Ryanair to charge for air on planes

Following news today that Ryanair are investigating the possibility of charging people £1 to go to the toilet on Ryanair flights, Ryanair are keeping quiet over concerns that they might in future turn of the air systems in the planes and instead charge people to use oxygen masks instead.

A senior Irish self publicist said on TV at every possible opportunity between repeating lies that Ryanair are the best airline in the world that "if we can get away with charging people for a call of nature when they have no alternative but to use aircraft toilets then why shouldn't we extend this to the air on the planes itself ? Remember, Ryanair don't give a toss about the customer, all we care about is profits and if we can get away with it, we'll do it".

Further future options Ryanair have considered are:

1) Introducing a new more expensive ticket for higher class customers. These tickets will be called "Cattle Class", and passengers will be treated the same as existing customers but importantly, will not have the put up with standing in queue with the plebs in the standard "Pleb Class" that already exists.
2) Seats will be stripped of covers with passengers asked to sit on bare springs. Passengers can pay an extra £10 for a velcro cover which they will be expected to give back at the end of the flight.
3) Passengers willing to travel naked will not be charged the full £4 charge (per journey each way) that debit card customers are charged and will, instead be charged just £3.87 per flight, saving a whole £13 pence.

Reporting comments and the risks of doing so

I don't make a point of quoting Guido Fawkes blog as I don't read it. I personally don't like the cult of the personality that seems to surround the blog or the fact that for so long he tried to hide his identity. I know its a very successful blog and congratulations should go to him for that.

However, if ever justification was needed as to why you shouldn't believe everything you read on blogs, particularly when reading comments to blogs, it comes from The Right Student who has been caught out by taking a quotation from a comment posted to Guido Fawkes blog which was later proven not to hold water.

Update : Interestingly this posting on "The Right Student" has been removed since late last night.

If you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear

Those words used in the title of this posting were used by Ming Campbell today to make the point that Labour, so keen to tell us that we need ID cards because "If you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear", are running scared (with lots of Tory support) or providing the Freedom of Information requests of cabinet minutes in the run up to the Iraq war.

Labour motives are obvious. But we know why the Tories support Labour in this lack of freedom. Aside from David Davis, there is hardly a history of open government and a willingness to put things out in the open (remember Spy Catcher ?) from the Conservative party. But the truth will come out eventually on the way Labour and Blair manipulated this country in to a war.

At least we Lib Dems can say proudly that we did not support sweeping things under the carpet.

No wonder the kids have problems if the parents are like this

Parents have reportedly complained that a presenter on children's TV channel CBeebies is "scaring their children" because she had one arm !

Quite astonishingly these parents claim their children are so disturbed to see that someone on TV does not conform to their perfect vision of the world that the kids are having nightmares !

What utterly useless parents these people must be if they cannot explain simply to their children that people in the world are different from each other, some have disabilities, some need wheelchairs, some are ill, some have spots, some run faster than others, some have different skin colours and some people, despite their handicaps overcome the hurdles put in front of them and show that efforts in life is rewarded.

Presumably these same people will not allow their children to watch the Paralympic Games for fear that the children will have nightmares from watching Ellie Simmons or Oscar Pistorius competing.

You have to fear for the future of this country if this is the type of parent having children in this country.

So why was Binyam Mohamed in Afghanistan ?

Getting away from the fact that released detainee Binyam Mohammad appears to have been tortured by US officials, something which any true believer in democracy is totally opposed to, how many others feel less safe because he is in the country tonight ?

As I understand it he came to the UK from Ethiopia, but despite having no links with Pakistan he travelled there and then on to Taliban controlled Afghanistan, strangely leaving Afghanistan when the Taliban were overthrown and was then captured by the US when trying to use a false passport to travel back to the UK.

Why does someone visit Afghanistan ? Why would he use a false passport ? Why was Afghanistan the sort of place he wanted to be in when Taliban controlled but not the sort of place to be when run by Afghans ?

Do these actions concern you ? They would me, but then we let him back in to the UK.

I don't have the answers, just lots of questions.

Crazy mortgages - You read it here first !

I note that Gordon brown has spoen out against 100% mortgages whilst Tories too are jumping on the bandwagon to attack crazy loans that their party had no problem in supporting a few months ago.

I'd just like to point out that I made the point HERE back in November 2006 !

Step aside Vince Cable.

Will Iain Dale have to repay the donations ?

Iain Dale likes to repeat and recycle the stories concerning the conman Michael Brown, who made a substantial donation (with the approval of the Electoral Commission), to the lib Dems before the last General Election.

