Where is UKIP

I was under the impression that UKIP was against overseas & foreign interference with our sovereign Government & democratic process. I therefore look forward to hearing their howls of protest at the blatant intervention of the Unelected President of the World via his so-called newspaper in the forthcoming General Election.

Carrot & Stick

Once again teachers, anybody but the parent of the bully, must do something & be accountable. Can no one see what impossible nonsense this is? Schools have anti bullying strategies which quite rightly focus on trying to get to the bottom of why kids bully and sort out the problem, more often than not successfully. But in any population there is always a hard core who refuse to respond- and I mean 'refuse'. It is not the methods, dedication, psychology or what have you that fail. We don't want to admit it but some people are just determined to be bad. To capture their attention we need to stop using human rights in the way that was never intended i.e by protecting the perpetrator rather than the victim. Teachers property has been vandalised and they have been beaten & even killed intervening in bullying incidents. Parents of bullies threaten teachers - one even drove his car at a teacher. No one, let alone a teacher, is allowed to use the force that is necessary to restrain the determined bully. For a minority of thugs we need to bring back corporal punishment. They might then be receptive to rehabilitation. Right now they see the 'punishment' that we are allowed to dish out as a joke and an ASBO as a medal. Before anybody gets too excited at this such evidence as there is suggests that only something like 5% of young offenders would need this hardline. It is the gesture of last resort but it should be there.
--

BBC telescope to the blind eye

When all the NW MEPs took up their seats in the European Parliament the BBC NW & National news chose to feature Nick Griffin & no one else. I complained & got the BBC party line about having to be impartial. Now we have Griffin on Question Time & I complained as follows "Once again we get the same old excuse about obligation to be even handed to a legitimate political party. Fair enough but does the BBC have to be in such a hurry to give Griffin air time? Chris Davies, Liberal Democrat MEP for NW England, has just started his third term in the European Parliament. This was not mentioned on the News when you reported on Griffin taking his seat. Chris knows about the workings of Europe. Griffin knows nothing. Chris is a controversial figure especially over his support for the Palestinians. He has also led the EU Parliament on some important environmental issues. He would make a lively panelist. Yet Chris has never been invited. So much for 'balance'& 'impartiality'". The BBC's reply to this complaint refers me to the programme editors blog & quite deliberately misses the point.

News or no news?

James Murdoch is reported as saying that the BBC's 24hr news channels  and web site
were inhibiting the ability of commercial competitors to invest in news. The variety of interpretation of words within the English language is one of its' great strengths. I have been exposed to the concept of 'news' within the Murdoch Empire in Australia & the USA, as well as in Britain and I confess I struggle to equate them with my understanding of the word and thus I have difficulty in understanding his concern. Indeed the arguments he uses for constraining the BBC are precisely those that perhaps could usefully be applied to his own empire.

Inconsistencies & Questions

As of 1st April 2009 the total annual remuneration of the Prime Minister was £197,689. The boss of RBS gets an annual salary of £1.2 million just for turning up to work and millions more if he does anything useful. Way down the pecking order from the boss, annual financial sector bonuses exceed the Prime Ministers salary. Whatever ones view of Gordon Brown there is surely something wrong here. Why does Gordon (or anyone else) want the job? Could it be that power is more important than money? I wonder if we capped ALL financial sector remuneration at £200000 p.a. how many would actually quit?

Barons & peasants yet again

Two stories in today's [8th August] Financial Times. On the front page, Stephen Hester of RBS bewailing the continued criticism of the bank(s) saying that the numbers of top performing staff leaving had doubled in the first six months of 2009 after the bank agreed with the government to place restrictions on future bonus payments. The fact that all Mr Hester has to do is to get the banks share price to 70p in three years to earn himself £9.6million, does, I'm sure, not influence his view of the role of the bank for the public good. I had no sooner finished mopping up my tears of sympathy when lo, on the back page of the FT Money supplement, we find that the banks are refusing financial support to SMEs forcing some sound and valuable businesses to go bust in the process. The global financial industry had to be kept afloat (sadly) but we should have allowed Northern Rock & RBS to go bust just to make the point to the others & deny Goodwin & Applegarth their grotesque rewards for failure. It has to be probable that depositors funds could have been protected for the same kind of money that has in any case been pumped into these two banks.

Sick joke=British justice

John Kiely was today jailed for 5yrs. It should have been 20yrs & he should have been stripped of everything he owned. This man terrorised hundreds of poor people who had borrowed trivial sums from him on which he charged outrageous interest. It was reported that he had made profits of £2.9m from 2003 until his arrest. Only last year he was given a Licence to trade in financial matters. So much for regulation & justice. Meanwhile 1400 female shoplifters, of whom 80% will re-offend within two years of release, are clogging up the prisons at a cost of some £35000 p.a. each. Is this really financially smart,let alone justice?