Critical Faculty Dojo

State of the Nation

2012-01-30T16:21:00.007Z

I am getting a little tired of listening to people complaining of government ‘cuts’.

The UK state is unnecessarily and unaffordably bloated and unwieldy.

It is that way, largely because too many people reflexively expect it to control so much more of every aspect of our lives than it has any real right or honest need to. So much so that even our ownership of our own bodies is threatened. it is that way because Authoritarian Stateists want it to be. It is that way because of empire building.

One suspects many of the places cuts fall are exaggerated or are made worse by the self serving politically motivated spin and subterfuge of some Local Government.

Ed Milliband (leader of the opposition) is now shifting his basically dishonest and untenable position on cuts slightly. Labour's latest line is that it opposes some spending cuts, on the basis they slow recovery. At least now he admits he would not necessarily reverse them. Many in the LibDem party, Partners in the coalition seem unable to move even that far towards actual coffee smelling.

Presumably Vince cable and Nick Clegg have had their noses sufficiently rubbed in economic reality to be ahead of the average member of the so-called “Liberal” Democrat pack.

OK, so let’s look at the actual figures (as seen in the Guardian).

What do they show?

They show that after inheriting a nice black balance sheet Gordon Brown, first as Chancellor and then as Prime Minister spent money hand over fist that he just didn’t have.

He was running the UK deeper and deeper into debt over the whole period he held office.

He also sold off half the UK's gold reserves when gold was at an all time low and plundered pension schemes helping to create the current pensions "Black Hole", and promised "No more Boom and bust", he got plenty of mileage out of that, but what's all that between friends, eh?

Don’t forget the graph only shows each year’s borrowing, not the total amount the UK actually owes. That is horrendous and still going up literally by the minute, check out the TPA clock on this site (top left). God help us if we loose our triple A rating and have to pay higher interest rates on it.

Look at the last two years of the graph. Those are the years of so-called coalition cuts that Labour and the Lib-Dems have bleated so much about and blocked at every turn.

Those cuts have not been enough reduce the debt. No – those last two years figures just show that the actual speed that we are sinking into the financial doo-doo under the Coalition has finally actually slowed a little.

If the majority of the electorate had the feeblest grasp of simple maths… perhaps enough to avoid being short changed… and if Milliband, or Balls, had any shred of honesty, or were capable of the least embarrassment, they would cringe and hide themselves in a deep cave somewhere from the honest light of day.

Meanwhile the UK economy continues to be crippled by so-called green taxes, an unwieldy unaffordable social security system and wasted billions pumped into our EU membership.

Should we pay out yet more to rescue the Euro? In an ideal world no. The Euro is probably not capable of surviving in anything like it’s present form without much of Europe being disenfranchised and a severe loss of sovereignty for most nations in it.

But the Euro needs to be supported into a landingsoft enough the world can walk away from in one piece, so reluctantly we have to at least to some extent.

Foreign aid? Again used properly it saves us from having to fight wars, and we no longer have the military capability we had a decade ago, thanks to a maintained level of government dishonesty, waste and incompetence over the last decade or more.. As the civil service has got bigger and more unwieldy the armed forces have been cut back and back... so again in our own interests we need to keep up foreign aid.

What can we do about it all, if anything?

Take responsibility and PAY ATTENTION!! for a start, don’t let the politicians distract you with pretty lights and spin.

Make sure you really know the facts and arm yourself with them. Actually think. Is what a politician says really true? Does it fit with the facts? Politicians are careful about the words they choose. Are they true, but still fool you into misunderstanding what they actually mean.

When they talk about inflation going down what they really mean is that it is going up more slowly than it was. It is still going up it is just the rate that has decreased.

What is their track record? Did they deliver on what they promised to get elected? If not, why not - and why should you believe anything else they say?

Ask yourself what might happen down the line if they bring in some new policy, or law and do you really need it?

Check their sums are honest and make sense. Remember there are lies, damned lies - and worst of all statistics. Check your pockets after you hear a politician speak.

Vote. Not like some zombie for whoever your ancestors did, but for what you think makes sense and is best. Watch what they are up to – ALL THE TIME. Don’t take your eye off the ball.

Email your MP if you don’t like something It only takes a few minutes. If you don’t like his answer, or it tries to wriggle off the hook then email them again and tell them so.

Sign single issue petitions you support, email your MP about issues you feel strongly about.

A Merry and Happy Christmas One and All

2011-12-24T15:04:00.006Z

It’s Christmas!! As Noddy Holder’s "pension plan" announces to us every year from the end of November to the New Year.

And it is Christmas, so despite the world not necessarily being the way we would like it to be and practically all of us not being what we should be, and that ramps up by a factor of 10 when talking politicians and fanatics.

Despite that, even for the secular, Christmas reminds us that we have the potential to be better than we are. Rousseau’s perfectibility of man if you like. That we could be better if we would.

For Christians it is a chance to remember, celebrate and give thanks that God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

So for a moment let’s turn our attention away from how spectacularly well politicians and people in general are getting it wrong and think on how they sometimes get it right and that it could actually be worse. And how it might be made better. It’s a wonderful life.

It is an interesting thought that the big, huge stuff.. constitutions, political systems, Yes we need to get those right. But if we get the small things right that builds the big picture. Jimmy Stuart’s George Bailey: “I know what I'm gonna do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next year, and the year after that.”

A little like comparing a top down command economy to the market. The market isn’t an entity. It is countless small actions adding up.

Imagine for a moment if we all just made a little effort to be a tiny bit more polite and considerate, a little more forgiving, slower to anger and irritation – every day. What might that add up to in the long run?.

For those of you who love individualism liberty think of it as charitable giving that costs no cash. For the coercive and authoritarian think of it as a tax on the freedom to be an ass likely to fall more heavily on everyone else - and that you can benefit from by promoting..

Any system we live by should ideally naturally reward such behaviour and discourage the opposite, preferably gently but persistently.

Merry Christmas One and All.

In Memorium Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-16T16:56:00.006Z

Here is what is intended to be a small - and gently humorous - tribute to Christopher Hitchens, author and journalist, who has died of cancer.

He was a fan of Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson, so had two good points at least.

An avowed an antitheist Right now he is either not saying "I told you so!", but would if he could , or being "I told you so!"'d by St Peter and thinking to himself.. "You win some. You lose some.".

Buddy, peut vous épargner un sou?

2011-12-16T16:52:00.005Z

EU political machinations against the UK clearly continue apace. Christian Noyer the French equivalent of the governor of the bank of England has evidently been wound up by his political masters, such as ~~his organ grinder~~ the French prime minister Francois Fillon, cherleading, or Mario Draghi Italian governor of the ECB, or Sarko himself, all part of the elite European rulership - and then pointed at the UK.

There is little need to link to it, as even the tabloids have noticed and have commented.

A country’s credit rating is based on its, well - credit worthiness. The worse it is the higher the interest rates it has to pay to borrow, a bit like people really. One of the reasons Greece and Italy are in such difficulties just now.

Put bluntly it’s ability to pay its debts. How safe it is to lend them cash. The world can be in little doubt that whatever else the UK is, unlike Greece, Italy, or even France for various reasons as an examples, about as safe a haven as it is possible to find in the current world economic climate.

The only real threat to the UK’s ability to pay its bills is probably the EU and the Euro crisis.

No one would really take such comments seriously, except this particular individual happens to be the governor of the Banque de France. A bank that is effectively, in turn, the glove puppet of the European Central Bank (ECB). It's main reason for existence these days being simply to implement the interest rate policy of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB).

Clearly M. Noyer is not fit for purpose as the figurehead of even a hollow shell of a bank and in a rational country would be removed from office.

Clearly we would also be foolish to expect anything other than , not necessarily entirely justified reflexive overweening pride and slightly irrational Franco centric behaviour from France.

Ken's got to pick a pocket or two

2011-12-15T01:00:00.000Z

So much to post on so little time.

With a smorgasbord of ‘delights’ available I decided to focus, for this post, on a fairly "local" matter but it perfectly illustrates the left’s thinking on personal property and the private contracts we enter into with each other voluntarily.

Dear old cuddly newt loving - amphibian type not republican politician type - ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone, for those of you who don’t know, Is an ex mayor of London England, not to be confused with the Lord Mayor of London of - No I have not been hanging round in dubious clubs – “puss in boots” fame, I am talking - as seen in Shreck.

Having been thrown out of office Ken wants to get back in to city hall out of the cold. Having brilliantly worked out that rents (property prices, transport and just about everything) are a bit high in London he had decided if he can offer tenants a discount paid for by someone else’s money they might vote for him, despite his record.

I am reminded here of Ben Franklin’s comment that “When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”

Ken is proclaiming that “rents rose by 12% on average in the capital last year - with no sign of improvement in the quality of the housing provided.”

October’s official National RI rate is 5.0347% inflation. That figure is derived over the whole country, London is, as we noted, more expensive and this does not take into account of the disproportionate impact of some commodity rises, 12% is probably not unreasonable. Some London business rates (property tax) were up by 23% in 2011 for instance.

He is quoted as saying; “no one should pay more than a third of their income on rent” and in the London Evening Standard saying;“I would cap the rents. We want to have rent control.

He has also been quoted as having said he would "actually intervene" in the private sector rent controls?

So Given his prefernce he would definitely cap rents. So not just taking from all London’s council tax contributers, but specifically something extra directly from the pockets of private landlords.

He would presumably impose a maximum that a landlord could charge. I am not sure how that would dovetail with ensuring no tennent paid more than a third of their wages in rent I find it difficult to imagine landlords would be forced to rent expensive properties at knock off prices to pecunious tenants, but who knows.

Virtually any cap would involve the local government forcing landlords to let properties below the market level. In other words the state treating private property as it’s own, and possibly intervening/restraining in private commerce and contracts.

It is open to question how long any landlord who owned decent properties would actually be willing to rent them at all under those circumstances. They would shortly find it to their advantage to sell to private owners who could afford it, thus reducing rented stock and reinforcing the effect still further..

Instead of picking private landlords pockets it would be possible to achieve virtually the same aim by introducing some sort of housing tax rebate, based on earning bands or tax levels might be more equitable and less damaging, but far less ideologically pleasing to Ken.

Boris Johnson (the current Mayor) pay attention here - you could steal a march on Ken here, feel free to pinch this idea, gratis. Though if you need further advice I am available for weddings, bah mitzvahs and helping govern London J

Economics 101 - and a half

2011-12-11T17:47:00.003Z

This seems to be doing the rounds at the moment and someone emailed it to me. It made me chuckle and is reproduced below, for your enlightenment and edification. I notice there is no mention of haircuts. Hat Tip to Pam.

Understanding Economics:
The Eurozone Bailout

It is a slow day in a little Greek Village. The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the village, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.

The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the Farmer’s Co-Op.

The guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the Taverna.

The Taverna owner slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him "services" on credit.

The hooker then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note.

The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveller will not suspect anything. At that moment the traveller comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.

No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole village is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how the bailout package works.

Warning: Creeping Stateism is bad for your Liberties.

2011-12-11T12:50:00.000Z

A “>report has been published in the British Journal of Cancer. It concerns the possible causes of various, predictably enough, cancers. Fair enough and all well and good so far.

It is based on medical researchers doing correlations and statistical analysis rather than any clinical tests, that is always prone to possible mis-interpretation, but it is not unreasonable to take the findings at face value.

It finds that lifestyle choices influence your likelihood of getting certain forms of cancer. That smoking is the main cause of lung cancer and second but far behind is a lack of fruit and vegetables in the diet possibly responsible for oesophageal or gullet cancer, half of the risk comes from eating too little fruit and veg. too much salt in the diet a possible cause of Stomach cancer. Way down there under 5% is drinking too much alcohol and being overweight.

Useful information if taken sensibly, along with other studies that show moderate levels of alcohol seem to be actually beneficial.

So what is apparently the knee jerk reaction of the Royal College of Physicians? True to form a demand for authoritarian legislation. Their president, Sir Richard Thompson, claimed the findings were a “wake-up call to the government” to take stronger action on public health.

He stated that rising incidence of preventable cancers showed that the 'carrot' approach of voluntary agreements with industry is not enough to prompt healthy behaviours, and needs to be replaced by the 'stick' approach of legislative solutions,"

Maybe Sir Richard Thompson’s intentions are good, but his instincts seem to be to order, to force and that is not.

Diane Abbott, Longstanding New Labour luminary and current Shadow Public Health Minister, said: "The government is failing on all the main public health issues.”
So let’s leave aside ideas of punitive taxation of burgers and sweets, making it illegal to smoke anywhere else or legislating illegal anti competitive minimum prices for alcohol for a moment. Lets rewind.

That reflexive authoritarian statist demand that the government get involved, do more.

Exactly what business of the state is it if I want a glass of wine after dinner in the fist place?

OK so I am not as fit or as skinny as I used to be but I can see how it is my business, maybe my “significant other”, my tailor even, but the Government?

The only justification I can see is how much I might cost the state. Possibly in increased pension payments from a scheme that I am basically forced by law to pay into by the Government if, I live significantly longer due to good lifestyle choices. Or increased medical costs from a scheme that I am basically forced by law to pay into, use it or not, by the Government.

So the only real justification for the State to be involved, apart possibly from the odd public health warning, is how much I cost systems that they force me to participate in and thus cost er - well me.

Catch 22.

Face to face, with the man who sold the world

2011-12-06T12:19:00.005Z

The British Prime Minister - Is he ours (the UK’s), or is he theirs (the EU’s)?

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” as the song says and to paraphrase, it’s beginning to look a lot like he is theirs.

Cameron happily says and promises almost anything to get into power – a referendum for instance.

But in practice - That is an entirely different thing. He will never willingly allow the British electorate a European issue related referendum. Not unless he can fix it to give the “right” result with a "Have you stopped beating your wife?, Yes or No” type question. He has already shown where he stands by suppressing a free vote on the subject. Unfortunately the so-called Loyal Opposition seem equally shy of the subject.

When you think about it is hardly surprising. The Conservatives basically picked him because he was a clone of Tony Bliar An acorn that fell a little too close to the tree it seems.

Interestingly the other “Boy from Brazil” his deputy Clegg looks suspiciously Blairish in the right light too. Clearly despite the misleading (all things to all people – how Bliar is that) title “Liberal” and “Democrat” it is questionable if he is either.

Clearly he feels he and the state have a far greater right to have a say as to what is done with private property than the rightful owners and the only way to ultimately enforce that way is - well force - So for all his spin that is pure authoritarian socialism. Cameron/Clegg birds of a feather.

So, the Euro, literally at least partly “jerry built” on foundations of the very best sand.

Now the North wind doth blow and it is in deep deep doo-doo. Rather than contemplate a soft landing the princes of Europe, the political elite, now seem hell bent on an all or nothing approach, metaphorically ready to shoot the first person to make a run for it.

To paraphrase Bowie, Oh no. Not us. We never lost control – Holding the threat of financial Armageddon over Europe to force, what would effectively be a political union, at least on the Euro-zone States. A Superstate in anybody honest’s book.

Ironically having attempted to dominate Europe and the world by hook individually it now looks as if France and Germany may be within a whisker of being shoehorned into dominating it collectively by crook, so to speak. Déjà vu, is a ironically a suitably continental expression for where we find ourselves.

The Greek and the Italian electorate have found out what this means, they essentially no longer have elected heads of state. They have Eurocrats, Commissars instead.

Rather like the EU in fact, although it has a “decorative parliament” it is effectively ruled by Commissioners who’s finances are so murky no hones accountant will sign off on an audit of them. It has a so-called president that no electorate voted for.

Its laws and justice system are essentially Statist, authoritarian, Napoleonic, more guilty until proven innocent. More “Do you have a permit to do that?” as opposed to “It’s not against the law”.. Continental oil to the English speaker’s water.

Surely a point, if ever there were one, for the UK to stop and think to it’s self. “Hang on a mo!” Is this really what I signed up for when I joined what I was promised was just a friendly trade association the Common Market”?

Back when we were so eager we dumped so many of our existing profitable trade partners and markets to do it too.

The Common Market looked quite sexy and cute back then didn’t it, wearing a beret, a sexy pencil skirt, smoking a cool Gauloises and quoting beat poetry, you had so much in common. That was then, this is now.

Now she wants different things, she looks sort of shifty, a little scary like her mother and suspiciously like she spent the savings and wants to claim your life insurance money. They are mushrooms in the stroganoff aren’t they? Oh and the door seems to be locked.

So a perfect time to have a referendum then, you might think. A vitally necessary time. Dave Cameron clearly does not. And one has to question his fitness to hold the office he does because of that. Is he really fit for purpose? Is he representing our interests at all. There is a word for someone like that.

So, a not unreasonable interpretation of the question:

“Do you want to be assimilated by the Borg or not?” :-)

Care about Democracy? Be afraid. Be very afraid

2011-11-24T17:18:00.008Z

The Euro crisis. Unless you have been on a simulated mission to Mars, or heard goats in a village in Africa it can hardly escaped your attention that the Euro is in difficulties.

It was always going to happen, given how it was set up. Sooner or later things would get more out of kilter and eventually something would trigger the systems falling apart.

But then that was avoided as a problem for another day by the European elite railroading the European state through over the wishes of what one suspects they see as an “unenlightened” electorate.

It is questionable if the Euro can function for any time as a currency without both political integration of the states using it and massive transfers of cash from the Northern states to the Club Med States.

But no matter. For many of the Europhile elite the Euro is a symbol of unity and it binds states and politicians more tightly into the developing European Super-state. None must be allowed to slip from the fold.

Now it seems they had seen a way to turn what for them was an unthinkable threat into an advantage… To further their goals.

When Greece began to wobble so badly the Prime Minister George Papandreou, faced with massive protests over crippling austerity measures the EU wished to impose, apparently decided the only way he could avoid massive civil unrest and maybe worse was to get the people onside.

He decided, not unreasonably, to hold a referendum on the measures. If they were accepted he had a solid mandate, if not it would be brutally clear to all, that without the banks taking, not so much a hair cut on Greek debt, but more like a hippy getting a crew cut it would be impossible for Greece to remain in the Euro and he might get a better deal from Europe.

Either that or Greece might default, re-instate the Drachma and become more competitive, at least as a tourist destination, by devaluing. It seems the Strength of the euro is harming the Greek tourist income as it haemorrhages to Turkey and other non Euro states.

The referendum might have been better for Greece and the democratic process, but it appears that those considerations are irrelevant in European politics.

