Monday Moan 52

 

Here comes the sun ……

What a lovely picture, as Julian O’Strange and Ricardo Patino got to meet face-to-face last week in London, after developing a close relationship via email and video-links despite being physically separated by the vastness of the oceans between the UK and Ecuador.  It is thought that if all goes well in their courtship, O’Strange will be moving to Ecuador on a permanent basis in order to fulfil his life-long ambition of avoiding having to face the consequences of his actions.

 

It was, of course, a shame that the weather in London failed to allow the happy couple to sunbathe together, as had been their fervent wish.  But a cheery wave to the waiting media was enough to assure us all that this love-story will continue to entertain us for a long time to come.

 

Incidentally, a reader of the Moan has questioned the use of a photograph of the lovely Dick Emery in previous articles about O’Strange.  My immediate reaction was to think that the humour I was trying to inject had been lost on my reader (s) but, on reflection, I am grateful for the query as I now realise that O’Strange has moved on with his life and now wishes to put forward a different image. So, here's a sneak preview of the picture that will accompany any future piece about the self-confessed whistle-blower and alleged sexual offender....

........Julian seemed surprised to be called by the Moan .......

 

 

Farcical Farage

Some people seem genuinely surprised that Nigel Farage has been revealed to be just the same as all the other politicians he and whoever else is covered by the UKIP banner continually portray as just looking out for their own interests.

 

I’m not sure why anybody should be surprised to hear that he has been saying one thing whilst doing another, that he has been criticising others for finding ways of paying less tax whilst he has been doing the same.  Whatever you might think of him, he is like the vast majority of people in this country to the extent that he wants to minimise his tax bill and maximise his returns.  Nothing wrong with that – all perfectly legal.

 

But to be ‘caught out’ quite so obviously clearly was not part of his grand plan.  His fumbling and unconvincing responses to questions were so laughable that they made some of his earlier public pronouncements seem positively statesman-like in comparison. 

 

In days gone by, he and Boris would have had to live in different villages, since there was only ever room for one idiot.

 

 

Educational standards slipping (1)

Although they quickly rectified their mistake, the Daily Mail suffered the equivalent of the embarrassing wardrobe malfunction they are so keen to highlight almost everyday amongst the more glamorous of female celebrities.

 

Following up the story about Nigella Lawson being ‘playfully’ throttled by her admiring husband, they came up with this spelling ‘fail’ this morning.........

 

Having spent so much time criticising falling standards of education you have to admire them for coming up with a graphic demonstration to prove their point.

 

 

 

Educational standards slipping (2)

It seems that it is not only spelling standards that are slipping – simple mathematics are under threat too.

 

The BBC’s cricket website is a favourite of office-workers everywhere as a means of keeping up with the developing drama of a game that inconveniently usually takes place both during and throughout the working day.  The recently-ended Champions Trophy saw England again fail to win a tournament having reached the final game.  But they might not even have got to the final had they been forced to overcome the South African total the BBC calculated after their innings in last week’s semi-final.  Obviously fearing that the 175 runs the South Africans mustered would not be enough, someone decided to set England double that number to win.........

Howzat????

Monday Moan 51

Bring me sunshine

This week sees the long-awaited visit of the Ecuadorean Minister to the UK in order to ‘discuss’ with the British Government what to do with the alleged whistle-blower and sexual offender Julian Assange (See Moan 49).
 

 

Apparently, the Ecuadorean Minister will be asking the British Government to allow Assange to sunbathe and enjoy the warm weather and sunshine because apparently, he hasn't been able to do so for a year.

 

Now I don’t know if this story is true, but I hope it is.  The absurdity of the whole affair would be summarised by a Government Minister travelling 17,000 km to make a serious claim like this.  My mind is now picturing the androgynous and albino-like figure of Assange being given an armed escort to lie on the grass in Green Park in order to get a bit of a tan.

 

But quite why this self-confessed law-breaker should be allowed to see the sun when most of us in the UK are still searching for it ourselves in this most miserable of summers  is beyond me. He and his Ecuadorean minders will have to be quick to spot the day when there is enough sunshine to warrant getting out the sun lotion.

