Another petition on the PM’s website worth signing: We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Respect our Bill of Rights 1689.

Our Government should recognise that all EU/EC/EEC ( etc ) law, regulation, guidance and acts are illegal and contrary to Our Bill of Rights 1689, the basis of Common Law.

Quote – “And I do declare that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm”. – End Quote

No article in the Bill of Rights can be repealed, despite Her Majesty’s signatures to the contrary. Its decrees are supreme and override all other law, regulation and acts.

We respectfully request Her Majesty’s Government to repeal, reverse and nullify any and all EU ( etc ) law, regulation, guidance and acts within 30 days of this petitions’ closing date.

This will be of particular interest to the Metric Martyrs who used the Bill of Rights in their defence against a prosecution under European laws for selling fruit and veg in pounds and ounces.

Just a quick update on my bid to get blocked by the Chinese government.

After about 8 hours I still hadn’t been blocked but I checked every hour or so and I can confirm that Wonko’s World was blocked after 12 hours.

The British government might be a bunch of illberal tossers but the Chinese government puts them to shame.

MP’s have voted to abolish the Lords and replace the upper house with an elected chamber.

This is bad for democracy, don’t be blinded by the “voting means it’s democratic” argument.

Before Labour “reformed” the House of Lords it was completely hereditary.  The political balance of the upper house was random.  Ok, it had a general leaning towards the Tories because rich aristocrats tend to be Conservatives.  However, none of that was set in stone – the political make-up of the House of Lords was decided entirely by an accident of birth.

Changing the upper house to a fully elected house is going to ensure that the House of Lords is dominated by the same party as the House of Commons.  Having proportional representation isn’t going to make enough of a difference – it won’t convince people to vote for a different party and PR isn’t going to make that much difference to the number of seats gained by each party.

There’s another issue too.  The House of Lords doesn’t revise devolved legislation so how is PR going to work?  Will the vote only be proportional to population or will it also be proportional to the amount of involvement in the democratic process that the House of Lords has?  England comprises 85% of the population of the UK and 80% of the work that the British government does only affects England so why should the vote of a Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish person be equal to the vote of an English person?  The House of Lords doesn’t have any involvement with the majority of decision-making outside England.  If you give equal weighting to relevance and population, about 90% of the vote should go to England alone based on population, English-only matters and a pro-rated share of British matters.  In fact, my estimate of 90% is erring on the safe side – I’d need more statistics to come up with a more accurate estimate.

The solution is a simple one – roll back Labour’s “reforms” which allowed them to appoint themselves a majority and politicise the upper house and restore the previous hereditary system.

This, of course, leaves you with another problem – unelected Lords over-ruling elected MP’s.  There is a solution in place in the Parliament Act which allows the British government to over-rule the Lords when they reject a bill 3 times in one session.  The Parliament Act has been used many times – more by Labour in the last 10 years than in a whole century of previous administrations – but it is flawed in itself.  If the Lords are so convinced that a piece of legislation should be blocked that they are prepared to block it 3 times in one session of parliament then there is obviously a major issue surrounding it and to allow the Commons to over-rule the Lords and ignore their concerns is equally wrong.

There is a way to make the House of Lords entirely hereditary and democratic.  All that is needed is to amend the Parliament Act so that in the event of an irreconcilable difference between both houses, the matter is put to a binding public referendum.  If the two groups of people charged with running the country for us can’t agree on an issue then the decision should be made by us.

Thunder Dragon posts about China’s latest crackdown on internet use and links to an interesting site – the Great Firewall of China.

Interestingly, my own rantings and ravings are not blocked in China despite my previous swipes at the Chinese government for the illegal occupation of Tibet, threats against Taiwan and their supression of the internet and free speech.

So, I’m going to do a little test and see how quickly I can get my blog blocked by the Chinese government.  Please leave your predictions in the comments as to how long it will take to get blocked.

I disagree with the illegal occupation of Tibet and the illegitimate threats to Taiwanese sovereignty.  I don’t like the Chinese government and I think it’s about time the Chinese people realised that there are a billion of them and in the face of a mass uprising, the authorities would stand about as much chance as a ghost’s fart in a force ten gale of stopping them.

Telford & Wrekin Council has decided to put up council tax by only 2.9% this year.

