NEW
DEVELOPMENTS!
A bulletin
board discussing ethical considerations in current affairs has
now been launched. Click on the link at the foot of this page.
Further
progress
While there
is much to commend the template principles provided by Zyworld
and these work well on a static page basis, the need for
instantaneous change demands greater flexibility.
Work will
start in February using FrontPage 2000 to develop this site
further. It is hoped that March 2000 will see a resumption of the
weekly commentary on the ethical aspects of current affairs.
The Weekly
Commentary
is intended
to seek out and question the underlying ethics of matters
encountered in the national or local press and in the daily
routine. It introduces themes that may later be developed on my
'Simply Ethics' page, or even have a page of their own.
Updated 12th November 1999
IT firms in UK still not coping with the demand!
Despite
problems I supported (and still do) screaming.net via
Tempo/Telnet (see earlier commentaries). Now EGG are making the
same mistake—unable to cope with the demand. The system crashed
on three attempts to start connections with them. 48hrs later the
paperwork arrives and I log on to register . . . and the system
crashes again! Success is one thing, but failing to assess demand
is a serious failure of either marketing analysis or strategic
management—or both! Either way it blots the otherwise excellent
initiative.
Likewise with
Waitrose! At the check-out were free CDs to their new web site. I
did not need one, I see no point in paying telephone line charges
even if profits do go to charity (screaming.net is free off-peak
as all ISP telephone links should be all day). I sign on and
proceed to personalise my page and see the goodies available.
Guess what? You've got it, page not available!
Law
professionals in state of panic
I have not
seen his site. It may be I would disagree with his way of going
about his complaints. That solicitors, for the lord chancellor’s
office, have bullied the closure of a web site critical of
certain judges clearly shows that the government’s belief in a
‘freedom of information’ bill is as much balls as are the
complaints over the British Museum’s marbles. Mr Hulbert, faced
with feeble-mindedness here has now placed his site on an ISP in
America. Once more, as with the Australian initiative of Peter
Wright, we rely on other countries in the world to keep us native
English informed of what is going on in our own country. Could it
be that Brussels’ mentality again? Sheer panic that anyone should
presume to criticise, in any way, the comfortable complacency of
government’s (the people’s, in fact) servants? I’ll let you know
my opinion when I find Mr Hulbert’s new server.
Will Lord
Irvine re-awake the values of integrity and ethics long lost to
the legal profession in this country?
Upon reading
the various reports on the News of The World’s payment to
a witness in the Gary Glitter case, it is clear that detailed
examination of the contract’s small print is required before any
authoritative determination of right or wrong can be made. I
shall lead the chase with clear absolutism! No witness before or
after any trial should ever be paid. Any such arrangement should
be an integral part of the court proceedings and the jury advised
that such a witness is immediately suspect. Justice must be
without fear or favour. Those relevant to a case must recognise
they are privileged to be of service to the community: it is not
their place to make money for themselves out of rendering such
public service.
Town
Planning
Monday 8th
November. Berkhamsted’s Town mayor called upon Mr and Mrs Hunter
of 5 Chapel Street Berkhamsted to apologise to their neighbour
for their outrageous and singularly inaccurate letter in which
they made complaint about the refurbishment of their neighbour’s
home. The mayor said that upon his fullest possible investigation
it was clear their neighbour had properly complied with all
planning regulations. He wished the Hunters had taken the
elementary precaution of checking their facts before widely
disseminating their wholly unfounded allegations.
The letter
from Mr and Mrs Hunter is a clear example of the dangers of
public involvement in planning issues. The downright ignorance
and plain, vitriolic bigotry expressed by Mr and Mrs Hunter
illustrates again how ill-equipped is the average member of the
public to make relevant comment upon important issues, especially
in key areas of aesthetic sensitivity. The house to which Mr and
Mrs Hunter referred is a major Berkhamsted landmark in the centre
of a conservation area. The work being carried out is a fine
example of how people should be encouraged to adapt period homes
to be practical in the modern age and meaningful for the future.
The Hunters’ inability to realise the fine example being set to
the community in this singularly sensitive refurbishment
questions once more the extent to which the general public
remains woefully ignorant of any sense of aesthetic value.
