Archive for April 2011

Cleggy says discrimination against English students is right

Nick Clegg has told the Daily Telegraph that it is right English students should have to pay up to £9k per year to go to university while Scottish students should study for free.

He said that under devolution it is right that there should be differences in the two nations and he’s absolutely right – the whole point of devolution is that we have different needs and priorities but the problem is that we don’t have devolution, Scotland does. The master of hypocrisy said:

There’s no point in having devolution if you don’t have devolved and different policy outcomes and that’s precisely what we have in higher education.

You either believe in the Scottish nation, as I do, and that you have Scottish solutions to Scottish issues or you don’t.

We believe that it is quite right, as longstanding supporters of proper devolution and indeed further devolution, that you have different solutions in different parts of the country.

Interesting choice of words from Cleggover – he believes in the Scottish nation and Scottish solutions to Scottish issues but he believes in the break-up of the English nation and British solutions for English issues.

I’ve sent the following email to his office:

In yesterday’s Daily Telegraph you are quoted as saying “You either believe in the Scottish nation, as I do, and that you have Scottish solutions to Scottish issues or you don’t”.

Do you believe in the English nation? Why do you campaign for the break-up of England into regions we don’t want?

Why do you believe that you should have Scottish solutions to Scottish issues but British solutions to English issues? Why do you believe that British MPs elected in Scotland, Wales & NI should vote for increased tuition fees in England but tuition fees in Scotland should be decided by members of the Scottish Parliament?

7 out of 10 people want to either stop MPs not elected in England from meddling in English affairs or a devolved English Parliament. Why do you believe they shouldn’t have what they want but the Scots, Welsh & Northern Irish should have just that? It seems to me the Liberal Democrats should be renamed the Illiberal Hypocrites because you are neither liberal nor democrats.

Click here to contact Cleggy.

Union? What union?

Ok, the wedding is over and done with and we’ve got our new princess.

Watching the wedding made me feel quite happy really – I love the royals and I’m sure William and Kate will turn more than a few borderline republicans into monarchists.  The run-up to the wedding has been absolutely horrendous though – days of inane chatter, clueless hypothesising and utter bollocks from people trying to imply they have some inside knowledge of the wedding because they know the Middleton’s gardener’s milkman’s postman’s next door neighbour.

The big downside of the royal wedding, though, is the proliferation of the union flag and people declaring their pride in being “British”.

The resurgence of the English flag over the last few years has been great.  Passing rows of houses with English flags in their gardens and hanging out of their windows is a gratifying sight but the last few days has seen English flags taken down and replaced with the flag of our imperial masters.  Even St George’s Day has been largely ignored by shops who decked out their stores with red, white and blue bunting weeks ago.  There is a very real danger that people will fly the BNP flag now that they have bought them instead of the Cross of St George, putting back the cause of progressive English nationalism by years.

And as for this ridiculous pride in being “British” – how does that work?  How can English people – the citizens of the last colony of the British empire – feel any pride in a non-country that has failed to build an inclusive national identity in over 300 years of existence?

The so-called “United” Kingdom is anything but.  The union between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has been superficial from day one and we are no more united now than we were in 1707.  This union of four nations has five governments, five flags, four languages, four constitutions, three legal systems, two judiciaries and two royal families – Prince William will be King William V of England and William III of Scotland.   “British” is a three century old failed experiment in social engineering that is as irrelevant now as it was before the Act of Union.

I used to describe myself as English first and British second.  Now I’m just English.  And isn’t it time we had a Prince of England?  A much better title for Prince William that Duke of Cambridge!

Brookside’s Burning woman jailed

Last September I posted some pictures of the police and fire brigade attending  a fire in some low rise flats in the next street to me.

It turns out that it was started deliberately by some drunken chav who decided to set fire to her ex-boyfriend’s baseball cap and throw it on a mattress.  She was given a 32 month prison sentence on Tuesday for starting the fire.

