OH TO BE IN ENGLAND...

.....now that April`s here.   So said Robert Browning and he may have had in mind the kind of scene in this photo that I took earlier this week along the stretch of the south west coast path near Lundy Bay in north Cornwall.   It was a perfect scene - blue skies, gentle breeze, birds singing, flowers along the way.

Trouble was, nothing really prepared me for what I discovered on my return home on Thursday.   Now we like to think that we live in a quiet-ish, peaceful, supportive community here in our Kentish conclave in what passes for the Garden of England.   And just 100 yards away down the road there`s a rather nice green area, flanked by trees with a stream running through it - a much treasured `amenity` for local residents, especially children.

Unfortunately, the area has once again been invaded - there`s no other word for it really - by about a dozen caravans, vans, trailers, etc. of the `travelling community.`  They simply break into the area, drive their vehicles over it, set up camp and know that the law and the authorities cannot touch them all over this Bank Holiday weekend.  Here`s what it looks like today:-

Just over the hedge on the right are three or four houses whose residents have to put up with the noise, the filth, the abusive behaviour and language but apparently there`s nothing the authorities can do apart from go through the tortuous legal process of serving Orders and hoping, optimistically, that eventually our visitors will be gone.  We local taxpayers have to pick up all the bills not least being the cost of cleaning up the mess they leave behind and leaving the area fit for human habitation again.

This is the third or fourth year this has happened and if I were not a tolerant, understanding chap who recognises the primacy of human rights, I could get a touch miffed about it all.   But this is England and it`s still just April...but I just wish I was back on that coast path again.

A SAD LEAVING..

It was particularly sad to see that Paul Elliott had voluntarily resigned from all his positions with the Football Association following his text message to former business partner and black footballer Richard Rufus.   Elliott`s text included language that was clearly bad tempered and racist in the extreme and he was really left with no alternative but to resign from positions that he had filled with distinction for a number of years.

As a player, Elliott was a cultured defender for clubs including Charlton Athletic, Chelsea, Celtic and Pisa in the Italian League.  On retiring from playing, he devoted much of his time to working with young players and with ant-racism initiatives in football and, having already been appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2003 he was appointed a Commander of the Order (CBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours list for his services to equality and diversity in football.

Now his resignation has left the Football Association looking for a credible ant-racist leader.   Elliott was in line to replace Lord Ouseley as head of a new inclusion advisory body being set up to replace the Race Equality Advisory Group overseeing new anti-discrimination regulations.  Lord Ouseley himself resigned from the FA Council in protest at the Football Association`s "mealy-mouthed approach" to the John Terry and Luis Suarez cases.

I`ve no problem with any of that - it all sounds reasonable and sensible stuff in keeping with the modern day approach to these sensitive and important areas of concern, but just one thing puzzles me.   It always seems to be the case that the leaders of these anti-discrimination bodies all come from a minority background and whilst that may be accepted wisdom, it could be claimed to be leaning in just one direction, whereas I`m sure the FA can find the credible leader they`re seeking, from any background?

MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS ?..

As a member of the generation brought up at a time when homosexual practices were illegal, I confess to struggling with the many changes in the world.   Some of those changes seem eminently sensible, others less so, especially those which have more than a hint of political chicanery about them.

Anyway, I`ve been observing - merely as a casual observer, of course - all the fuss there has been about the gay marriage business.    (My dictionary does indeed record that `gay` means homosexual but it also suggests  that the word equally means `merry and carefree.`   Is it really the same thing?)

Now, let`s see if I`ve understood this.   Gay couples have had the right to civil partnerships but not content with that there has been rooftop shouting for gay couples to have the same rights to be married as heterosexual couples.   It`s interesting that those who  shout the loudest are those who keep their counsel when there are other, arguably more important, matters to be championed.   So, the great British Parliament has now agreed that gay couples can now be married in church.   Except the Church of England, the church in Wales, the Catholic church and any other religious outfit that doesn`t want to do it anyway.   Smoke and mirrors.  Now you see it, now you don`t.

