April 2009 Archives

Many years ago, about the time when trams stopped outside Grey's Department Store in Bull Street, I used to be a gardening correspondent with more than a quarter century stint on The Birmingham Post

I mention this fascinating fact after seeing a friend planting up containers and trying to squeeze compost between the new plants attempting to avoid damaging either the roots or shoots.

One method often recommended, which protects the root ball at least, is is to leave the new plants in their pots, place them in the container and pack compost around them. Then when the container is filled to the right level you can lift out the plants in their pots, knock them out and pop the plants back into the pot shaped holes left in the compost.

Personally I prefer to use empty pots of the same size whenever I can which avoids risking any damage to the plants at all. Pack the compost in around the required number of pots - it doesn't matter if you fill the pots as well - and when the container is full lift out the empty pots and pop the plants into the holes where they should fit like a glove with no damage at all.

I was in London last week to see Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Trafalgar Studios which is just off Trafalgar Square - I suppose the name is a clue.

This is the stunning version starring Matthew Kelly and Tracey Childs which was at the Lichfield Garrick and has now moved to the West End.

The theatre is tiny and you are once more sitting in the living room of George and Martha. This is a brilliant production and has had good reviews in the capital so if you are in London it is well worth seeing. Matinees are on Thursday and Saturday and tickets are going fast as word spreads.

The BBC have done it again. They bring back Reggie Perrin in a new series, which was not bad to be fair, and stick one of their collection of banal laughter tracks on it.

This was the one recorded in a care home for cretins when the van bringing that day's medications had broken down.

Laughter from an audience actually watching a show has an empathy with what is going on. Canned laughter is just an annoying irritation totally out of context which just fills in the gaps between lines.

Whoever thinks it improves a comedy has no sense of humour or timing and perhaps should look for a job in something other than entertainment.

We actually know if something is funny and don't need a laughter track to guide us, particularly when lines worth no more than a smile are getting side-splitting guffaws. And if it isn't funny, then the BBC will soon know - we'll stop watching, which will make the laughter very empty indeed.

I would love to know what it is about the Gurkhas which really brasses off this Government. Someone in power really has a downer on them.

These are a bunch of lads who fought for us whenever we needed them and have probably done a lot more for Britain than most of the the political pygmies and benefit scroungers we are lumbered with in Westminster; yet when it comes to letting them live here then suddenly a Catch 22 immigration policy, which does not seem to apply to anyone else, pops up just for Gurkhas.

We have terror suspects, national security threats, foreign criminals, failed asylum seekers, illegal immigrants, you name it and we got it, all swanning around, many living off the state - that is me and you by the way - and we can't get rid of them.

If we deport them the either their human rights are going to be infringed in some way only a lawyer on a fat fee could ever understand or it would mean sending them back to some country where terror suspects and criminals are not exactly welcomed with open arms. Whichever it is they are still here and lawyers are still getting rich feasting on a diet of appeals - which again we are all paying for.

Yet when it comes to lads who have fought in our name and can rack up 13 VCs with another 13 VCs for British officers in Gurkha regiments topping off a host of other medals then it is a different matter.

A Government who can't even tell you to the nearest 10 million what the UK population is, so pathetic are our border controls, suddenly comes down like a ton of bricks on the Gurkhas.

We have even had the immigration minister - yes we do have one - Phil Woolas telling us that if we let in the Gurkhas it would set a precedent and open the floodgates to thousands, if not millions more people around the world who would want to come in on the same legal basis.

Ministers really do speak fluent cobblers and what is really sad, they actually think we believe them.

It is not just the World Wars where the Gurkhas have been at our side, they served in the Falklands, the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan, as well as holding up our end as UN peacekeepers in Kosovo, Bosnia and East Timor. They were even used as the protection squad for Prince Harry when he was in Afghanistan recently.

If you want to back the Gurkhas - and it seems only this Government doesn't - then you can sign a petition on No 10's website by clicking here which is http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ghurka1/ just in case it does not work or you can join the Gurkha Justice Campaign by clicking here which is http://www.gurkhajustice.org.uk/. You can then sign their petition and you will even get an e-mail of thanks from Joanna Lumley.

You also get an e-mail from No 10, thankfully not from Gordon personally, and, for a change, without any scurrilous remarks. The e-mail is just to confirm you exist and as my computer seems to have its own view of what to do with anything from Downing Street - it put it in the junk mail folder - it might be worth checking there in case your computer has similar good taste.

This Government has cornered the market when it comes to shabby but even by their low standards this has plumbed new depths.

Don't you just love our MPs and the huge tax free allowances scam they operate.

