Privacy

So much of our lives are out there on various databases that it has become increasingly difficult if you live in the modern world to escape intrusions in the way of unwanted emails, post or telephone calls interrupting your life. Every contact you make seems to spawn a plethora of unwanted contacts back and some of those contacts are persistent to the point of bloody rudeness. Yet you'd think that some organisations would be a little more careful with your details? Actually scratch that, I know whom I'm writing to here in a sense, trust in authority is in sparse quantity amongst those who come here to read.
Telegraph.

Police forces have received millions of pounds for passing on the details of road accident victims to claims management companies, insurers and lawyers, it has emerged.
It may have led to thousands of people being pursued by “cash for crash” companies looking to profit out of personal injury claims, vehicle repairs and providing a replacement car.
Police forces denied making a profit, insisting the money they received was merely covering their administrative costs in providing details to insurers after a crash. Three forces — Fife, Hampshire and the Metropolitan Police — have admitted giving the contact details of more than 16,000 people to third parties. It is believed the practice is adopted by other forces, although they declined to provide details to LV.
The Met admitted it had been paid more than £5 million since 2009; Hampshire has received £480,000 since 2010, while Fife has been paid £194,000, a freedom of information request by LV Insurance found.
Jack Straw, the former Home Secretary who led a parliamentary campaign to curb accident claims companies, described the passing on of information as “scandalous”. “It is completely unacceptable that the police and public services are selling data in this way,” he said.

The problem for the government of course is that nowhere in the rules does it say they can't. That plus expecting common decency from public services in keeping your details to themselves is rather laughable. Private companies perhaps would be a bit more circumspect, though again it is private companies who are buying the data to use and names and addresses once on a database seem to be bandied about with scant regard to whether the details are relevant or that the people contacted on these databases actually wish to be hounded by  anyone.
Normally I'm not in favour of the state intervening on anything but the absolute minimum level in our lives. However the details held in their databases are ours, not the peoples who are handing them over. Perhaps it ought to be a criminal offence for a public service to hand over any such details.
In the end though it comes down to money.
Companies are prepared to pay for the details and the public services use the money to offset some of their costs (or pay for junkets, who knows) Yet those details are ours and once they are handed over there is no control over who gets to see or use them next.
Perhaps in this case there should be a law against it?

Entitlement

Interesting article in the Mail this morning reporting on the ITV This Morning programme with a young couple on who believe that because their parents pay tax they are entitled to live on benefits in a two bedroom flat. Note that they have worked and paid into the system though certainly not steadily or regularly and believe because their family members do, they are 'entitled' as will be their daughter when she grows up.
Mail. (usual caveats)

A young couple who receive more than £17,000 a year in benefits appeared on ITV's This Morning to defend their taxpayer-funded lifestyle.
Danny Creamer, 21, and Gina Allen, 18, who live in a comfortable two-bedroom flat in Portsmouth with their four month old daughter, Talulah Rose, say they are better off on £17k benefits and argue that unless they are able to find jobs that pay £18,000 a year or more, there's no point in working.
The couple also hit back at those who describe them as scroungers, arguing that because their hard-working parents have paid tax all their lives, they are entitled to claim some of the money back.

Now this is definitely a lifestyle choice, though it can be argued that the minimum wage at the lower levels of employment has also become the maximum wage too. However it's the sense of entitlement that really gets my goat. There are people out there unemployed who would love any kind of job and have been left on the scrapheap by age, illness and sometimes sheer bad luck, but they are often those who have worked in the past and would work in the future given a chance and they don't see living off the state as a healthy option. Yet this young couple do as the state itself has made it easy for them to do so. They simply don't have to work, they can go through the motions with the jobcentre, but really they are quite comfortable where they are and that's the rub. Unemployment benefit after a certain period of time if you haven't paid in should not be a comfortable area. If you've paid in all your life fair enough there should be some benefit to this, but if you've paid in nothing then perhaps it should not be a comfort zone.
Claiming that because your parents pay in gives you entitlement though should surely be a non-starter?
Life is tough for the genuinely unemployed who are really seeking work, this couple are truly taking the piss here.

Tokenism writ large

The race industry in this country is a cancer that really needs to be removed from positions of power and influence. It has gone from a position of fighting to deal with unfairness and genuine racism to promoting the agenda of minority groups over and above those of the indigenous population. The latest proposals by the government prove this by looking to implement tokenism in companies rather than competence and the ability to actually do the job required.
Express.

