Author Archives: johnengland55

Winning Team

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Imagine that your sports team is about to play a series of matches against the best team in the world, a team that completely annihilated your team the last time they met. You want to make sure that you give yourself a fighting chance of victory and so you naturally want to make sure that you utilise your full resources and pick the best players possible.

But what if your star player is a self-centred, egotist who has upset every dressing room he has been a part of and once even sent texts, criticising his own captain, to opposing team members in the middle of a series. When he was subsequently dropped he then wrote a book insulting some of his former team mates and coaches.

He has now regained some sparkling form and following some encouragement from the sport’s incompetent ruling body put himself forward for selection only to be snubbed by the sport’s director because of a “lack of trust”.

Should he be selected, in spite of everything, on the basis that his is a special talent and that he really does give his team a genuine chance of success or, should he be left well alone? That is the situation facing English cricket and former player, Kevin Pietersen.

It’s a difficult one but the bottom line is winning and ultimately, the team’s coach must pick the team that he thinks has the best chance of attaining that objective. That means picking the best available players and if one of those players happens to carry a lot of baggage, is obnoxious, arrogant, hard to handle and disloyal many would say “so what”. As long as the team wins are the supporters that bothered about the personalities of individual members of that team?

Fifty Shades of Stupidity

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In the middle of a week dominated by politics an unusual story hit the news and almost slipped through the radar. It concerned a Frenchman who posted an advertvisement on a dating website inviting women to contact him for sex. To make his invitation more appealing he backed it up with a photograph of a 37 year old rugged-looking male model.

 

Evidently the ruse worked since two of his correspondents, on separate occasions, willingly allowed themselves to be blindfolded, a la Fifty Shades of Grey, in a dark room in his French Riviera apartment and then had sex with him. They were evidently horrified when the blindfold was removed to reveal not the 37 year old hunk that each had expected but a 68 year old bald overweight pensioner with wrinkly skin and a big nose.

 

Anyway, the aged Lothario has now been charged with “rape by surprise” even though he says the women gave their full consent and were perfectly willing at all times to engage in sexual activity; a fact they are not seeking to deny. The court will presumably have to answer the question as to whom the women thought they were giving that consent and then pass judgment accordingly.

 

Whether the old guy is regarded as a sexual predator or just a dirty old man who got lucky, the women involved can hardly expect universal sympathy. Willingly allowing themselves to be blindfolded by and then having sex with a man they had never even bothered to look at is hardly sensible behaviour. Clearly, when lust comes knocking at the door common sense jumps out the window. It should be an interesting court case.

 

 

The Government You Deserve

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Thomas Jefferson, founding father and 3rd president of the USA, is credited with saying “The government you elect is the government you deserve.”

England is a conservative country and has elected a Conservative government so, for England at least, we have the government we deserve. The same cannot be said of Scotland, which is now predominantly represented by the Scottish Nationalist Party, a militant and socialist organisation diametrically opposed to English conservatism.

The implications for the new government are clear, do nothing and Scotland will inevitably head towards independence causing the UK to collapse. To preserve the UK, changes will have to be made by either giving Scotland further devolved powers or by altering the whole set up of the UK and creating a US style federation. None of this must be funded or underwritten by the English taxpayer and this has to be driven home to the Scottish Nationalist Party leadership.

Talking of which, Alex Salmond, the former Scottish Nationalist Party leader, stated this morning that “the Scottish lion has roared”. Maybe, but I would hope that Parliament’s other members, outnumbering his party by 12 to 1, will convert that roar to a mew. I doubt it though and  I think we had better prepare ourselves for five years of whingeing and disruption by the Scottish Nationalists until they get what they want.

The Russian Threat

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Vladimir Putin is apparently going to use next weekend’s celebration of the Soviet (and Allied) defeat of the Nazis in 1945 to showcase the launch of the world’s most formidable tank, the Russian T14 Armata. This tank is evidently far superior to anything possessed by the West and its launch comes at a time when Russian military expenditure has reached levels greater than any since the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991.

It’s funny how history repeats itself and no matter how far we may think we have developed or how much we may think things have changed they often remain constant. In the 19th century the British Empire and Russia were deadly rivals and although that rivalry only came to open warfare once (the Crimean War, 1853-6) Russian imperialism was a huge threat throughout that century to Britain’s imperial and economic interests.

Of course, the Empire is long gone and Great Britain is no longer a major player but the Russian threat  remains, as events in Crimea and Ukraine have clearly demonstrated over the last couple of years. Modern politicians would do well to heed the words of Lord Palmerston, British Prime Minister who warned over 150 years ago that,

“The policy and practice of the Russian Government has always been to push forward its encroachments as fast and as far as the apathy or want of firmness of other Governments would allow it to go, but always to stop and retire when it met with decided resistance and then to wait for the next favourable opportunity.”

A copy of this speech should be sent to President Obama and to all those in the West who think that Putin’s Russia can be mollified by platitudes and appeasement. “Decided resistance” and not “apathy or want of firmness” is clearly required as much in the 21st century as it was two centuries earlier.

Spending What You Haven’t Got

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Austerity is a word we have heard much of over the last few years. It is derived from the word “austere” which my 1984 Collins dictionary defines as “stern”, “forbidding” or “showing strict self-discipline”.  Austerity itself  is defined as “tightened economy, as from shortages of goods”.

