'Av' you decided yet?

I think that the campaign by both sides has been confusing and lack-lustre.

However, when I look at the supporters of the Yes campaign it seems to consist primarily of minor political parties (and Labour who are there to oppose everything anyway) who see an opportunity to get more MPs and Ken Livingstone. Hmmm. Scottish National Party, UKIP and Ken Livingstone? Sounds like a good enough reason to vote NO.

If however, you want to slap the Tories, consider this. They elect their leaders using a similar system to AV. If no outright majority, the person with the fewer votes stands aside and everyone votes again. The last 3 Tory leaders have relied on the 2nd or subsequent vote. They did not get the most votes in the first ballot. If you are a Tory hater, this must prove that it doesn't work, so you should be voting NO.

Personally, I am appalled by little Nicky Clegg and his band who abandon their principles for the sake of personal power. There is an argument that says that at the last election, if AV had been in place we would be governed by Labour with Gordon Brown still as prime minister. The Lib Dems say not. They say that they would have refused to work with Gordon Brown. Yeah, right!

I do not think that either side has proven their case. The only interaction I have had with any campaigner was a lady from the YES campaign who collared me in Twickenham. When I asked her if there was a second choice to today's referendum she was at a loss for words.

On the basis that both camps have made it a contest to see which personalities they can get to support their campaigns rather than bothering to knock my door and explain their preference to me, I will vote on that basis. Nicky - your fired! I am voting NO.

Royal Wedding - Worth it?

So, it has started. The grizzlers are out already determined to put a dampener on the Royal Wedding.

"It's not fair"' they wail. "Why should the royals have all of this when I don't. The class system is just so wrong! They are only there through an accident of birth! Boo Hiss!"
May I suggest that those who subscribe to these views give up whatever property, savings or benefits that they have and bugger off to a remote village in Africa where they do not know where the next meal is coming from unless they can climb a tree to pick fruit or kill something that is actually better equipped to kill them first. It is only an accident of birth that puts them here in the UK, surely?

There seems to be a virus working it's way through all society and that virus has a name. Jealousy. Anyone who earns more than the minimum wage is meant to be loathed and one cannot be seen to celebrate wealth or success.
Look at our own Prime Minister who initially decided to turn up to the wedding in an ordinary suit. Our senior freely elected representative appeared terrified to posh up a bit for a wedding. I do not think that this was David Cameron's decision. I detect the hand of little Nicky Clegg and the thin-lipped, Mr. Angry, Vince Cable at work. The Times printed an excellent editorial pointing out that it only cost about £100 to hire a morning suit for a day and within 24 hours, Cameron changed his mind. Thank goodness! One does not turn up for a wedding in one's work clothes unless one is in the armed forces.

There are those who call for the monarchy to be abolished. I fail to see the economic sense in this so I can only assume that it is out of jealousy and spite.
Let's look at the facts:
The Queen costs 62p per person per annum (tax year 2009/10). She does not, as many people think, own all of the palaces and the crown jewels. She inherited Balmoral and Sandringham from her father. The rest is in her care as Sovereign and must be passed on to the next Head of State.
The Queen costs the UK £38.2m per annum. She funds the rest of the royal family. Total UK expenditure is £691billion. All of these numbers are beyond imagination so to simplify: Imagine for a moment that you are the UK and you earn £1,000 per month. These are your main monthly outgoings:
£160 for the NHS
£120 for Education
£70 for defence
£170 on welfare
£20 on recreation and religion
£180 on pensions
A half of one penny on the Queen

With apologies to Monty Python, "what have the Royals ever done for us?"
Well, for a start, their foreign visits encourage trade with the UK but thinking about closer to home,  we have 15m tourists each year spending a total of £15bn per annum. In London, the tourist industry accounts for 13% of the workforce. How many would there be without the royal family, the palaces and trinkets to gawp at, I wonder.

Another thing that I just don't get is that we are quite happy for a professional footballer to earn £15m p.a. basic salary , shag a prostitute old enough to be his granny, and allegedly cheat on his wife twice. Indeed some people hold him up as a role model! 

