That's gotta hurt

Andy Chowderhead and his Muslims Against Everyone and Everything Crusades was out marching yesterday in his self proclaimed shariah controlled zones.
London 24.

Islamist fanatics who plastered stickers in streets claiming that residential areas in east London were under the control of Sharia law, have held marches in streets today (Saturday).

Around 50 members of fringe group Muslims against Crusades (MAC) walked through Leyton in a noisy protest against British society.

Marchers chanted ‘Sharia for UK’, ‘secularism go to hell’ and ‘democracy is hypocrisy.’

Meanwhile, another demonstration by the group was held in Walthamstow.

Opponents of MAC from anti-fascist organisations and left-wing groups staged their own protest at the scene.

The fundamentalists of the MAC have thrust themselves into the spotlight over the past week by claiming that streets in inner-city east London were under control by morality squads enforcing the strict code of Shariah Law.

Stickers appeared in parts of Newham which set a list of strict rules which must be followed.

Speaking to London24.com this week, MAC spokesman Anjem Choudary claimed the new campaign was a response to the murders in Oslo, Norway, by killer Anders Breivik.

Mr Choudary also admitted to London24.com that MAC does not have enough members to enforce its own ‘sticker code.’

 The EDL were monitoring the two marches though were under instructions not to get involved as the real trouble was expected to come from other groups. Still this is an eye witness report of the antics.

I was in Walthamstow today and saw the demo. There was no counter demonstration from "anti fascist groups", that is a complete lie. Before the event the socialist workers had their usual anti EDL and BNP stupid stalls then disappeared

It's well known that anti-fascist groups will only target the likes of the EDL and BNP and literally have to tie themselves in verbal knots to justify not taking action against Islamic extremists.

It was good that the EDL wasn't there it as it was countered by moderate Muslims who were debating and arguing with them. This almost turned into a fight and the police had to intervene. A quote from a moderate "I'd rather stand with the EDL", caused a big argument with Abu Izzadeen the main man at the centre of it. Elsewhere there was sporadic trouble between the two. I spoke to some moderates and they were keen to argue with these guys which was good, it needs more of them to do this. Had the EDL been there it no doubt would've been chaos with EDL blamed as usual. It was a pleasure to see the MAC lot shaking their heads in despair. I overhead some of them talking and they were clearly not happy with how the day had gone.

So there you go, a complete fiasco for both the Muslim extremists and the so called anti fascist groups who deliberately chose not to face them. Well done to the Muslim moderates who opposed them and the comment "I'd rather stand with the EDL" has got to hurt big time for both anti-fascists and MAC enthusiasts.

Things you just don't do

Rupert Murdoch is not a man I care for, his media empire is not something I care for either as its attempts to "enhance" its stories have crossed lines from the morally reprehensible if legal to the utterly repulsive and illegal hacking into peoples voicemails. How much of this he knew about? I don't know, I suspect I never will, he might be very good at covering his tracks or there simply wont be any tracks to find, either way I'm not the one doing the looking.
However, what you don't do is go up to an 80 year old guy, whatever your feelings about him or the matter in hand and try and land him one with a foam filled "custard pie"
Express.

THE man millions of TV viewers saw attacking Rupert Murdoch with shaving foam was warned yesterday that he faces a jail sentence.

His attack was staged last week as Mr Murdoch was answering MPs’ questions on the phone hacking scandal. He shoved a foam-covered plastic plate at the 80-year-old media mogul during the Home Affairs select committee hearing.

May-Bowles was stopped in his tracks by Mr Murdoch’s 41-year-old wife Wendi, who lunged forward and slapped him. Dressed in a check shirt and black combat trousers yesterday, 26-year-old May-Bowles spoke clearly to confirm his name, address and date of birth.

No doubt his (few) fans think he's hilarious, me I just think anyone who physically attacks an 80 year old guy has something wrong with their head.
I doubt he'll go to prison, though perhaps he should, I doubt he'd like it very much if anyone tried something similar on his grandparents, but no doubt in his weird world of black/white, good/evil Murdoch deserved a pie in the face, save only that it made him out to be an utter cretin in my eyes and merely distracted from the proceedings and gained Murdoch a measure of sympathy he may well not have deserved.

How bureaucrats think

Well not all of them I'd guess, though it is only a guess, however bureaucrats running the health service have come up with a novel idea for saving money and it's probably not one anyone with an ounce of decency in their body would have come up with, indeed most of us would not even consider it.
Telegraph.

Health service trusts are “imposing pain and inconvenience” by making patients wait longer than necessary, in some cases as long as four months, the study found.
Executives believe the delays mean some people will remove themselves from lists “either by dying or by paying for their own treatment” claims the report, by an independent watchdog that advises the NHS.
The Co-operation and Competition Panel says the tactic is one of a number used by managers that “excessively constrain” patients’ rights to choose where to be operated upon, and damage hospitals’ ability to compete for planned surgery.
It claims unfair practices are “endemic” in some areas of England and pose a “serious risk” to the Government’s drive to open up the health service to competition.
But managers, who are already rationing surgery for cataracts, hips, knees and tonsils, say they must restrict treatment as the NHS is under orders to make £20 billion of efficiency savings by 2015.

One of the problems that often occurs when various departments are told to go looking for ways to make savings or cuts in expenditure is that those tasked with making the savings rarely if ever see themselves as expendable. In public services, the cuts almost always come in at the frontline services, because those services are rarely if ever asked their opinions as to how to make the service more efficient, mostly because the management know the answers will be to get rid of them rather than the frontline staff. A classic case of never asking a question which you know you wont like the answer too.
This is why most private companies use outside auditors, there's no level of covering their own arses involved in a fixed term contract to see where savings could be made.
Yet you have to admire the bureaucratic mindset (for a given level of admire) in their quest for savings in coming up with the idea of saving money by not spending any on their customers who have probably paid into the system their entire lives.
I'm fairly sure there's a special level of hell reserved for those who did this abominable act of cruelty yet justified it by the savings they made. They really are scum and they really need hanging from a lamppost with piano wire pour encourager les autres.

Well I'm gobsmacked

Actually no not really was just an attempt at sarcasm (useless in the written word), but it turns out that about 75% of those on statutory sick pay are actually fit for work.
Express.

THREE in four people on sickness benefits are fit for work or drop their claim before facing strict new tests, shock figures revealed yesterday.
Startling statistics showed that of the 2.6million people on incapacity benefit, a total of 1.9million could work.
A further 17 per cent were found to be able to work at some point with the right support. Nine out of 10 were capable of employment.
After the figures were released by the Department for Work and Pensions, David Cameron renewed his condemnation of how millions had been left languishing on welfare. Visiting a work programme in Wales, the Prime Minister said: “We have left people on welfare for year after year when those people, with help and with assistance, could work.
“So we’re producing a much better system where we put people through their paces and say that if you can work, you should work, we’ll be there to help you with the training and the skills.
“That will be good for them, good for their families and good for our economy.’’ 

One of the things those of us on the (real)* right have complained about for years is that if you pay people enough so that they don't have to work, well guess what, they wont work. In order to disguise the amount of people claiming unemployment benefits,a previous government decided that it might be better to hide them by putting them on sickness benefit which would take them off the books and massage the figures nicely. So we ended up with falling unemployment but a burgeoning incapacity benefit situation where the unemployed actually got more money. In short it paid to be sick, so people claimed to be sick, people being people and always looking to make the best of any situation.
To my mind if we have to have a benefits system it should work in this manner...

1. It's only open to those born here or those who have paid in a minimum amount equivalent to 10 years at minimum wage payments.
2. Unemployment benefit is the absolute bare minimum to survive, you only get housing benefits for the first 6 months after that you're on your own, though if you do take a minimum wage job you will get housing benefits.
3. For those bringing up children and cannot work, you get a variety of benefits paid at an in situ situation. You do not get rehoused or qualify for council housing, that goes to those who are in work. If you are in council housing already, that's fine.
4. Those who are genuinely sick and who will be able to return to the jobs market will get enhanced benefits to make their lives as comfortable as possible until they return to work.
5. Those who due to illness or injury cannot ever return to work will be looked after in comfort by the state for the rest of their lives.
6. Those who retire who have paid into the system a set amount over their working lives get an enhanced pension to keep them comfortable, warm and fed for the rest of their lives.
7. All the above are means tested.

