'Patient Care Not The Top Priority'

Sky News are reporting the results of a Healthcare Commission survey of 155,922 NHS staff. The headline result is quite incredible, "Less than half of NHS staff (46%) believe patient care is the top priority at their health trust". If patient care is not the number one priority, what is? I'd like to see the detailed figures but as with most state run "businesses", I believe that the top priority at the NHS is to run the NHS for the benefit of its staff. The NHS is a massive bureaucracy with the patient care aspect of little interest to many of the bureaucrats.

Does Gordon Brown understand how "the markets" work?

I only ask because before he sold of much of the UK's gold reserves in 1999, Gordon Brown announced that that was what he was about to do and guess what? As if you increase the supply of a good, then ceteris paribus (all other things being equal), the price will fall; the price fell. You would have expected such an intellectual giant as Gordon Brown to have learnt from that experience, wouldn't you?

So what does our great prat of a PM do this week? He says in a BBC interview "Because we've got low inflation, we can cut interest rates". So the markets factor that in and the value of the £ Sterling drops ahead of any Bank of England announcement this week.

London 2012 could cost £20billion... TEN times original budget, ex-Olympics chief predicts

I am shocked, absolutely shocked!

Read the story atthe Daily Mail; who would have thought it...

IMF or Alistair Darling?

So who would you rather believe, the IMF who predict that growth in the UK will slow sharply to 1.6% in both 2008 and 2009 or Alistair Darling who still believes that "there were grounds for optimism"?

Take a read of this BBC report of Alistair Darling's interview on Radio 4's Today programme this morning. I caught the end of it and even the BBC interviewer lost patience with the great dithering over-promoted Chancellor.

Absolut's ad campaign causes a problem

Michelle Malkin has the details, "The billboard and press campaign, created by advertising agency Teran\TBWA and now running in Mexico, is a colorful map depicting what the Americas might look like in an "Absolut" -- i.e., perfect -- world. The U.S.-Mexico border lies where it was before the Mexican-American war of 1848 when California, as we now know it, was Mexican territory and known as Alta California. Following the war, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo saw the Mexican territories of Alta California and Santa Fé de Nuevo México ceded to the United States to become modern-day California, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Arizona. The campaign taps into the national pride of Mexicans, according to Favio Ucedo, creative director of leading Latino advertising agency Grupo Gallegos in the U.S."

The blogosphere is full of interesting "takes" or rather "take-offs" of this advertisement. Here is one:

Sweden becomes part of Greater Finland


Somewhere I found one with Israel rubbed out in favour of Palestine, but I seem to have misplaced it.

Roger Harribin (update)

Further to this post on the poodle like qualities of Roger Harribin, here's some video from CNN Headline News that makes it all very clear...

Labour and the BBC

"Here's an abbreviated list of known Labour supporters and the positions they've occupied at the BBC since the the early 90's:-

Chairman Gavin Davies (later Labour adviser)
Chairman Sir Michael Lyons (previously Labour council chief)
Director General John Birt (later Labour adviser)
Director General Greg Dyke (previously Labour donor and candidate)
C.O.O Caroline Thomson (previously Roy Jenkin's aide)
Head of Political Research Bill Bush (later Labour spin doctor)
Deputy Head of ditto Catherine Rimmer (later Labour spin doctor)
Director of Strategy Ed Richards (later Labour spin doctor)
Head of Corporate Planning James Purnell (now Labour Minister)
Head of Northern Ireland News Tom Kelly (later Labour spin doctor)
Scottish News Editor Tim Luckhurst (previously Labour spin doctor)
Political News Editor Joy Johnson (later Labour spin doctor)
Political Editor Andrew Marr (student Labour organiser)
Home News Editor Celia Barlow (now Labour MP)
Head of European Affairs Chris Bryant (now Labour MP)
Newsnight Producer Phil Woolas (now Labour Minister)
Foreign Correspondent Martin Sixsmith (later Labour spin doctor)
Current Affairs Reporter Ben Bradshaw (now Labour Minister)
Current Affairs Reporter Lance Price (later Labour spin doctor)
"Question Time" Editor Gill Penlington (previously Labour researcher)
Many of them actually worked for the Labour party before, after and even during their BBC employment."


Thanks to a Biased-BBC correspondent for the information.

NHS Privatisation

I read this article in The Times about how "Ministers have begun a review of London NHS property in a move that could lead to the sale of some or all of the capital’s biggest hospitals to raise billions of pounds for new projects." and I couldn't help imagine how the BBC and the British Press would have reacted had this been a Conservative government "selling off the family silver". The double standards of the British media disgust me and whilst they are less awe-struck by Gordon Brown than they were by Blair (up until the Iraq war), they are still prone to go gently on the Labour government.


"The Times has learnt that the London strategic health authority, which includes the 31 primary healthcare trusts in the city, has hired investment bankers to advise it on the options. The NHS has one of the largest property estates in Europe, valued at more than £23 billion. In London the huge and ageing property portfolio comprises nearly 100 hospitals and hundreds of smaller sites, which together cost £700 million a year to maintain. The review follows Gordon Brown’s plan to reap billions from selling off a swath of the Government’s £337 billion of assets."


So here we go with more sale and leaseback deals, raising quick money here and now whilst committing future governments to crippling repayments. This Labour government really are ensuring that this country is well and truly screwed for the future.

BBC pro-Labour bias (part xxx + 1) - update

The BBC have now amended their puff piece to include some opposing views:

"The Conservatives accused Mr Brown of economic "incompetence"."

"Shadow chancellor George Osborne said the latest UK housing figures meant millions of homeowners were being "confronted with the consequences of Gordon Brown's economic incompetence".

He added: "Gordon Brown failed to prepare. He borrowed in a boom and allowed the debt bubble to grow. Now the whole country is paying the price."

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vincent Cable said the falling market would be a welcome "correction" for first-time buyers struggling to get on the property ladder.

But he warned that up to three million people who borrowed 90% or more of their property's value over the last year or so "have been sucked into negative equity".

He added that the credit crunch had meant mortgage rates had not been cut despite interest rate cuts, meaning many people were "finding it impossible to service their mortgage"."


I am pleased that the BBC have made these additions to the article but why did they have to wait until they had received complaints or reviewed their initial bias. The pro-Labour bias at the BBC is endemic and instinctive, are they capable of reform?

Socialist inspectors

That's one of a series of Conservative election posters from times gone by but one that I think speaks volumes today. Maybe the Conservative party could re-use some of them and save some advertising agency fees.


You can see more at Devils Kitchen and maybe on the Daily Mail website.

Rioting in Egypt

Did you know that there have been rioters on the streets of Mhalla for two days now? No, why should you it's not as though the BBC are reporting it. Take a look at Rantings of a Sandmonkey for details. Whilst you are there take a read of some of Sandmonkey's other postings, some are really quite incisive - this one on Gaza, Israel and Egypt for instance and some just point out the stupidity of much of what happens in the Middle East, like this on "The 4th grade poetry Egyptian-Israeli war"

"Kike"

Take a listen to this interview by Fox news presenter Alan Colmes and Yousef al-Khattab.

Here is some background.

And here is a quote from Yousef al-Khattab near the end of the recordong

"The only Jewish blood I have is perhaps on my hands" - Nice chap...


The "kike" comment is at 8:26.

Suspicious?

Can you see why the Police thought that someone wearing this rucksack was worthy of investigation? Would it increase your suspicions if they were of dark complexion?

The BBC seem to be portraying this incident as some sort of racist act.

Read the whole of the article and see if you agree with me that it probably was quite scary for BBC Radio Stoke's Max Khan but that the Police were not to know that "He was on his way back from a story about the recently-moved Post Office and carrying a backpack containing equipment that is regularly used to allow reporters to broadcast from locations around the city centre."

If I saw someone with a rucksack with protruding cables and aerials I too would be suspicious.

Mr Khan is reported to have said "It seems somewhat basic to be treated in that way just because of the colour of your skin." No, Mr Khan you were treated that way because you were carrying a rucksack with cables and aerials protruding from it. Can you possibly understand why that might raise suspicions? Have you heard of the 7 July bombings? Are you following the current terrorist story?

I was going to post a link to the current trial of the men accused of plotting to blow up planes flying from London to the US and Canada but cannot find the story on the BBC news main pages, the story about Mr Khan is the third lead story.

Priorities BBC, priorities....

