Lies, damned lies, and Westminster

I have always tried to give people the benefit of the doubt, excepting of course any of our breeds of politicians, to who I give neither respect nor credence. Some may call  me cynical; and while they have as much right to their opinions as I have to mine, I believe that my opinions are bolstered and proven by long experience. They (politicians)  routinely change course, they equally routinely lie, obfuscate and cloud the argument, in order to hold to their Party line, and the Party rules above all.

A Tory MP, Mark Pritchard, spoke on a Commons Motion to ban all live animals from appearing in circuses; he spoke despite being pressured by Whips as well as No. Ten, Downing Street, whose occupier was said to ‘look dimly’ on mere MPs actually speaking their minds. Some MPs spoke against the Motion, more agreed with Mr. Pritchard, and the Motion was passed. Now the actual Motion was just advisory, the Government need not heed its passage at all, but the reason why I write with such annoyance is because of the sheer, unadulterated bullshit which was unloaded within the Commons, and more importantly outside that building which used to represent the place in which speeches were made which decided how we lived in this once great country.

The journalist & commentator Nigel Lawson is no innocent in the jungle of politics; he was editor of the Spectator, editor of the Sunday Telegraph, and is now lead columnist for the Sunday Times. He wrote a whole leader column within Sunday’s edition, a position which used to command respect from readers, journalists and politicians alike. To write a leader column for the Sunday Times means you have ‘arrived’. And yet, this ‘wise man’, this ‘paragon amongst journalists’ cannot, or will not, write the simple truth about the stupid and silly ‘circus animal Motion’, because it would have meant revealing the fact that Parliament has not got the power to impose a ban upon circus animals! We gave it away, or at least one of the British governments gave it away; they gave it to Brussels. In twenty-six column inches, on the main opinion page of the Sunday Times, he cannot even tell the truth to his readers. Don’t believe me? Believe Richard North, of EU Referendum fame. He has chapter and verse!

My old Dad used to purse his lips whenever politics was mentioned in the pubs he used to run when we were young men, and once I asked him why he successfully stopped any political discussions in the bars?

Hiws reply:- “Michael, the ones that talk about it don’t know enough; and the ones who practice it mostly lie through their collective teeth!”

What are the odds indeed?

Forget the simpering EuroSlime as he pushes his, ‘homeowners can defend themselves‘ line for all he is worth, but the comment to be listened to is the one from the senior plod on the scene. He stated, ”

‘We are investigating this matter within the legal framework as it stands and I don’t want to speculate on political matters at this stage.

‘If somebody was confronted by a burglar tonight, I would tell them to ring the police and use reasonable force to protect themselves.’

In other words, some poor bloke who was faced with a career criminal is now likely to be charged with manslaughter, unless heavy political pressure is brought to bear!

 

Stuff Shami, if I was confronted by some clown who was trying to rob me, or harm my own, he would be dead before he got both feet on my engineered-oak floor! It truly is amazing what one can find literally misplaced on a low cupboard top next to the front door; a really, really sharp 9-inch long serrated edge knife that I was using to dead-head some roses last summer, a nice conveniently-weighted claw hammer that I was using to tap some cable clips tight against the skirting some six months ago: it truly is terrifying just to see where I dropped these things and forgot to tidy them away.

Gone unfortunately are the days when I could drop my hand on to my fully-loaded .38 calibre revolver, loaded that is with cast-lead death. That was in the good old days when I lived overseas. True, I had to attend a gun-handling course on the responsibilities of owning a deadly weapon, but few people have actually had to draw their weapon, as I had to do. I fired to injure, to warn; and for that I received a stern lecture from a Police Major, and also faced the possibility of the loss of my licence. The Police determined instead that I should attend further training sessions at the gun range, with strict adherence to re-learning the ‘kill-zone’ on the human body.

I fired my gun again, early one morning, at the racing figure of a black bloke who was trying to force my flat patio door open. I reckon I hit him, because the police found blood traces on the concrete of the property next to ours. That time, the Police Sergeant gave me some gentle advice on leading my aim on a moving target, and also the possibility of buying a gun with a longer barrel, which of course would provide a longer, better-aimed bullet flight!

My views are simple, yet robust; if someone comes into my home without express welcome from myself, he will get all he deserves. I wish sometimes that our laws descended from a Constitution, and were not continually being fenced and finagled by do-gooders.

Those silly ‘green’ lamps don’t last very long, Philip!

