Archive for November 2007

Moving Swiftly On

Bloody hell.  When was the last time England didn’t qualify for a European Championship?  Other than when we were banned from European football for having slightly more troublemakers than Vatican United and about 5 million percent less than, for instance, Turkey or Poland.  But that’s another story.

England lost 3-2 to Croatia last night and failed to qualify for Euro 2008.  Croatia and Russia topped England’s group and qualified for next years tournament.  At least we finished above Andorra.

Steve Maclaren was sacked this morning.  Which is nice.  I actually agree with the decision to sack Maclaren – I thought employing him was a bad idea in the first place – but the manager can’t take all the blame.  Putting a 22 year old kid in goal and leaving Beckham on the bench for the first 45 minutes was sucidal.  However, the national squad is supposed to be the cream of English football.  If the tactics the manager has decided on aren’t working, they shouldn’t have to wait until half time or some big girls blouse needs a medic for a broken nail before they change how they play.  Watch Brazil play – if something’s not working they change it.  Yes, we need a decent manager.  But more importantly, we need to shove a rocket up our players’ collective arses and tell them to use their bloody initiative.

It’s been suggested that Alan Shearer is after the job.  Sounds good to me but as long as the next manager isn’t Scottish, Welsh or Irish I don’t care who it is as long as we start winning something.

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Disunited Kingdom

The CEP’s Mike Knowles has had an article published in The House Magazine, a House of Commons publication for MPs and politicos.

Read it here.

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Capping CAP

The European Agriculture Commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, has announced that any farmer receiving more than €100,000 under the Single Payment Scheme will get their payments capped.

The Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) accounts for a third of Federal Europe’s budget and is responsible for the “wine lakes” and “cheese mountains” that have been in the news periodically for the last couple of decades.  The biggest beneficiaries of CAP are France and Spain yet this capping of payments will mainly affect the UK, Germany and the Czech Republic which hardly benefit from CAP at all.  In fact, it is because we get hardly any money out of CAP that the rebate was introduced.

Once again, French-dominated Federal Europe has managed to penalise the member states that benefit least (or not at all in our case) from their ridiculous, insular, protectionist policies.

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HMRC loses data

HM Revenue & Customs have lost two CDs containing personal data of every family with children under 16.

There is some confusion over what data has actually gone missing and the circumstances around its loss.

Firstly, the CDs have been lost in transit between a HMRC building and the National Audit Office.  They may have been lost internally (ie. sat on someone’s desk, dropped behind a cupboard, dropped in a bin, etc.) or externally by the courier TNT which operates the internal mail system.  HMRC says there is no evidence that the CDs have been stolen or aren’t still on government property.

Secondly, the data on the discs is encrypted and password protected.

Thirdly, only bank details of people who have their child benefit paid directly into the bank are on the CDs (it could be worse)

Alistair Darling has, naturally, been given a battering by the Conswervatives and the Illiberal Dumbasscrats and so he should because he’s a tit.  However, Vince Cable clearly doesn’t have very good researchers because he said “the ancient museum pieces it is currently using for computing must be replaced.”  If he had bothered to do some basic research such as Googling for information about their IT contract he’d have known that HMRC’s workstations and servers have all been upgraded recently.

Paul Gray, HMRC’s Chairman, has resigned because of the incident.

This is a monumental cock-up – my details will be on one of those CDs – but knee-jerk reactions won’t help.  As far as government departments go, HMRC is pretty low down the league table of ballsing things up – especially when you consider the mind-numbing size of the organisation.  That said, if Darling’s scalp is offered on a plate I’ll be more than happy to see it taken.

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Send him home!

A university lecturer who was banned by the Attorney General from taking legal action has found a way round the ban by launching another racial discrimination case in Northern Ireland.

The Hindu “Indian American” was named a vexatious litigant by the Attorney General after starting 40 discrimination cases against various universities and academic bodies in the US and UK. He has made almost £200,000 in compensation claims and cost the taxpayer around £1m.

