The Bolton News Printed It.

Remember that letter to the Bolton News I posted about on Saturday. Well it was printed, and was the letter that made the headline for the letters page as well! It survived remarkably intact from being edited. They've altered some of the punctuation and the odd comment, which I think makes some of the prose lose its original "bite". But 99 percent of what I submitted, made it on there. I must admit, although I thought my letter was quite good, and was pretty much what I originally set out to write (and had to re write as the e-mail deleted the bloody original one I was to send!) I did feel a bit bad at first, the letter is quite scathing, and I'm sure Mr. Harrison wouldn't have been expecting such a "robust" response (I actually think he would have liked a letter backing him up on how right he was about the cushy life on the dole.) But then I thought stuff it a bit. It's a lot worse for unemployed people worrying about their state of affairs, than someone being put out by a scathing letter setting them straight. I suppose that was really why I wrote it, not withstanding the fact that it was combating my pet peeve, lazy [non] thinking and right wing urban myths. But because he was belittling an issue that really affects people badly on a personal level, people who often have little voice. I hope that I spoke up for more people than myself. Challenge a stereotype for once, not perpetuate one.

Some Concluding Comments on the Speed Camera Affair

There was an interesting interview with Julie Spence,the outgoing head of Cambridgeshire police in the Telegraph the other day. It has been given coverage in other newspapers, including the Mail. The gist of it is that she says middle class folk who (rightly) want to see wrongdoers face the consequences of their actions, but do not apply this philosophy when breaking speed limits, are really being quite hypocritical (I agree.) It relates to the decision to remove fixed speed cameras in Oxfordshire, which has been criticized by the chief constable. I did a posting on the effectiveness of speed cameras here so I won't rehash on this one. Instead I want to highlight on some of what Ms. Spence has said, some of the loaded comments added by the Mail, and most importantly some of the comments to the article, which I believe are at the heart of the speeding problem.

" Julie Spence, one of the country's longest-serving chief constables, described speeding as 'middle-class anti-social behaviour'.

She said: 'People think, "We should be able to get away with it".
'They wouldn't tolerate lawbreaking by somebody else but they do it themselves without thinking.

'It all seems OK until something tragic happens, like their child dies because of a road traffic accident."

This needs to be highlighted more often, and we will see it in the comments below. Laws have to be applied evenly, objectively with a give and take, not just on the subjective whim,- say if the face fits, which some seem to want. It aint practical (not to mention in the spirit of the rule of law) It's always ironic that [law] is most in need of objective application to be both practical and fair, but is perhaps the most subjective issue of all.

"Her comments will put her at odds with many middle-class motorists, who feel persecuted by speed cameras and believe they are a 'soft target' for fines.

Many motorists who are caught speeding complain that they are being used to line the pockets of councils."

If that is the case. How do Gatsos single out Middle Class people? Won't they zap anyone speeding? And why are they being removed in a cost cutting exercise, if the rake in cash?

"Speeding fines raise about £100million every year - and many drivers believe that police should instead be targeting more serious offenders."

Thus in lies the problem.

"But Mrs Spence, 55, said that while anti-social behaviour is often associated with rowdy youths or vandalism, 'for too many it is the antics of drivers who refuse to accept that speed limit signs apply to them"

Good point.

"'Driving without care or consideration for other road users is probably among the worst kind of antisocial behaviour in its truest sense, because serious offenders can, and do, kill."

Ditto.

It is also difficult for the Mail to paint her as a do-gooder, Gordon McNueLiebore nanny state PC, pc (or whatever), when she says stuff like.

" that too much police time was spent on 'social work', blames the 'have-it-all' society for many social problems.

'Easy credit, drink as much as you can, have it when you want, buy this, buy that and buy the other,' she said.

'This irresponsibility costs - you play while others pay - and I think we have got to the point where we need to have a little more responsibility"

The underlying problem I have with this whole thing is that there seems a whole set of drivers out there who just will not accept that speeding is a big deal at all. That the right to drive very fast, should possibly be weighed against the right not to have a tonne of Mercedes smearing someone/something onto a primary A - road. Comments like this:

" These Chief Constables have themselves to blame for their in efficient and useless forces....... Now they need to make changes, get officers off paperwork and "elf and safety" rubbish and get on with what they are meant to be doing and SUPPORT THEM"

"Interesting that Criminals (think GBH, robbery with violence,etc) and speeding motorists are being spoken about in the same terms."

