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05/10/07 - 02/11/07
Well Darlings,
We've had the major political conferences for another year,
and I've been scanned so many times that I now have an
affinity with a can of baked beans. I feel like I am on
special offer, or come free with a bottle of mineral water.
Three of our seaside holiday resorts - Brighton, Bournemouth,
and Blackpool - have once again been subjected to the turmoil
of all the extra security needed for these events. Unless you
are a resident, or have been unfortunate to visit one of these
places around the time of its conference week, you cannot
appreciate just how much is done to protect those attending as
little of it comes through on the news bulletins.
Nothing on the television programmes will suggest to you the
weeks of searching and sealing every nook and cranny that
precedes these gatherings every year, nor the inconvenience
suffered by many local traders as whole areas are put under
siege in the hope that there will be some end financial
benefit to the resorts. Undoubtedly a few businesses do make
some money, big money, but overall it is very debateable
whether it is all worthwhile as the inconvenience, severe loss
of trade to other businesses, and the many hidden costs
involved are rarely considered. But at least here in Blackpool
we did see the drains around the Winter Gardens being pumped
out in the search for anything untoward, and that is certainly
good news for both local and visiting noses.
I did suggest to the crew of some twenty police at times
performing this unenviable drain-checking task that they
should also do the streets around Dickson Road as the
delegates often frequent that area, but they would have none
of it - I guess the plants growing out of the drains there
suggest they haven't been tampered with, and maybe the flora
growing from them does add a certain natural elegance to
otherwise unattractive surroundings. Besides, it might prove
unforgivable to deprive any visitor wishing to play the game
"Name That Smell" of their enjoyment - it may be a swaying
reason for their coming here. It is quite surprising how many
people actually take in great lungfuls of the stench, only to
exclaim that there is nothing so beneficial as good, clean sea
air. Hmm . . . I can usually name an idiot in one!
Travelling back to Blackpool from down south on trains
sporting a goodly amount of green-flavoured delegates and
media people who chose (or were forced into) this mode of
transport over the car, I was amazed at some of the
conversations around me. There was nothing to be heard of Sir
Menzies Campbell's pledge to give Britons legally-enforceable
rights to a clean environment, nor even a word spoken of his
determination to make age an issue at the next general
election. Gordon Brown's "New Labour is Blue Labour" speech,
where he maybe successfully mass-hypnotised the nation into
believing that neither he nor anyone else in his government
had anything in the slightest to do with the disasters of the
past ten years, did receive a few comments - mostly mirthful,
and with a whole series of jokes about his eyesight and the
way in which he "talked up" the NHS - but in the main the
banter was all about Blackpool, and what to expect. It seemed
everyone wanted to outdo everyone else with some horror story
they had to relate about the town which, although they swore
it was the truth, I have little doubt it was not.
Like everybody once told jokes about the Irish, but are not
allowed to anymore because of political correctness, it seems
everybody now makes Blackpool the butt of their humour. It was
certainly a conversation-stopper when my travelling companions
learned I actually lived in Blackpool. As a local taxpayer I
may poke fun at my town and criticise it, and so may anybody
who pays to come here for their holiday and is dissatisfied -
but this bunch of free-loaders where everything is paid for
them? One of them, a mere youngster (and very cute!), was most
annoyed when he couldn't obtain a receipt for the 30p it cost
him to "spend a penny" on Manchester Piccadilly station - he
should be my age and appreciate just what little value you can
get for that 30p. I am eternally grateful it doesn't cost me
30p anywhere I know or frequent in Blackpool. If you'll pardon
the crudeness, mostly our conveniences are free for a pee.
Forgive me if I digress a little here: I have to wonder why
all this time after Manchester Piccadilly Station was
renovated to become a clean, smart, warm and modern (albeit
expensive!) rail station, the platforms that serve Blackpool
and our surrounding northern areas (platforms 13 and 14) have
been left as poorly-lit windswept and dirty remnants of
nineteenth century travel which, like some far removed leper
camp, may still only be accessed after a long hike? I kid you
not, should anyone get caught short on one of these platforms
it would be of little consequence whether or not they had the
correct coins for that 30p entrance fee - they would never
make it all that way back to civilisation. In fact, with the
circa 1970 unreadable monitors still in use in this area, I
suspect there are those who do not make it to anywhere at all.
There! I think I've had my thirty-pence worth of relief now,
and I feel all the better for it!
So what of the conferences this year? Was there anything to
write home about? Any surprises? No, is the short answer, and
really the only answer. I don't think there was substance
worthy of merit to report on from any of them. The Liberal
Democrats behaved as we expected them to, enjoying all the
freedoms of a party that nationally remains unlikely to be
elected. Labour again stuck its flag firmly to the blue mast
they adopted some ten years ago, and continued to spew out
their vast reservoirs of spin which it appears people like to
hear these days - even though they don't believe a word of it
is, or will ever become, true it doesn't seem to matter to
them one bit. It is a reality thing, and we all know about
reality, don't we? Television has taught us it isn't real, but
in our millions we still love to watch it. Oh, Brother! Big
Brother - what have we done?
