Steeple Chase with a wheelchair

After having stayed in Norwich for a few months, I'm getting used to the poor condition of the pavements here.  So I keep my eyes in front of my wife's wheelchair and try to prevent bumping into holes.
At least I can do that.  It's impossible for me to keep the wheelchair completely upright when the pavement is really crooked, I'm in peace with that now. Sometimes the pavement makes you almost need to jump, but  pushing a wheelchair, that's impossible. Try to do the steeple chase while pushing a wheelchair!

                                         No possibillity to get off the pavement

Walking along I have noticed that cars are certain of getting good care. Wherever needed the kerb is lowered so the tires will not be damaged. It's really a priority.
Secondary in care is the way people in wheelchairs, on mobility scooters and with strollers are treated.  It takes me quite some strength to lower or uplift the wheelchair off and on the pavement where the kerb is not lowered.

                                         Blocking access totally

The people with cars have their own worries. The streets are often narrow (the city is old or wide streets maybe too expensive) so when they park they seek safety and so park their cars on the pavement.
That pedestrians are forced to walk on the road is not their problem. And of course the same goes for the people in wheelchairs and such.

                                          The car is safe!

It causes dangerous situations. More than once cars have passed us by while honking for minutes. I wouldn't like to try to walk with the wheel chair after midnight. In the neighbourhood it's pitch black because the local government is trying to save 20 pounds sterling a year for every streetlight they don't use in the night. So the lights in the neighbourhoods are switched off between midnight and 5 AM.
So we are restricted to the house after midnight.

                                          Blocking the pavement totally

My hope is that in the future the city council would do more about access to the pavement for people in wheelchairs and such. Maybe a member of the council should sit in a wheelchair and experience what the people do. Maybe car owners could consider the space for pedestrians and people in wheelchairs a bit more while they are parking their car. I do understand that they don't want their property being damaged, we can only hope that the city will provide more parking space where this is needed.
=====================================================

Teflon Man

Some  people say that all the travelling and exploring of outer space only gave us one good thing: teflon.
It's almost hard to imagine that there are frying pans without this material. It's great that our food will not stick to our pans like in the old day. You had to soak pans to be able to clean them.

                                                              Former Dutch prime minister Wim Kok

When I, as a Dutch man, look at British politics and especially at the Government, I am amazed.
In the Netherlands the prime minister, ministers and even the whole Government will step down when something happens that can be named a scandal or wrong doing. Even when things happened in the past, this might occur. For instance: The Dutch cabinet of Wim Kok stepped down after the reports about Srebrenica were published.
It all happened years before, but they accepted responsibilty for the things that went wrong even when they were not even in power at the moment when more than 7,000 moslem men were slaughtered by Serbs.

                                         David Cameron and George Osborne

In the United Kingdom we see David Cameron and his crew sticking to the power, while everything that can be blamed to them is gliding off them like their career is polished with teflon.

                                         Rupert Murdoch with his wife

I have seen plenty of good reasons for them to step down.  Let's see if we can remember them:

1. The scandal of the phone hacking by News of the World, the Sun, tv station Sky News and maybe by more of the newspapers of the Murdoch's News Corporation.
Murdoch's men were even hired by the government. I name Andy Coulson. He was hired after some pressure from George Osborne, who doesn't even have to appear in front of the Leveson inquiry.
Murdoch's men were put in high positions within Scotland Yard. I name the daughter of  Neil Wallis, deputy editor of the News of the World. Wallis was later arrested  on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications. This only cost Assistant Commisioner John Yates his job. He will not be punished;  it has been declared that "he made a poor decision".

                                         Rebekah Brooks and David Cameron

David Cameron was a good friend of Rebekah Brooks, former editor of the News of the World, who got arrested a few times because of being a main person in the hacking scandal.
David Cameron had several nice conversations with Rupert Murdoch. It seems that for help on the buying of more shares in tv channel BSkyB Murdoch was promising good support for the Tories. (He has been a very important money contributor in the funds of the Conservatives since the days of Margaret Thatcher.)
It didn't stick to David Cameron!

                                         Peter Cruddas

2. Conservative Party co-treasurer Peter Cruddas told undercover journalists that for 250,000 a person can get real influence on government business. For that price you can enjoy a dinner with David Cameron at 10 Downing Street, which is public property, yet used for party interest. Cash for access this was named. It seemed normal policy.
It only led to the resigning of Peter Cruddas. The whole story was dimished by naming it mere boasting of this man.

