I arrived home from work this evening to find a letter from the NHS.
This letter was informing me that unless I opt out by the 31st of May, the NHS will create a “summary care record” in their spangly new multi-billion pound database. The pitch informs me that in the first instance only details of any allergies, bad reactions to medicines and any medication I’m currently on will be included but “other important information such as serious illnesses, long term conditions and/or test results” will be added to the record.
Now I don’t have a problem with the whole NHS knowing that I have an allergy to penicillin, nor do I have a problem with them knowing that I have an inhaler for asthma. In fact, not only don’t I have a problem with it, I positively welcome that information being available to anyone in the NHS that needs it because if I was taken into hospital for some reason and was unable to speak for myself, it’s important that the medical staff know that I have asthma and that I have an allergy to penicillin.
It makes sense that a serious illness should be on the record but if I’m knocked unconscious and taken to hospital, do they need to know that I have arthritis? If I’d been to the doctors and had a routine blood test, would they need to know? I don’t think they do and I’m not prepared to give the NHS or any other agency that plugs into the database in the future (and there is very little doubt in my mind that this database will be added to, shared and linked into other databases in the future) permission to record any medical details they see fit about me in a database that’s available to tens of thousands of people in the NHS and beyond.
There is no way to control the amount of information that they record in the “summary care record” – you either agree to nothing or you agree to whatever they decide to put on there and whilst you can view your own record any time you want, you can’t remove anything from it. If it was possible to choose what type of information was recorded on the “summary care record” I would happily agree to it but as I’m not allowed any control over what goes on it and where it goes I’m going to opt out.
A year and a half ago I wrote about English PCTs weighing and measuring children and sending letters to parents telling them if their child is classed as obese on the fundamentally flawed BMI chart.
Back then I said:
The parents getting the “very overweight” letter will presumably put their child on a diet and the parents getting the “underweight” letter will presumably start trying to fatten their kids up. Both sets of parents, you would hope, will be fretting over the health of their child.
But what if the BMI is wrong and the child isn’t obese or underweight but is a perfectly healthy child that simply has a large or small frame?
Too much faith is put in statistics and arbitrary scales and targets and not enough in common sense.
Mrs Sane showed me an article in Reveal magazine today about a woman whose daughter was weighed and measured and then a letter was sent to her to tell her that her daughter was obese. She isn’t obese, she’s normal and one of four children, none of which have problems with their weight. But because she was 1lb over the “normal” weight for an “average” child with an “average” build her mother got a letter telling her her daughter was obese and therefore at increased risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, type two diabetes and cancer.
Luckily for the young girl in question – who, from the photos, looks perfectly healthy – her mother didn’t believe a word of it and has kicked off instead. But like I said a year and a half ago, what about the parents that get the letter and inappropriately start to fatten up their child or put them on a diet?
It’s time to do away the BMI scale and start using some common sense before we end up with a generation of children pushed into an obsession with weight and body image by British government propaganda.
Posted in Health by: wonkotsane 2 Comments Tags: BMI, Common Sense wonkotsane was surprisingly unsurprised when he wrote this post
Mark Pritchard, the Tory MP for Telford, has made a cryptic announcement on his website:
Under Parliamentary rules governing the pre-election period, this website will not be updated from 1st January 2010 until the General Election.
What rules say that a sitting MP can’t update their official website before an election has been called? I’m not aware of any but I am aware of new rules on election expenses during a “long election campaign” which are the rules that I suspect he is misleadingly referring to. These rules cover the 6 month period prior to an election and place strict limits on the amount of money that can be spent on an election campaign. His website would, of course, be included as election expenditure which would limit the amount of money he can spend on leaflets, public meetings and driving tanks up the wrekin.
If those are the rules he’s referring to then I’m sure his constituents would prefer that he was spending money telling them what he’s doing for them rather than saving up a few quid for leaflets.
Yesterday I got a call from Mrs Sane who was out on the road asking me to phone the police for her and tell them that some clever person had lobbed a traffic cone off an island onto the dual carriageway below and that just after the cone was a broken down and the two were causing a danger.
