"Shaving off my muff for you" - The second link is NSFW (Not Safe For Work)

The TV anchor lady who really didn't know what a "muff" was.

The site that definitely knows what a "muff" is - 100% Not Safe For Work (NSFW) and over 18s only.

"I sometimes wish I'd never gone buy to let"

Drag Queen with "Bohemian Bankruptcy" - absolutely brilliant.

However the "400 of us went, our bonuses all spent. Goodbye everybody, I've got to go. Gotta leave it all behind and face the debt" part with the image of clearing your desk into a cardboard box made Mrs NotaSheep start crying, she's a sensitive soul...



Thanks to ATW for the spot.

All you wanted to know about the Tardis but were afraid to ask

The Mind Robber has certainly done his research and with rumours that the Matt Smith regeneration of Dr Who will have a Tardis closer to that of Peter Cushing's than David Tennant's Doctor's, I feel it incumbent on us all to do some research... The Tardis doors will open outwards! We will have to wait and see.. In the meantime we have The Waters of Mars to look forward to on 15 November.

Hold on "The Waters of Mars" am I alone in realising that that is an anagram of "War of the Masters"? Maybe The Master is returning and it is he who will "knock four times". Perhaps "the hand of the Rani" that picked up the Master's ring from the remains of his funeral pyre, while the sound of the Master's insane laughter was heard in the background, may yet prove of significance...


In the meantime here's a montage of all the incarnations of The Master so far, courtesy of Wikipedia
My favourite is obviously Roger Delgado with John Simm a distant second.

"Gordon Brown to be torched on Bonfire Night"

Really, about time too.... What, I missed a bit out of the headline? The headline headline is actually "Effigy of Gordon Brown to be torched on Bonfire Night". Well that's much less satisfactory, I really must take more care when reading the Ripon Gazette in future.

Why are they burning an effigy of Gordon Brown anyway? Surely he has saved the world's economy is about to save the planet in Copenhagen. I suppose the organisers must be troublemakers. Oh sorry I read that

"The organisers, Ripon Gunpowder Plot, decided to make a giant Gordon Brown figure after consulting with sponsors and members of the public about whose face they would like to see on the Guy at the event, which takes place at Hell Wath on Friday, November 6."

So either it was the sponsors - the three main ones being "F B Taylor Cable Contractors, Keith Anderson metal recyclers and Eura Audit." or the members of the Ripon public feel about Gordon Brown the way that most people outside of the BBC and parts of the Labour cabinet do.

Air Passenger Duty - the truth

This Labour government and its cheerleaders in the BBC and the environmental movement have claimed that Air Passenger Duty (APT) was an environmental necessary to fight climate change. It seems that Alistair Darling, possibly the least impressive Chancellor of the Exchequer for a generation, has admitted that

"the higher air passenger duty being introduced tomorrow was needed to plug gaps in the national finances.

He made no attempt to justify the move - which will add £340 to the ticket for a family of four flying long haul - on environmental grounds, the official reason for the tax.

...

Addressing journalists in Newcastle, home of the failed bank Northern Rock, Mr Darling said: 'I am quite blunt about it, we need to raise money to pay for some of the things we have done.

'If unemployment goes up there is a cost obviously to the family, there is cost in increased benefits, Northern Rock has cost a lot of money.

What we are doing is putting a pound on to your average ticket, which about three quarters of people travel on.

'And you consider the cost of an air ticket, I don't think a pound is that unreasonable.

'In the North East, we have spent billions on a bank for very good reasons."

If it was just a pound then maybe I and others would not be so pissed off with this imposition of yet another Labour Stealth Tax. However the truth is that whilst ticket prices for short-haul economy flights to Europe rise from £10 to £11, on longer journeys the economy ticket levy rises by as much as £30 and of course by far more for Premium Economy, Business Class or First Class travel. Next November the Stealth Tax will rise even higher as the short-haul economy-class tax will rise to £12 per ticket. However for premium-class passengers on the longest flights the Stealth Tax will rise from the newly increased figure to as much as £170 per ticket.

Will air-travellers now be told the real reason for the rise in Air Passenger Duty, as admitted by Alistair Darling, or will they still be officially told that it is an environmental charge? If the latter, as I suspect, will stay the case then they are being lied to; would that make the charge invalid and could people refuse to pay it?

Is this another attempt to steal the next election?

Postal voting, dodgy electoral rolls, delayed counts and now reducing the number of polling stations.

"Thousands of polling stations would be closed and voting hours reduced under a plan to cut the cost of elections. "

Any other ideas to maybe help Labour win a few more seats than would otherwise be the case? Here's one "reducing security at election counts".

What else? Maybe only printing the name of the Labour candidate on the polling slip? How about only opening polling stations between 10am and 4pm so the employed can't vote? What about having multiple polling stations only in safe Labour areas of constituencies and just one polling station per Conservative leaning area?

Of course those last ideas were satirical! The real plan is that a swine flu epidemic will necessitate the imposition of the Civil Contingency Act.

Finally someone does call attention to Mark Steel's politics

Mark Steel, just one of the sneery socialist comedians that the BBC like to employ at our expense, was finally challenged about his political leanings by Ian Hislop on "Have I Got News For You". Do watch it if you get the chance, he really, really didn't like being called out. I wonder if Ian Hislop has read my November 2007 piece about BBC bias that included this passage:

"Whilst I am on the subject, the death of Alan Coren the other week (a death that really upset me, as this was a comedian whose writings and radio performances I have been enjoying since I was at school) has meant that the News Quiz has lost its last semi right of centre voice and with Mark Steel's Socialist Worker humour ever more to the fore the programme is getting closer to being crossed off my must listen list. Mark Steele is a regular BBC commentator on Radio 5 Live where his political affiliations have never been mentioned (so far as I am aware), despite his being invited to discuss politics on a semi-regular basis. Simone Clarke was denigrated by the media for being a supporter of the BNP a party whose views many would find no more repugnant than those of the SWP."

So not a Stalinist but a Troskyist, but I don't think an apology from Ian Hislop is in order. Now where is that pause button, a screen dump of Mark Steel's flabbergasted face would make a nice desktop background.

Pervert!!!

I am sorry but that is just aimed at the person who came to this site having googled - sexy pictures yvette cooper - Now why would anyone go looking for such images? This blog was the fourth site listed for this piece about "The world's most beautiful female politicians". As I said later in that article "Intelligent, highly competent women can be sexy but there aren't any in the Labour government (no Caroline Flint and Yvette Cooper are not sexy, they are just marginally better looking than the rest of a very poor bunch)"

Alastair Campbell

I had the grave misfortune to hear Alastair Campbell being interviewed by the vile Victoria Derbyshire on 5Live this morning. Alastair Campbell was ostensibly being interviewed about why Tony Blair would make the best President of the EU. However Alastair Campbell seemed most keen to explain why David Cameron, William Hague and the Conservative Party were out of touch, not capable of forming a government and so on and on and on. Standard Labour/BBC propaganda and not really worth commenting on, but then I had a look at Alastair Campbell's Wikipedia entry to check a date and saw that the entry on the Iraq War consisted of just this bland text:

"In early 2003 he advised on presentation aspects of the "Iraq Dossier". Later in 2003, commenting on WMDs in Iraq he said, "Come on, you don't seriously think we won't find anything?" He resigned in August 2003 during the Hutton Inquiry into the death of David Kelly."

Not a mention of the controversy over the dodgy dossier or even a link to the Iraq Dossier page on the same site.

How odd...

Immigration facts update

Burning Our Money has the latest figures and analysis.

The sixtieth weekley "No shit, Sherlock" award

This week's award goes to The Telegraph for this incredible headline:

"Iran accused of playing games on nuclear deal - Iran has been accused of playing games after attempting to renegotiate a deal on its nuclear programme."

Iran playing deals on nuclear programme - "No shit, Sherlock".

"James Naughtie is stupid"

Not my words but those that a visitor to my blog had put into Yahoo and my blog came a very respectable second in the list of search results.

It's all in the emphasis

Compare and contrast:

Sky News reports that:

"Tory MP Nadine Dorries has been paid an undisclosed amount of compensation by ex-Gordon Brown adviser Damian McBride."

BBC News reports that:

"Tory MP Nadine Dorries says she has been paid undisclosed damages by former Downing Street spin doctor Damien McBride over e-mail smears."

Has Nadine Dorries received (or been promised) the damages? If so why do the BBC report it as only something that she "says"?



The Sky report continues

"Mr McBride quit Downing Street in April when emails, containing unfounded allegations about MPs including David Cameron, shadow chancellor George Osborne, as well as Ms Dorries, were leaked."

