Crook? That's ok your pass is still valid

Were I to do something as stupid as robbing my employer I'd expect to be sacked, I certainly wouldn't expect to keep my loyalty card to the company shop and premesis. yet this is exactly what's still on offer to the troughers of Westminster.

Times.

DISGRACED MPs will retain their privileged access to the House of Commons even after losing their seats in parliament.

Almost all will be entitled to a parliamentary pass for life as a result of a secret ruling by Michael Martin, the Commons Speaker who was ousted during the expenses scandal.

In the past only MPs with long service in the Commons have been able to obtain the pass, which gives access to the buildings and meeting places.

The ruling could help departing MPs to market their continuing connections with parliament to political lobbyists. Former members are forbidden from using the pass for lobbying, but there are no safeguards to stop them doing so. 

Documents acquired after a two-year freedom of information battle with the Commons authorities show that 25 of the 200 former MPs who have a pass work in lobbying.

Sir Alistair Graham, former chairman of the committee for standards in public life, the parliamentary watchdog, said: “Access to parliament provides an incentive for lobbyist companies to employ ex-MPs.”

And they wonder why they are held in such contempt? They wonder why the public refuse to even discuss politics anymore or get involved. There is a place for those politicians involved in robbing and cheating their employers (that would be you and I) and it isn't the Palace of Westminster it's HMP Belmarsh!

They've even given up pretending to care, they claim the title honourable, but there is scant honour in these thieves.

Vote for change?

Do the Tories still believe that somehow Obama's slogan will match their ambitions? Haven't they been watching as he's slid down in the approval ratings? Didn't they notice his lack of support for the UK's stance over the Falklands recently including sending Clinton (Mrs) to talk to the Argentinian leader?
So why now pick a slogan with such a tainted past?

BBC.

The Conservatives will contest the general election on six themes, the party has announced at its spring conference in Brighton.

They cover the national debt, the economy, family, the NHS, schools and changes in Westminster.

David Cameron dismissed criticism that the Tories were too "timid" in a video post on his WebCameron blog, saying their plans were "bold and radical".

Labour's Douglas Alexander said the proposals were "reckless".

The Tories have revealed their election slogan will be "Vote for change".

Well, lets look again at some change.

1. Barnett Formula? Nope no change there.
2. West Lothian question? No real change there either.
3. EU? Promise of useless renegotiations and referenda on major changes conveniently ignoring the fact that after Lisbon we wont get a chance as it's self amending.
4. Economy? Promise to match government spending targets. No change then.
5. Education? Promise of voucher system, but still keeping state control over the curriculum and no doubt all the useless trivia and regulation that goes with it.
6. Family? Obsession with marriage, though not strangely enough those of us who choose simply to live together.

Don't get me wrong I think there will be changes, but more likely it will be change forced upon us (the country) rather than changes made to the way we live by the politicians, in other words they'll be reacting rather than acting.
The Tories are also trying to hide the fact that most of our regulations come from another source too. Much of what will happen to the UK after the election will come from the EU, not Westminster.

So, Vote for change? Not really, the only changes will be the faces behind the policies, not the policies themselves.

Poll axed

So what do the Tories stand for? or rather what does Ding Cameron stand for?
People (at least 36% of voters would like to know)

Guardian.

David Cameron today suffered a blow when a poll revealed that fewer than one third of voters "know and like" what the Conservative party stands for.
The ComRes poll, commissioned by the BBC's Daily Politics show, also showed that 36% of voters did not know what the party represented.
The figures were published at the end of a week that has seen a series of polls showing the Tory lead over Labour narrowing.
A poll in the Daily Telegraph today revealed that the Conservatives were now ahead by only five points.
Some Tories believe the party is in trouble because it does not have a distinctive message, and the ComRes figures appeared to confirm this as a problem for Cameron.
Only 28% of respondents to the ComRes poll said they knew what the Conservatives stood for and liked it.
Some 36% said they knew what the party stood for and did not like it, and the same proportion said they did not know what the party stood for.
The Ipsos Mori poll for the Telegraph, published on the eve of the Tories' spring conference in Brighton, is likely to dampen spirits at what is intended to be a launchpad for the election campaign.
The Conservative lead has been dramatically cut back from the 19% recorded at the time of last year's spring gathering.
The poll shows the Tories on 37%, Labour on 32% and the Liberal Democrats on 19% among those certain to vote.
The Tory slide continues a trend that has seen Cameron's advantage dip consistently into single figures since the new year.

Well the Tories and Ding have a number of faults...

1. Being "The heir to Blair" is no longer a recommendation, if anything it's now a millstone.
2. Reneging or appearing to renege on a promise particularly over the EU is not going to make you popular in England (in particular) so saying no referendum over Lisbon was a big mistake.
3. Telling a group of Scots about "Sour little Englanders" is not going to go down too well with the English voters who are the majority of voters for your party.
4. Telling a group of Scots that it's ok for them to vote on England only issues when the reverse isn't true as there is a Scottish parliament and many areas are devolved to it and no longer under UK control. Trust me this isn't going to go down well either, particularly as you promised to do something about it.
5. Ken Clark, the man might be a good politician and a brilliant ex chancellor, however sending him to Brussels to secretly negotiate with the EU is like a red rag to a bull to many of the EU sceptics who might have been inclined to vote for your party. He simply can't be trusted on EU matters.
6. Control freakery, your top down management of the Tory party complete with all women short lists and favoured candidates parachuted into constituencies doesn't look any different to Labour control freakery.
7. Tying yourself to the Green religion when their global warming climate change dogma is falling apart at the seams isn't the wisest of choices, if it ever was.
8. Pleasing or trying to please minority interest groups at the expense of the majority is never going to get you elected or make you popular, particularly if it isn't fair or evenly handed, it looks like favouritism.

That's just the ones off the top of my head, can't really think of any policies of yours I like, certainly not the buying tainted bank shares.
Problem with Ding and his Tories is they make UKIP look good, good enough to vote for anyway.

The lights are going out

Those of us who have done a bit of checking into the background of the power situation know there is a crisis coming. Our ageing power generating plants are coming to the end of their useful limits and succesive governments have failed to upgrade them, failed to build new ones and have fallen for the Green religion con trick of global warming climate change coupled with useless renewable energy from unreliable sources (cold day often enough = no wind)

Telegraph.

Forget global warming – the more pressing problem is that the lights are about to go out. Look at the projections, and you will see why Ed Miliband, the Cabinet minister responsible for energy (there have been eight since 1997), should be up at night worrying. Over the next seven years, all the assumptions about where our power comes from will be overturned.
Five years ago, Britain became a net importer of fossil fuels. The depletion of North Sea oil and gas means that we are depending increasingly on foreign supplies. In 2000, we imported just one per cent of our natural gas supplies; now it's nearly half, and the National Grid expects it will reach 70 per cent by 2018. On Tuesday, Oil & Gas UK, which represents the industry, issued a warning that without more investment in the North Sea, its contribution towards our energy needs will continue to dwindle.
At the same time, generating capacity is set to drop off sharply, as ageing coal, gas and nuclear power stations are taken out of service. As so often, Europe is playing its part, in the shape of the EU Large Combustion Plant directive, which says that they should be cleaned up at vast cost or closed. The Government admits that by 2020 the lost capacity will be vast – 22.5 gigawatts, or almost a third of our total requirements. The graphs show that if no action is taken, our energy supply will go downhill faster than Amy Williams at Vancouver.

