Mrs Sane has finally accepted that we’re not having another baby and decided on a puppy instead so last night the Sane family welcomed Charlie, an 8 week old West Highland Terrier crossed with a Toy Poodle.
And before any bright spark makes a comment, yes I am well aware of the irony of me having a half Scottish, half French dog.
Technorati Tags: Pets
One day the people of England will realise that socialists just cannot run the country. The last time Liebour was in government they left the economy in tatters and sure enough, the economy is in tatters again. Is it a co-incidence that most of Europe is run by socialists?
The Bank of England has dropped the interest rates again to 0.5% and asked the Chancellor for permission to start quantative easing which, being a clueless idiot, he agreed to.
Quantative easing is where the Bank of England magics money out of thin air to buy assets off banks which gives the banks more cash. The value of the pound reflects the value of UK Plc and inventing another £75bn of cash dilutes the currency, reducing its value against foreign currency. This makes imports more expensive, exports worth less and all the foreign money the British government has borrowed to bail out the banks more expensive to pay back.
The Zimbabwean central bank has been doing this for the last couple of years and has just had to knock 12 zeroes off the Zimbabwean Dollar to bring the exchange rate down from 161 trillion dollars to the pound. It was also used by the Germans between the two world wars, devalued the reichmark to a trillionth of its pre-war value and as a direct consequence, the Nazi’s came to power on the back of a policy of national socialism depriving Jews and bankers of their wealth.
The general feeling of the ruling class – certainly in the European Empire – is against national socialism and in favour of international socialism. More iNazi than Nazi – very 21st century and the Apple logo will look great on the EU secret police uniforms. Bankers and stock market traders are being held up as the cause of the recession and while the bankers, certainly, have to take some of the blame, they are not the cause of the recession. The British government’s attempts to deprive Fred Goodwin of his pension is precisely the sort of policy the Nazi’s pursued between the two wars.
Quantative easing is going to cost us a lot of money and it will take decades or an event on the scale of the second world war to rid ourselves of the consequences.
Technorati Tags: Quantative Easing
There’s lots of talk about trying to take Fred Goodwin’s pension off him and the British government are making vague noises about a legal challenge but is there a case to answer?
I’m sure the British govenment has a team of lawyers going through every clause of Goodwin’s contract, looking for any get-out clause but they might be missing something more fundamental – Wednesbury Unreasonableness.
Wednesbury Unreasonableness is a legal precedent set in 1948 in the case of Associated Provincial Picture Houses -v- Wednesbury Corporation in which the judge ruled that the courts could only overturn a legal administrative decision if the decision was “so outrageous in its defiance of logic or accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it”.
That Fred Goodwin should receive a pension which the media is now telling us is over £700k per year after taking the UK’s second largest bank to the brink of bankruptcy is certainly outrageous and in defiance of logic. Rewarding someone so handsomly for bankrupting a bank and costing the taxpayer billions of pounds to bail it out is morally objectionable and no sensible person would have given him a £700k pension given the choice.
But a pension isn’t a performance related bonus and Goodwin’s contract says he’s entitled to it so, understanding that fact, would a sensible person still have failed to come to the conclusion that he should be paid his pension?
Any armchair lawyers out there with an opinion?
Technorati Tags: RBS, Fred Goodwin, Pension, Wednesbury Unreasonableness
Basque nationalists have won 37 out of 75 seats in the Spanish general election which leaves them one seat short of a majority.
The Basque Nationalist Party will have to form a coalition with Aralar, Eusko Alkartasuna and Ezker Batua and hope that the conservatives don’t jump into bed with the socialists if they are to form a government. It’s certainly unlikely but as we know in England, when the unionists are faced with nationalists they can be thick as thieves.
The nationalists’ performance was hindered by the Spanish High Court banning two nationalist parties in the run-up to the election.
I’ve just had an interesting heated discussion with my parents and ended up calling them communists!