I'm not saying that is a perfect system, it may well need to be tweaked, I probably have missed a trick or two, but it does strike me as being a start, it certainly is better than what is going on at the moment.

* The (real) right being those of us who want small government and low taxes, not fascism, racism or other weird and wonderful things that those on the left believe to be far right.

It's a robberry, lets arrest the shop owner!

You cannot make this sort of stuff up at times, there was a robbery at a florist, a robber got stabbed and died the police then arrest a 72-year-old florist.
BBC.

A 72-year-old florist has been arrested after a man was stabbed to death in a robbery at a shop in Greater Manchester.

Police were called to the shop on Shrewsbury Street, Old Trafford, at 21:40 BST on Tuesday.

A 30-year-old man was taken to hospital with serious injuries and died a short time later.

Shop owner Cecil Coley was taken to hospital with minor injuries and is being held on suspicion of murder.

The dead man is believed to have been one of a number of men who tried to rob the shop.

Police said a gun was found at the scene and was being forensically examined.

Ch Supt Mark Roberts said: "Police in the area became aware of a disturbance at the florists.

"On attendance, there were a number of people in and around the shop and a number of men had fled the scene. 

He said it was not clear what the "full circumstances" were.

Clear enough apparently to arrest the shop owner though and as the shop was being robbed I reckon the guys a hero and anyone robbing the shop deserved everything they got, particularly as it appears to be a gang of them. Just last month the government confirmed that for a homeowner it is legal to stab a burglar and within the law MP Ken Clarke has confirmed reasonable force such as a knife cricket bat or baseball bat can be used in self defence of yourself and your family if confronted by a criminal at home or on the streets. The government were even looking to increase those rights to prevent things like this from happening. You'd have thought that would have applied to anyone defending their property or place of work. This doesn't seem however to have made its way down to Greater Manchester Police though.
So, here we go again, the police would much rather arrest a 72 year old florist than simply get on with the investigation into what actually happened. As for the robber, well so far all I can say is that he got what he deserved.

Captain Ranty puts a quicker version here.

Lies, damned lies and the Daily Mail

There's an article in the Daily Mail online that defies description such is its sheer distance from reality. The stupidity of the article is amazing. It is misleading to the point where I cant believe it was even allowed to be published.

The Norwegian fanatic has been in close contact with hundreds of British right-wing extremists for two years, it emerged last night.

No it didn't, all that emerged was that he added a load of people on facebook who displayed any sort of nationalist tendencies. If adding someone on facebook is being in "close contact for 2 years" then I'm a jellyfish.

He chatted about ‘tactics’ on social networking sites with hundreds of members of the English Defence League (EDL) and the British National Party (BNP)

This is made to sound like he was actually discussing tactics for terrorism and killing people. When it's known that he didn't mention this at all to anyone, for fear of being found out.

and attended demonstrations and meetings here

Not a shred of evidence that these were EDL meetings. No photos, videos, or even public statements from senior figures in the EDL, in fact exactly the opposite. No-one from the guys who march with the EDL remember seeing Anders Breivik at any demo either in London or Newcastle.The only two sources the Mail has are an ex member of the EDL (wonder why) and an anonymous woman who runs a Proud to be an enemy of Islam facebook page which isn't affiliated to the EDL at all.

Anti-extremist campaign groups and think tanks called on the Government to classify EDL as a far-Right organisation.

Well since the only aim of the EDL is to oppose Islamic extremism, they would have to say that opposing Islamic extremism is in fact 'Far-Right.'
To be honest I think most of the political class believe this anyway.

In a rambling 1,500-page manifesto posted on the internet shortly before his attacks, Breivik praised the EDL.

Whilst he did praise the thinking behind the EDL, he in fact called them "naive fools" and stated "The EDL and its principles can never be reconciled as we are miles apart ideologically."
No mention of this anywhere in the article. 

A source within the EDL said last night: ‘I know people within the English Defence League who claim Anders Breivik was at some of those meetings.

‘Also, people who he knows have been over to the UK many times and are very active within the EDL circles in London. There are definite connections between this man and the UK.’

This is total bull. 'A source' means one of the people they've messaged on the facebook site. Also no EDL member in a position to know those things would talk about this to a newspaper and not mention it to the leadership or on the EDL forums.
And they round it off with a quote from someone from searchlight.a communist SWP site masquerading as an anti-fascist site so clearly an unbiased source.

Matthew Collins, spokesman for the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight, told the Daily Mail: ‘EDL was his inspiration, ideologically and politically.’

Can't even get that right, Anders Breivik uploaded a 1500 page manifesto, "2083: A European Declaration of Independence", in which he stated: "EDL and [his] principles can never be reconciled as we are miles apart ideologically" 
The Daily Mail really has gone downhill these days, another headline on the front page claims that Breivik listened to 'music from Lord Of the Rings', when in actual fact the song in question was from a totally different film.
And the worst thing is they will get away with all of this scott free, no one will take any complaints seriously and this is why I hate the MSM.
The EDL leader was interviewed on newsnight last night by Paxman, not his best interview by far, but again he wasn't intimidated or cowed by Paxman and managed to get his point across.



Considering the desperate efforts being put in by the left, politicians and the MSM to somehow link the EDL to Anders Breivik I have to figure that somehow or other the EDL has the powers that be very worried indeed.

Unfit for purpose

I guess in the days before flight or even mass travel it was fairly easy for Her/His Majesties Customs and Excise to keep an eye on who (and what) was coming in, though judging by some of the novels of past times I've been reading, smuggling has always been a bit of a problem if only because the idiot politicians always set the bar too high where it came to duties on various imports. Eventually though we joined the EEC and the various powers that be conspired behind all our backs and without asking us turned the EEC into the EU and made our borders quite porous to anyone with an EU passport. The UK Border Agency was also formed in this time to keep a track of asylum seekers and other undesirables such as multi-national criminals and illegal immigrants. It rapidly became obvious that it was unfit for purpose.
Express.

THE UK Border Agency ran up record losses of nearly £300million last year, including £1.8million racked up by a convicted conman.
It also paid £2.2million in error to failed asylum seekers who were no longer entitled to benefits, costing £15million in all since 2008, the agency’s annual report reveals.
Staff also received £1.9million in overpayments and £14.2million was doled out to refugees wrongly detained by immigration officials.
Two private finance deals also had to be renegotiated after chiefs admitted “significant duplication” in IT projects awarded to Fujitsu and Atos Origin worth £430million.
The agency’s accounts were described as a “comedy of errors” yesterday and yet more proof that it is “not fit for purpose”, as Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said last year.
Despite the failings, 11 directors received £1.2million in pay and £90,000 in bonuses. UKBA wrote off £297million in bad debts and losses last year, including £207million lost on its e-Borders project, which collects travellers’ details before they arrive in Britain.

On top of this the government has also admitted that it has "lost" 180,000 illegals  since December 2008 and that's only the ones officially here who went missing, it does not include the ones smuggled in on lorries.
Now, I don't like government interference in my life and I especially hate it when the government and its agents are wasting my money. But I do think that it's the job of a minimal government to protect our borders, defend the country and enforce the few laws that we have. As it is we have big state and big spending and an uncanny inability to do anything right due mostly to over regulation and the idiocy of the Human Rights Act.
If we had a simplified system that checked people in and out and quickly removed those who remain illegally I'd be ok with my money being spent on it providing I thought it was giving value for money. This Agency would only allow one appeal by asylum seekers and no appeals at all for other illegals. That would also mean the return of any granted asylum who committed a crime, no ifs or buts.
We need control of our borders, the government has given them away and saddled us with a white elephant supposedly to guard them. We need out of the EU, we need the abolishment of the HRA and we need to enact laws that suit us, not the EU.
Otherwise things will only get worse.

Use it or lose it.

Seems local councils are sitting on property worth £250 billion at a cost of £100 billion to maintain, this includes golf clubs, social clubs and other bodies such as the local football teams changing rooms all of whom provide some sort of service to the public.
Telegraph.

Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, is to release new figures showing local authorities own around £250billion-worth of property in land in Britain - which costs more than £100billion annually to maintain.

Mr Pickles wants to make surplus land available for retail companies and property developers to buy. He also wants authorities to make more money from the assets they keep.

This could lead, however, to golf clubs, social clubs and other bodies which rent or lease land from councils facing increased charges.

