The Daily Record - Joan Burnie

Gun carnage is just a part of everyday life in USA

2012-07-27T06:30:13Z

TWENTY-FIVE people were gunned down in the US yesterday.

So how come this massacre, which was even worse than the Batman bloodbath in a Colorado cinema, wasn't covered as extensively as the slaughter wrought by James Holmes? Easy.

Because, my friends, two dozen-plus is the number of people who are shot dead each and every single day in the wonderful US of A.

It adds up to around 10,000 killed and 10 times as many injured on account of the blessed Second Amendment to the American Constitution - the right of its citizens to bear arms.

It isn't foreign wars that fill the US funeral parlours with vast numbers of young Americans, but the 300million guns owned by private citizens.

Holmes himself had acquired, perfectly legally, four weapons, including a semi-automatic assault rifle and 6000 rounds of ammunition.

A brief trawl through the internet indicates just how laughably easy it is for any nutter in the States to buy himself a deadly weapon.

But don't expect either Obama or his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, to do anything about it - even though four previous presidents have been killed in office, and another six survived assassination attempts. Heaven forfend.

They're running scared of the powerful gun lobby, which as its late cheerleader, Charlton Heston, once said, would only take away their weapons from their "dead, cold hands".

Of course it would be wrong to pretend we don't have our own tragedies here, such as Dunblane and Hungerford, but the daily slaughter that is part and parcel of American life and death doesn't happen in Britain.

Nor do I gloss over the fact that knife crime in this country is a continuing and bloody problem - but can you imagine the even greater carnage there would be if we allowed every wee ned to pack a pistol?

Questions, in the meantime, are being asked about whether it was the Batman movie itself that drove Holmes to spray bullets around that ordinary cinema in Aurora.

We also know that Anders Beivik, the Norwegian who murdered 77 young people, watched violent videos to give himself, he said, the "courage" to carry out his own terrible acts. But we're assured by some psychologists that what we read and what we see have little or no effect on our behaviour.

They say those who enjoy hardcore porn are no more likely to sexually abuse anyone than those who look at Antiques Roadshow. I give you what happened after the success of the S&M novel Fifty Shades of Grey - a four-fold increase in handcuffs and sex toys.

Back in Colorado, after the massacre 3000 MORE people have applied for guns. That's REALLY going to stop the daily carnage, isn't it?

P.S. I wasn't shocked by Madonna brandishing her fake gun at Murrayfield only hours after the Aurora tragedy. Just disgusted.

Too taxing to chase the mega-rich

2012-07-27T05:20:38Z

I AM up there with Jimmy Carr because I, too, am a tax avoider. I don't have any offshore funds but, true confessions, I gave a man £50 cash to fix my front gate. Shame on me.

Or at least shame on me according to one David Gauke MP, the Exchequer Secretary who says those such as me are depriving the Revenue of around £2billion.

Listen, sunshine, the minute you start going after the super rich who have put £13TRILLION in nice, cosy tax havens, I'll stop paying the occasional handy man a few quid.

Meantime, I thought when I went to Hutchie Grammar it was a school. Silly me. It's a CHARITY, or at least it is when it comes to paying its rates.

● GOT back from a brief hol last Sunday and had to wait almost an hour to get past passport control.

Nothing more guaranteed to kill the benefit of a break stone dead.

The staff available to deal with the numbers were nowhere near adequate. So, like some MPs, do I think the Border Agency people should all be sacked? No.

They're not the ones causing the chaos.

It's the politicians who got rid of experienced officers and cut the staffing levels to the bone.

Not that they'll ever accept they got it wrong - but then Posh Dave and Co never have to face the same delays as ordinary travellers, do they?

● HM has apparently "delighted" her 500 servants by posing with them for a staff photo to celebrate her Jubilee.

Whether they were quite so delighted at having to cough up £10 for a small copy and £40 for a larger version is not clear.

Fatcat sponsors miss Olympics ideal

2012-07-27T05:02:04Z

OFF to paint a wall so I can watch it drying. Think it'll be marginally more exciting than gawping at synchronised women's darts or whatever they've decided is now a bona fide Olympic sport.

But those who are hooked on the Games better be awfully careful lest one of the 300 "compliance officers" doesn't knock at the door and catch them looking at the TV, drinking Pepsi, downing a non-Heineken lager or enjoying a hamburger, which doesn't come from McDonalds.

