Where's our £42,130 Jacqui Smith?

Jacqui Smith Request for Payback



The Sunlight Centre are not content to let Jacqui Smith get away with an aopolgy to the House of Commons, not even the taxpaying/voting public. They want the £42,130 that they consider to have been "inappropriately used for the maintenance of Jacqui Smith's home". Quite right too, keep up the pressure until this one little piggy coughs up the money that she shouldn't have claimed. Then onto the next little piggy; who should that be?


Here's Jacqui Smith's unreserved apology for the claim for films and her weasel words of apology for her housing claim...

Odd things in a field

The Telegraph report on the Family Guy maze cut into a corn field in Danvers, Massachusetts. But I saw something almost as odd when looking something up on Multimap.

View aerial image of Saint Marys Road, Dymchurch, New Romney, Kent, England, TN28 8 on Multimap.com
Get directions to or from Saint Marys Road, Dymchurch, New Romney, Kent, England, TN28 8

A Sphinx and two pyramids; in Kent?


Interestingly this image does not appear on the GoogleMaps image.

Windows 7 hidden features

Thanks to Jason Hiner at TechRepublic we know about five new Windows 7 features that others seem to have missed.... Here's one:

"3. Registry: The Starter Edition

Much like the way Microsoft is offering a crimped version of Windows 7 called “Starter Edition,” I’ve also discovered an alternate version of the Windows Registry. Since this mysterious alternate Registry does not have an official name, let’s call it “Registry: The Starter Edition” because it is a greatly simplified and dumbed-down version. In fact, instead of five hives like the standard Registry, this one only has two: HKEY_CLUELESS_USER and HKEY_CRAPPY_MACHINE. I’m still not sure what purpose this alternate Registry will serve. The only thing I can think of is that it is designed to simplify the process of building Windows software for developers who have been writing Windows code for decades but are still too lazy to follow best practices in terms of file organization and user security."

Cute, very cute.

Why the House of Commons? Surely she should apologise to the people whose money she falsely claimed.

It seems that the former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has been told to apologise in the House of Commons for breaching expenses rules and that will be an end to the matter. Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of what she did, and I believe that the Sunlight Centre are still pursuing that matter; should Jacqui Smith not apologise to the Country from outside of the House of Commons? After all it is our money she was incorrectly claiming.

How about setting up some stocks on Parliament Green so MPs can apologise to the public and the public can express their views via the medium of fruit and veg.

Graphing without thinking

This website claim to be monitoring property prices area by area and produce graphs to show you how these prices are faring. Unfortunately they have a problem, looking at London NW3 for example it would seem that prices for detached houses and semi-detached houses have gone through the floor from around £3,000,000 to near zero. Oddly prices for terraced houses and flats have fared better. A more logical explanation would be that there have been no sales of detached houses and semi-detached houses in the recent past and so no data. Do MSN.local even look at the graphs their system is producing?

Can you spot the possible link?

The Mail report the shocking news that:

"A nuclear scientist arrested by armed police is said to have admitted plotting an Al Qaeda terrorist atrocity, possibly in Britain.

Dr Adlene Hicheur, 32, has confessed to talking over the internet with the North African branch of the terror organisation about attacks on 'Western targets', according to officials in France where he was held last week.

Hicheur, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, worked for the CERN nuclear research laboratory near Geneva and had also worked at the top secret Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in England."

Meanwhile The Sun reports that:

"SKINT defence chiefs plan to axe 900 cops who safeguard top secret bases in a drastic bid to save money.

The move to slash the size of the Ministry of Defence Police force, which is responsible for securing nuclear sites, has prompted serious security fears.

Last night a defence source blasted the proposal - discovered by The Sun - as "suicide".
...
"These guys guard nuke depots and weapons silos round the clock as well as intelligence units, docks and training facilities - every sensitive military building in Britain."

Joined up government thinking or a death wish?

How angry, how quickly?

Listen to this BBC report on the IRA bombing of The Grand Hotel, Brighton in 1984. This was an attempt to kill as many of the Prime Minister and her cabinet as possible. So did you get angry at the use of the word "audacious" to describe the attack at around 23 seconds? Or did you get past that and only get angry at the reminder at around 3:17 that the convicted Brighton bomber served just 15 years of his 35 year sentence as he was released under the Good Friday Agreement? Or maybe you made it through that to the mention of "The forgiveness project" near the end of the piece.

Settled science?

The BBC's quietly report that:

"For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on? "

This is very interesting as it is one of the few times that the BBC has acknowledged that there might be a problem with the "science" of global warming. What is even more interesting is that the BBC both report that

"our climate models did not forecast it"

and that

"The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.

In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models.

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling."

So the models didn't forecast it but the models include solar variation and ocean cycles"... Hmm that's odd. Are the models faulty? If the models are not faulty then maybe the Hadley Centre could show me the climate predictions that they made 10 years ago that predicted a fall in global temperatures. Maybe the Hadley Centre could also show me where 10 years ago they discussed how solar variation and ocean cycles might negate "global warming". Maybe the Hadley Centre and other proponents of the religion of Man Made Climate Change could stop being so
adamant that they are right and we are running out of time to save the planet.

Selling the family silver

The BBC report that:

"Gordon Brown is to announce the sale of £16bn-worth of assets by the government in a bid to shore up public finances.

The prime minister will give details of initial sales that could raise £3bn - including the Tote, the Dartford crossing and the student loan book. "

Oddly the BBC are also still reporting that:

"Prime Minister Gordon Brown has painted an optimistic prediction for the economy, saying it was "simply not true" that tough times are ahead."

How far removed from reality are Gordon Brown and his cheerleaders at the BBC?

I don't see how this can be anything but dreadful news for the UK economy in general and specifically the value of Sterling. How soon before Sterling reaches parity with the Euro? Is it possible that this has been Gordon Brown and others' plan for some time, to destroy the UK economy so as to get the UK into the Euro?

By the way are all the protestations by Labour politicians that in order to enter the Euro there must be a referendum taken seriously by anyone? After all they are being made by the many of the same people who promised us a referendum on the European Constitution - "Ever get the feeling you've been conned?"*




*Yes a gratuitous John Lydon Sex Pistols reference.

Labour sleaze

The Times report that:

"A multi-millionaire ally of Gordon Brown pretended that a small flat occupied by one of his employees was his main home so he could claim £38,000 in expenses from the Lords.

Lord Paul, one of Labour’s biggest donors and a friend of the prime minister, has admitted he never even slept in the flat, despite stating it was his main residence.

The one-bedroom flat was occupied by a manager from one of Paul’s hotels who confirmed last week that the peer had never lived there while claiming the expenses.

Paul, who has a family fortune of £500m, was actually based in London, where he has lived for more than 40 years.

By saying his main home was his manager’s flat in Oxfordshire, he was able to claim cash allowances which are available only to peers who live outside the capital.

Last week Paul argued that he had been entitled to claim the flat was his home as it was “available” for his use. He said he could have moved the manager out for the night if he stayed there, but he never did so. “I don’t say that I stayed the night — I said that it was available to me,” he said. "

During the last days of the John Major this would have been headline news on the BBC, but now NOTHING. Presumably Ben Bradshaw will claim this is still indicative of pro-Conservative BBC bias...

