CHARLIE GARD

One can only have sympathy for the parents of Charlie Gard, the terminally ill child who has been at the centre of a prolonged court battle. However, one can also question whether their actions have been in the best interests of their young son, or more about their own wants and desires.

Charlie, who was born in August 2016, has a rare and terminal genetic condition and has been in hospital since October; his muscles have wasted and he has severe brain damage. There is no cure for his condition and no treatment, other than some experimental therapy only available in the USA. Doctors treating Charlie at Great Ormond Street were of the opinion that nothing could help Charlie and continued treatment would simply prolong his suffering, including the experimental therapy which his parents wanted to try.

In March, doctors at Great Ormond Street agreed that Charlie's life support should be turned off and that he should be allowed to die. The parents disagreed and a legal battle ensued, at each stage of which the courts have agreed with the hospital's view that Charlie's best interests would be best served by allowing him to die.

 On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights, the last port of call in the parents' legal battle, declined to overturn previous rulings in British courts and it has now been indicated that the child's life support will be switched off later today. Naturally, the parents are dismayed but have nowhere else to take their case.

Appearing on radio and television today, Charlie's parents have expressed their sadness but have said little about Charlie. What they have stressed is THEIR desire to take him home, to bath him and sit with him; whether such things would be good for their son doesn't seem to have been considered. Once his life support is switched off, Charlie is likely to die very quickly as he has, for some time, only been able to breathe with the aid of a ventilator and has been fed through a tube; his quality of life has been minimal.

Again I say that one has to have sympathy for his parents but one must also consider the life that Charlie has endured. What is most important is to look to his best interests rather than those of his parents, and those best interest are now served by letting him slip away quietly, without fuss and without any further argument or recriminations.

TOWER BLOCK CLADDING : IS TESTING RIGHT ?

The external cladding attached to every single tower block tested so far has been deemed to have failed to meet expected fire safety criteria. Can this really be true ? According to the chairman of the Local Government Association, it actually indicates that there is something wrong with the testing arrangements.

On radio and television this morning, Lord Porter of Spalding has expressed serious reservations about the testing, suggesting that the 'experts' who have been advising the government have got things badly wrong. It seems that, following their advice, the testing has concentrated on testing the flammability of one particular component of the cladding rather than testing whole panels and the material which sits between the cladding and the exterior of the building itself.

Given that the failure rate from testing is 100%, does Lord Porter have a point ? Is it really likely that every local authority in the country has been negligent and penny-pinching in this respect, ignoring safety to safe a few coppers ? Is it likely that every single local authority has employed fire safety, health and safety, builders and building safety experts who have all been equally negligent and incompetent ?

It seems to me that the answer to these questions is most unlikely to be 'Yes'; what seems far more likely is that, in their panic to be seen to be 'doing something' bout the Grenfell Tower disaster, the government has been bamboozled by 'experts' and exploited by those who now expect to make large amounts of money from replacing all of the existing cladding on our tower blocks.

Political decisions made in haste and under pressure are rarely right and it seems that this one has simply proved the point.

DRIVERLESS CARS : A NIGHTMARE SCENARIO.

The prospect of 'driverless cars' populating our roads within a few years fills me with foreboding. To me, this is another example of doing something because we can, and for no better or more worthy reason.

What reason is there for having such vehicles on our roads ? While they may have a purpose in highly organised and controlled spaces - airports, theme parks and the like - to let them loose on our largely disorganised and uncontrolled roads seems folly.

People and computers behave differently, people often in intuitive fashion and computers by programming. A driver may often react to a situation before it arises as a result of years of experience added to a bit of anticipation; can a computer driven car ever behave in such a way ? The likelihood  of accidents arising as a direct result of a driverless vehicle behaving in a programmed but wholly unexpected manner, causing surprise and confusion to human drivers, must be substantial. Computers don't break rules, people do; sometimes, breaking the rules may actually avoid problems but a vehicle acting under strict programming would not be able to do this. The only solution to this conundrum would seem to be to make the relevant programming flexible so as to try to mirror human actions, which strikes me as being impossible.

We do have driverless trains and aeroplanes, although neither type of vehicle travels in the heavily congested spaces in which cars do and, almost invariably, they have a human driver available in case of emergencies. Cars are very different. In a driverless world, humans would hand over total control to their vehicles, no longer learning to drive and surrendering themselves to the vagaries of computer performance. From start to finish, their journeys would be outside of their control, unable to circumvent blockages along the way; people would lose all sense of location as location would no longer matter.

Is this what we want ? I, for one, certainly don't. Put the driverless car back in its box and let people  control their own lives, not be controlled by computers.

GRENFELL TOWER : APPROPRIATE RESPONSE NEEDED

No one can deny that the Grenfell Tower fire was almost certainly exacerbated by a failure to ensure adequate fire safety measures, in particular, that the cladding affixed to the outside of the building was fire proof. However, the subsequent reaction of the media and some politicians has been, to say the least, questionable.

Labour's John McDonnell, a man whose ambition it is to bring down the government and replace it with a communist-style dictatorship, has claimed that the victims of the fire were "murdered" by political decisions. Presumably he would also claim that the victims of other disasters and atrocities were also killed by the state as this is an easy way to blame the whole capitalist system for anything that befalls its people. He is, of course, using this tragedy to further his political ambitions, seeing those who lost their lives at Grenfell Tower as little more than collateral damage and a weapon to use in his on-going war with capitalism. McDonnell is a nasty little man who has spent most of his political life hiding in the shadows and waiting for an opportunity like this to arise; don't be fooled by him. We are all no more than pawns in his attempt to climb the greasy political pole.