The BBC equivalent report runs

"The Mid-Bedfordshire MP took legal action after the existence of the messages - said to refer to her private life - was made public.

Mr McBride, who sent the unfounded smears to Labour activist Derek Draper, resigned after they were made public. "

Again the BBC cast doubts on the reports "said to refer to her private life"



The Sky report also informs us:

"The damages are the result of the first of three cases that the MP for Mid Bedfordshire has brought against Mr McBride, Derek Draper and 10 Downing Street.

Ms Dorries told Sky News she will pursue the other cases "vigorously", until her name is cleared.
She also Tweeted: "The first hurdle in clearing my name down. Two to go.""

Oddly the BBC report that:

"Ms Dorries is still considering legal action against No 10 and Mr Draper.... She has until April to decide whether to launch separate defamation actions against Mr Draper and Downing Street."

Have the other cases been brought or not? If they have why are the BBC casting doubts?



Sky go on to tell us that:

"The Prime Minister was forced to apologise for the emails amid heavy criticism of a "dirty tricks" culture within No.10.

Mr Draper, a former Labour spin doctor, resigned as editor of the website LabourList over the affair.""

The BBC report it slightly differently:

"Mr McBride is understood to have made a "fulsome" apology to the Mid-Bedfordshire MP and expressed a wish to get on with his life."

That Damian McBride, what a mensch...

Is this charity a good one to support?

"Is this charity a good one to support?" That's a question that Mrs NotaSheep often asks me as she decides which charities should benefit from her generous streak. Macmillan Cancer Care and the MS Society get a thumbs up but she also is drawn to charities with Christian links in the name - The Salvation Army and Christian Aid being the most commonly mentioned. The Salvation Army gets half a thumbs up form me but Christian Aid gets a definite thumbs down... I will explain why.

Take a look at Christian Aid's "Policy Reports" section of their website. It's split into 10 areas: "Poverty over, Tax, Climate change, Trade, Middle East, HIV/AIDS, Private sector and development, Disaster preparedness, Rights and justice and Occasional Paper Series". That's odd just one geographical area gets its own section - The Middle East. Let's investigate further.

How many reports are their in each policy area?

Poverty over - One report comprising two "policy papers"

Tax - 10 reports including one on Latin America, one on Africa's mineral wealth, one on Sierra Leone and several on taxation

Climate change - 11 reports on this touchstone of the "concerned left"

Trade - 12 reports on this area

Middle East - Eight reports of which seven relate to Israel & the Palestinians and one to Iraq - I will return to this area at the bottom of this list

HIV/AIDS - Seven reports

Private sector and development - Three reports

Disaster preparedness - One report

Rights and justice - Three reports

Occasional Paper Series - Three reports


So Christian Aid reference 58 reports on their website. Only one area of the world gets its own section - The Middle East and within that section one conflict gets seven of the eight reports. How peculiar...

Let's take a look at Christian Aid's descriptions of these eight reports:

1. The Middle East Quartet: A Progress Report (2008)

The Middle East Quartet (the EU, Russia, the UN, and the US) is failing to make adequate progress towards improving the lives of Palestinians or improving the prospects for peace in the region. That’s according to a new report by a coalition of 21 aid agencies and human rights organisations including Christian Aid.


2. The Gaza Strip: A humanitarian implosion (2008)

The situation for 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is worse now than it has ever been since the start of the Israeli military occupation in 1967. The current situation in Gaza is man-made, completely avoidable and, with the necessary political will, can also be reversed.


3. Israel and Palestine: a question of viability (2007)

Our policy report goes beyond the rhetoric to outline the essential elements we feel are necessary for a truly viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


4. Lifelines (2007)

Case studies and campaign ideas to mark the start of the 40-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip in 1967.


5. Facts on the ground: the end of the two-state solution (2004)

The report details the strangulation of the Palestinian economy, as more land is taken from the West Bank for settler roads and settlements.


6. Losing ground: Israel, poverty and the Palestinians (2003)

Based on Christian Aid's work with local organisations in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories over the last five decades, this report looks at how and why ordinary Palestinians find themselves in conditions of deepening poverty.


7. Iraq: the missing billions - transition and transparency in post-war Iraq (2003)

Our hard-hitting report exposed that the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority had not properly accounted for what it had done with some $20 billion of Iraq's own money.


8. One land and many voices: Strands of Christian thought about who lives in the Holy Land

A brief overview of theological approaches to understanding the situation in the Holy Land.


Seven reports on Israel and the Palestinians and all with a definite anti-Israel slant.

So is the Israel/Palestinian conflict the most bloody in the world? The answer is of course NO; as I blogged back in April:

"5.4 million is the number of people killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo since a 1998 civil war began. That war continues today despite numerous peace treaties.

400,000 is the number of people killed in the Darfur region of the Sudan since a 2003 outbreak of violence between the government-backed Janjaweed militias and the secular "rebels" of the region. Approximately 100 additional people were killed there a few of weeks ago. Fighting continues in Darfur today.

65,000 is the number of Sri Lankans killed since the late 1980s, most of which have been civilians. During the war in Gaza, the Sri Lankan government forces overran the last stronghold of the Tamil Tigers -- a group considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government -- at the expense of dozens of civilians. Approximately 50,000 government troops are currently advancing through the jungle, taking aim at the rebels.

3,400 is a conservative estimate of the number of Palestinians killed by the Jordanian government in the span of 11 days during the Black September Jordanian civil war of 1970. Palestinian estimates claimed more than 20,000 dead.

1,000 is the number of Palestinians killed as of Jan. 15 in Israel's current war of self-defense against Hamas, the vast majority of which have been terrorists.


Yet it is Israel that is condemned by the U.N., the Vatican, and the rest of the world. It is Jews that are attacked all over Europe."

I was inspired to write this piece by this on Hurry Up Harry and I recommend that you take a look at the whole of that piece with its revealtions about the Baroness Tonge, connections with Interpal, Hamas and the ‘Apartheid’ Wall.

You might also be interested in this from Christian Aid Watch on Christian Aid, the United Reform Church and "how Christian Aid demonizes the Jewish state"

You might want to look around Christian Aid Watches website and not the intelligent comments such as this one:

"China has been in occupation of another country, Tibet, for over fifty years and has virtually wiped out the Tibetans' culture and religion. Why do the Christian not protest about that?
Russia is carrying out ethnic cleansing in Chechnya, without comment from Christians. How many MILLIONS have been murdered in Darfur, with no Christian protest. It seems that Christians know only how to protest against Jews - could it be that they are simply old fashioned anti semites -and defend those whose propaganda is predominately lies, such as the Jenin massacre which never took place and those who bomb innocent civilians in Israel, New York, Barcelona and London."

You might also want to read other articles on Christian Aid Watches website such as the one that starts:

"‘Over the last seven issues [Summer 2003 to Summer 2005] of Christian Aid News more than 17 pages were devoted to Israel and Palestine. Most of this coverage involved political criticism of Israel. The most coverage any other conflict zone got was 4.5 pages for Angola – barely a quarter as much. Sudan, scene of more than two million deaths in the civil wars of the past two decades and, in the UN’s words, “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world”, got 2.5 pages. These include a full page feature about a woman who makes perfume. It tells you her recipe.’"

You might want to read Seismic Shock's report on Christian Aid's advertising for a Programme Manager in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. You will note that a "Desirable" qualification would be "Arabic language skills" but that there is

"No mention of Hebrew then, the language spoken by Israelis. So although the job offer includes communicating with the media, communicating with Israelis themselves does not appear high up on the agenda. Yet the job listed involves working in Israel as well as Palestinian territories."

How peculiar...


You might want to look at Christian Aid Watches fisking of Christian Aid News No. 24 (Spring 2004) and its slanted reporting of the Archbishop of Canterbury (Rowan Williams) and his speech on Israel and the Palestinians.

"Rowan Williams preached a sermon in Jerusalem in January 2004. Here is what Christian Aid News quotes from it:-

The security fence stands as a terrible symbol of the fear and despair that threaten everyone in this city and country, all the communities who share this Holy Land... it is seen by so many as one community decisively turning its back on another, despairing of anything that looks like a shared resolution, a shared future, a truly shared peace.

And here is the next sentence:-

It is not the only symbol of despair, of course. The dismembered bodies of bombers and their victims are still deeper signs of the refusal of a future, the choosing of darkness and mutual alienation.

