No problems here.
It seems the results are in from the latest elections, read more
here, and both main parties did poorer than they expected. It's sad really.
What I found most interesting is that after this fiasco both sides has lessons to learn and they could then theoretically move forward and upwards.
Of course, all they did was point and the other side and point out how poorly they had done and, of course, the reasons why they did so badly.
Special case, No lessons here.
Surprising news.
Seems that to combat the threat from witchcraft we have amazingly enough generated the following recommendations.
1) Create a register of children who may be subject to such rituals.
2) Collect movement data of children for this register.
3) Create procedures for child protection.
4) Good practice guidelines for agencies looking after these people.
5) Forge better links with other organisations.
Read more
here.
It's got so predictable I could save the country a fortune by allowing use of my patented template.
1) Create a database of X.
2) Monitor citizens who have the potential to do X and store the data in the database.
3) Set up a department or a sub department to monitor this database.
4)
Generate lots of paperProduce procedures and processes to manage the department.
5) Allow them to
stick their oars work alongside private agencies and resources.
6) Forge links with other governmental
intrusive databases.
See easy as pie. A five year old could produce recommendations that the government would love with that template.
One stubborn kid.
Just got back from the Hospital. Seems that the granddaughter is so stubborn that she can hold her breath until she goes unconscious. Doctors say there is nothing to worry about but I'm not sure logic is much use while this process is going on. Also it appears that it is quite common with children under two. Well, I had two and they never did anything like this.
The little one is back to her usual tricks. Mum has been shown how to deal with it and peace, but not tranquility, has returned to the household. She better not do this again if I want to keep sane.
So. All in all, everything OK.
A very frightening day.
Not a good day all round. Granddaughter has gone into hospital because she stopped breathing for a few minutes. Doctor seems to think it is a temper tantrum due to tiredness.
Still it is enough to make you think and was frightening at the time.
I have this vision.
Trouble is caused. I see a bat symbol in the sky from powerful searchlight mounted on the roof of our mayors house and then in comes some help from a band of superheroes.
Or maybe
not.
Wait a minute this doesn't make sense.
It seems we are going to have celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the Falkland War. Read more
here.
Now if I remember correctly didn't we take away the us and them philosophy when we did the old red and blue thing a few months ago. It was not the French against the English but now it's OK for British against Argentinean over a conflict that many people must still feel very strongly about due to the fact their relatives died then while they are still alive and remembering.
To be honest I have no difficulty with the remembrance of the Falklands but don't understand why we couldn't celebrate the other the same way. Especially as it is likely to cause less offence.
Or maybe we want to wind up Argentina.
Taking it to it's logical conclusion.
Read this
article on taking the Muslim issue to it's inevitable conclusion. It starts off decades ago and rapidly brings us up to date with 911 and a radical way of looking at things.
I said the same thing years ago and was accused of being a ruthless b4$^4&d. I take things to it's conclusion as a matter of course. Sometimes a mid way point is a way to go but it's sometimes not a good idea to stop before the end. Ask the hare who was racing with the tortoise.
I bet a few people are thinking of this now and it's only politics that is holding them back.
And you thought it was bad enough now.
I think there is more danger from the home grown ones not the same as.
The US Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales has warned that home-grown terrorists could pose as much danger to the US as foreign al-Qaeda operatives. Read more
here. Really? I think he has it wrong. I think they are more dangerous. In the UK and the US.
A lot of people have been getting fed up with the way our countries are going. Many will turn a blind eye to things that before they would question and check up on. Now everyone is covering up something from the plastic bottle we put in the bin instead of the recycling, using your garden hose to a job on the side as a driver or a shop assistant paid in cash. Only a hardcore few soon to be the nosey sort and turning people in. They are known and it won't be long before they start paying in pain or repairs.
The home grown boys have all the advantages, valid ID, access to safe houses for plotting and storage and a network of friends and relatives. The imported ones have little help like that and are unable to really put a good long term campaign on. OK. You can get things like 911 but it took years of planning, plenty of money but was a one off and the US is now prepared, well sort of anyway. Our 7/7 were home grown and despite the talk there is nothing to stop it happening again. Chances are it will. Remember that one of the guys was known and I wonder how many thousands are on the watch list now. Remember the botched raid guys were on that list and they were totally innocent. Time must have been wasted, besides the raid on some preliminary investigation that have been done to thousands of others.
