No Fairy Story this, Hans Christian!

One of the better things which right-wing commentators look forward to is the occasional news item which demonstrates that the liberal, metrosexual, ‘rights for everyone except normality’, touchy-feely brigade don’t get their way all the time.

So it is with some enthusiasm that I draw your attention to the name and actions of Dr. Hans-Christian Raabe. A more unlikely Don Quixote than this man one could not imagine or create. A German national, he has lived and worked in Manchester as a G.P. because he likes working for the NHS, and because he sees the problems caused by drugs in and around Manchester, he has long campaigned with a charity which helps drug addiction.

But he did something really stupid recently. He volunteered for an unpaid position on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). So the trawl began to unearth something, anything, which his opponents could use against his appointment. Why does this mild-mannered man have opponents? Because he campaigns against the legalisation of drugs of any kind; because he speaks out in the face of the liberal elite which is marching to a very different drum-roll!

From the maelstrom of accusations and insults whipped up when he was appointed to the council in January last year, another grievance against him emerged. His opponents exhumed an academic report he co‑authored in 2005, while he was living in Canada, linking homosexuality to paedophilia.

The report, a collaboration between several doctors, was written when the Canadian Parliament was debating whether or not to legalise same-sex marriage, to which Dr Raabe — while  he is not against civil partnerships —  is opposed.

‘The paper summarised scientific evidence, which was in the public domain, and it was one paragraph, mentioning homosexuality and paedophilia together, which — so the Home Office tells me — caused them “embarrassment”,’ says Dr Raabe.

The offending paragraph states: ‘While the majority of homosexuals are not involved in paedophilia, it is of grave concern that there are a disproportionately greater number of homosexuals among paedophiles.’

So now he has two strikes against him; the first is that he speaks out against drug use and legalisation, and now the larger crime seemingly against everything held so dear by the liberal self-appointed elite amongst us, which is to state that he is of the belief that homesexuality finds much in common with paedophilia.

So Hans-Christian was dismissed from his post with the ACMD before he had been able to attend a single meeting. And then he decided to sue!

For Dr Raabe, there is a moral imperative at stake.

‘There has been such enormous resistance to my sitting on the ACMD panel that I feel it is a matter of principle to challenge it,’ he says.

‘Besides, I see so many people, especially the young, whose lives are being messed up by drugs, I feel that to sit back and do nothing about it would simply be wrong.’

 

He might not win his post back; if he does he will be vilified from pillar to post, he certainly will lose his anonymity, but I do so wish him the best of luck!

We, the People,

I have maybe said it before, but we really need the pieces of parchment operating in the United Kingdom which allowed the guys in the robes to come to this conclusion in America.

Fair enough, the bad guy is truly a scumbag, but the Law is the Law, and I sometimes wish we had something of similar value in Great Britain.

If we had the protections afforded by those precious documents, we wouldn’t have witnessed this disgraceful perversion of the Law, and we would still be governed under the ‘Double Jeopardy’ rules

Islands in the stream….

I am an avid reader of many of the Travel pages in newsprint these days, avid because, to all intents, my travelling days are over. In my youth, I sailed across many seas, into many harbours and ports, and even travelled further that the nearest bar; well sometimes. I also lived and travelled throughout  a fair stretch of Southern Africa. Most of the travel columns and sunjects are of course to be taken with a pinch (at least) of salt, because the writers are paid to shuffle out these columns, and the advertisers pay for the pretty pictures as well. But on the whole, allowing for the usual caveats of ‘buyer beware’ and ‘watch out for the steelworks hidden just down the road from your four-star hotel’, the holiday and tourist reader gets a fair bash at the truth about any country under the lights.

But I do tend to get just a little heated when only half the facts are lauded and pushed at the buyer, and the other half are quietly swept under the thick carpet. A good instance can be found in the columns of a travel writer in the Sunday Times (obviously no link) where he was asked to provide details of independent backpack travel through China. So Mr. Green goes into considerable proposals for backpack travel through this vast and fabulous (his adjective, not mine) country, with organised backpacker-style journeys readily available. He rhapsodises about the well-known tourist traps spots such as the Terracotta Warriors, or the Great Wall. Hostels and cheaper hotels are also covered, so he doesn’t leave much out of his writing.

It is a great pity that Mr. Green does not go into the other side of the marketing aisle, as it were, and after pushing aside some of the undergrowth, also tell his readers about the things which visitors to China might also see, or rather not see, if they walk about with their eyes only a little wider than normal.

