Arlen Spector

Well here is my next blog post and I must say I do like blogging because as it is all my thoughts I don’t have to reference anything, even though occasionally I do want to!

Senator Arlen Spector this past week became a Democrat, again. What does this mean for the Republican Party? Is it dead? Is it dying? Where should it go from here, how must it change? I personally do not have much time for the Republican Party, I think it is filled with idiots from the south, who bow to the wishes of the Christian Right and big business at every opportunity; its policies are outdated and hypocritical. One of its most cherished principles is fiscal conservatism, yet under George W. Bush they turned billion dollar surpluses into trillion dollar deficits and have almost doubled the national debt. So I can partly see why Senator Spector decided to jump ship, I think the polls from his home state might have helped as well, and yes he was acting in a self-serving way, but to be honest the people who kept in office aren’t Republicans anymore, there at best Democrats but mostly independents who feel detached from a party that has seemingly adopted Rush Limbaugh as its principle spokesperson. This defection also means that the Democratic Party is marching ever closer to the fabled 60 figure, giving it the means to invoke cloture and bring issues to vote. To those who don’t know what I am talking about, in the US Senate there are no rules on debates and a supermajority of 60 is needed to bring any issue to a vote, which generally requires bipartisan support, and so with 60 Democratic Senators, the agenda of the Obama administration has an easier passage through the Senate. On a side note a senator can vote to bring an issue to a vote, and still vote against the issue, and this is where party affiliation usually breaks down and senators vote for issues based on their personal beliefs and state needs.

Yet this defection also means that the moderate Republican senator is a dying breed, is this off a concern, I think it is. Moderates are needed in any legislature in order to help forge compromise and drive through legislation without it getting side-tracked by the more ideologically minded members. Will the two Senators from Maine defect, as they are the only moderates left in the Republican and the only two combined with Spector who voted for the stimulus package. I don’t think so, as they don’t have difficult primary fights ahead of them and their hearts still lie within the Republican Party, but it will be up to them to see if they can bring the party back from the ideological edge.

Apologies for the length of time it has taken me to write this blog, I am terrible I know! I will get better I promise. Speak to you soon; benbristol

Airline Stories

I know aren’t you privileged two blog posts in a day! I found this email yesterday, and thought I would share!

All too rarely, airline attendants make an effort
to make the in flight “safety lecture” and announcements a bit more
entertaining. Here are some real examples that have been heard or
reported:

1. On a Southwest flight (SW has no assigned seating, you just sit where
you want) passengers were apparently having a hard time choosing, when a
flight attendant announced, “People, people we’re not picking out
furniture here, find a seat and get in it!”

2. On a Continental Flight with a very “senior” flight attendant crew,
the pilot said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached cruising altitude
and will be turning down the cabin lights. This is for your comfort and
to enhance the appearance of your flight attendants.”

3. On landing, the stewardess said, “Please be sure to take all of your
belongings. If you’re going to leave anything, please make sure it’s
something we’d like to have.”

4. “There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways
out of this airplane”

5. “Thank you for flying Delta Business Express. We hope you enjoyed
giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride.”

6. As the plane landed and was coming to a stop at Ronald Reagan
Airport, a lone voice came over the loudspeaker: “Whoa, big fella.
WHOA!”

7. After a particularly rough landing during thunderstorms in Memphis, a
flight attendant on a Northwest flight announced, “Please take care when
opening the overhead compartments because, after a landing like that,
sure as hell everything has shifted.”

8. From a Southwest Airlines employee: “Welcome aboard Southwest Flight
245 to Tampa.. To operate your seat belt, insert the metal tab into the
buckle, and pull tight.. It works just like every other seat belt; and,
if you don’t know how to operate one, you probably shouldn’t be out in
public unsupervised.”

9. “In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, masks will descend
from the ceiling. Stop screaming, grab the mask, and pull it over your
face. If you have a small child travelling with you, secure your mask
before assisting with theirs. If you are travelling with more than one
small child, pick your favourite.”

10. “Weather at our destination is 50 degrees with some broken clouds,
but we’ll try to have them fixed before we arrive. Thank you, and
remember, nobody loves you, or your money, more than Southwest
Airlines.”

11. “Your seat cushions can be used for flotation; and, in the event of
an emergency water landing, please paddle to shore and take them with
our compliments.”

12. “As you exit the plane, make sure to gather all of your belongings.
Anything left behind will be distributed evenly among the flight
attendants. Please do not leave children or spouses.”

13. And from the pilot during his welcome message: “Delta Airlines is
pleased to have some of the best flight attendants in the industry.
Unfortunately, none of them are on this flight!”

