“RULE BRITANNIA” - SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG!!!

When Britain first, at Heaven's command
Arose from out the azure main;
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain:
"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
"Britons never will be slaves."

She most certainly was not ruling the waves of the Indian Ocean, on October the 23rd the day that R.F.A. Wave Knight watched Somali Pirates stop and board the Chandlers yacht.

25 Royal Navy sailors were on board the Wave Knight which also had a crew of 75 merchant seamen.

The excuse given was the captain and or the Ministry of Defence was afraid to interfere, as such action would have endangered the lives of Mr and Mrs Chandler. However Britain also takes a hard line about not paying ransoms to pirates and hijackers, so now the Chandlers are captive their lives being threatened and with no prospect that the government will pay a ransom.

If the British government does not intend to pay ransoms, a stand I applaud, the government should take a robust attitude to piracy akin to that of the French government’s attitude.

1. The Wave Knight’s captain should have known he was to intervene, regardless of the risk of casualties. – I hope this instruction has now been made to all Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxilliary ships’ captains.
2. The government should now be gathering all intelligence about the Chandlers’ whereabouts and followed up with a special forces rescue mission – this is what the French have done on at least two occasions. This action is permitted under a UN resolution passed in 2008 which allows all nations to persue Somali Pirates on Sea and on Land.

These pirates are businessmen, they want profits not a war, if it becomes known that attacks on British vessels will result in retaliatory actions which may kill the perpetrators soon these attacks will reduce – the pirates will go for vessels flying other flags, whose governments are not so robust in their response. Getting killed or wounded is not good business at the least it cuts into profits.

In Newsweek Christopher Dickey said of the French response. That on 3 occassions between April 2008 and April 2009 the Somali pirates had seized French Yachts. The French response has become well known to the pirates and now they avoid taking any French flagged vessels. In early April 2009 Somali pirates seized a French Yacht her crew and passengers. French Navy special forces went in to free the hostages, this operation resulted in the deaths of two of the pirates, unfortunately in the process the yacht skipper got killed, but on the plus side 4 hostages including a child were freed.

The long-term solution to Somali piracy will be a stable strong Somali government. But in the short term this historic problem can only be solved with historic, and somewhat barbaric, solutions. Those who opt for a life of piracy should be aware they are “international outlaws” and as such have no rights. If one of these pirates should be killed during the course of lawful anti-piracy operations, the death should be regarded as a natural consequence of being an international outlaw. Unfortunately Capital Punishment would not be acceptable to many Nations, therefore the law abiding maritime nations need to set-up an international court, and an international prison for these pirates.

There should be a mandatory very long sentence for piracy. Say thirty years with remission of a half, minimum time spent in prison fifteen years. The prison should be located in Africa, on land leased by the maritime nations. The standards within should be in accord with those expected in an African prison, not the standards within a European prison. The aim should be, to deter others from taking up piracy as a profession, with no thought of reforming pirates.

THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

This law, which plagues governments, boards of directors and all other decision makers, has always existed. At one time this law was closely allied to the Law of Unforeseeable Consequences.

An unforeseeable consequence, is something which may happen as a result of an action, and which a reasonable person could not have foreseen. Quite reasonably this might be also called an unintended consequence. However with increasing specialisation among decision makers and their advisers, they often appear to be blinkered to perfectly foreseeable knock-on effects of their decision making. At the same time our elected representatives often make their decisions in response to the campaigns of the popular press.

Take drugs legislation. Now let me make this clear I am not claiming either politicians or the press barons – especially the owners of the so called “Red Tops” – are in cahoots with drug dealers. Non the less a consequence of their actions is they create an economic environment that allows drug dealers to make big profits.

Drug Dealing is a form of Free Market Capitalism. It operates on all the laws of the market. Price is set by two factors: demand; and scarcity.

Demand - is a factor the government appears unable to influence, for a number of reasons some people want to take mind altering drugs. Some people settle for a legal drug alcohol, while others prefer one of the wide range of alternative and illegal drugs which are available.

Scarcity – is a factor the government controls. If a drug is legal the price that can be asked is relatively, as the supplier is taking no more risks than the supplier in any other operation. If a drug is illegal the price will rise.

