Simon Dee dies at 74

As one gets older the people you thought of as being not much older than you start dying. As a young teenager I put my transister radio to the radiator and linked it all up with a wire coathanger aerial so I could listen to Radio Caroline. It was a very Sixties type rebellion, not listening to the BBC. Simon Dee was one of the first deejays to go aboard.

Then he got an offer that made him a landlubber and I became entranced by the way his new TV show subtley seduced the likes of me and 19 million others into seeing into a different world. Simon Dee was a genuine contributor and he showed that live TV is a great medium. I well remember him playing a trick on a guest, possibly Michael Caine, I'm not sure. Dee always had a jug of water for guests to refill their tumbler. On this particular occasion he poured out some liquid and the guest casually lent over for a sip. He got a terrible shock. It was neat vodka. The audience appreciated the joke and the guest took it in good humour. You have to have a certain arrogance to get away with such a prank.

It was that inate arrogance that made the man for such a short time and it was that arrogance that eventually took away his fame. He is hardly a household name today. Simon who? However, whilst most of us will probably only be remembered by our family and friends, Simon Dee will be remembered by a lot more. I will remember those late Sixties' shows with a smile on my face.

If you want a flavour of what his shows were like, look at this Sammy Davis piece. Live, unscripted, unrehearsed - magic!

Jack Straw's House of Hayseeds

Jack Straw is meddling again. Not content with waiting to see what sort of House of Commons we get after the next election, he is muttering and murmuring about the House of Lords. He should leave well alone. An elected Lords in any form will be a disaster. Just a further tranche of politicians seeking the electorate's favours and friendship.

The likelihood is that the next general election will provide us with career politicians without fault or stain. Paragons of virtue with limited value in a democratic sense. I dread to think of the outcome. Never again will the House of Commons have mavericks, independent spirits or principled campaigners. We might as well have the whole House linked to a far-eastern call centre.

Now Jack Straw is a man of delusional thought when it comes to the House of Lords. He says, "A reformed second chamber could breathe new life into Parliament while protecting the fundamental primacy of the Commons". Not in a month of Sundays. A hybrid House will be a hybrid horror. Democracy will count for nothing. It is not democratic just to stuff the House of Lords with list-voted second-string politicians.

What is at stake is the loss of fine minds and those with a sense of contribution to give and a willingness to share knowledge. I cannot for the life of me think why it is wrong to have scientists, film directors, authors, playwrights, actors, farmers, diplomats, policeman et al in the House of Lords all giving some ability to revise legislaton, to impart some actual experience to aid parliamentary debate. Jack Straw, in some vainglorious attempt to ingratiate himself with the public by displaying "democratic credentials", just plays into the hands of those seeking to emasculate the second chamber.

I have no desire to have somebody knock on my door seeking election to a "revised chamber". Election for what exactly? To put my views forward? I have a MP for that and I can easily write to a peer on any subject under the sun. That's the great advantage of the House of Lords. Somebody knows about something. Yet Jack Straw, in his "Justice Secretary" role, keeps up this appalling mantra for change. "A reformed second chamber could breathe new life into Parliament while protecting the fundamental primacy of the Commons," he burbles. Hardly a change that will assist the country out of its current dire distress.

All that this will do, this crazy desire for change, will be to unleash a load of new politicians in pursuit of a reason to be there. They will squabble with MPs over who has democratic primacy, they will offer token revision of bills if they are government supporters and they will go to the cliff edge if they are not. According to Straw's plans, they will have fifteen years to do something and then go regardless.

If you want a constitutional crisis in the making, then vote for this second tier of wannabe governors. Tell Jack Straw you love the idea. My desire is for it to be left well alone. I've enough trouble worrying about the selection and election of on-message greasy pole sycophants to the House of Commons. That is the real problem facing the country. A 1984 intake in a 2010 election!

Senator Edward Kennedy dies

It was not unexpected, by him or by others, as he was gravely ill with brain cancer. One only hopes he was spared too much excruciating pain at the end. Whatever else the Kennedys were they were fighters for things. Getting their own way, helping others, pursuing women (or men), siding with terrorists, posing with peacemakers, lying about life, telling the unbridled truth. In a nutshell they were extreme versions of the complexity of human nature. Temptations came their way and were hardly rebuffed. They were either embraced or avoided.

Edward Kennedy had the misfortune to have had a father who felt it was the ideal aspiration for Irish immigrants to ascend to the heights of American society come what may. So the notion of a Kennedy Dynasty was foisted on the American people. John Kennedy was portrayed as a saint ready to save his people, Robert (aka Bobby) was brutally martyred and Teddy was the willing supplicant, keen to take up the torch of liberty. All that went adrift with Chappaquiddick, as it came to be called. Ted Kennedy was driving a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne from his Martha's Vineyard compound and drove off a bridge into a pond. Kopechne drowned, Kennedy swam to safety and left the scene of the accident.

At the time his future seemed one of literally being a washed up politician. However, as we know he came back and doggedly rebuilt his life. He left behind, apparently, some arrogant beliefs and became a politician of stature. I well remember the Kennedys causing people to have violently opposing views about them. But whatever we thought or think of them, they certainly left their mark.

