An English Shooters Blog

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The problem with taking kids to the gun shop is they see things…

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A story went up on Shooting UK today about the fact that British Shooting have been told to pay £400,000.00 towards it’s own Olympic Legacy.

The £400,00.000 price tag is what the government estimates it will cost to make the facility’s in the temporary shooting ground relocatable and usable by British Shooting to provide a legacy.

Glynn Alger from the NRA is saying that with the government paying the best part of £60 million for a temporary facility is not leaving much of a legacy for the sport and the only way we will great any legacy for the sport is to stump up £400,000.00.

So onto the point, this story was reported in the Telegraph on 11 January 2010 and only today 2 Feb 2010 is it getting to the shooting press via the Shooting UK.

It makes me wonder just where all of the back room deals have gone, when I first launched Resurrect the Sport I was told that some deals had been made with the government and there was no need for such a website, that they would look after us. Can we be surprised that such deals if they ever excised have not been stuck too? The NRA & Bisley shooting ground are getting a little hot under the collar  because they have missed the boat on the money that they so badly need to invest in the countries leading shooting ground, and the lot of the shooting public has not been improved and by the looks of it will not be improved.

Not only have the last two governments let the shooting public down (both Labour & Conservative) but by their attempt at placating the people with money so have the Bisley Shooting Ground and the NRA.

The NRA will need to realise that shooting is a political football and not a popular one, unless they come out along with the other shooting organisations with One Voice for shooting then out sport & way  of live is on it’s last legs.

The shooting organisations need to understand that as much as the shooting press lag behind the main stream press when it comes to stories such as this, the NRA & others are as far behind with the politics of shooting sports.

It is time for all shooting organisations to stand with one voice, sadly they have not managed it yet and I see no indications that they will in the near future, lets hope they manage it before it is too late and there is no voice to he herd.

This is my song of the day, and also album of the week!!

This is from a group of former civil servants, in a report about the way the business of government is being executed in the UK or rather how it should not be executed in the UK.

While on radio 4 this morning the group where talking about policy & law being made up on the spur of the moment or in a knee jerk reaction to headlined, criticising both the previous & current governments.

They are calling for better governance in government, something I am sure will be ignored & ridiculed.

Perhaps they would support the Great Repeal Bill, it is a pity that this idea does not get a little more coverage.

Very, very tong in cheek

While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, plagiarism is not on, at least have the curtsey of hosting your own images even if you nick the text.

Still it is nice to see that the neighbourhood watch website are keeping an eye on us

You may recognise the following news item A very organised neighbourhood watch? on the neighbourhoodwatch.net web site as a posting from this blog from yesterday A very organised neighbourhood watch?:

From the  Digital Economy Bill debate going on at this very moment in the Lords, and the political parties winder why we have little time for them.

A couple of reports on the BBC today make you winder if we have a lot to pat ourselves collectively on the back.

Firstly the National Centre for Social Research have put their latest report on Social Attitudes in the UK, and the headlines make interesting reading.

The biggest headline looks to be that the UK more liberal on homosexuality, and while this is a good thing the “good news” looks to be masking some of the other numbers more than worthy of comment in the report.

The graphs have been stolen from the BBC website.

One of the set of number that I find interesting is the voting attitudes. It looks to me that there has been an increase in the number of people who cant see the point in voting and those who will only vote if they thing they can change the outcome of the election in their area.

One other set of interesting figures are about tax & spending:

A new mood on public spending, but less sympathy towards attempts to reduce inequality

It looks like the tax and spend policy of the last few years is beginning to fall in the eyes of the people who used to support it, people want things to stay as they are most people are just getting by any more and things will go from uncomfortable to painful.

I think people see that the distribution of wealth over the last 12 years has just failed, the money has gone somewhere but people can not quite see where.

According to the BBC the UK is not doing too well on getting the cash to the poor:

Save the Children says the number of children in homes in this category rose 260,000 to 1.7m from 2004 to 2008.

So time for a little context about that statement:

Save the Children defines severe poverty as those living in households with incomes of less than 50% of the UK median income (disregarding housing costs) and who were also missing some basic possessions, such as a winter coat.

So even after years of high taxation and government promises over child poverty remember  It has pledged to halve child poverty by 2010 from the 1998/99 figure of 3.4 million and end it altogether by 2020.

Could there be a link between those who a few years ago had faith that New Labour could and would make a change and those who now can not see the point in voting or do the extra people in the cant be bothered to vote section come from the youth who despite being well educated or not so well educated can not get a job or from those who have seen this government squander what it had on vanity projects and looking good while ignoring the issues around poverty, law and order etc that where under their noses.

Either way the number of those whit an interest have fallen, the number who want to pay more tax have fallen and the social equality that people thought they may have been voting for a few years ago is more of a distant dream than ever it was.

Now while it is good that less and less people are concerning them selves with others sexuality and yes collectively we should pat out selves on the back, perhaps before we do we should look at the other figures that do not make for such palatable reading.

