john of gwent's blog page

So much for the "Online Society"

2009-06-10T09:03:00.003+01:00

Over on this BBC Web Page you will find the "startling" research finding that 43% of those who do not have access to the internet would not want it if it were handed to them free of charge.

And this is a surprise ?

I remember going to a trade show in Birmingham for the scuba diving "industry". I went to it mainly because the producer of "Blue Planet" was giving a lecture there but it was also a useful place to pick up some extra gear.

While I was there I saw a bloke advertising a "latest gizmo". we all have "surface marker buoys", right ? They show the dive boat where we are in the water. So this chap had a bright idea. "You put your mobile phone in here", he said, "and then if someone calls you while you are underwater, the call is taken and you can hear them through the vibration in this mouthpiece on your air regulator and you can talk to them too".

I looked on at this sales pitch open mouthed. I thought it was some sort of a joke. But then it dawned on me the guy was for real.

"You don't get it, do you", I said. "I spend all week at that bloody thing's beck and call but at weekends all it takes is an inch of water and the microwaves are blocked. From then on it's peace and quiet - except for the sound of my bubbles - for up to forty five glorious minutes".

I saw him again hours later. He hadn't sold any of his whizz kits and he still did not understand why.

Apart from the most remote areas of the planet (like Haverfordwest, according to Betsan Powys the BBC's Welsh Current Affairs Blogger) internet connectivity for those who want it has been available for over fifteen years.

Yes I can see that for some there is a question of cost for the equipment and the running costs, and yes for some there is a real problem of connectivity and not always for the reasons you might think.

For those who want the service and cannot get it I know all about the frustrations - for years in the late 80's and early 90's I lived in a house on the outskirts of North East Newport whose telephone service was apalling and whose internet service was more so because of the lousy telephone link. And even today my home cannot receive Freeview digital TV because the only free radio spectrum in the nearest TV mast was given over to the CottageBurner Channel S4C.

But come on, guys. The technologically disadvantaged make up only a tiny part of the numbers of non-adopters of your brave new online world. Why is it such a surprise that such a LARGE chunk of those not already making use of it see no need of it.

Do you support Egg-Chucking, Jessica ?

2009-06-10T06:50:00.003+01:00

I sent this to my MP last night. I wonder if she will reply.

Wednesday 10 June 2009

Dear Jessica Morden,

I wonder if you would care to explain something to me.

I would REALLY like to know why policemen stood back and did nothing about UAF protestors pelting an elected member of the European Parliament with eggs this evening.

After all, they didn't stand back and do nothing when John Prescott was pelted, did they. They didn't stand back and do nothing when Tony Blair was bombed with dyed flour lobbed from the public gallery, did they ?

I noted with interest Peter Hain's demand that the storm troopers of the Anti Nazi League he founded shortly after arriving on these shores after delivering the eulogy for a terrorist bomber and murderer in his homeland of south africa rise up against the BNP leader Nick Griffin MEP.

Are you personally pleased that they have heeded his call ?

I noted with interest that this incident occurred within television camera coverage of the houses of parliament. Now I was among the very last group of people - the Professional Contractors Group - to take part in a mass public lobby and demo of Parliament in 1999 over the Welfare Reform Bill, and our organised lobbying of members of parliament caused you so much chaos it was probably the reason Tony Blair brought in legislation to ensure it would never happen again by banning the assembly of a group of people without prior police permission within a mile of Parliament.

I note with interest that no policemen did anything about this group of "UAF" thugs. I take it then that you and the Home Secretary are pleased to condone their actions? I see no other explanation for the lack of police intervention in the face of the scenes that have been made public courtesy of the BBC and Sky TV.

I think it's a very dangerous path you're treading here.

I was a counting agent at Torfaen last week. I confess to being more than a little delighted to see your party's stranglehold on wales destroyed by the conservatives and UKIP and the shock at the size of the BNP vote in was palpable in the faces of the massed tory faithful but I think that unless the Home Secretary starts sorting out some proper protection for our elected representatives - ALL OF THEM - then this is all going to end in tears.

I note that the website of the organisation that your government allowed to violently assault an elected member of the European Parliament is ALREADY saying it should have been a brick in the face.

Is this what you want ?

DO tell me because if it is I'll join the BNP tomorrow and stand against you in the next General Election.

I'm PRETTY convinced they'd be delighted to have a former director of a company that employed five people and turned over £200K until YOUR government's policies on taxation and immigration destroyed it standing under their ticket.

Yours sincerely,

"johnofgwent"

The Court of The Star Chamber

2009-06-06T13:10:00.002+01:00

Sir Hugh, persuade me not;
I will make a Star Chamber matter of it.
If he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs
he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, Esquire

(Shakespeare: The Merry Wives Of Windsor. Act 1 Scene 1)

by johnofgwent

I'd forgotten much about my English Literature and History 'O' levels until this week. And then the mouthings of Chairman "Not Flash, Just Gordon" Brown brought them all back to me. For much of this week Brown has been trying to rescue his political arse by mentioning at every opportunity the need for his dishonourable members to face a "Star Chamber". As if the institution was a good thing.

Yet something puzzles the hell out of me. Because in my second year in secondary education at the age of twelve, our history lessons covered the original Court Of The Star Chamber and believe me it was not a good thing to have.

The Star Chamber (Latin Camera stellata) was an English court of law that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster until 1641. It was made up of Privy Counsellors, as well as common-law judges, and supplemented the activities of the common-law and equity courts in both civil and criminal matters.

The court was set up to 'ensure' the fair enforcement of laws against prominent people, those so powerful that ordinary courts could never convict them of their crimes.

Court sessions were held in secret, with no indictments, no right of appeal, no juries, and no witnesses.

Evidence was presented in writing. Over time it evolved into a political weapon and has become a symbol of the misuse and abuse of power by the English monarchy and courts.

So at the age of twelve I was led to believe the Court of The Star Chamber to be the device of the absolute monarch and political despot, an institution publicly paraded as necessary to deal with those who would set themselves above the law, but in reality a version of Soviet Russia's Lubyanka centuries before its time.

But of course in those days this country believed in giving British schoolchildren an education that covered British Economic Social and Political History. These days I wonder what schoolchild below the level of A Level or even Undergraduate or Postgraduate Historian has ever been told the truth of what the institution was or why The Long Parliament abolished it.

And here's a funny thing. When I was twelve the History textbook from which we learned of this institution and what it really stood for has a woodcut of the building and several pictures of paintings depicting it. How strange then that after thirty minutes of searching I can find no evidence of those pictures in cyberspace, just one which somone has attributed to being the establishment, yet which I believ to be nothing more than some nobleman's dining room.

Oh well, they say history is written by the winning side.

Jessica Responds On The Google Street View Cars

2009-04-11T20:30:00.003+01:00

I was so annoyed when I realised the qualityof the images on Google Street View allowed any tom dick or harry who fancied doin' a blaggin' to get the low down on your house's fencing, gates, door locks, window locks, security cameras and everything else the enterprising criminal would want to know before breaking into your house.

I was particularly peeved because unlike "before google", when the crim wishing to case the joint would have to walk down the road and look suspicious doing so, now they can do so from the safety of a MacDonalds Restaurant at the other end of the country, just by supplying a false name, address, postcode and email so as to get onto their wireless internet.

