Three different letters, three different papers!

! This post hasn't been updated in over a year. A lot can change in a year including my opinion and the amount of naughty words I use. There's a good chance that there's something in what's written below that someone will find objectionable. That's fine, if I tried to please everybody all of the time then I'd be a Lib Dem (remember them?) and I'm certainly not one of those. The point is, I'm not the kind of person to try and alter history in case I said something in the past that someone can use against me in the future but just remember that the person I was then isn't the person I am now nor the person I'll be in a year's time.

Well, what a bumper day this has been for letters.

First of all there’s this one in the Shropshire Star, in response to the council announcing that they’re going to put in average speed cameras on one of the safest roads, relatively speaking, in the borough:

Average speed trap not fair for motorists

Councillor Bentley wants average speed cameras for the A442 in Telford because they’re “fairer for motorists”? Fairer than what? There’s aren’t any speed cameras on the A442 in Telford and these new ones aren’t designed to be fair, they’re designed to catch more motorists than traditional speed cameras.

Will these speed cameras catch drivers that crawl down the outside lane at 40mph causing tailbacks and preventing other drivers from safely moving between lanes? Will it catch the drivers who undertake on cross-hatches?

Will it catch drivers who veer across from the outside lane at the last minute to exit the road? Will it catch drink drivers, erratic drivers, people weaving between lanes and cutting people up?

Like most drivers I sometimes break the speed limit and like most drivers I manage to do it without mowing down pedestrians or driving into other cars. The fact is, Telford & Wrekin Council changed the layout and speed limit of the A442 and made it more dangerous.

The number of accidents is down but the number of casualties is up which means that since they “improved” the road, the average accident is more serious and involves more people. Yet despite the best efforts of Telford & Wrekin Council, the A442 is still one of the safest roads of its type in the country.

Rather than install speed cameras at great expense to Telford taxpayers, the council should accept the fact that they made the A442 more dangerous by changing the lanes and reducing the speed limit and put it back to how it was a couple of years ago, complete with the 70mph speed limit.

Stuart Parr
Telford

Then there was this deliberately provocative letter in the Scotsman, in response to all the whinging letters about “Scottish banks being given to the English”:

If RBS and HBOS are Scottish banks and your average man on the street in Edinburgh is furious at losing “oor banks” to the English, can I respectfully suggest Scotland bails its own banks out?

It seems that when Scottish banks fail, the English end up paying to bail them out. It started with Darien and now the lion’s share of the £37 billion has gone to two Scottish banks.

We pay for your free prescriptions, your cancer treatments, and your free school meals and we pay to care for your elderly when they can’t look after themselves – all the things we supposedly can’t afford for ourselves. And what do we get in return? Anti-English bile and insulting, spurious claims that the Scottish oil industry, which English taxes paid for, even comes close to plugging the funding gap north of the Border.

If you want Scottish banks to remain Scottish then bail them out yourselves. If you don’t like the idea of relying on English money all the time, don’t take it. It’s not rocket science.

Stuart Parr
Telford, Shropshire

Finally, there’s this cheeky one in the First Post in response to some muppet who thinks the deputy editor of Prospect Magazine will be responsible for the Scots leaving the union because he upset them with an article about RBS:

Either Dave Bowen (above) has been on a really long holiday without access to news for the last decade or so or there is another country called Scotland that I was hitherto unaware of.

He says that if Scotland leaves the union then it will be because of “opinionated bigots” like Jonathan Ford. I wasn’t aware that Mr Ford had had such a long and illustrious career writing magazine articles dating back to 1934 when the seperatist Scottish National Party was launched.

I think that perhaps a generic dislike of the English and never buying into the whole “British” thing might have more to do with the Scots’ desire to leave the union. That and the belief that a few thousand barrels of oil will make Scotland the richest country this side of Saudi Arabia despite the gaping budget deficit the English plug every year.

And I did have a litle chuckle to myself when Mr Bowen said he wasn’t aware that being Scottish meant that you were automatically unsuitable for running anything more important than a chippy. If Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and the chief execs of HBOS and RBS are anything to go by then a chippy is probably asking a bit too much of them!

Stuart Parr

They should get a few people worked up. 🙂

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26 comments

  1. Icypurplepants (13 comments) says:

    Love the letter to The Scotsman – if you get any replies, will you be publishing them on here?

  2. axel (1214 comments) says:

    cool, i’ll forward them to you 😀

  3. wonkotsane (1133 comments) says:

    If you get that paper, that would be great axel. You’ve got my email and MSN.

    Any replies will definitely go on here, I wrote it specifically to counter the “established wisdom” in North Britain and to bait the natives. It’s the “give em enough rope” approach.

  4. William Gruff (138 comments) says:

    I too like the letter to The Hootsmon

  5. axel (1214 comments) says:

    hmmmmmmmmm, from todays letters page, it would appear that the nationalisation, is a plan by gordo, to keep scotland weak, so he can keep his job in Englandshire

  6. DialMforMurdo (6 comments) says:

    Heyup chuckles loved your letter in the Scotsman. Sadly didn’t spot much in the way of replies.

    I do wonder if you could hazard a guess at why Westminster moved the English maritime boundary north from Berwick to Carnoustie?

    chin chin

    Murdo

    http://tinyurl.com/5nbmck

  7. axel (1214 comments) says:

    because apparently it is ‘Englands sea’?

