Colcam

Oh dear, Anonymous has got all excited again. He's not the same one every time, but because of the common thread of rudeness and outrage most of them share, I just treat them as one.

Fortunately, I seem to annoy the anonymous people who comment here more than they annoy me, otherwise I would block anything from writers who are simply too rude, or scared, to identify themselves.

My post about Mohamed al Fayed got this Anon on his high horse, in a piece about him screaming about housing in Scotland, and telling the 'peasants' here how to run their affairs. I quoted The Times, and pointed out that Fayed lives in Switzerland.

Anonymous writes:


Do you really believe everything you read !!

Mr Al Fayed has never, and is not living in Switzerland.

The whole of Scotland ( not just the Cairngorm National Park) has vast areas of land ( adjacent to settlements and in rural settings )
where restrictive planning laws prevent development. What Mr Al Fayed is saying is , be imaginative, and select areas where there is a need, and develop these for the benefit of the community.

For Example. Land under trees is worth about £200 per acre. If the Council bought this land of a Landowner for £10,000, the Landowner would be thrilled. The council would then have a piece of land that could support 4 new houses at a plot value of £2,500 each ( instead of £70,000 per plot which is the price that local crofters are selling their land to incomers )

Mr Al Fayed has invested in Scotland for the last 34 years, creating business's and employment. Ask the local communities who he has supported what they think of him, and you will get an honest ( chip free ) response.He has done far more for Scotland than most Scots ( I am a Scot )

His plea is for a business approach to problem solving. Sadly most of the current solutions are put forward by people who have never run a business, and have been cushioned within the ever expanding public sector.

It is so easy to rubbish good ideas, when ,in fact, the idea is imaginative , creative and in the best interests of those who need really affordable housing.



Perhaps the anonymous creator of this public relations spiel on behalf of Fayed should write an angry letter to The Times as well as nipping my head. As it happens, I don't believe everything I read, and in this case, as usual, I took the time to check certain facts before publishing the piece about Fayed.

If indeed Fayed has never, and is not, living in Switzerland, then it is Fayed himself who is not to be believed. CNN/Fayed Quote: " After 35 years in Britain, al-Fayed has decided to base himself in Geneva ... for the moment... have been forced to leave because they cannot settle my tax agreement, but it is my country, I am going nowhere," al-Fayed told CNN.

At alfayed.com he states: He will permanently reside in Switzerland.

Or: EXCLUSIVE: AS HE LEAVES HIS BELOVED BRITAIN FOR GOOD, THE INTERVIEW THAT MOVED AL FAYED TO TEARS , and while I might not normally believe the slush the Daily Mirror churns out, this is from the al Fayed site. It's an extraordinary rant, by the way, worth reading for it's own sake - if only for amusement.



Of course, Switzerland may have not suited Fayed. Like old King Farouk, Egyptian tycoon Mohamed Al-Fayed has finally decided to set up residence in Monaco. "Switzerland has not proved so benign, and a recent change in the local law excluding foreigners from a loophole to avoid inheritance taxes has prompted his move to Monaco."

And I could go on.

Anonymous would seem to suggest that Mohamed al Fayed is a liar. Is he suggesting that Fayed was trying to get one over on British tax officials?

Finally, our anonymous Scot suggests that housing our poorer residents in areas of felled tree plantations is "creative, and in the best interests of those who really need affordable housing." Nothing to do with the fact that these plantations have become next to worthless in recent years, of course.

What he is really saying is that what he - and Fayed - want, is the less well heeled to be shunted into cheap affordable housing, to leave the quality, desirable properties for those more deserving and suitable and, perhaps, more pleasing to the eye of Fayed and his likes.

Social engineering to suit business and the landlord might seem creative to them, but most people would find the idea as disgusting as I find Anonymous and Fayed.

I, as always, thank Anonymous for his comment, and would welcome more from him - if he has the manners and the cojones to identify himself.

Devon Constabulary, using six cars, a helicopter and three stingers, took an hour to stop a stolen tractor traveling at a sedate twelve miles an hour on Saturday night.

This might be a good time for Exeter's finest to purchase a few patrol cars with a bit more oomph.

We recently got research results from Glasgow University telling us that when we go into coffee shops we do so to enjoy the experience.

Now Glasgow Caledonian University have discovered, at some considerable cost, that drinking alcohol leaves us with - wait for it - a hangover.

Academics were given £40,000 of taxpayers money to investigate “whether having an alcohol- induced hangover impairs psychomotor and cognitive performance.”

They drank the money, and proved that a hangover does affect the cognitive performance the morning after a booze-up.

That's what makes our nation great. Cutting edge scientific research which will save the planet and the human race.

The Sunday Times reports that sources close to the investigation into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes believe the two officers who fired the shots will escape criminal charges.

What a surprise.

"The two were said to have been interviewed last week by investigators from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). They are thought to have used the defence that they “honestly believed” he was a terrorist and say they used “reasonable force” to stop him endangering the public."

In the past 12 years no police officer has been successfully prosecuted for any of the 30 fatalities caused by police marksmen.

Reasonable to assume nothing will have changed, although the official does go on to say that someone further up the chain of command might have acted unlawfully.

Managers of the Cairngorms National Park announced last week that plans have been made to restrict the sales of new houses within the area to stop property prices rising beyond the reach of local people.

