YesBut all at Sea

Sections of the British press have been highly critical of the 15 Royal Navy personnel. They have been accused of at worst cowardice and best weakness in signing statements admitting they were in Iran waters when they were arrested, and their subsequent toadying fawning attitude towards Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I think you are not entitled to criticise these men and woman, unless you have yourself been subjected to psychological stress and manipulation. I admit given a choice as they were "If we admitted we had strayed, we would be on a plane back to the UK soon. If we didn't we faced up to seven years in prison". I would say “where do I sign”.

What I do condemn them for is their subsequent behaviour and particularly the news conference. They made them selves look like snivelling cowards - a couple of nights in a cell and they would confess to anything. They should have made a statement that they were pleased to be home, thank those who had worked for their release - end of story.

Clearly the Royal Navy has come out badly from the whole affair. Brought into question is whether the HMS Cornwall is the right vessel to patrol the Gulf? Particularly as its deep draft prevents it from going into shallow waters. How were the Iranian boats able to approach the Navy boats undetected? Why was there no air cover provided by the Lynx helicopter? What is not in question is the ill preparedness of the crew - you would think they were going out for a pleasant row on a boating lake on a sunny afternoon. They were as well prepared as Freddie Flintoff was in his pedalo.

One final question who is Chief Petty Officer Gavin Cavendish?

Social Engineering

Yesterday the Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly published an action plan to work with Muslim communities to isolate, prevent and defeat violent extremism. A study by Durham University was published alongside the plan, which claims “the traditional leadership need a new approach to counter radicalisation and better connect with young people“.

The key points of the plan are:

• Strengthening leadership and governance in mosques.
• A framework of new standards for imams engaged by the state who will go into areas where individuals are susceptible to extremism such as prisons and universities.
• Helping communities build stronger civic and religious leadership.
• Rolling out good practice guidance nationally to encourage the teaching of citizenship in madrassahs and supplementary schools.
• £6 million of new allocations to around 70 local communities.

Obviously the Government is faced with a challenge of countering the radicalisation of young Muslims. But should this be done by the Government getting involved in social engineering? Is the involvement of the Government with an imam likely to increase or diminish his influence? The largest body the Muslim Council of Britain, has fallen out of favour, leading to claims that ministers are talking only to those prepared to agree with government.

Why are young Muslims susceptible to radical influence? Two factors:

• A sense of alienation with British society.
• British foreign policy, in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

These factors are equally likely to be felt by all sectors of society, but they aren’t likely to become suicide bombers. Actually there are other groups in British society which have caused more deaths than Islamic extremists.

Gun carrying Afro-Caribbean gangs
Drunk-drivers.

Why isn’t the Government paying equal attention to the Afro-Caribbean community? Is it because the deaths are mainly restricted to within the community? As for drunk-drivers, how many millions of pounds worth of “don’t drink and drive” campaigns have failed to prevent the slaughter on the roads?

The above argument is deliberately disjointed and lacking supporting evidence - just like the Governments latest plan.

Danger nothing to do!

Do you suffer from itchy fingers? Sitting by your computer, are you tempted to fiddle, delete a program or download a new program? Next thing you know you either have a blank screen or the computer is taken over by an alien entity - flashing warning DO NOT SWITCH OFF THE COMPUTER OR EVEN MOVE WHILE THIS PROGRAM IS DOWNLOADING. Panic what have I done? How can I turn the clock back, so nothing has happened? Been there got the psychological scars. Now have seared into my brain cells:

Start > All programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore.

But all the bad experience hasn’t stopped me from roaming the byways of cyber space, looking for free downloads. I suppose its “free” that grabs me. What ever tempted me to download a program which will translate my blog into Garza, a language that died in 1828? I have downloaded so many anti-spyware programs that my computer looks like the cupboard you keep your junk in - you open the door and the contents spews out onto the floor. The computer does nothing but run spy ware programs - Alert Spywatch has detected a spyware, no sorry ignore that warning it’s just another anti-spyware program that‘s been detected.

Some of the free downloads available:

NTFS Reader
Access any NTFS volume from a machine running FAT, as easy as pie.

Fractal Forge
Yes, you've probably all seen a fractal generator before but this one is flexible and fast. It all comes flooding back...

IEradicator
Fed up with Internet Explorer? Do you wish you could kill it completely? You can

Can’t understand them, but I just love reading the descriptions.

Iran incident, UK crises.

Hopefully Iran and Britain are getting closer to negotiating the release of the British Naval personnel.

