Gobble, gobble...

I wonder how many more times Treeza can get away with attacking the Tories' natural constituency before they actually open their dim rheumy eyes and finally realise they're being taking for a ride?

First we had the Gideon's Dividend Tax, the biggest single tax hike on small business owners in my lifetime, and now....introducing...the Dementia Tax, the most socialist piece of tax planning since the days of Harold Wilson.

Think about it - where are houses priced at the most ridiculous levels in this country? That's right London and the South. The residents of those homes are also the most likely to vote Tory anywhere in the UK. The Tories are saying that should those residents be unfortunate enough to need care, either in a home or at home, then all but £100K of the value of their home will be taken into account when paying for it.

Finchley semi-detached house owner Mr Smith, whose wife sadly passed on three years ago finds he needs care, and Finchley council take £650K of the utterly stupid £750K his house is "worth" into account. Mr Jones in a similar situation in an ex-mining village outside Doncaster has all of £50K of his identical house, worth £150K taken into account by Doncaster council. Ergo the "rich" (on paper at least) houseowner loses 86% of his house value, while the "poor" home owner loses a mere 33%. Socialism in action, in the distorted view of your average blinkered Tory, at any rate.

As ever, the party who reckon they're the ones to be trusted with the economy, you know, the same party who have accrued more debt since 2010 than all previous Labour governments combined, have not thought this through. One hopes that the fine print of this draconian and avoidable pernicious tax takes into account that in my little scenario above, Doncaster council are getting £600K less than Finchley council for the same provision of care. Either a future Tory government takes social care back into government hands, which is unlikely, or it distributes the funds fairly, in this case moves £300K from Finchley to Doncaster council. More likely, those living in the affluent South will get a far better standard of care in their dotage, and sod the rest of us.

If Corbyn's Labour Manifesto had included a policy along these lines, the media would have ripped him apart like rabid vultures for its blatant inequity and for not explaining it properly. Is too much to ask for similar scrutiny from journos in this case? That's a rhetorical question, by the way.

Sadly, there will still be more than enough turkeys voting for Xmas from the older generation to ensure a thumping Tory majority. We are all going to die...and our offspring are going to pay for it by having their inheritance taken away.

Update 12:50pm 22/5/17: In the inevitable first sign of backtracking from Weak & Wobbly Treeza, she is now hinting at an as yet unspecified cap on costs taken from house values towards care. This may mean that our friend from Finchley will "only" have his estate fork out £500K instead of £650K...possibly. So that's OK then...

A little more to the right, if you please...

Message to BBC Points of View, Wednesday 17th May 2017:

I am writing to complain at the ongoing and plainly obvious political bias of the BBC's political news reporting team. From James Harding, the Director of News and Current Affairs down, a distinct bias towards the Tories is seen on all the main news bulletins. To be fair, whoever they appoint at the top is going to have a political sympathy, but the BBC's much vaunted impartiality brief surely dictates that the reporters and editors Mr Harding employs have views across the political spectrum? This certainly does not seem to be the case at the moment. We all know about Laura Kuenssberg, who has been called "David Cameron's Attack Dog", among far less kind epithets, but it does not end there, oh no.

The Photoshopped words, etc, are not mine by the way, but sum it up neatly!

The biscuit was taken on the day of Labour's manifesto launch, when on the main early evening news bulletin Business Editor Kamal Ahmed presented a frankly ludicrous graphic that appeared to suggest that someone earning £123000 a year would suffer an additional tax burden of £23000 under Labour's planned tax hike for higher earners. Even the most mathematically challenged among the audience must have suspected something didn't add up!

For your viewers' information, the actual figure of extra tax raised in this scenario under Labour's plan, assuming the basic rate of tax and the bands and allowances remain unchanged is £2150. A bit of a difference! Walking to work today I calculated in my head (and confirmed it on a spreadsheet later), that in order to suffer extra tax of £23000 under Labour's plan, one would have to earn a whopping £513000. I never thought the BBC would stoop to fake news, but these are strange times indeed.

If I very grudgingly accept that this graphic was a simple mistake, which will no doubt be your explanation, then a retraction including the correct figures should be made at the same time on the main late evening news bulletin. I won't be holding my breath.

Finally, I would point out that I am not and never have been a member of the Labour Party.

Yours, Dismayed...see wot I did there? :)

...

An edited version of this is on its way to BBC Points of View, not that it will do any good. Those of you inclined to send a similar missive, follow this link:

https://ssl.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mysv/contact

Au revoir to The Quiet Man

All of you who know me, in the real world or on Farcebook will probably know or surmise that my X has always been for Labour, and you'd be mostly right. Currently my natural party of choice is doing what it does best, tearing itself apart. Regardless of the recriminations and regret over how they got to this place, much like that stupid referendum result, we have to grit our teeth and get on with it. I say "our", but in truth that's a bit wide of the mark, as I have never been a Labour member. I joined the Greens briefly after their relative success in the European Parliament elections in the mid 1980s, but the constant factional infighting that became instantly apparent put me off party membership for life. That said, as a natural Labour voter, I have every right to express my opinion, so here it is:

Jeremy Corbyn will never win a General Election - cue foaming at the mouth by the idealist faction.

He is a quiet and dignified man whose principles guide him, a rare thing in modern politics. Corbyn is a lifelong Eurosceptic, and the fact he had to compromise his principles in the recent referendum debacle, and therefore only reluctantly entered the fray at the last minute, saying too little far too late to make a difference is at least part of the reason why thousands of natural Labour voters, especially in the north of England were not swayed from their misguided intentions to vote Leave. With such a small majority for Leave, Corbyn only had to persuade a few hundred thousand to vote the other way and the result would have been different. The fact that today we see a previously reluctant Corbyn on the news saying that Article 50 should be invoked now, not after we have a new Tory PM at the helm tells you all you need to know. He probably voted Leave himself, and is suddenly becoming forceful over the outcome.

His heart was not in the Remain campaign, that much was obvious from his demeanour, when he was visible that is. A grudging comment along the lines of "I give the EU 7 out of 10" is hardly helpful, and the first time I heard him say Labour had to look at their immigration policy, the major factor for those northern ex-Labour voters, was the day before the vote. Way, way too late. I heard one of those same voters being asked on the news what they thought Corbyn's stance was on the referendum, and his answer was he had "no idea". Much as Corbyn obviously loathes the media, and he has good reason to, if he is to stand any chance in the next General Election, which now could be a lot earlier than expected, he needs his own Alistair Campbell making damn sure he appears every five minutes calling the Tories to account. In fact, forget the GE, that should be happening right now, and it should be like shooting fish in a barrel, but Corbyn prefers to remain near invisible. It frustrates the hell out me, and no doubt countless other Labour supporters away from the membership bubble.

Leaving the appallingly stupid EU vote aside, Corbyn's biggest problem is also the reason he was voted in as leader in the first place. Part of his calm and reasoned manner involves travelling up and down the country meeting real people and explaining his vision, in his consensual manner. Marvellous, I agree, and a breath of fresh air, but unfortunately idealism has not won an election since 1979, and in the modern TV age it is unlikely to ever again. Stump politics may have worked in the 1960s, and arguably a faux version worked as late as 1992, but convincing hundreds of people at a time of your case will not win a GE in the 21st century. Corbyn has failed miserably at communicating his message to the greater mass of the public. You cannot win an election by ignoring the media, especially TV.

Labour will never get back the Scottish vote, assuming they are even part of the UK by the next GE, and so to win enough seats not to get a majority necessarily, but to be able to form a workable coalition, Labour needs to win back its disaffected northern vote, most of whom now don't bother as they feel disenfranchised, and worryingly some vote UKIP. Even more difficult, they also need to get a fair proportion of middle England floating voters to switch sides from the Tories. It will be a very tough call for any leader, and with his current outlook, completely impossible for Corbyn.

Another factor is his seeming lack of gravitas, although to be fair my assumption is yet to be truly tested, but if I'm right, it never will be! All prominent world leaders need a statesman within, and in our recent history, Wilson had it, Callaghan didn't, Thatcher had it, Major didn't - although he seems to have grown into it years too late. Blair had it, Brown didn't. The common factor with all those who didn't is they all failed in the job. Being PM is not a bout being "nice" and "reasonable", it is about making hard choices and dealing with the consequences. Speaking of which, courage and gravitas is astonishingly lacking in that cowardly idiot Cameron, without whom we would not be in this dreadful fucking mess in the first place. Thanks, Dave, you absolute waste of space.

