Sacred Bulls

So, Shambo's been taken away to be destroyed.

How proud I was to watch our Soldiers of Freedom, smartly jackbooted and high visibility vested warriors protecting our society as they manhandled dangerous Hindu monks out of the path of DEFRA officials to enable them to slaughter the sacred animal.

The monks' crime?

"Sitting quietly and peacefully with intent to protect their freedom to practise their religion"

Now, I'm not a religious person. Far from it, I'm an atheist to the core, despite my parents' and school's determination to make me sit through enough worship to turn me into a believer. They failed. I don't believe. I never will.

I do, however, believe in people's right to believe whatever they like, and if they want to worship spaceships, cows, chickens, housebricks or whatever else, then that's fine by me - but when I watch televison pictures as were broadcast yesterday - pictures showing freedom to worship, freedom to protest, and freedom to fight the courts being suppressed by burly policemen, I feel despair for the society we're becoming.

Shambo was important to those monks. Fair enough, he'd tested positive for the potential to develop Bovine TB.

He hadn't actually got anything wrong with him.

He wasn't going to become part of the food chain.

He wasn't going to mix with other herds of cattle.

He wasn't going to be sold or transported.

Quite how this translates to a dire threat to public health, I'm not sure. I'm certainly no Bovine TB expert, but I haven't yet seen any convincing evidence from DEFRA, or the Welsh Assembly, or anybody else which would suggest that allowing Shambo to live out his existence presented any significant risk to anyone's health.

I've been pondering whether the authorities would have taken the same action had this been an Islamic community.

I don't know whether there are any sacred animals to Muslims, but imagine for one second that a mosque was infested with rats, and the leaders of that Mosque refused to let Environmental Health have access to the building.

Would the police invade the Mosque and start removing worshippers? In the current political climate, I suspect it is unlikely.

I imagine also that the police would think twice before invading a school and dragging children out if they were protesting against poor school dinners, similarly I doubt a Church of England Bishop would be hauled into the street if he preached a sermon which the authorities didn't like the sound of.

All of this, however, depends on the climate of the society in which we are living - and it is frightening to watch the gradual erosion of our rights. There is an increasing tendency for example, for people to be presumed guilty until proven innocent... hardly the inclusive, generous, caring society of the image our government seem so desperate to project to the rest of the world.

Once upon a time, about seventy years ago, there was another European country, whose society started unwittingly down a dark path which ultimately led to the deaths of millions of people. I'm not saying the same thing will happen again, but we're hardly making it easy to avoid.

Polar opposites.

There were two items back-to-back on the Radio 4 Today programme this morning which caught my attention, and which together showed up everything which is becoming wrong with the overbearing, mollycoddling nanny-state in which we are increasingly expected to exist.

Note that I don't use the word 'live'. Living is fast becoming an inaccurate term which can and should no longer be applied to those of us unfortunate to live in Great Britain. Living implies an element of individual thought and, as a result, an element of risk. Risks, as we all know from the Health and Safety Executive, amongst other pointless organisations, are to be avoided at all costs. Risks are 'A Bad Thing'.

So to the news - the first item was concerning a new scheme whereby local councils (or police forces, I'm not sure I can tell the difference any more) are to be allowed to install an 'all-new generation of roadside enforcement cameras'.

Fantastic. That's all we need as motorists in Britain. More enforcement cameras.

So what do these new cameras do, I hear you cry? Well, they're designed to catch those drivers committing that most heinous of crimes - the crime of 'Wilfully or Accidentally (We Don't Care Which) Straying into an (Underused and Inconveniently Positioned) Cycle Lane'. The penalty, we were told, was to be a fixed penalty of £120.

This sanction, it was said, was to underline and reinforce the point that cyclists have as much right to use the roads safely as the evil car drivers out there. It conveniently skirted around the facts - that cyclists don't pay road tax, that there is no requirement for their cycles to be routinely checked for roadworthiness and mechanical safety, that cyclists are not obliged to be in possession of any insurance, that they are not required to wear any form of safety clothing, that they are not required to undergo any formal training nor sit a test, and that they in no way contribute to the upkeep of the road network as a whole.

So, I ask the following questions:

• Do cyclists really have as much right as car drivers to be on the road?
• Is it sensible that the penalty for straying into a (most likely empty) cycle lane be twice that of using a hand held mobile phone whilst driving, or speeding?
• Will the 'cycle lane infringement' cameras be used for the additional purpose of catching and fining those cyclists weaving and wobbling out of control out of their dedicated lanes and into the path of the car drivers using their lanes?
• In light of the protection of the cyclists God-given rights to their own lanes, will car drivers be protected from those who squeeze past cars at traffic lights, banging off the mirrors of the vehicles they pass, scratching their paintwork with pedals and handlebars?
• Furthermore, will cyclists who use the pavement, cross pedestrian crossings, cycle the wrong way down one-way streets, ignore road markings and signage, fail to give hand signals at junctions, display no lights or reflectors after dusk, abandon their bicycles chained up wherever they please regardless of the hazard they cause, or any one more of dozens of bad habits they regularly display be prosecuted and slapped with a hefty fine on each occasion?

