Justice will only be served if Jon Venables remains anonymous

The news that Jon Venables has been returned to prison* has, unsurprisingly, caused something of a feeding frenzy amongst right-wing tabloids and their readers focused around an alleged "need to know" why he has been recalled. So far, the "need to know" brigade have been unable to explain precisely why anyone unconnected with the case has any need to know anything about it, preferring to deflect such questions with emotive and inflammatory arguments about it being in the public interest, and all about justice for the family of James Bulger (along with lots of silly remarks about NuLiebor** secrecy). However, I can provide a very good reason why not only do we not need to know, but it is actually far better if we don't. 


Venables is, apparently, accused of child pornography offences. This means there are now a whole new set of victims who have suffered either directly, or indirectly, because of his actions. These children deserve justice every bit as much as James did. 


It's commonplace to assume that looking at photos of children being abused is, in some unfathomable way, less serious than actually doing it. This is a completely bogus argument. Anyone who looks as such material for enjoyment is complicit in the acts depicted. End of! The children in those images are real, they aren't 'posed by models', they aren't computer generated. They are real children who suffer for the gratification of others. They deserve to have their suffering recognised, and their abusers prosecuted. As anyone with half an idea about the British legal system knows, these children will not get justice if tabloid newspapers are allowed to print identifying information about Venables because, once identified, there would be little chance of him receiving a fair trial. The Crown Prosecution Service will be forced to drop the case, he will go unpunished, and may even end up back on the streets. 


And no, that's not because of some left-wing plot to promote criminals' rights, it's because our legal system attempts to ensure everyone who appears before a court is tried without favour or prejudice, no matter who they are, and no matter what they may have done in the past. Whether you agree with that or not, it's a system that's worked well over many centuries and only the stupendously stupid would consider it should be overturned simply to satisfy the prurient curiosity of armchair vigilantes. 


Furthermore, arrests in such cases often come as part of a wider investigation. It's entirely possible that, if guilty, Venables is only one link in a very long chain, and that identifying him to the public will compromise the whole investigation. 


Bearing all that in mind: if you genuinely believe you "need to know", do you also think that should be accommodated at any price? Even at the price of letting guilty people go untried? 


*Technically, it's not a return because he didn't serve his original sentence in a prison.


** Not my spelling, but that of the oh-so-witty ranting righties who seem to have overlooked the fact that Venables was last tried under a Tory government when he was named by a judge, leaving the Home Office no choice but to give him a new identity. 

Sustainable Communities Act launched today

"The Sustainable Communities Act gives new powers to communities and their elected councils to drive government policy to tackle local economic, social and environmental issues. It was supported by 80 national organisations, 300 local organisations, over 1000 parish and town councils and thousands of individuals."

Today sees the launch of the Sustainable Communities Act which was brought in to give local councils and communities to find and implement local resolutions to local problems.  The effects of the act could be quite wide-ranging, but could include initiatives to tackle crime, unemployment and housing; the protection of post-offices, shops, police stations and other other important services; plans to improve or implement local transport systems. You can read more about the act here and here,  you will also find sample letters you can send to your local councillor if you wish to ask your council to get involved.

Local councils request guarantees for Icelandic investments

The Times has published a list of local councils which may lose money invested in the Icelandic banking system. I notice my own local authority is among them - is yours?

What are your thoughts about the situation? Are you concerned about possible rises in council tax and/or loss of services. Would you support a government rescue package? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Mr and Mrs Palin should feel like a pair of Bristols

OK, I've been sitting on my hands to avoid posting about this, but I can't hold off any longer. Bristol Palin - imagine if she had been born this side of the Atlantic. The poor girl would have spent her school days with the nickname 'tit'.

Sorry, cheap shot, I couldn't resist. Having said that, you'd think her parents would have checked. I mean, no one likes to give their offspring a name which might raise eyebrows if they go abroad.

Are online networks responsible for the safety of children?

