As a child I would spend days watching the amazing manoeuvres of starling. This video captures some of the feeling of wonder I experienced.

Despite the bird flu, and some people’s idea to get rid of all birds wherever they are (and all animals if possible too) the annual garden bird count day was held today.

It was a warm, sunny day, just perfect for such an event, and we all enjoyed watching a large number of birds coming to our feeders. Not as many as the past-days flocks of starlings. I do miss the woosh they use to make and the amazing clouds they formed. But that was pretty happy not to have such a flock landing in my garden. By the way, does anyone know what happened to all these starlings?

Not so long ago you could see millions of starling covering the sky.

What we did see was:

Goldfinches: 5
Black Cap: 1
Bull Finch: 1
Chaffinch: 12
Greenfinch: 4
Blackbirds: 7
Magpie:1
Carrion crow: 1
House sparrow: 8
Great tit: 2
Coal tit: 2
Blue tit: 5
Starlings: 5
Dunnocks: 3
Robyn: 1
Wood Pigeon: 1
Collared dove: 2
Feral Pigeon: 2

Not bad for an hour of bird watching. Our feeders definitely do their job.

Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown said that an inquiry into the Iraq was will happen eventually, but now is not the right time.

So let me tell you something your Lordship, now is never the right time. Unfortunately, now is the only time we have. So what is that you’re waiting for? Post-retirement inquiry? Post losing the next election? Or maybe that senility and old age will prevent those responsible from appearing in court?

The public was lied to, this is a fact. Public money was used for inappropriate purposes, this is another fact. And no one can give a single reason what the f*** we are doing there. If it was not the government but a private company, this would have been considered criminal and lead to jail sentences. But the government is immune, even against criminal acts.

You were not there where the decision was made, and cannot be blamed. It was not your government, but those who made the decisions are your peers. By protecting them you become accomplice.

So the earlier we know the fact, the better it will be for all of us. So what are you waiting for?

Allow me to ramble again about education. But let’s first start with a poem:

Rats racing,
Cats Chasing.
Birds flying,
Cats crying.
Child calling,
Milk warming.
Cats lapping,
Birds tapping,
but
Cats napping.

This is not my poem, but rather my nine year old son’s homework. He was very proud of himself and was even awarded the HP award.

What a wonderful inspiration it is. So what am I whinging about, you must be wondering. Well, he wanted to read his poem to the class. His teacher, on the other hand, refused, as she felt it would hurt the feelings of those who did not do so well.

Is this some new trend in education?

If you have read some of my first entries, you know that I am crazy about animals. As such, I my entire backyard is filled with bird-feeders and nesting boxes. It’s wonderful to have my breakfast in the morning watching the birds having theirs.

By now the birds have found the feeders, and during the day, at any given moment you can see a few dozen birds a family of rats and some squirrels. The bird life is amazing, and so far we have spotted 30 over species. The one we were missing was the house sparrow.

Last time we lived here, about eight years ago, sparrows were the most common birds in our backyard. They were pests. We had dozens of them, and they would scare away all the other birds. I am not sure what’s happened to them and why they’ve all gone, but now we have none. Or at least that was the case until this morning, when a single sparrow approached our feeders.

I never thought I could get that excited about a sparrow.

We (at least I) have already established that math and science education are on the decline; bullies are not being dealt with effectively, and the latest is: ‘One in five is ‘unaware of the connection between HIV and sex.’

As only eight years ago one in eight didn’t make the connection, I can only assume that it’s the new generation that drives this increase.

Kids seem to be spending many hours at school, so what exactly do they do there?

(This, naturally, is based on the dubious assumption, that the report in the paper is correct)

Is there anyone around here who can’t use a mobile phone?

I didn’t think so. So let me tell you a secret. British services cannot.

Well, I am not really talking about the secret services – they have been known to be familiar with the technology since the 007 days – but rather about the entire service industry.

You don’t believe me? Let’s hear your explanation then.

Since I moved to the UK, we used great amount of services delivered to our house: from parcel delivery, to handymen, from utilities to inspection. If I said that we used a few dozens, it will not be an exaggeration.

Some gave a great service (Waitrose.com – 5 stars)
Some were bad (why did it have to take six weeks to fix the still-under-warranty fridge? What was I supposed to do in the meantime?)
Some I could book immediately.
Others were nightmare to book (BT at top, Virgin not far behind).

But the one thing common to all of them was the way they scheduled their appointments. They would only agree to give a general time of their visit, like: in the morning, or around noon, or in the afternoon.

As a person who often spends his days in pubs and going to cinemas, and can’t really stay home all day, I would always ask them to be more specific. None of them would. This I could still accept, but what I could not accept was that when I asked them to call or SMS me just before they leave for my home (you see I have a cinema and a pub near by) the answer would always be: “Sir, this is not something we can do.”

