Kevin's Watch

Posted: **Mon May 05, 2014 9:46 am**

I was slightly annoyed to see the leading photo on the front of the Observer yesterday which featured one of the ladies who marched through London to mark 20 years since the C of E's decision to ordain women into the priesthood. I've never been a fan of shaven heads on women or indeed men [but thats my problem not hers], but I felt the 'PRADA' sunglasses were a trifle ostentatious given the subject we were commenting on above. Dare I say it, but was this really about 'calling' - or was there a good dose of feminism lurking in the background.

Posted: **Thu May 08, 2014 3:34 pm**

I don't care what anyone says. Any country where two hundred and fifty schoolgirls can be spirited off into the jungle to be sold into slavery, prostitution or whatever, is a country where the Rule of Law has broken down to a point where the World Community should step in and re-establish order.

Posted: **Thu May 08, 2014 3:47 pm**

peter wrote:I don't care what anyone says. Any country where two hundred and fifty schoolgirls can be spirited off into the jungle to be sold into slavery, prostitution or whatever, is a country where the Rule of Law has broken down to a point where the World Community should step in and re-establish order.

The problem perhaps being, IIRC, that there are 5 or 6 countries with over 1/2 a million slaves, at least 3 with over a million, and 1 [india] with over 10 million.

There are also, I believe, zero countries with NO slaves. I think the U.K. have several thousand.

Posted: **Thu May 08, 2014 4:38 pm**

You can kidnap a school full of girls in any country. If you can get away with it, THEN you're law enforcement is dysfunctional. By which I mean: thinking that people would not do that where you live is wishful; there but for the grace of functional law enforcement goeth thou.

Posted: **Fri May 09, 2014 7:19 am**

The Rule of Law and functional law enforcement surely go hand in hand, do they not? I suppose it is the sheer 'concentration' of this event that gives it it's additional power to shock. Perhaps more reason for intervention is to be found in the states almost complete ignoring of the event until it became clear that it was achieving world notoriety [and thus effecting the countries 'world image'] than the event itself.

But in those countries V., are the slaves spirited 'en masse' from the schools in which they are studying, are they destined to become the playthings of 'soldiers in the woods' used and then discarded/killed when they have no further function to fulfill or when they become just a plain burden. Will they be fed into the human trafficking trade to supply money for guns and machete's that will then be used to butcher further innocent people because they happen to have been born the wrong religion or of the wrong tribal caste. Or is the slavery of these other countries more subtle, more nebulous - and more difficult to take a tangible hold of thereby?

[There is also an aphorism that goes something like 'Never was a greater mistake made than by the man who, because he thought he could only do a little, did nothing.

]

Posted: **Fri May 09, 2014 7:33 am**

One of the Sunday Papers last week ran a front page story outlining the comments of one of the leading NHS cancer specialists who expressed a view that [grantedly expensive] cancer therapies should be withheld from elderly patients on the basis that it was more efficient use of funds to spend the money on younger patients with a longet life expectancy ahead of them. Fair enough - but it seems a shame that you work all your life, pay your taxes to support the system and then are denied the acess to treatment at the very time you are most likely to need it. But thinking again..... actually this might be good policy. Could it not be extended over the health service as a whole; when someone needs treatment [let me think it out]....deny it to them and spend the money in other areas on people with better life chances! [Damn it, you could apply it to the poor as well!] Run with it boys - you're on to something there!

Posted: **Fri May 09, 2014 4:04 pm**

peter wrote: Or is the slavery of these other countries more subtle, more nebulous - and more difficult to take a tangible hold of thereby?

Depends on the country. But there's nothing subtle or nebulous about it in India, Pakistan, etc.
And whatever country it is in rape, forced prostitution, and other violence is integral to the "institution."

Posted: **Fri May 09, 2014 4:50 pm**

The person who deserves the "expensive treatment" should be the one that deserves it the most. I'd rather an eighty-year old productive member of society who exercises, doesn't smoke, etc. get treatment over a 25 year old who looks 40 because he smokes three packs a day and jokes that he'd rather get cancer than give up smoking...at least until he gets that cancer.

