John of Gwent's Blog

Enricher hands Plod the evidence to put him away on his own USB stick

2012-01-27T20:10:00.000Z

If I wrote this as a script for a work of fiction, the editor would laugh all the way to the bin he would throw the manuscript in, because by Heimdall's Horn, Thor's hammer and Odin's beard, I swear you could not make this up.

When that fine and upstanding example of British Citizenship and all it stands for after 13 years of cultural marxism, the Bolton resident Asim Kausar woke to find himself a victim of burglary, he did what every other upstanding Brit would do, he picked up the phone and dialled 999.

As one of the enrichers of our country, he, unlike the indigenous population, was actually entitled to a visit from the Plod, instead of a letter with a crime reference number and an offer of tea and sympathy which is all the rst of us get.

So when the boys in blue turned up, and were told there was a CCTV system that had captured images of the criminals in the act, the descendants of PC Dixon were only too happy to take copies away.

Mr Kausar even copied them to a USB stick he had handy.

Imagine the surprise of the SOCA team when they put the stick into their PC and found documents that told you how to manufacture ricin, how to make roadside improvised incendiary devices, and pictures of Mr Kausar strutting his stuff wielding an AK47 Assault rifle. The pictures were apparently taken in Pakistan, where he had gone to learn how to be a good little Ialamist.

So Mr Kausar has today begun a two and a bit year stint "doing porridge" for terrorist offences.

I have to say, long may the armies of Islam exhibit such rabid bloody stupidity. It makes the job of explaining their true nature to the tossers who represent them in Parliament SO much easier.

Details here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-16763494

White Men Can Blow Alto Sax

2011-09-04T15:53:00.000+01:00

Well that was quite a day.

A couple of years ago there used to be a pretty decent Jazz festival in Brecon, and another shortly afterwards in Pontypool Park. Regrettably the Brecon one has shrunk to a ghost of its former self, and probably worse than that has gone the way of the Glastonbury festival, with monster ticket prices for headline events that seem hell bent on turning it from a popular event for the masses into something akin to how would Carling put it ah yes "Glyndebourne doesn't do jazz but if we did .."

So it was most revealing to find that a "stroller" ticket to sit back and listen to some of "The Best Welsh Jazz Artists Around" was going to set me back a cool £1 for each hour I would be entertained.

And make no mistake entertained I was. Although for me the "highly individual" style of the vocalist from "Byron Jones' Big Band" was a little too individual for my taste (!) and provoked thoughts of "right then, where was the bar again" amongst many in the audience including me.

Throughout the afternoon and evening I witnessed mastery of instrument and voice at close range, including the stunning spectcle of "Harry Potter on Piano" as a lad from Penarth in a suit, with looks far too close to Daniel Radcliffe for comfort demonstrated that while there are indeed beasts with ivory teeth in this world, his particular brand of wizardry renders them tamed wthout question.

But here's the wierd thing. Stage and Auditorium alike were a sea of white faces. I saw fewer than a handful otherwise. Truly, white men can indeed not only jump, but blow Alto Sax. Hell at this rate there'll be a white man taking gold at the 2012 Olympics for the mens 100 metres.

What to do on a Bank Holiday weekend.

2011-09-04T15:25:00.001+01:00

OK thanks to my daughter not bothering to bring the camera I have had to put up with using this from the enthusiast's own site from a few years ago, but Bank Holiday Monday saw me spending a fairly pleasant afternoon reminding myself how things used to be done when governmets went too far against the will of the people.

In 1263 "Red" Gilbert De Clare (red for his hair colour not his political persuasion) controlled much of the lands of South Wales as Lord of Glamorgan. He sided with Simon de Montfort against the King, but soon switched allegiance when it became clear that would better suit his needs. After Simon De Montfort was slain at the Battle of Evesham, De Clare decided that rather than join the earl's son and his rebel pals INSIDE Kenilworth Castle, he would instead offer his sword and his services to the king, and join the besiegers. Impressed with the trouble they had in their siege of Kenilworth, De Clare began work on a mighty bastion of his owm, using many features similar to Kenilworth, including the large lake / moat.

De Clare would meet his own end at Bannockburn in 1314, deviod of a male heir. While the crown dithered as to who should have the spoils of his estate and the pleasure of his daughters, the locals starved as the crops failed. A siege of the Castle followed, and it was this siege that is re-enacted on last Bank Holiday Monday - and seemingly several previous ones.

The day proceeded as a number of "tableaux" depicting key scenes from the siege followed by demonstrations of the siege engines - a perfect opportunity to lob rocks the size of boulders hundreds of yards into the castle moat, grieviously disturbing the wildlife, which would normally lead to the red faced killjoys in Caerphilly Council dumping an ASBO on you.

Perhaps the funniest point in the day was madam borrowing the geat to demonstrate to devastating effect that a proper longbowman (or as in her case woman) could easily skewer one of the hand-cannoneers. Actually I take that back, the funniest moment was easily the point when the proprieter of the pig-stuff-inna-bun stall was ehard to complain that in the last re-enactment her stall was showered with arrows.

Excuse me ? She's set up a stuff - in - a - bun stall in the inner defended areas of a castle and she complains when attacking bowmen strike their mark ? I mean, the whole point of archers is that thy take out the castle's population military AND civil - some people just don't understand the point of total war eh ?

But the wierd thing is, hardly any of the people watching knew anything of the history of the siege or the people behind it. They would leave educated that the man at the head of the besieging army - who failed in their quest - would be taken to London to be hung drawn and quartered, but I bet few know just how hated the winner in the quest for De Clare's spoils and the loins of his eldest daughter, Hugh Despenser, was and would further become.

Pagina No Disponible (well the link was from Searchlight)

2011-08-27T09:47:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I read a fascinating article from "Hogarth" on Andrew Brons' BNP Ideas Site. I think it is fair to say that the gloves have well and truly come off and the search for a bit of 3x2 inwhich to hammer a couple of six inch nails a couple of lengths of pipe and some motorbike chain is well and truly on.

But one statement in the article puzzled me. The claim is made that the man who won by nine votes has endorsed as London Mayoral Candidate one Carlos Cortiglia, who, it was claimed, has professed some pride in volunteering in 1982 to fight against the United Kingdom in the Falklands.

I felt that such a statement deserved a little research. It is quite clear that whoever he is, Carlos seems to be the main author behind the London Patriot (a site google now tags as a malware site as they say it tried on more than one occasion to dump dodgy software on their spiders when they went calling). It is also clear the man is a pathological supporter of Nick G and his nine vote majority.

However, I cannot find any reference to him being a mayoral candidate, much less being endorsed by Nick. If anyone has a link to such, say something ! I did however find one claim that the man was "East Argentine, i.e. Uruguayan, and voluntered to fight against the United Kingdom in the Falklands. That claim was made on the site owned by "Our Friends In The North" and what a surprise the "link" they provided as evidence went straight to a 404 Not Found, or "Pagina No Disponible".

So, who can provide me with something ot back up the claim ?

Reflections On A "Britain First" meeting

2011-08-23T20:43:00.001+01:00

Last night was ... interesting.

Now before I go any further I meant what I said in my email advising the BNP that I no longer wanted to be a member. I don't see much point in being a member of that organisation any more, but I am in no hurry to join another. But I was pressed into service in the role of unpaid chauffeur last night and so I found myself a mildly intrigued member of the audience at what I believe was Britain First's inaugural meeting in South Wales.

I am sure their opponents will cast scorn on the small number of people who turned up to this event, but while they do, I would point out that attempts by a certain party I thought used to be serious about politics to rekindle branch interest after the flop that was the 2010 General Election met with a far lower response from the "faithful" in this area and to the west of here, and I know for I was in the meetings in question.

So, what happenned then ? Not a lot really. No chanting UAF thugs on the door being pushed back by a thin blue line. No need for "rediection points" and all the paraphernalia that earmarked any attempt by "those who there is little point in naming" to hold a meeting. Just three blokes in suits telling us what they hoped to achieve.

And the tactics were interesting in themselves.

Next time something kicks off in a street near you, and some so-called "community leader", usually one with a serious aversion to shaving and dressed in what appears to all intents and purposes to be a pair of plainly-coloured pyjamas, has a microphone thrust into his face and given forty fve seconds to bemoan how "his" community is treated, ask youself one question.

WHO THE HELL HANDED THEM THE CONCH ?

And that is probably a key ploy in Britain First's strategy. To work to reclaim the role of spokesperson for the community. And the best bit is all they're saying is someone from OUR interest group should be stepping up to the plate and volunteering to be a pivot point for Cameron's Big Society idea to swing from. It really is a master stroke. it is turning the much despised "dog dirt politics" label around and putting it to GOOD use.

So. Will I be JOINING them ? ... Probably not. But do I like their ideas ? Yes I do. And those who know me and know of what befell my family earlier his year know exactly why they can count on me for their "bring back Capital Punishment"campaign any time they like.

The Last Labour Government Has Undermined The Life Chances Of A Generation By Steering Them Away From Subjects Employers Value Most

2011-08-22T08:57:00.001+01:00

Last week my nephew collected his A level results and the fool has decided to follow the same career choice that I made all those yars ago. Attempts by my brother and I to point to the way his "Uncle John" was thrown out of his research career by a politician who decided te country no longer needed a medical research industry but far more badly needed a wunch of bankers were of no avail. It seems the young must be left to learn for themselves. Ah well, 'twas ever thus.

Actually, he may be better placed than I was to pick himself up should he find that the politicians in power when the ink is drying on his Baccalaureus In Scientia Magna Cum Laude are as myopic as the ones who sacrificed my career prospects in this country and drove my fellow students to the four corners of the earth in searh of ways to continue their work.

The title of this post is taken from a quote by Damien Hinds, a member fo the Education Select Committee, who was remarking on findings published on the Daily Telegraph Education Pages that show beyond doubt that thirteen years of Labour interference in, and manipulation of all that is taught ot our children, has led to a situation where fewer and fewer pupils study English, Mathematics, Science, Language, History and Geography.

The news makes grim reading. In 1997 when Blair swept to power on a wave of support for his promises to root out corruption in politics (remember that ?) 49.9% of the pupils, some 292,568 in all, took GCE 'A' level examinations in English or Mathematics or Two Science Subjects or One Foreign Language or History or Geography. The point being these were considered at that time the hardest to gain academic success in, and were the subjects employers most valued seeing on a CV.

In the few short months that followed Blair's entry to Number Ten in which he could do nothing to meddle with the future life chances of those leaving the education system he now controlled, almost half had the sense to realise the subjects to study and strive to achieve success in were those an employer valued.

Not so today of course. Last year, as Gordon Brown was unceremoniously dumped onto the pavement, the legacy of thirteen years of state indoctrination and intervention in the education field bore forth its last harvest. And now a mere 140,551 pupils, less than 22% of those sitting examinations, were taking exams in those subjects employers still valued most highly.

Fortunately, both my daughters and my nephew studied and achieved academic success with those "gold standard" subjects spurning the "fools gold" sbjects such as "media studies" offered as an alternative. An "alternative" which all can now see for themselves - thanks to a written answer to a Parliamentary Question put by Conservative MP Charlotte Leslie - was a cynical ploy to artificially inflate the grades achieved by the victims of Labour's State Intervention in Education by deliberately steering the pupils in state schools away from those "gold standard" subjects and towards study of subjects whose examination results are worthless bangles wanted by no-one in the real world, valued only by those who arrange the arse-kissing ceremony that leads to adoption by the political elite and one's name on a ballot paper in a "safe" constituency.

I promise you this. My grand-daugher will not be allowed to fall into this trap.