Well they aren't. But the end result of all can be carnage and maiming, and deaths, senseless horrible deaths at that. That is what she was trying to say.

"Well, she just about epitomises everything which is wrong with UK - stupid politically correct idiots over promoted far beyond their capabilities making daft comments. I recall my last speeding offence on M6 on a quiet Sunday morning doing 82 MPH. I was clocked by one of those silly vans which sit on the top of motorway bridges - for goodness sake I was the only bleeding car on the road. Are they all bonkers, how in heaven's sake is that worthy of a fine and 3 points. About time these PC coppers were thrown back to wherever they came from - pushing pointless paper around in some pointless job I've no doubt.

My heart bleeds.

"She wants to seriously consider why the majority of people in the UK are too scared to go out at night in ANY city or major town. Speeding drivers I can handle, the thugs that control our streets I cannot. Hasn't she got anything better to do with her time?"

Trying to stop both of them I think. Speeding cars are as good at breaking bones as muggers.

"The police just love to attack the middle classes don't they, possibly because they are soft targets and don't assault the police when they get caught. A sense of proportion from the police would be helpful along with some recognition from them that there is an understanding that burgulary , theft and assault are very different concepts from travelling in your car at 5-10 mph above the speed limit."

They are different concepts, but getting hit by a speeding car can be a lot more painful than a punch in the face.

All these comments are in the green. I didn't include all the ones about "the police should catch proper crooks instead of picking on middle class people." or "working class people speed too." (she never said they didn't.) And they highlight a worrying trend that some drivers just really downplay the dangers of speeding, and see it as "acceptable.". I really got an insight into how entrenched this desire to speed was when I saw "Police Camera Action" the other week. We saw three habitual speeders (heavy duty speeding. Up to 170 mph on the A 14, in one case) meet a 4 year old girl who was paralysed from the neck down, brain damaged and unable to breath without a ventilator. Her life totally, utterly ruined by a head on smash with an oncoming driver (who admitted to continuing speeding after the accident happened!) One of the drivers clearly was trying to wrestle with his desire to speed, against the terrible human cost of the worst case endpoint of this desire. We've made progress in making the roads safer (8000 in 1966 to 3000 in 2007), but this blase attitude to speeding, relative to the perceived dangers of robbery and assaults (which don't result in 3000 fatalities per annum, let alone 8000.) shows we have a way to go. But with brave officers like Julie Spence, who is willing to face the wrath of the more vocal "speeding lobby", we may be able to bring that figure down.

No Sign of my Letter.

In my last post, I showed a transcript of a letter I sent to the Bolton News, responding to the idiotic comments of Arnold Harrison about youth unemployment, where he pumped out the usual spiel about most people taking unemployment as a "cushy" option to real work. The kind of stuff that any pub bore who knows naff all about the real state of unemployment, passed off as complete scientific opinion. I sent the letter (well I e-mailed it) off Saturday morning, but it hasn't been printed today, and generally rebuttals to other peoples letters in the Bolton News get printed a day or so after the offending screed. So if there is nothing tomorrow, I doubt it's going to get printed at all, which is a shame as the letters page can be a bit of a bastion of sheer pompous idiocy at times. They could do with a good grenade lobbed in there now and again. It is also a shame, because I took that long dawdling writing the damn thing, the registration time out ooji Mcdoodgey on the e-mail kicked in, deleting the bloody thing completely. Upon which I had to write it again from scratch! Bummer.

Arnie. Prepare to be Terminated!

As I said in my previous post. I am currently unemployed at the moment. Another victim of staffing spending cuts during the economic downturn. It's pretty tough, and there is a lot of competition for jobs at the moment. There is simultaneously an up swelling in stories about "cushy benefits anecdotes." and that life on the dole is too rewarding to find real work. There is also talk of encouraging people to find work, which is all good and fine, IF THERE WERE LOADS OF BLOODY JOBS GOING! THERE ISN'T. THAT'S THE GODDAMN REASON PEOPLE LIKE MYSELF ARE OUT OF WORK!! There seems to be a bunch of people who think that everyone on the dole wants to be there. They do not seem capable of distinguishing the majority of people who are out of work due to plain bad luck, than the minority who do fiddle the system. People like Arnold Harrison who contributed this masterpiece of joined up thinking to the Bolton News:

"TO Mr Brian Derbyshire. I have followed your contributions for many years, not always agreeing, but in this case on reading your comments about Mr Stuart Chapman, I totally agree with him.