The European patrician political elite have had unfortunate experiences with referenda. They can't be relied upon to produce the "right" result and have to be repeated again and again and again, with pressure applied, until they eventually do get the “right” result.

They moved speedily and effectively. One can only suppose offers were made that were simply put "impossible to refuse".

Suddenly the referendum was off the cards and Papandreou might as well have been declared taken ill at his dacha in the Crimea in time honoured fashion.

Presto-chango! The Greek PM was suddenly (blnik and you'll miss it) Lucas Papademos the entirely unelected ex head of the European Bank. His Foreign Minister? The now Ex EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas.

And the Greek parliament were all lining up behind him in a “Unity” government. No referendum, No election. No Democracy…

Turning our eyes west we find Italy. Half of it at least another Club Med Euro Economy. Their debt is becoming too expensive as markets worry and their economy is a bit too big to easily bail out. PM Silvio Berlusconi, one minute declaring he is fighting fit to lead, the next disappearing stage left with the aid of a hook on a long pole in true vaudeville stylie.

And who quietly shuffles on sideways to replace him (sans elections) hoping the average punter does not notice?

Non other than Mario Monti, Ex European Competition Commissioner (what a coincidence) and founder - president of the Bruegel European Economic think-tank. Also an arch critic of Burlusconi. Not a game character at all. :-)

So the new European solution to wobbly Club-Med economies? Let’s not bother with that old fashioned democracy stuff shall we?

“Hey! Let’s just make dem bozos an offer dey can’t refuse an put our own guys in”.

I expect it is not lost on them that if the natives cut up too rough the is always the shiny new EUROGENDFOR waiting quietly tucked out of sight, like a club with nails in held behind their back.

EUROGENDFOR or EGF standing for European Gendarmerie Force and modelled (Oh joy!) after the French Gendarmerie and the Italian Unità Specializzate Multinazionali (M.S.U.) of the Carabinieri . Staffed by nationals from (naturally) the French Gendarmerie, the Italian Carabinieri, the Spanish Civil Guard, Portuguese National Republican Guard, Romanian Gendarmerie and the Dutch Royal Marechaussee.

Mostly authentically “Napolionically European” traditions, several used to enforce the will of dictatorships in living memory.

To mix metaphors are we looking at the nativity of some sort of western “Warsaw Pact MK II” with :-) frilly covers to disguise the tanks?

Maybe more State Capitalism Technocracy “China Syndrome”?

Oh - and before anyone in the UK starts to feel too smug. Don’t forget David Cameron’s sudden volt face about a promised British referendum on Europe, or the fact that he (thuggishly in parliamentary terms) prevented a proper vote on the question recently after parliament was petitioned to debate it under a system he set up.

The buck... just gets lost. in the shuffle

2011-11-18T06:00:00.001Z

One has to really seriously doubt the competence of both the Ministry of Defence and the current British 'regime'. Are either actually fit for purpose?

The harrier jump jet is a highly effective fighter jet with very useful capabilities not found elsewhere. The British government has seen fit to spend money on them and then scrap these fighters.

It seems however others recognise a perfectly good piece of newly renovated kit fit to last another 10 years or more even if the cretins in charge of the UK don't.

The US military, who seem to be capable of supplying their armed forces properly, unlike the British MOD, have snapped up the whole lot of them as a bargain.

Still it is hardly unusual, there are NHS managers who have committed their NHS 'trusts' to crippling public private finance deals no one but a naive idiot would have contemplated, like a stone round their necks, driving them into virtual bankrupsy and then flitted off to bigger and better things. Others who have presided over appalling unnecessary loss of life who flit off to some similar role apparently without any real cost to themselves.

What amazes me is the fact that there are whole divisions of "Sir Humphry's" out there of one stripe or another warming civil service seats and collecting a generous wage who never - ever - seem to be held accountable for their utter incompetence. Incompetence one can't help but feel verges on criminal.

This all presided over by Ministers with one suspects, ill thought out schemes who seem to have a tenuous grasp of things at best.

The buck never seems to stop with those responsible, there hardly ever seem to be any consequences for them.

Lost & Found

2011-11-15T13:02:00.005Z

“Who is it in the press that calls on me?”

“I hear a tongue shriller than all the music Cry ‘Caesar!’ Speak, Caesar is turn'd to hear.”

But the trouble is I can’t help feel that he is not turned to hear. Or are you?

Lately I have almost given up blogging. It is not as if there are not plenty of things well worth writing about. Far from it.

But it seems to me that the average citizen seems to be lurching through life like some zombie paying little attention to things that vitally affect their well being. Missing, or failing to understand warning signs. Missing the called warning about the ides of march entirely in the press, Football, celebrity gossip and TV soaps occupying much of their attention.

It is difficult not to feel as if I am wasting my time blogging. Perhapse I should renew my subscription to Murdoch’s Sky sports? :-)

Still. Nil desperandum.

We should all be well aware by now of the sheer incompetence of and off hand contempt many elected officials appear to hold both us, the electorate and their own office in by now.

We see many examples, such as the fiddling of expenses and junkets. The election promises they go back on.

Most recently, lest we begin to forget for a moment, several MPs have been kind enough to remind us.

Oliver Letwin, a Government Minister, for instance, dumping correspondence in a park. He is not alone, Vince Cable Secretary of State for Business is a little careless with his correspondence.

How little these oh-so-important people must think of their constituents who write to them as their represenitive in parliament. How little that the private details of what the writer, no doubt, would fondly imagine to be confidential are left for just anyone to find.

Apparently he has not risked national security – they say. One suspects more due to luck than any judgement.

Don’t they have office shredders? I expect they could get one on expenses. Rather that than hot and cold running High Definition home theatre flat screen TVs in every room of a “designated” second home.

It is not the harm actually done… more that it is a symptom. One that gives an insight into how little “they”, those in power, regard those who entrust them with that power. And how reliable and competent they are to weald it. And how well they protect all our interests.

Lies. Damned lies.. and 'health' statistics

2011-05-27T06:00:00.003Z

The charity Alcohol Concern Cymru's (AAC) have apparently convinced themselves that there is drinking problem amongst Welsh seniors.

It conjures up an image of seniors staggering out of bars, vomiting in the street, getting into fights and sleeping it off in police cells.

AAC are alleging seniors drinking over the recommended maximum in the week before rose from 22% in 2003/4 to 34% in 2009 for men and 7% to 17% for women.

The charity's local manager Andrew Misell made the alarmist claim that: "With the number of people over retirement age increasing, some researchers have even talked about a silent epidemic of older people's alcohol issues."

Alcohol Concern Cymru's (AAC) is what is sometimes referred to a "fake" charity. That is, a registered charity that receives the bulk of it's funding, not from charitable donations, but instead from the state, or interested state bodies, often by quite convoluted paths.

In this case it receives funding from the Welsh Assembly and the Department of Health. One can't help but suspect the objectivity of such 'charities'. It is in their interests to talk up 'problems' and to dance the tune of their major funders.

So what are the limits alleged to be exceeded the week before? For men 21 per week and 14 for women. A unit is 1/2 pint of beer, a glass of wine or a shot measure.

It means a man who had more than a pint and a half each day in that week would exceed that limit as would a woman who drank more than a couple of glasses of wine each day would be accounted problem drinkers.

Presumably, whatever their general level of alcohol consumption is, it can’t have done them any great harm over the last 65 years, or they probably wouldn’t have got to be seniors in the first place.

One wonders when the survey was actually done. After the New Year? During the holiday season?

In any event, the big problem with the statistics (gathered by the Welsh Health Survey) that AAC used, is that the way things were measured changed in 2006 - and they did not take that into account. So by comparing 2003 with 2009 they are basically comparing apples to aardvarks.

AAC were making the mistake of only measuring the change in the way the figures were recorded and compiled - not in the way people drink at all. Oops…

Still it made a great alarmist headline didn’t it - and how many people will ever notice?

Covert inter EU Protectionism?

2011-05-25T07:14:00.006Z

The Danes have banned Marmite from being sold in Denmark, allegedly because it has too many vitamins and essential minerals.

Marmite is a spreadable yeast extract, first marketed in 1902 originally as a vegetarian alternative to beef extract. The advertising slogan is, "You'll either love it or hate it.". It looks as if the Danish Government does not love it.

It is difficult to believe the recipe for Marmite just changed - and the law the Danish Government have suddenly brought into play to enforce the ban was apparently passed back in 2004.

So why have the Danes suddenly taken it into their heads to "come the heavy" over the innocuous Marmite?

Is this some sort of tit for tat attack on a British product because the British army is planning to feed it's troops British Bacon for breakfast instead of Danish?

It is reported that "The majority of pigs in the United Kingdom, including those in Scotland, are kept to a higher welfare standard than elsewhere in the European Union and other countries." This can push up the cost of the UK product.

Maybe Brits in general should think twice about buying Danish bacon...

Proposed Public Ban

2011-05-23T11:41:00.003Z

It has been suggested that authoritarian anti smoking campaigners be banned from public places. Proponents are suggesting the ban should cover public houses, public golf courses and sports grounds as well as squares, markets.

Anti smoking views may be allowed to be expressed on pavements outside parks, and car parks in public parks. Areas it is proposed the ban will not cover are the central reservation of motorways, firing ranges and the lion enclosure at Colchester Zoo.

A spokes person from the Essex Independence party stated that “The extreme authoritarian attitudes these individuals express in public, as if they are perfectly acceptable can seriously affect those who don’t think things through properly and are especially harmful children’s developing minds. Before you know it they will accept something like book burning as perfectly acceptable as well”

There has been no formal response to the proposal from ASH, but a random Manic Street Preachers fan who had nothing to do with them ,when approached for a quote, stated “If you tolerate this then your children will be next.”

Transparent Government?

2011-02-01T05:30:00.004Z

Does anyone recall Labour’s e-petition site at the prime minister’s office?

Not that it was ever really much use, but it did at least allow people to blow off some steam and give the government some idea of what their more unpopular ideas and policies were. Maybe it did get them to back-pedal once or twice – who knows?

Well that was then and this is now. It was suspended before the general election, presumably because Gordon didn’t want any more heckling from the punters.

Dave and Nick the “Transparent Government” twins have apparently decided that, rather than be simply and quickly re opened, the e-petition site is to be moved to Direct Gov this year - some unspecified date this year, to be, er, imprecise. This came out in parliament in December.

It’s February now and it is still not working. Odd that, considering they already have a functional system that works fine bought and paid for out of our hard earned taxes. One wonders why they couldn’t just move the pages to Direct.gov?

Still if they had done they would probably be getting nasty e-petitions objecting to selling off the forests, or student fees, or scrapping the Ark Royal, or… maybe something upsetting like this.

What’s the betting they don’t hurry themselves too much to get it up and running?

Still nature abhors a vacuum as they say.

Walk like an Egyptian, but talk Turkey

2011-01-30T20:26:00.004Z

I must admit to having a certain sympathy for the demands of the Egyptian demonstrators.

They say they want more democratic freedom, more open government, less corruption. They want president Mubarak to go as a symbol of corruption, stalled progress and all they see is wrong with their country. Hard to argue against those ideals.

Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak has been in charge for 30 years or so. He can’t argue anyone else is responsible for how Egypt is.

It is true there is a lot wrong with Egypt, high unemployment amongst the under 25s for one. But there is also a lot that has changed for the good in the lives of ordinary Egyptians in the last 30 years or so.

Some of the problems they are experiencing must be related to the current world downturn.

If they are hoping for some sort of velvet revolution though, I fear they need to ease back on their impatience.

It was not all that long ago that a not dissimilar ruler and regime was toppled in Iran. A lot of educated middle class young people were in the vanguard of that with hopes of a democracy and freedom. They foolishly imagined they could trust the hard eyed clerics, so-called “men of god” to be honest, upright and fair.

What they ended up with was a theocratic state and ill educated “black shirt thug” type religious police beating people forcing women to wear the veil and men to grow beards.

Those people who thought they were toppling a dictator in favour of freedom.. and their grown children are still crying out for real freedom and real democracy.

The Egyptian protestors should think very carefully lest they end up far worse off than they are now. They should be very wary of bringing down the system. They should be looking for changes and schooling themselves to some further patience. Firm robust patience, but patience and restraint never-the-less...

They should be looking at the example of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk the father of modern Turkey and "Kemalism"

It is perhaps Mubarak’s failure that he did not take Atatürk as his model and use his years in power to deliver a more modern democratic state.

They need to insist on change but allow the organs of the sate to maintain stability and prosperity yet deliver the change they need.

A difficult path requiring compromise and benefit for everyone

What the Egyptians need is far more akin to evolution, than revolution.

Merry Christmas to all

2010-12-25T00:01:00.004Z

It’s that time of year again. December the 25th. Christmas Day.

So I take the time to wish a Merry and Happy Christmas to all readers.

For many who celebrate Christmas the rush to get everything in place is now done. What has been left incomplete will have to be managed without and it is time, hopefully, to Celebrate the birth of Jesus and to enjoy the company of friends and family and a meal together.

For many the sense of comfort will seem stronger for contrast of warmth light and company indoors while the cold and snow and long nights are kept at bay outside.

Generally it is true. There is a sense of good will to our fellow men, throughout Christendom, even amongst those of a more secular leaning, even amongst those of some other religions.

A powerful example of this was during the Great War (WWI), the so called “Christmas Truce” all along the Western Front around Christmas of 1914. This was not an official truce, more a ’grass roots movement’.

It would be truly wonderful if that sense of good will, capable of briefly holding at bay a full blown World War, could hold for the rest of the year.

Alas there are evil individuals and groups filled with hate who make that unlikely.

Although we celebrate the birth of Jesus on December the 25th, it is quite unlikely that he was actually born on that date, That is simply the date the early church picked to mark the occasion. Unlike Easter, where the date is accurate, according to the Lunar Calendar.

The date of Christmas Day probably owes more to the fact that most pagan religions had a feast and celebration around that time to mark winter solstice and the fact that days were at last getting longer again and there was the distant but real promise of spring and summer to look forward to.

New converts would have been very reluctant to give up such a highlight and so it is likely the early church decided against forcing potential converts to have to make such a choice.

The relationship between the date and the actual solstice may have been further altered by use of a calendar introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC called the Julian calendar that was much better that what had been used before but was still slightly inaccurate over centuries.

Some orthodox Christian Churches still use the Julian calendar to calculate December 25th and celebrate Christmas. That corresponds to around January 6 or 7 of the Gregorian Calendar. So they have their Christmas 'late'.

The Julian year was around eleven minutes longer than the actual solar year. It might not seem much, but it adds up to a gain of about three days per 400 years - and drifting of the calendar against the seasons.

This was later compensated for with another calendar reform that introduced the Gregorian calendar that we use today and ‘lost’ or shifted back some calendar days.

Two wolves and a sheep plan a menu...

2010-12-21T00:01:00.000Z

The British public, or certain sections of them, often display sheep-like qualities. Much encouraged by British politicians who would prefer to (if your forgive me) to be able to pull the wool over their eyes on demand.

British politicians seem truly terrified of the prospect of the prospect of an armed informed electorate and encourage the sheep to bleat to that effect whenever possible... along with the familiar mantra of wondering why the innocent would ever object to the surveillance society.

The citizen is in practical terms strongly discouraged from defending themselves, their family, friends and property by the police and the way the courts administer the law. Citizens are often actually advised against trying to tackle anti social behaviour by the authorities.

People who do tackle burglars in their own homes seem as likely to end up being prosecuted by the authorities and sued by the burglar for having thir human rights infringed.

Now there is yet again more talk of rationalising the admittedly overly complicated UK gun law. This time yet again after a rampage. Whatever the outcome it is practically certain to only restrict legal gun ownership and use further.

The fact of the matter is of course that the practical result is the only section of the population who have no problem acquiring and owning firearms are those who have less qualms against ignoring the legal niceties... essentially the “Criminal Community”.

It is relatively easy to rent or acquire a weapon illegally. It is the law abiding citizen who is disarmed. Such laws mean little to those who hold them in contempt.

FIFA foe fum Pantomime season

2010-12-19T00:01:00.002Z

The initial furore over the abject failure of England's bit to host the soccer word cup has subsided.

New things take attention away from it and it sometimes seems that there is quite a limited public attention span for such things. Politicians and officials probably rely rather strongly on that. I imagine Joseph (Sepp) Blatter and his cronies are... having arguably decided attack is the best form of defence.

England's bid to host the soccer world cup was solid. It offered a concentration of some of the finest actually existing venues anywhere on the planet. There is a transport infrastructure and the country is stable.

It seems unlikely that, all else being equal, the bid should have secured more than two votes. while there is no guarantee of victory it seems unlikely such a solid bid would fare quite so badly.

One might also wonder at the countries FIFA actually selected, Russia will need to do a fair bit of building and one wonders at the attraction of a tiny hot middle eastern state such as Quatar with very little soccer related infrastructure that if built might be considered to be overkill, given their population (less that that of the county of Derbishire., much less than the City of Birmingham)

It seems clear more than two votes had been confidentially promised to the England bid team. At least 6 to be precise.

It says something that the English Football Association's acting chief Roger Burden, known for being 'above board', has unequivocally stated that he can no longer trust members of Fifa.

Three prominent members, Nicolas Leoz, Issa Hayatou and Ricardo Teixeira are implicated it taking money from a Sports Marketing company in exchange for being awarded contracts.

There is a strong suggestion, apparently backed by evidence that FIFA is blighted by dishonesty, and corruption.

Now Fifa vice-president Jack Warner, (allegedly one of those who had indicated, apparently inaccurately if they did, that they would support the England bid) has justified what looks suspiciously like a planned 'revenge' by claiming: "Fifa could not have voted for England having been insulted by their media in the worst possible way." "... To do so would have been the ultimate insult to Fifa."

It is perhaps time the England no longer lent FIFA credibility by taking it seriously.

In any event England are unlikely to get a look in. Members of FIFA have apparently taken against England because the UK press reported on some of their corruption.

One suspects it will likely be a cold day in hell before FIFA gives England the time of day, let alone anything else. Seeing England have little to loose it would seem to make sense to take the lead in an unenviable task and to do its best to unrelentingly root out any corrupt individuals and attempt to force some real anti corruption rules upon FIFA.

Unleashing if not the dogs of, war, then the press, upon FIFA. Possibly even with a quiet information related nudge or two from MI5.

It might also be worth seriously considering starting something like a Commonwealth Football cup. Maybe put our money where our mouth is and show how things can be done.