If there is one thing wrong with the Royals it is that they are surrounded by advisors who are more out of touch with the real world than they are, hence the Queen's initial misjudgement over the nation's mood upon Diana's death. 
No, they cannot always get it right but they get it right more often than not and they are good for the country.
Yes they have a lot of privileges but there is a cost. The family carry out about 3,000 engagements year. They cannot choose who they meet but have to show true interest in them and they have a knack of making you feel like the most important person in the world at that particular moment, so I am told.

So, through the wedding of William and Catherine, we should celebrate all that is good about Britain, our history and heritage. Those who want to spoil it through snide remarks, demonstrations or even violence can, as they say, sod off and leave the rest of us to simply enjoy the day because nobody does it better than Great Britain.

The God of Thunder

Seeing posters for the newly released film THOR reminds me of an old joke from the school playground which I feel that I must resuscitate.

Thor, the God of thunder, was floating around on his cloud with nothing to do. It was a lovely sunny day and there was no call for his crashes and bangs. Thor was bored.

As he skimmed across the sky he spied a beautiful maiden sunbathing on an otherwise deserted beach.

Thor could not resist. He descended at speed and made mad passionate love to her for seven days and seven nights non-stop.

Finally satisfied, he lay next to her. Then it struck him. This girl has absolutely no idea who I am. She will feel so privileged to know that a true God has made love to her. So, drawing himself up to his full height a took a deep breath and boomed "I'm Thor!!!"

"YOUR Thor?"' said the girl, "I'm tho thor I can't even pith!"

....aye thank you!

Comic Relief

As I sit here suffering from man-flu in my nice warm house, staying off work but still being paid and with my muscles and bones having screaming arguments with each other, I have had the chance to watch a bit more telly than usual.

It is impossible to miss the fact that Comic Relief will soon be upon us. Hitherto, my sole contribution has been to buy a Red Nose from Sainsburys which got put in a drawer and then to spend the day itself avoiding other people wearing Red Noses. This is no mean feat when imprisoned on a London Underground carriage for one-and-a-half hours and bucket rattlers abound.

I have always seen Comic Relief as a poor relation to Children In Need. It's all about chucking money to foreign lands, isn't it? Look at the state of our country! Charity begins at home.

I now realise that these views are, to put no finer point on it, complete bollocks.

Last year, I had cause to fly into Mumbai airport. On the approach, you fly over a huge shanty town which is on the airport perimeter. Some of the shacks were protected by bright blue tarpaulin. Many were not.

The passenger next to me, an indian gentleman, expressed disgust. But this was not disgust at how horrific those living conditions were but that they were making the airport look untidy to incoming Sahibs such as myself. I was appalled....in a quiet, understated, very British way.

The aeroplane did its usual trip around the airport looking for somewhere to park and then I had to get a bus to the Domestic Departures terminal. This enabled me to get a closer look at the edge of the slum. Women were washing and cooking. Wafer-thin kids were playing football in the mud. Men were staring. What were they thinking of, I wonder? "look at those lucky bastards", perhaps? I think not. I did not see any envy in those eyes. I smiled weakly at one of them and he beamed back. We exchanged a brief wave before my bus set off.

Later in the week, I was in Delhi. My God. It is all concrete and flyovers these days. Despite, its advancement over recent years there are still deformed children performing acrobatic tricks in the middle of 3 lane highways to try and earn money. They are being watched over by a number of large well-fed men who shout at them if they stop their flip-flopping for more than a second.

Both the man at the airport and these kids in Delhi deserve to have a chance. Just a little glimmer of light. Something tangible that they can aim at and work towards.

Comic Relief is not just about digging wells and building schools in Africa. It is far more reaching than that. Did you know that it helps sponsor the Altzheimer's Society in Bradford? Neither did I but it does. Look http://www.comicrelief.com/how-we-help/the-difference-we-have-made/personal-stories/den-and-audrey

Comic Relief has years of experience in getting our donations to the people and places that can make the best use of it. We must trust them to make the judgment as to where this is. I have not been to Africa and apart from what I see from my armchair have no real clue as to the challenges those people face day by day. The two small events that I saw in India, a supposedly wealthy country, made a lasting impression. I don't know the half of it or even the hundredth of it.

I, for one, will be digging a bit deeper into my pocket this year.

Sheila's Squeals

A European court has ruled that it is discriminatory for insurance companies to set a premium for car insurance based on gender. The result is that many women under 25 who are less likely to have an accident than their male counterparts will pay more.

