Just how 'Independent' is the Independent Asylum Commission' ?

On the way to work this morning I was listening to the 'Toady' programme interviewing some cah from an 'Independent body' who claimed that our 'treatment of asylum seekers' was 'substandard' and 'below that expected of a civilised society'.

Now before I go any further, let's get something straight. If you roll off a plane or a boat onto our shores and claim some bugger IN THE COUNTRY YOU JUST CAME FROM is out to kill you - or worse - for your beliefs then I say you have the right to make your case to our authorities, and you have the right to have that case heard swiftly, and if your case is proven then as this country is a signatory to the UNHCR's treaties and agreements then this country has a duty to protect you from whatever it was in the place you just left that you fear persecution for.

That's what the UNHCR is FOR. If anyone reading this has a beef with THAT then you can just stop reading this and bugger off you're not welcome here.

But how many of the people who complain about their treatment on THIS BBC News page qualify under my definition above. EXACTLY HOW MANY of them arrived in this country DIRECTLY from the country they say they are seeking to escape from ?

Not many.

And that's the problem, isn't it. Because once a GENUINE REFUGEE FLEEING FROM FEAR OF PERSECUTION arrives in a country that has signed up to those treaties, then as soon as they LEAVE it to try and enter ANOTHER they become BOGUS don't they. Otherwise why did they not fall into the open arms of THAT country's officials and pour their heart out to THEM. After all, THEY signed up to the same treaty WE did. THEY accept the same tenets that WE do. So why LEAVE there and tey to get in HERE ?

That's the real question.

And do you know what ? If we packed every last one of the people that roll up into OUR country from somewhere OTHER than a country the UNHCR recognise as a 'problem' STRAIGHT BACK ONTO A BOAT GOING BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM then guess what would happen ? I'll tell you what would happen.

• We would have NO MORE BOGUS ASYLUM SEEKERS for a start


• Those who DID come DIRECTLY from a place of persecution to OUR country would be SO FEW in numbers we could process their claim inside A WEEK and the process whould become a damned sight MORE civilised for every last one of the poor, persecuted, wretched souls

But do you see that happenning this side of a blue moon combined with Hell Freezing Over ?

No, I don't either.

So while a tide of humanity washes up on our shores from all parts far and wide and is allowed to clog our limited processing ability to the point where nothing is done about anyone, people like 'The Independent Asylum Commission' will be able to bleat to our bleeding heart press about the awful conditions those rushing to storm our gates face, and what a bunch of heartless barbarian bastarads we are for not taking those gates down.

But all the way through this interview something bugged me. Just who the hell are the 'Independent Asylum Commission' ? Well as far as I can see the organisation is headed up by two people, Sir John Waite and Ifath Nawaz.

Who ?

Well Sir John Waite seems to be, or have been at some point since 1993, a member of the Privy Council and is cited in various google searches as a former Appeal Judge. So, a man well placed to assess the legal aspects of our country's obligations to the UN and the UNHCR.

Ifath Nawaz is apparently the Chairperson of the Association of Muslim Lawyers which strives by any means condusive to their objectives to do rather a lot including advising muslims on what to do when they are arrested under the terrorism act.

But probably what worries me most about this outfit is this atatement on their 'Association In Practice' page

"In our current multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-religious society, it is important that the lessons of history can be applied wisely by allowing people to be different, within reason"

Well we all know how reasonable Islam is towards those who wish to be different, and just how far their defintion of 'within reason' stretches. Why are they not, for example, complaining at Iran's habit of stringing up homosexual men, and not for the purpose of demonstrating auto-erotic resposes to hypoxia. Why are they not complaining at the habit of beating and butchering women for wearing 'un-islamic dress'. Why are they not complaining at Saudi Arabia's distaste for the construction of Christian Cathedrals ? And why are they not complaining to Colonel Ghadaffi that visiting tourists on cruise liners cannot sit in the cabins of their ships enjoying a gin and tonic ?

Well we all know why.

But now I have a question to leave you with.

