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Archive for the ‘Community’ Category

We all know that the England Team had a very poor World Cup Tournament in South Africa and last night they played their first game since then, a friendly against Hungary at Wembley. In the end England won 2-1, all goals coming in the second half.

I watched the first half but not the second which was quite brave really because if you support England, either you don’t watch it on TV live or, you watch it from behind the sofa. However, after South Africa, I watched with mild interest as I no longer felt that involved plus, at 9 o’clock in the evening, I had something more interesting to watch on another channel. However, from this match, the run up to it and the aftermath, there were a number of interesting things which I thought are worth a comment.

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I saw on the BBC web site in their “Magazine Section”, an article that posed the question as to whether London ‘sucks’ the life out of Britain. The link is as follows: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/10508673.stm

In most ways, I suspect that the ‘proposition’ is an ‘Aunt Sally’ and the author is playing a “Devils Advocate” role which I was quite prepared to participate in as follows:

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There was a Court case going on that involved Prince Charles intervening in a proposed re-development of the Chelsea Barracks site so that the people financing it, the Qatrai Royal Family who are personal friends of ‘Chuckie’, pulled the plug on it. The Developers then decided to sue the Qataris for “Breach of Contract with the aim of getting the £80 million they would have made as ‘damages’.

They won’t suceed in this as planning consent hadn’t even been applied for so therefore their “loss” is minimal. I’m on Charlie Boy’s side but a rather pompous Editorial in the Independent wasn’t… http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-a-question-of-influence-not-aesthetics-2011034.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/an-unwelcome-intervention-what-judge-said-about-charles-2010989.html

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I have remarked before that to be a Catholic in the UK is to know for certain that there are a surprising number of people in this Country with an underlying and incipient hostility to the Catholic Church under any and all circumstances.

It breaks out quite regularly over abortion, adoption agencies and most recently, over Priestly sexual abuse of children in their care. If somehow the current Pope can be blamed in anyway, so much the better for these sad people.

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A 70 year old idiot called Ray Gosling went on a regional chat show and claimed that he had killed a former lover suffering from Aids by smothering him with a pillow. The Independent wrote an Editorial questioning all this: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-a-misguided-intervention-1902769.html

Gosling’s claim (if true), was to say the least, totally absurd and if he is campaigning for a “Right to Die”, totally counter productive to the “cause”. This man is no martyr, just another vain attention seeking old gay fart who can’t get a shag and because being GAY is all now ‘de rigeur in the Media’ let his gob runaway with him without regard to the potential audience. It is highly likely that because of idiots like him, the ‘acceptance’ of Gay People generally by the public at large will be put back somewhat rather than’advanced’, silly old Queer !

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I should be neither unkind nor unfair but I was not that impressed with an article in the Independent today written by a lady called Yvonne Roberts and entitled; “The age of the aged has at Long Last Arrived.” The link as follows: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/yvonne-roberts-the-age-of-the-aged-has-at-long-last-arrived-1855413.html

I thought the article rather lightweight simply because in a style typical of people like her, there is far too much “either/or” rather than  “and”, life is not simple, it is complex and “individual people” based but, read and judge for yourself. To say that the old are wise and the young foolish maybe correct in some cases, the point is, it is not true in all cases and likely, not in most either.

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Apparently the other day, a Labour Housing Minister addressing the Fabian Society said that the era in which all Britons can aspire to own their own home may be coming to an end. He suggested that Britain may be moving towards a European model, with renting on a roughly equal footing with buying.

He then said that home ownership had fallen from 71 per cent of households in 2003 to 68 per cent today, noting that this trend began in 2005, well before the recession. “I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing,” he said, what a prat ! I notice he neglected to mention the uncontrolled immigration during that same period.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/its-time-to-give-up-the-dream-of-home-ownership-says-minister-1838189.html

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Today Dominic Lawson wrote an interesting and amusing article in the Independent called “Europe will always be a foreign land for the British”. It was interesting in that he was ‘observing’ a situation rather than promoting such a view but it is worth looking at for the comments that came in the majority of which were rather rancid and well wide of the topic.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-europe-will-always-be-a-foreign-land-for-the-british-1826457.html

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Given the current state of the British economy, social problems and unemployment, it can be of no surprise to see politicians considering “voluntary work” as being a suitable path to explore. However and much to my surprise, the Conservative Party has gone one further and via sponsorship, is funding a pilot scheme aimed at 16 year olds on a purely “volunteer basis”.

The details can be found in the following article by John Rentoul, hardly a Tory supporter at the best of times but he writes up a truly interesting article on the subject.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/john-rentoul/john-rentoul-like-it-or-not-there-it-is-a-tory-policy-1825377.html

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On Monday as ever from Mr Rees-Mogg, an excellent article about Banker’s Bonuses and other stuff in the Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/william_rees_mogg/article6824030.ece

As we have come to expect, it was a measured article with good perspective and common sense. I too remember to 1970s and all that palaver, wage and price controls, that stuff never work and there is little point in trying it again today but that takes us to something else too.

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