So what's the point then?

There are moments when you read headlines and you wonder just what the hell is going on with this country. I've frequently had a go at the Human Rights Act and I've frequently had a go at the Borders Agency. However when the two combine you get what can only be classed as utter madness, though in this case the Borders Agency has my utmost sympathy...
Mail.

Thousands of illegal immigrants have been caught by the authorities before being released ‘to protect their human rights’.
One in six of those granted bail later absconds – meaning they must be caught a second time at huge cost to the taxpayer.
Internal Home Office figures show that last year 1,665 immigration detainees were granted bail, of whom 277 later absconded.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: ‘Trying to deport illegal immigrants inevitably takes a fair amount of time.
The courts should take account of this fact before releasing large numbers on bail, especially as they are fairly likely to abscond.’
When trying to deport an illegal immigrant, officials can either start legal proceedings or, in some cases, offer people bribes to go home.

Deporting illegal immigrants should not take a lot of time, once it's discovered they are illegals they go straight to the airport and are put on a plane back to where they come from. No appeals, they are illegals they have nothing but the basic right not to be put against a wall and shot. No access to legal aid, legal aid is for legal immigrants. No access to courts, politicians, charities, local government resources because they are illegals, it's not our responsibility to give them anything, save the trip back and a bill for that too to be taken from the ale of everything they've accumulated here.
 Of course simple logic falls by the wayside when it comes to the diabolical Human Rights Act which gives blanket rights even to those who break the law, when common sense should tell you that criminals should not have anything like the same rights as law abiding citizens. What we need to do is sort out basic rights from full rights.
That we don't just leads us to situations where illegal immigrants abscond because the courts feel obliged to release them owing to their human rights.

Not my country anymore

The UK used to be a place where you could speak your mind and face nothing but public censure if what you said was disagreed with. But the creeping hand of authoritarianism has gradually stifled this right in its efforts to 'protect' certain people and issues.
Guardian.

A drunk woman who racially abused fellow tube travellers in a tirade that was posted online has been jailed for 21 weeks.
Jacqueline Woodhouse, 42, from Romford in Essex, launched an expletive-laden rant at passengers on the Central line, telling those seated near her: "I used to live in England and now I live in the United Nations."
A seven-minute video of the verbal assault was uploaded to YouTube and viewed more than 200,000 times.
District judge Michael Snow told Westminster magistrates court, central London: "Anyone viewing it would feel a deep sense of shame that our citizens could be subject to such behaviour and may, as a consequence, believe that it secretly represents the views of other white people."

Perhaps what she says does represent the views of some white people, it's not for me to say, certainly not an area for a judge to comment upon either. Certainly her views were unpleasant, but she certainly had the right to say them in my view, sadly not any more, nor can I understand the attitude of those who chose to film her yet didn't step in to argue back, choosing instead to grass her up on youtube, home of a thousand other rants calling for the beheading of infidels by the likes of 'Hook' Hamza.
My advice for what it was worth is that Woodhouse should have opted for crown court and a jury of her peers, perhaps then she may have gotten a fair trial and an attack on this nations freedom of speech by a moronic magistrate avoided.
A dangerous precedent has been set now, the state now has claimed the power to lock you up if you say something it doesn't like.

Parish Notice

No post today as I have to travel to Chester to attend the funeral of my good Lady's brother.
A good man, loved father struck down in his prime by cancer.
God rest his soul.

Bribes

It must really be disheartening to be a good pupil in today's better schools, here you are flogging your guts out to try and get decent results, you turn up day after day hoping to get ahead despite everything the state and teachers can do to prevent you and your reward at the end of the day is a university place (if you're lucky) and a mountain of debt. Meanwhile the scrote brigade who infest the next school over school and only occasionally turn up to lessons gets 'prizes' for doing so...
Mail.

Hundreds of secondary schools are using a controversial reward scheme which ‘bribes’ pupils with iPods, DVD players and shopping vouchers to turn up to lessons and do homework, it has emerged.
Almost one million schoolchildren have been issued with supermarket-style reward cards which allow them to collect good-behaviour ‘points’ and cash them in for prizes.
Schools taking part in the ‘Vivo Miles’ scheme are spending several thousand pounds a year on incentives in an attempt to cut truancy and boost achievement.
The prizes are ultimately funded by the taxpayer, through school budgets.
Youngsters can choose from a vast range of products in an online catalogue, including Xbox games, hair straighteners and cinema vouchers.
Nearly 500 secondary schools, one in six, are signed up to the scheme, which is intended to replace old-style rewards such as stickers, gold stars and house points.
But the extent of incentives being offered in schools brought a warning last night that a generation of children is growing up expecting to be rewarded at every stage.

I never missed a day at school in so far as I remember, I even turned up after I had stitches in my knee after a football injury. Did I know education was important? Well not as I do today, but I had a better understanding of what would happen if I failed to turn up. Yes we had truants in those days too, however we had truancy officers who would approach any kids out and about during school hours and ask them just why they weren't at school. God help you if you didn't have a genuine reason and God help you when your parents got a hold of you too (in most cases, though I suspect a bit of rot had set in even then, this was the early 70's after all)
Whilst I can see the reasons for rewarding good behaviour, it shouldn't be in the form of prizes, the corollary as well should be that bad behaviour is punished, but again we all know that isn't going to happen either.
My company operates a bonus scheme, it's based on results, it's not based on everyone simply turning up it's not based on jobs well done. I'm pretty good at my job, but I don't make a profit directly for the company save only in the form of the contract that they have with the company I work at. Indirectly I do of course, if we don't do a good job here we lose the contract. If I were to find some way to expand the business of my company here, then that would contribute so in essence I get my bonus in the shape and form of the efforts of others mostly our sales force. In the end though the bonus works on us all doing well, not individuals and that is where this school scheme is wrong, it amounts to individual bribes for doing what they ought to be doing in the first place.
That doesn't happen in the real world (except possibly in public services)
It teaches a bad example.

Not the same thing at all...

The boy Clegg seems to be (as ever) under the misunderstanding that matters of conscience are interchangeable with similar legislation. He believes that MP's should not be allowed a free vote on 'Gay marriage' because they weren't given one on 'Civil Partnerships'.
Telegraph.

The Deputy Prime Minister said Liberal Democrat MPs will be forced to vote in favour of allowing gay marriage when the legislation is considered by Parliament.
Some Tory MPs are strongly opposed to allowing gay marriage. Last week Sir George Young, the Conservative leader of the Commons, announced that there would be a free vote on the subject because it was a matter of conscience.
But Mr Clegg disagreed, pointing to the fact that the original law bringing in civil partnerships was also not passed on a free vote in the House of Commons.
He the BBC’s Andrew Marr porgramme: “My view is that in the same way that the civil partnerships legislation that was introduced under Labour was a whipped vote, I personally don’t think this is something that should be subject to a great free-for-all because we’re not asking people to make a decision of conscience about religion.”
Mr Clegg said gay marriage was not “a matter of conscience” because the Government was not forcing churches to marry homosexual couples.

