New Year’s Eve

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So 2009 finally disappears in a puff of smoke, like Cinderella's chariot, at the stroke of midnight and we all start looking forward to the New Year.

I have no New Year resolutions to make or to break. It’s safer that way rather than risk the sniggers of those who know my promises will come to nothing.

Maybe I’ll try to be less irascible, give up smoking and make a start on the novel that lurks in the deepest recesses of my mind.

But don’t hold your breath!
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'Hi Ya, Sharon!'

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German computer scientists have spent the last five months cracking the algorithm used to encrypt the calls of four billion mobile phone users. Their published work allows anyone to eavesdrop on private mobile phone conversations.

There is, of course, a worry that criminals might be able to use this work, though it appears that only government agencies and ‘well funded’ criminals have access to the necessary technology.

I can’t say that I can get too worked up about this news. Imagine the number of banal and utterly worthless conversations that a crook might have to listen to before he found one of any interest.
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‘Good Riddance’ Day

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New Yorkers have found a neat way of ridding themselves of things reminding them of unpleasant experiences.

In the third annual event of its kind, ‘Good Riddance’ Day enabled New Yorkers to bring their letters, summons, divorce and other papers, newspaper articles and other reminders of the bad things that happened in 2009 to Times Square. Here these items could be shredded, smashed or pulverised and placed into a waste container.

It’s a nice idea, but if only it were that easy!
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Oh Really?

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I debated with myself whether or not to mention it, but finally succumbed to the sexist trivial.

A new shopping centre in Shijiazhuang city, in China's Hebei Province, has been provided with a women-only car park, painted in pink and light purple to appeal to female tastes and fitted with special signs. Female parking attendants have been trained to help guide women drivers into their parking spaces. The bays also have extra lighting.

What interested me most was not the colours, the special signs or the female attendants.

No, it was the fact that the parking bays are three feet wider than normal spaces.

‘Nuff said!
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The New Year

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So here we are. After weeks of preparation and expectation, Christmas has come and gone in a flash.

The conversation is about Auntie Caroline getting tiddly and talkative on Christmas Day, what young Peter said to upset his mother and how Grampa Grumpy spent most of Boxing Day afternoon snoring away contentedly in in his armchair. The shops are full of folk spending money in the seasonal sales in advance of the increase in VAT. The rubbish tips are filling up with the leftover food, wrapping paper and unwanted cardboard.

One definite sign that Christmas is over and that the New Year is rushing up upon us is the weekend’s newspapers and television programmes which are full of boring and repetitive reviews of 2009. I don’t want to know any more about 2009. It was not a notable year as we all know and I will not trouble to include a mini review myself.

I would prefer to look forward to the New Year which, in any event, is the time to look forward, make resolutions and be generally positive about things.

So, maybe 2010 will be the year that we have a new grandson, the year that my family will all stay healthy, the year that we come up on the lottery and the year that we can make a trip, first class of course, to Japan to see the cherry blossom.

Maybe, just maybe, it will also be the year we get some proper government and that our savings and pensions will actually be worth something - though, perhaps, that is asking too much!
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Forecasting Cherry-Blossom Time

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One of my ambitions is to visit Japan again and, if at all possible, to go there in time for the Cherry-Blossom Festival in March. It is, alas, an ambition unlikely to be fulfilled unless our lottery numbers come up - though I live in hopes.

Cherry blossom time in Japan is something which exercises the attention of the entire Japanese nation. Millions will take to their cars and clog up country roads in the hope of seeing the cherry trees in their full splendour. Aficionados will admire the different types of blossom, their arrangement on the trees and also their setting.

For fifty years the Japanese Weather Agency has been forecasting where and when the trees will bloom and, more often than not, they have been proved wrong and forced to apologise for their error.

There’s not much difference then between the abilities of the Japanese Weather Agency and our own beloved Met Office!
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Dreams

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In his traditional Christmas sermon Pope Benedict XVI focused on the needy around the world, praising the work of the Church to help relieve suffering.

The Archbishop of Canterbury in his Christmas sermon focused on present society which forces children to grow up too soon.

Both are right, of course.