What needs to be done (but wont, thank you EU) is that the environmental levy on all fuel bills be either scrapped or put into building power generating plants that actually work when the wind isn't blowing. We also need them quick so that means coal or gas and as we're sitting on masses of coal I'd opt for that as we'd at least be in control of our supply. We can even use existing technology to make them as clean burning as possible, but we need them soon. The EU wont let us however as it doesn't fit in with their policy of environmentalism at the cost of all else, which is just another reason as far as I'm concerned to leave.
Politicians are very aware of public opinion (even when they choose to ignore it) but they wont like what's coming when the lights start going out and people start freezing to death mid winter about 2017/18 I doubt many will survive the experience (including those who got us into the mess assuming they haven't jumped ship abroad)
I don't know about you, but I'm sick of short termism in politics, with those in charge seemingly unable to see further than the next election. This coming crisis should have been sorted out 10 years ago during the good times, but it was ignored by the fools in charge. We need the next government to go for a crash course in power station building, and the cost on top of the recession will be heartbreaking as the countries just about bust, yet anything is better than the result of letting the power die.

Not racist, just silly?

A store in Scotland had a little word in its ear from Grampian police.

BBC.

A company selling "Anyone but England" T-shirts for this year's World Cup has rejected suggestions it is racist after police in Aberdeen visited its store.

Police warned Slanj, which also has stores in Glasgow and Edinburgh, that a window display featuring the shirt could cause offence.
Grampian officers advised a store worker to consider whether the display was appropriate and should be removed.
A spokesman for Slanj said staff were "flabbergasted" by the warning.
Ross Lyle, from the company, said: "To be honest we're absolutely flabbergasted.
"We have been selling this T-shirt for the past three months and we've had a great response.

 

"Even the English people who come into the store think it's a laugh and just a bit of tongue-in-cheek football banter.
"We're certainly not being racist. We are the same race as the English. It's just daft to say it's offensive."
A spokesman for Grampian Police said the force's visit to the Slanj store was not in response to any public complaint about the shirt slogan and was prompted by an officer acting on his own initiative.
In a statement, the force said it was purely an "advisory visit" and there was no criminal investigation as a result.
Pc Kirk Hemmings added: "The primary role of any police force is to preserve the peace and we would be failing in our duty if we did not make people aware of the potential for disturbance such a window display could cause.
"The Grampian area, in common with the rest of the country, has recorded incidents relating to nationality and we have a responsibility to do our best to ensure that incidents of this nature are kept to a minimum.
"The public expect no less of us."

 No, it's not racist, though only the Celts would do such a thing, there really isn't the interest in anything they get up too in England unless they're playing us, only mild interest when they do occasionally qualify for anything important, then treat as England B and move on. Still I do wonder what the reaction would be if anyone produced an "Anyone but Scotland" tee shirt, howls of anguish perhaps or as the most of the English do, take it in good part?
Heaven forfend though if anyone were to produce an "Anyone but Pakistan/India/Jamaica" tee shirt. That I could imagine setting the alarm bells off in "Righteous" central. Yet it's the same difference isn't it?
I doubt many on the left (with certain honourable exceptions) would get offended by a "Death to Israel" tee shirt, or perhaps a "Destroy the USA" after all to them the USA is the one nation they feel obliged to slag off.
Yet the same principle applies surely?

Or is it never racist when it's England, the USA or Israel? After all hypocrisy is second nature when it comes to defending your own behaviour, just ask any politician.

Pop goes the weasel

The Guardian is in full gloat today over the latest opinion polls showing the Tory lead narrowing over Labour.

Guardian.

 

Guardian/ICM poll graphic, 22 February 2010, showing the Tory lead falling to just seven points. Photograph: Paddy Allen/guardian.co.uk

Support for David Cameron's Conservative party has crumbled to its lowest point for nearly two years, according to the latest monthly Guardian/ICM poll, leaving Britain on course for a hung parliament at the coming general election.

What interested me though is where the Tory votes are going and it appears to be going to the independents and (most likely) UKIP, because for all the idiocy of socialists and their far right tags on the BNP, most Tories see them as racist Labour and their policies certainly reflect that.
The Tories really need a serious look at where they are going, the rot set in when Cameron's hand was forced over Lisbon and his EUphile credentials were exposed to the light of public opinion. The wait and see, he's only biding his time proponents are suddenly looking to be very out of place as everything Cameron proposes seems to aggravate the voting public even more. The latest gaff being his selling the English down the river over their democratic deficit and having the gall to do it from Scotland.

The mainstream parties seem to have become so wrapped up in special interest groups looking for votes, blacks, gays, Muslims, Scots, Welsh (sorry guys, but you are at only 5 million and 2 million respectively) and forgetting that it's the English heartlands where the bulk of the votes lie and they have been progressively more isolated, ignored, had their livelihoods trampled over, had immigration foisted on them and whenever they've complained had "racist" "homophobe" "Islamophobe" hurled in their faces to silence them. They've been lied to, watched politicians steal and cheat and try to claim it was in the rules. Their natural EUsceptisism has been ignored and promised referenda denied them. When protesting they've been arrested (despite their civil rights) had their computers taken and their leadership denied the right to meet in groups of more than 3.

The mainstream parties seem to be struggling as to where the votes are going, I would have thought it was obvious, they're ignoring the core vote and what we want. If you ignore the wishes of the majority, the votes of a few minority special interest groups wont save you.
This is why the Tories are losing ground and Labour struggling to gain it. You're ignoring us, so we're ignoring you.

Rather defeating the object

An Asian Millionaire is going to attempt to join the BNP to try and change it from within.

Independent.

A millionaire Asian businessman who has applied to join the BNP said today he was doing it to "fight them from the inside".

Mo Chaudry, from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, said he wanted to take advantage of the enforced change to the party's constitution to expose them.

BNP members voted to admit black and Asian people earlier this month after the party was threatened with an injunction by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Pakistan-born Mr Chaudry, who is worth £60 million, runs a string of businesses around Stoke-on-Trent, which has eight BNP members on the city council.

He said: "If they are open to all British people then I want to join.

"If they let me in I will fight them from the inside and make their life very difficult.

"People are not racist in Stoke-on-Trent and I have never experienced racism in my time here.

"The good people that don't vote need to get off their backside and change things."

Mr Chaudry, who applied to join the party online today, condemned 78-year-old Rajinder Singh who is expected to become the party's first non-white member.

He said: "It's nothing more than a cynical publicity stunt.

"The BNP are using this man to give their party a veneer of respectability. They have no real interest in racial equality.

"This is a party whose very foundations are built on racial inequality. Nick Griffin on Question Time happily admitted sharing a stage with a Ku Klux Klan member."

1) The BNP will happily take his money, considering it as rope to hang the man with.
2) The BNP is controlled by Griffin for Griffin and run for the benefit of Griffin, I doubt Mr Chaudry has anything like the amount of money to change this, nor the central ethos of the BNP membership that he is part of the problem, not the solution.
3) Announcing to a national newspaper what you intend to do rather removes the element of surprise.

Mr Chaudry is either a fool, a hypocrite or has an agenda in line somewhat with the BNP, they will use him to demonstrate that they now accept people of black or Asian descent, they will take his money, they will not allow him near the wheels of power unless he follows the party line and if he does follow the party line, that makes what he announced today as hypocrisy.

There are no other explanations I can think of.

We'll all hang together

Apparently Michael (The Mace wielder) Heseltine thinks Ding Cameron's blandist Tories aren't going to get an overall majority in the general election, he may have a case in point, Ding has so far reneged on at least 2 key vote winning propositions (Lisbon and EvoEl) and there is some speculation out there that he actually doesn't want to win.

Telegraph.

David Cameron will not win a general election outright and will struggle to form a government, according to Lord Heseltine.

The party grandee stunned activists by claiming that history was against Mr Cameron’s hopes of securing an overall majority.
Instead, the former deputy prime minister said he would "put money" on a hung parliament, with the Tories the largest party. Mr Cameron would then be forced to call a second election later this year to seek a proper mandate to govern.