What Clegg is missing of course is the exact connotation of the word marriage. It doesn't matter if the government forces churches to marry gay people or not (something that they know they'd lose) but because the term marriage is a religious one and therefore is a matter of conscience. Marriage is a religious ceremony to join together a male and female for the purpose of bringing children into the world. Calling a civil partnership a marriage is wrong simply because the two terms are not interchangeable. What the government are doing is attempting to change the basis of a religious state into a civil one. This in essence is why the 'Gay Marriage' debate is a matter of conscience to many MP's not because they are opposed to gays living together or having the same rights as married couples, but because the term 'marriage' has a far different meaning to them than it does to the likes of Cleggy boy and various other parliamentarians on the liberal left including Cameron himself.
That is why it's a matter of conscience and that is why as usual Clegg is wrong to insist his MP's vote the party line.

Compare and contrast

Yesterdays post on my site could have had no better counterpart to today's headlines about the millionaires daughter who received a two year sentence for her role as a 'chauffeur' during the riots last year.
Telegraph.

A millionaire's daughter was yesterday jailed for her "pivotal" role in last year's summer riots after a judge said she was caught up by the "excitement" and "thrill" of the mayhem and lawlessness.
Laura Johnson, 20, a former grammar school prefect, acted as a chauffeur for a drug-dealing robber and his friends as they pillaged electrical goods during an eight-hour crime spree.
The university student left behind her privileged background and embraced the new world of cannabis, alcohol and violent gangster rap music, willingly partaking in the rampage.
Her actions added to the "overall lawlessness" that threatened to overwhelm the forces of law and order, the court heard.
After a two-week trial,Johnson was found guilty of burglary and handling stolen goods.
Yesterday Judge Patricia Lees sentenced her foir a total of two years for both counts after she said Johnson was caught up "through immaturity and ill judgement" what she thought was an "exciting experience".

Do I think she got what she deserved? Well yes and no, she certainly deserved some sort of punishment for her actions and the crime wasn't exactly victimless. Yet at no time was anyone injured over her actions, so I suppose two years (even if is reduced to seven months due to various other factors)  is fair enough.
However as I pointed out on Saturday, if you get annoyed with someone on the dance floor and then proceed to glass them severing one of the four arteries to the brain irreparably, then the chances are with the right judge you'll end up with a ten month prison sentence suspended for two years and even called a decent person by the judge to boot.
Yes I suppose there's a case for making an example of a millionaires daughter, however at the end of the day something stinks to high heaven with the UK's judicial system where a violent attack carries far less weight than driving a getaway car.
Our entire legal system seems to be based around property rights, not individual rights, not a day goes by without some MSM headline telling us so and so got a minuscule sentence for some form of violent attack, even murder, which should carry a maximum sentence, you can be out in 7 years assuming you behave yourself, hardly a just way of dealing with the taking of a life.
Perhaps one day (come the revolution) we'll get a decent legal system that's both fair and just. But I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Decent?

Decent to me conveys a lot of meanings, from fair, to honest, good condition to a good human being in general. However it seems the courts have a different definition of decent to anyone else I know.
Mail.

An accounts manager who left a student fighting for her life after smashing a wine glass into her neck walked free after a judge described her as a ‘decent young woman’.
Pretty blonde Claire Stephens, 23, attacked Rachel Spikula after the pair knocked into each other on the dance floor at Club 49 in London’s West End.
The American national was rushed to hospital in a passing ambulance after suffering a severed artery in the assault in the early hours of June 11, 2011.
Prosecutor Gavin Ludlow-Thompson said the victim would have been in serious danger had she not been treated so quickly.
‘Suggestions have been made that if the ambulance had not been there and the immediate treatment not been available this victim might very well have lost her life,’ he said.
But Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith spared Stephens from a jail term after hearing she was a ‘decent, hardworking, young woman.’

Now colour me sceptical,but anyone who goes out at night and glasses a random stranger who bumped into them on a dance floor does not strike me as being 'decent'. Drunk? Perhaps. Psychotic? Maybe. Shouldn't be allowed out in civilised company at night? Definitely.
As it is, she left a poor woman traumatised after the attack, with only three of the four arteries supplying the brain left intact. She's also become something of a recluse with severe emotional problems that may last a lifetime. Her attacker gets 10 months suspended for 2 years, so basically walks free and has a judges recommendation that she's apparently decent.
Steal stuff though and you could be looking at 5+ years, which shows you the weird and skewed priorities of our legal system, where property rights are treated far more seriously than violence.
I suspect rather than decent the Judge should have used the term 'of previous good character' which isn't the same as decent at all, but far more accurate.

Rights and wrongs

People over the age of 18 who are resident in the UK have the right to vote if they are on the electoral register. This essentially is updated every couple of years by the local governments via a letter asking you to declare who is eligible to vote in your household. A fairly simple system which only really became open to abuse by Labours relaxation of the postal voting system. Given that we have a right to vote, conversely it should be taken as a given that we also have a right to refuse to vote or register to vote. Sadly though this right is about to be made quite expensive...
Telegraph.

People who fail to register to vote could face fines of up to £130 under government plans to stamp out fraud and encourage a greater turnout at elections.
The new system of individual electoral registration (IER) would see individuals sign up to cast their vote rather than the current system which relies on the head of a household filling in a form stating the number of voters in a property.
The Government has scrapped plans which would have made failing to register a criminal offence.
Mark Harper, the constitutional reform minister, on Wednesday said: “We didn’t think it appropriate to criminalise people who simply didn’t register to vote.
“We do think it is appropriate to create a civil penalty, akin to parking fine, for individuals who, after being required to make an application by a certain date, have failed to do so.’’
The fines were unveiled as part of the IER system the Government hopes will crack down on voter fraud.

You want to stamp out fraud? Get rid of the postal voting system for anyone without a doctors certificate, that would do it.
Other than that I'm afraid the only way to get more people to vote would be for political parties to actually offer people something that they want. rather than what the political parties think they want or need.
Hanging a lot of politicians might help too.

Market forces

Remember the Bristol riots over a Tesco shop? Several police were injured and there were a number of arrests as the so called protesters had threatened to firebomb the Tesco store in their protest over globalisation. Eventually they set up a co-operative to offer an alternative by selling organically grown, local, fairly-traded food available to people on a low income in the area.
BBC.

A community supermarket set up to serve the Stokes Croft area of Bristol as an alternative to Tesco is winding up.
The aim was to make organically grown, local, fairly-traded food available to people on a low income in the area.
It began trading after riots in April 2011 when police raided a squat on Cheltenham Road over fears the nearby Tesco would be petrol-bombed.
A statement from the store said it could not compete with chain store prices and needed new leadership.

There are several reasons why organic produce is more expensive than factory style farming, the main one being that it's totally inefficient. crop levels tend to be at least a quarter of standard farming methods for pretty much the same cost outlay. Hence unless you're growing your own in your own time and at your own cost, you simply can't compete. Sure some people are prepared to pay more because it tastes better, but those aren't the ones this community supermarket were aiming at. They wanted to supply to people on a low income in the area.
People on a low income tend not to have great diets, because they have to budget carefully, that means they opt for own brand buy one get one free special offers. You sell organically grown carrots for £1 a kilo, and Tesco sell them for 50p. Guess where the low income family will go.
As the saying goes, you can't buck the market, this is a classic example of why. What people on a low income want is cheap, organic isn't cheap, it simply can't compete in the same market as Tesco's.

How about no, does that work for you?

I'm not sure how long the votes for prisoners farce via the European Court of Human Rights has been going on, I'm pretty sure it was the previous administration though, possibly back to the time of Blair. Still, it has finally ground to a conclusion, it seems we can make our own minds up, or rather the government or our courts can.
BBC.

