The Rubbish Strike

To add insult to injury, as if the Post Office fiasco wasn´t enough.......you have the strikers in Leeds.

I will do something quite uncharacteristic and officially state that I support them. Rubbish collection has been getting worse for years, and at the same time that draconian new rules to separate rubbish have been coming in. How can people comply when the infrastructure simply doesn´t exist to adequately support these wonderful environmentally-friendly ideas in the first place?

Take a look at this article.

Of course I don´t want Leeds to end up a mess, but something must be done. Council tax has risen excessively and the exact services that it is supposed to pay for have declined.

And to think that in Mexico that rubbish collection is far superior. Given, they must become environmentally-friendly here. But a twice-a-week collection where I live, and a daily collection in Mexico City surely isn´t bad. Wouldn´t a twice a week collection in London and Leeds just be heavenly?

Another example of how a developing country shows up the supposed developed and wealthier one.

Leeds residents, good luck in your dispute.

The Post Office

Very sad to see the state of affairs with the Royal Mail. I remember as a child being told of how a first-class stamp on a letter made sure that it could be delivered from London to the Highlands of Scotland by the next day.


Now look at what is going on.

I think this sums it all up for me.........another great British insitution to the wind.......not helped by EU rules on state aid etc. I wonder if France would alow "La Poste" to fall like this.

The whole episode beggars belief.

Until the next post,

Sovereignty..........

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It's very fitting that as I am about to lecture my students on the EU that the Daily Telegraph has started a new series of articles about it. Of course this is in the run up to the Irish referendum (Round 2) of the Lisbon Treaty. So the EU will be a topic I blog about regularly over the coming weeks......

This article has caught my eye as I was going to bed, and it seems a good a place as any to begin reflection.....

Is Britain still a sovereign state?

To think that I am discussing the impact of globalisation on sovereignty with my students, and I haven't even touched the mighty EU yet..........
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MP's Expenses Scandal and the rotten British Political System......

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Some long overdue comments on this outrageous tide of events.  I have been reading and listening to lots of comments about this and I want to throw my opinion hat into the so-called ring......here goes......

(a)  I don't think MP's should be chastised without examining each case closely.  Those who have followed the rules first of all need to be separated from those who have broken the explicit rules laid down by the Parliamentary authorities and/or the Fees Office.

(b)  Of course those who have broken the rules explicitly need to be duly and swiftly punished - which, given the nature of the very public role and duty that MP's have means losing their seat/standing down at the next election AS WELL AS prosecution.  I am heartened to see some reports saying that HM Customs and Excise (Excuse me, it has been rebranded as a part of Labour's spin on the administration of government - I should correctly say HMRC - HM Revenue and Customs) are fully prepared to look into the tax affairs of MP's AND high-ranking ministers (Yes Chancellor that means you - using accountants to post tax returns when it is prohibited for Joe Blog to do so) and if tax law has been broken will go ahead with pressing for a prosecution - so the message is, don't mess with your Majesty's Crown Mr Darling because she has her ways of coming back and biting you where it quite rightly hurts!

(c)  Those MP's who have kept within the rules first of all need to be recognised for doing so.

(d)  THEN, we can look at those who have followed the rules and quite rightly criticise them for the levels of their expenses claims.  If you feel as a member of the public that you have lost trust in your MP because of the level of those claims, express that opinion at the ballot box, but by no means put these MP's in the same camp as the others.  Where there has been an "abuse" in the sense of a high quantity of claims, let's voice our discontent but also recognise that no rules have been broken and the problem is WITH THE RULES THEMSELVES - now on course to change.....and this is how our system works!  Cast your mind back to but a month or so ago and we were criticising Harriet Harman because she threatened an immediate change in the law to force Goody Goodwin to give his pension pot back - we were absolutely aghast were we not at the thought of a British Government and Parliament legislating at will to scapegoat one man - a man who is certainly greedy but broke no laws.  Many were saying that the law must change and then we can prevent future Goody Goodwin's - and quite right.  The same principle applies here.  Don't abuse MP's because they stayed within the rules - QUESTION their need to claim highly BUT focus on the changes that need to be made and then let's move forward.  Focus the negative energy on those who must be purged from this political system that is in a dire mess.

(e)  My final point - Reading one article I realised that we can't leave human nature out of this equation - of course it is not a justification for what has happened (especially as this scandal spreads to the EU Parliament) but there is a certain side to many of us I'm sure that would take benefits offered to us as a part of our jobs and try to realise as many of those as possible.........if it is within the rules to stay at any hotel on a business trip, wouldn't you stay at the most comfortable one that would be allowed?  However perhaps there is further debate necessary on this when it comes to spending public as supposed to private funds......and I duly take note.

