The obvious solution to the 'drought'

Notwithstanding the fact that it rained heavily all weekend in London and much of the south of England, parts of the South are close to being declared drought affected. There does to be an obvious solution (pun intended) and that is to transfer water from the wet regions of the UK, mainly Scotland and Wales. Some years ago I remember this being discussed and a Scot saying that it was their water and why should they send it to the South of England. It's a fair pint, just is the point that 'it's our money why should we send it north to support you?'.

At the turn of the century a pipeline system was built to bring water from Wales to Birmingham, over a hundred years later could not a pipeline be built to bring water to London and Kent. Would it be too expensive? Five years ago, following a very dry summer, the Institute of Civil Engineers reported that a system of transferring water £330 million at a cost of £2.48 per megalitre. This would be cheaper than building a reservoir in the South East.

So whilst the rain falls in the north and the South and East suffer from fear of drought, guess where the largest population increases in the UK are happening? There is an easy and relatively cheap solution to droughts in the south of England but maybe the government (of all types) actually likes droughts as it means they can take more control of our lives.

So my message is build a proper water transfer system and build it soon or we in the South and East may decide that we don't want to transfer our money north!

'How about we send 6 top fashion models somewhere for a day. In just their underwear.'

Old Holborn has the plan:

'I'm not happy that UK airports think they can see me, my children and everyone else nude and scan me before I am allowed to travel just because it "might" stop one person setting fire to his shoe.

So the plan is to invite every tabloid and every TV crew in the land to watch 6 fashion models strip to their skimpies at the airport, get on a cheap flight and then fly back again in a day.

I reckon I'll need about £100 a girl to cover the flight and lingerie and I've already spoken to them. They're up for it (no, you cannot have their telephone numbers.)

It isn't illegal, no one is going to get arrested, it will raise the profile of my campaign in Cambridge and embarass our glorious leader and his government with just a few days left before a general election. In every national newspaper and every TV station.

Dig deep, guys, this could be fun. £600 to make Gordon look the proper authoritarian bastard that we know and love in his dying days.'

Fined for blowing your nose - the war on motorists contines apace

The Mail reports that:

"When motorist Michael Mancini found himself stuck in a queue of traffic with a runny nose, he instinctively reached for his hankie.

However, the simple act of pulling out a tissue and blowing his nose earned the astonished businessman a £60 on-the-spot fine after a police officer decided he was 'not in control of his vehicle'.

Police constable Stuart Gray handed out the fixed penalty notice even though Mr Mancini was stopped in stationary traffic with his handbrake on."

Police priorities? Controlling the public? Raising money from transgression taxes/fines?

"Things can only get better"?

The Quiet Man disagrees in a must read article, do take a read.

The never ending war on the motorist

I have received some flack for declaring that this Labour government have instigated a 'war' on motorists. However the news reported today that a group of government agencies including the Kent Police have commissioned the arms manufacturer BAE systems to adapt military-style planes for civilian use. These unmanned flying drones, similar to those used in Afghanistan, are to be used in Britain to spy on drivers as well as campaigners, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers.

Yes the greatest crime in Labour Britain is to exceed the speed limit by 1mph. I wonder if an upgrade will be to arm these drones so that if a driver is driving more that 10mph over the limit then a rocket is fired and no more 'criminal'. Of course that will never happen as its the fines that the Labour government and the Police want.

If the public were asked would they prefer more police on the beat catching burglars and muggers or spies in the sky? But nobody will ask us as the police need their toys and the government need the income and the control.

My how I hate this Labour government

The Labour government's war on the UK people continues apace. Back in October legislation was introduced that prevents acquitted defendants from recouping the full legal costs of defending themselves. Now these innocent people can only claim back legal aid rates, which can be as little as a third of the true cost. Why the change? Well it will save around £25 million a year - which used to sound a lot but under Gordon Brown's mismanagement of the economy is a drop in the debt ocean. I think the real reason may be somewhat different; let's say you upset the State/Labour government then they can just charge you with something complicated and financial and then even when you are found not guilty you could still be bankrupted by your no longer covered legal costs.

This is just the latest in a long line of Labour dilutions of the legal system: now we can be tried twice for the same crime, the presumption of innocence has been diluted, some people no longer have the right to see the evidence against them, summary punishment (fines) without trial are common place, innocent people's assets can be confiscated before trial and kept even the defendant is not found guilty. And don't forget that the amount of compensation you receive for loss of earnings whilst wrongly imprisoned is now paid less the cost of your prison bed and board.

