On 23rd December the Health and Safety Minister Lord Freud urged a common sense approach to clearing snow from footpaths and pavements. As we brace ourselves for the first arctic blast of the season, Health and Safety Minister Lord Freud is urging a common sense approach to clearing snow from footpaths and pavements. There are no health and safety regulations that prevent people from clearing snow at their home, their business or at their neighbours’ homes, despite newspaper stories in previous winters to the contrary. Now ministers want to pre-empt the usual health and safety myths ahead of the first snowfall that could prevent people from doing a good deed to help stop others falling and injuring themselves on a path or pavement. Minister for Health and Safety Lord Freud said: “People need to be aware that they will not be reprimanded for doing a good deed by clearing ice and snow. The truth is very simple: you can clear ice and snow from footpaths and pavements but always be careful that you don’t put yourself in danger. “Countless lives have been saved and injuries prevented because of robust health and safety practices. But bogus excuses give real safety laws a bad name and stop people from taking action.”
The Chair of the Health and Safety Executive Judith Hackitt said: “Anyone can clear ice and snow from public spaces, so don’t be put off because you’re afraid someone will get injured. Remember, people walking on snow and ice have a responsibility to themselves to be careful. “Health and safety legislation is designed to protect people where there is a genuine danger that someone could be killed or seriously injured, not to stop people from getting on with their lives and certainly not to stop people from reducing the risk for themselves and others by clearing snow and ice.”
More information can be found on https://www.gov.uk/government/news/snow-clearing-health-and-safety-myth-shattered
Photo source: http://bahnbilder.ch/picture/7697
Year: 2014
Winning isn’t Everything
Garrison Keillor once wrote that there are some prizes which are not worth winning. He cited a pie eating contest as an example. But perhaps there are times when even the taking part may not be as worthwhile as intended. Recently World Pie Eating Championships held in Harry’s Bar in Wigan were declared invalid after suppliers sent the wrong pies to the event. The large Adlington pies were destined to go to a Divorce Party. They were twice the size of the pies specified for the contest and the organisers decided to go ahead with the contest by cutting the pies in half. A competing fitness instructor/warehouse supervisor, set the best time of 42.6 seconds for eating half a pie, but the umpires declared the results null and void because of safety concerns. They said eating the 24cm (10in) pies could result in a dangerous “swallow stall”. The pie specifications are quite detailed and include the rule that there should be no gravy due to worries that competitors would mix in cough syrup to speed-up consumption. Competitors practise pie eating to get ready for the competition but not all took the mix up in their stride. Julie Welsh hoped to be the first woman to lift the trophy but walked out before the start because of the last minute pie change. She said: “I’m sick with disappointment but there are some principles you can’t compromise. I’ll be back next year, if they see sense.” Local pie-eating athlete, Andy Driscoll, said: “My mate and I have been practicing for weeks on small, soft Wigan pies, and at the last minute, they’ve substituted these monsters.” And amid the tumult the accusations fly – the pies weren’t even from the north (of England). Vince Bowen, the pies’ maker, was slated for originating from Southern England and including steam holes that could allow the pies to be contaminated. Bowen retorted to the criticism “I may be from down south but I know what makes a good pie.”
And if all this trivia was not enough The people of Wigan are called ‘Pie-eaters’ because during the general Strike of 1926 workers from Wigan were the first to go back to work and break the strike. From then on they were called ‘Humble Pie Eaters’, now just ‘Pie eaters’.
For more information and comments please see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/12/18/controversy-at-world-pie-eating-competition_n_6348408.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-30538447
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2879878/So-ate-half-pies-Popular-eating-competition-declared-void-wrong-sized-products-delivered-venue.html
The photograph is Melton Mowbray Pork Pie by Innocenceisdeath – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – httpcommons.wikimedia.orgwikiFileMelton_Mowbray_Pork_Pie.png#mediaviewerFileMelton_Mowbray_Pork_Pie.jpg
Heaven for Dogs
I was not surprised to see an article on the Pope’s supposed statement about dogs going to heaven on the front page of the New York Times.
I always thought that as dogs had a sense of humour they were created in God’s image and therefore worthy of a place in Heaven.