So I was not at all surprised that the good people of Milton Keynes rose up against one of the Google Cars when it came to photograph their street.

What did amaze me was that our Home Secretary was too thick to spot this herself. Presumably she is too busy watching her husband's port flicks, and her advisers are too busy trying to stop the BNP at all costs, for them to have had time to work this out.

So a while ago I wrote to jessica morden pointing this out and asking whether she thought it was such a wonderful idea after all.

I got a reply today

It says I have "raised some reasonable concerns" about the service and the Home Secretary is going to get a letter pointing this out.

All well and good but given that it took me less than five minutes to work that out, just from looking that the wikipedia page with a "typical street view", what the hell are Jacqui Smith's "paid advisers" doing for their money and more to the point, should I send her my CV to apply to be their replacement ?

In my book, this is just one more example of how New Labour have made you less safe in your own home

CPS London Staff To Get £250 Just For Turning Up To Work

2009-04-11T17:35:00.001+01:00

"Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Give Us More Dough"

by johnofgwent

In December 1981 I walked out of my flat in Richmond Road, Cardiff to walk the mile or so to work in the University. My experimental diary from the research lab notes "it's started to snow". And the last entry says "it's still snowing". The next day starts, and ends in pretty much the same way with a mid-day entry "it's getting deep". And the snow came down day after day. An each day I walked to work.

And I was in no way exceptional. The entire staff did as I did, although I do recall the drop dead gorgeous redhead Jane, my co-researcher, who hailed from "The Sunshine State" across the pond who had come to work in this country with our team, who found the sight of all this snow a little overwhelming.

Ah Jane, the number of blokes who would have given their all to be snowed up for a week with you - but you were safe with me for I had just married a woman the spitting image of Kate Beckinsale as she appears as Anna Valerious in "Van Helsing" - and the novelty of going home every night needed more than snowdrifts to hold me back (!)

But enough of such things and back to the subject in hand.

Imagine what I felt when I found staff working for the Crown Prosecution Service were to get a big fat £250 just for doing earlier this year nothing more than I did - getting off their arses and getting in to work despite the snow.

But you see, what I did then, I also did earlier this year. And nurses and teachers in South Wales did the same earlier this year too. One woman spent hours walking in to work to make sure the patients in her hospital had someone to care for them. Will she get handed £250 ? I very much doubt it.

So what makes the "Crown Prosecution Service" such a special case ?

Answers on the back of a used arrest warrant to NP19 7 please

Ask An AM - What is it with GP's and appointments

2009-04-01T07:36:00.004+01:00

Who amongst us will has already forgotten the way Tony Blair's polished, teflon-coated election campaign was sent headlong into the buffers and the end of a dead-end siding by a skillful verbal atack from a member of the public in an audience for one of his numerous appearances on the BBC in the usual "Let's Worship Tony" format.

I speak of course of the moment when he realised that his wonderful plan (that would have made Stalin weep tears of joy) to introduce ten year plans and target after target into the NHS had backfired. The moment when he took on the appearance of a rabbit, caught in the headlights . I speak of course of the moment when a member of the public demanded to know why he thought it was a brilliant idea that her doctor be allowed to refuse to make appointments more than 48 hours in advance as a result of his policy penalising doctors who were more than 48 hours late seeing a patient with an appointment.

As the truth suddenly dawned on him, his expression changed to that of a man facing the electric chair. Fear gripped his intestines. You could see his facial muscles twitching involuntarily and the demon eyes darted around the room seeking a means of escape from the trap he had laid with his own hands, mind and mouth.

It was a good night for British Democracy.

And in its wake, the insane system of allowing lawyers and "practice managers" (Orwellian Newspeak for Profit Maximisers) to dictate the way sick people would get access to the health services paid for out of their taxes took a beating.

But the time has come to give it another.

Thanks to my previous job and the Managing Director who forced me to work insane hours under insane pressure I now have heart problems caused by high blood pressure. I need to see my GP on a regular basis to have the efficiency of my current medication monitored. Every time I have seen him he has said I should come back and see him in a month's time, and every time I have gone to the desk to book a new appointment the receptionist has rolled out the inevitable story as scripted by the practice manager that "We Do Not Book Appointments More Than 14 Days In Advance".

WHY NOT ? The bloody DOCTOR told me he needed to see me in a months time. WHY does the jumped up upstart accountant have the power to tell the Doctor he cannot see me at a time of his choosing, for that is what is happenning here.

But no, I must bow down to this Stalinist Planning and twiddle my thumbs for a whole fortnight hoping that an appointment slot will be available before my prescription runs out.

Yesterday the inevitable happenned. "I'm Sorry JohnofGwent but you cannot see your GP as there are no appointment slots available in the next 14 days".

My prescription runs out in 12. But more worrying than that, the cardiologist I saw last week told me the existing medication is not doing the job and the dosage needs to be doubled. And because the drug has known efffects on kidney function, I need a blood test to be arranged to make sure the increase doesnl;t make me a dialysis patient.

So ordering the meds from one of these online get yer viagra here mediwebsites isn't going to provide the answer, is it.

So why am I being denied access to the medical assiatance the GP told me I needed.

Why indeed.

I would pose this question to my MP whose government put these insane policies in place but of course they did a Pontius Pilate and washed their hands of all responsibility and handed "Health Issues In Wales" to the Welsh Assembly Hot Air Pit.

So here's what I sent to each of the bloated expense-laden wasters whose highly paid job it is to "represent" me.

Tuesday 31 March 2009

Dear Mohammad Asghar, Jocelyn Davies, Michael German and William Graham,

I am sure you will remember, some of you with amusement, some not, depending on your party affiliations, the way Tony Blair was made to look a complete fool when during the general election campaign, it was made clear to him on prime time television that no General Practicioner would allow a patient to make an appointment more than 48 hours in advance, for if they accepted it, they risked breaching one of the lunatic targets set by the government, which would cost them a chunk of their "nice little earner" from the insane contract the government had failed to negotiate properly with GP's

In the fallout from that election campaign event in which it became clear to all that Tony Blair had absolutely no idea of the havoc his "master plans" were causing, our GP suddenly changed his policy and started allowing appointments to be booked up to two weeks in advance.

HOWEVER it is clear the same mentality and target driven stupidity reigns supreme. I have just been advised, and not for the first time, that I cannot be given an appointment to see the doctor treating my high blood pressure because no appointment is available within the 14 day limit.

The cardiologist this GP referred me to recently recommended my medication be increased as my BP is NOT being properly controlled; the existing medication is known to cause kidney problems; I wake each morning with a pain in the lower back right by the adrenal glands (as a former medical biochemist thrown out of that career by Margaret Thatcher I think I know enough to know none of this is a good sign).

I thought with matters of health now devolved to your hands I would ask each of you what you thought about this state of affairs.....

Yours sincerely,

John Of Gwent

I received a reply from Mike German - the Lib Dem man - within minutes acknowledging my email and stating he would get back to me as soon as he was able. Yes the cynic amongst us may say this is a "brush off" but the mail headers in the reply - and a typo in the body of it - tell me this was no auto-response from an email robot but the words were was typed by human hand. Which means he at least feels it is important to read and acknowledge constituents correspondence. OK OK he probably pays someone to do it in his name from those fantastic allowances but at least I have hard evidence that one of these people puts that money into measures to try to serve the people. No response from the others yet though.