If the great second homes rip off has to be ended to avert the appearance of nooses hanging from lampposts then the suggestion is that MPs should get an attendance allowance. Only MPs could come up with the jolly wheeze of first being handsomely paid and then being paid extra if you actually turn up for work.

I have a theory that if we had a flat rate 10 or 15 per cent tax rate on everything we might actually end up with more cash going to the Treasury.

Give everyone a personal allowance and then it is a flat rate for individuals, companies, corporations, shops ice cream vans, whatever with no tax havens, dubious family trusts, non-dom status, offshore banking cobblers or any of the other tax avoidance schemes which sees some of the ridiculously wealthy paying less tax than a hospital porter. If you live here you pay tax here at the same rate as everyone else.

It would save a fortune in administration, means accountants would be free to get a life and we would not have to put up with the annual budget charade which always seem to leave anyone with a job, who eats, drinks and drives a car worse off.

I just love the way our climate change carbon zealots want to encourage open, informed debate on the subject.

If you don't agree with them then you are not only ignorant and reckless, according to Lord Stern, but it is akin to denying the link between smoking and lung cancer and HIV and AIDS.

No doubt much the same sentiments were expressed against the reckless heretics who claimed the universe did not revolve around the earth - I mean how stupid could the likes of Galileo really have been, them and their mad idea of a solar system.

It must be remembered of course that Lord Stern is trying to flog his new book on climate change so needs a bit of publicity to keep it out of the remaindered bins for a while but it is still a common mantra among the greenhouse gas gauleiters that any disagreement with the CO2 gospel is blasphemy.

Whether global warming is a short or long term event, whether it is part of a regular, natural cycle or not, no one really knows nor does anyone know if carbon dioxide is a major factor in climate change or just a side show.

Latest estimates put the earth at 4.5 billion years old and some of the data being used by the carbon dioxide mafia doesn't even go back 50 years with models based on assumptions, theories and guesses.

Coping with global warming is a challenge we need to face, treating the earth with a bit more respect a necessity but slagging off anyone who dares question the global warming gestapo's assumptions - and they are no more than that - hardly does anything to progress the debate.

As one who was in the 1968 Grosvenor Square demonstration - altogether now Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh - the unbridled enthusiasm of the Metropolitan Police at such events and the removal or covering of identification numbers is nothing new.

The difference now though is that everyone and his dog has a mobile phone which can video our friendly bobbies in action.

The most worrying thing about the whole affair though is the fact the police announced a post mortem on the unfortunate newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson had show he died of a heart attack.

Now I am no pathologist but I suspect anyone who claims to be should be able to tell the difference between a heart attack and an abdominal haemorrhage which was the result of a second post mortem.

The second post mortem, of course, would in all probability never have been held had someone not popped up with video of Mr Tomlinson being charged to the ground.

Which begs the question was the first post mortem a cover up, incompetence or just the result the police wanted?

You have to wonder if anyone in Whitehall, the civil service or the public sector has any inkling of what life is like in the real world.

We have the Lords where it seems votes are for sale to the highest bidder then the Commons where our MPs have their snouts so far into the expenses trough they must have developed the ability to breathe through another orifice.

Then comes the civil service where the Crown Prosecution Service shells out £250 a head to anyone who turns up for work when it snows.

Hands up anyone else - you know, in the real world - who got paid for turning up in the snow. Management might have shelled out for the odd bacon butty or told staff to go early but that would be about it.

I do hope any of the two million unemployed who were down to sign on when it snowed got a bonus on their £62 or so a week if they made it in.

Now we have teachers demanding a pay rise of 10 per cent or £3,000 a year with one of their number claiming she is quitting to teach abroad because of terrible pay, she is only on £26,000 a year after four years in the job.

Hands up anyone - those who still have a job only please - who is on less than £26,000 after more than four years and while we are at it chuck in anyone who has 13 weeks holiday a year and a guaranteed gold plated pension scheme?

Good teachers do an excellent job but let's get real. When the people in the real world - those who pay public sector wages - are facing salary and hours cut or no pay rises at all, are being made redundant or living in fear for their jobs and pensions then it's time to just be grateful you have cake at all and not be shouting for a bigger slice.

Anyone notice the abysmal level of sportsmanship shown by the Blues' fans who booed when Wolves' Chris Iwelumo was carried off on a stretcher in obvious pain and distress after a truly horrendous tackle which rightly earned Lee Carsley a red card.

I don't know just how many people around the world outside Small Heath and Wolverhampton will have watched Blues against Wolves on Sky but any who did were certainly given a pretty awful impression of Birmingham as the Scottish striker was carried off to a chorus of boos and probably think everyone who lives here is a brainless moron.

So on behalf of the city, thanks lads.