I SAW a film last week called ‘The Lives of Others.’
It was set in Cold War East Germany and depicted the terrifying extent to which the secret police, the Stasi, spied upon their fellow citizens.
Mere suspicion resulted in surveillance, arrest, interrogation, imprisonment and the ruination of countless lives. Worse still, friends and family were forced to betray one another by the state.
But, evil though it undoubtedly was, at least the secret police were spying on those they believed to be enemies of the state, no matter how spurious their grounds for believing so might have been.
The Stasi did not, to my knowledge, deploy their considerable talents of surveillance to track down those guilty of dog fouling. The clearly missed a trick there which our own municipal watchdogs could have taught them.
This week every council has had a letter telling them to stop snooping so much. Well, it’s worded a bit more delicately than that, but basically they’ve been told they’re overstepping the mark in using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
This was an act that was intended to give guidance and restrainto to the like of the police and security services when they use covert surveillance like phone tapping and so on to tackle terrorist threats.
How some nameless, faceless bureaucrat decided it should be used to snoop on people suspected of cheating school catchment rules is anyone’s guess, but that’s what some ingenious little nosey parker has used it for.
It is like a sort of municipal Murphy’s Law. No matter how much you assure us that middle-ranking pen-pushers will not be able to authorise the tapping of our phones, if they are given that power, they will use it.
That’s why the Local Government Association has written to councils reminding them that they ought not to use these draconian powers on trivial matters.
Unfortunately when I said ‘every council’ earlier, I should have qualified that by adding ‘in England.’ Wales is apparently not getting this warning.
It would be nice to think that is because our authorities are blameless in this and have left their RIPA powers gathering dust.
Sadly not. Conwy Council, it has been revealed, felt that the security of the state was sufficiently threatened by someone working when they were off sick that they deployed their RIPA powers.
If they’re doing that when someone fakes a sickie, it rather makes you wonder what they would do for a really serious offence, like fly-tipping – deploy the nuclear option no doubt.
There may be some who say that if you are doing nothing wrong, then you’ve got nothing to fear from a bit of surveillance by your local authority.
But it’s all a matter of proportion isn’t it? Sure, if someone is plotting the downfall of the state, I rather hope someone from MI5 is listening in on their plans. If all they are planning is to get their child into a good school, then I’m thinking spying on them is a tad excessive.
The ability to spy upon citizens is an extreme one and ought only to be undertaken by those who we consent to police us, not some jumped-up council officer with a power complex.
I do hope that someone at the Welsh Local Government Association is penning a similar warning to councils here as that sent to authorities over the border.
I TAKE a hefty pinch of salt with ministerial suggestions that we should all tighten our belts.
Those who enjoy hefty Cabinet salaries and ridiculously generouls allowances, all funded by the taxpayer, ought not to give us advice on how restrained we should be in our salary ambitions.
With fuel and food on the rise, it’s understandable that people might like to see their wages go that way too. But no, no, the government doesn’t like that, it’s inflationary.
So the public sector gets to feel Alistair Darling’s icy hand exercising restraint and the private sector follows suit.
The thing is that people who see their fuel bills rocketing are going to twig sooner or later that that has an inflationary effect, but what exactly are Messrs Darling and Brown doing to curb that? Precisely nowt. See above, my advice on pinches of salt, ministerial advice for the use of.
What I’m slightly puzzled by is Gordon Brown’s seeming belief that somehow people are not going to vote him out of power at the next election because of the ruination their finances are in.
He is like the Mr Micawber of British politics, adamant in the belief that ‘something will come up.’ He had better hope so, because the electorate are not going to sit thetre being reposessed and paying through the nose for food and fuel without some hapless politician being strapped into the backside-kicking machine come election time.
Micawber was saved by Dickens’ deus ex machina, and Brown, son of the manse that he likes to remind us he is, is apparently hoping for similar divine intervention.
I reckon they’ve got about 12 months to get something sorted, and by that I mean something more competent than messing about with the 10p tax band. If they don’t come up with the goods then I don’t think it will make a blind bit of difference what the economy is doing come election day, people have long memories for this sort of pain, and Labour will be out on their ears.
WELL, my record of sporting tipping maintained its consistent record of being, well, rubbish, with the departure of Italy from Euro 2008.
Admittedly it was a choice based purely on the kit my son was given, but hey, better than my usual selection method involving a pin.
The one prediction I will make is more Grand Slams for Wales, and I base this purely on Charlotte Church and Gavin Henson’s fertility. Congratulations to the pair on the impending arrival of another baby. Charlotte reportedly said she’s happy to have a baby whenever Wales win the Grand Slam.
Marvellous, I look forward to Charlotte and Gavin producing a whole choir.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Column, June 17, 2008
SO the battle of the tick box has been won.
The 2011 census forms will include a box for people to indicate they are Welsh, not just British.
A trial run will be held in Anglesey next year and those who are Welsh will be able to express that. Good job it’s being held in October though, when the swallows of summer have left, otherwise the result might have been skewed and we'd think Anglsey was full of the English.
In a way I’m a bit sad about it. The absence of the tick box might have meant the revival of my old friends, The Independent Wales Party. My, the column inches I’ve had out of them.
We could have looked forward to another month of frolics as they gambolled from eisteddfod field to eisteddfod field, filling their coffin with forms that the Welsh refused to fill in because they could only declare themselves’ British.’
But no, some bureaucrat with no sense of fun has robbed them of their main raison d’etre and they can tick away to their heart’s content.
But wait, I think they might be missing a trick if they think the war of the census forms is won.
You see the forms let you say that you’re Welsh, but they don’t let you say just how Welsh you are.
There’s got to be gradations hasn’t there, otherwise everyone whose had a donkey ride on Talacre beach will be claiming they’re Welsh won’t they?
So can we work out a tick box system so people can choose just how Welsh they feel on census day?
Rather helpfully, I’ve got a few ideas of my own, see where you fit in.
A bit Welsh – once ate a stick of Llandudno rock
Quite Welsh – bought all of The Alarm’s CDs
Welsh – bought a Dafydd Iwan CD – haven’t returned it yet
Very Welsh – claim to like laver bread
Very, very Welsh – Lloyd George knew my father, but he knew my mother rather too well
Extremely Welsh – I’m a regular at the pub where we all speak English, but switch to Welsh when the English walk in
Ultimate Welsh – petrol – check, matches – check, now, where’s that holiday home?
Of course, I missed out the category pseudo-Welsh, where you knock out a weekly rant about Wales from a bolthole in England , but hey, it’s my tick-box form I get to edit it.
In the victory celebrations over the fact that the Welsh can declare themselves Welsh in their own country, we miss one important point. That is, will the Welsh get a tick box in England .
I suspect not. I rather think that if we are minded to declare our Welshness then we will have to do it by ticking ‘Other’ rather than British and then explaining where it is we come from.
Of course, we could risk the wrath of the census takers and add ‘Original’ before the word British, because that’s what we were before the Saxons crowded us out.
And in a way ‘Other’ is appropriate as the very word Welsh means strange, and I guess ‘Other’ is what we are in England .
The reason some were so vociferous about wanting a tick box is that they think it will bolster their ambitions of independence, as if a few thousand people ticking a box means you should start building your own navy and seceding from the rest of the UK .
It will provide a few headlines on the day they give out the results – ‘Lots of Welsh people say they’re Welsh – shock’.
What would be far more interesting and far more useful to know, would be how many people, like myself, count themselves as Welsh, but have left Wales .
I’m guessing there will be thousands in the job hubs of Liverpool, Manchester and most importantly, London .
All this talent (and I exclude myself from this point, naturally) is lost to Wales . We all have anecdotal evidence of young people leaving Wales . The traditional excuse if that they can’t afford a house, but I think it’s lack of opportunity not lack of housing that drives them out, because they aren’t finding cheap house in London let me tell you.
Let’s not let that get in the way of a good victory celebration about a meaningless tick box eh?
But if the exodus of young people continues, the coffin they carry in a few years won’t be for census forms, it will be for the nation itself.
HOW teacher Geraint Jones must have regretted his choice of practical joke that day at Ysgol y Creuddyn.
After all, there are so many he could have opted for – the whoopee cushion; the water-squirting flower; itching powder; electric handshake.
But no, he chose the old ‘fake bomb in colleague’s bag’ trick – always a winner, until, that is, the school is evacuated and the emergency services are called in.
It does make one rather wonder what life at the Llandudno school is like though. Because if I were to look in my bag and see what looked like a bomb, my first instinct would be to think – someone is having a laugh, not, oh my God, Al Queda’s latest fiendish plan is to take out teachers in schools in Wales thus bringing civilisation crumbling round our ears, we’re doomed I tell you, doomed.
Either that, or Mr Williams, who has been cautioned for his jape, does a convincing line in fake bombs. I take it it was more sophisticated than the old black cannonball labelled ‘BOMB’ with a fizzing fuse attached.
We never had anything like fake bombs in my schooldays. No, when I was in school one lad broke in and turned on all the gas taps in a fairly serious attempt the blow the place to smithereens.
So I suppose fake bombs are progress, of sorts.
The 2011 census forms will include a box for people to indicate they are Welsh, not just British.
A trial run will be held in Anglesey next year and those who are Welsh will be able to express that. Good job it’s being held in October though, when the swallows of summer have left, otherwise the result might have been skewed and we'd think Anglsey was full of the English.
In a way I’m a bit sad about it. The absence of the tick box might have meant the revival of my old friends, The Independent Wales Party. My, the column inches I’ve had out of them.
We could have looked forward to another month of frolics as they gambolled from eisteddfod field to eisteddfod field, filling their coffin with forms that the Welsh refused to fill in because they could only declare themselves’ British.’
But no, some bureaucrat with no sense of fun has robbed them of their main raison d’etre and they can tick away to their heart’s content.
But wait, I think they might be missing a trick if they think the war of the census forms is won.
You see the forms let you say that you’re Welsh, but they don’t let you say just how Welsh you are.
There’s got to be gradations hasn’t there, otherwise everyone whose had a donkey ride on Talacre beach will be claiming they’re Welsh won’t they?
So can we work out a tick box system so people can choose just how Welsh they feel on census day?
Rather helpfully, I’ve got a few ideas of my own, see where you fit in.
A bit Welsh – once ate a stick of Llandudno rock
Quite Welsh – bought all of The Alarm’s CDs
Welsh – bought a Dafydd Iwan CD – haven’t returned it yet
Very Welsh – claim to like laver bread
Very, very Welsh – Lloyd George knew my father, but he knew my mother rather too well
Extremely Welsh – I’m a regular at the pub where we all speak English, but switch to Welsh when the English walk in
Ultimate Welsh – petrol – check, matches – check, now, where’s that holiday home?
Of course, I missed out the category pseudo-Welsh, where you knock out a weekly rant about Wales from a bolthole in England , but hey, it’s my tick-box form I get to edit it.
In the victory celebrations over the fact that the Welsh can declare themselves Welsh in their own country, we miss one important point. That is, will the Welsh get a tick box in England .
I suspect not. I rather think that if we are minded to declare our Welshness then we will have to do it by ticking ‘Other’ rather than British and then explaining where it is we come from.
Of course, we could risk the wrath of the census takers and add ‘Original’ before the word British, because that’s what we were before the Saxons crowded us out.
And in a way ‘Other’ is appropriate as the very word Welsh means strange, and I guess ‘Other’ is what we are in England .
The reason some were so vociferous about wanting a tick box is that they think it will bolster their ambitions of independence, as if a few thousand people ticking a box means you should start building your own navy and seceding from the rest of the UK .
It will provide a few headlines on the day they give out the results – ‘Lots of Welsh people say they’re Welsh – shock’.
What would be far more interesting and far more useful to know, would be how many people, like myself, count themselves as Welsh, but have left Wales .
I’m guessing there will be thousands in the job hubs of Liverpool, Manchester and most importantly, London .
All this talent (and I exclude myself from this point, naturally) is lost to Wales . We all have anecdotal evidence of young people leaving Wales . The traditional excuse if that they can’t afford a house, but I think it’s lack of opportunity not lack of housing that drives them out, because they aren’t finding cheap house in London let me tell you.
Let’s not let that get in the way of a good victory celebration about a meaningless tick box eh?
But if the exodus of young people continues, the coffin they carry in a few years won’t be for census forms, it will be for the nation itself.
HOW teacher Geraint Jones must have regretted his choice of practical joke that day at Ysgol y Creuddyn.
After all, there are so many he could have opted for – the whoopee cushion; the water-squirting flower; itching powder; electric handshake.
But no, he chose the old ‘fake bomb in colleague’s bag’ trick – always a winner, until, that is, the school is evacuated and the emergency services are called in.
It does make one rather wonder what life at the Llandudno school is like though. Because if I were to look in my bag and see what looked like a bomb, my first instinct would be to think – someone is having a laugh, not, oh my God, Al Queda’s latest fiendish plan is to take out teachers in schools in Wales thus bringing civilisation crumbling round our ears, we’re doomed I tell you, doomed.
Either that, or Mr Williams, who has been cautioned for his jape, does a convincing line in fake bombs. I take it it was more sophisticated than the old black cannonball labelled ‘BOMB’ with a fizzing fuse attached.
We never had anything like fake bombs in my schooldays. No, when I was in school one lad broke in and turned on all the gas taps in a fairly serious attempt the blow the place to smithereens.
So I suppose fake bombs are progress, of sorts.
Column, June 10, 2008
IT’S unusual for police officers to speak their mind.
It’s a sad state of affairs, but like so many public servants they seem sworn to some Trappist vow of silence when it comes to expressing an opinion.
Oh sure they’ll reel off facts and statistics and descriptions and warnings to the public, but ask them to comment about stuff like politics and they insist on their right to silence with all the enthusiasm of the petty crooks they question.
And who can blame them, after all they’ve seen so many predecessors sent to the career equivalent of Siberia for giving the merest hint of disapproval of their political masters.
So when one is brave enough to stick his or her head above the parapet it’s probably worth listening to them. You might not agree with them, but give them a hearing because speaking out will have caused them a good deal more pause for thought than, off the top of my head, a blowhard newspaper columnist.
So when Andy Williams, an inspector from Anglesey said that the ne’er-do-wells of his patch fear being banned from the local pubs more than they fear the penalties imposed by the courts, that tells us two things.
Firstly, and really quite encouragingly really, the effectiveness of the Pubwatch scheme. I have to say I’ve often seen the signs behind the bars of the pubs I frequent for the very occasional half a shandy, and I’ve wondered about their effectiveness. But I’m reassured by the picture Insp Williams paints of criminals apparently indifferent to all other punishments, who are reduced to pathetic pleading when threatened with being banned from their local.
Jack Regan never resorted to that in The Sweeney did he, and he missed a trick: “You Slaaag, sign that confession or you’ve had your last pin in the Dog&Duck.”
The other thing that this tells us, and this is a bit more depressing, is that the criminals to whom Insp Williams refers hold the courts in contempt.
Now you have to realise that Insp Williams is coming at this from a certain angle and the yoghurt-knitting, wool-undie-wearing social workers among us might disagree and think that all car thieves need is a good hug. Until, of course, their Citroen 2CVs get nicked and burnt out, when suddenly they get a bit Genghis Khan about the whole thing, wanting to wreak vengeance on the car thief, and the car thief’s children and the car thief’s children’s children and…you get the picture.
But, in the carefully chosen words of Insp Williams, the courts “are bogged down in the politics of the government of today, which I feel has some extremely pressing issues in terms of both prison populations and the balance between punishment and rehabilitation.”
Someone not straightjacketed by a lifetime of public service, like, off the top of my head, a blowhard newspaper columnist, might put it like this: “The courts would like to bang them up, and you and me would like to see them banged up, but we can’t bang them up because the prisons and full and so we have to try and rehabilitate people who don’t wan to be rehabilitated, they just want to carry on nicking.”
What the answer is I don’t know, for a change, but Insp Williams points out the problem of a jail population that;’s bursting at the seams, resulting in a criminal population who don’t take the justice system as seriously as we would like them to.
The problem is the frustration that must cause Insp Williams and his fellow officers who know that we are worried about crime and yet, when they catch a criminal and put them before the courts – and believe me, they do this in the vast majority of crimes, there is no such thing as a criminal mastermind, the phrase ‘thick as thieves’ refers to their intellect as well – the crooks can shrug it off because they know they’ll get a slap on the wrist.
So, do we buold more prisons? Not popular because very few people want one of those in their back yard. Or do we have more punishments that actually mean something to those who commit crime – like pub bans. It might sound facetious, but if the threat of it works and reduces crime then who cares?
And if Richard Brunstrom’s willingness to speak out has filtered down to lower-ranking officers then that can only be a good thing. As I said, you might not agree with all they say, but they are empowered with enforcing the law and it is imprtant that is they are brave enough to express an honest opinion about that, we should listen.
I hope we hear from more officers like Andy Williams.
SO the fuel protests are coming to the A55.
A Facebook group has been set up – the nation quakes – and theur plan is a 20mph go-slow down the A55 from Stanlow to Colwyn Bay.
No doubt the COBRA committee is meeting in Whitehall to discuss ths latest threat to civilisation.
Apparently, the plan is to drive in convoy along the A55 holding everyone up to make the point that fuel is a bit expensive.
Somehow, I’m thinking, it’s goinbg to take a little more than that to get OPEC’s attention, but call me a whinging nay-sayer.
But I’m afraid to say there is one, crucial problem with their protest idea. The speed they’re planning to travel – 20mph on a Friday towards the North Wales coast.
Others who have endured the hell of the A55 on a summer weekend will be laughing as the read this – 20mph, we dreamt of travelling at 20mph, 20 yards an hour more like.
If they manage to get to Colwyn Bay at an average speed of 20mph, do they realise tat they will be carried shoulder-high along the beach by grateful holiday-makers, delighted to have got down the expressway in record time.
They’ll be given the freedom of the borough and hailed as the saviours of the North Wales tourist industry.
Why not walk along the A55 to give your support on the day? But not too fast eh?, You’ll leave them behind.
It’s a sad state of affairs, but like so many public servants they seem sworn to some Trappist vow of silence when it comes to expressing an opinion.
Oh sure they’ll reel off facts and statistics and descriptions and warnings to the public, but ask them to comment about stuff like politics and they insist on their right to silence with all the enthusiasm of the petty crooks they question.
And who can blame them, after all they’ve seen so many predecessors sent to the career equivalent of Siberia for giving the merest hint of disapproval of their political masters.
So when one is brave enough to stick his or her head above the parapet it’s probably worth listening to them. You might not agree with them, but give them a hearing because speaking out will have caused them a good deal more pause for thought than, off the top of my head, a blowhard newspaper columnist.
So when Andy Williams, an inspector from Anglesey said that the ne’er-do-wells of his patch fear being banned from the local pubs more than they fear the penalties imposed by the courts, that tells us two things.
Firstly, and really quite encouragingly really, the effectiveness of the Pubwatch scheme. I have to say I’ve often seen the signs behind the bars of the pubs I frequent for the very occasional half a shandy, and I’ve wondered about their effectiveness. But I’m reassured by the picture Insp Williams paints of criminals apparently indifferent to all other punishments, who are reduced to pathetic pleading when threatened with being banned from their local.
Jack Regan never resorted to that in The Sweeney did he, and he missed a trick: “You Slaaag, sign that confession or you’ve had your last pin in the Dog&Duck.”
The other thing that this tells us, and this is a bit more depressing, is that the criminals to whom Insp Williams refers hold the courts in contempt.
Now you have to realise that Insp Williams is coming at this from a certain angle and the yoghurt-knitting, wool-undie-wearing social workers among us might disagree and think that all car thieves need is a good hug. Until, of course, their Citroen 2CVs get nicked and burnt out, when suddenly they get a bit Genghis Khan about the whole thing, wanting to wreak vengeance on the car thief, and the car thief’s children and the car thief’s children’s children and…you get the picture.
But, in the carefully chosen words of Insp Williams, the courts “are bogged down in the politics of the government of today, which I feel has some extremely pressing issues in terms of both prison populations and the balance between punishment and rehabilitation.”
Someone not straightjacketed by a lifetime of public service, like, off the top of my head, a blowhard newspaper columnist, might put it like this: “The courts would like to bang them up, and you and me would like to see them banged up, but we can’t bang them up because the prisons and full and so we have to try and rehabilitate people who don’t wan to be rehabilitated, they just want to carry on nicking.”
What the answer is I don’t know, for a change, but Insp Williams points out the problem of a jail population that;’s bursting at the seams, resulting in a criminal population who don’t take the justice system as seriously as we would like them to.
The problem is the frustration that must cause Insp Williams and his fellow officers who know that we are worried about crime and yet, when they catch a criminal and put them before the courts – and believe me, they do this in the vast majority of crimes, there is no such thing as a criminal mastermind, the phrase ‘thick as thieves’ refers to their intellect as well – the crooks can shrug it off because they know they’ll get a slap on the wrist.
So, do we buold more prisons? Not popular because very few people want one of those in their back yard. Or do we have more punishments that actually mean something to those who commit crime – like pub bans. It might sound facetious, but if the threat of it works and reduces crime then who cares?
And if Richard Brunstrom’s willingness to speak out has filtered down to lower-ranking officers then that can only be a good thing. As I said, you might not agree with all they say, but they are empowered with enforcing the law and it is imprtant that is they are brave enough to express an honest opinion about that, we should listen.
I hope we hear from more officers like Andy Williams.
SO the fuel protests are coming to the A55.
A Facebook group has been set up – the nation quakes – and theur plan is a 20mph go-slow down the A55 from Stanlow to Colwyn Bay.
No doubt the COBRA committee is meeting in Whitehall to discuss ths latest threat to civilisation.
Apparently, the plan is to drive in convoy along the A55 holding everyone up to make the point that fuel is a bit expensive.
Somehow, I’m thinking, it’s goinbg to take a little more than that to get OPEC’s attention, but call me a whinging nay-sayer.
But I’m afraid to say there is one, crucial problem with their protest idea. The speed they’re planning to travel – 20mph on a Friday towards the North Wales coast.
Others who have endured the hell of the A55 on a summer weekend will be laughing as the read this – 20mph, we dreamt of travelling at 20mph, 20 yards an hour more like.
If they manage to get to Colwyn Bay at an average speed of 20mph, do they realise tat they will be carried shoulder-high along the beach by grateful holiday-makers, delighted to have got down the expressway in record time.
They’ll be given the freedom of the borough and hailed as the saviours of the North Wales tourist industry.
Why not walk along the A55 to give your support on the day? But not too fast eh?, You’ll leave them behind.
Column, June 3, 2008
LET’S start at the beginning shall we?
The Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago, and 3.8 billion years ago the oaceans were formed. Unless of course you are of a particularly literal religious persuasion, in which case it all happened over six days or so about 6,000 years ago, and if you believe that you’d best stop reading now.
But, what I’m getting at is that the Earth, the oceans and the Moon have been around quite a while now, and as a result, so have the tides. 3.8 billion years of the tide coming in, and going out, coming in, going out, coming in, going out, coming in, well, you get the picture don’t you?
You do, but the 70 people rescued from sand banks off the beaches of North Wales at the weekend did not.
Even as the water rushed in behind them, reportedly, some of them refused to heed the warnings of their rescuers of the danger they were in. Only when they realised they would have to wade waist-deep to get back to the shore did they, hopefully gratefully, accept a lift back from the RNLI.
Perhaps on the Croeso i Gymru signs on the border we should add “please check your brains in here”.
Even the common winkle, a mollusc not known for its extraordinary brain capacity, knows when the tide is coming in, but not, it would seem, the crowds paddling at Rhyl, Towyn, Llandudno and Pensarn.
Perhaps these holidaymakers were more accustomed to the puny tides of the enclosed Mediterranean, which lulled them into a false sense of security when they came to North Wales.
They might just be forgiven if they residents of the American Mid-West, for whom the sea was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But we are an island race, the furthest point from the sea is a mere 70 miles. Nelson would be turning in his grave to know a nation that once ruled the waves had been reduced to such a bunch of lubbers.
Still, I suppose it makes a nice change for them to be hauled from the sea rather than plucked off the mountains by helicopter after they tried a winter ascent of Crib Goch equipped only with flip-flops and a Mars bar.
Maybe there’s another way of looking at it. Perhaps this was evolution in action, some lemming-like instinct kicking in. These people through sheer stupidity were trying to unwittingly do the human race a favour by removing themselves from the gene pool. Or maybe it’s a crude attempt to return to the waters from which we evolved.
It’s a tribute to the dedication and persistence of the RNLI that those who refused help until the waters threatened to wash them away were brought safely to shore instead of being given a short, sharp swimming lesson.
It would seem there is a business opportunity for some bright entrepreneur who wants to set up a stall on the beaches of North Wales selling commonsense by the ounce – there are some visitors in dire need of it.
NORTH Wales Assistant Chief Constable Ian Shannon was out with the troops on a licensing visit to a pub when a sign caught his eye.
‘Polite Notice – Positively No Travellers’ it said.
Mr Shannon raised his concerns about the ‘bigoted and unpleasant’ sign on his blog and it was reported to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the sign, in a pub in the Flintshire and Wrexham area, has removed the sign.
Its author ought perhaps to have remembered the original purpose of many pubs and inns was to provide a place of rest for travellers, so it’s a bit rich barring them now.
As the credit crunch takes hold mine host might also find his regulars tightening their belts and he cannot be so discriminating, or discriminatory, about his clientele.
Of course, I dare say travellers are used to this sort of prejudice, whether it’s advertised by a notice or not. You can make someone take down a sign, but it takes a bit more effort to change what’s going on in their bigoted little head.
A couple of points to make about this. Firstly, it’s heartening to know that senior officers get out and find out what happens in the real world rather than rely on junior officers to tell them – other forces take note.
Secondly, good to see that the matter got sorted out without recourse to lengthy and costly legal action.
And finally, to signwriters everywhere, if you find yourself penning the words ‘Polite Notice’ on a notice, you’ll find it invariably isn’t, polite that is, and it’s perhaps best to put your paintbrush away.
AND now to the vexed question of who to support for Euro 2008.
The BBC has been focusing on this heavily in the run-up, as if we are all in a real quandary now that England are not in it, the assumption being that we would all have been flying flags of St George had England not been dumped out in the qualifiers.
Who to support has always been an issue this side of the border, so it has taken a little thought.
It was settled in the Banks household by a gift from Banks junior’s uncles. He was presented with a full Italy strip, on the grounds that they might win, and that’s a good enough reason to support the Azzurri.
It might seem fickle supporting a team on such a tenuous basis, but a Daily Post colleague from deepest North Wales has been a lifelong fan of Spurs as a result of the gift of a strip at an early age, footballing allegiances defy logic and rightly so.
They’re in a tough group though, with France, the Netherlands and Romania, so if they go the way of my previous football predictions, we could be looking for a new team upon which to bestow our support rather soon.
Until then, Forza Italia!
The Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago, and 3.8 billion years ago the oaceans were formed. Unless of course you are of a particularly literal religious persuasion, in which case it all happened over six days or so about 6,000 years ago, and if you believe that you’d best stop reading now.
But, what I’m getting at is that the Earth, the oceans and the Moon have been around quite a while now, and as a result, so have the tides. 3.8 billion years of the tide coming in, and going out, coming in, going out, coming in, going out, coming in, well, you get the picture don’t you?
You do, but the 70 people rescued from sand banks off the beaches of North Wales at the weekend did not.
Even as the water rushed in behind them, reportedly, some of them refused to heed the warnings of their rescuers of the danger they were in. Only when they realised they would have to wade waist-deep to get back to the shore did they, hopefully gratefully, accept a lift back from the RNLI.
Perhaps on the Croeso i Gymru signs on the border we should add “please check your brains in here”.
Even the common winkle, a mollusc not known for its extraordinary brain capacity, knows when the tide is coming in, but not, it would seem, the crowds paddling at Rhyl, Towyn, Llandudno and Pensarn.
Perhaps these holidaymakers were more accustomed to the puny tides of the enclosed Mediterranean, which lulled them into a false sense of security when they came to North Wales.
They might just be forgiven if they residents of the American Mid-West, for whom the sea was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But we are an island race, the furthest point from the sea is a mere 70 miles. Nelson would be turning in his grave to know a nation that once ruled the waves had been reduced to such a bunch of lubbers.
Still, I suppose it makes a nice change for them to be hauled from the sea rather than plucked off the mountains by helicopter after they tried a winter ascent of Crib Goch equipped only with flip-flops and a Mars bar.
Maybe there’s another way of looking at it. Perhaps this was evolution in action, some lemming-like instinct kicking in. These people through sheer stupidity were trying to unwittingly do the human race a favour by removing themselves from the gene pool. Or maybe it’s a crude attempt to return to the waters from which we evolved.
It’s a tribute to the dedication and persistence of the RNLI that those who refused help until the waters threatened to wash them away were brought safely to shore instead of being given a short, sharp swimming lesson.
It would seem there is a business opportunity for some bright entrepreneur who wants to set up a stall on the beaches of North Wales selling commonsense by the ounce – there are some visitors in dire need of it.
NORTH Wales Assistant Chief Constable Ian Shannon was out with the troops on a licensing visit to a pub when a sign caught his eye.
‘Polite Notice – Positively No Travellers’ it said.
Mr Shannon raised his concerns about the ‘bigoted and unpleasant’ sign on his blog and it was reported to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the sign, in a pub in the Flintshire and Wrexham area, has removed the sign.
Its author ought perhaps to have remembered the original purpose of many pubs and inns was to provide a place of rest for travellers, so it’s a bit rich barring them now.
As the credit crunch takes hold mine host might also find his regulars tightening their belts and he cannot be so discriminating, or discriminatory, about his clientele.
Of course, I dare say travellers are used to this sort of prejudice, whether it’s advertised by a notice or not. You can make someone take down a sign, but it takes a bit more effort to change what’s going on in their bigoted little head.
A couple of points to make about this. Firstly, it’s heartening to know that senior officers get out and find out what happens in the real world rather than rely on junior officers to tell them – other forces take note.
Secondly, good to see that the matter got sorted out without recourse to lengthy and costly legal action.
And finally, to signwriters everywhere, if you find yourself penning the words ‘Polite Notice’ on a notice, you’ll find it invariably isn’t, polite that is, and it’s perhaps best to put your paintbrush away.
AND now to the vexed question of who to support for Euro 2008.
The BBC has been focusing on this heavily in the run-up, as if we are all in a real quandary now that England are not in it, the assumption being that we would all have been flying flags of St George had England not been dumped out in the qualifiers.
Who to support has always been an issue this side of the border, so it has taken a little thought.
It was settled in the Banks household by a gift from Banks junior’s uncles. He was presented with a full Italy strip, on the grounds that they might win, and that’s a good enough reason to support the Azzurri.
It might seem fickle supporting a team on such a tenuous basis, but a Daily Post colleague from deepest North Wales has been a lifelong fan of Spurs as a result of the gift of a strip at an early age, footballing allegiances defy logic and rightly so.
They’re in a tough group though, with France, the Netherlands and Romania, so if they go the way of my previous football predictions, we could be looking for a new team upon which to bestow our support rather soon.
Until then, Forza Italia!
Column, May 20, 2008
IT’S probably fair to say that when Paul Murphy entered politics his inspiration was not Marie Antoinette.
But when a politician tells people they’ll have to make do with sub-inflation pay rises while all about them prices are shooting skyward, it does rather smack of comments the ill-fated queen made about the starving masses eating cake.
The common refrain of Government ministers these days from Gordon Brown down is that they ‘feel our pain’, or as Mr Murphy put it, “People in Wales are feeling the squeeze.”
Yes, They’re feeling about as uncomfortable as a Labour MP in a marginal seat I would say.
However, Mr Murphy had few comforting words for those facing debt, foreclosure and poverty – aka feeling the squeeze. No instead he warned any of them in the public sector that they shouldn’t expect any help from their employers – ie him.
No, Mr Murphy, whose salary as a Cabinet Minister could be as much as £138,000, warned that inflation busting pay increases were not the answer to our woes.
To his credit, he and other MPs, have accepted a below-inflation 1.9% pay rise this year. The uncharitable among you might point out that someone trousering £138,000 a year can afford to take a below-inflation rise once in a while without feeling the squeeze too much, but remember, Paul feels your pain.
It is statements like Mr Murphy’s that make me think that there are a few people at the very top of New Labour who really do not quite comprehend what is going to happen when they summon up the courage to call an election (that is of course, assuming that they do summon up said courage and don’t cling on by their bitten fingernails until the final day possible)
Electricity bills are up, gas bills likewise, food bills are rocketing and you have to get a move on when you’re filling your car with petrol for fear of the price going up while you’re pumping it in.
At the same time our AMs, those who have taken it, have enjoyed a very healthy, inflation-busting 8.3% pay rise which took their annual salary from £46,804 to £50,692. That’s just over twice the average Welsh wage of £24,544 a year. A wage which, incidentally, even before the credit cruch was not enough to buy an average-priced house in Wales. There are plenty of people here who will be welcoming a collapse in house prices.
But wage inflation, says Mr Murphy, is not the answer, that fuels inflation and they’re not going to take us back to the bad old days of the ‘80s and ‘90s when it was out of control.
Yes, dumping cash into an economy will have an inflationary effect, he’s quite right. Odd then that his government have sat back and watched the housing market dump huge amounts of cash into the economy as people cashed in their equity in recent years.
But then house price inflation was giving everyone a rosy glow about the government wasn’t it? All of a sudden people were taking equity out of their homes to buy stuff to fill those homes with; to buy second homes and to fund expensive foreign holidays, And to have interfered with it would have been an unwarranted meddling in the free market which has served us so well, up until now.
It was a bubble that had to burst, and so it has with predictions of a ‘correction’ in house prices by as much as 30%. So if you’ve just bought a house for £200,000, it might soon be worth £140,000. Try remortgaging that.
That is the sort of pain Mr Murphy and his fellow Cabinet members feel with us, insulated though they may be from it all by generous allowances that fund and furnish their constituency homes.
But Mr Murphy’s faith in the electors not to punish his government for their failings is touching. “At a general election people look at the policies and they will see that the Conservative promises do not add up,” he said.
Nice try Mr Murphy, but you’re fooling no-one. No, Mr Murphy, at a general election people who are feeling the squeeze will look at the contents of their bank account and vote accordingly.
I CAN reveal that the Oasis Hotel’s pink makeover and their orders to tone it down are nothing new.
You will remember that the Oasis was touched up in pink, but it was too vibrant a shade and the owners have been instructed to redo it.
Charlie Roberts, former painter of this parish, writes in to tell me of a similar incident back in 1966.
“Back in 1966 working as a painter for a local firm we had the job of painting The Washington Hotel on the prom, also in Llandudno, a deep cream, as I recall.
“We finished the job on the Friday, but on the following Sunday, Lord Mostyn, who was sailing in the bay as commodore of the yacht club, turned to his chief henchman, George Hillier, and said ‘What is that monstrous colour on that hotel George?’
“When he was told it was a sort of cream he said tell them to change it immediately. So we went back on Monday and done it again!”
“So Mr Banks, nothing has changed in 40 years. Bloated capitalists or what?”
“Yours faithfully, Charlie”
From the dates Mr Roberts has given, this is the previous Lord Mostyn, the fifth Baron, Mr Roberts refers to, not the present Lord Mostyn
You’re right Mr Roberts and the French have a saying for it – plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose – the more things change, the more they stay the same.
But then, the French also guillotined the class of people who might presume to tell them what colour to paint their hotels.
But when a politician tells people they’ll have to make do with sub-inflation pay rises while all about them prices are shooting skyward, it does rather smack of comments the ill-fated queen made about the starving masses eating cake.
The common refrain of Government ministers these days from Gordon Brown down is that they ‘feel our pain’, or as Mr Murphy put it, “People in Wales are feeling the squeeze.”
Yes, They’re feeling about as uncomfortable as a Labour MP in a marginal seat I would say.
However, Mr Murphy had few comforting words for those facing debt, foreclosure and poverty – aka feeling the squeeze. No instead he warned any of them in the public sector that they shouldn’t expect any help from their employers – ie him.
No, Mr Murphy, whose salary as a Cabinet Minister could be as much as £138,000, warned that inflation busting pay increases were not the answer to our woes.
To his credit, he and other MPs, have accepted a below-inflation 1.9% pay rise this year. The uncharitable among you might point out that someone trousering £138,000 a year can afford to take a below-inflation rise once in a while without feeling the squeeze too much, but remember, Paul feels your pain.
It is statements like Mr Murphy’s that make me think that there are a few people at the very top of New Labour who really do not quite comprehend what is going to happen when they summon up the courage to call an election (that is of course, assuming that they do summon up said courage and don’t cling on by their bitten fingernails until the final day possible)
Electricity bills are up, gas bills likewise, food bills are rocketing and you have to get a move on when you’re filling your car with petrol for fear of the price going up while you’re pumping it in.
At the same time our AMs, those who have taken it, have enjoyed a very healthy, inflation-busting 8.3% pay rise which took their annual salary from £46,804 to £50,692. That’s just over twice the average Welsh wage of £24,544 a year. A wage which, incidentally, even before the credit cruch was not enough to buy an average-priced house in Wales. There are plenty of people here who will be welcoming a collapse in house prices.
But wage inflation, says Mr Murphy, is not the answer, that fuels inflation and they’re not going to take us back to the bad old days of the ‘80s and ‘90s when it was out of control.
Yes, dumping cash into an economy will have an inflationary effect, he’s quite right. Odd then that his government have sat back and watched the housing market dump huge amounts of cash into the economy as people cashed in their equity in recent years.
But then house price inflation was giving everyone a rosy glow about the government wasn’t it? All of a sudden people were taking equity out of their homes to buy stuff to fill those homes with; to buy second homes and to fund expensive foreign holidays, And to have interfered with it would have been an unwarranted meddling in the free market which has served us so well, up until now.
It was a bubble that had to burst, and so it has with predictions of a ‘correction’ in house prices by as much as 30%. So if you’ve just bought a house for £200,000, it might soon be worth £140,000. Try remortgaging that.
That is the sort of pain Mr Murphy and his fellow Cabinet members feel with us, insulated though they may be from it all by generous allowances that fund and furnish their constituency homes.
But Mr Murphy’s faith in the electors not to punish his government for their failings is touching. “At a general election people look at the policies and they will see that the Conservative promises do not add up,” he said.
Nice try Mr Murphy, but you’re fooling no-one. No, Mr Murphy, at a general election people who are feeling the squeeze will look at the contents of their bank account and vote accordingly.
I CAN reveal that the Oasis Hotel’s pink makeover and their orders to tone it down are nothing new.
You will remember that the Oasis was touched up in pink, but it was too vibrant a shade and the owners have been instructed to redo it.
Charlie Roberts, former painter of this parish, writes in to tell me of a similar incident back in 1966.
“Back in 1966 working as a painter for a local firm we had the job of painting The Washington Hotel on the prom, also in Llandudno, a deep cream, as I recall.
“We finished the job on the Friday, but on the following Sunday, Lord Mostyn, who was sailing in the bay as commodore of the yacht club, turned to his chief henchman, George Hillier, and said ‘What is that monstrous colour on that hotel George?’
“When he was told it was a sort of cream he said tell them to change it immediately. So we went back on Monday and done it again!”
“So Mr Banks, nothing has changed in 40 years. Bloated capitalists or what?”
“Yours faithfully, Charlie”
From the dates Mr Roberts has given, this is the previous Lord Mostyn, the fifth Baron, Mr Roberts refers to, not the present Lord Mostyn
You’re right Mr Roberts and the French have a saying for it – plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose – the more things change, the more they stay the same.
But then, the French also guillotined the class of people who might presume to tell them what colour to paint their hotels.
Column, May 20, 2008
BARRISTERS say that you should never ask a question in court you don’t already know the answer to.
Government consultations work in a similar way, only then they never ask a question they haven’t already decided the answer to.
So when they say: “We’re considering closing down your local post office, and we’re now consulting you to see what you think of that”, what they actually mean is: “We’re closing down your post office and you can blether all you like, it’s going, tough cheddar, you can write in to complain if you want but it’s a waste of a stamp, and you’re going to be hard pushed to find somewhere to buy one of those soon.”
Let me give you one small example of just how mad this policy of slash and burn of local post offices is.
They claim that you will be within three miles of a post office, but as the Daily Post revealed, that’s actually quite likely to be nearer six miles. But that’s only applies to when you want to go to a post office yourself. In some situations you will have to travel much, much further.
In my work I get a lot of parcels sent to me recorded delivery. Now, at the moment, if I’m not in, the postperson drops them off at the village post office for collection later, which involved me walking all of 200 yards, on foot, no car involved, no pollution.
I say ‘involved’ because that’s what used to happen. The post office closed today. So now, although the nearest post office is about three miles away, because of the way the post office arranges its deliveries, these packages will go back to a post office 13 miles away.
So though you might be three, or six miles from your nearest post office, that might not be the one you have to go to in order to pick something up.
So now, to pick up parcels, it’s a 26-mile round trip, probably once a week. That is going to mean my car pumping a quarter of a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere because of the closure of my local post office. And that is just me, there will be thousands more like me, all having to make unnecessary journeys because our post office has shut.
I know the economic arguments and how much the post office network costs and so on. But just as village schools provide some of the social glue which holds a community together, so does the local post office. It’s closure might make sense to those who count beans, but then they rarely have an appreciation of anything the delivers value to a community rather than profit.
And I’m disinclined to listen to arguments about the unreasonable cost of running the post offices from a government that has squandered billions on an illegal war in Iraq and found billions in a ham-fisted attempt to bribe voters in wake of the mess that was made abolishing the 10p tax rate.
The thing that we all know is that the closure of the post offices will have its most devastating effect in rural constituencies where Labour does not traditionally fare well. They figure that their urban voters will not be affected by the change and so they can weather the fall-out from it. Once again they have shown themselves to be the party of the city-dweller.
So that’s what you get when you’re consulted – a deaf ear, a blind eye and a closed notice on your post office.
IT was, perhaps, inevitable that Cardiff City were going to lose in the FA Cup final with Portsmouth.
Not because they were in any way the inferior team, as we saw on Saturday, they pften played the better football.
No, it’s just there is is just so much good fortune a country can expect and Wales has had more than its fair share this year.
Winning the Six Nations – which would do us for the whole year most of the time, Joe Calzaghe beating everyone in the world, Duffy topping the charts and so on.
No, if Cardiff had won where would it have ended?
Bangor University causing a bit of an upset on the Thames when their scratch team of rowers from the rugby 3rd XV beat Oxford and Cambridge in the boat race?
A donkey off Ffrith beach winning the Grand National? (Even if it didn’t win it would do better than the knacker’s yard candidates usually backed by your truly)
The fearless bridge divers of Betws-y-Coed taking an unexpected gold for synchronised belly-flopping at the Beijing Games?
All of a sudden the planets would align, the Holy Grail would be discovered in a cave in Wales, carried aloft by the risen King Arthur.
Just think of the increase in traffic down the A55, sometimes it’s wise to hide your light under a bushel. Hard luck Cardiff, but it was for the best.
A PINK hotel might not be to everyone’s taste, but a shabby one is even worse.
What would Mostyn Estates rather the Oasis in Llandudno look like? They’re not happy that owners Ann and David Blanchard touched up its pillars a shade of pink and it now looks like it will be back to a less in-your-face shade.
At this stage I should say that decisions on the appropriateness of colour are not my preserve. Like the majority of the male population should I ever mistakenly pick up a pain colour chart – looking for the TV guide or somesuch other important document – I would see lots of little blocks of colour which I could not choose between.
Whereas Mrs Banks sees all the hues of the rainbow arrayed before her.
But it’s the principle of telling people what they can and cannot do when they are actually doing no-one any harm.
Yes, a vibrant pink might not make your heart skip with joy, but it does no harm, so lets allow a little individuality into our lives shall we? Lets not resort to the red tape simply because someone does something every so slightly different from the rest of us.
Of course, they’ll say where will it end, if the Oasis is allowed vibrant pink what shade will the others choose?
Can I refer you to Tenby, whose houses and hotels are decked out like a maypole and whose reputation, and visitor figures, don’t seem to have suffered too much as a result.
Government consultations work in a similar way, only then they never ask a question they haven’t already decided the answer to.
So when they say: “We’re considering closing down your local post office, and we’re now consulting you to see what you think of that”, what they actually mean is: “We’re closing down your post office and you can blether all you like, it’s going, tough cheddar, you can write in to complain if you want but it’s a waste of a stamp, and you’re going to be hard pushed to find somewhere to buy one of those soon.”
Let me give you one small example of just how mad this policy of slash and burn of local post offices is.
They claim that you will be within three miles of a post office, but as the Daily Post revealed, that’s actually quite likely to be nearer six miles. But that’s only applies to when you want to go to a post office yourself. In some situations you will have to travel much, much further.
In my work I get a lot of parcels sent to me recorded delivery. Now, at the moment, if I’m not in, the postperson drops them off at the village post office for collection later, which involved me walking all of 200 yards, on foot, no car involved, no pollution.
I say ‘involved’ because that’s what used to happen. The post office closed today. So now, although the nearest post office is about three miles away, because of the way the post office arranges its deliveries, these packages will go back to a post office 13 miles away.
So though you might be three, or six miles from your nearest post office, that might not be the one you have to go to in order to pick something up.
So now, to pick up parcels, it’s a 26-mile round trip, probably once a week. That is going to mean my car pumping a quarter of a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere because of the closure of my local post office. And that is just me, there will be thousands more like me, all having to make unnecessary journeys because our post office has shut.
I know the economic arguments and how much the post office network costs and so on. But just as village schools provide some of the social glue which holds a community together, so does the local post office. It’s closure might make sense to those who count beans, but then they rarely have an appreciation of anything the delivers value to a community rather than profit.
And I’m disinclined to listen to arguments about the unreasonable cost of running the post offices from a government that has squandered billions on an illegal war in Iraq and found billions in a ham-fisted attempt to bribe voters in wake of the mess that was made abolishing the 10p tax rate.
The thing that we all know is that the closure of the post offices will have its most devastating effect in rural constituencies where Labour does not traditionally fare well. They figure that their urban voters will not be affected by the change and so they can weather the fall-out from it. Once again they have shown themselves to be the party of the city-dweller.
So that’s what you get when you’re consulted – a deaf ear, a blind eye and a closed notice on your post office.
IT was, perhaps, inevitable that Cardiff City were going to lose in the FA Cup final with Portsmouth.
Not because they were in any way the inferior team, as we saw on Saturday, they pften played the better football.
No, it’s just there is is just so much good fortune a country can expect and Wales has had more than its fair share this year.
Winning the Six Nations – which would do us for the whole year most of the time, Joe Calzaghe beating everyone in the world, Duffy topping the charts and so on.
No, if Cardiff had won where would it have ended?
Bangor University causing a bit of an upset on the Thames when their scratch team of rowers from the rugby 3rd XV beat Oxford and Cambridge in the boat race?
A donkey off Ffrith beach winning the Grand National? (Even if it didn’t win it would do better than the knacker’s yard candidates usually backed by your truly)
The fearless bridge divers of Betws-y-Coed taking an unexpected gold for synchronised belly-flopping at the Beijing Games?
All of a sudden the planets would align, the Holy Grail would be discovered in a cave in Wales, carried aloft by the risen King Arthur.
Just think of the increase in traffic down the A55, sometimes it’s wise to hide your light under a bushel. Hard luck Cardiff, but it was for the best.
A PINK hotel might not be to everyone’s taste, but a shabby one is even worse.
What would Mostyn Estates rather the Oasis in Llandudno look like? They’re not happy that owners Ann and David Blanchard touched up its pillars a shade of pink and it now looks like it will be back to a less in-your-face shade.
At this stage I should say that decisions on the appropriateness of colour are not my preserve. Like the majority of the male population should I ever mistakenly pick up a pain colour chart – looking for the TV guide or somesuch other important document – I would see lots of little blocks of colour which I could not choose between.
Whereas Mrs Banks sees all the hues of the rainbow arrayed before her.
But it’s the principle of telling people what they can and cannot do when they are actually doing no-one any harm.
Yes, a vibrant pink might not make your heart skip with joy, but it does no harm, so lets allow a little individuality into our lives shall we? Lets not resort to the red tape simply because someone does something every so slightly different from the rest of us.
Of course, they’ll say where will it end, if the Oasis is allowed vibrant pink what shade will the others choose?
Can I refer you to Tenby, whose houses and hotels are decked out like a maypole and whose reputation, and visitor figures, don’t seem to have suffered too much as a result.
Column, May 13, 2008
IT’S a good job we’ve got the mountains.
Because when the globally-warmed waves, swollen by the molten ice-caps, come lapping at our ankles, we will at least have somewhere to retreat to as civilisation crumbles around us.
I know we don’t always see eye to eye with our English neighbours, but watching them slowly become and archipelago seems a slightly extreme way of settling our differences.
But why should the Welsh blame themselves for these impending ecological disasters?
Well, it might have something to do with the latest figures to be released by the Office for National Statistics, which looked at just how ‘green’ we were all being.
Here we are in Wales, a nation criss-crossed by quiet country lanes with barely a motorway worthy of the name in the entire country, and just how many miles, on average, do you think we cycle?
I’ll tell you – just 20.
The only people who cycle less then us are those who live in the West Midlands, But at least they have the excuse of the fact that pretty much every road in their neck of the woods is a motorway.
Of course, you could argue that Wales being, well, a bit on the hilly side, is somewhat offputting for the would-be cyclist. And that argument might hold water just long enough for you to see that the Scots, with more and higher mountains, cycle more than we do.
Safety then, that’s the reason, it’s simply not safe to cycle, it’s madness out there, you’re taking your life in your hands just putting on your bicycle clips.
Again, that sounds convincing until you notice that the residents of London, smoggy, traffic-choked, barbaric London, beats us as well, where people cycle an average of more than 50 miles a year.
Personally, I think we’ve got it into our heads that cycling isn’t safe. And in some circumstances that’s right. The increase in traffic has made many major A-roads simply unpleasant to be on because of the volume and speed of traffic and the pollution that comes with it.
But that doesn’t mean we should abandon bikes altogether. With a little thought alternate routes can be found away from heavy traffic and as long as you keep your wits about you cycling is not the white-knuckle danger some imagine it to be.
But in a way it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy – the fewer of us there are on the roads, the less prepared drivers are to cope with us. This when confronted with a cyclist drivers either tail you for miles, nervous of passing you lest you get sucked beneath their wheels; or else they are oblivious to you and pass you at 70 with millimetres to spare.
This is the ethos of the Critical Mass movement which forces drivers to acknowledge the existence of cyclists by arranging demos involving such huge numbers they outnumber the motorists.
By penning cyclists into cycle lanes and traffic-free cycle paths it all looks very safe, but it is counterproductive if it gives drivers a giddy fit when they see someone on two wheels.
The other figures that make for depressing reading from the ONS are those for the percentage of children who travel to school by car. Once again Wales tops the league, but not in a good way, with 38% of our children travelling to school this way.
I know we have managed to convince ourselves that there are predatory paedophiles lurking on every street corner and that our children walking or cycling to school is an unacceptable risk (despite the fact that the number or children killed by paedophiles every year remains an unacceptable five, while the number of children killed by their parents remains an even more unacceptable 100, so you do the math as to who is a greater risk to your child).
This is yet another reason not to close village schools, as if there weren’t enough already. But closing village schools and opening super-schools will only result in more children being ferried by mum and dad taxi service.
Mark my words, in a few weeks we’ll get another set of figures telling us how fat and indolent our children have become and we’ll wail and gnash and send them to after-school clubs to try to shed the pounds and then pitch up at the school gate in the Chelsea tractor to ferry them home to their video games and wonder where it all went wrong.
THOSE of you with long memories and an enthusiasm for chapel on a Sunday may remember my comments some time ago about Cliff Richard and the monster he released in our midst when he set the Lord’s Prayer to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.
I wasn’t a fan, but the many, many people who took the trouble to write in clearly were. I didn’t like Cliff’s evangelising, they clearly did, and my can they put pen to paper when they feel the need.
So of all the people you’d guess you would find in church, leading the singing, I don’t think I would be top of your list. It doesn’t stop there though, I was playing guitar, and, as we were heading to the beach straight afterward…wearing sandals. I admit, I could have grown a beard for the occasion just to complete the stereotype, but there are some lines which cannot be crossed.
Quite how I ended up there has something to do with living in a small village tended by a persuasive vicar, and being the only guitarist available. There may have been a brief moment of temptation when I could have given them a rendition of AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells, or Van Halen’s Runnin’ With The Devil, but was persuaded instead to gently strum along to ‘One More Step Along The World I Go’.
Still, no bolts of lightning descended to despatch me into the great hereafter, which shows that should the Lord indeed exist, he has a well-developed sense of irony.
Because when the globally-warmed waves, swollen by the molten ice-caps, come lapping at our ankles, we will at least have somewhere to retreat to as civilisation crumbles around us.
I know we don’t always see eye to eye with our English neighbours, but watching them slowly become and archipelago seems a slightly extreme way of settling our differences.
But why should the Welsh blame themselves for these impending ecological disasters?
Well, it might have something to do with the latest figures to be released by the Office for National Statistics, which looked at just how ‘green’ we were all being.
Here we are in Wales, a nation criss-crossed by quiet country lanes with barely a motorway worthy of the name in the entire country, and just how many miles, on average, do you think we cycle?
I’ll tell you – just 20.
The only people who cycle less then us are those who live in the West Midlands, But at least they have the excuse of the fact that pretty much every road in their neck of the woods is a motorway.
Of course, you could argue that Wales being, well, a bit on the hilly side, is somewhat offputting for the would-be cyclist. And that argument might hold water just long enough for you to see that the Scots, with more and higher mountains, cycle more than we do.
Safety then, that’s the reason, it’s simply not safe to cycle, it’s madness out there, you’re taking your life in your hands just putting on your bicycle clips.
Again, that sounds convincing until you notice that the residents of London, smoggy, traffic-choked, barbaric London, beats us as well, where people cycle an average of more than 50 miles a year.
Personally, I think we’ve got it into our heads that cycling isn’t safe. And in some circumstances that’s right. The increase in traffic has made many major A-roads simply unpleasant to be on because of the volume and speed of traffic and the pollution that comes with it.
But that doesn’t mean we should abandon bikes altogether. With a little thought alternate routes can be found away from heavy traffic and as long as you keep your wits about you cycling is not the white-knuckle danger some imagine it to be.
But in a way it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy – the fewer of us there are on the roads, the less prepared drivers are to cope with us. This when confronted with a cyclist drivers either tail you for miles, nervous of passing you lest you get sucked beneath their wheels; or else they are oblivious to you and pass you at 70 with millimetres to spare.
This is the ethos of the Critical Mass movement which forces drivers to acknowledge the existence of cyclists by arranging demos involving such huge numbers they outnumber the motorists.
By penning cyclists into cycle lanes and traffic-free cycle paths it all looks very safe, but it is counterproductive if it gives drivers a giddy fit when they see someone on two wheels.
The other figures that make for depressing reading from the ONS are those for the percentage of children who travel to school by car. Once again Wales tops the league, but not in a good way, with 38% of our children travelling to school this way.
I know we have managed to convince ourselves that there are predatory paedophiles lurking on every street corner and that our children walking or cycling to school is an unacceptable risk (despite the fact that the number or children killed by paedophiles every year remains an unacceptable five, while the number of children killed by their parents remains an even more unacceptable 100, so you do the math as to who is a greater risk to your child).
This is yet another reason not to close village schools, as if there weren’t enough already. But closing village schools and opening super-schools will only result in more children being ferried by mum and dad taxi service.
Mark my words, in a few weeks we’ll get another set of figures telling us how fat and indolent our children have become and we’ll wail and gnash and send them to after-school clubs to try to shed the pounds and then pitch up at the school gate in the Chelsea tractor to ferry them home to their video games and wonder where it all went wrong.
THOSE of you with long memories and an enthusiasm for chapel on a Sunday may remember my comments some time ago about Cliff Richard and the monster he released in our midst when he set the Lord’s Prayer to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.
I wasn’t a fan, but the many, many people who took the trouble to write in clearly were. I didn’t like Cliff’s evangelising, they clearly did, and my can they put pen to paper when they feel the need.
