Miliband showing his muscles

I was listening to the boy wonder Miliband, who has breezily announced that the British government has long thought the terminology 'war on terror' was a bad idea. Wow!! I wonder if this burst of British freedom of thought is linked in anyway to the fact that Bush is leaving his post and thus his British acolytes no longer feel the need to stand in line.



It must be very liberating for Miliband to feel free to express such radical opinions knowing that the new President has slightly more liberal sentiments than his predecessor.

Is this really a new dawn for British independent thought or will it all wither on the vine if Obama finds the realities of power compel a different approach from his promises? I suspect that this brave new attitude will last just as long as it is consistent with American aims, and when it does not...the naughty boys and girls will retire to their seats and shut up once more.

Dyslexia remark stupid but.......

Graham Stringer has made himself look a complete nit-wit with his comment that there is no such thing as dyslexia, although it's not the first time such comments have been made. Professor Julian Elliott from Durham University made the same allegation three years ago and said that dyslexia was a contrived condition with no scientific or medical basis and that the reasons for its elevation as a more prevalent condition in society was because it was an 'emotional construct' designed to protect children who read badly and who, it is felt, need to feel better about themselves.




Although experts point to certain neurological traits in sufferers from dyslexia, it is true that there are no clear and accepted neurological symptoms on which every medical expert can agree.

Although Graham Stringer has clearly put himself up to be shot down, I do feel there may be something in both his and Professor Elliott's suggestion that too many kids are being defined as dyslexic simply because of poor teaching methods. No child learns to read with quite the same facility as another and my concern would be that educationalists are finding 'dyslexia' to be an easy label and including too many children in too wide a web. The worry for me here is that too many children are effectively being labeled as suffering from a disability and packed off to some special needs facility when what they really need is more individual help and a more understanding home environment.

I am certainly not joining Mr Stringer in suggesting that 'word blindness' does not exist but I am suggesting that 'dyslexia' might have joined those words it's fashionable to toss out to explain a slowness in grasping a particular skill, which probably takes something away from the 1 or 2% of children, classed as dyslexic, whose inability is total and who do need special help.

Browns giveaway scheme just chasing losses?

I hate to say it, but I don't believe Gordon Brown's financial incentive scheme to train people, who have been out of work longer than 6 months, is going to work. Sure the companies will take the money and go through the motions of fulfilling their obligations but, I believe, companies are basically exploitative and will already be employing accountants to work out how long they need to keep people on to fulfill basic obligations before letting them go.




I still remember the Development Areas programme under Harold Wilson. Great idea, nominating areas of high unemployment as Development Areas and pouring in loads of taxpayers money to ensure factories got moved to the north- east and Scotland. The companies bought the deal then as soon as it was legally and economically convenient, closed the factories and left everyone as badly off as before.

I don't believe you can artificially correct unemployment, not by trusting the good nature of private enterprise anyway. If there are no real jobs to do these trainees will be out of the door as soon as the government money dries up. And then what? Training has a limited shelf life. You might know how to weld the underside of a vehicle or spray paint an SUV - but if the recession is a long one and you have had no chance to use those skills then employers wont look at you twice.

Far better, I believe, if government money is used in government directed schemes - road building or housing, for example where the work is guaranteed for a considerable period of time. Unless you suspend the whole principle of capitalist based economics, attempts to artificially keep people employed are doomed to failure, in my opinion. I wish Brown's initiative well but I fear for the success of it.

A minor notoriety who inspired a great song

It was announced this week that William Zantzinger had died at the age of 69. This rather unpleasant man would not have been remembered at all but for the fact that a crime he committed in 1963 resulted in a Bob Dylan song called 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll' which was included on Dylan's 'Times they are a Changin'' album released in 1964 which contained a whole host of gems.

Zantzinger (right) is pictured with his wife and lawyer outside the Baltimore courtroom



The report of Zantzinger's crime and what he did later in his life - extorting rents from black people who lived in shanties he no longer owned - is contained here.

Zantzinger was, apparently, angry at the treatment he received in Dylan's song saying it was unfair and loaded but he sounds like one hell of an unpleasant guy to me, so my sympathy for any distortion or 'poetic licence' is considerably muted.

The Great White Tribe that rule us

Prince Harry has been carpeted for following in the footsteps of his revered grandfather in being completely oblivious to the effects of racist terminology,- dismally depressing particularly when used by a member of the Great White Tribe which sits at the head of our multi-cultural, multi-racial state.

He is supposed to have called an army colleague a 'Paki' as a jest, for which he has apologised. Well personally I'm not going to get too worked up about that. He is a silly lad from a silly family which has no concept of the sensitivities of ordinary people who work for a living.



What disturbed me more was the explanation put out by St.James Palace for that and for another term he used - 'Raghead' The Palace propaganda machine put out the following statement.

'In using the term 'raghead', the Prince had no intention of insulting a friend. He was using it to refer to a member of the Taleban or Iraqi insurgent'

Oh well that's all right then. As long as they're the enemy it doesn't matter, presumably, if the Prince refers to them as 'sand niggers', 'coons', 'wogs' or any other term that might take his fancy. Do this exotic tribe from Buck House have any concept of the real world?

Brown nose award

It was announced today that departing President George Bush is to reward his most slavish foreign acolytes with the US Medal of Freedom, the highest honour, apparently, America can bestow on those foreign servants who have faithfully done its bidding.

AS well as that example of Socialist excellence, Anthony Lynton Blair, the medal goes to John Howard the former Prime Minister of Australia and Alvaro Uribe, President of Colombia. Just the sort of political company Blair deserves - this man of the people whose departure has been such a source of sadness to the entire Labour Party.

Well I can't show you the actual medal just the container in which it comes:-

Inching ever closer to a police state?

'The Times' reported yesterday that the Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan which allows police to hack into our computers without a warrant. This has, apparently been sponsored by Brussels, and is considered to be an important new step in the fight against internet crime.

But, I seriously ask, does there come a point at which the excuses given by government for giving police ever greater snooping powers, have to be weighed against the effects on us as a society?

Tony Blair reacted very angrily in the Commons, some years ago, when the accusation 'leading a police state' was thrown at him by an opposition MP. But just consider the number of CCTV cameras in our streets, the rights of police to intercept our e mails, the ability from Jan26th this year for police to raid your home to see if you possess 'dangerous pictures' and now an endorsement of their right to hack into your home PC.



I'm sure the Home Office could quote loads of statistics on how this will assist in the fight against crime. But what protection does the average citizen get against abuse of this privilege. It is not sufficient for self-satisfied guardians of law and order to say 'If you've done nothing wrong, you don't need to worry'. Apart from this being the wrong premise to adopt from the start, what constitutes 'wrong' as evidenced by the Dangerous Pictures Act , is ever changing and seemingly on a political whim.

I wish 'Liberty' had more teeth. I wish our MPs had more guts in opposing this kind of thing without clear and workable safeguards in place. For those who think I am scaremongering, just look at how we reviled the Soviet Union some years back for the sinister policy of spying on all its citizens and how we said 'Thank God we live in a democracy. That could never happen here!'