Saturday 1 August 2015

Jamie's Italian Visit

To respond to an invite from Younger Boy and his pregnant wife for a meal, mainly in celebration of his mother's birthday. I get to go along as a passenger! Jamie's Italian was the chosen venue; not going out much, we have no experience of this establishment and the youngsters not much either I think. Sitting outside, waiting to meet up with our hosts the overriding impression, through the full length windows was of a canteen. People sitting in the window would have relied on the forebearance and goodwill of those behind, to rise. Younger boy arrives and we enter, waiting 5 minutes or so for front of house to return to their station. This allowed a broader view into the room and confirmed that, unless you removed the bar and constricted the kitchen space, you couldn't fit another chair in. The decor semi-industrial with cable trays and air conditioning ducting visible in the naked ceiling. Shown to our fixed table and banquettes, we decided who goes where. Hint to the establishment; the success of fixed bench seating relies on the smooth surface of the seating making a glide across easy. Making the seat ribbed is no help at all. After an inelegant scramble we were in. Ambience gets 6/10. It was a little crowded (the place was very busy) but we were comfortable at the side of the room amd I quite liked the lighting. The piped music added nothing, but the staff seemed to like it. Ah yes, the staff. Now I like the ebullient, matey, cheeky-chap character that is Jamie Oliver on the telly. I am less sure about a waitress arriving with bon mots and a level 7 on the puppy excitement scale. A pleasant, professional manner would seem appropriate and if the clients bounce back with some amusing repartee, which is then responded to with wit and charm, would be the sign of an excellent, on the ball employee of a competent and thoughtful establishment. Now look, before this seems like a massive negative, let me give you the staff score now: 10/10. The service was efficient and attentive, the staff constantly busy. That the food delivery was slowish was due to the kitchen it would seem. We arrived at 7:30 and left at 10:20: we certainly were not hurried out. The food. This is the primary reason for dining, admitting good company is also a major contributor, however, the restaurant cannot be responsible for that so cannot be criticised. Our company was the best, so we only need consider our choices of plate. Well I say plate, my excited boy related that he had had their famous 'plank' starter so ordered that for us. I wasn't intending on having a starter so was not concerned with the selection. This spread of meats and cheeses, basically, can be for two or more persons. The waitress suggested a two person plank would probably do as a starter for four, many found it so. This was a good call on her part as, at best only three were likely to participate. It was elevated by the simple measure of three tins of Ragu from the store cupboard being placed on the table to rest the plank on, these presumably saving the kitchen the drag of having to make a tomato sauce themselves. I love mozarella, but it came smeared with chilli or something, so I gave it a miss. The girls dominated the bread elements, but I did try a proferred nacho. These we were told were Jamie's version; deep fried ravioli of mozarella and aged pecorino, resting in their bowl in chilli jam. Quite why you would go to the trouble of deep frying something, only to deliver it soggy is beyond me, but I had no idea at the time what was in the parcel (the menu's had been taken so I couldn't check) either. The chilli jam didn't enhance the whole either by moisture or taste, it made it quite unpleasant. Offered the tin of pork scratchings I went to pluck one, but instead got a tiny crust. Eating it, I got a nice crunch and then a lovely flood of toasted pork flavour. Then a bizarre oily, slimy after taste came on, so I didn't seek to investigate further by repeating the experience. When the waitress got the impression we had finished with the starter she did comment on the amount remaining, as only the boy had really engaged in any way with the plank. Personally, I would be more surprised at it being ordered, not least at £10.50 per person. For main course, the waitress launched into an explanation of the three specials available, breathlessly detailing every ingredient in such a torrent of tumbling words that none of us ordered one, I'd be amazed if anyone did. So it was from the menu. Younger boy had the Ultimate Burger, his pregnant wife the Summer Risotto, all of us forgetting Gorgonzola is a blue cheese, birthday girl had the Three Cheese Caramelle and I went for Jamie's Sausage Pappardelle, which got the circled fingers of approval from the waitress. This is the description of this dish on the menu, that is inviting you to choose it; Ragù of slow-cooked fennel & free-range pork sausages with incredible Chianti, Parmesan & herby breadcrumbs. This is what I got; a pile of pasta, topped with baked Parmesan and resting in a red coloured water. On eating, I became aware that the 'sausages' were more 'minced pork'. I had wondered whether they would be whole or sliced and what spicing Italians did to make their sausages, but no, little pieces that because of the prevalance of crispy breadcrumbs may not have been present at all. Certaim;y the complete absence of anything tasting of pork didn't help. And the slow-cooked ragu sauce was watery, red and tasted slightly of fennel. The baked mozarella on top was lovely. Biggest surprise, nay shock was the pasta. For an Italian restaurant to put a clump of thick, dense chewy pasta in front of a customer, who then struggles to deftly prise it apart, is not something easily understood. We rounded off the meal with birthday girl trying to eat a portion of cheesecake that was reported OK, and the children sharing a plate of something that looked like a brownie with a dollop of cream, as the Chocolate praline Younger boy wanted wasn't available. Food thus gets 4/10 and value for money has to be a resolute 1/10. It isn't terrible, but I don't know what would draw you in to eat there, even if you were oblivious of cost.

Monday 6 July 2015

Greece: What It Means For Us All

The comi-tragedy of the Greek financial situation continues, with the new twist of a 'no' vote in a referendum. The options for the Greeks currently are either a) to follow the diktats of the technocrats in Brussels or b) to follow the lead of a far-left party of Greek politicians.

The EU have supported the Greeks by loaning them enormous amounts of money over a long period of time. This has become so large that the Greeks have no way of meeting the repayments. The cause of this poverty is the dysfunctional nature of Greek society, where it seems almost no-one pays their taxes and have no idea that this has to have repercussions somewhere down the line.

Particularly amazing when they also expect to retire early on good pensions, they haven't paid for. The EU knew that the Greek economy did not meet the 'Euro' criteria when they allowed them to join, but everyone in Athens and Brussels hoped that this small detail didn't matter. And they also knew that, as a currency, the euro was of no use to the Greeks; it was bound to undermine their economy.

But Greece had to be part of the great European Project and facts and the plight of populations are irrelevant in that context. For the EU it represented their power and to the Greeks a source of funds.

This economic stupidity is symptomatic of Marxist regimes like the EU, but unfortunately Greece, in Syriza have a government that shares the same ideology. It has been playing dangerous games with the EU and the referendum was a stunt to scare them into doing what Syriza wants; more free money.

Whilst the Greek PM talks tough on nationhood, he is careful to not actually do anything to make withdrawal from the euro, from the EU inevitable. He certainly doesn't want the taps turned off, he wants the debt cancelled.

The EU don't want them to leave as the Project is about the power gained by forcing 'ever closer political union, under Brussels'. If Greece left, it would mean nothing is for ever, other countries being severely damaged by the incorrect currency forced on their economies could also seek to make their own way in the world, much more successfully than when shackled to a corpse.

So what does this mean for the wider world? Well, it is important to notice what has happened in our media over the last few days in particular. Phrases like 'facing the abyss', 'catastrophe' and 'disaster' were bandied about, without, in the following articles any supporting text. We were warned at the weekend that the markets would fall 5-10%, that currency instability would follow a 'no' vote.

Then the Greeks voted 'no' and the markets barely noticed and the commentators kept quiet about how incorrect their prior, dire warnings were. For Greece things are desperate and for the EU it is a political crisis, but for the rest of the world it matters not a jot.

Another favourite, to scare us into not voting 'incorrectly' in any referendum David Cameron might offer on EU membership, apart from the BBC's Nick Robinson saying referendums can have unforeseen consequences -hint; you are too stupid to be allowed to vote-, is that Britain trades mainly with the EU, it is our main trading partner.

Again without any substance, we are being given a vague, but scary warning of catastrophe and disaster, if we leave the EU. Lord knows why trade would be affected, but it is what they say.

But I have looked up some trade figures and it seems that the value of our trade with the EU is precisely £0. I looked and checked, but couldn't find anything that we export to the EU. Except that is the £13+ billion we send to Brussels. Certainly, Britain exports substantial amounts to a number of countries that are also members of the European Union, but not to the EU per se as the media and politicians keep insisting we do.

If Britain leaves the EU, we can still trade with EU members, just as others do. In fact, we could stay in the Single Market and ignore the political control if we want. Not something Brussels, or its love-struck follower David Cameron wants you to know. So, if you get the chance, don't hesitate to force our politicians to work harder once more, setting our laws and dealing with international bodies, to whom we are presently denied access, by voting to leave the EU.

Specifically, don't worry about the negatives. I don't think that we should overly concern ourselves with the salaries and pensions of people who care nothing for the people of Europe and who have done such damage. People like Jacque Delors, Angela Merkel, Neil and Glenys Kinnock and Peter Mandelson. Not people you could warm to!

Thursday 2 July 2015

What Kind Of Enemy Is Daesh?

The self-styled Islamic State, which is the same state as any group of murderous thugs, is more often related as Daesh in the civilised world. Whatever the name, who actually is the enemy, because if you don't know who your enemy is, how can you defeat them?

It is an Islamic sub-set, a cult that has gained some grip on today's muslims. This in itself is amusing as Mohammed, the prophet not one of the millions who choose to use the same name for some reason, after having to hide from his numerous enemies emerged with the literal word of God, the Koran.

He had apparently, been instructed to write down exactly what God said and from this he suddenly became popular (he had tried to gain followers for years, but with little success). Naturally, once he was powerful enough he killed all those who had tormented him previously (no doubt God had told him to do this in a side chat - no need to write this down- and was in no way personal).

