Archive for August 2007

EU Light Bulb Protectionism

The EU is interfering again in the free market and is recommending that a tariff adding up to 66% onto the cost of energy-saving lightbulbs from China is retained for another year.

The tariff is to protect the four European energy-saving lightbulb manufacturers from cheap Chinese imports but only the German company, Osram, is asking for the tariff to be extended.  The Dutch firm, Philips, is asking for the tariff to be scrapped as it already makes lightbulbs in China and environmental groups are backing them up pointing out the duplicity of Federal Europe in pontificating on the use of energy-saving lightbulbs to cut energy consumption at the same time as they are artificially inflating the price of the bulbs.

We are a free-market capitalist society in England – if China can provide cheap lightbulbs then let them do so.  Socialist economic protectionism creates a false economy precariously balanced and in need of constant “tweaking” to keep it steady.  Not only this, but it is detrimental to the consumer who find themselves paying more for goods to subsidise unprofitable manufacturing cartels.

Cameron: “I don’t agree Britain would be better off by leaving the European Union”

David Cameron, leader of the “eurosceptic” Conservative Party, has answered questions from readers of the Shropshire Star.  One of the questions was as follows:

Can you explain why politicians of all major parties think it is a good thing for Britain to be a part of a federal Europe and continue to say it is not necessary to have a referendum for the voters to give their opinion?  Here is your chance to convince us.  If you set a firm date for a referendum as an election promise, you would become the next Prime Minister.

David Camoron’s response was: 

I don’t agree Britain would be better off by leaving the European Union.  Instead, we need to work within the EU to fight for change but on the question of referendums, I do want to see one on the EU Treaty because that’s what everyone was promised.  The Conservative Party is campaigning very hard on just this.  Other European leaders say the latest EU Treaty is a return of the constitution in all but name so whether or not he keeps the promise to hold the referendum is a real test for Gordon Brown.  It will show whether he means what he says when he talks about restoring trust in government, and involving people more in decisions.

So there you have it – the Conservative Party membership may be eurosceptic but the leadership isn’t and the leader of the party and prospective Prime Minister is a eurofederalist.  When I asked one of my Conservative friends (you know who you are) why he stays in the Conservative Party even though he is rabidly eurosceptic he told me that he thinks the best way to change the party is from the inside.  It is clear from Camoron’s comments that the Conservative Party is no longer eurosceptic and it is the party membership that put this eurofederalist, left wing cretin at the head of the party.  There is only one place that eurosceptic conservatives (small “c”) can turn if they truly believe that we are better of out of the EU and that is to the UK Independence Party.

Shropshire Star: Battle for fairness on matters of treatment

This letter was in last night’s Shropshire Star … 

Battle for fairness on matters of treatment

I must say that I became quite emotional when I heard that my constituent, Mrs Jeannie Evans, of Frankwell, had finally been allowed the vital drug Avastin which will save her life.

At first she was told that this would not be possible and so she approached me.

We found out that this drug is being given to Welsh patients who come to Shrewsbury for treatment but is not available for Shropshire people.  This outrageous situation had to be challenged.

The government has given huge powers to the Welsh Assembly, which they created, and they have different health guidelines to us in England.  This has led to the difference in the treatment between the two countries in what people can recieve in terms of treatment.

I was so angry about what was happening that I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister and demanded that he look into theis gross injustice which he has helped create, and sort it out so that citizens on both sides of the border are treated equally.

I contacted the local Primary Care Trust and I am very pleased that they, on appeal, finally decided to give my constituent the treatment she requires.

I will continue to fight this gross cross border injustice until my constituents get health care parity with the Welsh.  Until such time, if other constituents find themselves in a similar position they should please get in touch with my office.

Let me have the details and I will be pleased to look into the situation and do what I can to help.

Daniel Kawczynski
Shrewsbury

This is good news – I have written to the Shropshire Star before on this same subject when Herceptin was the drug being refused.  Finally, Daniel has realised what is happening and is taking steps to bring it to the attention of the general public but he still supports the ridiculous English Votes on English Matters proposal the Tories have cooked up rather than an English Parliament which is the only way to stop this kind of thing happening.

Daniel, if you read this then please do what is right for your constituents and support the Campaign for an English Parliament.

Aint local politics greeeat?

I love reading the letters page of my local rag and seeing which ones have been written by councillors but signed in their own names.

