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TALLRITE BLOG 
ARCHIVE
This archive, organized into months, and indexed by time and alphabet, contains all issues since inception, including the current week.

ISSUE #121-26th March 2006 [291+176=467]

Trócaire and Child Labour

Every year in Ireland, at the start of Lent (the Christians' Ramadan) the charity Trócaire (an Irish word which means Compassion) distributes cardboard collection boxes to churches and other worthy establishments.  The faithful are exhorted to take them home and to put in them the money they are able to save by giving up stuff - like booze, sugar-in-tea, chocolate, second helpings, cigarettes -  as part of their Lenten penance. It's a very laudable way to collect and donate for charitable causes.  Trócaire successfully raises large sums every Lent, which this year runs from 1st March to Easter Sunday 16th April 2006.  

Its theme for this year's Lenten collection is child labour in South America.  This is supported by a frequent TV ad which depicts a gruff, heartless Hispanic boss who dictates rigorous employment terms (12-hour days, two days off a month, low pay, no liability for accidents etc) for work in the fields - to an eight-year-old little girl.  A similar radio ad features a nine-year-old boy called Jaime.  A couple of TV programmes have shown life in a Nicaraguan village where Jaime's mother, deserted by her husband, struggles to raise her children, whose schooling takes second place to working in dreadful conditions in a coffee plantation.  

Now, who could not deplore the use of children to toil all day - or in many cases trafficked as slaves - when they should be going to school and frolicking with their friends?  And who can doubt that their future prospects as undereducated adults are grim and likely to perpetuate a deprived life-cycle?

But what is the solution?  For this is not a simple issue.   Employers hire children because they are available, are cheaper than adult employees, and are no doubt less troublesome.  Children go to work because another adult (usually a parent) has sent them there, generally for the money that the family desperately needs to survive.  How are you going to persuade either party to desist from the practice?

So what is Trócaire planning to do with all the money it raises (apart from pay for the prolific advertising)?  Its special Lenten website, so verbose in presenting the problem of child labour, is singularly tongue-tied when it comes to explaining how it will actually use the money to alleviate it.    All it says is that 

“Trócaire works with communities to help children get information about their rights and help them into the education system. They also receive skills training so they can get proper jobs when they finish school.”

In its vague way, this seems to amount to providing a measure of education, which if so is an utter can of worms.  Consider.  

Child labour is not something that is solvable by throwing a bit of money at in a once-off gesture, as Trócaire seems to imply in what I regard as its fundamentally dishonest campaign.  

Throwing serious money is another matter.  An ILO report in 2003, “Investing in Every Child” (PDF, 1.1 Mb), showed that an investment of $760 bn (yes, billion) on education and replacing child wages would ultimately yield a net benefit of $4.3 trillion in terms of greater productivity and health in adult life.   But who is ever going to stump up the $760 bn?  It's just not a realistic option.  

On the other hand, numerous studies (for example these papers from the US Department of State) have shown that it is poverty which breeds child labour (not the  other way round as some have claimed), and that as families get richer they choose to spend money to educate their children rather than earn it by sending them out to work. 

England is a case in point.  It was not simply the moral indignation stoked up by Charles Dickens that led to the outlawing of child labour a century ago, but the newly acquired wealth that resulted from the extraordinary industrial revolution.  This is what made the elimination of child labour possible.  

And therein lies the lesson.  

To tackle child labour in the developing world, the countries there must grow their GDP - quickly and certainly faster than population.  This entails 

But rich countries must also do their part, which means 

In a word, embracing capitalism.  

Paradoxically, these straightforward measures will make not only the developing world wealthier and thus lead to the end of child labour, but will enrich the West as well.  

But are there too many vested interests to allow it to happen?  If there are, then there's no point bemoaning child labour as it won't stop.  

Meantime, I don't trust Trócaire in its Lenten campaign against child labour.  Not that I believe it will put the money collected to improper use.  The money will, however, do nothing substantive to tackle its stated objective.  

