The Hoax Call Rapper
This idiot is plaguing Manchester with hoax calls. He has made hunreds of calls and they cost the fire service about a thousand pounds a month.
Just like the thieves who stole the cables yesterday, perhaps we need an offence of endangering the lives of the general public, that has an effect.
The First Welsh-Born Prime Minister Since Lloyd George
Julia Gillard has just become Australian Prime Minister, as Kevin Rudd has stood down. She was born in Barry in South Wales, so becomes the first Welsh-born Prime Minister since Lloyd George.
When will we have a foreign-born Prime Minister? We already have! He was Bonar Law, who was born in the crown colony of New Brunswick, which is now part of Canada.
A Budget To Create Jobs in an Unexpected Way?
One of the provisions in the budget is that if you start a business outside of the South East, you will get a discount of up to £5,000 on NIC for each of the first ten employees.
This is very generous compared to other parts of Europe, such as France and The Netherlands, where social costs are a big cost of starting a business. Remember that over the last twenty years, the French have been one of the larger groups to move to the UK.
So will it mean that entrepreneurs will look favourably on the UK, as a plsce to start a new business, especially as UK income tax is lower than many places in Europe. For instance we have a tax allowance of £7,400 before we pay tax.
The more I look at this measure, it sticks out as a very good idea. It will be interested to see what the rules are and how they are interpreted.
But just imagine, you are something like an Australian or American software company, who needs a European support office. Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle or Manchester, all of which possess good air links to the rest of Europe, must have moved several steps up the list of where to site that office.
Justice – Pakistani Style
According to The Register, a lawyer in Pakistan wants to indict Mark Zuckenberg and others concerned with Facebook. They would face the death penalty if found guilty.
No-one however nasty they are deserves the death penalty, as it is a cruel penalty, that should have been consigned to the dustbin of history many centuries ago.
As I get older and suffer more and more health problems, I can’t think of anything worse than death, so to use it as a punishment for anything is totally over the top.
I’ve met murderers, people who have been locked up for years on bent evidence and those that have had loved ones murdered and I’m sure that things would be the same for them all, whether or not we had the death penalty. We need fair justice for all and support for all victims of crime and also for everyone, who might commit crime, so they don’t do it in the first place.
But silly charges as those in Pakistan, we do not need. They just make things worse and give those who would belittle one of the world’s once-great religions, more ammunition. The United States would not allow the extrditions anyway.
Remember the old proverb – Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Wasn’t it Jesus, who is also a prophet in Islam, who advised us to turn the other cheek? – That comes from the Sermon on the Mount
I may have no religion, but the advice is valid.
Let’s Help Crime Victims and Families More
This excellent article was written from an American perspective, but it is applicable everywhere. We spend fortunes on punishing offenders and not enough on the one hand providing services such as mental health care to stop them offending in the first place and also to provde real support to victims and their families. All we do is get more vindictive and cut services in the place where they might make a difference. If we take Derick Bird, who so callously murdered 14 in Cumbria, was enough done to check he was the right person to have a gun licence and also did he get the mental heath care that he probably needed. My GP worries about me, because I’ve lost my wife to cancer and can I cope with that and my strokes.
For those in favour of the death penalty, just think what difference it would have made to the Bird case. It would not have deterred him from killing and as he killed himself, it wouldn’t have made any difference afterwards except to give a ghoulish pleasure to the tabloids.
If we retain the death penalty, we are just as inhumane as the likes of Bird.
Years ago, I met Jimmy O’Connor, who had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death. But he was repreived and later married the barrister, Nemone Lethbridge. He became a successful playwright and probably did more good in his later life. Do read the story of Jimmy O’Connor’s life in Wikipedia.
Where did I meet Jimmy? At a children’s birthday party in Notting Hill. Whether it was one of his kids, I don’t remember.
What a Waste of Money!
The Saville enquiry cost £200,000,000 and didn’t find anything that most right-thinking people didn’t really know. Read the statements of sensible politicians like say John Major, and they would probably have predicted the findings about ten years ago.
