Charity begins at home!

What is it with governments of both Labour and Tory hue that believe that our money (yes, its ours, never theirs) is much better spent abroad than looking after the people in this country that most desperately need it (the elderly and sick)
Mail.

UN-backed Millennium Village project — to which Britain is now contributing millions of pounds for the first time — began in 2004 and encompasses half a million Africans.
It is designed to prove that targeted aid can lift such places out of poverty in just five years. But the scheme is facing mounting accusations that it is a waste of money, and is doing less to help rural Africans than it claims.
According to the project’s documents, the business plan reveals ‘total direct costs’ are expected to be £17.2 million and that the goal is ‘substantial poverty reduction’ for up to 2,250 households.
This means spending more than an astonishing £7,500 per household. To put this in perspective, this is 34 times the average annual income of households in the region.
The British Government — desperate to find ways to spend its soaring aid budgets — is handing over £11.5 million to this vainglorious venture.
Despite the austerity weighing on British families at home, spending on foreign aid — currently £8.8 billion a year — is rising by more than one-third under the Coalition.
Indeed, last Sunday International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell insisted they will enshrine in law the target of giving 0.7 per cent of our national income to global aid.

Now if I want to help starving Africans, that should be my choice to hand over my money, not the governments choice, not the politicians choice, not now, not ever! As one of the villagers says...

'Even if the money does flow from your country, it will end up in the pockets of corrupt people and politicians. We will not see any spent on our infrastructure or in our pockets.’

The government is throwing away our cash to kleptocracies and corrupt officials, it knows it is and we know they are, yet they continue to fund the totally unnecessary Department for International Development. Yet in our country we suffer huge heating bills, a badly mismanaged health system, atrocious education standards, cuts to our armed forces, fake charities funded by the government to tell ministers what they want to hear and ruinous green taxation to fund these ridiculous schemes.
Charity begins at home, if the people of this country want to fund projects abroad then it should be our choice, not the governments and it should be voluntary. The life of on pensioner dying of the cold in our land is not worth any (supposed) benefit given in cash abroad, not now, not ever. It's time we said you're on your own.

Well there's a surprise

Not many of us will be surprised that two men arrested under suspicion of plotting an attack against the London 2012 Olympic Games canoeing venue, just happen to be Muslim converts. Converts if anything being more likely to be extreme as well as being probably extremely mentally unstable for becoming Muslims in the first place, after all, check out around the web for just what they're required to believe.
Telegraph.

Two Muslim converts have been arrested in East London on suspicion of plotting an attack against the London 2012 Olympic Games canoeing venue.
Sources told The Daily Telegraph that the arrests were based on a tip-off after men were seen behaving suspiciously close to the venue in Waltham Abbey, Hertfordshire on Monday.
Hertfordshire police officers began combing the banks after three men were seen in a dinghy on the River Lea.
The two men, aged 18 and 32, were arrested at separate residential addresses in east London, by officers from the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism Command, at 7am on Thursday.
They were detained under the Terrorism Act 2000 on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism and held at a central London police station. Officers were last night searching two addresses in East London.
A friend of the arrested men named the 18-year-old as Jamal ud-Din and said the older man was someone he knew only as “Zakariya.”

Yes the berks are likely idiots, one of them Jamal ud-Din is certainly a well known member of Al Muhajiroun, Islam4UK, Voting is shirk, besically cannon fodder for the real extremists behind that organisation who were responsible for calling British troops murderers in Luton and burning the poppy on Remembrance day. Essentially they're mostly a bunch of rabble rouser's, though their links to salafist terrorist organisations are very well known and they have supported the attempts to get hate preachers into the UK to continue to radicalise the Muslim mainstream.
Mostly though all this does is demonstrate that the biggest threat to the peace in the UK is Islam, it doesn't matter if they were planning anything or not, it's costing us millions to keep an eye on the buggers and frankly it's money that could be better spent elsewhere if we were to just simply deport the troublemakers once they break cover. After all, no Islam in the UK, no more problems like this.
Yes, I know it's not going to happen (yet) but sooner or later they'll get lucky and do something appalling like the tube and bus bombings and the government will be forced to do something other than appeasing that vile religion.
At least we hope so...

Does it matter?

So her majesty the Queen met Martin McGuinness and shook his hand in public. No doubt at one time he'd have like to have killed her, his organisation was certainly responsible for Lord Louis Mountbatten's murder. Yet time is a great healer they say and no doubt after the IRA came in out of the cold this was inevitable.
Telegraph.

The Queen, once a prime target for the IRA, shook hands not once but twice with Martin McGuinness, a former commander of the terrorist group, in a gesture that meant every bit as much as the sovereign’s historic visit to Ireland last year.
Barely a decade ago, the idea of the monarch, the ultimate symbol of British rule in Ulster, even being in the same room as Mr McGuinness, arguably the most recognisable former member of the IRA, would have been unthinkable.
Yet at a charity event in Belfast, Mr McGuinness appeared genuinely pleased to meet the Queen, even using the traditional Gaelic greeting of Cead Mile Failte – a hundred thousand welcomes.
Nor was their handshake a perfunctory one; the Queen held the hand of Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister for several seconds as they shook hands for the cameras at the end of the event, when Mr McGuinness wished her goodbye with another Gaelic phrase, Slan Agus Beannacht, which he translated for her as “Goodbye and Godspeed”.

There's even the usual gushy royalist sentimentality further down the article about complimentary outfits etc. etc.
Yet does this really change anything? I don't think it does, the IRA were never the threat that the authorities made them out to be and at the end due to good intelligence and some ruthless wetwork we had them on the run, though I suspect it was the loss of American support after the twin towers outrage that hurt their coffers the most.
That said, there are people out there, like me who will never ever forgive the likes of McGuinness, Adams et al. Not even if they begged for forgiveness rather than becoming part of the parasite class themselves. In every way that mattered these guys had the Nazi/Socialist mindset of the end justifying the means. Their are still missing victims and a complete lack of remorse or help intrying to find them. The IRA were not freedom fighters as such but a jumped up set of gangsters in a similar vein to the Mafia, tagged onto a mythical belief that Ireland should be united. Though the sad truth was that they wanted it united under their rule and the minute they'd forced us to give way the bombs would have started up in Dublin and the Republic knew this all to well.
So in the end it doesn't matter what the Queen, or the powers that be might want us to think, some of us won't forget and aren't prepared to forgive.

Or you could just do your job...

We elect our MP's supposedly to represent our interests, unfortunately as happens often enough our MP's simply represent their own or their parties interest. Doesn't even matter if they promised it in a manifesto, after all, the Labour party via a court case made certain that manifesto promises were not subject to legitimate expectation. In other words a politicians promise isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Mail.

David Cameron is facing renewed pressure to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU after Germany said it would let its people have one.
German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said yesterday that closer integration in Europe could only go ahead with a ‘yes’ vote from the German people.
Later this week, the EU Commission will press for closer banking union at a summit in Brussels in a desperate bid to raise market confidence in Europe. The plans, which represent a step towards a European banking super-state, include an EU-wide guarantee scheme for bank deposits and a single bank regulator.
In an interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel, Mr Schaeuble acknowledged that a referendum would be needed to cede national sovereignty to Brussels.

