Archive for WTF?

McKay Commission fails to answer West Lothian Question

The McKay Commission on the West Lothian Question has reported today with the conclusion that not addressing the West Lothian Question is unsustainable and that nothing should be changed to address the West Lothian Question.

Sir William McKay

British government puts Scot in charge of commission deciding whether Scots should vote on English laws

The report says that English-only legislation should be supported by a majority of British MPs representing constituencies in England and that they should pass a resolution saying that they’re not going to do it again.

And that’s it – no ban on British MPs from constituencies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland from voting on laws that are devolved in their own country, nothing to prevent a repeat of the shameful way Scottish MPs voted through foundation hospitals and university tuition fees for England.  The procedures of the British House of Commons “should be changes to encourage MPs to follow this approach” (my emphasis).

The report says that instead of requiring a majority of MPs representing constituencies in England to pass a bill affecting England only, they should just publish the voting record of MPs representing constituencies in England alongside the final result.

If a government was seen to have failed to attract the support of a majority of MPs from England [or England and Wales] for business affecting those interests, it would be likely to sustain severe political damage.

This is pie in the sky stuff from the Scotsman the Brits ironically put in charge of this English commission.  It was well publicised at the time and has continued to be well publicised that it was British MPs elected in Scotland who imposed tuition fees on English students yet despite all the campaigns and violent protests about them being introduced (and then tripled) there has been no mention of this fact by the campaigners, protesters or the media.  In fact, the executive summary of the report also fails to mention these votes, raising the prospect of it happening but then dismissing it by pointing out that the party with a majority in the British Parliament has only had a minority in England twice which is completely irrelevant.

Specifically it raises the possibility that a majority opinion among MPs from England on such laws could be outvoted by a UK-wide majority of all UK MPs. But it is extremely rare for this to happen. Since 1919, only in the short-lived parliaments of 1964–66 and February–October 1974 has the party or coalition forming the UK Government not also enjoyed a majority in England.

The report recognises that “people in England are unhappy about the existing arrangements and support change” but ignores – by cherry picking the surveys it quotes – the fact that the majority of that support for change is for an English Parliament.  It goes on to say that British MPs representing constituencies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should not be banned from voting on English matters because that “would create two different classes of MP” completely missing the point that there are already two different classes of MP – those who can vote on domestic affairs in their own constituency and those who can’t, those who can vote on laws for another country where the people affected can’t hold them to account and those who can be held to account by every voter their decisions affect.

The commission report says that the democratic deficit in England as a result of the botched devolution deal that left England out is accidental:

In the absence of change in the way the House of Commons works, the consequence – clearly unintended, but nonetheless important – may be to impede the voicing of any distinctively English concerns, or perceived concerns, that exist on wholly or mainly English matters.

I don’t believe for a moment that the way England is treated as a British colony is accidental and the refusal of the British government to release the minutes of the 1997 Cabinet meetings on devolution makes me all the more suspicious.  The spurious excuse for withholding the minutes is that it would undermine the principle of collective decision making but last week Margaret Thatcher’s papers from the Falklands war were published which showed that Ken Clarke – a current member of the Cabinet – opposed kicking the Argentinians out of the Falklands and favoured collaboration with them instead.  If those papers don’t undermine the principle of collective decision making then what does?

McKay and his researchers make it very clear that they have sought opinions from all parts of the UK on how England should be government:

Any reforms undertaken to respond to English concerns must therefore be mindful of possible impacts outside England and seek to mitigate such impacts.

In 1997, however, nobody in England was asked for an opinion on how Scotland and Wales should be governed.  We weren’t even asked for an opinion on how England should be government and we’ve been refused the right to voice our opinion on it ever since.

The report dismisses an English Parliament within a British federation out of hand, claiming that “the great majority of evidence submitted to [them] was, however, set firmly against the idea of an English Parliament”.  This “evidence” was:

There are no precedents of federal systems in which one component makes up over five-sixths of the overall population of a state. There is a wide view that such a big unit would destabilise the state as a whole, both in relation to the three much smaller units in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but also in relation to the federal UK parliament and government, to which an English parliament would be likely to be a powerful rival.

