February 2009 Archives

One of my contributors is complaining that our illustrious Two Homes Secretary is using the rules to line her own pocket when he is a pensioner living on much less than she is claiming for her second home.

This is a very negative way of looking at things and I think we should be grasping the opportunity Jacqui Smith has given the nation to save money.

Has anyone checked, for example, if her sister has any more spare bedrooms in her South London terrace? It might even be worthwhile to pay for a loft conversion or stick an extension on the back so that Gordon and Alastair can move in which will help the jobbing building industry and save on mileage for cabinet meetings.

Then we can either let Nos 10 and 11 Downing Street or flog 'em off for development. Think of all the luxury retirement apartments you could get in there. That in turn will help get the housing market moving.

See, with a bit a positive thinking what might at first seem morally questionable is in fact far reaching policy.

Anyone else think that Britain, or at least the British, are not housetrained?

I was in a pub car park a couple of weeks ago; it was early evening after a meal so we are not talking stagger out singing Nellie Dean time and I was sitting in my car waiting for someone who had decided to inspect the plumbing before we left when two men in their mid 30s or so came out, walked to a car, urinated in the bushes behind it, got in and drove off.

Now I will admit it is possible they had noticed that the bushes in question were showing signs of marked deficiencies of nitrogen and phosphate and were providing emergency horticultural first aid - but I somehow doubt it.

Last night I was in a multi-storey car park and like almost every multi-storey in the land it is advisable not to touch anything and to avoid breathing as much as possible while passing through the stairwells. This particular one seems to be cleaned on a fairly regular basis with fire hoses. If the floor is uniformly damp then it is clean(ish) but if it is patchily damp then watch where you walk.

Many shops start their day with a mop and a bucket of water and disinfectant in their doorway and we are a nation where public toilets are closed because left open they are either wrecked by vandals or used for nefarious practices.

We just have to admit we are a filthy nation these days.

So the police are not going to investigate Lords flogging off amendments to the highest, or indeed any, bidder and the fact that one of the great ministries of state, the Home Office, is run from the back bedroom of a terraced house in South London is all perfectly above board . . . and presumably lodging.

I am sure that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be helping President Obama from her bedsit with a shared phone and bathroom somewhere in downtown Washington as I write.

So with MPS and the Lords controlling the switch, vote flogging and creative accounting on expenses has been given the green light.

But just in case you are starting to think MPs and Lords are beyond the law - which they make of course - try revealing any information that embarrasses the Government and see how quickly you get your collar felt - just ask Damian Green.

If ever proof were needed of how far out of touch with reality and, more importantly, us, the people, our politicians really are then this weekend has provided it in spades - spades being the only thing with which to clear the snow in some areas of the land.

We have Geoff Hoon, former defence secretary, bringing those silky skills to Transport where he tells motorists to stop whingeing and blames them for the chaos on our roads for not investing in snow chains - we all know where we would like to wrap his snow chains.

Then, while the US caps executive pay and the taxpayer looks on aghast as banks soak up our cash like sponges while planning huge bonus payments with, you guessed it, our cash again, Harriet Harman's main concern seems to be why women in the City have not been allowed to stick their powdered snouts in the trough as much as the men - demanding equal shares in the obscene excesses.

Next Jaqui Smith is claiming £24,000 a year or so of yet more of our money - more than most people earn - for the house where her husband and kids live as an allowance as a "second home" while she claims her main residence is staying with her sister in London.

Finally we discover that the Big Lottery Fund is doling out the cash almost four to one in favour of projects in Labour held constituencies. The board of the BLF, of course, are appointed by a Government department.

And they wonder why turnout is dropping faster than house prices when it comes elections . . .

I have no idea what Carol Thatcher said or who the tennis player was that she was supposedly referring to but it was obviously much worse in BBC eyes than broadcasting obscenities to millions and showing total contempt for a 78-year-old because it brought an imediate sacking - as opposed to days of wondering what the fuss was about which was the case with Russell Brand and Jonathon Ross.

I am not carrying a torch for Miss Thatcher and don't condone offensive remarks about anyone but let us get this in perspective, whatever she said was in a private conversation, not on air, and if anyone was really offended by what she said then they are all big boys and girls and presumably well able to put their two penn'orth in to show their displeasure.

