Religion Is Bunk

When it comes to religion, I am generally with Richard Dawkins. I may be an agnostic when it comes to the concept of a supreme-being but I am totally opposed to the idea of religion. There are thousands of religions on this planet and there always have been. All are based on teachings that range from the merely curious to medieval fantasy and absurdity. One problem which all of them rarely try to address is the slight problem of why my religion is right and yours is wrong. If they just existed in their own little worlds bothering no one, they could, as far as I am concerned, believe what they like. I am, fundamentally, a libertarian. But libertarianism does have the over-rider "provided that it does not impinge on other people's rights." And that is where most religions bite the dust. We, in Britain, have had nearly 2,000 years of mayhem and wars provoked or encouraged by Christianity. That is now over as far as the UK is concerned because very few people are religious - except in Northern Ireland. After all the killings of the last 40 years, the populace still insists on rioting on or about 12th July when the Protestants march around the Catholic areas celebrating the defeat of Catholics under King James II by the Dutch King William III of the House of Orange in 1690. That is 320 years ago and apart from the annual riots is of almost no contemprary significance to anything. But it's about religion. If we ignore Northern Ireland, it is the turn - again - of Islam. No doubt when that religion fades, we will have more medieval claptrap to organise the killing of another few million people.
There were headlines today that there is serious trouble in Lewes gaol because some Muslim prisoners were "accidentally" fed with non halal meat. Shock! Horror! Now it seems that the question of whether you can eat non-halal meat or not depends on who interprets the contents of the Koran. Does it matter? Would it not be more of an issue to decide if the truly religious should be eating meat at all? In this world of political correctness, the Establishment is prepared to pander to the fads and idiosyncrasies of any individual - particularly, if they are from the immigrant ethnic minority population. I think anyone who is in prison should have to eat the food provided for all prisoners obtained from the usual sources and prepared in the usual way.
To help out, I have included a picture, above, of a piece of ordinary meat alongside a piece of halal meat. Am I a racist? Possibly. Am I a anti-religionist? Certainly.
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A New Baby Jaguar

As I get older I find more and more that I am tempted to say "I told you so!" Is this the wisdom of experience or a celebration of the blindingly obvious? Things happen; governments, companies and other organisations do things which seem to me obviously wrong, yet they press ahead anyhow, only to find later that things do not work out as they thought. It is here that I want to say "I told you so!" Sometimes I, and I am sure many others, remember previous actions which produced exactly the same result as they do second and third .......... and fourth time around.

Now, Jaguar have apparently decided that they need a small car to compete with companies like Mercedes and BMW. To me this has always been obvious. At the end of last year they ceased production of their small car, the X-Type, because they said it was a failure. No it was not. It was a good car and from my experience, everyone I have spoken to who has owned one thought it was a good car as well. It never sold as well as Jaguar wanted and this, I would suggest, was because the marketing was so awful. I think it was so bad because there were people inside Jaguar who did not want it to succeed. In its initial incarnation it had a transverse mounted engine with front wheel drive plus an option of all wheel drive. These were revolutionary ideas for Jaguar and were, in fact. Ford engineering. Soon they offered a version with 2 litre diesel engine that was front wheel drive only. This was so non-Jaguar that the traditionalists wanted to ensure that it failed. So fail it did. There are many, like me, who drive an X-Type and love it.

At the time the Jaguar spin men told us that they intended to go for an upmarket niche for luxury cars and not waste time on a "cheap" Jaguar where margins were low and there would be too much competition. I thought that this was crackers. Most people know that niche markets are only niche markets because they are not worth having. Jaguar need to be able to knock out a good quality small[ish] car for around £20,000 to £25,000 with lots of good options on engines and interior fittings to meet every market - like the BMW 3 Series. Now somebody in Jaguar has reached the same conclusion and pictures of a new small car have appeared in Auto Express. The new XF and XJ are selling well but they will never match the X-Type - which in spite of everything always sold more units than all the other models put together. The new baby will be conventional Jaguar rear wheel drive and with an aluminium chassis and many other features form the XF and XJ should be on sale in 2012.

I like the suggested looks of the new car and if it come out at the right price, hopefully, one day I will own one.