” Philip, I told you that it was all a lie, it was all rubbish, this ‘Climate Change’ stuff that you read about. When that silly man Blair was in charge of Our Parliament, he got hold of some silly nonsense, probably from his equally-silly wife, about how we were all doomed unless we all switched to this tiresome ‘Green Climate’ thing that all the others were talking about. I told you that if British people were forced to change the way we live on the basis of the predictions of some ‘Committee’ which is beloved of the United Nations; we would all regret it! Now I read, just the other day, that all their predictions were based on computerised guesswork. And what have we ended up with, even here at the Palace? The lights don’t last; when they do they give off a light that you cannot even read by! I am so glad that I read that small piece on the Internet by that nice man who lives up in the North-East, and went to the site he linked to, so I have at least some decent lights to read by when I am in bed!”

“Yes dear.”

 

X-posted from A Tangled Web

Our Nigel!

Nigel Farage may well be a big-headed buffoon, he may well be a disaster for UKIP, but sometimes, he does sound just the right note!

 

Can you see me?

Readers will of course have seen the problem with these cutting-edge computers:-

 

All the users are holding them with the screens facing away from their eyes!

 

Houston, do we have a problem?

 

 

 

 

 

 

A sinking ship?

The picture above is not actually the result of a turnbuckle breaking and sending the $7.5 million luxury cruiser plummeting into the harbour, along with the owner, who was sipping champagne in celebration ten seconds previously; it is actually a graphic representation of the Greek Economy.

To aficionados of detail; note the carefully-protected seats behind the control console, probably so that the EU Finance Ministers would have somewhere dry to rest from their labours.

The good; and the bad!

The cropped photo shows, to my own mind, much of which is good with my world. The small fingers which grip my thumb belong to my eldest grandson, and the photo was taken yesterday, when I flew down to meet his Mommy and his Daddy, my eldest son, who is himself still recovering from orthopaedic surgery. My grandson was born prematurely, but with superb care, he thrived; and now he is just another normal three-year-old boy. My day was filled with laughter, with the sounds which can only be heard when innocence speaks; and life was good. My other grandson’s Mommy was in the hospital’s maternity wing up in Durham, where my third grandson was born late in the afternoon; there is a small problem with that tiny life, so the baby unit team has placed a cannula into an exceedingly-small vein, and are sending measured doses of a medication to fight the infection. So there are a few clouds on my horizon, but I am content that all that can be done, is being done; medically, that is.

And that is the basis of my writing today, because while I am content that the Premature Baby Unit in an Orpington Hospital did all that was necessary for my eldest grandson some three years ago, that the infant who is only seeing life for the second day in Durham City will be monitored and cared for as though its life was the only one being checked and monitored; and the care which my eldest son received was of the best, the same cannot be said of hospitals, and the Trusts which control them, all across the United Kingdom. David has written many times of the cynical manner in which the Health budgets in Northen Ireland are routinely utilised as political fodder, of promises made which cannot ever be kept; of the protagonists living in a true ‘Fools Paradise’. That, last, repeated many times over, are the source of the canker which is living just under the surface of many areas of our wonderful National Health Service. The political interference, the intrigues, the refusal to accept that NHS workers should, if found guilty of negligence or worse, should not ever be ‘punished’; but should instead be ‘re-trained’ or ‘given advice and guidance’. They are never sacked, never demoted, never ever, except in a few really-hardline cases, charged and brought before a jury of their peers.

Consider the Mid-Staffordshire Hospital Trust, who looked after the hospitals hit by scandal and death some two years ago. As the Telegraph reported, No one on the board at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust has faced censure and all of them were either paid off, walked into another job or allowed to remain in post. The man who ran the hospital trust received a large pay-off despite his part in the scandal.  Martin Yeates, the former chief executive, left the trust “by mutual agreement” with a pay-off of £400,000 and a pension worth £1.27 million, it has been alleged.

Time and time again, where negligence has been proven on almost an industrial scale, no-one gets demoted, no-one gets fined, no-one will even admit responsibility!

I am a man with a fairly short fuse when it comes to another’s actions regarding my health. When I was recovering from major surgery, the worst that I came up against was to ensure that some Scots nurse never came near my wound dressings, as she maybe was well-trained, but had not a clue about the vital ‘care’ sector of a patient’s life.

So I am suggesting that we as a nation consider a short legal reform, especially aimed at workers in the monolithic structures of Health and Social Services.

• All employment contract wording, in the areas of allegations of culpability, malfeasance, neglect or death; or in any case where a patient or patients have suffered even a loss of self-esteem, shall be voided; and replaced with a simple, one clause acknowledgement that the employee, if found complicit in the problems or injuries suffered by a patient, shall be charged and brought before a Court. This complicity will extend to all structures and areas of management. This charge will also apply to those who have left the area where the abuse occurred, but were present and complicit during the abuse. This charge will automatically result in a suspension of all pay and privileges, and if convicted, in addition to any sentence which may ensue, the employee shall be fined all or any of his or her earnings which may be invested, in savings accounts, or any bank; they will forfeit all pension rights, even if some of those rights were gained elsewhere. The employee shall also be barred from any employment within any public sector, and shall be forced to disclose such when applying for any Private sector position.

