Comings and Goings

Well I start this edition of the Blog with the news that the seemingly interminable wait that I endure each year between the ending of the NFL season with the Super Bowl and the start of the Baseball spring training leading to the beginning of the regular Baseball season on the 5th April is over. This period is not totally devoid of sport but it is not sport that interests me, I am sure there are a great many Hockey and Basketball fans out there and much power to your elbow I say but it not just for me.

Even the occasional reader of the Blog will be aware, if not you are now, that with Baseball I have for a great many years supported and followed the fortunes of the Cleveland Indians, in recent times a team of mixed fortunes, who last year played the 162 regular season games and lost 97 of them and sharing the bottom position in the Central Division of the American League with Kansas City who also played 162 games and lost 97. However the Indians have seen greatness during their 109 year history. They have played in the World Series three times, they won in 1920 and 1948 but lost to the Giants in 1954, in more recent times they were first in the Central Division for five consecutive years 1995 - 1999 winning the Division Series beating the Red Sox in 1995, the Yankees in 97 and the Red Sox [again] in 98 but losing to the Orioles in 96 and the Red Sox in 99; they were first in the Division again in 2001 but lost to the Mariners but first again in 2007 and won beating the Yankees.

So far during this years Spring Training they have won every game they have played and are unequalled by any other team in either the American or national League; however it will soon be the 5th April and I shall take my place on the Lazy Boy settee and settle back with a cold beer tune the television to ESPN America and await those famous words..................Play Ball. Let's hope that this year the Indians can return to the glory day.

I would be unfair to myself if at some point I did not mention the death on the 3rd March of Michael Foot at the grand age of 96. I am by inclination a Socialist [with a capitol S] and I tend politically to try, when I am able, to stand just left of centre and occasionally I do like the term radical when I lean intermittently leftwards.

I am today a socialist for three main reasons, first and perhaps most importantly I was raised in a socialist household though in hindsight I doubt very much if either of my late parents would have, if asked, classed themselves socialists, though both life long Labour voters, if questioned where they stood politically I think they may have said 'somewhere in the centre' but they both passionately believed in in a fair and just society with equal opportunities for all.

Secondly and though it seems strange now but in my early teens I became aware of a radical left wing socialist Labour politician called Aneurin Bevan. It was Nye Bevan who as Minister for health between 1945 and 1951 had the vision and foresight to play a vital role in the creation and introduction of the National Health Service, often amongst harsh opposition from both the Conservative Party and the British Medical Association. The new free for everyone Health Service becoming a reality, not just for those with the ability to pay, on the 5th July 1948. His passion, his values and his examples inspired a succeeding generation of followers, the Bevanites; that included Barbara Castle, Harold Wilson and Niel Kinnock to name a few. Nye Bevan had a vision for a better and more equal society for all.

Thirdly was Michael Foot. It was Michael Foot above all who inspired me to take a much greater interest in politics in general and socialism in particular though I have never been as brave as he [or even Nye Bevan] to lean that far to the left. There is much I disagreed with, Foots almost fervent staunch conviction in Nuclear Disarmament's for example, where often on television news reports of the day he could be seen near the head of some protest march or other; a dishevelled looking individual wearing his trademark beige duffle coat and with his flowing unkempt hair, but he was a man conviction, belief and strong socialism and that is what I liked about him. In his own words he first joined the Labour Party in 1937 in Liverpool because of the poverty he saw, the unemployment and the endless infamies committed on the inhabitants of the backstreets of that city. With my own father being born in Liverpool in 1915 his family would have suffered the unemployment and extreme hardships of the time and I find a correlation there.

First elected to Parliament for Plymouth in 1945 he sat on the back benches for nine turbulent years becoming always the radical voice to be reckoned with. During those years on the back benches he practised and honed his oratory skills, he warned Attlee's Government to beware of retreating from the purity of the socialist gospel and demanded greater help for the working people. Foot lost his seat in 1955 but when Nye Bevan died of cancer in 1960 it was Foot that was selected as Bevan's successor and he stood for an won the Ebbw Vale seat which he then held for 32 years until his retirement from politics in 1992.