Possibly it could be based around nations, possibly around teams. Possibly best of all more on the lines the FA cup. We should ensure it is absolutely honest and above board. Matches could be played in many nations improving the game across the board and earning smaller nations the chance to earn money also to develop and showcase talent. It could be a fresh breeze and good for the game.

Taking the Wikileak II

2010-12-17T10:18:00.004Z

Initially I was fairly convinced that the denial of service attacks Wikileaks complained of were more likely to be a result of the massive number of hits generated by huge international interest in the site than a denial of service attack.

I am more fond of the idea of occam’s razor than of conspiracy theories. I really don't think most of the supposed possible conspiracists are smart or watertight enougn to have a hope in carrying them off.

I am still fairly certain that much of Wikileaks DOS type problems were/are generated by massive and continuing interest in their site, just search engine traffic is likely to be enough to cause problems.

Having said that it does seem they may be subject of a concerted campaign to silence them, or at least make it so much bother keeping going they are rendered ineffective.

PayPal has made it more difficult for people to make donations, by permanently restricting their account. MasterCard is apparently restricting payments to the site and their Swiss bank, PostFinance has closed Julian Assange's account. we are apparently expected to believe this is all a pure coincidence and all alleged to be unmotivated by any political consideration.

What is the old saying? "Once is chance. Twice is coincidence - but three times is enemy action."

Then there is the problem Wikileaks seem to be experiencing with finding hosts and with their domain name.

I still believe that some of what they are releasing should not be easily available, or necesarily in the public domane at all. I worry it may risk lives.

It does seem that, less through any conspiracy than simply by, frankly p*ing off a lot of powerful people and interests, 'They' may really be out to get Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

It all sows a seed of doubt about the attempts to extradite Assange.

Quote of the Day

2010-12-09T08:46:00.001Z

"No public man can be just a little crooked"
Herbert Hoover

"Never esteem anything as of advantage to thee that shall make thee break thy word, or lose thy self-respect."
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Will that be eat in or takeout?

2010-12-06T09:54:00.002Z

It seems it's official - According to Wikileaks anyway, Saudia Arabia is basically funding Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, to the tune of millions of dollars.

Not the Saudi state, officially at least, though it might be said there is a blurring between the stae and certain individuals there. It is reportedly through companies/charities/groups within Saudi Arabia. This region is the seat of the extreamist Whabbi funamentalist Islamic sect.

It is interesting that Saudi Arabia, like Kuwait and some other ostensibly 'friendly' middle eastern states seem to be more keen on dealing with internal terrorism, when they can't risibly blame it on westerners allegedly blowing each other up in fatal disputes over alcohol smuggling.

They seem far less keen on dealing with what amouts to the export of terriorism and steming the flow of funds to it from it's citizens.

One presumes one reason is these states feel they are less likely to suffer the effects of terrorism themselves - if it takes place off their own soil. If they allow what might otherwise be an internal problem with their own dissidents who might destabilise their own regimes to be safely occupied much further away, targeted agaisnt western 'infidel' interests else where.

One wonders, given this apparent massive terrorist funding through Islamic 'charities', how much of their funding is actually due to the trade in drugs and goods counterfeiting that western governments seem keen to blame it on - and why they are.

A continued uniterrupted supply of supply of oil might be a good reason. with the added bunus of providing a nice justification for new laws and powers.

Quote of the Day

2010-11-29T11:13:00.003Z

"Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint."
Daniel Webster

"Just because you can doesn't mean you should."
Truism

"Restraint is a measure of intellectual acuity and self-control.
The ability to place thought before action."
Wes Fessler

"Self-righteous people can talk themselves into forgetting they
are part of a civilization. They can then feed on that culture,
bringing it down. It's happened many times in the past.
It could happen to us."
David Brin

"Honesty is the cruelest game of all, because not only can you
hurt someone - and hurt them to the bone - you can feel
self-righteous about it at the same time."
Dave Van Ronk

Taking the Wikileak

2010-11-29T10:19:00.007Z

It is becoming difficult to decide if Wikileaks is, on balance, a force for the betterment of mankind - or the reverse.

I must admit that I was initially inclined to the former view, but of late I am somewhat reluctantly coming round to the latter.

Now I am naturally inclined to see something like Wikileaks as on the side of the angels, so that is really saying something. I have no doubt that if people discover incompetence wrongdoing or cover-up in the organisation they work for they should be able raise the matter and get it addressed internally - and if not to blow the whistle on it.

What has really pushed me into mentally classifying the Wikileaks site as a net disbenefit is the release of the US diplomatic communications.

There seems to be something irresponsibly, parochially naive about the mentality behind these releases the site have made, something self-congratulatory and it is an interesting choice of news organisations Julian Assange has chosen to share the greater details with.

One suspects it says something about his politics. Being suspicious, one wonders if any cash or quid-pro-quo is involved.

I find it difficult to imagine these releases of diplomatic information will not ultimately cost actual lives.

It may be Wikileaks is of the view you can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs. There are a disturbing number of people who seem to take that view. I can’t help feeling It a bankrupt, lazy, way of thinking, from a site who’s’ only real justification is taking the moral high ground.

Apologists have argued that US Diplomats should be more careful about their cables.

This is disingenuous. Diplomats are there to smooth situations and argue a countries part... well diplomatically with foreign powers. They are also there to give their own government a warts and all accurate clear eyed view of things. To do less would be a disservice to their nation and make for improperly informed faulty decision making.

They must be brutally honest in their assessments with their own government – not ‘diplomatic’.

It is not even as if we don't all know such frank assesments are made in private, or as if we don't all know the value of tempering our public utterances, unless we are so socially inept for it to be classed as a 'condition'. The mere fact that such communications exist can hardly be cause to lay them bare. They may on the face of it seem two faced, but there needs to be some greater over-riding need.

To argue they should be more careful suggests either a flippant, possibly deliberate misunderstanding, or the sort of thinking that can justify stealing someone’s TV if they forget to lock their door when they go out.

To me it all seems uncomfortably like someone overhearing a husband and wife privately discussing a used car salesman, his merchandise and their available cash in the middle of making a deal – and then shouting it out to all and sundry including the staff in the car dealership. Basically a pretty scummy thing to do in those circumstances.

Politicians have denounced the site, some suggesting it be classed as a terrorist organisation. Intriguingly one of those particularly incensed is Representative Peter King (New York), possibly suffering from a serious case of double standards, is calling for Wikileaks to be designated as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization" and outlawed in the US.

A long supporter of the political wing of the IRA he might know a thing or two about “foreign terrorist organizations”...

On balance it is probably not a terrorist organisation. Although one fears there can be little doubt that some of the information they release will be of succour and assistance to terrorist organisations and powers unfriendly to the US.These latest releases seem more akin to spying than to terrorism. The documents were clearly stolen. Wikileaks will argue what they are doing is justified in the greater public interest.

It may have been true in the past. In this and in recent instances that is surely questionable. One wonders why no one has attempted to legally gag the site as might be a newspaper. One wonders if that is largely to avoid inflaming conspiracists imaginations.

Interestingly Wikileaks claimed to be under ‘cyber attack’ just prior to their releasing the information. A denial of service attack they claimed. This is where multiple botnet controlled computers are made to access a site in huge numbers. Assange seemed to imply the US might be behind the ‘attack’ attempting to ‘silence’ the site.

It all sounds most ‘conspiracy theory’ish until, if you have even half a brain, you realise there would have been massive worldwide interest in the site after they touted the so-called release. This would have resulted in huge numbers of people attempting to access the site, especially just before the information was published as they kept checking back – Still it helps pump Assange’s ego and publicity machine some more.

No deliberate ‘denial of service’ just overwhelming interest. Weirdly many media outlets uncritically pass the denial of service clams on unchallenged, don’t reporters have any understanding of the net?

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T09:34:00.006Z

A Happy Thanksgiving to any US Readers. Have a great holiday here's hoping you enjoy it and you get to spend it with those you care for.

Every now and then it is good to take a moment and reconnect with some of the main reasons why we bother at all. Friends, Family, children, the home... Be glad we made it through another year, be grateful for what we have and remember those who ca't be with you, for small, big, or more final reasons.

Also here's a grateful thought for those who have given their lives to allow things like this moment of thought, to protect our way of life.

What is this doing to democracy?

2010-11-25T09:25:00.003Z

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, or rather their pet Lawyers, went to court and actually argued that no one sensible believes manifesto promises. The phrase used was that they were “not subject to legitimate expectation.”

Fair enough It seems. No one can claim they weren’t warned.

Really - voting slips and manifestos should carry a public health warning stating it clearly, possibly with graphic pictures of something like - the Ark Royal being broken up, A harrier Jump Jet being scrapped, or a student turning their pockets out.

Up to now we had to put up with Labour telling us that an EU constitution was not a constitution if it was an identical document... but they called it a treaty instead. We could imagine the other parties might have more respect for the democratic process or the truth.

I must admit I was sceptical of Nick Clegg, once he took the same line as Labour over that “treaty” in Lisbon.

But now it seems that coalition is a marvellous excuse to chuck out your principals and firm “watch my lips” promises. You can handily blame it on the other party in the coalition.

So we are treated to a positive Christmas market of pork pie salespersons. Nick Clegg supporting hikes in university fees despite signing some pointless piece of paper that he would oppose them. We see good old Dave Cameron not only back pedalling on his talk of no more giving up sovereignty without a referendum. Now apparently the ~~EU Constitution~~ Lisbon “Treaty” can’t be pulled out of, or re negotiated.

But more telling he is making agreements to pool our armed forces with the French - Again with not a hint of consulting the citizenry.

And given that the only really credible (before he got his hands on them) armed forces in Europe are British and the French then that is basically what would comprise a European Defence Force. Well we can see where he is going with that.

So basically - any promises, no matter how apparently firm, that any politician makes in order to get you to vote for them are just not to be believed. They will be dumped for the sake of expediency at the first hurdle. It seems there can be no doubt that the only reason to “Watch their lips” is to be able to spot when they are - lying.... through.... their.... teeth.

The question is: What does that do to the democratic process? How does someone who is not dangerously self destructively naive actually decide who to ~~waste their vote on~~ vote for?

When they do get in and utterly fail to do what they promised, even if they do the exact opposite, you have absolutely no comeback - apart from voting for some other collection of proven liars, when it suits them, every 5 years or so.

Quote of the day

2010-11-05T16:14:00.008Z

"Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint."
Daniel Webster

"Just because you can doesn't mean you should."
Truism

"Restraint is a measure of intellectual acuity and self-control.
The ability to place thought before action."
Wes Fessler

"Self-righteous people can talk themselves into forgetting they
are part of a civilization. They can then feed on that culture,
bringing it down. It's happened many times in the past.
It could happen to us."
David Brin

"Honesty is the cruelest game of all, because not only can you
hurt someone - and hurt them to the bone - you can feel
self-righteous about it at the same time."
Dave Van Ronk

Be upstanding for Mayor... Ronnie Cray

2010-11-03T11:41:00.009Z

Thank goodness for the European Courts. An idiot’s idea of “Human rights” that keep armies of parasites at the public trough. And also for useless, craven, UK politicians.

It seems the unelected legislators who make up European court of human rights has decided it is unfair that criminals actually serving time are not allowed to vote. Do any of these judges have cousins who are of course “legitimate businessmen”?

Who brought the case before them? Would you believe it was almost literally... “Heeeeer’s JOHNNNY!!!" A "mad axe murderer” by your average man’s definition, who has been let out? And yes his name really is John and he killed his landlady with a genuine axe and then pleaded guilty to manslaughter with diminished responsibility.

You couldn’t make it up and be believed.

The UK government appears to be actually going along with this piece of insanity. For fear the Human rights industry will hit them with huge claims on behalf of the poor deprived inmates.

We can all imagine the likelihood of the French government going along with that – for about a millisecond!

They would probably simply shrug in that Gallic way and do just as they pleased, as they do over anything else that comes out of the EU that does not suit them. And the EU would do nothing.

So if our pointless politicians do go along with it, presumably the crooks will get to vote in the constituency where they are actually incarcerated, if that’s what they want, it being their place of abode. There are 48,000 of them concentrated in various places

The only exceptions will be those who commit the two truly terrible crimes of non-payment of debts or God forbid - contempt of court..

Presumably they will be able to vote in National, local council elections and parish council elections...

Presumably they will vote for candidates that suit them and as a block, given the way things work.

Cameron was making noises about making the local police chief an elected official.

So how long before local Councils in large prison’s catchment areas are packed with ex and unconvinced criminals. You know.. “legitimate businessmen” like Al Capone, or the Crays..

The question we need to ask ourselves is once what amounts to the mafia are in charge will they prove more effective that the political elite? Will the average citizen be better, or worse, off.

Compare the relative prosperity of Southern and Northern Italy.

One thing you can bet - the dustmen won’t go on strike any time soon - unless they are told to.

Meanwhile how long before the EU Court of Human Rights demands the vote for those they really have so much more in common with than anyone else - the clinically insane...

Another brick in the wall?

2010-11-03T09:52:00.007Z

Cameron and Sarkozy have signed a deal to share military resources. It was kept pretty much off the public’s radar until it was a done deal. Did parliament get any say so?

It seems Cameron has locked the UK into it for the next 50 years. It is not clear if it can be got out of.

It is doubtful if any of the UK’s politicians will ever seriously try.

Cameron is busy trying to spin it up into great news and it is for the pro EU political elite.

It is difficult to reconcile this with his earlier bluster about not signing away any more of the UK’s sovereignty without a referendum. But this will be yet another instance where a slight change in the newspeak name of the thing magically utterly transforms it, so an old promise can be safely ignored and discarded. He is taking a leaf out of Gordon Brown’s book, on the Labour Party election ~~lies~~ manifesto.

What it actually is is a tacit acknowledgement that thanks to his incompetent butchery of the UK's defence capability the UK is no longer capable of acting effectively on the world stage without support.

What it actually means is that the UK can now no longer act militarily, in many respects, without France’s agreement.

A mutual defence pact is one thing, even military co-operation, or joint expeditionary forces - but signing over a veto on when you use your military to a foreign power is a whole other ball game, more akin to treason.

Not that UK politicians have not been happily signing away sovereign power for decades, so he can reasonably expect the supine UK electorate to put up with that as they have done with so much else that more self respecting citizens would do something about.

Sadly it is probably unlikely there will ever be a tea party movement in the UK.

What is Cameron’s agenda? One suspects ever closer European integration and the construction of a seed of a EU military. How long before a "money saving treaty" with Germany comes along?

Then there is the argument that can now be used by the political elite that If co-operation works in this areas then why not others? They will then subtly suggest, as they so often do, that it will allow ‘Europe’ to be more ‘independent’ of the US.

US politicians still somehow happily seem to imagine the EU is an unmitigated good thing for the US, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Is it that they think they know the nature of the beast? It wasn’t so long ago they thought it was a good idea to fund the Taliban...

Good money after bad

2010-11-02T04:00:00.003Z

What is the point of politicians? I am sure they have their own reasons for being (Power? Money?) - but what is the point, the benefit, from the average citizens perspective?

Take David Cameron as an example. The EU wanted to increase it’s budget. As a negotiating position it suggested 5.9%. He was not going to stand for that – he said.

Now if you were thinking of buying something and there was a haggle possibility just you know the salesperson will ask double and let the unwary tourist knock them down and think they got a bargain. Did Dave never buy any jewellery for his wife in Greece?

This was of course readily agreed by the European Commission and rubber stamped by the European Parliament to keep the gravy high speed train rolling and would have cost the UK an extra £900m per year until it was put up again the following year.

The UK contributes a ridiculously large share of the operating costs of the EU. Who knows they might have been stupid enough to just go along with it.

So David Cameron makes militant noises and sets off apparently like St George himself to do battle with this hungry Wurm that nests on a pile of taxpayer’s gold.

Sadly the EU is an organisation it would be difficult to argue is fit for purpose, one who’s finances have, as far as I can tell, never been signed off as honest and above board by any accountants.

Put bluntly no accountant who wanted to stay in business, or to be able to portray themselves as honest, or marginally competent, is willing to chance their reputations and the prospect of doing time by signing off on them.

Now a question immediately occurs - well it would if you were not carefully steered away from it.

Why is it - when every European government is having to reduce their expenditure and operating costs - the EU feels the need to increase theirs, without apparently noticing everyone else is having to retrench.

So what was the result of all this tough negotiation, this rhetoric and spin? Was the budget actually cut, or even frozen - as it should have been if the EU reflected the states that make it up.

What did you expect? The budget was increased anyway of course, but by a mere 2.9% In real money 3% instead of 6%.

Dave Cameron is presumably not actually stupid so he must have some idea of the haggle, that suggests he knew quite well that 6% was a starting point. Maybe he thinks we are stupid.

The UKs massive contribution to the EU is a luxury it can’t afford, let alone increase. Even the EU recognised the UK had been rooked when it gave Thatcher a reduction in contributions, disguised as a face saving rebate. A rebate that Labour later pointlessly gave away big chunks of. Still it was only taxpayers money – plenty more where that came from.

How those European politicians must laugh when UK politicians turn up offering yet another opportunity to be fleeced yet again.

So Cameron comes back having committed the UK to pour a staggering extra £400,000,000 down the EU pissoire - and tries to spin that as tough negotiating! As some sort of great victory! Can’t afford too many more "victories" like that.

Getting back to that original question - What exactly is the point of David Cameron?

Back to the Future?

2010-10-31T18:21:00.008Z

East Belfast movie maker George Clarke was going through a Charlie Chaplin box DVD set about a year ago when he noticed, right at the beginning of a clip he was watching, a woman walking by looking for all the world as if she were chatting on her cell phone/mobile/handy.

It seems replaying it and zooming in did nothing to alter that impression either.

So - could it be a sneak preview of a futre Dr Who companion?

One with the DR's special tweaks that lets cell phones work accross time?

Or maybe a member of security staff from the USS Enterprise quietly chatting with the ship on her communicator whilst it was on an adventure in the past. Who knows could the man in the hat be a shot of a heavily disguised Spock with a hat covering his ears and eyebrows...

It is not likely it could actually be a current cell phone running on the current systems. They require an extensive infrastructure to make them work, with a network of arials to allow them to connect through to the provider's exchange and route the call on to the recipient.

Still there are other possible explanations - maybe time traveler with a walkie-talkie..

Of course there is the alternative that it is just coincidence, or someone who is hard of hearing, or even a hoax, by whoever put the original DVD together, we all saw Forest Gump at famous historical events, computing has moved on since that movie was made.