A modern party leader and hopeful Prime Minister has to make compromises every day, and both jobs are a triumph of pragmatism over idealism, that's the real world. Corbyn is no doubt an excellent constituency MP and is a great guy to have on your side if you want a new road crossing outside your local primary school, but PM material? Hardly, he's a back room man, an ideas man, and would make a good Secretary for Work and Pensions, but he is not and never will be PM material.

Unfortunately, the membership will no doubt re-elect Corbyn, the MPs who voted "no confidence" will defect and join up with the few Tories with a human face and a social conscience, and the Liberals...and lo...a New SDP to fill the missing centre, as nature and politics abhor a vacuum. It's 1981 all over again. Consequently the anti-Tory vote is split, Johnson gets in with the most right wing government we've ever seen in this country.

Do the Labour Party want a leader who will lead a marginal socialist rump in the House of Commons, satisfied to sit smugly on the sidelines occupying the moral high ground forever without a sniff of power, or do they want a leader who will be Prime Minister? I am a Labour voter, and to me, that is no choice at all...I might even join to give pragmatism one more vote.
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...just thought you needed cheering up...and I haven't even mentioned Trump! Yep, 2016 is most certainly the Year of Stupid. Fangyewandgudnite....

The Referendum Blues...Very Blue

On Thursday we here in the UK will be making the biggest decision of our voting lives, and for some of you who were over 18 on 6th June 1975 it is your second chance at determining the future of our country. 41 years ago that generation were young and hopeful of the future, as indeed they should be, and they and most of the rest of the country voted to stay in what was then the Common Market.

You are mostly all now in receipt of pensionable income of some form or other, and barring an absolute economic catastrophe your future income is safe, and more importantly, known. A large percentage of you have worked at some point or another for a Government department and therefore are probably well enough off to withstand the inevitable price rises that will follow a Brexit, an outcome most of you seem in favour of. Unfortunately those economic guarantees do not apply to your children and grandchildren, which is why I now ask you to think again.

I have read countless blogs, posts, articles on the Leave side of the fence, so I would like to think any Leavers reading this would do me the same courtesy, so, consider this if you will:

Whatever your reasons to vote Leave, do you really want to see a country where the opportunities to live and work anywhere within the EU without restriction is denied to your children and grandchildren? These are opportunities that some of you may have taken advantage of. Aside from the employment scenario, if any of you have married an EU citizen from another country, and brought them here to live - or vice-versa - after Brexit there is a good chance that will no longer be possible for your descendants, or at the very least only possible after waiting years for the correct paperwork. Do you really want to restrict their life chances that much, given that they are far more likely to want to travel abroad to find work than you were, and for a lot, finding a partner will follow.

Even the majority of your descendants who will always live and work in the UK will be directly affected as initially at least - and there's no guarantee we will ever recover fully - there will be an increase in unemployment as multi-nationals relocate or scale down their operations in favour of locations within the EU.

Additionally in a probably vain appeal to loftier ideals, the reason there has been no war in western Europe in over 70 years is down to the EU, and NATO. In fact the quest for lasting peace was one of the reasons the EU was formed. Breaking it up plays into the hands of nationalists and warmongers. Incidentally, I do not hear any Leavers wanting to leave NATO, where if any one of its members is attacked it is taken as an act of war on all of them. Isn't that "undemocratic", and even a close call to the dreaded and mythical European Army?

After that plea to your emotions, here are some pertinent hard facts that I would like you to think about:

The labour protection laws and benefits and H&S rules that gradually came into being since 1975 that you have benefitted from while employed all came about largely as a result of us being in the EU. Outside the EU there are no checks on what an increasingly right wing libertarian Government might want to repeal.

The mythical benefit to the NHS promised by the Leave campaign simply will not happen as the net monies we pay to the EU will not be there as the economy will undoubtedly shrink after a Brexit. Take a look at the financial pages of your paper - it's already happening as stock prices plummet in a nervous pre-vote market expecting the worst. This may affect your investments directly, investments that you rely on to maintain your standard of living, not to mention your children's investments for their retirement, one that whatever the outcome will never be as cushioned as that of the Baby Boomers, the most well-off generation of retirees this country has seen and will see for a long, long time.

A lot of you are being led by the Leave campaign and the media into fixating on immigration, and while the vast majority of you are not racists, we all know where those fears ultimately lead as recent events horrifically showed. In any event, leaving the EU will have little effect on immigration, otherwise why is it that over half of current net immigration is from outside the EU? And there is no way that Turkey will be joining the EU in either your or my lifetime. It only takes one member to object!

The more idealistic of you are voting Leave in some laudable but naive hope of better democracy. We had our chance at better democracy when we rejected PR a few years ago. Remember, we currently have a Government that was elected by less than a quarter of the electorate, who can force their legislation through an unelected second chamber flooded with unelected members for that purpose. It is ironic that the unelected chamber has 200 or so more members that the elected one. A Brexit will certainly lead to an unelected (that word again!) Government led by Boris Johnson, of a more right wing nature than we have ever seen in this country, as Cameron's position will be untenable following a Brexit. Rather puts complaints about the EU being undemocratic into perspective don't you think?

I could go on, but I doubt there is any point. If any Leavers are still reading, I congratulate you on keeping an open mind, but I fear that most have entrenched opinions and will not have read past the first paragraph, so I won't waste any more of your or my time. The EU is far from perfect, and yesterday I heard a German Eurocrat saying that whatever the outcome of the UK referendum it will cause the EU to take "a serious look at itself". Surely it is better to be part of that process than declining in isolation on the fringes? Vote Remain on Thursday 23rd June for a better future!

A Cautionary Tale...

Thursday May 16th 2019, a lovely day. The sun was shining, we were under a mini-heatwave, which at this time of the year meant the temperature was a pleasant 72°F. The weather was of minor concern to Jason, who had just woken to the sound of his alarm clock. Unemployed for nearly nine months, he still got up with his alarm at 7am, as he didn't fancy slipping into the morass of ennui that some of his mates wallowed in. Steve was actually proud of the fact that he never arose from his pit before noon, the lazy bugger.

Jason awoke with a rare smile on his careworn face, for he was looking forward to the weekend, as a £300 scratchcard win a couple of days ago has given him the wherewithal to take his wife out for a meal for...well, he couldn't remember exactly when it last happened, must've been over a year ago. Linda and Jase both liked a curry, and luckily Linda lived in one of the few conurbations where a few curry houses still existed, as the coalition crackdown on migrant workers had led to thousands of restaurant staff leaving the country, some willingly, some not so, rather than put up with constant suspicion and finger pointing, not to mention the steady withdrawal of benefit entitlement.

Since they lost the flat, Jason didn't get to see Linda much now, as he couldn't afford the exorbitant return train fare charged by the new rail franchise to her parent's place 70 miles away. There's half the win gone already...still let's not worry about that, for after he had given his mum a rare £50 there will still just about be enough left over for the meal, that's the main thing. Food prices had shot up since we left the EU two years ago, and he had wanted to give his mum all the money, as things were not exactly flush for his parents either, since their teachers' pensions had been reduced by 25% as part of a "rationalisation" in the last coalition Budget. "No, you take Linda out, it will do you both the power of good" she had said, bless her.

After that initial and uncommon burst of waking optimism, he got out of bed and promptly nearly fell over, the pain in his ankle reminding him that he couldn't put off going to A&E any longer. He had vainly tried getting a doctor's appointment, armed for disappointment as it was well known that unofficially you only got a appointment now if you were usefully employed and at death's door, or could afford to make a hefty donation to to the "Surgery Roof Restoration Fund" as it was euphemistically known. Jason's anticipated kickback came with knobs on as he thought he heard the disinterested receptionist at the other end of the phone suppress a cynical snort as he described his condition. "Try A&E" she had said and brusquely hung up. That prospect filled Jason with dread, as he resigned himself to losing a day and most of a night by spending the now average 18 hours in the desperately overcrowded and frankly dangerously grubby A&E waiting area. The long waiting time and dilapidated state of his local NHS hospital (at least he had one) being the result of the coalition's cutbacks, privatisation, and draconian immigration restrictions leading to hospitals up and down the land being unable get the staff to do the menial jobs, jobs that only the most desperate of the indigenous population would apply for.

