For my next trick...

By crikey that Tim's a cunning man. Prior to the election in November a number of the candidates wanted his head on a plate and a number of those got voted in. If the pre-election chatter made him nervous then he must have been crapping himself when the results came in. Or perhaps he just coolly surveyed his opponents with a contemptuous eye in the comfort of knowing his contract of employment would be twice the shield against any puny arrows than might be shot his way.

Rename Their LegAssy

"Death and taxes and childbirth! There is never a convenient time for any of them!", cried Scarlett O' Hara in Gone With the Wind. How very true, and it's perhaps a thought shared by our incumbent council: people are always going to complain about taxes, so we may as well raise them (and introduce an extra one for good measure). And voilà. Or maybe it's not their reasoning at all; there may never be a convenient time for taxpayers, but there is certainly more of a convenience scale for politicians. As a general rule, tax raising measures tend to become more inconvenient as the politician approaches an election.

How convenient, then, that our members have decided to raise taxes early on in their term, when there is still three and a half years left for the electorate to forget all about it (and as the election of Member Edwards Sr shows, we the electorate here have a very short memory). Now, far be it from me to accuse them of timing the tax hike with re-election in mind, I don't think they're that cold and calcula... Well, let's just say they didn't time it with re-election in mind.

Legally robbing poor Bennies

The budget proposals are out and while much of the content was probably unavoidable I was suprised by the multi-pronged attack government is making on the lower income earners and the private sector.

Lowering the personal allowance by two thousand pounds perhaps seemed an easy win and is also somewhat difficult to argue against on first consideration, however when the lower tax band too is lowered by a thousand pounds, it becomes clear that the main point of this budget (from a tax point of view) will be to squeeze as much money as possible out of the lower paid while keeping those on more significant salaries paying little more.  The tax bill for someone with a salary in the low to mid teens will significantly increase - this in a country which has a high cost of living as it is - while someone with a salary in the 50-60K bracket not only has a much lower increase in percentage terms but the affordability of the tax increase for those more blessed is of course much higher.

It's all in the name

I felt a subtle but unmistakable loosening of my bowels when the Edwards double act was elected in November. It wasn't necessarily anything personal: I didn't feel comfortable having a husband/wife combo elected in 2001, fearing family loyalties could dominate rational decision making, and I still don't believe that a father/daughter team on council is any more healthy. And, quite frankly, the concept of "three for the price of two" touted last year scared the bejaysus out of me. But that's democracy for you.

It was the non-elected Edwards from Fox Bay that set the alarm bells ringing over the weekend though. In a letter to the Penguin News she expressed her outrage at apparent Argentine manipulation of the name of the Malvina House Hotel and invited Islanders to come up with a new title for the establishment. "Let's change the name" she urged, "and stop the dirty Argies from thinking we are proud of the name Malvinas". Or words to that effect.

Law passed, things expected to stay pretty much the same

After months of rumblings and tremors, the imminent oil exploration and the Falklands were last week cast onto the media spotlight amid a newsprint ejaculation of scaremongering, exaggeration and conjecture that couldn't have been more sensationalistic if it had included Dad's Army's Private Frazer exclaiming "We're doomed!" after every article.

All it took was a new Argentine law that requires ships that sail via here from or to Argentina to obtain a licence. Irritating, perhaps, but hardly the harbinger of an apocalypse that newspapers would have us believe. Dare I use an example applicable to today's youth and suggest that if all this was going on on Facebook, the law would be little more than a snide Argentine comment under the Falklands' status.

Eyes wide shut

Among the significant dates which may have passed unnoticed by readers of The Beak is February 2nd, which is celebrated in the USA and Canada as Groundhog Day, when the emergence from hibernation of a small beaver-like creature is taken as an excuse for all sorts of craziness. Since 1993 and the screening of a film called Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray as a TV reporter who gets stuck in time while reporting this event, the expression has come to mean something akin to a rather severe case of déjà vu.

United we fall

There is an old adage: "United we stand, divided we fall", wise words indeed but the events of November 5 would appear to bely this.

The previous council made quite a show of always presenting a united front, regardless of the debate which went before. Very admirable apparently, but it leaves the voter only one place to turn to when it comes time to mark the ballot paper.

A balanced budget?

According to Jan Cheek a balanced budget tops the Councillors' list of priorities. Therefore under current circumstances of reduced investment and fishing income we can expect this to mean that either FIG spending is going to be reduced and/or taxes and charges will be raised.

With the worldwide economic downturn it is perhaps easy to begrudgingly agree that these are our ways of experiencing the pain that everyone else in the world is suffering. However when something on the horizon suggests I might suffer pain, I'm quick to scurry about in search of reasons to avoid it.

Feathering The Nest

Watching the development (and degeneration) of discussions on here over the last couple of months from my elevated perch, it has become clear that there is an appetite for a proper discussion forum dedicated to Falklands issues. Blogs are not a good place to have a two way discussion: it is difficult to follow conversations and impossible to see if there have been any new comments unless you have a magical head for numbers or, of course, you subscribe.

So, as FIG cannot seem to get organised enough to do it - and really, why should they? - The Beak in its magnanimous role has decided to open and run a discussion forum.  The link is at the bottom of this post - we shall call it The Nest.

God bless the initiative

I had quite forgotten about the small notice in the PN to say that the BBC would be back on local FM but by chance this morning I cranked the dial to 106 in a moment of unconscious fiddling.

