Came across this story on the BBC it regards a woman who received an ASBO for having Sex too loud, The story first came to my attention last year when the lady, Caroline Cartwright was convicted of breaching her ASBO.
Obviously this case has gained attention due to the seemingly comical nature of their activity at the time of the offence; I do think however that further investigation of the case shows a much less amusing picture of our society. The act that was causing the act is really not important to the case (and in fact the offences also include playing music too loud, but this doesn’t make as good a headline.) but the noise must have been quite extreme as complaints were not just received from neighbours but also a Postman and a passer by taking her daughter to school, so clearly there must have been some volume to it.
However this is when the case becomes truly farcical, Due to the complaints she was issued with a Noise Abetment Notice, this notice basically states that if you do not cease your actions you are liable to prosecution; this however did not have any effect on the couple as there were 5 breaches of this notice which resulted in her receiving an ASBO, basically stating that if she continues in her actions she will face prison. This however was again ineffectual, as in January this year she received an 8 week suspended sentence, meaning that if she commits this offence again within 12 months she will be imprisoned for 8 weeks. However she has just been back in court for the same offence, and instead of serving the sentence she has already been handed down, she has again been given a 12 week sentence again suspended for 12 months.
This is all a mockery of a justice system, for someone who I can only assume must enjoy the publicity, in fact one of her previous ASBO breaches was the evening after she received her ASBO. The words of the court recorder, Jeremy Freedman, made me laugh “This Court is giving you one last chance.” Only slightly at odds then of the words of Judge Beatrice Bolton when sentencing last January who warned her that if she “committed further offences of the same nature, she would be sent to prison.”
And we wonder why we can’t stop people committing crimes, it is because the legal system has turned itself into a whimpering pussy cat where there are no consequences for your actions.
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
Unemployment Rises make (Bob) Crow's Day
A leaked presentation seen by the Guardian has announced that there may be a 1.5 Million rise in unemployment from the Public Sector. Now to deal with that first even the Guardian have admitted that the (Independent) Office for Budget Responsibility have said that the Private sector should create 2.5 Million jobs in the same period. These seems like typical Best Case/Worst Case politics, I would imagine therefore that we have to look somewhere in the middle to find the truth, supposing that without the Public Sector millstone round the nations neck the public sector should be able to create 2 million jobs, but there will probably be an increase of around 1/2 a million unemployed from the cut backs. However the main question here is how many people would have been made redundant had George Osbourne not decided to cut quick and fast? I have always believed that if the public debt got to 1.5 Trillion that it would have necessitated the near collapse of our public economy with a near total paralysation of our Private economy - surely a much higher level of unemployment would have followed.
So despite the fact that the case for these figures is in no way proved RMT Leader Bob Crow has called for a summer of wide spread strikes, he has called for all unions to join together with community groups to have full disruption to society. Now Bob Crow is considered one of the more extreme Union leaders (which could explain why the Train Drivers are constantly on strike - £30,000+ for sitting down holding a handle?) but I think this shows the typical arrogance and selfishness of the Union movement.
"WAKE UP, THE COUNTRY IS ON THE BRINK OF COLLAPSE"
This is not the time to try and destroy the economy, this is the time to pull together and work to try and undo the damage of 13 years of the worst financial management
So despite the fact that the case for these figures is in no way proved RMT Leader Bob Crow has called for a summer of wide spread strikes, he has called for all unions to join together with community groups to have full disruption to society. Now Bob Crow is considered one of the more extreme Union leaders (which could explain why the Train Drivers are constantly on strike - £30,000+ for sitting down holding a handle?) but I think this shows the typical arrogance and selfishness of the Union movement.
"WAKE UP, THE COUNTRY IS ON THE BRINK OF COLLAPSE"
This is not the time to try and destroy the economy, this is the time to pull together and work to try and undo the damage of 13 years of the worst financial management
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
VAT Calculator
Found a decent little VAT calculator at Small Business Pro.
Also discovered that to find out the Net cost of a Gross value you divide the Gross price by 1.175 (Obviously to be 1.2 from next year.) - My days are so much fun when that is the highlight.
Councillor Prosecuted for Racist Comments
I saw an article over on the BBC.co.uk’s magazine section regarding the rules of Speech Crime (When you can be prosecuted for what you say.) like many issues I can see both sides of the story on this one as I deplore racism and feel that anyone who uses racial (or other prejudice) language and insults against someone deserves punishment. On the other hand however I believe fully in freedom of the individual, I believe the answer to racism is not to silence the debate but to bring it into the open and therefore beat it with education and logic.
