WMMMs are a mass distraction

So it's easy to get selected as a Tory WMMM (White, Middle-aged, Middle-class Male) candidate for parliament then, is it?

I wonder. Here's a little tale.

1 May 2008: I win re-election for the second time in Hart, with the biggest majority in the district. Hubris whispers slyly in my ear that this is because of how wonderful I am: Truth forces me to admit I have two excellent fellow councillors in the ward and possibly the best constituency MP in the land.

3 May 2008: Still feeling good about myself, I email my local constituency chairman, asking how to apply to become a Conservative parliamentary candidate (PPC).

7 June 2008: Not having heard, I email again. Again I get no reply.

14 May 2009: It's 11 months later and we have a new constituency chairman. So I email him to ask how to become a PPC.

19 May 2009: The chairman replies apologetically that he has made enquiries and CCO (Conservative Central Office) has recently closed the lists and is not accepting any more applications.

19 May 2009: I write back, pointing out that I'd twice enquired in mid 2008, almost a year before lists closed.

19 May 2009: A somewhat dismissive email comes back from CCO, saying they have no record of me applying. Well, that's right, they don't because my email got either lost or ignored in the local office.

21 May 2009: Having slept on it for 2 nights because it is not necessarily wise to send an email while exasperated, I write to CCO politely pointing out (with attached evidence) that I had twice previously asked to be considered but that the request had somehow fallen through the cracks and would they kindly reconsider having closed their lists?

24 May 2009: David Cameron announces he is re-opening candidates lists.

26 May 2009: I write in and ask for an application form.

29 May 2009: I get a reply from Eric Pickles which says, among other things, "It is clear that our political system needs radical change if we are to restore public trust – and that change involves new people putting themselves forward as MPs." An application form is attached.

Early June 2009: I fill in the forms, get referees, submit the forms.

25 June 2009: I get a reply from CCO, part of which says "... because of the large number of applications, it will not be possible for us to enter into individual correspondence with you about your application, but you will hear from us, probably by the end of July."

15 Aug 2009: I am feeling a touch neurotic now but I don't want to appear too neurotic so I wait a couple of weeks after the end of July deadline before sending CCO an email asking "Have I missed your reply, or are things running slowly over the holiday period?"

20 Aug 2009: A reply arrives. The essence is "We will contact you should you be progressed to the next stage. You will, however, be advised either way."

13 Sep 2009: The Sunday Times runs a story on "A-List" outsiders who've applied when I did and now have completed the whole process. I wonder. I am just a local Tory councillor. Where in the alphabet does that put me? I hope it's not the Z-List.

Early October 2009: I am sadly getting used to being ignored by my party. I see that in Bracknell (where I work), the Tory party has interviewed a lot of candidates and drawn up a short list. I realise I might not have made the short list but it would have been nice to been given the opportunity.

Part of me hopes I make the list before I retire.

Part of me thinks that Bracknell is a pretty good constituency where I have worked for most of the last decade and where I have a large collection of friends.

Part of me wonders whether it wouldn't be easier to run as an independent candidate.

Many people believe that as a white middle-aged middle class man I will have received preferential treatment. I am still waiting for CCO to get back to me. If it's true that men get preference, I wonder how much longer I would have to wait if I were a woman.

Update:
My older son, who is flu'-ridden but whose judgement I respect unquestioningly, told me that what I have written above sounds bitter. I am sorry about this: I didn't intend to sound that way but I must admit to feeling let-down. What I had intended to write was more about getting more women Tory MPs until I got distracted into looking up dates. So, dear reader, having read this far please stay with me!

I have a very good friend who until recently was the UK CFO of one of the best known retailers in the world. She left them when they moved their offices to continental Europe, as she has children who are happily settled in schools and whom she did not want to move. I've tried to persuade her to become a Tory candidate on several occasions but she's been adamant that she feels Tories don't want people like her.

I've attempted to explain this isn't true, but I may be labouring in vain in this case. If we want to attract more high quality women candidates we need to make women feel that they will be welcome. I think all-women candidate lists do the opposite and are patronising. And if we get high quality women candidates to come forward, we'd better be prepared for them and not give them the run-around.

