Good money after bad

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?

Repent at leisure?

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.

UK State clampdown on employing illegals

Well New-Labour’s kakistocracy is clamping down on firms that employ those (sub text - nasty foreign spongers) illegal immigrants. They made it illegal to employ illegal immigrants, they prosecuted companies that did and now they are going to pillory the employers by ‘naming and shaming’.

The lie they tell to justify this?

Apparently it’s all to help crush major organised criminal enterprises that use international people trafficing networks to smuggle people into the UK, as a supply of illegal labour. Any way the employers deserve it. They are unscrupulously undercutting the labour market by avoiding paying taxes on wages, that are below the minimum wage anyway. Why, surely virtually stealing jobs from the honest hardworking indigenous population...

...who find they make as money on benefit doing nothing than they could from such jobs as the immegrants are doing.

That’ll help drive up the cost of food and services. Is anyone out there using more than just a single brain cell to parse these excuses?

So we take one step back from the spin and lies.

The real problem is that New-Labour have effectively lost control of the UK’s borders. For years if illegal immigrants decamped from trucks and were caught they would be given instructions to make their way to reception centres and directions, the vast majority of whom promptly vanished. Those that were not caught vanished also.

Rather than have an effective system (this is New Labour here) they persecute hapless lorry drivers and employers, trying to force them to make up for government incompetence and despite a massively ramping tax burden state under funding.

OK. Now lets take another step back. Is there one? Yes.

Why is this a problem? Why are illegal immigrants a problem? Why are they illegal in the first place for that matter?

They claim benefits from a system they never contributed perhaps? Drain the good old NHS of resources when they never paid anything into it? Jump the social housing queue? Etc. etc. etc.

The underlying reason is that in sufficient numbers immigrants are a problem for a ‘cradle to grave’ welfare state, with universal entitlement like the UK’s, designed to run in isolation. Such a system also undeniably makes the UK much more attractive to economic migrants exacerbating the ‘problem’.

Without a welfare state that is constructed in the way the UK’s is immigration would become much less popular. Immigrants would not be a drain on the public purse either. They would either contribute to the economy and stay or not. If not they would not be able to survive here and would leave. If they committed crime then, tried, imprisoned then deported.

All that would be left would be boarder security issues and any social problems left.

Maybe that’s why New-Labour are so keen on the ID card and illegal immigrants (Oh - and of course the ‘War on Terror) will be their excuse to justify it…

‘Natural England’ advocate abandoning large swathes of Norfolk to the sea.

Thanks to the cult of Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW) the idiots at ‘Natural England’ are planning on abandoning huge swathes of Norfolk to the sea.

Why? Because they apparently believe some of the more alarmist predictions that proponents of the AGW theory make about possible huge rises in sea levels. They seem to have decided that they will be unable to defend against, or more likely to afford to defend against these possible rises. So they don’t even intend to try and are attempting to make a virtue out of this.

I don’t intend to get into if the theory of AGW is right or not, the fact is that some degree of climate change has been going on since long before the advent of humankind. It has been responsible for periods of greater cold and greater warmth than we currently take as normal, even within the last few thousand years.

The fact is that sea defences have protected these parts of Norfolk, the villages and broads and the unique environment they contain for centuries. There is no guarantee that sea levels will rise to such an extent they are impossible to defend against at all.

It is stupid, even bordering on criminally irresponsible, to just throw their hands in the air and just abandon large swathes of the country to the sea until we are absolutely forced to - and there is no guarantee that this will in fact happen.

If Natural England and the Environment Agency are unwilling to do their job and make a reasonable fist of maintaining our sea defences, as they are charged to do, then they should be divested of their authority and resources and these should be allocated to someone who will.

Why were bombers free to practice murder?

Yesterday four of the failed London Tube Islamist suicide bombers were found guilty. The jury is still out on two other ‘alleged’ plotters Manfo Asiedu, the 5th bomber, and Adel Yahya.

We have only their incompetence, by the Grace of God, to thank for the fact that they did not actually slaughter hundreds. But they meant it and we were apparently saved by the fact that Muktar Ibrahim could not even manage to attain the debased levels of competence required to pass the modern Maths GCSE. Still he will now have the necessary time in prison to rectify that.

What is of concern is the fact that these men came to the UK begging asylum, claiming their own countries were ‘too dangerous’ for them. The UK of course welcomed them, ensuring they had the opportunity to make the UK too dangerous for everyone else

After claiming asylum the mathematically challenged and terrorist trained Muktar Ibrahim had apparently been arrested for breach of the peace while handing out extremist literature in Oxford Street, London and subsequently skipped bail. Why was he bailed? Why on earth was he not in jail (Oh yes - no room) awaiting trial and deportation (No, not deportation - judges always assume everywhere is too dangerous to send asylum seekers back to, even the Isle of Wight) ?

It seems literally insane that, despite this, he was actually granted British Citizenship. One must conclude the authorities in charge of granting citizenship, or the rules they slavishly follow, are even more useless than Ibrahim.

Do they ever bother to check with the Police to see if they may be wanted for instance?.

Why should anyone with any criminal offences ever be granted citizenship, except under rare and extreme circumstances?

Why such a lackadaisical attitude to asylum seekers? Why, for instance, ever grant asylum for someone who has been waiting in a camp in France to get over here? Is France too dangerous for them too?

Why such pathetically useless tracking?

Olympic class... Rubbish

Yet another example of staggering Government incompetence – The new Olympic Logo has been unveiled. Apparently it took a year to design and cost a mere £400,000 (around $800,000 bucks).

Quite frankly it is rubbish, but what is really irritating is that a lot of money was spent on it. Money better spent on something else.

They could have got something better more-or-less for free, if they had organised a schools competition with the prise as VIP tickets.

No they have to spend a fortune and end up with something else that sounds ok ‘on paper’ (in the pub after a few drinks mre like) but is as usual not fit for purpose. They will hang onto it like grim death because people won’t get sufficiently worked up about it to complain loudly for long enough, unlike something like H.I.P.s