Is democracy viable?

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I was thinking in the aftermath of the Bhutto assassination that we hadn’t really succeeded in leaving a legacy of democracy behind as we pulled out of former colonies and left them to rule themselves. Then I wondered, “What does it take for democracy to work in the Third World?” Then like a thunderbolt it hit me – we don’t even have democracy in this country, so who am I kidding? Describing Benazir Bhutto’s murder as a “sad day for democracy,” as Gordon Brown has done is risible. It is a monumental disaster for Pakistan and a huge setback for world peace. A “sad day for democracy” was when Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister without an election.

So while we wait helplessly for the bloodbath to ensue in Pakistan, let’s consider the miserable state we’re in. We watch the news and we read the papers and we lament. A lying, incompetent government signs away our freedom to Europe without so much as a by-your-leave. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds. They are quite literally shameless. But what can we do about it? The Conservatives only promise incremental change, a little less tax here, a little less legislation there, but our future has already been signed away to the EU. The daily diet of cock-up and corruption distracts us from the more serious problem; democracy in this country has broken down. The question is, can we fix it or should we replace it?

Dealing with Air Rage

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“Drunken passengers who take advantage of cheap duty-free alcohol while waiting for delayed flights have caused a dramatic rise in ‘air rage’ incidents, it emerged last night.”
“Pilots called on the courts to take stronger action against those putting passengers’ lives at risk.”
Daily Telegraph report on increase in ‘air rage’ incidents.

Reading the above makes me very sad. I suspect the pilots mean us, the travelling public, I suspect they don’t mean the air travel industry that creates the problem in the first place. Those who run the airports and the airlines are breathtakingly indifferent to the plight of those they laughingly refer to as “self-loading cargo.” If they were forced to stand for hours passing through endless frustrating and demeaning queues and checks only to be finally herded onto planes with cramped and uncomfortable seating to spend further hours breathing stale air, I can promise you, they would all suffer from air rage too. Alcohol, cheap or otherwise, is just the match to a mountain of inflammable tinder.

By the time you’ve arrived at the airport, already stressed-out from the journey, and you’ve stood in a painfully slow-moving queue to reach the check-in desk, haggled over the inadequate baggage allowance, put liquids into transparent plastic bags, made your way to the security-check queue, had the indignity of stripping almost to your underclothes, putting your mobile phone, credit cards and small change into a tray, being summoned to walk slowly through the metal detector before being body-searched, and taking your shoes off to put through the radar, you have already spent a significant part of your life being ritually and publicly humiliated. Somewhere in amongst all that you will have had your ticket and your passport checked, after queuing separately on each occasion of course. Then you find yourself in limbo-land, a shoppers’ paradise except that the goods on sale are only fractionally less than high street prices. Apart from the booze, that is.

Finally you are summoned to board your flight. Well, what do you know, there’s a queue to have your ticket checked before you can get into the waiting area where you have to sit and wait yet again, and when boarding does start, there’s a mad scramble to form another queue to have your ticket and passport inspected one more time. And after what seems like a lifetime, you find yourself on the plane at long last. Now you have to find somewhere to stow what little hand baggage you’ve been allowed because there never seems to be enough room in the overhead compartments. That’s why those in the know were so anxious to board first. But anyway, you’ve done it, after all your trials and tribulations you’re on board and you’ve stowed your things. Now you can sit back and relax in your comfortable seat. Not a bit of it.

In order to deter all but the most determined and hardy travellers, the airlines have deliberately made their seats as cramped and uncomfortable as they can be. Airplanes are always overcrowded, you see, and if they could get you to sit two to a seat, one on another’s lap, they would. As it is, they leave you to play elbow-boxing with the person in the seat next to you for use of the arm rest; they simply do not care for your comfort. They simply do not care for your health, either, so to save a trivial amount of money they recycle the cabin air until it is putrid and almost dangerous to breath. So there you sit, for hours on end, uncomfortable, exhausted, deeply resentful, and developing an airplane-induced headache. Is it any wonder the cabin crew find some passengers fractious? Is it really the right response for them to confront such passengers with a heavy handed approach that will only get them irate to such an extent they can then rough them up, put handcuffs on them, and have them charged with air rage? Is cheap alcohol really the problem here? I think not.

Travel in happier times. Note the cabin crew using a stick to welcome passengers to their destination

Travel in happier times. Note the cabin crew using a stick to welcome passengers to their destination


Joined-up thinking by Labour and the Conservatives

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Two relatively minor news items today offer an insight into the approach of the two main parties.

Labour have announced they want to give every woman a £120 cash bonus for getting pregnant. How will that help deal with the problem of unwanted pregnancies? Now we’re going to pay them to have babies? The fact that the cash is intended to be used to buy fresh fruit is risible and shows complete ignorance of the demands of modern life. £120 will buy a very nice iPod, thank you.

The Conservatives, on the other hand, want to impose car parking charges at out-of-town supermarkets. They claim this will allow councils to subsidise local bus services. But as with the young mothers, once they have their hands on the money who knows what the councils will choose to spend it on. It certainly won’t be on subsidised bus services.