My dad was having a bitch about the RBS chairman, Sir Fred Goodwin, and his eye-popping pension. Naturally he thinks it’s a disgrace and that he should lose his pension because he’s failed at his job. God, it was like listening to someone reading the front page of the Sun.
I tried to explain that a pension isn’t performance-related pay, that his contract said that he was entitled to it and that the British government can’t just ignore the law and tear up a contract because someone is shit at their job. I said that once they’d got away with doing it once they’d do it again and again. I tried to explain that socialists are jealous people and that they would do it to more and more people and that it wouldn’t be the people at the top with all the money that lost out because they’re the ones who give the parties all their money.
“Yeah, it’ll be Joe Public that loses out, not them buggers in charge,” said my dad. Erm, isn’t that the point I’ve been trying to make for the last 10 minutes?
There’s was no talking sense to them, they were convinced that Goodwin’s pension was so outrageous it was worth giving the British government carte blanche to break the law whenever it suits them and I ended up telling them they were communists. Like so many people, the poll tax was the straw that broke the camel’s back and they voted Liebour to get rid of the Tories. They can’t wait to get rid of Liebour now after the balls up they’ve made these last few years. They’re just the sort of fickle swing voters that make or break a party’s fortunes at an election, people that will vote for a party that they don’t support and one to which they are ordinarily diametrically opposed on the strength of a single issue.
Disaffection with the whole system has caused such a general disinterest in politics that people see no problem voting for someone they don’t want to get rid of someone else they don’t want or because they agree with one thing a party says on a topical news item. People feel like they aren’t being listened to and that no matter what they say or do, nothing will change.
It’s a sad state of affairs but that’s English politics for you.
Technorati Tags: Communists, Parents, Disaffection
Back in December …
Prime minister Gordon Brown wants investment in technology to be at the heart of the UK and Europe’s economic recovery.
Speaking after a summit with business leaders from firms including Vodafone and BT, as well as French president Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission president José Manuel Barroso, Brown said the time had come “to build the technological and environmental infrastructure of the 21st century”.
And yesterday …
Mobile phone operator Vodafone has announced plans to cut about 500 jobs in the UK in an effort to reduce costs.
Jonah strikes again.
Technorati Tags: Vodafone, Jonah Brown
A senior Met Police officer has warned that we are likely to experience a “summer of rage” caused by “known activists”.
Superindendent David Hartshorn says that “known activists” are likely to organise protests and the recession will provide them with the “footsoldiers” they need.
The “known activists” are most likely the BNP. The timing – just after the BNP trounced Liebour in a Kent by-election – is too much of a co-incidence. He also mentions banks as a viable target.
Would the BNP use the banks as an excuse to wind people up? Does a bear shit in the woods? The BNP are left wing socialists with a policy of extensive nationalisation. Most of their members are only interested in booting foreigners out of the country but the party is about more than that. The BNP want a nationalist socialist country with prison sentences for people who weaken the state and nationalisation of key industries.
But the police are wrong to be concentrating on the BNP – they should be looking at the eco-terrorists as the biggest threat. These are people that are evangelical in their belief that the world is about to end in a man-made climate apocalypse. Sensible people who realise that the global warming scam is a load of bollocks have already been labelled as worse than the nazi’s and likened to holocaust deniers and virtually nobody dares question the climate change propagandists in public. Importantly, they vast majority of eco-terrorists are also anti-capitalists and they see capitalism as the cause of the man-made climate change they’ve invented.
The eco-terrorists have a judgement in their favour that they can use to justify whatever damage and destruction they want to cause. They argued that they were justified in causing tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage to Kingsnorth power station because the law says you can cause reasonable damage to prevent even greater damage from happening. This was intended for things like breaking down the door of a house to turn off the gas supply in times of emergency or breaking into a petrol tanker to move it from a car fire, that type of thing. But a jury agreed that the eco-terrorists at Kingsnorth were justified in causing £30k worth of criminal damage to the power station because of the damage it causes to the environment.
