It’s a shame that the Payne family have had to go through this farcical process just to see Roy Whitings term reduced by 10 years, following his appeal against the 50-year “tariff” applied by the then Home Secretary David Blunkett in 2002.

Whiting, currently 51, will be 82 before he is eligible for parole. This assumes that he reaches that age.

Shouldn’t life mean life ?

English rules tightened for immigrant partners

Surely it was an obvious requirement that anyone settling in the UK must be able to speak english. Am I the only one who believes this.

For all types of immigration the requirements should be …..

• True asylum seekers
  Might not meet that condition initially but it should be a requirement that they attend classes and reach an agreed minimum standard within, lets say, 12 months.
• General Immigrants (not tourists)
  Must have a minimum level of spoken english
  Must have a minimum level of written english
  Failure to meet either requirement should result in their application, to reside in the UK, being rejected. Let them re apply when they can demonstrate the required level has been attained.

Am I being too harsh. I don’t think so. I would expect nothing less from any country that I planned to settle in. Why would you plan to live in a foreign country unless you plan to integrate into their culture. Isn’t that why you went there in the first place, because it was foreign ?

There is nothing worse that the expat communities in Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal etc.. Everywhere you see signs declaring English Sunday Lunch, English Breakfast, English Pubs and so on. Then the “new locals” wonder why they are seeing a rise in “anti Brit” crimes in their community.

Seems just like England.

Congratulations to the British government for waking up…….. you are only 50 years too late.

Sarah Payne Murderer Awaits Parole Ruling

Roy Whiting must never get parole. What possible grounds are there to release such a person back into the public domain.

Sarah had her life snuffed out. She has no future. Her family have a lifetime of living with the knowledge of  what this animal did.

Therefore, if we are not to have the death penalty, anyone who takes a life should live there lives under lock and key.

“The Government has finally scrapped Labour’s “pay as you throw” plans for a bin tax”

Have you ever heard of anything that was so patently wrong ?

We the consumer were going to be taxed on the amount of rubbish that we throw into our bins.  The then labour government and the local authorities seem to spend so much time looking at different ways to squeeze more money out of the consumer.

Why is that ?

It couldn’t be because we are an easy target, we don’t have the money to fight back and we don’t have the ear of the politicians.

Why don’t they, the government and the powers that be, expend the same amount of effort and create some legislation to force the onus back onto the source of all this waste. By that I mean the manufacturers, the supermarkets, the post office and leaflet distributors.

My wife and I are both over 50, still working, cook every day etc. etc. We are both of an age and from the sort of background where we were taught not to waste food or pretty much anything. Our local authority provide two wheelie bins for waste disposal. One for general household waste, the other for recyclable items. The binnies empty each bin on alternate weeks.

So which bin is typically full ? The recycling bin of course. The general household waste bin is usually no more than a third full and that’s what makes me so angry. Whilst I can control what goes into the household waste I don’t have much control over what goes into my recycling bin because it is the manufacturers, the supermarkets, the post office and leaflet distributors that pretty much determine the content of that bin.

• The supermarkets, it seems to me, package their products for appearance. Practicality does not come into the equation.For instance, why do the supermarkets insist on packaging 6 sausages in a plastic tray which is then wrapped or sealed with a clear plastic film. All of this is then inserted into a cardboard sleeve. How about they drop use of the cardboard sleeve ?  It’s a small step but it would be one less item that I have to carry home and dispose of.  Yes I could go to the butchery department and they would put my 6 sausages into a plastic bag with a paper label stuck on the outside. Much more environmentally friendly. However, not all the varieties of sausage available pre-packed are available there.
• How about tins of  baked beans and tomatoes when bought in multiples or 4 or 6. These are variously supplied with plastic shrink-wrap, plastic rings or cardboard sleeves.Why not just do the price discount at the till and still supply the tins separately ? The technology is certainly thereMind you, watch out, as a multi-pack can be something of a con. A 4 tin multi-pack is not always cheaper than 4 singly priced tins.
• Why do I get so much junk through my letter box ?
  The postman delivers leaflets for double glazing, insurance, pizza and lord knows what else alongside the legitimate mail. This negates all the trouble I’ve gone to opting to have all my utility bills delivered by e-mail.  At least with e-mail I can turn on the spam filters and reduce the amount of junk I receive.Even with the telephone there is the Telephone Preference Service to prevent cold calling although this is largely ignored by the overseas callers that still come through occasionally

  Where is the spam filter equivalent for the postman ?

