Small Items |
This page consists of comments on a variety of issues, mainly political, which arise in my mind from day to day, usually provoked by news stories. Because I am in the UK and read UK newspapers and watch mostly UK television, much, but by no means all, of the material will be specifically relevant to UK. Each piece is dated and given a title to indicate the subject matter. New material will be added at the top.
After finding I have quite a number of entries on the relatively unimportant but irritating subject of misuse and abuse of the English language. I have now gathered together the English language gripes in a second page.
Constructive comments will be welcome, although I may not have time to reply to them all. Anything abusive will definitely be ignored.
All the items are listed in alphabetical order of title in a table below. Click here to view it
A B C D E F G H I L M N P R S T U W
Airport security
Alternative vote system
Arbitration
Archbishop of Canterbury
Armenia
Atlantis
Atlas Mountains
Attlee
Bankers
Banks
Banks
Banks
Banks
Benefit payments
Benn, Tony
Berlusconi
Binge drinking
Blair
Blairism
Bliar, Tory
Blockade
BNP
Body scanners
Brown, Gordon
Brown, Gordon
Building
Building
Bush G.W.
Cable V.
Callaghan
Cameron
Cash-for-honours
Children
Children' images
Clegg
Clinton, Bill
Company law
de Menezes
Democracy
Demonstrations
Demonstrations
Detention
Divorce
Drains
Economic policy
Education
Egypt
Election
Executive pay
Flood plains
Flood plains
Floods
Football
Football
Gaza
Gaza
General Belgrano
General election
Genocide
Gibraltar
Hamas
Hitler
Honest politicians
Incapacity benefit
Income tax
Indecent images
Internet
Israel
Israel
Jenkins, Roy
Journalism
Laws, David
Loans
Looters
Looters
Looters
Major, John
Mandelson
Manufacturing industry
Marriage
Mediterranean Sea
Miliband
Miliband
MMR controversy
MPs' pay
Mussolini
National Health Service
Next prime minister
Nixon
Noah's flood
Obama
Old Age Pension
Old Age Pension
Palestinians
Palin
Parliamentary expense claims
Piracy
Police
Police
Police
Political policy-making
Politics
Postal service
Prime minister
"Prime Minsterial" debates on TV
Principles
Privacy
Privacy
Profit v society
Railways
Recession
Referendum
Riots
Riots
Roosevelt
Roosevelt
Rule of law
Safety
Scandal
Scanners at airports
Sewers
Sexism
Sexism
Sharia law
Shooting
Storm sewers
Tax
Tax avoiders
Tectonic plates
Teenage
Terrorism
Thatcher, Margaret
Thatcher, Margaret
Turkey
Unemployment benefit
Web sites
Wikileaks
Wilson, Harold
Witness protection
There is no excuse for the looting and arson, but that does not mean there is no reason for it. It should be obvious that this behaviour is not normal, even for the disturbed people doing it - if it were, then we would be experiencing it regularly, which clearly has not been the case. It does not need much thought to see what the reason, or rather the combination of reasons, is. These people (with a few deliberately criminal exceptions exploiting the situation) are angry, with an anger that has been slowly building over a long period. When such collective anger reaches sufficient strength, any small trigger can cause it to burst out in apparently mindless violence as the angry people lash out wildly, needing subsconciously to let off a great head of steam. It appears mindless, and sometimes self-defeating, because the people concerned do not understand fully what it is that makes them angry - it is the combined result of a number of things which together leave them feeling helpless and victimised.
Most if not all of these things are the result of government actions, and failures to act, over a period of years. Let us list some of them (this is not in order of importance):
The Parliamentary expenses scandal - primarily caused by the Thatcher government encouraging misuse of MPs' expenses instead of openly implementing the independently recommended salary increase.
Excessive, and often obscenely so, bonuses and salaries paid to bankers and other senior executives of both public and private organisations, with government totally failing to act effectively to control them.
The mania for privatising everything in sight, putting profits in the pockets of the rich at the expense of everyone else.
Almost total loss of confidence in, and consequent hatred for, the police, especially the Met, brought about by:
Heavy-handed policing of peaceful demonstrations.