Little Miss Perfect

More than 25 years ago, a customer of mine and his wife were expecting their first child. This man was inherently cheerful: the kind of person you look forward to meeting in a business day. When I heard that the Big Day had come and the child been born, I popped into his office with happy congratulations which had left my lips as I entered. It was too late to register the grey and shocked expression which he could not hide. The child had been born healthy, but with Downs Syndrome. I have always been poor with words in such circumstances and all I could say was how sorry I was, and inwardly berate myself for not having checked if all had gone well before bursting in with a happy smile on my face.

It's something all expectant parents must worry about at least a little: what if Baby isn't perfect? For the vast majority, a counting of fingers and toes and a verbal thumbs up from the medical staff is a happy start to parenthood. The shock can therefore hit perhaps even harder when you learn later in life that Something is Wrong.

For Colleen and I, this happened with our second child Anthony. A bouncing baby and sturdy toddler (I nicknamed him Barrel, which given his adult wiry frame is ironic) he was a happy child who developed normally up to and including starting to talk. Then he went backwards and said less and less. Family and friends reassured us of famous people they knew who were late starters, but the worry started to grow. Cutting short a very long story of two years' worth of visits to specialists and speech therapists, at the age of four we were told he was autistic and enrolled him in the Key, the Johannesburg school for autistic children. His vocabulary at that age was less than a dozen words.

And then the miracle occurred. Autism is not curable (as far as today's science knows) and yet within weeks Anthony's vocabulary came on at staggering speed. After a year's intense speech, occupational and music therapy his development had pretty much caught up with other children his age. Within the next year he was ready to attend mainstream school. Please forgive a brief boast that he graduated with an excellent degree from Bristol this summer and, equally important, he has a large group of friends. He clearly couldn't have been autistic, but the important point I'd like to make is that somehow the teaching and support he received in those two years at the Key changed his life unimaginably for the better.

These memories came back yesterday when I received a press release from Parliament. The Science and Technology committee is investigating two pretty fundamental elements of government policy (1) What actually is the policy? (2) On what evidence is the policy based? This may sound simple: actually it's radical, making the assumption that government policy should be based on things that have been shown to work, rather than (perhaps) political expedience.

The first investigation will look at reading difficulties and dyslexia and how these are addressed today by government policy. The committee is looking for evidence as to how well this works. I include the full press release below: if you feel you can contribute, please do so now: the closing date for submissions is 26th October, just nine days away as I write this.

Basing government policy on evidence seems obvious. Please help make it happen so that even when a child isn't born Little Miss Perfect (or Master Perfect) they still have a good chance in life.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE
Select Committee Announcement

Committee Office, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA
Tel. No. 020 7219 2794 Fax. No. 020 7219 0896 Email: scitechcom@parliament.uk


No. 04 (08-09): 16 October 2009

NEW INQUIRY

EVIDENCE CHECK: LITERACY INTERVENTIONS

In preparation for the establishment of the Science and Technology Committee on 1 October, the former IUSS Committee commissioning work to assess the Government’s use of evidence in policy-making. The Committee wrote to the Government on a number of topics and asked two questions: (1) What is the policy? (2) On what evidence is the policy based? The Government has now replied and having considered the responses the Committee has selected Literacy Interventions for its first Evidence Check.

The first Evidence Check will consist of two sessions on 4th and 9th of November. The Committee invites short submissions by 26 October on the issues that the Committee will be exploring:
— the Government’s policy on literacy interventions for school children with reading difficulties
— the evidence base for the Every Child a Reader and Making Good Progress programmes
— the definition of dyslexia
— the evidence base for diagnosing dyslexia and teaching dyslexic children to read.

Each submission should:
a) be no more than 1,000 words in length
b) be in Word format (no later than 2003) with as little use of colour or logos as possible
c) have numbered paragraphs
d) include a declaration of interests.

A copy of the submission should be sent by e-mail to scitechcom@parliament.uk and marked “Evidence Check 1”. An additional paper copy should be sent to:
The Clerk
Science and Technology Committee House of Commons
7 Millbank
London SW1P 3JA

It would be helpful, for Data Protection purposes, if individuals submitting written evidence send their contact details separately in a covering letter. You should be aware that there may be circumstances in which the House of Commons will be required to communicate information to third parties on request, in order to comply with its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Please supply a postal address so a copy of the Committee’s report can be sent to you upon publication.