So of all the people you’d guess you would find in church, leading the singing, I don’t think I would be top of your list. It doesn’t stop there though, I was playing guitar, and, as we were heading to the beach straight afterward…wearing sandals. I admit, I could have grown a beard for the occasion just to complete the stereotype, but there are some lines which cannot be crossed.
Quite how I ended up there has something to do with living in a small village tended by a persuasive vicar, and being the only guitarist available. There may have been a brief moment of temptation when I could have given them a rendition of AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells, or Van Halen’s Runnin’ With The Devil, but was persuaded instead to gently strum along to ‘One More Step Along The World I Go’.
Still, no bolts of lightning descended to despatch me into the great hereafter, which shows that should the Lord indeed exist, he has a well-developed sense of irony.
Column, May 6, 2008
IT’S the economy stupid.
This was a catchphrase coined by Bill Clinton’s campaign team in his successful bid to beat George Bush Snr to the presidency.
Bush had a lot going for him, the Cold War was over and he had just beaten the Iraqis in Gulf War I, but back home there was a recession and Clinton made much ground reminding people of that.
So when Labour comes to sift through the ashes of last week’s political bonfire they might like to dwell on those four words.
Naturally, I don’t expect Labour stalwarts to pay me any heed, after all, I’m regularly accused of being a raving Nat or some sort of Tory fellow traveller. But as the son of a steelworker brought up in Deeside when they shut down Shotton I’ll leave you to guess where my political allegiances lie and if labour choose to ignore the likes of me then on their own heads be it, because they are ignoring the sort of people who put them in power in 1997.
It’s really quite simple. Firstly look at what’s going up. Food prices, fuel prices and the cost of your mortgage. It must come as something of a relief for some people to get turned down for a mortgage nowadays, because they know full well that even if they had got the mortgage they would be able to afford to heat the place or stock the larder.
Have any of those rises been accompanied by an equivalent, or even close, rise in average wages? No they have not.
And in the midst of all this carnage being wrought upon people’s finances, what did the Government go and do? Abolish the 10p tax rate.
Of course, note everyone lost out in that move. I count myself among the big winners. It turned out that all the income tax that was handed back to me by the new 20p tax rate was then snaffled back in National Insurance. All bar £1 a month that is. I’m a whole £12 better off – I’m going to spend, spend, spend.
But a large group of people who Labour might regard as their voters are going to be worse off and though we’ve had climbdowns and U-turns and promises of help from Ministers, when you look at the detail it’s clear there are going to be plenty of people who will not get a penny in compensation and for them it’s tough luck. Tough luck for the Labour candidate they might otherwise have voted for as well.
Secondly, look at the behaviour of the banks in all of this. The Bank of England has made cut after cut to its base rate and have those cuts been passed on to the poor homeowners? Not a one.
And yet whenever the Bank of England base rate has risen in recent years did the mortgage lenders ever baulk at passing on the rise to us – not once.
I know that interest rates have to go some way before they hit the crippling levels that they didn in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when they were in double digits. But back then the banks were not lending people five times their income and 110% mortgages which is what they have had to do now to chase a housing market inflated by themselves because of the amounts of cash they were dumping into it.
And yet the banks neatly absolve themselves of any responsibility for the mess created by the housing market bubble – they didn’t force us to borrow the money did they? Well no, but they fuelled that meant people needed to ask for such huge mortgages and they lent out huge multiples of people’s salaries.
Yet know they are being allowed to sit there, failing to pass on rate cuts, refusing to lend and raking in the cash to protect themselves against the recession that is coming and which they helped to create. If they did this sort of thing in wartime it would be called profiteering and the bank chief execs would be doing a spell in Pentonville to atone.
Instead we have the giant economic brain of Gordon Brown claiming that last week’s cataclysm at the polls was somehow because of a failure to get Labour’s message across.
Eh?
Does he really think that had he been able to explain more clearly Labour’s ‘message’ a family facing bankruptcy and repossession would have said, “Ah, now it’s all clear” and meekly trotted to the polls to pub their cross next to New Labour.
If he does then he isn’t the giant intellect some claim him to be.
Do you think Marie Antoinette, on her way to the guillotine said: “Zut alors, if only I had been able to explain to the unwashed mob what a nice alternative cake is to bread, then all of this nastiness would have been avoided.”
Brown need to forget about everything except the economy – schools, prisons, foreign policy, and Labour’s blessed ‘message’ – all that he can leave to ministers he has appointed to deal with it. He should focus entirely on getting through the next year or so without all of us ending up sleeping beneath the railway arches in cardboard boxes.
Do that and he just might find enough people well-disposed enough to him to turn up and vote for him at the next election.
THE above message applies to most of North Wales, save Gwynedd, where it should read “It’s the schools stupid.”
Because if there was ever a stupid policy suggestion it was closing the small schools of Gwynedd. The very thing that might encourage people to move there or for people living there to stay was the quality of education in the small primaries across the county.
To have closed them would have been a betrayal of Wales’s heritage as a country where education really mattered.
Now the election of councillors for Llais Gwynedd and the end of Plaid’s overall control ought to have consigned such barmy policies to the waste bin and hopefully another route will be found to achieve the savings they need.
This was a catchphrase coined by Bill Clinton’s campaign team in his successful bid to beat George Bush Snr to the presidency.
Bush had a lot going for him, the Cold War was over and he had just beaten the Iraqis in Gulf War I, but back home there was a recession and Clinton made much ground reminding people of that.
So when Labour comes to sift through the ashes of last week’s political bonfire they might like to dwell on those four words.
Naturally, I don’t expect Labour stalwarts to pay me any heed, after all, I’m regularly accused of being a raving Nat or some sort of Tory fellow traveller. But as the son of a steelworker brought up in Deeside when they shut down Shotton I’ll leave you to guess where my political allegiances lie and if labour choose to ignore the likes of me then on their own heads be it, because they are ignoring the sort of people who put them in power in 1997.
It’s really quite simple. Firstly look at what’s going up. Food prices, fuel prices and the cost of your mortgage. It must come as something of a relief for some people to get turned down for a mortgage nowadays, because they know full well that even if they had got the mortgage they would be able to afford to heat the place or stock the larder.
Have any of those rises been accompanied by an equivalent, or even close, rise in average wages? No they have not.
And in the midst of all this carnage being wrought upon people’s finances, what did the Government go and do? Abolish the 10p tax rate.
Of course, note everyone lost out in that move. I count myself among the big winners. It turned out that all the income tax that was handed back to me by the new 20p tax rate was then snaffled back in National Insurance. All bar £1 a month that is. I’m a whole £12 better off – I’m going to spend, spend, spend.
But a large group of people who Labour might regard as their voters are going to be worse off and though we’ve had climbdowns and U-turns and promises of help from Ministers, when you look at the detail it’s clear there are going to be plenty of people who will not get a penny in compensation and for them it’s tough luck. Tough luck for the Labour candidate they might otherwise have voted for as well.
Secondly, look at the behaviour of the banks in all of this. The Bank of England has made cut after cut to its base rate and have those cuts been passed on to the poor homeowners? Not a one.
And yet whenever the Bank of England base rate has risen in recent years did the mortgage lenders ever baulk at passing on the rise to us – not once.
I know that interest rates have to go some way before they hit the crippling levels that they didn in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when they were in double digits. But back then the banks were not lending people five times their income and 110% mortgages which is what they have had to do now to chase a housing market inflated by themselves because of the amounts of cash they were dumping into it.
And yet the banks neatly absolve themselves of any responsibility for the mess created by the housing market bubble – they didn’t force us to borrow the money did they? Well no, but they fuelled that meant people needed to ask for such huge mortgages and they lent out huge multiples of people’s salaries.
Yet know they are being allowed to sit there, failing to pass on rate cuts, refusing to lend and raking in the cash to protect themselves against the recession that is coming and which they helped to create. If they did this sort of thing in wartime it would be called profiteering and the bank chief execs would be doing a spell in Pentonville to atone.
Instead we have the giant economic brain of Gordon Brown claiming that last week’s cataclysm at the polls was somehow because of a failure to get Labour’s message across.
Eh?
Does he really think that had he been able to explain more clearly Labour’s ‘message’ a family facing bankruptcy and repossession would have said, “Ah, now it’s all clear” and meekly trotted to the polls to pub their cross next to New Labour.
If he does then he isn’t the giant intellect some claim him to be.
Do you think Marie Antoinette, on her way to the guillotine said: “Zut alors, if only I had been able to explain to the unwashed mob what a nice alternative cake is to bread, then all of this nastiness would have been avoided.”
Brown need to forget about everything except the economy – schools, prisons, foreign policy, and Labour’s blessed ‘message’ – all that he can leave to ministers he has appointed to deal with it. He should focus entirely on getting through the next year or so without all of us ending up sleeping beneath the railway arches in cardboard boxes.
Do that and he just might find enough people well-disposed enough to him to turn up and vote for him at the next election.
THE above message applies to most of North Wales, save Gwynedd, where it should read “It’s the schools stupid.”
Because if there was ever a stupid policy suggestion it was closing the small schools of Gwynedd. The very thing that might encourage people to move there or for people living there to stay was the quality of education in the small primaries across the county.
To have closed them would have been a betrayal of Wales’s heritage as a country where education really mattered.
Now the election of councillors for Llais Gwynedd and the end of Plaid’s overall control ought to have consigned such barmy policies to the waste bin and hopefully another route will be found to achieve the savings they need.
Column, April 29, 2008
WE had better start making a list.
The English are voting on whether to become part of Wales and if we haven’t got a list before we know it they’ll all be in.
Alright, it’s only started with the little village of Audlem , over in Cheshire , but you know what they say about wedges having a thin end.
Not that I’m saying we won’t welcome them all should they so choose to exercise their democratic right to become part of God’s Own Country, but we might want to exercise a little discretion.
Of course, you can understand why they all want in. After all, we’ve won the Grand Slam, Duffy’s top of the charts, Cardiff in the FA Cup, Doctor Who setting up home here, Gavin&Stacey’s Bafta, Joe Calzaghe a world champion twice over. We pretty much rule the roost, so you can sympathise.
Pub bores everywhere are suddenly finding Welsh great-grandmothers in their lineage and that’s enough for them to order their Grand Slam pullover and get all teary-eyed during Land Of My Fathers, even though not a couple of years ago they could be heard belting out ‘Swiiiiing Loooow, Sweeeeet Charrrrr-iiiii-oooott’ at the merest peep of a white shirt.
The people of Audlem, however, 63% of who want to be part of Wales , voted for far more practical reasons. They believe that they aren’t getting the services they deserve in England and believe being part of Wales will see them better provided for.
Well, with free prescriptions for all and no SATs tests for kids you can’t say they are far wrong.
So Audlem, formerly in Cheshire , but now part of what I am going to call Greater Wales – Croeso, Welcome.
The nay-sayers at Wrexham County Borough Council have raised the small matter of Audlem being quite a way away from us and Whitchurch being in between. Let’s not let that get in the way of things eh? Let’s annex Whitchurch too. I would say today Audlem, tomorrow the world, but it sounds a little too much like a chap whose ambitions ended badly.
But rather than seeing it as the English joining us, perhaps we ought to regard it as a return to Wales of what is rightfully ours. After all, Audlem and much of that part of the world was Welsh until we lost it to Northumbria 1400 years ago.
So.if we get Audlem, and Whitchurch, where else should we absorb into Greater Wales (got quite a ring to it that hasn’t it, Great Britain , but Greater Wales).
Well, we’ll have Liverpool for a start. We built it, we’re having it back, and we’ll put a stop to them tearing down the ‘Welsh Streets’ as part of Prescott’s grand renovation scheme.
We can quietly take Shropshire, but I think we ought to draw the line at Birmingham , on the grounds that it’s good to have someone outside Wales who also gets the mick taken because of their accent.
Most of Herefordshire and the West Country should surely be ours. Cornwall , I imagine, would be quick to secede too. The M4 corridor could see Welsh tanks across the Severn and on the outskirts of London before breakfast. If Wales had any tanks that is, and given how quick we take umbrage it’s perhaps best we don’t.
Keep the border creeping eastwards and once we’ve taken Yorkshire even I’ll be back in the fold. No need for hiraeth, I’ll be home.
Naturally there is the small matter of most of these communities not speaking Welsh. But I don’t think we ought to let that get in the way because except for the North West corner, most of our own communities don’t either.
It’s a whole new take on independence as well. You’ve no need to be independent of the English if they’re signing up to join you in their droves.
So, come one, come all, vote early, vote often to join the fastest expanding nation in the UK .
AS an exiled Welshman, albeit self-imposed, it’s always nice to bump into those with links to home.
So when I pitched up in a tiny North Yorkshire village it was a pleasant surprise that my nearest neighbour is an ex-office in the Welsh Guards.
We had a chat about the relative merits of North Wales guardsmen and South Wales – we agreed that North Walians were far the superior, although that might have something to do with Wrexham soldiers always being up for a fight.
Anyhow, Captain Mike is doing his bit for those injured in Iraq and Afghanistan next month in aid of the Help for Heroes charity.
This charity is raising funds for a swimming pool and treatment centre at Headley Court , the forces’ centre where service personnel recover from injuries received in action.
Captain Mike and hundreds of other riders will be cycling through the battlefields of France to raise money for this charity in late May.
You can read all about their efforts on the charity website http://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/ If you would like to sponsor Captain Mike, drop me a line at my e-mail address d.banks3@btinternet.com, and I’ll put you in touch.
PERHAPS the fact that the English are voting to become Welsh is not entirely unconnected to news that a church in Wales has applied for a drinks licence.
The Reverend Geraint ap Iorwerth could soon also be known as mine host as he wants a licence to serve alcohol at St Peter ad Vincula Church in Pennal, near Machynlleth.
It might have the ministers of the dry Sunday chapels turning in the grave, but in these days of declining church numbers the sort of social function where alcohol is served is one way of getting people through the door.
And apart from the nonconformist suspicion of the demon drink, the Church has always had a close association with brewing, especially the monasteries.
And if my shaky recollection of The Bible serves me, and I think it does, Jesus turned water into wine, not the other way round.
The English are voting on whether to become part of Wales and if we haven’t got a list before we know it they’ll all be in.
Alright, it’s only started with the little village of Audlem , over in Cheshire , but you know what they say about wedges having a thin end.
Not that I’m saying we won’t welcome them all should they so choose to exercise their democratic right to become part of God’s Own Country, but we might want to exercise a little discretion.
Of course, you can understand why they all want in. After all, we’ve won the Grand Slam, Duffy’s top of the charts, Cardiff in the FA Cup, Doctor Who setting up home here, Gavin&Stacey’s Bafta, Joe Calzaghe a world champion twice over. We pretty much rule the roost, so you can sympathise.
Pub bores everywhere are suddenly finding Welsh great-grandmothers in their lineage and that’s enough for them to order their Grand Slam pullover and get all teary-eyed during Land Of My Fathers, even though not a couple of years ago they could be heard belting out ‘Swiiiiing Loooow, Sweeeeet Charrrrr-iiiii-oooott’ at the merest peep of a white shirt.
The people of Audlem, however, 63% of who want to be part of Wales , voted for far more practical reasons. They believe that they aren’t getting the services they deserve in England and believe being part of Wales will see them better provided for.
Well, with free prescriptions for all and no SATs tests for kids you can’t say they are far wrong.
So Audlem, formerly in Cheshire , but now part of what I am going to call Greater Wales – Croeso, Welcome.
The nay-sayers at Wrexham County Borough Council have raised the small matter of Audlem being quite a way away from us and Whitchurch being in between. Let’s not let that get in the way of things eh? Let’s annex Whitchurch too. I would say today Audlem, tomorrow the world, but it sounds a little too much like a chap whose ambitions ended badly.
But rather than seeing it as the English joining us, perhaps we ought to regard it as a return to Wales of what is rightfully ours. After all, Audlem and much of that part of the world was Welsh until we lost it to Northumbria 1400 years ago.
So.if we get Audlem, and Whitchurch, where else should we absorb into Greater Wales (got quite a ring to it that hasn’t it, Great Britain , but Greater Wales).
Well, we’ll have Liverpool for a start. We built it, we’re having it back, and we’ll put a stop to them tearing down the ‘Welsh Streets’ as part of Prescott’s grand renovation scheme.
We can quietly take Shropshire, but I think we ought to draw the line at Birmingham , on the grounds that it’s good to have someone outside Wales who also gets the mick taken because of their accent.
Most of Herefordshire and the West Country should surely be ours. Cornwall , I imagine, would be quick to secede too. The M4 corridor could see Welsh tanks across the Severn and on the outskirts of London before breakfast. If Wales had any tanks that is, and given how quick we take umbrage it’s perhaps best we don’t.
Keep the border creeping eastwards and once we’ve taken Yorkshire even I’ll be back in the fold. No need for hiraeth, I’ll be home.
Naturally there is the small matter of most of these communities not speaking Welsh. But I don’t think we ought to let that get in the way because except for the North West corner, most of our own communities don’t either.
It’s a whole new take on independence as well. You’ve no need to be independent of the English if they’re signing up to join you in their droves.
So, come one, come all, vote early, vote often to join the fastest expanding nation in the UK .
AS an exiled Welshman, albeit self-imposed, it’s always nice to bump into those with links to home.
So when I pitched up in a tiny North Yorkshire village it was a pleasant surprise that my nearest neighbour is an ex-office in the Welsh Guards.
We had a chat about the relative merits of North Wales guardsmen and South Wales – we agreed that North Walians were far the superior, although that might have something to do with Wrexham soldiers always being up for a fight.
Anyhow, Captain Mike is doing his bit for those injured in Iraq and Afghanistan next month in aid of the Help for Heroes charity.
This charity is raising funds for a swimming pool and treatment centre at Headley Court , the forces’ centre where service personnel recover from injuries received in action.
Captain Mike and hundreds of other riders will be cycling through the battlefields of France to raise money for this charity in late May.
You can read all about their efforts on the charity website http://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/ If you would like to sponsor Captain Mike, drop me a line at my e-mail address d.banks3@btinternet.com, and I’ll put you in touch.
PERHAPS the fact that the English are voting to become Welsh is not entirely unconnected to news that a church in Wales has applied for a drinks licence.
The Reverend Geraint ap Iorwerth could soon also be known as mine host as he wants a licence to serve alcohol at St Peter ad Vincula Church in Pennal, near Machynlleth.
It might have the ministers of the dry Sunday chapels turning in the grave, but in these days of declining church numbers the sort of social function where alcohol is served is one way of getting people through the door.
And apart from the nonconformist suspicion of the demon drink, the Church has always had a close association with brewing, especially the monasteries.
And if my shaky recollection of The Bible serves me, and I think it does, Jesus turned water into wine, not the other way round.
Column, April 22, 2008
IF in doubt, blame the media.
In fact, strike that, there’s no need to actually be in doubt. It’s a rule we should all live by – get up, shower, breakfast, feed the cat, blame the media and go to work.
There are few sticky situations you will find yourself in where you can’t buy yourself a bit of wiggle room by blaming the media.
I’ll bet as the crowds departed from Calvary someone piped up that it was the Scribes that were to blame for the death of Our Lord.
Now, I’ll accept that I’ve got a bit of a vested interest here, being an accursed hack, and yes, one, who, on occasion would turn up on the doorsteps of those in dire circumstances and inquire whether a word with the papers might help.
And now, it seems, we are to blame for Welsh Rugby’s decision to shift a match to a Friday night.
As WRU spokesman John Williams put it: Our view is that we already have Friday night rugby in the Heineken Cup, the Rugby World Cup and domestic rugby and we are heavily dictated to by the media.”
“Dictated to be the media” eh? And just how does that work then.
As soon as the television deal was signed did the men in jackboots march in saying: “A-ha, ve haf vays of making you play on a Friday night, for you Dai, ze days of daytime rugby are over.”
No, I suspect that by dictating, what our man at the WRU was indicating was that TV will pay for Friday night rugby, on the grounds that they can sell adverts into it if they’re commercial, or they can get audience share if they are the BBC.
Either way, I don’t think the dastardly media types were saying give us Friday nigtht rugby or we won’t show it at all.
So it was open to the Six Nations Committee and the WRU to say, well, actually, on reflection, no, we’ve always played Six Nations on a Saturday or Sunday, so there it stays.
But then, name a sporting association since the invention of TV that has resisted the blandishments of broadcasters?
But can we honestly say they have all benefited? OK, snooker, I’ll give you snooker. Once a pastime for those who needed something to fill the intervals between smoking and drinking it was dragged out of the shadows and thrust into the spotlights of the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield .
But apart from that, what sport hasn’t sold its soul when it dealt with TV?
You only have to look at what football has become to see where rugby will go. Football long ago abandoned any pretence of consideration for the fans that filled the terraces. They are just another asset to be stripped of cash via ticket prices and ever-changing replica shirts.
And if they complain, so what, the Premiership clubs know they can fill seats many times over, and even if they can’t it doesn’t matter because the TV cash will fill any void left on the terraces.
Now, the money-persons at the WRU may shake their heads at my naivety and say that’s the way things are in today’s hard-headed commercial world. But do we really want rugby to go the way of football?
To its credit rugby has managed the transition from amateurism, via ‘shamateurism’ to become fully professional without players turning into the preening clothes-horses that afflict the Premiership.
The sad fact is that the Six Nations will probably get away with this and many fans who would like to have been in Paris will, of course, tune in to watch on TV.
But it’s one snub to true fans would otherwise have made the trip to France but now can’t because of work commitments. Such small blows add up until slowly but surely the face of a game we love has changed forever.
GREAT to see the BBC comedy ‘Gavin & Stacey’ do so well at the BAFTAs on Sunday.
Firstly, because it’s very, very funny and deserves the plaudits.
Secondly because much of its humour features the Welsh and yet it manages to refrain from that humour revolving around the rib-tickling revelations that a) we talk funny, and b) there are a lot of sheep in this country so there’s got to be some shenanigans going on there hasn’t there?
Thirdly, because anything featuring Rob Brydon is worth a gong, he’s a genius.
It was also a relief to see the BBC costume drama Cranford do so appallingly badly. It is dull beyond words and it was nice for once not to see awards going to a drama based on the yardage of crinoline used in its production.
In fact, strike that, there’s no need to actually be in doubt. It’s a rule we should all live by – get up, shower, breakfast, feed the cat, blame the media and go to work.
There are few sticky situations you will find yourself in where you can’t buy yourself a bit of wiggle room by blaming the media.
I’ll bet as the crowds departed from Calvary someone piped up that it was the Scribes that were to blame for the death of Our Lord.
Now, I’ll accept that I’ve got a bit of a vested interest here, being an accursed hack, and yes, one, who, on occasion would turn up on the doorsteps of those in dire circumstances and inquire whether a word with the papers might help.
And now, it seems, we are to blame for Welsh Rugby’s decision to shift a match to a Friday night.
As WRU spokesman John Williams put it: Our view is that we already have Friday night rugby in the Heineken Cup, the Rugby World Cup and domestic rugby and we are heavily dictated to by the media.”
“Dictated to be the media” eh? And just how does that work then.
As soon as the television deal was signed did the men in jackboots march in saying: “A-ha, ve haf vays of making you play on a Friday night, for you Dai, ze days of daytime rugby are over.”
No, I suspect that by dictating, what our man at the WRU was indicating was that TV will pay for Friday night rugby, on the grounds that they can sell adverts into it if they’re commercial, or they can get audience share if they are the BBC.
Either way, I don’t think the dastardly media types were saying give us Friday nigtht rugby or we won’t show it at all.
So it was open to the Six Nations Committee and the WRU to say, well, actually, on reflection, no, we’ve always played Six Nations on a Saturday or Sunday, so there it stays.
But then, name a sporting association since the invention of TV that has resisted the blandishments of broadcasters?
But can we honestly say they have all benefited? OK, snooker, I’ll give you snooker. Once a pastime for those who needed something to fill the intervals between smoking and drinking it was dragged out of the shadows and thrust into the spotlights of the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield .
But apart from that, what sport hasn’t sold its soul when it dealt with TV?
You only have to look at what football has become to see where rugby will go. Football long ago abandoned any pretence of consideration for the fans that filled the terraces. They are just another asset to be stripped of cash via ticket prices and ever-changing replica shirts.
And if they complain, so what, the Premiership clubs know they can fill seats many times over, and even if they can’t it doesn’t matter because the TV cash will fill any void left on the terraces.
Now, the money-persons at the WRU may shake their heads at my naivety and say that’s the way things are in today’s hard-headed commercial world. But do we really want rugby to go the way of football?
To its credit rugby has managed the transition from amateurism, via ‘shamateurism’ to become fully professional without players turning into the preening clothes-horses that afflict the Premiership.
The sad fact is that the Six Nations will probably get away with this and many fans who would like to have been in Paris will, of course, tune in to watch on TV.
But it’s one snub to true fans would otherwise have made the trip to France but now can’t because of work commitments. Such small blows add up until slowly but surely the face of a game we love has changed forever.
GREAT to see the BBC comedy ‘Gavin & Stacey’ do so well at the BAFTAs on Sunday.
Firstly, because it’s very, very funny and deserves the plaudits.
Secondly because much of its humour features the Welsh and yet it manages to refrain from that humour revolving around the rib-tickling revelations that a) we talk funny, and b) there are a lot of sheep in this country so there’s got to be some shenanigans going on there hasn’t there?
Thirdly, because anything featuring Rob Brydon is worth a gong, he’s a genius.
It was also a relief to see the BBC costume drama Cranford do so appallingly badly. It is dull beyond words and it was nice for once not to see awards going to a drama based on the yardage of crinoline used in its production.
Column, April 15, 2008
WATCHING Wrexham FC was always a bit of a white-knuckle ride.
Cajoled into abandoning my armchair support for Liverpool’s glory-boys by a couple of Daily Post colleagues – who were probably looking for someone to share their pain – I spent three or so seasons on the roads less travelled of the football league.
Let me tell you there is little joy to be had on a rainy day in Hull, which then had an open away end. The only laugh raised as we lost was when a ball hit the roof of the home supporter’s stand and they could all be seen brushing off the rust that had descended on them as a result. And then we couldn’t find a decent fish and chip shop open – in Hull. It was a long, long trek home.
But for all the cold, wet trips to see losses or 0-0 draws, there were more than enough moments of unrestrained delight to make up for that, and that is the joy of watching a team as unpredictable as Wrexham.
There was the Peterborough cup match when one of their fans, enraged at the drubbing they were getting by the on-form Reds, ran the length of the pitch to confront the Wrexham support. I think his sprinting years were some time behind him and by the halfway line he was flagging and grateful to be led away by the stewards for a cup of tea and a rest.
Who can forget Aresnal and West Ham, and Middlesbrough whose cup hopes were dashed on the rocks of unexpectedly brilliant Wrexham performance.
Who can forget 1-3 to dump Birmingham City out of the cup? Not me, because I had them at 30-1 with the stadium bookies to do just that.
But it wasn’t just the days of cup glory that I remember of Wrexham. It was moment like Jonathan Cross’s shot against Crewe one night as both teams vied for the play-offs. He took the ball on the bounce just inside the Crewe half and then lashed a shot at goal. Time seemed to stand still as we began celebrating one of the best strikes any of us had ever seen. Then it hit the crossbar.
All the time were were trogging round the backwaters of the football league though we could but wonder at what was going on off the pitch. Wrexham’s tribulations have not always been helped by those who have not always had the club’s best interests at heart.
Perhaps it has been a mercy that work has taken me away from the cruelty of being a Wrexham fan. My nearest league team is York now and having been there as opposition I can’t bring myself to switch allegiances and visit Bootham Bar as a fan.
Remember the plan to turn the pitch through 90 degrees, redeveloping one end and at a stroke rendering half of the newly-built Pryce Griffiths stand completely useless? Genius like that always seems to rise to the top in the lower reaches of football.
But that is the whole point of following a lower-league team. Let’s face it, few of us are ever going to achieve promotion to the Premiership.
You don’t do it for the abundant glories of watching Liverpool, or Man United or Chelsea do you? Following them disappointment comes when you are second best, not bottom of the league.
Following Wrexham means flirting with disaster. Travelling long distances for little or now reward and then still finding something positive to talk about on the long drive home.
That is what being a true football fan is about. Sure we can choose our team according to the wealth of the owner and guaranteed showings on Sky every week. But that’s not being a fan, that’s just a glorified version of shopping.
Being a fan means supporting your local team, no matter how dismal their performances are week-in, week-out. You keep the faith.
Now we are all but mathematically relegated, nine points from safety with 12 available. Miracles can happen, but some might say that Wrexham have had more than their share of them in recent years.
If the worst happens, and Wrexham drop, then we only have to look down the road to see that all is not lost.
To our unrestrained joy, Chester dropped out of the football league, but they’re back. Not without difficulties of their own, they’re hardly riding high, but they did claw their way back up.
It sticks in the craw to hold up the old enemy as an example, but sometimes you have to swallow your pride and admit they did what they needed to do.
Wrexham can do the same. It will be tough – takings will be down, players will be harder to come by. It will take a massive effort. But the loyal supporters who trail after them on dark winter nights, of who I was once one, deserve nothing less.
ST Deiniol’s Church, in my home village of Hawarden, is a big church, and it takes someone special to fill it.
Mark Parry, a school friend was that sort of person and his death, cruelly early, saw hundreds crowd the pews last week.
It was a sad day indeed, but the service reflected the joy and the music and laughter that Mark brought into so many lives.
The singing, by a Welsh congregation, was transcendent, I tell you, if you want a head-start toward Heaven then have Welsh women sing you on your way.
And it was typical of a man who brought happiness to so many, that he left the church to the tune of Laurel and Hardy’s ‘Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia’ – Mark ‘Paz’ Parry, as ever, trying to make us smile.
Cajoled into abandoning my armchair support for Liverpool’s glory-boys by a couple of Daily Post colleagues – who were probably looking for someone to share their pain – I spent three or so seasons on the roads less travelled of the football league.
Let me tell you there is little joy to be had on a rainy day in Hull, which then had an open away end. The only laugh raised as we lost was when a ball hit the roof of the home supporter’s stand and they could all be seen brushing off the rust that had descended on them as a result. And then we couldn’t find a decent fish and chip shop open – in Hull. It was a long, long trek home.
But for all the cold, wet trips to see losses or 0-0 draws, there were more than enough moments of unrestrained delight to make up for that, and that is the joy of watching a team as unpredictable as Wrexham.
There was the Peterborough cup match when one of their fans, enraged at the drubbing they were getting by the on-form Reds, ran the length of the pitch to confront the Wrexham support. I think his sprinting years were some time behind him and by the halfway line he was flagging and grateful to be led away by the stewards for a cup of tea and a rest.
Who can forget Aresnal and West Ham, and Middlesbrough whose cup hopes were dashed on the rocks of unexpectedly brilliant Wrexham performance.
Who can forget 1-3 to dump Birmingham City out of the cup? Not me, because I had them at 30-1 with the stadium bookies to do just that.
But it wasn’t just the days of cup glory that I remember of Wrexham. It was moment like Jonathan Cross’s shot against Crewe one night as both teams vied for the play-offs. He took the ball on the bounce just inside the Crewe half and then lashed a shot at goal. Time seemed to stand still as we began celebrating one of the best strikes any of us had ever seen. Then it hit the crossbar.
All the time were were trogging round the backwaters of the football league though we could but wonder at what was going on off the pitch. Wrexham’s tribulations have not always been helped by those who have not always had the club’s best interests at heart.
Perhaps it has been a mercy that work has taken me away from the cruelty of being a Wrexham fan. My nearest league team is York now and having been there as opposition I can’t bring myself to switch allegiances and visit Bootham Bar as a fan.
Remember the plan to turn the pitch through 90 degrees, redeveloping one end and at a stroke rendering half of the newly-built Pryce Griffiths stand completely useless? Genius like that always seems to rise to the top in the lower reaches of football.
But that is the whole point of following a lower-league team. Let’s face it, few of us are ever going to achieve promotion to the Premiership.
You don’t do it for the abundant glories of watching Liverpool, or Man United or Chelsea do you? Following them disappointment comes when you are second best, not bottom of the league.
Following Wrexham means flirting with disaster. Travelling long distances for little or now reward and then still finding something positive to talk about on the long drive home.
That is what being a true football fan is about. Sure we can choose our team according to the wealth of the owner and guaranteed showings on Sky every week. But that’s not being a fan, that’s just a glorified version of shopping.
Being a fan means supporting your local team, no matter how dismal their performances are week-in, week-out. You keep the faith.
Now we are all but mathematically relegated, nine points from safety with 12 available. Miracles can happen, but some might say that Wrexham have had more than their share of them in recent years.
If the worst happens, and Wrexham drop, then we only have to look down the road to see that all is not lost.
To our unrestrained joy, Chester dropped out of the football league, but they’re back. Not without difficulties of their own, they’re hardly riding high, but they did claw their way back up.
It sticks in the craw to hold up the old enemy as an example, but sometimes you have to swallow your pride and admit they did what they needed to do.
Wrexham can do the same. It will be tough – takings will be down, players will be harder to come by. It will take a massive effort. But the loyal supporters who trail after them on dark winter nights, of who I was once one, deserve nothing less.
ST Deiniol’s Church, in my home village of Hawarden, is a big church, and it takes someone special to fill it.
Mark Parry, a school friend was that sort of person and his death, cruelly early, saw hundreds crowd the pews last week.
It was a sad day indeed, but the service reflected the joy and the music and laughter that Mark brought into so many lives.
The singing, by a Welsh congregation, was transcendent, I tell you, if you want a head-start toward Heaven then have Welsh women sing you on your way.
And it was typical of a man who brought happiness to so many, that he left the church to the tune of Laurel and Hardy’s ‘Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia’ – Mark ‘Paz’ Parry, as ever, trying to make us smile.
Column, April 8, 2008
SOME people clearly have far too much time on their hands.
How else can you explain the complaints about a pub in Caernarfon called The Black Boy.
The complainants apparently believe it is racist. They’re almost right.
It was racist, when it was named, but that was 250 years ago, people held some pretty obnoxious views back then. Not just opinions though, slavery was yet to be abolished and we were enthusiastically shipping off black boys, girls, women and men to the colonies to work on plantations.
It is all very shameful, but it is also history. We don’t do it now, nor would we, and we shouldn’t apologise for what we didn’t do ourselves. Nor should we expunge it from our public buildings.
A week ago I was holidaying in the Peak District and pitched up in a town called Ashbourne, were a hotel rejoices in the name ‘The Blacks Head’, and across the street. Did I read that right I wondered as we passed, but there to confirm my suspicions of the racism of our forefathers, was a cast iron archway topped by a crude depiction of a black man’s head.
It did look rather odd in these days when we are fortunately more enlightened about equality. But should we tear down symbols that were put up centuries ago simply because we would not put them up now?
There are lots of episodes from history that we are not particularly proud of, but ou cannot pretend they did not happen. That doesn’t mean you are in any way celebrating them, but nor are you denying their existence.
It’s true that if you built a new pub and you were sitting down with a focus group brainstorming what to call you new hostelry, ‘The Black Boy’ wouldn’t be top of your list would it?
That’s not to say some new names can’t offend. A landlady in the West Country got into trouble recently when she renamed her pub ‘Hawkins Meeting House’ after a heroic sailor who assisted Drake in fighting the Armada. Trouble is he was also a slave trader and her pub was opposite the local race equality council building.
But if we start tearing down pub names simply because they offend modern sensibilities then where are we going to stop?
Are we going to do away with the Fox and Hounds, Hare and Hounds, Anything being pursued by Hounds because the animal rights brigade take offence at these glorifications of hunting? Are White Lions offensive to differently-coloured Lions?
Is it the end of the line for the Duke of Wellington, the Admiral Nelson and The Trafalgar for fear of offending our friends across the Channel?
No, leave them where they are and be thankful that the attitudes that informed their names do not prevail today.
And let’s be particularly penitent when we sup in that inn whose name must be a thorn in the side of every wife who enters its portals – The Nag’s Head.
ANYONE who watched the documentary about Josie Russell on BBC last week cannot help but be hugely impressed by both her and her father.
I think what struck me is their refusal to conform to the stereotype that so much of the media tried to pen them into – tragic victims, struggling against adversity.
Instead they seem to have returned to a community that Mr Russell knew would be supportive and then got on with living.
One thing I did notice though was that Josie’s school, Ysgol Baladeulyn, is one of those earmarked for closure under Gywnedd’s proposals for reform.
It was obvious in the programme just how much this little school had helped Josie in the immediate months and years after the attack.
Of course, one cannot argue that a school should be kept open on the off chance that a child should suffer the sort of attack that Josie did. But given what the school was able to do for her, how much do you think it could help children with other challenges?
Keeping small schools open is difficult, but undoubtedly worth it, as this programme proved once again.
THE progress of the Olympic torch through London was an unmitigated disaster, but whether it will advance the cause of a free Tibet is another matter entirely.
I somehow doubt that a beardy bloke shouting at Paula Radcliffe is going to melt the hearts of the men in Beijing and lead to a withdrawal of troops, but it makes for a nice photo opportunity.
I can’t say I’m much moved by the disruption of the torch’s progress though, as a spectacle it doesn’t amount to much and it is a tradition that dates back to the Olympics in berlin in 1936 when the Nazis were lionised in the film by Leni Riefenstahl. Not a tradition with its roots in ancient Greece then.
If you are moved to support the Free Tibet cause though, restrain yourself from shouting a some poor sportsperson or minor celeb (and just how did Denise Van Outen get in on this particular act?) carrying the torch.
Instead inspect your underwear for the tell-tale signs of collusion with the forces of oppression. In there you will, in all probability find a little label reading ‘Made in China’. If not there, you’ll find it one many of your child’s toys.
So, are you prepared to buy your clothes and toys from more ethical, and expensive, sources? Until we are then the protests in London will not amount to any more than empty gestures.
MILLIONS of pounds of public money and many lives disrupted and we reach the conclusion that anyone who lived there could have told you years ago for free – that turning the A494 in Deeside into a seven-lane super highway was stupid idea.
The noise and pollution it would create would be bad enough, but all it would achieve would be to shift the bottleneck a few more miles down the A55.
Still, the abandonment of the scheme is a good thing and we’ll probably end up getting what we should have had all along, a crawler lane up the hill for slow moving traffic.
How else can you explain the complaints about a pub in Caernarfon called The Black Boy.
The complainants apparently believe it is racist. They’re almost right.
It was racist, when it was named, but that was 250 years ago, people held some pretty obnoxious views back then. Not just opinions though, slavery was yet to be abolished and we were enthusiastically shipping off black boys, girls, women and men to the colonies to work on plantations.
It is all very shameful, but it is also history. We don’t do it now, nor would we, and we shouldn’t apologise for what we didn’t do ourselves. Nor should we expunge it from our public buildings.
A week ago I was holidaying in the Peak District and pitched up in a town called Ashbourne, were a hotel rejoices in the name ‘The Blacks Head’, and across the street. Did I read that right I wondered as we passed, but there to confirm my suspicions of the racism of our forefathers, was a cast iron archway topped by a crude depiction of a black man’s head.
It did look rather odd in these days when we are fortunately more enlightened about equality. But should we tear down symbols that were put up centuries ago simply because we would not put them up now?
There are lots of episodes from history that we are not particularly proud of, but ou cannot pretend they did not happen. That doesn’t mean you are in any way celebrating them, but nor are you denying their existence.
It’s true that if you built a new pub and you were sitting down with a focus group brainstorming what to call you new hostelry, ‘The Black Boy’ wouldn’t be top of your list would it?
That’s not to say some new names can’t offend. A landlady in the West Country got into trouble recently when she renamed her pub ‘Hawkins Meeting House’ after a heroic sailor who assisted Drake in fighting the Armada. Trouble is he was also a slave trader and her pub was opposite the local race equality council building.
But if we start tearing down pub names simply because they offend modern sensibilities then where are we going to stop?
Are we going to do away with the Fox and Hounds, Hare and Hounds, Anything being pursued by Hounds because the animal rights brigade take offence at these glorifications of hunting? Are White Lions offensive to differently-coloured Lions?
Is it the end of the line for the Duke of Wellington, the Admiral Nelson and The Trafalgar for fear of offending our friends across the Channel?
No, leave them where they are and be thankful that the attitudes that informed their names do not prevail today.
And let’s be particularly penitent when we sup in that inn whose name must be a thorn in the side of every wife who enters its portals – The Nag’s Head.
ANYONE who watched the documentary about Josie Russell on BBC last week cannot help but be hugely impressed by both her and her father.
I think what struck me is their refusal to conform to the stereotype that so much of the media tried to pen them into – tragic victims, struggling against adversity.
Instead they seem to have returned to a community that Mr Russell knew would be supportive and then got on with living.
One thing I did notice though was that Josie’s school, Ysgol Baladeulyn, is one of those earmarked for closure under Gywnedd’s proposals for reform.
It was obvious in the programme just how much this little school had helped Josie in the immediate months and years after the attack.
Of course, one cannot argue that a school should be kept open on the off chance that a child should suffer the sort of attack that Josie did. But given what the school was able to do for her, how much do you think it could help children with other challenges?
Keeping small schools open is difficult, but undoubtedly worth it, as this programme proved once again.
THE progress of the Olympic torch through London was an unmitigated disaster, but whether it will advance the cause of a free Tibet is another matter entirely.
I somehow doubt that a beardy bloke shouting at Paula Radcliffe is going to melt the hearts of the men in Beijing and lead to a withdrawal of troops, but it makes for a nice photo opportunity.
I can’t say I’m much moved by the disruption of the torch’s progress though, as a spectacle it doesn’t amount to much and it is a tradition that dates back to the Olympics in berlin in 1936 when the Nazis were lionised in the film by Leni Riefenstahl. Not a tradition with its roots in ancient Greece then.
If you are moved to support the Free Tibet cause though, restrain yourself from shouting a some poor sportsperson or minor celeb (and just how did Denise Van Outen get in on this particular act?) carrying the torch.
Instead inspect your underwear for the tell-tale signs of collusion with the forces of oppression. In there you will, in all probability find a little label reading ‘Made in China’. If not there, you’ll find it one many of your child’s toys.
So, are you prepared to buy your clothes and toys from more ethical, and expensive, sources? Until we are then the protests in London will not amount to any more than empty gestures.
MILLIONS of pounds of public money and many lives disrupted and we reach the conclusion that anyone who lived there could have told you years ago for free – that turning the A494 in Deeside into a seven-lane super highway was stupid idea.
The noise and pollution it would create would be bad enough, but all it would achieve would be to shift the bottleneck a few more miles down the A55.
Still, the abandonment of the scheme is a good thing and we’ll probably end up getting what we should have had all along, a crawler lane up the hill for slow moving traffic.
Column, March 25, 2008
SOME of you may be reading this in the haze of a near-diabetic coma brought on by Easter egg indulgence.
Others may be ruing that where Easter tumbleweed used to blow down the high street shutting every shop in sight; now it’s an annual festival of DIY, funded by what’s left of the limit of our overstretched credit cards.
One thing is reasonably certain, and that is that very few of us spend the holiday as it was meant to be – a holy festival marking the death and resurrection of Jesus. Easier to think about planking in B&Q isn’t it?
Not that I’m getting all holier than thou about this, you understand, although given the fact that I did attend an Easter service – albeit one organised by my son’s school – I do have dibs on casting the first stone, if I might be allowed a little Biblical imagery there.
A couple of things struck me as odd this weekend. Firstly the fanfare given to the fact that bookies were allowed to open on Good Friday for the first time. Hurrah, yet another day to go in and get fleeced betting money you can’t afford on sporting events you have no idea about the outcome of.
No, no-one is forcing them in there at gunpoint, but that’s not really the point. It’s another small step in making what were national holidays, just another day like any other.
The other was the fuss that was being made about Easter being early this year, and how inconvenient it was that it was on a different date every year.
Acres of newsprint and hours of airtime were devoted to debating this and the constant refrain was that wouldn’t it be better to do away with this tying of Easter to the phases of the Moon and let’s have a nice convenient set date every year.
Convenient for who exactly? Some mad education authorities have decided to separate the childrens’ two-week break from the actual Easter weekend, for what reason I know not.
But I cannot for the life of me see the reason for doing away with the moveable feast of Easter, although you have to go to the incredible difficulty of looking at a calendar to find out when it falls each year.
Of course, you detect the undercurrent behind these calls for Easter to be regularised, is that it would be more convenient for business to have it one the same date every year.
And these presumably would be the same businesses benefiting from the Easter being treated less and less like a holiday and more like an opportunity to make money.
I’m not saying we should be trooping to church in the numbers we used to, but we seem to have lost sight of the fact that holidays were one just that – holy days, and surely we can find something better to do with them than go shopping.
Christmas Day and Easter Sunday are just about the only days of the year now when you can find a bit of peace, when everyone isn’t on one headlong rush to get to work or the shops.
But as Good Friday is eroded, Easter Sunday will be next, and Christmas Day will surely follow. All to the consternation of the church that will be powerless to do anything about it because it long lost its ability to dictate to us our behaviour when it stopped getting us through its doors in the numbers it once did.
We go to different churches now, where the only bells that ring are on the tills.
IT was we apparently ‘have to admit’ a substandard Six Nations.
England and Ireland were ‘teams in transition’ – which means, not as good as they used to be but their selectos haven’t worked out what to do about it.
France were just mad, Scotland are a shadow of their former selves and Italy still find form elusive.
So, we should just pipe down a bit over here in Wales because no-one else is making too big a fuss about it all. Just put the trophy in the cabinet and thank your lucky stars you’ve got it.
Thus was the theme of the London-based press when they condescended to talk about the Welsh Grand Slam, which was often sidelined to make way for coverage of Danny Cipriani, the new golden boy of English rugby.
Fine. Except I don’t remember, in years gone by, a lacklustre Wales being a reason for downplaying English victories in the Six Nations.
Jeremy Clarkson summed it up thus: “I truly enjoy a seeing a downtrodden people being given a crumb of something that makes them happy.”
The sour grapes are being harvested across the border and it promises to be a vintage year.
SPEAKING of which. Gavin ‘Show Pony’ Henson was on again at the weekend, this time for the Ospreys, blowing through the Saracens defence like it wasn’t there.
At some point his, mainly English, critics will have to accept that for a show pony, he puts on some show.
TRAVELLING home to North Wales on Good Friday seemed like a ticket to hours in a traffic jam with a festival of roadworks welcoming all those approaching the A55.
But we slipped through the chicane of barriers with barely a pause, which pleasantly surprising as it was, should also be worrying.
It might be the fear of wintry weather that caused people to stay away, but on the evidence of Friday afternoon they were not heading our way in the droves we would have been hoping for on a Bank Holiday weekend.
A couple of hours earlier we had been leaving the opposite coast in England, where the world and his wife, despite the weather, was hitting the beach.
If I were working in Welsh tourism that apparent discrepancy would worry me.
If it is the weather that is keeping people away then we can just hope for a better summer. If it’s more than that though, then we have a big problem.
Others may be ruing that where Easter tumbleweed used to blow down the high street shutting every shop in sight; now it’s an annual festival of DIY, funded by what’s left of the limit of our overstretched credit cards.
One thing is reasonably certain, and that is that very few of us spend the holiday as it was meant to be – a holy festival marking the death and resurrection of Jesus. Easier to think about planking in B&Q isn’t it?
Not that I’m getting all holier than thou about this, you understand, although given the fact that I did attend an Easter service – albeit one organised by my son’s school – I do have dibs on casting the first stone, if I might be allowed a little Biblical imagery there.
A couple of things struck me as odd this weekend. Firstly the fanfare given to the fact that bookies were allowed to open on Good Friday for the first time. Hurrah, yet another day to go in and get fleeced betting money you can’t afford on sporting events you have no idea about the outcome of.
No, no-one is forcing them in there at gunpoint, but that’s not really the point. It’s another small step in making what were national holidays, just another day like any other.
The other was the fuss that was being made about Easter being early this year, and how inconvenient it was that it was on a different date every year.
Acres of newsprint and hours of airtime were devoted to debating this and the constant refrain was that wouldn’t it be better to do away with this tying of Easter to the phases of the Moon and let’s have a nice convenient set date every year.
Convenient for who exactly? Some mad education authorities have decided to separate the childrens’ two-week break from the actual Easter weekend, for what reason I know not.
But I cannot for the life of me see the reason for doing away with the moveable feast of Easter, although you have to go to the incredible difficulty of looking at a calendar to find out when it falls each year.
Of course, you detect the undercurrent behind these calls for Easter to be regularised, is that it would be more convenient for business to have it one the same date every year.
And these presumably would be the same businesses benefiting from the Easter being treated less and less like a holiday and more like an opportunity to make money.
I’m not saying we should be trooping to church in the numbers we used to, but we seem to have lost sight of the fact that holidays were one just that – holy days, and surely we can find something better to do with them than go shopping.
Christmas Day and Easter Sunday are just about the only days of the year now when you can find a bit of peace, when everyone isn’t on one headlong rush to get to work or the shops.
But as Good Friday is eroded, Easter Sunday will be next, and Christmas Day will surely follow. All to the consternation of the church that will be powerless to do anything about it because it long lost its ability to dictate to us our behaviour when it stopped getting us through its doors in the numbers it once did.
We go to different churches now, where the only bells that ring are on the tills.
IT was we apparently ‘have to admit’ a substandard Six Nations.
England and Ireland were ‘teams in transition’ – which means, not as good as they used to be but their selectos haven’t worked out what to do about it.
France were just mad, Scotland are a shadow of their former selves and Italy still find form elusive.
So, we should just pipe down a bit over here in Wales because no-one else is making too big a fuss about it all. Just put the trophy in the cabinet and thank your lucky stars you’ve got it.
Thus was the theme of the London-based press when they condescended to talk about the Welsh Grand Slam, which was often sidelined to make way for coverage of Danny Cipriani, the new golden boy of English rugby.
Fine. Except I don’t remember, in years gone by, a lacklustre Wales being a reason for downplaying English victories in the Six Nations.
Jeremy Clarkson summed it up thus: “I truly enjoy a seeing a downtrodden people being given a crumb of something that makes them happy.”
The sour grapes are being harvested across the border and it promises to be a vintage year.
SPEAKING of which. Gavin ‘Show Pony’ Henson was on again at the weekend, this time for the Ospreys, blowing through the Saracens defence like it wasn’t there.
At some point his, mainly English, critics will have to accept that for a show pony, he puts on some show.
TRAVELLING home to North Wales on Good Friday seemed like a ticket to hours in a traffic jam with a festival of roadworks welcoming all those approaching the A55.
But we slipped through the chicane of barriers with barely a pause, which pleasantly surprising as it was, should also be worrying.
It might be the fear of wintry weather that caused people to stay away, but on the evidence of Friday afternoon they were not heading our way in the droves we would have been hoping for on a Bank Holiday weekend.
A couple of hours earlier we had been leaving the opposite coast in England, where the world and his wife, despite the weather, was hitting the beach.
If I were working in Welsh tourism that apparent discrepancy would worry me.
If it is the weather that is keeping people away then we can just hope for a better summer. If it’s more than that though, then we have a big problem.
Column, March 18, 2008
IT was a tough decision – feed the kids or watch the rugby.
Mrs B was away and I was in charge.
I thought the boys might understand. The four-year-old shouts for Wales whenever they’re on (born in Newcastle , living in Yorkshire and thanks to his dad’s allegiances, now guaranteed a school-life of being chased around the yard by an angry mob.) The 18-month-old is a stout little chap, Celtic build like his dad. Surely I could hold off meal-time for 80 minutes?
But there they were, half an hour before the start, asking what’s for their tea. All they needed was a bowl in their hands and they’d be a pair of little latter-day Olivers.
For a moment I hesitated, thenI pictured the scene at court as the prosecution explained to the English judge: “Yes, your honour, the defendant, charged with neglect and cruelty of a most odious nature, is a Welsh rugby fan. His children were found begging for food as he danced round his lounge singing, somewhat sadistically, you might think, Sospan Fach, a Welsh song about, ahem, a little saucepan, your honour. Sadly, the only saucepans to be found in the Banks household that day were in songs and not on the cooker. We ask for an immediate, and lengthy, custodial sentence.”
No problem, I thought, set the video, feed the kids, bath, book and off to bed with them and then settle down to watch the match having studiously avoided all news channels, text messages and e-mail.
Job done, boys asleep, and I’m ready for the big, delayed, match.
Press rewind, the video whirrs. For a very…short…time.
Seven minutes, that’s all I got. Seven minutes.
While all of Wales was shedding tears of joy in one corner of North Yorkshire I was just shedding tears.
But a glimmer of hope, wasn’t the BBC banging on about making the unmissable, unmissable with some free internet wizardry.
And so it was six hours later, plugged into my laptop and on the BBC iPlayer site, I I watched as Wales put France to the sword. Late it might have been but, sweeter still for nearly having been missed, and thank you, oh thank you, BBC.
What a match, what a team. What a Grand Slam.
For me the defining plays of the game belonged to Gavin Henson who showed what defensive rugby was all about.
Time after time I thought he must be offside, but no, every time the French tried to run the ball Henson was up in their faces on the blitz.
He’s a good-looking lad, you can’t help but notice the teeth, the hair, the tan. That don’t look so lovely when it’s coming at you full pace, you’ve just taken the ball and you’ve got about a millisecond to do something clever before 14st 11lbs of Gavin folds you in half.
I’m surprised that when he got sin-binned the French didn’t ask for him to stay on, the one thing they didn’t need was Henson back on after a ten-minute breather.
If there are sports teachers out there wanting to teach young rugby players the art of being a centre, just let your young charges watch Henson’s performance.
The truly incredible thing about Saturday’s game was the devastating, unrelenting pace at which it was played. Right until the end Wales , and France to their credit, were at it full tilt. In the past the game would have died as fatigue took over and the ball stayed in the ruck while everyone gasped and prayed for the clock to go faster.
The thing the southern hemisphere sides have always had on us was the ability to play for 80 minutes at that pace but at last we seem to have produced a team that can match that effort.
The only thing that saddens me, and it was a comment by Brian Moore after the game, that the Welsh victory was all the more incredible because the players do not come from all over Wales , they are drawn from a narrow corridor down South.
And he’s right. But much better we could be if the pool of talent that we could draw upon included young players from the North.
Surely it’s not beyond the wit of our schools to use this victory as an inspiration and to get more children in North Wales playing rugby in the hope of emulating the side we saw on Saturday?
But that is for the future. And now we go to South Africa to test ourselves against the World Champions in summer.
For the moment though let’s dwell on a Grand Slam that began all those weeks ago when England decided that having got the lead it was nap-nap time and then watched as Wales showed the pace with which they would win the championship.
Let’s enjoy the memory of the Irish and French dismissals of our threat. Nothing to be frightened of, not New Zealand , after all. No, not new Zealand, but faster and stronger than Ireland and France .
Let’s wonder at just how fast Shane Williams can be; and how strong a pack must be to win a scrum against the head (and when was the last time you saw that at international level?) when France were camped under our posts; and how grateful we are that Martyn Williams decided retirement was over-rated.
Let’s look forward to what comes next, because everyone has said that this is a Wales side that can only get better, as if they have not given us enough already.
Let’s give a grateful prayer of thanks to Warren Gatland, Shaun Edwards and Rob Howley who engineered all this and let us also pray the WRU tie them to Welsh rugby with golden handcuffs – diamond-studded if need be.
And let’s remember that in winning they played the sort of rugby we recognise as Welsh – fast, creative, a joy to watch and none of the percentage kicking game that has threatened to kill the northern hemisphere game as a spectacle in recent years.
There is a school of thought that says we should not as a nation let ourselves be defined by the stereotypes of rugby-playing and singing. But to hear the national anthem all but lift the roof of the Millennium Stadium and then watch a Welsh side play the way they did, sweeps all doubt aside.
If you are going to be defined as rugby-playing choristers, then let’s always play like that, let’s always sing like that.
Mrs B was away and I was in charge.
I thought the boys might understand. The four-year-old shouts for Wales whenever they’re on (born in Newcastle , living in Yorkshire and thanks to his dad’s allegiances, now guaranteed a school-life of being chased around the yard by an angry mob.) The 18-month-old is a stout little chap, Celtic build like his dad. Surely I could hold off meal-time for 80 minutes?
But there they were, half an hour before the start, asking what’s for their tea. All they needed was a bowl in their hands and they’d be a pair of little latter-day Olivers.
