Gone and soon forgotten

I hope that there won't be too many people visiting this blog who give two hoots how Milosovic died.
Men like that should be put to the sword on the battlefield, and occassionally I regret that we did not drive into Kosovo all guns blazing and destroy that nasty little bully and his drug fuelled Army once and for all.

Green and Gold

Cricket today is most definitely Green and Gold. The combined forces of Australia, South Africa, India and Pakistan are teaching the rest of us how to play.

India will be disappointed (for a brief moment) that England's batting offers such a pathetic competition. It is times like these that you understand completely why the Americans will export their entire food and economic culture as far and wide as they can but they have no desire to see others take up their primary sports - they have no desire to see others do it better than them in the future!

As for the Aussie's and the Boks, well their record breaking one day game puts to bed any idea that cricket is a boring game.

Nearly nine hundred runs in a day, scored at 9 runs an over. In a match of 600 balls, 142 balls crossed the boundary for either a six of a four. That's every fourth ball! Stunning. Of Ponting's individual 164 runs, 102 of them came from boundaries. Of Gibb's 175 runs, 126 of them came from boundaries. Blistering.

Could you say that again more slowly and clearly, Minister

You all know my feelings about Sir Ian Blair, the Government's Metropolitan Police Puppet. I really, really don't like, admire or respect him. He blunders from high profile cock-up to media disaster. He isn't a real policeman and his force has no confidence in him. I greatly want to see him replaced.

Then he goes and does something sensible. I am torn!!

Let me assure you, if I am ever in a situation where I must have telephone calls with some of these Government Ministers, you can be absolutely certain that I will record them.

What is fascinating is that, unless I have missed something, it isn't clear how it became known that he had taped these calls. Are his own staff finally shoving him off the balcony? Or is the Government somehow conspiring to get rid of him before the report on the De Menezes shooting condemns him (and embarrasses them)?

It is rather amusing that Sir Ian is powerless to call off the very political beast that he snuggled up to so successfully and which appointed him with such confidence.

Political naivety can now be added to the long list of incompetences with which Sir Ian is so well endowed.

UPDATE: As always there are clever people at the Telegraph who sum up the case against Ian Blair a little better than I can.

Politics in the blood

I am very proud to have be asked to be a godfather this week. His name is Jozef Pawlukiewicz. He is 3 months old and he lives with his mum and dad in Aberdeenshire. His mum, Natasha, and I have been friends since our earliest memory and our mothers are our respective godmothers, so we are keeping the tradition going.

Anyway, young Josef has made his first media appearance this week and shows that he is a campaigning natural.

P.S. Aboyne has many things to be proud of and is a quite beautiful Highland's town. It sits along the Dee Valley, which stretches from Braemar to Aberdeen and hosts some of Scotlands finest scenery.
In the Meaning of Liff (sic), Douglas Adams and John Lloyd ascribe it the following meaning - "To beat an expert at a game of skill by playing so appallingly badly that none of his clever tactics are of any use to him!!!"

Campaign - Go!

So the first leaflet of my District Council election campaign is out. I am very grateful for the response so far. I have had a number of emails and phone calls saying good luck etc. Many thanks.

In this months leaflet, I have focussed on the work I want to do around improving youth facilities and ensuring the highest confidence in the policing of anti social behaviour. I know that this issue is very important to many people. I think that better policing and better youth facilities are, however, as important as each other. Firm and confident policing, with the full support of everyone in the community is a given but we cannot, in all conscience, continue to berate our youth whilst we fail to provide things for them to do. For them to have respect for their surroundings and neighbours, they must feel that they are a valued part of our community.

At the end of this month I will focus on the issues of affordable housing and Mill Road speeding - to which I believe there may be a relatively quick and happy ending.

Convulsions of a dying Government

Two quick points.

Firstly, this Jowell / Mills affair really is plumbing new depths of absurdity. Some might say that they are in a media spin but I would say it was a flat spin.
She knows what's coming downstream so she half junks her husband to save her career. She spins it as wanting to save the Prime Minister from further headlines and scandal. The Prime Minister clears her of breaking the Ministerial Code even when she has blatantly broken it. He doesn't bother spinning it, he just does it to keep a friend by his side in his final hours. So Blair saves Jowell and Jowell saves Blair and herself - for now. Jowell will be junked by the next Labour leader.
These are now truly desparate days of Ministers clinging to power.

Blair's intolerable mention of his divine guidance continues to rile, but it was only when I heard the story of the vicar who has resigned due to her inability to forgive those who killed her daughter of 7 July in the London bombings, that I understood why.
Her is a woman who quite understandably refuses to forgive anyone who kills in the name of any God.
I am not suggesting for one moment that Blair went to war under the banner of his religion, but here we are living in our own country under a greater threat than ever before, facing an enemy within whose motivation for their unspeakable actions is their belief in God, and what does Blair do - that's right, he places God and religion firmly within his own umbrella of justification.
This was, undoubtedly, the stupidest thing you could do. If we didn't have a religious war before, we do now.
The way to deal with religious zealots is to remove the things they fight against, not to make it a contest of beliefs and godliness.
Alistair Campbell was right - politicans shouldn't do God.

God told me to..

In normal circumstances one would have sympathy for anyone mis-quoted in the media and taken wildly out of context. But this is Blair we are talking about - a man who has forged his entire political career on the deliberate use of language to spin whatever truth he was trying to conceal or lie he was trying to promote.