"Ask Glenys" - What DO the french think about those asylum seekers ?

2009-04-01T01:28:00.004+01:00

There's a Euro-Election coming up. Not that most people would know about it. I mean, apart from articles in "The Dail Mail" denouncing the BNP for using a Spitfire flown by a Polish Pilot in their election campaign (smart move that, I thought, getting the Daily Mail to give them all that free publicity for their campaign !!) have you seen anything about the election ? From anyone ? If you have, I'd love to hear from you. Because the last leaflet drops here were one from the Lib Dems celebrating their success in saving money by blacking out our streetlamps, only ten minutes after they finished spending hundreds of thousands of pounds getting the street lamps fixed (!!) and another from our New Labour apparat-chick MP. Apparently she is holding a Surgery. I wonder if she refuses appointments that canl't be done in 14 days like my GeneralPracticioner does. But why hold a surgery anyway ? Ah, I get it, she must be worried that if she doesn't, she might have her allowances for the premises challenged :-)

And talking of the Labour Party, while round my neck of the woods they seem to have gone all coy and quiet, just down the road they're having a right old rant. "Get Out And Vote To Stop The BNP" they say. "They Only Need 8% To Claim All Those Lovely European Parliament Allowances And Expenses". So no prizes for guesing what motivates New Labour then. Not "Vote For Me For All My Had Work", or "Vote For meFor All My Policies". Not even "Vote For Me For Standing Up For YourInterests". No, in the eyes of new Labour it's "Vote For Me And Show Me The Expense Account". I'd say New Labour just blew a hole in their own head here if it wasn't already the case that I can see daylight between the ears of their candidate.

So what the hell, I figured, maybe I have not seen hide nor hair of any candidates at all because they all presume no-one will bother voting. Or maybe the ones in power have finally worked out, as the electorate has, that their discredited representatives ought to be hanging their heads in shame at what they have allowed to be done to this country and its people on their watch.

So I decided it was time to take the fight to them and see whether they have the stomach for battle. I used the excellent "writetothem" website, now expanded to allow a concerned - or brassed off - constituent to see all elected representatives charged with looking after their needs across a wide arc ofgovernment organisations, and joy of joys I found out my current EU constituency was represented by a right shower, including none other than Glenys Kinnock, the wife of the Welsh Windbag Neil, whose first job once packed off to Brussels was to impose VAT on the Severn Bridge Toll so as to more heavily tax the people wishing to enter the Principality of Wales.

It was too good an opportunity to miss. You might remember about a fortnight ago now a BBC TV News crew crossed the channel to capture the behaviour of a group of people camped out in filth and squalor near the French port and rail terminals at Calais hoping to smuggle themselves aboard something bound for england so they can claim political asylum.

I have often wondered what the official line on these people is in France. And who better to ask for a European perspective on this issue than a woman who has been paid quite a bit over the past few years to be there as our elected representative. I confess the temptation was irresistible. Here is a copy of my recent letter to Glenys Kinnock MEP sent courtesy of "www.writetothem.com". I don't expect an answer, of course, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't make the woman work for her money once in a while.

Enjoy (!)

Thursday 26 March 2009
Dear Glenys Kinnock,

I understand from the website www.writetothem.com that you are one of the Members of the European Parliament representing the constituency in which I live. If this is not the case and I am mistaken, please accept my apologies.

I am having great difficulty understanding a matter that I first saw on a BBC News at Ten broadcast a few weeks ago. I have sought answers but have not yet been able to find any, and I think someone with a EUROPEAN perspective may be able to provide some insight.

On March 12th the BBC ran a piece on a large number of people living in conditions I would describe as filth and squalor outside a suburb of Calais, each trying to break into lorries to catch a free ride to Britain. The camera crew interviewed one such person who beamed straight at the camera and said "I want to go to england and claim political asylum"

Now I spent a month or so working a few miles from the French "Le Shuttle" terminal, albeit a few years ago. From my first hand experience I do not see any easy way that I could describe the area as a war zone or famine area, neither does France appear to me to be a country riven with dictatorial corruption or political or religious persecution.

So I find it most confusing that this man wishes to depart a land built on the principles of "equality, liberty and fraternity" to come to my country and I am even more confused as to how he can possibly be given asylum from persecution in France should he succeed in illegally entering here.

But the thing I find most confusing of all is this.What is the status of this person standing there in that field in France ? What are the authorities there doing about him. How did he get there ? Why is he being allowed to behave in the manner he is ?

I would REALLY like some answers to those questions and perhaps now you understand why I think someone with a European perspective on the matter might be better equipped to provide those answers.No-one has seen fit to explain any of this to me in the past. but with the European elections coming up, I think I would like to hear some answers before I cast my vote.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope to hear from you on this matter at your convenience.

Yours sincerely,

John Of Gwent

.... of course, I don't expect to hear a word from her at all.

£250 Birth Bribe Bond is now worth only £198.55

2009-03-26T16:15:00.005Z

Something that tickled me when I read it on Betsan Powys' BBC Welsh Politics Blog.

In her "happy birthday, son" posting Betsan notes that the £256 (I thought it was £250) bribe she and every other mother got to induce her to save for her child's future is now worth somewhat less than was when she got it, Just like the hype on private pensions that turned out to be bollox, so the likelihood that this savings bond will buy even the passport to let her son get the hell out of this shithole country on his 18th birthday is pretty miniscule.

It seems also that Rhodri "golf addict" Morgan promised her and every other mother an extra £50 on top of that promised by Blair and like every other promise the wndbag makes, this one has come to naught too.

Well don't blame ME betsan. I wanted to vote against the setup of that hot air shit pit in the bay but my postal vote was intercepted. Blame one of the supporters of the zealots in the pit below your public gallery seat who almost certainly nicked it to vote yes to the gravy train.

Intense Debate

2009-03-25T12:40:00.002Z

Regular readers may have seen moves on the BNP Website to promote a blog comment system called "Intense Debate"

I was not impressed when I saw the statement that those not registered with intense debate would be barred from commenting on the BNP site, and I was even less impressed by the hoops I have had to jump through, and the crap and errors I have encountered, putting "intense debate" on this blog to judge the impact.

I am even less impressed by the fact that the "full integration" sems to require me to hand over MY blog template design to "intense debate".

This seems overly intrusive, and, I might add, smacks of the very attitude in the present government that I and many other opponents of the government, patriotic or otherwise, seek to oppose by the power of argument and through the medium of the ballot box.

BUT it is done now. This blog is running under the intense debate commenting system. Someone had to be the guinea pig for larger and more important sites and now we will see how things go.

I wonder how many Recruiting Agencies will be calling Nick Griffin Today ?

2009-03-24T07:47:00.003Z

Nick Griffin needs IT experts.
But will the pimps who filled these shores with guest workers from the indian subcontinent, each clutching a "fast tracked visa" issued to them under false pretences now be ringing the BNP offices up saying they have "the perfect candidate" and what will you give us as a finders fee ?

If my spelling in this post falters somewhat you will have to excuse me. For I write with tears of laughter streaming down my face.

