1st April 2013
A relaxed, light of heart Rowan Williams gave an interview on the Sunday Programme yesterday from a food bank where he is helping out in his new location of Cambrige. He criticised the press for always associating those on state benefits with scroungers. He might well have been thinking that journalists should visit donation centres themselves. They would see that invariably you are just dealing with people suffering hard times who have the courage to accept help from others, for themselves and their families.
In his Easter Day sermon Justin Welby referred to newspapers, quite politely, as being effectively barking mad for publishing surveys arguably pressurising him to sort out all the Church of England’s problems himself. Earlier he had said the Church should manage it’s manifest problems gracefully, no doubt to show the rest of us how it can be done. The Archbishop has also referred to the death of the eldest of his six children in a car crash in France in 1983 when she was seven months old. He confirms he only felt a calling to Christ when he was a student at Cambridge University.
A story not released for media publication I think until she had returned home but a week last Wednesday Samantha Cameron visited a camp for Syrian refugees in Lebanon as an ambassador for Save the Children. She was accompanied by the charity’s chief executive.
The South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, has said today that she is not underestimating the resolve of the North but her country will respond strongly in any required initial combat without fear of the political consequences. Meanwhile the North Koreans seem to be getting more worked up than ever. The have described nuclear weapons as the nation’s life.
Yesterday was the coldest Easter Sunday since records began 53 years ago. The harsh weather is likely to continue for a few weeks yet.
In chapter 5 of my book I mention that my parents-in-law live in Nottinghamshire. Although I didn’t put it on the website I did record in my diary that part of Today on Budget Day the week before last came from a Nottingham cafe and part of Channel 4 News from a pub on the outskirts of Nottingham, in Arnold. In the early hours of Saturday a school teacher was walking back from having a drink in the pub with colleagues, whilst on a school skiing trip in Austria. He fell, hit his head on a wall an rolled down a slope. Austrian police say he died instantly. He worked at a church school in Arnold.
A BBC webpage informs me today that authors in both The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph have been remakably rude, in my view, about the Germans. Talk about sniping from the sidelines. Having the generosity to help the Cypriots out with their money problems does not go down very well. The Mail person compared them to common criminals for stealing savers’ money. The Telegraph writer called them a bossy imperial power. I thought the German Finance Minister has a good retort to that attitude. He compared it to when hard pressed children at school get jealous because you are doing better than they.
The UK based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, who I suspect are prodded by the Gang, have reported that 6005 people died in Syria in March, the highest monthly total since the conflict began. I feel that is useful information to know and have no quarrel with the SOHR at all. However I do wonder if it could be the product of a totally perverse mind who wants us to know exactly how much human destruction he alone can cause which none of us have the power to prevent.
2nd April 2013
From the clip on the BBC webpage of George Osborne making a speech to workers at a Morrisons distribution depot in Kent he seemed quite nervous taking the fight to critics of the government’s new welfare reforms. He said there is nothing kind about letting people flounder on benefits so you can forget about them, or promoting a something for nothing culture.
All members of the jury today decided that the parents and male friend of the six children who died in the Derby house fire in May 2012 are guilty. They were playing silly games putting the children at severe risk and it all went tragically wrong.
The biggest arms supplier in the world is America, followed by Russia with China a long way behind. Those industries will provide a lot of jobs. It is pleasing therefore that none voted against a UN General Assembly vote to control the trade worth £46 billion annually. The latter two did abstain but only I think because they differed over the detail not the principle. As you might expect the nations who voted against were Syria, Iran and North Korea.
Today was Lord Tony Hall’s first at work as the new DG for the BBC. He said the trust of it’s audience is the the most important thing for the organisation. It must never be taken for granted.
Yesterday evening there was a one off Jonathan Creek episode on BBC 1. The plot was about two renegade intelligence officers who had got themselves in with the investigating police officer for the purpose of keeping secret some information they did not want to get out into the public domain. They were willing to kill for that aim. Because the piece of fiction was not specific about the information I will not be either. However it seemed to be suggesting that an associate of Jonathan’s had found proof, through hidden filming, that a British Prime Minister and his special adviser who persuaded us to participate in a far off war a few years ago, thought that the way of getting our agreement was to have more than half the media on their side, without worrying too much about whether what they were saying was actually true. Another example perhaps of an artist being able to take a certain amount of licence for the purpose of good story telling but still making an extremely important point about what can happen in our society in reality.