Reducing taxes will increase tax income

HMRC is targeting plumbers in its latest attempt to extort a bit more money out of us proles.  This is a similar exercise to the recent one where they targeted 30,000 doctors and ended up getting money out of just 5% of them.

Hector the EU tax collectorAccording to the British government, £45bn per year is “lost” through unpaid taxes although lost is the wrong word because that would imply that they had the £45bn in the first place which they haven’t.  And where does this £45bn figure come from?  If they know who isn’t paying their tax, why aren’t they making them pay it?

The British government has entirely the wrong idea when it comes to tax.  Their approach is “we need more money, what taxes can we increase?” when the best way to increase tax revenue is to lower taxes.

Not convinced?  It’s quite simple.  People pay taxes on the money they earn and the money they spend.  To earn money you need a job.  There aren’t enough jobs to go round so you need to create new jobs.  To create jobs you need someone to sell your products to.  For people to buy your products they need money.  The more money the British government takes off people in taxes, the less money they have to spend on stuff so the less the companies produce and the less staff they require.  It’s not rocket science, it’s just a variation on the “give a man a fish and he will feed himself, teach a man to fish and he will feed his whole village” line that charities use in their begging letters.

But it doesn’t stop there.  When Labour introduced the socialist wet dream otherwise known as tax credits, they abolished tax allowances.  Some people ended up better off, some people ended up worse off, most people were no better or worse off than before.  The side effect of removing tax allowances and replacing them with direct payments as full or partial refunds of tax paid is that two systems are now required where only one was before.  Instead of paying one lot of people to use one set of computer systems to collect tax off people, our taxes now pay for two lots of people and two sets of computer systems – one to collect the tax and the other to give it back.  All it did was create a load of unsustainable jobs, further complicate the tax system and increase the number of people who rely on the benevolence of the state (yes, I’m being sarcastic) to pay the bills.  There is no sense in taxing somebody and then giving them some or all of their taxes back – don’t collect the tax in the first place and it works out much cheaper!

But that’s still not the end of it!  When people have more disposable income they spend more on frivolous items which attract VAT.  The more people spend on commodities, the more tax they pay.  The more shiny things people buy, the more tied into the work ethic they get and the less likely they are to give up working and sponge off the state.

Reducing taxes will help shrink the size of the state as less people are required to enforce the extortion of half of every worker’s income.  The people who are no longer required to work for the state can fill the private sector jobs that will be created by the increase in disposable income.  People will have more money in their pockets to spend on “stuff” which will generate the income the slimmed-down state needs to provide essential services.  And the best thing about it is that it’s a self-perpetuating system because the lower taxes are, the more money people have, the less they need someone else to pay for things for them which means taxes can be lowered and people will have more money and the less they need someone else to pay for things for them which means … you get the picture, right?  So why don’t our politicians?

Google shuns St George

St Andrew’s Day …

Google Doodle St Andrew's Day

St David’s Day …

Google Doodle St David's Day

St George’s Day …

Google Doodle St George's Day

Now I can guess what the excuse will be – St George’s Day has been postponed until the 2nd of May by the church because it clashes with Easter and Easter is more important in the religious calendar than a saint’s day – but it’s not good enough.

It doesn’t matter whether there is congestion in the church’s calendar, St George’s Day left its religious roots behind a long time ago and is a national day for our country.  I don’t care what the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury says, England’s St George’s Day is on the 23rd of April every year.

So, to Google and Asda (who have decked out their Telford stores in British flags) and all the other shops around England that have ignored St George and stocked up on the butcher’s apron, I have only one thing to say: how dare you insult my country, fuck you.

St George’s Day at Telford Town Park

Here are some pictures and video’s from today’s St George’s Day celebration in Telford Town Centre and Telford Town Park …

Happy St George’s Day

It’s the 23rd of April again and I’ve racist’d the house up with Cross of St George bunting and flags.

