
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Die Katze schnarcht auf der Bettdecke .....

Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Late home from London
Better things tomorrow.
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Inherently good?
Again and again I find the statement from otherwise (I hope) sane and intelligent people, "that religion is the root of all the major wars in history" and sometimes that is refined as "Christianity is responsible for ..." Invariably when this is challenged one is confronted by the "evil crusades" or "the Spanish Inquisition" or "the Catholic wars of domination" or "the suppression of the Inca" and even with the "troubles" in Northern Ireland and English Civil War and Cromwell's excesses. Invariably one is told that "religious conflict" has killed "millions", figures difficult to support or refute since there are in fact very few records of the numbers actually killed or dying in any of these conflicts - and by most accounts, the bad hygiene practices of most crusaders carried off more of them than of their supposed victims. The fact is that while many have died in the name of religion, when this is looked at in the context of the historical timeline, more Christians died under the Roman Emperor's persecutions in the first two or three centuries of the Christian era than in any one given period since. Equally the dead supposedly piled up around the "Crusades" (Read any conflict between Christian and non-Christian worlds in the minds of the Atheist/Humanist lobby) include many who died of diseases introduced by freebooters along for the ride and no more Christian than any good atheist would claim to be.
OK, so there is something in these arguments, but I find no mention among them of the Islamic wars of conquest, nor of the invasions of the Mongols under Genghis Khan, famously atheist. Nor do I find any reference to the fact that, while religious issues might have been promoted as a propaganda front to whip up support, most of these wars were really about grabbing power - a particularly nasty human trait - or holding onto it. And I would hardly label any of the people who promoted and led them as "Christian" or even as "Muslim".
Then one arrives in the "Age of Enlightenment" in the 18th Century and runs up against the French Revolution. Notably there, the many thousands who died at the blade of Madam Guillotine (Including its inventor) were nominally at least Catholic and almost all of the Revolutionary Council were Atheist/Humanist. A blip in the history? Or something else coming to the fore? Similarly in the Napoleonic period, religion was certainly not what drove Napoleon to subjugate as much of Europe as he could, to deface churches and "secularise" everything he could. But then, his victims - numbered in hundreds of thousands - were merely "making way for the newer enlightened and godless society that was the Revolutionary "vision". Nor can the European Wars of the 19th Century be laid at the door of "Religion" or even of Christianity. These were a straightforward power grab exercise even though elements of the churches on all sides supported them. However, any reading of the Gospels soon dispels any thought that "God" or any belief in a Divine Spirit lay at the root of them. Likewise the land grabs that saw millions of Jews and peasants displaced from towns and villages across Russia as the aristocracy made a grab for land and power. The Pogroms of the Russian Tsarist State were justified by the publication of that most evil of all "enlightened" tracts, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" a work of pure fiction assembled by the Tsarist Secret Police and now regarded as "truth" by all anti-Jewish societies - including most atheists I have encountered.
Then we hit the 20th Century and find the victim count rises swiftly into the millions as war becomes the great game played by "enlightened" atheist dictators. There was no "religious" element to the declaration of the Great War, it was about land and power. Likewise the Second, yet now, the Atheist leader of Germany and his atheist henchmen declared a campaign of ethnic cleansing that beggars belief - yet is again denied by many now punting films like "The God Movie". Nor was Hitler alone in this. From 1923 to his death in 1951, Uncle Joe Stalin, beloved of the Left and Intelligentsia in the UK for his "Workers Paradise" calmly supervised the murder of thirty million of his own countrymen, Polish, German, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Romanian, Georgian and other Central and Eastern Europeans. And Britain's atheist Labour Party under Attlee colluded in the murder of 43,000 Cossacks they returned to the USSR knowing full well what Stalin intended. But let's not stop there, for we must not forget Pol Pot with six or so million of his countrymen to his "enlightened" credit and the unknown score for ho Chi Min and Kim Il Jong, Chairman Mao and our old pal Sadam Hussein (Who admittedly knew - like Joe Stalin - when and how to play the "religious" card to advantage) none of whom could ever be called "religious" and all of whom at one time or another declared themselves "atheist".
