Now There's A Suprise(!)

When the G20 Summit came to London in April 2009 a man was killed by the police during the demonstrations against the summit. Obviously there is absolutely no suggestion that any police officer will face any sort of prosecution over that incident but as news of the death sparked an inpromtu memorial service at the site the following day. As you can see from this video; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V23PGWd46MM a Sargent in the Territorial Support Group to slap one of the women in attendance across the face and then give her a couple of strikes with his baton. Under the pressure of publicity that this video created and the relatively minor nature of the crime the police officer (Delroy Smellie) was charged with common assault and put on trial. That trial ended today and guess what? He was found not guilty of all charges! So apparently what you see in that video is not assault.

It might seem a strange thing for me to say but I'm taking that as a good sign. You see two of the stranger rumours about me are that I'm a policeman and that I smell. Therefore a judge ruling that the Smellie policeman is entitled to use force to protect himself could be a good omen. Of course though that's just spin and won't detract from the fact that Delroy Smellie will now be allowed to continue his career in the police where he has earned a reputation for being quick to violence.

In other news I've had that chat with the Doctor from Parchmore Road. They don't seem interested in sorting out the problem quietly so have instead called in local social services to investigate what they suspect could be serious mistreatment of my grandmother. That means the atmosphere in my house is going to get very hot right around the first weekend in May. It will then blow over as once again one department of Croydon Council decides it's not going to find evidence of mis-conduct by another department of Croydon Council. It's a good job then that plans to remove Croydon Council from the decision making process are already at quite an advanced stage.

Hello, Hello, Good evening and Hello.

Since I last posted I've been in the pub with my father so it's not been a difficult evening wasted then(!) To make matters worse since the UK government announced that they will be banning 4-methylmethcathione, commonly known as meow meow all the neighbourhood felines have been worried that they've been served with a gagging order and made illegal.

Apart from that I should make clear that the three people at the OPG I've been in contact with today are;

George Atkinson,

Heather Kirk,

Alison Moody.

Somewhere along the line I also got hit with a call from Dr Shaikh from the Parchmore Road Medical practice who I will be have to be talking to again at some point tomorrow.

See An Entire Day Wasted.

When the Brits tried to force through these LPA's they took a gamble. That gamble was that because I did not object after the solicitor informed the Office of Public Guardian I will have forfeited my right to object. What they didn't factor into this little calculation was that I was informed by the solicitor on November 26th 2009 (and can prove it) prompting me to contact the OPG on December 11th (and can prove it). This means that I had an open dialogue with the OPG from December 11th and raises the question of why they didn't independently contact me when the solicitor, who's conduct is in question, contacted them.

I have spent most of this afternoon scanning, uploading and emailing some of these documents to the OPG because if they were to look at them it would cause them to immediately fold. The trouble is that they've suddenly started having problems with their email system so while I can confirm that the documents are on their server the addressees have not received them. I would say that this means that the Brits now know that they're so far in the suck they've been forced to resort to stalling tactics in an attempt to stop this matter coming before the Court of Protection in a timely fashion. I think I'm going to have to keep a closer eye on these cunning little ninjas.

Fun as today has been and it has been quite fun I have not had the time to prepare a submission for the Haiti Donors Conference that is taking place in New York tomorrow. I will now only be able to submit a very poor skeleton argument which I will try and fill out when it is too late.

The first issue of the donors conference is that the various reconstruction agencies have only received less the 49% of the US$1.4bn they require. This is because many people who have very publicly announced donations to Haiti have so far failed to make good on those promises and provide the cash. I understand that in many cases this is the result of difficulties collecting the money from sub-donors and problems channeling the funds into appropriate projects but the conference needs to work hard to turn promises of help into actual help.

The second issue, which will also help with the first issue, is how to best make sure that the donors and people of Haiti get value for money by ensuring the money is well spent. The best way I can think of to achieve this would be to formalise and expand the UN's ad-hoc advisory group in order to turn into into a development agency. I have chosen this model because over the course of it's life the ad-hoc group has widely regarded as being successful and was instrumental in the production of the E/2009/105 report which lead to real and important improvements to life in Haiti prior to 2010's earthquake. It is also broadly representative of the global community while keeping the Haitian government at it's core. Despite these successes though it would be a mistake to simply give this group more powers. First I think that a few changes need to be made to it's structure;

• It needs to be larger. While its current size of seven permanent members of the UN is fine for an advisory role if it is to take a more proactive role then it needs to be expanded. I think the best way to do this would be to leave it as a seven/eight seat group but allow each of those seats to have two representatives plus support staff. For Haiti's guaranteed seat their representatives can be the Haitian President and the Haitian Prime Minister if they so wish.
  

