A dad's rantings

Could Brown have been that bad?

2011-07-11T16:36:00.002+01:00

The latest revelations coming out today that the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown had his telephone, bank accounts and family medical records accessed by an investigator working for News international suggest to me two things.

Firstly, the security services responsible for protecting the Prime minister under Labour were so inept and useless that they and the politicians supposedly in charge were totally unfit for purpose.

OR

Secondly, the Labour Government were totally aware of the hacking and its extent and were prepared to allow it to go on so long as they could exercise some control of the information it allowed to be leaked this way.

Either way, it just goes to show what an unprincipled, incompetent bunch of mendacious charlatans the Brown government really was.

Two shags Prescott, the ultimate hypocrite.

2011-07-05T15:49:00.002+01:00

In no way do I approve whatsoever of the actions of the News of the World and its executives in sanctioning the interception of private telephone messages, but in targeting the mobile telephone of Milly Dowler the then missing schoolgirl they went so far beyond what can be considered acceptable that I am unable to find the words to express my contempt. The fact that over nine years have passed since her disappearance does not make the actions of the NOTW any less deplorable. The then editor and deputy editor have some serious explaining to do as to their role in this mess and why they were not aware, if indeed they were not, exactly how far beyond the bounds their staff were prepared to go to secure a story.

Unfortunately we once again see the hypocritical Labour motormouth John Prescott appearing all over the media calling for Rupert Murdoch’s head, seeking to gain political advantage against the current government without at once acknowledging that at the time of the abduction of poor Milly he was firmly entrenched in power as Deputy Prime Minister in a government which was totally in thrall to the Murdoch press empire. Given the power of his stable of newspapers and Sky TV Labour were at the time delighted to be in receipt of Murdoch’s blessings, after all they had helped secure a second term in office for Blair, Prescott et al.

I do not blame Prescott for not keeping a closer eye on the activities of the NOTW from his grace and favour flat in Whitehall or his country residence provided by the tax payer, after all he was far too busy shagging his diary secretary around then to have any real interest in running the country. There is something about the rank hypocrisy of somebody who knowingly and enthusiastically cheats on his wife yet retains a stance of moral indignation which is positively nauseous in its affront to all that is decent.

I notice that Messrs Brown, Blair, Prescott etc have not sought to assume culpability for the crimes that were committed by their troops during the expenses scandal yet seem it appropriate to go after Rupert Murdoch for crimes committed by his minions. They do not call for the head of a Chief constable when a humble PC is convicted for rape, nor do they go after the head of Terry Leahy when a store manager flogs booze to a teenager so why do they go after Rupert when a humble hack breaks the law and outrages the nation? The editor is the accountable person, not the proprietor unless they have declared that they no longer love Labour which is the big crime of which Mr Murdoch is guilty and for which he will continue to be hounded by the left until such point as he switches his allegiances back to them.

The activity of Prescott in the NOTW scandals of recent months is nothing to do with seeking out the truth, and all about wanting revenge on Rupert Murdoch for having deserted the sinking ship that was Labour under Gordon Brown.

Don’t get me wrong, journalists at NOTW and no doubt other newspapers as well have acted in a disgraceful fashion and those responsible need to be called to account, but to pretend that it is all the fault of Rupert Murdoch tends to undermine your integrity, but if you are johnPrescott you have none to undermine.

Redressing the balance

2011-06-28T11:42:00.001+01:00

There is an inevitability to public sector strikes that will not go away as long as the unions and militant members are able to strike with little or no impunity. It matters little if anything to them if schools and hospitals are closed down because they never have to face up to the consequences of their selfish actions. Schools will not close nor will hospitals as we cannot desert them in favour of more reliable providers; unemployment is not a possible consequence as it was for the private sector strikers of the 1970s and 1980s. As things are at present the power is entirely with the trade union barons on their six figure salaries and it is long past time this balance was redressed.

On Thursday of this week, schools will close because less than 20% of teachers want to strike. This will cause enormous hardship for many families which could involve them in having to take unpaid leave or purchase additional childcare. The victim of this action is not the government, it is the hard working taxpayer and we need the power to fight back.

