Not our business

What is it with military commanders that demand we get into ever greater conflicts with areas of the world that we have simply no business being in? Take the middle east, (please) the whole area is a train wreck of competing tribes, factions and religious strife and that's just the muslims. Yet Col Tim Collins believes that somehow or other we should get ourselves involved despite the lessons of the past which tells us that it never works.
Telegraph.

One of Britain’s most respected commanders has compared the massacres in Iraq with genocides carried out by Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot, accusing the Government of failing in its “moral obligation” to intervene.
Col Tim Collins, famed for his inspirational speech on the eve of the 2003 Iraq War, said that Britain’s politicians have “left for lunch” as he urged David Cameron to recall Parliament to debate the crisis.
He told The Telegraph that ancient civilisations will be “extinguished” unless Britain joins air strikes and provides arms to Kurdish forces, and suggested that troops should be stationed in Iraq to provide training and support.
Gen Sir Mike Jackson, Chief of the General Staff during the Iraq War, added his voice to calls for Britain to join the air strikes on “humanitarian” grounds and to bring an end to the “appalling” atrocities being committed in Iraq.

Sorry as I am to see ancient civilisations extinguished, it really is none of our business, we shouldn't even be wasting fuel on aircraft to drop aid, never mind drop bombs. In the end all we do is rile up our own barbarians that our government invited in and don't have the guts to remove root and branch from our own civilisation and so are heading us down exactly the same path as the middle east, civil war, until one side dominates the other. If it's islam then barbarism sets in, the religion itself more or less guarantees it in the way its written and interpreted.
There is no place for islam in a civilised society and we should not be helping any islamic groups. Evacuate Christians, Zoroastrians, Buddhists etc, but just fence the barbarians in and let them fight it out amongst themselves.

Going after the easy targets

In a UK where illegal immigrants can get the right to remain due to the Human Rights Act it comes as a surprise to find out it doesn't work for just anybody. It does appear that if you're a law abiding citizen you have less rights under the Act than a rapist or a child molester with a family.
Express.

A BRITISH man fears his family could be torn apart because his pregnant wife has been threatened with deportation to her native Australia.
In a bitter battle that has touched the hearts of thousands, Dale Tate's wife, Katherine, has been told by officials she will be booted out of the UK in just ten days, even though her husband and two sons are British citizens.
A judge said the family could stay at home in the UK, where Mr Tate has spent all his life – but the Home Office are seeking to overturn the ruling.
The fight comes as thousands of foreign criminals remain in the UK using human rights laws and the Home Office has only just been able to boot out terror suspects Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza after years of wrangling.
The 30-year-old, from Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, said: "My wife is an Australian citizen, our two children are British citizens, and she is six months pregnant with our third child.
"I own an electrical contracting company and employ two tradesmen and two apprentices in turn creating jobs, skills and a contribution to our economy and welfare system.
"We claim no benefits whatsoever, no child support, no family tax credits or others alike.

As the last sentence tells us, this family are obviously a menace and a burden to society /sarc>
You have to wonder at the mentality of those going after this woman, sure rules are rules, but depriving kids of their mother who is genuinely married to a UK citizen who is clearly a hard worker seems a tad ridiculous. The Home Office have even demanded that the NHS do not treat her pregnancy without the family stumping up cash first and it all appears to be over a paperwork error.
Is it just me or does the suspicion raise its head with anyone else  that had she been any colour but white this whole thing would have been swept under the carpet? After all, if you look at these cases you'd almost certainly think so...
Link.

* A Turkish man, aged 38, who was convicted of rape and jailed for seven years in 2004, but successfully argued that he would be in danger from the anti-terror police and intelligence agencies if he was sent home.
* A 28-year-old Congolese man who was handed four years' imprisonment for causing grievous bodily harm with intent – by battering a man with a metal pole – but won his appeal against deportation because he had an infant son.
* A father-of-three from Pakistan who sexually assaulted a woman after drugging her, and was jailed for 15 months.
* A 23-year-old Congolese man who was convicted of 10 crimes between 2002 and 2006 before being jailed for robbery in 2007, receiving a two-year prison term. His lawyers successfully argued that it would be wrong to return him to his native country where conditions were "harsh and difficult".
* A Lebanese man who was a prime mover in a £3 million fraud, and who admitted receiving £258,000 from the crime to fund a lavish lifestyle including a Mercedes, a Range Rover and expensive watches. The 40-year-old was jailed for 40 months but allowed to remain in the UK because of the effect that deporting him would have had on his children and wife, who was also jailed for her role in the fraud.
* A Pakistani man, aged 40, jailed for eight years for conspiracy to import Class A drugs and conspiracy to kidnap, whose lawyers argued that he should stay in Britain because of his "right to family life".

Guess it's so much easier to spend time, effort and taxpayers cash on going after the easy targets and you'd suspect that Mrs Tate would have though a paperwork mistake and her leading a blameless life would have been easy to surmount, particularly as all her children will be UK citizens.
Perhaps she ought to start committing crimes? It does appear to be the only solution to Home Office intransigence.
What a skewed set of priorities those running the government have.

Prodnoses

The campaign to outlaw alcohol appears to be gathering pace, rather than deal with irresponsible drinkers using existing laws, successive governments have taken to increasing the duty on alcohol (leading to smuggling and fake products) and talking about minimum pricing. They've used various fake charities and medical groups to support their methodology until we've reached the situation today where anything unusual involving alcohol immediately draws a response from so called do-gooders.
Express.

