Archive for General

Mark Pritchard MP getting his priorities right?

Mark Pritchard, the Tory MP for Telford, has made a cryptic announcement on his website:

Under Parliamentary rules governing the pre-election period, this website will not be updated from 1st January 2010 until the General Election.

What rules say that a sitting MP can’t update their official website before an election has been called?  I’m not aware of any but I am aware of new rules on election expenses during a “long election campaign” which are the rules that I suspect he is misleadingly referring to.  These rules cover the 6 month period prior to an election and place strict limits on the amount of money that can be spent on an election campaign.  His website would, of course, be included as election expenditure which would limit the amount of money he can spend on leaflets, public meetings and driving tanks up the wrekin.

If those are the rules he’s referring to then I’m sure his constituents would prefer that he was spending money telling them what he’s doing for them rather than saving up a few quid for leaflets.

Vote for English Votes on English Laws

Let’s get this straight right now – I do not support English Votes on English Laws.  It’s an insult to our nation and a constitutional fudge that is doomed to failure.

It is, however, a recognition of more than a decade of institutional discrimination against England at the hands of the British establishment and the need for English affairs to be managed by English politicians elected by, and accountable to, the people of England.  It will also inevitably lead to an English Parliament when the impracticality and inherent flaws in the system are shown up publicly.

To that end, I would encourage you to vote for the Power 2010 pledge on English Votes on English Laws.  It is currently in 4th place but it’s still too close for comfort.  Power 2010 and various other lobby groups associated with the Rowntree Trust will lobby every MP and PPC with the top 5 pledges as voted for by the public in the run-up to the election.

Where’s Wrighty?

Since the scum-sucking-pig-gate affair kicked off, David Wright MP has been a bit quiet not only on the Twitter front but I’m told his office telephone has been going unanswered when people are ringing for comments.

My spies tell me that David has been hauled over the coals but don’t worry, the Brownshirts haven’t sent him for “rehabilitation”, he’s been seen alive and well in the Cock Hotel in Wellington (no, that’s not a pun or a Freudian Slip).

I was sitting in the Cock last night having a quiet drink with a couple of fellow rabble rousers (one of which was the road pricing campaigner, Peter Roberts, but more on that later) when in wandered David Wright wearing a fetching Liebour-red jumper.  “I’ll get these” he said to his comrades (they’ll probably end up on his expenses as sundry items or subsistence allowance) then they had a good laugh about scum-sucking-climate-gate.

I did try to get a question or two for him out of some scum sucking pigs on Twitter but they were too slow and I had to leave so I wandered over, warned him that there was a hacker under his table and left as he had a laugh about it.

Euthanasia

Euthanasia and mercy killings are back in the news again, largely thanks to my favourite author, Terry Pratchett.

Terry Pratchett has a rare form of Alzheimers and wants to shuffle off the mortal coil on his own terms, in a chair in his garden listening to music taking an overdose of painkillers with alcohol.  And why not?

He said he detests the idea that the government can choose whether you live or die but accepts that they have a duty to protect vulnerable people and so he proposes a tribunal that will decide on whether a person can choose to die or not.

My uncle died a few years ago after cruelly being kept alive for about a decade.  He had Huntington’s which is superficially similar to alzheimers and parkinsons but it doesn’t cause dementia, it just renders the body useless.  By the time my uncle died he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, couldn’t control his bladder or bowels. He was kept alive for years in this state – his body didn’t work but his mind did.  He must have gone insane, there’s no way the human mind could cope.

If you kept an animal alive in that state you would probably be prosecuted by the RSPCA for animal cruelty so why is it not considered cruelty to do it to a human?

People should be allowed to make living wills while they are still of sound mind setting out the exact circumstances in which they would like to be put out of their misery.  The law needs to be changed to allow people to control their own ultimate destiny and to allow friends and relatives to help them do so.  The euthanasia tribunal idea is a good one and it should be coupled with a legal definition of quality of life, making it unequivocally clear when it is kinder to put someone down, to use the veterinary term.

My uncle shouldn’t have been kept alive for all those years with no quality of life and I would hope that someone would do the honourable thing and bump me off if ever I was in a similar position.

p.s. In case anyone is wondering, my dad didn’t get Huntingtons and it can’t skip a generation so I can’t get it.

Global Warming in China

Beijing has been brought to a standstill after being buried under 12″ of global warming snow – the most they’ve had since 1951.