All in all what this expenses scandal reveals is a rot at the heart of our political system - let's go back to 1997.  Now I see what has been happening.  Loony liberals bringing in political correctness, legislating for every conceivable outcome with armies of pen-pushers, and then sweetening their large majority of MP's on the backbenches by taking away the real power of Parliament (their power) and replacing it with endless benefits and handouts to fatten the pigs up and make it impossible for them to ever leave their constituency seats.  Rotten to the core now be the system!  Thank whatever God you believe in that Michael Martin is out.....good riddance for his arrogance and absolute contempt for the British Parliamentary System - however I hope his demise followed by Gordy's doesn't force these two Scots back home where they will finally be prepared to cut the Scottish political elite and Scottish public from the United Kingdom of (what-used-to-be-known-as-this wonderful) Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Thanks for Reading.......

P.S  One final thought - as this spreads to the EU and expenses scandals are uncovered there - if this is what the "elected branch" of EU "government" does, need we say more about the stomach-churning possibilities of the unelected Commission and European Council?  Well, let's not forget the European Commission events of 1999....a past experience to sweeten the taste...........
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Susan Boyle - My Comments

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OK, I have to admit, I can’t stop thinking about Susan Boyle over the last few days. Here from afar I am watching, like so many others around the world, as she very quickly becomes globally known, in face and name, as well as song. What a phenomenon!

I want to post the recurring thoughts going through my head here. First, I think she totally deserves it. The judges have admitted, and it was plain to see in the audience, the prejudice towards her. It’s farfetched to call it an entirely cultural attitude, but for those of you who are Brits you know the facial expressions and attitudes are so typical of what our culture has become, embodied perfectly by the too-much-makeup clad teenager and her ridiculous expression, followed by the screwed up face of a middle-aged heavy smoker that made her look like one of the witches from Macbeth. Susan simply deserves it first of all based on extraordinary talent, and if a handy little tool called YouTube serves her as it has been doing so, then the more that know the merrier.

I think we genuinely forgot the talent that we have on our shores for a moment, and if one will allow me to be patriotic for a moment, (a rare feat these days) I believe that over this past week she has put the ‘Great’ back into Great Britain, and has made the United Kingdom a place where pride can be felt for a change without the usual mess of political correctness and the ‘nannying’ feminisation of the state to tell us what is correct to feel or not to. So thank you Susan for giving us some national pride.

But what exactly is this pride that she has evoked? What is this collective feeling we are all experiencing that entices us towards her, regardless of if we felt sorry for her, or guilty for our prejudice?

It is a collective feeling of normality for a change! This is another one of my thoughts – Susan is totally enticing for how normal and down to earth she is. The evidence is clear, and to recount the incidences seen over the past few days more than proves the point. Here is a woman, whom up until a week ago, completely unaccustomed to fame, was just living her life since the original audition given to the show in January. Therefore, throughout February and March, and into April, I’m sure that her life was no different but for the excitement she must have been feeling knowing that soon she would see herself on television. I am also equally sure that people in her local area continued treating her as always – the good hearted with a good attitude, and the cruel hearted with a negative attitude.

Then the audition came onto television. Let’s look closely at some facts. She came onto the stage, she faced the eyeball-rolling Simon and wincing Piers Morgan (and no doubt sounds from the audience inaudible on YouTube) and she reacted with humour “But that’s just one side of me,” followed by the assertive nod that says “So that’s that.” Then she changed her life and the world’s perception of her in a matter of two lines when she started singing – amazing!

The second example of her normality was at the end of the song – what did she do? Just walk off the stage that’s what! She must have seen countless episodes of this show and others like it to know that contestants receive feedback at the end, but she was content just to sing her song and leave – how down to earth is that? Most aspiring stars wait at the end and expect all the praise and glory in the world to reach the next stage of their dreams – In contrast, Susan was done, and it was time to go home!

As the positive comments started to flow, first from Piers, she has sheer disbelief in her eyes. This woman was and is genuine. They followed with Amanda, finished by Simon’s ridiculous sarcastic comments that he knew it all along, to which Susan responded “Simon!” whilst not fazed in the slightest. Then the true test came, would it be a yes or a no? Absolutely yes, proclaimed Piers! Amanda seconded him, to which we can hear Susan state “Amanda, you too?” It is a sheer reflection of astonishment, and shows us that Susan was taking this exactly as it came; she was not expecting all-round perfect endorsements – Amanda’s yes truly shook her. Simon’s icing-on-the-cake vote made her explode in a fit of victory that was as sweet as it was deserved – watch her celebrate in her unique style; I’ve likened it to the victory of the Scottish clan, a staunch posture full of muscle; punching the air, and a lady truly startled by her achievement.

