A Christian woman has lost an internal appeal at British Airways for her right to wear a small crucifix.
BA has a policy of not allowing jewelery or religious symbols for its uniformed staff but does not extend this rule to Sikhs who are allowed to wear turbans or to muslims who are allowed to wear bangles and a headscarf.
The crucifix that the woman wears is the size of a 5 pence piece.
DEFRA, the incompetent British government department that looks after the environment and rural affairs in England, spent £170m on consultants last year.
Some of these consultants were no doubt responsible for overseeing the farcical farm subsidy scheme which has been bankrupting English farmers and has landed the British government with massive fines from the European Federation.
While all this money has been wasted on consultants, DEFRA has been making hundreds of people redundant and has been ordered to cut its budget by £200m next year, partly to make up for the fines.
The minister in charge of DEFRA is good old David Milliband who has probably never dirtied his shoes on a farm in his life and who New Labour flunky, Matthew Taylor, held up as a shining example of responsible blogging. Has the Milliblog got details of these consultants which we, the taxpayer, have paid for? No. Does it contain an apology – or even an explanation – for the complete balls up of the farm subsidies which have put countless English farmers out of business? No. Milliband is, of course, still in Nairobi at the expense of the taxpayer coming up with new ways to tax us to prevent global warming that isn’t actually happening.
Sikh’s from all over the country have travelled to North Britain to hold a vigil to call for peace and tolerance.
What motivated this gathering was the racially motivated attack on a 15 year old Sikh boy in which his hair was cut off – something deeply offensive to Sikhs.
What happened to the boy was wrong and, of course, these people are well within their rights to peacefully protest in response to what happened but why does it take something that offends their religion to motivate them? Why weren’t they jumping on a coach during the world cup earlier this year when English people – disabled people and children included – were being assaulted for being English?
Labour flunky, Matthew Taylor, has criticised bloggers for a crisis in politics by exposing shitty politicians, government stupidity and making unreasonable demands.
Taylor says that politics and the internet aren’t necessarily a bad partnership of course, citing Traitor Blair’s recent online interview and David Milliband (the cretinous minister in charge of DEFRA that has overseen mass bankruptcy of English farmers because of the incompetence of his department in paying farm subsidies) who has his own propaganda blog.
Political bloggers, Taylor says, are responsible for a “shrill discourse of demands” that dominates politics and specifically criticises those bloggers that see it as their job to expose venal, stupid and mendacious politicans.
It’s people like Matthew Taylor who spout this self-serving, holier-than-thou bullshit that convinces me that politicians are increasingly in need of a damn good virtual thrashing at every opportunity. We elect politicians to run the country for us. For us, not for them. Why shouldn’t I, or any other citizen, be allowed to expose incompetence, corruption, ineptitude or any other inappropriate behaviour by a public servant? Why shouldn’t I be allowed to question their motives and actions or demand that they act in the interests of me and my country rather than themselves or their party?
Taylor said “We have a citizenry which can be caricatured as being increasingly unwilling to be governed but not yet capable of self-government”. This attitude is what gave rise to the illiberal ID card scheme which will have the state tracking our every move because we can’t be trusted. It gives rise to undemocratic legislation that deprives us of our right to privacy, free speech, free assembly and many other rights and priveleges that we have had for centuries because we can’t be trusted.
We are all sick to death of being like Matthew Taylor telling us that we can’t be trusted to make our own decisions and that it’s wrong to criticise the government. A million people – 1/60th of the entire population of the UK – decended on London to tell the British government not to invade Iraq and they did it anyway. Over 400,000 people marched on Parliamen in protest at the hunting ban. Tens of thousands of people have signed petition after petition calling on the British government to take us out of the European Federation, to end health apartheid and change countless illiberal and undemocratic policies but do they listen? Do they buggery. Government knows best.
Blogging isn’t new – it’s merely a new way of doing something that’s been done for hundreds of years. Until recently, those of us who wanted to publically voice our opposition to the government would write in a newspaper or try and get on the radio or TV. The internet has provided a way – via blogs – to get your point across to an audience of millions.
Instead of slagging us off, people like Taylor should be looking to bloggers of all leanings for examples of what real people are thinking and what real people want. Labour’s precious pressure groups like the Muslim Council of Britain and the Countryside Alliance don’t reflect the views of the public, they exist only to perpetuate their own existence. Rather than seeing political bloggers as a threat, the British government should see them as a means of engaging with the public.