Even so, it fires the imagination dosn't it?

Quote of the day

2010-10-18T14:58:00.002Z

Dane - Geld

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: ~~
"We invaded you last night-we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: ~~
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: ~~

"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!"

Rudyard Kipling

Spin me right round baby, right round

2010-10-16T15:37:00.007Z

One of the few legitimate functions of government must surely be defence of the nation, or what is the point of it at all?

No it seems the UK State is reneging on even that basic duty. The coalition Government is attempting to spin a poorly though out attempt to save money as only an 8% cut in defence spending.

This is not really the case of course, but why did we ever expect honest dealing from politicians. When all is taken into account it is at least a 15% cut.

This after years of sustained, one can't help but suspect, essentially ideologically driven government neglect - and despite spin to the contrary, continuous real cuts in defence spending, even in a time of actual war thanks to the previous government.

It was to be hoped that things might have changed with the removal of the incompetent Labour administration but no.

These reductions from a government that is for some insane reason ring-fencing foreign aid budgets in preference to maintaining a credible defence capability, a government that seems to be surrendering the UK's ability to project any credible force globally.

One might be tempted to wonder if this is part of some cunning backdoor pro EU defence force thinking - but alas suspects it is more just simple lack of foresight, incompetence and a lazy hope that the US can take care of the bad guys out there for us (that seems prevalent in so many governments throughout the world) - whilst of course looking down their noses at the US for being willing to actually grasp the nettle.

It isn't as if the UK is unable (despite successive governments discouragement and denigration of them) to produce brave men and women ready to fight and chance dieing in the nation's interests.

Nor is it there is not the know-how and skills to equip them.

Or even as if there isn't the will within the population.

As usual it is politicians who fail to actually reflect the will and desires of the people.

So tell me - How does this 'democracy' stuff work exactly?

Good Intentions?

2010-09-17T12:31:00.006Z

The UK Coalition government are desperate to save the pennies.

We all know why - Mainly because Gordon Brown and the Labour Party did the political equivalent of getting a terminal diagnosis and then going on a credit card spending spree.

Unfortunately they didn't have insurance...

Now we are all going to have to pay for it - In a way it is fair enough - as collectively we enabled them to do it to us by voting for them... Oh except we never did vote in Gordon did we? But yes we did vote in Labour.

"Not in my name" - as they say.

So the Coalition are scrabbling around for Ideas - and I am prepared to believe for the moment they at least have good intentions - but some of the stuff they come up with seems just stupid or suicidally desperate - and we all know what the road to hell is reputedly paved with...

Firstly, why on earth are they ring fencing foreign bribes.. er aid.

They are planning on blowing some £7.8 billion on it this year. This is a huge amount - and charity, as they say, begins at home. Anything that is not a strategic policy aimed at propping up friendly states, or ensuring terrorism is suppressed should be cut to the bone.

What are they planning at the same time? Oh yes. To damage our armed forces and nuclear deterrent while we are fighting what amounts to two wars.

Reward those who are willing to defend the big society with their lives by making them unemployed!?

Wake up and smell the coffee people.

Something worthwhile?

2010-05-14T14:13:00.006Z

The new administration has done something worthwhile. Or it will if it follows through with it You might say it has justified it’s existence.

More than the previous administration did during its entire tenure anyway.

What? - You may ask.

They are to abolish New Labour’s fascist ID card system and the sinister national Identity Register.

Let's hope they make moves towards dismantling the system designed to nationally track all under 18s too.

Further promising indications towards the restoration personal liberties and freedoms are that they are considering making changes to how the National DNA database is administered and functions.

One hopes that before too long there will be a move to purge the records of innocent people that Labour were so keen to collect. The police never kept innocent people’s fingerprints, elimination prints were disposed of after use. There is no reason why DNA can not be treated the same and it might make people more willing to provide it for elimination purposes if they knew it would be disposed of after.

It looks as if the biometric passport may also go the way of all flesh and public CCTV cameras may be reigned back to some extent.

If the coalition administration actually manages to deliver on any of these it establishes it as more concerned for the citizen’s liberty and rights than the previous authoritarian Labour administration.

Last one out the box close the lid

2010-05-12T14:51:00.003Z

What a difference a day makes - as the song goes.

It seems the UK is to have a coalition government.

Things looked pretty bad over the last day or so. This by contrast to that seems not quite so worrying.

We are seeing a hint of light at the end of the tunnel and hoping against hope it is not the 17:15 to Cambridge and we are not all about to become the stuffed toy on the front of the dust cart, to mix and match metaphors.

Suddenly being polite and reasonable seems to be the order of the day. I do wonder about the timing of Gordon Brown's resignation and if it's timing was designed to strain the chances of a Liberal Democrat/Progressive Conservative Coalition.

Suddenly everyone is busy saying what a statesman he was as if he was dead, I guess he is politically - so I shall refrain from mentioning any inconvenient truths, the gold reserve or pachyderms quietly milling about in the corner of the room.

Experience suggests that the chances are a coalition is likely to come apart at the seams. Driven apart by internal fault lines when push really comes to shove - look at the Lib-Lab pact. Things are certainly going to get difficult before they get any easier, are the Lib Dems up to it?

Still maybe Cameron and Clegg are really serious about government in the national interest and may really be able to drag enough of their parties along with them.

One way they could save a huge amount of money would be to demand Thatcher's negotiated payments discount back from the EU that Blair blithely gave away. Maybe ask for a bigger one of their own.

The UK pays a disproportionately large amount in to the EU to pay for civic improvements in the likes of Portugal and allow French farmers to continue to live in the manner to which they have become accustomed, etc.

Not likely to happen one suspects what with Nick being a Europhile, still it would plug a big hole in the nation's finances.

Maybe we’ll get the best of both Liberal Democrat and Conservative policies and less useful ones will somehow cancel each other out.. Keeping each other honest with each party will acting like the other’s watchdog.

Maybe to save money they will have to hold back the expansion of the state and buy us some breathing space. Maybe some of them will actually even want to do that. Shame that the Liberal Democrats, like Labour and in favour of robbing the dead in the form of low thresholds on inheritance tax. Penalising the south disproportioantely.

I am keeping my fingers crossed - but I am also keeping an umbrella handy against the chance flying pigs coming home to roost turn out to have minimal bowel control.

Goodness knows we need politicians to get over confusing the national interest with their party's interest or even their own personal interest. The thought of them actually doing it seems almost too much to hope for or to actually believe.

Still, they say a cynic is a disappointed optimist, It seems there is a tiny bit of optimist left in me that can still occasionally and probably briefly surface...

It’s only a tiny ‘Obama moment’ of hope that I’ll probably pay for later.

Jumped or pushed?

2010-05-11T15:13:00.004Z

Well – He of the clunking fist, the old lady dissing, Gordon Brown himself is offering to resign, for the good of his party.

And all the pundits are going “Really!?!” amazed - at least the CNN ones seem to be.

How is this anything other than to be expected?

Gordon knows perfectly well that he has, whatever Labour spin MDs may try to say, led his party to a pretty bad, not to put too fine a point on it, defeat.

The only thing that kept the “dead man walking” actually walking, were the electric shocks supplied by the Dark Lord and puppet master himself – Madleson.

Really it was a choice of jump or be pushed.

Someone had to be the fall guy for what they could see was coming. The Labour leadership was a poisoned chalice no one sane wanted before the election... once they decided they had little chance of an outright victory.

They must all have been thinking “Let's fight like hell for what seats we can save, let Gordon take the bullet and maybe let Dave Cameron make himself seriously unpopular trying to sort the mess we made out - Back in 5 years time”.

It didn’t work out quite like that and now it is a real mess.

Labour clearly had no chance of hooking up with the Liberal Democrats while Gordon was in nominal charge, given his reported relationship with Nick Clegg. Could not make a majority with the Liberals either, not without minority Nationalist parties - and that would be an unstable mess that would barely have any majority anyway.

Maybe on alternate wednesdays if they were lucky.

Unless the Liberals and Conservatives can come up with something that is not Schizophrenic any coalition they make will not be able to last, or function effectively either.

Maybe what we really need is a general election?

Janus

2010-05-05T14:11:00.006Z

There is something inherently dishonest about the Liberal Democrat's current attempt to appeal to voters.

They are desperate to keep facing in both directions and be all things to all people, including new.

Nick Clegg and his advisors are perfectly well aware that for many disaffected Conservative and Labour supporters an x in their box is a protest vote against their own parties.

Many disaffected Conservative supporters could never bring themselves to vote Labour, but feel it is important to vote, so they vote Liberal, less so in a general election that in Local elections, but they definitely do it.

The same holds true for disaffected Labour supporters. They also can convince themselves that the Liberal Democrats are enough like Labour to vote for them.

So Nick Clegg's dilemma is he needs support from both disaffected Conservative and disaffected Labour supporters. To do this he has to play coy with who and what the Liberal Democratic Party are.

Even today on the eve of the election when directly asked Nick still desperately avoids answering that question as to who he might support in a hung parliament.

He needs Conservative Supporters to see him as practically Conservative and a potential partner to a Hung Parliament Conservative Government and Labour Supporters to see him as practically Labour and a likely potential partner in a possible hung pearliest Labour government.

Obviously the two positions are mutually exclusive. One group of supporters that he is so assiduously attempting to woo are going to be severely disappointed if there is a hung parliament.

Nick Clegg of course wants to put off betraying them and blowing his carefully implied political fellowship until after they have voted for him and it is too late.

If he can get his hands on power just once for just long enough he can push for whatever change in the electoral system most favours his own party at the expense of the others and possibly the UK too.

The Liberal party is dreaming being serious contenders - for the fist time since the Great War.

Oh... remember how sanctimonious Nick Clegg was over Gordon Brown's Gillian Duffy open mike gaff? He had his own moment, maybe he should have been a little less self satisfied about Gordon's

Janus, or Ianus, was the god of gates, doors & doorways, bridges and passages of beginnings and endings. He was also the god of the entrance of the home.

Elections - A bed voters will have to lay in afterwards

2010-04-26T14:47:00.004Z

It is finally election time in the UK. The date has been set for May 6 and currently there is much talk about the possibility of a ‘hung’ parliament.

This is a parliament where no party has a proper working majority - so basically they are usually pointless, weak, ineffectual and short lived.

There is talk amongst the MSM pundits that some voters may actually be hoping for a ‘hung’ parliament. I wonder if it has been explained to them it does not involve nooses and the lamp posts of Westminster as some sort of public participant entertainment of the type previously associated with Tyburn.

Why? Well it’s since the first televised ‘presidential’ style debate (that were not really debates as such) between the leaders of the parties, Nick Clegg, the leader of the unofficial “None of the above” party. The Liberals, who should not under any circumstances be confused with ‘Laissez faire' Liberals, is benefiting from doing quite well in them and from managing to distance himself from much of the recent corruption and the government’s incompetence.

It is worth noting that there is nothing to stop any, or all, of the parties changing their leaders immediately after the election, as the party leaders are chosen by the parties and are not presidential candidates at all and not voted for by the people.

UK voters, ignorant as many are, should bear in mind they are actually voting for their local MP, who again can switch parties if they wish, just as soon as they are elected if they so desire.

They are not voting for next British Prime Minister.

It will now be in Nick Clegg’s interests to be a little coy as to who he might be willing to do a deal with to help form a government in the event of a hung parliament.

Why? - Because many of his potential votes will be from disaffected Labour and Conservative voters who convince themselves in their disillusionment with their own parties that Liberals are practically the same thing. He will want to keep them all thinking he is the next best thing until after the election. Much like the Welsh and Scots Natonalists who in addition care very little about anyone outside their own areas.

The Liberals can’t be both - and someone will end up being disappointed, possibly both Labour and Conservative supporters who vote Liberal afterwards in the harsh light of day.

Liberals don’t do too badly in local elections where they can’t do harm on a national level with some of their more half-baked ideas.

That is the problem. If we think of it in evolutionary terms, some of the weirder ideas they have tucked away (think harmful genes) have never needed to stand the harsh light of day and never to date had the chance to do any real harm and harm the fitness of the organism that is the UK by becoming active.

I don’t mind what they may do to the Liberals themselves - Mostly keep them out of power since after the first world war so far.

I do care what they do to the UK, as I live in it.

I care in much the same way as I would if I were floating in a small boat taking on some water with some bright spark who thought it might be a good idea to poke holes in it with a screwdriver in order to let the water out…

"Fire up the Quattro Bolly"

2010-04-04T09:47:00.007Z

Up till now I wouldn't have actually really questioned the Milliband Brothers intelligence, only their good sense.

Seeing them launch their latest poster attack on David Cameron by trying to compare him with Philip Glenister's no nonsense cop character Gene Hunt from the popular TV series Ashes to Ashes made me do just that though.

Now I can see where they are trying to go with it. Labour see the 80s as unmitigately bad with Maggie in power and all that. I am not sure we all hated the 80s like Labour, but Labour certainly did, so they are probably making the mistake that we will all think 80s were entirely bad.

I know the 80s wern#'t perfect by any means, but the thing is the country also kind of turned it's self round and we beagn to feel just a little bit better about ourselves for the first time in ages too.

What Labour seem to have missed is that the character of Gene Hunt is really a kind of hero. Whatever else he is A. Incorruptible B. Tough C. Direct D Kickass and C Pretty Cool, etc. none are things that I had particularly previously associated with Dave the bloke.

Quite Frankly if Gene Hunt were running for PM he might well get my vote.

Up to now I couldn't help feeling Dave's greatest asset was that he was sligtly less awful and possibly slightly less incompetent than the clunking fist Gordon Brown. Who knows.. maybe he does share some of those characteristics with Gene Hunt :-)

If I were the clunking fist I would think twice about putting the Amaising Millibandis in charge of any more posters. It seems the Tories were quick to both spot and take advantage of this spectacular own goal and have gleefully hijacked it.

“Fire up the Quattro Bolly" - If anything it’s well overdue for change.

Labour's abrupt 'U' turn on no impropriety claim

2010-03-23T10:59:00.007Z

The clunking fist Gordon Brown, was busily dismissing demands for a Whitehall investigation into the Byers, Hoon, Hewitt, etc. and the secret political influence for cash scandal, one strongly suspects hoping to sweep it under the carpet as soon as possible.

"Nothing to see here folks, move along please..."

He was desperately claiming it was not necessary to have a formal inquiry into whether Government ministers changed policy after being approached by bought colleagues.

Amid demands that the Prime Minister order a formal enquiry Brown let it be known he was "satisfied" that there had been no impropriety on the part of ministers in the Transport and Business departments. A spokesperson said "The Prime Minister has seen the statements from the departments and is satisfied that there is no impropriety."

Well it seems that after Byers and his chums were outed by the Channel 4 programme which secretly recorded the former ministers and everyone could make their own minds up directly the pretence could no longer be kept up.

One wonders how happy Mandleson and Adonis were to have been implicated in the matter, and how much truth there was in the original claims.

One wonders if Byers is now falling on his sword having belatedly realised he has transgressed against omertà. It must have finally dawned on him they know where he lives...

Those involved have finally been suspended from the Parliamentary Labor Party. Apparently the party's chief whip, Nick Brown finally decided enough was enough after back bench pressure, probably largely motivated by fear of the electoral damage Labour might suffer over the matter if they carried on pretending such behaviour was acceptable.

Maybe one day these so-called honourable gentlemen Wouldn’t that be refreshing…

Meanwhile... I am also contemplating the acquisition of a reinforced umbrella against the day geneticists develop a winged pig :-) In the previous case I am not planning on holding my breath waiting as the need for that umbrella is sadly probably far more pressing.

Crooked influence peddler's looking for buyers?

2010-03-22T16:03:00.004Z

Well Labour’s former Transport minister the Honourable Stephen Byers along with some of his colleagues, Former Labour ministers the Honourable Geoff Hoon and the Honourable Patricia Hewitt have been caught in a sting operation touting for business.

Pedalling what political influence they have secretly to the highest bidder.

In his own words he was like “A cab for hire”.

He had boastfully claimed during a sting operation that he had surreptitiously engineered a deal with Transport Secretary Lord Adonis over the termination of a rail franchise contract. And that he had persuaded the Business Secretary Lord Mandelson to alter food labelling regulations on behalf of a major supermarket chain.

The chance of these being the only former ministers currently doing this are, one suspects, vanishingly small.

In an echo of the moral ambivalence MPs so amply demonstrated at length when caught fleecing the taxpayer by dubious expenses claims that would have resulted in any normal employer suspending the miscreants. Certainly reporting likes you or I to the police, probably followed by sacking.

He and his colleagues are insouciantly claiming they have done nothing wrong and they had complied with all the rules.

If that is the case it is simply another example of how endemic the failure of MPs moral compass is

After being confronted Byers tried to claim he was not actually like “a cab for hire” after all and that he had in fact “exaggerated”. Well we know that - his lips must surely have been moving when he was speaking after all. It is a polite way of putting it.

Those less inclined to be kind to him might interpret this to mean that the man is a self confessed liar..

The problem is deciding exactly how he is lying.

Lying to cover up his secretly influencing legislation for money?

...Or lying to all comers about how he can, for a sufficient bung, influence legislation to his potential customer’s advantage?

Difficult call...

A future - but would it really be fair for all?

2010-02-22T16:31:00.004Z

It seems that Labour, or rather the ideologically dedicated ;-) Saatchi and Saatchi, have come up with an election campaign slogan.

'A future fair for all'

Apparently it is supposed to capture Labour and particularly the (possibly literally) clunking fist’s "own personal point of view”.

No wonder they want to distract us from looking at their record in power with airy waffle of the future. A future they know will involve tax hikes and spending cuts that they are even now allowing to grow larger as they try to play them down dragooning their pet economists much as when they wrongly as it turned out attacked Geoffrey Howe.

“Fairness” is one of those Labour newspeak words like “Community”.

As near as I can tell, to Labour and their fellow travellers, fairness essentially means that no one should be allowed to succeed more than anyone else. The thought seems to be that if someone does, or aspires to do so, then it is somehow unfair. They are somehow “unfairly” taking advantage of, intelligence, hard work and plain good luck, or possibly that of their parents in order to succeed.

Essentially to cut people off at the knees so to speak in order to prevent them standing head and shoulders above anyone else. Because to their minds the very act of doing so is of course “unfair”.

S&S’s director of strategy to Richard Huntington would like us to believe that the new slogan “highlights that change is a process”. Really?

Apparently it also rather worryingly “locks together a destination for Britain”

Oh and it seems outrageously contends “that the future for Labour is for the many, compared to the Conservatives”, where he would have us believe the future would “always be for the few."

