18583 reasons not to trust the Government on law and order

A complete disgrace when you learn that those on early release committed the following offences:-

3,484 offences for violence

1,730 burglaries

790 drug offences

409 robberies

Hardly tough on crime, and certainly not on the causes. Prison works – because of these people had been banged up, these offences wouldn’t have happened!

want to depress yourself?

If you want to really depress yourself about the state of the world, why not click this link and choose the now option.

I think I’ll go back to bed!

Are legislators stupid?

Sometimes I really think they are. They call drinking bottled water immoral – in spit of the fact that the DoH have actuvely encouraged bottled water in some instances in schools.

They attack the use of plastic bags – on the waste issue (not energy produced) in spite of the fact that for example, disposable nappies are a much bigger issue with regards waste going to landfill than plastic bags will ever be.

Now there are attacking salt. Firstly the body needs salt to live. Let us not forget that. So slat in itself is not bad, it is just too much salt is bad. Then you read about the banning of advertising salty foods – and I just yet AGAIN, have to say I don’t believe it.

Perhaps some of our legislators should talk to retailers. I remember speaking to a chap whose company sells millions of pre packed sandwiches. He quite rightly told me that the bread in alot of these sandwiches has quite a bit of salt in. The retailer could remove all that salt tomorrow, but the problem would be that people are used to having salt in their bread, and if they did, people would hate the food. The way to do it is to slowly reduce the amount of salt in pre packed food – not to ban advertising food with salt in, not to ban or set prescribed salt amounts, and certainly not to say you can’t have a salt pot on your table!

Did the earth move for you Mrs Sheppard?

I promised Mrs Sheppard the earth would move for her on her birthday.

And at 1am it certainly did. How will I top that next year?

She said something along the lines of – it’s an earthquake – the house is falling in. Being a typical man I said something like – shut up, it’s just windy outside, go back to sleep.

no more showers for you!

Is the world really going mad, or are people just being plain stupid. I am the first to try to do my best for the environment. I have a wormery. My new composter just arrived. Ive replaced all the bulbs in our new house to energy saving ones.

I probably only drive about 30 miles a week as I can commute to London on public transport. I don’t have any kids. So in the scheme of things, my carbon footprint is pretty good, though could always be better.

BUT – I am under no illusion when I accept that human activity is inevitably damaging to the environment. There is nothing you can do to stop it, you can just try to limit it. To take the argument to its end – the way to help the environment is to look at population control – but that argument is for another day. We seem to be moving towards environmental considerations being of paramount importance above and beyond everything else, and that could be very very dangerous.

I had a Victor Meldrew moment and nearly felt myself saying I DON’T BELIEVE IT, when I read this story today.

Now we can have argument about whether prisoners should have showers in their own cells. I don’t remember getting my own personal shower at University, but hey if you’re a criminal I’m sure it’s all part of your human rights.

What I can’t believe is that we have a story about prisoners showers and how they are  contributing to the government’s CO2 output. The reason I can’t believe it, is that I can just imagine the next stage of this story. Well, we’ve had to release a few prisoners early, so we can meet our CO2 targets.

God knows what will be next. Perhaps prisoners will be forced back into slopping out, all in the name of being environmentally friendly! In fact – we could all just wash every other day (something some people I stand next to on the underground clearly do) just to do our bit.

Alternatively we could have a bit of common sense, and do our bit to limit our environmental impact, but appreciate that our very existence impacts on our planet.

Ken Clarke has a lot to answer for

Bet you think I’m going to talk about Europe from that headline. Far from it, I’m actually irate about speed humps. The Ken Clarke reference is due to the fact that he admitted he was responsible for introducing them into Britain. Anyway, this all stems from a very unpleasant bill I had to pay to get my old banger through its MOT last week. It was due to the fact that the hooter wasn’t working because the wiring had been crushed by a collision with a speed hump. Thinking back, I remember the hump in question. It appeared without warning on a road which didn’t have it the previous week, I took it at 25mph in the dark and the result was thus.
 
This has bought home to me just how much I hate these things. They appear without warning in areas where you would struggle to work up a decent speed, and proceed to knacker up your suspension due to how oversized they are. I also had a very unpleasant experience when I was rushed to hospital in an ambulance 3 years ago and the vehicle that had been ravaged by speed humps and I felt every single slight bump in the journey. Not what you want when you’ve got peritonitis.
 
Apart from my personal gripe with them, there are other reasons they need to go. I’ve already mentioned emergency vehicle damage and hold ups. These things could well be costing lives. There is the extra carbon emitted by the stop start nature of these things. There’s the noise pollution they produce especially with lorries going over them.

A sensible approach would be to dig these up and install either hazard signs showing your speed and urging you to slow down or installing chicanes. This would slow traffic down without damaging cars and emergency vehicles. As we haven’t come out with a transport policy or statement for months, then the halting of the installation of speed humps in favour of other solutions must surely be a popular and worthwhile policy direction.

 

bottled water

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A quick podcast of me ranting about bottled water on Radio 5. I’ll write more on this subject tomorrow 21st Feb) over at www.partypoliticalanimal.com

Total Politics

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I talked to the "tart of all things" (his words not mine) Iain Dale, to discover all about his new venture Total Politics.

To listen to Iain’s plans, including whether he intends fighting a seat at the next election click the download button above, or listen to it in our inbuilt media player.

Total Politics currently has a holding page at www.totalpolitics.com so why not pre-register your interest now.

Oi Paddick, I accept your challenge!

It appears as though Lib Dem mayoral hopeful Brian Paddick has challenged his opponents to do the marathon.

Boris may well be a bit busy, but Tory Radio will take him up on the challenge.

So Brian – dare you take me on? Now I must warn you the film run fat boy run could well be based on my own training regime!

www.justgiving.com/jonathansheppard2008 is the link for those who want to support my madness.

When someone said Marathon I though they meant a chocolate bar with nuts in.

Blair in bottled water shocker

No one can have missed the recent comments about how its apparently immoral for us to drink bottled water. I have written a piece over the the Party Political Animal.

Whilst looking into the issue it was very enlightening to see that at the resignation speech of our former PM, Northumbrian water actually bottled tap water. Oh dear oh dear. It’s alright for Tony to have bottled water – but not for us plebs. Tony was so pleased he was happy to have his picture taken with the bottled water. Mr Woolas won’t be pleased!

UPDATE – It appears as though the DoH has advocated giving bottled water to schools. Joined up Government at it’s best.