                                         Chris McManus

3. The failure of freeing Chris McManus and Italian Franco Lamolinara in Nigeria.
These men were taken by terrorists on May 12 2011. It was said that the British and the Italian government would work together on getting them free. Yet the Italians were informed at the moment the mission impossible already was taking place. Both men were killed during the liberation action of British forces and Nigerian military. The Italian government was furious. Nobody in the British government was blamed for this.

4. The scandal of the obligation for people getting an unemployment benefit from the State to work for free for supermarkets like Tescos and ASDA for periods up to 6 months. This with the threat that their allowance would be stopped if they would quit or get fired. When this became public knowledge the rules were adjusted a bit.
Nobody in the government was blamed for this either.

                                                     LibDem's Nick Clegg

This all makes me really astonished.
When somebody is being blamed it's just a person lower in rank in the system. And mostly nothing happens.
So nothing can happen to David Cameron and his crew?
I think they underestimate the common British people. They are fed up with it and show it. Not only were there some fierce student demonstrations but unions showed too that they are angry.
And the local elections of May 2012 made things even clearer. The Tories have lost 1/3 of their councillors in these regions. The LibDems of Nick Clegg lost even more, as much as half.
The next national elections will show exactly what the people think of all this scheming and dealing.

May 15 2012
Rebekah Brooks is arrested together with 5 others for perverting the course of justice. One of them is her husband, a friend of Cameron for some 30 years.
By now we know that Mrs. Brooks and David Cameron were texting on a very regular basis.

                                          Andy Coulson

More news:
(Former) Communications chief of David Cameron Andy Coulson (former employee of the Rupert Murdoch corporation was hired without the normal procedures of screening. This never happened before in history with any prime minister.

May 31 2012
Andy Coulson has been accused of perjury yesterday. According to the police he has been lying under oath about his knowledge of the hacking of phones.

                                         Lady Warsi

Lady Warsi, the co-chairman of the Conservative Party is under fire about dishonest claiming expenses.
She claimed having expenses because of having to stay in London. But she seemed to have stayed in the house of a friend for free. So there were no expenses. Now she states she payed someone else.
Her claims will be investigated by a parliamentary commision.

Lady Warsi is very important for David Cameron. She is a very outspoken lady. After losing the latest elections she declared that Labour was the real losing party for not gaining more seats. It was a real landslide, Labour gaining more than 850 seats in local councils.
She was parachuted in government by giving her nobility. After becoming a baroness she could get a seat in the House of Lords and so get into the government.

The dirt gets closer and closer to this government.

In other countries the coalition party (LibDems) would step out of the government and would stop supporting it. Nick Clegg is not doing this because this would lead to elections. Having elections in this period would be a disaster for his party. It would be swept from parliament.

June 4 2012
A bit of news again.
There are new developments in the Lady Warsi case.
She admitted not to have included rental income from a flat she owns in Wembley in her income in the Lords register.
More and more politicians ask her to step down from government while investigations go on about her falsely claiming expenses about renting a house while she stayed there for free.
The person accusating her is Wafik Mustafa, an influential conservative man who runs an Arab Network.

She apologised for not letting be known that she owned a business together with a relative. This company was involved in outreach events of the British High Commission in Pakistan.
David Cameron has asked Alex Allan to check if no ministerial code has been breached.

                                         Jeremy Hunt

And then there are the problems Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, got in.
He had to handle the bid of Rupert Murdochs company News Corporation on BSkyB, taking this over from Vince Cable who had quite a bad relation with  News Corporation. He was supposed to look at it in an unpartial way, but it has been proven that he had a very warm contact with the bidder. Even giving him important information without being asked.
This was initially denied in the House of Commons. More facts and messages to and from Murdoch showed up at the Leveson inquiry.
Within 25 minutes after being questioned, David Cameron could already tell Jeremy Hunt did nothing wrong in the process. This while most people are convinced that Hunt has lied to the members of the House of Commons.
The problems already caused the resignation of his special advisor Adam Smith.