They might see the People’s Security Police as they rough up and arrest any one who dares to even contemplate protesting against the overweening power of the Chinese Communist Party. They could attempt to travel the miles to visit  ‘Chen Guangcheng’ the blind activist, but would also have to navigate past the echelons of Security Police who are determined to keep the activist ‘safe from harm’! They might check what happens when anyone attempts to speak out about the multitudinous abuses of basic human rights, but they are also advised to ensure that they are well-protected with medical insurance.

Finally, they might travel to the heart of Beijing itself, to see the ‘Birdsnest Stadium’, the ‘Forbidden City’ and all the other fabled sights of China’s capital; it is a pity that they won’t be able to see where five thousand students died in Tiananmen Square, because all the blood has washed away long ago, all the granite has been repaired, and absolutely no protests like this one in Hong Kong will ever be allowed, or even thought of, in the Capital City of the People’s Republic of China!

An ‘enterprise’ zone.

If you listened to today’s T0day Programme on the BBC, you would have heard a rare occurrence. You would have listened to an angry mother defending a Law which sent all the killers of her son to a justly-deserved prison sentence. You would have heard how  Lorraine Fraser, whose son Tyrone Clarke was stabbed to death in 2004, describe how current ‘joint enterprise law’ was used in her sons case. I stipulate the term ‘angry’ because moves are afoot to modify or even to diminish the outlines of this very old piece of Legislation.

As we also heard, earlier in the programme, Gloria Morrison of Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association (JENGbA) , another of these pressure groups with not-so-catchy acronyms for their names, was arguing that the trawl of gang members carried out after a death was unjust, illiberal and probably fattening as well. She seemed to want either a repeal of the Law itself, or if that did not occur, a definite diminution of its effects on gang-related crime and murder.

As for the arguments, let me state that I am a sucker for any Law which puts all those who even cheered the killers on inside prison; my only dissent is the ridiculously small amount of time spent in prison by these wanna-be baddies! Lorraine gets my vote any day of the week!

We don’t need more prisons, we just need a large open space surrounded by multi-layered anti-personnel mines and a fence to keep the illiterate from trying to break in!

Definition….encouraged (when voiced by a minister)

So when the clowns from the local Council attempt to tell me that I should move out of my own home in order to ‘free up’ unused bedrooms, and move into ‘suitable sheltered accommodation’ , will I be then arrested for attempting to disobey the word from ‘on high’, or will the armed thugs who seem to be on permanent call simply bundle me and my wife into their black vans and take us to a ‘home’?

Where are the cries from the ‘Liberal Elite’ that government plans to deprive ordinary Englishmen of their freedom and property are as welcome as leprosy? These proposals are being made in all sincerity by people who are supposed to be Tories!

The question, as asked in the Economic Voice blog is quite reasonable; “‘How long before the elderly ‘volunteers’ become the elderly ‘encouraged’ and then the elderly ‘morally blackmailed’ being forced out because they are made to feel that they are not worthy to stay in the home they paid for?’

Legal, honest & truthful?

As a Sky user and viewer of tv programmes, and also as a man of mature years with a fair intellect, I believe that I have acquired a certain immunity against the avalanche of blandishments to buy this, spread that, or try the other, as shown in the vast majority of tv adverts. I don’t need things which dye my hair, or those things which promise to make me more alluring to the opposite sex, or indeed most of the items which routinely batter the viewing population with their slanted messages. Being honest, as I always am when writing, I have organised my viewing evening so that I view most of the selection from recordings, so that I can fast-forward through the adverts without suffering the annoyance of the interminable assaults upon my hearing and my eyes. As such, I take very little notice of adverts which do cross my mental threshold, with the exception of possibly a minute number of extremely well-made and targeted productions which do grab my attention for the reason that they do their job rather well. I am not saying that I endorse their message, it is that I tend to admire professionalism in all areas of endeavour.

But there are adverts which grab my attention for another reason altogether; that reason being that they are false, they present a false picture about the product or the people they depict. In other, perhaps more blunt terms; they lie!

Watched the HSBC banking advert which features a Chinese family celebrating the New Year, or whatever? There are six children lined up to receive the blessings and presents from, presumably, their grandfather. But this family is unlike any family I know of in modern China. The same China which has, until perhaps last year, rigorously enforced the ‘Single Child Edict’ by forced abortions, imprisonment and even internal exile for daring to go against the ‘Will of the People’. That ‘Will’ of course, thought up and enforced by a bunch of criminal geriatric despots who routinely abuse the power they seized decades ago with the beginning of the rule of the paeadophilic Mao-tse-Tung and his henchmen.