I phoned West Mercia police and asked to be put through to the control room at Telford and they duly put me through to the communications centre in Worcester. I explained which dual carriageway it was (the A442) in Telford and which interchange had the problem.
“Would you say it was Shifnal to Telford or Shifnal to Bridgnorth?” Completely different bit of road, not a dual carriageway and miles away from where I said it was. I explained, yet again, where it was and that it was only a quarter of the way from the police station and that the local police will know exactly where I’m talking about.
“What’s nearby, so I can tell them?” Arrrrgh! I told him to trust me, just to put down what I had told him and the local police who, as I’d just mentioned, were only a quarter of a mile away, would know where I was talking about.
He finally accepted it and after a couple of minutes taking my home address and phone number and asking me if I wanted a reference number for the call I managed to get him off the phone. All in all it took me a good 10 minutes to report a dangerous obstruction on the main arterial route through a busy town at rush hour and all because it’s no longer possible to speak to your local police station thanks to pointless regionalisation of public services.
The MP for Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath in Scotland standing in front of a British flag talking telling us his latest plan to balls up the English education system.
Perverse.
And does No Mandate Brown mention the country he’s talking about once in his 30 minute election address speech? Of course not! But he does talk about:
Teaching in Britain
National pride in our education system
Our country
Some that have concluded that Britain should follow the Swedish system
Our national challenge
In every place where you would expect the word “England” he said “this country” or “the country” or, bizarrely, “our country”. What a wanker.
That’s right, he’s done it again. Despite a strong performance from Herman van Rumpy-Pumpy, El Gordo managed to maintain a convincing lead from early on in the voting and finished up with 62% of the vote in a head-to-head contest with the Emperor of the European Commission.
No Mandate Brown was nominated for using the death of his daughter for political advantage on the Piers Morgan show and that, combined with his general twattishness, seems to have secured the award.
Let’s get this straight right now – I do not support English Votes on English Laws. It’s an insult to our nation and a constitutional fudge that is doomed to failure.
It is, however, a recognition of more than a decade of institutional discrimination against England at the hands of the British establishment and the need for English affairs to be managed by English politicians elected by, and accountable to, the people of England. It will also inevitably lead to an English Parliament when the impracticality and inherent flaws in the system are shown up publicly.
To that end, I would encourage you to vote for the Power 2010 pledge on English Votes on English Laws. It is currently in 4th place but it’s still too close for comfort. Power 2010 and various other lobby groups associated with the Rowntree Trust will lobby every MP and PPC with the top 5 pledges as voted for by the public in the run-up to the election.
A week late (still no reminders from the person who said he was going to remind me!) and here is the Twat of the Week voting for the last fortnight …
The first candidate, as ever, is El Presidente himself, Gordon “5 Pints” McBrown who was nominated by email for using his dead child for politicking.
The second candidate is Herman Van Rumpy-Pumpy, the President of the European Empire, for being an “Arrogant, unelected little mutant who acts like the heir to Caesar and Charlemagne. He looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book”.
A difficult choice between two very strong contestants this week. On one hand there’s a gurning, ineffectual Scottish europhile and on the other hand there’s a gurning, ineffectual Belgian europhile. It’s a tough one to call.
Since the scum-sucking-pig-gate affair kicked off, David Wright MP has been a bit quiet not only on the Twitter front but I’m told his office telephone has been going unanswered when people are ringing for comments.
My spies tell me that David has been hauled over the coals but don’t worry, the Brownshirts haven’t sent him for “rehabilitation”, he’s been seen alive and well in the Cock Hotel in Wellington (no, that’s not a pun or a Freudian Slip).
I was sitting in the Cock last night having a quiet drink with a couple of fellow rabble rousers (one of which was the road pricing campaigner, Peter Roberts, but more on that later) when in wandered David Wright wearing a fetching Liebour-red jumper. ”I’ll get these” he said to his comrades (they’ll probably end up on his expenses as sundry items or subsistence allowance) then they had a good laugh about scum-sucking-climate-gate.
I did try to get a question or two for him out of some scum sucking pigs on Twitter but they were too slow and I had to leave so I wandered over, warned him that there was a hacker under his table and left as he had a laugh about it.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. My MP (until May if he manages to hang on that long) David Wright has landed himself in a spot of bother with his inappropriate use of Twitter. It was inevitable really, he’s been at it for some time now.
