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.

...not sauce for the gander

So the House of Lords has ruled that, on divorce, wives are entitled to "compensation" for loss of earnings as a result of giving up their career prospects to look after the home and children. Seems reasonable, but there's an unwritten assumption here that only women make career sacrifices for the benefit of the marriage. I'm sure I can't be alone in saying that, had I not been married with a relatively young family, my career would have taken a different course, and I would probably have ended up in a far better paid job. Problem was it would have meant moving to London, or commuting from here in the Midlands, and clearly either way it would have had a big effect (and after discussing it, I decided a detrimental effect) on my wife and children. So I passed it up. Like I say, I'm sure there are plenty of other husbands who have made similar decisions. So how is that taken into account? Who compensates us?

Shuffle, shuffle....

I had little time for Charles Clarke as Home Secretary, but I think he was pretty poorly treated by being sacked in the wake of the "deportation of foreign prisoners" affair. After all, he's only been in post just over a year, and the problem goes back way beyond that. He certainly didn't handle the way the news broke very well, but the punishment seems out of all proportion to the offence. And now we have John Reid, Gawd 'elp us! The words "frying pan" and "fire" spring to mind.

The real NHS

The Health Secretary got a lot of stick for suggesting that the NHS had just had its "best year ever", despite stories of job cuts and ward closures. I've recently had first hand experience of my local NHS hospital , and my take on this is that the standard of care is good, but the standard of attention leaves a lot to be desired, and this is purely down to staffing levels. The ratio of staff to patients simply isn't sufficient to allow for an acceptable level of response most of the time. You soon learn that you need to know you need something about 10 minutes or so before you actually need it - that being about the average time delay between asking for something and it happening. So if this is the "best ever"........!!

The prodigal returns

Well, I'm back - sort of. Not my old self - never will be again, but I'm a survivor. Can't guarantee daily posts but will do my best to maintain some sort of continuity. Plenty gone on over the last month, mostly government ministers making fools of themselves. One thing that caught my eye was the almost hysterical reaction to a statement by a senior civil servant in the Home Office that he hadn't "the faintest idea" how many illegal immigrants were in the country. Now think about that for a moment. An illegal immigrant is one who has snuck in, and not gone through official channels - so how could anyone have any idea how many there are? The civil servant was simply giving an honest answer - the only honest answer he could possibly give. So why the furore?

Apologies

If anybody is following this blog, I apologise for the sporadic nature of my recent posts, but personal matters have I'm afraid taken my life over recently, and I have found, and indeed am still finding it difficult to find the time, or the will, to maintain regular daily posts. I hope to resume in due course, but for the time being, I hope you will bear with me.