Posts Tagged ‘responsibility’
The Catholic Church – Fount Of Greatest Evil For 2000 Years
Evil Personified
The Crusades.
The Inquisition.
Witch hunts over hundreds of years.
The oppression of the poor.
Oppression of the Jews.
Abuse of children by bishops, priests, nuns, monks and Church officials over hundreds of years.
The theft of land and property.
The mass deception of humanity for financial gain.
The cover-up of guilt and responsibility for all these things.
The prohibition of contraception to those who know no better and so are consigned to poverty, starvation and death in their millions.
The prohibition of abortion, even to women whose own lives are endangered.
It’s an appalling total of evil, misery and death. Frankly, I doubt that Islam even comes close.
Yet we entertain, revere and pander to Pope Benedict, this embodiment of the greatest source of evil for 2000 years filled with agony, suffering and death! Our leaders fawn over him as if there is some significance other than his depths of wickedness.
Even under the terms of his own doctrine he is a blasphemy, a craven idol, a personification of God. I thought these were sins!
I’d be prepared to overlook his membership of the Hitler Youth, even his dilatory attention to the child abuse scandals and his complicity in the cover-up. As an old man, I’d be prepared to forgive all of his personal failings but he holds himself up as the Church itself. He is utterly condemned.
It is nothing less than an outrage that he pollutes our shores, invades our nation, sullies our national consciousness with his presence. His kisses on our babies are filth. His deception of our people is an abomination.
Get him out of my country NOW!
The Oil Spill. The Bottom Line. What Obama’s Forgetting.
BP hired them so it is taking responsibility but…
Catastrophe
…the oil rig was American.
…the crew was American.
…the blowout preventer and other safety equipment that failed was American.
…six of BP’s 12 main board directors are American.
…40% of BP’s shareholders are American.
So when the first black American president suddenly starts calling it “British Petroleum”, a name it moved away from 12 years ago because it simply wasn’t accurate anymore, what is it but blatant racism?
This is shockingly grubby behaviour from a man who I was trusting on his platform of integrity.
He’s blown that idea just as sky high as Deepwater Horizon. He’s also forgotten who are his and his country’s most steadfast friends in the world.
If the Yankees, who squander the world’s resources and pollute the environment more than any other nation on the planet, think they’re going to stick this one on us, they need to think again. They need to get their collective brain into gear and start doing something useful. The anti-British rhetoric that has been coming from the States, from whining journalists and politicians as well as Obama, is ludicrous, disloyal and not worthy of them.
We are entitled to expect much, much better from those with whom we stand shoulder to shoulder. When the chips are down we are the only ones you can always rely on. You are a young nation in the history of the world. Now is the time to grow up and take responsibility. Stop passing the buck.
A Very British Bobby
Good Cop
Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde of Cumbria Police is the sort of man I would want around when the chips are down. He has done a magnificent job fronting Cumbria Police’s reaction to the Derrick Bird killings. He’s not only done his employers proud. He has been a great force for good and of comfort for the people of Cumbria and the nation as a whole. He has been professional, calm, dignified, accurate, understanding – everything that we could possibly have wanted from him. He is in the very highest traditions of the British police.
What a stark contrast from the out of control, lying, scheming thugs in the Metropolitan Police TSG, responsible for multiple assaults at the G20 and Gaza protests and the death of Ian Tomlinson. Only last month, 30 years after the event, they finally admitted responsibility for the death of Blair Peach at the Anti-Nazi league protest in 1979. How can there be such a contrast in the conduct and behaviour of our police officers?
I am sure that DCC Hyde still manages to fit in well with the canteen culture of the police. The difference is he is obviously a fundamentally decent man. He’s not from the sort of neo-Nazi, violent, fascist subset of the police that Sergeant Leroy Smellie and the rest of the TSG belong to.
When I first wrote about Smellie’s acquittal I came across Inspector Gadget, a blog written by a serving police inspector. The memory of what I read there has stayed with me and it disturbs me greatly. It offers an insight into the murkier corners of that canteen culture that should be rooted out and destroyed. Just like the appalling, scandalous predominance of Masonic culture in the police, it astounds me that Inspector Gadget is allowed to continue his rantings and provide a forum for police officers whose attitudes prove they are unfit for the job. Don’t anybody try to tell me that the true identity of Inspector Gadget can’t be established. That would just be another police lie.
I cannot let it pass without calling yet again for charges to be brought against the TSG officer who was clearly seen to assualt Ian Tomlinson shortly before his death.
However, I want to end on a positive note and say, once again, how much I admire the conduct and professionalism of Deputy Chief Constable Hyde.
The Sharon Shoosmith Affair
No one emerges with any credit from this sad tale of the way that we all failed Baby Peter.
The Buck Stops Here
Why can’t Ms Shoosmith accept that as Director of Childrens Services for Haringey she MUST take responsibility for her department’s appalling failure to protect the child? No one is saying that she is personally culpable for his death. Management is all about achieving results through other people and in this case she manifestly failed.
Ed Balls is one of the seedier and more slippery of Gordon’s cronies. You can see him looking sideways in everything he does, watching his back, ducking and diving to avoid any come backs, looking for any opportunity to take credit or blame someone else. Anything that he or his wife, Yvette, are involved in becomes a horrible curdled mess. It comes from mixing too much oil, slime, and vinegar . I can sympathise with Ms Shoosmith about having a boss who is so cowardly, two faced and disloyal.
Creeps
It’s time to move on. Both of these individuals are history. Somehow, we must find a way to protect vulnerable children effectively.