                                         Adam Smith

Maybe things now really start to move. Nick Clegg was being asked if he would support Hunt in the House of Commons. Clegg refused to tell the reporters he was going to do such a thing.
Without the LibDems supporting him Jeremy Hunt will not get through a voting about his functioning.

June 5 2012
Amazing!!!!
Even the celebrating of the Queens Jubilee can result in a scandal.

                                         The stewards under the London Bridge

The pageant needs to be guarded, people guided and protected so private companies are hired to give safety. Because the police can't do it, caused by cutbacks and therefore shortage of policemen.
But the private companies want to do things cheap.
So the Work Experience Program came in very handy.
The firm Close Protection UK "hired" 80 jobseekers and persons on "apprentice" wages to do the work.
They were transported by buses from Bristol, Bath and Plymouth to London.
They arrived at 3 AM and had to wait under London Bridge till the morning.
Then they had to change clothes in public, putting on a sort of uniformed clothing. The women in this group were told that they could change in a bus. Because the bus was closed they had no choice but to change in public too.
This group of stewards had a work day of 14 hours without payment, working under the threat of losing their benefits if they would refuse or not delivering a good job.
After their long working hours they were brought to a swampy area where they had to sleep in tents.
For 24 hours they had no access to a toilet.

                                           Molly Prince

The managing director, Molly Prince, denies that the group has been exploited. She stated that the clothing was worth 100 pounds. And she added that if her company will get in trouble because of this, it would result in the firing of hundreds of workers. And she will evaluate what happened.

                                         Lord Prescott

Former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Prescott has questioned Theresa May, the Home Secretary, about the whole thing. Asks if no laws or employment standards has been breached.
Of course you can ask too if safety of the public wasn't at stake. The stewards were not qualified for this type of crowd controlling work. I don't want to think about what could have happened!

                                         Theresa May

In a country like the Netherlands the Home Secretary would be declared responsible and there would be a lot of people asking her to step down. Again, I'm very interested what will be the result.

July 24 2012
It just became clear that Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks have to stand on trial because of the listening in on phones and the messing around with texts on phones. Against Coulson there are 4 accusations, against Brooks 3. With them there are 6 journalists who worked for News of the World who will face charges.
So again: the legal threats are getting nearer and nearer to David Cameron. How can he ever be sold as trustworthy again?

Then there is the continuous ridiculous story about the safety for the Olympics. Company G4S was given a contract worth lots and lots of money. But more and more it became clear that they totally screwed up.
How can you train your staff handling x-ray scanners in 20 minutes? It's clear that you can't.
G4S was going to supply 10,000 security people. Only a fortnight ago they admitted they could only submit 7,000, so the military have to fill the gap by sending 3,500 personnel and they have already 1,200 extra close by in case it will show that G4S is causing a bigger gap. A good example of how you can make a mess by privatising security.
We already saw that during the celebration of 60 years of governing by Queen Elizabeth the "voluntary" security staff had to spend the night under a bridge and had to change clothes in public view.

December 1 2012
Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks will stand on trial because of phone hacking and bribery.

                                               J.K.Rowling (one of the victims who spoke out)

Today and yesterday there was a lot of discussions about the Leveson report about the abuse by the Murdoch press. Leveson comes with propositions about having more control of the press.
David Cameron won't have any of it, is not going to do anything with the report.

                                         The report

The victims are very angry: they ask why they had to go through all their misery again giving evidence to Leveson and his committee while the prime minister knew in advance he would not do anything against Murdoch and his newspapers. Now members of parliament are thinking about making a new law based on the report themselves.
David Cameron will get away with it. Like always.

I expect that Rupert Murdoch slowly will sell his British newspapers and will withdraw from the UK totally. In the meantime he already bought the Dutch tv rights on Eredivisie football (and is expected to buy the rights on the national team as well). And he owns a large part of SBS, so he can give the Dutch what the British are despising: Murdoch's way of giving the news.
==========================================================

Darkness

It was very surprising to see that the County Council of Norfolk did what they already announced last year.
Street lights are turned off in parts of the city of Norwich. About 4,000 lights are switched off. It was announced this would be between 12 and 5, giving a saving of £ 35,000. Keeping on a light extra is costing
£ 20 per night. Last night I noticed lights were off from 1 AM till 6 AM. It was a cloudy night, so pitch dark.

