March 2009 Archives

The most alarming thing about those who have reached the top of the greasy pole and are trying to dictate everything we do from what we are taught in schools to what we eat and think is that they can never admit they have screwed up.

Far from accepting that their social experiments just do not work they dig the hole deeper for the rest of us to fall further in.

We have the worst figures of teenage pregnancy of pretty well any country that can boast plumbing and let's be honest the only reason we are not talking about pre-teen pregnancy is puberty - which thankfully the Government has no control over although no doubt someone in Whitehall is already working on sorting that out.

The response is sadly all too predictable. We have a proposal for sex education for five year olds, easy anonymous access to morning after pills and moves to relax TV advertising for abortion clinics and contraceptives.

Its all a bit like trying to reduce burglaries by subsidising the price of jemmies and making them VAT free with a mask, striped jumper and bag marked SWAG given away with every one - with TV advertising for good measure.

Sir Fred Goodwin gets a couple of bricks through his windows and the rear screen of his car and the place is swarming with police and scenes of crime officers - and SIr Fred was not even there.

Had that been plain old Fred Goodwin of Kingstanding, Acocks Green, Erdington or the like and he had been in the sitting room when the brick arrived through the window and landed at his feet, he would have been given a crime number for the insurance by the local nick and, if he was lucky, an offer someone might keep an eye on his place if they passed on patrol.

Who says money doesn't talk?

The problem with living in an embryo police state is that by the time the population realise what is going on it is too late.

The latest freedom this Government wants to bury is public inquests with its plans to be able to exclude press, relatives and indeed anyone it wants from inquests on national security grounds.

National security of course would cover the likes of Dr David Kelly, not that that particular Government whitewash could ever be described as an inquest, and the tube shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes along with our soldiers killed in action. No more embarrassing questions about lines of communications or sub standard equipment.

Not much National Security involved but a lot of questions for the Government, MoD and police.

We, as citizens, should have the right to know how and why one of our number dies if for no other reason than to see if anyone was responsible or whether future similar deaths could be avoided.

Give the Government, albeit in the guise of a tame judge, the right to hold inquests in camera on their say so that it is in the national interest, or more likely in their interest, and the very large can of worms is not opened but welded shut and buried in concrete.

It means that the state can cause the death of someone and then that same state can hold a secret inquest to absolve itself.

I remember a few years ago one of those surveys about how much respect, confidence and trust and all that the public have in various professions and journalists came out somwhere below prostitutes and just above estate agents.

Now, thanks to the likes of Tony McNulty, the works for me and my pension minister and our two homes secretary Jacqui Smith as well as all the rest travelling first class (on expensesof course) on the Westminster gravy train, journalists will at least have moved up the league table by one and even estate agents must be feeling hopeful.

No wonder they want to keep their exes secret.

The BBC are caught bang to rights bunging repeats into the "new" series of Antiques Roadshow and, spinning like a top, a BBC mouthpiece tries to convince us that it is really for our benefit, declaring: "Audiences have enjoyed another opportunity to see these programmes, with up to 6.5million tuning in."

With our cup running over with enjoyment perhaps we should let the BBC finance department enjoy another chance to see our licence fee cheques and send them photocopies of last year's offering when renewal time comes around.

Don't be fooled by the Government's lukewarm reception to Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson's loony scheme to have a minimum price of 50p per unit of alcohol.

I suspect that it is only Gordon Brown's instinct for self preservation - he does not want to end his premiership swinging from a lamp post - that has pushed the plan on to the back burner - for now.

I have said before that booze is much cheaper in the rest of Europe than in Britain and ask again why do the rest of Europe not have to put up with running the gauntlet of drunken yobs and yobettes or having to dance the vomit polka to travel through the streets in the centres of their towns and cities at weekends?

There are plenty of laws already in place to return city centres to some semblance of civilisation, drunk and disorderly for starters, but that involves action, extra proper police, court time and some cost so don't hold your breath on that one.

An increase in the price of booze will have a marginal if any effect on drunken behaviour but that is not the point. It has the attraction of bringing in much needed revenue at a time when income from taxes is in freefall.