BBC pro-Labour bias (part xxx + 1)

The BBC just can't stop themselves. Now a puff piece entitled "Brown seeks to calm economy fears" that starts "Gordon Brown has said the UK is well placed to deal with global economic crises, after figures showed a sharp decline in house prices. The prime minister said a 2.5% fall in March, recorded by the Halifax, should be seen in the context of 10 years of big increases and low interest rates. He added that the government was not a "spectator" and was "always vigilant" on global economic difficulties. He insisted the UK was in a much better position than in the early 1990s."

The article continues on to allow Gordon Brown to blame "the US credit crunch - which has led to falls in property prices there - saying the whole world was "in a difficult situation arising from what's happened in America"."

Then Gordon Brown's claims about the state of repossessions "the number of UK homes being repossessed was a "fraction of what happened in the early '90s"." are reported as fact.

Then Gordon Brown's claims about the economy now compared to under the Conservatives are allowed to stand unquestioned "the government had taken the correct "long-term decisions" on the economy, contrasting the position now to the world economic downturn in the early 1990s. "If you look back 15 years... we had 15% interest rates, 10% inflation, rapidly rising unemployment, public spending having to be cut, taxes having to rise dramatically."

Gordon Brown's comments re abolishing the 10% income tax band are also reported straight: "he also defended the recent abolition of the 10% lowest income tax rate, which has been criticised by Tories, Lib Dems and some Labour backbenchers, who say it is hitting the lowest earners. Mr Brown said it was one of a package of measures in the last Budget which, as a whole, saw those on the lowest incomes gaining the most. Asked about Labour MPs criticising him, he said he was taking the right "difficult long term decisions" and that over "the next few months" people would see the results. He said his government "would not play to the gallery" and would be judged in the long term."


Can you remember when David Cameron has been reported in this way, without any contrary views from the Labour party, a Lib Dem or just a BBC "expert". Can you remember the BBC giving a Conservative PM such an easy time? Of course not, that is because the BBC is not a news organisation, it is the publicity arm of the Labour party in power.

Is no contrary view allowed to be expressed in Gordon Brown's Britain. Will he send his new Chinese "goons" round to sort out the opposition? Is "Stalin" Brown to model his style of Government on Stalin's Russia, "Communist" China or Mugabe's Zimbabwe?

Ein Labour Party, Ein Government, Ein BBC.

Creepy That Gordon Brown, isn't he?

Lord Coe fearlessly speaks out

Well in fact he was recorded making these remarks by a Channel 4 reporter, they were not intended to be made public. This is what THe Daily Mail report that he said "Referring to the Chinese security guards, who were in France yesterday with the torch on the next leg of its world tour, he said: "One thing in Paris is to get rid of those guys. They tried to push me out of the way three times. They are horrible. They did not speak English. They were thugs."

Konnie Huq has also commented on the Chinese "Flame Attendants", the Mail reporting her as saying "The men in blue perplexed everyone. Nobody seemed to know who they were officially or what their title was. They were very robotic, very full on, and I noticed them having skirmishes with our own police and the Olympic authorities before our leg of the relay, which was confusing. "They were barking orders at me, like 'Run! Stop!' and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, who are these people?' "They kept pushing my hand up higher when I was holding the torch, so they were...interesting."

I asked at the weekend "what were those Chinese "Flame Attendants" doing? Under what law were they allowed to push people about in this Country? The way they were allowed to organise the Olympic flame handover in Downing Street was rather sinister."

Today the Daily Mail claim that "It was reported the men have been recruited from Chinese special forces brigades. Some came from the feared Flying Dragons and rthe Sword of Flying Dragons counter-terror units."

Meanwhile "The Greater London Authority, which coorganised the event, said: "They were brought over by the Beijing organising committee. They were the responsibility of Beijing.""

BBC pro-Labour bias (part xxx)

This morning the BBC are trumpeting "Extra help for first-time buyers", and reporting breathlessly that "The government is to announce new measures to encourage first-time buyers and key workers to participate in its affordable housing schemes.

There will be £1,500 grants to help qualifying buyers with costs such as solicitors' charges and furniture."

Wow, that is impressive. Now the BBC know that most visitors to their news web site only read the headlines and if they do click through to a story look at the first couple of paragraphs and move on. I am not a usual visitor, so here is some more information not to be found in the first two paragraphs...

This help is limited - "enough for 2,000 people." So not a huge boost to the system then...


"The grants are to run in conjunction with a part-buy scheme offered to key workers and certain first-time buyers." SO it's a small boost to an existing scheme that is only available to key workers (nurses, police etc.) and other certain first-time buyers (presumably members of the Labour party).


The BBC go on to quote the great Leader himself "Prime Minister Gordon Brown will say: "By offering new grants and sharing a stake in their home, we are making the dream of a new home more affordable for thousands of low-income first-time buyers and key workers such as nurses and teachers."" Oh thank you Great Gordon for allowing such bounty to fall from your table to enrich the lives of us poor people, "gawd bless you sir".

Treasury forecasting

When even the Brown Broadcasting Corporation have to report that "In its report on the 2008 Budget, the Treasury Select Committee said the Treasury now faced a major challenge in meeting its own targets. "Some of the very things that kept our economy growing over the last decade may start to cause us problems", said the committee's chairman John McFall. The UK faces an economic slowdown while public borrowing has soared." then you know there is no escaping the coming financial storm.

The BBC don't see fit to inform the public that the Treasury Select Committee is an all party committee with a Labour majority, so the verdict is not an opposition view.

Of course the BBC will still spin the economic troubles on the American sub-prime debacle and problems with the banking sector. Any pictures associated with stories about problems will be of large banks or Alistair Darling; there will be no pictures of the real architect of the British economies weakness, Mr Gordon Brown - the great borrower.

House prices fall

The BBC seem surprised to have to report that "House prices fell by 2.5% in March, the biggest monthly decline since September 1992, said the Halifax. The latest monthly figure from the UK's largest mortgage lender was significantly worse than average analyst predictions of a 0.4% fall."

This is no surprise to me and indeed fits in with my predictions of a "a 40% drop in the average UK house price from the peak last summer to the end of 2010.".

Zimbabwe update

It appears that President Mugabe has come up with a new way to steal the election, "Zimbabwean police have arrested at least five officials for allegedly under-counting votes cast for President Robert Mugabe in last month's election.

Police said the election officials have been charged with fraud and criminal abuse of duty, accused of taking nearly 5,000 votes away from Mr Mugabe."


I fear that this will end very badly in Zimbabwe, inter-factional violence cannot be far away.

Spot the difference

1. "The Austrian authorities have indicted politician Susanne Winter on charges of incitement and degradation of religious symbols and religious agitation. This offence carries a maximum sentence of two years. Last January, Ms Winter said that the prophet Muhammad was “a child molester” because he had married a six-year-old girl. She also said he was “a warlord” who had written the Koran during “epileptic fits.”

The politician, a member of the Austrian Freedom Party FPÖ, an anti-immigration party which is in opposition, added that Islam is “a totalitarian system of domination that should be cast back to its birthplace on the other side of the Mediterranean.” She also warned for “a Muslim immigration tsunami,” saying that “in 20 or 30 years, half the population of Austria will be Muslim” if the present immigration policies continue.

Following her remarks, Muslim extremists threatened to kill Susanne Winter and she was placed under police protection. Today, the Justice Department in Vienna announced that Ms Winter will be charged with “incitement and degradation of religious symbols” (Verhetzung und Herabwürdigung religiöser Symbole). If convicted she may have to serve up to two years in jail for her opinions."


2. "Alfred Hrdlicka, the Austrian “artist” who depicted Jesus and his apostles engaging in homosexual acts of sodomy during the Last Supper, has not been indicted. Nor will he be. Depicting Jesus sodomizing his apostles is not considered to be a “degradation of religious symbols” in Austria, but referring to the historic fact that Muhammad married a six-year old girl is “incitement to racial hatred.”

Neither has Mr Hrdlicka been threatened by Christian assassins for his “opinions.” The difference between Christian and Muslim extremists is that the former do not aim to kill those who offend them, but the latter do – which is perhaps also why the European authorities fear the radical Muslims and persecute their opponents while they subsidize those who insult Christians."



All information from The Brussels Journal.

Roger Harrabin

Pop over to Bishop Hill to see how the BBC's Environment Correspondent Roger Harribin reacts to emails from an environmental campaigner demanding changes to an article he had written for the BBC website. "Have a look in 10 minutes and tell me you are happier - We have changed headline and more."

