Month: August 2021

Williamson has effectively shifted the blame for incidents such as the shooting in Plymouth recently onto teachers. In Scotland teachers will get training to do this, not in England though.

Finally awake Williamson has agreed to provide 300.000 Carbon Monoxide monitors for classrooms across the country – with schools going back soon this would seem to be rather late. Also it would be good to know what the contingency plans are if the monitors show inadequate ventilation? But no rush as the monitors will not be in all schools until next year.

I love the Guardian – again – a recent investigation has shown that whilst swearing is down 27%, males still swear more than women and ‘bloody’ has dropped from 1st to 3rd place being replaced at the top by ‘fuck’ and then ‘shit’. Followed by bollocks; piss off; bastard; twat; and arsehole. The c word was 12th! Whilst there is firmly a place for the expletive, In. rather like the prosaic insults such as ‘may the fleas from a thousand camels infest your crutch’!

Dominic Raab should not be resigning, or being sacked, he should be arrested for manslaughter.

Spain has offered to become the EU hub for refugees fleeing Afghanistan whilst Germany has not put a number on how many it will take. The UK has offered to take 20.000 but only 5.000 this year – I guess they hope the rest will be dead by then.

That may be an oxymoron. We invade countries with leaders we do not like, unless they have enough oil, or are poor enough for us to supposedly win. We have turned Iraq and Libya into graveyards for their citizens. attempts to depose Assad in Syria have resulted in similar debacles. Biden has been justly criticised for his abandonment of Afghanistan followed by the pathetic response of Johnson that we have to do what the Americans do. We have a couple of spanking new aircraft carriers at a cost of £8 billion – our latest strategic ploy seems to be to see how much we can annoy the Chinese Government with them. But seriously, what will we do with them? Interfering in foreign governments has been a complete disaster, holidays in the tropics for the armed services?

Idiot of the week is shared this week. Dominic Raab should be hands down winner – does he not realise that being a Minister for Defence is 24/7? Or will threats to our country and allies (although who would want friends like us (and the Americans)) only occur when he has had a cup of tea and maybe a little siesta after dinner. And he has not the balls to resign. Sharing the award is Bozo – the buck stops with you. He hesitated over sacking Hancock, and now the same with Raab.

I truly love this paper for its quirkiness and generally being less antipathetic to my own views. But sometimes I wonder who writes for this paper. An article today about high sugar yogurts (so far excellent), said that someone yogurts had 5.5tsp of sugar per serving (bad), clever marketing was being employed (bad), but then they list products that are not available within my consciousness! I think this is a new geographical concept – but the following products are not available at my local Premier Store – Nush almond milk strawberry tubes; the Coconut Collaborative mango and passion fruit yogurt; and Yoplait Petit Filous strawberry and banana yogurt.

The majority of the government ministers attending Parliament shunned the speakers advice and went maskless. My paper (Guardian) did not comment on the Labour side which was unfortunate, but then they are not the government and the ones making rules. However with mask wearing recommended in crowded indoor places it would seem to be foolishness not to mask up. A photo of the government benches showed just 2 MPs wearing a mask out of the 62 in the photo. And surely the HoC is a crowded place with all within 1m of each other.

the cost of the wests military intervention in Afghanistan is now estimated to be $2 trillion or $2000000000000). The Taliban and extremism have returned mainly due to the abject poverty. It could have been so much better to have invested in humanitarian and education projects . According to SIRI this works out at about $90000 dollars for every person in Afghanistan, and even if spread over 20 years is considerably more than GNI of $500p.a.