The Aged P

It’s handbags at dawn as Peter Oborne gives Tim Montgomerie and his Ashcroft funded Conservativehome website a bitchslap in the dark alleyway behind DT HQ. Ashcroft is using Montgomerie as a sock puppet to shift Cameron & Co to the right, wails a distraught Oborne and it’s not fair because Peter wants David all to himself.

Others can dissect the root causes of this catfight better than myself but there are some observations that need to be made –the most obvious being that it’s a bit rich Oborne screeching about Ashcroft using his wealth to bankroll a media outlet in order to channel his own views. After all, he himself is obviously trousering a few sovs from the reclusive Barclay brothers who not only own the DT but also fiercely resist all attempts at invading their privacy. They say they run a hands off operation but articles about Sark politics and sycophantic features about Catholicism tend to open that claim to question.

Then this complaint about hectoring Cameron from the DT seems rather strange when one recalls the vicious guerrilla warfare waged by the paper against John Major in the 90s on behalf of….(don’t laugh)…Michael Portillo…”man of destiny” etc…

Oborne, of course, assumes, like most pundits, that we ordinary folk are incapable of drawing up our own opinions and need guidance from the pundit priesthood to make the right decisions. Hence we Tories supposedly pore over the Telegraph or Conservativehome to find out what we should be thinking today, rather like earnest Bolsheviks leafing through Pravda in the 1930s.

Cobblers

Many Tory voters don’t even read the DT – and probably a large number of those who do would not bother with Oborne. Even fewer visit ConHome (and when you read some of the comments there they seem to be mostly wearing tinfoil hats)

Peter and Tim are obviously big in the Westminster village – and that is their limit. Both of them shrink down to size when on TV…..Montgomerie is like a fairly unsuccessful insurance salesman and Oborne brilliantly fills the role of the pompous, opinionated Latin teacher at some third rate prep school.

Give me Nigel Farage or Dan Hannan any day…

And as for one person being able to influence conservatives with a tweet or a few words on Facebook there is only one person in the western world who can do that – Sarah Palin in the USA. Both Oborne and Montgomerie would view her with disdain. But then they need to ask themselves why her words have so much power.

Maybe it has to do with honesty and fearlessness – and not giving a tinker’s cuss what anyone else thinks…

It happens every two years. The England football team go to either the Euro Cup or the World Cup and the hype begins….this time our team will reach the final and win…lol..

Forget that the last time we won anything was the World Cup nearly half a century ago….

Trouble is that the media now bigs it up because they assume everyone is a football fanatic – and that’s not true. But a lot of people pretend to be interested to avoid being labelled a dork…

But one woman hasn’t been afraid to speak out. She was obviously not best pleased when “Chris” decided to fork out several hundred pounds to to go with his mates to the Ukraine to watch England win Euro 2012….and missed their anniversary. so she chose just the right place to voice her displeasure…a bridge overlooking a very busy road near their home.

What a doughnut…not only has he been publicly humiliated by his girl but he had to watch as the inevitable happened and England also got dumped by Italy…

Now we are in the cold light of day I think “Chris” has got a lot of crawling to do……..

h/t African Seer

Great stuff from Mark Steyn on Barack Obama who, like UK Labour Party leader Ed Milliband and Francois Hollande, the new socialist president of France, prefers to operate from outer space where he feels he can safely ignore the laws of gravity and economics…

Soaring rhetoric at a time of earthbound problems — jobs, debt — risks making the president sound ridiculous. Granted, there’s a lot of it about this time of year — commencement speakers assuring kids who can’t manage middle-school math that you can be anything you want to be as long as you dream your dreams. But Obama offers an even more absurd evolution of this grim trope: “I can be anything I want to be as long as you chumps dream your dreams.”

Unfortunately , as the French elections have taught us, there is no shortage in the west of misty eyed optimists always ready to be seduced by the snake oil salesmen who readily tell you what you want to hear. But eventually even the biggest sucker eventually gets to realise that there is no such thing as a free lunch..

Self-pity is never an attractive quality, and in an elected head of state even less so. Obama whines that his opponents say it’s all his fault. One can argue about whose fault it is, but not, as my colleagues at National Review pointed out, whose responsibility it is: It’s his. He’s the only president we have. And he made things worse. He increased the national debt by some 70 percent, and what do we have to show for it? No dams, no railroads, no moon shots. Just government, and bureaucracy, and regulation, unto national bankruptcy.