We’re going to Telford Town Park today for the St George’s Day event the council are putting on.  Last year was great, we spent the whole day there so hopefully this year will be just as good.

Complaint to the BBC about “far right” label

I was browsing the BBC News website this morning and started to read an article on the “far right” English Defence League (EDL).

The BBC has an obsession with the term “far right”, applying it to any organisation that speaks out against unfettered immigration and criticises Islam or multiculturalism.  In general, I think the BBC is a good thing but their institutional left wing bias really gets on my tits so I’ve sent this complaint:

It is increasingly common to find protest groups and political parties referred to by the BBC as “far right” when they hold views that are not mainstream.

The term “far right” is not a synonym for “different” or “extreme”, it refers to an extreme right wing ideology.  In Europe, the right wing of politics is conservative, liberal, generally christian and monarchist.  Racism is considered to be a trait of far right politics (although the same is equally true of the far left) but by no means the sole or overriding defining criteria.

The BBC labels the BNP as “far right” yet the BNP is a nationalist socialist party advocating nationalisation of industry and illiberal curtailment of freedom of the press.  Yes, they are racist but they are not conservative or liberal.  They have some traits of the far right but their core ideology is a national socialism which is very much a left wing ideology.  In reality, the BNP are a far left party.

The BBC also – bizarrely – refers to the EDL as “far right”.  The EDL is not a political party, nor is it a political organisation.  It has no political ideology at all and campaigns only against Islamification and unfettered immigration.  Whilst the cause of, and answer to, Islamification and unfettered immigration is politicial, so is the cause and answer to high fuel prices and food prices yet the motoring organisations and charities campaigning against those aren’t given left/right wing political labels.

Finally, why do you not use the term “far left” in the same way that you do far right?  I appreciate that the BBC is awash with Guardian-reading communists but there are prominent organisations like the laughably named fascist group “Unite Against Fascism” who are quite evidently far left extremists bent on violence and the suppression of freedom of speech and suppression and advocates of the sort of far left society that George Orwell warned about.

So my complaint is three-fold really and there are therefore three questions that I want an answer to:

1.  Why do you mis-label left wing organisations such as the BNP as “far right” when they meet only peripheral right wing criteria that can be equally applied to the far left and their core ideology is left wing?
2.  Why do you label apolitical organisations like the EDL as “far right” when they have no political ideology?
3.  Why don’t you label left wing extremists like UAF as “far left” in the way you label what you insist on calling right wing groups as “far right”?

First BNP Mayor elected in Lancashire

Padiham Council, near Burnley, has voted for a BNP councillor to be their Mayor.

Hope Not Hate and the Bishop of Burnley are both opposing his appointment but residents seem to be accepting of the idea judging by the comments in the Daily Mail article.

No matter what you think of the BNP’s politics, Councillor John Cave was elected to Padiham Council by the residents of Padiham and the council can’t discriminate against any councillor because they don’t approve of their politics.  Cave is a democratically elected councillor in Padiham and he has as much right as any other councillor to take his turn as mayor.

Democracy sometimes produces the “wrong” result, that’s the price you pay for political freedom.

GPs told to double prescription costs in England

According to the BBC, GPs in England are being put under pressure by PCTs to half the amount of medication they are prescribing patients to bring in more income from prescription charges.

Currently you can get up to 2 months’ worth of medication on one prescription but PCTs have been telling GPs to cut that to one month, doubling the cost of repeat prescriptions at a time when they have just gone up to £7.40 per item in England.

Prescription charges have been free in Wales and Northern Ireland for a while and became free in Scotland this year on April Fool’s Day – the same day the British Department of Health put the price up to £7.40 in England.  The British Department of Health says that it can’t afford the £450m cost of providing free prescriptions in England but the British government still manages to find £20bn per year of English money to subsidise free prescriptions and other benefits in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and £4bn to bail out Portugal.