So then, they are apparently (and possibly allowing their Freudian slip to show) taking a leaf out of the early Russian communists little red book.

Up to a certain point in 1903 they were part of the relatively innocuously titled “Russian Social Democratic Party”. A minority, who didn’t feel they were necessarily destined for success there, going on the way they were, spit away from the party and formed a breakaway group.

Much like our Gordon it seems they presumably cunningly and misleadingly, (rather than ironically), they referred to themselves as “members of the majority”. Possibly in order to sucker those who don’t look too closely at such claims and go with the feel of a slogan rather than it’s relationship with reality.

The Russian word for “members of the majority” is of course Bolsheviks, after 1917 they managed a much longer stint in power than Tony Blair ever did. Such an extended term in power is surely the stuff of the clunking fist’s private fantasies.

It seems to me more realistic to argue that if you want a future where you really do have a fair chance to succeed, without the ball and chain of the incompetent nannying of the repressive Labour state dragging you down then the last thing you should do is vote Labour.

Climate Change

2010-02-07T20:51:00.002Z

With the recent UK Met office predictions of Barbeque summers and mild winters that don’t materialise, the subject of ‘Global Warming’ never seems far from mind these days.

Belief in the theory influences may public decisions and where much public money is expended.

Possibly even Met office predictions, confounded by cool damp summers and frozen snowy winters. Predictions, it has been suggested, that are influenced by an evangelical conviction in Anthropocentric Global Warming of the Met offices boss and his hiring policy.

Lots of shorthand terms are bandied about. “Global warming”, “Climate change”, etc.

So lets examine the facts. Climate Change is an incontrovertible fact. There is overwhelming evidence accrued over years and over recorded history to back it up.

At various times the earth has lazed under balmy tropical temperatures over much of it’s surface, at others ice has covered vastly more of it’s surface than it does today. There is evidence that the climate has swung from warm to cold and back again countless times.

It did so before mankind existed and could not possibly have influenced it. It has continued to do so since he walked the earth, again before mankind could conceivably had any impact on it.

So then, climate change incontrovertibly exists - and would still exist if mankind had never existed, it will continue if we were to cease to exist.

What causes it? Well probably a complicated mix of many things. How far the earth is from the sun, cloud cover, the arrangements of the continents, sunspot activity, volcanic activity, how much dust and particulate matter is in the atmosphere to list a few.

Even Mars apparently undergoes variations, these must surely be entirely natural. It is difficult to imagine one or two solar powered rovers having much impact on climate.

It is questionable that we and so-called climate scientists have the definitive answer to all the causes of climate change and how they interact. To be honest I suspect if they are honest they are still trying to work it out.

Now currently all the evidence suggests we are in the middle of a series of coolings and warmings that fluctuate over millennia, with smaller fluctuations, or beats within the larger ones.

Most of recorded history happens to have taken place within a period of warming where the ice sheets retreated and vast amounts water, locked up in ice sheets on the land melted and the sea levels varied as water was added to them and some parts of the earth that had been squashed down under the weight of miles of ice rebounded and rose and surrounding areas that had been pushed up correspondingly sank.

One suspects we have been able to advance and support increasing numbers at least partly because warming of the climate has helped us survive and prosper.

So global warming? Yes that too must exist along with global cooling and the current warming has been going on since before the start of recorded history.

35,000 years ago, not so long in the grand scheme of things, There was ice sheet just north of where London is now. To the south tundra with caribou. There was no north sea or channel.

The ice began to melt, things began to get warmer. If that hadn’t happened then right now, where I am just now you could probably see a wall of ice.

This was not influenced by Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal four wheeled drive vehicles, or by the methane emitted by cows that went into their burger chains. Maybe planes full of teeming bison, caribou, wooly rhinoceros and mammoths are just as windy…

The logic is inescapable global warming can and does happen absolutely independent of the influence of mankind.

Left to it’s own devices it is overwhelmingly likely that some time in the next few thousand years things would have all changed round and started to get colder again.

The earth has seen much colder climate than it is now, but it has also seen much warmer, even in recorded history.

There have been little fluctuations over the last few thousand years that made things more or less comfortable for humans.

Most recently there was what is known as “The little ice age” a cooler period where the river Thames in London froze regularly enough for there to be annual ice fares held on it. When we regularly had snow.

Before that, around 1,000 years ago, there was what is known as “the little climatic optimum”, when the climate in Greenland was relatively balmy and vineyards did well in England.

So the real question is have our actions had any effect on top of all that? Over and above the large natural fluctuations that are incontrovertibly continuously taking place even now.

Can we really definitively spot anything we may have done to influence the climate amongst the complicated backdrop of what we know must be naturally varying the climate? Do we really know enough to be able to?

It seems we can’t really fully understand the natural mechanisms yet so we are left trying to spot trends in statistics and trying to work out if they correlate in any way and if any do is it direct or indirect. One suspects there is a lot of interpretation involved.

It is interesting to note even the UK’s Met Office, prominent proponents of the theory of manmade global warming doesn’t seem to be bale to get it right, having apparently got their long range forecasts wrong for the past decade by it seems inflating expected temperatures in line with theory and being consistently disappointed.

One thing that concerns me, as (I like to think) a reasonably educated and informed and logical layman are the instances of mistakes, exaggerations and possibly outright fraud in the so-called science of man made global warming. From sea level ‘adjustments’, to models that produce a hockey stick, no matter what data is input, to the scandal of the recently leaked emails.

Speaking of which it has now come out that Professor Phil Jones’ Climatic Research Unit according to the Deputy Information Commissioner Graham Smith committed offences from 2007 to 2008 under section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act in that they intentionally prevented the disclosure of requested information.

They have apparently only avoided prosecution because of the way the statute of limitations on the offences are being generously interpreted.

There is also now an independent review chaired by Sir Muir Russell attempting to establish if there is evidence that data was manipulated or suppressed in a way which was "at odds with acceptable scientific practice".

These are cutting edge so-called climate scientists of world renown who have committed offences by concealing or destroying data that they feel might me ‘misleading’ and who are apparently essentially suspected by the authorities of fiddling their results.
These same results are certainly still being used to bolster warmist claims/predictions.

Then there is the sheer vitriol, name calling and reflexive denigration heaped by all ‘believers’ (including the PM recently) on anyone who remotely seems to question the warmist agenda or theory. I don’t trust it.

That to me reeks of the rage and offence taken by a true believer when their deeply held religious or political beliefs are challenged.

It is my experience that the word of such people is not particularly reliable. There is a danger that their deeply held beliefs may make it seem ok to basically lie to bolster their case, especially if they are convinced they are right anyway.

The data in the IPCC reports is now revealed to be of extremely dubious merit, especially concerning dodgy claims of the rate of deglaciation. So dubious that scientists are daring to complain about a lack of proper peer review.

If these claims and it seems others as well are not to be trusted then just how much else that comes out of the IPCC can be?

So for myself I find myself in the position of being unable to trust the so-called data, those ‘climate scientists’ who earn a good living out of the theory and the politicians who find it such a good excuse to raise taxes and enact progressively draconian laws. I am also equally unsure of the motives of many deniers. I am left in a position of not knowing what to believe either way on the anthropocentric theory.

These are many of the same politicians who brought us WMD and the 45 minute deployment claim. It could be those claims were over egged too.

Of course the argument will probably be settled in 25 years time. Either the warmist predictions will have come to pass or not. If they are still arguing by then with nothing definitive to show then the theory is probably wrong in some way. I still wonder exactly what is responsible for the cycle of ice ages.

So meanwhile what to do?

Well it seems to me that we do need energy self sufficiency and it is desirable to avoid air pollution. We don’t want to be breathing smog, chemicals, particulate matter. It might also be good to avoid deforestation and the loss of species and complex habitat involved.

So in some respect it would seem to be desirable to proceed with developing green power generation and energy self sufficiency regardless of the accuracy of the theory of manmade global warming or not. I do feel strongly it would be very desirable to avoid crippling our economies with prohibitive taxes and red tape while doing it , especially after the recession has focussed our minds.

Maybe better if done with logic and honesty, without the largely unnecessary argument and without the quasi-religious zeal and vitriol. Done efficiently and cheaply. There could be manufacturing and employment benefits too.

Clearly the existing wind technology is not nearly as effective as is generally advertised by the warmist camp as it can only harvest energy when the wind actually blows and then only in proportion to how much it blows. It occurs to me that if it was used to pump water up a column or compress air it could at least be used to store energy from a windy day until it was needed.

Tidal energy is ever present unfailing and surrounds us. It would seem a far more reliable bet Unfortunately the energy harvesting technology seems much less developed and effective.

Finally there is the nuclear option. Personally I believe this can fill the looming energy gap, exacerbated by green Luddite resistance to the construction of new power stations, particularly nuclear. More effectively and efficiently and much sooner than anything else.

Currently the entire volume of high level nuclear waste from the entire life time energy use of a single individual takes up a lump of matter about the size of a household roll of duct tape.

The merits, benefits and dis-benefits of nuclear energy are material for another entire post.

Democracy at work?

2010-01-24T17:48:00.007Z

Earlier this month I posted on Lord Moynehan’s proposed bill to give the police the power to raid homes in order to search for so-called "performance enhancing drugs". Allegedly to prevent cheating at the 2012 Olympics.

I took my own advice and wrote to Eric Pickles Chairman of the Conservative Party and Conservative MP to voice my concerns. Nothing like going to the top.

He replied fairly promptly and actually answered the basic thrust of my letter, so good for him in that. The relevant section of his reply was as follows:

“I understand your concerns about this issue. Whilst I believe these measures are necessary to safeguard against the use of performance enhancing drugs in sport, it is important that they are not used unfairly against members of the public who have been prescribed these drugs for genuine medical purposes.

Please rest assured that my colleagues and I will press the Government to ensure that these powers are used for their intended purpose.”

Do you know... I really don’t think he did understand half my concerns about the issue based on his response.

Sports are a game. There may be money tied up in them, a lot in some cases - and prestige, but they are in the end still a game.

What’s more they are essentially a private arrangement between individuals, or groups of individuals, who agree a set of rules they will abide by. It may even go so far as being a contract, but that is still essentially between the individuals involved.

If someone cheats on those rules then it is a matter for all the other participants and the organisers. The governing bodies of the sports. The rest of us may form opinions about what was done and the people who did it, but that is it.

Even if the state decides to organise a sporting event it is still essentially a private matter.

I, like the overwhelming majority or citizens, have entered into no agreements. I am not involved in it, except possibly to be inconvenienced by it when travelling and directly, or indirectly, involuntarily having to pay towards it.

Also possibly watching a fraction of it on TV, after having paid again to do that too, either by means of the UK TV tax, or directly to one of the other content providers.

I don’t care particularly strongly about the games, not nearly so much as I do about how much I pay in tax. They let them use advanced materials and equipment in some events.

If they gave athletes carte blanche to use performance enhancing drugs as much as they liked the performances might even be more entertaining. They would certainly be on a guaranteed level playing field then… except some would not have so much money to put into training and equipment or time. Maybe they should insist on equal funding as well.

The thing is the staggering majority of us are not a part of it or involved in it in any realistic sense any more than we would be involved in horticulture if we had a day out and visited a country fair that had a vegetable growing competition.

It is simply wrong for the state to pass any law relating to the rules of a private competition. Would the government seriously consider making a law to ban overacting on the football pitch? Giving the police the power to curtail a footballer’s thespian leanings?

You can hear the catch slogan now… “Two to five for taking a dive? – It’s the LAW”

So… no Mr Pickles. If you believe for a second the measures are necessary then you clearly feel the state has far more right to interfere with my liberty than I do.

The state has no business whatsoever attempting to safeguard against the use of performance enhancing drugs in sport.

It is interesting to note the measures are proposed by an unelected Tory Lord who is completely unaccountable to the electorate. And that Mr Pickles, occupying a safe Tory seat as he does, is effectively only practically accountable to the Tory hierarchy.

The legislation in it’s very conception is anti democratic and authoritarian.

As for his assertion that “I will press the Government to ensure that these powers are used for their intended purpose”, at best I fear this simply demonstrates grossly misplaced optimism on his part.

We are all well aware that very little recent legislation that has been passed granting powers to the police of councils or virtually any public body has actually been used as they were allegedly intended. In practically all cases there has been creep. As I mentioned in my previous post on the subject and my letter to Mr Pickles.

So from his letter it seems he has a touchingly misplaced faith at variance with the observed facts that this legislation will, unlike most other recent legislation not be abused by those executing it. Plus a certain authoritarian belief that the state has a God given right to be intrude where it should not even be considering intruding.

Is it worth telling him do you think?

The Bookie always wins

2010-01-13T09:38:00.009Z

Here is an excellent example of why, when I was young, my Mother always advised me never to bet my money.

The house always wins.

This is the cautionary tale of hapless punter Cliff Bryant who trustingly placed an accumulator bet with British Bookmaker Ladbrokes that snow would fall on 24 towns and cities across the north of England on Christmas Day.

Well as it happened he was right, but like one or two insurance companies Ladbrokes were reluctant to pay out when they realised it would cost them £7.1 million - So they found a handy technical reason to avoid it and refused.

They were happy enough to take the bet, but when it came time to actually pay up they said they had accepted the bet by – get this ‘mistake’ and so would not be honouring the bet. Apparently it was somehow against their rules, even though they did take the bet.

Magnanimously they are willing to refund the punter back his original stake.

Curiously and it seems foolishly I had expected better of Bookmakers than politicians. I had thought they might actually honour their promises.

Now it seems to me that if they had honoured the bet it would have been a massive boost for their credibility and good publicity. Probably over a year it would have netted them what it cost and more.

As it is they now have a reputation of not honouring their bets, of welching - and who would trust someone with a bet who has so spectacularly shown they don’t always honour their bets?

So, next time you are thinking about placing a ‘fun’ bet, or any bet, especially with Ladbrokes, perhaps you would be better advised to think twice and spend your money on something you might actually get when you part with it.

All wind and no Substance?

2010-01-10T16:14:00.003Z

An article in the Sunday Telegraph (Jan 10th) by Cristopher Booker made almost as a throw away aside, an excellent point about the relative merits of various forms of alternative energy.

Now before I go further I should make my own views on the matter clear. I believe the UK should have, as a matter of national policy, complete energy independence. Further I believe it makes sense that this should be as clean as possible. This reguardless as to weather the theory of man made global warming is right or not.

Mr Booker’s point concerned power generation by wind turbines. He pointed out that the recent cold snap had effectively been largely windless. The point being that wind generation is not necessarily to be relied upon. Even over an area as large as the UK you can suffer a massive drop off of the power wind generators are capable of delivering.

One wonders why those who promote wind turbines so often quote near maximum out put in their figures, it would be more honest and accurate to quote averages, andy one who ever tried to fly a kite as a child knows that some days you can and some days you can’t.

If we had been reliant on wind power this winter we would have been in deep trouble.

So what can be relied upon to deliver power?

Well there are the tides. They are driven by the sun and moon and unless there were a disaster of unimaginable proportions are regular and utterly reliable.

Then there is nuclear energy. This is the route the French took decades ago, French steely self interest being less inclined to wilt before short sighted nimbi left/green luddite foot dragging.

It is interesting to note that the main reason our power generation capacity is not effectively carbon free right now is because of the Greens.

That is why not only are we not carbon free - we are in danger of soon being in a position of being unable to service our full power needs. We already have to buy nuclear generated electrical power from France.

I have said before. Surely we can use existing defunct deep coal mines to sequester spent nuclear material?

What is to prevent us building nuclear power facilities underground near the top of such mines and sequestering the spent fuel deep in the geologically stable depths of the mines. If there were ever a leak it would be contained underground and no spent fuel would need to travel overland.

It is also worth noting that recent evidence suggests that low levels of radiation may be far less dangerous than originally supposed at the dawn of the atomic age, even Green Patriarch and possibly now former poster boyJames Lovelock is now in favour of generating electricity by means of nuclear energy

With enough spare power capacity the possibility opens up of generating hydrogen from seawater in sufficient quantities to substitute it for petrol in internal combustion engines. The technology to burn Hydrogen in an internal combustion engine is relatively simple and could easily be adopted.

The only emissions from vehicles running on hydrogen would be water vapour then those inclined to hate 4WD vehicles would need to find some other excuse to do so. I suspect we can be assured they would do so.

Another brick in the wall

2010-01-06T06:30:00.005Z

Here is yet another truly sinister piece of proposed UK legislation and it goes to show that it is not just Labour who has little concern for citizens rights.

Tory Lord Moynihan has drawn up a draft Bill to give the police powers to search for performance enhancing drugs.

His ostensible reason, he claims, is to help prevent Olympic athletes cheating with performance enhancing drugs come the 2012 Olympics.

This sounds almost acceptable - if you are the sort of person who does not bother to to think to closely about these things.

The first thing to consider about any legislation is how it might go wrong because it has been poorly drafted.

It is unlikely the bill will be able to distinguish between ordinary citizens and athletes, let alone Olympians.

Also this relates not to so-called illegal drugs whatever you consider the merits or otherwise of prohibition. This relates to drugs which it may be perfectly legal to posess, may even be medically necessary for some conditions, but that also may enhance athletic performance.

My elderly mother is on steroids of some sort. She is therefore certainly in possession of what might be considered “performance enhancing drugs”.

The second thing is to ignore the claimed reason for it and consider what powers it will actually give to the state and it’s increasingly politicised police ‘service’.

You can be absolutely certain, whatever the ostensible reason for the additional powers, the police, or anyone else given them, will be using them to the fullest extent that is possible.

If you doubt this you only have to look at the lawful, but effectively misuse, of legislation that has resulted in the police harassing innocent photographers.

Or the violent ejection of an elderly Labour Party conference attendee from Conference when he made the mistake of criticising the Government.

Or the hundreds of incidences of local councils misusing anti terrorist legislation to spy on people’s refuse bin use, or where they live.

So what will this proposed piece of authoritarian legislation do? Apparently it will allow the police to raid a place of residence, for no better reason than to seize perfectly legal (if performance enhancing) drugs.

Another significant chunk of your and my right to live unmolested by an increasingly authoritarian state being gradually and stealthily stolen away while you don’t notice - and it is just too much bother to make a fuss over such a small thing.