It would seem that Roger Harrabin like Andrew Marr is something of a poodle.

What really happened in London during the Olympic torch relay

"London boasted the longest relay of nearly 50 kilometers among cities outside China's mainland. Eighty torchbearers, including Paralympics, Olympic athletes and celebrities carried the torch through ten London boroughs from Wembley to Greenwich. Landmark buildings and ancient sites witnessed the sacred flame.

Dragon and lion dancing performance dressed up the Chinatown like a festival. Large groups of Chinese in squares or concentration point waited the flame hours before its arrival.

Quintuple Olympic gold medallist rower from Marlow Bottom Steve Redgrave initiated the relay within the Wembley Stadium.

After striking gold in Sydney, Redgrave became the only English athlete ever to have won gold medals in five consecutive Olympic Games. His first Olympic gold came in the coxed fours in Los Angeles in 1984, followed by gold with Andy Holmes in the coxless pairs at Seoul in 1988, gold with Matthew Pinsent in the coxless pairs at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

In the Downing Street, Prime Minister Gordon Brown met a special torchbearer Ali Jawad, a disabled athlete on wheelchair, who is on the brink of qualification for Beijing Paralympics.

"The Olympic games are very important for all Chinese. In Chinatown, everyone is very anxious to see the torch pass," said London Chinese Community Center spokeswoman Annie Wu. "We hope it goes smoothly."

Chinese ambassador to Britain Fu Ying ran her leg in Chinatown, who was a hot topic of British media over whether she would be a torchbearer.

"It's a great day for both London and Beijing. The two cities meet each other today," said Fu.

"I hope the Olympic flame can splash peace, harmony and friendship to the world. I'm happy to see large groups of residents give their warm welcome to the flame's arrival including the elderly and the young.

"The Chinatown leg is a very special experience. Britain is one of the top destinations for first-generation Chinese migrants, so a lot of people have been living here for decades.

"It's really a great pleasure to see Londoners smiling and waving."

The Asian descendant Mayuri Morawaka had a leg in Enfield. "I ran a year dance club with another fellow student once a week at my school, I also help with sports day and dance workshops. I am currently completing the Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award," said Morawaka.

"I strongly support the Olympics because it encourages people to engage in more physical activity and a great opportunity to seethe world's sporting talents bringing each other closer."

Chun Pal Mak, an English student with Chinese origin living in London, carried the torch through Greenwich.

"This is the greatest honor to be able to represent Britain and China in this exchange of great importance. Since as a child I've watched the Olympics and prided myself that I am both British and Chinese," he said.

"I love sports and participate in many, representing the John Roan Secondary Schools cricket team. We reached the finals and we also won the under-15 league."

The last bearer is Dame Kelly Holmes, a retired English middle-distance athlete. She won gold medals in the 800 meters and1,500 meters at the 2004 Summer Games.

The route covers London's cross-sectional sites including Wembley Stadium, Notting Hill Gate, Hyde Park Place, Marble Arch, Oxford Circus, British Museum, Chinatown Arch, Trafalgar Square, Downing Street, Bridge Street, Waterloo Bridge, St Paul's Cathedral and Greenwich.

More than 80,000 people of Chinese descent live in London, making it the largest Chinese community in Europe.

Following the London leg of the Olympic Torch Relay, the torch will travel to Paris for its fifth leg in the global tour."


"It's really a great pleasure to see Londoners smiling and waving."


See no trouble, no protests, just "smiling and waving".


The above quotation is from the page devoted to the London leg of the Olympic torch relay on the official Beijing 2008 Olympic Games website.

You can see photos of this popular procession here.

"There are more Japanese banks in London than there are in Tokyo"

"There are more Japanese banks in London than there are in Tokyo" - so says Ken Livingstone in the Labour Mayoral Election campaign video tonight. Is that true?

Ken's lies

As well as pointing out the regular lies that Gordon Brown tells, I am forced to bring to your attention this article by Andrew Gilligan in the Standard.


Here are a few examples, do read the Standard article for the complete list:

1. "Claim: Speaking to the London Assembly on 12 March 2008, Mr Livingstone said: "Children are safer on the streets now than they've really been since the 1950s." (Approx. 17 min 45 sec into the webcast on the London Assembly site.)

Reality: There were 27 murders of children and teenagers in London in 2007. This is more in a single year than in the first seven years of the 1950s. In the first 13 weeks of 2008, there have been 11 child/teenage murders."


2. "Claim: When the Standard raised concerns about 11 City Hall-funded projects linked to Mr Livingstone's then adviser, Lee Jasper, the Mayor dismissed the story as a "pack of lies... For all the projects, there's a full audit trail, with chapter and verse on how the money's been spent" (BBC London, 5.12.07).

Reality: At the time of the interview the LDA was already conducting an emergency audit of one of the projects, Brixton Base, and suing it for monies owed. A subsequent LDA investigation found that there was no audit trail for six projects and called in the police. Three arrests for fraud and theft have already followed."


3. "Claim: "Over the eight years since my election, we've doubled the number of homes being built in this city from 17,000 a year to 33,000 a year and we've doubled the amount of affordable housing." (Speaking at campaign launch, 18.3.08.)

Reality: According to the Mayor's own London Plan Monitoring Report (29.2.08, p66), the net number of self-contained homes built in London was in fact 19,500 in 2000, the year of his election. It rose to 27,500 in the year to April 2007, the latest for which figures are available.

This is an increase of 41 per cent, not a doubling. Nor have "we" [ie the Mayor] accomplished it - it is largely private development fuelled by the house price boom."


3. "Claim: The Olympics will produce "40,000 new homes" (Ken, Guardian 9.3.07).

Reality: According to the Mayor's own London Development Agency, the correct number is in fact 9,000."


4. "Claim: The Olympics will produce "50,000 new jobs" (Ken, Guardian 9.3.07).

Reality: According to the LDA, the Olympics will produce 12,000 permanent new jobs. There will also be 8,000 temporary jobs during the building phase."


5. "Claim: In February 2003, Mr Livingstone pledged not to raise the congestion charge from its then level of £5 until at least 2013.

"It won't be necessary," he said. "It's now quite clear that £5 was enough. I can't conceive of any circumstances in the foreseeable future where we would want to change the charge, although perhaps 10 years down the line it may be necessary." (Times 26.2.03.)

Reality: The congestion charge was raised by 60 per cent (to £8) in summer 2005, and changed to encompass a wider area in

2007. It will increase again to £25 for some vehicles if the Mayor is re-elected."


6. "Claim: In a speech on 2 December 2003, Mr Livingstone pledged: "I will save the Routemaster." In 2001, he said: "Only some ghastly, dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster."

Reality: Mr Livingstone got rid of the Routemaster from normal service in December 2005."

To be fair, Ken Livingstone was right that only "some ghastly, dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster", one did.


Maybe Ken just "misspoke" on all these occasions?

Ken Livingstone's love children are his own affair

Ken Livingstone's love children are his own affair and not really any of our business. Except for the fact that in 1999 Mr Livingstone fiercely denied an apparent claim from Labour Party officials that he had a secret six year old son, saying: "If I am given the name of any Labour official spreading this, I will issue a writ for malicious libel first thing on Monday morning." (Sunday Times, 11.7.99) - reported here.


Remember, it's rarely the crime that does for politicians but the cover-up.

"Show me your ID"

The future is already here, see this video twice between 0:57 and 1:07...






Can you imagine how much worse it would be when we have to carry our ID cards?



The sneering "shut-up" at 3:55 and 3:56 are also quite lovely, if I had been the photographer I woukld have reported CPSO 7166.

BBC using loaded language

The BBC News website has a page explaining "some of the impending changes to your personal finances this year.". This is mostly informative and impartial but one line sticks out like a sore thumb. This line appears in the first section on Income Tax and national Insurance, the line is this (my emphasis)"The small but vocal group of tax-payers known as the non-domiciled, will now have to pay £30,000 a year to keep their privileged tax status, once they have had it for seven years."

"Small but vocal group", how does that fit into the impartial, factual article? Maybe "Pensioners are getting higher winter fuel payments." should be written as "The large number of unfashionably dressed Pensioners are getting higher winter fuel payments."


The BBC not scared of letting class warfare intrude into a factual article.