Gordon Brown saw fit to remind the world that as a Scot he is
British and proud of it, and in case any of us had forgotten
we were British, he mentioned it close on a hundred times in
his speech. I'm guessing a grateful for his praises NHS
performed the necessary surgery to ensure the words would not
stick in the Prime Minister's Scottish pharynx. It was a
speech that was all things to all people, as if he had
conducted a private poll in order to see exactly what every
single one of us wanted, and then he promised it to us. No,
there will be no U-turns required in government policy. How
can there be when the past ten years have been completely
written off, a line drawn under them, by the government? They
didn't happen, certainly not by them, so now there is not even
anything of which we need to forgive or excuse them. Not even
an illegal war. I guess it is a reality thing. I'm sure Oscar
Wilde would forgive me for near stealing his words in saying:
I'm not young enough to understand it.
David Cameron just came, er, on really, and he gave us all an
entertaining afternoon talk. I found it was more like a
one-sided chin-wag in a local pub than a political speech. It
was long, unscripted, and I'll give him it came from the
heart, but it had none of the fire and thunder that is
expected of a conference speech. Now I come to think of it, I
don't recall the man ever making a political speech in the
sense that we expect them to be made. I am not sure he is
capable, and I suspect he is far too nice a person to be a
greatly successful politician - great enough to lead his party
to victory at a general election. Sometimes it is not enough
to just have all the right ideas - and he does seem to have a
lot of good ones - it often needs that little something extra
that this man has yet to find, and indeed may not actually
possess. On the whole his followers seemed to be happy enough
with his speech, but perhaps happy was not right for a time
when needed was overwhelmed. Apparently Gordon Brown didn't
even bother to watch his opponent's speech, he didn't believe
it to be necessary - and that, I think, says it all.
Conservatives under David may not win a general election,
nevertheless Labour could still lose one.
The post-conference bounces, which at one point put Labour
between seven and eleven percent ahead of the Conservatives,
saw the Labour lead being cut dramatically following the jolly
here in Blackpool, and that despite the Prime Minister trying
to steal the limelight by flying out to Iraq. I think David
Cameron's future may all depend on whether or not there is a
general election before too much goes wrong for the government
following this line they have drawn in the sand. If Labour
were to call an early election and win with a reduced
majority, as could easily happen, it would weaken Gordon
Brown's authority. However three years into the future, if
they should wait, may not be a good time for Labour.
Alistair, our Darling Chancellor of the Exchequer, has had to
concede: "If you look at the consensus of the economic
forecasters, it would be prudent to assume that (the credit
squeeze) will have some effect on us here." That is putting it
mildly. There are many who suspect things are destined to go
downhill for a number of years, and if that is so the
Conservatives could then win despite their leader lacking all
the fire in his belly many would love to see.
Gordon Brown has a dilemma, and it will be interesting to see
how he will deal with it. Like no-one else, he has all the
information on hand to know just how bad the future might
become for us; how great the further tax increases needed to
ride out the storm that is coming. The trouble is: he knows
that we know that he knows, and that will obviously have some
bearing on his decision about calling an early election. Were
enough people to become worried that he is worried, and
calling an early election could suggest that, then it might
just possibly see him lose office. It would have been a long
wait for such a short journey.
Confused? Who isn't? Perhaps this is why politics is
increasingly becoming like X-Factor for so many people. Never
mind the song, vote for the cutest singer. Anyway, who cares
who wins? Is it even worth voting for anyone? Does it really
matter? So long as we can all still laugh at the crying
wannabe idiots who don't make it, it is all good fun, isn't
it? It is reality. It is what we do today. War, poverty,
immigration and refugees, law and order, climate change,
people dying of infections in hospitals, the hospitals closing
nearly as fast as the post offices, education standards
falling and kids now being asked to mark their own exam
papers, taxes rising, stealth taxes increasing, robbed pension
funds unable to provide adequately for those who paid into
them for a lifetime, and all the other things wrong around us
today don't really matter to a lot of people today. To deal
with them would involve doing a reality check - and who wants
that? We all know everything will turn out okay and everybody
will live happily ever after, because the good guy with the
white hat always wins in the end, doesn't he?
Er . . . He does, doesn't he?
"The Bitch!" 5/10/07.
Well Darlings,
It is essentially brown, stinks, runs and is into everything,
and nobody wants to admit they had anything to do with it.
What is it? If you thought of diarrhoea, full points. However
if you thought of Gordon Brown's Labour government going down
the pan, full points and go to the top of the class.
Yes, the jokes were out within seconds of Gordon Brown showing
his true colours, weren't they? What is brown and in
labour? A blue joke. What do you get if you put brown on top
of a load of red? A chicken yellow that runs. I particularly
liked: have you seen the ring Gordon Brown now wears on his
right hand? It's a darling. Think about it!