I do not propose that strikes in the public sector be banned, rather I would like to see anybody who is adversely affected by public sector strikes be given the right to have their quantifiable losses reimbursed by the trade unions who call the strikes. If you have to forego a day’s pay to look after your child because the teachers are on strike, then you should have the right to demand the union calling the strike pay you the wages you have lost. If as a result of a strike on the public transport systems you are unable to get to work, then you can claim the day’s wages from the union.

The problem with the NHS

2011-02-23T12:50:00.001Z

Not all of them obviously, but some are just so ideologically opposed to reform nothing will ever be achieved until they are either retired or replaced by others prepared to countenance change for the better.

Last night on the TV there was a programme featuring Heston Blumenthal who was going to improve the food at Alder Hay Children’s hospital. During the initial part of the show we were treated to a few cameos of bedridden children complaining about the food being boring and disgusting spiced up with a few shots of parents feeding their children food brought in from outside. Nothing new here, jokes about the awful quality of hospital food have been doing the rounds since God was a boy.

The revelatory moments came a few minutes in when Heston went into the kitchens to meet the team of six chefs and found out that of the six four were engaged in cooking for the staff canteen and two were occupied with cooking for the children. The four who were preparing staff meals were using fresh ingredients to prepare attractive meals such as you might eat at home yet the two who were responsible for the children’s meals were busy tipping frozen chips into fryers and opening tins of beans and spaghetti hoops. Like me, Heston was a bit confused about this as we both thought that the main purpose of a hospital was to look after the sick, instead it seems as if the catering operation at Alder Hay is being run as a welfare club for the staff and when the chefs were questioned on this the reasons they gave boiled down to the fact that it had always been done that way.

Next we met who for me was the star of the show, the catering manager, Jeff something or other, who had been at the hospital for around 30 years, who was convinced in his own minds that there was nothing that Heston could teach him about catering and that in fact it would be Heston who would learn from his interaction with the NHS caterers and not him. He was clearly bitter at having had this imposition foisted on him from above and was set upon a course of action that seemed to involve him sticking his fingers in his ears and going la la la la! However despite Jeff’s best efforts, Heston had at least engaged with the chefs a bit and was able to persuade them to go up to the ward and meet the children they were supposed to be feeding. I was amazed that despite some of them having had tens of year’s service in the hospital’s kitchen, none of them had ever been onto a ward and met a patient to find out what they thought of the food. It was at this point that one or two of the chefs finally realised that there was a problem and more importantly they could help to fix it.

From about here on in the programme got into the happy feely mood with the chefs thinking about and ultimately creating food that the children wanted to eat and Heston coming up with his typical fruitloop ideas. We were treated to a final appearance from Jeff decrying the idea that kids like to eat tasty food and that Heston could learn from him before the programme moved towards its inevitable dénouement with kids happily tucking in to the Heston inspired menu and like Oliver Twist coming back for more and the senior managers (way higher up the food chain than Jeff) agreeing to change their ways for ever.

Anyway to cut out further rambling, the problem with the NHS is people like Jeff. They have been in the NHS since leaving school and who be sheer hard work combined with natural talent have hauled themselves onto the bottom rung of management by their mid fifties and are content to serve out their time doing exactly as their predecessors have done for decades. They are not intrinsically bad or evil, far from it, instead they are happy to sit in their little office doing as little as possible, creating nothing nor thinking about what their job should entail. They are calcified in their outlook and not open to any form of change, their only response being that they know what is best because it has worked for years.

As most people know at heart, the NHS is in desperate need of major surgery, and a good place to start would be to get rid of those who say things cannot change and replace them with people who believe that the NHS should be about caring for patients and not about providing safe unchallenging jobs for people trying to fill out the hours between leaving school and drawing a pension. The people who matter most in the NHS are not the doctors or nurses, not the managers or caterers, not the porters or receptionist, not the Trust board members, not even those in Whitehall and Government; the most important people are the patients and the whole shoddy crumbling edifice needs to be redesigned around them and their needs.