The reason the word is so familiar nowadays is that the Coalition Government used the term to describe the actions they would need to take (and, of course, did take) to deal with the country’s severe debt which existed when they came to power in 2010. The word is now used as a weapon by opponents of the Government’s economic policies.

In the run up to the general election barely a day has gone by without some politician or other appearing on our television screens to tell us that his or her political party is going to spend £10 billion on this or is going to save £12 billion on that. They rarely tell us how they going to afford to do so.

Even a child knows that if he wishes to buy a packet of sweets costing £1 and he only has 70 pence he will have to wait and find the extra 30 pence before he can buy those sweets. You cannot spend money that you haven’t got. A good lesson in life.

You can always borrow the money of course but you will have to pay it back at some stage. That is common sense, pure and simple. It’s a pity that it is lacking in so many of our politicians. Unless, of course, they are telling us a pack of lies – surely not?

Man’s Revenge

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Last week an American man was charged with doing what many of us have surely been tempted to do at one time or another. He became so angry with his malfunctioning computer that he took it outside the house and shot it eight times.

His local newspaper, the Colorado Springs Gazette, said that “He was able to wreak the kind of revenge most of us only dream about”. That is undoubtedly true, as anybody who has spent several hours working on their computer, only to lose all that work because the computer wouldn’t save it, will surely testify.

As with Basil Fawlty giving his errant motor car “a damn good thrashing” with a fallen tree branch all those years ago, we find it funny because we can identify with it. Breaking-down cars, computers failing to function correctly and mobile phones losing their signal in the middle of an important conversation are three of the banes of modern life so all credit to the guy from Colorado.

Incidentally, and perhaps unsurprisingly,  his computer is not expected to recover from its injuries.

Happy Saint George’s Day!

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Today is St George’s Day, the national day of England. But where are all the flags and why aren’t we enjoying a public holiday in celebration? Well, actually, we English don’t really make that much of a fuss. Perhaps it’s something to do with our famous reserve.

Most English, typifying the phlegm and understatement, for which we are renowned,  are content to quietly slip under the radar just muddling along in true English fashion. Times have changed of course and a patriotic Victorian would barely recognise the England of today, or would he?

The reserve is still there, so too the inventiveness and wit, though few of today’s English leaders would be able to match the wit of Lord Palmerston, the great 19th century Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister.

Evidently a fawning French diplomat (aren’t they all?) once said to the great man “If I were not French, I would wish to be English” to which Palmerston replied “If I was not English, I would wish to be English”.

I’ll drink to that! In fact, in a couple of hours time I will be doing so in the company of forty like-minded, red rose-wearing Englishmen celebrating our national day by enjoying some roast beef washed down by flagons of English ale. Actually most of us will be drinking French and Australian wine but English ale sounds so much better, doesn’t it!

May I leave the last word (literally) to Lord Palmerston.  As he lay on his death bed, fussed over by anxious medical staff, he exclaimed  “Die my dear doctor, that is the last thing I shall do”! An English wit to the end!

A Happy Saint George’s Day to one and all!

Another Waste of Public Money

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Last  Friday, following the acquittal of four journalists brought to trial for allegedly paying public officials for information, the Director of Public Prosecutions,  Alison Saunders, announced that charges against nine other journalists for similar offences have now been dropped.

The charges were brought following Scotland Yard’s Operation Elveden which many critics referred to as a “witch-hunt” and an attempt by the Government to gag the free press. In other words, it was politically – and possibly even personally – motivated.

Journalists argued that under certain circumstances it is in the public interest to pay public officials for information and this was clearly the view of the jury last Friday.

What particularly grates is the fact that the operation cost the taxpayer an estimated £20 million, money that would have been better spent, for example, on counter terrorism or other serious crime.

Targets

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Everything seems to be  target driven these days and whilst this makes sense in the ultra-competitive world of business how can it be relevant in the public sector?  Targets are clearly important in sales where an employee is promised a financial bonus for selling a certain number of vacuum cleaners, fridges, cars or whatever. But, asking a teacher, a policeman or a doctor to reach a target seems pointless.

A teacher is either able to teach or not and the only imponderable (assuming the teacher is competent)  is  the ability or willingness of the pupil to learn. Similarly, the job of a policeman is to apprehend criminals and a good police officer  will arrest criminals as a matter of course, so why have a targeted number of arrests? Perhaps a town’s low number of arrests is due to effective policing which naturally leads to low crime rates. As for doctors, their job is to treat and heal the sick wherever they encounter them so why should a doctor need a target?

In the public sector the only “target” should be to do your job efficiently and effectively to the best of your ability and, provided the right people are in the right jobs, that should be enough.

The problem with the UK public sector seems to lie not with those on the front line (such as teachers, policemen and doctors) but with the hordes of administrators and pen-pushers who clog up the system  and cause unnecessary paperwork for those simply trying to do the job they are paid to do. How about targeting the removal of unnecessary bureaucrats?

Ordinary?

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On Friday some national newspapers ran a story about two “ordinary Yorkshire lads”, Hassan Munshi and Talha Asmal, who recently left the UK for Syria, presumably to join Isis.

At the risk of sounding racist (since anyone touching on this delicate subject is usually deemed as such) I would hardly think that “ordinary Yorkshire lads” would place high on their to-do list the act of joining a group of Christian-murdering, child-raping Islamic psychopaths.

I would have thought that “ordinary Yorkshire lads”, irrespective of colour or ethnic background, would be more concerned with drinking Tetley’s bitter, chasing girls on a Saturday night and playing cricket, but maybe I’m just old-fashioned.