Day Jar View

First off, let me say that I am no supporter of the BNP. This isn’t about their politics, or even their personnel; it is about democracy and being treated like children.

For all its posturing, and the proclamations of their being the upholders of freedom of speech, the BBC bottled it last night. They gave Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, a national platform on the flagship political debate show Question Time, and then reduced the whole thing to a version of the Jeremy Kyle show, albeit with posher accents.

As I understand it, the point of Question Time, or any other debate show, is to debate the issues of the day. Instead, last night they debated the following: immigration (hardly news), the holocaust (er, news to be sure, but it didn’t happen this week), homosexuality and, erm, that’s it.

It may be that the panel don’t know which questions are going to come up, but I would bet my house that the producers of the show picked questions from the audience that they knew would expose the BNP’s views, rather than simply allowing debate on the issues of the day. And it seemed that the other panel members had been briefed to attack these at any opportunity, however slight.

I think this says more about the so-called tolerance of the British public, and the awful smugness of our liberal media elite: they pretend that they have done the decent thing, and then allow a massacre in the full glare of the studio lights.

Whatever you think of his politics, last night no-one came out of it looking good, and it may just have made people feel something new about the BNP - pity.

Bit of excitement around these parts last night. Or at least I heard there was, as we slept through the whole thing.

Turns out a deadbeat student from around the corner decided to kick the wing mirror of our car last night at about 12ish. Luckily for us, but spectacularly unfortunate and bad for him, our neighbour Helen spotted him doing it and steamed out.

A melee of sorts ensued, with 3 (yes, 3) police cars showing up, and carting her around the side roads in search of the chap in the white t-shirt. Anyway, she spotted him, and he spent the night in clink.

Can’t fault the service: we had 3 calls from various police officers and victim support bods. I said that it been my BMW Touring rather than the crappy Zafira that had got the boot, I might have needed some victim support, but otherwise I was fine.

Thing is, the chances of my getting the cost of a new wing mirror out of him (if needed, not sure if I can repair it yet), are about as likely as the police turning up when you need them. Err, hang on….

On the way in this morning, I saw this van. On the side it said: “Websites from £2.99 per month.”

There’s so many things wrong with this, that I haven’t got the time to go in to them here. Suffice it to say there is one fairly safe bet that you can make about the quality of the work at that price. It will suck.

http://www.robwebsites.com

The Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, has rejected a recommendation by the parole board to release Ronnie Biggs, the Great Train Robber, at the age of 79.

Usually, I would say that when governments delegate authority to a 3rd party body, they should then follow any directives that issue forth from it. I have to say, though, that in the case of Ronnie Biggs it’s a bit less black and white.

First off, I think the fact that the romanticism surrounding the Great Train Robbery; the most expensive robbery at the time,  with the subsequent fleeing of Biggs abroad, evading capture for 40 years, has meant that those involved have been seen almost as heroes - on the run against those still trying to put old men behind bars.

The thing is, they not only got away with a large sum of money, they also assaulted someone that night. So whilst one might forgive the disappearance of all that money into the mists of time, it is harder to accept that Biggs should be let out simply because he is old and frail.

He’s done his time alright - sunning himself in Brazil, whilst the driver, Jack Mills, was never able to work again and died 7 years later. Perhaps now, Biggs should do some real time.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/8129146.stm

At work I often receive CVs, and the quality of the candidates veers wildly between excellent and McJob.

More ofen than not, the written English is pour (sic), and makes me wonder what we are teaching people these days, if this is the best that they can come up with.

As an example, this one winged its digital way into my colleague Graham’s inbox the other day:

“Hello! I’m A.Docio and I have just completed my final year on the BA(Hons) Graphic Design degree at the University of Wolverhampton.I would like to start my working life as a designer in a company and further develop my skills and knowledge there. I’m writing to ask whether you might consider either offering me a job. Please find attached my current CV and in addition you could ask me for a few sample pieces of my design work for your consideration. My aim is print and digital design.

I would be most grateful if you could consider my request. I was enjoying your web because you have very fresh and good works. I’m willing to learn there. My aims could be innovate, because I was travelling to many places and I have curiosity to look advertising and logos everywhere and I think I’m open minded. I love the detail and I’m able to work in my own.

Thank you for your consideration.
Yours sincerely
XXXXXXX”

Incidentally, those aren’t kisses at the end: I’ve blocked out the name, to give them some chance of retaining their dignity.

Needless to say, we didn’t rush to get back in touch.

It could be too good to be true, but Max’s first night was a bit of a breeze to be honest. He went down at 8.30pm, woke at 2am for a feed, slept until 5.30am for another one, and then slept again until 7am when Amelie announced her presence.

If that continues we’ll be well chuffed, but don’t want to count the chickens just yet!