That ruling gives the eco-terrorists a get out of jail free card. In fact, it gives them an avoid jail in the first place card. They’re motivated, the British government is doing their propaganda work for them and the law appears to be on their side. Rather than obsessing over the BNP where the entire establishment is working against them, the police and politicians should be more concerned about the eco-terrorists that are already on the inside.
Technorati Tags: Police
Mrs Sane and I went to a 40’s and 50’s themed party last night. I’ve never had to wear a monkey suit before – we don’t get invited to those sort of parties usually!
I felt like a waiter in an Indian takeaway.
Technorati Tags: Party
Another day, another victim of the curse of Jonah Brown.
Yesterday it was the turn of Saab who, following talks between their Chairman and El Gordo on setting up a new factory in the UK, are now considering filing for bankruptcy protection in Sweden.
Today’s victim is the mining company, Anglo American, which has just announced 9,000 job cuts worldwide.
The link with Jonah? Cynthia Caroll, Chief Executive of Anglo American sits on Jonah Brown’s “Business Council for Britain” – a group of unelected representatives from big business who advise him on business policy for England (it’s devolved in the rest of the UK).
Technorati Tags: Jonah Brown, Anglo American, Cynthia Caroll
Jonah Brown is continuing to wreak havoc on the global economy.
A week ago he visited an Ericsson R&D plant, a Mini factory and a Corus factory. A few days later Ericsson announced 5,000 job cuts, BMW announced 850 job cuts at Mini and Tata announced massive job cuts as part of a £600m cost saving exercise at Corus.
When I saw the announcement that Saab is considering filing for bankruptcy protection in Sweden, my first reaction was “what’s the link with Gordo?” And sure enough, it didn’t take long to find evidence of Jonah’s involvement.
El Gordo has been talking to the head of General Motors in Europe, Carl-Peter Forster, about setting up an electric car factory in the UK. Carl-Peter Forster also happens to be Chairman of … you’ve guessed it … Saab.
How different things might have been if Jonah hadn’t been allowed to spread his curse around the globe.
Technorati Tags: Saab, Jonah Brown
Jade Goody shot to fame for her … interesting … performance on Big Brother and has kept herself in the papers by doing daft things and insulting people.
Sadly, she has terminal cancer and her time on the mortal coil is coming to an end. She will leave behind two young children.
Doctors are doing what they can to prolong her life and it’s a cruel twist of fate that Jonah Brown has chosen to curse her by praising her determination. He visited John MacDougall, the MP for Glenrothes, days before he lost his battle with cancer …
Technorati Tags: Jade Goody, Jonah Brown
RBS is getting a kicking for its billion pound bonus package at the same time as taking god knows how much money off the taxpayer.
Yes, RBS has been run into the ground, taken on too much high risk debt and over-extended itself buying ABN Amro, but the majority of RBS staff weren’t responsible for the bad decisions – they were just doing their jobs and have continued to do so in the face of mass redundancies and an uncertain future.
The people at the top – the chairman, the board and senior managers – shouldn’t get any bonus whatsoever until the bank has paid the taxpayer back every penny it’s had from the bailout. But the ordinary staff aren’t responsible for the collapse of RBS and they shouldn’t be punished for it – if their individual performance merits a bonus then they should get it.
Technorati Tags: RBS
Over the last few days the news on the BBC and ITV have, understandably, talked about virtually nothing but the snow.
There are plenty of other things going on in the world they could be talking about but the snow is a major event so fine. But with the snow has come an apparent metrication of the BBC and ITV. When they tell us how much snow has fallen it’s 10cm or 15cm. They aren’t even giving it in inches as well for the majority of the population who don’t do metric.
Surely excluding most of the population by using only metric is a breach of the BBC charter.
Amusingly, BBC viewers and the Flag Institute have picked up on a minor gaffe at the signing of new trade deals between El Gordo, Peter Mandelson and the Chinese Prime Minister.
On the desk they posed behind for photos, the tacky plastic union flag was flown upside down which is historically a symbol of distress. 
