Temporary solutions

Seems that both Cameron and Obama have realised that high fuel prices might just be the straw that breaks the camels back, the camel being of course the opportunity to be voted in by the various mugs electorates they represent. So, what are they proposing?
Express.

HARD-pressed motorists were given a glimmer of hope yesterday after it emerged that David Cameron and President Barack Obama had discussed taking action to ease soaring fuel prices.
The two leaders talked about the possibility of releasing some of their countries’ reserve oil stock to increase availability and lower forecourt prices.
Speaking in New York, Mr Cameron said: “We are all facing the problem of higher oil prices and that translates into the cost of filling up the family car, which is very high here in the US, but frankly even higher in the UK.
“I want to try to help British families, just as Barack Obama wants to help American families.
“We didn’t reach a decision but we discussed the issue and I think it is important we do what we can to try to help families trying to make their family budgets add up.”

So instead of reducing the real cause of high fuel prices (taxation) they are going to attempt to glut the market with their reserves. That might work for the USA who only appear to have a taxation level of 20% on their fuel, but in the UK we pay something near 66% so for all a reduction might come it will not be as effective as far as I can see, though any reduction is of course to be welcomed.
The problem is though that these measures are only temporary, sooner or later the price of oil will rise again and we'll still have ludicrously high levels of taxation on the stuff.
The other thing that did occur to my paranoid way of thinking is that by opening up the vast U.S reserves, it rather looks like the USA (and the UK) are setting the stage for an attack on Iran, one of the first things the Iranians would try is to close the Straits of Hormuz to shipping thus cutting off the West's oil supplies, opening up the USA reserves would appear to be both a warning to the Iranians and a solution to the shooting war problem.
Either way, don't expect the price of fuel to come down by very much.

Stalled

You really would think that in any country with aspirations to be a modern technical democracy would get a handle on the basics of education and push it as hard as they could. Then again, many of us suspect that this is the last thing the powers that be who rule the UK actually want, they want an ignorant proletariat to do their bidding, who through ignorance don't know enough to question their betters. They want propaganda, not education to form views, save only for their own offspring and the elite education system set aside for them.
BBC.

England is being overtaken by other leading nations because progress on literacy has stalled, says chief schools inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw.
Reading standards have not improved since 2005, he told BBC Two's Newsnight.
Speaking ahead of a speech on Thursday, in which he will call for targets for 11-year-olds to be raised, he said: "Our standards should be higher."
Teaching unions say big improvements have been made in the past two decades.
They have accused Ofsted and the government of "playing fast and loose with international data".
Sir Michael, who took over the chief inspector's role in January, told Newsnight: "Standards in literacy and reading went up between 1995 and 2005.

You'd almost have to laugh at the sheer gall of the teaching unions response to Ofsted's report if it weren't so serious to the future of the country. Not a day goes by without some report in the MSM bewailing the poorly educated young people applying for jobs in the private sector and it all boils down to an education system no longer fit for purpose because it has been the tinker toy of politicians for the last 50 years, it became worse once we joined the EU because under its rules education is one of the few areas in which they don't set policy and so is one of the few places where our politicians can actually go hands on. This is why our kids are learning about equality, climate change and alternative sexuality rather than reading, writing and arithmetic, all with the connivance of the teaching unions.
Unless or until we seize back the powers we've lost to the EU and remove the parasite class root and branch from the levers of power and relegate the teaching unions (amongst others) back to their proper roll in wage and other disputes rather than managerial decisions, the situation will only get worse.
It may well be though that we've gone too far and will not be able to repair the damage.
I hope not, because it will mean a return to the dark ages in this land we love.

You're not doing yourself any favours here...

I occasionally have a go at the police here, though I'll be the first to admit that there are some situations where come what may, they just are not going to come out of something looking good. There are however a few situations where a simple admission that they got something wrong and backing off would help, a little.
Telegraph.

Police officers assaulted a 16-year-old boy with severe autism by forcing him into handcuffs and leg restraints during a school trip, the High Court has ruled.
Judges said the boy, who is now 19, and also suffers from epilepsy, had his human rights breached after he was subjected to unlawful disability discrimination and false imprisonment.
He was awarded £28,250 in damages following the incident at a swimming pool in Acton, west London, in 2008.
However, the Met has signalled its intention to appeal against the decision.
The boy was physically removed from the swimming pool and forcibly restrained after he jumped into the water fully clothed.
The court heard it was the first time police in London had been found to have subjected a member of the public to inhuman or degrading treatment, and to disability discrimination.