So what does the movie actually tell us about Jesus? Not a lot really, it draws hugely on the writings of the Gnostic branch of Christianity and the "library" of Arian Gnostic literature recently rediscovered in Egypt. It makes great use of our old friend Richard Dawkins who may be a great biologist but who patently knows nothing whatever about theology. It ignores or dismisses every document, book, historic fact and any evidence that supports our faith and concentrates on all the negatives it can find.
I think this is a film which tells us very little about Christ, but a great deal about those who do not wish to believe and who think that by destroying the faith of others they can somehow "elevate" society. As I look around me at the results of their "secular" society with no moral compass, no hope of higher things or guidance from anything other than "the inner being of human goodness" I do not think I see any hope for our society or our future. The greatest wars and the worst examples of "ethnic cleansing", the greatest slaughtering of innocents and the greatest enslavers of other humans have, to a man, been Atheists and their guides and henchmen frequently were Humanists.
Mankind inherently good? Mankind needing no "superstitious mythology"? Just take a look at what we do without it. Then go figure for yourself which is the greater evil.
Monday, 27 April 2009
Rain on the roof?


Sunday, 26 April 2009
The main structure is all oak beams and the engineering is quite remarkable. This roof had to span over a hundred feet - a ship like Victory is 90 feet in the beam - and in length cover the full overall length of the largest ship being built within it's confines. And it had to do it without any internal props or supporting columns. The picture was taken on the mezzanine floor and shows the length of the hall, but not the depth - the mezzanine is around fifty feet above the main floor.
Ships built in the age when this was created (Mid-18th Century!) would have been "framed out" and then the bare skeleton allowed to stand unplanked over a winter season to "season" the frame and allow the joints to settle and "marry" properly. These frames were held together and in place using wooden pegs called "trenails" and after seasoning a Master Shipwright would have supervised his team of men to go round the ship and drive all the trenails fully home before planking started on the hull. The building ways were covered to prevent the rain, snow and damp from allowing fungus or rot to get into the timbers and, even once launched, the ship might have a "roof" built over her upper decks to keep them dry while the internal fitting out was done.
The methods may have been crude and the materials simple - but these fellows knew their trade.
Saturday, 25 April 2009
All good things .....




Friday, 24 April 2009
This principle was recognised in the 17th Century by Louis XIV's Minister of Finance who invented the "Laissez faire" approach to economic management. He felt that by liberalising fiscal policy and reducing tax he encouraged the attraction of wealth by enabling the entrepeneurs to flourish. He was right, and France has never been wealthier than under his management. A pity his successors tried to do what Labour always do - and steal more money from the hardworking to pay for ideological folly.
Time will, I think judge this budget, and I'm pretty certain it will be a damning judgement. I suspect that this budget will introduce a terminal decline in this nation's fortunes as a world centre for trade, finance and investment. The stupidity and dishonesty of the tax system here is becoming all too apparent - even the lowest paid are now paying over 40% of their income in direct and stealth taxes directly too the government. What do we get in return?
Not a lot, most of it pays fat cat Civil Servants to do as little as possible and prevent anyone actually getting anything like the services they are supposed to provide. And don't forget that under Labour the Civil Service has grown by a full 5th of its size. That is where your and my money is going - into worthless and pointless jobs for Labour supporters who are not providing the services they are supposed too because they are too busy shuffling pointless forms and setting equally pointless "targets" for each other.
Time to throw the lot into the sea. (Or the Thames - except that would render it unusable for far to long..... )
Thursday, 23 April 2009
St George for England!

It's St George's Day, England's national day and all around our town the St George's Cross is on display to mark it. What a pity our political leaders have spent the last ten years in particular and the last sixty odd in general denigrating and trying to destroy all vestige of the concept of being "English". Our Foreign Secretary, the aptly named Jack Straw, is even on record as saying there is "no such thing as an 'English' nation". Try saying something of the sort in any other European Nation or in Scotland Ireland or Wales and you'd very likely be torn apart by the public if not the media. Your political career would certainly be finished for good - but not in a political climate where the "victim" culture has such firm roots.