Moreover, I've noted in the past Trocaire's unprincipled political behaviour, as have others.  So my Lenten no-beer money is going to its competitor charity, GOAL.  

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Never Be Gazumped

You know the scene.  You've found the apartment of your dreams.  You've put in your offer (a lot more than you hoped to pay or can reasonably afford), the seller has accepted it and you've paid a deposit to secure the deal.  You're thrilled to bits.  It's now over to the lawyers to draw up the formal contract.  A week later you get a phone call.  Someone has popped up out of nowhere and offered a higher price than yours.  So if you still want it, you  have to match the new price.  Otherwise it goes to the other guy and you will get your deposit back.  

You've just been gazumped.  And you're mad.  And impotent.  

I know.  I've been there.  

But there is a defence.  You don't have to be gazumped.  

In most of the English-speaking world, your word is not your bond when it comes to buying property, nor is paying a deposit and getting a receipt.  Either party can back out, however many witnesses you may have.  As Sam Goldwyn once said, “a verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on”.  The only thing that makes your contract water-tight is, well, signing the contract.  Both of you - buyer and seller.  

The difficulty is that the contract is a formal document drawn up only by lawyers, usually in their own good time - usually in weeks not days, and the clock can start ticking only after you have a agreed a deal in principle.  During this period, you are completely exposed.  (In fairness, so is the seller, because you can cut your offer just as he can raise his asking price.)

The trick is to manage this gap period.  “Mind the Gap”, as they say on the trains.  There are two approaches.  

Eliminate the Gap

Ideally you should try to get rid of the gap altogether.  

I did this after the first time I was gazumped.  Controlling my anger, I agreed the higher price demanded in a personal meeting with the seller (not his agent), on the one condition that we would not leave each other's presence until the contract was signed - which even included going to the Gents together.  We phoned our two respective lawyers and insisted they drop everything and prepare the contract immediately, in our presence, with the promise of a bonus fee (which I paid for both).  The drafting session dragged on from noon until 6 pm, with sandwiches being sent in, but at the end of it, the contracts were signed by both parties. 

It was a highly uncomfortable, highly stressful process but ultimately successful - in the sense I was gazumped only once instead of a second time.   For the amount of money involved, not to mention the crazy property market since, the stress was worth it.  

Do It Yourself

If you cannot marshal the lawyers on the spot (they're a curmudgeonly lot), there is another way to defend yourself against a gazumping.  

That is, to write and sign your own contract the moment that you have agreed a deal with the seller.  

Once again, this requires that you meet him face-to-face.  Real estate agents hate this, they find it insulting and will try to prevent it because they feel you are making them superfluous and are worried you will plot to cheat them of their commission.  But it is your money that they all want, so be hard-nosed and insist on meeting the seller, within the property itself.  The agent can come along if he/she wants.  

Beforehand, draft an agreement that reflects what you want to see included in any deal.  Ask your lawyer to help if you wish.  

Bring a laptop and printer with you.  Negotiate the deal with the seller, most crucially the price of course, and the payment schedule (deposit, first payment, final payment).  Being in the house will help clarify secondary issues on the spot such as what is included and what is not. Prepare the agreement jointly with the seller, including everything you have agreed.  Specify that this agreement will be superseded by a final contract, to be prepared by lawyers, which will reflect the same terms.  Print off two copies, one for each of you, and both sign both of them, on every page.  Both of you initial any amendments, or else re-print and re-sign the amended page.  Get a neighbour (or the fuming real estate agent) to witness the signatures.  Hand over whatever payment you have agreed to be then due.  Open the champagne.  

In due course, pass photocopies of the agreement to the lawyers and instruct them to prepare the final contract.  

Now the agreement you have just signed will not have the full force of the final contract.  However it will still be a most powerful document which either party will be loathe to put to any legal test.  The fact of its existence almost ensures the seller will not dare gazump you.  For if he does, it is by no means certain that he will get away with it, as he would if all you had was a Munich-style little receipt for a deposit.  At the very least a court of law would look sympathetically on your case and demand explanations from the would-be gazumper.  

