Interesting News Snippets

Two very different stories reported in to-day’s Press. Different how ? Differently accorded priorities.

The Daily Mail, beloved center right tabloid, much favoured by the intelligentsia of these Forums reports that while 20 million quid has been paid in compensation to various aggrieved Iraqi citizens, our own sevicemen languish in respect of their personal compensation some three years later. All of which means, they haven’t yet been paid for their sundry injuries and incapacities sustained in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters.

In the same paper, without any suggestion of irony, it was reported that someone has persuaded the Arts Council and the EU – whatever next? – to buy a still floating wreck of a boat from Ebay, empty it out and sink it off the Dorsetshire coast in the hope that when sea creatures arrive by the trillion to take over a new habitat, the conversion will be filmed by on board cameras for posterity.

Apart from the fact that this vessel looked in better nick than many I’ve owned, – so, there might be an element of ‘sour grapes’ here – the article in the Mail said that the cost of sinking it amounted to £80,000. I would have done it for expenses only. The total bill for this truly life affirming extravaganza totals £150,000 from various sources including the Arts Council which of course means me and you.

Now pardon me for throwing a spanner in the works. Did this kind of cash have to be spent on something as patently useless as this? Or could this cash, subject to some creative thinking, have been sent to one of the service charities patiently waiting in line for the Iraqi’s and Uncle Tom Cobbley to receive their generous taxpayer endowed settlements?

After all, sea creatures do have a home, it is called the sea.

Looks like Essax County Council could be in trouble. I did not personally see this but it was reported by someone who had. It seems that this council runs an apprenticeship scheme which offers a bonus of £2,500 to any employer who offers an apprenticeship to a member of an ethnic minority, specifically excluding white, British.

If reported to them, I wonder what the Equalities people would do – if anything ! This action of Essax Council must be illegal or are they working some unknown but convenient ‘get out’ clause or two.

Isis state that their goal is control of the Levant, of which Israel is a part.

The problem with lifting the blockade is that Hamas will then have access to better weapons. While I would also like to see an end to the blockade, it could only work if Hamas were removed.

I know no one is blameless but would we flatten a town if it was where 7/7 bombers came from?

Maybe simplistic but my answer to stop the “war”

1 Lift the blockade on Gaza. That is what Hamas wants
2 Get the Americans to stop supplying Israel with weapons and spares if the above is rejected by them.

Remember extremists exist on both sides If I was a Muslim living under Jewish control I would be very annoyed to say the least to be thrown off my own land so that Israel could have “Lebensraum.”

I don’t believe that any state or isis or similar in the area would be daft enough to take on a well armed and allegedly nuclear power like Israel.

indiscriminate slaughter of civilians is a step to far in my book.

For which Hamas shares the blame. They use hospitals, schools, shelters etc to hide weapons.

The only way to resolve this is for both sides to stop the finger pointing, and acknowledge and respect the existence of the other. Personally, I can’t see this ever happening. If we have to choose a side, I would much prefer to side with the Zionists than the Sunni extremists.

I tend to agree with you John. It is enough to pee any country off having missiles fired at them but the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians is a step to far in my book.

My memory stretches back to 1947/48 and the conflict between the nascent State of Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, with Britain as referee and ‘piggy in the middle’ shot at by both sides but particularly by the Israeli terrorist organisations known as the Stern and Irgun Zvai Leumi gangs.

As a consequence I’m not overly sympathetic to any Israeli cause. But, I’m coming more and more to understand that given the indecision and vacillation of Western Govts. we might well have cause to show more support for the Israelis as the first line of defence in the Near East against the advance of Islam apparently bent on slaughter and laying waste.

Or forward as the Israelis are behaving in Gaza!!!!!!!

According to to-day’s Telegraph, the murders and evictions are well underway. The Telegraph reports that Islamic militias operating in the new Islamic State of Iraq and Syria have instituted a systematic elimination of the remaining pockets of Christians by eviction, threat and murder. Tens of thousands of Christians have fled to neighbouring Kurdistan.

Their plight has moved the French govt. to offer sanctuary in France to these displaced Chrisitians. Canon Andrew White, the vicar of Baghdad’s Anglican church comments that “things are desperate, our people are disappearing, people are being massacred by having their heads removed”.

In 2003 about the time of the Allied invasion, there were about 1,000,000 Christians in the country. Most of them about three quarters have now gone – one way or another.