A LANCASHIRE school has been slammed for commissioning and selling a beer for two extra-curricular events as part of its centenary celebrations.
The Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School (BRGS) commissioned the special scholastic-themed brew to sell at a fireworks celebration and alumni reunion marking 100 years of the institute's history.
But a concerned resident lodged a complaint to the Portman Group, Britain's independent body in charge of promoting responsible drinking regulations.

No, they weren't selling it to pupils, but had aimed it at real ale enthusiasts who it was hoped would buy the bottles during school events. Instead some bigoted prodnose decided to complain that the school crest which was on the bottle was sending out 'the wrong message' they didn't complain or take it up with the school but complained to the Portman Group who then attacked the school for doing so...
Fortunately the school headmaster has taken the correct attitude...

"One unnecessary complaint - under a code which is not legally enforceable - will not be allowed to undermine the success of the year."

In other words he's telling the busybodies of the Portman Group where to get off, which is a good thing, though I suspect the Portman Group is just another fake charity using public funding from the government to tell the government what it wants to hear so they won't go quietly into the night. Expect more of these sort of stories as social engineering goes on apace with more and more attempts to get us to be good little drones.

Fire hazard

Bird mincers (aka wind turbines) are a favourite hobby horse of mine as it's a target rich environment. They're touted by enviroloons and moneygrabbing politicians as the answer to carbon free power generation and will help save the planet from global warming man made climate change. This is despite the fact that they're inneficient, expensive to run and intermittent in their generation as they don't work when there's no wind... or indeed too much.
Telegraph.

Wind turbines may catch on fire ten times more often than is publicly reported, putting nearby properties at risk and casting doubt on their green credentials, researchers have warned.
The renewable energy industry keeps no record of the number of turbine fires, meaning the true extent of the problem is unknown, a study backed by Imperial College London finds on Thursday.
An average of 11.7 such fires are reported globally each year, by media, campaign groups and other publicly-available sources, but this is likely to represent just the “tip of the iceberg”.
There could in fact be 117 turbine fires each year, it argues, based on analysis showing just 10pc of all wind farm accidents are typically reported.
Fires tend to be “catastrophic”, leading to turbines worth more than £2 million each being written off, because the blazes occur so high up that they are almost impossible to put out, it warns.

So not only eyesores and a danger to flying mammals, they're a bit of a liability when it comes to catching fire. That plus the ones at sea are discovering the joys of a salt laden environment and have corrosion/erosion problems. All in all it's pretty much a case of money down the drain along with the fact that it's also taxpayers cash subsidising the damned things.
Any engineer will tell you that objects with moving parts will require maintenance, in a normal power station there are people around to do this, but at least the turbines are at ground level (usually) In the case of a wind turbine, they're unmanned only visited on a regular maintenance schedule and as with regular maintenance, sometimes things go wrong that aren't picked up. Place a unit with plastics, hydraulics and generating heat via its power generation and you have a bit of a fire trap stuck off the ground where the fire brigade can't get at it, nor can be reached to do running repairs.
Still they're going to save the planet, along with the backup diesel generators sneakily brought in to supplement their dormant periods as the government closed down the efficient power stations to build these monstrosities.
If it wasn't so serious, it would be funny.

Oh just f*#k off!

Some people simply do not get the concept of what we do with our money is our business. They get on their little pedestals to the MSN and tell us what we ought to do for reasons that mean nothing to the ones they are pontificating too. They simply do not grasp that our money is ours to spend as we want and their cause celebre is generally not something we believe in...
Telegraph.

Middle-class families should stop buying large fridges in order to save energy and tackle climate change, a government-commissioned report has suggested.
Families could save up to £36 a year on their electricity bills by replacing large fridge-freezers or televisions with smaller appliances, according to a study published by the Department for Energy and Climate Change.
The report found that the average family fridge had grown in volume by two fifths since 1985, amid a fashion for large American-style appliances, while the average television had grown by more than seven inches since 2004. It warned that the trend undermined attempts to cut carbon emissions.
The study, by researchers at Loughborough University and Cambridge Architectural Research, found that energy-efficient technology was not enough to offset the increase in the size of appliances. For example, a 52in television with an A+ energy rating still uses more electricity than a 42in model with an A rating.
Nicola Terry, a co-author of the study, said: “Why do we need a bigger TV, and why do we need a bigger fridge? I don’t understand the case, but when people go to the shop they think, that’s bigger it must be better.”

I've got news for you Mz Terry, bigger might not be better in the terms you're thinking of, but to a family a bigger tv is better, a bigger fridge freezer is better and they don't give a damn as to saving £36 a year when they know the governments green taxes are stealing £120+ from them via the energy companies.You see most people aren't interested in the energy rating per-se, they'll go by them when comparing like for like, but the energy rating is not what decides someone from 42" to 52" its the picture quality and whether it will fit through the front door and hang on the wall. In the case of the fridge its whether they can easily get the family shop in plus have room for treats rather than like my own fridge be stuffed full of beer for the weekend that I can't get my packed sandwiches easily in for Friday's shift.
Nor do people give a damn about carbon capture, they know its a scam, they know that the government via the environmental lobby are lying through their teeth anf they know that the Department for Energy and Climate Change are run by enviroloons who do not have their best interests at heart.
Finally why do people buy the biggest fridge or telly that they can afford?
The answers simple, because we can!

