Greenhouse control or just hot air?

It has been announced by Britain's Environment Minister, David Miliband, that a raft of legislation may soon be enacted with the urgent aim of reducing the effects of climate change, cutting down the build up of greenhouse gases by pretty swingeing taxes on any contribution to the burning of carbon fossil fuels.

These could include, we are told, proportionate vehicle taxing depending on a combination of fuel consumption and carbon emissions, so its not just big vehicles that would pay the most but big OLD vehicles which pump a high volume of crap into the atmosphere.

They could include a pay as you drive scheme with different rates applied to each mile you drive based on the time of day.

Our holiday air flights could have a carbon emissions levy added making our cheap holiday flights considerably more expensive.

Haulage companies and inefficient industry could find themselves taxed and fined thus bumping up the cost of their goods and services.

I'm sure most people, who do understand the horrific consequences of global warming would be glad to suffer through the pocket to help stop this..IF the sacrifices were also seen to be global.

The worry for many is that, while setting a good example, Britain and the rest of Europe will be making great sacrifices to curb carbon emissions while the big polluters, primarily China and the United States, will continue on their own sweet way making precious little attempt to meet any targets lest it handicap their economic prosperity.

Fine that Mr Miliband has these grandiose ideas but there surely HAS to be global agreement on instituting any such measures. If Europe is on its own , showing good ecological faith, then surely we are just pissing in the breeze!

Irresponsibility in the BBC

This week has brought one of those tragic news stories of two British children found dead in their holiday bungalow on the Greek island of Corfu. Their father and his girlfriend were found unconscious in the same room but are now recovering.

It has been determined that the cause of the deaths was a faulty heater unit which was pumping carbon monoxide into the bedroom and representatives of the hotel have now been charged with manslaughter.

Before the findings of the pathologist were released the BBC News reporter was happy to tell us all that 'rumours were circulating in the complex that the children had died as part of a bizarre suicide pact'.

At the time she imparted this morsel nothing was known as to the cause of death, and I was astonished that a family which had been subject to a sudden tragic bereavement should have the further slur cast upon them publicly that the children may have been killed deliberately by their father and his girlfriend. Even had it been proved true, to suggest it with absolutely no medical findings available at that stage, was outrageous.

I contacted the BBC and suggested that this was at best a breach of good taste and the spokesman promised to take my views to the news department and provide an answer. I suspect I will be waiting a very long time.



The hotel complex where two children died

Why is the left so prone to gesture politics?

Why has the British left always been so prey to the inclination to 'gesture' politics, seen to be saying the right thing, giving out the 'appropriate' message, rather than common sense policies which actually work ? This is, of course, particularly true in the area of social and cultural legislation in which our left has walked on egg shells since time immemorial.

We have had left wing city councils declaring 'nuclear free zones', we had my own Labour Council some years back suggesting that the Christmas festivities be scrapped and replaced by a non religious 'Winterval' in case they offended the Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Jews and any other religion/ culture they could think of. It took a representative group of those very community leaders from the various non Christian faiths to tell the Council not to be so bloody ridiculous before they backed down.

The same with 'positive discrimination'. There is every good reason to educate management not to fill its vacancies entirely with representatives of the white middle class, but I'm not sure the idea of quotas encourages the result of necessarily achieving the balanced objective. When this was first implemented in Birmingham there were the usual jokes about 'Don't apply unless you are a one armed wheel chair bound, partially sighted, black lesbian feminist' and exaggerated though that was , the policy of lurching to extremes in order to be seen 'doing the right thing' has long been the order of the day.

Now, of course, the Labour bible has long cherished the ideal of multi culturalism. The idea that within a nation state, different cultures be allowed to flourish and grow, preserving their own ways and their own attitudes, their own schools, dress codes and so on.

The idea was to give these cultural communities the confidence to thrive and grow in a new land without feeling oppressed and subordinated by the indigenous population. What was not anticipated, and maybe should have been, is the degree to which many of these communities have so succeeded in this aim that they live completely separate lives from other cultures within the United Kingdom. The result has been racial stress, tension and distrust leading to the current wave of reaction against multi-culturalism. This wave is led by the very politicians who first encouraged it.

Muslim women teachers who felt they were entitled to demonstrate their cultural diversity by wearing the veil in class are now being told that its not acceptable and that they risk suspension. Bradford City Council, home to more Muslims than anywhere in Britain, is to introduce a uniform code of dress for students and teachers in all its schools. The ethnic communities are suddenly shell-shocked by having the proverbial rug pulled from under them by the very politicians who put it there.





