Category Archives: Everyday life

Labour trying to cash in on Forces good name?

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As an ex-serviceman with 38 years service in the RAF, I am of course a service pensioner.  I was therefore very interested to read about the issue of service pension cuts being raised at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool.  Apparently, Labour delegates are very concerned that ex-service personnel are suffering a drop in their pensions because of the government’s decision to change the way rises in benefits are calculated.  The switch from RPI to CPI means that anybody receiving an index linked benefit, such as a public pension, will effectively be taking a cut in income year on year.

I of course have a vested interest in this subject and would be very pleased to see the link with the RPI restored.  However, why has Labour waited until their party conference to make a fuss about this?

Also, why is it only service pensions that they are so concerned about?  What about all the other public servants who are now, or soon will be, on a pension and are receiving a year on year cut in what may be their only source of income?

Could it be that the Labour Party is cynically seeking to cash in on the current high regard the military is enjoying in the public’s eye?  If there were no servicemen and women returning from Afganistan dead, or suffering from horrific and life changing injuries, would this item of even been discussed at the conference, let alone appeared on an agenda?

Equality is important, PC is just plain daft

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Having made it taboo to talk of black sheep, black balling, or even black looks, we are now being told that witches hats should be pink and not black!

Also, apparently giving children white paper to use in the classroom, is also to be discouraged, as this too, has the potential to turn our children into racists.  No doubt if we gave the kids black paper and white ink, this would be wrong, because it would be putting white on top of black!  Where does this sort of mumbo jumbo stop?  We’re also told that teachers should lie to pupils when asked what their favourite colour is, by saying brown or black!  So, even if you don’t say that white is your favourite colour, saying it’s blue, could also make the kids racist.

Just as the homosexual community highjacked the word gay, making it wrong to use it in any other way than as decreed by the PC brigade, the colour black has been ring-fenced and claimed as only applicable to one thing – those that have skin that isn’t white, yellow or red.  I’m not going to get into a debate about whether anybody does in fact actually has genuinely black skin.

Having dealt with the witches, I suppose it’s only a matter  of time before the PC brigade turn their attention to the undertakers.  I wonder what colour they will want them to wear instead of black?  White’s no good, according to the PC brigade, that would send the same message as giving kids white paper to write on.  With pink taken by the witches, I supposes they’ll have to make do with a nice shade of purple.

Teenage shelter on the cards

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Had a meeting with some local youngsters, a resident and PCSO Paul Coupland on Friday night. The discussions were about providing seating for the kids to use when they are meeting on the open space area at Avignon Road on Wygate Park.

The kids also asked about putting up a fence around the open space to stop footballs going into the road. Although Christine and I understood what they were getting at, we didn’t think it would be possible to provide a fence that would be both effective and acceptable to the residents who live around the open space area. We did however come up with a plan to provide the kids with a teenage shelter that would give them an area to sit together and chat. Richard Knock, our hard working grounds maintenance manager, has agreed to take on the job and get it put in as soon after we have picked the right one for the job.

Although we blew them out on the fence, we were able to give the kids an update on the open space that will be coming forward as part of the next Kier development site, along with the Taylor Wimpey site that has recently been submitted as a reserved matters planning application. This area will be big enough for people to kick a football around with upsetting residents and without balls going into peoples’ gardens every 5 minutes. We also hope to be able to provide a set of goal posts and, eventually, an area of play equipment suitable for the older kids.

Complainers have lost the plot

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A somewhat bizarre story from Cardiff today, where apparently a speed camera is doing too good of a job, because the camera has only caught one driver in a year.

Am I missing something here? Aren’t speed cameras supposed to discourage drivers from speeding in the first place and not be used as a way of raising cash from them?

It strikes that those criticising this low hit rate have lost the plot and that instead of complaining about it, they should be celebrating the fact that there’s at least one speed camera in the country that is actually doing what it was designed for – discouraging speeding drivers. I can think of many villages in South Holland and many residents in my ward who would love to have such problem to complain about.