Let's face it, there's never going to be a great defence of your actions involving the words child, severe autism, handcuffs and leg restraints. I can accept that a 16 year old can be quite big, and with autism can be difficult to control, however a quick word with the people in charge of the boy (as I doubt he'd be out by himself) could have warned them as to the consequences of their action, still, what was done was done and a court case ensued.
You'd have thought though that someone in the PR dept of the Met would have had a quiet word with the legal dept about going for an appeal. There is no way that going for an appeal against compensation for restraining a disabled, severely autistic young man is going to look good even if you feel you have a good case to appeal. That plus there is the fact that you aren't doing it with your own money, it's coming out of the ratepayers pocket too.
There are times when it's wise to simply cut your losses, this was one of them.

The EU Arrest Warrant

Read this and weep


http://www.annaraccoon.com/madeleine-mccann/portuguese-men-o-law/#comments

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Symbology

A lot of Christians wear a cross of some description, a lot of Christians are also getting a wee bit peed off with the current government too with its insistence on gay marriage and what appears to be a mild persecution of their faith. The government may come to regret this later, but we're in the here and now and looking at a double standard.
Telegraph.

Christians do not have a right to wear a cross or crucifix openly at work, the Government is to argue in a landmark court case.
In a highly significant move, ministers will fight a case at the European Court of Human Rights in which two British women will seek to establish their right to display the cross.
It is the first time that the Government has been forced to state whether it backs the right of Christians to wear the symbol at work.
A document seen by The Sunday Telegraph discloses that ministers will argue that because it is not a “requirement” of the Christian faith, employers can ban the wearing of the cross and sack workers who insist on doing so.
The Government’s position received an angry response last night from prominent figures including Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury.
He accused ministers and the courts of “dictating” to Christians and said it was another example of Christianity becoming sidelined in official life.

To my mind,the government is actually right in the detail, but acting in gross hypocrisy in the wider sense of what it does appear to allow. They are correct in stating that it's not mandatory for Christians to wear crosses, a lot of Christians don't after all. It's not mentioned in the Bible and is in a lot of cases just a piece of jewellery, no matter the personal significance of it to the wearer. It's not for example mandatory as in the case of Sikhs with turbans and hair cutting, along with the kara bracelet. However, in the case of the NHS which is technically a branch of the state Muslim women are allowed to wear a hijab whilst nursing and despite claims by some Muslims that this is a religious symbol, it isn't. It's not mentioned in the Quran and it's only mention in the hadiths is An-Nur 24:31, which doesn’t explicitly say that the head should be covered, it just talks about modesty. To wear the Hijab is certainly NOT an Islamic obligatory on women. It is just an innovation of Islamic men suffering from a piety/sexual complex who are so weak morally that they just cannot trust themselves to keep their hands off women.

The Government claims the two women’s application to the Strasbourg court is “manifestly ill-founded”.
Its response states: “The Government submit that… the applicants’ wearing of a visible cross or crucifix was not a manifestation of their religion or belief within the meaning of Article 9, and…the restriction on the applicants' wearing of a visible cross or crucifix was not an ‘interference’ with their rights protected by Article 9.”
The response, prepared by the Foreign Office, adds: “In neither case is there any suggestion that the wearing of a visible cross or crucifix was a generally recognised form of practising the Christian faith, still less one that is regarded (including by the applicants themselves) as a requirement of the faith.”

I suspect it's time to get the popcorn out, because if I know about the hijab, you can bet that those bringing the case know about it and whilst two wrongs don't make a right, they do make for interesting court cases.

It was never going to happen

I raised a wry smile at the resignation yesterday of Michael Pinto-Duschinsky who was on the committee discussing a new "British" bill of rights. He apparently didn't know that any new rights had to be on top of existing EU rights vis the HRA, though the inclusion of Ken Clarke and Nick Clegg should have been a major giveaway.
Express.

HOPES of curbing the interference in British life of European human rights law were yesterday hit by explosive claims the process has been rigged by Ken Clarke and Nick Clegg.
A member of the commission ordered by Prime Minister David Cameron to consider a British Bill of Rights quit saying it has been nobbled by pro-European politicians to back the status quo.
Political scholar Michael Pinto-Duschinsky said the commission was following the agenda of “the human rights establishment”. He said it was ignoring the view held by the Prime Minister and the overwhelming majority of MPs that power must shift back from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to the UK Parliament.
Mr Pinto-Duschinsky claimed the commission had been “consistently directed” by its chairman Sir Leigh Lewis away from considering the issue of “parliamentary override” – giving Parliament ultimate power over the Strasbourg Court. “After one year, it’s now clear that it’s been intended all along to issue a report in favour of the status quo,” he told BBC One’s Sunday Politics show.
“We have considered the question of parliamentary sovereignty only once in the whole year that we’ve been in existence.”
Put to him that he meant the c­ommission was working to thwart Mr Cameron and Parliament, he said: “Yes, that’s exactly what I see and exactly what I’m saying.” He said that the commission answers to Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, ­adding: “His civil servants run the commission and staffing, his hands are everywhere.”
He said the commission was set up by Mr Clarke with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and they selected the chairman.