For almost two decades I ran my own business as an IT consultant. Faced with the closure of the employer who first took me on from my former academic post, I jumped off the deck into shark-infested waters and spent the next two decades having the roller coaster ride of my life.

When I started out in the business I placed my fate in the hands of a relatively small number of professional recruitment agents. Men - and they were mostly men - who had earned themselves a reputation for DOING the sort of work for which I was now offering myself for hire, men who had put up with the endless life out of a suitcase on the road, and therefore men who could speak with authority to me about what it was really like, and could speak to clients with authority about the skillset of someone they knew personally.

Such people found that there was money to be made by finding people like me our next piece of work and their track record of success in doing so on my behalf, leaving me to get on with the job in hand, was why they earned the cut they added to my bill. And with comparatively few people they knew personally "on their book", if too many of us went hungry, so did they.

But as the years passed and more and more people jumped on the bandwagon, so too did a new type of "recruiting agent". These people sat in offices and handled anonymous pieces of paper that fell out of fax machines. They were a voice on the end of a crackly mobile phone connection, disembodied voices who rang to urge me to get up and walk out of one client's office leaving them in the lurch because they had another client just up the road who was paying more. And when the internet replaced the fax machine, their numbers swelled, their distance from the client and the freelancer increased, and their knowledge of geography ("it's only the other end of the M4 you can do that in an hour surely") was as nonexistent as their morals ("I'll pay you five hundred to walk out of there right now and take this contract instead")

And as my home-grown UK based business was ground into the dust under New Labour Taxes, New Labour Regulations, New Labour Red Tape and New Labour Administrative Costs, a new sort of recruiter emerged. One with even fewer morals and a ruthless dedication to maximising their profit margin to the exclusion of all else. They exploited to the full the crooked Home Office Fast Tracked Visa Scheme and filled our shores with guest workers who had no right to be here because the Visa they held was contingent on the skill they had being in short supply and as I enjoyed helping to prove to a House of Commons Select Committee the premise on which that list was constructed was a fabrication. There were no such shortages, they had been invented as part of a dodgy deal to allow thousands of people in here from the indian subcontinent.

Last night I visited the British National Party Website and saw on their front page a "Situations Vacant" advertisement. I looked through the list of skills and ticked off every one on my CV. I was very tempted to apply, but the fact is after the bank that employed me as one of their IT experts threw me and dozens more like me on the street along with thousands of salesmen and other workers, it took me less than a fortnight to find a new employer. And I know many people with skills on a par with my own who are less fortunate.

But it is my personal experience that any organisation, no matter how big, or how small, who posts a "situations vacant advertisement" is very soon besieged with calls from the sort of pimps who filled these shores with guest workers, and charged thirty per cent of their hourly rate to do so. In these lean and hungry times when work is scarce, I wonder how many of those pimps will pick up the phone and call Nick Griffin this morning.

How typical of Labour Freeloaders to be in it for the expenses racket.

2009-03-22T11:57:00.003Z

Hat tip to my friend of some years now "The Green Arrow" for exposing what really matters to The Labour Party. In a post describing a leaflet drop from the party that deserted the people of the left in order to court fame with the electors that matter in the handful of seats that actually count, you need no commentary to read what really matters.

The leaflet you can read by clicking on the image above sums up their opinion of why people stand for office in one sentence.

Candidates ... only need to poll 8% in order to win a seat in the European Parliament and access to all the personal allowances paid to MEP's

What does that say of a party founded on the ideals of getting the voice of the ordinary working British man into the hallowed halls of British government. My God, is this the best these corrupt, boots-filling scum can think of. Can they not see anything of the needs of the people they "represent" over the rim of their champagne-filled goblet and gravy-filled trough ?

Kier Hardie would slap each of them in the face.

His Inquisitiveness Is Mightily Miffed

2009-03-21T06:20:00.003Z

"Do You Think Monty Python would have me in Their Inquisition Sketch NOW or must I do or say something even more stupid than I said in Africa first ?"

Hat Tip to The English Blog

For the past couple of months it's been a busy time for me over on the Green Arrow And Friends Blog and in the Hallowed Cyber-Halls of the UKDebaters, so I've rather neglected my own blog for quite a while. But I think this story deserves an airing and I didn't want to stomp over some fascinating revelations of money being poured to waste by our politically-correct masters over on GA's blog, so time to take off the dust sheets at chez johnofgwent.

I heard an amazing news item yesterday. One the like of which I believed would never be heard again in the lands of Dar El Harb. For until yesterday I truly believed these days the only "followers of religion" permitted to express any form of annoyance at what others thought of them through what they call "righteous anger" but what I call "throwing their dummies right out of the pram" were the cultist followers of "mohammedanism" (copyright Winston Churchill)

But what's this ?

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor has taken a leaf out of the book of the ranters within the cult of the dead paedophile and has taken umbrage at Peter Brooke's cartoon placed in The Times alongside their condemnation of His Inquisitiveness's attitude to the distribution of condoms in Africa as a measure against Aids.

So the cardinal has written a stiff memo, has he. Wow. I'm surprised that's allowed. I really am. Should I be wary of pitchfork-wielding, bible waving papists calling for The Editor's Head on a spike ? I don't know. But it will be a pleasant change to see religious protests from an organisation where the only womenfolk required to wear wierd clothing are those who seek the blessings of their god through contemplative prayer. work and study.

He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy.

2009-03-01T20:33:00.003Z

The late Graham Chapman as "Brian" with other members of the cast

Full Story here

A minor victory for common sense over censorship.

Thirty years after a panel of "church leaders" banned it from public view. Monty Python's "Life Of Brian" made it to the big screen in Aberystwyth (where ?) " this weekend.

Possibly helped by the town's mayor, Sue Jones-Davies, who played Brian's girlfriend "Judith" Iscariot in the film, the good people of the town can now see for themselves that their "leaders" were talking a load of bollox when they denounced the film as blasphemy against christ - for in the first couple of minutes a very "Robert Powell" like chappie in shining rainment is seen teling a crowd at the side of a lake that "The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth" - while 30 year old Brian is somewhere else altogether.

It was this rather key fact - a piece of information known only to those who watched the film - that led a man of the cloth sitting on a similar committee in Hereford and Worcester to denounce the campaign to impose a ban there, saying "he couldn't understand what al the fuss was about". Given his duties included at the time the spiritual welfare of a number of gentlemen of a somewhat "elite" military persuasion, one must presume here was a man who could tell the difference between "humour" and "an attack on one's religious principles. Or maybe he just knew when it was important to make a fuss, and when to turn the other cheek.

Because he knew, as did I after I watched the credits roll up the screen to the dying strains of "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life", that the people the film was really poking fun at were the fundamentalist messiah-a-minute-greeting nutters who inhabited what I think is best described as "The Occupied Territories of Palestine Italian Mandate (SPQR) 33AD (approx)".

Now if the film's censors and critics - including the charming chappie quoted as saying "I don't have to live in a pigsty to know that it stinks" on the back cover of the box holding the VHS cassette that is my personal copy of this masterwork has actually told the truth and said the film poked fun at religious extremists who saw "the messiah" on every street corner, and exposed the tendency of a great number of people to falsely represent themselves as "the messiah" then I might, just might have had second thoughts at paying to own a copy of it.

