Showing posts with label Jade goody. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jade goody. Show all posts

Wednesday 8 April 2009

A BIT OF AN OVERVIEW


A slight change today, my outlook on the national news from the Times, usually I use the BBC but I thought it was time for an upgrade.

First up is "Parky" with an honest assessment of Jade Goody and today’s society, which I thought hit the nail on the head.

“ Jade Goody, the reality TV star who died last month of cervical cancer aged 27, represented “all that is paltry and wretched about Britain”, Sir Michael Parkinson has said.”

Worth a read.



Then there is Alice Miles who thinks that we should stop torturing those poor MPs claiming expenses-

“Yet it is time for this leakage to stop. To hear Jacqui Smith being barracked yesterday on the Radio 4 Today programme about where she stays the night, and to hear her feebly protesting that “I'm not in some box room in the top of the house” at her sister's, was to listen to democracy on its knees. This is the Home Secretary, one of the great offices of State. We should not need to know where she washes her knickers of an evening.”

Nevertheless, she didn’t even consider the “porn” thing something to resign over- Jacqui Smith 'did not consider resigning' over porn claim

Shouldn’t the “occupier” (Jacqui Smith) of one of the great offices of state behave in a manner befitting that office?

No sympathy from me I am afraid, nobody dragged the “poor” MPs kicking and screaming into politics, they chose the public life and have to pay the piper when they are caught with their hands in the till.





The Concorde that graceful supersonic “eagle” in the sky may be off to Dubai. Ben Webster says it all.

There is some corner of a foreign desert that is for ever England. Dubai already has the Queen Elizabeth 2, the world’s fastest cruise ship, and now it is bidding for Concorde, the fastest airliner.

Forty years ago tomorrow, the British version of the graceful delta-winged aircraft took to the skies on its maiden flight.

The 22-minute journey made by 002 from Filton, Bristol, to Fairford, Gloucestershire, prompted an outpouring of national pride that swept aside complaints about the cost, soot and, of course, the deafening roar.

Yet the anniversary celebrations will be overshadowed for many Concorde enthusiasts by the disclosure that British Airways may betray a promise to put a Concorde on public display at Heathrow and instead cut it into pieces and ship it to the Gulf.

BA who hid their only remaining Concorde somewhere in a hanger at Heathrow is “refusing to help any of the groups seeking to get the aircraft back in the air”.

It has repeatedly rejected requests to publish a feasibility study. BA claims it showed that it would be too expensive, but it will not share the figures with the Save Concorde Group, which believes it could raise sponsorship for a return to flight.

A BA spokesman said: “It is an internal document and wasn’t intended to be shared. It has commercial information in it.” Despite making £20 Million profit a year from Concorde during it’s 27 years of commercial flights.

Come on guys; this is Concorde, we are all proud of it and let’s face it we haven’t got a lot to be proud of at the moment.



Tony Blaire has challenged the “entrenched” attitudes of the Pope on homosexuality, and argued that it is time for him to “rethink” his views.

Speaking to the gay magazine Attitude, the former Prime Minister, himself now a Roman Catholic, said that he wanted to urge religious figures everywhere to reinterpret their religious texts to see them as metaphorical, not literal, and suggested that in time this would make all religious groups accept gay people as equals.

Mr Blair, who now travels the world on behalf of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which aims to promote understanding of the main religions, left the Church of England for Rome soon after leaving office in 2007.


Watch it Tony, you could be excommunicated, but the good news is that as the law stands he will never be King of the UK, although he thinks he is.




Another example of our “hardworking MPs” No-show MPs halt help on fuel poverty (Lauren Thompson) Consumer groups have reacted furiously after legislation to help to end fuel poverty was quashed because not enough MPs bothered to vote.

The Fuel Poverty Bill was proposed by a Liberal Democrat MP in response to the Government's continuing failure to help the 5.5 million households who spend a tenth or more of their income on gas and electricity
But the legislation, which would have forced energy companies to make homes more energy-efficient and introduce lower prices for the poorest customers, was struck down last month. It had its second reading on a Friday afternoon, when most MPs head back to their constituencies.

It received 89 votes for and two votes against, but needed 100 votes to get through to the next stage.

Yes; the MPs really care about the poor, as long as they don’t have to do anything about it.


And finally:



Trickie Dickie Branson has declared a price war on rival train operator that restored routes (Ben Webster) The train company that offers Britain’s cheapest rail tickets is engaged in a battle with Virgin that threatens to force it out of business.