If you think that the EU will allow any result other than the one it wants, then you're seriously deluding yourself. If you think that a politicians word on a referendum is truthful, again you're seriously deluding yourself. The EU only permits referenda that it thinks it will win and then orders them held again (and again) if it doesn't go their way. Once it does, no more referenda (of course)
What we need is a government and a set of politicians who have the balls to defy the EU and tell the country if you elect us we'll take you out of the EU, a parliamentary vote not subject to EU bribery of the populace.
Frankly if Cameron allows us a referendum on an in/out vote about the EU it will only be on the grounds that he expects it to be an 'in' vote, he'll also campaign for one too, mark my words.
What the people want and what a politician will give them are two seperate things entirely. We know this all too well.

I thought that was the point?

My thoughts generally on Scottish independence run to the lines that it's up to the Scots, I'm far more interested in English independence, though sadly no-one is suggesting we get a vote to drop out of the Union. Yet you have to wonder at the mentality of certain politicians involved in the debate.
BBC.

Former UK chancellor Alistair Darling has launched the bid to keep the Union, saying there will be no way back from Scottish independence.
He compared independence to buying "a one-way ticket to send our children to a deeply uncertain destination".
Mr Darling argued Scotland could have the "best of both worlds", with a strong parliament at Holyrood and a secure place in the United Kingdom.

Bit of a no shit Sherlock moment for old badger brows there, as I thought the entire point of Scotland going alone would mean that there was no going back, I'd presume that if for some reason or other they wanted to come back that we (the rest of us) would have to be asked if we wanted them. As currently there is a majority of the English who want them to go (another reason we'll never be asked) I can see that would be a rather tricky referendum for any government. So I guess from their point of view it would be much easier for the Scots to stay and the English under no circumstances whatsoever be asked what they actually think of the Union, much easier to pretend presume we like it.
The breathtaking hypocrisy of old badger brows can also be recognised in the second  statement too when he states Scotland could have the "best of both worlds", with a strong parliament at Holyrood and a secure place in the United Kingdom. No mention of the fact that the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish all have their own parliaments with their own local MP's dealing with local devolved issues. I doubt the elephant in the room of an English parliament has ever occurred to him, or if it has then totally dismissed, he's far happier after all having the best of both worlds.
And that's really the nub of the entire Unionist argument, having the best of both worlds and to hell with what the English want. The fact that they have their own parliament, make their own decisions on what's best for them never translates into equality for all. They ignore the utter hypocrisy of non English MP's voting on English matters in the UK parliament. After all, they're all right...

England 0 : 0 Italy England go out on penalties.

What is it with penalties and England sides? Yes we struggled, yes Italy were far the better side, yes they were deserved winners. But, how come our players can't take penalties to save their lives?
It's truly weird...

Here we go again

Why is it that the judiciary and politicians conspire by badly written and unwanted laws to allow people the majority do not want here to remain in this country?
Mail.

An Afghan Muslim who claims he killed people while fighting for the Taliban has used the Human Rights Act to remain in Britain – despite Government efforts to deport him.
Zareen Ahmadzai, who spent three years fighting in Afghanistan, has admitted using a Kalashnikov rifle and firing rockets, as well as supplying weapons and food to the Taliban.
The Home Office rejected his claim for asylum, and when his appeal also failed, Ahmadzai was detained at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre in West London while awaiting deportation.
Yet when the 30-year-old – who initially did not speak English – mounted a fresh appeal, he was able to overturn the Home Office’s case on the grounds that his life would be at risk if he returned home.
The decision is another setback for Home Secretary Theresa May, who is under pressure to reform human rights laws following a series of high-profile cases in which Muslim extremists have avoided deportation.

Yes, that's right, a guy who arrived here illegally, couldn't speak the language, boasts he may have murdered people, possibly even British troops is allowed to stay because he claims his life might be in danger.
I know what most of my fellow countrymen will be thinking and it will be something along the lines of  'that's your problem, not mine.'
Again and again the Human Right Act has been used to allow undesirables to remain here often enough living on benefits whom the indigenous population neither want or are prepared to tolerate. Yet our idiot politicians and the judiciary who interpret the laws our idiot politicians put on the statute books have allowed the situation to persist beyond the point of madness.
Come the election time however none of the main parties will even have the removal of this odious act in their manifesto's. Indeed none of them will even have the option of leaving the EU to close the asylum door in their manifesto's either.
It strikes me that a vote for one of the big three is a wasted vote, they obviously will not give us what we want, just mealy mouthed platitudes and broken promises.

So what happened to payment in advance?

I'm finding it increasingly hard to keep my temper over this little scam piggybacked onto us by the EU where 'foreign' students qualify for cheap student loans then vanish without a trace after they have done their course.
Mail.

Thousands of European students who attended British universities are failing to repay taxpayer-backed loans worth £75million.
Of 8,700 graduates who have moved abroad, just 800 are currently making repayments.
The whereabouts of a further 9,900 EU students are unknown. Officials are waiting for them to provide their financial details.
The revelations follow the release of official figures, which also show how total outstanding student debt owed by British and EU graduates has ballooned to £40.2billion.
The figure has nearly doubled in four years – and will spiral even more sharply from September, when the upper limit for tuition fees is raised from just over £3,000 to £9,000 a year.
Students from EU member states have been eligible for special low-interest loans from British taxpayers to cover tuition fees since 2006, but cannot claim maintenance loans.
British-based graduates pay back their student loans automatically through the tax system once their earnings exceed £15,000.
However, there is no equivalent mechanism for those who move abroad. They are required to set up direct debits, or remember to pay online.

The problem is that the EU demands that anything we offer our own is applicable to their countrymen as well. This is why EU students get free education in Scotland whilst the English don't and why EU students qualify for taxpayer backed loans in England yet are expected only 'remember' to pay them back. No, this doesn't happen in any other EU country as they restrict their universities to those who pay, in advance and don't offer loans to help them do so. So guess what happens? Yes 'impoverished' EU students come here, get cheap guaranteed loans and then bugger off without paying them back, after all, what's not to like from their point of view? It's not like we're even making an effort to try and keep tabs on them.
Once again the government and the EU have conspired to rob the UK taxpayer blind.
Can we please just leave?

It's not just wrong...

Bit of a rhetorical question this, however in a civilised society what do you think should happen to someone who headbutted a woman causing them to have severe headaches, along with tinnitus and blurred vision. Whilst during the same incident kicked out and broke another persons kneecap to the point where they cannot walk unaided still? Somehow I don't think sorry should quite cut it do you? Nor in any civilised society would you expect to get just a 12 month referral order. However as we don't live in a just and civilised society, that's what happens, even if in mitigation the perpetrator is only 10 years old.
Express.

A BOY of 10 knocked one teacher unconscious and shattered another’s knee cap after being told off, a court heard yesterday.
The pupil became angry after teachers confiscated a coin he had been noisily scraping on a desk.
As staff tried to calm him in a corridor, he floored one woman teacher with a head-butt. She now suffers from headaches, tinnitus and blurred vision.
Kicking out, he broke a 53-year-old teaching assistant’s knee cap.
Despite surgery, she is unable to walk unaided. He later told police: “I’m sorry.”
The boy burst into tears as Bromley Youth Court in Kent was shown CCTV film of his rampage.
The pupil, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted unlawful wounding and causing actual bodily harm.
He was made subject to a 12-month referral order after District Judge Roger Ede told him it was “wrong to kick people”.