He might well be right, though my view on Heseltine is always coloured by his EUphile credentials and I'm alway a bit sceptical of what he has to say on anything.
However it seems the Celt Nats are also making plans too.

Scotland on Sunday.

Duncan Hamilton: SNP could get by with a little help from some 'friends'

AS IT turns out, learning lessons from the Welsh is not confined to the rugby field.

Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalists, have this weekend given us a timely reminder that there is much more to the debate on the future of Britain than simply resolving the question of Scottish independence. Plaid kick-started its General Election camp

ADVERTISEMENT

aign with an approach which presents some big opportunities for Scotland in the years ahead.

Traditionally, Westminster elections are presented as a choice between Labour and the Tories as the two parties of government, with the option of the Liberal Democrats for those who want to register meek, if worthy, protest. But this time, two things have changed. First, there is a real prospect of a hung parliament, with the opportunities that brings. To be fair, Alex Salmond has been making that argument for some time in Scotland, and Plaid have now adopted it in Wales.

But the argument deserves to be explored more deeply, because this isn't about just Scotland or Wales acting in isolation, but rather about the potential collective ability of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom to seize the possibilities of a hung parliament and reboot a Westminster system and mentality which grudgingly granted devolution a decade ago.

If ten SNP MPs (half the party's stated target) were elected together with five Plaid MPs, that is a very useful block. But add in the 18 seats in Northern Ireland and you create real political clout. Not an official grouping, not an alliance formalised in any parliamentary way, but rather a coalition of shared interest on a few vital areas common to each devolved area, such as the vexed question of future public spending.

I expect somewhere in their shopping list of more money for their nations is a demand for referenda on independence (save possibly Northern Ireland who are currently more British than the British). Pity they wont be asking for a referendum on the EU either, though from what I can tell they think the EU will be good for them (Hah!) but if they do go I suspect they'll find England will leave the EU and the one of the biggest net contributors to the EU economy leaving will make the pot of available cash a lot smaller particularly for newcomers and other small fry countries.

I cannot imagine what the horse trading involved in a hung parliament might bring about, key to this might be the Lib Dems (most likely) but if the Tories are just short of a majority then the power of the Celt Nats might just come into its own and then wont we be living in interesting times.

 

 

The beam in your own eye.

Matthew 3:7

And why behold you the mote that is in your brother's eye, but consider not the beam that is in your own eye?

Gordon Brown asked today that we should look again, acknowledging that Labour is not perfect, but urged Britain to take a second look at his party - and a long hard look at the Conservatives.

Sky.

Gordon Brown has told voters he knows Labour is not perfect, but urged Britain to take a second look at his party - and a long hard look at the Conservatives.

The Prime Minister unveiled Labour's vision for the country under the slogan "A Future Fair For All" at a rally in Coventry.
Speaking on his 59th birthday, Mr Brown said his party was committed to standing up "for the many, not the few".
On his way to the podium while Jackie Wilson's (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher played, the PM greeted Labour activists gathered to hear his speech.
He told them: "I know that Labour hasn't done everything right. And I know – really, I know – that I'm not perfect.
"But I know where I come from, I know what I stand for, and I know who I came into politics to represent.
"And if you, like me, are from Britain's mainstream majority – from an ordinary family that wants to get on and not simply get by, then my message to you today is simple.
"Take a second look at us - and take a long hard look at them."
Mr Brown accused the Tories of planning to "kick away the ladders of opportunity" and feigning "progressive" values.
"When you peel away the veneer and actually look at what their policies mean, what you see is it's not the new economics of the future, it's the same old Conservative economics of the past," he said.
"They are not the party of Britain's mainstream majority and have policies that give most benefit for the few."
He added: "Can they claim they know the aspirations of mainstream Britain when they so clearly understand so little of how we live?"

Well, let us take a second look at Labour.

Record peacetime debt.
Record peacetime deficit.
The first fascist MEP elected to the European Parliament.
UK drops from 7th to 24th in international maths and literacy rankings.
100 new taxes on the middle class.
Council taxes double for the middle classes.
Council tax revaluation if Labour are voted back in.
4,300 petty new laws.
Authoritarian police state oppressing legitimate protest, photography and law abiding citizens.
Doubled the length of tax law and created a mass of new regulations.
Sold the UK's gold reserves at the bottom of the market.
Ripped up a system of financial regulation proven over 300 years; 10 years later the UK has 5 Failed banks.
Destroyed the best private pension provision in europe, taking £100bn from prudent pensioners.
Destroyed more of the UK's manufacturing sector than Thatcher.
Politicisation of the police, the civil service, education.

Falling productivity in public sector despite 48% real-terms increase in spending.
Overseen the rise of the unaccountable, unsackable, feather-bedded bureaucrat, taking control over every aspect of people's lives.
New GP contract increased average pay to £100,000.
Most GPs refuse to provide care during evenings and weekends.
Arrest of an opposition MP for doing his job.
House prices unaffordable for workers on average salaries.
Soaring knife and violent crime in our cities.
Debasement of politics, endless re-announcements of the same policy, cash for peerages, lies, spin and deceit.
200+ service personal killed.
First non-jury Crown court trials.

Abolished century old practises of Parliament; House of Lords, Life Peers, Lord Chancellor's department, Lord Chancellor deminished

3 million immigrants invited into the UK to take 81% of all new jobs created.
1 million young people unemployed.
Jacqui Smith.
Foot and mouth crisis (twice)
Farm payments
Tax credits

Afghanistan war
Iraq war
Under funded ill-equipped Forces

Privatised large parts of defence establishment for short term gain
PFI
Home Office failures
Uncontrolled immigration (am I a racist for mentioning immigration, dear me)
NHS in tatters
School standards at the lowest ever
Thousands of knee jerk badly written laws
Rampant EU fraud
EU ignoring its own people
EU referendum promise reneged
Treaty/Constitution
Northern Rock

RBS
HMRC
Lost data – child benefit and dvlc
Donorgate

Climategate
Cash for Honours
Single families
Economy in complete tatters
First time buyers taken out of market
Rich and poor divide becoming bigger
Plenty of tax rises – both direct and indirect
Uncontrolled private sector
Crime out of control
Young deaths
Guns on our streets
NO ELECTION
Quangos controlling parliament
Populist catholicism

H/T 13th Spitfire


Brown stated "Can they claim they know the aspirations of mainstream Britain when they so clearly understand so little of how we live?"

It seems to me that few politicians know how we live, how angry we've become at them and how disappointed we are in the system they use to lord it over us. Does Gordon Brown in his pampered (27 years an MP) parliamentary existence know what it's like in the real world? Who the hell is this "We" he's talking about, certainly it's not me that he has anything in common with and I doubt he has much in common with anyone other than the Westminster bubble. I don't live in a free house, I don't get subsidised drinks and food at my place of work, I don't get generous (to say the least) allowances, pensions and expenses, I don't fiddle said expenses either, nor do I  get a ministerial car as and when needed.
Gordon Brown clearly hasn't a clue how the rest of us live because he doesn't live like the rest of us, nor do any of the top politicians in the country so his claim of understanding how we live is patronising in the extreme.
Ding Cameron may have his faults, but they're a mote compared to Browns beam.

Of rats and sinking ships

Well another one bites the dust and leaves the trough, though I suspect James Purnell (Labour) is far more disenchanted with the Labour regime than with the farcical house of corruption is the commons.

Times.

James Purnell, one of the few remaining Blairites with a chance of becoming Labour leader, shocked his party this morning by announcing that he was quitting Parliament at the election.

