Bleary-eyed Blears

From a pronouncement from the blessed Hazel

3) Make campaigning fun. Campaigning is like sex – if you’re not enjoying it, you’re not doing it right. It should never be a drudge. Make sure there’s plenty of meals, drinks, social events, and a campaign HQ with plenty of tea and biscuits. Tap into the enthusiasm of young people with blitzing and street stalls. High energy, high impact, low cost.

Well, I suppose I can see what she is getting at. However, I have to admit that my experience of sex did not include all of the delights she lists. Campaign HQ? - cannot see my blonde tolerating that.

Moaning Yorkshiremen

Not the original but because we know the Python original, all the funnier.

Tough job ahead

A panel of the great and the good were asked what they saw as tasks of the new Met Police boss.
Interesting and surprisingly waffle free,

NHS Expansion

No - not a self-portrait of me. An introduction to a very perception post by a well trusted blogger.

Read it - you will be amazed. Or, possibly, not.

Cost benefit analysis

I grew up in an atmosphere where sex was rented. Luckily it did not rub off (well, not very much anyway) on me but I can see the attraction of renting. I had a look at the McCartney and Mills relationship. After 5 years of marriage, he paid her $49 Million!

Assuming he got sex every night (which us men know would have never happened), it ended up costing him $26,849 each time he had sex with his wife. A really high class prostitute (OK, sex-worker for the nervous) apparently cost $4,000. The hooker is on the right and the wife on the left. So, no great debate there then. And no risk of getting splinters under your toe-nails! Even if you threw a 100% tip in for 'specials'. you are well ahead. On the face of it, renting wins all hands down. There is a web site that assists in showing the true cost of a girl friend.

I have to admit that no all prostitutes look as good as the one in my comparison. But at $4,000 a tussle one is pretty sure to find something. And ponder this as well - there are a heck of a lot of wives who look like the Jumping Cricket.

Unto them that hath shall be given?

A Californian woman who gave birth to octuplets earlier this week already has six children, US media has reported. The eight babies were delivered nine weeks early by Caesarean section in a hospital near Los Angeles on Monday. The mother has not been named, but US media is quoting family members as saying she already has six other children, including twins.

The Los Angeles Times later carried an interview with a woman identified as the babies' grandmother, who said her daughter already has six young children and never expected fertility treatment she had received would result in eight more babies. She said that doctors had given her daughter the option of reducing the number of embryos, but she had declined.

Officials at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, near Los Angeles, said the woman was already 12 weeks pregnant when she came to them. Despite media questioning, the hospital has declined to say whether the mother became pregnant through fertility treatments.

Well. I do not know how much of this is based on fact. I cannot imagine why a woman with six children would even share her bed with a male still less seek fertility treatment. I understand that the odds of producing that many embryo naturally are many millions to one. So, what the heck were the fertility clinic people thinking when they took her on? The woman cannot have been struck with a warm glow of maternal desire; she had six children and would have known full well what a further eight would entail. Check on that but I bet she will do very well from advertising deals. A slightly arcane point is that her husband is a civilian contractor in Iraq; a job with a higher than average risk of sudden death which would just about wipe out the security of the family.

There is now updated information about this woman. Some form of pathological condition that makes her want children. Keep her away from me please!

Sombre warnings

Was it ever more pertinent to say the following? :

I warn you that you will have pain – when healing and relief depend upon payment.

I warn you that you will have poverty – when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a government that won’t pay in an economy that can’t pay.

I warn you that you must not expect work – when many cannot spend, more will not be able to earn. When they don’t earn, they don’t spend. When they don’t spend, work dies.

I warn you that you will be quiet – when the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment make you obedient.

I warn you that you will be homebound – when fares and transport bills kill leisure and lock you up.

I warn you that you will borrow less – when credit, loans, mortgages and easy payments are refused to people on your melting income.

• I warn you not to be ordinary
  
• I warn you not to be young
  
• I warn you not to fall ill
  
• I warn you not to get old.

Raging Bull

This is shown here to celebrate the lady getting an Award for her performance. No other motive for the video. Believe me!

Never mind which knife - which bowl?

So, you have met this incredible Japanese maiden. Not a one night stand.Not a bath-house babe. Just a very nice girl. Two or thre dates in she says "You wanna come meet my Mum Dad?" If the relationship is to continue, there can only be the one answer.

So, in best bib and tucker, you turn up at what is quite an impressive house. This girl is looking more attractive by the minute. She has told you that her parents are Old Japan so you have revised the courtesies and a few phrases in Japanese. All seems well. Then, a meal is suggested. The door rolls back and the dining room is revealed. It is an on the floor job but they have provided a low table for you to save the cramp that comes five minutes after the Japanese-kneel posture.

Then you see the meal!