But I saw through the lies and spin uttered by those who "know what's best for us".

And while I do not know of anywhere on the planet that would still stone me for saying "That piece of fish was good enough for jehovah", I have a distinct feeling the number of places where I would meet that very fate for suggesting it was good enough for the prophet mohammed (may he rot in the lowest pit of hell) are increasing daily, and there are, amongst us right now, many who will not stop until that becomes part of the laws of this land where I was born.

Air Travellers Welcome !!

2009-02-18T15:54:00.005Z

What a difference a credit crunch makes (!)

I first boarded an aircraft in 1981, timidly walking up the steps for departure to italy for a honeymoon that was, shall we say, different. Different because, thanks to a terrorist attack on the airport we were scheduled to land at, WE got rerouted hundreds of miles away, and we staggered into our hotel at 6am too knackered to even think about what newlyweds are supposed to. What's that french saying about the more things change, the more they stay the same.

And as the years went by, and fares fell, airports became crowded, staff became shitter by the second, and, well you've all seen "Airport" haven't you. Annoyed passengers, shitty treatment. The reason why I've avoided airports like the bloody plague for over a decade.

But here I am, about to depart north to the land where the jocks are strapping with the only real problem being Alex Salmand's desire to install anti-aircraft guns at hadrians wall to ENSURE they stay independent (!)

And the first thing I notice is how like the 1980's the airport IS.

The car parks are empty. No, honest, I parked in the short stay with only 10% of the space filled, wandered into a DESERTED check-in desk, where I was genuinely welcomed, and the smile at the bar. HELL even the BEER is only slightly more expensive than it is in a Cardiff PUB.

If this is what Cardiff Airport is like, I might just do my bit to kickstart the economy.

Alicante for the summer holiday, anyone ???? Hic. Burp. Retch.

2.5% change in VAT = £140 per person

2008-11-24T08:05:00.003Z

Well it was when these comedians were on stage.

Cast your mind back, if you will, almost twenty years.

Margaret Thatcher is about to walk out of Number 10 and hand the keys to the Grey Man of politics on the right, who up to now is best known for saying of his fifteen per cent mortgage rates "if it isn't hurting, it isn't working".

And a much younger and slimmer John of Gwent is about to find his employer for the past eight years won't be his employer much longer. An awfully nice yankee chappie by the name of Rumsfeld demanded that in order to "solve the bearded nuisance in iran" problem they should arm the bloke next door with a lit of d's in his name to the teeth. Having done so, the company finds Uncle Sam declares the chap in question a bad boy, so he doesn't pay the bill.

Thus started my career as an independent IT freelancer. And my first invoices carried a 15% VAT demand. But not for long. For it would come to pass that when faced with the considerable outrage over the Poll Tax, the solution oput forward would be a £140 a head refund, to be paid for by a 2.5% increase in VAT.

Well taxes have a habit of sticking round. Income tax was a vehicle designed to fund the Napoleonic War and I think that's been over for a while but still I see "actors" making money each year telling me to get my return in. And similarly VAT stuck at 17.5% for fifteen years after the Poll Tax bit the dust.

But listen carefully this afternoon, folks. Because a 2.5% INCREASE in VAT was needed to fund a £140 cashback on the Poll Tax. So what is going to go up, and by how much, to cover the VAT handout ?

And when Diddy David stands up and rants, will someone please remind him who it was that put it up all those years ago, and why, and what was said at the time.

unable to recover the costs of all the weaponry it sold to a chap by the name of Saddam, who at that time was infintely preferable to the bearded bad guy next door who came out of exile i

Armed Robber raids shop - now the robber's MUM wants to sue the shopkeeper !!

2008-11-12T17:15:00.008Z

He's not a villain, he's just a naughty boy. Or so his mum says.

My blood pressure wasn't exactly helped when I chanced across this page on the BBC website earlier today.

The story goes back to the 12th of February when the BBC News website told of Preston Crown Court's issuing of a warrant for the arrest of one Liam Kilroe in connection with not one but TWO armed robberies in Lancashire. But the trail went cold for about a week, and then things got interesting.

According to this BBC News web page posted at 10:30 on the 19th of February Mr Kilroe was murdered and a 34 year old was 'helping police with their enquiries'. How interesting then that by 20:39 the same day the story had changed just a little.

Now the story was that as one Tony Singh closed up his "Lifestyle Express" corner shop in Skelmersdale and took his takings amounting to some £2,000 to his car, Kilroe aproached, smashed the car window, drew a knife, threatened Mr Singh with it and demanded that he hand over the takings. The BBC would have us believe that a "struggle" ocurred and it Mr Kilroe was stabbed in the chest with his own weapon.

By the 27th of February the BBC were saying Mr Singh was not going to face charges of murder over the incident, in which Kilroe is said to have launched an unprovoked and violent attempted mugging against Mr Singh, stabbing him repeatedly in the head and the back as he sat in his car. Now the BBC tell us Kilroe, who had previous convictions for assault and robbery, died from a single stab wound to the chest suffered after he smashed the window of the car Mr Singh was sitting in and trying to mug him.

That particular news page has the rather priceless quote from the pompous oaf in the CPS pontificating that "any person found to have acted reasonably in self defence will have the full protection of the law and will not be prosecuted"

Drug Baron or Victim of Attempted Armed Robbery - You decide !

But truly this story gets better and better !! On the 10th of November the same BBC News website reports the inquest into the death of Mr Kilroe and repeats Mr Singh's testimony that Kilroe attacked him 'like a pit bull' as he sat in his car, but two "neighbours" of his testified that MrSingh 'lost it' during the atack, and was 'giving as good as he got'. Mr Kilroe's "brief" Kate Stone demande dthat the coroner consider a verdict of "unlawful killing" on the grounds that the knife was SINGH's and HE stanned Kilroe in an argument over drug money !!

But best of all is the testimony from Kilroe's mum. She said he had no need to mug anyone as she was supporting him financially as part of her efforts to aid him evade capture by the police.

Bet you wish you hadn't helped him evade the plod now, don't you ? Better a nice warm cell than a cold damp coffin, don't you think, mum ?

But amazingly, despite the fulsome praise from the Police for the wy Mr Singh dealtwith being the innocent victim of a violent attempted mugging that left him seriosuly injured, Liam's mum is still on the warpath. She is, according to today's instalment of this sorry spectacle, "disappointed" with the verdict and is now seeking to bring a "civil action" against him

She'll probably get legal aid to do it too.

The desperation of the Irish and the load of American Cobblers

2008-11-07T09:10:00.005Z

I'm back. I've returned to blogging here after a period of other activity. And look what rich pickings there are. Let's start with the desperation of the irish, shall we.

The three hundred good people of Moneygall or Muine Gall to give it its proper name woke up the other day to find one of their long lost sons appears to have done very well for himself. Here he is, pictured outside part of his new office complex.

Never one to miss an opportunity, the irish government have seen fit to put it about that, well, in the words of the BBC News Website, "Never mind the US President-elect's 87-year-old grandmother in Kenya, what about his great-great-great grandfather from Co Offaly?"

What's that ? A BLACK Irishman ? How come ?

Well it would appear that the slave trade was not started off my the good burghers of Bristol or Liverpool at all, but by a little known enterprising irish chappie .......