• It needs a chairperson. Sadly the chair of the advisory group, Hedi Annabi was killed during the earthquake. This has created a vacancy and the opportunity to have the group chaired by a world class statesman who is skilled at negotiating with the variety of national governments and private corporations who are involved in the reconstruction effort. Bill Clinton is the obvious choice because he is already doing a similar job. If he has no interest in the job then any former US President would be suitable for the role along with a variety of other people including but not limited to Brazil's Lula Da Silva, France's Christine Lagarde and Canada's Michelle Jean provided they are prepared to leave their current offices.

• It needs a formal voting structure. With representatives of seven different nations decision making is always going to be difficult. Therefore I suggest a simple majority vote with the Chair and the Haitian delegation holding vetoes.
  
• It needs to be more representative. Although the current representatives from Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Spain and Trinidad & Tobago represent four continents and another Caribbean island. I am concerned that too many of them are members of the Paris Club, France has no representative despite it's long history with Haiti and that there is no representative from the far east or middle east. I also concerned that although Britain is not represented the Commonwealth is over-represented by both Trinidad & Tobago and Canada which appears to have given up on democracy in favour of direct rule from Britain. This is a serious concern because on the evidence available since the earthquake I wouldn't put it past Britain to try and ruin the reconstruction effort just to make me look bad. Therefore I propose that Canada steps down and France takes their place if the chair goes to an American or to America providing it doesn't hold the chair. I would also like to see an eighth seat added that would go to either Singapore or the UAE as these are both countries with sophisticated economies that are located in the eastern hemisphere.

Of course this stills leaves the large area of what this bodies remit should be and this is the area on which I have been unable to do any research whatsoever. However I think in the immediate term it should act as trust fund through which donations can be funneled and have full responsibility for the relief effort specifically getting the homeless into appropriate temporary shelter in time for the rainy season. Beyond that they should take responsibility for infrastructure projects such clean water at the provision of energy. It will of course retain is observatory role over other aspects of Haiti's development and can take on extra roles that the Haitian government wishes to give it.

I've Just Spoken to the OPG

On a recorded phone line they have just admitted that they have acted in error and therefore the statutory instrument cannot exist. What they have not admitted is that their "error" could well constitute a criminal offence. They have decided that they need to speak to quite a few people and will call me back with solution by 17:00.

To speed those conservations along I'll tell them now the solution will be that they will report themselves to the Court of Protection. They will also report the solicitor in question to both the CoP and the Law Society in order to open an investigation into him due to malpractice. They will then make gesture of around £1000 to compensate me for my trouble.

All in all they seemed much more helpful then they've been previously which suggests it's finally dawned on them that they have made a serious mis-calculation here.

Russian Train Bombings.

Today (29/3/10) separatist terrorists carried out two suicide bombings on Moscow's Metro rail system killing at least 38 and wounding more then 60. As these terrorist groups have been largely inactive for the last five years there was a possibility that certain elements may have encouraged them out of retirement in order to get Russia to change its policy on Iran. After the quick look I've had at the incident there is absolutely no evidence to support that. Of course some people will still try and use the incident to change Russia's position but it does seem to be just an internal Russian problem.


In less gruesome news London's entertaining Mayor, Boris Johnson has been talking to the media again. This time he's promised that London's 2012 Olympics will have the atmosphere of the Woodstock festival. Woodstock was of course so badly organised that it had to be declared a federal disaster zone so well done Boris!

Tomorrow I will be calling up this guy from the OPG and I strongly suggests that he makes himself available to take my call.

The 15:00 Deadline Has Passed.

And I have received no response from the OPG. That means they've decided to go about this the hard way that will result in them having to prove they've done something that I can prove they haven't. I don't understand their choice because all they can possibly achieve is building up bad feeling with me.

I know I shouldn't let it bother me but the whole episode has put me in the foulest of foul moods. That's because although it is only Monday I can already seen my entire week being wasted by yet another government employee who seems to think their job is beneath them. This is a real shame because todays bombing in Moscow makes it look as if the war on terror is about to take an unfortuante turn.

Now That Was a Little Bit Less Then Healthy.

last night my neighbours at number 50, henceforth known as the hen house, decided to stay up late and do their bit for the crown. Although there was no loud music involved they chose to be in their back garden 'till around 04:00 swearing, shouting and trying their hand at some less then convincing fake laughter. They regretted this slightly when I got up at around 05:00 to watch the Australian Grand Prix complete with the loud and screaming F1 engines.