I don't have any problems with antisocial behaviour in the ward - I know of areas where something like this is more likely to happen

2011-08-20T07:04:00.001+01:00

I take as the title of this post the words of this man as gunfire came to his town (yet again).

Meet Paul Cockeram, the man who currently sits as councillor for an area of my home town that is known only too well to several activists who walked its hills with me many a time spreading word of our existence and candidature in national elections in the days when I thought we still had a political party that stood up for me and people like me, before I realised it - and the funds its members raised - was actully one man's personal cash machine and retirement fund.

Yesterday afternoon a man burst into this ladies hairdressing salon in Malpas Road, Newport and opened fire with a gun shooting three women - none fatally thank god - leaving two in need of medical attention at The Royal Gwent Hospital. The weapon used was left at the scene but the man was able to escape the scene before police arrived. After an afternoon and evening of chaos and disruption in a part of the world where thankfully such behaviour is not quite so commonplace as it was in Leeds/bradford when I worked there, the body of the man in question was apparently discovered in "nearby woods". You can read all about it here

I have blogged about the area this man is responsible for before. On this page I brought you the news that the council this man sits on, which was at the time run by the party this man pledges allegiance to, poured hundreds of thousands of pounds down the drain tarting up the pavements and creating a lovely little car park around this derelict ruin on the pretext that the area was in need of renovation for the Ryder Cup. The building itself was the centre of a much larger financial scam of course when one of our "enrichers" ripped off the welsh Assembly Government pledging to turn this place into a "fine indian dining experience" with "upstsirs accomodation for staff" (how many of whom would have been legally permitted to be employed there being of course a matter for speculation)

Now Mr Cockeram is trying to tell you that he is quite shocked as the area he is responsible for is a haven of peace and tranquilty. Well I will give you two reasons why Mr Cockeram is a little out of touch with reality.

The first of those you can find here where the South Wales Argus's Crime Statistics page for Newport shows ample examples of anti social behaviour in and around the area.

The second is a more personal example. Not that long ago I was sitting at a table in a restaurant at the other end of the line of terraced shops pictured in the photograph above with the man in a white suit, and whie I sat there with my wife and adult children, four very disagreeable louts burst into the premises through the kitchens, spraying an ammonia spray into the face of two of the kitchen workers and holding a knife to the throat of one of the table staff, presumably seeking an easy way of collecting money ahead of their next expected benefits cheque. They did not succeed in their venture, as they were in fact repelled with force by several diners myself included all of us outraged that our fine dining experience in the existing retail catering facilities in the area was disrupted in this fashion.

I am, therefore, amazed Councillor Cockeram seems able to make out the area of town he represents is a haven of peace and tranquilty, but then again, he is a Labour man, and therefore blinkered to the reality of life - and death - on his watch

Gay Marriage A Step Too Far For Bert and Ernie

2011-08-13T12:01:00.001+01:00

There was a time when two men apparently living in the same house would not raise so much as an eyebrow.

Neil Simon took up his pen in the 60's and wrote a play featuring just such a scenario, two men forced by circumstance to "live together". Felix, almost military in his fastidiousness, and Oscar, so laid back a sloven if he were any more laid back he would fall over. "The Odd Couple" made an absolute fortune and at no point did either actor take off any items of clothing - although I recall Felix appearing in a dressing gown in one episode to berate his slovenly flatmate from hell over his leaving hairs in the sink after shaving .....

I lost count of the number of times these two appeared in pyjamas for one of their superbly timed routines, including what I consider the most superbly timed piece of stand-up going, Eric's dance routine with a string of sausages to the accompaniment of "The Stripper". The degree to which the fourth grapefruit ALMOST escaped the meat cleaver spoke eloquently of the fact that there was no "take two" here.

So you can imagine how joyfully I received the news that a bunch of idiots have demanded that the makers of Sesame Street that programme that teaches your kids how to mispronounce the alphabet (Liza with a Zee My Fragrant Arse) have the sock puppets BERT and ERNIE reveal that their long term friendship is far more than that, and far deeper. Yes the rainbow flagged ones are demanding that Bert and Ernie declare their love for each other and have a Gay Marriage On Screen.

PRESUMABLY this means "Rubber Duckie" here will be called in to play the part of Raggott The Gerbil ? Well, there's only one word to follow that .... Armageddon !!

AT THE MOMENT the producers of Sesame Street are sticking to their guns and declaring there is no way Bert and Ernie will be anything other than flatmates and friends.

Which, in my opinion, is just as well. Until he was sold off to the Japanese and never seen again, Sooty spent the first half of his life suffering Harry Corbett's hand up his arse, and the next enduring Harry's son Matthew taking over where his father left off. But we all knew Sooty couldn't work his magic wand without such foreplay .....

I suppose this whole story could be worse.

It could be these three the petition was trying to legalise the behaviour of.

One Of Our Aircraft Is ... well we don't really know

2011-08-12T08:28:00.000+01:00

Here's a Pub Quiz question for you. What became of the man behind the weaponry that 617 Squadron made famous ?

Well, for a start, he was so overcome by the fact that 53 of the 133 men who went on that raid did not come home that he vowed never to work on manned aircraft systems ever again. In doing so he probably condemned his work to obscurity but the fact is he pioneered a number of the principles taken aboard the push for "UAV's" or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, the "drones" that currently make the headlines by taking out wedding parties and schools somewhere between Turkey and the Indian Subcontinent while their "pilots" sit in nuke-proof bunkers somewhere in America.

The objects he designed to make use of that remote control technology, however, were quite obviously ahead of their time. I heartily recommend you read this web page dedicated to his ideas. The man was clearly a genius and his ideas were way, way ahead of their time.

And so it was that yet again, Short-Sighted British Government Penny Pinching took us away from the leading (some might say bleeding) edge development and handed it to the yanks, who as usual have done it again. Messed up, that is.

With British brains ignored, American dollars have funded the development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles you hear so much of these days as they are flown remotely on critical missions to bomb and strafe schools and wedding parties from the Turkish border to the Indian Subcontinent by Yank pilots safe in nuclear-proof bunkers on American soil. While in caverns away from prying eyes, the UFO's of tomorrow are assembled and put through their paces in our upper atmosphere where Barnes Wallis predicted and planned supersonic and hypersonic aircraft operation sixty years ago.

And this is the day they got it wrong. Again.

Those nice men in black from the Yank's Defense (they never could spell, see) Advanced Research Projects Agency or D.A.R.P.A. - the same guys that brought you the Internet (although they never meant you to have it, and called it DARPANet) have been funding the roll-out by Lockheed Martin of the Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle

And today they launched the second one. It's flight lasted a little longer than the first, which had to be abandoned after only nine minutes, but as far as DARPA knows it's still flying, because guess what, they've lost it. DARPA's twitter site (One you DONT want to follow- unless you fancy a ride in a black helicopter) tweeted “Range assets have lost telemetry with HTV2”

So here's a plea to all those little green men watchers. If you see something go screaming across the sky at Mach-20 don't reach for your Klingon phrasebook, reach for the phone and tell NASA to tell DARPA "you've found it". They'll know what you mean - after all, unless you're wearing a tin foil hat when you make the call, they'll pluck the information - plus your VISA card PIN number and the phone number of whoever you had sex with last night straight out of your brain, right.

As for me, well, I've had this idea. I'm of to call Daniel Craig's agent. Because I have this sneaking suspicion I know who's nicked their aircraft.

BBC News 24 Reporter admits rioters are predominantly black

2011-08-09T08:27:00.002+01:00

"Ere. Where Am All De White Men At?.

Bring Dem Out So We Can "Know Them" Like You Know What I Mean Innit"

Someone will be out of a job this morning.

I flicked over the TV to BBC News 24 at about 23:55 last night to get the weather forecast. After ten minutes I started to pick out landmarks around the flames that proved to me that the pictures were not coming from some place like Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain, Sudan or Syria,

Then I heard the News24 link man in the studio ask one of their "roving reporters" on the street - all of them dressed in hoodies to avoid being mugged and beaten while they phone their accounts back to the news room - the unbelievably stupid (for his career prospects) question "what was the makeup of the crowd".

Maybe he was hoping to hear something about the age of the people concerned, about how they had been failed by a government that promised them Oxbridge places in return for their one O level - in "Equality and Diversity Studies" of course but than failed to make good on the promise by funding the courses, and how Michelle Obama can't fund them now Yankland has been downgraded to an AA+ bananna republic by those NASTY Credit Agencies.

I bet you a piece of Croydon pavement he was not prepared for the answer.

After a sort of silence that could only be interpreted as the roving reporter thinking "are you mad you'll get us both sacked" the faltering voice started "well, it's true and it has to be said the crowds of rioters and looters are predominantly black although it is fair to say that while the crowds were indeed predominantly black when the trouble started in the poorer areas of London, now that it has moved out to the more affluent areas thare are more white faces in the crowd"

I bet the National Union of Journalists (or should that be Communist Party of Britain) will be clamouring for them both to be expelled from the Union and thus lose their jobs right now.

Oh yes, Can someone please tell Simon Darby he's put his foot in his mouth - again. He's mouthing off that no-one has made public the ethnicity of the rioters. Well, the photo evidence is plain for all to see and the BBC News 24 team have said what we all know to be the truth. If he was man enough to allow comments on his site like he used to, I'd have put a small footnote in his comments pointing to the fact that he is now in error. As he won't allow comments I'll have to tweet news of his cock-up to all and sundry to correct his stupid mistake.

Death of The All White All American Costumed Superhero

2011-08-04T13:52:00.000+01:00

When Conan Doyle chose to kill off Sherlock Holmes at the hands of his arch enemy Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls, there was uproar. Young men who avidly bought each new issue of "The Strand" magazine to read the latest instalment of the life and times of Conan Doyle's creation went about their city jobs with mourning crepe in their hats.

Eventually Sir Arthur relented and at great risk to the health and sanity of John H Watson MD late of the Indian Army, had the great Consulting Detective reappear in Dr Watson's surgery in order to expose the criminal Moran. Holmes would end his days quietly, having rejected a knighthood, accepted The "Legion d'Honneur", and moved to Sussex where he kept bees.

But at least Conan Doyle knew the place for a mulatto in crime fiction. Today the sick peddlers of the gospel of diversity and MultiCulturalism are wetting themselves as they rolling with laughter all the way to the bank. Or so they hope.

On this page of the Guardian's "literary" supplement Alison Flood reported how at the end of June this year Marvel Comics went where they have never gone before, publishing in "Ultimate Spider Man #160" a story line in which Peter Parker, the teenager raised by All White All American parents in the largely all white area of Queens who once bitten by a radioactive spider became The Amazing Spider Man, the ultimate home-grown All-White, All-American Costumed Super Hero, meets his end. Not a dry eye in the death scene and not a dry eye in the animation studio either.

But Spider Man as we know him had to go. Unlike another Costumed Super Hero we might mention, who despite his square jaw white face and serious muscles was actually an immigrant from another world - which may explain his persistent desire to wear his underpants outside his trousers - The Amazing Spider Man was the real home grown deal.

So Spider Man meets his end at the hands of his arch nemesis the Green Goblin (although I bet BNP Wales will be blaming his end on another green superhero by this time next week).

Search Google hard enough and you will find all sorts of stories starting with "it brings the story full circle since Peter only became Spider Man to avenge the death of his uncle" and Marvel themselves saying it marks and end to a story arc and they were not sure which way to go. Well if that's right they didn't take long to make their mind up.