As the literal word of God (something the Christian Bible does not claim for itself), no interpretation was allowed, so as the Americans would say, 'go figure' how today we have Sunni and Shiite, sects requiring the Mohammed/God inspired murder to continue.

Daesh are very particular in pushing their assertion that they are, in fact, in the right. True to the faith. Not sure what they base that on, when it is so critical that it is you who are following God's word and are not the faction. Maybe it is the usual belief in the authority of the gun; evidence would seem to point in that direction.

It has proven hard enough to deal with guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan, where territorial gain was the object, to throw out the foreigner, so how do we deal with people who don't even want that, but are satisfied with the most cowardly acts of murder?

Fundamentally, Islam is not the enemy. All the terrorists are muslims, not all muslims are terrorists. So that 'community' will supply the people that go on to cause the killings, but it is those that guide the murders that are the issue. We must, by all measures, kill them.

Bombing the forces involved in Syria is merely attacking where they feel strong, so maybe it helps, but decapitation is the key. Not of individuals, but of the organisation. If you kill the ideological leaders and keep doing it, the impetus will die too.

And we have to find and kill them without borders, no matter where they hide. Weak-minded muslims may send their sons to die a pointless death for these murderers, but ultimately the leadership are not a faith based outfit. Their ideas and mind-set are rooted in the medieval.

Now, religion is a part of it and a change within Islam would be the most powerful way to undermine these people. We have been here before.

In Western Europe of the Middle Ages, religion was a powerful force. People really believed in God, in a way that is difficult to understand today (and impossible if you are a self-impressed liberal luvvie). Kings warred on each other, but feared God and in some measure, the Pope.

When all Europe was Catholic, to be warned and/or excommunicated by the Pope was a serious business. And of course, the Church was very much behind the Crusades and the barbarity that often involved, much as the crusaders in the opposite direction today use the power of their religion.

But importantly, the Christian Church had those who questioned when they felt things went a bit far and we had a Reformation of the religious practices and schism and cults did not undermine basic faith or cause murder to become normal.

The important point here was that when Christianity had a hold on power, was allied to and involved in politics, the result was war and death. Islam is a political religion; it seeks political power. This was very important for Mohammed but has stayed unchanged and unchallenged ever since, locked in a medieval mind-set. It has held those countries back that allow it strong political power.

The Imams must as a matter of urgency, for the success of their religion, for the welfare of muslims and to scrub out the murderers that stain their holy books, introduce reform to their faith. They must humanise it and make it work with what we have come to understand of the world.

They do not need to supplant or diminish their faith in God, but when some person within their church makes crackpot assertions, quoting the Koran, the literal word of God, they need to tell them to stuff off. And nation states need to assert their independence. They need to separate church and state and no matter how devout allow politics to run the country and religion to guide their politicians conscience.

The Pound, Sterling

Briefly cornered, the self-centred Tony Blair succumbed to pressure for the UK not to join the Eurozone, much though he wanted to. So we prepared to endure all the privations of being alone and cast adrift as everyone who was allowed a say predicted.

I remember one of the key reasons the idiots quoted as to why we had to join in with the Euro was that we would not be able to survive, so close to an enormous trading bloc without having the same currency. In fact, that was one of a very, very small number of reasons, none of which had any substantiation, well, apart from fatuous assertions that millions of jobs would be lost.

Apparently, if your company deals with an EU country, all your jobs would go if the UK wasn't in the Eurozone, hence the size of the numbers 'at risk'. Jeremy Clarkson himself pointed out that we should join because then, people like him who travel extensively wouldn't have to keep getting foreign currency. So, of all the problems and paperwork facing a company trading overseas, currency exchange was of overriding concern.

Except, Clarkson still has to acquire local currency should he visit a backward country like Australia, or China, or India where, stupidly they have their own currency. And as to the problem of the big neighbour with a different currency, how on earth does Canada survive? It is not only next door to one of the largest economies in the world, but also a reasonably competent one, not something that you could accuse Brussels of.

And yet it still hasn't occurred to them that they cannot survive by the EU law of economics, without having adopted the US dollar.

Still, let us try to find some positives, after all this knocking, about the EU. It offers employment to a lot of people who don't seem otherwise employable. By taking a long time to establish a Europe wide dictatorship, they have given people the chance to realise what is being proposed for them and put a stop to it. And I suppose, it has contributed to society by keeping France and Germany distracted so they didn't start yet another war.

It is entertaining to consider that the weak and pusillanimous Cameron is almost ideally placed, by position and timing, to play the role of a Marlborough, Wellington or Churchill. He could, if he was another type of creature indeed, save Europe from the power mad grab of would be emperors in France and Germany.

Britain has used her power and prestige to stand above ridiculous continental politics and to intervene for the good when they tear each other apart. Today, we could, through resolute action of word and deed, completely destroy the Marxist Project spreading through Europe and hand back nations to their peoples.

Never forget, when Napoleon defeated Spain it became part of his empire, when Hitler invaded Poland, he didn't intend to ever give it back; it was now part of his Third Reich of a thousand years. But when a coalition led by the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon, he dumped the little corporal on the naughty step of St. Helena and went home. France stayed French.

If we vote (sensibly) to leave the EU, the same will happen as when we didn't join the Euro; nothing at all. But it opens up our ability to become a world player again, as a sovereign country once more, to trade where we like and get involved in international agreements. We could trade globally how we wished and look after our own people, without doing harm to others.

To ram it home, we could trade with all the countries of the world, particularly the growing economies and not be shackled to a corpse as at present. A united Europe was a great idea in the inter-war years (when it was thought of first) for all except Britain, but why would anyone stick with a 1920's idea in the global economy of today?

Greece And Democracy

As the papers are full of comments and articles about the current Greek crisis, I won't bother to recap. What I found interesting was the bleating from Brussels that they had a consensus of what Greece should do, but they won't play ball. And then outrage that the Greek government should dare to ask their people what they think, in a referendum.

So Brussels likes their version of democracy, a group of like minded gravy-train slurpers agreeing on a course of action, but thinks that the great mass of those their measures actually affect shouldn't have a say, should not rely on democracy.

I said before about the mass of media coverage, but it is not really coverage, not if you wanted information. If all you require to know is what the EU's point of view is, then fine, you are up to date. However, if you wanted more detail, well, tough luck.

For instance, I see quite a few stories about the British Treasury drawing up contingency plans in case of a Grexit. That stock markets will sink, how your pension will be affected and generally talking of financial disaster. In passing they do mention that British banks and institutions have almost no exposure in Greece, but fail to substantiate where, exactly the disaster lies.

The reason for this is simple. The disaster will be political. It will damage, perhaps fatally the politics of the European Project. And that is way, way more important than money (it's someone else's anyway) or the well being of the Greek people.

You see, if Greece leaves the Eurozone it will prove it is possible, ditto if it also leaves the EU. All this at a time when much of Europe is concerned with the nature and competence of the Project and David Cameron in particular is carefully crafting scare stories about leaving the EU.

Worse still of course, is the prospect of Greece reverting to the Drachma and with a currency floating to its natural level in the market, becoming a successful nation. (This would require the Greeks to get off their backsides and work and the government to actually collect the taxes too, though).

This example would have the other injured countries in a Franco-German pact set at a level to suit themselves, rushing for the exit. And having risked and been rewarded with a war as a result of attempting to expand this empire into Ukraine, Brussels would not then want to see Spain, Portugal, Italy and perhaps Ireland, leave.

The Spectator had a blog by some dimwit fashion writer for the Guardian wittering on about her amazement that the anti-EU stance of anyone, let alone the ungrateful Greeks should be tolerated. This not only says much about her statist, Marxist mind-set, but also how far reaching is the propaganda of the EU (they do spend a lot of your money on it).

It also shows how the current vogue, much promoted by and for the service of Marxists of not thinking about things yourself has caught on. How keen people are to have ideas planted, fully furnished in their heads, which they then believe and spout, no matter how evidently absurd the notion.

No, what the Greeks have to fear is either they will have to work harder and pay their taxes, or that they stay in the EU and accept the current status as their lot in perpetuity. They are not facing austerity to pay back debts, they are being pushed until the country exists at a level that fits the Franco-German model.

Friday 22 May 2015

The Dance Begins

Mr. Cameron is now making his opening overtures in his renegotiation of powers with the EU. Or so he would have us believe. For someone who has so far omitted to mention what specific powers he wants returned, indeed what the thrust of the renegotiation is, he seems at something of an advanced stage with our overlords.

Presumably he is able to tell them what he wants. We are led to believe that one will be an end to 'ever closer union'. And with such a big question we must ask ourselves, just how genuine is this man who wants us to stay in the EU, even before he has had his cosy chats.

The single point of the Common Market (as it was sold to us by the bare faced liar Heath) has been, is and always will be to create a single nation called Europe. For some it is to put the US in their place and create an, at least equal superstate. For others, it was to recreate the Soviet Union. Working towards this has led to the constant name changes and the increasing grab for power, within sovereign states.

Mind, I say sovereign states, but are we? When Heath signed over law-making in Britain to the government in Brussels (something he had no constitutional power to do, so was illegal) how exactly did the pretence of our being an independent country continue? The Scottish 'parliament' was only allowed as a precursor to it becoming the 'local authority for the area previously known as Scotland' within the EU superstate, no matter what the pompous assumptions of Nicola Sturgeon.

