St Patrick's Day Advice

Today is Saint Patrick's day and legend has it that he banished all the snakes from Ireland. Not sure what else he did but the Irish have chosen a glorified pest controller as their patron saint and we should respect it.
We should also respect their choice to celebrate the day wearing a big foam top hat shaped as a pint of Guinness, holding a pint of Guinness in each giant Guinness-sponsored foam mitt and spilling both pints of Guinness down the front of their Guinness St Patrick's Day T-shirt.
Saint Patrick's day seems to be celebrated with much more vigor in America than over here where we show a few Father Ted's and avoid mentioning the potato famine or Bloody Sunday.
With American television being full of celebrating Irishmen and the temptation of many Americans to purchase an Irishman , as the countries closest neighbour, we are best placed to pass on some valuable information on the proper use and care of your Irishman

It is highly recommended that you store your Irishman in a cool, moist space, and DO NOT EXPOSE TO SUNLIGHT. If exposed to sunlight, very bright red discoloration is normal.

If your Irishman experiences trembling, loss of appetite and general unpleasantness, administer liberal amounts of Guinness, Jameson's or Beamish.

You should not use your Irishman if you are in possession of a fertile womb. Improper use may cause severe multiple pregnancies.

Consult your doctor before using an Irishman. Prolonged exposure to an Irishman may cause severe ear-ache about how that Thierry Henry handball cheated them out of the World Cup.

Never combine an Irishman with an Englishman, may cause broken teeth.

We hope that your Irishman brings you many years of enjoyment but if you have any concerns, consult a barman.

What Obama Should Learn From Ike

With Israel once again doing it's level best to snuff out any chance of peace talks with the Palestinians before they even begin, President Obama should be looking back to another American President on how to deal with an Israeli Government literally getting away with murder.
Dwight D. Eisenhower faced a similar predicament half-century ago when Israel colluded with Britain and France to launch an attack on Egypt. Israeli forces quickly seized the Gaza Strip while the British and the French took over the Suez Canal.
Rather than go through the motions of the President jumping through hoops to justify Israel's action as we have become accustomed to from American Presidents, Eisenhower condemned the attack. At the United Nations, the U.S. joined the Soviets in taking the matter to the General Assembly and approving resolution after resolution calling for a ceasefire and withdrawal of the French, British and Israeli aggressors.
The British and French immediately began pulling out their troops but Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion adamantly refused to give up the Gaza Strip despite a sixth UN resolution calling for withdrawal.
Eisenhower told Ben Gurion he demanded 'prompt and unconditional withdrawal' from Gaza. Ben Gurion again refused.
At that point, instead of an Obama-style cave-in, Ike decided to take the gloves off. He informed Ben Gurion that he would support a UN call for sanctions against Israel which would effectively stop U.S. government aid to Israel. To prove he meant it, the president went on national television and told the American people that 'We are now faced with a fateful moment as the result of the failure of Israel to withdraw its forces behind the Armistice lines, as contemplated by the United Nations Resolutions on this subject. I would, I feel, be untrue to the standards of the high office to which you have chosen me, if I were to lend the influence of the United States to the proposition that a nation which invades another should be permitted to exact conditions for withdrawal'.
Ben Gurion's initial response was continued defiance, but with no indication that Eisenhower would back down, and the General Assembly about to vote for sanctions, he capitulated and withdrew Israeli troops from Gaza, although spitefully destroying all surface roads, railway tracks, and telephone lines in the area, as well as several villages on the way out.
Of course the Middle East today is very different but the lesson of 1956 remain relevant today that on the rare occasions when U.S. leaders have the guts to stand up to the bluster of Israel, to insist on respect for the United Nations and international law, to take their case to the American people and the world, and to back up their demands with the threat of economic sanctions, even the most conceited and warmongering Israeli government has no choice but to cave in.
If Obama would only learn that lesson, he might yet be able to achieve the lofty goals he set out to bring peace to the Middle East.

David Calvert Still Not Jon Venables

I received two texts today, both telling me Jon Venables new name and his latest crime.
Fortunately, i half remembered the name 'David Calvert' as the same one that was wrongly 'outed' as Jon Venables five years ago.
It seems that once again his name is being excitedly texted to mobiles and posted all over the Internet again which must fill the real Mr David Calvert with dread.
Being a scouser of the same age as Venables, some people took it upon themselves back then to threaten and abuse him and his family and vandalise their home in Fleetwood until he went to the newspapers armed with his photo album and they printed pictures of him aged 10 and through his teens which convinced even the most hardest of thinking of his growing lynch mob that he was not who they thought he was.
Now it seems that the panic button the police installed in his family home may need to be activated again because he name is being wrongly 'outed' again.
If you receive a text, email, tweet or read on a blog post that David Calvert is Jon Venables, he wasn't five years ago and still isn't now.