Inspiring as these homilies were, I warmed to the sentiments of the Bishop of Exeter who felt folk should try to live out their dreams for Christmas 2009 and into 2010 rather than merely wish for things they didn’t think would happen.

It’s an interesting thought. Not just to dream but to take action to bring them about.

Which, is what I think the Pope and the Archbishop were also saying in their own way.
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Happy Christmas!

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One of my all-time favourite films at this time of the year is the 1947 film, ‘Miracle on 34th Street’.

A departmental store’s Santa, who believes himself to be the real Santa Claus, is subjected to a court hearing to test his sanity. The defence attorney gets the prosecutor to agree that the US Federal Government, as embodied in the Postal Service, recognises Santa Claus to be real. The postmen then bring in dozens of sacks of mail addressed to Santa and deliver them to the man in the dock. Ergo, the man in the dock is the real Santa!

It’s a lovely film and one I enjoy every year.

So it is interesting that North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has been tracking Santa for over 50 years, and this year will be no different. According to NORAD, the system works because Rudolph the reindeer's famous red nose gives off an infrared signature similar to a missile launch. Children can follow Santa’s progress across the globe as he passes 24 ‘Santa cams’ starting at 1100 GMT on 24 December.

There you go. If NORAD can track Santa, then he must exist!

Happy Christmas!
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In Memorium

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An old friend for more than twenty years died suddenly yesterday morning in hospital. A week ago he was hail and hearty and looking forward to a number of projects he was involved in and about which he enthusiastically spoke.

A sudden and unexpected death is always sad, the moreso when it occurs just prior to what should be the happiest and most family-orientated time of the year. The shock to family and friends is not to be underestimated and we share in their sadness and sorrow at what has suddenly become a terrible and shocking time.

There is little of any real comfort one can say to someone who has been so unexpectedly bereaved and though, doubtless, the immediate family will gather round and extend their love and assistance, mere words cannot help.

Nonetheless, I pay tribute to my old chum, my knowledgeable and talkative chum, Albert Novelli, who many will know from his days in the merchant service and, more latterly, British Airways as a Cabin Services Director. Others will know of him from his hobby of photographing ships and aircraft.

God bless and keep you Albert, and extend his warmth and comfort to Ruth.
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The ‘Bug’

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I’ve said it before. As someone whose working life was bound up with ships, I get a little fed-up when the media reports cases of Novovirus occurring on board cruise ships, as they did yesterday when a few passengers suffered from it during a cruise on Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines ‘Boudicca’.

Having just recently disembarked from Olsen’s ‘Balmoral’ I can confirm that the hygiene precautions and standards on board, like all the other Olsen ships, were exemplary and, as someone who once worked for the company, I know this to be the case.

The Novovirus, known also as the winter vomiting virus, is the second most common virus next to the Common Cold and occurs regularly every winter throughout northern latitudes. It is an unpleasant illness though, fortunately, short-lived.

The problem is that ships, and other forms of closed communities such as hospitals, schools, hotels and others, do not themselves usually harbour viruses. People do. So, inevitably, when a virus of any sort is taken into such communities by folk, they are bound to spread.

What doesn’t get the same amount of publicity is when schools, hotels and even hospital wards are struck by the Novovirus. Such as the five wards in Bedford Hospital which were closed just this week to new admissions and patient transfers because of it. Or the two wards closed yesterday at Broomfield Hospital for the same reason.
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A Walk?

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Obsessed with telling the public what they already know and mainly ignore, the Department of Health is, in conjunction with the Ramblers charity, advising everyone to take a good walk on Christmas Day to burn off some of the calories consumed during the traditional Christmas lunch.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but Yours Truly intends to have his traditional Christmas lunch followed by his traditional Christmas snooze!

The walk can wait until the morning.
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Groan - It’s Started!

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It’s official. Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg are to appear in three 90-minute head-to-head televised debates.

Anyone expecting anything other than pure party politicking will be sadly disappointed.

George Orwell in ‘1984’ says ‘Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’

He got that right!
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We’re Hard-up - Let’s Shoplift!

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An Anglican priest in North Yorkshire has advised his parishioners to shoplift if they find themselves in financial trouble. He recommends that folk steal from the big chains rather than small businesses and comments that society’s attitude to those in need ‘leaves some people little option but crime.’

