Archive for January 2012

When will someone make the case for the union?

So, I suppose it’s about time I blogged about the Scottish independence referendum as it’s been in the news for a week or so.

Basically, this is the story so far:

Alex Salmond has been dicking about for a few years saying they’re going to hold a referendum on Scottish independence but keeps putting it off because a) they won’t vote for independence and b) the longer he threatens it, the more he can screw out of the Brits at our expense.

Salmond knows that the Scots won’t vote for independence so he’s come up with a great wheeze: devolution max.  Devolution max is almost, but not quite, a confederation between Scotland and “Britain”.  The Scottish government would be almost on a par with the British government, Salmond and Cameron would meet each other as equals rather than provincial administrator and imperial overlord.

Cameron got fed up with Salmond dicking about and told him he’s got to have his referendum sooner rather than later and he can’t offer devolution max, just a yes/no to independence.  Salmond told the media London was dictating to Scotland; Cameron said he wasn’t dictating, he was merely telling the Scottish government what they can and can’t do in a dictatorial manner (I’ve paraphrased slightly).

At some point the British government decided that after years of indecision, an independence referendum held by the Scottish government would be illegal.  Nobody has offered an opinion as to what they would do if Salmond held his referendum and ended up as Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Scotland – the thing about a unilateral declaration of independence is that it’s, well, unilateral.  Salmond retaliated by saying he’d order the Scottish police not to man polling stations if the ballot papers didn’t have his options on them (yes, he can do that but technically the British Home Secretary trumps the Scottish First Minister which would make for an interesting pissing contest wouldn’t it?).

The brief posturing is over with no clear winner and now the two sides are setting out their stalls.  The Brits are making the case for the union to the Scots, humming Rule Britannia whilst Britishly tearfully extolling the British virtues of the British union and good old British Britishness in British Britain and British Scotland.  Some of them are suggesting wrecking manoeuvres such as giving people in England a vote on Scottish independence as well, although they seem to have gone quiet since Survation (an up-and-coming polling company with a very good record so far on political polls) found that more people in England want to see Scotland declare independence than Scots.

The Scottish nationalists are doing what they usually do – confusing England with “Britain”, throwing some random numbers on paper to show they’re subsidising England and … well, that’s about it but even so the Survation poll says that Salmond is quite comprehensively winning the “referendum war”.

Unsurprisingly and true to form for the Brits, virtually nobody is thinking about England in all this.  The Labour MP for Torfaen in Wales, Paul Murphy, has called for the balkanisation of England by resurrecting Prescott’s rejected local government reorganisation with regional assemblies but that’s about as far as it goes.  Other than that it’s been Scotland, Scotland, Scotland as if the future of the UK and the relationships between the member states in it are the exclusive domain of the Scots.

I don’t want a vote on Scottish independence because it’s Scotland’s business but if Scotland has a referendum then a referendum should also be held on English independence, Welsh independence and Northern Irish independence.  If the union is to continue then it should be because most of the people in all four member states want it to, not because 4 million voters in Scotland say so.

I would love to hear the British nationalists making the case for the union to England like they are for Scotland.  I would love to hear them explain why we should stay in a union where we have no voice, where £20bn of our taxes are taken from us on threat of imprisonment and given to the other three member states of the UK to spend on things that we can’t afford, where politicians elected in another country are allowed to introduce and vote on laws that only apply to England when they can’t even vote on the same things in the country they were elected in and where we are generally robbed, put upon and despised.  I’d love to hear them make the case for that union because right now all I’m hearing is Scotland, Scotland, Scotland when quite frankly I couldn’t give a damn whether they stay or go.

The celtic dog has been wagging the English tail for too long and it has to stop.  The British establishment is full of people who are, quite frankly, irrationally fanatical about Scotland.  They are 5m people (and falling), we are 51m and increasing.  They spend the money, we foot the bill.  They have an inferiority complex, we have to make ourselves subservient to them to make them feel better.  The obsession is with what the Scots want, forgetting that actually it’s England that would make or break the union.