98% of pollsters think 95% of us think like them!

This about sums up the lunacy of people like Lou Dobbs who are actually paid to spout rubbish on TV. But it's not that they're paid so much, it's that they actually think what they are saying is in any way intelligently meaningful. Just listen to the airhead on this Jon Stewart video who can't believe the 100% vote. She just giggles but doesn't gainsay the nonsense of it all. I wonder, if Charles Darwin was alive today, if he'd manage to figure out the evolutionary habits of cable tv pollsters?

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BNP in membership legal fight

The powers-that-be are after the BNP. What for exactly? They want, in the form of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, to force the BNP to drop its ethnic restrictions on membership entry. Basically the BNP stands for what they describe as "The indigenous British ethnic groups deriving from the class of 'Indigenous Caucasian' consists of members of: i) the Anglo-Saxon folk community; ii) the Celtic Scottish folk community; iii) the Scots-Northern Irish folk community; iv) the Celtic Welsh folk community; v) the Celtic Irish folk community; vi) the Celtic Cornish folk community; vii) the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic folk community; viii) the Celtic-Norse folk community; ix) the Anglo-Saxon-Norse folk community; x) the Anglo-Saxon Indigenous European folk community; xi) members of these ethnic groups which reside either within or outside Europe but ethnically derive from them." In a nutshell, white Brits with something to be bothered about from an ethnic point of view.

Harriet Harman is all in a lather about this. She's got loads of non-white people desperate to join the BNP. In her fantasies! What is the point of opening up the BNP membership to non-whites? Is there a black man or woman in the whole of the United Kingdom that is so desperate to join? If there is, they'd have to have the hide of rhinerocerous and the mental agility of a top mensa member. This is not about that. It's about the Equalities people trying to force the BNP to implode without actually banning it. Knowing that currently around one million UK voters are supportive of the BNP policies, the government prefers stealth to serious debate.

I'd suggest that, if the BNP is forced to change its rules, the next thing will be descrimination lawsuits from black and asian members unable to attend meetings or whatever. All it will do is pitch white against black. If Harriet Harman had an ounce of sense in her brain, she would tackle the root causes that give succour to the BNP. That is having a clueless policy on immigration, a clueless policy on housing and a clueless policy on social cohesion.

Interestingly the Nation Black Police Asociation, which you'd think was for black people, isn't necessarily so. No, it's just "black" politically. As they helpfully point out on their website "The definition of "Black" does not refer to skin colour". So what does it refer to? Whatever you want it to mean, I suppose. And the Black Business Association in the Midlands is only open to "people of African or African Caribbean origin". I wonder if white Africans can join? Plenty of white Zimbabweans here.

The whole thing is nonsense. I have nothing against any group forming an association. I'm not rushing off to try and get into any of these ethnically-based organisations. And what harm is there in them? When it comes to the BNP, the government should get its head out of the sand and start to debate with them, start to create a proper environment whereby such views are marginalised. All that Harriet Harman is doing is creating the foundations for more tension not less.

Daily Referendum: Mark France - Sacked for exercising his democratic rights.

POSTAL PICK - This is a very poor show. Steve has done us a favour highlighting such petty bureaucratic behaviour.

Daily Referendum: Mark France - Sacked for exercising his democratic rights.

Mortgage fraud or bad banking?

The Chelsea Building Society is in the red. In fact it has lost £41m as a result of mortgage frauds involving some of its buy-to-let loans. Well, they say it is mortgage fraud. These frauds appear to have involved professionals colluding to inflate the value of buy-to-let properties. Now does that come as a surprise? Not to me it doesn't and it shouldn't to anyone else.

Ray Boulger seems to have hit on something. He is from mortgage brokers John Charcol and he says that the Chelsea had not in fact been a big player in buy-to-lending lending. "It wasn't particularly big in that market, the niche area it was most well known for was sub-prime lending." Sub-prime, did he say? So it wasn't mortgage fraud? It was reckless banking practice that may well be the culprit? Who knows. The truth is convenviently muddied when it comes to delving into the accounts of the money shops. The Chelsea saw a fair amount of their (ehem, savers) money get frozen solid in Iceland.

It is relatively easy to blame "third parties". Yes, some brokers and valuers may get involved in some fraudulent activity. But you don't need a sub-prime lending frenzy for that. It was always the case that property prices get overvalued when money is flowing fast. My father was decidedly unimpressed when a neighbour once boasted how much his house was worth. "His house is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it!" he grunted, as if to suggest worth and buyer were not connected in his case.

When the financial chickens come home to roost they will find the bonus-bulging cockerels very distinterested. But dare to suggest that the cockerels have their combs out of place and you will be blamed with any old excuse.

