June 2008 Archives

Just to show I don't moan all the time I am in the midst of getting ready for my younger son's wedding in Greece in the Autumn. Theo is younger by a whole three minutes than his twin Christian who is best man.

To me the event is still sometime in the future but I was told recently that apparently it was 100 days away. How do women know these things . . . and why?

Being a bloke my view on such matters was that you have the whole of the weekend before you fly out to find a suit/shirt/shoes and so on and, let us be honest, there is even a couple of days when you arrive before you are in danger of turning up in a pair of Bermudas, knock off shades and flip flops.

Being a married bloke though this view was strangled at birth which means I have less than 100 days to lose enough weight here and there to allow the new suit, nestled snugly in its carrier, to hang better. This, I think, is a wifely euphemism for losing enough excess me to allow the rest of me to sit down, bend and actually breathe without taking out the eyes of guests with flying buttons.

There are socks I am not allowed to wear and shoes wrapped in tissue paper and clutching a receipt which "will do if we can't find anything better". There is a shirt, the wearing of which before the event is a capital offence along with a tie that is yet to know the delight of a gravy stain - funny how most of my ties eventually end up with a similar pattern.

At the end of the day though there is something rather satisfying about it all when a son and his soon to be wife move on to their next chapter and give a happy ending to one of mine.

When I wrote earlier this week that during my children's lifetime people would be fighting for the rights and freedoms we are meekly surrendering on an almost daily basis I was not expecting it to happen within 24 hours and for the fight to be led by a politician

Whether any hidden motives emerge remains to be seen but for the time being David Davis deserves our full support if for no other reason it will force people to stop watching Big Brother and realise they are actually living it - all with one CCTV camera for every 14 people to keep an eye on things.

The 42 day detention without charge or trial is just the catalyst which appears to have tipped Mr Davis over the edge. We have the biggest DNA data base in the world, with most people on it totally innocent, and, as Mr Davis has already pointed out, a proposed ID card system which will carry more information than even the KGB and Stasi in their darkest days ever held on their citizens. All that information, along with even the most intimate medical details on the NHS system - if it ever gets off the ground - will then be available to the most obscure state employee for the flimsiest of reasons.

The only saving grace is that with this Government's record on anything involving computers the current population will be long dead before even the most basic system is limping into operation at the cost of scores of billions of pounds. More worrying, given their record of losing data, is that most of our personal details will be in the hands of criminals, terrorists and probably even on the Internet long before the first ID card is issued.

We have seen people arrested at the Cenotaph and charged under terror legislation for reading out the names of British soldiers killed in Iraq. We have seen a pensioner, a survivor of the Holocaust, dragged out of a Labour Party conference, again under anti-terror legislation, for a show of disapproval in a speech by the foreign secretary - for disagree read arrest.

We have race and religious laws that stifle free speech and free expression and, before the rent-a-conscience liberals splutter into their cornflakes, they should remember that freedom of speech is only worth anything when people are allowed the freedom to say things you disagree with. There were plenty of existing laws from breach of the peace to incitement that were available but they would not have given the same sweeping powers to state and police - or appeased certain sections of the populus.

We have stood by while laws were passed to allow a whole host of jumped up officials the right to enter our properties without permission, search every room and take photographs of whatever they like for assessment of council tax or whatever other reason they can think of and the same 800 of so public bodies are using anti-terror legislation for general snooping on the population, fishing for the most trivial of offences.

On top of all that we have extradition to the USA, for example, if the US authorities ask for it without them first having to prove a prima facie case in court - effectively giving up our citizens to a foreign power virtually without a fight. Then within the newly formed Ministry of Justice, a name somehow very anti-British, redolent of Kafka and a totalitarian state, we have threats to jury trials and even the presumption of innocence.

The irony is that while the state gives itself more and more power over our lives it is giving away its own powers to the unelected figures who run the EU in the shadowy world they inhabit in Brussels.

With the Liberal Democrats not putting up a candidate and Labour struggling to beat an egg when it comes to elections Mr Davis might well find himself with a free run with plenty of column inches and air time to express his views. Whatever people think of his politics, his party or politicians in general we should at least be grateful that he is forcing people to wake up and see what is being done, in their name, to their basic freedoms. Maybe the fight back might just be beginning.

We are becoming a totalitarian state by stealth and I suspect within the lifetime of my children and certainly in the time of their children there will be people battling for the rights and freedoms we are watching vanish as we stand idly by.

Anti terror legislation comes in and within days any jumped up little jobsworth with a badge and an official scrap of paper is using it to spy on ordinary people doing ordinary things and minding their own business.

Claiming that checks to see if someone is telling porkies about where they live to register their kids in a better school somehow equates to terror threats to blow up Parliament or a repeat of 9/11 seems to be a rather obscene perversion of what we were told the reason for these powers was in the first place. If we are honest it is also rather an insult to the memory of all those who have died in terror attacks.