Oh aye and don't dare be wearing Nikes. The sponsors' rights have to be protected above the rights of people to eat and drink whatever they want, where they want.

It is beyond irony when another obesity study indicates kids are becoming ever fatter and therefore more likely to suffer from health problems that the Olympics has been hijacked by the same companies who are pumping fizzy drinks and fat-laden food into our children.

l I hear Tony Blair alleges it was his wife, Cherie, who secured the Games.

Hasn't the poor woman taken enough flack without loading that on her as well?

If she's not careful, Tone will be telling us it was she who bullied him and George Bush into the Iraq War.

Naked rambler has more than one cheek after latest arrest

2012-07-27T05:00:11Z

THAT daftie, the naked rambler, Stephen Gough, has been locked up for the nth time.

God knows what these endless prosecutions and incarcerations are costing taxpayers - even if I don't believe he should yomp around with his bits hanging out.

I have a helpful suggestion that might allow him to carry on while sparing kids and elderly ladies the sight of his meat and two veg.

If he wore a rucksack on his front, rather than his back, and with slightly lengthened straps, he could cover his, or rather our, embarrassment.

And finally...

2012-07-27T05:00:00Z

NEVER thought the real Games would deliver anything as embarrassingly stupid as the brilliant comedy and Olympic mockumentary Twenty Twelve did.

But they did, with their crass blunder over the North Korean flag. The words brewery and p*** up come to mind.

Gold Medal to LOCOG and Lord Coe.

Lady and the tramp stamp

2012-07-24T06:29:32Z

LADY Steel says she decided to get that jaguar tattooed on her left shoulder because when you're getting older, you can be more eccentric.

Too true. Age may give you wrinkles but it also gives you a licence to please yourself without bothering too much about what others think.

I have a neighbour who decided to dye her hair bright red in her 70s and a chum who, despite her adult kids' horror, bought a sports car for her 65th.

In Judy Steel's case, it's her husband, Baron Steel of Aikwood, who doesn't seem to be totally thrilled. She says he's still "uncertain" about her body art.

I confess, me too. Not because of her age but because I've always thought tattoos were more tarty than arty.

But it's not my business what anyone puts on their body, no matter how young or old they may be, so good on Judy.

Maybe it's something for which she's yearned all her life and for which she has only recently had the courage to do.

I suspect, however, it's also a small personal rebellion against all those years and years of being the wife of a prominent politician who must never ever do anything which would frighten the horses - or rather Lord Steel's constituents.

Now it's Judy's turn to be herself and do whatever she damn well pleases - and if that includes a 3in tattoo of a jaguar, good for her.

Lord Steel should be grateful as well as relieved his lady wife didn't choose a cougar...

Jesus would have winced at Cardinal's intolerance

2012-07-20T07:18:59Z

A guest blog from the Daily Record's Annie Brown

A FEW years ago in Africa I met Catholic nuns distributing condoms in a slum that housed 50,000 children orphaned by AIDS.

The nuns were driven by conscience but they acted in secret, fearing the wrath of the hierarchy of the church.

To the nuns, dogma was one thing, watching men, women and children dying from a disease, largely preventable by a little piece of rubber, was another.

Two years ago, the Pope ended the ban on condoms, saying they could be morally justified if they reduced the risk of infection from AIDS.

The Catholic Church had, albeit reluctantly, evolved.

The Pope knew if the church was to remain relevant, it had to move with the times, just as it must now on the issue of same-sex marriage in Scotland.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien this week called for a referendum on equal marriage, declaring war on its supporters.

He promised to raise £100,000 for an advertising campaign, just like the US evangelists when they steamroller the policy of their democratically elected government.

The warchest will be raised through special church collections from the over-stretched pockets of pensioners and parishioners.

The church, worth billions, should flog a trinket from its creaking vaults of riches if it wants to save all those gays from hell.

Let's face it, it bugs the cardinal that he's not running the country - and thank the Lord he isn't.

Never be led by anyone who assumes God is on his side, lest we forget Bush and Blair.

The cardinal stumbled at the first hurdle in the fight for a referendum and he will fail to prevent equal marriage becoming a legal right in Scotland.

The will of the people won't concede to the will of the church.

I respect the cardinal's right to his opinion, but I am disgusted by how he has articulated it - "unnatural", "shameful", "grotesque", all part of his vitriol.

Jesus would have winced.

The introduction of civil partnerships, he said, had "failed those who struggle with same-sex attraction".