WHO is BANKROLLING the "Independent Asylum Commission"

HAS THIS MAN MOVED IN NEAR YOU ?

Here in Newport, just down the road from 555 Caerleon Road, we know all about Sex Offenders and we know all about the way they are 'monitored'.

We know how, after they have been banged up for abusing a kid of pre-school age, they get let out and housed in a halfway house yards from where primary school kids wait for the crossing lady to stop the trafic.

We know how, with their appetites whetted, they are allowed to wander around kiddies playgrounds unchallenged despite complaints to the police.

And we know how, when they pick their next victim, they get to being them back to their nice warm half-way house (where MAPPA haven't got the faintest idea where they are or what they do) so they can let their mates have a play with their latest conquest too.

And if you doubt a word of the above, go do a bit of googlong for the name "CRAIG SWEENEY". But have a bucket ready to vomit into.

So if you see a new chap on the street bearing anything like a passing resemblance to Captain Birdseye here, go read the reason WHY he is your new neighbour.

And now sit back, crack open a stiff drink, and pause in awe at the cheek of our former penal colony chucking back THEIR criminals to US.

Of course, there's one easy way to make sure the guy isn't a threat to your kids. Any time he wants a gift of a couple of quid to buy a nice, strong rope that's not QUITE long enough to let his feet reach the ground, drop me a mail and I'll be round with the cash faster than a nonce running a red light in the hope the cops won't pull him over with the evidence still sitting on the back seat

BEWARE of Politicians having a "tidy-up"

BEWARE of Politicians "Tidying Up" the statute books.

We used to have the right to hang people for treason. Even after MP's voted to abolish the death penalty almost forty years ago, we still kept the ultimate sanction for treason, and for those found to have committed arson in her majesty's dockyards.

Except that as I and about a hundred other people standing with me in the evacuation area will tell you, when a decade or three back there was a fire in the bowels of one such dockyard, AND it was found that the perpetrator was a citizen of a country then in one piece and sitting firmly behind the iron curtain, all attempts to string the bastard from the yardarm of the Victory were given short shrift.

But I recall sitting in an office in 1999 reading in a copy ot The Times that Tony The Lying Scumbag Blair had just initiated a clearing out exercise and under the guise of 'removing obsolete legislation from the statute books' had quietly, with no public debate and minimal fuss, removed the right of our people to use the ultimate sanction upon those who would perform sabotage upon our armed forces in their home ports.

So when I heard they were at it again I didn't take it lightly as
these fools did. Not least because I wouldn't put it past the scum in charge now to slip the MAGNA CARTA and HABAEUS CORPUS onto the list of obsolete stuff to scrap.

And yes, I HAVE been drunk in charge of a Steam Engine Wanna make summat of it ?

Gordon Goes Grovelling to Europe

YESTERDAY Gordon Brown's replacement at Number 11, Alistair 'Dead Man Walking' - 'Northern Rock is Safe In Our Hands' Darling, delivered his first budget. Strange that while there's 4MB of PDF of it on the BBC Website you end up having to download almost five times that much to get the full picture. New Liebour spin is alive and well.

I note with wry irony the fact that Darling said £12 MILLION will be set aside to assist women entrepreneurs. Oh good, i say to my daughter, go grab your share to set up the childcare centre you've just done the business plan for. But wait ! What is this ? If you go read the detail not a peny of that £12 MILLION will go to a single entrepreneur, female or otherwise. The whole lot will be be handed out in backhanders to the slimy scum that already get handed billions to spin lies and crap to the public.

So it is with that fact in mind that I take solace in the fate this morning of Alistair's boss. Gordon the Clown Brown. Dear Prudence himself. He's been off with his best begging expression to see his overlords and masters in Europe today.

Taking the Eurostar - to emphasise his green credentials - he's riding first clas, sipping champers, enjoying smoked salmon and belgian chocolates, pandered to by women who make Pamela Anderson look flat chested, and by men who would win a chippendale / full monty audition hands down - should he feel that way inclined, Gordy has wandered off to plead with his master to let him reduce the rate of Value Added Tax on 'green' goods. Home insulation. Energy Efficient Light Bulbs. And so on.

