Charity Bags

Do you get as many bags to fill for 'charity' as we do, I wonder? With about two a week coming through our letterbox, how much spare clothing do they think we have??

Today's is "Do not delay!" and is to help prevent breast cancer in Lithuania. It does not appear to be a charity, so there's no way of knowing how much money is raised and how much of it goes to breast cancer screening.

Kidney Research UK, whose bag arrived recently is a charity, and according to its most recent published accounts, just over 50% of its expenditure was on its charitable activities. I'll leave you to decide whether or not that's a reasonable amount. Just for comparison, the Baptist Missionary Society spent around 94% of its income on its charitable activities, according to their latest accounts.

A few days ago it was "The Hand of Help", who admit they are a commercial company "who helped the disabled children and will do so in the future." Good for them! But their bag, like the rest will be turned inside out and used for putting out our rubbish, as our council is no longer supplying us with plastic sacks.

If we have clothing, etc., we want to throw out, we it take to a local charity shop, so we know where the money is going to.

Private sector make millions at our expense - again

So let me get this right. Southern Cross are running of lots of care homes for the elderly. Then they thought it a great idea to sell off the properties and lease them back. But now they can't afford the rents and have asked the landlords to accept a 30% reduction of the rent (just for the time being, of course!).

In fact I heard that's what happened to Woolworths. It wasn't that trade was that terrible - they just could no longer afford the rent on the properties they had previously sold.

When are our political masters going to "get it"? Public services are services for the public - the clue is in the title! It's not that difficult! But when you put public services into the hands of the private sector, they are in it to make money, not to serve the community. So the shareholders get their whack and the bosses get ridiculously high salaries and the elderly, vulnerable people suddenly find their future very uncertain.

Of course, we could go back to Railtrack. You remember them, the private firm that ran the railway track and made wonderful profits, until surveys after a fatal crash showed that they were not, actually, doing the job they were supposed to. Then for months on end rail travellers were burdened with longer journey times because of speed restrictions, and massive engineering works at weekends.

But back to the sale of care homes. The question I haven't got the answer to is this - where did the £1 billion they got from the sale of the homes actually go to??

Electricity and Climate Change

I read last week that carbon emissions are up again and we are well on the way to a two degree rise in global temperatures, which is not good news for our grandchildren, although I'm sure I will be well gone before it happens.

It started me thinking on how much more we use electricity these days - either mains or batteries. To start with, we used to just have a telephone which was plugged into the landline, and didn't need a mains cable. Now we have a cordless handset so we don't have to jump up to answer it - it's there by our side - but, of course, we CAN walk around the house whilst speaking on it! Also we need to regularly charge up our mobile phones.

Then there are simple things that used to be mechanical, but now have to be electronic for some reason; like bathroom scales and kitchen scales that worked quite well with a spring. And do you recall when we used to wind up our watches and clocks?

My old 35 mm camera didn't need a battery to work - I adjusted it myself, but now one can't even zoom on digital cameras manually (yes, I know on the expensive DSLR ones you can, but they're not the most popular models!).

Do you remember the old days when you switched off things like TV's? Now you switch to standby and a little red light reassures you it's still using up power.

And of course, what's the latest gadget? An electronic book! Those old paper things you could borrow free from a library - now they really are old fashioned!

About time too!

A report damning the sexual commercialisation of children is due out on Monday, but 'leaks' are in the papers today. Thank God someone has spoken up! It is, in fact, the CE of the Mothers' Union (which, interestingly is a man!) who has written the report, which makes a number of recommendations, including:

- banning advertising hoardings with "sexualised imagery" near schools and nurseries (why can't they be banned everywhere? After all, children are everywhere);
- a clampdown on sexual & violent stuff on TV before 9 pm;
- music videos to have age ratings, like films do;
- stopping the sale of inappropriate clothing for children which exploits their sexuality.

Mumsnet is also involved in this, and more power to both organisations! But it's also up to you concerned parents to speak up; don't think you are the only person who is worried about these things.

It is outrageous how commercial organisations are taking away our children's childhood. May this new report, entitled Let Children be Children begin a sea change in what is acceptable and unacceptable in society today concerning our children.

Detectives on TV

We watched the first episode of Scott & Bailey, the new ITV female detective duo. It began with one of them breaking up with her boyfriend and the 'angst' got worse as the story went on.

Why can't they do drama where there's a crime, which they solve, without the all calamatous personal life that seems to be compulsory these days?

Why can't they go back to the good old days with programmes like Dixon of Dock Green? Good clean police drama and no disfunctional families. I mean George Dixon used to live happily with Andy, his son-in-law, who was a detective. It was all so much simpler then.

Although, wait a minute, I hear Jack Warner has been accused of corruption ...

Those who rule ...

I noticed in the paper this week (and it was mentioned in passing on Have I got news for you?) that whereas 0.14% of the UK's population are in prison, 0.62% of MP's at the last parliament are in prison. That's over four times the national average.

I'll say no more.

Back in business!

My sincere apologies to my loyal blog followers. But now I'm back! It's 4th June and I'm blogging again.

But what about superinjunctions? Maybe I'll unwittingly let a cat out of a bag! And then what?

Superinjunctions seem to me to be a bit like working for the secret service. They used to say (and maybe they still do) that not only could you not tell anyone what you did, but also you couldn't tell them you couldn't tell them. So you had to say something vague about being a civil servant when asked by anyone what you did.

Superinjunctions work the same way. Not only can you not report a story, but also you can't say you can't report on it. And there, as far as I can see, is a big problem. Say I'm down the pub and someone mentions something about somebody famous (say, a footballer, to take a random example). If that's the subject of a superinjunction, how do I know? How can I possible know NOT to say something when no-one is allowed to tell me I'm not allowed to say it?

Or maybe there's a list somewhere. But that would rather defeat the purpose! And THAT reminds me something I heard of many years ago. A publisher had brought out a new edition of the works of Shakespeare, but with all the naughty bits cut out. Thus it was suitable for schoolchildren. But they put all those bits in an appendix! So now, little schoolboys didn't have to read through page after page to find the best bits, they were all conveniently listed at the back!

But I've gone off the original subject.... Suffice it to say that if I stop blogging again, it just MAY be I've violated someone's very expensive superinjunction.