The result of the dead hand of the state

Governments never seem to learn, they repeat the mistakes of the past almost without fail and woe betide the end result of government meddling with price fixing and attempts to social engineer via market forces. If you use taxation to artificially raise the price on a product the public want, or even outright ban it then the results are inevitable, criminal organisations move in to give the public what they want...
Mail.

Buy a bottle of Smirnoff and you will expect to get a high-quality vodka. But what’s in the bottle could cost you your life.
Britain’s shops are awash with counterfeit spirits made from lethal chemicals including chloroform and methylated spirits, an investigation has found.
The concoction is putting thousands of drinkers at risk of blindness, organ failure and even death.
And the trade is the tip of a counterfeit iceberg that includes rip-off designer handbags and clothing, and counterfeit cigarettes.

This is the consequence of government meddling and high prices in the retail world, they've more por less made it easy for criminals to set up with a license to print money for themselves and believe me the gangs don't give a damn about quality control or health and safety, just profits. yet even today MP's are still giving voice to price fixing alcohol with a minimum figure. What the reporter found was what the USA found when it imposed prohibition, if a price is too high or (like drugs) it's banned then if the public want it, some enterprising soul will find a way to provide it, invariably criminal gangs move in and you have market forces in action. The state loses revenue through duty and taxation and the public get shoddy products (occasionally).
Unfortunately politicians never learn to mind their own business, one of the hardest things to do is to actually do nothing and leave things alone and let the people sort themselves out. They meddle, initiate tax grabs and listen to minority pressure groups and this is the end result, utter failure on their part and driving ordinary folk into the hands of criminals.
They never learn.

How about good at it?

The moronic religion of political correctness is often good for the odd chuckle with well meaning dullards often tying themselves in knots over trying to appear totally fair when it comes to dealing with race/creed/gender/sexual orientation. It does become a bad joke indeed though when measures to be fair are actually exercises in tokenism. The joke totally sours when politicians promote it within their ranks and believe that the public will be impressed rather than their own little political bubble coterie. What most people would like is competence, they won't be bothered who is doing what, the criteria should always be are they the best, not are they the right gender/colour/religion/sexual orientation.
Telegraph.

David Cameron is to reshape his top team to fight the next election by promoting a number of female colleagues to the Cabinet and sacking some long-serving ministers.
A large scale Cabinet reshuffle is being planned – most likely to take place the week after next - with several Tory women ministers being given permanent Cabinet berths.
The shake-up will also allow Mr Cameron to answer critics who say his Cabinet is too male dominated. Mr Cameron has previously said that he wants one third of his ministers are women.
He admitted last year he has not appointed enough women to the Cabinet and said his wife Samantha urges him to promote female talent.

Great, Cameron is going to turf out some senior ministers and replace them with inexperienced ones a year before the election on his wife's say so. OK, there may be some like Ken Clark who won't be missed by the likes of me, but frankly this is no way to run a government or a country.
I can only imagine his critics are in the Westminster bubble or are the Comment Is Free commentators of the feminista tendency to whom it doesn't matter if a woman is actually good or bad at something, she has to get the job because she's a woman...
I have a feeling that most people don't actually give a damn who Cameron has in his cabinet, male or female. All we want, assuming we take note, is people who know what they are doing. We may not like them, we may not agree with what they are doing, but as long as they are implementing that policy fairly and competently then we don't give a damn as to gender. It may be that some of the women Cameron chooses to promote will be brilliant at their posts, however there may just be a man who is actually better at it and a good way to breed resentment and division is to promote someone due not to their competence and ability, but due to a weird rule that they and you have no control over. I will be willing to bet though that many promoted will be completely out of their depth and will be given the run-around by the civil servants in their departments and in the current furore over a paedophile ring and Leon Brittan's claim that the documents he was given went missing once civil servants got a hold of them this cannot be a good thing.
No, what the political bubble once again fail to recognise is that people don't want their weird idea of fairness, they want (in so far as it registers on their views) competence. Fairness to the majority of us means an equal chance to try, it does not mean tokenism where someone of possibly lesser ability gets in because of who they are, not if they can actually do it.

They just can't help themselves

The urge by powers that be to show off their 'powers' on a world stage by meddling in things which don't concern them amazes me at times. The UK public have already made it pretty clear that another countries problems are not our concern the further away said country is; In the case of Syria we don't want our troops there doing another 'Iraq' so when thwarted in their intentions to do that, the idiots supposedly governing us and advising said government chose another tack...
BBC.

The UK drew up plans to train and equip a 100,000-strong Syrian rebel army to defeat President Bashar al-Assad, BBC Newsnight can reveal.
The secret initiative, put forward two years ago, was the brainchild of the then most senior UK military officer, General Sir David Richards.
It was considered by the PM and the National Security Council, as well as US officials, but was deemed too risky.
The UK government did not respond to a request for comment.

