Bad hare day

Here we have a contender for Drama Queen Of The Week and it's only Monday.

A POLICE probe has been launched after complaints were made about a hunt illegally chasing a wild hare.
Officers are looking into claims a pack of hounds followed by around 20 hunters on horseback were chasing the animal across fields between Barnoldswick and West Marton on Saturday afternoon.
The hunters, dressed in red blazers, black jodhpurs and black safety helmets, were spotted by a number of animal lovers who said they were deeply shocked at what happened.

It's surprising enough that a number of animal lovers who don't eat meat or wear leather were randomly in the area to see the hunt. It's less surprising that they were 'deeply shocked', as that seems to be the stock emotion for anyone who gets their name in the papers these days; what has my gast totally flabbered is the unbelieveable over reaction of this drama queen:

Carole Mitchell, 51, of Ollet Hall Road, Darwen, was visiting her three pet sheep in Stock Road, near Barnoldswick when she saw the hunt.
She said: “It was absolutely awful. I locked myself in the car because I just couldn’t bear it.
“It is so shocking to watch. There was this horrific screaming and I couldn’t tell if it was the dogs or the hare.”

Let's read that one again:

I locked myself in the car because I just couldn’t bear it.

And of course the police have to investigate any old complaint no matter how silly it is because they just can't say no to pillocks these days.

So Carole Mitchell of Owlet Hall Rd, Darwen, you are this weeks, Drama Queen of the Week.

A rant about the success of the smoking ban.

I put a ranty comment of a post of Leg-Irons at the weekend. He was tearing David Cameron a new arsehole for suggesting that the smoking ban was a success. It's well worth a read so I suggest you pop over there then come back here. I'll get the kettle on while you're gone.

*Brews up*

Amongst others, one of the 'successes' Leg-Iron picks up on is the fact that the pub trade has been decimated and thousands of staff turned out of work.

Back when the ban came in, me and Mrs Bucko were working for a pub company / brewery as relief managers. We would run pubs while the managers were on holiday or pubs where there was no manager and the brewery was recruiting. For anyone unfamiliar with the trade, pubs have to remain open all year round to keep the money coming in, so folk like us run pubs in the interim where there is no manager available.

It's always been my dream to run my own local boozer. If you don't have the money to buy a gaff then you can do what we were trying to do and manage one for a pubco until you have the funds. We started working for pubs within the company, me as an assistant manager and Mrs Bucko as a cook. Once we got noticed we were put on the relief managers training course and eventually became reliefs.

We travelled around a lot during that time, running pubs all over the north and the midlands. We ran all sorts from chavvy dives to fancy pub restaurants.

During the two to three years we did it I had some of the best and worst times of my life. I could tell you some stories, weather you want to hear about pissed up police functions, dear old ladies birthday meals or hideous fights with groups of chavs that get the riot police involved, I have them all, but that's for another day.

The endgame was to do the relief for a while and then get a pub of our own to manage, eventually buying one for ourselves.

Than the smoking ban came.

We never really believed it would happen at first, we just thought the talk would all blow over and things would go back to normal. One day we were called into a meeting and told it was going ahead and the government had set a date. Thwaites, the company we worked for, had set aside three million pounds for the purposes of building smoking shelters, training the staff in the new regulations and a huge PR exercise to let all our customers know what was happening.

They told us Carlsberg / Tetley, a much larger company had set aside ten times that amount for the same purposes.

I kicked off a little about this and asked why we weren't all pooling this money together and using it to fight the ban. I was told that nobody wanted to do that because the ban was a huge opportunity if handled right.

The company line was that smokers were in the minority and they were keeping many more non smokers out of the pubs. After the ban, the lost trade from smokers would be quickly recouped and then some, by all the non smokers that were going to start visiting pubs.

At the time I didn't foresee the wholesale destruction of the pub trade, I was personally angry because one day I wanted to own a pub and I wanted to welcome smokers. I certainly didn't want the Government telling me otherwise.

I didn't last another year in the trade. It wasn't long before Thwaites sold half of their managed house stock and I could see the end of the road for my career. I quit the pub trade the January following the ban and started an office job for a company I still work for. Within the following year, Thwaites sold the rest of their managed estate and the tenants began handing their keys in at the rate of 30 pubs per week.