LARGE companies would be urged to declare what proportion of their workforce is black and ethnic minority under a plan being considered by senior Tory figures.
David Cameron has reportedly asked ministers to come up with ideas that would help the party reach out to communities that are not traditionally Tory-supporting.
Conservative Party vice-chairman Alok Sharma said that could include asking firms to provide an ethnic breakdown of employees at different levels of seniority.
"We could also have some sort of voluntary code to say if you have taken on 10 people this year, and you had 100 interviews, and you had 1,000 people who applied, can we see the breakdown by gender and ethnic balance?" he said.
"Other countries do it in terms of gender but we would be doing something new if we did it in terms of the ethnic balance."
Mr Sharma said he was not talking about quotas.
"It's about information.

And no doubt the information would then be used to justify some form of tokenism to place ethnics in jobs that might be better suited to other candidates who would be disqualified for being white indigenous.
Anyone else here who cannot see that coming?
This is why we need the race industry to be dismantled, they just cannot help themselves trying to get their ethnics to the top of the tree and the plum jobs and to hell with the natives here. They've even changed the definition of racism to exclude racist acts by ethnics on the indigenous population by saying only the dominant culture (as they see it) can be racist in attitude whilst everyone else is simply angry and frustrated. Yet who is dominating who here? They have power and influence way beyond their numbers backed up by idiot leftists and the liberal/left intelligentsia who simply don't have to live with the consequences of their actions.
This is why we get demands for companies to state how many ethnics they employ and at which levels of seniority they have. Next step will be some form of law or statute demanding that said companies reflect or exceed the ethnic populace in the country and all in a grubby attempt to buy votes from people who apparently hate us.
It should be none of the governments business who employs whom in this country, in the end it ought to be down to competence, nothing less.

Injustice

Why is it that plod when they get it wrong will often go to extreme lengths to try and justify what they did? Oh I'm sure we only get to read about the cases that go really wrong (well some of them) and not the many that go to plan. Still in this case a mistake if such it was could have been corrected on the day, not 8 months down the line.
Mail. (usual caveats)

A teenage girl with autism was arrested and hauled before the courts because police mistakenly assumed she was drunk.
Despite being completely sober, 17-year-old Melissa Jones spent ten hours in a police cell, was finger-printed and had her DNA taken.
She was charged with being drunk and disorderly, forced to appear in court and became suicidal while waiting eight months for her case to go to trial.
Last week, however, prosecutors finally realised they had got it wrong and agreed to drop the case against her.
Miss Jones’s ordeal began shortly before midnight on June 16 last year when she and a friend went to a shop near her home in Edge Hill, Liverpool, to buy some Coca-Cola.
Another customer, a drunken woman, became aggressive when the assistant refused to serve her, and attacked Miss Jones and her friend when they intervened.
Both girls were stamped on and suffered severe bruising.
When police arrived the attacker had fled, and Miss Jones was crying and hysterical. Despite her protestations, police assumed she had been drinking and arrested her.
‘At the police station, a doctor confirmed she hadn’t been drinking, but still the police tried to pursue her through the courts.

Other than being a salutary lesson in not intervening, you have to wonder why the police ignored a doctors evidence that the young lady wasn't drunk. Even at the end though the CPS only dropped the case because they had insufficient evidence to prove she was drunk, not because they had it wrong.
The police even had the nerve to try and get her to admit her guilt by a £60 fixed penalty fine rather than accept the evidence that the young lady had autism and was not drunk at all.
Don't get me wrong here, I know it isn't easy being a plod and that they do get an awful lot of crap thrown them during their work, but really at times they simply do not help themselves. I'm still a bit mystified as to why they arrested her in the first place as she was the one who'd been assaulted. But have ran across the arrest first sort it out mentality from other reports of police actions in recent years to know just how some of them operate.
Now I realise we only have the mothers statement that there was a doctor, but the lack of evidence proving she was drunk does suggest that a doctor was there, after all, it's a simple test to prove you have been taking alcohol.
Perhaps the length of time was adjudged punishment enough for involving the police?
Either way, I doubt she'll trust them any more or get involved in future.

Lowest common denominator

One of the biggest flaws in attempts to bring 'equality' into being by law is that it works all too well. The problem being that it's the equality of the lowest common denominator. Where a system will be trumpeted by politicians as being fair, what you end up with is a second class system rather than a first class one.
Telegraph.

