Corruption in football

As is so often the case, we find real life reflecting my fictional stories.
Police are investigating allegations of match-fixing in the lower football leagues less than a year after I published my novel, 'The George at Bustington'; available for download from Amazon for the price of a pint.

My novel tells the personal stories of the players and staff of Bustington Wanderers within a background of widespread corruption in the industry. BUY NOW: here

Scottish Independence

The decision of whether the Scots abandon the United Kingdom to rule themselves and align themselves to be ruled by the unelected EU will be down to the Scots in September next year. A quick look at the political map of the UK will show that virtually all of Scotland votes for Socialism despite the Labour party almost bringing the Nation to its knees with economic malfeasance. On this basis, that the people of Scotland will collectively vote in the national interest, or for that matter, theirs, doesn't seem likely? It seems to me that when it comes to elections they're as looney as the leader of the SNP, AleX Salmond. Keeping the pound; I ask you!
But wait a minute! If the Scots secede won't they lose all the money that the mostly English cough up keeping the less than 5 million population of the frozen northern wastes above the bread line? Well! as the Scots wring their hands with the dilemma, we better get used to the debate because we've got ten wasteful months, not to mention the money, of this fatuous exercise.

RBS cheats

News is emerging of bad practice at RBS bank. Taking advantage of the economic decline, it is alleged that they forced viable companies into liquidation in order to pick up property at rock bottom prices thereby making huge profits. I know of one such Company and it is privately taking RBS to court. This is not an isolated incident and as 80% owners, the public are likely to suffer as a consequence of this Bank's unacceptable behaviour. The ramifications have been wide reaching, not only for the mostly small Companies that have suffered, the personal financial loss of the shareholders, their worry and distress for businesses often started from scratch, but also for some Bank employees, unhappy at following the bank's policy being forced to resign.
Let us hope that in this instance, bankers found to be responsible for malfeasance are JAILED or otherwise disgraced and their assets, including property, confiscated.

I have often written in my blogs how real life often follows fiction in my works. To read of a property scam similar to the above, download from Amazon:  The Green Man at Buddleigh  here

British politics hits an all time low

I think I've reached my personal nadir of political expectation.
News today that the parliamentary standards people can find nothing wrong with Tim Yeo's chairmanship of the energy select committee whilst holding senior positions with several energy companies is matched by the BBC's less than candid investigation into the Savile atrocities and the extraordinary excess payments made to underperforming executives. Couple that with the Prime Minister's programme of pushing through parliament gay marriage legislation whilst stalling with a EU referendum and Labour's less than convincing explanations over the Falkirk elections, their relationship with the increasingly hostile Unite union and their reliance for funds on the Co-Op Bank under the auspices of a known Methodist Church sinner.
One has to conclude that the whole lot are a disgrace, led by a Speaker who is beyond parody.
I have long decided that Democracy is a flawed political system because it gives the people  the chance to vote for their own interest rather than that of the country. Witness the polls today that show that 30% of the electorate want to re-elect a party that brought the Country to its knees with economic malfeasance. That is treachery!
However, if we must continue with the comedy of elections, there has never been a better time for a new party to enter the fray. A party that doesn't bring to the hustings baggage from the past. We also need better regulation of the regulators; people who are not afraid to confront the establishment. The government of the day have in the past thirty years filled the civil service with their own people and this practice must stop; NOW. This concept of the Government using press officers for 'getting its message across' has to be challenged; as is the employment of special advisers paid with taxpayers money. The electorate are mostly stupid but ought to be given the credit for making their own decisions without spin.
My message is in danger of becoming befuddled because of my apoplexic condition brought on by the cluster-f..k of stupidity emanating from Westminster. Even the newspapers, worried by legal threats are reluctant to expose the arrogant shits that govern the UK and the incompetent oafs that make up the official opposition. All I can say is thank goodness for Guido Fawkes!!

Christianity under threat

Baroness Warsi, the minister of faith in the British coalition Government is to talk on the threat to Christians around the world, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph. See:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10450617/Christians-face-extinction-amid-sectarian-terror-minister-warns.html

Christian communities have come under fire from mainly Muslim troublemakers who cannot understand a civil code of tolerance towards other faiths even if they worship the same God of Abraham. Why is this so?