In response to media interest in the story the Archdeacon of York says, ‘The Church of England does not advise anyone to shoplift’.

But not a word about firing a priest who seems to have forgotten the seventh Commandment!
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The Symbol Recovered

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I remember as a schoolboy watching those dreadful newsreel pictures of the terrible scenes found by Allied troops when they liberated the Nazi concentration camps. Even now I feel very uncomfortable when some of those shots show up on television.

Yet, despite these feelings of revulsion, I’ve always wanted to visit the Auschwitz camp in Poland and, in my own quiet way, pay homage to the millions of people who were treated like vermin by what one assumes were at some point in their personal histories ‘ordinary’, normal people.

The death camps, their origins and their incomprehensible function are a mystery and, perhaps, just perhaps, a visit to Auschwitz might provide some answers. I don’t know, but the urge to visit the shrine is a strong one.

The camps were incomprehensible. And so too was the theft a few days ago of the sign above the main gate to Auschwitz, ‘Arbeit macht frei’. But, fortunately, the Polish police have recovered the sign and arrested five people in connection with its theft.

The sign, ‘Work makes free’, is unquestionably the symbol of Auschwitz and all that happened in that hellhole, and it is good that it is to be replaced where it has stood all these years.

Maybe one day I’ll get to see it for myself, but whether it and the museum that now lays behind it will give me any answers to the many questions I have remains to be seen.
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I Wonder?

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Scientists have at last been able to map the Gamburtsev Mountains which are hidden under miles of ice in Antarctica.

The mountains were discovered by a Soviet team during the International Geophysical Year in 1957-8. Their detection was a surprise because the rock bed in the middle of the Antarctic continent was assumed to be relatively flat.

But now an international team have spent two months in 2008/9 surveying the Gamburtsevs which are totally buried under the ice cap. The survey revealed a very rugged landscape with high peaks and deeply incised valleys which have been worked in the past by both river and ice processes.

I’ve often wondered whether, if global warming were ever to melt the polar ice caps (though God forbid) scientists would discover the remains of human habitation.

But I won’t know in my lifetime.
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Trapped!

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We arrived home yesterday morning from a very enjoyable one-week’s cruise on Fred. Olsen’s Balmoral to find that four Eurostar trains had failed inside the Channel Tunnel trapping 2,000 passengers on them. We saw also for ourselves the tremendous gridlock along the eastern end of the M20 caused by the closure of the Channel Tunnel and the suspension of all ferry services due to bad weather.

There is nothing one can do about bad weather and, perhaps, even the best of contingency plans could not have coped with the snow storms encountered in the last couple of days.

I listened to Eurostar’s pr lady on television last night explaining that the trains became cold in the cold weather and then hit warm, moist air in the Tunnel which affected their electrics. Maybe, that is the true explanation.

But I paused to wonder why, if this was really the case, hi-speed trains throughout Europe and those also in places like Japan, all manage in cold weather to go in and out of tunnels without conking out.

At least it wasn’t because of leaves on the lines or the wrong sort of snow!
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Some Good News

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In the midst of pre-budget woes, more anger over MPs expenses, bankers’ bonuses and the general negative ‘flavour’ of the UK at the moment, is good to see a couple of heart-warming stories for a change in the run-up to Christmas.

The first is the news that fake clothes having a street value of more than one million pounds are being ‘rebranded’ instead of being destroyed and will be distributed to homeless people in Paisley, Renfrew and Glasgow. It is an action which other councils would do well to follow as it does something useful with the fakes which would otherwise be heading for the incinerator. Full marks to Renfrewshire Council!

The second tale relates to Rosie, an 11-year-old rescue dog, owned by the headmistress of a school in Exminster, Devon. Little Rosie is allowed to come into the school from time to time, but the busybodies in Ofsted took official notice of this and demanded that a ‘risk assessment’ be carried out as to whether she posed a risk to the children. I will not pass comment on the silliness of Ofsted noting that a small friendly dog might pose a risk, but I am glad to report that a follow-up inspection of the school concluded, ‘This elderly small dog appears well socialised and pupils respond to it readily when it ventures away from the head teacher's office.’ Woof! woof!
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Snouts Still In The Trough!

