The Commonwealth

The Commonwealth Games, which finished last week, turned out to be the great success that we had all hoped for. The host nation, Scotland, did an excellent job in organising and presenting the Games and it was wonderful to see so many athletes from across the world competing so hard to win medals for their countries.

As an Englishman, I was obviously delighted that England finished overall champions but that was almost by the by since the thing that impressed me most of all was the wide diversity of the competing nations.

To many, the Commonwealth is simply an anachronism representing, at is it does, the last reminders of the former British Empire. But what a reminder it is. Even a brief look at the location of member nations such as Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, Kenya, India and Australia is to take a lesson in world geography. All four corners of the globe touched by our tiny island.

It was all a long time ago of course, but not that long. History shows that all empires inevitably decline and fall and the beginning of Britain’s decline can be traced back to a date commemorated across the world earlier this week. That date was August 4th 1914, the beginning of the First World War, a war that claimed over a million British and Empire lives and sent the Empire on a downward financial spiral from which it never recovered.

Flight Delay

Nowadays, when booking flights, customers are usually asked to provide both their mobile telephone number and email address so that the airline can then advise of any delays or other problems affecting the flight. It’s a good idea and is one less problem for the customer to worry about when preparing to travel.

I experienced this first hand a few days back when I received both a text and an email from the airline advising me that my 14.55 departure had been put back to 15.40. Very useful, apart from the fact that the morons sent their messages out at 17.23 by which time I had been in the air for nearly one and a half hours and was virtually half way to my destination!

Hello Sailor!

There was quite a stir in the national newspapers following the suspension from duty of the first ever female commander of a Royal Navy warship who allegedly had an affair with one of her officers. Other than the obvious concerns over discipline and the morale of the rest of the crew I don’t see why anybody would be that bothered, let alone surprised.

Men and women working together away from home and for months at a time; is it really any wonder that it happened? After all boys will be boys and girls will be girls. Hasn’t it always been so in the navy? As Winston Churchill remarked, the Royal Navy was built on a tradition of “Rum, sodomy and the lash”! At least, this time, it wasn’t a case of the captain abusing the poor old cabin boy!

It seems to me that for as long as men and women work alongside one another affairs and sexual contact are as inevitable as a rainy day in Manchester. Perhaps the solution is to completely segregate the sexes and have ships for men and ships for women. Perhaps colour the ships differently, blue for boys and pink for girls! Maybe even blue and pink stripes for gays? Why not, it’s certainly a lot better than drab old grey!

Vote Winner

Last week the Labour Party announced that, should it be returned to power after next year’s general election, it was considering the imposition of a financial levy on English football’s Premier League. Sport and politics are usually best kept apart but these proposals will, I’m sure, resonate with many of us.

Almost daily we read of the mind-blowing figures involved at the highest levels of sport and particularly football. For example the Premier League recently entered into a three season contract with the big television companies whereby the League will receive £3 billion in viewing rights. Add to this the fact that certain top players are receiving up to £250,000 a week just for playing the game it is easy to see why there is a certain (putting it very mildly!) disaffection with the game.

The backdrop to this is the continued sale of sports playing fields by local authorities, a distinct lack of funding, a lack of facilities throughout the land and a lack of emphasis on sport and personal fitness in many of our state schools. Indeed, it was estimated that last year a mere £5 million was spent by local authorities on the maintenance of football facilities nationwide – put another way, less than half of what some of the top Premier League footballers were paid in the same period.

So the Labour Party’s proposal to take some of the money from the top level of the game and spend it at grass-roots level appears to be a good one. In addition they are considering a further tax on the betting industry which evidently turns over in excess of £6 billion each year.

One doesn’t have to be a socialist to relish the thought of money being taken from fat capitalists to be spent not on fast cars and luxury yachts but on the construction of facilities for disadvantaged children in the poorer areas of our country. A vote winner, for sure.

Bigotry in the Classroom

This week it was established beyond doubt that Birmingham City Council were complicit in the infiltration of the city’s schools by Muslim extremists. At best the councillors simply turned a blind eye to the overwhelming evidence that a substantial number of the city’s schools had been taken over by these fanatics (both school governors and teachers) who were bent on indoctrinating their pupils with bigotry and a hatred of all things western.

The Government-led inquiry revealed that children were taught, among other things, that–
– All non-Muslims will go to hell when they die.
– White children are lazy and white women have no morals.
– Women are inferior to men and wives are the property of their husbands to be used as their husbands see fit.
– Homosexuality is a crime against God and those who practice it should be jailed.
– The murder of the British soldier Lee Rigby and the Boston bombings last year were a fabrication of the truth by western governments.

In addition boys and girls were segregated in the classroom and some teachers insisted on teaching their classes Sharia Law insisting that it was superior to and should replace the law of the United Kingdom. Any teachers who objected to this indoctrination were paid off with sizeable severance cheques and made to sign non-disclosure agreements before leaving their employment.