Wrexham & Shropshire, which runs trains between North Wales, the West Midlands and London, began operating a year ago after spotting a gap in the market for direct services.

Despite receiving no subsidy it charges £53 for a standard class any-time return ticket from Wrexham to London. A similar ticket bought from Virgin costs £201.

Now Virgin plans to run trains in direct competition with W&S, despite having previously shown no interest in providing services to the key stations served by W&S.

Virgin, which receives £35 million a year in public subsidy, won the West Coast franchise 12 years ago. It withdrew its direct service to Shrewsbury in 2004, claiming that there was insufficient demand. Now, having observed the success of W&S, Virgin is planning to run trains from London to Shrewsbury and Wrexham.


When Virgin rule the world at our expense, all we will have is one airline, one train company and one health provider, probably with “pay as you pee” toilets.

“People have this illusion that all over the world, all of the time, all kinds of fantastic things are happening. When in fact, over most of the world nothing is happening.” David Brinkley

Angus

NHS Behind the headlines

Angus Dei politico

NHS-THE OTHER SIDE

Sunday 22 March 2009

SUNDAY SECTION


A bit different today, more of a roundup on the day’s news.

BBC NEWS UK plans comprehensive terror law the Gov is updating the terror laws to include “tens of thousands of Britons such as retailers had now been trained to deal with a terror incident.”

"What we're completely clear about is that if we're going to address the threat from terrorism, we need to do that alongside the 60,000 people that we're now training up to respond to a terrorist threat, in everywhere from our shopping centres to our hotels. We need to do it alongside the 3,000 police officers now working on counter-terror, and we need to do it with international partners”.

"This is no longer something you can do behind closed doors and in secret."

Unlike the terrorists, who are here because the Gov doesn’t stop them at the borders, and keeps our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.



Telegraph Senior Labour minister Tony McNulty has admitted claiming £60,000 of expenses on his parents' home.

The employment minister is the latest MP to be caught claiming the Common's controversial "additional costs allowance" for a property that is not strictly his home.

Mr McNulty lives with his wife Christine Gilbert in a house she owns in Hammersmith, three miles from Westminster. Yet the minister has been claiming up to £14,000 a year in parliamentary expenses to help pay for another house he owns in Harrow, 11 miles from the Commons, in which his parents live.

The MP can claim the money because the house is in his Harrow constituency and so qualifies him for the second home allowance. After the arrangement was disclosed by the Mail on Sunday this weekend, Mr McNulty announced that he had decided to stop claiming the money, which he has benefited from since becoming an MP in 1997.

Not good enough McNulty, pensioners are struggling and ordinary families are struggling, you are a selfish arrogant git.



Mail Online Gord and Mandy off to party in Chile, yep, sod the recession, sod the country and sod the rest of us.

The Prime Minister, accompanied by Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, will next week join Left-wing politicians from around the world at a ‘Progressive Governance’ conference in Vina del Mar in Chile.

The event, focusing on the global economic crisis and culminating in a leaders’ summit due to be attended by American Vice-President Joe Biden and Brazilian President Lula da Silva, comes at the end of a week of official visits by Mr Brown that also takes in America and Brazil.
Makes you feel all warm inside doesn’t it?


BBC NEWS UFOs- we are not alone or are we?
A woman reported seeing a glowing, spherical object rise into the air in Norwich after meeting a man who said he came from a planet similar to Earth.

In another sighting, a triangular craft hovered then "shot off at 500mph".
The third set of UFO documents to be released by the Ministry of Defence covers the period from 1987 to 1993.

In November 1989 a "completely terrified" woman contacted RAF Wattisham in Suffolk to report her close encounter with a man claiming to be an alien.
She said she met the fair-haired man with a Scandinavian-type accent as she walked her dog on a sports field.

He then said he had spoken to her because he felt it was important to have contact with humans even though he was told not to.

As the unidentified woman ran home she heard a loud buzzing noise and turned to see a large, spherical object, glowing orange-white, rise steadily until out of sight.

In November 1990, the crews of six RAF Tornado jets reported being overtaken by a "giant UFO" while flying over Germany.

They thought it was a test flight for the then top-secret US Stealth fighter, but it turned out to be the burning debris from a Soviet rocket body used to launch a satellite into orbit.

On 31 March 1993 various reports of moving lights over south-west England and south Wales were later traced to the re-entry of a Russian Cosmos rocket body.

The files, which can be downloaded from the National Archives website, are being released as part of a three-year project

These latest documents are the first containing information written by defence intelligence staff to be made public.
Dr Clarke said they were among tens of thousands of secret files contaminated with asbestos and were in danger of being destroyed.