So what’s the answer?  It’s quite simple …

Hold the referendum in Scotland with the three options – independence, current level of devolution or “devolution max”.  At the same time, hold a referendum in England, Wales and Northern Ireland offering the same choices (“current level of devolution” in England being what the Scots have now).  This will result in an English Parliament being created.  Take out the unconstitutional, unworkable English Votes on English Laws fudge (there’s no point trying to implement something that can’t work, it’s just wasting time and money) and support for devolution in England is overwhelming.  This may result in assymetry as it’s not guaranteed that all four member states of the UK will vote for devolution max (I’m thinking of NI here) but it would be through choice, not because the British government is prejudiced against one country.

This raises the spectre of one or more member states of the UK voting for independence.  Scotland is probably less likely to vote for independence than England despite the overt nationalism north of the border.  Of the four member states of the UK, only England pays its own way and only England would thrive outside of the union.  Despite the protestations of some Scots, they do extremely well out of the union whilst England does extremely badly out of it.  If one or more member states vote for independence then the British government should be prepared with a firm plan for a British confederation.  I won’t dwell on the virtues of a confederation, just follow the link.

The independence of one member state would raise some interesting challenges when it comes to the inheritance of treaties.  For instance, who would keep the UK’s seat on the UN Security Council?  If Scotland declared independence then “Britain” would probably still exist for a short time and once it fell apart, England would naturally be the successor state.  But if England declared independence and Scotland didn’t, “Britain” wouldn’t last any longer but Scotland would naturally be the successor state.  Salmond wants to demilitarise Scotland and on the international stage Scotland is a non-entity (“Scotland, isn’t that in England?” – you get the picture) – the UN isn’t going to have a bunch of whining skirt wearing with delusions of grandeur on the UN Security Council.

EU membership is another question that needs considering.  Scotland is the most europhile member state of the UK, it would probably want to remain a member.  The EU would want to keep England to pay the bills.  New countries joining the EU have to agree to join the €uro – Scotland might not be too fussed about joining the €uro but England?  It’s unthinkable.

What about the British Overseas Territories?  Who will inherit those?  If a confederation can successfully be created then problem solved.  If not, it’s open for negotiation – they may opt for independence, they may choose their own “protector” to pay fealty to.

The Vienna Convention on Succession of States in Respect of Treaties says that it’s basically up to succeeding states to decide who takes on what treaties with the assumption that if no agreement is made, all the treaties currently in force will apply to all successor states.  That means that the default position is that all member states of the UK declaring independence would remain members of the EU, UN, NATO and party to all the other treaties the UK has signed up to since 1978 unless they agree to divvy them up.  Contrary to what British politicians say, independence of any of the member states of the UK does not necessarily mean losing the memberships of international bodies the UK currently holds.

None of the perceived problems are insurmountable so what reason is there for the union to continue?  This is the case the British unionists have to make to all of us, not just the Scots and this is precisely what won’t happen.  The British are so obsessed with what the Scots want that they won’t see what’s happening under their noses until it’s too late.

My terrorist-appeasing, racist-loving stalker is at it again

You’d have thought the de-facto leader of a failing political party crippled with debt and haemorrhaging members would have better things to do with his time than Google my name every day to see what I’ve been doing and researching my past but apparently not.

Steve Uncles’ latest “exposé” on me is the startling revelation that I used to vote Lib Dem, once supported the English Democrats and didn’t support UKIP.

I’m quite open about my political past – it’s all over the internet and I’ve never tried to cover it up.  I voted Lib Dem when I was younger because I didn’t support Labour or the Tories.  I didn’t really know anything about the Lib Dems, I just voted for them because they weren’t one of the other two.  This is where the Lib Dems’ vote mainly comes from – the “None of the Above” vote.  In 1997 I voted Labour because Tony Blair seemed to me to be a nice enough bloke and because I wanted to make sure the Tories lost the election.  When I was a kid my parents did quite badly out of the Thatcher years so my view of the Tories was influenced by their loathing of Thatcher so I decided (like most of the country) that it was time for a change.

I’m a relatively recent convert to euroscepticism as it happens.  In 2005 when I wrote the blog post the racist-loving terrorist-appeaser has quoted (yes, he’s that desperate to dig up some dirt he’s gone back 7 years … and still not found any) I was marginally pro-EU.  I thought a single currency was a good idea (some of the arguments for it are still valid such as saving companies from currency charges) and I thought that on balance the EU was a good thing for the country.