But if they are really, really serious about equality, it seems only fair for heterosexual couples to be allowed to enter into civil partnerships?   And whilst we`re at it, I am inclined to petition Dibley Parish Council to organise a Straight Pride Parade through the village streets so we can enjoy a merry, carefree day of our very own.   

I might just volunteer to help with that.  After all, you may have guessed from my intriguing photo above, just where my allegiances lie.  Ah, those were the days!

THE ROAD TO NIRVANA..

Recent events from this madcap world have shown how, in two easy stages, it might be possible to reach Nirvana - that much sought after `state of supreme happiness.`  It goes like this.

Just up the road from me there`s a nice bit of rural countryside, with rolling fields nestling beneath the North Downs - all within the designated Green Belt.  I`ve no idea who owns the land but I`m thinking of moving up there, acquiring a white Transit van and constructing a shack from various bits of `material that has come my way.`   It will be idyllic - surrounded by peace and quiet, no hastle, the freedom of the open air - what could be better?  

Of course, I won`t have to pay any taxes, council or otherwise and it doesn`t really matter to me that maybe I shouldn`t be there because my human rights will outweigh any conscientious feelings I might have.   Now I imagine that those in `authority` might take a bit of a dim view of it and I suppose I might be served with the odd eviction notice and stuff like that but I`m pretty sure the United Nations, Vanessa Redgrave, a whole host of lawyers and human rights activists will come to my aid and fight for me to be allowed to stay.   If all goes well, I might just have ten years or so before I`m presented with enough inducements to encourage me to leave.

The other thing I have in mind is to start borrowing shedloads of cash and spending it on stuff I might not really need whilst also maintaining my essential stocks of tarmac, lucky heather, lavender and such like.   Of course, I`ll do my best to try and pay some of it back but I`m pretty sure it will be impossible.   No matter, because one bright day the people to whom I owe said shedload will come along and tell me that they`ve written off, kissed goodbye, to at least half of what I owe them and at the same time they`ll give me another shedload so I can go and spend that.  

Now if those two `strategies` - which might at first glance appear unconnected - are put together, then the Road to Nirvana is guaranteed.   All you have to do is find a nice bit of Green Belt land on the outskirts of Athens and you`ve got it made. 

THE MADNESS RETURNS..

My very good friend Mr. Slightly commented the other day on one of my posts concerning football that, football apart, `the world is quite mad.`  He was right.   And now we have yet another example from, unsurprisingly, the European Court of Human Rights.

It was in December last year that I had a bit to say about the tragic case of 12 year old Amy Houston who was mown down and killed by a failed asylum seeker who used Article 8 of the Human Rights Act to be allowed to stay in this country because he had fathered two children here - http://snoppersays.blogspot.com/2010/12/blog-post.html may jog the memory.

And now we have yet another case that stretches reason to its limits.  The other day, a Nigerian serial rapist escaped deportation after European judges ruled that he had a right to a `private life` here in Britain.   This after he had been found guilty of raping a 13 year old girl and having exhausted every legal avenue of appeal in this country.   Indeed, his case to be allowed to remain was so flimsy that the Court of Appeal refused to hear it.  

Despite all of that, the European Court of Human Rights sitting in splendid isolation in Strasbourg not only ruled in his favour but also awarded him costs of £3,500.   The seven judges, seen existing stage left above, included representatives of such pillars of reason as Bosnia, Albania and Montenegro, said that the Court must `protect his social ties with Britain,` despite the fact that he has no wife, long term partner or children in the UK, all of which are factors which foreign criminals have used to stay here under the now discredited Article 8.

The crime he committed is appalling  but the nonsensical decision to effectively show leniency towards someone who shouldn`t be here anyway is, frankly, astonishing and it shows once more the farcical world we seem forced to endure all the while we are strapped to the yoke of the EU.   Now of course, I confess to having my `difficulties` with anything connected with the EU - common agricultural policy, fisheries policy, its vast expense, its totally ineffective management of its common currency, it`s wasteful and unnecessary dabbling in foreign affairs.....I could go on.