An initial group of around a dozen councils will be the first to reveal plans for substantial savings in a pilot project which will be "rolled out" across the country if it proves successful.

Ministers say every bit of the public sector must be seen to play its part in helping drive down the deficit. Mr Pickles's critics, however, are likely to claim the move represents another "attack" on local authorities.

 I suspect Mr Pickles critics are right, though that doesn't make what Mr Pickles is doing wrong. When most people look at waste and what councils get up too, they do not look at bin collections, street lights, road repairs, basically the useful stuff, as in the stuff that directly affects them. What they want cut if or whenever they think about it is the silly stuff, like diversity co-ordinators, translation services, bin monitors basically anything that goes out of its way to make life just a bit more miserable for the rest of us. They also cannot understand why certain groups get priority over people who have lived there for years and always paid their way.
In this, Mr Pickles resounds a chord in the working class who see themselves as having been abandoned by the left and by Labour, not because they want services cut to the bone, but because they see those services being prioritised for others. In the end they'd rather see no-one get them than just the lefts pets, after all what are they losing? Well nothing really, they've been sidelined by those who should have been in theory looking out for their interests. So when Eric Pickles announces he wants councils to make cuts, the core of support that Labour councils and the unions might have expected has evaporated and they only have themselves to blame.

Hatchet jobs

There is a saying that "A lie can be halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on" and this seems to be the case in speculation about Anders Brehing Breivik and his links to the so called "Far Right" in the UK.
Guardian.

Anders Behring Breivik, the man accused of the murder of at least 92 Norwegians in a bomb and gun massacre, boasted online about his discussions with the far-right English Defence League and other anti-Islamic European organisations.

Well, I can't speak for all the EDL, I'm just an ordinary guy who supports them, however I can confirm from what I do know from various people higher up in the organisation is that until yesterday the EDL had not heard of him before.
Mail.

He is thought to have posted messages on a Norwegian website expressing admiration for the EDL and an extremist group called Stop Islamification of Europe.
It is Breivik’s online profile that has provided the authorities with most information about him so far.
His Facebook page, which was blocked soon after the killings, listed his interests as bodybuilding, ‘conservative politics’ and freemasonry. He also had a liking for violent video games and American TV drama series Dexter, about a forensic blood spatter pattern expert with the Miami police who hunts down and kills criminals in his spare time.

Express.

THE Right-wing psychopath behind ­Norway’s bloodbath was involved with the English Defence League, the Sunday Express has learned.

Twisted Anders Behring Breivik, who left 92 dead in a co-ordinated bomb and gun rampage, advised the EDL how to stir up anti-Islamic hatred.

He not only admired the far-Right group, but also harboured dreams of setting up Norway’s version to combat the country’s growing Muslim population.

This is also untrue, there already is a Norwegian Defence League, has been for months and no they haven't heard of him either.

PRESS RELEASE FROM NDL
It is with disbelief and sadness that we have received news of the tragedy at the government building and on the island.
Our goal has always been to provide information about the conflict between Western values and Islam, violence and terror is the means … we firmly reject.
The terrorist acts be connected with a person who is against multiculturalism and Islam, we must emphasize that the suspect has never been a member of our organization.
People who advocate violence, racism or extremism has been and will be banned from NDL.
This is in every way a setback for the debate in Norway. For us who want a fair debate, this is a situation we fear will be used against us. Our values are freedom of speech, equality, peace and democracy. It is our fear that the discussion will now end up in a track where our arguments are met with hatred and incoherent arguments.
But today is the day our condolences, thoughts and sympathies are with survivors, relatives of those killed, AUF and the Norwegian people.
A total NDL condemns the terrorist attacks on 22 July 2011. A date that will forever stand as a day of mourning in the country’s history.
Admin in NDL

I also have a few questions about this entire incident myself, perhaps they'll be answered one day though it might take a while.

1. If Anders Behring Breivik was anti-Islam, why didn't he attack a mosque rather than government buildings on a day when the government was not working?
2. How come he only set up his Facebook and twitter accounts 5 days ago. Straight away he is on FB with right wing stuff, and only one tweet. According to the Huffington Post he did have a Stormfront account which is no longer available and the Stormfront site is also apparently down.
3. I do not believe that one man could assemble and prime a massive car bomb and set it off, all on his own. Then slip away, disguise himself as a policemen, travel 20 miles across the land connecting the two fjords, commandeer a boat (or passage on a boat) to travel across to the island, carrying nothing more than the unremarkable weapon a police officer would normally have to hand (as he doesn’t seem to have excited any suspicion until he opened fire on the assembled teenagers) whereupon he shoots 70+ people dead (some of the 93 deaths so far, for which he is responsible are by drowning while trying to escape). The A team couldn’t have managed that and there were 4 of them. And their adventures were fiction.
4. If, as we are told, the Norwegian Prime Minister was due at the Island that day, why was the place not crawling with security as you just know it would be days before any such visit.

Personally I don’t believe that a ‘right wing Christian conservative’ gunman who hates Muslims and admires the EDL went berserk alone to kill 100 teenagers simply because that’s what right wing Christian conservatives do. Yet that, despite the evidence is exactly what the press want us to believe.

Contraband

The government is currently tying itself up in knots over various policies in which it's trying to either raise revenue by increased taxation or social engineer us into taking better care of our health often enough by increased taxation and restrictions on where and when we can do certain things. The smoking ban and various on street drinking bans spring to mind along with the yearly above inflation duty increases that come with each budget. Of course one of the things that happens when prices go too high is that people will look for alternatives, even banning a product will not work, look at just how well prohibition worked in the USA to see a classic example of meddling with the market, consumer simply went to those who were prepared to supply them with what they wanted, in that case it was criminal gangs, which is where most drug users in the UK go as simply banning a product doesn't prevent people from getting what they want anyway.
BBC.

Twelve million counterfeit cigarettes have been discovered during a search of a warehouse in Gateshead.
HM Revenue and Customs officers said it took three lorries to remove the haul and a full day to count the cigarettes.
The haul, worth £2.2m, was found during checks on industrial sites in the area on Wednesday.
HMRC spokesman Michael Connolly said the find was "staggering" and the largest ever seizure of its kind in the North East.
"This was a staggering amount of cigarettes to uncover in one place and shows the scale of this type of crime," he said.
"Each year the British economy loses over two billion pounds in duty from the sale of illicit tobacco, money that is ploughed straight back into funding other criminal activity in our neighbourhoods."

 A classic example, the government makes the price too high by piling on the duty and the criminal element see an opening and sell people cheap cigarettes and no doubt make a large profit as there wont be much in the way of quality control or other checks. You also have the HMRC complaining about the loss in revenue and yet who is to blame for this situation? Well the pointing finger goes straight back to those who made the product too expensive in the first place, Her Majesties Government and the anti-smoking lobby who encouraged the authoritarian anti liberty ban and the various duty hikes, although the government has always used drinkers, smokers and motorists as cash cows anyway and didn't need much encouraging.
This, all in all is a classic example of free market policies, make something too expensive and people will look for alternatives. If the government want to increase revenue then it needs to lower duty to the point where people will buy the legit product and the criminals will move onto something else.

Must?

Apparently according to an EU commissioner we "must" take more migrants and no doubt our spineless politicians will toe the line and allow more migrants in despite the fact that we have 2.45 million unemployed people officially on the books anyway.
Express.

MEDDLING eurocrats are demanding that Britain welcomes more immigrants to help the EU’s struggling economy, it emerged yesterday.
European Union Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom says immigration and visa-free travel are essential to boost economic fortunes.
The Swedish politician has urged member states to welcome more immigrants to help deal with skills shortages, an ageing population and a declining workforce.
Further immigration will boost the economies of EU countries and benefit their residents, she went on. Ms Malmstrom’s comments come after Denmark brought in tougher border controls in response to growing immigration from North Africa.

Ok, now first Ms Malmstrom is actually only talking about the Schengen Zone which doesn't include the UK, however once into the EU and given an EU passport, any immigrant would be free to come here and lets face it, a hell of a lot of them do.
The problem is the type of immigrant we get, North African immigrants tend to be unskilled and we have enough unskilled people here who really should be "encouraged" to take a low paid job whether they like it or not, even to the extent of cutting off their benefits.
The other problem with North African immigrants is that they tend to be Muslim and we have enough problems with the Muslims we have already in this country, not all to be sure, but enough to know that basically they cause more problems than they are worth and the more there are of them, the bigger the problems are as they don't seem to think that our rules should apply to them.
I'm not saying we don't need some immigration, however we don't need unskilled immigrants, we should only be looking for skilled professionals who can and will integrate into our society, not form another unskilled underclass with religious paranoia thrown in.
However, unless we do leave the EU, that's exactly what will happen because our idiot politicians handed over the keys to the door when they signed up to the EU and gave away our sovereignty, something the traitors had no right to do.