For far too long we "English" (And though I am foreign born all my roots are in England or Northern Ireland!) have allowed the Labour Party to get away with their promotion of the "English" as oppressors of their constituencies in Scotland, Wales and the North East. We have allowed their poodles in academia and the press/media to present the Scots, the Welsh (and even the Cornish now) as being the downtrodden minorities the "English" have discriminated against, stripped of their nationhood or shipped abroad. Certainly the "Plantation" of Ireland by the Normans, then the Elizabethans (On a much smaller scale than the Norman one) and finally the Stuarts who quite literally seized almost the whole of the North of Ireland (Including lands already purchased or awarded to "English" plantationers from the previous reign) and handed it out to their Scottish supporters. If anyone has been "downtrodden" since the Stuart reign it seems to have been the English and now the propaganda of the literary giants of the 19th Century has become the "Fact" rather than the fiction it was, replacing reality and truth with the much more exciting versions of events that the fiction author can create. Sir Walter Scot certainly based his work on historic events, though his portrayals of his "heroes" is usually far more romantic and very wide of the facts.
Perhaps it is time, on this St George's Day, as we once more contemplate a government hell bent on "tax and spend" regardless of the impact on the taxpayers, that is dominated by Scottish and Welsh MP's whose constituents are not affected by the measures they enact in Westminster, just who the "downtrodden" people of this United Kingdom are. Scotland has its own Parliament, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own Assemblies. Their affairs are decided by people elected by them in their own legislature. Westminster has become therefore an anachronism. It claims to be the "Parliament of the United Kingdom" yet, for the most part, its writ runs only to England and sometimes Wales. Labour's majority is made up of MPs elected in Scotland and Wales who have no constituency in England, yet they vote and rule in England and on English matters. Surely it is time this was addressed? Surely it is time to acknowledge that the United Kingdom exists only as an administrative exercise and Westminster is redundant. As the Treaty of Lisbon, aka The European Constitution, makes abundantly clear, the real power is vested in the Commission in Brussels and the Parliament in Strasbourg - not in Westminster.
So, the Monk's message for St George's Day to Mr Brown and his cohorts from North of the border and west of the Wye. Pack your bags and go home, the English have put up with you and your fictions for more than long enough. You do not represent us, you were not elected by us and you have sold our sovereignty to your Socialist pals in Brussels.
St George for England!
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Historic Lifeboat Display
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Diving deep ....
Monday, 20 April 2009
A lovely morning...
As soon as Mausi had knelt down by the water to take the photographs the ducks came to bid her a 'Very good morning!'.


Mausi just hopes this weather holds on for a bit longer....
Sunday, 19 April 2009
Reversed currents .....
It wanted only a very brief check to tell us that it was running backwards. A swift check on the Tuba Blower revealed it was doing the same .......
Now this may seem strange, but in fact the type of fan used for this will actually "blow" air whichever way it runs, but it is much less efficient in one direction than in the other. Also, with the motor running backwards it isn't being cooled properly so there is a potential for overheating. Now, if two of the motors are running backwards, that tells us that all four are doing it, which means that at least one of the phases in the three phase supply has been reversed! As it is only the organ blower motors that run off the Three Phase supply (415v/45 amp) - everything else is single phase 240v/15 amp - we hope that it is ONLY the blower motors that have been affected. It still means that the Electricity supplier will have to get his team back here PDQ to fix this or face a large bill for any damage to the organs.
Now, a brief explanation is probably due as to why the organ will still run with the reversed phase. First, even if the blower is running at half its normal efficiency the instrument will still get sufficient pressure to play because all the blower does is inflate a "bellows" which is what gives the pressure and the stbility of the wind supply. What would become obvious is if there was a sustained crescendo with the biggest pipes and stops pulled because at half efficiency, the blower would not be able to sustain the wind supply required.
More worrying is that these fans are secured to the motor shaft with a large threaded nut. This is normally tightening itself as the motor runs, but with the motor reveresed, it is probably unscrewing itself and could come off the shaft at any moment. If it does, the force will wreck the fan and could do damage to other parts of the instrument.
Watch this space - especially as we have a visiting choir and organist and the Monk is taking tonights Evensong ......