Interesting advice for Ken Livingstone

Interesting advice for Ken Livingstone from Politics Home, I wonder if he will take any notice? In fact I think he will because unlike Gordon Brown, Ken Livingstone has a tactical political brain. Will it do him any good? That is more of a moot point.

Is Philip Balmforth the new Ray Honeyford?

Decide for yourself...

Philip Balmforth

Ray Honeyford


The dangers of arguing against the multicultural consensus in Britain have never been more clearly exposed.

Immigration and jobs

The Labour Government's incessant lying about job creation and immigration has just been holed below the water-line again. Today The Telegraph reports that "Mass immigration has been accompanied by a fall in the number of Britons with jobs, official figures show. Since 2004, when citizens of eight central and eastern European countries were given the right to work in Britain, the number of UK-born people working here has fallen by 500,000, from 24.4 million to 23.9 million. Over the period, the number of migrants in work, including people born abroad but now naturalised as British citizens, rose by 1.1 million - to 3.3 million. They now make up one in eight of the workforce.

The figures, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), provide the strongest evidence yet that Britons have lost their jobs to immigrants, says a leading expert on immigration."


Immigration has lead to big business making larger profits as they have had a workforce willing to work for low wages whilst a larger and larger number of Britain's population are happy to sit and collect benefits for not working rather than take a low paid job. The Labour government win as inflation stays lower than it might and they can import more Labour voters as well as ensure that the ever increasing "non working" population will vote Labour, the immigrants get higher paid work than they could in their own countries and big business get all the benefits of low wages which feed through into increased profits. Who loses out? The economies of the immigrants Countries of origin lose dynamic members of their economies and the British taxpayer really loses...

"Our dollar is worth maybe zero over here"

"Our dollar is worth maybe zero over here" so Reuters are reporting.


"AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar's value is dropping so fast against the euro that small currency outlets in Amsterdam are turning away tourists seeking to sell their dollars for local money while on vacation in the Netherlands.

"Our dollar is worth maybe zero over here," said Mary Kelly, an American tourist from Indianapolis, Indiana, in front of the Anne Frank house. "It's hard to find a place to exchange. We have to go downtown, to the central station or post office."

That's because the smaller currency exchanges -- despite buy/sell spreads that make it easier for them to make money by exchanging small amounts of currency -- don't want to be caught holding dollars that could be worth less by the time they can sell them.

The dollar hovered near record lows on Monday, with one euro worth around $1.58 versus $1.47 a month ago.

(Reporting by Svebor Kranjc, writing by Reed Stevenson)"

Headcases

Fair to middling, worth a watch next week anyway to see how/if it develops. Gordon Brown's smile on a masquerade mouth was well observed but whoever did the William Hague voice had it spot on.








Thanks to Man in a Shed for the picture.

Old Jug Ears warns Tories on impartiality

Cheeky git, "BBC presenter Andrew Marr has warned Conservative politicians who want to scrap impartiality rules in news broadcasting be "very, very careful what you wish for". The host of BBC1's Sunday morning political show said the move could lead to TV news becoming "unfair" and "partial", like "people in the tabloid world"."

So Andrew, you fear that TV news could become "unfair" and "partial"? Please take a trip to Biased-BBC, I think you will find that the BBC is already "unfair" and "partial" but as it is biased towards your beloved Labour party headed by the great bogey eater himself. Maybe you might also like to peruse some of my articles about you, here they are. If that takes too much time away from penning poems of praise to the glory of Gordon then here are a few quotes from you, accepting BBC bias and the need for it:

1. In October 2006 Andrew Marr said: "The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias." - Walters, Simon. "We are biased, admit the stars of BBC News", Daily Mail, 2006-10-21.


2. Whilst writing his column in The Observer newspaper, Marr expressed a number of political views. In 1999, Marr defended the implementation of the Race Relations Act after the Stephen Lawrence enquiry stating :

"And the final answer, frankly, is the vigorous use of state power to coerce and repress. It may be my Presbyterian background, but I firmly believe that repression can be a great, civilising instrument for good. Stamp hard on certain 'natural' beliefs for long enough and you can almost kill them off." - 7. Marr, Andrew. "Poor? Stupid? Racist? Then don't listen to a pampered white liberal like me?", The Observer, 1999-02-28.


The British public are finally realising what liars currently rule us and what liars there are in the media willing to propagandise on behalf of their political chums and masters in the Labour government. Your time as an "opinion former" for which we now know we can read "propagandist" will soon come to an end and I hope that you enjoy working in a free unsubsidised media.


PS:
In case you didn't know you might want to take a look at BBC Pioneers piece on Andrew Marr's family connections to the Labour party.

Makes you so proud to be British, doesn't it?

For details see Guido Fawkes.

A thorny question

Rachel from North London has a must read piece on her blog, here's the start:

"If your job was to protect this country, and you found out that some people born in this country were going off to a different country ( say, a training camp in Pakistan)
to learn to use machine guns and rocket launchers, and intended after their training to attack UK targets and UK soldiers abroad, ( say, in Afghanistan and Iraq) but as far as you know (or hoped) they weren't actually going to attack UK soil, or at least, you had no conclusive proof of it what would you do? What should you do?"

Do read the rest, most thought-provoking...

A Government ponders changing the electoral system for party political advantage

Not Zimbabwe but the UK, where the Labour government are rumoured to be considering moving from the first past the post system to an alternative vote system in an attempt to hold onto power.

The Telegraph reports that "Ministers are thought to be considering a new system which would see voters being allowed to choose a second preference as well as their first-choice." If the polls continue to show double digit Conservative leads then "Gordon Brown might be tempted to give the green light to a highly controversial change to the voting system, the first significant reform for at least 50 years."

The fact that Jack Straw recently argued in the Commons that "one cannot use changes to the electoral system as some kind of partisan tool" does not reassure me at all.



UPDATE:
Justice Minister Michael Wills written ministerial statement on the publication of the government's review of voting systems including these two statements do not completely put my mind to rest either:

"It remains the Government's strong view that since the voting system for Westminster Commons elections could fundamentally change the way parliamentary democracy operates, any proposed changes would need to be endorsed by a referendum."

"Strong view" not vow or promise.


"At this point, it would be premature to seek to reform the electoral system for the Commons while the voting system for a reformed and substantially or fully elected House of Lords is still to be determined. Reform of the electoral system for the Lords to a wholly or 80 per cent elected chamber was supported by the House of Commons free vote in March 2007 and the Government is committed to formulating a comprehensive package of Lords reform, including developing detailed proposals for a wholly or mainly elected second chamber. Good progress is being made on the cross-party talks on Lords reform and the Government intends to publish a White Paper in the first part of 2008 reflecting the outcome of these discussions."

"At this point", matters might change if Labour are 20 points behind in the polls in 2009. Then reform of the electoral system for electing MPs might need to be urgently changed so as to keep the "political wing of the British people" in power for ever.

Banoz Mahmood (an update)

Banoz Mahmood was the young English Muslim girl who "was brutally raped, stamped on and strangled by members of her family and their friends in an "honor killing" carried out at her London home because she had fallen in love with the wrong man." You can see my previous postings about this girl's case here, here and here.

Today I read in the Daily Mail that "Honour killing victim Banaz Mahmod was failed by police when she turned to them for protection, an investigation has ruled.

The 20-year-old Muslim begged police for help four times before her brutal murder at the hands of her father and her uncle.

Her fears were not taken seriously, even after she smashed her way out of her grandmother's house to escape her family's first attempt at killing her.

The police officer who took her statement, PC Angela Cornes, dismissed her account as fantasy and wanted to charge her with criminal damage because she broke a window during her escape, her Old Bailey murder trial was told."

Do read the rest and maybe watch this piece of video from Sky news...

Konie Huq and the Olympic torch

"A man was pulled away by police after attempting to snatch the Olympic torch from former Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq as she carried it through London."

You can see the video on this BBC news page.


My views on the Chinese and the way they have treated Tibet and any outbreaks of democracy in China are will documented and my views on the Beijing Olympics are hardening as well.



Here's some more video...




A final thought, what were those Chinese "Flame Attendants" doing? Under what law were they allowed to push people about in this Country? The way they were allowed to organise the Olympic flame handover in Downing Street was rather sinister.

The REAL inconvenient truth

Take a read of Nigel Lawson in the Mail.

"Over the past half-century, we have become used to planetary scares. In the late Sixties, we were told of a population explosion that would lead to global starvation.