While there is no precedent of a federal system with one constituent part comprising 80% of the population working, there is no precedent of it not working.  There is evidence of discrimination or poor treatment of a native population bringing down entire empires though so the commission is shown to be very selective in what “evidence” it considers.

The argument that an English Parliament would somehow dominate a federal British government is a nonsense – in a federal structure the English Parliament would be concerned only with English domestic affairs, the same as the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Northern Irish Assembly are now.  If a reserved matter was of such specific national interest that the English Parliament and one or more of the other national parliaments were at loggerheads over it then it is clearly something that should be devolved anyway.

Any federal system requires a delineation of competences, which are usually arbitrated by a supreme court that would be able to overrule the UK parliament, as well as binding the devolved institutions. This would be a radical departure from UK constitutional practice. In this and in other respects, the “massive upheaval in governmental arrangements that would be needed to create a new Parliament for 50 million people” would not appear a proportionate response to the current sense of disadvantage in England.

I fail to see the problem with a constitutional court and in fact proposed this as part of my case for a British confederation – a solution that the McKay commission didn’t consider.  The British government (and devolved governments) should be bound by the law.  Changing the law to legitimise breaking the law is clearly wrong and a constitutional court should be able to bind a government in its judgements.  Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  Nobody and that’s why our politicians have been able to lie, cheat and thieve their way through their political careers with relative impunity.  A constitutional court is an eminently sensible suggestion.

Whether the creation of an English Parliament is considered by politicians and academics to be “proportionate” or not is irrelevant.  It is an integral part of the only two workable solutions to the democratic deficit experienced in England that maintains a British union and is what most polls show that most people in England want.

It seems unlikely in the current climate that citizens would favour having more politicians than now, or the costs associated with establishing a new institution.

The “more politicians, more cost” argument about an English Parliament is so discredited that it really shouldn’t have made it into this report containing “expert” evidence and opinion at all.  The vast majority of legislation currently passed by the British government is either English-only legislation now or would be under a federal system of government.  There is no need for over 650 British MPs with most of their work being the responsibility of another government.  Simply taking the number of British MPs representing constituencies in England and applying that number to a devolved English Parliament and redistributing the difference would result in no net increase in politicians but by being a bit more ambitious, the total number of politicians in the British and English parliaments could easily be decreased.

The cost is also a non-argument.  Former Tory MP, Chris Gill, wrote a paper on creating a British federation when he was still an MP.  The paper proposed turning the House of Commons into an English Parliament and the House of Lords into a federal British Parliament and found that in today’s money, it would save almost half a billion a year.

The report touches on cross-border effects of English legislation and uses that as a reason not to ban British MPs representing constituencies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland from voting on English laws.  It fails to examine the existing example of the Scottish government being given jurisdiction over sections of the River Tweed in England and its English tributaries which means English people accused of unauthorised fishing on an English river can be summoned to appear before a Scottish Sheriff in a Scottish court to be tried under Scottish law.

Cross-border effects of English legislation under the British government are also not fully explored.  The requirement of all young English people to remain in education until the age of 18 is a perfect example – the British government has passed this law without considering the cross-border effects resulting in there still being unanswered questions as to how people moving from England before finishing their post-16 education will continue to be educated in Scotland and Wales or if Scottish people will be exempted from post-16 education despite the fact that it comes into force this September.

EU legislation is given a brief mention, pointing out that it is applied differently to England than it is in Scotland, Wales and northern Ireland and that there is no differentiation between English and British interests.  The report fails to point out that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own representation to the EU.

