The Big Snow Reaches Portsmouth

 General  No Responses »
Jan 062010
 

So last night we had a huge whoomph, and this big pile of snow landed on Portsmouth (and many other areas of Southern England) last night. With something like 7cm of snow in Portsmouth this is probably the hardest hit Portsmouth has been since before I started living here. In fact I don’t recall many times the snow being this heavy anywhere (except in the US).

Of course other areas were even harder hit with up to 30cm is snow in places around the South. This has caused traffic chaos with people trapped in cars for up to 12 hours not too many miles from here, and at work this morning most drivers did not arrive. As the snow was continuing to fall heavily, work rather quickly decided to shut for the day and send us all home. Some of us continued to work from home 😐

Some of the thoughts that occurred as various reactions to the adverse weather set in …

Northerners keep criticising Southerners for being wimps when it comes to weather. Well this time the reaction was particularly irritating. The previous day the North also caught some heavy snow, but considerably less that the South got (yes some places in the North got more – places that get snow almost every day in the winter). Did Southerners start criticising when the North ground to a halt ? No we didn’t. It’s about time that Northerners stopped talking about soft Southerners when the weather we got yesterday and today was severe enough to cause the North to grind to a halt.

Businesses of course were whinging about all the money they will lose because of the bad weather – the lost production because of workers being unable to turn up, shoppers not diving in to spend money, etc. Well grow up, and live with it. Nature can’t be beaten, and there are more important things than making money – staying safe and avoiding fatal accidents in bad weather for one.

People are complaining about the council gritting operations being unable to keep the roads open and safe. They obviously don’t understand exactly how the “grit” works. In fact the grit is in fact rock salt and the salt helps to melt a limited amount of ice or snow. That is why gritters repeatedly grit roads when things get bad. What with abandoned cars getting in the way of gritters and the need to repeatedly grit roads, the number of roads that get effectively gritted goes down. Gritting cannot keep roads open in these kind of conditions.

I would say that drivers need to be a little more careful and a little more considerate of other road users, except that it is really the idiot car drivers who need to do that. It is just that the idiots are more prominent in these kinds of conditions. Some advice :-

  • If you don’t know how to drive in snow, don’t try.
  • Drive slowly … there is too great a chance of you sliding uncontrollably. I don’t care if you bend your nice shiny car, but I don’t particularly want to be smeared across the pavement at the end of your skid.
  • When clearing the snow off your windscreen, do the same for the rest of the car. All that snow will often leap off the car as you are moving along and the dropped snow will make things tricky for anyone else around. That is if it doesn’t hit anyone!

Lastly, whilst I have every sympathy for anyone who slips and falls in the present conditions there are some who wear entirely inappropriate footwear for the conditions. Wearing flat bottomed shoes with no grip and then complaining about how slippery things are just isn’t right.

Chinese Government Kill The English Madman

 Politics  No Responses »
Dec 292009
 

(With apologies to the relatives of Akmal Shaikh – I’m using somewhat impolite terms for mental illness)

The Chinese government has just executed an Englishman for drug smuggling despite the fact that he was plainly more than a little unhinged.  Even ignoring the fact that executions are a barbaric way of dealing with criminals, not taking into account someone’s mental health is positively medieval.

Well it would be except that medieval societies may well have been a trifle more understanding of those with mental health issues than the Chinese authorities have been.

The Chinese authorities are claiming that there are no reports indicating that Akmal has mental health issues, but it doesn’t take a report to know that he’s a bit of a fruitcase. And if there has not been a mental health assessment it is fully the responsibility of the Chinese authorities that there hasn’t been one!

Apparently the Chinese authorities are annoyed that people are criticising them for executing Akmal. They claim we have no right to criticise them! Well it’s not about whether we have the right to criticise them but about whether we find the behaviour of the Chinese authorities repugnant.

Lessons On Domestic Abuse

 General  No Responses »
Nov 262009
 

It seems that the government is planning on teaching children from the age of 5, that domestic abuse is wrong. And about time too! There is an absolutely horrific level of domestic abuse in the UK, which may or may not be better than elsewhere, but that is not what this is about.

Some parents are complaining that it is their job to teach their children about such things. Well obviously not all parents are doing their job properly, or the figures for domestic abuse would be far better! So this is a good initiative, or is it ?

Apparently the lessons are to emphasise that boys are to treat girls with respect and that girls are to expect respect. The reason for this sexism ? Because the overwhelming number of victims of domestic abuse are women. Well that is certainly true; the BBC article claims that in 2008/9 there were 293,000 incidents of domestic violence reported in England and Wales with 77% being against women. That leaves 23% being against men giving a total of 68,000 incidents.

Let us change the sex of those 68,000 victims of domestic violence to women. Would 68,000 female victims of domestic violence justify these lessons ? I would say so, so surely the lessons should also teach that abusing men is also wrong?

