No democracy here

On Thursday the people of the mainland UK get to decide who runs the country.  They also get to decide who runs the overseas territories (of which there are many - http://sainthelenaisland.info/government.htm#britishoverseas).  But the people who live in these “OTs” do not get a say in their own future.  The OT citizens are not allowed to vote in UK parliamentary elections, even though the decisions taken by the UK parliament directly affect them in many ways, such as their overarching laws, their local governance and especially funding.  In France the OTs take part in national elections.  Also in Holland.  But not Britain.  Britain, it seems, leads the world in denying democracy to its citizens.

This needs to change.

Problems with elections

We just had a by-election (or, as SHG often charmingly puts it , a"bye-election" - goodbye!)

Once again some candidates put themselves forward even though the result shows there was almost no realistic possibility of them getting elected.  Does this matter?  In a true democracy isn't anybody that is qualified entitled to put themselves forward?

Except that there is a cost to them doing so, not all of it borne by the candidates.  For two examples there is the work registering the candidates and checking their qualifications and also the space allocated to them in newspapers and on the radio.

The only barrier at present is that you need a proposer, a seconder and ten other supporters - this amounts to 0.6% of the electorate.  And at the recent by-election some candidates got very few more votes than this threshold: 34 (less than three times the minimum), 30 & 17 (only 4 more than the minimum).  Surely there should be some mechanism to prevent people from standing if they are only going to get so few votes?

In the UK you make a deposit; a sum of money you put up and if you get fewer than 5% of the votes cast you lose this.  In the UK the sum is £500, designed not to be too high (which would hinder democracy) but also not an insignificant amount to stake.  As St Helena incomes are about a quarter of the equivalent UK salaries, how about a deposit of £100?

£100 should not be enough to put off genuine candidates (and anyway, if they get 5% or more of the votes they get it back). But it might be enough to give pause to people who really have no hope of actually being elected.

In yesterday's by-election three of the five candidates would have lost their deposit, which might have deterred them from standing, making the election simpler and less expensive to run.

Worth discussing?

PS: while we're talking electoral reform, two weeks was not enough time for an effective campaign.  It should be always at least a month.

Your "Right to Know" (but only what we choose to tell you)

Today SHG has issued an Update on the “Code of Practice for Public Access to SHG Information”. Read the update at http://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/public-access-to-shg-information-update-on-code-of-practice/

Only 26 requests since June 2017?  And, as we remember it, it was also 26 when the last "update" was issued, some months ago. 

People do not bother using this policy because it is discretionary - you ask and SHG decides what it will release. 

The whole point of Freedom of Information is to expose things SHG would prefer to keep hidden – errors, mismanagement and, perhaps, corruption.  A discretionary policy cannot achieve this.

St Helena needs Statutory Freedom of Information, where SHG is REQUIRED to publish information, even when it would prefer to hush something up.  Inward Investors will run a mile from an administration that keeps its secrets hidden.

https://www.facebook.com/StHelenaFreedomOfInformation/

http://sthelenafoi.org/

Not the whole truth

There is a fascinating policy within SHG. Never, ever acknowledge any input that comes from outside SHG.

x

You see this in yesterday’s press release about the planning permission for the new Prison. http://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/exco-report-tuesday-17-september-2019/?fbclid=IwAR26TGf-a5WCw762ikLRWM3veaSjrVuwvBi7EuZgbj3WuoOAR1lb5sLhLlw

“Members noted that the existing Prison and Police Custody Suite located in Jamestown is not fit for purpose as identified following visits and advice from the FCO Prison Adviser. The current conditions and facilities at the Prison are substandard and the need for a new prison is undeniable and long overdue.”

While this is technically correct, it is a distortion of the true facts – not remotely the “whole truth”.

Yes, the Prison Adviser did recommend building a new prison because the one we have is sub-standard and does not meet Human Rights standards. But he started saying that way back in the 1990s and was ignored, even when he repeated his advice several times. It was only when our Equality & Human Rights Commission did its recent Inquiry (http://humanrightssthelena.org/prisoninquiry18.htm) into the prison did SHG take any meaningful action, which has got us to where we are today – some progress.