Such a change would be, in these ‘enlightened’ days, be almost unthinkable, but I feel that only drastic and harsh measures will point the way towards a true reform of our Health Services. Once one or two high-profile people have gone through that particular mill, I reckon there would be a great debate within the Health Service, and with that debate would perhaps come a realisation that the only people who have a ‘right’ within the National Health Service are the patients, and when the upper echelons realise that, we might see a better class within our hospitals and administrative areas!

Eeeny, Meeny…

It is a strange truth which forces an honourable man to choose between two sets of posturing clowns, both sets of course claiming that they are part of the same beliefs as that which is espoused by that same honourable man.

The man is Archbishop Vincent Nichols, leader of England’s Catholics, and the two sets of clowns are opposing factions of an obscure religious bunch called  the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St George. One set, favoured by, amongst others, King Carlos of Spain, is annoyed because the other bunch is giving awards, crosses, knighthoods, and is even more distinctly annoyed because the ‘Junior Prince’s’ bunch is planning a mass in Westminster Cathedral later this year.

The leader of the first set of ‘Constantinians’, who goes by the rather grand title of HRH the Infante Don Carlos, Duke of Calabria, Grand Master of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St George, Head of the Royal Household of Bourbon of the Two Sicillies, and doyen of the Knights of the Golden Fleece, (I kid you not) has written to the Archbishop, claiming that as the dissident group has no authority to use the name, they should not be allowed to celebrate the Mass in Westminster. Part of their argument is that the ‘dissident group’ has awarded Gold Medals to the Presidents of Syria and of Yemen.

Now one might see an argument right now in the bestowal of medals to ruthless dictators, but it is only a few short months ago that President Assad was ‘flavour of the month’ with many because he wasn’t quite as nasty as many of his neighbours.

So, apart from the fact that the leader of England’s Roman Catholics has enough to do with fighting for what he regards as natural justice for Adoption Societies, or lambasting Labour’s Alan Johnson for attempting to force ‘quotas’ on Catholic school intakes, he also has to deal with two crews of posturing, pompous clowns, both of which are as false as the other. He must heave a hearty sigh of relief when dealing with our own Royal Family, because, complicated though they may be, they are all at least Anglicans!

Being John Malcovitch

As actors come and go, most of us find our favourites, and few of us are disappointed in our choices. Their work, their talent, entertains us, thrills us, shocks us, or makes us laugh. When I was a young man, a character appeared on our B&W (Black & White) tv screens who epitomised all that the legends of the West. Rawhide’s ‘Rowdy Yates’, or to give the actor’s name Clint Eastwood, shone through the electrons with a talent which, even to an untrained eye such as mine, gave some signal of his talent and his future.

But listening this morning to a BBC radio clip which featured John Malkovich, I realised that, through the massive egos which litter the entertainment world, you can find the occasional nugget which proves that some, at least, use their intellect to think of things other that their plays, films or tv series, and how to publicise them. Malcovitch who is touring with a play which is built around an Austrian rapist/murderer named  Jack Unterweger. who was imprisoned for fifteen years for his crimes, but then fooled (which didn’t take much to achieve) the Austrian ‘Intelligentsia’ that he was reformed, and they clamoured for his release from prison. He exceeded all their expectations, writing a book and also working as a journalist and tv reporter. He was subsequently arrested and charged with eleven more murders, but committed suicide before his trial.

John Malcovich, himself a great actor, who can project a ‘persona’ of evil intent better than most, said something profound during the interview. The Death Sentence, or ‘Capital punishment’ for those of a more squeamish nature was being discussed, especially in respect of America; and Malcovich’s words were rather telling. The interviewer asked if he was content with the Death Penalty, and he replied that ‘there were some people who he would have little heartbreak about’. He also stated that there were many people on Death Row whose cases are very flawed, and they should be looked at once more on appeal. He then stated “The death penalty is a kind of philosphical question, whether it should exist or not. Otherwise, murderers are the final arbiters of life and death, and without the death penalty, it strikes me as being as though society is lacking something when a murderer is the only one who decides whether a person lives or dies”

Do we live in a just society here in Great Britain? Would we be a better society if the death penalty for murder had been retained? Would we have slept sounder if  William Hunter had been given the benefit of a short rope and a long drop? Would we have been able to digest our cornflakes a little easier if the likes of Rosemary West or Ian Brady had been clinically snuffed out, instead of suffering the drawn-out torture inflicted on some of their victims?

