bygjohn's blog

Well the current situation with the banks etc isn't good for anyone so feeling smug isn't something I'd do a lot of, but I am pleased that the erstwhile building societies have had their comeuppance. According to Robert Peston on the BBC, all the ones which de-mutualised have now either been taken over or gone bust and been nationalised.

While inertia and a mortgage kept my cash in the Halifax, I always thought the only thing "gained" by the change to being a bank was that they had free range to do daft things with our money and it turns out that they did just that.

Let's hope that the current mess ends up with banks etc being a tad less cavalier with other people's money and that sanity comes back into fashion.

Yesterday was voting day for local elections across the UK. Where I live it's been the first election for representatives for a new unitary authority: Cheshire East. Yet it's the first time I've seriously considered not voting. In the end I did, though not without a sense of grievance you shouldn't be feeling in a democracy.

So what's the problem that led me, who has always felt I should vote after my forbears fought long and hard to get it for me, to come close to abandoning it?

• Nobody asked us if we wanted to have a unitary authority. The "official" call for opinions explicitly disallowed any option to retain the existing setup. Our local council organised a referendum, though of course it had no official weight behind it. 85% of people voted to keep the existing setup with improved co-ordination between the county and local councils. Ignored, of course, by the government...
  
• Of the two new options, they imposed the worst. Having one big unitary authority covering the whole of Cheshire would at least have left all the county services intact, but splitting it into two means that all the services, county and local, are now being restructured at great expense. Not to mention all the rebranding etc which is doubtless going to happen and cost a fortune. Of my money...
  
• Because we were electing a new authority, we were all given 3 votes. Except that I couldn't use then as here in my ward we had 3 Tories, 3 Labour, 1 LibDem and 1 UKIP candidate. I could never vote for the Tories after the Thatcher/Major years and the damage caused. I can no longer vote Labour because they are just Tories 2 now, no socialist policies left. UKIP are a reactionary joke, so out of the question. Which leaves me with one candidate (LibDem) I can vote for. So I couldn't use two of my three votes.
  

Talk about being disenfranchised.

Just been trawling through the BBCi text service and came across the mind-boggling news that Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson has been criticised in the Malaysian parliament for blowing up a Perodua Kelisa, with some foolish politician suggesting he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Well, I doubt that Mr Clarkson gives a tuppeny hoot about some pompous Malaysian politicians (who are doubtless welcome to their Peroduas), or that he needs me to defend him, but I venture to suggest that as he's been testing cars for decades he knows good ones from bad. Also, while I've not driven a Perodua, the fact that they're sold locally by the garage which used to be the Lada dealer, who moved into Protons and Peroduas later, makes me suspicious. Everything else the place sells has the sole merit of being cheap, so I guess that applies to Peroduas too. Certainly they're ugly little boxes, which doesn't encourage me to investigate further.

But what's annoyed me is the complaining politicians. If Perodua wants to avoid criticism, it's up to them to make better cars. Politicians should really have something better to do, frankly.


Edit: What makes this even funnier is the claim that Perodua hasn't received a single complaint from UK customers. Well, the kind of people who buy the things are the kind of people who don't care if it's good as long as it's cheap, so where's the surprise?