UK Railways After Deregulation

Lately I have been using what is laughably called the 'public transport system' to go to work. By luck, the rolling stock on the company I mainly use (Trans Pennine Express), is reasonably new, and therefore, ignoring the cancellations, lateness, and other ills that plague the journey to Manchester and back again, I am at least largely spared the horrors of the state of the 'cattle trucks' that other companies pass off as passenger carriages.

However on Saturday whilst travelling to Edinburgh (Scotland), I was forced to use a Northern Rail train for part of the journey. Now I have been forced to get on their mix'n'match old rolling stock before, and suffered along with all the others in being squashed in to seats with inadequate leg room, and dirty surroundings. But this train on Saturday was a new low even for this particular service.

It was partially vandalised, and there was chewing gum on the seat covers, the internal doors were all jammed open, and the windows were either jammed open, or jammed closed. I was so taken aback, that I took some pictures, just from the one seat, I was faced with dirt, breakages and vandalism.

We are in the 21st century, but in the UK the public transport system is like some post apocalyptic nightmare, with stock that is up to forty years old, and broken. Its a national disgrace that we can pump 9.8 billion pounds into Olympics, or countless billions propping up a bank, but can't sort out and modernise our railway system .....

Here as illustration that every word is true are a few pictures ...... they speak far more eloquently than anything I can say ......

Vandalised Seats and broken storage racks .........

Dirty walls and chewing gum on the seats

USA...... Habla Usted Español Signor?

Well something of a Bombshell on the demographic front today .......

US Population Predictions

 

...... White America is being replaced as the dominant group in the US, by a combination of Hispanics, Asians and Blacks!

Olympic non events

Today came the shock news that a swimmer, Michael Phelps, has won every, I repeat every race they have entered, and mostly in new world records to boot, and now has an all time record 'zillion' gold medals, making him/her the greatest Olympian in all time ..... well since the last Olympics swimming.

It appears that every few years there is a Mark Spitz or Ian Thorpe or .... well the list goes on, and it occurs to me that the reason for this, is because there is no longer any difference between the 50 metre freestyle, and the 1500 metre freestyle, so the guy who is fast at one, can be fast at them all, which is why one good swimmer can win everything they enter.

Maybe its time to really cut back on the distances on offer e.g. 100m, 400m and 1500m only?

There is one other area of the Olympics where golds are like confetti, and that is Gymnastics, where every thing from prancing about with a stick and ribbon, to crashing headlong into a wooden 'horse', qualifies as an Olympic sport. The worst of this is that its "judged" subjectively i.e. the 'judges' vote for the Russian, or the US etc etc based upon who knows what criteria, with no way for the layman to know who is really the best.

The only way to sort out the Gymnastics, is to only have one Gold medal awarded after all the little events (that currently get a gold), and then give the Gold to the Gymnast who has the best aggregate points. At least that removes the fluke element that one event can currently have, and if you stopped the five leading nations from the last Olympics having a judge at the current Olympics, a lot of the politics is removed as well.

The whole Olympic list of events is littered with Gold Medals that are not true sporting tests, and often favour feats of winning multiple medals that are not feasible in proper events.

I cite as examples of this

Funny Sports

• LARISSA LATYNINA - Gymnast (Nine golds out of 18 Olympic Medals)
• NADIA COMANECI - Gymnast (Five golds out of 9 Olympic Medals )
• MARK SPITZ - Swimmer (Nine golds out of 11 Olympic Medals)

Real Sports

• Sir Steven Redgrave - Rowing (Five golds out of 5 Olympic games and 6 Olympic Medals)
• Al Oerter - Discus (Four golds out of 4 Olympic games )

Redgrave and Oerter both were true Olympians, competing in true and fair competition, for the only Gold available to the best in the world, not for multiple golds in the same events.

When Non Democrats show their colours

Two sets of stories, one theme, struck me this week.

In South Africa supporters of Jacob Zuma have threatened unrest if he is jailed for corruption ... they are not prepared to accept the law when they don't like it, nor to accept democratic norms as binding on them if they don't fit their agenda. Similarly President Mbeki has been accused of corruption as well ..... and no one expects the 'rule of law' to cause him any real problems.

Compare and contrast with Israel where Prime Minister Olmert is actively investigated by the Police and this is how the only true democracy in the Middle East or Africa behaves.

And back home in the UK, the followers of the 'Green' movement said that they would 'break the law' to stop a legally approved power station being built. In fact weapon stashes have been found by the police deposited in the nearby woods. The Greens and others deny any connection with them (of course).... but if you get in bed with the devil, your can't complain about the company!

The connection between these two sets of events, is that in both cases, the democratic "Rule of Law" is just ignored by groups who feel that their opinion is the only one that 'is above the law'.

It comes as no real surprise that supporters of an arrogant African politician, are proved to be 'anti-democrats' and prepared to ignore the 'rule of law', but for a main stream political party, such as the 'Greens', to be exposed as supporting actions, yet again, where illegal activities are used as 'legitimate tactics', is a disgrace.

Where are the rights of the policemen and women who are scarred and maimed by medieval throwing weapons in this green agenda, or is it like all those little 'trots' in the 1980's, open season on violence against any one who is not 'one of them'?

The 'Greens' are far too often caught in the company of 'Animal liberation Front' supporters, and the rent a mob of unemployed, 'New Age' thugs who accompany all the violence at 'Green' rallies, to be able to continually say 'its not us' or 'its a set up' ........

The fact is that the 'Greens' are the 'moderate middle class' face of a movement, that's basically violence based, with no respect for the 'rule of law' (where it doesn't involve the welfare benefit payments, which many of them require from our 'legally obtained' taxes), and certainly not in 'democratically obtained permissions' such as 'planning permission', which all buildings in the UK require.

This power station will have taken years to get permission, and the 'Greens' will have used the 'legal process' to oppose or slow the permission process down, but when the decision goes against them, they ignore all this process, and proceed to use a mob to try and stop the building, despite the fact that real locals depend upon it for jobs and survival.

Of course plunging Britain into darkness to support green fascism is all part of the plan for many of them, and to make people unemployed is no issue, they can just live on 'welfare' like many of the green mob do.

I repeat again ..... "When you get in bed with the devil, your can't complain about the company!"

I am no longer willing to listen to the Greens, or their supporters, until they totally repudiate all violence (like Gandhi), and accept that if the "Rule of Law" isn't upheld, than only the "law of the jungle" is left.

South Ossetia, Kosovos bastard child

The news of fighting between, Georgia, Russia and Ossetian nationalists has broken very quickly this week, and most of the world seems surprised ....

South Ossetia

but in fact British Intelligence apparently predicted the likelihood of a "European" war in the Caucuses this year.