August 2011 Archives

It takes a special sort of Government to sack soldiers and airmen while engaged in a third costly war declared by our politicians which has nothing to do with our defence or security.

Blair, and his Tory clone Cameron, have been quick enough to chuck in our troops whenever it suits the USA but you can't put on a show for the neighbours and strut around the world stage unless you have something to back it up.

If Argentine decide to invade the Falklands (or Malvinas as the US are now ominously calling them- so much for the special relationship) again the best we will be able to do is send them a strongly worded note and demand they explain themselves before a commons committee. Let's be honest we would struggle to defend the Isle of Weight if Argentina invaded.

We have no aircraft carrier nor aircraft to fly from one so we are flying sorties against Libya from Italy and some of the ground crew servicing those aircraft are likely to be among those losing their jobs and I am not sure how happy troops will be that they no longer have to face death in Afghanistan anymore because they have been sacked.

But what do you expect. This is the same Government that when the streets were awash with rioters said we needed less police yet is the same Government which seems quite happy to have civil servants pulling in seven figure salaries in unelected quangos (remember the bonfire of the quangos promise?) and is paying out tens of millions of taxpayers cash to spin doctors whose job is not to provide information but to hide the bad and if it gets out to make it look good.

I am quite sure that we could axe 22,000 jobs from the Ministry of Defence and find the savings to run an aircraft carrier and none of the jobs would involve anyone wearing a uniform just as we could cut police budgets by 20 per cent and not affect policing at all - indeed both defence and policing would be improved because of it - if the right people were axed.

Sadly the right people, the paper pushers, the cushy job holders, the clipboard carriers, the levels of invented management, the stalwarts of committees and meetings and the awful and incompetent are the ones deciding who is to go. I would not be surprised if both police and defence had to employ another few thousand staff just to oversee the sacking of the ones in uniform, the ones who are actually doing the job the rest are paid for. We just live in that sort of country with that sort of Government.

When you see people on telly you know instinctively whether you reckon you could get on with them on not. First impressions and all that, not that it matters as the chances of actually meeting them in your local pub, or them coming and sitting next to you on the bus are about the same as being abducted by aliens.

But I suspect David Starkey is not someone many people would warm to. He might be a bundle of laughs, life and soul of the party and king of the karaoke - but somehow I doubt it. But I do have a lot of sympathy with him for the latest furore he finds himself involved in.

For those who missed it Starkey was on Newsnight in a discussion about the recent riots and said "the whites have become black" adding that "a particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion".

Perhaps it was not the best way of expressing his views but the point he was trying to make was that an element of white youths had embraced the predominantly black Gangsta culture which anyone who has ever listened to the words of Gangsta Rap can tell you is hardly a textbook for Utopia.

Whether his view was accurate or even relevant was never even considered. He had committed the cardinal sin of putting black and white in the same sentence with a hint of criticism which automatically triggers hissy fits, pointy fingers and screeches of racism. Anyone who did not see the programme but saw the reaction could be forgiven for thinking Starkey actually appeared in a ku klux klan hood and robe holding a burning cross.

This is the major problem confronting race relations in Britain today. How anyone can think it is healthy for one section of society to be unable to even mention anything remotely associated with race without being shouted down as the devil incarnate is beyond me.

Logic flies out of the window. Anyone who has friends who are Asian, Afro-Caribbean, African, Arabic or whatever will know what they say about other racial groups, comments that would see a white person surrounded by armed police in seconds. Which is not to say that Asians, Africans, Jamaicans and so on are racist or bigots, just that they don't have to walk on eggshells when they talk about other races and cultures, other people. Until everyone has the same freedom everyone, black, white, brown, will have a problem.

I do hope that when the next honours list is published that someone remembers Tariq Jahan. For those who don't recognise the name he is the man who stood up hours after his son Haroon had been murdered in Winson Green, along with brothers Shazad Ali and Abdul Musavir, and made a heartfelt speech for calm and order.

The honours system has been devalued over the years with gongs going to party donors, given out like gold watches to senior civil servants, issued as long service awards to actors who have managed to remember most of their lines and avoid the furniture for enough years or as add-on extra medals to sportsmen who win anything . . .

If honours are to mean anything then they should be awarded for actions that actually mean something. Haroon Jahan calmed a whole community, he stopped what could easily have become a tit-for-tat battleground with escalating violence spreading through the inner city. He spoke with a quiet dignity, putting his community and his fellow man before himself at a time when he must have been hurting and grieving inside.

I don't know the man and will probably never meet him but he touched a lot of lives and if only for a few hours or days he made a difference. That is much more worthy of an honour than paying a few bob into the Tory or Labour party coffers or becoming a multi-millionaire as a banker.