So, that’s the report in all it’s inglorious mediocrity but what’s wrong with the proposal itself?  The proposals put forward by the report won’t actually change change anything in any material way.  The standing orders for committees might change but that’s just a framework.  Most English people have little interest in how these committees are formed, they’re bothered about the fact that British MPs representing constituencies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland get to vote on English laws and sometimes get to overrule the wishes of the majority of British MPs representing constituencies in England.  The McKay commission’s proposals don’t address this at all.  It isn’t even the unworkable “English Votes on English Laws” constitutional fudge, it’s a fudge of that fudge and a waste of everyone’s time, money and effort.

There are only three workable solutions to the democratic deficit experienced by England in the British union.  The first option and the one that causes the least constitutional upheaval is a federal structure which sees England given a devolved English Parliament with at least the same powers as the Scottish Parliament.  The second option is a more ambitious constitutional change, creating a British confederation.  The third option is English independence.  English Votes on English Laws and any of the variants proposed now or in the past just can’t be made to work.  A politician can’t exclusively represent British interests one day and exclusively represent English interests the next.  English laws need to be proposed, amended and voted on by politicians elected in England to represent English interests in an English government.  English Votes on English Laws would give us British politicians elected in England to represent British interests in the British government making British laws for England.  It would be an unworkable mess.

The unwritten brief of the McKay commission was to come up with a way of maintaining the status quo whilst appearing to be addressing the concerns of English people about who gets to make English laws.  In this respect, the commission has successfully met its objectives and the British government now has an “independent” report telling them that the answer to the West Lothian Question is to con English people into thinking that they’re doing something about it whilst doing absolutely nothing to address it.

Opinium jumping the gun on Scottish independence referendum?

I took part in an Opinium opinion poll last night and unusually for them got an “ethnicity” question at the end.  There was something a bit wrong with it though …

Opinium Ethnicity 17-12-12

Needless to say I have expressed my disappointment to Opinium.

Clegg’s comical timing over “wealth tax”

The timing of Nick Clegg’s suggestion yesterday that a temporary “emergency wealth tax” should be instituted so “the rich” can help fix the economy was comical.

Nick Clegg Winning Here

There’s only one “n” in wining

On Tuesday morning, the City AM newspaper revealed that a top financial sector recruitment agency in London has seen a 51% increase in French-speaking jobseekers looking to abandon France to avoid Francois Hollande’s 75% tax on high earners.  As expected, the 75% tax rate will bring in 0% tax from a great many high earners who are simply taking their money elsewhere.

Like council tax, Clegg’s “wealth tax” would tax people on the value of their assets and not their income and hence ability to pay.  Council tax is calculated on the value of your house in 1991 and whether you’re a millionaire or a retired couple who bought their house at the “right” time, you are expected to pay the same tax.  Clegg’s “wealth tax” would apply the same flawed logic that says if you own something expensive then you must have money.  It isn’t a tax on income, which can be spent, it’s a tax on the ownership of valuable things which can’t.

The suggestion that Clegg’s “wealth tax” would be temporary is as comical as his timing.  Income tax is a temporary tax, introduced in 1798 to pay for the Napoleonic Wars.  Once they get their hands on the money they won’t want to let go of it and we will be stuck with this unfair and counter-productive tax which is driven entirely by jealousy and political opportunism.

To fix the economy requires bold tax cuts, not ill thought out tax increases.  Cut tax and put more money in people’s pockets and they will spread that money around, creating jobs and reducing the drain on the welfare state which means less tax is needed to support public spending.  Big tax cuts will boost the economy and pay for themselves, big tax rises will drive the wealth creators out of the country and damage the economy.

Oxford University offering £22k bribe to Scottish students

Oxford UniversityThe English have been victims of institutional discrimination at the hands of the British establishment for years – elderly people have to go half blind before they can be treated for ARMD, cancer victims are refused life saving medication because there’s not enough of our money left to pay for it after it’s been “redistributed”, the price of prescriptions goes up in England every year but nobody in Scotland, Wales or NI pay for theirs  – but just once in a while something so blatantly wrong comes along to remind us that discriminating against the English is an integral part of the British psyche.