For a moment I hesitated, thenI pictured the scene at court as the prosecution explained to the English judge: “Yes, your honour, the defendant, charged with neglect and cruelty of a most odious nature, is a Welsh rugby fan. His children were found begging for food as he danced round his lounge singing, somewhat sadistically, you might think, Sospan Fach, a Welsh song about, ahem, a little saucepan, your honour. Sadly, the only saucepans to be found in the Banks household that day were in songs and not on the cooker. We ask for an immediate, and lengthy, custodial sentence.”
No problem, I thought, set the video, feed the kids, bath, book and off to bed with them and then settle down to watch the match having studiously avoided all news channels, text messages and e-mail.
Job done, boys asleep, and I’m ready for the big, delayed, match.
Press rewind, the video whirrs. For a very…short…time.
Seven minutes, that’s all I got. Seven minutes.
While all of Wales was shedding tears of joy in one corner of North Yorkshire I was just shedding tears.
But a glimmer of hope, wasn’t the BBC banging on about making the unmissable, unmissable with some free internet wizardry.
And so it was six hours later, plugged into my laptop and on the BBC iPlayer site, I I watched as Wales put France to the sword. Late it might have been but, sweeter still for nearly having been missed, and thank you, oh thank you, BBC.
What a match, what a team. What a Grand Slam.
For me the defining plays of the game belonged to Gavin Henson who showed what defensive rugby was all about.
Time after time I thought he must be offside, but no, every time the French tried to run the ball Henson was up in their faces on the blitz.
He’s a good-looking lad, you can’t help but notice the teeth, the hair, the tan. That don’t look so lovely when it’s coming at you full pace, you’ve just taken the ball and you’ve got about a millisecond to do something clever before 14st 11lbs of Gavin folds you in half.
I’m surprised that when he got sin-binned the French didn’t ask for him to stay on, the one thing they didn’t need was Henson back on after a ten-minute breather.
If there are sports teachers out there wanting to teach young rugby players the art of being a centre, just let your young charges watch Henson’s performance.
The truly incredible thing about Saturday’s game was the devastating, unrelenting pace at which it was played. Right until the end Wales , and France to their credit, were at it full tilt. In the past the game would have died as fatigue took over and the ball stayed in the ruck while everyone gasped and prayed for the clock to go faster.
The thing the southern hemisphere sides have always had on us was the ability to play for 80 minutes at that pace but at last we seem to have produced a team that can match that effort.
The only thing that saddens me, and it was a comment by Brian Moore after the game, that the Welsh victory was all the more incredible because the players do not come from all over Wales , they are drawn from a narrow corridor down South.
And he’s right. But much better we could be if the pool of talent that we could draw upon included young players from the North.
Surely it’s not beyond the wit of our schools to use this victory as an inspiration and to get more children in North Wales playing rugby in the hope of emulating the side we saw on Saturday?
But that is for the future. And now we go to South Africa to test ourselves against the World Champions in summer.
For the moment though let’s dwell on a Grand Slam that began all those weeks ago when England decided that having got the lead it was nap-nap time and then watched as Wales showed the pace with which they would win the championship.
Let’s enjoy the memory of the Irish and French dismissals of our threat. Nothing to be frightened of, not New Zealand , after all. No, not new Zealand, but faster and stronger than Ireland and France .
Let’s wonder at just how fast Shane Williams can be; and how strong a pack must be to win a scrum against the head (and when was the last time you saw that at international level?) when France were camped under our posts; and how grateful we are that Martyn Williams decided retirement was over-rated.
Let’s look forward to what comes next, because everyone has said that this is a Wales side that can only get better, as if they have not given us enough already.
Let’s give a grateful prayer of thanks to Warren Gatland, Shaun Edwards and Rob Howley who engineered all this and let us also pray the WRU tie them to Welsh rugby with golden handcuffs – diamond-studded if need be.
And let’s remember that in winning they played the sort of rugby we recognise as Welsh – fast, creative, a joy to watch and none of the percentage kicking game that has threatened to kill the northern hemisphere game as a spectacle in recent years.
There is a school of thought that says we should not as a nation let ourselves be defined by the stereotypes of rugby-playing and singing. But to hear the national anthem all but lift the roof of the Millennium Stadium and then watch a Welsh side play the way they did, sweeps all doubt aside.
If you are going to be defined as rugby-playing choristers, then let’s always play like that, let’s always sing like that.
Column, March 11, 2008
QUICK quiz.
You are on patrol in Kandahar province, Afghanistan , one of your Land Rovers has just been flipped by a landmine and you’re now outnumbered 3-1 by Taliban dug in around you and peppering you with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, machine guns and AK-47s. What do you do?
Most of us might say dive into the nearest hole and pray that Prince Harry is on hand to call in an air-strike to get us out of the proverbial.
But most of us are not Fusilier Damien Hields, or once he pays a visit to Buckingham Palace , Fusilier Damien Hields MC.
No, rather than keeping his head down Fusilier Hields followed the trail of the rocket-propelled grenades coming towards him, and then started giving the Taliban some back.
Just hang on a minute, let’s hit the pause button there, He followed the trial – got that – of rocket propelled grenades – yep, got that too – coming towards HIM? That’s where he loses me, because that’s where I would have been up and out and running as fast as my little legs would carry me.
Fusilier Hields however, is made of sterner stuff than soft-as-shandy newspaper columnists and to the evident misfortune of the Taliban attacking him, he was also armed with a grenade machine gun. I didn’t know such things exist, but if ever you are in a tight spot it is clearly the thing to have on your side and best to have Damien Hields at the trigger.
Having followed the trail of the RPGs fired at him, and I’m still utterly amazed by that, Fusilier Hields was able to spot the positions of the Taliban and started firing his grenades. Six boxes he got through in 15 minutes – that’s 192 grenades.
The Taliban understood the nature of the kicking they were getting from this one-man army and concentrated fire on him, turning his Land Rover into something more reminiscent of a tea strainer.
Fusilier Hields only stopped shooting back when they finally hit him, shattering a rib and he was dragged out of it to get treatment.
As well as winning the Military Cross, the third-highest award for gallantry, because this was a NATO operation he was also awarded the NATO Meritorious Service Medal. However, army rules do not allow soldiers to wear non-British medals, an anomaly which the pen-pushers at the MoD whose desks are a safe distance from the front line ought to put right straight away.
There’s been a lot of fuss in the past week about servicemen and women wearing their uniforms in public because of abuse aimed at them by those opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan .
I’m guessing that if you’ve got the nerve to follow the trail of an RPG fired at you, you can cope with the odd adverse comment from the misguided. Especially when the vast majority would applaud your actions.
Which brings me to the question of when we are to be allowed to do just that?
After Fusilier Hields receives his MC will the Army organise a parade of the 1st Battalion Royal Welsh (Royal Welch Fusliers) through the streets of Denbigh, and the other Welsh home towns of these soldiers?
I hope they do so that we can show our appreciation of the actions of someone who truly deserves to be called a hero.
ANOTHER weekend and another step closer to the Grand Slam.
The Irish said Wales hadn’t been truly tested thus far in the Six Nations. I take it they don’t think that now. We were tested, but it was they who were found wanting.
Strange how though, if you read the coverage of the London media, it is still all about England , the only team who deserve to win in their view, have let the championship elude them.
Wales, they grudgingly concede, are on track to win an ‘unlikely’ Grand Slam. Good of them to let us know eh?
And Shane Williams, once again, defied the laws of physics, which tell you that a 5ft 7ins player weighing 12st 8lbs (Williams) when tackled by a 6ft 2ins player weighing 15st 8lbs, ought to come off worst. But what does Shane do? He gives him the hand off and scores.
Another criticism levelled at the Welsh team is that that still haven’t played as well as they could. God help them when we do.
WOULD that we all had an independent panel setting our pay like AMs do.
Then we could all, with heavy heart, take our inflation-busting 8.3 per cent pay rises and insist that we don’t really want the money, but it’s being forced upon us by an independent panel, our hands are tied, our mouths are stuffed with gold etc, etc, etc.
What those AMs who are accepting the pay rise do not seem to understand – and it says something for the standard of intellect that the Assembly attracts - is that they can blether on about independent panels, commissions until kingdom come – their constituents are all facing low or no pay rises, spiralling mortgages and increasing bills.
They do not have the luxury of independent pay awards and they have little patience with politicians who take such awards while advocating restraint for the rest of us.
Congratulations to the Plaid AMs who had the decency to turn this award down. Their opponents call it posturing while trousering their cash. In the light of what we’re all facing in the real world, it was the right thing to do.
GOOD to see the Assembly doing its bit to put off the second home brigade this summer by sealing off Wales to visitors.
You might think of it as roadworks, but to those wanting to come her to buy a home it is more of a barricade. Two hours on the hell of the A55 and they’ll be turning back home to tune into ‘A Place In The Sun’ and buying somewhere on the Costas.
Of course, their might be one or two casualties in the Welsh tourism industry when the day trippers and holidaymakers fail to battle their way to our resorts, but hey, you know what they say about omelettes and eggs.
Fortress Cymru, you know it makes sense.
You are on patrol in Kandahar province, Afghanistan , one of your Land Rovers has just been flipped by a landmine and you’re now outnumbered 3-1 by Taliban dug in around you and peppering you with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, machine guns and AK-47s. What do you do?
Most of us might say dive into the nearest hole and pray that Prince Harry is on hand to call in an air-strike to get us out of the proverbial.
But most of us are not Fusilier Damien Hields, or once he pays a visit to Buckingham Palace , Fusilier Damien Hields MC.
No, rather than keeping his head down Fusilier Hields followed the trail of the rocket-propelled grenades coming towards him, and then started giving the Taliban some back.
Just hang on a minute, let’s hit the pause button there, He followed the trial – got that – of rocket propelled grenades – yep, got that too – coming towards HIM? That’s where he loses me, because that’s where I would have been up and out and running as fast as my little legs would carry me.
Fusilier Hields however, is made of sterner stuff than soft-as-shandy newspaper columnists and to the evident misfortune of the Taliban attacking him, he was also armed with a grenade machine gun. I didn’t know such things exist, but if ever you are in a tight spot it is clearly the thing to have on your side and best to have Damien Hields at the trigger.
Having followed the trail of the RPGs fired at him, and I’m still utterly amazed by that, Fusilier Hields was able to spot the positions of the Taliban and started firing his grenades. Six boxes he got through in 15 minutes – that’s 192 grenades.
The Taliban understood the nature of the kicking they were getting from this one-man army and concentrated fire on him, turning his Land Rover into something more reminiscent of a tea strainer.
Fusilier Hields only stopped shooting back when they finally hit him, shattering a rib and he was dragged out of it to get treatment.
As well as winning the Military Cross, the third-highest award for gallantry, because this was a NATO operation he was also awarded the NATO Meritorious Service Medal. However, army rules do not allow soldiers to wear non-British medals, an anomaly which the pen-pushers at the MoD whose desks are a safe distance from the front line ought to put right straight away.
There’s been a lot of fuss in the past week about servicemen and women wearing their uniforms in public because of abuse aimed at them by those opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan .
I’m guessing that if you’ve got the nerve to follow the trail of an RPG fired at you, you can cope with the odd adverse comment from the misguided. Especially when the vast majority would applaud your actions.
Which brings me to the question of when we are to be allowed to do just that?
After Fusilier Hields receives his MC will the Army organise a parade of the 1st Battalion Royal Welsh (Royal Welch Fusliers) through the streets of Denbigh, and the other Welsh home towns of these soldiers?
I hope they do so that we can show our appreciation of the actions of someone who truly deserves to be called a hero.
ANOTHER weekend and another step closer to the Grand Slam.
The Irish said Wales hadn’t been truly tested thus far in the Six Nations. I take it they don’t think that now. We were tested, but it was they who were found wanting.
Strange how though, if you read the coverage of the London media, it is still all about England , the only team who deserve to win in their view, have let the championship elude them.
Wales, they grudgingly concede, are on track to win an ‘unlikely’ Grand Slam. Good of them to let us know eh?
And Shane Williams, once again, defied the laws of physics, which tell you that a 5ft 7ins player weighing 12st 8lbs (Williams) when tackled by a 6ft 2ins player weighing 15st 8lbs, ought to come off worst. But what does Shane do? He gives him the hand off and scores.
Another criticism levelled at the Welsh team is that that still haven’t played as well as they could. God help them when we do.
WOULD that we all had an independent panel setting our pay like AMs do.
Then we could all, with heavy heart, take our inflation-busting 8.3 per cent pay rises and insist that we don’t really want the money, but it’s being forced upon us by an independent panel, our hands are tied, our mouths are stuffed with gold etc, etc, etc.
What those AMs who are accepting the pay rise do not seem to understand – and it says something for the standard of intellect that the Assembly attracts - is that they can blether on about independent panels, commissions until kingdom come – their constituents are all facing low or no pay rises, spiralling mortgages and increasing bills.
They do not have the luxury of independent pay awards and they have little patience with politicians who take such awards while advocating restraint for the rest of us.
Congratulations to the Plaid AMs who had the decency to turn this award down. Their opponents call it posturing while trousering their cash. In the light of what we’re all facing in the real world, it was the right thing to do.
GOOD to see the Assembly doing its bit to put off the second home brigade this summer by sealing off Wales to visitors.
You might think of it as roadworks, but to those wanting to come her to buy a home it is more of a barricade. Two hours on the hell of the A55 and they’ll be turning back home to tune into ‘A Place In The Sun’ and buying somewhere on the Costas.
Of course, their might be one or two casualties in the Welsh tourism industry when the day trippers and holidaymakers fail to battle their way to our resorts, but hey, you know what they say about omelettes and eggs.
Fortress Cymru, you know it makes sense.
Column, March 4, 2008
ONE of the less well-advertised perks of being a reporter is the press freebie.
Not something we shout about too much when we’re getting on our high horse about MPs fiddling their expenses, but on any given day you’ll find a fair few hacks in most airport departure loungse, off on a jolly to some tropical paradise at someone else’s expense.
These things are usually dished out on the basis of how decent a job you’re doing and the likelihood of you heading off to pastures new if the boss doesn’t keep you vaguely happy.
My first such trip was to the Isle of Man, in November, in a gale. Make what you will of how well my career was doing at that stage and how worried they were at the prospect of my departure.
Any road up, some years later I was dispatched to Arizona, so by then I’d managed to keep my nose particularly clean.
We were on a tour of towns of the Old West and pitched up in a swanky resort hotel in the town of Prescott. Now, one of the oddities of America, the land that gave us Vegas in all its neon glory, is that in many states gambling is actually illegal.
However, the Native American reservations get to make their own rules in that respect and if they want a casino on reservation land then so be it.
At this point you may be wondering what the blimminy flip this has to do with Wales, but bear with me, I’m getting there, but in all too roundabout a way.
So, in Prescott we were the guests of the Havasupai Indians, on whose land the hotel had been built. We were invited to take a look at the casinos it boasted and were given the choice of the upstairs, upmarket casino, or the downstairs, more, ahem, down to earth model.
Being hacks we chose the budget version and what an eye opener it was. If I ever had ambitions of becoming a high-stakes, high-roller they died the moment I set foot there.
The very polite, but also very firm and very burly security at the door told us we would not be taking any photographs there. And you could understand why as soon as you took a look at the clientele.
This may have been owned by a native american tribe, but they certainly were not its target market for punters. No, the people sitting at its vast ranks of slot machines were exclusively elderly, white Americans.
It was the Indians’ revenge. They might have been killed, driven from their homes and shepherded into reservations that are dwarfed by the ranges they used to roam, but now they’re extracting a payment from the descendants of those who did it to them.
The superannuated gamblers were assisted in their endeavours by a steady stream of waitresses who would get them drinks and giant cups of change – anything to keep them pumping the machines with their cash.
And this is where we finally get round to North Wales. You see, up until then the only experience I’d really had of gambling of this nature had been the arcades of the coastal resorts. And you have to say that tacky as they may be, when it comes to fleecing customers they are rank amateurs compared to the slot palaces of the USA.
And now the arcades of our coastal resorts claim they’re in trouble. The latest gambling laws mean they’ve had to reduce the minimum stake in their high-paying machines, from £2 to £1. And by high-paying we’re talking £500 – hardly the life-changing sums that people play the Vegas slots for.
Part of me would not mourn the disappearance from our seafronts of the cheap and not very cheerful arcades. But that’s just my own snobbery and that shouldn’t determine how people spend their time at the seaside.
No-one lost their home solely playing the seaside slot machines. But plenty have done just that in Vegas.
If the seaside arcades go to the wall it isn’t as if there isn’t something replacing them. This government’s inexplicable love of the gambling industry has ensured that casinos and online gambling are flourishing and taking money off people like they have never done before.
Spare me the blather about them being regulated and having to pay out a certain amount. The classic tactic of the card sharp, divert attention to one hand so they don’t see the devilry the other is doing.
So if it’s a choice between Vegas and the delights of Rhyl, give me Rhyl anyday, but don’t expect Labour to be standing at the next slot machine.
A CALAMITOUS piece of diary planning means that when Ireland are being put to the sword by the unstoppable, rampaging juggernaut that is the Wales rugby team, I will not be watching live.
House guests, non-rugby fans, will have arrived and they’ll need entertaining.
Of course, I could suggest that they might like an explanation of the intricacies of rucking and mauling, forward passes and just what in tarnation is going on at the lineout. It’s one of those suggestions that is greeted by a frosty glance from Mrs B and she carries on talking as if I’d never spoken.
So, do I secrete a radio about my person and try to explain away my delighted little dances as mere high spirits.
Or do I tape it and then try to avoid all media that might reveal in advance the result?
One things is certain, if we do the Irish then with France playing the sort of headless, attack-at-all-costs rugby we used to be guilty of, then the Grand Slam is our for the taking.
Then, and only then, might the BBC accept that the story, just for once, is not about England.
ONE quick question, or rather two.
How much did it cost to establish a news black-out of Prince Harry’s deployment to Afghanistan? Wouldn’t that money have been better spent better-equippping the soldiers who are already out there.
The MoD, a ministry famed for getting things totally and utterly wrong, has once again shown itself to be run by dullards of the first water.
They have treated Harry as if his demise would be a psychological blow to the nation so dire that we would never recover and would have to wave the white flag to the beastly Taliban.
Utter nonsense, I’m sure he would be the first to say that his death would be no worse than the death of any other soldier serving there.
And as for the argument that he will draw fire and put comrades at risk – well, only if he goes into battle carrying a big notice that says: “Here’s Harry”
He should have been sent along with his regiment, no special measures, and spend the money and effort on the news blackout properly equipping him and his fellow soldiers for the job they’re doing.
Not something we shout about too much when we’re getting on our high horse about MPs fiddling their expenses, but on any given day you’ll find a fair few hacks in most airport departure loungse, off on a jolly to some tropical paradise at someone else’s expense.
These things are usually dished out on the basis of how decent a job you’re doing and the likelihood of you heading off to pastures new if the boss doesn’t keep you vaguely happy.
My first such trip was to the Isle of Man, in November, in a gale. Make what you will of how well my career was doing at that stage and how worried they were at the prospect of my departure.
Any road up, some years later I was dispatched to Arizona, so by then I’d managed to keep my nose particularly clean.
We were on a tour of towns of the Old West and pitched up in a swanky resort hotel in the town of Prescott. Now, one of the oddities of America, the land that gave us Vegas in all its neon glory, is that in many states gambling is actually illegal.
However, the Native American reservations get to make their own rules in that respect and if they want a casino on reservation land then so be it.
At this point you may be wondering what the blimminy flip this has to do with Wales, but bear with me, I’m getting there, but in all too roundabout a way.
So, in Prescott we were the guests of the Havasupai Indians, on whose land the hotel had been built. We were invited to take a look at the casinos it boasted and were given the choice of the upstairs, upmarket casino, or the downstairs, more, ahem, down to earth model.
Being hacks we chose the budget version and what an eye opener it was. If I ever had ambitions of becoming a high-stakes, high-roller they died the moment I set foot there.
The very polite, but also very firm and very burly security at the door told us we would not be taking any photographs there. And you could understand why as soon as you took a look at the clientele.
This may have been owned by a native american tribe, but they certainly were not its target market for punters. No, the people sitting at its vast ranks of slot machines were exclusively elderly, white Americans.
It was the Indians’ revenge. They might have been killed, driven from their homes and shepherded into reservations that are dwarfed by the ranges they used to roam, but now they’re extracting a payment from the descendants of those who did it to them.
The superannuated gamblers were assisted in their endeavours by a steady stream of waitresses who would get them drinks and giant cups of change – anything to keep them pumping the machines with their cash.
And this is where we finally get round to North Wales. You see, up until then the only experience I’d really had of gambling of this nature had been the arcades of the coastal resorts. And you have to say that tacky as they may be, when it comes to fleecing customers they are rank amateurs compared to the slot palaces of the USA.
And now the arcades of our coastal resorts claim they’re in trouble. The latest gambling laws mean they’ve had to reduce the minimum stake in their high-paying machines, from £2 to £1. And by high-paying we’re talking £500 – hardly the life-changing sums that people play the Vegas slots for.
Part of me would not mourn the disappearance from our seafronts of the cheap and not very cheerful arcades. But that’s just my own snobbery and that shouldn’t determine how people spend their time at the seaside.
No-one lost their home solely playing the seaside slot machines. But plenty have done just that in Vegas.
If the seaside arcades go to the wall it isn’t as if there isn’t something replacing them. This government’s inexplicable love of the gambling industry has ensured that casinos and online gambling are flourishing and taking money off people like they have never done before.
Spare me the blather about them being regulated and having to pay out a certain amount. The classic tactic of the card sharp, divert attention to one hand so they don’t see the devilry the other is doing.
So if it’s a choice between Vegas and the delights of Rhyl, give me Rhyl anyday, but don’t expect Labour to be standing at the next slot machine.
A CALAMITOUS piece of diary planning means that when Ireland are being put to the sword by the unstoppable, rampaging juggernaut that is the Wales rugby team, I will not be watching live.
House guests, non-rugby fans, will have arrived and they’ll need entertaining.
Of course, I could suggest that they might like an explanation of the intricacies of rucking and mauling, forward passes and just what in tarnation is going on at the lineout. It’s one of those suggestions that is greeted by a frosty glance from Mrs B and she carries on talking as if I’d never spoken.
So, do I secrete a radio about my person and try to explain away my delighted little dances as mere high spirits.
Or do I tape it and then try to avoid all media that might reveal in advance the result?
One things is certain, if we do the Irish then with France playing the sort of headless, attack-at-all-costs rugby we used to be guilty of, then the Grand Slam is our for the taking.
Then, and only then, might the BBC accept that the story, just for once, is not about England.
ONE quick question, or rather two.
How much did it cost to establish a news black-out of Prince Harry’s deployment to Afghanistan? Wouldn’t that money have been better spent better-equippping the soldiers who are already out there.
The MoD, a ministry famed for getting things totally and utterly wrong, has once again shown itself to be run by dullards of the first water.
They have treated Harry as if his demise would be a psychological blow to the nation so dire that we would never recover and would have to wave the white flag to the beastly Taliban.
Utter nonsense, I’m sure he would be the first to say that his death would be no worse than the death of any other soldier serving there.
And as for the argument that he will draw fire and put comrades at risk – well, only if he goes into battle carrying a big notice that says: “Here’s Harry”
He should have been sent along with his regiment, no special measures, and spend the money and effort on the news blackout properly equipping him and his fellow soldiers for the job they’re doing.
Column, February 26, 2008
THERE’S no doubt that North Wales needs a prison.
There’s also no doubt that the UK doesn’t need any more at all.
That might seem contradictory, but given the state of the prison system, which is not just creaking at the seams, it’s burst and overflowed into police cells, it’s not as daft as it sounds.
It’s hard to have a sensible debate about this because you are dealing with convicts and from the time of Elizabeth Fry onwards prison reform has always had to contend with the impulse to lock ‘em up and throw away the key.
There will always be a few who would like our prisons to resemble an oubliette, but unless we wish to return to mediaeval standards of human rights we have to look to creating something a little more enlightened.
The fact is that the vast majority of prisoners do not actually go there for a long time. Whether they should spend longer there than they do is a different debate and one I’ll come onto in a while, but for most convicts are looking at a few months or a very few years behind bars before they are released back into the community.
The question is, what do we want to have happened to them in that intervening period for our, not their, benefit?
Now, I would suggest that for our, not their benefit, it would be best if they had not become a more hardened criminal, chock-full of criminal ideas garnered from their cellmates and just bursting to try them out on an unwitting public.
I think it would be best that prison is unpleasant enough that they don’t wish to return, but equips them with the tools to make sure they don’t. And by that I mean the social skills to make themselves a law-abiding citizen, not a more successful criminal.
And this is where a prison in North Wales comes into it. At the moment convicts are carted off to Liverpool or elsewhere, where it’s not as easy for family to visit. Research has shown that prisoners given a reason to want to be out are less likely to end up back inside and one good reason not to get banged up is your family. You aren’t given that motivation to go straight if your family can’t visit you.
As you read this you have to resist the temptation to say: “Well, they committed the crime, they’ve brought in on themselves.” They have, but I don’t see anything in the penal code that says wives, partners and children should be punished as well.
So putting prisoners closer to home makes sense if we are trying to encourage them to want to be at home rather than in prison.
But notwithstanding that, what we definitely don’t want is an extra prison in North Wales just to accommodate the vastly-expanding UK prison population.
The UK now has the largest prison population in Europe and last week it reached the crucial 82,000 mark where there were more prisoners than there were cells for them to go in.
All this might, might, just be justified if we had the most peaceful, law-abiding streets in Europe as a result of banging up so many of our citizens. But we haven’t.
The Magistrates’ Association was squawking in protest at a gentle suggestion by Jack Straw that they should look at alternatives to sending people to prison. But we send too many people to prison for short stretches for ‘acquisitive’ crimes like minor theft and fraud, and not anywhere near long enough for crimes of violence.
Petty thieves and fraudsters, pain in the backside as they are, should not be sent to prison where they just cost us more money. People who resort to violence should know that in all likelihood they will spend a long time behind bars.
We can’t go on like we are, jailing so many people that the prisons are so-overcrowded we are forced to release people early when some of them should definitely be staying behind bars.
And a North Wales prison is a good idea if it helps cut North Wales re-offending rates. It must not just become a dumping ground for an ever-growing prison population that is doing nothing to actually cut crime.
IT was a bit odd the way the BBC reported the weekend’s rugby.
It wasn’t the weekend when Wales went top of the table, the only team unbeaten so far and with a massive points advantage should it come down to that.
No, no, it was the weekend when England got themselves back in contention.
Odd that.
But it did nothing to dampen the joy of watching two Italians make the mistake of thinking they had caught Shane Williams, only to be left grasping at thin air as he crossed the try-line.
To explain how he managed this you need to consult that famous fan Welsh rugby, Albert Einstein (fact, would I lie to you?). It’s all to do with relativity.
You see Shane is so quick, he’s actually faster than light, so what the Italians were grabbing at was the image of Shane, while the real Shane was several yards ahead of himself. Simple really.
You want to know why he looks so young? He’s moving so fast he’s stretching time – a year for mere mortals is a day for Shane Williams.
Shane Williams is so fast, when he turns the bedroom light off, he’s in bed before it goes dark.
Speeding bullets want to grow up to be as fast as Shane Williams.
The cheetah is the fastest land mammal, but only because it wants to catch Shane Williams.
When Shane nips down to the shops, he’s so fast he meets himself on the way back, and he can help himself carry the shopping.
There’s gale-force winds, hurricane-force winds, and shane-force winds – that’s when you’re in trouble.
Other rugby-players are dial-up, Shane Williams is broadband.
Shane’s so fast that if you look carefully during matches, you’ll see his shadow on panting on the sidelines, taking a breather.
Roll on Ireland .
There’s also no doubt that the UK doesn’t need any more at all.
That might seem contradictory, but given the state of the prison system, which is not just creaking at the seams, it’s burst and overflowed into police cells, it’s not as daft as it sounds.
It’s hard to have a sensible debate about this because you are dealing with convicts and from the time of Elizabeth Fry onwards prison reform has always had to contend with the impulse to lock ‘em up and throw away the key.
There will always be a few who would like our prisons to resemble an oubliette, but unless we wish to return to mediaeval standards of human rights we have to look to creating something a little more enlightened.
The fact is that the vast majority of prisoners do not actually go there for a long time. Whether they should spend longer there than they do is a different debate and one I’ll come onto in a while, but for most convicts are looking at a few months or a very few years behind bars before they are released back into the community.
The question is, what do we want to have happened to them in that intervening period for our, not their, benefit?
Now, I would suggest that for our, not their benefit, it would be best if they had not become a more hardened criminal, chock-full of criminal ideas garnered from their cellmates and just bursting to try them out on an unwitting public.
I think it would be best that prison is unpleasant enough that they don’t wish to return, but equips them with the tools to make sure they don’t. And by that I mean the social skills to make themselves a law-abiding citizen, not a more successful criminal.
And this is where a prison in North Wales comes into it. At the moment convicts are carted off to Liverpool or elsewhere, where it’s not as easy for family to visit. Research has shown that prisoners given a reason to want to be out are less likely to end up back inside and one good reason not to get banged up is your family. You aren’t given that motivation to go straight if your family can’t visit you.
As you read this you have to resist the temptation to say: “Well, they committed the crime, they’ve brought in on themselves.” They have, but I don’t see anything in the penal code that says wives, partners and children should be punished as well.
So putting prisoners closer to home makes sense if we are trying to encourage them to want to be at home rather than in prison.
But notwithstanding that, what we definitely don’t want is an extra prison in North Wales just to accommodate the vastly-expanding UK prison population.
The UK now has the largest prison population in Europe and last week it reached the crucial 82,000 mark where there were more prisoners than there were cells for them to go in.
All this might, might, just be justified if we had the most peaceful, law-abiding streets in Europe as a result of banging up so many of our citizens. But we haven’t.
The Magistrates’ Association was squawking in protest at a gentle suggestion by Jack Straw that they should look at alternatives to sending people to prison. But we send too many people to prison for short stretches for ‘acquisitive’ crimes like minor theft and fraud, and not anywhere near long enough for crimes of violence.
Petty thieves and fraudsters, pain in the backside as they are, should not be sent to prison where they just cost us more money. People who resort to violence should know that in all likelihood they will spend a long time behind bars.
We can’t go on like we are, jailing so many people that the prisons are so-overcrowded we are forced to release people early when some of them should definitely be staying behind bars.
And a North Wales prison is a good idea if it helps cut North Wales re-offending rates. It must not just become a dumping ground for an ever-growing prison population that is doing nothing to actually cut crime.
IT was a bit odd the way the BBC reported the weekend’s rugby.
It wasn’t the weekend when Wales went top of the table, the only team unbeaten so far and with a massive points advantage should it come down to that.
No, no, it was the weekend when England got themselves back in contention.
Odd that.
But it did nothing to dampen the joy of watching two Italians make the mistake of thinking they had caught Shane Williams, only to be left grasping at thin air as he crossed the try-line.
To explain how he managed this you need to consult that famous fan Welsh rugby, Albert Einstein (fact, would I lie to you?). It’s all to do with relativity.
You see Shane is so quick, he’s actually faster than light, so what the Italians were grabbing at was the image of Shane, while the real Shane was several yards ahead of himself. Simple really.
You want to know why he looks so young? He’s moving so fast he’s stretching time – a year for mere mortals is a day for Shane Williams.
Shane Williams is so fast, when he turns the bedroom light off, he’s in bed before it goes dark.
Speeding bullets want to grow up to be as fast as Shane Williams.
The cheetah is the fastest land mammal, but only because it wants to catch Shane Williams.
When Shane nips down to the shops, he’s so fast he meets himself on the way back, and he can help himself carry the shopping.
There’s gale-force winds, hurricane-force winds, and shane-force winds – that’s when you’re in trouble.
Other rugby-players are dial-up, Shane Williams is broadband.
Shane’s so fast that if you look carefully during matches, you’ll see his shadow on panting on the sidelines, taking a breather.
Roll on Ireland .
Column, February 19, 2008
THERE are any number of ways of knowing you’ve hit rock bottom.
When a drink with friends involves a park bench and the sort of tipple that could double as paint stripper; waking up in police cells; or when the only callers that ever darken your door are the bailiffs.
As low as those predicaments all seem, there is one situation that is the true nadir of human existence, a pit of Stygian gloom so murky only the glare of TV studio lights can penetrate it – an appearance on the Jeremy Kyle Show.
If you have yet to sample the delights this daytime TV show, and surely it can only be viewed by the clinically obese who cannot make it to the remote to turn over, then see if any of the following apply to you:
· My brother has at least seven children and is still sleeping around
· Can you prove your son's my brother?
· I'll prove I didn't abort another man's baby - the results
· You stopped me aborting my baby...please let's be a family again
· Confess you're a cheat or I'll prove I'm the father of your eldest daughter
· Deserted by my dad every time he gets a new girlfriend
These are just a few of the titles of Mr Kyle’s shows and yes, I was confused as you were by the injunction to “confess you’re a cheat or I’ll prove I’m the father of your eldest daughter.”
The titles give a small hint of just how chaotic the lives are of those that appear on what passes for daytime entertainment nowadays. Like a car crash, its viewers know it’s going to be messy, but all the same they can’t help rubbernecking at the devastation of the lives of others.
When Jean-Paul Sartre said hell is other people I’m guessing he didn’t know Jeremy Kyle would one day be selling ringside seats to witness the fact.
One who surely must be contemplating the wisdom of appearing on the show is Craig Platt, of Kinmel Bay . He had agreed to appear because his wife Jane’s ex-boyfriend had wanted to find out who the father of her baby was – yes, I’m lost again too.
Platt, eaten up by jealousy following the show, according to his barrister, ended up pointing a loaded air rifle at his wife, who escaped through the bathroom window.
The producers of Kyle’s show, of course, deny that the parading of his wife’s alleged infidelities before the nation – or rather that dysfunctional portion of the nation who watch the show – had anything to do with his decision to chase his wife round the home with loaded air weaponry. He willingly took part and neither he nor anyone else involved was manipulated, they said.
Perhaps not, but there are a number of ways in which relationships under strain can be patched up. Airing your dirty laundry in front of a studio full of whooping morons and a wider moronic TV audience is probably not at the top of Relate’s list of marriage guidance techniques.
Of course, my sympathies for Platt probably end at the point at which he decided a reasonable way out of his difficulties was to pick up his trusty air rifle. But nonetheless, you do have to ask yourself whether his incarceration, at taxpayers’ expense, might have been avoided if he hadn’t been humiliated in front of millions.
It is like the Bedlam of old, where people would pay to look at the lunatics, only now it’s not the mad who are on display for entertainment, it’s the sad, ill-educated, inarticulate underclasses, who have to turn to Jeremy Kyle, God help them, to express their rage at the pathetic misfortunes visited upon them in their lives.
Everyone needs someone to listen to their woes, and maybe Kyle, as he says on his website, is a good listener, doing what any mate would try to do. Only your mate doesn’t listen to you in front of TV cameras. Your mate doesn’t have researchers working on your problems. Your mate doesn’t enquire, as the Kyle show website does, as to whether a lie detector test would save your relationship.
No, my guess is that if your relationship has reached the stage where it is suitable material for Jeremy Kyle, then it’s time to call in the lawyers; start divvying up the CD collection and decided who gets custody of the dog, because you’ve reached the point of no return.
THE British Army don’t mind being outgunned.
In fact, while building an Empire that spanned the globe, most of the time they did so in the face of overwhelming odds.
One who had to face them said the British infantry was the best in the world, and it’s a good job there are so few of them.
They have, for centuries, fought our battles in foreign fields and many of them were buried there before we decided to bring them home for funerals.
But what we should mind, what we should mind very much indeed, is servicemen and women putting their lives at risk and being sent into battle without at least a decent amount of kit with which to fight our battles.
Last week yet another coroner laid into the parsimonious incompetence of the Ministry of Defence that was sending Paras into battle against overwhelming numbers without night vision equipment so they could see who they were fighting.
Inevitably, one of their number, Captain James Philippson, was killed in a firefight with the Taliban. The Paras had repeatedly asked for night vision equipment to be provided, and scandalously, even after Captain Philippson’s death, the kit still was not delivered to the troops.
Here’s a quick question: Do any government ministers have a son or daughter serving in Afghanistan or Iraq ?
I’m guessing the answer is no. Do you think the under-equipping of our services might be solved overnight if they did? Answers to that one on a postcard to 10 Downing Street .
When a drink with friends involves a park bench and the sort of tipple that could double as paint stripper; waking up in police cells; or when the only callers that ever darken your door are the bailiffs.
As low as those predicaments all seem, there is one situation that is the true nadir of human existence, a pit of Stygian gloom so murky only the glare of TV studio lights can penetrate it – an appearance on the Jeremy Kyle Show.
If you have yet to sample the delights this daytime TV show, and surely it can only be viewed by the clinically obese who cannot make it to the remote to turn over, then see if any of the following apply to you:
· My brother has at least seven children and is still sleeping around
· Can you prove your son's my brother?
· I'll prove I didn't abort another man's baby - the results
· You stopped me aborting my baby...please let's be a family again
· Confess you're a cheat or I'll prove I'm the father of your eldest daughter
· Deserted by my dad every time he gets a new girlfriend
These are just a few of the titles of Mr Kyle’s shows and yes, I was confused as you were by the injunction to “confess you’re a cheat or I’ll prove I’m the father of your eldest daughter.”
The titles give a small hint of just how chaotic the lives are of those that appear on what passes for daytime entertainment nowadays. Like a car crash, its viewers know it’s going to be messy, but all the same they can’t help rubbernecking at the devastation of the lives of others.
When Jean-Paul Sartre said hell is other people I’m guessing he didn’t know Jeremy Kyle would one day be selling ringside seats to witness the fact.
One who surely must be contemplating the wisdom of appearing on the show is Craig Platt, of Kinmel Bay . He had agreed to appear because his wife Jane’s ex-boyfriend had wanted to find out who the father of her baby was – yes, I’m lost again too.
Platt, eaten up by jealousy following the show, according to his barrister, ended up pointing a loaded air rifle at his wife, who escaped through the bathroom window.
The producers of Kyle’s show, of course, deny that the parading of his wife’s alleged infidelities before the nation – or rather that dysfunctional portion of the nation who watch the show – had anything to do with his decision to chase his wife round the home with loaded air weaponry. He willingly took part and neither he nor anyone else involved was manipulated, they said.
Perhaps not, but there are a number of ways in which relationships under strain can be patched up. Airing your dirty laundry in front of a studio full of whooping morons and a wider moronic TV audience is probably not at the top of Relate’s list of marriage guidance techniques.
Of course, my sympathies for Platt probably end at the point at which he decided a reasonable way out of his difficulties was to pick up his trusty air rifle. But nonetheless, you do have to ask yourself whether his incarceration, at taxpayers’ expense, might have been avoided if he hadn’t been humiliated in front of millions.
It is like the Bedlam of old, where people would pay to look at the lunatics, only now it’s not the mad who are on display for entertainment, it’s the sad, ill-educated, inarticulate underclasses, who have to turn to Jeremy Kyle, God help them, to express their rage at the pathetic misfortunes visited upon them in their lives.
Everyone needs someone to listen to their woes, and maybe Kyle, as he says on his website, is a good listener, doing what any mate would try to do. Only your mate doesn’t listen to you in front of TV cameras. Your mate doesn’t have researchers working on your problems. Your mate doesn’t enquire, as the Kyle show website does, as to whether a lie detector test would save your relationship.
No, my guess is that if your relationship has reached the stage where it is suitable material for Jeremy Kyle, then it’s time to call in the lawyers; start divvying up the CD collection and decided who gets custody of the dog, because you’ve reached the point of no return.
THE British Army don’t mind being outgunned.
In fact, while building an Empire that spanned the globe, most of the time they did so in the face of overwhelming odds.
One who had to face them said the British infantry was the best in the world, and it’s a good job there are so few of them.
They have, for centuries, fought our battles in foreign fields and many of them were buried there before we decided to bring them home for funerals.
But what we should mind, what we should mind very much indeed, is servicemen and women putting their lives at risk and being sent into battle without at least a decent amount of kit with which to fight our battles.
Last week yet another coroner laid into the parsimonious incompetence of the Ministry of Defence that was sending Paras into battle against overwhelming numbers without night vision equipment so they could see who they were fighting.
Inevitably, one of their number, Captain James Philippson, was killed in a firefight with the Taliban. The Paras had repeatedly asked for night vision equipment to be provided, and scandalously, even after Captain Philippson’s death, the kit still was not delivered to the troops.
Here’s a quick question: Do any government ministers have a son or daughter serving in Afghanistan or Iraq ?
I’m guessing the answer is no. Do you think the under-equipping of our services might be solved overnight if they did? Answers to that one on a postcard to 10 Downing Street .
Column, February 12, 2008
HE probably won’t thank me for mentioning this but I think the Archbishop might have hit upon something with this sharia business.
I know that Lambeth Palace are tiptoeing about the whole business, hoping that yesterday’s speech that threatened to send communities around the country up in flames will be tomorrow’s chip paper, but I think they need to show a bit more gumption about it all.
Yes, sharia courts have got themselves a bit of a bad name what with the cutting off of thieves’ hands, floggings and the stoning women who have been raped. I know, I know, that’s just one reading of sharia and I’m sure there’s lots of sharia courts who let thieves off with a slap on the wrist rather than something altogether more surgical.
The national tabloids may thinks he’s a bit of a weird, beardy Welshman, but I think the Archbishop may have hit upon something with the idea of a return to the religious courts.
Let’s face it, the courts nowadays are not the crowd-pullers that they used to be. Oh, sure, we’ll pitch up like a bunch of tricoteuses when there’s a multiple murder on, but back when Dickens was reporting the courts they were packed to the rafters for every tuppeny ha’penny thief that was sent to the gallows.
With a return to the church courts we could have a return to real justice, red in tooth and claw, an eye for an eye and no eyes off for good behaviour.
Justice – if you can call it that, and let’s, just to make it a bit easier on the Archbishop – is a lot more entertaining the wall-eyed fundamentalist way.
Out in Afghanistan , before the lunatic Taliban was bombed out of power they came up with come innovative crime prevention policies. Sex offenders were put one side of a wall, a tank was put the other, tank knocks down wall and does wonders for your re-offending statistics.
Similarly, when you were hung there, it wasn’t from something as wimpy as a gallows, it was from a crane. When you were hung in Afghanistan , you stayed hung.
On top of that we had a return to stoning as a punishment, which has been much overlooked in the UK penal code, I think. It’s environmentally-friendly, using only natural materials, and it gives the participants plenty of exercise of the throwing arm.
And our police bound by red tape would suddenly find themselves unshackled where they allowed to employ the tactics of the Inquisition. The red hot poker, judiciously applied, would do a power of good to the detection rates, I warrant.
And it’s not just human defendants that a return to the church courts would sort out, oh no. We could keep the animals in line as well, after all, the church courts of Europe have a fine tradition of trying pigs, rats, dogs, beetles and weevils for all manner of crimes.
And of course if we returned to the church courts we could once again resume the hunting of witches too. It wasn’t long ago that we put a woman on trial for witchcraft. 1944 to be precise, when Helen Duncan, aka Hellish Nell, was put on trial by a government fearful her séances would give away secrets to the Germans in the run-up to D-Day.
The ducking stool was a much misunderstood vehicle of probative justice. Only the guilty need fear it and the innocent, well,
Now, there may be those of you who believe that we haven’t gone through centuries of painful separation of church and state, one of the cornerstones of our society, only to throw it away because it doesn’t suit one more devout section of the community.
You may feel that to yield up precious liberties to people judging you based on their interpretation of religious texts might just be a backward step of, ooh, three or four hundred years or so.
You’ll feel differently once the Inquisition have turned up on your doorstep. No-one expects them.
ANOTHER week and another report whioch shows how children in the UK are being failed by the school system.
This time reputable researchers from Cambridge University no less came to the conclusion that children in the UK start school too early and when they do get to school they are thrown into ‘stressful’ maths and English lessons and there is a culture of high-pressure exams.
To anyone who has paid even the scantest of attention to our school system compared to that of our European neighbours this would have been apparent for decades.
In Sweden and Finland children don’t start formal schooling until the age of seven, and do we see them lagging behind?No we don’t, in fact by age 11 they are outperforming their UK counterparts.
Successive British governments’ obsession with shovelling kids into school and cramming them for exams could just, only just, be excused if it were producing results, but it plainly isn’t.
And rather than listening to this advice the Government is figuring out new ways of getting pre-school children into new forms of lessons even earlier. They seem to think a child’s brain is some sort of barrel to be filled and the earlier you start filling it the better. Absolute educational garbage.
Isn’t it about time the Welsh Assembly Government looked at this and, like its abandonment of SATs, thought again about the age at which Welsh children start school?
It would take some nerve, but so did scrapping the tests. If it’s in their power, they should do it.
OH, you try not to dream don’t you, but then you look at the table and only two teams on there have played two and won two, us and the French and it’s only points difference that’s put them above us.
It’s a long, long few weekends to go, and you daren’t utter the two words in the same sentence. Grand is one. Slam is another.
The last game is against the French, and of course dreams could have been trampled in the mud by then. Alternatively it could be the greatest finale ever.
I know that Lambeth Palace are tiptoeing about the whole business, hoping that yesterday’s speech that threatened to send communities around the country up in flames will be tomorrow’s chip paper, but I think they need to show a bit more gumption about it all.
Yes, sharia courts have got themselves a bit of a bad name what with the cutting off of thieves’ hands, floggings and the stoning women who have been raped. I know, I know, that’s just one reading of sharia and I’m sure there’s lots of sharia courts who let thieves off with a slap on the wrist rather than something altogether more surgical.
The national tabloids may thinks he’s a bit of a weird, beardy Welshman, but I think the Archbishop may have hit upon something with the idea of a return to the religious courts.
Let’s face it, the courts nowadays are not the crowd-pullers that they used to be. Oh, sure, we’ll pitch up like a bunch of tricoteuses when there’s a multiple murder on, but back when Dickens was reporting the courts they were packed to the rafters for every tuppeny ha’penny thief that was sent to the gallows.
With a return to the church courts we could have a return to real justice, red in tooth and claw, an eye for an eye and no eyes off for good behaviour.
Justice – if you can call it that, and let’s, just to make it a bit easier on the Archbishop – is a lot more entertaining the wall-eyed fundamentalist way.
Out in Afghanistan , before the lunatic Taliban was bombed out of power they came up with come innovative crime prevention policies. Sex offenders were put one side of a wall, a tank was put the other, tank knocks down wall and does wonders for your re-offending statistics.
Similarly, when you were hung there, it wasn’t from something as wimpy as a gallows, it was from a crane. When you were hung in Afghanistan , you stayed hung.
On top of that we had a return to stoning as a punishment, which has been much overlooked in the UK penal code, I think. It’s environmentally-friendly, using only natural materials, and it gives the participants plenty of exercise of the throwing arm.
And our police bound by red tape would suddenly find themselves unshackled where they allowed to employ the tactics of the Inquisition. The red hot poker, judiciously applied, would do a power of good to the detection rates, I warrant.
And it’s not just human defendants that a return to the church courts would sort out, oh no. We could keep the animals in line as well, after all, the church courts of Europe have a fine tradition of trying pigs, rats, dogs, beetles and weevils for all manner of crimes.
And of course if we returned to the church courts we could once again resume the hunting of witches too. It wasn’t long ago that we put a woman on trial for witchcraft. 1944 to be precise, when Helen Duncan, aka Hellish Nell, was put on trial by a government fearful her séances would give away secrets to the Germans in the run-up to D-Day.
The ducking stool was a much misunderstood vehicle of probative justice. Only the guilty need fear it and the innocent, well,
Now, there may be those of you who believe that we haven’t gone through centuries of painful separation of church and state, one of the cornerstones of our society, only to throw it away because it doesn’t suit one more devout section of the community.
You may feel that to yield up precious liberties to people judging you based on their interpretation of religious texts might just be a backward step of, ooh, three or four hundred years or so.
You’ll feel differently once the Inquisition have turned up on your doorstep. No-one expects them.
ANOTHER week and another report whioch shows how children in the UK are being failed by the school system.
This time reputable researchers from Cambridge University no less came to the conclusion that children in the UK start school too early and when they do get to school they are thrown into ‘stressful’ maths and English lessons and there is a culture of high-pressure exams.
To anyone who has paid even the scantest of attention to our school system compared to that of our European neighbours this would have been apparent for decades.
In Sweden and Finland children don’t start formal schooling until the age of seven, and do we see them lagging behind?No we don’t, in fact by age 11 they are outperforming their UK counterparts.
Successive British governments’ obsession with shovelling kids into school and cramming them for exams could just, only just, be excused if it were producing results, but it plainly isn’t.
And rather than listening to this advice the Government is figuring out new ways of getting pre-school children into new forms of lessons even earlier. They seem to think a child’s brain is some sort of barrel to be filled and the earlier you start filling it the better. Absolute educational garbage.
Isn’t it about time the Welsh Assembly Government looked at this and, like its abandonment of SATs, thought again about the age at which Welsh children start school?
It would take some nerve, but so did scrapping the tests. If it’s in their power, they should do it.
OH, you try not to dream don’t you, but then you look at the table and only two teams on there have played two and won two, us and the French and it’s only points difference that’s put them above us.
It’s a long, long few weekends to go, and you daren’t utter the two words in the same sentence. Grand is one. Slam is another.
The last game is against the French, and of course dreams could have been trampled in the mud by then. Alternatively it could be the greatest finale ever.
Column, February 5, 2008
YOU’VE not really made it as a miserable nation until you’ve featured in a Radio 4 drama.
Part of my work sees me trekking to various parts of the UK behind the wheel of my car and I listen to a lot of radio.
I can’t abide the clatter of Radio 1 and I’m not yet able to surrender to the pipe and slippers feel of Radio 2, so it’s usually Radio 4 for me.
As a news broadcaster it’s without equal, but when it ventures into drama, it doesn’t matter how sunny your disposition, you’re in for a bad time.
It’s always the same, the afternoon play opens with the howling wind sound effects, a bit of lashing rain in for good measure, and more often than not in the distance a child can be heard wailing plaintively in the teeth of the storm.
Then a Celtic voice begins – Irish or Scots – to explain just how they came to be in this benighted state and wasn’t it all the fault of the English, so it was.
And it’ll continue in this vein for a good 45 minutes or so until the various protagonists all die of potato blight, or else make it to the USA where they find a land of milk and honey and the Mob, and the 3 o’clock news puts us all out of their misery.
I’m just waiting for the day the play opens with the sound of lapping water and a Welsh voice intones, to the sound of crying children in the background: “Tryweryn, drowned by the English.”
Then we will have made it into the ranks of the truly miserable, the permanently aggrieved. Then we’ll be able to hold our heads up among those whose crofter ancestors were evicted during the enclosures, or who are descended from those who barely survived the potato famine.
And we’ll deserve the title of miserablists because this very week a council near Aberystwyth is contemplating spending £1,000 preserving a wall, upon which graffiti is daubed urging us to remember Tryweryn.
Remember Tryweryn, how could we ever forget it?
And I've been as guilty as the next man, banging on about it, usually in the face of some Englishman who beleives we've never been treated with anything other than the sort of stern kindness meted out to a disobedient puppy.
And who was Tryweryn drowned for can you tell me? Yes, on the face of it the dastardly Liverpool Corporation, boo, hiss. But who was it working for? The people of Liverpool and a good proportion of them were, like it or not, Welsh.
There were 80,000 Welshmen and their families who migrated to Liverpool in the 19th century and their presence is evidenced by the 70 Welsh chapels that were there. Any Welsh child will tell you where the Eisteddfod of the Black Robe was held.
We built Liverpool and we even named many of its streets after our homeland. Voelas Street, Bala Street, Madryn Street weren’t given those names just because the English had been down our way for a holiday.
The inconvenient truth is that the drowning of a Welsh valley may have been done to us in an arrogant way, but in doing so it was for the benefit of many Welsh people.
The fact is that Liverpool was the capital of North Wales and it remains the creative and cultural magnet that draws many of our young people to earn a living there when their own country, to its shame cannot provide such an opportunity.
For all Cardiff’s claims to our allegiance, Liverpool remains a city that we have invested much in, and we should not let one event, however unjust, shape our relationship with it.
Remember Tryweryn by all means, but there must surely be better things to spend £1,000 on a than a bit of daubed masonry.What will they do if the wall falls down, daub another entreating us to remember the wall that told us to remember Tryweryn?
ONE of the more successful offerings of Channel 5 has been the US drama Prison Break.
In it, an unfeasibly handsome young man gets himself sent down so that he can save his incarcerated brother.
The key to their escape is contained in the intricate tattoos that adorn every inch of his honed body that can be decently shown on TV.
I suspect that someone in the Welsh team is similarly tattooed, only that can explain the jailbreak mounted at HM Prison Twickers on Saturday. My money’s on Henson.
It was looking like a grim Six Nations at one point, weeks of hard labour just to avoid the wooden spoon.
But the one of those magical moments happened that show you how a game can turn.
Lesley Vainikolo entered the fray to the admiring cheers of the Ruperts who have always admired a bit of beefcake on the move.
Mark Jones, the Welsh wing, had the misfortune to take the ball, facing the wrong way and he must have felt as well as heard Vainikolo bearing down on him like an express train.
In the crowd kindly fathers must have put a protective hand over young eyes, not wanting them to witness a Welshman disappear in a puff of blood and wintergreen.
Then Jones ducked.
Not elegant, but sharp, very sharp, and it did the job. Vainikolo looked for all the world like Wiley Coyote, speeding at full tilto toward the roadrunner in some death-dealing machine, only to be sidestepped yet again. By the time the Tongan’s mass came to rest he was somewhere in the upper tiers.
Speed of thought, hands, feet, have always terrified the opposition in rugby and Wales put 20 unanswered points past the World Cup finalists.
The day before the Welsh had been an unflattering 8-1 to win the tournament. Yesterday those odds had halved. And no, I hadn’t put a bet on them either.
Part of my work sees me trekking to various parts of the UK behind the wheel of my car and I listen to a lot of radio.
I can’t abide the clatter of Radio 1 and I’m not yet able to surrender to the pipe and slippers feel of Radio 2, so it’s usually Radio 4 for me.
As a news broadcaster it’s without equal, but when it ventures into drama, it doesn’t matter how sunny your disposition, you’re in for a bad time.
It’s always the same, the afternoon play opens with the howling wind sound effects, a bit of lashing rain in for good measure, and more often than not in the distance a child can be heard wailing plaintively in the teeth of the storm.
Then a Celtic voice begins – Irish or Scots – to explain just how they came to be in this benighted state and wasn’t it all the fault of the English, so it was.
And it’ll continue in this vein for a good 45 minutes or so until the various protagonists all die of potato blight, or else make it to the USA where they find a land of milk and honey and the Mob, and the 3 o’clock news puts us all out of their misery.
I’m just waiting for the day the play opens with the sound of lapping water and a Welsh voice intones, to the sound of crying children in the background: “Tryweryn, drowned by the English.”
Then we will have made it into the ranks of the truly miserable, the permanently aggrieved. Then we’ll be able to hold our heads up among those whose crofter ancestors were evicted during the enclosures, or who are descended from those who barely survived the potato famine.
And we’ll deserve the title of miserablists because this very week a council near Aberystwyth is contemplating spending £1,000 preserving a wall, upon which graffiti is daubed urging us to remember Tryweryn.
Remember Tryweryn, how could we ever forget it?
And I've been as guilty as the next man, banging on about it, usually in the face of some Englishman who beleives we've never been treated with anything other than the sort of stern kindness meted out to a disobedient puppy.
And who was Tryweryn drowned for can you tell me? Yes, on the face of it the dastardly Liverpool Corporation, boo, hiss. But who was it working for? The people of Liverpool and a good proportion of them were, like it or not, Welsh.
There were 80,000 Welshmen and their families who migrated to Liverpool in the 19th century and their presence is evidenced by the 70 Welsh chapels that were there. Any Welsh child will tell you where the Eisteddfod of the Black Robe was held.
We built Liverpool and we even named many of its streets after our homeland. Voelas Street, Bala Street, Madryn Street weren’t given those names just because the English had been down our way for a holiday.