I hardly need comment,"

Finally you might want to read this fromYNetNews via Commentary Magazine :

"T is a gay Palestinian who for the past 10 years has been living in Israel with his partner, an Israeli Jew named Doron. A few days ago, he heard that his father was ill, and he ventured across the border into the West Bank to visit him. When he tried to return, however, the IDF told him his permit had been lost, maybe revoked. T was stuck: he couldn’t go back home to Israel, and he couldn’t return to his village, for fear of being murdered because he is openly gay.

T was offered shelter by an Orthodox Jewish family, living in one of the settlements in the West Bank. Thanks to a generous, humanitarian gesture by one of those evil, nasty, gun-toting, messiah-heralding, baby-producing, Bible-thumping settlers, T has hope and room to breathe.

What do we learn from this? On the one hand, there’s the plight of Palestinians desperately trying to make their way out of their homeland to something better, and the trouble they face by the authorities of democratic states like Israel, and especially a security bureaucracy as lethal as its weaponry, even when they think they have permission to stay. On the other hand, there’s the touching personal story of the anonymous family of religious settlers willing to take T into their home — certainly not for the publicity (they remain unknown), and also not because they necessarily support equality for gays in society — but just because it is a mitzva to save the guy’s life.

But the biggest story, I think, is that he needed shelter in the first place. For all our hopes pinned on Abbas and the rest of the Fatah-led PA crew, it’s still a fact that an openly gay person risks his life by entering a Palestinian village. And the same is true in many places across the Arab world, and in Iran as well. The fact is that for all our desire to understand the “other,” to sympathize with the plight of civilizations different from our own and, to embrace their struggle against oppression while denouncing our own “colonialism,” the fact remains that at least part of what makes them different from us is not merely quaint or alien but reprehensible. That we are in effect extending a hand of tolerance to those who expressly renounce tolerance, and who make little effort to hide their murderous side.

Here there are no excuses to be made for Abbas: the problem with the Palestinian Authority is not that it lacks proper mechanisms for the enforcement of gay rights, that it just can’t get its anti-gay groups under its rein. The problem, indeed, is not with the regime, so much as with an entire society that doesn’t believe in gay rights and has no intention of protecting them. And that for them, the rejection of gays extends far beyond denying them civil rights into denying them human ones. Until this changes, if it ever does, why would any self-respecting Westerner take such people’s side?

When you affirm one civilization in favor of another — whether it’s your own, or that of your adversary, or just taking sides in a faraway conflict — you are affirming not just the people in that civilization but the values they cherish as well. For better or worse."

Now Gordon Brown is moving foreign policy power to the EU without even informing Parliament

I thought we lived in a representative democracy, I was clearly wrong. The Times reports that:

"Confidential plans to form the new European External Action Service (EEAS) by next spring will be agreed by Gordon Brown over dinner at the start of a two-day summit in Brussels.

But rather than a simple reorganisation of existing EU diplomatic activity, the new institution will take on the trappings of a fully fledged ministry such as the Foreign Office or America's State Department.

The Conservatives have attacked the Prime Minister for signing up to the plan, which follow weeks of secret negotiations, without public scrutiny or any debate in the House of Commons.

According to a restricted document, seen by The Daily Telegraph, the new Brussels institution will take responsibility for the "strategic direction" of EU foreign policy and will have its own independent budget.

It will be headed by a "High Representative", or EU foreign minister, who will take over key military, crisis planning and intelligence bodies previously controlled by national governments."

Will an incoming Conservative government have any real powers or will Gordon Brown, Tony Blair & Peter Mandelson have ensured that the real powers reside in the EU?

Arnold Schwarzenegger gets his revenge, subtly

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has had problems with his state legislature recently so is this his revenge?




Spot it?

Try looking at the first letter of each line...




Subtle, huh? or maybe a coincidence...

Is Barack Obama entitled to be President?

Yes, this rumbles on...

Here is the latest that I have seen, from Panama Legal. Here's an extract:

"Executive Summary – There is a live case in US Federal Court with Judge David Carter to make Obama prove his eligibility to be President of the USA. On Oct. 5th the Department of Justice attorneys went into court and did not produce any documents establishing Obama’s eligibility instead argued why the case should be dismissed. Absurd."

Typical "mission creep"

This Labour government's mania for control and raising money by any means possible will soon have another wing to it. Ths Times reports that:

"Draconian police powers designed to deprive crime barons of luxury lifestyles are being extended to councils, quangos and agencies to use against the public, The Times has learnt.

The right to search homes, seize cash, freeze bank accounts and confiscate property will be given to town hall officials and civilian investigators employed by organisations as diverse as Royal Mail, the Rural Payments Agency and Transport for London.

The measure, being pushed through by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, comes into force next week and will deploy some of the most powerful tools available to detectives against fare dodgers, families in arrears with council tax and other minor offenders.

The radical extension of the Proceeds of Crime Act, through a Statutory Instrument which is not debated by parliament, has been condemned by the chairman of the Police Federation. Paul McKeever said that he was shocked to learn that the decision to hand over “intrusive powers” to people who were not police was made without consultation or debate.

“The Proceeds of Crime Act is a very powerful tool in the hands of police and police-related agencies and it shouldn’t be treated lightly,” Mr McKeever said. “There is a behind the scenes creep of powers occurring here and I think the public will be very surprised. They would want such very intrusive powers to be kept in the hands of warranted officers and other law enforcement bodies which are vetted to a very high standard rather than given to local councils.”

His concerns are shared by leading legal figures, who believe that there is a risk of local authorities abusing the powers to search people’s homes, seize their money, freeze their accounts and confiscate their property. They also see parallels with the spread of counter-terrorist surveillance powers to monitor refuse collections and school catchment areas. "

This Labour government may actually be a danger to the general population; a general election should be forced on the dithering fool Gordon Brown, the ever plotting Peter Mandelson, the naive David Miliband and the apparently 'trying to be as authoritarian as David Blunkett' Alan Johnson.

So are we to live in a state where as Sir Ivan Lawrence, QC, a former senior Conservative MP, said

"Far worse is the encouragement being given to non-police bodies to search for what they think are proceeds of crime but may not be and subject the victim to the draconian and manifestly unjust processes of the Proceeds of Crime Act. Does anyone in Government understand that if you give prosecutors, who are supposed to be unbiased ministers of justice, the bribe of a proportion of the money they can find, you are actually poisoning the roots of justice in our society?"

The Times lists the POCA powers as (I emphasis the most worrying items):

"• Freezing a suspect’s assets at the beginning of a criminal investigation

• Presumption that all an individual’s assets are acquired through a criminal lifestyle

• Search for and confiscate cash of £1,000 or more

• Demand that banks and other institutions disclose financial information

• Seek confiscation order for assets after a conviction

• Collect a share of confiscated assets "

A refreshing view of Labour Britain

Take a listen to last night's Radio 4 Front Row interview with Michael Caine; some thoughts on taxation and government waste that go against the BBC's views.

Labour and immigration (even more revelations)

Following the David Teather revelations, The Mail reports that:

"Labour censored a hugely controversial report on immigration to remove details of its possible links to organised crime, street fights and begging, it emerged last night.

...

yesterday the row took a twist when it emerged that key passages which may have harmed the case for Britain adopting an open-door immigration policy had also been airbrushed from the report.

They included a section headed 'criminal behaviour', which warned of possible links between mass immigration and some crimes.

The passages were allegedly removed when the report was being finalised in 2000 by the Cabinet Office's Performance and Innovation Unit, which has been described as a Blairite 'think tank' operating at the heart of Whitehall.

One of the sections missing from the final report, which was published in 2001, said: 'There is emerging evidence that the circumstances in which asylum seekers are living is leading to criminal offences, including fights and begging.'

A second section warned: 'Migration has opened up new opportunities for organised crime.'

It stressed that migrants were not more likely to be criminals, despite more foreign nationals ending up in prison.

The prison figures were down to foreign visitors being held at airports and ports for drug smuggling, and did not relate to migrants looking to settle in the UK, the report said. But Downing Street allegedly removed the section because it was 'nervous' about how it would be received.

Other crimes linked to migration included 'marriage rackets', drug and people trafficking and fraud.

Another passage proposing a cross-government communications strategy on migration to inspire a more positive public attitude was also pulled.

The draft, leaked to London's Evening Standard, also claimed that racism towards black migrants had come 'not just from extremists or working class communities, but from politicians and policy-makers at the highest level'. This was not included in the final report."

This story is a big one, but the BBC is doing its best to minimise coverage in an effort to protect both its friends in the labour government and the multicultural agenda that it has been promoting for so many years.


