Disgraceful!

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A 66 year-old woman in Sale, Greater Manchester, has been fined £1,000, been given a seven-week curfew, ordered to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work in the community and wear an electronic tag for two months.

You are probably thinking that this woman’s crime must have been a very serious one. After all, violent offenders, burglars and drug dealers have been given lesser sentences than this.

But no. This lady, who has run a pet shop for 28 years, was caught in a ‘sting’ by Trafford Council for selling a goldfish to a 14 year-old boy contrary to the Animal Welfare Act 2006 which prohibits the sale of pets to children under 16 unless they are accompanied by an adult.

One would have thought that a simple warning to this great-grandmother would have sufficed, but Trafford Council thought it preferable to spend an estimated £20,000 to bring this case to court. Not only are they bullies, they must have money to burn. And what were the magistrates thinking in passing out a sentence so severe?

David Davies, the local MP, feels the same way. ‘You simply couldn't make it up. It is absolutely ludicrous that old ladies should be hounded through the courts and electronically tagged for something like this. Not only is it traumatic for her but it is a complete waste of time and taxpayers' money. It is ridiculous.’

It’s not only ridiculous, it’s a disgrace!
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Groan! ‘Teflon’ Tone’s Back!

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With a set-piece speech in his old constituency of Sedgefield, ‘Teflon Tone’ yesterday put in an appearance to rubbish the Tories and try to rally support for Labour.

When he said that the Tories are confused over their policies, he may well be right. Certainly, I haven’t heard much from David Cameron that gives me much confidence. At the same time, I haven’t heard much from the Lib-Dems - save for what Vince Cable has been saying recently - that gives me much confidence in them either.

But when Blair strayed from castigating the Tories to boosting the image of Labour’s time in office, he went too far. Failing to remind voters about the illegality of the Iraq war and the many u-turns and failures of this rotten parliament, he actually praised Gordon Brown’s ‘experience, judgement and boldness’.

Blimey! Who wrote that bit of the speech?

A spokesman for Plaid Cymru got it right. ‘If this is Labour’s ‘if all else fails, roll in Blair’ strategy then they must really be struggling.’
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You Have To Hand It To Her!

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You have to admire Joanna Lumley for the single-handed way in which she completely turned round the government’s attitude to the rights of our Gurkha soldiers.

Having presented a petition to 10 Downing Street, she later forced the immigration minister to agree in front of television cameras that the government would take another look at the issue. After a Commons defeat, it then agreed to let all Gurkha veterans who had served four years or more in the British Army before 1997 settle in Britain.

Speaking to the Commons Home Affairs Committee recently, the Defence Minister criticised her for her subsequent 'deathly silence' even though, as I understand it, the government asked her to take a back seat. Understandably, Ms Lumley was very upset by this.

So, yesterday, the Prime Minister made yet another phone call to Ms Lumley and expressed his regrets about the minister’s remarks who later apologised ‘unreservedly for any offence caused’.

You have to hand it to Ms Lumley. She has stood up for what she believes in and has forced ministers and a prime minister to humble themselves.

She should think of standing for Parliament!
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It’s Still Not A Bad Job!

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After a seven month long inquiry, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority has published its new rules governing MPs expenses.

In addition to their £65,000 annual salary, they will be able to employ one relative subject to ‘safeguards’, and claim £1,450 a month rent if they live more than 20 miles or one hour away from Westminster,

If the House sits after 11pm, they will be able to claim up to £15 for an evening meal and up to £80 to take a taxi home while others will be able to claim up to £130 to stay in a hotel overnight.

They will not be able to claim expenses without the proper receipts, and MPs will not be able to claim for mortgages. In future MPs will not be able to claim for first-class travel, and the golden ‘goodbyes’ are done away with.

It’s still not a bad job though is it?
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Leave The Foxes Alone!

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Most papers report this morning that, should the Tories be elected at the next General Election, they will block some of the tax rises proposed by Alistair Darling last week. That is good news.

But The Independent reports that David Cameron intends to allow a return to hunting with dogs if he gets to become our next Prime Minister. The idea is that a promise of a free vote in Parliament and the repeal of the Hunting Act 2004 will help the Tories win in key marginal seats.

If this report is true, then I think Cameron will be making a big mistake. Allowing a return to fox hunting is repellent to many people in this country. It also conjures up an image of a bunch of privileged ‘hooray henrys’ charging around the countryside on their horses oblivious to us ordinary folk.

Leave the foxes alone!
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Online Newspapers

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Rupert Murdoch’s News International have announced that from June anyone wishing to view the Times or the Sunday Times online will have to pay £1 per day or £2 per week.

It’s a brave move and only time will tell if it is a successful one. You can read almost any newspaper online in Britain and other parts of the world, and I do wonder if those now reading the Times online will merely switch to another newspaper.

I suppose the charges are not onerous, and anyone having a subscription to the printed versions of the newspapers, will have an automatic pass to read them online. On the other hand, if you have the printed versions, why would you want to read them online?

I scan half a dozen newspapers each day via the internet. It seems that from June, there will be one less to read.
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Fighting Back!

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We all have our favourite things which tick us off when we are driving. Mine include, in order of ‘tickedness’:

Those who use hand-held mobile phones while driving,

The high beams of oncoming cars at night,

Motorway lane hogs,

Drivers who belt round with their noisy hi-fi systems vibrating everything nearby,

Those who make brake suddenly and make sharp turns without signalling their intentions and

Those drivers, usually young men in their souped-up cars, who tailgate you in the hope that you will speed up when you are already observing a speed limit.

I’ve never driven a motorcycle as I think they are dangerous and need greater driving skills than I possess. Most motorcyclists are considerate to other road users but, as in any other situation, some are not. On the other hand, I sympathise with motorcyclists who make the same complaints about other drivers as I do. One of their chief sources of complaint relate to drivers who tailgate them and that is certainly a dangerous practice.

One 30-year old plumber from Stamford, Lincolnshire, got totally ticked off by tailgaters and put his mind to the problem. He decided that an effective way of deterring tailgaters was to build a flame thrower at the back of scooter so that, at the flick of a switch, he could blast fifteen feet of flames behind him. And that is just what he did.