Apparently, more than a quarter of 8 - 11 year olds have a profile on an online networking site according to a survey by Ofcom. One result of the report was a debate on the BBC Have Your Say forum about who should take responsibility for the safety of children online. While most people seemed to agree responsibility lay with parents, a number seemed to think it was somehow up to other people to safeguard children who use the internet. All I can say to that is: what a complete load of old cobblers.

My children are well past the 8-11 age group, but they are still only allowed to use a computer in a well used area of the house. The only exception is my 20 year old, but I think monitoring him would be taking things a bit too far LOL However, anyone who is letting their 8 year old use social networks, or the internet generally and who seriously expects service providers to act in loco parentis is quite frankly deluding themselves. Do these people expect the manufacturers of bleach to pop round to stop their toddlers drinking it?!

If you are one of these parents, for goodness sake get a grip. You are responsible for your children and for what they access online! Yes, maybe better enforcement of age restrictions should be introduced, but that does not mean parents can turn a blind eye and just assume little Johnny is quite safe typing away in his bedroom.

Further Reading on the Great Data Debacle

Contributor Matt, has been promising to post his article about the recent loss of child benefit data by Revenue and Customs, but he is a naughty blogger and hasn't. So, here pop over and read it here. Then, take a look at his post discussing the wider implications of the data debacle, and the technological side of the proposed id card scheme.

Sheer Incompetence

The personal details of 25 million people have been lost by the Revenue and Customs department. Those numbers include almost every child in the country, along with the bank details and national insurance numbers of their parents. And this government seriously expect us to trust them with our data when they launch their id card scheme!

Isn't that a bit cheeky?

The Royal family. We pay their wages, but they think we are too common to marry. Hmm. There's something wrong there, now what could it be. No, I give up, you are going to have to tell me.

ps: If anyone royal happens to be reading: toilet, pardon, pleased to meet you - oo er, I bet you're shocked now.

Should the BBC sign up for the bloggers code of conduct?

Over the last couple of weeks the BBC have been reporting the news about a possible code of conduct for bloggers, this follows their coverage of the Kathy Sierra case. Curiously, although Auntie seems to very keen to discuss acceptable standards of behaviour in the blogosphere, she doesn't enforce the same standards on her own forums, or at least, not on the 'Have Your Say' (HYS) section of the BBC news site.

At one time HYS was a great place to visit, one found a wide range of views and opinions being discussed in a vigorous, but articulate manner. Sadly, this has changed in recent months, and the boards have been infiltrated by what I can only describe as a bunch of Daily Mail* reading morons. It is easy to spot these folk, they have a tendency to blame anything and everything on either immigrants, single parents, the working class or just women in general. Today, conversation sunk to a new low - the castigation of low income pensioners**. For example:

Should've saved up and funded their own retirement properly.......

Stephen J Brown, Down South, United Kingdom

The fact that some commenters hold these views isn't the problem, everyone is entitled to their opinion. No, what I object to is the BBC publishing the sweeping and derogatory statements made by these individuals which stereotype and insult vast sections of society. These people are nothing less than trolls, if they posted this kind of content on any other blog, it is likely that their comment would be deleted, or only allowed on a blog which encouraged inflammatory remarks. However, the BBC isn't just any other blog.

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a publicly funded body. Every single television owning household in the country pays a compulsory television licence fee which is used to fund the BBC. In other words, the BBC belongs to the people of Britain, we are it's shareholders and amongst those shareholders are a sizable number of immigrants, single parents, working class people and women (and pensioners). Bearing all this in mind, surely the BBC has a greater than average responsibility to keep it's blogs and message boards free of insulting (and inarticulate) comments.

I believe everybody has the right to voice their thoughts, but there is a world of difference between arguing passionately but logically, and a bigoted rant. I do not want to read the latter, nor do I wish to pay for the privilege of doing so.