Labour insiders said that he was telling his Stalybridge and Hyde local party that with regret he was standing down to seek new challenges.

The former Work and Pensions Secretary could have triggered the fall of Gordon Brown when he suddenly left the Cabinet last June, fiercely criticising the Prime Minister's leadership.

But other ministers who might have been expected to follow him, notably David Miliband, did not do so. Some were talked out of going by Lord Mandelson. 

His departure is another blow to the Labour leadership as it sends out the message that one of the party’s youngest stars sees no immediate future in politics for himself — and probably for his party.

But it is an even bigger setback for Mr Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who would almost certainly have hoped to have Mr Purnell by his side were he to launch a bid for the Labour leadership in the event of defeat at the election.

Mr Miliband now stands as the only prominent Blairite left in the field for a future contest, in which Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, Jon Cruddas, the influential backbencher, and Ed Miliband, the Climate Change Secretary and the Foreign Secretary’s brother, could be contenders.

Mr Purnell, 39, left the Cabinet on the night of last year’s local elections, telling Mr Brown to stand aside and give Labour a “fighting chance of winning.”

 Purnell was one of the last really talented Blairites and probably the only one who might have rescued Labour from a suicidal lurch to the left. Certainly he's far more intelligent than the odious, untalented and disaster prone Milliband and no doubt saw the writing on the wall when Brown took over as Labour leader. I expect Mandelson will now retreat back to the EU as Labour continue to implode, even if they win the next election (some hope) or at least force a hung parliament their problems will not be over. The legacy of their years of power will continue to come back and haunt them and no doubt the BNP will continue to rise as the traditional Labour voters see just what it is that Labour have left them with immigration and debt taxation.
Purnell has decided not to face the consequences of his and his parties actions, he's taking the £64,000 handshake and no doubt in time the pension (gold plated naturally). He's left behind a country facing a mountain of debt, a ruined society splintering from internal dissent as the full measure of the Labour attempt to change the demographics by importing voters comes home to roost. A society where favouritism became entrenched in laws marked "equality" but which really meant that some favoured groups were more equal than others. A society where some nations were allowed a more direct say in their affairs than the majority nation and where the minority nations could still vote to foist unwanted legislation on said majority and did.

I will find it very hard to forget or forgive what Labour did to my country and Purnell was in it up to his neck, now he runs away so as not to face the consequences of his and Labours actions, a rat leaving a sinking ship indeed.

Sometimes it's best not to ask

There's a saying which goes a bit like this...

"If you don't think you'll like the answer, don't ask the question."

Unfortunately the government at times just can't help itself.

Sky.

A new scheme asking for ideas on how to punish young offenders has been forced to reject many suggestions, including floggings and the stocks.

Actors rehearse a school flogging scene in 1959

The Government asked members of the public in the North West to suggest jobs that youngsters could be ordered to carry out as part of their punishment.

In six weeks, 131 ideas were put forward including locking the youngsters in the stocks and pelting them with oranges.

One person suggested public floggings, saying: "They would soon lose all 'street cred' and NEVER re-offend again."

Of course this goes completely against the political class ethos of the criminals not facing the consequences of their actions but rather looking for causes and excuses rather than playing the blame game and dealing with criminal activity in a hard but fair manner.
Mind you there are lots of things that politicians ignore the wishes of the public on.
Hanging... Yes mistakes can be made and the innocent hung, though I'm sure the public only mean those that are bang to rights ie Sutcliffe and Huntley as well as the moors murderers where there isn't a shadow of doubt involved.
The EU. Well out of step with the public there, but as we still tend to elect them, perhaps we only have ourselves to blame.
Same with punishing the guilty, the liberal left tend to look to understanding rather than punishment, until at least they are offended against, then the join the hang em and flog em brigade big time.

Not that I'm for public flogging, but I am for a reasonably robust legal system that can lock away the violent and the habitual criminal rather than the person who can't pay or is no danger to the public. Moving the emphasis of the legal system away from property/theft rights towards personal injury/violence would be a start.

Social engineering at it worst?

Well it seems that the leftists are right,  all that hard work over the years brainwashing people has finally paid off as white people are institutionally racist........................................ against white people and no-one else.

Telegraph.

White jury bias against white defendants?
White jurors in diverse communities are more likely to convict white defendants who attack ethnic minority victims than other white victims because they are "more conscious of race", Professor Cheryl Thomas' report found. 

The study, Are Juries Fair, found overall that juries were indeed fair and free from racial prejudice and concluded that cases involving black and other ethnic minority defendants do not face "persistent disproportionality" in court.

Mock trials were staged in which real juries deliberated on the same cases but with defendants and victims of different races. 

Juries which were entirely white did not discriminate against defendants from ethnic minority groups.

However, cases held in Nottingham, an area chosen because it was racially mixed, revealed an apparent bias against white defendants by white juries.

In those cases white defendants were significantly more likely to be convicted of assault if the victim was from an ethnic minority group than if they were white.

It said: "This suggests that white jurors living in diverse communities may be more conscious of race and more censorious towards white defendants in cases involving interracial conflict compared to white jurors living in predominantly white communities."

  It seems strange that for all the kerfuffle by politicians and diversity groups, that the one sub group that is consistantly accused of racism, isn't, at least not in the way that the left would like to believe. Seems that my group, (The English) are more than fair in dealing with race related problems, more so than any other group in the UK.

However I doubt that this will make any difference to the Jo Brands of this world, or even the Jack Straws who continually pillory white people and/or the English because we're violent racist nonentities, still it's nice to be proven right for once when it comes to the perception of English fair play, turns out it's right and we are fair to all.

Another surprise

Quantitative easing, a harmless sounding term yet with very serious consequences. Back in January 2009 the government announced that because of the recession (that started in America and we're best placed to come out of it, yes that recession) they were going to break a 165 year old law and pump money into the economy to cover their spending and debts.

Telegraph. 

The Government is set to throw out the 165-year old law that obliges the Bank to publish a weekly account of its balance sheet – a move that will allow it theoretically to embark covertly on so-called quantitative easing. The Banking Bill, which is currently passing through Parliament, abolishes a key section of the law laid down by Robert Peel's Government in 1844 which originally granted the Bank the sole right to print UK money.

The ostensible reason for the reform, which means the Bank will not have to print details of its own accounts and the amount of notes and coins flowing through the UK economy, is to allow the Bank more power to overhaul troubled financial institutions in the future, under its Special Resolution Authority.

Many at the time warned that this was economic idiocy (something Labour seem to excel at, they ought to remember socialism is a political theory, not an economic one) and one result of this would be inflation.

BBC.

The UK inflation rate rose to 3.5% in January - the fastest annual pace for 14 months - from 2.9% the month before, official figures have shown.

Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation was driven up by VAT returning to 17.5% and higher petrol prices.

Retail Prices Index (RPI) inflation which includes housing costs, rose up to 3.7% in January, up from 2.4%.

Bank of England governor Mervyn King has had to write a letter of explanation to the chancellor.

That would be the "I told you so" letter. 
When will people stop electing Labour and/or socialists into positions of power? Every time we do this the economy is left wrecked, unemployment is higher and personal debt is eating a hole into our savings. This last government have taken economic illiteracy to new heights, wrecked our pensions, spent more than they took in by taxes so printed more money to cover, raised taxes, left us (assuming people are smart enough to vote them out) with inflation devaluing our currency and generally treat us like fools with their "no more boom and bust" mantra. Yet where the Tories should be ahead in the polls to the point of wiping out the Labour party from the electoral landscape, they're only just 10 points (if that) ahead. Seems all the Tories can offer is higher taxation too, and that will never sell, mind you a handfull of broken "Cast Iron" promises by Ding Cameron haven't helped one bit.
It's probably too late for the Tories to change their leadership team, but it's fast becoming obvious that they are yesterdays men, caught up in the Blairite philosophy of jam today.
One day no doubt we'll get the necessary government needed to get us out of the EU and out of recession, but I don't think it's going to happen any time soon, at the moment they're all to concerned with dipping their hands into our pockets.

