Category Archives: Current Affairs

Lucky People

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Sometimes I don’t think we realise how lucky we are living in the west and in particular the UK. We have free health care, the protection afforded by a democratic system of government, justice provided by an ancient and time proven legal system and free education for our children.

If we fall on hard times the state will pay us welfare benefits and provide us with housing, yet still some complain that they have a hard time of it.

A reality check is clearly required for some and the easiest method is the simple act of turning on the news to learn about yet another country racked by civil war and strife, its towns and villages laid to waste, their occupants slaughtered and orphaned children starving to death whilst the survivors can anticipate nothing better than a life of constant struggle and suffering.

That should do it. Try it tonight whist enjoying your third meal of the day.

Political Pygmies Revisited

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One of the enduring images of last week was the headline photograph of Prime Minister David Cameron, President Obama and the Danish Prime Minister (whose name escapes me) grinning inanely as the Danish PM took a picture (commonly referred to as a “selfie”) of the three of them on her mobile phone.

By itself there’s nothing wrong with that, just a bit of harmless fun in an often over-serious world – except that this was at a memorial service to the late Nelson Mandela whose funeral, at that time, had yet to take place.

For some reason, I cast my mind back to bygone images of world leaders pictured together and I settled on the famous photograph of the three allied leaders, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill taken at the Yalta summit in the latter days of the Second World War.

I wondered, had the technology been present at that time, whether any of those men would have taken a selfie at their meeting. I think we know the answer.

In this blog I have, on more than one occasion, referred to modern leaders as “political pygmies” in comparison to their forbears. After the events of last week, there can no longer be any doubt.

Police Informers

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Derbyshire police announced last week that they will pay a reward of £1000 to anybody reporting another member of the public who they suspect of driving under the influence of alcohol, payable presumably only following conviction. The announcement went on to suggest that people should even report their own friends. Now, not for one moment would I seek to condone drink driving but isn’t this taking matters too far?

Why stop there, why not pay people to report drivers for speeding, for using their mobile telephones when driving, for passing through a red light or any other transgression? Now you may think that any responsible citizen should and maybe would report law-breakers as a matter of course, particularly if other people’s lives are put at risk, and you may well be right.

So why would a responsible citizen have to be bribed to do something which he or she would feel duty-bound to do as a matter of course? The problem with this kind of initiative is that the police are in effect encouraging the public to act as paid informers or snitches against their fellow citizens. Maybe I’m out of touch here but I wonder is this really the kind of society – or country –  we wish to live in?

A Strong Man

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“Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge and dares forgive an injury”.

There will an avalanche of tributes to the memory of Nelson Mandela, who died yesterday evening, at the age of 95, but this quotation by the 19th century American preacher and poet E. H. Chapin seems to me to be an apposite epitaph.

We are all familiar with the history of Mandela’s struggles, his imprisonment and 27 long years of incarceration before his eventual release in 1990. Back then the world expected a desire for revenge against his former oppressors, a natural human trait, but instead it witnessed forgiveness which, as another great 20th century leader of peace and freedom, Mahatma Gandhi, described as “an attribute of the strong”.

The world lost a strong man yesterday.

The Perils of Paternity Leave

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Earlier this week the Government announced that from 2015 onwards fathers will be given a year’s leave to care for their new born babies. Very nice indeed for the fathers and their families but what about the businesses that employ those fathers?  I don’t mean large companies or corporations, with plenty of employees to go round, but smaller concerns such as family run businesses with a handful of employees each and every one of whom are vital to the success or failure of the operation.

 It’s all very well the Government issuing these people-pleasing edicts but what about those left to pick up the tab? Depending on which economist you listen to we are either still in or are just coming out of recession so isn’t it vital still that all hands remain firmly at the pump?

This, I’m afraid, is yet another example of government by liberal academics who have no experience of life in the real world and clearly no knowledge of how hard it is to run a business.

Allowing a key member of your company to take a year off because he has become a father may be a very nice humane gesture but it makes no business (or common) sense whatsoever.

Chaos in Bromsgrove

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Over the weekend the M42 motorway near Bromsgrove was closed for approximately 27 hours whilst local police tried to dissuade a man from throwing himself off a motorway bridge. They succeeded in their efforts but not before the incident had caused severe traffic chaos, a complete shutdown of roads in the local area and many instances of people stuck immobile in their vehicles for as long as 6 hours.

A row has broken out following the posting of tweets and messages on various  social media by people affected by the incident urging the man to jump so that they could all get on with their journeys and daily business. In response, the local Police Chief has accused them of insensitivity and a lack of compassion which is fair enough; surely nobody could really wish death upon such an unfortunate and clearly disturbed person?