This is exactly the myriad of evidence that shows us she is ordinary – she had to have 3 clear endorsements before she would accept the reality. A fantastic ending of the clip to watch, a clip which as I write has more than 34 million hits on YouTube. (And that is just the clip with the most hits; there are many others with more than one/two/five million hits)
Well done Susan!

Since the show, this ordinary aspect of her character to which we have attached ourselves so, continues to shine through. Throughout the last week with her endless interviews on CBS, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, and for local and national media, has shown us a woman who is desperately shy. She is truly new to all of this attention – unsure of how to look at the camera, her eyes often squinting, and her face scarlet red from over blushing. How normal she is, and how privileged we are, or should feel, to be sharing her experience as she comes to know the public spotlight; as her life changes irrevocably for the better.

What an incredible life story too that she has, that completes this dossier of evidence. She may not have been married, been kissed, and be lonely inside, but her heart is a pure one – years of devotion to her sick mother, her love likely to have kept her close to her parents in the first place as her siblings moved away. Aside from a job in a school previously, she has devoted years of her life to caring for the elderly and needy – who she admitted she “hasn’t had time to see this week.” Her cat for company and a group of true friends in her village, as she lives a lonely life day to day, content it seems but perhaps aware that something is missing; perhaps feeling disadvantaged in this society, as our prejudiced certainly proved.

I felt touched by her story, and as early academic studies are now taking place to try and describe the phenomenon being dubbed as “The Susa Effect,” I would like to contribute some raw data to the study. I feel overwhelmed; I feel inspired. She does indeed remind us that we can all achieve our dreams if we put our mind to it, with an added dash of faith and persistence, and by always making choices that we feel will lead us to our final destination. (Students take note please.) Her big caring heart and devotion to the needy reminds us that we are human, and that the world is indeed full of love and good feeling, albeit easily glossed over by prejudices and negativity. She has in essence put us in touch with ourselves; with the raw human condition.

Some might say that this is a breath of fresh air in a crisis, and I am prepared to accept that idea, but overall her impact has been more profound – she has brought us all down to earth and to the level that she lives on; a simple level, a pure level, a level where life is not so complex, where life may not be easy, but happiness there is. No wonder we don’t want her to change!

I conclude that the universe will always ensure that what you give out you get back in return, and with Susan Boyle’s stunning natural talent and caring, ordinary and down to earth personality, and now that the world truly values her for who she is, she cannot fail to realise her dreams. I look forward to seeing her fulfil her wildest dreams, and to singing in front of Her Majesty the Queen.

Best of luck Susan Boyle!
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God Save Britain and the UK!!

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1052881/Who-killed-Britain-A-new-book-reveals-land-Queen-Elizabeth-II-ruled-longer-exists.html

So, we don’t live in the same Britain that her Majesty ruled over more than 50 years ago! I imagine a lot of Brits are gasping for air trying to swallow the fact that a national newspaper finally had the balls to publically declare (albeit not very British but nonetheless absolutely necessary in this case) what we could have told the Queen herself at about anytime between 27th June 2007 and the present day, or indeed many moments between May 1997 May 1998 and the present day. (Just to give some credit to the Labour government – they did after all make a huge one-off payment to the national debt and secure the Good Friday agreement, which of course must be respected, unlike the first achievement, where debt has risen to record levels under our rather “prudent” Piss-it-all-up-the-wall Prime Minister.)

Your Majesty, I am not one to be rude or impolite but please stop listening to all the bullshit (also known as “nonsense”) that your government feeds you about the perfect, harmonised Britain in which we live. (A Britain that just happens to require the world’s most dense network of CCTV cameras to live in and you still don’t feel safe – however save a space in your purse for your future ID card – it can save you!) I implore you Majesty to come back from la-la land with the other Royal Teletubbies; I implore you to wake up and smell the.............well, how do I tell you...............the Royal tea bag! (However, “Get ‘wit it” would be the more modern translation, and it’s amazing that the Microsoft Word spell checker didn’t even underline “wit’ it” as a grammatical nor a spelling error) Please Majesty, wake up from la-la land using those two sugar cubes in your small cup of tea and rule over us with some sense of purpose and direction; leave the rather innocent touchy-feely nature of your world and embrace us here in your Britain wholeheartedly, for we desperately need some kind of leadership that injects a sense of collective identity back into the British people – that is a polite way of saying national identity. We all know it is going “down the drain”, “to the wall”, “to pot”, “up the creek”, “AWOL”, “kaput”, “pear-shaped”, and “rather doo-lally”, etcetera, etcetera – don’t we?