When you're working in that kind of environment you don't get much time to yourself. Whenever possible, me and Mrs Bucko would get together with my parents and my sister and her husband, go to the local pub and play pool.

My dad is the only non smoker in the group and after the ban he would come and join us outside if the weather was nice, and if it wasn't we would take turns to go out for a fag so he was never on his own. After a while my mums legs started to get quite bad and it became difficult for her to keep going outside to smoke.

My sister bought a pool table for their back room and I bought one shortly after for our spare bedroom. We both also bought dart boards and my folks bought a Wii. When we get together now we do it at one of our houses. Theres pool and darts, the booze is cheap and we can smoke as much as we want.

That boozer we used to go to closed eventually. Then it opened again. Then it closed. It's open again now. We have been drinking there for years. The same chap had it for a long time and then it passed to one of the long serving staff when he left. Since the ban it has gone through five managers that I am aware of.

So yes Cameron, the smoking ban is a huge success if what you set out to do is close all the pubs, ruin peoples careers, throw staff out of work and create a society where non smokers can no longer coexist with smokers in peace.

Big success.

Saturday (I don't want to blog about politics) night

We spent most of today working on Mrs Bucko's car. I think I mentioned she bought an old Sierra XR4i earlier this year from Essex?

She had spent weeks trawling ebay for the right type of Sierra and when she found it it was in Essex. I said Essex was way too far to go for a car but she insisted she wanted it, bought a train ticket and buggered off.

It's been leaking oil from the rocker cover so we fixed that, then we removed an old redundant alarm system and the old air box as someone has fitted an after market filter. We also tidied up some pipework that's been added for the new filter, then we cleaned the engine as best we could with a pack of baby wipes.

I also had to fit a new rubber exhaust fitting. I was lying face down on the floor with my head and upper body under the car when Mrs Bucko gave me a proper weggie. My undercrackers went so far up the crack of my arse, the elastic ripped. She picks her moments to be a funny fucker!

When it was all back together she tried to fire it up to test it. Would it start? Would it f%$£!

I pulled out a sparkplug to see if it was getting a spark, which was a job an half in itself because the plugs are buried very deep in the DOHC engine.

Electrics were working fine so then we discovered that it wasn't getting any fuel. This led me to believe that we had tripped a redundant immobiliser when we removed the old alarm so we put all that back together again. Still nothing.

I traced the fuel lines back from the engine and still got no clue. The job was now taking way too long and I had a haircut booked. I had to nip off to the hairdressers in my dirties and covered in oil. I got a few weird looks off the blue rinse brigade while I was there, they must think smart dress is required for a haircut. I must have looked pretty bad though because earlier I said hello to the little old lady who lives on the end of our street and she just ignored me and walked a little faster. I say little because she doesn't cover very much ground, even at full pelt.

When I returned home with the new cropped top, I decided to get the Haynes manual out. When you have covered all options it's best to look at the book.

I read the four sweetest words in the English language in that manual - 'Fuel pump reset switch'. Located in the spare wheel well. I think I have been away from engines for too long because I really should have known that. Schoolboy error and it cost me at least an hour.

It's all done now though. Mrs Bucko has had a long bath and looks like a girl again. I've washed my hands and opened a Guinness.

Friday night Moose music - Dance like yer dad 2

There was a few requests after last weeks 'Dance like yer dad', so here they are, and then some







Is that Checkov playing the drums?

Happy Friday. Mines a Boddies!

ASH's figures are a lot of guesswork.

Earlier in the week I wrote a post about an article in my local paper that suggests smoking is costing the East Lancashire economy £163 million quid.

Those of us who are familiar with the tactics of ASH know full well that these figures are rubbish and the purpose of my post was to try and demonstrate that.

What was quite refreshing was that all the people who commented on the Lancashire Telegraph article were of the same mind, that the figures quoted were nonsense and ASH should keep their noses out of peoples private lives.

Now I don't really get this Twitter thing much but I noticed the reporter who wrote the article is on Twitter so I decided to ask for his response to the comments.

He replied.

Hmm. Quite diplomatic.