 

 

Scandal in every action

The British press wants to be taken seriously. It wants us all to believe that it is engaged in investigations into matters of real importance – that it is the defender of our freedoms and interests.

 

Really?  Then it will have to do better than its renewed obsession with ‘scandal’ in every action of our politicians. 

 

Following the ‘revelations’ about the House of Commons Energy Committee’s Chairman Tim Yeo, which forced him to step-aside whilst his actions were investigated (see Moan 50), his deputy Sir Robert Smith stepped into the spotlight.  Bad luck for him.

 

In a piece designed to make something out of nothing, he found himself the subject of a typical Daily Mail piece which ‘revealed’ that he held some shares in Shell and had received some hospitality from BP.

 

Throwing into the report words and phrases such as ‘scandal-hit committee’, ‘potential conflicts of interest’ and that staple of nonsense reporting – ‘sleaze’, you might have imagined that this was a damaging revelation of secret information that had been withheld from the public until the Daily Mail stepped in to save us all.

 

But no, the article then acknowledged that all this activity had been fully declared in the register of interests, as required by Parliamentary rules, and that “there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing”. Which begs the question – why write this article in the first place?

 

Get a sense of proportion, please.

 

 

 

Questioning time

I usually avoid watching Question Time these days because it so often simply allows politicians to parade their well-rehearsed views, with no pretence of being open to consider alternative viewpoints or engaging in serious debate.  However, for some reason I failed to move quickly enough to switch channels this week and so caught an extract of the programme from Edinburgh.

 

What a scary programme it was.  The audience contained only 16 and 17-year olds, looking for all the world like a crack team of Sandmen from the film Logan’sRun .  It must be that I am getting old, but they seemed remarkably self-assured, articulate and passionate in whatever they said – unlike many a Question Time audience I have seen in the past.

 

And then we had Angus Robertson, SNP leader in the House of Commons.  I didn’t see the whole programme, so I don’t know if he was carrying the full Scottish chip on his shoulder or just a portion of it, but he was gratifyingly surly and full of the anger and resentment of the caricature downtrodden-Scot in the small section I saw. 

 

 

If the SNP really want independence then they have missed a trick by not campaigning for the whole of the UK to be given a vote on the subject. A few weeks of Angus and those like him would have the rest of the UK voting almost unanimously to cut the tie-line and wave goodbye.

 

 

All in a day's work

No comment necessary...............

Monday Moan 50

Does traffic have to be like this?

I had to go into London a couple of times last week and on both occasions decided to drive as the places I was visiting and the times of travel made driving a sensible option.  OK, we all know that travelling by road in any city is a slow process and so we build this into our planning.  But does it have to be as bad and as frustrating as it was last week?

 

London is full of bus lanes which squeeze the rest of the traffic into single lanes mostly, since the roads themselves have not changed much since they were first built.  London is also full of buses at all times of the day, seemingly irrespective of whether anybody wants to travel on them. So, you can easily have a large number of buses all trying to negotiate a narrow road, all of them carrying perhaps no more than one or two passengers.  Some scope there for efficiency savings you’d think.  The buses, of course, can’t wait for the one in front to stop and pick up or drop off their small number of passengers when they reach a stop, so they then push their way out into the already congested lane in which the rest of us have been crammed.

 

Bus lanes are also frequently blocked by cars or other vehicles parked in them – once the drivers have ascertained that there are no cameras at that point.  But the key reason why bus lanes seem to be a cause of congestion and chaos is the huge number of delivery vans that are stopped in them at all hours of the day, causing the buses to come out to get round them. 

 

No doubt all these vans are there legitimately, but why do they have to make their deliveries during the busiest times of the day?  Maybe Boris Johnson could think about requiring all deliveries to be made outside of the busy periods – say, between 22.00 and 06.00?  Lots of issues with that, of course, but someone needs to think a little bit creatively about this or the city (and others like it) will grind to a halt.

 

 

Weather forecasting – not a precise science?

With all the improvements in technology we now have an expectation that the weather forecasts will be pretty accurate, where years ago we took them all with a huge pinch of salt.  However, experience tells us that the forecasts are not always accurate, and they will most likely be inaccurate when you make the mistake of relying upon them.  So, you plan your day out on the basis that the forecasters all agree that it will be sunny and warm, 25C in the city with not a cloud in sight.  You dress and pack your bag accordingly and set out. 