Some 800 or so bodies can use these powers apparently which either shows a level of drafting one would expect from a dyslexic chimpanzee or a total disregard for the rights of the individual.

We now discover councils are secretly sending the contents of your dustbin to be analysed to see what you are throwing away. All being done anonymously claims the leader of one of the councils concerned - anonymous of course, apart from anything in your rubbish which contains a name and address or anything to identify you and anonymous in that no one asked the householders concerned if they minded. It is another example of officialdom and the state showing a breathtaking disregard for the people they are supposed to represent and, in the case of officials, their ultimate employers.

A similar study could of course be carried out if everyone were to help out by taking their rubbish and dumping it on the town hall steps.

Next up under the guise of more terror legislation is the 42 day detention malarkey. If terror laws can be used to check cohabitation or getting a child into a school what worthwhile guarantees are we ever going to have - which rules out anything a politician says - on how six weeks jail without even a charge let alone a trial will be used in the future.

The state has already shown that if it thinks it can get away with it, it will.

If local councils and Government really wanted to do something about the amount of rubbish we throw away rather than thinking up yet more grubby ways they can screw an extra few quid off us under the guise of saving the planet then they could start at the supply end.

So far this week I have had seven lots of junk mail. Two were dressed up as something important so I wasted time opening them, the rest went straight into the paper box without passing go or collecting £200.

That is in just two days and I do not see why I should pay anything to dispose of stuff I never asked for in the first place, so could I suggest a 1p a letter junk tax might slow down the flow.

Of course I know the powers that be will take the easy option and tax the likes of me and you with threats of court action and jail and all the usual heavy handed excuse for democracy they display but, just a suggestion, instead of disposing of junk mail yourself why not post it, unstamped of course, return to sender with a message that you do not accept unsolicited mail.

Well I never. The Commons Public Accounts Committee has worked out Worcestershire defence research outfit QineticQ was flogged off too cheaply and the top ten managers - public servants in what was a public body - made a wallet busting £100 million out of the deal or £200 for each £1 invested according to the committee.

The committee reckon that little lot cost you and me £90 million - and the rest one might add. No one loses their job or gets admonished and the managers who negotiated their own deal can probably cope with any fingers pointed in their direction as they raise the champagne glasses.

It would not be so bad if it were merely an isolated incident but this obsession for flogging off things which have no need to be sold and allowing civil servants to make themselves overnight zillionaires in the process is endemic.

The Commonwealth Development Corporation saga which trundles back to 1999 could well be the next to hit the fan. This was a department to oversee aid invested in projects in the third world until it was turned into a plc overnight. That little deal actually cost you and me money while making the civil servants in charge very rich in the process. Meanwhile investment priorities also seem to have changed from helping the third world to making as much money as it can from some of the poorest countries on earth.

Anyone any idea why the Civic Centre car park in Wolverhampton is closed on Sunday evenings when there is a concert on at the Wulfrun Hall?

I was not the only one at a recent Judy Collins concert trying to find somewhere to park and the problem would have been even worse had the hall been full. If Wolverhampton wants us to turn up at its theatres and concert halls it could at least meet us half way and provide parking.

Another day another dozen Government pronouncements. I have always been of the opinion that a Government is rather like a referee at a football match. Once you notice them they have lost control and are not doing a particularly good job.

Whenever anyone dares criticise our A star for everyone exams and target driven education system they are accused of being some sort of 'ist' exhibiting the worse sort of some 'ism' or other and we are told we are lucky to have a world class education system to go with our world class transport system, world class health system, world class . . . you get the picture.

Now the unfortunately named Ed Balls tells us that some 638 schools in England in our world class system are failing and is chucking £400 million at the problem with a threat they will be closed and replaced by academies, a pet project, or whatever happens to be education flavour of the month in 50 days time.

Meanwhile Lord Adonis, the schools minister, is planning schools that take kids if not from cradle to grave at least from nursery to when they gain their 48 A levels and are shipped off to university for remedial classes.

Our politicians seem to suffer from some sort of legislative deficiency syndrome almost as if it is in their contracts to produce half a dozen polices a day each.

Our kids get just one chance at education. What they are, who they become and how they earn a living - or not - will be moulded by their time at school and we are entrusting their futures to people you would have reservations about putting in charge of a paper round.

Perhaps the first lesson that everyone should learn when it comes to education is keep politicians out of it.

If there is one thing this Government is good at it is knee jerk reactions usually with half baked legislation, directives, action plans, delivery authorities or something else to grab that day's headlines and do little else.