Apparently the Pope spoke his words to comfort a little boy whose dog had just died. The Italian press quoted the Pope as saying: “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”
Father James Martin, (Jesuit priest, writer and Culture Editor of the Jesuit magazine America) seemed unconcerned with the reality of what the Pope said, and took the opportunity to understand the statement as saying that the Pope’s statement means that “God loves and Christ redeems all of creation.” Therefore, according to Fr. Martin, “He said paradise is open to all creatures. That sounds pretty clear to me.”
Not to be outdone, the New York Times quoted the Professor of Religion & Environmental Studies at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas and “an expert on the history of dog-human interaction”, as saying that she believed that there would be a backlash from religious conservatives, but that it would take time.
“The Catholic Church has never been clear on this question; it’s all over the place, because it begs so many other questions,” she said. “Where do mosquitoes go, for God’s sake?”
As another response, animal rights activists are heralding the advent of a “vegan world”.
All very good issues, no doubt. But dogs display loyalties which are not always present in other animals, dogs feature in a significant supporting role in the Book of Tobias and dogs deserve their place in Heaven.
It’s good to know that Pope Francis and myself are thinking as one.
What more can one say?
For more discussion please see Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/12/dear-father-v-could-there-puppy-heaven.html#more
Small Business Support and Wider Issues
Bill Bonner (https://uk-mg5.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.rand=adv3o5nver64d) reports that “Amazon has raised $6 billion in additional financing. Investors readily throw their money into the River of No Returns. At only 100 basis points over Treasury borrowing costs, they worry neither about the return on their money, nor the return of their money. Over on the equity side, investors are even more sans soucis. Nasdaq shows Amazon with a p/e of MINUS 714. After 20 years, the giant marketer has never learned to make a profit. The last quarterly report showed it with losses of about $1 a share, or about $2.50 on every hundred dollars of sales”.
This is the equivalent of a 2½% discount on every purchase.
No wonder small traders and everyone else are hurting.
Paul Kruger wrote interestingly in the New York Times in October about Amazon as a monopsonist – a dominant buyer with the power to push prices down. Please see http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/opinion/paul-krugman-amazons-monopsony-is-not-ok.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3As%2C%7B%222%22%3A%22RI%3A15%22%7D&_r=0
Small Success – Threadneedle Street
I’m grateful to be able to report a small success and an election issue resolved.
Since early 2012 I have been working on upgrading a footpath in Threadneedle Street at the back of the Eight Bells public house. The footpath got missed in the planning process for the houses at the back of the pub. For the last few days the street has been closed off and this morning when I called, the path had been cleaned up and was ready for a proper coating of asphalt or whatever passes as a suitable covering.
What is important is that children and adults on their way to school will have a cleaner and safer path. The job is well under way and it shows what local politicians can do!
Treasury Matters
Last Monday I achieved a small success.
It was the occasion of the Babergh and Mid Suffolk District Council’s Joint Audit & Standards Committee discussion on the Mid Year Report of Treasury Management 2014/2015.
Normally these meetings are a gentle breeze through the agenda merely noting what has happened and making the odd recommendation – all written and suggested by the officers.
Except that the recommendations included allowing deposits in banks and other organisations whose credit rating was BBB+. Additionally although recent regulatory changes approved by the European Parliament changed the eligibility of certain deposits (for compensation), public sector and financial organisations, remain ineligible for compensation. Anyone responsible for money management knows that in times of difficulty you chase security over yield – and I wasn’t going to let the investment profile move southwards.
Fortunately my view prevailed and the proposal to use BBB+ counterparties was withdrawn.
Which makes one ask, why it was suggested in the first place?
Budapest Cafe Orchestra
Yesterday we went to the Apex in Bury St Edmunds to see the Budapest Cafe Orchestra. (http://www.budapestcafeorchestra.co.uk/review.shtml) We were expecting something authentically ethnic but instead their leader hailed from Haringey and the team came from all over the U.K.
Fortunately the orchestra did not take themselves seriously and describe themselves as “the finest purveyors of Balkan music this side of a Lada scrap heap”.
