An epic mistake?

Finally someone on the left gets it about immigration, though naturally couches it in terms that excuse their actions as a mistake rather than a deliberate malevolent act.
Mail. (Usual Caveats)

Among Left-leaning ‘Hampstead’ liberals like me, there has long been what you might call a ‘discrimination assumption’ when it comes to the highly charged issue of immigration.
Our instinctive reaction has been that Britain is a relentlessly racist country bent on thwarting the lives of ethnic minorities, that the only decent policy is to throw open our doors to all and that those with doubts about how we run our multi-racial society are guilty of prejudice.
And that view — echoed in Whitehall, Westminster and town halls around the country — has been the prevailing ideology, setting the tone for the immigration debate.

It led to the point and scream method of debate.
Talk about immigration = point and scream racist.
Talk about non integration = point and scream bigot. 
Talk about anything the left are uncomfortable about = point and scream.

Over 18 months of touring the country to talk to people about their lives for a new book, I have discovered minority Britons thriving more than many liberals suppose possible. But I also saw the mess of division and conflict we have got ourselves into in other places.
I am now convinced that public opinion is right and Britain has had too much immigration too quickly.
For 30 years, the Left has blinded itself with sentiment about diversity. But we got it wrong.
I still believe that large-scale immigration has made Britain livelier and more dynamic than it would otherwise have been. I believe, too, that this country is significantly less racist than it once was.

Clearly he didn't talk to many in high immigrant areas otherwise he'd have discovered racism is alive and well, the only people less 'racist' are the majority white society. Nor did all the left blind itself with sentiments about diversity, many of them knew exactly what they were doing, the Frankfurt school agenda was very clear on this.

One of the liberal elite’s myths is that we are a ‘mongrel nation’ that has always experienced high inflows of outsiders. But this isn’t true. From 1066 until 1950, immigration was almost non-existent (excluding Ireland) — a quarter of a million at the most, mainly Huguenots and Jews.

The truth would have made no difference to you, point and scream, remember?

Much of this happened by accident. When the 1948 Nationality Act was passed — giving all citizens of the Empire and Commonwealth the right to live and work in Britain — it was not expected that the ordinary people of poor former colonies would arrive in their hundreds of thousands.
Nor was it expected after 1997 that a combination of quite small decisions would lead to 1.5 million East Europeans arriving, about half to settle. But come they did, and a net immigration of around four million foreign-born citizens since 1997 has produced easily the most dramatic demographic revolution in British history.

1948? Labour government? Explains a lot.
The east Europeans aren't really a problem other than their criminal gangs. A lot of them have settled and started marrying into the indigenous culture, same with Hindu Indians and the Chinese settlers, that an area that's more or less working out ok.

But it has also resulted in too many areas in which ethnic minorities lead almost segregated lives — notably in the northern ‘mill towns’ and other declining industrial regions, which in the Sixties and Seventies attracted one of the most clannish minorities of modern times, rural Kashmiri Pakistanis.

Strangely enough, it's the rural Kashmiri males who have now been arrested in their hundreds for the current grooming scandal, though the MSM seem more interested in Savile, can't think why.

The problem with mass immigration is that, without integration, it damages the internal solidarity of a country such as ours.

Something ordinary people said for years only to be faced with the point and scream method of debate.
No, mass uncontrolled immigration wasn't a mistake, it was deliberate and it isn't the liberal intelligentsia who paid the price, well not yet. But it's coming, hence the apologies now begin...

Pretty silly

How does a national litter picking campaign deal with the results of its findings?
Well it blames the companies who made the packaging, not the people who actually dropped it...
Mail.

Coca-Cola, Cadbury and Walkers crisps have been named and shamed for generating more litter than any other brands.
A national litter-picking exercise found the junk food giants’ packaging in parks, on beaches and on river and canal banks.
More than 37,000 pieces of rubbish were collected across the country. The bottles, wrappers and packets were then sorted by 500 volunteers.

I'm pretty sure the companies involved aren't feeling ashamed at all, after all, it wasn't them who were dumping the litter. if anything it shows just how well they control the market in these things.
Oddly enough most of the commenter's in the mail have spotted the bleeding obvious too. Though it would appear that the campaign is actually getting money from the named companies too, perhaps they might stop the funding? Who knows.
Litter is a problem, however naming and shaming companies simply because their products are popular hardly seems likely to get the results this campaign is aiming for. Biodegradable packaging and heavy fines for littering (enforced if caught) might balance things too. Though I believe the key in the end might just be education, but that hardly does anything about those throwing away their packaging at the moment.

Spring has sprung

Spring has sprung,

The grass is riz
I wonder where the warming is
Some say the planet's gettin hotter.
But the planet ain't doing what they think it ought'er.

Express.

