David's Daily Diversions

More on the Ridiculous Reshuffle

I missed blogging yesterday because after spending the day with Mrs Holford manning her stall at the Craft Fair in Abergavenny, and after she spent much of the evening looking for patterns online, I finally had a chance to write and the modem died. Late this afternoon (after Liturgy and the mid-year parish meeting) I got another from PC World and finally got it to work. I can’t use it with Windows XP, so I’m still limping along on my old hard drive and 98.

Holford Country Creations has gotten off to a slow start. That’s Mrs Holford’s new enterprise. She’s producing quilted wall hangings, embroidered pillows, smelly hot pads and coasters, and similar items with a handcrafted Americana look. Abergavenny was her first outing and it was plagued with extremely good weather, which kept people out of the Market Hall and out of town generally. Several of the veteran hucksters of this monthly event noted that it was the quietest day they had seen.

It’s time for reassessing which products will work best and at what prices. She is very good at this sort of stuff and the whole project has a lot of potential. Look for her website, hopefully sooner than later.

Descending into Chaos

Tony Blair’s reshuffle of his Government continues to be farce. He’s created a new post of Children’s Minister. He’s appointed the MP for Barking, which is appropriate because she barking mad. She’s the loony lefty who used to be leader of the Islington council, one of the local government boroughs of North London.

While Margaret Hodge was leader, Islington had quite a record when it comes to children. Newspaper reports indicate that at least 26 children were sexually abused while in the care of the council. “As far as services for children are concerned, we failed. I accept responsibility.” That’s what she said at the time.

Why did they fail? They were too busy focusing on other very vital issues. And official inquiry noted that the children’s department of Islington council was “paralysed by equal opportunity and race issues”. These including a ban on singing “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” in nursery schools because of its racist overtones. And as the Shadow Education Secretary (the person in the Opposition who has responsibility for following Government policy in that department) said, “We can only hope her views have matured since she launched a booklet discussing a ban on skipping ropes, musical chairs and GCSE grades below C.”

The only good thing about this appointment is that she is no longer universities minister. Universities have accepted lower and lower and lower achievement at the secondary level as a prerequisite for admission. As a result, they are producing a worse and worse product out the other end.

Great Scot!

You know things are crazy when the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) wants to distance itself from the annual commemoration of the Battle of Bannockburn. The SNP Transport spokesman thinks it’s time to move on and get past the victory over the English 689 years ago next Tuesday.

I think that the Scots no longer have a need to celebrate that victory over the English when Tony Blair has handed them an even greater one, without even the need for bloodshed. The Scots have taken over English government.

The head of the English judiciary and legal system is Charlie Falconer, the new Lord Chancellor. He appoints all the judges in England and Wales – not Scotland, which has a completely separate judicial and legal system. In charge of health care in England is John Reid, yet Scottish health policy is controlled from Edinburgh with its own health minister. The same goes for Transport, where Alistair Darling is responsible for dealing with all the problems public and private means of getting from place to place. But only south of the border. Scottish Transport is the responsibility of a minister in the Scottish Executive. And where does Edinburgh get its lump sum of English money to spend as it chooses? From the man who holds the purse strings for all the UK, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. A Scot, of course.

With all this, who needs to celebrate Bannockburn?