Saturday, 18 April 2009
Chatham visit
Breech-loading 4 inch gun
Muzzle Loading 64 Pdr Rifled gun, one of the gun ports is visible over the breech.
Nordenfeldt Quick Firing Mounting.
The Gannet spent most of her active service in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea suppressing slavery. Here she was engaged in a number of local battles and one of her officers was "murdered" and several of her seaman killed by slavers during raids. The ship took her revenge in due course and many slavers found themselves in irons, their ships sunk and their "cargo" returned to freedom.
Ironically she survives because by the time she returned to the UK after her deployment she was obsolete and was relegated to the role of training ship and then accomodation ship. Finally she was "lent" to the Maritime Society as a School ship becoming the TS Worcester, a role she held until the school closed in 1968. When she was recognised and her value realised, she was preserved and has undergone a lengthy restoration to bring her back to the state she would have been in in her slave patrol days. Still minus her engine and boilers and much of her internal furnishings, she is still well worth the visit.
Happy Birthday
Friday, 17 April 2009
Home at last
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Exploring Chatham
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
Sea, shingle and castles .....
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Dirt sticks .....
There isn't an honest or decent sentiment in the Labour Party and there never has been. My father once described them as "Closet Communists" who tried to disguise their real intention to drag this country into a soviet style "Utopia" by calling them selves "Socialists" - but you don't need to look far to see their real nature. The McBride affair is just the tip of the iceberg. How much more isn't revealed? Gordon Brown's lukewarm response is surely telling - he knows full well that his "advisers" are hard at it with their chums in the Red Top media and the Murdoch controlled broadsheets cooking up the lies and the poison they hope will keep them in power.
Labour is a lie and it is founded on lies. Look at the leadership and the paymasters, all of them from public school and moneyed backgrounds. Where are the actual "workers" in their ranks, there are very very few and most of them in very junior positions. NuLabour/Old Labour makes no difference, their only stock in trade is to engender greed in the idle, envy in those who work for those who have money and position and to perpetuate the mythology of the "victim". In their definition we are all "victims" if we don't share the privileged backgrounds they enjoyed - but have no intention of allowing us to reach.
Dirty tricks is the stock in trade of this party of dishonesty and self-indulgence. Their only mantra is "Tax and Spend" and this shower of worthless parasites, the majority of whom have never done a useful days work in their lives, prove it. The last few years have seen our hard won freedom eroded to the point where they dictate what we may say, what we may think, and what we may do. We have no right of self defence should one of their "deprived" drug-taking, benefit claiming liberators of other peoples possessions decide to attack the rightful owner and we are monitored and filmed everywhere, even in our own homes. Send your PC for repair? Take care, someone at the repair shop will do a "hidden file" search and find all those naughty pictures you've been looking at.
I'd like to see Mister McBride's computer hard drive examined. I suspect the contents of his and every other "adviser" in this shameful Party that governs us would make extremely interesting viewing to the Thought Police. Oh, except that said Thought Police are in the Party's pay .....
Monday, 13 April 2009
Bristol fashion.....
Sunday, 12 April 2009
Happy Easter
Friday, 10 April 2009
Good Friday and beyond
Thursday, 9 April 2009
Changing climate
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
And the answer to yesterday's question ...
For the non-players among us, the top "manual" is the "Solo" and "Apse" organ, the next down is the "Swell Organ", the third is the "Great Organ" and the lowest is the "Choir Organ". Out of the picture is the "Pedal Organ". The "Pistons" visible between the manuals allow the organist to select a particular set of stops which he has pre-selected (The little row of "Programmes" visible above the upper manual in the Right hand corner of the face) which means he can change the register without having to take a hand off the relevant manual to do so.
This is the driving seat for the Mighty Milton which has 4,600 pipes and 64 speaking "stops" for the organist to use. And yes, it does take a maestro to make it perform well.
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
In the works ....
Monday, 6 April 2009
On Holiday at last!
Sunday, 5 April 2009
Palm Sunday
Tonight, instead of Evensong, we have the St Mark Passion, a Cantata by Charles Wood entitled The Passiontide Cantata.
