Bill's Speaker's Corner Soapbox

2012-01-20T02:37:00.000-08:00

Use Your Talents

by Bill Ross

I want to submit a rebuttal to the blog by Dr. Glenn Winters entitled 'About those child opera singers: here's the deal.' My reason is that such a powerfully negative submission ought not to float around the cyberworld without being challenged, or at least garnished with an alternative perspective, viz. mine.

I'm going to level my opinions against those of Dr. Glenn Winters' blog which, at first glance (and possibly subsequent glances) seems to decry and discourage talented children from blessing us with the fruits of their talents and abilities. His blogsite from which I have taken mental notes is copyrighted, so I cannot copy and paste his testimony onto this site but I will include the URL so you can click your way to it directly:

http://dropera.blogspot.com/2012/01/about-those-child-opera-singers-heres.html.

I, however, do not attempt to copyright anything so, for all I care, anyone can copy, paste, smoke, eat or drink anything that I have created.

From the section titled, 'About Glenn', his professional qualifications appear to be far greater than mine and will always be so, although I am blessed with a couple of universal qualifications that might be deemed superior to his: a keen sense of hearing and a love of music. This leads me to the fundamental question of why we create music at all. Why do we? What is its central purpose? I would hasten to suggest that it's to provide enjoyment to ordinary people who do not necessarily know or need to know much about the technicalities of music; people who are not professionals. Indeed, professionals of Dr. Winters' caliber (I'm spelling American although I am a Limey) form a minuscule proportion of the music loving race. My 'profession' during my working life was tracing problems with domestic electronic equipment such as televisions and video recorders. My knowledge of the interior and workings of a television did not make me more qualified on the TV programme content than the owners of the equipment.

I've often heard it said that where there are gifted and talented children, their parents are too pushy and could be doing the children more harm than good (Dr. Winters says that in his blog too). I wouldn't deny that there could be such cases, indeed, I've seen it, but we should avoid confusing that with encouragement. Anyway, its cliche attribute is making this a little boring now, we've heard it so often. It's a fact that most parents would like to see their children do well at something. Maybe my mother was pushy (my father didn't care less and only discouraged me in everything, but that's another story); she would have liked to see me become a concert pianist, after all, she invested enough money in that objective. It was never going to happen though, principally, because I wasn't good enough. I've drifted through my life telling people that when I was a kid, I wanted to be a concert pianist, but one key element was missing: I needed to be able to play pianos, and despite seven years of lessons, I couldn't do that.

So, why do children who are capable of playing Chopin and Rachmaninoff continue to do so? Could their time be better spent playing with dolls or maybe working towards a career at Burger King? Dr. Winters speaks for himself and other professionals (thankfully not me and millions of other lay music lovers) when he says that they (the glitterati professionals) don't have much use for the phenomenon of the child prodigy. You see, that's where I started this. What does he mean by 'use for' and why are professional musicians key in this area? Does their opinion matter? Does anybody care what they think? It implies that the only reason for the existence or the performances of musicians is to appease professionals such as Dr. Winters, whereas it's really aimed at the hoi polloi (thee and me).

Let us define the word 'professional': apart from the widely perceived meanings such as 'expert' polished', 'skillful' and 'masterly', it means paid or salaried. The antonym of professional is amateur, meaning engaging in a pursuit on an unpaid basis. The commonly recognized meaning is however, inept or unskillful, which undermines the point I was hoping to make here. Let's be practical though, let's focus on the paid and unpaid aspect and see where it takes us. It could reasonably be assumed that if one is professional and therefore being paid, the payment could be deemed to be that person's only motivation and that is where her/his enthusiasm comes to rest, whereas an amateur who is not being paid, could and most likely is being driven by enthusiasm and love for the pursuit. I'll go back to my earlier reference to my own career. I would fix an electronic device and in order to do so, would limit my technical knowledge to the bog standard minimum required to get that job done because my only reward for doing it was my salary. I had no ancillary interest in or enthusiasm for electronic equipment. That which had previously existed was killed stone dead shortly after I turned my hobby into a vocation. I appreciate that I might be going some of the way towards endorsing Dr. Winters' point here, but believe me, I'm not. Concert pianism and/or opera singing is not the same as fixing televisions.

Many of the talented children whose performances are included within my websites (Genius Piano Kids & Girls Have Got Talent) are quite likely not being paid for their efforts, which would suggest that they are building up to a career and have not yet reached that pinnacle. Dr. Winters appears to have either overlooked or deliberately discarded this notion by stating that the children are not up to the standards of the professionals. Does he believe that the professionals have always been so consummate? Were they born professional, or did they go through a graduation process just like the children for whom he has no time? As we parallel the silly story about a centipede asking in which order should it move its legs, with children playing musical instruments, I tend to lower my respect for the expertise of even a doctor.

Child pianists memorize intuitively whereas adults do it analytically, explains Dr. Winters. Does it matter? Can the performer play it without staring at the sheet music and turning the pages from which it came, or not? If so, what more is needed? This story is suggesting that children who learn complicated pieces without knowing how they did it fall into a similar state of paralysis as the centipede. I too play complicated pieces from memory and I've no idea how my mind has recorded them, analytically or or intuitively, and quite frankly, I don't care. I just do it! Paralysis huh? As I watch the tiny fingers of some of these 5, 6, 7 and 8 years olds flying across the piano keyboard at the speed of light, the word paralysis does not come rapidly into my mind.

Let us move onto the tortoise and hare syndrome: child musicians play complicated pieces 80% perfectly with 40% effort and they will soon be surpassed by less gifted people who will attain 95% perfection with 110% effort. Well, aside from colloquialism or imagined emphasis value, the term '110%' can't exist.

If all of the above is discouraging for pianists, wait until we get to the opera singing. In essence, according to the Doctor, no 11 year old 'tweeny' girl should be doing this, primarily to avoid the harm she could do to her fragile and easily damaged vocal folds and her skeletal bone structure - bones, muscles and tendons are all are at risk of serious injury. Oh my goodness, dial 911, get some emergency help out to Jackie Evancho quickly, before she cripples herself.

"These girls are writing checks they cannot cash. No pre-adolescent children should do it and few teenagers should do it," states the doc. I've noted here that he said no pre-adolescent CHILDREN should do it, and not, no pre-adolescent GIRLS should do it. He adds that few teenagers should do much of it also. Would Dr Winters explain how boys fit into this? If children should leave soprano singing alone until they are adults, then boys have missed the boat.

Dr. Winters goes on to suggest that if your ten year old girl has a nice voice, then encourage her to play guitars or pianos, er.........., have we not just been there with our 'don't do this' proposal? I know, it's me, try to allow for this please, it's my age! Some of the girls' voices sound nice because they are young. They may or may not sound good when the girls become adults, so why should we miss what is possibly temporary. I'd suggest that when/if they can't sing in later life, then they could then go onto something else, but in the interim, I am likely to cut my wrists if I can never hear the sweet voices of Noelle Maracle or Madi (and many others) ever again.

Competitions: I now find myself in agreement with Dr. Winters. I too despise competitions where children are concerned, in fact, I don't like the concept of piano competitions at all. The only upside to them is that they give us, the music loving public, the chance to hear performances that wouldn't come our way were it not for them, so I can live with them. I do find shows such as the 'X Factor' and 'Every nation, city, town, neighborhood, street on Earth has got talent' somewhat sickening. Let us ask ourselves, what on Earth do Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and their judging cohorts know about classical pianism? Would Dame Fanny Waterman like to include them on her panel of judges at the Leeds Piano Competition, or might we see them judging at the Van Cliburn in Fort Worth or the Tchaikovsky in Moscow? Give me a break already!!

I suppose it must be time for me to epitomize: Dr. Winters has done it for me. "Children sing in church, home and school, leave the stage and the recording studio to the big bad grownups." Groan.....Yawn...Snore...Zzzz...Zzzzz. WE'VE DONE ALL OF THIS!!! WE'VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR CENTURIES!! (I wish I could control my shouting!) The birth of the internet and You Tube has opened up a new vista for talented children. Dr. Winters is fundamentally suggesting that we should discourage or even prohibit children from performing in all areas of music, notwithstanding their inherent talents, yet from other professionals, we hear that the time to start is when young.

I abandoned my piano playing when I was a teenager and I have regretted it ever since. It was many years later that I became 'born again' and I know that what I could have gained, I shall now never gain.

Please, anyone reading this, don't let it upset or discourage you. Take my stance, that being of one who bestows little or no respect for the 'expert' views of Dr. Winters. Were there much substance to his expert claims, there would be a torrent of disabled or badly crippled little girls, the product of their desire to sing. Personally, I would put money on a forthcoming brilliant career for the likes of Jackie Evancho and many of the pianists and other musicians featured on my two websites.

This next section is far more encouraging. In contrast to the views of this 'professional', there are other professionals who clearly do not share Dr. Winters' opinions. Let us take for example the late Patrick Tabet. I haven't been able to obtain much information about Patrick, but from what I can glean, it seems he devoted much of his life to encouraging and furthering the careers of child musicians around the world and in particular, to those of Aimi Kobayashi, Nadia Azzi and Umi Garrett among others who are featured on these sites.

It matters not who you are, what your aspirations are, how well and how disciplined you conduct yourself, you will always face the negativity that is spawned and extrapolated by the nasties of this world. Shortly after Patrick's death, whilst attempting to find more information about him, I inadvertently landed on a You Tube site that was filled with the most disgusting rants of one particular individual. There was a time, not too long ago, when a man who was fond of children and encouraged children in what they do was considered to be a nice man. In fact, many women who submitted their lonely hearts adverts to the Personal Columns of newspapers would often be, '....looking for a man who had a GSOH (good sense of humor) and must like children.' Now, following all the media brainwashing of the public, such a man these days draws a title other than 'nice man', the exact word used, I won't type here, but it adorned that You Tube site extensively. I choose to ignore such garbage; I've heard nothing but good about Patrick from child musicians, many of whom are my Facebook and You Tube friends and are featured on my websites.

If the testimony of Dr. Winters is worthy of any credibility, then the AADGT (American Association for Development of the Gifted and Talented) may as well close its doors forever. This organization, based at 8 Brookwood Road, New Rochelle, NY10804 Tel: (914) 712-665, exists to assist talented children to reach the pinnacle of their potential, many of whom, as a result of their involvement with AADGT, have performed for large audiences at New York's famous Carnegie Hall.

If we need more encouragement, we need look no further than Lang Lang who tours the world, not only performing in the world's greatest concert halls, but spends a lot of his time teaching and encouraging child musicians. Anna Larsen has received a large amount of teaching and assistance from him, as have many others. In London last year, he was responsible for organizing a massed piano event where 50 Steinways and a hundred children were on stage simultaneously, creating a magnificent sound the likes of which I'd never previously heard.

So, to sum up finally (I'll do it this time), it would appear on the face of it that Dr. Winters believes that encouraging children in their musical and singing talents is bad for them and the rest of us, whereas the likes of Lang Lang, Patrick Tabet and the AADGT believe that talented children are to be encouraged as much as is possible. So do I. Let us move forward with our child musician crusade, for if we are to rely exclusively on musicians whose careers begin in adulthood, we'll need to prepare for a massive shortage.

I'm mind wandering now - question - why did Dr. Winters write that blog? What was he hoping to achieve with it (I'll finish this soon, I promise)? It's had many hits, but because of it, will even one child desist from playing music? Will one little opera singing girl desist from singing. Do you know what all singing girls (without exception) say ? They all say that they sing because they love to do so more than anything. Should they be deprived of this key pleasure in their lives? I've yet to hear of a case of a girl's bone structure or vocal folds collapsing following a singing session.

No doubt, if Dr. Winters hears of this article, he'll proffer his own rebuttal against it, but no problem; I'm thick skinned. I already know what my problem is. It's that I have far more respect for children than I do for adults. That's one thing kids do not receive enough of from adults - respect. Try awarding it to them and hey listen, you'll be amazed at how much respect they have stored up waiting to be unleashed in your direction. I know, I've been there.

Bye kids, y'all sing and play well now, y'hear?

Slave Labour in 2012 Britain

2012-01-12T17:16:00.000-08:00

This is disgusting: A 22 year old who was claiming JSA whilst doing voluntary work in a museum was frog marched out of her voluntary job and forced to stack shelves and sweep floors at Poundland or face losing her JSA benefit. It's a government scheme designed to encourage the long term unemployed back to work.

So, what's disgusting about that? Why shouldn't people earn their benefit? This is why:
Large nationwide successful businesses such as Tesco, Sainsbury's and Argos are enjoying this FREE slave labour. Instead of solving the unemployment problem that this country now has, it is adding to it. How? Well, why would Tesco pay wages to employ staff to work in their stores if they can get someone to work for free? These people are now working for about a quarter of minimum wage i.e. their JSA benefit. This claimant was taken away from the voluntary work that was helping her towards a job, as it was linked to her studies at university, and made to do work that had no vocational value to her.

These companies can afford to bulldoze money at their shareholders, yet they have people working in their stores at absolutely no cost to the themselves. Make no mistake, YOUR TAXES are paying for this. YOU pay your taxes in order to finance the JSA, whilst Tesco, ASDA, Argos and Sainsbury's enjoy the free labour of the claimants.

Quite rightly, this particular claimant is taking legal action against the Government under the Human Rights Act, article 4 (2) of which states that 'No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour.' Normally, I'm not a fan of the Human Rights Act, but this case makes an exception to my aspirations. The argument? If there are jobs to be done, there are job vacancies to be filled.

Racist or what? - 7th December 2011

2011-12-07T03:00:00.000-08:00

Today, the news is carrying a story about an incident in which four Somali girls beat up a white girl so badly, that she has lost her job due to frequent sickness absence. They beat and kicked her in the head knocking her senseless, whilst shouting, "Kill the white bitch. Let's kill the white slag!"

In court, the defendants decided to use their religion as a defense device, stating that being Muslims, they are unaccustomed to being drunk because their religion forbids it. This suggests that their behavior is not their fault, but that of the alcohol they had consumed and their religion which prohibited them from becoming seasoned binge drinkers.

The court gave consideration to this. The judge's position in such cases is to balance the extenuating circumstances against the aggravating circumstances, after which, he can come up with the most appropriate sentencing.

In this case, the 'most appropriate sentence' for beating a girl senseless, which, because of what they were saying at the time, amounts to attempted racist murder by the standards of most right thinking people, is a 6 month sentence suspended for one year. In actual fact, it means they have walked away from court without receiving punishment.

The most obvious question to follow this with is, had four white girls attacked one Muslim whilst shouting "Kill the paki slag/bitch," would the court have been quite so lenient with them.

One Muslim caller to LBC criticized Nick Ferrari, the presenter for bringing race and religion into his rant about this case (and believe me, this normally politically correct bloke really did rant, for once). Quite rightly (and I rarely agree with anything Nick Ferarri says), he explained that the attackers brought race into the case by shouting, "Kill the white slag'" and they also brought religion into the limelight by using their religion as their central defense mechanism.

Some expert who came onto the programme explained that the judge has to consider whether rehabilitation or retribution would be the product of the incarceration of the offenders, but he (the expert) did let slip that the cost of imprisonment is really high. That's the key, the financial cost.

This shows quite clearly that crimes against the person are deemed low level crimes, as is burglary, where someone comes into your home, steals what you have worked for and trashes your 'castle'.

Were these four girls to have defrauded a large and/or governmental institution of a large amount of cash, I'm almost convinced they would not have received a six month suspended sentence, indeed, the cost of their imprisonment would have been found from somewhere. Please someone, tell me I'm wrong and why.

More on the CRB Checks

2011-11-08T07:18:00.000-08:00

The CRB Check is an extremely dangerous device.

Cross reference with July 2010 entry on this same topic.

Ah yes, that’s good, they’re OK, we’re safe with them. They’re all CRB checked. That means they’re squeaky clean and we can go ahead with our plans; our plans being to use a local private hire company to send a car each day to take our 7 year old girl to school. We sifted carefully through the yellow pages and other ads, and we saw what we needed to see: “All our drivers are CRB checked.”

Ahh, sigh of relief, now we don’t need to worry.........do we? We give them a call and ask them to send a car out at 8.45 to take our little girl to the school which is two miles away. Along comes a shabby looking vehicle driven by a shabbier looking man; big and fat, shaved head, great big fat arms, belly on his knees, tattoos and piercings all over his body. Are we feeling as safe as we did a few moments ago? What about the CRB check? Surely this guy wouldn’t hurt our offspring, he’s been CRB checked. Ah, but what did the CRB check reveal? Quite possibly, it would have revealed that the guy has a criminal record as long as his fat arms, but the result of the CRB check won’t accompany the advert, only the fact that it’s been done. How does this work? The guy, his brother or best mate owns the private hire company. They set it up when they came out of prison. Why did they do that? Because they, with a criminal past, cannot get a job; nobody is recruiting ex cons. The only way ex cons can progress through life is to either re-offend (which is why our prisons are always full to capacity) or they can set up their own businesses. Most re-offend, it’s easier and they have the experience. You can’t beat doing what you’re good at for an easy life.

There are other ways of getting through the CRB check barrier. One of them is to be taken on trust by an employer. The CRB costs a substantial amount of money, and some seedy employers will do whatever it takes to save a few quid, so they might simply ask a potential employee: “Have you been in trouble with the police?” The applicant will reply, “Yes, I was caught speeding one time.” “Ha ha ha ha ha,” they both laugh, then they get on with the job application. The interviewer ticks, ‘Yes, CRB checked’.

The above is not the most dangerous area though; no, that belongs exclusively to the people who have never been caught. Everyone whose insalubrious past will show up on a CRB check will at some time, have never been caught. Such a person at the right time will have absolutely no difficulty applying for and succeeding in getting a job as a taxi driver, a nursery assistant, a school teacher, a sports coach, in fact, any number of positions that place him/her in unsupervised contact with children of all ages.

“How’s that?” you ask. Well, the likes of Levi Bellfield (convicted of murdering Millie Dowler and two other girls; suspected of murdering several others), Roy Whiting (convicted of murdering 7 year old Sarah Payne) and Ian Dunkley (convicted of murdering Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman), Robert Black, convicted of raping and murdering Sarah Harper, Susan Maxwell, Jennifer Cardy, Caroline Hogg, suspected of murdering Genette Tate and several others, and furthermore, claims to have murdered between 30 and 40 girls in total, would at some time, have come up squeaky clean on a CRB check because unless someone has done and been caught for a criminal offence, his/her record remains unblemished. There is no real way of the public knowing what a person might or is likely to do. So, armed with the cosiness and comfort that their limited knowledge of the CRB check gives them, parents will gleefully take their kids to a nursery, music school or sports centre. They’ll be calm in the assurance that their children will be completely safe, protected and looked after by CRB checked professionals, as they leave them with total strangers whose only testimony to their integrity, reliably and diligence is the CRB check which gives no indication as to the heinous sexual crime that such a person is about to commit against your little girl, as soon as you set off for work.

“He’s a nice chap isn’t he, he looks all right, very pleasant you know. No need for us to worry there; anyway, his wife does most of the work with the kids. The bloke spends most of the day in his garden.” Don’t believe it. Many child abuse cases are teamwork, as the Fred West case will denote.

Yes, I’m convinced that the CRB check does little to help any of us. As suggested earlier, it stops people from ever working again. Oh yes, it’s so easy for us to smugly say, from the comfort of our cosy ‘never done anything wrong’ position, garnished with the perfection of our past behaviour (????) to say, “They should get a job and live normal lives now.” Don’t be silly; what would make anyone think they are going to get a job when nobody would dream of employing them? Would you?

Many ex-cons would like to be one timers. They made a mistake, often out of character, they got caught, they went to court, received their sentences which might or might not have been custodial. They did the crime, so they did the time. It’s over, they’ve paid their debt to society, now they can wipe the slate clean, re-enter society and settle down into a respectable and normal lifestyle, get a job, a mortgage and a family life – put it all behind them. WRONG!!!!! As far as the court is concerned, they HAVE served their time and paid their debt, but as far as society is concerned, they still have a lot of debt to pay. Indeed, they will be paying their debt whilst ever they are breathing. The rest of society will be constantly calling on them to make payments. The distillation of this will arise whenever an ex-con applies for a job, applies for voluntary work, tries to insure his/her house or car or tries to go onto television quiz shows such as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? etc. They will be judged. Jobs and Insurance are virtually impossible to obtain.

We cannot control last week, we cannot control last year nor can we control what happened in our lives several years ago, but because of the society we have (are), the past will always control us and our future. So, because society abounds with self righteous perfect individuals who have never done anything wrong (they haven’t been caught yet), society in its unforgiveness, will have to live with the consequences of its self proclaimed perfection – it will always have to live with crime, it will always have to finance prisons at the rate of £1,500 per prisoner per week (or £3,000 pw for young offenders).

“They should have thought about that before they committed their crimes,” you say. Yes, just like you, they should have been perfect in every way. But wait, just because you didn’t get caught skiving off from work, making private phone calls on the company phone in the company time, using Facebook and private emails on the company’s computer in company time, driving company cars using company petrol on private business, stealing goods from work for your mates to decorate their homes or build fences, just because you didn’t get caught doesn’t mean that you won’t. It also doesn’t mean you won’t lose your job when you get caught. It doesn’t mean your employer won’t prosecute you and you end up in prison. When you neglect to tell the tax office something it needs to know about your tax status, or your pension status, or your sickness benefit status, don’t think someone won’t say of you, “You should have thought about that before you did the crime,” because it’s ALL just as much a crime as burgling houses and stealing cars. “Ah, but that’s different, it’s like speeding, it doesn’t do any harm, it’s victimless,” you say. Really? That belief will not keep you out of court when they catch you. The custom that flows in the ‘everybody does it’ and ‘that only happens to others’ syndrome won’t save you either. When it comes to MPs fiddling expenses, it was the ‘everybody does it’ culture that led them to fiddling. I don’t believe for one moment that people stood for parliamentary election with the prime intent of expenses fiddling. It’s just that when they arrived, they either detected or were told that, “This is what happens here. It’s normal; it’s a way of making up your salary to what it should be.” So now they feel at ease, justified in their fiddling, so, like all crimes, it starts small, then grows and grows.

This doesn’t stop with MPs, it goes on in many work places. What of payments to police officers engaged in the Milly Dowler phone hacking and other scams? How many tradesmen will ask for ‘cash in hand’ instead of credit cards or cheques? That’s to fiddle taxation. You know, that’s almost seen as respectable dishonesty – everybody does it.

Somebody somewhere is wondering, with what would I supplant the CRB check because I have criticised the CRB, but haven’t suggested an alternative. That’s because there isn’t one. It’s a dire shame when something as disastrous and dangerous as the CRB check has to be deployed because it’s the best thing we have. Personally, were I an employer, I would go out of my way to employ ex criminals in order to give them a second chance to prove that they had made a mistake and instead of what they did being part of a serialisation or lifestyle. Employers need to ask themselves, if an ex con were intent on continuing a criminal lifestyle, why would he be applying for a job? There can only be one answer; he wants to move on. Would I engage a convicted paedophile in a position of trust with children? If there was the slightest chance that the person would be in unsupervised charge over kids, the answer would be of course not because it’s a well known fact that paedophilia doesn’t go away. It’s like homo-sexuality, once it’s there, it’s there – set in concrete, it’s sexual perversion and for that, there’s no cure.

“How would you know he/she’s a paedophile if there’s no CRB check?” you ask. Give me a minute, I think I’m currently shooting myself in the foot. It’s a case of, how long is a piece of string – let’s go back to the early part of this presentation. If there IS a CRB check and the individual hasn’t been caught yet, how would we know he/she is a paedophile?

I think the answer lies in the continuity of employment sequence (only if he/she has previously been caught). If all previous employers on an application form are checked, then questions would hang over any gaps or unsubstantiated claims. Oh what the heck? Where other people’s kids are being looked after, do the CRB check, because of the fact that paedophilia has no cure, so if someone has been convicted for sexually assaulting or raping a child, given the chance, he/she will do it again. OK, CRB check, you win that little detail, but overall, I still think it’s a dangerous device. By the way, the big fat shabby taxi driver mentioned at the start of this might well have been harmless as far as your little girl is concerned. The ex-con robs banks, he doesn’t attack children, but beware of the nice man in a suit; he could be far more dangerous. Most men, who are liked by kids, are genuinely nice guys. It could be that as many as 99% of them really are, but a serial paedophile will also be a nice man as far as kids go. He knows how it works.

Umi Garrett - Angel Of The Piano

2011-08-20T02:40:00.000-07:00

Click the pix for link to story

Who Is Willing To Pay?

2011-08-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

Who Is Willing To Pay?

Since we've had the riots in English cities, an overabundance of 'pundits' have flooded our radio/TV airwaves and more local chat venues with a copious supply of blame, solutions and remedies. "They (whoever 'they' are) should……………..they ought to ……………they are too soft, they should come down harder on these criminals, they should lock them up for many years, they are only handing out light 'slap on the wrist' sentences etc. etc."