The pictures he posted on the internet were certainly very impressive and I, for one, wouldn’t want to have been the recipient of the plumber’s flames.

Alas, the pictures were his downfall. Lincolnshire Police spotted the pictures of the man allegedly riding his scooter on a public highway and arrested him on charges of possessing an object converted to a firearm.

I suppose this is right. At the same time, it would have been nice to have seen this converted scooter in action!
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’Police! Open Up!’ - Part Two

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I commented last week on the plight of the elderly couple in Brooklyn in New York who were mistakenly suspected of being felons, not once but fifty times, by police. The couple received an apology and, of all things, a cheesecake!

Something like it can happen here.

Officers from Hampshire Police recently battered down the door of a young couple in Dibden Purlieu, near Southampton, believing it was the home of a suspected drug dealer. They detained the father of two children until they realised that the suspect had moved out of the property some time before.

Later in the day, officers returned to the house, not with a cheesecake as in the case of the Brooklyn couple, but with a £1.79 bottle of beer and a bunch of flowers.

I think I’d have preferred the cheesecake!
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‘Those That Can ...’

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The Guardian has published a letter from over 100 leading academics saying that British Airway’s radical stance against striking cabin staff and their union, Unite, could erode workers’ rights across the UK. I note that there is not a word about the union’s overly aggressive stance towards the airline which has been attempting to negotiate with it for the past twelve months.

Part of their statement reads: ‘The wider significance of a triumph of unilateral management prerogative would be a widening of the representation gap in UK employment relations, and a further erosion of worker rights and of that most precious of commodities – democracy.’

Managers have the right to manage a business in the way they deem fit and proper. Unions have a right to uphold the interests of their members. What democracy has to do with it, I don’t see, particularly as our country has more than enough laws and regulations to safeguard the employment rights of people.

The statement refers to ‘worker rights’. Does this, I wonder, refer to the free and discounted travel that striking cabin staff have now forfeited, having been clearly warned in advance that this would be a consequence of their actions? We need to remind ourselves that these strikes have so far cost British Airways £21 millions and merely add to their problems in trying to profitably operate an airline at a time of financial recession, rising costs and reducing passenger carryings.

The statement also criticises British Airways ‘marshalling of resources, including those of bitter industry rival Ryanair, to undermine the action of [BA] staff?’. What on earth did these academics expect the BA management to do faced with a strike of sections of their staff; roll over and let them create deeper losses?

The academics have made their point. But the old adage about those who can, do: those that can’t, teach come to mind.
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Barmpots Defeated!

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That primarily useless body, the European Union, has at least voted to defeat one of its daftest ideas.

A group of Spanish Euro-MPs attempted to reinstate a rejected European Parliament ban on 26 types of misshapen and discoloured fruit and vegetables such as straight bananas and curly cucumbers. Fortunately, this latest proposal was defeated amid fears that it would merely increase food waste. It was a wise decision.

Now they ought to vote again on the similar EU-wide ban for ten types of produce including apples, citrus fruits, lettuces, pears, strawberries, table grapes and tomatoes.

Curiously, you only have to visit a French fruit and vegetable market to see that these rules are completely ignored. So much for uniformity!
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Health & Safety Gone Mad!

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Bored with newspapers full of budget details, criticisms and political wrangling, I looked for something else to have a whinge about. I didn’t have to search for long.

A mischievous five-year old schoolboy climbed a 20 ft tree in the playground during the morning break and refused to come down.

But instead of helping him, teachers at the primary school in Melksham, Wiltshire, followed health and safety guidelines and retreated into the school building to ‘observe from a distance’ so that the child would not get ‘distracted and fall’.

Suppose he had not been distracted and still fallen was my first thought?

Forty-five minutes later, a passer-by saw the boy’s predicament and helped him down. You’d have thought that someone in the school would have thanked her for her actions. But no, she was reported to the police for trespass!

The Headteacher later confirmed that the school’s policy prevents staff going to the aid of children who have climbed trees and said, ‘The safety of our pupils is our priority ...’ It doesn’t seem like it to me!

Wiltshire Council then wrote to the rescuer: ‘You may well have acted initially out of concern for the safety of the child but any such concerns should have been raised with a member of staff.’ ‘You subsequently behaved in a verbally aggressive manner to a member of staff.’

There is no word from the parents of this active child, but if he were mine, I think I would become extremely aggressive to staff members who hid behind utterly stupid health and safety rules and did nothing to help a child who might well have fallen out of the tree and hurt himself.

Sometimes, it seems to me that commonsense eludes some people!
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Pensioner Power

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On the advice of a investment adviser, five German pensioners aged between 61 and 80 invested their savings in what was a booming property market in Florida. But the sub-prime mortgage market collapsed and the five lost £2.2 millions as a result.

The five got together and decided that they would kidnap the adviser who was then snatched from his home, driven three hundred miles in the boot of a car, hidden in a cellar, interrogated and beaten. After four days, the man managed to escape during a cigarette break in the garden and the five pensioners were arrested.

Yesterday, in a court in the Bavarian city of Traunstein, four of the gang were given sentences ranging from an 18-month suspended sentence and six-years in jail for the 74-year-old ringleader. One man is ill and will be tried later. Explaining his actions, the ringleader told the court that the five had taken the adviser to their home in Lake Chiemsee so that the ‘mountain air might help him to think better’.

While not condoning the crime, you have to admire the sheer stamina of these pensioners in overwhelming a 57-year-old man, binding him with tape, stuffing him into a removals company carton, lifting this on to a trolley which they rolled past unsuspecting people, struggling to get this into a car boot and then finally taking him into a cellar.

The presiding judge described their crimes as a ‘spectacular case of individuals taking justice into their own hands'. He was wrong.

It was a spectacular case of pensioners taking justice into their own hands!
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Barmy!

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Last year Northamptonshire Police issued a 93-page guide on how to ride a bicycle which gave officers advice, among other things, on how to balance, brake and avoid the kerb.

Now, it seems, they have got round to issuing some mountain bikes to some of their coppers. But they can’t ride them until the summer, for they have yet to complete a ten-hour training course on how to use them.

