Domodedovo airport bombing.
The Russians have a cheek calling this terrorism. The act itself, killing innocent people to make a political statement, is despicable. But one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. And undemocratic Russia has a recent history of massive human rights violations and of violently oppressing large numbers of its own citizens. Then there is the matters of Mikhail Khodorkovsy, Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko, Anna Politkovskaya (plus many other killed journalists) and the invasion and occupation of large swathes of another sovereign country, Georgia. So who is the terrorist now?
Andy Gray sacked from Sky Sports.
Britain has suffered a terrible epidemic of political correctness, diversity and health & safety which saps away at the very essence of our national identity and which has spawned a multi billion parasitic industry. This sacking is a despicable act, he did nothing wrong other than to be a humorous human being off air. What he said was less bad than what the national buffoon, Jeremy Clarkson, says regularly on air. Obviously the sacking had nothing to do with his £1.7 million salary and the fact that he was suing his boss, Rupert Murdoch, for tapping his phone.
Tunisia, Egypt etc.
As always you have to wonder if this is CIA inspired, but Obama’s weakness in all other matters makes this doubtful. Mossad involvement I can believe. There are still a lot of sham democracies and dictatorships in the world where human rights are ignored and great swathes of the population oppressed. So a bit of domino effect will be welcome. The big problem the public in these countries have is getting over the massively entrenched positions of fairly large ruling classes and the state apparatus they control. With luck the revolution will roll out as far as Moscow and Minsk.
Andy Coulson.
Personally I don’t think his departure is a great loss. Since the election the Labour party (with the help of the BBC) have managed to de-toxify their brand with the simple ruse of blaming the bankers for everything. And Coulson failed to prevent this. He just did not communicate adequately the sheer awfulness of the previous government and the parlous state that they have left this country in.
Tony Blair and the Iraq enquiry.
This is going to be very interesting. Are they going to have the backbone to tell us what we already know or will it be another fudge with him let off the hook? Presumably a freemason’s handshake has given Blair teflon like qualities thus far. There is a growing undercurrent for him to be tried for war crimes but I can never see the establishment allowing this to happen.
Nimrod MRA4 destruction.
This is a terrible loss of a vital and powerful resource for the defence of this country. But don’t blame the current government. There are three culprits. Firstly a ministry of defence who have a long record of ineptitude and a demonstrable inability to run large procurement programmes properly. Secondly the last, Labour, government and their profligate, out of control, ordering of defence equipment. Most notably two large aircraft carriers with extremely nasty poison pill contracts that makes them impossible to cancel. Thirdly BAE systems, our near monopoly supplier of defence equipment, who have a truly woeful history when it comes to delivering anything on time or on budget. Against this background the current government were forced to do what they did, so parlous are our national finances. But still they could have got rid of most of the tanks and brought our army back from Germany, both big and unnecessary expenses.
UK fraud £38 billion a year.
Every UK adult is £765 a year worse off. This tells you several things, mainly that the police are completely inept at dealing with real crime. Secondly that the people who are in prison are mainly the stupid and the mentally ill, the real criminals are active and amongst us. And thirdly the unwillingness of businesses to prosecute those who commit criminal acts against them. From shoplifters to huge corporate fraud the perpetrators are usually let go with no punishment so they can move on and do it again somewhere else.
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shame you didn’t post these as individual entries, to make it easier just to respond to the relevant bits, but here are some reactions anyway…
Andy Gray apparently “did nothing wrong other than to be a humerous human being off air”; well although I agree there’s hypocrisy given he’s not unique in mouthing off as he did, and Murdoch isn’t bothered about being politically correct if it helps him make money, I’d challenge you on the fact he was actually being “humerous” (sic); hardly witty, was he? just boorish.
re: Nimrod, and your general attack on Labour’s “out of control spending” – maybe they were inspired by your former life at Imagine Software, who weren’t such a great example of modest, in control, spending themselves, I believe. forgive the “humer”.
more seriously, the dismantling of Nimrod could almost be seen as a physical representation of the kind of dismantling planned of other UK assets; at least the actual cost of dismantling those aircraft was a minute fraction of their costs – whereas it will cost billions to dismantle such things as primary care trusts, only for a similar kind of structure then needing to be created, at yet more cost.
finally, in response to “…and thirdly the unwillingness of businesses to prosecute those who commit criminal acts against them” – perhaps a business-minded chap like yourself may be heartened by the current trend in stores threatening civil action via third parties, with “cough-up some cash, or we’ll take you to court” threats, to people who haven’t even proven as shoplifters; the cash demanded bearing no relation to the value of the goods involved, but which is often paid by even innocent people as they’re fearful of further trouble.
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Thank goodness someone whose willing to just say things as they really are, instead of hiding behind the agenda’s that the news think they have to be following.
Keep up the good work Bruce! Don’t let the politically corrected health-n-safety brigade tell you what you can and can’t say. I’m so glad youve started this new blog.