This is the British way unfortunately. It is always 'THEY' who need to find a solution to every problem, be it economic, industrial or criminal. The country is monotonously criticising the government's cuts and blaming the riots on this. Even high ranking officials such as the Mayor of London are berating the government for expounding its intention to go ahead with the proposed cuts in the Police and Judiciary Services. Every cut that the government has proposed since it came into office has been vociferously condemned by the public. All people will agree that the deficit needs to be addressed and that cuts in expenditure have to be made, but out comes the old 'not in my backyard' syndrome. "Yes, make cuts, but only cuts that don't touch me or my lifestyle. Make cuts that others will have to bear the brunt of, not me." Of course, if the government was to cosset every such desire, no cuts could be made.

The British are like this though, they want the government to do more and stop whining about saving money, but do the British want to finance this? Will they accept more taxation? Of course not. Will the people accept responsibility for anything instead of always downloading it onto "THEY"? This is why David Cameron's 'Big Society' comes in for criticism, because for that to succeed, people other than 'THEY' will have to get involved. For too long, this population has been bottle fed, its every whim pampered and nobody has been asked to contribute to anything, because "THEY" have always been there to serve. Whichever way the cake is sliced, it's going to involve people, be it with less income or reduced services. People refuse to acknowledge how fortunate they are to live in this country where the needs of us all are met, either by ourselves or our compatriots. Disabled and sick people here, not only do they not work and contribute to the treasury, but they receive everything they need and much more. Many of them receive brand new cars every three years, expensive scooters, free housing and no council tax to pay. Added to that they receive a regular income to spend as they wish. And yet, instead of showing gratitude, it is still not enough; these are the ones who complain the loudest, these are the ones who contribute the least and cream off the most. In many countries, there are no benefits, no health service, no law and order, no sanitation, no running water and no food. In such countries, those who don't work receive nothing. In fact, those who do work don't receive much either.

The public of this country needs to be made aware that services cost money and money needs to be available. How they moaned when VAT went up by a couple of pennies to 20 per cent. Some of the whines: "How are we going to feed and clothe our children now? What about the poor downtrodden pensioners?" These whingers always use children and old folks as weapons, where in actual fact, all they are worried about is their own ability to continue driving a couple of four wheeled drive vehicles and take three foreign holidays a year. It all comes back to the main thrust of my last blog about the riots, the greed of the people. This is a very greedy nation where self comes first and foremost. These people who moan about the plight of the pensioners hardly, if ever, go near their own lonely parents to see if they are managing well enough.

And so, until the people are willing to fork out, the cuts will have to take place. My main criticism of the system is the publicity that is given to government finance and services. The decent hard working law abiding citizens are not the only ones to hear of these constraints; the reports of them are not censored and directed only to respectable ears. The criminals also hear of the overfull prisons and the overstretched judicial and policing system, so of course, they are going to see this as an incitement to get stuck in. "Come on lads, this is our invite, let's go. Nobody can touch us."

Of course, the proof is there today (Friday 12th August 2011). Some of the rioters have been in court already. I say some, what I mean is a minuscule proportion of the offenders. Far fewer than those who were rioting were actually arrested, and only about a quarter of those arrested were charged. Of those charged, many were given slight sentences such as referral orders.

Like me, you're wondering what a Referral Order is, which is why I looked it up on Google:   The offender is expected to agree a "contract" with the panel and, if appropriate, the victim. The young person is supervised by a member of the Youth Offending Team and has to attend further panel meetings during the term of the Order. Victims are also invited to attend and take part.
If the young offender fails to agree a contract or fails to abide by it during the term of the order, the case is referred back to the court for re-sentencing.
Referral Order Panels are based on the principles of Restorative Justice: -
    •    Responsibility - The young person is encouraged to take responsibility for what they have done
    •    Reparation - Repairing the harm caused by the young persons actions. Reparation is either direct to the victim or to the community as a whole
    •    Reintergration - The panel looks at ways to address the young persons offending behaviour

It was in the news today that an eleven year old girl had called the judge a fat c***. He punished her by giving her a referral order, so that should give comfort to our citizens who can now go about their business, calm in the knowledge that justice has been done and that this girl, because of the 'severe' punishment she has received, will, for the rest of her life, fear and respect the law. Others who have appeared in court have received fines - one lad was fined a hundred pounds but because he had served 18 hours in police custody, the fine was only academic and he didn't have to pay it. Some lads and men have received custodial sentences. These are measured in weeks; not years or months, weeks and a small number of them.

Some of the suggestions propounded by the armchair experts who dispense their solutions over the phone to talk radio stations, and indeed on Question Time on BBC TV, recommend that the perpetrators of these crimes have their benefits stopped and be evicted from their social housing. This ideology is fostered by the assumption that all rioters and looters are from the 'great unwashed' sector of society who are unemployed and living in council properties. As that is not the case, then another question arises: how would they punish those who lived in the private sector and were gainfully employed? For a punitive system to work, it has to be distributed evenly and fairly, not punish the less fortunate more than the better off.

So, just to epitomize: for smashing up shops, setting fire to shops, homes, warehouses, busses and cars, the sentence can be a few weeks in prison, a non-payable fine or a referral order. One final sad note; five people were murdered in the riots, let's hope the perpetrators get something other than a Referral Order.

    •    We get the system we deserve. Amen.

London Riots - 8 August 2011

2011-08-09T05:53:00.000-07:00

The London Riots

Only the totally blind or blinkered could have failed to have seen this coming. A shot was fired across the bows last December, but the dust has been allowed to settle and life has been restored to 'business as usual'. 'Business as usual' can best be described as the modern day lifestyle of greed and self that has come to be the catalyst of unrest and disquiet among the young and deprived. Young people rarely vary in their needs and aspirations; it's life, it's growing up. They will always need to have a target. I was a growing lad in the 50s and 60s and the same desires existed within the young then as they do today. We had material desires, things we wanted to possess; we ogled cars and gadgets, just as today's kids do, but there are differences between now and then.

When I was a lad (sorry about the cliche), when we switched the television and the radio on, or opened a newspaper, we were not constantly barraged with the announcements of the good fortune of the few. By the few, I mean the greedy selfish uncaring fat cats of today. We never heard of radio and television presenters (BBC employees paid from the public's contributions) being awarded 7 figure salaries, their salaries being justified by the recognition of their talent or the claim that they work hard; employees such as Jeremy Paxman who so desperately needs and cannot survive on less than 1 million pounds per annum, or Jonathan Ross who could not begin to imagine keeping body and soul together unless he has SIX million pounds per annum coming in from the BBC's coffers. Of course, on another occasion, we read and hear about how the BBC is planning to source these outrageous fiscal packages; it is going to lay off the lower paid who actually keep the BBC's wheels turning and would continue to do so if Paxman and Ross (go on, I know, it's my name too which I regret in these circumstances) left this mortal coil tomorrow. It astonishes me to sometimes hear that salaries reflect how hard a person works. Were there any substance to this, how hard does someone on minimum wage work? On a sliding scale, you would have to say that they do almost nothing and take no time during the working day to do it.

Moving on, in my youth, we did not hear of incompetent bankers whose incompetence is magnificently rewarded with hugh salaries and bonuses. Neither did we hear or read of corrupt politicians ripping us off with their fraudulent expenses claims. Maybe it went on then, but we didn't get to hear of it. Furthermore, we never heard of heinous crimes committed by 'responsible' people like the News of The World reporters and their sub-contractors hacking into the personal lives of murdered children's families. In a nutshell, 2011 has been an unprecedented annus horribilis, to quote a very famous lady, i.e., a terrible year.

The young people who are rising up have desires of their own, when they look into their future, they stare into a very long and empty tunnel; one containing little or no hope. They see all the nice things that others own, Mercedes cars, BMW's, Porsches etc. They see flash looking computers, iphones, and every other conceivable technological toy, and quite rightly, they want some of this action. They, like the rest of us, will read about people living in places like Hampstead Heath who could drive a Bentley, crash it up and not even bother to claim on the insurance when it's a lot less fuss to simply but another car of the same ilk.

Now, here it comes: "They should do what I did, go out and work for it." Too right, they should. I did! When I was in my teens or should I say, barely out of my teens, some of my materialistic dreams started to come true. We often hear it said that times are much better now than in the 1960s; there's much more money about now and people get what they want more easily. They want it and they want it now!! Do they really? When I was a teenager, I dreamt of big flash cars, as did many teenagers of the time. How I would have loved to own a Mark 10 Jag or an E Type, or a 1959 Cadillac. Although we don't go all the way with our dreams, we could go some way towards their fruition. I managed to own a Vauxhall Cresta which was the biggest and flashiest car made by Vauxhall, a six seater luxury sedan. My best mate, similar age to me, owned a Mk3 Ford Zodiac, the biggest and flashiest car made by Ford, also a six seater luxury sedan. How did we do it? Well, we didn't go out rioting on the streets of our cities. No, we worked, we worked all the hours imaginable until we saved up for those cars. So, now what's my point here? You might criticise today's kids for adopting the attitude that they shouldn't have to work if they want something, they should come by it without having to generate the means themselves. Not necessarily the case: in the 1960s, the wherewithal existed. The nation's wealth was somewhat more evenly distributed. Less evident (if it existed) was the socio-eco division where millionaires and billionaires were living in close proximity to those who hadn't eaten that day. Jobs were available for all who wanted them. With absolutely no qualifications (that was me), we would go to the Youth Employment Office and instead of shuffling round aimlessly and complaining about their being no jobs, we were actually asked what we were interested in and what we would like to do as a job. A quick search through a filing system ensued, and out came a card. The adviser would say, "Here's a job that would suit you." You would then go for the interview and start work shortly afterwards. From one job, I was sacked in the morning because of my conduct; by lunchtime, I'd found another job and started work almost immediately. Imagine that ease of employment today.

Someone is probably saying that we can't blame the riots on the lack of job opportunities. Can't we? Look at today's youth - only income, Jobseeker's Allowance for which they have to bow and scrape to the despotic DWP. Their fathers' only source of income, Jobseeker's Allowance for which they too have to bow and scrape to the despotic DWP (Department for Work & Pensions). So, with that concept firmly in situ, ask yourself this question: if you were one of these youths, would you have a reason to get out of bed in a morning? Were you to take that pointless step, how are you going to spend the day? How are you going to expend all that energy that you have bottled up and aching to be released? You won't be doing it by legal means because that costs money. You won't be doing it by looking for work because for that to happen, two things have to coincide - there has to be a desire to find a job, but far more importantly, there has to be a job available. I never thought I'd be able to say this, but London has become the unemployment nucleus of the country. When I lived in the Capital in the 1970s, it was exactly the opposite, it was a case of, if anyone didn't have a job, it was only because they didn't want to work, but in reality, jobs were going begging.

So why rioting? They see it on television and they glean from what they see. The analogous question could be, 'why does a dog lick its own genitals?' Answer, 'because it can', and that is what the kids gleaned from their television screens. It's a way of indulging in excitement; they can go looting and acquire the products of their dreams totally unfettered. But what is much worse is this: there have been reports of 'non-yobs' forming orderly queues to go into shops to steal goods, even trying on shoes and clothes to see if they fit before nicking them. Others have brought their kids to the shops in their cars, told the kids what to get, then they drove off with their newly stolen possessions. Is this the society that condemns rioting, is this what we have become in this great civilised land of ours?

I've just heard the leading politicians' panaceas following three nights of rioting in not only London, but Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol and Nottingham. Theresa May, our Home Secretary has said: oh for goodness sake, I need to draw a deep breath before I relay this verbal effluent. This woman has been trusted with the highest position in our system of law and order. Is she worthy of it? Until now, I thought, "Maybe!" Now, we hear this from her oral orifice: "The riots that took place in Tottenham on Saturday night and the subsequent disturbances in other parts of London are totally unacceptable." Is that this woman's best shot? Shut your ears for a minute because I'm swearing under my breath.

So, now we know, it's totally unacceptable. Until this moment, did you know or could you have guessed that? Let's inhale more of this viva voce pollution: "Let me be absolutely clear. Those responsible for this violence and looting will be made to face the consequences of their actions." Yes Theresa, you are crystal clear. But what is she talking about here? She's dispensing threats to people who have a monopoly in the ammunition stakes. She has nothing in her armoury? What does she have to support her 'absolutely clear' threats? At her disposal, she has a police force (sorry, service) that is staffed by men and women who dare not overstep their mark, otherwise they'll be facing justice themselves, as we have seen recently, so they have to remain softly softly. Then, we have 215 arrests (up to the time of her speech) and 27 people charged. that means188 of those arrested have been released - "…..see you on the streets tonight lads, don't be late!"

Of the 27 charged, all will be released on bail and will eventually appear at Magistrates' Court to receive their ASBO or Community Service awards. The kids know as well as we all do that a) the prisons are too full and expensive to accommodate them and b) Kenneth Clarke has a very unsteady finger on the 'Justice' purse. So here's a question, how is Theresa May going to dispense this 'justice'? The crazy fool, whose position should now be untenable, has, as part of that idiotic speech, proclaimed that the planned cuts are still going to be made to the police force (er, service) because the police service can still operate with much less staff than it currently has, albeit stretched to the limits. Could such a comment be more untimely than that? I heard a caller on LBC this morning say that he had seen a deluge of busses carrying police officers down the M1 into the capital this morning. That can only mean that other parts of the country will be bereft of police coverage. What does that mean for me living out here in the sticks? What if someone attacks me or mine?

Now to David Cameron - are you ready for this? What a powerful speech he delivered as he cut his holiday short to deal with the crisis. The rioters will be shaking with fear now that he has spoken. He has comforted us by announcing that 450 people (updated since Theresa May) have been arrested. Phew, that can only mean that the trouble is over, he's done it, well done David. Furthermore, He condemned what he called "sickening scenes of people looting, vandalising, thieving and robbing." Wow, such powerful words David! BUT WAIT!!! We're not done, there's more: He told rioters: "You will feel the full force of the law. And if you are old enough to commit these crimes, you are old enough to face the punishment." Now, that will put a ceiling on it all. They will face the punishment - ASBO, Community Service or a prison cell costing Kenneth Clarke's budget a thousand pounds a week. Oh dear, David, you're really tough mate. Add all this to Theresa May's submission of: "…brought to justice - face the consequences of their actions -…send a message to them - …full force of the law."

Finally, please don't misinterpret this blog, I'm not here to condone or support wanton violence or abject crime. London is my favourite place on this planet and I love it dearly, so I'm upset to see it under attack and I pray that this rioting will end soon if not now. Because of its world prominence as a great city, it will always be first in the firing line. But in essence, what these young people are doing has a lot in common with what others have done recently. It's a means to an end and that end is to get, to acquire, to receive. It's just the means that is different, the means being dictated by the resources available to the individual.

The people who are rioting and looting have heard of how the bankers have used their resources to acquire, receive and get millions of pounds in undeserved bonuses. They have heard of politicians acquiring undeserved funds by manipulating the expenses system. They have heard about high ranking police officers receiving undeserved payments for tip offs and links to crime victims. They have heard of billionaires being dissatisfied with their billions and wanting still more and not caring who they trample on to get it. Yes my friends, these people have as their means, intelligence which is how they acquire the fruits of their greed. The young people on the streets do not have such intellect as a device, but they do have physical strength and lots of physical energy, so that is their mechanism with which they obtain what they want.

They've stood by watching and hearing of the aristocracy receiving and satisfying their greed and lusts, now they are thinking, "Now it's our turn." Rioting might be a more frightening method, but it's no less responsible than the behaviour of the bankers and the rest of the rip off crowd. Forget all that garbage about the cause of this being our not being allowed to smack our own or other people's children and all that nonsense. Can any intelligent person believe that these youths are saying to themselves, "I'm going rioting because my dad wouldn't smack me when I was a toddler?" I can now almost see the 'spare the rod and spoil the child' crowd shaking their fists at me as they spit out the (well worn...drone) term, 'do gooder', but this is my stage and these are my views. I cannot listen to talk radio again until the topic changes. I'm sick of all these mindless 'wonder drug' solutions.

I'm at ease now, I know our leaders have our safety in hand and will protect us with 'the full force of the law'. I'm done now. Sleep well Hackney, Brixton, Haringey, Ealing, Croydon, Stepney, Bethnal Green, Camden, Peckham, Tottenham, Sydenham, Lewisham, Clapham, Walthamstow, Sloane Square, Kings Road, Edmonton, Stratford (Olympics home), Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Circus and any I've forgotten. May God bless and be with you, amen.

Norway Atrocities

2011-07-25T17:28:00.000-07:00

As the reports of the horrific murder spree in Norway unfurl, out come the media cliches: nutter, unbalanced, insane, not insane, intelligent etc. etc. Up pop the ugly heads of the politically correct as they start to thrust their vitriolic vilification at so called right wing extremists who refuse to slot into the insipid nonpartisan space that has been allotted. As I continue this presentation, I am going to have to be very careful as to the terminology I elect to use. If I indulge in what was once a right in this country, viz. free speech, at the very least, I would be called some kind of 'ist' or 'phobe' as, along with other modern parlance, the politically correct bores attach their pre-fixes to these sounds, thereby creating modern day etymology, the likes of which had previously never entered the Oxford Dictionary with either any, or its modern day meanings. At most, I might be arrested on suspicion of inciting something untoward or having connections with some extremist group, because make no mistake, if anyone has views that until fairly recently were attached to Christianity as the laws of the western world still are, such an individual will be berated and vilified just as much as the most evil of criminals are.

Anders Behring Breivik had fundamentalist (there's an 'ist') views and had taken it upon himself to 'persuade' the world to listen to him. Of course, the media, being what it is - extremely incompetent, cannot agree even with itself. On Saturday, 23rd July, Breivik had massacred at least 93 people; Sunday it was 86, Monday it became 75. At this rate, Breivik will be released without charge in about a week from now because the figure will be zero.

Joking aside though, as always, the UK searches for the tiniest fragment that could forge a link with this country. Britain just doesn't like being left out of such headline grabbing incidents. Our own extremist groups such as the BNP & EDL are brought into focus, although the EDL has reportedly distanced itself from Breivik.

Psychologists (don't get me started on them) are brought in to feed the media and the rest of us with their preposterous expertise which should help us to understand what goes on in the mind of this man. We know the outcome of this psychology report, it's in the media, for example: "He shot the cutest girl first." How could they know this, how do they gauge the cuteness of massacre victims? David Wilson, a professor of criminology at Birmingham City University has authored a book called, A History of British Serial Killing, so he should know what he's about……shouldn't he? He explains that there was a mixture of political and the personal. Nouns usually follow adjectives, therefore, political and personal what? He doesn't say. The sentence is left open ended and incomplete. "The political is obvious, but the personal is more difficult - it's a grudge." Oh please; I cannot find the time for these people, who pays their salaries?

Other professionals I cannot countenance are those irreproachable paragons of righteousness, the radio talk show presenters who sit on their fat rumps for a mere three hours per day, slinging mud at people who probably work three times as hard and much longer than they do. I've mentioned these parasites in earlier rants. Let's face it, the likes of James Whale, who knows how to deal with everyone who, according to his observation limitations, is less than a perfect human being, have the easiest job on the planet. What do they do in their three hour stint? Pick a topic that's in the news headlines, talk about it for a few minutes, add a venomous twist in order to anger listeners who were not previously angered, then they'll say, "Give us a call on 0845....etc.". Then they play the latest nauseating British Gas and other mind numbing adverts until the calls roll in and provide the fodder for their shows. For this, they receive a fat cat salary (I know because one of them said so a couple of weeks ago). It seems that unless they are pro-gay, pro-Muslim and anti-Christian, they don't have the slightest hope of ever working in radio. Listening to them, it's clear they have all been manufactured on the same mass production conveyor belt. You don't believe this? OK, try phoning LBC and start relaying anti-Muslim views. I guarantee you won't stay on the line for more than ten seconds. Send in a similarly classified email, you won't hear it read out! Slag off Jesus and espouse staunch atheist views, and it's "….come on in my friend, sit down, make yourself at home on our right and proper radio show." You will enjoy a long and detailed conversation on London's Biggest Conversation (come back London Broadcasting, it was much better in the days of George Gayle and Adrian Love).

This morning (25th July 2011), I gave the James O'Brien show a few minutes of my time. I heard an Asian bloke explaining that Islam does not intend to take over Europe and the rest of the world through violent and extremist means; it intends to do it with other methods. Can you believe, O'Brien was sucking up to this? Is there any wonder people get angry? These guys point blank refuse to support the slightest modicum of possibility that their views might not be those of the minority. Do these radio presenters deliberately close their ears when Muslims announce that their flag is going to fly above Downing Street and that Buckingham Palace is going to be a super mosque someday? All they succeed in doing is espousing fear into their opponents (frequently, colloquially referred to as 'the silent majority') who dare not raise their views through the medium of broadcasting. Look how the supposed normality of homosexuality is being thrust down our throats not only by talk show presenters, but by script writers and producers of soaps on TV.

Fifty years ago, homosexuality was not only a sin against God, but a crime against this nation's laws, and the practising of it carried a prison sentence. Now, the prison sentence could be awarded to anyone who speaks out against this disgusting filthy act. A round of applause is bestowed upon anyone who (how about this modern day expression?) "COMES OUT", meaning announces that he's/she's a homosexual. Well, listen world, because I'm going to COME OUT: I'm anything but a homosexual. But, ok, I know that makes me a sexual pariah, but what the heck? There are still a few of us left.

I'm not ashamed to say that I accept some of Breivik's points of view. He claims that we have given peace a chance and it never gets results. What he has done is to plant a foundation for attention. Although at this stage, the stupid judges in the court he has appeared in have decided in their wisdom, not to allow the media into court so the rest of the world is barred from hearing what Breivik was going to announce at his first court appearance. Surely, the most myopic of us can see that unless his voice is heard, others will replicate his actions. Without question, he's not alone in his rancour of government forced multiculturalism. How else can the objections of the objectors be heard? Standing outside Downing Street with placards and shouting "What do we want?" and "When do we want it?" is never going to accomplish more than a few seconds' report on the local news bulletins.

This country fought long and hard during World War 2 to keep Nazism out. Other European countries were devastated by the onslaught of Nazism as the Third Reich spread all over the continent. Was all this effort and suffering for nothing, are we just going to hand it all over to the Muslims now? The only glimmer of a blessing in the UK is that New Labour is no longer in government and please God, let them never take over again because they seem to embrace Islam with ever wide opening arms. Let us make no mistake, the take over pledge triumph was on the horizon when Blair and Brown were in Downing Street. Concerning what one struggles with regarding Muslims is what they actually want from us. Surely, there are ample countries in the world where they can live and enjoy their culture, where their women can walk behind their menfolk and where they can wear as many letterbox veils as they like. Surely, if a person chooses to emigrate to another country, it should be that the person wishes to embrace and live the lifestyle of that country, not to change it to that of the country one has left behind. London is now the most diverse city on the planet, and I'm sure that if the true census figures were to be published, its population would be seen to be almost double the official figure of 7.5 million.

Anyone reading this will, by now, be convinced I'm a xenophobe and a homophobe (how's that for a couple of 'phobes'?). Not so, I actually like people from other countries, most of those I've met are nicer people than we are. I'm just against those who come here with the express intention of disrupting the traditional British lifestyle and culture when their culture is alive and well in the lands of their origin, places they are free to go back to if they choose. As for the homosexual fraternity, again, no problem. What they do on their own turf is non of my business. I object to having it hurled at me by whatever means, the press, television and Gay Rights marches through our streets. I don't march through the streets announcing my sexuality, so why do they need to do it?

I find difficulty understanding however, why Breivik had to slaughter his own people if it's Muslims that he hates.

According to another news source, Breivik started his training for this act in our beloved capital city. There you see, the link to Britain is found. We can find anything if we want to do so badly enough.

The Television Licence

2011-03-18T13:26:00.000-07:00

Personally, I don’t mind the concept of the television licence providing it keeps me free from those dreadful intelligence insulting adverts that emerge from our televisions and radios with the most aggravating repetition. Strangely, there seems to be a belief in Britain that broadcasting services shouldn’t be paid for by the consumer, yet people are reasonably happy to pay for most other commodities. That said, I believe I am not unreasonable as I criticise the BBC for the cheapskate way they are gliding through this weekend with a minimum of programmes for our entertainment. All through Friday evening we have Comic Relief, but worse than that, tomorrow, we have approximately 13 (YES, THIRTEEN!!!) hours of rugby and football. All other programmes have been supplanted by this muck. Ok for those who enjoy it, but who, even the most ardent sports fans included, would want to sit for 13 hours watching football and rugby?

The purpose of this whinge is to corroborate my belief that BBC1 is an all purpose general entertainment station. Were it a dedicated sports station, I wouldn’t have any comments to make.

Commercial television is just bearable if the programmes are recorded, then, by the wonders of modern technology, the viewer can skip past the adverts, but the virtue of this must really be short lived. The broadcasters survive only on advertising revenue and the advertisers are not likely to continue paying huge fees whilst it is common knowledge that viewers are not seeing their ads. As there are hundreds of stations vying for a slice of the advertising cake, one is compelled to wonder how much longer this can continue before we see a (YES - longed for) reduction in the number of advert dependant television stations.

