Indian Roads and Driving

Indian Roads and Driving!

To sit in the middle of a shape-shifting mass of vehicles is quite something. Our driver said, “There are no rules.” Not completely accurate. Traffic generally drives on the left - apart from the times that they don’t. 

                               

    POINT - GO - HOOT/HONK/TOOT - POINT SOME MORE - HONK AGAIN AND AGAIN - GO A BIT MORE

Most vehicles are small - many are tiny, Rickshaws, Bicycle carriers and men with huge bundles of sticks or straw on their heads wobbling along on ancient sit-up-and-beg boneshakers. Lane discipline is unheard of. Taxis particularly intrude their way between and through lanes. A blockage in the road as someone waits to turn right results in a string of cars simply turning in to the lane alongside irrespective of whether any other vehicles are there. All this is achieved with loud blasts on the horn. Our roads are massively underused compared to Indian ones. Where we are content to have a single lane of cars, the Indians will have three or even four lanes, tesselating together as a semi-homogenous mass. Buses and trucks, being so much larger, tend to get their own way. 

One of the more astonishing sights - and there is plenty of competition - is that of a bus stopping in the middle lane of a 3 lane highway to let people on and off. When the traffic is at a standstill this is not a problem. It also happens when the traffic is flowing fast and free. The bus stops suddenly. Following vehicles swerve to avoid it, and the passengers who get off in front of them. While we were in India, there was a report of a bus driver being arrested after two of his passengers were killed in exactly those circumstances. It appeared to make no difference to the practice which is widespread. 

Another doozy was to meet a taxi reversing back towards oncoming traffic off a highway sliproad - on a bend. Our driver avoided the taxi as though this was commonplace. Taxi drivers are something else. They negotiate their way through a three dimensional melee without the use of wing-mirrors (they have been knocked off in earlier scrapes). They seem to have a sixth sense of where traffic around them is going and switch their position frequently to make progress. Countless near-misses and 

Lorries and trucks frequently carry forlorn messages such as ‘Obey the Rules’ or ‘Drive safely’. Many carry the totally unnecessary plea to ‘Blow Horn.’ Many drivers have two horns: one a little blipper which is used semi-continuously to warn vehicles and pedestrians of their presence. The other is the blaster to be used when things get serious. 

Approaching busy junctions resembles a giant free-for-all. And amongst the chaos stroll pedestrians......

Many Indians believe in Karma or fate. If it is their destiny to be knocked over at a busy junction then so be it. For it is written. They insouciantly wander through a veritable minefield with nary a care. They die in their droves. But it is written...

One particularly horrific story came from a poor rural area. People exist by the side of main trunk roads. A 5-year-old boy was knocked over by a truck and killed. Several other trucks then continued to run over the remains of the boy. Locals called in the police who did not want to know. Eventually they staged a blockade of the road and the flattened remains of the unfortunate victim were removed by his family. The truck driver who killed the boy drove off and was not apprehended. Drivers do not stop because they would be attacked and possibly killed by the natives....

Road surface conditions vary enormously. We travelled over roads that were as good as anything in the UK. Unfortunately these were few and far between. The majority of roads resemble old time dancing. Smooth, smooth, crap, crap smooth. And the crap are really bad. Craters, collapsed gullies, grids missing or broken. This has the obvious and dangerous effect that vehicles traveling in opposite directions try and occupy the ‘better’ parts of the road - even though this may be on the wrong side of the road for them.

It all makes journeys never dull, often fascinating and occasional scary. Very scary.

India - what a shituation!

Just returned from a three -week visit. The main purpose was to watch the test matches in Mumbai and Kolkata. They were an experience of such wonder and intensity that they will live with me while I remain sentient. 
Alongside the truly incredible and the wonderful in India there runs a parallel world which is squalid and filthy. Unfortunately there are times when the degradation and squalor are brutally close. 
Here is one email sent to the Times of India - a quality newspaper costing the princely sum of about 6p. 

