Why We Don't Need The Royal Mail

As the Royal Mail descends further into chaos (strikes, post office closures and late deliveries) it is time for the long suffering customers to step back and ask themselves if they really need the Royal Mail.

In truth, none of us needs the Royal Mail. Here are a five reasons why we no longer need the Royal Mail:

1 There are other companies to deliver mail and packages

2 The service is at best unreliable, and is currently subject to the whim of the unions

3 We have email, mobile phones and the internet, all of which can be used to send messages

4 Bills can be paid online, or via the telephone

5 Large amounts of "snail mail" is in fact junk mail, and it therefore unwanted and unnecessary

The unions and management need to wake up to the fact that their services are no longer necessary; failure to do so will mean that they will all be out of work.

The Yob Epidemic

The British media is making much of the current "yob" epidemic, that is allegedly engulfing towns and cities throughout the UK.

Scarcely a day goes by when the media, and publicity seeking politicians, aren't "tut tutting" about yobbish drunken behaviour perpetrated by youths on the streets of Britain.

Whilst it may vent their spleens to "tut tut" about it, very little constructive solutions are produced as to how this behaviour is to be curtailed and controlled.

The refrain is usually:

1 Something must be done

2 Society is to blame

3 The parents are to blame, and

4 Let's ban something (eg drinking under 21, yet we are still happy for 18 year olds to die in Iraq)

The root cause of the problem is varied:

1 Lazy parenting

2 The granting of "human rights" to an ill disciplined, moronic mass of teenagers who have yet to develop intellectually or socially

3 Too much money being given to children by over indulgent parents

4 Lousy role models in the media

5 Invisible policing from the local police forces

The solution is difficult, but not impossible:

Those yobs that create a disturbance and a nuisance on the streets should be punished in a way that hurts them the most, ie hurt their egos. They should be sentenced, not to prison where they learn nothing more than how to commit more crime, but to a period in the stocks where they can be humiliated by their fellow citizens.

Drunken yobbery can be resolved by a session in the stocks, and by the tattooing (for say a month) on the foreheads of the yobs the following phrase:

"I am a drunken yob"

Any shop or pub found serving people with said tattoo on their heads, would immediately lose their licence.

Parents should stop giving their children so much pocket money. A child/teenager with too much money in their pockets will simply buy shit or booze/drugs. Therefore take their spending power away from them, and they won't be able to buy booze.

Parents should be made fully responsible for the behaviour of their brats, up until the age of 18. When their brats are caught breaking the law, the parents should have what is most dear to them confiscated by the state; namely their TV's, CD's, pc's and mobile phones. Should that not work, then their benefits should also be targeted.

Like it or not, they should be made to take responsibility for their brats.

Local police forces that seek to remain invisible, in spite of complaints by residents of yobbish behaviour on the streets, should be sued for failure to provide adequate police cover.

None of the above will be easy to implement. However, it will produce results.

The Rushdie Affair

There are three questions that arise from the recently announced award of a knighthood for Salman Rushdie:

Firstly, given the comments by Pakistan's religious affairs minister, Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, in the national assembly in response to the knighthood:

"if somebody has to attack by strapping a bomb to his body to protect the honour of the Prophet, then it is justified."

Why does the West call Pakistan an ally in the so called "war against terror"?

Secondly, it would seem that the committee that recommended Rushdie for the knighthood did not think that the award would provoke the furious reaction that it has done in parts of the Muslim world.

Additionally it seems that that English Pen, the writers' organisation that organised the lobbying for Rushdie's knighthood, had thought that the honour would lead to better relations between Britain and Asia.

What planet do these people live on?

Thirdly, why was Rushdie given the award in the first place?

He decamped from London to New York in 2000.

There are many excellent writers who are physically based in Britain, what is so special about Rushdie?

The award was made on the basis of a recommendation by English Pen. They provide an answer to the third question.

As per their website:

Salman Rushdie is a major writer whose works of imagination have engaged and galvanised society as important writing does. International PEN takes no position on the honours given by any government but celebrates writers being honoured and opposes those who would, through intimidation and inflammatory statements, try to curb freedom of expression. The 144 Centres of International PEN in 101 countries worldwide may however, choose to recommend such honours. Rushdie was honoured for services to literature and that service has also included his own defence of freedom of expression for writers around the world.

Therefore it would seem that they wanted to have Rushdie knighted, not so much for his writing, but for the fact that it would make statement to the world about freedom of expression.

Maybe the award was not so much made on the basis of Rushdie's literary talents?