But SHG cannot allow itself to accept that it is only taking action because “outsiders” have recommended it.

This form of 1984 double-speak is a fundamental part of any SHG press release and it is one of the reason why nobody believes anything said in an SHG press release.

This week it got interesting.

In week-ending 16^th August 2019 we got, as usual, two weekly newspapers:

·         The Sentinel, published by South Atlantic Media Services (S.A.M.S.),a local media company – see http://sainthelenaisland.info/newspaper.htm#thesentinel  (it also has a radio station, S.A.M.S. Radio 1); and

·         The Independent, published by an individual who relocated here many years ago, formerly a Swedish citizen, Per Mikael (“Mike”) Olsson – see http://sainthelenaisland.info/newspaper.htm#theindependent

Usually they cover much of the same news – all the press releases issued during the week and most adverts appear in both - and your choice between which one to buy is based largely on whether you want to know more about what’s happening in the St Helena community (The Sentinel) or more about the machinations of the UK Parliament as they relate to St Helena (The Independent).  Both have an interesting history. The Sentinel used to be very much pro-government, but these days seems to spend a lot of its time questioning government policy and practice.  The Independent used to be fiercely anti-government but is much less so these days.  Both cost £1, so you “pays your money and you makes your choice”.

At least, that’s how it has been up until this week. This week it got interesting!

For background you need to know that St Helena currently has an inward investor, Paul O’Sullivan, a wealthy businessman of Irish origins more recently living in South Africa.  He is planning to build a luxury resort with golf course and 100-150 luxury homes in the Broad Bottom area – a project entitled “Trade Winds”.  The St Helena Government, through its business development arm Enterprise St Helena, has been assisting Mr O’Sullivan in obtaining land for his project.

Last week The Sentinel published a piece pointing out the links between Paul O’Sullivan and groups in South Africa with a strongly pro-Afrikaner agenda.  These groups are linked to the creation of two almost-exclusively Afrikaner “enclaves” in South Africa: “Oriana” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orania,_Northern_Cape) and “Kleinfontein” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleinfontein).

Mr O’Sullivan responded angrily, accusing The Sentinel of trying to sabotage his project and suggesting their article was “treason”, writing them a long and rather diverse email demanding retraction (it was published in part on Facebook^(tm) by one of his supporters).  This set the stage for two interesting newspapers this week.

The Sentinel published on Thursday, 15^th and printed the full email received from Mr O'Sullivan together with a response.

I found their response to the letter masterly - in the best traditions of Journalism.

While he rants and raves and accuses them of just-about every crime under the sun, they remain cool, calm and collected and systematically demolish all his criticisms with facts.

This is exactly how a newspaper should respond to unfair criticism.  Don’t sink to the level of an angry complainant by trading insults.  Listen to what s/he has to say; consider whether any of the complainant’s criticisms are valid and retract or amend where they are; and where they are not, push back with factual information.

In addition to responding to his email they printed a revised version of the article in which only a few minor points of detail were changed, none of them affecting the thrust of the story.

So how would The Independent handle the story?

The Independent published on Friday 16^th.  I don’t buy the St Helena Independent. It’s a waste of £1 to buy both with more-or-less the same content, and as I’m more interested in the St Helena community than in the UK Parliament I buy The Sentinel. But somebody thought I should see this week’s edition and emailed me a copy.

I read it with increasing disbelief.

I don’t recall ever seeing a publication that calls itself a newspaper being so sycophantic about anything. Its love for Paul O’Sullivan is unrestrained. They almost credit him with solving world poverty and creating a cure for cancer. In their eyes he can do no wrong.

They have four full pages plus editorial comment devoted to promoting his project and giving the most positive spin on his background. I can only assume all the content was supplied by Mr O’Sullivan himself and just printed with no attempt at fact-checking, verification or the provision of balance.  They present such an upbeat view of the man one could believe it is only a matter of days before the Pope declares him the other kind of Saint.  They have nailed their colours so firmly to the O’Sullivan mast a category 15 hurricane could not dislodge them.

