The Furrowed Brow.
The place for serious talk about serious things. What's on your mind?
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This week's Serious Things...
The incessant coverage of the poor wee missing girl in Portugal, and the increasingly strident complaints from the media about the Portugese police having the audacity to do their jobs rather than waste their time filling up 24-hour news channels.
The US again blocking plans - this time at the G8 - to combat climate change.
And of course... Eurovision.
It seems to me that the warmth of Tony Blair's personal endorsement of his 'inevitable' successor, Gordon Brown, after a decade-long power struggle that has proved so destabilising to the workings of government, will not make it any easier for the Chancellor when he moves into 10 Downing Street.
However, the glowing nature of the outgoing Prime Minister's tribute will lead many reasonable-thinking members of the public to question why there has been so much enmity between the two men, if this mutual eulogising is to be taken at face value.
Yet while Mr Brown's bêtes noires, such as Peter Mandelson and Alan Milburn, may believe that they are performing the Labour Party a service by rallying behind the Chancellor, I suspect that this view is not universally shared by the electorate at large, who would relish the prospect of a meaningful leadership contest.
For, when Mr Brown has the temerity to launch his leadership bid by promising, among various pledges, to reward those who save, he deserves to be put on the spot rather than proceed, unchallenged, along a carefully choreographed tour of the country that will culminate in a grand "coronation".
This is the political leader, after all, whose indiscriminate raid on private pension funds, counter to the advice put forward by senior officials, has left many senior citizens facing an impoverished retirement and a generation reluctant to heed the Government's advice and put sufficient money aside for the future.
Such assertions, given Mr Brown's record, should be properly debated. And so should the Chancellor's desire for a "fresh start". For it would be improper if he was to set the political agenda for the next seven weeks without facing a level of scrutiny over New Labour's period in office.
This is because Mr Brown personally endorsed the decisions taken on the issues that will dominate his period in office, such as Iraq, the NHS, pensions and the soaring tax burden that is beginning to impinge upon so many families as interest rates continue to rise. Furthermore, the Chancellor has still to adequately address the growing resentment about how his government's devolution policies have led to a skewing of the public finances in favour of the Celtic nations.
I think Mr Brown has much still to prove before he assumes control of the country. And, unless he faces up to these issues, and others, prior to his anointment as Prime Minister, his early days in office could be very troubled indeed. For, while he may have successfully coerced the Labour Party into deciding that he is the man to succeed Tony Blair, I am even more unconvinced after his recent leadership launch, beacause I think it's a paradox entirely of Gordon Brown's own making.
Eddie;
The thing which needs to be kept alive is the ongoing discussion of children with Special Educational Needs. I can't recall any topic since Day One which has brought such a wealth of impassioned contributions. All of it heading just one way.
These people (I'm not one of them. Thank God!) need Yvonne and the PM team to take up the baton on their behalf and get at the real facts behind SEN provision in the U.K. and then get the education department on air to discuss the gaping difference between reality and their legal obligations based on those very facts (which it seems they will do anything to avoid on this reading).
Si.
Responding to one of your listeners on Friday's PM about the stupidity of the 150K voters in Scottish parliamentary election whose ballot papers were spoiled.
I was one of those voters. I understood perfectly well how to vote - my problem was the choice of who and what to vote for. NONE of the parties or leaders presented views which I could support.
As usual, the most innovative nation on the planet threw up the most inept candidates for leadership probably because the best ones had left the country.
I note one of the Scottish sunday papers yesterday in editorial comment said it would support the SNP if it dropped some of its idiot policies - such as local income tax.
I could not abstain from voting, that would be viewed as lack of interest. I did the next best thing - left all boxes blank and entered 'None of these'.
Strangely enough the best possible solution emerged.
Labour has lost its stranglehold, so with luck its corrupt practices will diminish.
Socialist workers achieved the oblivion they richly deserved.
Lib dems are a joke.
Greens policy is based on illusions.
Tories - who?
Leaving SNP in a wholly impossible position to try to implement their stupid policies.
Excellent! Democracy in action.
So farewell then Tony Blair, whose arrogance, dishonesty and sheer bad judgement took us into a war which will harm us and the rest of world for a generation.Worse even than Eden's Suez madness, it was the most tragic mistake made by a British Prime Minister since the nineteenth century. Let us play him out with a reminder of the unsavoury affair which inspired and sustained him throughout his shameful years as our leader.