The inconvenient truth is that the drowning of a Welsh valley may have been done to us in an arrogant way, but in doing so it was for the benefit of many Welsh people.
The fact is that Liverpool was the capital of North Wales and it remains the creative and cultural magnet that draws many of our young people to earn a living there when their own country, to its shame cannot provide such an opportunity.
For all Cardiff’s claims to our allegiance, Liverpool remains a city that we have invested much in, and we should not let one event, however unjust, shape our relationship with it.
Remember Tryweryn by all means, but there must surely be better things to spend £1,000 on a than a bit of daubed masonry.What will they do if the wall falls down, daub another entreating us to remember the wall that told us to remember Tryweryn?
ONE of the more successful offerings of Channel 5 has been the US drama Prison Break.
In it, an unfeasibly handsome young man gets himself sent down so that he can save his incarcerated brother.
The key to their escape is contained in the intricate tattoos that adorn every inch of his honed body that can be decently shown on TV.
I suspect that someone in the Welsh team is similarly tattooed, only that can explain the jailbreak mounted at HM Prison Twickers on Saturday. My money’s on Henson.
It was looking like a grim Six Nations at one point, weeks of hard labour just to avoid the wooden spoon.
But the one of those magical moments happened that show you how a game can turn.
Lesley Vainikolo entered the fray to the admiring cheers of the Ruperts who have always admired a bit of beefcake on the move.
Mark Jones, the Welsh wing, had the misfortune to take the ball, facing the wrong way and he must have felt as well as heard Vainikolo bearing down on him like an express train.
In the crowd kindly fathers must have put a protective hand over young eyes, not wanting them to witness a Welshman disappear in a puff of blood and wintergreen.
Then Jones ducked.
Not elegant, but sharp, very sharp, and it did the job. Vainikolo looked for all the world like Wiley Coyote, speeding at full tilto toward the roadrunner in some death-dealing machine, only to be sidestepped yet again. By the time the Tongan’s mass came to rest he was somewhere in the upper tiers.
Speed of thought, hands, feet, have always terrified the opposition in rugby and Wales put 20 unanswered points past the World Cup finalists.
The day before the Welsh had been an unflattering 8-1 to win the tournament. Yesterday those odds had halved. And no, I hadn’t put a bet on them either.
Column, January 29, 2008
THERE’S something decidedly rum going on in the state of Ceredigion.
It appears that if you want a planning application approved, despite the council officers being ranged against you, the best advice is to make sure you speak Welsh.
Now, I’ve come across some pretty arcane planning requirements in my time, having numbed my backside during many a council meeting – drainage, landscaping, noise abatement – the usual stuff, but never the language of the applicant.
Of course, we all know why they’ve done it, it’s to try to protect the local Welsh-speaking community. That’s a laudable aim, but it’s a questionable tactic to adopt in trying to pursue such an aim.
Now the assembly’s inspector, Ian Osborne, has said that granting permission for plans on the grounds the applicant was a Welsh-speaker was discriminatory. Now the council’s senior planning officer has warned councillors that they could lose their planning powers if it continued to make such decisions.
The thing is that planning laws are designed to deal with buildings and the environment. They are complicated, but they are nowhere near a sophisticated enough tool to deal with the fraught issue of the survival of Welsh-speaking communities.
It is madness to think you would get away with granting planning on the grounds of language, when English-speakers might have got shorter shrift from the council.
But more than that, I’m concerned about the image this gives of Wales. Yet again we are open to portrayal as some sort of banana republic because a council has played fast and loose with the law.
And the English will have a field day as they nurse their beer bemoaning the refusal of permission to put a three-storey extension on their tiny Welsh cottage complete with en-suite bathrooms for every bedroom.
“Of course,” the pub bore will declare, “I would have got it through if I could speak more Welsh than yakky-da (I know that’s not how it’s spelt, but it’s how they say it), one law for them, one law for us, they’d probably have burnt it down anyway etc, etc, ad nauseam.”
And the problem is that you can’t really argue with that, even though most of it is complete rubbish. Once you bend the rules, even with the best will in the world, you’ve given your critics ammunition.
All the reasoning about the death of small communities will be lost as they shout back: “Well, what if we did that in England, only allowed planning applications by the English? We’d be strung up, it’s political correctness gone mad I tell you?”
You wouldn’t mind if it was a proper planning scandal a la T Dan Smith and the despoliation of the North East of England, fortunes passed from hand to hand in brown paper envelopes. But no, we can’t even do that, we have to go about it in an algtruistic, albeit misguided manner.
The fundamental problem of course is not whether a handful of people gain a tiny advantage in the planning process because of the language they speak, but why councillors would feel they need to behave in such a way.
It can only be because they are casting about to find some solution to the perpetual problem of why people are leaving Wales. It’s the perennial problem and it’s why the row over the census in Wales and the Welsh tick box was a red herring. We don’t need to know how many people in Wales count themselves as Welsh, we need to know how many of them there are in England and then figure out why they went there.
I know the second homes market gets the blame, but that cannot possibly be the root cause when the whole of the UK has been afflicted by rampant house price rises.
Young people aren’t leaving Wales to get to some mythical Xanadu over the border where a first-time-buyer can get on the property ladder easily. It’s not easy anywhere, but over the border they’ve got a better chance of a better-paid job that gives them a greater chance of making that start.
Property is more expensive in England, not less so, so it cannot be house prices alone that are causing the Welsh diaspora we are seeing.
The planners of Ceredigion may have had their hearts in the right place, but they let them rule their heads in these few cases. It would be shame for them to lose their planning powers over such an issue, because they obviously care about the communities that have elected them and that is to their credit.
It’s all very well the Assembly government telling them they are out of order though, unless they come up with a lasting solution then the overwhelming pressure on local authorities will be to do something because the Assembly government is doing nothing.
SO farewell then Peter Hain.
Having previously backed Rod Richards in his travails it would seem that a vote of confidence from this column is akin to a football club chairman backing a losing manager – ie the kiss of death.
And on that basis I would like to give my firm support to Gordon Brown, he’s doing a fine job, and anyone who says the economy is down the pan and we’re mired in two wars we can’t win is a moaning minny.
That should do the trick.
IT’S that time again.
When I suddenly develop a passion for DIY jobs around the house.
Mrs B, who normally has to fulfil the role of foreman, finds it strange that all of a sudden I’m in my decorating gear and up the ladder every Saturday or Sunday.
She hasn’t quite made the connection between all of my jobs taking about 80 minutes or so, with a brief break for a cuppa halfway through, and all jobs, crucially, to be carried out within sight of a TV screen.
It’s Six Nations time again.
It appears that if you want a planning application approved, despite the council officers being ranged against you, the best advice is to make sure you speak Welsh.
Now, I’ve come across some pretty arcane planning requirements in my time, having numbed my backside during many a council meeting – drainage, landscaping, noise abatement – the usual stuff, but never the language of the applicant.
Of course, we all know why they’ve done it, it’s to try to protect the local Welsh-speaking community. That’s a laudable aim, but it’s a questionable tactic to adopt in trying to pursue such an aim.
Now the assembly’s inspector, Ian Osborne, has said that granting permission for plans on the grounds the applicant was a Welsh-speaker was discriminatory. Now the council’s senior planning officer has warned councillors that they could lose their planning powers if it continued to make such decisions.
The thing is that planning laws are designed to deal with buildings and the environment. They are complicated, but they are nowhere near a sophisticated enough tool to deal with the fraught issue of the survival of Welsh-speaking communities.
It is madness to think you would get away with granting planning on the grounds of language, when English-speakers might have got shorter shrift from the council.
But more than that, I’m concerned about the image this gives of Wales. Yet again we are open to portrayal as some sort of banana republic because a council has played fast and loose with the law.
And the English will have a field day as they nurse their beer bemoaning the refusal of permission to put a three-storey extension on their tiny Welsh cottage complete with en-suite bathrooms for every bedroom.
“Of course,” the pub bore will declare, “I would have got it through if I could speak more Welsh than yakky-da (I know that’s not how it’s spelt, but it’s how they say it), one law for them, one law for us, they’d probably have burnt it down anyway etc, etc, ad nauseam.”
And the problem is that you can’t really argue with that, even though most of it is complete rubbish. Once you bend the rules, even with the best will in the world, you’ve given your critics ammunition.
All the reasoning about the death of small communities will be lost as they shout back: “Well, what if we did that in England, only allowed planning applications by the English? We’d be strung up, it’s political correctness gone mad I tell you?”
You wouldn’t mind if it was a proper planning scandal a la T Dan Smith and the despoliation of the North East of England, fortunes passed from hand to hand in brown paper envelopes. But no, we can’t even do that, we have to go about it in an algtruistic, albeit misguided manner.
The fundamental problem of course is not whether a handful of people gain a tiny advantage in the planning process because of the language they speak, but why councillors would feel they need to behave in such a way.
It can only be because they are casting about to find some solution to the perpetual problem of why people are leaving Wales. It’s the perennial problem and it’s why the row over the census in Wales and the Welsh tick box was a red herring. We don’t need to know how many people in Wales count themselves as Welsh, we need to know how many of them there are in England and then figure out why they went there.
I know the second homes market gets the blame, but that cannot possibly be the root cause when the whole of the UK has been afflicted by rampant house price rises.
Young people aren’t leaving Wales to get to some mythical Xanadu over the border where a first-time-buyer can get on the property ladder easily. It’s not easy anywhere, but over the border they’ve got a better chance of a better-paid job that gives them a greater chance of making that start.
Property is more expensive in England, not less so, so it cannot be house prices alone that are causing the Welsh diaspora we are seeing.
The planners of Ceredigion may have had their hearts in the right place, but they let them rule their heads in these few cases. It would be shame for them to lose their planning powers over such an issue, because they obviously care about the communities that have elected them and that is to their credit.
It’s all very well the Assembly government telling them they are out of order though, unless they come up with a lasting solution then the overwhelming pressure on local authorities will be to do something because the Assembly government is doing nothing.
SO farewell then Peter Hain.
Having previously backed Rod Richards in his travails it would seem that a vote of confidence from this column is akin to a football club chairman backing a losing manager – ie the kiss of death.
And on that basis I would like to give my firm support to Gordon Brown, he’s doing a fine job, and anyone who says the economy is down the pan and we’re mired in two wars we can’t win is a moaning minny.
That should do the trick.
IT’S that time again.
When I suddenly develop a passion for DIY jobs around the house.
Mrs B, who normally has to fulfil the role of foreman, finds it strange that all of a sudden I’m in my decorating gear and up the ladder every Saturday or Sunday.
She hasn’t quite made the connection between all of my jobs taking about 80 minutes or so, with a brief break for a cuppa halfway through, and all jobs, crucially, to be carried out within sight of a TV screen.
It’s Six Nations time again.
Column, January 22, 2008
IN January a middle-aged man’s fancy turns toward his next holiday.
The rain is coming down in stair-rods, in the days when the sun does show through the perma-gloom of the clouds, it briefly shows it face above the horizon long enough to raise your hopes before setting and dashing them moments later.
Animals are walking round two-by-two as the waters rise and it’s got so bad there are rumours that water companies are even considering revoking their hosepipe bans for a day or two.
Having bagged one Welsh peninsula last year, the Llyn, we’re working our way down to Pembrokeshire this time in the hope that a more southerly aspect will help us escape the deluges that threatened to wash us into the Irish Sea last summer.
Mrs Banks is in charge of selection and she has found the perfect spot, and then revealed the price.
Apparently there is also a Pembrokeshire in Las Vegas which is the exclusive hang-out of the high rollers when they are taking a break from winning a losing fortunes at the tables. That could be the only explanation for the price Mrs B quoted me for a small cottage that she had found.
It must be set in rolling acres and enjoy fixtures and fittings the like of which we haven’t seem since the British Army liberated one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces and availed themselves of his gold-plated loo seats.
When I said I’d like to stay in. Pembrokeshire I didn’t mean renting out te whole region for my own personal use
But no, it’s a pretty modest bungalow, with a small garden, but it’s the going rate for that sort of place at that time of year – the school holidays.
Because it is the school holidays that bring out the spiv in just about every businessperson associated with the tourism.
Book at any other time of year and they’ll fall over themselves to fit you in. But try to get that six-week window of opportunity that coincides with your child’s holidays and all of a sudden they’re sucking their teeth and quietly sticking up their prices.
Yes, when it comes to getting away in mid-summer there’s more fleecing going on then in my uncle’s sheep-shed at shearing time.
The rule of thumb seems to be this – pick a figure that would make you wince – and then add another £200 or so.
Of course, you could argue that instead of going to the beaches of Wales, the more economical option would be to book a bargain bucket flight to somewhere overseas where there would be a far better chance of decent weather for a seven-day stretch.
But that would mean queuing in a British airport with a two-year-old and a five-year-old. That’s a whole new circle of Hell that Dante missed.
So instead of sitting in a departure lounge trying top control a small riot, I’ll be driving down through glorious Mid-Wales pointing out the landmarks of childhood trips where I, like my sons after me, inquired insistently from the back: “Are we nearly there yet?”
The other option would have been to take our son out of school to go on holiday during term-time. But a friend who had done the same warned us against this at the weekend. Did we realise we’d have to sign forms acknowledging our failure as parents for depriving our child of a week’s education, and did we accept full responsibility when he later dropped out only to reappear as a mugshot on Crimewatch, all because of our desire to get a cheap holiday?
So Pembrokeshire in school holidays it is and of course we’ll have a great time, despite the eye-watering hike in price.
But the tourism industry that has for so long relied on families like mine to fill its holiday homes should beware. There’s a chill in the air of the economy and just as retailers have had a miserable Christmas, so belt-tightening will extend to holidays too.
The expensive break in the UK will be replaced by a cheap one to Spain , or abandoned altogether.
The holiday home owners will blame market forces for the high prices, but it will be those same forces that may be their undoing in the next few years.
That’s the problem with sheep, you think you’ve got them all lined up to be fleeced, you turn your back on them and they’ve wandered off.
THE North West Wales NHS Trust has hit upon a brilliant way of cutting down on those troublesome infections like MRSA and clostridium difficile.
As many of these infections are believed to be carried in to thehospital, or spread, by visitors, they’ve planned a hospital with a unique way of dealing with that tricky problem.
Their plan for Ysbyty Alltwen, which will serve the Porthmadog area has 70 parking space, and more than 60 of them will be taken up by staff.
Brilliant. No visitors, no dirty hands on the wards, no infections.
It is brains like these they need at the very top of the NHS, they would cut waiting lists in half in a week, probably by halving the number of operating theatres.
Of course there are some moaning minnies who say that people in hospital would like the odd visitor. They’re nay-sayers the lot of them and I look forward to this policy being adopted by hospitals across Wales . Close the car parks, barricade the doors, together, or rather apart, we’ll beat the superbugs.
AMID the furore surrounding Jamie Oliver’s exposure of the cruelty of the chicken industry in this country there was a suggestion that it was somehow more ethical to eat game birds that had at least had a decent life in the wild.
Well, that would depend what you meant by wild. If you mean raised for most of their life in pens where they are fed and watered, then that’s a strange definition of wild.
Given a few brief weeks freedom before the shooting season starts, they are absolutely bereft of any natural wiles at all. I know, I live in shooting country and they practically flock round my ankles looking to be fed.
They are the stupidest creatures and when any other animal would lie low or fly away, they will fly straight into you. The one crouching in the hedgerow as I drove past should have stayed put, or at best flown in the opposite direction, but no, straight at the car was what its instinct told it and so my wing mirror was neatly excised and the pheasant met its end.
I couldn’t even find it for the pot, and yes, I know that’s illegal, but at £120 for a new wing mirror I think it would have been the most expensive pheasant ever killed.
Like fox hunting I think there are better things for our lawmakers to be doing than turning their attention to shooting, but the shooting enthusiasts ought to keep their heads down and avoid dubious claims about animal welfare.
The rain is coming down in stair-rods, in the days when the sun does show through the perma-gloom of the clouds, it briefly shows it face above the horizon long enough to raise your hopes before setting and dashing them moments later.
Animals are walking round two-by-two as the waters rise and it’s got so bad there are rumours that water companies are even considering revoking their hosepipe bans for a day or two.
Having bagged one Welsh peninsula last year, the Llyn, we’re working our way down to Pembrokeshire this time in the hope that a more southerly aspect will help us escape the deluges that threatened to wash us into the Irish Sea last summer.
Mrs Banks is in charge of selection and she has found the perfect spot, and then revealed the price.
Apparently there is also a Pembrokeshire in Las Vegas which is the exclusive hang-out of the high rollers when they are taking a break from winning a losing fortunes at the tables. That could be the only explanation for the price Mrs B quoted me for a small cottage that she had found.
It must be set in rolling acres and enjoy fixtures and fittings the like of which we haven’t seem since the British Army liberated one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces and availed themselves of his gold-plated loo seats.
When I said I’d like to stay in. Pembrokeshire I didn’t mean renting out te whole region for my own personal use
But no, it’s a pretty modest bungalow, with a small garden, but it’s the going rate for that sort of place at that time of year – the school holidays.
Because it is the school holidays that bring out the spiv in just about every businessperson associated with the tourism.
Book at any other time of year and they’ll fall over themselves to fit you in. But try to get that six-week window of opportunity that coincides with your child’s holidays and all of a sudden they’re sucking their teeth and quietly sticking up their prices.
Yes, when it comes to getting away in mid-summer there’s more fleecing going on then in my uncle’s sheep-shed at shearing time.
The rule of thumb seems to be this – pick a figure that would make you wince – and then add another £200 or so.
Of course, you could argue that instead of going to the beaches of Wales, the more economical option would be to book a bargain bucket flight to somewhere overseas where there would be a far better chance of decent weather for a seven-day stretch.
But that would mean queuing in a British airport with a two-year-old and a five-year-old. That’s a whole new circle of Hell that Dante missed.
So instead of sitting in a departure lounge trying top control a small riot, I’ll be driving down through glorious Mid-Wales pointing out the landmarks of childhood trips where I, like my sons after me, inquired insistently from the back: “Are we nearly there yet?”
The other option would have been to take our son out of school to go on holiday during term-time. But a friend who had done the same warned us against this at the weekend. Did we realise we’d have to sign forms acknowledging our failure as parents for depriving our child of a week’s education, and did we accept full responsibility when he later dropped out only to reappear as a mugshot on Crimewatch, all because of our desire to get a cheap holiday?
So Pembrokeshire in school holidays it is and of course we’ll have a great time, despite the eye-watering hike in price.
But the tourism industry that has for so long relied on families like mine to fill its holiday homes should beware. There’s a chill in the air of the economy and just as retailers have had a miserable Christmas, so belt-tightening will extend to holidays too.
The expensive break in the UK will be replaced by a cheap one to Spain , or abandoned altogether.
The holiday home owners will blame market forces for the high prices, but it will be those same forces that may be their undoing in the next few years.
That’s the problem with sheep, you think you’ve got them all lined up to be fleeced, you turn your back on them and they’ve wandered off.
THE North West Wales NHS Trust has hit upon a brilliant way of cutting down on those troublesome infections like MRSA and clostridium difficile.
As many of these infections are believed to be carried in to thehospital, or spread, by visitors, they’ve planned a hospital with a unique way of dealing with that tricky problem.
Their plan for Ysbyty Alltwen, which will serve the Porthmadog area has 70 parking space, and more than 60 of them will be taken up by staff.
Brilliant. No visitors, no dirty hands on the wards, no infections.
It is brains like these they need at the very top of the NHS, they would cut waiting lists in half in a week, probably by halving the number of operating theatres.
Of course there are some moaning minnies who say that people in hospital would like the odd visitor. They’re nay-sayers the lot of them and I look forward to this policy being adopted by hospitals across Wales . Close the car parks, barricade the doors, together, or rather apart, we’ll beat the superbugs.
AMID the furore surrounding Jamie Oliver’s exposure of the cruelty of the chicken industry in this country there was a suggestion that it was somehow more ethical to eat game birds that had at least had a decent life in the wild.
Well, that would depend what you meant by wild. If you mean raised for most of their life in pens where they are fed and watered, then that’s a strange definition of wild.
Given a few brief weeks freedom before the shooting season starts, they are absolutely bereft of any natural wiles at all. I know, I live in shooting country and they practically flock round my ankles looking to be fed.
They are the stupidest creatures and when any other animal would lie low or fly away, they will fly straight into you. The one crouching in the hedgerow as I drove past should have stayed put, or at best flown in the opposite direction, but no, straight at the car was what its instinct told it and so my wing mirror was neatly excised and the pheasant met its end.
I couldn’t even find it for the pot, and yes, I know that’s illegal, but at £120 for a new wing mirror I think it would have been the most expensive pheasant ever killed.
Like fox hunting I think there are better things for our lawmakers to be doing than turning their attention to shooting, but the shooting enthusiasts ought to keep their heads down and avoid dubious claims about animal welfare.
Column, January 15, 2008
I BLAME Casualty.
If you were sitting in your local A&E and hoping to get the attention of the staff there would you want to be cast as a stoic, but unimportant extra, or would you want to be the sort of attention-grabbing drama queen who has Charlie wandering round looking even more careworn than ever, if that’s possible?
Of course, if you were ever sitting in A&E and basing your behaviour on what you knew from a fictional TV drama then you would either be in need of the help of the psychiatry department, not A&E, or else you would be the proud possessor of a skinful of beer.
And that, I suspect, is the answer as to why staff in hospitals and GP surgeries in North Wales have had to put up with 792 attacks on staff, as revealed by the Daily Post. Skinfuls of alcohol, that is.
On the face of it, it would seem to make no sense. Poll any group of members of the public about their favourite, most respected professions and I’ll bet doctors and nurses come out top.
But clearly the public being polled are very different from those being admitted to A&E, or else they’re sober when polled and drunk when admitted.
However, it is an enduring mystery why people in need of medical treatment feel the need to threaten or attack those treating them. It is an extreme form of the boozed up punter who goes into and Indian restaurant and abuses the staff while ordering – good move that, racially abusing people who are just about to prepare your food.
Same deal in A&E, is it really your most sensible decision to threaten and abuse a nurse or doctor who is making decisions about your treatment. Not that I think a nurse or doctor in North Wales would base their decisions on anything other than clinical need – but, having been threatened they may well feel that the patient needs a little longer to sober up – a good long sit in the waiting room with only the Reader’s Digest for company ought to do it.
Part of the problem is the current obsession with ‘respect’. If you don’t get what you want, when you want it, if not earlier, then the person denying you is obviously ‘disrespecting’ you.
This philosophy seems to be based on the outlook of American rappers and sadly has made it’s inevitable way over here, where the viewers of daytime TV show with subtitles like “My mum’s lesbian lover ran off with my man” have adopted it as their philosophy in life.
Of course, acting like a decent human being is too much to ask if they are not being given their due quota of respect – usually pronounced ‘respeck’. And once ‘disrespecked’ this excuses any amount of vile behaviour from that point on.
Personally I think they should all be breathalysed before entering A&E and if they or their acolytes are even remotely over the limit they should be barred until whatever it is that ails them causes them to lose consciousness and thus they no longer pose a threat to anyone.
Of course, this will all change when the Government’s 24-hour licensing laws take full effect and the drinking barns that blight every town shut down in favour of the café society we were promised when they pushed through this barmy law.
We all know that A&E is often a repository for self-injured drunks and that they very often become aggressive. We shouldn’t be too surprised then that the people working in those places have to put up with violence and intimidation on any given night.
But that doesn’t make it acceptable in any way though and while, having known a few trainee nurse, I don’t always buy the Angels tag appended to them, they are in a caring profession and deserve protecting from the generation of raging drunks our licensing laws are creating.
THERE are a couple of things you should know about Peter Hain.
Of course, you might think you know a lot about him what with the all the noise about campaign donations.
I must say that I’m mystified why anyone would want to spend so much money to get a non-job like deputy leader of the Labour party, but there you go.
No, what I wanted to remind you about Peter Hain was that back in 1972 the South African security police wanted him out of the way and so they sent him a letter bomb.
It didn’t go off, others had, and they had killed their targets.
Hain remained such a thorn in the side of the apartheid regime in South Africa that they tried to frame him for a robbery that took place in 1974.
So, while politicians today remain obsessed with public this latest funding scandal might yet cost him his job, remember this about Peter Hain, while the world was watching South Africa oppress its people he stood up and was counted, at great personal risk.
Those whose greatest political risk was losing a debate in the comfort of Oxbridge ought perhaps to think about that before calling for his head so readily.
IT’S no bad thing to have been the city that gave us The Beatles, that should do as achievements go.
But having been crowned European Capital of Culture 2008, Liverpool should do more than just remind us of that fact.
Yet the two events that seem to have dominated proceedings so far are a launch event featuring Ringo Starr and a concert later this year by Sir Paul McCartney.
There is, I’m sure, a lot more to it than that, there better be. But when Liverpool won the title, up in its rival city of Newcastle posters went up saying ‘Remember 1968’, implying, with a little sour grapes, that Liverpool’s bid was more about the past than the present.
The Beatles heritage is a rich one, but Liverpool has much more than that to offer and it would be a shame if all 2008 amounted to was a historical re-enactment.
If you were sitting in your local A&E and hoping to get the attention of the staff there would you want to be cast as a stoic, but unimportant extra, or would you want to be the sort of attention-grabbing drama queen who has Charlie wandering round looking even more careworn than ever, if that’s possible?
Of course, if you were ever sitting in A&E and basing your behaviour on what you knew from a fictional TV drama then you would either be in need of the help of the psychiatry department, not A&E, or else you would be the proud possessor of a skinful of beer.
And that, I suspect, is the answer as to why staff in hospitals and GP surgeries in North Wales have had to put up with 792 attacks on staff, as revealed by the Daily Post. Skinfuls of alcohol, that is.
On the face of it, it would seem to make no sense. Poll any group of members of the public about their favourite, most respected professions and I’ll bet doctors and nurses come out top.
But clearly the public being polled are very different from those being admitted to A&E, or else they’re sober when polled and drunk when admitted.
However, it is an enduring mystery why people in need of medical treatment feel the need to threaten or attack those treating them. It is an extreme form of the boozed up punter who goes into and Indian restaurant and abuses the staff while ordering – good move that, racially abusing people who are just about to prepare your food.
Same deal in A&E, is it really your most sensible decision to threaten and abuse a nurse or doctor who is making decisions about your treatment. Not that I think a nurse or doctor in North Wales would base their decisions on anything other than clinical need – but, having been threatened they may well feel that the patient needs a little longer to sober up – a good long sit in the waiting room with only the Reader’s Digest for company ought to do it.
Part of the problem is the current obsession with ‘respect’. If you don’t get what you want, when you want it, if not earlier, then the person denying you is obviously ‘disrespecting’ you.
This philosophy seems to be based on the outlook of American rappers and sadly has made it’s inevitable way over here, where the viewers of daytime TV show with subtitles like “My mum’s lesbian lover ran off with my man” have adopted it as their philosophy in life.
Of course, acting like a decent human being is too much to ask if they are not being given their due quota of respect – usually pronounced ‘respeck’. And once ‘disrespecked’ this excuses any amount of vile behaviour from that point on.
Personally I think they should all be breathalysed before entering A&E and if they or their acolytes are even remotely over the limit they should be barred until whatever it is that ails them causes them to lose consciousness and thus they no longer pose a threat to anyone.
Of course, this will all change when the Government’s 24-hour licensing laws take full effect and the drinking barns that blight every town shut down in favour of the café society we were promised when they pushed through this barmy law.
We all know that A&E is often a repository for self-injured drunks and that they very often become aggressive. We shouldn’t be too surprised then that the people working in those places have to put up with violence and intimidation on any given night.
But that doesn’t make it acceptable in any way though and while, having known a few trainee nurse, I don’t always buy the Angels tag appended to them, they are in a caring profession and deserve protecting from the generation of raging drunks our licensing laws are creating.
THERE are a couple of things you should know about Peter Hain.
Of course, you might think you know a lot about him what with the all the noise about campaign donations.
I must say that I’m mystified why anyone would want to spend so much money to get a non-job like deputy leader of the Labour party, but there you go.
No, what I wanted to remind you about Peter Hain was that back in 1972 the South African security police wanted him out of the way and so they sent him a letter bomb.
It didn’t go off, others had, and they had killed their targets.
Hain remained such a thorn in the side of the apartheid regime in South Africa that they tried to frame him for a robbery that took place in 1974.
So, while politicians today remain obsessed with public this latest funding scandal might yet cost him his job, remember this about Peter Hain, while the world was watching South Africa oppress its people he stood up and was counted, at great personal risk.
Those whose greatest political risk was losing a debate in the comfort of Oxbridge ought perhaps to think about that before calling for his head so readily.
IT’S no bad thing to have been the city that gave us The Beatles, that should do as achievements go.
But having been crowned European Capital of Culture 2008, Liverpool should do more than just remind us of that fact.
Yet the two events that seem to have dominated proceedings so far are a launch event featuring Ringo Starr and a concert later this year by Sir Paul McCartney.
There is, I’m sure, a lot more to it than that, there better be. But when Liverpool won the title, up in its rival city of Newcastle posters went up saying ‘Remember 1968’, implying, with a little sour grapes, that Liverpool’s bid was more about the past than the present.
The Beatles heritage is a rich one, but Liverpool has much more than that to offer and it would be a shame if all 2008 amounted to was a historical re-enactment.
Column, January 8, 2008
PICTURE the scene, 1351, the Black Death has swept the world, reducing its population by about 150 million.
Edmund, the dung collector, has turned up for work and is awaiting the arrival of his colleague, Osric.
Edmund: “What ho Osric, thou lookst a little under ye weather today.”
Osric: “Me Edmund, no, fit as ye flea be me, never had a day’s illness in my life, ye dung needs collecting and groats don’t grow on trees.”
Edmund: “But what about that suppurating rosy rash on thy cheek and the unsightly swelling beneath your armpits?”
Osric: “That, oh that’s nothing, a poultice of bat’s droppings and I’ll be right as…atishoo…atishoo….Edmund, why hast thee fallen down?”
Every workplace has them, the Lemsip heroes, who despite being down with the flu, bravely dose themselves with whatever remedy they can to struggle in to the office, often loudly declaring that they’ve never had a day off ill in their life and a little sniffle won’t stop them.
No, but if it is flu and they’re still infectious it may well put a stop to the rest of their departments when they all go down like ninepins thanks to Typhoid Mary turning up with the aid of paracetamol.
The latest epidemic afflicting us is the dreaded norovirus, or winter vomiting bug, which has shut hospital wards to new admissions across North Wales.
You may well be reading this having made your first venture back onto solids after a couple of days spent hovering within dashing distance of the loo. If so, you have my sympathy.
The headlines have been full of it this week, the cases are expected to peak about now as everyone returns to work after the Christmas break and those struggling in with the aftermath of norvirus will duly infect the rest of their workmates.
This would, it was said, cost British industry billion. Well, if the captains of British industry were a bit less like the bloke who beats the drum in a Roman slave galley, then perhaps I would share their concern at the loss in production. While some people turn in for work because of misplaced heroism and a mistaken belief that the place will fall apart without them; many others go into work when they should really be off sick because they fear for their job if they don’t.
The Protestant work ethic as espoused by management has been the cause of many an employment tribunal when people’s genuine illnesses have been treated unfairly. That’s what you get when you understaff an operation and then expect it to function as normal during times of illness, such as this week. It’s not poor staff attitudes to work that are to blame, it’s plain bad management.
So instead of headlines saying “Norovirus to cost economy £3bn”, they should have read “Incompetent bosses send economy down the Swanee.”
Now I’m not making excuses for the malingerer, and we all know some of them, the sort who phones in coughing and spluttering in the middle of summer, claiming to have “the flu.” This despite the fact that there is no flu around at all at that time of year and for them to have developed it all by themselves would be nothing short opf a medical miracle.
For the malingerer, a headache is always “a migraine”, or a “crippling migraine” if he wants added sympathy; backache is “a slipped disc”; indigestion is “food poisoning” and a cold is most definitely the flu.
God help them when they get something genuinely awful, “Hello boss, I can’t come in today because…. (Thinks…now, I’ve told him I had typhoid, malaria, beri beri and Yellow Fever, so what’s left? I know)….because I’m dead, yes, doctor prescribes complete bed rest, worst case of death he’s seen.
This all comes from bitter experience. Having spent much of my professional life hale and hearty, I then had a family and that is like spending your life sampling the delights on offer in an isolation ward.
Your children’s immune systems are just building themselves up, and so they’re like boxers having a tilt at the world title – they take infection after infection, virus after virus, shaking them off and emerging from each one ever stronger.
Meanwhile, my sad 43-year-old immune system is lying in the corner throwing in the towel.
First one son, then the next, has brought a succession of coughs, colds and noroviruses into our home. I’m grateful to the Department of Health’s advice to us all to wash our hands to stop the spread of the winter vomiting bug, but when junior has emptied the contents of his stomach all over you, there’s only so much you can do.
The only thing they managed not to give me was chicken pox, but that’s because I had the foresight to have that before.
So if you get the call from someone who’s claiming to have gone down with this bug, my advice is play it safe, don’t make them feel guilty, tell them to stay home.
A HOLIDAY home burns down near Criccieth and while no-one is saying it yet I dare say one or two thoughts turn to Meibion Glyndwr.
Of course this might be an isolated act of criminal damage with no intent other than vandalism.
But I’ve always been puzzled by the act of house burning as a protest at the second home market in Wales.
After all, the houses are usually insured for their full value, and so all the house-burner actually achieves is to give the owner a new home. Upsetting maybe, but ultimately futile.
And what with the state of the market at the moment where virtually no-one is buying second homes and the first-time buyer at last seems to have a look-in, this would be a masterpiece of timing by the homeburners.
MATTHEW Parris ought perhaps to have thought harder and longer before writing a column suggesting that cyclists deserved decapitation for, among other things, their smugness and, apparently, the littering of a lane near his home.
He blamed them for the cans of fizzy drink found in the hedgerows.
No cyclist I know drinks anything fizzy while in the saddle, it’s a shortcut to throwing up in a hedgerow, never mind littering it. And we invariably carry drink in handly holders on our bikes that we refill every time we go out, as a moment’s research would have told Mr Parris.
Still, the Times columnist has apologised for his comments after the weight of advers reaction, including that of Rhyl Cycling Club, which knows more than most the risks cyclists face on the roads without ther added prejudice of Mr Parris, became overwhelming.
I like Matthew Parris a lot, he’s a very gifted writer and commentator. He got it wrong this time, but he said sorry. Let’s leave it at that.
Edmund, the dung collector, has turned up for work and is awaiting the arrival of his colleague, Osric.
Edmund: “What ho Osric, thou lookst a little under ye weather today.”
Osric: “Me Edmund, no, fit as ye flea be me, never had a day’s illness in my life, ye dung needs collecting and groats don’t grow on trees.”
Edmund: “But what about that suppurating rosy rash on thy cheek and the unsightly swelling beneath your armpits?”
Osric: “That, oh that’s nothing, a poultice of bat’s droppings and I’ll be right as…atishoo…atishoo….Edmund, why hast thee fallen down?”
Every workplace has them, the Lemsip heroes, who despite being down with the flu, bravely dose themselves with whatever remedy they can to struggle in to the office, often loudly declaring that they’ve never had a day off ill in their life and a little sniffle won’t stop them.
No, but if it is flu and they’re still infectious it may well put a stop to the rest of their departments when they all go down like ninepins thanks to Typhoid Mary turning up with the aid of paracetamol.
The latest epidemic afflicting us is the dreaded norovirus, or winter vomiting bug, which has shut hospital wards to new admissions across North Wales.
You may well be reading this having made your first venture back onto solids after a couple of days spent hovering within dashing distance of the loo. If so, you have my sympathy.
The headlines have been full of it this week, the cases are expected to peak about now as everyone returns to work after the Christmas break and those struggling in with the aftermath of norvirus will duly infect the rest of their workmates.
This would, it was said, cost British industry billion. Well, if the captains of British industry were a bit less like the bloke who beats the drum in a Roman slave galley, then perhaps I would share their concern at the loss in production. While some people turn in for work because of misplaced heroism and a mistaken belief that the place will fall apart without them; many others go into work when they should really be off sick because they fear for their job if they don’t.
The Protestant work ethic as espoused by management has been the cause of many an employment tribunal when people’s genuine illnesses have been treated unfairly. That’s what you get when you understaff an operation and then expect it to function as normal during times of illness, such as this week. It’s not poor staff attitudes to work that are to blame, it’s plain bad management.
So instead of headlines saying “Norovirus to cost economy £3bn”, they should have read “Incompetent bosses send economy down the Swanee.”
Now I’m not making excuses for the malingerer, and we all know some of them, the sort who phones in coughing and spluttering in the middle of summer, claiming to have “the flu.” This despite the fact that there is no flu around at all at that time of year and for them to have developed it all by themselves would be nothing short opf a medical miracle.
For the malingerer, a headache is always “a migraine”, or a “crippling migraine” if he wants added sympathy; backache is “a slipped disc”; indigestion is “food poisoning” and a cold is most definitely the flu.
God help them when they get something genuinely awful, “Hello boss, I can’t come in today because…. (Thinks…now, I’ve told him I had typhoid, malaria, beri beri and Yellow Fever, so what’s left? I know)….because I’m dead, yes, doctor prescribes complete bed rest, worst case of death he’s seen.
This all comes from bitter experience. Having spent much of my professional life hale and hearty, I then had a family and that is like spending your life sampling the delights on offer in an isolation ward.
Your children’s immune systems are just building themselves up, and so they’re like boxers having a tilt at the world title – they take infection after infection, virus after virus, shaking them off and emerging from each one ever stronger.
Meanwhile, my sad 43-year-old immune system is lying in the corner throwing in the towel.
First one son, then the next, has brought a succession of coughs, colds and noroviruses into our home. I’m grateful to the Department of Health’s advice to us all to wash our hands to stop the spread of the winter vomiting bug, but when junior has emptied the contents of his stomach all over you, there’s only so much you can do.
The only thing they managed not to give me was chicken pox, but that’s because I had the foresight to have that before.
So if you get the call from someone who’s claiming to have gone down with this bug, my advice is play it safe, don’t make them feel guilty, tell them to stay home.
A HOLIDAY home burns down near Criccieth and while no-one is saying it yet I dare say one or two thoughts turn to Meibion Glyndwr.
Of course this might be an isolated act of criminal damage with no intent other than vandalism.
But I’ve always been puzzled by the act of house burning as a protest at the second home market in Wales.
After all, the houses are usually insured for their full value, and so all the house-burner actually achieves is to give the owner a new home. Upsetting maybe, but ultimately futile.
And what with the state of the market at the moment where virtually no-one is buying second homes and the first-time buyer at last seems to have a look-in, this would be a masterpiece of timing by the homeburners.
MATTHEW Parris ought perhaps to have thought harder and longer before writing a column suggesting that cyclists deserved decapitation for, among other things, their smugness and, apparently, the littering of a lane near his home.
He blamed them for the cans of fizzy drink found in the hedgerows.
No cyclist I know drinks anything fizzy while in the saddle, it’s a shortcut to throwing up in a hedgerow, never mind littering it. And we invariably carry drink in handly holders on our bikes that we refill every time we go out, as a moment’s research would have told Mr Parris.
Still, the Times columnist has apologised for his comments after the weight of advers reaction, including that of Rhyl Cycling Club, which knows more than most the risks cyclists face on the roads without ther added prejudice of Mr Parris, became overwhelming.
I like Matthew Parris a lot, he’s a very gifted writer and commentator. He got it wrong this time, but he said sorry. Let’s leave it at that.
Column, January 1, 2008
HAPPY new year to you all and let’s begin 2008 as we mean to go on. Out with the old and in with the new.
And here are my suggestions.
Tolerance. Let’s have an end to that for a start.
Controversial I know, but than that’s what it says at the top of the page so I am in the words of the advert, doing what it says on the tin.
Yes, tolerance, way, way overrated and not, in my view, any great virtue and I’ll tell you why, because it lets other people get away with murder.
Oh we bang on about how tolerant and understanding we are and under our very noses people behave in the most beastly manner and we turn our failure to act upon their foulness into some sort of step towards sainthood.
This is all part of our British unwillingness to make a scene, so just as individuals we tolerate people jumping in a queue ahead of us, as a nation we do business with countries who behave in the foulest manner to their citizens.
So for instance there are only a select band of nations whose government sanctions the execution of children. Iran is one and we have pretty arm’s length dealings with them, well let’s face it, if we’ve got any infantry left after Afghanistan and Iraq, chances are we’ll be marching that way on the coat-tails of that other state executioner of children, step forward the USA, with whom we have a ‘special relationship’ – makes you proud doesn’t it?
So less tolerance of behaviour like that and more telling our special friends across the pond that until they stop killing kids they’re not our mates.
And let’s not tolerate things because of so-called ‘cultural differences’ eh? There are certain things which no matter how culturally different someone is, I’m not prepared to tolerate. The servitude and enslavement of women and children a start, execution of women who are raped for adultery and the execution of homosexuals will do as a starter. Your God might tell you this is the right thing to do, but he’s wrong, or more likely, the clergyman who tells you this is God’s will is mad.
Mobile phones – for one hour a day, one day a week, turn them off. See if anyone dies. If no-one does, then the next week do it for two days, three days the next and so on. Pretty soon the ringtone industry will go bankrupt and peace will reign.
Meetings. This is a plea to managers everywhere. If you are thinking of having a meeting that will go on for more than 20 minutes, don’t. Half of the people there will have lost the will to live, the other half will be using their mobile phones to do their Tesco on-line shopping.
Comedy Ring-tones. An oxymoron and the one thing that tempts me to re-think my views on capital punishment.
The professional Welsh. That small band beloved by the media who are wheeled on to represent us whenever some story breaks about us – usually a survey saying that we are the drunkest/fattest/most violent nation on Earth according to a survey of 50 people at Brent Cross shopping centre. The professional Welsh are the acceptable, neutered face of Wales. The sort that could be invited to be on the panel on Blankety Blank and trusted not to use the occasion to burn the Union flag.
Voter indifference. Also known as being bone idle. As the Yanks say, if you don’t vote, don’t bitch. For instance, there are thousands of parents currently fuming at Gwynedd Council’s decision to close village schools across the county. If they don’t turn out next election day to vote out the councillors who did that, then they have only themselves to blame. You might not have put them in power, but by not voting you allow them to remain in power.
The WRU. It might actually do us some good not to have anyone in charge at all for a couple of seasons. Just let the players sort it out among themselves. Stick a team sheet up on the door of the Millennium Stadium before match days, decide who’s bringing the half-time orange segments, and then hope enough of them turn up on match day. Alright, we might get stuffed a couple of seasons, but can you honestly say you would be able to tell the difference? And if we lose our fear of losing, who knows, we might find a way to start winning again.
Amusement arcades. Another oxymoron, and we can only pray for the perfect storm that would wash every last one of them from the sea-fronts of Wales. Can anyone, hand on heart, claim they are anything other than a means of fleecing children and the feeble-minded?
Welsh housing protests. Wake up, no-one can get on the housing ladder in Wales because no-one can get on the housing ladder anywhere. No-one can get a mortgage and houses over-priced everywhere. Pretending this is some sort of uniquely Welsh problem is starting to look a bit ridiculous.
Social, Welsh and Sexy. Any society which has to declare its sexiness is, by definition, not. More tiresome, professional Welsh.
Late night phone-in TV ‘quizzes’. Brought to you courtesy of ITV and Channel 5, who must be so proud to have created a new way of ripping off the sad, the lonely and the drunk.
Celebrities in rehab. Don’t they realise that their work will have more longevity if they actually die – worked for Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon. OK, there is the slight drawback of not being around to enjoy the adulation, but hey, that is, or was rock’n’roll.
24-hour licensing. Anyone noticed an outbreak of the continental café culture that was supposed to accompany this masterstroke? Anyone enjoying a late night stroll down the boulevards to enjoy a digestif with friends after a spot of supper? Or are you to busy dodging the vomiting revellers and too wary of the gangs of marauding drunks? Thought so. A bad idea, let’s pack it in.
ID cards. This government, all governments, could not run the security on a whelk stall and so they should stop pretending that all the personal information held on ID cards would somehow, be completely safe. There will always be some small cog who brings down the machine and we’ll all be even more vulnerable. If we’re not breaking the law the Government has no business in our business and our grandparents fought and won a war against people who insisted everyone should carry ‘their papers.’
There; that’s got that off my chest and it’s only day one of the year. Well, start as you mean to go on.
And here are my suggestions.
Tolerance. Let’s have an end to that for a start.
Controversial I know, but than that’s what it says at the top of the page so I am in the words of the advert, doing what it says on the tin.
Yes, tolerance, way, way overrated and not, in my view, any great virtue and I’ll tell you why, because it lets other people get away with murder.
Oh we bang on about how tolerant and understanding we are and under our very noses people behave in the most beastly manner and we turn our failure to act upon their foulness into some sort of step towards sainthood.
This is all part of our British unwillingness to make a scene, so just as individuals we tolerate people jumping in a queue ahead of us, as a nation we do business with countries who behave in the foulest manner to their citizens.
So for instance there are only a select band of nations whose government sanctions the execution of children. Iran is one and we have pretty arm’s length dealings with them, well let’s face it, if we’ve got any infantry left after Afghanistan and Iraq, chances are we’ll be marching that way on the coat-tails of that other state executioner of children, step forward the USA, with whom we have a ‘special relationship’ – makes you proud doesn’t it?
So less tolerance of behaviour like that and more telling our special friends across the pond that until they stop killing kids they’re not our mates.
And let’s not tolerate things because of so-called ‘cultural differences’ eh? There are certain things which no matter how culturally different someone is, I’m not prepared to tolerate. The servitude and enslavement of women and children a start, execution of women who are raped for adultery and the execution of homosexuals will do as a starter. Your God might tell you this is the right thing to do, but he’s wrong, or more likely, the clergyman who tells you this is God’s will is mad.
Mobile phones – for one hour a day, one day a week, turn them off. See if anyone dies. If no-one does, then the next week do it for two days, three days the next and so on. Pretty soon the ringtone industry will go bankrupt and peace will reign.
Meetings. This is a plea to managers everywhere. If you are thinking of having a meeting that will go on for more than 20 minutes, don’t. Half of the people there will have lost the will to live, the other half will be using their mobile phones to do their Tesco on-line shopping.
Comedy Ring-tones. An oxymoron and the one thing that tempts me to re-think my views on capital punishment.
The professional Welsh. That small band beloved by the media who are wheeled on to represent us whenever some story breaks about us – usually a survey saying that we are the drunkest/fattest/most violent nation on Earth according to a survey of 50 people at Brent Cross shopping centre. The professional Welsh are the acceptable, neutered face of Wales. The sort that could be invited to be on the panel on Blankety Blank and trusted not to use the occasion to burn the Union flag.
Voter indifference. Also known as being bone idle. As the Yanks say, if you don’t vote, don’t bitch. For instance, there are thousands of parents currently fuming at Gwynedd Council’s decision to close village schools across the county. If they don’t turn out next election day to vote out the councillors who did that, then they have only themselves to blame. You might not have put them in power, but by not voting you allow them to remain in power.
The WRU. It might actually do us some good not to have anyone in charge at all for a couple of seasons. Just let the players sort it out among themselves. Stick a team sheet up on the door of the Millennium Stadium before match days, decide who’s bringing the half-time orange segments, and then hope enough of them turn up on match day. Alright, we might get stuffed a couple of seasons, but can you honestly say you would be able to tell the difference? And if we lose our fear of losing, who knows, we might find a way to start winning again.
Amusement arcades. Another oxymoron, and we can only pray for the perfect storm that would wash every last one of them from the sea-fronts of Wales. Can anyone, hand on heart, claim they are anything other than a means of fleecing children and the feeble-minded?
Welsh housing protests. Wake up, no-one can get on the housing ladder in Wales because no-one can get on the housing ladder anywhere. No-one can get a mortgage and houses over-priced everywhere. Pretending this is some sort of uniquely Welsh problem is starting to look a bit ridiculous.
Social, Welsh and Sexy. Any society which has to declare its sexiness is, by definition, not. More tiresome, professional Welsh.
Late night phone-in TV ‘quizzes’. Brought to you courtesy of ITV and Channel 5, who must be so proud to have created a new way of ripping off the sad, the lonely and the drunk.
Celebrities in rehab. Don’t they realise that their work will have more longevity if they actually die – worked for Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon. OK, there is the slight drawback of not being around to enjoy the adulation, but hey, that is, or was rock’n’roll.
24-hour licensing. Anyone noticed an outbreak of the continental café culture that was supposed to accompany this masterstroke? Anyone enjoying a late night stroll down the boulevards to enjoy a digestif with friends after a spot of supper? Or are you to busy dodging the vomiting revellers and too wary of the gangs of marauding drunks? Thought so. A bad idea, let’s pack it in.
ID cards. This government, all governments, could not run the security on a whelk stall and so they should stop pretending that all the personal information held on ID cards would somehow, be completely safe. There will always be some small cog who brings down the machine and we’ll all be even more vulnerable. If we’re not breaking the law the Government has no business in our business and our grandparents fought and won a war against people who insisted everyone should carry ‘their papers.’
There; that’s got that off my chest and it’s only day one of the year. Well, start as you mean to go on.
Column, December 18, 2007
THE conversation goes something like this.
New Acquaintance: “So do you come from Liverpool?”
Me: “No, North Wales.”
NA: “Oh really, you don’t sound Welsh..”
Me: “Well, this is what people from North East Wales sound like and trust me, it’s not a Scouse accent.”
NA: “It sounds a bit Scouse to me.”
Me: “It’s not.”
NA: “Are you sure?”
Me: “I lived there for three years, yes, I’m sure.”
NA: “Go on, I think you’re a Scouser really aren’t you?”
Me: “Yep, the game’s up, kiss your hubcaps goodbye and here’s my impression of Yosser Hughes….gissajob….nut!”
OK, the final line is a fantasy lived out in my head while manners make me smile as sweetly as I can manage. And not that there’s anything wrong with being a Scouser mind you, it’s just that I’m no more Scouse than they are Welsh.
My accent or the lack of stereotypical Welshness in it has been the subject of tedious dinner conversation or offensive pub banter for as long as I can remember.
The longer I spend among the English the less ‘Welsh’ it is and the more the Scouse gene asserts itself and while I could never have taken up residence on Brookside Close, I do could pass muster as an extra on Bread, a sort of Scouse-lite that everyone can understand.
Give me half an hour or so back in God’s Own Country though and all of a sudden there more of a roll to every ‘R’ I pronounce and give me the odd double l, d, or even a bit of nasal mutation and all of a sudden I’m doing a Rhys Ifans impression.
But what I’ve never considered doing, even if I could manage it, is to lose my accent.
And yet, according to a survey, that what half Welsh parents want their children to do.
Now, the problem with a lot of these surveys is that they’re done on a shoestring and they ask so few people to take part they are utterly meaningless.
But this one, for the Combined Insurance company, sampled 2,300 people – which is a respectable sample size – well it’s about as many as they poll when they’re trying to figure out who’ll be elected as the next government.
So what do we make of that, half of us with children want them to lose our accent?
I blame the homogenisation of our youth. They may think they’re expressing their individualism, but in actual fact the mass media with which they are so familiar means they are all equally exposed to popular culture.
Keeping a Welsh accent is just one way of standing out from the crowd, and it’s not always easy to do that.
But that doesn’t explain why parents should want their children to lose their accent.
Could it be that parents are worried about how their children will be perceived outside Wales? That Wales is seen, however wrongly, as somewhere backward, insular and ill-educated and their children will suffer from people’s prejudices if their accent gives the game away?
There are many, many examples of role models in the media, but when you start listing famous Welsh people it becomes a bit of a desperate attempt to curry favour with the English by listing as many as you can before hitting upon someone they like. It’s rather like the Scots’ pathetic bleats that one of their number invented television and they are therefore all deserving of our respect.
Personally I think such exercises in self-justification are a little futile and we should all get a bit more bloody-minded about it. I don’t think we should justify our existence just because Rhydian made it to the finals of X-Factor and Gethin did well in Strictly Come Dancing.
We, and our accents, were here first and we’ll be damned if we’ll surrender them to some homogenised drawl that’s a vile cross between estuarine English and US drawl. And no, we don’t all sound like miners from the Valleys.
In a world increasingly dominated by US culture, our accents are one of the few things that set us apart and so, far from being encouraged to lose them, our children ought to be taught to treasure one of the remaining signs of their identity.
SO the nation was given a free vote on what project they thought was deserving of £50m and what did they choose?
The Sustrans Connect2 project to expand its network of cycleways and footpaths, that’s what.
So, with the nation so universally in favour of expanding this network, you would think it would have to be a pretty stubborn, short-sighted, small-minded local authority that would stand in the way of this sort of development wouldn’t you?
And just which bunch of burghers would cut themselves and their town off from the national cycle network and the massive funds that Sustrans would pump into such a development?
Step forward Conwy County Borough Council, who in the face of huge public support for cycling, as evidenced by the Lottery Giveaway vote, still insist that cyclists should use dangerous roads rather than the North Shore Promenade, and in doing so went against the advice of their own environment scrutiny committee.
Their reasons apparently rest on reasons of public safety so tenuous and without evidential support that they border on the fictitious.
If the roads of North Wales were littered with the bodies of those killed by lunatic cyclists you might think they have a point, but they aren’t, so they don’t.
Local authorities around the country are queueing up to work with Sustrans to create safe walking and cycling routes and the continuing refusal by Conwy CBC to see the benefits of this development to Llandudno and the people who live and work there is simply shameful.
NEXT Tuesday being Christmas Day I won’t be around, which should aid the digestion of the turkey – especially if you’re a Conwy councillor.
So I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and I will be back in the Post on ?????
New Acquaintance: “So do you come from Liverpool?”
Me: “No, North Wales.”
NA: “Oh really, you don’t sound Welsh..”
Me: “Well, this is what people from North East Wales sound like and trust me, it’s not a Scouse accent.”
NA: “It sounds a bit Scouse to me.”
Me: “It’s not.”
NA: “Are you sure?”
Me: “I lived there for three years, yes, I’m sure.”
NA: “Go on, I think you’re a Scouser really aren’t you?”
Me: “Yep, the game’s up, kiss your hubcaps goodbye and here’s my impression of Yosser Hughes….gissajob….nut!”
OK, the final line is a fantasy lived out in my head while manners make me smile as sweetly as I can manage. And not that there’s anything wrong with being a Scouser mind you, it’s just that I’m no more Scouse than they are Welsh.
My accent or the lack of stereotypical Welshness in it has been the subject of tedious dinner conversation or offensive pub banter for as long as I can remember.
The longer I spend among the English the less ‘Welsh’ it is and the more the Scouse gene asserts itself and while I could never have taken up residence on Brookside Close, I do could pass muster as an extra on Bread, a sort of Scouse-lite that everyone can understand.
Give me half an hour or so back in God’s Own Country though and all of a sudden there more of a roll to every ‘R’ I pronounce and give me the odd double l, d, or even a bit of nasal mutation and all of a sudden I’m doing a Rhys Ifans impression.
But what I’ve never considered doing, even if I could manage it, is to lose my accent.
And yet, according to a survey, that what half Welsh parents want their children to do.
Now, the problem with a lot of these surveys is that they’re done on a shoestring and they ask so few people to take part they are utterly meaningless.
But this one, for the Combined Insurance company, sampled 2,300 people – which is a respectable sample size – well it’s about as many as they poll when they’re trying to figure out who’ll be elected as the next government.
So what do we make of that, half of us with children want them to lose our accent?
I blame the homogenisation of our youth. They may think they’re expressing their individualism, but in actual fact the mass media with which they are so familiar means they are all equally exposed to popular culture.
Keeping a Welsh accent is just one way of standing out from the crowd, and it’s not always easy to do that.
But that doesn’t explain why parents should want their children to lose their accent.
Could it be that parents are worried about how their children will be perceived outside Wales? That Wales is seen, however wrongly, as somewhere backward, insular and ill-educated and their children will suffer from people’s prejudices if their accent gives the game away?
There are many, many examples of role models in the media, but when you start listing famous Welsh people it becomes a bit of a desperate attempt to curry favour with the English by listing as many as you can before hitting upon someone they like. It’s rather like the Scots’ pathetic bleats that one of their number invented television and they are therefore all deserving of our respect.