Few expected Gordon
to give up running the Treasury once he moved next door. I
think we all knew Alistair Darling would basically be little
more than a puppet, but nobody expected a glove puppet. Having
to stand there in front of parliament, and watched by the
nation, reveal the swag Gordon had stolen from the
Conservatives as the thief sat behind him on camera and
smirked, the poor bloke was totally shafted, wasn't he? Did
anybody ever believe the day would come when they would feel
sorry for dead-pan Ali?
We were expected to dismiss this government's previous ten
years under Tony Blair - ten costly years of mostly deceit
after deceit and utter failure after utter failure all topped
off with a totally unnecessary war, a wagging finger and a
Cheshire cat grin - in order to give Gordon Brown, the man we
pitied for having to wait so long, his chance to lead the
country. What a bummer! What a damp squid the man has turned
out to be! What idiots the British public are - and it seems
he knows it!
People, the public and the political pundits alike, were
stunned, utterly gobsmacked, to see this man of whom they had
expected so much thoroughly walked-over by David Cameron in
Prime Minister's Question Time. Unable to come back with
anything of substance or credibility, for all the world to see
he was hung out to dry. And who can deny, he deserved every
bit of it? Stealing the opposition's policies because they
were vote-winners and better than his own showed Brown's
contempt for the British public, and it has disgraced the
Labour movement. Everyone alike has condemned the man for his
actions and it remains to be seen whether or not he can make
any kind of a come-back. He probably can, but doubtless he
will never again be seen in exactly the same light.
Perhaps the happiest person in the country today is David
Cameron, closely followed by the Shadow Cabinet and the rest
of the Conservative Party. Had there been an election and had
Labour lost it, then it would have been down to the
Conservatives to administer some much needed bitter medicine
to cure all the failings of the past ten years. Quite
obviously that would have made them extremely unpopular, and
liable to lose the following election possibly to be banned to
the wilderness for many more years. As it is, the people will
now be left in no doubt as to who is to blame for the tough
times ahead.
Can we expect this government to get it right and to fix all
the problems we have, based on their track record? Unlikely,
springs to mind. Although the puppet-master may have changed,
they are in the main exactly the same crew that created the
problems. With Gordon Brown's right hand inserted firmly
in his sphincter, Chancellor Alistair Darling has implemented
the stolen Conservative economic policies - but not without
them adjusted to cost us dearly. Some say in one fell swoop he
has sneaked up to another £1.6 billion out of us in extra
taxation - and at a time when the cheap ride on the credit
boom is coming to an end, so soon it will become very
apparent.
I suspect taxing us further and further is the only answer
this government has to a problem - to any problem. Tired and
worn out, they don't appear to have any radical policies of
their own. Maybe they will steal some from the other two main
parties, but after the crucifixion they have suffered from
this latest plundering, that must be unlikely. I think as the
economy slows down they will increase taxes proportionately in
an attempt to preserve the status quo. It will hurt, and
should the economy take a dive rather than a slow down, it may
do worse than hurt. The addition of a mind-blowing £16 billion
to the public borrowing plans the Chancellor has had to make
(and, I'm told, not announce) this week, at a time when public
spending is being reined-in, is not encouraging, but it seems
not unusual for this government - they have wrongly forecast
the economic situation, and had to borrow more and raise extra
taxes, for six out of the last seven years.
The true strength and stability of the British economy over
the past decade has rested far too much on the ability of the
public and business sectors to pay more and more in taxation
to shore it up, but soon factors may make this more difficult
- perhaps even an impossibility. What then? Where then will
the money come from to sustain, let alone try to reinstate
back to their once envied positions, our Health, Education,
Law and Order, and (perhaps never so envied) Transport
services, to mention but a few? If it gets to every pound
mattering, how will they provide all that they have to for our
growing immigration and refugee population? Neglected, the
elderly and sick are already dying today at the hands of this
government, what will tomorrow be like for them?
Chancellor Alistair Darling's declared central government
grants to English local authorities has not been
well-received. The chairman of the Local Government
Association, Sir Simon Milton, is reported as saying: "This is
the worst settlement for local government in a decade.
Councils will continue to work hard for the people they serve
but they face tough choices. The Chancellor's announcement
will mean above-inflation rises in bills for council taxpayers
and businesses, and there remains a black hole in funding for
the care of the elderly."
I can only hope that those tough choices the councils will
have to make are not between the elderly and wallpaper at £50
a roll for their Town Hall. Perhaps any quarter-of-a-million
pound stained glass windows and luxury leather seating for
council chambers should be ruled out for the foreseeable
future too. The peasants are getting a bit fed up with eating
cake.
People are becoming increasingly fed up and disillusioned with
the way things are today. They know crime has risen
dramatically, they know the police don't deal with a lot of it
now, they know our falling education standards are being
rubbished by other European countries we once put to shame,
and they know our health service, once the envy of the world,
has become a costly lumbering dinosaur that lags far behind
our European neighbours and is now actually killing people in
great numbers rather than curing them. They know all this
because they experience it firsthand on a daily basis, and yet
to hear the government speak of these things is to believe
they are living in another world, one far removed from the
real one.