There is literally so much that could be done with such a large number of stations, but the potential is being wasted as the broadcasters all compete for the same audience by serving up the same cheap material - all these programmes about live police work, gardening, antiques, modernising houses, buying houses, decorating houses, game shows etc. Tucked away at the bottom of the listings are the (so called) adult and (again, so called) gay stations - another issue: I know I’m digressing a little here, but I object to this abuse of etymology. It has always been my belief that we humans are either children or adults, yet, whenever I see the word ‘adult’ used in modern text, it is inevitably associated with filth, be it verbal (obscene language) or pornography. ‘Adult humour’ is yet another category the BBC uses for its late night comedies; not forgetting ‘strong language’ of course. What actually is strong about it baffles me; I would have thought ‘weak language’ would have been more appropriate.

The word ‘gay’ always meant merry and light hearted, now it means homosexual. If something is decent, then it’s categorised as ‘family’. Well, I don’t live in a family and by the traditional definition, I am an adult. Does that mean I need and have to be content with a barrage of filthy images and parlance in order to qualify my status?

Returning to the topic: commercial radio is far worse that commercial television, it has to be said. Nobody records radio and zaps through advert breaks like they do with TV, so one either has to tolerate the constant mindless repetition of the British Gas (I’d love to choke the bloke who does the voice over on those) adverts, the Money Supermarket dot com adverts, the new silly BMI advert, the Honda car (a nauseating American voice over) and the Nissan (awful factory noises) advert, or just do as I do when I can’t take any more, opt for the wonders and beauty of silence, viz. switch the thing off. I really despise psychologists; they're the ones who use their (albeit self perceived) knowledge of the human mind to concoct all this drivvle.

When I bought a radio and a television, uppermost in my mind was NOT the acquisition of a device designed to get on my nerves and irritate me. Furthermore, I was NOT thinking of providing a tool with which other people can sell their wares. No, what was key was my own personal entertainment. The minuscule level of entertainment that emanates from this equipment isn’t a reasonable trade off against the annoyance that it causes me, which is why the only sound in my house right now is coming from my freezer, a clock ticking and my fingers on this keypad.

“Listen to BBC radio,” I hear someone retort! Sure, why not? Good idea? I don’t think so. The BBC seems to believe that all programmes have to be an equal mixture of discussion and pop music. Take the local stations, even early on Sunday mornings, the religious programmes have to be interrupted to reflect on the previous day’s sports, with all the crowd roars and screaming commentators to boot. That’s the last thing I want to hear at 6.20 of a Sunday morning. Five Live can’t manage more than a few minutes without the raucous roars and screams of football. Even the trails have to include a scored goal which must be as loud as Concorde on take off.

Finally, I recently heard someone say that they were glad to be back here from America because British radio is far better than American. That’s ridiculous. There must be another America. I’ve heard American radio from coast to coast and I know that it’s all formatted, instead of our all things to all people garbage that the BBC and commercial broadcasters provide.

In this country, even classical music is difficult to enjoy. Classic FM is presented like a disco - a sort of classical version of pop stations with its just one movement of a concerto and its simpleton charts (‘most wanted‘), and of course, the illustrious adverts. The music on BBC Radio Three is so obscure, few if any people have heard of it. Its audience must be unspeakably tiny. Perfection (which we can only dream of) would come if we had Classic FM’s music (all of it instead of snippets) along with Radio Three’s presentation format.

Silence is now golden. zzzzzzzzzzz

House of Flying Fingers

2011-03-08T05:07:00.000-08:00

Labour Council Scam

2011-02-25T06:33:00.000-08:00

Who is falling for this Labour run local government scam? Myopic traditional Labour voters, that’s who. Since 1997, I have been a Labour supporter; a lifetime Tory prior to that. What is clearly happening across the country in Labour strongholds is enough to make me about turn again.

So, what is it? The councils have had their funding reduced by Central Government, as part of the cuts process. Basically, it’s the Government’s intentions to save money, not to deliberately cause discord among the population (although that will undoubtedly be a bi-product). After all, it is this population whom the Government will look to for their hoped for overall majority (to get rid of Nick Clegg and his merry bunch of climbers) at the next general election, whenever that might be.

Of course, there’s nothing Labour councillors would like more than for the electorate to become furious and discontented at the actions of the Tory led Coalition. How to espouse this hoped for anger - hit the voters where it hurts most. If the 200,000 pound plus per year council leaders were rationalised, nobody would notice; the public would feel nothing except the knowledge that a fat cat had been removed from office.

However, get rid of the lollipop ladies, the social workers, the old folks’ day care centres, meals on wheels, the swimming baths, the libraries and road maintenance, now we’re talking. These are the front line services which, once extinguished, will lead to unspeakable discord towards the Tory led Coalition, but will also preserve the greedy unnecessary luxury lifestyles of the space and fund wasting council leaders whose jobs could be prosecuted by virtually anyone with a modicum of intellect.

If we look at Conservative led councils such as North Leicestershire, we find that ALL front line services have been sustained in total and cuts have been made within the management structure.

Most London hospitals are planning cuts of more than 500 staff. One suspects that the lower paid core workers, such as nurses and cleaners will be the victims, rather than the overpaid parasites whose skills would hardly be missed.

If you would like your intelligence to be unequivocally insulted, then embrace the belief that the dismissal of a lollipop lady will save the country from the fiscal crisis that it’s allegedly in at this time. Ask yourself, how much does a lollipop lady get paid for the 10 hours a week she stands there for minimum wage. How is her salary going to rescue the nation? Listen, we’re talking about 50 quid a week here, not the gargantuan salaries (£4,000.00 per week) that you, the council tax payers are rewarding these charlatans with.

If we present this argument to the powers that be, we will hear the well worn, well used (zzzzzzz……zzzzzz - here we go again) line, “We have to pay these salaries to get the best talent.” Nonsense!! If no councils offered them these salaries, where would they go to get such ridiculous incomes? They’d have to go into the private sector which has no shortages of them already. If there were open arms awaiting them in the private sector, they would find no difficulty finding employment were the council to do the right thing and dispense with their services. I could submit the same argument about the wealthy bonus creaming bankers who, having caused maximum devastation to it, threaten to leave this country, but that’s for another day. Bottom line, wouldn’t this world be just as God planned it if we didn’t have greed? There’d be sufficient for us all to co-exists in reasonable comfort. One is tempted to ask, why DID God give us all free will.

2011-02-25T06:30:00.000-08:00

Council (not Coalition) Cuts

2011-02-08T11:22:00.000-08:00

It's not too difficult to visually penetrate the restricted mentality of council managers who are in the position of having to implement the Government driven cuts. Fortunately, to some of us, they are more transparent than we are.

Whilst a Conservative (or in the present case, a Coalition) Government is in office, the worst places people can live in are Labour strongholds. Clearly, it's the desire of Labour councils to make the Government look as bad as possible, by whatever means they can and to capitalise on the current 'crisis'.

What will create the maximum impact for the electorate? Where is there a golden opportunity to cut services and not be blamed for doing so by the electorate?

What will cause the absolute maximum disquiet are cuts to the front line services, the ones where the rubber meets the road, and they're not in the upper echelons of the hierarchy, where in reality real costs would be cut.

Sack a few council leaders who are each on salaries that make that of the Prime Minister look minuscule, and nobody would notice the loss of their services; nobody would miss them. However, if we do what Manchester has announced today, close all but one of the city's public toilets (is it conceivable that a city of such prominence and size can manage with one public toilet?), close the libraries, close the swimming baths, and they are well on the way to orchestrating a proliferation of public dissent, aimed directly at Westminster.

Barts (St Bartholomew's) Hospital in central London has announced 600 job cuts. No doubt, among the 600 will be nurses, cleaners and porters, all of whom are vital to the operation of the hospital and without whom, the greatest anguish will be bestowed upon the public.

Other Labour stronghold areas are cutting the services of 'lollipop ladies' who work for about 2 hours a day for minimum wage. This manoeuvre will have virtually no influence on the council coffers, yet will create antagonism and fear among the people. Similarly, services to the elderly, for example places such as Day Care Centres (on the cards in London) which are a lifeline to people who live alone, being forced to combat loneliness, are earmarked for closure.

Then there are youth clubs, police officers, prisons, libraries, road sweeping, road repairing etc. Funding is being removed from voluntary services , so even an almost non existent cost is being cut, putting David Cameron's Big Society into the pits of eternal parlousness, along with all the other cut services.

Make no mistake, none of this will be temporary. If the fiscal recovery does dawn, these services ain't coming back. As I suggested earlier, the whole debacle is a mechanism to exploit the financial crisis for other reasons.

I have to say that recently, I have begun to believe that David Cameron and George Osborne have little if any part in engineering these cuts; all they are doing is cutting the supply of funding to councils, but it is left to each individual council to spawn the actual methods of implementing restraint, and they are clearly doing this in the most fatuous manner imaginable.

So, here we have it, the Coalition Government is perpetually blaming the previous Labour Government for the espousal of the pernicious state we're all in ("We're all in it together", remember?) and we have the Labour councils cultivating a gargantuan pile of vitriolic and pernicious 'panaceas'. Caught up in the crossfire of all this juvenile squabbling are the sick, the elderly, teenagers, victims of crime, children and the disabled, maybe even all of us. Make no mistake, in its quest to highlight the efforts of the Tories, Labour councillors are going to give us more pain than Central Government ever will.

The Rip Off Bankers

2011-01-11T03:53:00.000-08:00

It could be, and probably is being said that anybody who criticises or feels badly about the bankers’ bonuses today, is guilty of something like political envy or whatever other tags that might be being dispensed. Maybe we are upset at these huge bonuses being paid because we can only look at our own paltry incomes and wish. A question that is forever close to my heart is, for example, why does the office cleaner get paid £5.00 per hour when the office worker can muster £500.00 per hour? Why do the chambermaids in a hundred star hotel in Mayfair, who hold the place and the business together, receive minimum wage, whilst the fat cat at the top of the company, who wouldn’t be missed if he called in sick, gets a six figure salary?

Let us assume we are being paid a £9 million pound bonus for what we do, would we then be so incensed? Before getting too deeply into the rights and wrongs of that, I would suggest that we establish the source of this enormous amount of capital. Most of us might believe that it is the product of a callous rip off; others might conclude that it is a victimless acquisition and the disbursement is justified by the recipients having a unique skill or qualification that culminates in an ability of fiscal management to which the rest of us can only aspire. Maybe bankers can do what the rest of us cannot do; maybe it isn’t possible to find someone who can do what they do much more cheaply. Maybe they really ARE indispensable and know it. Do we really believe that? My belief is that there is a long chain of secondary beneficiaries who themselves would lose out, were these bonuses to be quelled.

I personally live among the former (callous rip off). Where does the money that ends up in the coffers of these bankers originate? It is not mined from under the North Sea, it doesn’t grow in a field, it isn’t mass produced in a factory; no, it comes from the coffers of other people, people such as you and me.

A few moments ago, I was listening to a caller to James O’Brien’s show on LBC, who explained it beautifully: “I have worked hard to build up a pension fund in Barclays Bank. It amounted to £28,000 at its peak. Suddenly, along comes the crash and my Pension Fund becomes worth £18,000. What I want to know is, where is my ten grand, who now has it? I didn’t bet it on a horse, I didn’t buy a flash car, I didn’t go into a casino, so where is that money?”

Now, in my opinion, that is one of the best questions I’ve ever heard on this topic. Match that with the other question, where does the money from which these bankers’ bonuses are cultivated come from, clearly the answer penetrates the mist of obscurity.

Don’t go on to get me started on the Tube Strike that is threatened on the day of the Royal Wedding. Don’t get me started on their £45,000 salaries for sitting on their rears pulling a lever all day long to drive a tube train. What will it take to get these guys to realise that they are virtually extinct? Even I could design a system that could run the London Underground without drivers at all; the automation of an electric train isn’t rocket science. No, don’t get me started; let’s not go there.

The great VAT rip off.

2011-01-05T04:49:00.000-08:00

YOU are being conned and ripped off. People will quickly work out the 2 ½ % increase based upon the existing cost, and quickly worked out, 3 pence added to the previous cost of 122.9p per litre of petrol, looks right. But that 2½ % is added not only to the cost of the product, it’s added to the existing tax too. This is a breakdown, as it exists: Cost of product – 39.85p, duty 57.19p and VAT 17.86p. Even in this breakdown, we are being charged VAT on the duty, but the new increases incorporate duty AND existing VAT. In actual fact, we are being charged VAT on the following: cost of product, duty on the product AND VAT (yes, VAT on VAT) on the product and existing duty.

The correct way to work it out is this: If the base cost of a product is for example one pound, to add 17.5% VAT to that we divide the 100p by 100 and multiply by 17.5, which gives us 17.5p. Add that to the one pound and we have £1.17 ½ . That is fairly elementary (my dear Watson).

To convert it back, we don’t deduct 17.5% from the new total price because that price now incorporates VAT and is not the net price. We deduct 14.89% of that from the total, then we get back to the one pound (you're already doing it aren't you?).

So, when we go into Tesco and find we are now being charged 80p for a cup of tea instead of the previous 75p, this is how it should have worked: 14.89% of 75p is 11p, therefore the tea costs 64p. 2.5% increase on that is 1.6p. Therefore the tea should now be costing 76.5 p, but I’m sure we’d be gracious and accept an increase of 2p, so 77p maximum.

I have heard some arguments from retailers this morning; they say that they have to pay VAT increases on the petrol that is used for delivery of the tea, the cost of the cups and the cleaning materials……..oh, you name the bleats and I’ve heard them all this morning. What they are not telling us is this which is from the HMRC “horse’s mouth”:

If you are VAT registered, you reclaim the VAT you pay when you buy goods and services for your business

The value of the Lib Dem Pledge

2010-12-08T03:48:00.000-08:00

There’s nothing new about politicians digging further in their quest to find lower depths of immorality to sink to, they have traditionally represented the lowest of the low. as far back as living memory can take us. Now however, much lower levels are being sought and reached by the Lib Dems who are reneging on their pledge to us all, the pledge to categorically vote against student fees.

Today on the radio, all I have heard from Lib Dem politicians was a miserable attempt to divert the interview from the direct questions being asked, as they whimper and wail submissions of their justification of their U-turn on this crucial issue.

It matters not where your own stance lies on this topic – I actually favour the increases, I believe that there are too many students going to university who would not even contemplate doing so were their time there to be paid for in full by themselves or their families, but that is not the issue in question at this time. The issue is one of integrity on behalf of Lib Dem politicians. This miserable bunch of liars toured the country waving signed pledges before the electorate and saying, “Vote for me on the strength of this.”

The electorate held up its end of the deal, the electorate voted for them as part of the pledge, but the politicians are going their own way.

Nick Ferrari (on LBC Radio) specifically asked a Lib Dem minister today to explain who had told him to vote this way, and in response the interviewee started by saying, “Well, look (wavering politicians always launch their lies with that), we are now part of a coalition and ………..”

Nick interrupted him to try and steer him back to the question, but alas: “Look, we have become part of a coa………”

“I’m sorry,” interrupted Nick, “perhaps you didn’t hear my question, who told you to vote this way?” Yet again: “Well, look, we are……….”

Nick – “You’ve told me that three times already, can I remind you what the question was that I asked you?” Monotonously, again: “Look,………….”

Oh for goodness sake!!

Tomorrow, this Lib-Dem party will sign its own death certificate. I can’t imagine even one person voting for them again. They have to be far more reviled than the Tories, even more so than Boris Johnson who has also breached his election pledges.

The Lib-Dems are not going to vote with their consciences or with their manifesto policies, they are voting for: ”Look at me, I want to be important, I want to be big,” Self interest, self importance, self image; that’s where they’re at today.

“But you promised to………”

“I can’t hear you, we are part of a coalition now”

“Being part of a coalition is your licence to lie to the public and rip up your manifesto pledges is it?”

“Sorry, I’ve got my fingers in my ears, I can’t hear you, we’re part of a coalition now.”

Oh, for goodness sake, where did I put that vomit bowl? Tony Blair who became nicknamed Tony Bliar looks must sit at the apex of diligence in comparison to this bunch. Now, all the Labour party members need to do is sit back and watch their future being built, not by themselves or their efforts, but by the corruption that is swilling through the coalition.

Minister for education Sarah Teather, who described the issue as "dear to my heart" in her maiden speech to the House of Commons, told Sky News to "go away" when asked why she had changed her mind.

In response to the question "Can we ask why you changed your mind?" she replied: "No you can't."

Nick Clegg has confirmed that all Liberal Democrat ministers will vote in favour of tuition fee rises in the Commons tomorrow. The Lib Dem leader said all 17 of the party's government ministers will vote in favour of the policy, as it is the fairest way of ensuring world-class universities for years to come.

"I've listened to the debate, I've listened to the protesters, I've listened to my party," Mr Clegg said. Clearly, he hasn’t listened to the people who voted for him and he certainly has NOT listened to his conscience.

Nevertheless, he is facing a significant rebellion by backbench MPs who oppose the measure. Clearly, some backbenchers are looking towards long-term self-preservation whereas the ministers see only short-term self-gratification and glory. The Deputy Prime Minister insists that the Government's policy is the "fairest way" to reform higher education funding as payments are deferred until students start earning £21,000. My question, why now? Where was this conviction during the run up to the election, who or what changed his mind?

If any politician approaches me during a campaign for the next election, my main question is going to be, “Will you be honouring any of your promises, or will you do a u-turn once elected, a u-turn that you will reinforce with a statement such as: ‘The previous government left us with a bigger mess than we originally thought’?”

Personally, I look forward to an election sooner than the statutory five-year term expiry, wherein the Liberals will reap the ‘fruits’ of their appalling and despicable actions.

The CPS – Guardians of The British System Of Justice.

2010-12-07T08:15:00.000-08:00

Following my presence at another trial yesterday, I’m encouraged to recant some of the content of my previous message: ‘Throw away The Key’.

What saddens me however, is the fact that I cannot recant much of it, indeed, not as much as I would like to think I could. The CPS and the police, those governmental agencies, once stalwarts of British justice, that fine upstanding symbol of unmitigated diligence and integrity, in earlier times, helped to place our great nation at the helm of the chart of excellence which all other nations aspired to equal.

Within the parameters of what the system deems to be petty crime, incidents such as the breaking into your home by the burglar who steals your possessions and on the way out, leaves a legacy, viz. he defecates on your carpets, such distressing misdemeanours are allowed to flourish and prosper without the likelihood of fettered discouragement. After all, the system knows that to the hardened and well-seasoned recidivist criminal, there is no deterrent. They fear, and consequently, are answerable to no one.

It’s much easier and target attaining to chase the normally law abiding citizen, for he/she, unlike the career criminal, doesn’t know his/her rights, therefore a motorist who inadvertently exceeds the speed limit by three miles per hour is more likely to receive a tough sentence than is a mindless yob who burns rubber doing hand brake turns along a council estate in a newly stolen car. Don’t just take my word – watch those ‘fly on the wall’ TV programmes that shadow the police as they go about their daily duties (for example, Cops With Cameras). Listen to the résumé of the sentencing at the end of the programme: ‘police cautions, fixed penalty fines, no charges brought, released after a night in the cells’ etc. These are people who are dealing and using drugs, distributing violence on our streets, stealing vehicles, causing criminal damage, in fact, turning every city and town centre into a no go area for decent people. They are petty crimes only in the eyes of the judicial system, not those of the public.

To many criminals, especially the recidivist type, prison is a career choice, a lifestyle in fact. What they find attractive about perpetual incarceration, escapes me, but as I sat in the waiting area of the Crown Court yesterday, I could hear people boasting about the sentences they’d previously served. No doubt there was bravado and when alone, they might not be so boastful, but the fact remains, they are still career criminals who either through choice, or circumstances (such as employment prospects (lack of), they don’t look for better times ahead.

What is more alarming is that the very system that is in situ to protect the citizens of this country, can, and often does take the effective reins of crime and it too can (albeit) metaphorically defecate on your carpets.

The case that I heard yesterday was typical of what an unscrupulous CPS/CID conglomerate would feast upon. The defendant had endured 18 months of fear and uncertainty – a huge slice of his life completely severed, only to hear the prosecution lawyer, who had been backed into a corner, withdraw his case and the judge tendering a dismissal. The fodder from which a ‘no case to answer’ outcome was conceived was submitted by the defence barrister, who, it now has to be said, is the reason I will mitigate some of the assertions that were presented in my last message. Clearly, they are not all fee chasing cowboys.

Notwithstanding, the area that completely demolishes one’s faith in the justice system is based around the CPS’s relentless and gluttonous pursuit of a conviction that was never destined to mature. This is tantamount to the situation immediately following the World War 2 surrender to the allies by the Germans, following the suicide of Hitler. The whole of Germany was in ruins, its civilians and armed forces were exhausted and had nothing left with which to fight, the capitulation had been signed, and yet, Hitler’s successor, Fuehrer, Grand Admiral Doenitz, wanted to continue the war. Somebody had to tell him that it wasn’t going to occur and any attempt would be futile.

In essence, what is happening here is, in their lust for ‘a result’ the police, in cahoots with the CPS, are not averse to lying and doctoring evidence in their dogged endeavours to attain that result. If an innocent man is convicted, so what? They’ll quell and balance the evil of their misdemeanours through self-justification: “Well, we believe he’s guilty.” A retired police officer once told me that although he wasn’t God fearing, he did worry sometimes when he held a Bible in his hand as he took the oath –and was knowingly about to lie to the court in order to secure a conviction.

On a personal front, one has to ask, when it eventually comes to light that a man has been fitted up by the police and CPS, and is later proven to have been innocent of all charges, do these officials sleep peacefully in their beds? What if a man commits suicide because he sees no hope for the future? We used to believe this sort of thing happened back in the ‘Life on Mars’ days of the 1970s, before the introduction of PACE (Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984) which is designed to provide a balance between the police’s powers and the rights of public (although I have my doubts as to its success).

I read today that South Yorkshire Police will shortly have to prune 40 million pounds from its budget. They may be wondering where the cuts are to be made. The most imaginative suggestion that can be offered by the authorities is to reduce front line policing, i.e. the stereotypical bobby on the beat. This from Police Oracle (the police force’s own daily publication) on 6^th December: “Frontline officers could lose their jobs because of the severity of budget cuts over the next two years, according to the leaders of police authorities in England and Wales.” In response, the Home Office, in its relative wisdom, disagrees: “A Home Office spokesman said: "Forces must focus on driving out wasteful spending, and increase efficiency in the back office to protect the front line.”

By my estimation, the two cases that I have referred to, both in this message and my previous one, must have cost the taxpayer in the region of £750,000, maybe much more, all of it wasted. I will agree that the majority of police officers are honest and law abiding, they do the job that they have been sworn in to do with the utmost integrity, but it cannot be denied that there is a cancer of evil in existence too. Almost on a daily basis, I can read on Police Oracle of corrupt officers being tried and sentenced for their unscrupulous abuse of office. In fact, here’s a case taken from yesterday’s (6^th December) publication:

“Andrew Barber, of Chesterfield, was a sergeant with Nottinghamshire Police, when an investigation revealed he had been using police systems to access information.

He was suspended from duty and has subsequently resigned from his post.

The 47-year-old admitted using restricted information taken from various internal databases before passing it to a third party and also using it for personal use.

At Nottingham Crown Court today, Judge Michael Stokes QC, said Barber had abused his position of trust and had no option but to impose a custodial sentence.”

I didn’t have to look far did I? I rest my case (for now)!!!

Throw Away The Key!

2010-11-26T03:31:00.000-08:00

The above title is a saying that is consistently on the lips of the perfectly behaved self-righteous members of our society today, when they are in conversations about the criminal fraternity. It’s just SO easy – “Look at him, he’s a wrong doer, look at me, I’m a goody, I’ve never done anything wrong, I can rightly sit in judgement of him.”

WRONG!!! We have all done wrong; the magnitude of our transgressions can vary of course. The major (and possibly only) difference between the man (or woman) in the dock at Crown Court and the rest of the populace is that he (or she) got caught and the rest of us didn’t, or have yet to be. My father, in his limited wisdom, used to tell me, “It’s not for doing wrong that we get punished, it’s for getting caught.”

OK, many reading this will say, as they wave their moral compass in your direction, “Rubbish! I’ve never done anything wrong!” Of course you haven’t – you never said to your mates, “Leave it with me, I can get you one from work.” You never drove the company car for private use with company petrol, you never did a ‘cash in hand’ job to avoid tax, you never made a private phone call at work, you never skived off, you never called in sick when you wanted to go somewhere, you never bought anything cheap in a pub, you never said, “Don’t tell ‘em,” about your savings when applying for benefits, you never did any work while on benefit, you never risked driving your car when you’d been drinking, you never drove a car without tax and/or insurance and/or a full driving licence, you never had sex with someone else whilst you were married, you never tried taking drugs.

“Ah,” you say, “but these things are not like robbing a bank or rape, are they?” Maybe that’s true, but many of them, if you were caught, could land you in court and even without a job, or worse, behind bars. You would then have to fill in the line of ALL future job applications (because you would almost inevitably lose your present job): ‘Reason for leaving your last employment.’ You would have to write, ‘Dismissed for stealing company property’. That would put you in a similar position to a convicted criminal who, like you, may never work again. You would have to become one of the ‘benefit scroungers’ who you currently enjoy deriding from the comfort of your current cosy position

As for the Criminal Justice system of this great nation of ours – we often hear that it’s the best in the world, and although not perfect, it works. Does it? Well, it would if everyone was on a level playing field and all participants were working honestly. Why does the average person, who has never had the misfortune of coming into contact with the police, believe that police officers are all honest and fine upstanding representatives of the people? Why do people think the same of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) that works as cohorts of the police? It’s simply because of this principle of auto-righteousness, that the public will convict any defendant even before the trial begins. They believe that "......the police wouldn't have arrested him if he'd done nothing." So when the first news item appears in the local paper, the defendant is guilty in the eyes of the readers, although the news item is only reporting that the case is ongoing and what the charges are.