As I blogged earlier this morning:

"Melanie Phillips thinks David Cameron should raise the subject of David Teather's revelations about Labour's immigration policy and I agree, but I would say it most unlikely that he will. If he does then he risks Gordon Brown labelling him and the Conservative Party as "racist"; do remember that Gordon Brown has nothing to lose and also seemingly has no regard for the truth these days."

Marvellous, simply marvellous

Marvellous, simply marvellous; Judge Christopher Ball QC seems to done it again. This time The Mail reports that:

"One of the country's most prolific thieves has been allowed to walk free from court after a judge was told he had turned over a new leaf.

Bradley Wernham, 18, has committed hundreds of offences during a £1million crime spree that began when he was 12 and involved stealing luxury cars and breaking into churches, homes and pubs.

But after admitting 20 burglaries and asking for another 645 offences to be taken into account, he was told that rather than going to jail he was to be relocated to a new town and given a rent-free home to live in with his girlfriend.

The punishment was handed out by Judge Christopher Ball QC, who has caused uproar in the past with a series of lenient sentences."

Aside from a prolific convicted burglar not receiving a custodial sentence and being relocated at the taxpayers expense, there was this sentence that took my eye:

"The Safer Harlow Partnership, a crime reduction body composed of organisations including councils and Essex Police, is covering Wernham's deposit and first month's rent until he can start claiming benefits and pay them back."

So a publically funded quango is "covering" his housing costs until his state benefits kick-in and one part of the state can pay the other back. Let's have a think who never gets the money back? Oh yes the taxpayer, including the 665 who this scrote burgled.

Innocent? It will cost you a lot to prove it now.

The Magistrate's Blog reports on a recent Statutory Instrument that had somehow passed me by:

"Legal Costs - Another Click of the Ratchet

Thanks to CrimeLine for pointing me to this statutory instrument giving the Lord Chancellor power to cap central funds costs. CrimeLine expects that costs awarded out of central funds will be capped at Legal Aid rates, which are way below solicitors' private client fees.
If I read this aright, someone who is tried and acquitted, having instructed solicitors and possibly Counsel privately, is likely to be left with a large bill for their fees, that he has no hope of recovering, despite his being innocent of the offence. The CPS, on the other hand cannot lose, and may see this as an opportunity to bully guilty pleas out of people who might have a defence but who cannot afford to run it."

That's this Labour government for you, they expect to be able to charge you and if you dare to fight it and prove yourself "not guilty" then you will still be out of pocket. Does the phrase "total bastards" cover them?

Will he or won't he?

Melanie Phillips thinks David Cameron should raise the subject of David Teather's revelations about Labour's immigration policy and I agree, but I would say it most unlikely that he will. If he does then he risks Gordon Brown labelling him and the Conservative Party as "racist"; do remember that Gordon Brown has nothing to lose and also seemingly has no regard for the truth these days.

Phil Woolas

Yesterday Chris Grayling asked Phil Woolas, Minister of State for Borders and Immigration in the Home Office, a question that Phil Woolas either pretended not to understand or deliberately avoided answering. Here's Hansard's record of the exchanges:

"Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con): Over the weekend, we have heard some pretty controversial reported comments by a former adviser to the Government about their immigration policy. May I invite the Minister to put the record straight? What was the motivation behind the very rapid increase in immigration under this Government?

Mr. Woolas: If one takes a responsible and reasonable look at the statistics, one will see that it was an earlier Act that brought about significant increases in immigration in this country. The most significant milestone in the history of migration policy since the second world war,
26 Oct 2009 : Column 7
in my view, was the abolition of border controls in 1994. With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I throw the question back at the hon. Gentleman: does he now support the border controls that we have put back into place?

Chris Grayling: I think a lot of people will notice that the Minister has made no attempt to answer my question. What Mr. Neather, the former adviser, said was that the policy of rapid expansion was done to put pressure on the right. Would it not be utterly disgraceful for any Government to decide immigration policy that was in the interests not of the country, but of a political party? Was that what happened?

Mr. Woolas: I do not know to whom or to which reports the hon. Gentleman refers. If he wants to take the views of someone with a political motivation, that is up to him, but I repeat that the Government have reintroduced border controls—electronic borders—despite opposition from the hon. Gentleman.

Chris Grayling indicated dissent.

Mr. Woolas: It is no good the hon. Gentleman shaking his head and smirking about it. The facts are that his party abolished border controls, that we have reintroduced them and that he opposes them."

"I do not know to whom or to which reports the hon. Gentleman refers."Really?

Big brave comedians

"Mock the Week" is a cutting edge news related comedy show, of the "takes no prisoners" variety. So I was interested to read on Dave TV's Mock the Week site that a rejected idea for "Scenes We'd Like to See" was "Things you wouldn't say to the prophet Mohammed"; rejected because "We're not idiots Joe. Rejected."

I wonder if the brave comedians would make fun of Jesus Christ or the Buddha on their programme? I think it likely. At least Frankie Boyle had the balls to make fun of Islam as much as other religions, it seems Dara O'Briain is less brave.

Is it a "lefty leader" thing

Sean Linnane reports the words of Ronald Kessler about the men who guarded US Presidents from JFK to BHO. Apparently Jimmy Carter was the "least likeable" president. Carter was "moody and mistrustful" and sought to micromanage everything, agents told Kessler.

"Moody and mistrustful"; does that remind you of a certain UK Prime Minister?

"Kessler discloses that Carter "would regularly make a show of going to the Oval Office at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. to call attention to how hard he was working for the American people."

In fact, "he would work for half an hour, then close the curtains and take a nap," Robert B. Sulliman Jr., who was on Carter's detail, told Kessler.
"His staff would tell the press he was working.""

I wonder if the same is true of the same UK Prime Minister, renowned for being a hard worker and "getting on" with the job.

"GSA managers found that when Carter stayed at the townhouse, he would take down the photos of Republican presidents Ford and Nixon and put up a half-dozen large photos of himself."

Vanity as well, this sounds more like the aforementioned Prime Minister's predecessor, or maybe his wife.


Ronald Kessler's book "In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect" sounds like a good read.

The fifty-ninth weekly "No shit, Sherlock" award

From The Telegraph's report on Colonel Gaddafi's non-apology for the shooting dead of WPC Yvonne Fletcher comes this real "No shit, Sherlock" moment:

"If Iran develops nuclear weapons it could eventually lead to the Palestinians having nuclear weapons "

D'ya think?

"No shit, Sherlock"

"Speculation" doesn't mean not true

The BBC faithfully report that:

"Reports that Gordon Brown is helping lobby for former PM Tony Blair to become European president are just speculation, says Downing Street."

They might indeed be speculation as they are not confirmed, but that does not mean they are not true.

Isn't it sad that every utterance from anyone associated with this Labour government has to be analysed for the get-out clause?

How does Gordon Brown know the recession will end next quarter?

I blogged on Sunday that:

"Gordon Brown has promised the economy will return to growth by the turn of the year, in his first reaction to news that the UK is still in recession.

His podcast was released on the Number 10 website a day after official figures showed the economy was still shrinking."

Cynical Mrs NotaSheep wonders if this means that our increasingly apparently deluded Prime Minister has found a way to fiddle the figures..."

It seems that Mrs NotaSheep and myself are not alone in having this cynical thought; Alex Masterley writes today that:

"Gordon Brown says the battle to prevent a depression was being won and has promised the economy will return to growth by the turn of the year, in his first reaction to news that the UK is still in recession.
...
...The truth is that if the government really wants to they could lift the economy out of recession by playing the game that Brown played before the recession. It was easy to claim zillions of back to back quarters of unbroken GDP growth when he simply put his foot on the spending gas pedal. The problem was that it was largely wasteful spending.

Sure enough he has promised to cut a some point in the future (not that he will be around), but it would be easy to create a upward blip in government spending to push the next quarter into growth, with a later collapse, perhaps by borrowing and spending, perhaps doing nothing more than a few accounting tricks getting PFI schemes to count as government spending or booking the payment of a defence contract in this quarter just to cook the books.

After all finding an extra 0.4% of GDP (£5 billion) can't be hard when the government is already overspending by 15% of GDP. Whatever it is done, it will likely be just enough to get out of the recession for a quarter, before falling into another recession."

Of course it is also possible to fiddle the figures for two consecutive quarters, the ones leading up to the general election, so as to fool enough of the electorate that the economy was on the up. The fact that the economy would dive afterwards would be of no consequence if Labour managed to win the election, probably be explained by outside influences, and entirely due to the new Conservative government if Labour did lose the election.