By our membership of the European Union, we have submitted to the will of an unelected dictatorship. By our EU membership, we agreed that we should not kill, or plan to kill, any murderer who is found guilty in our criminal courts. The question we should be asking ourselves is simple, have we traded our independence in action and thought for the ‘comfort’ of a supra-national government which itself brooks no dissent. Consider the reaction of the EU bureaucracy when Austria brought in a right-wing party to Government. The immediate imposition of sanctions wasn’t queried in any of the nations’ capitals; no, ‘they are unnacceptable’ was the reaction, because of the ‘Fascist’ associations of the Haider party. It is indeed starnge that the sanctions were slapped upon Austria because they elected a right-wing organisation, but refuse to move at the same time against Italy, despite many of Italy’s politicians having fascist or communist backgrounds!

For my own thinking, I would state that the path of ‘forgiveness’ of ‘reconciliation’, of passive acceptance that the best we can do is lock the killers up is at best barren, at worst useless, because they can always get out, be paroled, be ‘redeemed’. No, the only redemption for a killer is the fact that they will find out what is beyond the great divide of death a lot quicker than if they lived behind bars; if they face a man with a rope and a trapdoor, who will not be budged, who will not give way to special pleading, who will carry out society’s sentence, and remove the killer from our midst!

A legal case worth the name.

Several times, over the few years I have had the privilege of posting on both my blogsite and on ATW, I have written of the appalling debt owed to the 100,000  British Home Children of Canada; of the forced migration, supported by both Anglican and Catholic churches, of over 150,000 young children to Australia, New Zealand and the old Rhodesia in the years before the Great War, in the Twenties and Thirties, and in present days up until the 1970′s. A few were given a home, loving support and the chance of that promised ‘new life’; but the vast majority were treated as a virtual labour commodity, many of whom were abused both physically and sexually by perverts such as the Christian Brothers, and their slave farm at Bindoon!

So I can happily confirm that some Sixty-nine former residents are supporting the legal action in the Supreme Court seeking compensation for physical and sexual abuse they allegedly suffered at Fairbridge Farm School at Molong in New South Wales between 1938 and 1974. At long last the people who were treated so despicably, who were routinely lied to, were told their parents were dead, were told that their brothers and sisters had disappeared, those truly abused people are taking legal action against the Australian government. But I am hoping against hope that there will be a few more defendants in the dock when the Court Case eventually grinds into action. I would be looking for a mention of the British government, of the high priests, bishops and Cardinals of the Anglican and Catholic churches in England and Northern Ireland, as well as in the Republic.

I also hope against hope that there will be no ‘settlement’, no ‘compensation payments’ shrouded in secrecy and gag orders. Let the truth come out in Court, and let those who arranged this shameful exercise be handed their share of the blame for the way and manner in which these people were treated for so long!

As an afterthought, I would like to pay tribute to my own Mother and Father, for being lucky enough to be in a family where we were loved, and cared for, throughout our early years.

Keep the children quiet!

 

I, along with many other commentators of the slightly-Right persuasion, have often smiled as the CINO, wannabe’ liberal, goody-two-shoes of this political world of ours have delicately approached the thorny subject of ‘free speech’, and more specifically ‘free speech’ within the one place where it is guaranteed by Statute, namely the Houses of the Commons and the Lords within the Palace of Westminster.

Outside those two places, the freedom to speak your mind had been drastically curtailed, and it is mainly because of legislation enacted within those two Houses that we find ourselves wrapped about with draconian rules about who can say what about whom. It is only a couple of weeks ago that if I was to state that some low-life with absolutely no morals at all, who goes by the name of Ryan Giggs was screwing some woman with big tits, I might well have been hauled up for ‘contempt of court’, because Clarke’s mates in the judiciary had been approached by Schiilings the media (or rather mediocre) lawyers, and the lawyers had implored the judge to impose an injunction against a newspaper’s publication of the juicy details. The judge had also imposed reporting restrictions which forbade the very mention of the fact of the injunction.

The one thing which the lawyers and the judges were not told by this excuse for a man, who of course only wanted to protect his ‘family life’ is that he was also screwing his brother’s wife, and had been doing so for over eight years. When the newspapers got their teeth into this little episode, the first thing done was to ask if the scrote was going to serve five years, or seven for perjury. Now that would be a trial worth watching!

Ken Clarke, the so-called Justice Secretary, has been mooning, or musing, about the one thing which irks him beyond belief, which is that members of the same Houses are able to speak openly about matters which his favourite judges have deemed are unsuitable for the public to learn about, and in particular the ability of some members of both Houses to flagrantly defy those same judges, who of course believe that they are the Law. He was giving evidence regarding the Defamation Bill which is trundling its way through Committee, and of course is all for ‘Parliamentary Privilege’, but seemingly only when it is the ‘right sort of privilege’. He would just love to attempt to remove or constrain the very right of Members to speak on any subject, as of course would the Poison Dwarf, otherwise known as the Speaker John Bercow, but neither has got the guts to state it openly, because they knows that the wrath of both Houses would drop on their heads like a statutory Ton of bricks!