3rd April 2013
I wrote about an inappropriate police caution being made in Essex on 16th March 2013. A formal caution is given at a police station to an admitting offender by at least a police inspector in rank, in place of a court conviction. It therefore stops the legal system from becoming clogged but of course it also gives police the power to decide how to treat lawbreakers. The BBC reports this morning a worry exists that cautions are sometimes being used too often, and in inconsistent ways over the country, against repeat and serious offenders. The chairman of the Magistrates’ Association was on Today this morning who said that of last year’s total of 200,000, 1500 cautions were given for admitted burglaries and 40,000 were for sex offences. If they are not helping to reform criminals they are not being used properly. The Ministry of Justice is going to carry out a review.
March in the UK was the second coldest since records began over 100 years ago.
Yesterday the Cypriot finance minister offered his resignation to his president which was accepted. I think that could mean the three judge inquiry into the causes of their financial crisis might feel less constrained in it’s activities.
No feel of crisis about this story but a BBC webpage yesterday, and Today this morning, report that there is a degree of mislabelling in the fish as well as the meat industry. I imagine it must be legal but apparently new varieties of fish are being substituted in processed fish dishes without the consumer knowing. There could also be a problem with fish chilled by ice caught at sea. It’s real history has to be taken very much on trust. In an exercise the University of Salford found that 7% of fish sold in fish and chips shops, supermarkets and restaurants is not what it says. It seems the same suppliers keep on cropping up in the figures. Also, nearly all bulk frozen fish from Asia for the European market passes through Frankfurt airport. There it is thought 20-30% of the fish is not correctly labelled.
After the disruption of last year’s boat race Saturday’s passed off without incident. As a security measure Royal Marines were standing on the river bank over part of the course. On Monday a mother and daughter were found dead on a moored boat on Lake Windermere from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning. The male friend of the mother, owner of the boat, is seriously ill in hospital.
In typical Gang, and silly games, style it seems dissident Republican groups in Nothern Ireland are competing with each other to be worse than the rest. Following an explosion in County Armagh on Saturday designed to kill police officers the Northern Ireland chief constable said it is about time they started acting like adults.
The Guardian reported yesterday that the MI6 station head in the country at the time admitted to a friend before she died that her organisation arranged the assination in 1961 of the Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister because we feared he would align himself with the Soviet Union.
There was a suicide bomb and gun attack on a courthouse in the western capital of Afghanistan, bordering Iran, yesterday. The headline reason was an unsuccessful attempt to free Taliban prisoners but 50 peope were killed and 90 injured. Afghan officials say, as reported by the BBC, that the deeper purpose is to destabilise the area which is a smuggling route for drugs and immigrants. Lots of money in those activities. A few people killed here and there for that goal must be well worth it.
On Monday there was, according to the local MP, an unprecedented wildfire on heathland close to Fort William in the western Scottish Highlands. At one point it covered three square miles. Fortunately no property was damaged or person hurt.
Monday’s FT reports that Andrew Mitchell has written to the Independent Police Complaints Commission objecting about the way it seems the Metropolitan Police selectively leaked their plebagate report about him, sent to the CPS last week, to the media. The paper say that David Davis is a close ally of Mr Mitchell. I wrote about Mr Davis resigning his Commons seat in 2008, without naming him, in chapter 6 of my book. I believe he has good intentions but suspect he holds unfortunate friends, not including Mr Mitchell. I consider his judgement is poor.
That issue reports the Israelis started pumping natural gas from it’s relatively recently discovered offshore fields, to a terminal in southern Israel, at the weekend.
It appears a disproportionately high number of militant Islamists fighing in North Africa come from Tunisia. The paper wonders why that may be. Paradoxically it’s leaders have been good at acheiving high literacy for it’s people but poor on the economic development front. Perhaps knowledge that you are marginalised makes some young men disaffected. And the Gang of course will always home in where they see an opportunity.