As I have said many times before, any oncoming Conservative government needs to have planned a thorough investigation of the lies and deceptions perpetrated by this most unpleasant Labour government; prosecutions should follow in a modern day type of Nuremberg Trials.

Why does the FTSE keep going up?

Alex Masterley explains why, I just wish he'd told me this a year ago!

"The main reason the FTSE didn't drop is because it is already overvalued. Does that make sense? No, well then you weren't listening last week when Charlie Bean (of the Bank of England) told the world that the purpose of QE was not to fill the banks with cash, but to raise the value of the assets they held. This would boost their balance sheets and plug them full of Tier 1 equity. [As an aside, if that was the reason, I fail to understand why the BoE didn't simply subscribe for £175m of bank equity paid for in the same way, by printing electronic money transferred into the selling bank's account at the BoE, but I digress].

So QE is all about hyping markets and that spills over into the FTSE. More recession means more QE, and more QE means more cash chasing the same gilts and equity, which means higher asset prices (or lower value of money depending how you look at it). So the economy is still in a mess but the FTSE stays at the same price because the market expects more dodgy government money to be on its way any time soon."

Who wrote Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father"?

Jack Cashill at American Thinker thinks "Bill Ayers played a major role in the authorship of Barack Obama's acclaimed 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father." Here's one reason why:

"According to Dreams, the little family with one year-old Maya in tow made a long distance detour from the obvious places they might visit -- Seattle, Disneyland, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone -- to spend three days in Chicago.

As Obama tells it, the family rode some 1500 miles on Greyhound buses from the Grand Canyon and another 1000 miles back to Yellowstone to spend three dreary days in a motel in the South Loop of Chicago. Something does not make sense here.

In Chicago, Obama's most vivid memory is of seeing the shrunken heads on display at the Field Museum. Yes, the museum did have those heads on display. They were considered, according to one source, as a "crucial rite of passage for generations of Chicago kids." Ayers was one such kid. He grew up in suburban Chicago."

Who knows the truth of the matter? What I do know is that there are more unanswered questions about Barack Obama than make me comfortable.

The top 10 Internet rules and laws

The Telegraph have a must read guide to the top 10 Internet laws and rules; from the well known "Godwin’s Law" to the less known "Cohen’s Law". Take a read and see how many you recognise from your own Internet activities...

The 2010 Doctor Who logo

I know that I previewed the new logo a while back but thanks to Behind the Sofa and the BBC here's the ident...

The Large Hadron Collider

Could the Large Hadron Collider be sabotaging itself?

"In a theory reminiscent of the time travelling film Back to the Future, the theoretical physicists Holger Nielsen, from Denmark, and Masao Ninomiya, from Japan, have concluded that its discoveries could be so "abhorrent to nature" that they are coming back to stop their own creation.

They have outlined their thoughts in a series of papers with titles like “Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal” and “Search for Future Influence From LHC.”

The pair's hypothesis centres around the Higgs Boson, a mysterious tiny particle and building block of life that it is hoped the LHC will discover.

They have come up with a theory that it will "ripple backward through time" and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

"It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said.

He said that his theories may even provide a "model for God" who "rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them”. "

Food for thought?


Here's Channel 4 News's take on the story...

REX - A soldier's best friend - or Rincewind's "luggage" brought to life?

Israel Aerospace Industries' (IAI) REX is a small robotic platform designed to accompany ground forces on operations and can carry up to 200 kilograms, catering for groups of 3-10 troops on operational and logistical missions for up to 72 hours without refueling, REX acts as a robotic “beast of burden” for the modern soldier.

REX has both military and civil applications.

“The REX platform is unique in its state-of-the-art operational capabilities and its user-friendly interface, both of which are central to the platform’s superior performance,” explained Ofer Glazer, head of innovation at IAI. “The robotic vehicle follows the lead soldier from a given distance, utilizing technology developed and patented by IAI. Using simple commands, including ’stop’, ‘fetch’, and ‘heel’, the lead soldier controls the robot without being distracted from the mission at hand. Controlling the robot in this way allows for intuitive interaction and rapid integration of the product on the field within a short time frame,” Glazer added.


Is anyone else thinking that this sounds somewhat like Rincewind's "luggage" from the Terry Pratchett Discworld novels? Isn't it nice when sci-fi/fantasy concepts get brought to life by science?



Thanks to Double Tapper for the spot.

Wife-swapping at the House of Commons

Not as interesting/disgusting as it sounds but the story that MPs who are determined to get round the new rules banning family members from working for them are considering "swapping wives" with other MPs. Imagine indulging in such "swapping" and finding Pauline Prescott in your office...

The truth about "Climate Change" - Spreading the word

I see that currently, Christopher Booker's Telegraph piece about the lies that underlie Climate Change "science" is the number two most viewed article on The Telegraph website. Keep spreading the word and maybe we could get David Cameron to acknowledge that despite the BBC's slavish devotion to the religion of Man Made Climate Change, there might be a lack of proof...

"Gaddafi apologises for the shooting of Wpc Yvonne Fletcher"

Well sort of... The Telegraph reports that:

"Col Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, has apologised for the first time for the shooting of Wpc Yvonne Fletcher. "

But has he really> Well no, as the article goes on to explain:

"He said she was not an enemy of Libya and was protecting the Libyan Embassy in London when she died, but also insisted that the gunman remained unknown.

In a wide-ranging television interview, speaking in faltering English, he said: "You see, I know that such a thing happened. I know a policewoman was shot and killed when she was doing her duty.

"She is not an enemy to us, and we are sorry all the time and our sympathy, because she was on duty, she was there to protect the Libyan Embassy, but this is the problem that should be solved, but who did it? That is the question." "

As Colonel Gaddafi is still not allowing UK police to investigate who shot WPC Fletcher, I think the apology isn't worth the breath it used up.

Googling

I was pleased to see that Google India has this site as the 2nd returned if you google "once is happenstance". That's my favourite Ian Fleming line; it's from Goldfinger, in fact it's said by Auric Goldfinger himself

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."

What lies in store for an incoming 2010 Conservative Government

Sorry to depress you but this article on ConservativeHome deserves reading, here's a couple of extracts:

"The incoming Conservative government will face the worst inheritance almost anyone can remember. The only serious competition seems to be the Wilson government of 1974 and the Thatcher government of 1979. But each of those, in their different ways, had big advantages over the Cameron government of 2010. The combination of the worst recession since the 1920s; unemployment that will rise above four million unless something dramatic happens; public finances of the order of a banana republic; public spending on the scale of a soviet republic; the major industry of the economy (finance) crippled to the point of nationalisation; households burdened by ruinous debt; a war we absolutely must win but show little signs of doing so amidst widespread voter disillusionment with its value; a society ravaged by nihilism, sloth, adultery, divorce, irresponsibility, selfishness, promise-breaking and faithlessness on a truly epic scale; a political establishment that has no faith in itself or in the value of its ideals; an incoherent patchwork of overlapping legislatures in a constitution savaged beyond recognition; tension with our friends and partners in the European Union on the point of breaking out into open hostility - these and many other problems represent the backdrop to the 2010 General Election.


...


As unemployment rises above three million next year, and (barring something extraordinary) above four million over the following winter, the Conservative Party will be blamed. People will say that it's the spending cuts and the public sector redundancies that are the cause. There will be unprecedented social tensions associated with there being so, so many unemployed. Given the very low trust there is in politicians and the general scale of nihilism and social decay, the situation could become volatile - in an extreme case, in specific regions, even quasi-revolutionary (of the order of quasi-revolutionary union activities in the early 1970s, but probably not, on this occasion, at the instigation of unions). I have no idea how the Conservatives intend to deal with that - and, I think, neither does anyone in the Party."

And as the Country sinks into a mire of unrest and unemployment, the legacy of 13 years of Labour misrule, you can imagine the smirks on the faces of Blair, Mandelson and Brown.

The real global warming disaster

If you read nothing else this weekend then do read Christopher Booker in today's Telegraph. The article is headlined

"In a startling new book, Christopher Booker reveals how a handful of scientists, who have pushed flawed theories on global warming for decades, now threaten to take us back to the Dark Ages "

Christopher Booker explains why The Climate Change Bill is "far and away the most expensive piece of legislation ever put before Parliament" and why the IPCC is not compromised of

"1,500 of the world’s top climate scientists", charged with weighing all the scientific evidence for and against "human-induced climate change" in order to arrive at a "consensus"

but is in fact comprised in such a manner that the

"vast majority of its contributors have never been climate scientists. Many are not scientists at all. And from the start, the purpose of the IPCC was not to test the theory, but to provide the most plausible case for promoting it. This was why the computer models it relied on as its chief source of evidence were all programmed to show that, as CO₂ levels continued to rise, so temperatures must inevitably follow."

