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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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:

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:

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.

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.

Three 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:

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.

The 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.

Let’s have a look back at 2011 …

January saw two sports presenters lose their jobs after secret recordings of a private conversation in which they made sexist comments were made public and the protracted revolution in Egypt which kicked off what came to be known as the Arab Spring.

In February the Northern Irish MP, Ian Paisley Jr, spoke out against an English Parliament even though it’s none of his damn business and consultations started on changes to hospital services in Shropshire.

March was the month UKIP had its best ever election result beating the Tories to second place in Barnsley, the Welsh voted for more devolution in their second devolution referendum (two more than we’ve had), the Scottish government abolished prescription charges leaving England the only part of the UK paying for prescriptions and the far left organised anti-government riots.

In April one of our neighbours and his daughter tragically died in a house fire, the census police were out and about telling lies, GPs in England were told to halve the amount of medication they put on their prescriptions to bring in more money, Telford & Wrekin Council put on an excellent St Georges Day event (Google ignored it) and Nick Clegg said that it’s right English students should pay £9k a year in university tuition fees whilst the rest of the UK doesn’t pay anything despite a broken manifesto promise to abolish them.

May saw the long-overdue death of Osama Bin Laden, my election to Stirchley & Brookside Parish Council and I published my proposal for a British confederation.

June saw teachers striking for special treatment and the British Olympic Committee causing outrage in Scotland, Wales and NI claiming their FA’s support a Team GB football team.

In July the Guardian journalist, Kia Abdullah, showed the true face of the nasty left by making fun of the death of three teenagers killed on a gap year in Thailand and surprise, surprise the racist university tuition fees charged for English students studying at Scottish universities resulted in less English students studying at Scottish universities.

August was the month that thieving former Labour MP, Jim Devine, was released from prison after serving just a quarter of his sentence for stealing from the taxpayer, Iain Stewart MP argued against an English Parliament, a Scottish doctor suggested English students could sell a kidney to pay for their university tuition, the EDL came to Telford and failed to cause mayhem, I reflected on how the British have lost Wales and an opinion poll on the Daily Mail website said 72% support English independence.

In September the Conservatives came close to being disbanded in Scotland and an excellent 89 year old letter warning of imminent doom from global warming was published in the Shropshire Star.

In October I made the conscious decision not to support the Poppy Appeal for the first time, the British government put the recession to one side to sort out the vitally important business of the sexist line of succession and HMRC demanded a voluntary tax contribution off Mrs Sane.

November saw Virgin Money snap up Northern Rock for a song, I explained why we don’t need a British Bill of Rights and Speaker Bercow spent £37k on a painting of himself and a coat of arms.

Finally, in December Jeremy Clarkson was pounced on by money-grabbing unions for poking fun at the BBC, the wicked witch of the left, Harriet Harperson, demanded the BBC stuff its Sports Personality of the Year Awards with women in the name of equality, I found out I need a hearing aid, the South Americans want a pissing contest over the Falklands and the British government have given the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish a £30m gift of English money because the British have spent money for their Olympics in London.

So, we started 2011 in the EU dictatorship, the only country in Europe without any form of self-government and ruled by a bunch of crooked politicians and we’ll finish 2011 in the same state.  I lost a grandad and auntie this year (they died, I didn’t misplace them) but it’s been a good year overall – I have the best wife a man could wish for and four brilliant kids to be very proud of.

I’d like to wish a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my friends and enemies.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have negotiated a £30.2m bonus from the British government because the British government have spent money in London for the British Olympics.  No extra money will be spent in the rest of England where local authorities are facing cuts of about a quarter over the next few years.

The money is being handed over because of what is called Barnett Consequentials - the technical name for giving Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland a big wedge of cash just because the British government have spent some money in England.  Barnett Consequentials are part of the balancing mechanism to ensure Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland continue to get the same outrageous level of subsidy at England’s expense no matter how much capital investment the British spend in England.

Paying Barnett Consequentials because of the Olympics is a bloody liberty though because they’re not the English Olympics, they’re the British Olympics.  England doesn’t have a Olympic team and the British government’s investment in London is for their Olympics, not for London or for England.  Some of the facilities that are being built for the Olympics are going to be relocated to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and some of the events are even being held in those countries.  They will “benefit” from the British Olympics as much as the rest of England.

The British government shouldn’t have paid any Barnett money to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for the British Olympics but there was nobody at the meeting representing English interests.  As a consequence (excuse the pun), £30.2m of English taxpayers’ money is going to be handed over to the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish for no other reason than because the British spent some money in England for their Olympic vanity project.  This has only happened because there is no English government to represent English interests, saying “no, this is your Olympic games, we’re not paying your bribes”.