In the case of the union flag which looks almost identical both ways up (the white diagonal lines are slightly thicker on one side of the red ones) it’s a subtle way of telling anyone who’s looking that you’re in a spot of bother that Johnny Foreigner is unlikely to notice.
The Flag Institute and the BBC both assume that it was a gaffe – that the flag was flown upside down in error – but was it? Was it perhaps a freudian slip, the Trade Minister’s flunky responsible for putting out the flags subconsciously turning it into a distress signal? Or was Mandy asking for help? In the BBC’s picture (right), Gordo is standing menacingly behind him and Mandy doesn’t look like the cat that got the trade deal that’s going to save the economy. Was there a Chinese midget under the desk with electrodes attached to Mandy’s scrotum? Is there a Chinese SWAT team just out of shot?
Technorati Tags: Peter Mandelson, Gordon Brown, China, Union Flag
One thing that both irritates and humours me is people labelling the BNP as “far right”.
On more than one occasion I’ve opined that this is one of the most successful propaganda coups by the left who have associated the left wing BNP with the right.
The BNP are a left wing party. They are into nationalisation, curtailing freedom of the press and other far-left loveliness. They are not a right wing party but it suits the left if the electorate believes they are because that means they will associate the BNP with the Tories and not Liebour or the Lib Dums.
It’s good to see that I’m not the only one saying this though. A left wing Plaid Cymru AM has objected to the Chairman of Conswervative Future labelling the BNP as left wing. Iain Dale agrees that the BNP is left wing, as does AID. It is absolutely vital that those of us on the political right challenge the accepted wisdom that the BNP is right wing. The BNP is not right wing and the left cannot be allowed to continue to get away with peddling the myth that they are.
Technorati Tags: BNP, Left Wing, Plaid Cymru, Tories
Israel has pledged to give protection to any Israeli terrorist charged with war crimes.
The use of white phosphorus in civilian areas and rounding up civilians so they can be bombed are two examples of the war crimes committed by the Israeli terrorist organisation, the IDF.
How was Israel described by the terrorist sympathisers while they were committing these war crimes again? “A beacon of democracy in the Middle East” wasn’t it? They’re no better than the arab militants they claim to be fighting.
I wonder what the apologists will come up with to justify Israel pledging to ignore the will of the international community again. Post your predictions in the comments.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestine, War Crimes
Ashley Mote, the former UKIP MEP for the South East (he was expelled from UKIP after admitting to benefit fraud and now sits as an independent), had a leaflet put in the latest edition of the Save Our Sovereignty newsletter calling for letter writing activists.
I couldn’t resist sending him an email after reading it, an English politician really should know the difference between England and Britain.
Dear Mr Mote,
I got a copy of your leaflet in with the Save Our Sovereignty newsletter and I’m afraid I didn’t read more than a few lines. Nothing puts me off reading leaflets more than American-English and revisionism.
Could you please explain how you came to the conclusion that the 1689 Bill of Rights, passed into law by the English Parliament 18 years before the British Parliament came into existence with the 1707 Act of Union and not having legal effect in Scotland, is the “British” Bill of Rights? You talk a lot about the “British” Constitution but there is, in reality, no such thing. There is an English Constitution and a Scottish Constitution and depending on your interpretation of the Metric Martyrs ruling, there may even be a Welsh Constitution and a Northern Irish Constitution if you accept that the Acts of Parliament that created the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies were constitutional laws.
I see you even have a “British Constitution” section on your website. Surely, as a politician elected in England, you should know the difference between England and Britain?
Stuart
It’s been a few days and I’ve still not heard back from him …
Technorati Tags: Ashley Mote, Revisionism
As suggested by Gareth, I wrote to my MP and asked him to vote against the attempt to change the Freedom of Information Act so that MPs can hide their expenses. He actually replied to me for a change – normally he doesn’t bother, this time he might as well not have.
Dear Stuart Parr
Thank you for your recent email relating to members’ expenses.