I wonder who made the complaint in the first place. I, for one, am glad that my other half pays less car insurance. It means that it is cheaper for her to run her car meaning that I am more likely to get a lift home when I have been out drinking.

The court ruling is ridiculous. Insurance is a business of calculating risk based on historic fact. We are told that insurers will need to place more emphasis on age and postcode. How long before the ageist lobby come out and make a complaint?

What about life assurance? Women live longer than men - fact. The insurance company are likely to collect more premiums from a woman before she croaks than from a man, so they do not need to charge as much each month. Will this become illegal as well?

I remember the days when we thought that rulings from Europe were funny. They were about the shape of bananas and when you can use the words "Melton Mowbray" before "pork pie". But now it is becoming very serious indeed. The handcuffs, or Eurocuffs, that they are placing on companies such as the insurers is prohibitive to effective competition and trade. One size cannot fit all.

The company Sheila's Wheels is about giving cheaper car insurance to women. Now that Sheila is in Eurocuffs (pink fluffy ones, if the image on the advertisements is to be believed), is Sheila about to go down? OK, we would be spared the faux Aussie TV commercials but that would be the only benefit.

It is about time that our Government took a stance against such idiocy from Europe. Plenty has been written recently regarding the deliberations of the European Court of Human Rights for whom the criminal is king and becomes the victim.

What will Mr. Cameron do? I suspect nothing for now. He will let these Eurocourts carry on spewing out nonsense until the next election, which he will then fight on a mandate of withdrawing from these judicial theatres. That will separate him nicely from the policies of little Nicky Clegg and enable him to seek a clear majority in the next parliament.

Fire...Aim...Ready

I recall a sketch in "Not The Nine O'Clock News" which was a parody of the consumer programme "That's Life". Pamela Stephenson was doing a grotesque but hilarious impersonation of Esther Rantzen.
The gist of it was that a family ordered a fridge which worked perfectly. However, from the moment it entered the house, other things started going wrong in their lives - accidents, car crashes and the like. On every occasion, they rang the Electricity Board and on each occasion they were told "This has nothing to do with us" , a line delivered incredulously by the presenter.
What jogged my memory was a tweet from the BBC's Robert Peston following the news that Gaddifi's UK assets had been frozen. He wondered what the banks had done to establish that the Libyan leader's assets were obtained legitimately.
Now, Mr. Peston did an excellent job in exposing astonishing levels of greed feather-nesting and downright stupidity within the banks and hats off to him for that.
It is reasonable to assume, however, that whilst the political West was cuddling up to the Colonel over recent years, there would have been no objection from the authorities to our new best mate having a bank account.
Banks have a statutory and moral duty to report any suspicions regarding the source of funds or assets. Indeed, failure to do so would not only result in massive fines but the member of staff who failed to report his or her suspicions can be thrown in jail.
If I wandered into my local Barclays with a suitcase full of cash, I would expect a degree of questioning. What I do not expect my bank to do is interrogate me on  where I got the money to buy my house and where my hard-earned savings come from nor should they act as judge and jury as to the legitimacy or otherwise of my assets.
If they think that I may be assisting criminals with Money Laundering or Drug Running or illicit arms dealing, I would not expect the cashier to leap over the counter and arrest me on the spot. I expect that they would quietly fill in a form and leave it to the relevant authorities to decide what, if any, action were required.
Banks are an easy target and continue to make themselves so, in some cases. However, Mr P. should remember that the correct order is Ready....Aim....Fire!

A hundred times sorry

So, David Cameron is "sorry".
Is he sorry that no one is his government thought to get our citizens out of Libya? Sorry does not seem to cover it, in my book. The anguish of the people and their families must have been unbearable.
So whose job is it to think of such things? The PM? The Foreign Secretary? Little Nicky Clegg? One of their army of civil servants or just anyone with a bit more sense than they were born with?
Saying sorry for a mistake or something that we have done wrong is what we are taught as children. That's fine if we have split a drink or said something stupid in the heat of the moment. However, there are times when "sorry" just will not do. If we forget someone's birthday, we send flowers or make reparation in some other way.
If we forget someone completely and leave them to fend for themselves in the middle of a war zone, one would hope that they and their families have been given something tangible to help them over the trauma. I doubt it.