Anyone who lives in the real world can evesdrop on private conversations in pubs, by coffee machines in offices or works canteens and hear remarks and jokes which would have the PC stasi needing caridac rescucitation.

I suspect that had her mother been someone different then so might have been the outcome but we will let that pass. Meanwhile anyone who works on The One Show needs to be careful in future with a pc informant in their midst ready to run to management at every injudicious word.

Sadly, the fact management have left the tell tale in place tells you much about the BBC these days.

Regular readers of my blog may have noticed that there is a debate on the Birmingham apostrophe ban going on between Coun Martin Mullaney and that unlikely champion of the Queen's English - me.

For those who missed it scroll down to You Couldn't Make it Up or even click here to go to the comments page and join the debate.

Meanwhile Coun Mullaney makes the valid point that one of the problems facing the city council is which of the road signs and districts in Birmingham which look as if they should have an apostrophe actually need one. It is easy with Clay Pits Lane or Green Lane or whatever but others are not so easy. You cannot just stick an apostrophe in every word ending in S as Tesco for some bizarre reason do with CDs and DVDs, or CD's and DVD's in the supermarket's version of English.

One example he uses is Earl's Court in London, which has an apostrophe, and Barons Court, next door, which, correctly, does not.

Coun Mullaney has come up with a few names as examples in Birmingham so can anyone out there tell us the origin of the following and whether an apostrophe is needed?

Reddings Road (Moseley)
Lozells Road (Handsworth)
Queens Road (Aston)
Waterworks Road (Ladywood)
Deakins Road (Yardley)
The Radleys (Yardley)
Garretts Green Lane (Yardley)
Pritchatts Road (Edgbaston)
Willows Road (Balsall Heath)
Waldrons Moor (Stirchley)

Personally I think Waterworks Road is fine unless the road actually belongs to the waterworks, while according to the interesting website http://billdargue.jimdo.com/ The Radleys probably relates to red fields in mediaeval times from the red sand in the area, so is a plural and needs no apostrophe, as for the rest . . . help the council out.

How the rest of Europe must roll about laughing every time it snows in Britain. If we were one of the United Arab Emirates or bordered Somalia then a fall of snow on the second of February might just be a big story, dominating the TV news but we are not. We are an island in the North Sea off the coast of Northern Europe where it can, and often does, snow.

While every other country in the EU accepts winter and snow as part of life and just gets on with it a couple of inches in Britain and the nation is paralysed with schools closed, roads impassable, public transport disrupted, trains grinding to a halt and planes grounded.

Anyone any idea as to why most of Europe, and indeed North America, can take blizzards in their stride and carry on as if nothing has happened and we get a light dusting of snow, which is immediately dubbed Arctic conditions, and the whole place slithers to a halt?

It is currently -38 deg C in the Arctic by the way - which is real Arctic conditions.

We must be the only nation on God's earth where a nurse could be suspended for offering to pray for a patient. Mind you she is a serial offender and was reprimanded only last October when she committed the heinous crime of offering a prayer card to an elderly patient who happily accepted it.

In the latest case the patient mentioned it to another nurse the next day and said she was not offended but some mythical other person might have been which was enough to turn the PC stormtroopers out of the barracks.

In both cases the complaint did not come from the patient concerned but from the mealy mouthed jobsworths who seem to delight in finding the possibility of some sort of slight or offence towards some group or other they have decided to champion - an intervention which has not been asked for and is usually unwanted.

After her first criminal show of compassion the nurse was invited to attend an "equality and diversity course" - a name and an idea which I have always thought sounds like something you would have encountered in Brave New World, or 1984, which were frightening visions of the future.

It always strikes me that the diversity and equality always seems to be a bit one sided but how did we allow the meddling classes, the PC stasi, to turn their pathetic hang-ups into an industry? Look through the job ads for local authorities, public bodies and the like and they are full of ridiculously highly paid non-jobs with community, equality, diversity or some other pc buzz word in the title and a job description in fluent gobbledygook - all with our money!

What should be remembered by North Somerset Primary Care Trust is that hospitals were founded by religious orders, which in England, and Europe, meant nuns and, monks - the Church - while nursing too has its roots in religious orders, which is why senior nurses are still called sister.

Some nurses apparently still take the Florence Nightingale pledge upon their graduation which starts with: "I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity and to practice my profession faithfully."

Soon put a stop to that sort of subversion!