Stuart Wheeler wheels out his Trust Party

So Stuart Wheeler is spreading his bets by hoping to be elected as Trust Party MP for Bexhill & Battle. Did he pick this seat because he wants a battle on his hands? Surely Greg Barker is not the best target to complain about politicians with a past. I would have thought he might have picked an opponent with a "bit of previous".

And why start a new party? He gave money to UKIP. He knows Nigel Farage is trying his level best to get rid of the Squeaker in Buckingham. This just divides the anti-sleaze brigade's forces. And if UKIP is now not to his fancy why not sidle up to the Jury Team boss, Sir Paul Judge? I get the impression that the minor parties like to think the forthcoming general election is a bit like the Grand National. A mad rush over the jumps and the possibility that the favourites will fall. It's wishful thinking.

I wish Stuart Wheeler well in his campaign. But that's as far as it goes. However, if he wins, then his own battle will enter the electoral history books.

Blair to rally Labour supporters

So the Spiv-in-Chief is coming out from the deep recesses of his counting house to speak to the faithful in Sedgefield. Lots of cries of "Tor-Nee" will go up from those who still think he is a saviour of sorts.

The Conservatives think he's got a lot to hide. That counting house has some very odd contraptions in it for counting the cash in a special way. It's got Cameron's lot somewhat excited. However, they should be a bit more circumspect before casting aspersions. After all, Lord Ashcroft sees fit to live and breathe part of his existence in Belize because he fears being a pauper in Britain. If I were confronting Ashcroft I'd tell him straight. Dump this central American existence and be a real John Bull.

Tony Blair was depicted as being a political actor in BBC4's "How To Win An Election" last night. This was predicted in 1964 by Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Or at least the possibility of having an actor in politics. What Home would have made of Blair I do not know. However, Blair is totally unruffled by criticism. He seems to relish the fight. The Conservatives would do well not to give him so many free plot lines for his propaganda.

The Bill on the BBC?

ITV has dumped The Bill saying that audiences have fallen out of favour with the police series from Talkback Thames. Apparently viewing figures have declined, but this is hardly surprising since the programme was never on at a regular time. It tended to move around the schedules. According to Eric Richard, who played Sgt Bob Cryer, ITV used The Bill as knocking copy against the BBC's output. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Police dramas are popular, but they have to have a regular beat, otherwise viewers are lost.

When Granada was touted as possibly losing the northwest franchise of ITV, it was mooted that the BBC might pick up Coronation Street. Such a thought must have focused the minds of the ITV moguls and Granada stayed in place. However, the BBC has for many years had an arrangement with Granada (now simply ITV Studios) to make What The Papers Say, University Challenge and other programmes that ITV dropped unceremoniously.

So could the BBC cosy up to Talkback Thames and get a revitalised The Bill on BBC1? The company aready makes shows for the BBC so why not this one? Unless ITV has a golden armlock agreement, I can't see a problem. Maybe it has passed it's prime but Lorraine Heggessey, the boss of Talkback Thames, was taken aback by the decision to cancel the show.

If those people upset by the axing get up a head of steam, the BBC might be tempted!

Gordon Brown? Can he hang on?

All of a sudden the talk is not so much of us having a hung parliament but whether Gordon Brown can actually hang on. Hang on to what, exactly. The New Labour greasy pole? That's a tall order. No, it seems he may be able to do a kind of John Major 1992. This is all deemed possible by the British public settling for the devil they know, rather than plump for someone else, namely David Cameron.