The European Court of Human Rights has said individual governments can decide how to implement a ban on convicted prisoners voting.
The judgement means the UK will be able to decide for itself how to resolve the long-standing row over votes for inmates.
But the court says the UK only has six months to outline its proposed reforms.
In a landmark judgment the court found that an Italian prisoner's rights had not been breached.
In a summary of its judgement, the court said it "accepted the [UK] government's argument that each state has a wide discretion as to how it regulates the ban, both as regards the types of offence that should result in the loss of the vote and as to whether disenfranchisement should be ordered by a judge in an individual case or should result from general application of a law."
This comes seven years after the court first ordered the UK to rethink its absolute ban on convicted prisoners voting.

Well, there's my answer, seven years, seven years of mucking about by a court who most people in the UK hold in disdain for its continual meddling in our laws and rights.
Thing is, most people realise that going to prison has to mean the loss of certain rights taken as a given for law abiding citizens. Loss of freedom, loss of conjugal rights, loss of enfranchisement. Pretty basic and until seven years ago taken as a given for anyone being incarcerated at Her Majesty's pleasure. Granted there were special circumstances for those in on remand, but postal votes took care of that.
Now in an almost complete turn of the wheel the ECHR has said that any decision on prisoners votes is up to the national governments themselves.
So we're back to square one, though God alone knows how Cameron and the Tories will handle it, probably via opinion poll as to which option will gain them the most/cost them the least votes.
Still, the simple way is for the government to decide that the answer is 'no' you can't have a vote, now or ever.
That works for me...

We're sitting on trillions of cubic feet of the stuff you moron

UK politicians are wedded to trying to squeeze the last drop of blood out of a stone by taxation that they'll tell blatant lies about carbon capture and green energy to do it.
Telegraph.

Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, defended the “carbon floor price” policy, which sets a minimum on what British companies must pay for the greenhouse gases they produce.
He said it was “very important” to develop green energy policies and move away from relying too heavily on gas supplies from around the world.
The floor price scheme, which is due to be in place next year, is intended to encourage big companies, especially power generators, to adopt more environmentally friendly technologies.
However, critics have warned that the tax will inevitably be passed on to consumers.
Mr Davey told BBC 1's Sunday Politics programme it was right for the Government to pursue green policies to “insulate” the economy from fluctuations in world gas prices.

Question, will the carbon floor tax be passed on to consumers? Oh yes, energy suppliers are companies, they are beholden to their shareholders, their job is to show a profit, not absorb fairy tale costs from moronic ministers.
Question, is the UK dependant on foreign energy supplies. At the moment yes, but only because the idiots in government wont get off their arses to allow fracking due to enviroloony pressure. The UK could be sitting on trillions of cubic feet of shale gas which is relatively cheap to extract and would bring energy prices down (which it already has in the USA) Certainly there are still checks to be made about water tables and land subsidence leading to earth tremors though the current evidence suggests that no one would really notice.
No, what the government wants to do is carry on using useless bird mincers and solar panel technology to make us pay a high premium for our energy supplies to fill the governments coffers (and a few millionaires pockets) with taxpayers cash via subsidies and levies. Fully supported by the enviroloonies who believe we should simply sit and shiver in the dark in some sort of medieval paradise whilst nature reduces the population back to ignorant serfs ruled by a few technocrats.
So called environmentally low carbon energy supplies are expensive and usually not terribly environmentally friendly at all. The power they generate other than nuclear (which has its own attendant risks) is irregular, expensive and dependant on outside factors such as wind and sunshine. Too little or too much wind and a bird mincer wont work and try running a solar panel at night to see how far you get. In other words they're pretty useless and not likely to improve any time soon. Nuclear which is reliable is also expensive, both to build and to generate. We can throw up several gas generating plants in the time it takes to build one nuclear plant. Still, it is an option and best not to have all our eggs in one basket, just make sure they are reliable eggs is all.
Global warming or whatever they're calling it this month is dead, the public don't believe in it, the only reason it's still around is that enviroloonies believe it's useful to their cause and government to their coffers. The planet is going into a cooling cycle and there's far more chance of a mini ice age than seas rising due to it being too warm. But to admit this would be for governments to admit to having lied to us, to con us out of billions of pounds of our cash on useless vanity projects to appease the green god.
In the meantime our pensioners freeze to death and we ration our usage of energy whilst sitting on trillions of tons of cheap extractable energy.

Until proven guilty?

John Terry stands accused of racially abusing Anton Ferdinand of QPR, and he's denied the accusation. Still that has never stopped the so called "righteous" of wandering into the area of subjudicy and more so for the high chief of the righteous David Cameron.
Express.

DAVID Cameron has been caught on camera saying it was “good” that footballer John Terry had been banned from playing in last night’s Champions League final, according to newspaper reports. The Prime Minister is said to have told German leader Angela Merkel that the Chelsea and England captain had “said some bad things” while the pair were speaking informally during the G8 summit in the US.
Terry is due to stand trial in July accused of racially abusing Queens Park Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand during a match last October. He has strenuously denied the charge.
Legal experts reportedly said Mr Cameron’s comments were “poorly judged if he thought he could be overheard”.

All the more disgraceful as the reason Terry didn't play last night wasn't because of the charges but because he had been given a red card in one of the semi-final ties, so couldn't play.
It really does appear that even the accusation of racism is enough for those in the race industry along with their backers to assume that you're guilty no matter what, unless of course you're abusing the English, then it's ok (apparently). Until a court trial decides Terry's fate then he's innocent until proven guilty, Cameron should know this, the man's the bloody prime minister for God's sake. He should not have even mentioned the circumstance surrounding an ongoing case in an area where he may have been overheard or indeed with a foreign national, the Duke of Edinburgh (one of the three royals who has my utmost respect) and his list of gaffes should have served as a warning.
But no, the righteous have decided Terry is guilty no matter what, they've already made up their minds.

Utter, utter scum

I've become fairly jaded as my years have increased, the bright burning flame of fighting for what was right (then) gradually faded as the years past and the need to provide for family taught me a few valuable lessons on what really is important along with the suspicion that the real enemy is those in power, not necessarily those in government' the rich or anyone different. Along the way my ability to become shocked has faded as in general humanity has proven time and time again that there literally no depth of depravity that some members of the human race aren't prepared to plumb either to support a cause or get their kicks or in this instance steal.
BBC.

Thieves have stolen a metal plaque erected in memory of two young boys who were killed in an IRA bomb attack in Warrington, Cheshire.
Tim Parry, who was 12, and Johnathan Ball, aged three, died in 1993 when two bombs detonated in the town centre injuring 54 people.
The A3 size plaque is thought to have a scrap metal value of no more than £30.
Tim Parry's father Colin said the theft was "soulless, heartless and just very offensive".
He said: "My reaction is one of incredulity that somebody would be so heartless and without any conscience, and just calmly walk along and take something that has minimal [cash] value but huge emotional value.