Stories on Iain' blog centre around "Will the Lib Dems pay it back" to "Lib Dems to be bankrupted", depending on how anti Lib Dem Iain appear to be feeling in any given month.

So it was with some interest that I read today that Bearwood, a company owned by Tory donor Lord Ashcroft, is being investigated by the electoral commission in to its donations to the Tory Party. North Norfolk Conservatives received substantial donations from Bearwood in the run up to the 2005 General Election (although oddly every pound donated by Bearwood seemed to equate to another vote on the eventual Lib Dem majority there), and Iain Dale was, of course Tory candidate in 2005.

Should I now be running stories every month on whether Iain should pay back the money ?

No, that would be very silly.

Why the government's pledge to fight terrorism does not extend to Norfolk and Bacton Gas Terminal

Bacton Gas terminal in North Norfolk brings in one third of the gas we use in this country. It is guarded very ably by a small team of MOD police who work closely with Norfolk Constabulary. The MOD police themselves say they want the support of the local constabulary and this is vital to the work they do. So what does the government do to help ? They withdraw funding from Norfolk Constabulary meaning that they cannot provide 24 hour support for this prime target for terrorism in the UK.

Remember that people now locked up inside top security prisons for terrorist offences have had the name of Bacton Gas terminal on their lists of potential targets. There is a clear risk to Bacton, but this government, obsessed only with inner cities and London cannot spare the small amount of money it needs to protect Bacton properly so Norfolk is policed "on the cheap" by the government whilst other parts of the country are given the very highest levels of security.

Twitter ? Get a life !

I have always been someone who embraces new technology. I use the SatNav on my phone, I own more than one MP3 player (but not an iPod), I have a good AV system at home, love the internet, own more than one computer, I can network my music around my home (using ethernet cabling which is installed under the floor of my house), I have owned a Spectrum, a Commodore 64, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, NES, SNES, GameCube, DS, Wii, Xbox and Xbox 360. Oh, and I also had a first generation Gameboy. Yes, in general I'd make the point that I am tech savvy and like gadgets and gizmos.

So why do I not see the point in Twitter ?

It seems that bloggers are mad about Twitter but as far as I can tell from people's feeds on their blogs all Twitter tells me about is where they have been, what they have done, who they spoke to and, in general, I find these things about as interesting as paint drying.

I am sure there are some interesting feeds from some celebrities IF you have the time and inclination to follow them. However, I am at a loss as to why following an MP or a political blogger would be in any way interesting or worthy of my valuable time. And time is the most important aspect here.

For many years I have known Norman Lamb well. Since long before he was MP for North Norfolk I have been slightly in awe of the effort he puts in to North Norfolk and it has been a pleasure to know him. But do I want to follow him on Twitter ? Do I want to know who he has met, where he has been, which debate he engages in ? No. Why ? Because if I wanted to know I would call him or look it up on the internet. Now if I am not that interested in an interesting person in a high profile job who is a friend of mine, why should I have the time to follow someone else who does not meet any of those criteria ?

I have a life, quite a busy one, which involves my family, working, some entertainment (if I can fit this in) and generally trying to fit everything in to 17 hours a day and then get 7 hours sleep. As it is I find it hard to fit in the time to blog regularly.

The very fact that people spare the time to read my blog in the first place is something that amazes me, but at least, I hope, that because I am writing in some depth those who read this will find out more about me views and opinions as I seek to explain them. But could this happen on Twitter where you are limited to writing no more than a single sentence ? I think not.

So I simply don't get Twitter because I have enough to do in 24 hours without spending/wasting my time reading about the triviality of someone's bowel movements are who they bumped in to. For me Twitter is this year's Facebook, and whilst I can understand how the networking elements of Facebook make sense, even if Facebook itself serves no real purpose, then I fail to see how my life will be enriched or made anything other than trivial by learning about the trivialities of someone else's life.

A plea on behalf of education

A report today comes up with the rather sensationalist conclusion that Children in England are getting a "deficient" primary education. In many ways I agree, but don't let the headlines or government excuses allow you to believe for one minute that this is because of what is actually going on in schools. The problems for this lie with government and their addiction to recording what is measurable but not what is important.

The truth of the matter is, as the report suggests, schools are focusing too much on maths, English and testing. And why is this happening ? The simple answer is a system is in place which is obsessed only with SATs in primary schools and league tables, with this further emphasised by Ofsted inspections which largely ignore the great bulk of what goes on in a school and instead places the focus on test results in Literacy and Numeracy.