While I may not like the tone of Mr Cameron’s broken society as it neglects to take into account the Cconservatives complicit policy’s in place before the 1997 election of New Labour, he is at lease talking about the need to mend our broken society and admitting that there is a real problem that needs to be tackled rather than putting his head in the sand.

The question is what will be done, I think it will need a little more than the odd tax cut or increase and a shuffling of the deck of cards to make a real difference.

It will be interesting to see just what is in the manifesto’s of all the political parties then again the words in a manifesto are only worth the paper they are written on.

Now apart from the fact that they look stupid is the way they are dressed with reason enough for the police to stop them under anti-terrorism laws, perhaps if it was the fashion police you could understand it.

What if it was two hairdressers with stab proof vests walking from one salon to another, after all the scissors are very sharp or is it that the police want to be the only ones dressed in a paramilitary way?

It looks like the Nations Union of Teachers etc are balloting for strike action yet again.

But hang on, for this one I must say I am with them.

I have has two children go through the SATS system in the last few years and the pressure that it puts on them is beyond a joke.

to tell an 11 year old that the SATS are the single most important test in their life that will set them on a trajectory that they can not change is not only a blatant lie but contributes to a feeling of inadequacy in children that should be climbing trees.

SATS are an imposition on the children and considering that the 14 year old SATS have been canned as have the science SATS at 11 it is time to get rid of this failed & discredited innovation.

I am not often with the NUT but in this case I am.

This is a fantastic idea, just imagine the cash that can be saved and the carbon cost whatnot as well, just cut the lights by 50% after 11.00pm & 6.00am after all not too many people are out of the house during this time span ( I know as I often am out ) as for the “it will not be safe outside” people how ever did we manage in years gone by.

And will less of the orange glow we will be able to see more of the night sky, a real win win.

This is very good news but we are not out of the woods just yet, firstly this is only a very small number above 0 running at 0.1% over the last quarter of 2009.

The 1’st month of 2010 has seen VAT & fuel go up, the unemployment numbers are still on the up.

It is also worth remembering that we fell 4.9% in 2009, while it is nice to see a +0.01% it is not beyond the realms of possibility that if we call by 0.1% we will be back where we where in 2009.

We still have unemployment running very high, pay cuts / stagnation in a lot of the private sector just so people can hang on to their jobs, people struggling to pay the bills and keep their homes and after the election sometime in the next 3 months you can bet the public purse is going to be cut quite a bit that will have a knock on hit with the private sector.

Mind you saying that I have noticed the number of junk mail hitting my door mat is on the up, I have been pre accepted for a few credit cards in the last few weeks and the odd loan so perhaps there is a confidence that the banks / credit card companies feel it is time to try their luck again.

“Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.”   Elbert Hubbard

We are told that we should take an interest in our local area and the be the eyes and ears of the police, and organised groups is called the neighbourhood watch.

However when the neighbourhood watch have training, put on a uniform, patrol their neighbourhood keeping in radio contact with a central command to be very organised the police do not like it and say that the members are endangering themselves.

This is what the Shomrim (Hebrew for security) Stamford Hill Safety and Rescue Patrol (SHSRP) are doing 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week.

So is this a proactive neighbourhood watch or the beginnings of a vigil anti group, should they be applauded for their proactive stance, or should they be stopped as a group promoting terror in their area of North London or is the real question why is there a need for the SHSRP group, is the opposition from the police out of genuine concern or embarrassment  that the local residents feel the need for such a group.

It will be interesting to see if this is first group of many or just a one off.

It looks like a woman has ripped a Picasso in New York, just how bad would you feel?

This is what is should look like, it now has a rip in the right hand corner about 15cm long.

I have just got this via email, talking about how easy it is to manipulate an image and how the media do it all the time depending on the story they want to tell.

Clever idea, as far as email spam go’s.

Do you fancy a non-exec job?

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is seeking additional non-executive directors for the National Shooting Centre (NSC).

http://www.nra.org.uk/common/asp/content/content.asp?site=NRA&id=743

Little to say on this apart from read the BBC report

Apart from the title of the report the following two quote form the report make you think:

1. There was a “sense of malaise at the political level”, with some ministers already focusing on what would happen after the election.
2. Some ministers had “given up” and civil servants were starting to informally prepare for a Tory government, he said.

From the 8th February 2010 young people in London will be able to have an ID card at the cost of £30.00.

This is from the BBC website:

The cards, costing £30, could be used in place of a passport by 16 to 24-year-olds while travelling in Europe.

Young people still need to carry their passports for travel but the cards could be used as proof of age in areas such as retail outlets.

I cant quite figure out what it is for, not a replacement for your passport if you still need to carry your passport but it can act as a proof of your age? If that is all it can do is there much point.

On 24th November 2009 ID cards where rolled out in Manchester & the North West at a cost of £30.00, Manchester has a population of 2.5 million and I can not find a definition of the North West to find out the numbers but according to the same BBC report only 2700 have taken up ID cards, so going on the Manchester population that is 0.108% of the population hardly a resounding success.

Lets cut out losses on this project and not only save a pile of cash but keep our identity to our selves.