The United States, maybe the biggest and most successful nation with regard to the absorption of different cultures from all over the globe in a relatively short space of time has something to teach us. The U.S. applied a philosophy of 'the melting pot', allowing immigrants to adapt to US life at their own pace but always, in the background, was the firm committment to becoming an American and all that entailed.

While I would not necessarily like the UK to display all the overt manifestations of patriotism that marks out the United States, there is no doubt that there has been a lack of any emotional commitment to the nation state within the United Kingdom, no sense of belonging to a national community, precious little for immigrants to aspire to - so they have welded their own strong community rules and are shocked when these are challenged.

Belatedly the United Kingdom has recognised its failings and has started to do something about them but at times does seem to be thrashing round blindly for solutions. The encouraging thing is that many minority community leaders have themselves recognised the dangers of 'ghettoism' and are prepared to work towards greater harmony.

Maybe in ten years time there will be a different story to tell. I can but hope.

"The Hawthorns" Experiment

When I was at college doing a Business Studies Diploma, I learnt about industrial psychology as represented by the classic case of the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Co in Chicago between 1924 and 1927, thus termed 'The Hawthorne Experiment'.

Basically this experiment changed the working conditions of employees and consequently there were improvements in output. More surprisingly, the new improvements were then taken away and STILL there were improvements in output.

Basically the findings were that employees are basically motivated by being noticed rather than by financial rewards.

I'm wondering if this theory applies to my football team who, coincidentally, play at 'The Hawthorns'. At the start of the season West Bromwich Albion spluttered along under then Manager Bryan Robson hardly able to win a game and certainly totally incapable of getting any points away from home.

So the Club fired the manager. From then on,with no new players and just a tweak here and there in playing style - and with a temporary guy at the helm - they haven't looked back. These same players have now won four games in a row - two away from home, and banged in 14 goals in 4 matches , and old codgers like me are consulting their history books for the last time Albion did that!

Maybe it was complacency and boredom despite being paid megabucks. So now the Club has a new permanent Manager and the players continue to perform.

But wait! If my theory holds good that means eventually boredom with the new man will set in, the players will slip back to their old ways, the Club will have to fire the new man, reverse the improvements and bring back......oh God no surely not!

Happy birthday girl or sad little loser?

Today a little British girl is 3 years old. It is a miracle she has made it this far. Charlotte Wyatt was born 10 weeks premature on Oct 21st 2003 weighing only 458 grams and was 5 inches long. She is severely brain damaged, she can hardly see or hear, developed septicaemia, and suffered multiple cardiac arrests having to be resuscitated several times.

Doctors at her Portsmouth Hospital decreed that this tiny infant was in such pain that her life would be a misery for however much there was of it, and that the child would not live beyond infancy. They therefore decided that if she suffered further cardiac arrest they would not resuscitate a fourth time.

Charlotte's parents, Darren and Debbie Wyatt, fought this decision on the prime basis that Mr Wyatt's profound Christian beliefs told him passionately that such a decision was wrong and 'only God's to make'. He was of course supported by the Pro-Life campaign groups.

Originally the High Court judge supported the hospital doctors and did so again a month later when an appeal was made. On the baby's second birthday, last October, the Judge changed his mind after evidence was given that this plucky little mite was showing distict signs of improvement.

In February of this year, little Charlotte developed an acute viral infection which, in her weakened state, appeared almost certain to kill her. So the doctors went back to court and once more obtained a 'no resuscitation' order. To their surprise this tough little baby fought this seemingly fatal infection, beat it and from then on until this her third birthday, this blind, deaf, brain damaged infant with damaged kidneys and a damaged heart who cannot walk or even crawl has become stronger and stronger until she is now well enough to go home to the parents who made such a stand on principle.

A happy ending of sorts? Well no not really because those same parents have now split up and neither wants the responsibility of looking after her. So passionate it seems is their committment that, having won the 'religious principle' battle, Mrs Wyatt has visited the child only three times in nearly nine months and her husband even less.

Now one cannot pass judgment on a marriage break up and nor would I try, but it seems a strange kind of faith which makes you fight to keep a desperately damaged baby alive and then walk away from the problems your victory has created.