This would mean that anyone buying a home would have to be working in the area, or have a family link there, which is an entirely reasonable idea, given the problems caused by incomers buying houses at prices no one here can afford, often to be used only as holiday homes.

This idea, of course, has enraged the biggest incomer of them all, the Egyptian Mohamed Al-Fayed, owner of Harrods and a 65,000-acre estate in the Highlands. Not that he lives there. He prefers to reside in Switzerland.

There has always been something offensive about absentee landlords in Scotland trying to run local peoples lives - it's a common trait they all seem to have.

If Fayed isn't pleased at what is happening in Scotland, he could always get rid of his 65,000 acre holiday home and fuck off back to Egypt and tell them how to run their country.

Not many would miss him or his fat mouth here.

I have taken the trouble to type out and publish the comment I received yesterday from 'Anonymous', as he or she (a he, I suspect) posted his little speech on a piece I did in October, and not on the most recent piece covering the same subject yesterday.

I wouldn't want anyone to miss it.


The annoying thing about this sort of propaganda is that it takes basic truths, and twists them emotively. You fail to mention, for example, that a 'dawn raid' only takes place after a family or individual are welcomed into the country, gladly supported while they make their asylum claim, lose their asylum claim (the standard of evidence they need to provide to win, by the way, is lower by far than would be required in a UK criminal or civil court), are gladly supported while they appeal their loss, are offered SEVERAL times a free ride home, with expenses, if they choose to depart voluntarily, fail to take advantage of this...

And then, when they have exhausted every legal challenge they can make, and turned down every offer of help to go home - only THEN does the Home Office admit defeat, realise they are never going to leave of their own accord, and enforce their removal. They go early in the morning, because it's the best time to get the whole family in one place at one time ( the best precaution against splitting the family up by accident). They do wear protective clothing, in case of a hostile reception (rare, but from a health and safety point of view it would be negligent to send somebody into that sort of situation without planning for the worst case scenario). They do handcuff adults and youngsters, but only if necessary, and are no different from the police (enforcing different laws) in that regard.

To be absolutely clear though, because you're clearly an idiot likely to believe anything fed to you, the Home Office does not gas anybody. When somebody claims asylum here, a fundamental human right (and many win their cases, although you're unlikely to find the media kicking up a storm about that fact), they do so on the understanding that they might lose. If they lose, they can't stay here. If they don't go voluntarily (again, many do - while they might not be happy to leave, they understand their legal obligations under the asylum system), they have to be removed.

Failed asylum-seekers get every opportunity to to leave voluntarily and with dignity. They only get removed if they decide not to take these routes.

Given the MASSIVE publicity enforced removals get, is it not negligent of the parents of children in these situations to accept help in leaving voluntarily, and not putting their kids through this sort of thing.

I don't expect a rational rebuttal, because you're incapable of any form of balance in your emotive argument. You left your brain offline, if you have one. The system isn't perfect, so propose a better one.

(The only changes I have made to the comment above by Anonymous is to tidy up his spelling).


I thank Anonymous for his comment and, as always, start by wondering why he feels he must remain anonymous. A common trait among anonymous writers, I have found, is that, apart from in one or two exceptional cases, they are poor at spelling, and invariably resort to being insulting.

That aside, Anonymous makes some valid points, and certainly seems to know quite a bit about the system - I might have thought he was a right-wing politician, but such a person would not have had to resort to insults, and would probably be better at spelling.

Judging by what he writes, he could actually be one of the people who break down the doors on dawn raids. That could explain the fervour he seems to have for the 'official line' and would possibly also explain the offensive language.

Or he could just be someone who hates immigrants, and wants a 'white' Britain. And we all know what people like that are called.

But I could be wrong, probably I am wrong. It's just that anonymous writers always get me wondering about them.

Maybe he's a a policeman - that would fit too.

Is he from Scotland or England? That would also have some bearing on his attitude.

Enough, Colcam, of the wild speculation....... answer the man for Christ sake!

OK. Emotive? Yes, probably. This is a blog - not the Guardian or the Times. I get to be emotive here.

Gassing? Get a reality check, Anon. The sentence I used, in relation to Home Office minister Tony McNulty saying the methods used are not inhumane, was, ""I suppose Hitler said much the same as the Jews were being rounded up and gassed". I am aware the Home Office are not gassing people, and I doubt your intelligence if you felt you had to say that.

Maybe a doorman at the Home Office.......?

Anyway, I don't know which part of the country Anonymous comes from, but the easy and sensible way round the problem of forced removals in Scotland would be to declare an amnesty for families who have been settled here for, say, over a year, and whose kids are settled in school. Allowing the parents to settle, and therefor work, would be beneficial to our society - we badly need a population injection in Scotland. We are short of good people. These kids could be a vital and talented part of our next generation.

On the point about parents being negligent in not accepting help to leave the country, I would only say that, as most parents want the best for their children, would it not be more negligent for them to submit to the will of the state and leave the country without a whimper?

I could go on, but will just say, finally, that Anonymous seems to think that asylum-seekers should be grateful to be offered "a free ride home", with a bit of cash thrown in. If it were only that simple. But Anonymous, while being big on defending the Home Office, the men who break down the doors, and the dubious "generosity" of the state, is patently lacking in any understanding of human nature or, indeed, humanity.