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I doubt that anyone was surprised when the latest batch of MPs expenses were published last night.

Covering the last year, we find that MPs have charged, or attempted to charge, for garlic peelers, an air bed, a mothtrap, a hamburger machine, a toaster, televisions, curtains, a stove, logs and even .55p for a cup of Horlicks. One claim that has raised eyebrows is that from the Defence Minister who has denied trying to claim on expenses the £20,700 cost of rebuilding a bell tower.

Perhaps the claim that has made the most headlines this morning is one from the MP who had previously claimed for a duck house who had his recent claim for £10,526 reduced to £299.16.

Snouts in the trough continue. Is anyone surprised at this?
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Dangerous Drivers

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The Transport Research Laboratory has found that more drivers are using hand-held mobile phones than before tougher penalties were bought in two years ago and that phone-using drivers are four times more likely to crash.

This is more news that didn’t come as a surprise, for I guess most of us have seen drivers of cars and trucks negotiating their way through heavy traffic or round corners with a phone clamped to their ear in one hand. Not only is this highly dangerous, but it is very irritating to see drivers getting away with it.

I believe that the police now automatically check the use of mobile phones when investigating traffic accidents and I’m all for that. One assumes also that drivers caught using their mobiles lose their insurance cover when they cause accidents.

The thing that I find very curious is that, while hand-held mobiles and DVD players are forbidden to drivers, the use of GPS receivers is not. So many cars these days seem to be fitted with one and you often see drivers fiddling with their glowing screens.

Are not these as distracting to drivers as mobile phones and other gadgets?
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Well I Never!

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You learn something every day.

Such as: the anti-inflammatory drugs I take are often given to Indian livestock, and that the residue of these remaining in their carcasses is killing off some species of Asian vulture to the point of extinction.

Boy! They must be good!
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Skegness Is SO Silly!

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Just about everyone in England can bring to mind the ‘Jolly Fisherman’ poster which proclaims ‘Skegness is SO Bracing’. It was designed in 1908 as an advertisement for the resort by John Hassall.

The copyright to the poster is owned by Skegness Town Council, which has now told local tattoo parlours that they must pay a copyright fee of £10 to use the image.

The charge has come to public notice after a taxi driver complained that he had to pay to use the image on his taxi and argued the same charge should also apply to tattooists. One of the local tattoo artists called the charge ‘silly’.

He is right there! It must cost more than £10 for the local burocrats to process the one or two applications they get each year.

And, as another said, ‘It's good publicity for the town’.
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A Distraction

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Trying to concentrate on what Chancellor Alistair Darling had to say in the Commons this afternoon about his pre-Budget report, I was constantly distracted by Harriet Harman, Leader of the House, who was continually nodding at what he had to say.

It was like having your attention drawn to one of those irritating nodding model dogs that you sometimes see in the back of cars.

Whether or not Ms Harman actually agreed with what Darling had to say or whether this was some sort of front-bench tactic to distract the opposition seniors, I do not know.

But it was about as irritating and utterly meaningless as those wretched nodding dogs!
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Miscarriage Of Justice?

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English law is a bit ‘sniffy’ I feel sometimes.

Take Dr. Hawley Crippen for example. One of his distant relatives recently applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to have the case referred to the Court of Appeal on the grounds that he had not, in fact, murdered his wife Cora.

After Cora disappeared in 1919, a search of the house ultimately found human remains under the brick floor of the basement in Crippen’s house. By then he and his lover Ethel Le Neve (disguised as a boy) had fled to Canada on board Montrose. The case achieved some notoriety because this was the first time that a suspected criminal had been apprehended following a wireless report from a ship at sea after the pair had been identified by the ship’s captain. The pair were bought back to face trial in England by a Scotland Yard detective who had gone out to meet them on a faster ship. Though Le Neve was acquitted, Crippen was found guilty and hanged in Pentonville Prison in November 1911.

At the time of the trial, forensic medicine was in its infancy, but Sir Bernard Spilsbury found a piece of skin with what he claimed was an abdominal scar consistent with Cora Crippen’s medical history. However, in 2007 forensic scientists from Michigan State University showed that mitochondrial DNA evidence proved that the remains found beneath the cellar floor were not that of Cora Crippen.