Bank with HSBC? By all means, as long as you are happy with them playing fast and loose with the truth. As I have perhaps stated many times in the past, you, and you alone, decide where your cash ultimately goes,and whom it supports!

No contest!

The ‘Iron Lady’ which I know to be the real thing, is and was the most polarising influence in the second half of the Twentieth Century’s history of Great Britain. She was that rare thing, a conviction politician who saw the way forward from decades of misrule, from a pervasive political attitude which stated that ‘compromise’ was to be the finest achievement of a politician; which accepted that Great Britain was ‘second-class’, and even that status was over-rated!

The ‘Iron Lady’ who caught the imagination of voters who were at least capable of ‘thought’, who stated that the Conservative Party would revive and invigorate both the Nation and the economy; came to power in 1979, and, as politicians who make promises do; forged a path towards her dreams of a Britain free from the stultifying embrace of governmental control, of a Britain who spoke for and on behalf of those who were threatened, of a Britain which was willing to work with a voracious Europe; but on her terms and none other.

The ‘Iron Lady’ forged a bond with President Reagan, and with others watched as the skeleton of Communism collapsed from within. She was informed of the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, and demanded of the British military only one thing, “when do we sail to regain British Territory?” Her attitude to Union power was best encapsulated in her statement ‘“We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.” Her policies made Great Britain formidable once more, and it was good to announce to any enquirer that one’s nationality was simply ‘British’ because that said everything!

The ‘Iron Lady’ is showing a bit of ‘rust’ in reality, as that gallant Lady, now some eighty-five years of age, is showing more than a little of the ‘wear and tear’ that time brings to us all. I watched this bad and false facsimile, masquerading under the Thatcher trademark, as it makes an attempt at showing the alleged mental decline of a confused and befuddled old woman in the very sunset of her years. Meryl Streep gives a sterling performance, aided by startling prosthetics and make-up, but as to the Lady herself; it is simply ‘No competition!’

The Masque of the Red Death

Grief and sympathy are normal human emotions. When we lose a close member of family to death, whether accident or illness, we are touched with an emotion which is peculiarly human. it is a singular thing to be human, and it shows in how we grieve. True grief is reserved for those closest to us, a family member; a loved one from outside the immediate family. Being human, we also can feel sorrow at the death of a pet animal, because they have shared our lives; despite the knowledge that they, being animal, whether dog, cat, horse, tortoise, cannot possibly have shared our emotions.

When another human dies, one who is unknown to us, we cannot feel the same grief because we have not invested any mental capital in the unknown’s life, and therefore we are divorced from the need to grieve for one who is, and now was, unknown. That fact is why I detest the false shows of emotion for people who have died in the full glare of media publicity. For example, the murder of Joana Yeates bore a whirlwind of public grief, with memorials planned seemingly all over Devon and Somerset, yet she was just an ordinary woman who died. Or was it just the time of year when nothing much else was happening, so the newspapers and the tv went berserk over this murder? I would remove, from my critique, any memorial or ceremony to those of our Armed Forces who died whilst on active service, notwithstanding the fact that we are, in Afghanistan; in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and for entirely the wrong reasons!

I write of grief, of death, for two reasons. The first is that old age and death comes for us all. The silly rituals of vain women the world over in their stupid and ludicrous search to regain the flush of youth in their appearance has me asking myself has the world gone mad? We have women supporting, with cash, a multi-billion dollar industry in cosmetic products, including the injection of what is a deadly poison into their faces in the hope that ‘wrinkles’ will disappear. And in a country not too far away, people are dying because they have only contaminated water to drink! We now even see adverts for men showing how they too can regain their toned skin etc., but only if they use Product A, or as a last resort, Product B. The reply to my earlier question is of course that the world has gone mad, but we haven’t noticed yet!

The second reason for writing of grief is to express my sorrow for the 18 million souls who still have to exist and endure under the brutal dictatorship of the North Korean military. The pictures of the seemingly overwhelming grief spatter all over our newspapers and screens, yet we do not see the other photographers, the ones who systematically photograph the crowds of ‘mourners’ in the hope of catching a ‘dissident’ who isn’t quite as grief-stricken as he should be. The garish and revolting ceremonies, for a ‘leader’ who was no more than a figurehead for a regime which holds around a million of its citizens in concentration and re-education camps, should be banished without delay to a history shelf, and only discussed when the North Korean nightmare finally ends, when a subjugated people finally get their own chance to settle their own lives, hopefully by ending, swiftly and brutally, the lives of their oppressors!

Egg-zactly!