Racially biased and over-used stop and search powers.
Dishonest immediate reporting of incidents by the police, with an apparently automatic response of covering up what really happened (e.g. the immediate report on the death of Mark Duggan was that it was the result of a “terrifying shoot-out”, while later evidence shows only two shots were fired, both by the same policeman).
The phone hacking scandal, and especially the associated police corruption.
The repeated failure over many years to bring to justice the minority of police who misbehave, especially in their use of violence against innocent people.
The totally unnecessary and counter-productive government budget cuts, impacting mainly on the poor and, in particular, removing such facilities as youth centres (which councils have been forced to close). 1930s policies in a 1930s-type economic crisis, guaranteed to repeat the 1930s failure, instead of the proven Keynes remedy in this situation of getting money to those who will spend it to boost the economy (especially by increasing employment). The cuts approach so beloved by right-wingers will increase the deficit by increasing benefit payments to the increasing number of unemployed while reducing government income from taxes of all kinds. Boosting the economy by actually passing money to people who will spend it in turn will do the opposite, while so-called quantitative easing merely passes it to the banks who use it to boost their balances, salaries and bonuses instead of making loans to small businesses where it would do some good.
The fact that, of all the world’s developed economies, the UK has the most unequal and unfair society, with the richest 10% 100 times as well off as the poorest 10%, a well-known recipe for social unrest.
I understand, but do not condone, the violence and looting, and share the anger. As one looter explained, "There are no opportunities here, so what do you expect when people see one?"
A whole page of the leaflet is also devoted to attacking Nick Clegg and associating him with the vote on the referendum. This is a referendum on the voting system. not a vote on the popularity of Nick Clegg!
The fact is that the alternative vote system is a poor one, which is why few countries use it, but it does have the conclusive advantage, so far as this referendum is concerned, that it is better than our existing dreadful first-past-the-post system. In the referendum we are not being given the chance to vote for a good system, only the choice between the poor alternative vote and the even worse first-past-the post
Many star footballers do not rely on strength but on skill. Examples from past and present are Stanley Matthews, Gary Lineker, Ryan Giggs and Michael Owen. I see no reason why women shouldn't do what they do/did. Furthermore, the fact that on average men are stronger than women is irrelevant. Some women are stronger that most men. The criterion should be ability and nothing else. Similarly with rugby and all other sports. Men and women often do compete in the same long distance races.
First are those with no discernible principles, who are purely self-serving in seeking power. Apparent examples in this group are Mandelson, Blair, Nixon, Miliband, Clegg, Cable, G.W. Bush, Berlusconi and Mussolini.
The second group are those who do have and try to put into practice, strong principles, but whose principles are badly misguided or even evil. Examples are Osborne (and several other members of the present UK Cabinet), Thatcher, Hitler and, if she were to get into significant power, Palin (although it may be that she is too stupid to know what a principle is - she certainly follows wholly misguided dogmas without regard to facts).
The third group have and try to put into practice principles which are on the whole praiseworthy, but whose methods/policies are misguided or who do not have the ability to achieve them or are defeated by circumstances. Examples of this group are Tony Benn, probably Callaghan and Wilson, and possibly Bill Clinton and Obama.
The fourth and rarest group is of those who have praiseworthy principles and succeed in implementing a significant proportion of what they want (that does not mean I think everything they did was right - far from it). Examples here are Attlee in UK, F.D. Roosevelt in USA and, as Home Secretary, Jenkins, also in UK.
I have for the moment omitted Cameron. He looks as if he could belong in either the first or the third group. His statements do not seem to fit the second group, but with colleagues like his he appears to have no chance of being in the fourth.
Why not? The public sector could have employed the same or similar people to do exactly the same things and so made exactly the same savings, in addition to saving the the public purse the cost of the DHL profit which went to their shareholders in the form of dividends and capital gains. The need is for a reorganised public sector purchasing system, especially by ensuring the purchasing decision-makers are properly trained in how to seek out the best sources, bearing in mind price, quality and delivery times/reliability.
