Ian Fleming must be turning in his grave

What’s the world coming to? Ian Fleming must be turning in his grave, as the media reports today on Sir John Sawers, the man set to take over as boss of security service MI6 in November.

It seems his wife, Lady Shelley Sawers has spent months uploading to Facebook, carefully building up a collection of photos and personal facts on the Sawers and their wider circle of friends and family.

I just don’t get this. I thought that members of our diplomatic and ambassadorial services, let alone our security services, were chosen for their tact and discretion above any other personality trait.

Surely such an obvious display of immaturity, combined with the addition cost of protecting the Sawers family, should debar Sir John from taking up his new position?

They don’t like it up ‘em…

During the week, I had another odd late-night email from my recent Liberal Democrat opponent. Like most of those before it, this email seemed to major on how unjust it was that he’d lost; how our campaign tactics were grossly unfair; and how our sins would find us out.

An old saying about pots and kettles came to mind, but I won’t labour that point.

It seems that – in the immortal words of Clive Dunn in Dad’s Army – “…they don’t like it up ‘em.”

Go out and enjoy this beautiful weather!

Last week I attended a Munisterial visit to Dover on Monday; spoke at a Locate in Kent event on Monday evening, then drove up to Harrogate on Tuesday morning to attend the LGA Conference until Thursday, when I had to drive back down to open and present the Lifetime Achievement award at the Kent Excellence in Business Awards.

It’s been a manic week with not enough time to think, let alone blog. I’ve written this summary so you don’t think I’ve forgotten you, but will come back later today to fill in the details.

In the meantime, go out and enjoy this beautiful weather!

Green or brown? Bin or box? Decisions, decisions

A friend recently told me about his local council kindly dropping off a plastic crate in his garden. Not just any plastic crate, you understand, but a green plastic crate. He already had a green plastic crate, but this was different in both size and shape.

And in purpose too. For this was his ‘kerbside recycling box’ for cans and plastics. But not all plastics.

So now he has two wheelie bins – one brown and one green, and two boxes – both green.  He rehearsed with me the new rules.

He should put his green waste in the bin that wasn’t green, and his non-green waste in the bin that was.  He put his paper and card in the green crate, but definitely not plastic or cans – they had to go in the green crate that looked newer than the other green crate. He was encouraged to squash his cans, but not to squash aerosol cans (a handy tip) and plastic bottles, but not “other plastic containers” (how about plastic tubes, he asked?) And he should never put the lids from plastic bottles in the newer green crate. They should go – obviously – in the green wheelie bin. Of course.

Great system.  Except he’s colour blind with browns and greens, and couldn’t see any difference anyway…

Licence Proficiency Check at Headcorn

I had to look twice when this aircraft landed shortly after me at Headcorn...

The recent election campaign, starting for me as it did some months ago, pretty much negated any free time I had during evenings and weekends.  Dropping leaflets and knocking on doors became my entire life outside the day job at County Hall.

As soon as the election was over I began to look at all the things I needed to do in the first few weeks, and one of the most pressing actions was to revalidate my pilot’s licence.  Once you’ve qualified, as I did back in January 1999, you have to revalidate every two years – either by building up a number of flying hours, or by taking a test again.  I’ve always taken the test irrespective of how many hours I’ve flown as personally I think it’s safer.

So on Saturday afternoon I drove to Headcorn Airfield to take my LPC, or Licence Proficiency Check as it’s now called.  It was great to see the examiner again, and although I’ve not flown for best part of two years it all came back – climbing, turning, straight and level, stalling – even a simulated engine failure somewhere over Paul McCartney’s house.

I’d forgotten what an absolute joy it was to climb a little two-seat Cessna up into the sky, watching the rain on one side of the county as you followed the sunshine in the other.

Descending to 500 feet to simulate a ‘bad weather’ touch-and-go landing at Headcorn, then a flapless landing, and finally a glide landing where my examiner friend – with whom it’s an absolute pleasure to fly – treated me to a demonstration of how to get the aircraft down in a hurry, which left my heart in my mouth and my stomach nearly somewhere else.   He congratulated me on passing my LPC in just an hour and five minutes, and I left the field hoping that I might find more time in the next two years to actually fly for pleasure, rather than letting my work rule my life.

