The Falklands

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It seems that the Falkland Islands are never far from the news with Argentina’s refusal to keep the islands out of the international spotlight. In spite of, and maybe because of, their defeat in 1982 Argentina continues to lay claim to the islands that they refer to as Las Malvinas and has recently stepped up those claims. As far as international law is concerned the Falklands, despite their physical proximity to Argentina, remain a sovereign territory and a part of the British Commonwealth. The population, small though it is, remains English-speaking and 100% committed to maintaining its links to the UK. That really should be an end to the matter but, of course, things are never that simple.

The latest flare-up has arisen through two matters, I suspect, namely the potentially rich oil and gas deposits off the islands and political  opportunism by an Argentine president, anxious to cling on to political power. The UK has responded, though it may be coincidence, by sending to the islands a Royal Prince as well as a state of the art warship from our dwindling navy. Today the Argentines have stated that we also have a nuclear submarine in the area or at least on its way there.

So what does all this mean? Is it mere rhetoric by the Argentine president or is it something more sinister? Are the islands at risk once more and is there a danger that Argentina, aware of the fact that we have weakened considerably since 1982, may be prepared to have another go. If they are, then are we capable of successfully defending the islands once more and will there be the political will and public support to see it through? Difficult questions and none of them are easy to answer, though I feel the public would most probably support a defence of British sovereign territory and I’m sure that the Prime Minister would be equally supportive.

However, the problem remains that it is a conflict that we could lose and clearly we should do everything we could to avoid any escalation towards that conflict. We are no longer the force that we were. On the world stage we have considerably declined economically, militarily and politically and 19th century style gunboat diplomacy is no longer an option for us. In 1982 we successfully defended the islands through the political will of Margaret Thatcher and a well organised and equipped task force backed fully by public opinion. We were also fortunate to have American support and luckier still to face a poorly equipped enemy, half of whose bombs and shells failed to explode even when they hit the target.

This time, I doubt we’ll get the same support from President Obama as we got from the anglophile President Reagan and I don’t think we should rely on faulty Argentine weaponry either. If relations continue to deteriorate between Argentina and the UK we may well have no option but to place the whole issue in the lap of the United Nations; a bitter pill to swallow but better than military humiliation.

Sport in Perspective

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Monday morning, it’s the start of the week and you’ve got a nice warm glow following the weekend’s sporting success. 


It’s strange that something over which we have no control can influence our mood and general demeanour and to somebody with no interest in sport it all must appear quite baffling. Sports fans and journalists alike often use warlike terms like battle and struggle to describe what they have witnessed on the playing field and  somebody once described sport as war without the fatalities; an interesting analogy. I recently visited the second world war cemetery at Kanchanaburi, Thailand close to the famous bridge over the River Kwai where nearly 7,000 allied soldiers are buried. Such visits are both moving and humbling and the visitor cannot fail to be left with a true sense of perspective of the realities of his or her own life.

Sport, on the other hand, for all its aggression and occasional violence is nothing more than a recreational activity providing us with an escape from the reality of our often humdrum lives. Although  it has the ability to move both participant and spectator alike, portraying as it does the exuberance of life and competition, it is not war. At times it can appear to be the most important thing in life and even a matter of life and death, as Bill Shankly once said, but when all is said and done it is only a game.

Still, having said all that the sweet taste of victory lingers long in the mouth particularly when, against all the odds, your national team has emerged triumphant over its bitter rivals!

Arrogant English?

