88 year old Heinrich Boere, a Dutchman of Dutch-German origins, is currently on trial in Germany for the murder of three Dutchmen during the Second World War. Boere clearly sided with the German side of his family and joined the SS serving in occupied Holland. When the war was over, he admitted the killings to Dutch authorities but escaped to Germany before he was tried – presumably for war crimes. Now – an old man and 65 years after the event he finds himself in the dock.

Please let me make it clear. Boere sounds, from the newspaper reports, like a thoroughly distasteful man. He is reported to have said in an interview with Focus magazine – “Yes, I got rid of them. It was not difficult. You just had to bend a finger”. Clearly there is no remorse in this mans soul and my sympathies lie entirely with the families of those three men. They certainly do not lie with Herr Boere. And the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi regime are abhorrent and a lingering stain upon modern Germany.

But I am still somewhat puzzled by this. Whether Germany now likes it or not, the SS was a legitimate and government sponsored paramilitary organisation that carried out the will of the incumbent regime of the time. They were also in the middle of a war. And, it is claimed, the three Dutchman that caused Heinrich Boere to “bend his finger” were active members of the Dutch Resistance and, as such, enemies of the State. To Boere, his SS cohorts and the German regime, these men were terrorists.

And their execution is no different to thousands of other executions that have taken place throughout history. Wars are littered with the bodies of such people.

Now I am not unhappy to see Boere put on trial. One wonders why it took so long. But for me it raises a serious question. If 65 years after the event the current government can decide that Boere’s actions that day constitute a crime then what of every other soldier in every other war that has – or may – face the order to execute an individual for their activities against the state? Do they need to stop and think to themselves that one day, their own country may turn against them?

The big news story over the last couple of weeks or so has, of course, revolved around not so honourable members of parliament caught with their hands in the public till and the general and predictable melt-down of the Brown government. Many thousands of words have been written on this subject by professionals and amateurs alike so nobody really needs my contribution. But I am going to give it anyway and it was prompted by visiting the BBC news website this morning only to find that for a change politics was not the main story. Swine flu has made a comeback as the lead.

I found the whole media frenzy over MP’s expenses to be both indicative of what is rotten in UK politics but at the same time found the public outrage to be somewhat hypocritical. Fiddling expense claims and trying to reduce income tax liability have long been considered an English sport from the hiring of advisers and accountants by the wealthy to the loading of overtime by the rank and file. Who can honestly say that at no time in their working life have they claimed a dubious expense, put in an overtime claim for work they did not do or even stolen a pencil from the stationery cupboard? A matter of degree perhaps but it is the same form of corruption. The difference, of course, is being found out so we can all sit sanctimoniously back and point an accusing finger while conveniently forgetting our own small victories against our employer or the tax man.

What was of real interest while these revelations were being published, was the frenzied reaction of various politicians. For a while there, many of them exposed our democracy for the sham it really is. Suddenly we were being very publicly told what is fundamentally wrong with our system of politics – an inherently corrupt system that so favours the government of the day that any election victor will automatically choose to maintain the status quo. In particular there were sudden placatory calls for alternative voting systems; for an ending of the ‘whip’; for back-benchers to have more say in law and policy making and for fixed term parliaments.

All of these proposals, calls for which have recently come from all shades of the political spectrum, would greatly enhance true democracy in the UK. A voting system that allows a government to be formed without a majority of nationwide votes is by it’s nature suspect. The whipping system that keeps MP’s in line with party policy has nothing whatsoever to do with representation of their electorate or with the convictions that drove them into politics in the first place. Fixed term parliaments would remove the advantage a sitting Prime Minister has to call an election based on current public opinion. And giving the majority of those who call themselves the nations representatives the actual tools they need to represent us could be the one, single act that could change our form of governance for ever and for the better. I suspect that the majority of our population do not fully understand the difference between ‘government’ and ‘parliament’ which is the way any incumbent government like it – but over the last couple of weeks, if they were listening properly, they should have found out.

There is, I believe, very little likelihood of real change. The route from being an earnest and honourable candidate, through to a back-bencher drone making up the voting numbers, on to a junior minister, a cabinet member and finally Prime Minister is littered with compromise and an acceptance that without those very undemocratic processes at play life for a government would not be so easy.