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Grumpy Old Man 2

These days there are so many stories that make headline news on TV and in popular newspapers [if such a thing still exists] about which I know nothing and care less. Yesterday, it was announced that two "professionals" are leaving Strictly Come Dancing. I looked at the report - why, I don't know; perhaps I thought I might find out something important. It seems that the format of the show is being changed and the two who left thought ........................... Why bother. I had never heard of the two people who had left and since i never watch the show and never will, the format was of no interest at all.

Then I discovered that Channel Five TV has been sold to Richard Desmond, owner of the Daily Express and Daily Star and part-time soft pornographer. Whatever will he do to this channel, which occasionally has good programmes - some of their documentaries on engineering projects have been superb? First rumour is that he will revive the soon to be abandoned Big Brother. I can't wait. This monstrous pollution of the airwaves with its ten week gluttony of almost non-stop tripe should be continued, I am sure. Who watches it? Why? It is one of the worst things about our society that technological invention is always directed to more trivialisation of life. Computer games that involve shooting things and people; facebook, continuous text messaging. And even, sometimes, I have to admit millions of blogs that few people read. At least with blogs most people are trying to be creative in some way. But it seems to be TV that degenerates more and more. I know it is difficult to feed the insatiable appetite that TV has. An expensive to produce programme - no matter how good it is -goes out once, is seen by 10 million people and then becomes no more than a repeat. And so much of multi-channel TV does depend on repeats. But the mainstream TV channels still pump out a lot of rubbish. Soaps, hours and hours of them on three or more channels. Reality programmes. Ant & Dec - God help us! I'm a Celebrity - with more Ant & Blood Dec! And why, I have to ask again, is the DG of the BBC worth £835,000 per year. Why, in the last 50 years has his pay soared so far ahead of the Prime Minister and the Governor of the Bank of England?

I think I am just a grumpy old man. If only I could be so without other people's noise, kids, neighbours, etc

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A Modern Day Folk Hero?

There has been lots of flack fired at those who have signed up to the Facebook site set up to remember the life of Raoul Moat, the Geordie who was on the run for over a week after leaving prison and then shooting his ex-girlfriend and killing her lover. Over 40,000 gave their opinions, the vast majority supportive of Moat and hailing him as a hero and a legend. Many expressed satisfaction that he had avoided discovery for so long and had declared himself the sworn enemy of the police - some even expressing regret that he had not killed a few along the way. There were those who had known Raoul Moat and regarded him as a good and reliable friend. Added to all this, commemorative bunches of flowers have been left at the side of the river where he died and outside his run-down home.

The Establishment has come out with the expected condemnations of those who dare to hold up as a hero a man who has murdered and come close to killing two others. These members of the Establishment cannot understand the reactions of so many [mainly] young men because each of them has for the most part had a privileged and charmed up-bringing. Can David Cameron understand the behaviour of a man who never knew his father, has had little contact with a mother - who last week said that her son would be better off dead - who struggled with his social life, with his work, with bringing up children, who had been arrested a dozen times - but only convicted once - who believed that the police were harassing him ...... and so on? When he was in prison, his girl friend told him that their relationship was finished and that she was now with a policeman.

The other striking factor in so many [all?] reports was the need to tell the world that Raoul Moat was a bodybuilder "addicted to steroids." Nobody is addicted to steroids, nor was Moat's behaviour affected very much by steroids. He was a violent man who had grown up in a violent environment. Even if steroids were a factor, using them to grow extra muscle is not an excuse or a justification for violence. But the tabloid press had a field day with this and repeated old steroid stories that never had any foundations in fact to juice up the story. On Question Time last night and then again on This Week all the participants attacked the distorted values of those who could see any good in a murderer. Some like the wild Kelvin McKenzie - former editor of The Sun - went completely over the top. After all those who appeared last night and made my blood boil it was left to George Galloway to say something sensible about young working class males alienated from society.

There are thousands of young men in England who have similar chaotic lives, many girl friends but no permanent relationships and who could easily be tipped over the edge to do what Moat did. They hate the police and all authority figures and think that revenge is a justifiable response to a perceived slight. Many would want to kill any guy who took their girl while they were in gaol.