The British government first imposed university tuition fees on the English in 2003 thanks to the votes of British MPs elected in Scotland despite the tuition fees bill not applying to Scotland.  The British voted again last year to increase tuition fees in England to a maximum of £9k a year.  A university education is free in Scotland, costs a maximum of £6k in Northern Ireland and £3k in Wales.  Students from EU countries have to get the same treatment as residents of the country they’re studying in unless that EU country is England when they’ll have to pay up to £9k a year, just like they would if they studied in England.

This is all old news of course: this particular piece of racial discrimination has been going on for almost a decade now.  What is new is that Oxford University wants to recruit more Scottish students and is offering bungs of up to £22k to encourage Scottish people to come down and study there.  There is no financial incentive for English people to study there, just £9k a year in tuition fees.

How did we end up with a society where discriminating against English people isn’t just tolerated but actively encouraged?

26 week suspended sentence for murdering a baby

A muslim woman has been given a 26 week suspended sentence for murdering her newborn baby because she was worried about her family being dishonoured by her having a child out of wedlock.

Firstly … 26 weeks?  182 days for murdering a baby, going out with her family and then burying it in a garden.  Not just a paltry 26 weeks for murdering a baby, but a suspended sentence – she won’t even go to prison!  It’s obscene and a miscarriage of justice.  She put her family’s standing in the muslim “community” ahead of the life of her own baby and the baby died.  She should be punished properly for murder, not given tea and sympathy and let off with a slapped wrist.  A baby was killed for fuck’s sake and she’s walking around with nothing but an ASBO tag on her ankle (if that) by way of punishment.

The criminal justice system in England is an absolute joke.  A woman gets away with murdering a baby because it’s cultural.  Labour’s Lord Ahmed was convicted of causing death by dangerous driving and not only kept his peerage and party membership, but served less half of his outrageously low 12 week prison sentence and looks set to get away relatively lightly with allegedly putting a $10m bounty on the head of Barack Obama and George Bush at a public meeting in Pakistan.  A man was jailed for 70 days for burning a copy of the koran in April last year, a week after a muslim was given a £50 fine for burning poppies outside the Albert Hall on Remembrance Day and shouting “British soldiers burn in hell”.  There is very little justice in the justice system.

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?

£37k of taxpayers’ money spent on painting and Coat of Arms for Speaker Bercow

The Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, has unveiled a portrait of himself and a lovely new coat of arms … all for the bargain price of 37,000 taxpayer pounds.

The coat of arms was clearly designed by a team of lefty liberal PR consultants with a brief to produce a coat of arms so nauseatingly politically correct and “progressive” that even the Guardian couldn’t find anything to disapprove of and therefore ignored it.  It has a ladder to show how he’s climbed the social ladder from comprehensive-educated son of a taxi driver to MP and Speaker.  It has Lib Dem gold roundels to represent his love of tennis and his position as ex-officio head of the Boundary Commissions for England, Scotland, Wales and NI.  The main part of the shield is divided half and half Labour red and Tory blue.  The motto is “All are equal” with the words separated by pink triangles with the back of the scroll the motto is written on a gay pride rainbow pattern to show his commitment to championing the rights of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender people.  It also includes two swords to represent the county of Essex where he went to university.  The use of Lib Dem gold, Labour red and Tory blue was deliberate to show his “impartiality”.

The portrait isn’t bad but it’s not worth the £22k of our money that was handed over for it.  For £22k I’d want a painting the size of my house and Vincent van Gough’s bloody signature in the corner!

HMRC demanding a voluntary tax contribution!

Mrs Sane registered as self employed earlier this year for her Scentsy business.

Like most small businesses, she had start-up costs and is putting pretty much all of her profits back into the business so she won’t have any taxable income for at least a couple of years.  So it was a surprise to get a letter from HMRC today demanding £60 of National Insurance contributions.

