Author Archives: johnengland55

Spontaneous Love?

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Well, it’s that day again, the day when lovers all over the world pack into their local restaurants, hold hands, look into one another’s eyes, and pretend not to notice the other twenty five cloned couples sat in the same room in identical positions. The spontaneity of love eh?

Yes, they’ll all be out tonight, sat at their candlelit tables, red roses placed alluringly between them, the sparkling wine nicely chilled, as they self-consciously coo quietly to one another, poring over the special “Valentine’s Day Lovers’ Banquet” menu. She thinking,

“This is so lovely and romantic. I wish he was like this all the time”

He, with a strained smile, thinking,

“What a load of c++p! And it’s costing me a fortune! I wish we’d stayed in and ordered a takeaway!”

Both views are understandable. If you truly love somebody you’re unlikely to limit a show of your feelings to just one day of the year dictated more by the corporate greed of florists and restaurateurs than by Cupid or St Valentine.

A spontaneous flower given when she least expects it is far more effective than 12 red roses sent anonymously through Interflora; and a surprise dinner for two in your favourite restaurant is much more romantic than being sat in a room full of couples all trying to out romance the other!

 

The Floods

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England has just suffered the wettest January in 248 years and February is not shaping up to be any better. Parts of the South West of the country have been under water since the start of the year, the West coasts of England and Wales have been repeatedly battered by continuous storms and the River Thames is about to break its own record for flood warnings. Farmers have lost their livestock, businesses have collapsed, thousands of homeowners  have lost their worldly possessions and the Met Office says that there is still no end in sight of this freak weather.

This is a humanitarian crisis of high proportions and what do our politicians do? They point their fingers at one another and look for blame, trying to score points while families try desperately to hold their lives together. Government departments accuse each other of incompetence whilst telling the media that it’s not their fault. And politicians wonder why we dislike them so much?

Forget the posturing, you idiots, and do something about it. Ensure that all of these poor people are re-housed and their possessions replaced and then take whatever steps are humanly possible to ensure that British citizens, their homes, property and livelihoods are protected against future calamity.

Oh, and if the Government is wondering where the money is going to come from, do as one sensible Member of Parliament suggested over the weekend; for this year at least, suspend payment of the billions of pounds we give in Foreign Aid – £11.5 billion in 2013. We have enough problems of our own.

Breathtaking Corruption

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Earlier this week the European Union Home Affairs Commissioner, Cecilia Malmstroem,  a Swede, said that the widespread corruption in the European Union was “breathtaking”. Crikey,  who would ever have thought that?

This corruption costs the European taxpayer (people like you and me) somewhere in the region of 120 billion euros each year (that’s £99 billion in real money) although Malmstroem said the figure is probably even higher. Breathtaking doesn’t even come close. What single word does?

Still, at least it’s now official and a member of the European hierarchy has finally admitted publicly what many of us have known or suspected for years. The question is though, what are we and the British Government going to do about it? More pertinently, what can we do about it?

 

Mothers and Alcohol

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One of the  unique features of the English legal system is the fact that our laws are made not just by  act of Parliament but also by precedent established in the higher courts – case law. Occasionally a precedent is set that captures not only the attention of lawyers but the country as a whole and one such case will shortly be heard by the Court of Appeal.

A local authority is taking a woman to court to try to prove that she committed a criminal act by drinking alcohol during pregnancy, thus causing brain damage to her daughter, now aged six and in foster care. The authority alleges that the woman, repeatedly warned of the risks to her unborn child, chose to drink alcohol excessively throughout her pregnancy.

If the local authority are successful then it will be a crime for any woman to knowingly damage an unborn child through the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy. This will no doubt generate a storm of controversy (what if the woman is an alcoholic, for example?) and women’s rights campaigners have already voiced their objections. However, experts say that as many as 7,000 babies a year are born mentally or physically damaged through their mothers drinking alcohol during pregnancy so, irrespective of the moral arguments and the difficulties in policing such a law, something clearly needs to be done.

Doctors have been warning for years about the (surely obvious) downsides of women drinking alcohol excessively or smoking whilst pregnant and nobody of sound mind could possibly claim to be unaware of the risks of such irresponsible and dangerous behaviour. Perhaps if that behaviour is deemed criminal it may well go some way to alleviating the problem.

An Act of Humanity

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There was a bit of a storm this week over the Government’s decision to make a U-turn and allow approximately 500 Syrian refugees to enter the country on temporary visas. The Prime Minister has been criticised by some of showing weakness and of political posturing but others take a different view.

There is no doubt that previous governments have allowed immigration to get out of hand and only recently have our rulers started to realise the mistakes they made in opening our borders to all and sundry. Immigration is now a very hot political potato and public opinion seems to be firmly against any further mass influx.

Many believe that charity should begin at home and, looking at the economic problems we still face, that has to be right. However, there are times when common decency and humanity have to take a front seat and now is one of those times.

We in the West, in spite of the daily images on our television screens, can barely imagine the extent of the suffering of that tragic country and having made, in my opinion, the correct decision not to become militarily involved the least we can now do is try to offer some small comfort to those who so desperately need it.

Of course, that comfort will come from the taxpayer but that should be no consideration – I’m sure we can all think of far worse examples of government expenditure.

Winning

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You’d think that English rugby’s governing body,  the Rugby Football Union (RFU),  would be keen to develop youngsters and provide the national team with a constant supply of top class talent.

