So much for my hope that the EU had worked out a direction that would finally end the practice of pouring endless supplies of money into the bottomless pit that is Agriculture subsidies. http://goodtalking.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/eu-common-agricultural-policy/

French farmers have yet again thrown their weight (and a fair few eggs) around Brussels, and walked away with more of our taxpayer funds.

They claim that because governments have bailed out failing banks, they should be bailed out as well. Thrown out is what they deserve! They still expect us the taxpayer to fund their lifestyle, while they continue to build more butter mountains, or milk lakes, or whatever it is that is the current surplus product.

Its called a free market for a reason. If we want it, we’ll buy it. If we don’t like the price one supplier sets, we’ll go elsewhere to get what we need. The farmers can then adjust their prices or live with the consequences of funding an expensive lifestyle from one paddock of produce. Why should consumers pay more just to keep the farmers going on uneconomic production units. They need to look at their own cost structure before they can get another handout.

Banks were forced to look at their bonus culture when the governments saved them, so the farmers should expect the same sort of treatment. As UK Farming Minister Jim Fitzpatrick said – more subsidies are not acceptable if it leads to paying for production that nobody wants (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8289976.stm).

When will we get some politicians in Brussels with the guts to take the right course for all of us, not just kowtowing to a select, obnoxious, minority.

We often hear stories these days about how humanity is hard done by – on the receiving end of some sort of natural disaster or bad luck from nature. This can take the form of wild animal attacks on humans or domestic animals, flooding or droughts, and so on.

We should stop for a minute and really look at these stories to understand what has changed recently to cause the current conflict. Has there been some alteration in nature’s patterns, have the animals decided to take different migration routes or change their diets?

In every case you will find that this is not the case. Nature is just doing what it has been doing for millennia. The change has come from humanity.

The examples are many and varied – from Brazil to Bangladesh, to Australia.

In Brazil farmers are illegally burning down the Amazon rainforest. Then they move in with vast herds of cattle. And then they start complaining that the jaguar population is taking an interest in their livestock. Well why not!!! The jaguars were there first, they eat meat, and if the farmers provide animals that don’t run away fast enough – Lunchtime!

The farmers have got absolutely no grounds for complaint. The land is part of the jaguars’ hunting range, they have been there for thousands of years, and certainly will not be fenced out. If the farmers don’t like it, they can go back to where they came from, or learn to live with nature.

Living on a riverbank that gets flooded every year does not make much sense. In Bangladesh the Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers having been rising and falling like clockwork with the annual monsoons. But in the last decade or so the locals started complaining that the floods were higher, lasted longer and occurred more frequently, and now someone else has to start protecting them with flood banks and the like.

How about looking a little way upstream instead! Ask who is sitting there and you will see 1000’s of people wandering around chopping down trees to use them for cooking fires! Why should we rush to try and help someone when the problem is only getting worse? Get back in the hills and get the trees planted again. That’s what ameliorates the floods, not big piles of sand and concrete everywhere.

There have been a number of severe bush fires across the south east of Australia in the last few years, and people are moaning about the bush management regime that the councils are running. Well the councils are trying to leave it to nature as much as they can, and they are actually doing a reasonably good job. So what is causing the increased fires?

How about looking at the ground and the bush – it’s a lot dryer than it used to be. A drought perhaps? Or then again perhaps it is the fact that the lifestyle of the population is sucking a lot more water out of the ground than it used to. There are more swimming pools, the population is spreading into dryer areas, and still want their green grass and pretty flowers, and agriculture is getting more intensive and water dependant. It all adds up to a lot more water coming out of the ground than is going back in.

So perhaps if the water was managed with a little more restraint than the current free-for-all draining of the trough, then there might be a little more left over for nature to keep itself green and less prone to going up in a puff of smoke.

So in every Humanity vs Nature story, we really need to look at Humanity’s behaviour before we run around bleating about how we get the raw end of the stick from nature.

Yet again Israel hangs it’s violent, racist, fanatical and inflexible pedigree out in public.

On the one hand they are not prepared to slow down their illegal settlement activities while they negotiate for peace with Palestine. And on the other they continue to destroy all areas of Palestinian life.

