New Agenda on Sunday. is out! Edition of 31st December 2017

A very Happy New Year and Good morning everyone.

For most people, there are obviously better things to do at this time of year than to watch television. However, for some this could be the only company or enjoyment that they will have over the entire Christmas/New Year holiday period. Spare a though then that for the past 10 days or so the standard of television entertainment has if anything been even worse than for the rest of the year. Numerous repeats and an almost endless diet of American sit com / soap type fill ins seeking to dumb down the viewer and batter them into a state of docile submission. We "Brits" also must take blame for this appalling diet of dross coming from the corner of our sitting rooms.Regular readers will know my opinion of "Strictly" (but I understand that there are those who love it), through various attempts at "comedy" which fails to raise even a smile in our house. The latest programme to bring about just a shaking of the head in stunned disbelief, was the latest cop thriller, "Bancroft".

A series spread over four nights containing contrived multi story lines, implausible set pieces and leaving space and enough "loose ends" to justify another series. It certainly needs one, if only to explain to the viewer what took place in the first.

‘Like Victorian London’... child food poverty sparks comeback of rickets.

Rickets was virtually eradicated in the United Kingdom more than 50 years ago but has seen a resurgence over the past few years as living standards have fallen rapidly and child poverty has increased

Read the full comment at: http://new-agenda2012.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/we-must-not-allow-return-to-bad-old-days.html

Image result for inter Island seaplane service between St Helier and Peter Port

Meanwhile, back in Jersey a new proposal for an inter Island seaplane service between St Helier and Peter Port could be ready for next spring.Benjamin Hill, founder of Clear Harbour Airways, has been working on his plans for the past year and has been in discussions with Ports of Jersey, Ports of Guernsey and Customs, airport and government officials in both islands. We must hope that the new service will be more reliable than the service provided by the current ferry operator.

Hospital car park charges are no more than a tax on sickness as the companies running the car parking "facilities" at our hospitals make £174 million in 12 months.They state that the profits are "ploughed back" into car park improvements and maintenance or into "patient care".However, there is little evidence to support this claim as the standards of car parking facilities and availability in our hospitals continues to decline as parking charges increase.

Read the full comment at: http://new-agenda2012.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/the-scandal-of-hospital-car-parking.html.

Nick Clegg is knighted.

For services to sell out and betrayal. For services to self interest and double dealing. For services to the abandonment of principle and trust. For duplicity and insincerity.
Arise Sir Nick.

With thousands of homeless people on our streets, with more than one million people using Foodbanks, with the near collapse of our NHS, with the crisis in housing growing worse by the day and all the other problems with our society, why are we so concerned about the colour of our passports?

Storm Dylan for New Years Eve in Scotland, N Ireland and northern England, another as yet unnamed storm for southern England Wales and the West country for New Years Day. Still no snow down south but don't hold your breath.

Have a nice week

Northern Ireland and Brexit. The return of "The Troubles"

Northern Ireland: police attacked in another night of disturbances | Northern Ireland | The Guardian When the "Brexit" debate was still filling our newspapers and our television screens, readers may remember why I had changed my mind since voting to leave at the referendum vote. Apart from the economic arguments, which had become crystal clear after peeling away all the lies and misrepresentations trotted out by Bozo Boris and his "Get Brexit Done" conspirators, there was always the problem of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Would it be possible to have a border between the European Union and the United Kingdom where people, goods and services could pass freely between the two nations without customs restrictions, tariffs, duties and all the other formalities? Would it be possible to have one part of the United Kingdom treated differently from other parts of the United Kingdom, particularly when Scotland for example had voted overwhe...

Enough of this hysterical nonsense

http://style.uk.msn.com/royal-baby/how-will-the-royal-baby-look-as-he-grows-up Media generated hysteria. This is too much. For the last 36 hours (thought it seems more like 36 days) there has been wall to wall news coverage, media and television comment and reporting, with Sky News taking first prize for frenzied minute by minute reporting from the Palace, the hospital, from a village somewhere in England, from the studio and anywhere else that Burley, Botting and company could stick a microphone into some obscure "celebrity's" face and ask for yet another banal quote. All this galvanising the mass hysteria of some elements of the public, (who the media would have you believe is the reaction of "the whole world",) with their flag waving, dancing, singing and cheering over what is after all, no more than a woman having a bab...

A perverse and rather sinister media obsession to discredit, smear and undermine Jeremy Corbyn

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/venezuela-jeremy-corbyn-blasted-for-not-condemning-president-maduro-a3606156.html#commentsDiv Venezuela: Jeremy Corbyn blasted for not condemning socialist President Nicolas Maduro as violent conflict escalates There is a perverse and rather sinister obsesseion with the media and particularly television "interveiwers", in seeking to secure from Jeremy Corbyn a "condemnation" of some person or organisation or event. This time it is connected with events in Venezuela and the actions of President Nicolas Maduro and the bloody crackdown on protests against the result of last weeks poll which inaugurated a constituent assembly . The media "stories" and the interrogation by the television interviewers, are as subtle as a sledgehammer being nothing more than a variation on the "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" question, which so many repoters use in order for them to make themselves appear very ...

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