…in a rich man’s world!

I have always believed in the saying which goes ‘he knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing’ but never thought to actually see it demonstrated.

Lakshmi Mittal has now the slightly dubious honour of not only owning his very own ‘Super-Injunction‘, but also having his very own personal stock of Olympic tickets.

But there again, when you are the richest in the land, with very, very good friends in all the right places, it must be so.o.o.o. nice just to clap your hands and everything comes together!

The dreaded Survey calls again!

 

I recently sent a bouquet of flowers to my daughter’s office address in the far-away, distant South of London. I bought them online, and thought no more about the subject. I learned that my gift had arrived, my daughter liked the flowers; and, well, that was that! Or so I thought!

I received a confirmation e-mail thanking me for my order, I received another e-mail telling me that my order had been dispatched; well and good, but now I have three more e-mails from the same company telling me how delighted they were to get my money, and would I fill in a ‘teensy-weeny Ten Minute’ survey on how well they had done by doing their jobs!

If I hadn’t been satisfied with their work, or the flowers had all drooped or died, or any other complication had occurred, I would have been straight on my computer telling them that I was dissatisfied, and probably wanted my money back, but I was happy! So why the bleeding questionnaire; why the interminable quest to get ‘feedback’?

Trouble is, e-mails are too easy to send. If you had to phone, or write a letter to ask if a customer was happy, you probably would not send the damn letter! So why the  constant call for reassurance that everything was ‘painless’ and ‘enjoyable’. How silly can a company get?  I ordered the flowers, yes; but how was I supposed to feel? Like I had just completed an orgasm? Daft pillocks!

encapsulated news…………..

Now listen, like good little people, to Your Master’s Voice!

David Cameron, after listening to a drug-raddled and failed pop star twenty years ago, ensures that we, in addition to giving £9 billion a year to dictators, drug-lords and  nations who spend the cash on better fighter-jets than we have; will be giving £840 million that we do not have to ‘save the poor black babies’!

Oh no, this isn’t a U-turn, its a Realignment!

Cameron, Andrew Lansley, together with a Nick Clegg who is grinning from ear to ear in triumph, announces sweeping changes to the NHS reform process.

All in accord with the Rule of Law!

A Bahraini Government spokeswoman stated that all the accused doctors and nurses who were charged with terrorism, aiding and abetting terrorists and being unfriendly to the Bahrain Government were perfectly allright, mo one had been tortured, and they had all had their heads shaved because everyone who was arrested had their heads shaved. She denied that injured people had been pulled from the hospital, adding that they all had declared that the hospital was insanitary! (Well, alright, I did make up the last bit!)

Where’s your Bin?  I’ve bin’ down the road!

After much trumpeting about how everyone will get their bins emptied every week, Eric Pickles has caved in to weeping civil servants, and decided the fortnightly pick-up will remain where it has been introduced. Oh, and we are all gonna’ be told how to reduce ‘Waste’, whatever that is!

I see no ships!

A retired Rear Admiral has warned we don’t have enough ships for Libya, EU navy duties and British waters as well! Well, we already knew that; I mean if you scrap the ships we already have, we can’t use them any more!

Blood everywhere!

The Blood Transfusion Service is stating that blood donations are drying up. The homosexual interviewer asked if the policy of denying ‘men who have sex with men’ the right to donate blood was being reviewed? The Blood Transfusion man was too polite to state that, as young homosexuals were 53% more likely to contract HIV and Aids, it wasn’t policy to place possibly-infected blood into patients who didn’t agree with their lifestyle!

 

Work experience?

Cameron             Conservative Party economics team, Dogsbody for Carlton Television, politician

Clegg                     Journalist (of sorts), Brussels bureaucrat, EU Parliament politician, politician

Norman Lamb   Employment lawyer, politician

Frances Maude Lawyer, banker, politician

Oliver Letwin     Banker, politician

Vince Cable        Economics adviser, politician

Eric Pickles          Councillor, politician

Liam Fox              Medical doctor, politician

……………….

I could go on, but you must get the general drift of my writing, in that the vast majority of the people who decide how we live, what we get in terms of ‘Democratic Accountability’ are from just the one, grey, amorphous, amoebic master cast.

There isn’t one of them who has known what an honest day’s work feels like. They just do not understand what it is like to have worked all day and most of a night, to complete a tender document; and then to watch as the envelopes are opened to find your company has been pipped at the post by a calculation involving less than one tenth of one percent of the total. They also do not know what it is like to drive four hundred miles to a site upon receipt of a phone call, to find that the caller had misread a drawing, and that two connections had been placed in the wrong slots. I doubt very much if any of his grey group has ever penetrated past the shiny front offices of the offices and factories they ‘visit’ to find out how things are made, or assembled, or polished, or even packed!