    He will elucidate fully once he comes home

  8. wonkotsane (1133 comments) says:

    Sadly it didn’t get the traditional anglophobic rants I was expecting. I think someone at the Scotsman may have figured out my dastardly English plan before any replies got printed.

    You’d have to ask your Prime Minister why he decided to give England some of its own waters back. The maritime border used to point upwards on both the east and west coasts as an extension of the land border as per international maritime law. Only a Scot could complain about giving something English back to the English!

  9. axel (1214 comments) says:

    No, this is not the border at Berwick gig, according to his map, the maritime border is 150 miles further north than it should be, even by your calculations

  10. DialMforMurdo (6 comments) says:

    As Axel suggests you’re wrong old chum. The maritime border was moved from Berwick to Carnoustie. That means when you come to St Andrews for a round of golf and look out at the north sea, you’re looking at English waters, why? Oh and please, Blair was as Scottish as Dick van Dyke was a cockernee.

    It’s a simple question looking for a simple answer.

  11. axel (1214 comments) says:

    Murdo, that reference was in reply to a previous discussion of ours and he went to school here.

    Regarding the maritime border, i wonder which of you is right?

    Watching 2 huffy nationalists complaining about the others countries will be almost as exciting as watching 2 15 year old girls fight behind the bike sheds.

  12. axel (1214 comments) says:

    Maybe not as exciting as that but it is a dull friday morning

  13. DialMforMurdo (6 comments) says:

    Axel, who won, did you video the fight?

    Wonko, come on old chap, simple question please give it proper and polite consideration. Why did Westminster move the internationally recognised maritime boundary between Scotland and England north by 150 miles?

  14. axel (1214 comments) says:

    murdo, no one has won yet.

    You seem to think the border is Tay based and wonko seems to think it east west based at berwick, one of you is wrong, maybe both of you are wrong but all i\’ve got to say is, \’Go on, kick his teeth out!!!!!!!!!!!!!\’

  15. wonkotsane (1133 comments) says:

    I’ve just read that Statutory Instrument and it doesn’t move the maritime border, it just defines which executive – British or Scottish – has jurisdiction over that section of water. The maritime border is defined in the Continental Shelf Act. Putting some Scottish waters under the jurisdiction of the British government doesn’t mean the British government has transferred Scottish waters to England – the British government is British, not English.

  16. axel (1214 comments) says:

    So, you are both sort of right and both sort of wrong?

    Will there be a rematch after school?

    Could it be interpetted as, ‘the british government has moved some scottish waters to britain’?

  17. DialMforMurdo (6 comments) says:

    Why transfer the waters from Scottish jurisdiction to British, old crocus?

  18. wonkotsane (1133 comments) says:

    He’s your prime minister, why don’t you ask him? The effect of the SI would be to prevent the Scottish Executive from controlling the waters.

    Out of interest did you make the same fuss about the British government transferring fishing rights and enforcement for the whole of the river tweed and all its tributaries regardless of whether they were in England or Scotland to the Scottish government to be enforced by Scottish baliffs and sheriffs under Scottish law?

  19. axel (1214 comments) says:

    Hmmmmmm, has that bit of the north sea been \’sold\’ for oil exploration? So, the money goes to westminster along \’established\’ lines instead of along new ones which may need new legislation

    We will probably find there is some piece of \’Odd\’ national legislation, where it was easier to transfer the ground than resolve the issue?

  20. DialMforMurdo (6 comments) says:

    Fuss? Chuckles, you seem to be the one unwilling to answer a very simple question. Why would Westminster want to stop the Scottish Government controlling Scottish waters?

    So the Tweed waters, they flow north into Scotland do they?

  21. wonkotsane (1133 comments) says:

    Like I said, he’s your prime minister, you ask him. I don’t know what goes on in his freaky, twisted head.

    The Tweed forms part of the border between Scotland and England and its tributaries are on both sides of the border.

  22. axel (1214 comments) says:

    possibly because if scotland can earn ‘money’ for ‘itself’ by selling prospecting rights for the sea floor, it opens a whole pile of cans of bizarre constitutional worms?

    Anyway, tell us, why did they do it?

    The tributaries on the south flow from england, so surely they should be patrolled by english baliffs?

  23. axel (1214 comments) says:

    It is only fishing boundaries but as a point Wonko, it appears to restore the borders to your preferred diagonal north east facing boundaries.

  24. DialMforMurdo (6 comments) says:

    “Like I said, he’s your prime minister, you ask him. I don’t know what goes on in his freaky, twisted head.”

    Matey, come on, is that really the best you can do? Blair has moved on to the lucrative £12m a year after dinner speaker circuit, I doubt if I could afford to ask him the time of day.

    Be brave, have a stab at it, why do you think within two years of devolution the Westminster parliament took control of Scottish waters?

  25. axel (1214 comments) says:

    There is a Cthulloid under sea city off Dunbar and they dont want it to go tartan?

    They want the Dundonian sheep dobbers to go off in their own wee country?

    Forfar bridies are a mark of the anti christ?

    They did it for a laugh to see how lomng it would take anyone to notice?

    The civil service are part of an Illuminati super conspiracy and they have their own fnord reasons?

    Why do you think it happened?

  26. axel (1214 comments) says:

    Gordo is a fifer, that makes him at least part Deep One, his paw was a meenister, that makes him certainly suspect.

    As we used to sing at the Proclaimers on Tuesdays, ‘Fuck off back tae fife’

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