The only thing they don’t yet seem to have done is change the name of the newspaper. How can it continue to claim to be “Independent”, unless it’s using the double-speak of the “Democratic People's Republic of Korea”? Would “Trade Winds News” be a good new name?

There are rumours that Paul O’Sullivan is funding The Independent and its sister radio station, Saint FM.  Whether these are true I don’t actually know. But if I were a betting man I know where my money would be placed.

I can only say “RIP The Independent. A long time ago you did some good for the people of St Helena. I’m sad to see you come to such a sorry end.”

Let’s see what happens next week......

Facebook censorship

Apparently, on Facebook, I cannot write:

"For example, according to the laws in place in Germany in the 1940s the Holocaust was completely legal ......"

Facebook censors this comment.  The comment is factual, and does not promote any hateful agenda, but apparently it's not the sort of truth Facebook will allow,

Air-quality

If you're choosing a tourist destination, one of the factors you should consider is air-quality.  For example, if you suffer from Asthma you should avoid Bangkok - and indeed, much of Asia - or take a large number of inhalers with you.  Pollution in these places is notoriously high and even the permanent resident have problems.

Fortunately, St Helena has a very good tale to tell on Air-quality.  We have some of the cleanest air in the world.  Exactly how clean, and why this is so, is discussed here: http://sainthelenaisland.info/air.htm and you should give it a look before you choose your next holiday.  In our case it's our scenery that makes you breathless, not our air!

Advice for life – lessons from The Standard

Since I moved to Jamestown five years ago we have been treated to weekly advice on how to live.  I present below what I have learned.

(Please forgive me if the words below are not exactly accurate. I heard them through earplugs, with my head beneath the duvet, in a room with all the doors and windows tightly shut and the thick curtains drawn, so some slight inaccuracy is possible.)

·       You can’t turn back from the crossroads of life
If I ever locate them I’ll check, just to be sure

·       Sometimes you’ve got to fight to be a man
quite a surprise, that one. I’ve managed OK for the last 40+ years.

·         It’s hard when you’re just seven to know matters of the heart
It doesn’t get any easier when you’re 37 either, I can assure you

·         Apparently I will never walk alone
which is good to hear

·         Some people like to be beside the seaside
I do too

·         Don’t mess with anybody’s Toot Toot
If I knew what one was I’d be certain not to mess with it

·         I now know how to break a cowgirl’s heart
Should I ever need to the information will be useful, no doubt

·         Caroline is sweet
Nice to know, just in case....

·         Someone with a high, quavering voice will always love me
Caroline, perhaps?

·         You can cross the Mersey on a ferry
surely the tunnel is quicker?

·         It’s a long way to Tipperary
About 5,000 miles as the crow flies. Further via Johannesburg, London Heathrow, Dublin, etc..

·         Saturday night is an OK time to fight
To be a man, presumably

·         Money is funny
but, apparently, only in a rich man’s world

·         I know about Fulsome Prison
I’m pretty sure I don’t want to visit, but if I did I might apparently find Jesus sitting on the floor

·         It’s five o’clock somewhere
but only if you use Solar time. If you use timezones it usually isn’t.

·         Sorry seems to be the hardest word
I find antidisestablishmentarianism harder

·         I should not cry for Argentina
I don’t intend to.

·         Apparently I should be dancing
But probably best not – with my walking difficulties I’m sure I’d fall over

·         Lucille picked a fine time to leave
I’ll just have to feed the four hungry children and tend to the crops all by myself

·         I know about the Ring of Fire
Extra-bite fishcakes will do that to you.

·         I can push a pineapple and shake the tree
though I can’t figure out why I would want to

·         I should stand by my man
which is curious, because I don’t actually have a man to stand next to.

Today is Saturday, so I may learn more tonight......