The edition says that recent tribulations in the eurozone have caused developing countries to dump the euro in a big way. The prospect of it challenging the dollar as a reserve currency have been put back years. However if EU fiscal union does materialise that of course is likely to change in due course.
The editorial in the paper makes the simple point that state cyber theft is in nobody’s long term iterests. From our side Russia and China are the culprits. It is difficult for America, even if it is whiter than white, to name China as a black kettle. China funds American debt throgh holding it’s financial bonds. And little Britain would be quite brave to start talking assertively against it’s two eastern neighbours.
Politics is all about power. It must be really difficult therefore if a significant rump of MPs in a Party have no respect for the person who is best able to acheive success for them at the next election. Mr Cameron has that problem in my view but he must not allow it to divert him from remaining calm and doing the right thing in all areas.
Today’s FT reports that the Conservative backbench MP for Basildon, John Baron, has sent a letter signed by him and 100 colleagues to their leader demanding that the Prime Minister propose legislation for an EU referendum before the next election. It seems to me if you give some people an inch they will try and take a mile. Give them another inch and they will try and take another mile. An unhappy soul perhaps will never satiate itself.
Not by design but another note arguably on the same theme caused by one turn of the paper’s page. If you are in a position to influence your country’s path in history, I am sure you think about that and do what you can. On 1st August 2012 I noted that David Cameron wanted Britain to research into the phenome. By the time of my note dated 10th December 2012 that desire had been refined I think into analysis of the genome. We have the chance of being a world leader in the field. Similarly, it seems to me, Barack Obama has just announced that he wishes America to lead in knowledge of how the brain works, for which he hopes funding of $100 million will be forthcoming.
4th April 2013
Former BBC presenter Robin Lustig notes in Saturday’s FT that last year the chief executive of ITV with 4,000 staff earnt £3.7 million in cash and share options. His old boss at the BBC with 17,000 employees took home £450,000. He wonders therefore why there is such sniping at the Corporation by some sections of our society in spite of the broad public support it receives. Perhaps it is just jealously. He asks for the new DG to be it’s champion, and see that it’s future income is maintained in real terms. It is now a lean artistic organisation and should no longer be obsessed with costs. He also suggests the chairman of the BBC Trust should provide necessary support to give the DG appropriate risk taking freedom.
Just above that was an analysis on the life of Boris Berezovsky. It seems he was an informal business partner of Badri Patarkatsishvili, a Georgian businessman and politician. Both men apparently were heavily involved in the business career of Roman Abramovich. A Wikipedia page says Mr Patarkatsishivili’s associates included Alexander Litvinenko and Vladimir Putin. The same source says that after having dinner at a mansion he owned in Leatherhead in February 2008 Mr Patarkatsishvli told his family he felt unwell. He went upstairs to his bedroom where he collapsed from an apparent heart attack. The medical staff who were called pronounced him dead. An author in the London Evening Standard wrote about the incident that former KGB men are believed to possess a fine white powder called sodium fluoroacetate which when taken orally can induce heart failure but leave virtually no trace. The FT reports that Mr Berezovsky was laid very low psychologically by various financial battles he had lost. All his money had gone and he had bouts of depression. However a friend says the supposed letter to the Russian President asking to return to Russia was a complete fabrication. He was getting back to his old self. On the day he died Mr Berezovsky confirmed he would be going on a three day holiday to Israel which he had just asked a friend to book for him.
Elsewhere the paper was adding two and two to make four in my view. From good sources on both sides I would say, George Parker and Kiran Stacy reported that David Cameron now feels remorse about what happened to Andrew Mitchell. I wrote a note about this aspect of the situation on 6th February 2013. Quite understandably, in the circumstances at the time, Mr Cameron appears to now feel he made a bad judgement call. To make it up it seems there is the possibility of Mr Mitchell being nominated for the post of a British EU Commisioner in 2014. The article then goes onto connect how Tony Blair, after unfairly sacking Peter Mandelson in 2001, felt sufficiently guilty to offer him the chance of an EU post. Similarly Leon Brittan resigned in 1986 from Mrs Thather’s government over the leaking of a letter in the Westlands Helicopters affair. The article says Mrs Thatcher was sad to see him go. Lord Brittan became EU competition commissioner in 1989.
