HIPs Inspectors complain they have been hard done by

It seems that there is much perturbation on the Home Inspector Forum website. Inspectors are attacking the Government for failing to fully implement the scheme. They are bleating that they may face financial ruin if the delay in implementing HIPs (Home Information Packs) continues.

An inspector from Eastbourne, East Sussex, complained that if they could earn their training fees back they would count themselves lucky and get out of the business. Another felt they had wasted £4,000.

All true - and normally most of us would probably have considerable sympathy for anyone who had suffered as a result of State incompetence.

In this case though – sympathy somewhat lacking.

We are all acutely aware that when this EU inspired stupidity was first mooted it looked like it would be a licence to print money for the so-called inspectors and a convienient means for the State to spy on households, for tax raising purposes.

The people who ‘trained’ up to be inspectors clearly did so in that belief - and they must have known they would be milking people selling their homes, thanks to yet more pointless state forced unnatural regulation in the honest lawful exchange of property between individuals.

So to hear these inspectors complain that their parasitic careers may now be still born and that their ‘investment’ in training may have been wasted is not exactly guaranteed to elicit sympathy.

From the point of view of a homeowner it looks more like natural justice.

Let’s hope it puts off any likeminded individuals who might hope to profit from honest citizens by participating in some future state oppression of the populace.

Finally a ‘main stream’ UK party making vaguely libertarian noises

Finally the Tories are making some vaguely libertarian noises about reducing red tape and subjecting bloated Whitehall empires to annual rounds of ‘deregulation’.

It remains to be seen if such a thing could ever actually really happen.

Needless to say the Socialists in the form of Nu-Lab’s John Hutton are trying to talk it up as a lurch to the right and a fatal mistake. Well they would wouldn’t they, it is one of their areas of weakness.

Now whist it is clear Nu-Lab love regulation for regulation’s sake and would really prefer that citizens had to ask their permission (and preferably have to pay to do so) to do anything - why is reducing regulation suddenly ‘right wing’? Given that Broon has been making noises claiming to be about to do exactly that for ages.

Presumably the response would be an Orwellian it means what we say it means.

Could it be that this is the first sign of sense from Dave the Chameleon’s ‘the party formerly known as the Conservatives’ and it is actually worrying the Broon party machine?

After all with all this talk of the 'Broon bounce' and a big Nu-Lab lead in the polls, Broon must be cursing that he may find it difficult to take advantage of the chance of a snap election, with the “don’t mention the EU Constitutional referendum” albatross hanging round his neck.

Despite the lack of political comment in this direction - A snap election could turn into a referendum and maybe a judgement on previous Nu-Lab manifesto lies. Uncomfortable for Broon

Homeowner arrested after burglar falls to his death

A 56 year old homeowner in Manchester woke up to find a 43 year old intruder in his 4th floor flat, after some sort of confrontation the intruder fell 40 feet from a window. He suffered severe head injuries and later died in hospital. An occupational hazard you might be forgiven for thinking.

Needless to say the police arrested the householder and have now released him on bail, no doubt after fingerprinting him and taking a DNA sample. He could now face questioning on suspicion of murder.

The CPS (Criminal Protection Service Crown Prosecution Service) and ACPO (the Association of Chief Police Officers) have said that any householder can use reasonable force to protect themselves or others, or to carry out an arrest or to prevent crime.

Why was it necessary to arrest the householder? The police could hardly claim they didn’t know where he lived and one would have thought the aggrieved householder would have been willing enough to make a statement, or they would have within most people’s memory…

It used to be that the police had some care about arresting apparently law abiding citizens attempting to thwart a crime.

It used to be that the police made some attempt to catch burglars and prevent burglaries themselves. Sadly, since they have had to jump through hoops to meet ridiculous ill conceived state targets and political initiatives, it begins to seem as if they find it so much easier to find reasons to arrest the non criminal ‘community’ and improve Nu-Lab’s dubious crime statistics and inflate the DNA database.

A local voiced what many people will be wondering:

"If the guy who fell out of the window was breaking into the property then why was the homeowner arrested?"

Why indeed…

Gore alleges anti climate change conspiracy

Al Gore is alleging there is a global conspiracy against him and the so-called ‘scientific consensus’ on anthropocentric global warming.

He claimed, at a forum in Singapore, that the Exxon Mobil Corp, together with other unnamed ‘carbon polluters’, are waging a secret campaign to dispute the theory.

He went on to claim that "In actuality, there is very little disagreement." and alleges that "the deniers” (the infra green luddites just love that term) ”offered a bounty of $10,000 for each article disputing the consensus that people could crank out and get published somewhere,". "They're trying to manipulate opinion and they are taking us for fools,", he bleated.

Get real!

I suspect it’s Mr Gore who is doing his level best trying to manipulate public opinion, there is ultimately probably a lot more money and power at stake for his side and him personally than for anyone else - and that when all is said and done he and his cronies will turn out to have been taking people for fools.

Has he listened to himself? I know he is probably preaching to the converted and that the faithful will not like to question his assertions - but he sounds just a little like a conspiracy theorist, not too far from the Islamist claims that the CIA and MOSSAD blew up the twin towers, or that the CIA, or some other US government agency, have a captured flying saucer tucked away at a secret base.

To really hook the suckers in with this one he needs to work the CIA into it, at least, big business is good, but it still needs a little something extra to really get the conspiracy nuts going…

Now what are my chances of getting $10K for this?

Zero, Zip, Zilch, Nil, None, Nought, Nowt - if I had to guess...