There's a saying in Yorkshire, or at least there was. It's "There's nowt so queer as folk". This queer just means odd or peculiar and not the more recent usage. In fact, I haven't heard the word queer for ages, so perhaps nobody in Yorkshire says this anymore. Perhaps they should. We should all sit up and wonder if we are not all going a bit peculiar. How can a man who Richard Littlejohn describes as being sociopath have any chance? In fact, Littlejohn says in the Daily Mail, "For the entire time that New Labour has been misleading, bullying and cheating the British public, Gordon Brown has been at its dark heart, first as chancellor, then as prime minister. Brown's Britain is a failed state, led by an unelected Scottish sociopath and a gruesome gang of crooks, liars, political pygmies and smearmerchants. He has bankrupted the country, smashed our once gold-standard private pensions system, sold out our sovereignty to Europe and destroyed the special relationship with the U.S. over the release of the Lockerbie bomber for the sake of a squalid, sectarian squabble with the Scottish Nationalists. We have a ruinous welfare culture which rewards the feckless and a taxation system which punishes enterprise and the traditional family. Economically, he peddled us a false prospectus and has succeeded in beggaring the country for generations to come."

So, who could possibly think of voting Labour? Apparently quite a few. What on earth could they possibly get out of it? Well, I suppose plane-grounding strikers, a train-stopping union, bonus-grabbing bankers, climate change zealots, gravy train europhiles, equalities quango merchants and grumpy health service know-it-alls could make up a coalition of the politically corrupt and try to hallucinate the nation.

On, and there's talk of Blair going on the election campaign trail. The cherry on the cheesecake?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1261026/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-The-pygmies-sleazebags-whove-wrecked-Britain-I-nearly-Labour-MP.html#ixzz0jYld2fTY

Gordon Brown digs his heels into Heathrow tarmac!

He's a stubborn old mule, that's for sure! On the court decision, Gordon Brown mumbles on about the third runway being "vital not just to our national economy, but enables millions of citizens to keep in touch with their friends and families". So they can't now? What runways can't they fly from currently? The mind boggles at the man's diminishing sense of reasoning.

If anything we have far too much seat capacity on planes. Unless the "millions of citizens" are going to be forced to fly once a week on a trip to somewhere, the third runway vision is only a grandiose scheme to give the construction industry a boost. Surely that industry would be better placed giving us high speed rail, or better roads, or better houses.

The older I get the more I think those in charge have "being a moron" as the top skill on their CVs.

Heathrow third runway opponents win court challenge

Campaigners have won a High Court battle over plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport. Councils, residents and green groups had said the government's approval of the runway was flawed by "conspicuously unfair" public consultations. All this has been couched in terms of the green agenda.

Lord Adonis said, "A new runway at Heathrow will help secure jobs and underpin economic growth as we come out of recession. It is also entirely compatible with our carbon reduction target, as demonstrated in the recent report by the Committee on Climate Change." He always sounds like a pained angel, completely at odds with the argument.

A third runway is neither needed or desired. This is some fictitious fact dreamt up by Gordon Brown as some panacea for our problems. It is also a desire by British Airways to have folk flock down to London in order to use Terminal 5. Anyone living near a regional airport can come and go as they please. Birmingham has flights to all parts of the globe. But many in the West Midlands have been duped into thinking that London is the gateway to Paradise, so they endure the travails of train travel and the sweaty tube.

Madness is all around us. Boris Johnson thinks it a great idea to dump Heathrow and build a brand new airport in the Thames Estuary (or beside it, to be more factual). Such nonsense I thought had passed with the last century.

Birmingham Airport needs £25 million to expand its runway in order to have flights to Los Angeles, Beijing and other far flung parts. It will create jobs for a genuine service. The Heathrow business will be an expensive elephant on the runway. I think anyone north of Watford should give this project a wide berth.

Has Honour gone the same way as Prudence?

Gordon Brown once had a special flame called Prudence. She was mentioned in nearly every speech he made about the economy and in his erstwhile condemnation of greed. That was before he found his moral compass faced more directions than the planet Earth could cope with. Then Prudence was given the heave-ho. Honour is another trusty female who comes into regular contact with parliamentarians. She is there to make them behave themselves in a self-controlling way. However, she too has been violated recently, and not just by the men! Both Honour and Prudence are having a hard time.