Poor Design

Our home experienced an Internet outage over the weekend. The technical explanation is that the “Port” had locked.  In English, the system at SURE decided that something had gone wrong with our connection to their systems so the Port (a sort of entry gateway into their systems) shut down to protect itself and the systems behind it.  Not, you might argue, an unreasonable action, but this is where it gets interesting.

It did that at around 1am on Saturday.  We did not realise we had been disconnected until 2pm on Saturday, when we tried to use the Internet.  Call technical support and get it fixed?  Well that would be nice, but SURE does not provide any technical support at weekends.  Indeed, after the “Customer Care” centre closes at 12:00 on a Saturday it seems there is no way to speak to anybody at SURE about anything at all until 8am on Monday (or Tuesday, if Monday is a Public Holiday).  I tried every number in the ‘phone book to, attempting to speak to a human being, but apart from the ‘Faults’ line - which connected me with someone in the Falklands who had trouble speaking English and, when she understood my problem, could not help me – I could not even report the fault until Monday.  So the Internet was out all weekend until a technician arrived at work on Monday, when it took a few seconds to fix.

It seems to me that this is an incredibly unhelpful design.  I agree, it is reasonable that a Port should, if it detects a problem, shut down the connection.  But if there is not going to be anyone available to manually re-set it, surely it should have been designed to automatically re-set itself after, say, 10 minutes, and only if the problem is still occurring after 3 resets should it require a manual reset.

Or SURE could have a technician on call 24/7, as does every other Internet Service Provider on the planet, who could divert him/herself from Minecraft for the few seconds it would take to reset my port.

In the majority of the world the Internet is seen as an essential resource.  You would no more expect to be without Internet all weekend than you would expect to be without electricity or water.  Even Connect St Helena has an out-of-hours fault line.

What if I had been a business user, with an online presence connecting me 24/7 to my customers around the world?  What might they have concluded if I just disappeared off the Internet for two days?  What if I’d been a student trying to cram for an exam first thing on Monday?  What if I needed to upload something to meet a deadline with severe financial penalties?  What if I’d had a poorly pet and wanted to check the Internet to see if it was worth dragging the vet away from their Sunday?  What about my weekly Sunday Skype call to my aging relative overseas? What if I’m the Governor and I want to liaise with London about a fleet of Chinese ships massing in James Bay prior to an invasion?

The Internet is no longer an optional extra.

If Governor Rushbrook is serious about improving our economy by promoting the growth of businesses he could do worse than demand our Government-monopoly Internet Service Provider actually provides an Internet Service suited to 2019, not one that would have been barely adequate in 1999.

British Nationalists please note ....

10 uncomfortable facts for the British Nationalists so strongly in favour of separating from Europe:

1: Our aristocrats are descended from the Norman invaders (French) and our Monarchy is German.

2: Leading British businesses like Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Tesco were started by European Jews fleeing persecution.

3: The Bank of England was set up on the model of the Bank of Holland, and its first governor was Sir John Houblon, a Dutchman.

4: The Church of England is based on the ideas of Martin Luther (German) and John Calvin (French).

5: Our patron saint, Saint George, was actually a Turkish knight who never came to England.

6: The quintessentially English Sunday Roast is a Roman invention.

7: Suits from Savile Row, the epitome of English luxury, are based on tailoring introduced in the 16th century by the Dutch Walloons and refined by the French Huguenots.

8: English, our language, derived from German and Latin.

9: Our names for days-of-the-week are all derived from Norwegian/Danish gods (e.g. Thursday = Thor's Day)

10: Leading popular foods have European origins, including Pizza and Spaghetti (Italian), and chickens were introduced by the Romans.

Britain has been integrated with Europe for as long as Britain as we know it has existed.  The idea that Britain can stand alone flies in the face of what we learn from history. As Winston Churchill once said: “Those who fail to learn from history are apt to repeat its mistakes”.

Fur coat but no knickers

It’s a Northern England expression to refer to someone or something that is splendid on the surface but sadly lacking underneath.