It’s not easy trying to describe just how contemptuous people like Taylor are without resorting to traditional Anglo-Saxon words so I’ll leave it to the expert.
Potty mouthed, haggis eating blogger, Devils Kitchen, is making a guest appearance on 18 Doughty Street on monday from 9pm to midnight.
Should be worth watching, if only to see him sweat trying to string two words together without resorting to traditional Anglo-Saxon vocabulary and/or obscene and biological insults.
My local authority, Telford & Wrekin Council, has taken it upon themselves to offer to borrow £20m from the British government to help bail out our local hospital.
The loan would be paid through increases in our council tax bills but the people of Telford & Wrekin haven’t even been consulted – the decision has been made (without even talking to the hospital, I might add) and announced in the local press. This is exactly how the decision was made to subsume Telford into the Birmingham, Black Country and Coventry City Region and to hand over much of the council’s executive functions to a private company jointly owned by the council, Advantage West Midlands and local businesses.
I already pay for the hospital through my national insurance contributions and income tax, why should I pay again throught my council tax?
If they go ahead with this plan then I will formally request a tax rebate from the Treasury.
I thought I’d upset someone at the Shropshire Star as it’s been weeks since any of my letters have been published and then this one from a couple of weeks ago was published …
Farmers worse off as British Citizens
Farmers in the UK, like farmers in the rest of the European Federation, receive farming subsidies.
In Scotland, they are paid out by a department of the Scottish Executive and in Wales they are paid by a department of the Welsh Assembly.
In England they are paid out by DEFRA, a department of the British government.
Scottish and Welsh farmers received their subsidies on time last year. In fact, in most cases they were early.
In England some farmers are still waiting for last years subsidies. Shropshire farmers whose farms straddle the English/Welsh border are the lucky ones.
They have had at least part of their subsidies, but the majority have had to remortgage their homes, take out loans or expensive overdrafts to pay wages and bills or they have simply gone bankrupt or sold up.
Because of the late payments, the European Federation has levied huge fines on the British government which continue to increase as time goes on.
No doubt this will please our neighbours over the border in Wales who will pay a share of the fines by way of a reduction in their annual subsidy from the English taxpayer via the Barnett Formula. The same is also true of the Scots – the SNP must be rubbing their hands together with the impending Scottish elections!
A devolved English government, however, would be directly accountable ONLY to English voters and even if they were no less likely to make such monumental cock-ups, they would certainly be much more determined to fix their mistakes than a government that doesn’t rely so heavily on English votes.
Stuart Parr
Telford
Four Christian Student Unions have been banned from universities for refusing to allow non-Christians to address their meetings and for not embracing gays and he-she’s.
The unions have been banned because their beliefs and constitutions don’t fit in with the multi-cultural “positive discrimintation” policies.
I wonder if the other faith unions allow all and sundry to join them and are forced to abandon their beliefs. Muslim unions for instance, what with homosexuality being even more of an abomination in Islam than it is in Christianity.
The Student Unions in question are taking legal action against the universities,
Please let me have your Twat of the Week nominations for this week.
For more details, click here.
New passports feature a “secure” RFID chip with all your details on them. The RFID chip allows the details on your passport to be read by a scanner without actually coming into contact with the passport.
The British government introduced the RFID chip for a couple of reasons – firstly, the American’s will only waive the visa requirements for the UK if we have these chips on our passports (although they don’t use them themselves) and secondly, these chips will also be incorporated on ID cards.
The Identity and Passport Service website says “The development of the National Identity Scheme builds on the changes being made to passports to provide a secure and straightforward way to safeguard personal identities from misuse.”
Interesting use of the word “secure” there because a Guardian investigation has discovered that the data on these “secure” RFID chips can be downloaded to a PC using a commercial scanner they bought for £174 off the internet.
How reassuring. They’ve spent £60m on the scheme so far, using technology that is going to be used in ID cards which the British government have told us is perfectly safe and secure yet a journalist can use a scanner he bought off the internet to read the “secure” chip. All the more reason to refuse to submit to Labour’s police state if you ask me.
NØ2ID – you know it makes sense.
Hazel Blears, the Labour Stazi Chairman, has confirmed that the “heavyweight successor” Bliar was referring to during the Queen’s Speech debate in the Ignorant Jock.