Yesterday the Americans moved a mobile missile defence system to their military base on the Pacific island of Guam, for it’s protection, roughly half way between North America and North Korea. Today, I understand from a BBC webpage, David Cameron has written in the Daily Telegraph that we need to keep our planned £20 billion Trident nuclear weapon submarine defence programme, as a final insurance policy. He says that North Korea claims it has a long range nuclear ballistic missile that can reach the whole of the USA. If that is correct the whole of Europe is also in range.
A BBC webpage reports this morning that one of the heaviest storms ever recorded has killed six people in Buenos Aires and 54 in nearby La Plata. 16 inches of rain fell in La Plata causing thousands to be moved from their homes.
On 9th March 2013 I wrote an email to an English MEP which I copied to the Prime Minister. Included in the message was the word hate. The People who Hate is the title of chapter 10 of my book. This morning Greater Manchester Police have announced that in future they will separately categorise crimes which they believe have been motivated by hatred. That will enable more targeted support to be given to victims and flag up for other agencies, such as prosecutors, how they might best approach their own role in the criminal process. Today informed me this morning that hate crimes were recognised in law 15 years ago in relation to those involving sexual orientation, race, religion or disability. Hopefully the trend will now be for the motive for all crimes to be more deeply thought about.
Mike Thomson, in Sudan, conducted a lovely interview on that programme with a lady who moved to Kartoum in 1950 to be with the man she loves. She feels safe and looked after where she is and has no wish to return to her homeland. She is intelligently positive about Sudan. 80% of university students are woman. She says the country could not function without it’s women professionals.
Our former ambassador to North Korea was on the broadcast saying the regime is completely paranoid about being crushed by the Americans. Through not thinking straight it has concluded it must cause provocation to stop itself being pushed around. The danger with that of course is that it will blunder over a red line causing the South Koreans or Americans to retaliate in kind. Then the evening before I heard an extremely knowledgable American journalist, who has spoken to many North Koreans, interviewed on Newsnight. Everything there must be controlled by a very small clique because he says the elite are as miserable as everyone else. A third of the population are hungry and there is no electricity outside Pyongyang. The anti-American propoganda starts in school and continues in the army in which everyone must serve for 7-10 years. After that a Stalinist state operates employing he estimates 270,000 informants, enough for every apartment block in the land. Those that speak out get put in one of six labour camps containing 150-200,000 people. Everyone knows about them so the rest of the population keep quiet through fear. But the really clever thing, as always with the Gang, is that there is an element of truth somewhere along the way. During the Korean War the Americans bombed the country so effectively between 1950 and 1953 that 85% of all structures were destroyed. Uncle Sam has moved on a bit since then but because the people are isolated from the outside world they do not know it. Their fear of the Americans is real.
Once you realise all that it is not difficult to conclude that in fact it is the Gang themselves who are running scared. They are petrified of North Koreans finding out the truth about the world. If that should happen they will no longer be able to use the country as an example in their world community of what could happen to you if you do not go along with their wishes.
An illustration that the British government considers Pakistan now has the knowledge to fight back against the American Gang, in my view, is that we are doubling our aid to the country next year to just under £450 million. However a report from the Commons International Developmemt Committee out today suggests the money should not be condition free. In particular the MPs focus on the ridiculously low taxes remitted by most Pakistanis, even Cabinet Ministers. Only 0.57% of the population paid any tax, for the public good, last year. In comparable countries the figure is 15%.
I had not realised it before but the judge, in her sentencing statement today on the Derby fire deaths, said the father’s motive was to frame his estranged mistress for the fire. He thought that would encourage her to return to live with him, with his children by her, as part of a custody battle in train. That doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Such weird thinking has the fingerprints of Gang manipulation all over it. The judge said the children were to be deliberately terrorised as part of the father’s plan. Fortunately she believes their deaths were quick and painless.