Bought a packet of duck legs confit the other week and the label on the back read, Freezable.Previously frozen. Do not refreeze. What on earth does it mean? That you could have frozen the stuff if the manufacturer hadn’t frozen it first, but now you mustn’t? That you can freeze it once, but not twice? Or merely that the night before the final copy was approved the whole Packaging Design Dept. (Chilled Foods Division) had been overdoing the Macedonian Merlot (5% off) at a party celebrating the engagement of Darren (Asst. Manager, Pack Warnings Team) to Sharon from Accounts?
I wasn’t much bothered because I didn’t want to freeze it anyway (we ate the legs that night: they weren’t particularly nice), but I was curious to know the answer so, as it’s a free number and I was having a quiet day, I telephoned the supermarket’s Careline.
Young Beverley was polite but couldn’t understand my question, let alone answer it. She was able to bring up a picture of the pack on her monitor but that didn’t really help either of us much; she thought it might be a new product (so what?) and couldn’t really see why I was telephoning her. After a bit of chat she said she would get someone to call me back.
No-one did so, and nearly a fortnight has passed. Not worth taking it further, I think, and I shall not name the supermarket since I do not want them to be upset about this; the poor lambs are just recovering from the the ordeal of fighting off a £10 billion bid from a private equity consortium, and we all know how that feels.
I am exercised by the lack of democracy in the PLP, the fear of the MPs to put their heads above the parapet and challenge Brown.
I am also concerned about what the more radical nicotine addicts might do come July 1st. There are very worrying noises emanating from individuals who cannot bear the thought of not lighting up whilst getting having a drink in a pub or whereever. I fear that if one of these people lights up near me once I return to pubs after the deadline, I may do physical violence first and rational argument second. I lost my mother to cancer caused by passive smoking, and will not tolerate pollution of my air.
Challenge Brown and everyone else.
I don't really want to breathe your car-fumes. Be fair.
Simon - HERE, HERE. Lets hear it loud for an education for those children who have special educational needs - with the right intervention many of the 1.5 million children can and do learn. It is the Government who hold the key to that intervention. Central government must provide proper funding and training, this is not just a local education issue it is a NATIONAL disgrace. So come on PM, SHOUT IT OUT.
Numeracy is not about counting. Everyone can count by the time they leave junior school. Doing something useful with the numbers is an entirely different matter.
When leaving school you will never need to multiply 17 by 25 again in your life, but you will have spent years attempting to learn to perform this mechanical action. We have machines that we use every day to perform for us.
Help! Where do you turn to to pin the QCA examiners down and get them to confess that this year's KS2 writing tasks (15th May) were a direct steal from the 2003 tasks for 'the more able child'?!!!
Seven years' work and then they ask them to write something off the cuff that they would have had to spend weeks researching to do it justice.
Sorry. Another boring education topic - just letting off steam late at night in the hope that it will let me get to sleep!
Seriously though, who is responsible for this kind of sloppy laziness and why should the youngsters whom they are judging be the victims?
I know how I am going to die.
Judging by my experience walking in to work this morning (just 5 miles) I will die at the hands of a stupid, selfish, arrogant driver who thinks that it's OK to run a red light, or stop in the middle of a junction so that they have an imagined right of way when the traffic ahead of them clears no matter what the signals around them say, or take a short cut by ignoring a no-left or no-right turn sign (saw both ignored today), or driving on the pavement to get round an obstructing car or maybe just some appalling driving behaviour that I *don't* see every day.
I managed to jump out of the way of those morons umpteen times this morning, but I can't keep being that lucky for long. Eventually one of these people *will* kill me and the really sad thing is, my death won't change drivers' attitudes any more than the thousands of road deaths every year do.
There was some talk the other day about police arresting people for "trivial" crimes to make up quotas. I know a lot of drivers view traffic violations as trivial, but people are getting hurt and killed by drivers who believe they can do no wrong. If more drivers were cautioned, arrested or even banned because of their "trivial" lawbreaking, not only would the roads and pavements be a lot safer, but the roads wouldn't be half as congested.
TSSCat : I'm with you 100% on that one. The Highway Code seems to be regarded as a quaint anachronism these days.
When I still lived in towns I took to becoming an Assertive Pedestrian.