I called them up for her and asked how she could be liable for National Insurance with no taxable income.  Or no salary at all, in fact.  The answer was that regardless of whether she has any taxable income, she is still liable for £2.50 per week National Insurance contributions to ensure she is eligible to receive benefits and to go towards a state pension.

She doesn’t claim benefits and there will be no such thing as a state pension by the time we’re old enough to retire so I asked if it was a voluntary contribution.  He told me that it wasn’t voluntary but she could opt out of paying it if she has a taxable income of less than £5k per year.  So … that would be voluntary then?

Forget about the recession, let’s change the law of succession

The world is in recession, the Bank of England have had to magic another £75bn out of thin air to try and stimulate the economy, unions are threatening to bring the country to its knees and what’s David Cameron’s number one priority?  Changing the laws of succession.

Apparently what we really need to concentrate on is not sorting out the economy, making sure that people have a roof over their heads, jobs and something to eat but changing the law to make sure women can inherit the throne ahead of younger men and that future monarchs can marry catholics.  How can the head of the Church of England marry a catholic?

Unbelievable.  Well done Dave.

Scottish doctor says English students should sell kidney to pay tuition fees

What an organ head

A Scottish doctor, Dr Sue Rabbitt Roff, has suggested that English university students should sell one of their kidneys to pay for their tuition fees!

Roff has written on the British Medical Journal website in favour of the right to sell your organs for profit and suggested that those wishing to sell a kidney should receive the national average salary of £28,000 which they might like to use to pay university fees.

Alternatively, we could stop Scottish MPs imposing racist tuition fees on English students by creating an English Parliament so they can’t vote n things that are non of their business.  Slightly less extreme than selling your kidney to subsidise free university education in Scotland.

A sensible immigration rule at last!

An Indian woman who came to live in England on a Malawian passport is fighting the British government’s refusal to allow her husband and children the right to come and live with her here.

One of the very few restrictions the ConDems have put on immigration is that immigrants from outside the EU must have a basic command of the English language before they’re allowed to move here (immigrants from EU countries can continue to refuse to learn English, hampering integration with society and putting an unnecessary burden on the state).

Vali Chapti refuses to learn to speak English but still wants to come and live in England with his wife.  He says that because he’ll be living in Leicester, he doesn’t need to speak English because there are enough people there who speak Gujurati.  He and his wife claim that refusing to allow him to move here is a breach of their human rights to marriage and family and said that if they don’t win their appeal they will take the case to “a higher court – the European Court of Human Rights”. Rashida Chapti is being helped by Leicester Labour Councillor, Mian Mayat, who is her “interpretor and advisor”.

I won’t get sidetracked on a rant about how the EU courts have primacy over our own but there is no doubt that the EU Court of Human Rights will rule against the British government.  Vali and Rashida Chapti do have a right to live together as a married couple and as a family with their seven children but they don’t have a right to do that in England.  Rashida Chapti can leave England and live with her husband and children in India any time she likes, the British government is not preventing her from being with her family.

Immigration is out of control and damaging society and the economy.  We don’t have enough jobs and houses to go around the people already living here, let alone the people who want to move here.  We don’t have enough money to provide translation services or benefits for people who are unemployable because they don’t speak English.  Racial and religious segregation – the result of multiculturalism – is damaging to society, causing social and economic problems and stirring up racial tensions.  We need a freeze on economic immigration and then a points-based system applied to all prospective immigrants (including from the EU) to ensure that people moving here have skills that we need, have a home to move into, have the means to support themselves and speak English.

Elected Police Commissioners … why?

The British government is graciously allowing the proles in England and Wales to vote for police commissioners.

We want the vote on the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty that we were promised and we get a vote on changing the voting system from one undemocratic system to another, marginally less undemocratic system.  We want a vote on devolved government for England and we get a vote on who fills out the race and faith diversity forms in our local police force.

Electoral and constitutional reform is worth bugger all unless it actually makes a change to peoples’ lives (for the better of course) and it’s something people actually want.