This second approach works.  I've done it.  And far from the seller being in some way resentful and suspicious, he is invariably delighted because it gives him certainty too.  He can smell your money and the aroma is overpowering!  

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For many years, I held a senior contracting position in a multinational company.  And I can tell you that the  principle underlying the above techniques, which I had developed to help me buy gazump-free houses for myself, works equally well in any business negotiation context.   

And that principle is that if you have reached any important agreement, don't leave the room, however long it takes, until it's written up, in whatever form is convenient, and signed by both parties there and then.  Worry about eating, drinking and sleeping when it's all over.  Until then, don't stop or rest.  It can be written up nicely and more legalistically at a later date; that's just a formality.  

With this principle, you will save yourself no end of headache.  And you'll never be gazumped.  

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Adding to the Gaiety of the Human Condition
Also available as a 3.5Mb podcast

In the last couple of weeks we've seen some enterprising public rages by national figures over here in Europe.  

____________________

Ireland's minister of justice, Michael McDowell, was incensed when his own department's figures showed that last year the police force had increased by only two (yes, 2).  Purple of spittle-flecked face, he likened the opposition's Richard Bruton, who had pointed this out, to Hitler's chief of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.  Mr McDowell is the same minister who a little earlier had associated the Green party with looters, anoraks, muesli and open-toed sandals.  Sadly he issued a double apology for these transgressions.  

A fellow minister, John O'Donoghue, added to the exuberance by calling the Greens “bicycled tut-tutters and windmill blowers”.  John Gormley, the respected chairman of the Green party gave as good as he got, telling Mr O'Donoghue, “you are a sewer rat.”  

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Meanwhile, over in Italy, prime minister Silvio Berlusconi cheered up TV viewers no end when he foolishly showed up for an interview on an RAI TV station.  RAI is one of the few Italian networks that he does not own or control, and being under someone else's control is not an experience he is familiar with.  

An earnest young interviewer, Lucia Annunziata, with a bone to pick, not only asked him uncomfortable questions, but had the temerity to demand that he stop waffling and answer them.  Being aggressive and undeferential to politicians is commonplace Britain (Jeremy Paxman famously so), but apparently most unusual in Italy.  She questioned Mr Berlusconi about

The sensitive fellow could take no more of this impertinence.  Calling his interviewer a left-winger who “should be ashamed of herself”, he stormed out of the studio in a rage.  

____________________

Then there was the French moment, as we were entertained by more storming out, this time over in Brussels during the twice-yearly EU summit, under Austria's chairmanship.  

Last week, Frenchman Ernest-Antoine Seillière, who is president of the EU employers' federation, Unice, was delivering an address on economic reform to the heads of all 25 EU governments.  Having begun en Français, he switched to English saying this was now the international business language.  A Frenchman speaking English?  To an audience which included the French president?  Such insolence.  

It was all too much for the haughty Jacques Chirac.  In a fit of nationalistic chutzpah and in best Berlusconi style, the president of France stood up and flounced towards the exit.  Not only that but he dragged along his two lackeys - sorry, his two hapless ministers.  It was ironic that the theme of Mr Seillière's talk was the need to resist economic nationalism in the EU's single market.  Meanwhile, Mr Chirac skulked outside the grand meeting room until another Frenchman, Jean-Claude Trichet (president of the European Central Bank), restored Gallic honour by yakking in French.  

____________________

It is incidents such as these that give you faith in mankind.  If there were not people such as McDowell, Berlusconi and Chirac, whose juvenile tantrums from time to time 

where would we be?  

May they long splutter in rage.  

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Questions & Answers on Iraq

Those of a masochistic streak can watch me on RTÉ's Questions & Answers programme on Monday 27th March where I will be a plant in the audience.  I am told the panel will include a Minister, a Green, a Human Rightster and Gardaí union leader and a Columnist.  

