Smoking ban proposed for England

Something I agree with! I was taking a server to the data centre today and heard the John Reid’s speech introducing the new Health White Paper to the House of Commons. It sounded quite sane to me. Some bits were rather wooly though, he said that they Government would work with Ofcom to look at advertising of “junk” food to children. Personally I would rather there was more of a commitment than that.

The bit about banning smoking is fantastic though! I’ll be able to have a drink in the pub at lunchtime and Georgina won’t be able to tell!

Ben's Naming

Today was Ben’s naming ceremony. Lots of people turned up to welcome Ben into our family and we all had a good time. Ben was wonderful and didn’t cry hardly at all all afternoon. Jon played with his cousins and friends and seemed to really enjoy himself too.

Hopefully, I’ll get the text of the ceremony up on the website soon.

RIP

We grew up with you and we’ll miss you.

In other news, Yassar Arafat died today. I really hope that we see some real progress on sorting out a Palastine sovereign nation. One of the things that has disappointed me over the last year is the lack of progress. George Bush and Tony Blair stood up before the Iraq invasion and said that working towards a Palastinian nation was a priority and then turned their backs on it as soon as they could. Yet another example of policiticians lying to the people.

Bush, Iraq etc

I have been taken to task by my uncle for my glib comments about Bush winning the US presidential election. In case you missed the fact that I’ve got some comments on a blog entry, Check it out!

It is very easy for me to to sit at my computer and bemoan the loss of American civil rights, so I will take up the challenge and research into exactly what has happened in the last four years for US citizens and report back here. (This also gives me some blog topics :)

Of course, the conversation has already morphed into more than civil rights, so I intend to do some research on some of the issues raised with regard to Iraq and the UN as well.

No promises on time scale though as I’m reworking the photo album at the moment to make it more usable :)

Regional Assembly

It was quite clear that the North East does not want a regional assembly. This is hardly suprising as it’s not like the people in power listen to us, the people. What’s the point of another body to take our tax money and do nothing useful?

The funniest part was John Prescott saying “As a government we believe in letting the people have their say”. I don’t even know where to begin with this one, but this government has never struck me as a listening one.

Bush?

Looks like Bush is going to win. So we can confidently expect to see more rights of the US people eroded and at least one more country invaded by America. If I was going to bet, I’d say George will choose another country with a good oil reserve.

I feel sorry for American citizens abroad. They have to endure 4 more years of living with people who dislike their country’s regime.