Here come the powercuts

I know I have blogged about the coming powercuts before and made some scary predictions, but now Ofgen have predicted that: "There could be a potential shortfall in the period 2013-18 ... Life might be pretty cold."

In the case of an unusually harsh winter Britain could be forced to switch off power supplies to large factories to conserve dwindling electricity supplies for households.
This is the fault of a Labour government that has spent 12 years hiding from this issue: ignoring the need for more nuclear power stations for fear of upsetting the CND supporting wing of the party, ignoring the need for reliable cheap coal fired power stations for fear of upsetting the eco-loon wing of the party. The UK is now more vulnerable to energy supply shocks than any other major country in Europe. Whilst Germany and France have already invested in new lower-carbon power supplies, the UK will have to massively reduce demand in order to avoid power cuts.

Have you purchased your generators yet?

Barack Obama's prizes

Thanks to Theo Spark for the spot.

The Guardian newspaper and Israel (update)

It seems that The Guardian just can't help itself, following on from my piece yesterday about Denis MacEoin's letter itemising The Guardian's anti-Israel bias I see that they have been at it again. This time its in its reporting of the ridiculous decision to award Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, despite him achieving nothing in this field (yet) and the award being decided less than a month after his inauguration. The JC broke the story thus:

"The Guardian has helpfully printed a list of “everyone who has ever won the nobel peace prize”.

The source is, apparently, Nobelprize.org.
They do have a full list of all winners."

- I have published the two relevant parts of The Guardian's list at the top of this article, can you spot who's missing?

The Guardian have tried to explain the omission of Menachem Begin (Israel) as joint winner in 1978 and Yitzhak Rabin & Shimon Peres (Israel) as (joint) joint winners in 1994 thus:

"(it was down to a) technical issue during the data transfer from the site, which meant that many of the names of the joint winners of the Nobel Peace Prize were accidentally omitted, although the country of origin of the winners was not."

Really, how odd that this technical issue missed just two entries, both Israeli, one from the second column and one from the first column. I simply do no believe The Guardian's explanation.

There are several people who pointed out The Guardian's "odd" omissions in the comments that followed the original article and it is left to SimonRogers to explain:

"Hi all

It's my fault, I'm afraid. I decided where there was more than one winner to put the joint one in the second column. Unfortunately, this caused a few problems, which we've now rectified.

Please let me know if you spot any other missing names."

People are not convinced, here's a few reactions:

"Thanks for coming clean Simon.

Still strikes me as odd that anyone could look at a list that includes De Klerk AND Mandela on one line and then, on the very next line, Arafat on his own and not think there was something very wrong."

"Unfortunately, this caused a few problems

Only with the Israeli ones, eh? Very specific problem, that."

"

Simon then tries to explain away the omissions:

"Actually, we also missed John Raleigh Mott, The Quakers and the League of Red Cross Societies.To make matters worse, some of you may have noticed a java error on the page which meant we didn't see the comments until after 4pm. Sorry, but there it is. If you spot anything else, let me know."

But I still don't buy it; The Guardian has form when it comes to decrying Israel and this looks too convenient.



Note: The Guardian has updated its report to show the correct winners.

Brainwashing enviromentalist style

That's what our taxes are being spent on; scaring people with half-truths.

Now take a look at the Act on CO2 website and enjoy such rubbish as

"The sea-level rise across the UK is projected to be between 20cm and 80cm by 2100. In the worst case scenario, rises of up to 1.9 metres are possible (albeit highly unlikely)."

"The summer heat wave experienced in 2003 (which resulted in over 2,000 extra deaths in the UK and over 35,000 extra deaths across Europe) is likely to become a normal event by the 2040s or the 2050s. By the 2060s or 2070s, the intense temperatures of 2003 could become the average temperature experienced throughout much of Europe."

But best of all this one

"The scientific community agrees – climate change is happening and human activity is almost certainly the cause."

"The scientific community agrees – climate change is happening and human activity is almost certainly the cause."Really, all the scientific community, really, are you sure?

The Guardian newspaper and Israel

The Guardian's coverage of Israel and the Palestinians is even more biased than that of the BBC, and that is quite difficult. Take a read of Comment is Free or the news pages and there is a seemingly never-ending diet of anti-Israel stories. So it was with some relief that I found this reprinting of a letter by Denis MacEoin that I recommend you read. Here's a few extracts to give you a flavour:

"I know no other country in the Middle East that promotes the values I hold dearest: democracy, free speech, freedom of the press, and those rights for women, gays, and religious minorities. If I were to take you by the hand across the Middle East, from Morocco (where I have lived) to Iran (where I have lived as well), and beyond to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, those virtues would be nowhere evident. You would see no trace of democracy, you would see women oppressed, you would see young gay men dangling from ropes. Hence my deep concern when I see Israel traduced so many times in the Guardian, the very paper that should be holding it up as a flawed but dynamic model for democracy and ethical behaviour in the region.

...

I have seen with my own eyes any number of Guardian news reports slanted heavily against Israel, and a surfeit of op-eds voicing anti-Israel sentiment, including pieces written by apologists for Hamas and by two of its leaders. Hamas is without denial a virulently anti-Semitic terrorist organization whose very Charter commits it to the destruction of Israel and the fighting of jihad in preference to engaging in peace talks. The number of anti-Israel op-eds over the years has hugely outnumbered those in favour of the Jewish state. Azzam Tamimi alone has written some thirty-one pieces: this is a man who has said he wished he could be a suicide bomber in Israel. We have had large numbers of comment pieces from Ghada Karmi, a proponent of the one-state solution designed to eradicate Israel, and we have had pieces by Faisal Bodi, who famously wrote in the Guardian that Israel had no right to exist. The Guardian has published opinion pieces by two Hamas leaders, Ismail Haniyeh and Khalid Mish’al. Among other things, Mish’al has stated: ‘Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day’. He is not a man I would have in my living-room. No decent person would shake his hand. The EU and many countries have declared Hamas to be a terrorist entity: I find it hard to understand why a liberal newspaper would give publicity to the leaders of what is, quite frankly, a fascist organization.

...

I have waited to see the Guardian investigate in depth the very real evil of Palestinian terrorism, to carry a major report on the years of shelling of Sderot and Ashkelon, or even to publish and invite comment on the anti-Jewish and anti-peace Hamas Charter or the Risala Maftuha of Hizbullah.

...

I am also concerned that Guardian editors display a clear fondness for Arab and Palestinian sources than for Jewish or Israeli. On 21 March this year, Arab Media Watch held a dinner for 200 guests. Ian Black, the Guardian’s Middle East editor, was unable to attend, but sent a glowing tribute to the AMW. I would not deny that someone in Mr Black’s position should use AMW, but it’s worth saying that this organization is blatantly pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli. Their logo and name are shown in the colours of the Palestinian flag. I would have looked for some balance, perhaps with Mr Black’s honouring pro-Israel media organizations like BICOM, Just Journalism, Honest Reporting or MEMRI, but, as far as I’m aware, he has not made even a mild tribute to their work.