There’s been a bit of a tweetmeme going on throughout the day with people explaining why they’ve never voted Tory/Labour using #ivenevervotedtory and #ivenevervotedlabour hashtags.
But David Wright, a junior minister in the Treasury for a few years now, had to take it too far with the comment “#ivenevervotedtory because you can put lipstick on a scum-sucking pig, but it’s still a scum-sucking pig. And cos they would ruin Britain”.
I noticed the tweet earlier but I was out with my kids and so I didn’t make anything of it but it’s ok because Tory Radio noticed it and took a screenshot (above) and then Iain Dale picked up on it.
David deleted the tweet an hour after it was posted and apologised but then, bizarrely, subsequently claimed that his Twitter account had been tinkered with! But here’s the funny thing: it’s exactly his normal style and exactly the sort of juvenile insult he comes out with aimed at the Tories all the time.
Georgey Porgey looks like he is holding in a big fart
Whether he looked like he was holding in a big fart I don’t know but is this an appropriate comment from an MP, let alone a Minister in the British government? Since December he’s drunk-tweeted me, insulted me and even tried to intimidate me to stop me from asking him questions about Labour laundering taxpayers money through the unions to get state funding for the party and whether he’s a union-sponsored MP (he refuses to tell say).
But rather than take it on the chin after apologising, he quickly changed his story and said his Twitter account had been hacked. Absolute nonsense if you ask me! Iain Dale is now calling for support for the Tory PPC for David’s Telford constituency, Tom Biggins who already has a big advantage over David Wright in that he’s not Labour and he’s not David Wright but David does have some support still in the sinkhole housing estates that make up the bulk of his constituency. I want David Wright out of office as much as the Tories do but I won’t be voting for Tom Biggins who’s been parachuted in from Whitchurch, still in the county but a good hours drive away. I will be voting for – and actively supporting – the UKIP candidate, Councillor Denis Allen who has lived in Telford for years, has been a councillor in Telford for years, has served as Mayor of Wellington in Telford and is currently Deputy Mayor of Telford & Wrekin Borough.
I have a great deal of respect for David Wright for being an early adopter of Twitter amongst MPs and the fact that despite a mutual loathing he still talks to me on Twitter, even if trying to get him to answer a question is like trying to nail jelly to the wall. But he really doesn’t help himself with his failure to understand what is and isn’t an acceptable thing to say and do as an MP. Every day he tweets he says something inappropriate and people have warned him about his tweeting activities but he plods on regardless writing gaffe after gaffe and inevitably has attracted the attentions of the rabid Tory Twitterati and bloggers, some of whom have regular slots on national news channels and columns in newspapers, who will doubtless hound him until he resigns or something more exciting comes along.
David will be desperate for a proper politician to do something daft in the next day or two to take the heat off him, let’s hope they’re all on their best behaviour at least until the end of the week!
The results of the second Twat of the Week vote of 2010 are in and it’s a predictable win for the One Eyed Wonder of Wankistan who, despite being nominated for no reason other reason than the fact that he’s Gordon Brown, still managed to secure 39% of the vote.
Thanks god this isn’t a general election!
Remember to get your nominations in for this week’s Twat of the Week. Either post your nomination, with a one-liner to explain why, in the comments or send your nomination by email.
John Terry – for cheating pale French on pale English
Gordon Brown for being Gordon Brown
David Cameron: Wussy toff of a political leader. He hasn’t done much to differentiate Tories from Labour and has no coherent or strong policies. Wants to emulate Obama instead of Thatcher
George Papandreou: Won’t leave the Euro, despite the pain his countrymen are feeling. Just another Euro-socialist waiting for trouble.
News of the World for trying to undermine the best England captain we had in a long time in world cup year.
The Sports Minister [John Sutcliffe] for putting pressure on the FA to sack the best captain we had in a long time, but said nothing when John Presscott shagged his secretary.
Prof Phil Jones for contributing to global warming by having his bum on fire.