 

It is only after you have gone far enough from home that it would make no sense to return that the darkening sky sets off a small alarm bell inside your head, which gets louder as the sky becomes darker and the temperature not only fails to head up towards the promised 25C but actually starts to fall below the 19C it was showing.  That alarm bell goes into overdrive and becomes deafening as the heavens open, rain falls all around you and the temperature plummets still further.  It’s no use bemoaning your lack of rainwear or anything remotely resembling warm clothing – more fool you for having believed the forecasters and trusted in both their expertise and in the British weather.  It’s summer in London – what else would you expect apart from rain, wind and cloud?  The fact that most other parts of the country are basking in sunshine and high temperatures is of little consolation.  No, the consolation is that at some stage later in the year the sun will come out, it will be warm and we will forget the misery of what has gone before.  I hope.

 

Is the public really concerned?

Much angst amongst sections of the media and some politicians about the ‘revelation’ that the security services are monitoring communications as a key part of their battle against terrorism.  Not sure why this has come up yet again and why anybody should be particularly exercised about it.

 

This time the ‘whistleblower’ is one Edward Snowden, who has decided that he knows best what is legal and what is right.  He is worried about surveillance and doesn’t want everything he says and does monitored.  Perhaps he should have kept quiet about all this and not drawn attention to himself then?

 

Douglas Alexander, Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary, appeared on the television over weekend proclaiming that the matter was a major public concern and he wanted a Government statement.  Interesting.  My straw poll amongst members of the public revealed no great concern about this – in fact no concern about it at all.  Quite the opposite in fact.  The great British public seems to expect its security services to be doing all that they can to monitor potential terrorists, and prevent them being able to put into effect any actions designed to kill and maim people in the name of whatever cause it is that espouse. Moreover, they seem to be irritated by politicians and media people who want to tell us how worried we should be about Government getting on with its job of protecting us and our way of life.

 

Something of a disconnect here, don’t you think?

 

 

Lobbying – throw enough dirt and some of it is bound to stick

This seems to be the current approach of The Sunday Times in its ‘investigation’ (or ‘deception designed to extract something potentially incriminating’) of Tim Yeo – the latest in a line of politicians they seem to have been targeting recently.  Pretend to be someone you are not, invent a wholly ficticious scenario designed to interest the victim, talk to them for hours and then publish a highly selective and most likely non-representative extract from that conversation with no idea of context. 

 

This time it’s not clear what misdemeanours are being alleged, but lots of current buzzwords are being bandied around, including ‘lobbying’, ‘cash’, ‘outside business interests’, 'influence’ etc.  Some people seem to be surprised that Yeo appears to have talked to or maybe coached his business colleague about how to approach a forthcoming appearance before a Select Committee.   

 

Amazing revelation that one, that somebody actually thought about what he might say before an important event and even took advice on it from somebody with experience.  I am astonished – not that this was done, of course, but that anybody should think this worthy or mention and, potentially, an example of wrongdoing. 

 

Wonder if anybody ever advised the reporters involved on any aspects of their work, perhaps about their approaches to their job interviews, or writing their CVs, or maybe on how to operate their secret cameras whilst spinning a series of lies over the dinner table?

Monday Moan 49

Anyone got more money than sense?

A not-overly impressive picture appears one day on a wall. It is proclaimed as a work by ‘Banksy’ – the most well-publicised graffiti-merchant (sorry, street-artist) around. It is unsigned. Then it disappears, together with the wall on which is was painted, before re-appearing some time later at an auction, where it was expected to be sold for something in the region of £1 million.

Nobody knows for certain that it was painted by ‘Banksy’. Nobody knows who ‘owned’ it. Nobody knows who took it.  The auction was organised after it was ‘agreed’ that it would be sold to an American bidder for £900,000 unless a higher bid was made.  The cry went up (from the auction house amongst others) for Britain to get its act together and pay the money needed to keep the painting in this country.

Perhaps it’s just me, but I can’t help feeling that the world has gone mad.  This just seems crazy on so many levels. It’s not fantastic art. It seems like a con in so many ways. The BBC and other media have done their best to drum up interest – why?  And when did vandalising by spray-painting graffiti in a public place, where perpetrators would be fined if they could be identified, turn into street-art, where the perpetrators would be lauded as artistic royalty?