“Fly me to the moon / Let me play among the stars . . . ” Who needs another moon shot? Obama’s already up there, soaring ever more unmoored from reality. Pity us mere mortals back on Planet Earth, living in the land he made.

The good news is that while out walking the other day I came across just the bunch of fellows who can help Obama (and Milliband and Hollande) keep their feet firmly on the ground…

BTW Actually Earthbound Services is a great example of a successful local business creating jobs….there are thousands of these small businesses in the UK driving the engine of growth (and no, I have don’t have any connection with the company, just liked their lorry and found out more about them later…)

I know we should be concerned about Syria, the euro and lots of other problems across the globe. But in reality it’s almost always local issues, literally at street level, that get us fired up…maybe because we can actually get a handle on what is happening and the direct impact.

Hence my post on January 26th 2011 was a cri de coeur – yet incredibly the gods smiled upon me..until a few days ago…

When we drive out of our road, Allyington Way, we almost always turn right into Street Hill because that way leads to the main road (B2036) and the M23 or Crawley.

A few months ago turning right would have been a little more difficult

Now once we have turned right we drive about 150 yds downhill along this road to the T junction at the bottom

Previously we just hoped and prayed we wouldn’t meet another vehicle coming up the hill

It’s quite a busy little hill because it acts as a cut through to avoid traffic on the main road so you can see how pleased the residents of Allyington Way were when West Sussex County Council published a notice saying they were putting down those double yellow lines to ban parking at any time.

A bit draconian to do that, you might ask?

I don’t think so.

For many years during weekdays only the odd car parked on Street Hill. At weekends church users might fill the road up but rarely for longer than a couple of hours at the most.

The parking problems came with the construction of a nearby industrial estate by the northbound Jct 10A of the M23. Not only did several employees park all day on the hill but it also appeared to be become regularly used as a storage area for vehicles from the car dealership on the estate. Then at other times it was clogged with Sky vans, either from the industrial estate or maybe from meetings at a nearby hotel. The volume of parking often turned the hill during weekdays into a virtual one way street. The double yellow lines have stopped that. Where these vehicles have gone is unclear (a handful still park in the unlined area further up) but they do not appear, on weekdays, to be parking locally.

You can therefore understand why last week we were astonished to receive a notice from West Sussex County Council saying they were going to remove most of the double yellow lines in the first and third pictures above – thus allowing the return of the inconsiderate parking seen in the second and forth pictures.

Straight away we realised that the restoration of the scene in picture 2 would raise serious issues.

Firstly the pedestrian slope onto the pavement on the east side that is just to the north of the entrance to our road would no longer be protected by yellow lines. Since the upper west side of Street Hill has no pavement this means that, as before, pedestrians who need to cross from west to east might well have to squeeze past parked cars and possibly miss that slope completely…hard luck if you are blind, a wheelchair user or have a toddler in a pushchair….or the grass verge is muddy.

Indeed it would really be going against official guidelines because, at present the double yellow lines opposite our road help to reinforce Para 217 of the Highway Code

217: DO NOT park your vehicle or trailer on the road where it would endanger, inconvenience or obstruct pedestrians or other road users. For example, do not stop
• opposite or within 10 metres (32 feet) of a junction, except in an authorised parking space
• where the kerb has been lowered to help wheelchair users

I know that before the lines were painted weekday parking – and some weekend parking – made a mockery of Para 217 yet the WSCC proposals will allow those inconsiderate drivers to inconvenience local residents once again. It just seems odd that WSCC are quite sanguine about this.

I contacted WSCC and our local WSCC elected member, Councillor Richard Burrett, to find out why. It turned out that a number of people living in Saxon Road about 500yds up the hill had claimed that vehicles would move up closer to them during the week and park in and around their road – what they called “displacement parking”.

Fair enough, I suppose. The sensible option would have been to monitor parking for maybe one year to see if that did happen and then make a further judgement on the results. But for some reason there was panic in County Hall and an amended proposal to black out the lines put forward as a “compromise”

This rather cack handed response has made us very unhappy and we are asking ourselves why a so called compromise would actually restore almost everything we had complained about over several years – and why the views of those living further up the hill should carry such weight.