We often hear people say, “What’s wrong with the judges these days? They are so out of touch with reality, why are they handing down such lenient sentences?”

What people do not know or realise is that the person in the dock is not on a level playing field. In most cases, he/she has never been there before, has probably never been involved with the police or judiciary before. He/she is probably totally discombobulated, and overcome with fear, not only with the surroundings and circumstances, but also the terminology being used by the veterans of the system.

The indictment document is headed ‘The Crown vs. Joe Bloggs’ . How fair a contest is that? The crown is represented by experienced police officers, experienced lawyers, infinite resources such as funds and expensive experts, plus any manipulation techniques such as evidence tampering, that anyone of a dishonest position would care to implement. What does Joe Bloggs have in his armoury? He doesn’t even have access to the evidence to check on its authenticity. Well, he has the ability to lie, but unless he’s a seasoned liar, he won’t have the capacity to be convincing. He’ll have a solicitor, then a barrister, both of whom have their eyes on one target and one target only – their fees. Win or lose, it’s all the same to them. If the barrister makes any mistakes, Joe Bloggs pays for them – he goes to prison; the barrister goes home to his luxury house, then moves on to his next case.

Can we be sure that the outcome of the case is not set in stone before it begins? Can we be sure the barrister, who more than likely shares chambers with the prosecutor, hasn’t struck a deal with the prosecutor? “Come on, you won last week, it’s my turn now, you owe me one,” as they enjoy a drink together in the pub. In such a circumstance, Joe Bloggs’ entire life is the stake. Bottom line: if you are in the dock, you are on your own. The CPS would not have brought the case to the court if it weren’t 99% certain of winning, by whatever means, fair or foul.

At a case that I attended some time ago, the judge said in open court (well, prior to the jury being admitted), “It's clear that the CPS had decided that because there had been so much police time spent on the case that, "We will have to charge him with something.'"

After the inevitable guilty verdict was passed by the jury, the judge went on to say, “This has been a witch hunt by the police and the CPS throughout; despite the verdicts. Unfortunately, I am not able to reverse them. I believe the verdicts have got the prosecution out of the mire." This was said AFTER the newspaper reporter had left because she couldn’t wait to splash the guilty verdict all over the entire front page.

The parameters with which the jury was instructed to deliberate were so narrow even the even defendant would have had to find himself guilty if he’d been on the jury. There was so much that the jury was not allowed to consider, and so little that was permitted, anything other than guilty was not an option.

To move on – it has to be said that in most cases of criminal prosecution, the trial and sentencing form the least of the defendant’s problems. It’s easy to breathe a sigh of relief when it’s all over because it will most probably have been a marathon process. It will most probably have led the defendant through eighteen months of uncertainty (hell in most cases). He may well say, “Now I can get my life back!” If only. Now come the ramifications. Applying for a job – ‘Have you ever been convicted of a criminal offence that is not spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1972?’

Applying for insurance for your car or house. ‘Do you or anyone living in your house have any criminal convictions?” If you already have insurance, you must call them and tell them. There is no way out of this because if that isn’t done, your policy will be invalid and worthless if you have to make a claim. When you do tell them, you will undoubtedly hear, “I’m sorry Mr Bloggs, but we are unable to continue to cover you, we will give you two weeks to make alternative arrangements.” There are NO alternative arrangements – nobody else wants your business.

If the above is not bad enough, the story in the newspaper will be. All Joe’s friends and relatives will know about his case, all his neighbours, people who were his friends, but worse than that, people who probably don’t like him; they will gloat and gossip. There will be people who may appear to believe that he was innocent and wrongly convicted, indeed, he may well have been, but it will never be eradicated from their minds. Most of us belong to the ‘there’s no smoke without fire’ brigade, so there will always be a modicum of doubt and mistrust in the psyche of even your closest friends.

It’s not the easiest thing in the world to find encouragement for anyone facing trial; indeed, there is only one way: God. Take Him wherever you go, talk to Him, listen to what He has to say to you. When it’s all over, don’t discard Him, you will need to move on to the next stage of life and you will need God at least as much as you did during the trial and run up to it. Read this from ‘Word For Today’:

Labels tend to stick. When we’re young and our parents say things like, “Oh she’s just a plain Jane,’ or “He’ll never be as smart as his brother,” we drag those life limiting thoughts around like a ball and chain for the rest of our lives. Fortunately, God sees your potential differently. ‘God can pour on the blessings in astonishing ways so that you’re more than ready to do what needs to be done’ (2 Cor. 9:8).

Understand this: others can stop you temporarily, but you are the only one who can do it permanently. If God says you can, you can! And His opinion is the only one that counts. Edgar Guest wrote, “There are thousands to tell you it can’t be done, there are thousands to prophesy failure, there are thousands to point out, one by one, the dangers that wait to assail you, so buckle right in with a bit of a grin, take off your coat and go to it. Just start to sing as you tackle the thing that cannot be done, and you’ll do it.” Amen

We’ve Never Had It So Good – Lord Young

2010-11-19T07:47:00.000-08:00

You see, what I can’t understand is why the Labour Party is getting its knickers in a twist over Lord Young’s comments. Don’t the members of that party recognise a gift when they see and receive one? I can clearly understand David Cameron’s rage. The comment completely devours his central weaponry upon which he monotonously relies during PMQ’s – the now well worn line: “………….following the mess that the party opposite left for us to clear up.”

Now, he can’t use that any longer because if there is any truth to Lord’s Young’s assertion, then all the credit must go to the Labour government, especially to Alistair Darling who was the Chancellor during the build up to: “For the vast majority of people in the country today, they have never had it so good ever since this recession - this so called recession started.”

Now Lord Young has recanted his comments and resigned as the Prime Minister’s enterprise adviser. Angela Eagle, Labour’s chief secretary to the treasury said, “It is inappropriate for the Prime Minister to have an adviser who is so dismissive of the ‘real fears’ workers have over their jobs. David Cameron should sack him and sack him today. It's crass and he (Lord Young) should pay the price and go.”

There may well be some truth in what Lord Young has said. His comments included this observation: “Most people with a mortgage who were paying a lot of money each month, suddenly started paying very little each month. That could make three, four, five, six hundred pounds a month difference, free of tax. That is why the retail sales have kept very good all the way through.”

Take a look around; many people today will get upset if they can’t replace their mobile phones every six months (and that's just the children), they will get upset if they don’t have a 50” plasma wide screen telly hanging on the wall plus other tellies in every room of the house; they will get upset if they don’t have at least two cars per household and they will get upset if they fail to climb aboard at least two airplanes per year. Now take a look at their shopping trolleys, then match up the contents with the site of their huge bellies which are responsible for this nation being officially recognised as the fattest outside the United States. Crisps, Coca Cola, cakes, biscuits, burgers. Look at any High Street in the country, see how it’s lined with one after another fast food takeaways of almost every national cuisine denomination on the planet. Look at how Sunday lunch is obtained these days, not around the family table in the dining room, no, it’s in a pub or at MacDonald’s.

They will try to tell us that we’re in recession - on hard times. OK, a minority of people have lost their jobs and their homes, but not sufficient to be able to cast an eco-synopsis of generalisation over the entire state of this nation.

Bottom line? I think Lord Young is right. Recession, what recession? Come down my street and see the number of 4 Wheel Drive vehicles, mobile homes and other caravans, plus the Mercedes and BMW cars. See the home extensions and conservatories being built. Money seems to be flowing like oil did in Texas during the 1950s. And they tell us this is the worst recession since WW2. I’ve been around long enough to remember much harder times than now. Will the whingers please grow up?

Duncan Smith's Cheapskate Placements.

2010-11-09T03:34:00.000-08:00

A quote from the Daily Mail on Tuesday 9^th of November: “The feckless unemployed will be forced to take part in a punishing U.S.-style ‘workfare’ scheme involving gardening, clearing litter and other menial tasks for just £1 an hour in a new crackdown on scroungers.” This is the latest proposal by Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, one of the leaders of the ‘I can do it, and so can you’ and the ‘I’m a millionaire, so why aren’t you?’ clan.

These are the typical conservatives that can never fall upon mis-fortune, can never get cancer, can never fall victim to a paralysing car crash or other accident. No, because mis-fortune has never come their way. They strut through life calm in the belief that it never will. As long as their good luck continues, they can continue to occupy a position from which they can discharge abuse at the abjectly sick and disabled, smugly dispensing titles and stigmas such as those contained in the trashy tabloid newspapers from which the above quote was copied. Feckless, workshy, when is someone going to get original and stop repeating the same old same old parlance that is belched out from the self righteous ‘why should I?’ brigade that monotonously hog the James O’Brien and Nick Ferrari (and other) shows on London’s LBC talk radio every and all day?

The image of the unemployed and Incapacity Benefit recipients has changed course since the coalition took office. They have been attacked almost daily by the gutter press that quotes the likes of Duncan Smith and all others who are in good health and pleasant circumstances. At one time, the feckless workshy scroungers were considered a small and insignificant minority; a sort of burden that we would have to tolerate because it’s a simple case of this, some folks will not work no matter what. But now, it’s not the minority, it’s ALL claimants. People with terminal cancer, people missing limbs, people who are confined to bed, people with mental illnesses, they are ALL scroungers and they are ALL going to be made to work, one way or another. Either they will find jobs where there are no jobs, or they will sweep streets for one pound an hour.

One pound an hour? Yes, the reward for scroungers taking these placements that Duncan Smith, the multi millionaire is proposing, will be a drop from the luxurious job seekers’ allowance of £65.00 per week, to about £30.00 per week. This is how the Daily Mail tells it:

“Instead of receiving their usual £65-a-week Jobseeker’s Allowance for sitting at home doing nothing, they will get substantially less – and will have to clock on and off on time and work flat out. The Government has not decided how much people on ‘community placements’ will be paid but it is understood the figure will be between £30 and £40 a week – the equivalent to £1 an hour, one sixth of the minimum wage.”

Can anyone tell me what is attractive about living on £65.00 per week, even if you do nothing for it? If that life is so good, why aren’t more folks clamouring for it? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to give up the four bed detached house is suburbia and move to a bedsit in sunny downtown Grotsville? Wouldn’t it be great to relinquish the BMW four wheel drive and take up shanks’ pony instead? Furthermore, do these mindless blinkered clowns realise that there are other ways of obtaining money that the so called work shy can turn to, ways such as mugging, shop lifting and burglary? Get ready all you 'why should I' lot, it's coming to a house, street and/or shop near you very soon!

The news item relates to the proposal by Duncan Smith, to force benefit claimants to join mandatory work schemes in order to continue receiving their, albeit substantially reduced, Jobseeker’s Allowance. Now, if an employer were to pull a stroke such as this, he would be arrested and charged with exploitation in the workplace, he would be in breach of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998. The National Minimum Wage (NMW) Act is a legal right which covers almost all workers in the UK. It became law on 1 April 1999 and was introduced to prevent unduly low pay and also to help create a level playing field for employers. In other words, to prevent overly greedy millionaire and billionaire employers from exploiting their employees even more than they do now. As of October 2010, the minimum wage is £5.93 per hour. My beef with this proposal is that if there are jobs to be done, why aren’t the unemployed doing them for wages instead of benefits. They could be employed to do it instead of being forced into becoming modern day slaves.

I have to say that these proposals are never going to be any more than words. Also in October, the new Equality Act came into being. That act merges all existing equality legislation into one encapsulation. The Act applies to ALL service providers, not just employers and restaurant owners. The Government is a service provider and I’m convinced that if Duncan Smith tries to force the disabled into work, he will be breaking the law. If I don’t find that within this Act, I’m sure somebody will; a whiz kid lawyer should have no difficulty with it. Only last week, a judge overruled the government when it was forced, against its better judgement, to give the vote to prisoners, so it can be seen that even the Government ministers are not above the law.

Let me quote a few lines from this new Equality Act 2010:

“The Act protects you from ‘indirect discrimination’. This is where policy or practice is applied to everyone but it puts people with a disability at a particular disadvantage.

The new law makes it easier for you to make a claim for discrimination that happens because of something connected with your disability. If you’re at a substantial disadvantage when compared to someone who isn’t disabled, reasonable changes must be made by your employer or someone providing goods or services.”

As I read through that, I believe that the Government provides a service and that if it bunches the bog standard unemployed and the disabled together, forcing the disabled onto Job Seeker’s Allowance, then it is failing in its obligation under the Act because a disabled person who is in the same jobs market as a healthy job seeker, can without doubt be deemed to be at a disadvantage. The two would not be on a level playing field.

When I hear and read of the proposed bullying of the disabled that Duncan Smith and George Osborne have up their sleeves, I think I can be forgiven for allowing the intentions of Hitler's Third Reich to come to mind. The SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Richard Darre said: "As soon as we beat England, we shall make an end of you Englishmen once and for all. All able-bodied men and women between the ages of 16 and 45 will be exported as slaves to the Continent. The old and weak will be exterminated."

In summation, I have to conclude that if Duncan Smith has actually said and proposed all that the press says he did, then his position must be untenable as he is totally irresponsible in the present employment climate. As someone on the infamous LBC radio said last night, if there is no work available for the people who desperately want to find it, what is going to be gained by forcing those who can't or don't want to work into searching for it, apart from Duncan Smith's brownie points of course. It's a recognised fact that for every job vacancy in existence today, there is a large number of applicants chasing it. Only when we see an end to the daily ritual of business and public sector departement closures, will there be any encouragement and prospect of work being available, if only for those who want it.

In even more final conclusion, I would ask, does this or any other government want to preside over a Britain with 5 or even 6 million unemployed? If all Incapacity Benefit claimants have to be merged with the able-bodied on an equal basis, then that is what will happen. This country really will be disgraced on the world stage, especially when our poverty levels approach those of third world countries. On an encouraging note however, I will state unequivovally, it won't happen!!

DIDDUMS - The Housing Benefit Claimants' Pity Party

2010-10-30T16:20:00.000-07:00

For once in my recent life, I find myself siding with David Cameron. If he sticks to his guns on the housing benefit reforms, I might even vote for him at future elections. Now we have Ed Milliband and Boris Johnson taking sides against the coalition on this topic. Quite where they get their argument fodder from escapes me. Are there any identifiable political divides in this country any more? Boris seems to think that if the benefit is capped at £400 per week, there will be a mass exodus from central London to the suburbs – Quote:- Boris Johnson has been criticised for suggesting housing benefit cuts could lead to 'Kosovo-style' immigration from London - whereas Milliband seems to believe that it will lead to mass homelessness. In PMQ’s this week, he implied that councils were already booking B & B accommodation for evicted tenants. He was clearly submitting rebuttal for rebuttal’s sake; it left him looking quite inadequate and I am forced to wonder if he can handle the job.

I must agree with Cameron – If people who receive (only) 20,000 pounds per year in housing benefit are unable to find accommodation and are likely to become homeless as a result, there is something really wrong and unbelievable. These ‘poor’ claimants who currently live in top-notch properties in Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (dream homes to the likes of you and me!!!), for which they pay absolutely nothing, will have to live somewhere else. What a crisis, how awful, the thought that central London will be bereft of and off limits to poor people (Johnson’s gripe). Quite frankly, if people wish to live in that area, there is no reason why they shouldn’t, providing they are willing and able to do what I would have to do were I wishing to live there – pay the going rate themselves and not bring out the begging bowl.

Personally, I would love to live in Westminster – look out of the window onto Hyde Park or see and hear Big Ben, not need a car because there would be ample public transport and everywhere I would need to be would be within a mile or two of where I live. Sounds great! I had to leave London altogether back in the late 1970's because I couldn’t afford the cost of accommodation there. But of course, I wasn’t receiving the resources to pay London mortgages or rents; I wasn’t on benefit; I was one of the taxpayers who could only afford to pay someone else’s (housing benefit claimants’) rents. I was in full time employment!!

I’ve been incensed in recent months after having to listen to the slurs that have been bestowed onto all benefit claimants by the press, radio phone in callers AND PRESENTERS (who ought to know better considering they are always politically correct in all other relevant areas of PCness), slurs such as benefit scroungers, feckless work shy sofa jockeys etc. But, do these housing benefit claimants realise what it is that they are receiving?

£20,000 after tax and other stoppages from wages would need to be something like £27,000 before tax that they would have to earn if they were in full time employment. That is just to pay the rent. Then add to that their regular living costs and council tax. I don’t think I’m far wrong if I suggest that just to break even on their benefits, they would need a salary of £40,000 a year, were they to go to work, which they won’t of course. Not all of us can earn such a salary. Clearly, Cameron is trying, as he says he is, to make working more attractive than claiming benefits, but even by capping housing benefit at £20,000 per annum, I have to doubt whether he is going to achieve that. Many people who do not live in central London will be suffering hardship and they are the ones who will be encouraged to work rather than claim.

It’s clear that we have a self-perpetuating incongruity here. The rents are high in London because they are being paid by the DWP, which until now has been virtually limitless. Conversely, the DWP is paying enormous amounts in housing benefits because the landlords are charging such high rents - it's catch 22 is it not? Why can’t Boris Johnson and Ed Milliband realise that if all of these benefit claimants have to move out of their central London properties, the landlords will be faced with a dilemma: either lower the rents in order to attract self financing tenants, or have their properties standing unoccupied, thereby generating no income at all?

Ten years without an aircraft carrier.

2010-10-19T03:01:00.000-07:00

When we scrap the Ark Royal, it will be ten years before we obtain the two that will replace it. Dear Iran, Afghanistan and all other potential predators, can you be good sports and hang fire until we're ready?

We're All In It Together

2010-10-18T06:32:00.000-07:00

Yes, of course we are. Two days before the budget cuts are to be announced, all I or anyone else can do is to simply speculate on what our future is comprised of. The media is nourishing us with our regular diet of horror and fear, based on speculative material sourced from the government and/or its cohorts. In reality, we will, I suspect, be pleasantly surprised as is always the case. There is nothing a government values more than electorate popularity.

It is brought into existence by spending a very long period grooming the public, instilling the worst-case scenario into the public’s psyche. If we repeatedly and forcefully plant something, it will inevitably flourish and grow into something; that something is usually a grumpy tolerance and acceptance, embraced by a nonchalant ‘there’s not much we can do about it’ forbearance. Then it happens, the announcements are made, and they turn out to be far more lenient than we had been brainwashed into anticipating.

Take as an example, petrol prices: if the government/oil producing conglomerate wanted to raise the price of petrol from its former 95p to say, 110p, it couldn’t be done via a single price increase otherwise there would be uproar. Why not raise it in regular increments to 120p, wait until the shock is absorbed and the discord abates, then lower it to 110p? The stupid gullible public is now happy. How’s that for a ‘good old George’ accolade to bestow onto Mr. Osborne? Now, only the staunchest Labour supporting anti-Tories will find any denunciation for the coalition. Who knows, even the well-reviled Nick Clegg might win a few brownie points.

Of course, nothing I’ve said already comes near to putting our circumstances into perspective. What is it going to mean for us mere foot soldiers? Well, we have, for the past five months been listening to the proposed cuts to public spending, which, if they go ahead as projected, will violate and demolish the government’s election manifesto. The promises not to interfere with the elderly incomes and pensions, the NHS and countless other undertakings will fade into a sea of dishonesty, which will of course be covered by the well worn mantra: “There are unforeseen circumstances that we couldn’t have known about before the election” coupled with, “The previous government left us with an even worse mess than was originally thought.” How beautifully that one masks what is none other than a despicable lie.

So, public spending………..it can be done as a flow chart actually: Public spending cuts lead to increases in unemployment, more people on low income benefits, therefore less spending power. Next: less spending power leads to less income in the Private Sector. The private sector cannot stay as buoyant as previously due to less spending, so they make cuts. Er, wait a minute, did not David Cameron and his ilk announce in their ‘Big Society’ proposal that the Private Sector would take up the slack and it would employ those who are losing their jobs in the Public Sector? Yes he did. Where do these politicians come from? It must be a planet where myopia is rife and no one escapes it.

To continue the flow chart: now, in reality, we have both Private and Public Sector redundancies. The 2.7 million unemployed figure we currently enjoy is to increase substantially, so we will have more benefit claimants to feed. Ah, but no! We must remember that all existing benefit claimants are feckless work dodgers and need to be dealt with separately. What about the scroungers who are living on Incapacity Benefit and Disabled Living Allowance? The coalition is resolved to get these parasitic layabouts off their sofas, away from daytime TV and into work. Stop their benefits, then they will have no alternative but to go out and find work. Silly me, it’s so blatantly obvious, how could I have thought anything else was likely or even possible?

It amazes me to hear the countless idiots – members of my previously discussed ‘why should I?’ brigade who phone LBC radio (in my earlier blog) exhorting their belief that this will simply occur. Do these mindless clowns not realise that there is more to it than this simpleton’s premise? Do they not know that some people are genuinely incapable of earning a living? Do they want Britain, a legendary civilised country to become like the Third World nations that we condemn? Would they prefer to see out children being deliberately maimed and disfigured so that they can beg on the streets for 18 hours a day, just as they do in India and other countries? Furthermore, do they want to see the unemployed and handicapped being issued with rapidly expiring food stamp quotas, just like they do in America? Off the back of that, following the expiry of the food stamps comes the only remaining resource, crime. Are these smug self righteous ‘why should I?’ exponents going to willingly accept an increase in mugging and corner shop robberies? Believe me, there are indeed some lazy feckless work shy scroungers out there; nothing will ever make them go to work, so if their benefits are curtailed or axed entirely, they will, without a doubt, become criminals – maybe violent criminals.

That leads me to the next stage of the flowchart – the Justice Ministry. At this moment in time, two days before the cuts announcement, it is believed that a 30% cut to the Justice Ministry’s budget is in the pipeline. These cuts will be based around the expensive upkeep of prisons. We are constantly reminded that it costs £44,000 a year to keep one man in prison. Phew! The logically thinking coalition (mainly Kenneth Clarke) believes that the way to reduce this expenditure is to stop sending criminals to prison. Of course it is, what’s stopping the rest of us from seeing it just as this wise sensible man does, are we completely blind, or are we just stupid?
Take a look at this text, copied from Police Oracle last week:

Changes in rules for assault cases could see up to 4,500 offenders a year walk free from court. Sentencing Council boss Lord Justice Leveson, who unveiled the proposals yesterday, insisted he was not "soft on crime".

The reforms would see sentences based on the injuries and harm caused to victims.
An attacker's youth could be used as a reason to reduce their sentence.

The guidelines even argue that a violent attack by a teenager could be "a phase which passes fairly rapidly". Mental illness or showing "remorse" would be other mitigating factors.

There would also be less focus on whether attacks were premeditated, which could make it easier to crack down on boozed-up thugs who launch unplanned assaults.

Around 43,000 people are sentenced for common assault every year. But the changes could see 2,800 fewer jailed for the offence.

Fewer would also face prison for ABH, assaulting a police officer, assault while resisting arrest, and GBH. Only one offence, GBH with intent, would see an increase.

The changes could save the prison service £20million a year. They follow Justice Secretary Ken Clarke's call for jail to be used only for the most dangerous and serious offenders. Lord Justice Leveson defended the reforms and insisted he was not bowing to Government pressure
.

All of this is to save just £20 million a year, not even a drop in the ocean against the hundreds of billions that constitute the deficit. THIS £20 million would not even come near to paying the INTEREST for ONE DAY off this deficit. To my mind, this is a gargantuan price for the British public to have to pay for such a minuscule return. What is that price, you ask. The price to us is that violent criminals are to be given carte blanche to virtually kick our heads in as they rob us in the streets, as they will and must do in order to offset their benefit losses. We’re already seeing it in action. Only last week, we heard of how a 17-year-old autistic boy (somebody’s son) was kidnapped and repeatedly tortured for three days whilst his attackers filmed their fun on their mobile phones. What is torture in this case? Just a small amount of it was described to us: he was kicked in the head, his head was repeatedly stamped on (how that didn’t kill him can only be explained by God), he had faeces pushed into his mouth and several bottles of vodka forced down his throat, forcing him into unconsciousness – it lasted for three days, remember. The offenders were given 80 hours community service (unpaid work) and a 12-month community order (probation).

So, before I go for my lunch, just to re-cap on the flow chart:
Reductions in the Public Sector – job losses – less spending power in the community, therefore – reductions and job losses in the Private Sector which can in no way take up the slack created by Public Sector cuts. Increases in unemployed, more benefit claims – government targets benefit claimants, stops or reduces benefits – increase in poverty, leading to an increase in crime. Reductions in the Justice Department, therefore little or no prospect of prison sentences for violent offenders. Does violence ‘free for all’ become the norm? One is compelled to ask, cannot the £44,000 per prisoner per year be reduced? Is it necessary for hard-core prisoners to have a choice of five meals from a menu? I can accept the contention that to keep prisoners in barbaric conditions like they do in far off lands would be counter-productive, but let’s face it, we can afford to stay in a top quality hotel for that amount of money. So the question remains, instead of cutting prison sentences, why not cut the cost of prison sentences? They are going to reduce the cost of policing – it was stated today that we need to get better policing for less cost.