Marvel senior editor Mark Paniccia said of the death scene "Peter's death doesn't signal the end of their larger plan - it's the start of one of the most ambitious stories you've ever read in comics". Thay aren't kidding. For here comes a rewrite of history that Orwell would have wept at. Here comes the "We have always been at war with Eurasia" moment. The truth is Marvel Comics didn't even give Parker's body the time to go cold in the grave.

Meet the new arachnid on the block.

"Miles Morales" is a half black, half hispanic teenager, who lives with his black and latino parents in "diverse" Brooklyn a world away from the all white Queens where Parker was raised.

Marvel editor-in-chief Axel Alonso said the new web-slinger "speaks to our rich cultural heritage" in the US. "Going into this we knew we wanted to make a statement about the 21st century," he said. Alonso is himself of mixed race, having an English mother and a Mexican father. He says "he cried when Barack Obama was elected president partly because he was African-American but largely because of the fact that he was mixed race". He felt it necessary to add that the chief writer for the comic's Spiderman story line, Brian Michael Bendis, is Jewish and has two adopted children from Africa.

What Next, I ask ?

Maybe Captain America Transgendered, mincing across Times Square in pink leotard and five inch heels ?

If he/she/it does, you heard if first here people.

For those who feel this is a diversification too far, Peter Parker lives on in "The Amazing Spider Man" comic as he has since 1962. Let us hope that for the "Ultimate Spider Man" magazine, this outrageous mulatto takeover of the All American Costumed Superhero marks the ultimate (as in its true sense, i.e LAST EVER) issue of the publication.

How Does One Resign ?

2011-07-26T04:14:00.006+01:00

I'm not entirely sure what the protocol IS to resign from the party.

Will THIS do as my resignation letter, Nick ?

I “introduced” myself to a branch meeting some years ago by delivering a speech and slideshow showing the depths of skulduggery to which Gordon Brown had sunk as Chancellor, and ended saying that had anyone said ten years ago I would be looking to stand as a candidate for this party, I would have called them mad, but here I was, volunteering to stand for election to Westminster under the party’s banner.

I remember two ‘o clock in the morning of the count in 2010. I remember walking up and down the rows of ballot papers, I remember the lump in my throat on seeing my name on that list. I remember the tear in my eye watching my wife of thirty years it will be in two months time on the other side of the room on the other counting tables, looking every inch as if she’d been doing this her entire life, just like the conservative ladies she was chatting to whose candidate in this particular seat - the most labour supporting in the welsh valleys - were going to get almost as big a pasting as I got.

I also remember a surreal moment at three in the morning of the welsh assembly the next year. I was a counting agent at Cardiff. Utterly exhausted and finding the floor of the cafe littered with senseless bodies of stunned liberal democrats too young to remember when it was par for the course for them to lose a deposit, I staggered downstairs and stood in the counting hall in my business suit with a fellow counting agent similarly attired.

I then discovered to my amazement that his Ph.D Thesis of some twenty or more years past on subatomic particle physics answered some of the questions my own work on transport of materials across cell membranes had posed in the publications I wrote at the same time that have been cited by persons far more eminent than the two of us put together. The next time some scruffy grunt who has a problem spelling his name accuses the British National Party of being comprised wholly of thugs who have to share a brain cell between them and whose knucles drag on the fround, bear this in mind.

The memory of that conversation on subatomic energy levels and the heisenberg uncertainty principle between two suited gentlemen in a room seemingly filled with long haired scruffy bearded unwashed beatniks in dirty T shirts stained denim jackets and sandals (these were the counting agents for the “TUC against The Cuts Party”) is a memory I will hopefully take to my grand-daughter’s wedding (she’s not one year old yet, I intend to live to a ripe old age ….) before they go with me to the grave.

However. memories is all they are and all they will ever be. I resigned my lowly post as an official the day I departed (early) from the GMM having witnessed the shape of things to come. The infamous contract now embedded in the party constitution, forcing me to hand 10% of the total salary I WOULD have been paid throughout my period of office within what is it 30, 60 or 90 days of Griffin or Jefferson deciding I am of unsound mind and handing in my predated resignation letter the day after I take my seat without having actually been paid a penny of my salary ? I think not. I have never signed a contract I did not mean to keep to the terms of, and this one was a joke. That was the day I lost the will to stand as a candidate for this party and I emailed our RO to advise I wished to return to the rank and file as soon as I got home.

As a manager of a team, I always worked to the principle that I would never ask a member fo my team to do what I was not prepared to do myself. For that reason when the contract was voted into the constitution, I knew that I wuld never again be able to urge, coax or persuade another to stand when I myself would not. To remain an official, no matter how lowly, with this problem embedded in the constitution like a stubborn thorn in the side, I knew would be pure hypocrisy.

I remained a party member hoping that there would be an opportunity for change because as a voting member I was in a position to be an agent of that change. That opportunity has passed. I no longer feel there is any point in being in this party but I have to say I have no interest in joining another.

I wish the party members well and I wish the party luck. God knows you are going to need it. But this is the point beyond which I can no longer walk with you.

An interesting Sunday Afternoon

2011-07-11T13:07:00.002+01:00

Well that was interesting.

Sunday afternoon saw the leadership candidates for the upcoming election attend a hustings event in South Wales chaired by the Wales RO.

In stark contrast to the recent General Members Meeting, the organiser(s) trusted those attending to be capable of holding a civil tongue in their head after holding a glass or beer in their hand. It need not be said those present did not betray that trust. Another stark contrast between this and the GMM was that on this occasion hardly any vitriol was dispensed from the podium towards the floor.

Both candidates were subjected to detailed questions and their responses were courteously received.

Which is all the more remarkable given the firestorm that has raged in third party areas.

It was worthwhile going, but I can't say my opinions have changed, nor have my voting intentions.

One thing I will say though.

I wonder if clive jefferson's advisors are the same ones that advised nigel farage as reported by him in a BBC broadcast "The Political Club" which you can find available in full in an earlier link on this blog. It certainly sounded like it to me, but then again, i might be completely mistaken

Disasters, Appeals and Starvation.

2011-07-09T17:50:00.001+01:00

So last night I sat down to a big plate of sausage and bacon (we all need to do our thing for british pig farmers) and lo and behold what do I find when flicking the switch on the radio, nothing other than Kate Adie pleading for me to hand over sums of money to the "Disasters Emergency Committee" to buy food for the starving of East Africa. Again.

I think it is time someone had the balls to ask three very simple questions.

First of all, how much of this is REALLY down to 'crop failure' and how much is down to population numbers in these countries and others swelling way, WAY beyond what the planet can support.
Secondly, how much of the lack of food is caused by a failure of the crops to grow, and how much is down to the fact that it's damn difficult planting a crop, never mind tending it and harvesting it, while warlords and their followers are lobbing granades, launching rockets and just generally shooting at each other and anyone else they take a fancy at using for target practice over the months it takes for the harvest to come to fruition.

I take it we all remember how last month the Syrian Head Tyrant ordered tanks to flamethrow and bomb the fields around a village he felt the need to destroy, so that all could see what happens to those who dissent.

How long will it be before DEC are whingeing and rubbing their hands pleading for more of our money to feed the survivors of that Syrian earth scorching I wonder ? And will anyone have the memory to recall why they have no food, and will the "oh so politically correct BBC" allow anyone to say why ? I doubt it.
Thirdly - and my final word for the moment - how much of that DEC cash is going to end up paying for some warlord's golden throne to sit on take a dump in and flush his worries away ?

I think these are questions that need to have answers before I reach for my cheque book, don't you ?

Tomorrow Is Another Day ?

2011-07-09T09:56:00.000+01:00

Well, tomorrow will be interesting. Under the new-style "get-it-over-and-done-with" leadership election process - which is one part of the whole thing I HEARTILY agree with - tomorrow is the day both candidates have been invited to a hustings event within easy reach of my location, which is more than I can say about that damned General Members Meeting.

I'll be there.

What will I find when I get there. Well, I'm hoping for an atmosphere a lot less poisonous than the one I experienced in St Helens, a meeting that after four hours left me with such a profound feeling of pointlessness and hopelessness that I left early because the vitriol emanating from the podium left me in little doubt there was really no point in my being in the room.

I'm HOPING for that. Whether my hopes are realised or dashed of course remains to be seen. But I guess I'll consider it a step forward if I see this ...

... see what ?

Why, the end of the bullocks of course.

Proof that Ted Heath lied to us in 1972

2011-07-06T08:47:00.003+01:00

I thought it might be a very good idea to put up a page providing the incontrovertible proof that we the people of he United Kindgom were systematically lied to from day one at every oportunity in the matter of the true purpose of the European Union, or, to give it the name which was used to con us to join, the European Economic Community.

We all know, of course, that the 1957 Treaty of Rome bound its signatories, through their plenipotentiaries, to 2ever closer political union". I mean, we know this because any fool can fire up a google search and pull the treaty and see for themselves the writing there in the preambe in the first couple of pages.

Except that's not quite the case, and many PRO-Europeans will try to explain this away by the following little wheeze. You see, the European Union is a bit like the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984, with millions of Winston Smiths all beavering away to make sure that Big Brother's dayorder is never doubleplus ungood through its references to nonpersons or nonthings or nonfacts.

Yes, part of your taxes ensure that every tine the European Union opens its mouth, an army of oompa-loompas goes to work revising history, "consolidating" the recent amendments into the previous agreements and treaties, rewriting history, ensuring that "we have always been at war with Eurasia".

As a result, a cursory search for the "Treaty of Rome" will bring you up a document that says it's the Treaty of Rome, but it says also that it founds the "European Union". It says this because it has been "consolidated" a european union buzzword used to hide the fact that an oompa-loompa has come alonmg and rewritten the whole thing to include the modifications of the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties. This is obvious because in 1957 there was no European Union, so how can a treaty from that era make reference to it. It cannot, of course.

So what we need to do is find a copy of the ORIGINAL 1957 Treaty of Rome and see if IT has the words that condemn the liars buggers and thieves who say we were not lied to by Ted Heath.

Two years ago I found the very document. Ir was available in the orignal languages of the six founding countries of the Common Market as we were told it was, and no other. But my knowledge of French is quite sufficient to see the preamble IN 1957 said His Majesty The King Of The Belgians Blah Blah etc etc were DETERMINED TO LAY THE FOUNDATIONS FOR EVER CLOSER POLITICAL UNION.

Today, thanks to a rearrangement of the european parliament website, I hae stumbed across an English Translation of that 1957 treaty. It is 17.5MB in size, and it is a TIFF format file. You will have to download it and open it in an image viewer. There are plenty around. On or around pageten you will see the words I capitalise above, in the 1957 document preamble, clear for all to see.

The document can be downloaded from here. While you're waiting for it to download, go here to read how the Paris Summit of Autumn 1972 agreed the means by which the Articles of the 1957 Treaty was to be expanded to cover ENVIRONMENTAL, REGIONAL, SOCIAL and INDUSTRIAL policy.

So, when Ted Heath came away from his negoatations and took us into the "Common Market" on the 1st January 1973, he already knew the sumit held three months earlier was delivering the promise made in 1957 to bring about ever closer political union

Liars, Buggers and Thieves the lot of 'em

I went, I saw, I left .....

2011-06-27T09:11:00.002+01:00

What's Latin for "I went, I saw, I vomited"........

I understand there was a last minute change to the rendezvous and redirection point for yesterday's General Members Meeting. I understand this because I found out after I got there, no-one sent me any notification through any channel. Which is why I was rather surprised to see the Truth Truck parked up at the side of the road three miles from where my SatNav said it should be.

But hey-ho as Larry Grayson used to say....

