... for the peoples of the world the most important aspect ...

... of the 1215 Great Charter (Magna Carta) should be embedded in our psyche, it's the 29th clause which guarantees Justice, albeit at the time it only applied to "Freemen" ...

NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised (to dispossess or to deprive) of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.^[1]

... unfortunately in the 21st century Justice is sold, it is denied, it is deferred, all to the highest bidder.

A case in question

Sophie Lancaster, her mothers "Black Rose", not ethnicity but a cultural choice, she was Gothic as was her boyfriend Rob Maltby.
"... both were kicked and beaten so badly that ambulance staff could not tell which was the man and which the woman when they arrived on the scene."

How does the 1215 Great Charter apply to Sophie and Rob ?

Has Justice been sold or denied or deferred  ?

How does "... a gang of binge-drinking teenage yobs ... , without the slightest provocation, inflict such ghastly violence on a pair of kindly innocents" relate to the principles of Justice outlined in our great Charter.

We sold justice to the drinks and distribution industries by dropping the age that people are able to purchase alcoholic drinks.
We denied life to Sophie by creating a society that is intolerant to "difference".
We deferred morality, politicians chose to set aside qualities that accompany's tolerance .

... a sidestep in social observations ...

How can our Prime Minister become craven in his subservience to Anthony Bamford, a man who actively lobbies for cuts to business taxes and for restrictions to workers' rights, what human being would wish to take away from people rights fought hard for.

Would Bamford wind the clock back to a time when serfdom was the norm, when only a few were accorded the benefits of the 1215 Great Charter, is it might be time to wrench away from the "Great Bore Bamford" the rights he is claiming for a superior existence in this our world ?

Hillary Clinton is right and wrong ...

... when she said "... make the rich pay more tax".  Although such a strident call will appeal to the radical political left.

It comes across better when she expanded her thoughts with "... there are rich people everywhere and yet they do not contribute to the growth of their own countries".  This type of rhetoric will stir the blood of societies poor.

She further elaborated during a glittering New York conference by saying "... one of the issues that I have been preaching about around the world is collecting taxes in an equitable manner, especially from the elites in every country".  People are becoming a little more comfortable with the notion.

With three sentences she appealed to probably 70% (my guess based on anecdotal evidence) of the population, but the most important offering is the third when she used the term "equitable manner", it is an expression that seems to be underpinned with fairness.

This is not socialism, that political concept is dead and buried, it is "Stakeholder Politics" where everyone contributes to everything, not equally .... but not disproportionately, where rewards are proportional in a country where people are able to do more than just survive, and a country where everyone has the opportunity to achieve their full potential.

Is she telling the electorate they are "stakeholders", interesting times for the peoples of the USA, interesting times for the Republican Party, can they ever win where the vast majority realize they will never have a stake in the USA when the Republican  Party is in the White House.


We have issues in the UK, a senior tax lawyer might tell you to "leave before we set the dogs on you", referring to a well-spoken band of undercover protesters known as "The Intruders" as "trespassing scum", all because you might not approve of people such as ...


... the former HMRC boss Dave Hartnett,   The Intruders presented Mr Hartnett with a spoof "Golden Handshake" gong, the group were ejected by a dinner guest who called them "trespassing scum". A video of their exploits went viral yesterday on YouTube. Under Mr Hartnett's watch, HMRC was accused of agreeing "sweetheart deals" with major corporations such as Goldman Sachs and Vodafone. A Public Accounts Committee report criticised Mr Hartnett for being "too cosy" with big business. He was accused of signing off on a deal that saved Goldman Sachs £20m in tax payments and another which cut Vodafone's tax bill from £8bn to £1.25bn.


What chance the little people of the UK when our taxman was Dave Hartnett, we need a Hillary in Downing Street, but more than Hillary we need UK businesses to pay their unavoidable taxes, is that wishful thinking ?

When politicians urge teachers ...

... to take a Masters degree (MEP *) on appointment, all is probably lost for another generation.