Then, a little later, we were warned the world was running out of natural resources. By the Seventies, when global temperatures began to dip, many eminent scientists warned us that we faced a new Ice Age.

But the latest scare, global warming, has engaged the political and opinion-forming classes to a greater extent than any of these.

The readiness to embrace this fashionable belief has led the present Labour Government, enthusiastically supported by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, to commit itself to a policy of drastically cutting back carbon dioxide emissions - at huge cost to the British economy and to the living standards not merely of this generation, but of our children's generation, too...."

Palestinian farmer killed by missile attack and the BBC don't run a story on it - why?

From the Gulf Daily News comes a story that "A Palestinian farmer was killed in the Gaza Strip near Israeli border yesterday."

But why are the BBC not reporting this? The BBC normally love to report any deaths or injuries caused by those nasty Israelis. The answer comes in the next line of the the Gulf Daily News's article "The man was killed when a mortar fired by Palestinian militants at Israel fell short in northern Gaza. Militant groups initially reported the man was killed by Israeli artillery fire."

The farmer was killed by Palestinian terrorists so that is not worth reporting; "nothing to see here, move along".

Gordon Brown a laughing stock

I blogged last November first that "Bad news Gordon but tonight when Graham Norton made a joke about you and the audience laughed approvingly it struck me - you are now officially a figure of fun!

The joke was about a picture of you and your wife looking glum at the Queen and Prince Phillip's 60th anniversary service.

"What happened to him?

Did he get his dream job and discover he's shit at it""

and second that "Today Vincent Cable compared Gordon Brown to Mr Bean, bringing chaos out or order - much of the laughter was staged by Lib Dems and quick reacting Conservatives, but the quip hit home and is a great soundbite.

Like John Major in 1995, Gordon Brown is now a figure of fun. Gordon Brown has lost the respect of the country and his party will soon start to look around for a replacement.

Poor Gordon, he wanted to be Prime Minister for so so long but I don't think he envisaged it would be like this. If I didn't detest the man so much, I might even feel a touch sorry for him."


It seems as though this meme is catching on, last night's dinner party had people openly mocking his facial expressions and drooling over Carla Bruni and the blogosphere is full of people mocking Gordon Brown. There is more in the Sunday Times entitled "‘Blobby’ Gordon Brown gets gaffe aide". Gordon Brown will be puce rather than orange as he reads in "The Sunday papers" that "ON the day Gordon Brown turned orange it emerged that he has hired a former BBC producer to put an end to the visual gaffes that have dogged his time as prime minister. Nicola Burdett, 35, has been told to stop the embarrassing photographs and television foot-age that risk turning Brown into a figure of fun. The appointment has not come a moment too soon. Yesterday the prime minister was pictured at a summit of world leaders in Hertfordshire with a bright orange blob of make-up on his forehead."


The man is a joke, I wonder how Spitting Image/Headcases will choose to portray him tonight?

Mobile phones on planes

The mobile phone is a curse and many a tube or train journey has been ruined by morons conducting loud conversations over their mobile phones. Now Ofcom have decided that we should be able to use our mobile phones on planes once they are above 3,000 metres (around 10,000 feet in real measurements), so not for take off and landing but for the rest of the journey. Aeroplanes are bad enough with the sound of drunken fools shouting competing with the sound of babies screaming and small children shrieking without adding people using mobile phones to the mix.

Clive James feels the same way as me, read his wittier remarks here.

Zimbabwe - the poll fixing continues

In Zimbabwe I learn that President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party has asked electoral officials to delay declaring the results of the recent presidential election and to recount votes. Zimbabwe's state media has said the governing Zanu-PF party requested a recount because there had been "errors and miscalculations". The stuffed ballot boxes that could not all be deployed at the actual election count because too many were required will now be brought into use to give Robert Mugabe just enough votes to force a second round of voting or if he is feeling really brazen enough to win by a small but decisive amount in the first round.


Meanwhile the Mail on Sunday reports that "In a dramatic escalation of tension, armed police prevented opposition lawyers from entering the High Court in Harare to apply for an order forcing the release of last Saturday's election results.

'We can't go in. They are threatening to shoot. They are saying no one enters the court,' said Alec Muchadehama, a lawyer for the opposition Movement for Democratic-Change (MDC). "

Porn to bring peace to the Middle East?

Make love not war was the cry of 1968 and it seems that this might be a way forward to peace in the Middle East. I see from Jewcy that "It happened like this: After installing software that identifies where users are logging on, the managers of Ratuv (an Israeli porn site) discovered that a large number of their visitors were in Arab countries. They decided that a lack of diplomatic relations didn't have to equal a lack of sexual relations, so despite not being able to accept money for video downloads from these countries, manager Nir Shahar set to work making the site as hospitable as possible. With the Arabic translations and extra free pics, traffic from these countries rocketed to 100,000 hits per week. The Ratuv team is currently looking into creating and registering a similar site in Europe or America, so that they can legally accept credit card payments from countries prohibited by Israeli law. They're also eyeballing the possibility of making films in which Arab and Israeli stars come together. So to speak."



I don't really do porn on this blog but if you look at this page from the Ratuv website you can see Israeli Nun porn (NSFW).

The thought of Muslim men in the Middle East getting their jollies by looking at Israeli Nun porn is slightly mind bending at this time of the morning.

Yes we get the bloody joke

If I have to hear Graham Norton say one more time that he's looking for a Nancy, Andrew Lloyd Webber is looking for a Nancy or they are all looking for a Nancy - I may well explode. Yes we get it, you are looking for someone to play the role of Nancy in a new production of Oliver but "hysterically" and quite coincidentally Nancy could be taken as being nancy - a euphamism for a gay man!!! Yes we get it, ho ho, ha ha, hee hee.

Sorry, don't normally watch this sort of tripe but Dr Who had finished and Mrs NotaSheep fancied 15 minutes of mindless entertainment - she got it.

Sat Nav - the next 'front'-ier

Sorry about the punning headline, but I felt I had to.

May I introduce you to Nudar which "is "radar" for strip clubs and nudity. Our goal is to locate the best places and events where you can find naked hotties across the globe"

Yes it's a sat nav add-on o help you locate strip clubs and general nudity attractions.


Assuming this is not an elaborate spoof, what a technological advance.



Thanks to Shake well before use for the spot.

Amazeing!

I love Google Earth...


Thanks to Tuscan Tony for the spot.

Gun control?

Ever wondered why European governments (apart from Switzerland) are so keen on preventing their populations from legally owning guns, might the following quotation be a clue?


"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States."

-- Noah Webster, 1787 - An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution



Thanks to American Geek for the reminder.

Pity the poor fishmonger

I have been shopping at the same wet fishmonger for well over 30 years (man and boy) so what I saw today was most bizarre. Take a look here for the latest piece of government/EU pointless legislation.

Fishmongers have to display an authorised name for the fish they sell and display the above chart showing the Latin species name for the fish. Now I like fish and am quite happy to buy salmon, tuna, swordfish, hake, lemon sole etc. without feeling the urge to check that the fish I am purchasing is from is of the right species name. I trust my fishmonger to tell me if I am purchasing Thunnus or Katsuwonus pelamis.

Do we really need these people to... Sorry I'll rephrase that, do we really need these people.

Gerry Sutcliffe

I blogged last week about Gerry Sutcliffe, Labour's minister for licensing giving a jaw-dropping interview openly opposing Alistair Darling’s Budget. He wants the chancellor to “change his mind” about the alcohol duty increase. Yes, “change his mind”. I also heard that Gerry Sutcliffe tried to defend himself with the memorable line "My comments do not accurately reflect my views".

I'll repeat that, Gerry Sutcliffe said that "My comments do not accurately reflect my views".

One more time, "My comments do not accurately reflect my views".


Just about sums up Labour ministers doesn't it, what they say is not what they think.

China

"This is a state that imprisons, tortures and kills its political opponents. It is a state that pollutes public discourse with untruths, and that not only seeks to suppress truths, but that seeks to suppress the free exchange of thought between its citizens. It is a state that gives succour to the genocidal regime in Sudan, and has backed itself into the position of casting Buddhist monks as dangerous terrorists.

And it is a state that has so much in the way of natural resources, and manpower, and economic muscle, that it is all but immune to direct political pressure. We need them more than they need us."

Read the rest of Sam Leith's opinion piece in The Telegraph.