And it is absolutely clear I have managed to write this without resorting to childish jibes like idiot, even if I have left my brains offline.

Scotland's oldest war veteran was laid to rest today.

Alfred Anderson, who died on Monday aged 109, served with the Black Watch, and was thought to be the longest surviving soldier of the 1914 Christmas truce, when British and German troops came out of their trenches and shook hands with each other.

Born in Dundee, that city paid its last respects to Alfred by lighting the beacon of the Law war memorial overlooking the River Tay.




Colcam.Image

A 54 year old woman with athritis is sleeping rough under a bridge over the River Ness in Inverness.

Violet Boyd is a former psychologist, and is trying to complete an Open University degree in art history.

Whatever the reasons behind this poor woman's circumstances, there should be no excuse for her continuing to live like that for even one more night, as the Highland housing and social work department have been made aware of her plight.

The weather up here is sub-zero, we have snow. These conditions are lethal to anyone without somewhere warm to go.

Of course, if the Highland council do rescue this woman, and she is put into bed and breakfast accommodation because of a lack of places elsewhere, the council, in their latest move, may well try to screw her for money for breakfast and electricity.

Now that's what I call caring.

The four men who were rescued yesterday in the Cairngorms were incredibly lucky, considering that they not only had to spend a night out on the mountain in blizzard conditions - they were on the wrong mountain.

The four had raised the alarm on a mobile phone, saying they were lost on Cairn Gorm. Four mountain rescue services were called out for the search, and the rescue helicopter was turned back because of the awful conditions.

The rescue teams - do not ask me how - didn't think the men were where they said they were, and found them on Ben MacDui, some miles away. Gut instinct, I should imagine, added to their incredible skill.

Although well equipped, the men have been criticised for their lack of navigational skills.

One has to wonder why they were out on the mountains in the first place, given that these conditions had been forecast for nearly a week.

Weather Warning from the Ass-End of Nowhere.




I try to avoid the garden, never mind mountains, when it's like this.



Colcam.Image

First Minister Jack McConnell stands accused of misleading the Scottish parliament and the people of Scotland over the issue of the forced removal in dawn raids of asylum-seekers and their families.

Despite McConnell's previous pronouncements which led Holyrood, the public and the media to believe that he was behind changes to the removal system north of the border, his spokesman has agreed that McConnell never raised the matter with the Home Office.

Officials from the Home Office, which has responsibility for immigration throughout the UK, made clear yesterday that Mr McConnell’s claim of a future protocol on forced removal between the Scottish Executive and Whitehall did not make sense and that there was no prospect of any such one.

There is no "protocol", as McConnell suggested there would be, and the Home Office has no intention of ending dawn raids, or even the handcuffing of children.

Jack McConnell, always fond of publicity, is now getting plenty. I hope he's pleased, because his behaviour has embarrassed and angered the Scottish parliament and the public, and shown him up as a small-time Labour toady, snubbed by London, elevated beyond his meagre talents and worth.

Asylum statement demand defeated

UK Immigration Minister Tony McNulty in Scotland today.


UK Immigration Minister Tony McNulty was interviewed on Radio Scotland this morning, and said people were "hung-up" on the word protocol.

In what sounded more like a party political broadcast, McNulty, a man few had ever heard of until a week or two ago, defended the use of dawn raids, and said there would be no special protocol with the executive. He went on to say that any changes in how dawn raids were carried out would have to be made right across the UK.

Asked if there had been a misunderstanding between London and Edinburgh, McNulty said no, and that it was "willful and mischievous misunderstanding by other political parties who clearly, by their activities over the last couple of days, could care less about the lot of asylum-seekers and how we do removals, and care more about petty politics."

A pretty disgraceful performance from Tony McNulty.

Robina Qureshi of PAIH said this morning: "Dawn raids are going to end. McNulty can go back to where he came from, we don't want his like here on Scottish soil. His jackboots are too dirty for Scottish soil. We are going to end dawn raids - the blocks are going to be covered in Glasgow, they are very well occupied by asylum-seekers, they are going to be covered and protected so that families can sleep at night time, and children can sleep at night time, and they don't have to waken up from 4 o'clock to 7 o'clock to see if vans are coming down to their block in the high-rises of Glasgow".

The Positive Action In Housing website.

Kaspy the Collie and Spike, after months of fighting for control, have finally decided to share the comfiest seat in the house.

It used to be my favourite chair, but I know when I'm beaten and gave up the struggle long ago.





Of course Kaspy, having grown up with a cat, knows she is supposed to lie along the back of the couch, preferably draped round the Mongrels neck.

Me? I'm getting used to the floor.......





Colcam.Image

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has been forced by the European Union to write to the United States government to ask for it's reaction to reports that Washington has been running "black sites" in Europe where the torture of prisoners may have taken place.

I'm sure Jack Straw will be perfectly aware of what the American government have been doing.

Some time ago he swapped his spectacles for contact lenses. A clever move.

If you wear contact lenses and conveniently remove them, nobody can tell when you're turning a blind eye.


CIA Soil The Highlands

Bristol city council has become the ninth local authority in the country to officially oppose plans for a national identity card scheme.