Guys, what year are you living in? Making a telephone call is not something you can do? Is it because your servicemen or drivers don’t have mobiles (is it safe to let them into my home then?), or is it that you just did not train them how to use the device? Or, maybe, just maybe, it is that the convenience of your customer is something that you simply don’t give a **** about?

My son was taking martial art classes at his school (Karate). He loved it, he was good at it (genetic I suspect )) but then parents of friends started commenting that there was enough violence in the world, and that kids should not learn martial arts. This was followed by his friends teasing him. He stopped, and I can’t talk him back to it.

So for all those who make uninformed comments:

Most traditional martial art are non violent. There is far less violent in a karate match than in a football match.

Very little of the violence in our street is by martial artists. On the contrary, it has been shown that martial art training in violent neighborhoods reduced violence. This is for two reasons:

1. Traditional martial arts instill self discipline. “Be a devil for yourself and an angel for the other.” The gang culture in our streets is about lack of self discipline.
2. When people are confident (not arrogant) in their ability to defend themselves, there is less chance they, or people around them, will be attacked in the first place.

There are two type of non-violence attitude.
1. Avoid violence out of fear. This attitude actually attracts violence. After all it does not take two to start a fight.
2. Avoid violence for philosophical reasons, while knowing that in cases when violence is the only resort, you are not afraid to use it. This attitude reduces violence.

I think that if there were more calm people who chose not to get into confrontations, rather than avoided confrontations for lack of choice, our streets would have been much safer. .

I still hope I can talk my son into going back.

I was depressed last night so I called Lifeline.
Got a call center in Pakistan.I told them I was suicidal.
They got all excited and asked if I could drive a truck.

Just to clarify, I am still well and happy

I’ve always been a sort of a mad scientist, interested and curious about most things. It seems that my son is following. However, he has much harder time than I had.

Being interested in atoms, lizards, distilling water, and fossils, he doesn’t seem to find children his age with similar interests. Not that he doesn’t have friends. He is a keen footballer, and has lots of mates. But he doesn’t find anyone who is interested in the same things he really cares about.

He is known amongst parents of his school mates, as the one who likes science, and they don’t understand how we manage to drag him off his computer games to go and watch birds, or look for insects and spiders – but honestly, it’s normally him who drags us out of bed on the weekend to go to all these activities.

Talking to the guides of these tours, the sellers in exotic pet shops (well not that exotic – but anything that is not a dog a cat or a rabbit falls into this category), and the organisers of science activities, they all come with the same message. In the last few years, kids have disappeared. They don’t go out to look for animals anymore, they are not interested in finding about where they are; they are not curious. They just want to play their computer games undisturbed.

This is really great for the parents that the kids leave them quietly alone. But is this the source pool of the next generation minds? If you are not curious as a kid, when will you start to be?

‘Taxpayers will pay nothing to go nuclear’ the Government promised yesterday. Good on them. Sure I believe them.

Just like tax payers were going to pay nothing for the privatization of trains, electricity, or gas. Just like tax payer were not paying for the failed Millennium Dome project, northern rock, the war in Iraq, or the inflated salary of MPs and ministers.

If I ever made such a statement as a business person, I’d be taken to court if I couldn’t deliver. So, I just want to ask whoever came with this statement, how is he going to guarantee its execution? Will he sign a contract with the public that if, at any stage, we are required to pay, he will give back every penny he ever got from taxpayers (with a compensation clause, of course)? Or even better, would he then move to Kenya or Pakistan, or any third country of his choice, take a position there, and make sure we don’t ever see him here again?

Most British people believe immigrants are taking advantage of the Human Rights Act

What a revelation! I am sure it took lots of tax payers’ money to realise what everyone has always known.

Why do you think most people come here? It’s because they want better life for themselves, not because they want to make Britain better. The truth is that many of them don’t care about Britain, but just want to take advantage of the system to better themselves, while living the old life they had back home. A

fter all, if they don’t have the incentive people don’t want to change. The Human Rights Act, as it is today, does not incentives people to change.

But this is not the only reason.

The research also says people believe there is a lack of shared values in Britain. A total of 56% agreed that "this country lacks a shared sense of rights and responsibilities" and 94% agreed that "we need to treat each other with more respect

So if no two British can agree what the values of Britain are, what are the British values that we expect the new immigrant to take on?

Today’s paper reported on another young school girl who committed suicide, allegedly as a result of school bullying.

I don’t know if the claim is true; I don’t know what the statistics are. But from my personal experience, school bullying is much more tolerated here, in the UK, than in other countries I’ve been.