The very fact that Ken (I never saw an EU statute I didn't like) Clarke and Nick (I have an EU pension to protect) Clegg were involved ought to have told Mr Pinto-Duschinsky everything he needed to know about the intentions of Cameron who set up the thing in the first place. Cameron is an EUphile pretending to be an EUsceptic in order to hold onto power. He has no intentions of upsetting or thwarting the EU's grand design of ever greater integration and giving the British rights over the EU was a non starter from the off.
The Human Rights Act gives the EU a degree of control over our laws and sentencing that it uses to keep our ancient rights from being asserted. In our old system if it wasn't forbidden, it was allowed, under the HRA and other EU legislation, if it isn't specifically allowed then it's forbidden. Whilst that sits well on their system it directly clashes with ours.
Until we leave the EU, the likes of Clarke, Clegg, Cameron and the various power seeking mandarins of the civil service will always work to thwart our freedoms and tie them into the EU's system as it gives them far greater powers and a lot more opacity over what they say and do to us.

The return of the parasite class

Blagging at the taxpayer or ratepayers expense is an all too real event in many of our government departments and local councils, after all, it isn't their money they are spending it's ours. You have to wonder just how much has been spent on town twinning and fact finding missions to foreign parts staying at our expense in luxury hotels and wondering why many of us think that they are simply having a free holiday at our expense.
Express.

AN ARMY of British politicians, town hall fat cats and quangocrats spent four days wining and dining alongside tycoons and prostitutes at the world’s biggest property fair in French Riviera Cannes.
Sports Minister Hugh Robertson headed a list of politicians and council chief executives who enjoyed the sunny high life last week while taxpayers struggled with the closure of libraries, leisure centres and public toilets at home.
They were among 20,000 overwhelmingly male delegates who jetted to the south of France from all over the world for the MIPIM property show where hotel lobbies, super-yachts and bars became a magnet for prostitutes cashing in.
The public officials were there to woo investors for their pet property schemes, from housing blocks in Bristol to possibilities in the Olympic Park.
While some councils funded their trips from public funds, others were on freebies with thousands of pounds of expenses paid by their business friends.
The Sunday Express counted 41 councils and other publicly funded bodies which sent about 120 delegates to Cannes for four days last week.
The entry ticket to the famous Palais des Festivals conference centre alone was £1,400 a head, while flights cost several hundred pounds.
Newham Council in east London, one of the most deprived in Britain, sent six delegates, four more even than investment bank Barclays Capital.
Its contingent included powerful Labour Mayor Sir Robin Wales and communications head Douglas Trainer, who boasted his only expense was a “three euro” hotel room tax.
Bath and North East Somerset council sent four delegates, including two councillors, Lib Dem Tim Ball and Tory Francine Haeberling.
They shared a basement stand with Bristol but during one hour’s observation by the Sunday Express on Wednesday, only two people stopped by and that was to collect free mints.
The nearby Leeds stand, which included six officials from Bradford and Leeds councils, was not much busier possibly because cities from Eastern Europe, such as Riga in Latvia, employed glamorous women to entice the male property experts to chat.
The City of Edinburgh Council fared better by offering free whisky tasting sessions.
Coventry Council helped hire a two-storey apartment opposite the Palais, while MIPIM regular Manchester also went to greater expense.
It hired the Palais’s prime location, a balcony overlooking its famous red carpet film star entrance.

Nice "work" if you can get it and much of it coming from the pockets of ratepayers and taxpayers. The thing is, they know we hold them in contempt, yet they go ahead and do it anyway, they don't care that at home services (usually essential ones as they get more publicity) are being cut, so long as they can have a long weekend in Cannes swanning around at our expense and not really doing a lot other than being there. Many of these people are the ones who scream about bankers bonuses too, forgetting that at least banks earn their money, rather than leeching it off the public purse.
One of the commenter's on the article called them lazy thieving cockroaches, which was probably too kind and rather a slur on cockroaches as well.
We really do need to start getting these people out of office by not voting mainstream and stringing them up.They really are a parasite class and serve no useful purpose in society.