Ye gods! don't we have enough problems with muslims without training a bloody army of them how to do a proper job? Yes the civilian deaths are a tragedy, but they aren't our tragedy and Syria's problem is a civil war which they need to resolve themselves though the temptation to meddle and allow it to draw juhadis in to the conflict in order to wipe them out is tempting... just so long as we do not allow any of our homegrown ones back here.
Fortunately the government seems to have deemed it too risky, although I rather suspect the cost of it, rather than the fact that we'd be arming and training a bunch of jihadis in many instances will have been the deciding factor, after all, look how well that worked in Afghanistan.
No, Syria is not our problem, other than the islamoloons from here that go over to fight there of which my favoured solution is cancelling the passport of any who do go over there to fight and deporting them instantly if we catch them sneaking back in.
Had we gone down General Richards path we would have been storing up no end of problems for that part of the world, as if they don't have enough of their own without us arming and training them. I doubt Israel would be any too happy either.
Still, thank god in this case that the government lost its nerve...

Silly season

Imagine a country school, small, only 13 pupils all of them from the same ethnic background. The one thing you wouldn't expect is it to be put into special measures due to a 'hate crime' yet such are the rules when a child uses the word 'gay.' Well Ofsted's rules that is, normal common sense rules don't apply when dealing with what is essentially an inspection bureaucracy...
Mail.

A village primary school with just 13 pupils was put into special measures after an Ofsted inspection found too many incidents of racist or homophobic bullying and serious acts of violence.
But the chairman of governors at Ravenstonedale Endowed School in rural Cumbria has fought back, claiming the report was based on a single incident of children using the word ‘gay’ as a throwaway comment and not knowing what it meant.
Liz Morgan said it had been ‘blown out of proportion’ and also denied there had been any racism at the remote school, where all of the children are white.
She said she believed Ofsted had an agenda against small schools and suspected they’d been unfairly labelled racist because racism and homophobia were treated as one category by Ofsted.

Whilst I suppose it is possible the school is bringing up a secret sept of the UK version of the Hitler Youth you have to start wondering just what the Ofsted inspector was taking when they came to the conclusion that the school was guilty of too many incidents when there appears to be only one and that of a child probably using the term gay as an insult, not to gays, but in its other usage as something not terribly good. English is a terribly slippy language often picking up loan words and changing the meaning of others to suit new circumstances. The word awful was once used to describe St Paul's cathedral in London. It didn't mean that it was rubbish, but that it inspired awe to look at as in full of awe. Same way that gay used to mean happy (still does, though not in current usage)  then meant homosexual and now has turned not into a homophobic insult but means a bit naff when used in context. Now the gay mafia and the politically correct brigade may not like it, but in certain contexts the language has shifted and the word now has another meaning as well as the old ones.
It will be interesting to watch what happens to the hate crime school of Ravenscar, the accusations quietly shelved at best or some petty nonsensical measure put in place to sop Ofsted's position.
Seems like the silly season is now well under way.

I doubt this will change things

A government funded survey has told the political classes that they ignore the rise of anti-immigrant sentiments at their peril. Problem being that as they don't live with the people who have to live amongst the problems being caused by mass uncontrolled immigration and the debacle of multiculturalism where every other culture but the native one is prized and the native one is held in contempt by many of the political classes as racist and bigoted because it does not live as they do in their comfortable little bubble.
Telegraph.

Politicians have contributed to a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment because of a widening “disconnect” between the “liberal political class” and public opinion, the UK’s most authoritative barometer of public opinion suggests.
Almost half the population now believes that a decade of mass migration has not only harmed the economy but undermined “British culture”, the annual British Social Attitudes survey shows.
The “persistent public anxiety” over immigrant numbers is something the main political parties “ignore at their peril”, the Government-funded study warns.
Significantly, the study — which has been charting public opinion for more than 30 years — found signs of a rejection of a multicultural notion of Britishness.
In striking contrast with a decade ago, when the survey showed rising acceptance of minorities, increasing numbers now single out factors such as being born in the UK or having “British ancestry” as important elements of “British” identity.

A decade ago perhaps we were a little more tolerant, but the determination of the thrice damned Labour Party to rub the so called right's nose in multiculturalism has stretched that tolerance to the limit. Nor does the article mention where the real stresses in society lie. EU immigration is a problem, but it's solvable by taking us out of the EU as most of their immigrants don't have UK citizenship and will have to leave. The ones that are here such as the Poles etc aren't that big a problem though groups such as Roma are a bloody nuisance. The real problem has been the governments invitation of islamic immigrants whose creed and practices are anathema to everything that Western civilisation stands for. The political classes permitted them to get away with said practices by either ignoring them or rounding on those who did complain as racist or bigoted for having the temerity to say something critical about their little brown buddies. hence we had the grooming scandals, Female genital mutilation, homophobia, misogyny, a rise in genetic defects due to the tribal custom of marrying first cousins, militantism and finally murder on our streets as this alien creed refuses to integrate and see 'us' as the problem, not them All of this was swept under the carpet by leftards in local and national government until finally they could keep their squalid little secrets no more and the rise of groups who knew what was going on and were going to fight it became inevitable.
Yet still the political classes cannot and will not change, much of what I said above simply does not affect them.
Sooner or later we'll have civil war and they will be to blame...

A problem of their own creation

Apparently with little else to do because the EU makes up most of our laws other than try and figure out how to sell an intervention in Iraq to us (not going to happen) our MP's are decrying the lack of action in dealing with tobacco smuggling. It's the usual 'something must be done meme' being advanced by those who don't realise that the problem isn't really a problem at all, but a self inflicted wound caused by their own actions.
BBC.