In my day we wouldn't have dreamed of doing anything like that, the teachers would have brayed the living daylights out of us had we tried, not to mention the fear of what would happen if our parents found out.
Not that I'm particularly happy at the sentence or the judge telling him that it's wrong either, the sentence should have reflected the seriousness of the incident and the thug made to suffer some real consequences, but sadly this is what passes for justice in the UK etc... 

His mother blamed the teachers for “causing the situation”.
She said: “He’s not a bad kid. He won’t be coming back to court.”

 Personally I blame his mother for not teaching the little scroat that scraping a coin on a desk is something you don't do and that attacking someone in a fit of rage when they stop you is not something you should ever do.

So we end up in a situation where it's more convenient to blame the teachers than mummy's little darling.
That's where the real problem lies...

Not my flag, not my country #2

I do wish the government would give up on its ideas to try and make me (and the rest of the UK) something that a majority of us think we aren't. Yes I'm talking about 'Britishness' something I believe only applies to recent immigrants and deluded politicians (along with occasional royalists)
Mail.

The Union Jack is to be displayed on driving licences under Government plans to 'reinforce a sense of Britishness'.
Currently, plastic photocard UK licences bear the European Union flag but no British national symbol.
But Downing Street and the Department for Transport say they will use the introduction of new licences in three years' time to change the design to include the British flag and possibly also the Royal coat of arms.

OK, back to the QM straw poll, when the jubilee was being celebrated there were two union flags being flown from houses on my estates I'm not sure how many cars had them, but it was in the single figures, if not none at all. During Euro 2012, there are currently seven Cross of St George flags flying on houses and fifteen cars (at least) have England flags fluttering above them and that doesn't include my own England fluffy dice either.
I'm not British, I refuse to be British other than as a description as to coming from the British Isles, it's not my nationality it's not my country. It's a made up catch all term used to describe the ruling class of the country, it had some meaning from before 1997, though the mask started to slip a little in Euro 1996 when at least we had one parliament to govern us. Now the Scots and Welsh (along with the Northern Irish)  have their own parliaments and we're ruled by a British parliament including Scot's and Welsh MP's who make decisions with regard to the whole of Britain and the UK, not just the bit of it called England. Nor do they usually even mention England, it's always 'this country' or 'our country' as if they are ashamed of England or the word England, yet when they speak of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland they are always specific.
The people judging by my straw poll are as ever one step ahead of the political classes (at least) and this move will not help unite us, if anything it simply alienates the indigenous people of the UK even more.

Collective punishment

It's a favourite of those in authority. Can't be arsed to deal with a minor problem, opt for a blanket ban.
Telegraph.

A primary school has banned children from playing football at break-time during Euro 2012 to stop fights - and has asked them to play chess instead.
Pupils have been told kickabouts and all other ball games are off limits at playtime during the tournament.
Instead, staff at Hall Road Primary, in Orchard Park, Hull, hope pupils will skip and play with outdoor chess sets.
Deputy head teacher Kristina Frary said the ban was needed to prevent injuries and allow staff to get on with teaching.
She said: "Passions are running high, especially with the Euro 2012 football tournament. Potentially, that's why children are wound-up.
"We have had a sequence of fall-outs and they were all centred around football.
"It was only a small number of incidents - maybe half a dozen - but we have decided to have a break."

So instead of being prepared to deal with a half a dozen incidents, all the kids who want to play football have to suffer? Wouldn't it have just been easier to 'sin bin' the ones who can't control themselves and to let the rest enjoy the pleasure of kicking a ball about to let off steam?
I do wish the powers that be would just leave us alone, to see that in life as in sport there are winners and losers. To allow small disputes like these to be treated as a breach of the rules, rather than as an excuse for collective punishment.
Kids are competitive, kids fight, you punish the guilty, not the innocent.
What''s so bloody hard about that?

England 1 : 0 Ukraine

Not vintage England by any means, though we haven't really seen any signs of that in this competition. Still, all they had to do was not lose, tricky bit was, they were playing the host nation who had to win. Good defending, a simple goal and a blind touchline referee all contributed to a good result. Yes there will be those who say the Ukraine should have had a goal and that we were lucky. Yes we were, but these things even out, remember Lampard and a similar no goal against Germany back in South Africa?
As it is, we're not going home (yet) and we face Italy on Saturday night.

Now it's tea...

Cigarettes, alcohol, fatty food, tea, all will kill you if you don't cut back. Yes, drink over 7 cups of tea a day and you increase your chances of prostate cancer by 50%.
Mail.

Men who drink lots of tea are far more likely to develop prostate cancer, researchers have warned.
They found that those who drank seven or more cups a day had a 50 per cent higher risk of contracting the disease than men who had three or fewer.
The warning comes after scientists at the University of Glasgow tracked the health of more than 6,000 men for four decades.

This comes on top of Cholesterol damages your brain (BBC) Lack of sleep giving you a stroke (Express) and marathon running can scar your heart (Telegraph)
It doesn't seem to matter what you do, how you live your life there's something out there is going to get you. What's worse is that the health fanatics out there are determined to force us into living life on their terms, not ours.
What should be a matter of lifestyle choice is now fraught with authoritarianism. Smoke or drink too much or even overweight and there's a chance that medical staff will turn around and throw you off the waiting list for an operation. Doesn't matter if you're otherwise healthy, work and pay into the system, if you're doing something they don't like, then there's a chance they'll prevent you from getting treatment unless you stop eating/drinking/smoking.
How did we ever let these people get into positions of power over us? The sheer inhumanity of their decisions at times is staggering. It really is none of their business how we live our lives, so long as we aren't breaking any laws, rather than their petty rules.
Yes I know it's supposed to be about saving the NHS money, but I could do that quite easily by simply removing whole swathes of middle management and letting doctors and nurses sort things out for themselves. Not sure how well that would work, but getting rid of the policy makers who try to prevent people getting help certainly couldn't hurt.
I really think there needs to be a comprehensive look at just how we do 'health' in the UK, both in financing and delivery. To far too many people the NHS is a sacred cow, yet it's obvious that there are better ways to deliver health. We just need to pick the way that works best for us, not necessarily the most efficient, simply the best.

I shouldn't lose any sleep over this...

In general I like scientists, not climate pseudo-scientists, but scientists in general. They've improved our lives immeasurably, kept the lights burning and the fields producing. Plus they've also given us some good laughs with their theories, particularly the end of the world/universe ones.
Mail.

People often say that time speeds up as we age, but if the latest scientific theory is true the opposite could well be the case.
The radical theory by academics suggests that time itself could be slowing down - and may eventually grind to a halt altogether.
The latest mind-bending findings - put forward by researchers working at two Spanish universities - proposes that we have all been fooled into thinking the universe is expanding.
In fact, they say, time itself is slowing down until eventually, in billions of years time, it will cease altogether.

