Problem getting a mortgage?

There I was siting at home indulging in some light blogging when my home telephone rings. It is a recorded message from Britain's largest mortgage advisor offering to help me get a mortgage if I have ever had problems getting a mortgage in the past. Apparently this company specialises in helping people with a poor credit history get a mortgage. Bearing in mind the sub-prime problems in the USA and the coming financial storm in the UK, does anybody think this type of marketing is wise?

The blame game and Gordon Brown's "big tent"

Much to my surprise the government and it's BBC lackeys have been queuing up to blame Mervyn King for the Northern Rock debacle. If you listen to the "narrative" coming out of the Labour hierarchy and their BBC lickspittles such as Robert Peston, the only place than blame can be laid is at the door of Mervyn King. I am confused, why does no blame accrues to the board of Northern Rock for following a flawed business model? The answer is clear, the Northern Rock management should have been examining the risks inherent in their business model and who was Chairman of their Risk Management Committee? Sir Derek Wanless, to whom no blame can be attributed as he is one of the untouchables, being one of Gordon Brown's trusted great and the good. You will not be surprised to learn that the links between Northern Rock and this Labour Government go deeper than just Sir Derek Wanless. As an example, Deborah Mattinson, Gordon Brown's personal pollster, advises Northern Rock on its corporate responsibility programmes. We can only speculate as to whether this role included advising that Northern Rock give around £500,000 to Labour's IPPR "think tank".

Another oddity in this affair were the comments of Andy Burnham, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. When he was asked on Monday whether the government would "guarantee 100% of all bank deposits", he replied that it would be "the wrong thing" for politicians to get involved "in that way". An unusually straight answer for a Labour Minister, he must have been very sure of the answer indeed. Unfortunately, within an hour his boss Alistair Darling had done exactly what Andy Burnham had said would be "the wrong thing" and had issued the 100% guarantee.

I am not convinced by Mervyn King's evidence to the Treasury Select Committee yesterday, there seems to be too much evidence pointing to the involvement of Number 11 and hence Number 10 in the decision to support Northern Rock. One of Mervyn King's comments regarding the guarantee was interesting "my understanding...as far as I know" was odd from the man who was supposed to have been in charge and to have made the decision. He was also careful to say that the decision was a tripartite one involving the Treasury, the FSA and the Bank of England. He also appeared to be careful not to be 100% clear over whose idea the 100% guarantee had been. I suppose if we are lucky we may find out the truth in 20 years time. In the meantime, this Labour Government will sail serenely on protected by the BBC and tame journalists from any hard questioning. Gordon's "big tent" will expand as we slip towards one party rule.

I have just taken a look at the BBC UK news home page and the Northern Rock affair has disappeared completely. I moved onto the BBC UK business page and there we have "The City watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, is next to be quizzed by MPs on Northern Rock's problems" and more on Mervyn King - "Has Mervyn King" done enough?". The giving of "independence" to the Bank of England in 1997 was a masterstroke, suddenly the Treasury and the Government have no responsibility for anything going wrong with the banking sector of the economy.

Of course one source of criticism of the Government has been noticeably silent, the Conservative Party. George Osborne should be doing a tour of the media attacking Gordon Brown's economic record not sitting quietly admiring his tasteful wallpaper. I would like to see John Redwood being used to attack the Government's economic policy, he actually understamnds what has been happening and can articulate it. Unfortunately the BBC have destroyed his credibility by showing "that video" so many times. Take a look at John Redwood's web site there are many excellent articles on the Northern Rock crisis which are extremely well and intelligently written, I wish I could write as well as he does.

Protesting at ‘the Islamisation of Europe’ in Brussels

Please read this article from the excellent Archbishop Cranmer.

I was wondering why the Mayor of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans, would clamp down so hard against a peaceful demonstration against the Islamisation of Europ but then I started to read about the political problems in Belgium, the deepening splits between the French and Walloon parts of the country and finally I read this article which explains that "Already, the Mayor of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans, presides over a ruling Socialist Party caucus, ten of whose seventeen members are Muslim."