The Labour Stazi constitution says that the leadership succession has to be via a party ballot yet here we have the Prime Minister clearly stating that they won’t even be following their own internal democratic process – is it any wonder that democracy has taken a back seat in the British government’s drive to turn England into a police state?
Princess Tony’s website can be used to launch petitions. Amongst the petitions are these:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to scrap the proposed introduction of ID cards
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to agree to the setting up of an English Parliament
The website says they won’t allow anything party political but the second one was proposed by the English Democrats.
A belated announcement for the newly-resurrected Twat of the Week award and a return of the usual suspects.
First we had the Ignorant Jock, Gordon Brown. Always a firm favourite for the Twat of the Week award and rarely fails to make the nominations.
Secondly the unelected Scottish Lord Chancellor of England and the Prime Ministers old chum, Charlie Falconer.
Thirdly was Mrs Sane’s nomination (she’ll be upset nobody voted for him) – “that bloke with the really annoying eyebrows”, the Scottish Transport Secretary for England, Alistair Darling.
And finally, what Twat of the Week award could fail to include the treacherous war criminal himself, Prime Minister Anthony Charles Lynton Bliar?
The unanimous winner was, of course, the Tartan Taxman. BNP supporters and haters alike were united in wondering “what the f**k have race hate laws got to do with the Treasury?” Just because a judge finds the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, not guilty of racial hatred for criticising a religion doesn’t mean the law has to be changed, even if it means that bigots like Griffin would be taken off the streets. He broke no law, he is free to criticise who and what he likes – it’s called free speech.
Gordon Brown, you are the thoroughly deserving recipient of this weeks Twat of the Week award.
The Queen’s Speech is a bit of a sad affair. The speech has become such a highly politicised piece of propaganda that it’s become an embarassment. The British government should tell the Queen what they are going to do and she should write her own speech otherwise she just becomes a political tool.
Anyway, what’s in it? Grand gestures and more legislation to cover up the fact that existing powers under existing legislation aren’t being used.
There’s more but most of them are just pointless spin. These were the ones that were worth a mention.
Mrs Sane phoned me at work yesterday to tell me that something in the upstairs bathroom was leaking. Again.
When I got home from work, the ceiling in the downstairs bathroom was soaking and water was dripping from the light fittings. Generally not a good sign so I fired up the laptop and Googled for a plumber.
The first one I phoned went straight to voicemail, the second one was too busy and then I spotted a name I recognised. I phoned my mum and sister to find out why I recognised the name and it turns out I went to school with his daughter so I gave him a call, dropped the fact that I went to school with his daughter into the conversation and booked him to come out this morning.
He turned up bang on time at 8.30 this morning, spent a couple of hours taking the bath panel off, finding out what was wrong and changing the pipe from the cold water tap and charged me … £40. Bargain.
The Home Office has settled out of court with 198 jailed drug addicts for breaching their human rights.
What terrible act of torture and punishment was inflicted on them? They weren’t allowed to take drugs in prison and going cold turkey as a result was tantamount to torture.
According to a book called the “Prisons Handbook”, 643 drug addicts were responsible for 70,000 offences in just 3 months.
The British government has pledged £28m of taxpayers money on treatments for drug addicts in prison.
And here was me thinking that people were sent to prison for punishment.
It’s looking increasingly likely that the lung cancer drug Tarceva will not be made available in England.
The drug is widely available in North Britain but NICE considers the drugs not to be an effective use of taxpayers money. Money isn’t such an issue for our neighbours north of the border as it is the multi-billion pound subsidy paid by English taxpayers that means they can afford expensive medical treatments.
The SNP have tabled an amendment to this years Queen’s Speech to pledge to publish an exit strategy from Iraq.
They are using a Liberal amendment from 80 years ago as precedent when an amendment was proposed to withdraw from Iraq which was then known as Mesopotamia. Unfortunately, the decision on the amendment is down to the Speaker of the House … who’s North British … and a Labour MP. So that’s going to happen then.
The British Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, has compared climate sceptics – people who say that global warming isn’t happening – to people who support Islamic terrorism and says they shouldn’t be allowed access to the media.
Beckett is obviously ignorant of the facts – the average temperature of the earth rose two degrees celsius from the late 1700’s to 1940 and has been dropping since then. Climatge change is being used as an excuse to raise taxes and give Labour something to have credentials on in time for the next election.