Latest banner up the flagpole is knife crime which is rapidly becoming a scourge of society with hardly a week going by without someone being stabbed to death. But blaming knives for this explosion of murders is rather like blaming cars for deaths by dangerous driving. They might be the tool but the blame lies elsewhere.

There has been a headlong rush to devalue and diminish both marriage and the family, that stable unit of father, mother and children which has served mankind well for several millennia and which is still the bedrock of most civilised societies. We are one of the exceptions, having the benefit of New Labour which obviously knows better than entire civilisations which have gone before.

On top of that has been the obsession with giving children whole rafts of rights which effectively protect them from any meaningful discipline or punishment without them having any responsibilities whatsoever. We now have a whole generation of feral youth who see benefits as a career option, treat society, the police and the law with contempt and value human life as little more than characters in a video game.

They have been created by Government policy and legislation, social meddling and Labour's obsession with dismantling anything that could be seen as middle class values - the middle classes in their eyes being merely Tories in disguise. The result is gratuitous violence on our streets every day which sees dads beaten to death for little more than complaining about anti-social behaviour and fatal stabbings running at more than one a week.

When I was a kid every lad from eight or nine upwards had a large pocket knife, all complete with a thing for taking stones from horses hooves - not that I ever met anyone who had even ever found a horse with a stone in its hoof, let alone taken one out. The knife was used for whittling, carving whistles that rarely made a sound, for turning branches into spears, staffs or walking sticks, depending upon length, for pointing sticks, producing shavings to start fires and a whole host of other things including the game of splits. I won't go into details or foot amputations will rocket.

A fair number of youths were also in the scouts or boy's brigade. I can't speak for the BB but in scouts everyone had to have not just a sheath knife but a Bowie knife, the thicker, longer and sharper the better. Thus on troop nights or summer weekends when jamborees were in full swing half the youngsters of the country were wandering the streets with four or five inch knives in their pockets and anything up to a 10 inch Bowie knife hanging from their belts where some even had a trimming axe with its head in a leather case just in case the odd felled tree needed trimming

Yet knife crime, at least among youngsters, was so rare as to be unknown. Stabbings were the province of gangsters with stilettoes.

Knives have hardly changed and I would even hazard a guess that there are far less around now than 40 to 50 years ago. What has changed are the reasons and attitudes of the people carrying them. Now setting up a working party to find out why that has come about would be useful but I suspect there might already be an uneasiness that the answers would be far too close to home

I was talking to Judy Collins a couple of days ago ( I can do name dropping with the best of 'em) who is a truly lovely lady.

After nigh on half a century in the business she can still produce one of the purest voices in music - Vanity Fair recently called her The Voice, much to her delight - and is still producing new work and touring as well as bringing on new artists with her own record company, Wildflower, long after she became eligible for a bus pass.

Life has not been an easy ride. She has had bulimia, battled with alcoholism and depression and she saw her only son commit suicide at the age of 33 after a history of drink, drugs and depression.

Showing both our ages I recalled seeing her in early November in 1966 at Manchester's Free Trade Hall where she was appearing with Tom Paxton.

Paxton, who you suspect has always looked like your favourite uncle even as a teenager, was the star, Collins the support. She appeared in a long, evening dress - anything long was posh in those days - looking nothing like a folk singer. The concert was a few days after the Aberfan disaster and Collins sang The Bells of Rhymney, Pete Seeger's bitter anthem of the valleys based on the poem by former Welsh miner Idris Davies. Some moments stick in your mind for ever. That was one of them.

I will be meeting up with her again at Wolverhampton Civic Hall where she is appearing on Sunday so look out for the review.

Apparently our beloved leaders are making swimming free for the over 60s in a bid to encourage more people to take up sport ahead of the London Olympics.

I was pretty crap at swimming when I was at school and nothing has happened to make me think I will be any better now so unless a leisurely stoke or two to a poolside bar has become an event, I had better mention before we start it is perhaps best not to rely too heavily on me for the London games - even if they have managed to pay for the pool and finish building it.

Indeed my participation is further threatened by the fact my local pool has been closed for months for refurbishment and won't be open until sometime next year so my training schedule is already out of kilter.

Apparently the idea is eventually to make swimming pools free for all by 2012 to make us all a healthy super-race of amphibians which, if nothing else, will stand us in good stead if global warming results in rising sea levels leaving much of the country covered by tropical lagoons and mangrove swamps.

Now I am not knocking it but when local authorities are happily handing over development, construction and management of pools to private companies, who in general have been making a real pig's ear of it, then the old antennae start twitching when this Government starts to chuck money at the local lidos. Even their hidden agendas have hidden agendas these days.

And if Gordon has found a few million spare readies down the back of the No 10 sofa to improve health - £130 million so far for next year - he might start with free eye tests and an NHS dental service that did not cost about the same as calling out an emergency plumber on a Christmas morning.