There are no details as yet on who will be on the West Lothian Commission, what they will consider and whether an English Parliament will be ruled out immediately or when they report in 2013.

Uruguay proposed the ban and and the other three members – Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina – agreed.  There are less than 40 boats registered in the Falklands so it doesn’t affect a huge amount of people but that’s not the point, it’s an attack on the Falkland Islanders.

The Mercosur nations are ganging up on the Falklands for no reason other than to cause a nuisance.  They know that the Falklands belong to the UK, that the Falkland Islanders want to remain a British Overseas Territory and that the British government has pledged not to hand over the Falklands to Argentina unless the islanders wanted it.  They know that all they’re going to get out of this is a pissing contest.

That said, we have no aircraft carrier and most of our deployable armed forces are already deployed in the Middle East and Africa so if Argentina did decide to invade the Falklands again, we’d struggle to take them back again.  And don’t think our “allies” in the EU will help us – especially the French who Cameron stupidly decided we should enter into a military alliance with – because they won’t.  The president of the Falklands Chamber of Commerce has already had a thinly veiled pop at the EU, saying:

If it didn’t involve the UK and the former Spanish & Portuguese colonies then they’d be up in arms.  We can’t rely on our supposed “allies” in the EU to stand with us (they gave Spain jurisdiction over Gibraltarian waters, remember) and we certainly can’t rely on the French to provide us with the aircraft carrier we’re supposed to have an agreement for if it means going to war with their southern neighbour’s allies.  Or going to war with anybody for that matter, the cheese eating surrender monkeys.

If the EU won’t impose a retaliatory ban on Uruguayan, Paraguayan, Brazilian and Argentine goods then the British government should impose a unilateral one.  If the British government doesn’t have the balls (they won’t) then we boycott them ourselves!

Whut?

I went to the ENT clinic at the hospital yesterday to see if they could figure out why my hearing is so bad and came away being told I’ve got to have a hearing aid.  I’m 33 years old for god’s sake, hearing aids are for old people!

I must say, I wasn’t expecting to have a diagnosis (of sorts) and a cure (of sorts) on my first visit.  I’ve got to go for an MRI to make sure there’s nothing wrong with my head and I’ve got to get fitted for a hearing aid some time in the new year.  Which is nice.

My knees are buggered, my eyesight isn’t great, I get eczema and rosacea, I suffer with a bad back on and off, I’ve had asthma for years … I’m a wreck!

If I was an animal they’d put me down.

No jokes about odd shaped balls please

The man-hating Shadow Minister for Equality and Women has demanded that the BBC include some women in the shortlist immediately and criticised the BBC for including the editors of lads mags in the panel.

The panel of newspaper and magazine editors from publications with an interest in sport chose the shortlist for the BBC and came up with the all-male list.

There are undoubtedly many fine sportswomen – Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington for instance or England women’s rugby player Fran Matthews who should surely win an award just for playing a brutal sport and managing to look pretty hot rather than like Fatima Whitbread.  But the panel chose an all-male shortlist and it’s not for a failed politician like Harriet Harperson to demand that their decision is overturned and the list stuffed with women in the name of equality.

The BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards are supposed to reward sportsmen and women for talent and hard work, not for having a pair of tits.

During an interview on the One Show, Clarkson was asked what he thought of the strikes to which he replied that they were brilliant, he could dart around London and there was no traffic and it reminded him of the 1970s.  He then went on to joke that because it’s the BBC there has to be balance and said that he would take them outside and shoot them and would have them executed in front of their families.

The joke was actually at the expense of the BBC and its charter obligation to remain balanced and impartial which sometimes makes for bizarre statements from newsreaders and chat show hosts.  The unions, however, were consumed with mock outrage with UNISON actually going as far as taking legal advice as to whether he could be reported to the police for incitement to hatred!

Clarkson has now apologised to the unions for making a joke at the BBC’s expense and UNISON have magnanimously accepted his apology and won’t be trying to get him arrested for being funny.

Just in case anyone from any of the unions is wondering, if I was in charge I wouldn’t have you executed, I’d take your leaders and agitators and put them in a hard labour camp until they stopped being such bloody stupid pricks.  When people like Dave Prentis (UNISON), Mark Serwotka (PCS) and Bob Crow (RMT) hand over some of their huge salaries (they all have pay and perks of £100k+)  to set an example they might deserve some respect but until they do, they deserve all the contempt that’s directed at them, the useless champagne socialist troublemakers.