Senior Tory wants MP pay doubled

Sir Patrick Cormack has fanned the flames again over MPs expenses and pay. The South Staffordshire MP, who entered Parliament in 1970, says, "I've submitted a detailed series of proposals to Sir Christopher Kelly (the standards commissioner) and I am perfectly happy that they should be published. I made it plain in my submission that I had reluctantly come to the conclusion that the simplest and fairest way forward would be an abolition of the allowances and a commensurate increase in salary. This is not a propitious time for such a change and so I made a number of detailed proposals on the allowance front which would I believe go a long way to restoring public confidence. Foremost among these was that the second home should always be rented and generally in London." What does he get for his pains. A diatribe from Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat MP from his hairshirt lair. "It's outrageous and offensive for such a senior Conservative to propose doubling MPs' pay." Why? Davey never said it was outrageous and offensive to be taking the allowances all those years. So why the humbug now?

MPs have no doubt been very silly in pretending that pay is some kind of vulgar topic, always likely to send the electorate into shock spasms. They cobbled together the Allowance Scheme. Now that allowances are to be curtailed it seems only right and proper to get a correct payment process in place. The labourer is definitely worthy of his/her hire. Let's not be mealy-mouthed about it.

There are plenty of people skimming from the top and bottom over business expenses, plenty who want fat salaries, and they are not necessarily bankers. We need to grow up about this and stop the childish prattle, petty jealousies and rather stupid remarks about MPs. It was a bad system, but let's get a new and better one in, without trying to make MPs feel bad about themselves every day.

Is Corby Borough Council fit for purpose?

We live in a country (the UK that is) which is fast becoming ruled by bureaucrats. These bureaucrats live in a world where negligence is a non-word, where duty is something from the last century and where the citizens are now deemed to be customers of their sevices. It's not very civic and it's not very democratic.

Corby Borough Council has been found negligent in its clean-up of former steel works. This clean-up may have led to birth defects in some children. However, the council is none too happy about being blamed and is to appeal against the High Court ruling. I fully accept that councils have a duty to look after council taxpayers' money, but it seems now that they are more keen to look after it to suit themselves rather than to suit the citizens. Many councils now see the local citizenry as a necessary nuisance which needs to be bothered and bewildered by bureaucracy in order to obtain compliance.

This council is taking a "twin-track" approach to the ruling. By that they mean they will appeal at the same time as meeting the parents group to try to buy them off with a gagging-clause type out-of-court settlement. Is this local democracy? Sounds to be more like local bureaucracy.

It always seems a hard slog for parents of children in such a situation. Thalidomide was probably the worst. Full of cover-ups, deceits and lies. I hope the people involved in this Corby case can get proper satisfaction. The chief executive, Chris Mallender, is playing a long game. If I were the parents, I'd look out for an Erin Brockovich type. Fancy lawyers are one thing, determined women with nothing to lose are something else!

In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition

This is a marvellous piece in the Washington Post about all the crazies in America who have come out of the woodwork since Obama became president. Of course, the USA is not alone. Every country in the world has it's home grown nutters. But American ones tend to have God on their side!

I just like the line from this guy in Pennsylvania (Randy Hook) who was accusing Senator Arlen Specter of being too kind to President Obama's proposals to make it easier for people to get health insurance. He is an ordinary citizen, burly, with a crew-cut. He stood up, trembling with rage, went nose to nose with his baffled senator, saying, "One day God's going to stand before you, and he's going to judge you and the rest of your damned cronies up on the Hill. And then you will get your just deserts." Now what I like is that God is assumed to be the one doing the positioning before the senator. No understanding of awe and wonder, just palpable guilt on behalf of Specter.

That is the truth about these crazies. God is their servant. In their minds, God does what they want Him to do. So if they think God is going to lambast all the ones they think are crazy then they really are crazy!

Rugby no longer a sporting game

Rugby used to be played by gentlemen. Not necesarily gentle men, as most are bruisers, but by those who knew how to play the game by the rules with honour and fair play. Since games have become sport it seems these sports are definitely no longer games. They are businesses run for the investors with the players aiming to get as much out of it as possible. They are a bit like bankers. A modern day rugby player expects a decent "bonus"!

So does it come as any surprise that monstrous cheating has been going on? Tom Williams is a modern day rugby player. He faked an injury to allow fly-half Nick Evans to return to the field in a Heineken Cup tie against Leinster. Williams' face had been deliberately cut after the Leinster-Harlequins Heineken Cup match to hide the fact he had used a fake blood capsule to make his mouth look like it had been booted in. Now ex-Harlequins director of rugby Dean Richards has been banned from coaching in European competition for three years for his role in this fake blood injury.

Rugby is no longer an amateur game. But some professional sportsmen are behaving like rank amateurs, with total disregard to decency and fair play. As the 21st century progresses, clubs are no longer clubs and the fans and supporters are becoming customers of entertainment companies. With large sums of money floating about, it is these games that are seen as easy sport for the financiers and wheeler-dealers. Wimbledon's tennis has changed as much as Rugby's football. I well remember Jimmy Connors going into a rant. There was a hushed pause as Connors weighed up the rights and wrongs of abusing the umpire. A loan voice suddenly rang out from the crowd, plummy and to the point. "Come along, Connors, play the game!", whereupon the fiesty American took his eyes off the umpire and walked over to the Englishman and very nearly whammed his racket onto the critic's head.

