For me, the two biggest switch offs have always been Mrs Brown’s Boys and the Archers. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Archers’ intro music. ‘Dum de dum de dum de dum. Dum de dum de dum dum.’ But that’s where it stops. I’d rather listen to the shipping forecast. Around 15 years ago I worked with someone who actually claimed to listen to the Archers. Really!
Even though I’ve never been big on soaps. I am still impressed by the way programs like Coronation Street and East Enders draw me in. Even when I don’t like the characters. It was the same with the Jeremy Kyle show before they took it off air. It just grabbed my attention. Such a shame that it’s gone.
I’m nervous about Leveson’s proposals to abolish jury trial in intermediate cases and replace them with trial by a judge and two magistrates. It is as though he’s suggesting that either way offences carrying a likely penalty of less than 3 years imprisonment are not serious. But a theft conviction can be very serious if you lose your career as a result. Fair enough if you are actually guilty of the offence charged. That’s where the jury comes in. People like you and me with the same collective sense of fairness and justice. Not quite the same when you are facing an impatient prosecution-minded magistrate or judge who just wants to get through their case list. And what is the point of even electing trial, if you are not going to get to argue your case before 12 people who are living similar lives as you are.
Another thing I have long noticed is the increasing remoteness for our justice system from common expectations of right and wrong. Where everything seems to be decided on on academic technicality. We’ve come a long way since the passing of ‘people’s judge’, Tom Denning. Then there is the secrecy over the judicial appointments process itself. Whether it’s the appointment of judges and magistrates or the members of a parole board, who ignore public outrage when releasing a dangerous murderer. Who appoints these people? I’m sure that I have never been consulted. All that is left between them and us is 12 members of a jury. Now they want to take that away, Why? Because of successive government incompetence when it comes to our criminal justice system. How does it save money by delaying a case for two or three years instead of bringing it on now? It just doesn’t make sense to me.
My own solution would be to move to an American system of elected judges and magistrates. Make them accountable.
I never understand why today it is fashionable to see hot sunny weather as a problem instead of something to be celebrated. As a child going up in the UK, we never had weather like this. Yes, we might get a few sunny days. Rarely above 75°. But mostly, English weather was dreary dreary dreary. Rarely a winter went by with at least one heavy snowfall during January or February, lasting several weeks. Another winter feature was the fog, which made driving conditions difficult. A new phrase was coined, ‘motorway madness’ to describe the vehicle pile ups which occurred when drivers would insist on driving at speed through heavy fog, following the tail-lights of the vehicle in front. In those days, if you wanted hot sunshine, you had to pay for it by buying a package holiday to Spain.
I remember driving through London at the end of 1978 after heavy snowfall and in freezing temperatures.
Because it happened in the days between Christmas and New Year, no-one was prepared to get out of bed to grit the roads. That was a journey I’d never want to repeat. We passed so many smashed up cars.
Things had already begun to change with the long hot Indian summer of 1976 when we had an invasion of giant red ladybirds which would bite you. Anyone remember that? Then in September 2003, the Mercury hit 100° for the first time in living memory in the UK. Wouldn’t someone living in the mini ice age of 17th century Britain have envied that?
Of course a warmer climate in the UK means that adjustments have to be made. I think we are still too much of an ‘ indoor society’, when we should be getting out and enjoying the sunshine, like they do in other parts of the world. It’s why I like to take my computer outside and do my work instead of sitting in a stuffy box room. I’ve never believed in air conditioning. It has never made sense to me for someone to spend money burning energy to keep us in a freezer. How is that good for the planet? If I need to be inside, I’d much rather have a big wooden ceiling fan chug chug chugging overhead
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My heart always sinks when I see news footage of hobby eco-protesters standing outside a court building, waving placards, and celebrating the stalling of yet another commercial project. This time It was the Rosebank oil exploration project, off Shetland, in which Shell had invested £800 million and involved one of the largest undeveloped oil and gas fields in the UK continental shelf, containing an estimated 300 million barrels. And why do our most senior judiciary seem to think it is their mission to wave their green credentials to tease out the tiniest administrative flaw in the regulatory approval process, to send everything back to the drawing board? Who appoints these people? It follows hot on the heels of another court judgment crushing implementation of proposals to open Britain’s first new coal mine at Whitehaven, for more than 30 years. In each case, the judicial mantra was the same. “That the proposals failed to adequately assess the greenhouse gas emissions tied to burning fossil fuels.” And we know that with a government energy minister so opposed to fossil fuel extraction, that none of these projects are ever likely to happen. But haven’t these eminent legal brains slightly missed the point?
Yes – we know that burning fossil fuels causes climate change. Which is why we need to put in place viable alternatives .But neither the Rosebank nor the Whitehaven projects were about burning fossil fuels. They were about extracting fossil fuels so that we don’t have to import them from abroad. Either way. fossil fuels will still be burnt, because at the moment we have nothing else. And of course those projects would have also created thousands of well-paid jobs. So what is the point they are making? And it is entirely appropriate for me to refer to these eco-protesters as hobbyists, as none of them would have suffered direct personal detriment as a result of either of these projects. It is all about the big abstract ‘we’. And what message does it send to the outside world? A Britain which is so up itself that it is prepared to cut off its nose to spite its commercial face. Who would want to invest in us? The next big battle is going to be about the proposed third runway at Heathrow Airport. Even if it goes ahead, I’m not sure that I will still be around when it is completed. But that’s no reason not to support it.
I really blame the last conservative government for this farce. They had 14 years to drive these projects through. But instead they preferred to spend their time posturing about Brexit and their precious Rwanda scheme, as everything else around them fell apart. And they were a government which was in hock to the NIMBY lobby, which is why the cost of HS2 ballooned almost to the point of cancellation.
When it comes to the third Heathrow runway, I’m with Rachel Reeves. I know she’s had a bad press, but I’m convinced that she’s trying to do her best to grow the British economy. Again, so different from the last lot, the ‘party of business’. But even now, opposition to the third runway is cranking into gear, not least from London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has promised court proceedings to try to stall the project.
Spending my money to fight a court case against his own parliamentary party? What is that all about? And he hasn’t even consulted me. A case of public money fighting public money. How wasteful. But that is Britain today.
Earlier this week I took delivery of a letter-scale. It joins my laser printer as well as my scanner; computer monitor; headphones; wired mouse and keyboard. I bought it because I just can’t be bothered to stand in line at our local sub post office behind a long queue of people spilling out of the door and only one person serving. It’s never used to be like that. There were always at least two people behind the counter and the queue moved quickly. Not anymore. And I also read in the news of plans by the post office to close its remaining crown post offices in city centres
I had a letter to post. It was not valuable. It did not require a signature. But it was bulky because it contained a book. So I went to a couple of local sub post offices because I wanted to hand it over the counter and pay the correct postage. In the end, I gave up. So it sat on the shelf for a week whilst I decided what to do with it. Anyway, the scale arrived and I was able to calculate the postage myself and put on the required number of stamps and drop it into the nearest pillar box. Job done.
I had thought about trying the post office’s advertised door-collection service. But I didn’t fancy waiting indoors until the postman arrived. Though maybe I’ll try using it if I have a recorded delivery letter to post.
The long and short of it is that I won’t be going to my local post office anytime soon. In fact, if things carry on as they are, I’m sure that the next official announcement will be the closure of the remaining local sub post offices.
Like everything else in the UK, it’s all gone down the pan. And after the scapegoating Horizon computer scandal, who would want to be a sub postmaster?
BRUCE AND HOLLY 