Bastards

I and Mrs NotaSheep love turtles, they are such noble and peaceful creatures, a real joy to see in the wild. So I was really annoyed to see this piece of video of Palestinian fishermen landing and killing an endangered Leatherback turtle.

Zimbabwe's Presidential Powers Act - remind you of anything?

The Telegraph report in a seemingly shocked way that " Under the Electoral Act, a second round of the presidential contest must take place within 21 days, or by April 19.

Under the Presidential Powers Act, passed as a "temporary measure" in 1986, Mr Mugabe can rewrite any law he likes without reference to parliament.

He could issue a decree providing for a 90-day interval between the two rounds of any presidential election.

This would give him ample time to mobilise the war veterans."

Terrible, absolutely terrible and obviously this Zimbabwean Presidential Power Act has absolutely no similarity to our Labour government's Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 or clause 43 of the new draft Constitutional Renewal Bill.

Lily Allen acoustic version of LDN

As the weather improves, here's one of the songs of Summer 2006 but the acoustic version...

Zimbabwe elections

I blogged a while back that "The BBC are reporting that "Zimbabwe's government and electoral chiefs have warned the main opposition MDC it should not declare an early victory in the presidential poll. The MDC, which has repeatedly expressed fears of rigging, has started to quote unofficial returns, saying it has 67% of the vote so far and "has won". The information minister accused the MDC of "speculation and lies"."

I am afraid that any celebration may be very premature, first there were reports last week that Robert Mugabe has many many extra ballot boxes full of votes for himself to be added to the count and if these votes are not enough then the army can probably still be relied upon to put down the MDC."


It appears that whilst Robert Mugabe has given up on keeping a Zanu PF majority in parliament, he is hopeful of forcing a second round of voting in the Presidential election. If the stuffing of ballot boxes didn't quite work in round one, will he have more ballot rigging in round two or will the intimidation and violence have to be pushed up a notch?

Whilst you ponder this matter watch and listen to this piece of video...

Songs where the title is only mentioned as the last line of the song

Any others?

Polygamy in the UK (update)

Further to this article about "the recent government decision that "Husbands with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long Government review"" I see in the Mail that "Muslim is spared a speeding ban so he can drive between his two wives".

Spitting Image on the BBC Licence Fee

Spot the "biased news reporting" reference.

Labour and the Nazi logo?

I can do no better than direct you to Guido Fawkes' various posting today on this latest Labour party debacle:

"Bad Start for New No. 10 Digital Media Guru"

"Questions About the Progressive Governance Summit"

"Do You Think This is Herr Braun's Swastika?"

"Oh Look, De-Nazification After Bloggers Pointed Out the Obvious"


Whilst at least the Independent have picked up the story today - see here.

Open Labour Cabinet dissent

The Financial Times are today reporting that "Gerry Sutcliffe, minister for licensing, has given a jaw-dropping interview openly opposing Alistair Darling’s Budget. He wants the chancellor to “change his mind” about the alcohol duty increase. Yes, “change his mind”.

We cannot think of the last time a minister, indeed an experienced minister, so brazenly opposed a central Budget measure. This is an extraordinary breach of discipline. It is bound to lead to a deluge of negative commentary on the state of the Brown government. What was he thinking?"

You can read extracts from Gerry Sutcliffe's interview on the FT link above.


I cannot imagine a Minister briefing this way against a Gordon Brown policy when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, I wonder what action Alistair Darling will take...

Tessa Jowell - "We're not idiots here..."

It is too easy to poke fun at Tessa Jowell isn't it? But saying "We're not idiots here..." is almost too tempting - but no I must resist.

Bad news for Barack Obama

It appears that Jane Fonda, the actress and ardent anti-Vietnam War advocate who visited North Vietnam during those hostilities, has endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president. This will not help his support amongst liberal Republicans of a certain age. I wonder if John McCain will draw attention to the fact that during Jane Fonda's controversial wartime visit to North Vietnam, she was photographed at a Communist anti-aircraft gun battery where she joined North Vietnamese soldiers there in singing an antiwar song while preparing to shoot at attacking Americans. Meanwhile John McCain was an American airman who was shot down over that same city by those same anti-aircraft forces; he was tortured and spent nearly six years in a POW cell while Jane Fonda returned home.

An analysis of one Pallywood incident

Richard Landes on top form, do watch this video...

Another pointless piece of EU legislation

I see in the Telegraph that "Bus passengers who travel along a route of more than 30 miles must get off the vehicle midway through their journey to comply with new EU laws. The Brussels ruling dictates that drivers must pull over and let everyone off their bus after 30 miles, to ensure they do not spend too long behind the wheel."

Do read the whole story and wonder at what we are doing letting the EU run our lives to the degree that they already do and why our Labour government seem so set on increasing the EU's powers over us.

"I've been to a marvellous party"

I was looking on Youtube for Noel Coward's "London Pride" and failed but did find this splendid version of "I've been to a marvellous party" by The Divine Comedy.





STOP PRESS:
Here's "London Pride" in all its glory...

No recession in the UK then?

Even the BBC that bastion of pro-Gordon Brown news have had to report that "The squeeze on the availability of mortgages is expected to continue in the next three months, the Bank of England has warned. But it also predicted that demand for home loans was likely to fall slightly during the same period. The Bank, in its Credit Conditions Survey, said lenders expected the rate of homeowners defaulting to rise."

The article concludes: "Vicky Redwood, of Capital Economics, said the evidence increased the chances of the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee cutting interest rates next time. "The outlook for economic growth has deteriorated enough to prompt a rate cut next week," she said." In other words, there will be negative economic groth unless the MPC cut interest rates aggressively; unfortunately the MPC have to target inflation above all other factors (thanks to Gordon Brown) so they have a major issue. To put it mildly, the economy is on the edge of a precipice.

Taqiyya

Look out for my upcoming post explaining "taqiyya".

Muslims are forbidden to kill innocent people

Last year I blogged about the never asked question "Who is innocent". Inayat Bunglawala and Muhammad Abdul Bari of the Muslim Council of Britain were oft heard to say in the days after the London bombings that "we condemn the killing of all innocent people wherever they are" or "Those who seek to deliberately kill or maim innocent people are the enemies of us all. There is no cause whatsoever that could possibly justify such barbarity."

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

I have just found some video from a while back of an interview with British Mullah Anjum Chaudri in which he answers this question rather revealingly, here's the video...




So to put that in writing, Anjum Chaudri believes that:


"I will never condemn a Muslim brother."


"When we say innocent people we mean Muslims, as far as non-Muslims are concerned they have not accepted Islam and as far as we are concerned that is a crime against God... As far as Muslims are concerned, you are innocent if you are a Muslim, then you are innocent in the eyes of God. If you are a non-Muslim then you are guilty of not believing in God"

"I must have hatred to anything that is not Islam"



Maybe Muhammad Abdul Bari and Inayat Bunglawala could state where they stand on this issue.

A parallel system of Sharia law

The use of Sharia law in the UK as a parallel system of law has been suggested by many, possibly including the Archbishop of Canterbury. For this reason, this article in AKI struck me as apposite "A man and a woman have been stoned to death by militants in Pakistan's north-west border region after an Islamic 'qazi' court found them guilty of adultery.

A qazi court is an Islamic court, parallel to the Pakistani judicial system."


Hmmm...

Michelin starred restaurants - comparison

I learn that a restaurant on one of the Scilly islands has just won a Michelin star. This meant the Isles of Scilly, population 2153, has a Michelin starred restaurant which is more than can be said for Greater Manchester, population around 2,500,000. The restaurant is called Tean and is on the small island of St Martin's.

Curry grenade

It is claimed that the Indian army have developed a "curry grenade" for use against Islamic "militants" in the Kashmir. The ingredients are described as being chilli, pepper and phosphorus. Now although I like a nice curry, I am not that familiar with army tactics however I believe that the phosphorus might be the more effective of the ingredients in attacking Islamic terrorists. Although the chilli might be quite useful in flushing the terrorists out...

Dog sups from woman

Yes it's Dan Cruickshank time again. This week his Adventures in Architecture series included a visit to the Sun Temple in Konarak, India, with its sexually explicit statues including the one of the aforementioned dog supping "ambrosial fluid" from a woman's source of such fluid. If only someone could have leant Dan a chair.

Wimpy home builders ban wolf-whistling

Wimpy home builders have banned their builders from wolf-whistling or so I think I heard the BBC Radio 4 news report. Something to do with possibly upsetting prospective female house or flat buyers. I would have thought that prospective house purchasers would be more upset by the current cost of mortgage repayments.