A guide for written submissions to Select Committees may be found on the parliamentary website at: www.parliament.uk/commons/selcom/witguide.htm

Please also note that:
— Material already published elsewhere should not form the basis of a submission, but may be referred to within a proposed memorandum, in which case a hard copy of the published work should be included.
— Memoranda submitted must be kept confidential until published by the Committee, unless publication by the person or organisation submitting it is specifically authorised.
— Once submitted, evidence is the property of the Committee. The Committee normally, though not always, chooses to make public the written evidence it receives, by publishing it on the internet (where it will be searchable), by printing it or by making it available through the Parliamentary Archives. If there is any information you believe to be sensitive you should highlight it and explain what harm you believe would result from its disclosure. The Committee will take this into account in deciding whether to publish or further disclose the evidence.
— Select Committees are unable to investigate individual cases.

Smooth

I am a notoriously fussy eater. I confess this, I am sorry, but that is just how I am and now having lived a good half century, I am unlikely to change.

I suspect that I must have driven my mother mad and that after having me as a fussy toddler it is a wonder that she went on and had two other children. The list of things I don’t like to eat is several times the length of those I do and includes most fruit and vegetables, almost all cheese and most jams.

Except one.

The problem is that this one jam is very hard to find.

I was reminded of this yesterday when staying at a hotel for a business conference. It was a Hilton, which is perfectly acceptable. The breakfast was none too bad, and I noticed this tray with five small jars of things you could spread on your toast or pastry, namely honey, raspberry jam, strawberry jam, peach jam and marmalade.

I loathe them all.

And yet, there is a perfectly harmless jam they could have put there. If they had, it would have been consumed by the gallon. It’s not even expensive. It’s called smooth apricot jam and the best example of it that I have come across in the UK is Hartley’s “No Bits“ apricot jam. It is the best jam in the world and the only one which delivers pure, unalloyed joy upon consuming it.

I looked around all the other tables. No-one had opened even one of their jars of jam. Well, of course not. If one considers the history of apricot jam, I can state for a fact that it led directly to the Treaty of Vienna, the Armistice ending the Great War and the overthrow of apartheid. Who can possibly think bad thoughts or do bad deeds when there is smooth apricot jam on the menu? No-one.

Looking at the world right now, it’s clear that we are going through hard times. Some people blame Gordon Brown, or President Bush, or Putin (what is he now? President? Prime Minister? Grand Panjandrum? I forget). Some blame climate change or bankers or Greenpeace.

I think we all know the truth.

Bring back smooth apricot jam and all will be well.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Bankers still don't get it.

We're in possibly the worst financial crisis of modern history and yet

• Bankers are once again pulling in staggering bonuses
  
• While simultaneously threatening (blackmailing?) governments that if any action is taken to change this culture of greed, banks will move elsewhere.
  

The implication is that we can't afford to do without them. Recent history shows the opposite: they have brought unprecedented hardship to the richest economies of the world by their excessive risk-taking, for which they rewarded themselves handsomely with our money.

Bob Diamond from Barclays Capital was interviewed on BBC Radio4 on 15th September and said "banking is a risk business ... there is no banking without risk". That's fine, Mr Diamond, when you are risking your money. It's not when you are risking our economy. In this area, governments should legislate to reduce the risk to the country if a bank, or a series of banks in the kind of mass hysteria that we saw in recent years, acts foolishly. If banking involves risk (and I think we have to accept it does) then that risk must be qualified and understood at all times.

What about pay packets for bankers or other employees?

I think there is a simple answer here and it doesn't involve changing the law.

Let's start with what a million pounds in annual income buys you. With that much money, you can buy a large house in the best part of the country. A Porsche or two, replaced every year or two. Send your children to the best public schools. Travel first class on holiday. Enough left over to build up a fat pension pot. In other words, you are Extremely Well Off.

So why would anyone want more than £1m a year? The only answer can be bragging rights: a second or third holiday home, which would be empty almost all year. A boat, similarly unused. Maybe a small jet, if first class travel isn't comfortable enough.