Now we are to have candidates at this election being urged to declare details of other jobs they may have, property assets and their tax status. This is at the recommendation of a watchdog (without an electric collar I hear). So when it comes to wondering if we are electing honourable people the answer is propably not. Nobody trusts anybody these days and there is precious little doubt as to why that is. Corruption and seediness are all around us. What we will have before us are a collection of highly vetted, deeply scrutinised, morally flawless paragons of political trite and trivia. All will be "on message", none will have the slightest idea of how to respond to a question for which there is no cribbed answer. It will be ghastly.

I fear we are throwing the political baby out with the bathwater. Sending your old bathwater down the plughole is one thing, but being asked to sit in a bath full of disinfectant is quite another. I want my parliamentary representative to be a spirited advocate not a sterile apparatchik.

Mandelson's pot calls Byers' kettle black!

Peter Mandelson has some front. He calls the greedy antics of Byers, Hoon and Hewitt grubby. Here's a man who has ducked better than the most activated duck and dived better that a gold medallist at the Olympics. They say that oil and water don't mix. Well, Mandelson disproves that theory as much as he disproves nearly all the others.

New Labour is probably the most vile political vision to have been afflicted on the British people. In fact, it is something nobody should revere or praise. It is a deluding concept that turns people into rampantly greedy people, who lose all sight of reality. My big fear is that the poison that the New Labour chalice has in it will have infected too many voters come polling day. It has already befuddled the mind of Stephen Byers, who has the brass neck to suggest that his "caught-on-camera" remarks were all not really meant. Byers says he is a "cab for hire" but it sounds more like he is a car that's been "inadvertently" found in a red light district. Very seedy indeed!

Whatever Mandelson says, whatever the Labour Party does, it still signifies that this Blairite version of a quack doctor's remedy for carpetbaggers is utterly contemptible. I suggest that if any Labour candidate comes knocking at the general election they are given short shrift in good measure. My fantasy is that all of them receive ZERO votes. If only!

Obama gets his health care reform

I've long been surprised more Americans don't get heart attacks just by the sheer worry about being American. Not only are there crazies with guns just waiting to pop off innocent folk going about their business, but jobs are not safe, the ponzi merchants are still in place, and the national deficit comes out once in a while to scare them witless. And that's before they get round to thinking of healthcare.

I don't get it with the Republican Party. They seem to think it is perfectly OK for 10% or more of the US population to exist without adequate healthcare. Some have no healthcare, others have pre-existing conditions ruling out any effective get-well-factor. That makes insurance companies no better than scam artists. There are all kinds of cases, such as the woman denied breast cancer surgery because she had been treated for acne in the past, and a person whose policy was rescinded because his insurance agent had incorrectly entered his weight on the application form. Hospitals operate some pretty dodgy dealings as it is. If a person gets ill and say the hospital bill comes to $20,000 and the patient can't pay, the hospital takes on the role of canny bailliff. First the patient is given all sorts of verbal threats and then suddenly a soft guy role enters the scene. How about paying only $2,000 and we'll forget the courts and any jailtime. So the patient coughs up the cash, literally in some cases, and the whole sorry system moves on. I wonder how many hospital bills are paid by the ten-cents-on-the-dollar method?

Having spent time in America, been with Americans (of all shades of opinion I hasten to add) and discussed this, most have a world weary acceptance that Uncle Sam has given up his benevolent status to some vile alter ego. This new creation pops out to cause trouble all through life. So a shrugging of shoulders is often the response to questions about healthcare. The Republican Party has dined out for decades on frightening the American public on "socialised medicine" and "the nanny state of Europe". But these cheesy comments bely the fact that state hospitals do exist and that most people are not allowed to die as a result of accident or injury. Just don't get ill seems to be the message.

The Republicans may think it is the sign of a true conservative to let a sickly person struggle to their own feet by their own means. I think such an attitude just shows the sign of a petty-minded selfish person. Proper conservatism is wanting to distribute largesse when it has been properly earned so that those who are less able can be helped. The Good Samaritan was only able to help because he had the means to do so.