I don't know. I have just read Diarmaid MacCulloch's epic book, 'A History of Christianity'; all eleven hundred pages of it. The overwhelming feeling I have after reading the more than three thousand year saga is the utter futility of religion as a God fearing institution. The constant revisions, the schisms, disagreements, the too many to count reinventions of the liturgy, the thousand and one different offshoots that demonstrate the simple fact that there isn't a simple central message that proclaims the will of God. The Holy texts and I include the Torah and the Qu'ran, because of their ambiguities and errors are simply not credible as inspired works of a supreme omnipotent creator God. Nor, apparently, is His will updated; Muslims do not know, fourteen hundred years after Muhammed whether it is better to follow the Shia or Sunnee practice. Mainstream Christianity in the guise of Roman Catholics, Orthodox or Protestant in its many forms have never formed a consensus nor is there any prospect of a fresh message from God; one that can clearly demonstrate to all the peoples of the world his existence and purpose.

As we despair about the disaster in the Philipines, we recognise that vulnerable people need not only immediate aid and comforting but hope for the future. Not a future beyond the grave but in this life framed, not in terms of an unknowable and unbelievable divinity but in the belief of the basic humanity of mankind.

Not possible you say!

Well, while the holy men are sodomizing youngsters and killing so called heretics, it is man (and woman) that is writing the texts, building the cathedrals, painting the chapel ceilings and scoring the emotional music that brings tears to the eye.
If religions are failing as God fearing organisations, do they have a role to play? Let the Church's prosper but can they please do it without reference to a God. The prophets yes, all of those who espoused love and peace, but God, no.
Good luck to those who run the Sunday Assemblies.

War crimes

A retired former officer, Major-General Thompson, has appealed to the court for leniency in the case of the Royal Marine found guilty of murdering a wounded enemy terrorist in Afghanistan. He, unlike the pathetically posturing politicians, understands the pressures of active service. As usual, the almost unique British sense of fair play has given comfort to the enemy who will no doubt see this risible result as a sign of National weakness. It is not the first time that the British have looked stupid by pursuing a sense of moral superiority in public self flagellation.
This is war! Shit happens! This young man should be able to cite extraordinary circumstances in his plea for leniency. For a start, he wasn't in Afghanistan out of personal choice; he'd sooner be with his friends and family in the UK but he was ordered to the hellhole of Afghanistan by politicians, suitably safe behind the front lines, in the so-called defence of the Realm. This at a time when seven of his colleagues had been cut down by a cowardly enemy that hides behind women and children and another soldier had been shot and killed by a rogue policeman that he'd just instructed in the use of firearms. Only seconds before, the smiling soldier had been photographed next to his murderous pupil.
What are the politicians doing about it? Giving succour to those who are trying to keep the country safe? Not a bit of it if you listen to Labour's Hazel Blears cross-examining the leaders of the British spy services. Her main concern seemed to be that despite huge provocation and casualties amongst hard pressed British forces, she was worried that we were using torture in pursuit of victory over our enemies. I ask you! Let me tell you Mrs. Blears that I'd rather torture an entire Nation than see a single British soldier harmed and I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that. As we celebrate the Day of Remembrance let us give unconditional support to those young men and women that face death each and every day in our defence.

Anna Soubry

The Conservative Defence Minister, Anna Soubry, last night demonstrated how out of touch the Government is on issues of concern to the public. Her attack on UKIP leader, Nigel Farage's reasonable assertion that the UK needed a policy of 'managed' immigration was met with a vitriolic outburst that was only matched by an unknown woman in the audience. So insistent was her rant, accusing the MEP of scaremongering, one was left feeling that she must be either: married to an East European, had a personal dispute with Farage or she was a Labour plant. Perhaps all three!
Does it not occur to the main parties that an attack on Farage is also an attack on the only politician who is listening to the people; giving them some hope of a break from the lying, thieving self-serving politicians that fill Westminster today. They will all suffer and no more so than Anna Soubry who accuses Farage of promoting prejudice whilst she is part of a ministry that is actively running down the Country's defence capability. The people of her constituency, Broxtowe, in Nottinghamshire know, I'm sure, their duty. Vote UKIP.