They plan to build almost 1500 new houses in one of the West Bank settlements, using the relocation of 50 families from elsewhere as justification, taking control of more Palestinian land in the process. This almost sounds the same as what Mugabe did by taking possession of white farmers’ land in Zimbabwe – at least as violent and illegal. So why doesn’t Israel get the same attention and condemnation that Mugabe’s regime did? I’ve said it before (http://goodtalking.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/axes-of-evil/), and I say it again here.

Israel are obviously not prepared to let the peace negotiations proceed without substantially shifting the goalposts in their own favour using every means possible.

Meanwhile the borders to Palestine are kept closed, even to medical supplies and basic childcare requirements. These are not the actions of a country striving for peace. Clearly Israel has no humanitarian outlook, and takes no care to avoid unnecessary harm to innocent civilians. It has prejudged all Palestinians as terrorists, treating them as such, when all the Palestinians are trying to do is survive from day to day. This is exactly what the Jewish people endured prior to the creation of Israel as a country. And now the Jewish state takes revenge by brutalizing someone smaller than themselves.

All it would take to calm the situation down, to end the violence, the persecution of civilians is one thing: for Israel to stop what they are doing. I am not advocating a permanent cessation of all activities vis-à-vis the Palestinians and their land, just stop. Now. And start talking.

The basic fact about violence is that it needs two sides in order for it drag on unchecked. If one side is not fighting, the conflict will cease almost immediately. However it must be the dominant side that takes the first step. If it is Palestine that stops first, the last Israeli strike could cause considerable damage to what’s left of Gaza. Whereas if it is Israel that stops first, the last suicide bomb or missile will probably only knock a hole in a wall or two in Israel.

It is about time that the USA woke up to the extremist country they are supporting. Israel could not afford to survive without the huge cash donations it gets from the USA, but America is washing its hands of the actions Israel takes with American money to destroy Palestine. For how much longer must this go one?

The US says that the building must stop to enable a viable Palestinian state to emerge alongside Israel through negotiations. But what are the USA doing to add teeth to this political wet sop? Nothing. No restrictions on support to Israel, no sanctions, just talk. All hot air and nothing else.

Wake up USA, Israel only wants you for your money. They don’t care about anything else. The only way to get Israel’s attention is to stop the money. Forget the talk, the speeches of outrage, the media posturing – stop the cash!

Only when Israel runs out of American cash with which to raze Palestinian life will the region be able to make any progress towards creating a lasting peace for all peoples. Then they might be able to tear down the walls instead of building them higher.

What is in it for the average EU citizen to vote in the upcoming EU elections? To answer that we must ask – what does the EU do for that same average citizen?

And the answer to that is not difficult to work out – nothing. Or even less than that – it gets in the way of the average citizen

If I want to go out and buy some of my local feta cheese – I can’t. If I want to drive my Finnish truck on European roads – I can’t. If I want to plant some sugar beet when I want – I can’t. Feta cheese is a ‘named’ product that can only come from a small part of Greece. So the biggest feta cheese producer in Europe – Denmark, is forced to call it’s cheese something else. Trucks built in Finland are apparently about 6cm too wide for European road standards, and so must either be trimmed down the side by that amount, or stay at home. And in the agricultural arena, if there is too much of one product in the EU, you are not allowed to produce it, even if there is a shortage in your local country. Again the Finns seem to prefer the quality of their local sugar beet, but the farmers there are not allowed to grow it because there is a surplus of inferior product elsewhere in Europe!

So tell me – what does the EU actually do for the average citizen: it hinders and obstructs and taxes them at just about every opportunity, for no real return.

There are three groups that benefit significantly out of the EU. Firstly is the politicians who otherwise would have no-one to listen to all their hot air and useless pronouncements. Secondly the multilingual circus of bureaucrats that is required to keep the whole organisation functioning. Note that they do nothing for anyone in Europe, they just shuffle the parliament backwards and forward between Belgium and France every couple of months, and translate every single document into every single language. Do you really think that the Italians or the Portuguese want to know the details of the Arctic reindeer policies? Of course not, but to justify their existence, the bureaucrats claim that the translation is required.

And the final beneficiaries are the people on the edge that have got the ear of the politicians. The lunatic fringe, the flavour of the month in charity causes, the losers who cannot survive on their own. These are the groups that live off handouts from the EU, from our taxes.

So who is going to vote this weekend? The bureaucrats who believe in the way of life they have become accustomed to, and the minorities who can not survive without it.