I think finally, and it has taken a long time for it to
happen, spin is beginning to lose its effect. More and more
people seem to no longer immediately believe the rubbish they
are told, now preferring to rely on their own experiences.
They know everything around them is failing, and they know
they are being asked to pay ever increasing taxation for it.
After the record rises in council taxes over the past few
years, way above the rate of inflation, already as you will
have read above they are being warned the rises next year will
once again be above the inflation rate. What are these
enormous rises for? People are paying more and getting less
back for it. Why?
When after ten years of people's lifestyles and standards of
living only really improving through the relaxation on credit
allowing them to easily take on more debt, and not through
anything else the government has done, the prospect now looms
of substantial interest rate rises and harder to come by
finance, is it any wonder there is a now long queue of workers
all looking for significant pay rises? With world trade going
into a recession, this is not a good time for a rush of pay
rises, but that won't stop anyone pursuing them. They have to
pursue them - they have bills to pay they cannot afford. We
could yet be in for a period of considerable industrial unrest
this winter, or perhaps next spring.
A Prophet of Doom? Maybe I am. But then my teeth are old
enough to remember Harold "the pound in your pocket" Wilson
and Sunny "A lie can be half-way around the world before truth
has got its boots on" Jim Callaghan. The people who lived
through those times, rather than just read or heard of them,
may need to be forgiven for holding their breath today. There
are many similarities to the lead up of some real bad times we
had then.
We "never had it so good" once before, until the reassuringly
friendly and father-looking figure of Harold Wilson appeared
on the scene and swayed (mostly) the women voters. The polls
show Gordon Brown has that same appeal to women. Some will
tell you times have changed and that those dark days could
never happen again. I sincerely hope they are right. Much of
today's so-called affluent society could never cope without
its luxuries, never mind the essentials.
The last time we fought for our toilet rolls, sugar, cheese,
light bulbs, and all the many other essentials that
disappeared from the High Street after the country was forced
to go to the IMF with its begging bowl, we didn't have a
broken society and have to contend with an army of juveniles
all armed to the teeth. It could be a whole lot worse this
time, were history to repeat itself.
It may not happen. It probably won't happen. It is unlikely to
happen. We can all pray that it doesn't happen. But what if?
Never mind Gordon Brown, diarrhoea man, and disappointment of
the century - I'm off to stock up on my Gordon's Gin. At a
time like this, one needs to get their priorities right!
Oh, a tip before I go - just in case: the popular press give a
far better wipe than the broadsheets!
"The Bitch!" 12/10/07.
Well Darlings,
Since the end of the nineties, the annual total of gun crimes
in England and Wales has doubled. On average thirty firearms
offences now occur every day, and our police forces are all in
agreement that this is mostly due to the increasing problem of
teenagers carrying guns. No surprises in any of those
statements, is there? It is a society thing, or as it is more
fashionably called these days: a broken society thing.
Last year in this column I commented on Tony Blair's pledge to
halve child poverty by 2010 being way off target (it was off
by a mile!), as the figures then showed yet another rise in
child poverty and the rich-poor gap widening even further for
another year, as it has most years under this government - or
should that be every year, in its costly attempt to keep the
voters of Middle England happy? This year we see Martin Narey,
the chief executive of the children's charity Barnardo's,
wringing his hands in despair and proclaiming the government
has abandoned the pledge in order to "steal the Tories'
clothes" over inheritance tax. Writing in the New Statesman
magazine, Mr Narey has said: "For millions of poor children,
this is a tragedy. Tony Blair's pledge to halve child poverty
by 2010 was one of the most moving and inspiring commitments
made in the optimistic days after 1997. With this year's PBR
(Pre-Budget Report), it was abandoned. And nobody cares."
I think Martin may be a little off-course in that last
sentence. A hell of a lot of people do care. It is just the
government that seems not to care, isn't it? Most of the
public fully accept that a part, and perhaps a large part, of
those gun crimes - and indeed all crimes - may be attributable
to deprived kids, poor homes, and a failing society, with more
cases then being attributed to other kids who may not be poor
themselves, or come from bad homes, but feel they need to
respond accordingly.
Those who can still recall long ago teenage years with honesty
should be able to remember: not being an equal to your mates
at that time of life was almost a crime in itself. Better-off
kids were always being scolded for emulating their poorer
school chums, those from the wrong side of the tracks as it
was sometimes called, but they did it simply in order to (in
modern terms) have street cred, and sometimes the better off
you were, the harder that was to come by.
Although, in general, street cred today has little to do with
how well-off or how deprived anyone may be - now it is a
complicated combination of many things including, but not
limited to, the slang used, the mannerisms, style, fashion,
and an air of being or appearing capable - it has always been
led by the poorer element. When the fashion was
knuckle-dusters and flick-knives, as it was with the explosion
of post-war teenagers in the fifties, those weapons didn't
originate from the rich kids, but they soon had them too.