May all my readers have a blessed week of preparation for the great Feast of Easter.
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Thought for the day
The Chief Rabbi used the Passover tradition, where the Jewish gather the family and tell the story of the Exodus - an event 33 centuries old - to their children and grandchildren. Why is it important that they remember such ancient history?
Perhaps most importantly it is that event that defines them as a people, they passed from being a suppressed minority into being a nation that not only has its own history and traditions, but came to be the "chosen" of God. Secondly, as he pointed out, nations that forget or abandon the teaching of their national history, that do not give their children and their children's children that same sense of identity soon cease to exist. He pointed out that British History and perhaps more specifically English History is now taught, if at all, in a derogatory manner, emphasising the worst and denigrating the finest achievements. If that continues, we have no hope of survival, for the tide of history will engulf us in a morass of the mistakes of the past.
His second example was the Great Depression of 1929. Those who lived through it vowed it would "never happen again" and, as long as they were alive it was a promise they managed to keep. But, and this is telling, one of those survivors wrote in 1954 that it could happen again - as soon as his generation was no longer around to recall how it had happened and what had caused it. And now, 80 years on, it has happened again - and for all the same reasons.
Our present UK government suffers from a peculiar form of hubris. They do not believe that there was ever a "great Britain" and they do not believe that there is any purpose in studying history. Both of those doom this nation to oblivion - unless some of us make the effort to keep that history in perspective, keep it alive and, perhaps most importantly, keep alive the lessons that it teaches. If we do not, there are any number of really nasty events that are likely to be repeated.
Friday, 3 April 2009
Strident atheism
All I can say is that tells me that he is afraid of something - perhaps even afraid that his avowed "rationalist atheism" might turn out to be wrong and that nasty indelible baptism may turn out to mean that he winds up in an afterlife he doesn't believe in. What a shame, and what a great shame that those who are so quick to attack faith, don't take the trouble to find out what it is they reject.
I find it fascinating that these attacks are almost exclusively directed at Christian beliefs by a group who seem to be afraid that they are losing the battle to spread their message of unbelief. It is equally interesting to see that they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on Christian Forums and in Christian Chat rooms trying to denigrate the faith of those in these electronic discussions. Visit the BBC Faith Forum and what you find is a small number of truly angry and offensive individuals attacking everyone who dares to challenge their vitriolic attacks on our faith.
It is pointless trying to reason with these people, it simply drives them into an even more offensive frenzy. Considering that most of them will loudly and constantly proclaim that they are being rational and anyone of faith is not, you have to wonder why they get so angry when you try to discuss your point of view. Richard Dawkins is a case in point, he almost froths at the mouth as soon as he is confronted by someone who does believe in the Almighty and His Grace and, if you have the time to waste and read his book, you very rapidly discover that his understanding of Christianity or any other faith is so superficial it is nonexistent.
That much was obvious from the post on the Scifi Forum, the poster (and I note that his comment seems to have been removed by the Moderators) was trying to say that the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his statement that we cannot expect God to rescue us from the folly of destroying our planet's ecosystem, was saying that there is no God. Having actually heard the Archbishop, rather than having read the selective report on it, I can say that is most certainly NOT what he said and nor would he ever imply such a thing. Only someone with a completely closed mind and a lack of any understanding of the manner of God's working in the world could possibly make the conclusion he did.
As I said, I do wonder what it is that drives the atheist adherents to feel that they have to attack the faith of anyone who doesn't share their rather sad view that our existence here is all there is? I can only think it must be the fear that they may be excluded by their own actions and want to make sure everyone else is too. Fortunately for us all - including them - God is far more merciful and just than we can even begin to imagine and they may yet be pleasantly surprised by Him.
Thursday, 2 April 2009
A new Darien Adventure?
It was the recklessness of the Scottish Parliament in the late 17th Century that brought the Scottish economy to its knees and it seems that the Scottish extravagance exercised by our Scottish Labour MP Chancellor and now PM has ruined the UK economy just as surely. The Darien Adventure saw the Scottish Parliament "buy" land in South America from the Spanish. They then sent out shiploads of Scottish peasantry (and a few middle class folk just to govern them) and tried to establish a colony on the Darien coast. The equivalent of buying swampland in Florida today to build your dream home. They compounded this a few years later (After the English had bailed them out and forced through the Act of Union 1707) by throwing even more money into an investment scam that came to be known as "The South Sea Bubble". The bubble burst and scuppered Scottish dreams of buying independence from the Union for three hundred years.
