Down the drain.

You may have seen the story in the papers of the woman who was sent to prison for refusing to pay her Council Tax. Her beef was that her local authority had allowed her street to degenerate into a no-go area where drug dealers and yobs proliferated. The council's response was to say that they had put more than £750,000 into improvements in the street. A bit reminiscent of the Government's answer to recent criticisms of the NHS, pointing to all the extra millions they had put into the Health Service. Why is there this assumption that money equals improvement? As one who was involved, on a very small scale, with Civil Service finance, I can assure you that there is no such connection. What matters is not how much money is directed at a problem, but how that money is managed. A well managed small sum can work miracles - a badly managed large sum will make no difference. It may even make matters worse!

Seeing red.

I've suggested before that perhaps we need to reconsider the penalty kick, but what about red cards? Particularly red cards as a result of two yellows. Clearly transgressions need to be punished, but being reduced to ten men in the last five minutes of a game is a different kettle of fish from being down to ten men after half an hour. Is it time to take a leaf from Rugby and introduce the sin bin? Sending a man off for ten or fifteen minutes would seem to be a far more equitable solution. After all, it is now accepted that football is a spectacle as much as, if not more than a sport, so surely you have to look at things from a spectator point of view, and there's little doubt that sending a man off, particularly in the early stages of a game, more often than not ruins it as a spectacle. And people who have paid good money to watch a match - money which the game relies upon for its continued survival - surely deserve more consideration?

Flags

Interesting programme on the other night about the Union Flag, and whether it has any relevance these days. With its connections with conquest and colonialism, it's disliked, if not actively hated by many. The Scots and Welsh see themselves as Scottish and Welsh rather than British, and the only people who actively embrace the Union Flag are the BNP and the more extreme Ulster protestants - neither of whom come close to representing the views of the man on the Clapham Omnibus. I have always certainly seen myself as English first and British second, and yet if I had a flagpole, I would - except perhaps on St. George's Day, or when England were involved in some sporting competition - probably fly the Union Flag rather than the flag of St. George. Complicated, isn't it?

Ing-er-land

The media would have you believe that we are among the favourites, but am I alone in thinking we have little or no chance in this World Cup? We're not rubbish by any means, but we're so predictable and one-dimensional in attack. High balls into the box in the hope that Crouch or somebody can get on the end of them, and shots from distance - that's more or less the sum total of it. No real penetration - no guile. I hope I'm wrong, but frankly I can't see us getting past the quarter-finals.

The number of the beast.

So we've survived June 6th without any apocalyptic events - apart from the opening of a rather unnecessary remake of the film "The Omen". Of course, there are those who believe that the true demonic number is not 666 at all, but 616. Doesn't have quite the same ring though, does it? Of course, this whole numerology thing is complete tosh, because, even if you accept the basic premise, there is no agreement on what the relationship is between numbers and letters - or more to the point, you can use whatever system you wish. Which of course means that you can come up with whatever answer suits your fancy. A politician's dream!!

2 + 2 = 5? You've passed!

The news that GCSE examiners are being encouraged to ignore mistakes when marking papers will inevitably lead to accusations that exam results just don't mean anything any more. So are exams easier than when I took mine, some 50-odd years ago? They're certainly different, but what's even more different is the method of teaching. In my day, you were taught the subject, and the exam was a test of how well, or badly, you had understood what you had been taught. Today you are taught to pass the exam, and your exam result is more a measure of how well the teacher has performed, rather than any indication of your understanding of the subject.

Braveheart...?

The Scottish First Minister has come in for some stick for publicly saying that he would not be supporting England in the World Cup. But why should he? There has always been a healthy rivalry between Scotland and England where football is concerned, just as there has equally been between Wales and England in the case of Rugby (Union). Apparently a best-selling T-shirt in Scotland is one which says: "I only support 2 teams - Scotland and any team that England plays". I'm sure if Scotland had qualified the majority of English supporters would be rooting for their opponents. That's the way it is and always has been. Unfortunately, there's always an idiot minority who take things too far, and apparently an Englishman living in Scotland has had his windows put in for displaying the flag of St. George, and has been publicly abused in the street for wearing an England shirt. Mind you, you have to wonder whether it was a terribly sensible thing to do. Shall we all just grow up?