The Chinese Met Office has warned that the far north of China could be globally warmed to as much 32°C.

Airports and roads have been closed in China because of the global warming and in South Korea the global warming is causing long delays at airports where runways and planes are iced up.

My friend in Moscow tells me that the city was globally warmed to -17°C yesterday.

In November, Chinese scientists caused an unseasonal snow storm by seeding clouds with silver iodide.  Just a co-incidence, I’m sure.

Explosion in Shrewsbury

According to BBC Radio Shropshire, there has been an explosion in Shrewsbury town centre.

The emergency services aren’t giving much information but there have been injuries.  Three people have been sent to the nearby Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and one has been airlifted to Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham.  Three air ambulances and ten land ambulances are involved in the emergency.

Twitter is showing what a fantastic real-time news source it is.  According to people on Twitter it’s a gas explosion near Rowley’s Mansion, which seems to be backed up by the presence of a Transco van.

There’s a webcam image here from the Theatre Severn towards the site of the explosion.  Another webcam is located roughly opposite the site and pointed towards the Welsh Bridge and Theatre Severn.

An empty building has been destroyed by the explosion on the corner of Mardol Quay and Bridge Street – one of the busiest junctions in Shrewsbury.  The explosion has closed Frankwell, the Welsh Bridge, Riverside, Bridge Street and the streets in between.  The town centre is effectively closed and should be avoided.  The explosion was in a flat above an empty shop between Shrewsbury Hotel and a photo studio.

The explosion was strong enough to send rubble over the river, damaging the Theatre Severn.  It’s roughly double the distance shown from this webcam.

The BBC News channel was saying earlier that a person was trapped inside the collapsed building but that appears not to have been the case.

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Below is a map showing where the explosion took place and some pictures of the site. Theatre Severn and the Sixth Form College are also shown on the map – both were damaged by debris from the explosion.

For more pictures, check out this BBC “In pictures” page.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year

There’s nothing English about the EDL

The Daily Mail has an article on the English Defence League with the snappy title “This is England: Masked like terrorists, members of Britain’s newest and fastest -growing protest group intimidate a Muslim woman on a train en route to a violent demo”.  It used to be called “This is England: On the trail of the English Defence League” but that’s not nearly prophetic enough for the Daily Mail.

English Defence League

The English Defence League with their British flag

It’s quite a lengthy article written by a reporter who went on the same train as some EDL protesters to a protest and is therefore an expert on the EDL.  It makes much of the fact that their core activist base seems to be football supporter gangs and therefore EDL supporters are thugs.  It mentions Cardiff City’s “Soul Crew” but doesn’t make the connection that it’s a Welsh football club’s supporters gang in the supposed English Defence League.

The article starts with a picture of a bemused looking muslim woman in a hijab who was on the same train as some hoodie-wearing EDL supporters.  The caption under the picture says:

Some of the most violent football hooligans in Britain head towards Manchester to support a march by the burgeoning English Defence League (EDL), while a woman dressed in a black hijab appears intimidated

Perhaps the photo was taken when she wasn’t looking intimidated but as I said, she looks more bemused than intimidated.  And notice the word “Britain” in there – the word is used interchangeably with “England” throughout the article.  Further down the article, where the connection is less unlikely to be made, the reporters notes that a protester singing “We had joy, we had fun, we had muslims on the run” was told to shut up by his mates because of the woman in the hijab and that none of the other protesters joined in.

The article recounts an incident where a protester is told to take off a mask by a policeman.  The protester ask “Why are they allowed to wear burkas in public but we’re not allowed to cover our faces?” and is told “Just do what you’re told”.  It’s a valid point though, why is it acceptable for a muslim to be covered head to toe with only their eyes on show but a non-muslim can’t cover their face in public.  According to the article, the same protester then launches into one of the EDL’s favourites – Rule Britannia.  Again, the reporter fails to point out the bleedingly obvious: no Englishman would sing Rule Britannia, it’s a British song.

The reporter says that the EDL is linked with “far right” organisations such as Combat 18, Blood & Honour, the British Freedom Fighters and the National Front because their members are believed to have attended EDL protests.  No doubt members of a great many organisations attend EDL protests – there have been muslims at EDL marches protesting at radical Islam who probably belong to local mosques and other groups that promote the advancement of Islam in England.  Again, the reporter fails to point out that it’s the English Defence League and the British Freedom Fighters are … British.