After I watched the race I went back to bed for a few hours and awoke just in time to watch the repeat showing of the Grand Prix. This caused me to spend a good few hours of my day wondering if the last few hours had been a horribly predictive dream. To make matters worse old bloody fascist summer time began today so some of the clocks in the house were showing the correct time and some of them were set one hour forward. It is perhaps fortunate then that I had the malice and aforethought to prepare dinner before I became far too drunk to deal with that shiny, sharp, knifey thing.

The good spirits of the evening though has left me feeling warm enough to share with you a little secret. Keep it close to your chest and under your hat though because despite their high level of access the Brits haven't worked it out yet. In the F1 codebook I am both Jenson Button AND Lewis Hamilton. So I'm predicting a good season for Ferrari then.

While we're on the subject of competitive events tomorrow is Monday and the start of the British working week. That means that by 15:00 I will be expecting an email response from George Atkinson, my contact at the Office of Public Guardians (OPG.) Ideally this email will apologise for his most recent correspondence and inform me that all relevant LPA's have been cancelled due to a clerical error. If this is not possible then the email will contain a sworn statement admitting full liability on behalf of the OPG and details of how they will now be taking the matter to the Court of Protection (CoP) on my behalf. If not then George K Atkinson will have added himself and all those above him in the OPG's organisational structure to the list of people who will now have to be burnt from the pages of history.

So no pressure then.

I've Been Doing Some Reading.

Most of it has been research that I hope to bring together in a dull but important post in time for the Haiti's donors conference.

I've also had a close look at what I will have to do in the event that the OPG don't respond well to polite conversation. In that case all I need to do is go to the Court of Protection on Archway in London, pick up a form check one of four a boxes on the form, sign it, date it and hand it back. Although this whole business has been so dodgy I'm entitled to check all four of those boxes I've narrowed it down to the two best options.

Option 1. Due to a procedural error at the OPG the statutory instrument (LPA) does not exist. This is the quickest and easiest because the CoP will have no choice other then to send the whole matter back to the OPG with a big black mark against their name and I won't have to answer any questions about my grandmothers health or domestic situation.

Option 2. The statutory instrument was obtained through fraud or intimidation. This will be a little more complicated but a lot more fun because it will compel a judge to open a criminal investigation into fraudulent behaviour by Croydon Council and a number of its arm length authorities.

While this latest little episode has actually left me in a stronger position then I was in yesterday it has really p****d me off. So the bad news for the Brits is that large compensation figure they were complaining they couldn't pay, well it's just got a whole lot bigger.

A Thought Has Occured.

I know it took a while but it is Saturday.

The Office of Public Guardians (OPG) is an example of a Quasi-Autonomous, Non-Governmental Organisation (Quango). As I think is now pretty well established Britain intends to tackle its economic problems by slashing the budgets of or shutting down entirely certain Quango's. As it was set up by the Labour government under a Conservative government the OPG is going to be at quite high risk.

While I think my problems with the OPG will be solved with a quick chat the absolute doomsday scenario is that I will have to make a paper submission to the Court of Protection (CoP) over the matter. Even if this submission is handled by a bent judge the CoP will find it very hard not to rule that the matter stills falls under the OPG's jurisdiction and send it back to them while pointing out that they're not doing the job they are being paid for.

That is the sort of thing that is going to make it very hard for the OPG to argue that the Treasury should continue funding them. So while they think they're securing their future by doing me damage they're actually writing their own suicide note.

More Ineptitude from The Quango's.

Just received a letter from the Office of Public Guardian (OPG) informing that I am unable to raise an objection to these LPA's because the period for objections expired on February 22nd 2010. I'm just fired an email back to them explaining this is not the case. I am awaiting a response and expect them to be difficult. There is of course still no need to worry because for these LPA's to be enacted the matter will still have to go through the Court of Protection. There the OPG will have to successfully argue that Febuary 22nd 2010 occurred before December 11th 2009. I know they're based in Birmingham but last time I checked that isn't actually a parallel universe.

While I'm on the subject my grandmother's buprenorphine has started to kick in. This means she's experiencing increased sleep disturbance, headaches, difficulty tracking conversations, slurred speech and increased balance problems that have resulted in one fall and a head injury. A little part of me hopes that this news from the OPG encourages her doctor to continue the treatment because I for one will be fascinated to read her clinical justification for doing so.