  And what happens to all the leaflets that he has delivered….straight into my recycling bin. Well not quite straight there…. I do have to carry them from the letterbox to the wheelie bin. Perhaps I should place the bin next to my letter box.

• Any time you buy a magazine they are filled with junk leaflets & scratch cards. I thought by subscribing to my favourite motoring magazine I would avoid all the crap. But no, there it all was secreted inside the shrink-wrap just waiting to drop on my carpet.
• Pretty much on a bi-weekly basis the local kebab, southern fried chicken and pizza emporiums drop me their latest menus. And can anyone explain why one of our local fast food shops, that supplies all of the food variants previously mentioned, pretends to be three different shops and supplies three different menus but all with the same address and telephone numbers. But the menus are delivered on different days ???

If the government would pass legislation making it illegal to overpack and prosecute the companies that break the rules then we would have less waste going into the wheelie bins. Less waste to recycle.

If the government would pass legislation  making it illegal to post unsolicited leaflets through my letterbox there would be less waste going into the wheelie bins. Less waste to recycle.

If the Post Office would provide some mechanism that allowed me to opt out of receiving the junk mail they currently insist on delivering through my letterbox there would be less waste going into the wheelie bins. Less waste to recycle.

If they could just achieve just one of the above it would save oodles of money and make me feel a whole lot better.

Already, following the Derrick Bird shooting spree in Cumbria, there have been calls for toughening of the gun laws in this country. This is the typical knee jerk reaction that we saw after Hungerford and Dunblane.

I ask you how would that help ? How would tougher laws have helped Derrick Birds victims ?  Derrick Bird had, apparently,  held a gun license for over 20 years with no signs that he was anything other than a law-abiding citizen. No indications that he was a risk.

There have been mass killings or attacks in the past where either guns or knives have been used and we have had legislation for years.

The UK knife legislation makes it illegal to carry certain types of knife or knives with blades over a certain size. That doesn’t stop the yobs from wandering our streets carrying everything from flick knives thru hunting knives to samurai swords. It didn’t stop a machete wielding individual from attacking children in a Wolverhampton school.

There will always be bad people out there who will circumvent all the legal controls to get what they want. And then there are the folks who just explode into bad actions as a result of drugs, alcohol, mental or anger issues.

You cannot legislate for spontaneous events which, so far, the events in Cumbria appear to have been.

Ever since the awful shootings that took place in Cumbria this week there have been dissenting voices who have some how made this out to be the fault of the police. i.e. Where were the police ?, Why didn’t the police do something ? and so on. In my opinion there is no way that the police could have stopped this from happening.

Derrick Bird was not walking around with a label stating “I am a homicidal maniac”. Even after he had shot his first victim, although the police would have been called, nobody knew he was just starting out on a killing spree. I’m sure that the police may have began to wonder, when the 2nd call was received, but they still wouldn’t have known how far this was going to go.

Some bright sparks have asked why the police didn’t implement road blocks to prevent Bird from getting to his later victims. How would they do that in an area criss crossed with hundreds of country lanes ? It is only with the power of hindsight and the news media produced maps that one can see the direction Bird was travelling.  Despite what we are shown on programs such as “24” the police can’t just call for satellites to be repositioned so that the perp can be intercepted. Lets recognise also that they are human beings just like you and me. They may have special training but that doesn’t turn them into super beings. We are light years away from having a force comprised of “robocops”. At the time all the police could do was take in the reports of where he had been. Also, we now know that there are some 30 crime scenes. How would any police force have coped with that many incidents even spread as they were over three hours ?

I for one am sick to death of people giving the police a hard time. Its time they were given the recognition they deserve.