DIY air con!

I’m away on a training course this week and staying in a rather nice two-bedroom apartment in an old manor house-type thing (I think it might be Edwardian judging by the windows)  on the bank of the Thames with a colleague.

The place is covered with wi-fi which is pretty essential if you’re away from home even if it is barely faster than dial-up.  But dial-up would have been an improvement over the broadband last night and today.

The signal strength was fine but the connection to the outside world was dropping every few minutes so I went to the site office to report it.  As I walked into the office I saw someone vaguely techy looking standing in the doorway to a broom cupboard filled with servers, switches and wi-fi routers.  Ah-ha, I thought, they’ve got someone on the case already.  But no, he wasn’t a techy at all and was, in fact, merely holding the door open so that the electric fan that they’d stood in there pointing at the rack could do its job of cooling the cupboard down!

It’s been a rather toasty, globally warmed 30 degrees celsius down here in Surrey and it appears that the broom cupboard they are using as a server room is not only unventilated but doesn’t have aircon either.  By the time I got back to the apartment the internet seemed to be behaving so they either threw a web monkey at it in super-quick time or their wi-fi router doesn’t run well when it’s hot enough to fry and egg on it and the fan was doing the job.

Either way, I’m connected to the outside world again and I’ll appreciate my 20mbit broadband at home a little bit more when I get back.

£2.2m taxpayer funding for BBC Arabic

BBC Arabic LogoThe British government have announced a £2.2m funding package for the BBC Arabic service after the BBC announced it was closing it as part of its cost-cutting measures.

Apparently the “valuable work” it does in the Middle East is more valuable than, say, the cost of 100 life saving courses of the breast cancer treatment, Herceptin, for English women who are left to die because the “National” Institute for Clinical Excellence thinks £20k is too high a price to save an English life.  Or providing free university tuition for a year for 222 English students who have been priced out of university education by the British government’s English university tuition fees.

Bin Laden dead … apparently

So … that Bin Laden person, eh?

Apparently the Americans have killed Osama Bin Laden  and buried him at sea after tracking him down to a town near Islamabad.

Now, I don’t normally go in for conspiracy theories that involve the Americans as perpetrators because they generally don’t have the intelligence for deceit but this story is – if you’ll excuse the pun – a bit fishy.

Firstly, Bin Laden was found in a fortified house down the road from Pakistan’s most high profile military training compound.  Surely they’d have noticed something a bit suspicious about someone building a house 10 times the size of other houses in the area with 18ft walls and protected by armed guards?

Secondly, no Americans were killed in the raid.  Since when have the Americans been capable of carrying out a military operation without killing each other?

Thirdly, Islamabad is 900 miles from the sea.  He was supposedly buried at sea to conform with the Islamic requirement to have a burial within 24 hours.  Could they not find a shovel and dig a hole?

Finally, they apparently tracked him down after a four year intelligence operation.  Intelligence.  American Military.  Uh-hu.

If Bin Laden really is dead then it’s great news but there will be many thousands more to take his place.  Until Islam catches up with the rest of the world’s religions, we will always be at risk from this modern-day Spanish Inquisition.  These nutjobs have lost a leader but they’ve gained a martyr.  The news is about as good as it gets for Obama and the American government but it’s not likely to make the world a safer place.

I don’t doubt that Bin Laden is dead or at the very least, no longer at large.  But the circumstances of his death being described in the news?  For me it doesn’t add up.

British government stealing English money to redistribute to Scots and Welsh

The British government is planning to steal money out of “dormant” bank accounts in England to fund the Big Society Bank which will then distribute funds throughout the whole of the UK.

If you’re not sitting at your keyboard with a confused look on your face saying “what the fuck?” then read that first paragraph again.

English bank accounts are being emptied by the British government to fund “charity” not only in England but in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland even though their money isn’t being stolen and even though the “Big Society” only applies to England.