Fantastic.  The only problem is that it leaves the budget £2.3m short so they’re topping the budget up out of the borough’s cash reserves.  The £2.3m represents a third of the reserves and the amount of cash needed to fulfil the council’s promises is actually more than 8% higher than last year.  This means that the only way to sustain the level of spending they’re promising for this year is to bump up council tax by double-figures.  The alternative is to cut services or raid the reserves again.

Now, I have been accused of cynicism in the past so it may be unfair to suggest that this is the action of an increasingly desperate Labour council that has recently lost its majority to a local residents group in an election year.  It might also be unfair to suggest that the unsustainably low council tax demand is a thinly-veiled attempt to trick residents into voting Labour again in May with the added bonus that if the Tories win as expected they’ll inherit a bankrupt local authority and will have no choice but to cut services and investment.

Of course, you’d have to be a real cynic to think that they’d do such a thing.  Again.

I’ve got a Telewest set-top box in my house – well, it’s called Virgin now but that’s irrelevant – and at midnight last night I lost Sky One and all the other Sky channels thanks to Sky trying to take the piss.

Sky tried to almost double the price of its non-premium channels to Virgin saying that they’ve increased in value.  Virgin have quite rightly refused to be held to ransom saying that they couldn’t absorb the extra cost and would have to pass it on to customers.  Lets not forget that, depite the name change, the company is still ntl:Telewest and both those companies went through bankruptcy and financial restructuring before they merged.  They aren’t a cash rich company and they still have crippling debts.

Anyway, along comes the greedy crooked Australian owner of Sky, Rupert Murdoch, and desides the best way to stifle the opposition and keep Sky’s domination of the home entertainment market is to overprice the Sky channels so that they are either too expensive for Virgin to sell their TV service competitively or that they will be withdrawn and customers will flock over to Sky.

Well unlucky Murdoch, I don’t think your plan will work.  Firstly, what is on Sky One that can’t be got elsewhere?  The Simpsons and Futurama?  They’re on Channel 4 – admittedly not the latest episodes and not in the same quantity but as an avid Simpsons and Futurama fan I can tell you that unless there is a new series I see a new episode on Sky One maybe once every 3 months.  Lost and 24?  Never watched either of them and all the people I know who are fans of Lost and 24 downloaded episodes off the internet when the UK was a series behind the US and will do the same now.

What are Sky doing to the advertising value of their channels now?  Virgin has 3.3m cable TV subscribers, all of which had access to Sky channels until last night.  BSkyB has 7.7m customers – a third of its audience has disappeared overnight.  Lets see your advertising reps put a positive spin on that one Rupert.  Will Sky be able to afford the next series of Lost and/or 24 with the loss of income from Virgin and the reduction in advertising revenue that will follow from the channels being pulled from Virgin?

If you’re on Freeview and laughing because you don’t pay a subscription and still receive a handful of Sky channels then your schadenfreude will come back to haunt you because guess what – Sky are pulling their channels from Freeview in the next couple of months too.  One industry organisation estimates that there are 5.8m Freeview viewers and Freeview itself (which is part-owned by Sky) reckons that 10m set-top boxes have been sold since it took over digital terrestrial broadcasting when ITV Digital went bump.

So, taking into account Virgin and Freeview customers who will no longer be able to receive Sky channels, Sky is losing over 50% of its audience for its own channels.

There’s another angle to look at as well.  Virgin Media, through Telewest, owns Flextech.  Flextech owns Bravo and Trouble and half-owns the UKTV family of channels with the BBC.  UKTV includes UK Gold, Living, UK History, etc.  These are some of the most popular channels in the UK, along with the BBC channels and Sky channels.  If Virgin were to do the same thing to Sky then things could get interesting.

Anyway, back to the title of this post – I just wanted to take this opportunity to say “up yours Murdoch”.  I will stay with Virgin Media and you can shove your crappy satellite TV service up your arse.  I don’t need a phone line to “go interactive” and I don’t need to buy an expensive set-top box to have a PVR service.  In fact, I don’t have to buy a set-top box at all – Virgin provide it and replace it at their own cost if it’s faulty.  I also get to have cable broadband down the same cable into my house whereas Sky broadband customers have to use antiquated, inferior BT copper wires.  Cable broadband is, of course, faster and more reliable than ADSL.  When my mobile phone contract is up I also have the opportunity to take out a cheap mobile phone package and get my internet, TV, landline and mobile phone all on one bill with even bigger discounts for having all four services.  But most importantly I won’t be lining your grubby pockets and for that I am quite prepared to forego a couple of Sky channels.