No, much as I would love to be the one phoning max clifford to ask him to negotiate my worldwide fee for the scoop of the presidency, the previous sentence is a complete falsehood - unless you know different and can prove it, of course ? No, it would appear that, again according to that BBC website page, a Moneygall shoemaker called Fulmouth Kearney is Mr Obama's great-great-great grandfather. He emigrated to the US in 1850 at the tender age of 20. He married Ohio-born Charlotte Holloway. They had eight children and so began the American family tree which culminated with Ann Dunham marrying Kenyan-born Barack Hussein Obama Snr, and the birth of Barack Jnr on 4 August 1961.

And so the Irish government have extended an invitation for Obama to add to the list of other american presidents in coming to see for themselves the emerald isle in which they have (sometimes tenuous) ancient roots, .

Now I suppose the 300 good people of this hamlet are probably thinking it would be nice for him to drop in, but I bet they will think differently if he comes. When Clinton dropped in for a pint of Guinness on his way to defend his halting the extradition of IRA terrorists from America and to deny the DUP a voice at his table, the secret service threw almost everyone out of the village.

When he came to stay in the (then £1500 a night) presidential suite at the Coldra Celtic Manor Hotel during his hay on wye festival lecture tour, armed men set up exclusion zones for miles around and created complete bloody havoc. Ambulances were refused access to houses adjacent to the place. And I don't think ANY of the scum in his motorcade paid the severn bridge toll. Mind you I don't think george dubya's motorcade paid the congestion charge when they drove through london either

But news of Obama's Irish roots has set me thinking. Wouldn't it be WONDERFUL to find that the man about to take over the reins of George Dubya's war on terror has a great great grandaddy violently in favour of irish independence ..........

Now that WOULD be a scoop I'd ring Mr Clifford for. Watch this space !

European Union or Argmageddon ?

2008-10-07T08:56:00.002+01:00

A posting I placed on the green arrow forum this morning ...

Did you see Newsnight last night on BBC2 ? If not, you missed the most spectacular news scoop of the century. Only they don't know they have it. In a far ranging in depth analysis of the credit crunch and interviews with the mjor players that only the BBC can stage in the way it does, those who were running last nights programme revealed a few rather interesting facts.

Hands up anyone who remembers Black Wednesday ? Now keep your hands up if you were running a small business at the time. And leave them up if you were part way through the delivery of a major project to a large multi-national in the financial or industrial sector .....

.... Now then, of the small band of us left with our hands in the air, who amongst you watched Norman Lamont shove the interst rate to 22% at 2pm in order to fight off George Sorros' bet that we'd be out of the Narrow band ERM by tea-time. And who amongst you expected that the large multinational that owed you at least ten grand was about to go bust thanks to that crippling interest rate and take your small business with it as a casualty of war .....

Well I still have my hand up and I believe I see my old mucker GA there at the back has his hand in the air too. Because we were both right out there in the line of fire when the Germans decided to teach Norman Lamont a lesson or two about European Economics back then in 1993.

And so it was with little surprise that I read yesterday that shares were in freefall again thanks to the Germans saying one thing and then doing another behind our backs. And last night on newsnight they even sent their ambassador to the Newsnight Studio. And when questioned he said 'he understood Angela Merkel perfectly and perhaps you suffered a mistake in the translation'.

No, I don't really think there was a mistake in translation, Mister Ambassador. Well not in the translation from German to English. I recall your minister of finance on BBC1 in 1993. I remember his bluster and outrage when replying to accusations of collusion at the Bundesbank to destroy the British Economy. And I remember his words spoken in German on the Astra Analogue Sat-Eins-Plus station later that night. For in those days you thought no-one in Britain could receive your television signals, much less understand them. Now to give you credit, you have not made the same mistake this time, but how you must have cringed when your plan was exposed by newsnight, and how you must have gloated when you realised the fools were not 'on to you'.

What am I talking about, I hear you say ? Go find a copy of the programme somehow and watch it.

About half way through a long and very very boring litany of bankers being interviewed saying how sorry they are, and other apologists for the mess wer are in right now, Newsnight shows a graph. On its vertical axis is a measuure of the amout of personal debt each member of the population of the countries affected by this financial situation is in. On the horizontal axis is a measure of the amount of corporate debt the country's businesses and em,ployers are in.

Guess who is top of the list in both cases. Guess which country is out there streets ahead of all the others top of the tree and most dangerously exposed and most likely to take the hardest knock from the continuation of this situation ?

You don't need to guess at all, do you. It's UK plc that's out there most exposed of all, and we lead by quite a few city blocks.

And then Newsnight stumbled on the scoop of the year without knowing it. In posing the question "what is different between us and the united states, what is going on in Europe that is not the same as what is going on in the United States", the journalist reading the lines with all the enthusiasm of the man Maggie found to announce military losses during the Falklands conflict revealed the answer.

The United States are a Federal Unon with a Federal Financial and Legislative structure overseeing the individual states. The European Union has no such equivalent federal legislatitive and financial instutution. Or to be specific, we have the institution all right, but the individual governments of the member states can only be persuaded, and cannot be coerced into taking action, and above all are free to act independently in their own interest.

In other words the only way out of this credit crunch and the disaster it is causing daily is ever closer political union. Those were the very words used and no-one, absolutely no-one even bothered to take that theme any further.

Germany has been plotting its revenge for the snubbing it got over the Lisbon treaty for some time. I say that over the previous weekend it put its plan into motion.

"I feel sorry for the managing directors - they were paid about 50% of their bonus in stock, that's been written off."

2008-09-16T02:52:00.004+01:00

This man's job let him and his fellows cause the credit crunch.

Many years ago I was sitting at a desk in an office near Kingston Upon Thames. As the clock on the wall crept past 18:00 hours I rose from my chair, locked the document I was reviewing in the desk, picked up my bag and strode out into the car park. Driving out of the office complex and up the main road I pulled into a layby opposite a few shops by the roundabout. I walked into one shop bearing the logo of a certain pizza company. Which one ? Think Duff Beer and a family, (indeed a whole town) with severe jaundice and you'll get the idea.

This company 'make' the pizzas for each order starting by making the pizza base from a lump of proven dough. And in this shop the staff did this in front of you, to give you and them the chance to engage in conversation, a lost art in greater London I can tell you.

The woman deftly spinning my pizza base out caught sight of the magazine under my arm. 'Oh, you're a contractor' she said. This caught me unawares. "yes" I replied, and started telling her what little I could of my work across the road without risking getting us both in the old bailey for the same reasons Maggie put Clive Ponting there.

Without breaking stride in her pizza-making, the woman multi-tasked the twin operations of laying out black olives in a symmetrical pattern and looking wistfully in my direction. As she finished and consigned my supper-to-be to the main oven, she sighed, turned to me and said ...

"I wish I could go back to doing what you are doing now, but ever since we got thrown onto the street when the Torus project collapsed I haven't had the nerve"

That was almost a decade and a half ago, but the details of that conversation are etched on my mind. I'm ashamed to say the woman's face isn't. She was one of thousands of people who I paid to prepare or serve food to me in my days as a warrior of the road. Their faces blur into a gestalt, the surroundings blur into a greyscale of memories. But even today her voice uttering those words calls back to me across the years.