Releasing The Ripper

Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, killed 13 women and attacked five others after claiming to have heard voices ordering him to kill prostitutes. In 1981 he was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison and was placed in Broadmoor Hospital, a prison for the criminally insane, after a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
This week his lawyers won a ruling from a high court judge that a hearing should be held to set the length of time he should serve before being eligible for parole armed with the ringing endorsement from the hospital doctors that Sutcliffe is fit to be freed from Broadmoor and 'is effectively cured as long as he never stops taking his medication.'
The decision leads us to an uncomfortable appraisal of just what we expect from our prison system.
When a judge sentences a members of society who break the laws of the land to be jailed, is it as punishment, in order to be rehabilitated or just as a place to send them to remove them from Society for a length of time?
Is the 15 to 30 years of a life sentence the amount of time a judge considers long enough for a criminal to 'repay his debt to society' or is the thinking that this is the amount of time that a certain prisoner would take until he is suitably ready to rejoin Society and not be a liability?
If you see prison as a punishment or a rehabilitation centre, then at some point we are going to face the same decisions as we do now with Peter Sutcliffe who has almost served the minimum period and who doctors say is 'cured' of the illness that made him a killer.
If we see prisons as a place to hold the unsavoury members of society until they are deemed fit to rejoin the rest of us, then we still face the same problems when the time imposed is up.
There are advocates of restoring the death penalty and i would strongly suggest that if there were a referendum on the subject in Britain, hanging would be quickly restored to the list of possible punishments which explains why we would never be given the opportunity to vote on it.
As two thirds of prisoners re-offend once released, we are blatantly not rehabilitating prisoners correctly or enough. The punishment is obviously not severe enough to act as a deterrent and it shows we can only remove them for a short time but at some point we have to cross our fingers and put them back into the mix again.
I don't know a solution but i am very uncomfortable with the idea of releasing anytime soon a man who is only a missed dose of medication away from returning to his old murderous ways.

Better The Devil You Know

Mark Twain said that 'The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated' when a newspaper mixed him up with a dying relative and the Labour Party could do worse than to adopt this as there new slogan because the red flag may not be flying, but it's certainly fluttering gently in the breeze.
A few short months ago it was the Conservative Party 15% ahead in all the polls, the Murdoch Press had abandoned Labour and we were preparing for a Tory Government and the burial of the Labour Party.
Today, a YouGov survey for The Sunday Times gives the Conservatives a 2% lead so where did it all go wrong for David Cameron that he is seemingly finding it so difficult to bury such an unpopular Government?
One of the reasons was touched upon in December with Gordon Brown's comment that the Conservatives idea for Inheritance Tax was ‘dreamed up on the playing fields of Eton'.
The Conservatives predictably slated Brown for bringing class into it but it seems that evoking the privileged background of senior Tories, when they are attempting to form a connection to the 99.99% of the country who were not schooled in Oxbridge, struck a chord with the electorate.
Cameron argued that 'What people are interested in is not where you come from but where you're going to' and that shows a strong lack of knowledge of the people he is asking to vote him into power because where you come from is very important in class divided Britain.
The photograph of Cameron in the top hat and tails of the Bullingdon Club where membership is by invitation only and reserved only for the wealthiest Oxford students was the first of the drip drip of revelations that Cameron was 'a toff'.
His party members were embroiled in the expenses scandal with claims for 'moat cleaning' and 'tennis court maintenance' and Conservatives MP, Anthony Steen, ranting that he was disliked because of jealousy over his 'very, very large house. Some people say it looks like Balmoral'.
It is hard to connect with voters who don't have moats, tennis courts or homes like Balmarol and that is why David Cameron and his Party are sweating over how they have been pegged back by a party that has a track record that includes Afghanistan, Iraq, the expenses scandal, 10% tax rate debacle, billion pound payouts to the financial markets, the non-referendum on the EU Lisbon Treaty, the worst recession since the 1930s and a leader outed as a bully.
It seems that possibly the British electorate are taking the view of better the inept devil you know than the posh one that you don't.