Despicable, evil, insane? Well that's a Labour government for you.


And what do the protectors of civil society have to say?

"The Police Federation of England and Wales is backing the action because police officers are more often subject to criminal proceedings."

Fed up with the UK yet?

ID cards, still a live issue

I see that:

"Residents in Manchester will become the first people in Britain to be able to apply for ID cards.

They can now directly apply to attend appointments from November 30 to have their photograph and fingerprints taken for the £30 cards at Manchester's passport office.

Junior Home Office Minister Meg Hillier said the cards would be particularly useful for students and young people as they would "save the cost and hassle" of getting into clubs and bars.

Anyone over 16 in the city with a UK passport can apply for a card.

Ms Hillier told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Really for a lot of people it's a day-to-day convenience thing.

"For a lot of young people ... they often take their passports to prove their identity in nightclubs and bars and the Passport Service sweeps these up every week. So for a lot of people it'll save the cost and hassle of taking your passport, risking losing it and instead you've got this very convenient little credit-sized card. I've got one and it's very useful.""

Do read the whole piece and wonder if anyone will fall for the crap that Labour ministers still insist on spouting about the ID card scheme. Remember that Gordon Brown's announcement to the Labour Conference that "in the next Parliament there will be no compulsory ID cards for British citizens" was the same misleading line that ministers have been spewing for years. The ID card scheme was designed so as to force people to "volunteer" for a system that they can never then leave. Be under no illusions that before long you will be forced to register for an ID card when you apply for a passport or, before too long, for any officially-designated document.

The National Identity Register is still a target of the Labour government, a government that will not be happy until we are all traceable 24 hours a day. Our every move, our every action, our every piece of correspondence and interaction recorded, stored and retrievable by the State and its functionaries. The Stasi would have loved to have had just 10% of the information that our new rulers will have about each and every one of us.

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 "

State control it's what 'fascists' love

News this weekend:
a) Passengers from England landing in Scotland are being asked to show their passports 'as part of the fight against terrorism'
b) Two working mothers have been banned from looking after each other's toddlers because they are not registered childminders
c) Adults who look after friends’ children on a regular basis are being forced to register with Ofsted under new legislation. They must complete a criminal record check, learn first aid, take a childcare course and even follow Labour’s “nappy curriculum” for under-fives
d) A mother-of-two was threatened with arrest for theft and criminal damage after weeding out a dead flower from a council-owned border

State control it's what fascists love and this government are more akin to fascists than any UK government that have gone before.

Say hello to your own rats

Read and weep at the control over every aspect of our lives that this Labour government want to have. I really have had enough of the interfering, meddling and control-freakery of this Labour government.

More costs for private employers

This Labour government just don't understand how private business operates. Today I see two more costs are to be imposed on business; first is the right to claim back holidays that were blighted by sickness (read more here), the second is the granting of six months paternity leave to fathers (read more here).

This country's economy is collapsing and all the while Labour add more and more costs to business; it's almost as though the Labour government actually want to destroy the productive part of the UK eonomy.

Even more totalitarianism at the checkout

This is yet another in the long line of stories that I have published on supermarkets and their weird over-application of bans on selling alcohol to minors. You can see the last such of my postings here. This latest story is from a Sainsburys in Melksham in Worcs, where a 43 year-old RAF squadron leader was prevented from buying three bottles of wine with his shopping because he was accompanied by his 17 year-old son. As is often the case, the store manager backed his member of staff. A Sainsburys spokesman now says that the cashier asked for identification because the teenager had "presented" the wine by placing it on the conveyor belt, thus making it looks as though it was the teenager buying the wine. Now I rarely go to supermarkets but when I do it seems commonplace for children to help their parents by helping take the shopping form the trolley and placing it on the checkout conveyor.

These storied are not just about the application of licensing laws they are also about controlling the public. We can't be allowed to assume that we can buy what we want, we have to be allowed to do so by the store and the government. One final thought, and it is just a thought, I wonder if Squadron Leader Mark Giles was identifiable as being in the military and if this was some sort of anti-war stance taken by the cashier... Just wondering.

Met Office propaganda

The Met Office's UK Climate Projections include a "big picture set of "facts", shall we take a look at these "facts"?

