Punishment fit the crime?

From just one edition of my local paper the sentencing policy of the Magistrates suggests that all that seems to really matter to make our roads totally safe is that you don't exceed some arbitrary speed limit, often bearing little relevance to the true safe speed for the road.

Female without insurance: Fine £100 & six points
Female without insurance: Fine £65 & six points
Man without insurance: Fine £525 plus £85 costs and eight points
Man without insurance: Fine £250+£50costs+£15victim surcharge
Female twice over drink limit: Fine £100 & 18month ban
Man 50% over drink limit: Fine £305 & banned for 12months

Male caught exceeding 30mph limit [doesn't say by how much – if it had been a substantial excess would have been mentioned or even a headline]: Fine £60 plus costs £ 50 plus victim support £15 plus 3 points

What do we learn from this? Well as far as these magistrates are concerned if you are a woman you can save yourself several hundred pounds by not buying insurance. Bad luck on your victims but clearly they are of no consequence to this Bench. Actually being female is a great advantage. Previously a drunk uninsured woman who ran over a boy & broke both his legs got away with a trivial punishment.

Still never mind.

Who are the truly stupid

I've just been reading about the plight of the American 99ers in the paper. We are a bit more receptive to the needs of those who are unemployed in the UK although we have to wait & see exactly what the revisions to the benefit system amount to. The devil is always in the detail. I'd feel more comfortable if the media & political focus was equally condemnatory, & determined to act, over those who 'massage' their tax bill - legally or otherwise. It is hard to escape the conclusion the that the truly, really, stupid in this country are those who work hard, don't make a damn nuisance of themselves & pay their taxes. That is not a good conclusion. I'd like to see a concerted number of positive steps by government to convince me it wasn't true

You have to be impressed.

The World Bank is to lend [not donate you notice] $900m to Pakistan to relieve the distress of maybe 20million people. About one sixth of the bonus pot being dished out by Goldman Sachs to relieve the distress of a few thousand employees. You've just got to be impressed!!!! No wonder the rest of the world hates the Anglo American power block.

Special relationship my eye

Much excitement over Nick Clegg calling the Iraq war 'illegal' at PMQ's but why shouldn't he? This has always been the LibDem view since before the war started & the Tories were gung ho in favour of it. We haven't joined the Tory Party & don't have to support their position on everything. Much more of a gaffe was David Cameron talking about 1940. Personally I am sick to the back teeth over all this rubbish about 'special relationship' with the USA. If it ever existed it was given a cruel blow when, no sooner had WWII ended the USA was demanding repayment of our war loan. It was given a further battering when the USA (rightly) refused to support the Suez adventure. We gave it a belt when Harold Wilson (rightly) refused to go into Vietnam. One could go on - the full listing of failures of mutual support since 1945 could fill pages. The USA did not enter WWI or WWII until their own self interest was at stake. I don't object to that but for goodness sake let's stop kidding ourselves. Cameron needs to tell the USA that GREAT BRITAIN won the battle to stop Hitler in 1940 - ALONE. At the time the USA was being pretty unsupportive.

Know thyself

The UK Ambassador to Lebanon dared to observe that " The World needs more men like him [the late Ayatollah Fadlallah] willing to reach across faiths, acknowledging the reality of the modern world and daring to confront old constraints". According to reports the Ayatollah was pretty hard line & militant in his opposition to the USA & Israel. So predictably the Israeli Government protested & the 'blog' was taken down. Israel said "The British Ambassador must decide whether promoting terror and giving it religious justification can be considered a heritage to be cherished". If the Government of Israel applied this statement to itself some progress toward peace in the Middle East might just begin to be possible.

A very sick world

In a major three page story on Sunday 11th July 2010 about Haiti the Observer noted that only a fraction of the more than $5bn aid promised by the international community since the devastating earthquake on 12th January 2010 had so far been delivered. Millions are still living in tents & shacks made from essentially debris. If they are lucky they might get as much as $2 a day to live on. On the 21st January 2010 Goldman Sachs announced a bonus pot of $16.2bn. Something is surely very very sick in our homo sapiens world.

Getting a true sense of priorities

Some elements of our great & glorious press make our little chests swell with pride at the grasp they have of true priorities. Never mind the floods in Brazil, the tragic death of the 300th soldier in Afghanistan, ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and so on & so on. Yesterdays Daily Mail devoted its' entire front page to the love life of Chris Huhne.