I have noticed a BBC webpage today about a measels epidemic in South Wales where the number infected has now risen above 500. Parents are being asked to take susceptible children to their GP for vaccination. Even before the outbreak we had the second highest incidence of the disease in Europe at 30.4 cases per million. Belgium and Luxembourg have 3.9. However by far the worse is Romania with 179.5. The continent has pledged to eradicate measels by the end of this year which does not now look possible.
Just to increase the pressure a bit, in my view, the computer hacking group Anonymous has attacked online accounts of the reatatively few in North Korea who who access to social networking and the like.
My Gang I believe are probably based in Connecticut on the US eastern seaboard. That would make sense of a really interesting BBC webpage published today on Nazi sympathising white supremacist gangs based on the western side of the country. Passing metion is made of the 211 Crew from California and Colorado but the main subjects are the Aryan Brotherhood and their separate offshoot the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. Both are products of the repressive American prison system and formed it seems to protect themselves against the brutality they found in the jails; the first in California in the 1960’s and the second in the early 1980’s. With desegregation in American society came the added incentive to insulate their kind against aggresive intermingling blacks. As time wore on and they became sophisticated at smuggling contraband into prison they formed into more straightforward organised crime gangs with combined numbers of several thousands. The author also seems to have good knowledge of the detailed constitution and rules of the gangs so it appears their internal security is not what it might be, in stark contrast to my Gang. I also suspect that the spur of the article, a spat of killings of three senior law officers and one wife this year one of which I mention in my diary note of 23rd March 2013, is also Gang manipulated. The groups would have to be pretty self destuctive to wish to deliberately shine a media spotlight on themselves for no strategic purpose. Quite why the Gang themselves might think it a productive course for them to adopt also leaves me scratching my head. It reminds me a bit of the murder on the M40 from August 2007 I describe in chapter 6 of my book. You have to go down fighting, I suppose.
A report commissioned by Barclays Bank themselves into their past misdemeanours has just been published. I learn from today’s FT editorial that it cost the bank £17 million. It seems the author makes an accurate analysis of the culture failings, especially of the top 70 employees who paid themselves far over the market norm. However the paper suggests a lot of the document’s wording is banal. No specific recommendations are made.
5th April 2013
Yesterday whilst touring a factory in Derby George Osborne chose to make a connection between the fire deaths there and the need to reform our benefits system. The father, Mick Philpott, has had 17 children and The Daily Mail reports that his annual tax free benefits entitlement has been up to £68,000. That, I am sure, will have been a calculated political risk by the Chancellor. It has generated an energetic debate on the subject. I can see nothing wrong with that at all.
An indication in my view of Gang displeasure also broke yesterday. The day before Mr Osborne’s police driver called in at a motorway service area. The Chancellor got out of the vehicle and went inside. The car was parked. Someone was handy nearby to take a photo of the Range Rover in a disabled parking bay. That photo has made it into today’s press. All the indications are therefore that the driver was a Gang helper. All pretty puerile stuff.
The Gang story for goodies I feel is about holding a targeted group securely in your grasp, where no harm is flying around, and then let them instinctively, in our imperfect human way, start to do the right thing. Perhaps that process is working in Gaza at the moment where Unrwa provides assistance to 800,000 Palestinians. The UN Relief and Works Agency has just closed it’s food distribution centres in the Strip because of physical trouble caused by some people who do not think they are getting enough aid. There is a clip on the BBC webpage this morning showing an Hamas spokesman asking the UN to reconsider it’s position but at the same time condemning those hotheads who threaten violence against UN staff who are trying to help his people.
Yesterday was the coldest April day at Heathrow airport since the 1960s.
I recived my letter of deposit receipt from the British Library for my book on 8th March 2013 and from the Agency for The Legal Deposit Libraries on behalf of nominated libraries in Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Dublin and Aberytswyth on 25th March 2013. Today reported this morning that a statutory regulation has just been passed to enable the British Library and the others to also legally store every electronically published British webpage, presumably derived from servers based in the UK, that they wish. Discussions have been going on with the publishing industry apparently for 10 years on how a practical system could be devised and those have finally been concluded.
