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!

When ‘luck’ is not a gamble!

Since the early 1970’s, the real truth of how thousands of young men and women made a major contribution to our role, and our victory in the Second World War commenced a slow and filtered visibility into our national consciousness. Husbands or wives, who had never discussed their work even with their spouses over decades, finally were relieved of the burden of the Secrets Act, and from their lips came the real story of the Code-Breakers of Bletchley Park. In films such as Enigma, where Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet stand-in for the hundreds who actually did the mind-numbingly patient work of manually decrypting the ‘unbreakable’ German signals, only part of the truth was revealed.

I discovered, through reading a book entitled ‘The Secret Life of Bletchley Park’, that the Navy knew, for example when the battleship Bismarck broke out into the Atlantic, where she was almost as fast as the German Naval Staff knew, so fast were the decrypts obtained by the code-breakers. The Navy had to fly reconnaissance aircraft to spot ‘by chance’ where the Bismarck cruised, so as to cover the incredible, the most vital secret of the entire war, that the German naval communications had been so thoroughly penetrated. The warships of ‘Force H’, summoned by direct order from Churchill, were guided to the spot where Bismarck made her last stand by decrypted signals, and the final attack by torpedoes was the culmination of one of the most successful ‘intelligence camouflage’ operations ever envisaged. When Kenneth More starred alongside Dana Wynter in ‘Sink the Bismarck!’, all the movements of the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were stated to be from either observers on land or ship, and future courses were plotted on ‘assumptions’ as well as ‘knowledge of how a naval force would progress’ in real life.

Truth is sometimes much stranger than fiction! We had it all in 1945, and we simply threw it all into the garbage dumps!

I read that Bletchley Park is to be given £4.6 million by the Lottery. That is so wrong; it should be £46 million!

X-posted from A Tangled Web

Its only words……

The Prime Minister’s speech at the North Korean Tory Party conference

What he said……. In Afghanistan today, there are men and women fighting for Britain as bravely as any in our history. They come from across our country: England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland. They now have the equipment they need. And we’re on target to bring them home by the end of 2014. Theirs has been a campaign of incredible courage and sacrifice, and I know everyone in this hall will want to send a message to everyone who serves and who have served. We’re proud of you. We salute you. Thank you.

What he meant……Your P45 and Redundancy notices are in the post room. We won’t mention that useless Labour bunch when it comes to equipment, because our Defence bunch is just as useless!

What he said….. A few months ago I was in Nigeria, on a trade mission. While I was there, I visited a vaccination clinic. It was very hot, pretty basic and the lights kept going off. But to the rows of women, cuddling their babies, this place was a godsend. One of the nurses told me that if it wasn’t for British aid, many of those beautiful babies would be dead.

What he meant……Because the Nigerian government, despite being oil-rich and hugely wealthy, is so corrupt and useless; we are giving lots of your cash to do the vaccination programme, so shut up about the Overseas Aid, Already!

What he said………..  But when it came to that decision to help the Libyan people, there was something dispiriting about the debate here at home. It wasn’t that some people thought we shouldn’t do what we did – of course it’s everyone’s right to disagree.

What he meant……The slow but certain drift into yet another Islamic-, Muslim Brotherhood-, and Sharia-Law-dominated Arabic hellhole is just to be expected, but, what the hell, I ain’t living there!

What he said…….  The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That’s why households are paying down their credit card and store card bills. It means banks getting their books in order.

What he meant….  Our own example of being  a young couple, having not a penny more than £30 million to our name, managing to pay off a large chunk of mortgage shows how true grit and determination can get us through a recession. We only received, between 2002 and 2007, from the taxpayer to defray our housing expenses, a modest £102,874. Someone, anyone, should tell me what a credit card actually is, as being a millionaire, I have never actually held one. As well as my own wealth, I am blessed by being married to an extremely wealthy woman in her own right, with a family fortune enlarged by the fortunate fact that her father is involved in the extremely lucrative but totally futile wind-farms lunacies which are a direct result of the stupid, crazy and utterly indefensible policies of Global Warming and Climate Change adopted by the last Labour government, and enthusiastically endorsed by the sandal-wearers of our Lib-Dem colleagues!

What he said on Europe……..Nothing at all!

Free-er here, than over where?

In purely the interests of Freedom of Speech, along with everyone’s right to know, discuss and criticize, I bring you a small advert promoting a Canadian outfit named Ethical Oil.

Seems as though Ethical was preparing to show the ad on Canadian tv, so the Saudis got lawyered-up, and browbeat the Canadian Broadcasting Company into pulling the advert, because it told nothing more than the truth about this disgusting, tyrannical desert regime.

Hope the replays get out all over the shop, old buddy Abdullah (pboh, which is usually translated as ‘ up yours’ Abdullah!)

So study this!

We live in a land where our own Language evolved from its distant forebears. We acknowledge the extent to which English has taken from the Latin language, as well as ancient French, Norse, a touch of Gaelic, most European languages in its evolvement into the foremost language of business, culture, commerce and the arts all over the civilised world.

From our fields and cities have come the immortal words of Chaucer, Tennyson, Burns and Shakespeare (which can also be pronounced as De Vere). The printed word, of books, poetry, of song, of chant, had their first exposure in Mediaeval English, and when we look at the first known example of song lyrics in print, we read of ‘Summer is a-cummin-in’!

The list of English language authors has never been compiled, because it would be never ending. so great are the numbers of authors and books.

Our Universities rightly place the study of all kinds of English as a primary pillar, but do we really need a course in Harry Potter?