Cllr. Gavin Ayling

November has been a month of non-news.

Over the last few weeks we’ve been subject to so-called scandal after so-called scandal and yet none of them much matters. People don’t care, for example, whether a wealthy man gave a lot of money to Labour, only whether he sought to gain influence by doing so. To my mind, giving the money through friends suggests that no influence was so sought.

The same is true of Ian Lucas’ request to have a debate about a Welsh component to a revised Union flag. I suspect not a single academic child has grown up and not asked the same question. The absence of a Welsh flag can be explained by a little studying of history, but it still seems odd that it has not been added in retrospect.

Again, though, the Welsh flag issue is not the one that the MP for Wrexham ought to be worried about. What about Welsh people having to suffer the indignity of being represented by an Assembly which has lesser powers than the Scottish Parliament? Why do the Scots deserve preferential treatment?

And while we’re talking about constitutional settlements, what has happened to devolution for England? The Campaign for an English Parliament has been complaining for nearly ten years, the Labour party has been threatening to break England up for more than ten years and yet the BBC give news-time to a minor issue like what the flag looks like.

I completely agree, as I said, that the Union flag is an anomaly, but surely the bigger anomalies ought to be cleared up first — let’s give Wales and England the parliaments they deserve, and let’s cut the British parliament down to size (given it’s purely federal role after the institution of the Welsh and English parliaments).

It’s not by mistake that the Welsh calls for an Assembly upgrade are so largely ignored, though. The turkey chicken-politician isn’t likely to vote for Christmas Winterval unless the people who vote for them make them feel they have to.

Naivete is not the preserve of the wet left-wing. Us libertarians (who share some of the so-called liberal beliefs of the left) have grown up with farms offering free range eggs for sale with honesty boxes alongside; we’ve worked hard and paid for our could-be free newspaper in WHSmith.

So I’m at-first heartened to see this on the BBC’s Magazine today about Honesty Boxes and then, when you get to the end, dismayed at the cynicism that suggests it is peer pressure and/or a fear of being caught that makes some people honest.

Oh well, so long as many continue to be honest and so long as society and its governors take action when honesty is absent, we can live in a more peaceful world.

But when will our governors punish those who harm others? And when will they stop imposing draconian surveillance measures while utilising a proven failed process that is called ‘rehabilitation’ in place of punishment?

I cannot find the good and great Alan Drew’s Prison Works website at the moment, but I’ll add a link here later.

The BBC’s staff think some terrorists are justified apparently.

“If you trust the BBC, you can seem ignorant to those that don’t.”
Gavin Ayling, 27/07/2007

An advert in the cinema claims this summer may be a perfect summer of film.

I think the advert may be right — I watched Shrek the Third (which was great) and tonight Die Hard 4.0 (the perfect action film). This summer also has Rush Hour 3, Harry Potter, Transformers, The Simpsons and Evan Almighty to name a few.

The most classic trailer of all time is The Simpsons one though. Marge: “Why are there trotter prints all over the ceiling?”. I was still laughing in the car on the way home! Actually, I chuckled a couple of times when writing this too.

Note: I’m not telling you what the answer to that is.
Update 11:09am 08/07/2007: Found the answer here though somehow it’s not so funny when you haven’t seen the rest of the trailer so resist the urge.

And we have Jeremy Paxman who, for all his critics, does it to every political wing!

I’m afraid there will be no apologies for sharing this video with you. I think it is entirely appropriate and in the public interest.

The Hamster’s Dragster crash video:

Hat-tip to: The England Project