Personally I think such exercises in self-justification are a little futile and we should all get a bit more bloody-minded about it. I don’t think we should justify our existence just because Rhydian made it to the finals of X-Factor and Gethin did well in Strictly Come Dancing.
We, and our accents, were here first and we’ll be damned if we’ll surrender them to some homogenised drawl that’s a vile cross between estuarine English and US drawl. And no, we don’t all sound like miners from the Valleys.
In a world increasingly dominated by US culture, our accents are one of the few things that set us apart and so, far from being encouraged to lose them, our children ought to be taught to treasure one of the remaining signs of their identity.
SO the nation was given a free vote on what project they thought was deserving of £50m and what did they choose?
The Sustrans Connect2 project to expand its network of cycleways and footpaths, that’s what.
So, with the nation so universally in favour of expanding this network, you would think it would have to be a pretty stubborn, short-sighted, small-minded local authority that would stand in the way of this sort of development wouldn’t you?
And just which bunch of burghers would cut themselves and their town off from the national cycle network and the massive funds that Sustrans would pump into such a development?
Step forward Conwy County Borough Council, who in the face of huge public support for cycling, as evidenced by the Lottery Giveaway vote, still insist that cyclists should use dangerous roads rather than the North Shore Promenade, and in doing so went against the advice of their own environment scrutiny committee.
Their reasons apparently rest on reasons of public safety so tenuous and without evidential support that they border on the fictitious.
If the roads of North Wales were littered with the bodies of those killed by lunatic cyclists you might think they have a point, but they aren’t, so they don’t.
Local authorities around the country are queueing up to work with Sustrans to create safe walking and cycling routes and the continuing refusal by Conwy CBC to see the benefits of this development to Llandudno and the people who live and work there is simply shameful.
NEXT Tuesday being Christmas Day I won’t be around, which should aid the digestion of the turkey – especially if you’re a Conwy councillor.
So I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and I will be back in the Post on ?????
Column, December 11, 2007
WHY would anyone want to become a councillor?
There may have been a time when the burghers were men (because it was predominantly male) of position, respect and influence.
Now, it just looks increasingly like a thankless task, balancing ever-decreasing budgets against spiralling demand.
But I guess if you asked most councillors to cast their mind back to their original decision to seek civic office, an awful lot will use words to the effect that they wanted to make a difference, to be of service, to help their community.
Of course there may be a little political ambition mixed in with those laudable aims, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
But I’m also sure that not long after they take office they find that their desire to serve and make a difference has to be compromised when faced with the harsh realities of limited budgets and massive demand for services.
The books have to be balanced and to them falls the unpleasant task of wielding the axe to make sure they do.
I am sure there are more than a few sleepless nights among those who try to keep the wheels of local government on track, as they wonder whether they have done the right thing, sometimes in the face of heartfelt protest by those opposed to their plans.
I am sure they try to do the right thing. I’m also sure that years immersed in the bureaucracy of local government blinds them to the effects of what they do.
Sometimes they may wonder if they are still making a difference to the lives of those they represent.
On Thursday they have a chance to do so.
Then the councillors of Gwynedd will consider the plans to close 29 small village schools.
The problem is that if you look at a small school on paper it makes no sense whatsoever. Economically it would always seem much more sensible to put children into bigger schools with better facilities and more teachers and have them taking advantage of economies of scale by teaching larger classes.
But that analysis only works as long as you’re looking at the balance sheet and not what goes on in the classroom.
Small schools serve their pupils better than large ones. They also serve their communities better, in fact they may be one of the few things keeping a community together at all.
The proposal to close the schools is being justified by, among other factors, demographic changes in the communities that serve those schools – falling pupil numbers in other words.
What does not seem to have been taken into account is the fact that the closure of the village school might well hasten such demographic changes.
A low-wage economy couple with rising house prices has made bringing up a family in rural Wales a tough choice for many people. It has accounted for a drain of young families over the border where a house is certainly no cheaper but well-paid jobs are in more plentiful supply.
One of the few advantages Gwynedd had was the quality and size of its schools. This would persuade some to stay and some to actually move there
Take away the school and you remove one more reason to build a life in that village. And that will inevitable mean more houses in Gwynedd’s villages being snapped up as holiday homes and so the demographic change is accelerated by the council’s own actions.
Pupil rolls might be low now, but this can change, and one thing is for certain, if you close a school its places will never fill up again, it is lost forever.
Any councillor sitting in the meeting on Thursday should dispel any doubts they may have about how much difference they make.
On that day they have a real chance to serve their communities. I hope they put that above all else and reject this plan to close Gwynedd’s small village schools.
INTERESTING to see that police officers incensed by a miserly pay award are seeking to strike over the matter.
That will make a fascinating dispute.
Of course the policemen will have a bit of an advantage in this. After all, if they’re on strike, there’ll be no drafting in cops to protect strikebreakers.
This does not bode well. There could be a breakdown of law and order. The last time there was a policemen’s strike – in Liverpool, would you believe it – the government of the day had to send a gunboat up the Mersey to keep the peace.
What would we do now, where would we get the able-bodied men to stop criminals running riot?
I have a bit of a plan, which I’m willing to share with the Home Secretary free of charge.
Coal miners. Or rather, ex-coal miners.
Alright they might be a bit long in the tooth, but they’re tough as old boots and one of them standing on every street corner, pickaxe handle in hand would deter even the most hardened criminal.
And after all, it would be payback for the coppers who were bussed up from London to break the miners’ strike back in the ‘80s. Revenge, as they says, is a dish best served cold.
The main challenge to my, I must say, brilliant, plan, is persuading the miners to cross a picket line. I think most miners would never let themselves be used to break a strike. Whereas police officers would, and did.
THE demise of the school nativity has been halted in at least one corner of the country, Banks junior has his first role.
Quite why schools have decided to abandon this wonderful occasion can only be guessed – lack of time, commitment, resources and possibly, a misplaced desire not to offend those of other faiths (it has to be said that whenever this is suggested to Muslims, Sikhs or Hindus, they immediately respond by saying anyone who thinks they would be offended is barmy)
But in our village school young Banks will take to the stage as the innkeeper’s assistant. Admittedly I wasn’t aware that innkeepers had assistants, but I’ll be there filming the whole occasion for posterity – and no, that hasn’t been banned either.
There may have been a time when the burghers were men (because it was predominantly male) of position, respect and influence.
Now, it just looks increasingly like a thankless task, balancing ever-decreasing budgets against spiralling demand.
But I guess if you asked most councillors to cast their mind back to their original decision to seek civic office, an awful lot will use words to the effect that they wanted to make a difference, to be of service, to help their community.
Of course there may be a little political ambition mixed in with those laudable aims, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
But I’m also sure that not long after they take office they find that their desire to serve and make a difference has to be compromised when faced with the harsh realities of limited budgets and massive demand for services.
The books have to be balanced and to them falls the unpleasant task of wielding the axe to make sure they do.
I am sure there are more than a few sleepless nights among those who try to keep the wheels of local government on track, as they wonder whether they have done the right thing, sometimes in the face of heartfelt protest by those opposed to their plans.
I am sure they try to do the right thing. I’m also sure that years immersed in the bureaucracy of local government blinds them to the effects of what they do.
Sometimes they may wonder if they are still making a difference to the lives of those they represent.
On Thursday they have a chance to do so.
Then the councillors of Gwynedd will consider the plans to close 29 small village schools.
The problem is that if you look at a small school on paper it makes no sense whatsoever. Economically it would always seem much more sensible to put children into bigger schools with better facilities and more teachers and have them taking advantage of economies of scale by teaching larger classes.
But that analysis only works as long as you’re looking at the balance sheet and not what goes on in the classroom.
Small schools serve their pupils better than large ones. They also serve their communities better, in fact they may be one of the few things keeping a community together at all.
The proposal to close the schools is being justified by, among other factors, demographic changes in the communities that serve those schools – falling pupil numbers in other words.
What does not seem to have been taken into account is the fact that the closure of the village school might well hasten such demographic changes.
A low-wage economy couple with rising house prices has made bringing up a family in rural Wales a tough choice for many people. It has accounted for a drain of young families over the border where a house is certainly no cheaper but well-paid jobs are in more plentiful supply.
One of the few advantages Gwynedd had was the quality and size of its schools. This would persuade some to stay and some to actually move there
Take away the school and you remove one more reason to build a life in that village. And that will inevitable mean more houses in Gwynedd’s villages being snapped up as holiday homes and so the demographic change is accelerated by the council’s own actions.
Pupil rolls might be low now, but this can change, and one thing is for certain, if you close a school its places will never fill up again, it is lost forever.
Any councillor sitting in the meeting on Thursday should dispel any doubts they may have about how much difference they make.
On that day they have a real chance to serve their communities. I hope they put that above all else and reject this plan to close Gwynedd’s small village schools.
INTERESTING to see that police officers incensed by a miserly pay award are seeking to strike over the matter.
That will make a fascinating dispute.
Of course the policemen will have a bit of an advantage in this. After all, if they’re on strike, there’ll be no drafting in cops to protect strikebreakers.
This does not bode well. There could be a breakdown of law and order. The last time there was a policemen’s strike – in Liverpool, would you believe it – the government of the day had to send a gunboat up the Mersey to keep the peace.
What would we do now, where would we get the able-bodied men to stop criminals running riot?
I have a bit of a plan, which I’m willing to share with the Home Secretary free of charge.
Coal miners. Or rather, ex-coal miners.
Alright they might be a bit long in the tooth, but they’re tough as old boots and one of them standing on every street corner, pickaxe handle in hand would deter even the most hardened criminal.
And after all, it would be payback for the coppers who were bussed up from London to break the miners’ strike back in the ‘80s. Revenge, as they says, is a dish best served cold.
The main challenge to my, I must say, brilliant, plan, is persuading the miners to cross a picket line. I think most miners would never let themselves be used to break a strike. Whereas police officers would, and did.
THE demise of the school nativity has been halted in at least one corner of the country, Banks junior has his first role.
Quite why schools have decided to abandon this wonderful occasion can only be guessed – lack of time, commitment, resources and possibly, a misplaced desire not to offend those of other faiths (it has to be said that whenever this is suggested to Muslims, Sikhs or Hindus, they immediately respond by saying anyone who thinks they would be offended is barmy)
But in our village school young Banks will take to the stage as the innkeeper’s assistant. Admittedly I wasn’t aware that innkeepers had assistants, but I’ll be there filming the whole occasion for posterity – and no, that hasn’t been banned either.
Column, December 4, 2007
THERE comes a time in all our lives when the person we most need at our side is Sergeant Wilson.
He’s the quietly-spoken chap from Dad’s Army, played by John Le Mesurier, the reasonable foil to Captain Mainwaring’s pompous bluster.
If you’re of tender years and have yet to had the pleasure, I suggest you scan the Christmas TV schedules as chances are the BBC will be repeating an episode at some point.
Anyway, when Mainwaring was about to embark on yet another scheme guaranteed to end in disaster, Sgt Wilson would usually quietly intone: “Do you really think that’s wise Sir?”
He was invariably ignored and disaster ensued but if only the Captain had heeded his words of warning.
And that’s what I mean when I say we all need a Wilson at our shoulder. I’m sure we’ve all done things, said things, embarked on madcap schemes, only to wish that someone who had retained a nodding acquaintance with sanity had urged us to get a grip and stop.
If only Sergeant Wilson had been about when someone at the Victoria Centre declared: “Those kids are carolling too loud, I’m going to call the police.”
If only there had been someone there whose idea of what Christmas is about extends beyond jingling tills. If only someone had piped up: “Do you think that’s really wise.” Perhaps a finger might have paused before dialling for the cops, perhaps the Scrooge-like complainants might have had their hearts melted by a piping chorus of Silent Night.
But no. No Wilsonesque words of wisdom and so, yet again, the idiocy of a minority tarnishes us all as we are portrayed as a nation of miseries who never pass up a chance to spread gloom.
I mean, asking children, little children, to stop singing so loudly. What in God’s name were they thinking?
In most shopping centres you visit nowadays you are assaulted by piped music in every shop you enter, so to go somewhere where children were carolling is a rare treat.
Instead of praising them for their lovely singing, it’s bah, humbug and turn it down.
There are certain questions in life to which there is only one correct response.
When questioned as to whether your wife’s new hairdo suits her, it, naturally, most certainly does, and if anything it makes her look younger. Hesitate for a millisecond in answering and you, my friend, are dead in the water.
When asked by a police officer if you know how fast you were going, the correct answer is not: “Yes I do, and I don’t care what your little radar gun says.”
If a primary school child asks if you enjoyed their carols, the correct response is, yes you did, followed by a healthily heavy drop of loose change into their collection bucket.
Probably, on reflection, best not to dial 999.
Didn’t some little voice inside their head say: “These children will have their hopes and dreams battered enough by critics when they’re older, let them have their day in the limelight without calling in security.”
Centre manager Sue Nash admitted the situation could have been handled better. Surveying the headlines it has attracted, worldwide, it’s fair to say Ms Nash has discovered her own talent for understatement.
Still, the children have done well out of it. A heroes’ welcome when they went back this weekend – and no call to the cops. And an expenses-paid trip and an invitation to perform and a generous donation to school funds from the Savoy Hotel in London, where the spirit of Christmas is apparently still alive and breathing.
Those shopkeepers who complained ought perhaps to examine their consciences and realise that, for the most part, they are hawking their wares to parents and grandparents who take a dim view of killjoys who criticise kids’ singing.
And the tills will be jingling elsewhere.
DO I want the Welsh flag represented on the Union Jack.
At this point a pedant is already cracking open a sheaf of Basildon Bond to pen a missive informing me that what I’m referring to is the Union Flag, as the Union Jack flies only on a ship. They’re wrong, they’ve been interchangeable terms for centuries, so let’s move on.
Do we want the Welsh dragon on there in some form, as Wrexham MP Ian Lucas suggests?
Though I’m sure he means well, I would suggest most certainly not, for a few reasons.
Firstly, I don’t want to go where I’m not invited. When the Principality of Wales was absorbed into England there was no suggestion then of representation on the flag and I see no reason to rewrite history.
It has been suggested that the British national anthem should be rewritten for the same reasons, because verses that talk about “rebellious Scots” don’t go down too well north of the border, even if they are rarely, if ever, sung.
It’s sanitising historical fact, the Scots were, and still are, rebellious and taking the verse out of the anthem will not make them any less so.
Secondly, there is no way in the world the English are going to swallow a flag with a bloomin’ great dragon in the middle of it. At best we would be relegated to some corner, somewhat like we are geographically.
Thirdly, by allowing the rest of Britain to use a dragon we are diminishing its value as our symbol.
We are one of only two countries in the world with a dragon on their flag – the other being, my gift to pub quizzers everywhere – Bhutan. So why diminish what is an instantly recognisable brand by watering it down in some mish-mash with the flag of the Union.
And by absorbing it into the flag of the Union it might be suggested that there was some sort of union between us, when there never was. We were conquered, or rather some would suggest that attempts are still being made to conquer us, and we have merely been pausing for breath since the time of Owain Glyndwr.
Putting a dragon on the Union Jack carries with it the implication that we are one big happy family, when we are not. We are always going to be the awkward neighbours, the mountain people, with the strange language and forever, our own flag.
He’s the quietly-spoken chap from Dad’s Army, played by John Le Mesurier, the reasonable foil to Captain Mainwaring’s pompous bluster.
If you’re of tender years and have yet to had the pleasure, I suggest you scan the Christmas TV schedules as chances are the BBC will be repeating an episode at some point.
Anyway, when Mainwaring was about to embark on yet another scheme guaranteed to end in disaster, Sgt Wilson would usually quietly intone: “Do you really think that’s wise Sir?”
He was invariably ignored and disaster ensued but if only the Captain had heeded his words of warning.
And that’s what I mean when I say we all need a Wilson at our shoulder. I’m sure we’ve all done things, said things, embarked on madcap schemes, only to wish that someone who had retained a nodding acquaintance with sanity had urged us to get a grip and stop.
If only Sergeant Wilson had been about when someone at the Victoria Centre declared: “Those kids are carolling too loud, I’m going to call the police.”
If only there had been someone there whose idea of what Christmas is about extends beyond jingling tills. If only someone had piped up: “Do you think that’s really wise.” Perhaps a finger might have paused before dialling for the cops, perhaps the Scrooge-like complainants might have had their hearts melted by a piping chorus of Silent Night.
But no. No Wilsonesque words of wisdom and so, yet again, the idiocy of a minority tarnishes us all as we are portrayed as a nation of miseries who never pass up a chance to spread gloom.
I mean, asking children, little children, to stop singing so loudly. What in God’s name were they thinking?
In most shopping centres you visit nowadays you are assaulted by piped music in every shop you enter, so to go somewhere where children were carolling is a rare treat.
Instead of praising them for their lovely singing, it’s bah, humbug and turn it down.
There are certain questions in life to which there is only one correct response.
When questioned as to whether your wife’s new hairdo suits her, it, naturally, most certainly does, and if anything it makes her look younger. Hesitate for a millisecond in answering and you, my friend, are dead in the water.
When asked by a police officer if you know how fast you were going, the correct answer is not: “Yes I do, and I don’t care what your little radar gun says.”
If a primary school child asks if you enjoyed their carols, the correct response is, yes you did, followed by a healthily heavy drop of loose change into their collection bucket.
Probably, on reflection, best not to dial 999.
Didn’t some little voice inside their head say: “These children will have their hopes and dreams battered enough by critics when they’re older, let them have their day in the limelight without calling in security.”
Centre manager Sue Nash admitted the situation could have been handled better. Surveying the headlines it has attracted, worldwide, it’s fair to say Ms Nash has discovered her own talent for understatement.
Still, the children have done well out of it. A heroes’ welcome when they went back this weekend – and no call to the cops. And an expenses-paid trip and an invitation to perform and a generous donation to school funds from the Savoy Hotel in London, where the spirit of Christmas is apparently still alive and breathing.
Those shopkeepers who complained ought perhaps to examine their consciences and realise that, for the most part, they are hawking their wares to parents and grandparents who take a dim view of killjoys who criticise kids’ singing.
And the tills will be jingling elsewhere.
DO I want the Welsh flag represented on the Union Jack.
At this point a pedant is already cracking open a sheaf of Basildon Bond to pen a missive informing me that what I’m referring to is the Union Flag, as the Union Jack flies only on a ship. They’re wrong, they’ve been interchangeable terms for centuries, so let’s move on.
Do we want the Welsh dragon on there in some form, as Wrexham MP Ian Lucas suggests?
Though I’m sure he means well, I would suggest most certainly not, for a few reasons.
Firstly, I don’t want to go where I’m not invited. When the Principality of Wales was absorbed into England there was no suggestion then of representation on the flag and I see no reason to rewrite history.
It has been suggested that the British national anthem should be rewritten for the same reasons, because verses that talk about “rebellious Scots” don’t go down too well north of the border, even if they are rarely, if ever, sung.
It’s sanitising historical fact, the Scots were, and still are, rebellious and taking the verse out of the anthem will not make them any less so.
Secondly, there is no way in the world the English are going to swallow a flag with a bloomin’ great dragon in the middle of it. At best we would be relegated to some corner, somewhat like we are geographically.
Thirdly, by allowing the rest of Britain to use a dragon we are diminishing its value as our symbol.
We are one of only two countries in the world with a dragon on their flag – the other being, my gift to pub quizzers everywhere – Bhutan. So why diminish what is an instantly recognisable brand by watering it down in some mish-mash with the flag of the Union.
And by absorbing it into the flag of the Union it might be suggested that there was some sort of union between us, when there never was. We were conquered, or rather some would suggest that attempts are still being made to conquer us, and we have merely been pausing for breath since the time of Owain Glyndwr.
Putting a dragon on the Union Jack carries with it the implication that we are one big happy family, when we are not. We are always going to be the awkward neighbours, the mountain people, with the strange language and forever, our own flag.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Column, November 27, 2007
MURPHY’S LAW – Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.
WE’VE had our letter of apology, so that’s alright then.
I dare say quite a few of you have had one too, well, if you’ve got school age children will have.
Suitably contrite it was too given that 25 million of us are now hoping that our bank details are languishing in some Inland Revenue post room rather than on the laptop of some hacker who is intent on booking himself a trip to the Bahamas courtesy of my overdraft facility (I’d get in there quick if I were you sunshine, because you could best sum up my usual level of liquidity using a phrase involving two farthings not being rubbed together)
I’ve got to say as cock-ups go it has a truly epic quality. I mean, this isn’t just a few missing millions, it isn’t the farming industry down the swanee with blue tongue or foot and mouth, it’s the bank details, national security numbers, addresses, kids’ names and dates of birth of everyone getting child benefit.
It is simply staggering in the monumental nature of just how idiotic this mistake is. But what elevates it from idiotic to supremely irritating is the way the Government has tried to pass it off as some sort of junior clerical error that could happen to anyone.
A minor clerical error costs you £10, a minor clerical error means you have to queue up for some sort of refund.
A minor clerical error does not leave the bank details and personal information of half the country wide open to use by fraudsters.
This passing of blame to some hapless pen-pusher, or rather mouse-monkey, out in the Siberian wastes of the civil service is, frankly, a little bit pathetic.
It’s like giving a five-year -old a hand-grenade and when the ensuing carnage inevitably happens, washing your hands of it, saying: “Well, he was under strict instructions not to pull the pin, the pulling of the pin was completely unauthorised.”
The senior management of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs set up the system to handle our date and they are answerable for their management of HMRC to the Government.
If they have set up a system whereby a junior member of staff is able to download the personal details of 25 million people, remembering Murphy’s Law, they should know damn well that that is exactly what will happen, no matter how many rules and regulations they have in place telling them not to.
If he is on £12,500 a year then he is not exactly a minor cog in the wheels of government, he’s the oily grit that gathers between the cogs, he has aspirations of one day becoming a minor cog.
I’ve got to say I was slightly irritated by national commentators suggesting that because he and his colleagues were only on £12,500 a year this made them somehow more likely to flog off our details to fraudsters – as if low income and dishonesty come hand in hand, if anything, the reverse is true.
But he is at the lowest level of competence and decision-making in the civil service and as such should not be in a position whereby he could download such vast amounts of sensitive information. It ought to have been physically impossible for him to have copied that data onto a disk without a big red light flashing in Alastair Darling’s office with a Tannoy shouting in his ear “Warning – election losing blunder alert.”
Because when you leave most of the country poring over their bank statements looking to see if anyone has been ordering champagne and caviar at their expense then that’s the sort of memory that lingers when it comes to the polls. Gross incompetence is not a vote winner.
You see for all his bluster about this being the action of a minor member of staff, what people want of Alastair Darling is that he put checks and balances in place to make sure a minor member of staff is simply not able to get anywhere near doing this.
But the fact is that this Government merged the Inland Revenue with HM Customs and cut staff as a result.
The inevitable consequence of such a move means more work for fewer staff and therefore work is delegated down to staff on lower levels and it ends up on the desk of hapless desk-jockeys who simply do not realise the implications of what they are doing because they do not have sufficient seniority or experience.
And who was in charge of this whole mess before Alastair Darling accepted what he might now be regarding as a poisoned chalice – that’s right, Gordon Brown, the Iron Chancellor, the steady hand at the tiller, the economic rock upon which New Labour’s success has been built.
I have to say that I don’t buy the idea that out there some Bond-esque villain is holding the discs with all our details on them laughing: “They’re mine, all mine I telly you, mwahahahaha!” I’ve spent too long reporting magistrates court to believe in criminal masterminds, the terms are mutually exclusive.
Most criminals are a) thick b) pitiful c) violent or d) any combination of the above and if this disc were to fall into the wrong hands it would more likely be passed off as a knock-off copy of Pirates of the Caribbean down the Dog&Duck for a fiver than used to siphon off our every last penny.
But that does not absolve Darling and his boss from blame. If you create a system whereby you are able to lay the blame for the loss of sensitive data about half your population on the shoulders of a junior civil servant, then it is you who should be collecting your cards, not him.
Any Minister out there doubting just how damaging this could be should be reminded about Murphy’s Law, and also Flanagan’s Precept, which states categorically that Murphy was an incurable optimist.
WE’VE had our letter of apology, so that’s alright then.
I dare say quite a few of you have had one too, well, if you’ve got school age children will have.
Suitably contrite it was too given that 25 million of us are now hoping that our bank details are languishing in some Inland Revenue post room rather than on the laptop of some hacker who is intent on booking himself a trip to the Bahamas courtesy of my overdraft facility (I’d get in there quick if I were you sunshine, because you could best sum up my usual level of liquidity using a phrase involving two farthings not being rubbed together)
I’ve got to say as cock-ups go it has a truly epic quality. I mean, this isn’t just a few missing millions, it isn’t the farming industry down the swanee with blue tongue or foot and mouth, it’s the bank details, national security numbers, addresses, kids’ names and dates of birth of everyone getting child benefit.
It is simply staggering in the monumental nature of just how idiotic this mistake is. But what elevates it from idiotic to supremely irritating is the way the Government has tried to pass it off as some sort of junior clerical error that could happen to anyone.
A minor clerical error costs you £10, a minor clerical error means you have to queue up for some sort of refund.
A minor clerical error does not leave the bank details and personal information of half the country wide open to use by fraudsters.
This passing of blame to some hapless pen-pusher, or rather mouse-monkey, out in the Siberian wastes of the civil service is, frankly, a little bit pathetic.
It’s like giving a five-year -old a hand-grenade and when the ensuing carnage inevitably happens, washing your hands of it, saying: “Well, he was under strict instructions not to pull the pin, the pulling of the pin was completely unauthorised.”
The senior management of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs set up the system to handle our date and they are answerable for their management of HMRC to the Government.
If they have set up a system whereby a junior member of staff is able to download the personal details of 25 million people, remembering Murphy’s Law, they should know damn well that that is exactly what will happen, no matter how many rules and regulations they have in place telling them not to.
If he is on £12,500 a year then he is not exactly a minor cog in the wheels of government, he’s the oily grit that gathers between the cogs, he has aspirations of one day becoming a minor cog.
I’ve got to say I was slightly irritated by national commentators suggesting that because he and his colleagues were only on £12,500 a year this made them somehow more likely to flog off our details to fraudsters – as if low income and dishonesty come hand in hand, if anything, the reverse is true.
But he is at the lowest level of competence and decision-making in the civil service and as such should not be in a position whereby he could download such vast amounts of sensitive information. It ought to have been physically impossible for him to have copied that data onto a disk without a big red light flashing in Alastair Darling’s office with a Tannoy shouting in his ear “Warning – election losing blunder alert.”
Because when you leave most of the country poring over their bank statements looking to see if anyone has been ordering champagne and caviar at their expense then that’s the sort of memory that lingers when it comes to the polls. Gross incompetence is not a vote winner.
You see for all his bluster about this being the action of a minor member of staff, what people want of Alastair Darling is that he put checks and balances in place to make sure a minor member of staff is simply not able to get anywhere near doing this.
But the fact is that this Government merged the Inland Revenue with HM Customs and cut staff as a result.
The inevitable consequence of such a move means more work for fewer staff and therefore work is delegated down to staff on lower levels and it ends up on the desk of hapless desk-jockeys who simply do not realise the implications of what they are doing because they do not have sufficient seniority or experience.
And who was in charge of this whole mess before Alastair Darling accepted what he might now be regarding as a poisoned chalice – that’s right, Gordon Brown, the Iron Chancellor, the steady hand at the tiller, the economic rock upon which New Labour’s success has been built.
I have to say that I don’t buy the idea that out there some Bond-esque villain is holding the discs with all our details on them laughing: “They’re mine, all mine I telly you, mwahahahaha!” I’ve spent too long reporting magistrates court to believe in criminal masterminds, the terms are mutually exclusive.
Most criminals are a) thick b) pitiful c) violent or d) any combination of the above and if this disc were to fall into the wrong hands it would more likely be passed off as a knock-off copy of Pirates of the Caribbean down the Dog&Duck for a fiver than used to siphon off our every last penny.
But that does not absolve Darling and his boss from blame. If you create a system whereby you are able to lay the blame for the loss of sensitive data about half your population on the shoulders of a junior civil servant, then it is you who should be collecting your cards, not him.
Any Minister out there doubting just how damaging this could be should be reminded about Murphy’s Law, and also Flanagan’s Precept, which states categorically that Murphy was an incurable optimist.
Column November 20, 2007
THE Victorians gave us many useful inventions without which life would not be the same.
Railways, photography, electric light and the telephone to name but a few.
And one invention we still don’t quite know what to do with – childhood.
Of course the Victorians knew how to deal with some children – up chimneys and down mines, but for the better off it was the beginning of the idea that children were somehow different to adults.
Since then we’ve been trying to cope with the idea of childhood, and our basic attitude seems to be that we wish they’d hurry up and get over it.
How we deal with children was the theme tackled by the Archbishop of Canterbury, our own Rowan Williams, recently when he suggested that the age of criminality should be raised above its present level of 10 in England and Wales.
The Archbishop said that young people were drifting into gangs because of increasing family breakdown. He added that children who commit crime are still children and should be treated as such.
He is, of course, right, and it’s just a shame so few people go to church because the message might get through a little more if they did.
A child does not get to the age of 10 and suddenly decide to put aside the things of youth and mug a few pensioners. Something has happened to him or her that has made a life of crime a better alternative to playing with his train set.
And whatever got him to that point is not his fault. It is his parents responsibility to bring him up in a decent way and it is our responsibility as a society to make sure that children whose parents are unwilling or unable to do that are relived of that responsibility at an early enough age for it to make a difference to the outcome.
But instead of doing that we quite literally pillory them. ‘Naming and shaming’ laws allow for young offenders who would previously have been cloaked in anonymity to be publicly identified, and pictured.
This is aimed at preventing further offending, by identifying the offender to the community they know that if they re-offend they will be reported to the police. That’s the theory anyway.
It kind of falls down a bit when you know that most surveys of criminal behaviour conclude that the likelihood of detection does not enter their tiny minds when they are committing their master crimes, but there you go.
I’m sure that some of these young offenders boast of their notoriety when they have been named and shamed. Others genuinely shamed might live it down after a few months when another young hoodlum takes their place in the public eye.
But for some the shame is genuine and lasts and might just act to confirm them in a life of crime that might otherwise have been avoided.
Our attitude to children is somehow skewed. If we’re not allowing tjem to drift into a life of crime, we’re cramming them through an education system focusing entirely on exam results and blind to actual learning.
My own son has just started school this year and to listen to some parents you would think the next 14 years of education is a headlong sprint and the devil take the hindmost.
If I hear another proud parent trumpet how fast their offspring are progressing compared to others I will casually mention how junior split the atom before breakfast.
As I said, we can’t cope with children being just children and so we shovel them into adulthood too early, whether it is in school or in the courts.
On top of that we have created a society where often both parents have to work and so the job of childcare is at best handed over to grandparents and at worst delegated to nurseries where there is no way in the world young children get the devoted one to one attention they would, and should, get from their parents.
And then the products of this denial of responsibility are expected to have developed some sort of moral code by the age of 10 that allows them to know right from wrong.
Who are we kidding?
We have abandoned a generation of children and we are reaping what we sowed.
I WILL mention this next story only because if I don’t some foaming at the mouth petrolhead will accuse me of hypocrisy.
The death of a pedestrian knocked down by a cyclist in Cornwall was shocking, as was the suspended sentence handed down to the young man who was riding the bicycle.
But, how many cases of cyclists killing pedestrians can you remember?
Right, just this one.
So, awful as this case was, it cannot be said that it should lead us to believe that pedestrians everywhere should fear a mad cyclist bearing down on then on the pavement.
The fact is that the reason this case made the news is that it is so rare.
Compare it to the thousands killed every year by motorists and you retain a sense of proportion.
When you look right, left and right again it is not for the bike bearing down upon you, but the badly-driven car.
THERE is, of course, one little ray of sunshine in the wintry gloom this week.
That is the prospect of England crashing out of Euro 2008 tomorrow night.
OK, Israel did them a favour and now they only need a point from their game against Croatia, but that will make ignominious defeat all the more sweet.
AND finally, I’ll mention this story, only because another foaming at the mouth petrolhead will accuse me of deliberately ignoring it if I don’t.
A man in Scotland has been given a three-year probation order for trying to have sex…with his bicycle.
That’s just wrong. There are lines that cannot be crossed and whilst I love cycling, I cannot condone wanton lust for a pushbike.
We’re already in enough trouble for wearing Lycra, we can really do without this.
Railways, photography, electric light and the telephone to name but a few.
And one invention we still don’t quite know what to do with – childhood.
Of course the Victorians knew how to deal with some children – up chimneys and down mines, but for the better off it was the beginning of the idea that children were somehow different to adults.
Since then we’ve been trying to cope with the idea of childhood, and our basic attitude seems to be that we wish they’d hurry up and get over it.
How we deal with children was the theme tackled by the Archbishop of Canterbury, our own Rowan Williams, recently when he suggested that the age of criminality should be raised above its present level of 10 in England and Wales.
The Archbishop said that young people were drifting into gangs because of increasing family breakdown. He added that children who commit crime are still children and should be treated as such.
He is, of course, right, and it’s just a shame so few people go to church because the message might get through a little more if they did.
A child does not get to the age of 10 and suddenly decide to put aside the things of youth and mug a few pensioners. Something has happened to him or her that has made a life of crime a better alternative to playing with his train set.
And whatever got him to that point is not his fault. It is his parents responsibility to bring him up in a decent way and it is our responsibility as a society to make sure that children whose parents are unwilling or unable to do that are relived of that responsibility at an early enough age for it to make a difference to the outcome.
But instead of doing that we quite literally pillory them. ‘Naming and shaming’ laws allow for young offenders who would previously have been cloaked in anonymity to be publicly identified, and pictured.
This is aimed at preventing further offending, by identifying the offender to the community they know that if they re-offend they will be reported to the police. That’s the theory anyway.
It kind of falls down a bit when you know that most surveys of criminal behaviour conclude that the likelihood of detection does not enter their tiny minds when they are committing their master crimes, but there you go.
I’m sure that some of these young offenders boast of their notoriety when they have been named and shamed. Others genuinely shamed might live it down after a few months when another young hoodlum takes their place in the public eye.
But for some the shame is genuine and lasts and might just act to confirm them in a life of crime that might otherwise have been avoided.
Our attitude to children is somehow skewed. If we’re not allowing tjem to drift into a life of crime, we’re cramming them through an education system focusing entirely on exam results and blind to actual learning.
My own son has just started school this year and to listen to some parents you would think the next 14 years of education is a headlong sprint and the devil take the hindmost.
If I hear another proud parent trumpet how fast their offspring are progressing compared to others I will casually mention how junior split the atom before breakfast.
As I said, we can’t cope with children being just children and so we shovel them into adulthood too early, whether it is in school or in the courts.
On top of that we have created a society where often both parents have to work and so the job of childcare is at best handed over to grandparents and at worst delegated to nurseries where there is no way in the world young children get the devoted one to one attention they would, and should, get from their parents.
And then the products of this denial of responsibility are expected to have developed some sort of moral code by the age of 10 that allows them to know right from wrong.
Who are we kidding?
We have abandoned a generation of children and we are reaping what we sowed.
I WILL mention this next story only because if I don’t some foaming at the mouth petrolhead will accuse me of hypocrisy.
The death of a pedestrian knocked down by a cyclist in Cornwall was shocking, as was the suspended sentence handed down to the young man who was riding the bicycle.
But, how many cases of cyclists killing pedestrians can you remember?
Right, just this one.
So, awful as this case was, it cannot be said that it should lead us to believe that pedestrians everywhere should fear a mad cyclist bearing down on then on the pavement.
The fact is that the reason this case made the news is that it is so rare.
Compare it to the thousands killed every year by motorists and you retain a sense of proportion.
When you look right, left and right again it is not for the bike bearing down upon you, but the badly-driven car.
THERE is, of course, one little ray of sunshine in the wintry gloom this week.
That is the prospect of England crashing out of Euro 2008 tomorrow night.
OK, Israel did them a favour and now they only need a point from their game against Croatia, but that will make ignominious defeat all the more sweet.
AND finally, I’ll mention this story, only because another foaming at the mouth petrolhead will accuse me of deliberately ignoring it if I don’t.
A man in Scotland has been given a three-year probation order for trying to have sex…with his bicycle.
That’s just wrong. There are lines that cannot be crossed and whilst I love cycling, I cannot condone wanton lust for a pushbike.
We’re already in enough trouble for wearing Lycra, we can really do without this.
Column, November 13, 2007
WELL, it was raining, and it was cold, and I’m sure there were more pressing things to do like visit B&Q.
Perhaps that might explain the paltry showing in our little village for a wreath-laying at the war memorial.
Just 20 people, huddled against the thin, sleetish rain being driven in by a bitter wind, bothered to turn up in a village of perhaps 200 or more homes, is not what you might call a fitting turn-out.
Not fitting when you consider that four of the twenty were the Bankses, and two others were a former Major-General in the Scots Guards and a former captain in the Welsh Guards, who probably have better knowledge that most of the sacrifices made by our armed services.
Of course, the grand parade at the Cenotaph in London is as much a spectacle as it ever was, but Remembrance Day is surely about more than that.
I understand the Royal British Legion’s need to remind the public of the need to donate so that ti can carry on the work it does with service personnel and their families.
But I wonder now whether some people sport a poppy out of a desire not to be seen ‘not’ wearing one and that the message behind the poppy has got a little lost.
Anyone can be shamed into wearing a poppy, but that surely isn’t what you want people to be doing, wearing their poppies for fear of being shamed for not wearing them.
War memorials like the one in my village are a constant reminder of the sacrifices made by small communities the country over in two world wars. You cannot help but remember the fallen when you pass a memorial to them.
But in how many villages did these war memorials go unattended on Sunday. How many are falling into neglect as the passing years make Remembrance Sunday increasingly irrelevant to a younger generation.
There was a time when there was no escaping Remembrance Sunday because there was no community which had not sent sons, daughters, fathers and mothers to the conflict.
But as time increasingly puts a distance between us and those who gave their lives for us the so war memorials will fall into disrepair, after all it’s easy to find ‘better’ things to do than drag your children out into the freezing rain on Remembrance Sunday, albeit for the brief 10 minutes that it takes to lay a wreath and bow your heads in thanksgiving for the lives listed on the memorial and recognition of the way they lost them.
Perhaps disaffection with the current conflict in Iraq keeps people away from remembrance services, which is a shame. You may disagree vehemently with the decision to go to war in Iraq, but your ability to express that disagreement was hard-won by men and women 70 or so years ago.
And if you are going to have armed services then you at least owe the men and women who take up arms, the knowledge that their death, will not go unmarked and unremembered.
This doesn’t mean buying a multitude of poppies, although any such generosity helps.
But simply turning up on Remebrance Day to show that you haven’t forgotten is enough.
IN all the furore over the use of the pictures of Mark Gibney’s headless body one fact seems to have been lost along the way.
That is, that in driving so fast that when he crashed he was travelling fast enough to knock his own head off, he also put others at risk.
Other people were involved in his death, a family was trapped inside their car with his headless torso embedded in it. That is something they will never forget, and yet they seem to have been conveniently forgotten in a story which has now become a cause celebre for bikers who regularly risk their own and others lives on the roads of North Wales.
What happened to Mark Gibney was a fact that deserved recording as a lesson to others just how dangerous the roads of North Wales have become thanks to a small group of people who believe that speeding laws do not apply to them.
Upsetting as it must be to have his pictures used in this way, I would respectfully suggest that it is nowhere near as upsetting as his death itself, and there is only one person to blame for that.
HAVING had my two sons succumb to chickenpox this year I can understand why a vaccine against it has been developed.
Far from being the harmless disease of childhood that it is often portrayed as, it was easy to see, with my sons covered head to toe in the angry red pox, how it could worsen to septicaemia or other life-threatening complications.
Six children have died as a result of such complications this year.
Sad then to hear that doctors may have to delay rolling out the vaccine because of the unfounded, superstitious fears propagated about vaccination by those opposed to MMR.
In North Wales we have a particularly vociferous anti-MMR group who will no doubt be peddling their mumbo-jumbo about overloading young immune systems in due course.
Vaccination is a cast-iron medical miracle that has saved millions of lives. Polio, that dreadful, disabling disease that was a blight on humanity, is now approaching total eradication thanks to polio vaccination.
The new chickenpox vaccine would best be incorporated with the MMR jab, but because of the worry that even more people would be put off having their children immunised, it may now be trialled in young adults.
Naturally this will not have the same preventative effect, and more children might die because of the stubbornness of a group of parents looking for something to blame for their child’s autism.
They are very good at quoting supposed proofs of their fears, but the cold hard facts of the death of children from measles and now chickenpox they seem able to blithely ignore.
Perhaps that might explain the paltry showing in our little village for a wreath-laying at the war memorial.
Just 20 people, huddled against the thin, sleetish rain being driven in by a bitter wind, bothered to turn up in a village of perhaps 200 or more homes, is not what you might call a fitting turn-out.
Not fitting when you consider that four of the twenty were the Bankses, and two others were a former Major-General in the Scots Guards and a former captain in the Welsh Guards, who probably have better knowledge that most of the sacrifices made by our armed services.
Of course, the grand parade at the Cenotaph in London is as much a spectacle as it ever was, but Remembrance Day is surely about more than that.
I understand the Royal British Legion’s need to remind the public of the need to donate so that ti can carry on the work it does with service personnel and their families.
But I wonder now whether some people sport a poppy out of a desire not to be seen ‘not’ wearing one and that the message behind the poppy has got a little lost.
Anyone can be shamed into wearing a poppy, but that surely isn’t what you want people to be doing, wearing their poppies for fear of being shamed for not wearing them.
War memorials like the one in my village are a constant reminder of the sacrifices made by small communities the country over in two world wars. You cannot help but remember the fallen when you pass a memorial to them.
But in how many villages did these war memorials go unattended on Sunday. How many are falling into neglect as the passing years make Remembrance Sunday increasingly irrelevant to a younger generation.
There was a time when there was no escaping Remembrance Sunday because there was no community which had not sent sons, daughters, fathers and mothers to the conflict.
But as time increasingly puts a distance between us and those who gave their lives for us the so war memorials will fall into disrepair, after all it’s easy to find ‘better’ things to do than drag your children out into the freezing rain on Remembrance Sunday, albeit for the brief 10 minutes that it takes to lay a wreath and bow your heads in thanksgiving for the lives listed on the memorial and recognition of the way they lost them.
Perhaps disaffection with the current conflict in Iraq keeps people away from remembrance services, which is a shame. You may disagree vehemently with the decision to go to war in Iraq, but your ability to express that disagreement was hard-won by men and women 70 or so years ago.
And if you are going to have armed services then you at least owe the men and women who take up arms, the knowledge that their death, will not go unmarked and unremembered.
This doesn’t mean buying a multitude of poppies, although any such generosity helps.
But simply turning up on Remebrance Day to show that you haven’t forgotten is enough.
IN all the furore over the use of the pictures of Mark Gibney’s headless body one fact seems to have been lost along the way.
That is, that in driving so fast that when he crashed he was travelling fast enough to knock his own head off, he also put others at risk.
Other people were involved in his death, a family was trapped inside their car with his headless torso embedded in it. That is something they will never forget, and yet they seem to have been conveniently forgotten in a story which has now become a cause celebre for bikers who regularly risk their own and others lives on the roads of North Wales.
What happened to Mark Gibney was a fact that deserved recording as a lesson to others just how dangerous the roads of North Wales have become thanks to a small group of people who believe that speeding laws do not apply to them.
Upsetting as it must be to have his pictures used in this way, I would respectfully suggest that it is nowhere near as upsetting as his death itself, and there is only one person to blame for that.
HAVING had my two sons succumb to chickenpox this year I can understand why a vaccine against it has been developed.
Far from being the harmless disease of childhood that it is often portrayed as, it was easy to see, with my sons covered head to toe in the angry red pox, how it could worsen to septicaemia or other life-threatening complications.
Six children have died as a result of such complications this year.
Sad then to hear that doctors may have to delay rolling out the vaccine because of the unfounded, superstitious fears propagated about vaccination by those opposed to MMR.
In North Wales we have a particularly vociferous anti-MMR group who will no doubt be peddling their mumbo-jumbo about overloading young immune systems in due course.
Vaccination is a cast-iron medical miracle that has saved millions of lives. Polio, that dreadful, disabling disease that was a blight on humanity, is now approaching total eradication thanks to polio vaccination.
The new chickenpox vaccine would best be incorporated with the MMR jab, but because of the worry that even more people would be put off having their children immunised, it may now be trialled in young adults.
Naturally this will not have the same preventative effect, and more children might die because of the stubbornness of a group of parents looking for something to blame for their child’s autism.
They are very good at quoting supposed proofs of their fears, but the cold hard facts of the death of children from measles and now chickenpox they seem able to blithely ignore.
Column, November 6, 2007
THERE’S a statistic often quoted whenever anyone voices the slightest doubt about the safety of air travel.
It is that, worldwide, more people are kicked to death by donkeys than die in air crashes.
I’m not sure how much comfort it is to know, as you plummet towards the ground desperately trying to remember what the cabin crew said about inflating your life jacket, that out there somewhere a gang of donkeys are kicking to death the equivalent of your planeload.
Also, what happens in a year when there are more than the usual number of plane crashes? Do the donkeys suddenly get more murderous in order to maintain differentials.
But I guess what those who quote that figure are trying to say is don’t get in a sweat about disasters, because there are a lot more people out there dying in a very mundane way.
But I think it’s human nature. We’ll fret about the unknown threat far more than we will about the cast-iron, guaranteed thing that’s very likely to do us in.
So, for instance, outraged parents will go on the march against paedophiles they are asure are lurking on every street corner. And they’re right, that might happen to about five children every year. But 140 or more children will die on the roads – 28 times as many as are killed by strangers – and yet where are the baying mobs protesting at that?
All too often we are unable to properly assess danger, which means we’ll warp our kids in cotton wool one minute and expose them to unbelievable risk the next.
So it was with a degree of weariness I turned on Radion 4 the other day to hear the debate as to whether Snowdon should remain open to walkers.
This was, of course, in the wake of the terrible death of Liam Costello, the young boy who died after falling while climbing there.
The death of anyone in the mountains, young or old, is a dreadful thing, but it is all the more painful when it is a young life that is lost.
However, deaths in Snowdonia, when compared to the millions of people who visit, are tiny in proportion. To talk of closure of the mountains is a massive over-reaction to what is a small, if undoubtedly tragic, problem.
All too often now we hear about the obesity timebomb that is facing our children, that they never get out, that they spend all their time watching TV or on their Playstations.
It will come as no comfort to the Costello family I know, what could possible comfort them after all, but they were giving him experiences he would never have forgotten.
The joy of climbing the mountains is transcendent, it is beyond all experiences he would have had before and to take a child into the mountains is one of the healthiest things you could possible do for them, mind and body.
What would be tragic would be of parents, having read of the death of Liam, now decide not to go to Snowdonia because of the perceived risks.
With care, it is still a safe place to go and compared to other activities, or even a life of inactivity, it is by far the better thing to do for your children.
If you play it safe and let your child live a life of indolence they may safely make it to adulthood, but you will have sown the seeds of the heart attack that will rob them of an adulthood.
There are enough real demons out there, mundane as they are, there really is no need for us to conjure up any more. The mountains must remain open to us all.
SOMWHAT unfortunate that in the week a fire seems to have claimed four firefighters’ lives one North Wales fire chief should send out an ill-tempered memo about use of appliances after they appeared in a nude calendar.
As far as I’m concerned, if they are prepared to run into a burning building when everyone else is running out, what they do with their appliances in their spare time is their business, not mine.
And if it does no harm and raises a bit of cash for a good cause, it’s none of their boss’s business either.
YOU would have thought that the prospect of serving in Afghanistan and Iraq were worrying enough, but now another concern surfaces for our troops.
Insurance premiums.
Incredible as it might sound, troops are encouraged to take out extra cover when they are deployed to the front line.
Insurance companies, not slow to cotton on to risks, have realised the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq is a sight more risky than manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain, and they’ve whacked up the premiums by an eye-watering 160pc. This means your average squaddy has to fork out £1,000 a year for the privilege of insuring himself or herself for active service.
Of course the MoD is denying any culpability in this shambles, saying it is the soldiers’ own decision to take out the additional insurance. But let’s face it, if you were off to Iraq, you’d want to know your family would be taken care of wouldn’t you?
It’s all very well committing troops to two highly dangerous theatres of war, but if you do so as a government then you owe them a duty of care.
Whenever this issue is raised there is usually someone who bleats about World War Two and how the soldiers weren’t compensated then.
No, they weren’t. But the enemy was on our doorstep and we were all in it together then. Now we expect a tiny Army, Navy and Air Force to do every job we ask of them and more.
The least we can do is assure them that should the worst happen their families will be taken care of without the need for them to take out crippling insurance.
It is that, worldwide, more people are kicked to death by donkeys than die in air crashes.
I’m not sure how much comfort it is to know, as you plummet towards the ground desperately trying to remember what the cabin crew said about inflating your life jacket, that out there somewhere a gang of donkeys are kicking to death the equivalent of your planeload.
Also, what happens in a year when there are more than the usual number of plane crashes? Do the donkeys suddenly get more murderous in order to maintain differentials.
But I guess what those who quote that figure are trying to say is don’t get in a sweat about disasters, because there are a lot more people out there dying in a very mundane way.
But I think it’s human nature. We’ll fret about the unknown threat far more than we will about the cast-iron, guaranteed thing that’s very likely to do us in.
So, for instance, outraged parents will go on the march against paedophiles they are asure are lurking on every street corner. And they’re right, that might happen to about five children every year. But 140 or more children will die on the roads – 28 times as many as are killed by strangers – and yet where are the baying mobs protesting at that?
All too often we are unable to properly assess danger, which means we’ll warp our kids in cotton wool one minute and expose them to unbelievable risk the next.
So it was with a degree of weariness I turned on Radion 4 the other day to hear the debate as to whether Snowdon should remain open to walkers.
This was, of course, in the wake of the terrible death of Liam Costello, the young boy who died after falling while climbing there.
The death of anyone in the mountains, young or old, is a dreadful thing, but it is all the more painful when it is a young life that is lost.
However, deaths in Snowdonia, when compared to the millions of people who visit, are tiny in proportion. To talk of closure of the mountains is a massive over-reaction to what is a small, if undoubtedly tragic, problem.
All too often now we hear about the obesity timebomb that is facing our children, that they never get out, that they spend all their time watching TV or on their Playstations.
It will come as no comfort to the Costello family I know, what could possible comfort them after all, but they were giving him experiences he would never have forgotten.
The joy of climbing the mountains is transcendent, it is beyond all experiences he would have had before and to take a child into the mountains is one of the healthiest things you could possible do for them, mind and body.
What would be tragic would be of parents, having read of the death of Liam, now decide not to go to Snowdonia because of the perceived risks.
With care, it is still a safe place to go and compared to other activities, or even a life of inactivity, it is by far the better thing to do for your children.
If you play it safe and let your child live a life of indolence they may safely make it to adulthood, but you will have sown the seeds of the heart attack that will rob them of an adulthood.
There are enough real demons out there, mundane as they are, there really is no need for us to conjure up any more. The mountains must remain open to us all.
SOMWHAT unfortunate that in the week a fire seems to have claimed four firefighters’ lives one North Wales fire chief should send out an ill-tempered memo about use of appliances after they appeared in a nude calendar.
As far as I’m concerned, if they are prepared to run into a burning building when everyone else is running out, what they do with their appliances in their spare time is their business, not mine.
And if it does no harm and raises a bit of cash for a good cause, it’s none of their boss’s business either.
YOU would have thought that the prospect of serving in Afghanistan and Iraq were worrying enough, but now another concern surfaces for our troops.
Insurance premiums.
Incredible as it might sound, troops are encouraged to take out extra cover when they are deployed to the front line.
Insurance companies, not slow to cotton on to risks, have realised the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq is a sight more risky than manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain, and they’ve whacked up the premiums by an eye-watering 160pc. This means your average squaddy has to fork out £1,000 a year for the privilege of insuring himself or herself for active service.
Of course the MoD is denying any culpability in this shambles, saying it is the soldiers’ own decision to take out the additional insurance. But let’s face it, if you were off to Iraq, you’d want to know your family would be taken care of wouldn’t you?
It’s all very well committing troops to two highly dangerous theatres of war, but if you do so as a government then you owe them a duty of care.
Whenever this issue is raised there is usually someone who bleats about World War Two and how the soldiers weren’t compensated then.
No, they weren’t. But the enemy was on our doorstep and we were all in it together then. Now we expect a tiny Army, Navy and Air Force to do every job we ask of them and more.
The least we can do is assure them that should the worst happen their families will be taken care of without the need for them to take out crippling insurance.
Column, October 30, 2007
THERE are few enough good reasons for living in Wales.
A lack of jobs and opportunities, worse than average health, house prices kept at eye-watering levels by second home owners etc, etc, etc, you know the list all too well.
But there has always been one thing that rural Wales has had to offer that set it apart from the cities that lure so many people away..
Good, small schools.
The village school has been a feature of Welsh life since education became the responsibility of the state. It is as much a feature of the villages in Wales as the chapels are.
And one should never underestimate the desire of parents to see their children well-educated. They agonise over where to send their children and will make enormous sacrifices to do what they see as best.
Plenty of my friends have made the financially crippling decision to educate their children privately. While you might not agree with such a decision, and many of us simply do not have the cash to fund such a move, you cannot fault their desire to do what they feel is best for their children.
So Gwynedd has in its midst a collection of schools that are of supreme importance to the communities they serve.
I’m sure that over the years many of the parents whose children were and are being educated there have had the chance to move away, perhaps to England where jobs and wages are more generous. But they will have chosen to stay, and the good village school will have been a major factor in that decision.
And so what do the bright sparks at Gwynedd Council decide to do with these little educational jewels? Shut 29 of them down, that’s what.
And these are the same people who will be bemoaning the departure of people from rural Wales, demanding action to control the housing market, which they will claim is driving young people out of their home areas.
Yet at the same time they will have been responsible for shutting down the school which might have persuaded them not to leave after all.
You can see why they’ve done it of course. If the only skill you bring to the table is an ability to count beans, then yes, small village schools that have low pupil rolls do not make a great deal of financial sense.
The beancounters will blather on about ‘economies of scale’, which basically means they would like every child in Gwynedd to be bussed into one purpose built school-barn where they could be educated in a cost-effective way.
The school is a community hub. Where once there was chapel, now there is the school to bring a community together. How many sports days, school plays, parents’ evenings, Christmas concerts, eisteddfodau and fetes do mums and dads attend and decide that they had, after all, made the right decision to live in a little corner of Wales instead of moving elsewhere?
In an age where there are fewer and fewer things that promote social cohesion, the village school is a beacon of sociability. It is the glue that bonds a community together by the shared interest in good education.
How many children educated in Wales think back and thank their parents that they were sent to a small school where they had the, almost, undivided attention of a teacher, rather than being one face among hundreds at a bigger school?
Gwynedd councillors have approved the plan to close the 29 primaries ‘in principle’ and now they embark on an extensive consultation process, which you have to hope is a genuine consultation rather than just a sop to the protesters before they push through the closures regardless.
Those who advocate the closure of the schools are, as Wilde once put it, people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
The price of Welsh village schools makes their retention untenable, but their value means that rather than closing them, we should be building more.
SMALL note for Visit Wales, whose campaigns of late have shown considerable style and creativity.
You might want to consider how you are marketing North Wales.
On telling English friends that the family had holidayed on the Llyn peninsula we have thus far been met with the blank stares of those who clearly have not got the foggiest idea where it is.
They all know Pembrokeshire and the Gower though, as we have to direct them up from a familiar place.
The Llyn has every bit as much to offer as its southern counterparts and should not be a mystery to potential visitors.
AS Remembrance Day approaches we would do well to remember that men and women are still making the ultimate sacrifice for their country today.
The Royal British Legion has launched its poppy appeal once again and rightly reminds us that it works as much with injured servicemen today and the bereaved families of those who are lost, as it does with the veterans of wars fought decades ago.