It came through after 6.30am this morning that children’s heart surgery will start again at Leeds General Infirmary next week. Today then completely reorientated their morning’s transmission in a most professional, seemless way. Using mobile phones as appropriate interviews were conducted with the two local MPs concerned and the chief executive of the Childrens Heart Foundation. In the second discussion I did feel the Liberal Democratic MP used somewhat intemperate language about his co-participant charity professional colleague. She was only passing on concerns that had been expressed to her by worried parents and member groups. However the MP seemed to have a preconceived idea about the rights and wrongs of the situation. He appeared to want to shoot the messenger rather than listen to what she was actually saying.
I have never said it before but I do believe the Gang director in South Wales is the nastiest we have. He has a totally cruel streak which seems mostly to be targeted towards the young. A senior representative from Public Health Wales was on Today this morning saying that the current measels outbreak appears to have started at an athletics camp in England. Teenagers came back from that event and spread it into local Welsh schools.
Thought for the Day on the programme was given by the Chief Rabbi. It was about the hatred the Nazis felt for the Jews particularly with regard to the attack on the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. Lord Sachs says the Jews were exterminated there just because they were different and in a minority. But those circumstances could happen to any of us. He concludes by saying we must learn to fight hate together.
Immediately after that was an interview with the chair of Parliament’s Banking Standards Commission on their just issued report concerning HBOS. Mr Tyrie said the three most senior managers showed complete incompetence in their functions. They led a disfunctional board. The Chairman was delusion about the situation as late as March 2008. He calls for the FSA to consider the matter and take appropriate action.
Last weekend President Karzai went to Qatar to try to move along peace talks with the Taliban, a year before his country’s presidential elections in which he will not be taking part. The head of the Afghan Peace Council appeared on the broadcast. He said that overall he believes the Taliban leadership does want peace and, although there will undoubtedly be setbacks, he thinks it is achievable.
6th April 2013
In chapter 5 of my book I relate what happened as I travelled on a Ryanair plane from Italy in August 2008 when I believe hand baggage was switched between two sets of passengers, and susequent events. This morning I caught an Easyjet flight from Geneva to Gatwick. About 45 minutes in, when the beverage trolleys were going through the cabin, I noticed a passenger wearing a green tee shirt walking towards me. He was carrying a large fabric bag which he put in the compartment straight above where I was sitting. I immediately made the connection, I believe, I was meant to. The seat numbers for my party of five were chosen by the computer when we made our booking. I was sitting three rows from the back. When I went into observational mode I concluded that eight adult Gang helpers were the only occupiers in the rows behind me and that one was sitting next to me. Amongst that number were a couple with three chidren aged between about six and 14. The tee shirt man had a boy of about four. It was clear father and son had a close affectionate bond with each other. I was also pretty sure the man, as he walked on the plane, must have stored his bag half way down the cabin. I saw him move it to nearer where he was sitting. In that situation I decided there was no action for me to take other than write this note. After going through passport control I went to a cash machine to check my bank balance. Immediately I did that a senior airport official, with an identification tag hanging from his neck, ostentatiously sat down in the immediatly adjacent seat and started to busily text on his mobile phone.
The green tee shirt had printed on it the words GrAde el Capitan. I imagine you are meant to read it Grade A el Capitan. I see from Wikipedia that El Capitan is a rock in California which at one time was thought impossible to climb.
Robert Piggott visited the Sikh Gurwarda in Southall for Today in this morning’s programme. It seems the Sikh heirarchy in the country are running a committed campaign in relation to perceived injustices by the Indian government against Sikhs in the Punjab. Robert was giving air to the view that that preoccupation distracts young Sikhs from their lives in their adopted country in the UK and risks them becoming alienated within it.
Because of our bad weather last year, continuing into this, the president of the National Farmers Union was on the broadcast saying we will have to import wheat this season for the first time for 10 years.