£12 billion reasons not to vote Tory

Foreign aid often causes my hackles to rise, mostly because it's misplaced, used unwisely, lines the pockets of foreign dictators or is given to countries that clearly don't need it (India and Pakistan). Currently the aid budget stands at £12 billion and is as ever defended by our politicians including David cameron.
Daily Mail.

David Cameron will today admit that millions of pounds of foreign aid has been ‘wasted’, but insist this is not a reason to turn off the tap.
The Prime Minister, on a curtailed tour of Africa, will hit out at those in his own party who criticise his decision to pour billions more into foreign aid at a time of cutbacks at home.
In a speech in Lagos, Nigeria, he will declare: ‘The aid sceptics are wrong. Aid is essential. It can work and we are making it work.’

In this of course he is wrong, it's not essential at all, desirable in some cases perhaps, but not essential particularly when we have enough problems at home. As far as I can see, most politicians don't really understand the issues here as they seem to have no problems at all in signing away taxpayers money to all and sundry.

Charity or aid, whatever they want to call it, should begin at home or be used to cut our mountain of debt down. Yes I know it's not enough to make a huge bite into what we owe due to the previous and current governments ruinous spending programs but every little helps and giving it away to foreign governments is not helping.

Why our MP's choose to do this I simply do not know, it's like their common sense is amputated by the electoral process and they go on to be loyal little lobby fodder to the leadership rather than representing those who elected them.

I'm not in favour of banning things in general, but I'd make an exception for political parties they seem far too free with public money. Perhaps individuals voted in on their own policies is the way to go in the future with alliances made for issues rather by party political consensus.

Would certainly make the buggers work for the people once more.

Discrimination?

Kids congregate in groups, it's a social thing and most of the time it's quite harmless, though in some cases trouble happens, particularly when either showing off or occasionally because they know they are so well protected by the law that there's damn all anyone can do about it.
BBC.

A Kent McDonald's has been criticised for installing a device aimed at deterring groups of young people from congregating outside.
The high pitched sound from the Mosquito can usually only be heard by those under the age of 25.
The children's charity Kidscape said: "We can't have young people treated like pests or animals."

Whilst this is true, we can't have kids treated like animals, unless of course they are behaving like animals.

McDonald's said the device was fitted at its Week Street premises, Maidstone, following feedback from customers.
In 2008 the Children's Commissioner for England called for a ban on the devices, describing them as "degrading and discriminatory".

For "degrading and discriminatory" read effective and it looks like McDonald's have a reasonable reason for using the device as its customers have requested they do something about the kids congregating around the outlet.

In a statement, McDonald's said: "The device is operated by the restaurant management only as a last resort if groups fail to move on after being asked to do so by the duty manager.
"The device is fitted with a timer to switch off automatically after a set period of time."

Seems fair enough to me, it will only be used if nuisance makers won't move on and then it switches itself off automatically.

But Peter Bradley, deputy director of Kidscape, said: "We need to be careful about young people congregating and how that can be assumed to be a problem or to cause trouble. Let's not just make assumptions."

See above, it will only be used if there's a problem.

The Kent Green Party claimed the Mosquito discriminates against young people.
The party's chairman, Stuart Jeffrey, said: "If this was a device for keeping black people, women or the elderly away, McDonald's would rightly be prosecuted, so why should society tolerate discrimination against young people?"

Usual idiot response from the left (Yes the Greens aren't called watermelons for nothing) they aren't discriminating against kids, they are discriminating against troublemakers and whilst it's unfortunate that innocent kids will probably have to move on as well, at least the store is doing something to deal with a problem.
The solution is obviously simple, though it might take some kids a while to get it, don't cause problems outside McDonald's and you won't be moved on.

Or how about getting rid of it altogether?

VAT, a dreadful tax and a burden to both consumers and businesses and of course partly under the control of the EU. There are alternatives out there that would work better and be easier to administer, hell we could just get politicians to decide what the spending of the next financial year will be, figure out a universal tax rate to cover it and go from there. Even better, have it announced just before an election along with am alternative from all opposition parties and see just how quickly savings could be made.

Express.

VAT must be slashed by at least five per cent to kickstart Britain’s struggling economy, chiefs of small businesses warned in a report yesterday.
The leaders of the nation’s small businesses – which make up 99 per cent of all firms in the UK – lobbied ministers after it emerged that business confidence has tumbled in the three months to June.
If VAT is not cut to 15 per cent Britain’s recovery will falter, said the Federation of Small Businesses.
Hard-pressed consumers are simply not spending as much when almost all purchases carry 20 per cent VAT.
The construction and tourism sectors in particular are suffering, as are car retailers.
The federation, which represents firms typically employing fewer than 49 staff, says such VAT cuts would help boost consumer spending and help to create new jobs.
Greater spending could make up for lost revenue to the Treasury. John Walker, chairman of the FSB, said: “The economy is still in a fragile state and these figures show the Government’s growth strategy is just not working.

Yes I know we can't really do anything about VAT at least not until we leave the EU (please, please) but frankly the whole tax situation in the UK is an utter mess anyway, it needs simplifying more than anything. Move all tax into one category, get rid of VAT, national insurance and any other extras and keep it simple. Same with benefits have one universal benefit/pension and run it via the inland revenue as a negative tax code. Yes you can have various levels in it depending on invalidity etc but these are additions via a tax code rather than a separate system. As for rates, go for a land value tax rather than council taxes, the more your land is worth, the more you pay.
It's way past time that the whole idea and implementation of taxation is looked at in the UK, it needs simplifying and streamlining and it wont happen whilst we're in the EU.
Just another reason to leave, really.

Finally someone gets it

Immigration would not be a problem if we made it so that an immigrant here had to work or get no benefits whatsoever until they qualified for a safety net benefits system by paying a set amount into the taxation system over a period of time (or even a lump sum) No housing, health or unemployment benefits until you'd put something into the system, lower paid the job, longer it would take, say 10 years at least via the taxation of a minimum wage earner.
As no political party can do this because of EU regulations then the only way around it would be to strictly limit immigration only to the skills we need and this is what an advisor to Red Ed Millipede has suggested.
Telegraph.

Immigration in to the UK should be frozen altogether, one of Ed Miliband’s most trusted advisers said today.
Lord Glasman, the leading policy adviser to the Labour leader, said the country should “draw the line” on immigration and even renegotiate EU rules that allow free movement for migrant workers.
He told The Daily Telegraph that Britain is “not an outpost of the UN” and the needs of the British people must be put first.
The comments are the most drastic yet for any of the major political parties and would effectively end immigration in to the UK.
However, the Labour party was last night quick to distance itself from the suggestions, insisting Lord Glasman’s views were “his own”.
Immigration has been thrust back on to the political agenda by both Labour and the Conservatives.

This is particularly ironic coming from an advisor to the leader of the Labour party who reigned over uncontrolled immigration whilst they were in power.
Lord Glasman really should have remembered the example of Frank Field who was told by Tony Blair to "think the unthinkable" He did and was forced to resign. So Glasman finds himself being distanced from the politicians who cannot apply what an ordinary person believes to be common sense as they simply don't mix with ordinary people but rather live in a weird bubble where the only people they really contact are other politicians and the political classes. The political classes love immigration and immigrants (if only because they don't tend to live amongst them). Immigrants tend to vote Labour anyway so they are beloved of the left wingers who tend to see the indigenous people as the problem because they don't tend to vote for the left seeing the left as well as the political classes for what they are, parasites on the system.
The longer however this goes on, the greater the gap between what the UK public actually want and what our politicians want to give us becomes and it's a potential breeding ground for extremism. The more acute the problem becomes, the more people will start to look for anyone offering a solution. The left and many of the political classes have decried the rise of the EDL, though they only have themselves to blame for that, yet the EDL isn't the problem, the EDL came about because of the problems created by the political classes and the defence of extremists amongst the immigrant community by the left.
Lord Glasman has a solution, it would work (apart from the EU not letting it work) yet our politicians are running away from it without even discussing it.
Tells you all you need to know really.