Rewriting history, for convenience sake.

History is important to me, particularly the history of Britain or more specifically the history of the English, it should be important to everyone as it tells us who we are and how we got here.
Over the last 50 years though the nature of history has changed, or rather the teaching of it has. Gone now are the interesting bits, the battles, the heroes even the way life was lived. In came social and economic history which whilst of interest to some, was pretty much guaranteed to put kids off studying the past. It was deliberate I'm sure, removing the Magna Carta and the Bill of rights from being taught as well as the titanic struggles against European superpowers of the day (mostly France, occasionally Spain a couple of times Germany) So our kids no longer have a sense of who they are and why we should be who we are. The same no doubt applies in Wales and Scotland, although they are still allowed to be proud to be Welsh and Scottish respectively.

Telegraph.

History of England starts at 1700, says university

Academics have attacked a decision by a top university to scrap research into English history before 1700.

It was claimed that the move by Sussex University risked jeopardising the nation’s understanding of the subject and “entrenching the ignorance of the present”.

Under plans, research and in-depth teaching into periods such as the Tudors, the Middle-Ages, Norman Britain, the Viking invasion and the Anglo-Saxons will be scrapped, along with the Civil Wars. 

The university will also end research into the history of continental Europe pre-1900, affecting the study of the Napoleonic wars and the Roman Empire.

The university said it was “reshaping” its curriculum and research following a £3m cut in Government funding.

Last week, universities across the country were told their budgets were to be slashed by £449 million next year, including a £215m reduction in teaching funding, with threats of further cuts in the future.

Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, has claimed that institutions can use the opportunity to focus resources on their strongest areas.

But in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, 17 leading historians said the move was short-sighted and risked undermining the public’s understanding of the past.

“To cut everything but the most modern puts in peril the public function of history, entrenching the arrogance of the present and making a mockery of the claim by the

minister behind these cuts that 'we also wish to keep this country civilised',” said the letter.

The academics, who all trained at Sussex, said that the decision to sever ties with European history before 1900 was a particularly retrograde step.

“For a university which has long prided itself on its European links to abandon the serious study of such pivotal areas of modern history as the French Revolution will mean depriving Sussex graduates of the mental furniture of educated Europeans,” said the letter. “The university risks damaging its reputation as a centre of knowledge for European culture and history more widely.”

The letter to the Telegraph was signed by historians from universities including Nottingham, Southampton, Trinity College Dublin, Michigan, Sydney University and the University of London Institute in Paris.

 The title is a bit of a misnomer, English history more or less ended in 1701 with the Act of Settlement, followed up in 1707 with the Act of Union. It then became British history. So for all England had history from 300 years ago, it was all tied up in Empire and expansion and was the history of the Union.
Since devolution however the strains are beginning to show, the Scots showing the way, even choosing a national anthem containing the words "To be a nation again" and so there is a chance of England and English history beginning to flower again providing we can remove the social liberal taint from education.
We need to be showing our kids the history of our lands and not just the gung ho heroic stuff, but the bad stuff as well, where mistakes were made but also the basic rights that were obtained from them. Many people think the Magna Carta granted rights to the English (assuming they even know what it is) but it didn't, it confirmed those rights, we already had rights and it was the then King (read todays government) who was trying to override those rights. Since 1997 more and more of our rights have been stripped away by this perfidious government, had our kids had a decent education in history it would have been so much harder for the government to do this. But people just do not know what they are losing, they say "done nothing wrong, nothing to fear" despite the mounting evidence that we do actually have something to fear from the political classes and their desire for power and control over us.


The English need to be looking at our history, reinforcing our rights and removing any and all government from the EU down who trample over our ancient hard won rights.
Freedom has to be fought for, be vigilantly guarded, we have sleepwalked into tyranny and it all started when we lost our history and had it replaced by mind numbing dullness from social engineers of the left.

 

End this farce now!

One of the current anomalies of devolution is that for all they have their own parliaments and assemblies with their own devolved powers Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MP's can (and do with certain honourable exceptions) vote on matters pertaining only to the nation of England and that do not and will not affect their own constituents. When there was only one parliament for the whole of the UK, this was marginally acceptable as MP's were (and still are) expected to put the interests of the UK ahead of national interests. That ceased to be when Labour devolved powers to Scotland and Wales and left their semi employed MP's to tinker around with legislation on a nation who many of them appear to despise and have no business voting on merely being lobby fodder for the party system. That's why England has university tuition fees and trust hospitals despite the fact that a majority of English MP's voted against the measures, they were carried on the back of Scottish and Welsh labour votes.
For a time it looked as though the Tories were going to do something about it with various suggestions being put forward on English votes for English laws (EvoEl)
However Ding Cameron has decided to break another Cast Iron promise to the people of England.

Times.

Scottish MPs will still be able to vote on issues that affect only England under a Tory government, despite David Cameron’s vow to end the anomaly.

Members with constituencies north of the border would not be banned from voting at the crucial second and third readings of bills on English-only legislation.

The decision has angered some campaigners, who believe it is wrong that Scottish MPs can swing the outcome of crunch votes on issues that do not affect their constituents. The issue has been a running sore since 2004, when 40 Scottish MPs helped the government push through a highly controversial bill introducing university tuition fees.

Cameron has previously indicated that Scottish MPs would be banned from swinging legislation in such a way again.

David Mundell, the shadow Scottish secretary, revealed that they will be barred only from the committee and report stages of bills, in which the precise wording of new legislation is determined.

“Basically, what we’re saying is that, in the committee and report stage of the bill, the committee should be made up only of members from England, or England and Wales if that’s the jurisdiction. That’s the point at which amendments and changes come forward,” he said.

To counter concerns that restrictions would create two classes of MP, he added that Cameron would allow Scottish MPs to vote at the second and at the third, final, stage.

So, no change at all save that the committees would have English only members. Scottish Welsh and Northern Irish MP's will still get to vote on English matters because Ding Cameron is too much a coward and a traitor to his nation to end this disgrace. His one nation Toryism apparently does not include the nation of England.
It gets worse.

Times.

Cameron promises ‘great amount of money for Scotland’s great needs’

Earlier in the day, in Glasgow, before an audience of Scottish media representatives, Mr Cameron challenged the widespread perception south of the border that the Barnett Formula gave Scotland an unfair spending advantage over England. He said England was not being “ripped off” because of the formula, which, was coming to the end of its life anyway. Its abolition would not mean a “pot of gold” for English voters, he said. “Whatever the Barnett Formula is replaced by, it will have to be a needs-based formula and Scotland has great needs and will get a great amount of money under that formula.“ 

I give you that as one example of why this is a UK-wide Conservative Party that wants to keep the United Kingdom together,” he said. 

 I think it's time to end this farce of a Union, if the Scots and Welsh want to go their own way good luck to them, but it's time the English had their say on the Union too as to whether we want to keep ourselves connected to Scotland and Wales and perhaps to hell with being British.
Scotland can  keep its oil, Wales its sheep I'm sure England and the English will get on fine without them. It's time and past time that England emerged from this unequal union and made its own way in the world again, those that think we're stronger united forget the fact that there are 55,000,000 of us out of a UK population of 65,000,000 so we'll be almost as strong and certainly more willing to support the great if not greater needs of England rather than the Union as a whole.

So yes, it's time this farce of a Union and this parliament of treacherous Brits ended.