Honesty being the best policy

I've occasionally had to return goods to shops, most times I've had to have the receipt, occasionally at Christmas time the goods have been recognized as being part of the shops range and exchanged. Occasionally they've asked me for proof of address or some form of identity, though it's never been a problem. I do wonder what Harriet Wheeler thinks of the process though...
Mail.

When Harriet Wheeler was given a £2,000 Mulberry jacket by a generous male friend, she faced an awkward dilemma.
Beautiful though it was, she felt it did not suit her.
Not wanting to upset her friend by telling him, she took the black quilted leather jacket back to Mulberry's flagship store in London and asked whether she could exchange it for something else.
There the ancient art specialist found herself handcuffed, arrested and marched off to a police cell on suspicion of handling stolen or fake goods.
To make matters worse, her friend was dragged into the row when he was telephoned as part of the criminal inquiry.
Now police have decided there is no case to answer, and have told Miss Wheeler, 25, she can collect her jacket from them.

Looks like an anorak to me

Now in my closeted world of ordinariness I've never heard of Mulberry, I suspect it's probably well made if overpriced tat where you pay for the label for something you could get at Primark for 100th the price (at least) though no doubt without the quality stitch up ing. Still,the store does appear to have over reacted just a tad, even if they did have suspicions of the item being either a) a fake or b) stolen, a simple we'll have to take this higher as you've no receipt and can we have a contact number/address for when we've made a decision would probably suffice. As it is, the maxim "there's no such thing as bad publicity" is probably not going to hold up too well to scrutiny this time, especially since the store have refused to apologize and still maintain the article is possibly a fake, not even a mealy mouthed "we were just following procedures and lessons will be learned".
Now I realize that shoplifting and making fakes is a problem for certain companies, though in this case charging over £2,000 for what ostensibly appears to be an anorak does seem to be asking for trouble, however, arresting someone and taking them off your premises in handcuffs on a suspicion of handling stolen goods does appear to be a little counter-productive, especially since the person arrested has been freed, has no case to answer and went straight to the Daily Mail.
The only odd thing about this to me is why wait a couple of months and wouldn't her friend expect to see her in the jacket at some stage.
But then again, that's not a crime either...

An exceptional quote

It is often said debating the left is like playing a pigeon at chess, they knock over the pieces, shit on the board and then strut around like they won.

17 HDoodson // Mar 9, 2012 at 2:30 pm

Political discourse in the modern age

Tim Worstall.

Anna Raccoon and Longrider have the full story  

Denormalising history

Such is the venom of the righteous to attempt to denormalise what are pleasurable activities that they appear to be going back in history to accuse the Captain of the Titanic of causing the ship to sink because he'd been drinking...
Express.

THE captain of the Titanic may have been under the influence of alcohol when the liner hit an iceberg and sank, an unearthed document suggests.
Captain Edward Smith was apparently seen drinking in the ship’s saloon bar before the collision. The history books record the skipper was woken in his cabin at the time of the impact before taking the brave decision to go down with the ship.
But the previously unseen account by survivor Emily Richards blames Captain Smith, 62, for the tragedy.
The allegation was made in a letter she wrote on board the rescue ship Carpathia two days after the sinking in April 2012. Mrs Richards, 24, and her two young sons were rescued but her brother George, 23, was one of the 1,522 people who died.
Mrs Richards, of Penzance, wrote: “The boat struck an iceberg at 11 o’clock on Sunday night. The captain was down in the saloon drinking and gave charge to someone else to steer the ship. It was the captain’s fault.”

I mean seriously come on, did the woman expect the captain to be steering the ship 24/7? That, plus what anyone does off duty so long as it doesn't affect their performance whilst on duty means that like anyone else whether at sea or not can choose to have a drink when they are not at work. It's a bit like accusing me of causing a crane fault at work when I'm on my days off or between shifts, it really doesn't make sense. Though I suspect it will be taken as evidence on the evils of alcohol; by certain pressure groups and used to advance their cause.
The real reason the Titanic sank (other than hitting an iceberg) is that the men on watch had no binoculars as for some reason they weren't requisitioned on board for the first trip, that meant owing to time limitations steering a very large ocean liner out of the path of the iceberg was a case of too little too late, though perhaps if they'd hit it head on the ship might not have sank either.
I expect this letter was part of the blame game that went on at the time, people look for reasons and then they look for scapegoats.
Doesn't mean now though that it wont be used as a further excuse to make a legal pastime more expensive and more prohibited...

Killing us softly

There was something of a furore recently over Ken (I've never found an EU law I didn't like) Clarke suggesting that some trials should be held in secret. Turns out that our local friendly terrorist misunderstood Muslim activists have won a ruling on an anonymous witness to be allowed to give evidence in a secret trial to support their case.
Express.