Some trashy Sunday paper reported yesterday that George Osborne had suggested that benefit fraudsters are no better than muggers. Can that be true? What criteria does he muster in order to cultivate that observation? Has he forgotten that muggers use violence? Oops, silly me, I forgot; violence isn’t serious any more. Of course it isn’t. Mugging is a violent act against an individual. What’s an individual on the governmental stage? An individual has no value in such an arena. Now, benefit fraud, that’s robbery against the state. That’s where prison sentencing is to be focussed - public money.

Forgive me if I’m missing something, but it sounds like utter chaos and disorder is coming our way. DID WE VOTE FOR THIS? No, of course we didn’t!

Bill's Speaker's Corner Soapbox: Benefit Scroungers {?}

2010-10-12T16:06:00.000-07:00

Bill's Speaker's Corner Soapbox: Benefit Scroungers {?}

Benefit Scroungers {?}

2010-10-11T04:26:00.000-07:00

Benefit payment is a subject that has dominated the news over the past couple of weeks. Firstly, we had to listen to the ‘plight’ of the wealthy who have monotonously squawked about the cost to their lavish living standards that will be espoused by the loss of their child benefits. Now we are hearing about how the disabled and sick are going to be ‘helped’ back into work by a bunch of inspectors whose purpose is to assess a claimant’s ability to do any form of work.

Of course, the wealthier middle classes are continuing to do what they have always done best, think only of themselves as they foster the element of greed that keeps them endlessly miserable. They dominate the ‘why should I?’ brigade that I’ve mentioned in earlier blogs. They do NOT form part of the British society that is famously generous and is always first on the scene when fiscal aid is required following a disaster or other emergency in far off lands. They do not form part of the culture whose aim is to ensure that Britain does not become similar to the third world countries in which begging by children, suitably crippled or blinded (deliberately), is the norm. They do not form part of the culture that looks after its less well off and more unfortunate inhabitants. No, it forms part of the culture that would, if allowed, emulate the paradigm of Nazi Germany in which anyone who is not in perfect fettle and able to work for self sufficiency, can simply curl up and die. Why? It’s because of the ‘me me me’ culture, the ‘what about my foreign holidays?’ culture, the ‘why should I give up my four-wheel drive gas guzzling school run Chelsea tractor?’ culture. These people are earning around a thousand pounds a week, yet all they can bleat is, “We’re cut to the bone already, what further cuts can we make?” These people are happy to support the government in its quest to settle the national debt, the ‘mess that Labour left behind,’ but it’s strictly conditional. The conditions are that nothing the government does, shall affect them, nothing that government does, shall cost these people anything. No, take it from the poor, that’s how it’s always been. “What kind of Conservative Party is this, that robs us rich to aid the poor? We didn’t vote for this!!”

Well of course, the Conservative Party, or to be more precise, the coalition, is not only attacking the better off; it’s now switching to those who are already struggling to maintain a combination of body and soul through the already restricted means that is known as Incapacity Benefit. There has been a lot of publicity given to the minority of claimants who are pursuing a perpetual relay lifestyle of wanton unemployment, mainly due to the ease of benefit accessibility and laziness. The ‘relay’ factor is accounted for by the passing on of the ethos to offspring and the culture never leaving the family unit. Then there is the minority of the foreign claimants who are being well publicised for the multi million pound Central London mansions that they are occupying as a result of some silly ruling that stipulates that every child in a household should have his/her own bedroom. These people are enjoying claims of up to 2000 pounds per week for housing benefit alone.

Forget these minorities, there aren’t enough of them to make much of a dent in the national debt. It’s far more viable to target the many people who are genuinely sick and disabled. The government would do much better by ‘HELPING’ these people back to work – the woman who was unable to get out of bed during the inspector’s visit, yet was deemed fit for work and had her benefits stopped completely, now has nothing to live on. Now, it has to be said that the middle classes will not go anywhere near her corner, nor will they bleat on her behalf, no, it’s the three cars on the drives of their detached homes that matters most to them.

Forget the practicality of this, the system will work on the assumption that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs available, waiting only for applicants to come along and take them up. Needless to say, albeit sarcastically of course, the employers behind all of these vacancies are clamouring to employ people who are unable to walk or even get out of their beds. What the workplace really needs are people who haven’t been gainfully employed for years, if not decades due to disability or serious illness. Of course, this is just what the middle classes are wanting to hear. Maybe the coalition can claw back some of its lost credibility following this manoeuvre. Now the government can be seen to be making the feckless work shy scroungers go out and earn their own keep, thereby reducing the burden on the ‘hardworking taxpayers’. Maybe the ‘hardworking taxpayers’ will believe that their taxes will be reduced and their child benefits restored as a result of the ‘feckless scroungers’ being made to work. Sorry folks, you will NOT notice it!!!

London's Tube Strike

2010-10-04T04:37:00.000-07:00

Listening to Boris Johnson speaking at the Conservative Party Conference – re the Tube Strike, I hear him state that a strike should not be allowed to take place unless there’s at least 50% participation in the voting process. He claims the entire city is being held to ransom by a mere 3000 people who did vote. “It cannot be right to take strike action when less than half of the members have taken part in the ballot,” he told conference. Now he wants to introduce a law that makes striking illegal unless at least 50% of union members take part in the ballot. It always amazes me how the bosses in any dispute, will claim non-voters as being on side. In actual fact, non-voters are not on anyone's side, they don't count. So it's wrong for Boris to claim that the strike is being called by something like 30% of Underground employees. If any of the non voters were against the strike and in support of Boris, they should have voted accordingly!!!

A couple of weeks ago, James O’Brien of LBC Radio pointed out to Boris, that he was elected on a 48% turnout of eligible London voters, and only 45% of them actually voted for him. Working out this sum, it evolves that he was elected by about 20% of Londoners. He quickly dismissed this parallel and decided to move on quickly.

Last week, Boris was boastfully claiming that the previous strike did little if anything to cause disruption in London, yet shortly afterwards, he was deprecating the strikers with immense venom and anger. This morning, he is incandescent with rage, so which is it? Are they causing disruption or are they not? One commuter who was being shadowed by an LBC reporter, actually took 4 hours to get from Willesden to Westminster which included standing on Cricklewood overground station for more than one and a half hours, as he watched full trains go by without stopping. He eventually had to use a bus. He later admitted that he could have walked it in less than four hours.

The people who are whinging and refusing to support the strikers are those who are the victims of this action. Diddums, for just one day, they can’t glide into their place of work as smoothly as they do on other days. At least they have jobs that are not under threat. 800 London Underground employees will be deprived of their livelihoods shortly, but who cares? When that happens, they will inherit a new ‘job title’: feckless work-shy benefit scrounger. They will retain that title until such time as they get off their rear ends and go out and find work. The implication from this being, that the only reason they will be on benefit will be that they choose not to work, as is the supposed case with all unemployed people today.

Most of the Central London workers are right wing middle class, a section of society that can only be described as abjectly selfish – the 'me me me' crowd. Why do I say this? Listen to them moaning about the child benefit that George Osborne has just announced will be taken from all people who earn £44,000 per annum. How my heart bleeds for these who are ‘struggling’ to maintain a fair living standard on only £44,000 pa. Now they will have about 130 quid a month child benefit taken from them (assuming they have two kids). Take note: these are the very same people who are on my ‘Why Should I?’ blog of a few months ago. These people would gladly see those with severe disabilities and terminal illnesses be faced with either the option of finding jobs in a market that has no jobs, or starving to death, just so they, the right wing complainers, can continue to drive their Chelsea Tractors and enjoy their foreign holidays several times a year.

The benefit system was introduced to our civilised and caring society to stop people falling through the cracks, not to supplement the comfortable lifestyles of the wealthy middle classes. Quite frankly, if they can't afford to have kids, nobody forces them to do so. Oh silly me, I forgot; they work hard for what they get, don't they. When will I ever learn this? Sorry for my sarcasm, it becomes irresistible sometimes.

Good luck to the strikers on the Underground. We need more Bob Crows.

Christians? Don’t Make Me Laugh!

2010-10-03T04:49:00.000-07:00

I’m astounded by the people who classify themselves as Christians. They scornfully wonder why non-churchgoers call them hypocrites. They’re called hypocrites because that’s how they behave both in and away from their churches.

I hasten to affirm that the following comments do not apply to all Christians, some of whom are devout and whose attitudes and beliefs are unquestionably righteous. It’s simply a case of the image of the minority influencing that of the majority.

I can’t, and I refuse to identify with them although I am a churchgoer. I would consider myself as being of Christian values, but I won’t wear the Christianity (or any other religious) badge. What’s the purpose of religion? It can be none other than a group of clubs with similar aims but differing methods of reaching a target; clubs whose members use it as a means of self-righteous identification.

What do we have in these clubs? We have people who don’t have a clue as to how to be grateful and pleasant; they’re angry, they’re easily offended, they’re extremely unforgiving, they tell tales, they backbite, they tell lies and they try their utmost to avoid paying their way in life. They dispense excuses like confetti at a wedding (“An excuse is a reason packed with a lie” – Joyce Meyer). It takes virtually nothing to spawn their withdrawal from church membership. Just let someone forget to offer them something, let church policy or strategy change from the boring way it’s always been, let someone inadvertently ignore them for whatever reason, or say something that they misunderstood. That’s enough to leave the church.

Christians will frequently engage with selections from a huge spectrum relating to forgiveness. On the one hand, someone might forgive a rampant thug or a predatory paedophile who rapes and murders their 7-year-old daughter. At the other extreme, a Christian will hold a grudge and fail to forgive someone who inadvertently offends them by saying something that has been misconstrued.

If they want to change their course in life: blame God; find a scripture in the Bible that they can use to fortify their aspirations. The Bible is a very useful tool for sulking Christians. “We’re not leaving because of anything you have done, there’s something else.” More often than not, that’s a stinking lie.

If Christians don’t want to attend an event, they will think of an excuse for why they can’t make it. What is wrong with simply saying, “I don’t want to go?” I, being of Christian values and not one who wears the Christianity badge, would say exactly that, “I don’t want to go.” If it offends anyone, then let anyone be offended, I don’t care!

Christians will argue on the way to church, they’ll argue and behave badly on the way home, they will moan about anything and everything whilst in church. Some of us have heard the story about the woman who was honking her car horn at people, making rude gestures and dispensing profanity. A police officer pulled her over and asked her to prove ownership of the vehicle. Because the back of it was adorned with ‘Praise the Lord’ stickers, he thought the car had to have been stolen.

How about the person who complains that the music in church is too loud? Cannot that person be glad that he/she can hear it? He/she could be deaf; some folks are. They would love to hear loud music. “The lights are too bright,” – some folks can’t see them at all, they’re blind. Be grateful. Then we have the person who neither knows nor likes a newly introduced song. How they will moan: “Why don’t they stick to the hymns we love and know so well?” Do that, and you’ll hear: “Why do they keep playing the same old hymns, week after week, can’t they come up with something new?” It’s always, “Why don’t THEY, can’t THEY?

Who are THEY? THEY are the people who get stuck in and make the wheels go round. The moaners are usually the ones who do nothing, but are always first to complain about what THEY do!

Disabled Christians will complain about limited access to their church, even pursue lawsuits against the church for not providing enough of the very expensive limited use facilities that the church hasn’t been able to afford to provide for them.

Christians will complain about the denunciation of their beliefs by non-believers. This suggests that Christians have a right to a monopoly when it comes to opinions and beliefs. They have a right to believe, but they don’t like others having equal and opposing beliefs.

Christians are annoyed at the diminishing congregation sizes. They wonder what can be done to bring young people into church. As the older people are dying off, there is nothing at the other end to replace them. Of course, anything suggested to them will be rejected out of hand because Christians have all the answers, they know best. Amazingly, it’s always the case that the ones with all the answers are the ones who have all the insurmountable problems. The one incontrovertible fact is however, their answers are not working. Young people are not coming into the church, and why should they? What would they find if they did? A ‘sea’ of cauliflower heads garnishing a wealth of stone faces. Young people will be attracted to music, singing and dancing, not the incessant moans about the music being too loud.

My Family – A Conglomerate Of Sulkers And ‘Sulkees’.

2010-10-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

Family, what is this actually? According to the Oxford Dictionary, it is: a group of people related to one another by blood or marriage - a group of objects united by a significant shared characteristic - all the descendants of a common ancestor.

The above are technical or academic definitions; in reality, the characterization is a little discombobulated. I have been trying to garner some more profound and resourceful depictions that can be attributed to my own unit that most closely befits the Oxford’s version of the idiom. All I can muster is a nom de plume: Sulkers and Sulkees. To adopt a position of pragmatism, one has to concede that the family is never chosen, in a way similar to one’s friendship circles, rather, it is bestowed.

For many years, this specific unit has been in a continual state of socio/eco division and consequent ostracism, a scenario perpetuated by the sulkers enclosed within it. How do we know the sulkers are to blame? Who is to say that the ‘sulkees’ are not contributing at least in part to the partition? Does not the expression ‘six of one and half a dozen of the other’ claim some complicity in this? When acquaintances ask a ‘sulkee’, “Have you seen anything of your ********* (sulker’s name) recently?” the ‘sulkee’ will reply, “No, he/she doesn’t want to be associated with the likes of me.” The acquaintance could reasonably ask, “What have you done to heal the wounds, why do you think it’s all him/her to blame?”

To this, the ‘sulkee’ will reply, I have tried my best; I have sent Christmas cards, letters, emails, applications for Facebook friendships and other items of interest to the sulker. All of the above has accrued either a wall of silence or one of vituperative and fatuous censure, derision and/or disdain from the sulkers.

The reasons for this scenario are obscured by a distinct lack of communication from the sulkers. One of them was involved in a dispute in 1996 with one of the ‘sulkees’, but following an apology from the ‘sulkee’ for his contribution to the clash, the sulker subsequently submitted an assertion that the incident had long since faded into oblivion and was no longer an issue, viz. it had been forgiven and forgotten. The rift’s extinction did not follow this affirmation though. Ostracism continues to flow from the sulkers.

One of the other ‘sulkees’ tried to join the friendship list on another sulker’s Facebook site, but was met with a curt and arrogant rejection from the sulker. This must be more upsetting for this ‘sulkee’ as she was only about 8 years old and still within the spectrum of relative innocence when she last met the sulker.

Another sulker, who meets a ‘sulkee’ at events such as family funerals and/or weddings, will offer his hand in apparent friendship to the ‘sulkee’. Clearly, the ‘friendship’ is actually image projection masquerading as friendship and brotherly love because the handshake never leads to a cessation in the ostracism.

The socio/eco progression is not necessarily of benefit to the sulker. One wonders why the sulkers are at the vanguard of misery and enjoy such a penchant for grumpiness whilst the relatively poor ‘sulkees’ are revelling in a proclivity of blissful contentment, a joy that money cannot buy.

One is compelled to conclude as one started: we choose our friends, not our families, If we could choose our families, we’d tread far more cautiously than our parents’ genes and DNA managed to do.

Remember this oh wealthy ones: enjoy it while you can, it’s all temporal. Pre life and after life are great levellers. We enter with nothing and we leave with nothing. As it says in Matthew Chapter 19, verse 24: “Again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” …………. Oops, silly me, I forgot, my family members don’t believe do they? Well, one way or another, they will one day!

The Pope's Visit and Radio Presenters

2010-09-18T03:23:00.000-07:00

Well, I’ve heard some drivel today. I think I’ve found the reason that I continue to listen to LBC radio, it’s to wind myself up and to provide myself with sufficient fodder to keep this blog site alive.

The topic today is of course, the Pope’s visit to the UK. Why he would want to come to this emporium of aggressive atheism, confuses me. James Max, the presenter on LBC this morning oozes modern day political correctness as he viciously condemns the church’s denunciation of everything that he himself is obliged to espouse in order continue to be employed in the media.

Radio presenters don’t believe in God because they need evidence and there is no scientific evidence. They revere homosexuality and civil partnerships, and they vehemently berate the church that doesn’t join their reverence. IS IT REMOTELY POSSIBLE TO BELIEVE THAT WITHIN MY LIFETIME, IT HAS BEEN A CRIMINAL OFFENCE, LEADING TO A LONG CUSTODIAL SENTENCE, TO PARTAKE IN HOMOSEXUALITY? Now, in the 21^st century, anyone who fails to add their supportive acclaim to this appalling perversion (you now know that I don’t) is worthy of being taken to the tower and placed in the stocks.

These media ‘gurus’ would have us believe that homosexuality and paedophilia are 21^st century manifestations, a belief that is fostered only by the modern day media high profile that was lacking fifty years ago.

Why do the media anti-Christ specialists (aka talk radio presenters) continue to bleat on about scientific proof and bemoan the claim that the Bible is a book of ‘fairy stories; written by men? The Daily Mirror and The News Of The World are written by men (I could think of other nouns, but I’ll withhold), but the politically correct evidence needy don’t have much difficulty believing the ‘fairy stories’ that they contain. Woe betide anyone who raises the topic of conspiracy when referring to the case of Dr David Kelly or the demolition of the Twin Towers in New York. The radio presenters will be down on you like a ton of bricks.

We need to recognise the brainwashing that these media people are dispensing and we need to remain a self-thinking barrier in the face of it. Religious believers are not telling the non-believers what to believe, nobody is trying to convert them (or at least, they shouldn’t be). Atheists enjoy the right to disbelieve if that’s their choice. I understand Nick Clegg is a devout non-believer, yet his wife is a devout Catholic. I wonder how they intermingle that one.

Re-Offending - LBC discussion

2010-09-11T04:30:00.000-07:00

I don’t know why I continue to listen to LBC radio. London’s Biggest Conversation is what it calls itself these days, changed from London Broadcasting. It seems to me that to become a presenter on LBC, one would have to fit into a mould, a specific proliferation – almost a prescription.

What am I trying to say? It’s as if all presenters must be politically correct in their attitudes and opinions and above all, they MUST NOT believe in God. Not only must they refuse to believe in God, they must be so proud of this unbelief that they must make a proclamation of it almost on a daily basis.

The presenters will give infinite airtime to anyone who espouses views that are similar to or directly matching their own, but woe betide anyone who disagrees with them. “Blah blah blah, Dave’s in Ealing, what’s on your mind Dave?” To anyone who isn’t a regular listener, that line indicates the previous caller has been cut off before he/she has fully given his/her viewpoint, and a new caller has been introduced. One of LBC’s jingles is: “Have your say on London’s Biggest Conversation.” Have your say, only if your say blends with that of the presenters.

I’m taking a long time to get to my point today. The point is that on last night’s LBC, they were discussing how to prevent criminals from re-offending and going back to prison. There was a news item that stated some wealthy groups were to invest 5 million pounds into suggested schemes that might obtain this result. If they succeed, they will be paid 8 million pounds for their trouble.

One such suggestion is that criminals might be helped to find jobs and start a new life of respectability. A good idea, one might think. After all, the main reason people re-offend is that there is often no choice. Ex offenders have no hope, in the current employment climate, of ever finding work due to the attitude of employers. With no job, it often means no home. No home is less desirable than a prison cell, so, in order to get a roof, they have to commit more crime, and so the vicious circle goes.

Petrie Hosken, the presenter on LBC during this discussion said, “Why should we, the taxpayers, pay for criminals to be helped into work, what about the victims, who is paying for them to be helped into work?” Why don’t we provide such help for those amongst us who have never committed a crime? Sorry to keep going on about the ‘Why Should I?’ brigade (my previous blogs), but LBC abounds with people who are eligible for membership to the ‘Why Should I?’ club, the great bastion of the selfish, up yours clan that eclipses the warm, kind, charitable and compassionate members of our society that the British like to think they are famous for.

My question that in response to hers would be, do you want to stem re-offending or not? Simply releasing prisoners onto our streets isn’t going to convert them overnight into fine upstanding gainfully employed respectable members of the public. That question about those among us who have never committed a crime makes me wonder which planet Hosken comes from. No such person exists on Planet Earth. We’ve all (even the LBC non-believer fraternity) heard the scripture, where Jesus said, “He among you who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.” Nobody threw any stones on that occasion; they all turned and walked away.

This takes my thoughts to the CRB check, about which I’ve moaned before. The only difference between convicted criminals and the rest of us is that the convicts have been caught; the rest of society has been lucky so far. When I hear the self righteous spitting out their ideas of retribution on LBC (they being callers who are given as much time as they like), I have to wonder where all these perfect people live and how they managed to stay on the straight and narrow so long. These are the people who have never ‘borrowed’ anything from work, never used the company car and company petrol for private use, never used the company phones to made a private phone call, never bought any cheap goods that could have been stolen, never paid ‘cash in hand’ for work done, thereby avoiding VAT, never made a false statement about savings when claiming benefits, never called in sick when not sick, never skived off, never received or made copies of CD’s or DVD’s. I know a bloke who told me, “I’ve never committed a crime in my life.” On a separate occasion, he was boasting about all the expensive computer programmes he enjoys the use of, saying, “I never pay for any of them, I get mates to make copies.” When reminded of his previous no crime assertion, he said, “Well, that’s different.” See? People will tailor situations to fit their own desires and circumstances. Many Christians will doctor Bible passages similarly because they wish to do what the Bible is telling them they shouldn’t do.

Why Worry? It’ll Never Happen

2010-09-10T02:55:00.000-07:00

Right now, the coalition government has the disabled and sick worried about their future survival. Having indirectly, through media imaging, branded them ALL as feckless work shy scroungers, a move to get them off their butts and into earning a honest living is extremely popular with all those who are, until now, fortunate enough not to have to rely on Incapacity Benefit and Disabled Living Allowance.

The stereotypical image of all claimants is one of lying in bed until noon, spending the whole rest of the day watching daytime TV and generally enjoying a high level leisurely lifestyle. OK, some do; there are isolated cases of people from overseas coming here, being accommodated in Mayfair and Kensington mansions where the Housing Benefit amounts to 2000 pounds per week. But why does the media, especially LBC radio, insist on spawning and expanding the concept that all, or most claimants are enjoying a similar lifestyle. Quite frankly, one wonders why, if people believe this, they, whilst occupying a place on the ‘why should I’ assemblage, don’t join this bandwagon themselves instead of lamenting those already on it,

The members of the ‘why should I?’ clan firmly believe that all the government needs to do is to simply stop benefit payments, then all the claimants will suddenly rush out to look for work. Can you believe that there are people whose minds are so narrow and constrained? Well, it’s not possible in this or any other era. Many claimants are not able to work through genuine disability and illness. Others (usually with criminal records) will never be able to obtain work due to the prejudices of employers and society in general, plus of course, there are indeed work-shy people who receive more money in benefit payments than they could earn by working – indeed, some of them don’t wish to work. But why must the media insist on creating the impression that the worst-case scenario, the tiny majority, represents all or most claimants? Why, because it sells their trashy papers and attracts audiences to their tabloid radiobroadcasts as it catches the support that the government will need in order to gain the overall majority that it so desperately wants.

The government can drag in support from the populace at large by discharging a daily strategy of reform and debt clearance by clamping down on this ‘worthless’ group of the British human structure. Of course, there are no jobs for those who might be willing and able to work. Then there are those who are too ill or disabled, so they won’t work even if they are abjectly starved into doing so. Lastly, the real feckless and work shy. They too wouldn’t work even if jobs were aplenty. So what will terminating benefit payments do to them? Oh please………….can you really believe that the mindless population of this great nation actually thinks that these people will become honest and will genuinely go and look for jobs? If by some miracle that were to occur, David Cameron and George Osborne will ever more be the heroes who restored dignity and diligence to the population of Great Britain. They will be remembered for having succeeded where all others have failed. Give me a break!!

This is what will happen to YOU, Mr and Mrs hardworking honest and dignified taxpayer; the work shy will live off you, by one means or another. Stop their benefits, and then get ready for an uncontrollable rise in VIOLENT crime. They will mug you, they will burgle your homes, they will steal from your supermarkets and they will steal your cars. You and your families will get injured as you lose your hard earned possessions. Don’t take my word for this; take a look at the figures of nations whose welfare state isn’t like ours.

In addition to the above, this is what will hit the government hardest: The coalition will have to preside over a nation with between five and six million people unemployed. That will stand out on the world stage like the sorest of thumbs. It will put Britain alongside many third world countries. Does this coalition want this? What do you think?

Male Teachers In Primary Schools - Lack Of

2010-09-04T03:34:00.000-07:00

This is at a high profile stage in the news at this time. Various reasons for men not wanting to be teachers at Primary Schools have been submitted. Why are small children seen as part of a woman's world and teenagers more associated with men? What makes people think 6 year old kids don't need the father figure as much as 14 year olds?

The reason most speculatively submitted is that men are afraid of the paedophilia hysteria that abounds in Britain (not, it has to be said, in continental Europe). Men are afraid of being wrongly accused of inappropriate behaviour around small children (who wouldn't be?). Why are they so scared of this? It's because they don't think it out clearly; I'll explain my take on this:

If a six year old says you've done something untoward, it's because you did it. If a 14 year old accuses you of something similar, the 14 year old is sufficiently street wise and vindictive to make it up in order to retaliate against any punitive measures you might have issued the child with.