A Populus poll conducted for BBC News has shown a marked increase in the number of people who don’t believe in the global warming climate change CO2 pollution religion.
Just 3 months ago 41% of people believed in man-made climate change, now only 26% believe. 38% believe that climate change is not proven to be man-made when 3 months ago only 32% held that opinion. Three months ago 8% of people thought man-made climate change was environmentalist propaganda, that figure has now risen to 10%.
Worryingly, the number of people who think climate change is not happening at all has gone up from 15% three months ago to 25%. I say worryingly because the climate is changing, just as it has for billions of years!
Overall, this is excellent news. The wheels are falling off the global warming wagon as more and more people see through the lies, dishonesty and propaganda.
Euthanasia and mercy killings are back in the news again, largely thanks to my favourite author, Terry Pratchett.
Terry Pratchett has a rare form of Alzheimers and wants to shuffle off the mortal coil on his own terms, in a chair in his garden listening to music taking an overdose of painkillers with alcohol. And why not?
He said he detests the idea that the government can choose whether you live or die but accepts that they have a duty to protect vulnerable people and so he proposes a tribunal that will decide on whether a person can choose to die or not.
My uncle died a few years ago after cruelly being kept alive for about a decade. He had Huntington’s which is superficially similar to alzheimers and parkinsons but it doesn’t cause dementia, it just renders the body useless. By the time my uncle died he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, couldn’t control his bladder or bowels. He was kept alive for years in this state – his body didn’t work but his mind did. He must have gone insane, there’s no way the human mind could cope.
If you kept an animal alive in that state you would probably be prosecuted by the RSPCA for animal cruelty so why is it not considered cruelty to do it to a human?
People should be allowed to make living wills while they are still of sound mind setting out the exact circumstances in which they would like to be put out of their misery. The law needs to be changed to allow people to control their own ultimate destiny and to allow friends and relatives to help them do so. The euthanasia tribunal idea is a good one and it should be coupled with a legal definition of quality of life, making it unequivocally clear when it is kinder to put someone down, to use the veterinary term.
My uncle shouldn’t have been kept alive for all those years with no quality of life and I would hope that someone would do the honourable thing and bump me off if ever I was in a similar position.
p.s. In case anyone is wondering, my dad didn’t get Huntingtons and it can’t skip a generation so I can’t get it.
I know I said voting for Twat of the Week would close tomorrow but I’ve got things to do in the morning and I’d probably forget.
The first Twat of the Week, as nominated and voted for by the public, is …
Andrew “There’s cruelty in Englishness” Marr!
Glaswegian Marr’s racial slur against the English in his Sunday morning politics programme last week has resulted in many complaints to the BBC and now the first Twat of the Week award of 2010.
Andrew Marr, you’re a racist, a second-rate presenter and – officially – a twat.
Andy “Anyone but England” Murray is looking worryingly close to winning his first ever grand slam in Australia.
If he wins, life will be unbearable for those of us who can’t stand the tantrum-throwing, anti-English, second rate Scottish tennis player.
The BBC will devote its entire schedule to the life and times of Andy Murray, the Sun will lead the campaign for him to be given a knighthood, No Mandate Brown will declare a “Murray Day” public holiday in England to celebrate.
But there is still hope. Using the power of positive thought we could influence the result. Send out positive thoughts of Andy Murray crashing to a humiliating defeat throughout the day and it could make the difference. It works for Uri Geller!
Alternatively, there’s always the tried and tested voodoo doll idea.
The Department for Transport issues guidelines on village speed limits for local authorities in England. It defines a village as a settlement with a minimum of 20 properties with a frontage on a 600m length of road. If it doesn’t meet those criteria it isn’t a village. Their guidelines also say that speed checks should be done and the speed limit should be set at or above the mean average speed.
The guidelines are, unusually for a British government department, quite sensible. They are the product of the distilled wisdom of experts from the DfT, motorist groups and the police. There’s no point classifying a settlement with 20 houses spread out over a 2 mile radius as a village because it clearly isn’t. And there is no point putting in a speed limit that tens of thousands of drivers think is too slow because it will be ignored and the police won’t be able to enforce it.