Cautious? Possibly.

Health and safety conscious? Yes probably.

Barmy? Absolutely!
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Get It Over With!

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That this parliament has been a rotten one is unquestionable and most right-thinking people will be glad to see the back of it.

With the exception of the Iraq war and the collapse of our banking system and the national debt that arose from it, this rotten parliament will stick in most people’s minds as being the one when many MPs were demonstrated to have had their snouts in the trough. It is the parliament that showed only too clearly that some MPs were more concerned with lining their own pockets than actually serving the people they had been elected to represent.

Four MPs, including three former cabinet ministers, have now been suspended from the Labour Party after the Channel 4 and Times ‘sting’ aired last night showed just how eager they were to accept fees varying from £1,000 to £5,000 per day to influence government policy.

The newspapers this morning have dug deep into the rich mine of information on both these four MPs as well as a few others.

Who’d have thought, for example, that Patricia Hewitt in addition to her parliamentary salary of £60,000 (plus expenses, remember!) earns an additional £280,000 a year in fees from companies she advises. Is she worth it I wonder, and will some of these companies want to retain her in future? Ms Hewitt is not the only one benefiting from external work and there is a list of MPs earning additional sums varying from £30,000 to £245,000.

We learn also this morning that a number of MPs have enjoyed expenses-paid junkets in various places abroad and failed to declare their interest by lobbying on behalf of those countries. Over 400 times! One MP is alleged to have breached the rules ninety times after making annual trips to Cyprus.

The expenses scandal trundles on unremittingly and most of us are getting thoroughly fed-up with hearing about it for it only reinforces just how out of touch some MPs are with the feelings of ordinary people.

The sooner Gordon Brown calls for a General Election the better. Then, hopefully, we can see the back of some of the grubby snouts that were in this very grubby parliamentary trough.

The question is though, will the next lot be any better?
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You’re Sacked!

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History of sorts was made last week when a sixteen year old girl, who lost a ten pound note when running an errand, was sacked via her Facebook page from her Saturday job in a Greater Manchester café.

It’s an inappropriate use of a social networking site to dismiss someone like this. And what about the possible breach of employment regulations? My interest though was focussed more on the misspelt and ungrammatical exchange of messages.

From the manageress of the café:

'hiya (name) its (name) from work. sorry to send u a message like this but bin tryin to ring u but gettin no joy. I had to tell the owner bout u losin that tenner coz obviously the till was down at the end of day. she wasn't very pleased at all and despite me trying to persuade her otherwise she said I have to let u go. I'm really sorry. If u call in the week with your uniform i’ll sort your wages out. Once again I’m really sorry but it’s out of my hands. (name) xx’

The young girl’s response:

‘mum been to papers, she totally disgusted with what the cafe done to me I offered t paay it back I was sorry and not to be given a chance well I hope you loose loads of custom and the word will get round ... wish I never left (another) cafe .nyway’

I wonder what it cost to educate these two women?
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It’s Good To Recycle!

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Recycling seems to be a dominant theme this morning.

There is the report that a catamaran made of 12,000 plastic bottles, and appropriately named Plastiki, has set sail from San Francisco to Sydney to draw attention to plastic waste and the need for recycling. Powered by solar, wind and sea turbines, the voyage will pass the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’, an area of waste said to be about five times the size of Britain. Good luck to them.

There is news of the gentleman in Argentina who has built a five-bedroomed house entirely out of recycled glass bottles. The task took him twenty years and used up six million bottles. His theme also is for the need to recycle, and good luck to him as well.

And now we now know that we can even recycle MPs, as witness the four, including three former cabinet ministers, who were caught in a ‘sting’ by Channel 4 and the Sunday Times. It is alleged that they demanded fees of up to £5,000 a day for acting as lobbyists to influence government policy even though Parliamentary rules prohibit sitting MPs from doing this.

Yes, it’s good to recycle!
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‘Police! Open Up!’

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Let’s see. You’re a nice old couple in your eighties and live in a nicely painted detached house in a nice quiet neighbourhood in Brooklyn in New York. The front lawn is neatly mown, the two bushes neatly trimmed and the Stars and Stripes proudly flutters from a flagpole in front of your house. On the face of it, you are a respectable old couple enjoying your retirement in peace and quiet.

Not so. For over the last eight years, the police have arrived at all hours of the day and night, hammering on their front and back doors and screaming out, ‘Police! Open up!’

Not once but fifty times!

What must the neighbours have thought? Is the old man a drug dealer? Is the old lady running a house of ill-repute? Are the old couple running some sort of illegal racket via the internet? What is going on here?

The answer is that the old couple are indeed a respectable couple enjoying, as one might expect, their retirement. Only, thanks to the police, it’s not quite so peaceful.

It turns out that in 2002 the couple’s address was used as test data for a new computer crime-tracking system - except that when it went live their data remained in the system. Despite their complaints, and assurances from the police that their details would be purged from the system, their data remained on it and the disturbances and upset continued.

However, following the latest incident, the couple’s address has now been flagged with alerts barring police officers from further questioning them. Only time will tell whether this is effective.

One would have thought that the couple could have sued the New York Police Department for substantial damages, but they appear not to have considered this. Maybe because the New York Police Commissioner no less visited the couple last week to apologise and to hand over a conciliatory gesture of a cheesecake.

It must have been a very good cheesecake!
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‘Dear Mr. Illegal Immigrant’

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There is a curious story in one of the newspapers, buried beneath those of the strike by British Airways staff, which attracted my attention this morning. It concerns the data bases which some companies compile and then sell on to others who want to use them to send out consumer mail shots or to solicit charitable donations.

Last week, Virgin Media used one of these data bases for a mail shot. The result was that a gentleman in Strelley, Nottingham, received a letter addressed to ‘Mr Illegal Immigrant’ and which started off ‘Dear Immigrant’. As it happened, the gentleman concerned was neither an immigrant nor illegal and he was naturally upset to receive a letter addressed in this way. Virgin Media apologised and explained that there was a fault with the data base they purchased.

I suppose there is a comic side to this tale but, on the other hand, I did wonder if there was a more sinister side.