One of the loudest boasts of the European Union Gauleiters has been their claim that, by instituting their Single Market, with the requirements that all commercial and industrial companies have to operate under the same rules and restrictions meaning that no-one within the Union can operate with an unfair advantage. Well, that is the general idea, but it all depends which country you operate in, and whether you abide by the rules at all times.

About seven years ago, the Commission bent under the pressure from animal and bird-friendly people, who tend to shout louder than most, and agreed that the old system which allowed crowded battery cages for egg-producing hens to be used throughout the Union would be outlawed, and new, environmentally-friendly group layer cages would be introduced throughout the Union by January 1^st 2012. The investment in the new colony-cage systems is reputed to be, in the whole of the United Kingdom, running into £billions!

All so far, so good. But this extra investment, by the law-abiding British egg producers, now is placing our egg-producers at a distinct disadvantage from our cousins on the Continent, who in over a third of the total European egg producers, have not even commenced changing from the now supposedly-outlawed battery cages to the new, and very expensive, colony cage system. And apart from imploring all users of liquid and other illegally-produced egg to buy and use only British egg in their cakes, dough and products, our useless Government cannot, have not and will not outlaw the importation of the low-priced product from our European cousins across the Continent. Why, because that would be against the Law!

The ‘colleagues’ win again!

Watching the usually-hidden workings of the European bunch, including the Commission, the Council and the various sewage departments, as they vent their fury upon a Union Member (the United Kingdom), as we had the sheer audacity to say ‘No, Thanks’ to yet another bandage job (or treaty, as they prefer it to be named), I did not realise the amount of acid which was being splashed in our direction.

So, Cameron, for the first time, showed a tiny proportion of intelligence as he stated that he, and of course Great Britain, did not wish to envelop ourselves in yet another Treaty which had not even existed even in a draft format when it was presented to the Council. Bitter experience, as with the Lisbon, Maastricht and all the other Treaties which promised one thing, and strangely enough ended with something entirely different, had shown Cameron that if he had signed, he would have been consigning his nation to evermore ‘collective rule’ by the ‘colleagues’ in Brussels.

So he walked away, and has been perhaps vindicated in a way perhaps special to the Brussels Dictatorship. Because the draft Treaty, when finally published, shows that it would become Law when nine of the seventeen nations ratified it, with no referendums or blocking Parliaments allowed to interfere with a decision of those same ‘Colleagues’!

I do not know how this oily crowd are planning to get around  Article 4.2 of the Treaty on European Union , but, rest assured, they will find a way!

Just think, if you will, of the uproar within the Westminster Parliament, never mind the so-called Eurosceptic newspapers, if they were told that, because the Prime Minister had signed up, they would not even be allowed a vote, because it would not matter!

The trouble with surveys is…….

A national survey and study by the Government Accountability Office had indicated that many Americans who do not seek, or who reject, the new $1 coin for use in commerce would actively seek the coin if an attractive, educational rotating design were to be struck on the coin.

Many people cannot name all of the Presidents, and fewer can name the spouses, nor can many people accurately place each President in the proper time period of American history.

So America passes a Law to stamp and produce $1 coins, with printing stamped on the side, all to commemorate all the Presidents of the United States, because it was felt it would be a ‘good thing’ for American historical knowledge as well vending machine users.

So as a result of something which was done as ‘a really good idea’, America has now got to store and protect a pile of1,400,000,000 (1.4 billion) dollar coins, costing some $300 million to produce, which will take, according to conservative estimates, some ten years to pass into general use and circulation.

I bet Sacagawea feels really happy about this amount of ‘remembrance’

These simple things remind me of you

 

Item….A stainless steel double-edged kitchen knife

Item….A set of stainless steel serving dishes, together with a matching set of stainless steel tongs and salad servers

Item…A sadly-depleted (through time’s wear and tear) Japanese porcelain tea set.

Item….A matched set of oak-handled steel carving knives and fork made in the Samurai tradition.

The above list represents the total of things physical which date from our wedding some 44 years ago, but it does not cover one speck of the time we have spent as a couple, not of the milestones of that marriage, nor of the vows spoken during that simple ceremony all those years ago.

That glorious colour has faded from your hair, but those lips and eyes can still produce that slightly sardonic smile which fascinated me then, and still does today.

The steel of those long-held gifts reminds me of the bond between us, which has lasted through three children and three grandchildren, through the health and the sickness we spoke of when we stood together at that altar.

This morning I watched as the physiotherapist helped you move, with the aid of a walking frame and myself helping your balance, a few feet alongside your bed; the furthest you have moved in over six weeks.

