Category: Uncategorized

I’ve been listening like many people over the past months to the unfolding story of the NHS and its ‘cash-crisis’ and related job losses. I wanted to find out a bit more detail about this, apart from the various news agency stories, and made some searching on the Web.

To my amazement I could not find for example, online lists for Job Losses/Bed Losses or for example the recent Car Parking charges. Maybe there too hidden on other web sites! So guess what? I started a webs site to try and track these sort of issues.

Take a look at NHS Watch and see what you think. Its only basic at the moment, but I am relying to some degree on picking up items from news feeds, but mainly from receiving info from other visitors who know about their local hospitals and can send me the info.

I hope it can be of service to the on-going NHS story by collating the various aspects of Job Losses and other related NHS issues.

For the ‘techies’, I’ve managed to make this site completely compatible with the XHTML and CSS standards, even the tables!!! This of course really does show up the differences between the Browsers (IE, FireFox, Opera and others).

Well the hose pipe ban has finally arrived! Even though there seems to be some strange rules around them. For example, you can’t water your garden or wash your car with a hose pipe, but you can top up your hot-tub and your swimming pool!

What about Car Washes? It seems that they have escaped the ban (so far), seems to me that this is one very strange way of saving water. Surely what does it matter if the car is dirty, but your saving water for real needs such as supplying hospitals and other real users of water.

But the leaks still keep appearing! Over ONE THIRD of all water collected by the water companies disappears through leakage! It seems strange to me that this country is still replacing water pipes that were put laid by the Victorians.

It doesn’t stop there… For a number of years we have known that more water is being used than in the past, so why have more water reservoirs not been built? It seems that many of the smaller ones have been sold off, filled in and sold for house building!!

This goes back to one of my main gripes, in that water and anything to do with is should be a ‘public asset’ not managed for ‘profit’ and sold off to the highest bidder. More on this later.

Well, we finally got the word today, Wembley stadium will not be open for business until 2007!!!

I am sure that we have not heard the last in the succession of delay that has beset this project over the past three years.

I wonder why the Football stadium people did not go to the Rugby Union organisation to see what a good job ‘they’ done with Twickers.

I wonder who will pay the cost for the Wembley delays in the end? I expect that as always, it will be fans through increased ticket prices etc.

God help us when we start in earnest to build the 2012 Olympic stadiums and infrastructure. There are already some issues with getting hold of the land that are starting to bubble away.

Hello, only six years to go!!!!!

Three events came together this week, I watched Georges Bush’s White House press conference and picked up some more ‘Bushisms‘ – a) “Sloganeering! Something that describes P5, that’s the UN Security Council and Germany!, b) “Blowing up people and they end up on your TV”! Also managed to listen to Tony Blair’s speech at the Press Association, how many more times will he try and convince everyone that he has read the Koran all the way through and also still keeps it by his bedside!!!

I also finished Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror by Michael Scheuer. As I said in a previous post this was a ‘heavy-duty’ book full of many facts and well researched information, I tend to agree with most of what Scheuer puts forward (written in 2004), comparing how the ‘West’ was once able to send it Armys (and all of its peripheral attachments) to deal firmly with immediate threats; with the current situation that through political interference and appeasement to media led public option are now constrained to fight a ‘clean’ – for ‘clean’ read ‘low collateral damage’ war that they can never ‘win’! Not that I think that this war should have been started in the first place.

Scheuer paints a very informative portrait of Bin Laden (and he should know through his CIA analysts career) and states the point that the conflict from his (Bin Ladens) point of view, is not aimed at a way of life that he wants to destroy; but more at avenging and changing the successive USA (and Western) ongoing policies towards the middle east as a whole.

His impassioned criticism of his Intelligence and Political lords and masters, make me wonder how the book managed to be published in the first place, however under the pseudonym ‘Anonymous’ I suppose that it was possible. Of course Scheuer no longer works for the Intelligence organisations, but continues to publicly air his views.

I am sure that this book will have created many ‘hot spots’ for numerous people in both the USA and UK administrations, some of which can be seen already as people start to distance themselves from the original decision to invade Iraq.

A brilliant book that anyone with an point to make on Iraq should read. Whatever your opinion, this book will be sure to change some of it.

Some quotes from the book:
“If there is a single power the West underestimates, it is the power of collective hatred” Ralph Peters. Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph? Stockpole Books 1999.

“If you wish to conduct an offensive war you must know the men employed by the enemy. Are they wise or stupid, clever or clumsy? Having assessed their qualities, you prepare appropriate measures” Sun Tzu. The Art of War, OUP London 1963.

“There is no lack of bravery in our armed forces, but bureaucratic cowardice rules in our intelligence establishment (as well as the highest levels of military command)”. Ralph Peters, Beyond terrorism: Strategy in a changing world. Stockpole Books 2002.

Another related subject link.

M.

Is more than 8 years too long for a government to be be in office in the UK?

One of the reasons (there are many others) that the Conservatives (18 years in office) did not get re-elected in 1997 was that the public had lost its confidence in what they could do and the perceived level of ‘sleaze’ surrounding them.

Listening to Tony Blair’s ‘whiter than white’ statement upon his landslide election victory, seems to now be the typical political rhetoric that it was.

As the Labour party scrambles to ‘clean’ the ‘mat’, the public polls are now showing that the same public disdain is now focusing on their version of sleaze.

Perhaps 8 years ‘is too long!

So we have reached another milestone; 3 years later and IRAQ is still a unresolved issue. Listening to Allawi and the American Ambassador, civil war had already begun! It’s a far cry from the promises of the ‘liberation’. Still without country wide 24hr electricity or water the ‘body-count‘ on all sides continues to mount!