1. Climate change is happening and humans are contributing to it.

2. Temperatures are continuing to rise.

3. The current climate change is not just part of a natural cycle.

4. Recent warming cannot be explained by the Sun or natural factors alone.

5. If we continue emitting greenhouse gases this warming will continue and delaying action will make the problem more difficult to fix.

6. Climate models predict the main features of future climate.


Wow, that's an impressive list of facts. Let's look at the proof shall we.

The proof of the first fact that "Climate change is happening and humans are contributing to it" is a pair of graphs that conveniently end in the year 2000. Is there no more current data than that? What has happened since 2000?

The proof of the second fact that "Temperatures are continuing to rise" is a graph showing ever more rapidly increasing temperatures. This is an interesting graph as it shows a drop in temperatures between 1940 and 1950 and slow increases up until 1980. Interesting as that was the period when the increase in CO2 production was at its largest; the world fought a war with massively increased industrialisation and followed the war with a huge further spurt in industrialisation. All that extra CO2 and the temperature dropped and then rose slowly, isn't that odd?


I could debunk the rest of the "facts" but I have work to do. What I will do is point you to four websites that may prove of interest as an antidote to the Met Office's propaganda:

1. Greenie Watch - pay particular attention to the piece headed "Latest British climate predictions are a joke"


2. Climate Feedback - You may be interested to read that:

"But while the projections were originally slated for release last November, an independent committee was convened at the eleventh hour to check out the methodology.

Oxford climatologist Myles Allen was on the committee, and he’s concerned that the results stretch the science beyond its current capabilities. His main worry is that as recently as 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change didn’t think that climate variables could be reliably resolved at spatial scales beyond a couple of 1000kms. And no research published since has challenged that view. "

3. Climate Audit - This is Steve McIntyre's fascinating site and has plenty of graphs (and accurate ones at that) to pore over. Be warned the science is always there so you will need to concentrate, but the truth is not always as easy to understand as the spin.


4. Suface Stations is a site that covers many matters related to the subject of the questionable reliability of the data on which the "science" of climate change is based. maybge a good place to start would be with their page devoted to badly sited measuring equipment. If the equipment is sited badly (and by badly I mean near air-conditioning equipment, barbecues, asphalt surfaces, carparks etc.) then how can the data be relied upon?


Take a look at these sites, read around the subject and discover that the science is not as cut and dried as we are being told it is. Then you can start to wonder why governments, government agencies and super-governmental bodies are so keen to convince us that Climate Change is real, urgent and at least partly preventable.

Margaret Beckett for Speaker?

I read that:

"Labour Party veteran Margaret Beckett looks set to become the next Speaker of the House of Commons, replacing the disgraced Michael Martin who steps down on June 21. According to Labour sources today, Beckett has "all but made up her mind" to stand for election on June 22. "

The interesting thing is that the article includes this:

" Until last Friday ... she was housing minister under Hazel Blears, but with a seat at the Cabinet table - Beckett has barely been off the Labour front bench, whether in opposition or in government, for quarter of a century.

She has been Leader of the House, Foreign Secretary and Environment Secretary. She even holds the distinction of being a former leader of the Labour Party: she was in charge for the interregnum between the death of John Smith in May 1994 and the election of Tony Blair to party leader in July the same year."

Maybe someone could explain to me how a person who has been a Labour minister or shadow minister for longer than any other current MP could be even considered for the allegedly non-partisan role of Speaker. Oh hold on I've just worked it out, she would be expected to be as non-partisan as the current Speaker, Michael Martin. This Labour government really do make me sick.

Six to twelve years!

The BBC dutifully report the headline news that:

"Ministers are to trim up to 850,000 DNA profiles from the current total of 4.5m on a national database after a court ruled innocent people must be removed."

The detail that follows shows this Labour government up for having the totalitarian instincts of a fascist government:

"Those arrested, but later released or acquitted, will have their profiles wiped after between six and 12 years. "

One point - these are innocent people why should their DNA profiles be kept for even six years why not have the profiles deleted within three months (surely long enough even for this Government to achieve with whatever crap database they have paid over the odds for.

More restrictions on us

The Government's Environment Agency want to ration water by "banning power showers", having everyone use water meters and raising the price of water during the summer months.

The UK is a very wet set of islands and the shortages are generally because the infrastructure is so leaky and because the population levels have risen so high in certain areas.

