I received an impressive appeal from the daughter of friends of ours in Switzerland. She is working for the reconstruction and restoration of  a school in Pacomit, southern Albania, and she was soliciting donations on behalf of International Project Aid.

I’m not a great fan of Albanians as they appear to be behind a lot of the crime in North London, but obviously this means they need more educating. I thought I’d send her £20, so I tried to arrange this with my English bank.

They were happy to help, and also to charge me £20 for the service.

So I thought: the charity gets £20, and the bank gets £20 for sending my £20 to Switzerland. Not very equitable.

Instead I’m sending cash in the post. The banks really ought to get their act together and realise that we humans live in a small, poor world and not all of us expect a seven figure bonus on top of our salaries every year.

A bonus would be nice, but it’s more than I can dream of.

Come to think of it, a salary would be good as well.

The four broadsheet newspapers in Britain in order of circulation are The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian and The Independent.

Mondays, I buy The Daily Telegraph.
Tuesday, The Times.
Wednesday, The Guardian.
Thursday, The Times.
Friday, The Independent.
Saturday, The Guardian.

On Sunday I usually buy The Observer, or occasionally The Sunday Times.

Each paper has its good points, but if it came to the crunch and I was only allowed one, I think it would probably be The Guardian — for the excellence of its graphic design more than its politics.

One thing where The Guardian and The Independent beat The Daily Telegraph and The Times hands down is that they’re not mealy-mouthed and prudish.

At one stage in the last US election Senator John McCain turned and spoke to his ever-loving wife, one middle finger on each hand extended into the air. I don’t know if The Daily Telegraph or The Times reported it, but had they done so, this is what would have appeared in both those esteemed journals:  “**** you! ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****!!!”

I hope The Guardian and The Independent were more precise.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is a Non Departmental Public Body (NDPB), established under the Equality Act 2006. Their sponsor department is the Government Equalities Office.  They have a board of commissioners who steer the commission’s work and direction.

Many of those who worked in the previous equality commissions — the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) and the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC)  — joined the new Commission, creating “a body with an enormous wealth of experience and knowledge about race, sex and disability equality and discrimination.”  Many more people have since joined the gravy train — sorry, Commission; — experts in sexual orientation, age, religion and belief and human rights and people with skills and experience in all relevant functions.

Much of this data is taken from their website. It doesn’t say that the “experts” who work at the Equality and Human Rights Commission have to be barking mad, and I am sure that some of them might actually be sane, but the members of their Board of Commissioners are clearly deranged.

They have permitted the publication of a document which claims that body scanners at airport security gates might infringe human rights.

The Commission has expressed concerns about the apparent absence of safeguards to ensure the body scanners are operated in a lawful, fair and non-discriminatory manner. It also has serious doubts that the decision to roll this out in all UK airports complies with the law.

An absence of safeguards, such as monitoring who is being scanned and how those scans are carried out, means that authorities are unable to check if in practice people are being unfairly selected on the basis of their race, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation or disability.

These last two paragraphs have been lifted verbatim from their web site. Fantastic, isn’t it?

Far better that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s rights remain uncompromised than worry about the possibility of 400 innocent people falling screaming to their deaths.

My taxes pay for this Equality and Human Rights Commission to deliver tosh like this. Instead of reporting it, why doesn’t the media treat it with the derision it deserves? What is the purpose or function of an organisation with such a laughably tenuous grasp on reality?

Why doesn’t it do the decent thing and quietly disband itself, and let its experts in sexual orientation and other highly paid professionals try and make a living in the real world — which has to pay for these bureaucratic follies?

What is an expert in sexual orientation anyway?

It’s frightfully old-fashioned to talk about it, but most of us who share a culture (i.e. who were educated in the country they now live in) have a basic idea of how to behave in public.

Yes, it differs from country to country, and what is common practice in some parts of the world is abhorrent to others.

I stepped out of a shop the other day and as I did so an old man of Mediterranean appearance — Greek, I’d guess — delivered a gob of such mighty proportions and mucilaginous integrity that there was a loud crack when it hit the pavement right between my shoes.

I stared at him in horror and revulsion but he didn’t even notice. He just shuffled past with his unconcerned headscarved wife.

He came from a country (or culture, or era) where or when spitting in public was acceptable, I guess. He thought nothing of it. I was disgusted and offended. He was totally unaware.

Then I went to the hole in the wall to draw cash. As I was hunched over, secretively typing in my PIN number, a black lad came right up to my side, shoved some papers under my nose and asked something like “Do I pay this in here?”

I was outraged. I rounded on him and shouted “Get away from me! Stand back when I’m using the ATM!”

Startled, he fell back a couple of paces. “Right back! Stand behind the line!” I yelled. People were beginning to stop and stare.

“Don’t you understand?” I went on. “Don’t talk to people when they’re using a cash machine. It’s not …” — and here I paused, searching for the word — “it’s not POLITE.”

He stared at me as if I were a dinosaur, which to him I probably was. Polite? What was polite about a transaction with a hole in the wall?

Yet keeping your distance from someone who is using a cash machine must be the most universal basic modern courtesy. He was a Brit; how can he not have known that?

When I’d finished, I turned and he was still there. I stared at him, and he sauntered slowly off, eyeballing me.

An innocent query, misinterpreted by me? Or malicious intent?

I think I was right to react the way I did, because the only way in my culture that I could interpret his actions was to see them as potentially threatening.