Councillor Bill Goulandris said: "Like a latter-day Nero, Charles Clarke is fiddling with bits of plastic while British citizens are being blown up in our capital city."

That must be the best quote from anybody on anything all week.


Useless Identity Cards

Colcam.Image

According to a new book by a psychoanalyst who met the late President Mitterand of France twice a week from 1982 to 1984, the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher threatened to nuke Argentina during the Falklands war, unless Mitterand gave her the codes to enable her to disable Argentinia's French-made missiles.

Apparently she got the codes.

"One cannot win against the insular syndrome of an unbridled Englishwoman. Provoke a nuclear war for a few islands inhabited by three sheep as hairy as they are freezing! But it's a good job I gave way. Otherwise, I assure you, the Lady's metallic finger would have hit the button."

The poor man was probably terrified of the awful witch - everyone else was.

Whether the shrink is telling the truth or not, it's a great story, and having lived through her dictatorship, I certainly believe it.

The Highland Council, in the interests of equality for all and discrimination against no-one, have come up with a plan to make sure that everyone in the Highlands, not just tourists and householders, are ripped off, fleeced and robbed on an equal basis.

The poorest and most desperate individuals and families in the Highlands, the homeless, are often housed on a temporary basis in bed and breakfast establishments, because the council do not have enough furnished homeless accommodation or hostels available.

They are now to be charged for heating, lighting and breakfast during their stay in B&B.

Well done. Local democracy in creative thinking mode. Rob the poor instead of improving their situation.

Fleecing the homeless could create more local authority money for really useful things, like replacing all the road signs in the Highlands with bilingual ones in English and Gaelic for the three people up here who can actually read Gaelic.

Alfred Anderson died today at the age of 109.

Born in 1896, he was Scotland's oldest man, and a veteran of World War One. He served with the 5th Battalion the Black Watch, and was one of the first to be sent to the Western Front. He was probably the last survivor of the Christmas truce of 1914.

Prince Charles paid tribute to Alfred, who he had met on various occasions.

On his 106th birthday in 2002, Mr Anderson said: "We lived for each day during the war. At 106, I do much the same again."

I go into a coffee shop to enjoy myself. I will stop going in if the coffee is no good. If I ask another customer in the coffee shop if I can borrow their newspaper, I can get a warm response, or get the cold shoulder.

When I order my coffee, select my seat, occupy the table, then leave, I have performed a feat of skilful organisation.

How do I know all this?

Because researchers from Glasgow University have just spent three years, and £140,000 to tell me.

Thanks for that, guys - and thanks too for spending my money so sensibly.

Two unarmed female police officers in Bradford, England, were shot yesterday by armed robbers while answering a call. Sadly, one officer died from her wounds, while the other was seriously wounded.

Within hours of the shooting, the predictable howls for all police to be armed has started.

We were immediately treated by the BBC to the unedifying spectacle of Michael Winner, that rather weird and unpleasant film director, or food writer or whatever he is, screeching in posh accented outrage because every bobby in the land has not been armed to the teeth for years.

The Saturday Sun tabloid headlines scream "Police Girl Shot Dead. Rookie and WPC Pal Gunned Down by Gang".

She wasn't a girl, she was a police officer. She happened to be a 38 years old, a mother, tragically killed on the birthday of one of her children, but that is of no relevance to the debate on the arming of cops. She was a police officer and she was doing her job.

Regrettable that any death is, very few police officers are killed in the line of duty, even in these violent times. Since 1975 in England and Wales, the number is 89.

In the past year, 106 people have died during or after contact with the police, up 24 from the year before, and each of these deaths is every bit as tragic and just as unacceptable as the death of a police officer.

I hear no howls of outrage about deaths of members of the public from Winner the Weird.

I published a post about a sparrow earlier, and Blogger in its wisdom managed to put it into Colcam.Image Two, which is only supposed to have images, not words.

Not a problem, I optimistically thought. Just delete it, and re-post it, cross my fingers and hope it goes on the right blog.

It wouldn't show up on the list of posts on Two, despite it being there on the web page for all to see. No way to delete it.

I did get it posted where it should have been in the first place - eventually. But the story was still on Two, for posterity, it would seem.

After all the trouble he caused knocking down dominoes, his ghost was starting on me, through Blogger.com.

So, refusing to be beaten by a pesky sparrow, I deleted Colcam.Image Two entirely, and started all over again with ImageOnly. Unlike the old one, which was way behind, I might even keep this one up to date.

To all who tried to read about that bloody bird by linking through NEWSNOW and got a "page not found", blame either Blogger or the dead sparrow, not me.

A Dutch house sparrow who knocked over 23,000 dominoes was shot, after being cornered by an exterminator.

The dominoes were being set up in an exhibition centre by a TV company for a domino record event, and staff had spent weeks setting up four million of them.

The murder of the sparrow has caused outrage, and staff have been threatened.

A Sparrow Tribute Website has been set up, and the TV company are to screen a tribute to the wee bird before the domino toppling event is shown.

Oh how I wish the wee thing had knocked down the whole bloody lot.

These were taken just over a week ago. Apart from three days or so, it's been raining here at the ass-end-of-nowhere every day for over four weeks. It's the middle of November and the grass is still growing and badly needs cut. Just the other day the rain stopped, and it's been 0 degrees centigrade all day today, despite the sunshine. It's minus 8 tonite and getting colder.