A message from the Archbishop of Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, sent a greeting to Jewish Communities at the start of the festival of Rosh Hashanah, marking the start of the Jewish New Year. He sent this message last Tuesday, 11 September, I didn't notice any publicity about the message, maybe the BBC were upset by this paragraph "I sincerely hope that all that may have marred the year past – a rising level of anti-semitic incidents and the anxieties and insecurities arising from conflict in the Middle East – will be alleviated in the coming year. I particularly hope and pray for the return of Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev to their families."

After all to the BBC mind, reminding everyone of the captured Israeli soldiers is in such poor taste and might distract from the real issue of the perpetual persecution of the Palestinians by the nasty Israelis and their supporters the USA.

You can read the whole of the Archbishop's greeting here.

BBC fixing

There has been a lot of coverage of more allegations of BBC fixing phone-ins etc over the past few weeks, please see Biased-BBC for more details. One small item has tickled my fancy yesterday and today; there was a story that Blue Peter had asked viewers to vote on the name to be applied to the new BBC cat. However it was the name that came second in the poll that was declared the winner - Socks. So what was the name that won the poll that couldn't be used? I am pleased to report that Mrs Slocombe would be most happy that Pussy was the winning name. So do Blue Peter viewers have no originality or are they possessed of an incredible sense of juvenile fun or maybe "Are you being served?" is more popular that I thought amongst 7-13 year children.

UPDATE: What a shame, the winning name wasn't Pussy but Cookie.

BBC news website parody

Parody but believable.

Many thanks Swiss Toni for the link

and I thought I was paranoid

This is a comment on Guido Fawkes today - "Anonymous said...
One thing to think about at least is this.

Lets imagine that Gordon Brown is really an UNREFORMED Neo Marxist on a serious long term mission.

Is it possible he has long engineered this crisis as an excuse to 'very radically change' the banking system?

Think about it how else can he possible get out of the hole he has long since been digging?

Why else dig the hole in the first place if there was no planned punch line when the spade busts?

The BBC will not blame Gordon Brown they will blame the Free market system, long enough to make this smallish crisis into an almost complete national financial collapse followed by a massive devaluation of the "pound in your pocket."

Gordon Brown will then at this point come up with the only solution that will by then make any sense to the otherwise soon to be homeless and or bankrupt large section of the British electorate.

A government of national unity with Gordo the terrible at its dictatorial head.

This country will by this time be effectively a one party state with a central government power base to die for, and a government owned banking system to hold it all up.

Perfect time to then turn his head to Europe for more of the same.

Now that could all just be a load of crap, but there again is any one completely sure these days that it is not?

4:13 AM, September 19, 2007"

Hmm now I am in great fear of what Gordon Brown might be up to but even I had not considered this theory, I shall mull it over today...

PC Copperfield

For the rest of the week you can watch the Panorama programme "Wasting Police Time" with PC Copperfield from a link here.

A letter you should read and my reaction

From yesterday's Daily Telegraph a letter from Winston S. Churchill reads as follows:

"Islamist danger

Sir – Britain sends some of the finest and most courageous of their generation to risk their lives and spill their blood chasing the Taliban out of Afghanistan. But who, meanwhile, is guarding our homeland?

A recent police report makes clear that, back here in Britain the Deobandi – the very same Islamist sect responsible for spawning the Taliban in Afghanistan – has succeeded in taking over more than 600 of Britain's 1,350 mosques. In addition, it controls 17 of Britain's 26 Islamic seminaries and produces 80 per cent of Britain's home-trained Islamic clerics.

It's a funny old world, as Margaret Thatcher once famously remarked. Except that this is no laughing matter. Not for 70 years has there been a more clear or present danger to our internal security, to our free society and to our democracy, than that posed by this vipers' nest in our midst. The Deobandi, an ultra- conservative sect, outlaws music, art, television and football, and also demands the entire concealment of women.