Yet most of the money bankers make is our money. A few pounds every time we buy a tax-protected investment. A few pounds every time we buy or sell shares. A few pounds when we use foreign currencies on our holidays. A few pounds with every transaction on our pension plans. Most of these are things over which we have little or no choice because of the business of finance is essentially an oligopoly.

So what should the government do?

Rather than bringing in laws, it could simply decline to do business or minimise business with any publicly-held company whose employees earn over £1m a year.

Which banks would this leave? The small ones. Putting government business through them would make the banking sector much more competitive.

What about things the government can't do without?

Mobile phones? Tell the key supplier that when next reviewed, business will either be moved to a smaller vendor with less plutocratic executives, or cut back or both.

Defence contractors? We'll sign for those planes / helicopters / guns / ships / supplies when your execs cut back their pay. Play one off against the other as part of the negotiating process. Our objective should be to buy security, not absurd levels of wealth for our suppliers.

The BBC? If it wants government support (ie the licence fee) then it better cut everyone's pay back below £1m.

Are there exceptions? Yes. If someone makes a great deal of money through his or her own endeavours with his or her own capital and is successful, then let them earn all they wish. James Dyson making a mint - well done: here's a real entrepreneur! We need more of them and fewer parasites.

Footnote: according to The Telegraph Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, earned less than $1.3m (£800,000) last year.

I don't want to join the Labour Party

In April 2007 I joined Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, a company owned 50-50 by Fujitsu and Siemens (surprise, surprise). Last year, Siemens sold its 50% stake to Fujitsu and since then the company I joined has been merging with Fujitsu UK. (For reasons that don't matter here, it's been a fairly complex process.)

On July 22nd, I received an email from the trade union Unite, which it appears was sent to every employee of the old Fujitsu Siemens Computer company. It invited me to join Unite and attached a two page brochure explaining the benefits.

Now of course, you may be for or against trade unions in general or Unite in particular. I'm not trying to persuade you either way in this blog.

However, I was interested to read in the Independent recently that Unite gave £15m to the Labour Party last year. That's about £7 for every member of Unite. It's donated regardless of the political preference of the members.

To me this seems that joining Unite is equivalent to becoming a disenfranchised member of the Labour Party. I pay the money, but I don't get to vote on Labour Party policy (or anything else). Why would I want to do that, even if I were a Labour supporter? For that matter, who says that Labour is the best party for employed people? When Labour came to power in 1997, unemployment was rapidly shrinking. After 12 years of Labour rule, unemployment is rapidly rising and is higher than at any time since 1995.

I've asked Unite to justify their stance. I'll let you know what I hear.

Compassion for the criminals

I know this may seem an odd question, but why are we engrossed in showing compassion to out-and-out criminals?

According to the BBC website, the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, didn't want Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi to die in prison. Why not? AAaM was almost 49 when in 2001 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the worst terrorist atrocity in British history. There had to be every expectation that he would die in prison. Why would this invoke a moment's thought, even less compassion, on the part of David Miliband?

And then there's the case of Ronnie Biggs. Sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment for his part in the Great Train Robbery, he's spent a total of about 9 years inside before being released on compassionate grounds.

If we're going to show compassion - and there are many cases where we should - let's show it to people who can reasonably claim to be deserving of it. If we were to draw up a list of such cases, I suspect Biggs and al-Megrahi would be at the bottom of it.

You Guys Give up Yet? Or are you Thirsty for More?

There's been a bit of a stir in the military-political world this week. Somebody has been briefing against General Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff in the UK. It would appear that General Dannatt has made the mistake of telling the truth about what the armed forces really need and someone, presumably in government, didn't really like it or the implied criticism. So they started a campaign of rumours against General Dannatt.

A blogger called Guido Fawkes identified the origin of the smear campaign as Kevan Jones. An awful lot of people are very supportive of our armed forces, and the revelation of the presumed source of the smear led to a torrent of anger in Guido's blog.

Now comes the interesting bit. Kevan has an entry on Wikipedia. And at this point, someone decided it needed updating. Some of the updates weren't complimentary. Wikipedia has an army of editors to "correct" such matters and they can even lock an entry to prevent "vandalism". However, they leave a trail of what was previously there. It makes interesting reading in Kevan's case.