Luckily for both, it seems such things are determined by the "innate value of life" instead of life expectancy or an idea that one does not deserve societal help to avoid the consequence of their actions.

Posted: **Sat May 10, 2014 7:52 am**

Noticed on the 'Sky News' overhead in the shop yesterday that ex-animal TV show pressenter [and national institution] Rolf Harris has been charged with grooming.

Posted: **Sun May 11, 2014 8:19 am**

Yes, that one came as a shock, moreso than all the others that have recently been pulled out of the woodwork. I wasn't at all surprised about Stuart Hall or the sainted JS. Didn't I hear that DLT was accused too?

Posted: **Mon May 12, 2014 10:50 am**

Dogs ....grooming - tv animal shows. Sorry Iolanthe - must just have been my mucky mind spinning jokes where there were none.

Yes - the whole JS business has been a horrid revelation [but that guy must have been one of the most creepy people I ever encountered on TV or anywhere else in fact so suprised....no, definitely not].

Posted: **Mon May 12, 2014 11:03 am**

Ah, sorry, I was a bit slow on the uptake there!

Posted: **Mon May 12, 2014 2:31 pm**

If I had a pound for everytime I was the same.......

Posted: **Wed May 14, 2014 5:09 pm**

I was gonna say -- I thought grooming was generally considered to be a good thing.

Posted: **Wed May 21, 2014 10:55 am**

Last week, The Sun [the UK's largest circulating 'red top' newspaper] published a 'scoop' in which it exposed the fast food chain PizzaHut as using 'halal' meat on all it's chicken and beef pizza's. Story followed story as more and more chain-store giants were revealed as selling 'halal' killed produce with no labelling to indicate it as such.
A furore resulted in which pundits took sides - those who could see no problem against those who felt it was everybodys right to be made aware of whether they were eating meat that was killed according to the rules of halal or kosher doctrine, or not.

For me this is not a problem - as long as the unfortunate animals are stunned prior to being bled [as the vast majority of halal and losher meat apparently is] I have no problem with either the fact that it is a human rather than a machine that is doing the throat slitting [in fact I prefer it] or that the meat is blessed as the killing is done [don't get it myself but hey....]. But this is not the issue I wish to adress. For me the big issue here is 'what were the papers intentions in provoking this [to me] storm in a tea-cup. I'm afraid I see [and I'm not alone in this] a deliberate attempt to stoke religious hatred between the Christian and Muslim communities that have to live side by side in the UK. Pandering as it does to the less intellectually rigorous elements of the UK society, The Sun has massive influence on its readership and the stoking of this story where there was none [in fact PizzaHut had openly announced it's intention to use halal meat two years ago] will inevitably add to the drip-drip effect of similar culturaly biased stories that fill it's pages, in increasing divisions between etnically different sectors of the UK populace.

In the same week by coincidence, the unusual spell of sunny weather we were experiencing prompted a 68yo local radio presenter to play the old music-hall song 'The Sun Has Got His Hat On' unaware that the song contained 'the n word'. This in turn prompted a single listener to complain to the BBC who responded by sacking the man - an employee of 32 years.

Now tell me - who has done the worse damage here? The Sun with it's religious prejudiced laden 'story' and cod outrage at being duped by the food industry - or the old fool who plays an old song using a word that those who are supposed to be offended use on a regular basis between themselves with impunity. Can we get real here please!

Posted: **Thu May 22, 2014 6:26 am**

peter wrote:Can we get real here please!

Unlikely I'm afraid.

--A

Posted: **Thu May 22, 2014 10:06 am**

When I went to the USA a few years ago I was subjected to intense questioning at the flight check-in desk because I didn't have a return flight ticket. The reason, as I tried to explain to the small gathering that had congregated at the check in desk, was that I was sailing back from New York with Cunard and thus, only needed to fly one way. It was not untill they had actually phoned Cunard to verify my booking on the QM2 that they allowed me through and on to the plane. The reason for this seeming over-zealousness, which I completely understand, is that America is such a tempting prospect for nationals of other countries to enter and remain in, that if they were not rigorous in checking that entrants were genuine tourists, they would be swamped with economic migrants with no means of support and no intentions of returning to their country of origin. This seeming madness however, has not only been tolerated by sucessive UK governments - it has been actively encouraged.