And with the notoriously small voting turnout in EU elections, these groups will get enough votes to ensure that nothing changes, and nothing threatens their precious parasitic lives.

As for me – as soon as I hear of a candidate who pledges to downsize this EU behemoth, I know where my vote is going.

I hope you’ll see some sense and do the same, its better for your taxes in the long run.

The latest attempt by the UN to resolve some of the most pressing issues in our modern world has just been scuttled. And not by some flea-bitten terrorist dictatorship grandstanding on some obscure point of protocol, but by, supposedly, the leading nation of our globe – the US of A.

Yet again the USA expects the rest of the world to agree with them, only them, and nobody else, ALL OF THE TIME.

This time it is the UN Racism forum in Geneva. It has been boycotted by the USA and other nations because, wait for it, they don’t like the mood of the forum!

Apparently the forum is lining up to accuse Israel of crimes against humanity. Well maybe not that strong – but they should! It is about time that Israel’s performance in Palestine be recognised for what it is – brutal thuggery, repressing a people with different beliefs. And if that is not racism – what is? They have labelled every Palestinian a terrorist, and are treating them accordingly.

The only way to solve the Mideast issues is through dialogue, understanding and tolerating differences – from all sides. And that includes the USA who still seems to believe that Israel is completely innocent of all charges. Despite all that ex-Pres Jimmy Carter says, the American general public still swallow the lies, fabricated facts and half stories fed to them by their government. They firmly believe in their own position of being right despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

By not participating they are fueling and escalating the very thing they are complaining about – intolerance of religious and idealogical differences. How do they expect to be able to influence and change anything if they don’t even bother to turn up to the forum to talk about it?

The other complaint from the USA is that the mood of the forum has an anti western bias. Well if the USA can’t take a bit of criticism itself, why does it continually ‘lay down the law’ about other countries’ behaviours!! Do unto others as you want them to do unto you. So if the USA is always berating other countries about their performances, then they can only expect to receive the same sort of ‘helpful’ comments back!

Instead of turning their back when other countries speak a different message, it is about time that the USA listened to the opinions of others. They should not trample all over them, and insist that the world kowtow to the American view of reality in all things.

The BCCI (Board of Control of Cricket in India) seems to have forgotten what the very initials of their organisation stand for. They seem to think that they can decide who does what anywhere in the cricket speaking world!

Whether it is the makeup of a team to play against India in a different country, the roster of commentators for a completely independent broadcaster, or even the players who are eligible to play in competitions run by other organisations in other countries. They don’t seem to have any limit to their own perception of their authority. Surely the last letter of their acronym should give some idea of where their sphere of influence in the sport? Doesn’t the acronym BCCI limit them to control of the game IN INDIA? Then why do they think that they can demand presence or absence of certain participants in other countries, other games and other companies?

In New Zealand recently India requested that NZ not select a certain player as part of its own Invitation Eleven to play against India. NZ quite rightly refused and selected the player in question. India then threw a tantrum and pulled out one of its own star players! Why just one, why not all of them? Why the star of the team? Was the player allowed to have a say – it’s his career, presumably he wanted to play!

Later in the tour of NZ, a particular person was invited to be a commentator by one of the NZ broadcasters. Again India tossed their toys out the window and demanded that he not commentate!! What arrogance! Did they really think that a company in a different country, pursuing its own profit motives as best it could, would change their mind because of the BCCI? Maybe if the BCCI backed up their demands with some wads of cash, but that’s pretty unlikely!! These, and many other, unwarranted demands around the world are causing a lot of very unnecessary furore.

The point of contention is that these people have some past connection with the ICL tournament, which runs in competition against the BCCI’s own tournament – the IPL. And to have any connection is not just frowned on, it is harshly banned. Players around the world have had their international careers cut short simply because they were involved with the ICL and thus annoyed the BCCI, who then ‘leaned’ on the national organisations of the players involved and got them ‘unselected’.

If they want to ban half the players in their own country from the international cricket scene – go ahead, their problem. But they have no mandate to try and do the same thing in any other country around the world. Stop creating turmoil in the international game, and stick to shitting in your own nest. That’s were you belong BCCIndia!

There was nothing much else on the box, so I thought I’d watch some of the European Championships football matches. Tonight happened to be Liverpool vs Real Madrid. But really it could have been any one of the matches, the clubs are all the same in terms of their antics – legal or otherwise, once they get onto the grass.