I was actively vigilant at all times (just as you should be as a driver) and if a driver looked like doing something dangerous to me, I'd pre-empt it by attracting attention, grabbing eye contact, and then smiling.
Assuming there was time for all that, and that the attention thing worked, the smile disarmed most of them and all was well.
I was however younger and dafter then! And driving standards, though generally bad and getting badder all the time, were better than they are now.
I suggest you wear hi-viz clothing and carry a stick you can wave in the air as the vehicle hurtles towards you. Even if you don't need a stick for walking, it doesn't half increase the size and power of a gesture to brandish one!
Either that or move to the country. Driving's just as bad but you can see further so you get more warning. :o(
Fifi
PUSH!
Fifi (13):
Round my way there's so many people wearing hi-visablity lothing, I sort of stand out by being one of the handful who doesn't!
I'd love to move to the country, but while I'm looking after my elderly mum, I'm stuck in the council house in this ned-ridden estate; my salary is *just* enough to get a one-bedroom flat in town, and a small pottng shed in an out-of-town village. But that's a different rant...
Fifi & Feline,
I tried to agree with y'all as an aggressive, even arrogant pedestrian all my life, even in the years when my driving was downright disrespectful of other road users and neighbourhoods, EXCEPT (I hope) for pedestrians.
I was taught that, "the pedestrian ALWAYS has the right of way", in the same way as 'sail gives way to steam'. A human, naked as born rightly takes precedence over all mechanically extended forms.
Homo (self-styled) Sapiens is under attack from Homo Encapsulata (see link at my name above).
I've removed the link from the body of the post to get through the moderation screen.
xx
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TSSCat (15) 'high visibility loathing' sums it up.
We've just had a letter from Birmingham highways department saying that they will not change the timing on the lights at the junction outside my 99 year-old father in law's house because it would hold up the traffic for too long and there aren't as many pedestrians as there are cars!
The speed limit was changed to 40mph in the 1970's when they intended to create high-speed access into Birmingham, and this on a residential road. Needless to say the scheme never went ahead, some sections were widened and the speed limits alternate between 30 and 40 with vehicles doing anything up to 60'ish unchallenged.
There's no filter on the traffic lights so traffic turning right is forced to turn on the red, thereby running over the pedestrians. If the pedestrians wait until all the right-turning traffic has cleared there isn't time to cross.
Where's the logic in that? But it all fits with someone's definition of what's required, so as everywhere today 'do it by the book' rather than use common sense.
Of course someone will be killed eventually. But who cares, the traffic will have been kept moving.
Re: PM yesterday interview with the FSA about their decision to compel manufacturers to add folic acid into flour/bread. Why? 'In the interest of consumer choice' - they're going to force everyone to eat more folic acid through compelling bread makers to add it in. But a) I'm never going to get pregnant so why should I be force-fed this thing, and b) people wanting additive-free product are just going to stop eating bread! Well, now, that's a really good idea, isn't it? And if I get hold of some folic-acid-free flour (always supposing they allow such a thing) & make my own bread, will I be prosecutable under the FSA regs on what I must & mustn't do??? Surely, consumer choice is about letting flour producers make flour with and without & leaving it up to the consumer to decide whether or not they want it??? But that's going to come into the FSA Board's discussion NEXT month...Aaggghhhh...haven't these people anything better to do? Or are they getting a backhander from the folic acid industry? Eat Food, Mostly Plants, Not Too Much, and nothing that says 'healthy' on it (it's likely to be processed).
Fellow pedophiles,
It's a long time since I was in London, and it'll be even longer before I go there again, but I remember a situation at the top of Tottenham Court Road, where pedestrians are expected to descend a flight of stairs, walk through a tunnel and ascend another flight of stairs for the convenience of anal orifices comfortably seated in their individual carapaces....
Pedestrians Unite and Reclaim the Earth! (PURE)
Man walking All Hail (MWAH!)
xx
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Helen (18) I agree totally. It's a biological impossibility for the majority of the population to get pregnant (being the wrong sense, too olld, too young, etc.) Unlike flouridation of water, which benefits all, this move benefits only a small percentage of the population. Also, there are concerns about the action of Folic acid to mask other health issues in the old. By all means support women who are preganant by having folic acid supplements, or even the option of bread with folic acid, but to force this on everyone is just plain wrong. It's a headline-grabbing announcement by the HSA, rather than a well thought out position...