Labour has always wanted to hand out taxpayers’ money, and the Tories always used to want to reduce taxation. Now they are keen to impose a tax on parking at supermarkets, something that will hit almost every voter in the pocket, and something that will not go unnoticed by those voters.

The irony is, these two policies would effectively cancel each other out. With many hospitals already charging for parking, a pregnant woman could easily spend £120 in parking fees in just six months with supermarket parking charges on top. That would leave nothing for the fresh fruit, if that was what she was wanted to spend it on in the first place. Did the two parties collude over this?

Rural house price madness

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The Halifax Bank has reported the average price for a house in the country is now almost £250,000, and that it is £30,000 more than the average price for a town house. Factoring-in the disparity in earnings between those living in the country and those in towns, the disparity is a double-whammy. The worst-affected part of the country is Cornwall where average prices exceed average earnings by a factor of ten to one. There are half as many first-time buyers in the country as in towns and cities. This is really not sustainable, but how and when will the adjustment come? Will it be another round of house price crashes? Is the bubble about to burst?

Part of the problem, I believe, is the buy-to-let market where investors have been able to out-bid first-time buyers and soak up a lot of the available property. The losers in that bidding war then become their unwilling tenants thus ensuring the investment was a sound one. Every first-time buyer who fails to buy a home is a prospective tenant to the one who bought it.

A second part of the problem is the level of city bonuses which drive up prices in London and cause outward migration to neighbouring cities, where the incomers in turn drive up prices. They drive out owners who buy property in the surrounding countryside, driving up prices there. Because more people living in the countryside are people working in the towns and cities, the law of unintended consequences comes into play. Those people are obviously mobile and routinely shop in the same towns or cities where they work, so rural businesses suffer.

Everyone at the bottom end of this heap ends up with fewer job prospects and find they can only afford to live in city slums. Wealth is not trickling-down, it’s being sucked-up.

The WiFi bandit – stealing something of no worth

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Police in London have arrested and released on bail a man they saw sitting on a wall using a laptop. When questioned, he had admitted he was using the householder’s WiFi network to get connected. There was no suggestion he was attempting to hack into any computer systems or steal identities, so what was his offence?

The police view is that dishonestly obtaining electronic communication services is an offense under Section 125 of the U.K. 2003 Communications Act, while unauthorised access to computer material is a summary offense under Section 1 of the 1990 Computer Misuse Act.

Broadband accounts are permanently connected and typically billed in flat-rate monthly amounts unrelated to the amount of traffic used. It doesn’t seem on the face of it he has deprived the broadband account holder of anything of any monetary worth or deprived him of the use of anything that was his to enjoy.

If anything, it is the broadband account holder who has been foolish in leaving his WiFi unsecured. The risks of a passing stranger innocently using it without your permission to access his own email or whatever is trivial compared with the risks of having your computer hacked and your identity or bank and credit card details stolen.

If people realise how wide-open they are to that kind of criminal activity, maybe they will secure their networks and maybe then some good will come of this curious incident.

The Human Rights of a murderer

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Reading about the case of Learco Chindamo who is soon to be released from prison I can quite well understand the reasons for not deporting him. He came to this country at the age of five, he was born and raised here, he does not speak Italian, he is not Italian. I am less agitated by his so-called human rights than I am by the realisation that he is what he is because of us. It wasn’t Italy that made him a murderer, it was Britain. There is nothing to be gained by sending him to Italy. It might seem the modern equivalent of transportation but in those days convicts had no prospect of ever returning from Australia. These days travel is so cheap and our borders so open that he can return perfectly easily, so what’s the point.

The part I don’t understand though, is why is he being released at all? He brutally murdered a headmaster at his school. He has served just twelve years for taking a human life. The Home Office says he is still a danger to society. This is not about why isn’t he being deported, this should be about why is he being released? Murder should demand a very lengthy term in prison, “life” should be the norm and life really should mean life. Philip Lawrence’s murder shocked the nation at the time. But in the intervening years nothing has been done about the problem of juvenile delinquency. Our streets have become the playground for knife-wielding young hoodlums who seem to think they are living out some x-box fantasy in real life. They “blow away” those who get in their way. This problem is going to get a lot worse before politicians wake up to it and do something. When they do, it is going to take a generation to undo the damage already done.

Another skirmish in the Race Relations war

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I love the Sikhs. Of all the troubles we read about in today’s religion-obsessed world, none of them are caused by Sikhs. To my knowledge they stand for principles, loyalty, honour, family values and service to the community, plus whatever other qualities you can think to name. They have also served the British Crown loyally and valiantly for more than a century. You would think the Ministry of Defence would be delighted to be approached by leaders of the Sikh community with the suggestion of forming a Sikh regiment and the assurance they would have no trouble finding 700 willing volunteers. And the MoD were delighted. Delighted that is, until they spoke to the Commission for Racial Equality who vetoed the idea.