However in those days society wasn't "broken", every life was
still considered to be of value, and we didn't see deaths from
these weapons on anything like the scale we do today. Deaths
were quite a rarity then, despite there being this post-war
population explosion of rebelling teenagers, with many
frighteningly armed to the teeth.
Even in my sleepy-time village in a Hampshire back of beyond,
a place where a fart in public would make news on the Parish
Hall notice board and have you ostracised for weeks, we had
the flick-knives, dusters, and razor-sharp filed pennies (size
of a 2p today), but nobody ever used them. Never. They were
only for show, merely a fashion - a part of belonging; a
statement. Street cred, if you like. Whenever we had a set-to,
it was fisticuffs, a bloody nose and a black eye, and that was
all. So why are kids different today and actually using their
"fashionable" weapons to kill each other without a second
thought?
Considered it? Give in?
No, I can't believe it has any connection at all with the
violence seen on television, the horrific video games, or
anything like that. The kids like me who came up through the
absolute gluttony of gruesome war films, horror films, cowboys
and Indians, and countless musketeers running each other
through - most of which were rated with a universal
certificate that they would have no hope of achieving today,
and when they weren't it was never hard then to get in to the
cinema to see one - seem to have survived them totally
unaffected. Sweethearts, I fear the reality of what is wrong
today has everything to do with that fart in public. Well,
almost! It is about the things one learns they should and
should not do. Call it: accepted behaviour, for that is what
it is.
Pretty much throughout all of civilised history, regardless of
the street cred fashion of the day, there has always been an
unwritten and an overriding all other set of rules for
society, an accepted behaviour, and no matter what part of
society anyone came from, without thinking about it they
mostly observed the rules that applied to them. Although these
rules may have changed considerably over the many years, they
were always taught to the children at an early age and passed
on from generation to the generation. As an example: in my
younger years despite what a schoolboy may really have thought
of the stupid old biddy waddling down the street towards him,
if he knew her he showed her respect by tipping his cap or
touching his forelock. It was the done thing, the accepted
behaviour, and by doing it he proved he had a pride in who and
what he was. And should anyone not be considered much at all,
a thief even, they still had that pride - and there would be
those such as the old and the infirm from whom they would
never steal or see harmed, and of that they would be proud
too. Styles and times change, so I'm not suggesting that we
need to return to kids touching their forelocks, but
nevertheless the inbuilt respect we should have for each
other, and which a decent society demands, should still be
taught to children by their parents and teachers as a part of
being proud of their society, and themselves. Clearly not all
kids have received this tuition adequately, if at all. I
suspect a lot of people have not been proud enough of their
lot lately to have had the impetus to carry out this task.
Looking about me, I am not surprised.
Pride has been assigned to history and become almost
politically incorrect. Where today in society is there any
pride at all, apart perhaps from some in a local football team
or similar on a winning streak? Hooligan time. Society has
been broken. Totally. What rules are there to pass on today?
There are no longer any self-imposed rules; there is no room
for them. That room has been stolen, taken over by the Nanny
State, and that includes all the Draconian-like local
authorities which are so common today, those which rule and
penalise our every move and seek to charge for our every
breath. How can anyone be proud of anything when existing in
such a society? We have no responsibilities left for anything
at all - not even for how we wish to bring up our own
offspring - there are strict rules and guidelines to which we
must adhere for just about everything you can imagine, and the
list of them grows almost by the hour.
One cannot do anything today without first asking some "body
of authority" for permission, fully in the knowledge that it
will not be granted unless it costs them dearly. In England:
fly the flag from your window on St George's day? Oh, no. You
can't do that - it is jingoistic. However if you put in for
planning permission to erect a correct flagpole . . . Hmm!
There are many places today where we can no longer even have a
small Remembrance Day parade without first asking for
permission, paying the council a fortune, having it assessed
by Health & Safety, and coughing up for some massive
insurance. What insurance had those who died for us? Many of
them dying fighting against Hitler, only for our country to be
ruled years later by thousands of little Hitlers!
Society can only be proud of what it makes of itself. It will
never be proud of what is imposed upon it. That is why a Nanny
State can never succeed in improving the lot of any other than
those of the criminal element. When one day we elect a
government that gives the country back to its rightful owners,
the people, restoring all their lost freedoms and allowing
them once more to be responsible adults in their own
communities, we shall resurrect that pride in society and
those necessary self-imposed rules will reappear so that our
kids will start to see a value in their lives again, a future
where they may achieve something, be something that matters,
and they will stop killing each other.
For too many kids today there is no prospect of a decent
future, and from their perspective life just isn't worth
living. When the only hope many of them have for a better life
is something like the X-Factor and the million-to-one chance
of becoming a (spit!) "celebrity" - something quite useless,
but paid a lot of money - is it any wonder we recently read of
a youngster laughing as he was showered by bullets from a
drive-by shooting? What had he to lose? We may think he had
everything to lose, but from his viewpoint we are so wrong.