The Brits are taking the piss once again, where are the riots on the streets over this sickness tax?

Bin and recycling fines to go … probably

Good news!  The ConDems have done something sensible at last and announced their intention to remove the powers of local councils in England to fine people for not complying with their recycling and bin collection rules.

Naturally Labour and Greenpeace are up in arms and want councils to be allowed to carry on handing out unconstitutional summary justice to people who put cardboard in with their paper or put their bins out the night before their collection day.

The British government have apparently uncovered examples of illegal practices by some local authorities such as forcing residents to buy bin bags off them and charging for second bin collections when they’ve been missed the first time round.

Of course, there’s still time for the ConDems to cave in to the environmentalists but perhaps on something this trivial they might actually stick to their word.

YouGov dispenses with objectivity for No2AV

The other day I was invited to take part in a YouGov survey which contained, amongst others, a question about AV.

Witchfinder General Warsi

They vote for AV ... the mark of Satan is upon them. They must hang.

I don’t think AV is the answer to the democratic deficit in England as I have already said but I do support the change to the voting system because it’s better than First Past the Post.

Last week the increasingly desperate “no” campaign claimed spun one of their own pieces of “research” into a claim that “extremists” like the BNP will get into positions of power.  The desperation of the “no” campaign is evident in their use of Witchfinder General Warsi – a woman I wouldn’t believe if she told me water was wet – as a spokesperson.

So back to this YouGov survey and the question on AV:

Which of these would you prefer?

  • A voting system in which extremist parties have a good chance of winning seats in a general or local election if they have the support of around one-third of local voters
  • A voting system which makes it very hard for extremist parties to win seats in a general or local election unless they have majority local support

I said last week that it did no favours to the “no” campaign to misrepresent their opinion as fact and equally it YouGov no favours to accept what is so obviously a blatant piece of propaganda.  The question is worded so that it’s impossible to give the “wrong” answer – you either want to make it easy for “extremists” or hard for them.  No mention of the fact that it’s actually all small, unrepresented parties that will benefit and “extremists” only by virtue of the fact that they’re small and unrepresented.

ONS telling Census staff they’re not part of the government

We’ve just had the census police at the door as we hadn’t returned our form.  She had already been forewarned about my opinion of the census by the next door neighbour who happens to be her sister. 🙂

As it happens, the census has been filled out and sealed in the envelope already but it just hadn’t been posted.  She’ll be back soon though I expect.

I carefully followed the instructions on the front of the census form and complied with them to the letter.  The instructions told me that I must participate, that I must not provide false information and that I should write in black or blue ink in capitals with one letter in each box (this is so Lockhead Martin, the contractors who have been paid millions up front to run the census, can read them cheaply by computer).  I participated and I didn’t provide false information as instructed.  As should doesn’t mean must, I chose to scrawl my answers across the boxes provided.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a red pen or crayon to write with.

The census asked for the names of my children but didn’t specify that it had to be the name on their birth certificates so I gave their nicknames and left the surnames blank for security reasons.  I declined the opportunity to tell them who my employer was as I’ve signed the Official Secrets Act and they already know who I work for from HMRC’s records (HMRC is a government department).  I didn’t tell them how many bedrooms I have in my house because the Land Registry (a government department) already know.  Similarly, I didn’t answer the question about whether we have passports because the Identity & Passport Office (another government department) already knows.  I did helpfully point out to them where they could find the information.

I’ve checked the Census Act 1920 and it says that I have to answer the questions, nowhere does it say how I have to answer the questions other than truthfully.  As far as I’m concerned “Ask the Land Registry” is a truthful answer to the question how many bedrooms does my house have.

Anyway, the census person will no doubt be back in a few days to tell me that I haven’t filled it out properly and have to do it again.