Although there is a smattering of snow on the higher mountains, we have been seeing temperatures of 20 and 21 centigrade well into this month.

Could this suddenly be our very belated winter suddenly arriving?

That's climate change in action. I've been watching the seasons get crazier and crazier here for years.




Colcam.Image

Dame Stella Rimington, the former director general of MI5, has condemned the proposed introduction of an identity card scheme, saying the cards would be "absolutely useless" unless they can be made unforgeable. She thinks MI5 are not pressing for the introduction of cards.

The minister in charge of the ID card scheme, Andy Burnham, is desperately defending the cards, saying they will be "almost impossible" to forge.

That'll be right.

The government is not listening, of course. They are determined to go ahead with this disgraceful scheme no matter what anyone thinks, and against all advice.

Surely nobody can now think ID cards are anything to do with preventing terrorism or making the public safer.

And surely no one would believe the government when they claim the cards will be "unforgeable".

Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil liberties pressure group Liberty, described the former security chief's comments as "another nail in the coffin of the massive identity card folly".

I really do hope so - but who has the last and final nail?

ID Cards And The National Database - A Step Too Far

The prototype of the $100 wind-up laptop for kids in developing countries has made its debut at the United Nations.

Millions of the lime green machines should be in production within a year.

The laptop will run on open source software. Apple offered to supply an operating system but that was rejected, rightly, as that would tie the users of the machine into commercial software, which would defeat the purpose of the whole scheme.

Most of the stuff on my Mac is open source and free, and arguably better than many equivalent commercial versions, but I still have to buy the operating system itself. At the rate of development by Apple at the moment that can mean £100 per year and a half to keep up to date.

Critics say that computers come low on the list of priorities for kids in developing countries, saying basic schooling, learning to read and write, desks and chalk are what is required. Hard to argue with that, but these days it is simply not enough.

These green machines will transform the lives of children all over the world, whether they have access to formal education or not.


UN Secretary General Kofi Annan looked like he was having a lot of fun with his.

The Clockwork Laptop, 30 Sept 05

A study has shown that Britain has the best wind in Europe, simply because it never stops blowing, and that it delivers most power when demand is highest.

I could have told them that - I live in the Highlands.

This undermines the protesters biggest argument against wind power, that it is intermittent and unreliable.

Surely the action groups should shut up now and let the turbines go up, and then do something useful like picking up litter.

Fear the database, not the card, writes Phillip Johnston in The Telegraph

The ID card bill goes to the House of Lords this week. It's down to them to scupper this awful erosion of civil liberties.

The idea that civil liberties are not inhibited by their introduction is no longer advanced by any sensible person. Furthermore, they will do little to reduce crime, nothing to stop suicide bombers, will be useless against illegal immigrants because foreigners do not need them, and of doubtful value against fraud. They will also be costly to introduce and to possess.

The government claim to have a mandate for introducing identity cards, because the bill was included in their manifesto at the last general election.

I don't see that winning the election with less than one third of the popular vote is a mandate for anything so serious as this.

The Bill contains powers for 51 different classes of information to be put into the database and to impose fines if we do not keep the details up to date.

The database will reject perfectly law-abiding people because the technology has difficulties with certain biometrics, such as brown eyes or bald heads. If this happens, to the annoyance of potentially hundreds of thousands of people who will have paid for the privilege of being denied access to services to which they are entitled, it will not be long before it is proposed to capture everyone's DNA to reduce the chance of false matches.

This is not about protecting our identities but about placing them at the disposal of the state and sundry other organisations that will have access to them. There has never been so grandiose a scheme as this anywhere in the world.

And there never should be, ever.


The Telegraph

£40 Billion Quid For A Piece Of Plastic?

Drumochter Pass near Dalwhinnie on the A9 in the Highlands, a couple of days ago. I'm going down that way on Monday, and hoping the snowline isn't any lower, or that it's gone altogether.

That's called wishful thinking.





Colcam.Image

A Welshman known as "Robbie the Rubbish" came to Scotland clutching a pile of black bin bags after hearing about the litter left on Ben Nevis, and spent two days clearing the rubbish left by visitors on the main path.

"If one person from Wales can travel to Scotland and pick litter then why can't people in Scotland do it?" he asked.

A good question.

Ken Howett, national officer of the Mountaineering Council of Scotland, said: "This was a really selfless act - fantastic. If other people had that sort of motivation it would not take long to clear Ben Nevis ".

Beneath him and his organization to pick up litter, no doubt.

And beneath the people who run the Nevis Centre, which is the biggest piece of rubbish in the whole area. Of course they don't have time for such lowly tasks, being there simply to claw in money from the visitors who leave their litter on the mountain.

While the large English community in their Highland middle class ghettos are willing to work extremely hard setting up committees against everything from wind power to electricity pylons, and for saving the hedgehogs and getting street lighting in villages with a population of three, clearing rubbish involves getting the hands dirty, so no help there.

The Highland Council, perhaps? Certainly not. That would involve rubbish bins and the council don't believe in those, even in lay-bys on the roads, because locals might put rubbish in them. (You think I'm kidding now - I'm not).