14. Heard on Southwest Airlines just after a very hard landing in Salt
Lake City the flight attendant came on the intercom and said, “That was
quite a bump, and I know what y’all are thinking. I’m here to tell you
it wasn’t the airline’s fault, it wasn’t the pilot’s fault, it wasn’t
the flight attendant’s fault, it was the asphalt.”

15. Overheard on an American Airlines flight into Amarillo, Texas, on a
particularly windy and bumpy day: During the final approach, the Captain
was really having to fight it. After an extremely hard landing, the
Flight Attendant said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Amarillo.
Please remain in your seats with your seat belts fastened while the
Captain taxis what’s left of our airplane to the gate!”

16. An airline pilot wrote that on this particular flight he had
hammered his ship into the runway really hard. The airline had a policy
which required the first officer to stand at the door while the
Passengers exited, smile, and give them a “Thanks for flying our
airline.” He said that, in light of his bad landing, he had a hard time
looking the passengers in the eye, thinking that someone would have a
smart comment. Finally everyone had gotten off except for a little old
lady walking with a cane. She said, “Sir, do you mind if I ask you a
question?” “Why, no, Ma’am,” said the pilot. “What is it?” The little
old lady said, “Did we land, or were we shot down?”

17. After a real crusher of a landing in Phoenix, the attendant came on
with, “Ladies and Gentlemen, please remain in your seats until Capt.
Crash and the Crew have brought the aircraft to a screeching halt
against the gate. And, once the tire smoke has cleared and the warning
bells are silenced, we’ll open the door and you can pick your way
through the wreckage to the terminal.”

18. Part of a flight attendant’s arrival announcement: “We’d like to
thank you folks for flying with us today. And, the next time you get the
insane urge to go blasting through the skies in a pressurised metal
tube, we hope you’ll think of US Airways.”

19. Heard on a Southwest Airline flight. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you
wish to smoke, the smoking section on this airplane is on the wing and
if you can light ‘em, you can smoke ‘em.”

20. A plane was taking off from Kennedy Airport. After it reached a
comfortable cruising altitude, the captain made an announcement over the
intercom, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Welcome
to Flight Number 293, nonstop from New York to Los Angeles. The weather
ahead is good and, therefore, we should have a smooth and uneventful
flight. Now sit back and relax… OH, MY GOD!” Silence followed, and
after a few minutes, the captain came back on the intercom and said,
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I am so sorry if I scared you earlier. While I
was talking to you, the flight attendant accidentally spilled a cup of
hot coffee in my lap. You should see the front of my pants!” A passenger
in the plane yelled, “That’s nothing. You should see the back of mine.”

Budget 2009

This week has seen the Budget, and we have also seen the true colours of the Labour government, with the introduction of a 50% tax rate on earnings over £150,000. Now to a lot of people this seems like a staggering large amount of money and that if they are that rich they can afford to pay more. But is this really the case? Most of the people who will be hit by this tax will be the ones who have more often or not worked hard, saved up, built businesses who have paid tax all their lives and suddenly will have to pay even more, and if you look at the overall budget the rate will be about 62% as they will loose their personal allowances. Yet this will raise nowhere near the amount of money required to plug the hole in our finances, probably less as most people will find a way to dodge it, or just move abroad, further accelerating the brain drain from this country, at the time when we need it the most.

What should have happened in the Budget, probably a moratorium on the paying of rates for small businesses, a delay in the changes to the Airline Passenger Duty, a cut in the ridiculous amounts of benefits we give to young people. I am not arguing that we cut them off, but we need to find a way to make sure that we are reasonable in what we give, why pay unemployment benefit to someone who has left university and lives for free at his parents home without asking something in return, instead we should put his skills to use in the local community. Unemployment benefit should be given in an exchange of those giving their time for community service until jobs can be found, or for them to learn a skill. This enables something to be given back to society, and prevents decay and vandalism from setting in, in a local community which is a big problem during recession.

However, I don’t think that we will see the Labour government in power for much longer, there will be an election eventually, it may be sooner than May 2010, when Parliament expires, but I wouldn’t count on it the Brown government is doing the same thing as the Major government and running down the clock hoping that the economy improves, I don’t think it will work, well at least I don’t want it to work, we need a change now, and whether or not the Conservatives are better I don’t know but it is a risk that we have to take. Apologies for the huge gaps in the blogging, I am pretty rubbish at writing stuff sometimes. Happy reading, and speak to you soon. Remember please feel free to follow and engage with me on Twitter at

Windows Live Fail

Having spent my last blog post lauding Windows Live Sync, it decided to fall off a cliff last night, just when I needed it most. Not good…..