For this Englishman, it's now a case of England first and foremost.

 

Future fantasies 1975 as imagined from 1925

Hugo Gernsback wrote a syndicated piece in 1925 that imagined the world of 1975. It appeared in the February 8th edition of the San Antonio Light (San Antonio, TX) and has an interesting mix of hits and misses. Highlights from the article are excerpted below. You can read the piece in its entirety here.

Gernsback recognized that the future had the potential to be even more fantastic than we could imagine:

The chances are that if someone runs across this fifty years from now, he will severely condemn the writer of this for his great lack of imagination, for, no matter how wild the predictions may seem now, they will look very tame fifty years hence. If someone had tried to explain radio to you fifty years ago, or the X-ray, or radium, he would have been put down as ripe for the insane asylum, and you may rest assured that we are no different today.

On television:

Movies by radio! Why not? You will be able to have a moving picture produced in some central plant and projected in your home, on your yacht, or on your camping trip, the picture being sent by radio, and received and projected upon your screen. All this is perfectly possible.

On teleportation:

By [1975], we shall be able to send all sorts of materials by radio. If you think that it is impossible to transmit a carload of coal thousands of miles, you need only go back less than fifty years, when it would have been thought equally impossible to have the street cars of Syracuse, N.Y., run by the power generated by Niagara Falls. Today no one thinks anything of this.

On personal transportation:

Each pedestrian will roll on electric skates, such as have been constructed even today. An insulated wire running from the skate to the head or shoulder of the skater will be sufficient to take the power from the radio power line, and we shall then all be propelled electrically at a pace at least four or five times as fast as we walk today.

On buildings of the future:

All of our buildings and houses are due for a great revolution. In the Wintertime all of our buildings will be warm, and in the Summertime they will be cool. The future buildings and house will be fashioned along the principle of a thermos bottle. Each wall will be double, and the space between the walls will be filled with cork or some other poor heat conductor.

On airplanes:

The tops of our tallest buildings will be flat and glass-covered. They will have airplane landing platforms on which all kinds of airplanes, or even the trans-Atlantic planes of the future will land.

On hanging gardens:

Our large office buildings, or, for that matter, private houses, will have real gardens with large trees on top of the roofs, as has already been tried experimentally with smaller plants in some of our large cities.

On electrified crops:

Not only that, but plant life will also be greatly stimulated as recent high frequency experiments on plants have shown. Our crops and plants will grow practically two to ten times as quickly and the crops will be more productive under this electrification. Under such stimulation it will be quite possible to raise crops at least twice or perhaps more often during the year; and the most interesting part about this is that it will cost the farmer absolutely nothing except for fertilizer. And this he requires anyway.

On moving sidewalks:

Below the elevated railway we have continuous moving platforms. There will be three such moving platforms alongside of each other. The first platform will move only a few miles per hour, the second at eight or ten miles per hour, and the third at twelve or fifteen miles per hour.
You step upon the slowest moving one from terra firma and move to the faster ones and take your seat. Then arriving at your station, you can either take the lift to the top platform or else you can get off upon the "elevated level" and take the fast train there. which stops only every thirty or forty blocks. Or, if you do not wish this, you can descent by the same elevator down to the local subway.

It's amazing how right some of them were (though taken from today rather than 1975). And then how completely wrong (and bizarre) some of the others were.  Mind you seeing as how the Met Office in the UK can't even predict the weather as it's happening it wasn't a bad attempt by Gernsack.
Some people are even predicting what the results of the next general election will be, I think they might be in for a shock as I don't think what we see today, will be the result in a few months time, it will be interesting to see where it goes.

Cold

Well I was working nightshift last night (tonight as well) and wow I discovered a new level of meaning of the word cold. I'm usually wrapped up quite warm anyway though the warehouse is exposed to the elements a little mostly due to the fact that it's difficult to load lorries with the doors closed. Now it was only minus 2 last night according to the thermometer, but that didn't take into consideration the wind chill from a brisk breeze howling in up the Thames and straight through the doors. I'm not sure what temperature it felt like, but I know I haven't felt that cold before.
One of my hobbies is hill walking, so I know all about layering and keeping warm and I have the right gear to do it, but I'm not allowed to wear it at work, however, works corporate wear, even with the overfleece is not what I'd call quality issue, coupled with the fact that most of the equipment I work on (cranes and conveyors) is steel and gloves are not really suitable then it becomes a race to do the job quickly before your hands stiffen up and gripping tools becomes problematical (sitting on a steel girder is not a lot of fun either, I think I've avoided haemorrhoids though) I think the forklift drivers thought I was a bit mad as I would wander over and stand behind the machines to get a warm blast from their radiator fans (every little helps)
Tonight I'm thinking of hiding in the office with the heaters on, though I know I probably wont, the work ethic is deeply ingrained with me though I am tempted to take some proper thermal gear in with me, at least that way I'll be able to concentrate on what I'm doing rather than how I'm feeling.
Hypothermia is no joke, though it isn't really mentioned that much as a cause of death.

Table 1: Number of deaths of persons aged over 65 years who died at home, where (a) hypothermia was the secondary cause of death, and (b) where hypothermia was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate( 1, 2) , England and Wales, 1999 to 2008( 3)
Deaths (Persons)
	(a) Secondary cause	(b) Any mention
1999	26	36
2000	15	21
2001	16	27
2002	17	21
2003	18	22
2004	18	26
2005	17	27
2006	15	20
2007	14	21
2008	21	23
(1) Hypothermia was defined using the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) code 991.6 for the years 1999 to 2000, and the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) code T68, for the years 2001 to 2008. (2) Deaths reported as (a) secondary cause are included in those reported as (b) any mention. (3) Figures are for deaths registered in each calendar year.

It is however a contributory cause to the 30 to 40,000 winter related deaths in the UK. People get cold, they slow down, they stop eating, they die, mostly the old, mostly low income.

I dread to think what the deaths for this period (2009/10) will be, it's been a bad winter and it's not over yet, not that the government has helped by wasting our money on global warming prevention and expensive "green" energy schemes. People are running out of money, pensions don't increase in line with costs, fuel bills are up, means food costs more, means people can't afford to heat there homes and so end up living in one room eating toast.

Labour have cost the people of this country dearly over the last 13 years, now they are costing people their lives because they didn't put anything by for a rainy day. Putting it right will cost, people, the old, the sick will fall by the wayside this winter as the great global warming scam falls apart and leaves us having spent billions on wasted energy initiatives. yet still 30% of the population (well those who will vote) might vote for them.

Some days I think people who vote labour must be mad, days like today I'm absolutely certain of it. Though God alone knows how the Tories can put things right even assuming they get into power.
Perhaps it's time for change, to get rid of the old parties and start again with people who actually care about this country rather than lining their own pockets, perhaps it's time we all voted anything other than Lib/Lab/Con.

So, what about a proper referendum, like the one you promised?

So Parliament has decided to offer us a referendum........ though not the one most people seem to want on the EU, I doubt those in charge of their respective political parties will ever offer that though as they know they wont like the answer they'll get, which will be bye bye EU.

Politics.co.uk.

MPs have agreed to hold a referendum on reforming the electoral system.

Should Labour win the general election, a referendum will now be held on whether Britain should adopt the 'alternative vote' system on October 31st 2011.

MPs agreed the measure by 365 to 187, giving the government a majority of 178.

A more radical Lib Dem amendment, which would have seen the implementation of the single transferable vote system and the referendum brought forward to May 30th 2011, was defeated by 476 votes to 69.

The vote came late in the evening after a marathon debate which saw MP after MP stand to make their case.

Towards the end of the evening, George Galloway was reduced to telling the deputy Speaker: "I almost lost the will to live when we approached the 50th minute of the honourable member for Cambridge's [Lib Dem justice spokesman David Howarth] speech.