...

the media are awash with allegations against Israel that are simply not true. No doubt some Israeli media carry their own distortions, but that is not the point. I am concerned with the context for your reporting, which is the existence of a general anti-Israeli myth that bears close resemblance in many respects to the myths about Jews that have been around for many centuries and show signs at the moment of being revived to potentially deadly effect.

This is particularly true of much of the Islamic media and the far left in Europe and America, but many of these falsehoods have taken hold elsewhere or have come to exert a subtle influence by creating an environment in which it is easy to create report and opinion pieces like those found in the Guardian. Some of these falsehoods are just political slogans: ‘Stop the Holocaust in Gaza’ or ‘Israelis are the new Nazis’ or ‘Israel is an apartheid state’. They are emotive, they have simply no basis in fact, yet vast numbers of people, clearly unable to examine any of them in detail, believe them. Naïve British people actually believe there has been a Holocaust in Gaza and seem unable to do the simple calculations that would show it to be an outrageous lie. This creates a toxic environment, in which it is all too easy to think Israel capable of anything and to believe it would be only natural for Israelis to kill children for sport or to use their blood to make matzos (this last blood libel imagery has been used in university settings in the US).

...

The ‘massacre’ at Jenin in 2002 is still much quoted, despite the fact that a UN fact-finding mission declared that no such massacre had taken place. More recently, the ‘massacre’ of 40 children in an UNWRA school in Gaza on 6 January this year, was blazed across front pages and TV screens worldwide. Jeremy Paxman accused Israeli troops of deliberately firing in the school. In fact, as the UN later admitted, no Israeli rockets fell in the schoolyard as claimed, but in the street outside, from which Hamas had been firing. Some twelve people, not forty and not schoolchildren, died. Who will remember the true story when the lie has had such currency? Next year we may expect to see banners on the streets of London accusing Israel of ‘Massacre in UNWRA school’.

...

I am not asking you and your colleagues to become advocates of Israel or its policies. I only wish the Guardian could be a deal more fair, that it would run more stories on the positive things that happen in Israel (its treatment of religious minorities, for example, is stunning and unparalleled in the Middle East; its very real lack of racism is exemplary; and its gay rights parades an affront to all ultra-orthodox Jews and every single state in the region). And perhaps we could read more on the negative features of life in the West Bank or Gaza (honour killings of women, murders of homosexuals, the persecution of Christians?). The positive stories are readily available. At the moment, Guardian reporters go to Gaza, interview a few civilians (under the very strict gaze of Hamas minders) and report back that Israel has done this or that terrible thing. But what would you say if you knew that Hamas would have no compunction about killing you and your family if you said anything favourable to Israel? The heavy reliance on Palestinian stringers and interviewees has been skilfully studied in Stephanie Gutmann’s The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy (2005), which I strongly recommend. Its cover alone speaks volumes. It shows a Palestinian boy seemingly in the act of throwing a stone. But he is not throwing anything at anyone. He is pretending to throw a stone at Israeli troops. Next to him are perhaps fifty reporters from the world press, photographing him. It is a fake, but it will have been used. I have seen many like this. Did anyone step away from that photo-shoot, pleading that the reporters job is to tell the truth?

Let me leave you with a short and straightforward story from the recent Gaza war:

Col. Roi Elkabets, commander of an armoured brigade, told of occasions when fire was held. His troops saw “a woman, about 60 years old, walking with a white flag and six to eight children behind her, and behind them was a Hamas fighter with his gun. “We did not shoot him.”

I desperately hope to see stories like that in the Guardian in future. Israeli troops are not jack-booted SS soldiers, they are often kindly, helpful, and moral. They operate according to a strict code of ethics. Some do wrong. But soldiers in any army do wrong. The IDF is more moral than most, and Hamas has shown itself to be without any morality at all, as witnessed in this recent conflict, when it dragged members of Fatah out of their hospital beds to shoot them, when it stationed troops inside hospitals, and when it placed rocket launching pads in schools and on civilian buildings."

Happy birthday Dave

David Cameron is 43 today. The prospects look good for him becoming the next Prime Minister of this Country, but am I ready for a Prime Minister younger than me?

No crime too small

The BBC are ready to accuse Israel of another atrocity apparently:

"Two genuine zebras died of starvation earlier this year during the Israeli military offensive," and that is why now : "A zoo in Gaza has found a novel way to get around Israeli restrictions on the importation of animals by partly dyeing two donkeys so they resemble zebras."

Thos pesky Israelis, what can the BBC find to blame them for next?

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

This week's award is the first to appear as the result of a radio interview.

Cristina Odone in the 07:37 Today joint interview with her and Harriet Harman called our despicable Harriet Harman "patronising".

Harriet Harmnan "patronising" - "No shit, Sherlock"

Green shoots?

Not in the housing market where the ratings agency Fitch predicted that house prices in Britain would fall by around 30pc in total from the October 2007 peak, indicating that they have a further 17pc left to fall. The UK’s average house price-to-income ratio needs to fall further, like it did in the early 1990s, as the ratio is currently significantly higher than the long-term average.

Bye bye US Dollar

The news that China sold its first batch of sovereign bonds in Chinese yuan to foreigners last month points to the continuing demise of the US dollar. We are now in a transition period as the current global reserve currency the US dollar is gradually rivalled and then surpassed by the Chinese yuan.

So what will the effects of this change be? A worsening of the US dollar exchange rate and a hardening of the Chinese yuan. I also foresee the Euro, Yen and Sterling diminish against the Yuan, but probably increase against the dollar. The big winner will be GOLD.

“I got into the habit of paying for boys...All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excite me enormously."

Not my words, nor my interest, but those of Frédéric Mitterrand France’s culture minister. What is odd is that he made these remarks and more in a book published in his 2005 autobiography "The Bad Life" but only now is he getting any degree of grief.

"I got into the habit of paying for boys...All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excite me enormously."

"One could judge this abominable spectacle from a moral standpoint but it pleases me beyond the reasonable."

No wonder Frédéric Mitterrand has emerged as one of the most vociferous defenders of Roman Polanski.

Denouncing a traitor

Have the BBC covered the revelations in The Mail that

"Jack Jones, the firebrand union leader... was this week exposed as a KGB agent"?

" 'My contact was not a cultured or even an intelligent man,' he told the Mail yesterday.

'He was a dogmatic Communist who felt he had a sacred duty to help Soviet Russia. He had worked for the KGB for years without many in government suspecting a thing.'

So who was this shadowy figure? He was, in fact, Jack Jones, the firebrand union leader who was this week exposed as a KGB agent.

During Labour Governments in the Sixties and Seventies, the former Liverpool docker rose to lead the huge Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) and, significantly, became head of the Trades' Union Congress' International Committee, allowing him to travel freely behind the Iron Curtain.

In those days, when union leaders enjoyed beer-and-sandwich meetings at No 10, Jones had only to snap his fingers and the Government clicked its heels.

After all, Comrade Jack had the ability to call his two million members on strike and bring the country to a halt. He was once named in a public vote as the most powerful man in Britain.

Nicknamed 'the Emperor' by other union bosses, he reputedly held more sway over Labour Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan than even the favourites in their own Cabinets.