You never know you and I could be on that list. Our phone calls could be intercepted and our lives examined. I bet once you are on the list you never come off, well maybe de Menezes has but I'm sure that his file is just transferred. So with so many people on the list how many other Mohammed Siddique Khan's are out there and hidden among all the false leads. With so much false data the database will be impossible to use. Maybe we will all be an entry in the database. Looks like people are calling and offering the name of someone who parks in their space or let's their dog run amok in their garden. 'I don't know if to mention this but I seen him with a long tube like one of them rocker launchers walking into the house'
My fear is that these guys get smart. The home grown ones plan and prepare then a couple of fanatics from outside fly in and the next day 'Just walk over there and press this' With a group of these fanatics willing to die anyone with a decent plan could bring this country to it's knees. Not targeting civilians but infrastructure, civic areas such as courtrooms and , please, politicians.
This must be what they mean by win win.
First of all you create a justice gap as a side effect of appeasing the do gooders and your financial issues on prisons. Then you
attack the gap to appease the people that feel there is no justice. In the meantime you carry on with your policies which are all smoke and mirrors.
And the sheeple lap it up.
Perceptions again.
Perception is everything. One of the things I try to pass on to others.
This
article on people giving birth at home makes me wonder about the conflicting advice in the NHS. On the one hand we have Dr Crippen making his
statements, which make more sense than the other arguments I hear, and we have this band of touchy feely people saying they feel out of control in hospital and want to give birth at home.
I can understand that their perception is that when they are in hospital they are not the centre of attention nor do they have anyone on their beck and call. Unfortunately, that's how I feel when I go in for my broken bones, for my cuts and grazes, if fact for everything I go to hospital for. The perception is that everyone is a cog in a machine.
So why should people giving birth be given special treatment. Why should we all pay for a team to go to someone's house and give them individual attention when a single team can provide the same care for several mums to be in one central location. A much cheaper option.
My only caveat would be to those giving birth at home is that if anything happens to the child due to lack of support which is available in hospital then they are taking the risk not the NHS. We will send one midwife and that's your lot. You take the risks associated with that decision. The way we are going we will have to take along a fully equipped hospital when we go on a home birth or we will get sued.
Bad news for the Americans again.
Looks like a bad day for American forces in both
Iraq and
Afghanistan. More dead.
While I was looking at this
article on the two Americans captured tortured and killed over the last week I noticed that the photo of Pte Menchaca looks like the kind of snap that someone had cut from a group photo like my sons and his friends would be in. For some reason it struck a chord so I thought I should say something.
I can't really say any more about this topic as my views are well known. So I'm not going to comment about any more deaths in Iraq or Afghanistan unless there is something else that is significant beyond a wasteful death.
Who in their right minds would want to lead this country after Blair.
After Browns comments on Trident and the statement that Britain has some tough choices to make surely everyone in the UK who is not on the dole must be concerned about the tough choices they are going to have to pay for.
Seems that not only are they spending billions on a defence system of little use in the modern world and security services to ensure we don't have any more terrorists killing people and fixing the screw up that are our pensions we also have to spend on transport, infrastructure, energy and welfare policies. What exactly does that mean? Besides of course we need to spend more. The transport part should be easy because we already pay more than enough for that but of course as the funds are used for something else it won't be. I'm not sure what he means by infrastructure as the only infrastructure I can think of is water, energy, communications and transport where he lists transport and energy separately. The others are dealt with by others anyway. So maybe he means Planes, trains etc. Energy is the usual hot potato. Nuclear seems the only way to go but there are concerns. All options have side effects. So it's a minefield. Finally, welfare policies. He does mention flexibility in the statement so clearly they are looking at changes there as well where we have to be flexible again. Could this signal the end of the gravy train for some of the claimants? Read more
here on Browns comments.
The bottom line is that there are decisions being made now that will have repercussions for decades. Our replacement nuclear deterrent will commit billions spread over decades. Our transport policies, aimed at forcing as many off the road as possible, will change the way we work and play. Turning many, many more of us into criminals. Nobody will invest in pensions that are no longer an investment at all and are going to be worthless to the majority of people and those already saving will be watching those who have not saved and thinking that they too could have just pissed it against a wall. At least they ones who drank had the pleasure at that time.