I would suggest that ASH's figures are not guesswork. To make a guess you need to have some idea to begin with and be aiming in some way for the truth. The figures that ASH quote are out and out lies, plucked out of the air to fit a specific agenda.

"..but smoking is costly and does ruin many lives". The financial cost was covered in my last post on this. The 'human' cost and the ruined lives? Well, smoking does kill some people and give others hideous diseases. Smokers are all aware of this; some have chosen to accept the risks.

Telling smokers that tobacco causes all manner of diseases that it doesn't, scaring them to death in order to force them to give up and then telling them that nicotine is more addictive than heroin, that has got to have a negative impact on their lives.

Throwing smokers out of their traditional social meeting places then telling everyone else that smokers must be ostracised and denormalised because they are killing all around them, effectively banishing them into a world of isolation and shame where they must endure the hatred of the anti smokers? That is going to have a serious affect on smokers lives. That is even going to ruin lives, and for no good reason, only spite.

Besides, the costs to the taxpayer of ASH's hateful games is not a small one.

Join us later for more Dance like yer dad!

Time to scrap the minimum wage and useless uni courses?

Why are under-25s hardest hit by unemployment?

There's a worrying fact that often goes unnoticed when people talk about the current "record" rate of youth unemployment.
The number of 16 to 24-year-olds unable to get work has been rising almost without interruption since well before the recession.

Professor John Van Reenen, Director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE, describes growing youth unemployment as "a long running problem, rather than something that has just happened".

The figures also mean under-25s make up more than a third of all unemployment in the UK.

So youth unemployment is growing to record rates and the trends would suggest that this has been going on for years rather than being a modern phenomenon.

But why? I have said for a while that the minimum wage which increases year on year is pricing young people out of work. Teenagers with no experience are often not worth the wages that employers are forced to pay for them. Older people with better experience in their chosen field can be much more productive to employers and can justify higher wages.

Also, the minimum wage which is supposed to help people afford the rising cost of living, is actually contributing to that cost. If an employer is forced to pay a set rate rather than one which reflects ability and output, they will have to recoup the extra costs by adding them on to the price of their product or service. As the cost of general products increases, so does the cost of living. This is then addressed by a further increase in the minimum wage causing a vicious circle.

If the minimum wage was scrapped, the cost of products and services would decrease, the cost of living would follow and people would be no financially worse of than they are now. With the absence of artificially inflated prices, the market would be able to dictate wages and prices and we would all be better off.

Young people would be better able to secure employment. They would have to start out on low wages, but once they had gained experience with their employers, their productivity, and therefore value in the employment market would increase and they would be earning more. Just not from the outset, which is the way it should be.

The minimum wage is not mentioned in the BBC article, although I wouldn't expect it to be. Other problems are though.

In any economic downturn, unemployment tends to rise because firms lose revenue and need to cut costs.
Despite the fact that young workers tend to be cheaper to employers, often their productivity is lower and they produce less value for the company - meaning they can be more likely to be laid-off.

That's what I was saying about the min wage. If employers could pay young people what they are actually worth there may be less need for lay offs when times are hard. If everyone was paid on their worth, young people would not be targeted specifically for termination.

Higher redundancy payments also mean it can be expensive for firms to lay off older workers.

As to redundancy payments, do employers not have funds in place to cover redundancy?

But one of the biggest alterations to the lives of young people in Britain has been the growth in the numbers going to university, a change Professor Van Reenen describes as "phenomenal".
Since 1997 the number of higher education students in the UK has risen from 1.8 million to 2.5 million, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

But why are so many people going to university? We certainly are not raising a generation of young people who are far more intelligent that their predecessors, that is painfully obvious. It's all down to New Labours silly notion that everyone should have a right to further education and their targets for 50% of school leavers to do so.

In order to achieve this nonsense, university courses have been dumbed down to match the abilities of people who really have no business in further education anyway. This is taking people away from the lower paid and more manual jobs because they have been told they can go to uni and get much better jobs later. This is a complete fallacy for most of them as they don't have the academic abilities necessary.

It's a situation felt acutely by Robert Simmons, 25, who graduated with a 2:1 honours degree in Music Production from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) in 2008.
He spent much of the last three years unable to find any kind of work before finally getting a job with a human resources firm, for which he says he is overqualified.