* Notorious for it's support of Hitler in the 1930s
** You may need to click back a few pages, posts were coming in very quickly

Don't forget the weekly blog carnival, find out more here!

Call me old fashioned about education and the Labour leadership

The Local Education Authority (LEA) in Brighton and Hove have introduced a lottery system as a way of allocating places at over-subscribed schools. Supporters of the move say it will bring an end to the system of a child’s education depending on their postcode. Detractors, many of whom are parents who deliberately moved to live close to popular schools say it is unfair.

Will it work? Possibly. Will it be any more fair than the existing system? Probably not. After all, it is likely that a number of brighter children will now find themselves being educated at schools which are some distance from their homes, and which are not of the same standard as their local establishments. However, here’s a novel idea - instead of targets, initiatives and the reworking of existing systems, why don’t the Education Department make a genuine attempt to bring all schools up to an acceptable standard? Of course, that would require real investment and a return to the days when teachers were employed to teach, not to fill in forms, meet targets and juggle ever increasing levels of bureaucracy, so it will probably never happen.


Former government ministers, Alan Milburn and Charles Clarke (Remember him? He was the Home Secretary who looked like Big Ears.) have spoken out against the Chancellor Gordon Brown - most likely successor to Tony Blair - warning of a defeat for Labour at the next election. The duo have launched a website where Labour supporters can discuss the future of the party. I have to say I agree with some of their points. What exactly are Gordon Brown’s policies? Does he have any? And why is it such a foregone conclusion that he will succeed Blair anyway? Shouldn't there be some kind of election with a variety of candidates, or is that just a silly old fashioned notion?

Britain bottom of childhood well-being table

I’m sure no one can have failed to notice the report from Unicef which puts Britain at the bottom of a league of childhood well-being in 21 developed countries. If the authors of the report are to be believed, being a kid in Britain is a pretty unpleasant experience, and really, that isn’t surprising.

This generation of children start school at the age of four, a year earlier than their parents, and this will usually have been preceded by at least a year in a pre-school nursery environment - any parent who doesn’t enrol their offspring in such an establishment is considered to be a bit of an odd ball. Thirty years ago they would have been the norm. Of course, nursery care is a necessity. Not because it is best for the child, but because the majority of mothers are now in full time employment - two incomes are vital for most families - and these women are being encouraged to return to work earlier and earlier in a country which has the longest working hours in Europe. Gone are the days when a woman would give up work for a few years to have a family. Now, she will return within weeks of the birth, usually reluctantly. A study in 1999 showed that only 4% of new mothers actually wanted to work full time, 43% would, in an ideal world, have preferred to become full time mothers.

The life of a working mother is not an easy one when you consider it involves doing two full time jobs, only one of which you are paid for. It means constant early morning dashes to your child care provider, a race across town to your desk, a full days work, a dash back to the child care provider, then home. It doesn’t stop there. There is a meal to cook, laundry to do, housework, babies to bath, homework help, oh, and if you are very lucky you might even get to talk to the father of your offspring. The latter is not always possible because usually by the time you have both finished with the evening routine, you are so exhausted that you fall asleep in front of the tv. Then in the morning you crawl out of bed and do it all again.

Now, you may be wondering what all this has to do with the happiness and well-being of children. Quite a lot actually. I have a friend who works as a health visitor, her over-riding ethos is that happy mothers tend to have happy children and she makes a huge effort to provide support to the mothers she works with. It makes sense. Children look to their parents for reassurance, if they see them constantly stressed, tired and worried it causes them to feel the same. We have a generation who are growing up with parents who feel just this way, all the time, and this isn’t just a problem in the short term, it creates a horribly negative impression of adult life. What child would look forward to becoming an adult if they believe it is all about spending your life on an endless treadmill.