It is with amazement and dismay that I write. A country with Space Age aspirations has an Achilles heel. The statistic that the slum-dwellers of Mumbai - home to one of the biggest slums in the world - have to share one toilet between 25,000 inhabitants left me shocked and appalled. To see men (in particular) squatting by the roadside or train track to complete a bowel movement in both urban and semi-rural districts was further evidence of there being something rotten in the heart of India. 

Not just rotten but deeply stupid too. Flies do not discriminate between excrement and food. Nor do they discriminate between rich and poor, educated and ignorant. Flies spread disease. This is not news.

It beggars belief that a country with its eyes on space has done so little for great swathes of its population on the ground. Universal sanitation is a clear example of a common good. It is shaming to report that those with the wherewithal seem so dilatory in providing it. Will it take a mass epidemic affecting rich and poor for reason to prevail?

Bio-toilets are not only relatively cheap and hygienic, they do not need expensive treatment plants and pipelines. They also produce power for cooking and lighting. 

Is it asking too much to ensure that sanitation is available to all in India in the 21st Century?

Maude rides again

Maude rides again

The brass-necked scoundrel/respected elder statesman is at it again. Today’s Telegraph has this little belter among a story of our dear MPs renting homes to one another.

“Dispatches also found that Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, has claimed more than £15,000 on his second home — despite a public pledge from David Cameron in 2009 that he would stop. Mr Maude billed the taxpayer for council tax, utility bills, television licence and service charges.

In 2009, at the height of the expenses scandal, Mr Cameron said in a party political broadcast: “Other members of the shadow Cabinet, like Francis Maude and Chris Grayling, will not in future claim anything for their second homes.” (my emphasis)

Cannot be much clearer than that. 

“Mr Maude’s spokesman said that he had only agreed to stop claiming on his second home for 12 months.” Daily Telegraph 19/11/12

For those new to this tale. Maude fell out with the Commons authorities some years ago when they would not pay him as much in expenses as he thought he should get, (from us, the taxpayer). He promptly rented another property 300 yards from the house he owned in central London and made us pay all the expenses for him. 

Maude is a multi-millionaire. He owns several properties.

All in it together? 

Or are our leaders in the trough together?

These aren’t a few of my favourite things...

You can stick your ‘raindrops on roses’ where the sun don’t shine. There are an increasing number of reasons for people of all ages and income to mobilise, get off their backsides, boycott, campaign and generally work to bring some sense of fairness to our world. Here are a few to start with. 

Starbucks: for claiming to be making a loss to the taxman for 14 years yet telling shareholders how well they are doing. Odd that.

IKEA:for knowingly using political prisoners kept in appalling conditions in Stasi jails in East Germany, to make their furniture. And for ruling out compensation. That takes some nerve.

The Liberal Democlots: How long have you got? Suffice to say their latest support for the secret court policy beggars belief. This would mean people who have been badly treated by our secret and not so secret services would be denied access to justice. Rule of Law anyone?

NewLabour: For perpetrating and/or colluding with the madness of the war on terror which threw the Rule of Law in the bin. Miliband, Straw and Blair and cronies - this means you.

Amazon: for being so good yet so greedy. With 15,000 employees in the UK and making squillions across the globe, they are another slippery outfit who use our infrastructure to safely sell their stuff but do not pay their fair share.

Google: ‘Never knowingly do harm’ is their little bit of hogwash. Pure bollocks. Another company earning zillions without coughing up. 

Cameron: for farcically trying to insist the Police Commissioner election fiasco was worthwhile. Wait until he condemns the next strike ballot......or the vote on Scottish Independence.....!

The AA: now owned by a private equity company - and guess what? They do not pay their fair share either.

Osborne: Again - how long have you got? He seems to be working to a different beat to most of his colleagues. “Greenest government ever”  -  “We are all in this together”  - ‘Pasty tax’  -  stop, stop. No more. 

Israel: (and its ‘friends’ who collude with a regime that is aggressive, nasty and duplicitous).