 

Ultimate disrespect?

I'm sure Charlie Gilmour is a bit shocked today, he got sentenced to 16 months imprisonment for disrespecting Britain's war dead at the Cenotaph and with other things taken into account rightly so.

Mail.

The son of Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour was jailed yesterday after showing the ‘ultimate disrespect’ to Britain’s war dead by swinging from the Cenotaph during the student riots.
Charlie Gilmour, 21, reeled in shock as he was handed a 16-month sentence for his ‘outrageous and deeply offensive behaviour’ during a drug-fuelled rampage that also saw him attack Prince Charles’s car.
The Cambridge University history student was ‘out of his mind’ on a cocktail of LSD, Valium and whisky when he laid siege to the royal convoy during the tuition fee protests in London on December 9 last year.

Perhaps though had he been a Muslim though, he'd have been better off, or at least got a lesser sentence...

BBC.

A Muslim extremist has been found guilty of burning poppies at a protest in west London on Armistice Day.
Emdadur Choudhury, 26, of Spitalfields, east London, was fined £50 for offences under the Public Order Act.
Choudhury, a member of Muslims Against Crusades (MAC), had denied the charge at Woolwich Crown Court.
Mohammed Haque, 30, of Bethnal Green, was cleared of the charge. Both men had been accused of burning three oversized poppies on 11 November in Kensington.
Rival protests had been taking place at the time near the Royal Albert Hall, the end point of a charity march at which serving members handed over books of condolence ahead of Remembrance Sunday.
District Judge Howard Riddle said: "The two-minute chanting, when others were observing a silence, followed by a burning of the symbol of remembrance was a calculated and deliberate insult to the dead and those who mourn or remember them."

Ok, the extremists then didn't go on to attack a royal, though they did threaten to disrupt the recent royal wedding. Still, 16 months for swinging from a cenotaph flag and £50 for burning a poppy and chanting Islamic slogans during the 2 minute silence on Remembrance Day itself.
Can anyone smell a whiff of double standards here?
I'm not excusing Gilmour, to my mind he probably should have got a higher sentence for his behaviour, but it does look extreme to what Emdadur Choudhury got.
Seems if you are a Muslim of the extremist variety you can actually get away with the "ultimate disrespect" with only a £50 fine, whilst the man who tries to stop you is charged with police assault for leaping a barrier and gets a £315 fine. Burn a Koran, you get 70 days imprisonment, post homophobic stickers in quantity around east London, £100 fine.
And they wonder why people don't respect the law anymore.

Supply and demand

"For every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction" it's part of Newtons laws of motion, but it's also an apt description of what happens when regulation forces up the price or makes something illegal in that the black market will take over, a form of supply and demand so to speak.It's also why I'm very much in favour of legalising drugs and not over taxing something to the point where something like this can happen...
BBC.

Police are investigating whether an industrial unit where five men were killed in an explosion was being used to distil alcohol illegally.

Lincolnshire Police said chemicals found inside the "smoke-logged" unit at Broadfield Lane Industrial Estate in Boston indicated alcohol was being produced illegally.
But Supt Keith Owen, who said it was probably some sort of spirit, stressed investigations were continuing.

In March, Trading Standards, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and police seized cigarettes and drink, including counterfeit vodka, from six shops in Boston. The county council said last month that tests on the fake vodka showed it contained cleaning fluid and was unfit for human consumption. One shop had its alcohol premises licence revoked and another had its suspended.

 I think it's highly likely that they were distilling a form of vodka and I suspect they had a ready market for it considering how organised they were. It's not particularly hard to do either, it just requires some form of contained vessel and heat, the rest is straight forward chemistry and physics. Quality control of course goes out the window, but if it's cheap people will buy it considering how the health Nazi's and excessive taxation have pushed the price up to the stage where something like this becomes economically viable.
Cause and effect, supply and demand, none of which seem to be understood by politicians who either ban or price something to the stage where the criminal elements in society see a profitable opening and step in. Pretty often it's done in some misguided attempt at morality "think of the children" etc. But that doesn't make the demand go away, simply drives it underground.
There are lessons to be learned here for those who see taxation as a tool to modify our behaviour, I doubt they'll learn them though, they didn't learn the lesson on tobacco or drugs, simply drove those users into looking for alternatives or cheaper sources.
Be nice if the state would just simply get out of our lives to the extent of letting us make our own decisions. Stop taxing our pleasures to the stage where we'll go to an illegal supplier, stop trying to tell us how to live our lives.
I doubt they will though, it's part of the control freakery that makes up the mindset of the average politician and morality campaigner. We will not do as we're told, so we must be made to by banning or simply making it far too expensive to be able to be afforded.
It doesn't work of course, if we want something that much we will go to someone who will sell us what we want or do it ourselves, after all it's the state who makes it profitable.

This could be interesting

It was fun to see Jonah Brown making an appearance in Parliament to try and stick the boot into his old mate Murdoch and News International. Turns out all he said was a pack of lies and an attempt to rewrite history, so nothing new really showing that the inverse Midas touch he has will simply not go away.
Express.

GORDON Brown faced embarrassment yesterday when his claim that civil servants blocked plans for an inquiry into phone hacking were contradicted by official ­documents.
The former Prime Minister, in an extraordinary Commons tirade earlier this week, insisted that his demand for a major probe into allegations of newspaper wrongdoing during his time in Downing Street was wrecked by opposition from officials.
But records of the advice he received at the time – released on the orders of Civil Service chief Sir Gus O’Donnell yesterday – showed that he was told that the ­decision was ultimately his.
Shockwaves from Mr Brown’s outspoken intervention into the hacking row continued to reverberate around Westminster yesterday. Nick Clegg accused him of “rewriting history” with his attempt to distance himself from Rupert Murdoch’s News International empire.

Where it gets interesting for the politicians though is that Rupert Murdoch now intends to come to Parliament to attend a select committee meeting next Tuesday and he knows where the bodies are buried (metaphorically speaking... probably)
It's a bit like the old sticking your head into a lions mouth trick save I suspect that the politicians don't realise just who is the lion here. There are a lot of leftist politicians still smarting over News Internationals move to support the Tories in the last general election after 10 or so years of supporting Labour and who are anxious to stick the knife in. Save only that I suspect they are equalled by a similar number of MP's and the higher political classes who really, really don't want Murdoch to appear and tell the world just who has exactly been up to what. Influence does go both ways in this case after all.
The dilemma facing the political classes is if they push too hard, Murdoch probably has the means to retaliate good and hard, at least I hope he does.
It's probably too much to hope for, but I can dream of a massive falling out by all concerned leading to the downfall of the political class and a change of government to one run by honest people.
I can't think of a finer legacy for the curse of Jonah Brown.

Most natural thing in the world

This is about breastfeeding, although the title is actually about being offended in someone else's name, which seems to be the most natural thing in the world for busybodies and jobsworths.
Express.

A MOTHER was banned from breast-feeding her baby in public by civic centre bosses over claims it would cause “uproar” among Muslim visitors.
Emma Mitchell, 32, was preparing to feed her four-month-old son Aaron when a receptionist warned her it was a “multicultural building” and that she should use the nearby public toilets instead.
Furious Emma then had a stand-off with a manager at Oldham Civic Centre before being offered an empty room under supervision.
She said: “It was just awful. I felt humiliated, intimidated and guilty through the whole thing.
“We all live in Oldham and use this building and what I was doing was one of the most natural things a mum can do. I shouldn’t be made to feel it was wrong just because it’s not in someone’s culture.”
The incident occurred last Friday while Emma was visiting the town’s Citizens Advice Bureau.
When Aaron started crying, she asked if she could use an empty corner of the room to breast-feed him in, offering to face the wall.
But the receptionist told her it wasn’t allowed as “some gentlemen had complained in the past” and suggested she use the public toilets nearby. Emma said: “You wouldn’t eat your dinner in the toilets, so why should my son? She rang the manager who said ‘You absolutely can’t do that here’.”
A member of the complaints department then took her to a small room. Emma’s friend Michelle Booth, 38, who was with her, said: “They were implying breast-feeding was offensive to Muslim sensibilities. It’s political correctness gone mad.”