BRITAIN is set for a white weekend after forecasters predicted up to 6 inches of snow to cover most parts of the UK.
Much of the country will be bombarded by blizzards and strong winds which will dash any early springtime plans.The Met Office has issued a severe weather warning for snow across many parts, with predictions of 10-15cm (4-6 inches) possible in the north Midlands, north east Wales and north west England.
High areas could see 20-40cm (8-16 inches) of snow fall and strong and even gale force winds could lead to blizzard conditions, as the miserable March continues.

All doggerel aside, global warming (the original and best!) is still being promoted by certain 'scientists' and the environmental movement ably supported by the hard of thinking political left. They still appear to believe that if they point and scream long enough and loud enough that people will quietly go freezing into the still windless night in their efforts to save the planet (and the 'scientists' and the environmental movement ably supported by the hard of thinking political left) Never has so much been invested into producing nothing other than higher energy bills and useless bird mincers blotting dotting the landscape on their massive concrete pedestals (concrete is really environmentally unfriendly, trust me I've worked with the stuff)
All that's left now that the jig is well and truly up is to apportion the blame. It won't be those at the top of course, nor the Monbiot's or the Gore's. Nor any politicians one would suspect. No it will be the likes of the enviroloons who took some (though not the majority) of the money and howled at the moon that the planet was going to turn into a desert with whole countries swallowed up by the rising seas.
A pity really, I still believe we should hang them all, from top to bottom.

Sign here please...

Guido has a petition going to tell the Levesonites to go and take a flying one when it comes to censorship. If you value the freedom to read the opinions of bloggers (speculative or not) then the government needs to keep its hands off those of us who choose to air our opinions on current news.

Link...

Bit intrusive

Frankly the powers that be in the UK are far too intrusive in areas that really should be none of their business, in fact most of what they want to know is pretty much none of their business. My good lady uses the phrase as wanting to know the ins and outs of a ducks bottom (we have grandchildren it's affected our speech patterns) Still Birmingham council are really taking the mickey over this one...
Mail. (Usual caveats)

Town hall officials have quizzed residents about their sexuality – in a survey on wheelie bins.
The questionnaire, sent by Birmingham council to thousands of homes, posed a number of mundane questions relating to recycling reward schemes, the sizes of bins and whether respective properties had adequate space to store them.
But it had a bizarre sting in the tail. One of the questions in the ‘about you’ section asked: ‘Which of the following most accurately describes your sexual orientation?’
The options available were ‘bisexual, gay man, gay woman/lesbian, heterosexual/straight, other, or prefer not to say’.
The question has not gone down well with the citizens of Birmingham. One of them, Dave Dixon, 34, who was emailed the questionnaire, said: ‘It does not ask if residents want such bins but is very interested in their sexual orientation. Are we going to have different coloured bins dependent on one’s orientation?’

That they believe it somehow helps them to know if they've got the balance right cities ethnic/make-up simply tells you that they have far too much time and money on their hands and that really the people who come up with this sort of thing ought to be sacked and/or banned from ever holding public office or working in public services ever again. It's the only way they'll ever learn to leave us alone, pour encourager les autres as the saying goes.
Some of the stuff they want to know really isn't any of their business, particularly when it comes to skin colour/nationality, religion or sexual orientation.
Still the cartoon made me smile...

Not going to happen

I suppose it was inevitable, an Argie Pope is visited by the head honcho of the (failing leftist) Argie regime in an attempt to try and get the British to ignore a referendum in which out of the thousand votes cast only three wanted to be part of Argentina.
BBC.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner says she has asked for the Pope's intervention in the Falklands dispute between her country and the UK.
Visiting the Vatican, Ms Fernandez said she had asked the Pope to promote dialogue between the two sides.
Argentine Pope Francis was elected last week and will be formally installed as pontiff at a Mass on Tuesday.
In the past he has said the Falkland Islands, a UK overseas territory, belong to Argentina.
Before Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected, the 76-year-old was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Relations between him, Ms Fernandez, and her late husband and predecessor as president, Nestor Kirchner, were tense.

One wonder just which bit of the 1,517 votes cast in the two-day referendum, on a turnout of more than 90%, in which 1,513 were in favour of remaining British, while just 3 votes were against, the damned woman is struggling with? No wonder their economy is going tits up if she has problems understanding basic maths.
But no, ever a one to try and 'use' a figure of power Kirchner is up to her old tricks in trying to divert attention  away from domestic problems. So quicker than you can say General Galtieri she's off to Rome to politic with a Pope who oddly enough despised her and her husband, despite being some sort of Argentinian nutter who believes an island 351 miles from Argentina (way outside the 200 mile coastal limit) belongs to a country who never owned it in the first place. One could even point out the delicious irony that Argentinians themselves have displaced the native populace in Argentina whereas the Falklander's have done no such thing. The other thing about claiming proximity is that it could set off all sorts of spurious claims, after all, the USA has invaded Cuba a few times and is only 80 miles away from it and so could claim some sort of 'ownership' too.