When the Torus project was canned it was the Stock exchange's largest IT project failure to date. People were called into a mass meeting and as they waited there, men in peaked capped uniforms entered their offices, unlocked their desks, took out anything apparently personal, put it into a cardboard box and brought the boxes on trollies to the doors of the room in which they were gathered. Only when the trollies arrived did someone stand up and tell the assembled multitude that they were being shown the door. Each person was then taken out of the room, led to a trolley, handed "their" box of posessions and then "escorted" out of the building and into the street.

The fools have not learned. As this BBC news web page points out. The tale os told of many people leaving Lehman Brothers in Canary wharf cardboard box in hand. Some had not even got their feet under the desk. 24-year-old Edouard d'Archimbaud had only just arrived in Canary Wharf from paris for his first day at work. He expected to collect £45,000 a year (plus fat wads of bonus) as a trader. Instead, he got a P45. "I do not know what I will do now. I've taken out a six-month lease on a flat and I don't know how I will pay for it," he said. My heart bleeds piss for him.

But Andy Bevan, three years his senior and thus a man half my age, is my nominee for 'most bizarre quote of the year'. Bevan "works in equity derivative finance" which the correspondent on Radio 4's 6 O'Clock news last night translated into English for me. The Andy Bevans of this world made money by taking all those sub-prime mortgage deals whose borrowers had been allowed to take against unaudited, self-certified declarations of income, wrapping them up with other products into "packages" whose wrapping was so tempting the suckers buying the product - and paying the fat fees added on top - failed to notice the stench of decay and corruption that poured fourth from the rotten core. And others took those packages, added some more, tied them up with more string, added a further fat fee, and found another sucker.

It does not take much intelligence to see that after a few such "derivations" you end up with "derivative packages" that are, like their sellers, all mouth and no trousers, mini-ENRONs all ready to explode.

It is people like Andy Bevan who created the situation where bankers saddled with bad debts in the form of worthless mortgages taken out by people not challenged to prove either their worth or their ability to repay, were not only unaware they were standing in the street wearing just their underpants but were also unable to tell how much of this bad debt they had on their books.

The andy bevans of this world had done the job of selling the king his new clothes to a degree unheard of in recent days and now everyone will suffer as a result.

And what does Andy think ? Well, in one of the most bizarre quotes on the whole story, he says "I am lucky - I don't have any dependants or a mortgage to worry about. I feel sorry for the managing directors - they were paid about 50% of their bonus in stock, that's been written off". And he says he is off back to his team, drinking one last drink in the Canary Wharf Slug and Lettuce.

Enjoy the drink, Andy. I know what happens next. And I can't seem to muster the slightest bit of compassion for you.

Don;t worry. There won't be a Tsunami in Cardiff Bay

2008-09-10T07:10:00.004+01:00

Hot off the press from the BBC News Wales Website is the news that this man who will, they say, later today, kick off the Large Hadron Collider, has promised there will be no Tsunami in Cardiff Bay this morning. Or this afternoon.

Hmmm.

As a raw recruit to the ranks of the scientific profession, with the ink still wet on the piece of paper headed "Universitas Cambrensis" granting me "Baccalaureus Im Scientia Magna Cum Laude" I recall picking up a copy of The Sun from the tea room. Yes, we had the printed word in those days. On the front page was a Sun style enlargement of a very grainy greyscale photograph. A prototype of the sort of photograph now handed round offices across the country by grinning mums-to-be. And underneath that, in typical "Soaraway Sun 48 Point Type" were three little words :-

"IT'S A BOY"

About a fortnight later LOUISE BROWN was born.

You have no idea how much I hope that the stories peddled over the past few days by the successors of those journalists who couldn't tell an umbilical cord from a penis are equally flawed.

But if you'll excuse me, I'm off to prepare to kiss my arse goodnight. Because the chap above is absolutely right. There will be no tsunami in Cardiff Bay, because if it does go horribly wrong all the earth's seawater will fall through the event horizon (!) And remember folks, dive in head first. That way the last thing that will go through your mind will be YOUR arsehole. Jump in feet first and the last thing that will go through your mind is the arse of some like-minded stranger.

But I leave you today with the following two rather pleasant thoughts.

If everything does turn to shit later today, the EU commissioners will go down the black hole into non-existence a few millionths of a second before we do. So UKIP will have delivered on their policy after all. Leaving is to die well, and die free. And better than that, we die knowing Alistair Darling won't get a sodding penny in inheritance tax.

Ok people. It has been a pleasure and a privilege blogging for you. I am going outside now. I may be gone for some time. Or maybe. like Arnie, 'I'll Be Back'. Who knows ? Certainly not the chap pictured above.

"It was a pretty light-hearted petition, so we gave it a light-hearted answer."

2008-08-20T16:06:00.004+01:00

VOTE JEZZA FOR PM !!!

Now let us be honest. Would you want this man as Prime Minister ? Well, speaking personally, I would like to see him in number ten for five reasons.

Just HOW exactly can he POSSIBLY bring a worse poll rating to the Labour Party than the current leader ?
The sight of him heading up the cabinet would give Johnathan Porritt a stroke and that is no bad thing.
The Fuel Duty Escalator (express lift) would be as dead as a dodo.
Clarkson is, according to wikipedia, a renowned Euro-Sceptic. I'd vote for him just because of that.
He knows all about identity theft and how easy it is to hack our banking system. He was stupid enough to say "ID Theft" was a load of cobblers,. He then received a personal lesson when five hundred pictures of the queen's head were lifted from his bank account and handed to charity. I don't know which charity, and I don't care. It would have served him right if it was "Sustrans" but I hope the man was big enough to eat the humble pie and leave the money where it went.

The real point is, don't be fooled by the outward appearance of clumsy oafish stupidity. Clarkson gets to make serious money charging round this country and others and rushing round race tracks in fast cars the rest of us can only DREAM of having on our driveway. Most of us couldn'a afford the cost of a tank of petrol for them, never mind the insurance. So if Clarkson does not have a hard head for the serious business of making money, then he sure as hell has an accountant who does.

So in the spirit of the new openness at number 10 and the e-petition site, rather a lot of people signed a petition demanding Gordon Brown step down and the Queen ask him to lead her government in his place. Not as many as told Gordon Brown to stuff his road pricing and fuel duty rises, but quite a few.

So what is the response of the man his own party denounce as stalinist and who is said to go through several mobile phones a week as he throws them across the office in a fit of temper as the British public see right through him and his phony policies and phonier leadership ?

They waste god knows how many thousands getting someone to put together a swish video telling us to sod off, a video way beyond the quality that used to grace "webcameron", and they try to blag us with a load of bull that some lowly official put this together in his lunch hour. There's only one word that sums up my feelings about that.

Bullocks.

The Sherriff of Nottingham wants his money back

2008-08-15T08:31:00.003+01:00

After hearing how the British Archery Team found a bit of rain and some strong winds a bit of a challenge which led to their losing an Olympic Medal TO THE FRENCH (Zut Alors) maybe it is time we did a little less football, and a little more civic defence (!)

As a man of Gwent I found this particularly galling not least becauase my daughter saw no particular problem in standing one side of caerleon amphitheatre and landing twelve arrows in the centre of a target the other side. And that was on a damp day with a force five coming at her from the side.