I was invited to come along because the producers were evidently desperate to find someone - anyone - prepared to defend the Bush invasion of Iraq and the Americans' continuing presence there.  There aren't many such defenders here in Ireland, or if there are they're mostly silent.  

After transmission, the show will become available here.  

Late Note:  I appear in minute 7:30 of the ten-minute video clip.
For the next issue, #122, I translated the research I did for this discussion into a post 
to mark the three-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion

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Week 121's Letters to the Press

Only one letter this week (based on this issue's lead article above).  It wasn't published, maybe because of fears that Lenten donations would be reduced rather than, as the letter suggests, diverted from one charity to another more sensible one.   

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Quotes of Week 121

- - - - - - - - - - I R A Q - - - - - - - - - -

Quote: “I do not believe that a lasting peace is achieved by armed force, but I pay tribute to their courage and thank those who played a part in my rescue.” 

Peace campaigner Norman Kember, kidnapped in Iraq for four months, ties himself in knots with this ungracious thank-you for his release 
by an armed raid led by the Britain's legendary SAS.

He hates to admit that violence has had a beneficent outcome, 
with himself and his two kidnapped colleagues the fortunate recipients.  

Their fourth colleague was brutally murdered - 
which but for the SAS's violent raid 
would have probably been their own fate. 

Though at 75 he is old enough to know better, 
Mr Kember does not seem to recall that but for armed force, 
he would be speaking German, if not Russian 

Quote: “We will leave Iraq, but when we do, it will be from a position of strength, not weakness.”

President George Bush 
speaking to the City Club of Cleveland 

Quote: “The rationale for a free and democratic Iraq is as compelling today as it was three years ago.  A free and stable Iraq will not attack its neighbours, will not conspire with terrorists, will not pay rewards to the families of suicide bombers and will not seek to kill Americans.” 

Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of State, 
reiterates America's determination to stay the course in Iraq

- - - - - - - - - -A F G H A N I S T A N - - - - - - - - - -

Quote: “We will invite [Abdul Rahman] again because the religion of Islam is one of tolerance. We will ask him if he has changed his mind. If so we will forgive him.  But if he refuses to reconvert, then his mental state will be considered first before he is dealt with under Sharia law”

Judge Ansarullah Mawlazezadah at the trial in Kabul of Abdul Rahman 
who is accused of converting from Islam to Christianity, 
a crime punishable by death under Sharia law.  

Shariah law is integral to the new, post-Taliban Afghan constitution.

Happily, it now looks as if, due to international outrage, 
Mr Rahman will be released.  
An execution would have made him into a true Christian martyr, 
one who accepts being killed rather than recant his faith, 
and thus eligible for eventual canonisation.

- - - - - - - - - - B E L A R U S - - - - - - - - - - 

Quote: “[We will] wring necks of those who threaten a coup.”

Alexander Lukashenko menaces objectors 
to his regime and his flawed election, 
with a curious - yet perhaps appropriate - analogy 
to chickens trying to flee the coop

He was pronounced winner of the presidential election 
with 88% of the vote and a record 92% turnout.  
Ah, those halcyon Soviet elections.  

Quote: “I'm so tired to be afraid every time” 

Dimitri, a 19 year old student, demonstrating against 
the flawed re-election landslide of Alexander Lukashenko, 
dubbed Europe's last dictator

- - - - - - - - - - N O R T H E R N   I R E L A N D - - - - - - - - - -

Quote: 

“They are no more proper Muslims than the Protestant bigot who murders a Catholic in Northern Ireland is a proper Christian but, unfortunately, he is still a Protestant bigot.” 

UK prime minister Tony Blair enrages Unionists
by equating Muslim extremists to Protestant - but not Catholic - bigots

He was making a major foreign policy speech about how 
extreme religious beliefs can give rise to violence.

“Mr Blair ... is not ... comparing like with like.  I am not aware of any cases of senior Protestant church leaders or Government officials calling for sectarian attacks on Catholics. There are, however, cases of senior Muslim clerics calling for Jihad.” 

Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey responds

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ISSUE #120 - 19th March 2006 [240]

Palestinian Hand-Biting Has Consequences

Dear oh dear.  You just know that the ordinary Palestinian population are riding a wild tiger looking for a fall.  They are like someone who cannot, or will not, face a reality that is obvious to all around him.  He blunders on and on until reality smacks him in the face, and then he falls back, his eyes smarting in pain and bewilderment.  It happens more than once.  Only after repeated such episodes do the scales begin to fall from his eyes, and the connection made between his actions and the consequences that ensue.  Only then does he begin to adjust his behaviour so that it leads to benign outcomes rather than malign ones.  

For decades, the Palestinians have refused the offer of one Palestinian state after another, for the simple reason that they don't want the Jews to have one.  The result is that the Jews do have one, and the Palestinians don't.  Fixated that the choice they face is one of all or nothing, they have persistently opted for nothing.  Which is precisely what they've got.  

Of course it's misleading to talk of “the Palestinians” in this way, because in truth until this year it has been the unelected, unmandated tyrannical leaders of the ordinary Palestinians who have been making all the key decisions that have resulted in the impoverishment and estrangement of the people.  

From 1921 to around 1950, Haj Amin al-Husseini was the grand mufti of Jerusalem - appointed by the British - as well as being the Palestinians' political leader (a role taken up in 1968 by his nephew Yasser Arafat).  As Grand Mufti, Husseini led the way when he allied himself with Hitler, urging him in 1943 to extend the Final Solution to Jews in Palestine, and remaining as Hitler's guest in Berlin for most of the Second World War.  

Under Husseini's leadership, the Palestinians rejected a two-state solution in 1937 and again in 1947/8; two further rejections came under Arafat in 1967 and 2000.  The Israelis accepted them all.  (Actually, the proposals were for three-state solutions, two Arab and one Jewish, since Jordan - or Trans-Jordan as it was initially known - was created in 1946 as the first homeland for Palestinian Arabs.)  Meanwhile, after Israel was created in 1948, the Palestinians partook in four wars (1948–49, 1967, 1973–74, 1982) and two intifadas (1987-94, 2000-2005) against the Israelis - and got the worst in all of them.  

The Palestinians have thus been within easy reach of peace and statehood for seven long decade despite being perennially on the losing side in every conflict since 1939s.  Nevertheless it is true that the terms became less favourable with each passing offer, for such is the consequence of starting fights but never winning them, whilst being unwilling to cut your losses.   

With its dire leadership, the Palestinian entity has become such an economic basket case that today it can afford barely 40% of its annual $1.7 billion budget.  For the rest it relies on massive gifts from foreign taxpayers.  

Here is the breakdown of the Palestinian Authority's budget - 

Up to now, you could argue that the Palestinian people were merely victims of their vicious and incompetent leaders, rather than suffering from their own failure to recognise the reality of cause and consequence.  

But with recent events, that is changing.  And how.  

Firstly, the Palestinian people in their first ever proper election, have by a solid margin (58% of parliamentary seats) voted in Hamas, whose Covenant openly demands, since 1988, the elimination of Israel: 

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it ... the land of Palestine, or any part of it should not be given up ... There is no solution for the Palestinian [ie Israel] question except through Jihad.”

Thus such words now for the first time represent the will of the people. So long as this remains so, it is unconscionable that other countries should support them or their aspirations.  They have made themselves into pariahs.  

Secondly, last month, Palestinians did their share of rioting and looting in the wake of those Danish cartoons and Imam Ahmad Abu Laban's three fakes.  Their fury was directed not just at Denmark/Scandinavia, but at Western targets in general and EU offices in particular.  

Thirdly, last week, despite denials, the British, Americans and Israelis clearly co-ordinated and engineered a military attack on Jericho Jail.  British and American “monitors” or “guards”, or whatever they were, fled the jail just half an hour before the arrival of Israeli tanks, bulldozers and troops.  The Israelis laid siege until Ahmed Saadat (head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and five other Palestinians, all suspected of assassinating an Israeli minister in 2001, meekly surrendered within a few hours.  (Naturally, no suicide or glorious fighting death for these exalted, middle-aged gentlemen - that's just for youngsters from the lower orders.)  The action was apparently in response to Hamas's stated intention of freeing the six, which stsrikes me as a reasonable enough justification.  