"We want a dialogue and that's why we asked the pope to intervene so that the dialogue is successful."

No, what you want is your own way, you simply cannot accept any other decision other than the Falklands being handed back to you, that's not dialogue that's a demand. Well we know how you view the wishes of the people, lets see just how the Pope sees the wishes of the people.

Parish Notice

(Another) New job starts tomorrow and I have no idea how the shift pattern will affect my blogging.
Hopefully it will all work out as there's still a lot of stuff out there that that interests, annoys and makes me angry at times.

Out thought, out fought and out played

Well the England grand Slam dream crashed and burned yesterday as Wales totally dominated the match to run away at 30 : 3.
It was a match where the Welsh showed that passion combined with experience is a very potent mix as they completely destroyed the England side in all aspects of the game. They also 'gamed' the referee beautifully over the scrum decisions and left England with an awful lot of questions to answer.
In the end I believe England will learn from this, that they will come back and that this is a lesson they badly needed in what it's like to play in a partisan atmosphere with a team carried on a wave of enthusiasm. They failed to close down the Welsh attack and their own initiatives looked clumsy and predictable. Gone were the last few matches of brilliant, competent defence as the Welsh were able to punch through with ease particularly in the second half.
Was there anything England could have done to turn things around?
Well they could have changed things around in the rucks and mauls when it became obvious that the Welsh had their lack of numbers sussed and were getting their in strength to keep the ball moving forward in a straight line. A little more disciple in the line outs (again we lost far too many)  and a lot more savvy in the scrum. Still that's what coaches are for and experience will bring. So long as the lessons really are learned...

Misleading

One of the most misleading words used by politicians and the MSM is the word 'could' as it's often used in a manner that many believe it to be 'will'
Mail.

A criminal offence could be created to punish doctors and health chiefs who manipulate hospital statistics, it emerged last night.
Jeremy Hunt is expected to announce the measure as part of an effort to reform NHS management in the wake of the Mid Staffordshire scandal.
Last night the Health Secretary said: ‘This is about a transparent, honest and accountable NHS.
‘Patients and the public should be confident they can trust information about how hospitals are performing and a culture of honesty and accuracy will help those organisations drive up standard of care.
‘If NHS trusts are caught deliberately manipulating that information, whether waiting times or death rates, they need to be held to account.’If approved, the move will mean trusts could be fined millions and managers jailed if they are found to have falsified data on waiting times or death rates.

For one thing fining a trust just means that the cost of a fine has to be found from the funding they get, so services will suffer, not the people generally who are to blame, just those in the frontline.
As for jailing them, good idea in principle, but I think we all know that this is unlikely as those in the system tend to look after and cover up after their own. We may get the odd bureaucrat thrown to the wolves, but it's unlikely to be the chief executive. Nor is it likely to change the way the system is played where increasing the budget inevitably means keeping the bureaucracy well paid whilst cutting costs to cleaning, nursing, drugs etc... basically anything not to do with the system itself. To an executive or management a surgeon is a cost, they are 'essential' they are 'needed' they keep things running and everyone else simply costs far more than they are worth.
It's probably time to scrap the NHS and build something fit for purpose from the ground up. That it will never happen is because the people here are so deluded that they think it's a good thing and free.
Anyone who has had treatment elsewhere though knows just how bad the NHS is.

The x factor

The BBC are telling us that owing to the rise in the birth rate in the UK a quarter of a million new school places will be needed by September 2014. The BBC coyly doesn't mention just where the high birthrates are coming from...
One cannot think why...
BBC.

A quarter of a million extra school places will be needed in England by autumn 2014 to meet rising demand, the National Audit Office (NAO) is warning.
The spending watchdog said one in five primary schools in England was full or near capacity and there were signs of "real strain" on places.
The demand for places has been driven by the birth rate rising more quickly than at any time since the 1950s.
Ministers say 80,000 extra places have been created and demand will be met.
Schools minister David Laws said the government was "reversing completely idiotic policies" followed under Labour that had seen 200,000 school places cut.
Labour has denied the claim and accuses the coalition of creating a "crisis".

Bit disingenuous of Labour as they're the ones who actually created the crisis, not the government as most of the rise is due to the number of immigrants having babies has doubled since 2001, largely driven by an influx of Polish, Pakistani and Indian mothers.

This has been the main reason behind an increase in the overall UK birth rate to its highest level in decades, with 800,000 births in 2011, compared with 670,000 in 2001.Take a wild stab in the dark as to which party was in power during those years...
Yes, Labours policy of uncontrolled immigration from the EU and the Indian sub-continent is now coming home to roost as the influx now makes itself felt in areas other than housing and jobs. Yet strangely the BBC fail to mention immigration or just who was in charge during the time the influx happened. Not that the coagulation have done much to cut the numbers, they talk a good game, but talk is cheap.
One could almost come to the conclusion that the BBC might have an institutional bias towards Labour, but that would be silly wouldn't it? You'll be telling me that they're stuffing the Question Time audience with Labour Activists next to try and get at anyone not toeing the BBC/Labour line...
Oh...