So, after nearly 10 years of this sort of thing, when Tony Blair utters some meaningless drivel about how weighty is the decision to start a war and risk the lives (and deaths) of young servicemen and that he will be judged by God, you'll forgive me if I don't 'share his pain'.

After all, I have personally been sent into a potentially life threatening situation by this man in Kosovo in 1999.

Right and wrong are the sole factors that should influence your decision to step onto a battlefield. It is your ability to weigh a situation, calculate risk to national interest and carry your people with you that counts, not God or your faith.

It is quite literally the height of conceit and ignorance that our Prime Minister should either deliberately or absent mindedly bring his faith in God into the equation on his decison to go to war. But remember, this is the same man whose calculated words in the Commons sought to frighten us all into believing that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction against British targets in under 45 minutes.

Mr Blair is Prime Minister and knows full well that his words are analysed from every angle. He knows full well that you cannot go on Parkinson and raise such a loosely worded concept without being interpreted in a hundred different ways.

No. He did it deliberately and knew exactly what would happen. One can only wonder why and whether it was a cynical ploy to steal the headlines away from his floundering Culture Secretary.

These people have started to inhabit a world far, far away from the rest of us and the electorate will always find a way to punish conceit of this magnitude.

The battle for Lodge Farm pond

Out of my office window, I have a wonderful view of our pond and the myriad of wildlife on and around it. (Trust me - I appreciate how lucky we are!!)

Anyway, upon this pond a bit of a battle has begun between a pair of Moorhens and a pair of wild ducks for the nesting rights on the log that sticks out of the water.

Now its not for me to take sides but the Moorhens were there last year and produced three lovely broods, and to be fair, the ducks are being a bit of a bully. So far today, the Moorhens have taken ownership twice but keep being thrown off.

I think I am going to have to sink a new log for the Moorhens. I'll keep you posted.

Mill Road Update

The Cambs Evening News has covered the story too.

The street lights on Mill Road are finally on (with great thanks to our Parish Clerks for three years of tireless effort). This means, however, that:

1. Officially, the speed limit through the lit area is now 40mph.
2. The Council / Highways must ratify and sign post this reduction.
3. The Council / Highways may attempt to rescind this speed reduction by publishing a 60mph reinstatement order in the local press.
4. If published the residents and supporters must write as many letters as possible demanding that the speed restriction is retained.

It is up to us to ensure that we hang onto the 40pmh limit and get it properly sign posted.

Mill Road Speeding

On Monday this week, I represented the residents of Mill Road at a Hunts Traffic Management Committee meeting. Speeding on Mill Road is a real problem and despite efforts by the Parish Council, the authorities take no notice. So we stepped up a gear and presented a petition. The Committee accepted our petition and will report back in June. We even made it into the local newspaper.

I was allowed 3 mins to represent our cause at the meeting and here is what I said:

"Mill Road is a small ‘B’ road joining Buckden to the Offords. It is a deceptive road. Straight in parts but with close corners. The road leads down from Buckden to the River Ouse where the road narrows to cross the river and then crosses the main east coast railway line. Speeds on this stretch are very high and we know that 80/90 mph is regularly attained. Even at the national speed limit, this road is dangerous.

"The issue of speed combines with the layout of the road and its residential properties to create a fearful situation. There are some 30 households on the road, and at least 15 children. Your attention is needed because of the proximity of houses and residents to the edge of the road with absolutely no protection.

"The accident rate on Mill Road is high and particularly significant. Accidents over the past 5 years number in double figures. Over the years, there have been plenty of vehicle write-offs, many injuries and even loss of life. The danger on Mill Road is, however, out of proportion to its accident rate for two important reasons:

"Firstly, it is a “rat run” and many of those who drive on it do so with the specific intention of achieving a short cut. Faced by the river and railway crossing and the fear of further delays, they are mentally tuned to going as fast as they can to make the short cut worth while. They use the road with the specific intention of driving very fast.

"Secondly, it has become a highly popular weekend race track for young men in the area. Weekends come with the misery of high speed races taking place. Cars and motorcyclists driving deliberately fast, two abreast. The turns and straights of the road provide a challenging experience to young drivers.

"Living alongside this stretch of road is nerve shattering. Operating to the front of the house requires unbelievable care and attention. Unloading shopping or just getting the children into the house safely is a worrying procedure. Moreover, even with the speed limit as it is, we have figures to prove that it is not possible to avoid collisions should one resident pull out the moment before an on-coming car comes into view. Children fear to walk on the footpath into the village due to the wind blast and the speed of traffic entering the village is of great concern, especially since the primary school is the first thing they meet. It is not just the drivers of these cars who are at risk, it is the residents who live along the road and the people from the surrounding villages who use the pathway for recreation and access.

"We know that you have considered safety on this road. The Parish council have raised it in their joint funding bids many times but to no avail. It appears that the lack of deaths on the road is a bitter-sweet factor. Sweet that no-one has died recently, but bitter because we fail to raise the number of points we need to get your attention.

"We are asking you to reconsider earlier dismissive judgments. We ask you to understand the local factors at work and to look again at the speeds being reached. The level of fear among residents and users is very high, and with good reason when cars regularly plough into their fences and even their living rooms.

"Please take us seriously, and give us some support and some protection before an innocent resident is caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Please act before a tragedy occurs. Listen to the local people. We have alerted you to this problem and none of us want to have a death on our conscience."