And, perhaps with an eye to the future, one of his proteges was Gordon Brown, then an upandcoming socialist sponsored as a Westminster MP by Jones's TGWU.

Little wonder that when Jack Jones died at 96 earlier this year, The Guardian wrote: 'His power and influence was immense. He never shifted from his commitment to socialist ideals . . . but always with an unflinching integrity.'

Gordon Brown described him as the 'world's greatest trade union leader'."

Is anyone surprised that a leading Trade Unionist of the 1960s and 1970s was a traitor to the UK? Is anyone surprised that Gordon Brown lauded this traitor? Is anyone surprised that the BBC don't think the story is newsworthy?

Allocating blame?

The BBC Today programme's piece on the Leeds refuse collectors strike was interesting for two things. First that according to the report the cause was the local councils decision to equalise pay for men and women; now who introduced the legislation requiring this equalisation? I thought it was this Labour government, but of course they cannot be blamed for anything on the BBC - Afghanistan, Iraq and not doing enough to fight Climate Change, excepted. Second was the reporter saying that the council had said that nobody would lose 30% of their salary but that a striker had said he had it in writing. Did the reporter ask to see this documentary proof or do the BBC just take the word of a striker on trust?

Glenn Beck, Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg

A fascinating story; what really happened on that Amtrak train and why were Whoopi Goldberg and Barbara Walters so keen to attack Glenn Beck? I think we all know the answer to the latter question...

I've got 20 minutes to save the world and the Post Office is closed!

Dr Who related... More to follow...

In the meantime here's the new Dr Who logo

Gold and silver

The gold price closed up 3.3% at $1038 per oz yesterday with silver up 4.4% at $16.95 per oz. Is the start of the big move? I think that there will be some profit taking soon and then gold will move upwards in stages.

If a party leader's university background is that important

The BBC are enjoying getting their teeth into David Cameron's Bullingdon Club membership, Jeremy Paxman seemed obsessed by it during his, now apparently edited, interview with Boris Johnson. I have yet to hear an interviewer raise Gordon Brown's university activities with Gordon Brown, so I will here.

Whilst student rector at Edinburgh University Gordon Brown edited a pamphlet called Alternative Edinburgh. Here are some extracts from what has come to be known as the "freeloader's charter", so you can see how Gordon Brown's mind worked even at such an early age (my comments):
"If you're British and can give an address, free money is available from social security, basic £5.80 per week." "free money" I am not sure Gordon Brown has even now worked out that social security is not "free money"

"Social and medical benefits are your right, not charity hand-outs, so never be reticent about claiming them. For whatever reason the so-called welfare state was brought into being, it can and must be used to its full extent." That phrase "must be used to its full extent" reminds me of the Cloward-Piven strategy; "Cloward and Piven calculated that persuading even a fraction of potential welfare recipients to demand their entitlements would bankrupt the system. The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces … for major economic reform at the national level."

How to get a free bath: "Sit in the lobby until reception is busy, then walk quickly upstairs or into the lift. Even the plushest hotels have at least one public bathroom to a floor." Or become an MP and get the public to pay.

How to get a free meal: "Con your way to asking for a glass of water or sit beside drinkers and they will feed you for nothing." Or become an MP?

How to get into parties on the cheap: attend a party with "a carrier bag of empty cans with two half-bricks at the bottom". I can imagine Gordon Brown pulling this stroke well into his thirties; he seems the sort of person who's mean with his own money but wildly generous with everybody else's

When caught by police attempting to con someone, the booklet advises, "You may think you are guilty but legal advice can show otherwise." The now almost standard Labour defence in prototype form.


Maybe someone should point out to Gordon Brown that Social Security is not "free money", it is paid for out of hard-working people's taxes. Clearly Gordon Brown's views have barely altered, as he has spent the last 12 years building up a society of freeloaders and buying the votes of more by giving some of their taxes back in the form of benefits.

In my opinion Gordon Brown's past as a propagandist for freeloading is even more relevant to his nature now than David Cameron's membership of The Bullingdon Club is to his world view. However I doubt that Jeremy Paxman will ever raise it with Gordon Brown or Channel 4 commission a documentary drama about it.

The drip, drip, drop of lefty bias

Listening to the Today programme is getting harder and harder as the drip, drip, drip of lefty liberal bias is so insistent. One case this morning was the piece billed as

"Prison governors are urging ministers to scrap prison sentences of less than a year, to ease overcrowding. The Prison Governors Association (PGA) is to debate the idea at its annual conference. Home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw, and the President of the PGA, Paul Tidball, discuss the possible reforms."

The statistic that kept being pushed was that 60% of those who serve prison sentences go on to re-offend, so the conclusion was to cancel all prison sentences of less than 12 months. Of course the question not asked, as it might not be helpful, was what percentage of convicted criminals serving "community sentences" re-offend. Two other questions would be what percentage of convicted criminals serving community sentences re-offend whilst serving their sentence? I am pretty sure this figure would be higher than the re-offending figure for jailed criminals.

Hugo Chavez avoids the question

Hugo Chavez shows his skills as a question avoider.

The UN and Iran & Israel

The IAEA’s chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, emphasised last month that the agency had “no concrete proof” of a military dimension to Iran’s programme. He also said that "Israel is number one threat to Middle East" with its nuclear arms.

By way of contrast I read today in "Excerpts from Internal IAEA Document on Alleged Iranian Nuclear Weaponization" that Iran has the know-how to produce a nuclear bomb and may already have tested a detonation system small enough to fit into the warhead of a medium-range missile. This is based partly on evidence thought to have been smuggled out of Iran by the wife of a spy recruited by German intelligence.

Does anyone seriously believe that Iran has purely peaceful motives for its nuclear programme?

Hotmail passwords compromised

Neowin report that:

"Neowin has received information regarding a possible Windows Live Hotmail "hack" or phishing scheme where password details of thousands of Hotmail accounts have been posted online.

An anonymous user posted details of the accounts on October 1 at pastebin.com, a site commonly used by developers to share code snippets. The details have since been removed but Neowin has seen part of the list posted and can confirm the accounts are genuine and most appear to be based in Europe. The list details over 10,000 accounts starting from A through to B, suggesting there could be additional lists. Currently it appears only accounts used to access Microsoft's Windows Live Hotmail have been posted, this includes @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com accounts."

Information from other sources suggests that the compromised accounts are @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com but are only accounts that have fallen foul of a phishing attack.

I would still recommend that you change your hotmail password NOW.

Overcompensating?

It seems that there may be a surprising reason for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hatred of Israel, apart from the requirements of fundamentalist Islam that is. It seems that:

"A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth. "

Poor chap, it must be hard to be of Jewish descent and be a credible spewer of fundamentalist Islamic bile; mind Ahmadinejad does manage quite well.

Gold - that's odd

Here's an odd story about gold sales in the USA, it comes via Theo Spark from Rico:

"I doubt very many people have noticed, apart from a handful of coin collectors, but the US Mint has 'temporarily suspended' production of 1oz silver and gold bullion coins.

...