So, if genuine, Cameron is chipping away at the foundations of the whole project, whilst desperately trying not to let the cat out of the bag as to what the end game of 'ever closer union' is. He also hopes fervently that the general public don't understand the way the EU works. Everyone has been conscientious in not explaining it, ever, so it should work.

The usual draft of useful idiots on Question Time will give him the belief that he is right and a letter to the Sunday Telegraph last weekend couldn't have been more definitive of the opposite of reality. The correspondent wrote 'It should not be forgotten that this union has kept the peace in Europe, for the past 70 years, and that Russia is still a threat to stability today.'

The EU has done nothing at all to maintain peace, other than perhaps keeping the perennial problem-causers France and Germany in alliance to build a joint empire. NATO however, has done the job of protector and peacekeeper. Russia is a threat because it remains unstable, but we should remember that it was the expansionist moves of the EU that provoked Russia to protect its 'area of interest' in the Ukraine.

The most common bleat of course is the enormous amount of trade and therefore jobs that we will lose if we leave the EU. You will notice again, there is never any actual public debate on the issue, because like Global Warming, if debate was allowed, then the lies would be too easily exposed.

The EU is a political project, nothing more. It is to build the empire the French and Germans have constantly sought by perpetually bringing war to Europe. That would be the French, who after folding with remarkable speed in WW2, sided with the Nazis and placed their forces at the disposal of the Axis, even fighting British forces.

They whinged when we left via Dunkirk, because they felt we should fight to save their country while not that concerned to do it themselves. Despite the fact that we risked British lives and ships to evacuate 140,000 of their soldiers. And what did most of them then do? They went back to France and were made POW's! A mere 7000 joined De Gaulle's Free French and even then, the number involved in D-Day, the landing to liberate France, was 177.

De Gaulle, epitomising the French hauteur  suggested that the country that no longer existed as an independent entity, France, should join with Britain to become a single state. Nice. No doubt he felt that he was the man to run it too. There is a word for people like him and it cannot be used in front of children, but applies equally to the tribe in Brussels.

There is of course much else; as we constantly see from examples like Spanish house purchases by Brits, to French rules for French farmers benefit, to the Greek tragedy, we are not a single people. There is no demos.

If we see merit in the trading bloc bit though, fine, stick with that for now. People are deliberately mislead naturally, about what the EU is. You do not have to be in the EU to be in the Single Market. And as for influence, well we ain't got none. We are one voice in 28 and are represented at the international level by the EU.

Most new laws originate as ideas outside the EU with International bodies, ones where the old British seat is empty. They then make decisions, the EU rep having had 'his' say and is then converted into EU law. If we were back as a real sovereign state, we could go to the meetings on our own account and have our say directly. Like Norway does. Inside the Single Market but not the EU.

We don't have to copy that idea, we can have our own, tailored to our needs. But here's the thing. The big leaders meetings are not about negotiations and getting things done. That all happens behind the scenes, as Margaret Thatcher found out after being convinced by snivelling aides that the EU had a point (which it does, if you are a bureaucrat). When banging the table and meeting blank stares someone kindly took her aside and explained the deal had already been done.

Just enjoy the meal and smile for the photoshoot. And just like her views on Global Warming, she changed her mind when she found out more. (The Left of course, only ever mention she supported both).

So it really is simple. We leave the EU but sign up for the Single Market. Which solves our immigration, balance of payments to the EU, lawmaking, tax and employment problems (or at least gives us the chance to find cures) and shuts up the ignorant savages at the CBI and beyond, who want the political union for some undefined reason.

If however, you want more of the Greek experience, more state control, indeed more of a Soviet Union of Europe, then please vote for it. It may be the last bit of democracy you see. And you get the Euro! Happy days.

Wednesday 20 May 2015

Evolution

I like plants and I like a nice garden, but I really can't get interested in the detail and by God the work! So, watching gardening programmes and the Chelsea Flower Show on TV is endured not enjoyed (wife driven, naturally).

But you know, interesting things crop up in the strangest of places. A week or so ago one of the shows had a chap talking about a plant that he said is able to adapt quickly to new environments, so if it finds itself somewhere wet, it passes on coping strategies to its offspring (is that what plants have?).

At the time I just thought 'smart little bugger', but later whilst reposing in a bath (the soak is much underrated in modern society) it struck me that this was potentially something fundamental. In one of my earliest posts I moaned at the flaws, as they appeared to me, in the theory of evolution as currently understood.

Big forward jumps, survival of the fittest etc. The usual how and why the eye. And I become convinced that somehow we manage to pass into our DNA ideas rather than merely length of thigh bone and hair colour. Things that are important to the parents get passed on. A clue for me is instinct. What the hell is that?

The Joey finds its way from birth canal to pouch containing the nipple it needs to survive. How does it know a journey is required, who gave it directions and why is it born with the strength to achieve the trek?

And back to the plant. We may wonder about the thoughts our dog has, but a plant is surely a mechanical device. Having accidentally found the chemical reaction to turn sunlight into fuel to grow as a plant, it has ways to move moisture up the stem and deploys colour and lovely sweet stuff to attract bees to carrying away the pollen, to seed new plants and ensure the survival of the species.

Whoa! Back up! They do what? Darwin of course recognises that it was an accident, a mutation that one day meant a plant produced a colour that attracted a bee. The sweet substance was also a lucky accident and so the symbiotic relationship was formed. Really? That is a lot of accidents. What came first, the bee or the nectar?

But the plant in our programme, it was suggested, skips the randomness of accidents and the long drawn out process of evolution. It somehow changes to cope with differing conditions it encounters as it grows and then passes that information on to the next generation, so it is better able to cope from the outset. I know the first part still accords with Darwinian theory, but how does it ensure (and possibly, why) that its seed develops differently?

There has to be a feedback loop into the DNA. Which might also link in to the stories of 'the power of the mind' to make yourself well. And why pregnant women seem to have strange cravings for food that contains nutrients she is low on, at that time. How the hell does she know what good a lump of coal is going to be? Instant chemical analysis?

Anyway, I clearly don't know, but food for thought surely?

Police Union Whinging - Shock

The Police Federation, the militant Union for rank and file police officers is moaning again. It is of course the Union role and the PolFed are particularly keen to uphold tradition.

Due to continuing large scale cuts they now warn that the ordinary 'bobby on the beat' may soon disappear. There simply won't be the resources. Sounds scary and reasonable, since we are emerged in 'austerity' whilst trying to recover from having had a Labour government.

Except, whilst budgets have undoubtedly been squeezed it is not the government, but rather the senior police officers who decide where the cuts will take effect. Perks and plush offices may remain immune, but stuff you will notice and support their whining about very definitely will be cut.

So, their actual job and your safety matter not a jot when politics is in play. Curious is it not that the Union of the ordinary police does not blame the bosses?  They would in the corporate world. But generally, the Union and the Chief Constables are on the same page; government bashing.

When did you hear anything positive from the PolFed? When did you hear suggestions about how to police effectively, or models for reform? Never. If we sat down and said 'what pressures do the police currently face?' how do modern criminals differ from the past? and what would be the most effective way to deter that, we could then go on to cost it.

It would also require the police to understand what they exist for (clue; it isn't social work and it isn't political correctness). Once that idea had been reinserted into the most senior ranks we could then quickly establish techniques and how technology may be able to assist. You get the idea; a big rolling programme to re-evaluate how we approach policing, to produce what results and at what cost.

Currently we have leadership that is ideologically adrift, muddle headed and inept. All planning starts with what size and style the new police headquarters should take, the colour of leather for the chairs, when would a new computer system be available and how many iPads does each officer above Superintendent need? With interruptions to consider a press release complaining about something.

Oh and planning the line to take at the latest enquiry into something they haven't been able to keep hidden any longer. It all makes the few police who still do a good job very expensive indeed.

Tuesday 19 May 2015

In The News

Looking at The Telegraph today, I gather that the National Socialists from north of the border are still trying to shock, using the tactics of seven year olds. Petulant, silly rule breaking to show they are 'it' and you can't stop them. Well, yes and no. Tony Blair proved that, in the end, if a politician decides to behave in a totally immoral manner, there is no actual check that can be applied.

Let alone the will to do it. But for the Scottish NatSocs the problem is we've had the Tony Blair experience and we grew tired of it, so childish stunts by newbies with a gang mentality isn't going to be patronised for long.

If being rude and unlikeable is the image of Scotland they wish to portray, then that is up to their leader and her thugs. We already knew not to expect serious politics! And if Scotland was treated as a normal part of the UK it would have 10 or so constituencies, but even with 56 they are still a small part of the 650 in the Commons. So sit where you are told and shut up until asked to speak.

Outside the Commons you can say what you want, it is already clearly understood I should think that you winkers, so won't come as a shock. What I really want from this new branch of the totalitarians is what they really want and how they intend to get wealth they haven't got, because the 'Barnett' formula isn't going to exist forever, not with all your complaining. And Poland is a way to go for an invasion......

Aldi, Aldi, Aldi, what were you thinking? You get so much right, your pricing model, staff, buying policies but then you have a little slip in attention and bang! Fancy saying something is halal when it isn't. Not that difficult surely? And it matters to people who are committed to that kind of product. Much worse than hiding something and hoping they wouldn't notice, you were actually saying that the product was something it wasn't. That's lying.

How would non-Muslims like it if they were not told that the meat they are eating had not been killed humanely by being stunned first? Oh hold on, loads of companies pull that stunt, using only halal meat because it hardly matters to non-Muslims but means all their products are OK for Muslims. And the idiots we just voted for (all of them) tell us endlessly that this is the UK and UK law is supreme!