The country’s brightest pupils are being held back by comprehensives which fail to push them to achieve the top grades needed for the best universities, the chief inspector of schools has warned.
Sir Michael Wilshaw has ordered an urgent “rapid response survey” of how state schools teach the most able children. It will be the most extensive investigation of gifted and talented provision undertaken by the watchdog.
The “landmark” report, to be published in the spring, will address fears that children who get top marks in primary school are being let down by some secondary school teachers who leave them to coast rather than stretch them to achieve the best exam results.
The report was disclosed after league tables showed that hundreds of secondary schools did not produce a single pupil with high enough grades in tough academic subjects to win a place at elite universities.
Inspectors will investigate concerns that bright pupils who are taught in mixed ability classes are failing to be stretched and that schools are entering clever children too early for GCSE exams so that they gain only the C grades that count in league tables and are not pushed to the full extent of their abilities.

And that's equality for you in a nutshell, where the needs of the many are holding back our best and brightest because the system forces them (unless they are very lucky) into an environment where they aren't stretched because their teachers are struggling to cope with the not so bright. Because of moves towards equality social mobility has stagnated in the UK, where the brightest used to be able to get a good education at a grammar school and hence go to a (state paid) university degree course and improve their prospects and give themselves a better life. They have been left to wallow in boredom by the system only to find if they do make it to university their degrees have devalued by countless other degrees on offer and they have a mountain of debt to repay too.
It doesn't matter what the Ofsted chief wants, it's unlikely that he or the government will be able to break a culture of failure that goes back to the 1970's (at least) where equality has become equality of failure, rather than opportunity for success.
Perhaps this has been deliberate as many suspect, to create a society of worker drones subservient to the 'master class' of well educated intelligentsia. Though I rather doubt they'll like the end result, such ego trips usually end up with revolt and the elimination of the haves by the have nots. Then again why attribute to malice where sheer stupidity provides a reasonable answer. Well meaning stupidity perhaps, but still stupidity.
Perhaps in the end we will have to admit that the system itself is broken irreparably and rebuild from the ground up, though I suspect politicians will continue to tinker around the edges for decades yet.
Still at least they achieved equality.

The race hate industry

One of the biggest problems the 'race hate' industry has is trying to keep themselves busy finding thing to point at and scream 'racist!' They've almost reached the point of parody now with this little gem...
Telegraph.

Lego has been accused of racism by the Turkish community over a Star Wars model that supposedly resembles one of Istanbul’s most revered mosques.
Austria’s Turkish community said the model was based on Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul and that the accompanying figures depicted Asians and Orientals as people with “deceitful and criminal personalities.”
The Turkish Cultural Community of Austria released a statement calling for Lego to apologise for affronting religious and cultural feelings.
The anger was provoked by “Jabba’s Palace”, a model of the home of Jabba the Hutt from Lego’s Star Wars product range based on the blockbusting series of science fiction films.

Apart from demonstrating that some muslims and Turks are bloody idiots/troublemakers lets get a few factoids into the open.
1) The Hagia Sophia was actually built on the orders of Justinian I  the Byzantine emperor ( from 527 to 565) and completed 3 years before his death in 562 AD. It was a church not a mosque as islam only burst its genocidal way into the history book in 610 AD.
2) As Justinian was a Thracian and the Byzantine empire was a Greek empire based upon the Roman Empire, there's nothing Turkish about the Hagia Sophia (Which means holy wisdom not Saint Sophia as some think)
3) The model looks nothing like the Hagia Sophia.
4) The Hagia Sophia is not a mosque, hasn't been since 1931 AD, it's a museum.
5) Islam is a religion, not a race.
6) Turks are a nation/race but did not build the damned thing.
7) Some people are idiots particularly those who choose to take this seriously and not laugh loudly in the face of those who brought it up.

Lego have semi apologised.

Katharina Sasse, a public relations manager working on behalf of Lego, denied any link between Jabba’s Palace and the mosque.
“The Lego Star Wars product Jabba´s Palace does not reflect any actually existing buildings, people, or the mentioned mosque,” she said. “The Lego mini-figures are all modelled on characters from the movie.
“We regret that the product has caused the members of the Turkish cultural community to come to a wrong interpretation, but point out that when designing the product only the fictional content of the Star Wars saga were referred to.”

Bloody idiots, give the racemongers an inch and next time they'll take a mile.

Bloody Asians again

I keep harping on this catch-all term that the MSM use to describe attacks by basically people from the Indian Sub-Continent. Asia after all is a bloody huge place and technically Asian can be Chinese to Uzbecki and believe me they aren't similar at all. Though in fairness they do tend to use oriental when describing anyone from East Asia, which covers about 2 billion people.
Luton Today.