It came to mind when, as is normal with a new Governor arriving soon, the Government workers started painting the front walls of The Castle and the Courthouse.  No doubt they’ve also filled in all the potholes in the road from Jamestown up to his residence at Plantation House (but not an inch further), spruced up the Governor’s Office and cleaned and tidied everything else he will see in his first day on the island.

Meanwhile a short way away there are people living in Government Landlord Housing which is in such a poor state of repair it should be condemned not inhabited, but they live there because they have no choice.  For years there has been no money in the budget for repairs.

Many of these same people have no electricity because they can’t afford the bills and struggle each week to feed the family, but for years there has been no money for improved welfare spending.

Disabled people are trapped in their homes because for years there has been no money to pay for accessibility improvements.

But the police can afford to equip themselves with a Tazer per officer, just in case they find themselves in a situation where they might need to use it (we have three times as many police per capita than England & Wales, but only half the number of crimes, and very, very few of these violent).

Whatever our new Governor may think of the fur coat, I wonder how long it will take him to discover that there are no knickers (because for years there hasn’t been enough money .....)  Maybe when he leaves in three years time his successor will arrive to a better balanced society.  He should make this his priority.

St Helena goes back to the 1990s.

This morning SURE’s UK service provider disconnected our island’s connection to the Internet at 05:45h for “an hour”. The connection was not actually restored until just after 10am.

In those four hours the island had no Internet, or anything that depended on it.  No external email; no Skype; no ‘distance learning’ (a problem both at PAS and the Community College); no social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or whatever; no Wikipedia; no Google.  For all of that time we were living back in the 1990s (though then we all would have had fax machines – does anyone still use these in 2019?)

This disconnection demonstrates how vulnerable St Helena is to breakdowns in our tenuous connection to the outside world.  Physically we only get one flight a week and one ship a month, but in recent years we have been able mostly to get around that with an, admittedly slow, but at least operable real-time link.  We found out this morning how dependent we are on that link.  It was not nice!

Imagine what would happen if a big rock fell off the hillside are bent that great big satellite dish up at the Briars into a heap of twisted scrap metal?  How would we all cope for the many months it would take to replace it?  It doesn’t bear thinking about, but I hope that is something our Disaster Planning people HAVE considered, and I hope they’ve come up with a workable solution too.

Otherwise we’d better start breeding long-range carrier pigeons......

Exports from St Helena

It occurred to me this morning that, contrary to what we are always told, St Helena does have exports. I don't mean small quantities of fish and tiny quantities of coffee, I mean something much larger and more valuable.

Skilled workers.

There are Saints working on every continent (even the Antarctic, if he still goes there). They are skilled willing workers who make a positive contribution to the societies in which they reside.

If you are one of St Helena's exports, be proud!

Collective Responsibility

ExCo needs to abandon the shield of "collective responsibility" which forces all members to publicly support a decision even if they argued and voted against it. Collective responsibility is not open and transparent. We need to know what arguments ExCo considered and how it voted. The published minutes and the published "ExCo report" should reflect this.

ExCo is about to reconsider its rules, so now is the opportunity to propose a change. 

I can't see that the current rules benefit the ExCo members themselves - as it is if a member disagrees strongly with the majority they are required to stand behind and publicly support a policy that they and their electoral supporters disagree with. It would be better for their chances of re-election if they could speak out.

Lets hope the new rules support openness, transparency and democracy.

Small, but not insignificant

On this day in 1770 (249 years ago) an item appeared in the London Chronicle stating:

"Advice has been received of a dreadful earthquake at St Helena, which has entirely sunk the same in the sea.”

This was, of course, a hoax - not uncommon in British newspapers of the time, but it does raise a few questions about how history might have developed differently if the story had been true.

Firstly, of course, this posting and the entire Saint Helena Island Info (http://sainthelenaisland.info/) website would not have existed, but that aside:

1)            Where would they have put Napoleon?  Might they have instead sent him, as he wished, to America (always assuming recently-independent America would have accepted him)?  Might he have consolidated his power base and had a third attempt at leading France?  Maybe France and America would have allied, taken over from Britain as the predominant Empire and we would now all be speaking French?