I note the Israeli government defends its killing of some crew members of the flotilla by saying its troops had been provoked and attacked by activists aboard the vessels. Presumably they consider it a criminal act worthy of a death sentence without trial for the victims of pirates to attempt to defend themselves and their property from attack?
I conclude, therefore, that such debates are totally incompatible with our present system of democracy.
First, the Sky journalist was either incompetent or dishonest in leaving the microphone in place. Second, he was deliberately trying to stir up trouble by replaying the recording to the woman concerned and on television. This was a gross invasion of Brown's right to privacy.
Quite apart from this aspect of journalistic standards, don't we need some consistency in what we say we want from our politicians? They are repeatedly told they should be honest and say what they really mean, so why criticise Brown for doing just that? If he genuinely thought the woman was a bigot, why should he not say so in private to his own close colleagues?
Why won't the government take effective action? Why don't the main opposition parties crucify them for not doing so? They all want to solve the financial crisis by cutting government services, when it seems obvious to most people they should instead take the money back from these parasites who caused the problem in the first place. In this the Tories are worse than the government, wanting earlier and bigger cuts. The Liberal Democrats at least acknowledge that the present tax system is unfair by imposing a lower percentage tax on the rich than on the poor, but they don't take the next step and propose effective action to correct it. We have to look to smaller parties, such as the Green Party, for anything like a sensible and fair economic and tax policy.
This whole episode is nonsensical in several respects:
An additional point mentioned in today's newspaper is the fear that images of people's naked bodies, produced by these scans, could be published on the internet. This is seen, apparently, as a serious problem, with a need for precautions to prevent it. I don't see either the problem or an effective way to prevent it from happening. If the scanners do go into regular use, then sooner or later images produced by them will appear on the internet. So what?
Two (at least) reasonable solutions have been put forward. One is to legislate to make it a criminal offence for anyone in any organisation to be paid more than, say seven, times the lowest rate paid any other member of that organisation. This has great appeal in terms of justice, but would not, for example, curb in any way the grossly unwarranted payments made to many entertainers. It also has the great disadvantage that it would be extremely difficult to enforce as employers would find ways to circumvent it (just as banks are currently working to circumvent the one-off tax on bonuses).
The second solution, which I favour, is simply to increase the tax rate to a level far higher than at present for the excessively highly paid. At one time the top rate of income tax in UK was 98%. I see no reason why it should not go back to that, or even higher, for those paid in millions of pounds per year. The squealing of those in receipt of such incomes that they would leave the country should be ignored. They didn't in the past, and most of them would not in the future, especially if the legiclation were framed, as it should be, to hit them on earnings in the country regardless of where they live. In any case, the country would be better off without such parasites. There are plenty of people available who could and would do their jobs just as well for far less pay.
Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
...
Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilisation. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of that restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Almost every word of that statement applies equally today, the one major difference being that today the failed money changers, instead of abdicating, have demanded that governments bail them out so as to allow them to continue as before, and, unbelievably, governments of all countries have rolled over and done their bidding! Even when governments have (reluctantly) taken possession of failed banks they have allowed the same or similar directors to continue with their old ways instead of directing them, under pain of immediate dismissal (without compensation), to do what the country needs, not what they and their shareholders need, forcing them to split necessary commercial banking from their investment/gambling-with-other-people's-money activities and forcing them to lend to struggling small businesses which they have put into difficulties by causing the economic recession.
There has been considerable controversy in UK over the safety of the combined inoculation of children against measles, mumps and rubella (German measles), based on a totally wrong but widely publicised report that it could lead to the development of autism. As a consequence many children have not received the protection against these diseases that this jab could provide. Some people are now demanding that such children should be banned from normal schools, in order to protect those who have been immunised. This seems to me to suffer from two quite separate faults.
How are the children said to be at risk, by exposure to those who have not been immunised, in any danger? They have been immunised and, if that is as effective as claimed, they should be in no danger if they are exposed to any of these diseases - that is exactly what the immunisation was supposed to be for.
Secondly, since the objection, erroneous though it may be, is to the combined immunisation, why can those children not be offered three separate inoculations, one for each of the three diseases, and so provide those children with the protection they may well need without causing unnecessary stress to their parents? Why the insistence on a combined jab, which, as far as I know, is not used for any other diseases?