There were a lot of protests to prevent that this would happen, but the council has dismissed every complaint.
Predictions that streets will especially be dangerous for women have been rebuffed by statements that lights will be kept on on streets where there is CCTV. So these streets have double protection while others are kept totally in the dark. Should women restrict themselves to these streets? How to get into the neighbourhoods?
The streets in neighbourhoods are in the dark.

What happened to the 24 hour economy in the UK? Everything has to come to a standstill at 12 (or 1 AM)?
The government is going to decide for the people at which hour they should be in bed? What will happen if criminality really will rise, when people will feel less safe on the streets. Turning the lights on again?
I fear that will not happen. I predict more police on the streets, demands on harsher punishment. Should there be a curfew?

After 11 PM there is hardly any bus transportation. All pubs should close at 11 and people should have to rush home by foot when they don't own a car or can't afford a taxi. Going to the theatre will cause problems for these people for the same reason.
The Council doesn't care for people doing shifts that cause them to go home on nightly hours. Better paid jobs and people who own their own business mostly will not have these problems. So this will mainly hamper the lower classes.

It reminds me a bit of what my parents told me about the times when the Germans occupied the Netherlands.
The years 1940 till 1945. There were curfews and police was patrolling the streets and would shoot on sight. Shoot first, ask questions after a hit, was the policy.

I just saw a very significant article: Brasil surpassed the UK on the list of the largest economic countries.
Which will be next?
==========================================================
It's the last day of the year 2011. I just read this article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2078947/Street-lights-dark-road-soldier-killed-Christmas-Day-accident-switched-save-cash.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
The first victim because of this stupid decision!
Does this mean that a life is worth £ 35,000?
It really makes you think!

January 4, 2012
A storm passed England last night. It happened to be the night that the good people of this neighbourhood are supposed to have their bins out. They are always emptied very early in the morning.
This time the wind decided to blow them over and empty them.
Normally this would have been a nuisance, but with the lights out it was really terrible. I could save our bins but the rubbish was already untraceable when I got to these bins and their lids. This morning I saw at the end of the street a garden filled with the rubbish of our bin and some more. The poor neighbour was trying to clear his garden. With some light I'm sure we had been able to prevent this at least a bit and the same goes for other neighbours. We only had a little torch.
There is still a lot of rubbish on the street, not sure where this came from. I'm certain it will not be cleaned by the city.
==========================================================

How Governments show they are busy with fighting the crisis

It was not hard to notice in the news that both British and Dutch governments were showing how determined they are finding solutions for the economic crisis.
The Dutch government is allowing the people to speed up on the highways; 130 will be the standard instead of 100 or 120. In the Netherlands on certain highways there was even a limit of 80 because of fighting the air polution. The right wing government of Rutte noticed that the air quality has improved so in their opinion there is no objection anymore to speed up a bit more. In my opinion the pollution will be at the same height as before the speed limitations. And it will be more costly to drive a car because of using more petrol. The only people who will really see a profit are stockholders of oil companies.

                                           

Another brilliant idea came from the Dutch minister of Education. People should be more concerned with their children in school. So they should be more busy to control childrens' hair on lice and help with reading in class and so on and so on. She gave herself as an example for the population. She is and was a very busy person so she hired a nanny who also helped out in the schools. People should put their children on the first place and maybe should even work less. The professionals already warned against this: parents should not interfere with the new methods schools are using for educating mathematics and reading. The only result would be that children will get very confused.
And this all is very contradictionary to what the economics in the government want: everybody should work more for less salary and work longer too. And mothers should not stay at home, no more kitchen subsidy for couples! Everybody has to get a job.

                                             Lice mother

Both ideas don't help fighting the crisis at all. Only thing is that it doesn't cost the government a penny.
The common people will pay for it.

                                         David Cameron and George Osborne

In the United Kingdom you see similar things.
Historic is the campaign that has been started about having a keen eye on your older members of the family during the Christmas period. People should report signs of dementia to their GP.
Does David Cameron think that common people are educated in health matters? I would expect GPs to become very busy with reports about people's parents and grandparents being a bit forgetful. If this really would be carried out loads of people over 50 will reported about. It's well known that at about that age memory is working less good. The elderly should be cautious celebrating Christmas with the family...

