MARCH 2004
The on-going saga of British railways is getting more surreal by the hour. First we had a company that offered to run services across the Pennines at half the current price. This was turned down by the Rail Regulator on the ground that they would take business away from the excisting networks. Weren't we told at the break-up of British Rail that the purpose of the exercise was to create competition in order to get the cost of railtravel down? Unfortunately the way the system works means that the rail operators are guaranteed a specific profit. If the passenger numbers fall, the Government (meaning us, the taxpayers) will will have cover the companies' loss. So more competition means cheaper rail-travel, cheaper rail-travel means higher taxes.
Then we have Hull Trains, which actually seems to be run like a railway should be, with clean trains, polite staff and services arriving spot on time. They would like to run more services between Hull and London, but this has met with resistence from the Regulator on the ground that the lines are already too crowded. Maybe so, but I had an intersting chat with one of Kiyoko's cousins in our recent sojoourn in the Land of the Rising Sun. He works for one of the major rail companies there, and he had access to the following statistics. Japan has 25% more railway infrastructure than Britain; 20,000 kilometres against 16,000, but last year they managed to haul 21,7 billion passenger; Britain managed 1 billion.
I'm so old that I can actually remember a time when the RSPCA knew and cared about animals instead of trying to control the way we are supposed to think and live.. Anyone around here ever wondered why dogs these days seems to be even more obese than their owners, and suffering from a raft of health problems that no-one had even heard about 50 years ago? I have always been under the impression that people are too lazy to exercise their dogs properly, but discussing this with a bull terrier owner recently he informed me that if he got his dogs fit and healthy, he would be prosecuted, firstly for maltreating the dog, and secondly for being engaged in dog-fighting, even if the only "evidence" was that the dog was fit enough to do so.
The Chancellor presented his budget yesterday, and it is quite clear (to me at least) that that the General election will be with us much earlier than anyone had suspected. When politicians start giving us back some of our own money (even if they always manage to make it sound like it's theirs) the writing is on the wall. I would guess that the Dear Leader will go to the country in November.
It could only happen in the Peoples' Republic of (No-longer)Great Britain. After banning handguns, and now airguns and imitation guns, the next target is eggs. The police in Bradford has contacted all shops in the town with a warning that they might be prosecuted if they sell eggs to minors. It seems someone chucked an egg at the Chief Constable. At last Prescott sorted out the problem with a left hook last time egg-throwing was an issue.
The stratospheric rise in houseprices is bad for one's financial health. A lot of people have figured out that they have suddenly become rather wealthy, and are taking out new mortages to release equity and spending money like it was going out of fashion. I'm afraid it will all end in tears.
Others are taking out unsecured loans or are living the life of Riley on their credit card(s) even if the interest rates are a lot higher than with a mortgage. Several people I have talked seems to be under the impression that an unsecured loan means that the bank can't touch their property if they are unable to keep up with the re-payment. Dream on. It only means that the bank are not neccessarily the first in line when all your possessions are on the block.
Occacionally my luck is in. I just happened to meet someone who had just had visitors over from Norway, and they had left some "strange-tasting reddish-brown cheese" which was now going to be binned. I was more than happy to take the goat milk cheese off their hands. Pure bliss.
In the aftermath of the Victoria Climbie abuse case the Government has decided that we need a Children's Commissioner for England, but true to form he will have no role in investigating similar cases. So what exactly is he supposed to do? The suggestion so far has been to look into the problem of children obesity, think about it, talk to people about it, and then do a report. "Think, talk, do a report." At least it kind of rhymes.