Curly's Corner Shop, the blog!

Spotted in local supermarket

Oh no, don’t tell me it was South Shields MP David Miliband all along :-O

Yes, I know, childish humour NOT to be taken seriously, but it lightens the gloom a little as more bad news hits King Street.

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HMS Illustrious in quick visit.

Click thumbnail for larger picture

I was asked a few times yesterday about the “aircraft carrier” that was spotted anchored off the mouth of the Tyne as South Shields entertained thousands of visitors on a weekend dedicated to supporting Armed Forces Day. Following a small parade and presentation at South Shields Town Hall on Saturday morning there was a big presence of bikers and petrol heads at the Bents Park on Sunday as many people took advantage of rather hot and steamy weather to enjoy the seaside. The displays were quite impressive and it was pleasing to see an event organised by those who are probably more accustomed to bad press rather than being the subject of praise, however the Badlanders Motor Cycle Club and the Tyne Wear Chapter of the Hells Angels provided a variety of entertainment and bags of interest for those interested in monster machines, hot rods, heavy metal rock, vintage militaria, and generally good clean honest fun. They had live bands entertaining the crowds, lots of charity stalls, retailers, big bikes for sale, food and drink, and a car and bike show too, and the whole event was aimed at raising money for various charities with links to our servicemen and women such as Help for Heroes, Save Our Soldiers, and The Royal British Legion.

HMS Illustrious seemed to have timed her visit purposefully, but it may well have been an opportune accident of timing as she undergoes sea trials around the UK coast following a £40m refit at Rosyth. “Lusty” Illustrious is classed as a “strike carrier” but in reality she is the last remaining through deck cruiser after the decommissioning of Ark Royal and Invincible, her decks are now fitted for carrying helicopters and she will serve as the UK’s on call carrier when HMS Ocean undergoes a refit. She has been in Rosyth dockyard for the past 16 months for an overhaul which has seen her communications kit enhanced, mess areas – the crew’s living spaces – revamped, a new anti-torpedo system fitted, and has had 540,000 litres of paint (enough to fill one fifth of an Olympic-sized swimming pool) applied, including a fuel-efficient coating to her outer hull which will make her scythe through the oceans more efficiently, among other work carried out by Babcock and the ship’s company.

Above all, however, the ship emerges from refit capable of carrying up to 20 helicopters and 600 troops as an assault ship (a function she performed for real during operations in Afghanistan in 2001-02).

“This has been a challenging project, delivered to a very high standard by the joint team – on time and on budget.”

said Capt Graeme Little, of the Capital Ships team at the Defence Equipment and Support organisation.

“We approach Illustrious’ return to the navy with confidence in the significant improvements which have been made.”

After an initial week-long run-out of Rosyth earlier this month, a more thorough work-out for Lusty is now underway over the next five weeks.

She’s due in Portsmouth in late July, when she’ll be formally handed back to the Fleet.

I share the grave worries and concerns voiced by our top brass in the Ministry of Defence over our very stretched roles at present, and with two new carriers promised sometime never in the future we are left in quite a vulnerable position with one “strike (helicopter) carrier” on call at a time when the Argentinians are rattling their sabres over the Falklands again, if they had a mind to subjugate the Falkland Islanders I fear there would be little that we could do this time to relieve their plight. Worse still I cannot see our “friends” in America helping us, despite our clamour to help them out in Afghanistan!

At a time of economic restraint British military adventures need to be very carefully considered and priorities ought to be given to the defence of the realm and defence of British strategic interests, before we even think about assisting in the so called Arab Spring! These “revolutions” in the middle east have not produced exciting results either for the protagonists or the outside observers who were perhaps hoping to see the emergence of liberal democracies, even in Egypt the military seems to have worked quietly but successfully behind the scenes to get the result that they wanted. Our involvement in Libya was premature and hasty and many of us had doubts over the altruism of the original motives, it is becoming increasingly expensive for the tax payer and stretches the Royal Navy and the RAF to their absolute limits, to add insult to the current impasse we have the Prime Minister telling his Defence Chiefs of Staff that their job is to do the fighting and it is his job to do the talking! Please don’t misunderstand me, along with thousands of other South Tynesiders, I fully and unambiguously support the dedication and professionalism of our armed services when the politicians have made a decision to deploy them abroad, and I also recognise that the MOD is a big beast capable of wasting many millions of our hard earned pounds just as well as any other department, but the Prime Minister must at least look as though he is listening to what his military staff are telling him. The message they are trumpeting is that we are involved in too many campaigns at a time when the politicians are asking them to slim down the operations and the budgets, you cannot get quarts out of pint pots!