                                         An elderly person

Another idea is : The Big Society.
It's all about a retreating government sold under the name of restoring old social networks and so giving people a greater feeling of safety and possibillities of getting help from their neighbours and family instead of from the government. More social control will get the streets safer and will get people of drug and alcohol abuse. Volunteers should take control in neighbourhoods and charity should take over from government funds. It's all based on the theories of Phillip Blond. He expressed his thoughts in the book "Red Tory".
This all should be subsidised by the government. The money needed can be found in dismantling certain government agencies and stopping subsidies in companies that work for the government.
My problem with this all is for instance that all depends on the common Brit, the wealthy will have no part in this. I can imagine easily how people get home dead tired from their underpaid job, having a fast meal and then have to go out to do their voluntary duties.

                                         Phillip Blond

We here see the same as in the Dutch case: it's all on the cost and responsibility of the common people.
I do hope in both countries enough reasonable voters and politicians will recognise this and will vote against it or will speak out against it.
=================================================================

When you are born being 10 pennies you will never become 20 pennies

In the Netherlands we have an ancient song ("Als je voor een dubbeltje geboren bent, word je nooit een kwartje"). Translated into English it would be something like "When you are born being 10 pennies you will never become 20 pennies". I had to think about this when I read an article about poverty in the Netherlands.
In the article they came to the conclusion that in the Netherlands 15% of the children will stay in poverty when turning into adults.

                                          Homeless in the Netherlands

Children's poverty has a bad influence for the social life of children; there is a chance of isolation. Poor children will never go on a holiday, will not join in schooltrips, will not give their friends in school a treat when they have their birthday, will not have a birthday party and will wear "funny" clothes.
What is even more important: poor children achieve less in school.
For the parents having a job is not a guaranteed solution for ending the poverty. Because of low wages and the high cost of living it's often needed that there are two persons in a household with a steady income.

I wondered what the situation would be in the UK.
I found alarming figures and I understand that Nick Clegg has intentions to fight children's poverty;  at least there is a plan. The future will tell us how much really will be achieved while national cutbacks are still going ahead.

                                            Poor neighboorhood in England

I will try to compare figures against each other.
In the Netherlands 6.2% of the population lives in poverty; in the UK 23%.
In the Netherlands 311,000 children live in poverty, that is 9.1% of the children; in the UK 3.5 million, that is 30% of the children.
The unemployment rate in the Netherlands is 4.1%, in the UK 7.8%.
Of the 27 countries in the European Union only 6 countries do worse in statistics about poverty.
These are: Croatia, Estonia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia and Malta. Two countries are on the same level as the UK regarding poverty: Italy and Spain.

                                                        Foodbank in Norwich (UK)

In the Netherlands 15% of the children in poverty will remain in that after becoming adults.
I did not find a calculation of this for the UK, but other graphics and statistics make me believe this is more than 40% in the UK.

                                         Foodbank in Amersfoort (the Netherlands)

                                         Clothingbank in Amersfoort (the Netherlands)

I had thoughts about this, there should be a reason why there is less elasticity in changing from position in society. I can only think about the more awareness about your own class in that society. It's completely the contrary of the old American dream : newspaperboy that fights his way to become a millionaire.
It's really an absence of ambition and hope for a better future.
I do hope the program of Nick Clegg will bring a change in this, but again: I have my doubts.
===========================================================

UK resembles Iran in this case

In the summer when temperatures are getting nice, a common spectacle is a water fight between children. They will attack each other with water pistols, supersoakers and waterbombs (little balloons filled with water).
And it's not surprising that students do the same and even organise elimination competitions.  They act like snipers in a sort of gang war that can take weeks.  A person who is shot wet, is declared "dead" and out of the game.

                                           Water fight in the Netherlands

                                           Water fight in Thailand
                                       
It's not surprising either that throwing and shooting water at each other is popular in other countries too. When you go on the internet you can find loads of pictures of water fights.
The water fight can even be found in the Guinness Book of Records: in 2007 there was a water fight of 2,671 people in Spain.

                                             Water fight in Thailand

You can even see water fights in reality shows.  This is a picture of a fight on the final episode of Jersey Shore on July 31 2011.