I really had to admire the clarity of our Government's language on their website. Get a load of this:

- "production has been temporarily suspended because of unprecedented demand...the US Mint is required by public law to produce these coins in quantities sufficient to meet public demand..."

Did you get that? Due to demand, we had to halt production because the law requires us to meet demand."

Now why would demand for gold be increasing?

Democracy?

I have had a bad night's sleep due to fears and ideas swirling around my head and my blogging today will be very, very light as I have a tough work day.

The idea that we live in a democracy is one that is quite hard to give up as without it, what is the point of campaigning, writing and arguing. However it has been long apparent that their are forces within this country, and without, that demand victory and power and only believe in democracy if the vote goes their way. In the UK the Labour party and its supporters took power in 1997 and all opponents were expected to just 'suck it up' and accept the will of the people. The BBC and much else of the media and population were taken in by the smarm of Blair and cowed by the veiled (or otherwise) threats of Campbell and Mandelson. Of course in the case of the BBC a Labour government was greeted by the opening of champagne bottles on election night as their hard work destroying the Conservative government had finally paid off. 12 years on and this Labour government have proved even more incompetent and destructive as any previous Labour government and the UK is in real trouble. However the BBC, as shown by Andrew Marr's contrasting interviews with Gordon Brown and David Cameron, have no doubts that the continuation of Labour government of the UK is their aim. Within the UK the army of state employees has been carefully increased by Gordon Brown, with our money. An army expected to vote Labour and ally itself with those on state benefits to ensure permanent Labour governments. The carefully set-up Quangocracy will ensure that if by any fluke a Conservative government is elected, it will have enemies embedded everywhere to slow it down, fight it at every turn and work for the return of a Labour government as soon as possible.

Meanwhile outside of the UK, the EU has concentrated on accruing as much power to itself as possible. The EU Constitution was voted down by countries allowed the vote so its powers were re-written as amendments to the existing treaties in attempt to avoid any referenda. Ireland's courts saw through this and demanded a referendum, which the NO vote won but this was not satisfactory and the EU made some dubious concessions made them vote again and won a scared YES from the Irish. It is obvious to all that the UK population would vote no if asked to support the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum so we will not be asked for our approval. The Czechs will be bullied over and over again to ratify the Treaty before there is any chance of a Conservative election victory. Once ratified whoever wins elections in the UK will be of little importance as power will be centralised in Brussels like never before. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the return of Peter Mandelson was brought back into the Uk government to shore up Gordon Brown for just long enough for the Irish and Czechs to ratify the Lisbon Treaty.

So do we really live in a country where however we feel, however we vote; nothing changes? I fear that this might indeed be the case.Even if David Cameron's Conservatives manage to overcome the BBC's bile and win the coming general election, it is easily possible that they will find they have to answer to Tony Blair as unelected President of the EU and Gordon Brown as (unelected) head of the new more powerful G20.

Maybe Gordon Brown's prattling about a New World Order was more than just rhetoric. Maybe it is our future to live in a world where undemocratic supranational bodies have more power than elected governments.

The BBC in full ant-Conservative mode this morning

Andrew Marr's interview of David Cameron and most of The Politics Show showed how the BBC/Labour alliance will play the game from now on. Attack the Conservatives from the left and the right, try and get the word "extremist" associated with the Conservative party and portray David Cameron as a rich toff.

A tough weekend

David Cameron and his team will have a tough weekend (and beyond) to cope with. First the Irish were bullied into voting YES on the Lisbon Treaty, I make that 1:1 shouldn't there now be a decider? This will allow the BBC to try and open up as many splits as they can during the Conservative Party Conference; the BBC/Labour alliance needs to make up ground fast - expect the BBC to invite as many Euro-sceptics as they can into the studios next week and to concentrate on the EU in all interviews. Second Gordon Brown has folded and agreed to debated, with conditions, he and Labour have nothing to lose - they will therefore be dangerous.

The only film of Anne Frank

"July 22 1941. The girl next door is getting married. Anne Frank is leaning out of the window of her house in Amsterdam to get a good look at the bride and groom. It is the only time Anne Frank has ever been captured on film. At the time of her wedding, the bride lived on the second floor at Merwedeplein 39. The Frank family lived at number 37, also on the second floor. The Anne Frank House can offer you this film footage thanks to the cooperation of the couple."

Seeing that face looking out of the second floor window/balcony is a really odd experience for me. I first went to Amsterdam back in the 1970s and I found the Anne Frank museum very moving. I have been back to the museum quite a few times since, although not for some years now, but the last time it got too much for me.

"I'm essentially mad, mad, mad, mad, mad!"

A reminder of Rory Bremner's brilliant Gordon Brown as Mika parody

"I want to talk to you
The last time we talked Mr. Brown you reduced me to tears
I promise you it won't happen again.

Ding!

Do i attract you, do I repulse you
With my queasy smile
Am I too scary, are you too wary
Do I fill you with bile
I could be wholesome, I could be loathsome
'cause i'm a little bit shy
Why don't you like me
Why don't you like me without making me try

I tried to go on the telly, hee
but my looks were too bad, aah
now I act like Machiavelli, emm
I'm essentially mad, mad, mad, mad, mad!

I could be brown
I could be blue
I could be violent and cry
I could be hurtful
I could be purple
I could be anything I like
Gotta be green, gotta be mean
gotta be everything more
Why don't you like me
Why don't you like me should I just head out the door?

Getting angry doesn't solve anything!

Ding!

How can I help ya
How can I help ya how can I change how you vote
Helping the workers helping the Gurkhas being a bit less remote.
Why don't you like me
Why don't you like me, why don't I like myself
Feeling rejected never elected will be I be left on the shelf

I tried to go on the telly, hee
but my looks were too bad, aah
now I act like Machiavelli, emm
I'm essentially mad...

I could be brown
I could be blue
I could be violent and cry
I could be hurtful
I could be purple
I could be anything I like
Gotta be green, gotta be clean
gotta be everything more
Why don't you like me, why don't you like me
Why don't you head out the door.


I'll put her down as a maybe? (cheesy smile) "

Is Sinitta Jewish?

Sinitta celebrates Sukkot or else it's something to do with the X-Factor...

If Sinitta is the lulav, would she mind if I gave her a shake? BTW where does she keep the etrog?

Operation "destroy Cameron" (Update)

Further to this from July when I reported that:

"A Channel 4 programme not one of the BBC's, but I am sure the BBC will find a way of publicising it. The Independent report that:

"When Boris met Dave will dramatise the school and university years of the Conservative Party leader and his friend and political fellow-traveller, Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. This period in the two Old Etonians' lives is widely known for an infamous mid-Eighties Oxford University photograph, which shows the pair posing in the blue tailcoats and mustard-coloured waistcoats of the notorious Bullingdon Club.

The 90-minute documentary will be shown on More 4 in the autumn, prompting complaints from Tory MPs that it may influence voters in the run-up to the next general election. Philip Davies, a member of the House of Commons Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, said the timing of the programme left Channel 4 open to "accusations they are pursuing an agenda". "

The "left" in the UK are worried that despite all their hard work of destroying the credibility of the Conservative party, the voters are turning to that party. The answer - go into overdrive, attack on every front, after all to let the "nasty party" back into power would be a crime. "

Well I have news... When Boris Met Dave is to be broadcast on More 4 next Wednesday October 7 at 9pm, completely coincidentally David Cameron's speech to the Conservative Conference is on the Thursday afternoon after the broadcast.