Billions of years means very little to people who actually wonder just how they are going to manage till the end of the month. It is a good theory, though how they intend to prove it (or be around long enough to collect data) is not included in the report in a similar way that warmists refuse to discuss their theories when it's snowing and summer is delayed yet again.
When you're talking billions of years, I guess it really doesn't matter if the universe is expanding or contracting, at least not in the here and now. Indeed most of us care very little as to what might be happening in the here and now, beyond say the results of Britain hasn't got talent. Which I suspect was either planned by the powers that be or at least taken advantage of.
Still, with billions of years to spare, it might just be that we will end up with a government that actually does some good.
I was going to say filled with honest politicians, but not even billions of years could change their nature.

First name Mickey, surname Mouse

Plans are afoot to force mothers to name the father's of their children on the birth certificate. Though how they propose to make mothers tell the truth is another matter entirely.
Telegraph.

Fathers could be forced by law to be named on their baby’s birth certificate under plans being drawn up by ministers to boost their role in family life.
The controversial move is one of a range of options being considered by David Cameron, who is keen to help promote fathers’ feelings of responsibility for their infants.
At the moment, only the mother’s name must be officially registered. If there is no father’s name on the certificate, he will be described as “unknown”.
It is estimated that around 50,000 births are registered in Britain every year without the father’s name being recorded.
In an intervention to mark Fathers’ Day, coalition sources said enforcing the move by law was one of the options being studied, along with an alternative of tightening existing guidelines to “encourage” more fathers to sign birth certificates.

Now I'm all for fathers paying their way for their kids, however i can see a whole raft of problems coming from this proposed legislation including the main one of the mother not knowing who the father is, or simply lying in the case of possible infidelity. After all, that's what happened in the past with all those milkman kids.
Also disconcerting is the method they intend to make use of...

Sources said that the requirement for fathers to be named could be introduced using a law which was passed under Labour but never brought into effect.
The 2009 Welfare Reform Act contains a provision for requiring mothers to name fathers, threatening them with a £200 fine and seven days in prison for perjury if they gave a false answer.

Ah yes, how terribly apt that the coagulation should attempt an attack on the right to silence with a law introduced by the past masters of removing rights the Labour Party. Of course it will likely turn out that it's one rule for us and another rule for them...

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, did not sign the birth certificate when his son Daniel was born in 2009 – claiming he had been “too busy”. His duties at the time included attending a climate change summit in Copenhagen as energy secretary.

Climate change instead of proudly proclaiming you're the father of your son. Yes, that's Labour to the core as well.
This is simply another attack on our ancient rights by the powers that be. Instead of reducing the size of government, they seek to reduce their income by removing our rights.

Playing silly buggers with our money

I just wish politicians could get it through their thick skulls that when they give away money to shore up failing projects that it isn't their money and they shouldn't be doing it.
Express.

BUSINESS bosses, economists and MPs warned yesterday that plans to pump up to £140billion into banks to get them lending may not work and could be costly for taxpayers.
Some fear millions of Britons could end up carrying the can if banks make risky loans which then go bad.
Bank shares jumped in early trading after Chancellor George Osborne and Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King unveiled the package.
Two separate schemes, one to lend at least £5billion a month to businesses and another of up to £80billion over 12
months, will be offered to help banks struggling with the rising cost of borrowing on the open market.
Both involve banks swapping their assets temporarily for Bank of England loans on condition they maintain or increase lending to firms and families.

For one thing if the Eurozone as predicted goes tits up then this money will be lost, it will take a lot more than £140 billion to stave off the sort of damage that will do to our economy as the banks involved will lose billions due to toxic debt and dodgy loans anyway. What the politicians ought to be doing is rushing through a bill to separate the investment arms of the banks from the savings and public use of the banks. This is something they'd planned to do around 2020, but it's becoming increasingly obvious that this measure needs to be put in place now to allow the dodgy investors to go to the wall without taking the rest of the bank with it. Particularly with our cash in their grubby hands.

Sweden 2 : 3 England

Well what a difference a substitute can make. From being in a comfortable 1:0 up in a pretty boring first half through a quality Carroll goal. England seemed to blow a few fuses right at the start of the second half and ended up 2:1 down due to some sloppy defending. Credit to the manager for acting immediately by putting Theo Walcott on and turning the match around, Walcott was on 22 minutes, was on the ball 11 seconds, and made four passes (all successful), and had one assist and one goal.
England looked to have thrown it all away with the kind of horror start to the half that has grown men breaking down in frustrated tears. But credit where it is due, they rallied and with the help of an inspired substitution from Roy Hodgson to introduce Theo Walcott, they battled their way to victory.
But you have to ask yourself just why is watching England such a stressful and painstaking experience, even when we are winning?

Nice money if you can get it

Further to my post yesterday on people having to work well into their retirement comes along this little gem...
BBC.

Kent County Council has revealed its former managing director received a £420,000 payoff after she lost her job.
Katherine Kerswell, who left her post in December, was one of 1,500 staff who were made redundant as part of the council's spending cuts.
At the time the council refused to confirm her severance package, but it has now published its statement of accounts, detailing the amount.
Council leader Paul Carter said director salaries had reduced in Kent.
He said: "We've taken £1m out of the cost of running the senior directors' cadre and £45m of staff savings across the piece.
"I can't talk specifically as we're bound to a confidentiality agreement, but this job was one of the top jobs in local government.
"So if somebody had left a job to come to a new job then 16 months in you've restructured and decided a post is no longer needed, there has to be a severance payment that pays for that loss."

Yes, if a post is no longer needed you have to pay redundancy, but surely whoever is negotiating for Kent under these circumstances needs their wrist slapped (at the very least) for writing this severance figure into a contract. But there again it's perhaps not real money to them, they have a never-ending source of it via the rates. Years ago most if not all councils did not have managing directors, nor chief executives, the actual work of running their demesne was done by councillors themselves with the help of a few specialists in specific areas, managers mostly. There was no oversight save that done by councillors via committee. Then new Labour got elected and suddenly it was jobs for the boys (and girls) as cabinet style council management was introduced and the gravy train enabled various executives to cash in at the ratepayers expense.
What do they do that's any different? Well not a lot really except exclude elected officials from the decision making process, leaving them to vote on proposals rather than do oversight.
Big money, big wages, big payoffs to the powers that be. None of it their own...
As ever.

Working on

The new reality for a lot of folks is that they are going to have to carry on working once they've passed their retirement age either through choice or simply because they cannot afford to retire, particularly on a state pension. Well according to various headlines today anyway, though most seem to miss a very obvious omission in the people who will have to carry on working.
Express.

BRITAIN’S economic crisis has almost doubled the number of pensioners forced to work in their retirement as they struggle to cope with the rising cost of living.
Pensioners are driving taxis, cleaning houses and even taking care of the elderly in a bid to pay their bills.
As many as 1.4 million ­people were working beyond 65 last year – up from around 800,000 in 2000, ­official figures showed.
A high proportion of men had stayed on in “higher skilled” executive jobs – such as sales directors or chief executives, the Office for National Statistics found.
Vince Smith-Hughes, a retirement expert at Prudential, described the research as reflecting a “new retirement reality” which will see people having to work for even longer.
“More than 10 per cent of people who had planned to retire this year are making alternative arrangements and putting off drawing their pensions for the time being,” he said. “The retirement landscape is changing and as a result retiring at 65 is no longer a given for the vast majority of people.”