Who in their right minds wants to pick this up as PM and run with it when this is all going to come to a head in the next decade. I see Brown picking it up and finishing off this term just to get the pension boost and the title of PM on his CV. Who can blame him for looking after number one. But surely even he can't seriously be hoping to win the next election. It is all bluster. Labour really need to lose the next election if they are to survive. To plainly be the architects of the fall of the UK to even the thickest voter. Maybe that is why the Tories put forward Cameron. Hoping that they lose again and trying to put forward someone who they know will not get any support. It was obvious from day one he was of little use to anyone except the other political parties. Look out for announcements closer to the election that diminish the Tories standing even further.
I'm thinking of working abroad for a few years until after the inevitable riots and anarchy have died down. The government is planning for that also. Removing all weapons and getting us used to police assassinations so that they won't even make the news. On the negative side the politicians who architected it will be safe and well protected from the
populaceterrorist scum and on the plus side it will remove a few social claimants and free up a few jobs for others.
Just the ticket for modern day threats.
Well, the threats from our foreign buddies that want us to buy into their snazzy new weapons platforms anyway.
Trident, never mind it's like replacement is of little use in the threats we face nowadays. We still need something like it though to cover any little boys who grow up in the next few decades.
I think we should look at ways of extending the life of Trident rather than looking at replacing the whole thing. We could increase it's substrategic role for a start and look at ways to reduce it's cost in this modern world. Do we really need at those boats and the, smallish, amount of warheads we have on each boat? Why are we ramping up our nuclear development capability when we don't really have anyone to use them on?
And what exactly do they mean by Brown is expected to signal. Read more
here on Brown sounding like he wants to spend more of our money.
How did they come up with this figure?
Reading about them trying to get the NHS to fund more IVF treatments for childless couples. In it they say that each child contributes £147K to the UK econeomy in taxes, etc. Read more
here.
Really? Does that include the kids born to parents on the social who grow up to not work themselves? How did they come up with that figure? Is it a national average or something?
My thoughts on this are two fold. First I don't believe we should fund IVF on the NHS. It's not exactly a life or death situation and doesn't meet the criteria for requiring medical aid. In a way giving this treatement actually increases the risk to a woman. Second, why do we give away condoms and the morning after pill if having a child does so much good. Isn't that a bit of a conflict?
Decisions, Decisions.
Now that it looks like knife crime will cost me five years, read more
here, I now have a decision to make.
Do I stick to my little pocket knife I have used for nearly 20 years without stabbing anyone with or do I invest in a nice little 9mm at the same risk. At least for a while anyway.
Decisions, decisions.
Is this how democracy is supposed to work?
One questions that I've had about democracy is regarding votes on certain key issues. Issues like this one on Whaling that passed by one vote. Of course the losers are contesting the legality of the vote. Wonder if that would have happened if the vote went the other way. Read more
here.
It was interesting on two points. The first was that it appears our normal view on things like whaling, fox hunting etc. seem to be getting challenged and the conservations groups are not winning everything now. Maybe people are getting fed up of being fed the conservation line. It will be interesting to watch.
The other point I found interesting was the statement at the end 'it needs three-quarters of the Whaling Commission to vote in favour'. Wait a minute! I thought in a democracy the majority won. How come that in some of the issues that are raised it needs more that a majority to pass? One thing I have noticed though is that when it comes to taking our liberties or extra tax or anything we don't want but they do it actually only takes one vote more than the others and it's a done deal. When it comes to giving something away that they don't want to but we do then it needs 75% of the vote. I'm not sure that is how a democracy is supposed to work.
Read how Blair is letting our armed forces down and killing our soldiers.
Read this
article on EU Referendum and make your own opinion up.
Unfortunately, I'm at the stage where I don't believe anything our wonderful government says. If they told me it was raining I'd have to look and see.
The Western population heads towards a nose dive.
Seems that cybersex is starting to make headway in the mainstream marketplace. Read more
here.
Won't be long before all your kinks and fetishes can be played out online. No messy divorces, hell, before you get there no long courtships, no chocolates, flowers, STDs, etc. The sex will be handled by computer impulses into your brain.
Of course, we are a long way from that at the moment but at the rate we are going it won't be long. It will make us a very docile society so the government will love it. The guys will love it because it saves all the hassle we have to go through and the girls, well, I suspect a few will like it but the rest will be out in the cold.
Bring on
The Matrix but only where we all can have girlfriends like Charisma Carpenter and she will do things that the real Charisma has probably never even thought of. Now that will be a major change in our society. The western world will be all but wiped out in a generation.