A man was attacked with an axe and a screwdriver in broad daylight in Lygetun Drive.
The 39 year old was walking at about 3pm on January 11 when a silver car pulled up close to him and a man got out and punched him in the face.
Three other men then got out of the vehicle and joined in the assault, hitting the victim in the face with a screwdriver and on the leg with an axe.
Det Con Martin Hart said: “The victim attended hospital for treatment and is now recovering at home.
“I believe there was a lady in Lygeton Drive at the time of the assault and I would appeal to her or anyone else who has information about this assault to contact the police, in confidence.”
All four offenders are described as Asian men, between 25 and 30 years of age and all got out of a silver four-door Honda car, possibly a Civic or Accord.

Why do I sense another greasy attempt to avoid using the M(uslim) word or perhaps the P(akistani) word or possibly the B(angladeshi) word? After all, we know what the code for Asian means, which I suspect the powers that be wish we didn't.
All this comes on top of a Baroness Warsi speech accusing three quarters of us of being islamophobes anyway, this being the same Warsi  who kept quiet about her business partnership with Abid Hussain, allegedly a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. Sadiq Khan lifelong friend of Babar Ahmadinejad, a man indicted in the US on charges of conspiracy to provide material to support terrorists, namely, the Taliban and the Chechen Mujahideen, providing material to support terrorists and conspiracy to kill in a foreign country.
Thing is, we know we're being lied too by those on high, we know what the code phrases such as 'Asian' mean and we no longer take much notice of such insults or pre-noms such as 'right wing', 'fascist', 'racist' stuck before anyone daring to question an increasingly precarious status quo.
Until their is honesty in reporting and more honesty in admitting that there is a problem with certain adherents of a certain religion and its followers from the Indian sub-continent then the tensions will continue to rise until it gets completely out of hand.
The USA civil war had its roots in small beginnings and injustices.
A 'British' civil war is not out of the question if the matter of lies and misinformation about government policies and favouritism are not addressed to the satisfaction of the majority, not a minority.

I suspect we know what would happen if the roles were reversed

Now suppose I were to be so stupid as to phone or email the local mosque and tell them that I'd planted a bomb on their premises. Suppose I were to open a faceache account and threaten to burn a quran. How long do you suppose it would take before I landed up in a prison cell charged with racially aggressive behaviour along with various other charges and facing a prison sentence over a hoax? Not too long I suspect.
BBC.

A man who sent a message to the English Defence League saying its Bristol march was going to be bombed has told a jury he thought it would be ignored.
Sakander Mahmood, 26, from Sheffield, admits sending the right-wing group a hoax message through their website.
But the father-of-five denies communicating a bomb hoax.
He told Sheffield Crown Court that at the time he had thought the EDL would "get a bit wound up".
He said: "I wanted to get under their skin a bit and thought they would not take it seriously."
Mr Mahmood, of Firth Park, sent a message which read: "14th July in Bristol, You are getting bombed.

Remember this was after a group of muslim men had been stopped on a motorway with a nail bomb heading to an EDL demo.
So why would anyone protesting about islam getting a bomb threat assume that it was anything but serious? The only thing I can assume is that Mr Mahmood simply assumed he would not be traced. After all, if someone were to threaten to bomb mosques they'd be ignored too? Surely? (Caution this is irony)
No, Mr Mahmood wanted to put fear into those EDL members going to demo's, after all it's a standard islamic terror tactic and one they've used time and time again, when they aren't planting real bombs.
What will happen I suspect is a case of double standards. After all a guy who jokingly tweeted to blow up Robin Hood airport got a £325 fine and £600 costs so that's the standard we should be looking at.
Current betting is a £50 fine a veritable light tap on the wrist.
Oh I'm sure some out there think the guy is being hard done by, after all they 'know' what the EDL is, all evidence to the contrary. They're drunken, racist, bigots who have had the temerity to criticise multiculturalism and minorities. Yet, criticism of something should not be taken to be racism in the context of Islam, after all it's a religion. Yet there are groups out there who insist that the EDL are racist merely because they have raised concerns and awareness of a dangerous cancer in our society eating away at its core values. Many of those who criticise them do not even share our societies core values anyway and always look to undermine them if at all possible, hence all the political correctness and multicultural garbage thrown about in an effort to deflect criticism of what is bad by claiming cultural differences and misunderstandings, much of which happens in the islamic community and few others.
The EDL aren't perfect, they accept this, but they are good people and see the good in many other societies and cultures including that of the Sikh, Hindu's and any other race, religion or nation. Where their tolerance ends though is when another hostile culture takes upon itself to criticise our society without allowing any of us the recourse to criticise them without resorting to threats, violence and legal actions to gag us, all supported by our mealy mouthed politicians and many who are on the liberal left of society (not the working class though)
No Mr Mahmood is a typical muslim who has reverted to type.