As for the slow motion Labour leadership race, I don't have a clue. Who on earth can lead those backward, inept and politically naïve imbeciles? Not one of them shows any grace. Now, as they jostle to find a form of words that the electorate would vote for (not policies, not ideas and heaven forfend! not anything they intend to do, just words), we get the escapee from the elfish regions of Lord of the Rings, Yvette Cooper telling us that Labour got some stuff wrong.

Would that be the Labour you were a senior part of? The Labour that ran up a deficit in the good times, under your husband? How come you never mentioned Ed Mil. was more an edless chicken, before, you know maybe perhaps during the election? Still, Labour are hardly alone in British politics today in being solely concerned with their party, as opposed to what would be good for the country.

Saturday 16 May 2015

Ah, The Election!

I know you may well be bored of the recent election here in the UK (that is, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), but I wanted to leave a while for all the flavours to soak in.

At this date, a little remote from the action (and the shock!) of the day, the BBC - and others- with little left wing to talk up, are relentlessly ramming 'stories' about the one MP party UKIP down our throats. For what possible reason? No word of the other one MP party the Greens, but then I suppose the BBC don't want too much light shining on this peculiar lot, surely the true modern home of the Monster Raving Looney Party. Their views of course, being too close to those of the BBC elite.

But back to the result; so much joy! The pollsters got it wrong, so wrong that there is some suggestion of copying, maybe Ofsted should be involved. On second thoughts maybe not; I can't think of anything that benefits from Ofsted existing. nevertheless, these Magic Meg soothsayers were believed wholeheartedly by the political parties and their campaigns were based on 'neck and neck.

Interestingly, there is a possibility that this caused Cameron to start making some genuinely Conservative remarks and promises. But whatever, Miliband was and is only a comedy character and whilst Labour could not be allowed to 'do it again', Miliband helped make them unelectable. For that we must be thankful.

Joy of joys though, was Ed Balls being deleted from our misery and by a Conservative. I just wonder how stupid you have to be to vote for him at all, but I suppose it must be the 'always vote Labour' crowd. We also lost Ed Davey, another classic moron who has cost the country dearly by running his crackpot 'green' schemes against reality.

But it was a gift that kept giving, because Danny Alexander and Douglas Alexander have been turned into historic figures. And Galloway at last got what he deserves, obscurity.

Much of this was due to the seismic events north of the border. Or maybe not seismic, but interesting from a propaganda perspective. The SNP holed Labour below the waterline, but not for logical reasons, which is a pity, but we will take it for now. That we were then treated to lots of posturing by someone who is not a member of the UK parliament was annoying, but also instructive.

Nicola Sturgeon was always reckoned to be a better operator than Salmond (not difficult though) and she is. She certainly hides what she is up to much better than big mouth does. Not so much a case of keeping her powder dry as not letting the electorate know what they have voted for.

Trying to sound rational and easy going, she says before the result that she didn't expect to take all the seats or anything like it and afterwards that it meant nothing in respect of Scottish independence. Then went on to say they do have demands to make of the UK parliament, but not full financial independence. She hoped that would sound good to non-Scottish voters. Not a chance, luv. You may have mugged those with the same accent as yours, but down here we are not so blind.

Financial independence would mean she would have to have a means of paying for her demands, beyond 'England should pay'. And no such plan exists, because they can't afford what they do now (they could save an enormous amount though if they got rid of the Scottish parliament).

So there she sits, biding her time and the rest of the country was treated to the strange spectacle of her flying to London, to attend a memorial to those who died fighting the Nazis, just as she leads a surge of National Socialism in Scotland. Complete with the thuggish intimidation of competing politicians and voters. The popularity based on promises of handouts that the country can't afford, though this is of little importance, the seizure of widespread power being more important.

I can't wait to hear how she disguises attempts to form a separate dictatorship by somehow blaming England for trying to destroy Scotland. Then perhaps forcibly occupy nearby territory where they speak 'Scottish'.

Cameron really should make the redrawing of boundaries a priority and make Scottish constituencies more closely reflect overall sizes. To have 59 MP's it seems they have constituencies based around a pub and its customers.

Can Women Really Not Cope?

Heard a couple of stories in the news recently, where women are being pushed to the fore, if not actually having positive discrimination applied.

I know the cover story is that men hold women back, but it isn't ever as simple as that. Personally, the two women managers I have worked for were fine, both deserving of their jobs. Maybe I'm a strange version of a man, but being told what to do by a woman wasn't that much of a shock to me, I had a mother after all.

But I gather that it is really important to ask women to stand up for jobs they currently aren't doing (and are not physically beyond them or anything like that). They need to be implored, or systems altered to drag them in. Again, maybe I just don't get it, but isn't that the living embodiment of what, we are told, the pro-women programme is about?

A bit like diversity in employment officers whose job is to exclude certain types. Mad old world isn't it? Perhaps the election result reflects the growing realisation that we have let children and wuckfits run stuff for too long.

Tuesday 5 May 2015

The Stupidity Of The Intellectual

We know universities hand out bits of paper instead of earned certificates of learning. The endeavour now being to turn up. However, despite the political failings, some people still have intelligence and leave university having learnt something.

Some go on to use it usefully. Some become intellectuals, which all too often means left wing ideologues, with no idea. And like Global Warming, even their education doesn't stop them believing truly unbelievable things. Their ideology trumps all and any hint of science (in this case) is roundly forgotten.

Now, Christopher Booker, James Delingpole and others have been honoured by a particularly stupid bunch of intelligent people at a Polytechnic in Cambridge. They have been labelled 'deniers' because they point out the scientific flaws in the claims of the political groups pushing the Global Warming scam.

Of course, the idiots get to use the prejudicial term denier because they seek always to set the agenda (and use political correctness to close any debate that accidentally starts). They always do this.

So these morons are hoping that history will see Booker et al as idiots for opposing Global Warming. Here is a comment from real history that reflects where those claiming there must be no debate, may themselves be judged.

In the late 1800's an Italian by the name of Lombrosso developed a theory that people were 'born criminals' and that you could identify this class merely by looking at them, from their physical features. I'm guessing this is not a view currently held even by Global Warming fanatics.

When scientific views were put forward to show how wrong Lombrosso's theory was an outraged colleague said, reflecting the high esteem in which Lombrosso was otherwise generally held; "The criminal type is a definite fact, acquired by science, on this point no further discussion is admissible".

Is that right? Was it based on science? Is denial or disagreeing as it is usually called, of the theory that people are born as criminals, not allowed?



*Quoting Giulio Fioretti.

Wednesday 15 April 2015

Left Obviously Hoping You Have Short Memories

What with Ed Balls talking about the Tories destroying the country by leading the fast growing economy, creating jobs that we currently have, as opposed to his spend, spend, spend policies and Ed Miliband saying that Labour are the party of fiscal responsibility, is a tacit admission that people might not think they are, based somewhat judgementally, on past performance.

Now the US enters the same territory. Hilary Clinton wants to be the first female President (might work, Obama was elected solely because he was black). And what she hopes most of all is that you won't remember her recent poor performances and chicanery. She certainly hopes you won't mention her involvement, via that titan of manhood, her husband, in bringing forward the banking crisis.

Now, we are aware that many processes were at work, mainly the ability to be rewarded despite failure and led to an inevitable collapse of a house made of hubris cards. But it was given an almighty shove when the Clinton administration brought in new rules, basically insisting that banks give mortgages to people who couldn't afford them.

To meet the targets, banks got creative; low start repayments made people think they could afford the mortgage, the salesmen got rich on the commissions and banks sold on the worthless paper to other investors, bundled with some that might work out OK. When so many didn't, kerboom! Full scale banking crisis.

New Labour, who were very cosy with the money in the banks, caught a cold. Their reckless borrowing was because Brown had convinced himself (but probably no-one else, oh, maybe Robert Peston) that there would never be a downturn again. Brown had cured boom and bust. He sold our gold and bought Euros (interestingly showing his complete lack of financial nous - he announced to the markets he was going to be selling a lot of gold so the price rocketed downwards).

So when the banking crisis hit here, we were already deeply in the do-do hence it taking so long to climb back out. All the 'austerity' the Left squeal about without identifying is resetting required due to Labour having no idea how to govern whatsoever. Every Labour administration has left the country in a mess. Now Hilary Clinton thinks the US is ready for more.

Wednesday 1 April 2015

Labour Crashes Into Reality

Ed Miliband is working the, unplanned, distinction with his plan to outlaw 'zero hours' contracts and the Tories getting the backing of businesses. He supported the assertion that this meant Labour was for 'the people' and the Tories for 'the rich', even when asked if his stand didn't just mean people would lose their jobs.

Bang! Miliband crashes into reality, but no - he makes it plain that businesses know it is important that their workers feel secure, so would be OK about his stance. Really? So where do these zero hour contracts come from then? The employees don't want them Ed assures us, but the employers don't want to make their employees feel insecure.

Watching 'The Billion Dollar Chicken Shop' we were treated to an example of the real world, a place Ed Miliband is sure doesn't exist. A worker in a not-very-busy KFC said she hoped custom would pick up because, 'what's the point of a job if you only get 12 hours a week?'

This suggests she is on a zero hours contract and that she realises her income is tied to the success of the business. The business exists and so, as a consequence does her job. This simple fact of economic reality, known instinctively by a girl in a chicken shop, evades the man who would be Prime Minister.