Efforts to tackle tobacco smuggling have been hampered by a "farcical" lack of action by the government and its agencies, a committee of MPs has said.
The number of illicit cigarettes smoked in the UK rose by 49% to a billion in 2012, suggesting a reduction in enforcement action, the MPs said.
The Commons home affairs select committee said the failure to deal with rogue products was "of grave concern".
HM Revenue and Customs said tackling tobacco smuggling was "a priority".
The committee was particularly critical of the failure to fine a single firm for deliberately oversupplying cigarettes to high-risk markets in order for them to be smuggled back to the UK.
Taxpayers lose out on around £2bn in unpaid duty because of the illegal trade.

If the idiots in charge of us hadn't made the price of the things so expensive in the first place then smuggling them wouldn't be a lucrative activity by those who do it. If it didn't pay to do it, then they simply wouldn't bother and as for those who buy them, well it's clear they couldn't give a damn who supplies them as they look at the price from a man in a van and the state price in the shops and it's simply no contest. This is the lessons learned by the USA during prohibition, if people want something and its banned or priced artificially high then the criminals will come in and start selling it to the law abiding. Essentially the government have driven a lot of smokers into the hands of criminals and are now bitching that its costing them £2 billion in revenue.
The answers simple, drop the price and regain the revenue, however that's never going to happen as there are others out there who hate the idea that people smoke and it is they who at root have caused the loss in revenue and are not willing to compromise so want crooks arrested not realising that there are more out there to jump into the gap (and our prisons are full)
Anyway, this is definitely one to sit back and get the popcorn out as neither side will admit they made a mistake and the loss of revenue will continue to roll into the pockets of the criminal classes. That plus smokers are getting a bargain too and that's going to rub the noses of the anti-smoking brigade right into the mess of their own making.

Whatever happened to brightest and best?

Labour wrecked the university system we had in this country and generally have been a negating factor in education from without and within via the leftist leaning unions with their 'all must win' philosophies and emphasis on dragging all down to the lowest common denominator. They've even used left leaning think tanks to undermine the education system and make suggestions which frankly do not make sense if we wish our schools and universities to produce the best in educated pupils and scholars.
Telegraph.

Universities should drop their entry requirements for pupils from state comprehensives to prevent them missing out on sought-after degree courses, according to research published by the Department for Education.
Teenagers should be admitted to university with lower grades than peers from the private sector to close the gap between state and fee-paying schools, it was claimed.
The study, by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Warwick University, said performance in GCSEs had the biggest bearing on pupils’ chances of gaining good A-levels and getting in to top universities.
Millions of pounds spent by universities each year to “widen participation” in higher education should be focused on pupils aged 14-to-16 to push them towards degree courses, it said.
But the research warned that the sheer gulf in standards between comprehensives and academically-selective state or private schools was so vast that more drastic measures were needed.

So rather than tackle the real problem of failing state schools the leftard solution is to reduce the entry requirements for failing schools at top universities.
Truly idiotic is it not?
It does not seem to have occurred to anyone making this report (or perhaps it has and it's all part of the plan) that allowing more poorly educated pupils into university doesn't help them, the university, nor the ones who've really earned a place there. If you go in with a lower standard you've got to be brought up to the required standard for one thing and so several will find themselves dropping out because they cannot cope with the far more rigorous requirements that universities need in order to get a degree in a subject that actually means something.
Education has been wrecked by the so called progressives in this country who demanded an everyone wins formulae to make the system look like year on year things were getting better despite the obvious reality that things weren't and we were producing an underclass to whom reading and basic maths was a foreign concept. It was then taken further to try and force higher education to expand and take on pupils who were manifestly ill equipped to cope with the rigours required in studying at that level.
So now we come to another biggie, lower your standards to let the ill educated in so all can win prizes...
You'd struggle to make it up wouldn't you?

Aiding the recovery

Only an utter lunatic, leftard or EUphile will believe that picking peoples pockets by way of taxation will aid the recovery. By taking more away from us they believe the government will assist growth by spending it on projects they believe will be popular.
Mail.

Brussels has infuriated ministers with a provocative series of proposals to boost economic growth in Britain – including higher taxes, new levies on expensive homes, and more free childcare.
The European Commission acknowledged the UK economy had roared back to life over the past year, but warned of ‘imbalances’ that required action from the Treasury.
In an assessment of the state of the main EU economies, the Commission identified ‘risks in the housing sector’ as a problem for the UK and backed calls from other international organisations for the state’s Help to Buy scheme to be reined in.

Considering that the UK's recovery even if a lot of us haven't noticed is racing away from our EU rivals you'd almost suspect that the EU was trying to trip us up to help said rivals regain some ground. It's the typical solution of the leftards though, the magic money tree economics that caused the recession to be even worse than it actually had to be by pumping masses of cash via quantitative easing into the economy only to cause problems with inflation and see no measurable results by the use of it either, other than saddling the taxpayer with enough debt to cause our great grandchildren to be in hock up to their eyeballs.
The UK electors rejected EU meddling in the last election even if the biggest winner was the can't be arsed to vote party. You'd suspect they'd try to keep their heads down for a while, well you might, but the hubris of those idiots knows no bounds. As far as they are concerned, they know best and the rest of us have to simply do as they say, or that's the plan and always has been...

The idiocy of the easily offended

The are those out there who are easily offended, they are the type who can get a program suspended with one complaint, cause major offence to others by being offended in their name, even find offence where there essentially is none. They tend to be self loathing types who look for problems and issues where there are none and who seek the glare of publicity for their fifteen minutes of fame to highlight an 'issue' which essentially isn't...
Telegraph.