According to the Daily Mail his modus operandi is to apply for jobs which he may or may not be qualified for and if he failed to get shortlisted then he will launch a racial discrimination case. Sometimes he will apply for a job in both his own name and also with a fake “white” name and if he failed to get shortlisted but his fake name did then he will launch a racial discrimination case.

Unfortunately, the ban doesn’t cover Northern Ireland as it has its own judiciary and so Suresh Deman has launched his latest spurious claim there. He has complained that he can’t get a job because they know about his reputation. When a journalist approached him about the banning order he threatened to sue them.

Deman is an American citizen, has no job, is clearly an undesirable immigrant and quite obviously unemployable. He is abusing the legal system with spurious and unfounded legal action against taxpayer-funded organisations to pay the bills. Why not send him home where they teach this sort of thing in primary school?

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Name, Rank and Serial Number?

No Mandate Brown is slowly but surely revealing himself as the tin-pot dictator we all know him to be.

Between 2009 and 2014, new rules will come into force requiring 53 pieces of information to be captured and handed over to the state for every journey in and out of the country.  As well as the type of information you’d expect – name, date of birth, nationality, passport details, etc. – they also want to know how much you paid for your ticket, credit card details, email address, “no show” details for previous flights, itinery, contact numbers of people being visted and “other biographical information”.

This information be required for ports, including the Eurotunnel, but that’s not all.  Anyone sailing a yacht out of territorial waters for the day will need to provide the information, as will anyone flying a light aircraft out of British airspace.

The British government says that the information will allow them to refuse travel to anyone a bit dodgy but the rules will allow them to stop people who have outstanding fines such as parking tickets from travelling.

So who’s going to check these details collected on every one of the 305 million journeys in and out of the country?  HM Revenue and Customs?  It’s a well-known fact that they’re cutting jobs so perhaps not.  The police?  They can’t even keep up with Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) checks to stop kiddie-fiddlers from working in schools, let alone check 305m travel details a year.  The security services?  They certainly don’t have the resources and given the role of security services in pretty much every attrocity and crime against humanity in recent history, nor should they.

This is an ill-conceived idea with absolutely no merit whatsoever.  The state has no business knowing all these details about citizens.  Government exists to serve the people, not the other way around.

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Heather Mills is a Loony

Heather Mills is mad as a fucking hatter.  She turned up in a 4×4 to the unveiling of some new posters bearing her picture to tell us meat eating heathens that we’re all contributing to global warming by drinking milk and eating beef.

“Meat and dairy animals produce more greenhouse gases than all the worlds transport combined” says one of the posters.  The other one says that “livestock are destroying the earth”.

Humans are omnivores, we are designed to eat a mixture of meat and plants.  Eating just plants is not a healthy diet.  In one of her random, barely coherent rants, she seems to suggest drinking rats milk as an alternative to cows milk.  The woman is a lunatic.

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Was this man really the Chancellor?

The One Eyed Wonder of Wankistan has announced more “green” measures today, including the possibility of an increase in the target for reducing carbon emmissions by 2050 from 60% to 80%.

How is this going to be achieved?  Well, extra taxation, obviously.  The annual price of driving a car will probably end up being more than the car itself by 2050.  Britishness Brown says that his plans will require “no less than a fourth technological revolution”.  I’ve heard it all now – the Liebour Party can produce technological revolutions on demand!

Federal Europe has a hand in all this of course.  We will have to produce between 40 and 50% of our power by 2020.  Currently we produce only 5% from “renewable sources” and wind and solar power is massively inefficient.  We probably won’t even have the facilities to build wind farms of solar panels by 2020 anyway because of the carbon emmissions the factories produce.  In Brown’s Republic of New Britain we won’t have any factories, just mud huts full of basket weavers.

Brown reckons that by effectively banning any form of heavy industry, taxing drivers off the roads and penalising companies for producing carbon emmissions that hundreds of thousands of new British jobs can be created in British Britain.  Presumably from new companies giving advice on how to avoid paying so many green taxes and advising people on how to piss tens of thousands of pounds up the wall trying to improve the energy efficiency of their old, energy inefficient homes.