But this doesn’t seem to have occurred to the highways people at Shropshire Council who have gold plated the DfT’s guidelines and define a village as 20 houses in a settlement, regardless of whether they front onto the road or not and have a policy of applying a speed limit at or below the mean average speed. They also ignore completely the guidance put in on behalf of the police that says if the speed limit is being dropped below the mean average speed that engineering solutions must be put in place to force drivers to reduce their speed because the police won’t be able to police it.
Now all this is well and good as long as the council are honest about it but they aren’t. When objections are made to these spurious speed limit reductions, they are considered by the parish council for the “village” in question. A traffic officer for the council submits a report to councillors countering the objections but the traffic officers in Shropshire Council are lying to the councillors in their reports to cover up the fact that the “village” they are talking about isn’t actually a village – a pretty fundamental consideration when they are debating a proposal under the Village Speed Limit initiative.
Rather than repeat myself, here is the complaint I have sent tonight to one of the traffic officers who has been lying to councillors:
Dear Hugh,
I am writing to you as the responsible officer on a number of reports that have been given to councils in Shropshire considering objections to proposals to reduce speed limits in villages in the county.
In these reports you incorrectly assert that Shropshire Council’s definition of a village is the same as the Department for Transport’s definition of a village and in doing so you are misleading the councillors considering the objections and influencing their decision by providing a false statement.
The wording used is:
The Shropshire Council Village Speed Limits Policy and the Department for Transport Circular both share this same village definition of the number of houses on one or both sides of the road.
This is not correct. The DfT defines a village as a 600m stretch of road with 20 or more properties with a frontage on the road whereas Shropshire Council’s policy requires only 20 properties in the settlement. In the cases of Brockton, Leighton, Farley and Wall Under Haywood, for example, there are less than 20 properties with a frontage on the roads in question. There are 20 or more properties in the settlement with frontages on other roads that may or may not feed into the road which is being considered for a reduced speed limit but this does not comply with the DfT’s definition of a village.
Whether or not a settlement qualifies as a village is pretty fundamental when considering a speed limit reduction under the Village Speed Limit initiative. None of these settlements meet the DfT criteria of a village and should not be considered under the Village Speed Limit initiative. Because of your false statement, the objections relating to the proposals have not been considered fairly.
Please advise what procedures are in place for the reconsideration of objections made to the proposed speed limit reductions in light of the false information given to the councils involved and what steps will be taken to ensure that councillors are not lied to in this respect in future.
Andrew Marr, the Scottish presenter of the imaginatively titled Andrew Marr Show, used his BBC1 show today to racially abuse the English.
Whilst interviewing the actor, Mark Rylance, about his new lefty liberal hand wringing play about Englishness, Marr interrupted to say “There’s cruelty in the play but there’s cruelty in Englishness too”.
The following a transcript of the relevant part of the interview:
Rylance: I think it’s about the question of what is indigenous Englishness. I think it’s clearer to look at the Welsh and the Irish and the Scottish and grasp … maybe you can’t put words to it but there’s certain kind of things that are very much part of their nation’s character and it’s harder perhaps because of our imperial past and the nature of the history of England to be pleased or proud about being English. We used to have at the Globe a lot of difficulty trying to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday and St Georges Day without the National Front coming in you know?
Marr: Yeah
Rylance: And I remember Ken Livingstone and I think still Boris is trying to figure out how …
Marr: How you celebrate because part of this is very sort of dark and dysfunctional too isn’t it? And I mean just thinking about that ghastly story from Doncaster this week, I mean there is a certain amount of wildness and madness and cruelty. There’s cruelty in the play but there’s cruelty in Englishness too. It’s not just an easy thing to celebrate.
Can you imagine the outcry if a BBC presenter had said there’s cruelty in Scottishness or Polishness or Chineseness?
Why on earth should we allow ourselves to be racially abused by a second-rate Scottish TV presenter for the British Broadcasting Corporation? Well I for one won’t be – the following complaint has been made to the BBC regarding Andrew Marr’s racism and demanding a public apology.
On today’s Andrew Marr Show, Andrew Marr (a Scot) racially abused the English with the following comment:
“There’s cruelty in the play but there’s cruelty in Englishness too. It’s not just an easy thing to celebrate.”