It is often the parents, the friends and the families which
have the most to lose each time one of our kids is killed, or
joins that frighteningly ever-increasing number that commit
suicide each year. It is time both society and the government
realised that and gave ALL children a life that they could
value, and the chance of a future they would not wish to lose.
Only when someone can put a decent worth on their own life,
can they learn to respect and value another's life. We have
the resources to easily meet that child poverty target by
2010, but we do not have the resolve within the government to
do so. What price the votes of Middle England?
Life is for living to the full, and if at all possible, to be
enjoyed. It is not for suffering or simply enduring. It is
time we killed the Nanny State and stopped killing our
children! That way we will ALL have a better life!
"The Bitch!" 20/10/07.
Well
Darlings,
Do you ever get the feeling you fell asleep some time ago -
you are dreaming, and you know you are dreaming, so nothing
you experience really matters? I know I do. In fact, I am
convinced it must be happening to me at this very moment, and
I am not so much dreaming as about to drift off into a
terrible nightmare.
Surely only in the world that exists behind closed eyelids
could somebody suggest that Tony Blair would make an excellent
President of the European Union. I mean, that could never be
for real, could it? Besides, I don't even recall ever being
asked if I wanted a European President. When did they actually
create the United States of Europe (USE)? Did I miss
something? Was I away playing with the fairies at the time?
No, don't answer that last one! I shall attempt to wake up. I
really could not survive yet another episode of that scrawny
wagging finger making its way around the world, the
all-concealing Cheshire Cat grin, and this time probably World
War Three. I thought Cheshire Cats were supposed to lie to you
and then disappear up their own whatsits - why won't this one?
Oh, here's another dream passing by I can explore. This one is
really stupid, so I will jump aboard it for a laugh. I could
do with a laugh after the last fright. I am now in Oakley, a
typical English village just a mile or so outside of
Basingstoke. There has been a pond here for around 400 years,
and as a treat throughout all that time families have taken
their children to see it and to feed the ducks. But no longer.
Families are now banned from feeding the nine mallards that
live on the pond, and a prohibiting sign has been erected
there because in this age ruled by Health & Safety the local
councillors have decided there is a risk that the birds'
droppings might harm the children. They also claim the
additives in bread are bad for the ducks. God forbid! I eat
the stuff, and unlike the ducks I don't swallow pebbles to
beat it to death.
The chairman of Oakley and Deane Parish Council, John
Strawbridge, is reported as saying: "We don't want to be
killjoys. But feeding the ducks puts a strain on the pond's
entire eco-system." Hmm . . . Not a fraction of the strain
such a stupid statement must be putting on the locals'
tempers, I'll bet!
Now, pardon me for stating the obvious - so obvious that a
councillor who, according to my well known theory, has like
most councillors on appointment lost all common sense and
therefore cannot see it - the pond's eco-system has survived
the past 400 years quite successfully without any interference
from him. The ducks, the other wildlife, the pond water, and
all the surrounding families who visit it are all still doing
very nicely thank you, as they have now throughout four long
centuries.
If there is any strain today being put on the pond's
eco-system I suggest it is more likely to be coming from the
chemicals or slurry sprayed onto nearby land by farmers, or
from weedkillers used by the council, not from the infrequent
kids' visits. Memorably, it was on Charles and Di's wedding
day, I lost six domestic ducks to farm slurry.
I say there is absolutely nothing wrong with the occasional
feeding of these ducks by the local toddlers. It is a British
way of life which has happened at thousands of village ponds
up and down our country throughout all our history - I have
done it, my children have done it, and today my grandchildren
do it - and with a risk so minimal as to be totally
incalculable. However I suspect there might be a substantial
risk associated with some of the local councillors here. What
have they been fed on lately? I suggest at the next election -
and purely in the interests of Health & Safety, of course -
these people should not be given any Xs at all as they are
obviously extremely bad for them, particularly for their
brains. The people of Oakley and Deane should really try to
remember this the next time there is an election in an effort
to protect a now almost extinct species - the sensible
councillor!
And now I know I am fully awake at last, because I can recall
an email sent in this week by a regular reader. A really
strange one - the email, not the reader. Oh, I don't know,
though. However it wanted my views, and it posed the question:
in a democracy where (say) only 30% of the electorate are
happy enough with the options to register a vote for any of
them, what right has the body that takes office on such a
minority to do anything more than simply "keep the wheels
oiled and turning"? The reader suggested that they had no
other rights, and in a democracy, in the true sense, when (as
in this example) at least 70% of the electorate has rejected
them and their policies, I could not see they had any other
rights either.
Perhaps if by law the option: "None Of The Above" had to be
added to the ballot papers we might see a bigger turnout at
some of our elections, especially the local ones, as the
people could then actually register their dissatisfaction. We
would then certainly all know for sure whether or not those
who took up office really had the justification to carry out
some of their more stupid policies. It would be a giant step
forward in cleaning up politics, and in making the public feel
more satisfied with politicians, but of course it is unlikely
to ever happen. What politician is going to vote for a law
that would give us a true democracy - and stop them fleecing
us?
