A Question Of Trust ?

For once, things actually got interesting in the Senedd yesterday when a heated spat blew up between Plaid Cymru AM - Adam Price - and the the First Minister - Welsh Labour's Carwyn Jones. As many will already know, the First Minister is already under investigation over claims of a bullying culture that exists within the Welsh Government and into claims that he has been deliberately misleading the Senedd. This all came to a head due the tragic and unexpected death of one of Jones own AM's in Carl Sargeant,

That investigation is ongoing with many claims and counter-claims that the inquiry is already flawed. But it has led to a rather interesting and tense atmosphere in the Senedd, especially during First Ministers Questions, as many clearly have the scent of a First Minister fighting for his political life.

However, the spat yesterday was interesting given that there are now threats of legal action over whether the First Minister has breached the Data Protection Act. You can read about it as reported on the BBC Wales website this morning here.

I am not going to go into the legalities of what is being claimed - that is for a court of law to determine if it gets that far - and I am not about to blog opinions on something that may become a court case. But it does raise some interesting questions.

Adam Price later tweeted about the matter:

And Plaid Cymru themselves later confirmed they are pursuing this:

 
 For those unaware of how the Senedd works, '@yLlywydd' in the tweet above refers to the Welsh Assembly equivalent of Westminster's Speaker of the House (John Bercow). The present 'Llywydd' is Elin Jones.

As most people know, the emails of Assembly Members are available for anyone to examine under the Freedom Of Information Act, as long as they are emails held by the Welsh Government email system (it would not extend to an AMs personal emails on a personal service - such as GMail - for example). Therefore, it is quite possible that any member of the public could have got access to the emails mentioned by Carwyn Jones. There are some rules, so some emails can be excluded from FOI if, for example, the contents of said email could be something with might compromise national security. There are obviously many things that Politicians discuss behind closed doors which the general public cannot be privy to for obvious reasons (such as national security).

It is also true that the Welsh Government email system is considered a corporate email system and therefore anybody using that email system - employees AND AMs - would be subject to their emails being analysed by the Welsh Government at any time if there was just cause for viewing them (e.g.  such as the employee and/or AM being suspected of illegal activity). So again, nobody in the Welsh Govt can expect any email they send or receive to remain personal.

However, what can be questioned is 'how' the First Minister got hold of the emails in question that he used to attack Adam Price. If he asked Welsh Government staff to retrieve those emails for him to use, then he would have needed to go through a formal process, which would have been logged and recorded, which would include the reasons why he wanted such information and on what grounds he could expect to have a right to see them. Furthermore, the person whose emails he has asked to see would also have the right to know that such a request had been made. Adam Price's reaction in the Senedd would seem to indicate that he was unaware that any such thing had taken place.

Of course, it is also possible that the emails were supplied by the Health Board themselves, as is their right because they were also involved in the exchange. However given the recent bullying claims that were made in some quarters, as reported by ITV News here, then one could also legitimately ask if those emails were given willingly or under duress.

A further complication in any legal proceeding would be the concept of 'Parliamentary Privilege'. This means that Ministers enjoy a legal immunity from criminal or civil proceedings for actions or statements done in the performance of their Ministerial duties.

A fuller explanation is given on Wikipedia here.

Now whether Parliamentary Privilege applies in the Senedd I do not know. I am sure that guidance is held somewhere, possibly on the Welsh Government website itself. But even Parliamentary Privilege only gets you so far. Breaches of the Data Protection Act can, and should, override any such 'Privilege'. But we all know that buried deep in the Legislations around Parliaments are often surprising 'get-out' clauses or 'immunities'.

So, as I said at the start, these are indeed interesting time in the Senedd. Rather than the same old bland 'business as usual' things seem to have been stirred up in recent months in the Senedd and the tension is rising and rising. This particular episode may yet even end up in the Law Courts.

But one has to ask how much longer the First Minister can keep his tenuous hold on his office. A fingernail grip can only last for so long. And if he does fall, how many others would he take with him ?

Welsh Politics has taken a turn toward the 'interesting'. About bloody time too. 

I will certainly be watching with interest.