No doubt breastfeeding is offensive to some Muslims, God knows they get offended with just about everything else, but it's not about Muslims either, I've seen old women complain in cafe's about breastfeeding mums.
Granted not everyone likes to see a woman in full view feeding her kids via the breast, but, it's something that is encouraged and not something that should cause over officious jobsworths to step in and say use the toilets. Whilst I do have some sympathy for private businesses in a sort of my gaff my rules sort of way, if an area is designated as public access, then you take the risk of some woman needing to feed a hungry baby.
So it strikes me as being offended in someone's name seems to be the most natural thing in the world for some people.
Not me though, I'm offended about a lot of things, just not in anyone but my own name, it's part of being a real grown up. If people can't cope with real life as it's lived, perhaps they'd be better off living where it isn't permitted, rather than complaining to a receptionist.
As for the receptionist...
Words fail.

The immigration magnet

One of the reasons the UK is a magnet for immigrants is our language, English is the second language of choice for most foreigners should they choose to learn it, most books and technical publications have an English language version, the vast majority of films are made in English in the USA, even the language used in international air traffic is English, thus an Italian pilot, landing in Italy under the control of the Italian air controller will do the whole process in English. Even to the extent that words from other languages will often be adapted into English if we like them or they are popular enough to enter our culture, we don't seek to defend our language as other countries do, we simply absorb new words and call them ours.
Mail.

More immigrants settle permanently in Britain than any other country in Europe, a study revealed yesterday.
The latest figures showed that 397,900 foreigners decided to live here in 2009 – second in the world only to the U.S.
The figure marked a rise of 14 per cent from the previous year. It was the largest increase in the developed world, at a time when most countries saw dramatic falls in the number of permanent settlers.
The study, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, said the increase was largely down to family members coming to stay with those already in Britain, and the large number of foreign students living here.
The study comes just over a week after Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said a generation of Britons would be condemned to a life on benefits unless immigration rules were tightened.

Fair enough in its own way, people will come here to learn English or will travel to a country in which they already have a rudimentary knowledge of the language, after all it's easier than trying to learn a new one.

However any new immigrants should also expect to adapt to us and not simply hole up in a ghetto of their own which unfortunately has happened recently, nor do I believe that immigrants should be entitled to any sort of benefits until they have at least paid a fixed sum into the system in taxation, that includes medical treatment other than emergency stuff. That would mean people coming here to work at least would be encouraged, non working partner/spouse well they pay for them too. That would also mean the better paid/more skilled they are the quicker they would be covered by the safety blanket. Non skilled minimum wage slaves coming here would have to be working at least 10 years before they even got minimum benefits. 

That still leaves us with a problem about what to do about our own unemployed, but if we have fewer economic migrants because they have to pay their own way, perhaps our employers will look to take on some of our own.

House of cards

or the domino principle if you wish, referring to a situation in which the collapse of one part of a structure has the end result of the next part falling until the whole structure collapses. In the case of the Euro it was (and is) Greece, however the warning signs are now showing that Italy or Spain is now about to go under too, rapidly followed by Portugal and possibly Ireland as their reckless borrowing based on the strength of the steady German and other Northern European states comes home to roost as they now simply cannot pay off their debts, or carry on the way they were doing.
Of course our banks are up to their necks in it, though fortunately although we aren't in the Eurozone, if our economy wobbles we can at least re-value our currency, something Greece, Italy or Spain cannot..
Express.

SHARES in British banks plunged today amid fears the Eurozone debt crisis is set to spread to Italy and Spain. Jittery market traders ditched shares in banks across Europe in a huge sell-off.
British banks were among the worst hit with Barclays, which has major exposure to both Italy and the Iberian peninsula, down nearly 5 per cent at one stage.
Taxpayer-backed Lloyds was down 3 per cent and Royal Bank of Scotland down 1 per cent.
The FTSE 100 Index fell 100 points, or 1.7 per cent, today with banks among the biggest fallers. Meanwhile, the Dax in Germany and the CAC 40 in France fell more than 2 per cent.
Britain’s exposure to the Italian economy amounted to £43 billion at the end of March, according to Bank of England figures.
UK banks and investment houses risking losses of £7.9 billion if the Italian government defaults on its debts and a further £5.7 billion if Italian banks collapse.

Of course, the ultimate horror of it is, is that governments might move in to shore up the banks with our money (again) and if you thought the national debt was bad now (see counter on the left), just wait and see what it will be like if or when our so called leaders have finished with trying to put right what simply should be left to sort itself out.
The problem is a matter of pride to certain EU apparatchiks, they simply cannot allow their prestige "currency" symbol of all that the EU is about fail, yet if anything should be obvious, you cannot buck the market. The Euro is doomed to fail simply because there are nations in it who do not belong to it, who falsified their economic standings to be a part of it and borrowed like hell to cover their outstanding costs as prices rose, retirement ages fell but productivity remained the same.
The fall is inevitable now, the only thing to wonder about now is how painful the leaders of the EU make it, for all of us.

I can't be the only one surely?

Sometimes you have to read between the lines in a newspaper article, to what's not being said.

Telegraph.

Scotland Yard has launched an attack on those it accuses of undermining the police investigation into alleged illegal payments to police by deliberately leaking information about the inquiry. 

The statement, widely interpreted as an attack on News International, was released this afternoon.

The force has taken the rare step of explaining how detectives believe that information known by only “a small number of people” has been selectively leaked to “divert attention from elsewhere”.

The Metropolitan Police statement then goes on to detail meetings between News International and the force, saying that all parties had agreed to keep the details of the investigation confidential.

The statement was released in response to an Evening Standard article, which said that personal details about the Queen and her aides were sold by royal protection officers to journalists working on the News of the World.

Now, I'm reading this as "undermining the police cover up" if only because the leaks aren't diverting attention away from suspects, but rather opening a bigger can of worms. After all, the more information out there, the bigger the investigation becomes and the less chance that guilty parties might just slip under the radar as their names aren't in the public domain or have been pointed too via the leaks.
At the moment what appears to be a major witch hunt is going on and everyone is looking very closely for scapegoats, particularly those whose hands are dirty over the deal yet hope that by deflecting some of the blame onto others, their part in the whole shoddy business will be overlooked. More information out there, more overload there is and more blame to go around.
No-one is going to come out of this mess smelling of roses, save perhaps the victims and many of them I'm highly unsympathetic towards, Gordon Brown for one. Yet despite my disdain for the political side of the mess, the fact remains that peoples privacy and grief were intruded upon and the law was broken and appears to have been broken with the connivance of certain police officers.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes clearly applies in this case and if those found to have collaborated in the privacy breach by either bribes or turning a blind eye are caught and convicted, they should have very harsh penalties to face. That's why the more information out there the better, certain bloggers and others will not let this go and no amount of cover up will work if all the details are in the public domain.
The more we know, the less chance there is of anyone getting away with it, trying to hide the information looks suspiciously like a cover up to me.
That's what I read between the lines anyway.

You what????

I do not believe we can win in Afghanistan, I do not believe we should be in that barbarous place, I believe that we should have gone in to be sure, but should have wrecked the terrorist training camps and their support mechanisms from one end of the country to the other killed every terrorist we could get our hands on and simply left. We should have then kept an eye on the place and if they attempted to rebuild, do the same again (including in Pakistan) ad infinitum. As we are there, I expected that we would deal with any problems in a robust manner. I would have been wrong of course.

Telegraph.

British soldiers who spot Taliban fighters planting roadside bombs are told not to shoot them because they do not pose an immediate threat, the Ministry of Defence has admitted.

They are instead being ordered to just observe insurgents and record their position to reduce the risk of civilian casualties.

The controversial policy emerged at an inquest into the death of Sgt Peter Rayner, 34, a soldier from the 2nd Batallion The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment who was killed in October last year by an improvised explosive device as he led a patrol in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Wendy Rayner, 40, disclosed that in the days leading up to his death her husband been told that it was not his job to attack insurgents laying bombs.

Mrs Rayner, who lives with their young son in Bradford, told the inquest that the insurgents were being allowed to get away with the murder of British troops.

She said: “They are not allowed to fire on these terrorists. If they can see people leaving these IEDs, why can’t they take them out? One officer even told him 'I am an army Captain and you will do your job'.
"We have lost too many men out there, they had seen people planting IEDs yet could not open fire or make contact with them. I believe strongly if people had taken on board what he was saying more he might have been here today.” 
Under the Geneva Convention and the nationally administered Rules of Engagement the 9,500 British troops in Afghanistan are told they can only attack if there is an immediate threat to life.