According to the Lancashire Council of Mosques, the Deobandi has now taken control of 59 out of 75 mosques in the old Lancashire mill towns of Oldham, Preston, Bury, Blackburn and Burnley. While not all Deobandis are extremist, leading preachers of this sect aim to radicalise the Islamic youth of Britain, and to mobilise them against our society and the freedoms we hold so dear.

When will the Government wake up to this mortal threat which – if not swiftly dealt with – threatens to bring strife and bloodshed to the streets of Britain on a scale far exceeding anything seen in the bombings of recent years?

Why are Gordon Brown and David Cameron, indeed our entire political class, so deafeningly silent on this, the most pressing matter confronting Britain today? Who will help the moderate majority of Muslims maintain control of their mosques? Who will safeguard the homeland?

Winston S. Churchill, London SW1"

I have been predicting for a few years now that by 2020 some of our northern towns, such as Burnley and Oldham, would be run under a system of Sharia law as well as the law of the United Kingdom. Three years ago my more "right on" friends said I was mad to think this was possible, later they said I was massively exaggerating the situation, more recently they said maybe Sharia law running alongside United Kingdom law wouldn't be too bad and anyway it won't affect us in London, now they look a little more worried...

I agree with a Liberal Democrat!!!

This article made me agree with a Lib Dem spokesman, in this case Vincent Cable. He said today that Gordon Brown's attempts to recruit politicians from other parties is a "threat to democracy". Mr Cable said the "offer from Gordon Brown to join the big tent" had to be rejected. He added: "What he's doing is not just a threat to us or the Tories but a threat to democracy, an attempt to stifle democracy. "He's trying to create a permanent dominance. That's something we can fight."

An undercover policeman missed

I wanted to watch Panorama tonight but Mrs NotaSheep wanted to watch Nigella Express; we watched Nigella! I will catch PC Copperfield tomorrow morning. In the meantime here are my impressions of the Nigella programme, and impression is the key word as it seems that Nigella was doing an impression of Roni Ancona doing an impression of Nigella Lawson. Smiley, smiley, smiley; most peculiar.


Whilst looking for a piece of video of Ronia Ancona doing an impression of Nigella Lawson I found this unexpected forum with this extract - "What if your were lucky enough to pull someone like Nigella (or Roni Ancona as Nigella) at a nightclub?

You might take her home, go to bed then find out that in fact, she's a rubbish shag. She might just lie there like a sack of tatties while you're giving it laldy, refusing to go doggies because "it's dirty" or worst still, absolutely refusing access to "the tradesmans" for biblical reasons (and that's just plain unacceptable).

Christ, you might go back to her's for a snog and not even get the tit." Well it made me laugh, and Mrs NotaSheep.

This was another link I found, I love the Internet... you never know what you will find.

Tilt shift photography

I saw an article in the Sunday papers the other week about a really interesting photographic technique, tilt shift. I found it quite tricky to understand the technique which involves adjusting the focus and depth of field to make the image of a real location or object look like a photograph of a scale model miniature. By distorting the focus of the photo, the artist fools the eye into believing that the distances in the photograph are much smaller than they really are. Tricky to understand but easy to appreciate if you look at the work of Naoki Honje which will be exhibited from September 28th at Paul Smith's Albemarle Street shop, the exhibition is called "Small Planet". Here are two examples -




There were some lovely tilt shift photos of London in the article but I cannot find them on the web and have lost the original article - can anyone help me locate them?

There are some other photographers taking this sort of photograph, you can see examples of their work here , here and some more from Noki Honge here.

Where's Gordon

Surely our brave Prime Minister should be out and about reassuring the public as to the state of the economy after all it's his policies that have brought us to edge of the financial abyss.