It wasn't as if they'd stole something from a past age, shocking as that might be, the Warrington bomb attack is still a fresh scar to the people of that town and particularly the parents of the children killed. Nor despite the peace process in Northern Ireland is their a sense of forgiveness for the act that killed two children and injured fifty four others. There have been other atrocities in the meantime of course, but none at which a memorial has been stolen with such poignant memories.
Yet this is just part of an ongoing battle against metal thieves and those who provide the cash for their activities. No doubt there will be calls to license all scrap metal merchants and prevent a cash in hand system, that's the usual response of the state when a public outcry forces them into action. It wont work of course, legislation like that never does.
Perhaps what we need is a punishment to fit the crime, rather than a simple slap on the wrist in most cases and being told not to do it again. Perhaps our prison system is too soft anyway and should be somewhere where people dread being sent too.
I don't have the answers, draconian legal systems rarely work well anyway, but what we do need is an effective one which includes a deterrent value.
In one sense I'm glad I still had the ability to feel anger of an act like this, the problem is though it should have been easier.

All right for some

You'd think that those who are in public service having reached a high enough rank (scum floating to the top as it were) lived in a completely different world to the rest of us. Well, you would if you read this story...
Telegraph.

A former chief constable is to receive compensation of almost a quarter of a million pounds despite being forced to retire in disgrace, it was revealed yesterday.
Grahame Maxwell, 51, lost his job after admitting allegations of misconduct over the help he gave a relative during a North Yorkshire Police recruitment exercise.
The local police authority failed to renew his £133,000-a-year contract and he officially retired from the force on Tuesday.
Yesterday it emerged that his employers had no option but to pay him a compensation package totalling £247,636.
The payment has been described by one local MP as “ridiculous”.
Julian Smith, the Conservative MP for Skipton and Ripon, said taxpayers would find the figure “shocking”. He has raised the issue with Nick Herbert, the policing minister.

Now anyone else admitting to their employer "gross misconduct" would probably be sacked, not forcibly retired in disgrace, because retired implies a pension. As it is under nationally-agreed regulations over the employment of chief officers (as negotiated by the corrupt ACPO) because he was retired and his contract not renewed, he's entitled to compensation. Despite the fact that he's an odious little nepotist who attempted to make sure a relative jumped the queue into a police job. Where mere mortals in charge of recruitment would have to declare an interest if a relative tried to get a job in a company they worked for or be sacked if found out. It appears that different rules apply in the public services, where you can be "nearly sacked" and then have your contract not renewed leaving you in line for either a gold plated pension or compensation.
Then they wonder where the respect for the position has gone...

Never ending story...

Every time you think you've seen the last of Ali Dizaei the corrupt sod seems to worm his way back into a position of power. Promoted above his ability as a sop to multiculturalism, he became a symbol of exactly why tokenism in the name of multiculturalism was a very bad idea.
Mail.

Corrupt police chief Ali Dizaei has lost his job at Scotland Yard for a second time.
The 49-year-old, who has twice been jailed for corruption, was dismissed from his post as commander after an internal disciplinary tribunal.
A spokesman for Dizaei confirmed the ruling but added: 'His case against the Metropolitan Police Service and his conviction is not over.'
The sacking was a formality after his career was effectively ended by his conviction for misconduct and perverting the course of justice at a retrial in February.
He received a three-year prison sentence - reduced by the time he already spent behind bars after guilty verdicts in 2010 were quashed a year later by the Court of Appeal.
Dizaei won his job back with the Metropolitan Police before the retrial, but had been suspended on full salary, pending the disciplinary process.

 There appears to have been an almost concerted attempt by the powers that be to try and keep Dizaei in his post despite the mounting evidence that he was slightly more dodgy than a £9 note. Yes I know procedures have to be followed, but does anyone doubt here that if Dizaei had been a white middle class Christian that he'd manage to get reinstated, assuming his feet touched the ground as he flew through the exit?
Dizaei is a classic case of the two tier system instituted by the powers that be throughout the UK, where there is one set of rules for the English and a second set for anyone not English, though in certain instances it also stretches to white and non white, Christian and non Christian. Examples of this bias and occasional persecution can be found by comparing court cases of similar type along with the reluctance of the powers that be to label any crime on a white by another group to be labelled racist, even to the denial from some minorities that it's impossible for them to be racist.
Justice is supposed to be blind, unbiased and equal, but as George Orwell pointed out, 'some animals are more equal than others.'
So it goes in the land of England today.

What were they thinking?

I'm often astonished at the actions of the underclass, if it isn't nailed down, they'll steal it, but in this instance other than sheer spite, I cannot for the life of me see what they hope to achieve...
BBC.

Sex toys worth more than £11,000 have been taken during a burglary at a Worcestershire flat.
More than 400 items stored in four large suitcases were taken from the flat in Gilgal, Stourport-on-Severn between 9 and 10 May.
The toys belonged to online mail order company, Happy Bunny.
Manager Kylie Jones, 24, said she was angry and upset, adding: "I'm not seeing their logic in terms of why they would want to steal them."
West Mercia Police said the suitcases were stolen when the flat was broken into at some point between 23:30 BST on 9 May and 09:00 BST the following day.
Ms Jones's father, Nigel, who owns the business, said: "You try to get something going and they have disrupted it and for what?
"If they manage to sell them then I would give them a job."

Now either there's some sort of secret market for this stuff or the scum stealing it have far bigger sexual needs than that of a small nation which I tend to doubt. Also like most items of this type you need a licence to sell plus 'ebay' and 'Cash Converters' wont touch the items, so I cannot for the life of me see why they took them other than they can. I'm also trying to get my head around a scenario in which the scrotes Mum/Girlfriend/Bit of stuff finds the cases hidden under a bed, looks inside and asks "Whose are these?" Perhaps I'm of a generation that would be mortified if I were caught with anything like that, typically English of the old school I guess.
Still I did like the comment of Nigel Jones, "If they manage to sell them then I would give them a job." I somehow doubt that they'll ever approach your residence again Nigel after a threat like that.

A cultural malaise...

Another day another case of someone from the Muslim community attempting to groom or force an underage girl from outside of their religion and community into sex...

As ever the MSM do not mention the underlying problem, Islam.
BBC.

A Carlisle takeaway boss has been convicted of attempting to recruit four girls aged between 12 and 16 into prostitution.
Azad Miah, 44, was also found guilty at Carlisle Crown Court of running a brothel from his business and paying for the sexual services of teenagers.
The owner of the former Spice of India restaurant had denied all charges.
He was found guilty of inciting four girls into prostitution, and cleared of the same allegation against two others.
He was also convicted of paying for the sexual services of two girls.
Miah, who was warned that he faced a "substantial" prison term, will be sentenced on Tuesday.
The court was told that the married father-of-four hounded and stalked the girls to try to persuade them to have sex for money.
He was described as carrying out a "cold, clinical exploitation of the desperate and vulnerable", targeting girls with drug or alcohol addictions, or with troubled backgrounds.
In his opening address, prosecutor Tim Evans said: "It is the Crown's case that the defendant deliberately targeted girls who fell into that category or who had other problems with the law.
The jury heard that one girl complained to police about Miah persistently harassing her in 2008, three years before he was arrested, but gave up when no action was taken.
Miah came from Bangladesh to England with his family in 1982, married his Bangladeshi wife seven years later, and opened the Spice of India in 2000.

 There has been a concerted attempt by politicians "community leaders" and various nonentities from the socialist left to try and shift the blame from the perpetrators to the victims or rather from who they see as the victims to the real victims. Anyone who watched Question Time on the BBC last Thursday would have been repulsed and revolted by the attempts of the various panel member to try and deflect the blame from race or religion to anywhere they could attach it too.
There was no mention of the fact that Islam permits sex with underage girls (if it was good enough for Mo, it's good enough for the rest of them) nor that Islam does not see anyone who isn't a Muslim as someone to be lied too or exploited. Nor that Islam sees women as property if they are Muslima's and whores to be taken if they aren't.
Politicians are desperately trying to shift the blame for their gross negligence in allowing this fascist, totalitarian creed take root in our country, the more they do so, the harder it will be to remove it.
And still the cases keep coming...