The situation is exacerbated by the behaviour of the police in wheeling out vast resources in order to track down one man in a fairly small area of the north-east. It is interesting also that quite a number of men were very prepared to help Moat in spite of the massive police presence. In spite of these resources Moat held out for a week. He targeted no one except those against whom he had a grudge. He fought authority and he resisted to the end. To many he is a hero and it is a measure of just how out-of-touch the Establishment is when it comes to understanding the people. The last government under the appalling Blair made criminals of us all in a way that no government has done in modern times. They increased surveillance, they kept tabs on us, they photographed us, they searched us, they imprisoned people without charge or trial, they increased police powers, they stopped the right to free protest, they took away our liberties until we were left with Us and Them. Us is everybody except the rich and those in authority who have always run this country. Anyone who fights against Them is a hero!

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Teachers Can Be Expensive

Today it was revealed that a headmaster at a primary school in Lewisham, SE London was paid £276,000 in salary, pensions and bonuses last year. Apart from the obvious fact that this is an absurd amount of money, how could it be possible that a teacher could have got to the point where he was paid this money and what collection of buffoons authorised it. From the reports, it seems that the money was authorised by the board of governors of the school. On what basis and within what terms of reference were they allowed to squander such an amount of public money. It is us, the taxpayers, who have to pay for this profligacy. Where and when did they meet to make their decision? Late one night in a pub, perhaps? The primary school has 330 pupils - mainly from ethnic minorities - which, I suppose we would expect in Lewisham - and this teacher is paid over 5 x the salary of an average head teacher. He gets nearly £100,000 more than the head master of Eton; and is - in the view of the idiots on the board of this school - worth twice as much as the Prime Minister.

Apparently, there are quite a few teachers paid more than £150,000 per year - again all more than the Prime Minister. Is it surprising that this country is in a mess when bankers pay themselves millions for wrecking the world's financial structures; local authority chief executives [town clerks] are paid £200,000+; GPs need over £120,000 per year to work less hours than ever before; and footballers are paid £7,000,000 per year without, apparently, being able to play football.

The majority of people in this country support the new government and in spite of one or two cock-ups along the way, wish them well in their endeavours to cut the vast oceans of cash pouring into public service box ticking and providing vast un-funded pensions to people whose precise purpose is obscure. Already the unions are gearing up to protect feather-bedded terms and conditions of employment and the extended holidays that most of them enjoy - although, I have to say that, to their credit, the unions have condemned this crackpot remuneration package in Lewisham. Most of us will suffer some hardships in coming months but if the coalition government can get rid of the accumulated deficit and stop us paying £50,000,000,000 in annual interest charges - money down the drain and 50% greater than the total defence budget - it will all be worthwhile.

What nonsensical salary package will we hear of next? Road sweepers and dustmen on £100,000 per year, perhaps? Tell me it is not so.

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Population Growth

A report published today by a team from Leeds University has told us something which appears blindingly obvious but which gains from getting academic respectability. The report says that by the time of the census in 2051 the UK will have a population of 78 million of whom 20% will be of "ethnic minorities". The growth in population will be mainly via immigration and by the higher birth rates in these immigrant populations, encouraged by alien religions. For the most part, lets face it, the immigrants will be from third world, mainly Muslim, countries. By the time of the 2051 census I will have been long dead and that must be counted as a blessing. Already it is difficult to recognise the country that I was born into and which I wanted to live in. The whole island becomes more and more crowded and the Islamification continues day by day. There will be those who welcome this "diversification" as they view our islands from their private Cloud-Cuckooland through darkened rose-tinted glasses but they are the same people who would not recognise reality if it were to hit them with the force of a pile-driver. The alien culture of Islam will divide these incomers from the indigenous population for as long as it takes to persuade them to give up their nonsensical dogmas. When it come to religion, I am with Richard Dawkins.