"The smart way to keep people passive & obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow very lively debate within that..."

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."

Not my words but those of the darling of the left Noam Chomsky. I wonder if the BBC have been using those words of his as their operational template for the last 20 years.

Maybe the BBC also agree with Noam Chomsky that "supporters of Israel are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction" and that "Israel's very clear choice of expansion over security may well lead to that consequence"

"I firmly believe that repression can be a great, civilising instrument for good."

Not my words but those of the BBC's Andrew Marr. You can read more from the ever so liberal Andrew Marr in The Guardian. Here's some more

"Stamp hard on certain 'natural' beliefs for long enough and you can almost kill them off. The police are first in line to be burdened further, but a new Race Relations Act will impose the will of the state on millions of other lives too. "

and also

"What then can be done (to defeat racism)? (Apart, of course, from widespread and vigorous miscegenation ("s the mixing of different racial groups, that is, marrying, cohabiting, having sexual relations and having children with a partner from outside one's racially or ethnically defined group."), which is the best answer, "

Delightful chap and without a hint of scandal around him...

Freedom of Information?

The BBC are pleased to report that their vile anti-Israel bias can remain hidden

"A bid to force publication of a review by the BBC of its Middle East coverage has been rejected in the High Court.

London lawyer Steven Sugar wanted the Balen report, which was drawn up in 2004, to be revealed under the Freedom of Information Act.

But Mr Justice Irwin ruled that, as the material was held "for the purposes of journalism, art or literature", the corporation had no duty to disclose it.

...

In 2004, senior news editor Malcolm Balen examined hundreds of hours of television and radio broadcasts to compile the 20,000-word report.

Mr Sugar, from Putney, south London, wanted it to be part of the debate about alleged anti-Israeli bias at the BBC.

He has argued that the Freedom of Information Act was badly drafted and prevented disclosure of material which should be publicly available.

But the BBC said the report was always intended as an internal review of programme content, to inform future output.

It has said it was vital for independent journalism that debates among its staff about how it covers stories do not have to be opened up to the public gaze.

In his judgment on the Steven Sugar case, the judge said he had taken account of the fact that the BBC was a public body under the Act which was publicly funded, adding that there was a public interest in accessing information about its activities.

But he also said there was a public interest in preserving the freedom of journalism as well as creative and artistic activity.

He told the court: "Different views may legitimately be taken about these questions, particularly at the margins or where the principles collide.

"The resolution is for Parliament, not for the courts or the tribunal. The resolution is contained within the proper meaning of the language of the statute."

Welcoming the ruling, a spokesman for the corporation said: "The BBC's position is that free and impartial journalism is vital to our viewers and listeners and is at the heart of public service broadcasting.

"If we are not able to pursue our journalism freely and have honest debate and analysis over how we are covering important issues, then how effectively we can serve the public will be diminished." "

Dithering Gordon?

Apparently the BBC, ITV and BSkyB have written to the three main party leaders setting out the details of their proposal to each produce and broadcast their own debate, selecting the chair themselves. This would mean not one but three debates, one shown live on each network - with delayed coverage on the others.

So far David Cameron and Nick Clegg have agreed to appear in such debates whilst Gordon "courage" Brown has just said that he had made up whether to participate or not in a live broadcast but that now was not the right time to discuss the matter.

Mr Cameron has accused Gordon Brown of "dithering" over the issue, something that is of course totally out of character for the decisive Mr Brown.


I have my doubts over these debates mostly because so much depends upon the choice of debate moderator; the BBC would be most likely to choose David Dimbleby which I cannot see being to the benefit of any party other than Labour.

Gilad Shalit is alive

But still held hostage, not that the Western media seem especially upset by this fact.

It's Rio

Rio de Janeiro will host the 2016 Olympics. The first Olympics to take place in South America and just two years after Brazil hosts the World Cup.

Has the gloss rubbed off Barack Obama?

It seems only a few months since Barack Obama could do no wrong, so I am sure that the Chicago Olympics 2016 team thought he would be an asset to their bid; maybe as big an asset as Tony Blair was to the London 2012 bid. Well it seems they were wrong as Chicago was the first city to be eliminated from the voting process.

The BBC must be in shock

"0926: Chicago entered today slight favourites to win the 2016 Games, lest we forget - although many will concede this year's race is just too close to call. As well as the Obamas' presence, the likes of basketball legend Michael Jordan, TV talk show host Proah Winfrey and secretary of state Hillary Clinton have all lent their support - and as shown by Tony Blair's influence in 2005 and Vladimir Putin's in 2007, personalities can be absolutely crucial to a bid team's success.

...

BBC sports news correspondent James Munro: "The Chicago bid really came alive when the Obamas came to the fore in their presentation - it is now a question of whether their impact is big enough to sway the IOC voters to their city."

...

0955: Here's how the news wires are reporting Chicago's bid - and no surprises for guessing the Obamas are big, big news. "Led by President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, Chicago made a heartfelt and, at times, very personal plea for the 2016 Olympics," reported AP. Reuters opened their review of the bid with: "Chicago played its two trump cards on Friday, US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle both making impassioned speeches." And the AFP report mused: "US President Barack Obama took a brief respite on Friday from a packed political agenda to visit Copenhagen on a mission to capture the 2016 Olympics for his cherished hometown of Chicago... he is taking somewhat of a political risk in putting his presidential prestige on the line."

...

1015: So, Tokyo - whose presentation was kick-started by a 15-year-old gymnast, underlining the bid's desire to involve the children of the city should the 2016 Games be awarded them - are just wrapping up their 45-minute stand in Copenhagen, but many believe they will really have to pull something out of the fire if they are to rival the two cities considered by many to be the front-runners - Chicago and Rio de Janeiro. However, as BBC Sport's Matt Slater pointed out in his blog in August, "my guess is that we'll be left with the same equation: the IOC's heart calling for Copacabana but its head worrying about crime and passing up the riches on offer in Chicago - a confusion that might just let in Madrid or Tokyo."

...

1210: By way of an indication of just how fleeting US President Obama's visit to Copenhagen was, Air Force One has just departed Denmark. A fleeting visit, yes, but also one that underlines Obama's crucial support of the Chicago bid. Will it make all the difference?

- A flight from the USA to Copenhagen to deliver a speech each and then straight back to the USA, presumably AirForce 1 produces no CO2 -

...

1305: In Chicago, Amy Jacobson reporter for WLS Radio: "Optimism is growing here in Chicago especially after that wonderful and emotional closing speech by Michelle Obama. I'm down on Daley Plaza, where they are getting ready for a huge party - everyone here expects to win. They are going to broadcast the decision live in the heart of the city and we are expecting thousands of people to come down and cheer on Chicago."

...