We seem to be in the middle of a series of banking failures, stemming from their excessively risky investments in such things as the so-called sub-prime mortgages. The first such failures (such as Bear Stearnes and Northern Rock) have resulted in government rescue packages, but with Lehman Brothers the (USA) government has stood aside and allowed it to fail. The result looks like being financial chaos not only in USA but also in other countries (such as UK) where the bank has major interests. The banks have been able to get themselves into this mess because governments have removed the controls they used to apply to prevent such lunatic behaviour.
It seems to me two major actions should be taken. First, controls should be imposed (or re-imposed) on banking investments to prevent any repetition. Second, when a bank does fail the government should step in and take it over, paying no compensation to shareholders or directors, sacking the directors and suing them on behalf of shareholders for their misuse of shareholder funds. Ordinary cusatomers of the banks, such as private depositors and account holders, business customers and mortgagees, none of whom have any control over the directors' behaviour, deserve to be protected, so far as possible at the directors' expense.
I see MPs are likely to be given another pay rise. It occurs to me that, since there can be no doubt that they should receive enough income to support a reasonable standard of living, the level could sensibly be set by comparison with others who also have that need and have their income set by Parliament. I therefore propose that the pay of each MP, the standard state pension and unemployment benefit (or whatever it's called this week) should all be equal, with incapacity benefit being a little higher to allow for the additional expenditure that condition necessarily requires.
Thatcher destroyed the Old Age Pension system (by removing the link with average earnings) and manufacturing industry.
Major destroyed the railway system.
Blair and Brown have destroyed the education system, the National Health Service and the postal service.
What does that leave for the next prime minister to do?
Their priorities are wrong because they are putting "security" above human rights. There is never a good case for arresting anyone before the evidence of their wrong-doing has been collected, so there is no excuse for making an arrest if they cannot immediately be charged with a serious offence. The excuse that the police need the additional time to collect the evidence necessary to bring a charge is totally invalid and contrary to the rule of law (which is what they are supposed to be defending), quite apart from the fact that the police themselves say the proposed increase is unnecessary.
It is well-known that terrorists regard the provocation of an over-reaction by government by introducing laws suppressing basic human rights as a major objective. Laws such as this are exactly what the terrorists want, and act as a powerful recruiting agent on their behalf. It is difficult to think of anything which could be more counter-productive than this change, increasing an already grossly excessive period of detention without charge or trial which will be seen by so many as aimed at a particular minority (and likely to be used primarily against that minority).
Parliament should amend the proposal from 42 days to 24 hours, which is quite long enough to bring criminal charges if the police have sufficient evidence to justify making an arrest.
First I must maintain (and it seems the archbishop agrees) that the criminal law must be the same for everyone. Neither sharia law nor any other special arrangments have any place in this area.
In the area of civil law it is already the case that some disputes can be settled outside the courts, either privately or by use of an independent arbitrator whose decisions can be final (preventing further appeal to the courts), subject to prior agreement by both sides. This seems very reasonable to me, provided there is no coercion of any kind to go along with this, and with the civil courts as the alternative if agreement on arbitration cannot be reached. It is essential, though, that this agreement to arbitration should be reached at the time of the dispute and should apply only to the point in dispute at the time of the agreement. With those safeguards, I see no reason why marriage according to sharia law should not be acceptable, subject to the civil requirements of registration and independent witnesses that both parties agree to the marriage. Similarly divorce should be acceptable in the same way provided there are no dependant children; if there are children then civil proceedings should be required to ensure that their welfare is paramount, both in agreeing to the divorce and in any related settelment conditions. However, it should be quite clear that a marriage according to sharia (or any other belief-based) law does not imply agreement to subsequent divorce on the same basis - this is a separate decision needing separate agreement. In the same way, arrangements for loans according to sharia law, if agreed by both parties, are no business of the government provided the reality of what happens is recognised fully for tax purposes, giving neither advantage nor disadvantage compared with normal arrangements.
In all cases, if agreement cannot be reached on a procedure or arbitrator outside the legal system, then the normal civil law and its courts should be the default alternative.