That Prescription Letter's Done

And delivered. As usual I can't exactly post it up on the Internet but it shouldn't be hard to find a copy. Basically it details how in last two years my father has transferred my grandmother through four different doctors each time getting them to prescribe opiates before switching to a new doctor when those prescriptions are questioned. That should be enough to get him flagged up as a drug seeker and kept away from any further clinical decisions.

The Budget.

Today the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer has delivered his annual budget in which he outlines how much money the country's got, how it's going to spend that money and how it intends to raise more money. As it is widely accepted that in 42 days Britain will be holding a General Election that will return a new government which will implement it's own budget this years speech was nowhere near as significant as normal. The Chancellor's hands were further tied by the fact at the coming election his Labour party is going to try and differentiate itself for the other political parties by promising to ignore the national deficit and continue with public spending. Therefore he could hardly announce cuts in spending or tax rises and the Queen most certainly wasn't going to allow him to spend any more money.

It would though look just a little unprofessional if the Chancellors budget speech consisted of him standing up and say; "We're pretty much going to leave everything the way it is" before sitting down again. So he decided to heavily pad the speech by spending the first twenty minutes droning on about how his party had responded to the global financial crisis and why he thought it was all an amazing and excellent idea. This has very little to do with Britain's current economic situation and probably should have been saved for a party political rally rather then the budget speech. The Chancellor did however, eventually get on to the important stuff;

Growth Forecasts. In 2010 the Chancellor predicts that the UK economy will grow between 1 and 1.25% which although is being claimed as being in line with forecasts is actually a slight downgrading. The growth forecast for 2011 has been downgraded more significantly to between 3 and 3.5%. Although I think these figures are still slightly optimistic they are, especially at the lower end of the estimate, within the margin of error and are therefore quite credible.


Unemployment. The Chancellor was proud to announce that in spite of the recession unemployment has not risen as severely as expected and in fact has fallen by 47,000. This is nothing more then a fiddle because while the number of people claiming Job Seekers Allowance and therefore registered as unemployed has fallen the number of people classed as "economically inactive" has risen. This group includes people who are on sickness benefits, are funding their job search through savings or redundancy payouts and young people who have been tricked into worthless university courses and are therefore reliant on Student Loans Company who do not have a reputation for prompt payment.


Public Sector Borrowing. Public sector borrowing and therefore the national debt is predicted to have fallen by £11bn to £167bn. Although still very high this is good news for the economy. Aside from a very large estimate in the Pre-Budget Report this has been achieved in a number of ways. The majority of the reduction comes from the one off supertax on bankers bonuses that has netted the Treasury an extra £2bn in revenue. Borrowing has also been helped by the scamming of the unemployment figures that has reduced the amount of money that is being paid out to benefit claimants. Also there have been reports that the department that pays benefits has been ever so slightly underpaying people and paying them late while the department that collects tax has been ever so slightly overcharging people and forcing them to pay early. A large part of this reduction in borrowing though is due to the fact that the governments expensive public health campaign to get people to quit smoking and drink less has failed spectacularly. Sales of tobacco and alcohol products have been up significantly and because they are taxed at around 300-400% this has netted the Treasury a couple of billion pounds in extra revenue.

Taxation and Spending. In terms of the real nuts and bolts of the budget the will effect the average man in the street the Chancellor has actually done very little. There is an attempt to nibble away at the edges of public spending with an extra £6bn in "efficiency savings." As always you need to go right into the minute detail of the budget to discover what these are but I think they are genuine efficiency savings by further reducing the budgets of quangos, moving government offices in areas of cheaper rent and stopping them buying new office equipment. There also small attempts to boost revenue by increasing the tax on alcohol and tobacco in line with the escalator. The tax on cider will be raised by a huge 10% in order to bring it in line with other alcohol products. This is quite a sneaky way to raise extra revenue because very strong, very cheap and largely synthetic ciders are normally drunk by the sort of problem drinkers you would probably call tramps. Therefore this tax hike can be disguised as an attempt to clean up society while sucking a lot of extra money out of people who are basically addicts. The Chancellor has also decided to phase in the 3 pence rise in fuel duty over three stages between April 2010 and January 2011 rather then just doing it in one go in April. This has been done in response to the rise in oil prices and worries that it could damage the economic recovery.