I don't wish to see a game return to it's cloistered roots but neither do I feel modern day games players should behave in a less than sporting way.

Human Foreskins are Big Business for Cosmetics

I knew the cosmetic industry had a few skeletons in its cupboards, but this one really gets me angry. Whilst President Obama tries to get his health care reforms through Congress, the medical establishment is still racketeering. Two totally unnecessary surgical procedures are routinely carried out - circumcisions and hysterectomies - so that doctors can pocket extra dollars. Now I find there is a bizarre trade going on - a multi-million dollar rip-off!

Newborn male babies are genitally mutilated by eager surgeons who use the harvested foreskins to sell to eager cosmetic companies. Until just now I had no idea that this trade was going on. Not only is it bizarre, but it is quite evil. To decide in a blatant manner that a newborn should treated as a potential dollar earner is disgusting. Only in America? Probably not. But I hope Obama puts a stop to this racket.

SkinMedica is one company that has used so-called foreskin fibroblasts in their cosmetics. I wonder if the women who purchase these creams and potions know what they are smearing on their faces? It's amazing!

I read this article (which is now over 2 years old) and it is very illuminating. Here's another article from The East African, just last week.

Babies deserve better. At the most defenceless stage of life, some are just seen as money makers - for greedy adults.

Is Burger King barmy?

There are some jobsworths around. With such people common sense goes out the window and a mantra is maintained. In a Missouri Burger King the manager had read the company rules on dress code seemingly in the manner of a dullard. So when a mother came in with a baby he was quick to tell her that the child was a hygiene problem. No booties, no burgers!

The manager told the mother that they would have to leave the restaurant because the baby wasn't wearing any shoes. The mother put socks on the baby to try and adhere to the policy. She was then threatened by the manager saying that he would call the police. The baby doesn't walk, and can't even crawl yet, but the manager didn't want "baby germs" getting in the way of his business.

You'd think Burger King would want to respond by saying that it was all a ghastly mistake. But no. They've not bothered to squeak. More fool them. They've got enough trouble with the persistent publicity about junk food. Do they need any further bad press?

I'd suggest they got a real lesson in hygiene. Take a swab from the baby's feet and take another from the Burger King kitchen. It would be interesting to see who's got the bigger germs!

Supermarionated Andy Burnham - the anti-democracy man!

Andy Burnham takes the biscuit - the ward round biscuit! Not only is he New Labour automoton led, but he has a nasty streak of anti-democratic nature about him. Being in charge of the NHS has gone to his head. Nobody must dare to criticise the National Health Service of Britain. It is wonderful beyond measure, nurses are sweet and caring, the conditions perfect. Critics can go hang. They are unpatriotic. They are stupid. They are....whatever you want them to be so long as it is nasty.

Now the ridiculous Burnham suggests that David Cameron should ban NHS critics ( I prefer realists) from the Tory Party Conference. Ban, ban, ban, that's all Labour knows. Ban fox hunting (but not quite), ban smoking (but not quite), ban MPs expenses (but not quite), and so it goes on. Why should those who seek a different approach to health provision be banned? It is arrant nonsense.

The truth is out there! Mr.Burnham knows it but follows his master's voice without even bothering to think for himself. Yes, the NHS excels in fine health care. Most people have the highest degree of satisfaction. But money is still thrown at it like confetti. Staff still spend large amounts of time walking through buildings with clipboards looking busy whilst wondering what to do next. Not everything is rosy.

I suggest this. That Andy Burnham puts on a disguise and spends a day just sitting in a hospital watching things happen. He will get a far better education from that than any departmental briefing will ever give him!

The sainted NHS - Woe betide the gainsayers!

It is never a good idea to speak the truth about the NHS. If you do you get pilloried. By the supermarionated Andy Burnham, who looks like he's just had an NHS facelift. Or by the morally accurate compass maker, who doubles up as our prime minister. And now David Cameron has weighed in to criticise Daniel Hannan, who Cameron describes as an eccentric. He who won't have a word said against the outfit.

The trouble with the NHS is that it was a con from the start. Aneurin Bevan decided the people were too stupid to follow the real politics so he duped the country by inventing National Insurance. Nothing whatsoever to do with insurance. Slush funding at its best. Right from the start people thought they were paying into something and that "claiming" would be easy. It has always been underfunded. Only Keith Joseph spoke up and suggested a proper funding portfolio, but he was dismissed for his pains. Pity!

I have had first hand experience of the NHS recently. As with most British institutions it is good in parts. If you get a good bit, you'll probably praise it to the rooftops. I take a realistic approach, I think. It is staffed in the main by well-meaning, mostly caring people who can get a tad pissed off with a day's work. Some of the patients leave you wondering about your fellow human beings.
On one stay I had my first evening meal sitting up in bed with my trousers round my knees, soaking wet from urine, with a newly fitted catheter. Nobody had been able to attend to me. You see, time is not always of the essence. Before I got my meal, I was severely reprimanded for being past the five o'clock scoffing time. 6.30 was when the puddings had stiffened. I had asked for my meal at nearly 7!