This is not a subject for censorship

I'm in an odd position on the marriage debate, I was married, now I'm not, though I do live and share my life with a very wonderful woman. I'm firmly of the opinion though that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, not a man and a man nor a woman and a woman. I don't have a problem with them joining together in a legal partnership to live their lives, it does bother me when they choose however to attempt to call it something it is not.
Cranmer (a fellow blogger) has run into a problem with the ASA for advertising a link supporting this view...

I see nothing wrong with this.

Now you may be pro, anti or indifferent to the debate itself, however that does involve supporting the right to have a debate and produce evidence/statistics supporting your view. The ASA are attempting to silence a blogger simply for supporting a viewpoint they do not like and demanding evidence that the ad itself is supported by facts (it is, it's based on a genuine survey).
This is I suppose an "I'm Spartacus" moment. You may not support Cranmer's view or mine, but you do need to support the right for us to have such views. It might be your turn next, after all...

A matter of trust

No-one likes false accusations in pretty much the same way no one likes a liar* However a corollary to that maxim is also that mud sticks...
Telegraph.

MI5 warned Scotland Yard that policemen in its ranks were suspected of attending terrorist training camps, it can be disclosed.
The policemen lost their jobs when their security clearance was revoked by senior officers after checks were carried out because of fears of “sleepers” in the ranks.
The Sunday Telegraph can also disclose today the identity of one of the policemen suspected of being at a terror camp in 2001.
Abdul Rahman had been a constable for almost three years when MI5 warned that he might have visited a training camp in Pakistan when he travelled there.
He resigned rather than be dismissed from the force and is now suing Scotland Yard for compensation. He says he is entirely innocent and has never been to a terrorist training camp.
His lawyers say he has never been questioned, arrested or charged under terrorism legislation.

It may well be that Mr Rahman is innocent, but this isn't really an area where you can err too carefully on the side of caution. No he wasn't questioned, but that might have been simply because they were watching to see what he did, there might well be other correlating factors involved, seems more than likely, simply going on a family holiday in Bangladesh is not usually grounds for constructive dismissal. Who you met and what you did however might well be, particularly when compared to those whom you were mixing with off duty as well. Certainly the selection of a security-vetted judge suggests that there is far more to this story than either side are letting on.
Yet in the end it boils down to this, trust. There is a growing awareness of corruption in various forces involving Muslims, just look at the Ali Dizaei case where the guy apparently used his race and his religion to rise further in the ranks than his talents would warrant and ended up abusing said rank to silence witnesses. Whislt there is a suspicion of corruption and deceit then it should be apparent to those members of the police force who are Muslims that keeping your nose clean and setting an example of honesty and probity is a must to allay the fears of member of the public such as my good self. It only takes one rotten apple etc.

*Excepting politicians views on politicians.

Oh joy...

Seems like the energy supply countries are about to take us for mugs again with a major price rise in the region of 15% Some of it is wholesale costs, mostly though it's the cost of government interference in the way they have to do business, by interference read "green energy" along with the climate tariff. This along with a reluctance to opt for the abundant and relatively cheaper fracking method of gas production leaves us to face the inevitable rise in bills, notwithstanding the £9 million pay rise given to British gas executives of course...
Express.

ENERGY bills are set to rise by up to 20 per cent this winter, experts warned last night.
That would mean already hard-pressed households having to fork out an extra £240 a year.
Centrica, owners of British Gas, warned wholesale costs were up 15 per cent on last year. The UK’s biggest supplier, which has nearly 16 million customers, said other costs such as transport would add a further £50 per household to the cost of supplying gas and electricity.
Industry analysts said they expected the company to put up bills by 19 per cent. The other major suppliers that make up the Big Six – EDF Energy, EON, nPower, Scottish and Southern Electric and Scottish Power – are expected to follow suit.
British Gas put up its gas charges by 18 per cent and electricity by 16 per cent in August last year. It then dropped its electricity tariff by five per cent in January.
All the Big Six raised bills last year, by an average of 21 per cent, adding roughly £224 to the yearly bill. When wholesale costs fell, they cut charges by just 3.2 per cent on average.

The easiest way to reduce prices is as I've said to remove the various bits and bobs of green legislation attached to the energy companies in the way of generation subsidies and the green tariff itself. The next step would be to remove foreign control from the UK's power generation industry. If the the UK power industry were controlled and run by companies based in the UK then at least the suspicion that we're subsidising foreign fuel bills will be put to rest.
At the moment though, what we have appears to be a cartel, actively supported and encouraged by the government of both the UK and EU to fleece the long suffering people of the UK.

Fifth column

Fifth column is a term taken from a 1936 radio address by Emilio Mola, a Nationalist General during the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War. As his army approached Madrid, a message was broadcast that the four columns of his forces outside the city would be supported by a "fifth column" of his supporters inside the city, intent on undermining the Republican government from within. (Source Wikipedia) Essentially it is a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group such as a nation from within. A fifth column can be a group of secret sympathizers of an enemy that are involved in sabotage within military defence lines, or a country's borders.A key tactic of the fifth column is the secret introduction of supporters into the whole fabric of the entity under attack.
Mail.

The Home Counties ‘white widow’ of a 7/7 bomber was accused yesterday of being the main financier of a terror plot to kill hundreds of British tourists in Kenya.
Soldier’s daughter Samantha Lewthwaite planned to use a deadly cocktail of bombs to target tourists in Mombasa, a court in the Indian Ocean resort heard.
Police believe 28-year-old Lewthwaite from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, and British accomplice Jermaine Grant were days away from carrying out their attack before he was arrested.
Grant, a Muslim convert, went on trial for his role in the alleged Al Qaeda-linked plot yesterday.
Lewthwaite, who was seven months’ pregnant when her husband Jermaine Lindsay detonated a bomb that killed himself and 26 others on July 7, 2005, was travelling in East Africa on a false passport when she was arrested with Grant five months ago.
She fled and is now being hunted by the CIA, Scotland Yard and Kenyan police and is thought to be in hiding in Somalia. 

Well done the security services, but it just goes to highlight a growing problem in our midst with homegrown terrorists residing within closed communities in our midst. The 7/7 bombers were all born here, along with the South-West café bomber, the shoe bomber and the Swedish car bomber along with the two attempted suicide bombers who targeted Israel.
There is no doubt in my mind that we have allowed a very dangerous totalitarian creed masquerading as a religion to take root in this country and start churning out converted homegrown fanatics who hate us and our way of life.The government is of course in denial, as are the liberal and hard left, both fifth columns in their own right.
I have stated in the past that the problem is not the doing of all Muslims, most who simply want to get on with their lives, however it's becoming increasingly obvious that even those "harmless" Muslims cannot do anything about the monsters and extremists in their midst, nor seem to want too either. It's either fear or cultural, but it's also blatantly obvious that the larger these communities grow the worse the problem gets.
I'm firmly of the opinion that there is no place for Islam in a civilised society., the problem is though that it's getting to the stage where peaceful solutions are slipping away daily...

My God, the BBC admit it...