Another thing about those statistics is that it is known that domestic abuse is subject to a huge level of under reporting. With that in mind, and bearing in mind that women have been encouraged to report domestic abuse, it is perfectly possible that the statistics given above are inaccurate not just in the size of the problem, but in the ratio of victims – it may well be that men are as likely to be victims of domestic abuse as women! Perhaps you do not agree, but we simply do not know.

If we teach children the lessons exactly as expressed, children will learn a second lesson from them – that whilst girls should have respect, boys do not need be given respect. It is a short distance from that to accepting domestic abuse against men.

Domestic abuse against anyone is unacceptable.

The English Theocracy

 History  2 Responses »
Nov 152009
 

I was surprised a number of years ago when having a pleasant argument with someone online when he claimed that the English/British government was a theocracy. It had never occurred to me that the English government could be called a theocracy, but with the monarch being both head of state and head of the state religion there is a grain of truth to it.

Before going on, I will explain that although I am going to use “English” all the way through this, in later periods of history it should perhaps be “British”. But for convenience and because much of the points become well before the British union, I will use “English”. That’s not to say the Welsh and Scottish are irrelevant; just that bringing consideration of them in, will confuse the whole issue

As mentioned before the English monarch is both the head of state and the head of the Church of England. So a theocracy then. Well, no. Anyone who argues such is ignorant of the way in which titles of nobility work – whilst a single person may hold multiple titles, they are distinct and separate. For instance, the current Queen is correctly known as the “Lord of Mann” on the Isle of Mann, and the “Duke of Normandy” in the Channel islands. Neither are part of or will ever be part of the English monarchy. It is theoretically within the power of the holder of a title to gift that title to someone else – for instance it would in theory be perfectly possible for the Queen to lose the title “Lord of Mann” in a drunken poker game.

And yes such things have been known to happen, although if it were to occur in modern times it is likely to cause an outbreak of republicanism.

Another possible source of the idea that England is a theocracy are the “Lords Spiritual” who are 26 bishops and archbishops of the Church of England (or previous to Henry VIII’s reorganisation of government the “Church in England”) who sit in the House of Lords. And indeed if there were just 26 members of the House of Lords, and the House of Lords actually comprised the government, England would be a theocracy. In fact there are 724 members which means England is no more than 4% of the way to being a theocracy.

And of course the House of Lords comprises the government no more than I do. We often think of the House of Lords having more power than it in reality has had for centuries. On a very simplistic level, the House of Lords has been little more than the humorous sidekick in the struggle for power between the Monarch and the House of Commons.

Finally there is the argument that the power of the state is exercised at the local level by Church authorities (the “parish council” still has some residual authority even today in rural parishes). This dates from well before Henry VIII created the Church of England, and is an example of pragmatic government. This could be said to be an example of how theocratic the English government is, but neglects the fact that the authority was not delegated to Church authorities but to the parish officials.

Of course there is a little bit of hypocrisy in such a statement, but at no point was the authority delegated to the priest himself. It was delegated to the parish authorities who were already in place to perform such duties as the Church itself would not do – such as ensure that the maintenance of the community’s portion of the church was carried out (the Church itself looked to the maintenance of only the priest’s half of the church).

Initially local authority was delegated to the manor and the lord of the manor but this was found to be less than totally effective. This was due to the fact powerful aristocrats could come to be in charge of many manors and not all received effective authority. The parish authorities were on site and could be counted on to perform such duties as the King required.

Imagine a King pulling up his horse after journeying over a particularly poor road; tired, cold, wet, and angry. He would pop into the largest house in the village looking for accommodation and nourishment, and ask the most obviously in charge person to see to the maintenance of the road. He would not care a bit that the person he charged with such a duty was part of the Church hierarchy or not; he would just want one of his subjects to perform a necessary service.

The English government does have the Church intertwined throughout it as a historical artefact. But whilst the Church is there, it rarely interferes – for instance the Church “Lords Spiritual” very rarely actually vote on normal government matters. This is partially because the English government has never been properly dismantled and put together again without historical oddities, but the Church does not come anywhere near enough authority for the English form of government to be called a theocracy.

Mr Brown’s Letter

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Nov 062009
 

If I were close to someone who had been killed in action in Afghanistan, which would I rather receive ? A handwritten letter in poor handwriting and numerous misspellings ? Or a carefully worded letter, computer printed with a signature at the bottom.

Obviously I would rather receive neither – I would rather than someone close to me were still alive. But given the choice between the two letters, I would rather receive the handwritten one with misspellings and poor handwriting. A properly crafted letter that is computer printed is far less personal, and the wording is likely to be very bland. It would also feel like it was a form letter sent to everyone.

As for the poor handwriting and misspellings, a sensible person would not draw attention to that. There are often reasons why someone has poor spelling – for instance dyslexia. And someone with poor eyesight who probably relatively rarely writes by hand is likely to have poor handwriting.

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