The problem is, this chap was fed the idea that he could do any old thing he wants in higher education then get a job in it at the end. He never bothered to find out how many music producers are actually required in the industry and if it was worth his while doing the degree.

He thought that after a couple of years in uni he could get a job in a recording studio for a celebrity rapper and spend his days producing nigger music and slapping ho's. Reality thought differently.

Robert says there was huge competition for even the most basic jobs during his hunt for work.
"There could be a hundred people applying, maybe ten to 15 being interviewed for every position," he explains.
"Most of the jobs I ended up applying for were unskilled jobs, basically things that you could do after a week's training in-house."

Hopefully the increase in tuition fees will help to solve this problem. If students are about to get themselves in debt, they will probably make sure they can get a half decent job at the end of their education. You would think anyway.

The bigger concern is over an apparently growing number of young people at risk of being locked out of the jobs market for good.
The argument goes that the longer young people go without gaining professional skills, the harder it becomes for them to enter the labour force.
It's something that worries William Winch, 20, from Hackney in east London who has been searching for a job since he left college in the summer.
William is now being helped by the charity Street League which helps get young people into work using football followed by professional training and support.

Yeah that'll help.

Wish me luck

I've applied for a job. Gah!
Same company, better position, big step.
Here's hoping....

Equal rights, equal debts. Oops!

I find my first reaction to this article to be, "So what?".

Half of Britons being plunged into insolvency are women, the highest proportion since records began, a report revealed yesterday.
It predicts official figures, which will be published tomorrow, will show women account for nearly 50 per cent of all insolvencies in England and Wales for the first time in history.

What did they expect? Traditionally it would have been the male in a relationship who shouldered the burden of any debt, but after fourteen years of over the top feminism, a lot of women no longer 'need' men as they can do anything we can. They've been brought up in a culture where they have to have everything now on credit rather than working for it, but they've also done away with the people who would have traditionally taken responsibility for the repayments.

They could do this because under New Labour, not only did they become entitled to spend money they didn't have, they also became entitled to earn money they weren't worthy of.

Women's rights to employment with an equal wage to men became a farce with women only shortlists for jobs, positive discrimination when employing females, higher wages to bring them in line with men in executive, outdoor or dangerous jobs while they stayed in the 'typing pool', and silly maternity allowances that could see them being paid for staying away from work for almost a year.

Now the tax payer funded bubble has burst, women are finding themselves out of work as fast as New Labour previously created non jobs for them.

Trouble is they still have to pay for the countless handbags they bought on their store cards. Welcome to the world of equality, it involves downs as well as ups.

Experts say they fear it is proof that women have paid the biggest price for the recession, with hundreds of thousands losing their jobs.
More than one million women in Britain are unemployed, with numbers growing by around 500 a day, amid warnings of worse to come.

When money is tight you are not going to employ someone to fix their makeup all day. Make or female, you will take on the person who can best get the job done. When there is a huge possibility that a woman of child bearing age may disappear for a year or three during the early stages of her employment, maybe you would prefer to employ a man.

Many women who do have a job are frustrated because they have been forced into part-time work, which is typically badly paid.

It happens to men too dears.

Women also account for around two-thirds of the State workforce, which means they have been more affected by the Government’s cull of the public sector.

When the public sector positively encourages employing women over men in some misguided attempt at equality for women, then of course they will be hit the hardest when the money tap is switched off and all those with non jobs find themselves out on the street.

Una Farrell, from the Consumer Credit Counselling Service, said: ‘There is a new generation of female bankrupts.
‘Women used to only become insolvent as a result of a major life event, such as marriage breakdown or ill health.
‘Now household budget pressures such as inflation, welfare benefit changes, wage freezes and reduced working hours, are pushing them into bankruptcy.

‘
No, none of those reasons are pushing women into insolvency. Entitlement and bad money management are the culprits.

Have a read of this sorry tale:

Click for gigantism

Buying a huge house, well beyond your means then attempting to keep up with the Jones's are no longer an option.

You are no longer entitled....

Pull the other one Cameron

Rising fears of cyber attacks must not lead to crackdown on internet freedom, says Cameron

Fears of cyber attacks and rising online crime must not be an excuse for a ‘heavy-handed’ crackdown on freedom on the internet, David Cameron said on Tuesday.