That Dave Cameron feels he is ‘right’ and has a ‘strong moral case’ to give £814 million which we do not have, to help fight disease in Africa, but has he, or any of his cohorts, actually had to do something productive to help earn any part of the cash he and his mates are giving away? Does he feel ‘empowered’ by his infatuation with the Euroslime in Brussels, and by his betrayal of everything he says he stands for?

I wish someone both astute and rich would found a new Party, he might call it the British Work Party; and the only requirement for standing for Parliament under its banner would be the simple fact that the candidate had known honest toil, had done a job of work, whether manual or deskbound; had known what it is like to actually earn and make a living. I reckon that person, the founder of the B.W.P. would achieve a great deal of support from many areas and people, from those who are fed up of being lied to on a daily basis, of being fed ‘froth’ instead of honest beer; of being taken for granted on an industrial scale.

The shape of things yet to pass

I am about to produce a ‘world’s first’ in Critical Reviews of television documentaries, in that I am writing a review of a show which has not been shown on television as yet!

The show is titled ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ and is concerned with the final few months of the war between the high-principled secessionist Tamil Tigers, and the base and nasty Sri Lankan Government’s armed forces. As the show is due for broadcast on Tuesday 14^th June, I will now forecast the nature, tone and conclusions of the ‘Impartial documentary’!

• The film will demonstrate that the Tigers were routinely attacked by Government forces in overwhelming numbers, and because they were poorly equipped, did not stand a chance.
• Tamil Civilians,  ‘corralled and subjugated’ by the Tamil forces, were routinely targeted by heavy Government Army artillery shelling, with no regard for the fact that they were ‘non-combatants’, or that they had played no part in the insurrection.
• Sri Lankan naval craft routinely fired upon and sank harmless fishing craft belonging to Tamil fishermen, on the mere ‘suspicion’ that the fishing vessels were used to smuggle weaponry into the fighting area, and that no warnings were given before the naval vessels opened fire upon the ‘defenceless’ fishermen and their vessels.
• Reports which surfaced in the leaked UN document on the final months of the war of ‘tens of thousands’ of defenceless Tamil civilians being killed will be endorsed, and ascertained to be truthful and without bias.
• The documentary will give ‘absolute clarity’ to statements that the Sri Lankan Government would not ‘talk or confer’ with the leaders of the Tamil movement, preferring to move towards military actions which verge on genocide.
• The documentary will conclude that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam only wanted a land of their own, and they were not responsible for the deadly attacks by bombs and thousands of other terrorist atrocities as alleged by the Sri Llankan government, as it was well know that all the attacks were in fact carried out by ‘Liberation Dissidents’. All the Tamil Tigers were doing was to legitimately protest, and the Government responded in a deadly and ferocious manner.
• The fact that all violence has now ceased, and all the remaining Tamils are going back to theri ancestral fields and farms is beside the point, as the Sri Lankan Government had never engaged the Tamil movement in constructive dialogue, never attempted to reach a consensus; but only wanted to achieve a military victory by crushing the rebellious Tamils, and killing all their democratically-elected leaders!

For Bravery beyond Belief!

We have, in Great Britain, a well-established ‘Honours’ system. The awards, honours and titles are varied, and according to those who regulate the system, are granted for ‘services to charities’ or ‘the community’, or to the various instutions for which they have either worked or volunteered. It is a system which has largely been devalued in the eyes of many becasue of the large proportion of so-called ‘Civil Servants’ who seem to be given honours, knighthoods or whatever simply because they were serving civil servants, and they ‘deserved’ the honour. The ranks of politicians who have been awarded ‘honours’ must by now be longer than the Criminal code. Her Majesty must be heartily fed-up with greeting non-entities who have survived through ‘Buggins turn’ and having to give a medal and a membership of one of her chivalrous orders to a time-serving nincompoop!

But, every so often, a person appears, blinking a little in the limelight which he never ever sought, who has done something which is above bravery, far above his job-description, far above any expectations of civilised behaviour. When this happens, when such a person is known; when his deeds and actions, or even more rarely his lack of action are revealed, surely this man or woman should be honoured above many? Can we stand by and just say, ‘Good show’ or ‘well done’, or any of the other platitudes which pass for praise when such bravery is brought forth.