No win, no fee, no scruples

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Watching weekend TV has me returning to one of my favourite hobby horses – no win, no fee lawyers. Today’s trigger is particularly galling, as it involves somebody who has built a reputation on helping the needy fight the system and over the last 25+ years, has become the champion of children through a telephone help line called Childline. Even worse is the cynical use of the same format Esther Rantzen used in her highly successful TV show, That’s Life.

Esther Rantzen is now the ‘front-woman’ for a personal injury claims company, in other words, a bunch of no win, no fee lawyers. There are several other household names fronting TV ads for these ambulance chasers, but none has quite the gravitas of somebody who has a national reputation as a champion of exploited consumers and abused children.

My message to Esther Rantzen CBE is simple. Please find a different way of earning a crust Esther, preferably one that doesn’t ruthlessly exploit your good name with the public and thereby bring in to question your scruples.

Developers say it’s not their fault

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The link below is to the PAS website and continues the debate started by RIBA, on the issue of the shoebox homes we now provide in this country.

There is a very revealing comment from a building industry bigwig at the end of the article. Side stepping completely the accusation that his industry is indeed shoe horning families in to smaller and smaller dwellings at ever increasing prices, he points the finger at – you’ve guessed it, the planning system and then land availability followed by viability. What a sad reflection that is on the priorities of those who are supposed to be providing good quality homes for the British people.

As long as greedy landowners, who have done nothing other than get their piece of land designated as suitable for development via the planning system, are allowed to make millions from what was worth only thousands and developers willing to pay throughout the nose, we are always going to have this problem.

Given that government keeps telling us there’s virtually no land left for building on, now would be a perfect time to set in process a price control mechanism, combined with a minimum size and build quality standard for all future housing to follow. Indeed, if landowners tried to strangle off the supply in the hope that a change of government would see a return to the old ways of maximum price for minimum efforts, an updated version of the compulsory purchase process could be introduced to allow councils to acquire the land needed at a sensible price. I can just hear all the capitalist turning in their graves!

http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/general/news/stories/2011/sep11/150911/150911_2

Renewable energy policies give me that sinking feeling

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Two articles in today’s Telegraph demonstrate the ludicrous situation our politicians have gotten us in to on renewable energy. The first, gives an insight in to the damage the Chinese are doing to the north of their country, in pursuit of the coal to needed to power their ever increasing chain of coal fired power stations. However, it’s not the fact that the Chinese are causing areas of their landscape to cave in to vast underground mines that caught my attention, but the scale of their appetite for coal, compared to the rest of the world. Quoting from the article by Malcolm Moore:

‘To keep its glittering skylines alight, China now uses more coal than the United States, Europe and Japan combined. But voracious mining has hollowed out vast tracts of the north of the country, leaving three million people living on ground that could collapse at any moment.’

The second article is entitled, Wind turbines ‘will treble under Coalition planning reforms’, by Louise Gray and contains the statement that demonstrates perfectly how the government is getting things so wrong. ‘A separate analysis by the Department of Energy and Climate Change says the reforms are essential to “deliver the infrastructure we need to reduce our carbon emissions”.

It’s that last statement that demonstrates to me, that it is the liberal fanatics who are in the driving seat when it comes to renewable energy in this country, not the pragmatists who understand how pointless the pursuit of carbon reduction is, when the Chinese so obviously don’t give a damn about their massive and ever increasing contribution to this global problem.

For me, a third article, written by Geoffrey Lean, actually strikes the right note and is much more likely to gain wider public support than continuing to bang on about reducing the UK’s measly 2% contribution to the global carbon emissions figure. This country is currently pursuing the ambitious goal of a low carbon economy, something we need to do reduce our continued reliance on fossil fuels.