Putting all that to one side however, it’s easy to see why people would be infuriated by the incident. They are entitled to ask why it took so long for the matter to be brought to a conclusion. For example, couldn’t the Police have arranged for netting or inflatable plastic/rubber to be placed under the bridge to stop the man’s fall? Couldn’t a couple of lorries be placed underneath the bridge to reduce the height of the drop? Don’t  the Police have experts available to deal with such incidents?  Should it really have taken well-over a day to bring the matter to a conclusion? What about the pandemonium  caused to the rest of the populace? All these questions deserve answers.

Pornographic Music Videos

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Earlier this month veteran singer Annie Lennox called for pop music videos to be censored and rated just as films are by the British Board of Film Classification. Many parents of young children are naturally very concerned at the exposure of their offspring to unregulated televised pop music videos of which some, in the opinion of many right-thinking folk, are nothing short of pornographic.

Action is surely required but, whatever steps are now taken it may be too late for a whole generation of youngsters brought up on an unlimited diet of porn on the internet and social media sites. Don’t forget that this is an age where the first act of courtship to many adolescents is to email or text the object of their desire photographs of their genitals. How do you regulate and police that?

The internet has proved to be a revolution like no other and is an undoubted boon to many. There is however a dark and sinister downside and I fear we are yet to see the full extent of its effects on our society.

Recruiting for the Extreme Right

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It was reported last week that a school in Blackburn has ordered its pupils to wear a hijab (a head dress covering the girls’ faces) both in and OUT of school. What makes this calculating and overt act of religious control even worse is the fact that the school, the Tauheedul Islam Girls’High School, is state-funded, funded by taxes collected from ordinary UK citizens like you and me.

When I saw the headline (in last week’s Sunday Times) I did a double take. Surely that couldn’t be true? Then I read the article and, yes, it is. What on Earth are we coming to. What is happening to a country that has, since the Middle Ages at least, prided itself on practising the essential freedoms and religious tolerance? Why would we allow this to happen?

The misguided liberals, of all major parties, who have governed us for the last twenty years or so would say that my reaction (a reaction shared by the majority, I’m sure) is that of a reactionary bigot. Well is it? Here’s what a well-respected Muslim has to say.

Haras Rafiq, the former expert adviser to the Government on the prevention of Islamic extremism, prepared a dossier in 2011 raising concerns about the Tauheedul  Charitable Trust which aims to set up more schools like the one in Blackburn. The Government ignored his concerns  and granted permission for the setting up of three such schools. No doubt, more will follow. Rafiq was quoted as saying “I think it threatens to create young British Muslims who are not able to integrate in the wider society, who are living in isolation and outside the wider community”. He’s right and, as one concerned parent of a pupil at the Blackburn school said “Religion belongs in the place of worship or the home and not the classroom”.

What do the Government say to that? Surely, even the most blinkered liberal can see that their policies will do nothing but foster more resentment among right-thinking folk (both Muslims and otherwise) and ultimately will lead to more racial tension. If the Government wanted to act as a recruiting sergeant for the extreme right they couldn’t be doing a better job. Such fools.

Family Fraud

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A report recently published by the Marriage Foundation reveals that almost a quarter of a million people in England and Wales are pretending to live apart so that they can claim single parent benefits worth up to in excess of £7,000 per year.

One of the reasons for this fraud (other than the obvious greed and criminality) is the fact that English tax rules have created a serious imbalance so that it actually costs more for parents to stay together than apart. Couples can make money by splitting up. That is crazy and the Government needs to act, if they are truly serious about their desire to clamp down on benefits fraud.

Either they want to create a fair society where people have the incentive to work and to create a stable family environment or they don’t. Benefits fraud and tax evasion are the twin evils of modern day British economics and the law-abiding electorate are getting sick of it.

 Unless the Government delivers on its promises voters will throw their lot in with someone else who will. The trouble is, at the moment, no realistic alternative seems to be presenting itself.

Protection or Oppression?

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There’s a very delicate balance between national security and individual liberty, a balance that’s sometimes very difficult to maintain. These are dangerous times and since the monstrous attacks of September 11th, 2001 the West has had to live in constant fear of those who would destroy us.

We in the UK, like most western countries, have given our government extended powers of arrest, detention and investigation in an attempt to provide further protection from the threat of terrorism. In return the Government surely has a duty to ensure that this power is used firmly, fairly and most important of all, proportionately.

Last week, UK Immigration officers at Heathrow airport detained a young Brazilian man, David Miranda, who just happened to be the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian newspaper journalist, who recently exposed details of illegal US and UK espionage activities. Miranda was taken away for questioning, locked up in a sealed room, denied the right to see a lawyer until the last minute and was then, after the maximum nine hours of interrogation permitted under the anti-terrorism laws, released without charge.

This was an example of a distortion of that balance between security and liberty, an example of authoritarian behaviour  based more on paranoia than an honest attempt to protect the nation from harm. It was an example of a misuse of power, of a government using its extended anti-terrorism power as an instrument of oppression. In short, it was behaviour more redolent of a totalitarian police state than a western democracy. We, and our law-abiding visitors, deserve better.

http://www.johnenglandcommonsense.com