"I've sat here for six and a half hours shaking my head at the complacency on view from both sides."

The amendment is unlikely to reach the statute book given the shortage of parliamentary time available.

So they wasted a day debating something that probably wont become law but was designed to show up the Tories as non reformist, typical Gordon Brown thinking then as he doesn't see things as being good for the country (with the possible exception of Scotland) but either good for Labour or bad for the Tories.
That's why he's selling off English assets (Dover, Thames Crossing et al) and no-one else's and it's also why he did this to try and show that he's a reformer, despite the fact it wont matter and that when you look closely at the system he wants it would boost Labour votes as second choice and disadvantage everyone else.
Meanwhile a real bill for a referendum on the EU is being proposed by Douglas Carswell, I hope it manages to become law though the odds are stacked against it, both in Parliament with the current stranglehold the EUphiles have on the various party leaderships and outside with the EU not liking the idea of losing a net contributor.

I just wish our politicians would get over playing stupid point scoring games and actually run the country for the people who live here, rather than themselves and outside interests.

Or perhaps I just want the impossible.

Here we go again

Seems the corrupt and venal EU Parliament has decided it's time for a new EU commission and commissioners.

BBC.

The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly in favour of the new 27-strong team of European commissioners.

Each commissioner had previously faced a hearing in the European Parliament.

The Commission is the EU's executive arm, responsible for drafting EU laws and ensuring that the 27 member states comply with the EU treaties.

Bulgaria's first nominee, Rumiana Jeleva, failed to convince MEPs about her suitability for the job, so she was replaced by Kristalina Georgieva.

MEPs cast 488 votes in favour of the Commission, 137 against and there were 72 abstentions.

You'd have thought they'd have learned the lessons when bad accounting, along with bad management, nepotism and the fraud that resulted from it, brought down the entire European Union Commission, then headed by Jacques Santer. Or how about the Eurostat fraud committed under the all seeing gaze of Neil Kinnock? Who then went on to sack the investigator Marta Andreasen.

15 years of not having signed off the accounts, the CAP, the destruction of our fishing industry, the demented green energy regulations complete with poisonous light bulbs (complete with a carbon burning trip to Strasbourg from Brussels every month), expenses corruption that dwarfs our own parliament, undemocratic, referendum ignoring, corrupt to the core the bloated bureaucracy that is the EU.

 

H/T 13th Spitfire  

We are slowly but surely losing our country.

Can we leave? Now!

Tit for Tat

Seems Iran is a tad upset at us keeping something of theirs (for a change) as opposed to just generally being upset with us.

Well, not quite upset, more miffed than irate, though our initial acquisition of the item is probably in the grand style of the Elgin Marbles.

But perhaps we should retain it until they give us back our assorted dinghies.

Iran cuts ties with British Museum over Cyrus Cylinder

Iran's national museum has said it will cut all ties with the British Museum in protest at a decision to delay the loan of an ancient Persian treasure.
The Cyrus Cylinder dates back to the 6th Century BC and is regarded as the world's first declaration of rights.
The British Museum says it needs to keep the artifact until the summer in order to continue its research.
But the head of Iran's state cultural organisation said the move was unacceptable and politically motivated.
"The Cultural Heritage Organisation has cut all its relations and co-operation with the British Museum," said the head of the organisation, Hamid Baqaie, according to Reuters news agency.
He said his organisation would send a letter of complaint to the UN's cultural body, Unesco, and suggested Iran would incur considerable costs because of the delay.

Symbol of early rights

He also threatened to write to all world museums to caution them against working with the British Museum.
In September, the British Museum said it would have to delay handing over the 2,500-year-old clay cylinder due to unspecified "practicalities".
But, last month, the museum said the reason it needed to keep the object was in order to compare it with two recently discovered tablets, thought to be from the same period.
The cylinder was ordered to be made by Persian king Cyrus following the conquest of Babylon.
Covered in tiny lettering called cuneiform, it is said to represent the first bill of rights and encapsulate religious tolerance.

Surely we wouldn't do something like that now would we?  :-D

Wrong, wrong, wrong

Vernon Croaker on Tory Schools proposals.

With no planning restrictions schools will be able to open... without the sort of decent facilities all children should have.

He doesn't get it, yes in an ideal world all schools would have all manner of facilities to educate children with, however this is about parental choice, not governmental regulation or what education authorities say is the minimum requirement.
If parents are happy enough to send their kids to a school that's based in the village pub/hall/pre-fab then that's up to the parents, most just want what's best for their kids, something that recent governments seem to have forgotten in their ever increasing politicisation and dumbing down of school children.

Croaker then goes to blow his entire argument out of the water by stating.

"Tory councillors agree with us, and growing evidence from Sweden, that this policy is not just un-costed, unworkable and unfair, but would also set back the big improvements in school standards we have seen over the last twelve years."

That would be the making exams so easy anyone can pass them? Or the steady rise in truancy? (Note the figures only go to 2007 because the government stopped the count then) How about the addition of useless lessons to the curriculum such as global warming, citizenship and Britishness (only available in England, go figure). Or there's the fact that the UK is tumbling down an international league table of graduation rates and now sends a smaller proportion of school leavers to university than the Slovak republic, Ireland or Portugal.

Education, education, education? Croaker should hang his head in shame at what the education system in the UK has become under Labour.

This is where libertarianism and legalisation would have worked.

Drugs are bad, addictive, will kill you, will turn you into a criminal......

Well so say the do gooders and control freaks that make decisions in this country, the ones who wish to control our lives and make sure that we do as we're told. One of those aspects is the making of certain drugs illegal, thus criminalising a subset of people and driving them into the arms of dealers who overcharge and don't do quality checks.

Guardian.

A lethal batch of heroin contaminated by anthrax has emerged in London and Germany, and has now claimed 10 lives, two months after cases emerged in Glasgow.

The Health Protection agency said that an unnamed heroin user is being treated in a London hospital after becoming ill last month, in the first known case of anthrax being caught through drug use in England.

Investigators also confirmed that the anthrax which killed a drug user in Germany in December was indistinguishable from the strain confirmed to be in 14 of the 19 cases so far in Scotland, where nine addicts have died.

The odd thing is, statistics prove the vast majority of casual drug takers aren't addicts, at least not in the way of becoming thieves, being unable to do their jobs and taking to the streets to live in cardboard boxes. In pretty much the same way that most people who like a drink aren't alcoholics.
This is why most (though not all) libertarians favour the legalisation of drugs. They can then be taxed, quality controlled and the users registered at a chemist/doctors and their health monitored. It's essentially a win/win situation as the criminal classes who prey on vulnerable users will be put out of business or will be forced into other areas, the same would work for the sex industry (if industry is the right term. Legalise it, monitor it, control it, then tax it.
Yes I know some people out there will think we are corrupting society or minors, but over all I think it will lead to a better society and certainly fewer opportunities for a criminal underclass to prosper and abuse their clients/slaves.
That's not to say that some will not abuse the legalisation, but then again there are some who drink themselves to death even now.
So, what's stopping the government? It's not like they haven't tried to probe and control every aspect of our lives now is it?
I suspect they fear some sort of moral outrage, perhaps sanctions from abroad, I'm not sure, but certainly what appears to be a good idea is blocked by political intransigence and lack of will.

Business as usual........................probably tomorrow but no promises.

I'm going outside now, I might be a while, the siren call of the pub is overwhelming my resistance.

Oh yes, my first batch of sloe gin is ready too..........it's very, very strong, but very very nice.