Driverless cars

The idea is back with us. A concept I first introduced in my 2008 novel, 'The Lamb at Nettlesham'.(Available for download from Amazon for the price of a pint). The Lamb at Nettlesham

For those who would like to read of the many advantages and possibilities of driverless cars in the UK's evermore congested roads, read   here and here and here.

The real point to be made however is that the UK, as world leaders, would derive all the world-wide benefits of developing and exporting all the technological knowhow. Instead of being behind the innovation curve we would be ahead of it. It's time the Government pulled its proverbial finger out and encouraged enterprises such as this. Oh yes and by the way; HS2 could be cancelled because it would no longer be needed along with the rest of the railways as they all convert to commercial pod traffic.

Minimum wage

At a time when WORKING families around the country are facing poverty, the Socialist leader, Ed Miliband, is making the case for the Minimum Wage for workers to be raised to make it a Living Wage.
The problem is, Companies are reluctant to pay workers more because it directly effects profit. Look at the big supermarkets; they employ many people, mostly women, on tills for instance but in a move to reduce the wage bill they are introducing 'do-it-yourself' checkouts. The motor industry employ robots rather than people for many jobs on the production line. Companies have a duty to earn their shareholders as big a profit as possible and this contrasts with the needs of their employees. One cannot escape the conflict of interests between modern industry and citizens need to earn a living. It was once considered that the strength of a company lay with its workforce but nowadays the Company is more likely to want to run down its wage bill.
This is another facet of what is irredeemably wrong with modern day Capitalism where wealth around the world, is being polarised creating a huge gulf between the 'haves' and 'not haves'. This is ultimately unsustainable.
We must recognise that seeking a profit is not in itself evil but it is a question of scale. Companies are too big, too influential and too powerful. It is the natural consequence of a  commercial evolution since the onset of the industrial Revolution. Has it now run its useful course? A relatively few large Companies now hold an unnattractive influence on the affairs of States. None of this is good for the majority of people who will be increasingly marginalised.
The mandatory reduction in size of Companies should be one of the priorities of all the major industrial Nations around the world. Will it happen? Of course not because the political classes are in the pockets of the very Companies they might seek to curb.

Christianity and the Judicial System

Christians are complaining that their faith is being sidelined in all aspects of British life.
This tendency was highlighted this week in a speech by Sir James Munby, the senior judge and President of the Family Division of the High Court, who spoke about Christianity’s decline as an influence in the judicial system.
Read more: here

Well forgive me but what the Christians are claiming, that their religion, as an offshoot of judaism, was responsible for founding the principles upon which jurisprudence and therfore all of British justice is based, is a load of bollocks. It does not take a genius to work out that when one establishes a blueprint for the proper code of conduct in newly civilized societies that one begins, thou shall not kill; thou shall not steal etc. It is common sense. nothing else. You do not need a divine presence to establish how the newly evolving cities of the second millenium BCE need to regulate behaviour for orderly coexistence or as we think of it now, neighbourliness. In the absence of a policeforce, what was needed was some sort of lever to persuade the populace to comply. Step in the priestly classes with the threat of divine retribution for sinners, thereby, At a stroke giving them power and contol over the populace. Its been so for four thousand years but times they are a changing. Increasing numbers of people are no longer prepared to swallow the line put out by the Abrahamic religions. The religios might complain but Justice Munby was only pointing out the obvious.

New standards in schools; a return to common sense

A head teacher on breakfast time television this morning whilst applauding the return of spelling and grammar, lamented the loss of what she thought of as the positives of modern teaching. ie more emphasis on course work.
Does she also lament the fact that since the advent of course work assessment, universities have to coach their new intakes with remedial English and mathematics because modern teaching is FAILING the students. Assessment on course work does not stretch pupils or, for that matter, teachers.
Does she also lament the fact that the UK has dropped down the international league table of educational standards from close to the top to twenty-first or thereabouts in the last thirty years.
Bring back grammar schools!