New Agenda on Sunday. is out! Edition of 23 July 2017

Good morning everyone.

The school summer hoildays have arrived and with them a new business in the village. We had a knock and upon opening the door found two young women armed with buckets, sponges and an assortment of cloths. These young entrepreneurs had arrived on their bikes to announce the start of "Bubble and Squeak", a new car washing business in the village (but only it seems for the duration of the school holidays) and left their hand written card complete, with names and telehone numbers advising that their service was, "Available most week days and week ends. Please can you call one of these numbers if you are interested or would like to book".

Very refreshing to see two youngsters having the initiative to start a business during the holidays and the best of luck to them. Who knows, "Bubble and Squeak", may be on the way to becoming a £ multi million enterprize by the end of September. If you happen to know these two, please pass on best wishes and good fortune to them.

Image result for bbc presenters suing over pay gap

There is trouble brewing at the BBC, even if it has not already exploded into open warfare. The problem is as usual money or matters closely associated with money. How anone can justfy huge differences between the salary paid to a woman and that paid to a man, when both do essentially the same job, has always been a mystery to me. Some years ago, I was heavily involved in a campaign led by my Union at that time, which ultimeately brought about the Equal Pay Act. Not that the Act in itself solved the problem, as "clever" employers managed to find ways around the legislation and continued to large extent, to perpetuate the gender pay differentials. The BBC seems to have managed not only to maintain the excessive salary differentials, but also to conceal the fact from the public and it seems many of their own staff. Concealed that is until last Wednesday, when a report published in the face of great resistance and hostility from the BBC "establishment", revealed not only huge pay differences between the sexes, but that only one third of the top earners in the BBC are women. Top female presenters are among "more than 40 women" who have written to Lord "Tony" Hall, Director-General of the BBC , demanding that the gender pay gap be closed now.

This story could run for some time, with perhaps even resignations from some presenters.

Another actor from a well remembered television series passed away last week.

"Rollin Hand" the real planner from the "Mission Impossible" team (the original and best series with Peter Graves, Barbara Bain, Gregg Morris and Peter Lupus) and then later as Major General Adlon in "Meteor", Martin Landau had a career in film and television with numerous roles spanning many years.
A truly great talent.
Martin Landau June 1928 – July 2017

American film and television actor. RIP

Image result for grenfell tower pictures

The Grenfell Tower fire occurred on 14 June 2017. The reporters and teleision crews have moved on and now all that remains of this story is a blackened and chard 24 storey 220 feet high structure which was once home to around 600 people living in 129 apartments. The other thing that remains of course are the victims. On top of all this, that of the £20 million donated by public fund raisers, ad hoc donations and individulal charities, since June, only £800k has been distributed to victims. Those involved in managing the money say they "have to ensure it is properly accounted for and it reaches the right people", which taken on face value is a reasonable position, but where victims of the fire have lost everything and still rely on "temporary accommodation" the failure to distribute these substantial donations is bordering on scandalous. This seems to be yet another example of "authorities" becoming obsessed with their own systems and procedures and consequently losing site of the real objective of providing relief for the victims.

read the full text of "Why the delay in distributing the £20 million donated thus far?" at

https://new-agenda2012.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/why-delay-in-distributing-20-million.html

What about the weather?

Well, as D I Alex Drake (sometimes called Bolly) puts it at the start of series 3 of that terrific television serial "Ashes to Ashes", "Your guess is as good as mine"

Have a nice week

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...

New Agenda on Sunday is out Sunday, Apr. 28, 2019

https://paper.li/f-1346065353#/ Good morning everyone. Last weeks scare regarding Megan and Harry being sent to live "somewhere in Africa" seems to have been dispelled, at least for the time being. It now seems that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will take up residence in California. Unless they are actually doing some proper work in "The Golden State", I hope that they are taken off the civil list so that we do not have to fund their life choice. The nauseating Daily Mail is at it again. A headline this week, which I will not even bother to reproduce here, screams out in disgusting and repulsive bias without any acknowledgement to the factual basis of their "story". Spewing out their usual smears and embellished distortions about Hamas, the IRA, Hezbollah and the rest, the Mail condemns itself with ample justification, for the closure of a "newspaper," which again abuses 10 fold, the privilege of "freedom of t...

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 ...

Agenda 2019

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