"an erosion of the sentence the judge had imposed"

I learn that the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, has criticised the early release of prisoners under the scheme to reduce prison overcrowding. Lord Phillips, said it was "an erosion of the sentence the judge had imposed" and called for a clear sentencing structure. The Ministry of Justice said data suggested "the scheme is working well".


In related news, a National Statistical Office spokesman confirmed that white was white and black was black. A Government spokesman assured the public that white was black, black was white and that "all will be well in the garden".

The 'R' word

I see that Federal Reserve boss Ben Bernanke has come close to using the dreaded 'R' word. In recent testimony to the US Congress he said "It now appears likely that real GDP will not grow much, if at all, over the first half of 2008 and could even contract slightly,"

The usually accepted definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth.

Ben Bernanke is still predicting an upturn in the second half of 2008 and the start of 2009; I have my doubts.

Housing all MPs in upmarket student halls of residence

Can you imagine having to live in close proximity to George Galloway or Ruth Kelly or Jack Straw or Tessa Jowell or ...

A possible proposal arising from the Commons review of MPs' expenses is just that, to house all (presumably out of London MPs) in one or more upmarket halls of residence. It is nice to think this through; would they need one building for Labour MPs, one for Conservative MPs and one for the minor parties? What happens to the empty rooms after the 2009 or 2010 election when there are only 100 or so Labour MPs left? Would anyone want to live next door to George Galloway? Would Sinn Fein and UDP MPs like living next door to each other? If MPs are not segregated by political party, would Anne Widecombe and Ruth Kelly have pillow-fights each night? Would we need male and female blocks of apartments, or is that homophobic? The questions are endless....

Maybe we could just settle on proper auditing of expenses and no making of profit on 2nd homes paid for by the taxpayer.

"China's human rights record is getting worse, not better, because of the Beijing Olympics"

China's human rights record is getting worse, not better, because of the Beijing Olympics, so says Amnesty International. What a surprise, giving the Olympics to China has not opened up China or brought freedom of speech and expression to China, instead it has brought a clamping down on dissent in a bid to portray a stable and harmonious image of China ahead of the Games in August.

Wimmins bollocks

I can think of no other heading for this story. From the ever excellent England Expects comes the story of the "Third Global Congress of Women in Politics and Governance which will be held on October 19-22, 2008 at the Dusit Hotel, Makati City, Metro Manila, Philippines. The theme of the congress is "Gender and Climate Change"."

Here's a flavour of the whys and whats:

"Women and environment experts have raised concern over the absence of women in the discourse and debate on climate change, a global mainstream issue that is currently impacting the entire world. The involvement of women in areas of environmental management and governance should not be perceived as an afterthought. Women's roles are of considerable importance in the promotion of environmental ethics.

The current imperative is for women to understand the phenomenon of climate change and its impacts and implications at the individual, household, community and national levels. Studies show that women have a definite information deficit on climate politics and climate protection. Only with this information can women take their proper, significant and strategic role in the issue of climate change.

Invited to this congress are women parliamentarians, women in decision - making and governance, environment organizations, youth Leaders and Media Practitioners"


So that's around $2,000 each plus airfares and non-included meals and a lot of CO2 emissions to attend a four day whinge. Well why worry? After all the taxpayer one way or another will fund the trip.


I had to follow the link to the Congress Home Page, I could read and "fisk" this for hours but I have work to do...So here's just a few choice extracts.


1. "The CENTER FOR ASIA-PACIFIC WOMEN IN POLITICS (CAPWIP) is a non-partisan, non-profit and non-governmental regional organization dedicated to promoting equal participation of women in politics, governance and decision-making. CAPWIP was established in 1992 by a group of women from the Asia-Pacific region who have defined their paradigm for change as:



Politics that is both TRANSFORMED and TRANSFORMATIONAL.


TRANSFORMED because...

it uses power to create change, to develop people,
and to build communities;
it is non-hierarchical and participatory in its
structures and processes; and
it accords priority to the disadvantaged sectors,
such as the poor grassroots women in rural and
urban areas and indigenous women;


TRANSFORMATIONAL because...

it is development-oriented, issue-based,
and gender-responsive;
it seeks economic, social, and political equity between sexes
and among sectors; and
it builds a society that is just and humane and
a way of life that is sustainable."



2. "Why Gender and Climate Change?

Differential impact on men and women: The Gender and Climate Change website states: "Climate change is not a neutral process; first of all, women are in general more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, not least because they represent the majority of the world's poor and because they are more than proportionally dependent on natural resources that are threatened. The technological change and instruments that are being proposed to mitigate carbon emissions, which are implicity presented as gender-neutral, are in fact quite gender based and may negatively affect women or bypass them."


Presumably it would be sexist of me to point out that there is no such word as "implicity", I presume they mean "implicitly". However why should women have to restrict themselves to the male decided spellings of words? If wimmin want to spell implicitly as implicity then they can, they can spell it zzxxhh if they want - they are wimmin, hear them roar!



3. "Expected Outputs:

· Gender Responsive Legislative Agenda on Climate change"



looks like a worthwhile event, maybe I could declare myself a woman and attend, surely it is my right as a man to be a woman if I want.

Bishop Nazir Ali has an ally in the Church of England

Finally another leading member of the Church of England has stood up against the Islamisation of the UK. Mrs Ruoff, a member of the General Synod is reported by the Daily Mail to have "called yesterday for the building of mosques to be banned. Alison Ruoff said more construction would lead to Islamic no go areas dominated by exclusively Muslim populations living under sharia law. Mrs Ruoff, a member of the General Synod, the Church's parliament, added: "If we don't watch out we will become an Islamic state. It's that serious.""

The Daily Mail's article continues: "Speaking on Premier Christian Radio, she said: "We are constantly building new mosques, which are paid for by the oil states.

"There are enough mosques for Muslims in this country.

"You build a mosque and then what happens? You have Muslim people moving into that area, all the shops become Islamic, all the housing will become Islamic and that will be a no-go area for anyone else.

"They will bring in Islamic law. We cannot allow that to happen.

"We are still a Christian country, we need to hold on to that.""


Of course there had to be a response from the Muslim Council of Britain and it came from this blog's old "friend", Inayat Bunglawala the assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain. He is reported to have said: "These are very narrow-minded and bigoted remarks." Well if anyone should know about narrow-minded and bigoted remarks I would imagine it would be Inayat Bunglawala.


"As a Christian, she surely ought to be working to build good ties between different communities."

Stranger and stranger (some clearance)

Further to this blog last year about the Israeli bombing of a "facility" in Syria. I read today that "Israel has admitted for the first time that an air strike in Syria last year was aimed at a nuclear facility built with assistance from North Korea."

Well that clears that one up.

PMQs 02 April 2008

Looks as though Harriet Harman has not chickened out of standing ion for Gordon Brown and that William Hague will lead for the Conservatives. Harriet Harman does not appear to be wearing a stab-proof vest today, maybe she should keep a wary eye on the "Honourable members" behind her, just in case they forget that it is her not their glorious leader taking the questions.

Harriet Harman is in full smug Islington mode today, can William Hague puncture it?

Question 1 from William Hague is prefixed by a nice dig at Gordon Brown's declaration of respect for Margaret Thatcher. 1st question is on Zimbabwe, Harman ignores the question and attacks Hague for sexism, foolish woman.

Question 2 - nice clown joke, Gordon Brown comment that noone would be worse off following doubling of 10p tax band. Harman baseball cap jibe and no answer to substantive question.

Question 3 - Wiliam Hague jokes about people behind her wanting to kill her. 5.3 million worse off, not none, Gordon doesn't seem to understand... Harman - tax burden under this government as under previous Conservative government.

Question 4 - Out of touch if they believe tax burgen is low. Health Minister feel governmnet is losing touch... Doesn't she have even a little sympathy with the views of the Health Minister. Harman - economy as resilient as possible, we are in touch...

Question 5 - Gordon in a palace probably lost by now. Hague quotes from Harman's blog that people are not aprehensive or insecure. Harman - Harriet in High Street - sounds a right laugh, was she wearing any special clothing in Edinburgh. What a rehearsed line about "good jokes, poor judgement".

Question 6 - 5 million people worse off...... (prepared attack), and here comes Harman's pre-prepared end remarks... economy continuing to grow, slower rate but... continues to grow, secure economy for the futire, eduction to age of 18...