I for one would much prefer to teach, and feel safer around infants than teenagers, any day. BTW, I'm not a teacher.

Foreign Aid To India And China

2010-08-16T03:11:00.000-07:00

Should Britain be sending fiscal aid to countries whose wealth and rapidly escalating prosperity exceeds its own? Today, China has become the second largest economy in the world. Britain also sends financial aid to India, a nation that has a 35 billion defence budget plus plans to launch a moon project. India can afford to buy our Jaguar car company plus many other companies that were once ours.

Jo Johnson, Conservative MP for Orpington and brother of Boris, has explained the government’s position and justification for Britain shoring up these nations. He explained, with amazing sincerity, that these two nations still have abject poverty on a large scale. He said that there are in effect, two Chinas and two Indias – a third world China, a third world India, a first world China and a first world India. He further explained that we, the British, aim to contribute to the elimination of world poverty. Those two nations do not have a welfare state of their own, so people are starving. Why and how could any right thinking person disagree with Mr Johnson? Should we not be helping poor people in other nations?

What about a suggestion that China and India have an abundance of millionaires and billionaires? What about the suggestion that their governments have more than enough resources to start their own welfare state? What about a suggestion that money being donated through Foreign Aid and private charity donations is being creamed off by corrupt individuals? What about the suggestion that despite all the aid being sent to these countries, the poverty goes on and always will?

Will anyone who sends money to these nations ever receive any positive feedback to indicate where it went? Answer: these two nations don't have the expertise or experience to extrapolate their huge wealth to the aid of the poverty stricken millions of starving people, so it's right that Britain steps in to take up this slack. Stop laughing, this is serious stuff...........:=) :-)

Whose Earth Is This? Wealth Or Theft?

2010-08-11T07:30:00.000-07:00

For the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof (1 Corinthians 10:26).
This message is not going to be popular with those who shore up and flow with the capitalist mantra. It’s going to hammer fat cats, billionaires and millionaires. Translated into modern parlance, the Bible verse says, FOR THE EARTH IS THE LORD’S AND ALL THAT IS IN IT. It doesn’t belong to the first on the scene, as is widely believed in the land of opportunity, otherwise known as the United States of America.

The questions that emanate from this are, who has the right to assume possession and ownership of land and anything found in it? To whom do coal, oil and all other raw materials belong? To whom did the land your house stands on belong before you bought it. What right did the vendors have to sell it to you, why was it theirs before it was yours? What right do they have to demand payment from you for the land your house stands upon? The gold diggers and oil drillers had no right to claim their findings as their own to sell on to the rest of us.

“Let no man seek his own, but every man, another’s wealth.” (1 Corinthians 10:24).
Some people reading this might not be familiar with the Bible, nor might they believe in any of its contents, but whatever your conviction, the way of life and the laws of the western world were built on the messages contained within the Bible, so it does concern us all.

The key item in the news today is the perpetual success of the fat cat bankers (following the government bail-outs) and supermarket leaders. All of this is swilling around in a sea of the “We’re all in this together” caveat from the government, further exacerbated by the announcement of London’s 33% unemployment rate (is that believable? I find it hard to believe that 330,000 unemployed constitutes 33% of such a large city). The ‘We’re all in this together’ admonition as propounded by George Osbourne, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, urges an atmosphere of belt tightening, amidst the fear of job, home and livelihood loss for millions of us. We’re to be ensnared within a tight corner from which there is no escape. People are going to be made jobless in droves, those on benefits are to be assessed with the goal of the government’s efforts being to reduce or eradicate many benefit claims.

How will this work? There will be more benefit claimants because of increased unemployment, yet the government is determined to reduce the number of claimants. How are we going to live? No benefits and no jobs. Remind me, did we vote for this, was this in the manifestos of either the Conservative or Lib Dem parties who are now forming the coalition we have today?

As I listen to the radio, particularly LBC, I find myself asking their presenters to change the record. They’re in danger of wearing out all of this benefit scroungers song that they’re monotonously singing on a daily basis. I have to suspect that the belief that everyone on Incapacity Benefit is a feckless work-shy layabout who emanates from a household, from which no member has ever been in employment, has been tattooed onto the mindset of these presenters. It must be Global Radio’s policy. Nobody with a modicum of wisdom and intelligence would suggest such family units don’t exist, but the canon of LBC seems to dictate that this worst case scenario is not the minority, not the majority, but ALL Incapacity Benefit claimants. LBC’s callers also flow with this doctrine and of course, the government is picking up on the public’s mood and see it as a vote catcher. It’s incredibly short sighted, as are most of the fortunates in this world. Work-shy, feckless benefit scroungers are never going to be workers. If they can’t live on benefits, they won’t get jobs; they’re not wired up for it. They’ll live on the proceeds of the whatever alternatives to work, come their way; most likely, it’ll be crime that they will turn to. So, listen up all you self-righteous members of the ‘why should I keep them’ brigade. Get ready for being hit over the head for your hard earned money, if it is hard earned of course. Most of it isn’t.

It’s been announced that the leaders of the major banks are trousering a remuneration package of up to 5 million pounds per annum. What do they do to earn this? What do television presenters such as Jonathan Ross do to justify 6 million pounds a year? When they get it, what do they do with it? How can anyone spend this amount of money? The deeper concern is however, what gives them the right to claim it. It’s reasonable to believe what is written in the Bible, that the earth belongs to the Lord. It says so in Exodus 9:29 too. It’s reasonable to believe that the earth and all that is in it was created to meet the needs of every living creature that God placed onto the earth. If fairly distributed, there would be no need for the existence of wealth or poverty. But He gave free will to humans, and free will incorporates greed. Greed leads to the disproportionate allocation of the earth’s wherewithal. It means that while millions of the earth’s residents are without the basics of life itself, others have more money than they could possible dream of using. Yesterday, an apartment in London became the world’s most expensive residential property as it was sold for 140 million pounds. Pair this up with the slums of Mumbai where a million people live within an area of 1 (YES ONE) square mile. Last week, there were two cars parked outside Harrods’, one costing £300,000 and the other a cool £1,200,000, both the property of the new owners (and both got parking tickets).

There are so many fat cats in Britain that the prime minister’s salary does not elevate him to the status of being within the nation’s top fifty thousand highest paid individuals. But of course, these overpaid covetous desperados and their cohorts will argue that they work hard, have studied hard and not everyone can do their job. A common argument is that we have to pay top salaries in order to get the best people. Well, people much further down the fiscal structure can make such claims too. Not many of us can perform surgical operations or play Rachmaninov’s Piano Concertos. Coal miners and sewage workers work hard in the most sub-human conditions imaginable, conditions that severely harm their long-term health, conditions that the bankers wouldn’t participate in, even if their salaries were magnified many times over. How good would the lives of the rich be if sewage workers didn’t do what they do? With such importance, I would contend that their efforts are far more valuable to us than those of the TV presenters, footballers and bankers. Furthermore, we do not have to pay 7 figure salaries in order to get the best surgeons, concert pianists, sewage workers or coal miners; we get them anyway and I would suggest that we could get top bankers, footballers and TV presenters without such salaries. We did in days gone by, so why not now?

Wealth that is acquired by many methods has one encapsulating distillation: it is theft. Such a submission I would support by analogising it with the ‘finders keepers’ syndrome. What gives the oil barons the right to extract God’s oil from God’s earth, then sell it to other people, accumulating unspeakable wealth from the proceeds. The capitalists will argue that the oil barons made the effort to mine the raw materials, so why shouldn’t they be rewarded for their efforts. I agree, they should be rewarded for their efforts, much in the way a coal miner is rewarded for his efforts. Everyone should be paid for what they do, but my argument is that their salaries be in proportion to what they do, as is the case with the majority of us. We all need to be paid for our time and efforts, but paying multi millions in salaries is not related to this initiative.

What about people who have made their fortunes through their own efforts in creating and running businesses, one might ask. Bill Gates did that; he became the richest man on the planet. Clearly, his fortune is the product of disproportionate distribution of the proceeds of his business. He didn’t make the fortune by his own efforts, his employees did that, but they are paid proportionally far less than the wealth that their efforts created. Additionally, the customers of the businesses have had to pay far more than the products are worth in order to acquire them. So, the answer is, the staff should have been paid more and the customers charged less. There is no reason why Bill Gates can’t simply take a living salary from his business and fairly distribute the remaining funds to where they belong.

But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation (Isaiah 6:24).
And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24).

Enjoy it while you’re still alive fat cats, for there is nothing for you afterwards. That is where the rest of us will become rich. Amen, praise God.

Cameron's BIG Society

2010-07-31T04:36:00.000-07:00

What's normal and acceptable in today's Big Society, to look at beauty or ugliness?

What is our nation coming to? When David Cameron introduced his ‘BIG SOCIETY’ concept, I doubt that he was aware of the ambiguity of his vision. We’ve finally made it: I read a few weeks ago that Britain is now the fattest nation on Earth having surpassed the United States. Approximately 75% of the country’s population is overweight. The UK’s obesity problem is believed to be worse than was previously thought. Quite frankly, I have to wonder where the previous overview figures came from. As I roam around South Yorkshire, admittedly, the fat capital of the fattest nation on Earth, I have wondered where the experts got the previous figures of “one in five is overweight” from. No, reverse it; one in five is NOT overweight. Dr David Haslam, clinical director of the National Obesity Forum, said recently: "We have become a nation where overweight is the norm and it is only getting worse.”

In the news this week is a suggestion that doctors tell their huge unhealthy patients that they are fat, rather than obese because the word obese doesn’t hit home as much as fat does. Health Minister Anne Milton said, “The word fat is more likely to motivate people into shedding the pounds," adding, "It is important that they take personal responsibility for their lifestyles.” What planet is she from? Read on and you’ll see why I’m asking that question. Oh my, psychologists again. Compared to psychologists, estate agents and second hand car dealers are angels in my book.

Whatever happened to people’s self respect, especially among the female gender? Not too long ago, young women would spend a lot of money and many hours of their time just to enhance their appearance and maximise their beauty. Now the race is on to claim the ugliness accolade. “Oh, must get some tattoos, I can be equal to men now – it shows we can withstand as much physical pain as they can, it shows we’re as tough as they are.”

Why do women want equality with men; why would they want to step down from a higher level to equal a sector that is beneath them? Why do they superciliously display in public, their ability to equate with men on the use of profanity, violence and the consumption of alcohol and to exceed them in the obesity stakes? Is this equality? Is this the Big Society that David Cameron is preparing for us, or should I say, us for?

This morning, I walked into the café at the local Tesco. I saw two women (why are women more into obesity than men? It wasn’t always so) who were both enormous. One of them is extremely ugly and smells of urine. She was tucking into a full English fry up. I said to the person I was with, “It seems to me that obesity has become as much a must have fashion item as tattoos.”

A few minutes later, a little girl came in and sat a few tables away (hopefully out of smelling distance) from the fat ugly smelly woman. The little girl (aged about 7) was unspeakably beautiful. Someone had gone to a great amount of trouble to capitalise on her inherent beauty. She wore a lovely pink dress and a silver jacket that sparkled. She’d had a gorgeous hairdo adorned with ribbons and a flowered slide.

Now, the question is, what has our society (BIG or otherwise) turned into? A further question is, what is the purpose of making an effort in order to make something aesthetically beautiful if not to be perceived by visual contact? Where this is going is this: I said to the person I was with, “If I sit here and stare at that smelly fat tub of lard over there, nobody will notice me doing it nor will they think bad of me, yet, if I sit here and stare at that stunningly beautiful little girl, whose beauty is partly the product of someone’s extreme effort, I’ll be viewed extremely suspiciously. I’ll be suspected of having perverse intentions.”

I know that none of this was part of David Cameron’s analytical brainchild when he bestowed his BIG Society concept onto the electorate. No, the idea was to get the voluntary sector to replace the employed public sector. It amazes me to think that politicians really believe that the population cannot see through such transparencies as this. Any fool (I’m living proof of this) can see that it’s cheaper to dispense with the services of police officers, council workers and other people in the public sector, and pay them Jobseeker’s Allowance than it is to pay them wages (until Duncan-Smith’s axe falls). Of course, the slack can be taken up by volunteers who don’t wish to stay home watching daytime TV all day. London’s commercial radio is already awash with adverts for Special Constable recruitment. In fact, it could be that the very same people, now unemployed, could be doing the same jobs they were doing before they became unemployed, but now only for benefit money. I'm digressing, sorry.

I once observed that the residents of South Yorkshire were distinctly fatter than the population of London. However, London doesn’t want to be left out of this fashion race. On more recent visits to the capital, I noticed, mainly in the suburbs, that they are catching up with the north, albeit slowly. Obesity and tattoos are now sharing the must have fashion rostrum, in London’s suburbs with South Yorkshire. I say suburbs because I see none of it in Westminster or the City, mainly because most people there are foreign visitors. They say that food from Chinese takeaways is fattening, but who ever sees an obese Chinese or other oriental person? Maybe our Chinese food isn’t authentic; maybe Chinese people wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. Maybe you couldn’t buy it on Gerrard Street W1 (London’s China Town).

Well, with that, it’s time for my lunch………….from Weight Watcher’s range of products………honest.

Financial Murder

2010-07-28T02:48:00.000-07:00

Another tragic case of the chicken without a head syndrome hits the headlines and is being discussed on James O’Brien’s show (London's LBC Radio) today. They’re talking about the murders of the wife and two little daughters of a bloke called Andrew Case. There was no suicide note left by Mr. Case, so all that is available is the conjecture by the media. This conjecture plays around with the suggestion that pride and money worries led Case to murder his children, his wife, then to kill himself. It could be the truth, which then sets me off on the road of how terrible pride and greed can be.

It’s been suggested that Case did not want his children to grow up without a father, so to thwart this concept’s existence, he decided to kill them. The speculators also suggest he did this out of love for them. James O’Brien is asking if it’s possible that we, the listeners, can shed any empathy towards this man and his actions. My immediate answer to this would be no. My delayed answer, after some considerable thought, would still be no.

Picture this: with one hand, you have your two year old little girl, whom you love so dearly, pinned down on the bed, in the other hand, you have a knife. Are there any circumstances that could cause you to plunge that knife into that little girl? If so, could you do it again a few seconds later with the other child whom you also love dearly? Your next step is to stab the children’s mother. Then, to escape living the next forty some odd years with the knowledge and regret of your actions, plus retribution, you hang yourself from the stair banister. No thought for the people who have to be first on the scene of this massacre. As it happened, the wife’s mother who probably casually popped in for a chat or a cup of tea, was the one to discover this. What has it done to her? Sorry folks, I’m sticking with ‘NO!”

It’s believed that people who do things like this are at rock bottom; they can see no escape from their present fiscal circumstances, they see no light at the end of the tunnel; they see murder and suicide as their only release. I’ve got news for people – it isn’t a release. The door doesn’t close here. Suicide is a sin and there will be after life consequences.

They could have turned to God with whom, there is always another side. How do I know this? Who am I to gauge other people’s circumstances? I’ve had my rock bottom, I’ve been along the suicide route and it doesn’t have to be as narrow as non-believers think it is. You, reading this, possibly do not believe in God. You think I’m talking out of bodily orifices other than my oral cavity. Well, my message is this: only non-believers will go down the road that Mr Case traversed. Only non-believers will fail to give opportunity to the possibility of another side from which to emerge.

Refusing, or failing to believe in God won’t make your burdens any lighter. The comment I once heard from a youth: “I don’t believe in God, so He can’t hurt me” will NOT work. Although I wasn’t of a devout Christian pedigree prior to the onset of my struggles, I have never been a staunch non-believer either. When my problems came into being, I just ‘came home’ and I’ve never left ‘home’ since.

Jon Venebles (AGAIN!!)

2010-07-26T04:02:00.000-07:00

This story just will not go away. Because the media is constantly raising this issue and has done so again today, I feel inspired to supplement my earlier blog on the subject. I have to say that I never buy or read tabloid newspapers, which are the key output mechanism for this outrage cultivating lynch mob fodder. They will never boost the sales of their daily squalor by arousing passions of fury in me, but I will however, admit to being an ardent listener and follower of the James O’Brien show on London’s LBC radio from where I obtain much inspiration. I’m not saying that I’m told what to think by this show, just that my pre-installed passions are aroused by what is dispensed along these airwaves.

A passionate point is the public’s response and attitude towards the Jamie Bulger killers, Jon Venebles and Robert Thompson. Why are people so much more enraged by the murder of a child by other children than they would be by an adult? We can all name these two boys, yet, as was mentioned in the previous rant, since they committed their heinous act in 1993, 1400 children have been murdered by their own parents. Actually, considering about 80 kids are murdered in this way every year, we can add another six to that total. How many of these children can we name? How many of their murderers can we name? Can anyone actually remember the names of the Baby P killers?

The question remains, why? How many of us are willing to accept that a ten year old cannot be considered as responsible for his/her actions as a 30 year old? If a ten year old beats up his sister or throws his dinner across the room, we’ll easily accept the concept that “……….he’ll grow out of it,” whereas if an adult did the same thing, we would not say that. We would see a serious problem that needs to be addressed, so why are people (I’m avoiding the ridiculous use of the word ‘we’ at this stage) enraged by a much greater magnitude when a child kills a child than when an adult kills a child. Surely, the one person we all look up to, depend on, trust and respect above all others when we are at the earliest stages of our lives is our mother. So, I ask again, why are people not far more enraged by a mother who kills her own child than by another child doing so?

When we see the anger of the people who gather outside police stations and courts, banging on the vehicles that carry offenders such as Venebles and Thompson, it becomes clear to me that the potential for committing murder is not confined to those inside the vehicle. It becomes necessary to give these two new identities (at immense taxpayers’ expense) in order to protect these members of vigilante mobs from themselves, because they clearly would commit murder if they could get access to these two. These people are scary; in fact, the scariest thing is that they are and will continue to be at large amongst us while we are protected only by the incarceration of the likes of Thompson and Venebles.

When James O’Brien raised this topic on his show today, someone sent in a text suggesting that James was being too ‘bleeding heart liberal’ and that Venebles and Thompson should be strung up on scaffolding in the middle of Trafalgar Square. You know, I’m always fascinated to hear the testimonies of perfect people who have yet to commit the slightest sin. James tried to get this guy on the phone to encourage him to discuss his position live on air, but it never happened. People like this are happy to throw their obnoxious monological viewpoints along a one-way street, but will run a mile when the threat of facing rebuttal exists.

I may have mentioned in an earlier blog, a man who filled in an application form for a job. He responded to the question, “Have you ever been arrested?” by replying, “No.” The next point on the form was, “If yes, explain why.” He responded to that one anyway, by writing, “Because I’ve never been caught.” Neither have all these viscous self-righteous vigilantes, who undoubtedly must include that texter who would like to see Venebles and Thompson swinging above Trafalgar Square.

Drip Feed Brainwashing.

2010-07-19T15:39:00.000-07:00

How many people reading this believe that Britain is suffering a financial crisis? How many reading this believe that there’s a climate problem? How many people believe that there are too many cars in use and that those who use cars are the pariahs of the modern society? How many people reading this believe that it’s not safe to allow children out unsupervised for fear of abduction by perverts? In other words, how many of YOU have become the victims of governmental trickle charge brainwashing and have allowed yourselves to be manoeuvred by the media joystick?

When will the 'great' British people realise that publications such as the News Of the World, Daily Express, Daily Mirror and Daily Mail are nothing other than comics, or better still, mindless anger fodder. If you wish to read something that you can relatively respect and feasibly relate to, try the Dandy and Beano, but please, not that textual effluent that is produced and distributed by those psychology and anger manipulators who have moved their offices from Fleet Street into Docklands Canary Wharf. If you take them seriously, you are adorning them with the power, clout, muscle and majesty after which they inexorably lust.

It’s been said before on this blog site: if you tell people something often enough, they will believe it. We’ve been drip fed for over a year now; all that dross about the national debt. The idea is to embed a crisis caveat into our psyche, leave it for a while to be digested, then when it’s firmly secured into place, they will augment the gravity of the crisis, then sit back and allow that too to sink in. They will go on to tell us that the dilemma “…….is far worse than was originally thought”. All the time this is going on, the great British public is being groomed for the acceptance of governmental re-structuring of the society we’ve always taken for granted and accepted as ours by right.

Bring in the cuts, bring in the stealth taxes, bring on the fear……….BRING IT ON!!!

Has anyone noticed that all discouragements are financial? If they (the government) want to dissuade us from doing something, they always propose a levy on the perpetuation of what is being discouraged. By this constant drip feeding of propaganda, governments know that the public will eventually give them carte blanche to implement new measures such as motorway mileage charges, the switching off of, at first, motorway street lights (to reduce emissions), then the lights in your street and eventually, your town centre after midnight.

The public will, albeit grumpily, embrace a reduction in the NHS, education, the police, pensions and sickness benefits and prison sentences for the scrote who burgled your house or threateningly stole your child’s mobile phone. Measures will be taken to reduce the charges of the mugger who killed your grandmother, to manslaughter, because he pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity. His indictment will be mitigated further by the introduction of the blame culture. He will explain to the judge that his father was violent and his mother was a prostitute, a story that will be clinched by the court – the aim being to ensure he gets a lighter sentence thereby saving the cost of his incarceration. If you, reading this, do not believe that money is considered to be of a much higher value than the life of yourself and/or your loved ones, then I recommend you continue to bury your head in the Daily Mail because that will be your bible.

The public will, notwithstanding, scornfully, accept the concept of dispensing with police officers and increasing the use of Special Constables. The public will accept Cameron’s “Big Society” which aims to reduce the use of paid staff which will be supplanted with voluntary workers. Hey, why pay for something when you can get it for free?

Of course, the tactic is to camouflage the proposals’ reprehensibility by purporting to have the public’s interests at the vanguard of their strategy. How many times has Cameron assured us that unemployment will be reduced year on year throughout the term of this Parliament? This is despite his plans to launch huge indiscriminate job cuts in every area of public service for which redundancy payments and benefits will have to be found. His retort is always that the private sector will pick up the slack. He has a plan to make Britain more attractive to the private sector, thereby introducing sufficient jobs to counterbalance the public sector job losses. What has evidently escaped him is the fact that in order to make Britain attractive to industry, Britain will have to find a way to make 50” flat screen televisions to retail at £600, laptop computers for £250, mobile phones for £20, and countless other luxury items, the cheapness of which we are not only accustomed to, but fervently expect.

The never-ending brainwashing about climate change will champion the acceptance of more paranoid measures because the British public will be calm in their belief that by their sacrifices, they are striving for the common good. How do they say it? “……saving the planet for future generations.” Where do they get off believing that they can substitute God’s role here. Where do they get off thinking they are so important, that if they follow the advice of switching off their lights, televisions and heating, they will be saving the planet for their kids and grand kids? No, this is how it works. Like everything else in this rant, it’s all about money and greed. The people who produce energy, and all of their governmental cohorts, would like to receive more money for supplying less energy. They feed the public all the claptrap about climate change and global warming, get scientists, who will say anything if the fee is right, to back them up, the public reduces its usage of energy, after which the providers increase their unit charges. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that.

Let us assume for one minute, that Boris Johnson reaches his target of thousands more cyclists on London’s streets, replacing car drivers. What does he (and in his day, Ken Livingstone) want London to become, a ghost town similar to that which Sheffield has been turned into? Surely, they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces. If motorists stopped motoring, how would they substitute the crippling loss in revenue to the treasury? This country couldn’t afford to discourage car driving, what with 80% of the cost of every litre of petrol going to the governmental coffers in duty. Add to that the Excise duty (tax disc).

Addendum To Previous Blog

2010-07-08T14:35:00.000-07:00

Just an addendum to the last message: It's an alarming fact, that many of us will soon be remembering with affection, the days when we had fun, enjoyed life and had mementos of such times. We lacked technology in days of yore, but we utilised to the full, what we did have. Now we have the technology, but today's kids will grow up totally bereft of records of their childhood achievements. I hope the miserable politically correct morons of the modern world are getting this and realising the damage they are bestowing upon the rest of the people of this land. “WELL, WE HAVE TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN.” Protect them? You’re virtually killing them!!!

If you’re not a paedophile, prove it

2010-07-08T04:45:00.000-07:00

Now for the next lunacy chapter: once again we hear a caveat that all men are paedophiles unless they can prove otherwise. A father of a boy at De Lisle Catholic Science College in Loughborough, Leics., arrived to cheer on his son at the sports day only to be turned away, unless he could produce a valid current CRB check. The father in this case actually ended up hiding behind trees from where he watched his child race. Were the father to be seen in such a position, he would look incredibly suspicious.

British paedophile paranoia again; can there be another country where this obsession is so rife? It seems the authorities are focusing so intensely on non-existent problems, that real threats will prosper unnoticed. Let’s look at this: how many incidences of sexual abuse against children have come into being as a result, direct or otherwise, of fathers watching their children run in the egg and spoon race? We are monotonously barraged with reports of parents not being allowed to video their children performing in sports, theatrical and ballet events. Another question arises: how many child sexual abuse or abduction occurrences have evolve as a result of fathers filming their daughters dancing in the school ballet? If any man gets his jollies by viewing fully clothed children, he can feed his appetite of lust any afternoon by viewing almost all TV channels for a few hours; he doesn't need to gather fodder from his own child's school.