And so it came to pass that by about half past ten I joined a throng standing outside the venue for the 2011 General Members meeting. And I was still standing outside at half past bloody eleven, which made me question why I bothered leaving Newport so bloody early. But then I still expected to have to be at a McDonalds car park by 9am.

The meeting finally kicked off at 12:15 and first business was a point of order from Arthur Kemp presenting his view that the meeting was of dubious legitimacy as it had utterly failed to present the detailed proposals of the previous voting members meeting as was expressly required, and Arthur made it clear he was going to consider taking action in the High Court to have the meeting's business overturned. Our Party Chairman's response was that anyone was free to do so but they should first ensure they have a house handy to lose to pay the bills. an INTERESTING set of words considering his behaviour in the past I would say.

The Party Chairman had, as most reading this will know, arranged for copies of the resolutions then in existence to go out to all voting members but a second letter sent a week later repeated these, along with a description of them that suggested they were what the previous voting members had decided they wanted - a description I find unconvincing having reviewed the evidence put before me - and also included a proxy voting form giving members the right to instruct one of a select few officers of the party to cast their vote by proxy either "as instructed", or "as the officer saw fit".

I have not been entitled to attend a voting members meeting before so I cannot comment on the statements made that this has never been done before. That it was done this time, however, meant that the Party Chairman was sitting on a block of about 590 proxy votes he was instructed to use "as he saw fit". If I tell you the meeting had about 200 souls present I think you can work out how the wind blew.

It was an ill tempered meeting. One member clearly of some standing was ejected. After a resolution from the floor to disregard the proxy votes was proposed, seconded, voted on and overwhelmingly carried, the Meeting Chairman AND Party Chairman announced this would make no difference and the prosy xotes would still be counted. That caused uproar and a walkout, although many who walked out walked back. There was a moment when the Party Chairman made certain remarks about certain members doing nothing for a whole year which provoked some sort of reaction from Michael Barnbrook, but although I was sitting not ten froot from this I did not really understand the details of the altercation, although I and all in the room were treated to a fulsome explanation of the background to this little contretemps. And there was some wierd goings on in the South West area too but again exactly what, I am not sure.

The "them and us" attitude was made clear to all when the rules issued to all stated clearly that there was to be no shouting, no swearing, no heckling, and no consumption of alcoholic drink, yet amongst the "top table" of regional organisers and other great and good several clearly had pints before them. Either that, or their camel is pregnant, and judging by the colour and the froth, not through the actions of another camel.

It was a disorganised meeting. For three hours I sat through heat and humidity I last endured in Sharm El Sheikh in June, while the chairman of the meeting struggled to make those in the room understand clearly what a vote was bring taken on. "Was this a vote on the amendment to the motion, or the motion" was a cry oft heard.

And it was a meeting there really was no point in me being present at, other than to act as witness. The Party Chairman's decision to offer voting members a proxy vote was really a vote winner. FOR HIM. His block vote of "do as you like" proxies meant all his measures that I sat through sailed into the constitution. It reminded me of Yul Brunner as Pharoh "So Shall It Be Written" but we had no Charlton Heston.

I tried for fifteen minutes to catch the eye of the Meeting Chairman to speak on opposition to Motion Three but it was clear that the Meeting Chairman was as blind to one half of the hall ... no, I won't finish that. However, it is a fact that Motion Three now allows the National Nominating Officer to send a letter of resignation to whatever government body a party member has been elected to, tendering his resignation on the grounds that he is of unsound mind. If only we had the same powers vested in a Party Medical Officer......

I left the meeting without bothering to wait for Motion Two to be discussed. I saw no point in staying. I had seen all I needed to see. So I do not know if the Party still has an Advisory Council, or a National Executive stuffed with stooges nominated by the Party Chairman, or a National Executive drawn largely from persons Elected To Office as Regional Organiser or Regional Representative. I don't know, but since the proportion of elected people on that Executive is LESS than the two thirds needed to pass a vote of no confidence in the chairman, which is now the ONLY way to remove the Party Chairman for four years, I do not think it matters.

For thirty years in employment, in business as a sole trader and in business as a company director, I have NEVER signed a contract I was not happy with. I have ALWAYS renegotiated to a point where I consider signing, or walked away. I have to say I cannot, now, put myself forward as a candidate to stand for election to public office while the eminently laughable document that is now enshrined in our constitution remains there.

This brings me to a second point. I have ALWAYS felt that any organisation has th be run by "Cabinet Government". By which I mean those running it go off and mouth off in private, and then come out in agreement, or at least with agreement to put on a brave face over a bad job, or hand the reins to someone else and retire to the back benches.

And the truth is that although seeing my name at the bottom of the General Election Ballot Paper brought both a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye - which takes some doing I can tell you - I cannot in good conscience remain here as an officer in the party because I cannot find it within me to go forth and enthuse others to stand as candidates while I do not believe they should be doing so under the terms of that contract.

So I no longer wish to be an OFFICIAL within the party. I wish to return to the rank and file. But I fully intend to remain IN the rank and file - such as are left - because I AM STILL a voting member and there is a vote coming up in which I will be itching to cast that vote.

If someone wants to tell me how to cease to be a contributing editor to "The Gwent Patriot" - which although unofficial was created largely for party officials to use - I would be pleased to hear from them. I'm not sure how to cease being the editor of a blog I started.

John Voisey. Pround to have been a Party General Election Candidate in 2010.

EDIT: I see the text here has been copied over to The British Resistance web site. I suppose I ought to get annoyed about that, but I can't be arsed. Plus they have a much higher hit rate. However, I note the site says the article has been written by me. Well, in a sense it has, but I am not a writerfor their site, and I cannot be while the Wales Organiser continues to proscribe it. Well, not until after the leadership election. Because depending on how THAT pans out, I may quite fancy standing for newport council in 2012 as an independent.

Three Hundred and Fifty Miles to Save The Party.

2011-06-23T00:45:00.000+01:00

If only this were the sight to greet Nick Griffin this Sunday - Thousands

of Party Members coming to vote. But which way, Nick ?

Well, I have decided.

For some inexplicable reason an email inviting me to an officer's meeting arrived in my inbox THE DAY AFTER the meeting took place even though it was dated ten days earlier and most certainly WAS NOT in my inbox the day before.

The vagaries of the email servers the party and its regions use leave little to the imagination in the "pissup in a brewery" stakes.

However, despite being told (twice, once by Mr Walker in person and once by Jennifer Mathys by letter) that my party membership had lapsed - even though I had renewed it and had the email saying thank you and the line from my bank statement showing funds taken from my account in favour of some strangely named asociation of which I expect Nick Griffin is sole beneficiary - I have now received my party card for the third year running, and more importantly my invitation to attend the General Members Meeting.

An invitation I warmly accept. Although as my passport has expired I have no "photo-id" except my PADI Diver Card (which was what I used to get into Question Time) so I may not get into the meeting. How strange that the party whose leader, at the Euro Elections, proudly proclaimed "it is not our party who demand the police have the right to stop you as you walk home from the pub and demand to see your papers" now demands that we now submit to that same control freakery and present photo-id or accept that we will be denied access.

Well Mr Griffin my Birth Certificate was good enough for the Returning Officer when I took my nomination papers to stand as General Election Candisate for the party you then led and now mislead, and I will be offering my expired passport, my birth certificate and my PADI Photo card to your paid thugs as evidence of who I am. If they refuse it, well, I'll have something to write about when I get home won't I.

Yes, I have decided. I have decided that I will be at your General and subsequent Voting Members Meeting even though it means a 175 mile trip each way. I want to see this charade for myself. What I do then depends on what happens when I get there.

The Political Club - Political Party Funding From Elected Members

2011-03-29T08:18:00.000+01:00

Some time ago the BBC researched the degree to which political parties are funded through the extraction of "donations" from the politicians elected under the banner of the party name, and the imposition of levies on salaries of elected officials at all levels.

The programme revealed the degree to which Nigel Farage had initially shouted from the rooftops the way he funded NATIONAL UKIP party business through claiming and then transferring on European Union money intended to be used for the benefit of the CONSTITUENTS of the constituencies served by Farage's elected members, and the shabby way that when the wrongful use of these funds was discovered, the EU Men In Grey said he could carry on doing this, provided he stopped publicly talking about it, and in return the EU would MIS-FILE the documentation they already had alerting them to this abuse.

It also has some interesting things to say about how Labour and Lib Dem politicians find their wallets being picked by the party whose banner they stood for election under, something that strangely the Conservatives say they do not do.

The programme was an eye opener for me. It is twenty nine minutes long but I really do think it is worth a listen, and you can grab a copy from here

Newport Council In breach Of Freedom Of Information Act

2011-03-29T05:28:00.001+01:00

A few weeks ago I made this Freedom of Information Act request to Newport Borough Council, as I wanted to know how much money Newport Borough Council had spent laying new pavements railings and other improvements around the derelict building that used to be The Old Rising Sun public house on the Harlequin Roundabout.

As I recorded here, over five years ago now Admiral Taverns auctioned off their interests in 57 pubs including this derelict pile. The remaining term of the 999 year lease on this particular property was sold for a sum "close to the asking price of £300,000" to one Parvin Ali and her father. And then nothing much more occurred.

In the run up to the Ryder Cup Newport Council declared that they were going to spend money improving the pavement area around this property at our expense, while the owner successfully obtained nearly £173,000 from the Welsh Assembly to tart up the outside of the building to make the area look presentable to the tourists that would be passing by on their way to see the Ryder Cup. The handout was supposed to be added to a half a million pound makeover that the property was supposed to get from the owner's own pocket to turn the place into a "fine asian dining experience" with "staff accomodation" (a piece of spin and hype that later got changed to "student accomodation") on the top floor.

I see that in March 2010 a planning application was made to authorise the digging up of the pavement at the side of this property to provide access to the very fine car park that was constructed (by whom I wonder) at the rear of the building.

But apart from various unsbstantiated rumours doing the rounds of the residents and traders that live and work up the road from this establishment - rumours that suggested the owner had gone back to ask for yet another handout - this time to tart up the inside - and been turned down, I have heard nothing and to be honest apart from seeing the building draped with various banners which vanished after the Ryder Cup ended I have seen no more work done on this property.

So I put in an FOI request asking how much the council had spent on this work and whether any of it - or the £173,000 grant from the Welsh Assembly - had been reclaimed given the owner seems extraordinarily reluctant to carry out the work promised in the hype.

I should have received that information last Friday. I have received nothing. To be fair the person in charge of handling FOI requests was out of the office yesterday and returns to work today. I await the arrival of further correspondence with interest.

Is it my imagination, or are the astronauts getting older as the policemen get younger

2011-02-26T13:57:00.001Z

Well there you go. NASA Space Shuttle Discovery has taken its last leap beyind the thin blue haze that keeps us alive on this insignificant little rock in the backwater end of the unfashionable spiral arm of the galaxy. Apologies to the late Douglas Adams there.

I sat spellbound before a black and white 405 line TV watching the Apollo Saturn Fives lift off. I heard Armstrong do his little speech and I knew long before the blogosphere denounced it as a fraud that he never wished his former next door neighbour an interesting saturday night as he climbed back into the LEM. Merry Christmas Mr Gorsky.

I watched the first launch of an STS on TV from the Student's Union Bar (where else !!) and thanks to my Demon Internet dialup vPOP and their broadminded attitude to UseNet I was one of the first to know that woodpeckers had ruined the launch schedule by pecking at the insulation, because NASA pushed the story out to Sci.Space.News

I always wanted to go and see one of these lift off, but I doubt I'll get the chance now, as there are only a few flight plans left and this si the last for this particular craft.

