The Aged P

New President Of China Hails A Taxi…..Too Good To be True – And It Wasn’t….LOL..

So the great Xi Jinping taxi story (new President of China jumps into a cab to show he’s just an ordinary bloke) proved to be a hoax…..

Red faced media big cheeses in China issued grovelling apologies and, natch, airbrushed the original story from their sites.

But one of the reasons the hoax gained legs was because it sounded exactly like the type of fairy story fantasy “man of the people” pumped out by the agitprop churners of every party based dictatorship.

Beloved Leader “suddenly” decides to leave office, go out onto the street and hail a taxi. A few minutes later the cab deposits said leader outside his humble abode where Mrs Leader is in the midst of cooking noodles…..and, astonishingly, media hacks are present throughout the whole journey.

Fact is these characters are as distant from the great unwashed as any medieval monarch. China, Cuba, North Korea and the jolly old USSR – any communist regime – is based on dynastic rivalries not on any truly democratic process. The party is a divine vanguard whose members know the needs of ordinary people much better than the ordinary people themselves. But, because they claim to rule in the name of the masses, unlike a medieval king whose power came from a hotline to heaven, They have to pretend to be “just like us”…..

Maybe next time his PR guys should suggest a swim……

Thanks For Working Hard – I Need You To Be Taxed So I Can Buy Booze & Ciggies

Our new ruling class?

Please pass me that metal bucket – I just need to put it over my head and bang it with a hammer for eight hours…

“Another example of the whingeing, self-serving, poisonous b******s that seem to have become your hallmark”

un•kempt
/ˌənˈkem(p)t/
Adjective
(esp. of a person) Having an untidy or disheveled appearance.

Synonyms
disheveled – dishevelled – untidy – slovenly – scruffy

No wonder the police as an institution have become increasingly regarded as an ineffective, inefficient bunch of jobsworths – unfairly in my opinion because the majority of officers do a hard and often thankless task remarkably well considering the restrictions imposed on their actions by “political correctness”. But you do wonder, sometimes, if some senior officers undermine the reputation of the troops on the ground by their unwillingness to use discretion in cases of “political correctness”

Recently a conservative MP was the subject of a lengthy investigation by Sussex Police for the ultimate 21st century sin – racism. The Race Card was played by a man who claimed that the MP had described him as “unkempt” – thus demeaning his “gypsy” heritage.

In an email to Mr Loughton complaining of his treatment by the authority, Mr Francis said he was insultingly described in an official council document as unkempt, although he bathed regularly.
But Mr Loughton wrote back: ‘As regards the specific whinge about being described as “unkempt”, given the meaning of the word as “untrimmed, dishevelled and rough” it strikes me as eminently accurate.’
The MP, who describes Mr Francis as a ‘serial complainer’ and his most problematic constituent, added that the complaint was ‘another example of the whingeing, self-serving, poisonous b******s that seem to have become your hallmark’

After several months the investigation, which probably cost £100.000 did not lead to a prosecution and was filed for no action. Strange, is it not, that in this case the police claimed they had no option but to pursue the matter but could quite happily use their discretion and not pursue the matter of 1,000 suspicious deaths at Mid Staffs Hospital…..

Bus Driver Gives Masterclass In Driving In Icy Conditions

Whenever we grind to a halt as a result of a bit of snow and we see all those motoring slithering about because they expect to be able to drive as if it’s a sunny day in August I always think of this Teeside bus driver giving us a masterclass in how to handle a vehicle in icy conditions….

The Aged P Endorses Romney…..

So, within a few hours the long saga of the US Presidential election will be over. Compared to our own bursts of six week frenetic electioneering, the American process is a long drawn out affair which began in the early autumn of 2011 when Republican hopefuls started throwing their hats into the ring.

I have never been a great fan of Mitt Romney. He has a well deserved reputation for shifting his political stances according to prevailing winds and he always distanced himself from the Tea Party revolution that emerged, unbidden, from the wreckage of the 2006 and 2008 GOP defeats.

His problem with many conservative Republicans, at present submerged beneath the soundbites and overblown rhetoric of whistlestop campaigning, is that once in the White House he would revert to type and pursue a don’t rock the boat, steady as she goes establishment pleasing Bush style governance that would kick the can of America’s dysfunctional indebtedness further down the road for Willow Palin’s generation to sort out.