President Obama has done well on this matter. The Republican Party has unfortunately shown itself up as being rather spiteful and self-centered. Such behaviour gives conservatism a bad name.

Ex-ministers push pigs away from trough!

Any surprise that Stephen Byers has been caught trying to get his snout back in the trough. And Geoff Hoon? These guys not only want to take the biscuit but the trough feed as well. Greedy pigs comes to mind, but as I'm a great fan of the porcine creatures it does a great disservice to pigs to equate them with the greedy creatures that have been spawned by New Labour!

All this adds grist to the mill that will grind this greed out of our political culture, hopefully! Roll on the general election.

Barclay's Bob Diamond Bags Bonus from Croesus!

Bob Diamond sees no recession. Barclay's Bank sees no recession. Gordon Brown does vaguely and all the while the national deficit gets whoppingly bigger. Bob Diamond is the American in charge of running Barclay's Bank and he carries on as if the Yellow Brick Road was real. In fact, Barclay's is no longer a bank, it has become a finance product retail shop. So much so that those with decent deposits get to be phoned up by British call centre workers trying to flog the latest "financial product" and the less financially secure get to speak to an Indian call centre with the delightful tones of 1940's English with a hint those teach yourself English CD courses. "Hello, Mr.Jones, I notice you only have two pee in your account - why is this?" "Rupee?" "No, not rupee, TOOOO PEEEE!" and the satellite phone system goes into it's own orbit.

Bob won't being getting any phone calls from Bombay. No, he's got some other place for the £63 million bonus bag. And I hardly think it's in a Barclays deposit account. "Hello, Bob, this is Brenda from Billericay, how are you doing today. Great. I thought I'd give you a call to let you know about the latest financial product we have on offer. It's got great returns!" A fantasy of course.

I find it hard to fathom where Bob Diamond and Barclays found this £63 million going spare. They aren't lending much, they aren't giving out mortgages as they used to, business is grumbling, so where did Bob make it all? Has he been to the funny money casino? It seems that this new thing called "investment banking" is just some kind of fancy money laundering, all done in the cleanest possible way, no doubt. I don't get to hear that banks have cleaned up their act. They've just re-invented the vehicle they last used. After all, if an impecunious hobo can be sold a house with a loan that, when it defaults, is wrapped up with similar loans and passed off as today's best investment deal, what chance have any of us to get a sense of the real value of money?

Who is fooling who? It seems two and two don't necessarily make four in the modern banking world. Five is just as good a number, or six or seven. Gordon Brown's arithmetic is at sixes and sevens. How do we know such an affliction isn't elsewhere?

Tony Blair's oily Iraq War

So the Iraq war was nothing to do with oil? How come the dodgiest prime minister ever ends up being an adviser to an oil company with interests in, guess where, Iraq? It has emerged that Blair has been paid for advising the UI Energy Corporation, a South Korean oil firm with interests in Iraq and the US. Douglas Carswell MP says, "It stinks".

Tony Blair has been a chancer all his life. Everyone knows that and if they don't they must either be mad or extremely naive. Or possibly from another planet or a parallel universe. There is an outfit called the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments which is supposed to delve into such things as former prime ministers living off former political decisions. As Carsell says, "It seems that the former prime minister of the United Kingdom has been in the pay of a very big foreign oil corporation and we have been kept in the dark about it. Even now we do not know what he was paid or what the company got out of it. We need that information now. This is revolving door politics at its worst. It's not as if Mr Blair has even stepped back from politics, because he is still politically active in the Middle East. I'm afraid I have no confidence at all in the committee that vets these appointments. It's no good telling us these deals may be commercially sensitive - we are talking about the appointment of our former prime minister and the public interest, rather than any commercial interests, must come first."

Exactly right! However no amount of "political vetting" will hide the fact that Blair is, and probably always will be, a dodgy dealer. The South Koreans just hired Arthur Daley's posh protege.

