Not About Lady Godiva!

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Now and again I look up some of the websites recording notable events on a day-by-day basis to see whether there is something interesting to chat about.

According to a number of websites, today is the day on which in 1678 Lady Godiva made her famous horse-ride though Coventry wearing just her long hair. I set about looking at some of the fables about this lady who, by her ride, persuaded her husband to remit some of the oppressive taxes he had levied on his tenants. I was going to ponder whether many of our lady MPs would do the same thing to relieve us of some of our tax burdens.

But it was a pointless exercise since I quickly found that Lady Godiva was, in fact, an 11th-century noblewoman and had been dead for over five hundred years by the date postulated by some of these websites.

I guess that the mistake was made by one website and then copied by some of the others. It demonstrated to me the need to check facts.

So as I couldn’t write about the Lady Godiva and her naked ride through Coventry, I looked around for something else to ponder on. In truth, there wasn’t much to interest me on another day dominated by politics, taxes, the economy and other such dire stories.

However, there was one; about Big Ben, the clock standing at the top of the 360-foot high St. Stephen’s Tower above the Houses of Parliament. For today is the day in 1859 when the clock struck the hours for the first time.

Big Ben featured large in my working life for one of its clock-faces could be seen from the flat we lived in after we got married, and I was to see it many times afterwards when working in London. For years I was to drive past it twice a day, checking my watch against it and noting when Parliament was sitting by the light atop its tower.

The original Palace of Westminster was destroyed by fire in 1834 and a new building was erected in the Perpendicular Gothic style. The architect was Charles Barry who was assisted by Augustus Pugin. Construction commenced in 1840 and continued for the next thirty years.

St. Stephen’s Tower was completed in 1859 and soon became known as Big Ben after its principal bell, a massive thing weighing 13.5 tons, cast by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Two months after it was first struck, the bell cracked and a lighter hammer was ultimately designed, the bell rotated and put back into use again three years later. Curiously, the bell was never repaired.

The clock itself was built by Dent & Co. to a design by a barrister and amateur horologer, Edmund Dennison, and the Astronomy Royal, Sir George Airy, and is renowned for its accuracy. Since it was put into service, it has suffered only one serious breakdown.

There are no conclusions to be drawn from this little essay, but I thought it might be interesting seeing that I couldn’t write about Lady Godiva!
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Groan!

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The Dissolution Honours List has now been published and so we learn that, along with a number of other oddballs, ‘Two Jags’ is to be elevated to the House of Lords.

That one piece of news screams out to me for the need of a radical reform of the Upper House!
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If Only ...

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The Chief Treasury Secretary, David Laws, has fallen on his sword and resigned after been caught out fiddling the MPs expense system by renting rooms owned by his partner.

Perhaps, if Mr Laws had come clean over his expenses when other MPs were queuing up to regularise their own positions, all might have been well. But he did not and he has now paid the price for his failure.

It is a great shame for undoubtedly the new government has, for the moment at least, lost a first class brain.
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One Way Out!

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I have often wondered why fortune-tellers and clairvoyants never seem to win the football pools or the lottery. What use then are these facilities, I ask myself?

One answer might be that they could let you off jury duty.

Such was the case last week at Livingston Sheriff’s Court when a television mindreading celebrity turned up for jury duty. The clerk of the court recognised him as ‘the human lie detector’ on a television chat show, decided that it would not be appropriate to use him and sent him home.

Well, it’s one way of getting out of jury service!
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Benefit Reform

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The Department for Work and Pensions has admitted that the benefits system was ‘breaking’ and in need of urgent attention. I think we all knew that!

The department has disclosed that almost five million people were on unemployment benefits, 1.4 million of whom had been receiving support for nine or more of the last ten years and that, in addition, 1.4 million under-25s were neither working nor in full-time education.

Nearly 700,000 families receive more than £15,000 a year in benefits and around 50,000 households receive annual benefits of more than £26,000, As this last is more than the average pre-tax wage for full-time workers, it is no wonder that so many benefit recipients are reluctant to get out and seek work. The annual cost of all this is £13 billions.

When you also learn that housing benefit has risen by 40 per cent under Labour to more than £14 billion, with some families receiving an absurd £93,000 a year, you have to agree with the new Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, that something needs to be done. So the government proposes to introduce a new ‘work programme’ which will offer help to get the unemployed into work – with sanctions if they refuse.

The 2.6 million people on Incapacity Benefit will also be subject to new assessments of their ability to work. It is interesting that since new assessment standards were introduced at the end of 2008, nine out of ten people who claimed to be too sick to work were found to be actually fit to take a job!