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The oldest, and many would say still the best, tournament in world rugby union begins tomorrow. Yes, the Six Nations Championships are with us once more, with France seeming to be most people’s favourites to take the title. Wales, after an excellent world cup, should surely run them close and Ireland can never be written off. Poor England, following their disastrous world cup, the loss of their manager and the retirement of several experienced players, are fancied by few.
With a young and relatively inexperienced side England travel to Edinburgh to meet the eager Scots who need no encouragement in  trying to put one over their “auld enemy”. So confident are they that T shirts celebrating a Scottish victory are already on the streets of Edinburgh. Now that really is confidence isn’t it?
Can you imagine the howls of righteous indignation that would emanate from north of the border if it had been the other way round?  Imagine if T shirts had been printed celebrating an anticipated England victory? The accusations of English arrogance would fill the air for weeks, maybe months but when our neighbours behave this way  it’s all a marvellous example of their passion and patriotism! Funny that.
Memo to England – read the papers before the game, see how everybody has written you off, see how your opponents are already gloating and use it to your advantage. What greater inducement do you need to win the game?

Facebook Reveals All

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Evidently Facebook is to force something called Timeline on its users. This will allow others to quickly obtain information on any Facebook user by searching accurately via date rather than by haphazardly searching through endless data. Many subscribers, frightened of the embarrassment that a revelation of past indiscretions will cause, are now actively trying to persuade the owners of Facebook to scrap Timeline.

Two things occur to me here. Firstly, why would anybody (or at least anybody over the age of adolescence and/or with half a brain) want to post revealing photographs of themselves on Facebook for all to see? Does it not occur to them that not everybody is going to be impressed by photographs showing them smashed out of their brains whilst in a compromising position with somebody they shouldn’t be with?

Many employers, wishing to take on somebody under the age of 30, would probably have a good scan of Facebook just to make sure that they are appointing the right person. I imagine that a photograph of that person sat naked on a photocopier whilst throwing up over his/her friends at the previous employer’s Christmas party is hardly going to be an inducement to sign them up.

Secondly, I’ve always thought that there is a conceit in Facebook users thinking that anybody could really give a damn about what they do in their spare time. Yes, we all like a drink. Yes, we all like a laugh and yes, we all do silly things from time to time. So what? You’ve got a life and you like to have fun. Excellent, just get on with it and stop boring the pants off the rest of us.

We’ve all done daft things in our lives; things that we may be embarrassed by or ashamed of, things that are best forgotten and left hidden in the mists of time. The last thing we’d want (or so you’d think) is for these things to be revealed to all and sundry. Frankly, if anybody is big-headed or stupid enough to willingly post details of their indiscretions on the worldwide web they deserve everything they get.

The Welfare State

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There are many who believe that it is the duty of the state to look after the needs of its less fortunate citizens. A belief that the strong should protect the weak and that the wealthy should use their wealth to help the poor. These are not just the views of socialists but views that many of us feel should be at the very core of any civilised state. They are views, surely, that anyone with a conscience and a clear set of moral values would find hard to contradict.

Even at the height of Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries there was a huge gap between the means of the wealthy and the poor in this country and it wasn’t until 1909 that Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, began to redress the balance with his radical and bold People’s Budget. By the late 1940s the Welfare State was well and truly established with the setting up of the National Health Service and other welfare organisations by Clement Attlee’s Labour government. All these advances were surely for the better, establishing, as they did, the rights of everybody to free education, free healthcare, benefits for the unemployed and allowances for those who were sick or disabled.

However, as so often happens in this country, the pendulum has swung too far. Now, nationally, we have whole families who have no incentive whatever to work because they would earn less than they would receive in State handouts. This isn’t even a recent phenomenon since some families can boast (if that’s the right word) several generations who have never worked. Add to this the fact that this country regularly allows people from all over the world, with no ties or links to the UK, to enter the country and claim the full range of benefits including housing and unemployment and it becomes clear why the system is collapsing and on the verge of bankruptcy.

This week the government, very sensibly, announced that it intended to cap the maximum benefits payable. A figure of £26,000 was announced which to many seemed incredibly generous, equating as it does to a full time  worker grossing £35,000 or so per year. Even then, incredibly, certain politicians declared their opposition stating that it was unfair. Unfair? How on earth can that be unfair? Turn the question on its head and ask is it fair that working citizens should earn less than those who, whether through choice or otherwise, do not work?

