My usual method of writing this article is to put clippings of various news items in a drawer in the kitchen, then pull them out early in the morning before management wakes up.
However, having read all the clippings I saved, everything pales into insignificance against the terrorism in France and elsewhere. How any human being can be brainwashed into thinking that the doctrine of Islamic State has any credence whatsoever, is mind blowing. As someone said the other day, the six most dangerous words in the world are “your reward will be in heaven.” The only positive note, if it can be called positive, is that every single person in every single continent must now realise that we are in world war three.
On matters more parochial, it is interesting to read that the toxic RSPCA has failed over the last 21 months to find a chief executive for the board. Who would want to lead that rabble of hard line animal activists, one of whom has likened livestock farming to the holocaust? What a dog’s dinner this charity has become.
At snooker the other night, myself, two farmers, a retired contactor, a retired vet and a retired car salesman came to the conclusion that there was a fair amount of money to be had in putting up temporary fences to protect newts and other slimy things from civil engineering projects. The amount of plastic fencing that is littering the countryside rather suggests that the population of newts is so great that there is no actual need to protect them. It’s a great shame that our country did not employ a similar amount of energy in protecting our nation’s borders. The amount of low life and potential terrorists that have wandered through our totally inadequate border control does not bear thinking about.
It is difficult to mention low life without including that species which worms itself to the top of the pile in civic duty. It seems they are able to write their own contracts of employment, which of course includes their redundancy package, the contents of which seem much more attractive than trying to win the lottery. Here we are, cutting to the bone the money available to provide front line services, yet the government has not got the wit or the balls to sort out the greedy nondescripts who are allegedly in charge. Further, unwarranted expense is incurred by the various watchdogs whose remit is to improve performance.
Take the Care Quality Commission which inspect NHS hospitals. Recently 118 officials – whose main expertise is to walk around with a clip board and look important – cost the tax payer £81,000 in hotel bills alone when inspecting a single NHS trust. Small wonder the junior doctors are up in arms.
OFSTED is another prime example, with failed teachers and those who have never taught being employed to tell others how to improve schools’ results. These so called experts are trucked in from all over the country to inspect an individual school and consequently rack up enormous bills for hotels, restaurants and travel, none of which are less than five star. It is ridiculous. Management – herself a retired teacher – tells me that in the good old days when teachers were respected, Her Majesty’s inspectors, who all lived in the locality, did the job quite successfully. They knew the heads, they knew the teachers and more importantly they knew the background which the pupils came from. Why is it that every branch of the civil service is totally incapable of doing anything in the most cost effective way? The answer is that the money being spent is not theirs and it is perceived to be sensible to keep dim wits off the dole, most of whom could not hack it in the private sector.
We recently acquired two six month old male kittens with enormous paraphernalia at the rear end and subsequently we had them orchestrated at great expense (our local pig farmer used to do it for nothing). On picking them up the vet told us to keep an eye on them for 24 hours as they would be slowly recovering from the anaesthetic. Well, having let them out of the cat basket only five hours after the operation, they were seen fizzing round the stable and you would have thought they had been on full fat Coca-Cola for a week. The result must have been a heavy load off their minds! Our new cats are named Mardy and Largarine after those two well known cooking fats.
PS: The Tory party promised before they were elected, to cut down on bureaucracy. Mid term report: failing miserably.
