Weather report from Blighty

Snowball chase on main street ... Free speech a danger for football manager ... Top Totty beer off in Commons' bar ... Knife victim stitched-up over trauma of giving testimony against boyfriend ... Sligo council's bullying monitor ... Leverhulme's London Calling 

You have probably heard that it has been snowing in Britain in the past few days. The white stuff always comes as a big surprise to the media and the great organs of the community tend to fail at the merest flake.

Heathrow halted half its flights after three inches of snow appeared. There was the odd traffic jam and some schools closed. The press trotted out its favourite words like, "chaos ... pain ... misery".

TV reporters stood above the snowiest highways and looked really disappointed as the cars whizzed past.

"It looks all right now but it's bound to get worse," was a typical comment.

Near my corner store, the local furniture salesman chased three youths up the path and made good ground on them before his condition gave out.

The spotty ones had been hurling gritty snowballs against his shop window. It is good practice for rioting.

The watching locals standing in a group over the road waited for the lights to change and passed comments that summed up modern Britain.

They agreed to a person that they were witnessing "disgoostin'" behaviour, and half of them chose to convict the boys.

"They should be strung-up," said one woman with a pram. Her comfortable friends agreed.

A skinny, bearded man with a back-pack disagreed and was keen to acquit.

"There's a name for grown men who chase kids."

That name didn't spring to mind because it's usually done on the internet and not on the street.

As the boys crept warily back down the road the man grassed on the sofa seller and shouted that their pursuer was hiding behind Sainsbury's door.

The kids re-armed themselves with fresh snowballs.

*   *   *

Ferdinand and Terry: squaring-upStill, old beardie was exercising his human rights and there has been cause to reflect on free speech in recent times.

John Terry, the England footballer, was stripped of the captaincy because he was charged with speaking his mind in a racist way to another footballer called Anton Ferdinand.

At this stage, the England manager Fabio Capello appears to be in strife for telling Italian television that Terry was innocent until proved guilty and shouldn't have been sacked.

So Fabio may well be stripped too; which is just as well because no-one understands what he says anyway.

*   *   *

Abu Qatada, who was supposed to be a drinking mate of Osama Bin Laden before he went fishing, was released on bail by Mr Justice Mitting.

Abu, who was born in Bethlehem, and has called for the killing of Jews, came here on a forged passport nearly 20 years ago.

Qatada: out of Jordan and jailHe had been resisting extradition to Jordan where the authorities want him for conspiracy to carry out bomb attacks. It's the sort of thing, peppered with the odd fatwa, which he has been keen to promote here.

But the highest court in Blighty didn't want to ship him off to a place where the evidence against Abu could have been procured from torture victims who were not free to remain silent.

This Human Rights malarkey is getting terribly confusing.

*   *   *

In the Strangers' Bar at the House of Commons a beer was removed from sale not because of Health and Safety issues but because it was deemed to be demeaning to women.

The Labour MP for Stretford and Urmston, Kate Green, who is also the party's women and equality spokesperson, took umbrage at the picture on a beer tap of a bikini-clad lass with bunny ears called Top Totty.

Unsuitable for Commons' strangers barNow when I lived in Australia, "totty" was not a word in popular usage but here it is favoured by engineering students to describe a highly desirable person of the female persuasion.

Kate is a fighter. 

She bravely battled an all-female short-list to win pre-selection for parliament and she continues to do good works by raising important issues such as these.

One chap wrote to the paper saying that in his pub there is an even more offensive brew called The Wife's Bitter.

Slater's Ales, which makes the Totty has reported a doubling of sales.

I don't think that's fair, do you?

*   *   *

On a much more serious note, a woman called Sacha Williams-Rowe was brutally stabbed with a kitchen knife by her ex-partner. He was charged with attempted murder.

She endured two days in the witness box, but the trial was halted when the judge fell ill.

Williams-Rowe: stab victim got seven daysThe court ordered a retrial. Ms Williams-Rowe was loath to re-live the ordeal. She asked the prosecution to rely on the evidence at the first trial, including horrific visual images of her wound.

Her request was refused and she failed to appear at the trial.

The judge, Lord Parmoor (hereditary title) issued a warrant. 

She failed to appear for a second time so His Lordship gaoled her for seven days.

When she eventually made it to the trial, the Crown accepted a plea of unlawful wounding and the real criminal got a paltry 15 months. The photo of the wound says it all.

Ms Williams-Rowe put it succinctly.

"When the judge was ill he was given time to get better, but when I was unwell I was sent to gaol even though I was the victim."

*   *   *

From Ireland comes a story of public money being put to good use. 

Sligo Borough Council is paying consultant expert Declan Naughton of Organisation Solutions nearly €1000 a time to attend council meetings. His crucial job is to monitor proceedings for incidents of representatives bullying one another.

Dec's expertise is on-going, as they say, and should cost ratepayers €54,000 if things run to plan.

So far it has been money well-spent. The expert has been unable to find any examples of cruelty to councillors.

 Perhaps the shrewd old foxes know he's watching.