Happy Christmas

As one of the bell ringers at my local Parish Church, I will be going out just before eleven this evening to help to ring the bells for the Midnight Service.
The number of our local bell ringers is unfortunately getting less and we've only managed to get one new recruit during the past year but have lost three ringers who have moved away. All except our new lass are over sixty, and I'm certainly finding that I can no longer manage any of the heavier bells. With a bit of luck we'll manage to ring six of the eight bells for about half an hour, with a few breaks.
No lie in in the morning however, back to ring for the Christmas day service before we go to our younger daughter and family for Christmas Lunch

Here are two examples of ringing, the first being rung on the six bells of St. Lawrence Church, Abbots Langley.



The second, at the other end of the scale, on the twelve bells at Trinity Wall Street, NY on Jan 19, 2009, being a 10 minute clip of peal of Bristol Maximus rung by the St Paul's Cathedral Guild.


Twelve bell ringing is way beyond my range of skills, personally I prefer the sound of six or eight bells when I can hear the individual bells.

Happy Christmas.

British Muslim Banned from the United States.

The morning news was all about a Muslim family of eleven people being banned from the US and certain sections of the media were full of instant condemnation and the local Labour MP penned an immediate missive to David Cameron demanding action as this hard-working family was being deprived of the pleasure of taking their children to Disneyland for the Christmas holiday.
My initial thought was that the US is a sovereign country and it is entirely up to them whom they let into the country and perhaps this might also be put down to what I would describe as the "Trump effect".
However, as the day wore on, people started to ask questions. First of all, it was revealed that the family consisted of the father, his brother and nine children. No  adult female was in the group. Then one wondered why a Muslim family should be going there anyway, surely such frivolities and music are banned by their religion. And why for Christmas, when we are frequently told that our Christmas celebrations can be offensive to many Muslims?
By the evening, it emerged that a Facebook page claiming links to radical Islamist groups was set up by someone who has lived at the family's postal address, although they claim that it has been set up by hackers.
The latest revelations are from the Daily Mail.
As I said, the US is a sovereign country and has the absolute right to refuse anyone entry; unlike the UK where we have to accept anyone with an EU passport, something that is given to most so-called refugees without question by some EU countries.

Volkswagen and Emissions

A lot has been said in the media about the "fiddling" of the emissions produced by the diesel engines in VW cars and of course how governments and the poor old public were badly misled. This is, as usual, followed by the flood of people who feel that they should get compensation.

I used to own a VW Bora Diesel, and it was a very nice car with amazing acceleration for a diesel. Before buying, I looked at quite a number of things, how it drove and its handling, comfort, space, availability of a local dealer, etc. I even considered its fuel consumption, although experience suggested that any manufacturers' mpg figures needed to be taken with a very large pinch of salt. However, one thing that I never looked at was its emission figures as they are pretty meaningless to anyone unless they have carefully studied the subject. How would I know without a lot of research whether a certain number of grammes of CO2 emissions per mile was good or bad?

So, out of curiosity, I spoke to a few friends and acquaintances and I was unable to find anyone who had actually considered a car's emissions before making a purchase. Most had looked at fuel consumption, and like me, had little belief in the manufacturers' figures. In general, they all thought it was a useful way of comparing different models, but otherwise not representative of the real world.

So where are all these people are who thought about emissions before buying a car? Where are all these people who are so traumatised by feeling that they have been deceived that they deserve huge amounts of compensation? It is suggested that the second hand value of such cars will plummet; my experience in selling my old cars suggests that the values could hardly plummet far without the owner having to pay someone to take it away! If you want to part-exchange a VW for a new one, I suspect VW will offer much the same as previously in order to secure a sale.

The only organisation which may have made a loss is probably the Treasury should the cars have been put in the wrong tax band and if so no doubt they will take action if they feel it is appropriate.
It is also interesting to speculate on what, if anything, will be found when the test results from other manufacturers are examined - have any others been fiddling their results?