They were eventually saved after a campaign by historians to rescue them from the old War Office building in Whitehall.



BBC NEWS Call for school travel shake-up and about bloody time, Ministers and local authorities must do more to provide alternatives to car travel for pupils, MPs have said.

The Commons Transport Committee said it was disappointed plans had not been in place before the introduction of 14-19 diplomas, which can mean more travel.

The committee recommended a move towards more walking, cycling and American-style yellow school buses.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said it would be looking at the committee's recommendations "in detail".
Imagine, no more school run-heaven!

And finally-BBC NEWS Jade Goody dies Reality TV star Jade Goody has died at the age of 27, her spokesman Max Clifford has confirmed.

She died at home in Upshire, Essex, overnight on Saturday after a battle with cancer.


Rest in peace, didn’t like her personally, but maybe cervical cancer screening will save lives, so good on her.

“A newspaper is lumber made malleable. It is ink made into words and pictures. It is conceived, born, grows up and dies of old age in a day.” Jim Bishop

Angus

NHS Behind the headlines

Angus Dei politico

NHS-THE OTHER SIDE

Sunday 22 February 2009

SUNDAY SECTION 1


A bit late today, I overslept, ignored the alarm and was woken by the cat (I love my pussy) biting my nose, which she obviously thought was a sausage (she loves sausages); I have managed to stem the blood loss and with plaster on nose will attempt to write something vaguely intelligent-ish.

Jade Goody prepares for wedding and good luck to the girl. I hope she has the best day of her very short life, she has shown courage and strength, and deserves a bit of happiness.


Children out late 'unacceptable' this is from BBC News, it seems that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says it is unacceptable for parents not to know what their children are up to at night.

She was speaking after police in 27 council areas in England picked up and returned 120 youngsters late on Friday.

Police spotted scores of teenagers who were drunk, abusing drugs or had nowhere to stay.

They encountered large groups behaving anti-socially, and children being out far too late without an adult.

Ms Smith said Operation Staysafe had highlighted the role parents must play to alleviate the problems.

Haven’t we been saying this for years? I am sure that Labour is in a different time line to the rest of us.


BBC NEWS UK Brown signals 100% mortgages curb I have made a small comment on this on Angus Dei politico (bit of unadulterated advertising)


From Ananova- A church school teacher asked a class of ten-year-olds to write down the rudest words they know.

Parents were horrified when their children returned home with exercise books littered with expletives.

Teacher Fred Laband asked pupils to write a list of hurtful words commonly levelled at the victims of bullying and classify them from 'really upsetting' to 'harmless'.

They came up with obscenities including four letter words, reports the Daily Mail.

Many of the terms were displayed on a board in front of the class at Great and Little Shelford Church of England Primary in Great Shelford, near Cambridge.

In a letter to parents, headmistress Alison Evans said: "On reflection, it has been agreed that it was inappropriate to record these words in writing and the pages have been removed (from exercise books)."

Alastair MacGregor, chairman of the governors, said: "We deeply regret this happened. We are investigating what happened, and are taking appropriate disciplinary action, but I cannot comment on what."

Let’s hope that the teacher’s resignation note doesn’t say “F**K OFF”


Also from Ananova - DVD thief went back for remote a thief in China was caught when he returned to the scene of his crime to collect the remote control for the DVD player he had stolen earlier. But the thief was allowed to go free - when police officers ruled the £100 DVD player was not valuable enough for them to press charges.

And we think we have troubles!

And finally from Ananova - Teen thief picks on wrong pensioner a thief picked on the wrong victim when she tried to run off with the handbag of a former championship sprinter.

The schoolgirl was surprised to discover her victim still had a turn of pace - at the age of 72.
Jean Hirst had allowed three teenage girls into her car to help with directions after getting lost in Long Eaton, Derbyshire.
Mrs Hirst, from Mansfield, said: "Suddenly I felt 18 again. The adrenaline just kicked in and I seemed to turn back the years.

"She had a head start but I covered 70 yards in about 15 seconds and was within two strides of her when she looked over her shoulder and saw me.

"She probably thought I was an easy target but she shouldn't have judged a book by its cover. The look on her face was one of sheer amazement and she just threw my bag aside."

Mrs Hirst stopped and picked up the bag which she said contained her "whole life", including purse, keys and address book.

A nice bit of “grey” justice, but just a hint don’t let people you don’t know into your car or your house.

In the Halls of Justice, the only justice is in the halls.” Lenny Bruce

Angus