Take this for example:

[snip]
I would also like to respond to the comment in the Star from Cllr Eade of a “fast track regeneration” of Dawley.  May I respectively [sic] remind him that the regeneration partnership has been working hard for the last two and half [sic] years to lay the foundations.  I would advise him that now the fruits of that hard work begin to show he restrains from scoring cheap party political points.

Shaun Davies
Dawley

Sage advise from Councillor Davies of the Labour Party who were, of course, in power during the two and a half years to which he refers.

Belgium on verge of split, France to annexe Wallonia?

PJC Journal has a post on the apparently imminent break-up of Belgium and an article in Le Figaro calling on President Sarkozy of France to prepare for the annexation of Wallonia, the French speaking region of Belgium.

It’s no secret that Belgium has been on the rocks for a while.  Flanders has had an independence movement for a long time and the already tenuous union of four regions speaking different languages has been weak for years, partly due to cultural differences and partly due to money.

The Flemish region has been subsidising Wallonia for years and opposition to this state of affairs is increasing.  The threat of break-up is now so real that the King has summoned his Crown Council to try and resolve the problem.

What is now Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were once united as a single country but in the late 1500’s an 80 year war started which resulted in the Netherlands (including Luxembourg) gaining independence from Spain and Belgium remaining under Spanish rule.  Luxembourg subsequently split from the Netherlands when the Dutch Crown passed to a woman and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg passed to the Dutch Queen’s cousin.

The situation in Belgium is strangely similar to the situation in the UK.  Four “regions”, all of which have their own culture, history, heritage and language (Dutch, French, German, Flemish/English, Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic).  One of the “regions” (Flemish/England) subsidises the others but one of the subsidised regions (Flanders/Scotland) is full of resentment for its wealthier neighbour and wants independence.

It looks like it’s only a matter of time before Belgium – the multi-national, multi-cultural federation on which the EU is modelled – ceases to exist and with a bit of luck the EU and the UK will follow suit.

Electoral Commission appeals on UKIP verdict

The Electoral Commission is to appeal the ruling that UKIP should only pay back £18,481 of the £367,697 donations it recieved in good faith that later turned out to be unacceptable.

The largest part of the contested amount is a donation from Alan Brown, a retired bookmaker, who was taken off the electoral register without his knowledge for a 12 month period.  Another smaller part of the money is a donation was from a company in the Isle of Man which is considered to be a foreign donation under electoral law.

The Electoral Commission said “As it is the first time that the law on forfeiture of impermissible donations has been tested in court, we believe it is important to clarify the law in this area.”  The reason why it has never been tested before is because they didn’t take the Lib Dems or Tories to court over their recent illegal donations which were both far more substantial and taken in much more dubious circumstances but instead decided to pick on UKIP in what can only be a deliberate attempt to bankrupt the party.

The rules on accepting foreign donations were designed to stop parties from accepting large amounts of money from overseas and were brought in as a result of allegations of bribery and corruption against the “big three”, not UKIP or any of the other small parties.

BBC denies claims it is promoting Islam …

Britishness Day again

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a New Liebour puppet, has decided that there should be a National Britishness Day the day after Remembrance Sunday to promote Britishness and build a British identity.

The national holiday should ask people to give back to their community (whether they mean geographic or ethnic/religious they don’t say), celebrate local heroes and promote diversity.  The usual left wing apeasment bullshit you expect from Liebour and their champagne socialist stooges.

The same report says that a quarter of people want to live in an area where almost nobody is from a different ethnic background which is contrary to the British establishment’s policy of diluting the English identity so expect more new legislation to make us think right – perhaps a law requiring one in every five houses in England to be reserved for non-English people or compulsary Islamic studies for school kids.

Of course, our neighbours north of the border are having none of it – the Scottish Executive (which is in charge of bank holidays in Scotland) has said it won’t be observing the British national holiday but will be celebrating St Andrews Day instead.  The Scottish First Minister also says that the English should do more on St Georges Day.  Which would be great but it’s not going to happen while we’ve got an English-hating foreigner running our country.

So, like the Britishness lessons in schools and flying the British flag from public buildings, it’s only going to be the English that are having Britishness shoved down their throats.  Time is running out for England, it’s time to stop mincing words and start taking affirmative action to take our country back from the British.

Greek Tragedy

I’ve not read a newspaper or seen a telly for a week having been in a tent in a field for the duration but today I see that there are major fires all over Greece and that arson is suspected.

Several people have died in the fires, including firefighters.  Several arrests have been made for arson and a picture has been released showing two suspected arsonists.