Cast iron promises

The old joke (not a funny one, not any more) about how can you tell if a politician is lying (because you can see his lips moving) seems to have popped up in the news today over Cameron's speech about the EU.
Oddly enough he seems to have caught Millipede E out, though not the boy Clegg both of who have gone back to their fallback positions of not saying anything to rock the EU at all.
BBC.

David Cameron has said the British people must "have their say" on Europe as he pledged an in/out referendum if the Conservatives win the election.
The prime minister said he wanted to renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU, before giving the "simple choice" of a vote on accepting the result of the talks or leaving the EU.
The news was welcomed by eurosceptics who have long campaigned for a vote.
France and Germany both warned the UK could not "cherry pick" EU membership.
During noisy Prime Minister's Questions exchanges in Parliament, Labour leader Ed Miliband said Mr Cameron was "running scared" of the UK Independence Party, whose poll ratings have been rising.
Mr Miliband, who said he opposed holding an in/out referendum, said Mr Cameron "is going to put Britain through years of uncertainty, and take a huge gamble with our economy."

We'll forego all the usual caveats about risk to the economy as in reality a phased withdrawal would leave us in a position to negotiate our position vis the EU in a manner similar to either Switzerland or Norway, both of whom trade equably with the EU, yet have the right to veto any EU proposals thrown at them should they so desire.
Cameron is taking a bit of a gamble here, but with his party increasingly unpopular as well as a limited resurgence to Ukip he's having to go down a path which he clearly is not happy with in order (he hopes) to garner some votes.
However we all know about cast iron Dave's promises, there's a lot of wriggle room in his promise of a referendum, certainly enough to refuse us one if things change such as the EU giving him a new deal.
This plus if anyone thinks the EU will fight fair over any referendum offered means that those of us who oppose our EU membership will have a massive fight on our hands particularly as the government such as it is will probably recommend that we vote to stay in, or at least the likes of Cameron will.
As far as I can see, the only way we'll be offered a referendum is if the government is convinced it's going to remain in.
Otherwise, we simply won't be asked.

Parish Notice

Owing to family illness the blog will be on hiatus for the next week or so.

Sorry folks.

No good deed goes unpunished

No good deed goes unpunished.
Clare Boothe Luce

 It's a popular trope and it seems particularly apt in the case of this good Samaritan...
BBC.

Firefighters cut the roof off a woman's undamaged car to rescue two people she gave shelter to following an accident.
Janice Dunlop narrowly avoided the accident herself when a lorry overturned on the A27 near Arundel, colliding with two cars.
She allowed the pair to wait in her car but firefighters cut the roof off after the two complained of neck pains and paramedics needed to move them.
Mrs Dunlop said she is still unsure whether insurers will replace the car.

Ouch, plus the possible insurance scam ruling I do have sympathy for the woman, though first aiders would probably have told her it wasn't a good idea what with potential whiplash or other injuries. A car is probably not the best enclosed space in which to find yourself trapped.
That said, kudos to Janice Dunlop for at least caring enough to help the injured in the aftermath of the accident though her later quote of sheer carnage is rather undermined by the Ambulance boss statement that  no one was seriously injured in the collision, so carnage it wasn't, though certainly messy.
Still, you can't help but wonder if it was the fear of getting sued rather than the fear of exacerbating an injury that caused the decision to cut off the roof. No doubt injury lawyers would have salivated at getting their hands on a case where their prospective clients had been dragged out of a car by medical staff at the scene. Certainly worth a couple of grand I'd expect.
I do hope Janice Dunlop's insurers do come through for her, giving aid to the injured is not as common as it was in society a few years ago when political correctness and no win no fee lawyering came about.
Still, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't.

So kick em out

Apparently the UK has enough illegal immigrants living here to fill three cities the size of Newcastle, though how on earth anyone can be sure of the numbers is debatable, after all they are here illegally so there isn't really a record. Most apparently live in London and all are from countries in the Commonwealth.
Mail. (Usual caveats)

Britain is hosting enough illegal immigrants to fill three cities the size of Newcastle, according to border officials.
A Home Office report says an estimated 70 per cent of the 863,000 illegal migrants are living in London.
The study also reveals that 10,000 foreigners who had no legal right to live in Britain have been granted permission to stay under the so-called 14-year rule.
It means they managed to stay in the country for so long without being booted out that the Government has now given up the fight.
Ministers say the situation is a legacy of Labour's shambolic handling of border controls.
The illegal immigrants are a mixture of those who sneaked into Britain in the back of lorries and those who arrived on visas but never went home.
The Home Office says the top five countries from which the illegals have arrived are believed to be India, Nigeria, Pakistan, China, and Bangladesh.