It must be clear to everyone that the country cannot afford rising benefit costs and that those who are able to work should be encouraged to do so when work is available. At the same time, those who do attempt to return to work should somehow not be penalised financially by doing so.

It will be a difficult thing to arrange and the draft proposals have already drawn forth angry protest. On the other hand, the former Work and Pensions Secretary, John Hutton, welcomed the ‘exciting’ reform plans.

And he should know!
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Gone!

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Perhaps few government proposals in recent years, other than the hated Poll Tax which bought about the downfall of Margaret Thatcher, have aroused so much hostility as the last government’s introduction of identity cards.

The introduction of these cards elicited claims that they were an intrusion and that the country was moving closer to a police state. Others took the view that many countries used identity cards and that their citizens didn’t seem to mind having them. Indeed, when living in America I had to have an ID card and it came in very handy when cashing cheques and making some purchases.

Anyway, the Home Secretary has now announced that the first bill of this new parliament, the Identity Documents Bill, will abolish identity cards within one hundred days. For many, this will be good news. But, perhaps, those who had lashed out £30 on a shiny new ID card won’t be too happy to learn that they will not be getting a refund.

What has come out of yesterday’s announcement is the news that the ID card scheme has so far cost the country £250 millions and that scrapping it will save £800 millions over the next ten years.

That’s some saving!
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Crop Circle Season

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Some of the morning newspapers show the latest crop circle which has appeared in a Wiltshire rape seed field. It is said that the complex spherical design is a ‘tantalising approximation’ of a mathematical formula called Euler’s Identity which is thought to be the ‘most beautiful and profound mathematical equation in the world’.

Mathematics bore me to tears, so I can’t make any comment on whether this crop circle does what the experts say it does. However, many of the crop circles I’ve seen are quite beautiful to look at even though you might need a helicopter to see them in their full splendour.

Are crop circles made by aliens trying to give us messages, the result of natural forces acting on the crops, or just elaborate hoaxes? The arguments for and against are endless and, except for those rare instances where the perpetrators of hoaxes own up to them, we may never know.

The one thing that the newspapers and television news teams very rarely comment upon is what the farmers affected by these circles feel about their crops being damaged.

What is certain is that the crop circle season is definitely upon us!
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Can One Prosecute A Dead Man?

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There’s an interesting snippet in the morning papers today. The family of the fugitive ex-Bosnian Serb army chief, Ratko Mladic, is seeking to have him declared officially dead.

Mladic is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on war crimes charges, including genocide, in connection with the 1992-95 Bosnia war. He has been on the run since 1975 and is thought to be hiding in Serbia.

Now his family want him declared dead so that his wife can collect a state pension and also sell his property. Which seems fair enough I suppose.

But, if she succeeds in declaring her husband officially dead - can he be prosecuted?

Can a dead man be prosecuted? It’s a very interesting question.
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‘Craven Abdication Of Responsibility’

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Last week I took a poke at the Crown Prosecution Service for foolishly sending a case to court involving a trivial injury by a Pritt Stick. I made the point that some cases require the application of a good dose of common sense.

Yesterday a man was cleared by Sheffield Crown Court of a charge of rape falsely brought by a woman who eighteen months earlier had made a similar false claim against a man who ended up committing suicide as a result.

In the latest case, the judge said, ‘The evidence did not, and was never going to, prove rape’. Judge Patrick Robertshaw went on to deliver a scathing attack on the Crown Prosecution Service, part of which is worth repeating here:

‘The prime overriding consideration in the CPS’s decision had been merely that the complainant wished the case to go ahead. It was little short of a craven abdication of responsibility for making an independent and fair minded assessment of the case. It is quite astonishing these decisions are made by those who simply do not have experience of what happens in Crown Court because they never come into Crown Court. They sit behind desks and make decisions that result in this sort of trial taking place.’

The shocking thing is that, after making such allegations against two innocent men, the woman involved cannot be named. The law here should be changed, and quickly.

One hopes that someone will shake up the Crown Prosecution Service who are also heavily criticised this morning for bringing the case against two ten-year-old boys accused of raping an eight-year-old girl who some say may merely have been playing ‘doctors and nurses’.
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Serious Lack Of Judgement!

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As yesterday, the morning papers are full of the disclosure that the Duchess of York sold access to her husband in a distasteful sting organised by the News of The World. She was filmed demanding £500,000 for this and was seen to take a payment of $40,000 in cash.