Jason hobbled to the bathroom, only to find it already occupied by his Dad. "Fuck" thought our Jase, as Dad never spent less than half an hour in there of a morning. "It's either cross my legs or go piss in the kitchen sink". Oh the joys of living with your parents, something over half of Jason's 30-something generation were now doing out of economic necessity because housing, both owned and rented was way out of reach for the ever-increasing millions in Jason's jobless position what with the huge reductions in Housing Benefit, as well as being an increasingly unrealistic aspiration for those on the average working wage, which was shrinking every month, that and the burgeoning unemployment rates again thanks to the UK leaving the EU.

Jason was ever grateful to his parents for putting up with him and keeping him housed, fed and clothed after his meagre unemployment benefit stopped three months into his current workless state and he lost the marital flat, Linda's low wage not being anywhere near enough to support them both. Jason was thankful they didn't have kids to worry about on top of all that.

Jason's last job was at the local car plant until it announced that owing to the UK's imminent leaving of the EU it was relocating to Lille in France three months prior to our upping anchor and sailing off into the open arms of the Third World. They did offer Jase a position over there, but he just couldn't see himself putting up with all those Frenchies, a decision he soon came to regret, as France would no longer let him in as a now non-EU citizen. Desperation was taking hold for our hero, and it looked like he now had no choice but to apply for one of the hundreds of very low paid hospital cleaner jobs, assuming he's not forced into one on Workfare. Even if he could get paid a wage for it, the minimum wage had been frozen since the election, and let's face it, it was nowhere near what you could independently live on anyway, especially as the powers that be had recently withdrawn the right to tax credit to people living with their parents.

As Jason limped downstairs towards the kitchen, his bladder by now tripping the light fantastic and praying his Mum wasn't in there, Jason fretted over the circumstances that have led to this coming day out at the hospital. If only the bloody council would fill in those potholes instead of wasting their money on that immigration processing facility, then I wouldn't have tripped while crossing the road last week, he pondered. He could forget suing as that was now a legislative minefield that only the wealthy could afford to negotiate. Still, it could be worse, his mate Dave had been in prison for nearly four months now on suspicion of an unspecified terrorism-related offence, simply because some lackey frightened for their job at PC World found some writings on Arab sponsored militant Islamic groups on his computer when he took it there for some routine maintenance. The fact that Dave was doing a thesis on Middle Eastern politics didn't seem to have any effect on his case, and now we were no longer part of the EU Human Rights Act, the State could do whatever it liked if the "T" word was bandied about enough. They wouldn't even allow visitors, the bastards.

Thankful to arrive at the kitchen to find it empty, Jason stood on the footstool and blissfully relieved himself into the kitchen sink, as he ruminated some more on his unfortunately brainy mate. Dave had always been a leftie, and was forever banging on about justice and equality and other subjects Jason couldn't give a toss about, let alone grasp, but Dave always made him laugh and always got his round in, that was what really mattered after all, eh? Smiling at the memory, Jason recalled that Dave once tried to physically stop him from voting "Out" in the EU referendum by unsuccessfully attempting to lock him in his flat on that fateful Thursday. Fuck, that really tested the friendship that did! For all that, it was slowly dawning on Jason like a sunrise through the thick sulphurous fog of his prejudice-clouded brain that he along with many thousands of other dimwits voting for UKIP in droves back in 2015, thereby giving Farage's poisonous little cabal a big say in the current Tory/UKIP coalition, and then voting "Out" in the EU Referendum were possibly the two biggest mistakes he had ever made in a voting booth...apart from that time he voted after an afternoon session at the pub and threw up all over the ballot box, but that's another story.

The politics of ignorance

Today's headline-grabbing burst of Newspeak centered around the annual EU budget adjustment that sees the UK having to stump up a staggering £1.7bn by the end of the month, or Barroso's sending the boys round. This announcement sees the majority of the nation howling in rage in typical knee-jerk fashion at the unjust nature of the out of control EU monster.

But...hang on a minute. This is an annual adjustment, which means it happens every year...yes, really. In some years past we have received refunds, just as in some years we have made payments. Barroso, being a seasoned Brussels apparatchik has made the public announcement of this frankly staggering amount that our Treasury must have known about for months for one reason and one reason only - David Dipshit Cameron. A man who continues to dig himself into a deeper and deeper hole, and a man who conversely is the only serious threat from the UK to the Brussels status quo.

There is a by-election coming up that the Tories are desperate not to lose to the beer'n'fags myopic little Englanders (and they're the liberal wing) who constitute UKIP. By announcing that the UK must pay £1.7bn yesterday, or Liz will find her favourite horse's head where Phil The Greek should be in her bed, Barroso is feeding on the knee-jerk reactions that the majority of the UK are prone to in these situations, thereby making the Tories chances of winning that seat much less than they otherwise would have been. Not that it's difficult, but the Eton chancer has more than met his match in Barroso, for sure.

Now, I do not consider myself particularly intelligent, but the second I heard this headline on BBC Breakfast I thought there must be more to this than meets the eye. Ten minutes of research will confirm that in the past we've had refunds from the annual adjustment. You didn't see Camerong wringing his hands in liberal guilt and suggesting we give our refund to Spain or Greece, who obviously needed it more, did you? Obviously, spending ten minutes on the internet finding out what lies behind the headline before mouthing off in the manner of an ignoramus is too much for most people.

Yes, the amount is way too much when you consider it amounts to a fifth of our entire net annual contribution. Its esoteric calculation, that includes estimates of the amount made in our black economy, is yet another example of the excessive and blundering bureaucracy at the heart of EU being its main failing point, but the principal behind it is right, the richer nations should support those not doing so well. Trying to square that with giving France and Germany rebates takes more than a bit of swallowing it has to be said. Why not scrap all this adjustment nonsense and have fixed budgets?
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The way the BBC reported this on tonight's Six'O'Clock News was a tad disappointing. They got it right up to the point where they explained the UK's annual EU contribution, which, if I remember correctly was £8.3bn. The logical thing to have followed that with was "...and Germany contributes £xbn, and France £xbn". Instead, the £8.3bn is left hanging there in the minds of the wilfully ignorant like a maniacally grinning bile magnet. Fail.
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I'm not finished yet, oh no. The reason we have to make this extra payment is because, relative to all the other economies in the EU, we are growing at a much faster rate. All well and good, but I don't feel any better off now than I did six years ago, how about you?

Of course the only reason our economy is doing so well on paper is down to growing employment rates that are almost exclusively the result of Multinat Corp Inc (based in Luxembourg, thereby getting away with paying no tax on their profits here, natch) being able to employ vast numbers at minimum wage rates. This is what makes the UK so attractive to immigrants, not just from outside the EU, but from within it as well. To a lot of these people, these shit jobs at shit wages represent a nirvana that their home countries cannot supply.

Immigration per sé is not the problem, although you would have to be a Guardian-reading Tarquin or Jemina living in splendid Brit-only white-only isolation in the Cotswolds not to have noticed that the sheer numbers coming in have got out of hand. No, the problem is that since THAT BLOODY WOMAN successive governments of both colours have continued at a pace with the deregulation she started in 1979 to the point where it is for all intents and purposes irreversible. Wages are suppressed to the bare minimum and unions have become an irrelevance with absolutely no power to stop the continual draining of money and resources from the general population to the elite. This laissez-faire attitude towards the control of capitalism's excesses and the resultant boom in poorly paid jobs is what attracts the immigrants from their poverty stricken countries of origin, and who can blame them?

As for "they come over here and live off benefits they've not contributed to", well, that too is an almighty red herring of convenience for the right wing. Again, ten minutes of research will tell you that the amount of immigrants fraudulently claiming benefits is a tiny proportion of the whole.

As I said, I do not consider myself brain-dazzlingly intelligent, so if I can do the research if only to confirm what my political instincts tell me anyway, why can't anyone else?
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Now, time to put another cat picture up. Have a nice weekend.
Roger McNasty

Behind you!

My conspiracy radar went into maximum twitch mode this morning when the news on BBC Breakfast informed me that Canadian authorities had arrested two guys who were planning to bomb a passenger train en route from Toronto to New York. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (the image of bomb-waving terrorists being arrested by some blokes in bright red on horseback crosses my mind and makes me smile) admitted that their plan, such as it was, had barely got beyond the "What if?" stage, or at least that's the impression you got from reading between the lines. Good on the Canucks, you may rightly think, they've shown the FBI how it's done and actually nipped an atrocity in the bud.

Then they have to go and spoil it by suggesting connections to that handy terrorist suspect coverall, Al and his Quaedas, an not just that, but the I-ran branch. I have long suspected that while there may be an organisation of that name, the word "organisation" is in itself highly questionable. More like a bunch of extremists who all like the idea of blowing up a few Westerners now and then, who occasionally meet in cafés to drink very strong green tea and smoke the pipe and rant at each other about the Yankee infidel through their beards.