The answers to half of the current financial conundrums for our Defence Chiefs must surely be a very swift and total withdrawal from Afghanistan, regardless of the pace of the US draw down, and a lightning fast removal from Libya, in both cases we ought to make it quite clear that it is now up to the people of those countries to decide their own destinies and fates without external intervention. We have done our bit, it’s surely time for them to do theirs (if they really want that change).

A more insular policy may well be required for a while at least until the bristling of the top brass has subsided, however as the prickly Argentinians become more embroiled in robust rhetoric we at least can rely on the good Doctor Liam Fox to fight fire with fire:

“Those in politics on the other side of the world can huff and puff but it will not change our resolve politically to retain the independence and the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands nor to come to their defence and to maintain deterrence as best we can.

“We have Typhoons already stationed there. We have a very clear message that we have both the naval power if necessary, and certainly an intent to ensure that the Falkland Islands are kept free and their people enjoy the liberation we fought so hard for 30 years ago.”

Those words need to be read very very carefully, he mentions political resolve but not military resolution, and he talks up deterrence “as best we can”, he talks of intent to keep the Falklands “liberated” from the Argentinians. All this with a few Typhoons and a navy that would fill the South Marine Park lake? Come on Dr. Fox, the only naval power that we might have left would be a nuclear submarine prepared to play very high stakes in an international game of poker!

Either that or the big  hearted Badlanders and Hells Angels from Tyne Wear and Durham might be enlisted to join a cargo carrier headed south to relive their glory days of 29 years ago!

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Apologies

I must apologise to regular readers for the distinct lack of posts and updates over the past week, I have rediscovered the joys of reading!

Currently getting stuck into the digital versions of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy“, having quickly finished The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I’m now about halfway through The Girl Who Played With Fire, and because they are such good page turners I will probably move straight into The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest.  I like a good detective thriller and these three certainly live up to the billing they have received, the long awaited first film should be worth seeing and Lisbeth Salander is exactly the sort of investigator who ought to have been invited to South Tyneside to catch a monkey!

Not sure why it took me so long to discover eBooks, I have a library at home (well at least an entire wall) given over to books which haven’t been looked at for some years, I’m pretty shocked at how they have accumulated, but now that I know that a digital reader or even a laptop can hold thousands of works on the space normally reserved for one CD I shall be looking for a decent car boot sale or a worthy charity to get rid of this physical mountain of paper, digital is definitely the way to go!

I’ve also been taking a good bit of exercise along our glorious coast in South Shields and Whitburn on my bicycle and “power walking”  musing over how I’ve never been lucky enough to spot a seal on the beach! Must also get around to carrying out some gardening for my father, however, I will endeavour to contribute one or two posts per week to this blog.

As you wait for the next activity here, why don’t you check out my other photographic activities at South Shields Daily Pictures.

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……..they can  hardly ever tread a straight path.

In some other European countries such as Belgium and Italy, where the electoral system is forever throwing together pacts and coalitions between parties, they are used to seeing compromises, here in the UK we are more likely to call them “U-turns”. Whether its on deficit reduction, higher education, NHS reform, defence, or justice the ConLib coalition is constantly in flux with policy being driven more by the need to keep the coalition together than what might be seen as the necessities of good government.

In many respects this was to have been expected when David Cameron’s Conservatives and Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats drew up their agreement last year after we failed to make a clear decisive choice at the general election, but by far the biggest flaw at the outset was the agreement manipulated by David Cameron to engineer a five year fixed Parliament. With this new restriction in place Cameron probably felt that he had a chance of carrying through most, but not all, of his party’s programme, with a few adjustments along the way. However, it is inevitable that tensions will arise within government and within the two parties making up the administration, and as one policy after another appears to the press and Opposition as being ill judged or poorly formulated detractors can (almost justifiably) point to yet another U-turn or abandonment of important party principle. During previous periods when we have had either a minority government or a government getting by with a small majority the most important opposition has come from within the ranks of the governing party keeping the executive on its toes, this is not quite so easy to achieve when two parties are involved. The other important position to note was that a major defeat for such a government in The House of Commons might lead to a new general election as the Prime Minister attempts to secure a good working majority.