None, I guess. But I can dream, can't I?
Enter Politician Stage Left.
Politician: "Dreams will be permitted in your area only
between the hours of 10pm and 6am. The Unitary Authority
charges a statutory fee of £5.00 for the first 15 minutes or
part thereof and . . ."
"The Bitch!" 26/10/07.
Well Darlings,
Writers and critics today have a lot to be thankful for -
there are so many idiots and idiotic schemes, surveys and
deductions around these days they can never be short of
something to write about. The latest £4.5 million study by 21
international "experts" on behalf of the World Cancer Research
Fund (they should have known better!) is the latest excuse for
me to trot out yet once more my eternal belief: today's
experts are tomorrow's idiots far too often for them to be
taken seriously.
If your teeth are as long as mine you will still no doubt
remember the experts of the day in the fifties. They told us
we should eat fewer potatoes, eat as much red meat as we could
afford, and eat far less bread in order to stay healthy. Just
one medium-sized potato was suggested for a dinner, and no
more than a couple of slices of bread a day, which should be
wholemeal. A kid loving my bread and jam (US: jelly) sarnies
at that time, I complained bitterly. But this was the advice
of the then experts who believed they knew everything, and our
family stuck to it. Today those experts are considered to have
been nothing more than a bunch of idiots. But were they?
Perhaps it is today's experts who are the real idiots - but
that can and will only be known for sure on one of our
tomorrows. However something worth considering: those who
survived the fifties are the ones living to great ages today,
whilst we already suspect the blobs of lard being raised
lately are unlikely to see anything like a similar number of
years. In the fifties fat was funny, not fashionable.
The experts of the fifties, just like those do today, were
convinced they were at the pinnacle of knowledge. There was
nothing more for them to know, and their findings were
absolutely indisputable. But apparently they were not, and
later ideas crept in telling us that red meat and animal fats
were bad for us. This revelation led to the food industry
producing some very dubious alternatives. Our friends in
America won't need reminding about the artificial fat,
Olestra, worked on by Procter & Gamble in the sixties and
later released as being "safe". Technically safe it may have
been, so far as we know to date, but it was not without its
side effects. It was arguably responsible for inserting: "anal
leakage" into many an American's vocabulary, and perhaps more
alarmingly into their underpants!
Hardly a year goes by now without some new idea, one that
overturns all previous ideas, of what we should and should not
be eating. Here are just a few: fish was good for us, and then
it wasn't because the seas were polluted and the marine life
radioactive. Chicken, once a treat, became a mainstay food -
until salmonella necessitated it being so incinerated that all
the goodness from it was obliterated. Eggs have been in and
out of favour more times than I care to remember. It was once
believed they were good for you, but too many gave you
jaundice. Then we were told we could not digest them, so they
weren't worth eating. Later on that was said to be wrong by a
panel of different experts who suggested we should be eating
them. We did, and it took an outspoken Conservative MP, Edwina
Currie, to prevent us all dying from the dreaded salmonella
that was rife in them, but unspoken about at that time. And
perhaps the only thing to have been in and out of favour as
much as the "stuff" served up at burger joints - once revealed
to be of less nutritional value than a tin of cheap dog food!
- is the good old-fashioned fish and chips, providing they are
cooked correctly in a reputable vegetable oil and not the
axle-grease that once gave them their unique flavour!
Knowing all this, why should we consider this latest advice to
be any more accurate, reliable, or beneficial to us, than that
of all its predecessors? Much of it will still have come from
drones sitting behind their desks number-crunching, where only
the computers employed today are different. That is the way
these bodies come up with the statistics that are supposed to
sway us. But there are statistics, and there are statistics.
These, linking obesity with cancers, and attributing both some
of the obesity and the cancers to what people buy from their
supermarket, appear to be generalising and sweeping
conclusions. They prompted the Daily Mail to ask in front page
headlines: "So what IS safe to eat?"
According to our latest experts, meats such as salami, ham,
bacon and sausages should be avoided. In fact, it seems any
food that is processed could be risky - and when you come to
supermarket food, what food isn't processed? Even the "fresh"
produce will often have been treated with preservatives.
Folks, with the amount of it we have to consume, I doubt we
now rot in our graves like we used to!
Statistics are often meaningless, and frequently used to
mislead - or to take your mind away from current failings by
giving you something else to worry about. Extremely plausible
ones can be produced to convince or mislead the public about
anything. It is easy to do, and our government, police, health
service etc, and their associated cronies are particularly
adept at the task. Those who believe them without question do
so at their peril.
Did you know that more men who mostly wear black shoes will
suffer from cancer than those who mostly wear brown ones? It
is a fact, I promise you. But of course, before you rush out
to change your footwear, the cancer has nothing at all to do
with the shoes. It is simply that black shoes are the more
popular - and it is playing with the statistics. So when
nearly all the food we eat these days comes from supermarkets
or fast-food joints - it almost has to, as there is little
alternative left - and when anything we wish to put into a
sandwich or a meal has had to be processed to include all
those various additives, I have to ask: did we really need to
spend £4.5 million to find out that the people who eat it are
more likely to succumb to some form of cancer? As opposed to
whom?