HOME Secretary Theresa May suffered a setback in her bid to deport seven Algerian terror suspects yesterday when the Supreme Court gave them a chance to appeal.
The men can now return to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission and fight to have a witness statement heard in secret. If Siac agrees to make the statement in their favour confidential, Government lawyers will not even be allowed to check it is true.
Mrs May is trying to deport the suspects, who cannot be named, on national security grounds. They went to the Supreme Court after Appeal Court judges rejected claims that they risked “inhuman treatment” if sent home.
Algerian ministers have pledged not to torture the men, but they claim to have a whistleblower who can prove they will be harmed.
They want their witness to give evidence in secret because if British officials try to check its truth they may unwittingly reveal his identity.

So what we have here is actually hearsay, which is essentially what unsubstantiated evidence is, bit like saying "everyone knows" when reality will tell you that it's odds on everyone doesn't. They are going to produce a witness that will say the Algerians will torture them and we aren't allowed to check the veracity of the witnesses statement in case we identify him to the Algerians and he's forced to apply for asylum?
You know, frankly I'm at the stage now where I don't give a damn about what happens to people we return to their home countries after committing a crime here, put it this way, if you don't want to be deported, don't come here illegally or commit crimes here. Add to that the twisting of our legal system to justify your desire to stay and what you have is utter madness, we can't find out if the witness they're calling is telling the truth!
So, in the end we may be forced to allow a bunch of Algerian suspected terrorists, including two fanatics linked to the ricin poison murder plot to stay here on hearsay evidence.
The law and those who wrote it, truly are at odds with what the UK public want.

Playing the odds

Insurance companies are like bookies, they figure out a set of odds on a set of circumstances happening and give you a quote based on the likelihood of your failing to avoid those circumstances. After that it's up to you whether you figure the cost is worth it, even with car insurance it's the same for all it's supposed to be mandatory to have it, some people (particularly those who are not good a good bet at avoiding accidents) will choose not to take out the insurance, after all, they are rarely caught and if they are, the fine they get is usually less than their premium.
Well, that used to be the way the system worked until the equality industry got involved...
Mail.

Millions of women drivers could have to pay an extra £362 a year for their car insurance after a ruling by European judges, it emerged yesterday.
The increase follows a decision that men cannot be charged more for their policies even though they are more likely to have a serious crash.
The ruling, described by critics as ‘madness’, means that from December 21 women drivers – although generally safer – will no longer be able to access cheaper car insurance rates because of their gender.
Labour transport spokesman John Woodcock said female drivers face an ‘insurance timebomb’ and called on ministers to curb the impact of the ruling.

First off, this judgement happened on Labours watch, their record on ameliorating ECJ rulings is precisely nil, all that they are doing in this case is using it as a stick to blame and beat the government with (as I'm sure the Tories would have done if the positions were reversed)

Insurance experts warned that younger women will be hit particularly badly as they will end up having to pay the same premiums as ‘boy racers’.
A woman under the age of 22 pays around £1,682 in car insurance while a young man is charged an average of £2,750.
This is because men under 22 are ten times more likely to have a serious crash, 25 times more likely to commit a driving offence and twice as likely to make an insurance claim.
Policies with more than one named driver will be adversely affected if the main policy holder is a woman.
When a man is the main driver and a woman the ‘named’ driver, premiums are likely to come down. The changes will be forced through without Parliament having the chance to fight the ruling by the European Court of Justice.

As you can see, it was all pretty much about odds, statistically women are safer drivers (lets not go down the path of better) in that they have fewer accidents. That meant to insurance companies they were a better risk overall compared to men so could be charged less, it was all about risk after all.
Instead because some idiot consumer group based in Belgium brought a case before the ECJ insurance groups are no longer allowed to play the odds (by giving a good quote) based on gender. As Douglas Carswell put it "Three weeks ago the Prime Minister held a meeting for the insurance industry at Downing Street. But because we are not prepared to do anything about Europe, we can do absolutely nothing about this madness."
Again and again foreign judges are interfering with the way we live our lives, yes I know the ECJ isn't the EU, however it is still allowed to interfere in the laws of this land without taking into account our wishes, after all, what might work for one country may not work for another, but they put a blanket ruling in anyway.
The EU, the ECJ, the HRA, all interfering in our rights, all without a squeak of protest other than the odd bit of media mention and various bloggers plugging away.
When will our politicians start representing us and tell them where to get off or we'll leave?
Don't hold your breath on that one, they are traitors and panderers to the grand European dream.