David Cameron, unfortunately decided to tie his own hands behind his back with the fixed term Parliament and it would take an enormous effort from MPs to force him back to the polls, it has also tied Nick Clegg into a very tight arrangement which so far has resulted in his party becoming the whipping boys for the coalition,  some say Cameron has played a blinder! I don’t, and I see this coalition arrangement leading to weakened policy as some on the right wing of the Tories become more vociferous, and more on the left wing of the Liberal Democrats become more rebellious, “fudge” will become the flavour of the month! I would have been far happier with a much more fluid and loose voting arrangement between the parties, without Lib-Dem ministers, that would enable a Cameron government to start out along its path, with the possibility of a sooner rather than later general election to try and cement his position.

The risk of a government falling can actually strengthen its hand with its own backbenchers and fortify its survival measures. There is nothing quite like the threat of losing one’s seat to exercise the minds of those recalcitrant MPs in marginal seats (of all parties), as they huff and puff to try and blow the government off course!

The five year fixed Parliament is a classic illustration of fixing something which was not broken at the outset.

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Current Jarrow seat may disappear say researchers

Let’s throw our hands up in the air in a shock horror moment!

Well that’s just about the reaction that we ought to expect in large quarters of South Tyneside, as some “experts” speculate that the current constituency of Jarrow will be “wiped off the map” as a result of the coalition government carrying out its electoral pledge to reduce the overall number of MPs to 600. We did after all want to reduce the costs of our democracy didn’t we?

Personally I think the views of these experts, if realised, would leave a fairly silly looking situation where parts of the borough of South Tyneside would be represented by three Members of Parliament for South Shields and Jarrow, Gateshead East and Hebburn, and Washington. Geographically the map would look flawed destroying age old local identities. I rather preferred the comment of South Shields MP David Miliband who said that he couldn’t comment “until the actual proposals are out”.

Personally I’d prefer to keep both Jarrow and South Shields with Biddick Hall and Whiteleas going into Jarrow, and Cleadon Village and East Boldon coming into the South Shields constituency – but that’s exactly what you would expect me to hope for isn’t it?

Let them find some other seats in the north-east to lose!

Full report from the Democratic Audit researchers at Liverpool University  here (.pdf) Yes folks it’s only a university project.

Your views please!

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What is the truth about the numbers?

I know, I mentioned exactly the same thing last year, I emailed Tony Carlisle but he failed to respond to my questions, and yesterday’s Great North Dog Walk held on The Leas, South Shields may have set yet another new record to be inscribed into the Guinness book.

Thing is, I have all sorts of questions about this so called “record breaker”, but lets have another look at the numbers again. According to The Shields Gazette:

The 3.5-mile Great North Dog Walk attracts up to 30,000 visitors to South Tyneside each year, and holds 15 Guinness world records for participation. Last year, more than 18,000 dogs including 178 different breeds took part.

Since it started in 1990, it has raised £4.2m for good causes.

And so yesterday, from what I hear, they were hoping to break that record again. So once more we ought to be examining the mathematics and posing more questions.

The picture above is not in any way a representation of yesterday’s event, it is just a factual view of one single moment at just after 2:00 pm, however it did indicate that after four hours the event had all but finished, tents were being taken down, fences were being removed, RSPCA volunteers were taking a rest, vans were being loaded, you get the picture.

Which means that if last year’s record was remarkably beaten again, then an average of 4,500 dogs per hour had moved past the point that you see in my picture; because this is a family event you often see pairs of dog walkers, or even threes and fours, now that would mean about 38000 humans took part. 38000 would fill The Bents Park twice over! Now, my own eyes, and those of the APCOA Civil Enforcement Officers witnessed that a great many of them arrived by car, they certainly didn’t all walk to The Leas, and if only 25% of the dogs arrived by car then where did the 4500 cars park? They certainly didn’t, indeed could not, park alongside The Leas because from Gypsies Green Stadium to the Redwell Bank roundabout there is only room for about 250 vehicles. Where would the other 4000 odd park? Not on the Dragon, it was virtually empty.