I have a different call.
Instead of being racist and just calling for better education for black people as
this call does. Oh! Wait a minute that's inverse racism so it's OK. Silly me.
Anyway, why don't we do something so everyone leaves school with the ability to read, write and do sums at an absolute minimum?
There is something far wrong with a system that effectively takes ten years and fails to perform any of those tasks. How it manages to do it more than five million times, even in our socialist nightmare of a society, is beyond me. That must cover about 10% of our society in total.
I love this flexible word.
Whenever you hear the word flexible spoken by anyone they usually mean '
You need to be more flexible and give me what I want'
That seems to be the theme going through this latest
statement on the pensions front. It seems that despite all the promises decades ago saving for your future does not seem like a good idea. You put money in to a pension fund and our greedy government takes it out and you are powerless to do anything about it. If you are near retirement then hopefully it won't make that much difference if not then a serious look at your retirement options is called for. If you are just starting in employment or setting up a pension scheme then you need to think very carefully. I'm in the middle of mine so I'm a bit tied. I can't see enough flexibility to do all that much. Plus there is always the fear of further legislation and fund grabbing further down the line especially if enough people do something radical.
Notice how everything like this seems to be coming to a head now. If I was a politician I would not want to win the next election. How can the total screw up that is the UK be fixed in a mere four years. Whoever wins will have to fix all the screw ups our current masters have put in place plus try and introduce some real change, if it isn't Labour of course. With them I dread to think. Surely even they know their current policies are unsustainable.
The whole lot is a bit like the Glaciers. Nothing much for a long time. Minor thaws an odd breakaway then all of a sudden a big meltdown and everything just collapses and is gone. I'm not looking forward to it.
How does that work then?
It seems that despite the NHS being funded out of the public purse and the NPfIT/CfH project being funded by the public any delays are being met by the suppliers themselves and not the public. Read more
here. Mmmm. That sounds like one of those half truths. The suppliers are undoubtedly paying for their time when there is slippage on a rollout to a trust for example but when the slippage is caused by the NHS not supplying key personnel or making changes then a change request is raised and then the public does pay for it.
It's the usual smoke and mirrors. We complain about the delay and the additional costs. They respond to just that complaint with the fact that the suppliers pay for delays. We go away happy with a clear answer but only to a single question.
The suppliers are not stupid. They want to make money out of this and at the moment they may be making less than they thought, read about Accenture who won two of the five areas
here, but the project is not finished yet. Changes have been coming in from day one and some delays are caused by them. Do you think the suppliers pay for those delays? No. We do.
Like all big government projects this one will be massively overbudget and behind schedule. That is the nature of any massive leading edge, long term, unscoped and politically driven project.
I bet this artist is not too pleased.
This
article about an art exhibit made me laugh. It defines how much art is really crap.
Courtesy of Tim Blair.
Why should we pick up this tab?
Looks like yet again we are spending our money on something that gets us absolutely nothing in return. This time it's our dubious pleasure to hold a War Criminal, unfortunately not Blair, if he gets convicted at the Hague. Seems they are OK putting him on trial but don't want to look after him if he is found guilty. Our useless government then put their hands up so we can do our bit. Read more
here.
And here I was thinking we had a shortage of prisons for our criminals. Seems that is not the case after all.
Fingers crossed he could get
away with it. found Not Guilty.
Let's get the story straight.
On the one hand we are told that one of them was due to be released and yet today we here that all three are "dangerous enemy combatants". Read
here.
I had to smile at this
article though. It goes on about the suicides being a PR stunt. Then it says that one guy was a mid- to high-level al-Qaeda operative who had participated in a long-term hunger strike from late 2005 to May, and was "non-compliant and hostile" to guards.
That seems to be the limit of his crimes then. He was in a hunger strike, which btw does not count as a protest because they said he had made no protests before, and was hostile and unhelpful to the guards. What a b4$^&rd he undoubtedly is. After all they were keeping a roof over his head. Some people can be so ungrateful.
I've always found sentencing confusing.
One area which I have always found strange is where you get a third off for pleading guilty. In some cases the evidence is so overwhelming that pleading guilty has been a way to reduce your punishment. On the other hand innocent people pleading not guilty end up in longer than regular criminals. Seems strange to me.