Now they seem to have tried it again, only this time Labour's Scottish MPs and Cabinet are ruling the English and paying the bills in Scotland out of Union taxes, the bulk of which are raised in England. And once more they have been profligate with the money. And once again, the bubble has burst and the economy is in deep trouble, they have borrowed to the hilt, sold off the industries we used to have, cut the armed forces to the bone, reduced the fleet to a skeleton and the RAF to a shadow. Our banks are now in the hands of Civil Servants who couldn't manage their way out of wet paper bags or sold off to the Spanish. (Santander, the Spanish Financial giant has swallowed everything the Treasury hasn't yet managed to ruin.) Our Merchant shipping fleet is no longer British flagged or owned and the few remaining industries are owned by French, German or Japanese corporations. Even the Vauxhall car plant is likely to go as a result of GM's woes in the US and Mister Obama's insistence that GM must cut back and reshape itself. Very little of the UK's commercial activity is now UK owned and even less of our service providers. NPower, the former British Nuclear Power generator is now owned entirely by a German power supplier, the French on SE Power and London Electric and Thames Water and Severn Trent are also owned by European companies.
I have wondered before this whether our present government, the cabinet was, until recently almost exclusively Scottish or Welsh, wasn't running an agenda which was to completely destroy the "English" in revenge for their imagined "victimisation" under the Union. The recklessness of the spending plans they have espoused, even though these often contained elements of double accounting, were simply unsustainable and have led us to a position where the pound has crashed in value and the threat of our foreign owned industries closing down to save the jobs in their own countries is very, very real. Today we have suffered yet another rise in fuel tax - the government hoping that we won't notice in the plethora of stupidity that is the demonstrations against the G20, but we will and we have. As for the morons who want a return to the "Fuel Tax Escalator" all I can say is that there is some swampland owned by the Scots that needs a new bunch of settlers. Oh, and it won't be accompanied by the benefits and handouts you currently enjoy.
Labour's Darien Adventure has brought our economy to its knees, we can only hope that we can save enough of it to bring this nation back to productivity and restore our fortunes. It is time to put an end to the Tax and Spend of the socialist left and restore some common sense. Perhaps we can even persuade Mr Brown to remove himself and all his PC Brigade North of the Border - and invoice his Party for the £400million they shelled out to build a Parliament that now costs several billion to run - and is probably another major cause of the economic woes we face.
As I believe Cromwell told Parliament - "For too long you have disgraced this House. In the Name of God - go!"
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Boys behaving badly ....
Where women were at a disadvantage fifty years ago, young men are increasingly disadvantaged today, particularly, it seems, if they are white and lower middle or working class. Young men and boys are now routinely portrayed on TV as stupid, inept and generally incapable of getting anything right. Girls on the other hand are portrayed as bright, adept and always in control and this theme carries through a range of media. Look at the Harry Potter series, Harry and Ron are always clumsy and obsessed with sport or dodging study while Hermione is always on top of the game, way ahead of Harry or Ron and certainly the brains of the outfit. Yes, Harry or Ron sometimes behave heroically, but generally they are shown in a rather negative light against the brilliance of Hermione.
Studies recently have shown that boys and girls have different learning processes, yet our education system is now geared only toward the system by which girls learn best and placing the boys at an immediate disadvantage. There is a reason truancy is higher among boys than girls and it is, quite frankly, that the education system is designed to demotivate the boys. It is no accident that boys do well in "Boys only" schools, and girls do even better in "Girls only" environs, but this does not fit the current trend to socially engineer a society in which white men are relegated to second class citizens. All too often at present one hears politicians calling for quota systems to be introduced to "redress the balance" and "raise the profile of the under represented", all of which directly impact on young white males. What does this tell the teenager struggling through the feminised Comprehensive (Failure) School where he is unlikely to get the sort of education he needs to rise above the herd and get that boost into university (Assuming if he is in England, that he can afford the fees or find the means to pay back the loan which pays for them.) which may eventually enable him to get a well paid position in a career of his choice.