For Miliband the sequence, in order of importance is that the government dictates how a business may operate, what the nature of its employment contracts must be (and much else) and then the business may exist. And in existing it must guarantee jobs for its employees. More than a whiff of Hollande there.

If the disaster of the last Labour administration was not enough to warn you off trying it again, how about the fact Miliband is in thrall to the policies enacted in France, ruining the country, but so big government! For him it is porn, a wet dream just across the channel.

Alongside a man so elite and separate that he doesn't know how to eat a bacon sandwich, was Rachel Reeves. Rachel of course is heavily pregnant and that got me thinking about reality and the lazy, un-considered policies of Labour (no pun intended).

With the enormous amounts of maternity leave now available and offered, will she get elected and then disappear? Will an unelected replacement pop up? And for how long? If you put your cross in the box for Rachel and end up with Dorkus Maximus, how pleased would you be?

The Campaign

The big news today of course is the 100 business people who have signed a letter supporting the Conservatives. Their rationale is that it is not the time to change direction, but to stick with the policies which are quite clearly working.

Difficult to argue with that and even the charge that they are looking after their own interests is hardly different from anyone else. Business votes for the party of low corporation tax, benefits claimants vote for the party that offers the most benefits.

However self-evidently true the letter's contents it does not affect the BBC though. After headlining the letter they go to Chuka Umunna (Labour) for two disparaging quotes. Then they mention that two thirds of economists think that the austerity measures are wrong and unnecessary (not heard that claim before), going on to interview one from the left leaning London Business School.

His point was that things were recovering anyway so the austerity measures were not needed. He went on to explain that the measures were actually just to pay down the deficit in this parliament, something that hasn't been achieved. Oh dear. So which is it? Did it achieve nothing? Was there really an austerity drive? How did not spending not affect the public purse?

But he is an economist so the economy confuses him. Look what it does to Ed Balls! Chuka too was a gem. Apparently, the Tories organised this letter and it was in the Tory supporting Telegraph. And? Proof? But then, what about the Labour advert using unauthorised quotes about the EU, to claim businesses support Labour?

Was this advert not placed in the Labour supporting FT? So do Labour want business backing or not? Why claim it the day before announcing you intend to return to punitive taxing of business?

Then there was the issue of zero hours contracts. I wonder how many people, unable to get any other employment are looking at their job ending if Labour win the election. Because companies cannot afford sometimes to give that commitment.

Thatcher correctly identified that 'the problem with Socialism is that, eventually they run out of other people's money'. Except Socialism is a movement to address issues of deprivation, lack of opportunity and unfair bias in society. Labour today are interested only in state control and increasing its reach.

Much like Oxfam would be out of business if they solved problems, so Labour would be out of business unless there were people locked on benefits. It has not so much created a client class, as condemned a whole section of society to a hopeless future, in the name of maintaining Labour as a party.

All the Union leaders are Marxists, working to bring about a totalitarian state run by them. They do not have to pull too hard on the strings binding Ed Miliband to them as he is also a committed Marxist.

Whilst nothing is perfect, the least worst option is a Conservative government. But the alternative of a communist government under Labour, or worse still a coalition of communists, Greens, SNP would see Britain rapidly spiralling into recession and possibly depression.

They would stifle economic activity, they would increase costs, push up taxes both direct and on things like energy and fuel and would simply lose money dreaming up crackpot schemes and being fleeced by chancers and conmen. Or their friends as they are otherwise known.

Tuesday 31 March 2015

What Your Licence Fee Buys

Well, the election campaign is barely under way and the BBC are possibly more blatantly supporting Labour than usual. Mind you, over recent years they have been more open about their decision to break the law and be biased.

So we get a statement about Cameron's claim that Labour will raise taxes and make cuts, giving a figure of £3000. The BBC then give a commentary that they can't possibly know this. Switching to analysing Labour's claims things are different.

Labour have quoted business people in an FT advert, but just forgot to ask them if it was OK. The BBC modify this truth to explain, they did tell people in advance they would be using the quotes and that most stand by Labour.

The quotes were about staying in the EU and big business has done very well in their dealings with the Brussels bureaucracy. If the EU want to bring out new regulations, they bring in big businesses to ask about its impact. So the big boys agree rules that suit them and do the most damage to small competition. Cushty.

But the BBC 'missed' the biggest point regarding Miliband's advert. And that is that Cameron is offering a referendum to see what the people of Britain want. Miliband is saying he will allow no such thing. The people cannot be trusted with such things. He knows best and he will decide.

Now as the EU, big government and having an elite ignore the general population are all dear to the BBC executives hearts, of course they don't bring it up. Ed is right!

Labour have, of course, countered Cameron's claims to some degree, by admitting they have no plans to balance the books and will be borrowing more. The BBC didn't mention this, naturally.

Monday 30 March 2015

The Dangers Of The Left

Mostly I think, people see the General Election now rushing towards us, as a battle between two mildly different parties. Both very British, one focussed on the poorer people and the other on businessmen.

There has been some hardening on these traditional views lately, more of which later, but they are still widely held. That if you vote Conservative, it reflects your general outlook and will do no great harm. Similarly, the Labour voter.

Handing sovereignty to Brussels has had a corrosive influence of course, by giving politicians less to do and thus more time to fiddle and engage in pointless personal jousts, pretending it is in some way related to politics.

But quite apart from that an underground movement has been gaining strength and flexing its muscles ever more openly. The objective is totalitarian government by a self chosen elite, along Marxist lines. The first casualty has been socialism. The laudable aims of the Labour movement, to espouse genuinely social policies to improve the lot of the greatest mass of the population, have been subsumed and deleted.

They are too soft, too irrelevant for the modern 'progressives' as they love to refer to themselves, despite their retrograde thinking. Simultaneously, they had to demonise the Conservatives, to make them seem extreme, living black shirts always on the edge of violent repression and war.

Despite a complete absence of factual evidence, it was working too. The virulent hatred for Thatcher is designed to impress that she was some kind of witch, despite saving the country from a ruinous Labour administration and even having the focus and clear-minded approach needed to deal with the Argentines. If you remembered her successes, you would doubt that the Conservatives were what the progressives claimed.

It is why the Left and their useful idiots attack UKIP so savagely and so quickly, because they represent a resurgence of traditional Conservative values, when the mainstream Party had accepted that it was 'nasty' and moved to the left. Such thoughts, of voting UKIP, must be expunged and viewed as beyond the Pale.

All of this is going on mainly out of sight, as it is clearly understood that if their intentions were made plain they would be dead in the water in a current democracy. The only way to achieve their aims would be by force and they lack the means or support to carry that through. So, they use guile.

They infest the institutions such as the judiciary, the teaching profession and the Civil Service, to ensure that the thought control, Groupthink, is imposed on an unsuspecting society through Political Correctness.

The EU is doing much the same thing, by hiding its real objectives and playing the long game to achieve an empire that was previously beyond the reach of military conflict. It has always wanted to be a single country, with unified laws, taxes, police and armed forces and currency. It isn't working too well, but they are persevering and hope to have their completely democracy free country, run by technocrats.

It would be a useful vehicle for the hard Left progressives to take over of course, but otherwise they continue their own projects. Based in small cells, like a terrorist organisation and for similar reasons they chip away at the underpinnings of Western democracy.

Race has long been a weapon and why they helped set up all the racial awareness bodies, to keep difference in the forefront of everyone's minds and ferment racial intolerance, which was really their own intolerance. The same with class hatred, global warming, 'greedy bankers', homosexuality and paedophilia.

Now, there is a committed Marxist leading the Labour Party who wants to further undermine pretty much everything Britain has ever stood for. His goal would be to bring forward the project of totalitarian government, where the state controls everything. A major plank will be the continuation of borrowing to increase his support by buying 'clients' and to destroy the economic viability of the country.

Remember, these are the same people who, when last in power told us that state sector jobs would lead to a growth in the economy, despite the opposite being (quite obviously) true. You are expected to believe this though, because the population is increasingly poorly educated. again this is a deliberate plank of the progressive project. Most of the people need to be 'proles' of low expectation who will do the work needed by the elite, without an ability to realise how they are abused.

And in an age of instant mass communication information must be controlled too. There is much barking from the Left and the 'environmentalists' about a hostile, Right wing dominated press. Again, it is laughably the opposite of the truth. The BBC is ludicrously in thrall to the Marxists, Channel 4 is more blatantly there too, Sky has Adam Boulton  to cheerlead for the Left and the Daily Mirror, Guardian, Sunday Times, Financial Times and numerous magazines sing from the same hymn sheet.

It is thus hugely important that until and unless the Labour Party becomes a Socialist Party once again, no one should vote for it. That goes for their 'branches' too; the Greens, the Lib Dems, SNP and other crackpot groups.

A proper, libertarian leader is needed, to strip out root and branch the corrupt and festering malignancy that infests our politics today. Think how much could be spent on genuine welfare for the genuinely needy, on the NHS, on educational resources and all the rest, if we cut out the stuff we don't need. The Left projects of diversity monitors, drug addict support networks, a whole raft of Non Governmental Organisations and pointless Quango's  that nevertheless bleed the treasury dry. Billions wasted on the attempt to destroy capitalism by spending our wealth fighting non existent 'global warming', more again on supporting the EU project, a 1920's solution that is irrelevant in the 21st century.