Mention has been made of the frustration felt by the armed forces that their efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are not appreciated because of the political controversy surrounding those conflicts, especially Iraq.
Nothing should be further from the truth. While we have a right in a democracy to question our leaders’ decisions to take us into a war, we should never forget the sacrifice made by those who are prepared to die to buy us that freedom of speech.
It is as a consequence of the IRA tactic of murdering servicemen in uniform that the armed services stopped wearing uniform when ‘off duty’ – returning from service etc. So they are not as noticeable as they should be on their return.
Perhaps the regiments concerned ought to arrange homecoming parades in the regiments home cities. Not always easy when the men and women concerned are going to want to be back with loved ones and now barracks are often many miles away from the traditional recruiting grounds due to regimental reorganisation.
But nevertheless, this would be an opportunity for the public to show their appreciation for the bravery, dedication and professionalism that they continue to show while serving their country.
A lack of jobs and opportunities, worse than average health, house prices kept at eye-watering levels by second home owners etc, etc, etc, you know the list all too well.
But there has always been one thing that rural Wales has had to offer that set it apart from the cities that lure so many people away..
Good, small schools.
The village school has been a feature of Welsh life since education became the responsibility of the state. It is as much a feature of the villages in Wales as the chapels are.
And one should never underestimate the desire of parents to see their children well-educated. They agonise over where to send their children and will make enormous sacrifices to do what they see as best.
Plenty of my friends have made the financially crippling decision to educate their children privately. While you might not agree with such a decision, and many of us simply do not have the cash to fund such a move, you cannot fault their desire to do what they feel is best for their children.
So Gwynedd has in its midst a collection of schools that are of supreme importance to the communities they serve.
I’m sure that over the years many of the parents whose children were and are being educated there have had the chance to move away, perhaps to England where jobs and wages are more generous. But they will have chosen to stay, and the good village school will have been a major factor in that decision.
And so what do the bright sparks at Gwynedd Council decide to do with these little educational jewels? Shut 29 of them down, that’s what.
And these are the same people who will be bemoaning the departure of people from rural Wales, demanding action to control the housing market, which they will claim is driving young people out of their home areas.
Yet at the same time they will have been responsible for shutting down the school which might have persuaded them not to leave after all.
You can see why they’ve done it of course. If the only skill you bring to the table is an ability to count beans, then yes, small village schools that have low pupil rolls do not make a great deal of financial sense.
The beancounters will blather on about ‘economies of scale’, which basically means they would like every child in Gwynedd to be bussed into one purpose built school-barn where they could be educated in a cost-effective way.
The school is a community hub. Where once there was chapel, now there is the school to bring a community together. How many sports days, school plays, parents’ evenings, Christmas concerts, eisteddfodau and fetes do mums and dads attend and decide that they had, after all, made the right decision to live in a little corner of Wales instead of moving elsewhere?
In an age where there are fewer and fewer things that promote social cohesion, the village school is a beacon of sociability. It is the glue that bonds a community together by the shared interest in good education.
How many children educated in Wales think back and thank their parents that they were sent to a small school where they had the, almost, undivided attention of a teacher, rather than being one face among hundreds at a bigger school?
Gwynedd councillors have approved the plan to close the 29 primaries ‘in principle’ and now they embark on an extensive consultation process, which you have to hope is a genuine consultation rather than just a sop to the protesters before they push through the closures regardless.
Those who advocate the closure of the schools are, as Wilde once put it, people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
The price of Welsh village schools makes their retention untenable, but their value means that rather than closing them, we should be building more.
SMALL note for Visit Wales, whose campaigns of late have shown considerable style and creativity.
You might want to consider how you are marketing North Wales.
On telling English friends that the family had holidayed on the Llyn peninsula we have thus far been met with the blank stares of those who clearly have not got the foggiest idea where it is.
They all know Pembrokeshire and the Gower though, as we have to direct them up from a familiar place.
The Llyn has every bit as much to offer as its southern counterparts and should not be a mystery to potential visitors.
AS Remembrance Day approaches we would do well to remember that men and women are still making the ultimate sacrifice for their country today.
The Royal British Legion has launched its poppy appeal once again and rightly reminds us that it works as much with injured servicemen today and the bereaved families of those who are lost, as it does with the veterans of wars fought decades ago.
Mention has been made of the frustration felt by the armed forces that their efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are not appreciated because of the political controversy surrounding those conflicts, especially Iraq.
Nothing should be further from the truth. While we have a right in a democracy to question our leaders’ decisions to take us into a war, we should never forget the sacrifice made by those who are prepared to die to buy us that freedom of speech.
It is as a consequence of the IRA tactic of murdering servicemen in uniform that the armed services stopped wearing uniform when ‘off duty’ – returning from service etc. So they are not as noticeable as they should be on their return.
Perhaps the regiments concerned ought to arrange homecoming parades in the regiments home cities. Not always easy when the men and women concerned are going to want to be back with loved ones and now barracks are often many miles away from the traditional recruiting grounds due to regimental reorganisation.
But nevertheless, this would be an opportunity for the public to show their appreciation for the bravery, dedication and professionalism that they continue to show while serving their country.
Column, October 23, 2007
THERE was an odd moment watching the rugby on Saturday night.
Matthew Tait, a man who seemed destined to be remembered for being folded in a tackle by Gavin Henson, made THE break of the whole tournament.
A darting, twisting, sidestepping move that will have WRU selectors deliving through the records at Somerset House to see if there isn’t some Welsh blood in the Tait ancestry somewhere.
It was pure, instinctive brilliance.
It set alight what promised to be a tense, but ultimately unspectacular final – as so many finals are such are the stakes.
And in at the corner went Mark Cueto.
That’s when it got a bit odd.
Because I found myself on my feet cheering. Cheering a man in a white shirt.
I think I even shouted words to the effect: “Go on, get in there.”
Fortunately I was in a sitting room in the heart of England, not a pub in Wales, so I reached the end of the evening untarred and unfeathered.
But how could this be, how could I cheer on the old enemy? I’ve tried to work it out since Saturday and my best guess is that I love rugby more than I dislike England (the team, not the country, that is). And England showed more of what rugby is about than did Wales this World Cup.
A week or so ago I was invited to join a Facebook group. Facebook, for those of you fortunate enough not to have heard of it is a ‘social networking’ website wher bright young things can amass lists of friends who they can then inform what a wild time they are having at any given moment (when they’re really cutting their toenails while watching Corry, the soap, not the rugby player)
It also allows members to band together in groups of common interest and I was invited to join a group supporting anyone but England to win the Rugby World Cup.
Now, while I’m all for that sentiment when watching the overpaid nancies who play football, I can’t say the same for rugby, because rugby is different and I think unless you’ve played you won’t understand this.
In rugby you can spend 80 minutes trying to genuinely hurt your opponent, you go into a tackle hoping you’ll hit him so hard his grandmother will feel it. Or else, as was the case with me, you spend 80 minutes trying to run so fast that those intent on burying your mincing winger’s body beneath a pile of forwards cannot catch you.
And when it all boils over it’s proper punches, not the handbag-waving histrionics of footballers who have an attack of the vapours when someone so much as brushes their elegantly coiffed hair.
Yet at the end of those 80 minutes you clap them off the pitch, shake their hands, sink a beer, or two, with them and sing songs with them that are musically and lyrically off-key.
No hatred, no accompanying violence on the terraces, no matter how much they see on the pitch. That’s rugby.
And rugby is a team game, where effort, spirit, courage, and honour still count for something.
And I’ll tell you what, England had all those qualities in spades.
Before you tear up this page in a fit of what you think is patriotism, let me give you one warning.
Unless we learn to be more like England we are destined to forever repeat the dismal performance we put up in this World Cup.
By more like England, I don’t mean play like them, I mean try like them, care about it like them and show the sort of self-belief they did, even when everyone was dismissing them as over-the-hill. They were the antidote to Southern Hemisphere arrogance that we failed to provide.
Sadly there’s a certain karma to the fact that the try they probably did score but weren’t given in this World Cup has made up for the goal that they almost certainly didn’t score but were given in the World Cup in 1966.
But even that they have borne with the dignity expected of rugby players rather than the aggrieved whining we’re accustomed to from football managers.
Lest we forget, we had the beating of England since the last World Cup, and that impetus was squandered in a couple of short years.
Lets try to make sure that in four years time we have something to as proud of as the English do now.
CONTINUING the sporting theme, can anyone explain the amount of coverage devoted to Lewis Hamilton’s failure to win the Formula 1 world championship?
A sport whose dullness is inversely proportional to its volume does not seem to me to be the stuff of headline news, and yet night after night this past week it’s been on our screens in one way or another.
Reporter after reporter tried and failed to come up with reasons why I should care whether Lewis Hamilton became the first British driver since Graham Hill (maybe Damon) to win the world championship.
Still, at least they have got over the breathless way at the start of the season they reported that, whisper it, a black man was driving a fast car. The tone of surprise they adopted seemed to suggest they thought he was lucky not to get pulled over on suspicion of having stolen his McLaren machine.
For those of you who were too busy watching the paint dry on your walls, the world championship was won by someone else in a phenomenally fast car. You heard it here last.
YOU can see why Gwynedd Council has decided to take the axe to 29 of its primary schools.
After all, when it comes to cutting costs, closing schools will do the job for you..
But look at it another way. Gwynedd has a well-known problem of attracting and retaining young people.
One of the key factors young families will take into account when deciding where to live is whether there’s a good school in the area.
And what do Gwynedd go and do to attract young families into their rural communities? Close down the small local schools.
But that’s the sort of brilliance you get when all you bring to the table is an ability to count beans.
GOOD to see the Llyn peninsula and the Mawddach estuary both making it into one Sunday paper’s top worldwide ‘secret’ holiday destinations.
Had to laugh when the writer said that those queuing in traffic to the Lake District should have turned off for North Wales to avoid the jams.
Clearly he’s not been down the A55 during school holidays then.
Matthew Tait, a man who seemed destined to be remembered for being folded in a tackle by Gavin Henson, made THE break of the whole tournament.
A darting, twisting, sidestepping move that will have WRU selectors deliving through the records at Somerset House to see if there isn’t some Welsh blood in the Tait ancestry somewhere.
It was pure, instinctive brilliance.
It set alight what promised to be a tense, but ultimately unspectacular final – as so many finals are such are the stakes.
And in at the corner went Mark Cueto.
That’s when it got a bit odd.
Because I found myself on my feet cheering. Cheering a man in a white shirt.
I think I even shouted words to the effect: “Go on, get in there.”
Fortunately I was in a sitting room in the heart of England, not a pub in Wales, so I reached the end of the evening untarred and unfeathered.
But how could this be, how could I cheer on the old enemy? I’ve tried to work it out since Saturday and my best guess is that I love rugby more than I dislike England (the team, not the country, that is). And England showed more of what rugby is about than did Wales this World Cup.
A week or so ago I was invited to join a Facebook group. Facebook, for those of you fortunate enough not to have heard of it is a ‘social networking’ website wher bright young things can amass lists of friends who they can then inform what a wild time they are having at any given moment (when they’re really cutting their toenails while watching Corry, the soap, not the rugby player)
It also allows members to band together in groups of common interest and I was invited to join a group supporting anyone but England to win the Rugby World Cup.
Now, while I’m all for that sentiment when watching the overpaid nancies who play football, I can’t say the same for rugby, because rugby is different and I think unless you’ve played you won’t understand this.
In rugby you can spend 80 minutes trying to genuinely hurt your opponent, you go into a tackle hoping you’ll hit him so hard his grandmother will feel it. Or else, as was the case with me, you spend 80 minutes trying to run so fast that those intent on burying your mincing winger’s body beneath a pile of forwards cannot catch you.
And when it all boils over it’s proper punches, not the handbag-waving histrionics of footballers who have an attack of the vapours when someone so much as brushes their elegantly coiffed hair.
Yet at the end of those 80 minutes you clap them off the pitch, shake their hands, sink a beer, or two, with them and sing songs with them that are musically and lyrically off-key.
No hatred, no accompanying violence on the terraces, no matter how much they see on the pitch. That’s rugby.
And rugby is a team game, where effort, spirit, courage, and honour still count for something.
And I’ll tell you what, England had all those qualities in spades.
Before you tear up this page in a fit of what you think is patriotism, let me give you one warning.
Unless we learn to be more like England we are destined to forever repeat the dismal performance we put up in this World Cup.
By more like England, I don’t mean play like them, I mean try like them, care about it like them and show the sort of self-belief they did, even when everyone was dismissing them as over-the-hill. They were the antidote to Southern Hemisphere arrogance that we failed to provide.
Sadly there’s a certain karma to the fact that the try they probably did score but weren’t given in this World Cup has made up for the goal that they almost certainly didn’t score but were given in the World Cup in 1966.
But even that they have borne with the dignity expected of rugby players rather than the aggrieved whining we’re accustomed to from football managers.
Lest we forget, we had the beating of England since the last World Cup, and that impetus was squandered in a couple of short years.
Lets try to make sure that in four years time we have something to as proud of as the English do now.
CONTINUING the sporting theme, can anyone explain the amount of coverage devoted to Lewis Hamilton’s failure to win the Formula 1 world championship?
A sport whose dullness is inversely proportional to its volume does not seem to me to be the stuff of headline news, and yet night after night this past week it’s been on our screens in one way or another.
Reporter after reporter tried and failed to come up with reasons why I should care whether Lewis Hamilton became the first British driver since Graham Hill (maybe Damon) to win the world championship.
Still, at least they have got over the breathless way at the start of the season they reported that, whisper it, a black man was driving a fast car. The tone of surprise they adopted seemed to suggest they thought he was lucky not to get pulled over on suspicion of having stolen his McLaren machine.
For those of you who were too busy watching the paint dry on your walls, the world championship was won by someone else in a phenomenally fast car. You heard it here last.
YOU can see why Gwynedd Council has decided to take the axe to 29 of its primary schools.
After all, when it comes to cutting costs, closing schools will do the job for you..
But look at it another way. Gwynedd has a well-known problem of attracting and retaining young people.
One of the key factors young families will take into account when deciding where to live is whether there’s a good school in the area.
And what do Gwynedd go and do to attract young families into their rural communities? Close down the small local schools.
But that’s the sort of brilliance you get when all you bring to the table is an ability to count beans.
GOOD to see the Llyn peninsula and the Mawddach estuary both making it into one Sunday paper’s top worldwide ‘secret’ holiday destinations.
Had to laugh when the writer said that those queuing in traffic to the Lake District should have turned off for North Wales to avoid the jams.
Clearly he’s not been down the A55 during school holidays then.
Column, October 16, 2007
ABSTINENCE does have its benefits – for one thing it is character-building.
They tried it in the USA for 13 years and it built a character called Al Capone.
When it came to creating a favourable trading environment for a gangster looking for an easy way to make a living, prohibiting alcohol must have been the answer to his most heartfelt prayers.
It’s simple supply and demand economics and so it’s surprising that the country that has grown so much as a result of the free market could fall for so simple a trick.
By cutting off the supply from legal outlets, the market was left to the likes of Capone who set up the supply routes for bootleg alcohol to satisfy the public thirst for booze. And as he had a stranglehold on supply, he could charge what he liked.
Naturally others wanted in on the action and thus Chicago became the gangland it was and the mob grew in strength as a result. Capone raked in millions.
As law enforcement measures go prohibition was an unmitigated disaster, and served only to strengthen the hand of criminals who corrupt US society to this day.
It also had the effect of killing the disparate independent brewing industries there, which has had the result of them inflicting upon the world the tasteless bilge they call beer because they lost so much expertise in actually making beer, as well as wine, when they prohibited its sale.
So prohibition doesn’t work. It’s been tried, on a massive scale, it was unworkable, unenforceable, had no measurable health benefits and was a gift to the mob.
So why are we trying it now with drugs.
Don’t get me wrong, this is no paean to the benefits of cannabis or any other controlled substance. Let me say at the outset I think they are all vile and those in their grip are at best tiresome and at worst unutterably sad individuals. Life must be pretty bad if oblivion is a better alternative.
But the fact is the war on drugs was lost long ago, in fact, the minute you declare a war on drugs you may as well surrender, for the very act of declaring war means that you hand control to drug barons who will turn a tidy profit as a result of your action.
Now and again you will read reports of victories by law enforcement in the war on drugs. Some shipment will be intercepted and millions of pounds worth of cocaine or heroin will have been kept off the streets.
But even if this has any significant effect on supply, do you think the dealers bat an eyelid?
No, if they’ve got less to sell, they just shove up the price so they make the same amount of money as they did last week, but by selling less product. And what does that mean for addicts, well they have to find more money, and that often means committing crime.
It’s usually petty stuff, theft, burglary, street robbery, car crime, but the sort of thing that makes life that bit more miserable for the rest of us.
If you want confirmation of this take a trip to magistrates court any day of the week and see how many defendants’ solicitors are pleading drug problems as mitigation for their clients’ crimes.
Richard Brunstrom recognises this and now wants drugs to be legalised and regulated and the old Class A, B and C system of classifying drugs to be scrapped.
It’s odd then that the opinion of a cop who is in charge of cops who have to haul in the same faces week-in, week-out for the same catalogue of miserable crime, is dismissed so easily by politicians.
Alyn and Deeside MP Mark Tami said: “As 280,000 Class A drug users are responsible for half of all crime, taking the risk of legalising such a dangerous drug is foolhardy and I would not wish to gamble so much on the health and well-being of our children.”
A laudable sentiment were it not for the fact that all that crime would not be committed were it not for the fact that the users needed to get cash to buy their Class A drugs from dealers who now they can milk an addict for every penny they’ve got as well as a few pennies they will steal.
Alyn and Deeside AM Carl Sergeant points to the link between drug use and poverty and that it is important to tackle the social deprivation that leads to such drug abuse. Another fine aim, but social deprivation is not going to be solved in this lifetime. In the meantime thousands of lives are being wasted in ineffective court cases and jail terms for people who need help more than they need punishment.
The only people benefiting from current drug policy are the dealers, the drug barons and everyone else in the supply chain all the way back down the line to the poppy-growers in Afghanistan who are defending their trade with rocket-propelled grenades launched at our troops over there.
Richard Brunstrom might not have the answer, but at least he is brave enough to confront us with the inconvenient truth that current drug policy has failed, in spite of the brave efforts of police officers who put their lives on the line trying to enforce it.
The least we can do is have a proper debate of where exactly we think our drug laws are going rather than blithely assuming we can carry on with the current plan which hands power to exactly the people it is trying to put behind bars.
A FRIEND in Cardiff calls.
He’s just received a text. It’s one of those annoying ones from a service provider telling him what new services he can enjoy at the press of a button.
It’s offering him a new ringtone.
Imagine his delight when he’s told he can now download ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ as his new ringtone.
I tell him that if he’s going to get it, better be prepared to run fast down Queen Street.
They tried it in the USA for 13 years and it built a character called Al Capone.
When it came to creating a favourable trading environment for a gangster looking for an easy way to make a living, prohibiting alcohol must have been the answer to his most heartfelt prayers.
It’s simple supply and demand economics and so it’s surprising that the country that has grown so much as a result of the free market could fall for so simple a trick.
By cutting off the supply from legal outlets, the market was left to the likes of Capone who set up the supply routes for bootleg alcohol to satisfy the public thirst for booze. And as he had a stranglehold on supply, he could charge what he liked.
Naturally others wanted in on the action and thus Chicago became the gangland it was and the mob grew in strength as a result. Capone raked in millions.
As law enforcement measures go prohibition was an unmitigated disaster, and served only to strengthen the hand of criminals who corrupt US society to this day.
It also had the effect of killing the disparate independent brewing industries there, which has had the result of them inflicting upon the world the tasteless bilge they call beer because they lost so much expertise in actually making beer, as well as wine, when they prohibited its sale.
So prohibition doesn’t work. It’s been tried, on a massive scale, it was unworkable, unenforceable, had no measurable health benefits and was a gift to the mob.
So why are we trying it now with drugs.
Don’t get me wrong, this is no paean to the benefits of cannabis or any other controlled substance. Let me say at the outset I think they are all vile and those in their grip are at best tiresome and at worst unutterably sad individuals. Life must be pretty bad if oblivion is a better alternative.
But the fact is the war on drugs was lost long ago, in fact, the minute you declare a war on drugs you may as well surrender, for the very act of declaring war means that you hand control to drug barons who will turn a tidy profit as a result of your action.
Now and again you will read reports of victories by law enforcement in the war on drugs. Some shipment will be intercepted and millions of pounds worth of cocaine or heroin will have been kept off the streets.
But even if this has any significant effect on supply, do you think the dealers bat an eyelid?
No, if they’ve got less to sell, they just shove up the price so they make the same amount of money as they did last week, but by selling less product. And what does that mean for addicts, well they have to find more money, and that often means committing crime.
It’s usually petty stuff, theft, burglary, street robbery, car crime, but the sort of thing that makes life that bit more miserable for the rest of us.
If you want confirmation of this take a trip to magistrates court any day of the week and see how many defendants’ solicitors are pleading drug problems as mitigation for their clients’ crimes.
Richard Brunstrom recognises this and now wants drugs to be legalised and regulated and the old Class A, B and C system of classifying drugs to be scrapped.
It’s odd then that the opinion of a cop who is in charge of cops who have to haul in the same faces week-in, week-out for the same catalogue of miserable crime, is dismissed so easily by politicians.
Alyn and Deeside MP Mark Tami said: “As 280,000 Class A drug users are responsible for half of all crime, taking the risk of legalising such a dangerous drug is foolhardy and I would not wish to gamble so much on the health and well-being of our children.”
A laudable sentiment were it not for the fact that all that crime would not be committed were it not for the fact that the users needed to get cash to buy their Class A drugs from dealers who now they can milk an addict for every penny they’ve got as well as a few pennies they will steal.
Alyn and Deeside AM Carl Sergeant points to the link between drug use and poverty and that it is important to tackle the social deprivation that leads to such drug abuse. Another fine aim, but social deprivation is not going to be solved in this lifetime. In the meantime thousands of lives are being wasted in ineffective court cases and jail terms for people who need help more than they need punishment.
The only people benefiting from current drug policy are the dealers, the drug barons and everyone else in the supply chain all the way back down the line to the poppy-growers in Afghanistan who are defending their trade with rocket-propelled grenades launched at our troops over there.
Richard Brunstrom might not have the answer, but at least he is brave enough to confront us with the inconvenient truth that current drug policy has failed, in spite of the brave efforts of police officers who put their lives on the line trying to enforce it.
The least we can do is have a proper debate of where exactly we think our drug laws are going rather than blithely assuming we can carry on with the current plan which hands power to exactly the people it is trying to put behind bars.
A FRIEND in Cardiff calls.
He’s just received a text. It’s one of those annoying ones from a service provider telling him what new services he can enjoy at the press of a button.
It’s offering him a new ringtone.
Imagine his delight when he’s told he can now download ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ as his new ringtone.
I tell him that if he’s going to get it, better be prepared to run fast down Queen Street.
Column, October 9, 2007
“GIVE me the boy until he is seven and I will give you the man.”
So said the founder the Jesuit order, St Ignatius Loyola, knowing that a good bit of indoctrination when young will lead to lifelong, unquestioning faith.
And it worked for him, or rather the Catholic Church, so why not try it elsewhere, such as in schools?
That seems to the philosophy that holds saw in the Department of Education , beg pardon, Department for Children, Schools and Families (at least that’s what it is until the next reshuffle)
The Government stands accused of an ‘obscene rush’ to get children producing academic work.
So which bunch of lentil-eating, anti-establishment, drop-outs would make such a charge?
The National Primary Headteachers’ Association that’s who – so, basically, the women and men who are running primary education then. A group that any politician with an interest in leaving a legacy that lasts further than the next election date would do well to pay heed.
The NPHA said that play-based learning had all but disappeared when children entered Year 1 – the year after reception class – and warned that some children with summer birthdays would only just have turned five when they are being expected to engage in formal academic learning.
The NPHA wants play-based learning extended until children are at least six.
Now the old-fashioned 3Rs never-did-me-any-harm brigade out there might have a sharp intake of breath at the thought of children playing in class or play having anything to do with learning.
All the evidence from studies in European countries is that children do better academically if formal teaching is delayed until six or seven actually boosts academic performance later in life.
But for whatever reason our schools are locked into this system of one year of playful introduction then that’s enough messing about, time to get your head down and don’t you dare look up from your books until you’ve passed you A-levels.
I wouldn’t mind so much if the Scandinavians were the simpletons of Europe, constantly laughed at for their uneducated ways, pointing at aeroplanes and using their fingers to count etc.
Ever met a stupid Swede? No, me neither, and to think I had three years head-start in my schooling.
But the problem is that the attitude still prevails among politicians and, it has to be said, a fair number of parents, is that children’s heads are empty vessels to be filled up and the sooner you start filling it up the better.
I know pushy parents who are signing their children up to learn viola when their child is still sucking a dummy.
Parents and politicians will say they are preparing the child for the tough competition they face in life, but the sad fact is that they are not.
Education is not a matter of filling up a child’s brain like it was a jug. Of course, you can stand at the front of a class and list the dates from 1066 to the Moon landing and eventually some of it will stick.
But when that child enters the workplace what will they actually be able to do other than list dates? Handy for trivia quizzes but not much else.
If you accept the view that education is more than lists of facts, but that it is helping a child to learn to think, then all the research says that play-based, co-operative learning is what will achieve the best results.
It’s the old Chinese proverb – hear and forget, see and remember, do and understand. So are our schools teaching memory or understanding?
The Department of Children, Schools and Families is adamant that the formal school starting age of five has served children well for decades and that standards in primary schools have never been higher.
Of course, this might have something to do with the fact that government tied funding to performance in SATS tests and head teachers got very good at shovelling their children through the tests to make sure they could buy books next year.
Who said that five is the optimum age to start learning? The fact that it’s been going on for decades means that it was decided a long time ago when we knew far less about just how a child learns.
But this, once again, is an area where Wales’s fledgling government has broken free from its larger neighbour and followed a more enlightened path.
Wales did away with the evil of SATS some time ago and they have pointed out to the government’s review of primary education that in Wales, play-based foundation stage learning goes on until the age of seven.
Round the fringes of Wales this will lead to friction where parents will compare the play-based schooling of their children to the formal drilling going on in their English neighbours.
It’s natural to be concerned if you think your child is falling behind, but given that Wales is only doing what’s been working for years in Europe, then I think those fears are misplaced.
WAY back in the mists if time I spent a year working at a radio station.
They wisely did not let me near a microphone, I was a back-room boy, typing out bulletins for the DJs to read.
Then one day they decided to have a phone-in debate about the aftermath of the closure of Shotton steelworks, but the phones remained resolutely silent.
Eventually the station manager sidled over and suggested I get on the blower and pretend to be Mr Angry of Deeside. Fortunately for the listening public the news arrived and they were saved from my ill-formed thoughts on the subject.
But what if I had got on? Would Ofcom be inquiring into the faking of this segment, would there be apologies all round.
If it had been a BBC station, which it wasn’t, then the answer is a definite yes.
The BBC seems to have lost the ability to decide what is badly misleading (editing the Queen to make her look like she was in a strop) and what is inconsequential nonsense (the name of the Blue Peter cat).
So it’s apologising for everything. And now a Who Do You Think You Are episode featuring Carol Vorderman appears to have played fast and loose with strict accuracy, unbeknownst to the Countdown star, in getting a shop assistant to ‘recognise’ a photo she had never seen before.
Seeing as sorry seems to be the easiest word at the Beeb I await their donning of yet more sackcloth and ashes in due course.
So said the founder the Jesuit order, St Ignatius Loyola, knowing that a good bit of indoctrination when young will lead to lifelong, unquestioning faith.
And it worked for him, or rather the Catholic Church, so why not try it elsewhere, such as in schools?
That seems to the philosophy that holds saw in the Department of Education , beg pardon, Department for Children, Schools and Families (at least that’s what it is until the next reshuffle)
The Government stands accused of an ‘obscene rush’ to get children producing academic work.
So which bunch of lentil-eating, anti-establishment, drop-outs would make such a charge?
The National Primary Headteachers’ Association that’s who – so, basically, the women and men who are running primary education then. A group that any politician with an interest in leaving a legacy that lasts further than the next election date would do well to pay heed.
The NPHA said that play-based learning had all but disappeared when children entered Year 1 – the year after reception class – and warned that some children with summer birthdays would only just have turned five when they are being expected to engage in formal academic learning.
The NPHA wants play-based learning extended until children are at least six.
Now the old-fashioned 3Rs never-did-me-any-harm brigade out there might have a sharp intake of breath at the thought of children playing in class or play having anything to do with learning.
All the evidence from studies in European countries is that children do better academically if formal teaching is delayed until six or seven actually boosts academic performance later in life.
But for whatever reason our schools are locked into this system of one year of playful introduction then that’s enough messing about, time to get your head down and don’t you dare look up from your books until you’ve passed you A-levels.
I wouldn’t mind so much if the Scandinavians were the simpletons of Europe, constantly laughed at for their uneducated ways, pointing at aeroplanes and using their fingers to count etc.
Ever met a stupid Swede? No, me neither, and to think I had three years head-start in my schooling.
But the problem is that the attitude still prevails among politicians and, it has to be said, a fair number of parents, is that children’s heads are empty vessels to be filled up and the sooner you start filling it up the better.
I know pushy parents who are signing their children up to learn viola when their child is still sucking a dummy.
Parents and politicians will say they are preparing the child for the tough competition they face in life, but the sad fact is that they are not.
Education is not a matter of filling up a child’s brain like it was a jug. Of course, you can stand at the front of a class and list the dates from 1066 to the Moon landing and eventually some of it will stick.
But when that child enters the workplace what will they actually be able to do other than list dates? Handy for trivia quizzes but not much else.
If you accept the view that education is more than lists of facts, but that it is helping a child to learn to think, then all the research says that play-based, co-operative learning is what will achieve the best results.
It’s the old Chinese proverb – hear and forget, see and remember, do and understand. So are our schools teaching memory or understanding?
The Department of Children, Schools and Families is adamant that the formal school starting age of five has served children well for decades and that standards in primary schools have never been higher.
Of course, this might have something to do with the fact that government tied funding to performance in SATS tests and head teachers got very good at shovelling their children through the tests to make sure they could buy books next year.
Who said that five is the optimum age to start learning? The fact that it’s been going on for decades means that it was decided a long time ago when we knew far less about just how a child learns.
But this, once again, is an area where Wales’s fledgling government has broken free from its larger neighbour and followed a more enlightened path.
Wales did away with the evil of SATS some time ago and they have pointed out to the government’s review of primary education that in Wales, play-based foundation stage learning goes on until the age of seven.
Round the fringes of Wales this will lead to friction where parents will compare the play-based schooling of their children to the formal drilling going on in their English neighbours.
It’s natural to be concerned if you think your child is falling behind, but given that Wales is only doing what’s been working for years in Europe, then I think those fears are misplaced.
WAY back in the mists if time I spent a year working at a radio station.
They wisely did not let me near a microphone, I was a back-room boy, typing out bulletins for the DJs to read.
Then one day they decided to have a phone-in debate about the aftermath of the closure of Shotton steelworks, but the phones remained resolutely silent.
Eventually the station manager sidled over and suggested I get on the blower and pretend to be Mr Angry of Deeside. Fortunately for the listening public the news arrived and they were saved from my ill-formed thoughts on the subject.
But what if I had got on? Would Ofcom be inquiring into the faking of this segment, would there be apologies all round.
If it had been a BBC station, which it wasn’t, then the answer is a definite yes.
The BBC seems to have lost the ability to decide what is badly misleading (editing the Queen to make her look like she was in a strop) and what is inconsequential nonsense (the name of the Blue Peter cat).
So it’s apologising for everything. And now a Who Do You Think You Are episode featuring Carol Vorderman appears to have played fast and loose with strict accuracy, unbeknownst to the Countdown star, in getting a shop assistant to ‘recognise’ a photo she had never seen before.
Seeing as sorry seems to be the easiest word at the Beeb I await their donning of yet more sackcloth and ashes in due course.
Column, October 2, 2007
“IT is important that we do not tear ourselves apart as a nation,” said Roger Lewis, chief executive of the WRU.
Too late Roger, too late, we were already ripping ourselves asunder when yet another Fijian crossed the try line.
But I suspect Lewis knows his words will fall on deaf ears, after all in almost the same breath he said: “ Rugby defines us as a nation and unites us as a nation.”
Being defined by something and then getting a good drubbing at it does not make for an easy life.
I should have seen it coming though. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago I debated the merits of rugby at length with a football fan who believed it was not worth watching because it didn’t produce upsets.
Di I not hear the tramp, tramp, tramp of hostages to fortune on the march as I assured him that it jolly well did, and what’s more rugby was a joy to watch even when you lost?
When I thought of underdogs triumphing I was thinking of plucky little Samoa (population 214,000) or brave little Tonga (population 102,000), against England .
I wasn’t really thinking of Fiji (population 853,000) doing Wales (population 3 million) like a turkey.
I’m sure it wasn’t in the WRU script either, though given a record of 13 defeats in 20 games you could say we all saw it coming, we just hoped it could have been in the quarter finals.
Given what happened in France, a piece of work by Bangor academic Professor Duncan Tanner was about as perfectly timed as a Martyn Williams interception try (sorry, sorry).
He has looked at what he calls the ‘myth’ of rugby being Wales ’s favourite sport.
“On a typical Saturday afternoon in winter you’d find more Welshmen out walking, playing football, and even more playing golf than you’d find playing rugby,” he said in his academic paper entitled “Are the Welsh obsessed with rugby”.
Indeed Prof, indeed, and if DIY ever gets classified as a sport then the numbers of man traipsing down aisles in the hell of B&Q will outnumber all of the above many times over.
He pointed out that in New Zealand more than twice as many men play rugby than do in Wales . Fair point Professor, fair point. They also strongarm in every South Sea islander they can persuade to become New Zealandish, but then after our own rum record in grandfathering in players with dubious, well non-existent, Welsh ancestry, I guess we can’t cast too many aspersions.
But while Prof Tanner found attendance at club games was low compared to football, attitudes changed for the internationals.
In fact we pride ourselves on our rugby above language, music and culture.
Not after the weekend we don’t.
Professor Tanner, who obviously has a promising career ahead of him as a clairvoyant, should he ever choose to give up the day job said: “If we play the Welsh way and lose to one of the top teams, then stoical Welsh fans will have a few beers and look to the new season.”
“If we lose to a smaller nation…the media will be sharpening their knives.”
Only knives?
Still the WRU have blunted the attack with the sacking of Gareth Jenkins and now we’ll go through a period of navel-gazing misery as we try to pick a new coach and assess what we’re going to do to stop our misery being compounded in the six nations.
But Prof Tanner has hit upon something when he talks about the numbers of people actually playing rugby.
If you look at the way in which the South Sea islands produce such prodigious numbers of good players relative to their populations you can’t help but notice how many of them actually play the game.
If you have the majority of your population playing a game at some level then you will discover where the talent lies.
Wales has for too long rested on the laurels of its players in the South, fantastically gifted though many of them were.
The game has changed and if we are to consistently compete at international level we have to make the most of all three million of our population, not just the southern section.
And its no use looking at what the adult population do now, we’ve already lost that generation. We need to be promoting rugby in junior schools so that when kids have a kick-about, while most of the time it will be football, sometimes it will be rugby.
Compared to giant nations like England we punch above our weight, but we place too much emphasis on beating the English in the Six Nations and not enough on the World Cup.
Beating England might be supremely satisfying, but progress in the World Cup would rejuvenate the game and give the young players of tomorrow something to emulate.
Every New Zealand schoolboy dreams of being an All Black. What the WRU needs to do is make the red shirt the aspiration of every young person in Wales .
WITH the prophets of doom gathered around the housing market one section of society ought to be raising a grim smile.
The first-time buyers in Wales , that most endangered of species now has a chance to get on the housing ladder.
It’s predicted that house prices will actually fall next year which will come as a great relief, not least to those of us heartily fed-up with pub bores who tell you how much equity they’re got in their house (only now they’ll bore us about how much it’s fallen of course).
But what will be interesting will be whether, in a falling market, young people choose to stay in Wales .
My theory has always been that young people leave Wales for all manner of reasons, just one of which is house prices. Good jobs and the desire to live in a big city count for a lot more.
Those who argue that the sole reason people leave is house prices should be able to prove me wrong this time next year.
Too late Roger, too late, we were already ripping ourselves asunder when yet another Fijian crossed the try line.
But I suspect Lewis knows his words will fall on deaf ears, after all in almost the same breath he said: “ Rugby defines us as a nation and unites us as a nation.”
Being defined by something and then getting a good drubbing at it does not make for an easy life.
I should have seen it coming though. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago I debated the merits of rugby at length with a football fan who believed it was not worth watching because it didn’t produce upsets.
Di I not hear the tramp, tramp, tramp of hostages to fortune on the march as I assured him that it jolly well did, and what’s more rugby was a joy to watch even when you lost?
When I thought of underdogs triumphing I was thinking of plucky little Samoa (population 214,000) or brave little Tonga (population 102,000), against England .
I wasn’t really thinking of Fiji (population 853,000) doing Wales (population 3 million) like a turkey.
I’m sure it wasn’t in the WRU script either, though given a record of 13 defeats in 20 games you could say we all saw it coming, we just hoped it could have been in the quarter finals.
Given what happened in France, a piece of work by Bangor academic Professor Duncan Tanner was about as perfectly timed as a Martyn Williams interception try (sorry, sorry).
He has looked at what he calls the ‘myth’ of rugby being Wales ’s favourite sport.
“On a typical Saturday afternoon in winter you’d find more Welshmen out walking, playing football, and even more playing golf than you’d find playing rugby,” he said in his academic paper entitled “Are the Welsh obsessed with rugby”.
Indeed Prof, indeed, and if DIY ever gets classified as a sport then the numbers of man traipsing down aisles in the hell of B&Q will outnumber all of the above many times over.
He pointed out that in New Zealand more than twice as many men play rugby than do in Wales . Fair point Professor, fair point. They also strongarm in every South Sea islander they can persuade to become New Zealandish, but then after our own rum record in grandfathering in players with dubious, well non-existent, Welsh ancestry, I guess we can’t cast too many aspersions.
But while Prof Tanner found attendance at club games was low compared to football, attitudes changed for the internationals.
In fact we pride ourselves on our rugby above language, music and culture.
Not after the weekend we don’t.
Professor Tanner, who obviously has a promising career ahead of him as a clairvoyant, should he ever choose to give up the day job said: “If we play the Welsh way and lose to one of the top teams, then stoical Welsh fans will have a few beers and look to the new season.”
“If we lose to a smaller nation…the media will be sharpening their knives.”
Only knives?
Still the WRU have blunted the attack with the sacking of Gareth Jenkins and now we’ll go through a period of navel-gazing misery as we try to pick a new coach and assess what we’re going to do to stop our misery being compounded in the six nations.
But Prof Tanner has hit upon something when he talks about the numbers of people actually playing rugby.
If you look at the way in which the South Sea islands produce such prodigious numbers of good players relative to their populations you can’t help but notice how many of them actually play the game.
If you have the majority of your population playing a game at some level then you will discover where the talent lies.
Wales has for too long rested on the laurels of its players in the South, fantastically gifted though many of them were.
The game has changed and if we are to consistently compete at international level we have to make the most of all three million of our population, not just the southern section.
And its no use looking at what the adult population do now, we’ve already lost that generation. We need to be promoting rugby in junior schools so that when kids have a kick-about, while most of the time it will be football, sometimes it will be rugby.
Compared to giant nations like England we punch above our weight, but we place too much emphasis on beating the English in the Six Nations and not enough on the World Cup.
Beating England might be supremely satisfying, but progress in the World Cup would rejuvenate the game and give the young players of tomorrow something to emulate.
Every New Zealand schoolboy dreams of being an All Black. What the WRU needs to do is make the red shirt the aspiration of every young person in Wales .
WITH the prophets of doom gathered around the housing market one section of society ought to be raising a grim smile.
The first-time buyers in Wales , that most endangered of species now has a chance to get on the housing ladder.
It’s predicted that house prices will actually fall next year which will come as a great relief, not least to those of us heartily fed-up with pub bores who tell you how much equity they’re got in their house (only now they’ll bore us about how much it’s fallen of course).
But what will be interesting will be whether, in a falling market, young people choose to stay in Wales .
My theory has always been that young people leave Wales for all manner of reasons, just one of which is house prices. Good jobs and the desire to live in a big city count for a lot more.
Those who argue that the sole reason people leave is house prices should be able to prove me wrong this time next year.
Column, September 25, 2007
AS you read this over the Corn Flakes you may well be looking across the table at a son or daughter, uniform on, ready to go to school.
As a good parent you will take a keen interest in their education, you will have told said son or daughter how important school – happiest days of their lives and clichés like that – having been through it yourself you will be aware that how they do will have a big impact on the rest of their life.
If you are sending your child to a school in Denbighshire you might well be wondering why you bother.
The report, and I have to say it is one of the worst I have everread about an education authority, can be read in full via a link provided by the Daily Post here: http://videos.icnetwork.co.uk/icnorthwales/estyn.pdf
But if you are a parent in Denbighshire, be warned, it makes for grim reading.
Here are a few of the key remarks you might want to contemplate:
“The political leadership of education in the authority is ineffective. At both cabinet level, and in the scrutiny committee, challenges to officers about the performance of the education service are not focused enough. Accountability for the poor performance of the education service and schools is unclear. Overall, the authority has a poor track record in managing change and making improvements in education.”
“The authority does not have an effective planning system for improvement in education.
“The authority places too much emphasis on performance measurement and not enough on performance management.
“The authority has not demonstrated that education and the raising of the standards achieved by all children and young people are its priority.
“There are many important barriers to improving education services in Denbighshire. These barriers impact on all the services inspected.”
Estyn – the school inspection service for Wales – gives grades in its reports, 1 being the best, 4 meaning shortcomings in important areas. In every category bar one Denbighshire got a grade 4, and in the one that wasn’t a 4 they only got a grade 3.
For years people have believed that an education in Wales was a headstart for their child. Education both in Welsh-medium schools and in English was excellent and parents believed they were doing the best of their children sending them to state schools here.
And for the most part they were justified in that belief – but not in Denbighshire.
Now people there is talk of a whole generation of children whose education has been ruined by the mismanagement by the education authority.
How does an education authority allow a situation to develop like this without someone, somewhere saying ‘hang on, this isn’t right, we’re letting these children down.’
And by someone, I mean someone whose responsibility it is to get things right and who has the power to do so – that means councillors and senior officers within the authority.
I’m sure that teachers and head teachers in the trenches had been warning of the problems they were facing for a long time, but change cannot be imposed from the bottom up, leadership need to come from above.
In a masterpiece of understatement education minister Jane Hutt wrote to council leader Rhiannon Hughes saying she was ‘very concerned’ at the findings of the estyn report. Not as concerned as those of you packing your kids off to a Denbighshire school this morning I’ll wager.
She has the power to intervene in the running of the education authority, but has decided not to at this time. It makes you wonder just how bad things have to get before she would intervene, perhaps that solitary grade 3 has to drop to a 4 so Denbighshire has the full-house of bottom grades.
She has said she will intervene if she is not satisfied with the progress that is being made. That’s all well and good, but she should know that parents of children attending these schools will not allow her the luxury of a lot of time to make these improvements. They are going to want to see results fast, and they are completely justified in that desire.
Education, education, education was the promise of New Labour when it was elected in 1997 and its central to the policies of Plaid Cymru who regard it as a ‘fundamental right.’
Both parties need to do more than just trust Denbighshire to get it right from now on, the children of the county deserve better than that.
I’VE always been a fan of Charlotte Church.
I’ve not always been keen on the fact that when summing up Wales, as English meda types are wont to do, she gets wheeled out as illustration along with Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and Treorchy Male Voice Choir.
But what I liked about her was a dogged determination to do things her way, in spite of the brickbats being hurled in her direction, usually by London-based critics who did not know quite how to deal with a Welsh woman with a bit of attitude who could not give two figs what they thinks and write about her (and I’m guessing Charlotte would use a different phrase to ‘two figs’ there)
So it’s congratulations to Charlotte and Gavin Henson on the arrival of their baby daughter.
Pleased to see too that Charlotte has gone for a home birth. Wales is leading the way in promoting home births – a system which is already widespread in other parts of Europe, but which for some reason the UK has lagged behind in adopting.
We don’t know the baby’s name as a six-figure magazine deal hangs on upon baby being revealed for the first time somewhere else. Good luck to them, rugby careers and celebrity can be short-lived and now there are three mouths to feed.
As a good parent you will take a keen interest in their education, you will have told said son or daughter how important school – happiest days of their lives and clichés like that – having been through it yourself you will be aware that how they do will have a big impact on the rest of their life.
If you are sending your child to a school in Denbighshire you might well be wondering why you bother.
The report, and I have to say it is one of the worst I have everread about an education authority, can be read in full via a link provided by the Daily Post here: http://videos.icnetwork.co.uk/icnorthwales/estyn.pdf
But if you are a parent in Denbighshire, be warned, it makes for grim reading.
Here are a few of the key remarks you might want to contemplate:
“The political leadership of education in the authority is ineffective. At both cabinet level, and in the scrutiny committee, challenges to officers about the performance of the education service are not focused enough. Accountability for the poor performance of the education service and schools is unclear. Overall, the authority has a poor track record in managing change and making improvements in education.”
“The authority does not have an effective planning system for improvement in education.
“The authority places too much emphasis on performance measurement and not enough on performance management.
“The authority has not demonstrated that education and the raising of the standards achieved by all children and young people are its priority.
“There are many important barriers to improving education services in Denbighshire. These barriers impact on all the services inspected.”
Estyn – the school inspection service for Wales – gives grades in its reports, 1 being the best, 4 meaning shortcomings in important areas. In every category bar one Denbighshire got a grade 4, and in the one that wasn’t a 4 they only got a grade 3.
For years people have believed that an education in Wales was a headstart for their child. Education both in Welsh-medium schools and in English was excellent and parents believed they were doing the best of their children sending them to state schools here.
And for the most part they were justified in that belief – but not in Denbighshire.
Now people there is talk of a whole generation of children whose education has been ruined by the mismanagement by the education authority.
How does an education authority allow a situation to develop like this without someone, somewhere saying ‘hang on, this isn’t right, we’re letting these children down.’
And by someone, I mean someone whose responsibility it is to get things right and who has the power to do so – that means councillors and senior officers within the authority.
I’m sure that teachers and head teachers in the trenches had been warning of the problems they were facing for a long time, but change cannot be imposed from the bottom up, leadership need to come from above.
In a masterpiece of understatement education minister Jane Hutt wrote to council leader Rhiannon Hughes saying she was ‘very concerned’ at the findings of the estyn report. Not as concerned as those of you packing your kids off to a Denbighshire school this morning I’ll wager.
She has the power to intervene in the running of the education authority, but has decided not to at this time. It makes you wonder just how bad things have to get before she would intervene, perhaps that solitary grade 3 has to drop to a 4 so Denbighshire has the full-house of bottom grades.
She has said she will intervene if she is not satisfied with the progress that is being made. That’s all well and good, but she should know that parents of children attending these schools will not allow her the luxury of a lot of time to make these improvements. They are going to want to see results fast, and they are completely justified in that desire.
Education, education, education was the promise of New Labour when it was elected in 1997 and its central to the policies of Plaid Cymru who regard it as a ‘fundamental right.’
Both parties need to do more than just trust Denbighshire to get it right from now on, the children of the county deserve better than that.
I’VE always been a fan of Charlotte Church.
I’ve not always been keen on the fact that when summing up Wales, as English meda types are wont to do, she gets wheeled out as illustration along with Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and Treorchy Male Voice Choir.
But what I liked about her was a dogged determination to do things her way, in spite of the brickbats being hurled in her direction, usually by London-based critics who did not know quite how to deal with a Welsh woman with a bit of attitude who could not give two figs what they thinks and write about her (and I’m guessing Charlotte would use a different phrase to ‘two figs’ there)
So it’s congratulations to Charlotte and Gavin Henson on the arrival of their baby daughter.
Pleased to see too that Charlotte has gone for a home birth. Wales is leading the way in promoting home births – a system which is already widespread in other parts of Europe, but which for some reason the UK has lagged behind in adopting.
We don’t know the baby’s name as a six-figure magazine deal hangs on upon baby being revealed for the first time somewhere else. Good luck to them, rugby careers and celebrity can be short-lived and now there are three mouths to feed.
Column, September 18, 2007
THERE was a time when, if you wanted to warn the citizens of the World of the impending arrival of little green men, who were sending you messages through your tin-foil hat, the only way to spread the word was to get on your soap-box at Hyde Park Corner.
It was the repository of the angry, the disaffected and the nut-job.
Then Tim Berners-Lee came up with bright idea of the Internet. Couldn’t he just have let it lie?
Now every wibbling Tom, Dick and Harry has access to the wired-up world to present their views in all their glory.
No longer are they limited to how much they can shout out before the men in white coats come along to take them to the room with the comfy walls, now they can spread the mad word 24/7.
The web has been hailed as the great democratiser of information. No longer is it the preserve of the likes of journalists such as myself, conspiring with my press baron masters to control the flow of news to the masses.
Now anyone with a PC can set up their own website and hey-presto, everyone’s a ‘commentator’ on whatever subject takes their beady-eyed fancy that particular day.
But a word of caution.
Electronic communication, in whatever form, has a tendency to exclude all reason. The more technically advanced it is, the less human it renders you.
There was a time when we communicated face-to-face, by letter, or by phone, and that was pretty much it. Talking to someone in their presence does, for the most part, have a tendency to force us to adopt some norms of civilisation, politeness, common decency etc.
The act of writing a letter, committing something to the permanence of paper that can be treasured, copied, or produced in a court of law, makes you think twice about intemperate language.
The telephone means whoever is on the other end can answer back, you can hear their tone and gauge the effect your own words are having.
All that goes out the window as soon as you sit down at a little screen with the World Wide Web as your oyster.
Normally sane and rational people suddenly have an attack of the screaming ab-dabs when they are put in command of a mouse and they start giving us the benefit of their obviously pent-up thoughts on life, the universe and everything.
E-mail is another nightmare in this respect. It’s instant and having tapped out a message that will make its recipient burn with rage, it is despatched at the click of a mouse, while a snail-mail letter once re-read, might have been rewritten into something less inflammatory.
Chatrooms, supposedly conducive to open debate, are quite the reverse, and become a virtual shouting match with more mud flying than there is at the bottom of a scrum on a wet weekend.
I have been unwise enough to indulge in these on news-sites and, having entered for a quick look at what was causing debate, have found myself, three hours later, in furious debate with some American redneck over the situation in the Middle East. A situation which, I hasten to add, it was patently obvious both of us knew nothing about, other than we disagreed with each other.
You have to wonder quite why people indulge in such grandstanding. Perhaps that what the higher-ups in the Labour party in Wales are thinking about David Collins’ contribution to the debate over the language. Namely, that he thought it was ‘brain dead.’ Unfortunately he thought it out loud on a website and was thus pilloried by every political opponent who smelt blood in the water.
Mr Collins, researcher for Vale of Clwyd AM, Ann Jones, has said it was a slip of the keyboard and that he meant to say it was a dead language, not brain-dead. So that’s alright then. But I would just say that the difference between the word dead and the phrase brain dead is pretty significant and that’s a long enough slip of the keyboard to stretch credulity.
The thing is, we should be able to have a calm, rational debate about the future of Welsh and the place it has in our culture. It is a minority language, albeit a large minority and more and more young people have a working knowledge of it now that they have to do it throughout their school life.
But using phrases like ‘dead’ or ‘brain-dead’ tends to halt any advance of that debate dead in its tracks, because it’s like red rag to a bull to those committed to the language surviving and prospering.
They then attack the person who made such remarks, call for Ann Jones to act, call for the Welsh Labour party to act, and they all naturally get on the defensive and issue statements distancing themselves from Mr Collins while not actually doing anything, probably in the not unrealistic hope that it’s a storm in a tea-cup and it’ll all blow over.
Until next time.
The fact is that for a politician, for Mr Collins harbours political ambition, in Wales to say Welsh is ‘brain-dead’ or even dead, is a pretty dumb thing to do.
I don’t mind my politicians being outspoken and opinionated, it’s what they’re there for – but being stupid is unforgivable.
ONLY in Wales do you get your rugby in stereo.
In one Cardiff pub last week and there was club rugby on one screen, in Welsh and World Cup on the opposite side of the bar, with patrons swivelling according to where the action was.
And it’s a joy to be in a bar where, when a transgression occurs, those present, nod, or disagree, but do not sit nonplussed waiting for the one ex-rugby player present (me) to explain to them the dark mysteries of the ruck (I was a winger, what would I know about one of them? I would just be lying at the bottom of one screaming @not the face, not the face’)
I ended up debating, at length, with a football fan the point of watching a World Cup where minor nations never produce upsets (he had, it turned out, missed Argentina’s opener against France)
I think that, unlike football, you can enjoy a rugby match in which your team go down fighting. Such as Wales Australia . But perhaps you enjoy it more knowing that the English didn’t even put a point on the board against South Africa .
Nil.
Zip.
Nada.
Nul points from the South African jury.
Joy.
It was the repository of the angry, the disaffected and the nut-job.
Then Tim Berners-Lee came up with bright idea of the Internet. Couldn’t he just have let it lie?
Now every wibbling Tom, Dick and Harry has access to the wired-up world to present their views in all their glory.
No longer are they limited to how much they can shout out before the men in white coats come along to take them to the room with the comfy walls, now they can spread the mad word 24/7.
The web has been hailed as the great democratiser of information. No longer is it the preserve of the likes of journalists such as myself, conspiring with my press baron masters to control the flow of news to the masses.
Now anyone with a PC can set up their own website and hey-presto, everyone’s a ‘commentator’ on whatever subject takes their beady-eyed fancy that particular day.
But a word of caution.
Electronic communication, in whatever form, has a tendency to exclude all reason. The more technically advanced it is, the less human it renders you.
There was a time when we communicated face-to-face, by letter, or by phone, and that was pretty much it. Talking to someone in their presence does, for the most part, have a tendency to force us to adopt some norms of civilisation, politeness, common decency etc.
The act of writing a letter, committing something to the permanence of paper that can be treasured, copied, or produced in a court of law, makes you think twice about intemperate language.
The telephone means whoever is on the other end can answer back, you can hear their tone and gauge the effect your own words are having.
All that goes out the window as soon as you sit down at a little screen with the World Wide Web as your oyster.
Normally sane and rational people suddenly have an attack of the screaming ab-dabs when they are put in command of a mouse and they start giving us the benefit of their obviously pent-up thoughts on life, the universe and everything.
E-mail is another nightmare in this respect. It’s instant and having tapped out a message that will make its recipient burn with rage, it is despatched at the click of a mouse, while a snail-mail letter once re-read, might have been rewritten into something less inflammatory.
Chatrooms, supposedly conducive to open debate, are quite the reverse, and become a virtual shouting match with more mud flying than there is at the bottom of a scrum on a wet weekend.
I have been unwise enough to indulge in these on news-sites and, having entered for a quick look at what was causing debate, have found myself, three hours later, in furious debate with some American redneck over the situation in the Middle East. A situation which, I hasten to add, it was patently obvious both of us knew nothing about, other than we disagreed with each other.
You have to wonder quite why people indulge in such grandstanding. Perhaps that what the higher-ups in the Labour party in Wales are thinking about David Collins’ contribution to the debate over the language. Namely, that he thought it was ‘brain dead.’ Unfortunately he thought it out loud on a website and was thus pilloried by every political opponent who smelt blood in the water.
Mr Collins, researcher for Vale of Clwyd AM, Ann Jones, has said it was a slip of the keyboard and that he meant to say it was a dead language, not brain-dead. So that’s alright then. But I would just say that the difference between the word dead and the phrase brain dead is pretty significant and that’s a long enough slip of the keyboard to stretch credulity.
The thing is, we should be able to have a calm, rational debate about the future of Welsh and the place it has in our culture. It is a minority language, albeit a large minority and more and more young people have a working knowledge of it now that they have to do it throughout their school life.
But using phrases like ‘dead’ or ‘brain-dead’ tends to halt any advance of that debate dead in its tracks, because it’s like red rag to a bull to those committed to the language surviving and prospering.