Historical Lessons

I am a proud Welshman. I have lived in Wales for most of my life (apart from a brief spell in London when I got a first job). I love Wales. It has friendly people (for the most part), astonishing scenery and an abundance of beaches that attract people from everywhere during the summer months. Unfortunately, it is also governed by overly-paternalistic fuckwits at both Government and Local level who have a strong desire to micro-manage every minutiae of our personal lives that they can get away with. The latest wheeze on the part of these fuckwits is to give the vote to 16 & 17 year olds. This because the fuckwits in question are Labour politicians and they seem to be of the belief that the young will vote for them in their droves. I think that will backfire badly on them.

In my experience, young people cannot be arsed to cast a vote even way past their 18^th birthday as politics do not register as being important in their lives. Besides, what world experience does a 16/17 year old actually have. They can only marry prior to 18 with their parents consent. They can join the armed forces at 16 (with parental consent) but cannot be sent to the frontline to fight. They are banned from buying knives, glue, alcohol, cigarettes and even over-the-counter drugs because they are not considered responsible enough. Despite this, the Labour Government think they are responsible enough to vote, even though those same politicians want to deny them the right of buying or doing any of the items I just mentioned above, and more.

If these people are constantly trying introduce ever more restrictions on adults (and they are), then just think about what they have already banned kids from doing. 

I did exactly that. The whole announcement of giving the vote to 16/17 year olds has led me think back to when I was a kid growing up during the 1960’s/70’s. What I could do as a kid that is denied to today's youth.

What was different ?

We were much freer. I can remember as a kid owning several air-rifles and pistols (it was not illegal). I also owned two (sport) longbows and arrows and 3 javelins (I was a very keen athlete). As I enjoyed angling, I was also the owner of several different types of knives. In fact, it was common for me to be carrying at least one knife even when I wasn’t fishing. A knife was useful for all kinds of things such as cutting/whittling wood for whatever I was making for myself to play with. Of course, as with all kids, I was regularly involved in dust-ups as disagreements with friends/foes broke out. They carried knives too, but none of us would ever have dreamed of using a knife in a fight. Nope, for us, the way to settle a disagreement was with our fists. If you resorted to threats with a knife then you were considered a complete wimp and shunned.

Another thing I regularly did was to go down the shop to buy cigarettes. Not for myself or my parents (both my parents were life-long non-smokers), but for my grandfather or grandmother. The shop assistant, whether at a small corner-shop or a fledgling supermarket (supermarkets in those days were tiny premises) would not bat an eyelid. Most enclosed public spaces (like pubs. clubs, cinemas, snooker halls etc) were fug-filled places that was like walking into a fog-bank. But it never harmed me.

There were enormous mountains of spoil heaps at one end of the village and we regularly 'sledged' down those spoil heaps on old pieces of rusty, corrugated iron sheets. We would inevitably have a few mishaps along the way, resulting in a few cuts and bruises, but no real harm came to us (though a few of the more unfortunate did sometimes end up in the river at the foot of the spoil-heaps).

In the school holidays (and most weekends) I would be off out of the house before 9am on my push-bike, never to be seen again until the sun was setting. We would often be many miles from home by midday. Something else we often did was to cycle (or push) to the top of the nearby mountain, spend a few hours up there, then race back down on the mountain road, often reaching speeds of 50-60mph on the steep slope, overtaking cars, vans and even lorries on the way down.

We bought sugar-laden sweets in bags that were a mixture of the contents of massive jars behind the counter at the sweet shop. Some of those sweets were sugar laden cigarette look-alikes, replete with similar cigarette style box packaging. We’d have great fun with those in the winter months putting them in our lips and blowing huge plumes of steam in the cold air pretending we were smoking. But despite this, I never once was tempted to smoke an actual cigarette throughout my childhood. Granted, some kids did, but most of us did not.

I still recall going with my father to watch him playing rugby, entering the smoke-filled rugby club before the match. Sitting down with him the same smoke-filled rooms after the match while he enjoyed a pint and I had my glass of (full fat) coca-cola. Hell, I can even remember watching some of the players having a smoke on the rugby field at half-time.