Hang on a minute. WE JUST HAD A SODDING BUDGET. If Chairman Gordy is so passionate about reducing taxes on "green" goods WHY THE HELL DIDN'T HIS DARLING PAL OPEN HIS MOUTH AND DO SO YESTERDAY.

The answer is, of course, that we don't set our own tax measures any more. We have to cower at the demands of our european masters. And if they say 'niet' we can't lower our tax rates.

I understand there are a few elections soon.

Maybe some people would like to ask the candidates WHY we can't reduce the rate of tax levied on goods sold in this country ? After all, Gordy thinks it is a wonderful idea he just told Eddie Mair so on P.M. And neatly avoided saying whether he was content that he couldn't just reduce the rates.

Remember this when those who want your vote tell you WESTMINSTER sets our taxes.

Remember this when those who want your vote stand on your door.

Remember this when those who want your vote say OF COURSE we haven't handed our sovereignty over to euro-scum across the pond.

Above all, REMEMBER that the scum who want your vote to stay on the gravy train DENIED YOU the right to tell them to sod off out of Europe.

It's not the children that need to pledge their allegiance

I came here this morning to report with thinly veiled delight the stuffing that was handed out to the Attorney General in this morning's Today programme on Radio 4.

But I confess to being in a darker and more furious mood than I expected. I will post the details of that stuffing, but in a more abbreviated form, and then I will go on to detail why I am in a dark mood.

The story then, can be read on almost any news site. Terrified that have seen through him as Prime Minister as easily as we saw through his tissue of lies in his failed budgets, Gordy The Clown commissioned the Attorney General, the man who U-turned at Tony Blair's behest to create another tissue of lies proclaiming the justness of a war with Iraq, to come up with some ideas to improve the Britishness of this country.

Well, I can suggest one way. Fix signs around our three mile limit saying 'Piss Off We're Full' and use force to sink anyone who doesn't turn round. After all, there was a reason we had a three mile limit, and the reason was that this was the longest range over which we could aim and deploy our naval defences. As the guide that took me round the Old Battery at the Needles told me, it's pretty pointless claiming a territorial limit you can't enforce.

But no, such things are no longer in our power. Hell we cannot even refuse demands that our cars waste fuel running headlamps every minute of the day.

So what has the Attorney General come up with ? A plan to make our secondary school leavers pledge their allegiance to the queen, that's what. And a plan that was shot to ribbons at 8:15 this morning by both the Labour Peer Baroness Kennedy and by the Toady Programme presenter alike. It was hilarious they had the guy stalled dead in the studio and ran rings round him. What of the Scots ? What of the Welsh ? What of the Republicans ? Can we really expect anyone who wishes the abolition of the monarchy to stand there and pledge allegiance to the current incumbent to the throne? It would seem the Attorney General thinks so, for he said so, live on air.

I have news for him. Should I ever find myself watching an assassin preparing to take a pot-shot at Liz or Phil her Greek Consort I would almost certainly intervene, even at peril to myself. Not out of any loyalty to her, or him, but because such is not the way things are done. And because if he succeeded, both I, and Dennis Skinner (a man I hold in high esteem not for his views but because he can be counted on to be his own man regardless of the consequence to himself, a rare thing in today's Parliament) would be cheated out of the delight of watching her apply for a job stacking shelves at woolworths or face losing her Jobseekers Allowance.

I especially liked the bit where Baroness Kennedy pointed out that the way to instil a sense of citizenship was perhaps to make our citizens feel they had a voice, to make them think their views mattered, and to make them think they could TRUST our institutions, and our politicians.

And I would have left this blog entry at this point, except perhaps for a brief foray in search of the soundbites so you could all enjoy them.

But then my mood darkened.