I have three kids going to three different schools, and this is the fourth country we’ve lived in since they started their schooling. We’ve always lived in similar type of suburbs, and sent our kids to similar types of schools. By all means, my three kids have encountered (fortunately, not first hand) more bullying here than in any of their previous schools.

But the scarier thing is not the bullying itself, but the total inability of the schools stuff to discipline the bullies. Despite the fact that a single bully can make life hell for all other students, school stuff is not given any means whatsoever to handle bullies.

As one of the teachers said: “I don’t know why we need to sacrifice entire classes of good student for some hypothetical ideal of giving everyone equal opportunity. It simply doesn’t work.”

If you learn at schools that bullying doesn’t have a price, can we really complain about the level of violence in our streets?

Is the horrendous crime level in out street on anyone’s agenda?

Today I am going to talk about how we don’t make the difference we want to believe we do, and about chicken.

So let’s start with some unpleasant truth. Contrary to the old wisdom, in our modern world saving pennies never made anyone rich.

If your mortgage, taxes, car, rates and the rest of the big expenses consume 80% of your income, saving pennies on the 20% of your left over everyday life budget will, at most allow you to rent a couple more bad videos per month, that’s it. Is it worth the effort?

In other words, too often we put too much effort into areas that, despite our best intentions, make no difference to anyone. To make a difference we need to first identify what really matters, and focus our efforts there.

So where do chicken come into the picture?

In recent years, it’s become common knowledge how badly chicken, and other farm animals, are treated. If you’re not familiar with the issue, just imagine yourself taking a London rush-hour underground ride in the summer, for eighteen months, after which you will be slaughtered.

Sounds fun?
This is exactly what the chicken are complaining about.

Being conscious of such cruelty, many in the UK have shifted to free range eggs and poultry; and now about 60% of all eggs sold in supermarkets are free range. Yet, despite this shift, over 70% of all eggs in the UK are produced in old-style cruel batteries.

This is because we, once again, have been looking at the fringe of the problem – our home consumption, while the majority of eggs in the UK are not consumed directly by the household, but by the food industry.

Is your bread made with free-range eggs?

So if you are a free-egg enthusiast, unless you confront the industry labeling standards, and change the way you consume ready made product, consuming free-range eggs will mostly deal with your conscious and not with chicken.

Now that we are post holidays and life is back to normal, it’s high time to go back to an old pastime of mine, BT bashing. Despite all that I have written about them, I think that it’s not enough. There are lots of companies here I dislike, but none has been as torturous, unfriendly, irritating (out of superlatives here) like BT.

So I had quite a few stories to tell, but none will convey the point better than this one picture:

As we have been discussing why the government doesn't do what needs to be done, I thought that a free-translating of another one of Krilov's fables is the right thing to do

As Chimp the monkey felt one day
his eyesight getting dimmer
and which banana was so ripe
he found so hard to tell
so off to the magician went him
in quest for cure or spell.

It’s easy cure the wizard told him
not even need for spell
glasses is all that you need
easy to use as well.

I never heard of such a magic
the monkey said in owe
Please can you give me just a dozen
I’ll take them now to go.

A dozen pairs the monkey took
and went to home on trail.
He put them on his head and also
balanced them on his tail
But even though he made such effort
His eyesight stayed as frail.

Do I really look that dense
the monkey cried annoyed.
This magic thing just makes no sense
It’s nothing but a fraud.
And in his fury threw and shuttered
the cure he thought was flawed.

Some interesting social trends have been on our news lately. Let’s look at some examples:

1. Social mobility in Britain is lower than other advanced countries and declining.
2. English education is on the decline and every year, and our students performance declines to international standards.
3. The UK has the second highest teenage pregnancy rate in the developed world

Let’s assume that these surveys (and many others) have been conducted properly and their results are reliable. Considering that these trends have developed under Labour government, whose prime call is to support of the middle and lower socio-economic groups, what can we conclude?

In my view there are only two possible explanations. The first is gross incompetence. That is, our politicians are too busy with politics that they have no time left for policies (assuming that they have the ability). Therefore, most policies we see are just done off-hand, normally as a knee jerk reaction.

The other option is sinister. Remembering that the highest rate of support for the Labour comes from lower socio-economic groups, to guarantee re-election, the government needs to ensure that these groups spread, or at least remains unchanged. Trying to improve their status will be cutting the very tree the government is based on, and must be avoided.

Every failure is a win someone’s win, every loss a gain. When you say that something is a failure, think who was the winner, and then you will have the complete picture.

Each of us should make their own mind which of the two options describes our government better, incompetent, or devious.

My favourite version of the immortal Carmen