Fanatical fundamentalist Christians and Muslims: who appear to define themselves by their hatred of each other. Not forgetting the Catholic Church who have taken the message ‘suffer little children’ to a much baser level.

‘Honour Killings’: never was ‘honour’ so ill-used. The silence of the Muslim religious leaders and politicians on this issue is deafening. 

Slippery, self-serving venal MPs: the list continues to grow of our ‘honourable’ members who fiddled their expenses and now lecture us about ‘probity’. The numbers involved were many times higher than the handful who went to jail. Kevin Barron, Keith Vaz et al, not to mention the umpteen Cabinet and Shadow-Cabinet members who made a fortune in property - all at our expense. It may have been ‘within their rules’ but it stank then and it still stinks now. 

No clearout = no confidence = no point voting. Definitely not apathy. 

With that, we are off to India to hopefully see England fight back in the test series....Hmmm.

Police Commissioner Elections: the democlots strike again!

The Tories have foisted on an unwilling citizenry the farce of elected Police Commissioners. Early reports suggest a record low turnout. ‘Experts’ are saying that the government did not handle the election at all well. Participants were not allowed to do a mail shot to their electorate. This disenfranchises the number of folks without internet access. It presupposed that citizens would be bothered enough to find out It also reduces the impact as people chat in the street, pub or cafe. 

Setting the fee at £5000 to enter the contest was anti-democratic and sets a barrier to the poor. A better method would have been to have an increased number of nominators to deter frivolous candidates. The Downing Street machine has been remarkably quiet and done little to raise the profile of the election. It has cost £75 million to hold these elections. Money which could have gone on front line policing. 

As for the voters? What a choice. Most candidates have sung from the same or similar hymn sheet so what is a decision based upon? 

Now the votes have been held and the turnouts are in the low teens - 13% for Greater Manchester, 15% for leafy Wiltshire and maybe 19% for the ‘Mouth of the Humber’ Prescott's area. A report has just come in from Wales stating that a ballot box from one area was returned empty! Not a single ballot paper! Not one.

The voting system, which slipped under the radar without any fuss from the same press that excoriated the LibDem attempt to reform voting, is preferential. All first preferences are counted. The top two candidates go through to a final. All the others who did not reach the final have their second preferences counted. Then a result is called. 

Many people will have spoilt their papers. I did. Another expert this morning said that this system of voting typically produces about 2% of spoilt or invalid ballots. This can be putting a cross in both boxes instead of a 1 and 2. It can also be a ‘none of the above’ comment, or other written scathing remarks. How many of those are needed to render the result farcical? The Minister in charge claimed this morning that the results were legitimate! These are the same people who deride union strike ballots when they drop below 50% turnout and claim the outcome is not credible. Well they will be now!

Yet another plank has been added to the raft of omnishambolic policies put forward by this incompetent bunch of clots. 

The posh clots are not turning out to be a great advert for £30,000 a year Eton. They may well know which spoon to use and which way to pass the port but they appear increasingly clueless about the things that matter.

POLICE COMMISSIONER ELECTIONS:DERBYSHIRE

For the first time in my life there is an election taking place which is leaving me perturbed yet peculiarly uninvolved.

When the Tories announced their plan to introduce an American-style contest for virtually every police force in England, it was greeted with widespread apathy and very little interest. Thanks to the self-aggrandizing buffoon calling himself Lord Prescott - a title to belie his so called ‘socialist’ roots - there has been a tiny bit more interest. 

Some key facts.

The contest is a sort of preferential voting system - you know - similar to what the tories put the boot into with the help of their media arslikhan chums. You put 1st and 2nd preferences down. The top two candidates then have their 2nd preference votes counted and added to the first round count. More than a whiff of hypocrisy here .

Candidates have to put up £5000 to stand. Mere loose change to some of our toff brethren but not straightforward for an honest Joe or Jill with a family. The Tories claimed they wanted Independent candidates. Oh Yeah! 