Interestingly, when we were talking about what I’d written on the census, she told me that the government don’t get the census, the ONS do.  When I pointed out the ONS is part of the British government, she said she had been told that it wasn’t part of the government.  I pointed out that the website for ONS is ons.gov.uk.  “Oh yeah,” she said.

Naughty ONS, they’re even lying to their own staff!

Father and daughter found dead in my street

I was out walking the dog last night and there were 6 police cars a few doors down from my house.  An hour later there was just one car left that I could see and a driveway was cordoned off with police tape.  Turns out a man and his daughter were found dead last night.

The police aren’t naming them and say the deaths are “unexplained” but they said there was a fire that had gone out by itself in the kitchen and the Daily Fail are reporting the names as Tony Lineton and his daughter Kayleigh.  Apparently he worked at Fruit of the Loom.

They didn’t really socialise with other people in the street – the daughter never came out and played with the other kids – but we’ve seen them quite a few times, him carrying his daughter on his shoulders round the back of our house.  Came as a shock the first time we were sat at the table eating and this girl’s head and shoulders floated along the top of our 7ft fence!

Real shame this, she was very young and apparently only on a contact visit with her dad and was due back yesterday.

Paedophile zombie aliens will eat your babies if you vote for AV

No2AV have produced some “research” claiming that changing to the Alternative Vote system will mean the BNP getting into power.  Well, that’s how some in the No2AV camp (such as Witchfinder General Warsi and Guido) are painting it but that’s not what their “research” says.

Yes2AV LogoThe “research” says that in 35 seats, the votes of “extremists” would decide the outcome of the election.  Or to use their words, “35 seats could be in the gift of extremists under AV”.

So what do they mean when they say the seats could be in the gift of extremists?  Reading the three and a half pages of “research” which contains no verifiable facts, no numbers and no explanation of how they did their research, what they are saying is that the second preference votes of people whose first preference is the BNP or National Front could make the difference between a win or loss for the candidate that would have won if those people were disenfranchised.

My first question is how do they know what BNP and National Front voters’ second preferences are going to be?  We’ve never had an election under AV so nobody knows what second preferences would look like.  It’s pure guesswork.

My second question is how do define an extremist?  Is an 80 year old woman casting a protest vote for the BNP because the housing estate she’s live in all her life has been taken over my immigrants an extremist?  What about an 18 year old student voting for the BNP because his parents do?  What about the thousands of ordinary people who don’t hate foreigners and don’t want to “send the darkies home” but vote BNP in the mistaken belief that their protest vote will force the LibLabCon to change their ways?  Are they extremists?

My third and final question is why are the second preference votes of anyone who puts a tick in the BNP box automatically “wrong”?  Why should their choices be ignored because they vote for the “wrong” party?  No2AV’s “research” makes it clear that a candidate winning because of the votes of an  “extremist or fringe” voter is wrong, the implication being that the candidate that gets their second preference votes must automatically be unsuitable.  I vote UKIP so I presumably fit into the “fringe” category because I don’t vote for the LibLabCon so why is my vote worth less than someone who votes for one of the establishment parties that are full of liars, crooks and warmongers?

A “no” vote in the AV referendum will be deemed to be a “no” to any form of electoral reform.  AV isn’t the answer to the current system of unrepresentative and unaccountable government but it’s better than First Past the Post which ignores the votes of most of the electorate.  The answer is AV+ or STV but that’s not on offer so we have to set the ball rolling with plain old AV.

It does no credit to the No2AV campaign when they so obviously misrepresent facts and misrepresent opinion as fact.  They don’t have a clue what AV will mean at elections so they have to resort to trying to scare people about the non-existent threat of the BNP getting into power.  The simple fact of the matter is that under AV, the votes of more people will matter than under First Past the Post and the fact that elections will be more unpredictable under AV is no reason not to try it.  Far from it – the LibLabCon will have to start doing something about the issues that drive people to vote for “extremist and fringe” parties if they want to win elections and anything that makes politicians listen to voters can’t be a bad thing.