I am therefore preparing to ask all the authorities who are usually engaged in the compilation of the ‘New Year honours’ and the ‘Birthday Honours’ lists to add a singular new name to the list of MBEs and OBEs, of Dames and Knights, of even Life Peerages, although the last has been debased from the original idea, by the institution of a new order of chivalry, only awarded as the personal gift of the Monarch, upon acclamation by that Nation, for services to the Sovereign within the Nations of the United Kingdom. It shall be named the Meritorious Service Medal, and the first recipient should be a journalist. His name is Joe Casey, he was the under-cover reporter who penetrated the web of deceit and torture hidden under the veneer of a ‘Care Home’ named Winterbourne View, and he deserves a nation’s thanks for not doing anything to interrupt his investigation, for staying silent despite every nerve telling him to leap up and defend the defenceless; for allowing we, the viewers of that harrowing hour-long film to see the true meaning of the phrase, ‘Man’s inhumanity to man’ .

Write on one side of the paper!

When living and working in South Africa some thirty-odd years ago, I ran the Engineering side of a construction company. I supervised the tendering for work, as well as the overall supervision of the various sites we had under control. I was the ‘appointed person’ for all engineering installations, both electrical and mechanical, which meant that, in Law, if anything went wrong, my name was at the top of a very short list. This meant that I had to ensure that all work was carried out safely, to relevant standards, with no ‘shortcuts’ allowed. My ‘Health & Safety’ policy document consisted of one sheet of paper, which stated that there are no accidents on site, there are only omissions and deviations from set, stable, established routines. If anyone departed from those set routines, he would be dismissed on the spot.

One of our sites was engaged in the cabling and installation of high- and low voltage electrical equipment which would supply power to homes in a Black township named Tembisa. The consultant, the guy who looked after all our contract phoned me up and casually stated that he was worried about certain high-voltage cabling and switching procedures which he had observed from a distance on site; and was giving me the opportunity to set things right before he was obliged to take note and action!

When I write about high-voltage cables and switchgear, I am writing about a force which can kill instantly, as well as burn and disfigure horribly if practices are not rigorously observed at all times. I arrived on site, found out what was happening, and what had been done; and proceeded to give final written warnings to the two senior men on site, as well as firing on the spot the highly-skilled high-voltage cable jointer who had placed his labourer, an ordinary Zulu in our employ, in the gravest danger. The jointer thought he was indispensable because his skills were in short supply, but he walked away because he broke the rules, which were developed and written long before he was born. The contract was delayed, a bit, but I had no choice, because I had found I could not trust a man who had stated that he always worked by the rules.

So what do readers think of the people who wrote, and then allegedly checked several times before printing the massively-faulted Business Studies examination paper, or the equally-bad Geography and Computing exam papers? When kids these days sit down to an exam, they know that their future is standing before them, and if they falter, their whole way of life can be massively altered or downgraded. What would you do if the first question you come up against on the exam paper just doen’t make any sense, because of either bad preparation, bad writing or simply ignorance? Your confidence is shattered, because you haven’t understood the question, and you reckon all your preparations have been for nothing! Multiply that feeling by a hundred thousand, and ATw readers will get some idea of the damage done to these kids who were hoping to get a smooth start in their exams.

But how many of the AQA staff will face dimissal? With British employment law the way it is these days, I reckon a grand total of Zero!

 

The numbers are different.

World War Two

British military deaths by enemy action (all Services)…………….383,000

British civilian deaths……………………………………………………………………75,000

Casualties were high, many civilian families suffered multiple losses, especially during the bombing of Britain. We entered the War badly prepared, we had many reverses, we were badly served by some quite senior politicians, and a lesser number of military figures. Our mobile armour was, to put it bluntly, pathetic. The Royal Air Force had, in service, three different types of bomber, all of which were mobile death traps. By the greatest good luck, we also had the Supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane as air defence fighters, as well as the electronic wizardry of basic Radar. The Royal Navy was perhaps the best equipped and prepared, but even then our Capital ships were old, and ill-equipped for modern naval warfare. The secret mental weaponry of Bletchley Park was being assembled, but the electronic decoding equipment which sprang from the agile mind of Alan Turing was yet to be constructed.

Yes, we battled, we lost good men and women by bullet, bomb, bayonet and treachery, but with the aid of Allies such as the Free Poles, Free French and Dutch, all of the Empire forces, and subsequently the might of American industrial and military men and weaponry, Hitler and subsequently the Japanese were defeated. It was, above all, a just war, against expansionist and evil people.

Afghanistan

British military deaths (all Services)………………373

This was the Day!

Today’s date has special significance for me on one count, it was the day my daughter was born.

For everyone else, however, this day should be perhaps one of the very, very few days when we should thank the stars above for the planning, the luck, the bravery, the sacrifice and the determination that Good shall triumph over evil!

Few amongst us knew the extent of the ferocity and hatred unleashed by the Nazis and their allies. All most of those who lived through the dark days from 1939 knew that this was, in Churchill’s words,’the beginning of the End’. I myself was but four years old, and the headlines passed a small boy by.

Let us therefore pause, and remember all who took part in this, truly ‘The Longest Day’, remember those who fought and lived, and those who did not!