Ok, first thing the government should do is change the 14 year rule to indefinitely.
Second, make sure anyone caught gets one appeal and no legal aid.
You lose you're out and all your worldly goods are sold to pay your fare.
If you claim under the HRA that you have the right to a family life then your family has the right to go with you, at their own cost.
Draconian? Yes.
Workable? I believe so, we could even tattoo their foreheads as a warning to prospective employers if they try to get back in say a third time.
The problem is that we've tied ourselves down in Labours abortion of a Human Rights Act which came on top of their opening the floodgates of uncontrolled immigration. In essence they made it impossible to get rid of them once they got in. I believe the term used was 'rubbing the rights nose in diversity'
Well, looks like they succeeded in rubbing everyone's nose in it not just the mythical right.

The legacy of allowing enviroloons to formulate policy

It's not been too cold a winter so far down in Kent where I reside, though I do know it has been colder and wetter elsewhere. Still, the complaints are coming thick and fast about energy prices and the controversial claim that many people are turning off their heating in order to be able to afford food. Using such methods as duvet's and hot water bottles through the day (and night) because the government with its carbon capture tax and green energy supplement to our heating bills has driven many families and people into what's called fuel poverty.
Mail. (usual caveats)

Soaring energy bills are forcing one in four mothers to turn off their heating in the depths of winter in order to afford food for their children.
Fuel poverty is resulting in thousands of families resorting to wearing extra clothes and using blankets in their homes.
More than half of families turn off the heating in their houses when the children are out, while 45 per cent of adults keep warm using blankets or duvets during the day, according to a survey.
Fuel bills have already soared by eight per cent this winter, but costs are expected to rise further in coming months.
Experts have warned that the number of households suffering fuel poverty, whereby heating bills account for more than a tenth of a family's income, will double to nine million by 2016.
A shocking 23 per cent of families are already having to choosing between buying food or using heating, according to a survey by the Energy Bill Revolution campaign.
A fifth of respondents said that their children were ill more regularly as a result of colder homes.

And it hasn't really gotten that cold yet.Yet a lot of his is due to the government pushing useless green policies and subsidies for expensive (not so) green power generation as well as a carbon capture tax and policies that would bankrupt this nation leaving it an unindustrialised wasteland. What we are seeing is the direct result of allowing enviroloonies to set policy whilst various unscrupulous ministers have used these policies to feather their own nests (yes Yeo and Gummer, we're looking at you) Couple this with allowing a Lib Dem in charge of the environment and energy Dept (Ed Davey) and we have the potential for a national disaster on our hands with the very vulnerable in society being at risk, because of the insistence on 'green' solutions despite sitting on a cheap energy source by the way of shale gas extraction which despite some ludicrous claims by certain energy ministers with their fingers in the wind farm pot will as it has in the USA reduce our bills and keep us safe from foreign supply.
No, the reason we have high power bills can be laid directly at the greed of the government and the ignorance of some (if not all) MP's. People are going to die because of this, you mark my words.

Bansturbation writ large.

Politicians love to meddle, it's an inborn thing with them, sometimes it's for the good, more often than not it's because they can, they simply need an excuse, or a cover story to try to sell it to us as a good idea.
BBC.

Labour has urged the government to consider introducing legal limits on sugar, salt and fat-content in food.
The party says the coalition's emphasis on voluntary agreements with industry is not working.
It is starting a consultation on how to tackle obesity.
The Department of Health in England says its Responsibility Deal with food companies shows the voluntary approach can be successful.
At its core this is an argument about how best to reduce levels of fat, sugar and salt in our food - through regulation, or collaboration.
The coalition says working with industry through the Responsibility Deal has improved food content and labelling.
But Labour argues the government has failed to come up with a convincing plan to tackle rising obesity rates.

Now whilst I'll admit obesity is a problem, what the government and its opposition believe is obese often enough isn't. Nor would legal limits on sugar and salt help very much as a variety of starches in food convert to glucose and are stored as fat by the body far quicker than sugar itself. Nor would any form of regulation help with the quantity problem of people simply eating too much even if it's better for them (in the governments eyes)
No this appears to simply be regulation for regulations sake in other words bansturbation, a favourite pastime of political parties out of power and who can say pretty much anything outrageous to see what people think. If the reaction is negative then it's dropped like the hot potato it is and brushed aside as a personal view, or simply put down as out of the box thinking.
The only way you'll cut down on obesity and over eating is to educate and convince those who do it, not change what's in the food they eat. It doesn't matter if the salt and sugar content of a Big Mac is reduced if you're going to polish four of them off in a single sitting. Yes that's a bit of an exaggeration, but essentially it really is quantity not quality that is the real issue, by all means make foods healthier but don't expect it to fix 'obesity' that's down to the obese.