Nevertheless, since the alternative is allowing Obama and his seedy gang of hacks an opportunity to set in concrete their goal of turning America into John Lennon Imagine World, it seems to me that Romney is the least worst alternative.

The other solid reason for enjoying a Romney victory would be the delights of relishing the deflated balloons at the BBC which, throughout the campaign, has scarcely deigned, via the wretched duo of Mark Mardell and Jonny Dymond, to conceal a sneering disregard for the views of flyover USA. Throw in the tears of Obama’s wealthy groupies in Hollywood and his mainstream media palace guard and it would be a repeat of that glorious November in 2004 when GWB confounded the elite and won his second term fair and square with the bonus of congressional control.

Unfortunately the GOP establishment threw that magnificent moment away in subsequent years. Would Romney do the same?

Perhaps.

But remember, during Bush’s second term, there was no figure who symbolised the spirit of conservative resistance. With President Romney he and his advisers would always be aware of the presence of Sarah Palin, always ready with a red hot poker near the presidential derriere to keep him on the straight and narrow……

EU To Be Awarded Nobel Peace Prize For 2012 – An Even Sicker Joke Than Giving It To Obama In 2009..

If the award of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to the newly elected Barack Obama was a sick joke the news that this year’s prize is going to the EU reduces the selection process to the level of a meaningless farce. This bureaucratic monstrosity, steeped in corruption and nepotism, subject to no democratic oversight and run by a bunch of second rate jobsworths has no foreign policy credentials and lacks any military capability

“The stabilizing part played by the EU has helped to transform most of Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace,”

This was the justification that the secretive cabal of Norwegian grandees offered to a bemused world. Perhaps they hired a North Korean hack to compose it for such a Pravdaesque concoction of sycophantic untruths could only be cobbled together by someone well practised in the art of purveying the most audacious of lies with a completely straight face.

That Europe became a continent of peace had nothing to do with the EU and everything to do with NATO – but rest assured the airbrushing out of inconvenient facts is already under way…

Maybe Only Boris Johnson & Sarah Palin Have That Gift Of Connecting Effortlessly With A Crowd…

There is universal agreement that the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics were the best ever, brilliantly organised, flawlessly presented with the stadium packed to the max every day (By the way, Mitt Romney, we are still waiting for that apology…) As a result London Mayor Boris Johnson has probably become one of the most popular figures in Britain – and considering he is a politician that is an astonishing feat – most of us Brits place politicians lower in our scale of trust and approval than estate agents, car salesmen or even journalists…..

Boris is a Tory but his appeal crosses the lines of party, class, gender and race. Last May when the Conservative Party vote was collapsing in the local elections he was re-elected as Mayor of London in a city that is traditionally left wing even though his core beliefs are those of the Thatcherite wing of his party – euro sceptic, smaller government, robust on crime, pro business etc

That’s partly because those values, though despised by by the Guardianista detachment of the middle classes cosily ensconced in the fashionable quarters of North London, happen to resonate with a substantial element of working class voters in the poorer boroughs. But it’s also because Boris, out of the box eccentric that he is, can connect with ordinary folk better than any other politician in the UK. His delivery, his vocabulary, his sense of humour break every rule of political speaking – just like Sarah Palin in the USA. Yet the two of them, although their styles are different, manage to achieve something golden – an electrical charge with their audience that creates a shared experience no other politician can hope to emulate.

They also share another special quality – the ability to use a folksy golly gosh manner to camouflage a shrewd and savvy political brain that is always five moves ahead of anyone else…

Just watch the reactions of the crowd before him and the athletes behind – this man CONNECTS…no wonder PM David Cameron looked a little nervous beside Boris – he could be watching the emergence of a future party leadership rival…

Considering The Disastrous State Of Our Education System School Meals Should Be The Least Of Our Concerns…

So Michael Gove, Secretary of Stae for Education has appointed a school meals Czar

For crying out loud..

I had hoped that Gove was impervious to all this nonsense. When you consider the dire straits of our educational system, the lack of attainment, the absence of a proper learning culture, the total waste of literally billions of pounds for nil effect the last thing we need to concern ourselves with is school dinners.