Highlanders then? No chance, they are an ethnic minority in their own land, so that would be discriminatory - and I never see Highlanders here doing very much of anything anyway.

That would appear to leave me.

Bugger off - I can't stand the bloody place anyway.

So if "Rob the Rubbish" reads this, could he please get back up here and start on the lay-bys on the main tourist route North, the A9. Nobody else is going to do it.



Colcam.Image

Experts at the London School of Economics now reckon the taxpayers bill for the identity card scheme will be at least £40 billion.

The government's estimate of £5.8 billion does not include the cost of rolling the scheme out over government departments and other public bodies.

The Home Office says the LSE figures are "nonsensical". They say expensive card readers and other equipment will be partly funded by savings made by reducing benefit fraud and fraudulent health tourism.

Where have I heard that before? The politicians fantasy - kick a few punters off the dole and that will pay for absolutely everything. Does anyone actually believe anything this government says?

Even the Home Office figure of £5.8 billion is outrageous for the dubious privilege of being forced to carry a card around which will match our life details on a national Orwellian database.

The ID card bill goes back to the House of Lords this week. Tory and Liberal Democrat peers are expected to win a vote on amendments which would make it more difficult for the government to make the cards compulsory.

Anybody who has had kids has been there. Give them a mega-expensive toy, then sit there with a forced smile as they play with the box it came in.

I've done it so often.

Now, rightly, the cardboard box has been given proper recognition - a place in America's National Toy Hall of Fame.

It's surprising it wasn't there years ago.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke has admitted that he asked chief constables to lobby MPs to support the anti-terrorism bill and push for 90 days detention without charge, but denies attempting to politicise the police.

Cabinet members are being wheeled out to defend the government, the police, and Prime Minister Blair.

Defence Secretary John Reid said the accusations that the police had been "politicised" before the vote were a smokescreen to cover Tory embarrassment at blocking the 90-day proposal. Reid went on to accuse the opposition of a "slur on the integrity of the police".

The police, while entitled to give a view on matters concerning legislation which will directly affect them, undoubtedly played politics regarding detention. An intense lobbying campaign is not the same as giving advice.

Chief constables, who are not elected by the public, have clearly attempted to interfere in matters that are dealt with by elected MPs.

Of course they have become political, no longer neutral.

As for slurs on the integrity of the police, Reid is talking nonsense. It doesn't need the Tory party to cast aspersions on their integrity - that was shot along with Jean Charles de Menezes on a tube train at Stockwell Station, and with the lies and attempted cover-up which followed.

___________________________

Tory leader Michael Howard has asked Tony Blair if police now need authorisation from Charles Clarke before appearing on the media, after John Reed made remarks during an interview which appeared to suggest specific approval would now be needed.

A British man and his wife, along with an Australian, were seized by the Iranian Navy during a sailing trip which took them into disputed waters in the Gulf.

They were held for 13 days without charge, did not know why they were being questioned, and were denied access to consular officials.

During their detention, the three were allowed to contact their families, and were held in a five star hotel.

They were eventually released after pressure from the British Foreign Office.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said "a good deal of work behind the scenes" had helped secure their release.

"It has been distressing for the Wises and for their family," he said.

While expressions of outrage have been voiced by all and sundry, it seems these people were treated very well. Those in Britain who are arrested under the terror laws here will not be kept in a five star hotel. Nor will they have access to their families. In Britain they could be kept incommunicado for 28 days without knowing why (90 if PM Blair and Met Chief Blair had got their way) and with no legal representation.

Of course that's different, isn't it? These people are middle class and white, and the country holding them is Muslim.

By golly, we can't have that, old chaps.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, soundly defeated yesterday by MPs over his insistence on giving the police powers to detain suspects for 90 days without trial, is saying today that those who voted against the bill are out of touch.

How arrogant can this man get?

There was never any convincing argument by Blair, or the police, to warrant "disappearing" people for three months, and MPs acted accordingly.

Now Blair is telling us that the public wanted the police to have these powers. Perhaps that is true, but if MPs did everything the public wanted we would be hanging people, and that has never even come close to being passed in parliament. Despite numerous debates and votes on the issue since the abolition of the death penalty it will, thank goodness, simply never happen again in this country.

Apart from Blairs Thatcherite tyrannical tendencies, many MPs rightly took exception to the behaviour of the police in this, and their blatantly political lobbying and interference in political matters, which is not the job of the police and never should be.

It is Blair who is out of touch, and who has lost his touch, his authority and his judgement.

And 28 days is better than 90, but it's still too long.

When campaigners staged a sit-in at the UK Immigration Service headquarters in Glasgow last week to protest at the dawn raids used in Scotland to deport failed asylum seekers, they were successful in that they managed to secure a meeting with assistant director Rolf Toolin to be held today. (Monday)

Immigration Minister Tony McNulty stopped the meeting going ahead at the last moment.

MSP Tommy Sheridan of the Scottish Socialist Party called the move "a serious breach of democracy".

The protest was part of the campaign against the inhumanity of forced removal, after the Vucaj family were taken from their (contains more links) Glasgow home and deported.

Mr Sheridan is right. This is a serious breach of democracy. Unfortunately the New Labour government led by Tony Blair would seem to operate pretty much solely on breaches of democracy in everything it touches.