Customers say the £3 St George's Cross, with the word "England" on the red cross looks like the hoods worn by the racist US organisation
Supermarket Asda has defended a "wearable England flag" it has launched for the World Cup after claims it resembles a Ku Klux Klan outfit.
The £3 St George's Cross, with the word "England" on the red cross, features a hood which Asda said was to allow fans to wear it and stay dry despite the unpredictable British weather.
But some fans took to Twitter to point out what they believe were similarities with the hoods worn by the racist US organisation, also known by its initials "KKK".
One user called Kieran posted a picture of himself at his @KieranCPhoto account, writing: "Asda are selling wearable England flags, they look dodgy to say the least ..."
Another user called Simon replied on his @HungryHatter account: "'ENGLAND RULES OKKK' Honestly, do Asda simply not bother to see how these things look when worn? *sigh*"

As the KKK aren't an English organisation, nor do they have much if any support in England clearly this is a case of morons with too much time on their hands. Nor as far as I can tell do the hoodie flags cover the face and have eye holes in them as the KKK outfits do.

England fan

KKK member

Rather easy to spot the difference you might think.
I'm rather surprised that local witches and wizards haven't come out of the woodwork to complain about associating to their beliefs by wearing a pointy hat, nor anyone who wore a dunces cap either complaining about the memories invoked either come to that.
I suppose you could even get complaints about the Guatemalan cucurucho garb being mocked if you really want to get down to some serious being offended.

Cucurucho style

You see its only a flag, not an outfit and not meant to offend anyone, though the easily offended will no doubt continue to believe that anyone who drapes themselves with the flag of St George is a racist (closet or otherwise) simply because their self loathing will not allow them to do anything else.
It's one of those things where if you go looking for something long enough and hard enough, you'll find it, even if no one else save a few of your fellow morons can see it or wants to see it.

One in a million

Language and mores change over the years and what was acceptable in the past is no longer acceptable now. That's not to say that the likes of the current round of sex cases from forty years ago being dredged up by the police are innocent, but, at the time it was an accepted attitude for the 'glitterati' to behave with their adoring fans. Being basically mobbed by fans and taking advantage of them or your position whilst not exactly accepted, was ignored as just one of those things. people didn't complain unless it was gross or extreme and there were so many blind eyes around that I'm surprised we weren't walking into lampposts far more often.
Yet even now, people try to apply the morals and rules of today on what was said or done in the past and as ever in a politically correct society, breach the rules of today by broadcasting something said over eighty years ago can have consequences...
Telegraph.

The BBC was facing criticsm last night after it forced a radio presenter to resign after he unwittingly played a song containing a deeply offensive racist slur.
David Lowe, a veteran radio broadcaster, played a song on his show which, unbeknown to him, contained a phrase using the N-word.
When a listener complained Mr Lowe offered either to apologise on air or resign. His BBC managers initially said he would have to resign, but after the affair threatened to become public the corporation underwent a sudden about turn and has now stated he can have his job back.
However the broadcaster said he had been left so stressed by the BBC’s attitude that he no longer feels well enough to continue working.

No, they didn't sack him, they were prepared to accept his resignation, but the whole procedure seems to have left the guy with a stress related incident for playing something that was originally recorded in 1932. One person complained saying they were deeply offended and the whole politically correct procedure goes into overdrive and leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. A quiet word of don't play that again would have sufficed, instead it took the fact that the matter was about to become public to make the BBC do an about face and tell the guy that he didn't need to resign when they'd been more than willing to let him and brush the matter under the politically correct carpet.
We should never judge the past by modern standards, they thought differently, acted differently and what might have been acceptable then for all it is not acceptable now needs to be appreciated in context (and vice versa)
I believe Mr Lowe made an honest mistake, yet paid the price for a heavy handed enquiry into his actions. He didn't even need to apologise, though it might have mollified the horrified listener (though I suspect they are permanently horrified at anything politically incorrect) The record is as it is and considering what modern rap artists scream out when singing is rather mild. Still we can't have 'ol whitey' getting away with the N word now can we?
It's clearly reserved for the N people themselves...

No moral obligation

There are certain idiots out there who don't understand how taxation works, particularly with regards to the terms tax evasion and tax avoidance. The first is illegal, you have to pay the tax you legally owe, the second is perfectly legal and is pretty much what most successful companies do in structuring their businesses to run as efficiently as possible.
Mail.

Amazon paid just £4.2million in corporation tax last year despite record UK sales of £4.3billion – meaning it paid a nominal rate of just 0.1 per cent.
Margaret Hodge, Labour chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee branded the figures an ‘outrage’, and called on shoppers to boycott the firm.
She said: ‘Amazon should pay their fair share of tax. I no longer shop at Amazon, people should shop elsewhere.’
Mrs Hodge recalled a boycott of Starbucks two years ago, after it emerged the company paid just £8.6million in corporation tax in 14 years of trading in Britain.
The action prompted the coffee chain to offer to pay the taxman £20million over two years – a move that has not yet been repeated by Amazon.
But Mrs Hodge suggested the firm could be pushed into reviewing its tax bill, saying: ‘What we demonstrated with Starbucks is the power of the consumer voice.’