To be fair, I did struggle for a parking space at last Saturday's gay parade in Glasgow.

He talks of being gay as an illness that should be cured. If only we could cure the sickness of religious zeal.

The Catholic Church and the Church of Scotland are obsessed by sex, yet it merits only passing references in the Bible.

The good book has much to say about the black hearts of money lenders, yet, bar the odd criticism, the cardinal hasn't declared war on the bankers.

Religious freedom is a basic human right and Catholic priests won't be forced to conduct same-sex marriages but churches who want to, can.

The church argues that the Government are abusing their power if they legislate on religious matters, but they already have.

The Civil Partnership Act says no religious activity is allowed during the process of registering the union.

What civilised society says gay couples can't invite God to their wedding?

Civil partnership is not the same as gay marriage.

In apartheid, blacks could get on the same bus as whites but they had to sit at the back.

This is about the right to choose.

The Scottish Government have postponed their decision, hopefully not because the SNP are running scared of one of their biggest donors, tycoon and anti-gay lobbyist Brian Souter.

But I know the Scottish Government will make the morally right decision in the end because it is the only civilised thing to do.

From time to time, Scotland gets lost in a fog of religious bigotry, but as a nation we are a tolerant and fair-minded people.

We will be guided by right in the end and, I think, any God, of any ilk, would say amen to that.

Naked truth is Madonna's still got talent

2012-07-20T07:13:45Z

A guest blog from the Daily Record's Annie Brown

MADGE in her pants has got the critics' knickers in a twist again.

Ever since she started wearing a conical bra, they of the big pants and sturdy underwear have been telling her to put them away.

"How can she show her nipples at 53?"declared one. "And the swearing, surely that's behind her?"

Madonna is still filling stadiums at 53 because no one can put on a show like her. She has the body of an athlete and boobs most women in their 20s would kill for.

No one complains when Tom Jones and Mick Jagger gyrate on stage and why should they?

There is a reason for their longevity and it's talent. In an age of manufactured reality pop, we should be grateful such a thing still exists.

Besides, if I had a bum like that, I would come to work in my pants too.

● MY generation remembers the teachers who would lose it in class and belt any kid who stood still long enough.

Other teachers could simply walk into class and hush descended.

When we smack kids, all it says is mummy and daddy can't cope with the power they wield.

A wee slap on the hand when a kid is edging towards a fire is essential, but smacking kids is an ineffective form of discipline and pretty barbaric.

New legislation would probably be unworkable but it would send out the messages needed to change a culture.

If a bigger kid at school hit a smaller child, it would be considered bullying.

That's what smacking a child is, whether you happen to be their parents or not.

Besides, the psychological torture of Supernanny is much more satisfying.

Staying in Nato does no favours

2012-07-20T07:06:08Z

A guest blog from the Daily Record's Annie Brown

FORMER NATO secretary Lord Robertson said the first priority of Government is to keep its people safe.

He derided the SNP's plans to stay in NATO if nuclear weapons go from Scotland.

In Faslane alone, we have four Vanguard submarines, with eight Trident missiles and 40 warheads a piece.

Each warhead has an explosive power eight times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

I get nervous on Guy Fawkes night, so all that firepower in my backyard doesn't make me feel so safe.

Exactly which countries are we planning to nuke? Apart from Iran, we trade with all the worst ones. The banks wouldn't let us blow them up.

People in Scotland aren't scared of Russia, China or Iran, they are frightened of terrorists blowing up their train or their bus.

They are terrified their sons will get stabbed walking to the garage for fags.

A warhead the equivalent of 100 kilotons of high explosive is no deterrent to  al-Qaeda or the ned.

Moving the weapons south of the Border is not much better. Any nuclear explosion north of Newcastle and we still wouldn't be able to go near Edinburgh for 300 years.

MSPs would drop like flies without Holyrood's subsidised grub, which would be the only silver lining on the mushroom cloud.

The SNP is right to dump nuclear weapons, but don't bother to stay in NATO.

Far from protecting Scotland, it has dragged us into protracted and bloody wars, made us a terrorist target and cost the lives and limbs of our young men.

Yet in Syria, NATO have done nothing. They have the might to impose a no-fly zone, which could stop the Assad regime flattening cities.

NATO's boys' club rode happily into illegal and immoral wars but doesn't seem to have the stomach for humanitarian disasters.