She has now apologised for her actions, saying that it was a ‘serious lack of judgement’. She can say that again for the affair has done the duchess no credit and undermines the work she does for charity.

The News of The World says that their attention became focussed on the duchess when a ‘close royal associate’ claimed she was already being paid for setting up deals with foreign businessmen without the knowledge of the duke.

If this is so, then the details ought to be brought into the public domain and subjected, if appropriate, to legal scrutiny.
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At Last!

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Warmer weather, said to be better than in some Mediterranean resorts, arrived yesterday along with clear-blue skies.

As we took our dogs out for their early morning walk on Two Tree Island, we spotted a green woodpecker scurrying along the road’s edges after the insects that run along them. The may blossom was diffusing the island with its delicate scent and, as background music, we had two pheasants calling to each other as well as a pair of nightingales.

Afterwards, the supermarket was jam-packed with shoppers stocking up with stuff for the barbecues that would be fired up at midday. On our return with our own shopping, the lawnmowers and strimmers could already be heard along with the sounds of a couple of DIYers banging away. In the gardens, children were playing to the music of the local blackbirds, and in our own garden the blue tits were busy foraging for their young. By lunchtime, the strangled jingles of the ice-cream van could be heard in the distance.

Truly, summer has arrived at long last.
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Science Fiction Becomes Fact

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Back in 1963, Pierre Boulle wrote ‘The Planet of The Apes’ in which earthlings travel to a distant planet by means of a solar-powered spaceship.

Something like this may be accomplished in the next few days when the Japanese satellite, Ikaros, is released from the H-IIA rocket which blasted off yesterday morning carrying a probe, Akatsuki, to study the inhospitable atmosphere of Venus which it will reach in December.

When it is released, Ikaros will unfurl an ultra-light solar sail which scientists hope will provide enough power to send the satellite on to Venus after Akatsuki.

What an exciting project - science fiction becoming a reality!
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Finding The Common Ground

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Tragedy in Spain, continued unrest in Thailand, deteriorating relations between the two Koreas, violence in Karachi, strikes in Greece, a wobbling euro and planned strikes of British Airways cabin staff despite record losses for the airline. The morning newspapers don’t make for pleasant reading.

But at least our new coalition government is cracking on. Among other things, they’ve already scrapped the introduction of identity cards along with the next generation of biometric passports, and have suspended the useless Home Improvement Packs prior to them also being scrapped. The freezing of council tax for at least one year is good news.

Inevitably, there are moans and groans about this or that party abandoning or modifying some of its policies. But that is what coalition government is about - finding the common ground and, hopefully, sorting out the country’s economic problems in the process.

If in this process, a lot of other things get sorted out to the nation’s good, then I am all for it.
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Assault With A Pritt Stick?

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Years ago most police prosecutions were overseen by an experienced police officer who looked through individual case notes and decided whether the evidence was such as to make proceeding worthwhile.

But then politicians tinkered with court systems and the Crown Prosecution Service became the body to decide whether cases should be sent to the courts. Since then there have been a number of instances when commonsense seems to have been thrown out of the window.

Take for example the recent case of the art teacher with an unblemished thirty-year career who was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm to a 12-year-old special needs pupil with, of all things, a Pritt Stick. In evidence it transpired that the superficial wound to the pupil’s thumb by the aforesaid glue stick was caused accidentally and the case was thrown out.

You’d have thought that someone would have looked at the case notes of this heinous crime and wondered why so much time and effort had been spent on it thus far. But no, the Crown Prosecution Service sent the case to court, incurring costs over a three-day trial in Swansea Crown Court estimated at £30,000.

The Home Secretary has promised to give some powers back to the police.

She could start by ordering that someone sort out the Crown Prosecution Service.
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What If?

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Life is a series of choices and one thing I learned over the years is that you have to live with them and their consequences. I also learned that you have to keep moving forward for there is simply no point in looking back and wondering ‘what if?.

The issue arises this morning from The Guardian’s revelation that Gordon Brown had drafted a resignation speech which he intended to give when he announced the date of the General Election, but was dissuaded from doing so by his so-called advisers.

His intention, faced with adverse opinion polls, was to let the electorate know that he would stand down as Prime Minister after the election in the hope that this would improve Labour’s chances in the polls.

There must be a number of people asking ‘what if? this morning!
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Absolute Scum

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Faced with two 16-year old youths who had desecrated Blackburn Cathedral by damaging a valuable cross and scribbling racist and sexually abusive graffiti on prayer books, the chairman of the magistrates’ bench said in sentencing: ‘Normal people would consider you absolute scum.’