If so, they are going about it in a funny way since they have just announced to schools and clubs that  there will be no more trophies for successful under-11 sides and if any game appears to be too one-sided players will be swapped around at half time to balance things up. The emphasis is to be on developing skills rather than the result of the game.

What kind of a lesson is that to give to kids on sport, or on life for that matter? Of course the result matters and a determination to win the game is surely the biggest factor in the development of game-winning skills in any sport. This just smacks, once again, of political correctness and a desire to tell children how life should be rather than how it really is.

Whether our politicians, teachers and sports administrators like it or not, the fact is, life is a competition. From the lowliest single-cell organism to mankind life is a competition resulting in success or failure, victory or defeat and sometimes life or death.

As  Vince Lombardi, the legendary and hugely successful American Football player and coach once said  “Winning isn’t  everything, it’s the only thing”.

 

Torture

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Irrespective of whether or not you believe in the right of a country to execute its citizens the story of the execution of Dennis McGuire in Ohio, last week, is truly disturbing.

 McGuire, convicted of rape and murder way back in 1989, was executed by means of lethal injection which in itself is no big deal, if you believe in the death sentence. However, this was no quick methodical execution since from the moment of injection it evidently took between 15 and 26 minutes for the man to die, depending upon which account you read.

There are those who will no doubt shrug their shoulders and say, “So what? He committed dreadful crimes and what mercy did he show his victim?” An eye for an eye and all that. Whilst that point of view is understandable it is surely wrong.

Any civilized state, using all lawful means at its disposal has a duty, a moral duty if nothing else, to ensure that it doesn’t sink to the level of the criminal. If a state insists on executing its convicted felons it should at the very least ensure that such executions are both humane and speedy. Anything less is torture, plain and simple.

A Remarkable Feat

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Late last week English schoolboy, Lewis Clarke, became the youngest person ever to trek to the South Pole. Setting out on December 2nd, some two weeks after his 16th birthday, Lewis, from Bristol, completed the 702 mile journey in 48 days. Though accompanied by an experienced polar guide he dragged his own equipment by sledge across the snows in temperatures as low as -40C and winds gusting to 120 miles per hour.

It is an amazing achievement that surely merited far more media coverage than it in fact generated, particularly when considering that he is only one of three hundred to have reached the South Pole on foot or sledge since the Norwegian, Roald Amundsen and the ill-fated Englishman, Robert Falcon Scott first succeeded back in 1911/12.

Lewis will return home later this week and then it’s back to school where he will face the somewhat more mundane challenge of his GCSE exams. What a remarkable young man.

 I wonder if he can play cricket?

 

Adopt an Animal

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On Tuesday the BBC published an article on its website about the disappearance of the West African Lion. Evidently there are now estimated to be as few as 250 West African lions of breeding age and they compete for a mere 1.1% of the areas they used to call home, the rest of their former territory having been taken, inevitably,  by man. Instead of just repeating the comments I made in my last blog I wish, instead, to make a suggestion.

As a member of the World Wildlife Fund I am familiar with their adoption programme where people pay to adopt an animal of their choice whether it be a panda, a lion, a leopard or whatever for as little as £3 per month (check it out on https://support.wwf.org.uk). I have always thought that this is both a clever way of raising revenue and also an excellent means of making people aware of the plight of the world’s wildlife. Parents often make a gift of animal adoption to their small children so that they too can learn about what is happening in the natural world.

At the moment, following the excesses of Christmas, the shops are bombarding us with ideas for the next commercial rip-off namely Valentine’s Day. Typical advertisements urge us to treat the woman/man in our lives (in some cases maybe both, who knows?) to something special this Valentine’s Day. We are urged to do the predictable stuff, like treat her to a romantic five course meal in an exclusive restaurant, whisk her off for a night of passion in a luxury spa, buy her three dozen beautiful red roses plus all the other yawn-inducing, cliché-ridden unimaginative tosh.

My suggestion is this, instead of making some fat capitalist fatter still why not give your true love a year’s adoption of her favourite animal, courtesy of the WWF? You could adopt something personal to her such as a tiger cub, a cuddly panda, or a cute little polar bear.  Indeed any creature that takes your fancy and reminds you of your her although, be careful , adopting an elephant or hippo on her behalf might not be such a smart idea!

Playing God

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A recent report into the numbers of the world’s large predators, published in the Science journal, emphasises yet again what a dangerous game mankind is playing with nature and the world’s eco systems. Staggeringly, the report reveals that over three quarters of the world’s large carnivores, such as lions, tigers, wolves and bears, are in decline.

In Yellowstone Park, USA studies have shown that a reduction, through hunting and culling, in the numbers of the top predators, the wolf and the cougar, has resulted in an increase in the number of elk. This has led to a widespread destruction and loss of vegetation leading in turn to a reduction in the numbers of birds and small mammals living there.

In large parts of Africa the eradication of lions and leopards, again through man’s hunting and culling, has led to a huge increase in the number of olive baboons, resulting in large scale damage to crops and livestock, putting small farmers out of business and adding to food shortages.

We have to stop playing God, listen to these experts and learn from what they are telling us. It’s no use relying solely on governments and big business since they have other priorities, many of which are diametrically opposed to conservation.

It all comes down therefore to charitable institutions (and by implication, us) to actually try to do something about it. We have to do more than wring our hands in frustration or shake our heads in disbelief at these tales of destruction. If we really do care about our planet and care about the state it will be in when we hand it down to succeeding generations we have to put our hands in our pockets.

There are plenty of worthy charities out there, Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund to name but two, and I’m sure we can all find at least one that fits our own particular bill.