Dutch gays responsible for Srebrenica massacre says US general

Whatever one may think of homosexuality and the activity of same-sex relationships, I hardly think the testimony of General John Shaheen is helpful. If I got caught in a raging fire I'd never think of asking the firefighter first about his or her sexual activities. "Oooh, you're gay, oh please, pass me more petrol, I've got to stoke this fire and end it all!" What a ridiculous notion.

However, General Shaheen comes before the US Senate and utters a load of rubbish that begs the question, "How did he get to be a general?". It is one thing to have a don't ask, don't tell policy. I've always thought that the best one, but not just for homosexuals. It should be for heterosexuals and any other sexual type. What business is it of anyone to nose into one's private life? Now we get all this fake openness which is just as bad as persecution. If a person is known to be homosexual basically so what. We don't need a court of inquiry to establish the facts. Not telling has been taken as "never, ever say you are", but I think a proper don't ask, don't tell policy is just a case of everyone minding their own business on this.

General Shaheen waffles on about gay soldiers and insinuates that the Dutch Army is run by a gaggle of men that prance about and cannot hurt a fly. He suggests that the massacre at Srebrenica was caused by Dutch gays just letting the Serbs let rip. Preposterous, of course.

Leprechauns rob bank but get no gnomes!

St.Patrick's Day is supposed to be the feast day of the British Christian who went to Ireland. I say went but he was actually captured by Irish raiders who enslaved him. However, such an inauspicious start did not deter him in later life from becoming an important figure in Irish history.

A strange thing happened yesterday in Nashville, Tennessee. Instead of celebrating St.Patrick's Day properly, two men decided to raid a bank. One of them dressed up in a costume representing an Irish leprechaun. What brought this on is anyone's guess, but we won't find out as the two robbers were shot dead.

Perhaps they wanted the publicity? They got that. Perhaps they had a warped sense of humour? Or maybe they were trying to flush out a few gnomes? Whatever the reason, it has gone with them. Raiding banks is no answer to personal problems. Neither does it have any effect on the bank other than scaring the staff witless. Banks carry on, so raiding them makes no sense if it was a kind of political statement.

The BBC reports, "The suspects left their car in a field and fled on foot. They were killed while exchanging fire with officers, police said. No officers were injured and money was recovered from the suspects' vehicle. Both suspects were pronounced dead on the scene." So, on St.Patrick's Day two bank raiders celebrate in this style. As their souls drift passed the presence of St.Patrick will they be wondering if anything has changed since those first raiders confronted Patrick and gave him six years of hard toil and bother?

British boy found in Pakistan

Yesterday the BBC was leading with the story that Sahil Saeed had been found in Pakistan. This little boy was abducted by people seemingly bent on making money. He is just an innocent pawn in the machinations of adults.

Firstly, I thought the BBC overdid their political correctness by emphasising that Sahil was a "British boy", as if to ram home to any half-witted incorrect persons they must repeat the mantra. I googled British Boy and the BBC's lead in all this has come up trumps. Sahil is top of the list! I would have thought just describing him as a little boy from Oldham would have sufficed, but then I'm not as mind-bent as the BBC is currently. The Today Programme repeated "British Boy" in rather the same manner as the "Winslow Boy". We all had to know who he was and what he was.

Then there was the David Miliband contribution. The Foreign Office is, as Enoch Powell once described it, a nest of vipers. The media is in a spin about ransom money. Talk of £100,000 being paid for Sahil's release. If I was betting on this, I'd say it is more likely than not that some cash was paid. Pakistan is presently a state populated by bandits and rogues. Decent people live in fear of the crooks and crazies. Miliband pompously states that Britain doesn't pay ransom money. Yes and no is the answer here, I think.

Sahil went to visit his grandmother and got caught up in intrigue and plots. Thankfully, he has come to no harm. Interestingly the yacht couple in Somalia are having no such luck. Of course, Miliband is involved in their case. But I am letting my fevered brow think that doing deals in Pakistan may get some brownie points later on, whereas giving a gun-toting Somali pirate even a measly penny is too much. No oil, no gas, no mileage in Somalia worth contemplating. Pakistan is different.