The Election Give Aways. It is traditional for the last budget before a General Election to be packed with freebies, give aways and bribes to encourage people to vote the government back into power. Although the Chancellor enjoyed more freedom the recently in the content the budget the state of the public finances meant that these too were thin on the ground. There were some though. The most high profile of these is the decision to scrap stamp duty for first time house buyers in the event that they can get a mortgage. The higher rate of winter fuel payments to the elderly will continue for another year provided the pensioners remember to vote Labour. There is also a scheme to make bank accounts available to people who have, up to now, been unable to have them. This last scheme does rather sum up the budget because while it hints at a semi-interesting talking point for socialists over the subject of social exclusion within a capitalist society it will only really affect about 1 million over three years. Therefore you really need to be more deeply interested in Communist politics then is probably healthy in order to care about it.

Considered that the time I spent watching the Budget and writing this has meant that I've be unable to write that letter to the medical people I'm inclined to sum this budget up as a bit of a waste of time and effort.

Oi, OI, Good Evening and Hello

I have been drinking for most of my life and for the most part of tonight. However for the next two hours I will be on the internet where I will try very hard not to look at all those pictures of naked ladies I promise.

Go On Admit It

You prefer it when I'm being lazy.

Apart from writing long, rambling and slightly shouty text messages and blog posts I've also been in touch with the my grandmothers GP's surgery to discuss their recent decisions regarding her treatment. I had hoped that this could have been dealt with by a brief chat in which I informed them of their current boundaries and obligations while gently nudging them back to the principles of the NHS. Unfortunately in the rather anxious conversation with their manager I got the impression that they might be prepared to go to war on the matter which makes me think they might have dipping into their own stash. It turns out that the collective "they" would like me to make a full written complaint that will be investigated "thoroughly" by them. Printer permitting this is something I will do tomorrow and in doing so will advise them that it would be a very sensible idea that for the duration of the investigation my grandmother's contentious, weekly prescription is not renewed.

At present my grandmother is on the 5 piqug/hour seven day patch. As the main objective of this prescription was to provoke a confrontation I can't be bothered with the argument to take the patch (it's like a nicotine patch or an elastoplast) off her. After all, save for a catastrophic allergic reaction that would have happened by now, this single dose is not going to do much damage on its own.

Apart from that I should point out that I am currently watching "The Delicious Ms Dahl" and on one drunken outing I believe I did meet the eponymous' double. But much like tonight it was a very drunken evening so I'm sure couldn't remember any of the details.

Farewell to Universal Jurisdiction?

As you may have heard over the last couple of weeks there's been a little bit of an argument going on in the middle east between Israel and well most of the rest of the planet over the issue of illegal settlements. Britain's foreign intelligence service, MI6, have little idea about the specifics of this particular argument and have been forced to open a communication channel with Israel in order to find out what's going on. In order to save their blushes they've decided to dress up this fishing expedition as Britain giving Israel severe telling off over the Dubai assassination.

This isn't the first time that Britain has made a big show of getting tough with Israel over the Mossad's use of cloned British passports in that operation. You may remember that shortly after authorities in Dubai released their dossier on the killing the Israeli ambassador to London was summoned to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Whilst there he was given such a severe talking too that he was forced to suppress a giggling fit as he left. Unfortunately as Britain is such a great friend of Israel it couldn't possibly embarrass them by questioning their actions like this without some sort of apology for the distress caused. By a stroke of pure bad luck the Israeli ambassadors visit came on the same day that sentencing began on those convicted over the protests outside the Israeli Embassy in London over the war in Gaza. Therefore as an apology to Israel these people, many of them little more then kids, were given exceptionally harsh sentences for participating it what was essentially a state sponsored riot.

Now that Britain has gone one step further by expelling an Israeli diplomat and writing a strongly worded letter to the Israeli ambassador many people are now expecting Britain to make an equally large gesture of apology to Israel. A lot of people think that this will involve Britain exempting Jewish Israeli citizens from the principle of universal jurisdiction. This is a mechanism of international law by which any judge in any country that signs up to it can issue an arrest warrant for anyone formally accused of breaches of international law regardless of where the offence was committed. It was this mechanism that allowed a rouge British judge to issue a warrant for Tzipi Livni back in December 2009 for crimes against humanity that were allegedly committed by Israel during the Gaza war. Since that unsightly international incident Israel has been lobbying Britain hard to do away with the mechanism so serving and former members of the Israeli armed forces and government can continue making visits to the UK without fear of prosecution. Personally I don't think it will happen over this because Israel having been having too much fun over the Dubai case. Besides they understand that Britain is not going to be in any position to prosecute anyone else for crimes against humanity any time soon.