Now SHE does it to keep up the tradition in this neck of the woods. The Italian Gladiators (reenactment ones, not those silly sods in lycra leotards on 'Challenge TV') who were on tour to bring roman history to life, and who issued the challenge to her schoolkids, which she took up to "keep our side up", were impressed. Hell. Leonidas's 300 Spartans might have had problems against a few more like her.

So what better place to go see about reviving our Olympic Hopes in the arrow chucking department than where another British Legend originated. I write this sitting in a hotel about five miles from the place where the statue depicted above is erected, right outside the gates of the PRESENT castle at Nottingham. The one the Shire-Reeve of Nottingham used to amass the loot he took was pulled down some time ago and this one built.

All that remains of Robin Hood's old enemy stronghold is the amazing hostelry previously the brewhouse used to make drinkable beer from the undrinkable water in the Trent at the time. A pint of Old Trip now has to make a trip from Suffolk as the brewers were bought out and the brewing facilities moved on, but I can still reccomend the stuff.

But on a sadder note, I regret the Sherriff of Nottingham is busy recoupng the losses he sustained from our stout-willed men with hearts of oak. For on every lamppost in this city a number plate recognition camera is erected, dutifully ensuring you don't travel at more than 29.9 miles an hour to the next one.

One or two are quite understandable. But after you've been surveyed by a fifty of the buggers in a five mile journey from the motorway to the hotel, you are left with the feeling that if an armed gang were to open fire upon the chief constable, you would stand and applaud as he bled to death on the pavement.

Hopefully the same would not happen when the armed gang are bank robbers opening up on the poor bloody beat bobby. But you come up here and make your own mind up.

Where the hell are the BNP and their pledge to destroy this wilful snatch and grab on the ordinary bloke in the street when you need them ??

Eat Kangaroo Or Cow Farts Will Destroy The Planet

2008-08-10T09:41:00.003+01:00

JoeyBurger And Fries.
Coming soon to a McDonalds near you.
Mmmmm......... I'm Lovin' it

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7551125.stm

Is it April the 1st ? No, it's too wet outside. So it must be true then. The Anglo-Saxon habit of rearing cattle for their beef, milk and leather will be the death of us all, as the earth is devoured by a ravening wolf. Or so this Australian chap has declared.

The problem is simple. Cows fart. And what they fart will be the death of us all. The digestive system of the humble friesian is filled to overflowing with bacteria which digest the cellulose in the cell walls of the grass and other fodder the cows eat. Now whilst most of that activity creates short chain fatty acids, and most of them are absorbed by the animal and used as its primary foodstuff, rather a LOT of methane gets produced.

How much ? Well, enough to suggest that the reason the Cow of Nursery rhyme fame "jumped over the moon" because some damn fool farmhand sloped off into the cowshed for a crafty fag and struck a match right next to Ermintrude's arse.

A swift poke round google will turn up dozens of sites, some more scientifically accredited than others, which claim the "greenhouse effect" of methane is many, many times that of an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide.

So there you have it people. The British addiction to roast beef and yorkshire pud is the reason why the "south east asians" are dying from tsunami and tropical storm. Shame on you, you vindictive thougtless eaters of flesh. Repent this minute and turn to fundamentalist veganism.

Er ... actually, no, please DONT do that. Because the second largest source of methane is from waterlogged rotting vegetation under attack from similar bacteria .... on paddy fields across the rice-growing regions of the world. Looks like it's time gentlemen please for Satay sliced Beef with Egg Fried Rice though

Passports ... Get Yer Passports... Only A Pony, Guv...

2008-07-29T08:02:00.003+01:00

An interesting story here on the BBC Website this morning. It seems 3000 passports and visa stickers were stolen en route to an RAF base from where they were to be sent to embassies worldwide. But fear not, says "Not Flash, Just Gordon" 's minions. The items are quite unusable and have no value on the black market as they are fitted with new state of the art ID chips.

No Value On The Black Market ? Really ?

Remind me again what you need to wave to get more than three hundred quid out of a bank these days. Other than a gun, that is. And for that matter what you need to open an account. Or buy a house. Or do just about anything else. After all, it was Gordon Brown that demanded our financial institutions do sod all for you unless you wave one of these documents, so why should he be surprised when a few thousand go missing. And whose fault will it be when the immigration agencies get handed photocopies of the passports handed over by next month's cocklepickers ?

And how many estate agents will have the same technology as fitted to terminal five ? Actually it's just as well they don't. You wouldn't want your solicitor conveyancing a house in Perth Australia while your Laugh A Minute HIP Kit describes a house in Perth, Scotland.

But I wonder just how 'secure' those documents really are and how much technology I'd need to overwrite them. Given the way APACS did Chip and Pin on the cheap, I bet little more than I could fit in the boot of a reliant robin at a car boot sale.

60 years of the NHS and we still stuff doctors mouths with gold - for doing sod all

2008-07-12T07:30:00.004+01:00

If you lived the last three months in a coma you might have missed the efforts of New Liebour to trumpet the 60th Anniversary of the work of this chap.

But fear not, when you come out of the coma the yellowed bunting will still be there adorning your ward. That'll be the bunting they put up in 1948 of course.

So how have we done then ? Well Nye Bevan of course found out that no doctors will agree to anyuthing unless someone has already "stuffed their mouths with gold". And how appropriate it must be then to see this tradition is still ongoing.

Over here you can read how Doctor Amjad Husien has done rather well. Who is Doctor Huisien ? You may well ask. I'm sure his profession would prefer you not be reminded, for their official policy is to punish whistleblowers, bury the mistake and move on quietly. Ask the anaesthetist who blew the whistle on the incometent child killers at Bristol's Child Cardiac Unit in the 80's for a start.

But back to Mr Husien. In 2005 problems were noted in his work in breast cancer screening at Trafford and North Manchester General. Specifically, a total of 22 patients he diagnosed as clear of cancer were nothing of the sort. For each of those came the shock of disclosure that they had been told they were free of disease and were nothing of the sort, and the fear that this killer now had a firm foothold where it might have been previously nipped in the bud. Details of these women's additional pain and suffering are not easy to come by. All that is being said is that one of the 22 died, but of course the doctor's unions will make sure we never know if her death was avoidable or whether Husien has her blood on hios hands.

And although twenty two women were given the worst possible wake-up call to incompetence in the NHS, a total of TWO HUNDRED were sent a letter recalling them for a second time, and some of those were also being recalled two years after the event.

Just stop and imagine that. You've seen all those slushy cancer charity ads with people being told 'you're clear'. Well imagine you were starring in that for real life and TWO YEARS later someone tells you 'actually, we screwed up'.

Hanging is truly too good for this incompetent.

But what punishment was meted out ? Well, it seems the good doctor was sent home to prune his roses, during which time he was able to grow a whole hedge of laurels from which to make a cushion to sit on, and boy was he able to afford to buy them, for he sat suspended ON FULL PAY of £75000 for THREE YEARS.

ALMOST A QUARTER OF A MILLION SMACKEROONIES were suffed into this man's wallet.

And then when the General Medical Council FINALLY got off their arse and banned him from practice for twelve months he tried to appeal against the ruling.

It seems Doctir Husien FINALLY "quit" his post and withdrew his appeal.

I wonder where he is now ?