Pompey In Administration

Along with Charles Dickens, Peter Sellers and brothers Christopher and Peter Hitchens, i hail from Portsmouth and
although i haven't been to Fratton Park for many years, i do have a soft spot for my hometown team.
After years in the lower leagues, we suddenly burst forth, won the FA Cup and had a team full of International stars. And then the wheels fell off and today Pompey became the first team in the World's richest top football tier to go into administration with debts in the region of £70m.
Docked nine points and with relegation almost guaranteed, angry fans are obviously looking for someone to blame and a few people have been put forward as the reason why Pompey are in such a mess.
Hard to point the finger of blame at the Inland Revenue who are owed £18m in taxes and were the main people pushing for Portsmouth's comeuppance. We all have to pay taxes and i'm happy to see that they go after the big fish with as much vigour as they do with everyone else.
Some have blamed the players for pocketing such exorbitant wages but who would turn down such crazy wages if they were being offered?
Others are blaming the FA for not checking out the finances of the two Arabs who took over the club closely enough but then these are the same fans bawling at the FA in the summer for not giving them the necessary clearance quick enough when they thought they were loaded and wanted to sign more players.
For me the blame lays at the feet of two men, former manager Harry Redknapp and former owner Sacha Gaydamak.
It was Redknapp who signed the players on such wages the club could not sustain and Gayadamak who continually gave him the nod until the outgoings became too painful for his pockets and he withdrew his support leaving the club with a sky-high wage bill that sent it spiralling downwards.
Both knew they had created a monster between them and Redknapp, knowing what was coming, quickly distanced himself from the carnage by jumping ship to White Hart Lane.
True, he did win Pompey it's first trophy since the 1940s and under him Pompey fans lived the dream for a couple of seasons but as usual, it wasn't until later that it was discovered that they did it by selling Portsmouth's long term future.
If you Pompey fans want anyone to blame, you will find him sat in the dug-out at Tottenham's ground.

Winter Olympics Highlight

From the bits i have seen, the Winter Olympics in Vancouver have been quite disappointing for us Brits.
We won a gold medal in the ladies Skeleton but our medal bag is as empty as Ashley Cole's underpants if the rumours of Mr Cole's equipment are to be believed.
Being a virtually snow-less island, Britain was always going to be nearer the bottom of the Medal Table than the top and it looks as though Australia are going to finish above us which is galling.
As we suck at these snow events, we have looked for other ways to entertain ourselves while the countries with the unfair advantage of having mountain ranges carve up the medals among themselves.
One good old fashioned British past-time is making fun of Johnny Foreigners names and once again it is our Germanic cousins who have cheered us Brits up after watching our two man toboggan slide down the track on it's side.
Footballer Stefan Kuntz has a place in British folklore just by the virtue of his name being daringly close to the name we call Manchester United supporters but even he has been surpassed by the German Ski jumper with the gloriously naughty name, Andreas Wank.
Yes it is childish and immature and we should know better but if Germans are going to give themselves surnames like A. Wank, it would be rude not to cackle like drains when the commentator says things like 'The next German up is A Wank'.
Great stuff.

The Daily Mail Upsetting The Canadians

My Canadian colleague is one of the nicest, unflappable people you could wish to meet but something has him riled and it's strange seeing a riled Canadian. It's a bit like seeing a laughing German or a sober Australian, very rare indeed.
It seems that the British newspaper, The Daily Mail, has been having a pop at the Canucks for being bad Olympic hosts, cheating and criticising its role in the death of the 21-year-old Georgian luger.
The maple syrup was almost spat in anger as the Canadians stopped clubbing baby seals for a while to register their displeasure at the British media, and us Brits in general, at the Olympic Fanhouse website. Comments included:

'Why don't they pay more attention to the elected officials who are being charged criminally instead of worrying about the Canadian Olympics'

'This story coming from a country that tried to conquer the whole world !!!!'

'I must be bored. Why do we care what they think? I don't hate Brit's. I just feel better when they're not around'.

'The UK press better have a stiff upper lip in 2 years, I hope their games go off without a hitch'

'I think its just a case of the brits being jealous that we dumped the comonweath and gave up on the queen and that upsets them'

All eyes are on Canada now because of the Olympics and this is bothering the Brits. They are simply cold hearted people who are JEALOUS. At least, we smile and greet people, not like them who are anti-social morons'

'Sour grapes from the underacheiving motherland!'