Since this report was published, I have seen a number of people using the old ‘blame the parents’ chestnut. No, let’s not. Let’s blame a society which makes life bloody hard for parents. This has never been a child friendly country, but at least in the past children were only expected to be seen and not heard. Nowadays, it seems they are expected to be non-existent. Children are viewed as an inconvenience, a problem to be dealt with, the product of a ‘lifestyle’ choice, instead of human beings who are adults in the making. When it snowed last week, I actually heard some employers saying that if people didn’t go into work they would be sacked. The fact that many schools were closed, which meant a large number of children were staying at home and needed to be cared for, did not seem to register with these people. It would be a rare parent indeed who would put someone else’s profits before the safety and well-being of their children, yet, some considered it acceptable to demand that they did just that.

The sad thing is, we do not need to live like this. The Scandinavian countries which top the league also have a high percentage of two income families, yet they don’t experience these problems. For them flexi-time is a normal working pattern, not just a luxury enjoyed by those lucky enough to have forward thinking employers. Many Scandinavian parents are able to plan their working hours so that their children are always cared for by one parent or the other, and even if external care is needed it is high quality and easily available, not over-subscribed and over-priced.

I could continue and discuss the lack of affordable housing - in many families one parent’s income is completely swallowed by housing costs. I could talk about the absence of playgrounds - sold off to the developers of luxury homes. Maybe, I could mention an education system that constantly changes and which places pressure on pupils from the time they are in infant school. However, I will just sum up by saying this: we need to have a long, hard look at the way we live. The children of today will be the adults of tomorrow, and the kind of adults they become will be largely dependent on their experiences now. For the last twenty or thirty years we have lived in a ‘me, me, me’ society, and it just hasn’t worked. The good old fashioned childhood may not have been as idyllic as many of us remember it to be, but it did have it’s advantages. Children were allowed to be children, they weren't regarded as inconvenient little packages which get in the way of profit, and becoming a parent wasn’t considered to be a lifestyle choice.

Parents 'powerless to bring up their children' | UK News | The Observer

Many parents have lost confidence in how to bring up their children properly and feel inadequate, isolated and unsupported in coping with the pressures of modern family life, the government has warned. Mothers and fathers often feel 'disempowered' as parents, and find it particularly difficult to enforce rules so their child does not misbehave, according to Beverley Hughes, the Minister for Children and Families.

Source: Parents 'powerless to bring up their children' | UK News | The Observer
   First let me say that I'm not buying into a kind of "Daily Mail" alarmist, "oh my God-our children are out of control and society is crumbling" bullshit. We're talking about a minority here, although possibly an increasing one. And to a certain extent I'm being deliberately provocative.
   So why would this be? Could it be because parents are concentrating on other things, rather than bringing up their children?
   I'm not talking about parents that go out to work. I realise that people have to make a living. What I mean is that when parents are at home are they spending their time raising their children? Or are they so self-obsessed that all they're worried about is their own needs and if that that means parking the children in front of some mindless cack on the T.V. or turning a blind eye when they're roaming the streets shoplifting, tying fireworks to cats and gobbing at people, then so be it.
   We've all read the horror stories about children pushed out of the door in the mornings and left to their own devices - "Get out from under my feet. Go out and play!" With no boundaries or regulation set on their behaviour children will grow up to do exactly as they please with no thought or regard for the consequences of the actions or for effect they have on others. And what happens when children like this reach child-rearing age and have kids of their own? Will they ensure that their offspring grow up with any kind of social conscience? Will they hell! They've never considered anyone's needs of feelings other than their own and they won't start with their own children.
   By the law of averages not every child will grow up to be an "'orrible little scroat". You'll get a fair proportion of the kids growing up to be decent people but with no parenting skills at all because they were shown none when they were growing up. Hence the problem - reasonable people with no clue how to set boundaries for the kids or how to enforce those that they do set.
   When did this vicious cycle start? Although there's always been "disaffected youth", it only seemed to seep into the public consciousness that children were starting to run out of control in the late 70s and early 80's. This suggests to me that the parents of children who were born in the late 60's and early 70's may have started the rot. Could it be that the Hippies are to blame? Anti-establishment, anti-authority and stoned out of their minds, what did they teach their children? And what have their children taught theirs?
   When you have a child you have a duty to parent. Yes, go out to work if you must but when you get home - parent! Interact with your children, teach them how to behave, to respect other people before they expect respect themselves. If this means you can't go out to the pub/club/whatever - tough! If you want a full social calendar - don't have kids. if you want to concentrate on your own wants and needs - don't have kids. If you want kids - parent, even if it means learning how to.
(This post will also appear at Solid Gone, my personal blog.)