2)            Where would the Liberated African slaves have been taken?  Indeed could the Royal Navy have operated a successful slave-trade interception operation from only Ascension Island?  Might the history of slavery have been different?  Maybe Napoleon would have sided with the slave-owners and the American Civil War turned out quite differently?

3)            What about the Boer Prisoners and the various other exiles placed here since Napoleon (http://sainthelenaisland.info/exiles.htm). Putting all of them somewhere else would probably not have dramatically changed world history, but where else would have been so conveniently isolated?

4)            And lastly, from where would the Falklands and Ascension Island have got their skilled and willing labour forces? (And Swindon would have been a lot smaller too!)

On the whole St Helena has made quite a significant contribution to world history, so it’s probably just as well it didn’t disappear into the sea around 250 years ago.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I agree with the opinion piece in this week’s Sentinel (p4) – and therefore disagree with our current Governor (not, sadly, an uncommon occurrence).  If you are not allowed to know how your elected members voted on an issue then how can you make a meaningful choice at the next election?

Prior to an election candidates make lots of promises about what they will do, what they will support and what they will oppose.  For example, let’s say a candidate promises to improve healthcare on the island.  They get voted in and then spend the rest of their four-year term voting against anything that might result in improved healthcare.  But at the next election they, again, promise to support and promote healthcare.

In a developed democracy (UK, Europe, USA and most others) you can find out how your member voted on every single issue.  In the UK you consult a publication called Hansard (it’s online). If you find s/he didn’t vote the way they promised they would you can demand an explanation and, if you are not satisfied, not vote for them again.  But to do this you have to know how they voted.

It is completely against everything I understand about democracy to keep members’ votes a secret.  Secrecy in this benefits nobody except the dishonest.

Maybe one of our more honest members would like to put forward a Bill to remove the shroud of secrecy and bring democracy to our island’s governance.  Obviously not one of the ones who hides behind the veil of silence to do his or her underhand dealings; one who actually votes the way he or she promised the electorate they would.

I assume there is at least one.....

International Politics Explained!

North Korea is an undemocratic regime that tortures and kills its opponents and poses a military threat to its neighbours.

Saudi Arabia is an undemocratic regime that tortures and kills its opponents and poses a military threat to its neighbours.

Any yet North Korea is an “evil empire” while Saudi Arabia is a friend and ally. Why is this?

The answer is that Saudi Arabia supplies the US and UK with oil, and buys armaments from us, and hence helps our rich get richer. North Korea does not.

International Politics is not about justice, fairness and Human Rights – it’s about preserving and expanding the wealth of our leaders.

MI5’s current list of active secret agents

Hands up all those who know what The Gazette is, and how to access it?

I ask because Governor Honan claims that it is “open and transparent” if an announcement is published in it (Letters, today’s Sentinel). 

I must disagree. 

Nobody reads the Gazette.  Most people have never heard of it and very few know how to get a copy (you have to find it on the notoriously impenetrable SHG website, but to find it you first have to know it exists and it’s there).

Something put in the Gazette can hardly be said to have been ‘published’, and certainly not either openly or transparently.  A letter in both newspapers counts as published (it has to be both because many people only read one).  Or an announcement on the radio (again, both stations), run for at least three days because people sometimes miss one night.  If you want people to know something you publish it where people will see or hear it. 

In my opinion, claiming something to have been “openly and transparently published” because it was in the Gazette is like the Vogons (in “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) saying their plans to destroy Earth had been “on display in the local planning office in Alpha Centuri for 50 Earth years”.  About as open and transparent as MI5’s current list of active secret agents.

All of the people, all of the time

Don't you just love it when you read a SHG Press Release that begins "SHG is disappointed ....."