Our islands are over-crowded although the welcoming committees will point to the wide-open spaces in the Scottish Highlands and the Welsh mountains. And ultimately, those will be the only places to live as we abandon the rest to the migrants. It is a thoroughly depressing picture. It is notable that this new report has come just a day or two after a report that tried to draw attention to the problem of world population and the simple problems of feeding people and providing other essential resources - water and energy. This report talks about the demands on the planet being made by the ever rising tides of people - demands that, in many ways, lie at the root of mass migrations taking place every day. Britain is, the report tells us, incapable of meeting the needs of its people from Britain's own resources unless we reduce the population to 15 million. So our population is four times too high and we are planning - no, that is not the right word - we are prepared to allow the population to grow to 78 million. And what is our - or any other government - proposing to do about it? Nothing, that is the answer. Only China has tried to control population and many of those who ignore population growth tell us how bad the China model is. But the world cannot go on ignoring the destruction of the planet by an every growing human population that destroys everything else. The atmosphere is polluted, climate change is a fact as the world warms; the fauna and flora on every continent are threatened with extinction; we are short of oil, minerals, wood; even the seas and oceans are dying, over-fished and polluted with garbage and sewage.

I want to live for many years yet into what I hope will be a healthy old age but I feel depressed about the prospects for the coming generations - victims of government mismanagements and neglect - presented with problems which others should have solved many years before they were born.

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Raoul Moat Dead

Raoul Moat died in the early hours of Saturday morning lying wet through on the ground on a field in Northumberland. Clearly, he was not a nice man but the more i read about him the more I think he was a walking tragedy slowly advancing to his own death. Not just over the last week but over many years. He has been arrested many times over a 10 year period but only successfully prosecuted once. During the last week the police mounted an extraordinary force to capture just one man - even if he was armed. It seems that Moat never left the area around Rothbury, yet, in spite of the thousands of men employed in the search it took the whole of a week to find him. It seems that Moat was helped by friends who, like him, disliked the police intensely.

The story of Raoul Moat is just an extreme example of something that could happen to thousands of men in this country whose lives have been starved of success. How many men do we know with complicated love lives, children by various mothers, never getting married, never having a stable home life, never having any long-term job prospects, do bouncer work as a means of satisfying their needs for a macho image and inflicting a bit of violence. And also meeting plenty of women who wanted a bit of casual sex with a macho man. With these men image is all; designer clothes, expensive performance cars, etc.

The first thing that goes wrong is the unstable home life in childhood, poor performance in school and immediate post-school unemployment. And when children appear - as they surely will - the downhill journey continues and the foundations are laid for more problems with the next generation.

I don't know all the answers. But the fact that the Moat did what he did - murder and attempted murder and then an unnecessary suicide suggests failing yet again of our vastly expensive social services. In this case, it seems that Raoul Moat's intentions as far as his ex-girlfriend were concerned were known and it seems that he had arranged to pick up the guns immediately he was released. The prison authorities knew quite bit but seemed to have been quite relaxed about either stopping him leaving the prison or informing the police.

Raoul Moat died wet, abandoned, hungry, lying on the ground surrounded by hundreds of armed police. Maybe the police Tasers made him kill himself but at that point in his life he had already reached the bottom and a man like him could see no point in continuing his existence.

Several newspapers anxious to have the best shock! horror! headlines told us that Raoul Moat was a hulking bodybuilder, addicted to steroids. The intention being to suggest that such an individual was not a normal human being and that his behaviour was fuelled by 'roid rage. Everything I read trotted out the same old tabloid stories but made worse by an aura of respectability created by attributing the report to someone in either the medical profession or - even worse - psychiatrists and psychologists. The fact that there is little real scientific evidence that 'roid rage exists and that most of the alleged side effects of steroids are much exaggerated is just by the way.

But all too often the facts can spoil a good story.

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Mallard

Anniversaries fascinate me. Every day is the anniversary of something and a little investigation will reveal reminders of important events about which we have almost forgotten. Since I have been writing about anniversaries, I will write about just one more. In a week when England were knocked out of the World Cup - as they deserved to be by possibly the eventual winner - and the cricket team lost to Australia [twice] and Andy Murray carried on the tradition of male tennis players failing to win at Wimbledon, I will recall a time when England could still do some things well. It was a time of great economic uncertainty, unemployment was high and the threat of war hung over Europe but at 4.22 pm on Sunday 3rd July 1938 a beautiful blue painted steam locomotive, with black smoke box and bright red wheels, with seven coaches surged along the East Coast main line just south of Grantham and established a world speed record for a steam locomotive at 126 mph - a figure that has never been exceeded and now probably never will be. Sir Herbert Nigel Gresley's masterpiece A4 pacific Mallard performed to perfection and astounded the world. Sir Nigel was too ill to be on the train on the day but he was given a massive tonic by the success of Driver Joe Duddington and his hard working fireman, Tommy Bray.