Leave our Andy alone to weep a while

2012-07-13T07:42:26Z

IF Ally McCoist can come over all emotional about Rangers, then Andy Murray is entitled to his own wee weep at Wimbledon.

Whether the Jeremy Vine show, which had already allowed Nina Myskow to malign Murray in a very personal manner, was right to spend another 30 minutes sneering at his tears on Monday is quite another.

Meantime, having heard some of the evidence in the John Terry trial on "handbagging", I think footballers could learn an awful lot about how to conduct themselves from tennis players.

But then the "beautiful game" has long had the ugliest participants.

● OBVIOUSLY the Lords needs reforming. It's a democratic disgrace that we have almost 900 of these unelected time servers, crooks, arsonists,and party placemen picking up £300 a day, along with all of the other lovely Westminster perks that go with their titles.

But, and it's a very big but, given the current state of the country, tying up hour upon hour of parliamentary time on it is a complete nonsense.

A large padlock and a closed sign should do it.

● ROOF leaking after the storms, need a spot of house renovation? No worries. The Lotto will help you out. It has £375million available for urgent repairs.

But this largesse is only for those with a stately home. See, we're all in this together. Not.

The wrong prescription

2012-07-13T07:40:31Z

Well, maybe. But closer examination seems to suggest that it's not just ordinary, but specialist, stuff.

That said, I was slightly surprised to be offered free paracetamol by my own GP but it was only because I needed a largish amount - don't ask - which you can't buy over the counter.

But the biggest shock was in the waiting room where a glossy mag urged me to buy one of Posh's new scarves for a mere £235! I nearly had a seizure.

IT seems some people are abusing free prescriptions by demanding toothpaste and suncream from their GPs.

Security is a Tour de Farce

2012-07-13T07:35:59Z

NEXT week I'll be on my hols, hopefully watching arguably the world's greatest sporting spectacle.

Don't be daft, not the Olympics but the Tour de France. Allez, Wiggins.

Meanwhile, we have the farce that is G4S trousering £300million to provide security for the Games but, whoops, with only days to the off, small problem, they've admitted they can't actually do the job.

So cue the poor bloody infantry who, after a gruelling tour in Afghanistan, might have been looking forward to some R & R - or in some cases their P45s - but who will now have to step into the breach. Again.

There is this bull-headed belief at Westminster that public services are bad, private ones are good.

That is why, despite all the evidence that firms such as G4S vastly inflate their abilities to perform, they still get the work.

Lord Reid, when he was in the Home Office, called it not fit for purpose.

As his Lordship is now a director of G4S, wonder what he calls them now?

Maybe he would care to tell us.

Last night of these proms can't come soon enough

2012-07-13T07:15:28Z

THE prom season is almost over. The stretch limos are back on the day job, catering for the stag and hen nights - and those unfortunate parents with teenagers still at school have started saving for next year's blowout.

They'll have to.

The cost of an average prom now comes in at around £400 but what kid, especially if she's a girl, wants to be average?

Which means there'll be some doting parents shelling out the warmer part of a thousand quid to get their very own Cinderella to the ball.

Be grateful if you've only got sons, a wee Prince Charming comes a lot cheaper, unless he wants a designer kilt and insists on sky diving into the venue.

Personally, I think the whole shebang has got completely out of hand.

Yes, yes, I know the school leavers deserve it but, come on, back in the olden days we may have had a bit of a hooley at the end of our final terms, but we didn't dress up like divas or spend a fortune on the obligatory spray tan and a fancy nail job, did we?

Of course, along with trick or treating and foreign wars, it's yet another import from the States that we could well do without - or at least do without in the way it's risen like a banker's bonus.

So I'm an old misery guts and don't the kids, not least today's kids, who have fewer prospects than previous generations, need a bit of a do before they launch themselves out into the cold economic climate that awaits them?

Well, maybe - but does it really need to be something which costs so much?

One of the sadder emails I got when I was an agony aunt was from a girl who knew her mum couldn't afford to pay for a prom frock, never mind the extras that went with it.

Could I, she asked, think up a decent excuse not to go?

Not because she was too concerned about missing the party but because she didn't want her mum to feel guilty.

Obviously, the second it was printed you lot, as ever, turned up trumps and came up with everything from the dress to a free session in a beauty parlour.

And that was terrific.

However, that was only one kid and God knows how many more of them this year developed flu, or whatever, because they knew the prom dream was way beyond their means.