Back in the USA the FBI are, or it seems were, as they've gone very quiet on the subject, desperately trying to link those two bastards in Boston to AQ, or at least they were before they were caught. Once it turned out their suspects were a) beardless and b) white they knew that they were probably looking at home-grown nutcases. The gnarled old cynic in me would suggest that the Yanks are praying that the suspect who survived pegs it in hospital, for, once both of them are brown bread, they can link them to whoever they please with no comeback.

Also, have you noticed how American nutjobs who gun down school children are never linked to AQ, oh no, they're just lone wolves that no amount of gun control would stop, at least not while the NRA are paying for the Senators' holidays. On the other hand as soon as anything explosive and larger than a bullet is involved, it must be the fault of those pesky Islamists.

Anyway, I've drifted off topic slightly. Not only do the Mounties link it to AQ, but AQ "in Iran", a country with no known connections to AQ, and a country where the Yankee military-industrial complex sees the next killing, literal and metaphorical, being made. Yeah, let's leave North Korea alone, they might actually cause us some damage should we invade, but I-ran? Bring it on! Yeah, right, whoop, whoop. It's called "preparing the ground" and if they repeat these spurious allegations enough times they'll convince themselves it's true. It worked in I-raq, did it not?

You can almost smell the testosterone from here, and that's just Hilary Clinton. Thank gawd for John Kerry that's all I can say.
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I have a t-shirt that bears the legend "Twatter - because no-one wants to know what you had for breakfast", an article of clothing I can no longer wear in public as I've joined the ranks of Twits, hypocrite that I am! Purely for promotional purposes you understand, as it is indeed true that folk do seem to like telling each other what they had for breakfast. What is that all about?

The promo thing is for my music scribblings and I'll hold my hands up and admit it actually seems to work.
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Do not feed the animal

Ice Ice Baby

It's going to be a wee bit chilly next week, with Shoesville's maximum temperature in the limited daylight for the entire week expected to be a mere 1C, with predicted night time minimums on a progressive downward scale to a snot-freezing -10C by a week on Sunday. Don't you just love winter?

Then of course, on the following Friday the 21st, the world ends. What I want to know is does it end at the beginning or end of that day? It would be a bit annoying if it was the former as I have a birthday meal booked on the evening of the 21st at the best restaurant in town, the Thai Nam Tip. Oi, Itzamná, let me have my fave scrumptious beef yellow curry before you blast us into the netherworld, ya bastid...

Speaking of restaurants it was good to see that the best (only?) true Indian restaurant in the county was back on form last week, when Team Squonk spent most of its quiz winnings on a damn good nosh at Pooja's in Wellingborough. Phill and I nearly always have the same starter, sharing a Chili Paneer and a plate of Mogo Chips (luvvly chips made from cassava roots), and I have to say that last week's was probably the best I've ever experienced. And the service was unusually quick too. In fact the whole thing was a complete contrast to the utter nightmare of the previous visit, which was so bad it put B and I off the place for months; suffice to say, all is forgiven.

Having spent the last two weeks away from the Vic in a semi-successful attempt at boosting the coffers, next Tuesday we will return and conquer...or more likely come 3rd.
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Judging by the news in this country it seems that Kate Middleton is the only woman ever to become pregnant, and therefore the also first to suffer anaemia. Bloody 'ell they don't half lay it on thick when a Royal gets up the duff, do they not? Earlier this week while watching BBC Breakfast having suffered over half the previous half an hour on the bloody subject of the posh foetus, we return from the local news to Susannah Reid (gawd she's no fun that woman - bring back Sian!) kicking off with "Let's talk babies". "No Susannah, let's not talk effin babies" shouts me at the telly reaching for the off button. She redeems herself slightly before I get to push the button by saying "Will it be a boy, a girl, or both?" Yes, that's what we want, the first hermaphrodite Royal!
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Politicians are all slime, well mostly, but Gideon takes the biscuit...well, actually he snatches it from the grasp of the defenceless with one hand while picking their pockets with the other. All in it together? Well, him and his mates are, yes, giving themselves tax breaks they don't need while slashing at the subsistence existence of those who rely on the State for support. Not to mention keeping all his share dividends in megacorps healthy by continuing to let the likes of Amazon ship their profits to Luxembourg. It's bloody embarrassing when we rely the pressure groups like 38 Degrees to shame Starbucks into paying £20m in Corporation Tax over 3 years (mmmm, go a long way that will, doncha think?) while our rulers lie through their teeth about how everyone makes a contribution to cutting the deficit.

We're all going to die, possibly on my birthday! Yippee!

No Brain Count

Shoeville's town council has a very long history of being utter pants, dating right back to the time of the Industrial Revolution when the fat controllers were...ahem..."persuaded" by rich landowners surrounding the town that having a mainline train station in the town and thus train tracks across their land was a bad idea, thus isolating the place for years until sense was seen and a branch line installed. To this day, Shoesville, a county town with a population of almost 200000 and the third largest town in the country remains marginalised when it comes to rail travel.

We no longer have a daily local paper and local news in print is courtesy of the free papers we get through our letter boxes, if you're in an area where these are delivered. We only get them intermittently at home, but at work, which is much closer to town centre, we get them every week. Glancing at the front page of today's Herald & Post I espy the headline "Council's five day wait to reveal fountain bug."

Not Tivoli

Those of you who know Shoesville will be aware of the magnificent plumes of water that rise to all of five feet out of the pavement at the bottom end of the Market Square. Magnificent, doncha think? The council paid almost £100000 for it too, dolts that they are, in an age where painful cuts are being made to essential services,

Anyway, the story under that headline relates to the council waiting five days before it told anyone that the reason they turned the fountain off on Tuesday 14th August was not, as they originally claimed, due to "strong winds", but actually because the results of tests on the water the previous day had revealed higher than normal traces of legionella and e-coli in the water! I can quite believe that there was no evil intent in this cock-up, as blundering idiocy is ingrained into our local leaders (no matter what their political persuasion, I hasten to add) like comedy is ingrained into Liverpool FC.

I was in town on the rather warm Monday when the tests were carried out and walked past the "fountain", where kids were messing about in the water as kids do, and I do recall walking directly through the fountain mist. So far I've not gone down with flu-like symptoms thank Thor, but God knows what the parents of those kids are going through!
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Disappointment & Denial

Disappointment

We have been going to Pooja in Wellingborough, the only authentic Indian restaurant in Northamptonshire, for seven years or thereabouts; Phill will know as he can recall every meal everyone has ever had in any restaurant anywhere for the entire passage of time! In that time we have come to expect somewhat haphazard service, but as the food eventually produced is absolutely bonza, a few disruptions in the service continuum are no problem.

Last night we went over there to spend some of Team Squonk's quiz winnings, and, for the first time ever, I had to leave part of my main course as it was inedible. The service was also of probably the worst standard we have experienced too. The starters came out ok, roughly at the same time, but the first thing I noticed was the over the top fiery heat of Phill and I's trusted starter, the good old Chili Paneer. This wasn't too much of a problem as that dish can be a bit variable depending on the chef; it was ok is about all I can say.

Then our orders for the main courses were taken, and we waited. And we waited. And we waited. In the meantime a family who had come in after us had already been served, not good.

Forty minutes later the mains started to arrive, well partly. Mrs P and Colin had no rice to go with their orders, Phill and I had only one of the two noodle dishes we were going to share, but B did at least get her dhosa. As the food that had arrived was lukewarm at best, obviously having sat in the kitchen waiting to be taken out for some time, we all decided to start eating it rather than wait for the rest. The first noodle dish Phill and I shared was ok, if a tad greasy. After about ten minutes, the rice and our second noodle dish arrived. On taking the first mouthful I was definitely not expecting crunchy noodles! The bloody things had either dried out and been reheated or not cooked; judging by their appearance I'd guess the former.

Added to all this according to B the loos were in a dreadful state. I refused to pay for the second noodle dish, and in hindsight, if B and I had not been with Phill and his missus who are (were?) big fans of the place I probably would have kicked off more and refused to pay the bill at all. As B said, if that had been a first time experience for any of us we would not be going back there again.

This slip in standards seems to have coincided with the departure of manager Majood back to his native country. Come back  Majood, we may not ever have understood a word we were saying to one another, but you sure knew how to do your job!
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Denial

It's Sunday, so let's have a religious rant!