And on that basis a relative of Crippen, James Crippen of Dayton, Ohio, asked for the case to be reviewed.

However, the Commission found that he was not a ‘properly interested person’ in the case and that there was no real possibility the Court of Appeal would hear it. They further stated that the ‘person should be the widow or widower, ‘personal representative’, or a relative who has a ‘substantial financial or other interest’ in the appeal.’

I don’t know whether there are any other avenues open to Mr Crippen to clear his famous relative’s name, but it looks as if a miscarriage of justice was carried out, and it seems wrong to me that it cannot be corrected even at this late stage.
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Not So Quick Please

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At a time when officers from the UK Border Agency found cocaine worth £1.7 million inside an HGV trailer coming into Harwich from Holland, I’m not sure I’d be too quick to criticise those members of the UKBAs staff who received bonuses totalling £295,000 last year.

As well as finding illegal immigrants stowed away in lorries and trucks, the UKBA people that work our ports and airports do sterling work and we often hear of the huge drugs and other illegal hauls they detect.

Sure, the immigration side of the UKBA is in disarray but, as I understand it, their staff can be posted to ports and airports to detect illegal hauls as well as to desks to sort through immigration issues or check passports, etc.

I, for one, wouldn’t want to work for the UKBA. Not unless a bonus was guaranteed!
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Turner Versus Turnip

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For me, art is like poetry. I like to understand it.

So this year’s Turner Prize for art, worth £25,000, goes to a young man who, with four assistants, has made a huge mural covered in gold leaf. Unusually, it will be destroyed after the current exhibition ends.

Explaining this, the artist said, ‘I am interested in placing painting in the situation where it collides with the world; the fragility of that existence. Being here for a short period of time, I feel, heightens the experience of it being here.’

Yeah, right.

Others will disagree with me, but my view of the Turner Prize is that it encourages tosh done up in the name of art. Other works submitted included a melted passenger jet engine, an untitled steel frame filled with cows' brains and pictures of unclothed dolls.

I think on balance, I prefer the unpretentious Turnip Prize, organised by the villagers of Wedmore in Somerset where they compete for the prize of ... a turnip.

This year’s prize went to a lady who pinned a pair of old underpants to a bar room door and titled it ‘Manhole Cover’. Clearly it was a winner!

Other entries included a fence panel entitled ‘Don't Take A Fence’ and a bunch of naked Barbie dolls in an old birdcage entitled ‘Knickerless Cage’.

Ah, yes. The Turnip Prize is by far the better competition!
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Less Than Helpful?

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Despite what I say from time to time about the behaviour of some of our MPs, I am a firm supporter of Parliament and some of its privileges.

I believe that the Houses of Parliament are set aside in various ways from normal life. I’m not bothered about MPs cheap meals and some of their other perks of office, but I would exclude policemen from clod-hopping all over the place without a warrant or special approval.

In the case of their utterly fruitless and pointless search of the office of MP Damien Green in November of last year, they didn’t have a warrant but were given permission to search by the Serjeant At Arms, Jill Pay, who had not been long in her job.

Miss Pay has now apologised for giving permission for the MP’s office to be searched by police without first asking if they had a warrant. In her defence she said that she was put under considerable pressure by the police and was given to understand that she could not refuse their request.

Nonetheless, one cannot help thinking that some of Miss Pay’s seniors were less than helpful to her at the time!
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A Long Slog

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It seems that the Labour Party, by which I mean the government, has withdrawn its pops against Tory MPs who were privately educated since it was disclosed that many of their own MPs were so privileged.

Among the leading Labourites who were privately educated are: Ed Balls, Hilary Benn, Stephen Byers, Alistair Darling, Quentin Davies, Peter Hain, Harriet Harman, Geoff Hoon, Tessa Jowell, Bob Marshall-Andrews, Michael Meacher, Nick Raynsford, Geoffrey Robinson, Keith Vaz and a whole bunch of others.

It’s going to be a long slog to the General Election but, thankfully, at least one subject has been ruled out of further discussion.
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Why Bother?

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This morning’s papers carry stories as to how ‘Bronco’ Brown proposes to save £12 billion over the next four years. The plans include ‘streamlining central government’ (whatever that means), cutting the civil service, getting rid of some quangos, etc., etc.