His fellow magistrates agreed with him, but the clerk of the court objected to the language he used which she considered inappropriate. Unsurprisingly, the mother of one of the boys has lodged a complaint and an inquiry is now in progress.

Referring to the actions of the clerk, the magistrate later said, ‘She could have turned around and faced the bench and had a quiet word.’

He is absolutely right. Instead of wasting time looking into the language used by the magistrate and supported by many of us, the inquiry ought more to focus on why the court clerk bothered to interfere in this way.
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Stop Messing About With Trivia!

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We have a bright and shiny new government and I’d like to think that one of the messages it ought to send out to local councils is: ‘Stop Messing About With Trivia!’

Every day we hear of the sort of council silliness that causes untold stress and unhappiness to the people involved.

Like the 95-year-old lady in Swansea who was threatened with legal action because, mistakenly, she put an empty butter tub in the wrong recycling bag. Or the great-grandmother who, while picking up her dog’s poo in a Houghton-le-Spring park, was pounced upon by two so-called environmental enforcement officers who claimed she had picked up the wrong dog’s mess and handed her a £50 fixed penalty notice.

Once other people started screaming about these incidents the councils concerned backtracked. And so they should. Officials ought to concentrate their efforts on more important issues than these.
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We All Knew That!

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Apparently, there is a convention that outgoing ministers leave a note for their successors with advice about the job.

Certainly, former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne, left the customary note for his successor, David Laws.

It said simply: ‘I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left’.

I think we all knew that!
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Children’s Lies

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Scientists and researchers are forever looking into things which many people would say are obvious.

The latest such study was carried out by the Institute of Child Study in Toronto University who have discovered that almost all children lie and that those that do often reach the top of the pile.

Researchers tested 1,200 children aged two to sixteen and found that the most deceitful age was twelve when almost every child tells lies. From this, they deduce that children who learn to lie at an early age have better developed brains, marking them out as potential executives and leaders.

Any parent could have told them that children lie, but whether that marks them out as potential executives and leaders from a study of just 1,200 is a step too far in my view.

Maybe, it marks some of them out as future criminals and con artists!
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More Grief!

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The Department of Transport has issued a warning that the ash cloud from the still-erupting Icelandic Eyjafjallokull volcano could disrupt British airspace from today through to Tuesday.

If they are correct, the skies will clear just in time for the latest strike of British Airways cabin crew.

Good grief!
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The Delights And Perils Of Skinny-Dipping

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It is many years since I went skinny-dipping with a chum. It was at the end of a very hot midsummer day when we may have had a drink or four of his lethal home-made beer.

We walked out to the Ray, a sandbank near Southend, stripped off and dived in. The water sobered us up fairly quickly and we swam out to a small boat bobbing nearby, climbed in and rested for a while. Our rest was short-lived for we realised that the sandbank was becoming somehow narrower and that the tide was coming in. Boy!, did we jump back in the water and head for shore fairly quickly!

It was a wonderful evening for, as the sun disappeared and the lights of Southend lit the mud we now had to stumble across, something very magical happened.

Every footprint became brightly lit by a blue-white luminescence. We stopped at one point and looked back to where the tide was approaching in the distance. There behind us was a trail of footprints lit by enchanting but slowly fading lights in the mud.

We came to no harm that memorable evening, despite foolishly misjudging the tide, except getting our legs covered in mud up to our knees.

Which cannot be said for a Canadian tourist in New Zealand who decided to skinny-dip in the sea and then have a snooze on the beach afterwards in his unclad state.

This poor man woke to find his member had become swollen and painful with a red mark on it which suggested that it had been bitten. By the time he reached the nearest hospital, in the northern town of Dargaville, his member was severely swollen, his blood pressure was up and his heartbeat racing.

Doctors decided that he had been bitten by a katipo, a Maori name meaning ‘night-stinger’, a rare native spider related to the Australian redback and North American black widow spiders. The man then spent the next sixteen days in hospital suffering from a potentially fatal heart inflammation. After treatment with anti-venom medicine, he was able to return safely home to Canada.

By comparison, my skinny-dipping adventure all those years ago was thankfully memorable in a entirely different way!
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Traditions Upheld

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Despite the jokes about Ken Clarke’s normal attire, I for one was pleased to see him process into the Royal Courts of Justice yesterday dressed in ceremonial robes of wig, gown, stockings and silver-buckled shoes. It was good to see also that the new Solicitor General and Attorney General wore court wigs and gowns.

