A Start

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London’s Mayor, Boris Johnson, has asked the Prime Minister to consider bringing in a law requiring a minimum 50% participation in a strike ballot by union members which, he feels, will bring an end to the sort of expensive and disruptive strikes which have once again brought London to a standstill.

Whether or not you feel, as he does, that the latest strike by tube workers is a ‘nakedly political gesture’, it can’t be right that just a simple majority of members actually voting as presently provided by law can cause so much disruption. Something needs to give somewhere.

The CBI, who pointed out that only 33% of tube staff actually bothered to vote, would like new legislation to be introduced requiring 40% of balloted union members to be in favour of a strike.

At least that would be a start.
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Come On Dogs!

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It’s a few years since I tasted a real truffle, sliced and folded into a plate of pasta. I suppose they are an acquired taste, but I have to admit that its delicate flavour immediately appealed to me.

The subject arises this morning from the news that Prince Philip has been trying to cultivate a truffle plantation, a truffiere, at Sandringham. Having planted some appropriate saplings impregnated with the spores of the fungi, nothing happened. So he is bringing in some experts from Acqualagna in Italy to help hi. They will look at the soil, check its alkalinity and generally advise.

Perhaps the Prince should contact a primary school in Perth, where the pupils have dug up what was thought to be a Scottish summer truffle in their vegetable patch. However, an expert has said that the 250 gm fungi is not a variety he had ever seen before in Scotland. Notwithstanding, if edible, this truffle could be worth many hundreds of pounds.

Depending upon their quality, white truffles can fetch around €10,000 a kilo, while the black truffle can fetch around €3,490 a kilo.

Ollie and Mickey are always snuffling around in the undergrowth in our local woods. I wonder if they could snuffle me out a few truffles?
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The New ‘Bombing’ Of Guam

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It is twenty-five years since I visited Guam, though I can’t say that I saw much more of it than the quay to which the ship I happened to be on was tethered.

I did wander ashore in the morning and walked along the quayside to visit a Japanese cruise ship for a couple of hours. Afterwards, I recall taking a shady seat on the quay and having a cigarette while watching the Japanese ship sail. Had I known that Guam was infested with brown tree snakes, I might not have done that.

It seems that brown tree snakes were introduced to the otherwise snake-free island as stowaways from a cargo ship that called there in the 1940s. The invasive snakes quickly multiplied and are responsible for killing off many of the island’s native birds, lizards and fruit bats as well as causing major power outages when they coil themselves around power lines.

This piece of information comes to light with the bizarre news that the US Navy are planning to ‘bomb’ the island with frozen dead mice stuffed with paracetamol, a chemical that is poisonous to the snakes. Even more bizarrely, the plan is to attach cardboard wings and green streamers to the dead mice, dropping them from helicopters and letting them float down to catch on the tree branches where the snakes will find them while, at the same time, avoiding poisoning other jungle-floor creatures.

I’m not keen on snakes and wish the US Navy well with their plan.

But I shudder to think I might have had one of these critters fall on my head that hot day I sat in the shade of Guam and watched a ship sail!
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Too Comfortable?

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The subject of prisons is one that interests me for I have not long since retired from doing voluntary work in my local one.

I often ask myself whether or not prison is an answer to many crimes and I usually, but not always, come to the conclusion that it is. Sadly, I often think that prison is too comfortable for many prisoners who, though having lost their freedom temporarily, may enjoy better conditions in prison than they might at home.

This is partly borne out by the news that an unmarried 75-year-old career criminal who has spent fifty of the last 56 years in jail has been sent back to prison for two years for theft and handling stolen goods. Described as a ‘bit of a rascal’, this man committed his first crime in 1945 when he was nine, since when he has clocked up a total of 35 convictions. Rightly, the court heard that the man has been institutionalised by prison and ought to be ‘in his slippers in front of the fire’ rather than carrying out more burglaries. This is confirmed by his reaction to being sentenced; ‘OK, thanks’, he said, and gave the thumbs-up sign.

Perhaps this man represents one extreme, but it is interesting to note that the Justice Secretary has disclosed that the number of prisoners in England and Wales has reached an all-time high at 85,495, around 2,000 short of the prisons’ operational capacity. It is reported that he wants a greater emphasis placed on rehabilitation and community sentences.

I really don’t know what the answer is except to build more prisons. I have doubts that rehabilitation and community service achieves a great deal but, at the same time, I have reservations that prisons may be too comfortable for some people. Prisons come with a great variety of amenities not all of which are available to folk outside: decent food, education and training, gymnasiums and sports facilities, recreation areas, televisions in cells, laundry, chapel, etc., etc.

There is a popular comparison between prisons and work circulating on the internet:

PRISON VERSUS WORK

Prison: You spend the majority of your time in a 10x10 cell. Work: You spend the majority of your time in an 6x6 cubicle/office.

Prison: You get three meals a day fully paid for. Work: You get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it.

Prison: You get time off for good behaviour. Work: You get more work for good behaviour.

Prison: The warden locks and unlocks all the doors for you. Work: You must often carry a security card and open all the doors for yourself.

Prison: You can watch TV and play games. Work: You could get fired for watching TV and playing games.

Prison: You get your own toilet. Work: You have to share the toilet with some people who pee on the seat.

Prison: They allow your family and friends to visit. Work: You aren’t even supposed to speak to your family.

Prison: All expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work required. Work: You get to pay all your expenses to go to work, and they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.

Prison: You spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out. Work: You spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.

Prison: You must deal with sadistic wardens. Work: They are called managers.

Alas, there may be truth in some of this!
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More Commonsense

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In a newspaper interview, Lord Young has promised to rein in the health and safety madness which has beset this country for years along with the compensation culture that says someone must be held to account for everyday mishaps and accidents.

He promises a crackdown on the many no-win, no-fee television advertisements that encourage so many personal injury claims in which the legal fees are often many more times the amount of the claims themselves.

At the same time, Eric Pickles, the Local Government Secretary, promises to crackdown on the number of local government employees who earn more than the Prime Minister by cutting their salaries or by getting them to do more work. He says he also wants to restore weekly rubbish collections, look again at unreasonable parking restrictions and the revenues made by local councils from parking fines.

It’s about time we had some commonsense like this!
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Keep The ‘Real’ Bobbies

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The Taxpayers' Alliance asked Hampshire Constabulary for details of what had been achieved last year by its 330 PCSOs, who were each paid an average of £23,636 and who cost that county a total of £7.8 million in wages.

They discovered that the PCSOs, who have no powers of arrest and serve no real purpose except what one senior officer said was to ‘provide a visible presence on the streets’, detected just 50 crimes and handed out only 122 fines. So the productivity of PCSOs in that force was £156,000 per crime detected.

It makes you wonder what the position is around the country. If it is anything like as similar, then one hopes the coalition government will get rid of PCSOs and protect the employment of ‘real’ policemen as soon as possible.

This is more particularly relevant to Hampshire as their Chief Constable is considering reducing his force by a fifth, or 1,400 jobs.

Get rid of the PCSOs and keep the ‘real’ bobbies!
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Surely She Jests?

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Harriet Harman, Labour’s Deputy Leader, gave the closing speech to the party’s annual conference in Manchester yesterday, a speech which is traditionally a light-hearted affair.

Among other things she said that she was, ‘disappointed to be in opposition, but proud of what we achieved in government’.

That was the biggest joke of the lot. What achievements?
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