'you bloody brits are so full of sh--. keep your damn negative comments to yourself'

'I didn't see any Brit lugers...what wrong no guts as usual'

Why are we surprised? The Brits, by nature are inward looking hooligans who have been deprived of all their colonies. Their national soccer team sucks, can't play hockey, unemployment is sky rocketting, dishonest ministers are claiming expenses on houses they have no mortgaged on, London is getting filtier with each passing year, need I say more??'

'And in this particular instance, since when has England been such an authority or power house when it comes to winter sports? Oh wait...it's that stupid stick-up-the-butt accent that I suppose gives them the right to look down their nose at everyone else and spout criticism, isn't it?'

'Bloody Brits criticize everyone and think they are better than everyone'

'why dont you strap on skates to some of these big bad football and rugby pussies and see how they make out with our boys!'

'Who needs the Idiot Brits, a once mighty nation reduced to nothing. I say abolish the Gov General and any ties to the Queen, and Full speed ahead Canada'

'It's obvious I'm not the only Canadian who's had the privilege of experiencing the holier-than-thou English attitude'

'So-called "Great" Britain went down the tubes years ago and is now bordering on third-world status with crime, government corruption, completely idiotic local "councils", "justice" system, etc, etc'.

Well done to the Daily Mail, not only have you managed to tick off one of the few countries left who tolerated us but now i have to share an office with a grumpy Canadian stomping around at work in a brightly coloured shirt like some sort of miserable faced pelican crossing making fun of my stick-up-the-butt accent.

Defending The Falklands

When you claim a land 8000 miles away from your capital, to my mind your claim is on shaky ground not that it ever stopped the British empire in it's pomp. India? Kenya? New Zealand? All part of Britain old boy.
Now it seems that the British and the Argentinians are arguing over the Falkland Islands again with the tabloids getting so excited by the prospect of a re-run of the 1982 Falklands conflict between us, that they have taken to comparing the military capabilities of us both and drafting in military experts to dissect how they think any conflict will pan out. God Save the Queen and a resounding spanking for the Argies of course.
As long as i can remember, the Falklands has been a source of irritation between Britain and the Argentinians with the Buenos Aires Government regularly bringing up the subject in the United Nations to negotiate the sovereignty issue which Britain stonewall despite UN Resolutions that compel Downing Street to chat things over.
So why is Britain so keen to keep a tiny island of the coast of South America? Give yourself half a point if you said the estimated 60bn barrels of oil in the seas around the Islands.
Britain is due to start drilling and the Argentinian Government declared that it was taking control of all shipping between its coastline and the disputed islands, and duly detained a supply ship which was transporting pipes to the islands from an Argentinian port.
Not that the 60bn barrels is the main reason for Britain's wish to keep the Union Flag fying in the Falklands, the big prize is the 386,000 square miles of Antarctic seabed that we can claim because of our sovereign rights of a small part of that particular geographical shelf. Virgin Antarctic seabed just ripe for oil and gas exploration.
The Government will make a big play of the 170 plus years of British history on the Island and the 255 who died in the 1982 war but if this current disagreement escalates, it will be as much about doing the right thing for the Islanders as Iraq was about weapons of mass destruction.

More Cheetah Than Tiger

Tiger Woods has apologised for his indiscretions in preposterous scenes that couldn't have been more contrived for the cameras if it had featured him surrounded by sick children from the local hospital.
It pulled off the impressive trick of being both hilarious and toe-curlingly awful at the same time.
Hilarious because it was such an obviously desperate attempt by Woods public relations team to woo back the sponsors and get the Woods brand money making machine back in business and toe-curlingly awful because it ticked every box on the 'How do i get out of this mess' list.
With a delivery as wooden as the tree he drove into that night as his wife tried to wrap a 9 iron around his neck, he liberally sprinkled around apologises to all the right people (except the women he slept with i noticed), managed to sneak in a paragraph concerning his return to matters of religion, (to keep the bible holding clan happy) and managed to put the blame for sticking his penis into 14 women who were not his wife on an 'addiction'.
I imagine some people will buy into the Woods apology, especially the sponsors who will be hoping that this sort of confessional speech which seems to go down well in the States will wipe his slate clean and they can get back to paying him more for wearing a hat or a t-shirt than they pay the entire workforce in the countries that produce them.
The truth is that the only thing Woods is sorry about is that he got caught and it is almost a guarantee that if his wife had not found out about his affairs that night, he would still be at it now and he wouldn't be returning to Buddhism, seeking the forgiveness of his family or seeking help for his sex addiction, or cheating on your wife as it's called when someone non-famous does it.
I imagine Ashley Cole may be taking careful notes though while Cheryl is hopefully practising her golf club swing.