It always reminds me of my old headmaster. He would be "disappointed" that boys had been caught smoking. Disappointed that only twelve had got into Oxford/Cambridge. Disappointed that somebody had burned down the school hall. Etc. Etc. He was never "angry" because that would have involved him leaving his high place of superiority and descending to our level. Instead he remained aloof.  Just as SHG tries to do.  SHG should not be patronising the people of St Helena, it should be listening to what we have to say and engaging positively.

SHG was "disappointed" that the Sentinel "misunderstood" the "facts" about coffee plants, according to their press statement.  One wonders how it will react when it reads this week's edition which proves that the information the Sentinel used in its story came by email from SHG!  More 'disappointment', or just plain "Oh, shit, we f@$£ed up, we'd better say nothing at all"?  An apology would of course be out of the question because that would involve admitting they got something wrong.  SHG believes it, and everything it does, is axiomatically correct and reality must be adjusted around it.

It will be fascinating to read the results of the recent "What do you think of SHG Information" survey.  Everybody knows that what they publish is crap, but I'm sure the results will show that 105% of respondents believe SHG's information to be reliable, trustworthy and completely accurate (just like when 100% of the people of Iraq voted for Saddam Hussein).  I'm sure it will turn out that there will have been many "spoilt" submission papers; spoilt with errors like not ticking "the best" for every box which meant they had to be disqualified.

Who do they think they are fooling?  Certainly not me or any of the other people of St Helena.

Until we get some reality from SHG the gap between Government and People will continue to widen.

Shame on you!

Yesterday was International Womens' Day.

The St Helena Government proudly posted on its Facebook page about the "many wonderful achievements of St Helenian women and girls" while completely failing to mention that, in St Helena, it is still perfectly legal to pay a woman less for the same job as a man and advertise a job for men only.

Instead of a proud post they should be cowering in a corner in shame.

Smile for the camera!

Words cannot describe how bored I am with postings from Travel Shows.  Facebook and Twitter are infested with them.

I guess the island has to be represented, but do we need to see hundreds of postings showing images of people smiling at the camera with some stand in the background? How does this help us?

Why not give us some useful data: how many people visited the stand? how many said they would actually consider St Helena as a future tourist destination? Then we would know if the budget that pays for these excursions was being well spent, or should it instead be allocated to fixing the roads or improving benefits for the poor and needy.

Look! An iceberg....!

I see SHG says it's "looking into" the allegations against the hospital in Pretoria. Meanwhile another batch of patients left for there on Saturday......

Imagine SHG as Captain of the Titanic. Somebody spots an iceberg dead ahead, and we get this statement: 

"We have received unconfirmed reports of an iceberg dead ahead. We have contacted London and they are sending an Iceberg Expert to review the situation. He will arrive in three weeks and we should have his report in about six months' time. In the meantime the ship will continue at full speed on its present course".

Facebook logic

Facebook just sent me "Add a phone number to your Facebook account. 249 of your friends added a phone number."

Well if 249 friends do it, clearly so should I. What more compelling reason to do something than "because my friends do it".

I'm sure at least 249 of my friends follow some religion, smoke, cheat on their wives/husbands, evade taxes and lie on Government forms (some maybe do all of them!) so clearly I should do all of those too, according to Facebook.

Um.... no. I'll make my own decisions, thank you.

Blow those leaves!

In the before days (i.e. until about five years ago) leaves were swept up by a chap with a broom.  The operation was largely silent and the only energy used was derived from his breakfast.  Took a couple of hours.  You could chat with him while he worked, doubtless making his day brighter and easier to bear.

Nowadays we have modern technology.  Same chap, but now instead of a broom he has a leaf blower.  Powered by fossil fuels and thus adding to the planet’s carbon dioxide content, it makes a noise like a moped struggling to get up Ladder Hill.  No chatting – he has to wear ear defenders, so works in sullen isolation, cut off from the world around him.  And the operation still takes a couple of hours, during which time everybody in the vicinity is disturbed by the noise.  Especially if he starts at 6am.

Could someone please tell me in precisely what way this new technology is an improvement to human life?