The capture and release of Sahil Saeed tells us far more about the politics of the world. And the plot thickens by moving to Spain. When Sahil grows up, I hope he is able to be a fantastic influence on the world because we certainly need to sort out a few things adults are getting wrong.

Thin end of the political wedge

A judge has seen fit to throw out the BNP's new constitutional rules. This is on the basis that they are still discriminatory on the basis of race. Maybe they are, but what these liberal minded baters, who are trying to use legal methods to implode or explode the BNP, forget is that such tactics backfire. For much of the past 25 years they have had a prissy policy of holding to a "no platform" approach. They hoped the BNP would drift away. However, as many of these libertine types are responsible for passing bad laws, defending immorality or just brushing unpleasant facts under the carpet, there is plenty of stuff for the BNP to say "I told you so".

Today we have had the conclusion of a review on whether teachers can be members of the BNP. The teaching unions are up in arms over the decision which says they can. Ms Chris Keates, of the NASUWT, is in a lather. She says, "The idea that a person who signs up to membership of the BNP can simply leave these beliefs at the school gate and behave as a 'professional' when they walk into school is risible." That is taking the typical leftie approach. What is definitely risible is that it seems OK to be a left-wing union activist but not be a member of a legal political party. I am all in favour of making sure political parties obey the law but attempting to outlaw personal beliefs, however odious one may find them, smacks of undemocratic actions. Ms Keane just plays into the hands of those in the BNP.

Personal politics have no place in the classroom, BNP or any other party. However, Ms Keates and her chums have infected schools with left-wing propaganda for decades. I know of many members of the Conservative Party, who are teachers, being held as suspect by the likes of Ms Keates. She seems to want a political-cleansing that suits her own propaganda.

I fear that the BNP are going to do well in the general election. They are parading themselves as white knights (literally) in the face of political ineptitude, bonus bagging bankers and corruption in high places. It shouldn't be that way. If the politicians had not seen fit to feather their own nests and the New Labour regime had not interfered on almost every level by imposing crazed ideas on social experimentation, we would have no rise in far-right politics.

The likes of Ms Keates are the cause of Nick Griffin's advancement. She needs a long hard look at herself in a mirror!

General Election or General Selection?

The general election is nearly upon us. The British people will have their say in whether the Prime Minister gets the bum's rush or gets the cherry on the cake. Personally I'm hoping for the former. However, there may be a nasty sting in the tail, or will it be tale?

The simple truth is that Britain is a democracy in a muddle. Most people think they are voting for a party to be in government. This will be enhanced even more by the three leaders going live with their "presidential" debates. But Britain doesn't have a proportional representation system. It has a simply majority system based on individual constituencies. And currently there is a multi-party scramble to elect MPs. The British people have a dog's dinner of a system, inherited from the grand old days when people were either little Liberals or little Conservatives of Gilbert and Sullivan style. When there were two parties it all made sense. Now its not quite senseless, more a bit sensitive when adding up the democratic benefits.

There is talk of a hung parliament. There are mutterings from the right that David Cameron may just not get enough seats. There are mutterings from the left that Gordon Brown will have to do a deal with the LibDems. But it's also said that Nick Clegg doesn't want to be with Brown, he'd prefer Cameron. The trouble here is that Clegg's backbenchers won't sit with the Tories. It has all the makings of 1974, except that there are now far more parties vying for votes, so we could end up having elections just giving us hung parliaments.

In my own case of Solihull, I am completely divorced from the Labour Government and its antics. No Labour candidate will ever win here. This is a battle between the LibDems and the Tories. Whoever wins will not have any effect on the Labour benches in the House of Commons. And that is the point. We elect MPs in individual consituencies. Some could win by getting less that a third of the vote. So a skewed result at Westminster is perfectly possible. In technical terms the pundits call this a hung parliament. Opinion polls mean very little, except that they provide an income to pollsters.