In an NHS hospital you are more likely to contract a new disease than ever get one on the outside. Added to that, you get all kinds of nocturnal happenings. One of my co-patients used the washbasin by my bed as a urinal at 2.30 in the morning. Now I never asked for such added attractions during my stay. It just happened. Also, visiting time is a joy, especially when grumpy relatives ask you to join in to discuss their loved ones' problems!

Daniel Hannan is in hot water for daring to suggest that there may be an alternative way. David Cameron is said to be beside himself with a mixture of embarrassment and outrage that a Conservative could think in such a way. I'd like to know if David Cameron would care to eat a meal with urine-soaked trousers about his knees. Maybe that's just the price we have to pay for not putting our heads above the parapet?

The Conservatives would do better if they just got a grip of the truth. The truth being that the NHS system is overloaded and overworked. That it doesn't always run smoothly with sweet smiling nurses and a grade A service. I don't want an American system where the doctors are mainly driven by money. In the USA unnecessary surgery is conducted so that $10,000 can be pocketed instead of $1,000. The US system is great for the fully-insured when they are not sick.

Both countries have the potential for great health services, properly funded with everyone catered for. If the politicians got their faces away from the mirrors, stopped listening to vested interests and just admitted that things need to change, we will succeed in getting proper health provision. Otherwise it's the same old rubbish for the next generation.

Les Paul, guitar legend, dies at 94!

What a plucker! Les Paul must have been at the top of the tree as far as the guitar was concerned. No retirement, just going strong until the end. What a guy - a legend!

What's wrong with sex?

If ever a word was discriminated against by the modern broadcasters and politically correct journalists it is the word SEX. A very short word. It is not even a four-letter word. It has an absolute meaning, which for whatever reason, is being usurped by a prattish lot of poseurs and pimping politicians. As the late Lord Hailsham said, "sex is what you are, either male or female, nothing more!".

But it does mean more. "Having sex" is a popular expression, or it was. By popular, I mean it was frequently used by many in the populace. A fairly meaningless piece of English but well understood by everyone. Sex became a dirty word. So dirty in fact that it could not be cleaned up to impress the new-fangled lot who now infect every inch of the airwaves with their newfound word "GENDER"!

Gender is a far better word for them. It has no foul connotations. Anyone heard of "having gender"? Try shoving that one into a Hollywood blockbuster. Sex is on a backburner wordwise. This morning on the Today Programme Evan Davis asked about gender as if six or seven varieties were a possible answer. And that is the thing. Gender is so maleable as a word, whereas sex is not. "I'm a lady, yes I am!" "Come on, sir, what's yer name?" "BRIAN!"

All government forms ask about gender. Sex appears nowhere. It has been expunged from the forms, only to appear in the nether regions of a rusting computer's database. The same happened to Christian names. My mother got the frosty reply, "well, not all people are Christians!" when she once had the temerity to enquire about that. I suppose I would get a similar response if I tried to solicit an answer about sex. "Well, not all people are having sex, sir". Quite!

Cheney reckons Bush was an "ordinary politician"!

Dick Cheney should have president with Bush as his supplicant. We'd have had shootouts and shootups all round the world! No cringing lefty would have survived. It would be like the Oil Barons Ball every day.

The Washington Post sees personal trouble ahead between Bush and Cheney. As a taster, last month, an account in Time magazine, based on close access to Bush's personal lawyer and White House counsel, described Cheney's desperate end-of-term efforts to change Bush's mind about a pardon. Cheney, who has spent a professional lifetime ignoring unflattering stories, issued a quietly furious reply. In the most explicit terms, he accused Bush of abandoning "an innocent man" who had served the president with honor and then become the "victim of a severe miscarriage of justice." Cheney now says privately that his memoir, expected to be published in spring 2011, will describe their heated arguments in full.

Cheney's disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues. By habit, he listens more than he talks, but Cheney broke form when asked about his regrets. "In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him," said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney's reply. "He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney's advice. He'd showed an independence that Cheney didn't see coming. It was clear that Cheney's doctrine was cast-iron strength at all times -- never apologize, never explain -- and Bush moved toward the conciliatory."

What's that about oil barons?

Europhobia Is Only Getting Uglier

So says Michael Freedman in Newsweek. The American Right has always been made up of a mixture of white supremacists, bible-bashers and the elegant elite who wish the Statue of Liberty had gone down with the twin towers. After all, that woman with the flame is flaming French! Rednecks, good 'ole bubbas, mixing it with the genteel folk. All grist to Rush Limbaugh's mill. I'm not the sort of conservative he cares for. He's not the sort I care for!

He's upping the ante with his so-called europhobia nonsense. On his radio show, Limbaugh compared all the ways Obama is like Adolf Hitler. "Obama is asking citizens to rat each other out like Hitler did," he said. "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate," he said. And so on. What a bollock-brained prat Limbaugh is. The real problem is that there are so many morons listening each day to his infantile rubbish.