Well there were two teams, both of 11 men, all on the same pitch. There was also a ball and a referee on the pitch which both, however, seemed rather incidental to the real action.

The first goal, in hindsight, was scored after the defender had been physically pulled over and dumped to the ground. The attacker’s arm reached out, hand clasped the defender’s shoulder and jerked backwards. Lo & behold – one defender flat on his back and the goal now open.

Soon after that one of the players delivered a horizontal scissors kick across an opponent’s legs that would have scored a gold medal on the pommel horse. One leg goes in front of the player with the ball, the other leg comes swinging in from the back, aiming squarely for the back of the knee, to slam the ball holder to the ground, while pretending to go for the ball. The gesticulating afterwards, protesting against the well deserved yellow card, was the pure ego-tripping histrionics of a spoilt self-centred brat. Which, of course, is just what most football players are! Meanwhile the victim was lucky to get away without having his legs broken.

Sure they all go down when an opponent’s boot dares approach closer than a metre (http://goodtalking.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/ballet-with-boots-but-no-balls/), but they also deliver killer blows to unsuspecting opponents, without batting an eyelid, and then protest to the ref and stamp away in a sulk calling him a blind ba****d.

We often hear of various clubs employing talent scouts to watch games in order to short list the players they need to buy into their team. I think its time for a bit of thinking outside the box, or outside the pitch to be precise. Some of the entertainers (they’ve long since given up being called wrestlers!) on WWF, or whatever it is called, could do a pretty good number on their opponents on the football pitch. Likewise, I see a great future for some ‘football’ players, on the mat of a wrestling ring.

So what is – European Championships Football, or All In Hacking?

As I’ve said before – its time to get tough with some post match slow motion replays delivering some appropriate penalties to the perpetrators of the worst of the violence.

We live in a world where finally it is being frowned on to wantonly throw litter away. At home and in the office we are encouraged to separate and recycle our rubbish. But once we get out onto the street the focus seems to have drifted a bit. Nobody seems to care that we throw rubbish onto the ground, cigarettes get stubbed out anywhere and chewing gum is tossed away regardless of how far it is to the nearest rubbish bin.

But most blatantly, it is the people who think they are doing us a service, who are actually causing the biggest mess on our pavements. At street corners and transport hubs they proliferate. Whether at election time to hand out candidate flyers, or in the evening to advertise the local nightclubs, or at any other time, we see them standing around forcing their little pieces of paper into our hands. Because it is ‘information’, and ‘for our benefit’, they feel justified in carrying on with this practice. They have to get their message across, and they’ve decided that this is the most efficient way of doing it.

It is very easy to work out the main pedestrian flow, because ‘downstream’ from these people is a huge spread of discarded flyers on the ground. It starts after about one metre, grows rapidly for another four or five meters to a full ground-covering layer, and then dwindles away over the next 10 or so metres. And does anyone do anything about it?? Of course not, freedom of speech or freedom of the press, or freedom of some damn thing, but anyway they continue handing out rubbish that is promptly dropped on the ground at their feet.

And when they have finally handed out their complete supply, what happens next? They walk away. A simple as that. No attempt whatsoever to clean up the mess they directly created. “We didn’t drop them”, they whine, “the public did, it’s their fault.”

Well guess what – you can tell by the number that were dropped immediately exactly how much we wanted that information. Not at all!! It’s their information, their paper, their rubbish, and their obligation to clean it up.

I sincerely hope that our city councils are actively charging these organisations for the right to stand on the street and litter the pavements. It looks like a great source of revenue to cover the cost of cleaning up the mess afterwards. And if the price is high enough, it might serve a dual purpose. It will bring in much needed cash and it might even dissuade them from repeating the practice again in the future. Thus we will perhaps better encourage a more responsible use of our scarce resources, instead of watching them being consumed in the printing and discarding of the paper.

So we need to understand that this mass littering is a crime, if not against the law, then certainly against us and against the planet for incredibly bad use of our resources. It must stop.

“Strip, please, yes and your belt and shoes”. No, not under some subdued lighting in a back-streets room with a woman of dubious reputation. Instead very much in public view and under the harsh glare of an airport security checkpoint. Everyone complies, no arguments are allowed. This public humiliation, this rude interruption to our rights of safe passage, this intrusion into our personal privacy is almost completely unjustified. And then they have the effrontery to justify their invasive behaviour with the catch-all line ‘we’re doing this for your own safety’.