But one thing is bugging me – there are fires on several islands which would imply that several co-ordinated arson attacks have taken place.  It is, of course, possible that the other fires were sparked by the original fire as the fires are big enough to be seen by satellites but it does seem to be a deliberate, co-ordinated attack.  If so, who did it?

I’m back

I’m back from my camping trip, normal service will resume shortly.

Thanks to Gareth for keeping an eye on things while I was away.

Going Camping!

Going camping … get it?

Press Release: AWM – Words are small comfort when there is very little to back them up

Press Release: AWM – Words are small comfort when there is very little to back them up

The West Midlands NO! Campaign is urging people not to be taken in by Advantage West Midlands’ self-congratulations over its response to the recent floods.

The £2m which AWM is claiming to be giving out in flood relief is money that, until recently, would have been in the hands of elected local authorities, not an unelected regional quango that is scrutinised by another unelected regional quango.

£250,000 of the £2m allocated is actually for a new attraction at the Severn Valley Railway and not flood relief, how much of the £2m will actually be spent on flood relief?

AWM claims to be offering practical assistance for businesses through its Business Link service and promoting tourism.

However, AWM recently withdrew its funding for the Heart of England Tourist Board which will cease trading at the end of the financial year as a result and they recently regionalised the local Business Link service resulting in such a poor service that the regional Business Link only receives as many phone calls as a single office used to.

Words are small comfort when there is very little to back them up.

Comments

MEP convicted of fraud

Ashley Mote, the former UKIP MEP who left to join a far-right European group as an independent, has been convicted of benefit fraud.

The MEP was claiming thousands in unemployment benefits between 1996 and 2002 but failed to notify the DWP of changes to his circumstances.  He was elected as an MEP in 2004 for UKIP but the party withdrew the whip later that year when he was accused of benefit fraud.  In 2005 he joined another group in the European Parliament and in 2007 he co-founded the “Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty” right-wing nationalist group.  In 2006, Ashley Mote was in talks with the English Democrats about joining their party but they evidently fell through.

Hat-tip: English Democrats

ID Card “FAQs and myths”

The Identity & Passport Service website has some “FAQs and myths” on its website about ID Cards and the National Identity Register.  The pages in question can be found at http://www.identitycards.gov.uk/faqs-and-myths.asp

Lets have a look at some of the “FAQs” and “myths”:

  • Who will be eligible to have an ID card?
    Anyone over the age of 16 and legally resident in the United Kingdom for at least three months will be eligible to have an ID card.
    • Eligible?  I think required is a more appropriate word to use here.
  • Will it be compulsory to have an ID card?
    Yes, it will eventually be compulsory to have an ID card once further legislation is approved by Parliament, but it will take some time before the scheme reaches this point.
    • Assuming they can get the technology, ID cards will be mandatory for anyone holding a passport by 2010.  Is less than two and a half years “some time”?
  • Will it be compulsory to carry a card?
    No. You will not have to carry a card, although you may find it simple and convenient to do so. The police have no new powers associated with the scheme and they will not be able to stop you and demand to see your card.
    • You won’t have to carry an ID card at first but once everyone has one it won’t be long until you do.  You may find it simple and convenient to do so because you’ll be required to produced it more and more often as time goes on.  The police don’t have the power to stop you and demand it yet but once everyone has one it won’t be long until they do.
  • Will information be given out without my consent?
    Private sector organisations will not be permitted to access any information on the National Identity Register (NIR) itself. However, in many circumstances, it is useful to be able to prove your identity to such organisations (e.g. when opening a bank account).
    • They will be able to confirm that information they have about you is correct.  This will help to prevent fraud?  If someone gets your basic personal details such as name, address and date of birth and steals your ID card they have all the details they need to commit fraud using your indentity.  Just like they do now with the added irritation of having to steal your ID card but the added bonus of banks being less stringent with their other checks.  Think it won’t happen?  When was the last time the name on your debit card was checked at the supermarket?
  • Therefore, the Identity & Passport Service (IPS) plans a service that will allow you to let a private sector organisation request a check of your identity details. This check will then be conducted by IPS against the information held on the NIR. However, such requests could only be made with your consent.
    • And there are no rogue traders out there who might lie about it …
  • The police and security and intelligence agencies may make checks without consent but only for the prevention and detection of serious crime. They could also find out where and when your card had been used, but again only in cases of serious crimes. (There are no new police powers associated with the scheme.)
    • Check the ID cards legislation, it’s not just the police and security services that can get access to the database without your consent.
  • An independent National Identity Scheme Commissioner will be appointed to oversee the scheme and report to Parliament. The Commissioner’s role will include ensuring that personal identity information is used only for the purposes set out under the scheme and that no unauthorised extra information is held on the NIR.
    • Independent … employed by the British government and sackable by the British government.
  • What are the aims of the scheme?
    The aims of the scheme are to:
    • help protect people from identity fraud and theft
      • You can change your account number or PIN, you can’t change your DNA.
    • strengthen our security and improve public confidence
      • The public don’t have confidence in it already and it’s not even in yet!
    • tackle illegal working and immigration abuse
      • Illegal immigrants don’t take any notice of the law, that’s why they’re illegal.
    • disrupt the use of false and multiple identities by organised criminals and those involved in terrorist activity
      • Funnily enough, terrorists and master criminals don’t take any notice of the law either.
    • ensure free public services are only used by those entitled to them
      • So it will be compulsary to have and produce an ID card.
    • enable easier and more convenient access to public services
      • Easier and more convenient to have to carry and produce an ID card than not having to carry and produce a card?
  • You say now that people wouldn’t have to carry these cards, but what’s to stop you or a future government changing their minds?
    The Identity Cards Act 2006 explicitly prohibits the Government from making it a requirement to carry a card. If a future Parliament wants to change this, it would have to pass further primary legislation.
    • No government can bind its successor.  In fact, there is nothing to stop this government from passing a law requiring you to carry a card.
  • Won’t the proposal lead to racial discrimination?
    […] The scheme will be open to everyone and treat everyone on an equal basis. It will also incorporate rules on the production of cards/identity checks that are consistent and do not single out particular groups.
    • Open to everyone.  That makes it sound compulsary, which it isn’t.
  • Will the Data Protection Act 1998 apply?
    Yes. Individuals registered on the National Identity Scheme will have subject access rights under the Data Protection Act 1998.
    • And what about the bit of the Data Protection Act that forbids personal data being “exported” outside of the EU which it will be when it’s shared with other countries?
  • How will ID cards protect us from the threat of terrorism?
    The National Identity Scheme will disrupt the use of false identities by terrorist organisations, for example in money laundering and organised crime. We know that terrorist suspects make use of false identities. The scheme would also be a useful tool in helping to maintain and disrupt the activities of terrorist networks.
    • No, it won’t prevent terrorism.  The British government has already admitted that ID cards and the ID database won’t prevent terrorism.
  • If the Government already has a lot of info on me, why do we need an id card?
    […]But what the Government does not have, and nor do you, is a fail proof system that can prove you really are who you say you are. The long established ways of linking us to our identity – a signature or a photograph – are no longer enough. ID cards will link your basic personal information to something uniquely yours – like the pattern of your iris, your face shape or your fingerprint.
    • And nor will they have a fail-proof way of proving who someone is.  DNA can’t be faked but iris patterns and finger prints can.

Shrewsbury Again

Apologies to those of you who have no interest in Shrewsbury Town or football in general but I just have to mention Shrewsbury’s second game of the season – Tuesday night’s game against Championship team Colchester which Shrewsbury won 1-0.  It was very nearly 1-1 in extra time but the goalkeeper managed to save a penalty kick.  Only down side is, he’s Scottish.  Never mind, even league 2 clubs have foreign players nowadays.

Which leads me nicely on to the fate of Derek Asamoah, the Ghanian international who currently plays for Shrewsbury.  Or rather, did play for Shrewsbury until he signed for the French team Nice today.  Lucky for him that they wanted him, though, because he went awol 3 weeks ago claiming to be ill but was actually undertaking a 3 week unauthorised trial for Nice in France!  The club have said that if he hadn’t been signed by Nice they’d have sacked him and even had the support of the players union which is unusual.  Still, they got £50k for him which is £10k more than I predicted when the rumours first started flying about a couple of weeks ago.

Pros and Cons of Invading Iran

The Americans have declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard – the religious army of Iran – a foreign terrorist organisation.  This is, of course, a prelude to American freedom fighters going in to save the world and liberate the Iranians from their oppresive government.

According to the BBC, the Revolutionary Guard is estimated to have 125,000 troops consisting of ground troops, air force, navy, intelligence and special forces.  They also control another group called the Basij Militia which consists of 90,000 regular soldiers, 300,000 reservists and potentially 11 million more that could be called up in time of need.

The Revolutionary Guard is seperate to the regular Iranian Military which consists of 350,000 ground troops, 18,000 naval troops and 52,000 air force troops.

The Revolutionary Guard are responsible for law and order, border controls and some naval security.  They are a branch of the Iranian government controlled by the ruling clerics.  They are, in effect, the religious army of Iran.