Freedman has a good take on these nutters. Mostly they are enraged by Obama's health care program. I'd say this to the redneck roosters. If 40 million plus people went down with a disease that no hospital would treat because they had no insurance you'd have riot on your hands. Desperate people take desperate measures. In the crooked minds of the American Right the poor go hang but the rich get to steal and destroy banks with impunity. No wonder shrinks do so well. The next customer on the couch must be Rush Limbaugh!

Car killers and justice

Only recently, near my home, an elderly woman was knocked down and killed by a speeding driver. She didn't die instantly. It took a while. But she was dead by the time she got to hospital. All she wanted to do was to cross the road to catch a bus. The bus stop could be seen from her bungalow. The driver is probably being questioned at length as no court case seems to have occurred yet.

I use this blog to have a go, so to speak, at the downright anti-social, selfish behaviour of some drivers. Road safety is not about penalising people, or it shouldn't be the first option. Good driving standards are about road safety. I'm all for freedom - freedom of expression, freedom to dress how you like, freedom to speak your mind, watch what you want, all the rest of it. But freedoms are not about frightening people or killing them. I certainly to not have a freedom to place a bomb under the seat of a person I may have fallen out with. I do not have the right to shout abuse at people. Freedom is only freedom if people can live peaceably together.

So it is hardly freedom to drive at 60mph or more in a 30mph zone. Frightening people, scaring people, annoying people. What kind of freedom is that? None at all in my view. However, many disagree. Or more pointedly, they can't be bothered or care not a jot for anyone else.

One such selfish sod was Atif Faiz, who was driving at twice the speed limit when he hit Amanda Bailey in Leeds Road, Nelson. Ms Bailey was crossing the street to a garage when Faiz's Astra hit her at 60mph in a 30mph zone. She died a short time later. No doubt in extreme agony. The judge told Faiz at the subsequent trial this week, "If you have any conscience, you should be haunted every day of your life by what you have done and the hurt you have caused." I hope so. Sorry might be a start!

Faiz got three years in jail. Seeing as HM Prisons are not about punishment or even rehabilitation these days, more about cell occupancy management, Faiz will be out in 18 months with the possibility of driving down another road. What sticks in the craw is the fact that it was a hit and run. He knew she was dying! As Ms Bailey's mother says, "I'd never have left the body in the road - I wouldn't do that to a dog or a cat so I wouldn't do it to a human being".

Three years for this? This is not justice - it is merely a slap on the wrist. If the sentence had been appropriate (ten years in my opinion) the judge would not have needed to rub it in to Faiz.

In Britain, speeding is seen as being perfectly OK with lots of people. I see it every day. White vans, parcel delivery vans, reps, executives, those going to the leisure centre - most going too fast. The attitude is that those driving come before anyone else. In fact, "what the hell is that guy crossing the road for?" is more like it. I'd have a properly dedicated traffic court where those accused of traffic violations go. We need a complete overhaul of how we deal with the misery and mayhem that follows the selfish and mean-spirited actions of some people.

The young woman pictured above is dead. Not because she had a disease or was involved in a true accident. She was killed by a man in a moment of self-centred desire. What a waste of a life!

Brummie banana justice

This case of an allegedly stolen banana has made headlines because it involves a banana (always good for a bit of fun) and the fact that the trial cost £20,000. The Crown Prosecution Service thought it money well spent as they felt "it is not the cost of the item that determines a prosecution". They also felt they had the alleged banana napper bang to rights.

What I thought about this case was a bit different from others. I was taken by the remark of the accused James Gallagher who allegedly stole the fruit from an Italian restaurant in Birmingham's Bullring Shopping Centre. He said he had chosen a Crown Court trial because he expected magistrates would have found him guilty. Interesting? Mr.Gallagher hits on matter of considerable importance, I'd say.

Are we to assume that magistrates would just rush through a guilty sentence if he had not elected trial by jury? Do we think that magistrates err on the side of presumed guilt? Are magistrates still of the opinion that prosecuting authorities are word perfect in their detail? Mr.Gallagher was charged with burglary and theft, not shoplifting, presumably as a restaurant is not a shop. But burglary is a serious crime - a prison sentence is always possible. He took his chance with a jury.

Now what do we think of the juries of today? Did they sit there thinking "this is all a complete waste of time"? Are juries made up of people more likely to side with the "ordinary bloke"? The CPS said they had "sufficient evidence and it was in the public interest for the prosecution to proceed." The jury obviously thought differently. Sufficient evidence can mean a lot. It could mean that the CPS thought he was guilty but didn't have the banana to prove it.

If many more take the Crown Court route we could find that the CPS is again in such a position. It tells us that juries are not so keen to convict as magistrates. Magistrates may not mix socially with those before them and may be prone to assume guilt over innocence. Juries on the other hand may identify with the accused. They may think that certain "crimes" are just misdeamenours not worth the time of the court. They may think a lot of things. One thing is certain, the CPS is no longer going to get cosy convictions.

Birmingham bust-up for anti-Islamic protest

Birmingham has been targeted as a suitable place for a march and counter-march leading to a punchup. The so-called English Defence League decided to march down Broad Street demonstrating against Islamic fundamentalism. The so-called Unite Against Fascism group thought they would turn up to stop them. 33 arrests were made and shoppers disadvantaged and businesses put to trouble securing their premises. Peaceful it was not.