Now there of this
case with the child rapist getting a reduction in sentence because he plead guilty. The sentencing was in line with the rules laid down before the judge and as defined by our government and it is unlikely our guy would get out then anyway. Due to the fact the minimum possible sentence came out at five years, which appears way too lenient, the public is up in arms. Seeing the possibility of gaining a few brownie points, our great leaders, you know, the ones that set the policy that allows this, are making capital from it.
Now to be perfectly honest this sentence is too lenient. Way to lenient. This guy should never see the outside of a prison again. It's not the judges fault though. Blame our namby pamby government. You know, the ones that are blaming the judge. Who also seems to be known as a tough sentencing judge. Go figure!
Now the reason these sentence reductions are there is so that we can save time and money in prosecutions. As a bonus it can save victims in cases of rape from having to relive their attacks. As a reward they get time off their sentence. Now if this 'loophole' is removed then there is no point anyone pleading guilty. Therefore be prepared for more expense, longer court cases and real criminals getting off on technicalities. Imagine if this guy had plead Not Guilty and got off because a copper had not filled in form 2567F correctly. He would now be free. Not all cases are black and white to a jury.
So yet again a knee jerk reaction that will do more harm than good all for a few plus points of publicity on a guy who will probably never be free again. Perhaps they should look at sentencing in total so that even after pleading guilty his minimum sentence was 25 years, after a third reduction. That's more like it.
Divide and Conquer.
If Israel had known this was going to take place they would have bumped off Arafat years ago.
It seems that the predictions that the Palestinians would tear themselves apart look like they are coming true. So much for the united in a common cause. It seems like the power is becoming more important that the destruction of Israel. Read more
here.
Coupled with the fact that any dissenters on that side of the border can start another round of violence. Anything Israel sees as an attack triggers an automatic response then anyone with an agenda can negate months of negotiation. It's actually in the Palestinians interest to keep the fight going. They push for more and more and it makes you wonder why Israel concedes anything. The Palestinians see each concession as a step towards what they want, not an end in itself.
Keeping them at each others
throats must be a win for the Israelis and shows the world what is going on.
The latest episode of the Saddam comedy show.
A bit like the Keystone Kops but within a courtroom.
The latest outburst in the courtroom and the observers comments can be read
here.
The whole thing sounds like a farce to me. One the one hand you have Saddam playing to the crowd which is what you would expect but on the other hand you have a judge who is supposed to be impartial and making sure the trial delivers justice when it sounds like justice is nowhere to be seen. It's clearly been removed by the occupation forces in allowing a kangaroo court to be set up. Wonder if we would allow our guys to be tried this way. Five months of prosecution case and then four weeks for the defense and a verdict next month. On the plus side it is Saddam so it difficult to really care but considering we were supposed to be introducing democracy and justice it is galling that the first real test is such a failure.
One thing they have taken care to avoid though is anything that has links to the US or the UK. I'm sure Saddam is just waiting for an opportunity. Wonder if he will live long enough.
If I was Muslim I'd be cutting off someone's head for this.
It seems that, yet again, there is one law for them and one for us. Us, the evil white people, have a couple of protestors and they are all arrested and charged. The poor coloured people have loads of people and banners with death threats and everything. Nothing happens, a few weeks later a couple get arrested and despite them having photographs of them holding signs that say 'Death to the Infidels' 'Off with their heads' etc. there is insufficient evidence to prosecute. Read more
here. How did the police identify them to arrest them? Why did they arrest them if there was to be no prosecutions? Looks like having a violent streak means nobody wants to screw with you unless we can do it from the air via 500lb bombs or by 125 to 1 odds.
It seems to me that being a copper must be a soul destroying job. If you uphold the law you get it rejected by the CPS. If you do get to court they get virtually no punishment. If you terrorise ordinary people you get a job well done and a commendation. They are the front line troops in our justice system but with no backup at all and a leader, in the Met, who is running the Met the way his namesake is running the country. Into the ground.
A final act of cruelty.
One of the things that I find strange in our criminal justice, if I can use the word justice associated with our criminal system, is that we always seem to have this one area where we have to dig the knife in one more time before we let a suspect go.
That is where we have a suspect, we are checking up to see if he is a bad guy and, oops, we can't find anything to charge him on. So we release him. Fair enough except the act of releasing him takes a significant amount of time and during that time we don't tell them. Just to twist the knife a little bit more.
it seems the US has the same philosophy. One of the Saudi's who killed themselves over the weekend was due for release but he wasn't told because they didn't know where to send him. Err.... Better not tell him because it will take us another year to work out where to send him. Why not. 'We are going to release you because although we have kept you here for three years we don't have any reason to prosecute.' Thinking about it maybe not. How about 'We are going to release you but don't know where to send you' 'How about sending me home' 'Good idea.' Sounds like a pathetic excuse to me. Read more
here.