If the Government felt they could have sneaked it in at 50p you can guarantee - for our own good mind - it would soon be going up like duty, a couple of pence here and there and then up every year in line with inflation plus three per cent or whatever.

And don't discount the brewers in all this. Pub and club prices are all way above 50p a unit so any increase they sneak in on the price rise bandwagon is pure profit and they are hardly going to be upset if their competitors, the supermarkets and off licences, are forced into hefty price increases. Make it more expensive to drink at home and people might just go to the pub.

I was in the gym (ok, settle down at the back, it's not that funny) overlooking the car park in Mere Green this week when two women appeared with a supermarket trolley which they pushed between the last two cars in the corner at the very end of the car park.

I assumed that one of the cars was theirs but no, they emptied the trolley and walked off just leaving the trolley there. It meant that the driver or passenger of one of the cars - i.e. me - had to move the trolley before they could open their door.

Apart from being remarkably ill mannered it costs the rest of us in our food bills as staff have to be employed to round up trolleys.

It has not been a good week in car parks. I came back to my car yesterday to find some brain donor had managed to park over the white line to end up a couple of inches from my door which meant I had to clamber in from the passenger side - something I am not designed to do.

The driver of the offending vehicle of course had left himself, or herself, with enough room to not only climb in and out but knock up a patio and hold a barbeque if the mood took them. It would not have been so bad but it was only a Clio so did not exactly need a parking space the size of a tennis court.

Personally I think parking over white lines in a car park or, even worse, parking in a disabled space without a legitimate badge should carry some penalty even if it is just a sticker on the windscreen explaining the finer points of parking.

If ever you wondered if the world had gone mad then the latest lunacy from the bureaucratic asylum of Europe should make your mind up.

Now I am one of those who found the term chairman as just the word for the head honcho of any committee, whoever it was. It didn't have a sex but once the air was filled with the smoke of smouldering bras every word was suspected of committing an offence.

Now we have got to the stage it seems where Mrs and Miss are now banned in the European Parliament along with their equivalents in the array of EU languages because they are sexist so women MEPs are now to be addressed only by their full name.

It's all in the "gender-neutral language" pamphlet where MEPs will also find man-made has had the chop in favour of artificial or synthetic - why not person-made you might ask?

Manageress has gone along with usherette, male nurse and air hostess but it seems the bureaucrats could not agree on a gender neutral term for waiters or waitresses so they stay as they are, as do midwives.

Somehow I don't think the language challenged noddies who came up with this load of old cobblers are trying hard enough. With a little ingenuity surely they could have found some inoffensive sexless term for waiters and waitresses - they both wait so why not call them godots or even Becketts while midwive is easy, Mid-cohabitees. Sorted.
Personally I think the people who came up with all this should be made personally gender neutral as soon as possible.

And, just to show the US are still world leaders in the language game, Concoran, a New York estate agent has had to institute its own word ban with bachelor, as in pad, out in its ads as it might offend couples.

Concoran is just protecting its back after a flurry of court cases sparked by the equal opportunities policies of the New York City Housing Authority. So you can't have within "walking distance" of anywhere as that could offend the disabled, "ideal for families" might upset the childless and "exclusive" is apparently racist.

Of course all of this could be stopped if just one judge, somewhere, had the bottle to stand up to the language terrorists who see, or at least claim to see, offence in almost every word with a vowel and told them to go off and find a life - then awarded costs against them and their opportunist lawyers.

A pet gripe is these people at supermarkets who go through the basket only till with a trolly the size of a small truck.

Yesterday there was a women with a heavily loaded trolley in the basket only line and when another customer pointed out to her that she had a trolley and this was basket only the women smiled sweetly and said: "Oh I couldn't have got all that in a basket" and carried on regardless with the lady behind visibly seething.

If looks could kill we would be talking casket rather than basket.

Anyone notice that the outcome of the anti-war rant at the return of the Royal Anglian Regiment in Luton this week was just two arrests?

I am sure no one will be surprised to find that that the only people the police decided were worth arresting were both supporting our solders.

There are times when you wonder if the BNP actually pay the police for help in recruiting and marketing.

Luton, incidentally, is where the four London bombers met up and travelled into the capital in 2005.