On the BBC News Front Page, two stories below the stock photo of the Queen and the headline shouting the attorney general's plan, I found THIS

---

If the police and social workers had only listened to 12-year-old Ruksana when she told them her father had threatened to send her to Pakistan to be married against her will, then she says life might have been very different. But they did not take her seriously, she says. She ended up in a foreign country and married to a violent partner who raped her and made her pregnant, aged 15. Although she managed to escape, Ruksana (not her real name) now lives alone with her young child in a refuge somewhere in England.

Ruksana believes that by taking her away from school so early her parents robbed her of her education. And she says having a child at such a young age has hindered her career. "When I was at school. I enjoyed it and worked hard," she says. "I was in the top sets for English, maths and science. I wanted to go to college and university - but I didn't even get to take my GCSEs."

All this may have been prevented, she believes, if she had not been let down by the authorities that she trusted. With her classmates at school, Ruksana had heard a talk about domestic violence - and some of what she heard chimed with the 12-year-old schoolgirl. Says Ruksana: "The speaker listed the symptoms and said - if this is happening to you, then it is domestic violence. So I kept his card, and when my parents threatened me with marriage, that's when I called the police."

"I told the police: my father wants to send me to Pakistan to get married against my will. I told them that he had my passport. The police reassured me that this wouldn't happen. But then the police came to our house, and talked to me in front of my family - so everyone knew that I had complained. Soon after that the father moved me away to a relative's house."

"There I was visited by a social worker that the police had arranged. She came to visit me twice - but she also didn't speak to me alone, so my relatives knew what was going on as well."

Things moved quickly after that, says Ruksana. "After about six to eight months my father came back from Pakistan. He said: 'We're going to Pakistan for a holiday. It's only for a short time - a month or two'.

"Then when we got on the plane he told me that I wouldn't be coming back, and that I couldn't do anything about it. After I arrived in Pakistan I stayed there for two years. I got married aged 15 and then got pregnant. When I was there I did still secretly think that the British police would come looking for me - because I had already complained to them. I thought the school in Britain might search for me - I obviously wasn't coming to school any more. But nobody looked for me. I had to go through all that alone. It was horrific."

"Then I came back to the UK - I did not want to stay married and I told everyone this. But they said they had given their word, and if I said no it would bring shame to the family. So I had to go through with it."

Ruksana gave birth in a British hospital. Then, when her Pakistani husband eventually joined Ruksana in the UK, the marriage was unhappy.

"He was very violent towards me. I have been through rape," she says.

Eventually Ruksana took her child and ran away. She is now in hiding from relatives who believe she has brought shame on the family name. "I am always looking over my shoulder," she says. She blames the authorities for not believing the word of a 12-year-old Asian girl. "If they had responded properly then my life wouldn't be the way it is now," she says. "I think maybe the police and social workers aren't aware of forced marriage Or they think it is an Asian thing and it doesn't happen with white people. "White kids can call Childline and they get listened to - but for Asian children it's thought of as wrong to complain."

Ruksana is not bitter towards her parents: "I think they know that in our religion - Islam - forced marriage is wrong. But it is also in our tradition.

---

Ladies and gentlemen, I put it to you that it is not the children that need to take a pledge of allegiance to our sovereign, and more iomportantly, to the laws and customs she represents.

Obviously Blogger is down, but ...

Once upon a time a computer occupied a space the size of three european teenager's bedrooms. Pilots flew aircraft using a control stick and rudder pedals that were directly connected to the control surfaces, and to phone home required the use of a strange device in a red box at the corner of the street, into which one placed some coins and pressed button 'B'. Or maybe Button 'A'. I can't remember now.

Yesterday evening I noticed that my attempts to poke around on the web returned rather more 'Server Error 502' pages than normal. And so I did a bit more looking around. And that's when I spotted this little gem.

Faced with the realisation that a protocol chosen by the military to provide multiply-redundant communication systems in the hope that bits of them would be able to operate during, or just after, a nuclear holocaust DOESNT mean 100.00% 24/7/365.25 reliability, it would appear a couple of users of this free service are throwing a teenage strop because no-one from the company that provides the free service had the time to pander to her demand that they jump and provide updates on how things are going.