For more information about the programme and to watch it on Channel 4 version of iPlayer

Pulling the Woolas over our eyes

2010-11-11T22:18:00.002Z

Well, it appears as if Phil Woolas is on his way out of the door, and I for one am not upset. He is undoubtedly the architect of his own misfortune and really has nobody else to blame; he was ultimately responsible for publishing lies about his opponent and has thereby lost the right to represent the constituency of Oldham. I seriously doubt he will be missed in Westminster, he never struck me as particularly good at his job when he had one and given the alacrity with which Harriet kicked him out of the Labour Party I suspect this view is shared by the party hierarchy.

There does however seem to be a strand of opinion doing the rounds within the hallowed walls that even if it was right that he should go, the method of precipitating his departure was wrong; that judges should not have the power to interfere with the will of the people who elected him. This argument may have some merit were it not for the fact that his lies undoubtedly had influence over the result. If his majority had been huge it might not have mattered but seeing as more people voted for candidates other than Woolas and the winning margin was so small there was a pressing need to rerun the election without the lies and half truths.

Amongst the “great and good” at Westminster there are many who believe themselves to be beyond the laws that govern normal mortals and that in matters such as lying to the electorate or trousering expenses to which they have no right, they should only be answerable inwards to their fellow MPs. As we have seen with the expenses scandal there seems to be a marked reluctance to recognise the anger in the country about the behaviour of Parliamentarians and their seeming inability to come to terms with this anger. It is long past the time when we need to wrest back power from this self serving elite who are in the unique position of being able to write their own rules. They fully understand that with every erosion of their status, with each clawing back of power their ability to run Parliament as a cosy little club for their own benefit is diminished; their self awarded authority stripped away and they do not like this one little bit.

Parliament has no power other than that given to it by the people and it is for the people to determine the extent of that power, to vary it and reduce it as the people see fit and the mechanisms for doing so are the ballot box and the courts. As Cameron takes us towards fixed term Parliaments the need for the courts to have the ability to challenge Parliament and its members increases. When I hear MPs saying that the Courts do not have the right to look into their affairs the red mist descends, of course they have the right, without the courts who would protect the rights of the citizen against the state.

We have had the unedifying farce of Messrs Morley, Chaytor and Devine parading through the courts claiming that the laws as they apply to mortal man do not apply to Parliamentarians and they should not be subject to the normal court processes that apply to us if we have been accused of theft; thankfully this has now been adjudicated upon by the Supreme Court who have rightly decided that they are not above the law and I look forward to their trials with anticipation. I trust that if found guilty, incarceration will immediately follow.

Labour gets a spine.

2010-11-10T11:36:00.000Z

Ever since Gordon Brown ascended to the top of the greasy pole, one thing seems to have characterised the Labour Party both before the General Election and afterwards, a seeming inability to come to a quick unambiguous decision. This was first evident when Bottler Brown vacillated over when to go to the country; a decision which arguably cost him his job. This failure on the part of Brown to take the big decision dogged his time as PM and seems to have continued under the omni-absent Ed Milliband who has managed to keep very quiet over Woolas, Livingstone’s support of the non-Labour candidate and the Labour Lords.

It is not my intention to intrude upon the private grief of the Labour Party at a time when the dishonesty of many of their Parliamentarians is making so many headlines so I will restrict myself to praising Harriet Harman for her decisive actions in declaring that liars have no place as candidates for Parliament and kicking Phil Woolas into the long grass. I do so hope that this will set some form of precedent not only within Labour but also other parties so that our future MPs are honest trustworthy folk not given to mendacity and self enrichment.

So once again Harriet, congratulations on injecting a bit of backbone and decisiveness into Labour.

Michael Gove, you are going too far.

2010-11-02T13:32:00.002Z

This is certainly a strange day for democracy; we hear this morning that those who have been convicted of the most heinous of crimes are to be given the right to vote in elections for Parliament, on the grounds that it is their human right to be allowed the vote. These are the people who have taken away the human rights of others by murdering them or raping them or invading their homes or stealing their possessions, not a thought for the human rights of the victims of crime only the perpetrators.