The Daily Mail in its article of Wednesday 10th September was not afraid to spell out some rather uncomfortable home truths in its depiction of “what we all knew anyway, but were too afraid to say” tone of voice. (For the fear of offending some other undefined group of people - that must be respected - because they are defined as different by the very fact that they are undefined - and we are not as such.) Let’s applaud the newspaper for trying to publicise what must have difficult in the asphyxiating politically-correct environment in which it must print its ink and cause the felling of many more trees. However, this might be one example of when such an environmentally unfriendly activity could have been justified, not too dissimilar from another major piece of news from the same day regarding the Greenpeace activists that successfully were able to claim in the courts that their criminal damage to a coal-fired power plant was justified in that they were attempting to prevent the even-bigger damage caused to the planet by the Co2 emissions of the plant.

Hoorah!

So we have two examples in one day from the same newspaper not afraid to stick two fingers up to extreme political correctness for a change. Of course, the sceptic might say that all this publicity and temper-tantrum attitude will make little difference – point duly noted – but when we wake up one day and our sense of national identity that has made us feel so proud of who we are, secure, and with a sense of belonging to a group disappears, then I don’t want to hear anyone say that they weren’t told. However, always one to look on the bright side, I guess that the ultimate loss of the British identity (and thus the political union on which it was founded) will give the PC brigade a mission, sense of purpose, and a real big mammoth of an event to pour their pens over for years to come. They can waste money, time and paper all they want trying to figure out how it could have happened. (Oh I just realised; it did all of a sudden dawn on me - excuse me for not explaining the term “PC” – this equals “politically-correct” – I am genuinely sorry to any group that felt excluded by their lack of knowledge of abbreviations) Back to the point, I wonder if the PC brigade will recognise that for once in their artificially-created bio-bubble (fast running out of air because nothing can imitate Mother Earth nor the true art of breeding bullshit) that they didn’t actually consider the British people, because if they do their jobs well, they can save £500,000 of public funds and still discover that this is the true answer. Learn from the lesson of spending £10,000 to tell us that the best biscuit to dunk in our tea was a digestive, oh mighty pen-pushers! (No offence meant to the actual researchers who completed the investigation.)

To close my moaning session, I address you again your Majesty by saying that I absolutely, without the shadow of a doubt; without feeling the guilt of my most non-PC act to date, look forward to seeing you on your arrival from la-la land. The kettle is on and the biscuits are waiting. Have a safe trip on the Royal plane!

Your most faithful subject but pissed off citizen of the state you are supposed to uphold and represent. (God Save the Queen!)

(Just to tell readers for the record, only two errors were highlighted by Microsoft Word in this text – the first was “Teletubbies” and the second was the “lally” in “doo-lally.” Not bad at all I’d say.)

(Final final point: Sarcasm is a most British craft, so I must apologise for any offence caused to any group of people - and yes this includes those who feel offended but don’t quite know to which group of offended people they belong yet. Please address any comments on a postcard to the usual address. Goodbye for now.)

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New Semester - August 2008

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Things have certainly been hectic here since the semester started on Monday 4th August. As I write I am midway through the third week and have covered an enormous amount of material with my students, including an introduction, their final project, the two world wars and the cold war.

I have had a wonderful amount of energy and enthusiasm lately despite the demands of work, and with the final project of my students now online, where they have to produce a small video analysis of two articles from a selected international publication each week, it is amazingly convenient to track their work. To do that I have designed and now maintain a central page – http://www.netvibes.com/johnread

This allows me to present deadlines through a countdown, send messages and make a to-do list, as well as maintain RSS feeds to students’ youtube channels, and a direct link to the NEW class blog at http://escenariosregionales2008.blogspot.com

Finally, students conduct weekly participation and an extension of class activities on their own class “wiki” – addressed as http://escenarios1.wetpaint.com (change the number to 2, 3, 4, or 51 for the other groups) The wikis can all be designed by the students in each group and it was my intention that they completely control how the wikis develop. I am able to track participation through the netvibes page or the wiki itself, where an RSS feed tells me who did what when, and provides direct links.

Welcome to Web 2.0!

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