To quote their web site: The BCO is a music-driven phenomenon, a specialist performance-entertainment outfit, certified to enthral audiences everywhere. The infectious energy of the BCO sweeps you off your feet and stays in your heart forever. One journeys from one emotional pole to another: from a desperately tragic evocative heart-rending ancient Jewish melody to a dance from Romania or Russia and all the fiery exuberance that goes with it.
The Budapest Cafe Orchestra share as many blood cells with the folk of Hungary as the Penguin Cafe Orchestra do with the web-footed fellows of Antarctica. Their Magic Potion is a closely guarded recipe of malt, hops, yeast and water, handed down in the secret tongue of Estuary English through generations of Professional Gypsies. With a sole mission: to entertain and enchant audiences, they are undaunted by even the most demanding and wildest village hall crowds, for example those inhabiting the darkest corners of Warwickshire.
We dined at Carluccio’s before the show and it was overall a very good night out.
A Cynic Writes
Bill Bonner in The Daily Reckoning on Wednesday wrote that the American voters w”ere busy at the polls… participating in the solemn fantasy of modern democratic government. Approximately 60% of people who were eligible to vote stayed away from the polling stations. Among young people, 18-29, the total was even higher, about 75%. The rest wasted their time standing in line and giving their ballots to the usual grifters, panderers and earnest nincompoops who fill public offices.
One of them, Michael Grimm of Staten Island, had a commanding lead when last we looked. Representing New York’s 11th Congressional District, the local paper says he is ‘hot headed’ and ‘distasteful’. It claimed he was making Staten Island the “laughing stock of the nation” after he was indicted on 20 counts of mail fraud, tax fraud, and perjury. In April, he threatened to throw a reporter off the balcony of the Capitol building. Perhaps the reporter had it coming; we don’t know. But we understand the voters who cast their lot with Grimm; at least they have no doubt what they are getting – exactly what they deserve. But the problem with political jokes, as Henry Cate observed, is that they get elected. And then, we all have to live with them”.
* I don’t classify myself as a grifter, panderer or a nincompoop who fills a public office but this is an apt description for some.
Old Models – Poor Directions
Yesterday’s E.A.D.T., published the following letter:
New council H.Q. in Hadleigh will achieve the most savings
It’s all very well for the Leader of Babergh District Council to say that it is unlikely for Babergh’s and Mid Suffolk’s headquarters to be based in Hadleigh (EADT 25th October) – but this is precisely the direction indicated by the consultant’s report. Locating the main activities in Hadleigh and disposing of surplus sites and space will achieve a 50% reduction in costs. Relocating activities to the County’s building in Ipswich will achieve savings between 11% and 13%. Putting a new hub in the Ipswich fringe will only yield a 32% saving. The hub and spokes business and governance model is seductively simple but only suitable for banks, building societies and estate agents. It is recipe for senior management to distance themselves from the reality of the everyday lives in the areas they are supposed to be managing and directing. This is not a desirable way forward. Instead, both councils should focus on how value for money can be delivered to the residents because if monies are not spent wisely council taxes will rise.
Yours faithfully,
Brian Riley
District Councillor – Hadleigh North
County Councillor – Hadleigh
So far reaction has been favourable
Tower Hamlets
The Spectator’s Coffee House Evening Blend reports that Tower Hamlets was “a council ruled by a ‘medieval monarch’ that was ‘riddled with cronyism and corruption’. That was how Eric Pickles’ described the local authority ruled by Tower Hamlets’ First’s Lutfur Rahman. The Communities Secretary sent in three commissioners to take over the authority after a report by accountancy firm PwC found contracts were awarded without the appropriate paperwork and Rahman picked preferred companies. It said Tower Hamlets’ ‘current governance arrangements do not appear to be capable of preventing or responding appropriately to failures of the best value duty of the kind we have identified’. This is Pickles’ first intervention in a council since he sent commissioners to monitor Doncaster in 2010. His statement in the Commons today drew support from Labour, who are calling for Rahman to resign as Mayor. His way of governing and the rotten borough practices of the council leave him with no friends in other parties
http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=b7034b6517cfdcc8d4d4e60e9&id=19fa52a048&e=725a6d17bb
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