Just like supporting the English Democrats, my support of the EU was a product of the naivety of youth and a lack of real information about what I was supporting.  Over time, I came to realise that the EU was an affront to democracy, an undemocratic, corrupt organisation hell-bent on destroying my country.  I realised that voting for someone you don’t want to get rid of someone else you don’t want is a waste of a vote and only ends up with you getting someone you don’t want.  Over time I also came to realise that the English Democrats were not the party for me and that Steve Uncles in particular was not somebody I wanted to be associated with.  When I turned down his offer of setting up a branch of the English Democrats in Telford, help with elections and funding many years ago I knew I had made the right decision – I instantly became an enemy of England and this barely-sentient knuckledragger has made it his mission to harass me ever since.

Steve Uncles - Stalker

Do not approach this stalker, he has serious delusions of adequacy and if excited may attempt to engage you in barely coherent and slurred conversation

Even when I first started supporting UKIP I said that I wouldn’t want a UKIP government, just enough UKIP MPs to set the agenda.  I make no secret of that either, it wouldn’t take a genius to go on Google and find places where I’ve said that on the internet – after all, Steve Uncles can manage to turn up something I said 7 years ago so any creature with opposable thumbs should be able to do it.  Just like I changed my opinion of the EU and the English Democrats, I changed my mind about a UKIP government and I can’t imagine a party that would make a better job of running the country.

As for the aforementioned Garry Bushell – he lost that election but he also came to see the English Democrats for what they are and declared his support for UKIP.

I know why fat boy (as he’s known to his colleagues) stalks me – it’s because I refuse to cave in to his threats, intimidation, libel and harassment.  What I don’t understand is what he thinks he will achieve from it.  I don’t read the English Pisspot libel factory unless someone tells me that he’s obsessing over me again and everyone that reads what he writes just thinks he’s a cock and let’s be honest, they’re not far wide of the mark are they?  He cosies up to BNP racists, tried to do a deal with Sinn Féin terrorists, makes jokes about suicide victims and abuses and threatens anyone who stands up to him.

Still, he does serve a purpose: no matter how bad you think things are, you can always take comfort from the fact that you’re not Steve Uncles.

Unemployed museum volunteer forced to work for free at Poundland

An out-of-work university graduate was forced last year by her local Jobcentre to stop volunteering at a museum and do a voluntary work placement at Poundland to keep her unemployment benefits.

When challenged about this, the DWP which administers unemployment benefits said:

Working in retail is perfectly good experience for a career in a museum. There are very similar transferable skills involved.

Yep, I get that.  But surely better work experience for someone looking for a career in a museum is working in a museum?  Like the museum she was already working in you cretins!

And here was me thinking the slave trade had been abolished.

Shropshire Council spending £1m on 22 traveller pitches

Paddy Doherty

Tarmac your drive? Terty grand.

Shropshire Council is spending a million pounds on 22 new pitches for travellers.

A million quid!  For 22 pitches!  That’s 45 and a half grand per pitch!  Multiple exclamation marks!  They’re a sign of a diseased mind!

Let’s see how much value for money Shropshire Council are getting …

How much would a 56 acre caravan site with a fully-stocked 21 acre fishing lake with planning permission for 79 static caravans, 58 already sited, multiple out-buildings and planning permission to convert 3 holiday cottages set you back do you think?  Going on Shropshire Council’s figures, that’s £3.59m just for the pitches without taking into account the out buildings but no, it’s available for a mere £1.5m.

What about a 10.5 acre caravan site with 80 pitches and 135 storage bays?  That’s £97.8m at the £45.5k a pitch Shropshire council are paying but amazingly the owners only want £800k for it.

How on earth can Shropshire Council justify spending £1m on 22 pitches for travellers when that sort of money can buy you a fully developed, profitable caravan site with four times the number of pitches and facilities already built?

Another racist gaffe by Diane Abbott

Diane Abbott

We must cleanse the streets of the racialist taxi drivers!

I don’t know whether to despise Diane Abbott just that little bit more or whether to pity her for her evident stupidity.

Not content with insulting one fifth of the world’s population, she’s also said that taxi drivers are racist!