Unsurprisingly, the nationwide response has been one of outrage that schoolchildren have not only been exposed to this blatant racism and bigotry but also anger that those who should protect them did nothing to prevent it whether through complicity, fear of the extremists or just through the muddled politically correctness of not wanting to offend a religious minority.

Perhaps the greatest irony in the whole sorry tale is that those councillors, who in a misguided attempt to show tolerance of the extremists and avoid claims of discrimination, will actually have achieved the opposite effect. The publicity generated by this scandal will not only add fuel to the fire of political parties on the extreme right but it will also have the effect of turning many previously mild and tolerant British people against Muslims. This would be unfortunate since no one doubts that the majority of Muslims are, like the rest of us, decent people who simply want to live in a climate of peace, tolerance and understanding.

Predictably, the Government has stated that this must never be allowed to happen again and that, in future, all schools throughout the land will be carefully monitored and regularly inspected. We must hope their actions are successful since no form of extremism, political, religious or otherwise, can have any part to play in the education of British children.

Choice and Responsibility

Last week a US court ordered a cigarette manufacturing company to pay damages of $23 billion (approx. £14 billion) to a woman following the death of her husband from cigarette related lung cancer. The rationale was that the company, aware that cigarette smoking was both addictive and life threatening, still persisted in selling its product to the unfortunate man.

Putting aside the incredible amount of damages awarded to the woman (no doubt her lawyers earned several million dollars too for their noble efforts) the question is why should any award be made? Cigarettes may well be addictive and harmful but even a child could work that out. Alcohol is also addictive and damaging to health. How long will it be before we read about multi-million dollar awards for deaths caused by pickled livers?

One of the greatest benefits of living in the West is that we have freedom of choice. In the main, we are free to choose whatever we want to do with our bodies and long may this continue. We also need to bear responsibility for our actions but somehow that word doesn’t seem to be so important these days.

Food Waste

A recent report by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation revealed that worldwide approximately 33% of all food is wasted at a cost of £500 billion.

Those are staggering figures when taking into account the fact that nearly one billion humans are classified as starving. Put another way that’s approximately three time the population of the USA or eighteen times that of the UK.

Food wastage occurs in many forms from supermarkets rejecting malformed (but perfectly edible) fruit and vegetables to spoilt Westerners overfilling their plates and gorging themselves at all-you-can-eat buffets before discarding half the contents of their plates into the rubbish bin.

Those who govern us don’t appear to have any bright ideas on how to solve the problem but in the case of supermarket waste the rules regarding size and shape of vegetables need to be urgently reviewed.

As for the rest of us a little more restraint might be a good idea.

Preparing for Success

So one of the best football world cups in recent memory has finally come to an end and few will disagree that the trophy was won by the best team in the competition as well as probably the best prepared.

As just a small example of the German team’s meticulous planning and attention to detail, consider their choice of base for the tournament.

The north of Brazil is a lot hotter and more humid than the south in the tournament months of June and July, so most teams chose to base themselves in the more comfortable south even though this meant that they would have to travel hundreds of miles to compete in games scheduled to take place in the north.

The Germans, knowing that all their group games were in the north, decided to base themselves there and save on the disruption that travel would undoubtedly bring. They even went so far as to construct their own exclusive training complex – the only World Cup building project to be completed on time.

The German victory in last night’s final should have surprised nobody. As Alexander Graham Bell once said, “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.”

Unnecessary Interference?

Most of us in the free west instinctively oppose any measures taken by government to interfere unnecessarily in our lives. Over regulation and micro management smack of Big Brother in George Orwell’s chilling novel “1984” and are abhorrent to free thinkers.

The key word in the preceding paragraph is “unnecessarily” and the question has to be asked is when is government interference necessary and therefore acceptable?

As I write these notes there is considerable controversy over the British government’s decision to force through legislation to increase surveillance of communications meaning, among other things, that our private emails will be private no longer – though I wonder, with all the technology at the government’s disposal, if they ever were private in the first place.

Many critics have called the legislation a “Snoopers’ Charter” and have referred to the measures as draconian and an example of unnecessary (that word again) “State Control”.

I sympathise with that viewpoint and the last thing I want is for my life to be controlled by the State. However, I also want to stay safe and I want my loved ones, my friends and fellow citizens to stay safe too. On balance, if the government remains fully accountable (a prerequisite) to the electorate and its measures succeed in preventing lives being lost to terrorist acts won’t a loss of privacy be a reasonable – and necessary – price to pay?

Knowing Nothing

It’s strange isn’t it, that as youngsters, we know everything but then somehow, the older we get, all that knowledge just disappears!

Perhaps age brings with it a certain kind of wisdom and as Socrates, the Greek philosopher, said way back in the 5th century BC, the “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing”.

On the same subject another great thinker, Albert Einstein, once said “Any fool can know. The point is to understand”.

Funny that neither of those great men became politicians!