- And after the vote -

"BBC News' Adam Brookes in Chicago: "The shock of Chicago's elimination was greater for the fact that it came in the first round. And greater for the fact that President Obama had taken valuable hours from his packed and tense political schedule to travel to Copenhagen. His legendary powers of persuasion will be said to have failed him, though in reality it will be Chicago's bid that failed him. Nonetheless, this is a moment which allows the president's detractors to allege waning prestige on the part of his presidency. And it will raise questions about the political advice that he is receiving.""

It must be hard for the BBC to understand that Barack Obama may not be the world's favourite politician. I think people are realising that like Tony Blair in the UK he's spin and lies.

Very scary Climate Change prediction from TIME

"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval.

...

Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the ... trend.

...

Whatever the cause of the ... trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic."

Scary stuff, I am deeply concerned... Well I would be were it not of the fact that those are extracts from a TIME Magazine article from 1974. The article concludes:

"The earth's current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries—the U.S., Canada and Australia —global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."

Why is the 2000's obsession with Global Warming/Man Made Climate Change any more credible than the mid 1970's obsession with Global Cooling?


Thanks to No Parasan for the spot.

Is it 1976-1979 all over again?

The last Labour government collapsed following Britain facing financial crisis from 1976. The Labour government was forced to apply to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a loan of nearly $4 billion. In return the IMF insisted on deep cuts in public expenditure, greatly affecting economic and social policy.

Today I read in The Guardian that (my emphasis):

"Britain was served notice by the International Monetary Fund today that reforms to healthcare and pensions will be needed to repair the long-term damage to public finances caused by the global recession.

The IMF is in favour of higher government spending to support activity through the most serious downturn since the second world war, but believes governments will have to take stringent steps to deal with their debt. Olivier Blanchard, the IMF's economic counsellor, said the UK and other countries running big deficits had to take measures which improved the medium-term sustainability of the debt.

Asked specifically about the UK's financial health, Blanchard warned that action would be needed once the crisis was over. "That means reforms of the retirement system; that means reforms of the healthcare system. These reforms have basically to be confronted. The idea of (just) introducing these fiscal rules and not doing these reforms is a joke.""

Once again a Labour government takes the UK to the brink of financial collapse, this time it is far far worse than 1976-1979, when will the electorate learn?

Is today the last chance to stop the EU juggernaut?

The Irish go back to the polls as they gave the wrong answer last time. The big battalions of the EU have done their best to persuade the Irish that a "No" vote would not be in their interests and so if all goes to the EU's plan the Lisbon Treaty will be ratified by all except the Czechs and the Poles and it's only the Czechs that might delay this Treaty for more than a month or so. The Mail reports that

"(Tony) Blair is set to become EU President within weeks if Ireland votes 'Yes' in its referendum on the Lisbon Treaty tomorrow. The former prime minister's candidacy for the new post will be rushed through as quickly as possible, according to government sources."

Rushed to ensure that an incoming Conservative government can do nothing about the Treaty.

So people of Ireland - vote YES and get Blair, is that what you really want?


For more on where the ratification process really is, take a look at Your Freedom and Ours.

Taking the Bacon

I was unfortunate that I turned on my radio late last night as I drove home and heard 5-10 minutes of the most ridiculous discussion on BBC 5Live. It seemed that Richard Bacon and guests were discussing whether or not the BBC was now biased in favour of the Conservatives, the only evidence seemed to be that Boris Johnson had appeared on Eastenders and Gordon Brown and Ken Livingstone had not. The discussion also seemed to decide that 5Live itself might now be biased in favour of the Conservatives.

Let nobody be fooled, this is part of the new Labour narrative that they are the underdogs, that everyone is against them and that it just isn't fair. It is probably only a matter of time before Harriet Harman gets up and threatens to "thcream and thcream 'till I'm thick" unless BBC coverage of the Labour party reverts to the near adulation of the early Blair years.

A reasoned speech to the United Nations

Much publicity was given by the British media to the recent speeches at the United Nations by Libya's Gaddafi and Iran's Ahmadinejad, both less than pleasant rulers of less than pleasant undemocratic, former or current terrorist sponsoring regimes. A speech that got little or no attention was that of the democratically elected Prime Minister of Israel - Benjamin Netanyahu. So here it is, do take the time to read it.

"Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland.

I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.

The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events.

Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth. Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.

Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. Is this a lie?

A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler’s deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?

This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie?

And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie? One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents, her father’s two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?

Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honour to your countries.

But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?

A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state.

What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations! Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. You're wrong.

History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.

This Iranian regime is fuelled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries. In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Muslims and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times.

Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated. The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization.

It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death.

The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century. The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day. Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope. The pace of progress is growing exponentially.

It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone, decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few years to get from the personal computer to the internet.

What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.

I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances – by leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and biology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment. These innovations the world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise.

But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after an horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind. That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.

The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?

Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism?

Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?

The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?


Ladies and Gentlemen,

The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.

For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks. We heard nothing – absolutely nothing – from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one.

In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis. We didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare. You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent.

Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond. But how should we have responded? Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country's civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II. During that war, the allies levelled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians – Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers.

That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in ambulances. Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas.

We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave. Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's civilian population from harm's way.

Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel. A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.

By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth. What a perversion of justice.


Delegates of the United Nations,

Will you accept this farce?

Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgement against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat.

If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from densely populated areas, you will win immunity. And in condemning Israel, this body would also deal a mortal blow to peace. Here's why.

When Israel left Gaza, many hoped that the missile attacks would stop. Others believed that at the very least, Israel would have international legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defence. What legitimacy? What self-defence?

The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back our right of self-defence now accuses us, my people, my country - of war crimes? And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defence. What a travesty!

Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report is a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel or will you stand with the terrorists?

We must know the answer to that question now. Now and not later. Because if Israel is again asked to take more risks for peace, we must know today that you will stand with us tomorrow. Only if we have the confidence that we can defend ourselves can we take further risks for peace.


Ladies and Gentlemen,

All of Israel wants peace.

Any time an Arab leader genuinely wanted peace with us, we made peace. We made peace with Egypt led by Anwar Sadat. We made peace with Jordan led by King Hussein. And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my government, and the people of Israel, will make peace. But we want a genuine peace, a defensible peace, a permanent peace. In 1947, this body voted to establish two states for two peoples – a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted that resolution. The Arabs rejected it.

We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years: Say yes to a Jewish state. Just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel. This is the land of our forefathers.

Inscribed on the walls outside this building is the great Biblical vision of peace: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war no more." These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,800 years ago as he walked in my country, in my city, in the hills of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem.

We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland. As deeply connected as we are to this land, we recognize that the Palestinians also live there and want a home of their own. We want to live side by side with them, two free peoples living in peace, prosperity and dignity.

But we must have security. The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel.

That is why a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized. We don't want another Gaza, another Iranian backed terror base abutting Jerusalem and perched on the hills a few kilometres from Tel Aviv.

We want peace.

I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the forces of terror, led by Iran, that seek to destroy peace, eliminate Israel and overthrow the world order. The question facing the international community is whether it is prepared to confront those forces or accommodate them.

Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the "confirmed unteachability of mankind," the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them.

Churchill bemoaned what he called the "want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong.”

I speak here today in the hope that Churchill's assessment of the "unteachibility of mankind" is for once proven wrong.