A spokesman for the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, Steve McNamara, said:

We find it amazing that in this day and age someone in Diane Abbott’s position can try to resurrect the stereotypes from the 1960s. At worst she is racist and at best she is stupid in making comments like that. Either way, she should go.

[…]

She might have trouble getting a cab in the future and it won’t be because she’s black, it will be because she is stupid. I certainly won’t be stopping for her.

You can always rely on a cabbie to tell it how it is and I would so love to see her flag down a black cab and be told to get stuffed!

Meanwhile, the bungling idiot Ed Dave Ed … whichever one it is … Milliband had an unfortunate Freudian slip on Twitter earlier:

Sad to hear that Bob Holness has died. A generation will remember him fondly from Blackbusters

Who you gonna call? Blackbusters!

Diane Abbott MP broadcasts casual racism on Twitter

Diane Abbott MP, well known for her snide racist remarks, has finally stepped over the line saying that “white people love playing divide and rule”.

Abbott has tried backtracking after being outed as a racist, saying the comments were taken out of context but if you read the exchange of tweets that the comment is part of, she clearly believes it’s “us and them” and that black people should close ranks.

Bim Adewunmi: I do wish everyone would stop saying ‘the black community’ though. WHICH ONE?

Bim AdewunmiClarifying my ‘black community’ tweet: I hate the generally lazy thinking behind the use of the term. Same for ‘black community leaders’.

Diane Abbott: I understand the cultural point you are making. But you are playing into a “divide and rule” agenda.

Bim AdewunmiMaybe. I find it frustrating that half the time, these leaders are out of touch with black people they purport to represent.

Diane AbbottWhite people love playing “divide & rule” We should not play their game #tacticasoldascolonialism

Bim AdewunmiI don’t advocate ‘divide and rule’. But I wish we could deal more effectively with issues without resorting to monolithic view.

Diane AbbottEthnic communities that show more public solidarity & unity than black people do much better #dontwashdirtylineninpublic

Taken in context, the comment is even worse.  The Labour Party is institutionally racist, I have said this before.  They are prejudiced against the English and now one of their MPs has openly made racist remarks about white people on Twitter.  Perhaps we need an inquiry into the institutional racism in the Labour Party?

Bim Adewunmi actually makes a bloody good point which will sadly be lost in the furore over Abbott’s racism which is a shame.  I find it extremely irritating when the media, politicians and police talk about “the black community” and “black community leaders”.  Have you ever heard the term “the white community” or “white community leaders”?

Abbott is a racist, I hope she gets hung out to dry and deselected.  We have enough problems with racism in this country already without racist politicians making it worse.

FCO: no EU Treaty was drafted at the European Council in December

FOIThree weeks ago we submitted a Freedom of Information Request for a copy of the EU treaty that David Cameron was supposed to have vetoed.

The Foreign & Commonwealth Office have responded today with the following:

Dear Mr Parr,

Thank-you for your email. I apologise for the short delay in getting back to you.

We are not treating your email as an FOI request as no EU Treaty was drafted at the European Council in December. So I have passed your email asking about the Prime Minister’s rejection of a new EU Treaty and a financial transaction tax to my colleagues in our Europe Directorate for a response. They will be in touch shortly.

No treaty?  That’s interesting because according to the Conservative Party website on the 9th of December …

Prime Minister David Cameron has today spoken of his decision to veto a new European treaty following a round of discussions with European leaders in Brussels.

The Conservatives misleading the public?  Surely not.If you read the FOI request that we submitted, the first question asks for a copy of the treaty that Cameron vetoed and “If no draft treaty exists, please provide a précis of the intended purpose and contents of the proposed treaty”.  So no thanks, a statement from the EU Directorate isn’t really good enough.

Dear Mr Leinster,

Thank you for your reply.  In the first question in my request I said “If no draft treaty exists, please provide a précis of the intended purpose and contents of the proposed treaty”.  As no treaty exists but the proposed contents of said treaty were “vetoed” this information must surely exist and as such I should be entitled to it under the FOIA, notwithstanding the usual restrictions around national security/interest.

Did the Stephen Lawrence do more harm than good?

The latest Stephen Lawrence case has finished and his murderers are going to be sentenced shortly.  Great, let’s get this over and done with and get it out of the news.

National Black Police Association

Still no National White Police Association?