Can't we just let them be kids?

Back in the 60's when I was growing up we had the Moors murders, I don't personally remember reading about it, though I do sort of remember a change of attitude in the adults around me. It was probably there before but an emphasis was placed in not going off with strangers of being careful. The phrase I sort of remember was never to trust anyone if they offered to show me puppies. I suspect that child molesters and others who meant kids harm were far more wise to this ploy, but that's how it was done. As it is, evidence came to light that kids were in far more danger from family members than the general public, but that's by the by too.
Mail. (Usual caveats)

Children as young as three are to be taught how to use the internet safely.
A government campaign to highlight the ‘dark side’ of the web will also target men who take ‘risks’ when shopping and chatting online.
Ministers have vowed to ‘crack this problem’, warning too many people are reckless when posting personal information on websites.
Officially children under the age of 13 are not supposed to use sites like Facebook.
But with toddlers frequently using web-linked devices like iPads, the government says educating them about the risks cannot start too soon.
Very young children will be told how to managing their ‘online identity’ and why they should not put ‘inappropriate’ information on the internet.
Teenagers studying their GCSEs should also be taught about card fraud and the risk of identity theft.
‘For some aspects of it, you cannot go too early,’ a senior official told The Guardian.

Yes I know there's a dark side to the internet and that it has enabled those who mean our children no good at all a means to communicate with like minds. But three years old? Surely this should be something that parents are doing anyway? (I know, I know nanny state etc) I rather doubt many three year olds will be chatting online and giving out their personal information along with credit card numbers anyway. I know some 3 year olds who can spell their names, but that's about the limit anything else is likely to be paint programs and hunt the hidden object.
Too many times the government and others have used the 'for the cheeeldren' meme as a way of wasting our money, removing our liberties and generally irritating people who actually do know better. But what they don't seem to want is for children to be children. They appear to want them to grow up long before they mature. I know that some fear that ignorance is bliss exposes children to risk, but statistically, they'd do far better to keep their kids away from adult family members than computers.
I know that the age of innocence has gone, I know that there are dangers out there for kids. But the government really are not helping here, they rarely do.

And they wonder why we protest

Can you imagine a situation where your income jumps twice as fast as your paymasters? Well you can if you live on benefits in the UK...


Mail. (usual caveats)

• Benefits rising twice as fast as salaries: Payments to unemployed jump by 20% in five years
• Jobseeker's Allowance up 20 per cent from £59.15 a week in 2007/08 to £71
• In the same five-year period wages only rose by 12 per cent

Welfare handouts to those languishing on the dole have risen almost twice as fast as average wages over the past five years.
Out-of-work benefits have jumped in value by an astonishing 20 per cent since 2007 while wages have crept up by just 12 per cent, official figures released last night reveal.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said the figures proved that automatically increasing benefits by the rate of inflation, as has previously been the case, was ‘not fair’ on working people whose taxes fund the handouts.

Wouldn't it have been nice to have had a 20% increase in your income over the last five years? A 4% increase per annum? I certainly never managed anything like it, I even had a pay freeze two years in a row, though thankfully the company's financial situation has improved somewhat and we will be getting a pay rise this year. I doubt it will be 4% though.
Thing is if you check the comments not many actually 'get it' that the money paid out in benefits comes from workers and businesses. There's far too much of the 20% of nothing is nothing nonsense going on. They don't get it that taking something from someone who has to give to someone who hasn't by the state is strictly speaking theft, particularly if those who have are tightening their belts because of the economic situation.
Sure you can play about with percentages, but the facts remain, those who have are getting the shitty end of the stick by a previous Labour government who have created a welfare dependent class and a public service administration who rely on the states largesse. The same state who takes from us to give to them and doesn't give a damn about us...

Muslim faith schools in race hate shocker!!! Or tell us something we didn't know.

Seems the daily Star has come up with a report that muslim faith schools might just be teaching young muslims some seriously offensive hate material. Took them a while, Channel 4 gave the game away back on 15 January 2007 with Undercover Mosque. Of course it might just be fear of stating the obvious and getting yourself arrested for being honest that might just have stayed their hand considering what happened to Channel 4 along with the examples of others who have stated just what islam is and what muslims are expected to believe and do.