What I mean by the submission that real threats will go unnoticed is that I believe real paedophiles will be laughing their contaminated heads off as they read all these paranoia stories almost daily in the newspapers.

It’s amazing that parents are standing for this debasing treatment of them and their offspring. This is not a case of protecting children, it’s a distillation of people in authority who have achieved their life long ambition of reaching such a position, flexing their otherwise scrawny muscles and enjoying themselves whilst doing so. These are people who themselves, missed out on being prefects when they were pupils at secondary school and are making up for lost time now.

Various groups have protested vehemently against persecution and have claimed successes. We have homosexual rights, religious rights, disability rights and ethnicity rights, so how long will it be before we hear of campaigns for parents’ rights? Quite frankly, if parents don’t make a stand against this lunacy and disdain aimed at them, they only have themselves to blame.

Why Should I?

2010-06-28T15:46:00.000-07:00

The subject of Incapacity Benefit is in the news again today (28th June 2010) because the Chancellor, George Osborne is considering reducing the number of claimants, under the pretext of “helping people”. Where have we heard that one before? The assertion is that there are more than double the number of claimants that there were in year dot – not sure which year they used as a sample. The belief is that because of this circumstance, there must be people who are claiming it who are not entitled to do so, because the logical way of thinking (which supports politicians’ arguments) is that there can’t be twice as many disabled and sick people as there were in year dot. When will politicians realise that they don’t possess a monopoly on intelligence? They already know we don’t like them, why must they insist on augmenting this dislike by insulting the people who elected them, in fact, the people for whom they work? What is wrong with the argument that there were people who were entitled to the benefit years ago, who were not claiming it but are doing so now?

When the topic was discussed on LBC Radio, as it was today, out they came, the same old same old; the ‘why should I?’ brigade. “Why should I go out to work to pay for benefit claimants to sit at home all day, why should I finance these scroungers? Why should I pay for this, pay for that, why should I this – why should I that?” Because of this sickening adverse publicity, the country is being brainwashed into the feckless, work-shy sofa jockey tenets.

Well, they don’t have an exclusive claim to the ‘why should I?’ tirade. All my working life, I have been a single person, paying single person’s tax, which is considerably more than the married person’s tax; more still than the family man’s tax, and I don't get to claim child benefit.

This is what I see: I, being a single person, constitute a much smaller drain on the nation’s resources than does a family. I don’t have use of schools; I am only likely to use the Health Service by a quarter of what a family of four is. If the ‘why should I?’ brigade ever crash their cars, set their houses on fire, become victims of crime, why should I subsidise the ambulance, fire service and the police to come to their rescue? Would the ‘why should I?’ brigade be happy to receive a bill for such services and pay for literally everything that they make use of?

The true definition of the ‘why should I?’ crowd is the greedy, self self self, me me me party, the sort who would vote Republican in the United States. When God made 6 or 7 billion of us, he provided sufficient of the world’s resources for each and every one of us to have our needs met, yet we have on the one extreme, people with more money than they could ever spend, and that still isn’t enough. They threaten to emigrate from Britain if anything gets in the way of their huge salaries and bonuses. At the other end of the spectrum, we have people who suffer abject poverty. We have people in Asia who will deliberately blind and permanently cripple their own small children so that when they go begging in the streets, they might get more money. So a blinded, crippled child will spend 18 hours a day begging, the other 6 hours sleeping. All this so that football players and television presenters in Britain can get their 6 million pounds per year as employees.

“But we work hard!!” they’ll have us know. Try telling that to the chamber maid in the Ritz Hotel or Claridges, who makes billionaires' luxury £7,000.00 per night hotel rooms habitable, as she works all day long for minimum wage. How bearable would rich people’s lives be were it not for folks on minimum wage looking after their every need and pampering their every whim? Yes, I worked hard and long hours, many of them without any pay at all despite having to pay single person’s taxes.

Aren't we glad that we don't live in a country where people die from starvation and we don't have to maim our children before sending them out to beg on the streets of London? So, a last word to the whining, self centred, greedy, Chelsea Tractor driving miserable 'I'm allright, stuff you' shower, I didn't mind subsidising your extravagent irresponsible debt ridden lifestyles. I had no problem paying towards the upkeep of the children that YOU chose to have. Why should I?

BA's Sex Discrimination Policy

2010-06-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

The topic of the abuse (or not!) of our children is continuing in the media. Isn’t the media wildly passionate about this subject? It reminds me of an animal that has been starved for a lengthy period, then is suddenly exposed to a profusion of its favourite diet. Watch how it brandishes its onslaught on the poor little food source (usually another live animal that is about to suffer unmitigatedly) as it sinks its teeth in and devours the ‘nosh’.

Today’s topic is on British Airways' conception of potential paedophilia. Likewise other groups mentioned in other blogs, BA is also locked onto the notion that all men are guilty of this unless they’re proven otherwise. Why men, why not women? In recent months, there have been more women accused of child abuse (in nurseries, for example) than men. Yet, the great British public is still keen to cling to the mindset that children left in the custody off women invokes an air of cosy security whereas with men, will at best, engender a sideways glance of doubt, at worst, sheer horror and outrage.

The story today refers to a man called Mirko Fischer. He and his wife were passengers on a British Airways flight. His wife was sitting next to the window, Mr Fischer was sitting in the middle and next to him, was a 12 year old boy who was travelling alone. In line with BA policy, the cabin crew patrolled the aisles before take-off, ensuring that children travelling alone or in a different row from their parents were not seated next to a male stranger (read on, BA is going to deny that its policy is discriminatory).

If they see that there is a man next to a child or teenager, they will ask the man to move to a different seat and the aircraft will not take off unless the passenger obeys.

A male steward asked Mr Fischer to sit elsewhere, which he initially refused to do as he wished to remain alongside his heavily pregnant wife and she wanted to sit near the window. Eventually, in order not to create a problem that would encroach on the other passengers, he eventually capitulated, thereby allowing the plane to take off.

Mr Fischer has sued British Airways on the grounds off sex discrimination. The claim is amply supported by the fact that at first, Mrs Fischer was sitting next to the boy and no one objected, but because she wanted to sit near the window, she asked her husband to swap seats so that meant he was in now the middle.

It was Mr Fischer's contention that the aircraft is effectively a public place, so were he sexually perverse towards boys, he wouldn't have an opportunity to perpetrate any abuse on the child as the aisles are patrolled frequently and other passengers are only inches away. A counter contention suggests that he could verbally groom the boy, obtain his phone number and/or email address and arrange to meet at a later date. This is statistically as far fetched as it's possible to get. The chances of the man being a paedophile are remote in the extreme. The liklihood of the man making arrangements to meet, to which the child will adhere, are even more remote. OK, CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection) does deal with this kind of problem, but when the meetings that they deal with are arranged, the child usually believes he/she is going to meet another child because of Internet deception. It's not going to happen as a result of a personaal meeting on an airplane.

Mr Fischer has won his case and BA has paid his costs in addition to some fiscal compensation, which Mr Fischer has donated to various children’s charities (Kidscape and Orphans In The Wild). He has supplemented the donation with £2,000 of his own money.

The following is mind boggling to say the least: British Airways is denying that its policy is discriminatory despite having admitted to sex discrimination in this instance. How such a claim works when the rule only applies to men, is truly astounding. Nevertheless, BA is reviewing its policy. Neither Virgin Atlantic nor easyjet impose such a ruling.

From this disturbing story, one feels drawn towards the equally disquieting news report of yesterday (24^th June) which claims that where the Sex Offenders’ Register is concerned, the Probation Service is so overloaded, that it cannot cope with the workload and is thereby risking a dangerous likelihood of re-offending. The service is "……unable to engage effectively with offenders and challenge their behaviour". There are more than 44,700 people on the Sex Offenders’ register for England and Wales.

I’m aware that sentences that embrace the inclusion on the Sex Offenders’ Register are thrown around by the courts as liberally as confetti at a wedding; there are too many people on it. People who are accused of “possessing indecent images” because they took photos of their own children in the bath or on the beach, are being caught in the crossfire of the 21^st century paedophobia that is now rife. They are added to the register and are being treated as perverts. Take a look at this comment from Andrew Bridges, the chief inspector of probation: "The proportion of sexual offenders who are reconvicted of further offending is known to be low. Nevertheless, their subsequent crimes understandably cause considerable public concern.”

It’s my contention that if there weren’t so many people on the register, coping with the real offenders such as predatory (and other) paedophiles, rapist and abusers would not only be plausible, it would be considerably easier. But, what do I know? I’m not an expert. It always amazes me that the experts are the ones who are forced to languish in the problematic ‘fruits’ of their own systematic architecture, but can never consider the possibility of their having got a decision wrong.

Child Killers - Public Vitriol

2010-06-22T05:27:00.000-07:00

Jon Venables is in the headlines again, following his appearance in court on charges unrelated to the murder of James Bulger, 17 years ago. Surprisingly, James Bulger’s mother’s solicitor has been in touch with the Ministry of Justice, to make representations on her behalf, and to raise a number of concerns that she has about the way the case is going to be handled. One is compelled to wonder what business it is of hers considering the latest charges are unrelated to her son’s murder. I don’t wish to appear heartless here, but the reality should be faced and that reality is that due legal process rather than personal retribution, needs to be engaged. The case against Venables that related to James Bulger’s mother was dealt with at the appropriate time.

Now, the key theme of this blog is the anger of the public. How many people are aware of the number of children who are actually murdered in this country each year? It’s easy to believe that we are made aware of them all, but that’s not the case. There are on average 79 children murdered each year, which means about 1,400 children have been slaughtered since Jamie Bulger was killed. How many of these can we name? Victoria Climbie, Sarah Payne, Hollie and Jessica, Baby Peter………about 5 or 6 over the last 17 years.

Why do we direct such anger, fury, rage and vitriol by means of reckless behaviour in the streets, at the least responsible and most vulnerable perpetrators of child killings, such as two ten year old boys, yet we tend to deploy no more than a shoulder shrug at the adult killers of children, of whom there are far more?

Paranoia in the UK

2010-06-11T03:28:00.000-07:00

Following on from yesterday's rant on this site, one is forced to wonder how the British media managed to engineer and implant all the ‘paedophobia’ into the psyche of the majority of the UK population. Apparently, in Denmark, only a stone throw away from the UK, it doesn't exist in the slightest.

Why are people so terrified of each and every one of us, why do we assume the worst case scenario is the normal circumstance? Why are people suspicious of child photographers, why do they fear that their child's images will be distributed on a paedophile website the next day? Why was a 57-year-old female college lecturer dismissed from her livelihood this week for slapping a 20-year-old female student on the hip? Why do we have to ask parents' permission before we use a video or other cameras in the presence of their children? Why can infant school teachers no longer cuddle or comfort a small child in distress or pain.

Why is it that every adult is a paedophile until proven otherwise? Why do we now have a situation that we cannot go to the aid of a lost or injured child in the street, because we fear the suspicion that will surround us? Because of this, the child will remain lost and to his/her own devices.

This most derisory distillation of precaution is robbing children of their childhood - the ability to grow into the world they will have to inhabit as adults. Children are deprived of the protection and safety they have a right to expect from the adult realm when they become lost or distressed in a public place, or even at school. Children are being robbed of a visual record of their early years to look back on later in life - I ask you, what kind of person believes that a paedophile will get off on a video of children doing a nativity play? If anyone does get his/her jollies by viewing fully clothed children, there's an abundant supply on daytime TV from 3.30 onwards, every day.

What people fail to accept is that 'stranger danger' proliferates far less danger than other forms of threats - the inability to cross roads due to inexperience for example. 99.99999999999% of the adult population is not a danger to kids, but it's assumed that such a percentage is. People who do what Roy Whiting did become nationally famous. The victims of men like Roy Whiting and Ian Huntley also become nationally or even world famous. Why? Because these incidents are so rare; we do not learn the identities of every child who is killed by cars, yet there is no call to ban the use of motor vehicles because they kill far more kids than paedophiles do. Child murders from strangers don’t seem to occur every year, but killings by children’s carers and parents happen every week. A 6 year old girl was stabbed in the chest in her own home in Guildford only yesterday.

In Denmark, men work in nurseries and even change nappies. How strange - British parents would bridle at the thought of a man changing their daughter's nappy. In Turkey, it’s considered normal for adults on a crowded bus or train, to lift a standing child and let the child sit on their knees, with no pernicious looks or comments from the parents.

Will the days ever return when we can smile at and speak to strangers' kids in the street without creating fear in the parents? Yes, the risk, however minuscule, does exist, but risk exists in every stage and form of daily life. One needs to balance the risk against the resulting quality of life. If anyone is so scared of risk, why get the kids out of bed in the morning? Even staying in bed isn’t safe, the bed could catch fire.

Figures support the contention that the risk from paedophiles is no greater now than it was in the 1940s, when the paranoia didn’t exist. Can you imagine in 1940, a woman being ejected from a public swimming pool because her four-year-old daughter wasn’t wearing a top? James O’Brien (LBC presenter) says that one day on the tube, he was pulling funny faces at a young child to make him/her laugh. When the mother saw this, she grabbed her child and moved to another part of the train. Grow up Britain, the rest of the world is laughing at you!!

Are We Cutting Public Spending Or Not?

2010-06-10T03:43:00.000-07:00

Currently, the country is trying to get out of a fiscal mess. An excellent way to foster such an attempt would be to conserve funding, reduce and/or eliminate the wastage of public money. Clearly, there are many options available to the current Lib/Con coalition. We could stop catering for school kids who are claiming to be suffering from school phobia. Cases such as this have to go through the courts and child psychologists have to have their fees paid. If we were to sensibly rid ourselves of such ridiculous phenomena that the human rights wave has recently brought us, we could save quite a pot of cash for the treasury. Of course, it would reduce the workload of and therefore, the demand for some of these child psychologists. Self preservation in many professions is costing the country a lot of money that otherwise could be saved.

A question that must come to mind is, why is this story accompanied by a photo of little Sarah Payne? The answer is that the sub-human piece of effluent, AKA Roy Whiting, who snuffed out Sarah’s mere existence in order to cultivate his own perverse gratification, has launched an appeal against his 50 year prison sentence. A judge, in his infinite 'wisdom' has decided that the sentence was too severe and has therefore reduced it to 40 years. This means of course that Whiting will be 83 years old when considered for parole. It’s possible that by such time, he won’t be a danger to little girls or indeed, anyone else, so the ruling is academic. Academic or otherwise, the fact is that this appeal must have cost the judicial system a fortune. One is compelled to ask why are we able and willing to afford and squander funds on this waste of time?

I normally do not have much time for (then Home Secretary) David Blunkett; I always see him as an irrational knee-jerk merchant who never stops to think before acting, but I am tempted to applaud his initial decision to download a 50-year sentence onto Roy Whiting. One last thing: Sarah would now be 18 years old had she never met Whiting.

Women in Government

2010-06-09T05:40:00.000-07:00

Harriet Harperson's (Harman's) crusade in favour of a 50 percent male female split in the Labour Party can only have a doubtful success level, were it ever to come to fruition (which I doubt). The concept is no different from the race equality quest of Bristol Council, on which I wrote on this blog site last week.
People should succeed on their merits only, and not be shoehorned into positions for the sake of gender, sexual orientation, racial and disability balancing.
I’ll concede that I’m a white male and will be seen as speaking from a position of smugness, but I’ve always believed that all things have a greater value if they are taken rather than given. How would I feel were I to obtain a top position because of my gender, race, sexual orientation or disability? I wouldn’t feel that I was deserving, nor would I believe I was the best person for the job and I wonder if those who are shoehorned feel this way too.
I’m often bemused by the job application forms that proclaim that the employer is an ‘equal opportunities’ employer. It then goes on to ask the following questions:

Do you consider yourself to be:
White British,
Black,
Asian,
Chinese,
White Other,
Prefer not to say?

Do you consider yourself disabled? If yes, give details.

Are you gay, straight or bisexual?

Do you have a criminal record that is not yet spent under the 1972 Criminal Rehabilitation Act?

Equal opportunities? Don’t make me laugh!!

Fat Cat Job Switching

2010-06-09T04:28:00.000-07:00

During the British Airways cabin crews' strike, several (about 300) pilots have been working as proxy cabin crews. They were certain the work was easy and undemanding. What they hadn't bargained for was the abuse and whinging that is frequently dispensed by irate passengers. Clearly, pilots, being well detached from the public confrontation arena, are unaware of what the regular staff have to endure, whilst being pleasant and wearing a perpetual smile.
After a very short time, the pilots withdrew their cabin services now that they had become conscious of what the regulars have to tolerate on a daily routine basis. In actual fact, these pilots were nothing other than strike breaking scabs and should hang their heads in shame.
I now wonder where else this eye opener could work. Would the highly paid managers and bankers like to do the work of their subordinates, even though they could keep their own ridiculously high salaries? Would the CEO of a top Mayfair hotel have a go at doing the chambermaids' tasks? I suspect they wouldn’t stick at it for long, notwithstanding the retention of their own salaries. If this were so, how would they like to try to keep body and soul together on minimum wage, as the chambermaids do? The chambermaids in hotels are the most useful members of the staff and would cause the greatest devastation were they to remove their services. No fat cat’s absence would be noticed by anything like the same magnitude.

Politically Grooming the Public

2010-06-07T15:22:00.000-07:00

You know, it's been said that if we're told something often enough, we'll believe it, regardless of how far fetched 'it' might be. For almost a year now, we have been told that there is an enormous deficit in our balance of payments structure, and that whichever party wins the election, tough measures are to be deployed. It's a form of grooming, we’re being conditioned, even brainwashed into accepting whatever is dealt without resorting to the disdain that would normally be dispensed by an angry electorate.

Let me set out a typical example of public grooming. Imagine the government and/or the oil companies wanted to raise the price of petrol from say, 90p per litre, to 115p per litre. To do this in a single manoeuvre would cause unprecedented outrage, even rioting in the streets. No, a much better way is to raise petrol prices by weekly increments of one or two pence each. That way, the public will simply murmur and grumble each time, but they will accept it. The price of petrol creeps up to 120p per litre, the public moans, but carries on with life. Then, after a few weeks of price stability, the cost is lowered to 115p per litre. Now the public embraces the price gleefully after having become used to paying 120p. This is grooming.

Apply the same technique to the 'deficit' scenario. Keep banging on about it; engage the tactic that David Cameron used this morning (7th June 2010) which was to announce that the deficit was even far worse than was previously thought and that the panaceas that will have to be adopted will affect every person in the country and will be more painful that previously envisaged.

The entire scenario and reason for these measures will be blamed exclusively on the previous government. With this blame factor eventually set in stone, the public will rapturously accept the changes and will possibly even applaud them. The resentment towards the New Labour government will expand which will appease the Conservatives and bolster their popularity with which they can head for another general election. Now they will gain the massive majority that they seek. The Lib Dems will be discarded like yesterday's garbage and the Tories will press forward with their own policies totally unimpeded - challenged by no one.

Political Correctness

2010-06-02T02:35:00.000-07:00

It's not the so-called victims who are the proliferators of political correctness, it's the people in authority who are struggling to propagate a gleaming distillation of their own ideology, simulating positivity towards the downtrodden. Bristol City Council is now recruiting only those from the ethnic minorities. Their rationale is to redress the imbalance - 12% of Bristol's population is from the ethnic minorities, yet only 7% of the council employees are likewise.

This gives unfair proclivity to the 12% of the city's population and iniquity to the remaining indigenous 88%. Comments from members of the ethnic minorities suggest that they are being patronised and the council and those of a similar genus are doing them nothing other than a disservice.

The Coalition - some questions

2010-05-12T06:52:00.001-07:00

Clearly, we are now going into the unknown with this unprecedented governmental arrangement. Because of it's uniqueness, it's difficult to know if one is sceptical or happy about the future. Only days ago, Cameron and Clegg were as aloof as is imaginable, yet now they're sharing positions at top table. Who knows - this time next year, we might be saying this is the best thing to have ever happened to this country, why didn't we do it earlier?

The spectacle of Clegg and Cameron standing shoulder to shoulder on the steps of 10 Downing Street could be deemed to be the work of a computer imaging enthusiast making a collage on Photo Shop.

If the coalition is successful and is embraced by the electorate, will we be able to vote for another coalition, or do we simply revert to voting for individual parties, knowing that we will be going back to the old system?

If the Conservatives are unhappy with it, and they call another election after which the Conservatives gain a working majority, will the old rivalry be re-instated and the Lib-Dems be returned to their old region of the House of Commons with Nick Clegg's entitlement being once again, only two questions at PMQ's?

In the present arrangement, when Cameron is away from his post, clearly Clegg will take his place at the helm; will the rest of the Conservatives be happy about Clegg being their spokesman at PMQ's?

Who will be the Prime Minister if Cameron faces an unfortunate circumstance following which he cannot continue in his position?

Will the Conservatives and their voters be happy with a Lib-Dem leader?

Who will claim the credit for any successes in the future?

Could Labour and their supporters rightly be angered by the coalition? The Lib-Dems came third, yet Labour came second. Some might ask why Labour couldn't join the Tories and form a much larger coalition; after all, the Lib-Dems' opposition to the Tories was no less bitter and vociferous than that of Labour.

What is worrying is this: the Tories have consistently blamed Gordon Brown for the onset of the global recession, even though it's groundwork came from elsewhere. Undoubtedly, the recovery will be cultivated whilst this coalition is in office. One suspects that Cameron and Clegg will claim the credit for this 'success'.

Failure of Cameron

2010-05-07T04:53:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems that David Cameron was handed the victory on a golden platter and yet, failed to grasp it. Within a few days of the election, Brown publicly insulted a voter in Rochdale and he was described by one of his own party as being the worst prime minister since the war. The electorate has held Brown in unprecedented low esteem, yet in the face of that, Cameron has failed. What does it take for him to win? He clearly lacks the perspicacity to lead the party and prosecute a campaign. If I were a Conservative party member, I'd be striving for a new leader. That wants doing starting today. Some might not wish to agree with me, but the facts before us are incontovertible.

Children's Minister's Apology

2010-03-17T04:01:00.000-07:00

Now that Dr. Maggie Atkinson, the children's commissioner, has issued an apology for the disparaging comments she made last weekend, that the killers of James Bulger should have never been prosecuted because of their age, is she going to cement some veracity to the apology by withdrawing the comment and reviewing her attitude? Why do I suspect not? Without the sentiment, the apology is just an audible discharge from her mouth.
Does anybody know what the function of this office is? What does this quango (children's commissioner) actually do for the rest of us?

Geert Wilders

2010-03-06T03:45:00.000-08:00

No doubt every 'IST' in the book will be bestowed onto me as I embrace the visit of Geert Wilders to our shores. It was dominating London radio (which I'm almost permanently glued to) all day Friday (5th March). Once again, the minority are making the most noise (trying to paint a much bigger picture) - violence again in Millbank yesterday – led to traffic chaos around Parliament Square, all the way up to Trafalgar Square and even to Piccadilly Circus and blocked Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges. But of course, what do I know? I'm the ubiquitous, abominable, universal 'IST' that PC radio presenters love to vilify. Unlike them, I won’t be losing my job if I inadvertently (or otherwise) let the wrong thing slip (I'm currently listening to Ken Livingstone on LBC who's going on about the same topic, although to be fair to him, he's only asking people questions rather than spouting his own views). Listening to the radio yesterday (Friday), all those who had condemnation of Wilders were given carte blanche to speak for as long as they liked. His supporters were cut off after a few seconds (on the Jeni Barnett show). And they claim to be supporting free speech and equality. When do I stop laughing? Good for the Dutch; I’m almost becoming proud of my heritage. The basic theme of proclamation is that "........not all Muslims are blowing up planes......." Well, neither are Christians, but they're the ones who have to have thick skin and broad backs. Offending the indigenous Christian population is acceptable and it's they who need to stop whining. I could go on, but I need a new and stronger soapbox, this one is crumbling a bit.

A PRS for Music Licence to listen to talk radio.

2010-02-25T04:01:00.000-08:00

PRS for Music was spawned from the old MCPS-PRS Alliance in January 2009. During that time, PRS for Music has been patrolling business premises and where its staff have found radios are being used, a demand for the application for a licence has been issued. Its purpose, as is claimed, is to collect and pay royalties to its members when their music is being exploited in one of a number of ways – when it is recorded onto any format and distributed to the public, performed or played in public, broadcast or made publicly available online.

Maybe this is reasonable at face value, but it has to be said that musicians’ royalties are paid by the radio stations that must have a licence to broadcast music. What has become disturbing however is that in London, many business premises are switched to LBC (London’s Biggest Conversation), which is a talk radio station. They do not play records.

One argument proposed by PRS for Music is that there are jingles being played on LBC. LBC argues that the composers and performers of the jingles are paid directly and none of their income comes from PRS for Music.

Most disturbing was a report on Nick Ferrari’s show on the 25^th of February 2010, a call came from a man who is now retired, but to keep active, he still repairs a few clocks and watches in his own house. The public does not have access to his house; it isn’t a business premises, but he is repeatedly being approached by PRS for Music for licensing fees. The aggravation has been going on for most of a year and he has now contacted his MP, who believes the situation is ridiculous.

