The Queen’s New Photo
The Queen has had a new portrait photograph taken and it is shown here on the BBC.
I don’t like it as it is too formal and looks like the sort of rubbish monarchs would have had painted hundreds of years ago.
I bet she likes this one much better!
Clarke Loses to the Vengeance Tendency
Sadly, it looks like the progressive sentencing policy of Kenneth Clarke will be dropped according to reports this morning. The Mail and Sun are triumphant.
So what are the government to do now to cut the prison population? Regrettably, I don’t think they’ll be able to do it, so are we to see more prisons being built. I hope not! As the current crime academies, with little or no rehabilitation and education, do not too much to stop offenders going back to a life of crime.
But there is hope from the United States. There crime is dropping and no-one seems to know why. Read this article on the BBC web site, which offers a range of reasons, like Obama being elected President, computer games distracting possible criminals, the deterrent effect of camera-phones and abortion meaning that less prospective recruits are being born.
Many of the factors postulated by American researchers would apply in most places in Europe.
It’s All Greek To Me!
I like Greece and the Greek people for that matter, even if they do smoke too much!
I also like the euro and on the whole think it is a good thing and we should have joined, just like we should have joined Schengen.
The trouble with Greece is that they don’t like rules and especially those imposed by others on their economy. One Greek told me that’s why they all smoke in restaurants despite it being against the law.
So perhaps their economy wasn’t strong enough for Greece to join the single currency, but for a few years it gave them a lot of cheap money, just as it did Ireland. So now that the lenders want it back, there’s problems all round. Robert Peston of the BBC analyses it all here.
I’m no economist, so where it will all end, I do not know. But I am a qualified control engineer and I do know that the Greek economy has all the stability of a bicycle with the handles stuck either turning to the left or right.
Just like the bicycle, the Greek economy will have an awful crash.
The villians really are not the Greeks here, but the politicians who wanted a single currency and didn’t really think through about how to make it work properly. If the right rules had been in place from the first day, then there would have been no need for a bailout of Greece, Ireland or Portugal.
I suspect now, that if it was that stable, then we would have joined the euro. Or we would have at least tried to!
A Spammer Gets Screwed, Glued and Tattooed
I don’t like spammers and this story is worth a read.
The hero is actually an American law firm, that took up a ridiculous case against a British anti-spam organisation; Spamhaus, on a pro-bono basis.
Sir Fred’s Lover to be Named Soon
This is a story in The Sunday Times today. After all the Giggs story seems to have bottomed out, so the tabloids need a new victim.
As I’ve said before, the truth always comes to the surface.
Should High Earners Be Allowed Subsidised Housing?
I have always felt that houses should be used to provide the maximum number of individual dwellings.
For instance, I don’t believe that people should own two houses, that they keep for their personal use. But if they want to, then they should not get any reliefs on the second house. In the past I’ve owned and lived in two houses and it doesn’t have too much to recommend for itself. Some may claim it’s nice to live in London in the week and go to their cottage at the weekend, but do they ever realise that that cottage probably causes someone to not have a house. If you live in two houses, then the second house should be taxed to provide subsidised houses in the area.
Buying to let is different, as you are providing a service of housing for someone else. And if you are successful, then you pay tax on it.
But what really gets me is those, who live in Local Authority or Housing Association properties and earn enough money to either rent privately or even buy their own house. The case of the ex-Labour Minister, Frank Dobson, reported in the papers today is scandalous. He should be booted out forthwith, so that someone else, who needs it, can have the property!
All of these abuses should be tightened up and hopefully the government is doing something about it. And while they are at it, they should be tougher on those, who illegally sublet their properties.
I should also say that sometimes, I feel guilty about having a reasonably large house all to myself.
To return though to the Dobson scandal! In my year at school, Animal Farm was the set book for GCE O Level. George Orwell was so right and it is fairly obvious, what his view of NuLabor would have been!
We Could All Learn From This
India has just released their oldest prisoner, who was 108. He looks extremely dangerous as he is carried from jail by his relatives in this story on the BBC web site.
How many prisoners in jails in the UK and around the world should be released as they are ill or demented and well past an age at which they can do anybody harm?
Every Religion Seems To Have Its Mad Side
When I read stories like this, I despair of religion. I suspect most of my practicising friends do too!
Sometimes, there seems to be a contest to see which religion can be the maddest and cruelest.
Why can’t they stick to the agenda that most religions seem to agree on, about looking after your fellow man and trying to make the world a better place?
Surely stoning a dog to death doesn’t do that! Especially, as they’ve asked the local children to do it.
Growing Old Gracefully
Joan Collins gives a superb interview in The Times. Buying the paper was worth it just for this quote, after she was asked how many men ha been her lovers and the interviewer had been surprised – “As I’ve been married five times, I’m more of a serial bride than a mattress!”
I did meet her once and from the pictures in the paper, she probably looks better now. But another of her comments about Bette Davis (difficult and ascerbic and coered in cigarette smoke) does suggest that she has given up the evil weed.
If she has, good on you, Joan and long may you keep us amused and entertained.
One of the Earliest Places I Can Remember Turns Up in The Times
The Times today has a piece about how some hospitals should be merged or closed because they are failing.
The headline of “17 years ago closure was needed urgently. Today, Chase Farm stays open” summarises the text well. When I used to live in Cockfosters as a child, no-one had a good word for the hospital, so I suspect it hasn’t improved much after the years. The last time I was there was to see C’s godmother, who was recovering from a stroke in the hospital and I can’t remember anything positive or negative about the visit.
But I can remember my first visit to Chase Farm Hospital in 1950. It was to collect my mother and my baby sister, who had just been born there. We parked in front of the very same building shown in The Times.
The main thrust of the article in The Times is that Peter Carter, the head of the Royal College of Nursing has said that some failing hospitals should be shut.
I would agree.
When my son was first admitted to hospital in Manchester with an illness that later turned out to be pancreatic cancer, the place was a disgrace and they failed miserably in their diagnosis. Only when we moved him to Addenbrooke’s did we learn the awful truth.
So let’s shut failing hospitals and concentrate resources on services that work. We should also move a lot of those services into the community as Dr. Carter says.
The Anonymous Widower 