Do read the whole piece and spread the word before it's too late.

Are there different types of evil?

The political establishment and most of the media are united by their detestation of the BNP and I understand why. Elements of the Labour party think that even allowing them free speech is beyond the pale and that the BNP should be proscribed. However that view does sit rather oddly with the revelation that:

"Leading members of a group that wants to bring down the British state and replace it with a dictatorship under Islamic law have secured more than £100,000 of taxpayers’ money for a chain of schools.

Accounts filed at the Charity Commission show that the Government paid a total of £113,411 last year to a foundation run by senior members and activists of Hizb ut-Tahrir — a notorious Islamic extremist group that ministers promised to ban.

The public money helped run a nursery school and two Islamic primary schools where children are taught key elements of Hizb’s ideology from the age of five. "

Do read the whole of The Telegraph's report and the wonder how the Labour government can gibe over £100,000 to an organisation that in the words of The Telegraph

"regards integration as “dangerous” and says that British Muslims should “fight assimilation” into British society. It wants to create a global Islamic superstate, or “caliphate”, initially in Muslim-majority countries and then across the rest of the world.

It says that “those [Muslims] who believe in democracy are Kafir”, or apostates. It orders all Muslims to keep apart from non-believers and boycott “corrupt” British elections and political processes."

Read the whole article and wonder how this Labour government can allocate over £100,000 to an organisation whose (in the words of The Telegraph)

"website previously displayed a leaflet urging Muslims to “kill [Jews] wherever you find them” and at a rally in London earlier this year, Imran Waheed, its chief media adviser in Britain, said that there could be “no peace” with Israel, calling on Muslims to “fight” a “jihad… in the way of Allah” against it."

Read the whole article and wonder how this Labour government could allocate over £100,000 to schools where (in the words of The Telegraph)

"At least three of the four trustees are Hizb members or activists, including Farah Ahmed, the head teacher of the Slough school, who has written in a Hizb journal condemning the “corrupt Western concepts of materialism and freedom”.

On their website, the schools say their “ultimate goal” and “foremost work” is the creation of an “Islamic personality” in children The creation of an “Islamic personality” is a key tenet of Hizb’s ideology.

The schools’ history curriculum states that children are taught that “there must be one ruler of the khilafah [caliphate]”. The schools’ website says that “in the glorious history of Islam... the Sharia was the norm”."

It is more than a little odd that the BNP are derided by Labour ministers and the BBC for being racist whilst the same Labour government gives money to a Muslim organisation that has previously called on Muslims to “kill [Jews] wherever you find them”.

The Winter of Disconnect (reprise)

So Gordon Brown's government looks like leaving office rather like Jim Callaghan's did, to the sound of strikes and general discontent at a ruined economy. When will voters realise that all Labour governments end in economic and social failure? I wonder how long it will take to fix Labour's mess this time and if David Cameron will be given the chance to do so by our EU masters.

Typical BBC reporting

The BBC reported this week that "Rich Germans demand higher taxes"> Blimey I thought, that's socially responsible and very in line with the BBC ethos. The article started

"A group of rich Germans has launched a petition calling for the government to make wealthy people pay higher taxes.

The group say they have more money than they need, and the extra revenue could fund economic and social programmes to aid Germany's economic recovery.

Germany could raise 100bn euros (£91bn) if the richest people paid a 5% wealth tax for two years, they say. "

Interesting and ignoring the Laffer Curve maybe feasible.

However the BBC's excitement needs to be seen in context with the following line

"The petition has 44 signatories so far, and will be presented to newly re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel. "

Does anyone else think that the headline "Rich Germans demand higher taxes" is slightly misleading when it concerns just 44 Germans? Still if it fits in with the BBC agenda then I suppose it will always be worth reporting.

Where are the hurricanes

In December 2007 I blogged that:

"In 2006 predictions were made of a bad hurricane season to follow on from 2005's Katrina etc. The predictions did not come true so before the 2007 hurricane season started, more dire predictions were made (this on the BBC):

"Experts are again predicting a busy Atlantic hurricane season, with up to 17 named tropical storms forming - nine of which could become hurricanes. At least one major storm is expected to make landfall in the US during the 1 June-30 November season, Colorado State University forecasters said... the record-breaking 2005 season saw 15 hurricanes, including Katrina which devastated New Orleans. Another forecaster, London-based Tropical Storm Risk, has likewise predicted 17 tropical storms, nine of them hurricanes, for the 2007 season. "We have increased our forecast for the 2007 hurricane season, largely due to the rapid dissipation of El Nino conditions," Colorado experts Philip Klotzbach and William Gray said in a statement. "We are now calling for a very active hurricane season. Landfall probabilities for the 2007 hurricane season are well above their long-period averages," they said."

I was almost put off my Caribbean holiday but then I remembered last year's predictions and went anyway; beautiful weather and a lack of strong winds, let alone hurricanes.

The Atlantic hurricane season has just ended and the news is not good for the doom-mongerers. In October the BBC were reporting that "Update on the Atlantic Hurricane Season by Steph Ball
At the start of the year the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued their pre-season predictions of an active 2007 hurricane season. They predicted a total of 13-17 storms, with 7 -10 becoming hurricanes, of which 3-5 would be major hurricanes.

The season was late in spawning any hurricanes, with Dean the first to develop mid-August. Dean became a Category 5 hurricane and went on to make landfall at that strength along Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on August 21st.

September saw activity increasing with eight tropical storms being named, three of which became hurricanes, though only Hurricane Felix strengthened into a major storm. This amount of storms was above average for September and equalled 2002 for the record for the most storms forming during the month. However the National Hurricane Centre in its September summary, using its own measure of combined strength and duration, classed it as below average. This was because most of the storms were relatively short-lived.

So far October has seen no storm activity. The 2006 season saw no activity after the 3rd October though this was put down to a strengthening El Niño. The year was a relatively quiet one with no hurricanes making landfall at all in the US.

At present the number of hurricanes spawned is below that predicted. However with the season running until the end of November, there is still the chance we will see a further upsurge in activity."

You can almost hear the desperation in the writer as he writes "there is still the chance we will see a further upsurge in activity."


Of course come the end of the hurricane season, the news for the "we need a disaster" brigade was no better:

"Hurricane season – quiet for the US but not for others by Steph Ball
On Friday the Atlantic hurricane season draws to an end and the United States will be able to breathe a sigh of relief, as they escape with a second mild year.

At the start of the year it was forecast that the 2007 season would be an above-average season, with 17 storms and up to 7 to 10 of these going on to become hurricanes. Instead, 14 storms were spawned, 6 of which reached hurricane status.

Two of these were major hurricanes, Dean and Felix, which went on to make history. It was the first time since records began in 1851, that two Atlantic hurricanes had made landfall in the same season as Category 5 storms. Category 5 is the highest strength on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.

While the US may have escaped with little impact this year, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean have not been so lucky. More than 200 people were killed with almost four billion dollars of damage caused, often across already impoverished communities. Hurricane Dean roared across the Caribbean in August, making landfall on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Felix followed early September leaving over a hundred dead as it struck the northeast of Nicaragua.

2006 was itself a quiet year with no hurricanes making landfall in the US at all. Both years have been a far cry from 2005 which still echoes from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina."

2008 was another quiet year for hurricanes but 2009 was once again predicted to be a bad year. So how many hurricanes this year in the Caribbean/North America? 10? 9? 8? The normal 5-7? No... NONE, zilch, nada. And yet the BBC will push the Man Made Climate Change agenda day-in and day-out for that is the new religion.

"mass immigration under Labour was not just a cock up but also a conspiracy" Update

Further to this it is interesting how apart from The Standard, The Telegraph, The Mail and Sky News this story is receiving so little MSM attention. Anyone would think that the New Labour establishment was calling in favours.

Meanwhile the blogosphere is awash with related stories, take a look at Iain Dale for a studied response (and see how he received some ad hominem attacks in return in his comments), you might also want to read this from The Last Ditch and this from Bastard Old Holborn.

Sunday catchup

So much news, so little time.

1. The BBC report that

"£6m government ad warning about climate change is to be investigated by watchdogs over claims it is misleading and too "scary" for children.

The Advertising Standards Authority has received 357 complaints about the Department of Energy and Climate Change's "bedtime stories" ad.