In the
Wider World
‘Council Tax
unfairly hits Labour voters’, The Guardian November 6
headlined an article. A report, commissioned by the Civil Service
union PCS and produced by the left-leaning New Policy Institute
acknowledges that the present version of the old rating system is
‘hugely unfair’ to the lower paid who are subsidising higher wage
earners’.
Interesting.
The whole principle of the poll tax was that it was based per
head and related to income, thus helping the lower paid (a
Thatcher initiative!). Yes, the principle was ineptly managed,
but the principle was unquestionably right—as socialists now seem
to be proving!
Party time
for those who’ve lost their Marbles!
Required by
government to cut costs, raise income, perform better on reduced
subsidy, the British Museum has now been criticised for doing all
of this by holding elite soirées amongst their marbles. It
appears that the highfalutin voices raised in anguish have
forgotten that originally much of the sculptures in the Roman
galleries were placed around the baths, where it was rather
steamy and all sorts of antics went on. So, where’s the problem?
Update
24th October 1999
The Franco-Germans show their true EU colours
I shall
not be boycotting French foods for the French (and
Germans) are right in showing the way the EU should be run, as
independent countries in Europe but not run by
Europe! The unilateral decisions by these two governments over
British beef imports are the correct and proper responses of free
and independent nations. It was. after all, the mishandling of
the BSE crisis by the UK government of the day that caused the
problem in the first place!
These countries stalwart support of their national interests
puts to shame Tony Blair’s headlong dash to relegate England to
puppylike subserviency to the EU. The French are now showing
their real response to European matters that is usually kept well
buried beneath the façade of their talk about ‘an integrated
Europe’. Such talk is to betray the British into giving up the
most valuable commodity in the world: British sovereignty and
citizenship.
The corrupt nature of England’s government.
For 37 years
the Inland Revenue and the DSS accepted that a Mr Bath was a
married man and taxed him accordingly. Upon his death the DSS
claimed he had never been married, that his children were
illegitimate and his widow therefore not entitled to a pension,
because the marriage had followed only Sikh tradition and had not
been formally registered.
On Friday 22nd October 1999 The High Court ruled
that it would be contrary to the policy of the law to refuse to
extend the benefit of presumption which would apply to them were
there no evidence of such a ceremony.
How could the DSS be so managerially incompetent as to incur
the expense of a court case when the result is clear from the
start?
When will this country’s civil servants get off their butts
and understand that departmental self-interest and separate
determinations and criteria are irrelevant to good and efficient
governance?
Government is a collective whole. The role of departments is
at best questionable if not downright counter-productive. At the
very least there must be free exchange of information between
them and a universality of interpretation.
Democracy: aren’t the Chinese right?
Have not
the protestors against the Chinese government proved Chinese ways
are right? Can democracy, as we understand it work in the
most populous country in the world (1.2 billion people)? Our
concepts of democracy derive from classical Greece where numbers
were small and only an elite was entitled to take part. Is that
concept of democracy workable with large numbers?
What were these protestors actually saying through their
demonstrations? Surely, that they defy the majority in this
country who have elected a government that determines it was
proper to invite Jiang Zemin to this country. Thus they snub the
Queen, in whom all aspects of our sovereign identity as a
democratic country are enshrined. What right have they to
embarrass those whom the majority of us have elected for a term
of office with appropriate authority?
Are the Chinese not right in perceiving these protestors
ill-mannered and unrepresentative? If we have elected a
government and by that election given it authority, do we not
undermine ourselves when we make such embarrassing protests?
Tony Blair agrees with the Chinese view of Democracy!
If he
doesn’t, why is his ‘Freedom of Information’ bill so designed as
not to achieve what its name pretends to indicate? Or is it
simply that in battling against the French and Germans he wishes
to show himself better than they in bowing to the diktat
of the EU commissars, who most certainly do not want
any kind of ‘Freedom of Information’. Perhaps because honest
facts will show up the lies of their EU promotional hype?
Is Tony Blair really going downhill?
Having
had Bill Gates in to tell him how he can best run England’s IT
investment to Bill Gates best financial interests, who arrives
from the States hot foot behind him but Barry McCaffrey, the US
‘drugs Tsar’.