Quick Detail

In the UK family doctors or General Practitioners (GP's) as they're known normally set up practice in the form of a business partnerships. This involves normally two or three senior GP's acting as partners employing one or two junior GP's to do all the work. There is actually a BBC1 daytime soap opera called "Doctors" that explains the process quite accurately.

The GP who my grandmother's been transferred to by my father and is writing the dodgy prescription is another partner within the Parchmore Road practice. It is this practice that was prescribing all the codeine last year. That makes this their offence and therefore high time they were expelled from the medical profession. After all on this evidence they could quite easily be replaced by a drugs vending machine.

The US Healthcare Reform Bill Has Passed Then.

Amid quite some controversy I believe. It is with a sort thudding predictability then that today I have been provided with yet another horror story to warn of the evils of socialised medicine.

As you may or not remember most of 2009 was spent with various doctors under the Croydon health authority trying to convince my grandmother that she had dementia by wrongly proscribing drugs like codeine that mimic the symptoms of dementia. After I put a stop to all that nonsense my father went out a recruited a quack that would agree with the dementia diagnosis.

Today that doctor and I use the term loosely actually examined my grandmother for the first time. Even before she examined the patient she had prescribed a drug called Buprenorphine in a trans dermal patch. Like codeine Buprenorphine is an opioid analgesic however it is much, much stronger. In fact under the brand name Subutex it is used along with methadone as a heroin substitute.

Obviously I've fixed that problem already but I think it might be time for me to serve the doctor in question with written notice that not only are they prescribing a totally inappropriate medication they are doing so without the patients consent and in the process breaching patient confidentiality by discussing the case with someone who doesn't have a medical power of attorney.

And the First Round of the BA Strikes Goes To.....

....The Union.

In a few hours British Airways (BA) cabin crew and check in staff will complete their first strike in a dispute over the future of the airline. As with all trade union disputes both sides have been less then truthful about the impact of the strike with BA especially mounting a huge disinformation campaign. It does though appear that this strike action has gone the way of Unite the Union.

Of a total of around 12,000 available staff only around 1000 have been turning up to work on strike days. This figure includes staff who were overseas when the strike began and were therefore not allowed to go on strike until they had worked a flight back to the UK. As around 3000 of those 12,000 staff are not members of the striking union there is no evidence that any union member has broken the strike and crossed the picket line. This deep level of support for the strike meant that BA was forced to ground 125 of its 205 available aircraft. The majority of the flights that were able to take off were cargo planes that do not require cabin crew and "ghost flights" of passenger aircraft that were flown without passengers either to ship freight or to move the aircraft to the correct airport for when the strike ends. In total only around a dozen BA passenger flights were able to fly during the strike.

Although the strike has clearly had the unions desired effect on BA's operations this does not mean that BA's chief executive, Willie Walsh, is necessarily lying when he says that the companies contingency plan is working. This is because the main thrust of that plan was to transfer as many BA passengers as possible to flights on rival airlines. As a result 26,000 of the 77,000 passengers who were expected to fly over the weekend have taken their custom to BA's rivals and BA have paid those competitors to take on the extra business. Of the remaining 49,000 passengers around 47,500 reached their destinations flying on so called "Vanilla Aircraft." These are passenger aircraft that are operated by specialist companies who rent the planes out a flight at a time to tour operators and large airlines who need extra capacity in the short term. Although the quality of these aircraft vary from operator to operator they tend to only have economy class cabins and fly with the minimum safety number of cabin crew who are provided along with the aircraft. Therefore if you've paid for a Executive Club ticket you will find yourself very disappointed to be flying on a vanilla plane. Plus it costs BA money to charter these aircraft and crew meaning they're having to pay to maintain two fleets of aircraft in order to do half the amount of business. According them BA this costing the £7million per day plus the lost revenue. Clearly this is not sustainable in the long term especially if BA are also going to continue to rent big coaches with blacked out windows to drive empty across picket lines to try and falsely convince the strikers that people are scabbing.

This strong showing by the union should be enough to encourage a rational chief executive back to the negotiating table. Unfortunately Willie Walsh is the sort of short and angry man who will ignore the cost and use the number of staff who did work and the number of passengers who were moved to refine his contingency plan in the hope of besting the union in the next round of strikes. That means that this dispute will have to go to a third strike before both sides are finished with the foreplay.





On a personal note last Friday my mother and siblings celebrated my sisters birthday. We went to an Italian restaurant where the manager had watched the Go Compare TV advert one too many times. They'd invited an actually rather good opera singer to preform live in the very small restaurant. As a result I got the theme from the BA adverts sung to me very loudly about 12 inches from my left ear. On reflection it was a very good idea of my sister not to turn up to her own birthday celebration.