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BBC Impartiality Review

The BBC Trust is going to review the BBC’s impartiality following devolution.

Cardiff University School of Journalism is going to review the BBC’s coverage of local elections in England and the elections to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Northern Irish Assembly.  The report will be authored by Dr Anthony King, professor of government at Exeter University and the project director is Mike Robinson, a former BBC news and current affairs editor.

Dr King, a Canadian, once talked about a new English national identity evolving from sport on Radio 5 and writes for the Daily Torygraph.  Mike Robinson worked for the BBC for 25 years and resigned last year after falling out with the BBC1 controller over the scheduling of Panorama.

So, a Canadian professor, a BBC “lifer” and a Welsh university are going to review the impartiality of the BBC … right.

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Scottish woman travels to Malta for hip replacement

A Scottish woman who doctors said was 30lbs overweight has travelled to Malta for two hip replacements at a cost of £7,000 each because the Scottish NHS refused to even put her on the waiting list.

I guess I must be lucky (if you look at it that way) in that I’ve never been turned down for surgery on my knees even though I’m overweight.  It probably helps that I’ve been seeing the same consultant since I was at school but it’s probably more the fact that he understands that when you have real trouble walking it’s very difficult to control your weight.

If surgery is being refused on the rather lame pretext of being overweight in Scotland, you have to wonder what all these billions we’ve been sending north of the border have been spent on.

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Hat-tip to “axel” (reader)

English farmers to pay again

English farmers, already on the ropes following a Foot and Mouth outbreak and a bluetongue outbreak in quick succession, are going to have to pay for DEFRA’s response to the outbreaks.

Setting aside the fact that this is DEFRA’s job, the Foot and Mouth outbreak originated in a British government research facility – why should English farmers pay the British government to clear up their own mess?

The levy which DEFRA intends to force English farmers to pay should raise about £40m.  This co-incides with the announcement yesterday that the British government is planning to cut DEFRA’s budget by £300m.

DEFRA is already a hopelessly inefficient and incompetent agency, cutting £300m off their budget is a fatal blow for the English farming industry which unfortunately relies on DEFRA for support and funding.  The budget cuts will leave DEFRA under-financed and under-resourced and even less capable of dealing with a serious incident in future.

Still, there aren’t many farms in London are there?

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Israel – Russia

This is the match that matters.  Israel have to beat Russia to give England a chance of qualifying for next years Euro 2008.  Something you’ll not see very often on this blog – I’m supporting Israel!

Israel has taken an early lead, currently winning 1-0.

Update:
Israel won 2-1 which means England are still in with a chance.

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Scotland – Italy

I only wish the match wasn’t on Sky Sports so I could cheer Italy on.

Italy are leading Scotland 1-0 in the second half.

Update:
18:24 – Noooooooooooooo, Scotland have equalised.

Update:
Scotland lost 2-1 to Italy and are out of the Euro 2008 competition.

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Parlez vous English?

Shopping with Mrs Sane yesterday, we popped into the Entertainer.  I couldn’t help laughing at the message on the box …

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CEP Press Release: English parliament is only answer to West Lothian question

On Wednesday November 14th the the House of Commons Justice Committee of MPs taking evidence from invited experts on constitutional matters was informed by Professor Robert Hazell, the Director of the Constitution Committee, that ‘the closest to a complete answer to the West Lothian Question was a separate English Parliament’.’ It was a statement with immense political significance. moment. The Constitutional Unit, located within University College London, had been set up with Professor Hazell as its Director in 2000 with full government backing to address the complex constitutional issues arising out of the 1998 Devolution legislation which had set up the Scottish Parliament and he Welsh Assembly but which had granted no devolution to the English nation whatsoever.