The English Defence League is apparently a bunch of football types keen to eradicate the streets of manic preachers of the Islamic terror type. The UAF is keen to silence anyone they think is a fascist and to these ends they are prepared to use violence if necessary. If the government got a grip over the way these anti-British preachers are free to roam around preaching hatred and violence in the name of Islam we would not have to fear people taking a more virile approach.

Most Muslims are no doubt sick and tired of fanatics branding the ills of the world onto the backs of the British people. But we will all be sick and tired if this sort of thing carries on on a regular basis. As with many things currently happening, the answer lies mainly in the hands of the government.

Daily Mail report.

School kids run NHS swine flu hotline

The government is always doing things on the cheap. The war in Afghanistan is a prime example. So is the NHS. Actually, I should say we get the results on the cheap but the method is one of extravagance and profligacy. Now it is revealed that the Swine Flu Hotline, which we were led to believe was being staffed by knowledgeable nursing types is actually full of 16-year olds biding their time whilst they wait for their GCSE results. We are told, as reported in the Daily Mail, by an insider that "many have accents which are difficult to understand and some have difficulty in reading from the prepared script." I can understand that having had experiences with oriental call centres and ending up at cross purposes with them.

The revelation that GCSE students are diagnosing flu comes just days after nine out of ten family doctors said they feared phone diagnosis would lead to serious diseases being missed. And they have. Menegitis being one of them. Andy Burnham continues to waffle on like a double-glazing salesman at 11.45pm desperate to prove he's not in the wrong job. However, the whole swine flu thing has been a complete disaster from an organisational point. If a disease wants to find a population, it could do no better than England. It's a germ's paradise.

The outfit running this call-centre calamity is NHS Professionals. Another outsourced in-house operation at arm's length from anyone who is vaguely responsible for something. On their website, NHS Professionals trumpet that they have "been developed by the Department of Health to provide innovative flexible staffing solutions." So flexible that youngsters can be plucked from school to speak to anxious patients about a pandemic that could kill. One hour's training and they're ready.

I'd say that that was like throwing caution to the wind. Which pretty much sums up the New Labour approach to finance!

Genitals of Briton given Greek-style torching!

I have noticed recently that young British men abroad are becoming increasingly loutish. Some are prone to drunken behaviour leading to street vomiting, others just see the young women of the locality as suitable targets for perverse innuendo of a sexual nature. Nothing remotedly charming about any of it. One wonders why so many people attempt to come to Britain when the exported manhood is well past its use-by-date.

In various cities of Europe inebriated young men, and sometimes women, act like alcoholically-charged vacuum pumps. It is little wonder local mayors want them out. Now there is a case where a Greek woman dowsed a Briton's genitals with alcohol and set fire to his crown jewels. She says she did so after being sexually harassed. I do not condone in any way what the young woman has done, but I have some sympathy for her. Perhaps this may be a message to young British males? Maybe. How would they like it if a drunken Greek molested their nearest and dearest female relatives? Not a lot, I suggest. So what makes it right the other way round?

The one mindblower in this story is the response from the Foreign Office. A spokeswoman said, "We can confirm that in the early hours of Tuesday a 23-year-old British male national was assaulted in Crete. We understand he suffered burns on his chest and abdomen. He has been receiving consular assistance." Chest and abdomen? With that kind of understatement one can appreciate how easy it is for ministers to get the wrong end of the stick with regards to Afghanistan!

On The Buses? No, off them if middle class!

The Local Government Association, which has commissioned a report (more work for consultants!) about bus passes, has come to the conclusion that posh, rich middle class people with cars should not be riding around in buses with free concessionary passes. No way matey! Get in your car, clog up the roads, you're costing us too much. Let some other blighters sort it all out. We're being short-changed by the government, they weep.

After a furore and a hullabaloo, the LGA denied that it was considering introducing means tests. So was this "commissioned report" just jobs for the boys, or was it an opening shot in some inter-governmental showdown? Either way, it's a warning sign to us all.

I would hope that the next general election produces MPs who are representatives of the people and not career politicians cravenly working the system to suit "government" and themselves. As they say, I must declare an interest. I'm in the bass pass queue next year. Unless of course they change the age criterion in which case I won't!

We are supinely good in Britain at listening to waffle and rubbish and just shrugging our shoulders. I'm beginning to get a bit revolutionary. I want the stocks brought back. I'd shove Harriet Harperson in for a day. A few rotten tomatoes in her boat race might bring about a change. The only thing the British Establishment understands, and it understands very little, is latent unrest about to boil over. I suggest we get off the back burner and turn the heat up a bit. They might just get it then.

Birther baloney continues with Chuck Norris

I knew there was talk around the time of the election that Barack Obama may not be a "proper" American. That was all based on him being born in Hawaii and when that state entered the union. But it appears now that there are loads of people who are convincing themselves that the President is not a natural born American at all. As if they are? Anybody who can be convinced of such nonsense is far too loopy to be a natural born anything.