Ask yourself why the State should run everything as the Left wants, when everything it does run, doesn't work. Then ask where the real, actual political violence comes from; the Left. From the Poll Tax riots, to the Occupy mobs, the attacks on the Countryside marchers. All of it Left organised though claiming to be spontaneous. Bear in mind, from Blair organising the 'public' applauding him as he arrived at Downing Street to the lies of Global Warming and the need for class hatred, the truth and the 'progressives' are rarely in the same place at once.

Thursday 26 March 2015

Mark Duggan Lawfully Shot

It comes as no surprise whatsoever that the career criminal Mark Duggan was shot and killed quite lawfully, by armed police officers. There doesn't seem to be a situation in which our superb police ever shoot people wrongly.

Sure there have been completely innocent people shot, and the deranged man with a gun, shot to hurry things up, and the baddies who should have had a gun, though on this occasion didn't, but they were all shot with the best intentions and purest of motives.

Mark Duggan put himself in harms way when he devoted himself to a life of violent crime. The police killed him, but it could so easily have been another gang, or a street argument. He chose to play with fire and he got burnt.

I don't have a huge amount of sympathy that he found himself in front of armed police and I'm not that concerned that he was shot. I am however, always concerned that our police do things the right way and for the right reasons. Usually these days you can assume they won't. Firearms officers really do not need to be in that kind of culture.

I understand that people like the Met Commissioner are probably too dim to understand the consequences down the line of their inept, ideology driven version of policing. But in a free society (which clearly he despises) we demand better.

So, my problem, as ever is the IPCC and their protection racket and the way armed police deploy, act, are led and when they fire their weapons. With the Duggan case, the main issue for the IPCC to gloss over is the actual shooting, most of the rest is self evidently easily supported.

The summary is this; the police knew Duggan was involved in using firearms, they knew on this day he was going to acquire a firearm. They even seem to be aware that this fatal cab journey was to pick up a gun. So a team of firearms officers (CO19) was scrambled to intercept him.

They decided to use a tactic known as 'hard stop', which involves blocking in the vehicle a target is in with police cars and apprehending the suspect at gunpoint. When you know where he is going, I'm not entirely sure you need to do this, but it is what they decided on. I would think the best way to apprehend someone would be to present them, in a calm situation with a fait accompli. They are caught, by armed police and only the terminally insane would then react.

The best way to get an unpredictable result I would guess would be to surprise and disorient an armed man. He is likely to make an instinctive self preservation movement that may include firing a weapon (in defence as he would see it), to run, or to dispose of the weapon. He may, calmly stop what he is doing and raise his hands. Though that is akin to not jumping when someone pops a balloon.

Duggan looked to escape (his police profile refers to him as an escaper, that is, someone liable to try to escape). So the entirely unforeseen action of Duggan exiting the vehicle no doubt increased the tension in the police officers. As the lead car was blocking the pavement and with a wall and railings alongside, Duggan could only run in the direction of two police cars behind the taxi.

At this point, the police allege, Duggan reached inside his jacket and produced a gun, which he was raising when one of the officers fired two shots. One of these rounds proved fatal to Duggan and also struck a police officer. The sort of thing that happens when you surround someone and start shooting. Possibly better to deploy with tactical forethought but hey, ideal worlds and all that.

The report has the officer saying he could see the gun and that it was being raised towards him. Now I don't care if Duggan was going to throw it away or whatever, that alone would justify opening fire. You know he has a gun, there it is, fire.

Only, the photo of the weapon as found 4.35 metres from the taxi is a picture of a sock. Because the gun was in a sock. So if the officer had said 'I saw him reach for and produce a sock' that would have been factually accurate. But he said he saw a gun. This is a bit of semantics as I accept that the intelligence was good and in the split second and with the suspect moving, he should expect to get shot. Gun, gun in a sock, it doesn't matter.

But the report presses many areas on detail, yet here it accepts the officer saw a gun. Which didn't then just drop to the ground apparently. And a police officer caught Duggan before he hit the ground too. Which suggests even further than he was unlikely to escape, so close were they.

Mark Duggan is dead for two reasons. Firstly because he chose to become involved in criminal behaviour with firearms, but also due to the faulty tactics of our armed police. And the report makes clear that neither the police nor the IPCC care.

http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Documents/investigation_commissioner_reports/IPCC-investigation-report-fatal-shooting-of-MD.pdf

Sybolism

Some things become symbols, a cipher for larger events and so I believe is the 'sacking' of Jeremy Clarkson. The state subsidised Left wing broadcaster, the BBC cannot contain itself that finally they feel justified in shooting the golden goose, who has the wrong political ideas.

Despite an inquiry, at the highest level in the BBC, news gets out early and the world, including Clarkson presumably learnt that he has been sacked, via the media. So, done deliberately then. This becomes more obvious when the announcement that the Live shows were cancelled was made during the 'investigation'.

The legions of incompetent half-wits, whose only true ability is to gull similarly challenged people to give them high paid jobs, who run the BBC can now update the motoring show 'Top Gear'. So expect legions of lentil eating soap dodgers to whine endlessly about how to get rid of cars. Whilst demanding a limousine to pick them up, or possibly a helicopter from their tax haven home.

This will be presented as 'cutting edge' and 'a daring new direction', with the word diversity slipped in every so often.

In the past, we all found someone who was monumentally useless at their job and whilst we would moan about them when they caused us grief, if they kept their head down that was usually it. Rare and moderately tolerated. Now, with organisations like the BBC stupidity must stand out on your CV every bit as much as statements of support for a range of pointless or better still, damaging Left wing concepts.

And you must mention diversity.

Of course the publicity hungry, political police couldn't wait either. So up they pop to see if they can arrest and charge another non-Left celebrity with something. When one of their own politicians was filmed punching a member of the public, they spent a month reviewing the evidence to see if a crime had been committed and then decided, probably not.

Enormous resources devoted to chasing sex pest celebrities from decades ago, who turn out to be innocent or the politically motivated pursuit of journalists, to shut them up when there is no proof of wrongdoing at all. (Well apart from the police hacking phones in the desperate hope of finding something even mildly incriminating).

But no resources at all devoted to dealing with real crimes against huge numbers of young girls. Or actual pervert politicians.

The Lefties are the reason the BBC is as bad as it is, are the reason we had a world wide recession, are the reason you pay so much tax, why you cannot think certain things, why people die so routinely in hospitals and why your children will struggle to get a quality education. Have you not had enough of this yet?

Wednesday 25 March 2015

A Telling-Off From Judith Wanga

The Telegraph has an article by someone called Judith Wanga today and I have to say I haven't read such confused, yet pontificating drivel in quite some time. And I say that despite the Left squealing loudly everyday about some affront, hurt or pretend crisis.

Judith feels that her personal opinion trumps that of millions of people, so a standard Leftie. She has to be right, because she knows how lovely she is. And she only asks you to hate people she doesn't like.

The article is about Jeremy Clarkson. Well, it is in passing because Judith is spectacularly comfortable interpreting what Clarkson meant in any utterance and invents others that he, probably only an oversight, never got around to saying.

Admitting we don't know the details yet, she prattles on about how his supporters leapt to his defence without knowing what he had done, but she knows he did a horrible thing. Although, we don't know what happened.

She says he called his dog Didier Drogba because he is racist and was 'harking back to the days of dehumanising black people and comparing them to animals'. I don't remember these days and I'm a bit older than Clarkson, but young Judith remembers them. When you are looking to take offence it is good to have done your research (or make it up).

The chance that he has the dog because he likes it and, as a Chelsea supporter named his dog after one of their stars not only doesn't occur to her, it is in fact a disallowed thought, because it suggests way too much humanism against someone she is demonising.

And that is clearly her underlying creed; when she wants to take offence everything you say is wrong. She will set the standard, she will tell you what you are allowed to think. The comment that Clakson supporters think 'PC gone mad' is what Clarkson is against, she makes the usual lazy Leftie assertion.

Naturally something as mad a political correctness doesn't need any additions to do its harm. Designed solely to allow lightweights such as Judith to shut down debate (you can't say that) and accuse anyone they target with a range of -isms invented possibly on the spot, tailored to suit. Even the phrase 'people like Clarkson' admits to stereotypes which is something Judith complains bitterly about.

National stereotypes always seem to have some real world relevance, but that can't be allowed in Marxist fantasy land, where everything must be seen through their political prism.

I don't know what happened in the 'fracas' and I don't know how one of Clarkson's employers, the BBC should react to an incident that didn't happen on their premises or while he was 'at work'. But the Left of course don't do truth, justice or fairness when they have a target in their sights. Judith proves it with an article of personal (affected) affront, full of arrant nonsense. There must be real and talented writers and commentators out there surely, Telegraph?

Tuesday 24 March 2015

If Roger Harrabin Could Tell The Truth

A report by the vested-interest journalist Roger Harrabin on BBC news was laughable. It is more nonsense to support the global warming scam, which he benefits from financially.

He says that solar power could provide 4 percent of UK energy by the end of the decade and interviewed an industry spokesperson who said solar could be price competitive with fossil fuel electricity within ten years, if subsidies remain stable.

Now, if Roger was able to tell the truth, he would start by questioning the whole reason for vast, ugly, highly reflective fields of solar panels. Prices have dropped it is true, but not enough. Harrabin would then say that worldwide solar currently contributes roughly 0% of energy used and the UK will need to cover enormous areas of land to approach a 4% figure.

Even then, it will be 4% while the sun is shining. What the interviewee didn't say, he could disclose is that the companies building solar farms (and wind farms) do so only to farm the subsidies, not because it is a viable energy source. And the government must keep pushing the price of oil and gas up by taxing it. Oh, and not allowing fracking.