Listening, learning and having a heart is not on their agenda.


Supporters To Visit Deported Vucaj Family. 10-10-05
Home Office To Continue Dawn Raids. 16-10-05
Peter Mullan And The Vucaj Kids. 19-10-05

Cressida Dick, "gold command" of the operation that led to the death of Jean Charles de Menezes in the bungled Stockwell tube shooting incident shortly after the July bombings in London, says she never gave the seven letter code word telling police they should kill.

That, no doubt, will be of much consolation to the de Menezes family.

The public and the Independent Police Complaints Commission are going to hear a lot of coppers, from head honcho Sir Ian Blair down through the ranks, covering their backs and blaming others for the murder of an innocent man.

I was in Dundee, my home town, a couple of times this past week, and the weather was warm, more like summer than November. I sat here by the River Tay to dry out after a 130 mile trip on the motor bike, the first 90 miles or so, as usual, through heavy rain accompanied by high winds.



And people wonder why I can't stand the Highlands.

Colcam.Image

Loyalist thug Johnny Adair has moved back to Scotland. Some might say it's a step in the right direction - Troon is closer to Northern Ireland than Bolton in England.

Unfortunately, the good people of Belfast don't need him any more than the folks of Troon.

But, on the other hand, it's nearer for those who would rid Scotland, England and Ireland of the "Mad Dog" for good.

Nobody needs scum like Adair.


See all recent posts.

Good God, if it isn't bad enough having Met chief Ian Blair playing politics and demanding internment in the UK, we now have one from Scotland - Fife Chief Constable Peter Wilson - jumping on the bandwagon.

With Tony Blair facing a choice of defeat or a climbdown on the 90-day detention plans, the Scottish bobby is wasting his breath anyway.

Amazing what some of these guys will do for a bit of power and some cheap publicity.

The Apple DotMac service, for £68.00 a year, gives daft Mac users like me a bunch of features such as a home page (crap) to publish stuff on the web, online file storage for backup, and a Mac e-mail address with 1gb storage. Address books, bookmarks and organizer can be synchronized with other Mac computers, and even with my mobile phone. There are a few other "benefits" which are not worth mentioning.

Anyway, my subscription is due for renewal in 10 days, and I have decided to save my money and do without a service I grossly underuse.

Easier said than done. My life has become a nightmare.

I need a new e-mail address - with at least 1gb storage. I need it to be free. When I find one, I need to transfer around 700 e-mails from Mac into it. G-Mail would do nicely. It's not available yet in the UK - and is unlikely to be within the next 10 days.

I have hundreds of passwords and user names to services and websites. I don't know any of them, as the Mac takes care of all that, and backup doesn't work without DotMac. And even if I knew them all, many user names are often e-mail addresses. Mac e-mail addresses, of course.

My phone doesn't seem to sync without DotMac.

I can't get my hundreds of bookmarks to backup then transfer to a Mac not running DotMac.

And it's been raining here for three weeks.

Probably there is a way round all this, but I don't know how. Last night I formatted my Mac Mini, without DotMac, to start to figure out a way to get all the bookmarks, addresses and phone numbers, user names, passwords and God knows what else back on it, and have so far got nowhere.

I can't even get my 5gb of iTunes music back on.

Everything is still on the Powerbook and linked to bloody DotMac, but time is running out fast.

It feels like a choice between the end of the world - or 68 bloody quid.

It's interesting to note that, last Wednesday, when Tony Blair survived a key vote on the anti-terror laws with a majority of only one, MP George Galloway was in Cork, collecting £15.50 per head from punters to see him perform his one-man show.

The show, An Audience with George Galloway MP, is billed as a chance to ask about his beliefs and passions.

Not a great performance in the House of Commons, then, from a man who spends so much time ranting about his hatred of Blair and his government, and is a "fierce critic" of the terrorism legislation.

Of course George was only one of twelve who didn't attend for the crucial vote, but he was certainly the most notable by his absence.

Given his well known rule of never receiving money, I would have thought the chance to vote would have been far more important to him.


SERIOUS FRAUD OFFICE TO EXAMINE GALLOWAY OIL-FOR-FOOD ALLEGATIONS

MSP Brian Monteith has resigned from the Conservative group at Hollyrood, only days after the resignation of Scottish Tory leader McLetchie.

An internal party investigation discovered that Monteith had e-mailed a Sunday newspaper suggesting they run a column calling for McLetchie to resign over the taxi expenses row.

Who needs enemies when you have Scottish Conservative's for pals?

The McCartney sisters, in London to receive an honour at the Women of the Year Awards, passed it up when they discovered Margaret Thatcher was also to get an award.

Claire and Catherine refused to share a stage with someone who had "inflicted injuries" on their country.

Their decision once more shows the strong moral integrity of this family, which would shame most politicians - and especially Thatcher, who was never a friend to Northern Ireland.

Needless to say, Baroness Mad-Old-Bat picked up her award.


(The sisters were honoured recently at the Daily Mail Pride of Britain Awards)

Stirling Council in Central Scotland have introduced biometric technology at Stirling High School, with fingerprint readings to identify kids ordering school dinners.

Seemingly innocent in itself.

And a perfect way to start getting compliance for the police state from the next generation

I mentioned in this previous post that UN human rights monitors were to visit the Guantanamo Bay prison camp at the invitation of US authorities, who wished to show "they had nothing to hide."