We are in the middle of a terrible worldwide recession and unless and until we get to grips with these problems we will continue to slide even further down the slope to economic oblivion.

Male Aggression

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Today’s edition of the journal “Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society” (no, I’d never heard of it before today either) reveals that male sex drive is the root cause of most of the world’s violence from football to wars. Really? I wonder how much the scientists behind this story were paid for stating the bl**ding obvious!

Evidently, the report continues, men are shaped by evolution to be aggressive to “outsiders”. Well, of course they are. Traditionally, man has always been the hunter-gatherer whilst woman has always been the homemaker and family carer – no matter what shaven-headed feminists might say to the contrary. Since the days of the cavemen the male of the species has always defended the home or settlement against outsiders and has always dealt with intruders and rivals in an aggressive manner. Through time this developed on to a tribal and national level and any cursory glance at the history books of any nation in the world will show centuries of male-led and executed violence from the Greeks to Genghis Khan and from the Romans to the Nazis. It’s what men do, unfortunately.

The report, again stating the obvious, concludes that women tend to resolve their conflicts peacefully, although on second thoughts, when I consider my time as a divorce lawyer,  perhaps it isn’t quite so obvious after all! Women are  evidently programmed  “to protect and befriend” their offspring and this certainly makes sense.

Women have much to teach us men (with the clear exceptions of parking and reversing!) and maybe if there were more women in positions of power throughout the world it would be a safer place. I’m sure that there would be fewer wars. I can’t imagine that many mothers would willingly risk the lives of their sons by sending them off to battle, can you?

Fat Britain

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We are often told by medical experts and government officials that the UK is in the flabby grip of an obesity epidemic although, frankly, you’d have to live in a monastery or be completely housebound with no television to be unaware of this fact. The briefest of visits to your local high street will certainly give you the impression that we have been taken over by thousands of invaders from the Planet Blubber or the offspring of Jabba the Hut!

It’s sometimes hard to make your way down supermarket aisles, blocked as they are by huge beasts loading their trolleys with frozen pizzas, bogof own-brand sausages and multipacks of Walkers crisps. Fastfood shops are packed full of customers salivating at the thought of their 24 deepfried chicken pieces loaded into gallon size cardboard buckets and young girls, their huge guts bloated by a lifetime of chip fat and fried bread, stand around swigging cola and smoking cheap cigarettes in between their feeds. Yes, welcome to modern Britain.

Don’t get me wrong, I realise that some people cannot help their weight, whether through some medical condition or inherited genes, and they deserve our sympathy, support and respect. The others not so.

The icing on the cake (burger more like) was a report earlier this week that some NHS hospitals are concerned that some of their patients are so grossly overweight that they are unable to pass through hospital CT scanners. The scanners were not designed for such large beings and so some hospitals are considering asking their local zoos if they can use their animal CT scanners which are evidently able to scan patients of 30 stones and over! Apparently, this is a fairly common occurrence in the USA where they have had a problem with obesity for many years. Still, good to see that we are catching up.

The Crazy World of the RFU

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As we all know, the RFU, the ruling body of English rugby union, are searching for a new manager following the resignation of Martin Johnson last autumn. The interim appointment of Stuart Lancaster as caretaker manager for the Six Nations Championship does, however, appear to be a good one.

Although it is two weeks before the tournament begins Lancaster, the former manager of England’s reserves (the England Saxons) has made an encouraging start. He has said all the right things, cleared the decks, selected boldly, and seems to be doing everything he can to restore a proper sense of value and some humility to the side following the debacle of the 2011 World Cup. It has now been revealed, however, that the RFU wish to appoint a full time manager before the tournament is over, so no pressure on Lancaster there then. If the RFU were confident enough to make him caretaker manager why are they not confident enough and sensible enough to wait until the tournament’s conclusion  before passing judgement on him?