Should I care ? I don't know, it was popular to deride the space programme with jibes like "the project was built by the nation that couldn't be arsed to clean up its own back yard" and the famous line from "Capricorn One" that a RE-RUN of the Lucy Show got a bigger audience that the Launch. And without this programme we wouldn't have some annoying woman telling us to turn right into the onfenced canal.

But neither would we have had an opportunity for Bruce Willis to NOT make it to the final reel.

So this is me signing off from this post raising a glass to those who Boldly Go To Infinity And Beyond. Cheers.

My Stance On Capital Punishment.

2011-02-10T22:55:00.003Z

This is going to be one hell of a post. Here goes.

People say there are three things more stressful than any other. They SAY those three are Getting Married, Moving Home, and A Close Family Bereavement. Done all three. In the case of the last, done several of the more grisly ones. Unborn Child. Cot Death. Father. So what do I think about the people who say those are the three most stressful things you can do ? I say that I think they're bloody liars.

Saturday Morning. February 5th 2011. 07:54. The phone goes off. Long experience tells me this is never a good sign. Glance at phone, see it's my eldest. Here we go I think. More outgoings.

Dad, Can I speak To Mum

No. She's Busy (snoring more like). What's Up ?

Never Mind. Can I speak to Mum

No. Now what's Up ?

The house is on fire. I've had to call the fire brigade

The brand new and bright "flame" red Suzuki Alto SZ4 on the driveway is, according to Suzuki, capable of 94 mph. They lied. It does more than that. Despite the fact that they are a mile closer to her house than I am, I beat the second wave of fire engines to madam's ground floor flat in Broadmead Park, Lliswerry. Yes. you heard it right. The GROUND FLOOR FLAT.

About fifteen minutes later I've got madam - in dressing gown joggers and pretty much bugger all else - and her 5 month old daughter in nappy, babygro, blanket thoughtfully provided by Maindee Fire Brigade, coat thrown on as it's the first thing madam grabbed and piss all else because let's face it with smoke alarms going off all round you and choking brown smoke coming through the ceiling you don't stop to pack a suitcase do you - in my car whisking her away from what I suspect is almost certainly going to be found in the upstairs flat by the poor bloody firemen. I've seen what they had to remove from the cab of an articulated lorry that rolled over a car in the hard shoulder at Newbury and had its diesel tanks go up. I've seen what they took from a Ford Transit on the M25 that went up like a fireball. Which is why I wasn't going to give her the opportunity to find out for herself. Plenty of time for that sort of thing later.

Of course, what the firemen found was rather more than what even they bargained for. I can't say much about it, except to say that whoever the murdering bastard was who decided to commit the crime of arson in order to attempt to cover up his crime of murder did so in the almost certain knowledge that the flat below was occupied by a young woman and a baby and that their lives were as worthless to them as the two they had already taken, and the deaths of two more innocents below were obviously quite necessary for the purpose of concealing their guilt.

What a wonderful Prime Minister this person would make.

What a shame then that whilst they were a ruthless murderer they were clearly a piss poor amateur arsonist. After several hours the desired effect had not even remotely come about, the crime scene remained reasonably intact.

Now, I have a question for all you left wing cardigan wearing tree hugging scum.

WHEN THE COURTS PROSECUTE AND THE JURY FINDS GUILTY WHOEVER IT WAS WHO SNUFFED THE LIGHT OUT FOREVER ON ONE YOUNG LIFE AND THE SECOND SHE CARRIED INSIDE, AND WAS CLEARLY HAPPY TO MURDER TWO MORE IN THE FLAT BELOW, WHY CANT I WATCH THE MURDERING BASTARD SWING ON A ROPE GASPING FOR BREATH UNTIL THEIR EYES GLAZE OVER.

The reason is, of course, that the lying, conniving, grinning piece of scum that the Labour Voters allowed to run this country for twelve long years did away with the ability of this country to have the death penalty ever again. Well, unless we tell the EU to stuff it, that is. And that's unthinkable in the mindset of the New Labaah Voter and MP alike. Well guess what. Earlier today the government we voted in to replace Blair and Brown took its first faltering steps to tell that European Hegemony to shove it where the sun does not shine.

I predict we'll have the rope back on the agenda before long. When we do, I'll cheerfully use one particular piece of legislation Blair brought in and left on the books when he buggered off. The right to take a convicted criminal back to court and try him again if the punishment is not severe enough. So I've a message for the murdering bastard who thought they could take out my daughter and grand-daughter as part of the cover-up. I'll be standing there, in the line, waiting for my lottery ticket to come up to pull the bloody lever and send you to your sodding oblivion, you piece of shit.

No Votes For Prisoners: A Step In The CORRECT Direction

2011-02-10T20:41:00.002Z

This little number is the European Convention on Human Rights which was created in 1950, seven years before six conspiratorial plotters identified as the "plenipotentiaries" would con the French, Belgians, Germans, Dutch, Spanish and Italians by putting their name to the Treaty Of Rome which in its preamble committed the signatories to "ever closer political union"

The convention was signed by Britain who with its sense of fair play and all that thought it a "spiffing idea, what" and all that but at the time no-one could have had the faintest idea that a traitor of a British Prime Minister would take us into a European Political Union in which thanks to the Lisbon Treaty - upon which Labour promised us a referendum but then lied and weasled its way out of the commitment - the above document would be set above the law of each sovereign state and given the status of Primary EU Legislation which over-rules our own supposedly Sovereign Parliament.

However tonight I sense the worm has turned. Various news sites are saying MP's have rejected the demandfs of the EHCR by a massive majority.

The truth as ever is slightly different. Some 230-odd members have voted to ignore the demand of the EHCR and leave the decision on whether our convicts have the vote in the hands of our (supposedly sovereign) Parliament. About 22 voted to take it up the arse from the EHCR.

And on those figures 400 coild not be arsed to put their head above the parapet. Where were they ? Maybe checking out the other benefits of imprisonment, visiting rights and conjugal rights. After all, today we sent down one of their former number and pronounced another guilty. At this rate the prisoners will be running the country.

Street Comment On The Pope's Visit

2010-09-16T09:03:00.000+01:00

What on earth could they mean ?

A tale of Two Cities - In Pictures.

2010-08-05T09:55:00.001+01:00

In the 2001 census returns for Newport as supplied in the Demographic Information section of the "So You want To be A Councillor" Information Pack it is seen that the Victoria and Pillgwenlly

wards of Newport were 13% and 15% islamic.

A few minutes ago I received an email that explains with some eloquence why I think the outgoing government seemed to be going to some lengths to annoy the civil servants in titchfield responsible for ensuring the 2011 census is ready on time.

Here is a photograph taken in a fairly typical shopping area in the city of Lahore in the ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF PAKISTAN.

Here is a photograph taken in a fairly typical shopping street in the city of Newport in the land Elizabeth II By The Grace Of God Swore to Defend The Faith Of.

Not a lot more to say, really, is there

Looks like the Tories will take anyone these days !

2010-08-03T14:15:00.000+01:00

The Conservative Party have welcomed John Marek into their open arms.

As Betsan Powys put it "Cheryl Gillan and Nick Bourne were in Wrexham to welcome him to the fold and marvel at his political journey". And marvel is the word. Starting as a Labour man he was deselected and promptly stood as an independent believing the Labour Party were moving too far from the socialist roots it revelled in during the glory days when Michael foot led it into the wilderness.

Marek created his own "Forward Wales" party and stood under that banner for the Welsh Assembly, recruiting Ron "moment of madness" Davies who unsuccessfully stood under their banner before cultivating an interest in Plaid Cymru.

And now it seems the wheel has turned full circle with Marek joining the tories.

Well, well, well. First Bourne's Boys and Girls welcome the former Labour Then Plaid Then "disillusioned" Mohammed Asghar and his daughter. Now they're putting out the bunting to welcome Marek. At this rate maybe I should apply to join them too. They look like they are in need of someone a bit right of centre to balance up the ship.

So why are the accounts late again guys

2010-07-31T10:56:00.002+01:00

As a General Election 2010 candidate I was required to submit my election expenses within a certain period or face a kick up the arse and financial penalties. Given that the expenses were hardly a challenge it was no surprise to say they were in well before the deadline. I wish the political party under whose banner I stood could say the same.

The details of this failure are officially reported on the Electoral Commission here under "regulatory action". I think someone, somewhere has just handed the wreckers another golden opportunity. Way to go, guys.

Goodbye To The ASBO

2010-07-29T08:07:00.002+01:00

If the seventies were the decade that fashion forgot, then Blair's time at Number Ten was the decade of the ASBO. Not surprising really, the term "Anti Social Behaviour" did not exist before that lying piece of shit got his foot in the door of Number Ten.

And how quickly the term became a laugh or even a badge of honour.

Blair gave us a society from which the means to discipline the unruly and the unlawful was stripped.

He gave us schools in which seven year old thugs wielding screwdrivers charged down teachers in the playground yelling "I'm gonna f*****g stab you, bitch" and it was my daughter on playground duty at lunchtime who got the receiving end of that screwdriver and still has the scars.

He gave us schools where the lie of a "pupil" caused the suspension of a headmistress.

And he gave us a world in which having of of these gave you FREE ENTRY to the London Dungeon and York Dungeon too.

So I say good riddance to this "badge of honour".

New Year, New Start

2010-01-07T10:55:00.003Z

Good Morning All

Well, the new year is upon us, and soon we will have the opportunity to dispose of the clown clinging to power by his fingernails.

So much for the "Online Society"

2009-06-10T09:03:00.003+01:00

Over on this BBC Web Page you will find the "startling" research finding that 43% of those who do not have access to the internet would not want it if it were handed to them free of charge.

And this is a surprise ?

I remember going to a trade show in Birmingham for the scuba diving "industry". I went to it mainly because the producer of "Blue Planet" was giving a lecture there but it was also a useful place to pick up some extra gear.

While I was there I saw a bloke advertising a "latest gizmo". we all have "surface marker buoys", right ? They show the dive boat where we are in the water. So this chap had a bright idea. "You put your mobile phone in here", he said, "and then if someone calls you while you are underwater, the call is taken and you can hear them through the vibration in this mouthpiece on your air regulator and you can talk to them too".

I looked on at this sales pitch open mouthed. I thought it was some sort of a joke. But then it dawned on me the guy was for real.

"You don't get it, do you", I said. "I spend all week at that bloody thing's beck and call but at weekends all it takes is an inch of water and the microwaves are blocked. From then on it's peace and quiet - except for the sound of my bubbles - for up to forty five glorious minutes".

I saw him again hours later. He hadn't sold any of his whizz kits and he still did not understand why.

Apart from the most remote areas of the planet (like Haverfordwest, according to Betsan Powys the BBC's Welsh Current Affairs Blogger) internet connectivity for those who want it has been available for over fifteen years.

Yes I can see that for some there is a question of cost for the equipment and the running costs, and yes for some there is a real problem of connectivity and not always for the reasons you might think.

For those who want the service and cannot get it I know all about the frustrations - for years in the late 80's and early 90's I lived in a house on the outskirts of North East Newport whose telephone service was apalling and whose internet service was more so because of the lousy telephone link. And even today my home cannot receive Freeview digital TV because the only free radio spectrum in the nearest TV mast was given over to the CottageBurner Channel S4C.

But come on, guys. The technologically disadvantaged make up only a tiny part of the numbers of non-adopters of your brave new online world. Why is it such a surprise that such a LARGE chunk of those not already making use of it see no need of it.