Legalising Marijuana
What does
Duncan Campbell in The Guardian October 23rd
tell us about McCaffrey (a name sounding ominously like
McCarthy)? That he should be the last person to listen to if you
want a balanced argument based on facts! McCaffrey spends
$17.8billion on drug control, of which 60% is spent on law
enforcement and only 11% on prevention. This from a man who
claimed ‘we cannot arrest our way out of this problem’. Result?
700,000 people arrested for marijuana offences and 400,000 in
prison on all drug offences.
Holland’s argument for liberal drug laws is that legalising
marijuana holds back the hard addictive narcotic. They have a
murder rate of 1.8 per 100,000 against the US 8.2 where American
youth is turning from marijuana use to crack and heroin. Might as
well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb syndrome? And why is the US,
renowned for public access to facts, coy about revealing these
statistics?
In the US 6 states, representing 20% of the US population,
have voted for decriminalisation of marijuana for medical use.
That those suffering the aggravated pain of cancer should be
denied solace for a political convenience of public posturing is
an absolute disgrace and a major destabilisation of the authority
of government. Or at least its hard right wing approach to drug
containment.
Anti-hunting, fishing, shooting
Anti-hunt
brigade ‘at it again’. If they want a moral stance, then why are
they not against shooting and fishing? Answer, surely, the odds
are against them! Where then the moral argument? Moral arguments
are not intimidated by the ‘impossible’. By failing to take in
shooting and fishing the anti-hunt brigade acknowledge they are a
minority view and therefore have no case. Are they not, then,
merely the ‘yah-booh’ element seeking an excuse for an easy
punch-up?
The
Paddington Rail Disaster
Early (moderated) opinion indicates a system fault in which the
principle of rail ownership does not apply.
However, at
the time of privatisation, in a letter to the Berkhamsted
Gazette I wrote that investment in the railways should be
regarded as a long term capital appreciation, not a fast-buck
overnight revenue return for common money-grubbers.
Anyone
looking at the railways knew that massive investment was needed
for at least 10 years before anyone with only the most
rudimentary morality would expect to earn a return.
The issue, is
the fundamental accountability we all have in our daily lives for
the consequences of our actions and our investment portfolio.
Company Boards have a moral accountability to the local and
national public for the social consequences of their business. It
is time we made these directors and their shareholders
acknowledge the social responsibility that comes with the
privilege of share ownership.
Other
Railway Matters
On the Euston line commuter trains regularly start and end at
Tring. However, railway managers recently suggested ending and
starting them at Berkhamsted, 6 miles down the line. This would
mean losing car parking space to put in the extra platform. It
was claimed the car park was not fully utilised, conveniently
ignoring the fact that they had increased charges excessively
beforehand, forcing cars on to the streets to create that 'spare'
space.
The car park
managers fail to co-operate with the town council as regards a
mutual overall parking strategy for the town as a whole.
The car park
also has a new automatic facility, totally incapable of giving
change, and you do not know what change is needed until you have
got stuck in position. To obtain change requires a passenger, or
an extensive delay while the driver blocks the road and visits a
booth on the opposite side!
We have the
ludicrous situation where trains that connect to Gatwick via
stops at Olympia for Earl's Court are not advertised at
Berkhamsted because the connection is at Watford (at which
Berkhamsted trains nearly always stop), because they are run by a
different company!
The
assininity of privatisation gives us our station car park managed
by one company, our station by another, the rail track by another
and only one of three train service providers are advertised
there because the other two only 'go through' and are not allowed
to advertise their connecting stations and time-tables.
We are
expected to take the managers of these operators and the
government that created this situation seriously.
No one with
an ounce of sense or sensibility should ever take such fools
seriously. It is time we brought such sense and sensibility to
bear unremittingly.
Why is is
that marketing and publicity departments these days seem wholly
staffed by the illiterate and semi-literate? 'Passengers' is the
commodity transported by the railways, not 'customers'!
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Updated Saturday 5th November 1999
Going Backwards to the 19th Century FAST!
Our most
modern triumph, the Channel Tunnel shows businessmen's feet
are still of base clay and as thick as the traditional
proverbial. Securitas, security agents for Eurostar do not
like seeing women wearing trousers! How can so supposedly
modern an organisation employ such Male Chauvinist
Dinosaurs? The personnel manager (otherwise known as 'Human
Resources Manager' in Eurospeak claptrap) should be
summarily dismissed for allowing a climate in which such
blatant sexism would dare raise its head. They'll be wanting
all staff to wear morning dress and stove pipe hats next!