 

Injunctions R’ Us stands down

The alleged ‘Family Man’ footballer who gained a super-injunction against damaging stories about an affair with a Big Brother slapper has some fresh explanations to tell his long-suffering (or alternatively deaf, dumb, stupid and blind) spouse.

Seems he has been battering away at his BROTHER’S wife for 8 years, without too much remorse, or worry, or even threats of litigation.

Rumours of a quick visit to Schillings, the media lawyers with an eye for’ super-injunctions’ while you wait have been denied by Schillings themselves, who are rumoured to have kicked the lying clown out of the back door, while stating, “Yep, we usually can do something to protect a client’s reputation; but in your case you just don’t have one any more. Bye”

The Judge who usually slotted the injunctions in before lunch was heard to remark, “Cor,r,r,r,r,r,r,”

The F1 course will be cleansed of all blood before the race!

A 20-year-old girl was arrested by Bahraini police thugs after standing at the Pearl roundabout and reciting a poem.

The poem, aimed directly at the Bahrain rulers, included the words:-

“We are the people who will kill humiliation and assassinate misery,”

We are the people who will destroy the foundation of injustice.”

She addresses King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa directly and says to him: “Don’t you hear their cries, don’t you hear their screams?”

She is reported to be either in a military hospital suffering from injuries received during torture, or dead!

 

The Kingdom of Bahrain welcomed the decision of the FIA (Federation Internationale de L’Automobile) World Motor Sport Council to reintroduce the Bahrain Grand Prix to the 2011 calendar.

Well, that must be all right then!

Loved the bit about “on the path to recovery from the painful crisis.” Murderous bastards!

Comment upon a comment!

“What I find amazing is that they were fighting, and I mean both sides, were fighting to prevent exactly what our country has become!!! I don’t think they ever envisioned a country where class differences would deepen, where greed and superficiality would be more important than character and honesty. I will never forget these men, and I am saddened that what they fought for has been largely abandoned and forgotten by the people of this country.”

The above words were written as a commentary upon a Youtube video of the theme tune to ‘Gods & Generals’, the Ted Turner film of the first years of the American Civil War. But here is the strange thing, they could have been written about this country, the four nations of the Union; and the attitudes and thoughts of the people that I have come to see as the reason for the decline of Great Britain from a global power to a nation with pretensions, of a nation consistently trying to punch above its fighting weight, but without the backbone, the grit and the determination to somehow pull ourselves out of the morass of superficiality which seems to rule all around us. We voted this scum to rule over us, we have watched as they have routinely lied and broken every promise made, and we just do not seem to care!

We are fighting two wars, we have placed our fighting forces in harms way in Libyan skies and the blood and dirt of Afghanistan, and what are we reading about in our newspapers?

How a jockey has been banned from riding a horse.

We are treated to a review of where the cast of some strange tv show which is known apparently by the initials TOWIE will be spending their holidays.

A judge claims he is forced to free a drug dealer arrested with £5,000’s of cannabis because of ‘the guidelines’

An in-depth look at some ‘talent show’ where the only winner is the promoter, who locks all the acts into unbreakable contracts.

We read how one Prime Minister who is busy giving billions of pounds we do not possess away to foreign scum is being backed by an ex-Prime Minister.

The news is broken that a balding footballer is getting a hair transplant.

And so on, ad infinitum!

As the Man said; ‘Ten..hut!’

The Poem of the Fallen

A pinewood box,
Dressed in red, white, and blue,
Holds a soldier who died for you.
He was only nineteen,
When he was deployed,
He should’ve lived with no danger to avoid.
The morning he died,
He saw our flag,
His reason for serving,
Not so vague.
When his life flashed
Before his eyes,
He could already
Hear his family’s cries.
And as the trumpet
Sounds today,
With twenty-one guns to send him away,
Remember him with honor in every way,
And pray for our soldier’s every day.

Dedicated to Spc. Justin Ross and other fallen soldiers – written by Hannah, 6^th Grade at Lineville Intermediate School

Copied with speed and gratitude from Blackfive

Safety checks, what safety checks?

Good Practice guide when preparing or planning to Weld Oil Tanks:-

 

A repair like this should be done with the tanks, drained and purged with inert gas, purge plan, monitoring, inert gas pressure test/or hydrostatic test for leaks.
Be aware that this form of repair, may require post repair inspection and testing per ASME, API, etc.—if one plays it by the book.

So if you don’t follow the Rule Book, this is what you are likely to see whilst hanging off the remains of the scaffolding:-

 

That is, of course, if you were using scaffolding!

Loved the ‘in’ comment from blogger All Seeing Eye about the C3 Committee:

The C3 Committee is about to meet (you’d have to be really local to get that – UK readers think COBRA but with plastic chairs).