Why this time? For the truly world shattering and absolute necessity to make it a little bit more difficult to cheat at sports. Even if it were instead supposed to save lives it might be a price too high to pay

You should be concerned. Don’t just sit there. Take 5 minutes to actually do something. Complain to your MP. It is easy and completely free, just go to the ‘They work for you’ site. Enter your post code plus a few details and the site will forward your note to your MP.

If you can’t think of how to put your objection then just paste this in:

Dear Sir/Madam/etc.,

I am writing to you as my MP, my representative in Parliament to make you aware of my strong objections to Lord Moynihan’s draft bill that proposes to give the police powers to search residences for, otherwise legal drugs, that enhance athletic performance in time for the 2012 London Olympics.

Even with safeguards this legislation poses a great risk to our rights and liberties. It is a case of the proverbial hammer being used to crack the nut. All in the name of sports.

Many people require these so-called “performance enhancing” drugs on a daily basis for their health. Such legislation could theoretically mean police would have the power to search the homes of many people who have nothing to do with the Olympics.

We have seen a number of recent instances where other supposedly laudable, but draconian, legislation has effectively been trivially misused in ways we were assured would never occur when the legislation was passed, take the matter of councils spying in on household refuse for but one instance. I am sure like the rest of us you must be well aware of others.

If these powers are granted they will inevitably be used and more.

Can you please advise me, in clear language, weather you intend to represent me, my views and oppose this legislation, or not.

Thank you for your time, I look forward to your reply.

yours faithfully

#your name here#

Quote of the day

2010-01-06T06:00:00.002Z

"The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to "create" rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting."
William J. Brennan, Jr

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
Abraham Lincoln

I told you so

2010-01-04T11:47:00.000Z

I don't generally crow about "I'told you sos", but it seems the UK has just had the coldest December in 30 years. Now it is January and the Met Office are now predicting yet more snow and sub-zero temperatures. More Severe Weather warnings have been issued.

This is a world away from from the mild winter predicted earlier.

One suspects the sharp contrast between the long term forecasts and the actual weather we get may be driven by more a tendancy to slant long term forecasts towards the warmest possible outcome, based on a conviction of the reality of global warming and maybe a problem with connecting possible climate change with actual climate.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T00:01:00.000Z

Well it's the new year - Happy New Year one and all!

Traditionally the new year is a time when we make resolutions - and generally fail to keep them :-)

Why do we do this?

It probably stems from that feeling of renewal, the fresh start. The old year is tired and worn out. It may be it went well, it may be it was a dissapointment, it may have been average with both good and bad.

Henry Ward Beecher said: "Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past."

However 2009 was we draw an artificial line in the... snow? Ahead there are no footprints, what is in front is virgin, unspoiled territory waiting for us.

The moving finger has not writ... yet. We can have a hand in what is writ if we care to. That is the sense that drives us to make resolutions.

The fact is that is true... every... single... day.

Welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives, It will be true of each new dawn we see. Always there is - potential. The trick is to remember it and not loose the wonder and the will.

Quote of the Day

2009-12-31T00:10:00.002Z

"Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors ...and let each new year find you a better man."
Benjamin Franklin

UK Glorious Leader's New Year Speech

2009-12-30T12:33:00.007Z

The Glorious Leader and saviour of the world Gordon Brown delivers his New Year’s message to his grateful people.

He warned voters not to "wreck the recovery", presumably by voting for someone other than him in next year’s election that has been forced on him.

One wonders if he sees voters who don’t wholeheartedly support him as “saboteurs” and “wreckers”. Maybe they need to be lured out and dealt with for the good of the nation.

One fears the speech may be open to misunderstanding so I have helpfully provided a commentary to assist with certain passages…

Gordon: “important legislation making long-term changes in energy, climate change, health, pensions, planning, housing, education and transport, 2008 will be a year of measurable changes in public services. important legislation making long-term changes in energy, climate change, health, pensions, planning, housing, education and transport, 2008 will be a year of measurable changes in public services.”

Translation: “we will be legislating (as quietly as possible) massive tax hikes to try to cover our pissing away tax payers hard earned cash. We will hide this by pretending it is to save the planet. Maybe we will set some more target that will mess everything up and fiddle the figures to pretend we met them.”

Gordon: ”we will not shirk but see through changes and reforms in the vital area for our future - secure energy, pensions, transport, welfare, education, health and national security.

We will strengthen the democracy and unity of our country. Our priority at all times, our guiding purpose: One Britain of security and opportunity for all the British people.”

Translation: ”So say good-by to some more ancient rights, liberties and freedoms. We will be building power stations where we want and really don’t want to be bothered by your reasonable objections. Oh and if you think you will be allowed to just do things like taking a picture of Nelson’s column or possibly a member of the constabulary shoving an old man over then think again. You can be harassed and arrested for that now.”

Gordon: “ Our strong economy is the foundation. And with unbending determination, in 2008, we will steer a course of stability through global financial turbulence.

The global credit problem that started in America is now the most immediate challenge for every economy and addressing it the most immediate priority.”

Translation: “Our economy that I badly damaged when I was chancellor and carried on treating like my personal piggy bank as PM is pretty shot, but maybe, if I keep saying it’s strong some of you might be stupid enough to believe it. In any case it is the nasty American’s fault and in no way nothing to do with me whatsoever and I do hope you don’t notice everyone else seems to be starting to recover so much more quickly."

Gordon: ”To lead in the skills of the future and create a full employment Britain, we will guarantee young people the right to school or college, an apprenticeship or training free of charge until the age of 18. This is the greatest change in education in our country in half a century.”

Translation: “Unfortunately young people don’t have much hope of getting a job since I did so much to bugger the economy… so I will make sure they stay in full time education - and off the unemployment books as long as humanly possible.”

Gordon: ”To lead in safeguarding the environment, the climate change bill will make Britain the first country to legislate legally-binding cuts in carbon emissions.
And because a good environment is good economics, we will take the difficult decisions on energy security - on nuclear power and renewables - so British invention and innovation can claim new markets for new technologies and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.“

Translation: ”We will tie a stealth taxation ball and chain round the economy’s leg and as I said build Wind farms and Nuclear Power stations where we damned well please – Got it?”

Gordon: "To build for the future of our families and our economy, we are starting the biggest housing programme to boost owner occupation - and will provide historic levels of investment in transport and infrastructure through Crossrail, at Heathrow and across the country.

Translation: ”We will build crap housing and instant sink estates where we please and by historic we mean something as useful and popular as the Beaching cuts. There’s historic for you”

Gordon: ”we will not be deflected from our commitment to cleaner hospitals and to change to increase the opening hours of GP surgeries.”

Translation: ”Lets hope the thicko voters don’t remember we have had over a decade to fix all this stuff already and just made it noticeably worse. Especially GPs hours with that cocked up new contract we came up with, everyone knows you used to be able to get your own Doctor to visit your home in an emergency, now you have to talk to NHS direct on the phone and then get to make your own way to a centre or call an ambulance if they think you need it.”

Gordon: “We have other promises to keep, from neighbourhood policing in every community to the renewal of our democracy and the revival of confidence in our political process. We will define a new citizenship of rights and responsibilities - and establish a new points system as a condition of living and working in Britain.”

Translation: ”Yes I know you don’t trust the police much anymore after we politicised them got them arresting law abiding members of the public instead of criminals and tied them up with targets and red tape so they cant patrol. But we hope if we start to pick on those immigrants we encouraged in the first place as stealth ideological social engineering maybe you won’t vote for that bastard Griffin.”

Gordon: ”And in 2008, with firm conviction and resolve, we will make the case for the United Kingdom - standing up for the cause of the Union and against secession, showing people in all parts of the country that for so many of the challenges our country faces - from climate change to terrorism - there are no Wales-only, Scotland-only or England-only solutions.”

Translation: ”…and talking of bastards... You little shit Salmond! If you think you are cutting away what’s left of my political support you have another think coming. You just want to be a big frog in a small pond and are throwing away the large big UK pond the Scots are already in charge of - Idiot!!”

Gordon: "And in 2008, with firm conviction and resolve, we will make the case for the United Kingdom - standing up for the cause of the Union and against secession, showing people in all parts of the country that for so many of the challenges our country faces - from climate change to terrorism - there are no Wales-only, Scotland-only or England-only solutions.”

Translation: ”In your face Salmond. – one peep from you and we will nail you with being soft on terrorism, especially after you let that Libyan out of jail”

Gordon: "This season is above all a time to pay tribute to those who serve and sacrifice for our country, often in places far away. And we pledge that the men and women on the frontlines of our security, at home and overseas, will have all the resources they need for our defence and their own safety.”

Translation: ”Hurrah for our good old troops!! See how patriotic I am folks… don’t you pay any mind to the fact that we have looked down on the sort of people who are willing to defend their country for decade. Or that we have cut their numbers, equipment and funding to the bone - while expanding the civil service and useless parasitic Quangos. Or the fact that to actually supply half decent kit after a public outcry we are going to gut other areas of defence funding even more. Hurrah for the troops!”

And hey folks! Don't forget you can take a Labour Manifesto Promise straight to the failing bank of Neverpay.

It's Legal, it's official you can't reasonably expect them to deliver on them.

A Merry and Happy Christmas to all

2009-12-24T00:15:00.004Z

Christmas Eve... For many of us it conjures happy childhood memories. Memories loaded with excitement and happiness form a time when the world, especially at Christmas, seemed a more magical, happy and safer place.

Each year it seems to be commercialised, diluted and spread out back earlier and earlier. Even so, at it’s heart is that core. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Charles Dickens encapsulates it in his Pickwick Papers when he writes:

“Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!”

Still for many of us these memories - and the feelings they can still call up, makes us just a little more patient and tolerant at this time of year. A little more generous of spirit, slightly slower to anger.

The celebrations may pre-date Christianity. They always did and still do contain much that has very little, on the face of it, to do with the teachings of Christ. Never-the-less much that is at the core of Christmas as we know it, Christian or Pagan do in a very real sense have at their core the best of “Christian” values.

Values worth having because they generally make life better for all - if we hold to them. That we should hold to, no matter what belief, or philosophy.

So here’s wishing the world - and everyone in it, good cheer and best wishes this Christmas.

As Dickens said:
“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

Here’s a hope that we can try to be like his reformed character Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol and carry that spirit of decency with us into the new year when he proclaimed:

"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~###~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Scrooge was better than his word - He did it all... and infinitely more…

He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.

Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

…it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.

May that be truly said of us, and all of us! …God Bless Us, Every One!

Quote of the Day

2009-12-23T09:47:00.001Z

"As long as I have any choice, I will stay only in a country where political liberty, toleration, and equality of all citizens before the law are the rule."
Albert Einstein

Don't you know who I am?

2009-12-23T09:16:00.004Z

Picture this. He has tattoos. “HATE” and “ACAB” on his knuckles and a spiders web on his neck.

He is shaved bald and struts imperiously. He is walking his dog Bruno. It is some unspecified sort of bull terrier. The dog defecates on the floor near a “no fouling sign” and he walks on by, just leaving it.

A young mother takes him to task over it and he blankly refuses to do anything about it telling her “It aint Brunoe's fault, he's only a puppy and no way am I going to pick up shit, you think I'm do'in that you are stupid” Suppose she stood up to him anyway and there was a fierce argument over it...

What would you think of our dog walking example? You would think he was scum wouldn't you?

You might think he relied on his physical power to avoid admitting responsibility and doing something he considered beneath him.

Now suppose the dog walker was female, maybe a UK government minister... say the Solicitor General to pick a post at random. The post is currently held by ID card and dog loving Vera Baird MP for Redcar.

If it was her would you change your opinion?

The confrontation over the dog mess was sufficiently fierce, or the dog fouling sufficiently annoying, for members of the public to call the police.

In this instance, despite the police becoming involved... well a community support officer anyway. No action was taken. No fine for allowing a dog to foul, no nothing.

When the hapless Support officer attended the scene when they didn't show sufficient biased deference she reportedly demanded of him “Don't you know who I am?” Maybe they had thought it shouldn't matter who she was. That the law should apply equally to all...

No action was taken but, it is reported, the dog owner got an official apology.

I wonder who go to clean up the mess?

You might be forgiven for thinking that, practically speaking, there is one law for the political elite and one for the rest of us.

I suspect you could be sure if it had been an ordinary member of the public they would have been instant fodder for Police figures, probably getting a fixed penalty fine, possibly being arrested and having their DNA taken if they had no ID.

Quote of the Day

2009-12-21T10:42:00.002Z

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have."
Thomas Jefferson

UK State encroachment backs off, but not far enough

2009-12-21T10:27:00.003Z

The UK's New Labour Government seem to have backed off slightly from their frankly crazily draconian extremes of their criminal records check system after public outcry.

As usual the public are far too reasonable and don't complain nearly enough, about anything like enough.

The legislation was supposedly brought in to prevent another “Soham” child murder and essentially tries to and succeeds in treating practically any adult who may anything to do with children as a paedophile unless proven otherwise.

In practice this amounts to, effectively, a licensing system the individual must pay for themselves to be allowed to interact with the young.

The ludicrous - and typical for the New Labour State - thing is that there were perfectly good existing systems in place that, if they had actually been followed, would almost certainly have prevented the Soham murders.

Rather than address the failure to follow the existing system, New Labour rail-road through new, hastily and ill conceived authoritarian legislation. Legislation, that it is difficult to imagine would ever have been acceptable to previous generations, who had a greater respect for our historic ...and rapidly becoming just historical traditional liberties.

All of this is the New Labour states instinct to legislate and the ostensible reason is to protect children Ahhh. And with New labour there is always a subtext and one suspects layers of agenda.

The sub text will be “So it can not be a good thing to resist it can it?” It is there to keep children safe. In the same way as their National ID scheme is always to “fight organised Crime and Terrorism”. Speak out against it and you are “soft on crime”.

Despite the state's tactical withdrawal on some of the more draconian aspects of the legislation and the insane consequences that come from it the legislation is still Owellian.

It also, most dangerously of all in my opinion, establishes the precedent that the State rules who may interact with the young not the citizen.

Before the clime down it was seriously preventing job sharing friends looking after each other's children by private arrangement. May still impact of what mutual arrangements parents are allowed to make amongst themselves to drive their kids to school.

In the case of the women they were both police officers so were presumably subject to vetting anyway when they joined up. Insane. If this was not deliberately intended to result by the legislators then it was a piss poor piece of legislation. But then that is par for the course with the current government that apparently does not do thinking things through or joined up thinking.

As I mentioned what is being slipped in without anyone seeming to be aware is the precedent that the sate rather than the parent decides who is allowed to interact with and influence the citizen's child.

The State distracts like a grinning performing magician. “Look at my hand nothing up my sleeve Ladies and Gents, Girls and Boys.”

Quote of the Day

2009-12-12T08:00:00.001Z

"Theory helps us bear our ignorance of facts."
Andrew Carnegie

"Scientists should always state the opinions upon which their facts are based."
Unknown

"What we see depends mainly on what we look for."
John Lubbock

"Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed."
Thomas Henry Huxley

"Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition."
Adam Smith

Predictably... Unpredictable

2009-12-11T11:03:00.006Z

The met office is at it again predicting record highs that is. This time for Summer 2010.

Logically, sooner or later they may even turn out to be right if only by sheer chance and persistence .

But one can't help feeling that they are simply thinking... "Hmmnnn Global warming... Well it's bound to be hot isn't it? I Know! Lets just predict that. Not enough people will remember if we get it wrong again anyway."

I am sure we all remember the blistering "Barbecue summer" of 2009, with record highs predicted by the met office.

There was the recession and we were looking forward to being able to enjoy it in the UK for once. We had visions of Bournemouth being more like Niece. They coined the term Stay-cation in anticipation.

The Barbecue summer predictably failed to materialise and there was a last minute surge in Non European (Euro exchange rate being poor) bookings to escape the rain. Turkey anyone? Then it just kept raining with autumn seeing flood defences being overwhelmed... again.

Meteorologists if they are honest admit they can really only accurately predict the weather up to about five days ahead. Long term predictions about "big weather" effects, such as global warming for instance come from "Climatologists".

Also in line before the again predicted Barbecue summer is a mild winter

Interestingly the bookies, who make a good living out of calculating the odds - and getting it right - are shortening the odds on a white Christmas. More Turkey anyone?

One has to wonder about all these warm predictions. But some might not consider the Met Office boss John Hirst to be 100% disinterested and objective. He was reportedly leaning on his staff recently over the scandal at the Climatic research unit. He was very keen they all sign to "defend their profession" and state they had the "utmost confidence" in the evidence questioned. Without it seems looking too closely at the leaked emails.

Long range weather forecasts should not be simply Warmist propaganda. They should be as objectively accurate as possible. Even if the climate is warming it will surely be a trend but an average trend, not up every year.

Now if my boss leaned on me that way it would make me feel uncomfortable, Jobs are important in a recession.

It has apparently been suggested by some scientists that "The Met Office is a major employer of scientists and has long had a policy of only appointing and working with those who subscribe to their views on man-made global warming."

So it seems if you want to work you had better know what side your bread is buttered on.

Clearly the "Barbecue summer" side...

Quote of the Day

2009-12-05T21:07:00.003Z

"He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave."
Andrew Carnegie

No room for science that is not "on message"

2009-12-05T20:45:00.005Z

It has been a while since I have posted, as has been pointed out to me.

The reason is twofold. I have far less time to spare for blogging than I used to and I frankly despair that it makes any difference. The public sometimes seem indifferent to the lies, obfuscations and fiddles of politicians.

I listen sometimes to a sound bite or even news report and the broken logic and confused reasoning is truly incredible to behold. And they do it with straight faces too. You can practically see the fishing hook in the reporters mouth sometimes.

It’s certainly not because there was nothing to post about.

There is something that has disturbed me quite a lot recently. You see it every now and then in the news.

Most recently, ahead of the Copenhagen talks, over the fuss caused by those leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, in the UK that suggest leading ‘climate scientists’ may have fiddled figures and destroyed data to bolster the anthropomorphic theory of climate change, Man Made Global Warming.

The UK Premier and Glorious Leader Gordon Brown came out strongly in defence of consensus global warming with another personal contribution of hot air in the Guardian ranting:

"With only days to go before Copenhagen, we mustn't be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics,"

Now why anyone in their right mind would by now imagine Gordon Brown to be competent in anything - let alone “climate science”, when he is clearly a complete buffoon in his own claimed area of expertise… economics, I fail to grasp. Better for the warmists camp if he had kept quiet.