Sikh soldiers in the Indian Army

The CRE, which itself has a dreadfully racist record of employment, has a vested interest in perpetuating the race relations industry and saddling this country with insane policies. It is also highly selective in its approach. Saying “the creation of a separate regiment according to ethnicity would be segregation, which amounts to discrimination under the Race Relations Act” is to defy common sense. The British Army has for centuries formed regiments along ethnic lines, and why? Because they work. Society is entirely happy with the idea of the Irish Guards, the Scots Guards and the Welsh Guards. They take recruits on ethnic grounds from all across the UK. There is no conceivable reason why the Sikhs cannot do the same.

I hope common sense will prevail and Sikh leaders and the Ministry of Defence will decide to ignore the CRE and go ahead with this inspiring proposal.

The English Nazi movement

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Those of us who remember having proper history lessons will no doubt recognise the circumstances in which the Nazi party flourished in Germany. They pandered to popular outrage over the way the Treaty of Versailles was stripping the country and they directed their ire at the Jews. They rallied in their thousands with flags flying to hear ranting and hate-mongering. They wanted racial purity and the re-establishment of what they considered traditional German values.

Sound familiar? Today, we have a large body of opinion that deeply resents the European Union and all it is doing to emaciate this country and they direct their ire at Moslems and immigrants. Well I am in the former body of opinion but emphatically not in the latter. I also resent the way they have hijacked my flag and my values and claim them to belong to true Englishmen.

These people represent the worst of what this country is becoming. Krystal Nacht is not far off.

The riddle of the silver trophies

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I was in Corfu town recently, and in the park opposite Liston a company was staging a promotion for it’s wares. There was loud music, a troupe of dancing cheerleaders waving pom-poms, a giant video screen, and a collection of rigid raider speedboats. And on one of the speedboats was a row of fancy silver trophies. The public was milling around and I didn’t see any signs of security, which puzzled me a little. They would never get away with it in England, I thought, those trophies wouldn’t last five minutes before they were nicked.

Now, why is that I thought? The answer came to me quite quickly – they’re on an island, so where would the thieves dispose of their booty? A few more sips of beer and another thought came to me. The reason they wouldn’t get away with displaying valuables openly in England is that thieves have a whole support network. We have a criminal industry here. It’s probably the only growth industry we have. Stolen property is handed on from thief to fence and sold on in pubs and on eBay. What are we doing to break up that network?

There was an account of a court case a few years ago which I read with astonishment. An ‘alleged’ thief was caught red-handed with property he had stolen from a nearby house moments before. The copper saw him and nabbed him. However, the copper hadn’t actually seen the thief leaving the premises with the stolen property, so it couldn’t be proven conclusively that the thief was the culprit. He said he found it under a bush and didn’t know it was stolen property. So he got off.

Now I know about miscarriages of justice, and how many we’ve had, and how bad they have been. That’s the only reason I would never support the death penalty, which I actually agree with. I would not trust our judicial system not to make a mistake. But haven’t we gone too far the other way? Are we not setting too high a standard of proof before a conviction? Given the overcrowded prisons, that probably seems like a ridiculous question, but does anyone believe we are a law-abiding society any more? We’re losing this battle, aren’t we?

Does Blogging make you a better person?

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There has been some debate recently about freedom of speech, moderation, flame wars, leaving in a huff, learning to live with criticism, differences of opinion – a whole raft of aspects really. The most popular topic on the MyTelegraph blog site is – blogging. There seems to be very little sympathy however for the effete, the shrinking violet, the gentle soul. The attitude is if you can’t stand the heat you should get out of the kitchen. Me? I’ve been around the block a bit when it comes to blogging, and posting on USENET before that. How many of you even know what USENET is, never mind have used it? rec.humour.funny, remember it well, alt.flame, another cracker and rec.org.mensa, where I cut my teeth. It is certainly true that many people develop a thick skin and can look after themselves well in what can be an unremittingly viscious environment. And it can be that at times. What we have on MyTelegraph these days is like the proverbial vicarage tea party. Even so, we see people storm off in high dudgeon and I’ve seen that before, oh so many times.

Why do I believe my premise is true? Well you might believe that what you have to do to survive is develop a thick skin and learn to fight back when attacked. You could pick up some flaming techniques from the experts and you might even get quite good at it yourself. But I don’t think that’s what makes you a better person. What I think could make you a better person is if you learn to read between the lines, behind the actual words being used. If you learn to use words yourself with care. If you develop toleration not just of the views of others but of the way they express themselves. If you develop a skill at understanding someone else, you will learn so much more about life, about other people, and those are skills you can use in everyday life too. Life’s too short to worry about punctuation. Life’s too short to take offense where none was intended. The neat thing is, if you learn to ignore what you wrongly perceive to be an insult directed at you, you will learn to ignore real insults when they are intended. That’s actually quite a useful trait. By then you have probably learned what causes offense to others in the way you communicate, especially when you don’t intend it. That’s especially valuable to learn.

So I believe that blogging can make you a better person, if you wish it to.