Now perhaps someone could could persuade the Speaker to follow suit (no pun intended) and restore the traditional ceremonial dress into the House of Commons.
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An Amazing Site

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Archaeologists in Xian in the Chinese province of Shaanxi researching the vast tomb complex of the First Emperor, Qin Shihuang, who reigned between 259 BC to 210 BC and who is credited with being the unifier of China, have unearthed another 114 of the life-sized terracotta warriors standing guard over the mausoleum.

In front of the emperor’s tomb itself are three pits containing individually fashioned and decorated warriors and horses, and so far over 8,000 of them have been excavated. Some of those unearthed recently, many of which were found in pieces, were brightly coloured and lying alongside their weapons and other items.

The site of the First Emperor’s resting place has been known for the 2,200 years of its existence. The earthen pyramid-shaped tomb mound is known as Mount Lishan and, according to one ancient text, the emperor is buried in a complex complete with palaces, offices, halls, towers and personal belongings as well as a scale model of China complete with rivers made of mercury beneath a ceiling showing the heavenly bodies. Scientists working above the tomb mound have detected high levels of mercury in and around it which suggests that there may indeed have been rivers of mercury inside.

The existence of three pits containing thousands of individually-crafted warriors, thought to have been made to resemble actual people, was unknown until 1974 when farmers drilling a well made the discovery. Since that date, archaeologists have unearthed an amazing variety of warriors, archers, horses, officials, acrobats, musicians, chariots and other artefacts some of which have been exposed to public view in a specially constructed museum. Experts believe that there may yet be other pits to be discovered.

Ancient texts say that over 700,000 people laboured for eleven years to build the emperor’s tomb. It seems that some time after his death the pits were robbed for their weapons and valuables and then put to the torch. This is borne out by archaeologists who found that many of the warriors were missing their weapons, were smashed and that some were found to have burn marks.

The Chinese have reservations about disturbing the First Emperor’s tomb, not least because they don’t want to disturb or destroy whatever is inside it. They fear also that dealing with large quantities of mercury could be both difficult and expensive. Nonetheless, should the tomb ever be excavated, it is sure to contain treasures such as might eclipse those of Tutankhamun.

It is no wonder that this sensational site has been designated by UNESCO as one of major cultural heritage.
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No Answers, Only Questions

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History of sorts is being made in the Old Bailey with the shocking trial of two ten-year-old boys accused of raping an eight-year-old girl in West London. They are believed to be the youngest ever in Britain to face trial for this offence.

I’ve often said that children of today seem more grown-up than they did in my day over fifty years ago. In truth, while they remain children, they probably mimic what they see on television or on their games consoles. Whether they have much understanding of what they see and do or what consequences follow is another thing.

Sex? - I didn’t know what it meant. Rape? - I’d never heard of the word. When I was ten years old, I was engrossed in the Dandy and Beano comics. I waited impatiently for the next weekly instalment of ‘Journey Into Space’ on the radio. I enjoyed watching ‘Children’s Hour’ on the television and especially the antics of Muffin the Mule. I kicked balls around with my chums and helped to teach the Minah birds in Clissold Park how to swear and fished for minnows in the lake there.

Along with the vast majority of my chums, I showed respect or else faced the consequences. Misbehave in a public space, we’d be approached by a park warden or a policeman to whom the greatest respect had to be shown lest a cheeky answer be followed by a clip round the ear.

Increasingly it seems that we hear about crimes committed by younger and younger children; crimes of burglary, theft, graffiti, violence and even murder are among them.

Where do these children get their ideas from? What are their parents teaching them? What do they learn in school? What do they see and learn around them?

More importantly, how can their behaviour be corrected? I have no answers but I do hope someone has for the children of today are the adults of tomorrow.
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Good Luck!

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What a riveting day it was yesterday, ending all the speculation and culminating not only with a new Prime Minister but a new form of government.

The morning dawns with our new leaders, Tory and Lib-Dem, talking positively about the future with all bickering put aside in a general will to make this next government work for the good of the country.

Best of all, those now in charge have all been elected and we have seen an end to the ‘unelected and the unelectable’ trying to control the country from behind the scenes.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg have shown that parties can co-operate for the good of the country. The country deserves decent government for a change.

Good luck to them!
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Get On With It!

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So Gordon Brown has finally announced his resignation, and the country waits with bated breath to see which of the parties the Lib-Dems will get into bed with - and for how long such a relationship will last.