His mere mention of it almost makes one want to seriously review everything one knows about “flat earth science”, in case there just might be something in it after all :-)

Surely it is "anti science" to fiddle results? To bolster your own research? To destroy data that someone who is questioning your figures asks for? To discount evidence against your theory. Or indeed to shout down opponents, denigrate them.

The language becomes even more suspect when another politician Ed Miliband (David Milliband’s not so famous younger brother), branded anyone who is not fully on New Labour’s political message as, “dangerous and deceitful, climate saboteurs”.

David is the one Hills seems to like.

Ed, like David, soaked up Marxist Theory at his father Ralph’s knee so he probably knows a thing or two about class enemies and re-education. One wonders when they will enact legislation to lock these climate saboteurs in mental institutions and outlaw their deceitful lies.

That it is all over climate change in this particular instance is almost irrelevant to my point. If the science is good it can stand on it’s own feet. It can stand up to scrutiny, It does not fear verification. It certainly does not need the sort of language employed by religious or old style soviet leaders.

As soon as one hears things couched in that sort of intemperate hyperbole Brown and Milliband deployed you know you are dealing with a deep belief like a religious or political conviction, not subject to being moved by reason or proof and willing to do anything to protect and support their dogma or belief.

But it is not in relation to just one of the state’s pet enthusiasms you see this dubious attitude wherever it surfaces in a certain mind set.

Recently it was discovered by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) that the original recommendations for an individual’s average daily calorie intake, which were made in 1991, underestimated the average requirement by up to 16%.

The official UK guidelines were and still are at the time of writing, 2,000 calories for women, 2,500 calories for men and 1,800 calories for children aged five to 10, 16% below the real figure.

The first official thoughts seem to be concern that revising the guidelines might risk sending "mixed messages", rather than concern for accuracy.

It was reported that health campaigners were concerned that the Department of Health and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) could seek to "sweep this report under the carpet" in a bid to avoid sending out “mixed messages “in the middle of an “obesity epidemic”. Especially as New Labour are looking at the introduction of new food-labelling schemes. The FSA has spent two years evaluating new methods of labelling and this will change things

This view was bolstered when The National Obesity Forum partnered with the government’s Department of Heath chipped in warning that it was a ‘dangerous assumption’ that adults could consume more calories each day.

Advice Service Diet Scotland representative Lorraine McCreary, said: “People have lived with these established guidelines for a long time and most people understand if they go above the recommended intake they are likely to put on weight” she went on to say she thought it would be “very confusing for people.”

Again, when New Labour’s drug aviser complained that government policy on drugs didn’t fit with the science or the advice the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) were giving the government he was ruthlessly forced out by Alan Johnson the UK Home Secretary to shut him up.

The unfortunately named Professor, David Nutt had criticised Labour politicians for "distorting" and "devaluing" the research evidence in the debate over illicit drugs. Pointing out that some "top" scientific journals had published "horrific examples" of poor quality research on the alleged harm caused by some illegal drugs.

UK police boss Johnson said the Professor’s comments “damaged efforts to give the public clear messages about the dangers of drugs”.

Time and again we see those who run the UK state have scant regard for whatever may, or may not, be the actual facts.

Their prime concern seems to be that science is "on message", that it should be forced to bolster whatever policy they happen to have, shoehorned to fit with any square corners roughly hacked off to fit the round hole they insist it will be going in.

Whether it is to enable them to criminalise and control vast swathes of the British public or to find new and inventive ways of stealthily taxing them (for their own and the planet’s good of course) in these straightened times.

The party dogma machine just grinds away. Anyone who questions it, right or wrong, is shouted down, ground under, called bad names, briefed against.

No wonder people are more interested in voting for the X-Factor TV show, at least they get the chance to do that once a year and their vote influences the outcome of the contest.

New Labour's Child Catchers

2009-05-19T11:29:00.005Z

The UK Orwellian NewLabour state is desperately rolling out the quite sinister National Children's Database designed to contain details of and track everyone in the UK under 18.

One wonders how long it will be before they decide to keep the details for life...

The alleged reason for it is to enable "more co-ordinated services for children" and of course to ensure none slips through the net like Victoria Cimbie.

It is questionable if such a database would in fact have prevented her death, or that of baby "P", local co-ordination, lower case loads and effective working practices would almost certainly have far more impact and cost far less.

In the same way they try to uses the fear of terrorism to justfy a national ID database. It is well known thatID cards would never have prevented the London Tube suicide bombers. Or those who attempted to bomb busy London clubs and attacked Glasgow Airport.

This governemt though seems to have only one kneejerk reponse, cataloguing, regimentaion and control of the ordinary citizen - and it seems their children too.

It is terrifying to think of the numbers of people who will have access to what should be private details of our children. Will all council employees be vetted in the same way as youth workers? No. The potential vulnerability that access to this data lays children open to is truly concerning.

Then there is the potential to just loose the details releasing them into the public domain.

The way local councils have misused anti terrorist laws gives an indication they are not to be trusted with our children's details, that are effectively also our details. How long before they routinely check them to establish where you live for instance?

Those who take comfort that these are the twilight days of New Labour and hope the scheme will die a death with their electorial demise are probably fooling themselves. Once rolled out could an new incoming governemnet be trusted to remobve such a big state friendly tool of control?

Maybe the economic facts of life might make a difference. The database is currently slated to cost £224 million, as with all such things this will be underestimated by a whole order of magnitude. Perhaps in the end it will prove to be too expensive.

Food for thought

2009-04-23T08:05:00.000Z

The UK government and it's indirectly government financed “pressure groups” and “Charities” have been really pushing the anti obesity thing for some time now with talk of taxing certain food products plus having set minimum prices for alcohol and punitive taxes on it too.

If you are overweight you are not just morally reprehensible because the Puritanical socialist-patrician classes don't approve of you.

No from their tone you are not just a resource hogging criminal because you are personally destroying the UK's National Health Service.

Now it seems you threaten the whole planet, every last one of us, every creature and plant you are personally making “Climate Change” worse and you must be stopped.

Arrested for filming changing of the guard?

2009-02-17T09:41:00.002Z

Well that is interesting. It seems. The UK Government has been busy “protecting” us all from TERRORISM and ORGANISED CRIME again… oh so quietly.

Why quietly? Because as is usual when they are ”protecting” us It is at best a two edge sword, but usually just involves another mechanism that is curiously suited for oppression.

Even Dame Stella Rimmington former head of MI5 thinks the New Labour State is exploiting the fear of terrorism to restrict our civil liberties - and she ought to be able to spot it if anyone can.

So what have New Labour quietly sneaked in under the radar this time? Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act is what. It is supposedly there to stop TERRORISTS gathering intelligence on the police and Armed Services by taking pictures of them.

Now what did they do with Communists who wanted to take pictures of sensitive stuff and situations during the Cold War? Presumably arrested them for spying. They didn’t need such a law then. Presumably the government of the time had a greater regard for civil liberties.

Part of the blizzard of new laws that make it an offence to do things like commit murder on a Tuesday as opposed to say just committing murder. Then there would be committing murder on Wednesdays whilst wearing a hat…

So what does this effectively do? It gives the police the power to arrest anyone filming them or taking a picture of them, say for instance, when they are doing something that might lay them open to criticism.

It seems even the rank and file police officers feel this may be a step too far and their “union” the Police Federation have expressed concerns.

We have already had it repeatedly demonstrated that the New Labour Sate and their pet New Labour senior police officers can be relied upon to misuse any such legislation, practically as soon as it is passed to suppress political dissent and embarrassing revelations/facts. Even to the extent of having senior opposition ministers arrested.

And they have the nerve to criticise Mugabe, when he is only watching them and learning.

New Labour State Reclassifies Cannabis

2009-01-27T09:36:00.003Z

It seems the New-Labour State has, in the face of it’s own advisors best advice, decided to reclassify cannabis as a class b drug.

Given that this decision is not based on the merits of the case, especially as having it de classified saw a 4% drop in its use, the immediate question that arises is, “What is their agenda?”

Interestingly, they effectively plan to record a persons details on the first “offence” and fine them on the second “offence”.

I don’t know what the percentage of the UK population is that at some time has tried cannabis but I suspect it is very significant. I would imagine thousands of essentially law abiding otherwise non criminal users are detected by the police every year.

To give an idea of the numbers, when surveyed 10% of people asked actually admitted they had used an illegal drug in the past year, that is around 3,100,000 people. Given that many of the repondants may not have admitted using drugs and that the majority of drug use involves cannabis that is a huge pool of potential cannabis users.

One effect of these new rules is likely to be a massive increase in the number and rate of additions to the New Labour State’s disguised National DNA Database.

Another effect is likely to be a considerable increase in revenue for the State in the form of fixed penalty or so-called “on the spot” fines.

Could either of these considerations influenced a cash strapped government anxious to push through a massively unpopular national DNA database?

Then there is the matter of pretending to be ”tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime”…

Welcom to A new US president

2009-01-20T09:16:00.006Z

Today is the inauguration of President Elect Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America. Arguably one of the most powerful offices on the planet.

There is an incredible optimism associated with this particular inauguration. It is seen as a sea change in US politics and society. It is doubly poignant as it comes after Martin Luther King Jnr’s day and is in many respects the realisation of his dream.

Everyone speaks of a black president. As someone pointed out to me it is largely in people’s minds. Barak Obama is in fact 50% black and that somehow makes him just “black”. You could use the same logic to say he was “White”.

Whatever, many people have invested a huge amount of hope in him. Maybe they should dial back on that just a little? He is human, not a superman. He does not have a magic wand.

If people build him up unrealistically in their minds they are likely to be correspondingly unrealistically disappointed if he can’t deliver on their every wish.

So here is a hope that people don’t expect too much and too fast and then get annoyed if he can’t do miracles. Especially with all the troubles the world is beset with right now.

Between Memorial Bridge and Arlington Cemetery, there is an inscription on the memorial to the Seabees, the U.S. Navy Construction Battalions. It says:

“The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer.”

Quote of the Day

2009-01-13T11:19:00.001Z

" The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason."
Thomas Paine

" At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols."
Aldous Huxley

" Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
Martin Luther King Jr

" To those searching for truth - not the truth of dogma and darkness but the truth brought by reason, search, examination, and inquiry, discipline is required. For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction - faith in fiction is a damnable false hope."
Thomas Edison

Potential threat UKs food security in New EU Rules

2009-01-13T10:03:00.002Z

There are the beginnings of worries for security and self sufficiency in a number of areas, especially energy security, as recently highlighted over the European dependency and vulnerability to continued supply of gas from Russia.

Now it seems the UK’s food security is threatened by the EU. Another area where the UK no longer retains sovereignty over it’s own laws. They are now dictated by the EU.

Though it never really saw light in the MSM the reason Gordon Brown could not reduce VAT enough to be any practical use was that he was not allowed to reduce it below 15% by EU law.

So how is our food security damaged by the EU? Because they are changing the rules on how pesticides and the like are assessed. They have decided that scientific assessment is no longer a good enough test. Now they want to base it the ‘rigorous’ test of "perceived hazard" instead. What next, consulting astrologers?

Presumably this plays well with the green lobby and will help drive up prices to aid the Organic producers, but it has the potential to seriously threaten many of the UK’s crops and virtually wipe out carrot growing in the UK.

The National Farmer’s union is opposed. Their deputy president Meurig Raymond stated: "The lack of sound science behind the plans is a major concern,"

"We cannot support measures which reduce the tools available to farmers and growers to produce crops and that could ultimately jeopardise future food supply and security."

One of the main problems is that because of the UK’s generally damper climate than Europe certain pesticides are much more useful to combat diseases particularly associated with wet weather like potato blight.

The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs are also concerned. A spokesperson stated: "We believe the proposals could hit crop yields without noticeable benefit for human health.”

"We've done our own impact assessment on the matter but the European Commission has not."

It is feared close to a quarter of produce will be lost in the UK if the plans go through, including the total carrot crop and a 20% reduction in cereal production.

Quote of the Day

2009-01-02T12:16:00.001Z

" The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses."

Malcom X

" During a war, news should be given out for instruction rather than information."

Joseph Goebbels

" The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary."
Gabriel Garcia-Marquez

" If they give you lined paper, write the other way."

William Carlos Williams

When is a Terrorist not a terrorist?

2009-01-02T11:55:00.004Z

Has anyone else noticed how “terrorists” are suddenly “militants”?

I first noticed it when all the UK news channels suddenly seemed to start referring to the terrorists who attacked Bombay as “Militants”. Murdering scum encapsulates it nicely for me. Certainly they are terrorists. Undoubtedly Islamicist ones as well.

Difficult to think what else to call them but terrorists.

The term “militants” brings to mind the industrial unrest of the 70s in the UK, maybe Arthur Scargill’s lamentable comb over look and donkey jackets. The unions generally didn’t go in for suicide bombings, rocket attacks, or tote Kalashnikovs. Even the IRA drew the line at suicide bombings.

Now the people firing missiles into Israel, who seem to be the proximate cause of the recent flair up, are also “militants”, at least to the mainstream media.

It is difficult to imaging two such organisations as the BBC and Sky randomly and spontaneously starting to use the term at the same time, or to understand why they might - so one must presume it is not spontaneous.

Who’s agenda then? Unless they are running some sort of news cartel then logically it is likely to be the UK Government.

Why would it suit New Labour to phase out the term terrorist? News-Speak? Or more NewSpeak?

What don’t they want us thinking now…

New Year 2009

2009-01-01T17:49:00.003Z

Another year rolls into the past and the next hoves into view.

Farewell 2008. Let us hope 2009 brings better things to and for, the world and each of us, than the year just gone did.

Having New year on top of Christmas seems to be over doing things. Should we take a leaf out of the Roman's book and move it to when the world wakes up?

Would that have the southern hemisphere putting in a bid to move it completely?

In any event - Have a Happy Peaceful and Prosperous New Year - Everyone!

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T07:05:00.002Z

Well it's December 25th, So I am taking this opportunity to wish a Mery Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all.

Democracy and the EU

2008-12-13T16:26:00.001Z

If there was any doubt as to just how profoundly undemocratic the EU and those who promote it’s dubious benefits are, then they should be dispelled by the fact that those behind the European project clearly do not intend to let a little thing like a democratic rejection of the Lisbon Treaty by the people of the Irish Republic become an obstacle in their unstoppable path.

Democracy only suits the Eurocrats if things go the way they want. Then it is a useful justification, or fig leaf, for their plans. The heart of the European project is not so much undemocratic as antidemocratic. The commissioners hold office by appointment, by dictat.

They did appear more subtle than the likes of Robert Mugabe, at least until the home office started having opposition MP’s arrested, for the time honoured use of leaks from a whistleblower to highlight where the current government were risking security by such poor vetting they were employing illegal immigrants in it’s offices.

Now it seems the Irish people’s clearly voiced democratic rejection of the treaty will not be allowed to stand. They will be bludgeoned with repeated referenda until the Eurocrats get a result they can spin as and acceptance. Meanwhile they go ahead anyway, behind the scenes, as if the Treaty had never been rejected.

The new Taoiseach has said he intends to steer a second Irish referendum to a successful “Yes” conclusion next May. Ireland was the only country where the people were actually allowed the chance to reject the treaty, which they did decisively.

The UK was promised a vote by New-Labour in their election manifesto, but Gordon Brown, cunningly if dishonourably, reneged on this when in office to avoid such a problem.

In a similar vein it will be interesting to see how the much propagandised congestion charging stealth tax beloved of New Labour manages to body swerve the massively decisive rejection dealt it by the people of Manchester in their recent referendum.

Apparently entirely by coincidence, my spell checker keeps trying to change Eurocrats to Autocrats or Euro rats…

If the cap fits

2008-11-29T17:32:00.013Z

It’s generally considered a bad sign for democracy - in any country, when it’s government starts having members of the opposition arrested in order to intimidate or to prevent them from exposing it’s incompetence, mistakes, or shenanigans.

We all look on with disapproval at such regimes, and I am sure we can all think of examples in South America, Africa and on our own continent.

Often the population is too supine, or cowed to protest.

I have pointed out on a number of occasions that New-Labour is in the habit of passing draconian legislation with the alleged purpose of combating “terrorism” and “Organised crime”. If anyone raised any concerns over it’s misuse then they are accused of being "soft on crime", etc.

We always hear the lie trotted out, to suppress the natural concerns of those who do care about liberty, that “if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear”. The BBC can usually find a gullible old lady, or bereaved parent, to back the claim up.

Well “anti terror” legislation is actually repeatedly used by the current government and it’s minions to do things like eject elderly party members from party conference who loudly tell one or two home truths too many.

It is used by local officials to spy on large numbers of ordinary members of the public to establish if they are committing such terrorist related offences as fibbing about their addresses on a school application forms, or putting their rubbish out on the wrong day, or over filling their rubbish bins…

Or it seems... if you happen to be a senior opposition member of the shadow cabinet trying to expose New-Labour’s habitual lies and spin, then it is used to arrest and attempt to silence you.

Worse still it tramples on parliamentary privilege.

Not just anti terror legislation was used this time - but elite anti terror officers were used to do the deed too...

One wonders if anyone in government felt now would be an excellent time to bury this particular “bad news”, what with the terrible events that have unfolded in Bombay.

It is a shame the Anti terror officers weren’t devoting themselves to actual anti terror work of some sort. It’s not like the Indian government probably couldn’t do with them looking to see what they can find out here that might possibly be of help.

It is only half tongue in cheek to conjecture how long before they get a trendy uniform redesign, possibly involving lots of black, calf length leather boots… and their own special logo on their collars, or lapels?

It is perhaps as well for Mr clunking fist, Gordon “Stalin” Brown, that the current opposition never used such tactics when he was in opposition, he was very fond of political leaks then and his ministers still are - when it is to his advantage.

Worryingly the senior ranks of the UK’s police seem to have long since been purged of virtually anyone interested in actually trying to keep law and order, or provide the sort of service and presence the public actually want. These days it appears to be largely run by New-Labour apparatchiks and mostly occupied with/driven by directives and policies that are designed to help give the bogus impression the state is meeting it’s targets…

When it isn’t using anti terror legislation in ways it was never intended on the state’s behalf.

One can’t help but wonder - the cynical amoungst us will have noted the outgoing Met Commissioner Ian, Blair has a reputation for being “comfortable” with the New-Labour state and is outgoing because he has been popularly ousted by London’s new Conservative Mayor.

Probably nothing to do with the latest incident though...

It is truly difficult to believe even the most insensitive, incompetent, flatfoot would have blundered in so heavy handily, or even at all, entirely on their own. One would have thought self preservation alone would have made even the brain dead think twice...

