Voices From The Past

Sometimes the oddest things catch my imagination, in this case it was a sort of conversation from the past.

 James Tappern plays one of the Trumpets 

Tutankhamen's Trumpets.mp3

The first to catch my attention was the BBC replaying a 1939 recording, made with the two trumpets found in Tutankhamen's tomb by Howard Carter. They had got a British soldier, James Tappern, to play them, and the sound is a haunting echo of a music that has not been heard for over 3,000 years!

Learning From Custer?

How do you know the Gaddafi's regime is doomed? Because we are sending in the Apaches!!

Just ask General Custer what happens next .... okay that was the Cheyenne, but 'an Injuns an Injun' as the saying goes .... the effects the same.

Oh hang on, they meant the other Apaches ....

.... Oh well, the effects still the same.

Broken Britain ... Another Tale

Sharon Shoesmith, head of social services at  Haringey Council when "Baby P" was killed, and the woman who was paid the big money to have the buck stop on her desk, has just won a court appeal against getting sacked .... the reasons? The court thought the sacking "procedurally unfair", not morally or ethically, just some i's not dotted, or t's crossed.

As a consequence of this court decision, Ms Shoesmith described herself as "thrilled" .... not ashamed, just "thrilled" ... of course it means that the taxpayers will be left to pay her huge amounts of 'compensation' (She has claimed that she is entitled to her full salary and pension from Haringey up to the present day .... £133,000 pa x 3.5 = £465,500.00), for her being sacked while in charge of a system that allowed a child, that should have been protected by her employees, to be brutally and systematically beaten to death (he had over 50 injuries when he died in 2007).

Haringey are set to appeal against this, but when you take into the account of the lawyers, legal aid, and court time already taken up by her endless round of appeals to tribunals, and you can see that already, her case has probably cost more than the back 'salary and pension' that she wants .... so what is the point of employment laws when it always ends up in court until the claimant 'wins' (as they always seem to do in the end).

You can see why most employers simply 'pay up' even when they are faced with these often frivolous fishing' claims ... its totally wrong, and there are figures which suggest that some 'employees' make repeated claims from every employer they are sacked from. The employment laws, which were meant well, has been subverted by frequent challenges by lawyers and now work against society, and not for it.

This story tells you everything that's wrong with a society, where the laws are set by and controlled by the same lawyers who always make money in these cases.

Only Justice Should Be Blind

The use of injunctions and super injunctions, to allow very rich footballers and celebrities to have a measure of legal protection not available to me or you is very wrong .... its a law being created on the fly by lawyers and judges, and without the say of the UK Parliament. It's actually trying to gag the right to 'Free Speech', in favour of the 'right to a private life'.

This whole ridiculous situation, all stems from the UK's judiciary and legal fraternity, interpreting a provision of the "Human Rights Act" in a perverse manner, one which has once again turned it into nothing more than a charter for terrorists, criminals, illegal immigrants, and now, very rich men who can't keep their trouser zippers up, but want to be able to get away with this infidelity by hiding it from their wives, partners and their children. However if you are caught having an affair, there is no particular protection against the consequences of your actions ... well not unless you have upwards of £50k to spend on lawyers who can 'make it so'. So instead of a storm in chip paper wrapper, we have a fundamental challenge to the UK's (and Europe's) commitment to free speech, which may have implications for everyone.

The current English Law prevents me from even mentioning the names of the two footballers (even though I know one for sure, and the other by speculation), who are currently trying to hide their infidelities behind its highly paid skirts ... but in Scotland, I could now do so, as they are in the public record ....there is also a very thinly disguised picture of one of the footballers on the front of the Sunday Herald newspaper, which anyone with even an once of web savvy could find on Google. He and one of the actors concerned in an earlier injunction, were effectively both outed a week or so ago in an English Newspaper comment article, which ostensibly commented on the actors latest facebook contents, and then referred to the footballer, as a model of the family life the actor should be following .... this farce has been played out across the press, with enough oblique or cryptic clues, for anyone with half an interest to be able to interpret.

There is a simple but fundamental solution ... we must enshrine as absolute, the 'Right To Free Speech' in the UK, in the same manner as in the US ... Nothing else will stop the lawyers from trying to gag first the press, then the Internet, and eventually all of us, to the favour only of 'politicians, celebs, and sportsmen', but to the permanent detriment of an 'open government and society'. We don't need lip service paid to free speech, we need a robust and positive defence .... David Cameron can be the Prime Minister to free us from the threat of the tyranny of the gag, or be the Prime Minister who stands by and sees this 'freedom' extinguished.

In the UK, only justice should be blind .... we the British public shouldn't be.

Post Script: A few hours after I posted this, a Liberal Member of Parliament publicly named one of the footballers - only a few million people knew this name, but, it was about time that the issue was brought into the public sphere so that we can talk about the 'privacy laws' that have been brought in by the back door in the UK. NB:  In more of a joke, The 'Super Injunction' remains in place.

Photo Editing .....

I have been reading XPD by thriller writer Len Deighton as my train book .... 

 

XPD Thriller By Len Deighton

 

..... the premise is that in June 1940, Hitler and Churchill met up near the Belgium border to discuss British surrender terms .... the Nazi papers which described the meeting are on the loose, and the British, Soviets, CIA and a German group are all after them for different reasons.