Hopefully, we will see the light at the tunnel’s end together, as I know that there is a bloke with a box of matches nearby; and equally hopefully that time will encompass a few years yet!

Now you see it….

I have often thought that our rulers live on a different planet, but now there is proof that they exist in a different Universe. As any sci-fi enthusiast will tell you, the probabilities of a multitude of different Universes, where the lives of everyone are changed by seemingly subtle actions or policies, are quite high. For example, a Universe where David Cameron is viewed as a old-style Tory politician is possible, but not very likely. Similarly, a Universe where we, the British People, are asked on a very regular basis for our views on how we are governed might well exist, but that Universe’s chances of existing are deemed to be very low indeed.

And then we have the Universe inhabited by the likes of the crowd which is organising the London Festival, in and around the London Olympics, where the Second World War never happened, where all the aims of the ‘Lefties’ and the ‘Luvvies’ have been fulfilled without any of that nasty blood spoiling the nice posters advertising that same Festival!

‘All that glisters is not gold’

That famous quotation, taken from the words of William Shakespeare (and none other!!), reminds us of the illusion presented as fact.

Over on ATW, we have advised more than once that the Arab Spring is no more a  change in appearance for the peoples of those lands.

We here in Europe, along with America, part of the old Empire, now known as the Commonwealth and various other nations who have ‘seen the light’, have at least a semblance of Democracy. It has taken a long time to achieve this tenuous balance, with many mis-steps, side-steps and falls along the way. We see India, the worlds’ second most populous nation, changing governments without much tension or blood, due to the fact that the Nation has spoken in a ballot! We here in Britain gave them that, and it is a proud claim. Their laws are based largely on their inheritance from the old Raj, the British Empire. Many nations have tottered after independence, some have fallen under dictatorship, but many more survive.

Turn to America, that ‘shining light in the West’, and we see Democracy writ large. That nation grew from an intolerance of greed and stupidity laid heavily on it by the rulers of England, who saw it as a cash cow which would never speak back. By the actions of brave men, and by the thoughts and deductions of a Continental Congress which gave them a Constitution which certainly I envy, that young nation twice became the saviour of a tired Europe and an oppressed East.

Our victories have sometimes been imperfect, we still see evil perpetuated in high places; but we get by.

And that is what I argue has given us the ability to govern ourselves without resort to bullets and bombs. This is also is what has been lacking from countries with Muslim-majority Arab populations, they have no memory of democracy, they have no basis. no ‘folk memory’, no instinct to state without fear, “You cannot do that!”. So when the Egyptian revolt took place, who slid in to keep their own power and methods? The Military; closely followed by the Muslim Brotherhood of course, because they know what is right for Egypt, and no one else will be allowed a say! When Bahrain rumbled and writhed in protest, the royal family imported the ‘heavy weapons’ from Saudi Arabia, and crushed them before they has a chance.

So should we be surprised when we read this in our newspapers?

Prioritise!

Life, in these exciting, or alternatively troubled times, is all about priorities.

To be warm, or to eat well. For many of us on these Isles this is a choice. With prices rising for heating as well as for basic foodstuffs,, many on small incomes, battered beyond belief by inflation and price-gouging, it all comes down to choices, to alternatives.

Bur enough of reality; my question this morning is quite simple, do you agree with the priority choices of the Daily Mail when they lead, at least in the online edition, with the news of the Greek Referendum vying for lead space with pictures and an article about whether some young woman with a very strange name and lifestyle is getting a divorce after 72 days of marriage; and right down at the base of the page come pictures of the homecoming march of elements of  3 Commando Brigade, nineteen of whose personnel returned earlier, not of course because the weather was cold!

Shock; Horror!

A European politician threw the entire brigade of European politicians into turmoil last night by deciding to do what every other politician from that same Europe has failed to do; which is to ask the people who voted for his Party if they agreed with the policies of austerity and loss of sovereignty introduced by his Government. Our own bunch, Clegg, Milliband, Cameron, liars and thieves all, declare in ringing tones that they would ‘ask the people’. But when they have an opportunity to actually ‘ask’, the sounds of heels as they thudded on the boards taking them away overcame all other noises!

So here is a toast to Mr. George Papandreou, possibly a mediocre politician, possibly an adroit and careful survivor in the seas of deceit and corruption swirling around Greek and European politics.

Or should it be a toast to the ‘Only Honest Man in European Politics’?

Tickets please? All change!