Fortunately some more sensible voices seem to have prevailed. Voices that suggest if 100.00% uptime means so much, those demanding it consider PAYING someone to provide it.

It reminded me of a conversation I had recently with a client whose internet connectivity was suffering and whose 'help line' were worse than useless. It seemed the people she was speaking to half way round the planet couldn't give a toss and weren't able to do anything even if they wanted to. But the service she was using was "free". Meaning it was "piggy backed" onto their mobile phone contract. And was therefore a service that made no revenue for the parent company at all.

Given the 'offers' I see al the time it is clear I am paying over the odds for both my broadband internet service at home, and the mobile internet service I am using right now to post this blog entry. And I shall continue to pay. Well I almost certainly will.

Why ? Well, because when something strange occurred on my mobile internet service last month, and I dialled the (5p a minute) number to have a chat with someone about it, the "someone" I was connected to in seconds understood instantly the problem I was describing, didn't waste time reading a "have you tried rebooting your PC and turned your router off and back on again" script, took my details and said they would email me with a workaround and let me know when the issue was resolved. And they did.

Similarly, after my land-line broadband company made a "boo-boo" with the billing and blamed me for not paying, whereas in fact the fault lay with them for not issuing a payment request, my forthright complaint brought forth a swift explanation and apology from the highest levels in their management. And they made sure they got it right for the future.

It's called a 'Service Level Agreement'. It works like this; they promise to do their absolute best to sort out a problem, in exchange for which I pay them something, or a part of what I pay gets earmarked as a budget for their service.

I don't HAVE to give them my custom; I am free to take my money, and my needs, elsewhere. One day, I may do so. But that day is not today.

To those who carp and whinge when a free service doesn't come with free "when I say jump you say How High" support staff at their beck and call, I say I'll cheerfully offer you that level of service on my own server and I promise you notification by telephone or email within five minutes of a system unavailability issue occurring, and half hourly updates thereafter, with thge option for automated failover to a separate redundant system. To take up this offer please send £1000 a year to my home address, £2000 if you wish to avail yourself of the redundant failover option.... In fairness I would point out others may charge substantially more, or substantially less, for a similar sounding service. I would suggest you check out their trade references before parting with any money.

ALternatively you can do what I did when my free blogger service went off air for a short time. I went down the pub, drank a few beers and sang myself hoarse with the rest of the locals "accompanying" the "Shadows and Other Sounds of the Sixties Guitar Tribute Band" they had on stage.

Uniforms On The Streets: I confess to mixed feelings

So Gordon Brown is miffed that our troops have been told not to wear their uniforms on the streets? I must say I have some seriously mixed feelings about this.

There was a time when, to the civilian population of Great Britain, the sight of men in uniforms such as these three gentlemen above, or of younger men, wearing the uniforms that succeeded them, would bring a few tears to eyes and lumps to throats. And not through any sense of civic, or national, pride.

No, the sight of young men in such uniforms would generate that reaction because everyone knew the wearer had been (or far too soon would be) sitting behind the control stick of a rather fragile piece of engineering, hoping they would be able to complete their orders to shoot a similar young man, sitting in a similarly flimsy piece of engineering, before he shot them.

A chap my father knew when I was a kid, who flew spitfires out of a base in Kent, told me his job was to get up there and ideally creep up behind some poor sod just like him who'd never see him coming and wouldn't know anything about it until all four cannons ripped into his aircraft and his body. But that was over 65 YEARS AGO. War, or at least the sharp end of it, was then, and remains today, something not generally undertaken by old men.

Yes, "National Service" ensured that for some considerable time, every able bodied man spent some part of his life in uniform. But the last National Serviceman, Second Lieutenant Richard Vaughan of the Royal Army Pay Corps, was demobbed on 16 May 1963. Source : here where you may find some interesting insights.