Gordon Brown could be defeated in the popular vote but get enough MPs for him to do a deal. How far will he stretch his honour? It is up to the Prime Minister to continue or to resign. Mere voting does not necessarily push him out of office. It is perfectly possible for him to convince the Queen that he can indeed "command a majority of his peers". Those MPs may well be a rag-bag of assorted parties or form the basis of a nod-and-a-wink agreement, but Gordon Brown's political arithmatic is not connected at all to the adult suffrage of the people.

So in the scheme of things winners can be losers and losers can get a second chance. General elections may have a tortoise and hare aspect, but this particular election could well ressemble a farmload of animals suddenly let loose. Who ends up where is impossible to guess!

Frau Merkel's Greek island real deal

The Greeks are in difficulty. Not only are they up to their eyeballs in debt, but they are getting further into the clutches of the EU mandarins. Nigel Farage was not wrong when he said Greece had become a subservient statelet of the European Union. Now the German Chancellor has come up with a good wheeze on the financial front. She's had a look at the map and spotted that there are plenty of Greek islands so why not flog off a few for extra cash?

Frau Merkel reckons the Greeks should sell uninhabited islands of which there are 227. I'm not sure if such real estate is worth much. Who would buy such an island? Richard Branson? The latest lottery winner? Or maybe Lord Ashcroft, to keep up his non-dom credentials? Definitely no doms on those islands.

Personally I think this crazy idea just about sums up the arrogant thinking of the EU machine politicians. It's gone past the absurd into the realms of fantasy. If implemented this could set a very bad precedence, leading to all manner of dodgy deals. Gordon Brown could be flogging off our islands including the inhabited ones. It's got an Ealing comedy flavour about it. Passport to Pimlico? Frau Merkel wants to see your visa!

Fake pilots and child air traffic controllers

Much money, time and effort is put into deterring would-be suicide bombers from getting onto planes but little is done to check up on ordinary workers who have regular access to sensitive arears in airports. Probably because money comes first in the minds of those in the aviation business, not a lot is done to maintain regular checks on the workers. By all means strip the passengers bare, lead them through electronic devices that have bells and whistles on them, and charge them extra for such delights, but don't get too rigorous with the staff. One check and they're in.

A Swedish pilot has been arrested at Amsterdam Airport as he was about to fly a jet with 101 passengers to Turkey. He has been without a valid licence to fly for 13 years, but that hasn't stopped him. The pilot said he had been flying for European airlines and had logged 10,000 hours. Dutch police said he once had a licence to fly small planes but it had expired and it did not allow him to fly large jets. Good detective work there. It just goes to show how many people can be so convincing. Then there is the child who was apparently allowed to direct planes at New York's JFK airport. Admittedly he had his father, a qualified air traffic controller, giving him a lead, and the authorities are taking a dim view, not unnaturally. One wonders what the other staff in the control tower were doing and thinking. It didn't faze the pilots either.

There are many occasions where people have decided to pose as pilots, doctors, teachers, nurses, etc. For many there appears to be an uncontrollable desire to pose as somebody else. Perhaps the authorities should have an amnesty and see how many fakers come out of disguise. My guess is there are far more than we realise.

Tabloid press incite the masses

Well, I wasn't far wrong. The tabloid press is gathering pace in inciting the population to get the hot oil vats out. The Daily Mail is in pure pompous mode. They've stoked the fires up. 471 comments on this article. A lot of bile and hatred. I can understand why, but, boy, aren't people easy to get steamed up. A lot of ingenious ways for normal people to think of inflicting more horror.

Tabloid journalists love a good pander to the lowest common denominator!

Killer Venables 'where he belongs', says Bulger mother

John Venables was a ten-year old murderer of a two-year-old little boy. The outrage caused public anger. As with all cases like this it left more scars on the human pysche and people began to vent all manner of diatribes and platitudes in equal measure. Such an event always triggers revenge and feelings of retribution it seems. Sometimes these feelings are directed mindlessly at those who are charged with dealing with the consequences.

