Happy Seventieth Birthday to Pele
Pele is seventy today. I hope this inspires some of today’s crop of footballers to not only play better, but be better sportsmen and people as well.
I’m sure all of my generation remember the iconic photo of Pele and Bobby Moore
Portsmouth on the Brink
I’m glad that I visited Fratton Park earlier in the season, as it looks like the club may not come out of administration according to this report on the BBC.
Brown’s Aircraft Carrier Too Many
The Times really lays into Gordon Brown this morning about the purchase of a second aircraft carrier, which more than likely will never be used by any fixed wing aircraft.
This was what greeted Gordon Brown this morning from the front page of The Times.
Taxpayers will have to pick up the £2.6 billion bill for the controversial aircraft carrier that will never carry jets because Gordon Brown agreed an “unbreakable” contract designed to protect shipbuilding jobs in Scotland.
Under a 15-year agreement signed with BAE Systems, the Labour Government guaranteed work for the company’s shipyards on the River Clyde and in Portsmouth.
This included the £5.2 billion contract to build two new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy, which David Cameron revealed this week that he was unable to cancel.
When the coalition looked at axing one of the carriers to save money, BAE responded that the Government would still have to pay shipworkers to do nothing for the remaining 12 years of the deal. However, at no point did Mr Cameron’s ministers seek to renegotiate the shipbuilding agreement with BAE, according to the company.
It looks like game, set and match to BAE!
As I said earlier, big contracts are too important for politicians to get involved.
What is also interesting is that despite all these bribes to his friends in heartland constituencies and trade unions, Brown still lost. So we’re all having to pay for the idiot’s bribes and mismanagement!
It’s about time, politicians were made liable for some of their disasterous decisions and purchases.
US May Re-Instate “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” Policy for Gay Servicemen
I have never understood the US’s policy on gay servicemen. My view has always been that if you’re up to the job you can do it and if you’re not you shouldn’t. Whether you’re gay or not is irrelevant.
As the British and other forces have gay recruits and some of these are probably fighting alongside the US forces in Afghanistan, I just wonder if the subject ever comes up. I suspect that professionalism will out!
I just think though that the US should bring its policies up to what is acceptable in the modern world. Let’s start with proper attitudes to gays, women, minorities, religion and the death penalty.
BBC to Fund S4C
In times of cuts difficult decisions need to be made.
S4C, the Welsh channel costs about £100 million a year to run and is funding now going to be transferred to the BBC. In other words, a proportion of my licence will be used to create programmes that in many cases have an audience that can’t be measured.
If the Welsh are so keen on the Channel, then surely funding should come from the Welsh Assembly! But they are too intelligent to fund such a bloated dinosaur, when there are much more worthy projects about.
Why Politicians Should Keep Their Sticky Fingers Out of Government Projects
The aircraft-carrier fiasco is a classic project, where politicians have tried to be all things to all men and quite a few women as well.
Surely, if France can make do with just one carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, then why do we need two. And surely, we should have an Anglo-French aircraft manning both,as quite a few projects between the two countries work well.
But that more affordable option would have been bad for NuLabor in its Scottish heartland.
The Scots are good at many things, but over recent years they have shown that they are not very good at politics with an English dimension or one with a great amount of project mangement.
I’ve just read this piece from Robert Peston’s blog. The highlight for me was a comment from Wee Scamp, who as you see describes himself as a non-voting Scot.
As a non Labour voting Scot I am quite sure that Gordon Brown set up the carrier contract to ensure Scotland – and particularly Glasow – would vote Labour in the May election.
My logic for believing this is quite straightforward. Most importantly, the design of the new carrier is very badly flawed in that they’re not nuclear powered, do not have an angled flight deck and aren’t equipped with either a catapult or arrestor gear. In other words they are limited to using VSTOL and/or helicopters but couldn’t carry a conventional jet and will be limited in range due to their dependence on needing a refuelling tanker or access to dockside refuelling facilities.
In other words, if we really needed these carriers they would have been properly designed. In fact though they are just a job creation exercise and Brown couldn’t have really cared less what they were or weren’t capable of.
Indeed, politically the only error he made was ensuring the contracts can’t be broken. If they had been then both carriers would have been cancelled and the boost to Labour would have been huge. Not surprisingly though he couldn’t even get that right.
Yet again Prudence shows himself to be an even worse Prime Minister than Lord North.
Expensive Council Number Plates
The BBC is running an item this morning about how councils have very expensive number plates on official cars.
Apparently, Essex has already sold F1 for £375,000, but it may now be worth up to £5,000,000, so it would appear they may have been short changed.
Northampton would appear to have the most valuable one and that is NH1, which could be worth £400,000. But as they say, once sold you can’t cash in next year.
On the other hand, one person’s asset could satisfy another’s ego. So would it not be possible to lease the number plate for an appropriate amount of money?
Now, whilst we’re talking about number plates, could the lease apply to other council assets?
- How many expensive works of art are languishing in public hands, that people would pay to hire for a year, months or even a day?
- Councils have some desirable houses in valuable positions, that might be better rented than sold.
- Councils have some of the best car parking in the centre of towns. It should all be rented to those who can afford to pay!
- The list probably goes on!
Returning to number plates, I always remember that when I lived in the Barbican BP had the plate BPO 1L on a corporate limousine. Later I saw it on a transit mini-bus in the company’s colours. Do they still own it? It probably wouldn’t be a good idea after the Gulf Oil Spill.
Health and Safety at the Tate Modern
The Tate Modern exhibition of porcelain sunflower seeds has had to be closed because of a possible health risk. This is not the first time, that these issues have occurred at the museum according to The Guardian. A friend actually got stuck in Doris Salcedo‘s crack in the floor.
The Anonymous Widower 