The title of this blog entry is, by the way, from Kevin in the 1980s film Home Alone. Kevan would do well to think about it.

Sunday Photo of the Week

Yes, I know it's Tuesday. I spent Sunday making cookies.

Anyway, back to the photo. About 30 minutes south of Cape Town is the town of Fish Hoek. It has a gorgeous sandy beach which is extremely safe for swimming. The water in the bay is shallow and only gradually gets deeper, with gentle tides so it's a favourite with families.

There are also some fishermen who scrape a living by pulling their boats out into False Bay. In the olden days, fishing here was pretty much a hit-or-miss affair but since the coming of cheap mobile phones things have changed. They have a "spotter" who sits with binoculars on the rocky hill overlooking the bay. As soon as he spots a shoal of fish he phones the fishermen who are resting in the dunes and within a couple of minutes with a flurry of activity they have launched their rowing boat, just as they are doing in this photo.

Later in the day, you can eat their catch at the pleasant Beachcomber or Gallery restaurants a few hundred yards down the beach.

Sunday Photo Of the Week (SPOW)

I visited Las Vegas last year and, having flown in from London, was pretty jet-lagged. So on the first morning I woke very early. As I walked out of my hotel, I saw this view of New York.

The pre-dawn sky was exactly this gorgeous shade of deep blue and it looked as though the hotel had been built to look its best when viewed from an inconspicuous entry to the MGM Grand.

This being Vegas, there were still plenty of people around at 5am although to be fair a good number of them were joggers. It made me decide to take up early-morning jogging and I only gave up on this resolution once I'd actually tried it.

Power to the People

By 2015, Britain will run out of electrical power.

This is a statement of fact, based on our expected power consumption and the way power stations will gradually be shut down. We take it for granted today that when we turn on a light switch or plug in an electrical device it will work. Over the next few years that will start changing.

On May 27th, 2008, hundreds of thousands of houses in England lost power when two power stations failed by coincidence within minutes of each other. This was a shock, mainly because Britain's power grid has been so reliable in the past. However, it will become more common, not by accident but by inaction unless we act fast (and even then it may be too late.)

The problem is that ... well the problem comes from a number of causes.

• Power requirements keep increasing as we get wealthier and as use of technology increases. Newspapers and books cost very little electrical power to produce; the Internet is a lot more power-hungry.
  
• Britain is running out of natural gas. Production peaked in the last decade and is rapidly decreasing. The biggest alternative source of gas, Russia, has shown itself to be unreliable.
  
• Nuclear power plants have a limited life. Although the radiation is kept within the plant, it slowly causes the plant to decay which is why after a few decades, plants have to be retired. Four of Britain's ten nuclear power plants will close in the next decade, with no current plan to replace them.
  
• EU regulations on carbon emissions mean that Britain's coal-fired plants will not meet standards, without expensive and uneconomic modifications.
  
• Planning regulations, local opposition and the inefficiency of wind-power have limited its adoption.
  

So take a moment to think about this.

How would you manage without your early morning cuppa? No street lights? No lifts or escalators? No power for your computer? (Yes, you may have a battery in your laptop, but I bet your broadband connection is plugged into a power socket). No lights. Or hot water - even if you have a gas boiler, chances are it's controlled by an electrical timer. And that's before we get to the important stuff, like hospitals, factories, banks (want to draw cash from a powered-down autobank?), shops, schools and many, many more.

The next election will see Brown out. Unless we act fast, brown-outs will become common in the economy too.

Keep Them Honest with Evidence

"Politicians! They're so transparent and cynical! They never do the right thing - they do what's best for them!"

Ever felt like that?

Then here's a chance to change things, just a bit.

The Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee is looking for suggestions of areas of government policy that require an ‘evidence check’. In theory as a result of the hearings the government will be more likely to make sensible decisions, based on evidence.

So if you'd like them to investigate an area of government policy which you believe does not have a good basis in fact, read here and write to them.

And let's start making government better.

Sunday Photo Of the Week (SPOW)

Old Potbridge Road lies between Hook and Hartley Wintney in North East Hampshire. It's a very quiet country road, with just four or five homes built along it and it comes to a dead end in real life long before the map shows this.