Many of the present younger generation do not want to work and have no intention of doing so In many cases it being no fault of their own but the system. The lack of quality education, the lack of incentives and deterrents. Why rise early in the morning to start work at 7.30am in a mundane job with little future prospects when I can stay in bed, draw my weekly benefits and with a little wheeling and dealing get by very nicely, thank you.

Why learn? Why conform? Why work? The pot at the end of the rainbow does exist but only for the very few. The remainder are happy to sit and wait for the finger of fate. In the meantime, life is more than bearable and do not gorge, Mr Derbyshire, our nation has a policy of importing foreign workers to do the jobs we will not do ourselves. It is the system.

Arnold Harrison Little Hulton"

Missing the point a bit. Doing Northernbloke has raddled my brain or something. I have a greater urge to hammer these people around the head (spiritually speaking of course!) with the stupid illogic of their own ramblings, than I used to do. So I sent this response to this idiotic letter that goes as follows.

"One of the strongest indicators of healthy self awareness and a good grasp of the topic at hand is when you can judge whether to dive in and explain a complex social problem, or whether it is best to actually do some research on what you’re talking about beforehand. This way you don’t end up being the opinionated voice of the saloon bar pundit. A nugget of wisdom that seems to have escaped Mr. Arnold Harrison; author of (Why work for a mundane job?) a staggering letter about youth unemployment. Which is ironically, written by someone who knows nothing whatsoever on youth unemployment.

Leaving aside the tiresome and insulting cliché that “today’s youth” are a bunch of lazy oafs (they aren’t). Mr. Harrison appears to think that most unemployed people both want and choose to be unemployed. (They don’t) I’ll let Mr. Harrison into a little secret they don’t. Speaking as an unemployed, not so youthful youth, (31) I don’t appreciate being told by someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about on this issue that we are in the position we are in because we don’t want to work. And that I’m better off unemployed. (Trust me I’m NOT!) There are too many people out of work, and too few jobs to go round. I was made unemployed by the far reaching hand of the economic slump, not through choice. I have e-mailed and written to as many employers I can think of. If you get a response from one in thirty of them you are doing well. I’ve signed up for voluntary work, but there is a back log (work it out.) I’ve walked around retail estates giving out CV’s. I’ve even somehow managed to haul my lazy youthful backside out of bed at 6 am to do jobs in the past. Mr Harrisons letter really could have done with a bit of research.

I can assure him I have never got up thinking I’m on a winner. I’ve gone from quite a well paid job, to 60 quid a week on the dole (taxes which I paid into in previous jobs, and will pay back in future ones.) I am in a kind of limbo – which only those who unintentionally find themselves out of work can understand, as my life is on hold while I find something new. It’s the strangest kind of cushy existence I’ve ever experienced.

So Mr. Harrison, I suggest you get your facts straight, before sounding off in the paper. We live in hope."

I don't pull to many punches, and it is long(ish) for a newspaper letter, so I don't know how likely it is going to get published. But we'll see. I am so sick of this kind of lazy arsed [non] thinking, swallowing the big lie as generously as an alchie necks slugs of whisky. Two seconds of reflective thinking about what he had written should have told him that you do see lots of under 30's working in every day situations, oh all the bloody time! I literally believe people like Arnold have got their heads so squarely up their backsides, they would believe any limit of stuff so stupid and so self evidently irrational, if it backed up their silly world views. I don't think I could even begin to think up the kind of utter arse these people could potentially fall for, if it rang all the right bells. Even if I stayed in a dark room for 20 whole years. Depressing isn't it?

A Double Headed Assault

The Daily Expresses Christmases have all come at once with this story about the Romanian president, Traian Basescu's comments on how 2 million Romanians (100,000 in UK) are working overseas, because the natives of western Europe. (The Express headline implies he means the U.K. But further reading between the lines reveals that he actually was commenting on Italy, Spain, Germany and France. We don't get a look in!) are too accustomed to living off the cushy bosom of state welfare, to do the jobs the Romanians are filling. And indeed it is good for Romania, as they have a deficit of unemployed, and minimal welfare benefits themselves. It is really a double whammy for the Express, as they can (and do) claim that it will encourage more Romanians to come here, (pure speculation.) and allows them to have a pop at the feckless working classes, who live on our cushy (I've currently been put out of work, and waiting for all this money I'm apparently supposed to hosed down with! I most certainly AM NOT better off!) welfare system. At one point the.. You've guessed it - Taxpayers fucking Alliance give us this soundbite.