I listened to Bush last night, “We’re implementing a strategy that will lead to victory in Iraq and it will also make this country (USA) more secure”!

Surely by now, that ‘strategy’ should be fully ‘implemented’ given the amount of money and resources thrown at the problem, if you look back at other similar conflicts, such as the Russian invasion and the USA’s failed adventure in Vietnam, the outcome does not look good for either side of the conflict.

I recently helped someone with some searching on the Internet for information about a missing person they were looking for that had been in the Navy at the same time as myself.

During that searching, I came across a unbelievable fact that last year (2005) 14 people have mysteriously disappeared from various Cruise Ships around the world!

At the moment it would seem that there is confusion as to who’s responsible for investigating the event when someone goes missing from a Cruise Ship. Is it the country where the ship is registered, the nationality of the owning company, the nationality of the home port of the ship?

The situation seems so confused that that a new Website has sprung up that helps the relatives of the missing victims and hopes to influence governments (and in particularly the US Congress) to pass new legislation to tighten up the reporting of crimes on board cruise ships.

Also backing up this subject, a number of media organisations are now starting to cover this with news articles from the UK Times, Telegraph and Independent newspapers on the subject.

Sounds a very strange situation!

I’ve been catching up on book reading recently, Bill Bryson‘s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything‘ is a fascinating book full of all those facts that you ‘have’ to keep telling to the person sitting next to you!

Its a long time since I went to school and how I wish that we had had information books like this to read instead of the boring text books in use in the 50’s and 60’s (that’s the 1950’s and 60’s before anyone thinks otherwise). DNA, E=MC², Paleontology, Cosmology, Geology, Evolution and many other easy to follow subjects crammed into a ‘page-turner’ that oozes information. Just how small is a quark?

It’s interesting how books seem to connect with one another, as inside Bryson’s book is a reference to another that I read in 2004, ‘The Seven Daughters of Eve‘ by Bryan Sykes, where the premise is put forward that all humans are descended from these seven women! According to Bryson’s book, all humans share over 97% off the same DNA and its only the 3% that separates us into who we really are!

Another book I am just halfway through is, “Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror“, initially penned by Anonymous, but now known to have been written by former CIA employee Michael Scheuer. Interestingly, its publication was ‘blessed’ by the CIA itself, some say to destabilise Bush’s re-election chances in 2004!

It’s a ‘heavy-duty’ book that reconfirms my belief that we do now live in a more dangerous world than five years ago and through ongoing actions by western governments it is getting worse. Perhaps with a little more clear thinking by politicians we might not be in the mess that we now see in the middle east. I now view the Iran issue as another possible stepping-stone to further disaster. I’ll reserve my final judgement till I finish the book, but as with other similar books, it seems that the ‘silent’ majority are continually out-manipulated by politicians who seem more bent on conflict.

Do you remember what a good English breakfast tastes like?

Well here is a place that celebrates the fact that it is still alive and well in various Cafés.

And much to my pleasant surprise various places in the USA, but what about those old diners of the late 70’s and early 80’s?

So lets put that on a big plate and eat it!!

During the early 90s I was in Washington DC on a business trip and as I had forgotten take some books to read, ended up in buying a couple from a book store, near to my hotel. One book with a story that I have never forgotten (I can’t remember what the other book was about) was ‘We were Soldiers Once… and Young’. The story of the beginning of a catastrophic military adventure in the mid 60s into a foreign part of the world that was in the end, to be the wasting of 10’s of thousands of young mens’ lives, given up ‘for their country’!

That period of world history (and particularly USA history) has always fascinated me throughout my life. The 60’s have been described as many things; swinging, optimistic as society emerged from the somewhat austere 50’s and also the beginning of individual political thought.

For me it was also the decade when I joined the UK Royal Navy, in fact one year (albeit 10 days – 24th Nov. 1964) before that fateful landing at LZ X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley by members of the US 7th(and other) Cavalry units. Throughout my early days in the Navy, I was on ships that made a number of deployments (post 1967) to the Far East and although the UK was not(thank God) formally involved in the conflict, we did sail and work with US naval forces in various exercises around the whole of South-East Asia.

During those ‘trips’, I also had a chance to meet some of the people that had been directly involved in the fighting when we visited US bases in the Philippines, Thailand and Japan. Did we sit down a talk about the philosophical aspects of the conflict? No we were just 19 & 20 year olds doing what servicemen seemed to do, drink, drink and … yes drink some more. But I do remember some of the stories that came out their experience and I was grateful that we were not involved.

What brings back the memories of this book and that period in my life? About three days ago I recorded the film version of the book and last night I watched what for me was another masterful explanation of the futility of war and its aftermath for all sides, both military for the people directly involved, and human, for those that have to remain at home, unaware of the horror and carnage that their loved ones are experiencing, (yes there are inaccuracies in film, but I guess that’s film making).

I sat and could not believe how ‘effectively’ the written words (of Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway) had been transferred to the visual senses. It was an experience that after two hours left me feeling drained of emotion on every level.

This is not a film for everyone, but like a few of the UK second world war veterans that I heard talk about the film ‘Saving Private Ryan‘ and how they felt, that for them it was one of the most ‘realistic’ films that they had seen. I can only imagine that ‘We were Soldier Once… and Young’ must have been equally as ‘realistic’ and traumatic for any Vietnam veterans that may have watched it.

I have gone to my book boxes in the attic and retrieved my copy to read again. Perhaps in 20 years time, someone will write a book about the ongoing ‘adventures’ in the latest foreign ‘field’, and we’ll look back and wonder how it all happened so quickly and easily, again!

If you want to read the book, you can find it here, as well as the DVD.

If you just want to pause for a thought; then this is probably the place to do it.