A very quick look at Obama

Right my second blog, as apparently I have been told I have to blog at least once a week. To be honest I keep thinking to myself that I should blog then promptly forget that I should. Before I start being sanctimonious, I want to extol the virtue of two bits of software. First there is TightVNC which I think is wonderful as it means I can keep my laptop on and control it from my desktop, well all I do is change the song on iTunes as the laptop has all the music and is wired into my good speakers. Second bit of software is Windows Live Sync, I know its from Microsoft and I know they are evil, but it has made syncing stuff between my desktop and laptop so much easier, especially as the desktop essentially is supposed to mirror my laptop. I haven’t tried outside of my LAN, but it is encrypted and bloody easy to set up so I can’t imagine there being any problems.

This blog was originally going to be a look at the actions and policies of the Obama presidency, so I suppose I should at least dedicate some blog space to it! Now obviously to many people, the domestic policy of the US has little impact on their everyday lives so why should we care? Well on certain areas we shouldn’t, but in terms of energy, environmental, economic and to an extent transport policy has a real and lasting effect on the world. Now the initial steps by the Obama administration have been broadly positive; a stimulus package that will hopefully push the US economy out of a recession, which in turn will help us. A caveat on this point though, our economic recovery will take longer as we have been so dependent on the financial sector for our growth we have nothing else to fall back on, now I am not saying the financial sector should be cut loose, because believe it or not they make London the economic capital of the world, even to an extend beating New York, but we have for too long neglected manufacturing and agriculture. Now whenever we mention manufacturing here we think immediately back to steelworks and shipyards, this isn’t what we should be focusing on. We should be focusing on environmental friendly and hi-tech equipment to help us meet the challenge of global warming, we have the skill and drive we just need the environment. But I digress, the US has an agriculture and manufacturing sector to fall back on, both are very inefficient and this is due to a legacy of protectionism and an unwillingness to make the tough decision to cut them loose, this is changing, slowly, but it is changing and I think that the bankruptcy of GM is a good think, obviously I feel desperately sorry for the people who loose their jobs. But they are jobs that should have changed or even been eliminated years ago, also a federal provided welfare net would take the strain of a lot of these companies as they wouldn’t have to provide those services. But can change happen fast enough, I don’t know. The willingness of the Obama administration to take action though on climate change is a massive positive step, as it will help drive the economic recovery, and improves the environment. Whether or not it is too late or the shift isn’t drastic enough, I don’t know but it is a positive step. Anyway enough of Obama, ok so I didn’t really touch on his foreign policy, but to be honest anything different from George W. Bush has to be better.

Right no more Obama this week, now onto the National Trust. I have recently joined, and I have decided that it is an organisation that everyone should join as the work they do, the knowledge of their volunteers is something quite special. I have been to Chartwell and Petworth House, both very different, both full of history and the volunteers at both of them were excellent, full of wonderful nuggets of information. Right that’s my update for this week, sorry for the slightly meandering nature, but I am literally writing about everything I can think off! See you all soon!

G20, Obama and the Credit Crunch

So here goes, my first attempt at blogging, and like everyone else I will pontificate initially about how this is a wonderful experience and how my insights are going to be amazing and frankly save the world! I don’t for minute believe that, also if anybody ends up reading this I’ll be impressed!

I start my blogging experience at an interesting time. We have a new(ish!) President, ok I meant to write this in January. We are in at best a recession at worst a global depression, and London is currently hosting the G20 summit, with some good old fashion anarchists thrown in for good measure.

Firstly I want to deal with the protesters, now I can understand there frustration and I can see their point of view, but what is the point in clogging up the streets of London screaming at the Bank of England and RBS branches. The fault for this credit crunch, recession, whatever we want to call it, is ours. We wanted the cheap credit, we wanted the bigger houses, we wanted the faster cars, they just provided the means. Maybe we should have said to the banks do you actually have the capital to lend, do you really want to give out 125% mortgages but we were too busy gorging ourselves from the trough of consumerism to notice (oooo I like that sentence, exceedingly sanctimonious!), so stop moaning and start saving because we have a lof of that to do! So whilst I have no problem with people marching, just think about why you are protesting and whos fault it really is. For the CampClimate protesters well I am not going to even go there, I can’t even begin to talk about the hypocrisy of them all, the Stop the War Coalition I can sympathise with, I don’t necessarily agree with what there marching for, but at least they can protest without feeling like hypocrites.

This blog was originally going to be a blow by blow account of the Obama presidency, due in part to my laziness at posting I have slightly missed the boat on that one. I will still look in detail at what is going on in the administration but it will not be exclusively about Obama. All I want to say in this post is that so far I think he has done a fair job, a little bit more action maybe on the environment, yes I know I’m being hypocritical, and also I like to see a coherent vision for NASA, and a workable solution for the Middle East, but other than that I think he has done well in extraordinary difficult circumstances.

It is my hope that one day, this blog is part of a wider website but until I can get round to building one, or more than likely getting someone else to build one, it will stay on wordpress.com! So for now; thanks for reading, hope your come back, the next post will be a Obama post, so good night!