You just have to admire the brass neck and sheer hypocracy of our MPs. With the rioters being arrested and charged there they all are, calling for maximum jail terms, teach them all a lesson justice and punishments that fall just short of hang, drawing and quartering.

Now I think the rioters, looters and murderers deserve everything they get and have no problem with harsh sentences but somehow I don't think MPs are the right people to be leading the calls demanding the full force of the law.

I seem to remember that the last time we had mass theft on anything approaching this sort of scale, with large numbers of people and millions of pounds involved, only a tiny number were charged and jailed and the rest just had to pay back the money for what they had stolen - which is what fiddling expenses actually is.

It is rather like the looters being told that if they take the nicked plasma TVs back to Richer Sounds we will say no more about it.

Maybe I missed it but during the MPs expenses scandal I just can't recall any MPs demanding eviction, loss of benefits, maximum jail terms, naming and shaming and everyone held on remand.

While we are at it its is entirely predictable that when what was supposed to be a peaceful protest turned into a riot, catching the police unprepared and, in many cases, outnumbered, it was all the police's fault.

When the next night the police met force with force with thousands more officers involved and mass arrests somehow that was not the police evolving tactics to deal with the situation, oh no, that was because of demands, orders and advice from MPs and ministers.

We all know that tactic from numerous people above us in the corporate pecking order. If it goes belly up its all your fault but if it is a stunning success it was all my idea.

SKY had some thug in a hood on today whining about how all the rioting was somehow our fault because society had let him and his equally anonymous hooded and masked mates down.

In a way though you have to agree with him. He has been let down by our politicians, probably starting with Margaret Thatcher who made greed and easy profits, whatever the cost, not only acceptable but something to which everyone was supposed to aspire. The red braces and casino culture of the city was given full rein. It was the me first society.

The seeds of the current banking collapse for which we are all paying - except for the bankers of course - were probably sown then with Gordon Brown adding the copious watering and feeding to bring it to full bloom.

We have had the human rights act which has been corrupted by lawyers, ever quick to see a nice little earner, so that in too many cases it gives rights to wrongs, if you see what I mean.

We are on the second generation of kids who cannot be disciplined in school or on the street. Any hint of a school or a resident standing up to thugs and yobs and some teacher or bloke trying to live a normal life is up on an assault charge. These rabbles know at what age the laws relating to youngsters change, they know the maximum punishment they can face and they know what the consequences are of putting up two fingers to that punishment.

We have given youngsters the option to become feral and too many have taken it. We have given them rights without any responsibility . We have given them all manner of rights they have neither earned nor deserve or even needed.
Kids know they can do as they like and not only will there be no real consequences but they will even be protected from anyone who tries to stop them. All these rights yet we deny them, or, just as bad, allow them to deny themselves that most basic of rights, education.

We now have kids breeding among themselves who were born into households where no one has worked in two generations and where marriage is about as common as a tap dancing donkey. A baby is seen not only as a right of passage it is also regarded as a valuable asset. It puts a teenage mum with no job or income right up there with a winning ticket in the housing list. It buys them a home paid for by the state and no end of extra allowances and benefits.

Marriage is positively discouraged by a benefits and tax system which makes it financially advantageous not to be married all aided by New Labour politicians, like George Orwell's Napoleon in Animal Farm, spouting that all relationships are equal, despite every study saying the opposite.

We teach sex education almost before kids can walk, have a teenage pregnancy rate through the roof and a generation growing up where there is little respect for women or indeed relationships.

Where once sons might have followed fathers and grandfathers down the pit, into the factory, the mill or shop, now they follow them on to benefits. Benefits is not only a career option it is a family business with many on benefits having a higher disposable income than many people who are putting in an honest day's work.

Amid all the talk of people working longer and contributing more to their pensions no one seems to dare to mention those who contribute nothing yet receive everything.

This did not come about by accident. Political parties are only interested in power and taking control again of the benefits system could lose a lot of votes among those who see a regular, reasonable income from the state as their human right.

The bills for years of buying votes with benefits, the money coming from those paying tax and national insurance in the hope of a decent retirement - is now having to be paid.

I have no sympathy for the looters and anyone who believes that this is some sort of political protest or social comment needs their bumps read. It was thieving and thuggery.

But somewhere along the line successive governments have got to accept some responsibility. Buying votes with benefits, social tinkering with things politicians know nothing about, has led to a generation robbed of dignity, community, hope and ambition. Government has created an underclass who have no respect for themselves or for others.

They are not part of society any more and unless that cycle can be broken, with benefits returning to the level of a safety net to provideno more a roof and stave off starvation after an initial period, with those who have chosen it as a career weened off handouts and guided back into work, we will never really take our streets back.