I suppose you can’t blame the Lib-Dems for trying to get the best deal for their party, but I do wish they’d speed things up. This interim period of ‘will they, won’t they’ is driving the nation crazy.

What I’d like to know is: was Gordon pushed, and do we really have to put up with him for another four months?

The one person that came out of yesterday’s political toing and froing with honour was David Cameron who offered Nick Clegg a referendum on proportional representation. Now we learn that Clegg could be dancing with Labour on Gordon Brown’s cynical promise of electoral reform legislation.

The Lib-Dems got a quarter of the votes; thus, three-quarters of the electorate don’t have views on electoral reform. Why then should we be subjected to legislation on it without first a referendum on the issue?
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A Useful Life

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Today is the day on which we remember Saint Aurelian of Limoge.

Saint Aurelian, you may recall, was the third-century pagan priest who wanted to throw Martial into jail but was struck dead as he tried to do so. Martial brought him back to life, baptised him as a Christian, ordained him as a priest and later consecrated him as the second bishop of Limoge where his relics are now housed.

Maybe the party leaders should give up a few minutes to remember this saint. After all, he lived a very useful life after once being struck dead!
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The Luckiest Man

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You may not like his politics or his outspoken views, but most people would agree that the dapper Nigel Farage, former leader of the UK Independence Party, is a charming and loveable rogue.

On polling day, the small plane in which Farage was a passenger crashed in a field in Oxfordshire when the banner it was towing got wrapped around the plane’s tail. He and the pilot sustained various injuries but yesterday Farage was released from hospital saying that he thought he was the luckiest man alive. Was he going to celebrate his survival in his usual ebullient way? No, he was going home to bed ‘for quite a long time’.

I’m glad he’s emerged unscathed but sad that he didn’t unseat the Speaker in the election. When he’s recovered we can look forward to some more of his scathing comments about the bureaucrats in the European Parliament. Though it was very rude of him to say it, and led to him losing ten day’s expense allowances, I’m still chuckling over his scathing comments to the President of the European Council who he said had the ‘charisma of a damp rag’ and the ‘appearance of low grade bank clerk’.

What a shame Farage didn’t unseat the Speaker. He would have livened up Parliament for sure!
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The Case Of The Arctic Sea - Part Two

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Back in August I commented on the curious case of the Arctic Sea, a 4,000-ton Maltese cargo ship, crewed by 15 Russians and hijacked the previous month by a group of eight Estonians, Latvians and Russians after it sailed from Finland with a cargo of timber on board worth £1.1 million bound for the Algerian port of Bejaia.

Though the ship was tracked continuously by maritime officials in Malta, Finland, Sweden, Russia and possibly other countries, the ship was allowed to continue its voyage to an unknown destination until, after part of a Russian naval fleet was sent to intercept it four weeks later, the hijackers gave themselves up on 17 August in international waters off the west African coast.

I wondered at the time what was so important about this ship that a group of men felt motivated to hijack it, and why the Russians paid so much attention to it when the navies of other countries could have intercepted it sooner. There was much speculation that the ship contained an arms shipment or an air defence system for Iran, though we will never know of course.

One small part of this puzzle has been answered, for a Moscow court has given one of the eight hijackers a five-year jail term for piracy. The man, an Estonian, pleaded guilty to the offence, as has one other man. He and the others have yet to be sentenced.

It still remains a curious case, the moreso since the navies of other countries appear not to have taken an interest in the ship. I wonder why?
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Madness

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After two failed strikes costing the airline millions plus the effect of the airspace closure costing even more, British Airways cabin crew are threatening to strike once again with four waves of five-day walkouts.

A British Airways spokesman accused the crew’s union, Unite, of showing a callous disregard for the travelling public.

That’s quite right. But this madness also threatens BA’s financial situation as well.
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What A Disappointment!

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The General Election is a disappointment to many, not least the leaders of the three main parties.

Brown must be disappointed that Labour have lost so many seats and have now come second to the Tories.

Cameron must be disappointed that the Tories didn’t gain an outright win and that Brown seems resolved to hang on to power (though this may change in the fullness of time, of course).

And Clegg must be disappointed that, not only was ‘Cleggmania’ a busted flush, his party have actually lost seats.

The most disappointed of all must be the electorate who surely hoped that one or other party would have held a mandate to govern. Instead we have days, possibly weeks, of bickering negotiating and, worse still, a lengthy hung parliament to look forward to.

Can I foresee another General Election looming? Possibly! Groan!
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A Bright New Future For Some!

