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I’ve just been watching the news and the latest is that Israel might be planning a ground offensive in Gaza. The actions of Israel around the world arouse strong opinions……
Meanwhile, a small feature, later in the news, was a report on how the Sri Lankan army has made a major incursion into Tamil Tiger territory in the north of the island – hailed as a victory against terrorists. This is another case of a western ally using military might against disputed territory held by extremists.
It’s not really an issue any more except for with the relatives of the people involved. I can’t get worked up about it. It’s like the soldiers shot for cowardice during the First World War or the unpopular officers shot by their own men under the cover of enemy fire – it’s history.
Drunk women generally are less of a problem than drunk men. How many random GBH attacks have been made by drunken women? Yes, I have heard of a case, but they are very rare.
This sort of thing has always gone on, it’s just a lot more widespread now. What used to be occasional treats in life are now weekly or daily occurrences. When I was a teenager in the 70’s, there was quite a bit of drunken-ness but it didn’t seem to lead to violence.
Maybe spirits, drugs and aggressive music have something to do with the change. Also in those idealistic times people were better at keeping their ‘inner fascist’ hidden.
When Iran’s president was making those threats to wipe Israel from the map, did he stop and think that would mean curtains for Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon too, not to mention the possibility of an Israeli a nuke landing on Tehran?
I’ve said before, the UN should get the Chinese army to send in a huge peace enforcement army. Nobody would argue with the Chinese military.
The people of Gaza elected Hamas to power in what was generally considered to be a free and fair election. Hamas is a radical islamic jihadist organisation whose forces have fired missiles at a neighbour who happens to have a very powerful and efficient military. I think the deaths of innocent people on either side is tragic but Israel didn’t start this. Even Fatah, the (now) moderate Palestinian party that runs the west bank, is partly blaming Hamas for what’s happening.
What flavours public opinion here is that the actual battles in these skirmishes involving Israel usually seem one-sided because of the unequal casualty levels. But although the Hamas rockets, like the Hezbollah ones, don’t usually kill many people because of their inaccuracy, they could hit a school, a train or a synagogue and cause hundreds of casualties. Israel’s response isn’t so much disproportionate as more devastatingly effective.
In the wider Israel / Palestinian conflict, neither side is the good guy, it’s a matter of which is the least bad guy.
The boss of Suzuki Motors has said that the slump will really hit the Japanese motor industry around the middle of 2009. Partly this is a knock-on effect from the situation in USA where car sales have slumped, hitting all manufacturers, in particular US-owned ones – GM, Ford and Chrysler.
He went on to say that people have lost interest in cars, particularly in Japan, where fewer people are learning to drive and it’s no longer un-cool to be a non-driver. I could see that coming here too.
We are seeing a big reduction in the amount of packaging used as people buy less stuff.
Woolworth’s have led the way in this, since they no longer use any packaging at all.Anyway, reports say that a lot of the waste collected for recycling is dumped in landfill now as there’s no economic use for it. Now that we have real economic problems that could match the great depression of the 1930’s we haven’t really got time to be sidetracked by packaging problems. I throw more recyclable stuff in the normal bin than I used to. I used to be a very good recycler, now I’m just quite good!
Some goods are over-packaged, I agree, but the alternative is that more things get broken before you buy them.
We need to learn to love landfill again. There are plenty of sites around Britain where landfill could be used to the good, like disused quarries. If we’re really serious about recycling, why don’t we go back to returnable bottles with a deposit? Melting broken glass down to make new bottles probably takes almost as much energy as making new glass from sand.
If you want to recycle bubble-wrap, do you know anyone who sells stuff on eBay? They would jump at it.
Another symptom: I was looking at car registrations and it struck me how few ’58’ ones I saw, compared to last year, 2006 or even ’08’. I know there’s been a big fall in new car sales, but even so there are surprisingly few 58-reg cars. Is that because a lot of them are fleet cars, no longer needed and sitting in auction yards waiting to be sold?