I recently asked a young man what he intended to take as his A-Levels once he has his GCSE's (He's bright and predicted to get A's and B's for the GCSE's he's taking.) and his response was disturbing. It was simply, "I'm not taking any. What's the point, I won't get a better job with them, all the good jobs go to girls now." How do I persuade him otherwise? On the same day the Chairman of the Local Government Association was demanding that my former profession must be forced to recruit women only until the service reflects 40% women and 5% ethnic minorities. I have nothing against women or any other section of society, but I do have a very strong view of anything that smacks of discrimination, whether dressed up as "positive" or otherwise. The line between "positive" discrimination and "negative" is extremely thin and our present lords and masters are walking a very dangerous line in promoting a policy that our youth see as biased and unfair to anyone white and male.
Then there is a apparent increase in violence practiced by our teenagers. Again our government has disarmed the populace, removed the right of self-defence (It's so tied up in legal niceties its almost impossible to prove that you were defending yourself, a situation not helped by every criminal charged with violent and deadly assault trying to argue that he was "in fear of his life".) that the only people who now routinely carry weapons are the criminals - and the youngsters who have no role models worthy of the name to emulate. Take a look at the most popular video games, almost exclusively gory and violent and then tell me yet again that these have no influence on the mind of the player. In my own youth we played with toy guns, and we knew it was all make believe. None of us would have dreamed of taking out our father's service pistol or rifle and playing with that, we knew what the consequences were likely to be. Now we here of "anger management" counselling for the violent, but this seems to include encouraging the afflicted to play his favourite and frequently truly violent game!
I will say that I am no prude, yet I am now probably going to prove that I am by saying that I find the dress (or lack of it) of many young girls (and I do mean young!) disturbing. Then these same girls complain that the boys are only interested in sex. And the boys find themselves accused of harassing the girls or, worse, of molesting them or even in extreme cases of rape. Yes, I'm getting older, but no self respecting girl would have dreamed of dressing the way so many now do when I was a teenager, for one thing their parents would have banned them from setting foot outside, let alone run off to see the boys like that. So what do we expect our boys to do or think when an attractive girl wears a provocative outfit and then sends such mixed signals? Why are we, and they, surprised when the boys respond inappropriately?
Our boys today frequently have no real role model, no one who sets an exemplar pattern that inspires any boy to follow in that lead. Who are these kids "heroes"? pop stars, most of them drug takers and most of them really socially repugnant. Football stars, many of them with "anger management" problems and some really anti-social attributes. Where do we think the boys get this habit of spitting everywhere and all the time from? On the one hand they are constantly told that discipline at home infringes their "rights" yet we expect them to impose their own "self discipline" without ever having any guidance on what is, and is not, socially acceptable behaviour until they get hauled before a magistrate for the routine slap on the wrist in a family court.
This flows over into the perceived state that a "single parent" home is better than a home with a father in it. Yes, some fathers are bad parents and yes, some marriages should not be perpetrated at all cost, but far too many young mothers seem to think they can do the job better without a father around and many seem to be encouraged into this by the ubiquitous "Social Worker". Fatherhood has been given a very negative image in recent years again creating the mindset among many teenage boys that once they got the girl pregnant they have no further role or place in her life. Many of these do not even know for sure who their own fathers are because they are themselves from a home in which "father" changed regularly according to their mother's latest fling.
This is, as I said at the outset, a very complex issue and political ideology which pursues a "social engineered" society is not helping it at all. In fact it is a major part of the problem. Our young men and boys are being made to feel that they have no place in our future society. They feel they have been sidelined and are cut off from any hope of a meaningful place in that society. They are not given the best educational opportunities because the system has been slewed against them and feel they have no real chance of finding a suitable career and future. So what have they got to lose when they pick up a knife or a gun, deal in drugs or get a girl pregnant. In their eyes nothing and our society will have no future unless this trend is reversed - but it may already be far too late for the present generation.