Addressing an international cyberspace conference in London, the Prime Minister said it was essential to strike a balance between the needs of online security and the right to free expression.

The call by Mr Cameron for human rights online to be respected was seen as a direct challenge to Russia and China - both represented at the conference - who have been pressing for tighter regulation of the internet through binding international treaties.

Sounds good doesn't it, yet this is coming from the man who wanted to shut down Blackberry and Facebook during the London riots; a move which China picked up on because Cameron has criticised them for censoring the web.

This same Government who now try to tell us they believe the internet should be free are the same ones who told us porn should be blocked at the point of delivery, and managed to bully the main internet suppliers into doing just that for new accounts.

Cameron doesn't believe the Internet should be free anymore than China does. His problem is he wants censorship with the illusion of democracy. Eventually, through reasons of porn, cyber attacks, slanderous bloggers etc, he will be 'forced' to censor the web and it will be done with the blessing of the people.

Cameron also tells us yesterday that he is 'nervous' about banning smoking in peoples cars. The only thing he is nervous about is the fact that the smoking ban has nowhere near the support he would like it to and the public are beginning to see through the anti tobacco lobby and their lies.

All he needs is someone to come out with some new and really believable junk science about the health effects of tobacco smoke in cars and he'll be rubbing his hands in glee at the thought of a ban.

I'm sorry Cameron, I'm just not buying it anymore.

Who is so interested in the polar bears?

Don't panic! We can still save the polar bears, was a post that I wrote back in December last year. Somebody is really interested in it because it's had nearly 400 pageviews this month.

Who is interested in the post and why? Do tell, I'm dying to know.

What's better, the health lottery or the National lottery? FIGHT!

Stop selling the Health Lottery, plead charities: Good causes are losing out as supermarkets push new game

 Charity leaders are urging supermarkets to stop selling tickets for the controversial Health Lottery amid claims that stores are deliberately promoting the new game at the expense of the National Lottery.

What's wrong with a bit of healthy (ahem) competition? Surely the Health Lottery gives to good causes too?*

Acevo, the association of chief executives of voluntary organisations, has written to supermarkets asking them to ‘do the right thing’ and drop the lottery because it gives a far lower proportion of revenue to good causes than its rival.

I'm sure supermarkets are very eager to do the right thing, although probably not until they've made a healthy profit, achieved a healthy market share and given the customers what they want.

The Government has asked the National Lottery Commission to investigate whether the game was damaging sales of the National Lottery.
It has also asked the Gambling Commission to check whether the Health Lottery complies with restrictions on such competitions.
It is illegal to set up a national lottery to rival Camelot. The Health Lottery has circumvented this rule by setting up a network of 51 local lottery societies – which also makes it exempt from paying the extra 12p duty a ticket that the National Lottery gives to the Exchequer.

Ooh dear me, they are avoiding tax. Somebody call security!

*I had a look at the Health Lottery website, linked above, but details on where it's money goes are a bit sketchy. They give grants to local health 'charities', and although the don't seem to mention many names, there seem to be charities of both the fake and real kind. It was only a cursory glance and I'm sure readers will know more than me.

New Ofsted head is a bell end. *Updated*

Teachers should have 'sabbatical' to avoid burnout and return 'refreshed', says new Ofsted head

See!

Sir Michael Wilshaw: The tough headmaster thinks schools should give teachers more time off work.
Stressed teachers should be allowed to take sabbaticals to ensure they are fresh for the classroom, the new head of schools watchdog Ofsted said yesterday.

He doesn't sound very tough to me.

Sir Michael Wilshaw said teaching for five or six hours a day is a ‘tough, tough job’ and has led to ‘widespread burnout’ in England’s schools.
Schools should find the money to allow staff to take a few months off so that they can return to the classroom refreshed, he told a group of cross-party MPs.

I'm sure that handing a bunch of New Labours modern kids can be a bit of a challenge, but it's not so tough a job that teachers need a few months of to recover on the taxpayers dime, on top of their current generous holidays.