School meals at every level of education have always been crap because it is mass produced cooking for a captive audience. Added to that the natural gravitational pull between junk food and adolescents and it is obvious that any attempt to get secondary students to pig out on poncy colour supplement trendy cuisine must be doomed to failure.

But we live in a world where self appointed messiahs are just so eager to poke their noses into our own affairs by hectoring us about our sinful behaviour and an infantile media, unable to reverse its own decline, jumps on any bandwagon to scare us into demanding something must be done – and the current panic about school meals becomes flavour of the month.

Let’s get things straight. Schools and teachers are not parent substitutes. They should not be used as freebie child minders. They cannot heal the halt, the sick or the psychologically unstable. Their job is to enable a common cultural inheritance to be passed to the next generation by providing children with the basic tools to understand and add to that inheritance.

Give them the tools and the money to do that effectively for once and just outsource school meals to MacDonalds and Domino’s Pizza – and put gaffer tape around the mouths of every celebrity chef and chattering class food critic…

Fat Cat Doctors To Go On Strike For More Gold From Taxpayers…

‘Fat cat’ doctors to hold 24-hour strike for routine operations and GP appointments

That was the headline in the Evening Standard – and it upset some of the chaps at the BMA.

Thousands of patients are to have operations and appointments cancelled as doctors take industrial action for the first time in nearly 40 years.
GPs and hospital doctors will stop routine work to protest at government pension reforms.
Emergency operations and treatment will still be carried out on the day of action, June 21. But the strike will mean the postponement of non-urgent cases such as knee and hip surgery.
The British Medical Association said doctors will see anyone who is ill, or who believes they are ill, but will not do paperwork

Average pay £100,000 per year.
Thanks to an over generous deal with the previous Labour government no compulsory out of hours cover
Minimal weekend hospital cover by consultants
Very few doctors surgeries open at user friendly times in the evenings/weekends
Most doctors starting in 2015 will retire on an annual pension of £68,000

In the 1940s Bevan bribed them into the NHS by “stuffing their mouths with gold” and the stream of gold continues to this day – and it’s all out of the taxpayers pockets.

The BMA is part of the producers cartel that aims to run the NHS strictly for the benefit and convenience of the people who work in it. For years they have dined out on the angels/saints narrative that convinced previous generations to regard them as selfless moral beings dedicated to serve – and quite a number are, of course. Nevertheless they get paid very well and maybe this is the moment for us, the customers who, via taxation, pay them their wages, to draw the line and make our demands that they start organising their working routines to benefit us.

Perhaps also this is the moment when some politician might dare to query the “free at the point of entry NHS” mantra that has thus far blocked any serious attempt at reform. The simple truth is that we can no longer sustain this model of the NHS – at some time in the future we shall have to introduce a contributory social insurance structure. Then, of course, we shall all realise we are paying customers and start querying why we aren’t getting value for money – and that should mark the end of the NHS as a producers cartel.

The Teacher Who Inspired The Man Who Turned Tesco Into One Of The Most Successful Retailers In The World..

Terry Leahy (or Sir Terry since his audience with the Queen) is the man who in twenty years transformed Tesco from third rate shabbiness to one of the biggest retail businesses in the world.

He was brought up on a tough council estate in Liverpool and, like his brothers and most of his friends, he expected to leave school at the earliest opportunity and drift into low level jobs.

But one of his teachers, Mr McCann, lit a spark of ambition in young Terry

Mr McCann would talk about life beyond the council estate — he’d say such things as: “When you grow up you’re going to be a lawyer or an accountant or a businessman,” ’ says Sir Terry. ‘He talked about things you never dared imagine. He made them seem possible. He made me realise that if you worked hard, you could do as well as anyone else.’

His teacher’s words motivated him to grammar school and university and into the rather unfashionable world of retail management

Isn’t that what education should be about – not just learning facts and doing well in tests, but also inspiring young people to have confidence in their own ability to fashion their own futures by hard graft, determination and a sense of vision. A good teacher is someone who can sow the seed of inspiration in young minds and make them realise that all things are possible.

Sounds a bit old fashioned, doesn’t it – maybe because we appear nowadays to celebrate the idea of not rewarding/celebrating achievement for fear of offending those without ambition….

Not much room for inspiration in the cultivation of mediocrity…….