Foreign Office Minister advocates UK gives up Permanent Seat on UN Security Council

Former UN Deputy Secretary General and now newly minted UK Foreign Office Minister, Lord Malloch-Brown (what is it with Nu-Lab PMs littering the ranks of the not necessarily derserving high and mighty with namesakes?) is advocating the UK gives up it’s seat on the UN Security Council to the EU.

Nice to know the Foreign Office Minister has Parliament and the UK’s very best interests at heart then ;-)

After all, we can be 100% sure the EU would vote just the way we would want, in every set of circumstances, knowing how similarly the French and Germans see things to us, in all circumstances. Surely the French should be falling over themselves to give up their seat.

Day, Cold, Hell, In?

This was obviously in his master plan last October, while he was still the UN's Deputy Secretary General, when he advised EU diplomats in Brussels that the EU would eventually have single seat within the UN. "I think it will go in stages. We are going to see a growing spread of it institution by institution," He went on that he hoped it would happen "as quickly as possible. I'm a huge fan of it."

When confronted with this evidence the Foreign office argued that had made those comments before he was made a Government minister.

Oh well that’s all right then - So are they suggesting he lying then, to suit his words to what his audience wanted to hear - and does not still hold those views? Possibly quite a plausible argument when considering a politician’s words, but would you want to bet on it?

Or did his words reflect his true intentions and loyalties? If so where exactly are his primary loyalties?

With the UN or the EU?

Why would a PM who was loyal to parliament appoint someone like that?

Recommended Read

If you have not come across it I must recommend ‘FAT’ by Rob Grant, Published by Gollancz. ISBN 978-0-375-07820-8

Set in the UK, in a scarily (barely) immediate future, who’s probability wave appears to be in the process of collapsing, as Schrodinger might say, even as I write.

It is a good read - funny and also makes some seriously telling points.

In his preface he says:

” When somebody does something you don’t like and then tells you they did it for your own best interest: run. Run till you drop. And don’t look back” - Excellent advice…

Parents left with limited options now make more use of A&E

This one is an absolute classic. Dr Patricia Hamilton head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, is complaining that parents in the UK are now more willing to take their child to A&E with a minor problem, such as a fever, instead of dealing with it at home or calling their GP.

Oh really! She might try the experiment of calling NHS direct out of office hours herself. She could claim she had a small child and they were running a fever. She would find that the advice she was given, especially if it is filtered through non-medical parental perceptions, was effectively to go straight to A&E, do not pass go, do not collect £200.

Now most people are very reluctant to go to A&E. Despite the frankly untrue claims of being seen within some fictitiously tiny amount of time, we all know that it can only be counted as a personal miracle if you are really seen within 2 hours, as opposed to being assessed by someone - possibly a cleaner :-) - and then put to the back of a very long queue behind a retarded thug barely retraining their natural urge to random violence and a 15 year old single mother with a flat head and one continuous eyebrow. Recent personal experience you will no doubt deduce…

So the average parent, or indeed anyone sensible, would have to be pretty desperate to use the average A&E at all and would probably be more that happy to take even advice from their own GP as an alternative if it were actually possible to speak to them.

So then not more willing then, just faced with fewer opportunities to avoid it.

So perhaps she really needs to direct her comments to the incompetent Governmental department in question or ditto hospital ‘manager’. Then she could be given duff advice and told to wait uncomfortably for and indefinite period.

Whilst complaining about parents actually using A&E she also took the opportunity to get in a plug for the Government’s propaganda line on the (probably soon to be crime) of childhood obesity and on the ever encroaching ‘menace’ of child binge drinking.

At least the latter has regulations and laws, that if actually enforced would work well enough to prevent it, though this is unlikely to stop the government from passing a whole raft of entirely pointless unnecessary legislation that will cause some unexpected consequences far worse than the so-called problem.

Our privacy is not in the governments gift

I was going to do a piece on the Labour State’s ever expanding DNA database, presumably, whatever lies they come out with, eventually destined, if only by political ‘gravity’, to contain a record of all UK citizen’s DNA.

However I came upon this excellent commentary on it by Sam Leith in the daily Telegraph entitled “Our privacy belongs to us not the Government”, so include the link here - it is well worth a read.

Here is another excellent piece, this time in the Guardian, by Henry Porter on the subject.

You know you really need to worry when both the Telegraph and the Guardian are worried about something…

IPCC: De Menezes never had a chance to surrender

The British Police generally do a difficult job fairly well. They put their own hides between the rest of us and danger. Every now and then a police officer will pay the price for that, with their health or their life.

The average citizen of the UK would probably not want to swap them for any other nation’s police forces.

That is why it is so appalling that they appear to have fallen down so very badly in the case of poor Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician, who had apparently over stayed his visa.

According to the Independent Police Complaints Commission the Metropolitan Police released, what was described as, "incorrect information" - saying Mr de Menezes had been challenged and "refused to obey" and kept claiming he had been wearing suspicious bulky clothing when he had not.

The report said:

"The IPCC investigation team understands that Mr de Menezes did not refuse to obey a challenge prior to being shot and was not wearing any clothing that could be classed as suspicious.”

"However there is no suggestion that the challenge is one that an innocent man would have understood, or that Mr de Menezes was given instructions that he could have chosen to obey."

On the face of it, but for the grace of God, it could have been any of us. Well any youngish male who had a bit of a tan and dark hair, one suspects, based on the profiling.

What were they playing at? By the sound of the IPCC report he was not carrying a rucksack, or wearing clothing that could have concealed a bomb. By the sound of it he was never given a realistic opportunity to ‘come quietly’.

One worries that even if he had put his hands in the air and said ‘I surrender’ he would not have survived his encounter with the Met.