Of course the answer to all of these questions is 'No'. Of course none of the ideas presented could really work as cyclists don't have a registration plate advertising their identity to aid the easy generation of revenue. Sorry, I mean 'prevention of crime'.

So, just another example of the state protecting the vulnerable, in this case the cyclist by ironing out a threat to their existence? Maybe... but for the wrong reasons, and in the wrong way. This isn't responsible government - this is nanny state, Big Brother, 1984 kind of stuff. Taking an easy route once again, penalising the easy targets - motorists are used to paying up - rather than addressing the real issues at hand.

So the other news item that caught my ear? The discovery of an unmarked mass grave, home to the remains of over 400 British and Australian soldiers, buried by the German army after the battle of Fromelles which took place during July 1916.

Brave men, who gave up their lives to protect that which was sacred to them.

Freedom.

Freedom. Only seven letters, but the biggest word in the world. Those brave young men died to protect theirs - the freedom to live, and think for themselves. The same freedom which is slowly but surely being taken away from all of us. Not through the actions of a despotic tyrant, nor a government driven by hatred and greed - but through our own apathy, through our own inability to stand up, speak out, and to paraphrase the words of Dylan Thomas, shout:

"We will not go quietly into the night, we will rage rage against the dying of the light"

In memory of those brave soldiers - please take a moment to be silent as you read the following, from 'For the Fallen' by Laurence Binyon.

"They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning

We will remember them."

Love and Marriage, Love and Marriage...

So, yesterday we had the report, this morning the comments. If you've been living in a cupboard, you will not be aware that David Cameron's Conservative party yesterday published a wide ranging report resulting from an 18 month review carried out by Iain Duncan Smith into social problems in Britain.

Amongst some 190 different recommendations to tackle the five key 'paths to poverty' the report identified, were plans to provide tax breaks equivalent to around £20 a week in the pockets of married couples.

Now, I'm sorry, but I think they've missed a trick here. On the Today programme this morning, the comment was made that a couple bringing up 4 children were worse off, so deserved Government help in meeting their financial commitments. I don't have any children. I don't particularly want any, either, but I can't help noticing I'd be in line for a load of Government money coming my way if I had one or two. Tax credits, child benefits, nursery vouchers to name a few.

So what about those of us who form part of a stable couple (who will be married in March 2008), who don't burden the health service or education system?

We both work and pay tax and National Insurance, neither of us are entitled to or claim any benefits, neither of us are entitled to free prescriptions (my partner requires regular asthma medicines - and these for no good reason whatsoever are excluded from free provision, whilst at the same time the government is positively encouraging 13 year olds to take advantage of free contraceptives!), neither of us receive free dentistry... need I continue?

I pump a lot of money into the British economy through taxes and personal spending, yet I receive nothing in return. The health service is a shambles, the cost of living rising year on year at an alarming pace, and hard work seems to now be an exception rather than the norm.

Where's the tax breaks for those of us who don't use any of the funds the government takes from us? Why don't I get a rebate from my NI when I don't use the NHS?

Could it be because I'm an easy target?

I'm back!

OK, I apologise. If anyone out there in internet-land has been eagerly awaiting a new entry, I'm sorry. I've been slacking, badly, and it's been nearly three months since I posted.

I'm now approaching a quieter time at work, and so I'll probably have a lot more time to get irritated about stuff.

So what's happened since I last posted? Well, far too much to go into in any detail, but I've been on holiday in Scotland, which was as expected both wet and midge-ridden, although that didn't prevent me having a fantastic time.

I've had my 30th birthday, which as milestones go wasn't that remarkable - I honestly don't understand what all the fuss is about, but I did have a very nice day.

I've been measured up for my wedding outfit, which will consist of full formal Scottish Highland Dress. As an interesting point to note, wearing a kilt (or, possibly, a skirt, although about that I couldn't possibly comment) is a tremendously liberating experience for any man who hasn't tried it before. I won't go into any more detail than that.

I have had a payrise, although compared to the relentless march of inflation and interest rate rises in the UK, broadly speaking it's pretty much irrelevant.

We've had a new Prime Minister. I really wish I could think of something nice to say, but I can't, and my Mum always told me if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all... But who listens to their Mum at 30 years old, eh?

So, we have a new Prime Minister. Ably taking over the role of steering our once great nation into international disrepute and economic decline, the Great Apostle Gordon Brown was ushered into office, unelected by all and unwanted by many, at the end of June.

First job on the agenda was to assemble a rag-tag band of little known, largely illiterate and staunchly fawning brown nosed Labour ministers to form Gordon's first Cupboard. Or Cabinet, or something - but definitely NOT a sofa.

Gordon Brown doesn't like sofa-style Governments, oh no. Instead, he's built a sort of Ikea government for us, if you will. Flat packed, unattractively packaged and likely to fall apart at the slightest provocation, the various bits which were missing will no doubt resurface at some point in the future, most likely about five minutes after they were necessary to avert a disastrous break-up of the furniture they should have held together.

He'll probably find them down the back of the sofa.

There you go look, now I've made myself miserable. I doubt it'll be another three months until I see you again!