I would have said that planting an IED would have been an immediate threat to life as the next person past it would have been killed or maimed. Besides, these people need to learn if they do this sort of thing, there are consequences and the terrorists there certainly do not follow the Geneva Convention and the nationally administered Rules of Engagement so neither should we. They will kill our troops given any opportunity, the only thing they really understand is strength and we appear to be anything but strong. No, I'm not advocating random violence nor reprisals, though I do believe there might be a case for reprisals but anyone seen planting a bomb should simply be shot pour encourager les autres, to coin a phrase.
Our troops have a hard enough job on their hands as it is, our idiotic politicians, the U.N. and the Ministry of defence have hobbled them and tied one hand behind their backs by insisting on civilised rules for dealing with barbarians.
Either let loose the dogs of war or leave, what we are doing now will never work in a million years.

Must?

Committing political suicide seems to run in the veins of the Lib Dems, or rather those of the Lib Dems who are pro EU and pro Euro.

Telegraph.

Nick Clegg angered critics by insisting Britain’s fortunes were tied to the eurozone.
He said the UK could not stand by while countries like Greece ­teeter on the brink.

I know he's an ex EU something or other and has to say such crap in order to hold onto his pension, but really, how out of touch is the deputy leader of the coagulation?
The UK more by accident than design managed to stay outside the Euro currency and thus managed to keep a measure of control over our interest rates and economy, something which the individual countries in the Eurozone do not have, much to Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy's detriment.
This should have meant that we simply tut tutted as those economies slid into oblivion at least until they pulled out of the Euro and took control of their "new" old currencies and devalued them to the correct levels of their debt. Something they can't do with the Euro. What we shouldn't be doing as the boy Clegg is suggesting is bailing out the Euro, it's not our currency and although the EU do lord it over us to an extent (at the moment) it isn't our problem. If the Greek economy does go tits up because they can't pay their debts, then it's not our business to be throwing good money after bad and simply stave off the inevitable.
Out of touch and clearly out of his mind, Nick Clegg clearly has no idea what the UK public at large actually think about the EU or if he does, doesn't give a damn about representing that feeling in Parliament or abroad.
Sooner his party goes into oblivion the better.

Interference

Soldiers and other military forces have a difficult job to do whilst they are in action, sometimes decisions have to be made on the spur of the moment which can often have fatal consequences, either for the troops or those they oppose. One thing they should at least have confidence in is that they will receive the benefit of the doubt and be judged from a military standpoint over such decisions, rather than by rules primarily designed to be applied to civilians.
Telegraph.

British troops accused of unlawfully killing civilians in Iraq breached human rights laws by failing to properly investigate their deaths, European judges ruled yesterday. 

Judges concluded that the actions of British soldiers in Iraq were covered by Europe’s human rights convention during the time they were responsible for the security of parts of the country.

The landmark judgment by the European Court of Human Rights overturns a ruling by the House of Lords in 2007 that there was no such human rights jurisdiction surrounding the deaths of five civilians, because it was outside of the UK’s borders.

The Government must now pay tens of thousands of pounds in damages to the relatives of the five and lawyers last night warned the “monumental” ruling could lead to a flood of claims over the treatment of Iraqis by British troops.

The decision will also further fuel concerns over the influence of European judges on rulings made by the UK domestic courts.

Yes again it's that damned European Court of Human Rights again interfering in how we go about the business of  running things our way. Despite the fact that these cases weren't in Europe, despite the case that what the military do should be held to a differing standard, the ECHR has again stepped in cost us a fortune, opened the gates to a flood of claims and put our troops lives at risk as they may now be in danger of hesitating by fearing an ECHR reprisal.
The ECHR should have no say whatsoever on the lives of any UK citizen, though that has never stopped them in the past, they especially should have no say in the conduct of our military, that's in the domain of military courts and military justice, not civil justice.
For the life of me I cannot understand why our politicians signed us up to this abominable court? It persistently interferes in the daily life of of this land, overturning decisions made under UK laws designed for UK citizens, businesses and institutions. The only thing it seems good for is keeping lawyers well fed from the money they make out of it.
Still, I maintain, no foreign court should ever have jurisdiction over UK military forces, not now, not ever!

Deluding the readers

Another day, another cry for "British jobs for British workers" as coined by the BNP (May 2006) and now grabbed by the mainstream parties to try and make themselves look a bit like EUsceptics. Particularly after the English train company Bombardier announced a 1400 jobs cut after losing out on a contract to Siemens.

Express.

A RALLYING cry to back British workers was issued last night after the UK’s last train-maker announced it was cutting over 1,400 jobs because it was losing a key contract to a German rival.
A further 12,000 jobs are likely to go at 100 local companies supplying the plant.
Derby-based Bombardier suffered the latest blow to British industry after the Government chose German company Siemens as the preferred bidder to supply 1,200 train carriages.
They are part of the £6billion Thameslink mainline rail project.
The Government claims that it had no choice under EU competition rules.
But today the Daily Express launches its latest crusade “Battle for Bombardier” and urges the Government to think again over the decision and prevent further sell-outs affecting our companies and workers.
UKIP MEP for the East Midlands, Derek Clark, asked: “Whatever happened to British jobs for British workers?
“Workers have been let down by successive governments which have not made better efforts to retain manufacturing in this country and simply caved in to EU pressure.
“While we are in the EU we cannot do anything about competition rules or stop manufacturers going elsewhere.”

Gerry Doherty, leader of the TSSA rail union, said: “Ministers must abandon their role as Pontius Pilate and stop standing idly by while train-making slowly bleeds to death in the UK.
“No German or French government would be so foolish as to award such a vital contract to an overseas manufacturer, threatening thousands of domestic jobs.”

Well, perhaps the French and German governments wouldn't, but that would only be because they arranged the contract to be written in such a way that only a French or German company could win the quote, they'd play within the rules, but find a way to make the rules work in their favour.
The UK government isn't of course smart enough to do this, besides we still have a tendency to play fair when it comes to the rules.
However the facts remain that whilst we remain part of the EU, this sort of thing will happen, any tenders for this sort of national infrastructure have to be opened for tender to all companies/interested parties in the EU. No amount of bleating by politicians, union leaders, newspapers or even blogs like this will change the fate for Bombardiers workers unless of course we leave the EU, even then it's unlikely, contracts will have been signed, penalty clauses inserted.
When we leave the EU and I truly believe it is a when, not an if, certain politicians and civil servants need to be held to account, these people were complicit in giving up our sovereignty, complicit in allowing further integration to the detriment of our nation and who have by taking our money in taxation conspired in treason against us the people.
Leaving might well be painful, might well cause all sorts of problems, but it is infinitely more desirable than staying. What happened to Bombardier is only one of a myriad of tales of job losses and interference on a massive scale by the EU in the UK, it will happen again and again until some politician grows a set and we leave.
Can't come soon enough, though sadly it's too late for Bombardier.
Should have been the first act of the new government, but we know what kind of man cast iron Dave is...
Saying told you so is cold comfort today.

The (genuine) right to remain

How other states treat their citizens is a matter of concern and on occasion they should be allowed refugee status if they somehow or other make it here if they were at risk of persecution.
BBC.

A Jamaican lesbian has won the right to stay in the UK after immigration judges ruled she risks persecution if she returns to her home country.

The woman, who cannot be identified but lives in Stoke-on-Trent, was originally refused leave to remain in the UK by the Home Office.

She asked to stay on the basis she was an "out" lesbian and her home country is "deeply homophobic".

A tribunal has now ruled she can remain in the UK.

Her case was reconsidered by the Upper Tribunal's Immigration and Asylum Chamber in London where senior immigration judges said she was "entitled to refugee protection".

The case was identified by the judges as one of potential "country guidance" on the issue of the risks to lesbians returning to Jamaica.

The tribunal heard the woman became aware of her sexuality as a young girl.

Unable to be open, she had lived as a "discreet lesbian", socialising with a select group of women who organised meetings via an internet chatroom.

She told the tribunal that while out with this group on one occasion they were identified as possible lesbians because they were dancing together, rather than with men, and the DJ began playing hostile songs with anti-gay lyrics.

A group of men then threatened to "convert them" - implying they would rape them - and followed them out of the bar.

