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Posts Tagged ‘Within the UK’

There was an Editorial in the Independent today, the aim of which was to “warn” the Conservatives in particular against cuts that cost Government jobs in economically depressed areas. This is all rather odd and a bit mixed up considering the “Indy” is no supporter of the Tories at any time !

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-two-nations-once-more-2066181.html

However this is rather an odd article in another way because it fails to tackle the problems head on and instead ‘paddles’ in the shallows rather than applying any serious thinking to examining the core issues that lie behind this.

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I just loved this Telegraph story: “Twice as many Tescos open 24/7 as Police Stations”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7957168/Twice-as-many-Tescos-open-247-as-police-stations.html

After some 13 years in power, just what did these two Muppets achieve – sad detritus that both of them are ! But and never-the-less, after increasing the public sector payroll by some 800,000, it sort of indicates what the likely result is for Health Care and Education – increased costs plus reduced outcomes. Policing is the least of it with efficiency further depleted by endless form filling to produce statistics to justify that Labour was “doing the right thing”.

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Gilbert Adair wrote an article in yesterday’s Independent about him ‘falling out of love with Apple Mac’. I fell about laughing, it provoked a massive response which considering all the really important things in this world was as pathetic as it was funny but to me, not at all surprising, people do love their Totem Poles I guess.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/apple-a-love-affair-turned-sour-2053373.html

I have written before that the saddest thing about our consumer society is that in retail terms, the iPhone is the most ‘radical product’ to have been produced in the past 10 years – how totally depressing !

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A writer in the Independent today penned a piece entitled, “University is not right for everyone and that sentiment touches upon what I have felt for quite a few years now. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/philip-hensher/philip-hensher-university-isnrsquot-right-for-everyone-2053386.html

It is a simple fact of life that when only a few people take part in any particular activity, it tends to be ‘Fun’. Driving a car used to be fun before everyone had a car and were competing for the same bit of road space. Likewise, not only are our roads overcrowded but in these small islands subject to heavy commercial air traffic, so too are the skies. If you fancy flying privately, it is only tolerable whilst there are few other people wanting to do the same, faced with congestion and higher demand, rationing of any activity by “price or licence” is inevitable.

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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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The current ‘big story’ is the leaking of some 90,000 US documents on the Wikileaks website concerning the Afghan War between 2004 and 2009 and revealing many, previously unreported incidents which amount to ‘collateral damage’ or, the killing of innocent civilians by ISAF Forces whilst conducting military operations. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10758578

For all the ‘noises’ made by all concerned, I do not think that this material will make one iota of difference because there is absolutely no ‘amazing revelations’ of say a “My Lai Massacre ”. Though many no doubt will seek, incorrectly to say the killing of people at a wedding party by bombs or missiles is the same which clearly it is not. Poor or bad intelligence does not equate to an Officer losing control of his men and they, then going on a deliberate killing rampage of the people in front of them.

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Andrew Marr writing on the BBC web site made some very good points concerning “new media” and whilst I would agree that “News Content” should be paid for, the real problem is that the current Media Barons haven’t sorted out the answer to the basic question which is, HOW ?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10745720

To my mind the reason for this is that no one is sufficiently daring enough to really “think outside of the box”. The focus seems not to have switched off from the past business model of a cover price + advertising revenue for the physical delivery of a paper product. The fixation on pay walls for access assumes that all you do is get the customer to switch from paying for a paper copy to paying for computer/mobile access and that is wrong.

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I suspect that the “Media Honeymoon” over the Coalition Government will soon come to an end as the reporting over these past few days seems to signal. Though not, I might add because serious questions are being raised by Government policies, it is not the way the British Media works.

The problem for media people is that they are reactive to events not proactive. “No news”, or even worse, “Good news” is bad for business, there is just no ‘story’ to chase so in the end these “media children” will… Well we all know what the Devil does in making work for idle hands… so, the media will get restless and like children on a journey, keep asking“Are we there yet ?”

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Is it me or are ‘commentators’ totally weird ? Since it was announced that British Forces would hand over Sangin to US Marines, there have been so many ‘Defeat’ articles as to be unbelievable. One in the Independent was by some ‘Nut Job’ who has written a book on Iraq:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/richard-north-another-halfhearted-war-another-defeat-2023711.html

To me, the most worrying thing about our deployment in Afghanistan is how we got to this point. Nine years ago, SAS and SBS units helping the “Northern Alliance” was about right but John Reid as Defence Secretary casually starting this deployment with a public view expressed in The Commons, that they (troops), “Will probably come home without a shot being fired…” is indicative of where we are today and how we got there, we got here via complacency.

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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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