The economy is FUBAR (part 3)

I have been looking at various news forums to see what the general public have to say about the Northern Rock affair, this comment on the BBC seemed quite pithy - "Gordon Brown is to blame for this situation. he knew if getting finance was easy, people would borrow more and more, creating a false and deluded feeling that the country was prospering and all was well under labour. House prices soar, and he gets more revenue from inheritance tax and stamp duties. Well, the Party is almost over, Here comes the Hangover!! Martin Saunders, Bournemouth"

I think he meant "party" rather than "Party" but maybe he has something!

Israel v Hizbullah and the power of the press

I thought you might be interested in this article from Gateway Pundit on the ending of the war between Israel and Hizbullah last year.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim Council of Britain and other matters jihadi

The Muslim Brotherhood is an organisation that has its origins in 1928 Egypt and a very questionable present but my attention has been drawn to this article that reminds me that in 1991 the FBI found out more than enough about the Muslim Brotherhood but took no action. The document they discovered 16 years ago was an "explanatory memorandum," which outlined the "strategic goal" for the North American operation of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan). Here's the key paragraph: "The process of settlement [of Islam in the United States] is a "Civilization-Jihadist" process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who choose to slack."

The entire 18 page platform outlines a plan for the long haul. It sets out the Muslim Brotherhood's comprehensive plan to set down roots in civil society. Back to the Dallas News "It begins by both founding and taking control of American Muslim organizations, for the sake of unifying and educating the U.S. Muslim community – this to prepare it for the establishment of a global Islamic state governed by sharia.
It sounds like a conspiracy theory out of a bad Hollywood movie – but it's real. Husain Haqqani, head of Boston University's Center for International Relations and a former Islamic radical, confirms that the Brotherhood "has run most significant Muslim organizations in the U.S." as part of the plan outlined in the strategy paper."

"The HLF trial is exposing for the first time how the international Muslim Brotherhood – whose Palestinian division is Hamas – operates as a self-conscious revolutionary vanguard in the United States. The court documents indicate that many leading Muslim-American organizations – including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim American Society – are an integral part of the Brotherhood's efforts to wage jihad against America by nonviolent means.

The Muslim Brotherhood is an affiliation of at least 70 Islamist organizations around the world, all tracing their heritage to the original cell, founded in Egypt in 1928. Its credo: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." Sayyid Qutb, hanged by the Egyptian government in 1966 as a revolutionary, remains its ideological godfather. His best-known work, Milestones, calls for Muslims to wage violent holy war until Islamic law governs the entire world."

The key here is that it has taken many years of pressure by various experts on the Islamic threat to the West for the Main Stream Media to acknowledge that there are demands for a return to the caliphate in Muslim lands. Still interviewers and presenters fail to ask what is a Muslim land. They allow the Islamist interviewee to say Muslim lands and move on. The inconvenient truth is that Muslim lands are anywhere that has ever been Muslim territory. Just as no building that has ever been a Mosque can be used as anything other than a Mosque, so any land that has been ruled as Muslim land is considered as Muslim land.

At this point you might want to read an earlier article where I include Hassan Butt's explanation of what motivates British jihadis - "though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice."

"How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion?

There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.

Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.

For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world."

"Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.

In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians. "


It is not enough to glibly say that Islam is the Religion of Peace. There are Islamists who use the Qur’aan to justify their murderous attacks, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel & the Palestinians, Chechnya are all red herrings - the truth is out there, go look.

This links in with another article I wrote about the language used by Inayat Bunglawala and Muhammad Abdul Bari of the Muslim Council of Britain (incidentally why not Great Britain and what about Northern Ireland?) when they are asked for their opinion or that of the Qur’aan on acts of terrorism. They say something along the lines of "We condemn the killing of all innocent people wherever they are" or "Those who seek to deliberately kill or maim innocent people are the enemies of us all. There is no cause whatsoever that could possibly justify such barbarity." The key word is "innocent" as we heard during the trial of the thwarted terrorist Jawad Akbar, who planned to commit slaughter on the Ministry of Sound's dance floor, "No one can turn around and say, 'Oh, they were innocent', those slags dancing around. Do you understand what I mean?" So in his view these were not innocent people, how about in the view of Inayat Bunglawala and Muhammad Abdul Bari? The follow-up question that is never asked of these representatives of the MCB is "are those people who don't pray to Allah five times a day and who don't follow the tenets of Islam, innocent?".