Far more recently, I was having a conversation with an American over a few beers and the topic of conversation got round to Christmas, from there to Christmas presents, and from there to unwanted Christmas presents. I asked him if he'd ever had problems giving back one he didn't want.... He thought for a while and then said there WAS one ... as a teenager in the 1970's Uncle Sam handed him a letter offering him an automatic rifle and free travel to South East Asia to use it. He wasn't terribly keen to take advantage of this offer, but Uncle Sam wasn't taking no for an answer.

These days, those who have taken the place of 'the few' are still called upon to go out and risk quite literally having their world shot out from underneath them. But I remember not that long ago that before the 'Chuckle Brothers' of Stourmont found they could take us taxpayers for tens of thousands of pounds a year in "salaries" for which they did nothing, they were each at the head of political movements that attracted followers who felt no particular loyalty to the ballot box at all, and found the Armalite a much more useful tool for getting one's voice heard. And in that environment, the word went out that only a fool would wear the uniform in the street other than whilst on patrol, for to do so would invite a NORAID yankee dollar funded, libyan supplied bullet, or worse.

And that's why I have mixed feelings about this. I am concerned that by going out into the streets of Britain in uniform but unarmed, our servicemen and women are providing a target for more than insult and saliva. And I don't see why they should put themselves at risk just to salve Gordon's conscience for his act of treachery in sitting on his hands while his former master lied to us and lied to parliament in order to commit us to supporting the military adventures of his pal across the pond.

Planners: The real Nazi's in today's society

As a kid, I often walked home from the comprehensive school in Llanishen, Cardiff, that I attended. Buses were few and far between and it was not only as a university student that I sometimes found myself one half of a new penny short of the bus fare home.

I recall the walk down past the fields that now 'boast' the massive Inland Revenue buildings, to the roundabout where now instead of corner shops we have a massive supermarket, past the Royal Ordnance Factory, now long gone as we have long ago sold out our ability to defend ourselves, and past the Avana and Merretts bakery on the corner of Maes Y Coed Road.

Maes Y Coed: There's a descriptive name for you. "The field of trees ?" My command of the language has dissipated. Fields and Woodlands. Once maybe, in the days when my grandmother bought her home on the new estate then being built about half a mile from St Marks Church at the crossroads of the A469 and the A470. And now about a quarter of a mile from where the massive gabalfa interchange now stands. Fields and woods then maybe, but no more. But I digress.

Yet as a university student I recall - and none too fondly - the time I spent in the easter and summer holidays in those bakeries on Maesycoed Road. I personally put the crosses on half a million hot cross buns. Well it felt like half a million. And they were put on manually, with a device that looked like a small petrol pump that delivered a thin stream of runny dough. An 'orrible nasty job. The dough stuck to everything, the stench of "chemical baking" was overpowering and for years after the stench of hotcross buns made me want to vomit.

I well recall the way they fiddled the payslips to underpay me. And the way the closed shop union agreement meant that the bakers union - and thus the scum in the labaah party - collected from me on two separate occasions a further wek's "union dues" for the two weeks long after those holidays when I finally got to go back and collect the money the bakers had swindled me out of.

Yes that time in those bakeries taught me that big business is the criminal that swindles the honest labourer of a decent day's pay, but so much more a swindler was the labour party and the trade unions for taking two more slices of the cake from the additional payslips I was given for work I'd done in the past but not been paid for until after the business admitted its mistake and paid up. I still have those payslips, yellowing, in a drawer. I wave them at anyone who extols to me the virtue of trade union membership, as an objectlesson in how corrupt they were, and probably still are.

But my time making those products holds mixed menories. Of the time the machine went nuts and plastered everyone within a six yard radius head to foot in sticky dough that made us all look like extras for the part of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in a Ghostbusters movie. And pittance as it was, the work I did there provided the means for me to amass the funds to buy my girlfriend her engagement ring.

God almighty I'm getting retrospective.