Frances Maud, the British Cabinet Office minister responsible for the legalised theft of English money, has called for the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments to put money they intend to steal from bank accounts in their own countries into the British English Big Society Bank but the Scots and Welsh have already said they’re going to spend it their own way in their own countries.  So the Scots and Welsh (and probably the Northern Irish as well) will be getting a share of English money stolen from English bank accounts by the British government as well as the proceeds of the legalised theft of money from Scottish and Welsh bank accounts.

This is fucking lunacy.

Schools advised to cancel swimming lessons for Ramadan

Stoke-on-Trent City Council has produced an 11-page Ramadan guide for schools which advises them to cancel swimming lessons and sex education for all pupils during the month.

The council suggests swimming lessons should be cancelled in case muslim children accidentally swallow water when they’re supposed to be fasting rather than the more reasonable suggestion that muslim children should be given the opportunity of taking part in another sport instead.

They suggest cancelling sex education lessons because muslim boys are forbidden to think about sex during Ramadan after they have reached puberty rather than the more reasonable suggestion that muslim children should have the opportunity to catch up on missed lessons after Ramadan.

The Ramadan guide even suggests that schools reschedule exams in case muslim pupils are tired from getting up early to eat before dawn rather than the more reasonable suggestion that muslim children might like to go back to bed after their early breakfast so they’re not tired for their exams.

The council says “The overriding consideration should be that children do not feel disadvantaged in school activities because of their religious observance” whereas most people, I think, would say that a more reasonable “overriding consideration” should be that a child’s religion doesn’t get in the way of their education or the education of every other child in the school.

Making reasonable adjustments to accommodate the religious desires of a child I have no problem with.  Offering Halal or Kosher meals to those that want them is reasonable, only offering meat from animals that have been killed inhumanely to all pupils isn’t.  Offering pupils the ability to defer their participation in activities or even miss them altogether because of their beliefs is reasonable, forcing an entire school to miss out on activities or reschedule them to accommodate the whims of a medieval religion isn’t.

Despite the best efforts of some, the muslim breeding programme hasn’t yet provided a majority muslim population in England and until it does there is no reason why the lives of so many people should be disrupted to accommodate the religious choices of a minority of the population.

But the nice people at Stoke-on-Trent City Council haven’t pulled all of this out of their own arseholes, they’ve had guidance from the Muslim Council of Britain.  The MCB is an unelected taxpayer-subsidised europhile Islamic group which claims to represent 500 muslim groups, membership of which is restricted entirely to those who profess the muslim faith.  Hardly representative of the majority of English people are they?

Stoke-on-Trent City Council really have gone too far with this booklet.  Not only is it a waste of taxpayers money, it’s also insulting to assume that non-muslims will happily have their lives rescheduled around the Islamic calendar.

Another game of croquet your Lardship?

John Prescott’s phoney class war has taken another bizarre twist with the announcement that he has accepted a peerage.

Prezza made a BBC documentary recently all about his class war and in 2005 he even slagged off Tony Bliar’s school “reforms” because they weren’t working class enough.  Yet as Deputy Prime Minister he was on a salary of £134k – more than 9 times the current minimum wage of around £14.5k – and had two grace and favour homes paid for by the taxpayer and a flat paid for by a union as well as his taxpayer-funded constituency home.  And then there were his two armoured, chauffeur-driven Jags that he used to do the shopping and drive his wife up the road so her hair didn’t get blown about.

Like all class warriors that have had a stint lording it over the proles (excuse the pun), Prescott is a millionaire with a hefty ministerial pension which will keep him in the manner to which he has become accustomed and as a member of the House of Lords he’ll be paid £335.50 for every day he hauls his sweaty, pampered arse into the House of Lords.

I can’t decide whether the thought of an unelected millionaire Lord Prescott fighting his phoney class war against other unelected millionaire Lords, all appointed under one of the systems he’s supposedly devoted his life to opposing, could be best described as ironic or hypocritical.  I’m thinking probably both.