This latest initiative is to tackle what the Welsh government sees as poor standards in basic skills in schools (Wales was ranked lowest of the UK countries in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa)), basic skills being ...

• reading,

• writing,

• arithmetic,

... my feeling is there is something very wrong, should teachers be appointed to a post when they are unable to deliver these most essential life skills, should teachers who are subsequently assessed as not capable continue in post ?


It seems that newly-qualified teachers will take modules on subjects such as behaviour management and leadership but should not need to attend lectures, and the timescale, 1,000 new teachers may start the course this year (2012).


Looking at the proposals from outside the box, could it be we are to appoint, or have recently appointed, 1000 people as teachers, who are in fact not fitted for the role.

The person who sits behind the education desk is non-other than Leighton Andrews, is he fit for purpose I wonder.


*  The Masters in Education programme (MEP) will focus on skills for tackling literacy, numeracy and behaviour.

With a mouth like ...

... this :

... the expression "...... keeps me humble," just doesn't ring true.

Although when he said ....

 "The problem with Alex Salmond is that he wants to destroy Scotland with his ridiculous ................ everybody knows he's a disaster.,"

... he was of course referring to the Salmond windmills,  not the Salmond and the Edinburgh sideshow this weekend.

..... you cannot help warming to him, well that's an exaggeration......

... the "deterrent effect of the shadow of the gallows"...

... should be reconsidered, bringing back the death penalty for those who kill police officers should be considered, thus spoke Conservative peer Lord Tebbit.

Would ordinary people be comfortable participating in such an extraordinary, normally prohibited act, by sitting as a juror where the outcome for a guilty verdict will be judicial murder. For most people most of the time, killing another person is beyond contemplation — and yet capital punishment asks people to do just that.

... but it's not the juror its the law, and it's not the judge, the law requires etc..............

Professor Johnson of the University of Hawaii thinks otherwise ...

... consideration:

After two men were hanged on Aug. 3, Minister of Justice Makoto Taki claimed that he has a duty to authorize executions. "As minister of justice", he explained, "I must carry out my role to respect courts and court decisions."

The two people executed had been found guilty at trials:
03 Aug 2012
Junya Hattori, 40, was executed in Tokyo. Kyozo Matsumura, 31 in Osaka.  They were the first killings under the administration of new Justice Minister Mokoto Taki, the fifth during Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda`s time in office.
Hattori was convicted of attacking and raping a 19-year-old student who was cycling home from college in January 2002. He set her on fire while she was still conscious, killing her. Hattori was on parole after being sentenced for a violent robbery.
Matsumura killed his 57-year-old aunt and his 72-year-old grand uncle in separate attacks in January 2007 and stole their money.  

The issue is "duty", the Minister of Justice calls on the concept of duty much as a pedestrian calls for an umbrella in the rain, as a protection from his or her conscience, duty for the Minister of Justice allowed him to direct the murder of two men without referring to any form of ethics or morality.

Professor Johnson references French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who regarded duty-based views as "bad faith," which he defined as "pretending that something is necessary when in fact it is voluntary."

.................... 

People who say they "have no choice" are often engaged in bad faith, and most acts of bad faith are mundane. Every day we say "I had to do it" — laugh at the boss' bad joke, or nod at a teacher's unpersuasive explanation — and what we imply is that we have placed higher priority on the expectations of a role than on our own freedom to choose how to act.

... it was at the point of reading Professor Johnson where he writes of "... nod at a teacher's unpersuasive explanation" that I understood the very persuasive arguments that  Jean-Paul Sartre had made.

If I am not prepared to commit the crime of murder, then I should not be prepared to participate in a trial where a guilty verdict would make me complicit in the judicial murder of another person, no-matter how heinous the crime.

Is this the argument that commits humanity to abolish all forms of judicial murder ..........

So Lord Tebbit, I'm afraid your call to arms in support of Capital Punishment is unsupportable .........

......... if I am obliged not to laugh at the bad jokes at work, I am also obliged to confront people such as yourself who would incite me to murder .........