I don’t agree with the emphasis we are currently seeing government place on the construction and installation of wind turbines. It would be far more beneficial to this country, if we could encourage as many residential and commercial properties as possible to install some form of renewable energy generation. Installing solar panels, air and ground source heat pumps, or maybe even anaerobic digesters, is far more likely to be both possible and productive than a wind turbine is every likely to be.

The sooner we stop the obsession with wind turbines and start using some of the ridiculous amounts of money given in subsidy to the operators across a wider audience, the sooner more of us will be making our own contribution to reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and yes, our carbon emissions (a bit!).

Developers are far from hungry

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I see the developers are taking full advantage of all the publicity about the housing shortage, to take yet another swipe at the planning system, in cahoots with various ministers of Government.

Behind all their whaling and whining, hides the fact that, difficult times or not, the industry still has hundreds of thousands of planning permissions they have not implemented. Why isn’t Greg Clark berating the building industry and asking why they aren’t building what they’ve already got, instead of moaning about wanting more? to paraphrase Oliver Twist, ‘Please sir, my bowl is already quite full, but can I have some more anyway!’.

Time for action on Big Society

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As MPs went through the motions in Parliament, having been recalled, I hope at least a few of them, including those on the Tory benches, took the opportunity to ask David Cameron how, given the events of that triggered the recall, he intends to put his Big Society vision in to practice.

Surely, the recent, both horrifying and depressing, events across mainly England, are a confirmation of what David Cameron has been saying since he became Party leader. His biggest problem now, is the risk of being accused of being all talk and no action. Can he really expect all those people who turned out on the streets of London, armed with brooms and bin bags, to keep doing so from now on, without something more than words of encouragement from his government? If he does, then his vision is doomed already.

Just like a train needs tracks to run, Big Society will only work if it has the right sort of infrastructure to support it. People are demanding no more cuts in police budgets, so that more officers can be put on the streets and that is one solution. However, the heavy hand of authority is the way regimes such Syria, Lybia and Zimbabwe control their populations. I don’t think any right minded citizen would wish to see the UK go down this route, if only because it fails completely to address the underlying issues. Policing is the answer, but not neccesaraily high police numbers. Policing focussed on and based in the community, in other words, a return to a form of the good old village bobby.

If David Cameron believes that the Big Society can work, he could do worse than start by reintroducing genuine local policing. This could be in the form of a proper community based police officer, complete with office and house – sound familiar? Or, as works in other European countries such as Holland, community wardens living and working in their communities. Recent events in Japan also highlighted their system of community based officials. I also understand that it is common practice to see mini-police offices on many street corners, providing genuine community based policing.

The key to this approach is ensuring that there are enough boots on the ground, as they say in the military – over to you Dave.

Pilgrim Hospital still well below standard

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Given all the bad press quangos have received since we were ‘blessed’ with a new government, the health service watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), certainly seems to be earning its keep.

The CQC has maintained it’s criticism of Pilgrim Hospital in Boston and it’s extremely depressing to hear a spokesperson for the hospital say that things have improved because they are now filling in a few forms.

From my personal experience, the hospital actually needs to go back to basics and not just faff around with bits of admin and updated procedures. Only the complete replacement of the staff running the wards would achieve what’s needed at this hospital, because most of the staff are simply not up to the job. I’ve no doubt there are some highly professional and dedicated staff in the hospital wards at present, but they have let patients down just as badly as their sub-standard colleagues, by failing to speak out over the years.

Now compare my experience in Pilgrim Hospital with a recent, albeit brief, stay in Peterborough’s brand new city hospital – put simply, there is no comparison. The people of Peterborough and its hinterland are fortunate indeed to have, not just a nice new shiney hospital, but to also have excellent staff to go with it. As an aside, and again from personal experience, it’s the staff that make the difference, not the age of the building, Nottingham City Hospital proves that – over 100 years old and counting.

On an even more depressing note, the County Hospital in Lincoln is even worse than Pilgrim, at least it was 3 years ago. I’m therefore more than a little surprised that the CQC hasn’t laid in to them yet.