The population of Northern Ireland is just under 2,000,000 according to this report on the BBC. So that means the report cost about £100 for everybody there. Wouldn’t it have been better to have given the money directly to the people, especially as about 11% are pensioners?
We must move on and even some of the most controversial characters from the depth of the troubles have done so.
Take Glenn Barr He is still a controversial character to both the British and the Nationalists because of his involvement with the Ulster Defence Association and politics. Now though he has retired from active and conventional politics and devotes himself to community projects in Derry, often concerned with high unemployment.
This is also in his Wkipedia entry.
He has also worked closely with Paddy Harte, a former Irish Government minister, on promoting awareness of Irish Catholic participation in both World Wars.
I first saw Glenn Barr on a BBC Panorama program in the 1970s. Asked by the interviewer, what would happen if the British pulled out, he said that the Protestants and Catholics would probably fight for a couple of days and then realise they were all Irish and had a lot more in common. He was also asked if he had any regrets. He said that he couldn’t watch Derry City, as he wouldn’t be safe. I hope he can now!
In about 1980, I heard report on BBC Radio 4, about a guy called Paddy Docherty, who had found an abandoned coaster in Derry harbour. He was filling it with Irish cast-offs like hand sewing machines and was going to sail it to Ethiopia, where such would be appreciated. The trouble was that they couldn’t get the Deutz diesel engine repaired. So I sent him some money to help, as did aot of others. He sent me details of what he was doing and he was running the YTS in Derry. His major supporters were Robin Eames, Cardinal Daly and others I knew to be on the right side. His number two was Glenn Barr. Iremember, I phoned Paddy up and had the most enlightening hour with one of the real heroes of Northern Ireland. Years later, I met Jim Prior and he spoke appreciatively of Paddy.
Just thing what £200,000,000 would have done in the right hands in Northern Ireland, rather than in the hands of expensive lawyers.
I’d love to know what happened to the coaster.
Trouble at Court
On Monday, there was a serious incident at Cambridge County Court. C used to work there a lot.
What the idiot’s motives in trying to burn the place down are, are uncertain, but is it part of a general unhappiness at the way people are treated by the courts in areas such as divorce and child matters? C had many angry clients, who in many cases felt the law shouldn’t apply to them. Typical would be the man, who felt that his ex-wife didn’t deserve a penny from their failed marriage.
Will we see more incidents like this, as costs are cut from legal aid and court budgets, which will mean that people get more and more unhappy with the service they get? I hope not!
Sea Eagles in Suffolk
Plans to reintroduce sea eagles to the Suffolk coast have been put on hold due to the economic conditions.
It would have been nice to see them, but the pig and poultry famers opposed to the plan have realistic fears. Many animals run for cover when they perceive danger and who knows what will happen.
But if the Suffolk coast is so suitable from sea eagles, I suspect that in perhaps the next century nature will take its course and they’ll be back. Look how falcons have come to live in Brussels Cathedral. Remember sea eagles live on carrion, so perhaps their niche is now filled by the countless crows and magpies, we seem to have everywhere. Are these birds partly responsible for the decline in small birds?
Health and Safety
Health and Safety is in the news today, with the government announcing a review by Lord Young.
Strangely, all the Health and Safety training that I got at ICI in Runcorn in the late 1960s, is kicking in to help me protect myself from my weak left side. You have to assess threats in just the way you walked around chemical plants with noxious substances like HF dust all over the place. I still remember the charming and sensible Charlie Akers, who showed me over the BCF plant at Rocksavage Works and still follow his rules on climbing ladders and metal stairs. But Rocksavage in those far-off days had an impeccable safety record and it was all down to everybody working to a sensible philosophy not hard and fast silly rules dreamed up by bureaucrats.
Thank you, Charlie!
Lord Young’s investigation needs to have input from people like you, who are at the sharp end and get hurt when accidents happen.
The Anonymous Widower 