Meanwhile BT remains as insensitive to customer opinion and
market realities as ever it did!
Having
transferred to Localtel because of the screaming.net free
connect time to the internet, as well as free ISP
facilities, I find BT did not pass on proper account
information and that Localtel still have to go through BT
engineers. BT engineers still take 10 days to rectify their
mistakes! God knows how long they would take if I were
dealing with them as a private person! Thank heavens
Localtel have got that problem and not me.
Value
of The Monarchy
Prince
Charles enjoys private a dinner with friends instead of
attending the Chinese reception. Correct: country officially
diplomatic, dissenters compensated.
Takes
His Son Hunting
Why not?
Sort out the whole shooting fishing hunting scene as a
complete and rational debate, or don’t tinker with any of
it.
Legal
Dipstick of the Week/Month/Decade?
In a
Guardian article (4/11/99) about the Law Society taking on
100 extra staff to handle mounting complaints against
solicitors, an unidentified solicitor announced proudly ‘. .
. we are a victim of our own success. The reason we get so
many complaints is because we deal with them so well’. [It
presently takes between 6 and 9 months for a complaint to be
dealt with!]
With
people like him as solicitors no wonder they describe
themselves as only ever practising law, never actually
mastering it!
Justice Only For Those With Money!
Latest
demonstration of manipulative tactics was displayed just
recently. ‘Of course, there may be a case to answer, but we
would require the financial assurance that the contestant
can afford the fees of the best barrister in the field, whom
we will call, and expect her to pay should we win'. So,
however good your case, however confident you feel in
handling it yourself, unless you have the money to pay the
other side's interpretation of what it requires, don’t ever
believe its to do with justice and rational debate: its all
to do with intimidation and the roulette wheel of
manipulative psychology.
Because
lawyers are still ‘only practising’ it appears there are
none yet professionally competent enough to say, ‘no win, no
fee and we’ll pay the other side’s costs if we lose’.
That is
the level of professional judgement and competence on which
every other business operates. Until the law does likewise,
there will never be civil justice in England.
Wigs,
or stove-pipe hats with frock coats and morning dress?
Did you
know, that when it was agreed solicitors could make some
representation in court without using a barrister, it was
debated long and hard as to whether they should be required
to wear wigs on these occasions—or whether, in fact, they
should not be allowed such privilege, in case they thought
they were other than mere solicitors?
Knowing Your Value or, The Stupidity of Change for Change’s
Sake
Renowned
as the best indicator of books, The Sunday Times
closed down its weekly book charts through amalgamating its
‘Books’ pages into an irrelevant section called ‘Culture’.
Three weeks later it has decided to re-instate the weekly
charts! In the meantime competitors have jumped on the
bandwagon of the lost value so there are now several
authoritative alternatives to what was once the only
authority! How stupid can you get? With mismanagement on
this scale The Sunday Times has no need of
competitors!
News
at TEN!
Then, of
course, there’s ITV. At least The Sunday Times took
only 3 weeks to realise what an ass it had made of itself.
Six months on and ITV still doesn’t realise its got it
wholly and utterly wrong! Sense behind the idea, stupidity
behind the interpretation: 10:30pm was the obvious
alternative choice—assuming a change was necessary in the
first place! Most people thought there wasn't. If they
wanted a two-hour drama after the 9:00pm watershed (which is
a complete fallacy anyway) what's the problem with an
half-hour news as the interval and writing the play as two
Acts?
31st October 1999
The British Lead Again In Europe
and the
Europeans (Brussels) can't keep up!
Why else
are the French intransigent over British beef? Because they
know it is the best and will win back the markets in which
French standards now lag behind the British.
Where
else do the British lead? Well, not lead at the moment, but
responding to the market demand for organic farming the
British impetus is delayed for may be a year . . . . Why?
Brussels hasn't done the paperwork!
When
will these irrelevant bureaucrats understand there is a
force called 'LIFE' outside their offices. A real world
beyond their wildest dreams and that those who want a piece
of it need to get up off their butts and join the dance?
Will 2000 Herald The End of Democracy?