Now we hear that Michael Gove is proposing to sack teachers who are members of the BNP; why for God’s sake? The BNP is a legally constituted political party the same as the Conservative or Labour parties and as such their members and supporters should have the same rights to express their political opinions as the next person. They are not members of a proscribed organisation and whilst that remains the status quo they should be entitled to the same rights as those who hold different political views. What next, will we be proposing a ban on teachers belonging to Labour or SNP or some other party that the government does not like, I do so hope not but fear that this is yet another erosion of personal freedoms.

Don’t get me wrong, I loathe the BNP and the policies they espouse with a passion, but by withdrawing from them the right to work in teaching or the police or the NHS or wherever all we will succeed in doing is to drive them underground. We need to expose them to the light of open unbiased public scrutiny where the fallacies behind their rhetoric can be demolished and their credibility such as it is destroyed.

Michael, you burst forth into the national consciousness earlier this year promising a massive reduction in central control of our schools with decision taking to be devolved to a local level and now hardly six months into your job you are proposing to dictate to schools who they may and may not hire. Please rethink this awful authoritarian throwback policy.

A teacher is supposed to be a professional, and as such there is no place for him or her to be expounding their personal beliefs in front of a class of children, that is wrong and to be deprecated irrespective of those beliefs and any teacher who is found to be attempting to politicise children should be disciplined but it is wrong to arbitrarily punish somebody for their beliefs if they are making no attempt to preach them.

Please Michael, no more blanket bans on groups of people instead allow local head teachers and boards of governors to deal on a case by case basis, that is part of the reason for having them in the first place.

Europe, get out of our lives.

2010-11-02T08:53:00.001Z

Once again we are being subjected to a piece of European interference with our laws about which there is little if anything we seem able to do. They now wish society to extend the right to vote to those who have repudiated the norms of civil society by committing crimes against the laws of the land. They wish thieves and murderers and rapists and drug pushers to have the same rights as law abiding citizens when it comes to electing our representatives in Parliament and on Councils. This is a decision that flies in the face of common sense; after all they are locked up because they are a negative influence upon society at large.

We lock criminals up for the very good reason that they are not fit to live amongst the rest of us by virtue of their anti-social behaviour and as such they should forego the rights and privileges the rest of us enjoy whilst they are incarcerated.

This latest piece of Euro garbage follows hot on the heels of last weeks debacle at the European council when we were effectively told that whilst we here at home must endure cuts in services and higher taxation to help restore our economy, our unelected Euro Politburo need more money for new offices and higher wages and more staff and it seems there is precious little we can do about it under the present treaty arrangements.

I have no desire to live in a country where we must work until we are 66 or even 70 so the indolent French and Greeks can continue to retire at 62 or 60 or whatever, if they want that luxury then they should pay for it, not me or you.

The time has now come for our Parliament to say NO to these increasing demands upon our wallets and NO to these impositions on the way we rule ourselves. Don’t negotiate with them, don’t argue with them, just say no and keep the cheque book in the pocket. Europe needs the UK far more than the UK needs Europe.

Just tell Barroso and Van Rompuy and the others to go and take a running jump!

Who to cull, that is the question.

2010-10-20T09:27:00.000+01:00

I was talking to somebody yesterday who is employed by a local council and they were unsurprisingly bemoaning the impending cuts that most if not all councils will soon have to implement. Naturally I suppose their focus was on the likelihood of potential job losses and the likely impact on “front line services”. When I raised the subject of so-called non-jobs I was surprised by their answer which was to the effect that these are amongst those least likely to be affected. I was naturally sceptical until the rationale was explained to me.

It seems that most of the normal council workers (housing, finance, IT, planning etc.) are paid for out of general council funds but most of the non-jobs are in fact usually fully funded by central government under a plethora of initiatives, so axing the horde of diversity officers etc. will save the council nothing at all. If they lose the post they will lose not only the salary of the former employee but also the additional money that goes with it to help fund their office costs, HR costs and so on. By simply axing one of these jobs paying say £25,000 pa the council will probably lose another £5,000 to £10,000 of central government money as well.