Palestinians were furious at the seizure, blamed the British (mainly) and then went on another anti-Western rampage, on a kidnapping spree and on strike.  The eleven kidnappees were mostly French, Swiss and Korean aid workers and journalists, who happily were eventually released unharmed.  EU monitors at the Rafeh crossing with Egypt were attacked and the British Council cultural centre in Gaza City burnt down, along with a number of cars.  

Now assemble the the pieces of this sorry tale.  

The world genuinely wants to see the Palestinians enjoy peace and prosperity.  This includes not just the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims, but the Western countries and even (albeit for its own security reasons) Israel.  If you doubt this, 

What's in it for any of these organizations and the people behind them?  

The answer is

But the behaviour of the Palestinians is utterly bizarre and at odds with not only their own best interests, but intrinsically immoral.  It is foolish in the extreme to bite the hand that so lavishly feeds you, to attack those who are trying to help you with no thought of reward.  But it is also morally wrong.  

Yet that is precisely what they are now doing.  

The result is predictable though evidently not predicted.  Once Hamas with its annihilate-Israel covenant assumes power, 

The Palestinians will be left to fester impotently in Gaza and whatever of the West Bank Israel opts to leave for them.  

How long this goes on for is anyone's guess.  But it will only end when the Palestinian population as a whole - and its leaders - recognize that their dire plight is the consequence of no-one's behaviour but their own.  When they realise that biting the hand that feeds you has consequences.  

When this realisation eventually strikes home, they will not believe the goodwill that is out there to help them.  Even in Israel.  And this time they are likely to appreciate it and use it to good effect. 

Let us hope it does not take too much longer and too much more self-inflicted pain for the scales to drop at last from their eyes.  

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Belligerent Adult Bullies Love Bluff, Hate Death

Slobodan Milosovich had sworn he would never be taken alive.  He would either die fighting like a warrior or else, as his two parents had done, take his own life.  But it was just a bluff, for when it came down to it, on 31st March 2001, the Bully Butcher of Belgrade spiritlessly put up his hands and surrendered.  Next he found himself in The Hague before the International War Crimes Tribunal.  

Saddam Hussein was another bully who had compared himself with Saladdin and declared he would never be taken alive.  But he was.  Dragged by the Americans from a disgusting hole in the ground.  He could have used his pistol to send a couple of the GIs into the afterlife, with the certainty of his own violent death to follow.  But no, he was no more courageous than Slobo.  (Or many of the rest of us - but we don't brag about our bravery.)    At least Saddam's own two sons went out fighting.  But they had probably lived such cocooned lives that it never occurred to them that shooting at other people, which they'd often done, might entail their own deaths.  

Then there was Ahmad Saadat in Jericho Jail last week.  More talk about never being taken alive; about choosing a hero's exit.  But it took just six hours, and a clear ultimatum from the Israelis, “surrender or you will be killed”.  So he surrendered, preferring to spend the rest of his life (he is only 50) behind Israeli bars, rather than a quick and glorious martyr's end.  

As I've noted before (eg in “Child Shahids” last week), death and and martyrdom are reserved solely for the young from the lower classes.  The job of their boastful, bullying elders and betters is to persuade them down this depraved course.  Definitely not to lead by example.  

Craven hypocrites.  

On another related issue, it is distasteful to see posthumous honour poured on Slobodan in the form of a public funeral attended by over 50,000 mourners as we witnessed at the weekend.  Moreover, his grave will no doubt become a shrine for evermore, like those of the executed Japanese war criminals buried in Yasukuni near Tokyo, which prime minister Junichiro Koizumi controversially visits every year.  

Something similar will also more than likely happen after Saddam has been executed.  