The cost to the National Health Service, and therefore the British taxpayer, of keeping Charlotte in hospital is £6000 a month. It seems heartless to talk of money when a child's life is involved but this is one of those tragic situations where there seems to be no winner - the Hospital Trust could probably use that money on cases where there is likely to be a better chance of survival, the parents seem to have succumbed to so much pressure that it has ended their marriage and for the plucky little girl celebrating - if that is the word - her third birthday, she lies there a pain racked little vegetable with no home to go to and only Portsmouth hospital doctors and nurses to give the kind of love which should be the duty of parents. What kind of life is that?

Only a little bit of torture!

The BBC World Service survey published today shows that, hearteningly, two thirds of the world's population reject the use of torture as an acceptable instrument of the state even when based on the 'torture one to save hundreds' theory.

This still leaves approximately one third who are in favour of 'some limited amount of torture when the situation demands it'.

As a member of Amnesty and a human rights activist this latter argument always reminds me of a Monty Python sketch, grimly unfunny though the argument is.

"'Ere, you in favour of torturing people then?"

"Er no, not really - well at least not much - and only when they ask for it!"

"NOT MUCH? 'Ow much is not much then? Beatin' their kidneys with a stick?"

"Ooooh no that sounds awful - not as much as that!"

"Ticklin' em under the ribs until they kick their legs in the air?"

"Well a bit more than that!"

"Pulling their finger nails out?"

"Well maybe just on one hand..."

I always feel that arguments about favouring a 'little bit of torture' are like claims that a woman is a little bit pregnant. You either are prepared to endorse torture or you are not!

It is a maybe understandable cop out by those who believe torture works but don't want to be branded as heartless sadists but I believe, regardless of what some perceive as the effectiveness of torture it has to be absolutely and firmly rejected by everybody as a means of interrogation and acquiring information.






I don't believe it is something we should be half hearted about. Torture is an absolute and total violation of human rights and it is no more of an argument, in my view, to justify it by arguing that the victim may well be more violent than his torturers. On that tit for tat basis we would still be killing murderers, painfully castrating child rapists and so on. Unless we absolutely and unequivocally condemn torture as unacceptable and a crime against humanity, what do we have left for those who favour 'a little bit of torture'? Its OK to torture terrorist suspects say some...OK what about torturing little children to give away the hiding place of their parents? Some nations would condone that. It has to stop.





The argument for torture of course is expediency. It helps to get information quicker. Well even if that is true I believe it is NOT acceptable for any state machinery anywhere in the world to include torturing of suspects in its repertoire and we should be doing everything in our power to convince those who still support it that they are misguided and wrong. When we dehumanise others we dehumanise ourselves. The recent shameful events at Abu Ghraib should have reinforced that.

50 years ago and what have we learned?

..and so we invented a pretext and then launched an invasion force of an arab country in defence of western economic interests with the object of securing 'regime change'. While the military did everything that could be asked of them, the whole venture failed because the politicians had not worked out an end game, and it ended in ignominy and disaster.

Ring any bells? No its not Iraq, but this week is the 50th anniversary of the attempt by the British and French to invade the Suez Canal, to remove President Nasser and his regime from office and replace it with an Egyptian Government both sympathetic to British and French economic interests and one which would be more sympathetic to the then new State of Israel.



Following a secret meeting at Sevres, just outside Paris, between France, Britain and Israel, the Israelis, deliberately used as the trigger, invaded the Gaza Strip and headed towards the Suez Canal, 'forcing' Britain and France to invade to keep the two warring sides apart.

The strategy worked wonderfully but the fly in the ointment in terms of a political success for the invaders was - a Republican Administration in the United States under Eisenhower, who threatened to sell US reserves of the British pound in order to cause a collapse of the British economy if Britain refused to withdraw. So after such irresistible pressure, the British and French withdrew, the Canal stayed in Egyptian hands and Nasser remained in power to celebrate his 'victory'.





The invasion was an appalling political misjudgment by Eden, the British Prime Minister, forcing his resignation as a result of the humiliation suffered as a result of his failure to deliver. It would have been a military and political triumph had it not been for the fiscal might of the United States which had firmly opposed the invasion.



It makes one think, fifty years on, what a pity it is that the United States is so economically omnipotent that no fiscal overlord is around to stop THEIR current, and far less able, Republican Administration from disastrous and immoral adventuring into Arab lands, hell bent on regime change.