Chuck Norris has entered the fray. He now wants to see the presidential birth certificate. What for I cannot know. Perhaps we can see Chuck's and wonder if his is real or fake. This trouble and strife all stems from the "natural born" reference. It has come to be implied to those born in the United States. However, it was originally put into the constitution to clarify the position of those born in the Colonies as British subjects who became American citizens as a direct result of the status of independence. Ten presidents were affected by this clarification.

In the sense of 18th Century English, "natural born" meant just being born in the United States of American parents. Birth meant citizenship, automatically. However, because a territorial description was not added conclusively a natural born person could possibly be born elsewhere to American parents. Because it is a quandary the US Government no longer refers to such in current laws regarding citizenship.

The inhabitants of the US Virgin Islands are citizens, probably natural born ones, but they cannot vote in presidential elections let alone be president. They can, though, vote in the primaries. A crumb of electoral comfort there then. So with this confusion comes the conspiracy theorists. Some may think anyone born in Hawaii isn't a proper American. Some may think that if your father is foreign you are no American. But then all this started with making the former Colonists into natural born Americans. They were born on the continent, but not in the USA, they started out as British and ended up as American, all the while being "natural born"!

Chuck Norris should just reckon that all this birther baloney is not natural. It is very unnatural. Instead of begging to see a certificate, he should be getting the Congress to write a definitive law on the matter. I bet Norris wouldn't have batted an eyelid if Bob Hope had ever wanted to be president. But Bob was born British, as was Jerry Springer and loads of other Americans who just missed being born naturally. In Jerry Springer's case he definitely was born unnaturally. In a tube station in London. His mother got him an audience that night!

Church, lepers and leaders

Our parish church has succumbed to the government's advice on pandemic flu. The stoups have been closed, the peace is a brave wave and a smile and we are no longer to receive communion on the tongue. Swine flu has intervened in faith, has diminished hope and is acting in a very uncharitable way.

The cynic in me suggests that this is nothing about contracting this disease rather it is the old hoary chestnut of not being sued. The churches could well do without a legal dispute over a contaminated font. Which leads me to wonder about baptism. Is this banned under the government's advice to "faith communities"?

I have serious doubts about all this. We are advised not to shake hands or touch each other during the Peace. However, in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, people are still shaking hands each day. The Prime Minister shakes hands with visiting dignitaries. Does he have a stand with hand gel and washing facilities as his advisers are impressing on the church? Now I know why the Queen wears gloves. You never know where people have been.

Helpfully the government tells the "faith communities" that this advice 'refers only to pandemic flu as defined by the World Health Organisation; it does not refer to seasonal flu or to outbreaks of other communicable diseases'. So those with regular diseases are alright to shake hands, except that they can't because of swine flu.

The whole aspect of faith communicated in the Mass has been hijacked by a secular world obsessed with controls and regulations. Sneezing from seasonal flu in public is OK, if a tad anti-social, but swine flu sneezers watch out. I've never ever considered receiving communion as anything other than a sacramental thing. Now I get flashes of pictures of germs and disease floating about my brain. Again, the cynic in me suggests this might be a crafty way to put me off believing.

When the leper came forth to ask to be made clean my Jesus it was because he had faith. One suspects that if he had had swine flu the pharisees would be out like a shot clearing the streets.

I agree very much with hand-washing but I have a severe aversion to hand-wringing. If everyone had a decent approach to personal hygiene, we'd all be a lot better off. However, over zealous dictats and contradictory instructions will get us nowhere. I suspect it isn't the swine flu virus that the government is afraid of, more the feckless nature of some people. I bet there are still those who think they are indispensible and go to work with fevered brows and sweaty palms. Common sense will defeat the virus, selfish activity and contradictions will not.

Alky Ada and the Spooks!

I am currently reading Matthew Parris' autobiography. A good read with some really good insights into the human existence, his as much as others. In one part of his life, just after Cambridge, the MI6 or 5 brigade thought he would make a good spook. He thought so too, but came to realise that he was not cut out for spying. The problem was they didn't. They offered him a job! Parris puts it brilliantly - "On reflection it struck me I was too unreliable to be a spy. I am not discreet, not self-effacing, not patient, not heterosexual and besides, there was, as Mrs.Thatcher would have put it and probably has, 'something not quite right about that boy'. It's a matter of relief that I had noticed my unsuitability for British intelligence. It's a matter of concern that British intelligence never did." And he goes on to say that if you ever thought British Intelligence was just like the books, all Oxbridge dons and closed door meetings, then it is "just like that".

I have heard some accounts of friends' friends passing through the hallowed halls of these spying types. Joining all the tales together and it does give the impression of a service to our country that is more wing and a prayer than anything else. So it comes as no surprise that MI5 may have mistakenly recruited Al Queda operatives as willing Muslim informants.

Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Home Affairs counter-terror sub-committee, said he was told six recruits were ejected after worries about their past. Questions are now being asked. Good, because if these six wonders were still operating what sort of fantasies would MI5 chiefs be living under? The mind boggles. An Arab once said to me, "You British, you can be such fools," and he meant it kindly, as if to urge remedial treatment in an alpine clinic.

As they say, this story has legs.