I Like Capello
He may a hard bastard with the England team. Or he may be a complete pussy-cat.
But he has this attititude that all managers of whatever, should copy. His dealing with the statements of Slaven Bilic is clever, inoffensive and will motivate England.
Judging by the expected result tonight, his attitude has worked.
Wedding Boom at Gretna Green
According to the BBC, the number of weddings today in Gretna Green is more than double the normal level today.
There are rumours that many are members of the emergency services.
Michael and Rochelle
Michael Shields, who was jailed for an attack in Bulgaria has now been released by the Home Secretary using his prerogative. The conviction was always dubious, especially when it involved such a horrendous offence. You just feel that in such cases, everyone should make their best efforts to get the right conviction. I don’t think they did here and preferred the anyone would do to discourage the others. I have not seen the evidence, but because that eminent organisation, Fair Trials International, have been supporting Mr. Shields, the conclusion is most likely just.
Rochelle Adams is a 19 year-old Canadian, who made the mistake of falling in love and getting married to Adam from Wales. In fact, she was just a few months younger than my late wife was when we got married in 1968, We succeeded and were married for 39 years until her untimely death.
A few years ago, Rochelle would have been allowed to stay in the United Kingdom, as is fit and proper for anybody setting out in that noble joining between two people. But because we must protect people against forced marriages, she can’t, and so Adam and Rochelle must start their married life for eighteen months five thousand kilometres apart until she is 21. She should then be able to get a spousal visa. Or one would hope so, but if Prudence’s disreputable bunch are still in power, you could imagine a different result.
Now the Home Secretary has the power under the Forced Marriages Act to allow Rochelle to stay. As the BBC says.
He had the discretion to let Mrs Wallis remain with her husband at their home near Aberystwyth but refused to do so because many other innocent victims may also be caught out by the same rule.
But he remains stubborn and is hiding behind the bureaucratic mess that has been created in the last few years. We need to protect against forced marriages, but there are better ways of doing it. After all one forced marriage case involved a thirty-year-old or so doctor! Did their Act help?
Perhaps though you can see his reasoning. Allow one exception and he’d have to allow many more because of a very badly drafted piece of legislation. And let’s face it Prudence and his cronies have been responsible for a lot of that!
Or could I just be cynical and say there are more Labour votes on Merseyside than in the Aberystwyth area?
The Return of the Elm
Look at the paintings of John Constable and you’ll see lots of English Elms. Sadly most of them are no more as they were devastated by Dutch Elm disease in the 1980s. At our previous house, we had several large specimens and I can remember the day they all came down. We’d tried everything that we could to save them, but you can’t resist nature.
Here’s what Wikipedia says about the English Elm.
Ulmus procera Salisb., the English Elm or Atinian Elm was, before the advent of Dutch elm disease, one of the largest and fastest-growing deciduous trees in Europe. A survey of genetic diversity in Spain, Italy and the UK revealed that the English Elms are genetically identical, clones of a single tree, the Atinian Elm once widely used for training vines, and brought to the British Isles by Romans. Thus, the origin of U. procera is widely believed to be Italy, although it is possible the tree hailed from what is now Turkey, where it is still used in the cultivation of raisins.
But, we still have some English Elm in this country and they seem to be resistant to the disease. This seems to be surprising, if they are all genetic identical, so perhaps they are not, or there is another factor.
The Conservation Foundation is now distributing elm saplings to schools, that have been grown from this possibly disease-resistant strain of English Elm.
This is the sort of initiative that we should all support.
Incidentally, some years ago, I met David Bellamy, one of the founders of the Conservation Foundation. One of my companies had won a green award.
He was not as I expected, in that many media experts are full of their own ego and never listen to your point of view. I found him to be very much a listener, who made some extraordinary incisive points, that many would not accept.
He is very much a maverick and we need more thinkers like that. They may not always be right, but challenging them often produces a train of thought and a result, that is infinitely better than a conservative approach.
I always describe myself as scientifically green.
The English Elm project ticks all the boxes, as those children in thirty years time will want to take their kids back to their school to show their children, their elm trees.
The Anonymous Widower 