The joke of it is that there is no evidence that on weekdays there has been any “displacement parking” further up the hill and very little at weekends. This is just a big fat nothingburger.

I’m sorry, WSCC, this is simply not good enough. The people of Allyington Way are very unhappy that the residents of another road appear to be able to convince the county council to amend a Traffic Regulation Order by mere speculation rather than systematic monitoring over a twelve month period.

The euro-mafia is already hailing the Greek election as a turning point, hoping that conservative New Democracy and their socialist rivals Pasok will form a coalition which will implement the austerity measures demanded by Germany. Their micawberish expectation that something will eventually “turn up” is not, however, shared by all observers..

Both parties, which have ruled Greece for 38 years, are widely blamed for a crisis that has taken the country to the brink of economic collapse. Between them they won only about 40 per cent of the vote. By contrast, parties that opposed the bail-out increased their share of the vote to over 46 per cent, with Syriza, the radical Leftist coalition that wants to discard the agreement, almost winning outright.

Has the Greek euro maiden been untied from the rails and carried away before the locomotive thunders down the track?

I think not.

Settle down, folks, for the longest running death scene since the days of Victorian melodrama….

Lord Leveson, the big legal cheese heading up the Inquiry into media behaviour and, it appears everything else in infinity and beyond, had his bewigged fronds bruised by the audacity of a member of a government duly elected by a majority of British voters who said

the Leveson Inquiry had created a ‘chilling atmosphere’ towards freedom of expression and any attempt to tighten regulation of newspapers could result in ‘a cure worse than the original disease’.

It is alleged that the noble lord was deeply aggrieved by such abusive language and perhaps he almost considered referring the matter to his unelected mates at the European Court of Human Rights. But, instead, he took the UK Establishment route. The unelected judge complained to an unelected civil servant, no less a figure than Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary and Britain’s pen pusher supreme.

Memos obviously went back and forth. Quiet words were probably whispered into certain ears. Attempts to unruffle feathers were made. No doubt the golden mantra of avoiding a “fuss” could be heard in the corridors of power. So when Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, the minister who had so rattled the Levesonian cage, was summoned to give evidence to the Inquiry himself it was expected that, still smarting from rapped knuckles, he would, like Henry II in 1174, crawl on his knees in penance across the room, clothed in sackcloth and covered with ashes.

Instead the noble judge was shocked to find Mr. Gove not only defiant but openly aggressive in his attitude towards the Inquiry in general and His Levesonianship in particular.

Mr. Gove, the Education Secretary, gave an impassioned defence of the right to offend people as he gave evidence to the hearing on media ethics. Mr. Gove clashed with the judge several times, as he warned against knee-jerk decisions to put new restrictions on newspapers and broadcasters. “The cry, ‘Something must be done’ often leads to people doing something which isn’t always wise,”

Moreover he actually had the nerve to rebuke His Legal Lordship

The judge said he was concerned that the Education Secretary was prepared to put up with “unacceptable, albeit not necessarily criminal” behaviour from journalists because of the right to freedom of speech.
Mr. Gove said some cases of press misbehaviour were “deplorable” but argued that these could be punished under existing laws, such as defamation. “Freedom of speech doesn’t mean anything unless some people are going to be offended some of the time,” the minister said. Defending the “rough-edged” trade of journalism, the minister said it “twas ever thus” that reporters are unpopular. “Politicians and journalists have always tended to be held in relatively low regard,” he said

Politicians and journalists have always tended to be held in relatively low regard
He might easily have added lawyers and judges…….

Mick Hume at Spiked sums up this farce in his usual straight from the hip style

We are faced with an almost medieval spectacle of a judge and his top lawyer acting as priestly men of wisdom, apparently drawing their authority from some higher power, to interrogate and pass judgement on elected politicians and other public figures from the mortal world. That might have seemed strange and worrying enough. Stranger and more worrying still, however, is that so many rational and liberal-minded figures have chosen not merely to kowtow to the unreasonable power of the inquisition, but to cheer on the inquisitors

Cameron’s attempt to hit this hacking affair into the long grass by setting up the Inquiry has been a signal failure. Instead of allowing the courts to decide if actual laws had been broken by examining evidence he merely provided an additional trough into which well heeled lawyers and celebrity weasels can plunge their snouts.