Do you support Egg-Chucking, Jessica ?

2009-06-10T06:50:00.003+01:00

I sent this to my MP last night. I wonder if she will reply.

Wednesday 10 June 2009

Dear Jessica Morden,

I wonder if you would care to explain something to me.

I would REALLY like to know why policemen stood back and did nothing about UAF protestors pelting an elected member of the European Parliament with eggs this evening.

After all, they didn't stand back and do nothing when John Prescott was pelted, did they. They didn't stand back and do nothing when Tony Blair was bombed with dyed flour lobbed from the public gallery, did they ?

I noted with interest Peter Hain's demand that the storm troopers of the Anti Nazi League he founded shortly after arriving on these shores after delivering the eulogy for a terrorist bomber and murderer in his homeland of south africa rise up against the BNP leader Nick Griffin MEP.

Are you personally pleased that they have heeded his call ?

I noted with interest that this incident occurred within television camera coverage of the houses of parliament. Now I was among the very last group of people - the Professional Contractors Group - to take part in a mass public lobby and demo of Parliament in 1999 over the Welfare Reform Bill, and our organised lobbying of members of parliament caused you so much chaos it was probably the reason Tony Blair brought in legislation to ensure it would never happen again by banning the assembly of a group of people without prior police permission within a mile of Parliament.

I note with interest that no policemen did anything about this group of "UAF" thugs. I take it then that you and the Home Secretary are pleased to condone their actions? I see no other explanation for the lack of police intervention in the face of the scenes that have been made public courtesy of the BBC and Sky TV.

I think it's a very dangerous path you're treading here.

I was a counting agent at Torfaen last week. I confess to being more than a little delighted to see your party's stranglehold on wales destroyed by the conservatives and UKIP and the shock at the size of the BNP vote in was palpable in the faces of the massed tory faithful but I think that unless the Home Secretary starts sorting out some proper protection for our elected representatives - ALL OF THEM - then this is all going to end in tears.

I note that the website of the organisation that your government allowed to violently assault an elected member of the European Parliament is ALREADY saying it should have been a brick in the face.

Is this what you want ?

DO tell me because if it is I'll join the BNP tomorrow and stand against you in the next General Election.

I'm PRETTY convinced they'd be delighted to have a former director of a company that employed five people and turned over £200K until YOUR government's policies on taxation and immigration destroyed it standing under their ticket.

Yours sincerely,

"johnofgwent"

The Court of The Star Chamber

2009-06-06T13:10:00.002+01:00

Sir Hugh, persuade me not;
I will make a Star Chamber matter of it.
If he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs
he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, Esquire

(Shakespeare: The Merry Wives Of Windsor. Act 1 Scene 1)

by johnofgwent

I'd forgotten much about my English Literature and History 'O' levels until this week. And then the mouthings of Chairman "Not Flash, Just Gordon" Brown brought them all back to me. For much of this week Brown has been trying to rescue his political arse by mentioning at every opportunity the need for his dishonourable members to face a "Star Chamber". As if the institution was a good thing.

Yet something puzzles the hell out of me. Because in my second year in secondary education at the age of twelve, our history lessons covered the original Court Of The Star Chamber and believe me it was not a good thing to have.

The Star Chamber (Latin Camera stellata) was an English court of law that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster until 1641. It was made up of Privy Counsellors, as well as common-law judges, and supplemented the activities of the common-law and equity courts in both civil and criminal matters.

The court was set up to 'ensure' the fair enforcement of laws against prominent people, those so powerful that ordinary courts could never convict them of their crimes.

Court sessions were held in secret, with no indictments, no right of appeal, no juries, and no witnesses.

Evidence was presented in writing. Over time it evolved into a political weapon and has become a symbol of the misuse and abuse of power by the English monarchy and courts.

So at the age of twelve I was led to believe the Court of The Star Chamber to be the device of the absolute monarch and political despot, an institution publicly paraded as necessary to deal with those who would set themselves above the law, but in reality a version of Soviet Russia's Lubyanka centuries before its time.

But of course in those days this country believed in giving British schoolchildren an education that covered British Economic Social and Political History. These days I wonder what schoolchild below the level of A Level or even Undergraduate or Postgraduate Historian has ever been told the truth of what the institution was or why The Long Parliament abolished it.

And here's a funny thing. When I was twelve the History textbook from which we learned of this institution and what it really stood for has a woodcut of the building and several pictures of paintings depicting it. How strange then that after thirty minutes of searching I can find no evidence of those pictures in cyberspace, just one which somone has attributed to being the establishment, yet which I believ to be nothing more than some nobleman's dining room.

Oh well, they say history is written by the winning side.

Jessica Responds On The Google Street View Cars

2009-04-11T20:30:00.003+01:00

I was so annoyed when I realised the qualityof the images on Google Street View allowed any tom dick or harry who fancied doin' a blaggin' to get the low down on your house's fencing, gates, door locks, window locks, security cameras and everything else the enterprising criminal would want to know before breaking into your house.

I was particularly peeved because unlike "before google", when the crim wishing to case the joint would have to walk down the road and look suspicious doing so, now they can do so from the safety of a MacDonalds Restaurant at the other end of the country, just by supplying a false name, address, postcode and email so as to get onto their wireless internet.

So I was not at all surprised that the good people of Milton Keynes rose up against one of the Google Cars when it came to photograph their street.

What did amaze me was that our Home Secretary was too thick to spot this herself. Presumably she is too busy watching her husband's port flicks, and her advisers are too busy trying to stop the BNP at all costs, for them to have had time to work this out.

So a while ago I wrote to jessica morden pointing this out and asking whether she thought it was such a wonderful idea after all.

I got a reply today

It says I have "raised some reasonable concerns" about the service and the Home Secretary is going to get a letter pointing this out.

All well and good but given that it took me less than five minutes to work that out, just from looking that the wikipedia page with a "typical street view", what the hell are Jacqui Smith's "paid advisers" doing for their money and more to the point, should I send her my CV to apply to be their replacement ?

In my book, this is just one more example of how New Labour have made you less safe in your own home

CPS London Staff To Get £250 Just For Turning Up To Work

2009-04-11T17:35:00.001+01:00

"Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Give Us More Dough"

by johnofgwent

In December 1981 I walked out of my flat in Richmond Road, Cardiff to walk the mile or so to work in the University. My experimental diary from the research lab notes "it's started to snow". And the last entry says "it's still snowing". The next day starts, and ends in pretty much the same way with a mid-day entry "it's getting deep". And the snow came down day after day. An each day I walked to work.

And I was in no way exceptional. The entire staff did as I did, although I do recall the drop dead gorgeous redhead Jane, my co-researcher, who hailed from "The Sunshine State" across the pond who had come to work in this country with our team, who found the sight of all this snow a little overwhelming.

Ah Jane, the number of blokes who would have given their all to be snowed up for a week with you - but you were safe with me for I had just married a woman the spitting image of Kate Beckinsale as she appears as Anna Valerious in "Van Helsing" - and the novelty of going home every night needed more than snowdrifts to hold me back (!)

But enough of such things and back to the subject in hand.

Imagine what I felt when I found staff working for the Crown Prosecution Service were to get a big fat £250 just for doing earlier this year nothing more than I did - getting off their arses and getting in to work despite the snow.

But you see, what I did then, I also did earlier this year. And nurses and teachers in South Wales did the same earlier this year too. One woman spent hours walking in to work to make sure the patients in her hospital had someone to care for them. Will she get handed £250 ? I very much doubt it.

So what makes the "Crown Prosecution Service" such a special case ?

Answers on the back of a used arrest warrant to NP19 7 please

Ask An AM - What is it with GP's and appointments

2009-04-01T07:36:00.004+01:00

Who amongst us will has already forgotten the way Tony Blair's polished, teflon-coated election campaign was sent headlong into the buffers and the end of a dead-end siding by a skillful verbal atack from a member of the public in an audience for one of his numerous appearances on the BBC in the usual "Let's Worship Tony" format.

I speak of course of the moment when he realised that his wonderful plan (that would have made Stalin weep tears of joy) to introduce ten year plans and target after target into the NHS had backfired. The moment when he took on the appearance of a rabbit, caught in the headlights . I speak of course of the moment when a member of the public demanded to know why he thought it was a brilliant idea that her doctor be allowed to refuse to make appointments more than 48 hours in advance as a result of his policy penalising doctors who were more than 48 hours late seeing a patient with an appointment.

As the truth suddenly dawned on him, his expression changed to that of a man facing the electric chair. Fear gripped his intestines. You could see his facial muscles twitching involuntarily and the demon eyes darted around the room seeking a means of escape from the trap he had laid with his own hands, mind and mouth.

It was a good night for British Democracy.

And in its wake, the insane system of allowing lawyers and "practice managers" (Orwellian Newspeak for Profit Maximisers) to dictate the way sick people would get access to the health services paid for out of their taxes took a beating.

But the time has come to give it another.

Thanks to my previous job and the Managing Director who forced me to work insane hours under insane pressure I now have heart problems caused by high blood pressure. I need to see my GP on a regular basis to have the efficiency of my current medication monitored. Every time I have seen him he has said I should come back and see him in a month's time, and every time I have gone to the desk to book a new appointment the receptionist has rolled out the inevitable story as scripted by the practice manager that "We Do Not Book Appointments More Than 14 Days In Advance".

WHY NOT ? The bloody DOCTOR told me he needed to see me in a months time. WHY does the jumped up upstart accountant have the power to tell the Doctor he cannot see me at a time of his choosing, for that is what is happenning here.

But no, I must bow down to this Stalinist Planning and twiddle my thumbs for a whole fortnight hoping that an appointment slot will be available before my prescription runs out.

Yesterday the inevitable happenned. "I'm Sorry JohnofGwent but you cannot see your GP as there are no appointment slots available in the next 14 days".

My prescription runs out in 12. But more worrying than that, the cardiologist I saw last week told me the existing medication is not doing the job and the dosage needs to be doubled. And because the drug has known efffects on kidney function, I need a blood test to be arranged to make sure the increase doesnl;t make me a dialysis patient.

So ordering the meds from one of these online get yer viagra here mediwebsites isn't going to provide the answer, is it.

So why am I being denied access to the medical assiatance the GP told me I needed.

Why indeed.

I would pose this question to my MP whose government put these insane policies in place but of course they did a Pontius Pilate and washed their hands of all responsibility and handed "Health Issues In Wales" to the Welsh Assembly Hot Air Pit.

So here's what I sent to each of the bloated expense-laden wasters whose highly paid job it is to "represent" me.

Tuesday 31 March 2009

Dear Mohammad Asghar, Jocelyn Davies, Michael German and William Graham,

I am sure you will remember, some of you with amusement, some not, depending on your party affiliations, the way Tony Blair was made to look a complete fool when during the general election campaign, it was made clear to him on prime time television that no General Practicioner would allow a patient to make an appointment more than 48 hours in advance, for if they accepted it, they risked breaching one of the lunatic targets set by the government, which would cost them a chunk of their "nice little earner" from the insane contract the government had failed to negotiate properly with GP's

In the fallout from that election campaign event in which it became clear to all that Tony Blair had absolutely no idea of the havoc his "master plans" were causing, our GP suddenly changed his policy and started allowing appointments to be booked up to two weeks in advance.

HOWEVER it is clear the same mentality and target driven stupidity reigns supreme. I have just been advised, and not for the first time, that I cannot be given an appointment to see the doctor treating my high blood pressure because no appointment is available within the 14 day limit.