Having had these cuts announced in the papers, Brown then ‘announces’ them to at audience at the Royal Society.

Three questions arise in my mind.

Firstly, why has he bothered to make announcements to the good folk of the Royal Society? After all, we had only to look at our morning papers for this news.

Secondly, why doesn’t he tell Parliament what he proposes first rather than let his press department hand it out in advance?

Thirdly, and more important, why hasn’t he implemented these proposals years ago?
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Good On Yer!

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I have to support the New South Wales Police who have summoned the winner of ‘I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here’ after they killed and ate a rat.

An Australian RSPCA official said, ‘The killing of a rat for a performance is not acceptable. The concern is this was done purely for the cameras.’ I would agree with him. Though this is not a programme I watch, there are also far too many advertisements for programmes in which animals kill other animals.

OK. Maybe Nature is cruel. But we don’t have to see it. And, certainly, we don’t need to see people killing animals, however loathsome they may be to some propole.

Good on yer, Ossies!
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What Is The Point?

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Apart from being sentenced by an Italian court to 26 years in jail for her part in the murder of Meredith Kercher, Amanda Knox has to pay damages of one million euros to Miss Kercher's mother and the same amount to her father.

In addition, her siblings will each receive 800,000 euros. If that wasn’t enough, she must also pay 40,000 euros compensation to local barman Patrick Lumumba, for falsely accusing him of the murder.

Where does the court expect this young women to get this money?
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Climate Change

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A new poll suggests that 50% of people in the UK are unconvinced about climate change and, if pressed, I’d probably side with them.

Like most other people, I know very little about the things that affect climate change, but it occurs to me that shipping hundreds of politicians and their entourages, along with a variety of so-called experts, to the Summit to be held in Copenhagen next week doesn’t seem to be very climate-friendly.

Among many other things, we are told to switch off unnecessary lights in our houses. Does my switching off a few lights help to compensate for shipping all these people to Copenhagen by first and club classes and then putting them up in expensive hotels? Does my using less electricity or gas help to compensate for the damage to the climate done by President Obama, worthy man though he is, who will use a couple of 747s to get there and be accompanied by hundreds of his own people as well as the presidential car?

I very much doubt it.
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Archie

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I used to give a lift to the City a former army officer who, after he retired from the military, took a job in the civil service.

During the hour-long run up to town, he would regale me with his various tales of life in the military and one day the subject of spiders came up, though I no longer recall why. It seems that he saw service in Uganda and was posted from there to Germany and, when he moved, his furniture went with him.

One evening he had some friends round for supper and they were relaxing afterwards with a drink when a terrified women guest jumped out of her chair and shouted that she had just seen a large hairy spider shoot across the room and dart back underneath the sofa on which her husband was sitting. It seemed that the arachnid in question was a wolf spider and it became seen so often around the living room that my chum and his wife came to regard it almost as a family pet. Indeed, they called it Archie.

From time to time, Archie with his eight eyes would shoot off into a corner of the room, grab another spider or a fly, and run back into his home underneath the sofa. And, much later when the couple moved back to England, Archie came with them and was seen now and again keeping the place free of other insects.

Some time after this conversation my wife and I were invited round for supper, but it was an invitation I declined on some pretext or another. The simple reason was that I just don’t like spiders since an unexpected encounter with a large hairy one as a child.

My chum, and his ‘pet’ wolf spider Archie, came to mind this morning when I read that a colony of cave spiders which had been ‘squatting’ in a disused building in the Yorkshire Dales had been returned to the nearby cave from which they had escaped ten years ago.

It seems that a team of archaeologists surveying their cave habitat near Chapel Fell managed to bring some of the insects back in their equipment. And from there the creatures made their home in this disused building.

They were lucky. Had I seen them, they were likely to have been squished!
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Another Cover-Up?

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The Ministry of Defence has moved to another job the man who ran its UFO Unit which has now been closed down.

After fifty years of collecting public sightings of UFOs, the Ministry say that none of them yielded any proof of extraterrestrial life. They say that in future, ‘Any legitimate threat to the UK's airspace will spotted by our 24/7 radar checks and dealt with by RAF fighter aircraft’.