“President Basescu has held a mirror up to our welfare culture and identified the lack of incentives to work that mean so many UK nationals pick welfare over work, and so many migrants flock here to cash in.”

He said that the native born, OF A LIST OF NATIONS THAT DIDN'T INCLUDE BRITAIN were disenfranchised to work because of the "generous benefits", and that his countrymen had to fill those roles. Not that they were coming for benefits themselves.

Nigel Farage sticks his oar in with this statement.

“We cannot blame the Romanians for taking what they can get but we can blame our own Government for allowing British workers’ wages to be forced down and jobs to be handed over to those prepared to work for less.”

It's ambiguous whether his "what they can get" refers to benefits, but don't Farage and the "Tax Payers Alliance" always nail their libertarian, uber free market colours to the mast? Aren't these migrant workers embodying the spirit of free enterprise? Isn't wage deflation, and cost undercutting to those who are willing to work harder for less, the true spirit of the free market? Character building or some bollocks? Is Farage endorsing that the state should regulate the wages of low paid indigenous workers?

Now I must emphatically state that I don't support the raw free market philosophy of these people quoted. I know many who would suffer under a system, due to bad luck, the wrong place at the wrong time, not having an entrepreneurial nature. The totally self made society is often more myth than reality. I know a few "self maders" who had a bit of a leg up on the way. Nor is it right to ignore that certain working class groups do fare badly with such a mobile; globalised labour market. See the Lindsey oil depot trouble last year. (perhaps tax incentives for companies to invest in local workforces in deprived areas is an idea. I'm not averse to this sort of protectionism.) But migrant workers can create jobs too. I worked in a distribution warehouse a few years ago, for a Christmas job. It is safe to say, that the place was kept running by the Eastern European staff (my god these guys could work.). It would have been hard (IMHO) to staff it with just local workers, and gave me a perspective on this issue. But that is another story, and I may tell it one day. But it gets on my wick when these so - called champions of laissez faire, ostensibly try a bit of worker solidarity this way. A sad hypocritical joke.

A Masterpeice of Hypocracy. The Mail Lecturing People on Creating Helath Scares!

The bare brass faced balls of the Daily Mail and it's columnists is truly the stuff of legends. How Richard Littlejohn, the star columnist of a paper that sells more health scares, does x cause cancer? (Answer to tabloid rhetorical questions are usually no.) Why brushing your teeth causes rectal prolapses, and grapes make you go psychotic "health" articles. Shit like that. Yes, -how Littlejohn, sitting in his tacky villa in Florida can type the following article and keep a straight face at the ironic chutzpah of writing an article condemning overreactions to health scares in a paper that does more health scare stories, than a PG factory churns out teabags. Actually I do understand how he can, that six figure; closer to seven salary of his. That's what.


Here it is in full then.


"Labour blew £1.2 billion on the swine flu epidemic that never was.

A new study says all the money spent on patronising advertising campaigns, vaccinations, anti-virals and face-masks probably saved just 26 lives.

Each case cost £46million, which would have paid for six months of cancer drugs for 3,000 patients.

And no one can be sure if those 26 people wouldn’t have died anyway. Swine flu claimed fewer lives in Britain than a normal winter flu outbreak.

That’s despite hysterical predictions from the ludicrous Liam Donaldson, chief medical officer and Whitehall’s resident Dr Death, that 65,000 people would die.

We’ve been here before. Labour’s default mode whenever a potential public health problem arose was blind panic.

During the foot-and-mouth scare, every farm in Britain was turned into an al fresco Argentinian barbacoa pit.

Millions of animals were slaughtered unnecessarily, causing untold hardship in rural communities.

Five minutes after a sheep sneezed in Lanarkshire, Gordon Brown was summoning a press conference to announce that he was taking charge.

It was more Corporal Jones than Winston Churchill.

Same with headless chicken flu and the non-existent SARS epidemic, which was going to lead to thousands of corpses on the London underground.