Cutting this army of LGBT outreach workers etc. will have no impact on general fund expenditure; it will in fact only serve to reduce the amount of money available to pay for front line services. There is no incentive for councils to cull these jobs; in fact there is a positive disincentive because by doing so they will lose the additional funding that comes with them.

Who should we choose

2010-10-15T13:32:00.000+01:00

With the latest expenses scandals hitting the headlines this week with reports that yet another Labour MP is being investigated by the police, surely it is time we had a radical rethink about precisely who should represent us in Parliament. I doubt for a minute that we can find a system which will give us a less corrupt bunch than we have at the moment but surely we could find a system which might inject a bit of competence.

My first and probably biggest gripe is with the lack of real world experience that many of the current crop of political leaders have, with few notable exceptions most of the political top table on both sides is replete with fresh faced professional politicians. Politics is no longer a way of serving your country, it is a career. Schoolchildren openly talk of having a career in politics maybe more with hope than certainty but when I was a child nobody gave it a moment’s thought as a way to make a living when you were fresh from school or university. We all had aspirations to do proper jobs whether it was to go to the pit or join a bank or go to university to study and become a “professional”, we all saw our futures out there in the real world doing a proper job to which our family and friends could relate. We knew we would start pretty close to the bottom but with luck and hard work we knew that the rewards of promotion would follow until we reached the point where our accumulated wisdom and experience would count for something.

Now we are faced with a plethora of ruddy cheeked, identically suited, media trained clones, slavishly loyal to the party which in effect controls their future in their chosen vocation. With few notable exceptions, no longer do MPs represent their constituents in Parliament; instead they represent their parties in the constituency. This country is no longer run from the bottom up as it should be rather it is now run from the top down and is becoming more like an elected dictatorship with each passing administration.

When election time comes round again I would like to be able to choose from a list of candidates who have achieved something in their life. Somebody who knows the cost of milk in Tesco because they have to pay for it and not because it is an item on an expenses claim form. I want my candidates to have CV’s replete with accomplishments and experience not degrees in PPE from Oxbridge.

Accordingly I would like to suggest the following ideas for bring back some sanity.

1. No candidate for paid political office shall be allowed to stand until they have spent a qualifying period in the world of real work, be it on the factory floor or the trading rooms of a merchant bank. Paid employment as a political advisor or similar would not count. The realistic minimum would be ten years.
2. Each candidate should provide a detailed CV, similar to that required when applying for a proper job, to each household immediately each election is called. As candidates are normally selected by their parties well in advance it could easily be fact checked before it is published.
3. Nobody should be allowed to be an elected politician for more than four terms at any level.
4. No duplication of representation, I don’t want my MP sitting on the local council as well; concentrate on the one job.
5. Compulsory retirement at the next election after the sixty fifth birthday.
6. No better pension arrangements than are available to the public at large.
7. No resettlement grants when your time is up over and above what would be your redundancy entitlement if you lost a job in the real world.
8. The right of recall
9. Each politician to publish an annual return of their achievements, voting record, attendance, expenses etc.
10. Each politician to hold an annual public meeting in their constituency within 45 days following publication of the annual report.
11. Upon leaving office, no politician to be allowed to take a job which has not been publicly advertised unless there is an established connection prior to first election such as a family enterprise. There may need to be an option to independently scrutinise the recruitment process if the former MP gets the job which the employer will pay for.
12. The removal of all centrally imposed quotas and lists from the process of candidate selection, this to be an entirely local affair, no parachuting in of the favoured few with constituency parties free to choose who they want to represent them.

We need to get choice, scrutiny and accountability back to the voters who in turn deserve candidates who will put their interests ahead of party and career. WE need MPs who will put something back instead of take out.

Is Sally a chav or just a silly little girl?

2010-10-14T17:08:00.004+01:00

A thought popped into my mind a while ago that Sally Bercow is a chav. Now where did that come from I wondered; after all chavs are from the social underbelly that populates many of our towns and cities and Sally certainly is not that.