                                           Water fight in TV programme Jersey Shore

First it strikes you as odd that in Iran dozens of youngsters have been arrested by the morality police because of taking part in a shameful and corrupt event.  Some were forced to go on TV and admit they had been acting against the law.  Because of the water,  niqabs were sliding down and the girls were showing too much hair and sometimes the forms of their body could be vaguely distinguished. The mullahs and ayatollahs probably never were young themselves. I think the youth should be able to have some fun. But we know rules are very strict in Iran.
I read that these water fights are organised on Facebook just like they are in other countries.

                                           Water fight in Tehran, Iran

                                                        Water fight in Tehran, Iran

It really hit me as very amazing to read that in Colchester (U.K.) a young man of 20 has been arrested because of organising a water fight on Facebook. His arrest is based on a law dealing with heavy criminality installed in 2007. A second man was arrested but later released without charges.
It shows the danger of the super soaker for British society!
=====================================================

Are the riots and looting in London anything new?

                                           Tottenham riots 2011

Everybody agrees on the fact that the death of Mark Duggan ignited the riots and looting that are taking place in London, Manchester and Birmingham. The man got shot.  First the people are told that the police were firing back when he opened fire and so he got hit.  Later the story changed into he was armed and considered dangerous.
There are two stories about what he was.  His family and friends tell  that he was a true family man, not really innocent but certainly no criminal. The police keep to the story that he was an important gang leader and a crack dealer. I fear we will have to wait a long time before the truth comes out about his life and death.

                                           Mark Duggan

It does show again that the police are not  great communicators.  There have been incidents before and the people don't forget. There was the death of newspaper salesman Ian Tomlinson in 2009 who happened to be in the neighbourhood when there were demonstrations.  He had nothing to do with these,  got hit anyway and died because of it.  Stories the police told were untrue,  there was plenty of filmed material to prove it.  Last year the lawyer Mark Saunders was killed after being surrounded by 59 policemen for hours.
And there was the case a few years ago of the Brasilian Jean-Charles de Menezes who got shot seven times in the head because the police thought he was an islamic terrorist.

                                           Death of Ian Tomlinson

Furthermore the police lost a great deal of respect because of the close connection between the top of the police and the tabloids of Rupert Murdoch. The disappearance of The News of the World will not change this  for the public.

                                             Margaret Thatcher

When we go back in time we see the riots of Brixton in 1981. These were the days of Margaret Thatcher and  her economics. The poor saw that they were getting poorer and the rich were getting richer. There was a lot of dissatisfaction and it caused the uprising of mostly black poor people. This was caused even more because of the police being close to being racists. Thatcher was not a person for showing mercy:  the miners and the Argentinian army (Falklands War) have witnessed this.

                                           David Cameron and George Osborn

David Cameron has a different approach. He wants everybody to share in his Big Society. Till now not everybody sees that there is an equal sharing.  According to Cameron the youngsters in the gangs just need more love.  Till now there have been more words than action, we still wait for the first signs of "Hug a Hoodie".

                                           The Gordon riots by painter Seymour Lucas

Some newspapers claim that there is an organisation behind the riots. The looters are in contact with each other by mobile phone and blackberry. There is no proof of this. I doubt if they need these.
There have been riots and looting since there are people on this world.
The largest riot in history in London happened in 1780: the Gordon riots in which almost 300 people got shot by the police.

                                           Crowning riots in Amsterdam in 1980

And of course it's also not a real British thing, think about the riots in Paris and several other cities in 1968.
And of the riots in the banlieus in France in 2005. Even the Netherlands had their own, for instance the Crowning riots in 1980. The use slogan of the rioters: "Geen woning, geen kroning". No house for us, no crown for you (Beatrix of Orange).

                                                    Eel pulling

                                                           Eel uprising in Amsterdam in 1886

A legendary riot is the Eel uprising in 1886. A policeman hindered a game of eel pulling. The eel pulling game was officially forbidden because it was a bit cruel. A living eel was bound on a rope that was hung over a canal. Little boats would go under it and try to get it off with risking to fall into the water.
The bystanders became angry with the policeman and he got a severe beating. Other policemen came to arrest the people responsible. Things got out of hand, a big riot resulted and 25 people got killed by the police.
According to historians it really was caused by a big gap in wealth between rich and poor. Not having a mobile phone or a blackberry did not stop the rioters.
Nothing new is happening in England.
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