Friday, February 20, 2015
GETTYLib Dem MP Mike Thornton accidentally sent Christmas cards without stamps
In my time most MPs sent between 500 and 600 and some topped 1,000. The member will sign each one while staff address and stamp the envelopes and it is all at the MP’s personal expense.
Most do it willingly to thank schools, hospitals, charities and individuals for their work in constituencies.
This year Mike Thornton, the Lib Dem MP for Eastleigh, hired an outside agency to manage the dispatch but unfortunately it was less than meticulous and accidentally sent out some cards without a stamp so some unfortunate constituents were asked by the Post Office to pay for the postage themselves.
From the resentment which has ensued you would think the poor MP did it deliberately. One constituent moans it is an insult and ludicrously suggests it will cost Thornton the next election.
He may well lose but I doubt if the Christmas card will be uppermost in people’s thoughts when they are putting their crosses on the ballot papers.
Equally disproportionate and grumpy was the reaction of cafe? owner Florence Coke when HMRC accidentally sent her a bill for £1billion.
If I had a bill for a few thousand more than I was expecting I would worry but if I got one for a billion I would laugh helplessly, show all my friends and have fun composing a humorous letter to HMRC.
Instead Ms Coke says she was “really, really traumatised” because she was new to business.
Frankly anybody nai?ve enough to think such a demand might be serious probably should not be in business at all.
HMRC do indeed get things wrong, which is exactly why they should not be allowed to raid people’s accounts without a court order but any organisation that size going to get things wrong occasionally and we should be grown-up enough to recognise that.
HMRC sent Ms Coke a bunch of flowers, which seems to me just the right touch in the circumstances but as with the MP’s Christmas card even that is met with churlishness, with the lady commenting that the bunch could not have cost more than £10.
What ever happened to the grace and humour which used to be so much part of the British way of life?
GETTYDame Fiona well deserves her honour
Unhealthy or not the greater consideration is that these crash courses seldom produce any lasting result
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This is the time of year when the papers are full of diets and detoxes aimed at those who have overindulged during the festive season and those whose new year resolutions might still be in the active phase.
Naturally the celebs cash in with their own versions and Gwyneth Paltrow’s has been comprehensively rubbished by some experts who claim it’s unhealthy.
Unhealthy or not the greater consideration is that these crash courses seldom produce any lasting result. If you were to lose no more than a pound a week then by next Christmas you would have lost 52lb or the best part of four stone.
More importantly your eating habits would have changed slowly and therefore surely. I speak from personal experience. in 2002 I lost 36lb in eight months including my time on the TV reality show Celebrity Fit Club.
Everything I had lost slowly in the first six and a half months stayed off for ever but the weight which I lost in a hurry as the programme was nearing its end was back within six weeks.
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Congratulations to Fiona Woolf on being made a dame for services to the legal profession, diversity and the City of london.
Needless to say the usual grievance-mongers immediately protested that the honour was inappropriate or distressing to the victims of child abuse because Ms Woolf had to resign as chairman of the inquiry into Historic Child abuse before she could even begin work after there was an outcry about her establishment connections.
Looking at the reactions of the MPs John Mann and simon Danczuk you could be forgiven for thinking Ms Woolf must have been a paedophile herself instead of a lady who has made a highly distinguished contribution to British life.
My advice to both of these gentlemen would be don’t damage a seriously good cause by petty refusals to acknowledge the worth of a good woman.
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AT last a traffic warden who dares to use his own discretion and bosses who are prepared to back a departure from the rulebook straitjacket!
A mother-of-three lost her car keys and spent so long looking for them that she overstayed at her parking space. returning she expected to find a ticket on her screen but instead found the keys stuck there in an envelope. A kind-hearted warden had found them and bosses say he will be congratulated.
How sad though that the event was so unusual as to feature in the newspapers. discretion and common sense should be the norm not the exception.
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I wonder how many more times we must be told that Ched evans has shown no remorse and has not apologised to his victim by those who oppose his right to rebuild his life?
“You have shown no remorse,” has become a refrain which even judges have begun to use to those who have pleaded not guilty.
It is of course somewhat unintelligent to expect someone who protests innocence to apologise for something he says he has not done.
Evans has always claimed innocence and indeed there is now an inquiry into his conviction.
Nevertheless he was found guilty and we are all entitled to assume he is a rapist unless and until a judicial process determines otherwise.
What we should not assume in his case or in any other case is that a convicted person has somehow no right to dispute the verdict.
After all even those found guilty of murder have from time to time had the verdicts overturned.
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We want public figures to tell the truth but too many people resent it when they do, which is why no political leader dares to say that the NHS cannot survive in its present form no matter how much governments spend.
Similarly I doubt if any of them would admit to the police being too overstretched to do the job. Sir Tom winsor, Chief Inspector of Constabulary, has now said just that, making a statement of the blinking obvious that in future police will have to prioritise the crime on which they spend time and will prefer to pursue acts of violence rather than shoplifting.
What else can they do? Predictably the reaction is that he should not have told the painful truth.
There was a time when Brits called in the police sparingly but now they are expected to deal with everything which upsets anybody including offence- taking, internet trolling and even playground taunts.
The same is true of the emergency services with doctors and ambulances summoned for utter trivia.
When did we become such a nation of wimps?
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Kara Scott
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