The article was written after the case of Cllr Shirley Brown (Lib Dem) on Bristol Council, apparently she called an Asian Councillor a “Coconut”, now I have to admit when I read that I was shocked and thought it was more PC nonsense, however on reading deeper it appears that Ms Brown called fellow councillor, Jay Jethwa (Conservative) a coconut as it is a well known insult for someone who is brown on the outside but white in the middle. (First I have heard it.) Ms Brown goes on to say "I must admit, I was angry because I thought it was an absolute insult, because she is of Asian background. I was thinking how could you cut funding that is going to impact so many people. So the first thing that came to mind, instead of saying 'you idiot', I said 'you coconut'." When I read this I found this incredible, so basically what she is saying is that if you are Asian, Black etc.. you have to vote (and I assume) think a certain way? Surely to believe that someone has to have certain opinions due to their skin colour is the worse form of Racism! And to say that someone is “white” because they disagree with you is insulting to the victim of the attack and every white person in this country, and I am sure there are many white people who would have been on her side.
Personally I think it is a shame that clearly racist individuals like Ms brown are allowed to hold political office, however as I said earlier this may be the price of freedom, I just hope that her constituents take the next opportunity to relieve her of spending time with people she clearly feels uncomfortable with.
The article was written after the case of Cllr Shirley Brown (Lib Dem) on Bristol Council, apparently she called an Asian Councillor a “Coconut”, now I have to admit when I read that I was shocked and thought it was more PC nonsense, however on reading deeper it appears that Ms Brown called fellow councillor, Jay Jethwa (Conservative) a coconut as it is a well known insult for someone who is brown on the outside but white in the middle. (First I have heard it.) Ms Brown goes on to say "I must admit, I was angry because I thought it was an absolute insult, because she is of Asian background. I was thinking how could you cut funding that is going to impact so many people. So the first thing that came to mind, instead of saying 'you idiot', I said 'you coconut'." When I read this I found this incredible, so basically what she is saying is that if you are Asian, Black etc.. you have to vote (and I assume) think a certain way? Surely to believe that someone has to have certain opinions due to their skin colour is the worse form of Racism! And to say that someone is “white” because they disagree with you is insulting to the victim of the attack and every white person in this country, and I am sure there are many white people who would have been on her side.
Personally I think it is a shame that clearly racist individuals like Ms brown are allowed to hold political office, however as I said earlier this may be the price of freedom, I just hope that her constituents take the next opportunity to relieve her of spending time with people she clearly feels uncomfortable with.
Is it time to stop making excuses for things that are simply not acceptable?
I am by no means a bastion of good grammar or even good spelling for that matter, but luckily I am more than able to press F7 (Shortcut for Spell check in MS Office) however the news that BT recently had to reject ¼ of applications for an apprenticeship due to the applicants being practically illiterate send shivers down my spine for the future of this country.
Listening to James Whale’s Drive on LBC last night the consensus seemed to be that the fault is shared between the Teachers and Technology, the Teachers argument I can understand as after all they are paid to educate so a limited education must result in some blame being apportioned there. On this subject the only thing I would say is that before we get some burning torches to chase after the teachers for a good old fashioned witch hunt, there is no way that they alone can be responsible and until they are allowed to restore discipline and even more important are backed up by the Parents at home then there will be little they can do other than try and get the children through the day.
I may blog some more on this in a bit but for now I want to focus on the technology part, the argument goes something like this: Young People spend more time sending text messages, e-mails and tweets (Follow me @adamgbrown), these communication streams have limited size (Although I refute this with regards to e-mail.), therefore it is causing children to use txt spk (text speak) in formal communications. I find this theory preposterous, basically when I was growing up, and to this very day I have always used the greeting “Hi” I say Hi to my friends, I write Hi in my e-mails and text messages, and when I write a formal (or even semi formal) message I start it with “Good Morning/Afternoon” or perhaps “Dear Sir or Madam”. In all the years I have been writing and talking I have never, to my knowledge, had an issue with when to use formal language and when to use informal. Surely this is all part of our social interactions, something which we have been doing for millions of years.
Exactly why sending a few texts should excuse people of this basic building block of what is known as common sense is beyond me, however it is systematic of a larger scale problem facing the country, why are we so quick to provide excuses for what is simply not acceptable? The LTA (Lawn Tennis Association) spends as much money on supporting failed tennis stars as we do on supporting the ones who have a good chance of making it, in fact our two big Tennis hopes at the moment are Andy Murrey who left the UK to head to Spain to train and Laura Robinson who trained in Australia. So there is review after review as to why we can not have a British Wimbledon champion, and yet at no time is anyone willing to turn around and say “Sorry, you’re just not good enough.” We create a society where turning up and competing is good enough and then complain when our sportsmen do not show enough passion.