Amazon are being sensible here and following the rules, they are not really worried about a boycott that the idiot hodge is proposing because unlike Starbucks they don't cater to a small elite of customers. What Hodge is suggesting is that Amazon should hand its cash over and above what it legally owes to the government for the government to spend on what the government wants which is pretty much a byword for waste and inefficiency. Nor will changing the law on taxation work, the way Amazon do it is within EU rules, not UK ones and unless we leave the EU... but few politicians are suggesting that (mores the pity)
To my mind Amazon have a moral obligation (as do the rest of us) to minimise every penny we give to the government, they do not have a moral obligation to give them a penny more than absolutely necessary nor does bitching about it in the MSM make a difference to my mind. Yes they only pay 0.1% tax, I wish I could, but I'm not jealous or greedy, that's simply good business on their part and they are following the rules, rules that the government and the previous government of which Hodge was a part of agreed too.
Hodge should also consider the problem to the workers Amazon does employ in the UK if a boycott begins and Amazon goes under...

Straining credibility

The continued witch-hunt against Ukip goes on, with puff pieces in most MSM outlets trying to stick the knife in one way or another, although they are really straining credibility now. Accusations of racism, corruption, using actors in their adverts (like every other party) the list goes on.

Clearly racist

Mind you, there was a new one today which caught my eye and showed just how bloody stupid the complainer is...
Mail.

Ukip faced fresh accusations of double standards today amid claims Eastern Europeans have been hired to hand out flyers in its anti-immigration election campaign.
Latvians have been hired by a firm in Croydon to hand out flyers ahead of elections on May 22.
It follows revelations the party used an Irish actor in a poster about Brits missing out on jobs, as David Cameron today stepped up his attack on Ukip, accusing his rivals of not believing the country has a bright future.

Silly thing is, it would have been illegal to advertise to use UK only people to deliver the fliers and I very much doubt Ukip could (or would) ask to vet the staff that an agency would use. Tory MP Gavin Barwell who accused the party of hypocrisy I suspect knows this but chose to make a fool of himself in his quest to make a headline anyway.
You'd think by now the big three would have realised that this campaign of muckraking is having the opposite effect to the one they wanted it's actually rallying support to Ukip and putting people off voting for the big three. There's a sense of circling the wagons from Ukip supporters as well as a rush of support from unexpected quarters (the indigenous working class) who don't see what the odd-ball Ukip candidates as being racist or extremist at all as they live with the bloody problems that the candidates were describing.
There are hints of desperation coming through clearly from the main parties, they clearly are struggling with the concept that a very large minority of people do not like the EU and are being joined by many who simply do not like the mainstream parties and their out of touch policies and rhetoric at all. People are sick and tired of being told all is well when it clearly is not, those same people know just who is to blame as well, it isn't Ukip.

No you can't

David Cameron has promised he will make sure an EU referendum takes place according to the BBC, clearly a case of big words from a little man running scared of Ukip prior to the EU elections. With Ukip running high in the polls at the moment because of the elections coming up and being seen as a protest vote against the current coagulation by those who cannot bring themselves to vote for the Millipede's party Cameron has decided to promise something he cannot deliver unless he's the Prime Minister after the next General Election.
BBC.

David Cameron is to promise to "make sure" UK voters get a referendum on whether to leave the European Union.
Launching the Conservatives' campaign for the local elections taking place later this month, the prime minister will argue that this is a "fundamental principle" for his party.
Mr Cameron will say Labour "won't" deliver a referendum and UKIP "can't".
He will also argue that he has a record of "standing up" to Brussels over eurozone bailouts and EU budgets.
Councils in many parts of England will be holding polls on 22 May in England, the same day as elections for the European Parliament.
Mr Cameron, who is keen to prevent a surge in votes for UKIP - which campaigns for a withdrawal from the EU - will discuss the subject when he addresses Tory activists in the Midlands.

Weasel words as the next Parliament cannot be bound by the decisions of the previous one and currently Cameron is unlikely to be Prime Minister after the next election so this is an empty promise which looks good on paper but is essentially undeliverable unless he wins. Hence there is no 'will' make sure at all, simply a statement of what he 'might' do as we all know what a politicians promises are worth, particularly Cameron with regards to his beloved EU.
So running scared of Ukip are the establishment that amidst the smears there were some clues as to how the powers that be actually regard some of us...
Express.

UKIP voters need to be "educated" about the "lies" and "xenophobia" of Nigel Farage's party, Labour's former European Parliament leader has claimed.
Glyn Ford, who led the Labour group in Brussels from 1989 to 1993, believes pro-Europeans can "blunt" Mr Farage's victory in May's European election but only if they "reclaim" the EU issue.
His comments come in a special report written for left-wing think tank the Centre for Labour and Social Studies entitled "How can the European left deal with the threat posed by xenophobia?"
Speaking to Express.co.uk, Mr Ford was asked if he considered Mr Farage to be xenophobic.
"Yes, I do," he replied.
"He's not the worst, the nasty people are the ones who are trailing behind him."
He added: "Ukip are the BNP without the bother. They don't have a violent streak."
Mr Ford said he did not believe Ukip voters were xenophobic, but left-wing politicians such as himself "haven't been out campaigning".
"We haven't educated people as to what they are all about - Ukip voters need to be educated."