In offering an open door policy to economic migrants of other EU member states, together with immediate acess to the UK benefits and health service, there has been a policy tantamount to saying 'Come here to the UK and we'll give you money'. Thus migrants in their tens of thousands have poured in from poverty stricken Eastern European member states - and who in their right mind could blame them. If they get work they can earn multiples of their expected top salary at home - and if not there is very little lost; life on bebbefits in the UK is often more tolerable than employed life in their home states. So you can never, never, never accuse the people of acting in anything other than the completely sensible way in accepting the offer of coming to work and live in the UK. But the madness of the policy remains.

We are desparately short of housing in the UK and the current policy in this direction is providing less than half the new-builds to meet even the current shortfall, let alone provide for a population swelled to breaking point by the ranks of those who come, fairly expecting to be welcomed with support and help in establishing their new home in the UK. Meanwhile the 'minnimum wage' lags behind the calculated 'livable wage' by about 30 %; and people wonder why the press is awash with stories about families being accomodated in B&B's and hotels at the tax-payers expense. Will the movers and shakers not get it; if you are going to have a polict that allows a limitless influx of people into your country, you have to have balancing policies to provide a) work, b) housing and c) health care/support for all the people, indigenous and immigrant alike, as well. It's not rocket science. We're not India, people will die here if they have to live on the street [they die in India too and that's a disgrace as well]. You cannot adopt the laizer-fair approach to labour if you don't balance it with provision for it's needs on the other side; to do so is to invite suffering on a masive scale and to open the door to the spectre of extreme nationalism which is already beginning to show it's ugly head across large swathes of Europe.

Posted: **Mon May 26, 2014 11:23 am**

Last Friday a Slovakian Roma couple lost their court battle in which they attempted to stop two of their children from being adopted by a same sex couple in Kent. The Judge, saying they had 'no grounds for appeal' upheld the legality of the adoption and effectively brought the case to a close.

In a difficult to describe way, I feel a slight sense of unease at this decision. I have little empathy for the parents who apperently allowed the two boys to fall int a state of neglect, and I have little doubt that the same sex couple could provide as stable and loving a home background as any mixed sex parents - but this is not where I am coming from. It seems to me that these two poor little mites are already facing sufficient scources of potential stigmatisation when they eventually start mixing with their peers, that it ill becomes the adoption services to add yet another potential cross for them to bear. They are foreighners, they are Roma, they are addopted - do they really need to be explaining that gay parents are 'just the same' to the school-kids in the playground as well? Is this not a case where in the childrens best interest it might have been more sensible not to sacrifice the likely realpolitik of their future circumstances on the alter of liberal political correctness.

Posted: **Mon May 26, 2014 11:41 am**

peter wrote:When I went to the USA a few years ago I was subjected to intense questioning at the flight check-in desk because I didn't have a return flight ticket. The reason, as I tried to explain to the small gathering that had congregated at the check in desk, was that I was sailing back from New York with Cunard and thus, only needed to fly one way. It was not untill they had actually phoned Cunard to verify my booking on the QM2 that they allowed me through and on to the plane. The reason for this seeming over-zealousness, which I completely understand, is that America is such a tempting prospect for nationals of other countries to enter and remain in, that if they were not rigorous in checking that entrants were genuine tourists, they would be swamped with economic migrants with no means of support and no intentions of returning to their country of origin. This seeming madness however, has not only been tolerated by sucessive UK governments - it has been actively encouraged.