Retiring at 65 will soon be a thing of the past anyway, the government intends to raise the retirement age to 67 by 2028, though why they're waiting so long is a bit of a mystery. But the hidden omission in all this talk is that whatever the retirement age is for the private sector or getting your hands on a state pension, the same rules don't apply to the public sector who are hell bent on keeping their gold plated index linked pensions and retiring at an age that those who work in the private sector can only dream of (whilst paying taxes to pay for the public sectors largesse in its pension scheme) Indeed if the state hadn't run up such a massive public debt (thank you Labour and thank you Tories for continuing the madness) we wouldn't be in this position now, there would just about be enough money in the pot to keep our pensioners in a degree of comfort. That coupled with the politicians lunacy in demanding 'green' energy coupled with expensive fuel bills means that many of us will never ever be able to afford to retire unless we get lucky on the lottery.
This sadly is the legacy of massive government, idiotic left wing policies, socialist leaning unions and a lack of duty of care to a vulnerable section of our society.
Work, starve or freeze in the winters that we were no longer supposed to have.

Spreading the blame

I suppose it was inevitable that the powers that be seeing an attack (justifiably) on their pet Islamics that they couldn't brush under the carpet sought to shift the blame onto communities as a whole. So instead of concentrating on the mass sexual exploitation of young girls by Pakistani males, we're now supposed to look out for the mass sexual exploitation of young girls by... Well apparently by just about everyone.
Telegraph.

The Deputy Children’s Commissioner, who has been gathering evidence ahead of a report due in September, shocked MPs as she detailed the scale of the problem and gave graphic illustrations of what is being done to children in communities across England.
She said that although the Rochdale case involved one particular “pattern” of men from one ethnic background abusing girls from another, these different around the country.
“What I am finding, I regret to say, is that there are parts of every single community – white, Pakistani, Afghan, Gypsy and Romany traveller, you name it – who are seeing children as easy access in terms of sexual exploitation. In terms of victims, we are seeing the same kind of profile.”
In London, black gangs were attacking black children while on an estate in the north of England, white men were pursuing white girls.
Mrs Berelowitz agreed the vast majority of people in each area were horrified by what was happening, but added: “There are always horrible people within every community who will take every opportunity to hurt children, but they are a minority.”

Doe sexual abuse of children go on? Yes, sadly it does, does it go on in all communities? Yes sadly it does. Is it carried out on a factory scale by certain elements in every community? Well, no, frankly the evidence isn't really there to suggest it does, save only in one community, that of Muslim Pakistani males.Which is what makes this report so dangerous as it will fuel denials for the Pakistani community that it is a problem specific to them followed by the usual 'et tu' defence when they are finally pinned on it.
What the powers that be are doing is attempting to shift the blame from Islamics onto other communities, where there might be a problem, however that problem judging by a quick check of the headlines is few and far between.
After all, think for a minute, if there were mass sexual abuse of young girls by white 'English' on any estate, town, or city in the UK do you not think we'd have heard about it? How no stone would be left unturned until those who had perpetrated this outrage upon society had been brought to book?
I recall no such evidence, I recall no such headlines.
I suspect we're being played for fools again.

Not inspiring confidence

I've blogged for quite a while now on various recurring themes (as well as anything else that takes my fancy) but a major one has always been the state of education in England and the deliberate dumbing down of a large percentage of the populace whether by accident or design. Being highly suspicious of government motives along with a growing understanding of the powers that be and their desire to keep themselves as the powers that be, I soon recognised that this was deliberate, if a mistake on their part. In order to keep power you need fresh injections of talent and ideas, you don't get that from a stagnant group, just take a look at the results of inbreeding if you like. I'm still not convinced they've given up on the idea, but you only have to look at the efforts they are going too to try and improve education to see the damage they've done to it over the years.
Mail.

Tens of thousands of teachers will be forced back to the classroom to study grammar and maths because they lack the knowledge to deliver tough new primary school lessons.
Ministers yesterday unveiled an overhaul of England’s ‘substandard’ primary curriculum in an attempt to reverse more than a decade of dumbing down.
English lessons will contain tougher grammar and spelling, while maths classes will put greater emphasis on times tables, fractions, mental arithmetic and long division.
But experts warn many teachers will need intensive retraining to deliver the new lessons.

That's right, in order to just teach the basics, teachers themselves are going to have to be taught. Why? Simply because they've never learned them themselves. The system didn't require the knowledge it just required ever increasing results. So teachers taught kids how to pass exams, not how to actually think and work things out, bit like driving instructors teach people how to pass the driving test, not necessarily driving as it's done.
Will it work? I'm not so sure, perhaps if the government made educationalists drop all the excess baggage they are throwing at kids such as gender equality, racial awareness, religious equivalence and enviroloonyism. There's even a proposal to make learning a foreign language compulsory from the age of seven.
Whilst agreeing in principle with the basics system, I do think it will fail unless something else gives way. However I cannot see the powers that be wanting to give up on brainwashing kids with their pet likes.

France 1 : 1 England

Hmmmm.
Ok for once I was impressed by an England side that actually played as a team and not as a bunch of primadonnas. We created several good chances and apart from one close header left France to long range efforts sadly one of which they scored from.
What we do appear to be missing is a goalscorer, though Rooney will return for the final match as to whether he'll disrupt the team or enhance it remains to be seen.
Still I'll give them a 7 out of 10 for this performance.

Surprise, surprise

We've known for a while about fake charities, various blogs and groups have highlighted their activities over the years there's even a fakecharity site, which appears no longer to be regularly updated, but the information it contains is still valid.
Still, the numbers shown there only appear to be the tip of the iceberg as a report shows...
Mail.

Thousands of charities are barely disguised fronts for state-backed campaigns, a report warned yesterday.
It said 27,000 groups rely on the taxpayer for more than 75 per cent of their income – with individual donors providing less than half the funding for the entire voluntary sector.
Many of the charities lobby for the pet causes of politicians, according to the Institute of Economic Affairs. The environment, public health, foreign aid, inequality and women’s rights are areas that have been ‘particularly blessed’.
Christopher Snowdon, the report’s author, said government departments should be banned from using public money for advertising campaigns and called for the abolition of unrestricted grants to charities. ‘Government funding of politically active charities, non-governmental organisations and pressure groups is objectionable,’ his study said.
‘Firstly, it subverts democracy and debases the concept of charity. Secondly, it is an unnecessary and wasteful use of taxpayers’ money.
‘Thirdly, by funding like-minded organisations and ignoring others, genuine civil society is cold-shouldered in the political process.’
The IEA said that charities such as the School Food Trust – created by the Department of Education following Jamie Oliver’s school dinners campaign – act as ‘special advisers to the Government and are essentially part of the bureaucracy’.

Dear Lord, 27,000? I knew it was bad, but I would never have guessed that it was quite so many suckling at the taxpayer teat. To my mind, it's not the job of the government to be giving my money away to any special interest group, if I want to donate to them I will and the vast majority of the groups represented quite frankly deserve to go to the wall. You have Alcohol Concern, ASH, Smokefree NorthWest, Smokefree North East, D-Myst, etc. ASH is one of the most powerful fake 'charities' in the land and directly dictates Government policy yet only raises £11,000 in direct donations. Yet, genuine charities like the RNLI get nothing (nor I suspect do they want government support)

The real reason though is that politicians have slipped so far down in the trust league that any initiatives they start are now held in extreme suspicion, so they opted for 'trusted' charities to try and tell us what to do. Judging by some of the causes supported, it's fairly obvious that the political classes still haven't a clue about what people want, which is mostly less of the political classes telling us what to do. Nor do they see anything wrong with throwing our cash at a 'good' cause. 'Good' causes being anything that fits their ideas on what we should be made to do, without actually being any proof of doing good at all, merely hectoring us to change our ways.
There are some who believe that any 'charity' that receives government funding should lose its charitable status and a little health warning tagged onto their name when they make a pronouncement, something like "Paid by the UK government to tell you what to do."
The best idea though is to simply give them nothing at all, let them stand on their own feet by public subscription/donation. I rather think most will go under.