It is because of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry that an accusation of racism when committing a crime automatically makes that crime worse than if it was committed against a white person.  It is because of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry that the police have to consult “the community” if they want to do anything that specifically targets members of an ethnic minority – even if that something is a terrorist raid.  It is because of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry that black police officers have special status and are fast-tracked for promotions to fill diversity quotas.  It is because of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry that police are criticised for stop and search statistics that show them disproportionately targeting black people despite said statistics proving that black people commit a disproportionate number of crimes.

The two people who murdered Stephen Lawrence were wrong and committed the ultimate crime but why is there this fixation on it being racially motivated?  So what if they killed him because he was black?  If they’d killed him because he was short or because he had brown eyes then it would have just been a “normal” murder, their prejudice against short people or people with brown eyes wouldn’t have even been mentioned or if it was mentioned it would probably only be to prove that they were mentally ill.  Murder is murder, it is the worst crime you can commit and it doesn’t matter whether your motivation is the victim’s colour, religion, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality or any other prejudice – it’s just murder.

I’ve no doubt that racism existed in the police before the Stephen Lawrence inquiry and I have no doubt that it will continue to exist long after I’ve shuffled off the mortal coil.  The Stephen Lawrence inquiry undoubtedly did some good in tackling it but it’s done a lot of harm as well.  It’s put ethnic minorities on a pedestal where the law is concerned and the police spend an inordinate amount of time pandering to over-sensitive “community leaders”.  The special treatment ethnic minorities get at the hands of the police does nothing to promote community cohesion, it just causes more racial tension.

The pair got minimum sentences of 15 years, 2 months and 14 years, 3 months.  The judge sentencing them said that he was handing down long sentences because it was a racist crime despite the fact that they were supposed to be sentenced as if they were teenagers (which they were when the murder was committed) and under the guidelines in place at the time which didn’t impose extra punishments for racially-motivated crimes.

Thirteen years ago, before the Stephen Lawrence inquiry published its findings, everyone was equal before the law regardless of their race, colour or ethnicity.  This is no longer the case and that isn’t a positive thing.  If a crime is committed against me then it’s not right that the same crime committed against someone else with different colour skin to me is automatically considered worse and the perpetrator more severely punished if they did it because of the colour of that person’s skin.

New British tax on English alcohol

The British government’s Christmas gift to the English this year was minimum pricing on alcohol, a tax that will penalise the millions of occasional drinkers who cause absolutely no problems whatsoever and the off-licences who are already struggling to make a living in the face of stuff competition from supermarkets.

Home Rule for EnglandThe Calais booze cruise is part of life in the south east of England where you can catch the ferry over the channel for a few quid and bring back a boot load of cheap booze from a hypermarché for half what it would cost to buy it here.  Elsewhere in England coach companies run organised booze cruises and groups of people get together to share transport costs for their own booze cruises.

Booze cruise costs are prohibitive for a lot of people but what if your booze “cruise” was a drive across the Welsh or Scottish border where minimum pricing won’t apply?  It would only cost me about a tenner to drive to the Welsh border and back where I could buy cheap booze that isn’t subject to the British alcohol unit tax.  My annual alcohol consumption is roughly what your average binge drinking teenager would consume in a weekend and Mrs Sane drinks infrequently so a boot load of cheap Welsh booze would last us a year.  What incentive would there be for me to buy booze from a local supermarket or off licence?

Retailers in the south east are already losing out because of British taxes on alcohol and tobacco and they’re increasingly losing out from people travelling to France and Belgium to fill up their lorries, vans and even cars with diesel which is currently about 15% cheaper than in England.  Naturally it’s the English that lose out most from repressive British taxes due to our colonial status but not exclusively so.  The Northern Irish border is dotted with petrol stations on the Irish Republic side of the border reaping the benefits of low fuel duty which of course costs Northern Irish retailers on the border a great deal of money.  The Northern Irish do have the pay-off of cross-border trade the other way as food and clothes are cheaper in Northern Ireland so they are in a slightly better position than England.

All four home nations lose out because of the misguided big state, high tax policies of the British government under any of the LibLabCon parties but the English disproportionately so because we’re under the direct rule of a fundamentally anglophobic British government.  The sooner we take control of our own affairs from the British the better.