One can’t help but think they must have felt their actions would go down well at the highest level. Certainly condemnation of their actions, or Speaker Martins inaction, have been slow in coming from New-Labour’s front bench.

One hopes that complaints will be made against the officers involved for their, quite possibly illegal activity. Behaviour that strikes at the heart of the way, what is left of, our parliamentary democracy functions. They should be suspended pending the outcome of a parliamentary investigation and hopefully disciplined.

I would have thought it was in the country's interest to have things like the fact that the home office were employing illegal immigreants to look after their security, and the incompetence of those who employed them, exposed to parliamentary scrutiny. Rather than allow the home office to use possibly illegal big brother tactics to conceal such things.

This should be part of an MPs job. It is in the public interest. He should not be arrested whan he does it.

Civil wars were fought over this matter in the days when parliament had more intestinal fortitude.

Solidarity

2008-11-29T17:27:00.005Z

This blog would like to express its solidarity with the people of India - and particularly the citizens of Bombay at this time.

We all know they have suffered a murderous citywide attack by calculating, but rabidly savage murderous religious maniacs, who care not what atrocities they do. Apparently driven by a twisted and wickedly distorted ideology.

Innocent honest hardworking citizens making their way home, indiscriminately mowed down in hails of bullets. Men, women and quite possibly children indiscriminately slaughtered by evil wicked people.

In stark contrast to the murdering scum who perpetrated this atrocity, tales have emerged of acts of selfless bravery, heroism and dedication to duty by ordinary citizens of Bombay such as hotel staff.

To paraphrase…

One can’t help but think that we are all citizens of Bombay now - and that may be something to take some pride in being.

Crooked Lawyers

2008-11-23T16:56:00.002Z

I was disappointed – but not surprised - to read that crooked immigration lawyers have been milking the immigration and legal aid system for all it’s worth in order to facilitate economic migrants gain illegal residence in the UK.

Apparently, according to the papers, they have even fiddled forms, prepared false stories and suggested to ‘clients’ how they can disguise their fingerprints. So much for the Government’s much vaunted - and largely pointless - Biometric IDs.

One quails to think how many of these parasites there are out there, but the report seems to suggest some £12 million extra may have siphoned out of the system in the past year. Presumably some are more cottage industry ‘extra pocket money’ types, rather less industrial scale than others.

One question that springs immediately to mind is: What is the real difference between these sleazebags and the human traffickers who smuggle migrants into the UK illegally? They are “white collar” is the only obvious one.

One suspects that the maze of human rights legislation introduced by this government can only assist these crooks in their schemes, as it appears to do for most other sorts of crooks and terrorists. If ever there was a case of the law of unforeseen consequences biting inept legislators in the backside the human rights legislation would appear to be it.

Clearly it didn’t escape some lawyers that the legislation - and specialising in it, might be a licence to print money. One must suppose it would have been more apparent to politicians who are also trained lawyers…

Will any politician have the intestinal fortitude to take this ill thought out legislation on? Health advice would be: ”Don’t hold your breath”…

Quote of the day

2008-11-18T09:56:00.000Z

“ If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”
Winston Churchill

Repent at leisure?

2008-11-18T09:16:00.002Z

Apparently the Government are going to rush through legislation to ensure there will never be another “Baby P” case.

Ed Balls the “Children's Secretary” is planning to put forward legislation make local services more accountable forcing them to chart their progress in intervening at an early stage.

Now any right thinking individual would wish to prevent any such dreadful thing ever happening again. But one fears hurried I’ll considered legislation is not the solution.

It is almost certain there is perfectly effective legislation already in place that would be adequate to the purpose - if only it had been used. Similarly there was an enquiry after the last dreadful failure of Harringay Council with Victoria Climbié. An enquiry made recommendations, were they ever actually implemented properly? Were all existing guide rules adhered to?

One suspects not.

The last thing this country needs is yet another piece of New Labour legislation that only does what other legislation, if actually enforced, already does, or invents new subdivisions of existing offences.

You can be sure it will not be any better and will almost certainly eventually be found to have unexpected and detrimental consequences, in this case probably to ordinary families.

Herodotus (484 BC - 430 BC) observed “Haste in every business brings failures.” This seems to have entirely escaped the attention of the current government, with their hatred of any history not post 1945 and not spun.

Quote of the day

2008-11-11T07:51:00.001Z

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Dr. John McCrae (1872-1918)

RoSPA warns of "health and safety" threat to freedom

2008-11-09T17:45:00.005Z

It seems that even those with a vested interest in the Health and Safety industry are realising things may have gone just a little too far.

The chief executive of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) Tom Mullarkey warned safety experts they will be accused of constructing a nanny state and damaging freedom if they continue to meddle unnecessarily in people's private lives.

He pointed out the obvious fact that "absolute safety" is an unattainable goal in any case.

Clearly it is insane to mindlessly persue absolute saftey beyond the point where the persuit of it is a greater threat to public well being and quality of life than the original risk.

Unfortunately one fears things may have already gone too far to be recoverable.

Whilst Mr Mullarkey may have a real interest in safety it is difficult to credit that many of those behind the burgeoning compensation culture do not have their eye at least as much on the money to be had at the expense of the taxpayer and consumer - that and their lucrative jobs.

This in turn terrifies the likes of teachers, volunteers and local councils that they will be sued. Those that are still willing to take the chance they may arbirarily be accused of being a paedophile if they so much as pat a child on the head and are willing to undergo the bother and expense of often multiple criminal records checks.

Could it be about time there were much stiffer costs for bringing some of the more dubious cases for compensation to court, for both the party that brings the case and their attournies. Also it might be good if a much greater weight were given to their not having taken reasonable precautions, or if they are partly responsible.

More more rational limits on amounts awarded might also be a good thing.
It begins to look as if greed for un justified and undeserved compensation payments is gnawing away at some of the underpinings of a healthy society.

Quote of the day

2008-11-05T13:46:00.002Z

“He who has never hoped can never despair.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

“We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”
Barack Obama

The problem with crude oil

2008-11-03T13:35:00.005Z

Due to the general economic slowdown oil is no longer in such demand right now. This had resulted in a drop in the price of crude oil. Now OPEC want to restrict supply in the hope of driving prices back up.

Now I am not generally in favour of what the Green’s are. Their science often seems dubious, their policies ill thought out. Their motives anti progress, anti people. To the point where the mere fact that they may endorse something is enough to raise suspicions about it.

Never-the-less I do sometimes involuntarily find myself marching in parallel with them. Their dislike of oil is one of those occasions. Needless to say I am not demonising 4 wheel drive vehicles and their drivers, wanting to impose punitive taxation on air travel, or want to see Tata forced to stop selling cheap cars in India.

Still it would be nice to wean the world off carbon fuels. This is difficult as there is a massive existing technology and infrastructure. It is not like starting out from scratch.

The thing is, a standard car/truck, preferably made with a stainless steel engine parts and exhaust could run almost unmodified on hydrogen gas, producing nothing but water in the way of emissions. Zero Pollution.

Now Hydrogen can be ticklish stuff, but so can petrol. Surely it can not be beyond the wit of the worlds engineers to come up with a relatively 'safe' (as safe as petrol) means of storage, if only a really tough tank/bottle.

If it could be accomplished it would be an easy win in so many areas and has the potential to grant energy self sufficiency.

With sufficient power it would be possible to crack hydrogen from water.

So then, lots of power… atomic power stations anyone? Follow the French lead?

That would certainly cut green house emissions, but having power to spare is probably not sufficiently hair shirt for the Greens. Obviously not hair shirts for them personally, just the rest of us who would get to live in mud huts and die before 45.

Halloween in Second Life

2008-11-02T17:10:00.008Z

Halloween, or All Hallows Eve (AKA Samhain or All Saints' Day) has just been and gone over the weekend. This celebration tends to blend into Nov 5th firework night in the UK

Taking a leaf out of JMB and Moggs book I thought I might post on the subject.

It is also interesting to note that other cultures celebrate festivals often involving fireworks, such as Diwali or the festival of Lights celebrated by celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and also Buddhists I believe.

Every year, up to this one, we have put out a pumpkin jack-o'-lantern and enter into the ‘spirit’ ;-) of the thing. This year, despite good intentions, it was left just a little too late. Unfortunately I was left attempting to acquire one at short notice in the midst of an apparent pumpkin famine.

I drove round all over on Friday afternoon, but was unable to find one. Rather than completely miss out, I thought why not decorate my place in second life? They are unlikely to have run out of pumpkins there, effectively having an infinite supply.

So I set off and visited a few rather spooky pumpkin emporia. There was a positive wealth of spooky Halloween gear, most of it at reasonable prices too. So I made a few judicious purchases, including spooky glowing lights and an animated ghost.

My place in sl is a pleasant terraced half-timbered building in the Tudor sim of Reading Primley, Renaissance Isle, so it has atmosphere anyway.

On my return from the expedition it was the matter of only a few minutes work to fix up some pumpkins, the ghost lights and a the piece de resistance - the ghost, that I set up to emerge from my front door and float into the street every now and again.

I think the whole thing worked well.

So Happy Halloween, Samhain, Diwali, etc. all.

Oh and at this time of year let’s also not forget the man reputed to have been the only one ever to have entered parliament with honourable intentions - Guy Fawkes.

French appeal to the ref over Agincourt

2008-10-27T17:09:00.003Z

I find reveisionist so-called ‘historians’ truly incredible.

Now it seems they have set their sites on Agincourt of all things.
The fact is the French were thrashed by a numerically inferior force, thanks to a large extent to the longbow and the trained English archers who used it to such effect.

Apparently French revisionists are trying to excuse the defeat by claiming the poor French were the outnumbered underdogs and the English ‘war criminals’, though there is nothing to suggest the English violated the rules of war that existed at the time. Talk about sore loosers…

The documentary evidence in favour of the accepted versions is pretty solid. Maybe they should concentrate on finding the historical equivalent of the urban myth.

Quote of the day

2008-10-20T15:54:00.001Z

"It may be true that you can't fool all
the people all the time, but you can fool
enough of them to rule a large country."

Will Durant

Brown banks on the taxpayer to bail him out

2008-10-20T15:36:00.006Z

It’s a funny old world as they say...

Sub prime lending by banks to people who were likely to default on their loans got the world into a terrible two & eight, now more sub prime borrowing, this time by the banks from the UK government is going to get us out of it, according to the newly endowed superhero of our times...

...who is about to be outed by the ~~evil Lex Luthor~~ Lord Mandleson as none other than mild mannered Gordon Broon.

It may do, but one suspects as much for psycological reasons as economic.

Who is really lending the dosh? The British Taxpayer is who. Why does the Government not have the readies to hand? Well one reason might be that Gordon sold off half the countries gold reserves precisely when the price of gold had bottomed out. Now of course it is riding sky high. Just like government borrowing that has now hit an all time high.

If he had actually been canny or even prudent, as he likes to spin himself and hung onto it to a more opportune moment (almost any other time since, but now would have been good) maybe he could have got a good price for it and not hocked us all up to our eyebrows.

What strikes me as crazy is that there are people out there who believe the spin and feel safer with him in charge than anyone else.

Quote of the day

2008-10-17T09:22:00.001Z

" So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men."
Voltaire

Good times to bury unwanted stories

2008-10-17T09:14:00.002Z

Hasn’t it been a really good time to bury bad news recently…

The political equivalent of building a new overpass with lots of concrete.

Amid all the blanket reporting of the problems with the banking system and stock markets globally the MSM have had such a problem paying attention to things like the New Labour State’s obsessive desire to control and spy on it’s own Citizens.

Even 24hr news channels only seem able to find room for one or two story lines, repeated endlessly, or they cut to an empty podium and talk rubbish waiting for a speech. God forbid they should actually report a wider variety of news.

So the leopard does not change it’s spots. New Labour does not trust the citizen. It apparently does not believe the average citizen is capable enough adult enough to run their own lives and affairs.

They cannot be trusted, they need to be kept safe from the malice of others and their own stupidity. They even need to be told what they can eat and drink.

They need a patrician socialist class to govern every aspect of their lives… And if they object then doesn’t that show how foolish and irresponsible they are?

The silly citizen has a foolish traditional belief in their hard one ancient rights and liberties, but these just get in the way of shiny new legislation that the state needs to protect ~~itself and it’s interests~~ the public.

There is little that can be does to amend this pernicious attitude. New Labour need to be removed from power for a generation to contemplate the error of their thinking and the ripe contempt they apparently hold the citizen in. It would appear that this sort of medicine can work, ask David Cameron…

Quote of the day

2008-10-15T11:19:00.000Z

Nations grown corrupt
Love bondage more than liberty;
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.

John Milton

Another day, another New Labour Governemnt Database

2008-10-15T11:07:00.002Z

The Nanny state, apparently deeply concerned that it is leaving us any privacy at all, is now turning it’s attention to the creation of a newsuper database to record when we make phone calls, or send emails and who to, oh and all the web sites we visit.

Of course this is purely ‘for our own good’, to protect us all from terrorism. That catchall ‘bogeyman’ excuse of the Authoritarian state, ‘protecting the citizen from the terrorist and criminal’. The same citizen that the State will not permit to defend themselves against criminals with the frequently used threat of prosecution hanging over them if they do.

A Home Office spokesman disingenuously attempted to claim that: "Changes to the way we communicate, due particularly to the internet revolution, will increasingly undermine our current capabilities to obtain communications data - essential for counter-terrorism and the investigation of crime - and use it to protect the public.

Now as far as I know it is still possible for the authorities to tap phone conversations and intercept post, within the law. They do not currently have a database of all letters sent and to whom as far as I am aware. Nor have they ever had one.

So when the spokes person claimed:"Losing the ability to use this data would have very serious consequences for law enforcement and intelligence gathering in the UK." it did not follow logically at all.

The simple fact is that the state already has access to this and more, such as emails and web useage if they suspect someone. It is going too far to monitor us all.
And we all know the State can be trusted to look after this information and not loose it on a bus, or sell it, or something.

And we all know just how much the promise of the State is worth when they say they will only use legislation only for the purpose it was framed.

...Or maybe we could ask Islandic banks about how anti terrorism legislation was recently limbered up ready to be used to freeze Islandic funds in the UK. Or how other legislation was used to silence and eject hecklers from a Labour party conference.

Quote of the Day

2008-09-18T01:30:00.000Z

" Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly - and for the same reason."
Author Unknown

Girl Power?

2008-09-12T13:44:00.001Z

It is interesting to note that Obama was doing well, in front in the polls…

Until Palin became a factor...

Now the race for the Whitehouse appears to be far more even. She appears to strike a chord with many voters. It will be interesting to see how things pan out.

Quote of the day

2008-09-12T13:37:00.001Z

Remembering the Super Hadron Collider...

" The media tends to report rumors, speculations, and projections as facts... How does the media do this? By quoting some "expert"... you can always find some expert who will say something hopelessly hopeless about anything."
Peter McWilliams

Bumper stickers

2008-09-05T11:13:00.002Z

I was driving through our nearest town today.

I noticed a bumper sticker on the vehicle in front. It said: “I love my country - I just don’t trust it’s government.”

It made me chuckle.

UK’Stamp Duty’ suspended for 12 months

2008-09-03T11:58:00.004Z

Has anyone noticed?

New Labour’s much trumpeted partial holiday on ‘Stamp duty’ (for non UK residents this is a sales tax imposed by the state on house sales) is, if it is of benefit to anyone, mostly likely to be of benefit in the north, which at least historically was demographically more New Labour friendly.

New Labour are talking about a holiday for stamp duty under £175K This should cover quite a few properties for sale in the North and proportionately far less in the South, due to regional differences in house prices. Any figures the Government states one suspects will be 'spun' averages.

Could it be that they calculate they have terminally burned their bridges already with the South, so they want to minimise the coming electoral debacle for at least some of their sitting MPs

House sales depend on chains, with new time buyers going in at the bottom of the market and the others in the chain trading up, How far up the chain will theis make a difference?

Of course if you can't get a mortgage in the first place – and that is the major actual problem with the housing market, mortgages having effectively dried up because of the credit crunch. Then what difference will reducing the sales tax of around £1.7K imposed on a few of the sales make?

And let’s not forget that any improvement in the housing market that may actually be had from this piece of spin will have to be paid for in reverse, at the end of the ‘holiday’ in a year’s time, when ther will be a corresponding rush then a step back down in sales.

Quote of the day

2008-09-01T15:34:00.001Z

" To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. "
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

" Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph."
Haile Selassie

" When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
Edmund Burke

Quote of the day

2008-07-07T16:06:00.001Z

" He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave."
Sir William Drummond

" Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."
Thomas Jefferson

Gordon Brown blames UK consumer for rising food prices

2008-07-07T15:38:00.008Z

OK. I heard this on the radio news today. Apparently, according to Gordon Brown, the reason why food is much more expensive of late is because of… wait for it…

The consumer wasting vegetables, buying them and then throwing them away because they don’t know how to look after them properly and have gone off - and the evil supermarkets making ‘two for the price of one’ offers tempts them into it too.

I am now waiting for Gordon’s performing seals on, say the GMC, to start calling for VAT on vegetables to be doubled to eliminate this problem. Or maybe consumers to be licensed to purchase food, license cost £25 renewable yearly, 2,500 civil servants to administer.

Next they will be quoting little old ladies on how a robust national ID card system will help curb the wastage and prevent illegal immigrants from depriving 'hard working families' of their carrots.

I am so glad it has nothing whatsoever with the drop in the value of the pound against the Euro that by weird coincidence happened about the same time as food costs rose

Or the cost of oil rising and therefore petrol rising (most of the cost of which is due to punitive taxation) and therefore transportation rising in turn. Also coincidentally happening at the same time.

Oh and we must not forget Gordon’s Government slavishly following the EU dictat of pushing bio fuel production, that takes acres and acres of productive land out of food production and into fuel production.

Does he really expect anyone to believe it?

One can hardly imagine even one so stupid as to sell off half the nations gold reserves when the market had bottomed out to believe such complete nonsense himself.

Gordon’s pork pies anyone?

Still, thanks to all his New Labour cronies, he and they, have just secured access to new 'John Lewis' fridges in all their second homes, to help keep their veggies and pork pie collections fresh in...

Quote of the day

2008-07-04T07:10:00.002Z

…We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness-That to
secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any
Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of
the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…

July 4, 1776. A DECLARATION

Here is wishing a happy July 4th to all and hoping the weather holds good for those parties tonight and over the weekend. Happy birthday America.