The supplier is taking greater risks, he operates in an illegal environment. Possibly his overheads will include payments to other criminals for “protection”. The drug user, who in all other aspects of their life may be perfectly law-abiding, is also forced into this criminal sub-culture. Thus the law-abiding drug user becomes, to some extent, alienated from authority. Another nail is hammered into the coffin of decent society.

It should not come as a shock to the legislators that the mere act of making a drug illegal, will not stop people taking the drug, but it will create an open door for organised crime. In the 1920s in the U.S.A. the sale of alcohol was made illegal, the era we now call “Prohibition”. This did not stop Americans drinking. It merely created a demand, a demand the Mafia was willing to satisfy. In fact the Mafia did so well out of Prohibition, that they secretly made donations to the funds of politicians who favoured prohibiting alcohol.

In fact the effect of declaring certain drugs to be illegal has worldwide repercussions. Soldiers are dying in Columbia and in Afghanistan in wars which are in part financed by the illegal drugs trade. I do not claim drugs are safe for their users. Far from it, as a former addict I know they are bad, but I also know other legal drugs are equally addictive and cause the user harm. Therefore it seems to me the justification for outlawing some drugs is not rational.

Furthermore if one considers the revenue lost to the Treasury and therefore the nation the justification becomes even weaker. If only 2.5% of the population use illegal drugs in a week, each spending a very conservative £5 for their drugs this would represent at a minimum £67 million lost VAT. To this should be added, any special drugs taxes probably a total of 50% of the total street price probably another £250 million. This is not the end of lost revenue, if drugs were legal the dealers would be paying income tax, and they would no longer be able to claim unemployment benefits.

Mr Johnson said he was worried about social impact of lowering the classification of Cannabis. Co am I but there we diverge. He should recall what Blair said in 1997 “Tough on crime tough on the causes of crime.” Politicians should face up to reality, the so called war on drugs is lost, it was lost many years ago. Legalising drugs does not mean drugs should be freely available – indeed the opposite can be the result of legalisation. What has to date been an unregulated black-market will, upon legalisation be open to scrutiny – both supply and consumption can be regulated by the state.

Let us bring to an end the present ludicrous and somewhat hypocritical situation. Rizla, the company who manufacture cigarette papers for those who roll their own. Produce a very large paper which has only one use – to roll what is called a “Joint”, so called because drug users used to join together 3 cigarette papers or more.

In nearly every town in this country, even the smallest market town, somewhere there will be a shop which sells these large cigarette papers. In all probability the same shop will sell small scientific brass scales and weights, these scales are used for weighing drugs when they are being sold. This same shop will probably include in its stock small special pipes for smoking Hashish and hubblebubble pipes too.

The dealer at the school gates, - the mythical bogey man of the Red-Top Newspapers will be far less likely to be able to operate.

The "Social Ills" caused by legalisation may well be less, than the effects upon society which can be laid at the door of continuing to outlaw, substances a large number of people use.

DO WE NOW LIVE IN A POLICE STATE?

DO WE NOW LIVE IN A POLICE STATE?

I ask this question after reading 2 reports in the past week, of the police apparently making arbitrary rulings.


Case One

In a County Durham village a street has been given a new name after the Durham Police claimed the Wright family who built houses there and originally named the street were a criminal family, involved in anti social behaviour including illegal fly-tipping.

Alan Wright said he only has one conviction – threatening to commit criminal damage and that conviction was 15 years ago and is now “spent”


Case Two

A village shop in St Breward Cornwall was vandalised by a 20-year-old man, who was jailed for his offences, the case was in open court and there were no reporting restrictions.

The shop owners decided to “name and shame” the miscreant, (in my opinion a waste of time in a small village the size of St Breward pop 880 in 2001). They put a sign on the boarded-up window, which read, “DAMAGE DONE BY BEN HILL” .

The Devon and Cornwall Police, in the person of the Neighbourhood Beat Officer told the shop owners to remove the sign. A Police spokesperson said. "Publicly naming him in this way could inflame the situation and possibly tempt one of his friends to carry out further acts of vandalism on the shop."

Sorry am I missing something? When someone is convicted in a court of law this becomes public knowledge – it may be reported in the press. Ben had been convicted of the vandalism, not only to the village shop but also to a number of other properties and vehicles. So can someone tell me, why does he deserve Police protection?
– Answers on a postcard to – The Chief Constable, Devon and Cornwall Police, Police Headquarters, Sowton, Exeter, Devon.