Blair wants to help....yeah right!

For the first time in a very long time in his political career Blair is not making an arse of himself in public because of his foreign policies. Now he's doing it because of his home policies. Sure it makes sense to identify problems in society but keeping young mums on benefit? I'm all for benefits, they are incredibly helpful. However they need to have practical help and advice for themselves and their children. Surely, they need to be giving encouragement to help these people to get on their feet and ultimately improve the lives of their children?

Workplace revolution

Plans are being draw up for radical changes for Women and parents in the work place

Under the plans Parents will be given the right

• to work part time ,
• to choose their own hours,
• to statutory sick in the event of child illness,
  

Lets ignore the impact on business, lets look at how it could affect you on an individual level.

Imagine you are working in a shop, factory or office and you don't have young children? Ah yes folks you are stuffed, your colleagues have to go and pick little Robert and Amanda from school? So YOU are working late, it's the law. You get last choice on working hours.

You want to be off over Christmas? Ah well your colleagues have kiddies so YOU have to cover. None of this I worked last Christmas so I get this off lark.....

If one of my colleagues wants to have a child then fine, but I don't see why that should impact me. I accept we have to be reasonable, I accept there maybe a need for family friendly policies, but having children is a duty and responsibility that people choose.

Another thing in the proposal is that companies must prove they are paying Men and Women the same for doing the same job. Now firstly let me state I see nothing wrong with this but, oh come on you new there was one, you have to allow for different levels of experience and you have to be treated the same.

What do I mean? Well if a man and a woman do the same job they should be expected to do the same activities. Telling the man he is expected to do overnight support but, that it is unreasonable to expect the woman to do so because it may not be safe is not equality.

Equality is a noble and worthy aim and one we should all want but you can't have your cake and eat it.

Good Neighbours?

Uzma Rahan, her husband Arshad, their two sons Adam (11), Abbas (8) and daughter Henna (6), sadly these names have been become familiar to UK news viewers for all the wrong reasons. Arshad is missing, is known to have flown to Thailand but could be good knows where. His wife and three children are all dead, murdered by a blow to the head. A horrific and hugely tragic story. However, the reason I have mentioned this story is as follows. This family lived in suburbia, yet the bodies of the Uzma and her three children are believed to have lain undiscovered in their house for up to four weeks. Four weeks! How bad do things have to be for inactivity at the house not to have been noticed for such a length of time?

It may not be so obvious to read politics into this. However we do have to wonder what our politicians and local councils are doing to help engender good community relations or bad ones? I'm not suggesting we all go round to our neighbours straight away to give them a hug, metaphorical or otherwise. After all we can choose where we live but not who our neighbours are. Even so at some point we all have to rely on our neighbours for something.

The UK air industry about to give itself a good slapping

As I have been reporting here and before that here the UK air industry is being systematically decimated in the UK by the UK government.

This news just in:

Air passengers could face a fresh surcharge on tickets to pay for the escalating price of airport security.
politics.guardian.co.uk

So what they are saying is that I now need to pay for the right to be treated like a man under arrest, harassed and then have everything I own lost while facing delays and cancellations while the people who are charging me for this dubious right by-pass the same humiliation.

All this in the name of a truly dubious idea that no right thinking terrorist would actually consider.

I have to pay for the right to be harassed so that something that wouldn't work can not be attempted by people who couldn't make it work.