Moronic Labour

You can almost guarantee that the race industry will attempt to inveigle itself into all aspects of our lives. You can pretty much guarantee that the political classes for whom it suits particularly those on the left of the political spectrum will come out with something so ridiculous that it just beggars the imagination.
Mail.

England players should walk off in protest and abandon the match if any of them are racially abused during the Euro 2012 football competition, Labour said last night.
The unprecedented call for a pitch protest by Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander came amid a growing political row over the tournament in Poland and Ukraine.
And the view received strong support in a snap poll, which suggested six out of ten backing players who walk off.
Mr Alexander said that if, as many fear, black England players are abused when the team plays Ukraine on Tuesday week, the match should be stopped – with the points awarded to England.

Now I don't know who these people in the snap poll are, but they clearly understand about as much of the game as Wee Dougie.
If the England players walk off the pitch in protest about anything without the permission of the referee, that's known as forfeiting the match and the points go to the other team. This is usually followed up by FIFA imposing sanctions on the nation involved.
Now as Wee Dougie is a Scotsman perhaps he should just stop commenting on an English team and mind his own, or perhaps he'd just love England to be kicked out of the competition for breaking the FIFA code of conduct, he is a Scot after all and their sympathies when it comes to the English are suspect to say the least. Not that the press helps matters by producing Scottish editions highlighting the England teams progress, but that's just part of the ongoing 'British' mentality that pervades the MSM in the UK.
Either way, the race industry is talking out of its arse when it comes to what England's players can and cannot do within the framework of the rules of the game and the code of conduct they are expected to follow.
No-one likes overt racism or racism in general, however it's something that FIFA/UEFA will deal with after the match. It's not something the players are expected to do anything about during the match.

Weird lists

A survey by the Skipton Building Society of 2,000 people revealed the 50 things which show you have become a fully-fledged adult.
Well, I couldn't resist...

1.Having a mortgage 2.Mum and dad no longer make your financial decisions 3.Paying into a pension 4.Conducting a weekly food shop 5.Written a Will 6.Having children 7.Budgeting every month 8.Being able to cook an evening meal from scratch 9.Getting married 10.Having life insurance 11.Recycling 12.Having a savings account 13.Knowing what terms like 'ISA' and 'tracker' mean 14.Watching the news 15.Owning a lawn mower 16.Doing your own washing 17.Taking trips to the local tip 18.Planting flowers 19.Being able to bleed a radiator 20.Having a joint bank account 21.Having a view on politics 22.Keeping track of interest rates 23.Finding a messy house annoying 24.Being able to change a light bulb 25.Owning a vacuum cleaner 26.Holding dinner parties 27.Listening to Radio 2 28.Enjoying gardening 29.Spending weekend just 'pottering' 30.Mum starts asking you for advice 31.Carrying spare shopping bags just in case 32.Like going round garden centres 33.Wearing coats on a night out 34.Going to bed before 11pm 35.Making sure mum and dad are phoned at least once a week 36.Classing work as a career rather than a job 37.Repairing torn clothing rather than throwing it away 38.You iron 39.You wash up immediately after eating 40.Enjoy cooking 41.Buying a Sunday paper 42.Always going out with a sensible pair of shoes 43.You like receiving gift vouchers 44.Work keeps you awake at night 45.Filing post 46.Having a 'best' crockery set 47.Being able to change a car tyre 48.Being sensible enough to remove make up off before bedtime 49.Being able to follow a receipt 50.Owning 'best towels' as well as 'everyday towels'

No, haven’t got one. Well, yes. No, only myself to blame there too (and the CSA) Yes No Having kids does not make you an adult, merely fertile. Yes Yes How does that make you an adult? Yes I do, but it doesn’t make me an adult No Hell no. Watching it yes, believing it no No No, my good Lady does though Only because they don’t collect Hell no A ten year old could do that Yes That they are all corrupt idiots? Yes Bollocks Sort of Again a ten year old… This makes you an adult how? Why? Bollocks Ditto See above No Why? I mean why? Bollocks Why? Bollocks What and worry the hell out of them No No  I can, I don’t Mostly Yes  No Trainers and walking boots Hell no Only nightshifts Only if threatened No Yes I don’t wear make up Yes No

To me being an adult isn't what you own or what you listen too, it's not even what you do. It's a state of mind, a willingness to take the consequences of your decisions.
Now look through the papers at the politicians, civil servants, social workers, police chiefs etc who constantly try to shift blame.
That isn't what adults do...

Or we could just stop fighting foreign wars.

What is it with politicians in that when it comes to savings they always look in the wrong places? Instead of cutting waste, getting rid of Quangos and fake Charity Donations, Of ridding themselves of the middle management consultant mentality or various chief executives. They immediately plump for frontline services?
Express.

THE Army will have to rely on help from mercenaries and foreign soldiers in future wars, the Defence Secretary announced yesterday.
Regiments face being axed or merged as part of Government plans to reduce the number of Army personnel from 102,000 to 82,000 by 2020.
Private military contractors, Nato allies and Territorial Army reservists doubled to 38,000 with a £1.8billion investment will plug the gaps, Philip Hammond told the Royal United Services Institute.
Mr Hammond outlined plans for civilians to provide “logistics support” for frontline soldiers. Vital tasks such as catering may be out-sourced, he said, with Britain relying on foreign powers in other areas like transport.
Mr Hammond told his audience that the Army will “rethink the way we deliver every aspect of military effect in order to maximise capability at the front line”.

Only a lunatic would put the safety and transport of their armed services into the hands of factors out of our direct control, well lunatic/politician/civil servant, take your pick. The terms seem to be interchangeable these days. There's also the slight problem in that any armed force under 100,000 isn't actually an army, it's a civil defence force.
At the end of the day though, you have to look at government spending, it's still rising yet services are being cut here there and everywhere. Which beggars the question of where the hell is the money going?
It can't all be going on pensions, the NHS, green subsidies and the EU along with Quangos and Fake Charity consultants can it?
I have to admit, I'm beginning to wonder though.

An ongoing outrage

It's only taken twenty years to highlight the problems of grooming young girls by male Muslims of Pakistani descent. It would still be going on without the efforts from patriotic and nationalist groups to highlight this abuse. Even now the state still attempts to accuse such groups of racism and extremism and would still be attempting to use its agents to cover up the story if it could.
Mail.