Another MP whose constituency is within the catchment area of a relatively small radio station has received a complaint from that radio station, stating that it is losing listeners (and consequently, business) at an alarming rate because of the harassment being distributed by PRS for Music in its area. Rather than pay for a licence, people are merely switching off radios in factories, hairdressers’ premises, shops and offices. The ramifications of this are affecting the radio station’s income in that advertisers are loath to give business to a radio station that has a declining listener base. Undeniably, this means that fewer people are listening to the creations of the musicians, the rights of whom PRS for Music is allegedly battling for.

Benefit Millionaires

2010-02-16T04:39:00.000-08:00

Posted by Bill Ross on Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Today on the Nick Ferrari Show on LBC Radio – 16 February 2010. London's Biggest Conversation, LBC 97.3

There are now 16 benefit claimant families living in homes worth north of a million pounds in London. Today, it is reported that a Somalian single mother with seven kids is occupying a 2 million pound mansion in central London, at a cost of £1,600.00 per week, paid for by the taxpayer of this country. In addition to this almost £84.000.00 p.a., she receives £35,000.00 in other supplementary benefits. She is a near neighbour of Sir Paul McCartney in the exclusive St. John’s Wood area.

It was stated that a family can go to absolutely any borough in the country, and if they apply for accommodation in that borough, their application has to be processed in that borough. The rules are that the accommodation must provide one bedroom for each child, plus one for the parents, therefore this woman ‘needs’ eight bedrooms. So, they can go to the likes of Mayfair, Kensington and Chelsea or St John’s wood, and they will be found an ‘appropriate’ home that meets their requirements.

Following this discussion, a woman (born and bred English) from Merton (less exclusive that St John’s Wood) called in to explain that two years ago, her family home was repossessed due to an unfortunate turn in their lives. She explained that she has to go onto the waiting list to qualify for housing. The qualifying points system has her pretty low down the scale, so she is in Band G. Were she severely disabled, she would graduate to Band A, which means she would stand a chance of receiving a home within the next five years. So this basically means she has no chance. She is living in privately rented accommodation which costs her and her husband £1,200.00 per month; every penny of that they have to pay themselves because they are in work.

She went on to explain that she has a bucket on the floor of the kitchen because the ceiling leaks water; there is mould creeping up all of the walls.

Is it me, or is something wrong here? Remember, there are 16 families living in million pound plus accommodation in OUR capital city. Is it our city any longer, or has it all gone abroad along with the white cliffs off Dover?

Your Future, Not Your Past? Let's See

2010-02-16T04:36:00.000-08:00

As we listen to various Christian testimonies and as we read various scriptures and daily devotionals, we are perpetually advised to ignore the past tense and to refuse to let our past influence or get in the way of our future. God forgives us, our Christian peers won’t let anything we’ve done in the past get in the way of the future that we are trying to build. They won’t let it block or hamper our walk in Christianity, they won’t allow any part of our past to obstruct our relationship with them. Armed with all of this, you need to dismiss your past because being born again, you are a new creation. Your past no longer exists……………..RIGHT?

Wrong!!! Unfortunately, all of this gets left behind when you walk out of the church door. Or does it? Does it even creep under the door of the church and find a way inside? If you wish to work, either vocationally or voluntarily with children, your past could prevent you from doing so. Your past will inhibit your future. Not only working with children – if you apply for any job at all, you will be CRB (Criminal record Bureau) checked and if you have served a prison sentence, the job you are applying for will go to someone else. Your past will inhibit your future.

This has to be the cause of constant re-offending. Many recidivists will explain that all that awaits them on release from prison is homelessness, joblessness, despair and a feeling of worthlessness. Many will realise that their offence was a mistake; they will have taken advantage of training and rehabilitation programmes that are destined to assist them into work and a worthwhile future. It’s all going nowhere while ever employers keep on passing them over because of their criminal past. Re-offending leading to a nice warm cell and three square meals a day (paid for by the taxpayer) is the only future that their past will allow them to pursue. Their past will inhibit their future. And people wonder why the prisons are so full, that there is no room left for the real dangerous men from whom we really do need protecting, men who should never again be allowed to patrol our steets and neighbourhoods or to be amongst us.

On the subject of children, a new body called the ISA (Independent Safeguarding Authority) is either replacing, or supplementing the CRB. The ISA is far more stringent than the CRB, in that its databases will hold all incidents that you have been accused or suspected of, whether or not exoneration ensued. Exoneration is fundamentally worthless. It’s the ‘no smoke without fire’ syndrome that carries the greater value here. If you were accused or suspected, you did it and that’s going through life with you, wherever you go. Your past will inhibit your future. The CRB and ISA databases will only reveal the ONE mistake that you might have made in your life. It will NOT reveal the years of arduous effort and work that you have done for charity and other worthy causes without payment. It will NOT reveal the life of the child you saved as you pulled him/her out of a swamp or river. It will NOT reveal the thousands of pounds that you have raised and/or donated to life saving causes. No, it will reveal the error of judgement that landed you in a courtroom, maybe many years or decades ago. Your past will inhibit your future.

These measures are far more dangerous than the people they are set out to protect us from. These measures give us a false sense security in that it is assumed that ALL dangerous people have already been caught and are on the databases. Armed with this ‘security’, a parent will, calm in the knowledge of the infallibility of the ISA’s databases, comfortably send their little girl off to school in a taxi driven by a lone man about whom they know nothing, other than he has been CRB/ISA checked (the taxi firm's Yellow Pages advert says so). They will be content and at peace, knowing their little girl is totally safe in the hands of a childcare centre/nursery, because all checks have been carried out and the staff there are squeaky clean (really?).

So, the way of the world is that all dangerous people have already been caught, there are now no first times. The only person who would commit a heinous crime against a child has already done it and is known to the police, ISA and CRB and from such an individual they are protecting us. So it’s a case of “Aaarrrrrr, we can relax, our little Katie is in safe hands.”

Why did I imply that all this nonsense does not stop at the church door? A few days ago, I needed to take a brief video shot of a congregation in situ in the church; it’s for a documentary that I am making. As is customary and courteous, I asked the congregation if anyone objects to being filmed. Only one person made a comment, a woman; she said, “Do you mind not videoing my kids?” Where are all of the Bible passages and the testimonies now? What is this suspicion that arouses such mindless paranoia here? Does she think we are gathering fodder to load up kiddie porn websites for paedophiles? In front of the rest of the congregation, all of the embarrassment must be falling onto her shoulders. From my perspective, I have been making video productions for 22 years, 95% of which have been of and about children. In all that time, I have never had to listen to such a disgusting request, either inside or outside church.

God bless.

New Year Resolution

2009-12-31T03:12:00.000-08:00

Blog more. This is a good high horse on which to climb.

2009-12-31T03:05:00.001-08:00

I must say I agree with this proposal. Maybe similar structures could be brought in for the obese, smokers and 'gear' lovers.

£500 Hospital Fee For Drunks
31-Dec-09
Tory Think Tank propose to charge drunks for hospital treatment...

Drinkers could be hit with a £532 bill if they land in hospital after a night on the booze.

Bingers with "acute alcohol intoxication" would face a flat-rate fee if they spent more than 24 hours recovering.

Those agreeing to fork out for an alcohol awareness course would get a discount under tough new proposals.

They come as it was revealed hospital admissions of New Year's Eve revellers tonight are expected to cost the NHS a record £23million.

The excess drinking charge plan is contained in a report by David Cameron's favourite think-tank.

If elected, the Tory chief may implement the findings of the Policy Exchange.

Today's shocker

2009-12-30T04:05:00.000-08:00

In 2 1/2 years suspects let out on bail committed 24 murders and 9 rapes in one county alone, it was revealed last night.

The figures showed that people on bail were responsible for 11,171 crimes across Lancashire between January 2007 and September 2009.

As well as the murders and rapes, they included 62 attempted murders, 63 other sexual offences, 45 arsons, 283 robberies, 667 burglaries and 3,100 shoplifting incidents.

Stunned local Tory MP Nigel Evans "The figures are very large indeed. These are obviously people who are repeat offenders."

Calling for a more rigorous system, he added: "They should be kept under lock and key in the future."

Who are they kidding? Making statements such as this in public, looks good to the electorate who have to be convinced that something is being done. Why does it have to be done after these figures come into existence? Surely, common sense would dictate that the action that is being adopted would culminate in the results that we now have. It's not rocket science.

The problem is, the powers that be are looking more closely at funding and costs of incarceration than they are at the effect on the public. What does a rape cost the government? Nothing like what it costs the girl victim (albeit the cost not necessarily financial). It's far cheaper to have criminals at large than in prison. Each prisoner supposedly costs the system several thousands of pounds per week, more than if they were in a Mayfair hotel.

A key question should be, why shouldn't ex cons re-offend when released? What else do they have going for them? Unless a prisoner has nuclear family that is still willing and able to embrace him after release from prison, he has nothing but homelessness to look at. He'll walk out of the jail with the clothes he's wearing, and 45 pounds in his pocket. He'll not know whether to turn left or right. He'll have no home to go to, he'll have no job awaiting him, nor the likelihood of ever getting a job. He'll never have a mortgage and he'll not have many (if any) qualifying points on the council house waiting list. His only friends will still be in prison.

When I was on a discussion panel on a BBC radio programme, I heard an ex prisoner state that when released, his only immediate intention was to get back to his nice warm cell and three meals a day. He threw a house brick through a police station window and from that, he got what he wanted, back inside.

Are we getting sick of human rights?

2009-12-29T15:25:00.000-08:00

I think so. It's ok for foreigners to come here, kill our little girls, then squawk about their human rights when anybody tries to rebut these evil criminals. Where were this girl's human rights? Who knows, if only the killer hadn't run off, he might have been able to have called for help to save her life?:

An Iraqi asylum seeker who knocked down a 12-year-old girl and left her to die while banned from driving has won the right to remain in the UK.

Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, 31, from Blackburn, Lancashire, faced deportation but successfully invoked human rights legislation granting him the right to a "family life" in the UK.

75% think China was right to execute Akmal Shaikh.

2009-12-29T14:33:00.000-08:00

The point is, he went into territory that carries the death penalty for the crime he was commiting. I believe he went, calm in the belief that a plea of mental instability would work in his favour.
Bipolar disorder or not, he had the presence of mind to commit this crime in the country that has the death penalty for it. His confidence in the mental disorder escape route has backfired on him. What is wrong with these people, what is wrong with the bleeding hearts that sympathise with him. We know that drugs are the scourge of modern life in Britain and they are the source of ramification crime right across the board. Drugs are making ALL our lives miserable. At least this consignment didn't get onto our streets.

2009-11-11T03:28:00.000-08:00

Look how carefully honed this piece of junk is worded: "It is why ... I am announcing that anyone who kills using a knife, a knife that they had earmarked for this purpose, should go to jail for a minimum of 25 years,"

So, if you use a knife that wasn't previously earmarked for this purpose, slap on the wrist, maybe a police caution. We have to listen (and read) very carefully what politicians say before we start to rejoice. Plus, we have to know that it isn't in law yet, only to be discussed in parliament before Christmas. The cost of keeping them in prison will, as always, block this move. Sorry folks, we're no safer from the pond life as a result of this.

Knife Killers To Serve Minimum 25 Yrs

11-Nov-09

Justice secretary announces 10-year increase in minimum term after review following fatal stabbing of Ben Kinsella...

The minimum prison sentence for knife killers will be increased from 15 to 25 years, the justice secretary, Jack Straw, said on Tuesday 10 November.

Straw's statement followed a review ordered amid public anger at the sentences handed out to the murderers of 16-year-old Ben Kinsella.

The justice secretary said he was writing to the Kinsella family to tell them the outcome.

He told the Commons that the changes would be discussed in parliament before Christmas.

"The loss of a loved one in any circumstances is heartbreaking, and even more so when they are the victim of a senseless and appalling murder," he said.

"It is only right that thugs who carry knives with the intention of using them, potentially to kill should the opportunity arise, go to prison for a long time."

Straw said that was why he had ordered the review of the minimum jail term for knife killings.

"It is why ... I am announcing that anyone who kills using a knife, a knife that they had earmarked for this purpose, should go to jail for a minimum of 25 years," he added.

"I am determined to do everything in my power to tackle the menace of knife crime on our streets. The government is very clear that, if someone is caught carrying a knife, there will be serious consequences."

The review looked at bringing laws for knife killers in line with those for gun killers, who face minimum sentences of 30 years.

When the measures announced today become law, judges will use 25 years as the starting point for deciding what sentence to hand down.

Ben, the brother of the former EastEnders actor Brooke Kinsella, was murdered in Islington, north London, last summer while out celebrating the end of his GCSEs.

His killers, Juress Kika, 19, 18-year-old Michael Alleyne and Jade Braithwaite, 20, were given minimum sentences of 19 years at the Old Bailey in June.

Afterwards, the Kinsella family said the terms were "simply not enough".

The Islington South and Finsbury Labour MP, Emily Thornberry, welcomed the news on behalf of Ben's parents.

"On their behalf, and on the behalf of the people of Islington, can I take this opportunity to thank you for your statement today," she told Straw.

The justice secretary said that, under the 2003 Criminal Justice Act, there was a minimum starting point tariff for adults of 15 years.

"There was, in the light of the Kinsella murder and the sentences, understandable concern raised about the fact that this starting point for murders, where people had gone out with a knife with the intention to commit a serious crime, was too low," he added.

Why is the BNP doing so well in Barnsley?

2009-10-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

The first part of this is a message posted on the site of Steve Green by him:
http://dailyreferendum.blogspot.com/

The Star (Barnsley) is reporting that Labour is likely to lose its overall majority of Barnsley Council. They look to be heading towards defeat at the hands the BNP in the St Helens ward by-election tonight. Barnsley has had a Labour council since the 1930's, but the BNP are fast becoming a force to be reckoned with.

Why are the BNP doing so well in Barnsley? Does this high level of support mean that is Barnsley a town chock full of racists? The straight answer is no. I'm from Barnsley and I can assure you that it is not a hotbed of racial hatred. So why are the good people of Barnsley voting for a party that has racist policies?

To understand this puzzle you need to look at Barnsley's recent history. In the last thirty years, Barnsley has changed drastically from a working town with decent wages, into a dying town with nothing but the dole, the sick and the minimum wage. Since the pits closed in the 80's, Barnsley has become a town of call centres surrounded by boarded up shops and factories.

Barnsley's industrial collapse has lead to widespread poverty, low paid jobs and a reliance on the state. That's bad enough for any town, but when you throw high levels of immigration into the mix, the situation becomes desperate for many locals. Well paid jobs are hard to come by in Barnsley, and some of the low paid jobs that would normally get school leavers onto the work ladder, are being taken up by EU migrant workers.

There is another surprising factor that has aided the BNP's growing support in the Barnsley area - Barnsley until very recently was about as ethnically un-diverse as you could possibly get. I went to a High School in Wombwell (a small town in Barnsley) during the 80's and you could count the number of non-white pupils on one hand. I don't even remember any kids with foreign accents. Barnsley is simply not used to immigration and people have a fear of the unknown.

So you have a large town that has lost its major industry - has never seen much in the way of immigration - suddenly hit by an influx of foreign men and women willing to work for minimum wage. This leaves desperate locals, who feel let down by Labour, willing to ignore the less pleasant aspects of a BNP that is promising jobs and prosperity for their families (WWII?). The failure is of course the government's for allowing large scale immigration to an already struggling area.

Barnsley is a perfect breeding ground for the BNP. The people have lost of faith in the Labour Party and have a strong dislike of the Conservative party. The majority of those voting BNP are not doing so because they share their racist views - it's because they feel that they have no one else to vote for.

It's shameful that my home town is becoming associated with racism. It's time for all the major parties to stand up, pull their fingers out, and do something real to stop this spreading to other struggling towns.
Posted by Steve Green at 09:51

My response is as follows:

The media today (October 23rd) is full of the fallout from last night’s Question Time on BBC1. I don’t normally watch this ridiculous ‘all shout at once’ type of programme, but on this occasion, I decided to join those who augmented the viewing figures four fold on this one occasion.

I’m neither angered nor disgusted by anything Nick Griffin said, mainly because he hardly said anything. He was viciously attacked from all sides, but especially by Jack Straw (who, it has to be said, was allowed to speak totally unfettered),
Right from the start, the programme was a ‘beat up BNP’ stunt and not, as Nick Griffin has subsequently and rightly said, the usual format of generic discussion.

The conservative Muslim woman Sayeeda Warsi (who comes from Dewsbury, the town with the BNP’s biggest following – not Barnsley), Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion (whatever that means) fired a gargantuan deluge of abuse and assumption at Nick Griffin e.g.: “Mr Griffin is a thoroughly, thoroughly deceptive man who comes on here and tries to sell whatever message he wants, he’s no friend of Islam. He’s here to demonise Islam, just as he demonises Christianity. Mr Griffin preaches extremism in the name of Christianity and brings that faith into disrepute as well.” Nick Griffin wasn’t able or allowed to rebut one any of this.

It’s more than evident that the public’s and media’s attitudes towards the BNP were set in stone and were so, long before this broadcast took place. This culminated in the fact that they didn’t hear what he said, they only ‘skim listened’, catching every fourth word then compressed the outcome of that into a sentence that fed their own personal and political doctrine.

Jack Straw was repeatedly asked by David Dimbleby: “Jack Straw, can I try just one more time to get you to either answer the question, no or yes? The rise of the BNP and the reason Mr Griffin is on the panel tonight – is that because of failings of your government over the last 12 years to reassure people about the scale of immigration?”
Eventually, on the third time of voluble asking, he said, “I don’t believe it is. ”Sayeeda Warsi followed this with yet another long winded uninterrupted ‘blog’ that referred to “…… Mr Griffin’s has proved that by his evasive answers today…….”

She neglects to mention that Mr. Griffin hadn’t enjoyed a clear platform similar to the one she had. Mr Griffin hadn’t been allowed to add flesh to the bones of any of his answers because either the rest of the panel, David Dimbleby or the members of the audience interrupted him almost every time he tried to speak.

When a black man asked Nick Griffin, “Where do you suggest I go and live, I was born here?” not one person seemed to hear Griffin say, “You’re welcome to live here.” In fact, as I write this, the very question is on the BBC website: ‘One man asked Mr Griffin: "Where do you want me to go? I love this country, I'm part of this country."’ Where is Mr Griffin’s answer? That is not on the website – I rest my case. Selective reporting springs to my mind here.

Towards the end of the discussion, Nick Griffin gave his views, when asked, on homosexuality: “I’m against the teaching of homosexuality to primary school children; I’m against the teaching of any sex to primary school children. A lot of people find the sight of two grown men kissing in public, really creepy. I understand that homosexuals don’t understand that, but that’s how a lot of us feel. Christians feel that way, Muslims, all sorts of people.”

Again, Griffin was interrupted by the raucousness of the audience’s rants of. “RUBBISH!!” What that tells me is that Nick Griffin is talking rubbish, therefore, there are no people who are disgusted by the sight of grown men kissing in public. Even Christians don’t find it repellent, if as the audience proclaims, he’s talking “RUBBISH!!” Who are these people who speak for all of us?

Outside Television Centre, as we all know, was a sadistic lynch mob, clearly belonging to the group ‘Unite’, supported by David Cameron and by his own admission on LBC today, Ken Livingston. It’s a known fact that Nick Griffin received a suspended sentence some time ago for inciting hatred, yet the members of his party were not part of the riot last night.

People who are known to be members of the BNP, dare not say so in public (not even in Barnsley) lest they become victims of these violent groups, whose tiny mindedness allows them only to settle their differences with sticks and stones. They believe they hold a monopoly on free speech and conviction; anyone whose views conflict with theirs will become their victims. No radio or TV presenter dare have or express on air (or, as we’ve discovered recently, in private conversation – Carol Thatcher et al) any politically incorrect views that berate homosexuals, Muslims, or soon to join them, the clinically obese. If they do overstep this mark, they will lose their jobs so fast, their heads will spin. Free speech? Don’t make me laugh!

It’s true that Barnsley is not a hotbed of racial hatred; indeed, it’s probably the most tolerant borough in the country. Perhaps this is because it has, for many years, enjoyed being the last bastion of vernacularism. Even now, the majority of immigrants in the borough are not Asian, but east European. Now of course, the demise of the mining industry has created an irresistible magnetism for the sweatshop owners who approach such areas of mass unemployment with their tongues scraping on the floor, secure in their belief that people will work for a meagre pittance, rather than not work at all. The through-put of staff in the workhouse call centres that have disfigured Barnsley and the Dearne Valley for more than ten years, speaks volumes of the contempt that these companies have for their employees, coupled with the 1980's’ salaries that they pay. Mortgages haven’t stayed in the 1980's like the salaries have. Unbelievably, anyone offered a £13,000 salary today would think all their Christmases had come at once, yet, the average house price is around £170,000. The salary won’t even come near to qualifying for a mortgage.

One final comment: I suspect that the Labour Party, the Tories, David Dimbleby, the studio audience and the rioting lynch mob outside did nothing other than to boost the membership and support of the BNP. Idiots, can't they see that?

Swine 'flu.

2009-04-29T06:47:00.000-07:00

Bill Ross
I don't want to BOA you, but I think I've got swine 'flu, I've had it for over a
WEEEEEEEEK now. I need some OINKMENT 'cos I'm coming out in RASHES.

Talk about.........

2009-04-19T04:25:00.001-07:00

Gossips talk about other people, bores talk about themselves.

Always right?

2009-04-19T04:24:00.001-07:00

I think I'm right, but I may be wrong.

Keeping Schtum 2

2009-04-19T04:23:00.000-07:00

The man of few words is wise; even a fool is thought wise when he's silent, so when you can't improve on silence, be quiet!

Just listen

2009-04-19T04:22:00.000-07:00

If I was meant to talk more than listen, God would have given me two mouths and one ear.

Right thing

2009-04-19T04:21:00.000-07:00

The true Christian always does the right thing, even when nobody is looking.

Keeping Schtum

2009-04-19T04:19:00.000-07:00

Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.

Envy-Greed

2009-04-19T04:17:00.000-07:00

People will want what you have, but they won't do what you did to get it!

Criticism

2009-04-19T04:16:00.000-07:00

Remember, when you point a finger, there are three more pointing back at you. Before taking the speck out of your brother's eye, take the telegraph pole out of your own.

Good/evil

2009-04-19T04:15:00.000-07:00

All it takes for evil to flourish is that good men do NOTHING.

Don't Worry

2009-04-19T04:13:00.000-07:00

Today is the tomorrow you spent yesterday worrying about.

DON'T PHOTOGRAPH BUSSES IN LONDON

2009-04-18T02:54:00.000-07:00

It's true, the Metropolitan police are "Working Together For A Safer London" (I know because it says so right outside New Scotland Yard). Now we can rest, calm in the knowledge that we are safe as we roam around our great capital city.

OK, so there are frequent stabbings, muggings, cars being stolen, burglaries, rapes and murders. But please be assured that the police are doing their utmost to protect us: an Austrian tourist was taking photos of London landmarks this week, a record of his once in a lifetime holiday, as tourists do (we need protecting from these dangerous people). Amongst his collection of the usuals - Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge etc., he added a photo of a big red London bus. How dare he do that? Thankfully, a police officer saw him do this and seized his camera. The officer then deleted the picture from the tourist's memory stick, explaining that he is not allowed to take photos of any public transport vehicle in London.

How is it possible to take pictures around Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, or especially Oxford Street, without capturing an image of a bus and/or a taxi?

Still, take comfort, no terrorists will ever attack our great city again, now this new rule (law, bi-law or whatever) is in place to protect us. Who knows? Perhaps the stabbings, rapes, burglaries and car thefts will all stop now, the criminals are quaking in their boots.

Friends, what are they?

2009-04-15T05:45:00.000-07:00

This, and many other sites such as Facbook and My Space encourage people to invite friends to their sites. Most of the 'friends' that are invited are not personally known to the account holder, they are there to make impressive numbers up on the site. Most of us don't know what friends are; the people whom we meet on a regular basis, and get along with are acquaintenances, not friends.

The best friend I ever had in my life, told me one time that during our entire lifetime, we shall not make enough friends to equal the number of fingers on one hand. Up to the present time, I haven't found a reason to doubt that.

I had a 'friend' once, or so I thought. We were the best of 'friends' for 39 years, then, as if a light switch had been turned off, the friend no longer wished to be associated with me; this was despite there never having been any kind of altercation or unpleasantness beforehand. That was more than three years ago and contact has not been reinstated to this day. THE FRIENDSHIP COULD NOT HAVE BEEN WORTH ANYTHING.

Here's a line from the Bible: "Before removing the speck from your brother's eye, take the plank out of your own."
Here's a similar thought: When pointing the finger at someone else, remember, there are three fingers pointing back at you.

What is a friend? It is someone who is always there, no matter what he/she thinks he/she has found out about you or what you might have done to him/her, or anyone else. A friend does not gossip about you. A friend would discuss and clarify the details of anything that is bothering him/her; not become your judge and jury.

Another quick thought: To find friends, become one.