Lab Lib Con

Bad news for Labour supporters but good news for the mechanic who gets paid to modify the suspension on Ken Clarke's Government car as it looks as though David Cameron and the Conservatives are going to get their grubby little hands on the keys to number 10.
The whole election thing was all a bit of an anti-climax really as nobody gained enough votes to rule outright and it all comes down to backroom deals to see who can get the 326 seats needed to make a Government.
The Liberal Democrats support tanked to 4 seats less although they actually got more votes than last time and the Labour Party shed almost 100 seats to finish a long way behind the posh boy's party.
As much as i wouldn't like to see a Conservative party back in power to continue the great sell off that they began last time, a deal that would see the much more central Lib Dem's sharing power would actually suit me.
The Iraq war lost any chance of me voting Labour until the instigators such as Brown and Straw are well away from the scene of their crime and the Libs would temper any manic right wing intentions the Conservatives held.
I'm quite content with that and it would be highly unfair if the Labour and Liberal parties, who came 2nd and 3rd, stitched it up between them when the voters obviously didn't think either was good enough to win the thing.
A weakened Conservative Party in power with Vince Cable, an actual economist in charge of the economy, fancy that, and Ken Clarke the Foreign Secretary i can swallow.
Hopefully, five years on, Labour will have purged itself of the morons who have been running it and we can have our Labour Party back again.

Iran v USA

If any country in the World was going to boast of it's record when it comes to wars and conflicts, unless it was Switzerland, they would be asking for a swift whack around the head with a history book.
Recent history is not Hillary Clinton's strong point obviously as she and the Iranian President clashed at the United Nations over Iran's nuclear facilities.
Hillary Clinton said Iran's nuclear ambitions are putting the world at risk and Ahmadinejad retaliated by saying the government of the United States had no evidence his country was seeking nuclear weapons and the USA had not only used nuclear weapons, but also continues to threaten to use such weapons against other countries.
Mrs Clinton hit back stating "Iran will do whatever it can to divert attention away from its own record and to attempt to evade accountability," she said.
Now i don't know how far into history Clinton was going but since the Iran Iraq war which we were continually told Saddam began, America has had Gulf War 2 (illegal), Afghanistan (very iffy), Gulf War 1 (dodgy) and Kosovo (misguided).
Hillary would do well to climb down off that high horse of morality because only Israel could challenge that record and nobody is rushing to defend that place as a hot bed of military restraint.
Ahmadinejad should just say 'I believe the US are trying to create an excuse to invade my country and here is the evidence supporting my case.'
Clinton should just say 'I believe Iran is building a nuclear bomb and here is the evidence supporting my case' and let's see who the international crowd believe.

Ark lark

You do have to have a degree of sympathy for the bible cradling religious folk today. Back in history it would have been much easier to believe in a God who created the universe and everything in it and is sat down somewhere weeding out the sinners and helping American athletes win at the Olympics.
As we progressed, the Copernicus and Darwin crowd gouged huge chunks out of the religious argument so now all the modern day believers have is a vain attempt to reinterpret the Bible and say actually, we never actually meant there was a Garden of Eden or men begetting children aged 864, it was all an analogy.
Weak argument i agree but occasionally they start jangling their rosary beads all excitedly because finally, they may have some evidence that it isn't all a load of nonsense.
This has happened once again this week with the announcement by a group of Christians that they were 99.9 percent sure they had found Noah's Ark.
In the story, God observed, in a kind and caring way obviously, that the earth was corrupted with violence and decided to destroy all life upon it. He chose the 600 year old Noah to build an ark and gather up the required animals before he unleashed death and destruction on the planet. Lovingly because God is love remember.
God decreed that 'the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
A cubit is the distance between an adults elbow and tip of the finger, generally 18-inches. This means that the ark would have been 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. Must have been pretty cramped for two of every unclean animal and 7 of every clean sort and all the food needed for 40 days and nights.
It turns out that like so many Ark discoveries before it, this particular find was a hoax but keep the faith religious types because one day, somebody may find that first scrap of evidence that backs up your argument.