Does it compare to 911 or 7/7?
But it apparently is an Act of War. Read more
here. Let loose the Dogs of War and let's raise an army to teach them a lesson.
But wait a minute. They could be attacking us now. They could all be topping themselves in their own homes. We are unable to defend ourselves against that. I think we need a new law. We clearly can't stop them attacking us by topping themselves in Iraq or Afghanistan but in the UK we could install some sort of device in every person which could be used to watch what was going on. After all we need to give up a little liberty to defend ourselves against attack. There can't be much left to give up.
It is so ridiculous. Three guys commit suicide because they don't want to live that way any longer. In some sort of defense for accusations of not monitoring them properly they come out with this. What defense do they need? If people want to kill themselves then you can't stop it unless they were chained 24hrs a day and even then I have no doubt some enterprising people would still manage it. No case to answer for, unless they were helped of course, and no need for any stupid comments about an Act of War.
A long and tiring day.
What a day. It's been hot and all my clothes have been sticking to places I don't want them to stick too. Being *cough* slightly overweight has that effect.
Any way. I have been reading and drinking all day. Having a chat with the neighbours. One is a soldier home on leave and we were discussing a few things as you do while you are catching up and he was talking about the soldiers who were found not guilty of forcing an Iraqi boy into a river and leaving him to drown. He said they were complaining about the way they were treated and how the army had 'left them out to dry', Well I just fell about laughing. I though that if that was their words then they were very poorly chosen considering the circumstances. I've looked on the BBC web site but can't find the details. Funnily enough, we don't always agree, and we disagreed a few times today, but he agreed with me on that particular case.
Oh Dear. This slipped out late on a Friday.
Seems the two men arrested have been released without charge. Read more
here.
Do I see an ambulance chasing lawyer on the front doorstep. They may even get a lift home.
Blogger Issues.
I don’t know what’s up with Blogger, probably a victim of it’s own success, but it’s been very difficult to get on to for the last few days. Got on for a couple of five minute bursts yesterday and the day before but only managed to post one thing both times.
Looks to be better now.
Death is not normally good news.
I don’t normally celebrate the death of another human being.
In this
case we will make an exception. Zarqawi will probably be replaced far too quickly with another blood thirsty maniac but it will be a sorely needed morale booster for our guys and shows that even the high ups are not safe. To be honest I just though he was a thug given a playground and it was only the West that raised his profile so he sounded like he was next to the Devil. There are many, many more like him over there.
Now, if only Osama was a leader who actually led by example. That would be worth a round of drinks.
Well. Looks like all Western Politicians are similar?
After seeing how many countries are involved in this it makes you wonder is there any countries in the world that have any respect for human rights. And consider that every one is denying it or, in our case, avoiding the questions. Read more
here.
The amount of effort going into making sure that someone doesn't feel insulted by the English flag but where it really matters we send people off to be tortured and disappear. Brings back memories of Soviet Russia.
It makes you despair.
The most efficient part of our Police nowadays. The PR dept.
Well seems like everyone is positioning for the inevitable failure of the *cough* intelligence led raid on Friday. It's not over yet obviously one of them will have a lighter or something dangerous but it looks like no chemical bomb unless they count the curry. Read
here and
here.
Now it seems it is standard for an early morning raid. No knock and armed to the teeth. People, innocent or not, being woken up by people charging into their rooms. How soon before a kid is wasted by our trigger happy cops or copper is attacked and the attacker wasted. Then nothing is found to justify the raid.
All I can remember is Ian Blair stating 'Innocents will die'.
Somehow I think there will be a lot more of them than we originally thought in our police state.
This could save a fortune.
Seems Brown is insisting that immigrants coming to Britain must learn English. Read more
here.
Now we could save a fortune by getting rid of all the benefit forms that are translated into Urdu, Swahili, French etc. Let's make English the common language and the only ones on forms. If others want to create instructions in Swahili or whatever then let them do so but our forms should always be in English only.
This needs to include the Welsh as well. I'm OK for a national language but let them pay for it if that's what they want.
Looks like nothing to be found after all.
It seems they are still looking for this device after four days. Read more
here.