So, where to start? Japanese food comes in extremes - very hot and spicy, very salted, very many things and all without any real indication of the traps set for Western palates. Luckily, Japanese Miss knows her Old Japan etiquette and selects something and offers it to you. The next trial is the sake. This, like modern-day vodka comes in many flavours. The one thing in common is that all are 200% proof alcohol. Put it in your Zippo if the lighter fuel is missing. They can down large quantities; the merest sip does for most of us.

I think I upheld the flag for the New World. I was invited back a time or two but fate intervened and I was posted to Korea. Local girls who could be described as 'nice' there were few and far between but at least they ate American food!

Auschwitz

There seems to be a mass of discussion about the fate of the infamous concentration camp complex erected with the sole purpose of disposing of human beings. Over a million of them.

I remember the wave of horror that went through the free world when reports of these places appeared on our cinema screens. There was no convention then of sparing viewers distressing scenes. Bulldozers were used to shovel piled up bodies into mass graves. The 'living' were also shown in great detail. In some camps - mostly those opened up by Americans - the locals were ordered to attend and see what had gone on in these barbed wire enclosures where trains had run in crowded with humans and out empty. I was twelve years old.

What went on then is truly history. Ancient history. Publicising them and preserving them has served it's purpose. Who now needs convincing of the inhumanity that can spring from a human mind? Those who deny the Holocaust will not change their opinions and they have no influence on me anyway. 

Let them wither away say I. Indeed, level them to the ground and plant a forest of trees. Over a million of them.

Guys over Sixty

Great work by any sky diver - to get these results from a team all over 60 is really exciting. 

Well done blokes!

Sara Payne

The murder of little Sarah Payne was an event that had a great effect upon me at the time. The photograph of a very pretty child was everywhere and the inquiry attracted great attention. However, what really got to me were her parents Sara and Michael. They presented what I thought of as faces of bravery. No mawkish sentimentality; dignity shone through their loss. The broke up some while later but Sara continued to press for changes in the law.

Now she has been appointed Victims Champion. This is a Government post which sees her representing all victims of crime, giving them a voice at a national level. Mrs Payne, who campaigned for a "Sarah's Law" to reveal information on where paedophiles live, said she would challenge "whatever needs to be challenged" in her discussions with ministers.

She said: "Over the last eight years I have been asking for victims to have a louder voice, and for the Government to listen more closely to what they have to say. I am proud I will now be their champion, and welcome my appointment to this very important role. I look forward to bringing the voice of victims and witnesses to the heart of Government."

I hope she gets the support and results she deserves. There can be no better memorial for that lovely little child.

Fings ain't what they used to be

Criminal immigrants?
Police chases?
Police inefficiencies?
Level of crime?

Think these are modern day concerns?

Not a lot new under the sun.

Matthews and an another

The summing up by the Judge in the Shannon Matthews case is a fine example why our justice system, in the main, works. A careful and precise examination of the facts presented and reference to other decisions in similar cases.
What I found especially interesting is his statement about the two offenders at paragraphs 26 to 30 inclusive. All the while the State ends up with the finished products of education as revealed here we stand little chance of making much improvement.

The way things are

Polly is not a favourite of mine. I certainly would not want her on my shoulder declaring how pretty she is. Sometimes, she does a good report and analysis and deserves my support there. So it is when she looks at an AGM. The fat cats are identified; named but not, one suspects, shamed. For my money; and thanks goodness none of it is involved, her comment on the bonus arrangements and the lack lustre attitude of shareholders explains just why we are where we are. If the owners and directors of an enterprise are allowed to reign untrammelled they will act in their own interest. That is where the financial controls let us - the great unwashed - down. The fat cats were observed by others with fat feline characteristics and standards.
I never really studied the Russian Revolution but it is something akin that we need to change systems in this country. Not a move towards Communism (surely now seen by all as a failed concept) but adopting a root and branch survey and change in the way things were run by those who, even if they did not end up with their hands in the till, certainly had the keys to the cash box.

The War on Terror

When put through the currently fashionable process of initialisation, we get TWOT. Not so far away from the street cred name for the primary female sexual characteristic. When one reads about police concerns at music gigs, it seems appropriate. The costs of such procedures - financial and in terms of police/public relationships - must be immense. To me, it demonstrates the way in which counter-terrorism is handled. We spend large amounts of time and money on arcane measures to prevent something that has a minute possibility of occuring. I cannot now recall the actual term for such conduct - the law of diminshing return is the nearest I can get. Something like the cost of preventing theft from motor vehicles being £1 million per year but the total loss from such offences is less than half a million. Conclusion? Do away with the publicity etc. campaign and give the losers full compensation. Saving of £500K.
The other aspect is possibly not so apparent. If it is thought that a certain class or genre of music leads to problems, it means that the followers of that style are deemed more likely than others to be disruptive. Prejudice anyone?