We are told by ‘a senior Government source’ that  MPs will for the first time be asked to back an explicit statement that offenders’ human rights should not outweigh the interests of society and law-abiding citizens.  This is to supposedly stem the ‘outrage’ in Parliament that offenders routinely use their ‘Human rights’ to escape deportation. We are also told that Ministers are preparing to back a ‘strongly-worded’ statement to the Judges who give these criminals the right to stay in Britain, that they should ‘take notice’ of the public anger and annoyance over criminals’ rights being given sway over the right of Britain to deport those it wishes to.

Now just let us ponder on those few sentences.

• Strange, is it not, that the name of the ‘source’ is not revealed. If I wish to say something, I put it forth under my own name. It is a symptom of weak and vacillating government to place projects or plans on an anonymous basis to check how they might be accepted or otherwise by a gullible public!
• It is a fact, a truth; that laws are passed in our Parliaments, but reviewed, interpreted and sometimes even modified by the Judiciary. If the Ministers and Parliamentarians have a problem with the decisions of the Judiciary, whether it be on matters of criminal justice or matters esoteric, such as the sacred area of ‘Rights’ legislation, they have only themselves to blame. For the Judges are only doing their jobs, much as it pains me to say. They are interpreting the Law which has been handed to Her Majesty for her signature and approval. Those same laws which have passed through both Houses of Parliament, through committee after committee, and remembering all the while that a vast number of M.P.s are also lawyers!
• So why the outbursts? Why the feigned anger against the Judiciary, who, as I repeat, are only judging within the Law? Well, folks, it is simply because of one word, one organisation, one club whose employees have written Laws which cannot be picked apart, cannot be reviewed; cannot even be re-negotiated. And that one word, organisation? EUROPE!
• Parliament, along with the blustering Cabinet Ministers who fulminate, and gesticulate, cannot do anything about areas of our life which have been passed to Europe because we would have to get all 27 Union members to agree to a change, and do you honestly believe that we, as the ‘Odd Man Out’ of Europe; we as the ‘outsider’ who wanted into the Club, and then decided that we did not like the Club rules, wanted to change them to suit us, would even get a hearing?
• We have only two options over the whole farrago of Human Rights legislation as it has been imported from Brussels. We can either pipe down, keep going as we are, with no further ‘noises off’; or we can get out! We would not be allowed, as some fevered minds within the Tory Party state, to re-negotiate our Membership, to repatriate certain areas of European Legislation. we cannot do it, because the Europeans would not allow it
• So which path do we go down? Shall we stay forever like a sulking teenager, leaning against a lamp-post, shouting the odds with his parents who are sitting cosy and warm in their home? Or shall we strike out on our own again, and see what is before us on our own, with only our native wit and intelligence to guide us?

I know which path I would choose; do you?

Banking for old people!

Subject: Banking for the Older Generation . . . . how we should get back at the Banks

 Dear  Sir:

I am writing to  thank you for bouncing my check with which I endeavoured to pay  my plumber last month. By my calculations,  three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the  check and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it…

I refer, of course,  to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire pension, an arrangement which, I admit, has been in place for only eight  years.You are to be  commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account $30 by way of penalty for the  inconvenience caused to your bank.

My thankfulness  springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me  to rethink my errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas I personally answer your telephone calls and letters, — when I  try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal,  overcharging, pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank  has become.    From now on, I, like  you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person.. My mortgage and loan  repayments will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank, by cheque, addressed  personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom  you must nominate.

Be aware that it is  an OFFENCE under the Postal Act for any other person to open  such an envelope. Please find attached  an Application Contact which I require your chosen employee to  complete. I am sorry it runs  to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or  her as your bank knows about me, there is no  alternative.  Please note that all  copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by  a Notary Public, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities)  must be accompanied by documented proof.

In due course, at MY  convenience, I will issue your employee with a PIN number  which he/she must quote in dealings with me.I regret that it  cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modeled it  on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service.  As they say,  imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Let me level the  playing field even further.

 

When you call me,  press buttons as follows:

IMMEDIATELY AFTER  DIALING, PRESS THE STAR (*) BUTTON FOR ENGLISH

#1.  To make an  appointment to see me

#2. To query a  missing payment.

#3. To transfer the  call to my living room in case I am there.

#4  To transfer the  call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.

#5. To transfer the  call to my toilet in case I am attending to  nature.

#6. To transfer the  call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.

#7. To leave a  message on my computer, a password to access my computer is required. Password will be  communicated to you at a later date, to that Authorized Contact  mentioned earlier.

#8.  To return to the  main menu and to listen to options 1 through 9

#9. To make a  general complaint or inquiry.The contact will  then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service.

#10. This is a  second reminder to press* for English.

 

While this may, on  occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play  for the duration of the call. Regretably, but  again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new  arrangement.