She comes from a comfortable middle class background and was educated at the top private school Marlborough College as were those other poor underclass children Princesses Eugenie and Kate Middleton, a good few MPs and BBC journalists, and of course Anthony Blunt the communist spy. So it is fair to say that she had a bit of a leg up in life courtesy of mum and dad. She must also have a brain as she was accepted for Oxford University where she spent a few terms enjoying the life of an undergraduate. Unfortunately she did not graduate though I guess she must have tried hard as she did make out that she had when she applied for a job with a City PR firm.

No, Sally is not your stereotypical chav. She wasn’t born on a council sink estate, she didn’t go to a failing comp, she didn’t leave school without qualifications, so why do I think of her as a chav? I think it is more to do with her mental attitude to life, rather than her actual circumstances.

Chavs seem to have this innate sense of entitlement, if they want it they will have it; no need to work for it just take it. A bit like Sally and her supposed degree which she never actually received but that did not stop her from intimating that she had one on her CV to get a job. I think that used to be called obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception; the normal chav version is called TWOCing or shoplifting.

Typically your average tabloid chav is also renowned for their consumption of alcohol, again this is an area where Sally has admittedly excelled though I suspect her tastes run more to Dom Perignon than White Lightning, and like most chavs ethanol is the source of many of their troubles. Your average chav is likely to pop down the nearest alley for a quick bit of rough and tumble or hoik up her top and show her tits to the CCTV cameras whilst Sally is probably more likely to jump up on stage with a male stripper at Oxford if rumours are to be believed.

Sally, you are no martyr to free speech and despite the above I don’t really think you are a chav though one might be forgiven for thinking that; in truth you are no more than a silly little girl.

EDIT

Well since the revelations in the Standard which seem to be all over the MSM today, The Daily Mail being a particularly thoroughly nasty job, I have seen nothing to make me change my mind about the utterly pointless stupid woman.

Madame Speaker - Heroine?

2010-10-04T16:07:00.000+01:00

Some people think that Madame Speaker is a bit of a gobby tart, whilst others fawn on her every word of which there are plenty. Her main claim to fame is that she is married to the Speaker of The House of Commons, apart from which she has done little of note. She has however used this platform to promote not only her political views but also to catapult her into the media spotlight. She has like other nonentities used her marriage to a high profile individual to give her celebrity, a bit like a political Colleen Rooney.

In her earlier years she benefitted from a good education at Marlborough College (with Sam Cam) and Keeble College Oxford where she had a brief flirtation with Conservative politics. She appears to have dropped out after a couple of years and moved politically to the left having stood unsuccessfully as a Labour candidate in recent council elections.

Having failed to obtain her degree, and having failed to be elected to a council she has sought another outlet for her talents and of late taken up a bit of punditry, on one occasion alongside the Grand Dame of Blogging, Iain Dale. As a result of an unguarded comment on one of these shows she has been threatened with a Libel suit by somebody she upset and no doubt after a bit of wise advice gone running to her lawyer of choice who seems to be labelling her as a heroine.

Now this is where I have to take issue with a lawyer, something I am not normally afraid to do in my professional life but this lies outside my area of expertise so I move forward with a bit of trepidation.

Sally Bercow is not a heroine!

Joan of Arc was a heroine, Boudicca was a heroine, Odette Hallowes was a heroine, Mother Theresa was a heroine, Marie Curie was a heroine. These women were heroines because they showed courage and bravery in the face of death, all Silly Sally has done is to shoot her not insubstantial mouth off on television one too many times and then gone running to her lawyers at the first sign of trouble.

I cannot think of one conspicuously brave thing in this which merits the honorific of heroine, silly girl maybe or complete idiot but heroine; come off it.

For the record I do not think her comment constitutes a libel and she does not deserve to be dragged through the courts for it, though I doubt it will ever get that far. She is just another silly little girl with no discernible talent trying to make her way in life with a mouth that is conspicuously quicker than her brain.