Score draw there I would say...


Vince Cable - nice question about the Queen cancelling her Diamond Jubilee celebration.

Michael Martin rules the question out of order and says that the question still counted.

Harman says economy has grown for 62 quarters, Labour have been in power for only 43 quarters, maybe someone should point that out and how the economy was doing well before Labour came to power...


Interesting question and answer on Bangladeshi restaurants being raided on Friday evenings.


Ed Davey - good question on Labour reallocation of money between Councils. Harman ignores the question and answers another.


Robert Wareing may have been reading my blog this morning re airports. Harman waffles.

John Baron - 42 days question. I predict Harman will call Tories soft on crime... Harman attacks Tories for not supporting measures ... abolish Human Rights Act...


Nice question on CPI/RPI at the end and Harriet Harman who had been fair up until then blew it badly. No answer just a stuttered promise to pass onto Chancellor of Exchequer to answer. Poor very poor.


Summary:

Wiliam Hague was too jocular, should have been more aggressive, the public have turned against labour, Conservative politicians no longer have to play nice when questionning Labour Ministers

Harriet Harman was OK when she could find the right briefing note but dire when she couldn't, maybe she is just a pre-programmed minister. PMQs didn't make feel physically sick as it does when Gordon Brown lies and distorts his way through one, so maybe a putsch by Harriet Harman whilst Gordon is trying to find his way around another palace might be in order.

A government mouthpiece?

John Humphrys described a Zimbabwean newspaper as "a government mouthpiece in reality"; well he should know about working for a government mouthpiece.

London airports - T5, 3rd runway, Biggin Hill crash etc.

Why do we persist in flying planes over urban areas? Heathrow airport is sited so that planes either come in to land by flying over central London and along the Thames or take of and then fly over north west London. The addition of a third runway at Heathrow would increase this traffic and spread it over more of north west London and its environs. Gatwick airport, whilst stupidly located in a fog prone area, causes less low level overflying of urban areas but can be run no harder. The same can be said to a lesser degree of Luton and Stanstead. The recent plane crashes or near crashes at Heathrow and near Biggin Hill should act as a warning to us all; planes should take off towards and land from areas of as low population as possible. This is not possible at Heathrow so further expansion should not be permitted, instead limited expansion of Stanstead and Luton should be encouraged but even more importantly the building of an airport on the Thames Estuary should be where money and effort should be concentrated.

Immigration benefits the country, or does it? (Update)

I see that Gordon Brown has reacted to the House of Lords Committee report by trotting out the same old lies. "He said migration had added £6bn to the economy and was a "substantial income"." The Committee covered this and said quite clearly, so that even a monocular moron could read it, that that figure was an "irrelevant and misleading" measure and the only one that counted was the impact of immigration on everybody's personal income.


Gordon Brown also said that gross domestic product per head had risen since 1997 from £13,900 to £22,840 in the last year. Yes it probably has increased by that much - just over 5% per annum, how much of that is Gordon Brown laying at the door of immigration?


The deliberate misdirection that Gordon Brown and other Labour Ministers make that annoys me most is that the key workers argument. Here's his attempt today "Most people in the City of London know they have benefited very substantially...Not just from the inward investment that's coming from international companies, but the number of key workers who are coming to join them and are making a huge contribution to the British economy."

I doubt that many people have an issue with skilled American quants, Malaysian computer programmers or South African dentists coming to work in the UK and pay tax here. These people may be earning £60,000 or more a year and so paying over £30,000 in Income Tax and National Insurance a year. What people do have problems with are people coming here and not working but claiming all the benefits they can and/or using the NHS to treat the illnesses they have brought with them into the Country. Why can Gordon Brown and his Cabinet not distinguish between the two types of immigrant, the rest of the Country can?

"Speaker's expenses being probed "

Not before time I learn that The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has begun a preliminary investigation into Commons Speaker Michael Martin's use of expenses.

I do hope this is not an April Fool, just an enquiry into a fool's misuse of expenses.

A special relationship between the EU and UK

A fascianting article by Melanie Phillips revealing that "A remarkable intervention by the very architect of the constitution himself, the former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, has come my way. Interviewed in the French weekly Le Point on July 5 2007 about the revived constitution, Giscard said there was now a serious problem with the British for whom European integration appeared as 'an obstacle, a brake, a source of complications.'... What Giscard appeared to be suggesting here was precisely the kind of relationship with Europe — economic, co-operative but not integrated — that the vast majority of the British people would undoubtedly want, if given the choice. And it wasn’t the first time he’d done so, having said something similar in an interview with the French radio channel France Inter on June 27 2007. From Giscard, then, of all people, comes the idea that Britain can have precisely what it wants in Europe — a unique relationship befitting the UK’s unique position as the bloody-minded offshore island that stubbornly wants to remain in charge of its own affairs. Giscard of course has long moved on; but since he is so much the spirit of the EU — the grandest possible of fromages — his suggestion is electrifying.

So there you are, William and David — Giscard has handed it to you on a plate. What are you waiting for? Or to put it another way, how come a former French president is suggesting something that's in the fundamental interests of the UK but for which British politicians are too afraid to ask?"


Read the rest and start lobbying the Conservatives, this could be the answer we want.

BBC website redesign

Have you noticed the BBC website's redesign? Whilst not as bad as some of the beta versions that I have seen it is still dire. You now see less stories than you did before on each page and less text on each screen. It looks as though the new site has been designed by the team previously responsible for designing websites for small children or the visually impaired.

The one good feature that I saw on some of the beta versions was the ability to include and exclude certain types of story, that of course has not appeared in the full version.

"Clinton didn't pay health insurance bills"

It appears that Hillary Clinton's campaign was at least two months behind with its payments to Aetna Healthcare and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield for the campaign team's healthcare. Interesting as Hillary Clinton has made her plan for universal health care a centrepiece of her agenda.

" Team Livingstone fabricates polling data"

Take a read of an interesting article by Dizzy Thinks regarding Ken Livingstone's team disingenuous statements.

Immigration benefits the country, or does it?

For some years now Labour Government Ministers have been claiming that immigration benefits the UK financially and culturally and for just as long groups such as Migration Watch have been smeared as racist for pointing out the logical fallacies used to justify these claims. As recently as last December this Labour Governments' Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, talked of "the purity of the macroeconomic case for migration". Now a report from the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, published today, says its six-month inquiry could find no evidence to support the government's claim that a high level of net immigration has generated significant economic benefit for Britain.

This Labour Government told the House of Lords Committee that immigration had boosted Britain's economy by £6bn in 2006. The Committee said that was an "irrelevant and misleading" measure and the only one that counted was the impact of immigration on everybody's personal income. So the Home Office submitted new evidence to the inquiry based on a Low Pay Commission research study, showing that every British citizen is, on average, £30 a year better off as a result of the impact of immigration. However the Committee report says that, in the short term, immigration has created economic winners and losers. Unsurprisingly the biggest winners have been the migrants and their employers; whilst some consumers have benefited from lower prices and the Committee also make the odd claim that taxpayers also benefit from the lower costs of public services. The people that have lost out are those who have either lost their jobs or been kept out of the workforce by immigrants taking the jobs and for the most part these people are the low-paid employee.


Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister, on the Toady programme this morning has been trying to mislead us with his claims about what the Committee said and what the truth of the matter was. I get so fed up with Government Ministers who claim that black is white and then when the untruthfulness of this position is made clear they concede that black may not be white but it is certainly very grey and then concede that it is at least off-white. This is a time delaying tactic and should be pointed out more strongly than it is.



For the background story you can read articles about this subject in The Telegraph, The Times and The Guardian. You can also see video of Liam Byrne and Migration Watch's Sir Andrew Green to the Committee here.

April Fool

Some of the following short stories are an April Fool, the rest are true - but which are which?

1. According to the Toady programme this morning, Ed Balls has had a "big idea"

2. To clear the baggage backlog at Heathrow Terminal 5, BA are sending a large quantity of bags to Milan for sorting and onward shipment by road or air.

3. According to Guido Fawkes Boris Johnson will lead for the Conservative party at PMQs tomorrow so he has the right to question Gordon Brown about his recent lies.

4. Today's scheduled RAF flypast to celebrate the RAF's 90th anniversary has been cancelled due to complaints that the planes' red white and blue paint trails are racist symbology.


Take your pick...