One thing of which we can be sure. There will be no intervention armed or otherwise by Western govts. The militias will note this and draw encouragement for further religeous and ideologicaly based barbarism.

No matter what you think about religeon, is this a step back to the events of the Holocaust ?

If the Scots do go for independence their display team would probably consist of two Pitts Specials trailing blue and white smoke Made from dyed Buckfastand called the “Brown Haggis’s”

A rather more than ‘interesting’ news item came to notice yesterday. More ‘interesting’ in the sense of its implications. I had previously mentioned that when on a visit to Farnborough two weeks ago, to see the Red Arrows in rehearsal prior to the opening of the air show, I had been patriotically enveloped in the red, white and blue demonstration smoke from the Hawks which led to the suspicion that because of my limp the following day I had been ‘chemtrailed’.

Happily, the true cause rapdly became knowm. A report in yesterday’s D. Tel. about the openng of the Commonwealth Games, suggested that none of the above would necessarily have been possible.

The report went on to comment that some Scottish organisation had tried to influence the Red Arrows to only display blue and white smoke to reflect the colours of the Scottish flag of St. Andrew. This overture was refused on the grounds that the Commonwealth Games was an international event opened by the Queen and should be properly represented by the red, whit and blue colours used by the British and particularly the Red Arrows.

Someone must have been particularly keen to make a point.

Come on be fair John £679,452 is hardly enough to buy a decent house in London!

Why oh why didn’t Daddy put me to work for the Local authority – any Local authority or, the blessed BBC. I’d now be enjoying my spoonful of the gravy train.

The Taxpayer’s Alliance carries a report about Haringay Local authority and the Baby P affair featuring one, Sharon Shoesmith. No doubt most of you recall this matter. It seems that Sharon’s alleged incompetance in the handling of the wilful neglect and death of Baby P has at last been rewarded by the award of almost three quarters of a million pounds in compensation for unfair dismissal from her former job.

Is this yet another example of failure and incompetance in public office being rewarded by promotion and more compensation than most people ever see in a lifetime of honest toil ?

Re 157 & 158

Inevitable ? Certainly. We’ve seen nothing yet. Islam is on the march, especially in the Middle East region. It is supported in South East Asia, China, the Indian sub continent and much of the world where Islam enjoys a strong and militant religeous resurgence.

Is it possible to stop it ? Only by the most determined opposition by the Western powers. That will happen only when the existence of Israel is threatened with nuclear weapons and/or when serious trouble hits the shores of Europe.

I hope your friend is okay.

While even the wisest off us can not see all ends, I believe this type of extremism was inevitable. We may have hastened it, but it was always going to happen eventually.

Now all we can do is decide whether we let it happen, or stand up to it.

Re post 152
I have a very good and kind friend who is an Iraqi. He is a copier dealer with a wife and three young children. He spent years saving up to buy a house in Mosul. They has fled to Kurdistan with whatever they could get into their car. I cannot get in touch with him and am worried about him. Perhaps if the USA and us stayed out of other countries business he would still be at home!

I suppose the Royal Navy carriers will have to be as much about ‘showing the flag’ as power-projection; the US Navy, with a far bigger fleet, will have more options for goodwill-visits.

I’m just guessing really that goodwill-visits would be a major consideration but you have to ask what advantage nuclear-power would give a carrier; even if the carrier didn’t need to refuel the escorting vessels would need to. The development of a new nuclear-power plant would be expensive too; France chose to use two nuclear-reactors developed from those used in French submarines but I believe there were problems with this approach. The whole Royal Navy carrier saga was fraught enough without adding the ‘nuclear’ issues into the mix too!

Re 154

That must limit the usefulness of many of the US. Navy’s big ships. How do they get on ?

Many countries, and many of our NATO allies, do not allow nuclear-powered vessels into their territorial waters; this would seriously limit the operational usefulness of the Royal Navy carriers. I believe Australia, New Zealand and Canada restrict nuclear-powered vessels (including submarines) in this way; previously Royal Navy carriers have been excluded when the Royal Navy would not (confirm or) deny that they were carrying nuclear-weapons.

To-day’s D. Tel. has a letter from a reader asking why the first new British aircraft carrier, just launched, isn’t propelled by nuclear power ?

I do not know the answer – does anyone ?