Dave Brothers

Returning

Dave Brothers — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 01:42:03 +0000

After a long lay off I’m returning to blog on the EU, politics and life in the North East of England. But from now on I’ll be blogging from Crawcrook in the Borough of Gateshead. So a new setting for the same old views…or are they. I’ll probably be adding more views from a conservationist perspective as well, so even more to look out for!

EU Meddling

Dave Brothers — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:23:36 +0000

My daughter is going to have a baby in December and we are all over the moon. We are also glad to know that it is a boy, so that we can prepare appropriately, namely blue not pink for the nursery and jumpsuits. But once again Europe is trying to bring in a ludicrous ‘one size fits all’ ruling that would spoil all of this.
They want to ban doctors from telling parents the sex of their unborn child. Why? Because of the selective aborting of foetuses in some former Soviet states. Why should that affect parents to be in the UK, where this problem does not exist and where the sex of the foetus is not usually discovered until 20 weeks, when it is too late to have an abortion anyway, except on medical grounds?

The Council of Europe, which is making this recommendation, does not have the power to impose its recommendations on governments but they are frequently enacted as a result of conventions and treaties. The committee’s draft resolution will go before the council’s full parliamentary assembly next month.
I know my daughter and her husband, like many other parents-to-be in County Durham, would feel pretty angry and disappointed to be told they can’t be told the gender of their unborn child, so write to David Cameron and tell him that you are sick of EU meddling and want a referendum – so that you can show your feeling democratically.

Labour Waste

Dave Brothers — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:55:50 +0000

In an article in the Northern Echo today, a member of the Durham County Council (DCC) Education Select committee has described the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme as an example of Labour’s ‘tragically wasteful spending’, with the council spending over £5.7m on ‘non-building’ costs.
The considered response of David Theobald, DCC’s project director is: “Meeting these costs was a necessary requirement in order to take part in the programme and secure the very substantial capital funding that was made available to our schools”. Which is exactly the point being made against Labour’s BSF programme, that it is too complicated, too costly and to quote a recent independent report ‘not fit for purpose’. There might well have been over 3000, much needed, schools built, but to burden generation to come with the debt was not the way. This was just another example of Labour failings.

Climate Change?

Dave Brothers — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:42:15 +0000

I do wish that the likes of Rob Megg (The Northen Echo 6th June) would check their ‘facts’ before going to press. Yes, climate change is happening. If it wasn’t we’d be living on a dead planet. No, scientific evidence does not overwhelming support it being man made. He should try reading some of journalist Lawrence Solomons profiles of, so far, three dozen scientists of ‘great eminence’, all recognised leaders in their fields, many of them actually involved in the IPCC, who question the IPCC conclusions.
Evidence, not rhetoric, also shows that oil companies do not finance the ‘deniers’, for the simple reason that they want to protect their ‘vested interests’ by improving their green credentials.
As for using emotive terms like ‘crank’ and ‘denier’ that is the usual response of those lacking facts.
What we need to be doing is researching ways to cope with inevitable climate change, not focussing on economically destructive pogroms, which will lead to impoverishment. Lets put the wasted cash into the research and development of flood defences, food production, water and securing a supply of cheap, possibly renewable, plentiful energy, which is vital to our nation’s economic and social well-being.
That is the no-brainer Mr. Meggs.

Public Policing

Dave Brothers — Tue, 31 May 2011 16:52:44 +0000

How can we expect to have a working and just police service?
A serving officer has this week opened up the service to reveal how it is obsessed with targets and figures, which do nothing for natural justice. It would appear that it is more important for a front line officer to arrest someone, than it is to get a conviction. So arrests are made without sufficient evidence and criminals walk.
In CID the target is to get a charge or a caution. A caution does not require a lot of evidence, just a gullible ‘offender’ who is prepared to accept the caution, guilty or not. So I’ll leave you to guess what happens.
The CPS, on the other hand, are assessed on getting convictions. So a youth with 15 wraps of crack, a £100 in his pocket and a negative test for drug use will be charged with possession, rather than supply, because he is more likely to plead guilty.
Add to this a ‘crime management unit’ to focus on recording the results ‘accurately’, such as recording a street robbery as assault and theft to double the target success, and you have a pretty useless police service that only serves the bureaucracies needs and not the publics.
Is it any wonder that many of us want an elected Police Chief who is accountable to the public.