Unfortunately and unsurprisingly the visitors would not have been allowed to talk to the detainees.

The UN has now said it will not visit the facility unless they are given free access to prisoners.

A good decision.

It shows the US that the UN is not willing to accept half measures and take the word of camp prison guards and officials that everything in Guantanamo is legal, humane and acceptable.

Guantanamo, it would seem, is only the visible tip of the iceberg anyway.


See See CIA Soil Highlands. Sept. 05



CIA HOLDS TERROR SUBJECTS IN SECRET PRISONS.


The Washington Post today carries an extremely disturbing report on the hiding and interrogating of important al Qaeda prisoners in a covert prison system in various parts of the world.



Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.


The top 30 al Qaeda prisoners exist in complete isolation from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.



I in no way defend al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization or any individual terrorist in acts of violence. Neither can I defend or approve of government, whether it be of the U.S. or any other flavour, resorting to degradation and torture, and isolating human beings from the normal safeguards of a humane democracy.

If the U.S. torturers only used methods like churchmen in Texas use on their children, that would be disgraceful in itself, but I'm sure that is probably mild stuff compared to what has gone on in these places.

Only the Americans cannot understand why they and their country are are referred to as "The Great Satan."

As is common in these cases, David Blunkett, who only yesterday was defiantly saying he would not quit over breaking the ministerial code of conduct - has today quit.

Blunkett's constituency agent says the MP was hounded out of office by the Conservative party and the press. True to a point, and nothing wrong with that. They didn't do it for nothing.

He should have been hounded out by Tony Blair at the start of the sleazy business.

Now the Prime Minister has been left looking like a fool.

Andrew Gumbel writes in the Independent about a Texas Christian group who use a particularly evil method of keeping youngsters "on the right path."


It's called Hell House, which sounds ordinary enough. What makes it peculiar is that it is run by a right-wing evangelical church, and its aim is, quite literally, to scare the bejesus out of impressionable teenagers and shock them into signing up for a life in the service of Christ.

We've already endured scenes of assault, abortion, murder and suicide, complete with ear-piercing gunfire, strobe lights, thumpingly loud music and buckets of theatrical blood. We've seen a teenage girl punished for entertaining a single brief thought about meeting a guy on spring break - a thought that leads directly to her being viciously gang-raped. We've seen how homosexual temptation can lead to lies, betrayal and violent death. We've seen people become evil under the influence of pornography.

From here on in, everything was over the top. We were escorted into what we were told was the ante-chamber of Hell, where Grand Guignol videos showed demons trampling on the buried heads of the condemned. "Do you know where you are going when you die?" asked the soundtrack. Soon we were treated to a montage of images of Jesus being whipped and tormented before nails were banged into his hands and feet in gruesome close-up - images that were intended to give us Hell Housers hope.


Comparing these right-wing evangelical so called Christians to the Taliban isn't really fair - the Taliban never ever thought up anything so sadistic, mentally sick, or perverted as this bunch.


Thoroughly shaken, we were taken to one last room where a pastor called Larry invited us to choose between two doors - one plain one marked "Exit" leading straight to the night-time air, and another leading into a "prayer room" where Hell Housers could sign up for the church and talk, if they wished, with a counsellor.

"The question is, if you were to die tonight, where are you going to go?" Larry asked. At least three of the teenagers trembled visibly. "The devil is trying to stop you going through the prayer door," he asserted. And, he told us, calling yourself a Christian was not enough protection from eternal hellfire. "Who does the devil want most? Those close to him, or those who got away?" he asked. The teenagers murmured: "Those who got away." Larry thundered back: "And what are those who got away called? That's right, Christians!" Every single member of my party went through the prayer door. Some of them rushed through.


The Taliban are pussycats compared to the likes of Larry and his warped "Christian" chums.

David Blunkett is to sell his shares in DNA Bioscience in an attempt to save his cabinet position. Earlier Tony Blair expressed his confidence in Blunkett, while other cabinet members kept ominously silent over the weekend.

The Times on Tuesday reveals that seven weeks before Blunkett took up a job with the DNA testing company, he had been told that he had breached the ministerial code of conduct by not consulting the committee over an earlier appointment. Blunkett ignored three letters from the committee stating that he was required to consult the code.

Blunkett will come under more pressure today, having failed to consult the appointments committee about taking a job with DNA Bioscience, and an earlier one with Indepen Consulting.


Also from The Times, More questions than answers as Blunkett fights for survival, such as:

Why did David Blunkett accept a job a fortnight before the election when he was tipped to return to Cabinet in the reshuffle?

Why did he buy shares in a company which stood to profit from any government contracts in the event of the expected flotation?

Why didn’t he immediately sell the shares when he rejoined the Government and there was an potential conflict of interest?

Why did he start working for Indepen management consultants within weeks of resigning as Home Secretary last December when the advisory committee’s guidelines propose a three-month break?

Why did he fail to consult, as required, the independent advisory committee which had sent him three reminders of the rules?


Too many questions, not enough believable answers out of Blunkett. It's long past time for him to go the way of that other Tory, McLetchie in Scotland.

Previous Blunkett posts HERE, and HERE, and HERE.