Hello, good evening and I am home.

I am home and just little bit drunk so I think now is the time for me to say goodnight and go to sleep.

You Wait Ages For a Merlin

And then two turn up at once.

In Britain there's been a long running argument about whether British troops in Afghanistan have enough helicopters. In response the government promised to buy some new Merlin helicopters to boost the number available to troops. I can confirm that at least two of these new helicopters are now nearly ready for deployment. I know this because they have been carrying out test flights over my house this afternoon. I have to say I quite impressed by them because they're really no louder then the police's helicopter despite being about three times the size.

Apart from that my father's never ending quest to find medical professionals who will tell him what he wants to hear meant that he brought a hospice nurse who specialises in palliative care around to see my grandmother. After spending a few minutes with my grandmother the nurse concluded there is nothing she can do for her on account of her not being anywhere near on her death bed.

The New F1 Season is Upon Us.

And I for one think we should give this no refueling during the race idea a few months to develop. After all if it does turn out to be an utterly shit idea we can reassure ourselves that Max Mosley won't be part of the decision making process for the 2011 season.

Apart from that can I be the first person on this blog to point out that Samantha Cameron's eyes are far, far too small for her face.

Tony Woodley Needs To Go.

Tony Woodley is the joint general secretary of the British Trade Union Unite. He represents the Transport & General Workers side of the union that is behind the strikes by British Airways (BA) cabin crew that have been called today. The timing of these strikes is somewhere between foolish and state sponsored. The airline British Airways gets its business from two core groups of customers;

1. Business travellers. These customers make dozens of long haul flights a year that are usually paid for by large multi-national banks through multi-million pound contracts that provide BA with most of their income. These passengers normally travel on Monday's to Fridays and without their repeat business BA would very quickly find itself in serious financial trouble.

2. Leisure travellers. More commonly know as tourists these passengers make two sometimes three flights a year for the annual summer holiday and the occasional short-weekend break. These passengers who tend to be hardworking couples and families normally fly Friday through Monday and BA normally makes a loss on these flights having been priced out of the market by so called no-frills airlines like Easyjet.

In order to settle their industrial dispute with British Airways Unite have decided to call two strikes. The first of these will take place on Friday March 2oth and run until Monday March 23rd. The second will take place on Saturday March 27th and run until Tuesday March 31st. That means that these strikes have been timed not only to attack the most sympathetic group of BA passengers but also cause the minimum amount of disruption to BA's business.

Therefore it's kind of obvious that Tony Woodley and his self-appointed heir apparent, Len McClusky have done a deal with BA management. The idea being that the ineffectiveness of these strikes and inevitable infighting that will result from the ineffectiveness of these strikes will undermine the support for the strike and force the cabin crew to accept the lowest offer that BA will put on the table which does rather defeat the purpose of going on strike in the first place.

That is not how you do effective negotiation so BA management must literally be wetting themselves with laughter at these strikes. Or at least they will be until they realise that all it means is that they've got to endure 7 days of strikes before they put their first offer on the table.

Now How's This for Lazy.

Following last weekends escapades I feel I should go round and talk to the dozen or so people in the street who complained in person. Instead I'm just going to post this up here and hope that word gets around.

If last weekends events are repeated rather then complaining to the housing association or the MP it's probably best to just call the police. This is because even before they get involved in upholding the law and solving crime the police are sworn to keep the peace. Therefore if they are called to a disturbance with loud music, raised voices and what sounds like people fighting they will attend and they have a variety of powers to shut it down there and then. Plus if the police get involved then it adds weight to any other complaint made to the housing association etc.

That's what I would have done but obviously me asking the police to do something is pretty much a guarantee that it won't happen.

A Tiny Detail.

Following my neighbours party over the weekend I said a few of the other people in the street had complained to the Council run housing association that managed the property. In fact they more sort of complained to the local Member of Parliament who in turn complained to the council run housing association.

That's why Britain's news today has been all about the traumas of Anti Social Behaviour. Although I should point out that a local government department conspiring to drive down property prices in order to make a multi-million pound profit goes slightly beyond anti-social behaviour. In fact it could be described a serious and organised criminal behaviour and that's even before we get into questions about medical research.

Now Where's the Fun in That.

As I've explained before Croydon Council's harassment strategy is based on two key housing association properties near my home. The first of these is located diagonally to the right, across the back garden on Richmond road. This property is responsible for all the break ins at my home and most of the burglaries across the borough. The second property is located directly next to mine and shares a common wall. This property is managed by an agency called Croydon Association for Young Single Homeless (CAYSH) and is normally multiply occupied by four women aged 18-25.