In other words people who vote Ukip are bigoted, ignorant or thick and they 'need' to be re-educated to vote socialist/mainstream because only the ones currently in control understand the real issues of why we should have our lives run by the unelected bureaucrats from Brussels.
Glynn Ford is a classic example of how the political classes think, they know best and the rest of us should put up and shut up. The EU and the establishment including the moronic egg throwing violent left absolutely hate the idea that people have their own minds and don't fit in with their cosy vision of a grey drab future for all but those in their comfy little club. The want to educate us to see their vision despite the fact that they despise us for having the power to vote them down (but not out of power unfortunately)
In the end I doubt Ukip can win an election, but they certainly can upset the apple cart to an extent that Cameron can make a promise he's unlikely to keep and Glynn Ford can tell us all that we need to be 'educated' because we don't share their vision of the future.

This is a revelation?

The Daily Mail has revealed that Labours £118 billion 'stealth' raid on the pension companies turned a once thriving business into one which could not sustain its promised outgoings and had to re-adapt to the market.Mail.

The devastating impact of Labour’s infamous raid on pensions can be laid bare today.
Official figures reveal that the tax grab has saved the Treasury – and cost workers – £118billion since 1997.
In one of his first decisions as chancellor, Gordon Brown scrapped tax relief on pension firms’ dividends.
The move is blamed for wrecking a once thriving industry and fuelling the closure of many final salary schemes.
Analysis by the Office for Budget Responsibility shows it has saved the Treasury almost £7billion a year – £2billion more than Mr Brown had expected.
The annual gain is expected to top £9.7billion this year with £117.9billion saved between 1997 and 2014.
The OBR quietly published the figures on its website this week.
Ros Altmann, a former Downing Street pension adviser, said Labour’s move marked ‘the beginning of the end of the gold standard pension that British workers could rely on from their boss’.
She added: ‘This is money that has come out of people’s pensions. It paved the way for the end of final salary schemes because it made them so much more expensive. They were suddenly unaffordable.’

Well it certainly wasn't news to me and I doubt it was news to anyone else who took an interest in Labours wrecking of the UK's economy by reckless spending and borrowing. Not that the present government have done anything to change this, although I rather suspect they now need that income to pay off Labours other debts. What happened was basically Labour saw spare cash and grabbed it, didn't care for the consequences as anyone who could afford one of those schemes obviously wasn't going to vote for them (probably) So being typically socialist they took from the rich and not so rich and squandered it on grandiose projects and wrecked the countries economy until at the end all was left was a note telling the next government that the money had run out.
Now they tell us that idiots out there might just vote them back in to form the next government. Truly some people must be utter morons.
The pensions industry has adapted of course, you can still get a reasonable deal if you shop around, but final pension schemes that would have kept many happy in their declining years have gone the journey save of course in the union dominated public services who use their muscle to keep the schemes they have at the expense of the taxpayer a sort of double whammy, thank you Labour.
This is one of the reasons I hate the left with a vengeance, they simply don't have a clue about economics, it's all take, take, take, spend, spend, spend and then leave someone else to clean up their mess whilst they bitch about the measures needed.
Yet people still vote for them, go figure...

And who invited them here?

Tony Blair has a tendency to tell us things we already know when he isn't off jaunting with his faux job of bringing peace to the Middle East (nice work if you can get it, a bit like painting the Forth Bridge) Apparently radical islam is spreading and they pose a danger to western civilisation, something others said for years and got branded bigots and racists for mentioning...
Express.

TONY Blair has said the West must focus on tackling religious extremism, and called for further involvement in Syria and Libya.
Failure to shake off the legacy of Iraq and "take sides" with moderates in the Middle East and beyond could mean the 21st century is dominated by conflict rather than peaceful co-operation, the former Prime Minister warned in a speech today.
Mr Blair described a global crisis with its roots in "a radicalised and politicised view of Islam, an ideology that distorts and warps Islam's true message".
He said: "The threat of this radical Islam is not abating. It is growing. It is spreading across the world.
"It is destabilising communities and even nations. It is undermining the possibility of peaceful co-existence in an era of globalisation.

Now these sentiments might sit well with liberal leftards who are now only just realising that there is a problem more due to the headlines rather than having to live amongst it, but it shows an utter naivety about actual islam and what drives it... as ever.
First off, no one in the U.K. (apart from certain politicians,  leftards and libtards) wants any involvement in Syria or Libya other than to stop the buggers coming here, what's happening there is none of our business, so long as it stays there. The problems we have with islam all stem from inviting it in and it was mostly Blair's Labour who did so in order to get votes.
Secondly, whilst there may be moderates in the Middle East, they have a tendency not to survive and do not like to be associated with us as that makes them a target to the radicals, leave them alone and hopefully we can simply let them get on with things as every attempt to deal with the problems we face by direct action has foundered on the fact that those who replace who we displace inevitably are worse.
Thirdly, islam's true message is what the radical are preaching, not the moderates and its spreading across the world because of enablers like Tony Blair and other leftard politicians who didn't realise the threat until it had set deep roots amongst us and started to tell them what they were going to do.
Peaceful co-existance with islam is impossible, look at any state where there is a majority or significant minority of muslims and generally you find trouble, either in the way of terrorism or outright aggressin against their non muslim neighbours, hell the quran even tells them how to deal with a conquered people from wiping them out to making them pay protection money.
Blair like most politicians seems to have an idealised version of islam that only exists in his head, the evidence itself from those who live near or amongst them tells a far different story as to how peaceful and tolerant actual islam is... which is not at all.