The cardiologist this GP referred me to recently recommended my medication be increased as my BP is NOT being properly controlled; the existing medication is known to cause kidney problems; I wake each morning with a pain in the lower back right by the adrenal glands (as a former medical biochemist thrown out of that career by Margaret Thatcher I think I know enough to know none of this is a good sign).

I thought with matters of health now devolved to your hands I would ask each of you what you thought about this state of affairs.....

Yours sincerely,

John Of Gwent

I received a reply from Mike German - the Lib Dem man - within minutes acknowledging my email and stating he would get back to me as soon as he was able. Yes the cynic amongst us may say this is a "brush off" but the mail headers in the reply - and a typo in the body of it - tell me this was no auto-response from an email robot but the words were was typed by human hand. Which means he at least feels it is important to read and acknowledge constituents correspondence. OK OK he probably pays someone to do it in his name from those fantastic allowances but at least I have hard evidence that one of these people puts that money into measures to try to serve the people. No response from the others yet though.

"Ask Glenys" - What DO the french think about those asylum seekers ?

2009-04-01T01:28:00.004+01:00

There's a Euro-Election coming up. Not that most people would know about it. I mean, apart from articles in "The Dail Mail" denouncing the BNP for using a Spitfire flown by a Polish Pilot in their election campaign (smart move that, I thought, getting the Daily Mail to give them all that free publicity for their campaign !!) have you seen anything about the election ? From anyone ? If you have, I'd love to hear from you. Because the last leaflet drops here were one from the Lib Dems celebrating their success in saving money by blacking out our streetlamps, only ten minutes after they finished spending hundreds of thousands of pounds getting the street lamps fixed (!!) and another from our New Labour apparat-chick MP. Apparently she is holding a Surgery. I wonder if she refuses appointments that canl't be done in 14 days like my GeneralPracticioner does. But why hold a surgery anyway ? Ah, I get it, she must be worried that if she doesn't, she might have her allowances for the premises challenged :-)

And talking of the Labour Party, while round my neck of the woods they seem to have gone all coy and quiet, just down the road they're having a right old rant. "Get Out And Vote To Stop The BNP" they say. "They Only Need 8% To Claim All Those Lovely European Parliament Allowances And Expenses". So no prizes for guesing what motivates New Labour then. Not "Vote For Me For All My Had Work", or "Vote For meFor All My Policies". Not even "Vote For Me For Standing Up For YourInterests". No, in the eyes of new Labour it's "Vote For Me And Show Me The Expense Account". I'd say New Labour just blew a hole in their own head here if it wasn't already the case that I can see daylight between the ears of their candidate.

So what the hell, I figured, maybe I have not seen hide nor hair of any candidates at all because they all presume no-one will bother voting. Or maybe the ones in power have finally worked out, as the electorate has, that their discredited representatives ought to be hanging their heads in shame at what they have allowed to be done to this country and its people on their watch.

So I decided it was time to take the fight to them and see whether they have the stomach for battle. I used the excellent "writetothem" website, now expanded to allow a concerned - or brassed off - constituent to see all elected representatives charged with looking after their needs across a wide arc ofgovernment organisations, and joy of joys I found out my current EU constituency was represented by a right shower, including none other than Glenys Kinnock, the wife of the Welsh Windbag Neil, whose first job once packed off to Brussels was to impose VAT on the Severn Bridge Toll so as to more heavily tax the people wishing to enter the Principality of Wales.

It was too good an opportunity to miss. You might remember about a fortnight ago now a BBC TV News crew crossed the channel to capture the behaviour of a group of people camped out in filth and squalor near the French port and rail terminals at Calais hoping to smuggle themselves aboard something bound for england so they can claim political asylum.

I have often wondered what the official line on these people is in France. And who better to ask for a European perspective on this issue than a woman who has been paid quite a bit over the past few years to be there as our elected representative. I confess the temptation was irresistible. Here is a copy of my recent letter to Glenys Kinnock MEP sent courtesy of "www.writetothem.com". I don't expect an answer, of course, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't make the woman work for her money once in a while.

Enjoy (!)

Thursday 26 March 2009
Dear Glenys Kinnock,

I understand from the website www.writetothem.com that you are one of the Members of the European Parliament representing the constituency in which I live. If this is not the case and I am mistaken, please accept my apologies.

I am having great difficulty understanding a matter that I first saw on a BBC News at Ten broadcast a few weeks ago. I have sought answers but have not yet been able to find any, and I think someone with a EUROPEAN perspective may be able to provide some insight.

On March 12th the BBC ran a piece on a large number of people living in conditions I would describe as filth and squalor outside a suburb of Calais, each trying to break into lorries to catch a free ride to Britain. The camera crew interviewed one such person who beamed straight at the camera and said "I want to go to england and claim political asylum"

Now I spent a month or so working a few miles from the French "Le Shuttle" terminal, albeit a few years ago. From my first hand experience I do not see any easy way that I could describe the area as a war zone or famine area, neither does France appear to me to be a country riven with dictatorial corruption or political or religious persecution.

So I find it most confusing that this man wishes to depart a land built on the principles of "equality, liberty and fraternity" to come to my country and I am even more confused as to how he can possibly be given asylum from persecution in France should he succeed in illegally entering here.

But the thing I find most confusing of all is this.What is the status of this person standing there in that field in France ? What are the authorities there doing about him. How did he get there ? Why is he being allowed to behave in the manner he is ?

I would REALLY like some answers to those questions and perhaps now you understand why I think someone with a European perspective on the matter might be better equipped to provide those answers.No-one has seen fit to explain any of this to me in the past. but with the European elections coming up, I think I would like to hear some answers before I cast my vote.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope to hear from you on this matter at your convenience.

Yours sincerely,

John Of Gwent

.... of course, I don't expect to hear a word from her at all.

£250 Birth Bribe Bond is now worth only £198.55

2009-03-26T16:15:00.005Z

Something that tickled me when I read it on Betsan Powys' BBC Welsh Politics Blog.

In her "happy birthday, son" posting Betsan notes that the £256 (I thought it was £250) bribe she and every other mother got to induce her to save for her child's future is now worth somewhat less than was when she got it, Just like the hype on private pensions that turned out to be bollox, so the likelihood that this savings bond will buy even the passport to let her son get the hell out of this shithole country on his 18th birthday is pretty miniscule.

It seems also that Rhodri "golf addict" Morgan promised her and every other mother an extra £50 on top of that promised by Blair and like every other promise the wndbag makes, this one has come to naught too.

Well don't blame ME betsan. I wanted to vote against the setup of that hot air shit pit in the bay but my postal vote was intercepted. Blame one of the supporters of the zealots in the pit below your public gallery seat who almost certainly nicked it to vote yes to the gravy train.

Intense Debate

2009-03-25T12:40:00.002Z

Regular readers may have seen moves on the BNP Website to promote a blog comment system called "Intense Debate"

I was not impressed when I saw the statement that those not registered with intense debate would be barred from commenting on the BNP site, and I was even less impressed by the hoops I have had to jump through, and the crap and errors I have encountered, putting "intense debate" on this blog to judge the impact.

I am even less impressed by the fact that the "full integration" sems to require me to hand over MY blog template design to "intense debate".

This seems overly intrusive, and, I might add, smacks of the very attitude in the present government that I and many other opponents of the government, patriotic or otherwise, seek to oppose by the power of argument and through the medium of the ballot box.

BUT it is done now. This blog is running under the intense debate commenting system. Someone had to be the guinea pig for larger and more important sites and now we will see how things go.

I wonder how many Recruiting Agencies will be calling Nick Griffin Today ?

2009-03-24T07:47:00.003Z

Nick Griffin needs IT experts.
But will the pimps who filled these shores with guest workers from the indian subcontinent, each clutching a "fast tracked visa" issued to them under false pretences now be ringing the BNP offices up saying they have "the perfect candidate" and what will you give us as a finders fee ?

If my spelling in this post falters somewhat you will have to excuse me. For I write with tears of laughter streaming down my face.

For almost two decades I ran my own business as an IT consultant. Faced with the closure of the employer who first took me on from my former academic post, I jumped off the deck into shark-infested waters and spent the next two decades having the roller coaster ride of my life.

When I started out in the business I placed my fate in the hands of a relatively small number of professional recruitment agents. Men - and they were mostly men - who had earned themselves a reputation for DOING the sort of work for which I was now offering myself for hire, men who had put up with the endless life out of a suitcase on the road, and therefore men who could speak with authority to me about what it was really like, and could speak to clients with authority about the skillset of someone they knew personally.

Such people found that there was money to be made by finding people like me our next piece of work and their track record of success in doing so on my behalf, leaving me to get on with the job in hand, was why they earned the cut they added to my bill. And with comparatively few people they knew personally "on their book", if too many of us went hungry, so did they.

But as the years passed and more and more people jumped on the bandwagon, so too did a new type of "recruiting agent". These people sat in offices and handled anonymous pieces of paper that fell out of fax machines. They were a voice on the end of a crackly mobile phone connection, disembodied voices who rang to urge me to get up and walk out of one client's office leaving them in the lurch because they had another client just up the road who was paying more. And when the internet replaced the fax machine, their numbers swelled, their distance from the client and the freelancer increased, and their knowledge of geography ("it's only the other end of the M4 you can do that in an hour surely") was as nonexistent as their morals ("I'll pay you five hundred to walk out of there right now and take this contract instead")

And as my home-grown UK based business was ground into the dust under New Labour Taxes, New Labour Regulations, New Labour Red Tape and New Labour Administrative Costs, a new sort of recruiter emerged. One with even fewer morals and a ruthless dedication to maximising their profit margin to the exclusion of all else. They exploited to the full the crooked Home Office Fast Tracked Visa Scheme and filled our shores with guest workers who had no right to be here because the Visa they held was contingent on the skill they had being in short supply and as I enjoyed helping to prove to a House of Commons Select Committee the premise on which that list was constructed was a fabrication. There were no such shortages, they had been invented as part of a dodgy deal to allow thousands of people in here from the indian subcontinent.

Last night I visited the British National Party Website and saw on their front page a "Situations Vacant" advertisement. I looked through the list of skills and ticked off every one on my CV. I was very tempted to apply, but the fact is after the bank that employed me as one of their IT experts threw me and dozens more like me on the street along with thousands of salesmen and other workers, it took me less than a fortnight to find a new employer. And I know many people with skills on a par with my own who are less fortunate.

But it is my personal experience that any organisation, no matter how big, or how small, who posts a "situations vacant advertisement" is very soon besieged with calls from the sort of pimps who filled these shores with guest workers, and charged thirty per cent of their hourly rate to do so. In these lean and hungry times when work is scarce, I wonder how many of those pimps will pick up the phone and call Nick Griffin this morning.

How typical of Labour Freeloaders to be in it for the expenses racket.

2009-03-22T11:57:00.003Z

Hat tip to my friend of some years now "The Green Arrow" for exposing what really matters to The Labour Party. In a post describing a leaflet drop from the party that deserted the people of the left in order to court fame with the electors that matter in the handful of seats that actually count, you need no commentary to read what really matters.

The leaflet you can read by clicking on the image above sums up their opinion of why people stand for office in one sentence.

Candidates ... only need to poll 8% in order to win a seat in the European Parliament and access to all the personal allowances paid to MEP's

What does that say of a party founded on the ideals of getting the voice of the ordinary working British man into the hallowed halls of British government. My God, is this the best these corrupt, boots-filling scum can think of. Can they not see anything of the needs of the people they "represent" over the rim of their champagne-filled goblet and gravy-filled trough ?

Kier Hardie would slap each of them in the face.