I think we all know that being numerate and literate are important, but this government has an obsession with tinkering with education, literacy schemes, numeracy frameworks and national curriculum objectives which mean that teachers are constantly having to change the way something is taught before we know if the way we had been doing it is actually going to be the best or most successful methods.

If a doctor gave out different pills each week to a patient, how does the doctor know which pill s are the ones that cure the patient or which makes them worse ? The same is true of education. We need time to bed things down, see what works and make adjustments accordingly.

I heard David Cameron on Radio Five Live a few days ago going on about education and "his plans", and my heart sank. Not because I am bitterly opposed to the way the Conservatives have treated education in the past with real terms cuts in funding in the 1990s whilst favoured "opted out" schools creamed of money from LEA schools and selected pupils, but because want I want, and what just about every teacher wants to hear is that any new government will have a moratorium on education which means we will have at least 2 years (and preferably longer) with absolutely no change at all.

No change might seem like a cop out, but in the primary sector we need time to see what is working and what is not. We need to given the new literacy and numeracy frameworks, which have only been in place for a few months, time to work. David Cameron and the Tories certainly ought to be planning for what might need to happen, but how about listening to people in education and stop pandering to those who fail to understand there is more to education than changing the curriculum.

If David Cameron want to win over thousands of teachers in a single swoop and make a real difference, he could take on board one of the main thrusts of today's report and seek to deal with the over testing of primary school children by scrapping the key stage two SATs tests and accepting that ongoing informal assessment by teachers (which is allowed at KS1 and KS3) should be the way forward.

Cameron Hypocrisy : Number 192

More hypocrisy from Cameron. What a surprise.

The difference between the letter and the spirit of the law

Jacqui Smith may well have informed the relevant parliamentary authorities about her living arrangements and I am sure she does have a letter telling her that her arrangements conform to the letter of the rules. However, does she really think her arrangements fit the spirit of the law ?

If we asked 100 people on the street the simple question, which of these is the person's main home ?

a) The house they own. The house where their spouse and children live. The house where the children go to school from.

or

b) Their sister's spare bedroom where they spend a few nights a week.

How many people would answer (b) ?

I think we all know the answer.

Spanish jobs for British Government Agencies

With the economy in such a state and with British firms laying people off by the day, any small thing the government can do to promote British made products really can make a difference.

So why are the DVLA encouraging people to use their online services by offering each and every month as prizes Spanish built Seat Leon cars ?

Surely this would be the ideal time to be offering a Nissan made in Sunderland or a Honda made in Swindon or even a Mini from Oxford ? No. Not this government. It's a Seat from Spain that wins !

Why do the Tories and Labour think that cities should elect presidents ?

Instantly I expect people to assume I have my facts wrong when I use the word "president" instead of mayor, but let's be clear, the proposal that the Tories have pushed whereby large cities in England would have directly elected mayors with presidential powers which allow them to make councillors almost totally redundant is the last thing that local democracy needs.

It is hard to name an area where having a directly elected mayor has lowered costs or led to a resurgence of interest in local democracy. Do the people of Hartlepool feel better off for having a directly elected mayor ? Is turnout any higher in Doncaster because they have a directly elected mayor ? Are people any happier in Newham because they have a directly elected mayor ? Of course, everyone knows the answer is no. In fact, the election of a mayor, where your vote makes less difference due to the whole constituency nature of the voting, renders your vote less worthy and makes the council more remote. Knowing that your local councillor essentially becomes someone who just lobbies on your behalf but has no real power is hardly strengthening local democracy.

What Cameron needs to do if he really want to roll back the centralisation that started under Thatcher and was continued and accelerated by Major and Blair is to return real power to council and allow councils to raise their own taxes through a local income tax or some other form of local taxation. Only when councils are really accountable for their spending and their own decisions will people take proper notice and interest in what local councils do.

Sadly Dave's plans to further remover powers from councillors and hand them to one person is not what most of us would call democracy.

Read your email Keith Simpson

A little tale was told to me today about Keith Simpson, Tory MP for Mid Norfolk and an accusation he made against a fellow MP from a different party.

In Buxton (Mid Norfolk), there is currently a by-election ongoing, and last weekend Norman Lamb, who is Lib Dem MP for the adjoining North Norfolk constituency dropped by to give the Lib Dem campaign some support.

Keith Simpson, who had pulled up in the same car park huffed his way over to Norman Lamb and demanded to know why he had not received a message from Norman informing him that he would be campaigning in his Keith Simpson's constituency.

"You have", replied Norman, "Have you checked your e-mail ?"

"Err, no" replied Keith Simpson.