Ryder Cup

2010-10-03T11:13:00.003+01:00

Quite why somebody decided that holding this event in Wales in October would be a good idea escapes me for the moment but nevertheless they did so here we are with one of the worlds most significant sporting events due to take place over the first weekend in October. Unfortunately the glorious Welsh climate has intervened and thus far the competition has been a near complete washout.

But why?

I used to play a bit of golf a few years ago and along with every other amateur golfer in the UK I was equipped with wet weather gear. I had a rain suit which kept me dry, a wide brimmed hat, waterproof shoes, waterproof gloves and a big umbrella. In short despite the very best efforts of the British climate I kept dry whilst out on the course. I even had a waterproof cover for by golf bag so the clubs did not get any wetter than they needed to.

I cannot remember any competition I was in from the monthly medal to the annual club championship being postponed because of rain, so why is the Ryder cup being delayed by a little precipitation?

The competitors each have somebody on hand to lug round the extra kit, they will have access to the very best wet weather gear FOC, yet for some to me unfathomable reason they are not expected to venture forth into the Welsh countryside and risk getting wet.

The paying spectators are perfectly willing to stand around in the wind and rain for hours on end, mostly keeping themselves warm and dry with their own waterproofs and umbrellas yet the massively wealthy prima-donnas they have come to see while away the hours ensconced in a warm dry hotel playing cards or watching TV or whatever until the clouds roll back and they can sally forth unencumbered by a layer of Gore-Tex. I do hope the paying public who have shelled out a small fortune for tickets will be reimbursed for the cost of tickets and the time and expense they have incurred but I sadly doubt they will.

It was too good to last I suppose

2010-10-01T23:30:00.003+01:00

Well H came round this evening shortly after I had gone out and got into another confrontation with her mother. Fortunately no injuries this time just some minor damage to some shrubs and a few thumps on the car. She has been a lot calmer these past couple of months so I have no idea what caused her to kick off like this. SWMBO reckoned she was wild eyed and angry as soon as she answered the door so maybe she had taken something she shouldn't, who knows. The police have been round and they are going to go and look for her to give her a bollocking but I fear she is becoming hardened to this and will pay no heed to their warnings.

It is horrible living like this not wanting to go out for an hour or two in case she comes round and attacks her mother or sister.

Is the BBC fit for purpose?

2010-09-30T11:03:00.000+01:00

Leaving aside the ability of the weather forecasters to get it wrong on seemingly every call, the thing which really hacks me off the most is their blatant left wing bias. I understand that during this last week there would inevitably be a natural concentration on the Labour Party, but with the exception of Liam Fox, I don't think I have seen a member of the government on the beeb at all. It will be interesting next week to see how they try to balance coverage particularly when the journalists and some of their fellow travellers are talking of walkouts and other industrial action to sabotage coverage of the Conservative Conference.

I expect to have my print media show political bias, it is for many their USP; and for private media companies such as Sky, CNN, Fox, ITV etc to spin according to the dictates of their owners has to be acceptable, but the BBC is nationally owned and must be politically neutral. I do not want a BBC that is on the right, nor the left; I do not want one that is slavishly pro-government nor vehemently anti-government, what I want a BBC which uses its immense power to hold the government to account, to criticise where appropriate and praise in similar vein. In short I want it to tell me what I need to know not what I need to think. Give me the information and facts, I will do the thinking.

I do not think that the BBC is stuffed to the gills with socialists intent on pursuing a Stalinist agenda although there are a few no doubt who fit into that category. Instead they seem to be forever putting forward the idea that we should all be cocooned by a big warm fluffy state blanket from the harshness of the world beyond. The whole ethos seems to be that of “nanny knows best” when in fact she doesn’t.

I do believe there is a need for a state run politically independent broadcasting service but it should operate as a gatherer and disseminator of facts not opinion.

As for its entertainment output, that has no place in a state run broadcasting operation, I have no wish to pay for Eastenders or Come Dancing, they hold no interest for me so why should I be forced to pay for them? I do however have an interest in history and science and am more than happy to pay for this entertainment through a subscription to Sky TV.