I come from a religious family, my parents and grandparents were all non-conformist Protestants of one kind or another, ranging from Methodists to Baptists to Congregationalists. My sole surviving aunt from my mum's side of the family is a Quaker, and a more lovely right-on person you could not hope to meet. In her eighties, she stayed with the anti-capitalist protestors outside St Pauls for a day last year, good on her! If had I still been persuaded by any form of organised Christian religion, this is the branch I would naturally have gravitated to. For those who do not know anything about Quakerism, suffice to say that since their formation in the mid 17th century they have come across as puritan inclined proto-hippies!

When I turned 14 my dad, obviously sensing my growing detachment from the family church, and the usual grunting teenage resentment at being dragged off to church and Sunday school every week told me that I was old enough to make up my own mind, and if I didn't want to come along any more, then fine. Huzzah for good old British lower middle class liberalism! So I stayed home, playing my obscure prog records on Sunday morning, and the rest as they say, is history.

This preamble is to illustrate that I do actually know what I'm talking about when it comes to Protestant Christian religion, and I would draw your attention to the debate raging at the National Trust's bizarre decision to include Creationist theory in their exhibits at the museum attached to the 60 million year old Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. This archaeological wonder is proven to be 60 million years old, that is an indisputable FACT.

Wallace Thompson, Chairman of the National Trust has this to say: "We fully accept the Trust's commitment to its position on how the Causeway was formed, but this new centre both respects and acknowledges an alternative viewpoint and the continuing debate, and that means it will be a welcoming and enriching experience for all who visit." Why must they acknowledge an alternative viewpoint for an established fact, if not about how it was formed, then certainly about its age, the main crux of loony Creationist argument? If we let the NT get away with this woolly-headed political correctness-gone-mad thinking, then there will be calls for Creationist Theory to be taught in schools, God forbid! (I'm an agnostic, so I've every right to say God forbid...heheheh).

I'm sure if my parents were alive today they would have absolutely no truck with this movement of fuckwitted stupendous and downright dangerous ignorance; the latest unwanted import to our bedraggled Isle from across the pond.

The fact that this has is happening in Northern Ireland, a place where loony right wing Protestant extremism still exists only just under the surface of the now perceived normality of the place is no surprise.

If this dangerous chink in the armour of Brit common sense annoys you as much as it does me, join the FB group protesting against it.
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Kick Out The Jams

I had to check my calendar....no it's not April 1st, this is a real living nightmare.

THIS IS AN UNBELIEVABLY FUCKING STUPID IDEA

Those libertarian self-serving greedy fuckers that call themselves the UK Government have come up with their most stupid, and indeed stupendously frightening idea yet. Whoever dreamt up privatising parts of the police service deserves a thorough kicking, metaphorically, literally, karmically, and in every other imaginable way.

Forget the ill thought out seismic upheavals they have planned for the NHS, this latest example of scary libertarian thinking, if I you will excuse the oxymoron, could, nay should be the thing that makes all those idiots who voted this latest lot of under-achieving undeserving chinless Eton-Oxbridge failures that are the Tory Party into office actually rise up from their self-centered view of the world and make Cameron stop this idiotic idea in its tracks.

Surely anyone with a quantum amount of common sense can see that this hare-brained scheme is a recipe for corruption. Just imagine Cops'R'Us shareholders' rights superceding those of victims, and it does not take much imagination to envisage the consequences. Perhaps News International will apply to look after the police horses? Fuck me this makes me angry!

As for those of us who were daft enough to be conned by Clegg's TV friendly fizzog into voting Lib-Dem, well I reckon it's time for another stroll along The Embankment, this time in millions.
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Twenty minutes...

...is the average length of one side of those old fashioned LP thingys, or it is the time it takes to get dressed, or it is the length of time of your average knee-trembler, or it is the time it takes to fry some bacon and make a bacon sarnie, amongst a host of other things.

It is also the journey time saved, if, as looks likely the new high speed rail link between London and Birmingham gets the nod next week. At a cost of £17,000,000,000 that works out at £850,000,000 per minute or £14,166,667 per second of time saved for the few thousand who make the journey between the two cities every year. Or, to put it another way, £170,000,000 a mile, or £96,591 per yard to build. Even footballers don't get paid that much per yard!

That's not to mention the horrendous environmental cost as the proposed route carves its way through many currently quiet and naturally beautiful parts of the countryside, nor does it account for the human cost making currently valuable country des res' in The Chilterns unsellable. OK maybe that last bit won't have you shedding tears, but you get the point. It also renders Shoesville even more redundant than it is now as the main rail link bypasses our town yet again. I have seen no evidence of our perennially useless council lobbying for the route to go through our town, which may have tempered my rantings, but their apparent lack of action does not surprise me in the slightest.

The Government would be well advised to spend the money improving the existing network and by plugging the financial holes in an NHS hospital or ten. I strongly suspect that there are more than a few MPs and local councillors who are on the boards of companies set to make a killing from this dreadful white elephant. It could be the cue for the middle class uprising that brings down Cameroon. We can only hope.

Room 101

The last remaining vestige of socialist utopia in our benighted isle as imagined by Atlee's post-war Labour Government is the very wonderful NHS, currently under threat of privatisation by stealth from out ghastly rulers. One of many nightmares fuelled by the current Tory led coalition is the end of the free at point of service NHS, something I dread should that ever happen.

Yesterday saw my third operation in just under a year on the wires and pulleys in my hands, or to use the technical term, correction of Dupuytren's Contracture. As this is my third time I now know exactly what to expect. While I cannot fault the excellent standards of the actual operation, the amount of attendant bureaucracy is mind-boggling.

When I got my first letter in early September informing me of the operation time, I noticed that they wanted me at the hospital on Wednesday 12th October by 7:15am! That would mean getting up by 6am at the latest, and those of you that know me will realise that this filled me with some dread. I am not and never have been a "mornings" person. I still regularly recall my dear old dad getting up at the rise of the sun, and wandering about the house whistling at some ungodly hour. The memory makes me smile and cringe at the same time. How can anyone be so cheerful so bloody early?!

Anyway, I digress. I phoned the appointments people and asked if they could find me a date later in the month at a slightly later time, say 9am - still quite early enough, thank you, but if not I'd take it anyway as I want the op over and done with. "OK" she said, "we'll see what we can do". A fortnight passed and no call or letter, so I ring again and was informed by answer-phone that the lady in charge of appointments was on holiday, and could I ring my consultant's secretary, which I duly did. Of course this meant explaining the situation again, and she told me that the reason the original slot was so early was so that the consultant could see me before the operation. I asked her what time he arrived in the morning, and she avoided the question - obviously a lot later than 7:15am I'll bet. I and the other patients would just end up sitting around for hours with the chill air conditioned breeze wafting through the gaps on those horrible do-up-at-the-back smock things they make you wear.

She was actually very helpful and said she'd look into why I had not been contacted and get back to me. A few days later a revised appointment letter arrived..great, they've changed the slot... for Wednesday 19th October...at 7:15am. It made me laugh that did! So I rang up the secretary again and asked what was the point of changing the date if the time slot remained the same? "Oh" she says, "well, you should have explained yourself better". I smiled to myself and bit my tongue, "Never mind" sez I , "I'll take it anyway"..."Hold on" she replied, put the phone down and came back and said "How about 10am, same day? It'll mean you won't see the consultant beforehand"". "Great" sez I "He's seen me twice already, I'm sure he knows what he's doing". Just why they couldn't have done that first time round I don't know.

I arrived at the hospital yesterday and guess what, the consultant saw me anyway, and I was under the knife within an hour. When I got back to the ward the guy in the next bed who had been operated on directly before me was moaning about having to turn up at 7:15am and then sitting around for two hours while nothing happened. Wahey!

Bureaucracy addendum - In the short time between arriving at the hospital and being put under the lights (lovely reflection of my op to watch in the light cover by the the way!) I was asked the same pre-op questions by the ward nurse, the theatre nurse (who supplied The Stone Roses on her iPod as operation music - marvellous!), and the anaesthetist, who all filled in three different versions of exactly the same form. This doesn't really surprise me, having to deal with HMRC in my day job. Anything the Government get involved in is bound to be in at least triplicate!