In offering an open door policy to economic migrants of other EU member states, together with immediate acess to the UK benefits and health service, there has been a policy tantamount to saying 'Come here to the UK and we'll give you money'. Thus migrants in their tens of thousands have poured in from poverty stricken Eastern European member states - and who in their right mind could blame them. If they get work they can earn multiples of their expected top salary at home - and if not there is very little lost; life on bebbefits in the UK is often more tolerable than employed life in their home states. So you can never, never, never accuse the people of acting in anything other than the completely sensible way in accepting the offer of coming to work and live in the UK. But the madness of the policy remains.

We are desparately short of housing in the UK and the current policy in this direction is providing less than half the new-builds to meet even the current shortfall, let alone provide for a population swelled to breaking point by the ranks of those who come, fairly expecting to be welcomed with support and help in establishing their new home in the UK. Meanwhile the 'minnimum wage' lags behind the calculated 'livable wage' by about 30 %; and people wonder why the press is awash with stories about families being accomodated in B&B's and hotels at the tax-payers expense. Will the movers and shakers not get it; if you are going to have a polict that allows a limitless influx of people into your country, you have to have balancing policies to provide a) work, b) housing and c) health care/support for all the people, indigenous and immigrant alike, as well. It's not rocket science. We're not India, people will die here if they have to live on the street [they die in India too and that's a disgrace as well]. You cannot adopt the laizer-fair approach to labour if you don't balance it with provision for it's needs on the other side; to do so is to invite suffering on a masive scale and to open the door to the spectre of extreme nationalism which is already beginning to show it's ugly head across large swathes of Europe.

I faced a smaller version of this scenario in my job. New York City offers (offered) the most liberal and lucrative benefits to the homeless in the world. This was result of a legal aide agency continually suing the city on behalf of the homeless. The result was that anyone entering the homeless system in NY was automatically entitled to certain benefits. Families were automatically entitled to an apartment style shelter, were guaranteed no bedroom had more that 2 children, free medical care, free education, food stamps, transportation, job training, welfare, etc. They would also receive a rent subsidy for something in the area of 80% of the rent. On top of that agencies were forbidden to deny services to individuals based on where they came from, in fact we were prevented from asking a client where they came from. The result was that every city, state, municipality, or country would buy their homeless a one way ticket to NYC. Or they would find their way there on their own. They would arrive with tiny scratches of paper with an address to the NYC Department of Homeless Services processing centers. NYC was overwhelmed and crushed by the numbers of homeless entering the system. Something like 100,000 this year. So DHS decided to eliminate the rental subsidy thereby discouraging people from entering the system. It didn't work. It was simple, the homeless benefits without the subsidy was far better than anything they currently had. The consequence was that the city eliminated 'the only way out' of the system and had no legal way to remove a freeloader thanks to the intensive work of the lawyers. I get a headache just thinking about it.

Posted: **Mon May 26, 2014 11:46 am**

peter wrote:Last Friday a Slovakian Roma couple lost their court battle in which they attempted to stop two of their children from being adopted by a same sex couple in Kent. The Judge, saying they had 'no grounds for appeal' upheld the legality of the adoption and effectively brought the case to a close.

In a difficult to describe way, I feel a slight sense of unease at this decision. I have little empathy for the parents who apperently allowed the two boys to fall int a state of neglect, and I have little doubt that the same sex couple could provide as stable and loving a home background as any mixed sex parents - but this is not where I am coming from. It seems to me that these two poor little mites are already facing sufficient scources of potential stigmatisation when they eventually start mixing with their peers, that it ill becomes the adoption services to add yet another potential cross for them to bear. They are foreighners, they are Roma, they are addopted - do they really need to be explaining that gay parents are 'just the same' to the school-kids in the playground as well? Is this not a case where in the childrens best interest it might have been more sensible not to sacrifice the likely realpolitik of their future circumstances on the alter of liberal political correctness.

From the perspective of an urban dweller I could not disagree with you more. Every young couple in Manhattan, be they gay or straight seems to have adopted a foreign child/ children. It is the trendy thing to do thanks I think to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. And quite accepted here. These kids have a life to look forward to of private schools and summers in the Hamptons. (the NY Hamptons)

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