Marketing data bases are sold by companies that compile information on us. The chances are that if you buy something in a shop or a supermarket or order something online, details of your purchases will be sold to one of these companies. You may also have filled in a questionnaire as part of an entry to a newspaper competition that will also be used by data base compilers.

Thus, the chances are that on a data base somewhere, I am noted for buying books of a historical nature, that I am keen on Japanese food, that I generally use certain supermarkets, that I like to cruise as my main holiday, travel to France by train now and again and that I read the Times and the Telegraph every day. A data base might have more information on me, such as my sex, age, socio-economic grouping and, possibly, other stuff as well.

In my previous incarnations, my companies have often used such data bases for mail shots aimed at folk in a particular socio-economic group, who read certain newspapers or magazines and who are likely to be interested in, say, a cruise to the Caribbean at a certain time of the year. The chances are that a mail shot based on these sort of criteria would more than justify the purchase of the data base plus the cost of sending the mail shot out to, perhaps, many thousands of people.

But I do wonder if the compilers of data bases are using more information than they should. How would they know that anyone might be an illegal immigrant?

Is there more than meets the eye to this particular story I wonder?
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A ‘Bung’?

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Unite, the largest union in Britain has donated almost £30 millions to the Labour Party over the past decade, leading to claims that it has the party in its pocket.

I don’t know whether this claim is true or not, though I have my own views on the subject, but a report in the Daily Telegraph this morning reveals that the union has, in turn, received £18 millions of taxpayers' money since 1998 under Labour.

It appears that the government controls two little-known funds, the Union Modernisation Fund and the Union Learning Fund, set up to improve training and skills for union members. Unite, it seems, was the biggest beneficiary from the first of these funds and received a sixth of all the money given out from the second.

The Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, said: ‘This really looks like money laundering - taxpayers’ money is being funnelled into Unite then put straight back into Labour's coffers.’ Opposition parties claim that the funds are a ‘bung’ to groups that support Labour politically and financially. It certainly seems that way.

Unite is the same union that by threatening to strike has already cost British Airways an estimated £25 millions and may cost them a great deal more if the strikes go ahead!
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Put The ‘Great’ Back Into Great Britain!

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I wrote the other day about the gloom that has descended over the country in recent years and the lack of pride some folk seem to have in it.

Our American cousins are very proud of their country - one that is just as diverse as ours - and many of them wear the Stars and Stripes in their lapels. The Stars and Stripes are frequently seen to be fluttering outside people’s houses, restaurants, offices and other places. The Star-Spangled Banner and other patriotic songs are heard at all manner of events and very often on television when the armed forces are commemorated. Americans’ pride in their country is palpable.

Contrast this with dour Britain. Except for those above public buildings, the Union Flag is a rare sight though, admittedly, one sometimes sees the English, Welsh and Scots flags being flown by those with a sporting or regional interest. Few of our national products bear the Union Jack any more (what happened to campaigns like the ‘Buy British’ one?) and precious few people have it in their lapels.

Why am I banging on about national anthems, flags and national pride?

It is because a few people have complained to the BBC that the national anthem played at the end of the day by Radio 4 is too loud and that it is ‘jingoistic’. They are right; it is loud and I agree it is jingoistic. But it’s our National Anthem.

There was a time when the National Anthem was played at the end of every day on radio. It was played at the end of cinema and theatrical performances. I seem to recall it was played at the end of the day by BBC Television in the days when it was the only channel and closed down early. There was a time also when we had great pride on our country and all sorts of products bore the Union Jack as a sign of quality before the odious BNP took it as their symbol.

And what now?

We have a hundred or so people complaining that Radio 4 plays the National Anthem at the end of the day. Good for Radio 4 is what I say! Radio 4’s network manager has it right. ‘While some will hear it as jingoistic others will hear it as comforting and encouraging and redolent of tradition and community and all sorts of other things.’

It’s time to put the ‘great’ back into Great Britain, and we could start by playing the National Anthem a bit more frequently and by sporting the Union Jack more than we do at present. A bit more national pride is what we need!
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How Disappointing!

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The lovely BBC presenter Sian Williams has been fighting HM Revenue and Customs over her £4,500 annual bill for clothes, dry-cleaning and hairdressing even though she needs to look smart when presenting the news.

Though Miss Williams is most demonstrably smart, she failed to convince a tax tribunal judge that she needs to spend this amount, ‘wholly, exclusively and necessarily in the performance of the employment duties’, and so lost her claim for a £1,800 tax deduction.

As part of her claim, Miss Williams said that she would be happy to ready the news naked. However, a spokesman later said, ‘There is no danger of her actually presenting naked.’

What a disappointment!
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Of Course!

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I’m amazed sometimes at the number of academic studies into things we already know.

Like the team from the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland which studied six neighbouring groups of wild vervet monkeys in South Africa's Loskop Dam Nature Reserve. They found that the animals were better able to learn a task when it was demonstrated to them by a female.

Blimey! Any wife could have told them that!

[Oh Boy! Am I going to get into trouble for saying that!]
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Morally Wrong

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Thirteen British pensioners who live abroad have lost the discrimination case they brought against the Department of Work and Pensions in the European Court of Human Rights.

This is the end of a long-running legal challenge that was effectively brought on behalf of half a million expatriate Britons whose UK pensions were frozen as of the dates they relocated. The judges in Strasbourg ruled that the British government’s refusal to update their pensions each year did not breach their human rights.

Government rules allow for annual increases to pensioners who live in the EU or in a few other countries with reciprocal pension arrangements, but not in 150 other countries such as Australia, Canada and South Africa. The International Consortium of British Pensioners, which supported the thirteen in this case, says that this means, for example, a pensioner who began drawing a full pension in Australia in 1981 will still be receiving £29.60 a week, although the basic UK state pension is now £95.25 a week.

Government ministers are said to concede that the existing rules are illogical but stubbornly refuse to make any concession to the expatriate pensioners affected. There seems no logical reason why pensioners living outside the EU who have been contributing to their pensions over their working lives like everyone else should not enjoy the same benefits as others.

I suspect the government’s position relates more to the cost of providing uptodate pensions to the estimated half a million people involved, rather than anything else. And, in the present economic climate, I can’t see any government altering their position.