Damian Green MP and National Security

Then of course there was the now infamous and well documented raid, arrest and search without a warrant, conducted by anti-terrorist police on a member of Parliament within the Palace of Westminster.

As you will know from my biography I do not like Tories. I do not like their policies and regard them as the enemy, but I do respect the right of our elected representatives to do their jobs.

The raid on Damian Green MP has no parallels in modern British history. The police acted no differently to their counterparts in the KGB, the Gestapo or the Stasi. I am sure they would offer the same defence for their actions, “I was only obeying orders …”

To the best of my knowledge the last time such high-handed action had been taken against an M.P. was in the seventeenth century and was one of the trigger events that culminated in the English Civil War.

January 6th 1642 King Charles the First, entered Parliament to arrest 5 members of Parliament, the Speaker of the House refused to collude and the King was thwarted. There were riots on the streets of London which spread across the kingdom. Eight months later, in August 1642, Parliament and the Crown were at war.

In the 21st century there has been barely more than a whispered whimper of protest, despite the fact, that the Rights and the Liberties, which are associated with a modern democracy, are being trampled on, by the Crown. The Crown excuses its actions by saying they are in the interests of National Security. Stalin and Hitler also arrested people because they were a threat to National Security!

What has happened to us? Where has the passion gone? Do we no longer hold beliefs? Do we no longer have convictions?

Introducing BOF

Let me introduce myself.

I am 61 years old, and have led a varied life. No doubt in subsequent pages, as time rolls by I will reveal even more about me than I will in these opening paragraphs. Suffice to say at this time I was brought up in a middle-class home, with a fairly typical 1950’s middle-class education.

My mother, who before she married had been a dancer, had theatrical pretensions consequently I was given an impossible moniker. Unfortunately I was not “man enough” to bear the cross of teasing and carry the name with aplomb. In my late teens I changed my name, now in this age where I.D. has become a big issue this sometimes poses a problem.

My early years of schooling were spent in poorly equipped private day schools, my contemporaries were the sons of G.Ps, dentists, bank managers, and farmers. My father suffered a stroke, and could not return to his job. In a short space of time the comfortable lifestyle disappeared. No more private education and worse still, from my point of view, we moved house from Cornwall to Devon. 31 years later I returned to live in Cornwall.


What is a B.O.F?

The acronym B.O.F. stands for “Boring Old Fart”.

Old in my mind has always been a moving feast. I recall when I was a teenager old was over 25 and over 30s were walking dead. I used to justify my drug fuelled lifestyle by saying I did not want to live beyond 30 then as I reached the end of my teens this age became 35.

This movement of the definition of old continued until one day I was 60; I now had a bus pass.
Worse still I found myself prefacing statements about current events, with the phrase, “when I was young …”

I knew I had become a B.O.F.

The contradiction is I am still as Angry as I was when I was in my 20s. I listen to the news on the radio or read the news on line and rage impotently.

In the last 15 years I and many others have been effectively disenfranchised. The Labour Party which spent years guarding against Left Wing infiltration, were looking to the left and did not notice the takeover by a right-wing faction. A faction who had more in common with Ted Heath’s “One Nation Tories” than with the rank and file of the Labour Party. In my opinion, after 18 years of Thatcherite Tories, most members of the Labour Party would have elected Old Nick himself, if they thought he could defeat the Tories.

My use of the word “Ranting”, should be self explanatory
– I see in the preceeding paragraph I have begun to rant. Although in my opinion I have been restrained and measured.

Finally Insignificant.

I have no illusions. This Blog will change nothing. My opinions will not influence any decision makers. I, as an individual are no more importance than a single grain of sand on a beach. If the grain of sand is washed away by the waves no one will notice. If ten grains of sand are washed away by the waves no one will notice. If ten times ten grains of sand are washed away by the waves still no one will notice. Even when ten times ten times ten grains of sand are washed away by a single wave no one will notice. Only when the beach has washed away will it be noticed the grain of sand has been washed away.

My rant is no more than a grain of sand – insignificant in the greater scheme of things.
If I am an optimist I may aspire to be the grain of sand that gets into a machine and becomes a major irritant.