Most days, the Corona Pop lorry would come through the village where we lived, selling the pop in bottles from the back of the lorry. I would always go around the village later in the day with my mates collecting the empty bottles to return to the Corona lorry the next day because we used to get money for returning the bottles.

.... and Yes. I still have all my own teeth !!

I could walk into any ironmonger and buy sharp tools like screwdrivers or wood-chisels, even knives and scissors. Hell, my father often used to send me up across to the ironmonger with a 1 gallon can to buy paraffin for the paraffin heater we used during the winter months.

I can even remember, along with several of my mates, going to a petrol station and filling a 1 gallon can with some 4-star (leaded) petrol, then heading off up the mountain to some ruins with a load of (glass) milk bottles and rags and we made petrol bombs with them. We did not cause any problems with these explosive devices, just chucked them against some old stone walls and watched them burn. Health & safety would have a fit at such a sight today.

Speaking of which, we could also purchase fireworks. Proper fireworks, not the watered down two-sparks-and-a-meek-bang ones you get these days. I could not imagine Health & Safety ever allowing such a device as a Jumping-Jack firework (which did exactly what you would expect from the name) to be sold these days. On November 5^th, we’d have a massive (usually at least 20ft tall) bonfire on the common and let off fireworks. Not an adult to be seen. None of us ever came to any harm.

As I reached my latter teenage years, I became interested in cars and motorbikes - the majority of which (in the 1970's) were veritable deathtraps. Seat-belts were not law in those days. Most cars did have seat-belts, at least in the front, but plenty were on the roads that had no seat-belts whatsoever. I learnt to drive without ever wearing a selt-belt. I even took my driving test without wearing a seat belt. It was several years after I had passed my driving test that wearing seat-belts became law. By that time, most cars also had rear seat-belts and a few years later it became law to wear those too. The first time I ever rode a motorbike, crash helmets were not required, though those did become law before I took my motorbike-driving test.

But even with all that life experience and freedom, which kids these days do not have, we would not have known or cared who to vote for. I was in my early twenties before I first voted, by which time I was working and had a more realistic view of the world.

We thought we had no world experience upon which to choose to vote in those days, that fact has not suddenly changed. But if Labour think giving the vote to 16/17 year olds will give them a sudden leap in support, they are sadly mistaken. Besides, Labour have already lied to the young once when they pledged to annul all student debt, only to then admit after the last election they couldn’t do it. Most will not forget that lie. But then again, there are still plenty of terminally thick people even amongst the young.

The Same Old Arguments

My Sunday mornings, as with most people, are generally a relaxed affair. As a (very) early riser on most days, my Sunday morning starts at 4am, before waking my younger daughter up to get ready for her early morning shift at the local supermarket. This means I am usually out of the house at 4.45am taking her to work. If the weather is not too wet, I then will often go for a walk along the Swansea Bay seafront at 8am before picking the same daughter up at 9am when her shift finishes. That is then usually followed by heading back to the Supermarket for 9.30am opening so that I can get whatever groceries I need and get through the tills when they open at 10am – leaving the rest of Sunday to do with as I please from the comfort of my home.

This particular Sunday morning, I was sitting at my PC catching up on the usual round of blogs that I like to read, with the TV on in the background. I don’t generally take much notice of what is on the TV when I am catching up on blogs, I just like to have it on as background noise. 

As it happens, the TV was on BBC 1 this morning, and Nicky Campbell’s “The Big Question” was showing. It’s not a program I usually take any notice of. In fact, the only previous time I have taken any nnotice of it was when Chris Snowden made an appearance a couple of weeks ago. But this morning was different.

They started a debate about whether pornography was harmful. Now normally, this wouldn’t grab my attention, but I started hearing very familiar arguments being aired and that is what grabbed my attention.

It began with some woman (no idea what her name was) who was from an organisation called ‘Object’ (no, I’ve never heard of it before either). She was your typical ‘Mary Whitehouse’-type telling everybody why (in her opinion) porn was wrong and that everybody should be agreeing with her. She sounded very like the way Deborah Arnott comes across with her anti-tobacco rhetoric, and this is the reason why the debate suddenly caught my attention. Not because of what this woman was saying, but because of her reaction when people spoke up against her. Just like Arnott, her reaction to dissention was to attempt to talk across everyone else. Fortunately, Nicky Campbell is quite adept at controlling these debates so that was not allowed to happen.