I blogged yesterday about the conclusion of the trial in Manchester and the conviction of those men for grooming underage girls for sexual purposes. I also mentioned that the BBC were very coy about the identity of the men involved, though admittedly the names and the pictures were a dead giveaway.
Yet amazingly today on the BBC website there is a candid disclosure that the men aren't "Asians" (a massive slur on all Asians who do not appear to be involved in this activity)
BBC.

The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester has said more arrests are likely in connection with a child sexual grooming ring in Heywood.
Peter Fahy said he hoped more victims of sexual abuse will come forward after nine men were jailed on Tuesday.
The men, from Rochdale and Oldham, who exploited girls as young as 13 were given sentences from four to 19 years.
Five girls gave evidence, but police believe there may have been up to 47 victims.
The nine defendants, eight of Pakistani origin and one from Afghanistan and aged between 24 and 59, were found guilty of offences including rape and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child.
Mr Fahy said there had been "a number of arrests" in other sexual abuse cases and there were "a number of other trials pending".

For the first time the BBC have actually admitted which community these men are from, they've even noted that there are more ongoing trial and more arrests likely, the implication being that these men will also be from the same community (they are, it's no secret out here in internet land you can even find out the name of the mane who cannot be named for legal reasons if you go looking)
Yet this admission also has the hallmarks of a BBC attempt to focus attention away from the activities of other extremist elements within the Islamic community.
Still, it's unusual for the BBC to even admit there is a problem within a specific community, even today most of the MSM were determined that these men were "Asians" truth having little to do with actual reporting. There are still ongoing trials in Liverpool, Oxford and Telford, these men are apparently "Asians" too.
Unless or until we get "honest" reporting of all the facts in this country, rather than what the media/government think we ought to know, this sort of thing will fester in the background and when it does break the results will be far more extreme than had it been openly dealt with in the first place. Tarring an entire continent for a crime was not a good start.

It's a start

Back in January I posted that you wouldn't read about a certain trial in the MSM. At the time the judge had made it clear that any attempt by the MSM or indeed as it turned out blogs and debating boards to even mention the trial or defendants would bring down the wrath of the law via a contempt of court summons.
Various blogs immediately pulled the content and stringent rules prevented any mention in a lot of debate boards too. Still, the story was too big to be hidden and eventually the Daily Mail broke cover (they at least could afford to test the water) and it was game on, so to speak as a plethora of other linked cases hit the news at pretty much the same time, all with the same modus operandi and all concerning the grooming of underage girls be members of a certain religion of peace from the same ethnic national group.
Well the trial is over though still not all the details have emerged.
BBC.

Nine men who ran a child sexual exploitation ring in Greater Manchester have been jailed.
The men from Rochdale and Oldham, who exploited girls as young as 13 were given sentences ranging from four to 19 years.
They were found guilty of offences including rape and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child.
Liverpool Crown Court heard the group plied five victims with drink and drugs and "passed them around" for sex.
The girls were abused at two takeaway restaurants in the Heywood area of Rochdale by the men aged between 24 and 59. The takeaways are now under new management.
The 59-year-old ringleader, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was also convicted of two rapes, aiding and abetting rape, sexual assault and trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation. He was sentenced to 19 years in prison.
The eight other men are:

• Kabeer Hassan, 25, of Lacrosse Avenue, Oldham, was sentenced to nine years for rape and three years, concurrently, for the conspiracy conviction.
• Abdul Aziz, 41, of Armstrong Hurst Close, Rochdale, also convicted of trafficking for sexual exploitation, received a nine year sentence.
• Abdul Rauf, 43, of Darley Road and Adil Khan, 42, of Oswald Street, both of Rochdale and also convicted of trafficking a child within the UK for sexual exploitation, received six and eight years respectively.
• Mohammed Sajid, 35, of Jephys Street, Rochdale, also convicted of one count of rape, sexual activity with a girl under 16 and trafficking for sexual exploitation, was jailed for 12 years.
• Mohammed Amin, 45, of Falinge Road, Falinge, also convicted of sexual assault, received a five-year jail term.
• Hamid Safi, 22, of Tweedale Street, Rochdale, also convicted of trafficking girls for the purposes of sexual exploitation, has been sentenced to four years. He will be deported to Afghanistan at the end of his sentence.
• Abdul Qayyum, 44, of Ramsay Street, Rochdale, was jailed for five years.

Two of the defendants on trial were acquitted.

The BBC are as ever coy about the ethnicity of the men along with the link via religion too, though the names and the pictures in the article are a dead giveaway, however they are Muslims of Pakistani origin simply following their cultural mores which is to treat their own women in general as second class citizens and all other women as prey. The Judge did say this, however the BBC conveniently blanked this out...
Telegraph.

Judge Clifton told them: "All of you treated (the victims) as though they were worthless and beyond respect."
"One of the factors leading to that was the fact that they were not part of your community or religion.
"Some of you, when arrested, said it was triggered by race.
"That is nonsense. What triggered this prosecution was your lust and greed."

Telegraph.

Martin Narey, former chief executive of children's charity Barnardo's, said there was "troubling evidence" that Asians were "overwhelmingly represented" in prosecutions for street grooming and trafficking of girls in towns such as Derby, Leeds, Blackpool, Blackburn, Oldham and Rochdale.

For Asians of course read Muslims of Pakistani origin. As again the powers that be attempt to hide the obvious.
I'd still like to know why the ringleader cannot be named especially as he's already branded the judge and jury ‘racist’ and was eventually barred from returning to court.
Naturally the race industry is out in force today saying we shouldn't brand a whole community for the actions of these men. However trials in Birmingham, Telford and Oxford have already shown that when it comes to the underage grooming of girls, there's only one group involved, male Muslims of Pakistani origin.
Says it all really.

I don't care any more

When it comes to the Human Rights Act and the abuses allowed by its poorly written and complex legislation I'm way past caring. I don't care if murderers have the right to a family life, same with fraudsters and illegal immigrants, to me their is no right to a family life if you break the laws of this land, particularly if you aren't supposed to be here in the first place.
Express.

AN illegal immigrant and benefits fraudster is still living in a council flat in one of London’s smartest areas as she uses human rights laws to fight deportation. Joy Chishimba, from Zambia, has been allowed to stay in the Chelsea property even though she used a fake British passport to defraud taxpayers out of £34,000.
A Whitehall insider said the 26-year-old single mother is only here because “she’s got a kid who was born in the UK”.
Her lawyers will argue that separating her from her two-year-old daughter would breach Article 8 of the Human
Rights Act 1988, guaranteeing a right to family life.
The Home Office is thought to have granted Chishimba discretionary leave to remain until at least 2014.

As far as I'm concerned she can take her daughter with her or put her up for adoption, what she shouldn't be able to do is use her to blackmail the state into allowing her to stay. Sorry if this sounds callous, but I fail to see why we should even be supporting this woman at the taxpayers expense at all, never mind allowing her legal aid to appeal.
This woman should have been out of the country having been asset stripped en route so fast it should have taken her breath away. Instead she's using the legal system to milk the taxpayer and make fools of us all and this is what passes for justice today, sadly.

Getting it wrong

There's a narrative out there which seemingly only applies to those whom the state and MSM believe to be on the so called "right" despite the fact that when looked at, such groups rarely are politically right wing. However as has been discussed here in the past, the acronym "right wing" is the MSM/states catch all word for "racist" such having been inculated in the public's mind by the left since the days of the Nazi's (who were by no means right wing either) as a means of defining national socialism from international socialism. Yet it's commonly used to smear the innocent with the guilty as the Independent tried today.
Independent.