If that in itself wasn’t crazy enough they have, instead of drawing up a list of possible candidates, appointed a firm of City headhunters to do it for them. What, how many could there realistically be? Ask anybody with even a basic knowledge of rugby union and they will probably be able to name at least four contenders. From the English ranks the aforementioned Stuart Lancaster along with the popular Jim Mallinder of Northampton and from the ranks of foreigners Nick Mallet of South Africa and Eddie Jones of Australia all appear realistic choices. Most rugby aficianados could probably double that number so why pay a slick firm of headhunters no doubt huge sums of money to do the job?

That money could be better spent on the grassroots of the game, kit and equipment for schools, improved facilities for junior clubs, coaching for inner city kids etc. It really does fill you with a sense of exasperation. In the 1990s Will Carling, the former England captain, described rugby union’s ruling body as “old farts”. Not a lot has changed has it?

Travel Bureaucracy

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Readers of this blog (and you both know who you are!) will remember that I posted two blogs last summer about the inconsistencies and anomalies of UK airport security. Most of us who travel regularly know the rules, the red tape and the hoops that we have to jump through to get from A to B and generally we play along, co-operate fully and emerge unscathed at the other end. Well, I have to hold my hands up and admit that, last week, I momentarily forgot the rules and did a terrible thing.

I tried to smuggle a 200ml can of shaving gel through Manchester Security. I know, I know, what a thing to admit to! I’m sorry to shock you like this but I have to say that it was an act of thoughtlessness rather than outright criminality and never ever before have I tried to break the 100ml limit.

As the sombre official confiscated the offending can I shrugged my shoulders and smiled sheepishly at her, half expecting an armed guard to burst through the crowds and spread eagle me against the wall. That didn’t happen, of course, and the official even gave me the option to fly the can through as hold luggage at a cost of £25. No thanks, I’m more of a Gillette than a Calvin Klein man and 5 euros would easily buy a replacement, though I was grateful for the kind offer.

What I wanted to ask, was firstly, why would the can be less dangerous in the hold than in the cabin? Secondly, why is a can containing 200ml of shaving gel more lethal than a can containing 100ml? Of course, nobody knows the answers because there are no answers. These are just ridiculous, ill-conceived, ill-thought out, knee-jerk European Union laws drafted by some guy chained up in a dark Brussels basement. Our job is not to question, it is simply to accept the rules and get on with it.

I did some research though and the guy in the basement has now decided that it is in fact ok to travel with larger quantities of liquids. The trouble is though that the present rules will remain in force until April 29th, 2013. Why ………….oh, forget it!

Happy Children

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The results of a survey into the happiness of the nation’s children were published yesterday revealing that a sizeable proportion of our children are unhappy. Of course, some sections of the media seized upon this as yet another example of our collapsing society but is it really? Shouldn’t we just pause for breath, take a step back and see what the survey was actually about. For example, what questions were asked of those taking part and what were their replies? What were the ages of those questioned?

In the midst of all the angst and browbeating there was a calming voice of reason and common sense in the form of an inner city secondary school headmaster who said that children, particularly those under 10 years rarely concern themselves with the long term so it is not fair to ask them about long term happiness. A child will often say he is unhappy if he has been denied an ice cream or has been prevented from using his computer because he was rude to his mother. That is short term unhappiness and it soon blows over.  
The person best qualified to comment on a child’s long term happiness is someone close to the child whether it be a parent or teacher. Adults have the advantage of experience and we should use this to help our children. Children need guidance and structure in their lives. They need rules and regulations, set boundaries and most of all they need leadership. They need to feel appreciated, they need to feel safe and secure and at home they need to feel loved. If they have all that then, of course, they will feel happy irrespective of the number of ice creams they consume!
Is there really a need to analyse our children and to burden them with the travails of modern life? Talking of burdens, is there really a need for schools to give  homework to infants? Childhood can and should be a joyous time and children should be encouraged to express themselves, to play and to have fun with their friends. Put simply, they should be allowed to be children, adulthood will arrive soon enough.