If VW decide (or are forced) to offer any compensation, how long before we are inundated with TV and radio advertisements or text messages similar to those for PPI ?
I dread the thought of TV adverts, "Have you ever owned a VW within the past ten years, if so there is a pile of money which has been put aside waiting for you to claim, just text XXXX at once to stake your claim".

As an aside from the main issue, I have been wondering whether it is actually possible for a manufacturer to meet the emission limits required by the EU.  So many other EU targets have not been met because they are simply impractical, so are their required car emissions equally impractical?

VW and Climate Change.

I thought that this cartoon was one of the best that I'd seen lately

Courtesy of the Bishop Hill Blog and Cartoons by Josh

Just in case you missed it!

According to Breitbart, Labour MP Rachael Maskell, the Member of Parliament for York Central, declared:

“We need to shout so much more and say 20,000 is not enough, 30,000 is not enough. We will keep going until we hit our saturation point because what does it matter if we have to wait another week for a hospital visit?  Or if our class sizes are slightly bigger? Or if our city is slightly fuller? What does it matter if things are slightly more challenging? If we have to pay a little bit more into the system? Surely it is worth it to see those lives being restored again.”

At last a Labour MP has admitted that immigrants are increasing the time waiting for appointments and treatment at our hospitals, she has admitted that school class sizes increase (but no mention of falling standards because of the time taken with non-English speakers), she has admitted that cities are becoming overcrowded, and last but not least, she has admitted that we will have to pay more tax. What she doesn't mention is that many also carry diseases, with TB and polio which were once virtually eradicated from this country now making a come-back.

This is the reality of Corbyn's Labour party.

One Dead Boy

Seventy migrants suffocate in the back of a lorry and everyone metaphorically shrugs their shoulders. One photograph of dead child on a beach and the whole of the EU changes its policy towards migrants.

This video from Nigel Farage is worth watching

The dead boy's family were quite safe in Turkey, a Muslim country, indeed one might even conclude that they were safe in Syria as they went back to bury their son. This shows me that they were economic migrants, nothing else, not refugees, as apparently they were not in danger in Syria.

Ask yourself, would a refugee, fleeing from Nazi Germany with his family return there to have buried a member of the family who got killed during the escape? That is the reality of real refugees from war or oppression, not someone who goes back, apparently quite freely,  to have a burial service.

It is also of interest that Breitbart is the only media outlet that I am aware of which refers to them as Kurds. The Kurdish controlled area of Syria is now relatively stable (if anything in the Middle East is stable), so one might ask why didn't they join their fellow countrymen and assist with the fight against ISIS?  Or were they from the Kurdish area which meant that they could return at will, but decided that it wasn't good enough for them?

However you look at it they were economic migrants, not asylum seekers fleeing for their lives. Even then, Turkey wasn't good enough for them so they decided to try to get to the Germany or, as they speak English, more likely to the UK.

If we are to take any Syrian refugees, they should be genuine refugees who are living in poor conditions in Lebanon or Jordan, not ones who are effectively trying to jump the queue by forcing themselves upon some unwilling country.

In any event, I take the view that it is wrong to rehouse large numbers away from their home country; hopefully ISIS will be beaten and in due course they will be able to return home. The right approach is what this country was doing, providing humanitarian aid to the adjoining countries which are housing them, Lebanon, Jordan and to a lesser extent Turkey. There they are with people of their own culture, speaking their own language, not having to try to live, in what to them, must be an alien environment.

We have accepted refugees in the past, but they were in relatively small numbers compared with the overall population, they were generally of our culture and were assimilated within a couple of generations. With their different outlook on life, I cannot see Muslims ever being assimilated into the native population.

So I would ask our politicians, don't make major decisions on the basis of one dead boy lying on a beach, but on the basis of common sense and rational logic.

Thrown in from the Telegraph

I haven't posted much lately because I've been very much "under the weather", but I couldn't resist this sub-heading from the Daily Telegraph.

 It shows what happens when you rely on a spell-checker!