I would also like to point out that the use of a power shower is not necessarily wasteful of water, it depends upon how many showers are taken and for how long. I shower under a power shower once a day for maybe 2 minutes at most, surely that uses much less water than running a bath. Mrs NotaSheep showers for much longer and so uses much more water; if she showered for the same amount of time as me, would that be OK with the "powers that be"? If we showered together would that be OK? Would it be acceptable if we videoed our showering together and sent it to Jacqui Smith's husband?

I presume that after banning power showers, the next move will be to ban baths, washing machines and dishwashers; already in the South East we often experience bans on hosepipes, filling paddling pools, washing cars and house windows - but not golf courses...

Maybe we will all be only allowed to flush our toilets once a day or only after number twos - As they say in the Caribbean "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down.". Mind you on the Caribbean islands that I have visited, where the water fall is minimal compared to the UK, there are only very rare water shortages.

Liberty in the UK

This was a comment that I found on the "Henry Porter" blog recently, I think it was to do with Police stopping photographers from taking photographs of buildings etc. I thought it was worth reproducing here (my emphasis):

"If you are worried about civil liberties being stolen from you by diktat or bled away by a thousand tiny legislative lacerations, you need to get together and arrange something on the scale and scope of the atheist bus campaign.

Commenting on a Henry Porter blog may be cathartic, but it will do no good unless it leads to more action.

Ask yourself: would I join in a mass protest - or am I too scared that I might be the one taken away by the police?

Your answer will tell you something about the scale of the public outcry which is needed and how much you are already living in fear of the state.

Each person mentioning the person they know or saw or their own experience of being treated as a state suspect for simply doing something normal and innocent reveals the problem.

It is that we are each alone against the power of the state and that isolation, that separation and that aloneness is the very thing which gives the state its power.

Stop reading and commenting and thinking that in so doing, you are saving liberties and pushing back the juggernaut of the state.

Your only protection is in a group, a tribe, a society which can have a voice which will have the power to shout down the state.

Stop squeaking and start to roar. "

I am not a natural protestor and admit to being scared to go on demonstrations, but something will have to give soon.

Are all photographers terrorists now? (update)

I have blogged previously about the way that photographers are being increasingly targeted by the "powers that be", do read my old articles on this subject. Today I read in The Independent that:

"Reuben Powell is an unlikely terrorist. A white, middle-aged, middle-class artist, he has been photographing and drawing life around the capital's Elephant & Castle for 25 years.

With a studio near the 1960s shopping centre at the heart of this area in south London, he is a familiar figure and is regularly seen snapping and sketching the people and buildings around his home – currently the site of Europe's largest regeneration project. But to the police officers who arrested him last week his photographing of the old HMSO print works close to the local police station posed an unacceptable security risk.

"The car skidded to a halt like something out of Starsky & Hutch and this officer jumped out very dramatically and said 'what are you doing?' I told him I was photographing the building and he said he was going to search me under the Anti-Terrorism Act," he recalled.

For Powell, this brush with the law resulted in five hours in a cell after police seized the lock-blade knife he uses to sharpen his pencils. His release only came after the intervention of the local MP, Simon Hughes, but not before he was handcuffed and his genetic material stored permanently on the DNA database. "

and that:

"In the summer, armed police swooped on a group of trainspotters known as the Steam Boys as they waited with high-powered photographic equipment to capture a 1950s engine called The Great Marquess as it crossed the Forth Bridge near Gordon Brown's constituency home in Fife.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has also taken up the cause, highlighting the case last month of the photographer Jess Hurd, whose camera was taken from her when she was detained for 45 minutes under Section 44 while documenting a traveller wedding in London's Docklands. Last week police were filmed obstructing photographers covering a protest at the Greek embassy in London. Scotland Yard promised to investigate."

I also read in The Mail that:

"A Tory MP was stopped and searched by police on suspicion of being a terrorist after taking photos of a cycle path, he revealed yesterday.

Andrew Pelling was taking the pictures to highlight a 'long-neglected bicycle and pedestrian route' in his Central Croydon constituency to Parliamentary colleagues.

But as the cycle path was near the town's main train station, two police officers stopped him on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack.

Even when Mr Pelling, 48, showed the officers his House of Commons pass and explained what he was doing, they insisted on searching his bag.