Whale Sharks & The Castle of Otranto

Two of the new pages on Saint Helena Island Info.

This is the update announcement:

Whale Sharks are important to St Helena! They were previously discussed with Dolphin Watching but now have a page of their own: http://sainthelenaisland.info/whalesharks.htm.
We'd previously mentioned the mystery of the Castle of Otranto, but now we know more so it has a page of it's own: http://sainthelenaisland.info/otranto.htm.
The latest Wirebird census results are at http://sainthelenaisland.info/wirebird.htm#wirebirdcensus
Did Mattie John lose a plot of land in a card game? It seems the story may be true! Check it out at http://sainthelenaisland.info/characters.htm#mattyjohn
Photos of the finished Rock Rose were released recently. We have these and of the work-in-progress at http://sainthelenaisland.info/savedbuildings.htm#rockrose (and also a few of the work-in-progress at Teutonic Hall).
We have a very detailed map by the Royal Engineers from 1872. So detailed we can only show it in parts! See http://sainthelenaisland.info/maps.htm#historicmaps Excerpts appear where relevant on other pages e.g. http://sainthelenaisland.info/longwood.htm
Our newly discovered and named Seamount is described here: http://sainthelenaisland.info/geology.htm#seamounts

A NATION OF CRIMINALS

Here’s a little known fact to interest you.  EVERYTHING on St Helena is a Criminal Offence.

Elsewhere there are Crimes (murder, rape, theft, etc.) and Civil Offences -the Americans call them “misdemeanours”, which are less important things like being drunk in public, improper parking and speeding.

But not here.

On St Helena even minor offences gets you a criminal record.  Being caught doing 35 mph in a 30 zone gets you a Criminal record. Being caught peeing in the street gets you a criminal record.  On St Helena Trespassers CAN be prosecuted (elsewhere it’s a civil offence).

These ‘criminal’ offences have to go to court, with all the due process this entails.  Cases have to be made.  Defences have to be constructed.  Lay Advocates and prosecutors have to stand up and say their pieces.  Magistrates have to rule.  Records must be kept.  All of this is a ridiculous waste of time (and money) for the judicial system. 

It also results in people being declared ‘criminals’ for minor offences that no other jurisdiction would care about.  In the UK you get caught speeding: a few points on your licence for a short period and its forgotten.  Here you become a criminal, in the same bracket as a child-molester.

Does anybody benefit from this?  Maybe the police want it because then they can then point to the vast number of ‘criminals’ here to justify the large numbers of police officers they employ?  Maybe the justice system wants it because if they only had to deal with real crimes they would be mostly unemployed?  Whatever the reason, that doesn’t make it any less stupid!

If St Helena has any plans to become a modern society it needs to address this issue.  It needs the same dual-system used in other 21^st Century jurisdictions.  It will require some work, but it will create vast savings in police and judicial system costs that will more than repay the initial outlay.  And it will stop people who are caught relieving themselves in a back alley while on their way home from the pub from being branded as criminals together with rapists, thugs and thieves.

THE UNIFYING THEORY OF EVERYTHING.

Scientists have a problem with their theories. They want one set of laws that explains everything, but big things like planets operate to different physical laws to tiny things like sub-atomic particles.  There isn’t as much matter in the universe as there should be unless you invent “dark matter” which you can’t find. Is Schrödinger’s cat alive or dead? Heisenberg says we can never know where a sub-atomic particle was before we observed it and therefore moved it.

I have the answer, and it isn’t God. It’s Sod’s Law.

Planets do not behave like sub-atomic particles out of sheer cussedness. That’s also why so much of the matter in the universe is hiding.  If you want Schrödinger’s cat to be alive, it will be dead (and vice-versa). And wherever you want Heisenberg ‘s sub-atomic particle to be, it will be somewhere else.

From buttered toast falling buttered-side down to meeting red traffic lights when you’re in a hurry, Sod’s Law explains absolutely everything in the observable universe.

Watch for my paper at the next international physics symposium. (Which I won’t be able to present because the plane will be delayed.)