Full marks. then, to Mr Gove for pricking the Levesonian balloon. However, even more satisfying, it seems clear that the general public have already filed this as a circus of relevance only to the Westminster village. With the Eurozone imploding and the UK economy at ground zero the noble lord and his underlings are prancing around the sawdust to a rapidly dwindling audience.

No more lifeboats on the EU Titanic – so instead they’re busy rearranging the deck chairs…

Thank goodness the leadership of the USA is much more competent….ROFLMAO!!!!!!!

Look at the sea of Surriento,
what a treasure it is!
Even who has travelled all over the world,
he has never seen a sea like this one.
Look at these mermaids
that stare, amazed, at you,
that love you so much.
They would like to kiss you,
And you say: “I am leaving, goodbye.”
You go away from my heart,
away from the land of love,
And you have the heart not to come back.
But please do not go away,
do not give me this pain.
Come back to Surriento,
let me live!

We did something romantic for our Ruby Wedding in 2007….all lovers should try to see Sorrento at least once. It’s a fascinating town in itself and there is so much to explore in the surrounding area –a great place to visit…

….you can easily reach the Isle of Capri…

….Naples…

With the warning shadow of Vesuvius always there in the background…

Alternatively you can look down on Naples from the volcano’s summit…

Then look into the crater…

Pompeii reminds us of the power of Vesuvius..look what happened to this Roman…

Perhaps he’d been walking along this street when he was caught by the eruption…

Nearby Herculaneum is even better preserved….

Of course from Sorrento you can also travel south to Amalfi..

Then back to Sorrento to just sit and watch the seagulls…maybe even catch the eye of a mermaid…

Gordon Ramsay went into Brixton Prison to teach inmates how to cook – but he came out astonished at how easy their life was.

Perhaps we could learn a lesson or two from Arizona….

Most of us in Europe, Asia and America are living longer – but not so much of that in Africa. Many people in Africa are dying earlier than us of malaria, typhoid etc….those old fashioned diseases caused by bugs, dirty water and exacerbated by under nourishment.

However few of us will simply die in our sleep – instead we will die of other diseases like cancer or heart/blood pressure problems because these are diseases of old age. Most Africans, for the moment, are spared that.
The diseases that will kill us off are non-communicable diseases, known as NCDs and you’ll be glad to know that the UN is on the case.

On Saturday at the sixty-fifth World Health Assembly – a meeting of the 194 member countries of the World Health Organisation – ‘delegates approved the development of a global monitoring framework for the prevention and control of NCDs, including indicators and a set of global targets.

Don’t rush out into the street proclaiming that the WHO has found a cure for cancer because we’re not talking about SCIENCE. The guys and gals in their white coats are still shaking their test tubes and are still far away from finding a cure. No, we are talking about the only global industry that is in permanent growth mode – public health agitprop or health “education” as the industry prefers to describe itself.

‘The NCD Alliance, a global advocacy organization representing a network of more than 2,000 civil society organizations led a major lobbying campaign, and mobilized its network to ensure this target was secured.’
‘Intense lobbying by NGOs’ : the epitaph of our times. How delightful it is that these organisations think that lobbying and legislation is a substitute for biology and medical science.

You know exactly what sort of people will be implementing these campaigns says Chris Snowdon at Spiked

the puritans, bureaucrats, nannies and headbangers of public health are so keen on the idea of ‘non-communicable diseases’, because it gives them what every trigger-happy army general wants: a war without end.

…and it gives them salaries and funds to spent upon “marketing strategies”…and once in situ they will always be demanding more money for “one last push” and the supply of money will be limitless because it will come from “governments” i.e. taxpayers pockets.

Here’s a novel idea – why not by pass the lobbyists and “civil groups” and marketers with all their high rent offices and glossy leaflets and bustling office staff and give the money to the guys and gals in the research laboratories shaking their test tubes and help them find an actual cure….

Nah – on second thoughts that’s a bit too old fashioned and so not 21st century….and there wouldn’t be any “ambassador” jobs for Hollywood celebrities and their hangers on….