The incident was caused when the crew of two British Naval patrol boats were arrested by Iran, but the crisis was caused by the subsequent inept handling of the affair by the British Prime Minister. Anyone who read the Islamic Republic News Agency’s initial press releases would have seen Iran was seeking a low key negotiated resolution. It only became a crisis when Big Mouth Blair claimed the sailors were arrested in Iraqi territorial waters. No one with smallest amount of common sense or knowledge of the subject would have made such a statement. But it is typical of Blair’s approach to diplomacy - let us not forget that Blair has taken Britain into more wars than any other “Peacetime Prime Minister”.

Why was it foolish for Blair to claim the incident occurred in Iraqi territorial waters? The Maritime boundary between Iraq and Iran was established by the Algiers Accord in 1975. However at the time it was recognised the border, in the open sea outside the Shatt al-Arab waterway, was defined not in reference to a well established coastline, but to moving mudflats; consequently it was agreed the position of the border should be reviewed every ten years. No such review took place as Saddam Hussein “tore up” the agreement in 1980, at the start of the 1980 - 1988 Iran Iraq war. Consequently neither Iran nor Britain can claim the boats were in Iran or Iraq waters.

The situation was aggravated when the UK briefed the press using maps which delineated the boundary with a thick red line. It must be realised, the question of the location of the border is as sensitive an issue to Iran as the ownership of the Falklands and Gibraltar is to Britain.

Over the weekend, Britain seemed to recognise the prudence of following traditional and well established diplomatic procedures to establish contacts with Iran. This however was not helped by Blabber Mouth Bush, referring to the sailors as “British Hostages”. Then his partner Blair could not resist throwing in his three pennyworths with his belligerent mutterings.

This World will be a safer place when Blair and Bush finally leave office. Hopefully they will shut up long enough for the diplomats to do their work.

Have medical prescription will travel

On 1st April NHS Prescription charges in England increased to £6.85 per item. On the same date medical prescription charges in Wales were scraped.

If you live in London and have more than three items on a prescription, it will be cheaper to buy an Advanced Return train ticket and travel to Cardiff to obtain your prescribed medication, than go to your local pharmacy..

Sunday there was a program on BBC Radio 4 “Battle for Birth”, looking at the history of maternity practice in the NHS. Even within the last thirty years expectant mothers, as a matter of routine had to suffer the indignity of being shaved and given an enema. It was NHS policy for all women to give birth in Maternity Hospitals; and they were not allowed out of bed for two weeks after giving birth. How things have changed; today because of financial constraints 9 out of 10 NHS Health Trusts in England and Wales cannot afford to run antenatal classes. A recent survey by the Royal College of Midwives revealed two-thirds of maternity units are understaffed and an additional 3000 midwives need to be recruited.

NHS National Health Service is a misnomer, it should be PCHS Postal Code Health Service.

That’s News to me.

The ITV has won the rights to televise live FA Cup and England football matches from August 2008. From that date football will cease to exist! The BBC lost the rights to televise cricket Test matches live and suddenly, as far as BBC Television News was concerned no Test Matches are played. Sky has the rights to the ICC Cricket World Cup, how much coverage, apart for the murder of Bob Woolmer, has BBC News devoted to reporting the event? Zilch.

Writing Saturday’s blog, I looked up coverage by Middle East news organizations of the British sailors captured by Iran. To my surprise I saw their main concern was reporting on the 19th Arab summit. I say surprise, because there had been no reference to this meeting by the British television news organisations. This I find astonishing, when you consider the main topic of the summit was to reach a way to settle the Israeli-Arab conflict. It’s recognised by all, apart from Blair and Bush, the lack of the resolution of the Palestine-Israel dispute is at the heart of the Islamic militant movement. Solve this dispute, and the risk of Islamic terrorist attacks in Britain and USA will be diminished by 99%. Yet the meeting was unreported.

Over a hundred people are killed in an Indian train crash and there is no mention on British TV news. An 84year old woman dies in a train derailment in Cumbria, and there is saturation television and newspaper coverage.

Newspapers print stories they think will sell newspapers. The BBC broadcasts stories it thinks . . .? Well its difficult to identify the BBC’s methodology, it claims to have more reporters in more countries than any other news organisation; but it tends to follow than lead. How many scoops does it have each year? Not many, if any.

1st April

You can imagine my joy when I received official notification that this blog had won the Google Blog of Blogs Award for 2007.

Immediately I knew what I had to do. A blog without readers is merely computer code floating in cyber space. It is you the reader who makes the blog tangible and existent. Consequently I have great pleasure in sharing the award with you.

To claim your share of the prize enter your details as a comment or send an email to Grumpy@Tesco.Net.

Finally on this joyous occasion, may I wish you all Happy All Fools Day.