Just prior to Christmas we heard and read the most dreadful news stories – the worst being the killing and injuring of more than 70 people enjoying a pre-Christmas market in Germany followed closely by the harrowing courtroom evidence of a young girl suffering horrific injuries – beaten mercilessly to death by her own father and stepmother.
The former appalling crime was carried out by a driver ploughing a car through crowds, the perpetrator allegedly being an immigrant from Saudi Arabia who became a doctor.
It beggars belief that someone who dedicates his or her life to saving lives can become so twisted that he commits an act of taking lives.
It was reported that the reason was he didn’t like the way Muslim immigrants were being treated in Germany.
We will have to wait many months before the trial, but prior to that there will be an election in Germany and the probability is that the Christmas market attack will feature prominently in voters’ minds and lead to Germany moving to the political right. And history tells us what that can mean.
It’s my guess that the German people’s attitude to further immigration will drastically change.
As for the horrific injuries inflicted on the 10-year-old girl, the court heard of abuse that included more than 70 fresh injuries and many older ones, including bruising, burns, fractures and bite marks. After her death the couple fled to Pakistan.
The judge said: “Sara’s death was the culmination of years of neglect, frequent assaults and what can only be described as torture. “The degree of cruelty is almost inconceivable… None of you have shown a shred of true remorse.”
The girl’s father and step mother were jailed for life and her uncle for 16 years because he knew what was happening and did nothing to stop it.
We now have to keep these immigrants in prison for many years at the public expense.
I would be more than happy to have them sent straight back to Pakistan which has a list of 27 different offences punishable by death. (Did you know that these include blasphemy, rape, sexual intercourse outside of marriage, assault on the modesty of women, and smuggling of drugs.)
I wonder what the result of a referendum in Britain would be on whether we should reintroduce hanging and public birchings for lesser crimes. I have no doubt that if judges had such punishments in their powers, the crime level would be drastically reduced and we wouldn’t be spending a small fortune on locking people up.
UK IS FULL
This takes me conveniently on to the current voting intentions of people in the UK.
Just before Christmas there was a council by-election in the district of Swale, Kent, on the south side of the Thames. The turn out was very low at 17% – reflecting that many are sick to death with politics.
The result was a win for the Reform party, and the most recent poll of polls carried out in the UK show that Labour is now only just in the lead with 26%, Tories at 25%, Reform at 23% and growing fast, and Lib Dems, which had their best General Election ever in the summer, trailing at 11%.
Reform leader Nigel Farage is growing in confidence that he will be the next PM of Britain. I fear for a country led by a party further right than the loony right of the Tories, but one issue they will sort out and that is immigration, legal and otherwise.
And Labour must get this totally under control soon, sending all illegals packing, otherwise Farage will have elections in the bag.
UNFIT FOR PURPOSE
My last rant highlighted the news that past governments had let the number of people in Britain’s armed services to dwindle to such an extent that what’s left would be wiped out within six months of a conventional war.
Let’s hope that it doesn’t come about any time soon, or at all, because it has now been revealed that more than 13,500 of those remaining service personnel are not “medically deployable” – meaning they could not be sent anywhere to fight.
SAVE OUR CHARITIES
Labour has not performed at all well since sweeping into power and I have no doubt many now regret voting them into power, just as they did after discovering what came after voting Tory 14 years ago, and calling for Brexit.
News of inflation on the rise again and a flatlining economy does not bode well, and opting to hit businesses and farmers with higher taxes rather than putting up income tax on the richest is in my view crazy when you want businesses to grow rather than be clobbered again.
But now we hear that charities will be facing a mammoth extra tax burden because of rising NI contributions on those being paid. It’s estimated that the additional burden could be £1.4billion a year.
Sadly charities have become big business over the years, now contributing to at least 3% of the entire economy.
You many think that when you give money to a charity virtually all of it is going to finance the aims of the charity. But no – all the major charities have CEOs earning vast salaries. The top is Nuffield Health with the CEO receiving £1.229 million. The National Trust CEO gets £209,000 and the RSPCA CEO, £240,000.
Perhaps it’s time that a very close look is taken to the many thousands of charities with the question asked why isn’t the state paying for such things as hospice care, all research into cancer and other medical cures, air ambulances, and the RNLI for example. It’s a nonsense that a charity is funding saving lives at sea. It’s no wonder that we see endless TV adverts from the RNLI begging for money.
TRUST IN HEALTH
A total of 37 NHS trusts in the UK increased car parking charges at some point in the two years to March 2024.
Thank goodness that here locally in Spain it’s free to park in hospital car parks and long may it continue – but in the UK you can be stung with big bill to pay – worse if you have to wait for hours for treatment, as is increasingly the case. £3 an hour soon mounts up.
Sadly in the UK many hospitals are in town centres – but one solution could be to increase the amount of land allocated for out of town park and ride schemes, with buses going to hospitals as well as town centres.
* On the subject of health we saw another horror story of a gunman shooting dead the CEO of a leading health insurance company in the US. It seems the gunman has gained some sympathy because of the huge cost of insuring oneself against health problems in America and, probably, like the UK, faced with quibbles as to whether the insurance company will foot the bill.
I long for the day when NHS healthcare in the UK and healthcare here in Spain is so good that we can put two fingers up to insurance companies and the need to seek private hospital treatment.