Another BP accident

Apart from the big banks and financial institutions, the oil industry is probably the next most disliked industry. Apart from the environmental damage it causes getting the stuff out the ground and earning billions in profits while doing it and it funds the anti-environmental lobby to muddy the waters while they continue polluting the waters.
The news shows pictures of the huge oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico that has been leaking from the oil rig that exploded last week and is beginning to reach the shores of the southern American states with devastating consequences. The bad news is that last year it took 10 weeks to plug a leak in the same circumstances when an oil rig exploded off the coast of Australia. That spewed 400 barrels a day into the Timor Sea, the US Coast Guard has said that as many as 1,000 barrels of oil a day are being pumped into the Gulf of Mexico.
BP does seem to have a worrying history of 'accidents'. A BP refinery explosion in Texas, 2005, killed 15 and injuring dozens of others. BP was fined a record $87 million in 2009 for failing to correct the safety hazards that had caused the explosion.
In 2006 a BP leak blamed on 'negligence' led to one of the largest oil spill in Alaskan history and a $20m fine although that amount pales into insignificance compared to the $303 million fine it received for price manipulation.
I saw Obama today saying that the bill for the clean-up is going to land on BP's doormat and i hope it is closely followed by a massive fine and compensation for the families of the 11 workers killed. If it is also found that it was an accident through negligence or lack of safety procedures, i'd like to see BP shut down permanently.
Accidents happens but it seems that accidents happen a bit more to some firms than others.

UK Celebrity Voters

The UK election has a week left to run and still large swathes of the country are undecided as to cast their vote for the posh one, the one nobody knew a week ago or the one that was Tony Blair's mate so as usual it comes down to the public asking, ' Who is that woman off of Countdown voting for?'
As it is so tight, the celebrity World is stepping in to try and sway us because heaven knows i lay awake at night wondering what Frank Bruno makes of the plans to increase British manufacturing output.
In the red corner, backing Gordon Brown and the Labour party are JK Rowling, David Tennant, Eddie Izzard, Patrick Stewart and Chris Evans.
Backing the Conservatives are Cilla Black, Chris Rea, Frank Bruno, Joan Collins, Nick Faldo, Michael Caine and Carol Vorderman.
Pulling for the Liberal Democrats are Colin Firth, Jane Goldman, Chris Martin, Kate Winslett, Daniel Radcliffe and John Cleese.
While none of them look particular attractive, if an invite to a dinner party with celebrity guests dropped through my door from all the parties, i would choose to go to the Liberal Democrat one if they promised Chris Martin wouldn't be providing the entertainment.
The Tory line up looks like an invite from hell and the odds of being sat within hearing distance of Chris Evans spoils the chance to meet Eddie Izzard or David Tennant at the Labour Party shindig.
All in all a rather poor sprinkling of celebrity dust over proceedings although with a week to go their is still the chance of the famous 'if Labour/Conservative/Lib Dem win i'm leaving the country' quotes to flow forth from a washed up actor or singer.
Now that sort of celebrity endorsement will sway our votes because i guarantee if Victoria Beckham said it, the party she said would force her out would win by a landslide.

Who I like

I know it is not right to make sweeping generalisations about countries and its populations but we all have our opinions coloured by our experiences while on holiday there or what we read or see on the television or for the most trivial of reasons and everything gets cranked up a couple of notches on the internet anyway so putting aside footballing reasons and just concentrating on the country, here is the countries competing in the World Cup this summer that i would like to see win it, those i hope they get knocked out straight away and those that i just don't particular care about one way or the other.

Being English, i of course want to see England take it but if they get knocked out i would like to see either France, Argentina, USA, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, N Zealand, Spain or Switzerland win it because for various reasons, these are countries i like.

What would ruin my summer would be if anyone from S Africa, Greece, Australia, Italy, Brazil or Portugal won it because these are countries that i dislike.

The old Spitting Image song about not finding a nice South African is true, i have yet to meet one and i had a torrid two weeks holiday in Greece a few years back so they can bugger off as well. It always gives me a warm feeling inside to see the loudmouth Aussies getting beaten at anything and almost every Italian i have ever met has been arrogant, smarmy and instantly punchable. Brazil always win it and i hate Ronaldo with a passion so want to see him, and therefore Portugal, out quickly .

All the rest i don't like or dislike for any reason and would greet any World Cup victory with a nonchalant shrug and the knowledge that nobody from my dislike list won it.