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So at long, very long, last the politicking, lying, back-stabbing and shouting are all over and we will learn in the morning what the future holds for us.

I have no crystal ball but I would guess that the new government, whichever one it will be, will launch into a series of deep spending cuts that will hit every one of us.

On the other hand, we will see a new collection of bright and enthusiastic MPs all eager to sign up for their new salaries, expenses and other perks. They’re not going to be much hurt by the things they will be agreeing will affect us!
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Might A Prayer Help?

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Until yesterday I had no idea that many local councils commence their sessions with prayers, as is the case with Bideford Town Council who have twice voted to maintain them.

However, one member of this council feels so strongly against the practice that he has involved the National Secular Society who say that it is a breach of the European Convention of Human Rights and who now seek a judicial review on it. They consider the ‘archaic practice’ is ‘not appropriate in modern-day Britain’.

Bideford’s Mayor, who as it happens is an agnostic anyway, said the legal action was ‘a bit of an overreaction’ and that he thought there were ‘far greater issues than whether we should pray before council meetings’. I agree with him.

We have some quaint customs in our country, and prayers before council meetings may be one of them. I have no strong feelings on the issue, particularly as some councils don’t follow the practice.

But it does seem to me that the legal action threatened by the NSS could involve this north Devon council in legal expenses they could ill-afford at a time when there are so many more important things to concern them.

Maybe, the local elections coming up will oust the troublesome councillor and so neatly put an end this test case! Might a prayer to this effect help?
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Quiet Contemplation

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I’ve often hankered for a boat of my own. Not a big one, but just a small one with a cuddy that I could anchor maybe a mile offshore and from which I could do a bit of quiet, contemplative fishing.

But I saw plenty of boating in Alaska and eventually decided the risks to a basic landlubber like me were not worth it. It struck me that real small-boat sailors, just like the ones that sail big ships, read and understand their charts, take careful note of their bearings and headings and have some sort of picture in their mind as to what was underneath their boat as they progressed. They are well-qualified to be out and about on the water.

Despite these practicalities, you hear plenty of horror stories of folk who set sail meaning to go around the world and take with them just a packet of cheese sandwiches, a bottle of beer and an AA book to guide them.

Just last week, one benighted fellow had to be rescued after going round the Isle of Sheppy thinking that he was, in fact, navigating his way around the British coastline.

And yesterday, another free spirit ran his boat aground in adverse weather conditions in the Thames just off Canvey Island after attempting to reach Rochester in Kent from London using only a car satellite navigation system to guide him. Coastguards discovered that the man and his companion had set sail without any charts, emergency flares or even a radio.

Quiet, contemplative fishing is one thing. But not knowing the ins and outs of small-boat sailing and taking all the proper precautions to stay alive is sheer stupidity!
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How Wars Start

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On 26 March an explosion sank the South Korean warship, Cheonan, killing 46 seamen in what was originally suspected as being the result of a contact with an old floating mine close to the North Korean border.

The two Koreas are still technically at war since the 1950/53 conflict ended without a peace treaty being signed, and the two countries have been clashing from time to time ever since.

The ship, which was split in two by the explosion, has now been salvaged and, although the remains are being examined by various naval experts, the South Korean Defence Minister believes that a torpedo strike is among the most likely causes. Without directly blaming North Korea for the disaster, he promised ‘punitive action’ against ‘the perpetrators’.

Let us hope that moderation is exercised in an area where, despite the tragedy, insensitive action could well spark another war.
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It’s Been A Bad Week For Gordon

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I suppose I can’t ignore the electioneering of the past week since all the newspapers are stuffed full of it, and the television channels have joined in with their collection of experts and pundits and daily opinion polls which jump up and down like the value of the pound to the dollar.

It’s been a bad week for Gordon Brown is the basic message, followed by speculation as to whether or not there will be a hung parliament between the Conservatives and Lib-Dem. This, in my view at any rate, may not be a bad thing since it might rein in the wildest of Tory ideas. There is also much merit in Nick Clegg’s oft-repeated plea to get the financial wizards of the three main parties together to sort the economy out. A bit of cross-party co-operation on other issues might not also come amiss.

But to return to the main story, one reviewed both by the columnists and the cartoonists this weekend. Gordon’s bad week.

I said earlier in the week that some of Gordon’s problems were brought about by the Labour party spin-doctors; the return to Gillian Duffy’s house to apologise in person for calling her a bigot was a case in point. Having telephoned her with an apology, he should have carried on with his campaign trail and not been deflected into what became a public humiliation for him. But ‘Duffygate’ derailed his campaign and ‘that woman’ has now confirmed she has thrown away her postal voting card despite a grovelling invitation to go to Number 10 for tea with Gordon and Sarah.

