Just spent 36 minutes on the line to BT trying to set up a phone line at my new address – not that I actually want to use BT, but the company that I do want to use, for an broadband/call/line bundle, Plus Net (which seems to do very well in customer surveys), can’t set up an account until the line is in my name.
But BT will only do a 12-month contract, so I’ll be stuck with the dinosaur for that period.
So much for “customer choice”.
No, not Britain this time, but Australia, where years of the Howard monster has pulled politics far to the right. So much so that union officials are debating asking their members to vote Green Party in the Senate.
Anatole Kaletsky in the Times today (always worth reading) joins the dots between Helmand province and gang violence in Britain: Helmand province and the streets of Manchester et al are linked by drugs – and specifically by the illegality of drugs. He concludes:
All these observations point to a simple conclusion: simple, though not easy. The global war against drugs is in contradiction to the war against violent crime at home and the war against terrorism internationally. Legalising, or at least decriminalising, drugs would, not on its own, end terrorism or gang violence — and it is no substitute for long-term measures to promote development abroad or improve education at home. But a ceasefire in the war against drugs would at least give peace a chance — not only in Afghanistan, but also in the streets of Britain.
It is this week over at Redemption Blues – and as you’d expect, Chameleon has a spectacular, comprehensive collection – and you can listen to the roundup as well as read – you should do both.
A big issue in the blogosphere has been how employees of the British forces in Iraq – translators and others – should be treated: should they be given asylum? I’ve been asked to give my view on this, and I doubt it will surprise anyone when I say that yes, I think they should: as Chameleon says, they have taken whatever jobs were available, and it is our actions that have endangered them.
That pretty well sums up the industrial fishing industry. The figures are astonishing: almost two-thirds, TWO-THIRDS, of the fish caught in British waters are thrown back because they don’t meet specifications. That’s thrown back dead, because industrial hoovering methods means death for anything in their path.
Scientists estimated that a total of 186 million fish weighing 72,000 tons was caught by English and Welsh commercial fishing vessels in the English Channel, Western Approaches, Celtic and Irish Seas between 2002 and 2005.
Of this total catch, 63 per cent of the fish, weighing 24,500 tons, were thrown back over the side.
But hey, it is better elsewhere: this figure is thought to be about 1.5 times as bad as the general worldwide statistic, so in general about 40% is thrown back – Great!
Now I can already here a certain sector blaming regulation – but those regulations about undersize fish, for example, and against the taking of certain species, are there for good reason – to try to save stocks. Surely the answer is to fish in ways that are selective, just as fishermen have done traditionally for millennia.
Where are you?
After years of protests by residents, belated regulation by the state, and an influx of aid from government and private groups, more than two-thirds of the colonia dwellers in six border counties finally have access to water lines, safe sewage disposal or both, compared with a small minority just 15 years ago, according to a report by the state in December.
Texas, in the land of the free, of course. Which goes some way to explaining the horrible maternal and child mortaity statistics.
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