And so the betrayals begin

One of the things that EUsceptics like myself and others pointed out was that it opened the way to a massive raft of EU legislation being able to simply go through our parliament on the nod, without being scrutinised. We pointed out that even were such legislation to be not in the best interests of the country, it wouldn't matter anyway, it's not like our parliament had the power to even move a comma from such legislation.
Of course we were told by EUphiles that we were wrong, that such things couldn't and wouldn't happen and anyway the EU was simply full of fluffy goodness and that we were worrying over nothing, everything would be fine in EUland and who cares if a few ancient rights were trampled over such as habeus corpus, the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, after all we would be "allowed" new rights instead of taking them for granted.

You know, the odd thing is, it turns out we were right, amazing isn't it?

epolitix.

The government has been accused of treating Parliament "with contempt" in its fast-tracking of European measures to track alleged terrorist finances.

In an urgent question, the chairman of the Commons European scrutiny committee Michael Connarty said MPs had been denied the time set to examine opting in to EU measures under the Lisbon Treaty.

The Linlithgow and East Falkirk MP called for a statement from the government on the "breach of undertakings" to Parliament regarding the timescale of the opt-in developments.

Treasury minister Sarah McCarthy-Fry told the Commons that the agreement had "significant national security benefits".

Connarty said the events had been a "very bad start to the new process" on the assurance of the Lisbon Treaty.

"It's quite clear that someone is treating this Parliament with disdain and contempt," he said.

"Parliament is in fact being treated with contempt, possibly by the government."

He added: "Once again we are worried that the European Union will push these things aside and the government will just fall over and let them do what they wish."

Shadow Treasury minister Mark Hoban said it had been a "serious breach of an important undertaking" by the government and that Parliament had been assured that opt-in decisions would be given eight weeks of scrutiny.

"Let us be clear - as we speak there is no law in place to prevent terrorist suspects from accessing frozen assets despite the prime minister's repeated assurances, " he said.

"As a result of its incompetence, the government has failed in its primary duty to protect its citizens."

 Yes, that's right, our MP's are being ignored when it comes to pushing through EU legislation, they're citing "security" and these are the opt in decisions that the government made over Lisbon, you know that minor treaty that we were promised a referendum on by all major political parties only for them to renege on their word. Well now our MP's are seeing the wonderful world of Lisbon coming home to roost as they are denied time promised to them to scrutinise provisions of EU legislation and watch said measures go through at the nod by a government that sold us out in the first place.

In this instance I just hate being proven right and saying I told you so is cold comfort to me.

Racism and rascist

The MSM and some local councillors are apparently up in arms that some Taxi drivers have the temerity to declare that they speak English. Apparently this is racist.

Telegraph.

A group of drivers of licensed cabs in Southampton put up the signs because they claimed passengers complained to them that some drivers cannot speak English.

The matter came to a head in a meeting with drivers and the city council last week when some drivers told the council of the alleged problem. 

Now the city council has said any cab that has the sign or a St George flag put up will have their licence suspended if they do not take them down within seven days.

This is because they need the permission of the authority to put up any sign. 

Councillor Royston Smith, deputy leader of Southampton City Council, said: ''Members of the public and the taxi trade have expressed their concerns to us that these stickers are inappropriate so we are asking any taxi drivers in the city who are displaying these to take them down. 

So flying the flag of the country you reside in is again racist, as is apparently being able to speak English and announcing you can do so.

Mail.

A racism row has broken out after a city's taxi drivers started displaying stickers in their cars saying they are 'English speaking'.

Up to a dozen drivers have been showing off the notices bearing the St George's Cross on the back windows of their cars in Southampton, Hampshire.

The small red and white sticker declares the cab is being driven by an 'English speaking driver.'  

Campaign group Show Racism the Red Card demanded the stickers be taken down from the cab windows.

Chief Executive Ged Grebby said: 'I don't have a problem with displaying the cross of St George because this is a symbol we have managed to reclaim from the far right.

'But the "English speaking driver" part is where it crosses the line into racism.

Since when has the Flag of St George been racist Mr Grebby? The Union flag is the banner of the BNP and other nationalist groups, not the Cross of St George, it's never had to be reclaimed at all!
And would the racism bandwagon be hounding shop owners of Indian or Pakistani descent if they had a sign in their door saying Urdu/Telugu/Punjabi/Hindi spoken here? Or how about Middle Eastern stores announcing that Arabic was spoken? How about a sign saying Swahili spoken here?....................Somehow I think not.
What is wrong with someone announcing that they can speak English? It's not as if it's tied to the English, anyone who can do so could have that sticker, the Taxi drivers in the Medway area have a number of Sikh drivers who's command of the English language would put many locals to shame, I doubt they'd have issues with a sticker saying they speak English superimposed on an English flag. They often have one flying during the football anyway.

This is clearly a classic "offended in my name" moment where the Righteous cannot wait to impose their view on the majority and so end up offending everyone and doing race relations no favours at all.

I think by now the English know who the real victims of racism are.

Killing small communities

As a libertarian, I believe that the best person to decide how my money is spent, is me, I don't think it's the government either national or local, though I'm willing to concede that there should be a government and that some of my taxes should go towards certain things like defence and transport infrastructure on a national level and streetlighting and rubbish removal on a local level if only to avoid 16 different rubbish collections over 7 days of the week. I do believe however that a lot of the things that national government does ought to be devolved down to local levels, the lowest local level being me.
I certainly don't believe the state should be involved in education in the way that it is, they shouldn't be the employer of teachers, they shouldn't be setting the curriculum and they should not be constantly asking for data on how well the kids are doing.
What should be happening is that all parents with kids get an education voucher, they can go and check out different schools and if they find one they like that will accept their kids, they hand over the voucher to pay for their kids education. Doesn't matter if it's a school with over 100 teachers or two people who simply have the knack of passing on knowledge, so long as the parents and kids are happy. That way the bad teaches and schools are weeded out and the kids actually get taught stuff they need to know, not what Gordon Brown or Ding Cameron thinks they ought to know. Exams would be the same, let industry, commerce and the schools sort out the exam system so at least it's consistent and meets what the country needs.
With that system we'd avoid this scenario.

ePolitix.

Cornwall is the 141st worst funded local education authority in England.

Right now it is reviewing primary schools, with the implicit threat that smaller more expensive village schools will be cut in the name of tackling ‘surplus places’.
In my adjournment debate today I want to challenge the Minister answering to make a solid commitment to improving funding for Cornish schools – but more importantly recognise that village schools can’t be properly valued with a surplus places model.
In small rural villages of radically different needs and requirements the target has to be vibrant working communities. Methods of school funding and educational delivery for areas like Cornwall must take this into consideration.
As a rural area, Cornwall has a high percentage of small schools serving small villages. The benefits of small schools are widely acknowledged and students from small schools perform well at primary school and beyond.
Sustainable rural communities thrive from having a very school – without them working families often cannot even live there. But there is a cost. Local authorities get the Dedicated Schools Grant from government based on how many students there are, and then have to make their own decisions about how and whether to value small schools. This means that in an area like Cornwall the realities of ‘per pupil funding’ mean that some pupils’ places cost almost £16,000 per year – and some less than £3000.

With a Libertarian system of education (based on the Swedish model) these schools wouldn't have to close as the villages would have the potential to hire teachers to educate their kids and the money would stay in the communities too as it would be easy to use any building, not the school building to educate them in, even the village pub would do.
People ever since the industrial revolution have been gravitating towards the cities, however it doesn't mean that villages need to suffer educationwise, or any otherwise come to that, all they need is control over their own destinies and for big government to butt out of their affairs.

We really need a revolution for freedom in this country, we're long overdue one. Big government, even local government has failed, it's riven with party politicalisation where dogma replaces common sense. Only then will we get the England we want.