The first person to silence her happened to be a young lady sitting right behind her. This young lady is a porn actress and her reaction to being talked across was to ask this ‘Object’ woman if she had ever been in the porn industry. When the reply came that she had not, the young lady quite rightly pointed out that she therefore had no real-world knowledge of how the porn industry works and that she should listen to somebody who did have that experience.

The debate continued with the woman from ‘Object’ getting more and more flustered as other people spoke and disagreed or countered her views. One author, who has written books on the porn industry, quoted a story he had been told by a stripper who complained that members of this ‘Object’ organisation actively came to the strip-clubs and screamed abuse at the strippers about what they do for a living and that ‘Object’ were actively lobbying various North London councils to get the strip-clubs (and therefore their livelihood) shut down.

If you are a smoker, such a story should be familiar to you because it is the exact same tactics that ASH have been using against smokers, retailers AND tobacco companies.

Another young lady, a Professor at some North East University, came out with an absolute belter of a statement that caused the whole audience to break out in a round of applause.

Her statement was:

“What is more damaging is people coming along and telling other people what their morality should be.”

That was a scathing commentary on the likes of Object, and indeed ASH. For what are those bodies other than busybodies who are intent on poking their noses into everyone else’s business and trying to impose their own values.

I found myself nodding in agreement with this Professor, as I suspect would every smoker, vaper & drinker. We are all well-used to such people constantly poking their noses into what we like to do in our private lives and lecturing us on why we are wrong, that we should not be doing that and the harms we are doing to ourselves, despite us all being in full possession of the facts and still being happy to continue with our ‘frowned-upon’ habit/enjoyment.

The last devastating statement came once again from the author, who said:

“Porn addiction is a non-entity dreamed up by scientists and researchers.”

To me, that was the nail being firmly whacked on the head by the hammer. Smokers & vapers are well-used to being lectured on how addictive Nicotine is by the ideological-driven tobacco control people. We all know there are reams of scientific evidence that points to nicotine in itself having no addictive qualities whatsoever.

So I had an interesting and unexpected diversion from my normal routine this morning. I could plainly see how the tactics that have been employed by Tobacco Control over the last 30 years is slowly seeping its way into other areas where the busybodies would like to poke their noses next.

This debate just happened to be about pornography, but we have all seen the same arguments used to justify regulation on smoking, vaping, alcohol, fast-food, sugar, salt, fizzy drinks. The list is endless and having got away with the lies in regard to smoking, these busybodies clearly think that is the way to go to get their other pet projects (i.e bans) off the ground.

...And what a joyless world that would be.

This morning’s episode of ‘The Big Questions’ can be found here.

The debate on Pornography starts at the 23:50 mark.

Watch it and see the parallels I describe.

Scope Creep

We are only 19 days into 2018 (as I type this), and already we are getting into ‘peak absurdity’ level in regards to Public Health.

In 2007, England finally fell in line with Wales, Scotland & Ireland and banned smoking from all public enclosed spaces. Since then, we have countless years of the likes of ASH pushing to expand the boundaries of the smoking ban, culminating in 2017 when we saw efforts to ban smoking from beaches, parks and other open-air spaces, and in some cases succeeding.

Of course, smoking was banned from being advertised on radio and TV many years ago, the ban eventually extending to cinemas. This was quickly followed by the ban on Tobacco Companies sponsoring sports events. Those of us a certain age can all remember cricket being sponsored by the likes of Benson & Hedges. Rugby League was also sponsored by Tobacco Companies in various guises, e.g. the Silk Cut Challenge Cup. Then there was snooker with competitions such as the Embassy World Championship. 

Perhaps the most iconic sporting images of all time were to be found in Formula One. Who can forget the Marlboro Mclaren decked out in the distinctive orange and white livery, the Rothmans Williams Renault decked out in blue & white, or the all-black John Player Specials driven by World Champion Mario Andretti and his team-mate, the late Ronnie Petersen ? 