 A terrible thing it is to be threatened for what your lifestyle choices are and I do hope she can make something of her chance to remain. That said however, I also hope she is not going to be a burden to UK society simply by being a benefits drone and I also would hope that if she breaks the law for any reason, she's out and on the next plane home. I also realise the way the law and benefits system now works here that she could do either of those things and still remain here which doesn't strike me as fair at all. I also wonder what happened to the first safe country principle that's supposed to be used for claiming asylum rather than the first rich country rule that seems to be high on the agenda of a lot of refugees. Nor do I have any time for those who claim asylum as economic refugees, still this seems genuine and I have no problem with genuine, I do have a major problem in that the genuine seem to be well outnumbered by those who just wish to stay because this is a better place to stay rather than because they are genuinely being persecuted. I'm also wondering if claiming that your sexuality is an issue will take over from the "right to a family life" which seems to have been a favourite.
Like many others I have no problem with being a safe haven for genuine cases, I do however suspect that the legal profession is taking the piss with a good few cases and technicalities, not circumstances have allowed a good few to remain when really they should have been sent home.

From the department of the bleeding obvious...

I've just spent a wonderful couple of days up near Stowmarket with my good lady, resting and relaxing, drinking more than the government alcohol points limit and eating more than they recommend too, we spent a day in Norwich wandering all over, buying the sort of gifts for family that are both interesting and quite forgettable, mostly mustards and fudge all local and all reasonably priced.
So it was with interest that I noticed this article in the Express...

PEOPLE satisfied with life are less likely to get heart disease, research shows.
And the more happy people are with their “lot”, the greater the protection.
Depression and anxiety are well known for putting people at higher risk. Now scientists have proved the benefit of a satisfying life boosting heart health.
Dr Julia Boehm of Harvard School of Public Health, said: “Taken together, this research indicates that being satisfied with specific life domains – in particular one’s job, family, sex life, and self – is a positive health asset.”
The study polled 8,000 British civil servants with an average age of 49 and included love relationships, leisure, standard of living, job, family and sex.
Dr Boehm said: “These findings suggest that interventions to bolster positive psychological states – not just alleviate negative psychological states – may be relevant among high-risk individuals.”

Wow, wonder how much it cost them to discover those little gems? I have a feeling many of us could have deduced that for nothing that happy, satisfied with life people will live longer than those under a great deal of stress.
One of the things that I did notice about Norwich, other than it's a pretty nice place to visit, was the general air of happiness about the people living there, happy people, happy town and quite homogeneous too, other than a very few different nationalities most of whom I could only tell by language, there were no signs of multiculturalism to be seen. I guess I've kind of got used to seeing the odd/bad side of multiculturalism where I live and where I've worked, so it was odd to be in a place where it didn't seem to be happening. No ghetto's, not burkhas, no weird ethnic dress, just a few odd looking Goth students.
I know it's just my perception, but it did strike me that where multiculturalism isn't, people seemed happier, something that politicians should perhaps take note of, assuming they want us to be happier.
If not, well all we have to do is bring down the government and get rid of all those stupid laws, rules and regulations that stress us out and we'll be fixed.

Parish Notice

I'm away for a couple of days R & R in darkest Suffolk, normal blogging (or what passes for normal here) will probably resume on Tuesday evening.
Take a look at the other blogs on the right hand sidebar whilst you wait, always good reads to be had there.

It's not immigration as such, it's integration

The ONS figures for immigration were released yesterday and merely confirmed what everyone knew, despite attempts to close down the subject by the previous Labour government by screaming racist at anyone who brought the subject up and the promise of the current Tory government to get the numbers down to the 10's of thousands.
Express.

OF all the promises in last year’s Conservative manifesto one stands out as belonging in fantasy land: “We will take net migration back to the levels of the Nineties – tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands.” Yesterday the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released its latest population figures and there is no mistaking in which direction immigration is heading.
In the year to mid-2010, 574,000 immigrants entered Britain. Net migration rose from 176,000 to 230,000, contributing to the sharpest rise in the uK population for nearly 50 years.
The latest estimate for the UK in mid-2010 was 62,262,000, a rise of 470,000 on a year earlier.
In fact immigration plays a greater role in boosting the overall population than those figures suggest.
Recently arrived immigrants have a far higher birth rate than does the existing population. The total fertility rate – the number of children a woman can expect to have in her lifetime – is 1.84 for women born in the UK and 2.48 for those born abroad. In 2009/10 just under a quarter of all babies born in the UK were to mothers born outside the UK.
Given that it takes a full year for the ONS to compile its population estimates, the latest shocking rise in immigration – which covers the period mid-2009 to 2010 – cannot be laid at the present Government’s door. Nevertheless it is hard to see how next year’s figures will present a much different story.

 Yes, mass uncontrolled immigration is a problem, no-one denies that (now) and this is a relatively overcrowded island in places, particularly the nice bits of England where most of us happen to live. However the real danger has come from deliberate government policies that have prevented integration.
No deliberate policy of only using the native tongues of this land in all communications in fact a deliberate effort made to translate for all immigrants enabling them to reject or ignore integration by language.
Deliberate use of political correctness to prevent investigation into cultural crimes, often by the use of the term racism to shut down debate or criticism, a prime example being the years of the police knowing about the grooming of young girls by Pakistani Muslim males, other examples being the criticisms levelled at racial profiling as being racist rather than statistical.in nature.
Deliberate use of multiculturalism to allow ghettoisation of certain cultures and move them above criticism simply for being who they are, leading to isolation from the mainstream culture and lack of integration due to cultural bias often against women, often against other cultures being forced out by a variety of hostile acts and discrimination.
Nothing seems to have changed in government policy in the last year or so, merely big words on cutting down on immigration without any seemingly tangible action. But immigration wouldn't be a problem if immigrants had to integrate simply because they would not thrive otherwise, also certain religious groups cause more trouble than their worth because their cultural norms are not compatible with western democracy and their religious laws are actually anathema to western law. Not that these people can't integrate, just that often enough they wont and expect us to accommodate and adapt to them.
So the problems we face are mostly of our politicians making, too many immigrants and no pressure to integrate. This needs to change and change fast before the next stage of the lack of integration kicks in, mass civil disruption and rioting by the populace, followed by civil war.
I see no sign as yet that 20 years down the road we will not be fighting a war for supremacy in our own land against a foreign creed utterly at odds with our hard won freedoms.

It's all related

Ian Duncan Smith is going to get up in parliament today and tell us what we all know in that mass immigration has been an absolute disaster for the UK in condemning whole generations of UK youth to a benefits culture because they are simply not able to do the jobs on offer owing to poor education standards.

Telegraph.

Too many young people are unable to read, write or communicate properly and do not work hard, a business leader claimed, as mass immigration is named by the Government as the biggest threat to challenging the benefits culture.

The Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce, David Frost, said business leaders knew there was a problem with youth unemployment but they could not afford to ignore cheaper skilled foreign workers.
Mr Frost said employers needed the "best people" and identified what he said were the problems with too many of Britain's youth, in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
He said businesses expected "young people to come forward to them who are able to read, write, communicate and have a strong work ethic and too often that's not the case".
He added: "There's a stream of highly able eastern European migrants who are able to take those jobs and that's why they're taking them on.
"They are skilled, they speak good English and, more importantly, they want to work."

Yes, they want to work and they come here to do the jobs that our poorly educated young people can't and wont do it seems and so long as they are allowed to come here, the situation will go on.
What is needed is a radical rethink of the way young people/kids are educated in schools where the emphasis is on basics, discipline and the inculating of a work ethic. Yet that alone is not enough if the changes don't happen within the home as well.
It's hard to blame companies who wont take on UK people who don't meet the job requirements especially when they can get people who do and are prepared to work hard from elsewhere. Turning off the immigration tap will help a bit, but it will be an expensive process too as people will need extra training to meet the standards required. yet that and education is exactly what is needed to solve the problem, though I suspect it will take years assuming we could even start now, which we can't, because of the EU.
It will take years to put this right, just stopping immigration wont do it, we need a well educated workforce and that's something we don't have, decades of meddling with the education by the imbeciles in parliament have seen to that with their social engineering and everyone must be a winner dogmas.
Step one, leave the EU.
Step two, remove the political ethos from education and just educate.
Step three, adjust benefits to where having a job is a major benefit rather than an obstacle.
It will put itself right eventually, but not till we do the above.