Had any other nationality been described as cruel there would have been an instant apology on-air yet because it is the English he has made a racist comment about, no apology was made.
I demand an unreserved apology on-air from Andrew Marr on next week’s show for his racial slur.
The programme can be watched again on the BBC iPlayer here. Fast forward to about 24 minutes.
Google appears to have finally found some balls and has told the Chinese government that it is no longer willing to censor search results.
The announcement – and the associated threat to pull its operations out of China altogether – was prompted by the hacking of two Google email accounts used by Chinese human rights activists. Google hasn’t specifically pointed the finger at the Chinese authorities but that is obviously what they are implying.
One of the conditions on Google being allowed to operate inside China was that it would censor search results on behalf of the Chinese government. China restricts internet access severely and websites that they don’t approve of are blocked very quickly. I tested the response of the Chinese censors once by posting something about Tibet with a picture of the Tibetan flag here on Wonko’s World and then checked the Great Firewall of China website regularly which allows you to check if a website is accessible in China via proxies. This blog was blocked within hours.
At the time, Google was criticised heavily for caving in and meeting the demands of the Chinese censors. But I wonder now whether Google had a long term plan to establish itself in China, to become a dominant and recognisable brand in China as indispensible there as it is elsewhere around the world and then to start using that influence to try and end China’s censorship of the internet.
I would like to think that it was all part of a big plan but I guess we’ll never know. Either way, it’s good to see that Google has finally got some balls.
The Tory Speaker, John Bercow, has announced his intention to introduce legally binding quotas for “diversity” of candidates for political parties.
Under the rules, parties will be forced to have all black (not the rugby team), all asian, all women, etc. candidate lists to meet the quotas the fake-diversity obsessed British government forces on them. Under Bercow’s plan, parties will no longer be able to select candidates solely on merit, the selection of candidates will have to be centralised and the democratic votes of local branches will be subject to annulment by the national party if it messes up their quota.
If the electorate doesn’t vote for enough minority candidates to reflect the make-up of the population as a whole then that’s tough shit. If the branch members of political parties don’t vote for enough minority candidates to reflect the make-up of the population as a whole then that’s also tough shit. If this law comes into force it would encourage me not to vote for a minority quota candidate purely on principle.
Thank god Nigel Farage will be kicking this idiot out of Westminster at the next election!
Dave “the Ego” Camoron has got his mug plastered on billboards all over England inviting people to vote for change … by voting for the other of the two parties that share power between them. Some change.
No thanks Dave, I think I’ll vote for real change, not more of the same. New Labour or Blue Labour, what’s the difference?
The Tory MP, Eric Pickles, is saying on Twitter that No Mandate Brown has told the News of the World that he will stay on for a full term if Liebour is re-elected in this year’s general election.
So that’s 5 more reasons not to vote for Liebour when Bottler Brown eventually calls an election.
Just as well El Gordo stands as much chance as a ghost’s fart in a force 10 gale.
The British government has started making plans to off-load millions of swine flu vaccines it bought during the swine flu hysteria last year.
As expected, swine flu has proven to be less of a problem than seasonal flu and the third wave predicted by the “experts” and the pharmaceutical companies has failed to materialised.
There are now less than 5,000 in England with swine flu and only 360 deaths caused by swine flu were recorded in the UK. Seasonal flu kills about 4,000 a year.
All of the deaths could have been avoided if the British government had closed our borders before swine flu had hit these shores but No Mandate Brown saw it as an opportunity to look like a capable leader, the prime minister that saved us from certain death from a modern day plague.
When El Gordo sold off our gold reserves he announced the sale well in advance and depressed the market so badly that the price of gold halved by the time he sold it, losing the taxpayer billions. Let’s hope the same doesn’t happen with the swine flu vaccines.
Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, both former Ministers, have written an open letter to all Liebour MPs calling for a secret ballot on No Mandate Brown’s leadership of the party.
They say the party is “deeply divided” and that the question of McBroon’s leadership needs to be “sorted out once and for all”.