The lesson for the day ? Learn to use e-mail regularly or get yourself a Blackberry Mr Simpson !

Is there any Z list celebrity TV challenge that Lembit Opik won't do ?

Every time they announce a new celebrity challenge TV show my heart sinks knowing there is a good chance Lembit Opik will whore himself by appearing in the show. Thankfully he didn't appear in "I'm a Celebrity", but appearances on various TV shows from Celebrity Apprentice (which was a good show but left me feeling Lembit came out of it very badly) to Celebrity Mr and Mrs, and others along the way, as a Lib Dem, make my heart sink.

Lembit apparently feels he is unappreciated in the Lib Dems by the members as a whole and feels that some bloggers fail to give him credit for things he has done.

So should I give him credit for appearing in the latest celebrity feature "Team Ant versus Team Dec" on "Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway" ?

No, of course not. When he ought to be knocking on doors in his constituency, when he ought to be doing the work his is paid to do, instead he is appearing on a ITV1.

Credit where credit is due Lembit. Now go and do something I can give you credit for.

Agreeing with Ken Clarke

You can't argue with the logic of what Ken Clarke said today about the merger of HBOS with Lloyds. It does now seem that this merger, although an enticing prospect for Lloyds at the time, may result not in the saviour of HBOS, but the failure of HBOS and Lloyds.

The fact that ken Clarke was excluded for so long from the Tory front bench means he does come to the whole credit crunch debate with the freedom to speak his mind, but also with some gravitas, something the Tory front bench lacks at the moment, someone the press actually believe and go to for real information, not spin. At the moment the press really only have one port of call for a political expert on the credit crunch, and that is Vince Cable. Perhaps Ken Clarke might be able to get some of Vince's action. However, as Paul Walter points out, Ken has not really moved with the times. He mumbles and "erms" his way through interviews lacking the incisive direct point that Vince Cable hits so often.

So whilst I agree with him on Lloyds, perhaps it is clearer to see why he has been away from the front line for so long.

For me, Ken Clarke was the obvious choice as Tory leader in 1997. At a time when people did not like the Tories at all, he was the sort of leader who would have made them credible (something they never were under William Hague) and not loathed.

Tories want a return to slum landlords

Lowering the standards required for housing so that people can rent these lower grade properties to people hardly looks like a forward thinking policy, instead it seems like a return to allowing slum landlords to provide poor accommodation for sky high rents. Surely nobody could believe this is a good idea ?

Oh, apparently its a Tory idea.

Glorifying Teenage Pregnancy - Thanks to "The Sun"

Today's headlines in "The Sun" glorifying the 13 year old father of a child really does send out the wrong message.

The Sun has an "exclusive" on this story and the baby's teenage parents have, apparently, been behind closed doors with representatives of "The Sun" all day. Putting two and two together you would have to assume that "The Sun" are not providing this support out of the kindness of Rupert Murdoch's heart and they have paid the teenagers a handsome sum in return for the exclusivity of this story.

At a time when people bemoan the obsession teenagers have with fame and a lack of willingness amongst some youths to get qualified and get a job, is "The Sun" paying these children to report their law breaking really sending out the right message ?

There are supposed to be laws that prevent people from profiteering from breaking the law yet "The Sun" tries to offer these people money, fame and a shoulder to cry on.

What an example to set.

Tories rewriting history

We shouldn't be so shocked that a Tory employee attempted to change an historical fact on Wikipedia , instead we should be more worried about the Tories attempt to whitewash their past and claim the oral high ground in the wake of the credit crunch.

on BBC Radio Five Live this morning George Osborne simply ignored Nicky Campbells questions regarding Tory leader David Cameron speeches from less than two years ago when he criticised attempts to regulate the City of London and the banks. The presenter seemed to have a list of speeches and dates from Mr Cameron which Osborne had absolutely no answer for other than to say "but we do want proper regulation". It seems clear that the Tories are desperately hoping that nobody examines their "light touch" policy on The City in too much depth.

Osborne tried to justify the Tories high moral line by arguing that under Tory governments in the past no banks went under. Sadly it seems that someone who wants to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer has never heard of the Bank of Credit & Commerce International (BCCI), a large bank which although foreign owned, was based firmly in London which under a Tory government (and virtually no monitoring or regulation, as is the Tory was) went bust. Though no HBOS, BCCI went under in relatively bening times and without the Tory government having a clue that it would happen.

the Tories would be much better off holding their hands up and saying "We were wrong on regulation and we now see the need for it" rather than denying their guilty secrets and making us all suspicious of whether we can believe them about anything.