I don't believe or support the death penalty under any circumstances; it is morally wrong to take a life unless absolutely necessary, which is not the case once a criminal is securely behind bars for life.  But I would certainly support a post-death penalty tagged on to the end of life imprisonment.  

Specifically, I believe that such monsters should be cremated by their jailers and their ashes scattered to the wind.  The chance of post-mortem veneration - and thus emulation - would be very much reduced, with no coffin at the funeral and nothing to inter.  The early Soviets knew this when, having executed the entire Romanov royal family, they burnt their bodies and buried the remains in a mine.  

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A Particularly Malodorous Peerage

A row has long simmered in the UK over the strong correlation between citizens who make generous donations to the governing Labour Party, and knighthoods and peerages received by the donors.  Under the parliamentary rules, political parties have to declare donations and identify the donors, which makes the corresponding award of honours a bit obvious and embarrassing.  “Cash for honours” is an unwelcome headline.  

The row has recently flared up again after revelations in the Sunday Times that to get round this inconvenient transparency, honours are now being dished out to people who have merely made loans to the Labour Party:  loans do not have to be declared, y'see.  The going rate for a peerage seems to be a loan in the order of a million pounds.  (I don't know if it ever has to be repaid).  

Personally, I don't see anything particularly wrong in principle in selling such honours provided it is done upfront and openly.  Better still would be an auction.  The subterfuge and hypocrisy are what is objectionable.  It's true that, insofar as the House of Lords is part of the legislature, people bidding for peerages would also be buying their way in to help make laws.  However, is that so different from being born into a peerage or becoming a peer just because the leader of a political party likes you (or wants to banish you from the more powerful lower house)?

Unless and to the extent that the House of Lords becomes fully elected, all methods of populating it are unsatisfactory, even if the result is nevertheless a chamber which is effective.  

Late the other evening, 16th March, I nearly choked on my post-prandial Armagnac (well, cocoa) when tuning in to the BBC's Question Time programme.  Sitting there, bold as brass, was someone called Baroness Tonge of Kew, a peer of the realm on behalf of the Liberal Democrats party.  Was this really the notorious Jenny Tonge MP, a medical doctor subject to the Hippocratic Oath (“first do no harm”), who infamously excused suicide-homicide bombers, blaming their acts on provocation, and adding that she might have become one herself if she were a Palestinian, which I commented on scathingly at the time?  

Indeed it was none other than she.  

Charles Kennedy, then leader of the Liberal Democrats, honourably sacked her from her shadow cabinet position forthwith.  But he was evidently so embarrassed to have her around, that last May he dishonourably elevated this odious creature to the Lords, where she is entitled to remain, swathed in ermine, until death.  

This malodorous elevation is far more outrageous than someone openly purchasing his/her peerage or knighthood.  

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Animal Military Technology

I was astonished to hear on the radio (minute 16:30-21:30) the other day that the US military are training bees to detect weapons such as roadside IEDs, Improvised Explosive Devices, in Iraq. TNT is a vital, explosive component in each IED, and it tends to seep out into the surrounding soil and plants.  So if you can find TNT you've found a bomb or a landmine.  

Mixtures of sugar and TNT are placed in a field and the bees are released to go and seek it out, over a radius of about a hundred metres.  Gradually, the percentage of sugar is reduced and the bees become familiar with the smell of TNT.  Eventually, they seek out pure TNT, convinced it is a flower.  Then fifty or so of the high performers are fitted with minute radio transmitters, half the size of a grain of rice, and are ready to be released into enemy territory.  Amid a swarm of maybe 50,000, they rush out, scatter and scour the territory looking for TNT.  

Electronic devices keep track of the bees' movements, and detectors back at the hive are able to determine whether the bees have returned with traces of TNT on their bodies.  

Apparently this technique is still in the early stages of development, but seems to show great promise.  

Other animals inspiring special research include 

Where did God get all these bright ideas in the first place anyway?

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Week 120's Letters to the Press

Only one letter this week.  It wasn't published, maybe because of fears of libel ...   

Here's another one, al