They may well be right, but what’s the betting that others will say that closure of the unit is part of some sort of cover-up?

Me? I don’t have an opinion - even though I’m sure I’ve seen a UFO. Oh, and so has my wife who was with one of our sons at the time!
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Time To Change The Criminal Law

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A fundamental tenet of English law is that a defendant in a criminal court is presumed innocent until he or she has been found guilty, and I wouldn’t want to suggest that anyone tamper with this in the slightest.

Against this, some recent criminal trials seem to suggest to me that defendants often enter an innocent plea even though they may appear demonstrably guilty at the outset.

But I do think we could introduce one fundamental change in the criminal law which wouldn’t interfere with this basic tenet or with any appeals process.

The issue that arises in my mind is the sheer waste of time, effort and money that goes into some criminal trials which, if a guilty defendant had simply pleaded guilty at the beginning, could have been saved. Thus, such trials would be speedier since they would need only to consider the severity of the offences and the consequent sentences imposed.

The problem that arises is how to persuade a guilty defendant to plead guilty in the preliminary proceedings rather than waste everyone’s time in proving that a plea of innocence was untruthful.

The simple answer that comes into my mind is to disallow remission of sentences to all defendants who by pleading not guilty have thereby wasted the time of the courts and everyone else concerned.

Loss of remission in such cases might focus the minds of some guilty criminals while they still sit in police cells.
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Get A Life!

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We’ve had the Bishop who tells us that some Christmas carols contain nonsense, that we should be embarrassed singing them and that we’ve made something akin to fairy tales from the Christmas story. We’ve had the council who replaced their annual Christmas fir tree with a much more expensive artificial one that has since been vandalised. We’ve had other councils who have elected not to put up street decorations on the spurious grounds of health and safety.

Now we’ve heard from an outfit funded by the government - that means you and me! - who tell us not to eat our traditional Christmas puddings because the ingredients they use up damage the environment. They seriously expect us to eat more sprouts, cheese and cobnuts.

These people should get get a life and leave our Christmases alone!
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Bilingualism

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As anyone who has visited Canada will know, their signs are all bilingual; English and French. This might, just possibly might, make some sense in the predominantly French-speaking areas, but they seem wholly out of place in the others. On my visits to the west coast of Canada it always seemed a nonsense to me that official signage there was bilingual.

In our own country, signage in Wales has become bilingual even though the majority of residents there speak only English, and already bilingual signs are creeping in across Scotland even though only a minority speak Gaelic.

It is one thing to protect a language, but it is quite another to force it on the majority who don’t speak it. The cost of making bilingual signage and, in some cases official documents, must be phenomenal and is something that the Canadians found out years ago. Not only is the cost of bilingual signage expensive, it is often very confusing; the bilingual road signs in Wales are a good example of this.

Because the majority of folk don’t speak the language that is being forced on them, cock-ups can occur and they often take months to discover. Take the sign in Swansea which should have read, ‘No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.’ The man responsible for making signs misread the email order he got for it and made a sign which said in Welsh, ‘I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.’

So I can’t say I have much sympathy for the Cornish folk, admirable people they may be, who have demanded the right to classify themselves as being of Cornish nationality on the 2011 census return. Those pressing for the change will be disappointed that MPs yesterday rejected the proposal. Which may dampen for a while any thought that signage in Cornwall should be bilingual.

It is a case, in my view at any rate, of permissum voluntas increbresco or, for those who don’t want their signs to be set out in Latin as well as English, ‘Let sense prevail’!
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How Sad

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The saddest news of the day is that of the death of a four-year-old boy in Liverpool who was mauled in his grandmother’s house by a dog which is now said to have been a ‘pitbull terrier-type’, a breed banned under the Dangerous Dogs Act.

The police are now investigating reports that they ignored a telephone call as long ago as February that dog breeding was being conducted at the house in question. Whether that is true will doubtless emerge in due course.

No amount of police investigation will return this little boy to his parents who, along with other members of the family, including the grandmother who was herself injured, must be suffering untold agonies and I deeply sympathise with them.

I do not join the debate as to the rights and wrongs of people owning what the law says are dangerous dogs, for this family have learned a lesson in the most terrible and tragic way.
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