So Roger's headline comment wouldn't have been that 'solar has taken off massively in the UK', it would have been that the collection of state subsidies has been massive, for no benefit.

You think the Left have a use? That they help the small against mighty government? Then why are they the leading proponents of the redistribution of wealth from the poorest to the rich, via the raising of energy prices, which hit the poor disproportionately hard, merely to hand subsidies to the wealthy?

Monday 23 March 2015

Latest Farage Stunt

I gather some approximations of human beings drove Nigel Farage and family out of a pub at the weekend. I'm not sure if they objected to Nigel existing, to his family, to his right to have a pub lunch or what.

But here is the thing; we are constantly bombarded by stunts and media bile aimed at UKIP for daring to represent views contrary to the Establishment view. That Establishment view now being of course deeply Left wing. UKIP we are told are so nearly extreme Right (which it goes without saying means vile), really just a bit of the EDL etc. Violent, racist, homophobic thugs.

And where does most of the actual, real, happening violence come from? The Left, the Marxists and their travelling companions. 'Poll Tax' riots? A concocted effort of the Left. So called 'race riots'? Again, not based on anything but the agitators of the Left.

It really is time to wake up Britain. This is how the totalitarians attain power everywhere be it Russia, North Korea, Germany or France. Tin pot tyrants use the lack of resolve of the calm majority to their advantage by being extremely violent and simultaneously pointing and saying 'look over there at the nasty man'.

Blair wasn't such a beast. He didn't care about anything but himself and his bank account, but at least he hardly bothered to pretend otherwise. Deeply unpleasant, but easily disposed of. The likes of Miliband however, with his deep rooted Marxism is very dangerous.

Look at how political (and strangely useless at the same time) the police are. Look at the sustained attack on freedom of speech, first using the 'you can't say that' line, then enacting laws and pursuing the Press -using useful idiots like Hugh Grant.

You are told the Left is caring and the Right is only ever 'hard Right' and wishes you harm and includes the Conservative Party. The truth is the extremes are the Left of Miliband, Clegg and all the Marxists bands hiding alongside them, including fascists who are also mere totalitarians and the other end, the Right if you will of those who believe in freedom, liberty and individual justice.

I don't care how benign someone says they are, I would rather have a country where we can change our leaders and not just have to do what some self impressed gimp says.

And that is the point. The attack on Farage is and always is, because someone with a profile dares to oppose Left Groupthink. He hinders, merely by being allowed to speak, the Left wing project to turn this country into a single party dictatorship. Hence the lampooning of anything he says (usually by wilfully misquoting) and attempting to shout him down.

Monday 16 March 2015

Sack Danny Cohen

The Jeremy Clarkson fuss has thrown into the spotlight just how the BBC operates, perhaps more clearly than ever before. It is time for change.

The Marxist agenda running through (and ruining) society has had too much sway for too long and the BBC has been the main propaganda source of the Left. It pushes the global warming scam, it undermines capitalism, freedom of speech, proper education for children and much else besides. Indeed, it helps the Political Correctness mantra of 'you can't say that' by direct measures and interventions.

So the licence fee paying public should at last stand up and be counted, other than by the BBC and its mysterious detector vans! However the BBC is allowed to continue we need to be demanding that standards are set and met by the Corporation and a proper accountability put in place.

No longer should endless Left wing politics be the sole reasoning, repeats and mindless drivel (thinkin' of you Frankie Boyle, oh yeah, you know it) its entire output. The culture of bullying embedded in the way it operates should be dismantled too and all of these things can only happen if we break up the cosy cartel of jobs for the 'correct'.

A good place to start would be the arrogant, without substance, Danny Cohen. If you work at a place like the BBC (a renewable energy company, a council, school, NGO) you are not allowed to have any views contrary to Left wing edicts. You must speak well of any amount of patent stupidity or risk losing your job. All around you are automatons spouting mindless politicospeak, who shriek like frightened mice if you disagree.

Disagreement is not debate to them, there is no prospect that they may have missed something, might learn something; you are just wrong. And as with Jeremy Clarkson, Danny Cohen would have you sent for 're-education' in proper Marxist thought processes (that he calls re-hab!)

There are too many overpaid dumplings taking up space in the BBC. It has long been fashionable to moan about their number and their salaries and whilst these are offensive, they are not really the point. No, despite being overpaid and too numerous by a large margin they actually and actively do harm. That is the reason to get rid of them all.

Without them the Corporation would have more money, to spend on proper programmes well made. And no-one to make sure that it all 'complied'.

If Danny Cohen is so sure about his Marxist tosh, then he should stick with it. I hear North Korea is lovely this time of year and do seem short of really solid top level managers in their TV industry.

Then Jeremy Clarkson can have his job back, but don't let him run the BBC. God, could you imagine that?!

Wednesday 11 March 2015

Why Has Jeremy Clarkson Been Suspended?

Clearly biffing someone is not a debating stance that most people would accept as relevant or proportionate. Nor would it realistically be considered a fitting form of punishment for a transgression. Word is that Jezza struck someone, a producer, for not having organised a meal for the presenters, to be taken post filming.

Sounds a tad trivial to us and maybe a little 'superstar', but probably not far North of what anyone would do after a long day and when it is the norm and expected. I believe outlets for the provision of food are numerous and some open quite late. But if catering is part of the package, well, you know.

Still not right to hit someone though (for reasons of clarity, can I make clear that by 'someone' I am inferring 'anyone excepting Piers Morgan'). However, the story goes currently, that Clarkson says he didn't hit anyone.

But the BBC is right to act, yes? Actually, the question is irrelevant, the money, popularity and the money that Top Gear brings in has stopped the eager souls at the top of the BBC (nearly said 'work for'! Work? Not likely) from ditching the show years ago.

Left liberals (as they call themselves) have been screaming to delete Jeremy Clarkson for as long as he has been allowed airtime. He not only promotes cars, which are evil in their eyes, but he does so with a distinct lack of seriousness. In fact, you could go as far as suggesting a degree of tomfoolery. Worse, as part of the jocularity, he says and encourages others to say things that are not Left wing.

This ability to have an opinion runs contrary to all they have been working towards, and largely succeeded over decades. They do not want to see a counter-culture survive and thrive. Clarkson tells jokes without the target being Margaret Thatcher, he lampoons beloved public services on the supposedly important grounds that they lack use. And he suggests that things they say and do are idiotic, particularly heath and safety Nazis and speed limits for no purpose.

Clarkson has even objected, on occasion to the Left telling lies, as if that could ever matter, in the cause of the greater good.

So basically, Clarkson had to go and it seems that now he has given the pathetic wretches who run too much of everything in this country, enough to force their co-religionists to be rid of him. Good. Let's get the team on Sky where the programme could have some real life and not sully the BBC or hinder in their race to the bottom, largely on their own.

Perhaps they could call it 'Gold-Top Gear, the Cream of Motoring Shows'

Thursday 5 March 2015

And There It Is

News in the Telegraph today that government advisors think that telling schoolchildren about drugs might be having no effect, or worse actively doing harm, by encouraging drug use albeit inadvertently.

I think this falls in the 'no sh*t Sherlock' category of revelation. Only something closely connected with government could find this a surprise, or take so long to notice what everyone else could have predicted and then realised in practice.

Still, they don't seem to suggest the harm was deliberate, so some pretty obvious stuff evades them yet. If the Left were not absolutely positive that aggressively pushing homosexuals to 'fight for their rights', by insisting that they can have children etc just like anyone else, and promoting paedophilia, particularly by sex 'education' in schools and ever lower age of consent, they wouldn't have bothered to push it.

The nuclear family is the bedrock of a stable and successful society. A stable and successful society is of no use to someone who can only achieve power through creating chaos (no one would vote in Stalin by choice). And the best way to destroy a family, to bring a feeling of utter hopelessness to these people, is to corrupt their children.

The lack of action to protect children by the police and the social services seen in recently exposed scandals, must have delighted the Left beyond measure. Here are key organs of state, with clear legal responsibilities who, following Leftie doctrine rather than the law, have allowed the harm to take place.

We need to be fighting back. A good place to start would be with investigations, with prosecutions as appropriate (meaning they must happen where appropriate, not that it is never appropriate to hold a politician to account), into the historic connections between the Left and paedophilia. Then, with their eyes opened perhaps the general public will see how they have been manipulated and duped.

Friday 27 February 2015

Greater Germany

When we hear of the latest attempt by the Greek people, through electing a party that said it would do what they wanted, to have large pensions, paid early, without having to actually work, or pay tax, the replies don't come from the EU. Yet is it not a Euro and therefore an EU problem?

Well obviously, but when a crisis of this magnitude comes up, some urgent action is required and the old façade slips. Hence the other side of the argument comes, pretty much exclusively from Angela Merkel. Now, it has long been held that Germany are the EU's bankers, so maybe they should have a strong say over what happens in the EU, financially.

But it is clearly more than that isn't it. The Germans are calling the shots for the whole shooting match (oops, unfortunate). France, the great administrators as they alone exclaim, have slipped a little in the prestige stakes, having elected an extra special idiot to run the country. (In fact, the only reason France isn't in as much trouble as Greece or Italy say, is that as a founder member they got to channel funds to support their economy from the rest of 'Europe').

So what we have is Greater Germany, way beyond the dreams of the Kaiser or Hitler. Even, poor French loves, beyond Napoleon, now a distant memory.