The Tories have form in this area, too. Remember the great heterosexual Aids epidemic myth, which consumed hundreds of millions of pounds in the 1980s?

Perhaps it is too much to hope that the new Government will introduce a sense of proportion.
At the moment the risk-averse ‘if it saves one life’ tendency holds sway.

We simply can’t afford to keep throwing billions at every health scare. Rule one: Don’t panic."


I've a few rebuttals on what's been written, so here we go:


1. Regarding Labour "blowing" 1.2bn on combating swine flu. Hindsight is 20/20 (his argument about money wasted that could have been used in cancer drugs is the same thing.). The outbreak may never have happened anyway. The preparations may have prevented it from spreading in the first place. The H1N1 strain (not technically swine flu, but a hybrid of 3 strains of flu) was reported to have been responsible for 457 UK deaths. SARS about 775 worldwide. So there was a danger, and they weren't "the scares that never were." Real, human casualties occurred. It's easy to sit there as an armchair spectator afterwards, proclaiming that there may never have been an outbreak after all. Truth is influenza has a nasty habit of mutating, SARS is a RNA based pathogen, and thus more prone to mutation and species jumping than a DNA based one. It's hard to detect before hand if a virus will mutate (evolution is a reactive force after all.). Containment (after preliminary victims were identified as succumbing to these viruses) is the best option.


2. You can't compare funding cancer drugs (of which the juries out on their effectiveness) with preventing a viral pandemic. They are completely different things. The cost of prevention, is much less than the cost of a pandemic (in both lives and money).

3. It's all good and well complaining about the powers that be are so obsessed with "elf n safety" in regards to "if it saves one life" mentality. But we all know that if it was a Mail columnists family member, or the right kind of "face fits" victim who succumbed, then they would scream blue murder at the governments /NHS callousness in allowing their loved ones to die. The "if it saves one life" mentality perhaps doesn't seem as rigid, if it is someone close to you who needs saving.

4. About foot and mouth. The main reason so many cattle were destroyed was that although it didn't kill all of them, it damaged their ability to produce milk. They were essentially almost worthless on the market. Handy going to uni with someone who was a dairy farmer!

5. Hmm heterosexual AIDS?? Yeah we didn't get an epidemic here. But there's this place called Africa, and you might say it's a bit of a problem over there. It's hard to predict the extent of an epidemic, before it has occurred.

But all these rebuttals, really miss the point of his article. Littlejohn is not really interested in how the health system deals with pandemics. It's a win win argument. If there is no pandemic, the government and NHS have overreacted and wasted tax payers money, and thus are the enemy. If there was a pandemic, the government and NHS are incompetent and failed the tax payer who funds them to do the job they are supposed to do, and are thus the enemy. And all this from a paper that can blow any health scare (if there is even any basis at all to justify it) into a hysterical end of the world scenario. They have no right to lecture anyone on "getting it into perspective."

This kind of thing by "hard hitting" columnists like Littlejohn really bugs me. All the snide racism and homophobia, and plain nastiness and ill spirit that saturates his cruddy column is bad enough. But Littlejohn has admitted himself that his job is to "sit at the back and throw bottles", when he was asked why; if he was so pissed off about everything, did he not become an MP himself. The world and his wife can sit at the back dismissing everything as toss. I know full well that Littlejohn lacks the intelligence and gumption to ever try to put forward active solutions, or to have a reasoned debate without resorting to name calling. It stinks when knee jerk cynicism is palmed off as "brave" and "controversial", by the likes of Littlejohn. It's just the laziest and most crude form of punditry going.

I Fixed Something On My Laptop. This is a Miracle!

I'm astounded. For the first time ever I've actually fixed something on a computer when it started to play up. I was catching up on a few DVD's on the Nero player, when the whole machine seizes up, the screen goes weird, the colours on the screen go even weirder, and I'm left with a tiny version of the normal screen, that is about a quarter of the size -at the centre of the display, with a black border around it, which will not let me alter it to get it back to full size. But lo and behold, I managed to mess around with a few settings and get the display back to normal size. Thus, for the first time ever - I have mended a computer. That strange machine that functions on strange gobbledygook, and weird stuff that I have some genetic indisposition to ever understand. But no more! I fixed a computer, and that truly is a miracle.

I speak too soon. The bloody spell checker on blogger has now decided to stop working. (honest!!)