Now I would have thought that if there was anything to find, considering it could kill hundreds, they would have found it by now so I can only hope they are trawling for evidence that will point to somewhere else that this device can be found. More likely is they will come up with a bottle of bleach and some car filler and claim they got there before the weapon was assembled.
Unfortunately, in reality it looks like there is no device and it makes you wonder about the quality of intelligence. The bad guys, and they are out there, are feeding useless information to the security forces so they send 250+ officers out to shoot innocent civilians and overwhelm them so that the real information is buried like a needle in a haystack and there is insufficient manpower to handle it.
Couple the costs involved in this with the compensation that we will have to pay if this guy is innocent. Factor in the harm this will make to the relationship with these people and this is unlikely to improve the quality of the intelligence. In fact it is more likely to be used as a form of revenge or intimidation on people similar to Iraq and Afghanistan.
This sounds suspicious.
Reading about the terrorist suspects in London over the last few days. Read
here and
here.
Makes me wonder if this isn't going to be another in the long line of terror raids that generate massive amounts of publicity and then a few days later the guys are kicked out of the police station after having their DNA and fingerprints taken with little or no news coverage.
Of course this one will be different as one of them got a lead injection. But already it sounds like there is confusion over him jumping the barrier or wearing a coat. Oh wait a minute.
I really hope this one pans out and it was a legitimate raid with some real evidence. Even supporters of these anti terrorism measures have been questioning the number of raids and arrests against the number of prosecutions. It used to be 'They are stopping them before they do anything' but it is now 'If they are doing something how come there is no evidence. Just someone's suspicion'
Let's wait and see on this one.
No wonder we get suspicious.
It seems that every time something significant happens there is a investigation. It looks like if it identifies that there is a cock up by central government then the report is suppressed or classified. Now it looks to be slightly different north of the border because it seems that even the MPs themselves are not trusted. Obviously they are not under the thumb like our useless lot. Read more
here.
I'm still a believer in making all investigations public. The guilty get named and shamed and action taken and the innocent get cleared. People can make their own minds up about the evidence and if there is evidence of a whitewash then it can be raised. Our lot just release a report saying 'The evidence says that nobody is to blame. Carry On.' And like sheep we do.
So when they hide or suppress something we all get suspicious and they get upset we don't trust them. Yet they never seem to wonder why.
Winning hearts and minds.
Well, less about winning and more about taking them forcibly as prizes. Shoot em, take their hearts and minds. Leave the bodies. Much, much easier.
Take more than an
ethics program to fix this
issue.
World peace in Ten Years.
Well there could be. Although it's unlikely though.
Makes you question what it actually means when people say thinks like this about Irans capabilities. Read more
here.
Does it mean that they will have a bomb in ten years regardless of anything we do politically, besides war of course? Does it mean that if we keep them to their agreements on the NPT then it would take significantly longer or would never happen?
Why would they sign up to the NPT if they didn't want to abide by it? It limits certain areas and forces them to meet certain obligations. Obligations it appears that they are already meeting.
Anyway. I hear we are all going to be terrorist free in two generations if we give up all our freedoms. Yay! Amazingly enough from the same people that gave us Iraq and the 45 minute terror alert. I have that warm glow of confidence. Ooops. Wait a minute, I've spilt hot tea on myself.
Talk about petty.
Jeez! Some people need to get a life. Flags on cars will be banned soon, in the name of Kyoto, if this guy has his way. Read more
here.
Is this really anything more than PR?
I have been reading over the last few weeks about the massacre at
Haditha and the associated cover up. In a way it is not surprising. Everybody understands the emotions that must have coursed through these guys at the death of their pal and how things can escalate out of control.
This new process they are rolling out then can be little more than a PR exercise. They are going to give these guys ethics training. Read more
here. If they don't have that ingrained into them now then a couple of training sessions isn't going to do it. Plus, I would suspect that all these guys already have ethics. The problem is now they are put in a situation which they can't handle. They see the same group of people attacking them that they are trying to protect. They can't tell the difference between who they are protecting and those they are attacking and that works both ways. They see who they should be protecting as the enemy.
This is a major failing in the Wests armies. They are designed to fight other armies but since Vietnam the enemy recognises that guerilla warfare is the only way to go. The West still has not adapted.
Until the entire army trains and prepares for this sort of warfare an Ethics course is not even a sticking plaster. It can only be a PR exercise.