The cuts affecting the NHS were in evidence in the ward after the op. The discharge nurse (in the sense of leaving the ward, not messy liquids..heheh) asked if I would need any painkillers. and as I have not used any of the co-codamol prescribed after the first op for that or the second op, I told her no thanks. A bit of soreness does not necessitate medication in my opinion, unless you're a complete wuss. Medications are handed out all too freely these days if you ask me. She told me that was just as well as they had run out of the "proper" stuff (co-codamol) and could only offer me paracetamol in any case.

Despite all the endless layers of officialdom and general waiting around, the NHS is a truly marvellous thing and the coalition will rue the day their pernicious and self-serving little Health Bill becomes law.

If the Evil Coalition get their way, which is depressingly likely, the first stages of creeping NHS privatisation will soon be upon us, enabling Dave's mates to set up phoney health companies in order to make vast profits out of the rest of us, and we will all be nostalgic for the old ways of endless paper shuffling related above. There's still time to sign 38 Degrees' petition to to stop the changes, so if you haven't already signed it, get off your arse (well, hit a few keys on your keyboard) and do it now! At nearly half a million signatures one can only hope, perhaps naively I'll admit, that some notice is taken in Westminster.

The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strnen

First impressions are nearly always defining, nowhere more so than in business, be they from face to face meetings or from written communication. We received this magnificently mangled email at work today from the Yorkshire & Clydesdale Bank:

Hi There,

I am the new business development manager for the Yorkshire and Clydesdale bank covering Northamptonshire,

As your aware over the last couple of years small business's have felt the brunt of the recession effects and in this time most SME customer have felt that they literally have not had adequate support from there bankers, That's not the case with the Yorkshire and Clydesdale banks, We have increased the level of investment in this sector ranging money being available to lend to increased staff count to service our current and perspective clients.

I would like the opportunity if possible to be able to come out and explain our proposition further, This will cost nothing but your time and hopefully you will find it worthwhile as most of the accountants i have had the pleasure to present to have.

Please contact me to arrange a time/date.

Johnny Badgramerr
Business Development Manager

That second paragraph is priceless, and if anyone can tell me what the last sentence actually means I'd be amazed. The message is so bad I thought it was spam, but no, it actually came from the Yorkshire and Clydesdale bank (sic). Would I entrust my clients to someone who shouldn't be allowed to have a word processor on their computer? What do you think?!
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A heartening example of language being used for good occurred on Facebook at lunchtime today, with me and young black rapper engaging in a great conversation on the BBC Breakfast page about respect (all typos left untouched, it is only Facebook after all):

Me
Respect is a much misunderstood word, particularly amongst the kind who went looting, who when they talk about respect actually mean fear. Respect is often an instant thing on meeting someone for the first time. If they behave in a civilised and courteous manner towards you, and you to them, respect is given and taken. On the other hand if the newcomer comes across as aggressive, arrogant, foul mouthed, or obviously has a chip on their shoulder, or deliberately speaks in a manner they know you won't understand, then I for one will not respect that person. I may fear them, but I will not respect them.

MC Jay-Zed (not his actual pseudonym, obviously!)
What type of behavious would you call "civilised and courteous "

And are you suggesting that "aggressive, arrogant, foul mouthed, or obviously has a chip on their shoulder" type behavour is only to be found in the 'streets'...? Or would you agree you can also find these behaviours in offices up and down the country?

Finally, what makes you think people go around deliberately speaking in a manor they know you won't understand?

Me
"Civilised & courteous" behaviour - isn't that self-explanatory?

"Agressive" etc - No of course not. Anyone from any walk of life can be disrespectful.

Last bit - I've had it happen, that's how I know!

JZ
I'm asking for your definition of "Civilised & courteous", I didn't ask if it was self explanitory

Middle part - ok cool...

And does an incidence provide enough grounds for generalization?

Me
Ok "Civilised & courteous" to me means acting in a manner that will engender a pleasant experience for both on a first meeting. Or, to put it another way "do unto others as you would have do unto you". Some people (and I don't just mean the young) barge into initial meetings like they have a point to prove even if they have never met the person before. If I meet someone, and they are polite and listen to what I say, even if they disagree with it, and I do the same to them, and instant respect is formed.

OK I may be making a generalisation, but I can only base my thoughts on my experience. And how do you know it's not happened more than once?

JZ
cool, we're generally on the same page.

And at least you're a lot more reasonable than a lot of the other people on here posting comments

Me
Thanks for that. We are obviously from entirely different backgrounds, but have ended up respecting one another, which is what it's all about really. Have a good day :)

JZ
and yourself, good sir.


I now seem to be down wid da kidz - who'da thunk it! After all the shit that has gone down recently, that little "chat" made me realise that the world isn't completely full of fuckwits and arseholes after all. There is hope!
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And finally......the Monday daily award for Mental Deficiency In The Face Of Domesticity is claimed by......yours truly.

Our office is above a restaurant, which although it has a state of the art air conditioning system cannot but help leave lingering cooking smells in our workplace, particularly after a weekend.

So, about eighteen months ago I bought one of those plug in air freshener things, got it out of the packaging, inserted the three perfume bottles, plugged it in and left it. I was always a bit underwhelmed by its effect, for although you could faintly smell its perfumed fragrances, the cooking smells usually won.

I also wondered why, when it said on the packet that the refills should last an average of three months, it was still working after a year, and indeed today! I thought "this is rubbish, I'll get a different brand". So I took it apart to find that the top of one of the three bottles had split and it was nearly empty, while the other two were almost full. Closer investigation revealed that the tops unscrewed, and lo, for they did issue forth smells of pleasantness. I had inserted the bottles but omitted to take the tops off! What a plank!
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"Rah Rah Rah, We'll Smash The Oiks"

Boy, what sickener that week was, compounded by the populist knee-jerk reactions of our glorious leaders.

First up was Mr Eton Rifles with his ill-considered comments that convicted looters should have their benefits stopped. Yeah, right, let's deprive the lovable scum of the little income they have and make them even more pre-disposed to thieving and sticking metaphorical middle fingers up at authority in the form of bricks, fire bombs and worse. Great idea Dave. What's more, quite a few of the looters (I refuse to use the word "rioters" as it lends them undeserved political kudos) had jobs, so what about them?

Tonight on the news Labour leader and panda lookey-likey Ed Milibrand showed himself to be completely out of his depth when confronted with the articulate and righteous anger of one of his own supporters outside Brixton tube station on a walkabout. The 40 something lady was imploring her party's leader to do something about the youth who have nothing and feel completely disenfranchised by our laissez-faire capitalist society, and his reply was something along the lines of "Thank you, and it's been good to meet you" accompanied by a false smile and a thousand yard stare, after which he moved on, surrounded by party minders. That actually doesn't come across half as awful in print as the totally cringeworthy scene it proved to be on TV. The man has all the gravitas of a smelly day old damp flannel. If any Americans read this, he's a douche bag!

As for Corporal Clegg, has he said anything at all? If he has I've missed it.

I repeat what I said last time - withdraw all our armed forces from everywhere abroad and use the billions saved to set up a Government sponsored Community National Service for all 16 to 21 year olds not in education or employment. Even better, what about setting up a National Apprenticeship Program, for we've all heard countless times about the skills shortage.

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Despite having done this blog thing for a while now, my keyboard dyslexia shows no signs of improving. My most common error seems to be the words "with the" which usually come out as withe, as my fingers obviously cannot keep up with my amazing speed of thought. I decided to type this bit without correcting any erors and because as a result I'm probably concentrating harder there will be none...possibbly...let's see...oh, well, nearly.
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London's Burning

I should be working, not writing this, but after seeing the news this morning I am a mass of negative emotion ranging from frustration to fear to anger, as I am sure you are too. I need to get this off my chest before I can even begin to think straight enough to work, so here goes. Written through a red mist this may well be riddled with typos and inconsistencies, but hopefully you'll get my general drift.

The continuing rioting and looting in London, now spread to Liverpool, Nottingham, Birmingham, Leeds and Bristol, and on to God knows where else tonight, shows what a thin and flimsy veneer civilisation actually is. The ensuing chaos also shows up our rulers for the ineffective bunch of self-serving mealy mouthed stuffed shirts and blouses that they are.

Before Labour supporters jump on the Tories and their reckless cutting as being behind this, I consider that had the catalyst for all this happened before May 2010 the end result would have been exactly the same. The Metropolitan Police and the Tory politicians are all far too quick to blame all this on what they call "criminal gangs" out on a stealing spree, but we all know it goes much deeper than that. There must have been thousands involved in the eight or nine different looting locations in London last night; are you telling me that they were all part of "criminal gangs"? Yes, probably a hardcore element were organised crime, but the vast majority of these vile scum were teenage to mid-twenties chancers, out for a new pair of trainers or iPhone or HDTV, or whatever they could get their worthless hands on.