Now when this “Well at least you tried” attitude was simply affecting our sportspeople (I love sport as much as the next man, but it is unlikely to have too much of a negative effect on our country.) it was just a bit of an embarrassment, but now that it is effecting the next generations ability to function within our society surely this has to be the wake up call.
Listening to James Whale’s Drive on LBC last night the consensus seemed to be that the fault is shared between the Teachers and Technology, the Teachers argument I can understand as after all they are paid to educate so a limited education must result in some blame being apportioned there. On this subject the only thing I would say is that before we get some burning torches to chase after the teachers for a good old fashioned witch hunt, there is no way that they alone can be responsible and until they are allowed to restore discipline and even more important are backed up by the Parents at home then there will be little they can do other than try and get the children through the day.
I may blog some more on this in a bit but for now I want to focus on the technology part, the argument goes something like this: Young People spend more time sending text messages, e-mails and tweets (Follow me @adamgbrown), these communication streams have limited size (Although I refute this with regards to e-mail.), therefore it is causing children to use txt spk (text speak) in formal communications. I find this theory preposterous, basically when I was growing up, and to this very day I have always used the greeting “Hi” I say Hi to my friends, I write Hi in my e-mails and text messages, and when I write a formal (or even semi formal) message I start it with “Good Morning/Afternoon” or perhaps “Dear Sir or Madam”. In all the years I have been writing and talking I have never, to my knowledge, had an issue with when to use formal language and when to use informal. Surely this is all part of our social interactions, something which we have been doing for millions of years.
Exactly why sending a few texts should excuse people of this basic building block of what is known as common sense is beyond me, however it is systematic of a larger scale problem facing the country, why are we so quick to provide excuses for what is simply not acceptable? The LTA (Lawn Tennis Association) spends as much money on supporting failed tennis stars as we do on supporting the ones who have a good chance of making it, in fact our two big Tennis hopes at the moment are Andy Murrey who left the UK to head to Spain to train and Laura Robinson who trained in Australia. So there is review after review as to why we can not have a British Wimbledon champion, and yet at no time is anyone willing to turn around and say “Sorry, you’re just not good enough.” We create a society where turning up and competing is good enough and then complain when our sportsmen do not show enough passion.
Now when this “Well at least you tried” attitude was simply affecting our sportspeople (I love sport as much as the next man, but it is unlikely to have too much of a negative effect on our country.) it was just a bit of an embarrassment, but now that it is effecting the next generations ability to function within our society surely this has to be the wake up call.
Monday, 28 June 2010
Hands off Harry
An interesting question was put to me earlier, ever since the match finished yesterday the press and commentators have been pushing for the FA to hire Harry Redknapp. Obviously as a Spurs fan currently experiencing the best time I have known since taking an interest in football, this is a suggestion I find less than exciting.
So the question that was put to me is: What would I prefer England to win the world cup, or Tottenham to win the Premier League? Now as the years pore by and my cynicism increases I am starting to doubt I will see either, but given the choice I would take the league.
As much as I love the World Cup to come home and despite my better judgement continue to get over excited at each competition I have taken too much abuse, too many false dawns and been the butt of too many jokes to turn down the chance of spurs winning the league.
So keep your world Cup and look elsewhere for your manager, were keeping Harry.
(Before anyone feels the need to point it out I know that neither things are likely to happen, with or without Mr. Redknapp)
Sunday, 27 June 2010
They're coming home, they're coming England coming home
Well 9 minutes left to play and we are on our way out, tomorrow the headline writers will come out with the usual lazy accusation stories, blaming how much the players earn, or how many foreign players are in the premiership. However for my,money I will be,placing the blame firmly at the door of Fabio Capello. Whilst I often defend the managers who often take an unfair portion of the blame, throughout this tournament Capello has been unimaginative and cowardly with his selections and tactics.
When faced match after match with a sub-standard Rooney, and a frankly dismal Gerrard, instead of making the brave call and benching these "superstars" he instead withdraws Defoe to being in Hapless Heskey and sticking to 4-4-2 like it was the only possibility.
Had I been in charge (obviously I am saying this with the certainty that I will never be put to the test) I would have played a 4-5-1 Upsom would be out so I would play with James in goal, Johnson, Dawson, Terry and Cole in defence. Lennon, Lampard, Gerrard, Millner and Wright-Philips with Defoe up front on his own.
I think what the most interesting fact to remember is that Capello signed an extended contract before the tournament, so if we want to fire him it will cost millions.
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