Their position is morally wrong but, alas, there is no court in the world that will decide a case on its morality.
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In Weston-super-Mare?

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Weston-super-Mare in Somerset features in most of this morning’s newspapers for what the town’s good burghers are most likely to feel are the wrong reasons.

I’ve never visited this town and looked up its website (I loved the advertisement for the Dog Lead Shop!). It appears to be a typical seaside town with miles of golden sands complete with donkeys, a pier, a large observation wheel, an aquarium, two museums including one of helicopters, a Memorial Garden to Jill Dando plus all the usual holiday resort attractions. Wikipedia advises that notable residents of the town have included Bob Hope, John Cleese, Jill Dando and Rupert Graves.

But, like any other town I suppose, there is another side to Weston-super-Mare, for, among others probably, it has a nightclub advertising itself as an 'exotic house of luxury' in which the paying guests can enjoy an 'exclusive lap and pole dancing venue'.

I imagine that most towns (with the probable exception of Frinton in Essex!) have these so-called night clubs and that they would most likely prefer that they not become the focus of national attention. So what has made Weston-super-Mare different?

It is that undercover reporters (yeah, right!) discovered a 14-year old schoolgirl performing there as a lap dancer and giving men £20-a-time naked dances. Not only that, but the shocked reporters discovered she was drinking vodka alcopops.

Inevitably, the police became involved and the young lady concerned, who told reporters ‘This is only my second night but I'm a very good lap dancer’, has been asked to concentrate more on her school work than lap dancing in future. Her shocked mother will have to be watchful in future - she thought her daughter was at a sleepover!

Who’d have thought it?
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Wise Words. Wise Deeds?

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Every now and again my wife will produce some very wise and thought-provoking words.

We were out walking with our two dogs yesterday afternoon when she said, in relation to the raft of legislation this government has introduced, ‘Britain used to be the ‘Can Do’ country. Now it’s the ‘Can’t Do’ country’.

I mulled this over afterwards and realised that she was quite right.

In the days of Margaret ‘Do it my Way’ Thatcher, legislation was mainly about the big issues (even the dreaded poll tax which led to her ultimate fall was a big issue!). Of course we had strife, chiefly with the miners and the print unions, but the country - indeed, much of the world with the end of the Cold War - seemed to be surging forward most of the time. The Falklands conflict, seen as a just one by the British at any rate, produced a pride in Britain and our accomplishments. The union flag was seen on a variety of products as representing quality. Our standing in the world was high, and we had pride and self-esteem.

I suppose it all started to go downhill with the government of John ‘The Invisible Man’ Major who had to deal with the Gulf War, recession and the Maastricht Treaty. He was, alas, a grey man and the country seemed to descend into a sort of greyness.

Then along came Tony ‘Teflon’ Blair. He gained the Belfast Agreement and promoted devolution for Scotland and Wales, but got the country involved in unpopular wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and, most notably, Iraq. The ancient law prohibiting ‘double jeopardy’ prosecutions in cases which had been tried was overturned. He reintroduced expensive local government for London which had been scrapped by Margaret Thatcher and, after the initial rapture following his election, the grey evolved into a sort of gloom.

And then Gordon ‘Bully Boy’ Brown appeared on the scene. Under him the gloom has most certainly deepened. We’ve had the Treaty of Lisbon (despite a promise of a referendum on the issue), the introduction of 42 days detention for terror suspects, parliamentary expenses scandals and national financial collapse. The motorist is overtaxed, and what few places are left for them to park their cars in are patrolled by aggressive traffic wardens or ‘Civil Enforcement Officers’ as they are now called. Our standing in the world has never been lower. What is left of the country’s self-esteem at the moment? Very little.

There is a feeling that the country is now overburdened with petty legislation, that some members of Parliament are corrupt even if not criminally so, that Parliament is incapable of regulating its members sensibly, that a government totally out of tune with the people has waged war against the motorist and has done very little for the ordinary man in the street. Indeed, we are now subject to more taxation and petty legislation than ever before. We are reported to be the country with the most surveillance cameras anywhere in the world, and latest regulations suggest that almost every citizen needs to have a Criminal Records Check for one reason or another.

Any new government, of whatever party, needs to lift this country out of its despondency, sort out immigration, deal with the national debt, take us out of expensive overseas conflicts and try to give us back our pride and self-esteem and our standing in the world. Most importantly, it needs to lighten the tax burden.

Wise words prompted this morning’s blog. Whether any of our politicians can come up with any wise words - and deeds - to sort this country out remains to be seen. But, at the moment, it seems highly unlikely from what I have heard so far.
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Odd Jobs

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Now and again it’s good to ignore all the dire newspaper headlines and look for the stories that raise an eyebrow or make one laugh. This morning I spotted two articles calling for folk to sign up for unusual jobs and they definitely have raised an eyebrow.

The first job is paying a salary of nearly £24,000 for being a couch potato. It seems that a company that produces a weight-loss product is looking for someone who will eat an extra 500 calories a day in high fat meals such as Chinese takeaways, fish and chips and pizzas and sit around doing nothing. ‘It’s the ultimate work from home job,’ said the spokesman.

I reckon I could do this job but, since the position has already been advertised through the national JobCentre network, I imagine that I’d probably be at the back of the queue of at least a million and a half other people!

The second job I spotted was a voluntary one and so doesn’t pay any money. But if you are willing to spend your evenings in a haunted mansion and act as a guide to those who cough up some cash to be there with you, this might be the very job. Built in 1585, Plas Mawr House in Conwy is home to a bunch of ghosts, three of which like to walk around now and again. There are ‘cold spots’ even in summer.

I’m not too fussed about this particular job. I have enough frights just reading the morning papers, let alone travelling to Conwy for a few more!
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Happy Mothering Sunday!

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It’s Mothering Sunday, or Mother’s Day as it is now usually called. A day when we celebrate our mothers as well as motherhood itself.

It is a day when we give presents to our mothers, so giving a welcome boost to the sales of florists, card shops and chocolate manufacturers.