So what are they actually doing and are they achieving anything at all from it?

Requiring travellers to open laptops and take out the batteries prior to putting them into the scanner; allowing empty bottles to be kept, but any bottle that has any liquid at all in it will be confiscated; demanding the removal of even the smallest of men’s belts, while women’s belts remain right where they are thank you very much; and so on. A tube of toothpaste that has been through several airports is suddenly subject to confiscation from an over-zealous guard, eager to throw his unwarranted authority around on victims who are not allowed to complain.

Which particular aspect of safety is enhanced by any of these measures noted above? What better security do we get if a laptop is placed open into the scanner compared to a closed laptop – None!

How dangerous is a well-used tube of toothpaste? It has been through the scanner, no bomb was detected, but no – ‘we’ll have that’ they say.

All of these checks are directly driven by American paranoia, and then enforced by governments globally who are fearful of offending the mighty US of A. Americans are so scared of the rest of the world that they insist that everything and everyone is put under the microscope before getting anywhere near their borders. Maybe they should ask why they are so scared – there’s a good question!! There is no danger of terrorist attacks in countries as far apart as Finland and New Zealand, but even in these far flung corners of the globe, American paranoia prevails over common sense and customer comfort.

What would happen if governments around the world started following the US in other areas of repressing their citizens?

As I have noted elsewhere in this blog, we would lose the ability to have art shows exhibiting any part of the naked human anatomy (http://goodtalking.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/decent-exposure/ ); we would be forced to censor our literature to conform with the currently accepted American standards (http://goodtalking.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/censorship-of-the-arts-in-america/); we would be become obliged to interrupt all our advertising programs with no more than a few minutes of actual performance each hour on television; we would have to support greater safety on the streets by allowing everyone to carry whatever gun they want whenever they want; and we would force a lawyer driven perception of reality, in which every event is an opportunity to get rich quick at someone else’s expense, on our innocent and lawyer free cultures.

So why is it that we have all enacted their draconian ‘public safety’ measures at airports, when we realise what a lot of crap other aspects of the US culture are.

The sooner that our governments start to lead a life of their own in this area, the sooner we will have smoother and easier travel. As a sop to the US, we can maintain separate strip search security channels just for their citizens, so that they feel comfortable as they are subject to this invasive security for no real benefit.

And where is the forum for us to say “Enough!” Everyone is too scared to say anything as they might be seen to be sympathising with terrorism.

There is no-one we can complain to, nobody will stand up and admit responsibility for the rules governing how we are searched. Airport security guards point to airport authorities, who point to governments – but not to a particular person or department. No, just the faceless term ‘the government’ is responsible.

Well we elect the government, they are empowered to do what we want them to do. Nothing more, nothing less. Do we want them to continue with this intrusion into our privacy? I think not, so now we need say “Enough!”

We’ve all been there – cruising along the road, and then suddenly having to come to a complete halt. Stuck there interminably, and for no good reason. And then, just as suddenly, we’re on the way again.

No not traffic jams and gridlock, unwanted and unneeded traffic lights!

Why do councils suddenly see the need for more artificial interruptions to the traffic flow, when it has been working smoothly until now? Is it some sort of training exercise for new traffic engineers – give them a quiet intersection to see if they can stuff it up for the traffic?

There has never been a request from the public – “please can we have some lights installed at this intersection”. No, the council always knows best what we all desperately need, even if we don’t say so.

Having traffic lights, including the pedestrian crossing lights, running on an automatic cycle is a complete waste of effort. If there are no pedestrians or crossing traffic, why does the rest of the traffic have to stop and wait for their red light to change to green?

Any competent council would see from a quick survey that there is not enough traffic to warrant any form of control. But no, the councils have to justify their existence, and the only way to achieve that is to make the traffic stop needlessly. It has cost the council (ie US the Taxpayer!) money to study the intersection, time for planning the phasing, resources for building and installing the system, and then ongoing maintenance when impeded motorists take out their frustration on the lights.

And what has it all achieved? Nothing – no improved flow, no better clearing of waiting traffic in the side streets and no facilitation of pedestrians crossing (there were none there to start with!).

Just get rid of the lights, and let the traffic take care of itself without interruption.