The British English Communities Secretary has compared the EDL to the British Union of Fascists (ironically supported by the Daily Mail in the 30’s), a political party formed by a former Liebour government minister, Oswald Moseley.  The BUF was banned by the British government in 1940 and Moseley, along with most of its prominent members were interned during the second world war.  A vision of things to come for the English Defence League, perhaps?

The leader of the EDL started the group as “British Citizens Against Muslim Extremists” and many of their senior officers are member of the British National Party but the reporter again fails to point out the British/English thing.  The EDL’s youth wing apparently has over 300 members across the UK and their 18 year old leader, Joel Titus, says “We want to hit every town and city in Britain”.  Again, the British/English thing is ignored by the reporter.

A Home Office advisor, Professor Matthew Goodwin, says:

The EDL is now well-organised and not just a minor irritant. It has become a rallying point for a number of different groups and to have them marching through sensitive areas is a major concern.

What I find more concerning is that any area should be so sensitive that a group protesting at muslim extremism should be a problem for the British government but that muslims who want to preach racial and religious hatred and intolerance or left wing fascists like Unite Against Fascism who turn up at EDL marches to cause riots are acceptable.  Not only are they acceptable but UAF actually get funding from the British government and senior members of the British establishment are members.

The truth is, there is nothing English about the English Defence League.  Why they decided to call themselves the English Defence League and then go about singing British songs and waving the British flag is beyond me but it is important that the schizophrenic nature of the British/English Defence League and the media’s reporting of them is exposed and challenged at every opportunity so that moderate civic English nationalists are not incorrectly associated with the EDL.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all my friends, relatives and enemies *

* Except Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson, you’ve gone through enemy and out the other side.

Switzerland votes to ban pointy towers

Switzerland has voted to ban the construction of Minarets in a national referendum.

They have an excellent system in Switzerland – one that Lord Pearson has made a key policy for UKIP – where a petition with 100,000 signatures calling for a referendum has to be acted on by the government.  This particular referendum was arranged by the Swiss Peoples’ Party.

The Swiss government is opposed to the ban, mainly because they’re shitting themselves that the “muslim community” is going to kick off.  The Swiss Justice Minister, speaking on behalf of approximately nobody but herself, said it’s “not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture”.

Bizarrely, Amnesty International said that the ban on minarets is a violation of muslims’ rights to freedom of expression.  Presumably Amnesty International can point to the bit in the Koran that compels muslims to build big pointy towers painted in garish colours?  Or alternatively they could just shut the fuck up and stop interfering in the democratic process.

A self-appointed muslim leader in Switzerland, Tamir Hadjipolu, claims that the ban on building pointy towers will lead to the “muslim community” living in fear.

There are 400,000 muslims in Switzerland and Islam is the second largest religion in the country, yet there are only four minarets in Switzerland and almost every application to build a new one is rejected.  The ban is unlikely to achieve much other than a ban on something that is already effectively banned anyway but the important thing is that it’s what the Swiss people want.

The bad news is, you’re going to have to wait until we get a UKIP government to get the same access to democracy that the Swiss get and unless people start voting for who they believe in rather than the party they think has the best chance of beating the party they most want to lose we’re going to be stuck with the current shamocracy for some time.

Top 10 film meme

I’ve been tagged by Toque on a top 10 films meme, in the hope that he’ll find some inspiration for his LoveFilm rentals.  In no particular order …

  • Final Destination
    A kid has a premonition that the plane he’s on is going to blow up, panics, gets thrown off with some school friends and … the plane blows up.  Death has been cheated and claims them one by one in the order they should have died.  It was the first of its kind and, the scene where the girl gets hit by the bus is classic.
  • Saw
    Again, first of a kind and really gruesome.  Some bad people are abducted and locked up and forced to maim/kill themselves/each other to same their own lives.  Whoever wrote the script should probably be on a list of people to be very worried about.
  • Whoops Apocalypse
    Not the (relatively) recent one, the old one with Rik Mayall and Alexi Sayle in it.  Hilarious spoof with Rik Mayall as a bungling special services commander and Alexi Sayle as some communist leader.
  • Italian Job
    The old one, not the new one.  If you don’t know the story, what planet have you been on?
  • Star Wars
    All six of them.  I know it’s controversial but I like them all and I wish they’d remake the original three so they fit in properly with the three newer films.
  • The Matrix
    Yet another “first”.  I get bored easily by films unless they’re really funny or different and the Matrix falls into the latter category.  You have to watch it a few times to figure it all out.
  • A Clockwork Orange
    Because sometimes you just want to see lots of shagging and mindless violence.  There’s probably a plot but I’ve never noticed one.
  • Death Race 2000
    The film that inspired the Carmageddon series of games.  A film set in the future where a trans-continental race takes place regularly in America (officially sanctioned and blessed by the Pope!) where drivers score points for every pedestrian they kill.
  • The Exorcist
    The original scary poltergeist film in which a priest tries to exorcise a posessed girl.  “What’s wrong with me mommy?”
  • Kill Bill
    All of them.  Gratuitous violence and excellent special effects.