Opinions vary on when this celebration of mothers started. One source says it was begun by the Greeks who kept a festival to Cybele, the great mother of Greek gods. Others point to the Romans who celebrated Matronalia on which mothers were usually given gifts. The idea was then picked up by the Christian Churches who fixed the fourth Sunday in Lent to honour the Virgin Mary.

I suspect that mothers have been celebrated once a year throughout the world in all ages and by all cultures. Not only did mothers give birth to us, they loved and cherished us and tried to bring us up correctly; things that are worth celebrating.

So today I and the rest of my family honour my mother and wish her many more Mothering Sundays.

Happy Mothering Sunday To All Mothers!
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Hard Cheese!

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The English are well-known for their eccentricities which often shows up in the type of sports they play.

Cricket, in my view at any rate, is possibly the most boring activity in the world next to watching a goldfish swimming round its bowl, though I accept, of course, that many would disagree with me.

Notwithstanding, I incline to the more interesting of sports, one with a bit of excitement. Cheese rolling, for example.

The Annual Cheese Rolling Race & Wake on Coopers Hill in Gloucester is a race that has been run for two hundred years and has attracted thousands of followers. Just last year, over fifteen thousand people turned up to watch competitors chase 7lb Double Gloucester cheeses down an impossibly dangerous 1:2 gradient sustaining many injuries in the process. What fun!

But no more. The health & safety police have stepped in to say that there are issues about the number of people attending and, as a result, this year’s race has been cancelled. Crowd control, inadequate parking, overcrowding and emergency access have been cited as reasons for the cancellation.

Curiously, not a word has been said about the health and safety of the would-be competitors. That’s eccentricity for you!
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What A Lot Of Fuss!

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The least popular student in the oddly-named Itawamba County Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi, is an 18-year old lesbian who wanted to bring her girlfriend to the Annual Prom.

High school proms are important affairs in America. Students get themselves dressed up in their hired finery, the boys buy corsages and flowers for their girlfriends and often hire stretched limos to take them and their guests to the festivities.

But not this year in Itawamba County Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi, for the event has been cancelled.

The young woman asked permission to bring her girlfriend and was sniffily told that she and her partner would not be allowed to arrive at the event together nor would she be allowed to wear a tuxedo. The School Board also reserved the right to ask the student and her girlfriend to leave if it made any other students feel uncomfortable.

That august body, the American Civil Liberties Union, got involved and issued an ultimatum to the School Board to reverse its ban on same-sex couples attending proms. The School Board’s response was to cancel the event altogether, saying that it hoped ‘private citizens will organise an event for the juniors and seniors’ instead.

What a lot of fuss and bother about nothing in what is supposed to be enlightened times. You’d have thought that the School Board would have cast a blind eye on the issue rather than raising it to international headline proportions. And had the American Civil Liberties Union kept their noses out of it, the prom might yet have gone ahead albeit without the young lady and her girlfriend. But neither party did and so a lot of students, not to say the local businesses benefiting from the annual student bash, will suffer.

The young woman responsible for this hoo-ha commented, ‘A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this.’ Boy, how right she is!
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That’s A Relief!

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Some years ago I found myself in Edinburgh over a weekend and took myself off to church on Sunday evening in the days when everything else in town was firmly closed.

Two things are burned into my memory from that evening. The first was the length of the sermon and the second, made worse by the first, was the hardness of the church pews. The minister, one of the hellfire and damnation variety, spluttered on for a full hour. Sleep was impossible because of his delivery and also because of the comfortless pews. I was never so glad to get out of a church in all my life.

So the latest announcement from the Roman Catholic Church will gladden the hearts of all those who, like me, have been trapped on hard pews in a church while a minister rambles on and on and who don't have the bottle to get up and walk out.

The Vatican has called for priests to respond to dwindling congregations and their dwindling attention spans by limiting their sermons to no more than eight minutes.

I am not a Catholic, but there is now a certain attraction!
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Not Above The Law

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The front page of today’s Daily Mail puts it quite succinctly: ‘Thieves’ who think they’re above the law’.

It refers, of course, to the three MPs and one peer who appeared yesterday in the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court to face charges under the Thefts Act. Their lawyers argued that the allegations against them should be considered by parliamentary authorities instead of a jury as they were protected from criminal prosecution by the right of parliamentary privilege, dating back to the Bill of Rights of 1689.

The parliamentarians also asked to be spared the humiliation of being forced to stand in the dock at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

Both requests were quickly denied, and the four men pleaded not guilty and were bailed to appear at Southwark Crown Court at the end of the month, with the judge reminding them that they would be entitled to reduction in sentences if they pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity.

The appearance of the four men was accompanied by extraordinary scenes outside the court where protesters, one dressed as Guy Fawkes and another as a pig, made the feelings of the ordinary man quite clear.

As if there was any doubt!
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In Plain English Please!

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It is true that all industries have their own jargon understandable only to those in the know.

In the main, this doesn’t matter provided the words and phrases are used within those business circles. When I first went to work, I had to learn the jargon of shipping pretty quickly in order to understand what people were talking about around me.

However, it seemed to me that once accountants and MBAs appeared on the scene, taking over from those who had been in a business from the bottom upwards, they introduced a whole raft of meaningless waffle that baffled a good many of us. So I naively thought that when I retired I had left all that behind me, but no, I constantly come up against people who think that by peppering their conversations with the latest management-babble they appear more knowledgeable than they really are.

The Local Government Association has published their latest list of ‘impenetrable phrases’ used by government and local council bodies. The words include: wellderly, disbenefits, under-capacitated, tonality, trialogue, clienting, synergies, contestability and mainstreaming. Heaven alone knows what these mean.

The bit of jargon that fascinated me most was ‘goldfish bowl facilitated conversation’. For the life of me I can’t work out what this could possibly mean. Does it mean a discussion round a table so that everyone present can see each other? I don’t know and, frankly, can’t be bothered to find out.

The Chair of the LGA said, ‘Why do we have to have a ‘webinar trialogue for the wellderly' when the public sector could just talk about caring for the elderly instead?’ She’s got that right!
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More Junk Mail!

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I suppose it is good news that Royal Mail and the postal workers have kissed and made up in a new national agreement that has averted further strikes and go-slows.