Own goal?

Incandescent fury in the media at the sentence handed out to a paedophile who abducted and abused a three-year-old girl. Even the Home Secretary has weighed in to criticise it. Much is made of the fact that the man concerned could be released in just under six years. Of course, the important word here, which has mainly been ignored, is "could". This is simply the earliest point at which he could be considered for parole - there is absolutely no guarantee that he would get it. But let's look further into this. The judge's basic sentence was "life", but the judge is then bound to set a tariff - essentially the maximum the prisoner will serve - this he set at 18 years. You may argue whether or not that is long enough, but it's certainly a long time. However, the judge is then bound to give a discount for the fact that the accused pleaded guilty at the earliest possible moment. This is one-third, reducing the term to twelve years. He then has to reflect the fact that, subject to good behaviour, all prisoners (other than true "lifers") are considered for parole after serving 50% of their sentence - hence the six years which has caused the outrage. But as you will see, the judge was simply following the rules. And who makes the rules? A body called the Sentencing Guidelines Council. And who appoints the members to that council? The Lord Chancellor, and (you've guessed it) the Home Secretary!!

The law is what I say it is...

I had, and still have no problem with the Prince of Wales' marriage to Camilla - not before time is my reaction, but the question of whether their marriage is legal or not raises some interesting questions about how such issues are decided. We now know that, only ten years ago, the then Government was advised that members of the Royal Family could not be married in a Register Office, and indeed the Act which introduced the concept of civil marriage states quite clearly that it does "not extend to the marriage of any of the Royal Family". Pretty clear, wouldn't you say? And yet last year the Lord Chancellor quite blithely advised Parliament that "we are clear" that the Prince was free to marry in a Register Office. How did he manage to square the circle - well he didn't really try to, he simply stated that in his opinion past views on the matter had been "overcautious". Like I say, I wish the couple all the very best, but it should be a matter of some concern that a Government law officer can simply ignore the clear wording of an Act when it suits him.

Acceptable?

Much rejoicing in the media at the news of the death of Al-Zarqawi, but did you notice in the small print, the fact that the air strike which accomplished it also killed six others, including a child?

IT = It's trouble!

I've commented before on how we seem to be oblivious to lessons we should learn from the past. The latest example is the new NHS super computer system. It was supposed to be up and running by now, but the latest news is that it will probably not be in service before 2008. And the cost - well it started out at something like £3bn, was later uprated to twice that, and the latest estimate has ballooned to something like £20bn. Why am I not surprised? Because we've seen it all before - and not just once. The Home Office computer system, the DVLA system, the Court system, the Tax Office system, and many others - they all went horribly over schedule and over budget. And at the end of the day, none of them have really delivered as promised. So why should this one be any different? Why oh why don't we learn from history?

Wot, no E-numbers?

My grand-daughter goes to nursery. It was her birthday the other week, so her mum baked her a birthday cake, and sent a chunk to nursery for her friends. Except that nursery wouldn't allow it to be handed out because it was home-made. A shop-bought cake would have been fine. The logic? Well, I'm not sure there is any logic to it, but it seems to be all about the risk of the nursery being sued if anything in the cake were to make any of the children ill. With a shop-bought cake they could argue that they had taken reasonable care by consulting the list of ingredients, and ensuring that nothing listed there would cause a problem, and if it did in fact make anybody ill, they could pass the legal responsibility on to the cake manufacturers. What a strange, sad world we live in!

What goes around.....

We are constantly being exhorted by advertisements in the press and on the TV to recycle, but a series of letters in the paper makes it clear that just what you can recycle and how varies considerably from place to place, and often seems to make no sense. Where I live for instance, you can recycle paper (not Yellow Pages however!) but not cardboard. So at what point does paper become card? Just how thick does it have to be before it becomes unacceptable for recycling? You can recycle glass bottles, but not the tops. You can recycle tins, but have to take the labels off first. And in some parts of Yorkshire, it would appear that you are provided with a recycling box, but there is no collection - it's up to you to take it to the recycling centre! If they want people to take recycling seriously, this all needs sorting out.