Great roof, shame about the pictures!

When I got home this evening and watched the tail end of the Andy Murray v Stanislas Wawrinka match.

Great match, and we should probably count ourselves fortunate that the new roof on the Centre Court enabled the marathon 3hrs 57min match to continue until 10.40pm. But unless the colour has gone on my TV, I couldn’t make out the ball, or even at times the players, against the luminous green court.

Great roof, shame about the pictures!

What a ridiculously obstructive system

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday afternoon who pointed out his son’s old car on the drive.  ”It wouldn’t get through its MOT” he said “without a load of cash spent on it, so we decided to scrap it.”

He went on to tell me that a friend of his wanted the number plate, as its letter and number prefix matched the model of a car he’d just bought.  It simply needed an £80 transfer fee to the DVLA to swap plates across from the car to be scrapped.  Apparently though, it’s not quite as simple as this – it never is, is it?

The car going for scrap must have a valid tax disk before its plates can be transferred.  To get a valid tax disk there must be a current MOT and current insurance.  So my friend is back where he started.

I can’t believe our system is really so ridiculously obstructive.  Won’t someone out there please tell there’s a method by which plates can be transferred from scrap vehicles?

“First day facts, second day admiration, third day dirt”

“First day facts, second day admiration, third day dirt”. That was how Andrew Marr this morning summed up the reaction of the media, as the Sunday Telegraph runs its ‘what the Nanny saw’ so-called scoop on Michael Jackson from an ex-employee of the Jackson household.

The depths are unarguaby plumbed by the Daily Star, whose front page leads with the quote “we miss Daddy” from Jackson’s children.

But in the feeding frenzy which follows major news events, surely our media can do better than this? Only a couple of weeks ago, The Telegraph showed their consummate skill in project managing 240 investigative journalists to assemble a powerful story on MP’s expenses. What a shame they can so quickly conform to the norm displayed by many of their competitors.

Michael Jackson – a consummate legend

Unbelievable.  Still can’t quite take it in.  At the age of 50 Michael Jackson has died at the UCLA Hospital in Los Angeles.

Even watching the supposedly “balanced” coverage on BBC News 24, there’s the usual rubbish content to fill the time slot.  From musicians and show business “acquantainces” with clearly very little knowledge of Michael Jackson, to Baptist Minister and civil activist Reverend Al Sharpton who knew him for decades, the coverage has been variable to say the least.

Inevitably, they showed still shots of the facial close ups, commenting on his ‘facial surgery’, as well as moving footage of him holding his baby over the German hotel balcony.  All cheap and unnecessary.  All to fill the time while the real facts come in.  Much of the early coverage seemed to be from the LA Times which first broke the story.  To read their coverage, click this link.

For me, the abiding memory was during his “Bad” tour almost twenty years ago, when you couldn’t get tickets for love nor money, but a friend of mine living in Madrid and working in the music business got tickets for the show at the Arturo Stadium.  It was smaller than the London venues; it was more intimate, it was spellbinding.

He was a consummate legend, and to quote Reverend Al Sharpton, “Let’s hope that history is kinder to him than the contemporary media have been.”

Backing Kent Business with Invicta Chamber of Commerce

I was invited to go along to the Ashford International Hotel yesterday, by Jo James of the Invicta Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber held a business to business exhibition at the hotel and – perversely given the recession – all 120 stall spaces were fully booked, with a waiting list of exhibitors who for space reasons were unable to get a pitch.

I was pleased that KCC had a stand for both its Kent Foundation for young people, and my “Backing Kent Business” campaign.

And after lunch, I was invited to speak and answer questions on the campaign and how KCC intended to be more business friendly.

Backing Kent Business can only succeed by working together across sectors. I feel fortunate to number the Invicta Chamber of Commerce among our partners in this.