I'd much rather travel on the eurostar and catch my flight from a French or Belgum airport. If only out of principle.

In my back yard, please!

    I don't know what kind of worldwide circulation it's achieved but there's an acronym in use in the U.K. used to descibe a person who has objection to the siting of...well...almost anything really near to property they own. NIMBY stands for "Not In My Back Yard", not literally the rear of one's property you understand, just uncomfortably close to.
    One of the installations that one sees run foul of the NIMBYs on a regular basis is Windfarms. In my part of the world (Eastern England) there are a few of these windfarms around. It seems to be a fairly regular occurence that local councillors are reported as objecting to the siting of proposed windfarms in their locales, the most recent example being County Councillors refusing to back plans for the Sheringham Shoal Offshore Wind Farm off the North Norfolk coast on the grounds that it may impact the local fishing industry. While I have a certain amount of sympathy with the issue of the fishing industry (although not sufficient not to back these plans), it's way past time that some people opened their eyes to "the bigger picture".
    West Devon Borough Council turned down plans to build nine wind turbines in January of this year and admitted that

"the main reason for refusing the application was the impact of the turbines on the landscape."

    which is the reason guaranteed to have me climbing up onto my virtual soapbox. Perhaps these people would prefer a nice picturesque nuclear power station? Ok, I know that a nuclear power station wouldn't be sited there but there'd be objections to it whereever it was proposed.
    My point is that society today demands electricity. Surely its better to try and generate it by means that don't further impact the environment as a whole even if it means putting these wind turbines in "areas of outstanding natural beauty"? If some climate change models are to believed (and they are, increasingly by people who know about these things) then the point of choosing whether to try to generate our power by renewable means, even if it does have an aesthetic impact on the environment or losing most of the land mass of Great Britain to rising sea levels has already been reached. Is it really that difficult a decision to make?
    And on the subject of "aesthetic impact", I don't find that these wind turbines are that objectionable. Tall and brilliant white, they have a strange otherworldly elegance which is far more pleasing to the eye than the endless ranks of steel pylons which for years have carried electricity across the countryside with hardly a murmur against them.
    Dependent on the approval of my landlord, I would like to offer here and now that if any electricity generator would like to site a wind turbine in our back yard then they're more than welcome. An offer of a  roof installation, generating power exclusively for us would be met with a very favourable response and could be a PR coup for someone!


Technorati Tags: electricity, climate change, environment

Age Discrimination - Financial Insanity

Earlier this week The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) warned that a shortfall in the numbers of graduates with science and technology qualifications was creating a skills shortage and forcing employers to look overseas for suitable candidates. At the same time a growing number of older people are complaining that they have suffered the effects of age discrimination. It doesn't take a genius to see the first problem could be solved by the employment of people suffering from the second.

Age discrimination is still rife, and unregulated against. However, a new law is set to be introduced in October, which may at least begin to tackle the problem. Although, older workers are those most commonly discriminated against, under 25s can also be affected, and it is not unusual for a recent school leaver or graduate to be told that whilst they may have relevant qualifications they lack experience and are therefore not worthy of employment. Older people who have both qualifications and experience are often turned down for different reasons. The more qualified and experienced a worker is, the more they can reasonably expect to be paid, business owners want to keep costs down, so prefer to employ someone less costly. I believe that this is partly the reason for the skills shortage the CBI have highlighted.

There may be fewer people studying science and technology subjects, but, there are still plenty of people with relevant skills who would be happy to make up any shortfall while a new generation can be trained. However, these people have years of experience, are often highly professional and respected, and are therefore worthy of a salary to match their experience and professional standing. It is cheaper to import people. If you are watching a profit margin, the choice is pretty simple, but it is a short-sighted one.