Political parties have jumped in. They put up a party stooge plus the £5000! 

Any virtue in this ballot is disappearing fast. There is a danger (delight?) in the turnout being very low. At what point does it become illegitimate?

As for me in Derbyshire I will be faced with a party hack from Labour matched by a similar one from the Tories and a candidate somewhere to the right of barking for UKIP. Then there is an independent ex-copper. 

Laura N’Order is a popular girl across the country just now as all these hacks and stooges espouse her virtues.

Options are limited:

Do not bother voting: not happy with this as it is a right I cherish.

Vote just for one candidate - the independent. Perhaps.

Spoil my ballot paper. This has been advocated by several columnists - chiefly John Harris in a Guardian article recently. What would happen if spoilt papers won? This appeals but what is written has to be pithy and to the point. All ‘spoilt’ papers are read out to the candidates at the count. Can be very entertaining.

Any suggestions?

Remembrance Day Portnahaven 2012

Remembrance Day Portnahaven 2012

The War Memorial stands on a prominent hill overlooking both villages and the Atlantic. It is a perfect day. Bright with scattered cloud. A cool north-westerly is cold enough to notice but not enough to matter. In the south the coast of Northern Ireland is softly visible. To the west stands the lighthouse on the isle of Orsay. Breakers are softly crumping over Frenchman’s Rocks in the north-west. On the other side of the village a dog barks at the seals in the bay. Seagulls wheel overhead mainly silent, a sparrow chirrups nearby followed by the alarm chatter of a pipit. A skein of geese honk their way across the sky. 

On the other side of the village subcontractors continue buzzing and humming as they renew water pipes. No two-minute silence for them. Even on a Sunday - and particularly this Sunday - mammon must thrive.

At the foot of the memorial lie two wreaths already in place. One from the council and one from the WI. A shortage of vicars on the island has meant the ceremony began and ended well before 11-00 a.m. This enabled the vicar to get to another ceremony in a neighbouring village. 

On one side of the memorial are a list of 13 names from the First World War and on the other side are an additional 11 names from the Second. These are relatively high numbers from an outlying rural area. Several met their deaths at sea as sailors in the Merchant Navy or Royal Navy. They lie in the depths of the Atlantic. The same ocean that today looks so benign.  

Meanwhile down in Whitehall the ‘official’ ceremony takes place. In an article in today’s Telegraph, Baroness Warsi made the not unreasonable plea for the memory of many colonial troops who died in strange lands for causes a long way from their own not to be forgotten. To cite one example, "from the 3 to 23 November 1914, the two division India Corps suffered an average loss of 90 men per day. In the space of a ten-minute bombardment on 7 November, 9th Bhopals sustained 55 casualties with another 15 men hit a little later." Gordon Corrigan 'Sepoys in the Trenches' as quoted in 'Forgotten Victory' by Gary Sheffield. The photo is from the Menin Gate in Ypres which commemorates over 50,000 soldiers who were killed in the area and who have no known grave. 

Responses online were hostile. As usual with these sites there is a sour undercurrent of racism which is increasing and nasty but is particularly unpalatable on Remembrance Sunday. What did all these men and women die for? Another strand made more sense. Many pointed out the £12,000 in expenses that Warsi had somehow claimed wrongly thereby removed her of any right to comment. Some went further declaring that the presence of self-serving, venal politicians at the Whitehall ceremony was an insult to the dead.

They have a point. The days when the Cabinet was full of men, and some women, who had served in the Second World War are long gone. Prime Ministers Eden and MacMillan experienced at first hand the horrors of the First World War. Chancellor Dennis Healey won the Military Medal in combat at the D Day landings. When the Americans came calling for support for their Vietnam folly it was these and similar people who told them where to go. 

How times have changed. The likes of Blair and Cameron can commit other people’s sons and daughters to danger and put them in harms way without having a clue what warfare is really like. 

As Cameron placed his wreath was he thinking of the dead? Or was he thinking of the arms deal he had just concluded in the Middle-East?