But it is definitely not good news that we could now be deluged with unlimited amounts of junk mail delivered by our postmen who, until now, have only had to deliver three items of unsolicited mail a week.

Speaking for my own household, all of the junk mail which arrives on our door mat is trashed immediately, so now we will be putting even more rubbish out for the council to take away.
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Bottled Ghosts?

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I’ve sometimes said that you don’t have to spend a fortune to get worldwide publicity for something - you just need a very good idea.

This was the case when a manufacturer of electronic cigarettes in New Zealand managed to buy two bottled ghosts for £940. The bidding for the items on a local online auction website attracted over 200,000 views, and the media have now picked up on what is certainly a good story.

It seems that a lady living in Christchurch got fed up with having to share her home with the spirits of an old man and a girl who, among other things, would touch her on the neck, frighten the dog, move things around the house and, without being asked, boil a kettle. So she called in a local exorcist who managed to contain the two spirits in phials of holy water. Since then the lady’s house has been at peace.

Quite what a manufacturer of electronic cigarettes proposes to do with little bottles containing the spirits of two dead people remains to be seen, but it is inviting suggestions as to what they should do with them.

In the meantime, it has already received queries about what it proposes to do for the comfort and well-being of the spirits they now possess. Might there be a danger that the spirits will take possession of them instead?
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Let’s Hope They Know What They Are Doing!

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A government minister has announced that in an effort to control Japanese knotweed, they will be trialling this spring the release of a tiny insect that naturally preys on the plant and supposedly nothing else.

Japanese knotweed, introduced by the Victorians as an ornamental plant soon became rampant throughout Britain. It grows more than a metre a month, swamps any other vegetation in its path and can break up stone and concrete surfaces and walls. Removal of the plant is both expensive and difficult.

Scientists say that the plant is common in Japan but does not rage out of control thanks to the natural predators that keep it in check. They selected a psyllid, aphalara itadori, as the best method of control after testing it on ninety different British plant species. This little insect feeds on the sap of the knotweed, stunting its growth.

One scientist has said that, ‘...a contingency plan is in place so that should, in the unlikely event, any unintended consequences be detected, we will be able to do something about it’.

Let’s hope he is right. Experience over the last hundred years has shown that deliberate introduction of some pests to combat other pests has often been a complete disaster - as witness the Cane Toad in Australia.

Let’s hope they really do know what they are doing!
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A Dream, Perhaps

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Congratulations to the French naval ship Nivose which, with the support of an Italian ship and Spanish aircraft, has succeeded in capturing 35 suspected pirates off the coast of Somali. Four ‘mother’ ships and six small boats used by the pirates were seized in the operation.

Pirates in the area of the Gulf of Aden have become more and more adventurous and have extended their activities south towards the Seychelles and even further towards Madagascar.

Piracy has got out of control in the area and the mission of the international community to eliminate them is beginning to show dividends. But, in the end, the only way to put a stop to the pirates is for a combined force to go into Somali and eliminate them and their equipment altogether. For too long have ships of all nationalities been held to ransom.

We should also not forget that Mr and Mrs Chandler who were kidnapped by pirates last October are still languishing somewhere in that lawless country in which no-one seems to have any proper authority or control.
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Does Anyone Care?

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The Met Office is to stop publishing its quarterly weather forecasts after being castigated for not foreseeing the last wet summer or this extreme winter.

‘Although we can identify general patterns of weather, the science does not exist to allow an exact forecast beyond five days, or to absolutely promise a certain type of weather,’ a spokesman said.

Though this admission is something most of us probably guessed already, the new monthly predictions won’t have the same element of risk about them. We looked forward to last year’s forecast of a ‘blistering’ summer and hoped right up to the end that we would get a bit of it!

I recall many years ago a correspondent of the Sunday Express, whose name I now forget, wrote regular weather forecasts based on the records he and his father had kept for many years. Now and again, the newspaper ran an article on this man whose long-range forecasts were generally accurate and better than those put out by the Met Office. Then, of a sudden, we heard no more of him and we supposed that he had died. Thereafter, we had to rely on the Met Office and, I suppose, realised that there was an element of risk about long-range forecasting.

But, frankly, does anyone much care that long-range forecasts have been abandoned? After all, complaining about the weather has been a British trait for years!
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Safely Behind Bars!

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I can’t join in the screams by sections of the media calling for the present identity of Jon Venables to be revealed.

Venables and Robert Thompson, who were then both aged ten, became Britain’s youngest murderers after abducting the two-year-old, James Bulger, in 1993 from a shopping centre in Bootle. Both were given life sentences, but released in 2001 with new identities under certain licence conditions. A court order prevents details being published which could reveal their present names or whereabouts.

It has been disclosed that Venables has recently been returned to prison after having breached his license conditions by allegedly committing a serious offence. The Justice Secretary has refused to give any further details and has made the point that, ‘a premature disclosure of information would undermine the integrity of the criminal justice process’.

The emotional aspects of the original crime and any views on the subsequent treatment of the two boys, now men, must be put aside. Doubtless, if Venables is proved to have committed a serious crime, he will be appropriately punished for it.

It is correct that the justice process must be followed, and Venables’ current name really doesn’t have much to do with it. In any event, it seems to have been forgotten that the man is now safely behind bars!
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Not For Me!

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The two Bristol plane-spotters who were arrested in a hotel room in Delhi overlooking Indira Gandhi International Airport with an air traffic control scanner, binoculars and cameras were lucky to escape with just a fine.

Charged with with intercepting communications, the pair admitted illegally monitoring aircraft and were fined just £365 each and are now free to return home.

Plane-spotting can be a dangerous hobby in some parts of the world - witness the group that were arrested in Greece some time ago - and the pair were lucky that the authorities recognised that they posed no threat to security but were enthusiastic hobbyists.

I’ve never seen the inside of an Indian jail and hope not to. So plane-spotting is certainly off my list of things to do in the future!
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Thanks To Birdseye!

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Today is a momentous day in history for it is the day on which Clarence Frank Birdseye II patented his method for fast-freezing food.

