Christopher Hitchens
Read his article in the Sunday Times today. Superb!
A previous version of the article is here.
The Obesity League Table
The Sunday Times publishes a list of the fattest boroughs in England. Here’s an extract.
A Department of Health survey, however, shows four local authority areas are far ahead of other parts of the country.
The areas affected are Swale, covering the north Kent towns of Sittingbourne, Sheerness and Faversham; Medway, also in Kent; Gateshead, in the northeast; and Tamworth, in the West Midlands.
Danny Dorling from Sheffield University has this to say.
Places such as Swale and Gateshead are “obesogenic environments”. This means they suffer from a complex mix of factors such as rising numbers of fast-food shops, few open spaces where people can exercise and road layouts that make it hard to walk or cycle.
I think he’s right. It would be interesting to see how levels compare in the various London boroughs.
Do 50% Tax Rates Work?
I don’t think so, except for financial advisors and accountants.
When the rate gets too high, people see an increasing amount of their money going in taxes and do something about it.
I remember, an accountant once told me of a client, who asked him to cut the amount he paid in tax. The client by the way had a small but successful manufacturing company. He told the client to leave some of the money he didn’t need in the business and invest it to make the business grow. The tax bill went down, but the wealth of the client’s company grew. I just looked it up on the Internet and its even bigger. Sadly the accountant carried on smoking like a chimney and died of lung cancer.
So I’m in favour of reducing the tax rate and removing the loopholes. This incidentally, is what Mrs. Thatcher did and the tax take rose. It also made a lot of accountants and financial advisors unemployed.
You could argue that we need a very simple tax system, that everybody on the Dalston Omnibus could understand.
But no government would ever do this, as they’d have to deal with large numbers of irate civil servants.
Formula One to Iran
I never thought I hear these words together, but then some of those who work in Formula One have a different set of morals to those that I do!
I doubt it will happen, but read this piece in the Telegraph. Here is the update at the end.
UPDATE on 08/09: Bernie Ecclestone, F1’s chief executive, has now played down the possibility of a race in Tehran. “It’s not a question of politics,” Ecclestone said. “I’m not political. If a country is peaceful and safe then that is fine with me. But we have three or four countries waiting their turn. I don’t think Iran is top of our list at the moment.” Of course, Bernie has never been known to perform a U-turn.
If you could read Bernie’s mind, you’d make a fortune.
The Second Hand Clothes Racket
The Times on Friday had an article obout gangs collecting second hand clothes and then selling them in Eastern Europe. But it’s not just here, that it happens! Here’s a story from Dubai of all places on a related theme.
When I get bags asking for clothing to be donated through my door, they go straight in the recycling bin. If I have any clothes to go to a good cause, I take them to the Oxfam shop on my way to the station.
Lord Winston says nurses need good English
He’s absolutely right here, but it also applies to lots of other professions as well.
I also think, that a couple of hundred years ago, others were complaining about Lord Winston’s ancestors in the same way, when they first came to the UK!
The solution is simple. People should not be allowed to practice in many professions, without a proper knowledge of English. I rarely use taxis and never use mini-cabs. With the latter, you never know what or who you are going to get. In the case of taxis and minicabs, all drivers should be subject to various tests and checks.
Perhaps black cab drivers could also have proficiency tests in other languages they know. So let’s say a Spanish fsmily staying in Londonwanted a Spanish-speaking taxi, this could be booked over the phone. I suspect that in London, there are quite a good few taxi drivers with pretty good Spanish, French, Polish and Russian for a start. I did have a Chinese driver once somewhere in the UK.
A Bridge Strike at Kings Langley
On Friday, I went to Liverpool, by train from Euston. Some idiot, then proceeds to get his truck stuck under railway at Kings Langley, which meant that we were delayed by about 30 minutes. It wasn’t as dramatic as the report, but they did have to let the truck tyres down and then drag it out.
It didn’t actually matter to me, as I had six hours to do a couple of hours work, but the companions at my table, had an urgent appointment to do some publicity over a concert I think.
I do hope Network Rail are claiming off the idiot’s insurance policy, as they should have known the height of their truck. I know from seeing the statistics, that bridge strikes are one of the more common causes of delay on the railways.
The Second Tragedy of September 11, 2011
The attacks on this day were awful and no words can express the damage done to individual and collective lives.
The second tragedy of this event, is that Bush and Blair pursued such a misguided strategy afterwards that they made a second serious attack more likely to happen.
To show how badly they performed, you just have to look at how many people think the attacks didn’t happen and were an event staged by the CIA and the Israelis to get at Muslims. Or something else equally false and bizarre!
We should probably have gone into Afghanistan, but Iraq now looks in the eyes of nearly everybody to be a colossal mistake. Although saying that, Saddam was a cruel tyrant and had to go, if only to protect his own people. But the Arab world seems to specialise in people like him. Just look at Syria, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria and Egypt. And don’t get me going on places like Saudi Arabia and a few others. How many women would like to live in those countries?
The attacks gave us a chance to deal with the real problems of the world. But we just made it worse, by our vengeful actions and our complete disregard for human rights at Guantanamo and other places we are just starting to know about.
Those That Buy The Gun Live Will With The Consequences
The Times today has a story about one child of a couple in Alaska, who accidentally shot a sibling with a pistol, leaving the child a paraplegic. So they are doing what all good American’s do and reach for their lawyer and suing the manufacturer of the gun.
It would have been so much easier and less stressful, if they hadn’t bought the gun in the first place.
After all guns are designed to kill people and when they do, it’s more likely that the victim will be the owner of the gun or one of his friends or family.
The Anonymous Widower 