BBC poll: Who we like

The BBC World Service run an annual poll taken from 28 countries to decide which nation is viewed most favourably.
America, for the first time, is viewed as more positive than negative although my suspicions are that has more to do with George W Bush leaving office than anything Obama has done on the global stage which doesn't seem that much to me.
The most favourably viewed country was Germany followed by Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada and France.
The nation viewed least favourably is Iran, then Pakistan, North Korea and then Israel.
I can see the attraction of Germany and Japan, both countries that seem to have learnt from their history, but as the UK has followed Bush's America around like a lovesick puppy for the best part of a decade, i can't see why we are sailing so high in the poll.
Likewise, i wouldn't fancy visiting any of those countries at the bottom of the pile. Iran and Pakistan are just about ready to explode while North Korea is a basket case of a country and Israel are the worlds pariahs for a very good reason.
The superpowers, America, Russia and China are all sat around the middle with a fairly neutral view but superpowers are always going to divide opinion anyway.

Making space on a crowded island

Immigration seems to be a topic we avoid for fear of being branded racist. I take the view that all are welcome here as long as they benefit the country.
This is different to asylum seekers who come here for their own safety. Admittedly it was us who were making the places dangerous as in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq so we had a moral duty to invite them here, especially if we are raining bombs on their neighbourhood from thousands of feet up.
Sorry just didn't seem to cut it somehow.
The problem we have is that Britain is a cramped little island and so have little room to expand and so as the population grows, the infrastructure doesn't keep up.
It is obvious that more people means we require more schools, hospitals, prisons and houses. But where to build them? Slowly we are creeping into land previously designated as green belt and ring fenced as places not to be built on. They are now redefining large swathes of it brown belt and calling in the builders.
One of the housing solutions is to renovate buildings into homes, with any unused office block or pub rubbed down, sold off and turned into flats.
There are some certain buildings that we never see converted although they hardly get any use at all.
Controversially, these places are churches and probably have some sort of legal protection dating back to Oliver Cromwell that renders them safe but i say we are surrounded by the damned things, let's rip some down and build on the plot.
Apart from on Sunday mornings when three men and a dog wander by, these places are largely empty and each city has many of these buildings of various size within a shake of a collection tin of each other.
Not only must they cost the local authorities a fortune to run and maintain, they are only used by a tiny percentage of the population who would only suffer the indignation of an extra 10 minute walk to the next nearest church.
They are a relic of a by-gone age, take up more than their fair share of land and mostly stand empty so tear up that ancient law (if there is such a thing) and let's have less Bishops and more builders.

Why Keep Trident?

I have strong feelings that sometimes the Governments of our countries don't give us a say on some policies because they know they wouldn't like the answer.
I would be very confident in predicting that if there was a referendum on the return of the death penalty, they would be erecting gallows in prison yards by the weekend.
Same with handing the bankers billions. A referendum would have said a firm no and many high street banks would now be occupied by Poundland shops.
That's why i think Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has hit a very plump nail square on the head with his plan, if elected, to rid ourselves of nuclear weapons.
Short of revenge if we attacked by a nuclear armed country, it is hard to think of a reason why we keep on pumping billions into keeping our nuclear arsenal and to be honest, the odds of us being attacked by one of the other 6 nuclear powers is remote in the extreme.
While it is true that we don't know what the future brings, it is also true that while we are making people redundant and closing public services, it seems folly to pay out billions for something just because of some event that is unlikely to happen at some unspecified time in the future.
By scrapping Trident, we free up £100 billion that would make things very much more comfortable now and more than half the £180 billion debt our country is currently struggling under.
The real problem seems to be that we would lose our seat at the top table with the big boys because we have very little else to offer apart from being in the nuclear club.
I don't know how much a comfort it is that we have nuclear missiles when you are clearing out your desk but i wouldn't have thought it crosses many peoples mind and it seems almost criminal to keep ploughing money into Trident when the country is desperate for funds.
And that's why we won't get a choice of whether to keep or scrap it.

Why not under the sea?

We have long been able to take any form of transport and move holiday makers around the planet.
In the air with planes and airships and over land on trains and motorised vehicles and even over sea with ships, hovercrafts and boats.
One area that we don't seem eager to exploit is under the sea although we have long had the technology.
Submarines skim along under the water and are not affected by erupting volcanoes, high winds or snow yet apart from military purposes, we have not yet had anyone that has taken the submarine idea and turned it into a method to offer travellers to get from one point to another.
Possibly it is too expensive or there are other unseen reasons i have not considered why this has not been thought of but i see a great opportunity for someone to introduce a new form of transport that moves along beneath the waves.
If they do, remember who mentioned it first and i expect a mention in the history books.