Max William King

Well, today was a big day. It saw the arrival of my 2nd child - a bouncing baby boy, whom we’ve named Max William King. I say bouncing, as he was 8lb 7oz, which, if he’d been allowed to bake another two weeks as nature decrees, he might have ended up nearly 9lb - I think then they might have had to fit a sunroof, rather than just a letterbox!

He looks a lot like his sister did when she arrived, which I suppose is no surprise, given that they have the same parents (I think).

Funny thing was, although today was a BIG day, it also felt like quite a small day: we weren’t that nervous about it, we had everything organised, and the NHS were, again, more than up to the job. So it all felt pretty normal, like maybe going to the dentist (albeit for a MAJOR extraction).

Tomorrow I’m going to take Amelie over to the hospital to meet her new baby brother, and I think that will be when it hits home. She’s been our life for the past 19 months, and we’ve been hers; and yet tomorrow we will introduce someone else equally (if not more so for a time) important than she is - poor kid! What will be going through her head when she sees this thing taking up all Mummy’s time, and being held all day long!

She’s such a character, that I don’t think it will faze her too much - although she might crank up the attention seeking a little bit, just to see if she can get noticed.

Father of two eh? Who’d have thunk it.

Straight off the bat, congratulations to Sean Penn for winning the Oscar for Best Actor the other night. I say winning, but of course we can’t say that any more; we must say the Oscar “went to” him - presumably for fear of implying that the others are all losers.

Well, they are. Or at least they were that night. I’m sure some of them will be again, and some will win something one day, but let’s call a spade a spade.

Apropos that victory (natch) for Milk, and something that happens on a regular basis in my house, I thought I’d bring up the subject of Use By, Best Before and Sell By dates.

Before we go any further, I love my Girlfriend, who is also the Mother of my wonderful Daughter and has another one brewing, as it were. However, there is one aspect of her behaviour which I find brilliantly off the wall and endearing at the same time, and it’s her relationship with the dates printed on the side of everything these days.

For the most part, if a perishable good is even in the same lunar cycle as its Use By date, she will become agitated, and make moves to hide it from me, so that it can then be discarded without my noticing.

However, as we order our shopping online, and I do all the cooking in our house, I know exactly what we’ve got at all times, so her efforts are largely in vain.

Notwithstanding the waste of money, my beef isn’t so much with this particular habit as with the behaviour that she displays alongside it. For example, whilst pouring 2 pints of perfectly drinkable milk down the sink (as she did this morning), she can be happily cutting the mould off the cheddar before making her daily sandwiches.

Whilst chucking out a chicken that’s been deep frozen for 2 months, she can be happily reheating a pie portion from the fridge I made 6 days before.

I don’t try and work out what’s going on in her head - I’ve long since given up on that - but I do wonder about it.

For the past ten years, I’ve had a plant. It’s been in a few offices, and now resides in my house., above the fire. I don’t know what it is - I think it might be an Amaryllis, but don’t quote me - but it is still around, and is the only thing we haven’t managed to kill.

Each year I am consistently amazed by the appearance around this time of green stalks, from a bulb that has all the hallmarks of a dessicated cricket ball. How does it survive? How does it know it’s spring? How on earth can it go without a drink for 4 months when I forget to water it?

Who knows. All I know is that around the same time that the Business minister was busy putting her foot in her mouth about the green shoots appearing in the economy’s flower bed, my plant was busy putting up a few of its own. Here’s to another ten years!

The news that BMW is cutting 850 jobs at its Cowley plant doesn’t come as much of a shock to anyone I wouldn’t have thought. Apart, it seems, to union leaders.

Despite the fact that the past quarter showed a fall of around a third in new car sales, it seems the union dinosaurs can’t help themselves when it comes to slagging off the government, the manufacturer, and anyone else who perhaps ever bought, drove or looked at a Mini.

In most businesses, if people stop buying your product, you have to cut costs. BMW will make less cars, cutting the working week from 7 to 5 days, and therefore need less people to make them. As a business with shareholders, they have a responsibility to them first and foremost; paying workers to sit around idle to avoid the wrath of union leaders is not only a catastrophic business decision, but it is also just plain daft.

The workers that are getting the chop are mainly agency workers I understand, and the unions have branded the decision a “disgrace”, as they accuse BMW of picking them as they are easier to sack as they have no rights, despite the fact that some of them have been employed as agency workers for 5 years or more.

I think it works both ways. They had jobs, often at a higher rate of pay than if they had been officially employed by the company, for around 5 years in a very competitive industry. If they had been promised anything by the unions then that is wrong, but I can’t believe that they expected special treatment at a time when the parking lots at Cowley must be a sea of steel.

I hope they get all the support they need, but to expect to walk into another manufacturing job is not realistic, so they must be prepared to re-skill where necessary. And in future, like the rest of us, be prepared for the worst at the start of each day.