Five men believed to be linked to the far-right English Defence League have been arrested on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred.
Police said that officers working with the North East Counter Terrorism Unit swooped to arrest the men, who are members of the North West Infidels – a splinter group of the EDL. The arrests are in connection to a series of alleged racist comments posted on social networking sites, including Facebook.
After news of the arrests spread, rumours surfaced online suggesting that John “Snowy” Shaw, who is thought to be the leader of the group and live in Knaresborough in North Yorkshire, was among those arrested as part of the operation. Police, however, denied he was one of the five detained today.

Where to begin...
The EDL are not "far right" or even "right wing" they are an apolitical single issue protest group who are concerned with the creeping Islamisation of the UK under successive UK governments. You may not like their methods or their modus operandi, but they are not of the right, never have been, never will be.
The North West Infidels, were formed by disgruntled ex EDL members who left because the EDL would not commit to racist policies, they are not a splinter group of the EDL and have been banned from EDL marches because of their latent racism, the NWI has links to Stormfront and other neo-Nazi groups in the UK, the EDL doesn't, it being a multi ethnic, multi racial broad church of  patriots from all spectrum's of UK society, including Muslims which is never printed in the MSM.
So, lets get things into perspective, the EDL are not the NWI, have no links with Stormfront are not the BNP, do not know Anders Breivig and consider those groups and individuals to be racist and/or lunatics. The EDL are ordinary patriots trying to protect legally and peacefully the people of the UK from elements within Islam who believe in the Quranic edict of submit or die. They don't care about your skin colour, your nationality or even your religion, quite simple really which is why the state and elements of the powers that be have done their level best to smear them and stamp them out. Speaking the truth will often do that for you in the UK 2012.

This is why you shouldn't encourage them...

In the past I had my run ins with the Child Support Agency, I disputed every claim against me they made, not because I wanted to get out of supporting my kids, but because after a couple of colossal blunders (one of them requiring an ombudsman to sort out) I no longer trusted the people at the ground level to do their jobs properly, relying on what appeared to be tick box taxation to justify what were some outrageous claims to my income. In the end they had me marked down as a "difficult" customer and I believe went out of their way at times to be difficult too, but that might just be my creative paranoia at work.
yet I was also well aware of the problems elsewhere in the system...
Express.

THOUSANDS of absentee fathers are getting away with paying next to nothing for the care of their children, shock new figures reveal.
One in three – a total of 314,000 – pay £5 a week out of their weekly benefits of £100.
If they have several children by different women, the situation is even worse, as shown by the case of serial love rat Keith Macdonald.
The 25-year-old, from Washington, Tyne and Wear, has fathered 15 children with 14 mothers. One former girlfriend, Danielle Little, gave birth to twins. His £5 weekly contributions means each child will get just 33p.
Another 240,000 fathers pay nothing because they can’t be traced. In total £3.8billion is owed by absent parents, a scandal highlighting the role of the Child Support Agency, which is overseen by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, the source of the staggering statistics.
The Department for Work and Pensions said: “It is a deeply flawed system. That’s why we are overhauling it.”

Initially my first thoughts on Keith MacDonald was that after the third child he perhaps should have been forcibly sterilised, but of course it does take two to tango as it were and perhaps the silly (or easily charmed) women he got pregnant should also share some of the blame too, contraception after all is fairly easy to get.
Yet this in a sense is a problem of our own making, years ago if a girl (or woman) got pregnant out of wedlock there was a shame factor and/or her family went round to the "father" of the unborn child's house and remonstrated with him right into a shotgun wedding if necessary. If he were already married he's be in for the hiding of his life, unless rich in which case he'd be out of pocket for a long time. These days with housing benefit and other perks of the benefits system it actually can be quite a good move for a young "lady" with no other prospects to get her own place and have it all paid for by you and I. The very ineffectiveness of the CSA system means that the only people really out of pocket are the taxpayers. The system we have encourages a feral underclass system and maintains a bread and circuses attitude towards them, perhaps out of fear for what might happen if they ever did break loose and made the recent riots look like a cakewalk. They don't work, wont work and can't be made to work under the present system, the government even encourages mass immigration to do the jobs they wont do. Yet sooner or later it will break, if only by the taxpayers saying enough is enough and voting for a party who will do something, however unpleasant their other policies are..
As it is, none of the mainstream political parties are interested in fixing it, merely tinkering with it, that's why we should never vote for them, ever.

Only 2p?

A fuel price war has erupted crow the MSM with Asda dropping its price 2p a litre before the Mayday holiday. Others have of course followed suit...
Express.

ASDA yesterday prompted a price war on supermarket petrol forecourts by slashing up to 2p a litre from both unleaded and diesel.
The cut, which comes just in time for the big Bank Holiday weekend getaway, was immediately matched by Tesco and Sainsbury’s.
Other major retailers are expected to follow suit.
The news provides a boost to ­Britain’s hard-pressed motorists who have seen fuel prices soar.
Just last month the AA said increases this year had added £21.72 to a two-car family’s monthly petrol bill. A typical 50-litre family car was costing £71.24 to fill, a rise of £5.12 since January.
Yesterday Asda claimed its price-cutting move was possible because of a drop in global oil prices coupled with the supermarket’s “ongoing commitment to help lower the cost of living”.

Ok, 2p is welcome, however in the grand scheme of things where fuel was costing in the £1.40+ a litre range it's actually pretty small beer. Though fair do's to Asda, they tend to have cheaper fuel than most places I pass anyway. What really rankles though is that the government could half its take on the price of fuel and drop the price in total by a third! That would get the economy moving, reduce the price of food and goods and put cash back into peoples pockets, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. Last I checked, the government got £25 billion from fuel, the overseas development budget is going to come in at £12 billion, so there's your savings straight away.
But yes, who am I kidding, the government takes, it does not give, it's even committed to ever more ruinous borrowing to keep things going rather than reduce its costs.
Still, you never know, one day perhaps we'll get a cost cutting government, but I doubt it will be from the 3 main parties, they're far too committed to spending our cash on things no government should be involved in. Though judging by the local election results, that's a long way off yet...

Oh dear God no...

I suppose it's possible for people to make a comeback, it's worked in the music/entertainment business, though the suspicion always is that the money has run out. It doesn't seem to work so well in UK politics though, particularly the higher up the tree you got, the memories involved being bitter and often repugnant of the actions of said politician...
Mail.

'I'm ready for a comeback': Blair's made millions since quitting... now he wants to 're-engage with UK politics'

• Ex-PM and wife Cherie to appear alongside Ed Miliband at an Olympics event in July... and he's already hired a spin doctor
• He thinks enough time has passed since 2007 for people to have forgotten the Iraq war AND how he was forced out of office
• Still has a job as Middle East peace envoy and a complex web of businesses earning millions
• Blair's political legacy is 'debt, war, ignorance, welfare dependency and social division', says Lord Tebbit

Tony Blair has hired a new spin doctor to deflect criticism from his complex financial affairs and help him to ‘re-engage’ with British politics, it emerged today.
The former prime minister ‘has things to say’ and believes the time is right for him to make an impact on the home front after years in political exile.
Mr Blair will appear on a joint platform with Labour leader Ed Miliband in July at an event to celebrate the Olympics. His wife Cherie is also due to attend, making it a rare public outing for the Blairs together.The ex-PM is understood to believe that enough time has passed for people to have forgotten the disastrous effect of the Iraq war on his image and how he was humiliatingly forced from office by Gordon Brown.