Social workers knew for six years that a teenage mother, murdered for bringing shame on the families of two Pakistani men who had used her for sex, was at clear risk from predatory Asian gangs.
Laura Wilson, 17, from Rotherham had been groomed by a string of British Pakistanis before she was stabbed and thrown into a canal to die for informing her abusers' families of the sexual relationships.
Her killer Ashtiaq Asghar, who was 18 at the time, was given a life sentence and will serve a minimum of 17-and-a-half years after he pleaded guilty to murdering Laura in October 2010.
But it has now emerged that Rotherham County Council's social services were well aware she was at risk and had received information about certain adults suspected of targeting her from the age of 11.
Last week the council's Safeguarding Children Board published a serious case review but key passages which reveal they knew she was at particular risk from 'Asian men' had been blocked out with black lines. 

There's that 'Asian men' line again, which is code for Muslim males of Pakistani descent. Even now despite the complaints from various other 'Asians' about the MSM and the powers that be's use of the catch all term.
The only reason I can see for social services allowing this abuse and hiding it away from the rest of us is that a) They thought it might be construed as racist and b) It was 'cultural' and the politically correct thing to do was ignore it.
Problem being it is cultural and the majority culture and the vast majority of minority cultures find it abhorrent to say the least. Yet the state and the servants of the state tried to cover it up even encouraging more immigration from this subculture and giving it protected status from criticism from the majority mainstream despite its appalling record of misogyny, terrorism, cruelty and sheer barbarism.
There is no place for people in this country who abuse young girls, systematically or individually, there is no room for their religion which condones it and no room for those who believe that hiding the truth is the way to deal with it.
Sooner or later if this matter is not resolved properly and the rug lifted to expose the dirt and corruption there will be a bloodbath of a revolution.
Mark my words.

Jobsworths

One of the more irritating aspects of the so called commercialisation of the NHS was the introduction of parking fees at most major hospitals. Take my own local hospital, Medway Maritime, yes there is a problem with the sheer number of people wanting to park there, but that doesn't detract from the problem of people having to shell out a fee if they park at the hospital either for treatment or to visit a sick relative. Reducing the number of spaces for visitors in order to increase the number of staff parking places didn't help either but that's another issue. Unfortunately most hospitals put their parking controls in the hands of private companies and some are over zealous (to say the least)
Express.

A KIDNEY-SWAP patient had 10 parking tickets plastered on her car at a hospital while she was having surgery.
The woman had legitimately parked in a disabled bay and left a note on the windscreen saying she was in for transplant care.
But her Mini was blitzed by an “overzealous” warden at the ­University Hospital of Wales in ­Cardiff with tickets adding up to £300 in fines.
Yesterday the tickets were finally removed from the car after high-profile calls for private firm Vinci Park UK to show compassion. ­
Andrew Davies, Tory leader in the Welsh Assembly, said: “While I understand parking regulations and their enforcement are a necessity, some compassion would not have gone amiss.
“The issuing of 10 tickets is a ­little overzealous, to say the least.
“Everyone using a hospital car park is already under a certain amount of stress and anxiety.”

A tad OTT wouldn't you say?

Now this might be a set up, however the fact that the company or its representative bit just highlights a problem where those seeking treatment are being held over a barrel by those seeking their cash. Hospital visits are not particularly pleasant affairs for many anyway and this sort of thing simply adds to the stress factor.
I suppose you could insist on people using public transport to get to the hospital, though considering just how inconvenient public transport can be at times plus the lengthening of journey times coupled with the price of said transport does not make it a favourable option for many. In my case I can drive to the hospital in ten minutes, were I to go by bus, you're talking about at least an hour there plus an hour back complete with extortionate fares even if I buy a day ticket, it's pretty much the same price as parking for 24 hours at the hospital anyway.
Oh I'm sure there has to be some form of traffic and parking management for hospitals, I'm just not sure that the way it's currently being done is in anyone's best interests.

And so it begins...

It was almost inevitable considering the enviroloonies constant pressure against the wishes of the general public combined with the idiocy and gullibility of the political classes in believing that we'd swallow anything they told us.
Express.

A REBEL council is attempting to block the building of new wind farms in populated areas in a backlash against so-called green energy. The first such move by a county council flies in the face of David Cameron’s pledge that his Coalition is the country’s
“greenest government ever”.
Tory Lincolnshire will vote this week on proposed new planning guidance that includes a presumption that no new
turbines will be erected near homes within the authority’s boundaries.
It follows growing irritation with wind farms, which have been criticised as unsightly, noisy, expensive and inefficient.
Leader of the council Martin Hill, said: “We are not saying we are not going to have any more but we feel we have already got 75 big turbines – things above 130 metres high.
“The latest ones are the sort of size of the London Eye.

Sadly the politicians in and around Westminster running the taxgrabbing scam are as ever behind the times when it comes to what the public want and need (as opposed to what the politicians believe we want and need).
But local government at least is far more sensitive to public opinion, if only because they also feel the backlash against national policies as well as local stuff far more quickly.
What the public want is cheap, efficient and working as and when they need it, not at the vagaries of the weather and certainly not subsidised at their expense in the name of some imaginary "green" catastrophe.
Lincolnshire County Council seem to have to honour of being the first public authority to see what a tarnished brand the term 'green' has become in the eyes of the general public. I doubt they'll be the last.

Like flies to...

What is it with politicians and the overwhelming need to stab someone in the back? Or have I just answered my own question? They are politicians after all. Anyhow it came as no surprise at all to find out about this...
Telegraph.

Nick Clegg has suffered a fresh headache after it emerged that senior Liberal Democrats are holding secret talks with Labour with a view to closer co-operation between the two parties in the future.
Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, and Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Lib Dem leader, are among those said to be in contact with members of Ed Miliband's inner circle.
The talks are said to be "informal" and to take place on "different levels". One Labour source revealed Mr Cable and Mr Miliband spoke regularly by telephone, buts sources close to the Business Secretary did not confirm this.
The aim of the discussions is to find "common ground" between the two parties so that, if the next general election results in a hung parliament, they are are able to form a "progressive" coalition which would see the Lib Dems turn their back on David Cameron and the Conservatives.
Specific policy areas are discussed - including House of Lords reform. Many Lib Dems are furious that David Cameron appears to be booting the issue into the long grass.
As well as Mr Cable and Sir Ming, Lib Dems who support the strategy are understood to include Simon Hughes, the party's deputy leader, Tim Farron, its president and a predicted future leader, and Lord Oakeshott, the former Treasury spokesman. All are from the left wing of the Lib Dems.

The problem for the Lib Dems is that the Party itself has two distinct parts to it The classic Liberals (aka Orange bookers) and the Social democratic wing who are descendants of a Labour split and still have a hankering for big government spending and all the trappings of socialist failures. They're essentially the ones who would have allied with Gordon Brown after the Tories threw away the general election if Brown himself hadn't been such a toxic brand. As it is they've acted like a fifth column within the coagulation always seeking division and the blocking of any policies seen as too right wing or possibly even workable. It boils down to this, They want the coagulation to fail (as do I) however unlike my good self who wants a government who will actually do something about the mess the countries in, they want to ally with the party mostly responsible for the mess and do it all over again!
Am I bothered about House of Lords reform? No, it will happen when it happens, it's only the moronic left in the Westminster bubble who get their knickers in a twist over it. It's not an issue at all, the predations of the EU, the collapse of our economy and the dissolution of the country due to mass uncontrolled immigration are. But the upshot of the matter is, those issues to the politicians talking to Labour are of no matter at all, they'd rather fiddle whilst Rome burns than actually sort out the countries future. Which to them means higher spending and higher taxation complete with bleats about how unfair it is that the rich are all leaving and no company will set up here because it costs too much.
This was always going to be a problem for the coagulation, too many of the Lib Dems were closet socialists. Unfortunately when coupled with the most incompetent Tory leadership since the days of Heath it rather looks like they are getting ready to jump ship.
What happens next remains to be seen, but it wont be good.

