POEM The Snow Storm by Edna St Vincent Millay

Poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine in 1892. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry and was also known for her feminist activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work. The poet Richard Wilbur asserted, “She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century.”

Every Saturday morning on 106.9 SFM Gill Fraser Lee (@Ahappyflower) reads poems in our Tranquil Time feature at around 07:50. Today Gill reads Edna’s The Snow Storm.

Hurricane Bertha -v- England

Ahoy! A car driving along Crown Quay Lake

We had been warned about it for quite a couple days.  We knew weren’t going to receive a full lashing from Bertha – in fact, she was an ex-Hurricane – but that made it all the better because we get the excitement of extreme weather – without the real hard nosed consequences.

And so, when she arrived in the afternoon of 10th August – she came with a drum roll of thunder and an almighty clatter of rain against our windows.  It wasn’t so much that she was a spectacular sight or did lots of damage – more, she reminded us that our drains don’t work; our roads flood easily and roofs leak.  Thanks Bertha – now, can we get back to enjoying summer again?

Some of the pictures I took from around Sittingbourne during the “aftermath”!

A Sittingbourne resident starts the clear up process

More friends and neighbours help one Sittingbourne resident

A carboat

The Cheaters Charter

I hate to bash Europe and it’s Court.  I’m not one of those who bemoan the fact that they try to make our banana’s straight or rename our sausages as “emulsified high-fat offal tube”.

I should say – none of the examples above are true – they are just “euromyths” as set out in this BBC article.

However, one thing which has really concerned me lately is that the European court has backed the “right to be forgotten” and said Google must delete “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” data from its results when a member of the public requests it.

So far, most of the requests to delete data are from bankrupts, criminals and those with unsavoury things to hide.  How apt that this ruling should come from Europe – where their definition of privacy – varies greatly from what we in Britain regard as “private”.

You just need to look at France – where the actress linked to French President Francois Hollande, Julie Gayet, is suing the magazine that published photos of their alleged affair; as reported in many outlets including the BBC website.  She is suing for breach of privacy – even though the facts are true.

And then today, I read an article from the BBC’s economics editor Robert Peston about a blog he wrote in 2007 which has been deleted by google because “in my blog, only one individual is named. He is Stan O’Neal, the former boss of the investment bank Merrill Lynch.

My column describes how O’Neal was forced out of Merrill after the investment bank suffered colossal losses on reckless investments it had made.”

You can read the full article here.

The original blog featuring Stan O’Neal is here.

This is just a charter for those who have skeletons in their closet – to not only close the door- but lock away the evidence and throw away the key.  Hardly a modern democracy!

 

Baby duck reunited with family

Feel good story of the year….so far!

A cat brought home a  baby duck.  After about 20 minutes of wondering what to do the cat’s owner decided to take the duckling outside to see if it could call to it’s mother.   This is what happened…

boys and their toys – awesome flight simulator

I neither have the skill, time nor dedication to build something like this – however, Richard Hutchinson’s ambition and achievement is admirable.

I read that he’d spent £10,000 converting his spare room into a replica cockpit.

I love 3D art

ukip are MAD, but not as dangerous as the killers we keep!

How is this possible?

The current coalition Government and their opposition numbers in the Labour party denounce UKip for the “racist” and the “dangerous” language they use when speaking on matters of immigration.  I wouldn’t wish to take this valid point away.

However, how well does our Government’s record stand up to scrutiny when it comes to the immigration status of the truly undesirables in the UK?

The UK political elite state that UKip’s protestations, that there are too many ‘immigrants’ in the UK, is nothing short of dangerous racism, yet at the same time – have allowed our courts to give ‘leave to remain’ to some of the worst murders and war criminals at large from around the world.

They seem not as affronted when a foreign killer of a few or many – wins the right to stay in Britain indefinitely – after claiming his human rights would be breached if he was deported.

Or when a mass murderer is allowed to roam our streets freely because to send him back to the country that seeks him – to answer for his crimes- may use capital punishment and to that end – we will not go.

I do not agree with capital punishment – but I agree even less with a murderer or someone connected with genocide escaping to our country and using our laws to hide the justice that seeks them.

I cannot comprehend what it must be like to know that the person who killed your family member (or family) is being protected by another country- that defends them that slaughtered your loved ones the “right to family life”?

Yet we have it here in the UK.

The test for our politicians is not just to point at UKip – accuse them of being racist and hope the problem will go away – but to look at the reality of modern day Britain and ask…

Who would you rather stayed in our country?

• A mass murderer
• A student whose visa has expired

Currently – if you are on a student visa which expires – we’ll grab you by the collar and throw you out on your ear and our courts won’t lift a finger to help! However, let us say you are a mass murderer…well, errrm… “Welcome To The United Kingdom”.

Here are just a few examples…

Foreign war criminals ‘able to stay in UK’ 

Immigration judges block foreign killer’s deportation on ‘human rights’ grounds

IRA terror suspects told they would not face prosecution in ‘comfort letters’

Killers on our streets: 207 war crime suspects living in Britain including five ‘Nazis’

Britain home to nearly 400 war crimes suspects

100 war criminals apply for UK asylum in a year

 

Yet it takes years for us to deport known extremists and the only way we seem to get any kind of conviction is in a foreign court!

Abu Hamza found guilty of terror charges in US court

Britain finally deports Abu Qatada

 

And if they are not mass murders – just ordinary people – they have even more of a struggle…

Nigerian Lesbian Posts Video Plea For Asylum, Facing Death or Prison if Deported

19-year-old Mauritian student Yashika Bageerathi deported

UK decides to deport Indian girl’s entire family back to Mauritius despite protest

Community shocked as Sajid family is deported

Derry man Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh tells of wife deportation fear

 

Others just have to fight….

FORMER British Army soldier Isimeli Baleiwai fights to stay in the UK

Najibullah Hashimi seeks help raising cash to fight deportation

Convicted boat race protester Trenton Oldfield fights deportation from UK after visa denied

Thankfully they won…but only after a BIG fuss….

Soldier given leave to remain in UK

Teenager ‘over the moon’ after winning deportation battle to Afghanistan

Boat Race protester Trenton Oldfield wins deportation case

I guess the question is – what are human rights in the 21st Century and does that apply to those who seek to evade justice?

Saturday Breakfast with Jason McCrossan

Saturday Breakfast with Jason McCrossan is broadcast across Sittingbourne and Swale on 106.9 SFM. You can also listen via the SFM website: www.sfmradio.com

For more information visit: www.sfmradio.com

routing

The World’s Most Viewed Photo

From twitter account @ClassicPixs 

Bliss was the name of the default computer wallpaper of Windows XP.  The photograph was made on June 24, 1996 for the digital-design company HighTurn by Charles O’Rear, a former National Geographic photographer.

According to O’Rear, the image was not digitally enhanced or manipulated in any way.  The image was captured from the side of the highway 12/121 with a hand held medium-format camera. The approximate location is 3101 Fremont Drive  (Sonoma High Way), Sonoma, California.

3101 Fremont Dr. (Sonoma Hwy.), Sonoma, CA

 

 

The same location in November, 2006, showing vines covering the hillside and foreground.