So, that’s 810,125 troops in the Iranian military with 11 million potential conscripts.  The Americans have 1.4 million active troops with 1.259 million reservists.  That’s a shade under 2.66 million troops.  There are 160,000 troops in Iraq and 15,000 in Afghanistan.  There are 1,065,600 troops currently on board ships or manning military bases in their own territory.  There are more troops manning military bases overseas with the top five countries accounting for 147,600 troops.  I haven’t been able to find out how many troops they have deployed elsewhere in the world but just these commitments come to 1,388,200 which leaves a potential fighting force – if all reservists were called up – of 1,271,800 troops.

Whilst these figures might suggest that the US, with it’s “superior” technology, has the upper hand a few things have to be taken into account.  Firstly, it would be an invasion of a country halfway round the world.  Logistically, this is difficult enough but Iran is one of the largest countries in the world in terms of both surface area and population.  An “advantage” of 400,000 troops in an invasion of this size is worth jack shit – Iranian troops will be fighting on their own territory and with the help of hundreds of thousands of religious nut-jobs who will be more than happy to become a martyr to stop the zionist invaders.

Invading Iran would be the ultimate act of folly for the lunatic warmonger, George Bush.  Not only would an invasion make the Soviet balls-up of Afghanistan in the 80’s look like a playground squabble, but the American military would be devastated, putting their own national security at risk.

So, pros and cons of invading Iran.  Pros – the Americans wouldn’t be in a position to spread “peace” and “democracy” around the world for a very, very long time.  Cons – global economic meltdown when the Americans spend 75% of the GDP on defence trying to get themselves out of the shit they got themselves into by invading in the first place and the power vacuum leaves the door wide open for another insane warmonger to establish themselves as the worlds policeman.

Which is the lesser of two evils?  Tough call.

(The above figures are all available through Wikipedia with references to offical sources)

SNP & Independence

The Scottish National Party has caused a bit of an upset both north and south of the border by pressing ahead with its manifesto promise of holding a referrendum on Scottish independence.

All the other parties in the Scottish Parliament with the exception of the Greens who are in coalition with the SNP, have promised to jointly fight the proposal and the British establishment is similarly horrified that democracy might actually take place on terms that are not favourable to their agenda.

The British government have actually claimed that the Scottish people do not want independence, citing a survey saying that only 30% of Scots want it.  Which is presumably why more people voted for the SNP than any of the British unionist parties, including Liebour who have controlled Scotland for 50 years.  The survey they are quoting should be treated with a pinch of salt as well.  They claim that English people don’t want an English Parliament because their years old survey says so even though every poll for the last few years has shown increasing and consistent majority support for one.  They also claimed that English people wanted regional government, particularly in the North East euroregion, where it was rejected by 78% of residents in a referendum.

There is a convention in Westminster that any manifesto pledge will travel through Parliament unopposed and unmolested.  The Scottish Parliament is far too young to have established such a precedent but one would have assumed that it would have adopted this basic Parliamentary convention.  Whether it has happened until now I couldn’t say but it clearly isn’t going to happen now that the SNP is in power.

We all know what independence means for Scotland but what about for England and Britain?  Well, Britain is a dead duck and I think we all know this – even the British politicians and our faux-British no-mandate Prime Minister who seem intent to cling on to the last shreds of Britishness rather than let it die with dignity.  It is clear that Britain cannot continue for long without Scotland.  It may only contain less than 8% of the population and cost the English taxpayer billions in subsidies but it constitutes about a quarter of the land-mass and a disproportionate amount of the ruling elite, hence the term “Scottish Raj”.  With Scotland gone we would be left with a “united” kingdom consisting of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  Both Wales and Scotland already have a degree of self-government, independence is only a small step from devolution when you’ve had the trappings of statehood for several years.

But I don’t think it will be down to Wales and Northern Ireland to dissolve the union – that honour, I believe, will fall to the English.  There is a growing feeling of disappointment amongst the English that they have been left out of the devolution process whilst the rest of the UK get to rule themselves and England.  The British identity is declining rapidly as more and more people identify themselves with an English identity instead.  It will take a few years before independence actually happens, even if the referendum takes place and gives the right answer, by which time the British identity will pretty much exist only in Westminster.