I'm not surprised there are still children beating up children in Britain today. Unless a child is mentally ill, all behaviour is from nurturing the nature of the child. I'm sure I could have turned my children into knife-wielding little thugs if I'd been of a mind. In turn, I could have been the evil result of debauched parents. Thankfully neither has happened or will ever happen. But my honest opinion of the human condition is that hatred of others comes about far more easily than love and understanding. It seems that most news items on television pander to the disasters and brutality in the world, rather than the triumph over adversity or the love of one to another.

So when it comes to dealing with a 27-year old man who was a ten-year old child killer what do we do? The vast majority appear to want everything from hot oil vats to a return to hanging (plus drawing and quartering for good measure!). Any half-trained television reporter could stir up such feelings. Seeing as Britain does not have cruel and inhumane punishment as an option, the authorities have deemed it fit to give John Venables a new identity. Since his release he has been out on licence. Now he is back inside for breaching his parole terms.

The questions I have been pondering are these? As he has a new name, is he currently in prison for a parole violation regarding a crime his former self committed or is he just there because he is a parole violator? Surely the fellow inmates will get round to asking what he was inside for. Does he have a made up crime to subsitute for the original one? We are not going to be told what condition he violated. According to a legal expert on BBC News he could just be in prison because he became mentally unstable. This could be one reason. Which suggests prison is not an ideal place for a mentally unstable man trying to remember who he is.

Then I have issue with this new identity business. What if he had keep to the straight and narrow according to the parole rules and had got married and started a family? Does his wife have a right to know that the man she is with is not who she thinks he is? And it could go throughout society. Could he rise to be a successful businessman or is keeping a low profile part of the deal? The trouble with secrecy is that secrets have a way of coming out. The authorities want to keep his identity secret because they fear the actions of the wider society. So a person like John Venables goes through the rest of his life like a lone rat in a sewer. Such a creature needs all the mental agility to plot a course to avoid being deluged with excrement and foul concoctions.

The real conundrum here is that no-one really knows what to do for the best, because the life Venables is leading is one that would cause anyone to go barmy. Fifteen odd years of living a lie must be a strain, particularly if those around you are more than likely to be distant and aloof.

How we treat the likes of John Venables does matter. Society has not changing one iota over the centuries. We like to think we are somehow 21st century superior, but the revenge, petty jealousies, selfishness and greed continue. Looting eathquake hit shops in Chile, excuses trotted out at the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, suicide bombings, the list goes on. Getting steamed up about John Venables just helps to keep the kettle boiling.

I have no easy answers. But I do know that shouting epithets and venting hatred from an armchair says more about the venter than those trying to makes things better.

Are you Nick Griffin?

A most unfortunate episode happened at the Conservative conference. A councillor was stopped by a policewoman who wanted to be sure he was not Nick Griffin. The poor man apparently gets this a lot. Being mistaken for the BNP leader, that is. Now two things strike me as being odd about this story that I found in the Guardian. Firstly Lynden Stowe, who is the leader of Cotswold district council, was "made to produce identification and explain that any similarity between him and Griffin was merely superficial" before being allowed in. So if one looks like a severely politically-incorrect politician, is it the job of the British police to inquire whether thoughts go with the looks? Secondly, is Nick Griffin being tailed by the police during this election? If he is, I'd suggest the police keep well out of it. Let the electorate decide. We don't wan't prissy chief constables telling us who is or is not worthy of voting for. Any unnecessary involvement in the democratic process is bound to backfire. Illegal thuggery is one thing. Trying to prevent democratic discourse is quite another.

I was watching a video of the late great Arthur Worsley with his Charley Brown character. I've just had visions of Mr. Stowe being questioned by the dummy. "Go on!!!! ARE YOU NICK GRIFFIN??? Look at me when I'm talking - ARE YOU NICK GRIFFIN???" Well, it's one way to get an answer.