Apparently the BBC received a large number of complaints which they believe have been made as part of an orchestrated campaign (no doubt organised by the unions).  I have made my own complaint tonight at the BBC’s decision to apologise to the unions when they were obviously taking the piss for publicity:

First things first, it’s possible to reduce your tax liability through legal avoidance but not to the extent where you pay no income tax.  If you earn a wage here you pay tax on it.  What counts as a taxable income can be bent but you can’t earn the sort of money that give you a £260m personal fortune without paying tax on it.  But let’s go with what the London Evening Standard says anyway.

In the case of this cleaner and the financiers behind the company she works for, she’s paid £225 per week and pays £26.58 per week income tax and National Insurance (NI).  Her evil capitalist employer pays £11.88 per week Employers NI.  That’s £1,382.16 per year that she pays in tax and £617.76 her employer pays in Employers NI for the privilege of giving her a job.

Assuming her evil capitalist scum employer avoids all his income tax liability (which is impossible) and he only pays 10% Capital Gains Tax (CGT) on his earnings, he would have to earn only £117,000 to pay the same amount of personal tax as the cleaner which isn’t a lot for a devil-worshipping evil capitalist fat cat is it?  And his company is paying for the privilege of employing her as well as paying tax on its profits.

In more general terms, there are calls every day from the left for rich people to “pay their fair share”, fair share being entirely undefined but more than what they pay now.  The fact that the top 5% of earners contribute something like a quarter of the UK’s tax income is lost on these people who are motivated by jealousy, not common sense.  But who contributes more to the Treasury?  One man earning £200k a year or 10 people earning £20k a year?

The 10 people earning £20k will all have a tax free income of £7,475 each, the person earning £200k will have no tax free income as it reduces by £1 for every £2 earned over £100k.  So that’s £149,500 of untaxed income for the 10 people earning £20k each.

The person earning £200k will pay income tax at 22% up to £35k, 40% up to £150k and 50% thereafter.  The people earning £20k will pay £4,038 each in tax and NI in a year which totals £80,760 in gross contributions to the Treasury.  Most of the people earning £20k will also be entitled to tax credits and someone taking £50 per week in tax credits will be receiving £2,600 per year back from the Treasury.

The person earning £200k will pay £82.959 in tax and NI on his income over a year and will get nothing back from the Treasury.  So one person earning £200k contributes more in direct taxation than 10 people earning £20k each and the gap widens the more the high earner earns and more in indirect taxes (such as VAT and fuel duty) because they have a higher disposable income.

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!

This is hardly a shock announcement – the strikes would have gone ahead whether they caved in to every unreasonable demand the unions issued because this isn’t about pay and conditions, it’s a union protest against the Tories.  Even the BBC can’t avoid showing pictures of anti-Tory slogans on official union placards because they’re everywhere.  The protests are being backed by the far left extremist Socialist Workers Party and senior Labour politicians.

This is a party political campaign, not a grassroots one.  The public sector have pensions that most of us can only dream of and perks like guaranteed pay rises and being paid by the mile to drive to work are a public sector invention, the majority of us that work in the sector don’t get anything like the pay and conditions the public sector get.  The strikes on Wednesday aren’t about keeping the pay and conditions – even the economically illiterate unions understand that it’s simply not sustainable – they’re about trying to overthrow the ConDems and installing a puppet Labour government in its place.

Not all public sector workers are highly paid of course – cleaners, lollypop (wo)men, dinner ladies, etc., don’t get paid a great deal – but that doesn’t mean that all public sector workers should keep their gold-plated pensions and expensive perks at the expense of some of the poorest, low-paid workers in the country.  The public sector and unions are infested with communists who bang on about wealth redistribution and capitalist greed so I’m sure the highest paid public sector workers such as the 447 civil servants that earned more than £100k last year will be more than happy to redistribute their wealth to the low paid public sector workers they’ll be striking with on Wednesday.  As, I’m sure, will the champagne socialist union bosses who earn at least three times the median salary for the public sector workers they are supposed to represent (the list is out of date – the head of the FBU is on £82k per year).

I wish I was in Telford this week instead of away on a training course so I could find a picket line to cross just for my own little protest.  I object to having so much of my money taken off me on pain of forfeiture and imprisonment to to fund pay and conditions for “professional” public sector workers that I could never realistically expect in the private sector.  The country is broke, we are too highly taxed already and it’s time the public sector got a dose of reality.

The announcement, which was the EDP’s worst kept secret since his mate Richard Barnbrook joined in January, will be a bitter blow to the handful of party activists that haven’t yet joined UKIP who had hoped to stop the BNP takeover of the party.

UKIP recently announced a revised devolution policy that would see the creation of a federal UK with devolved parliaments for all four home nations.  The final touches are being put to the full devolution policy paper before it goes to the membership for ratification.  UKIP is the only non-racist, mainstream democratic party advocating the creation of a federal UK with equality for all four home nations.

English Democrats: not left, not right, just racist.