I drove down that road a week or so ago. Long gone is the Royal Ordnance Factory and in its place are rows and rows of yuppie town housing. Buildings jammed in on each other with railings and brick walls keeping out the undesirables such as the schoolkids that might, as I once did, walk down that road on their way home.

And opposite the bakeries, to the south, more and more rows of similar 'high density town housing'. The slums-to-be for the 2050's and beyond, I predict. Fortunately I shall almost certainly be dead by then and my kids will have left this shithole country.

But today, those yuppies are dancing with glee. For the johhny-come-latelies have persuaded the planning nazis to impose their will on the bakeries that have been there for the best part of eighty years. It seems the new kids on the block are not happy that the factory keeping people employed has to make some noise to do so. And it seems that the builders of these new houses have been somewhat slipshod in their building, for had they done a proper job of soundproofing, there wouldn't be a problem.

But doubtless mindful of the fact that their pockets are deepened by millions of pounds in council tax from these new kids on the block, whereas they get jack shit from the business rates paid by the bakery to central government, the planning nazi's have slapped a noise abatement notice on the factories that have been there, doing nothing more or less than they have done for decades, and the court has put two fingers up to their protests.

I wonder whether this is actually a plot by the housing developers on both sides of the bakery to have them put out of business so they can snap up their site and make another killing.

Margaret Hodge - Out of Touch With British Culture

The Daily Telegraph seems as good a place to start gathering my thoughts today. For whilst I see the "repeater stations" of the British National Party have faithfully seeded cyberspace with an image of the "Last Night Of The Proms" with the strapline 'Too White For British Culture" I say they've fallen headlong into a stage trapdoor.

Because when this woman stood up in front of the well-paid IPPR think tank - funded I imagine in large measure from handouts from new labaah special advisers seeking paperwork to bolster their paper-thin opinions of what's good for us, she was particular in her choice of words. She spoke of 'The Proms'. Not the 2007 or 2008 season of the BBC Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, nor "The Last Night Of The Proms", that (since 1982) preserve of everything gloriously Thatcherite, "In Yer Face " and "Up Yer Junta Galtieri" but of the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts as a whole.

And in doing so the woman demonstrates how far out of touch with 'Britishness' she really is.

Have yo ever BEEN to a Promenade Concert ? I admit that when I went it was long, LONG before Red Ken could even DREAM of putting on his jackboots and strutting round pronouncing how he's going to overcome 'local difficulties' and shove a tramway in Oxford Street. But when I went, there was more than Edward Elgar and Richard Wagner on offer, and amongst the audience of fellow twenty-somethings (I SAID it was a LONG time ago) there were precious few blonde six foot three blue eyed aryans. Indeed I was probably the only one.

Take a look at the Telegraph article. They say Hodge's "observation that the Promenade Concerts - one of the best-attended and most financially accessible annual music festivals in the world - were not sufficiently "inclusive", was worthy of a loony-Left council of another historical era".

And I agree with every word above.

Does anyone reading this recognise the picture above ? Maybe not. It is a perfomance of Peter Grimes. Benjamin Britten's work telling the story of a fisherman, unjustly accused of terrible things when his apprentice boy dies at sea, unjustly pilloried by the community when he seeks a replacement apprentice (the picture above is from a scene where he goes to recruit a new apprentice) and in the end, driven mad by the local hostility, he becomes what the locals fear he is, and in the end he sails out to sea into a storm from which his corpse does not return.

You don't need to be a Grimsby Trawlerman to identify with Peter Grimes. Yes it helps to be one of those whose livelihood was stolen by Spanish factory fishing vessels that would plunder your goldfish bowl if they had a chance, aided and abetted by thieving corrupt european union officials keen to plunder the riches off our coasts. But anyone, ANYONE who was in any kind of employment during the Thatcherite destruction of our manufacturing industries and our conversion to an oligarchy run by the square mile cannot fail to identify with the depressed fisherman driven to suicide by the events that befall him and the sense of helplessness he felt at his lot.