This is why Obama ...

... must win:

Searching for a better life than the impoverished one he had in his native Mexico, Martin Cervantes moved to Chicago and took a job at a car-wash on the West Side.

But after a year and a half there, and fed up with work conditions, he quit and took a job in a factory.

Cervantes said he was never paid an hourly rate at the car-wash and was compensated only through tips. He said he worked long, gruelling hours — sometimes without a break — but never received overtime pay. Once, in order to pay rent and buy groceries, he had to sell his TV set.

"This is supposed to be the country of opportunities, but I can assure you the American dream is hard to fulfil," Cervantes, 29, said through a translator. "We want society to open their eyes — this job is poorly paid and hard work."

Cervantes gathered with other car-wash workers Thursday at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum for the release of a report detailing a bevy of negative labour conditions and abuses in the city's car-wash industry. The report was issued by the Labour Education Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Titled "Clean Cars, Dirty Work," the report, funded partially by United Steelworkers, found that a majority of Chicago car-wash employees, who are mostly men and Latino, earn less than the state's hourly minimum wage of $8.25 and work more than 40 hours every week.

The study also states that most do not receive safety equipment, such as gloves and goggles, while on the job, even though they use harsh chemicals when cleaning.

Meanwhile, Arise Chicago, an interfaith workers rights group, has launched a campaign to improve work conditions for the "carwasheros," a Spanglish term for car-wash workers.

Along with hearing the complaints of local car-wash employees, the organization was inspired by car-wash workers in New York and Los Angeles who have either unionised or boycotted work to fight for better health and safety rights.

"We won't stand for that kind of treatment, and we're willing to help (employers) change their ways," said Adam Kader of Arise Chicago.
Though he had not read the study, Eric Wulf, chief executive officer of the Chicago-based International Carwash Association, said his national organization's 12,000 members treat their employees fairly. But not all carwashes are part of his association, and he said variations of work conditions exist in nearly every industry, including his own.

"It's like restaurants," Wulf said. "There are lots of wonderful restaurants, and then there are some you might not go to, some that might not follow every rule."

Disgusted with his work conditions after 14 years, Angel Nava, 56, left his job at a carwash on the Near Northwest Side in 2011. There, his employer kept the tips, overtime was never paid and health insurance didn't exist, he said.

Nava, who still works in the industry, said he hopes the government and other agencies take control of the situation, though he doesn't know what to expect.

"But we are here and we are fighting to improve our working conditions," Nava said. "This is not only me talking; this is carwash workers in all of Chicago."

jmdelgado@tribune.com

...  No man or woman should be reduced to serfdom to survive.

High double standards, a prerogative in Wales where ...

....  do as I say, not as I do, is the preferred way of  Carwyn and chums ...

In June, Health Minister Lesley Griffiths said she would be instructing all seven local health boards (LHBs) in Wales to publish their own corporate risk registers on their websites to :

... assess the likelihood of each risk ..., assess the impact ..., and have counter-measures in place should a risk become reality...

Carwyn Jones [the first minister] personally turned down a BBC Wales request under the Freedom of Information Act to see the government's corporate risk register.

... he said its disclosure would cause "substantial harm".

The registers are a list of all risks an organisation faces, here it is our Cardiff Bay administration.   

The risks assessed include financial, security and IT,  though not restricted to the three important considerations.

The chair of the assembly's public accounts committee, said...

"It smacks of double standards".

 ... the administration said ...

"Publishing risk registers may also appear to legitimise possible but unlikely risks"

"This could prejudice and distort informed public debate about important issues which in turn could have an impact on the conduct of public affairs"

Now myself, I have a need to see the truth, to see the difficult decisions governance deals with each day, I don't have a problem with political warts, I particularly have a need to judge the decision makers by their real actions not the spin.

It's a black day for democracy when political tyranny becomes the norm.

How long before the next election ? 

Is UKIP standing in Caerphilly at the next election ?