The 'Jewish' conspiracy.

I'm sure we've all heard of the so called Jewish conspiracy so beloved of muslims and the left as well as the hard of thinking worldwide. Occasionally it's called Zionism, but at heart it's all about a group of people following a minor religion that somehow or other secretly controls the world. When I say 'secretly' I mean of course to everyone but muslims and the left as well as the hard of thinking worldwide. Apparently they run all the media, control all the worlds finances and they influence politicians as well as other powers that be. Oh don't be fooled by the lefts claims that somehow or other it's a right wing thing to hate Jews, it isn't, Nazism and fascism are not and never have been right wing creeds or politics.
Telegraph.

Labour has suspended a peer who is alleged to have blamed a Jewish conspiracy for the imprisonment he received over a fatal motorway crash. The Times has reported that Lord Ahmed, a Labour life peer, claimed that he received his prison sentenced because of pressure on the courts from Jews “who own newspapers and TV channels". Lord Ahmed, who in 1998 became the first Muslim life peer, is said to have claimed that the conspiracy was a result of his support for the Palestinians in Gaza. He is said to have made the comments in a TV interview in April last year while on a visit to Pakistan. Labour today suspended the peer "pending an investigation". 

Remember this is the muslim peer who mowed down a man in a parked car after using his mobile phone to send or receive texts. Anyone else would probably have gotten more than 16 days, but such is the (imaginary) sense of victimisation and grievance felt by muslims everywhere Lord Ahmed has convinced himself that he somehow is at the centre of a plot to shut him up or get rid of him. This is despite the fact that he's doing a pretty good job of it all by himself.
Still, well done the Labour party for stepping in to suspend the idiot, something the Lib Dems could take tips over David Ward who is also convinced that somehow or other the Jews are responsible for all that ails the world.
Does it not strike anyone else as odd that 19 or so million Jews cause so much fantasy phobia in the minds of so many? After all, there are 1.5 billion muslims worldwide who are actually a bigger nuisance backed in many cases by some of the richest countries on Earth (the Arab oil states). When was the last time you heard of a Jew setting off a bomb on a train or bus, flying a plane into a tall building, murdering tourists at a disco? Oh sure I've heard all the fairy stories about Gaza, most of which prove entirely false when scrutinised and I laugh at the assertions of Israel being an apartheid state (I've been to South Africa, now that was real apartheid)
Still, it's what Goebbels called the big lie, keep it loud, keep it going and soon enough 'everyone' knows it's true.
That in a nutshell is the real 'Jewish conspiracy' the one where they are said to be the problem as opposed to being the victim.

I`ll sthrceam and sthrceam till I`m thsick and I can too!

As intoned Violet Elizabeth Bott in the Just William novels when she couldn't get her own way. As do the so called health campaigners (aka killjoys) who believe that the UK government should ignore EU rules and voter preference on minimum alcohol pricing.
BBC.

Health campaigners have reacted angrily to reports that plans for minimum pricing of alcohol in England and Wales may be dropped.
Splits within the Conservatives have also emerged, with ministers who are said to no longer back the plans accused of "political manoeuvring".
The government had planned to introduce a 45p charge per unit, but this is said to be facing strong cabinet opposition.
The Home Office said it was considering responses to its 10-week consultation.

Political reality getting in the way of those who believe we should do as we are told and shut up in the process of being reamed.

Labour said dropping the plans would be a "humiliating climbdown" and accused the government of "weak leadership".

Because Labour have never met a repressive intrusive measure they didn't like.
If it is dropped it's good news for the majority of us who do drink responsibly and don't cause problems. It's also a poke in the eye for the authoritarian bansturbationists who believe that what they believe is good for us needs to be enforced by law and cost. These generally are the people who can easily afford to pay the extra, rather than those who can't but enjoy an occasional drink anyway to take their minds off what the health campaigners are up too now.
Most of us just want to be left alone, we don't like being badgered and hectored by people who don't live as we do and don't have to put up with the shit we have too. We don't like the government interfering in our lives and if pushed too far will vote them out for anyone who will reverse the change. We are also very aware that the government funds a lot of these so called  health campaigners from public funds to tell the government what they want to hear so they can tax us on it. Same process goes on with the environmental lobby too.
They keep pushing and pushing then wonder why people become divorced from the political process, sooner or later they'll keep pushing and we'll push back, though I don't think we've reached that stage yet. I don't think it will be drink either, more likely immigration.
Politicians would be much more popular if they learned the art of doing nothing and leaving us the hell alone.