2010-09-19T00:10:00.000+01:00

There has been a bit of a kerfuffle going on over the French President kicking out a bunch of thieves called Roma and sending them back to where they came from. As they generally seem to do no work, contribute nothing to society and take what they want when they want it, it seems a bit of a no brainer to me. Good call Sarko!

It seems as if we have our own problem with the thieves now and I congratulate Judge Morgan for not being conned by the crocodile tears and handing down a sentence which should stop her stealing but only while she remains in prison. Unfortunately he should have been able to throw her out of the country via the first available plane, and until we are able to deal with thieves from beyond our shores in this way we will be prey to their voracious dishonesty.

It will no doubt be anathema to many bleeding hearts out there, but to my way of thinking, if you come into my country and then play fast and loose with the laws of the land you forfeit the right to stay and should be thrown out ASAP

Manners maketh man

2010-09-18T14:13:00.003+01:00

What is it with people today, particularly the youth that they no longer practice common courtesy. At school yesterday my daughter arranged to meet up with a couple of friends in town this lunchtime. After waiting a while nobody had turned up so she rang one of these girls and was told that she had decided to go shopping with her mother instead to another nearby town. It would have cost her next to nothing to send a text about the change of plan but it never even occurred to her. It would never have occurred to me to make such an arbitrary change of plan when I was her age without notifying my friends but it seems to be normal teenage behaviour these days. My daughter seems totally unfazed yet had I been stood up like this I would be spitting blood.

Why do so few parents teach their children basic manners, is it because they are lacking in them themselves or are they just outmoded for society today. Are good manners an anachronism that are no longer relevant for modern society?

I am afraid that I cannot accept there is no need for manners, in fact I would contend that they are more needed today than ever.

The BBC and the Labour Party

2010-09-17T09:51:00.002+01:00

Last night I settled down to watch the weekly mudslinging which of late has come to characterise Question Time only to be confronted with what I can only describe to be a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the Labour Party. The five contenders for the party leadership were given around one hour of prime time television to ostensibly make the case for why they should be chosen as the next leader of the Labour Party, but how big is the legitimate audience for this. As a non-member I do not have a vote as to who becomes party leader so a leadership hustings debate really was of no relevance to me nor I suspect was it relevant to the majority of the viewing audience. I have my own views as to who might be the best leader for the party and who might be the worst, but as I do not have a vote in the outcome it is irrelevant. I await the outcome and then along with everybody else who is not a member of the Labour Party, will try to live with that outcome.
If we assume the party has a membership of 250,000 souls then this was the maximum audience to which a leadership hustings could be relevant. As somebody who is not a member of any political party, the only information this programme was able to impart to me was how wrong the coalition government is in everything it says or does. There was not a single voice raised in opposition to this viewpoint. It did inform me of differences between the candidates on a number of issues but as I have no vote, these nuances were wasted on me and I suspect most of the audience.
It is vitally important that those who do have a vote, and especially those with several votes such as Harriet Dromey, are informed as to the respective candidates merits and policies but at what point is it the responsibility of the BBC to provide a platform for such a narrow audience. Will they give over a whole show to the candidates for the leadership of the BNP when they next choose their new fuehrer? I think not.
I suspect that a significant proportion of those who are entitled to vote in the elections for Leader of the Labour Party will have now made up their mind as to their preferences and cast their ballot accordingly, for those who have already committed, last night’s show was also irrelevant; in fact Question Time last night was really only of relevance to those who have not made up their minds and how few in number are they?
I appreciate that the choice of Labour leader will become of relevance to me in a little over four years time and I will take note of what they say and do in the period between their being anointed as Leader and the next General Election but until the leader is chosen I do not want to see countless hours of coverage of Labour’s internal squabbling funded through the licence fee particularly when most of what is said is an attack on the parties currently in power.
Maybe in the spirit of balance we can have a future edition of the programme featuring four coalition cabinet ministers and a senior backbencher from one of the coalition parties to promote their agenda. It will be equally valueless but it will at least restore some semblance of balance to the output of the BBC which for many years has been sadly lacking.