There were many, many more examples that I bet you can all remember.

Of course, after the ban on advertising, this was the only way that Tobacco Companies could promote their products. But of course, the slippery slope is neverending and soon tobacco control succeeded in extending the ban to stop tobacco companies sponsoring any sporting event (or indeed any type of event at all).

So, quite naturally, sports and sports teams had to move on to other forms of sponsorship. The breweries and other alcohol manufacturers and vendors were quick to fill the void. So we found rugby events such as the Heineken Cup (European Cup), the Magners Pro 12 etc. Football also followed suit and we had the Carling Cup (League Cup) and the Budweiser Cup (FA Cup). Many rugby and soccer teams also managed to secure alcohol sponsorship which was often seen emblazoned across the front of jerseys.

But in recent years, public health has also started moving against alcohol sponsorship of sports teams and tournaments, declaring that such sponsorships are damaging to the health of the public. Think about this. They have not quite got there yet, but how much longer do you really think it will be before they make moves to get alcohol banned from sport sponsorship/advertising in exactly the same way as tobacco ?

The latest trend has seen many sports teams becoming sponsored by betting companies. This is far more prevalent in soccer than most other sports, but considering that soccer is by far the biggest sport in the UK and, given the plethora of gambling options that you can find on soccer matches these days, it is hardly surprising.

Inevitably, in an obvious case of scope creep, gambling is being claimed as a public health issue these days with organisations like Public Health England calling for a clampdown on the gambling industry. Now, aside from a flutter on the National Lottery, I can in no way be considered a gambler. I think I have only ever been in a bookies on one occasion (with a mate who wanted to lay some bets on the horses) and I have never ever set foot in a casino. Hell, I don’t even have an occasional flutter on a fruit machine. But even so, I have to agree with Chris Snowdon

Which brings me to tweets I have seen appearing from one of the most sanctimonious and joyless ‘person’ I have ever seen working in public health – Robin Ireland.

So, basically, Robin wants to see a ban on the Gambling Industry sponsoring soccer. Presumably he would like to see this applied to all sports, and he is not alone. There are countless more like Robin in the public health industry who think that gambling is an illness that public health should be concerned with. Their way of dealing with it is taken from the Tobacco Control manual and that is to try and ban advertising in all its forms. It is as clear a case of scope creep as one can imagine.

I surely cannot be the only one who can see the pattern forming here.

Tobacco advertising was driven out of sport by the zealots.

The zealots are also trying to drive alcohol out of sport.

Now they are making moves to drive gambling companies out of sport.

Given the current outcry against sugar, salt and so-called ‘junk food’, it is only a matter of time before cries ring out to try and ban companies like Coca-Cola, McDonalds & Pizza Hut from advertising in sport.

Where will it end ?

Will Financial Companies be banned from advertising/sponsoring sport because their products may result in risky investments ?

Will Automotive Industries be banned from advertising/sponsoring because they are promoting risky driving ?

Will energy companies be banned from advertising/sponsoring because they have not invested in sufficient green technologies ?

The way things are going, it will become increasingly difficult for Sport, or indeed ‘Arts’ events like music festivals, to find any way of getting sponsorship because the largest and most successful companies on the planet are banned from any involvement. There will be a growing number of sports teams and tournaments chasing an ever dwindling list of companies that are allowed to sponsor them. The inevitable result will be the decline of sports teams and an increase in costs to the followers of such sports.

Somebody commented recently in a blog (sorry, I cannot recall who it was), that Public Health are running around in ever decreasing circles. I would go further than that and suggest that Public Health are slowly running up their own arses.

Enjoy these days, because the way the public health racket is panning out, our children and their children will never get to enjoy or experience the world the way we have. Sport will cease to exist if it cannot find sponsorship/advertisers, and Public Health is constantly seeking to limit who is allowed to do the sponsorship/advertising.

The Arts rely on advertising/sponsorship, especially the music industry. More and more other type of events and festivals also rely on advertising/sponsorship.

Finally, the TV and Film Industry rely on sponsorship/advertising. Take those away and there will simply be no content to watch on TV or in the cinema.

Could Public Health actually turn out to be the death of modern civilisation ?