 

May I wish you a  happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous New  Year?

 

Your Humble  Client

 

And remember:     Don’t make old people  mad.    We don’t like being old  in the first place,    so it doesn’t take much  to piss us off.

Second thoughts?

America decides, ‘next time, we gonna’ pick our own damn cotton’!

 

The argument began over whether the customer should pay 15 cents for a cup of water; or ‘reparations’, or something!

 

Listen, before you are made to listen!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Timeline of a crime

The scene pictured is that of a small lake near Cheshire, Connecticut. It is a peaceful quiet view of part of a peaceful, almost bucolic area of Connecticut. The items under discussion in that sleepy town range from the work of a local artist to the farmers’ market at Spring Glen church. It is a microcosm of small town America, and those words are definitely not used in any belittling sense, but rather as an acknowledgment of America’s strengths. But Cheshire was also the scene of a violent invasion of a family home which ended in the deaths of four members of that family.

As a police officer approached the home of the Petit family in Cheshire, Conn., on the morning of July 23, 2007, two men ran from the scene as flames poured out of the house. They were quickly apprehended.

When officers returned to the house they found Dr. William A. Petit Jr., 50, who had been severely beaten, and the bodies of his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and their daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. The police said that the victims had been tied up in separate rooms, and that Ms. Hawke-Petit and one of the daughters were sexually assaulted before the house was set on fire.

Stephen Hayes was sentenced to death last year for his part in these crimes, but the focus of the judicial process now swings to Joshua  Komisarjevsky. Having been found guilty of capital felony killing, kidnapping, arson and sexual assault, the jury must now determine whether he face the death sentence, or long years in prison.

The reason why I write of this crime which shattered a family, and left a husband and father in morning for his wife and daughters, brutalized, raped, strangled and finally burnt is that it was mentioned on the BBC Today Programme as evidence that Connecticut still retains the Death Penalty, and how abhorrent that is to most ‘progressive thinking’ people! I sometimes wonder if any BBC employee has ever looked beyond the pearlescent skies of the world they alone seem to inhabit, and get down into the grubby and sometimes violent world where the rest of us live?

Speak your mind!

Colour me as in total agreement with Adrian Smith, who was demoted for expressing himself freely on a subject which is anathema to him.

I too would state that : ‘No, not really. I don’t understand why people who have no faith and don’t believe in Christ would want to get hitched in church.

‘The Bible is quite specific that marriage is for men and women. If the State wants to offer civil partnerships to the same sex then that is up to the State; but the State shouldn’t impose its rules on places of faith and conscience.’

Good on you Adrian; I wish I had known you earlier, so I could have e-mailed you and offered my unconditional support!

and THIS young lady got it just right!

When I check out American newspapers, I tend to do a little ‘speed-summarising’. I tend to click the links within the e-mailed digest which intrigue me, and sometimes my search is rewarded by a superb op-ed or article.

So it was when I happened upon this little treasure, which gives the inside track from a young African-American lady on who the Obama Administration and Congress deems fit to teach in schools such as the one she attended. Seems as though unruly students, classrooms in turmoil and incessant truanting are not the preserve of British schools.

So take a few minutes, and read this well-written and -argued piece by Candice Johnson, and then see if you agree with her when she states that good education mainly emerges from good, well-trained teachers!

Cuts to the System

My Dog I went down to the Benefits Office this morning to sign up my Dog. The woman said, “Dogs are not eligible to draw benefit”. I explained to her that my Dog is black, unemployed, idle, can’t speak English and has no clue who his dad is. She then looked in her reference manual. He gets his first cheque on Friday. Damn this is a great country..

 

 

Call me by my name!

Readers of the damning CQC report into patient care in hospitals do not need me to state that this report is neither news, nor fresh. Individual hospital cases, where people have died or suffered terrible neglect, have been reported upon for years; and every time, every case, every distraught relative has been re-assured, ‘we have learned lessons’. And that, folks, is the Standard Response, straight out of both the NHS and Government handbooks.

“Don’t worry, things are getting better!” One can almost see the appropriate NHS Trust executive or hospital administrator flicking over the pages of a large loose-leaf folder to find and state the appropriate, approved, and useless response to be given out via the waiting microphones and cameras to a despondent Nation.