They then attack the person who made such remarks, call for Ann Jones to act, call for the Welsh Labour party to act, and they all naturally get on the defensive and issue statements distancing themselves from Mr Collins while not actually doing anything, probably in the not unrealistic hope that it’s a storm in a tea-cup and it’ll all blow over.
Until next time.
The fact is that for a politician, for Mr Collins harbours political ambition, in Wales to say Welsh is ‘brain-dead’ or even dead, is a pretty dumb thing to do.
I don’t mind my politicians being outspoken and opinionated, it’s what they’re there for – but being stupid is unforgivable.
ONLY in Wales do you get your rugby in stereo.
In one Cardiff pub last week and there was club rugby on one screen, in Welsh and World Cup on the opposite side of the bar, with patrons swivelling according to where the action was.
And it’s a joy to be in a bar where, when a transgression occurs, those present, nod, or disagree, but do not sit nonplussed waiting for the one ex-rugby player present (me) to explain to them the dark mysteries of the ruck (I was a winger, what would I know about one of them? I would just be lying at the bottom of one screaming @not the face, not the face’)
I ended up debating, at length, with a football fan the point of watching a World Cup where minor nations never produce upsets (he had, it turned out, missed Argentina’s opener against France)
I think that, unlike football, you can enjoy a rugby match in which your team go down fighting. Such as Wales Australia . But perhaps you enjoy it more knowing that the English didn’t even put a point on the board against South Africa .
Nil.
Zip.
Nada.
Nul points from the South African jury.
Joy.
Column, September 11, 2007
IT’S a rum time to be a child.
Either you live a life of mollycoddled, barely-contained terror, the imminent victim of whatever predator your parents imagine to be lurking around the corner, or else you are the source of all society’s ills, to be hounded, corralled, CCTVed, ASBOed and generally blamed until you hit 18, at which time you can shift the blame onto your younger siblings.
I suppose behooded youth are responsible for their own tiny proportion of the crime that is committed in this country, although their constant presence on the front page of certain hysterical London-based tabloids might lead you to believe that little Johnny next door is a Ronnie Biggs in the making just because he cycles on the pavement.
However, I’m guessing that on North Wales Police’s ‘most wanted’ noticeboard, you don’t find too many four-year-old girl’s in purple knitted cardigans.
Alright, little Karen Lewis’s cardigan did have a hood, but as hoodlums go she’s about as threatening a presence as Peter Pan’s Tinkerbell.
So, maybe, just maybe, the staff at Les Harker’s amusement emporium could have exercised a modicum of discretion and let her keep her hood up.
I doubt somehow that little Karen’s plan was to empty the 2p machine of its coppery contents before making off safe in the knowledge that she had been hidden from the pervasive CCTV by her gran’s best impenetrable double-knit.
Thinking about it, perhaps the villains on Crimewatch marching into banks and building societies wearing a pair of 30-denier Pretty Pollies to disguise their mush are missing a trick. It’s purple-knits they should be wearing, after all who would suspect them if they look like an advert for Ladybird kidswear?
I’m sure Rhyl suffers its fair share at the hands of youths with nothing better to do than go visit its arcades, an I’m no expert in criminal profiling, bjt I’m guessing that it’s not four-year-old tots that the emporium owners want to worry about capturing on CCTV, but rather males some 10 years or so older.
Like I said, it’s a strange time to be a kid. In Denbighshire they’re planning to get them to eat healthy options by locking them into the school.
They’re fed up with kids voting with their feet and walking to the nearest chippy instead of eating a Jamie Olive healthy meal. So they’re considering a lunchtime lockdown to give them no option but to eat their greens.
They are of course reckoning without a child’s ability to go without a meal if it contains too much greenery and not enough sugar. I’ve a theory that they’ve got some little fat reserve somewhere so, like a camel, when sugary times are a bit lean they can just plod on, refusing food until mum and dad relent and buy them a pack of Smarties.
But this is the plan, deny them the burger bar in the hope that hunger will drive them into the arms of the salad bar.
But doesn’t this sort of defeat the whole ethos of Jamie’s healthy eating plan – that you should convince children of the virtues of healthy eating by gentle persuasion, not the sort of incarceration employed on Alcatraz?
But why should children follow by example when the example we set is so bad? If children don’t eat well in school it’s because they don’t eat well at home. Rather than suspecting hoodie-wearing teens of every ill imaginable, why not wait to see how they behave rather than demanding to catch them on film on the off-chance they turn out to be a criminal?
In fact, if you want them to behave like a human being, why not treat them like one?
THE disappearance of Madeleine McCann, see which theory you prefer.
Her parents, having accidentally killed her, cook up a plan in the couple of hours before they have to go to dinner with friends to conceal her death.
Then they hide her body.
Then they go to dinner as if nothing had happened.
Then they call the police and manage to convince them that their daughter had vanished, having somehow staged the scene in their apartment in the time they went to check the children during their meal.
Then, despite the near 24/7 media scrutiny, they manage to move her body, according to police, thus leaving behind a DNA trace of Madeleine’s blood (despite the fact that, having supposedly died at least 25 days earlier, any body would not be leaving behind much blood.) Furthermore, any parent’s clothing will be chock-full of their child’s DNA, because, well, they’re their parents and when they get any bump of scratch, who do they come running to?
Then, instead of doing a few press conference and fading into obscurity, which any guilty person would do, they embark on a PR campaign the like of which we have never seen, culminating in a meeting with the Pope. Low profile it certainly isn’t.
And all hatched in the frantic moments after the supposed accidental death of a child.
Or do you believe theory number 2.
An incompetent police service utterly cocks up the crime scene and fails to seal it off for proper forensic examination.
Then apartment is then let out again, even though it needs more forensic tests later.
Then, coming under increasing pressure to end this case because, well, the family holiday market is fickle and would you take your child somewhere where there a was a child abductor still at large… the police concoct a fanciful plan to throw suspicion on the parents and to take the heat off themselves, just before the parents are due to fly home.
Then, having successfully slung mud at the family, they quietly scale down their investigation, thus allowing their tourism industry to get back to normal.
I may have concerns at the way the middle classes circled the wagons to defend the McCanns’ actions, but, given what we know I don’t believe for a moment they had anhting to do with her disappearance and if that is the case the behaviour of the Portuguese police is an affront to justice and has allowed the true abductor of Madeleine to go free.
Either you live a life of mollycoddled, barely-contained terror, the imminent victim of whatever predator your parents imagine to be lurking around the corner, or else you are the source of all society’s ills, to be hounded, corralled, CCTVed, ASBOed and generally blamed until you hit 18, at which time you can shift the blame onto your younger siblings.
I suppose behooded youth are responsible for their own tiny proportion of the crime that is committed in this country, although their constant presence on the front page of certain hysterical London-based tabloids might lead you to believe that little Johnny next door is a Ronnie Biggs in the making just because he cycles on the pavement.
However, I’m guessing that on North Wales Police’s ‘most wanted’ noticeboard, you don’t find too many four-year-old girl’s in purple knitted cardigans.
Alright, little Karen Lewis’s cardigan did have a hood, but as hoodlums go she’s about as threatening a presence as Peter Pan’s Tinkerbell.
So, maybe, just maybe, the staff at Les Harker’s amusement emporium could have exercised a modicum of discretion and let her keep her hood up.
I doubt somehow that little Karen’s plan was to empty the 2p machine of its coppery contents before making off safe in the knowledge that she had been hidden from the pervasive CCTV by her gran’s best impenetrable double-knit.
Thinking about it, perhaps the villains on Crimewatch marching into banks and building societies wearing a pair of 30-denier Pretty Pollies to disguise their mush are missing a trick. It’s purple-knits they should be wearing, after all who would suspect them if they look like an advert for Ladybird kidswear?
I’m sure Rhyl suffers its fair share at the hands of youths with nothing better to do than go visit its arcades, an I’m no expert in criminal profiling, bjt I’m guessing that it’s not four-year-old tots that the emporium owners want to worry about capturing on CCTV, but rather males some 10 years or so older.
Like I said, it’s a strange time to be a kid. In Denbighshire they’re planning to get them to eat healthy options by locking them into the school.
They’re fed up with kids voting with their feet and walking to the nearest chippy instead of eating a Jamie Olive healthy meal. So they’re considering a lunchtime lockdown to give them no option but to eat their greens.
They are of course reckoning without a child’s ability to go without a meal if it contains too much greenery and not enough sugar. I’ve a theory that they’ve got some little fat reserve somewhere so, like a camel, when sugary times are a bit lean they can just plod on, refusing food until mum and dad relent and buy them a pack of Smarties.
But this is the plan, deny them the burger bar in the hope that hunger will drive them into the arms of the salad bar.
But doesn’t this sort of defeat the whole ethos of Jamie’s healthy eating plan – that you should convince children of the virtues of healthy eating by gentle persuasion, not the sort of incarceration employed on Alcatraz?
But why should children follow by example when the example we set is so bad? If children don’t eat well in school it’s because they don’t eat well at home. Rather than suspecting hoodie-wearing teens of every ill imaginable, why not wait to see how they behave rather than demanding to catch them on film on the off-chance they turn out to be a criminal?
In fact, if you want them to behave like a human being, why not treat them like one?
THE disappearance of Madeleine McCann, see which theory you prefer.
Her parents, having accidentally killed her, cook up a plan in the couple of hours before they have to go to dinner with friends to conceal her death.
Then they hide her body.
Then they go to dinner as if nothing had happened.
Then they call the police and manage to convince them that their daughter had vanished, having somehow staged the scene in their apartment in the time they went to check the children during their meal.
Then, despite the near 24/7 media scrutiny, they manage to move her body, according to police, thus leaving behind a DNA trace of Madeleine’s blood (despite the fact that, having supposedly died at least 25 days earlier, any body would not be leaving behind much blood.) Furthermore, any parent’s clothing will be chock-full of their child’s DNA, because, well, they’re their parents and when they get any bump of scratch, who do they come running to?
Then, instead of doing a few press conference and fading into obscurity, which any guilty person would do, they embark on a PR campaign the like of which we have never seen, culminating in a meeting with the Pope. Low profile it certainly isn’t.
And all hatched in the frantic moments after the supposed accidental death of a child.
Or do you believe theory number 2.
An incompetent police service utterly cocks up the crime scene and fails to seal it off for proper forensic examination.
Then apartment is then let out again, even though it needs more forensic tests later.
Then, coming under increasing pressure to end this case because, well, the family holiday market is fickle and would you take your child somewhere where there a was a child abductor still at large… the police concoct a fanciful plan to throw suspicion on the parents and to take the heat off themselves, just before the parents are due to fly home.
Then, having successfully slung mud at the family, they quietly scale down their investigation, thus allowing their tourism industry to get back to normal.
I may have concerns at the way the middle classes circled the wagons to defend the McCanns’ actions, but, given what we know I don’t believe for a moment they had anhting to do with her disappearance and if that is the case the behaviour of the Portuguese police is an affront to justice and has allowed the true abductor of Madeleine to go free.
Column, September 4, 2007
IN years to come it will be like the question: “What did you do in the war Daddy?” – What did you do when Di died?
Strange now, 10 years later, how there seem to be more people wondering at the mass explosion of very public mourning that broke out after her untimely death in a Paris tunnel than there are people who admit to the flower-throwing, grizzling grief we saw in those tumultuous days afterward.
There must have been some doing the grieving, I’ve seen the pictures again this week – grown men blubbing like babies as they gently placed bunches of flowers at the edge of the growing carpets that were laid outside the Royal palaces.
But it was worse than that – even though the histrionics displayed by those who never knew her and had never met her was bad enough. What was worse was the self-appointed grief police who were on patrol in our pubs, clubs and offices as the nation mourned.
You needed to show you were suitably bereft by:
Not smiling
Expressing how you ‘could not believe she was gone’ every 10 minutes or so
Warning prophetically that this would be the end of the monarchy
Solemnly intoning ‘the queen of people’s hearts’ when yet another clip of her appeared on TV
If you weren’t doing any or all of the above to the satisfaction of the grief police you were no doubt a heartless swine who probably tortured kittens for a hobby.
The only people smiling, and not even they were doing it in public, were the florists. And how is a bunch of soon to be wilted flowers an appropriate tribute. Save us from this strange desire the British seem to have adopted to place flowers ‘in tribute’ to someone. It had started before Diana of course, with little roadside shrines to those departed in crashes, but it attained its full expression in the carpets of decaying foliage that gathered outside the Royal palaces.
There is a word for what went on in Britain in those September days 10 years ago – weird.
I’m sorry, but if your public outpourings of grief for a woman you had ever known or even met are such that her funeral is taken out of the hands of those who did love her and becomes a public occasion, you’re weird.
What those grieving ‘their princess’ seemed to forget was that she was the mother of two young sons and they above anyone else had a right to grieve.
And yet what happened to them? Were they allowed to cry for their mother at her funeral like any other normal young boy?
No, they had to follow her coffin on a gun carriage because the crowds clamouring for a state occasion would settle for nothing less and certainly nothing private.
That’s why there seem to be more people know who wonder at such public mourning than there are people who actually did it – after all if you had denied two young boys the right to properly mourn their dead mum all because of your overwhelming compulsion to hurl daffs at her hearse, you might have got a bit reticent as well.
Even now, 10 years after, there are still people who regard her death as public property. There were calls for her memorial service to be broadcast on giant screens for the inevitable crowds that would turn up – which would have seemed a bit like overkill to the handfuls of foreign tourists who were hanging about.
There are still people who think they own her memory to the extent that they can dictate who attends her memorial service and that the Duchess of Cornwall was persona non grata, even though she was invited by William and Harry.
That is weird.
One woman even said she felt like she had won the lottery when it was announced that Camilla would not be attending. You would have to have a fairly empty life I would suggest to express emotions like that about a memorial service for a woman you didn’t even know.
Perhaps that’s the reason for the public outpouring of grief that happened 10 years ago. The buttoned-up British finally, briefly, found a person they could have a good blub over in public and no-one would think the worse of them.
Now I think many of those who grieved so loud and long are slightly embarrassed by their actions back then. Perhaps that’s why, for her memorial service last week, the giant screens called for by some national papers were not needed because only a smattering of people turned up as spectators.
That left the memorial service to those who really knew and loved her – her two sons. Which is how it should have been 10 years ago.
IT has always been said that it is unwise to pick a fight with a solitary young drinker in Hereford.
Chances are the young man might well be from the nearby SAS headquarters.
However, as one hoodlum in Harlech found out, there has been an unforeseen result of the Army’s deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.
He took a dislike to two young men having a quiet pint together in Harlech. He left and was unwise enough to return with a knife.
They were only armed with their bare hands…and combat experience in Afghanistan.
I dare say that if you’ve spent several months having the Taliban fire rocket-propelled grenades at you, a drunk waving a knife in Harlech might seem an amusing diversion.
In the understated terminology of court proceedings it was said that he was ‘disarmed’ by the soldiers. Suffice to say he was duly dealt with – and I’m hoping it was none too gently – and delivered into the arms of the law.
I hope the two brothers in arms went on to enjoy their night out. They deserve bravery awards for their service in Afghanistan, but they shouldn’t really have to earn them on a night out in their home town.
Strange now, 10 years later, how there seem to be more people wondering at the mass explosion of very public mourning that broke out after her untimely death in a Paris tunnel than there are people who admit to the flower-throwing, grizzling grief we saw in those tumultuous days afterward.
There must have been some doing the grieving, I’ve seen the pictures again this week – grown men blubbing like babies as they gently placed bunches of flowers at the edge of the growing carpets that were laid outside the Royal palaces.
But it was worse than that – even though the histrionics displayed by those who never knew her and had never met her was bad enough. What was worse was the self-appointed grief police who were on patrol in our pubs, clubs and offices as the nation mourned.
You needed to show you were suitably bereft by:
Not smiling
Expressing how you ‘could not believe she was gone’ every 10 minutes or so
Warning prophetically that this would be the end of the monarchy
Solemnly intoning ‘the queen of people’s hearts’ when yet another clip of her appeared on TV
If you weren’t doing any or all of the above to the satisfaction of the grief police you were no doubt a heartless swine who probably tortured kittens for a hobby.
The only people smiling, and not even they were doing it in public, were the florists. And how is a bunch of soon to be wilted flowers an appropriate tribute. Save us from this strange desire the British seem to have adopted to place flowers ‘in tribute’ to someone. It had started before Diana of course, with little roadside shrines to those departed in crashes, but it attained its full expression in the carpets of decaying foliage that gathered outside the Royal palaces.
There is a word for what went on in Britain in those September days 10 years ago – weird.
I’m sorry, but if your public outpourings of grief for a woman you had ever known or even met are such that her funeral is taken out of the hands of those who did love her and becomes a public occasion, you’re weird.
What those grieving ‘their princess’ seemed to forget was that she was the mother of two young sons and they above anyone else had a right to grieve.
And yet what happened to them? Were they allowed to cry for their mother at her funeral like any other normal young boy?
No, they had to follow her coffin on a gun carriage because the crowds clamouring for a state occasion would settle for nothing less and certainly nothing private.
That’s why there seem to be more people know who wonder at such public mourning than there are people who actually did it – after all if you had denied two young boys the right to properly mourn their dead mum all because of your overwhelming compulsion to hurl daffs at her hearse, you might have got a bit reticent as well.
Even now, 10 years after, there are still people who regard her death as public property. There were calls for her memorial service to be broadcast on giant screens for the inevitable crowds that would turn up – which would have seemed a bit like overkill to the handfuls of foreign tourists who were hanging about.
There are still people who think they own her memory to the extent that they can dictate who attends her memorial service and that the Duchess of Cornwall was persona non grata, even though she was invited by William and Harry.
That is weird.
One woman even said she felt like she had won the lottery when it was announced that Camilla would not be attending. You would have to have a fairly empty life I would suggest to express emotions like that about a memorial service for a woman you didn’t even know.
Perhaps that’s the reason for the public outpouring of grief that happened 10 years ago. The buttoned-up British finally, briefly, found a person they could have a good blub over in public and no-one would think the worse of them.
Now I think many of those who grieved so loud and long are slightly embarrassed by their actions back then. Perhaps that’s why, for her memorial service last week, the giant screens called for by some national papers were not needed because only a smattering of people turned up as spectators.
That left the memorial service to those who really knew and loved her – her two sons. Which is how it should have been 10 years ago.
IT has always been said that it is unwise to pick a fight with a solitary young drinker in Hereford.
Chances are the young man might well be from the nearby SAS headquarters.
However, as one hoodlum in Harlech found out, there has been an unforeseen result of the Army’s deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.
He took a dislike to two young men having a quiet pint together in Harlech. He left and was unwise enough to return with a knife.
They were only armed with their bare hands…and combat experience in Afghanistan.
I dare say that if you’ve spent several months having the Taliban fire rocket-propelled grenades at you, a drunk waving a knife in Harlech might seem an amusing diversion.
In the understated terminology of court proceedings it was said that he was ‘disarmed’ by the soldiers. Suffice to say he was duly dealt with – and I’m hoping it was none too gently – and delivered into the arms of the law.
I hope the two brothers in arms went on to enjoy their night out. They deserve bravery awards for their service in Afghanistan, but they shouldn’t really have to earn them on a night out in their home town.
Column, August 28, 2007
IN the past few years it has been my great good fortune to work with a number of young people from the South Wales valleys.
Always of a relentlessly sunny disposition they were, don’t you believe a word from those who would suggest that the valleys imbue people with a demeanour that some would describe as well…gloomy.
Not just gloomy, in a perpetual state of Stygian gloom so inky that, like a black hole they actually consume light. No, no, they are the little rays of sunshine the lot of them.
But, my being North Walian, of a Gog, as the braver among them would eventually sum up the courage to call me, there was never a sense of a shared identity, save for the days when we united in abusing the English in the rugby.
Then eventually, usually as we parted company on a leaving do, they would summon up the courage to say what they really thought.
“David, you’re not really Welsh are yew? I mean you’re not from Welsh Weaallls are yew.”
Welsh Wales for the purposes of this conversation being whatever grassed over spoil tip was home to them.
The reason they had come to this conclusion was that because they had an accent like Huw Edwards, Charlotte Church or the little dragon off of Ivor the Engine, their Welsh credentials were beyond reproach.
My North East Welsh accent, like a Scouser on the run trying to disguise his roots, meant that I was, well, they thought, English.
A few years ago this would be akin to lighting the blue touch paper and standing well back, now I am resigned to us being a nation forever divided.
The problem is that many of those claiming Welshness because they sound like a tenor from Treorchy, couldn’t actually speak Welsh. For them it was how you sounded that was important, not what you spoke.
This division is illustrated by the Early Day Motion (think of it as Westminster graffiti, a sort of political peeing against a lamp-post), put down by South Wales MP Chris Bryant about train announcments which says: “That this House notes that the announcements at all railway stations in Wales are made in Welsh first and then in English; wholly supports the policy of bilingual announcements; but believes that it would be far more sensible and far more convenient for passengers, whether regular commuters or local visitors, if announcements at each station were made first in the language used by the majority of the local population.”
Wholly supports bilingual announcements as long as English comes first in parts of Wales then.
And who is to decide at which point English-first stops and Welsh-first starts?
This is just a mirror image of the old Fro Gymraeg that was suggested by Cymuned way back, but this time if the English-speakers telling us this is English Wales and then over to the West you get Welsh Wales.
The problem is that you create the division in visitors’ minds and then they wonder why anyone bother with Welsh at all. If they can get by without it in the Valleys, why do those bothersome folk in the North keep it up.
You think these attitudes don’t exist but only this week a friend returning from the Llŷn said she had found some people there a little ‘unfriendly’, when asked how, she said, oh, we went into shops and they were speaking Welsh.
It was suggested that had the shop been in France and the language French she wouldn’t have batted an eyelid – but the Welsh understand English she insisted.
And so we do, and that is our downfall. The Welsh language will not stand or fall because railway announcements are made first in English. But it is just one more sign to people that Welsh doesn’t matter, that as long as you speak English you’ll get by.
Try suggesting that in France, where the majority of people speak English, but hey, prefer to speak the language that they think in, no matter how inconvenient that may be to English tourists.
Welsh Wales starts at the Croeso I Gymru signs and it finishes at the sea and we don’t need Westminster MPs bolstering the divisions we create among ourselves.
ONE of the best bits of TV in recent months has been Griff Rhys Jones’s ‘Mountain’ which has seen him scaling Scots peaks, a few English hills and finishing up in Snowdonia on Sunday night.
The photography was the BBC at its best and a greater advert for the awe-inspiring beauty of the Welsh mountains there could not be.
It was no rose-tinted elegy though, he pointed out the impact of man on the mountains from the sheep that crop the slope of their bio-diversity, to the fag-ends and plastic bottle that adorn Yr Wyddfa.
But the strangest pollution comes in the form of the heaps of ash that were once people, scattered over the peak as a final resting place.
Not a bad place to be for eternity, but I think people always have visions of a handful of ash being caught by the wind and disappearing across the peak.
In actual fact cremation produces quite a bit of ash and rather than being caught by the breeze, the remains of the dearly departed end up as small heaps on the slopes.
As Griff pointed out, ash is quite fertile and so plants grow better in these heaps than elsewhere on the peaks and so the ecology is changed.
I’m not sure I would want my final resting place to contribute to such changes, so perhaps those scattering their loved ones from now one might consider doing it on a really windy day.
THERE is a bright side to Wales’s drubbing by France.
You can now get odds of 100-1 on them to win the World Cup.
Look, stick the tenner that you would normally put on the Grand National on them to win.
My theory, as always, is that they’re lulling the opposition into a false sense os security.
Come the final you’re £1,000 up.
One small note of warning, I haven’t won a bet since Seagram won the Grand National in 1991, and that was someone else’s tip.
Always of a relentlessly sunny disposition they were, don’t you believe a word from those who would suggest that the valleys imbue people with a demeanour that some would describe as well…gloomy.
Not just gloomy, in a perpetual state of Stygian gloom so inky that, like a black hole they actually consume light. No, no, they are the little rays of sunshine the lot of them.
But, my being North Walian, of a Gog, as the braver among them would eventually sum up the courage to call me, there was never a sense of a shared identity, save for the days when we united in abusing the English in the rugby.
Then eventually, usually as we parted company on a leaving do, they would summon up the courage to say what they really thought.
“David, you’re not really Welsh are yew? I mean you’re not from Welsh Weaallls are yew.”
Welsh Wales for the purposes of this conversation being whatever grassed over spoil tip was home to them.
The reason they had come to this conclusion was that because they had an accent like Huw Edwards, Charlotte Church or the little dragon off of Ivor the Engine, their Welsh credentials were beyond reproach.
My North East Welsh accent, like a Scouser on the run trying to disguise his roots, meant that I was, well, they thought, English.
A few years ago this would be akin to lighting the blue touch paper and standing well back, now I am resigned to us being a nation forever divided.
The problem is that many of those claiming Welshness because they sound like a tenor from Treorchy, couldn’t actually speak Welsh. For them it was how you sounded that was important, not what you spoke.
This division is illustrated by the Early Day Motion (think of it as Westminster graffiti, a sort of political peeing against a lamp-post), put down by South Wales MP Chris Bryant about train announcments which says: “That this House notes that the announcements at all railway stations in Wales are made in Welsh first and then in English; wholly supports the policy of bilingual announcements; but believes that it would be far more sensible and far more convenient for passengers, whether regular commuters or local visitors, if announcements at each station were made first in the language used by the majority of the local population.”
Wholly supports bilingual announcements as long as English comes first in parts of Wales then.
And who is to decide at which point English-first stops and Welsh-first starts?
This is just a mirror image of the old Fro Gymraeg that was suggested by Cymuned way back, but this time if the English-speakers telling us this is English Wales and then over to the West you get Welsh Wales.
The problem is that you create the division in visitors’ minds and then they wonder why anyone bother with Welsh at all. If they can get by without it in the Valleys, why do those bothersome folk in the North keep it up.
You think these attitudes don’t exist but only this week a friend returning from the Llŷn said she had found some people there a little ‘unfriendly’, when asked how, she said, oh, we went into shops and they were speaking Welsh.
It was suggested that had the shop been in France and the language French she wouldn’t have batted an eyelid – but the Welsh understand English she insisted.
And so we do, and that is our downfall. The Welsh language will not stand or fall because railway announcements are made first in English. But it is just one more sign to people that Welsh doesn’t matter, that as long as you speak English you’ll get by.
Try suggesting that in France, where the majority of people speak English, but hey, prefer to speak the language that they think in, no matter how inconvenient that may be to English tourists.
Welsh Wales starts at the Croeso I Gymru signs and it finishes at the sea and we don’t need Westminster MPs bolstering the divisions we create among ourselves.
ONE of the best bits of TV in recent months has been Griff Rhys Jones’s ‘Mountain’ which has seen him scaling Scots peaks, a few English hills and finishing up in Snowdonia on Sunday night.
The photography was the BBC at its best and a greater advert for the awe-inspiring beauty of the Welsh mountains there could not be.
It was no rose-tinted elegy though, he pointed out the impact of man on the mountains from the sheep that crop the slope of their bio-diversity, to the fag-ends and plastic bottle that adorn Yr Wyddfa.
But the strangest pollution comes in the form of the heaps of ash that were once people, scattered over the peak as a final resting place.
Not a bad place to be for eternity, but I think people always have visions of a handful of ash being caught by the wind and disappearing across the peak.
In actual fact cremation produces quite a bit of ash and rather than being caught by the breeze, the remains of the dearly departed end up as small heaps on the slopes.
As Griff pointed out, ash is quite fertile and so plants grow better in these heaps than elsewhere on the peaks and so the ecology is changed.
I’m not sure I would want my final resting place to contribute to such changes, so perhaps those scattering their loved ones from now one might consider doing it on a really windy day.
THERE is a bright side to Wales’s drubbing by France.
You can now get odds of 100-1 on them to win the World Cup.
Look, stick the tenner that you would normally put on the Grand National on them to win.
My theory, as always, is that they’re lulling the opposition into a false sense os security.
Come the final you’re £1,000 up.
One small note of warning, I haven’t won a bet since Seagram won the Grand National in 1991, and that was someone else’s tip.
Column, August 21,2007
WREXHAM Women for Peace, now there’s a name that fires the imagination.
I wonder if there are sister organisations like Wrexham Women for Apple Pie and Wrexham Women for Teddy Bears?
Also, do they have a nemesis organisation called something like Wrexham Women for War?
No doubt they would be manning, sorry, personning, the barricades along with the Women for Peace who have sent a detachment, well, at least one, down to Heathrow, there to fight the good fight against global warming.
Heathrow as you will have seen has become the latest battleground for an assortment of protesters, from the well-known like Greenpeace, to disparate others who turn up at any old protest like latter-day Wild Ones – Whaddaya protesting against Johnny? – Whaddaya got? Well, this week we’ve got global warming, which everyone has decided is a Very Bad Thing.
Well, if it melts the icecaps and submerges large sections of the coastline worldwide, then it undoubtedly would.
Down at Heathrow they are insistent that they’re a peaceful lot and they march about waving rather pompous banners declaring that they are: “Armed…with peer-reviewed science.”
Well, let’s consider that for a moment shall we?
What is probably true is that we are going through a period of global warming.
What is also true is that due to industrialisation we are producing lots of gases like carbon dioxide as a by-product of things like electricity generation and travel, including by jets.
What ahs not been shown conclusively, yet, is that the carbon dioxide produced by man is causing the global warming.
You see the great big fat problem that the eco-protesters somehow skirt around is that the world has gone through phases of global warming and cooling before, many, many years before the industrial revolution. We had no big power stations, no factories. Henry Ford and Orville and Wilbur Wright were mere twinkles in the forefathers’ forefathers’ eyes, so there were no cars or planes, and yet there was global warming.
So what was causing it then?
Furthermore, since the industrial revolution started, we have also gone through phases of global cooling, though carbon dioxide levels were rising.
Now, I’m not saying that the eco-warriors having their summer camp are wrong, but what I am saying is that haven’t proved that they are right.
They do their cause a disservice by stating things as fact when they have yet to be proved. It is almost like a religion to some of them, and it fits perfectly with their anti-Establishment viewpoint, because being against climate change means you can have a go at big business like airports.
That’s not to say the police haven’t over-reacted somewhat to the legions of the unwashed who surrounded Heathrow like the tidemark on a bath – 1,800 officers to tackle 2,000 protesters does seem a remarkably personal policing service to me.
You also have to take into account that a substantial minority of the protesters will have been undercover newspaper hacks who rather than protesting will have sat cowering screaming “Not the face, not the face” the moment a burly constable flashed his warrant card at them.
Still, it will all fizzle out this week and I’m sure many of those who have so bravely taken on the police will be off on their gap years to various points across the globe. Of course it will take them a while to get to wherever they are going to teach bemused indigenous people how to knit an operating theatre out of raffia, because being anti-flying they’ll have to bike and row their way there.
Still hats off to what a British education has done for these young people, all of whom will have biked or walked to school, and definitely, definitely not been dropped off by mum driving a Chelsea tractor on the school run eh?
And I’m sure none of the middle-class Jonquils and Jocastas ever enjoyed a holiday in the sun with mummy and daddy and went there by jet did they? Odd that they would deny people the luxury of cheap travel when they’ve probably indulged in it to the full themselves during their lifetime.
I’m no fan of air travel, I think it is hellish and avoid it for the simple reason that I don’t like being treated like cattle and fleeced like a sheep.
But for many people air travel broadens horizons and gives them an idea that there’s a world out there other than their own back yard.
You shouldn’t give up that freedom based on the quasi-religious beliefs of protesters who for all their claims have yet to prove their prophecies of doom have a shred of truth to them.
YOU will no doubt by now be cowering in your home, having barricaded the doors, convinced that we are all under siege from anti-social behooded hoodlums.
It seems that we are living in a state of anarchy and the police have yielded control of our streets to gangs of yobs.
That is, if you believe the national newspapers in August. As a rule of thumb I find it best to discount every third story as the fevered invention of a hack with an empty diary.
We have had a few attacks, some murders, some public unrest, and it would seem that editors have decided the nation has gone to hell in a handcart.
All that was missing was asylum seekers as the instigators of the violence, but apparently they had an alibi this time, so the nationals seized upon the next best thing – drunken youths.
This feral lawlessness will come as something of a surprise to many of us who had, until now, been enjoying a peaceful, if rather wet, summer.
But rest assured, the unrest is happening, you’re just not looking hard enough.
So that bunch of kids playing footy in the park? Clearly a cunning cover for drug dealing. The gaggle of girls playing with their dolls – a razor gang waiting to pounce. And why else would kids ride round on bikes other than to run down innocent pensioners?
For those of you who might be persuaded that we are the mercy of criminal youths I would just remind you of the case this week which demonstrates quite how inept these hoodlums are.
This was the case, reported by the Daily Post, of the youth who hatched the cunning plan of disposing of his electronic tag, by attaching it to a sheep.
A plan, stupid in so many ways it’s hard to know where to start. Firstly there’s the question of why the tagging monitors were supposed to believe he was spending day and night grazing in a field.
But secondly it was his belief that he could entice a sheep to him and persuade it to be tagged that marks him out as not the most gifted of master criminals.
If anti-social youth are all as thick as that, I think we can sleep safe in our beds a while longer.
I wonder if there are sister organisations like Wrexham Women for Apple Pie and Wrexham Women for Teddy Bears?
Also, do they have a nemesis organisation called something like Wrexham Women for War?
No doubt they would be manning, sorry, personning, the barricades along with the Women for Peace who have sent a detachment, well, at least one, down to Heathrow, there to fight the good fight against global warming.
Heathrow as you will have seen has become the latest battleground for an assortment of protesters, from the well-known like Greenpeace, to disparate others who turn up at any old protest like latter-day Wild Ones – Whaddaya protesting against Johnny? – Whaddaya got? Well, this week we’ve got global warming, which everyone has decided is a Very Bad Thing.
Well, if it melts the icecaps and submerges large sections of the coastline worldwide, then it undoubtedly would.
Down at Heathrow they are insistent that they’re a peaceful lot and they march about waving rather pompous banners declaring that they are: “Armed…with peer-reviewed science.”
Well, let’s consider that for a moment shall we?
What is probably true is that we are going through a period of global warming.
What is also true is that due to industrialisation we are producing lots of gases like carbon dioxide as a by-product of things like electricity generation and travel, including by jets.
What ahs not been shown conclusively, yet, is that the carbon dioxide produced by man is causing the global warming.
You see the great big fat problem that the eco-protesters somehow skirt around is that the world has gone through phases of global warming and cooling before, many, many years before the industrial revolution. We had no big power stations, no factories. Henry Ford and Orville and Wilbur Wright were mere twinkles in the forefathers’ forefathers’ eyes, so there were no cars or planes, and yet there was global warming.
So what was causing it then?
Furthermore, since the industrial revolution started, we have also gone through phases of global cooling, though carbon dioxide levels were rising.
Now, I’m not saying that the eco-warriors having their summer camp are wrong, but what I am saying is that haven’t proved that they are right.
They do their cause a disservice by stating things as fact when they have yet to be proved. It is almost like a religion to some of them, and it fits perfectly with their anti-Establishment viewpoint, because being against climate change means you can have a go at big business like airports.
That’s not to say the police haven’t over-reacted somewhat to the legions of the unwashed who surrounded Heathrow like the tidemark on a bath – 1,800 officers to tackle 2,000 protesters does seem a remarkably personal policing service to me.
You also have to take into account that a substantial minority of the protesters will have been undercover newspaper hacks who rather than protesting will have sat cowering screaming “Not the face, not the face” the moment a burly constable flashed his warrant card at them.
Still, it will all fizzle out this week and I’m sure many of those who have so bravely taken on the police will be off on their gap years to various points across the globe. Of course it will take them a while to get to wherever they are going to teach bemused indigenous people how to knit an operating theatre out of raffia, because being anti-flying they’ll have to bike and row their way there.
Still hats off to what a British education has done for these young people, all of whom will have biked or walked to school, and definitely, definitely not been dropped off by mum driving a Chelsea tractor on the school run eh?
And I’m sure none of the middle-class Jonquils and Jocastas ever enjoyed a holiday in the sun with mummy and daddy and went there by jet did they? Odd that they would deny people the luxury of cheap travel when they’ve probably indulged in it to the full themselves during their lifetime.
I’m no fan of air travel, I think it is hellish and avoid it for the simple reason that I don’t like being treated like cattle and fleeced like a sheep.
But for many people air travel broadens horizons and gives them an idea that there’s a world out there other than their own back yard.
You shouldn’t give up that freedom based on the quasi-religious beliefs of protesters who for all their claims have yet to prove their prophecies of doom have a shred of truth to them.
YOU will no doubt by now be cowering in your home, having barricaded the doors, convinced that we are all under siege from anti-social behooded hoodlums.
It seems that we are living in a state of anarchy and the police have yielded control of our streets to gangs of yobs.
That is, if you believe the national newspapers in August. As a rule of thumb I find it best to discount every third story as the fevered invention of a hack with an empty diary.
We have had a few attacks, some murders, some public unrest, and it would seem that editors have decided the nation has gone to hell in a handcart.
All that was missing was asylum seekers as the instigators of the violence, but apparently they had an alibi this time, so the nationals seized upon the next best thing – drunken youths.
This feral lawlessness will come as something of a surprise to many of us who had, until now, been enjoying a peaceful, if rather wet, summer.
But rest assured, the unrest is happening, you’re just not looking hard enough.
So that bunch of kids playing footy in the park? Clearly a cunning cover for drug dealing. The gaggle of girls playing with their dolls – a razor gang waiting to pounce. And why else would kids ride round on bikes other than to run down innocent pensioners?
For those of you who might be persuaded that we are the mercy of criminal youths I would just remind you of the case this week which demonstrates quite how inept these hoodlums are.
This was the case, reported by the Daily Post, of the youth who hatched the cunning plan of disposing of his electronic tag, by attaching it to a sheep.
A plan, stupid in so many ways it’s hard to know where to start. Firstly there’s the question of why the tagging monitors were supposed to believe he was spending day and night grazing in a field.
But secondly it was his belief that he could entice a sheep to him and persuade it to be tagged that marks him out as not the most gifted of master criminals.
If anti-social youth are all as thick as that, I think we can sleep safe in our beds a while longer.
Column, August 7, 2007
NEVER trust a bull or a policeman was one of my Taid’s favourite sayings.
He was hardly Staylittle’s own version of the Godfather, him being a deacon of the chapel and all, but, one had to be wary with both of them, bulls and coppers.
That might be particularly true if you suspect that one of them is on the jury trying you at Crown Court.
It wouldn’t be easy to tell of course, they don’t file into the jury box wearing their uniform and helmet, that would be altogether too helpful.
However if you caught one of them giving the investigating officers a friendly wave and then going for a pint with them in the lunchtime break, that might give you a hint.
But it’s been revealed that since the law changed in 2004 no fewer than 92 serving police officers from the North Wales Constabulary had served on juries.
Before the law had been changed they couldn’t sit on a jury – nor could peers, lawyers, prisoners and the insane – strange company indeed. Now they still keep madmen off juries, but they allow coppers, lawyers and lords on.
Perhaps they ought to even things out a bit by allowing the occasional old lag to do a stint on a jury. It would make for some interesting, even frightening discussions.
I think we would all like to think that, in the extremely unlikely event that we were to find ourselves in the dock, that the jury would be packed with the likes of Henry Fonda, giving us a reprise of his role in 12 Angry Men and getting us off even though it looked for all the world like it was a fair cop and they’d got us bang to rights.
I suspect that in reality jury service has more of the Tony Hancock about it than the Henry Fonda.
Certainly that is true if the tale of one US jury is anything to go by. Irrevocably split on whether a man was guilty of murder, they resolved their disagreement by tossing a coin – and found him guilty.
And off he would have gone to life in jail (this was at least one of the US states where the death penalty had been abolished) had it not been for one of the jurors who revealed their unusual method to a court usher and so the whole case went to a retrial.
Whether the heads you’re guilty tails you’re not approach is adopted by many UK juries is unknown – because it is, of course, against the law here to even ask a juror how they reached their decision.
This does protect us from jurors coming out with books the minute they deliver their verdict as happened in the USA in the trial of OJ Simpson. But it does stop us finding out quite what goes on in there at all. Even a judge can’t ask the jury how they reached their verdict, no matter how perplexing it might be.
In the past that has been a guard against tyranny – the judges, often establishment figures, might have directed juries in the strongest terms, but there has been a famous streak of independence in juries, who have over the years returned verdicts which might not have stuck to the letter of the law, but which did deliver justice.
The idea of putting policemen, and lawyers and judges for that matter, on juries might on the face of it seem like it delivers an advantage to the prosecution.
But look at it the other way – a policeman, lawyer or judge will bring their skills, experience and common sense to the case and may be able to spot holes in the prosecution case that others did not.
And if a police officer were to be blindly arguing for a guilty verdict, wouldn’t that tend to drive other jurors in the opposite direction?
The jury system is based on trust and while we may suspect that jurors are swayed by all manner of things from tabloid headlines to whatever they might be googling when they get home, we have to trust that when it comes down to it they will give a true verdict.
If we don’t believe they can do this then the only alternative is to abolish juries and have judges acting in their place.
Juries are, in the memorable words of the late Lord Devlin, ‘the lamp that shows that freedom lives’, that here it is a jury of your peers that convict you, not the state.
Rather than being concerned with how many policemen serve on juries – which is a small number compared to the hundreds of others who must have been called – I’d be more concerned about the number of people whose lack of civic responsibility leads them to get themselves out of it on some trumped up excuse.
It’s harder to do now, but it still happens. If we want juries to reflect our society then we need to do the right thing when that summons drops on the doormat.
THE Royal Mail has apologised for the letter it sent to sub-postmasters warning them of the consequences of speaking out against post office closures.
What with threats of undercover agents visiting them to ensure they were toeing the line and withdrawal of compensation as a penalty, it definitely had a whiff of the Cosa Nostra about it.
You could see why the Royal Mail did it though. Sub-postmasters are the hub of many rural communities and if anyone if well-placed to motivate widespread public protest it is the local sub-postmaster.
The village post offices would become virtual headquarters of resistance movements across the UK, organised like cells. Just as the bosses thought they had snuffed out one pocket of resistance, along would come another group of crack pensioner letter-writers taking them to task for their miserable penny-pinching policies that were going to tear rural Wales and England apart.
But they’ve apologised and withdrawn the letter now, so that’s alright then isn’t it? Sub-postmaster can speak out without fear can’t they?
Yeah, right, of course they can. No matter what the Royal Mail says that letter showed the mindset operating among some of its management.
I would suggest that sub-postmasters have got the message loud and clear and now only the bravest will speak for fear of the consequences.
The Royal Mail should lose its ‘Royal’ appendage for the way it is behaving. It has shown itself to be nothing more than any other venal profit-motivated corporation and it does not deserve the respect that a Royal title commands.
He was hardly Staylittle’s own version of the Godfather, him being a deacon of the chapel and all, but, one had to be wary with both of them, bulls and coppers.
That might be particularly true if you suspect that one of them is on the jury trying you at Crown Court.
It wouldn’t be easy to tell of course, they don’t file into the jury box wearing their uniform and helmet, that would be altogether too helpful.
However if you caught one of them giving the investigating officers a friendly wave and then going for a pint with them in the lunchtime break, that might give you a hint.
But it’s been revealed that since the law changed in 2004 no fewer than 92 serving police officers from the North Wales Constabulary had served on juries.
Before the law had been changed they couldn’t sit on a jury – nor could peers, lawyers, prisoners and the insane – strange company indeed. Now they still keep madmen off juries, but they allow coppers, lawyers and lords on.
Perhaps they ought to even things out a bit by allowing the occasional old lag to do a stint on a jury. It would make for some interesting, even frightening discussions.
I think we would all like to think that, in the extremely unlikely event that we were to find ourselves in the dock, that the jury would be packed with the likes of Henry Fonda, giving us a reprise of his role in 12 Angry Men and getting us off even though it looked for all the world like it was a fair cop and they’d got us bang to rights.
I suspect that in reality jury service has more of the Tony Hancock about it than the Henry Fonda.
Certainly that is true if the tale of one US jury is anything to go by. Irrevocably split on whether a man was guilty of murder, they resolved their disagreement by tossing a coin – and found him guilty.
And off he would have gone to life in jail (this was at least one of the US states where the death penalty had been abolished) had it not been for one of the jurors who revealed their unusual method to a court usher and so the whole case went to a retrial.
Whether the heads you’re guilty tails you’re not approach is adopted by many UK juries is unknown – because it is, of course, against the law here to even ask a juror how they reached their decision.
This does protect us from jurors coming out with books the minute they deliver their verdict as happened in the USA in the trial of OJ Simpson. But it does stop us finding out quite what goes on in there at all. Even a judge can’t ask the jury how they reached their verdict, no matter how perplexing it might be.
In the past that has been a guard against tyranny – the judges, often establishment figures, might have directed juries in the strongest terms, but there has been a famous streak of independence in juries, who have over the years returned verdicts which might not have stuck to the letter of the law, but which did deliver justice.
The idea of putting policemen, and lawyers and judges for that matter, on juries might on the face of it seem like it delivers an advantage to the prosecution.
But look at it the other way – a policeman, lawyer or judge will bring their skills, experience and common sense to the case and may be able to spot holes in the prosecution case that others did not.
And if a police officer were to be blindly arguing for a guilty verdict, wouldn’t that tend to drive other jurors in the opposite direction?
The jury system is based on trust and while we may suspect that jurors are swayed by all manner of things from tabloid headlines to whatever they might be googling when they get home, we have to trust that when it comes down to it they will give a true verdict.
If we don’t believe they can do this then the only alternative is to abolish juries and have judges acting in their place.
Juries are, in the memorable words of the late Lord Devlin, ‘the lamp that shows that freedom lives’, that here it is a jury of your peers that convict you, not the state.
Rather than being concerned with how many policemen serve on juries – which is a small number compared to the hundreds of others who must have been called – I’d be more concerned about the number of people whose lack of civic responsibility leads them to get themselves out of it on some trumped up excuse.
It’s harder to do now, but it still happens. If we want juries to reflect our society then we need to do the right thing when that summons drops on the doormat.
THE Royal Mail has apologised for the letter it sent to sub-postmasters warning them of the consequences of speaking out against post office closures.
What with threats of undercover agents visiting them to ensure they were toeing the line and withdrawal of compensation as a penalty, it definitely had a whiff of the Cosa Nostra about it.
You could see why the Royal Mail did it though. Sub-postmasters are the hub of many rural communities and if anyone if well-placed to motivate widespread public protest it is the local sub-postmaster.
The village post offices would become virtual headquarters of resistance movements across the UK, organised like cells. Just as the bosses thought they had snuffed out one pocket of resistance, along would come another group of crack pensioner letter-writers taking them to task for their miserable penny-pinching policies that were going to tear rural Wales and England apart.
But they’ve apologised and withdrawn the letter now, so that’s alright then isn’t it? Sub-postmaster can speak out without fear can’t they?
Yeah, right, of course they can. No matter what the Royal Mail says that letter showed the mindset operating among some of its management.
I would suggest that sub-postmasters have got the message loud and clear and now only the bravest will speak for fear of the consequences.
The Royal Mail should lose its ‘Royal’ appendage for the way it is behaving. It has shown itself to be nothing more than any other venal profit-motivated corporation and it does not deserve the respect that a Royal title commands.
Column, July 31, 2007
THERE are many rites of passage a child must go through.
First day at school, learning to ride a bike, death of a pet, and the rediscovery of gravity.
Newton got there first of course with his apple, but each and every child at one time or another falls far enough to have time to realise they are actually accelerating toward the ground.
For me it was when I was playing up a tree I just had time to register indignant surprise when a branch came away in my hand, then I was falling backwards toward the ground and I distinctly remember realising that I was going faster and faster and faster. I knew how Newton’s apple must have felt.
The next moment every last molecule of breath was knocked from my body and I wondered whether I was going to die.
Today, if we believe some of the tales of the compensation culture that has gripped the nation, I could have consulted m’learned friends to sue the owner of the tree for having defective branches as well as the owner of the land for keeping it in such a hard, unyielding and dangerously uncomfortable state.
Shakespeare had it right in Henry VI when he wrote: “First, we kill all the lawyers.” Lawyers will argue that what Shakespeare meant was that lawyers were the defenders of freedom and had to be eradicated before any revolt could succeed. Typical of lawyers, they’ll even twist the words of the Bard.
Now we hear of cotton-wool kids, brought up cocooned from all risk. Thinking about it though, some strategically-placed cotton wool might have saved me a winding that day.
Conkers seem to feature highly in the league-table of risk to today’s children. If council’s aren’t chopping down centuries-old conker trees to stop children climbing them, they’re banning the playing of conkers in the schoolyard because as we all know a piece of flying conker shell has all the lethal properties of depleted uranium.
Forget Challenger tanks and Typhoon fighters, what our brave lads need against the Taliban is a good stock of horse chestnuts, they would all be home by Christmas.
But now the conker has had to make way for another threat to our children’s health – the donkey derby.
Llandudno donkey derby to be exact. A hotly-contested fixture on the racing calendar, or so you might think given that insurers have refused to cover it and the lawyers have said that if there’s an accident a young jockey might sue.
Children from across the UK had competed for years and it has to be said the high Court had as yet been untroubled by litigation stemming from it, but nevertheless the organisers were told it was a risk and so this year’s derby took place with inflatable sheep as riders, not the understandably disappointed children.
It was hardly as if they had been facing anything like Bechers Brook on the course, it was a 30-second race at little more than walking pace and they all wore helmets.
Parents were even willing to sign a waiver, but according to the lawyer the child might still sue at the age of 18 for injuries sustained years before.
I’d just like to know how the insurers are calculating this risk. How many donkey derbies are there up and down the country and how many result in death and mutilation for the youngsters taking part? I’m willing to bet there are none.
Now, how many young children are killed or injured by cars every single day? Dozens, and yet of the two risk groups, the insurers decide it’s the killer donkeys of Bodafon Fields that are uninsurable, not the nutters in hit’n’run hot hatchbacks.
It’s stories like this that perpetuate the feeling that our children are constantly at risk. Life becomes like an episode of Casualty when you’re left wondering which carelessly placed iron, which discarded cigarette, which gale-blown tree or runaway bus is going to see off your nearest and dearest.
Reports at the weekend said that fewer children than ever play outside. Their parents generation would play in the street, but the risk from cars and irrational fears of predatory paedophiles mean children are locked away with TV and computers as a diversion instead of something riskier and healthier like a game of football in the park.
Parents who think they are protecting their children by doing this are sadly misguided, with obesity levels in children reaching record levels, is it any wonder they are so fat, when they never go outside?
The protective parent is basically laying the foundations for a heart attack in their child’s 40s by keeping them indoors.
By protecting them from non-existent risks parents also prevent their children from developing a real sense of what is and isn’t dangerous, so that when they finally emerge from their parents’ cocoon, they are unable to make sensible decisions about the risks that are around them.
And the risks they face as a teenager are real – alcohol, drugs, gangs, teenage pregnancy – but they have been so sheltered up until then they aren’t able to assess those risks.
Is it any wonder they end up happy-slapping each other and posting the results on YouTube? By the time they get t 13 their minds must be so addled by boredom only full-blooded fighting can remotely amuse them.
Our attitude to young people is very odd. First we want to protect them from all risk as young children, then when they grow into surly teenagers we want to place ASBOs on them and issue dispersal orders so they can’t hang around with each other.
They might be forgiven for thinking we are all mad, and they would probably be right.
First day at school, learning to ride a bike, death of a pet, and the rediscovery of gravity.
Newton got there first of course with his apple, but each and every child at one time or another falls far enough to have time to realise they are actually accelerating toward the ground.
For me it was when I was playing up a tree I just had time to register indignant surprise when a branch came away in my hand, then I was falling backwards toward the ground and I distinctly remember realising that I was going faster and faster and faster. I knew how Newton’s apple must have felt.
The next moment every last molecule of breath was knocked from my body and I wondered whether I was going to die.
Today, if we believe some of the tales of the compensation culture that has gripped the nation, I could have consulted m’learned friends to sue the owner of the tree for having defective branches as well as the owner of the land for keeping it in such a hard, unyielding and dangerously uncomfortable state.
Shakespeare had it right in Henry VI when he wrote: “First, we kill all the lawyers.” Lawyers will argue that what Shakespeare meant was that lawyers were the defenders of freedom and had to be eradicated before any revolt could succeed. Typical of lawyers, they’ll even twist the words of the Bard.
Now we hear of cotton-wool kids, brought up cocooned from all risk. Thinking about it though, some strategically-placed cotton wool might have saved me a winding that day.
Conkers seem to feature highly in the league-table of risk to today’s children. If council’s aren’t chopping down centuries-old conker trees to stop children climbing them, they’re banning the playing of conkers in the schoolyard because as we all know a piece of flying conker shell has all the lethal properties of depleted uranium.
Forget Challenger tanks and Typhoon fighters, what our brave lads need against the Taliban is a good stock of horse chestnuts, they would all be home by Christmas.
But now the conker has had to make way for another threat to our children’s health – the donkey derby.
Llandudno donkey derby to be exact. A hotly-contested fixture on the racing calendar, or so you might think given that insurers have refused to cover it and the lawyers have said that if there’s an accident a young jockey might sue.
Children from across the UK had competed for years and it has to be said the high Court had as yet been untroubled by litigation stemming from it, but nevertheless the organisers were told it was a risk and so this year’s derby took place with inflatable sheep as riders, not the understandably disappointed children.
It was hardly as if they had been facing anything like Bechers Brook on the course, it was a 30-second race at little more than walking pace and they all wore helmets.
Parents were even willing to sign a waiver, but according to the lawyer the child might still sue at the age of 18 for injuries sustained years before.
I’d just like to know how the insurers are calculating this risk. How many donkey derbies are there up and down the country and how many result in death and mutilation for the youngsters taking part? I’m willing to bet there are none.
Now, how many young children are killed or injured by cars every single day? Dozens, and yet of the two risk groups, the insurers decide it’s the killer donkeys of Bodafon Fields that are uninsurable, not the nutters in hit’n’run hot hatchbacks.
It’s stories like this that perpetuate the feeling that our children are constantly at risk. Life becomes like an episode of Casualty when you’re left wondering which carelessly placed iron, which discarded cigarette, which gale-blown tree or runaway bus is going to see off your nearest and dearest.
Reports at the weekend said that fewer children than ever play outside. Their parents generation would play in the street, but the risk from cars and irrational fears of predatory paedophiles mean children are locked away with TV and computers as a diversion instead of something riskier and healthier like a game of football in the park.
Parents who think they are protecting their children by doing this are sadly misguided, with obesity levels in children reaching record levels, is it any wonder they are so fat, when they never go outside?
The protective parent is basically laying the foundations for a heart attack in their child’s 40s by keeping them indoors.
By protecting them from non-existent risks parents also prevent their children from developing a real sense of what is and isn’t dangerous, so that when they finally emerge from their parents’ cocoon, they are unable to make sensible decisions about the risks that are around them.
And the risks they face as a teenager are real – alcohol, drugs, gangs, teenage pregnancy – but they have been so sheltered up until then they aren’t able to assess those risks.
Is it any wonder they end up happy-slapping each other and posting the results on YouTube? By the time they get t 13 their minds must be so addled by boredom only full-blooded fighting can remotely amuse them.
Our attitude to young people is very odd. First we want to protect them from all risk as young children, then when they grow into surly teenagers we want to place ASBOs on them and issue dispersal orders so they can’t hang around with each other.
They might be forgiven for thinking we are all mad, and they would probably be right.
Column, July 24, 2007
AS a jobbing reporter on regional papers I have numbed my backside for more hours than I care to remember on the press benches of local councils.
Planning committees were often more arduous than most, as one innocuous application after another was examined, rarely exciting hot debate and even more rarely troubling my shorthand skills.
But I do remember one phrase that began to catch my eye on officers’ reports to the extent that I was shaken from my habitual sullen indolence to actually do a story.
That phrase was a short statement which said: “This development is being built on a flood plain.”
Hmmm, I thought, I’m no expert, but doesn’t that sort of imply that occasionally this will, kind of, flood?