So why are British politicians so keen to keep the union together?  Simple really – how can you be a British politician if Britain doesn’t exist?  An MP elected in Scotland couldn’t be a Minister of State if Scotland wasn’t in the UK any more could they?  No Mandate Brown couldn’t be Prime Minister if the country he was elected in was no longer in the union and how would Liebour keep their majority if they didn’t have their Scottish MPs to rely on?  I’m not sure what the motivation of the Tories is for maintaining the union other than the fact that they’re the Conservative and Unionist Party and that Dave the fuckwit Cameron is clinging to the vain hope that the Tories will ever be electable north of the border.

The british government still insists that devolution has strengthened the unioin despite the fact that nationalists now control Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland thanks to devolution and it is because of devolution that the SNP is in a position to hold a national referendum in Scotland on independence.  The lack of devolution to England, coupled with Liebour’s loss of the Scottish and Welsh devolved governments means that the union is on its last legs.  The only saviour of the union is federalism – a federal British government with all four home nations as equal partners is the only way the UK will survive and even then it’ll only be a sticking plaster.  By the time my kids are my age I don’t expect there to be a United Kingdom at all.

Criticism over Lebanon

The British government’s own Foreign Affairs Committee has criticised the delay in calling for a cease-fire when Israel invaded Lebanon saying that it has damaged our reputation.

When Israel decided to punish Lebanon because a group of terrorists kidnapped a couple of their soldiers, Traitor Bliar waited a few weeks before calling for the illegal attack on Lebanon to stop.  The Committee said that acting sooner could have saved Lebanese and Israeli civillians.

It was a while ago now and Israel does this sort of thing so often, you may have forgotten what happened during this event.  The Americans sent them lots of shiny new bombs to blow people up with.  Israel deliberately targetted tower blocks full of civillians because they said Hezbollah stored weapons in them.  Israel evicted the entire village of Qana and then blew up the convoy of people they’d just evicted.  The invasion went on for weeks and they still didn’t get their soldiers back.

Despite the human rights abuses and indiscriminate targetting of civillians, the UK waited several weeks before calling on the Israeli’s to stop and even when the UN eventually got the UK and US to agree to a resolution ending the Israeli invasion, Israel still dropped 3.5m cluster bombs on Lebanon.  This was 90% of the cluster bombs dropped throughout the campaign – a clear demonstration of Israel’s contempt for international law, the UN and the will of the international community.

The Committee also says that the British government is wrong in refusing to deal with the elected democratically elected Hamas government in Palestine, calling it “counter-productive”.  THe British government considers Hamas a terrorist organisation but, unlike in Northern Ireland where it accepts Sinn Fein as a seperate entity to the IRA despite openly being its political arm, they refuse to deal with the political arm of Hamas.

Metrication by Degrees

Despite the metrication project instigated by our masters in the European Federation, we are still predominantly an imperial country but despite the European Federation graciously allowing us to use imperial measurements beyond their forced-metrication deadline, efforts to wipe out imperial measurements are being stepped up.

When I went to primary school 20-odd years ago we had two types of maths lessons – “mathematics” and “practical maths”, the former using metric and the latter using imperial.  Now they don’t teach imperial measurements despite them being the only legal form of measurements in America and being used in many countries worldwide, mostly in the Anglosphere.  Kids now are only taught metric.

Some local authorities have tried putting up metric road signs but these are illegal and they’ve been forced to take them down.  This applies to road signs, footpath signs and bridleways.  This explains the road signs you sometimes see sited at 110yds (100m), 328yds (300m) or 383yds (350m) from it’s destination.  However, it doesn’t seem to apply to the British government.

The Terrorism Act bans unauthorised protests with 1km of Parliament.  That’s one kilometre, not one mile.  The foot and mouth regulations DEFRA have put in place specifies exclusion zones and observations zones in kilometres, not miles.

The BBC have recently started using metric in place of imperial rather than giving the metric measurements in brackets afterwards or vice versa.  The British government pulls most of the strings in the BBC, the EU pulls the rest of them through it’s propaganda funding of state broadcasters.

There is no need to replace imperial measurements with metric.  Most people are still unfamiliar with metric and we still do more trade with the Anglosphere than we do with Federal Europe so imperial is much more relevant to English people than metric.  Metricating road signs will cost billions and it will take years (and millions of pounds of speeding fines) before people get to grips with the foreign measurements.  It is a thoroughly pointless exercise.

No Team GB

The Tartan Army have taken time out from buying football shirts for every team England might play in the next 12 months and learning the words to Irish republican songs and have set up a website opposed to the creating of a British football team.

The No Team GB website has the support of the Association of Tartan Army Clubs, the Football Supporters Federation, the Welsh Football Supporters Federation and the Green and White Army.