The reaction of Home Secretary Theresa May and London MP Dianne Abbott on this morning's BBC Breakfast was a bit of eye opener too. first we had Ms Abbot, who is mainly known for her left wing liberal (to put it mildly) viewpoint, saying that the riots cannot be allowed to continue, and any means should be deployed to stop them breaking out again. This of course implies a curfew and sending in the Army to enforce it, a view that I certainly agree with. May on the other hand sat there metaphorically wringing her hands and blathering on about consensual policing, and asking the parents of the scum to make sure that they know where there precious kiddywinks are. They already know, and what's more, you daft bitch, I'll bet some of them joined in too! Abbott/May in role reversal indeed.

Once this frankly terrifying outbreak of social unrest has died down, what you may well ask, can be done to stop it? Well for one, pull ALL our troops out of foreign climes now, and use the huge amount of money saved to set up a form of Community National Service for all 16 to 21 year olds not in work or education. The first six months of the no doubt paltry sentences that will be handed down to the few looters who get caught and convicted should be served repairing the damage they caused to their own communities on a 12 hour day basis, supervised by coppers with whips. OK maybe that last bit is going a bit far, I'm not after a job with the Daily Mail, honest! Ah, I see I seem to have found my battered sense of humour so now maybe it's time to stop.
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Oh, and while all this has been kicking off' our private pensions, already lying whimpering on the ground after several body blows in the last two trading days, are now being given a further kicking, and are heading for intensive care as we speak. Isn't life grand?
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When I'm 65....or 68...or older...

Today sees the national public service strike over pension rights, a strike that is proving highly divisive and will probably end in the public service workers losing a lot of the goodwill they accumulated during and after the anti cuts march in London earlier this year.

There's an awful lot of willful ignorance being bandied about by the public service unions over the pensions issue, probably deliberately so, as they could not tell their members the truth when it comes to public sector pensions for fear of losing their positions of power.

First, here's some simple maths. Let's assume that two workers, one public one private sector who end their careers today on identical salaries having had identical average salaries over their working lives. Joe Public will have a pension four or five times the size of Fred Private, or, to put it another way, Fred Private would have had to contribute at least five times the amount of Joe Public over his working life to his private pension to arrive at a pot large enough to achieve a similar future monthly pension payout to Joe Public. This is because public sector pensions are based on final or average salaries, a luxury afforded to only about 10% (and falling) of private sector workers, most of whom have to put up with the much less attractive defined contribution schemes. The reason for the continued decline in private sector final/average salary schemes is simple - they are unaffordable as there is no investment plan available that gives the returns required to finance them.

It used to be the case that public sector workers earned far less than their private sector counterparts, and the generous pension scheme was a compensation, but this earnings anomaly simply no longer applies. According to Paul Lewis of The Money Programme the annual cost of public sector pensions is some £30bn, of which £26bn is paid for through exisiting low level employees' contributions and Employers' NI contributions. The shortfall of £4bn per year (or up to £6bn depending who you listen to) is being paid for by the tax payer. By the way, £4bn is two thirds of the value of the Coalition cuts programme currently chopping away. Yes, of course "the tax payer" includes Joe Public, but why should Fred Private contribute to Joe's pension via his taxes when his own pension is paltry in comparison? Also, as the population lives for longer these costs will only go one way, at least for the short term. It is simply unsustainable, even Ed Millibrand acknowledges this. Another example of the over generous public sector pension scheme is Joe's ability to take his retirement pension at 60. I can think of six people I know personally who have done this, and who are all doing very nicely thank you. This is being kicked into touch under the planned changes, and is there honestly any argument to be made against it?

The main reason for this strike appears to be the planned increase in Joe Public's contribution to his pension. It is calculated that a teacher will face a 50% increase in contributions to 9.6%. They should count themselves lucky that even after the proposed changes their pensions will still be way in excess of what Fred Private could ever afford.

The Tories, as ever, have shot themselves in foot in the way they have mis-handled this, or rather the way in which they have not handled it at all, simply hoping they can impose all the changes in one fell swoop and without negotiation. Cameron would have done well not to mention pension changes and deficit cuts in the same speech as it gives the unions the excuse they're looking for, linking the two when there is no link. No, the public sector did not cause the current crisis, but I'm afraid that's entirely irrelevant where this dispute is concerned. Public sector pensions are unaffordable in their current guise, regardless of whether or not the country is up to its neck in debt.

The unions for their part would have been far better advised to make the stike against the too hasty and excessive cuts and the philosophy behind them. I marched with you in London on that theme, but you can take a hike on this one I'm afraid!

Tony Blair - A Journey

A not unexpectedly weighty tome this, and in some parts, especially the overlong treatises on foreign policy, not the easiest of reads, but not as dry as one might have expected. Written in a conversational style, Blair comes across as a man with a sharp mind, but without intellectual baggage, pseudo or otherwise. In fact he maybe tries too hard to come across as the Ordinary Bloke he plainly is not.

It is nigh on impossible to write a review of a political autobiography objectively as the reviewer inevitably brings his or her own political bias to the table, however I'll try. Taking the book as a series of themes, this is my take...

New Labour
Blair was elected to Parliament when Labour was under the ideologically pure but hopeless leadership of Michael Foot, and Blair obviously has affection for Foot, but not for his party's then hidebound and completely out of touch policies. Blair sees the modernisation of the Labour Party as essential to making them electable and he's probably right, but he fails to see that his taking Labour to the centre and thereby pulling the Conservatives in the same direction has contributed in no small part to the general population's political apathy.

It is repeated many times in the latter parts of the book that in Blair's opinion if Brown was to deviate an inch from New Labour's tenet of introducing the free market into public services as a means of modernisation then they would lose to the Tories. I disagree completely with that idea. As one of thousands of disaffected Labour voters I voted Lib Dem in 2010 (God help me) purely because Gordon Brown was not and never would be Prime Minister material, not because he disagreed with Blair's version of modernisation.

Blair can be justifiably proud of dragging the Welfare State into the modern age which was the fulcrum of New Labour thinking, but I'm afraid for me New Labour remains a compromise, not a vision.

Gordon Brown
The relationship is described in minute detail and Blair goes to great lengths to describe Brown's treachery in daring to disagree with what some might see as Blair's Conservative tendencies where private capital is concerned, disguised as progressivism, but he does it in a manner that places the blame on GB's team, not on the man himself. He distills the ongoing and understandable resentment on Brown's part for Blair not handing over when initially promised by stating that he would only go if GB promised to continue New Labour's (read Blair's) reform program, something Brown was increasingly reluctant to do. Indeed why should he have given a promise to effectively put his own ideas on the back burner?

However, Blair goes out of his way to praise Brown's numerous contributions and talents on more than a few occasions, so it's obvious Blair still has affection for his old friend. It will be interesting to read Brown's take on the breakdown of the relationship, should he ever write it.

War & Peace
We've all got our opinions on the rights and wrongs of the Iraq war, and no amount of justification by Blair is going to change my view that the conflict was plainly wrong. Blair ultimately justifies the conflict by way of stating that if we hadn't removed Saddam when we did, he would have had to be removed at some later point anyway.

Firstly I thought that the reason for the war was Saddam's capacity to make and deploy WMDs? Secondly, why would "we" have had to remove him at a later point? I would have thought the first countries to be involved in any extraction would be Iraq's Arab neighbours, should the need arise.

Blair makes the point that Great Britain as a nation has a prominent role to play in world politics as a direct result of his ensuring our involvement in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq etc. I think most folk in our tiny nation stuck here on the edge of Europe do not share our leaders' (of whatever political persuasion) obsession with clinging on to some vestige of long forgotten (by the population at least) Imperial power. The billions to be spent on renewing Trident, a symbol more than a useful military tool, and a decision Blair almost said no to but didn't have the balls, would be far better spent on incentivising the economy to ease the lot of the burgeoning jobless total.

It is plain that Blair does carry the weight of those who died in the various conflicts he had us involved in, and he is deeply sorry for the fact, but there remains no doubt in his mind he made the right decision where Iraq was concerned.  I don't suppose we should have expected anything different on that front.

The achievement that New Labour and Blair should rightly be applauded for and the achievement that should have been Blair's legacy was getting the Northern Ireland peace agreement finalised and working against seemingly impossible odds. Mo Mowlem is portrayed as being only peripheral to the triumph, as Blair clearly views it as his legacy. If he can pull off a similar feat in his new role as Middle East Envoy with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict then Iraq may be forgiven.