Not my flag, not my country

I know this is going to come across as churlish, petty and grumpy. But seriously, I cannot give a damn about the diamond jubilee. A straw poll just looking around the estate where I live suggests that the only people here who are remotely interested are old people (60+) and young kids who got it force fed at school, even they're just holding a small flag, no bunting, no parties. Unlike the silver jubilee celebrations which I remember rather better.
Part of the problem for me, specifically, is that I no longer recognise myself as British, nor the Union flag as my own, yes it incorporates my flag, but it doesn't mean a great deal to me these days unlike the Cross of St George flag, which I feel far better represents an ideal or imagery with which I'm comfortable.
I didn't lose my pride in the UK, it was stolen from me by successive governments, who took Britishness and denigrated it, sold it off to the EU, allowed unrestricted and uncontrolled immigration and worse, failed to ensure the immigrants integrated, yet allowed them to claim the pre noun of British tagged onto that which they considered themselves to be. British-Pakistani being but one example.
There was also the attitude of the 'British' establishment who were prepared to allow other components of the UK their own parliaments and celebrate their national identities whilst denying me my own. English to them equalled British, still does too. Yet they are perfectly happy for Scots to be Scots and Welsh to be Welsh.
Yet to be English is to be identified by the state as violent, racist, bigoted and altogether beyond the pale.
Jack Straw:

The English are potentially very aggressive, very violent. We have used this propensity to violence to subjugate Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Then we used it in Europe and with our empire, so I think what you have within the UK is three small nations...who've been over the centuries under the cosh of the English.

Utter bollocks of course, but pretty much par for the course in the thinking of the establishment in which it's ok to mention any other country by name except England. David Cameron in his "there's Scottish blood flowing through my veins" speech mentioned the USA and Scotland, but England was reduced to "our country", "the whole country" and "this country"
When the English question government policy on immigration.

Gordon Brown has apologised after being caught on microphone describing a voter he had just spoken to in Rochdale as a "bigoted woman".
Sixty-five-year-old Gillian Duffy had challenged Mr Brown on a number of issues including immigration and crime.

The authorities praise 'ethnic' communities for defending their areas during the London riots.
Dan Hannan.

The Turkish shopkeepers and restaurateurs who patrolled Dalston, the Sikhs who stood with drawn swords before their temple, are reacting as generations of British people reacted in similar circumstances. Rather than simply whining about the failure of the state, they took responsibility. It would obviously have been better had they not been forced into this position; but, finding themselves there, they acquitted themselves rather heroically.

 yet when the English did the same?

Dozens of officers have kettled around 300 people outside the McDonalds restaurant on Eltham High Street, which escaped the widespread rioting seen elsewhere in south east London last night.

So the 'British' choose to ignore my country, consider me a bigoted,violent, racist yet expect me to join the celebrations for the British Monarch?
Not that I have a major issue with the Monarchy, I respect the Queen, like Prince Philip, Like Princess Anne and respect Prince Harry. The rest I wouldn't miss, care little for and in the case of Prince Charles hold in utter contempt.
Sadly all the state and the powers that be over the last 35 years have done is place me in the position where the only British thing about me is my passport (and I'd change that if I could)
I simply don't care any more, I want the British out of my country, I'm sick of the English being under foreign rule.

And out of the woodwork comes...

You could practically guess when the government start discussing obesity it becomes the catchword to pin various organisations authoritarian bansturbationist policies on.
Take the Noise Abatement Society (please) they have a target and have now bolted on the obesity meme to highlight their desires...
Telegraph.

The Noise Abatement Society says the tinny renditions of Greensleeves represent an “aggressive selling” technique that is no longer needed, particularly considering Britain’s obesity epidemic.
It is calling on the Government to keep the current restrictions on how frequently Mr Whippys can play their bursts of music, and to resist demands by the industry to let them blare out later into the night – which the pressure group believes may merely annoy potential customers.
The comments come after David Cameron highlighted little-known regulations governing ice cream sellers as an example of unnecessary state interference in business, but the resulting review is likely to lead to even more red tape.

It's the equivalent of buzzword bingo, got a cause, bolt on the correct phrases, hey presto instant headlines and hopefully government support.
Now I'm all for keeping noise down to a decent level, however ice cream vans don't even cross my radar when it comes to nuisance value, yes they are noisy, but they are also transient. They don't stick around and pester power is not in the purview of the Noise Abatement Society, it's just another phrase the establishment is fond of using to justify their authoritarian stance.
As far as I'm concerned, the Noise Abatement Society can just go to hell over this unjustifiable attack on a UK tradition.

Well they all do it

I remember back in the days of Thatcher how the Labour party used to bleat on about how a differing method of counting the jobless was being used to hide the actual figures. I believe that promises were made to go back to the 'old' system as and when Labour got into power. They never did of course, bit too inconvenient for them, though their faux outrage at meddling with the jobless totals has never stopped them fiddling the figures themselves.
Express.

LABOUR kept tens of thousands of jobless young people out of official unemployment statistics before the 2010 election to conceal soaring levels of welfare dependency, it was claimed yesterday.
New figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions show that under Labour around 50,000 unemployed people aged under 24 were given a “training allowance” or paid from a “Future Jobs Fund” rather than Jobseeker’s Allowance.
Ministers yesterday said that once the Labour “gerrymandering” is discounted, the number of unemployment young adults has fallen by 5,000 since the Coalition came to power two years ago.
The Whitehall figures were released as ministers hit back at Labour claims that the Coalition will spend £9.1billion more on welfare than expected in this Parliament because of its failure to get people off benefits.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith rejected the figures and said welfare spending was so high due to Labour’s failed policies.
He said: “Labour gerrymandered unemployment figures for years to conceal the fact they have let down generations of young British people. They found it easier to park young people on spurious schemes than deal with the root causes of their unemployment.

I remember those schemes, my stepson ended up on one, he rather enjoyed it too, though sadly like most who ended up on one there was no permanent employment at the end of it. I thought at the time it was just a way to mask the unemployment figures, but I'm an old cynic anyway so would have thought that.
Seems Labour was pouring billions of taxpayers money into make work schemes to hide the unemployment totals, something that a lot of people suspected, though knowing how much on a national scale it was, was difficult to tell, just that everyone I knew who had a teenager who'd left school and hadn't made it to university, said teenager was usually unemployed.
Did my stepson learn some useful skills? Well yes, he did, he also demonstrated that he was reliable by turning up every day, on time and worked hard at the tasks he was set. Did it do him any good? Only in the abstract, certainly didn't help him find another job immediately. Though he is now in full time employment, granted it's McDonald's, but at least it's work and he knows he can do well there if he applies himself.
Still, you have to wonder if the money spent on hiding the unemployment might have been better spent creating real jobs by reducing the tax burden on industry.
But sadly that's not how politicians think, they only see as far as the next election.