I know girls, and boys too, just wanna have fun - but here's a thought.

The only way to get some sanity into the situation is if the schools take a stand and stop the spiralling costs.

Put a ceiling of £50 on the whole thing and no limos, never mind helicopters.

And how's about turning it into a competition, seeing which girl can make her own dress for 20 quid or less? In short, get inventive, not expensive.

Then everyone can participate. The last thing we need are these big fat gypsy proms.

MPs and bankers in this together.. up to their necks

2012-07-06T07:00:45Z

COME on. Does anyone seriously believe that our politicians are the fit and proper persons able to conduct a full inquiry into the banking business?

Our heads don't button up the back.

Quite apart from the fact that considerable numbers of Westminster's honourable ladies and gents have, to put it kindly, been a trifle lax when it comes to their own finances, our MPs and the banks are - or possibly were, until the ordure hit the fan - up each others' rear.

Tony Blair trotted straight from Downing Street into a £2.4million, part-time job with JP Morgan, while more than half of the Tory Party's current funding comes from the City institutions.

It stinks.

It began, I suppose, in the 80s when Lady Thatcher decided to turn GB from a country which actually manufactured stuff into something that was little more than a dirty big casino.

Anything went and heaven forfend that anyone should put the hems on these masters of the universe as they filled their boots and bamboozled everyone with their fancy dancy derivatives and anything that could be converted into cash.

Or rather fool's gold.

As we all know, it was just smoke and mirrors, apart from all the filthy lucre filtering into the bankers' own pockets.

That was real, hard cash. Millions of it. Diamond Bob - who is after another £20million for graciously quitting - has lifted £100million over the last decade from Barclays.

See, he and they were worth it - so Bolly and bonuses all round, boys. And hell mend anyone who questioned whether they actually were.

Furthermore, those who should have been doing the questioning, didn't.

Politicians of all parties were mesmerised by the spivs in pinstripes.

Just a few months before Northern Rock crashed, Gordon Brown was giving them love bites while telling them: "This is a new golden age for the City of London."

At the same time, Ed Balls, now the Shadow Chancellor, was vowing that nothing should be done to put at risk a light touch regime.

But even that "light touch" was too much for the Tories, who were squealing and squawking for even less regulation.

In short, it's all very well for MPs to come out with all this synthetic sound and fury now but it's years too late.

They're the last people capable of cleaning out the banks' stinking stables.
Oh, they'll do a bit of grandstanding, as they did on Wednesday with Diamond and previously with the likes of Fred Goodwin.

But they'll achieve nothing apart from getting their faces on the telly.

As for the so-called financial watchdogs, the FSA - a bunch of limp patsies and yes men with less bite than a stuffed spaniel.

Ditto the Bank of England.

What we need to bring the shysters down is the equivalent of a financial Eliot Ness who'll hunt down the wrongdoers and lock them up.

For all their faults, at least the Americans aggressively pursue those who rig and defraud the markets.

Here the worst they can expect is an afternoon in the Commons saying it wisnae me.

Me, I'd nationalise the banks.

Currently they owe every man, woman and child in GB something like £16,000.

If we'd been handed that cash instead and told to spend it, think what it would have done for our stagnating economy.

But hey, even yet, there are still those who bleat that we've got to keep chucking money, not just at the banks, but at those who run them.

We have to, just in case they go elsewhere. If only.

Wives at 33 a Risky Business for Tom

2012-07-06T06:59:00Z

ALL three of Tom Cruise's marriages have crashed just after his wives' 33rd birthday.

Spookeee.

THE security which the royals require is never included in the costs of keeping them in the style to which they sincerely believe every last one of them is entitled.

So not only are we stung with Prince Andrew's jollies but half a million quid to make sure his daughters fall out of their Jimmy Choos and nightclubs safely.

Then there was the £400,000 Edinburgh had to cough up because Zara Tinsdale, nee Phillips, decided she rather fancied getting spliced in Scotland's capital, despite neither she nor her groom actually living in it.

So off she trips, leaving us with the bill.

Some daft bird was wittering on in a phone-in that a president would cost us just as much.
Maybe, doll, but we wouldn't be expected to keep all his or her many relatives in right royal style as well, would we?

SEE the Wee Frees, those most conscientious of sabbatarians, have joined the digital age and will promote the Church through Facebook. Will they, on pain of eternal damnation, forbid anyone to look at it on Sundays?