Also, if each dog lapped up around half a litre of water during and after the walk, they would consume the contents of some 4500 two litre bottles of water, that’s a lot of pallets and a lot of dog bowls, yet behind the finish line I counted only around 50 bowls.

I missed the start of the event so I cannot truthfully tell how many thousands were lined up ready to go, but remembering last year I found it difficult to believe that there might have been thousands behind the start line, hundreds would have been a better estimation from what my own eyes saw. Yet still I continue to find it very difficult to believe that now around 4500 dogs per hour walk around the course.

So, considering that South Tyneside Council is now one of the major sponsors of the event I think we are entitled to ask some questions to validate that it is indeed a major event worthy of tax payer support.

• How do the organisers confirm how many dogs take part on the day?
• Is there any involvement by any official from Guinness World Records Ltd on the day, and on site, to validate the “world record” claim?
• How much does the event cost to organise and run?
• How much sponsorship is raised and from whom?
• How much money is raised for charities and which charities benefit?
• Are any accounts published, and where can the public read them?

Related posts

• Double money canine cash give away
• On dogs and water trends
• Great North Dog Walk

I’m sorry that I find these numbers challenging, they just don’t match with what my eyes see,  were you there yesterday? Am I going slightly barmy about it?

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Ever thought of getting to know them a little better?

Regular readers here will know that for some time I have been very concerned at how “The War Against Terror”, and the attendant changes in anti terror legislation introduced during the Blair/Brown era, affected the way we viewed ourselves, our civil liberties, and the way in which we approached others within our communities. I have to report that in South Shields, at least, the more general fears and stereotypical views about the followers of Islam have not been realised, although there have been a very few isolated incidents reported in the local press.

I have often criticised in this blog, the apparent failure of government to adhere to its own principles that terrorism would not alter the way of British life, government itself has managed to achieve that by regulating, legislating, monitoring, spying, and gradually eroding many of our centuries old civil liberties that we often take for granted. Following on from the major outrages of 9/11 and 7/7 government has managed to introduce an illogical sense of fear about Muslims in our communities and allowed sections of the press and media to highlight the most extreme extreme examples of expression from teachings and preachings to public demonstrations, yet in the majority of British communities, and most certainly here in South Shields, there is very little evidence at all to support these fears.

We have lived side by side with Muslims in our locality for over two hundred years here, with descendants of Yemenis and more recently Bangladeshis, educated in our schools, working in our community, and generally being normal “Geordies” enriching our lives with an infusion of diversity and culture. I stated in a previous post that I will be writing a little more about our Muslim neighbours during June and July to try and bridge that gap of understanding which still exists, and I am meeting some people who are keen on reaching out into the wider community to help us gain that understanding about their cultural and religious beliefs.

We all need to appreciate, accept and respect each other’s beliefs and be able to come together in those areas where we all share a common path, it strengthens us as human beings, engages us, and challenges us to move forward with greater social integration. We have been blessed in South Tyneside with many years of social, cultural, and religious harmony, but the history of recent more international events risks alienating a section of our community which has done little to deserve suspicion on any level.

The video above is taken from an American website which has broadly the same aims, My Fellow American is also reaching out to bridge that divide, caused by ignorance, and build stronger local communities with greater social cohesion. Just because your neighbour may have a different coloured skin, or may occasionally dress differently, or wear a beard, or eat different meals to you is no reason to view him with a wary eye. We didn’t necessarily do this with those speaking in an Irish brogue in the 1970s did we?

As we approach Ramadam I will be introducing some members of the Muslim community here in South Shields who will talk about their experiences and share them with us, I hope you will find their stories fascinating, interesting, entertaining, and engaging.

I hope that it may encourage you to reach out and get to know your neighbour a little better.

It’s part of what being a Sanddancer is all about.

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Anonymity on Twitter NOT guaranteed

I haven’t bought The Sunday Times for a few months now, perhaps because it takes a full week to read, so I am grateful to a reader for dropping me in this clipping from yesterday’s edition. Sorry if the quality isn’t great but it is not my photocopier/scanner responsible.