The ad aims to make adults feel guilty about the impact their carbon emissions are having on their children's future. "

it would seem that many people agree with me when I mused "The scientific community agrees – climate change is happening and human activity is almost certainly the cause."Really, all the scientific community, really, are you sure? "


2. The BBC reprt with an admirable straight face that

"Gordon Brown has promised the economy will return to growth by the turn of the year, in his first reaction to news that the UK is still in recession.

His podcast was released on the Number 10 website a day after official figures showed the economy was still shrinking."

Cynical Mrs NotaSheep wonders if this means that our increasingly apparently deluded Prime Minister has found a way to fiddle the figures...


3. London Muslims have an interesting turn of phrase in their piece entitled "Blair makes millions from war contracts through Arab Tyrants" (my emphasis):

"The War criminal Tony Blair fresh from sending British troops to their death in Iraq & Afghanistan is now cashing in on war contracts with the usual array of cowardly disco Arabs.

Not content with prostituting our country's interests for Israels and being paid handsomely, he now with his partner in crime Jonathan Powell tours the Middle East searching out ignorant Arab tyrants which isn't that difficult.

Having spent some time with UAE royalty who must have thought Blair was asking them to put a wager on the Grand National, TB hot foots it across the desert to those brave warriors in Kuwait. Remember, these were the ones who the moment they smelt Saddam Hussein's gun powder shit themselves and did a runner for the nearest departure lounge."

Interesting POV article and I site I shall visit more regularly now to see what other gems I can find.


4. Sky News are reporting the news that I and others posted about yesterday that former Labour speechwriter Mr Teather claims that "Labour ministers deliberately encouraged mass immigration to diversify Britain over the past decade". Interestingly this story has yet to be reported by the BBC.


5. THe Telegraph and others report that "Detectives have relaunched the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing and are pursuing "several" new lines of inquiry including a fresh analysis of forensic evidence". My advice to them would be to look towards Syria.


6. Britten-Norman BN2 Islander and nine passengers survive a crash landing in the Caribbean, although the pilot died. I suppose this is relieving news to Mrs NotaSheep and myself who are semi-regular passengers in just such a plane.

US girlfriends have a plan to end the recession

Onion News has the full story on "the Nation's Economic Cohabitation Act"



Thanks to Fried Green Onions for the spot.

"mass immigration under Labour was not just a cock up but also a conspiracy"

This is one of the most incredible and maybe political landscape changing stories I have reported since I started this blog.

The Telegraph report that:

"The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and "rub the Right's nose in diversity", according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.

He said Labour's relaxation of controls was a deliberate plan to "open up the UK to mass migration" but that ministers were nervous and reluctant to discuss such a move publicly for fear it would alienate its "core working class vote".

As a result, the public argument for immigration concentrated instead on the economic benefits and need for more migrants.

Critics said the revelations showed a "conspiracy" within Government to impose mass immigration for "cynical" political reasons.

Mr Neather was a speech writer who worked in Downing Street for Tony Blair and in the Home Office for Jack Straw and David Blunkett, in the early 2000s."

If true and I have heard no Labour minister deny it, then this is political dynamite. It blows a hole in the side of this Labour government and destroys what is left of their fingerhold on credibility. Mr Neather was a man who worked at the heart of this Labour government and who saw the raw material that he helped turn into speeches; he knows what facts were deliberately excluded and why.

The Telegraph article continues with this damning passage, again about Mr Teather:

"He wrote a major speech for Barbara Roche, the then immigration minister, in 2000, which was largely based on drafts of the report.

He said the final published version of the report promoted the labour market case for immigration but unpublished versions contained additional reasons, he said.

He wrote: "Earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.

"I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn't its main purpose – to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date."

The "deliberate policy", from late 2000 until "at least February last year", when the new points based system was introduced, was to open up the UK to mass migration, he said.

Some 2.3 million migrants have been added to the population since then, according to Whitehall estimates quietly slipped out last month."

I wonder if Barabara Roche is available for comment.


Mr Teather is keen to point out that:

"(he) defended the policy, saying mass immigration has "enriched" Britain, and made London a more attractive and cosmopolitan place.

But he acknowledged that "nervous" ministers made no mention of the policy at the time for fear of alienating Labour voters.

"Part by accident, part by design, the Government had created its longed-for immigration boom.

"But ministers wouldn't talk about it. In part they probably realised the conservatism of their core voters: while ministers might have been passionately in favour of a more diverse society, it wasn't necessarily a debate they wanted to have in working men's clubs in Sheffield or Sunderland."

This, if true, is going to play out very badly for the Labour party in its heartlands and should see a further erosion in their support to the BNP. (see end of this post for a cynics response)

The report ends with comments from various concerned individuals: first Sir Andrew Green of Migrationwatch who has been calling for the truth to be told on immigration for a long time and suffered being tagged as a racist when it was verbotten to even discuss the subject, second Frank Field and Nicholas Soames whose recent report I mentioned yesterday and finally from a Home Office spokesman who ignores the central point of Mr Teather's claims:

"Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the Migrationwatch think tank, said: "Now at least the truth is out, and it's dynamite.

"Many have long suspected that mass immigration under Labour was not just a cock up but also a conspiracy. They were right.

"This Government has admitted three million immigrants for cynical political reasons concealed by dodgy economic camouflage."

The chairmen of the cross-party Group for Balanced Migration, MPs Frank Field and Nicholas Soames, said: "We welcome this statement by an ex-adviser, which the whole country knows to be true.

"It is the first beam of truth that has officially been shone on the immigration issue in Britain."

A Home Office spokesman said: “Our new flexible points based system gives us greater control on those coming to work or study from outside Europe, ensuring that only those that Britain need can come.

“Britain's borders are stronger than ever before and we are rolling out ID cards to foreign nationals, we have introduced civil penalties for those employing illegal workers and from the end of next year our electronic border system will monitor 95 per cent of journeys in and out of the UK.

“The British people can be confident that immigration is under control.”"

There is a not a whiff of this story on the BBC who prefer to report under the headline "BNP support in poll sparks anger" that:

"Peter Hain says his fears have been proved right after a poll suggested support for the BNP has risen after Nick Griffin appeared on Question Time.

A YouGov poll in the Daily Telegraph suggests 22% of people questioned would "seriously consider" voting BNP. "

A cynics response - Might it be that the appearance of this article within 36 hours of Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time is not a coincidence? Might the Labour government be playing their final card; the card of deliberately boosting the BNP vote in an attempt to move votes from Conservative as well as Labour voters in any future general election.

Moving from cynicism to conspiracy theory; might the Labour party be engaging in the most dangerous pastime of engineering social conflict, social conflict that then requires the hand (or taser) of firm government to suppress? Suppression here might include one or more of the following: brute force on the streets, suspension of democracy & the normal rule of law under the Civil Contingencies Act and maybe the use of EU law and order & army to "restore order". Could Labour be that desperate?

BNP get an opinion poll boost following Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time

The Telegraph report that the latest You Gov opinion poll shows that "More than a fifth of the public would consider voting for the British National Party". In more detail

"The survey found that 22 per cent of voters would “seriously consider” voting for the BNP in a future local, general or European election. This included four per cent who said they would “definitely” consider voting for the party, three per cent who would “probably” consider it, and 15 per cent who said they were “possible” BNP voters.

Two-thirds said they would not consider voting for the party “under any circumstances” with the rest unsure."

So that plan went well didn't it BBC? Or is the plan really to sow dissent and violence so that their newly armed police can take their revenge and then have an excuse to postpone the general election.

Carbon rationing - when?

Watts Up With That have some interesting revelations about "UK government strategy for personal carbon rations".

"Personal carbon rations would have to be mandatory, imposed by Government in the same way that food rationing was introduced in the UK in 1939… Each person would receive an electronic card containing their year’s carbon credits …see the Tyndall Centre’s study on “domestic tradable quotas”… and their recent establishment on the political agenda…the card would have to be presented when purchasing energy or travel services, and the correct amount of carbon deducted. The technologies and systems already in place for direct debit systems and credit cards could be used."

(Environmental Audit Committee minutes-House Of Commons-London)"

It's those authoritarian greens again...

Judge Goldstone avoids the questions

UN Watch report an interesting Question and Answer at the UNHRC.

"Geneva, September 29, 2009 — The U.N. Human Rights Council plenary witnessed a dramatic face-off today when the head of its controversial "fact-finding" mission on Gaza -- in which Israel was declared guilty from the start -- was unexpectedly confronted by one of his own witnesses.