I have to say I do not know how much more information needs to be published considering that the order to be put to the vote on Thursday means that the following categories of expenses will be reported:
(a) Administrative and Office Expenditure:
(i) Accommodation costs for offices, surgeries, etc;
(ii) office equipment and supplies;
(iii) telephones and other telecommunications;
(iv) professional fees and charges;
(v) agency and other staff costs;
(vi) travel costs;
(vii) utilities;
(b) Personal Additional Accommodation Expenditure:
(i) mortgage interest;
(ii) rent;
(iii) hotel costs;
(iv) council tax;
(v) fixtures, fitings and furnishings;
(vi) subsistence;
(vii) other household costs, including service charges, utilities, telecommunications, maintenance and repairs;
(c) Communications Expenditure:
(i) websites;
(ii) reports and surveys;
(iii) delivery charges, postage and stationery;
(iv) advertising;
(v) equipment;
(d) Staffing Expenditure;
(e) Travel Expenditure in relation to travel by Members:
(i) car, including third party vehicle rental and mileage;
(ii) rail;
(iii) air;
(iv) other UK and European travel;
(f) Resettlement Grant;
(g) Winding-up Expenditure.
A committee is also to be put in place to review these headings.
I am sure you will agree that this is reasonable.
Yours sincerely
David Wright
None of this is new information, it’s the same information packaged up in a different way. What MPs have been ordered by the High Court to disclose and what they are proposing to change the law to avoid is the disclosure of their receipts so that we – the people who are paying their expenses – can see exactly what they’re spending our money on. I know my employer wouldn’t be satisfied with me putting in an expenses claim without receipts so why should we, the MPs’ employers, be satisfied with it? I’m not satisfied and I don’t think it’s reasonable so I sent this in reply:
Dear David,
I am disappointed but hardly surprised that you support your government’s attempt to keep MPs expenses secret from the people who pay for them.
Breaking down MPs expenses into categories doesn’t do anything to improve transparency – that information is already supposed to be available but without the headings. If I want to know, for instance, how much taxpayers money you have spent on taxi’s or restaurants, why shouldn’t I be entitled to that information? If I wanted to know how much taxpayers money you spent in the off-licence in Oakengates why shouldn’t I be able to find that out? I can find it out for any other public servant under the Freedom of Information Act so why should you be treated any differently just because you’re an MP?
The High Court ruled last year that it was unlawful for MPs to hide their expenses from the taxpayer so rather than comply with the ruling, you and your colleagues are instead conspiring to change the law so that the judge’s ruling is no longer valid. That is not improving transparency, that is an outright abuse of power and totally unacceptable.
I would strongly urge you to reconsider your support for this assault on democracy and accountability. Or is your desire to hide your expenses, perhaps, because you have something to hide?
Stuart
I fully expect him to ignore me for the next 3 months which is what normally happens when he doesn’t like what I say.
Technorati Tags: Freedom of Information, David Wright
It was #2’s birthday today so, as I do with all the kids’ birthdays, I took the day off work.
I’ve been off work ill this week – some stomach bug I picked up at the weekend – and took advantage of a marked improvement today by going out shopping with Mrs Sane and #4 (aka “Daddy’s little princess”) this morning. And then again this afternoon with Mrs Sane after dropping #4 off at nursery which is where we found the bargain of the century – a Blu Ray DVD player for £129!
If you’ve not experienced the joy of High Definition then get yourself down to your local Currys or Comet and take a look at the big plasma’s playing a DVD. You’ll know it’s playing in HD because it looks like it’s playing on a computer monitor but on a grander scale. Once you’ve seen a HD film there’s no going back – we watched Star Wars Clone Wars in Blu Ray tonight and even a cartoon looks stunning. I even got the Wii hooked up to the surround sound system so it was a thoroughly productive day.
The only downer on the whole day was stupidly lifting the TV unit, complete with TV and all the other kit that goes with it, to move it back to the right place on my own and, I think, pulling a muscle in my stomach. If I haven’t pulled the muscle, I’ve at least given it a good tug – it bloody hurts whenever I bend or straighten up.
Technorati Tags: Blu Ray