An informative lady from the British Library was on the tramsmission telling us more about their new digital archiving project. They intend taking a yearly snapshot of all our internet material, estimated to be one billion pages on 4.8 million websites, using four linked servers in London, West Yorkshire, Aberystwyth and Edinburgh, to provide an ongoing record of social history in this country. They will start with .co.uk sites and expand from there.
The anaesthetist I wrote about on 29th March 2013 contributed from Australia on the programme. His view is that in medical matters authorities must be firm with senior hospital doctors and surgeons. They have a tendency to be too big for their boots. If politicians get involved they must also accept to be responsible for their own actions. Should their influence keep open a medical unit with proven above average mortality rates, meaning unnecessary deaths, they cannot subsequently argue they were only doing what their constituents wanted. They must exercise proper judgement. The gentleman also said that five years after leaving Bristol he was taken aside by a friend to be told he was the most hated cardiac anaesthetist in Europe. His logical conclusion is that because he caused several surgeons, including one Chief Executive Officer, to be struck off the medical register the profession as a whole cannot bear someone breaking their ranks; to be betrayed.
7th April 2013
When writing my diary notes at home I use a PC in my office or a notebook in the house neither of which have internet access. In France last week I used my online laptop. At about 9am BST last Thursday I composed my note on our nuclear deterrent in which I used the phrase final insurance policy. I later read Mr Cameron’s article in that day’s Daily Telegraph where he used the term insurance policy. I also noticed in a TV interview with the BBC during the day that he twice used the term ultimate insurance policy.
I do resent the Gang intruding into my life. For no particular reason really I decided to hide away my notebook so it could not be tampered with in my absence. Before I took my car out of the garage last weekend I put it in the spare tyre compartment of my car. When I used it yesterday I found that my DOS word processing software had been corrupted in a minor way as has often happened in the past. That, it seems to me, means there must be a hidden Gang camera in my garage and that they hold a manufacturer’s copy of my car key.
As part of her manifesto the Kent Police and Crime Commissioner, Ann Barnes, said she would use part of her salary to fund the position of a youth PCC. A very laudable thing in my opinion. Last week a 17 year old young lady was appointed from 150 candidates. However it seems possible she may not have been a particularly good choice. The Mail on Sunday has immediately found violent, racist and anti-gay comments on her Twitter account leading to calls for her resignation.
Later in the day Paris Brown spoke to a BBC Kent reporter in a room, I think, in Maidstome police station. Ann Barnes was sitting next to her with her arm behind Paris’ shoulder. Paris started off confidently, thoughtfully rebutting the personal critiscisms of her but as the questions kept coming she did cry. Ms Barnes took over. She said most of the offensive tweets were two or three years ago. Paris knows they were wrong and she regrets them. The experience has taught her a lot. It was clearly brave of Ms Brown to immediately put herself before the media for examination. I hope everything will be fine for her.
I see a bit more animal training went on in my absence last week. Yesterday a squirrel came up to the patio window, stood up on it’s hind legs and peered into the lounge. Very sweet. Then a jay, a member of the crow family, started rooting around on the lawn for a buried morsel of food left there which it eventually found.
When we took the car back to Geneva airport yesterday it had to be with a full tank of petrol. In trying to pay for that my two credit cards and one debit card, with Virgin and the Cooperative, were rejected by the payment terminal. Fortunately for me my son’s worked fine or I would have been in a right spot. This morning I received two automated security calls from the Cooperative Bank for their cards confirming to me that the Swiss end of the attempted transactions were correctly made to the UK. All very interesting.
I have noticed over recent years that there seem to be quite a high number of accidents in ski resorts involving British tourists, quite often working in the medical profession. We booked our apartment direct from the owner using a collective website. The English lady living at the resort was very nice. An unusual feature of the property was that there was a locked internal door to the unit behind, where the lady did not live, allowing access without any view from the street. Ski resorts of course are relatively small physically enclosed localities. Ours comprised about five villages at the top of the mountain. Our owner referred to her community as like a family. All the businesses were owned by just a few people.