Cheaper overseas workers may fill a temporary gap, but this can't be a long term solution. At a time when we are being told that we must work for longer, the idea that anyone over 45 is going to become steadily less and less employable is worrying. As a population we are living longer, we have children (who need supporting) later, it does not make economic sense to throw a whole generation on the scrap heap when they are still valuable and productive. These people will need to have some kind of financial support, many won't have been working long enough to have built up a pension that is capable of providing for them adequately. So, they will turn to the benefits system, this will in turn lead to a rise in taxes which will cost business owners more.

Anti-age discrimination legislation is not going to change perceptions, or bring about any kind of improvement overnight but, hopefully it will have a positive effect over time, in the same way that laws to prohibit race and gender discrimination did not really achieve much in the short term, but did create a long term sea change in attitudes. This long overdue measure is both necessary and hugely important to us all. We will all get older, and like it or not, we are going to have to work for longer than our parents and grand-parents did. Unless we want to spend several decades of our lives living in relative poverty, we need to be confident that the judgements about our suitability to do our job are based on ability not the date on our birth certificate.

Technorati Tags: age+discrimination, uk+anti+age+discrimination+law

UK Airport Chaos: update - attacks wouldn't work anyway.

"Our official protectors and deciders trumpet the fools they catch because they haven't got a handle on the people we should really be afraid of. They make policy based on foibles and follies, and Hollywood plots."
theregister.co.uk

The Register has a story investigating the potential of the threat of "Liquid Binary Bombs" and concludes that security should be far more worried about white powder (like sugar) than liquids.

The reason: the terrorist is more likely to damage the toilets and blow themselves out of the window than actually kill anyone else.

"But what do these experts know about chemistry? Less than they know about lobbying for Homeland Security pork, which is what most of them do for a living. But they've seen the same movies that you and I have seen, and so the myth of binary liquid explosives dies hard."
theregister.co.uk

The Conclusion: someone has been watching too much TV.

"After a few hours - assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven't overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities - you'll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two."
theregister.co.uk

read the full story

UK Airports

Yes the UK airport system has it's head up it's own arsehole. Yes the Department for Transport is in dire need of a good overhaul but then the gradual "discovery" that most governmental departments are not "fit for purpose" is no surprise to those of us who have been saying so for a very long time.

The entire system is a giant cancer of inefficiency and expense.
lordmatt.co.uk

It may be "not done" or it might be "OK" to quote oneself in opening a new topic but what is done is done.

In a continuation of the terrorism effects that a well motivated and dedicated group of many thousands of people armed with military grade tactical thinkers UK airports have been effectively reduced to a circus. A circus that our leaders get to by-pass.

This so-called "security reaction" where everyone is treated as though they are guilty of something has required that every airport perform everything short of a full body cavity search of every passenger.

The result: cancelled flights inbound and outbound and many many British subjects ending holidays with long stays in foreign airports only to finally be forced to fly separately home on cramped and under equipped plans running a skeleton staff.

It is this sort of silliness in the avionics industry that causes crashes, not because of terrorist actions but because the rush didn't allow a full check and the plane simply was not fit to be in the air.

One mother quite rightly points out in the Daily Telegraph "Never again will I take the kids on a plane". When they suggest that the children travel back first (and separately).

I can just picture it - a bunch of three and four year olds wondering around London airports after three hours in a sardine-can with strangers wanting the potty, dinner, mummy, daddy, teddy or all of the above (if possible). Little kiddies getting lost and run over outside, locked in toilets, vanishing and never seen again or simply getting sent to the wrong airport like so much luggage has of late (another side effect of not having enough staff to carry out the ever changing requirements of the department of "transport".

Any shares you had in the aviation industry should have been shed already but my advice to all is sell now, sell fast. Other industries like coach and rail will be doing well out of this for a few years to come.

It has, quite frankly, gotten so far beyond stupid that it makes the tate modern look mainstream.

What is most telling is the effort the leaders of the UK are going to to avoid seeing the problems while they get fast tracked past security and onto private jets.

After all it's one rule for us and another for them!