The so-called West Lothian Question has become the most difficult issue of all caused by that legislation. The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly have created a totally unfair and undemocratic situation for the English. Scottish MPs in the Union Parliament in Westminster are still entitled to vote on such very important matters as health, education and transport for England, even to be cabinet ministers of health, education and transport for England, while no English MPs can do the same on the same issues for Scotland. It has enabled Scotland to vote for free prescriptions for all Scottish people, free personal care for the elderly, no university fees for Scottish students and free bus travel throughout Scotland for all its pensioners. The Scots each get £1500 more spent on their health and education than people in England. Nothing has created more disunity in the United Kingdom and friction between England and Scotland than the West Lothian Question since the Act of Union of 1707, three hundred years ago.

When the Constitution Unit was set up in the year 2000 its Director Professor Hazell, in his ‘State of the Union’ lecture at its inauguration stated that an English Parliament was not the way to resolve the West Lothian Question. He declared that an English Parliament would mean the end of the United Kingdom. Now, after seven years of investigation, his influential Unit has informed the House of Commons that an English Parliament physically separate from the United Kingdom Parliament is the best way to resolve the very question that is creating tension and break-up within the Union. It is a political conversion of Road-to-Damascus proportions, and all the more significant and reliable for that reason.

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Wonko on BBC Radio 4

A couple of months back I got an email from Gareth asking if I’d do an interview on behalf of Anthem 4 England for BBC Radio 4.

Being a media whore helpful person I invited the presenter up to Telford to do the interview.  He was here for about an hour which was distilled into less than 10 seconds in the programme!  Not only that but he said that I run the Anthem4England website which, of course, is incorrect – Gareth runs it.

Ah well, at least it got the subject of an English anthem a mention on national radio.

You can listen again to the programme.  It was on today’s Questions Questions and the anthems programme starts at about 7:30.

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Can I just say, “get a life”?

A black man has had a whinge that his complaint about a market trader hasn’t been taken seriously enough.

The market trader, foul heathen fiend that he is, has been selling … I can hardly bring myself to say it … Golliwoggs.

Apparently, the man brings children from ethnic minorities to Market Drayton and he thinks they might be offended by the toys.  Market Drayton is a town in a field in rural Shropshire.  Immigrant population, excluding livestock, could probably be counted on one hand.

There are a couple of options this man has.  He could try going somewhere where he won’t be exposed to a black faced child’s doll.  Africa or Asia perhaps.  Alternatively he could get a life and accept the fact that 99.9% of the population don’t find Golliwoggs offensive.

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EDM266: CONDUCT OF THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE SCOTTISH CLAIM OF RIGHT

Worm your way out of this Gordon …

That this House recognises that the Prime Minister is a signatory to the Scottish Claim of Right in which he declared and pledged that in all his actions and deliberations the interests of the Scottish people `shall be paramount’; believes that by declaring that the interests of the Scottish people should come first he has committed himself to discriminating against the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland; considers this to be incompatible with being the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in which office the interests of all UK people should be equal; and calls on him publicly to disassociate himself from and withdraw from the Scottish Claim of Right.

How can this MP, elected in Scotland on a narrow mandate of reserved matters, ever claim to be representing the whole of the UK?  He has no mandate to govern England and signed the Scottish Claim of Right pledging to put the interests of Scottish people first and foremost in all his actions.

Simple answer is, he can’t.  No mandate, no job – seems pretty simple to me.

 

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Virgin on ridiculous

The NHS has found something new to spend our money on.  Not something frivilous or wasteful like cancer treatments, but hymen repair jobs for muslim women.

I kid you not.  Muslim women can get a pretend virginity for their husbands free of charge on the NHS.

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) refuses lots of medical treatments because they don’t provide “value for money”.  But fake virginities do.

I am increasingly of the opinion that the only way we’re ever going to reclaim England from the traitors who are running the country into the ground is a revolution.

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Sarkozy won’t hold EU referendum

The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, says that a referendum on the EU constitution in the UK would result in a no vote and has refused to hold a referendum in France “because that would mean having one in Britain and that would be a danger to Europe”.

The French and Dutch have already rejected the EU constitution once but are being refused the opportunity to reject it for a second time.

Jim Murphy, a Minister for Europe, is in the Netherlands today to discuss ways of avoiding having a referendum.

 

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