I hope he does not mind me saying but I feel Professor David Nutt is an emotional man. I think that is an admirable trait. Today he has been having a moan at the Home Office for effectively making the substance psilocybin impossible to obtain in this country for medical research. It is categorised as a Class A drug because it is present in magic mushrooms. It seems possible it would be useful in treating depression and Mr Nutt’s team haven’t been able to get hold of any to progress their investigations.
A BBC webpage published last night reports a severe gorse fire near Okehampton in Devon covering nearly 1,500 acres. More than 100 firefighters have been tackling the blaze.
An American resident journalist broadcast the weekly A Point of View on Radio 4 this morning. He has also written an accompanying webpage. As far as America is concerned he feels they are very insular and self centred. It is not in their culture to look abroad to see how different people to them lead their lives, and to learn from that. Other countries do actually have gun laws allowing normal freedoms which prevent young children being killed. Neither does he think Americans can perceive that other folk have workable public health insurance systems which protect the poor in society.
On Friday North Korea seemd to still be in the phase of making a new threat every day. That day’s was protection could soon no longer be guaranteed for foreign embassies in Pyongyang. That however was taken calmly by other countries. They could rationally see no change of circumstances on the ground so say they are staying put. Then this morning America has announced it is delaying an intercontinental ballistic missile test previously scheduled for next week. It does not wish to give the North Koreans the excuse for upping their rhetoric further. Indeed it might be quite a clever move if Mr Jong-un connects that his actions can produce a form a dialogue, albeit unspoken at the moment, with his worst enemy.
For me William Hague, from what he said on the Andrew Marr Show today, has come to much the same conclusion as I wrote on Thursday about the situation. He says the North Korean regime are using external factors to keep their people in check. The cabal fear losing control of things. Gang experience is that the best way of exercising their power is to create a hate plank. America is their hate plank.
It is such a shame, in my view, that married 29 year old Kim Jong-un, who I am sure would like a family of his own, does not seem to be able move that feeling onto also doing the best for his people. He does actually have the power to achieve good if he had the resolve. Charity begins at home, not shadow boxing at debilitating expense with some perceived far off foe who in truth means you no harm at all. Whatever you want for your country you should have the confidence to argue it out in the open and have the grace to accept help where it is offered. North Korea is a tiny country which causes much distress in it’s region. It is about time it grew up.
Talks between Iran and the six negotiating powers in Kazakhstan finished yesterday. It seems some genuine talking took place but no positions were changed. Further formal talks have not been scheduled and it seems Baroness Catherine Ashton, for the EU, will now make direct contact with her Iranian counterpart to see if they can work out a way forward.
From the radio newspaper review this morning I know the Sunday Times reports that a compensation culture is rife in the police. Over the last four years more than 8,000 officers have made claims worth over £70 million for injuries sustained whilst on duty. One application apparently is due to an individual developing a fear of sirens.
On the Sunday Programme this morning a former spiritual adviser to Bill Clinton was speaking about his suggestion in America that President Obama should offer to have face to face talks with Kin Jong-un. Whilst he accepted that there is no chance of that actually happening he thought it needed saying because it is the right religous approach to love your enemy, even if some critics will immediately say such words are irrelevant and bring Christian teachings into disrepute.
It was very pleasing to hear the Assistant Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain on the programme talking about the grooming of young girls for sex, often carried out by Muslim men. As we know now a multi-discipline approach creates healing momentum to such problems. In this case it is various Muslim bodies, the NSPCC, the police and several others pooling their experiences and working together to increase their overall knowledge. The gentlemean was not afraid to admit Muslims are often involved. He correctly said, in my view, that the perpetrators are essentially criminals satisfying their sexual desires.
Regular churchgoers in Germany have to pay by law 3-4% of their salary to their religous order to support and finance it. Another interesting piece on the programme was about some eminently sensible Germans deciding in hard times that it is a bit too much to pay. One man was interviewed who said he liked going to church but felt he should be hard headed about it. He has left his congregation. It does worry him a bit that no priest will be available to conduct his funeral but as the man said that is a few years off. Apparently about 300,000 people a year are currently leaving chuches in the country.