Of course, I should have said that most of Gordon’s problems were brought about by the Labour party spin-doctors. He was, after all, mainly following the scripts given him.

It has to be said that Gordon is not a natural television personality even though he sincerely believes in what he is fighting for. The accident which caused his blindness hasn’t helped his facial expressions and his Presbyterian upbringing probably suppresses any passion the man feels. Given this, the spin-doctors should have put him into situations where these two things didn’t matter though, to be truthful, I can’t think of any except for radio broadcasts where the studios were not monitored by television cameras to record every grimace or look of despair.

Then there was the line-up of senior party officials who, along with Gordon, all looked as glum as glum could possibly be, all photographed beneath posters which were of such insignificance that no-one remembers what they said. A scene made all the more bizarre when some hapless and distracted motorist crashed into the bus shelter nearby. Whatever message those posters were meant to convey was obliterated in a moment; the actual message received by the media was that Labour was crashing and the looks on the faces of their seniors showed just that.

Worst of all has been Gordon’s appearances at the ill-conceived leaders’ debates which have mainly distracted voters’ attentions from party policies to the performances of the three main personalities. How could Gordon have outshone the polish of the other two men? Gordon did his best to get across complicated financial figures and statistics but overdid them to the point where any memorable response to a question was obscured and, bizarrely smiling in the wrong places, he came across at times as decidedly odd. None of this helped his or the Labour cause and one assumes that some spin-doctors have been ‘spoken to’ subsequently. I guess too that the spin-doctors who suggested that a bronzed Tony Blair be parachuted in to make a couple of insignificant speeches realises now that this may not have been the best idea of the campaign so far either.

Labour was never going to be ultra-popular in this election. Thirteen years of Labour misrule have seen to that. Much of the odium for the past, and most certainly the current economic situation, falls on the shoulders of Gordon Brown and, sad to say, it is Gordon Brown who will lose this election for the Labour party.

I actually feel sorry for Gordon who I think has been very poorly served by the spin-doctors, though it has to be said that his initial cock-up for calling a Rochdale matron a bigot was entirely his own fault. Compared with the slick campaigns across the country by those advising Cameron and Clegg, that of the Labour party has been something of a shambles.

Is there any way of Labour surviving from this point? I can think of only one and, sadly for the man himself, that surely can only be Gordon’s speedy announcement that after this election he will stand down as leader of the party.
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Unnecessary

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A Pennsylvania court has fined a hunter around £4,500 plus court costs for illegally baiting a twenty-stone North American brown bear with doughnuts.

Parts of Pennsylvania allow people to apply for a licence to hunt bears during the three-day bear hunting season. A Wildlife Conservation Officer spotted the man in question driving a truck loaded with pastries one week before the start of the bear season. Suspicions were aroused and the officer checked the truck’s license number with bear check stations.

After his arrest, the man admitted using pastries to illegally bait what would have been the largest bear killed during the 2009 season. In addition to the fine, the man faces a possible three-year hunting ban.

Bears are a known problem in parts of America and, indeed, one trashed my local supermarket in Alaska one afternoon when it came down from the mountain when lured by the smell of cooking meat. Another came down for a bath in someone’s swimming pool one hot day when I was living in California. In both cases, the animals were tranquillised and transported to places where they couldn’t cause a problem.

I could never agree that private individuals could go out armed with powerful guns to hunt bears and this view wasn’t popular with a couple of my outdoor-type friends. It seemed to me that the best way of dealing with bears when they became a problem was to leave it to the professionals who could, if possible, remove the bears to where they couldn’t harm anyone. But, as I say, it was a minority view.

I suppose one of the problems with bears is that they become attracted to some of the things we humans like, and they have learned that we leave much stuff around. Visit one of the great picnic sites in north America or Canada and you will see signs asking you to take your litter and leftover food away with you so that they don’t attract bears which could then harm other visitors. When I lived in Alaska and California, my trash bins were of the bear-proof type, but that didn’t stop some people just dumping their rubbish which then attracted the racoons, mountain cats, bears and other animals. There was one tourist spot in Alaska where the local brown bear would emerge from the trees to feast on the remains of the salmon barbecues cooked up four or five times a day, though so far as I know no-one was ever harmed by this elderly creature which I’ve seen myself a couple of times.

But in this case, a magnificent beast has been killed illegally and unnecessarily.
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