However, it's a high point relative to the land to the west and so when we had a lovely sunset in the spring, I set off for the Old Potbridge Road to take some photos. I took several dozen, but most weren't keepers. One of the survivors is shown above; the remaining half dozen are in my online album.

Fine Weather We're Having

It's said that people are divided into three groups: those that can count and those that can't.

Similarly, when it comes to climate change, people seem to fall into one of three categories: the evangelists, who believe that man made climate change will do hard-to-imagine harm; the atheists who deny that mankind's activities have any significant impact on our climate; and the agnostics who can't make up their minds, despite all the evidence.

I'm an agnostic.

However, today I'd like to introduce an atheist, the Australian Professor Ian Plimer, who has just written Heaven And Earth: Global Warming - The Missing Science.

We've all heard to a greater or lesser extent about why man is causing global warming. Here' is an extract from The Spectator's review of Professor Plimer's book.

What Heaven And Earth sets out to do is restore a sense of scientific perspective to a debate which has been hijacked by ‘politicians, environmental activists and opportunists’. It points out, for example, that polar ice has been present on earth for less than 20 per cent of geological time; that extinctions of life are normal; that climate changes are cyclical and random; that the CO2 in the atmosphere — to which human activity contributes the tiniest fraction — is only 0.001 per cent of the total CO2 held in the oceans, surface rocks, air, soils and life; that CO2 is not a pollutant but a plant food; that the earth’s warmer periods — such as when the Romans grew grapes and citrus trees as far north as Hadrian’s Wall — were times of wealth and plenty.

In September, Colleen and I are off for a week's peace and quiet somewhere. I've put Heaven and Earth on my reading list for that week, together with an overdue read of the IPCC reports. (I'll have to squeeze in something lighter as well - perhaps re-reading of one of PG Wodehouse's Jeeves books).

Maybe, just maybe, I'll be converted. One way or the other.

Regarding Henry

Henry Allingham's funeral yesterday reminded me the time I briefly met him in April last year.

It was the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Air Force and, together with some other local councillors, I was kindly invited to a ceremony at RAF Odiham. Nine trees, one for each decade, were planted at the base.

"Officially" planting a tree is a bit of a laugh. Someone else has done the hard work and, with the usual RAF meticulous organisation the soil was neatly piled beside the hole and the sapling placed inside, exactly vertical. So all I had to do was take the gleaming shovel (one per hole, handed over by perfectly presented personnel) and formally shovel in two or three spadefuls. I felt honoured and it was a bit of fun.

The real VIP was, of course, none of the councillors but Henry Allingham. He was 111 years old at the time, and wheelchair bound. It was a chilly spring day and he was wrapped up warmly. He was also a fund of cheerfulness and my abiding memory is what happened as he started shovelling soil onto the tree. We were all watching this World War I veteran with awe when he burst into tuneful song "I talk to the trees, but they don't listen to me."

If this was a cameo of his life, then what a remarkable life.

Dear Henry, you'll be missed.

Just the Facts, Ma'am

I heard recently that the amount of information in the world doubles every two years. I don't know if this is true, but it seems possible.

Faced with this, people often have difficulty in sorting the wheat from the chaff. What matters? What's true? What information can I trust?

Fortunately, there's a great source of simple information about scientific matters, including health. Sense About Science doesn't claim to cover everything but it does have good and easy-to-read information about Bird Flu, Detox, MMR, Radiation (mobile phones) and many other topics.

Just click the picture above to have a read - and make sense of the information deluge.

Sunday Photo Of the Week (SPOW)

When I turned 50, I had planned to play a couple of songs on the guitar at my party. However, I found it was just too difficult to rescue the skills I'd had 30 years earlier, even with the help of a good guitar instructor.

Russ Lane is a good friend who recently had a Significant Birthday. To my chagrin and envy, he achieved what I had failed to do, and played and sang half a dozen great rock 'n' roll numbers from his youth. Here he is, at the microphone, giving a short talk at the end to the assembled partygoers. My word, did he play well. It made me relieved, in retrospect, that I hadn't succeeded - my efforts would have paled in comparison.

I shot quite a few photos at his party. This one was one of the better ones, ironically taken when my flash failed and so it retained the great colours of the nightclub. 75mm, f1.6, 1/60, ISO 200. The original is here.