The media
Blair started out as the media darling, spun them into at first annoyance and later downright hostility, and ended by being hunted at every turn.

Complaining that the media tried to bury him and and New Labour in the sleaze storm over cash for honours and the comical sideline of gravity's effects on Prescott's trousers when in the presence of his diary secretary, Blair says being hounded out that way would have been "reputationally ghastly".

I consider complaining about the media having wound them round his pinky for so long is somewhat disingenuous.

Regrets
A few, but too few to mention. Oh, alright then...he regrets the Fox Hunting legislation, and the Freedom Of Information Act. The former shows he's out of touch with majority opinion and the latter shows contempt for that same majority.


In conclusion, this book will not alter what most folk see as defining Blair - The Iraq War, and entrenched opinions will not change. I've come out of reading this with more respect for the man, but I don't like him now any more than before, but that's probably how he would want it.

Train Kept A-Rollin'*

* Except when there's the wrong kind of snow, or leaves, or signal failure at East Cheam, or....

As you've probably heard there is soon to be reform of the UK's rail network (read cuts) following a government study of their value for money released today. Our rail network apparently costs 30% more to run than comparable networks on mainland Europe. Could that alarming statistic have anything to do with the fact that administering a self created highly fragmented privatised system puts the UK at an instant cost disadvantage to state run networks in Europe perchance? So much so that the state subsidy to our wonderfully successful privatised railway system at £5 billion is five times greater after inflation than it was pre-privatisation.

When asked about the forthcoming reforms, Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said on Breakfast this morning that introducing a sliding scale of rail fares just before and just after peak times would increase choice:

"Instead of having a massive cliff edge between the peak fare and the off-peak fare you could have a couple of intermediate bands in between, so that people have more choices about the times they travel."

What this means in practice is that fares will increase in the hours immediately before and after peak times, ie in the times when most non-commuters want to travel. For "people have more choices" read passengers will suffer increased fares at the times they want to make their journeys. We already pay for annual increases in ticket prices way above inflation and now this. Interestingly since Hammond said this the review has been published and concludes that fares should be "more equitable" and are "already too high", and Hammond's quote above has mysteriously vanished from the BBC report.

Another great idea Hammond bestowed on us minnions was to build more parking spaces at stations in order to raise more money. Exactly where are these extra passengers going to fit? On the train roof or hanging out of doors perhaps? At least the Indians will feel at home!

Mind you what do you expect from a Tory Government, all they are interested in is increased profits for the major shareholders (which ironically include those paragons of choochoo virtue, the German and French rail companies) while they all swan around in chauffeur driven limos. On the other side of the fence, 70s throwback rail union chief Bob Crow said this about proposed further changes in working practices for his members:  - "To turn around and say working practices have not changed in decades is completely untrue," he said. "The railway runs 7-days a week, 24-hours a day. If you are talking about changing working practices to make people work longer, that is a step in the wrong direction." Oh come on, train drivers and "Revenue Officers" (ticket collectors/sellers) are on seriously good money, and a bit more flexibility on their part and you may indeed see passenger trains running "7-days a week, 24-hours a day", something I can assure Mr Crow has yet to happen in my lifetime. The 24/7 quote is another that has since vanished by the way.

Crow would no doubt object, and this time rightly so, to another mooted idea, the reducing of the number of on-train staff. Quite how this could be acheived is beyond me as B and I have often made entire 100 mile plus journeys without once having our tickets checked. No wonder fare evasion is a problem. Mind you, if want to buy an over-priced polystyrene cup of molten iron while on board from the many vendors blocking aisles with their trolleys of inedible tat, that's no problem.
 
Tory politicians may well point the finger at the rail unions and the Brontosaurus that is Bob Crow, who let's face it is an easy and somewhat large target, but the biggest share of the blame for the state of our once proud rail network has to be taken by their party. All in all rail privatisation has been a complete nightmare for the service user, what with inflation busting annual ticket price increases, a fare system so complicated you need a degree in theoretical mathematics to understand it, overcrowded trains, crazy route duplications in the name of so-called competition, cancelled or severely restricted services every Bank Holiday when they chose to do maintenance work, some godawful stations (Clapham Junction, Birmingham New Street to name two), arbitrary route and timetable changes, rude and unhelpful station staff, etc etc.

One way billions could be saved at a stroke is the scapping of the utterly unecessary, environmentally decimating and hyper expensive new high speed line between London and Birmingham which as far as I can make out is being built to shave 30 minutes off journey times between the two cities. Woohoo! I'll bet it will still be cheaper by plane, and, unless you book your ticket five months in advance and thereby travel when the train companies want you to but not when you want to, by car too!

Tory ideology has wrecked our railway system, just as the same blinkered thinking threatens to wreck the NHS....but that's another story.

If Labour made rail re-nationalisation an election pledge it would certainly grab my vote and I'm sure many thousands of others too, but unfortunately my turning up at the pub quiz in a frock is more likely!
 
I am most dischuffed....see what I did there?
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Monday sees a return to NGH for yours truly as an operation is booked to fix the Dupuytren's Contracture in my left ring finger, or in layman's terms, to fix the wires and pulleys in my left hand. This time I may be put under a general anaesthetic as this op is going to take longer than the one on my right hand last year. Although my right ring finger is undoubtedly in a better state than before the op, and the grip in the right hand is slowly returning, I would only term it a qualified success as it has left me with occasional pain when having to grip with my right hand. Hopefully this will improve over time.

Am I nervous? Yes, slightly, as this time I know what to expect, which is not always a good thing. The aftermath will be fun too, as being left handed I will have to rely on my "lesser" and not fully functioning right maw for a couple of weeks. Expect lots of typos as I regale you with all the gory details including pictures of scars ;)
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That Lady Gaga was on Breakfast this morning too. She's a bit daffy is she not? Undoubtedly as popular as she is what with 34 million Facebook followers, I can safely say I have never knowingly heard one of her "tunes", for I am an old fart.
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Lunchtime musings

I sent this missive to local freesheet the Herald & Post today:

In Talking Point in your May 5th edition, Brian Binley MP uses the Australian experience of AV to make the disingenuous claim that "six out of ten voters (in Australia) want the AV system scrapped". Firstly to have a contentious claim like that published on the day of the referendum when there is no time for a reply shows a bias on the part of your paper toward the No camp. Secondly, and this would be the proper riposte had there been time to give it, the statement Mr Binley makes is simply not right.

Respected Australian political journalist Antony Green debunks the same claim made by Mr Binley's boss in a speech back in February. Mr Green says "The problem is, the Prime Minister's statement (and therefore Mr Binley's claim) is based on a single survey, and that survey was one in which the Alternative Vote was not even an option." The survey asked whether the voters were in favour of the current compulsory preferential system, where one is obliged to rank all the candidates, or to just vote for one candidate. Again to quote Mr Green "What was not offered in this survey was the Alternative Vote option being offered in the UK. The Alternative Vote is is optional rather than compulsory (my highlights) preferential voting, a system used at elections in the Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland. As the survey stated, it is compulsory to give a preference for every candidate on the ballot paper to vote at Australian federal elections." So our AV was not offered as a choice in this survey, as the optional or compulsory distinction is a contentious issue in Australian politics. The survey panned out "57% for first past the post and 37% for compulsory preferential voting." This is where the "six out of ten" quote originates.

Mr Green's full article can be found here: http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2011/02/do-australians-really-want-to-abandon-the-alternative-vote.html?cid=6a00e0097e4e688833014e5f66017a970c

I would ask Mr Binley to check his facts before making clever use of semantics to get his (and his leader's) point across.

By the time this is hopefully published we will know the result of the referendum, and, if the No camp win it is to be hoped that this is not taken as a mandate to ignore calls for proper PR (which is not AV by the way) for the next 50 years. If the Yes camp win, maybe Mr Binley will have to be a bit less cavalier with his propaganda to get re-elected?

I have no expectation of a reply from Binley, and only low expectation of it being published at all. Ah well, at least I tried....

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A glance at the jobs pages in the same paper showed a pathetic total of 25 vacancies, 17 of which were posts with various State or State funded agencies, mainly teaching posts. To put it another way, only 8 (or 32%) of the jobs advertised were with employers who actually make money for the economy and thereby pay taxes to fund the State sector. And they tell us we're on the road to recovery?
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