The Liebour Party is battling with crippling debts and is technically insolvent. It is facing regular revolts from the unions that are keeping them out of the bankruptcy courts and MPs are in open revolt. There are more unelected peers in the cabinet than there has ever been in history, making a mockery of Liebour’s claim to be the party of the working class man. Liebour was virtually wiped out at the EU election in June last year, coming in fourth place behind the Tories, UKIP and – embarassingly – the Lib Dims. The state of the economy would shame a third world finance minister and the Liebour propaganda machine just churns out meaningless drivel about “our message”, “shared values”, “fairness” and “getting on with the job” to mask the fact that they have absolutely no idea what to do next.
It remains to be seen whether Liebour MPs ditch El Gordo this close to an election. Not only does it show how weak and divided they are, but surely even the Liebour Party wouldn’t dare to impose yet another no mandate Prime Minister on us without an election? Has there ever been a case in our history where we’ve had three Prime Minister’s from the same party with only one election? Perhaps that’s their plan – to oust McBroon, call a snap election and try and stem their losses?
I have a feeling the One Eyed Wonder of Wankistan will call an early election and hope for a career-saving miracle rather than lose a ballot on his leadership but once the election is over, he will be gone and Peter Mandelson will flounce in to take his place. Mandelson has been hogging the limelight ever since he began his bizarre third stint in government and only yesterday he announced plans for a one-off Queen’s Jubilee bank holiday in England in 2010 despite the British Department for English Media, English Culture and English Sport being the ones running with it.
Mandelson’s leadership campaign started the minute he was brough back into McBroon’s cabinet of all the talentless.
On 10th December I sent a letter to my MP, David Wright, about the British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, vetoing the release of minutes of a 1997 cabinet meeting on devolution via WriteToThem.com. He didn’t reply but he’s just agreed on Twitter to reply to questions I’ve asked him on Twitter and to my letter so here it is and I’ll post his reply when he replies.
Dear David,
The British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, has vetoed the release of minutes of the 1997 cabinet meeting on devolution to Scotland, Wales and “the English Regions”.
This is only the second time that a ruling by the Information Commissioner to release information has been vetoed by the Home Secretary.
What was said in a meeting about devolution that was so dangerous that it can’t be made public? What deals were done to break up England and preserve the dominance of Scottish politicians?
I think we all need to know just how much of the current discrimination and Britification of England goes back to shady deals done in that cabinet meeting and what the ultimate objective is. Is the status quo of a neutered England in a Scottish-dominated union all that was intended or was the complete abolition of England ordained in 1997? The cabinet meeting was about long term policy for the union, I think we have a right to know exactly what the British have planned for us. I urge you to speak to your Home Secretary and ask him to rethink his decision to keep this information secret.
Stuart
I have to say that while I don’t rate him as a politician, he does make more of an effort on Twitter than most.
British Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, has said that he will use the Public Order Act to ban the Islam4UK protest in Wooton Bassett planned by Anjem Choudary. He said “The idea that anyone would stage this kind of demonstration in Wootton Bassett fills me with revulsion”.
Well yes, I’m sure it fills most people with revulsion but there’s this quaint concept in England called freedom of speech and even people like Anjem Choudary are entitled to it.
Let Choudary turn up with his mates and exercise their right to protest at our soldiers, just as long as everyone else who wants to stage a “counter protest” is allowed to exercise their right to protest at Choudary and his Islam4UK mates. I’m sure the BNP and EDL will be there, not to mention the families of soldiers and ordinary members of the public who will want to turn up and support our troops. The British government lets the violent fascists from Unite Against Fascism start riots at EDL protests so it’s only fair.
Choudary wants 500 muslim protesters carrying empty coffins in Wooton Bassett so the police won’t even have to bring their own body bags.
Posted in Health by: wonkotsane 
That’s right, he’s done it again. Despite a strong performance from Herman van Rumpy-Pumpy, El Gordo managed to maintain a convincing lead from early on in the voting and finished up with 62% of the vote in a head-to-head contest with the Emperor of the European Commission.
As expected, swine flu has proven to be less of a problem than seasonal flu and the third wave predicted by the “experts” and the pharmaceutical companies has failed to materialised.