Nicholas Winterton
There has been a lot of outrage over Nicholas Winterton’s interview on Radio 5 yesterday. Here’s The Times for example. I heard it and felt that on the one hand he had been stupid and on the other he had talked a lot of sense.
I usually travel Second Class on trains. I have a railcard which gives me discount, so I find it good value. But at certain times, I always travel First to avoid such things as families, spotty youths with over loud iPods, mobile phone users and over-crowded carriages. I also do it, when I have something complicated to read.
Where Winterton was right was when he said MPs should be entitled to First Class travel. If I was travelling with perhaps confidential papers about constituents or sensitive matters, I would always sit in a single seat in First, so that my neighbour couldn’t read the problems of Mrs. Smith with local hooligans.
Where he was wrong was in that he betrayed the arrogant attitude that so many of the great and good show. I have known four MPs well. Two were out and out nasty and grasping people and the others were totally charming and got things done. Who were the good? Gwyneth Dunwoody and John Gummer. I’ll let the others take their guilt to their graves. By the way none of the nasty were Tory.
I would love to have the late great Brian Redhead‘s view on Nicholas Winterton. Winterton was Brian’s MP and despite being on the opposite side of the political divide, I seem to remember they had a firm friendship.
Nothing is ever what it seems.
Readers Digest
So the Readers Digest has gone into administration. Although reading their web site doesn’t show anything is amiss.
I’ve never read it, but I have put quite a few pieces of their junk mail into the bin. Hopefully, that will stop now!
But perhaps it shows how we’ve moved on and their publication is past its sell-by date. After all the US parent had to file for bankruptcy protection last year.
Cabinet on the Road
Prudence likes to take the Cabinet on the road to have meetings in different places. But as this article in The Times states.
The Cabinet Office has gone out of its way to play down the cost of sending the Cabinet out of London even though mandarins originally opposed the concept. A parliamentary answer suggested that the first in September 2008, held in Birmingham where there are key marginal seats, cost £72,756.
But as with many things Prudence and NuLabor say, the devil is in the detail. And the figure above doesn’t include security by the local police. This was said about one visit to Leeds.
Only West Yorkshire Police has so far revealed the cost of a visit: £130,000 was spent on security at the Government’s second Cabinet meeting, held in Leeds in November 2008, trebling the cost from an initial £67,198 to £197,198. The Prime Minister’s eight Cabinet meetings have cost the taxpayer an average of £200,000.
I’m all for government learning more by visiting different places, but surely if they all decided to get on Eurostar to have a meeting in Paris and then left immediately afterwards for London, they would learn little about the French capital. It would always be better to hold the meeting at the most mutually convenient place and then visit where necessary afterwards.
It would also seem that Prudence and his cronies were economical with the truth.
Fined for Enrolling Too Many Students
My late wife was a governor at Anglia Ruskin University, so I take note of what happens there.
It has just been announced on the local BBC News, that the University has been fined £600,000 by NuLabor for recruiting too many students. They are not the only one to be fined, as this article in the Telegraph details.
Now I’m not one who believes that all and sundry with three E’s should go to University on leaving school, but I do feel that in times of high unemployment, that Universities and other colleges should be used to give needed skills to those without jobs.
So fining those Universities who take on more students is just another load of old Balls from NuLabor’s Stalin Central. If anything Universities should be praised and rewarded if they manage to give good education to more students.
Can anybody tell me where the fines will go? Into Nulabor’s general pot for bonkers ideas no doubt.
I should say, that for some years my software has been used by the Department of Education and Science, or whatever politically correct name it is now and the guy I talk to can document loads of failed ideas that have cost billions of pounds to such as fraud. It would have been better to plug these leaks and then there wouldn’t be a funding crisis.
Health and Safety Ruins Pancake Race
This story from the Daily Mail takes the biscuit. Or should I say the pancake!
Further down they also have pictures from the pancake races at Olney in Buckinghamshire, which don’t have a speed restriction. They have been taking place since 1445. Perhaps the Mayor of Olney should appraise his opposite number at St. Albans.
Twitter Twat
David Wright is the Nulabor MP for Telford and a whip. So you’d think he know how to behave.
But he’s in trouble for a tweet on Twitter, that calls the Tories, “scum-sucking”. Now, he is claiming that the tweet was edited by a third party. If it was, his security has been compromised probably by his own stupidity. If he’s not, he’s lying to try and save his skin.
But whatever is the reason, he just doesn’t understand things like Twitter. You have to be subtle in my view too, to get your message across.
I hope that the good people of Telford consign him to where he belongs at the next election.
Job Interview – Palestinian Style
My next door neighbour years ago had been a Colonel in the British Army. One of his duties had been to enforce the British mandate in Palestine before the Second World War. I remembering him saying that he got on well with both the Jews and the Arabs and in many cases the only way to tell them apart was by their name. He didn’t like Menachem Begin, but I don’t suspect I would not have, if he tried to kill you with a bomb in the King David Hotel.
What has happened since has been a tragedy for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
I can remember the Six Day War of 1967, where nearly everybody had sympathies for little Israel, who was being threatened by their much larger neighbours. But since then we’ve all had more sympathy for the Palestinians, as the Israelis and the corrupt Palestinian leaders have driven them further and further into abject poverty. I will not aportion blame between the two sets of leaders, but feel that if they’d talked and cooperated, they all might be in a better state.
And now we have this sex scandal in Hamas. And for a bit of balance, the assassination of one their leaders. One is for the tabloids and the other for the serious papers.
If both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict behaved with dignity and compassion, and perhaps admitted sometimes that they were wrong, we might find a solution. But then they all believe it’s so much more satisfying to reach for their weapons.
Weapons rarely solve a problem, but they can make it a whole lot worse!
Ray Gosling
I’ve liked Ray Gosling and his quirky documentaries for many years.
It was probably a surprise that he admitted last night to mercy killing a gay lover who was dying from AIDS. Perhaps, it was more of a surprise, that I hadn’t realised that Ray was gay. But then that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that one is a decent human being. Ray appears very much to be that sort of person.
So was Ray right, to kill a man who had no hope of life and for whom the doctors could do no more, I think, yes. I only think as I don’t think I could have done it myself. In fact, when my wife was desperately ill in great pain at the end of her life, I couldn’t have done it. So perhaps for Ray, he saw no hope and did the deed that many will condemn.
I will not.
One for the Lawyers
My late wife, who was a barrister, always used to put a legal slant on events in the news. She would have commented strongly on the case of the couple, Nigel Payne and Justine Laycock, who won £56million on the Euromillions lottery at the weekend.
They look happy now, but they aren’t married and the check was paid to white van man, Nigel. My wife would have known, what rights Justine has to the money, but I suspect if he decided to trade her in for a new younger and more sporty model, that she wouldn’t be entitled to half of the money. What she did get would be a nice little earner for the lawyers.
I know she would be saying to Justine, that she should be using all of her feminine wiles to get Nigel to the altar.
The Anonymous Widower 