But, in the spirit of the day, I am prepared to get my spray can out and produce a rather mundane, clichéd picture on a wall near you for a mere fraction of the amount being fleeced for this ‘Banksy’ from people who should know better.  I’m not a greedy man, so shall we say £100,000?

Saving 'your’ money?

My local Council has produced a glossy handout for every household in its area asking residents to “Stop throwing your money away”.  Like many others, I am sure, I was intrigued to read on and find out how I could save some money.

Unfortunately, the headline appears to have only a tenuous link to any money-saving possibility for residents.

It seems that ‘our area’ (unidentified) has been found to be one of the lowest performing in all of the district in terms of recycling.  This, incidentally, despite the evidence of overflowing recycling boxes on our pavements on each collection day.  OK, must be all the other roads in the district that are under-performing.

The story continues; the Council collects the recycled items and sells them. This money helps to pay for the collection of the material. Material that could be recycled but is instead just thrown away is sent to landfill – which costs the Council money. So, anyone not recycling is throwing money away.  

It’s a long-winded explanation that, in the end, offers no real incentive to residents to recycle more items beyond an implied suggestion that if more waste could be sold then perhaps our Council Taxes might be lower.  Implied is the word – no direct link, no promise that money saved will not be spent on something of no benefit to the mass of residents.

If you want people to change their behaviour then some kind of incentive would help.  But if that is too difficult to administer then at least be a little more honest in your communications with residents.  And maybe recognise that low levels of recyclable materials left out for collection may not mean that we don’t care. It may be that we care so much we have already changed our buying habits and no longer purchase things that need to be recycled – like newspapers (read online instead), or fruit and vegetables in unnecessary packaging (choosing fresh produce and placing in reusable bags or single paper bags rather than polystyrene or cardboard cartons wrapped in plastic).

  

Hard to know who most deserves our scorn?

Once again the media is full of stories about politicians who appear to be forever on the lookout for opportunities to line their pockets whilst already being paid large amounts of public money to do their jobs.  This time it’s a Tory MP, two Labour Lords and an Ulster Unionist Lord, but in truth the party labels mean nothing here. It’s a behavioural thing that crosses party lines.

It’s too early to say whether what these people have done wrong is really serious or not – the full details have not been revealed.  All of them are protesting their innocence, saying that they believe what they have done is within the rules.  There will be an investigation at the end of which they will discover whether or not they are right and have been unfairly cast as villains, or they are wrong and must face the consequences.

What we do know, of course, is that the ‘evidence’ of their wrongdoings has been provided by the very media that set each of them up in sting operations designed to catch them out by offering them inducements.  The BBC, the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph each set out to create stories, rather than uncover existing stories.  So there’s a fine line being walked by them as well as the politicians.  At least two of the ‘victims’ of the stings are claiming that the day after the interviews that appear to show them breaching lobbying rules, they contacted the people who were trying to sting them to say that they had reconsidered their positions and now no longer wanted to pursue their discussions.  We shall see if this is true, but if it is then we have, of course, been given a doctored version of events rather than the full picture.

It’s a tricky one:-

(a)  do we accept the view of The Independent that this is “a welcome reminder of the value of an unfettered media”; or

(b)  do we see this as another example of the media creating and manipulating the news, rather than reporting events that are happening independently of their own promptings?

Julian Assange – is he still here?

The news that Julian Assange is still here in the UK came as something of a surprise to me – out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. 

Now we hear that Ricardo Patino, an Ecuadorean Minister, is to visit Assange in London soon and that he has offered (offered rather than asked for?) a meeting with William Hague, the Foreign Secretary.

Had I given it any thought I might have imagined that he had been spirited away by the authorities once the press furore had quietened down after the initial excitement of him giving press conferences from the safety of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. But of course, that will not happen, and whenever he is moved or chooses to move we will be subjected to wall-to-wall coverage of everything that follows, whether he manages to escape to his Ecuadorean bolt-hole or he is arrested and sent to Sweden to face sexual offences charges.

Bet you can’t wait.......