Author: bravo22c

Or, rather, in this more refined place, debate.

A piece in the Times today notes that our schoolboy foreign secretary is waxing wroth over the supposed use of forged British Passports by Israel’s Mossad. (Nothing about the proven use of forged British Passports by criminal wannabe terrorists, it is noted.) ‘Supposed,’ because there is as yet not one shred of evidence linking the Israeli foreign intelligence service to the attack in Dubai. (And, please, not a word about the fact that the passports were all forged documents of people with British citizenship living in Israel. For the sum of 250 Euros and the price of a First Class air ticket and two or three nights in a 4 star hotel – I’m not greedy – in Bucharest or Sofia, I can get you a passport in the name of a British Citizen living just about anywhere in the World you like.) Anyhoo, all that aside, there’s more. And what might that be? ….

Inspired by Pseu’s reminiscence on her training days, a little anecdote from my Army days. I have three good friends from those long-ago days. Of course, I have many friends from my time with the colours, but, by good friends, I mean the people who, if they say, “I need…,” I would answer, “OK,” before asking, “What?”

Whenever we three meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain, we always go out to eat, and the venue must be outside. Why? Like to know?

I wrote this some time ago for MyT. I have seen nothing since to suggest a change of view.

1. The decision to permit unrestricted immigration of low-skilled, poorly educated immigrants from a culture that is entirely different from our own, sharing none, or almost none of the values of 20th century western society and with no forethought or preparation as to how these people were to be integrated into UK life was a huge mistake. Read on if you’re interested

There was a comment on MyT which contained this:

>….living in a predominantly Muslim town …<

In England?

Is it just me or does anyone else find this statement appaling in the extreme?

There are many ways to commit suicide. The suicide I’m talking about here is of two particular flavours, industrial and economic, though they are, of course, connected. this kind of suicide is definitely not painless

On July 17, 1998, United States District Judge William L. Osteen vacated Chapters 1-6 of and the Appendices to EPA’s Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and other Disorders, EPA/600/6-90/006F (December 1992).

Judge Osteen wrote, “In conducting the ETS Risk Assessment, disregarded information and made findings on selective information; did not disseminate significant epidemiologic information; deviated from its Risk Assessment Guidelines; failed to disclose important findings and reasoning; and left significant questions without answers. EPA’s conduct left substantial holes in the administrative record. While so doing, produced limited evidence, then claimed the weight of the Agency’s research evidence demonstrated ETS causes cancer.” – More>

….of the things crap epidemiology – and lightweight, grant-farming epidemiologists aided and abetted by the media which publishes scare stories written by liberal arts graduates who would not recognise a Risk Ratio if it leapt up and gave them a Liverpool Kiss – say give you cancer. Read the List

There has been some discussion, both here and on MyT, about ex-soldiers who are unable, for whatever reason, to re-settle into civilian life. Here is an organisation trying to help some of them. Please take a moment to sign this petition:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/HelpSOTS/#detail

With the ever growing number of forgotten ex service personnel whose lives have been affected by homelessness it is time for the government to step in and help. We all think they deserve better after going through the traumatic experience of war.

The Soldiers Off The Street Organisation have come up with one solution with the following: Read about the potential solution

I was sitting in the smoking lounge this morning, drinking my first coffee of the day – I’m actually a tea-drinker, but that is another story – and chatting to a few of the company’s drivers.  One of my team, a recently graduated management trainee, was also in the lounge with some other colleagues.  She came to my office with a query a little while after we had finished our coffee break and, in conversation, asked me why I had chosen to sit with ‘those drivers,’ rather than her and the others of the team;  ‘They speak such awful Russian, you are learning bad words.’ Read more

I felt this little post was needed to explain a point in my next post. My current contract is with a tobacco  company. Shock. Horror. In the headquarters, where I have my office, there are lounges on each floor where employees can go, drink coffee, socialise and do the business that often gets done better informally than in the formal business process. On each floor, one lounge is a smoking lounge and one is non-smoking. Employees therefore have the choice and do choose, without any interference from authority, whether to drink their coffee with smokers, or without.

As a matter of interest, the proportion of smokers and non-smokers in the company reflects the proportion in the general population – I have found this to be generally the case in all of the places I have worked with the company, E/W Europe, the States, S. America and Asia.

I have no objection to bans on smoking where appropriate – I do not smoke in my own house, for example – what I do object to is the compulsory nature of blanket bans on smoking in places which you can choose to enter, or not – pubs, clubs, restaurants and so forth. (I do not include public buildings or public transport.) The community I work in shows that it is quite possible, and reasonable, for people to make their own choices without the imposition of centralised controls and the bureaucracy of rules, regulations and intrusive inspectorates that such controls entail.