And at this point, I have reminded myself of the words of Jean Monnet, a  French diplomat and a `founding father` of the EU, who said, "Europe`s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening.   This can be accomplished by successive steps each disguised as having an economic purpose but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation."  Indeed.

Now I agree that all of that is perhaps a long way away from having a moan about yet another daft decision from the judges in Strasbourg, but it does serve to remind me that all the big things that are going wrong with Europe, coupled now with these humanly tragic `smaller`  issues, surely make the case of themselves for this country`s politicians to do what they promised - a referendum on Europe and a Bill of Rights following withdrawal from the Human Rights Act.

Trouble is, we`ve got a coalition government with the inevitable result that nothing will happen here and, all the while, the madness of Europe will continue unchecked.   And you wonder why people like Mr. Slightly and myself try to escape all the madness and find comfort, and sometimes even reassurance, in football.

DAYS...

 I noticed that yesterday was International Womens Day.   Could hardly miss it really.  When I turned on Sky News early in the morning, I noticed that all the presenters were female which probably accounted for the fact that  the Paper Review  was concerned with recipes for fairy cakes, make-up tips and stuff like that.  Fair enough.

Seems to me however that, by having an International Women`s Day, with all its trumpeting, championing of the cause and assertive self- promotion (eg. multi-millionairess warbler Annie Lennox giving it large for the sisters) might actually be self-defeating, as it implies the acceptance of an `inferiority` which really isn`t there.

Now, in  much the same way as I wondered whether there might be a Straight Pride Day in Brighton, for example, I also wondered if this clamour for equality might see us   have an International Men`s Day.   And then someone advised me that there is - on 19th November.

Oh dear.  Gives us a chance to reassert our masculine inferiority I suppose.

BUT ESPECIALLY FOR GRIEVING FATHERS....

I`ll probably get in a bit of bother about this but now and then I hear things or read things that resonate with me as a father, a grandfather and, I hope, by and large a decent human being.  One such `event` occurred today and I don`t think I can do any better than to set out the text of a PA report that was issued at lunchtime.   It goes like this:-

`A failed asylum-seeker who left a 12-year-old girl dying under the wheels of his car while banned from driving will be allowed to remain in the UK, judges have ruled.  Mohammed Ibrahim, 33, an Iraqi Kurd, was already banned from driving when he ran off, leaving Amy Houston trapped under his Rover car.

Amy`s father, Paul Houston, 41, from Darwen, Lancashire, begged judges at a recent deportation hearing to bring "my seven years of hell to an end" by sending Ibrahim back to Iraq.  Mr Houston was left to make the decision to turn off Amy's life support machine hours after the crash in Blackburn, Lancs, in November 2003. He has since campaigned to get Ibrahim deported in a tortuous legal battle spanning seven years.

Last month he handed in a letter to judges, containing an impassioned plea asking for Ibrahim to be deported.  The Upper Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber sitting in Manchester also heard Ibrahim, given leave to remain in the UK, had a string of criminal convictions.

Ibrahim's lawyers argued that his human rights would be impinged if he was sent back to Iraq. The lawyers claimed human rights laws permitted him to remain in the country, as his right to life and to family life trumped attempts to return him to his native Iraq.   And two senior immigration judges rejected a final appeal by the UK Border Agency to have him deported. Ibrahim will now be allowed to live in the UK permanently.

Mr Houston said he was "frustrated and angry" at the decision.  He said: "How can he say he's deprived of his right to a family life? The only person deprived of a family life is me. Amy was my only family."

I`m not sure the above calls for any real comment from me, for the conclusion reached by any `ordinary` decent person is obvious so I will confine myself to suggest that Human Rights, like political correctness and our old friends health and safety, have now gone too far and it`s time we put the twin virtues of common sense and common decency towards out fellow countrymen once more at the forefront of our consideration.