The ‘degree-qualified’ nurses who are too intent upon their tasks, whether to hand out drugs and potions from a carefully-monitored prescriptions list to checking temperatures and blood pressures, to glance at the PERSON in the bed and discover that the Patient has been trying to get a drink of water for half-an-hour or more. The unqualified and untrained ‘Care assistants’ who are employed to do the ‘scut work’ which the Nurses are now too grand to do, are themselves working to a schedule which blanks out any mention of the fact that the truly important people on the wards are ignored. Because the lists, the routines, the ‘tick-boxes’ must be filled in, they are oblivious to the fact that the Patients, the reason for their existence and employment, are trying, and usually failing, to get their attention.

To amend this disgraceful state of affairs will not be easy, because it demands change which is almost impossible, in these days of what has become ‘jobs for life’. The NHS can start with one small task, right across every hospital, ward and A&E desk. They should be required to address the patient either as Mr. or Mrs. ‘Everyman’, or Sir or Madam; every time that patient is spoken to. Never mind the familiarity of a first name; ignore the fact that the Nurse, or Doctor, has seen and spoken to that patient maybe fifty times. Every time they speak, they must remember that the man or woman in that bed is an individual, with the automatic right to civility and respect. The supine form in the bed is not an interesting case, or a problem to be solved;the person in that bed, upon that ward is, in fact, their employer!

 

Lets all hope someone listens

 

When I wrote an e-mail ‘Letter to the Editor’ to the Northern Echo, I will be honest in stating I would not get published; but there again, I did tell the reporter that the photographer would just capture an image of some fat bloke beside a stair-lift!

 

 

These aren’t cuts; they are slices!

I have received a questionnaire from Durham Council, targeting maintenance costs for stair-lifts supplied by the Council, and used by disabled residents of County Durham.

We are asked if we are getting good value from the Stair-Lift Maintenance companies who maintain the afore-mentioned Stair-Lifts; and then we are asked if we would agree to a proposal to make us, as individuals, responsible for their continued maintenance and call-out repair costs. The Council ‘cost-saving’ proposal seeks to off-load the long-term maintenance and repair costs, which must be considerable, on to the backs and wallets of a group of people, who by the very nature of the service provided by these stair-lifts, are vulnerable as well as being disabled. The grants are Means-tested, and in fact most of the stair-lift users or their families are pensioners.

My wife, who is the user of the stair-lift, qualified for the installation because of her disability, but we were never advised that the financial aspects of this installation, which was provided for her through a Government-funded Disability Grant, would change so drastically. We were told, before getting the stair-lift, that the first year’s maintenance would be covered by the manufacturer’s guarantee, and after that, the repairs would be covered by Durham Council.

As an extra twist of the Council-wielded knife, we are also asked if we are Homosexuals, Irish Travellers, or possibly asylum-seekers! (The last item might be a slight exaggeration, but I would hope you get my drift!)

I have contacted the local newspapers, but have found no success in even getting a letter printed or on-line, and despair of getting any reasonable argument from the Council.

So I am asking, through these blog pages as well as other avenues, if some will support me in a campaign to get this high-and-mighty Council to change their minds, and seek another method of ‘saving’ money besides loading yet another financial burden on to the shoulders of those amongst us who can literally least afford the extra?

Mike Cunningham

Horns…1 Stupid berk…..0

 

How could I put it so as not to sound slightly less gloating?

 

No, sorry; he deserved everything he got!

 

 

Different folks…Very different Strokes!

When I was a schoolboy, my father was tenant of a public house in Jarrow. As newcomers to the Town, we soon realised that this was a place apart, where whole streets had been flattened by German bombs, where grass grew where once people had been born, lived and died because a would-be invader fought against us; where grass grew because the very house foundations had been blasted away. The people of Jarrow had been through the same mill as most other British towns and cities, but their fortitude was perhaps of a different brand, having first been the crucible from which the steely determination of the Jarrow marchers was cast.

Their aim was honest, to simply publicise the way and the manner in which they felt their own town had been cast upon the industrial scrap-heap, and to civilly ask the Government of the day to give them aid and help. On October 5^th 1936, they set off, and marched for 22 days, and 280 miles; to London. Despite huge publicity, and a groundswell of approbation on the march itself, they did not meet the Prime Minister, the hoped-for jobs did not re-appear until re-armament brought increased industrial activity to the mines and the shipbuilding sector of the North-East.

 

Switch forward sixty-five years, and a second ‘Jarrow March’ sets off as HUNDREDS of activists are planning to recreate one of the most iconic protests ever to be held in the wake of rising unemployment.

To mark the 75th anniversary of the legendary Jarrow March, a new generation of crusaders are planning to follow in the footsteps of the 200  jobless men who made their way on foot from South Tyneside to London in 1936.

 

Somehow, I don’t think we do ‘Iconic’ any more!

If you are offended; my job is done!