And yesterday signalled quite clearly that we were back to business as usual. Gordon Brown announced a placebo enquiry into our voting and electoral system while another Labour party spokesman made it clear that any referendum on the subject would not be binding. But it was left up to David Cameron to hammer the nail into the coffin of the short-lived hopes for proper reform when he responded to Brown’s statement with the infantile and fallacious comment that the Prime Minister was trying to rig the system to ensure a Labour party victory at the next General Election. In that one statement, Cameron reduced what is an imperative for true reform to the usual playground behaviour of wanting to be the first on the swings. He is either stupid or – more likely – can already smell the scent of power floating on the winds. So why rock the boat?

There is a promotional ‘ad’ seen often on BBC News 24 where the Vatican correspondent makes the statement that the Vatican ‘works in centuries not in years’ and if that is indeed the case, then the current papal incumbent will not have been at all surprised to have just been served with a lawsuit pertaining to events 700 years ago. Must seem like only yesterday in fact.

I have to admit the news that The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ have filed a lawsuit to have their good name reinstated by the Vatican is one of those news items that gave me enormous pleasure. The Association’s members are, they claim, the rightful heirs to the famed Knights Templar.

In 1307, the King of France – Philip IV – had bankrupted his treasury waging wars and had borrowed heavily from the Templars. Following unsubstantiated rumours of heresy and ‘ungodly’ practices within the order, he saw having it outlawed a way out of his financial difficulties and persuaded the Pope – Clement V – to do just that. On Friday 13th October, in a well organised Europe-wide operation, Templars were rounded up, arrested and their lands and wealth confiscated. Hundreds were tortured to force admission of heresy and many were executed – most usually by burning at the stake. The Vatican always did have a thirst for blood-letting in imaginative and inhuman ways but of course, I am sure God instructed them to do this so it’s all right then.

The lawsuit, while claiming that it is the good name and reputation of the Templars that must be exonerated, also calculates that the value of land, money and possessions that were seized by the Vatican 700 years ago is, today, worth some 79 Billion UK Pounds (100 Billion Euros). I like that bit!

Bearing in mind I am just talking about the leadership here and not the millions of Catholics across the world who practice this cursed religion – but I’d like to see the modern day Templars storm the Vatican and burn everyone within out in St. Peters Square. The world would have been a better place over the last 2000 years without this evil spreading it’s hatred, intolerance and vile doctrines.

Good luck to them I say. But I would still go after the money – they have an excellent case.

This, to me, is a new sort of ‘Fuck You’ although, as far as I know it might have been going on in Bolton for years. Milton Keynes may suffer this weekly but at least it would give the people who live there something to talk about. Around here, it seems to be a new sort of nocturnal adventure.

Yes – it’s a stolen drain cover. This one was actually the replacement for the one that was stolen about a month ago. They cost, I am told, about £100 each and on the first occasion the whole street was stripped. And, of course, as you will note from the photo – when gone they leave a bloody great big hole behind, big enough to catch out the early riser crossing the road, the postman peddling along on his round and young kids going to school who notoriously don’t look where they are walking because, well – at that age, they are invulnerable.

This is a particularly nasty Fuck You. Along with the possibility of it causing serious injury this is one I end up paying for. And so do you. And, of course, the bastards who took them have an almost infinite supply. Come back next month and there will be shiny new ones.

It’s easy to point fingers but the disappearing drain cover did coincide with a small encampment of ‘travellers’ at the end of the village who sawed through a farmers barrier to make camp. You can’t help but be suspicious can you? Still, speaking personally, it could have been worse. The last time they stole anything from me it was my car which was a very big, very expensive Fuck You.

A few days back I wrote an item called The Metal Forest regarding the planting of a huge number of unnecessary signs up a local road where the number of sunken sign-carrying posts had gone from about 4 to 24 in one day.

An update is needed as you may be able to tell from the photograph. We are down to 23 after one of them vanished in the night! I don’t know if this was an irate local or a genuine theft but i suspect the latter. It was, after all, only a few weeks back that somebody stole all the drain covers from the gutters up the very same road.