Hoodwinked By The Banker Robbers
That’s you and me. We’re the one’s who’ve been conned and cheated. Gordon, Alistair, the FSA – they’re all either criminally negligent incompetents or co-conspirators.
Absolutely nothing has changed in the world of banking. Is any more proof needed that the people running banks are liars, cheats and thieves? Aside from the systematic extortion of the taxpayer, none of the promises about lending to the real ecomony or reining in their depraved “culture” have been kept.
Spineless assurances will not do anymore. The government must radically overhaul the terms of the licences under which banks operate. Real leadership and responsibility is needed now to ensure that this happens before the end of the year – not after months or years of consultation and behind the scenes corruption.
Businesses that want to enjoy the huge privilege of serving UK consumers as bankers must be held to a strict and rigidly enforced rulebook. No participation in casino banking, minimum levels of lending, maximum levels of interest rates and charges, a “right to borrow” for those businesses and consumers who meet straightforward criteria.
These steps are essential to re-establish the operation of an effective market economy. In a world which has become entirely monetised we can no longer be subject to the rapacious and avaricious behaviour of those who run the money business.
Peter Reynolds 
A Fundamental Problem At The BBC
with 3 comments
I am very close to being the BBC’s biggest fan. It is a remarkable and entirely unique institution. Somehow it occupies a place between the state and the people which I can find no comparison for. It would be easy to define it as some sort of socialist idea but it is genuinely independent from the state. I do, however, have some concerns about its accountability. I am very concerned about the way it handles complaints.
No Complaints Accepted Here
I have grown up with the BBC and I trust it. In fact, I think that it’s done a better job of maintaining Britishness and values of integrity, tolerance, fairness and justice than any UK government of any political complexion. That’s why the curmudgeons in all political parties turn against it. I think Jeremy Hunt’s recent attacks and comments were particularly poorly judged. He hasn’t a had a good start in government at all has he?
I made a complaint to the BBC recently and I am very, very unhappy about the way it has been handled. The subject is not relevant here. I shall write about it in future but for now it would distract from my point. I am horrified to discover that the BBC does not handle complaints itself. They are outsourced to Capita in Belfast which describes itself as “the UK’s leading outsourcing company…at the leading edge of redefining and transforming services to the public.” For me that needs a huge pinch of salt, a mountain in fact and even then I’m choking on it.
Handling complaints should be at the very heart of an organisation. It is the essence of your brand. There is no more important management function. Contracting them out is an abdication of responsibility. More than that, it is a complete failure of integrity, a massive mistake. If an organisation is truly committed to meeting its customers’ needs it must be as close to them as possible. This irresponsibility strikes at the very heart of everything I value about the BBC. I am deeply disillusioned.
If this disastrous decision had resulted in a well administered service then that might be some consolation but not a bit of it. It is dreadful. Every bit as bad as any horror story you’ve heard about British Gas, BT or yes, even a bank. This is the British consumer experience at its very worst.
Not What It Used To Be
In sharp contrast to the rest of the BBC’s websites, try making a complaint online. It’s like something from the very early days of the internet with clumsy, badly aligned fields and an archaic feel. I almost expect to hear a modem whistling away in the background. From a complainant’s point of view it’s quite useless. You don’t get any option to save a copy of your complaint or email it to yourself. You don’t even get an acknowledgement once you’ve completed it so you’re left with a completely unsatisfactory feeling of uncertainty. Did they get it or not? Will I get a reply? When?
It gets worse. Complaints are lost. They don’t get answered at all. They certainly don’t get answered within the 10 working days promised. One answer I received was just laughable in its anodyne, crass simplicity. It was nothing more than an patronising acknowledgement of what I was “unhappy about”.
Useless
I could go on even further but I won’t. It does get even worse and it becomes embarrassingly so when Capita start to trot out the oldest excuse of all about “system problems”. It is an excruciatingly bad, defining example of appalling customer service. I’d say it takes the biscuit.
All this is the inevitable result of outsourcing your complaints procedure. That aspect of business that should be one of your most important tools. What’s worse is that Capita are absolutely useless at doing the job.
It is no exaggeration to say that, for me, this rocks the very foundations of everything I believed about the BBC to the very core. It is not the organisation I thought it was. I feel betrayed. I am “disgusted of Tunbridge Wells”. In fact, I am very, very, very disgusted of Weymouth, Dorset.
Written by Peter Reynolds
August 12, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Posted in Business, Consumerism, Politics, technology, television, The Media
Tagged with abdication, accountability, acknowledgement, anodyne, appalling, archaic, attack, bad, bank, BBC, Belfast, believed, betrayed, brand, British, British Gas, Britishness, BT, Business, Capita, choking, clumsy, comment, complainant, complaint, consolation, consumer, contrast, crass, curmudgeon, customer, customer service, decision, defining, disastrous, disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, disillusioned, Dorset, dreadful, email, embarrassing, essence, exaggeration, example, excruciating, excuse, experience, failure, fairness, fan, feeling, foundations, government, horrified, horror story, Independent, institution, integrity, internet, irresponsibility, Jeremy Hunt, justice, laughable, lost, management, mistake, modem, online, outsourced, patronising, pinch of salt, political, political party, poorly judged, remarkable, reply, responsibility, rocks, simplicity, socialist, system problem, the people, the state, tolerance, trust, UK, uncertainty, unhappy, unique, unsatisfactory, useless, values, Weymouth, worse, worst