I am not saying that Muhammad Abdul Bari or Inayat Bunglawala are terrorists, I am not saying that they support terrorism within the UK; however I am saying that the question "in your view and in the word of the Qur’aan, what types of people are innocent and what types of people are not innocent?" should be asked of, and answered, by them.

Driving

I have just returned from 8 days well deserved rest in Mallorca and have been considering the way that drivers are treated there compared with here. Getting to the airport in England necessitated a drive around part of the M25 and along another motorway. It was not a familiar route to me but it was on three lane motorways with nice wide British lanes. The speed limit is an unrealistically low 70mph and the fear of speed cameras and lurking police speed traps meant that I (and presumably other drivers) were spending as much time looking at their speedometer to make sure that I had not inadvertantly drifted over 75mph and looking for yellow boxes next to the carriageway, odd cameras on gantries and white vans on overhead bridges. By way of contrast in Mallorca the roads are easier to drive on. I have never seen so many decent two and three lane roads in such a small place. The lanes are narrower and the speed limits not so frequently advertised, also as there are no fixed speed cameras and speed traps are rare many people exceed the speed limits and concentrate on driving as fast as the conditions allow. The result is that traffic flows well as drivers are concentrating on the road, the conditions, the traffic around them and not on avoiding being caught by the authorities. I can honestly say that my driving in Mallorca was a pleasure, like driving in the UK was before the collection of fines and the suppression of any joy in motoring took hold. Maybe a move to Mallorca is in order?

An uncovered policeman

One of my regular read is PC David Copperfield, I also have his book and I thoroughly recommend that you read both the website and the book. Now I read that PC Copperfield has come into the open, presumably risking his position in the Police Force as a result, and will be appearing tonight (Monday 17 September) on a Panorama programme entitles "Wasting Police Time". I would strongly suggest that you watch it, unless they have stitched Stuart Davidson up, his views are trenchant and accurate and a fine riposte to the cr*p that we are fed about crime and how we deal with it in this country.

UPDATE: Iain Dale's Diary: PC Copperfield Exposed#links#links says that PC Copperfield will be leaving the Burton-on-Trent police and moving to Canada to join the Canadian Police.

The economy is FUBAR (part 2)

I blogged recently that the crash was coming. Today Alan Greenspan is reported to be warning of increases in UK interest rates and a doubling of inflation, he also predicts a world wide increase in inflation as China starts to consume the products that it has been selling so cheaply to the West. He also predicts a fall in US house prices, something that I have been predicting in the UK for quite a while now - you can read about Alan Greenspan's prediction in the FT here and my predictions on this blog. Alan Greenspan does have a book (or books) to sell, you can read a US review here but he knows what he is talking about. Alan Greenspan is not predicting world financial meltdown, I however am; we will see who is right...

You can read the BBC article on Alan Greenspan here or look around the web for better articles, I can't do everything for you!

Listening to Alistair Darling this morning on the Today programme, I think he knows that the game is up.

I take my hat off to Dave

I don't know Dave's surname, I don't know where Dave lives, in fact I know next to nothing about Dave. What I do know is that having listened to his girlfriend, Lisa, talk practically non-stop for over two hours to her friends on a flight back from a Mediterranean break, Dave deserves a medal. This young woman talked at her friends about cooking, including recipes for roasted vegetables with or without potatoes or cheese and tortilla, how happy she was with Dave and how stable their relationship was. It was a two hour flight that left me with a headache that took hours to dissipate. How Dave manages to keep his head together when with Lisa is beyond me; so Dave wherever you are - you are a hero, pat yourself on the back.