Friday 15th October The Evening Standard's Front Page
LONDON WANTS LIVINGSTONE. Yet all the formal influence of
democracy is determined to deny the popular vote its popular
will. If politics, politicians and the various mechanisms
enabling their effectiveness are to be marshalled in so
great a deliberate betrayal of the fundamental principle of
democracy, what hope is there for democracy in this new
millenium, when politics is increasingly proved to be but
chaff in the oatmeal of corporate economics and domination?
Is theEU The means by which Democracy will be
destroyed?
The
entire structure and original intention of the EU is
specifically geared to the future ruling class of corporate
technocrats. Its purpose, the social engineering of a new
meritocracy based upon economic influence, raised through
the power houses of international corporates.
The
Franco-German Domination Game
The Franco-German powerbase is determined to block England's
original and independent thinking and force the issue, 'in
or out, not halfway'. If in, the structure of the EU at
present will guarantee that England's instinctive devotion
to democracy will be outvoted and over-run by the
undemocratic structure of the EU. If out, their accumulating
arrogance is such that despite four centuries of this
country regularly putting each of those two countries in
their place, they once again believe they could seriously
challenge an independent England. An England, now bereft of
practical Commonwealth loyalty and support—the price we paid
for entry into Europe, reneging on our heritage—and our own
democratic devolutionary separation of what once was a
united kingdom.
Why
Sterling Must be retained
Hence, the argument over sterling has nothing to do with
economics and everything to do with politics, political
power and unelected (and unelectable) EU domination.
The
economic argument is so strong, there is no argument, The
EU's social and political base is such that the Euro will
always be weak in comparison with sterling and the US
dollar.
Flexibility, adapatbility, malleability. The three great
principles without which economic and commercial success
cannot be stabilised and securely founded.
All of
life, be you evolutionist or creationist, cries one
consistent fundamental universality: change is the only
constant. Inflexibility in a state of constant change is a
recipe for universal disaster.
Conformity and standardisation are the archangels of
inflexibility and the Loreilei of democratic destruction.
The
Conference Season is Upon Us!
POWER! POWER! POWER! At all costs let us seek power! Cry all the
parties.
What has
happened to the concept of rendering service to the community in
public life?
If Labour had
originally sought to serve and provide sound government it would
have stated it would raise taxes by the equivalent of 10p on
income tax. But it wanted power and so straight-jacketed itself.
In my view it would still have gained a substantial majority if
it had had that honesty and sense of sound governance. Labour
blew it!
Now, the
Tories, having realised the assininity of running headlong into
Europe and bringing some semblance of sense to their party's
agenda, they make the same mistake as Labour, looking to reduce
taxes, rather than acknowledging the public need for services and
their financing.
The Lib-Dems
have always said they would put up taxes to meet the costs we
should accept for essential services, but where is their power?
Sold out to Europe, closed the doors for liaision with the
Tories, they have abandoned realistic opportunities to be
seriously considered for national governance.
At least at
local level they show sound understanding of what governance is
about. But that achievement has been at the price of burdening
local politics with the utter irrelevance of the party power
base.
Where to now?
Electronic Communications
10/10/99. Not waving but drowning, SCREAMING in fact!
Screaming.net,
created through Tempo and Localtel initiatives has been so
successful it has become a disaster!
While the
second-rate journalist has been having a field day, jubilantly
thrusting an ego that can only rise to the occasion of someone
else's misfortune, the triumvirate was the first to provide the
basis on which all America operates—entirely free internet access
and presence.
That it
should be overloaded with success should have come as no
surprise—it is the only valid communication system in the UK at
present. That it should have been over-burdened by that success
is a failing of strategic management, which is disappointing. As
a country we should be better able to manage success. After all,
with nearly four centuries of practice we should have got used to
being successful and expecting to be so as a matter of course!
What is
amazing is that no one else has had the intitiative to realise
that Tempo/Localnet/Screaming.net have got it right and that
there is sufficient capacity for at least one other follower!
Where the hell are they? Are we again waiting for foreigners to
step in and ride roughshod over us once more, now that we have
shown them how?
In the mean
time, my strategic management response to the fact that the
e-mail server at screaming.net has been down for the second
multi-day period since it started and this time (as at 10/10/99)
for five days with no resolution, my e-mail addresses are:
petersuch@hazeltree.screaming.net
and
petersuch@classicfm.net.
Use the latter when screaming.net's server is down as it now
seems to be something of a habit!
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