Today there are two lifeboats moored up within ten miles of my caravan in west wales. One is placed to scour the sandbanks to which the unfortunate mariner or pleasure seeker will be carried on the incoming tide, the other, more powerful, is placed ready to scour the wider area to which the corpse will be washed if not rescued from the ebb. And it's not only jetskiers that they have to fetch. The maxim 'the sea shall not have them' runs in my veins as a rescue diver just as it courses through the sinews of those crews. Fortune has smiled upon me when I have been called upon to demonstrate my skills in this arena. But sometimes it is an aspiration to which one cannot always succeed. Sometimes the ambulance meeting the lifeboat at the shore station doesn't bother using its blue lights. Sometimes it doesn't get called to attend at all. Thankfully I have not shared that sense of failure yet and I hope that day never dawns. But there is another reason why Britten speaks to many. And he's just one man. OK OK he had help. TWO men.

So Mrs Hodge I'm sorry to tell you that this is just one performance, in one concert hall, on one day last year, that spoke to me of what it was to be British far more powerfully than the Notting Hill Carnival or the Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy. And yes, it was to a performance of Peter Grimes that I went as a promenader all those years ago.

Does Precoed actually KEEP anyone these days

So I pop over to the BBC Website and trip over yet another 'one jumped over the wall' story about the Usk hotel that's supposed to lock the front door, 'Prescoed Open Prison'.

Because YET ANOTHER of the people sent there as a 'punishment' and a 'deterrent' has wandered out of the door and not bothered to wander back in again.

Source here.

"Police are hunting a convicted robber, who has failed to return to an open prison in Monmouthshire. Andrew Clifford Phillips, 40, originally of Pentwyn, Cardiff, failed to return to HMP Prescoed on Saturday. He was jailed for 11 years for robbery in May 2005 and Cardiff Crown Court was told he had a record of 100 previous offences, including violence."

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ONE HUNDRED OFFENCES, INCLUDING VIOLENCE, AND HIS LAST SENTENCE WAS ELEVEN YEARS IN PRISON.

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"Gwent Police say he is white, medium build, 1.75m tall with cropped hair and has tattoos on his neck and forearm.... A police spokesman warned ... there may be a potential risk due to the fact that he is no longer in the custody of the prison service. Gwent Police said he is not a sex offender. "

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Let's play that again. There may be a potential risk due to the fact that he is no longer in .. custody. NO SHIT, SHERLOCK.

I have a few questions:-

1) What does one have to do these days to get put away for ten years

2) What sort of government puts such a man, a man clearly happy to use violence in carrying out his criminal activities, in an OPEN PRISON

3) Why do Gwent Police feel the need to highlight the fact that he is not a sex offender ?

I tried to find some answers to hose questions. Unfortunately a Google Search for ten year tariffs led me not to a Home Office website listing how long you will get banged up for, but to Raju Bhatt, (a fine english chap, with a name like that, I have no doubt, but he seems to have rather a suntan from his picture). And what does Mr Bhatt do ? Well, he seems to make his bucketloads by making the lives of those who run our Home Office a misery by forcing them to defend their protection of honest British Citizens by repeated legal challenges. Maybe with people like Mr Bhatt allowed to carry out this form of ambukance chasing, it is no wonder we have no time or money to keep our criminals under lock and key.

As to the answers to the second and third questions, well I think the answer is the same. The government that puts this sort of man in an open prison is the same one that lets convicted nonces out early for 'good behaviour' and then hands them free accomodation at 555 Caerleon Road within forty yards of where the crossing lady stops the traffic for seven year old's to walk to school.

So we know what New Liebour have done about law and order. They have destroyed its application, and split the department that administers it into two so each canblame the other, just like Michael Howard did when he swas Home Secretary of the bunch of comedians now led by Diddy David Cameron.

And would ANYONE, ANYONE in their right mind trust a party with the word 'Liberal' in its name to do a proper job of locking up the criminals?

So who the hell can I turn to for help ? Is there any party out there prepared to tell me they will keep criminals locked up where they cannot bring further misery to the honest men and women of this country ?