Since I wrote the above two paragraphs, but before putting it on-line, I have heard one of the conclusions of an independent inquiry into the incident. This states that the inquiry was greatly and deliberately hampered by the Commissionner obstructing its work. If this is true (and I have no reason to doubt it) he should be sacked immediately.
In case anyone should get the wrong idea from the above paragraph, I should make clear I have no time for Gordon Brown, and don't expect any significant change from the right-wing policies pursued by his predecessor Tory Bliar.
This makes no sense to me at all. There was a war in progress, and this was an enemy warship. When two countries are at war with one another, surely any military force or capability in the possession of one side is a legitimate target for the other? The ship could have changed direction at any moment, may have been intended to escort additional forces to the battle area, or going to have its capability strengthened before returning to the fight. By its very existence as a warship in enemy hands it was a legitimate target for attack so long as the war continued. The legitimacy of the war and/or of the Argentinian invasion is an entirely separate matter on which I shall probably comment as part of a much wider topic at some time.
Incidentally, this ship was sold to Argentina by the USA. It was known in the USA navy as "The Lucky Ship", although its official name then was Phoenix. It gained the nickname because it was the only ship to survive the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
If one judges by British media reports, the impression is given that this is a purely British phenomenon, but is continued by British teenagers when abroad on holiday. As a result, any British portrayal of British teenagers on holiday in somewhere like Majorca or Ibiza gives the impression that each of these places caters specifically for British teenagers, with bars and clubs full of them, all drinking too much alcohol and behaving badly. However, if you were to watch instead a German television programme showing either of these places, the impression given is that they are dominated by German teenagers behaving in exactly the same way! On British TV, the teenagers are speaking English, signs and menus are a mixture of English and Spanish, local police talk about the problems brought by the British. On German TV the language spoken by all the teenagers shown is German, the signs and menus are German and Spanish and the local police complain about the behaviour of young Germans! Why can't we have some balanced reporting in both Britain and Germany?
There are two (maybe three) quite separate issues here.
They also mention that many existing towns and cities (including London) are built on flood plains. This is quite true, but the point is that if a tiny part of the flood plain is built over and protected, this makes little difference to the flood plain function, but when major parts of it are treated in the same way it can no longer do its job, and either the defences are overwhelmed or flooding appears elsewhere.
Certainly there is a need to house people, and with a growing population and the deterioration of some old housing stock new houses will be (and already are) needed, but there must be better answers than this lunacy. One desperate need, both in UK and world-wide, is a reduction in population by lowering the birthrate.
In voicing and encouraging this criticism the press and television have demonstrated a total ignorance of the way the law and the police work (or have ignored it in order to make up a story). The police clearly felt, as did and still do most people, that a series of high profile peerages given to people who had made very large gifts or loans to the Labour Party gave rise to a very strong suspicion of corruption at high levels of government. They quite rightly carried out a very thorough and painstaking investigation, not just into whether such criminal behaviour had in fact taken place, but also to collect evidence so as to be able to prove the point beyond reasonable doubt in relation to specific individuals. The fact that no charges have been brought shows not that no such crime was committed but only that the police were not able to find sufficient evidence to make a case stand up in a criminal court - a much more difficult undertaking.
It does not, however, follow that the police actions were entirely on the right lines. At least one arrest was carried out (according to the reports I read) by getting the person concerned out of bed in the early hours of the morning. This seems to be standard practice by a few police forces when making arrests in people's homes. This was in this case, and in many others, both unnecessary and unjustifiable. I can see that in a few cases it is necessary to take the perosn by surprise in order to prevent them from running away in advance, but in most cases it is clearly done simply to intimidate the person being arrested. That is not and most definitely should not be a police function. They need to remember that in English, and most other, law, a person is innocent until they have been convicted in a fair trial. The police, like the press, television and everyone else, are under an obligation to keep that at the forefront of their minds at all times. I think there is a strong case for a person who has been arrested in that way to bring an action against the police and receive compensation, unless the police can prove there was a good reason for their behaviour. This right should exist regardless of whether the person is subsequently found guilty of the offence for which they were arrested.
Click here to contact Jim Fisher, the author of this web site
Small Items |