I have just finished re-reading a 1973 book on WW1, by David Shermer. At the end, discussing the brave new world the victors planned to make, he points out the stupidity of the measures. We are used to understanding that the draconian nature of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles led to a justification for German anger and eventually, WW2.

But Shermer talks of the problems of ignoring nationalities and cultures, He mentioned a created Poland with many non-Poles within the new territory, the Balkan mess and several other problem areas. Translate that to today and we have the utter nonsense, pure bilge in fact, spouted by EU supporters about being European.

As if some common heritage existed. You can't have it both ways; either Europe has always been a homogenous region that just never thought of uniting under a single bureaucracy before, or it has been the scene of countless wars. Current history books (those without the helping hand of EU revisionists) seem to talk quite a lot about war. That then is the truth.

Lord help us, we have not long ago experienced the explosion of violence again in the Balkans. Something, incidentally the EU, despite all its claims couldn't even begin to find a way to deal with.
Which leaves us with the blindingly obvious conclusion that the EU is counter-factual inasmuch that it creates the problems it claims to be the solution for (hello? Ukraine) and that by ignoring nation states and self determination, it has lit yet another fuse.

But I do get that it created an enormous amount of wealth and power for a large number of politicians and that it was a backhanded way of creating a totalitarian state to govern in perpetuity. Having seen how it ended for Hitler, Stalin, Lenin and all the others around the world, there was no point pursuing the violent revolution, or awaiting an uprising of the people.

There is no European demos and there is no need for an EU. In fact it is anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, old fashioned and irrelevant in the globalised world of today. But it is the Thousand Year Reich so it is here to stay. Unless someone with courage says, no. Again. Perhaps that should be Britain's role in Europe. Again.

Wednesday 4 February 2015

You Dead Yet?

Obviously, as you are reading this you didn't get killed by someone driving at 31mph. Possibly because he braked when he saw you. Additionally, you have avoided swine flu, bird flu, salmonella, MRSA (probably by staying out of hospital) and several other mishaps that the authorities and its experts predicted you would succumb to.

But most amazingly, you have dodged vCJD. As we know from global warming, scientists know everything and never get anything wrong. That is why we listen to their every utterance with reverence. And why they are so often cited to stop us asking questions.

So, when Professor Richard Lacey said that half a million people would be dying of CJD by 2016, it would as night follows day, come to pass. So maybe you are dead. Or definitely several people you know.

Checking the record seems to suggest we are expecting a pretty big leap next year because the number of deaths due to vCJD in 2013 was precisely 1. And in 2014 none at all. This is only evidence of course, just a statement of fact, which as we again have learnt from global warming isn't as true as what they think. There are probably 499,999 deaths hidden somewhere that we haven't correctly attributed.

Its not me, its you, as scientists would say.

Tuesday 3 February 2015

We Require A New Philosophy

For a long time now we as a society and the West generally, have been following a Left wing agenda. It sets the ethos and ethics and instructs us on the path to take. It does so outside of democracy by not actually asking for visible power, but it exerts it none the less.

It does so by evoking its creed 'progressive', to suggest that we are achieving progress by following their lead, but going in the right direction. Blair called it 'modern'. But 'the right direction' is one that works for the vast majority, one that people agree on. For the Left that is not it at all. Their 'right direction' is when they get what they want.

It is a form of fundamentalism that is every bit as careless of the public at large as ISIS, but does so behind the scenes most of the time. It tried mass murder before and strangely it wasn't as wildly popular as was imagined. Violent revolution is out, for the time being and soft, patient destruction is in.

So what are the fundamentals of the strong Western society that has done so well since the Reformation? Well, basically, family, individual liberty, democracy, capitalism and property rights and strong law to support these ideals and the people (in general).

Reviewing all of the above, which are all iniquitous to a solid, Left wing totalitarian state, the only ones that really matter are capitalism and family. These, if suppressed will never be other than a cause of friction, better for the people to come to realise that they are false, or perhaps just lose them by inattention.

A society once reliant on these codes and mores that sees them vanish will become chaotic and at that point the lever pullers will step from behind the curtain to seize power and delete the other aspects of liberty, freedom and justice. The state, e.g the Left elite will provide all that.

Capitalism is the tough one. It works and is seen to work (see ebay and the sharing community). Left to their own devices people instinctively act in a capitalistic fashion. The phrase 'to better oneself' or even 'to better provide for my family' are garlic to the Left vampire.

So, the nuclear family had to be the target. Hence the sexual revolution of the Sixties, the relaxation of divorce laws, the insistence by the Left that women should work (that looking after children was beneath them and used by men to oppress them) and the promotion of homosexuality and paedophilia.

Much of this worked because it all seemed so 'reasonable' and caring. To think otherwise made you feel as if you were constraining someone else, not empathetic. The introduction of welfare for single parents and the insistence that children born out of wedlock should not be a shame on the mother, were crucial building blocks in destroying the family.

A mother who devotes herself to her family and works in the home, looking after children cannot be costed or underrated, any more than the man, who sees less of his children due to his devotion to family by work and providing an income. Whilst men have become accustomed to feeling superior, nothing stops a woman working and they are no less able. By such action attitudes change.

Naturally, a woman going out to work meant two incomes in a family and an increase in their wealth and ambitions. This isn't the Leftist way, so thankfully the ability to pay more for a house meant prices shot up and the Left pushed the need for ever more expensive, regulated childcare to remove as much of this income as possible.

They don't care about a woman's identity and feeling of worth, by having a job, they just don't want her forming a strong family unit. Just like they care nothing about the angst and mental anguish of the homosexual and paedophile, they just know they both can help to destroy a society's structure, if they push for 'rights'. Which is why the 'movements' supporting these activities are so aggressive.

Capitalism, the Left tried to address intellectually. They pointed out that some people were rich and others not and that it would be perfectly in order for the poorer to take what they want from the 'rich'. (Most Left wing ideas are at best naive, the sort of things you believe at school but then leave behind when you discover the real world - so after university as well)

They talked about fairness and redistribution of wealth, but as they progressively undermined education (their state cannot have educated people in it, someone has to do the work), the public became less and less interested in such matters. Bit of an own goal there.

But then they hit on an idea of simple genius. They would use the mass stupidity they had created to get turkeys to vote for Christmas. There had been some academic research into the possibility of an impending ice age as it seemed to be getting colder. Then it seemed to get warmer and the scare went away. But some, looking at the mechanisms decided to go further.

An effect was discovered that became known as 'the greenhouse effect'. The biggest aspect of this is clouds. They reflect sunlight off their tops back into space and act as a blanket keeping warmth in. Other things keep heat in too like methane and carbon dioxide.

It took only one person at first I guess, who had never got past schoolboy politics to think; if carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and Man has been producing ever greater quantities of it then surely we have warmed the planet? We have affected the climate!

Studies were carried out and even by 1966 it had been concluded that the amounts produced by Man were insignificant in the context of global conditions controlling climate. But science isn't static and politics not interested in the truth when a lie works better.

So, the essentially sound theory that CO2 can cause warming, was pushed way beyond credulity (but when told to simple folk, with a straight face, can work) and sustained by a wave of propaganda. Politicians of all stripes saw in it a way to raise taxes and the Left were gleeful that capitalism was destroying itself spending its wealth chasing a chimera.

For the Left of course it was even more totemic. If you can get people to believe a completely unbelievable thing, something a child could see through, then you have achieved a great thing. So global warming wasn't just helping to destroy capitalism from within, it was proving just how stupid people are. A massive coup.

At this point, those with an open mind and a leaning to enquiry ask about the science. It is settled apparently. Well, there immediately is the problem. Scientists are telling us that something, perhaps the only thing in the history of Mankind, is absolutely 'known' by scientists. They are so sure that they not only say further research would be pointless, they insist there must be no further research.

And as governments pay the scientists, I guess anyone saying, 'well, I might have a look any way' will find he has no funding. And is now being ridiculed personally in august scientific journals.

Science has a method. This says that by observing and experimenting, producing repeatable results we can espouse a theory. It is up to others to prove it wrong. All of the global warming data says things like, its been hotter and colder before, so climate changes for reasons we don't understand. The planet warms and CO2 content goes up, not the other way around.

It has been colder when there was way, way more CO2 in the atmosphere. Water vapour (clouds) are by many, many times the largest warming contributor, oh and OMG, the Sun. Didn't see that one coming eh? And the only current empirical evidence from observation we have is that there has been no global warming for 18 years.

The Left's global warming scam was based on ever more CO2 causing ever more warming, and computer models preloaded with that assumption. So, our current crop of scientists don't hold to the scientific method, have made the most costly demands in history all supported only by computer models and no actual science.

When they discovered the evidence was against them, they lied but somebody leaked the emails. But then of course the international body running the climate change scam, demanding you show it respect consists of a few vested interest scientists and a whole raft of anti-capitalist activists like Greenpeace and WWF. Run by a railway engineer, who makes a nice penny on the side with his 'green' companies looking for government handouts.

So, the Left are currently pushing up your energy prices massively (more to come), ensuring your children don't get an education, destroying healthcare, making the police a political body and increasing state powers in as many areas as it can. The EU could be a part of it, again it is a Marxist ideal lying about its true intentions, but it is run clumsily by too many traditional politicians, so is little more than a sideshow for the real Left.

What we need is a better understanding of how we live together, to return freedoms that even so called conservatives are taking away and a new philosophy. What we mustn't do meantime is undermine our own democracy by voting for Marxists like Labour, the Lib Dems or, heaven help us, the Greens.