After finding nothing of interest they sent the MP on his way. A police spokesman confirmed the December 30 incident, saying: 'The officer conducted a stop-and-search - taking into account the current terror threat - as he (Mr Pelling) was taking pictures in the vicinity of a major transport hub.' "

I have news for The Independent and the Mail, this is not about preventing terrorism, meeting crime detection figures or getting people onto the DNA database; it is about the Government through their uniformed wing showing the public who is in charge and who is in control and keeping the general populace cowed in fear and obedience.

An Englishman's home is his castle - (no more) and his PC is to be an open book

This Labour government really does keep on inventing new ways to piss me and any libertarian off. Their latest wheeze is one that I have mentioned before but an interesting update was in yesterday's Times:

"THE Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant.

The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives “a coach and horses” through privacy laws.

The hacking is known as “remote searching”. It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at his home, office or hotel room.

Material gathered in this way includes the content of all e-mails, web-browsing habits and instant messaging.

Under the Brussels edict, police across the EU have been given the green light to expand the implementation of a rarely used power involving warrantless intrusive surveillance of private property. The strategy will allow French, German and other EU forces to ask British officers to hack into someone’s UK computer and pass over any material gleaned.

A remote search can be granted if a senior officer says he “believes” that it is “proportionate” and necessary to prevent or detect serious crime — defined as any offence attracting a jail sentence of more than three years.

However, opposition MPs and civil liberties groups say that the broadening of such intrusive surveillance powers should be regulated by a new act of parliament and court warrants.

They point out that in contrast to the legal safeguards for searching a suspect’s home, police undertaking a remote search do not need to apply to a magistrates’ court for a warrant.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, the human rights group, said she would challenge the legal basis of the move. “These are very intrusive powers – as intrusive as someone busting down your door and coming into your home,” she said.

“The public will want this to be controlled by new legislation and judicial authorisation. Without those safeguards it’s a devastating blow to any notion of personal privacy.” "

My apologies it's not the Labour government's idea it is an EU instigated concept, but I am sure the Labour government's Home Office embraced the idea with open arms. Ah the EU, that bastion of free speech and democracy. I swear the EU and UK more and more resemble a totalitarian state in embryo.

Am I a "Rager"?

According to SpyBlog I could be classified as a "Rager" by the UK government under a scheme that has impressed them, borrowed from the US Air Force Blog Response flowchart. This is because of the last paragraph of this recent item:

"I am not sure which members of this Labour government I hate more: people like Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson who seem to know what they are doing and seem to take a perverse pleasure in keeping power whatever the cost to the Country, aspiring leaders like the Miliband brothers, Ed Balls and Harriet Harman who are so, so eager for ultimate power that you can see the ambition dripping from every pore of their bodies or the apparatchiks like Hazel Blears, Jacqui Smith and Geoff Hoon who would parrot any line they are being fed if instructed so to do. What I do know is that I hate them all, I hate what they have done to this Country and what they intend to do to it. I hate their lies, their misrule, their transgressions that go unpunished and the way that whatever goes wrong they feel they can blame the last Conservative government rather than themselves. I hate the way that they have so politicised the public institutions of this Country that any incoming alternative Government will need more than 20 years to start to reverse the institutional bias. I hate the way that their mistakes are covered up by the BBC; no longer an independent broadcaster but now an arm of the Labour government. I hate the way that opponents are labelled "racist", or "nasty" or "little Englanders". I hate the way that this Labour government have ruled as if they really are "the political wing of the British people" and as a result have trampled on all opposing opinion. I hate the way that this Labour government have, over and over again, "played the man" rather than the argument; all but destroying dissent as a result. I hate the way that they have split up the UK for their political advantage and destroyed many of the traditions of England along the way. Above all I hate the way that this once great Country, a place I have lived in all my life, has been systematically turned into a place that I can no longer feel proud of, no longer love, no longer want to live in. For all of these reasons and more, this Labour government have made me both sad and very, very angry."

As a "Rager", my blog would be classified as "Monitor Only" and the Government would "Avoid responding to specific posts, monitor the site for relevant information and comments". I would be unhappy with this classification for several reasons although I suppose that I should be glad that I had not been classified as a "Troll". As SpyBlog say, "actually it is deserving of a considered response to an "Unhappy Customer".



Off on a tangent; being called a "Rager" reminded me of an episode of Blackadder III when Prince George says (my emphasis):

"I'm a gay bachelor, Blackadder. I'm a roarer, a rogerer, a gorger and a puker! I can't marry, I'm young, I'm firm buttocked... "