While working in Labrador this Brooklyn born scientist observed that fish pulled from the ice by the Inuit natives froze almost instantly and that when they were thawed they tasted fresh and had retained their texture. After much experimentation, he finally came up with a method that would freeze fish instantly between two metal plates and went on to do the same thing with meat, poultry, fruit, and vegetables.

In 1929, Birdseye sold his company to what eventually became General Foods Corporation and which founded the Birds Eye Frozen Food Company. The first product line featured 26 items, including eighteen cuts of frozen meat, spinach and peas, a variety of fruits and berries, blue point oysters, and fish fillets. He died in 1956 at the age of 69.

Just think what life would be like without Birdseye and his frozen foods!
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A Hung Parliament?

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A YouGov poll has found that the Tory lead in sixty Labour-held marginals had shrunk from seven to just two points over the past year which pundits say might indicate we are heading for a hung Parliament at the next General Election.

One problem the Conservatives face is identifying exactly what their major policies are and their recent conference didn’t do that for me. Less politicking and more direct communication might help them in my view.

On the other hand, I can’t say that I fully understand what policies are being proposed by the other parties either!
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Freak Waves

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It is rare to hear of deaths at sea and cruising has to be one of the safest forms of travel in the world. I except from this, of course, the Titanic and some of the less well-managed ferries in third-world countries.

So it is a tragedy that the recent accident to the Louis Majesty led to two passengers being killed and fourteen being slightly injured when three freak walls of water, more than ten metres in height, hit the ship on Wednesday. The waves stove in the windows at the front of the ship and also flooded a number of cabins.

The Louis Cruise Lines vessel of 40,876 tons tons, formerly the Norwegian Majesty and fairly recently refitted, was carrying 1,350 passengers and 580 crew off the coast of northeast Spain when the accident occurred. A Spanish oceanographer said that large waves were common in the Mediterranean but ones of the size that struck Louis Majesty occurred only once or twice a year.

Having been in the shipping industry all my life I can attest that freak waves are very rare. Nonetheless, they do occur and I can think readily of two such incidents in which, fortunately, no lives were lost or people seriously injured.

Despite the accident to Louis Majesty, cruising in my opinion is the safest and most comfortable way to see the world. It can be a totally relaxing and enjoyable holiday and no-one should be put off by this unfortunate accident.
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I Must Get One!

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I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be what’s called these days a ‘detectorist’, one of those people who wander the fields in all weathers looking for treasure with their metal detectors.

Now and again you hear of detectorists that have uncovered valuable hoards of coins or gold artefacts and, from what we read, their rewards can sometimes be phenomenal.

In 1996, the government introduced the Treasure Act, one of the more sensible pieces of legislation this Parliament has enabled. The Act gives folk who find buried artefacts to report them to the local coroner who, if he decides the finds are treasure and a museum wishes to buy them, they go before the independent Treasure Valuation Committee, who sit in the British Museum. The committee recommends a market value, then refers them to museums who may be interested in buying. If no museum is able to buy, the finds go back to the finders who are then free to sell them on the open market.

That all seems quite clear and I think the provisions of the Act are fairly well known among the public, particularly the detectorist community.

But one lady in Shropshire has fallen foul of the Act and has been prosecuted for failing to declare her find of an 14th-century silver French coin which, foolishly perhaps, she took along to a museum to value. Prosecution followed, though she was given a three month conditional discharge only and ordered to hand over the coin.

Curiously, the coin may not be a ‘coin’ at all but a rare ‘piedfort’, which was probably struck for ceremonial presentation in the French court of Charles IV and not used as currency.

It’s amazing what you can find buried in the earth. I must get myself a decent metal detector!
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Flush It Away!

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There’s an interesting little video on the BBC website (go to: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8546706.stm) which shows a rather special toilet - a holy one.

If you have a problem, you write it down on a piece of paper and then literally flush it away in the Mantokuji temple in central Japan.

What a great idea, but a pity that the holy toilet isn’t big enough to take the present government!
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No Problems

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The latest in a number of motor manufacturers which have had to recall cars for modifications is General Motors who have recalled 1.3 million small cars in North America because of a power steering problem.

Possibly, cars are becoming too complex. I only know that were I to have a problem with my car, my local garage would virtually have to call in a computer expert to diagnose the fault.

As it happens, I’m on my eighth Toyota and have had not a moment’s problem with any of them - but fingers crossed!
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Why Not For Life?

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I took Mickey, our Yorkshire Terrier, to the vet yesterday for his annual booster and kennel cough vaccination.

It took but five minutes and, £52 later as I was walking him back to the car, I wondered to myself why dog and cat vaccination has to be once a year. Why can’t they have ‘for life’ vaccinations as we humans have?

It’s a rhetorical question as I don’t expect anyone from the animal vaccine industry will reply (though if they do I will let you know). But I did wonder if that £52 pop every year might have something to do with it!
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Please Get It Over With!

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I wish the government would take the bull between the horns and declare a General Election now and without waiting to 6 May.

There is so much party politicking at the moment, it’s enough to drive you nuts trying to work out which party promises the most sensible policies while, at the same time, the Labour party can’t explain if, why their policies are so good, they haven’t implemented them until now.

There’s an interesting leader in The Independent this morning which suggests that a closely fought election would be a tonic for our democracy. There is much sense in this and I quote part of it.

‘For most people, who are not members of any party, a keenly fought campaign can only be a good thing. Landslide victories tend to follow lifeless campaigns in which the party that knows it is about to taste office (again) sinks into complacency and arrogance. If both main parties know they are in with a chance, the result may be bruising and sometimes ugly but the plus side is that party leaders will have to be more precise about their policies than they might choose to be, and will not be able to coast along on bland slogans about "change" or "investment versus cuts".’

This is right, of course. But I do wish they would hurry up and get on with it!
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Free Eggs?

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Residents of the Belgium town of Mouscron are being offered pairs of chickens as part of a campaign to reduce household waste.

Those participating in the scheme must have enough space in their gardens to house the birds and agree not to give them away or eat them for at least two years. They will also be given basic instruction on chicken-management.

I wonder if the idea would work over here? If so, there’d be some pretty hefty chickens wandering around!
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