In a surprise appearance arranged by the Geneva human rights organization UN Watch, Dr. Mirela Siderer -- an Israeli doctor who was brutally disfigured in 2008 by a rocket attack fired from Gaza into her Ashkelon medical clinic -- pointedly accused Goldstone of ignoring her July oral testimony in his report, and of failing to disclose material information concerning the prior statements of the Human Rights Council and panel members declaring Israel guilty in advance. Click for video. The speech was published in full today by Canada's National Post, and covered widely in Switzerland, Israel and worldwide.

Sitting on the dais, Goldstone was visibly shaken by Dr. Siderer's challenge and scrambled for a copy of her speech. His response to the plenary ignored 7 of her questions, and inadequately responded to the 8th."

Here are Dr Sederer's questions:

"My name is Dr. Mirela Siderer. I am a gynecologist living in Ashkelon, Israel.

Judge Goldstone, in July you invited me to testify. I told you my story. I am known by my patients -- including many women from Gaza. For me, every human being is equal.

On May 14, 2008, my life was changed forever. I was working in my clinic. Suddenly, the building was hit by a missile, fired from Gaza. I was terribly wounded. Blood was everywhere. My patient was also wounded, and more than 100 others. Next month will be my eighth operation.

Judge Goldstone, I told you all of this, in detail. I testified in good faith. You sent me this letter, saying, "Your testimony is an essential part of the Mission's fact-finding activities."

But now I see your report. I have to tell you: I am shocked.

Judge Goldstone, in a 500-page report, why did you completely ignore my story? My name appears only in passing, in brackets, in a technical context.

I feel humiliated.

Why are there only two pages about Israeli victims like me, who suffered thousands of rockets over eight years?

Why did you choose to focus on the period of my country's response, but not on that of the attacks that caused it?

Why did you not tell me that this council judged Israel guilty in advance, in its meeting of last January?

Why did you not tell me that members of your panel signed public letters judging Israel guilty in advance?

Judge Goldstone, you, too, signed such a letter, saying you were "shocked" about Gaza.

But where were you when Gaza attacked my medical clinic, in violation of international human rights and humanitarian law?

Where was this council?

Why were you all silent?"

Here is Judge Goldstone's pathetic reply:

"With regard to the statement made by Dr. Siderer, I’m clearly upset that she feels humiliated by the report. She was treated in the report in no way different to that of other victims who spoke to us. She was referred to in the report as one of the people who was injured as a result of a rocket attack on a shopping center in Southern Israel. The report also refers to the fact that the evidence of the people who gave evidence to us are available on the website of the OHCHR. It is there for anybody to see."

Here is UN Watchs's analysis:

"UN Watch Note: Dr. Siderer posed 8 simple questions. Goldstone avoided all except one, and on this was non-responsive and misleading. Dr. Siderer never said that she wasn’t “referred to,” but rather complained that her story was ignored, and that her name was mentioned only “in passing, in brackets, in a technical context;” and that this underscored how he overlooked 8 years of suffering of the rocket victims. Here is Dr. Siderer's original testimony; here is Goldstone's report. Search her name -- it turns up but once, in passing, in par. 1640. Goldstone' s claim that other witnesses were given similar treatment is manifestly false: see, e.g., the report's repeated and in-depth discussion of witness Abu Askar. What is clear is that the report gives short shrift to Israeli suffering by its selective focus on the period of Israel's response to the rocket attacks (Dec. 2008 and Jan. 2009), instead of to the attacks themselves (2001-2009)."

Of course the reasons behind the bias in the Goldstone report are clear and widely known. If you want to know more, I suggest you read this and this.

Is Gordon Brown about to announce that the UK is ready to join the single currency, the five economic tests having been passed?

There are rumours that Gordon Brown is considering signing the UK up to the Euro in the very near future so as to remove any chance of an incoming Conservative government calling a referendum on any aspect of EU membership.

The electorate have always been promised that there would be a referendum before any entry into the Euro, but we were promised a referendum on the EU Constitution and you know how that was side-stepped.

Currently the Government's Euro Assessment website shows the famous "five economic tests" and the results of the 2003 assessment. To remind you, the five economic tests are/were:
"1. Are business cycles and economic structures compatible so that we and others could live comfortably with euro interest rates on a permanent basis?
2. If problems emerge is there sufficient flexibility to deal with them?
3. Would joining EMU create better conditions for firms making long-term decisions to invest in Britain?
4. What impact would entry into EMU have on the competitive position of the UK's financial services industry, particularly the City's wholesale markets?
5. In summary, will joining EMU promote higher growth, stability and a lasting increase in jobs?"

The "five economic tests" were in fact just the most publicised of the four key building blocks that this Labour government declared in 1997 would decide when the Labour Government, who had already committed the UK to the principle of joining the single currency, would actually join the Euro.

The four key building blocks are/were:

"1. a successful single currency within a single European market would in principle be of benefit to Europe and to the UK: in terms of trade, transparency of costs and currency stability
2. the constitutional issue is a factor in the UK's decision but it is not an overriding one, so long as membership is in the national interest, the case is clear and unambiguous and there is popular consent
3. the basis for the decision as to whether there is a clear and unambiguous economic case for membership is the Treasury's comprehensive and rigorous assessment of the five economic tests
4. whenever the decision to enter is taken by the Government, it should be put to a referendum of the British people."

Reading the 2003 report it is incredible how wrong the Labour government was then about the economic prospects of the UK. Here's a few examples:

"The Government is committed to building on the platform of stability and has announced a wide-ranging forward-looking policy agenda to deliver high levels of output and employment. This will help to make the economy more convergent with the euro area for the future. "

Gordon Brown has managed to make the UK and the Eurozone converge in one key way; Sterling and the Euro are nearing parity.

" What impact would entry into EMU have on the competitive position of the UK's financial services industry, particularly the City's wholesale markets?

Over the four years since the start of EMU, the UK has attracted a significant level of wholesale financial services business. The strength of the City in international wholesale financial services activity should mean that it continues to do so, whether inside or outside EMU. EMU entry should enhance the already strong competitive position of the UK's wholesale financial services sector by offering some additional benefits. Again, while the UK's retail financial services sector should remain competitive either inside or outside the euro area, entry would offer greater potential to compete and capture the effects of greater EU integration that would arise from the single currency and other efforts to complete the Single Market, in particular the Financial Services Action Plan (FSAP) - benefits which are postponed while the UK is not in EMU. Overall, the financial services test is met."

Do I really need to "fisk" this one?

Fancy a laugh? OK try this extract (my emphasis):

"Enhancing stability and flexibility: housing

* To deliver a more settled platform of stability in the future and a higher degree of convergence, the Government is committed to a comprehensive programme to improve the functioning of the housing market. Building on the reforms to deliver a step change in planning policy, the Government is undertaking further significant changes in the planning system, supply of housing and housing finance to tackle market failures, increase the responsiveness of supply to demand and reduce national and regional price volatility. These measures are beneficial in their own right to improve the stability and flexibility of the UK housing market and wider economy, but will also increase the housing market's compatibility with the euro area, encouraging greater convergence over time.

* This means implementing quickly and decisively past reforms to housing supply and going further to address both supply and demand in the housing market and macroeconomic stabilisation more generally:
o
o on the supply side, the Government is requiring new Regional Spatial Strategies to take account of volatility in the housing market and promote macroeconomic stability as part of delivering sustainable development; tough and credible measures, including intervention, where local authorities are not delivering housing numbers in high demand areas; and exploring whether, in the medium term, achieving the Government's objectives will require a system of binding local plans. The Government has also commissioned a review of issues affecting the elasticity of supply in the UK, in particular to look at the role of competition, capacity and the financing of the house building industry and possible fiscal instruments, and the interaction of these with the planning system and sustainable development objectives;

o on the demand side, through a review of the UK mortgage market to establish why the share of fixed rate mortgages is so low in the UK compared to many other EU countries and to identify ways of encouraging the market for longer-term fixed rate mortgages; and

o at the macroeconomic level, given that housing is identified as a significant risk factor to the achievement of sustainable and durable convergence and, in the context of the Treasury discussion paper Fiscal stabilisation and EMU, to consider what additional reforms and measures might help deliver wider stability in the economy, including with reference to the housing market, to create the right conditions for convergence within EMU. The Government's announcement of its intention in the next Pre-Budget Report to give the Bank of England a symmetric inflation target as measured by the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices will help ensure inflation expectations in the UK remain in line with those of the euro area."

I wonder when the next formal assessment of the "five economic tests" will take place and what the results would be? Or will parity between Sterling and the Euro be taken as the excuse for rapid entry into the EU? Could the EU loyal Peter Mandelson and Gordon Brown deliver such a prize to incoming EU President Tony Blair, and could it be before the general election?