You can click on the thumbnail on the left to open a fuller sized version of the clipping, just hoping that you can all read it OK up here in South Tyneside.

The gist of the story is that a civil servant working at the local government department headed by Eric Pickles was found to be operating a Twitter account , not from the office, but from his iPhone out of work, penning Tweets as the “Naked Civil Servant” he has been suspended prior to disciplinary proceedings alleging gross misconduct.

The principle and moral lesson to be learned from this article is that your anonymity on the internet cannot be guaranteed unless you are far more clever than the security experts, something for someone up here to think about and stew over!

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Landmark decision – Cllr. Tom Fox

“I’ve followed this with great interest and I think it’s a landmark decision and a very important case.

“Too many people are prepared to beaver away anonymously using a pseudonym and hide behind that.

“People do have the right to say things, but they have to be right, otherwise it can be very damaging.

“Anyone who is spreading misinformation and sometimes deliberate lies needs to be brought to account.”

Cllr. Tom Fox, Leader Scarborough Borough Council

South Shields and South Tyneside people deserve to be shown in a better light, the vast majority of us are better people than those who wrote the offending blog, I call upon local and regional news organisations to similarly back our council’s decision to seek information which may unmask the Monkey and allow others to pursue litigation against the rogue blogger. There are two sides to every coin.
Full story here

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Tears of a Clown – Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

As South Shields councillor Ahmed Khan continues to stoke the fires of a self generated publicity campaign built around the dubious premise of privacy and confidentiality, we have to begin to wonder just how genuine his concerns are after making public so much information which ought to have remained within the confines of private organisations (but more of that later). His press campaign is now reaching fire storm proportions, and you have to grudgingly respect his ability to make best use of the press and media, especially as he has spent so much time attacking certain newspapers and individuals amongst them.

It is, of course, a classic reflex reaction of a politician caught in the glaring headlamps of publicity, bring out the mirror and deflect it all in the direction of your detractors, then use the age old ruse of answering a question with further questions. One can only hope two things (a) that all of this bravado is cheering him up, and (b) that the sunlight shines on him again and the public gain a deeper understanding of his real concerns about privacy and confidentiality.

The saddest part of this whole episode is tacitly acknowledged by Cllr, Khan in this Tweet, the negative publicity that he has generated could potentially put an end to many embryonic schemes to invest in South Tyneside and generate new jobs, just as those who may now have been driven to read the offending blog decide that there may be too much risk in dealing with South Tyneside Council or its members. This is the great tragedy, and not one that I would be willing to shoulder responsibility for.

The relatively small sum involved in tracking down and revealing the the name of the mystery blogger pales into insignificance compared to the value of potential jobs and investment lost, and that is something which we ought not to lose sight of. It is of far greater importance than clowning around creating a personal media makeover.

Further, as he revealed in yesterday’s Shields Gazette, South Tyneside Council has asked for a wide range of information from Twitter including personal computer records, e-mail addresses, subscriber and user names – telephone numbers, postal addresses, and even bank and credit card details – this suggests that they have someone working with or for them with a level of IT and technical expertise not hitherto available. We should remember that Twitter is doing nothing more than complying with its own Terms of Service within an area of jurisdiction covered by the 9th District Court of San Mateo California, terms which are available for all Twitter users to read, perhaps this is why Cllr. Khan decided not to contest the application (notwithstanding the costs involved.)

We have now seen a week of faux outrage, first of all over privacy and confidentiality, and secondly over the costs borne so far by the tax payer, without a hint in the media of the full back story of Cllr. Khan’s own privacy and confidentiality leaks and transgressions, or of his colourful record during his short term in office so far. The national and international media have shown no awareness of his ill judged protest against the Israeli incursion into Gaza when he arbitrarily encouraged  South Shields Muslims to remove their children from school to join him at the Town Hall, nor have we heard about the massive costs initially borne by South Tyneside council tax payers in his doomed legal quest to overturn an election defeat, and they failed to describe him as an “overbearing bully”, as a District Judge did here when clearing him of an assault allegation.

The media in the UK can be very fickle, they can build up a star and cruelly knock them down the following month, they only need a little encouragement.

There will be tears at the end, the question is, who will play the clown?

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