I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history -- that we can prevent danger in time.

In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago, let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril, secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come.

Benjamin Netanyahu
Speech to the UN's General Assembly
September 24th, 2009"

Never too young to be brainwashed in the land of the Obamamessiah (update)

Further to my post about the "Dear Leader" cult in the US.


Now I see that Glenn Beck has picked up on the same piece of video...

Does this sort of Obama-worship worry you at all?

A nasty look from a nasty man leading a nasty political party

This clip follows the one I blogged here of the Adam Bouton Sky interview with Gordon Brown.

And this one shows a bit more of the Studio reaction from Kay Burley than my original post.


Isn't Gordon Brown an absolute charmer?

The Laffer Curve and why Gordon Brown and David Cameron should pay attention to it

Burning Our Money has the story and very well written it is too. Here is their conclusion and one that I agree with:

"So given that Gordo's new tax is going to make his fiscal black hole even blacker and even deeper, you may be asking why he's going to do it?

You're not? Well, I'm going to tell you anyway.

You see - and brace yourself because this may come as a shock - our leader is an unreconstructed socialist. He not only believes that government is better at spending our money than we are ourselves, he also believes that high incomes for the few are A Bad Thing.

So although this measure will end up costing all of us, and although we'll all have to pay more taxes, and although we'll all be poorer as a result, we will benefit from knowing that the rich have been whacked good and hard. According to the IFS, there are only 350,000 of those bastards, and we all know they've got it coming. Think how much better we'll feel as we pay our own eye-watering taxes.

The thing is though, Mr Cam is not a socialist. If reports are to be believed, he's a Tory. And Tories... well, they're supposed to believe in prosperity and individual effort and enterprise and all that other stuff.

Aren't they?"

"Best placed" economy?

Alex Masterley informs us that:

"The International Monetary Fund has just listed the UK as the country "most susceptible" to having its economic recovery derailed by a lack of credit in its global financial stability report.

The Fund says there aren't enough domestic resources to finance government borrowing and private sector credit, and that funding gap would represent about 15 per cent of national income in the UK during 2009 and 2010, compared with 2.4 per cent in the US and 3 per cent in the eurozone. This year the Bank of England has filled the gap with its £175bn programme of quantitative easing, creating money out of thin air to buy assets, predominantly government bonds.

"In terms of regional vulnerability, the United Kingdom appears most susceptible to credit constraints under our stylised scenario, given its significant reliance on the banking channel and the projected sharp decline in domestic bank balance sheets, as well as substantial public financing needs," says the IMF.

The choice for is either or all of

* more quantitative easing, in which case expect the value of sterling to drop further, making imports and the cost of living more expensive for all,
* drastically less spending by government and the private sector, but mostly current spending by government because that is where the biggest shortfall and hence most of the funding gap arises, which will hit the public sector worst immediately but damage the prospects of UK business through lack of investment and will keep unemployment high; or
* much higher interest rates to attract foreign lenders to put their money into sterling, in which case businesses and homeowners get it in the neck and few new jobs will be created.

Either way you are probably screwed. Sounds like the scrag end of the last Labour government."

I couldn't have put it better mysepf Alex, so I didn't!

Bias included at no extra charge

The BBC have brought back Poll Tracker and very interesting it is too, maybe now they'll also bring back Poll Watch. Anyway the Poll Tracker allows you to choose which pollster's polls to view and the BBC defaults the choice to YouGov. Why YouGov? They are alphabetically the last not the first... Could the reason be that they show the smallest gap between Conservatives and Labour in their latest poll - 13% to ComRes's 16%, ICM's 17%, MORI's 17% and Populus's 14%? Maybe there is an innocent explanation but with the BBC's record somehow I doubt it.

Eduction, eduction, eduction

Is there anything that this Labour government cannot screw up? Take a look at their latest Party Political Broadcast here on the BBC's site. You can either watch it all or skip to 2:31....

"Eductional Maintenance Allowance has helped 2.8 million teenagers"

Well done New Labour, it looks as though your education policies are really having an effect...

China's 60th anniversary

The BBC report that:

"China is staging mass celebrations to mark 60 years since the Communist Party came to power.

Vast lines of tanks, soldiers and missile launchers are being paraded through the capital Beijing.

President Hu Jintao has appeared on the rostrum at Tiananmen Square in a black Mao-style tunic, seen by analysts as a symbol of his control of the military.

He was joined by his predecessor Jiang Zemin, Premier Wen Jiabao and other senior leaders.

After a 60-gun salute, the Chinese flag was formally raised in the centre of the historic square - where revolutionary leader Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949.

The military parade, expected to show previously unseen missile technology, followed a drive-by inspection of the armed forces and a speech by President Hu which lauded China's progress.

The president, speaking from the same spot where Mao Zedong had stood 60 years ago, claimed China had a bright future, had made global economic strides and would unite all cultures and ethnicities within it.

Security forces have been deployed in force across Beijing, ahead of a pageant featuring ordinary citizens, which will also take place in Tiananmen Square.

Some 30,000 people have been invited to watch the events, but others are being encouraged to stay at home and watch it on TV to "avoid complications".

Armed police in body armour have taken up positions at major road junctions in the capital, with snipers spotted on buildings along the parade route on Chang'an Avenue.

Roads have been blocked off, the international airport closed and the subway disrupted.

Many shops and businesses have been closed along the route and a new portrait of Mao Zedong has been installed in Tiananmen Square.

Some reports say the extravaganza will use twice as many fireworks as featured in the opening ceremony to last year's Olympic Games.

National Day is an annual highlight for the Chinese government, but extra effort has been made to mark the 60th anniversary of what China sees as the start of its transformation from an impoverished country into a global contender.

On the eve of the festivities, the country's leaders held a dinner for 4,000 people in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Premier Wen Jiabao praised China's development and said he was looking forward to celebrating "the centenary of New China" in 40 years' time."

Anything missing from this article replete with mentions of Chairman Mao?

How about a mention of the around 50 million people killed by the Chinese regime since 1949? How about a mention of the many millions tortured by the Chinese regime and forced to give up their "intellectual" jobs to work on the land as "workers"? How about a mention of those killed in Tiananmen Square? How about a mention of the human rights abuses that occurred around the Beijing Olympics?

Adolph Hitler's Nazi Germany killed around 7 million people and the regime is rightly abhorred. Stalin's Russia and Mao's China killed many many more and shhhh hardly a word of protest is allowed. Why? Maybe something to do with the backgrounds of a large proportion of the BBC and Labour Party leadership; once a Marxist, always a Marxist?

Rats rejoining the sinking ship

News that Alastair Campbell is to return to the Labour election campaign team and that Tony Blair would campaign for a Brown/Labour general election victory brings up so many thoughts of "rats" and "sinking ships".

In this case it is the Sewer Rat (Campbell) joining the sinking ship first and then the God (botherer) Rat Blair returning to help spread the poison. With Blair and Campbell back to joining Brown Rat (rattus moral compassus) and Black (Arts) Rat Mandelson, the four people most responsible for launching and steering to power the New Labour Project will be back at its helm; how fitting that they should be so as it sinks below the blue tide.