Common sense tells us that to gorge like a pig is detrimental,
and that obesity is unhealthy and life-threatening. We know by
experience that fatty foods aren't good for us, and we suspect
many of the additives in food today are bad for us in the
quantities we can easily accumulate them by eating just a
simple mixture of processed foods, so farm fresh produce is
always best if it is at all obtainable. To come to these
conclusions none of us has had to spend £4.5 million - we have
simply listened to our stomachs and our bodies, remembering
when they have complained, and how we have felt after eating
certain foods. It doesn't take much intelligence to work out
which food one is eating, or quantity of it, is responsible
for putting on weight, making one feel bloated, flatulent,
exhausted, or producing the restless legs feeling in bed that
is becoming so common today. It is not rocket science. It is
simply called living your life - that thing we did before the
Nanny State. Anyone remember it?
Homo sapiens has slowly evolved from being an herbivorous
species to becoming an omnivorous one, and as proof of that we
have our canine teeth and the now long-defunct and sometimes
troublesome appendix. Like it or not, as a species we have
evolved to naturally eat both meat and vegetable matter, so it
is quite strange for the experts to say meat is bad for us.
But of course, it is not the actual meat so much as what is
done to it (both alive and dead), what is added to it, and
perhaps how old it is before it gets to our mouths that is the
problem. Best before and sell by dates are now totally
meaningless, and they don't give any indication of freshness.
Under current law, when the date arrives the product can
simply be irradiated (again and again?), given a new date, and
put back on the shelf for sale without any obligation on the
supermarket to state that has occurred. Mary had a little lamb
- and they'd both been on the shelf for years!
Why this damning report has not been specifically aimed at the
government and food industry, but has instead seemingly been
targeted directly at the public, I have no proof - but I have
my suspicions.
With all the recent "statistics" on smoking still fresh in our
minds, those that were rammed down our throats at a tremendous
cost and in nothing short of a mad frenzy, where those who
smoke have now because of them been turned into noticeably
second-class citizens, I would like everyone to take just a
little time to carefully consider this statement from one of
the world's leading experts, Professor Sir Michael Marmot,
professor of epidemiology and public health at University
College London, and the chair of the World Cancer Research
Fund survey:
"With smoking, we know that if you smoke you increase your
risk, but most smokers in the end don't get cancer, so it's
not a one-to-one relation. With obesity and overweight, it is
very clear and it is a graded phenomenon. The more overweight
you are, the more obese you are, the higher the risk of
cancer." He also goes on to suggest the direct link between
increased weight and increased cancer risk is even stronger
than that which links cigarettes with cancer.
If you are surprised by that statement, then you are one who
has succumbed to all the spin and brainwashing about smoking
we have been subjected to in recent years, but don't feel
ashamed - most people, including eminent doctors, have too.
The link is there, but it is not that strong - a smoker is
still unlucky if they get cancer as most smokers will not get
it, and for passive smoking those that actually did the
research will tell you the risk is insignificant and their
findings were "sexed up". Where have I heard that one before?
There is no denying that smoking can give a person cancer,
that is why the tobacco companies have had to cough up
substantial damages - it is undoubtedly an unhealthy pastime
that was often promoted by them as being good for you, but the
relationship between the number of smokers and the number of
cancers has never stood up to scrutiny. After four hundred
years, with the number of smokers falling dramatically in the
last half of the 20th century - previously everybody including
kids smoked heavily on far stronger untipped cigarettes, and
that was at a time when few people even in old age died of
cancer - the disease has since escalated alarmingly. Something
had to be done to appease the public, so worldwide the smokers
have been singled out. However that will have as much affect
on the number of cancer patients as taking a piss was in the
recent Californian fires. They know that, but it will be
decades before it becomes publicly apparent. To take note of,
and to follow up, the correlation some scientists claim to
have found with the automobile is far too much of a hot potato
for any government of any country to pick up, and in an "oil
is king" world it will remain so for many years to come.
Knowing this, would anyone need forgiving for suspecting this
attack on our food and our fatties is yet another smokescreen
to prevent us dwelling on the appalling inadequacies of both
our government and health services? There is little more to be
gained from pursuing the smokers much further, they have won
the battle there, so our health organisation, that which would
prefer not to be a service and have to treat us at all as it
much prefers to be a "bossy-boots" ruling our lives, has found
a new target - the obese. Smoke? Sorry, no treatment. Obese?
Sorry, no treatment. It is quite obviously what the health
service is aiming for, and we have to wonder who will be
targeted next?
Having seen, and personally had to suffer, what has happened
to the smokers in the UK where the laws regarding smoking have
become some of the most severe in the world - and for what we
are now told has been based on far less evidence and for a
much less need - I can only say: May God help the lard-asses!
Their time of reckoning is nigh.
"The Bitch!" 2/11/07.
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