The A4 class of streamlined locomotives epitomised the best of steam locomotive designs and incorporated ideas pioneered by Italian car designer Ettore Bugatti and French railway engineer Andre Chapelon. The engines were immensely powerful, with four cylinders and a high working boiler pressure and were designed for high speed running between London and Newcastle and Edinburgh. Gresley had been assisted for many years by Oliver Bulleid, the New Zealand born engineer full of highly innovative ideas but by this time Bulleid had left the LNER and was now Chief Mechanical Engineer on the Southern Railway. These A4 pacifics were one of the most successful of all steam locomotives that ever operated in Britain and it is fitting that so many of them have been preserved - including Mallard, which still in running order, is owned by the National Railway Museum.

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What Happened on July 1st?

Today is a historic day. I suppose that every day is historic in some way or other but today is a day of quite serious anniversaries. Of course, there are many events that are recorded as having happened on July 1st but I will go back only to 1690 when William III [of England] the Dutch King of the House of Orange decisively defeated King James II at the Battle of the Boyne and laid the foundations of Troubles in Ireland in general but in Northern Ireland in particular. A few months later the remnants of James II forces were defeated again and the French aided Irish rebellion was at an end. James finally gave up on his attempts to regain the throne of England and the last Catholic king went into exile in France living at the the Chateau de Saint- Germaine - en - Laye until his death in September 1701 at the age of 68. The commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne has been an important day in the Protestant life of Northern Ireland and members of the Orange Order have marked the event by marching through the streets of many towns in the province. These marches have been seen as nothing but deliberate provocation by the Catholic Republicans and clashes have resulted year after year. They caused particular provocation during the worst days of unrest. Is it not time that these marches and demonstrations were finally dumped in the great dustbin of history and Loyalists stopped celebrating the activities of a Dutch king who died over 300 years ago?

Another event that occurred on July 1st took place 226 years later. At 7.30 am on July 1st 1916, the British and French Armies under General Haigh attacked the German trenches in the Somme. For a week prior to the Allied attack, guns had been firing shells continually at the heavily fortified German positions but the bombardment was not successful in destroying the fortifications - and the Germans knew well what was coming. They took cover until the shelling stopped - as it had to when the Allied troops started their advance - then the Germans came out, set up their own machine gun positions and waited. As the heavily loaded soldiers advanced they were simply mown down by the guns. By the end of that first day the British had lost 20,000 men dead and another 40,000 wounded. In this disaster, 60% of all the British officers involved were killed. I mentioned in "The Dead of Afghanistan" the loss of 235 men - the Accrington Pals - in a period of 20 minutes. They were not unique; other groups of "pals" who joined up together and went to war together, died together on that day. Hague pursued his attacks in the Somme until November when winter weather called a halt. By then the British had suffered 420,000 casualties, the French 200,000 and the Germans 500,000. By the arithmetic of the First World War, the Germans won. The allies had gained a few miles but the slaughter made little difference to the progress of the war. Two more years would be required on the killing fields before everyone gave up.

Another, but less apocalyptic, event that occurred on July 1st was the first use of the Emergency number 999 in Britain. This began in London on 1st July 1937 and very soon after it was used nationally. The service was introduced following a disastrous fire in London the previous year when a member of the public had tried to ring the Fire Brigade only to be held in a queue for some considerable time by a busy operator - all calls in those day had to go via an operator. The numbers 999 were chosen because they could be used with minimal modification of coin operated red call boxes which had A and B buttons. It was easy to adapt them to allow 999 calls to be made without need to insert a coin. The system has been in use with little modification ever since. Perhaps it can be remembered as one of the more successful achievements of Neville Chamberlain's time as Prime Minister.

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