You can imagine how delighted I was to hear the smooth eloquence of the BBC delivering the news. I found the experience so intellectually uplifting that after just a few minutes I actually cooked breakfast by simply thinking about it and using the energy from excess IQ.

If Stuart isn’t knighted for his initiative then at the very least I hope he’ll feel the warmth of the Lord’s smile.

Constructive cynicism

The recent lack of posts belies the fact that the couple of weeks have been eventful for The Beak. Keen followers may have noticed the storm-in-a-teacup that brewed in the aftermath of the Demeaning article, but if you didn't, here's the gist of it: an accusation about an individual was made in an anonymous comment, counter accusations flew back and forth and somehow The Beak ended up getting blamed for it all. The Beak was forced to protest its innocence and close comments on the matter.

Nevertheless, a disgruntled reader followed up (or tried to) with a comment arguing that The Beak had taken a turn for the negative and had therefore lost his or her readership. This after two posts respectively praising a councillor and a decision that did away with needless bureaucracy. Tough crowd.

Jane Cameron – truly “the special one”

The death of any person is difficult to bear for family and friends, more so, perhaps, if that death was caused by accident and our sympathies go out to all those in the Falklands for whom the festive season has been marred by bereavement.

Red tapers struck down

Dullards we are, one and all. Too busy we are crying and whinging about being choked by red tape that we fail to see small victories and rejoice in them. I refer to a notice in the back pages of the Penguin News of a few weeks ago informing us that we may now import a number of types of fruit without the need for the tedium of a pile of documentation, albeit with a few conditions.

Diddle Deemail

The Diddle Dee Telegraph still works – some would say more effectively than Cable and Wireless - and occasionally brings good news from unexpected quarters. The Beak was cheered last week to discover by this medium that Sharon Halford, as one of the elected members for the Camp in this Council is now emailing all her constituents with regular reports on what she is doing on their behalf. Whether or not Sharon’s reports make riveting reading, the fact that she is sending them is a praiseworthy acknowledgement of her accountability to the people who put her where she is and, incidentally, dispels the belief held by at least one member of the previous assembly that such communication is “elitist.”

Demeaning

With no shortage of rant-worthy issues soaking up The Beak's creative juices of late, it has taken over a week to put finger to keyboard regarding a recent feather-ruffling matter.

The case in question is a brief letter in the Your Questions Answered section (aka the civil servant letters page) of the December 4th Penguin News, asking if it was true that the staff carrying out the business end of the demining operation had never done such work before. It took a couple of minutes for the implications of this question to sink in: Complete novices. Handling 28 year old explosive devices. Could someone really think this was going on? They may as well have asked "Is it true that Bactec will be using the Irish demining technique (hands on ears, one foot stamping)?"

Falkland Islands News Network - Time to bomb it?

Those of us in the Falkland Islands fortunate enough not only to get TV reception, but also to enjoy the varied range of channels offered by KTV, may have come across the satirical news programme, The Daily Show. This programme, which is broadcast by CNN and hosted by Jon Stewart uses a conventional news desk format to take an irreverent and sometimes hilarious look at the stories currently in the news.

Presumably to avoid legal action, but also for the benefit of any idiots who might be watching, the screening of The Daily Show is preceded by a disclaimer which states that the views expressed in the programme are not those of the broadcaster and have not been fully thought out. It also states that the presenter and the reporters featured are not journalists.

Sane regular readers of the Falkland Islands News Network (FINN), if there are any, and particularly anyone who has read an article of December 3rd entitled: Falklands’ Oil –Time to Defuse the Bomb, must surely be wondering why, if in the name of free speech we must permit this kind of incoherent dribble, it cannot also be preceded by a similar disclaimer.

To moderate or not to moderate

It has been gratifying to see the number of comments on the posts so far: some witty, some insightful, some not.  Unfortunately there will always be comments which take it a touch too far (just ask Rosemary Minto) which is why they are moderated on this blog.

Undone by paragraph 12

If like me you have no life and are simply killing time until the grim reaper takes his inevitable swing then you may have found yourself perusing Gazette Supplement number 12 of 2009 which accompanies Gazette number 17. Of course you will have noticed paragraph 12 of the Members’ Remuneration Bill 2009 which basically states that a Councillor may take his/her partner on one overseas trip per term of office at the expense of FIG.

The delusion of choice

Newly arrived residents and visitors to the Falklands could be forgiven for thinking that we enjoy a level of competition and choice in our retail market unusual for such a small population.

The much-publicised opening of the new West Store extension marked another battle in the seemingly endless war for our shopping baskets that FIC and the Chandlery continue to wage against each other. Waitrose, Sainsbury's... Never before have shelves offered so many UK household staples to so few. And yet, why does it feel like there is still an element of "like it or lump it" about food shopping in Stanley? And have things changed that much, really?

The opposition

Submitted by The Beak follower "Rambunctious Penguin"

Having been voted out one might expect a former Councillor to get the hint and disappear into obscurity, at least for a while. It's somewhat tedious therefore to hear Mikey Mike point scoring at public meetings and trying to tell the Councillors what they should be doing via the pages of the Penguin News. I don't think either of these "public appearances" made him look good and they suggest that he has a certain contempt for the process of democracy that said his input wasn't necessary.