Daily Star. (usual caveats)

“RACE-HATE” schools may be turning kids against the British way of life, secret papers have warned.
Ministers are said to have concerns that more than 100 independent faith schools, most of which are Islamic, could be encouraging anti-British hatred.
But education bosses fear they will be unable to crack down on extremism as it is too difficult to prove it is going on.
A Government source said: “There is a gap between what we think we know and what we can prove.”
Three schools flagged up as being “of interest” in the secret documents are run by a group which is alleged to have links to deported hate preacher Omar Bakri.
The schools, in north London and Berkshire, are controlled by the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation.
It has been claimed the foundation is run by activists from Hizb ut-Tahrir, a hardline Islamic group Bakri was once a member of.
However, the foundation said no such activists were on its board and added the Department of Education had “no concerns about extremism” in its schools.
Other faith schools said to be causing concerns include the Darul Uloom school in Birmingham.
Undercover filming at the school showed pupils allegedly being taught an extreme Islamic creed which blasted Jews and Hindus. This has led the Government to bring in new independent school standards.

Well there's always the infamous quran 5: 60...

Say, "Shall I inform you of [what is] worse than that as penalty from Allah ? [It is that of] those whom Allah has cursed and with whom He became angry and made of them apes and pigs and slaves of Taghut. Those are worse in position and further astray from the sound way."

Old Mo is of course talking about Jews and Christians and saying that those of us who question or mock islam are as apes and pigs. As for Hindu's, well they're heathens according to old Mo and don't even get the chance to pay jizya protection money and have to be slaughtered for simply not believing in the guff muslims are expected to suck up and spew out.
Islam is a poisonous faith that corrupts all that it comes into contact with, just look at the shithole nations who ascribe to its tenets. Where it becomes dominant, civilisation goes down the crapper. Most of the originalmuslims who came here wanted to escape islamic societies, unfortunately they didn't put their religion aside, but eventually invited in the imams and fanatics who inevitably destroy the very wealth they'd hoped to share in. As soon as they are able the fanatics cut the muslims off from mainstream society and proceed to alienate muslims from it and antagonise the mainstream with their views to cause the mainstream to view muslims with caution and a whole vicious cycle builds up until either the muslims are removed or they reach the stage through over breeding of taking over the mainstream. that normally wrecks the country involved and the sensible muslims move elsewhere for the whole ghastly cycle to begin again.
Islam is a cancer on our society, it really needs to be excised as soon as possible.

Just remember You may be a muslim if...
1. If you refine heroin for a living,
But you have a moral objection to liquor.
You may be a Muslim

2. If you own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launcher,
But you can't afford shoes.
You may be a Muslim

3. If you have more wives than teeth.
You may be a Muslim

4. If you wipe your butt with your bare hand,
But consider bacon unclean.
You may be a Muslim

5. If you think vests come in two styles:
Bullet-proof and suicide.
You may be a Muslim

6. If you can't think of anyone
You haven't declared Jihad against.
You may be a Muslim

7. If you consider television dangerous,
But routinely carry explosives in your clothing.
You may be a Muslim

8. If you were amazed to discover that cell phones
Have uses other than setting off roadside bombs.
You may be a Muslim

9. If you have nothing against women
And think every man should own at least four.
You may be a Muslim

10. If you find this offensive or racist
You may be a Muslim (or leftard)

Happy New Year

Well it's 2013 and the world didn't end in 2012 or if it did, it failed to notify the rest of us.
As in years past I'm going to make a few predictions, though considering how wrong I got most of last years, I really don't know why I bother, so in another act of supreme wishful thinking here we go.

The Coagulation will not fall apart though the members will become ever more estranged and the Lib Dems popularity will reach all time lows.
UKIP will continue to do ok, though unless there's a defection, they won't make a political breakthrough in any by-election, more down to there not really having a local government base of councillors to help the party along.
America will struggle on and Obama's presidency will become one of the most unpopular ever and his methods will become ever more extreme and divisive as he doesn't have to face re-election. Expect levels of spite and vindictiveness on Gordon brown levels. Despite having most of the media on his side, some things just can't be covered up too well.
Islam will remain in the news and become increasingly unpopular in many nations save by muslims and the hard of thinking on the left of the political spectrum.
The middle east will go to hell in a handbasket due to increased militancy by islamic idiots seizing power in various countries. If we're very, very lucky we won't get drawn into it, but you know politicians...
The EU will carry on, increasingly unpopular and increasingly autocratic, its defenders will have to work twice as hard to try and convince us that somehow it's a good idea, whilst fooling no one.
Sport, Newcastle United will finish in the premiership above Sunderland, I think that's the most I could hope for there.

Above all, keep the fight going to keep people informed that there are like minds out there fighting for their small corner. Freedom of speech and expression are under attack by those in power in ever increasing ways, too many lights of freedom went out last year, let's hope for a better one this year.