While McDonnell tries to make political capital at the national level, many local councils are now running around like headless chickens trying to discover if they might also have a Grenfell Tower disaster in the making. It seems that a very high proportion of similar tower blocks may also have the same cladding as was on the tower in Kensington and councils have been panicking mightily as a result. Tenants have been ordered out of their homes in the middles of the night, special 'fire wardens' have been appointed and fire engines are on emergency standby; all of this even though the buildings in question have stood happily and safely for many years, even decades, without the slightest sign of any problems. While taking additional precautions might be sensible, the over-reaction in some areas has been almost risible.

With all of this going on, the media has been having a field day of its own. Interviews with tenants from here, there and everywhere, coverage of demonstrations, constant badgering of politicians and daily updates on developments, particularly on the number of buildings now thought to be potentially dangerous. Rather than sticking to facts and investigating the veracity of those facts, the media prefers to make the most of every bit of perceived 'bad news', reporting and commenting on such snippets in such a way as to ramp up fear and distrust. Instead of reporting dispassionately, the media loves all that is dramatic and so the truth is all too often overlooked and unreported.

The aftermath of the Grenfell Tower tragedy will be with us for a long time to come, but we really should not get carried away by it. We need a measured and appropriate response, not the wild flailing around that is currently going on, and certainly not political points scoring or finger pointing.

BREXIT NEGOTIATIONS : THE GREAT BORE BEGINS.

At long last discussions about the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union have begun and, inevitably, the media has gone into overdrive, again.

Endless consideration, assessment, analysis and re-analysis of a handful of words from a handful of people seems to be the media's idea of 'news'. Of course, it isn't and the 'news' is very little so far; all of the rest is hot air and pointless rhetoric.

The one clear issue that's emerged seems to be that the EU is of the view that the European Court of Justice should be the final arbiter of the negotiations and should also continue to have oversight of the position of EU nationals living in the UK even after the latter's exit from the union. How this position can be maintained is an interesting question as it would be akin to one team in a football match setting all of the rules of play and having all of the officials on its side as well; not exactly a level playing field.

No doubt Theresa May's initial suggestion regarding the future arrangements for EU nationals living in the UK and vice versa is no more than an opening gambit, as is Angela Merkel's reported response. It's said that there are some 3 million assorted EU nationals living in the UK and a million UK nationals in the EU; clearly these people need to have some certainty about their likely futures but we need to keep in mind that they have voluntarily chosen to live where they do. In particular, the many UK pensioners who have forsaken our shores for the warmer climes of France or Spain did so for their own benefit, not that of their country. Some have lived abroad for many, many years and yet whine about what they might lose if they are not protected from any adverse effects of 'Brexit'. Effectively these people want to have their cake and eat it, something which most of us know isn't realistic and which should not be a stumbling block in negotiations.

On the other hand, those UK industries which rely heavily on EU labour might well need to be protected or supported and I see 2 ways in which this might be achieved. Firstly, our overly generous welfare system needs to ensure that anyone who is fit for work only receives benefits when there is no work available for them; to my mind, there is no reason why, for instance, the harvesting of soft fruit seems to be a preserve of Eastern European nationals when we have 1.5 million unemployed of our own. Get at least some of them working and forget ludicrous notions of what is or isn't 'suitable employment'.

Secondly, where there is no alternative to migrant labour why should there be any problem about allowing appropriate numbers into the country for the period of their employment ? Many of those who undertake this work now do so only on a temporary basis and send most of their income back to their families, wherever they are in Europe, before themselves returning once the employment comes to an end. Perceived issues in this area reported by some seem to be no more than part of the on-going attempt to reverse the result of our referendum.

The nest 18 months or so are set to be full of claims and counterclaims, offers, proposals, rejections, fall-outs, red lines, breaking points, agreements, disagreements, leaks, fake news, innuendo, lies, damned lies and statistics. The media will do its very best to dissect all of this and bore us to tears with every last ounce of coverage that it can manage, much of it utterly meaningless and pointless.

What a miserable time we're all going to have before we get the inevitable agreement in March 2019.

WHO WILL LEAD THE LIB DEMS ?

Following the departure of Tim Farron as leader, the Liberal Democrats find themselves in a sorry state.

With only a dozen Members of Parliament, they have few to choose from and that few are mostly anonymous figures are known to almost no one outside of their constituencies and Parliament. Of the names that have been put forward as contenders, Jo Swinson has already said that she doesn't want the job and it seems that the choice is to be between Ed Davey, Norman Lamb and Vince Cable.

One would have to say that the field is pretty uninspiring, being more akin to that found on a wet Wednesday in Wolverhampton than at Royal Ascot; Lamb was easily beaten by Farron in 2015 and so is a proven loser, while Cable is 74 and surely not a suitable choice for a party that sees itself as radical and forward thinking. That leaves Ed Davey although he is actually the least favoured of the three with the bookies.

Whomever they pick has a pretty thankless task and is unlikely to make much impression. They have my sympathy.

FINSBURY PARK ATTACK WAS RACIST, NOT TERRORIST

Following the Finsbury Park Mosque attack, we're told that it was a 'terrorist incident'; what utter poppycock. While it may suit the authorities to draw no distinction between attacks by those who have been indoctrinated by Al Qaeda or Isil and those who are simply mad racists, there clearly is a distinction.

On the one hand, the attacks are directed as an assault on our nation and culture while on the other they are nothing more than perceived retaliation by idiots, with no controlling influence or indoctrination involved.

Those involved in recent incidents in Westminster, London Bridge and in Manchester were attacking our society as part of a coordinated attempt to destroy it,; they are rightly considered terrorists. Those involved in the attack at Finsbury Park are undoubtedly guilty of a variety of criminal offences, including murder and attempted murder, but terrorists, don't be ridiculous.

We should not let our politically correct minded masters con us into believing otherwise.