Yes, said those who I spoke to, complimenting me on my hawk-eyed watchfulness of planning matters and incisive analysis of their implications (ok, made that bit up.) And what is more if you build on a flood plain, you not only risk floods to tha development itself, but you store up problems for other areas too.
Because if you stick a load of concrete and tarmac on a flood plain, rainwater that would otherwise have sate there and soaked into the ground has to go somewhere else, and it will go wherever gravity takes it – and that might mean into the next-door housing estate.
We have been building on flood plains for years, well, since they founded London in Roman times at the very least. But at least when the Romans built they didn’t seal the ground so thoroughly that they created great tsunamis of flood water that washed everyone from house and home.
Now we have spent decades building on flood plains and with the recent scenes across the country we are reaping the consequences.
It’s no good people demanding why weren’t they warned and why weren’t the defences in place. Firstly, the Met Office were warning us on virtually every bulletin last week, but people have this blind optimism that it won’t happen to them, right up until they see their sofa floating out of their lounge window.
Secondly, what exactly do you expect the government to do? They could evacuate people to safety – which they have. Feed them and keep them warm – which they have. Mobilise the Army to help – which they have.
When a river breaks its banks there is not an awful lot you can do to stop it. Sure you can put flood barriers up and hope they don’t get overtopped, but that just shifts the problem downstream to another town or village. It might break its banks into an open flood plain, but then you’ve got to hope you’ve got one handy that you haven’t built on, see above.
So while I’m all for blaming government when they deserve it, I’m disinclined to stick it to them now.
Especially as the BBC seems to believe the flooding in the West Country this weekend is tantamount to the end of civilisation, whereas when the North was deluged a few weeks ago it was all but ignored.
On Sunday night we had Kate Silverton in a distinctly damp-looking hairdo, intoning grimly about the floods in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. Yesterday morning the Beeb had even set the disaster to music with a plinking piano soundtrack backing slo-mo scenes of devastation.
A couple of weeks ago the city of Hull was laid waste by the rain and did we hear a peep from the BBC? Perhaps they think stoic Northerners can take it better than southern-softy executives who’ve got grand homes in the South West. And they’re probably right.
But here’s a tip if you want to avoid flooding in the future. If on your survey it says the house you want to buy is on a flood plain, don’t buy it. If it’s by a river, don’t buy it. Go onto the environment agency website and use their interactive flood maps to check the level of the last flood – if your house was under water, don’t buy it.
We’ve had rain like this before. But in the last 20 years or so we’ve overgrazed the uplands, so they can’t hold water, and we’ve over-developed the lowlands so they can’t cope with the run-off.
So when we get wet, we’ve only got ourselves, not government, to blame.
THE death of North Wales airman Peter McFerran serves to underline the need to extract ourselves from the country as soon as possible.
There is a cruel irony to the fact, as revealed by his father, that he had thought long and hard about joining the RAF because of his doubts about the war in Iraq.
Once in however, like any good member of our forces, he went where he was ordered and paid for that service to his country with his life.
Our political leaders continue to insist that, having got Iraq into this mess, we ought to get them out of it. But that should not be a blank cheque to be signed with the blood of our sons and daughters they send out there.
The grieving family of Peter McFerran deserve to know that others will not share their fate and that it is time to bring the boys, and girls, back home.
THE schools inspectors have conducted their dawn, well, 9.30am, raid on my son’s playgroup.
They found what we knew was there, a well-run group catering to a lively group of very happy children who learn a lot through various play activities.
It’s well-supported by parents and has good links with the school where the children move on to once they’re four.
But, Ofsted being Ofsted, and I can only hope Wales’s Estyn doesn’t share this ethos, they had to find something to constructively criticise.
And the glaring absence the inspector had found?
No laptop.
Yes, the absence of the white heat of technology diverting them from healthy play into the nightmare of video games was a cause for concern.
My son is four next month. The only laptop he is interested in is the lap of his mum or dad when he gets his bedtime story.
When I started work it was hammering away at a sit-up-and-beg typewriter with carbon paper and elderly gents in green eyeshades picking my copy apart. Since then computers have come to dominate my work and my life and rarely have I felt each innovation bring any great benefit.
There will be plenty of time for my son to explore the good and the bad of computers. Now I just want him, and all other children of his age, to play.
Planning committees were often more arduous than most, as one innocuous application after another was examined, rarely exciting hot debate and even more rarely troubling my shorthand skills.
But I do remember one phrase that began to catch my eye on officers’ reports to the extent that I was shaken from my habitual sullen indolence to actually do a story.
That phrase was a short statement which said: “This development is being built on a flood plain.”
Hmmm, I thought, I’m no expert, but doesn’t that sort of imply that occasionally this will, kind of, flood?
Yes, said those who I spoke to, complimenting me on my hawk-eyed watchfulness of planning matters and incisive analysis of their implications (ok, made that bit up.) And what is more if you build on a flood plain, you not only risk floods to tha development itself, but you store up problems for other areas too.
Because if you stick a load of concrete and tarmac on a flood plain, rainwater that would otherwise have sate there and soaked into the ground has to go somewhere else, and it will go wherever gravity takes it – and that might mean into the next-door housing estate.
We have been building on flood plains for years, well, since they founded London in Roman times at the very least. But at least when the Romans built they didn’t seal the ground so thoroughly that they created great tsunamis of flood water that washed everyone from house and home.
Now we have spent decades building on flood plains and with the recent scenes across the country we are reaping the consequences.
It’s no good people demanding why weren’t they warned and why weren’t the defences in place. Firstly, the Met Office were warning us on virtually every bulletin last week, but people have this blind optimism that it won’t happen to them, right up until they see their sofa floating out of their lounge window.
Secondly, what exactly do you expect the government to do? They could evacuate people to safety – which they have. Feed them and keep them warm – which they have. Mobilise the Army to help – which they have.
When a river breaks its banks there is not an awful lot you can do to stop it. Sure you can put flood barriers up and hope they don’t get overtopped, but that just shifts the problem downstream to another town or village. It might break its banks into an open flood plain, but then you’ve got to hope you’ve got one handy that you haven’t built on, see above.
So while I’m all for blaming government when they deserve it, I’m disinclined to stick it to them now.
Especially as the BBC seems to believe the flooding in the West Country this weekend is tantamount to the end of civilisation, whereas when the North was deluged a few weeks ago it was all but ignored.
On Sunday night we had Kate Silverton in a distinctly damp-looking hairdo, intoning grimly about the floods in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. Yesterday morning the Beeb had even set the disaster to music with a plinking piano soundtrack backing slo-mo scenes of devastation.
A couple of weeks ago the city of Hull was laid waste by the rain and did we hear a peep from the BBC? Perhaps they think stoic Northerners can take it better than southern-softy executives who’ve got grand homes in the South West. And they’re probably right.
But here’s a tip if you want to avoid flooding in the future. If on your survey it says the house you want to buy is on a flood plain, don’t buy it. If it’s by a river, don’t buy it. Go onto the environment agency website and use their interactive flood maps to check the level of the last flood – if your house was under water, don’t buy it.
We’ve had rain like this before. But in the last 20 years or so we’ve overgrazed the uplands, so they can’t hold water, and we’ve over-developed the lowlands so they can’t cope with the run-off.
So when we get wet, we’ve only got ourselves, not government, to blame.
THE death of North Wales airman Peter McFerran serves to underline the need to extract ourselves from the country as soon as possible.
There is a cruel irony to the fact, as revealed by his father, that he had thought long and hard about joining the RAF because of his doubts about the war in Iraq.
Once in however, like any good member of our forces, he went where he was ordered and paid for that service to his country with his life.
Our political leaders continue to insist that, having got Iraq into this mess, we ought to get them out of it. But that should not be a blank cheque to be signed with the blood of our sons and daughters they send out there.
The grieving family of Peter McFerran deserve to know that others will not share their fate and that it is time to bring the boys, and girls, back home.
THE schools inspectors have conducted their dawn, well, 9.30am, raid on my son’s playgroup.
They found what we knew was there, a well-run group catering to a lively group of very happy children who learn a lot through various play activities.
It’s well-supported by parents and has good links with the school where the children move on to once they’re four.
But, Ofsted being Ofsted, and I can only hope Wales’s Estyn doesn’t share this ethos, they had to find something to constructively criticise.
And the glaring absence the inspector had found?
No laptop.
Yes, the absence of the white heat of technology diverting them from healthy play into the nightmare of video games was a cause for concern.
My son is four next month. The only laptop he is interested in is the lap of his mum or dad when he gets his bedtime story.
When I started work it was hammering away at a sit-up-and-beg typewriter with carbon paper and elderly gents in green eyeshades picking my copy apart. Since then computers have come to dominate my work and my life and rarely have I felt each innovation bring any great benefit.
There will be plenty of time for my son to explore the good and the bad of computers. Now I just want him, and all other children of his age, to play.
Column, July 24, 2007
AS a jobbing reporter on regional papers I have numbed my backside for more hours than I care to remember on the press benches of local councils.
Planning committees were often more arduous than most, as one innocuous application after another was examined, rarely exciting hot debate and even more rarely troubling my shorthand skills.
But I do remember one phrase that began to catch my eye on officers’ reports to the extent that I was shaken from my habitual sullen indolence to actually do a story.
That phrase was a short statement which said: “This development is being built on a flood plain.”
Hmmm, I thought, I’m no expert, but doesn’t that sort of imply that occasionally this will, kind of, flood?
Yes, said those who I spoke to, complimenting me on my hawk-eyed watchfulness of planning matters and incisive analysis of their implications (ok, made that bit up.) And what is more if you build on a flood plain, you not only risk floods to tha development itself, but you store up problems for other areas too.
Because if you stick a load of concrete and tarmac on a flood plain, rainwater that would otherwise have sate there and soaked into the ground has to go somewhere else, and it will go wherever gravity takes it – and that might mean into the next-door housing estate.
We have been building on flood plains for years, well, since they founded London in Roman times at the very least. But at least when the Romans built they didn’t seal the ground so thoroughly that they created great tsunamis of flood water that washed everyone from house and home.
Now we have spent decades building on flood plains and with the recent scenes across the country we are reaping the consequences.
It’s no good people demanding why weren’t they warned and why weren’t the defences in place. Firstly, the Met Office were warning us on virtually every bulletin last week, but people have this blind optimism that it won’t happen to them, right up until they see their sofa floating out of their lounge window.
Secondly, what exactly do you expect the government to do? They could evacuate people to safety – which they have. Feed them and keep them warm – which they have. Mobilise the Army to help – which they have.
When a river breaks its banks there is not an awful lot you can do to stop it. Sure you can put flood barriers up and hope they don’t get overtopped, but that just shifts the problem downstream to another town or village. It might break its banks into an open flood plain, but then you’ve got to hope you’ve got one handy that you haven’t built on, see above.
So while I’m all for blaming government when they deserve it, I’m disinclined to stick it to them now.
Especially as the BBC seems to believe the flooding in the West Country this weekend is tantamount to the end of civilisation, whereas when the North was deluged a few weeks ago it was all but ignored.
On Sunday night we had Kate Silverton in a distinctly damp-looking hairdo, intoning grimly about the floods in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. Yesterday morning the Beeb had even set the disaster to music with a plinking piano soundtrack backing slo-mo scenes of devastation.
A couple of weeks ago the city of Hull was laid waste by the rain and did we hear a peep from the BBC? Perhaps they think stoic Northerners can take it better than southern-softy executives who’ve got grand homes in the South West. And they’re probably right.
But here’s a tip if you want to avoid flooding in the future. If on your survey it says the house you want to buy is on a flood plain, don’t buy it. If it’s by a river, don’t buy it. Go onto the environment agency website and use their interactive flood maps to check the level of the last flood – if your house was under water, don’t buy it.
We’ve had rain like this before. But in the last 20 years or so we’ve overgrazed the uplands, so they can’t hold water, and we’ve over-developed the lowlands so they can’t cope with the run-off.
So when we get wet, we’ve only got ourselves, not government, to blame.
THE death of North Wales airman Peter McFerran serves to underline the need to extract ourselves from the country as soon as possible.
There is a cruel irony to the fact, as revealed by his father, that he had thought long and hard about joining the RAF because of his doubts about the war in Iraq.
Once in however, like any good member of our forces, he went where he was ordered and paid for that service to his country with his life.
Our political leaders continue to insist that, having got Iraq into this mess, we ought to get them out of it. But that should not be a blank cheque to be signed with the blood of our sons and daughters they send out there.
The grieving family of Peter McFerran deserve to know that others will not share their fate and that it is time to bring the boys, and girls, back home.
THE schools inspectors have conducted their dawn, well, 9.30am, raid on my son’s playgroup.
They found what we knew was there, a well-run group catering to a lively group of very happy children who learn a lot through various play activities.
It’s well-supported by parents and has good links with the school where the children move on to once they’re four.
But, Ofsted being Ofsted, and I can only hope Wales’s Estyn doesn’t share this ethos, they had to find something to constructively criticise.
And the glaring absence the inspector had found?
No laptop.
Yes, the absence of the white heat of technology diverting them from healthy play into the nightmare of video games was a cause for concern.
My son is four next month. The only laptop he is interested in is the lap of his mum or dad when he gets his bedtime story.
When I started work it was hammering away at a sit-up-and-beg typewriter with carbon paper and elderly gents in green eyeshades picking my copy apart. Since then computers have come to dominate my work and my life and rarely have I felt each innovation bring any great benefit.
There will be plenty of time for my son to explore the good and the bad of computers. Now I just want him, and all other children of his age, to play.
Planning committees were often more arduous than most, as one innocuous application after another was examined, rarely exciting hot debate and even more rarely troubling my shorthand skills.
But I do remember one phrase that began to catch my eye on officers’ reports to the extent that I was shaken from my habitual sullen indolence to actually do a story.
That phrase was a short statement which said: “This development is being built on a flood plain.”
Hmmm, I thought, I’m no expert, but doesn’t that sort of imply that occasionally this will, kind of, flood?
Yes, said those who I spoke to, complimenting me on my hawk-eyed watchfulness of planning matters and incisive analysis of their implications (ok, made that bit up.) And what is more if you build on a flood plain, you not only risk floods to tha development itself, but you store up problems for other areas too.
Because if you stick a load of concrete and tarmac on a flood plain, rainwater that would otherwise have sate there and soaked into the ground has to go somewhere else, and it will go wherever gravity takes it – and that might mean into the next-door housing estate.
We have been building on flood plains for years, well, since they founded London in Roman times at the very least. But at least when the Romans built they didn’t seal the ground so thoroughly that they created great tsunamis of flood water that washed everyone from house and home.
Now we have spent decades building on flood plains and with the recent scenes across the country we are reaping the consequences.
It’s no good people demanding why weren’t they warned and why weren’t the defences in place. Firstly, the Met Office were warning us on virtually every bulletin last week, but people have this blind optimism that it won’t happen to them, right up until they see their sofa floating out of their lounge window.
Secondly, what exactly do you expect the government to do? They could evacuate people to safety – which they have. Feed them and keep them warm – which they have. Mobilise the Army to help – which they have.
When a river breaks its banks there is not an awful lot you can do to stop it. Sure you can put flood barriers up and hope they don’t get overtopped, but that just shifts the problem downstream to another town or village. It might break its banks into an open flood plain, but then you’ve got to hope you’ve got one handy that you haven’t built on, see above.
So while I’m all for blaming government when they deserve it, I’m disinclined to stick it to them now.
Especially as the BBC seems to believe the flooding in the West Country this weekend is tantamount to the end of civilisation, whereas when the North was deluged a few weeks ago it was all but ignored.
On Sunday night we had Kate Silverton in a distinctly damp-looking hairdo, intoning grimly about the floods in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. Yesterday morning the Beeb had even set the disaster to music with a plinking piano soundtrack backing slo-mo scenes of devastation.
A couple of weeks ago the city of Hull was laid waste by the rain and did we hear a peep from the BBC? Perhaps they think stoic Northerners can take it better than southern-softy executives who’ve got grand homes in the South West. And they’re probably right.
But here’s a tip if you want to avoid flooding in the future. If on your survey it says the house you want to buy is on a flood plain, don’t buy it. If it’s by a river, don’t buy it. Go onto the environment agency website and use their interactive flood maps to check the level of the last flood – if your house was under water, don’t buy it.
We’ve had rain like this before. But in the last 20 years or so we’ve overgrazed the uplands, so they can’t hold water, and we’ve over-developed the lowlands so they can’t cope with the run-off.
So when we get wet, we’ve only got ourselves, not government, to blame.
THE death of North Wales airman Peter McFerran serves to underline the need to extract ourselves from the country as soon as possible.
There is a cruel irony to the fact, as revealed by his father, that he had thought long and hard about joining the RAF because of his doubts about the war in Iraq.
Once in however, like any good member of our forces, he went where he was ordered and paid for that service to his country with his life.
Our political leaders continue to insist that, having got Iraq into this mess, we ought to get them out of it. But that should not be a blank cheque to be signed with the blood of our sons and daughters they send out there.
The grieving family of Peter McFerran deserve to know that others will not share their fate and that it is time to bring the boys, and girls, back home.
THE schools inspectors have conducted their dawn, well, 9.30am, raid on my son’s playgroup.
They found what we knew was there, a well-run group catering to a lively group of very happy children who learn a lot through various play activities.
It’s well-supported by parents and has good links with the school where the children move on to once they’re four.
But, Ofsted being Ofsted, and I can only hope Wales’s Estyn doesn’t share this ethos, they had to find something to constructively criticise.
And the glaring absence the inspector had found?
No laptop.
Yes, the absence of the white heat of technology diverting them from healthy play into the nightmare of video games was a cause for concern.
My son is four next month. The only laptop he is interested in is the lap of his mum or dad when he gets his bedtime story.
When I started work it was hammering away at a sit-up-and-beg typewriter with carbon paper and elderly gents in green eyeshades picking my copy apart. Since then computers have come to dominate my work and my life and rarely have I felt each innovation bring any great benefit.
There will be plenty of time for my son to explore the good and the bad of computers. Now I just want him, and all other children of his age, to play.
Column, July 17, 2007
THERE is a strange contradiction in this country.
On July 7 when the Tour de France set off from London for the first time in its history, four million people turned up to watch as it wound its way through the capital and the through the lanes of Kent.
And this year we in Wales had a hero to cheer on in the peloton in the shape of Cardiff’s Geraint Thomas. Perhaps not a contender for the yellow jersey – well at 160th out of 170 when I last checked it’s not the maillot jaune he covets, but the red lantern that he’s trying to avoid.
But hey, even being in there is a towering achievement for any cyclist.
I wonder whether the next day any of those four million cursed as a cyclist got in their way as they drove to work.
Perhaps not, maybe the four million motivated enough to go to see the fantastic spectacle of the Tour’s ‘Grand Depart’ would not be the sort to lean on their horn should a cyclist have the temerity to ride on any part of the road other than the gutter.
I suspect that while many will be cycling devotees themselves, or at least more tolerant of cyclists, a good few of the four million will not be able to see the connection between the superhuman athletes of the Tour and the wobbling commuters on bikes the next day.
On the face of it there might not be much. After all there is world of difference in ability and athleticism between someone who pootles into work on a sit-up-and-beg bike and a Tour cyclist who takes on the lung-bursting mountain climbs aboard a carbon fibre piece of cycling wizardry.
But they’re all cyclists, and outside the marshalled safety of the Tour, the professional cyclist is as vulnerable on the road as the fun cyclist out for pleasure.
And this is where attitudes diverge either side of the Channel. In some European cities up to a quarter of the highways budget is spent on promoting cycling, with understandably positive results in the numbers of people taking up cycling.
Here a fraction of those amounts is spent and, little wonder, in lots of authority areas the take-up of cycling is very small.
Part of that might well be down to lack of demand, but then its chicken and egg scenario, unless the facilities are invested in, would-be cyclists will not venture out on two wheels.
Another problem is the contradictory nature of public attitudes. For many parents one of the landmark moments is buying your child’s first bike and then teaching him or her to ride, eventually without stabilisers.
What then turns such loving parents into cycle-hating demons when confronted with an adult cyclist making their way along the road without the aid of stabilisers?
And what happens to stop a child who is inseparable from their bike in childhood continuing to use it as a teenager and young adult? Something makes them abandon the bike as a plaything of childhood and not a serious mode of transport.
And yet the benefits of continuing the childhood habit of cycling into adulthood are obvious. A healthier population and a drop in the massive cost of caring for people who have had strokes and heart attacks brought on by an unhealthy lifestyle.
When it comes to reducing your carbon footprint there are few bigger things you can do than foregoing the car and replacing it with a bike.
But it’s all very well individuals taking action, but without co-ordinated support from government at a local and national level it is hopeless.
For example, how did the Government, which wants us to get out of our car, manage to sell of rail franchises to operators, some of whom make virtually no provision for bikes on their services. How is that a ‘joined-up’ transport policy?
And then you get authorities like those in Llandudno deciding that a ‘safe’ route through the town for cyclists to take their chance in the traffic instead of sending them along the promenade. Yes, so safe another cyclist has been knocked down and seriously injured again this week.
So, no, sadly, I don’t think the Tour’s start in the UK will mark any sea-change in our perverse attitude to cycling. Instead we have to rely on the sheer bloody-mindedness of the likes of Ken Livingstone who are determined to save their cities from the blight of car congestion.
Where London goes first, perhaps one day Llandudno will follow, but I suspect a lot of cyclists will have to risk their lives before they do.
I THINK only an idiot, or a BNP supporter (and perhaps that is a tautology), could ever have doubted that Nick Bourne would be cleared of improper conduct in calling the BNP “nasty, mean, distasteful and grubby bunch of sub-human flotsam and jetsam.”
But what was interesting was the BNP’s response to the Assembly opposition leader’s remarks on his blog. They were, they said, delighted, because it showed he was afraid to debate their arguments.
Oh really, well I’m sure that the 180 people who had the time and motivation to make a complaint were not BNP supporters at all. Because BNP supporters must all have shared the leadership’s delight at being called a “nasty, mean, distasteful and grubby bunch of sub-human flotsam and jetsam.”
In fact Mr Bourne has done them a favour, after all, political parties can spend a lot on re-branding nowadays.
So instead of spending money on red-socked advertising dandies to come up with a slogan for the BNP, Mr Bourne’s got the job done, free of charge.
As election slogans go it might break new ground in its pithy honesty, but given their pathetic performance in Wales thus far, it might be worth giving it a try.
On July 7 when the Tour de France set off from London for the first time in its history, four million people turned up to watch as it wound its way through the capital and the through the lanes of Kent.
And this year we in Wales had a hero to cheer on in the peloton in the shape of Cardiff’s Geraint Thomas. Perhaps not a contender for the yellow jersey – well at 160th out of 170 when I last checked it’s not the maillot jaune he covets, but the red lantern that he’s trying to avoid.
But hey, even being in there is a towering achievement for any cyclist.
I wonder whether the next day any of those four million cursed as a cyclist got in their way as they drove to work.
Perhaps not, maybe the four million motivated enough to go to see the fantastic spectacle of the Tour’s ‘Grand Depart’ would not be the sort to lean on their horn should a cyclist have the temerity to ride on any part of the road other than the gutter.
I suspect that while many will be cycling devotees themselves, or at least more tolerant of cyclists, a good few of the four million will not be able to see the connection between the superhuman athletes of the Tour and the wobbling commuters on bikes the next day.
On the face of it there might not be much. After all there is world of difference in ability and athleticism between someone who pootles into work on a sit-up-and-beg bike and a Tour cyclist who takes on the lung-bursting mountain climbs aboard a carbon fibre piece of cycling wizardry.
But they’re all cyclists, and outside the marshalled safety of the Tour, the professional cyclist is as vulnerable on the road as the fun cyclist out for pleasure.
And this is where attitudes diverge either side of the Channel. In some European cities up to a quarter of the highways budget is spent on promoting cycling, with understandably positive results in the numbers of people taking up cycling.
Here a fraction of those amounts is spent and, little wonder, in lots of authority areas the take-up of cycling is very small.
Part of that might well be down to lack of demand, but then its chicken and egg scenario, unless the facilities are invested in, would-be cyclists will not venture out on two wheels.
Another problem is the contradictory nature of public attitudes. For many parents one of the landmark moments is buying your child’s first bike and then teaching him or her to ride, eventually without stabilisers.
What then turns such loving parents into cycle-hating demons when confronted with an adult cyclist making their way along the road without the aid of stabilisers?
And what happens to stop a child who is inseparable from their bike in childhood continuing to use it as a teenager and young adult? Something makes them abandon the bike as a plaything of childhood and not a serious mode of transport.
And yet the benefits of continuing the childhood habit of cycling into adulthood are obvious. A healthier population and a drop in the massive cost of caring for people who have had strokes and heart attacks brought on by an unhealthy lifestyle.
When it comes to reducing your carbon footprint there are few bigger things you can do than foregoing the car and replacing it with a bike.
But it’s all very well individuals taking action, but without co-ordinated support from government at a local and national level it is hopeless.
For example, how did the Government, which wants us to get out of our car, manage to sell of rail franchises to operators, some of whom make virtually no provision for bikes on their services. How is that a ‘joined-up’ transport policy?
And then you get authorities like those in Llandudno deciding that a ‘safe’ route through the town for cyclists to take their chance in the traffic instead of sending them along the promenade. Yes, so safe another cyclist has been knocked down and seriously injured again this week.
So, no, sadly, I don’t think the Tour’s start in the UK will mark any sea-change in our perverse attitude to cycling. Instead we have to rely on the sheer bloody-mindedness of the likes of Ken Livingstone who are determined to save their cities from the blight of car congestion.
Where London goes first, perhaps one day Llandudno will follow, but I suspect a lot of cyclists will have to risk their lives before they do.
I THINK only an idiot, or a BNP supporter (and perhaps that is a tautology), could ever have doubted that Nick Bourne would be cleared of improper conduct in calling the BNP “nasty, mean, distasteful and grubby bunch of sub-human flotsam and jetsam.”
But what was interesting was the BNP’s response to the Assembly opposition leader’s remarks on his blog. They were, they said, delighted, because it showed he was afraid to debate their arguments.
Oh really, well I’m sure that the 180 people who had the time and motivation to make a complaint were not BNP supporters at all. Because BNP supporters must all have shared the leadership’s delight at being called a “nasty, mean, distasteful and grubby bunch of sub-human flotsam and jetsam.”
In fact Mr Bourne has done them a favour, after all, political parties can spend a lot on re-branding nowadays.
So instead of spending money on red-socked advertising dandies to come up with a slogan for the BNP, Mr Bourne’s got the job done, free of charge.
As election slogans go it might break new ground in its pithy honesty, but given their pathetic performance in Wales thus far, it might be worth giving it a try.
Column, July 10, 2007
TO BE fair it wasn’t raining every day we were on the Llŷn.
One day it was just blowing a gale.
No-one told me that gills were this season’s must-have for a holiday on the peninsula.
But I suppose the Llŷn was not alone in being drenched last week, and we did have one final day of glorious sunshine that we spent on Llanbedrog beach that reminded me of the idyllic holidays spent in that part of Wales as a child.
In a way not much has changed, the Llŷn is still blessed with unspoilt stretches of beach that are as good as any you would find the world over.
But while the Llŷn remains unspoilt, it is that lack of change which seems to be the greatest threat to its future.
One of the great things about the place is that it has resisted the march of corporate culture. It still has its own quirky, individual shops and cafés that are not part of some global, homogenized chain.
They’re owned and run by local people and their profits stay on the Llŷn because their owners live there.
But, you have to say that 24-hour-a-day convenience shopping is not part of that culture and, perhaps rightly, they shut up shop on the dot.
That’s fine, so long as your competitors do the same, and as long as the Llŷn was served by small shops, that was the case.
But now the big boys have moved in, Tesco, Morrisons, Asda are all within easy reach and they stay open way into the night when the small shopkeepers have long pulled down their shutters.
The arrival of the big supermarkets on the Llŷn is I think the death knell for many of the small traders there, unless they can adapt fast.
Tourists can now head for their holiday home, call in at Asda Pwllheli on the way and load up with all the food they need for the week. The cash that they would have spent in locally-owned shops simply swells Asda’s profits and little benefit is felt locally. OK Asda provides jobs to local people and may buy some of its produce in the region, but it will never benefit the local economy to the same extent as it would if the shopping was done at a local small business.
This is going to change the nature of the relationship between people who live on the Llŷn and tourists, a relationship that is already uneasy at times.
For the most part, while the holiday home debate rages, it was accepted that tourism contributed a huge amount to the economy of the region.
However, when you remove from the contribution the money that is now going to supermarket shareholders instead of local shopkeepers, then the local community are going to see tourists as less beneficial than they were previously.
There’s no easy answer to this, small shops cannot hope to beat supermarkets on opening hours, price or range. But what they can do is be more authentic than the supermarkets.
People don’t come to the Llŷn for convenience – let’s face it, if you were doing what is convenient you would be hopping on an easyjet flight to somewhere much hotter for about the same money that you spend on petrol getting you into Wales.
So if they come to the Llŷn for its beauty and character, it’s not unreasonable to think they might be prepared to forego their supermarket shop and shop locally instead. And they would be more tempted to do this if the local shopkeepers promoted local produce.
Some of them are doing this already, but it needs to be pursued aggressively. You are never going to beat Asda on the price of a tin of beans, so don’t try. Instead source your food locally and make sure that for an authentic taste of the Llŷn then it is your shop that tourists have to come to, not the nearest supermarket.
Some shops might be more specialist and might not see the supermarkets as their competitors. But what the supermarkets do is reduce the traffic of shoppers on the high street, and the passing trade falls off so there is no room for complacency.
This not meant to sound pessimistic, the Llŷn remains a beautiful place that will always attract visitors – but the question is how much benefit will the Llŷn derive from those visitors.
Even in rain that is being driven straight into your face by winds whipping in off the Irish Sea the Llŷn is lovely. It remains the wild edge of the world and my favourite part of Wales.
WHAT wasn’t so lovely was the regular appearance of jetskis off the beaches of the Llŷn.
I think the majority of visitors, and locals, who go to the beaches there do so to find a little tranquility and to enjoy the unspoilt nature of the coastline.
How you do that with a jetski fizzing up and down the shoreline is beyond me.
Of course, some might argue that banning them will damage tourism. But a couple of jetskiers can ruin the enjoyment of a beach for hundreds of other visitors, so what little benefit they bring is vastly outweighed by the damage they do.
They are a vile invention, they serve no useful purpose, they pollute the environment and they ought to be banned completely from the North Wales coast.
One day it was just blowing a gale.
No-one told me that gills were this season’s must-have for a holiday on the peninsula.
But I suppose the Llŷn was not alone in being drenched last week, and we did have one final day of glorious sunshine that we spent on Llanbedrog beach that reminded me of the idyllic holidays spent in that part of Wales as a child.
In a way not much has changed, the Llŷn is still blessed with unspoilt stretches of beach that are as good as any you would find the world over.
But while the Llŷn remains unspoilt, it is that lack of change which seems to be the greatest threat to its future.
One of the great things about the place is that it has resisted the march of corporate culture. It still has its own quirky, individual shops and cafés that are not part of some global, homogenized chain.
They’re owned and run by local people and their profits stay on the Llŷn because their owners live there.
But, you have to say that 24-hour-a-day convenience shopping is not part of that culture and, perhaps rightly, they shut up shop on the dot.
That’s fine, so long as your competitors do the same, and as long as the Llŷn was served by small shops, that was the case.
But now the big boys have moved in, Tesco, Morrisons, Asda are all within easy reach and they stay open way into the night when the small shopkeepers have long pulled down their shutters.
The arrival of the big supermarkets on the Llŷn is I think the death knell for many of the small traders there, unless they can adapt fast.
Tourists can now head for their holiday home, call in at Asda Pwllheli on the way and load up with all the food they need for the week. The cash that they would have spent in locally-owned shops simply swells Asda’s profits and little benefit is felt locally. OK Asda provides jobs to local people and may buy some of its produce in the region, but it will never benefit the local economy to the same extent as it would if the shopping was done at a local small business.
This is going to change the nature of the relationship between people who live on the Llŷn and tourists, a relationship that is already uneasy at times.
For the most part, while the holiday home debate rages, it was accepted that tourism contributed a huge amount to the economy of the region.
However, when you remove from the contribution the money that is now going to supermarket shareholders instead of local shopkeepers, then the local community are going to see tourists as less beneficial than they were previously.
There’s no easy answer to this, small shops cannot hope to beat supermarkets on opening hours, price or range. But what they can do is be more authentic than the supermarkets.
People don’t come to the Llŷn for convenience – let’s face it, if you were doing what is convenient you would be hopping on an easyjet flight to somewhere much hotter for about the same money that you spend on petrol getting you into Wales.
So if they come to the Llŷn for its beauty and character, it’s not unreasonable to think they might be prepared to forego their supermarket shop and shop locally instead. And they would be more tempted to do this if the local shopkeepers promoted local produce.
Some of them are doing this already, but it needs to be pursued aggressively. You are never going to beat Asda on the price of a tin of beans, so don’t try. Instead source your food locally and make sure that for an authentic taste of the Llŷn then it is your shop that tourists have to come to, not the nearest supermarket.
Some shops might be more specialist and might not see the supermarkets as their competitors. But what the supermarkets do is reduce the traffic of shoppers on the high street, and the passing trade falls off so there is no room for complacency.
This not meant to sound pessimistic, the Llŷn remains a beautiful place that will always attract visitors – but the question is how much benefit will the Llŷn derive from those visitors.
Even in rain that is being driven straight into your face by winds whipping in off the Irish Sea the Llŷn is lovely. It remains the wild edge of the world and my favourite part of Wales.
WHAT wasn’t so lovely was the regular appearance of jetskis off the beaches of the Llŷn.
I think the majority of visitors, and locals, who go to the beaches there do so to find a little tranquility and to enjoy the unspoilt nature of the coastline.
How you do that with a jetski fizzing up and down the shoreline is beyond me.
Of course, some might argue that banning them will damage tourism. But a couple of jetskiers can ruin the enjoyment of a beach for hundreds of other visitors, so what little benefit they bring is vastly outweighed by the damage they do.
They are a vile invention, they serve no useful purpose, they pollute the environment and they ought to be banned completely from the North Wales coast.
Column, July 3, 2007
IF you were to wander through a North Wales town firing a shotgun, not particularly aiming at anyone, bit not really taking care not to, I wonder what would happen?
I’m guessing the forces of law and order would soon take an interest in your activities and a short spell in police cells would be rapidly followed by a long spell in prison.
So why is a shotgun different to a car?
Why can you get away with behaviour driving a car that would almost certainly see you jailed were it any other sort of implement?
The failure of the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute Robert Harris for any offence other than having defective tyres has been rightly criticised by North Wales coroner John Hughes.
From the inquest it is clear Mr Harris is sorry for what happened when he lost control of his car and killed four cyclists, but prosecution fulfils two functions.
Firstly is punishes those who have broken the law; secondly it prevents further offending – by taking the perpetrator out of circulation – and, crucially, acting as a deterrent to others who see him punished.
That deterrent effect is somewhat diminished if the public who are supposed to be being deterred see the perpetrator walk free with just a prosecution for having defective tyres.
Very few people get behind the wheel of a car intending to do harm and yet that is what they end up doing through carelessness or recklessness and so reminders are what they need no matter how unnecessary they might seem.
So why do car drivers enjoy this leniency?
Well, I think it’s due to the fact that virtually all of us have cars nowadays and when one of us breaks the law there’s a feeling of palpable relief among those unwilling to criticise themselves. It’s a case of ‘there but for the grace of God go I.”
And how did the Crown Prosecution Service suddenly take over from the courts?
I can understand them taking decisions on whether to prosecute or not, but they need to understand the effect those decisions have.
The proper place for cases to stand or fall on the evidence is a court, and yet all too often the court does not determine whether the charge is proven or not, the decision is taken out of the hands of judges and magistrates.
If the CPS decide not to prosecute that denies someone their day in court and a cloud still hangs over their name – have they truly been cleared? No they haven’t.
The CPS needs to be careful that in deciding whether there is a realistic likelihood of a conviction they do not undermine the role of the courts. Very often they decide there is not and a case never makes it to court.
The problem is that while grieving relatives may be able to accept a court’s decision to dismiss a case, they are less tolerant of decisions made by faceless CPS staff without any consultation.
But the fundamental problem is that we, as a society, are far too tolerant of crime committed at the wheel of a car.
And the hysterical reaction of people to Richard Brunstrom’
Tackling that tolerance of wrongdoing will take legislation so that the punishment fits the crime and is an effective deterrent.
THE Bankses have packed the car, packed the kids and hit the beach.
It’s a traditional Llyn holiday for us this summer, complete with monsoon it would seem.
How the Llyn welcomes its visitors will be interesting to see. I remember idyllic holidays there as a child and wonder whether it has become more welcoming, or less.
More importantly, will it be sun-drenched days on the golden sands, or noses pressed up against the window and interminable board games as the rain beats down.
I’ll report back on the experience in next week.
I’m guessing the forces of law and order would soon take an interest in your activities and a short spell in police cells would be rapidly followed by a long spell in prison.
So why is a shotgun different to a car?
Why can you get away with behaviour driving a car that would almost certainly see you jailed were it any other sort of implement?
The failure of the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute Robert Harris for any offence other than having defective tyres has been rightly criticised by North Wales coroner John Hughes.
From the inquest it is clear Mr Harris is sorry for what happened when he lost control of his car and killed four cyclists, but prosecution fulfils two functions.
Firstly is punishes those who have broken the law; secondly it prevents further offending – by taking the perpetrator out of circulation – and, crucially, acting as a deterrent to others who see him punished.
That deterrent effect is somewhat diminished if the public who are supposed to be being deterred see the perpetrator walk free with just a prosecution for having defective tyres.
Very few people get behind the wheel of a car intending to do harm and yet that is what they end up doing through carelessness or recklessness and so reminders are what they need no matter how unnecessary they might seem.
So why do car drivers enjoy this leniency?
Well, I think it’s due to the fact that virtually all of us have cars nowadays and when one of us breaks the law there’s a feeling of palpable relief among those unwilling to criticise themselves. It’s a case of ‘there but for the grace of God go I.”
And how did the Crown Prosecution Service suddenly take over from the courts?
I can understand them taking decisions on whether to prosecute or not, but they need to understand the effect those decisions have.
The proper place for cases to stand or fall on the evidence is a court, and yet all too often the court does not determine whether the charge is proven or not, the decision is taken out of the hands of judges and magistrates.
If the CPS decide not to prosecute that denies someone their day in court and a cloud still hangs over their name – have they truly been cleared? No they haven’t.
The CPS needs to be careful that in deciding whether there is a realistic likelihood of a conviction they do not undermine the role of the courts. Very often they decide there is not and a case never makes it to court.
The problem is that while grieving relatives may be able to accept a court’s decision to dismiss a case, they are less tolerant of decisions made by faceless CPS staff without any consultation.
But the fundamental problem is that we, as a society, are far too tolerant of crime committed at the wheel of a car.
And the hysterical reaction of people to Richard Brunstrom’
Tackling that tolerance of wrongdoing will take legislation so that the punishment fits the crime and is an effective deterrent.
THE Bankses have packed the car, packed the kids and hit the beach.
It’s a traditional Llyn holiday for us this summer, complete with monsoon it would seem.
How the Llyn welcomes its visitors will be interesting to see. I remember idyllic holidays there as a child and wonder whether it has become more welcoming, or less.
More importantly, will it be sun-drenched days on the golden sands, or noses pressed up against the window and interminable board games as the rain beats down.
I’ll report back on the experience in next week.
Column, June 25, 2007
WHEN the British Army was planning the logistics of the relief of Khartoum who do you think they went to for help?
It was quite an enterprise, they needed to move 18,000 troops and 40,000 tons of supplies, plus another 40,000 tons of coal, which needed 28 steamers to take it from Tyneside to Alexandria . On top of that 27 steamers were needed on the Nile and they employed 5,000 local workers in Egypt to shift it all.
Who had the experience of shifting that much bag and baggage across huge distances?
Thomas Cook, that’s who, or rather his son, John Mason Cook, who by that time was running the firm with his father.
No small achievement all in all for a firm founded by a lay preacher who decided the ills of Victorian society lay in too much alcohol and that education through travel was the answer.
The firm practically invented tourism as we understand it today, not only that they invented the package tour and came up with the idea of travellers’ cheques to boot.
So in the early days they clearly showed a genius for the sort of idea that made them the world’s best-known holiday firm. That and a grasp of the logistics of travel that meant many people agreed that they would not just book it, they would Thomas Cook it.
In achieving their pre-eminence as a holiday firm I suspect that their management focused clearly on the things that matter to their customers – price and quality – simple ideas, but taking effort to attain.
Thomas Cook came up with the idea for his holiday firm as he walked one day from Market Harborough to Leicester for a temperance meeting.
I’m not party to his thoughts that day, but as he contemplated the benefits of bring train excursions to the masses, I’m willing to lay money that he didn’t mentally add: “And I’ll make sure none of my staff speak Welsh as well.”
This isn’t the first time this has happened and I’m wondering if some of these companies send their management trainees to the same – presumably English – training school.
Then the bright young things are packed off to the provinces and some of them pitch up in Wales , where, apparently for the first time in their lives, they find that some people actually use Welsh as a first language.
Perhaps it is the shock of this discovery that led someone in Thomas Cook management to issue an edict instructing staff to speak in English.
But by now with the Assembly, the Commission for Racial Equality weighing in and Cymuned parking their tanks on their doorstep, well, waving placards, but if Cymuned had tanks that’s where they’d be parked, you would have thought some bright spark in the company that pioneered the Grand Tour would have said: “Hold on chaps and chapesses, let’s just have a think about this.”
You see, I bow to the superior management skills of Thomas Cook’s upper echelons, but I think before I started banning my staff from speaking their native tongue on grounds of clarity of communication, I might just have checked how much business had been lost because of a lack of clarity of communication between my Welsh and English staff.
I’m guessing that not one hotel room, not one airline seat, not one beach towel, not one Costa barstool went unoccupied because some of Thomas Cook’s Bangor staff speak Welsh to one another.
I’m also guessing that now, whereas many Welsh speakers might well not just have booked it they would have Thomas Cooked it, they’ll have come up with another rhyming slogan which owes something to the Anglo-Saxon that Thomas Cook would like to see employed by all their staff.
There is a point in these affairs where, if someone really senior steps in and says: “Look, bad, bad, really bad mistake, we’re sorry, of course you ca speak the language you learnt at your mum and dad’s knee, just please, please, please carry on booking your holidays with us because we do understand you can quite easily never use us again, ever, ever, ever.”
Then maybe, just maybe, we might be persuaded that it was just the idiotic actions of one ignorant management suit and a fine company with a great history shouldn’t be punished because now and then they give a job to a numbskull.
But, if as has happened so far, the management stick by their unjustifiable policy, then people in Wales might just decide to book their hols at the multitude of other firms who give not two figs what language their staff speak to each other, as long as they sell holidays.
If they won’t listen to reason then there is only one language this company will understand, and that’s hard cash. Don’t book it with Thomas Cook until they have backed down on their decision to ban Welsh.
A NEW threat has emerged to second home owners in Cornwall .
The Cornish National Liberation Army has targeted Jamie Oliver of all people, who it says, is responsible for the inflation of house prices there. Never mind the fact that his restaurant gives local young people the chance to learn how to become chefs, nor the fact that it uses local ingredients from local businesses, logic not the top weapon in the CNLA’s armoury it would seem.
But I was very interested to see the CNLA claim it has financial backing from the USA and ‘expertise’ from Welsh activists who burnt down holiday homes in the 1980s.
Hmmm. Those would be the same ‘experts’ who made such a dent in the Welsh holiday home market wouldn’t it? Not a sniff of a holiday home in Wales from Deeside to St Davids is there?
Estate agents in Cornwall must be rubbing their hands with glee, with ‘experts’ like that on board a second home boom is just round the corner.
It was quite an enterprise, they needed to move 18,000 troops and 40,000 tons of supplies, plus another 40,000 tons of coal, which needed 28 steamers to take it from Tyneside to Alexandria . On top of that 27 steamers were needed on the Nile and they employed 5,000 local workers in Egypt to shift it all.
Who had the experience of shifting that much bag and baggage across huge distances?
Thomas Cook, that’s who, or rather his son, John Mason Cook, who by that time was running the firm with his father.
No small achievement all in all for a firm founded by a lay preacher who decided the ills of Victorian society lay in too much alcohol and that education through travel was the answer.
The firm practically invented tourism as we understand it today, not only that they invented the package tour and came up with the idea of travellers’ cheques to boot.
So in the early days they clearly showed a genius for the sort of idea that made them the world’s best-known holiday firm. That and a grasp of the logistics of travel that meant many people agreed that they would not just book it, they would Thomas Cook it.
In achieving their pre-eminence as a holiday firm I suspect that their management focused clearly on the things that matter to their customers – price and quality – simple ideas, but taking effort to attain.
Thomas Cook came up with the idea for his holiday firm as he walked one day from Market Harborough to Leicester for a temperance meeting.
I’m not party to his thoughts that day, but as he contemplated the benefits of bring train excursions to the masses, I’m willing to lay money that he didn’t mentally add: “And I’ll make sure none of my staff speak Welsh as well.”
This isn’t the first time this has happened and I’m wondering if some of these companies send their management trainees to the same – presumably English – training school.
Then the bright young things are packed off to the provinces and some of them pitch up in Wales , where, apparently for the first time in their lives, they find that some people actually use Welsh as a first language.
Perhaps it is the shock of this discovery that led someone in Thomas Cook management to issue an edict instructing staff to speak in English.
But by now with the Assembly, the Commission for Racial Equality weighing in and Cymuned parking their tanks on their doorstep, well, waving placards, but if Cymuned had tanks that’s where they’d be parked, you would have thought some bright spark in the company that pioneered the Grand Tour would have said: “Hold on chaps and chapesses, let’s just have a think about this.”
You see, I bow to the superior management skills of Thomas Cook’s upper echelons, but I think before I started banning my staff from speaking their native tongue on grounds of clarity of communication, I might just have checked how much business had been lost because of a lack of clarity of communication between my Welsh and English staff.
I’m guessing that not one hotel room, not one airline seat, not one beach towel, not one Costa barstool went unoccupied because some of Thomas Cook’s Bangor staff speak Welsh to one another.
I’m also guessing that now, whereas many Welsh speakers might well not just have booked it they would have Thomas Cooked it, they’ll have come up with another rhyming slogan which owes something to the Anglo-Saxon that Thomas Cook would like to see employed by all their staff.
There is a point in these affairs where, if someone really senior steps in and says: “Look, bad, bad, really bad mistake, we’re sorry, of course you ca speak the language you learnt at your mum and dad’s knee, just please, please, please carry on booking your holidays with us because we do understand you can quite easily never use us again, ever, ever, ever.”
Then maybe, just maybe, we might be persuaded that it was just the idiotic actions of one ignorant management suit and a fine company with a great history shouldn’t be punished because now and then they give a job to a numbskull.
But, if as has happened so far, the management stick by their unjustifiable policy, then people in Wales might just decide to book their hols at the multitude of other firms who give not two figs what language their staff speak to each other, as long as they sell holidays.
If they won’t listen to reason then there is only one language this company will understand, and that’s hard cash. Don’t book it with Thomas Cook until they have backed down on their decision to ban Welsh.
A NEW threat has emerged to second home owners in Cornwall .
The Cornish National Liberation Army has targeted Jamie Oliver of all people, who it says, is responsible for the inflation of house prices there. Never mind the fact that his restaurant gives local young people the chance to learn how to become chefs, nor the fact that it uses local ingredients from local businesses, logic not the top weapon in the CNLA’s armoury it would seem.
But I was very interested to see the CNLA claim it has financial backing from the USA and ‘expertise’ from Welsh activists who burnt down holiday homes in the 1980s.
Hmmm. Those would be the same ‘experts’ who made such a dent in the Welsh holiday home market wouldn’t it? Not a sniff of a holiday home in Wales from Deeside to St Davids is there?
Estate agents in Cornwall must be rubbing their hands with glee, with ‘experts’ like that on board a second home boom is just round the corner.
Column, June 19, 2007
THE thing about Orwell is that people never get him quite right.
Take Room 101 for instance. Now it has become a tame BBC celeb-show, famously consigning all of us to Room 101 when Anne Robinson was a guest.
What the forget is that in Orwell’s vision of the future Room 101 was not some dustbin to which you consigned those things you hated. It was a place were the things you most feared resided and you would be tortured by being put in there with them.
Likewise the title of his novel, 1984, was misread when 1984 came and went and we didn’t have a spy camera in every room in every home.
When he wrote 1984 Orwell was not behaving like some literary Mystic Meg, making predictions for specific dates. He merely reversed the year he was writing in 1948 became 1984 – it just meant ‘the future.’
And now those who sneered in 1984 about the absence of brotherly surveillance from our lives might like to pause in silent apology to Orwell’s foresight.
The spies may not be state-imposed, wall-mounted devices and the television turned out to be much more benign than the spy we have invited into our homes – the personal computer.
We all use them and they sit there quietly logging every last thing we look at, everything we buy, every message we send. Of course, no-one looks at these records of our every last mouse-click – until they need to. And then, if we’ve done nothing wrong we’ve got nothing to fear have we?
Now it emerges thanks to the Liberal Democrats that one in five Welsh children aged between 10 and 17 has their DNA on the national DNA database.
Of course, if they’ve done nothing wrong they’ve got nothing to fear have they?
Lembit Opik, revealing this shocking statistic said: “It is clear ministers see no limits in their haste to invade our privacy.”
This includes some children under the age of 10. So they’re too young to be criminally responsible as far as the courts are concerned, but not too young to be recorded as far as this government is concerned.
Of course it’s always dressed up as the fight for law and order, the war on terrorism or such like. But tell me this, as the surveillance society crept up on us webcam by webcam, have you notice how peaceful and law-abiding we have become?
In fact you almost have to applaud the genius of the criminal community for carrying on in their chosen way of life in the face of increasing odds that their face will be captured for posterity, or at least Crimewatch, and Nick Ross will be warning viewers not to have nightmares about them.
The incredible thing is that when Orwell wrote his book it was seen as almost impossible that free British people would ever allow themselves to become the subject of such intrusive state scrutiny.
Yet here we are 60 years later and we’ve welcomed it in with open arms. Not only that, we buy most of the surveillance kit that Big Brother needs out of our own pockets. We buy the PCs and webcams and mobile phones and pay for the internet connections and e-mails.
Of course, if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to fear have you?
Just one small thing.
Who decides what’s wrong?
Who was it that decided it would be a good idea to have 20 per cent of the Welsh child population on a DNA database?
You’ll never find an individual, it will just be a succession of small decisions by middle-ranking bureaucrats and so little by little we stop being free.
Instead of walking down the street knowing no-one can interfere with us as long as we are obeying the law, now we cast a nervous glance over our shoulder to see who is watching to check that we are obeying the law.
Soon we will have to take that walk carrying an identity card carrying biometric data confirming we are who we say we are, and we’ll have to show that to a police officer if he or she asks.
That’s not freedom. You’re not free if you’re walking the streets on sufferance, so long as you can produce your papers.
How did we get here? Well we started down this road by believing politicians when they told us lies. They are people who believe they can run our lives for us, and they love seeing our every move, because they believe they can run our lives better, if only they could control us a little more.
Of course DNA is a useful tool to the police and the more people who are on it the better chance of catching criminals.
But here’s the thing. Most criminals, when they offend, don’t even give detection a second thought, they all think they’ll get away with it, database or no.
In the meantime the law-abiding majority have the freedoms they cherish snatched away from them all in the name of law and order.
Under this government this shows no sign of abating and so when you realise how right Orwell was, don’t say you weren’t warned.
AND just in case you were of the opinion that the surveillance society had made us more law abiding, think on.
It was announced last week that prisons in England and Wales were just 481 places away from capacity.
A few tasty nights in cities across the country and they will have to hang the ‘no vacancies’ sign on the door.
So, the option is stop sending so many people to prison, or build more prisons. But where to build when every plan attracts an outraged petition from people who don’t want and prison on their doorstep?
Something has got to give and given the fact that we have the highest prison population per head in Europe , then perhaps its magistrates’ penchant for throwing the book at every offender.
Take Room 101 for instance. Now it has become a tame BBC celeb-show, famously consigning all of us to Room 101 when Anne Robinson was a guest.
What the forget is that in Orwell’s vision of the future Room 101 was not some dustbin to which you consigned those things you hated. It was a place were the things you most feared resided and you would be tortured by being put in there with them.
Likewise the title of his novel, 1984, was misread when 1984 came and went and we didn’t have a spy camera in every room in every home.
When he wrote 1984 Orwell was not behaving like some literary Mystic Meg, making predictions for specific dates. He merely reversed the year he was writing in 1948 became 1984 – it just meant ‘the future.’
And now those who sneered in 1984 about the absence of brotherly surveillance from our lives might like to pause in silent apology to Orwell’s foresight.
The spies may not be state-imposed, wall-mounted devices and the television turned out to be much more benign than the spy we have invited into our homes – the personal computer.
We all use them and they sit there quietly logging every last thing we look at, everything we buy, every message we send. Of course, no-one looks at these records of our every last mouse-click – until they need to. And then, if we’ve done nothing wrong we’ve got nothing to fear have we?
Now it emerges thanks to the Liberal Democrats that one in five Welsh children aged between 10 and 17 has their DNA on the national DNA database.
Of course, if they’ve done nothing wrong they’ve got nothing to fear have they?
Lembit Opik, revealing this shocking statistic said: “It is clear ministers see no limits in their haste to invade our privacy.”
This includes some children under the age of 10. So they’re too young to be criminally responsible as far as the courts are concerned, but not too young to be recorded as far as this government is concerned.
Of course it’s always dressed up as the fight for law and order, the war on terrorism or such like. But tell me this, as the surveillance society crept up on us webcam by webcam, have you notice how peaceful and law-abiding we have become?
In fact you almost have to applaud the genius of the criminal community for carrying on in their chosen way of life in the face of increasing odds that their face will be captured for posterity, or at least Crimewatch, and Nick Ross will be warning viewers not to have nightmares about them.
The incredible thing is that when Orwell wrote his book it was seen as almost impossible that free British people would ever allow themselves to become the subject of such intrusive state scrutiny.
Yet here we are 60 years later and we’ve welcomed it in with open arms. Not only that, we buy most of the surveillance kit that Big Brother needs out of our own pockets. We buy the PCs and webcams and mobile phones and pay for the internet connections and e-mails.
Of course, if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to fear have you?
Just one small thing.
Who decides what’s wrong?
Who was it that decided it would be a good idea to have 20 per cent of the Welsh child population on a DNA database?
You’ll never find an individual, it will just be a succession of small decisions by middle-ranking bureaucrats and so little by little we stop being free.
Instead of walking down the street knowing no-one can interfere with us as long as we are obeying the law, now we cast a nervous glance over our shoulder to see who is watching to check that we are obeying the law.
Soon we will have to take that walk carrying an identity card carrying biometric data confirming we are who we say we are, and we’ll have to show that to a police officer if he or she asks.
That’s not freedom. You’re not free if you’re walking the streets on sufferance, so long as you can produce your papers.
How did we get here? Well we started down this road by believing politicians when they told us lies. They are people who believe they can run our lives for us, and they love seeing our every move, because they believe they can run our lives better, if only they could control us a little more.
Of course DNA is a useful tool to the police and the more people who are on it the better chance of catching criminals.
But here’s the thing. Most criminals, when they offend, don’t even give detection a second thought, they all think they’ll get away with it, database or no.
In the meantime the law-abiding majority have the freedoms they cherish snatched away from them all in the name of law and order.
Under this government this shows no sign of abating and so when you realise how right Orwell was, don’t say you weren’t warned.
AND just in case you were of the opinion that the surveillance society had made us more law abiding, think on.
It was announced last week that prisons in England and Wales were just 481 places away from capacity.
A few tasty nights in cities across the country and they will have to hang the ‘no vacancies’ sign on the door.
So, the option is stop sending so many people to prison, or build more prisons. But where to build when every plan attracts an outraged petition from people who don’t want and prison on their doorstep?
Something has got to give and given the fact that we have the highest prison population per head in Europe , then perhaps its magistrates’ penchant for throwing the book at every offender.
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