Teachers currently get at least 13 weeks of paid holiday each year – almost three times that of the average worker.
In addition, school budgets are already stretched, with some facing the prospect of having to make redundancies over the next few years.

If redundancies are necessary then I would begin with anyone who thinks this is a good idea. I bet this Ofsted chap is on a pretty penny too. Let's bin him also.

But Sir Michael said: ‘I would strongly support [sabbaticals], because there is an element of burnout; people need to be refreshed.

That's what weekends are for. If these little daisies are that tired after a short working day and thirteen weeks paid holiday, they need to spend a month or two working for the private sector, to find out what real life is like.

Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of Schools and College Leaders, welcomed his suggestions. ‘We need to invest in our teaching workforce to ensure that they have acceptable working standards,’

Apparently this man believes that thirteen weeks paid leave a year is not acceptable working conditions. Well neither do I. It's far too much.

Russell Hobby, of the NAHT, said the general public underestimates how hard teachers and headmasters work.
He said heads work an average of 55 hours a week and, due to the nature of their job, cannot have an ‘off-day’ as they constantly need to ‘perform’.

Poor dears. How do the poor, downtrodden public sector cope. It's like Victorian conditions down the pit!

The NAHT is looking at plans to use part of the pension pot to fund sabbaticals so that a teacher could take six months to a year off midway through their career.

An adult worker taking a year off work and being paid to do so by their employer? It's the stuff of dreams.

Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said such suggestions were ‘out of touch’, adding: ‘Teachers already enjoy some of the most generous holiday allowances in the workplace, paid for by taxpayers.
‘Many of them are threatening disruptive and unreasonable strike action to retain unaffordable pensions.’
A national strike is planned for November 30 which is set to close most schools and nurseries in England as teachers walk out over a row about pensions.

These people have never had it better, yet still they want more.

It's time we brought their pay and conditions in line with the private sector. See how many of them are there to teach children and how many are just there for a ride on the gravy train.

*Update*

Millions of public sector workers will today be given a ‘take it or leave it’ offer over changes to their ‘gold-plated’ pension schemes as the Government tries to head off a national strike.
Ministers will tell teachers, nurses and civil servants that even after reforms are implemented, they would have to pay a third of their salary to get equivalent benefits if they worked in the private sector.
Instead, the five million state employees in public sector schemes will be asked to contribute just 10 per cent of their salaries on average.

Teachers are going on strike because of changes to pension schemes which noboby on thier wages in the private sector could hope to get. These people really do need a dose of reality.

Despite the generosity of the offer, unions are threatening an attempt to bring Britain to its knees with industrial action on November 30. Unison, the biggest public sector union, is expected to announce later this week that a million staff have voted to walk out.

I think the public sector over estimates it's usefulness. You go on strike, let's see what happens....

If you have to ask a 92 year old for ID, you don't deserve to be selling alcohol

Gran, 92, refused booze - because she had no ID

GREAT-GRANNY Diane Taylor was stunned when a shop assistant refused to sell her alcohol at the age of 92 - because she had no ID to prove she was over 18.

I don't know if I believe this story from The Sun or not, but there's a lot of weird stuff happening in our country at the moment so I'll work on the assumption that it's true.

Diane, who was born in 1919 and was eighteen in 1937 two years before World War 2 broke out - had asked for a bottle of whisky from her local One Stop Shop.
But she was surprised when she was asked if she could prove she was old enough to buy alcohol.
The great-grandmother-of-three produced her over-60s bus pass, an OAP card and even her pacemaker certificate but still the store refused to serve her booze.

We do now live in a country full of people with little or no common sense, where they can't make decisions for themselves and where they misinterpret laws, be it alcohol sales, health and safety etc, to the extreme, in order to protect themselves against an overly hyped problem, but asking this woman for ID takes the cake.

Is that the biggest bus pass ever?

The shop seem to think that what they did was ok and they have seriously misunderstood the restrictions on their alcohol licence.

A spokesman for One Stop Shop said the store had to enforce a strict 'no ID, no sale' policy or risk losing their licence.
He said: "Although we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused, staff at the store are required to ask all customers for ID as a condition of its licence to sell alcohol."

A no ID, no sale policy on people who look like they might be under eighteen is fair enough, but no court in the land would insist they ask absolutely everybody as a condition of being able to sell alcohol.