Time has shown us that there are those who are natural speakers, and certainly it is a skill that all in public office must learn and master but there there are a few to whom it comes as a natural ability and who can speak with such deep belief, passion and conviction. Winston Churchill certainly was one, oddly enough Neil Kinnock is another and Michael Foot is another, and in my opinion he was truly spell binding to listen to.

Eventually Michael Foot, perhaps really against his own better judgement, became leader of the Labour Party after James Callaghan resigned during the Labour Conference in 1980. In the run up to the 1983 General Election with Margaret Thatcher still riding on a wave of success after the Falklands War the year before, Michael Foot laid out the Labour Party Manifesto for the forthcoming election and that speech has now passed into Labour Party folklore as 'The Longest Suicide Note in History', it was the end for Foot and the beginning of the end for his brand of leftist radical labour, the party vote fell to its lowest since 1935.

However times change and Neil Kinnock, a Bevanite himself, John Smith then Tony Blair brought the Labour Party out of the wilderness and back into office by making its core values more centre ground, even right of centre at times and more moderate, well that and the complete internal collapse and total mistrust of the Conservative Party by the general public, but it was not the politics or beliefs of Michael Foot, it was 'New Labour' and Michael Foot was 'Old Labour' radical and left of centre, he belonged to a different age and a different time. Michael Foot has long been a political hero of mine, a genuine man with a passion and dedication in his beliefs not often seen today, one of the old guard of left wing radical politics.

Google have in the last day or so announced that the Street View on Google maps has now been released for Britain with about 98% completion rate, it did not take long for the Moaning Minnie's, the Loonies and the NIMBY's to throw their collective hands in the air in horror and shout loudly at anyone who will listen, no doubt eager to gain some support, about invasion of privacy, permissions not given, it being a 'Burglars Charter' and all sorts of other nonsense. For the benefit of any new reader from Chad a NIMBY is a mnemonic for Not In My Back Yard to indicate someone or a group of people who think anything will be a great idea so long as it is not built or does not happen near them.

One of the less significant daily newspapers even published a story about how one of their reporters had found on the Google Street View an image of a child that was half dressed [no doubt after spending countless hours hunched over his or her computer zooming in on every image of a child they could find to do so] and now claims this will become the favoured tool of paedophiles who will use the Street View to locate children and then rush off to do whatever it is that paedophiles do with children. Does this newspaper seriously expect us to believe that they think a paedophile will spend hours searching Google Street View in search of a victim and then rush off to the given geographical location and expect the child to still be there; it surely goes without saying that the Street View is not a live image but a pre-recorded image now published on the web. I might expect some of these images to be up to six months or more old, what a ridiculous and scare mongering article the newspaper has printed, but knowing the newspaper it is about par for the course for them and it's reporting style but even more sadly reflects the readership of this newspaper that it is believed without question and I am sure mobs of vigilantes are forming as I type.

For those who have claimed it is an invasion of their privacy and that their permission had not been sought for these images to be collected I might remind them then that when next they are on holiday or out for the day and they plan to take some photographs to ensure they go and ask everyone else on the beach or in the town or city or wherever they may be to obtain their permission as no doubt they might be included on the photograph as well. What a ludicrous notion. I expect we all have photographs at home or on our computers to remind us of happy holidays or day visits and in the background are perhaps hundreds of other people, if at the beach for example, do we go and ask every persons consent who may be caught innocently on the photograph.

Do some of these people really believe that because the street or road that they live on is now included in Goggle Street View that suddenly there will be a great influx of crime on their property or in their area, what do they base that on? I can purchase an A to Z guide of any city or town in this country, open it at any page, stick a pin into any given area and go to that point and stand outside any house or other buildings take some photographs and walk around the area, this is no more or no less than can be done with Google Street View or than can have been done with any A to Z Guide for the last twenty or so years. How does that in some way in peoples mind become an opportunity for an increase in crime.

It is all such a silly notion from a lot of loonies, but I am getting flipping angry again.

Good news on the Gnome front. I can report the the Gnome arrived safely some days ago and since then I have taken it to work for the day and taken some photographs, Mrs F and I also took it to the North Yorkshire Moors National Park visiting Sutton Bank, Helmsley and the Lion Inn at Blakey Ridge for lunch. I have added the pictures and a small written report to the Gnome World Travel Web Site and he has now departed for his next destination in Dunfermline Scotland prior to crossing the Atlantic to the new world and the colonies.