If Blair thinks we have forgotten the legacy of "New" Labour (same as old Labour but with added spin) then he's deluding himself. Whilst I and many other bloggers are having a good go at the coagulation for their current policies on the recession, uncontrolled immigration, climate change and the EU, we haven't forgotten who and which party caused the whole damned mess in the first place. Nor have we forgotten the years of betrayal, the wars, the endless spin where everything was twisted to fit a certain narrative and people were smeared (and possibly even murdered) when their views did not fit the narrative.
Yes Blair was a master politician, he had a knack for saying the right thing at the right time, however as a leader, well he left so much to be desired in the area of principles (bit like most politicians) and looking back at his career it's a bit like follow the money, he even set his wife, a human rights lawyer, up with a nice little earner by the introduction of the Human Rights Act. His financial arrangements and friends were also not exactly kosher when opened to scrutiny either.
Still it's interesting (for a given degree of interesting) that the lacklustre Milliband is desperate enough to get Blair out to help considering the two men's political views are almost the antithesis of each other.
Still desperate times etc...

Wasting our money on toys

You expect a responsible employer to provide for their workforce the necessary tools to do their trade. Some trades such as engineering occasionally the employer expect an engineer to provide the basics (and replaces them if broken or worn out) but the employer will provide specialist tools to do the job over and above the basics. Same with management, laptop and mobile phone, perhaps a company car, though not always, simply the necessities to do the job. Most -places though do not provide top of the range equipment for those in a roll who simply do not need it, unless of course you are suckling at the public purse...
Mail.

MPs are to receive taxpayer-funded iPads in an attempt to modernise Parliament.
Politicians will be able to put the tablet computers on expenses if they give up one of their old pieces of computer kit in return.
Around 350 MPs who sit in the House of Commons on select committees will be offered the devices without having to trade.
Buying an iPad for every single MP in the Commons could cost as much as £430,000 – not including monthly subscription charges to access the internet on the move.
But the House of Commons commission, led by Speaker John Bercow, insisted the move would cut costs and save paper.

One of the things most people in industry notice is that any cost saving or paper saving equipment usually costs a lot and generates more paperwork. There's also the problem that iPads are not exactly suitable office style equipment, the big advantage of a laptop is the keyboard, the onscreen keyboard the iPad uses is nowhere near as fast or as useful, so as a research tool it's less than satisfactory. Battery life is limited, doesn't support flash (no kidding) and can’t make phone calls, can’t take pictures, and the most affordable model only has WiFi.
There’s also no multitasking in the iPad because it uses some variant of the iPhone OS. This means you can’t listen to Spotify and browse the web at the same time. No working in Pages while making a VoIP call. And the list goes on…
And because of the closed nature of all things Apple, there’s no simple way to transfer files to and from the iPad. Why is this relevant? Well, it means all the media files will have to be synced through iTunes, which always involves conversions to the mad Apple formats. There’s no way to just drag and drop them over WiFi or using a USB Mass Storage Device.
Not to mention all the documents produced with iWork (which even deserved to be ported to the iPad). Where will those go? And while we’re in this department, how can a device coined as a “great productivity tool” lack the support for non-Apple office software (Microsoft and Openoffice).
The main problem though is that the most affordable model is very, very expensive compared to say a netbook and the money for it is coming out of our pockets, not the House of Commons or the MP's.
Essentially it's a massive waste of money to give MP's a "cool" iPad on the taxpayers expense, it wont improve productivity and it wont save paper as MP's wont be able to use it for the purposes it's supposedly to be used for.
They'd be much better off using their memory and a pad and paper, or if they really need facts quick, then a laptop.

Not the real enemy

The EDL will be turning out in Luton this coming weekend, it's a celebration of 3 years of the organisation coming into being. 3 years in which the spotlight has been turned upon Islam in the UK, the previous and current governments policy of ruinous uncontrolled immigration and the growth of home grown terrorism within the UK.
Naturally there are those who would choose to bury their heads in the sand, or simply oppose the EDL because of who they perceive them to be, mostly on the left of the political spectrum as they do not like opposition that they don't or can't control.
Luton Today.

SPEAKERS at a meeting last night called for people in Luton to come together and oppose the ‘Islamophobia’ of the English Defence League, who are holding a protest rally in Luton on May 5.
The EDL have been told by Bedfordshire Police that they can hold their rally in Park Street, while coalition group ‘We Are Luton’ are being allowed to protest in Wardown Park.
‘We Are Luton’ is made up of different groups, including trade unions, Unite Against Fascism (UAF), the Green Party and the Luton Council of Mosques.
A UAF-produced poster displayed at last night’s meeting showed a picture of EDL leader Stephen Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, alongside a photo of Norwegian killer Anders Breivik, with the slogan, ‘Different Faces, Same Hatred’.
Labour councillor Sian Timoney told the meeting: “Last time, people told the EDL, ‘Sod off, we don’t want you here.’ That is the message we need to give them again this time.
“This town is proud of its diversity.
“There were comments last time saying the UAF are as bad as the EDL, that they just want a fight. Emotions run high and I would urge everyone to have a calm and peaceful protest.”

 The last statement is somewhat hysterical considering that in the picture top left is Wayman Bennett one of the UAF thugs responsible for most of the violence at EDL demo's.
There's also the usual attempt to link Anders Breivik to the EDL despite their being no evidence other than a possible intro on the EDL forum by someone using a name Breivik is supposed to have used, this being despite the fact that anyone can join the EDL forum which is a focal point for discussion and not the EDL itself.
However the real enemy despite the claims of the committee are those of the Islamic faith living in Luton.
Express.

FOUR suspected terrorists accused of plotting an attack in Britain were yesterday sent to the Old Bailey.
Zahid Iqbal, 30, Mohammed Sharfaraz Ahmed, 24, Syed Hussain 21, and Umar Arshad, 23, were remanded in custody at London’s Westminster Magistrates Court until May 11.
They had been arrested at their homes in Luton last week.
Before the hearing, prosecutor Piers Arnold said: “It is alleged the men committed acts of terrorism, or assisted others to commit acts.”
Mr Arnold, of the Counter Terrorism Division of the Crown Prosecution Service, added: “The alleged conduct included planning travel overseas, organising training, purchasing survival equipment and supplying funds for terrorist purposes.”

The EDL have never plotted to kill anyone and have never provided funds for terrorists,they have even refused to allow association to the EDL of groups known to support terrorism. yet you wont see a committee in Luton come together to deal with the real problem in their midst, they'd rather target the patriots of the EDL for highlighting the situation in the first place.
Luton and the various organisations making up ‘We Are Luton’ should really be concentrating on cleaning up their own house though judging by the picture they already have two of the enemy within anyway.
‘We Are Luton’ should be ashamed of the fact that they are being manipulated into defending a terrorist supporting religion whose tentacles run deep within its community. That they can't see this is to their eternal shame, that they have allied themselves to the vile UAF who support violence against ordinary patriots and have demonstrated in support of Islamic paedophilic grooming gangs in various cities in the country simply shows them to be either depraved or incredibly naive.
Still, what else can you expect from the organised left.