If this story is true then the One Stop Shop do not deserve to be selling alcohol at all.

It's disappointing to see that most of the commenter's are in favour of the stores policy. After seeing that the Telegraph readers don't believe the rubbish from ASH about the costs of smoking and the Daily Mail readers don't want more gun restrictions, it seems the Sun readers still need to grow up.

Kids with shotguns or self righteous MPs...

...which is the more scary?

More than 30 children aged under 10 issued with shotgun licences in past three years.

More than 30 children aged under 10 in England and Wales were issued with shotgun licences in the past three years, official figures revealed.

10 children under 10 years old issued with shotgun certificates per year? It doesn't say 'shock' figures reveal, yet I get the impression we are about to have a call for some kind of government restrictions on shotguns.

The statistics show 11 certificates were issued to under-10s last year, five in 2009 and 15 in 2008.
The figures were obtained by Labour MP Thomas Docherty, who has campaigned for a change in the law to set a minimum age for holding a shotgun licence.
Children are not allowed to use a gun unsupervised until they are 15, but the Dunfermline and West Fife MP said the rules were 'really weak'.

The rules seem fine to me. You can hold a shotgun licence but must be supervised by an adult until you are fifteen.

Mr Docherty said: 'Society as a whole is deeply uncomfortable with the idea of a seven-year-old having access to a lethal weapon.

I wish these MP's would stop trying to speak for me. I am not uncomfortable with a seven year old using a shotgun under adult supervision. I would prefer young children are taught gun safety and respect by their parents, than be shielded from guns by the nanny state, only to be introduced to them by wannabe gangsters when they get older.

MP's of the bansturbatory type make me much more uncomfortable.

'I have not heard a single coherent argument for why a seven-year-old, who has no legal culpability, should be allowed to have unfettered access to fire a firearm.'

MP's should be held accountable every time they tell a lie, preferably by losing their seat. Kids do not have 'unfettered access' to guns. They can only use them under adult supervision.
And why does he need to hear an argument for why under 10's should be allowed access to shotguns? Do we need to give MP's a reason why we should be allowed to own things, or why we should allow our children to? No we don't.

Mr Docherty, who earlier this year launched a parliamentary bid to ban under-14s from holding a licence, said senior police agreed with the need for a minimum age.
The Association of Chief Police Officers had argued that 10 would be a suitable minimum age.

As one of the comments on the article says, this man has a solution and is looking for a problem. Why 10? Why a minimum age at all? Why do these people feel a need to constantly stick their noses into other peoples business.

Issuing shotgun certificates to children to be used under the supervision of adults is not causing any problems. On the contrary, it helps teach young children the proper respect for firearms.

When there is a problem, come back.

Mr Docherty said: 'Do we have to wait until we get a tragic accident involving a seven or eight-year-old before we take action?'

I'm assuming from that off the shelf statement that there has not, so far, been a tragic accident involving a seven or eight year old (Probably not true but I'm using his words for my counter argument).

Laws get made but they never get repealed. That means that under tens have always been allowed shotguns, and probably with less restrictions than present as you look back through history. How long have shotguns existed?

Modern shotguns have been around for more than 150 years as far as I can see. That means no accidents in 150 years according to this muppet. Why does he want to regulate?

(I'm sure there have been accidents involving children, but considering how few certificates are granted it must be a statistically insignificant amount.)

The BBC ran a similar story last year and this quote is taken from there:

A spokeswoman for the Gun Control Network told the BBC News website: "We oppose the idea of anyone under the age of 18 being given a firearm or shotgun.

"We totally oppose this - children and guns do not mix.

"If people are familiar with guns they are far more likely to use them.

"If a gun is in a house people are far more likely to be affected by a gun injury accident."

If people are familiar with guns they will use them? That's the whole point isn't it? I assume they mean for criminal purposes, so this statement is completely untrue as people who legally own guns and understand gun safety are the least likely people to use their guns for criminal purposes.

As for gun injury accidents, again where people understand gun safety they are not likely to have an accident. A person who owns illegal firearms is more likely to have an accident.

The Gun Control Network is campaigning for a gun free environment. They are not campaigning to take away criminals guns though, they want yours.