Major article on war injuries

In The Telegraph today Sir John Major has written a good article on how Britain treats its war wounded. One sentence jumped out at me

If we cannot afford to treat our wounded with generosity then we should not expose them to risk.

Exactly.

The government's approach to our military has been driven by evident contempt. Its treatment of our dead and wounded has been virtually inexplicable: politically foolish, intellectually indefensible and morally wrong.

Churchill lost the election after the war when returning soldiers turned to Labour. It's hard to imagine too many of our returning servicemen and women doing the same in the next election.

The Best Customer Service in the World

A man running a small business in the West Indies is losing money satisfying a happy customer in the UK.

The customer is me. The company makes a very spicy sauce. I bought a bottle of it when my wife and I visited Nevis in the West Indies for our 25th anniversary in 2007. Since you only use 2-3 drops at a time, it's lasted 2 1/2 years, but it's at an end. This was a case of great sadness for me: I cannot afford to travel to Nevis to buy another bottle but this is without doubt a superb sauce: the best I have come across in more than 50 years on Earth. Two to three drops blow your head off: I suspect a teaspoonful would be fatal.

I noticed that the label included an email address and, more in hope than expectation, I send off an email asking whether there was anyone in the UK who stocked the sauce. Back came the reply "my sister is going back to england next week give me your telephone # and i will give you a call on how to get some over to you glad you enjoyed it"

I emailed back my phone number and he called me from the West Indies and has indeed arranged for his sister to bring back two bottles of this sauce. This is spectacular service: the "deal" is just £10.

The man's name is Llewellyn Clarke and his sauce is shown in the photograph.

So if you are ever in Nevis, call in to the local supermarket and buy this sauce. It's just labelled "Hot Pepper and Thyme Sauce" with Llewellyn Clarke's name on it. You can buy it from Ram's supermarket, just outside Charlestown on Nevis. It's the best spicy sauce in the world and so is the after-sales service!

Swine flu and beer

So here I am at home with swine flu.

It's not a lot of fun but it is also boring. On Friday we had tickets to see Jude Law in Hamlet. Sorry I missed you, Jude. On Saturday we had tickets to an Army concert. The Dearly Beloved wasn't going to waste the tickets so she took a friend instead of me. I mean, I could have died. Today we had tickets to RIAT, the best air show in the world. Gave them to some friends. At least it was their anniversary.

Today I bleared into consciousness mid-morning. By lunch time I was zonked so I fell asleep. When I woke up about 4 o'clock I saw England were in danger of winning the Test. So I thought I would watch. This would be more fun if we had furniture in the lounge. The furniture is being re-upholstered so I am sitting on a garden chair.

This swine flu was very badly timed.

Now, I am a even-tempered man so I can adjust.

All I need is a beer.

I don't feel up to getting one from the kitchen fridge. My Younger Son refuses to get me a beer unless I can find something on the Internet that says it's OK to have a beer with swine flu.

The first Google hit is titled "swine flu: is it safe to drink beer?" Answers include "Of course beer is safe. Alcohol kills all the germs. ", "Acidity and alcohol will kill any virus that tries to live in beer" and "NonPork based beer only". MYS does not give due credence to these. As a recent graduate he is filled with an undue sense of the importance of his fatuous opinion.

So I look on the National Health Service website.

The top hits for "swine flu beer" include "Cancer-of-the-breast female" "cancer-of-the-testicle" (which I assume is male), "Herceptin", "chemotherapy" and "menopause". Now I am truly worried.

Then I come across a site that says alcohol causes swine flu. Scary.

A beer would take the edge off.

What is Love?

A few years ago I was contacted by a poor widow whose Nigerian husband had left her $10 million in cash. If I could just help her get it out of Nigeria using my bank account she would let me have $4 million. We had a pleasant email conversation for a few days before I let slip that I had given "her" details to the president@whitehouse.gov, after which she became terminally reticent.

So sad.

My family is spread around the world. We often keep in touch using Skype. Out of the blue, I've just been contacted on Skype by "Tonya". Here's how the conversation went.


I apologise for the grammar and the misquote from Twelfth Night, but I was so excited that I was on the verge of discovering love that my education failed me.

I don't know why Tonya isn't speaking to me any more.