Now that I've effectively locked down the activities of the burglary property the CAYSH property has become vitally important to the harassment strategy. Preparations for this property to take over the lead role began in January 2010 when two of the existing residents were moved out and two new ones were moved in. After taking a few weeks to get their bearings these new residents got on with what they were put in the property to do. On Thursday March 4th they invited their friends round, turned up the stereo and held a party that went on for the next four days.

Although a bit annoying this was nothing compared with when I used to live in Brighton between two nightclubs and near the guy who was in no way responsible for the 20k sound system used to put on illegal parties in the abandoned factory at the bottom of the garden so I was able to sleep through most of it. Unfortunately most of the rest of my street weren't so the managing agency got deluged with complaints. This meant that the noise abuse was shut down before I was able to blow the dust of my stereo and respond in kind. Also the complaints have given CAYSH the opportunity to try and open a dialogue with me in the hope of getting me to act as an unpaid consultant in the best way to manage the property and its residents who've probably not had the easiest of lives.

Apart from that I finally got round to responding to the Office of Public Guardians (OPG). It was a pretty standard email just bringing them up to date on the situation and asking for advice on how best to deal with my father going around falsely telling people he has power of attorney over my grandmother. This was a good time to ask that question because my father who didn't like my grandmother's previous doctors diagnosis has go out without my grandmother's agreement to get her a new doctor who will tell him what he wants to hear.

Together these latest incidents do demonstrate that containment is simply not going to work so it is necessary to put in place robust barriers to moderate the Brits bad behaviour.

That Jon Venable Conversation.

Seeing as everyone's far more interested in it then I was at the time I should keep everyone in loop by telling you what was said between my mother and I regarding Jon Venables' rehabilitation as far as I can remember it.

Being a woolly minded liberal with rocks in her head my mother thought his rehabilitation would be successful. I on the other hand said something along the lines of;

"The state will probably condition him into paedophilia and then keep him on staff for the next time they want to rape someone's kids."

Today it's been speculated in the Sunday Mirror newspaper that three days after this conversation Jon Venables was recalled to prison over child sex offences. It's worth pointing out that the Mirror newspapers credibility was destroyed in 2003 when it published faked photographs supposedly showing British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. The consensus around the incident is that the then Editor of the Mirror, Piers Morgan had been set up by the then Prime Minister's Press Secretary, Alistair Campbell

I've Just Remembered Something.

Well actually I remembered it about three hours ago but since then I've been cooking and cleaning up after my bone idle father but anyway.

The last time I had dinner with my mother which was about two, three weeks ago the long, rambling and rather loud conversation touched on the Jamie Bulger case. Specifically the rehabilitation of Jon Venebles because we couldn't remember the other guys name. So it would appear that three days after this someone in the *ahem* Probation Service looked at John Venebles and something along the lines of; He drives a car and he drinks alcohol therefore we'd better recall him to prison in case at some point in the future he commits the offence of drink driving.

Apart from my mother and I there were only five other people in the restaurant including the staff so I think that amongst other things someone is trying to play spy catcher.

On a completely unrelated note I should correct a mistake I made earlier. Whilst talking about the deal to devolve policing, justice and probation powers to Northern Ireland I stated that it would have to be approved by a public or cross community vote on March 9th. This is incorrect. It will have to be approved by a vote by the Assembly members which is normally described as a cross party vote. This is a shame because the devolution would be more likely to be approved by a public vote then a political one which is likely to be clouded by narrow political interests. Either way I still think approval for the deal should be little more then a formality.

News,news,news. Hello and News

Good Evening. Since my last post the Yorkshire Ripper has appealed in the High Court for a release date, Sterling has tumbled and Jon Venebles has been recalled to prison. This should all tell you that over the weekend I went out drinking where the Conservative party conference was just a few hundred yards away in Brighton town centre. Now the British State is desperately searching around for friends, lovers and allies that will help them escape that nasty nine letter word beginning with S that they so dearly try to avoid.

Apart from that an earthquake has struck Chile. I won't pretend that this had been a good thing because an 8.8 'quake is big in anyone's book. However the epicentre of this one struck off shore and the shock wave and the resulting Tsunami hit the second city of a country that is able to repair the damage and I am sure will receive any help it requires. Besides in situations like this my assistance can do more harm then good.








Note: this post has been delayed for a full two hours by GCHQ for reasons that have been well explained above.