FFS what sort of madman can even start to think that new trees are equivalent to ancient woodland. Just for a start the biodiversity is completely different.
There was an interesting article by Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph in which he asks if “Europe” is going to turn out to be one of those things which we’re always told are necessary but turn out not to be.
Aside from the obvious (well who’d have guessed he was about to die?) here are a few thoughts on the passing of Nelson Mandela.
Let us remember that, in today’s values, Nelson Mandela was first a terrorist leader, and (whether rightly or not) he was convicted of such.
Had he lived almost anywhere but South Africa he would have been locked up for life without any prospect of a get out of jail free card. As, in fact, he was!
That he did get out of jail is largely down to the dysfunctionality and instability of South Africa at that time.
Mandela made the most of the opportunity and turned it to good, which was no mean achievement!
Consequently I suspect that until now South Africa has held together as well as it has because of his very presence. He may no longer have had any formal power, but his influence would, I’m sure, have been very real. And who knows what mafia-esque machinery turned behind the scenes?
I sincerely hope South Africa continues to hold together, return to stability and becomes a respected African nation again. However I fear that it won’t.
There seems to be a big danger that the factional infighting and feuds, which are still there, will surface in what is an inevitable power vacuum. And that this will lead to a descent into anarchy and civil war, if not an outright tribal bloodbath — black vs white, Xhosa vs Zulu etc. Which is much the route trodden by their neighbour Zimbabwe, amongst others.
I hope I’m wrong. The South Africans have invested too much in getting this far to even contemplate such horrors.
North-West London NHS last year consulted on proposals to rationalise the delivery of A&E services in the hospitals in its area. One element of this is the closure of A&E at Ealing Hospital, close to where I live. This is unlikely to happen for at least three and probably five years.
Watching BBC Breakfast yesterday (22 October) I spotted my first Remembrance Day poppy if the year. It was being worn by some female, the head of one of our plethora of regulators, who was being given an easy ride of an interview.
This is obscenely early, given that Remembrance Day (11 November) isn’t for another three weeks.
But then, as I’ve said before, I sometimes think I’m the only person in the country who finds everything about Remembrance Day sick and obscene. I’m with novelist Evelyn Waugh who in his youthful diaries described Remembrance Day as
… a disgusting idea of artificial nonsense and sentimentality. If people have lost sons and fathers, they should think of them whenever the grass is green or Shaftesbury Avenue brightly lighted, not for two minutes on the anniversary of a disgraceful day of national hysteria.
The Matt cartoon in today’s Daily Telegraph amused me …
Yesterday’s Independent carried a short article under the headline
Civil servants could cut the cost of government by £70bn in seven years just by making more use of computer technology, a think-tank report … claims.
The ambitious claim … is almost 10 times what the Cabinet Office hopes can be achieved.
The report … highlights ways government departments waste money by using too much paper.
Offenders include the Crown Prosecution Service, which prints a million sheets of paper every day, the Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency, where “two articulated trucks loaded with letters and paper pull in every day”, and the Passport Office, which prints out forms filled in online and posts them back to applicants to sign.
Oh FFS! I know I worked for a large IT company but set in its ways though the Corporation was even we got rid of most paper forms 10 years ago!
So you bet the government could save £10bn a year, but it will happen only if:
Will all of those happen? … No.
Will any of those happen? … Probably not.
Gawdelpus!
Just what is it about politicians? They just cannot seem to learn from even the most recent past. Nor can they stand back and take a long, cold, hard look at where they’re going.
The US and the UK are about to get themselves embroiled in Syria. Why?
Oh someone has used some (internationally banned) chemical weapons.
Yes, OK that is reprehensible (to put it politely). But it doesn’t excuse blatant aggression by other people.
Look guys. Just stop and think!
1. Within the last few years the US and UK have meddled in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya that I can think of quickly. None of them with any real justification (and in the case of Iraq based on a known wrong set of beliefs). Result? Long-term involvement in two of them and no real useful result in the third. All it has done is waste the lives of our military personnel and waste a load of money that frankly we don’t have.
2. What is happening in Syria is civil war — just as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Egypt. War, by definition, produces atrocities. That is no reason for us to go adding to them.
3. So you want to get involved in Syria on the side of the rebels against Assad? You do realise, don’t you, that those rebels are the very people you were fighting against in Afghanistan and Iraq: al-Qa’ida and the Taliban? OK we know you’re two-faced (you’re politicians, after all) but really!
Now no-one is pretending that the use of chemical weapons is acceptable. But this is NOT an excuse for the US and UK to go around continuing to be bullies. Especially as we know that short sharp interventions never are. Remember Iraq?
No, this is a matter for the UN. Their inspectors need to be allowed to complete their work, report, have their report considered. The if the international community (in the guise of the UN) is still unhappy it is for the UN to take action. Unilateral action by the US and/or the UK is just not acceptable.
David Cameron … If you continue down this path of action, you will become as reviled by everyone as was Tony Bliar, who rightly earned the epithet Tony B Liar. Up with such actions we, the people, will not put! Such actions will definitely lose you the next election (if you’ve not lost it already). Is that really what you want?
Barack Obama … The same applies to you.
When even your (ex-)military chiefs are saying this is misguided, maybe that should be telling you something.
Gawdelpus!
So who should be most in favour of HS2, the proposed high-speed rail connection from London to Birmingham and the north?
Well if it is as essential to the economy as we are told it is, business should be lobbying hard in its favour.
Are they? … No, they are not!
Businesses know value for money when they see it, and our research shows that they don’t see it in the Government’s case for HS2 … The IoD cannot support the Government’s current economic case for HS2 … We agree with the need for key infrastructure spending, but the business case for HS2 simply is not there. The money would be far better spent elsewhere and in a way that will benefit much more of the country. Investment in the West and East Coast main lines, combined with a variety of other infrastructure projects, would be a far more sensible option.
[Simon Walker, IoD Director-General]
Interestingly there was another report in the Telegraph last December (which I had not previously picked up) exposing the fact that the projected passenger numbers also do not stack up with the business case.
Hurrah for some common sense! I’ve been saying this since HS2 was first mooted. Cynically I’d say that HS2 is the rail industry willy-waving and indulging in self-aggrandisement to distract from the fact that is hasn’t/can’t sort out the current rail infrastructure and get that working efficiently — something which should cost a lot less than the currently projected £50billion price tag for HS2. Let’s sort out what we have first and then see if we still need such a massive, environmentally and financially destructive project as HS2.
And anyway, in the current economic climate, do we really have this amount of money to throw around?