I’ll pass this on to …

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 – 1918)

Where’s the poppy, Google?

Google has had a Sesame Street logo on its site for most of the week to mark the 4oth anniversary of the show.

Presumably the makers of Sesame Street are presumably paying them to display the logo because not only did the Google UK site fail to mark the 5th of November, but they have also failed to mark Remembrance Sunday.

I can forgive them missing the 5th of November but failing to mark Remembrance Sunday is a disgrace and an insult to the memory of the men and women who gave up their lives during the two world wars and beyond.

Google should be ashamed.

Damn it

Just checked the Big Ben webcam and I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news – the Houses of Parliament are still there.

Not suitable for children

It’s traditional to bedeck websites with scary images at Halloween.  Google has this rather tame offering:

I prefer something a bit more scary …

Scary Gordon Brown - Caution

Karadzic show trial begins today

The trial of Radovan Karadzic starts today at the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.

Karadzic is defending himself and has asked for a 10 month adjournment to prepare his defence, a request that has been dismissed as a delaying tactic.

But the prosecution has filed over 1m pages of evidence against him which raises concerns.  Whilst the man is clearly guilty – I don’t think there are many that would argue that he didn’t do what he’s accused of – there is no way, even with a team of defence lawyers, that a defence could be mounted against 1m pages of evidence.

There will be no successful defence – you don’t get a million pages of evidence for something that didn’t happen – but everyone has a right to defend themselves and without a defence you don’t have a fair trial.  It is impossible to mount a defence against 1m pages of evidence so Karadzic won’t get a fair trial.  You might not think he deserves one but when you start denying the right to a fair trial, it’s time to worry about the way society is going.

Adonis and Hain want to sit in House of Commons

The unelected English Transport Minister, Lord Adonis, says that he and the unelected English Business Secretary, Peter Mandelson, would love to sit in the House of Commons to answer MPs’ questions directly instead of by proxy in the House of Lords.

The BBC points out that the Shadow English Transport Minister and the Shadow English Business Secretary never get to directly face their opposite numbers in the Commons.

There is a simple solution to this democratic deficit – stop stuffing the cabinet with useless, unelected peers.  There should be no unelected peers in the cabinet.

Down with this sort of thing

Despite appearances to the contrary, I’m not just a keyboard jockey.

On Thursday I will be at the Campaign for an English Parliament‘s protest at the pantomime that is the regional grand committee for the West Midlands euroregion.

The regional grand committee for the east of England euroregion was a complete farce – hardly any MPs turned up to the meeting (not enough for a quorum so they couldn’t discuss anything on the agenda) and they spent 30 minutes of the 50 minute meeting debating whether to put the PA system on.  The whole thing cost the taxpayer nearly £2m, the meeting in the West Midlands euroregion will also cost roughly the same amount.

This is El Gordo’s vision for the future governance of England but it’s certainly not mine.  The protest will be at 6:30pm on Thursday the 8th of October at the Sandwell College campus in Smethwick.

Theme suggestions

This WordPress theme is creaking at the seams. It doesn’t support widgets and I’ve butchered it quite extensively over the years so it’s time for a facelift.

Any recommendations on a nice new WordPress theme for me to personalise?

Bring your own bottle

The removal van has dropped off the last bit of furniture, the gas and electric has been turned on there are boxes everywhere but Wonko’s World has finally moved into its new home.

Runtime UK is a local internet firm here in Telford which runs the Telford Live website that I frequent regularly.  They also host the English Parliament Online website.

Hosting is only £55+vat a year which you certainly can’t complain about!