His Inquisitiveness Is Mightily Miffed

2009-03-21T06:20:00.003Z

"Do You Think Monty Python would have me in Their Inquisition Sketch NOW or must I do or say something even more stupid than I said in Africa first ?"

Hat Tip to The English Blog

For the past couple of months it's been a busy time for me over on the Green Arrow And Friends Blog and in the Hallowed Cyber-Halls of the UKDebaters, so I've rather neglected my own blog for quite a while. But I think this story deserves an airing and I didn't want to stomp over some fascinating revelations of money being poured to waste by our politically-correct masters over on GA's blog, so time to take off the dust sheets at chez johnofgwent.

I heard an amazing news item yesterday. One the like of which I believed would never be heard again in the lands of Dar El Harb. For until yesterday I truly believed these days the only "followers of religion" permitted to express any form of annoyance at what others thought of them through what they call "righteous anger" but what I call "throwing their dummies right out of the pram" were the cultist followers of "mohammedanism" (copyright Winston Churchill)

But what's this ?

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor has taken a leaf out of the book of the ranters within the cult of the dead paedophile and has taken umbrage at Peter Brooke's cartoon placed in The Times alongside their condemnation of His Inquisitiveness's attitude to the distribution of condoms in Africa as a measure against Aids.

So the cardinal has written a stiff memo, has he. Wow. I'm surprised that's allowed. I really am. Should I be wary of pitchfork-wielding, bible waving papists calling for The Editor's Head on a spike ? I don't know. But it will be a pleasant change to see religious protests from an organisation where the only womenfolk required to wear wierd clothing are those who seek the blessings of their god through contemplative prayer. work and study.

He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy.

2009-03-01T20:33:00.003Z

The late Graham Chapman as "Brian" with other members of the cast

Full Story here

A minor victory for common sense over censorship.

Thirty years after a panel of "church leaders" banned it from public view. Monty Python's "Life Of Brian" made it to the big screen in Aberystwyth (where ?) " this weekend.

Possibly helped by the town's mayor, Sue Jones-Davies, who played Brian's girlfriend "Judith" Iscariot in the film, the good people of the town can now see for themselves that their "leaders" were talking a load of bollox when they denounced the film as blasphemy against christ - for in the first couple of minutes a very "Robert Powell" like chappie in shining rainment is seen teling a crowd at the side of a lake that "The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth" - while 30 year old Brian is somewhere else altogether.

It was this rather key fact - a piece of information known only to those who watched the film - that led a man of the cloth sitting on a similar committee in Hereford and Worcester to denounce the campaign to impose a ban there, saying "he couldn't understand what al the fuss was about". Given his duties included at the time the spiritual welfare of a number of gentlemen of a somewhat "elite" military persuasion, one must presume here was a man who could tell the difference between "humour" and "an attack on one's religious principles. Or maybe he just knew when it was important to make a fuss, and when to turn the other cheek.

Because he knew, as did I after I watched the credits roll up the screen to the dying strains of "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life", that the people the film was really poking fun at were the fundamentalist messiah-a-minute-greeting nutters who inhabited what I think is best described as "The Occupied Territories of Palestine Italian Mandate (SPQR) 33AD (approx)".

Now if the film's censors and critics - including the charming chappie quoted as saying "I don't have to live in a pigsty to know that it stinks" on the back cover of the box holding the VHS cassette that is my personal copy of this masterwork has actually told the truth and said the film poked fun at religious extremists who saw "the messiah" on every street corner, and exposed the tendency of a great number of people to falsely represent themselves as "the messiah" then I might, just might have had second thoughts at paying to own a copy of it.

But I saw through the lies and spin uttered by those who "know what's best for us".

And while I do not know of anywhere on the planet that would still stone me for saying "That piece of fish was good enough for jehovah", I have a distinct feeling the number of places where I would meet that very fate for suggesting it was good enough for the prophet mohammed (may he rot in the lowest pit of hell) are increasing daily, and there are, amongst us right now, many who will not stop until that becomes part of the laws of this land where I was born.

Air Travellers Welcome !!

2009-02-18T15:54:00.005Z

What a difference a credit crunch makes (!)

I first boarded an aircraft in 1981, timidly walking up the steps for departure to italy for a honeymoon that was, shall we say, different. Different because, thanks to a terrorist attack on the airport we were scheduled to land at, WE got rerouted hundreds of miles away, and we staggered into our hotel at 6am too knackered to even think about what newlyweds are supposed to. What's that french saying about the more things change, the more they stay the same.

And as the years went by, and fares fell, airports became crowded, staff became shitter by the second, and, well you've all seen "Airport" haven't you. Annoyed passengers, shitty treatment. The reason why I've avoided airports like the bloody plague for over a decade.

But here I am, about to depart north to the land where the jocks are strapping with the only real problem being Alex Salmand's desire to install anti-aircraft guns at hadrians wall to ENSURE they stay independent (!)

And the first thing I notice is how like the 1980's the airport IS.

The car parks are empty. No, honest, I parked in the short stay with only 10% of the space filled, wandered into a DESERTED check-in desk, where I was genuinely welcomed, and the smile at the bar. HELL even the BEER is only slightly more expensive than it is in a Cardiff PUB.

If this is what Cardiff Airport is like, I might just do my bit to kickstart the economy.

Alicante for the summer holiday, anyone ???? Hic. Burp. Retch.

2.5% change in VAT = £140 per person

2008-11-24T08:05:00.003Z

Well it was when these comedians were on stage.

Cast your mind back, if you will, almost twenty years.

Margaret Thatcher is about to walk out of Number 10 and hand the keys to the Grey Man of politics on the right, who up to now is best known for saying of his fifteen per cent mortgage rates "if it isn't hurting, it isn't working".

And a much younger and slimmer John of Gwent is about to find his employer for the past eight years won't be his employer much longer. An awfully nice yankee chappie by the name of Rumsfeld demanded that in order to "solve the bearded nuisance in iran" problem they should arm the bloke next door with a lit of d's in his name to the teeth. Having done so, the company finds Uncle Sam declares the chap in question a bad boy, so he doesn't pay the bill.

Thus started my career as an independent IT freelancer. And my first invoices carried a 15% VAT demand. But not for long. For it would come to pass that when faced with the considerable outrage over the Poll Tax, the solution oput forward would be a £140 a head refund, to be paid for by a 2.5% increase in VAT.

Well taxes have a habit of sticking round. Income tax was a vehicle designed to fund the Napoleonic War and I think that's been over for a while but still I see "actors" making money each year telling me to get my return in. And similarly VAT stuck at 17.5% for fifteen years after the Poll Tax bit the dust.

But listen carefully this afternoon, folks. Because a 2.5% INCREASE in VAT was needed to fund a £140 cashback on the Poll Tax. So what is going to go up, and by how much, to cover the VAT handout ?

And when Diddy David stands up and rants, will someone please remind him who it was that put it up all those years ago, and why, and what was said at the time.

unable to recover the costs of all the weaponry it sold to a chap by the name of Saddam, who at that time was infintely preferable to the bearded bad guy next door who came out of exile i

Armed Robber raids shop - now the robber's MUM wants to sue the shopkeeper !!

2008-11-12T17:15:00.008Z

He's not a villain, he's just a naughty boy. Or so his mum says.

My blood pressure wasn't exactly helped when I chanced across this page on the BBC website earlier today.

The story goes back to the 12th of February when the BBC News website told of Preston Crown Court's issuing of a warrant for the arrest of one Liam Kilroe in connection with not one but TWO armed robberies in Lancashire. But the trail went cold for about a week, and then things got interesting.

According to this BBC News web page posted at 10:30 on the 19th of February Mr Kilroe was murdered and a 34 year old was 'helping police with their enquiries'. How interesting then that by 20:39 the same day the story had changed just a little.

Now the story was that as one Tony Singh closed up his "Lifestyle Express" corner shop in Skelmersdale and took his takings amounting to some £2,000 to his car, Kilroe aproached, smashed the car window, drew a knife, threatened Mr Singh with it and demanded that he hand over the takings. The BBC would have us believe that a "struggle" ocurred and it Mr Kilroe was stabbed in the chest with his own weapon.

By the 27th of February the BBC were saying Mr Singh was not going to face charges of murder over the incident, in which Kilroe is said to have launched an unprovoked and violent attempted mugging against Mr Singh, stabbing him repeatedly in the head and the back as he sat in his car. Now the BBC tell us Kilroe, who had previous convictions for assault and robbery, died from a single stab wound to the chest suffered after he smashed the window of the car Mr Singh was sitting in and trying to mug him.

That particular news page has the rather priceless quote from the pompous oaf in the CPS pontificating that "any person found to have acted reasonably in self defence will have the full protection of the law and will not be prosecuted"

Drug Baron or Victim of Attempted Armed Robbery - You decide !

But truly this story gets better and better !! On the 10th of November the same BBC News website reports the inquest into the death of Mr Kilroe and repeats Mr Singh's testimony that Kilroe attacked him 'like a pit bull' as he sat in his car, but two "neighbours" of his testified that MrSingh 'lost it' during the atack, and was 'giving as good as he got'. Mr Kilroe's "brief" Kate Stone demande dthat the coroner consider a verdict of "unlawful killing" on the grounds that the knife was SINGH's and HE stanned Kilroe in an argument over drug money !!

But best of all is the testimony from Kilroe's mum. She said he had no need to mug anyone as she was supporting him financially as part of her efforts to aid him evade capture by the police.

Bet you wish you hadn't helped him evade the plod now, don't you ? Better a nice warm cell than a cold damp coffin, don't you think, mum ?

But amazingly, despite the fulsome praise from the Police for the wy Mr Singh dealtwith being the innocent victim of a violent attempted mugging that left him seriosuly injured, Liam's mum is still on the warpath. She is, according to today's instalment of this sorry spectacle, "disappointed" with the verdict and is now seeking to bring a "civil action" against him

She'll probably get legal aid to do it too.

The desperation of the Irish and the load of American Cobblers

2008-11-07T09:10:00.005Z

I'm back. I've returned to blogging here after a period of other activity. And look what rich pickings there are. Let's start with the desperation of the irish, shall we.

The three hundred good people of Moneygall or Muine Gall to give it its proper name woke up the other day to find one of their long lost sons appears to have done very well for himself. Here he is, pictured outside part of his new office complex.

Never one to miss an opportunity, the irish government have seen fit to put it about that, well, in the words of the BBC News Website, "Never mind the US President-elect's 87-year-old grandmother in Kenya, what about his great-great-great grandfather from Co Offaly?"

What's that ? A BLACK Irishman ? How come ?

Well it would appear that the slave trade was not started off my the good burghers of Bristol or Liverpool at all, but by a little known enterprising irish chappie .......

No, much as I would love to be the one phoning max clifford to ask him to negotiate my worldwide fee for the scoop of the presidency, the previous sentence is a complete falsehood - unless you know different and can prove it, of course ? No, it would appear that, again according to that BBC website page, a Moneygall shoemaker called Fulmouth Kearney is Mr Obama's great-great-great grandfather. He emigrated to the US in 1850 at the tender age of 20. He married Ohio-born Charlotte Holloway. They had eight children and so began the American family tree which culminated with Ann Dunham marrying Kenyan-born Barack Hussein Obama Snr, and the birth of Barack Jnr on 4 August 1961.

And so the Irish government have extended an invitation for Obama to add to the list of other american presidents in coming to see for themselves the emerald isle in which they have (sometimes tenuous) ancient roots, .

Now I suppose the 300 good people of this hamlet are probably thinking it would be nice for him to drop in, but I bet they will think differently if he comes. When Clinton dropped in for a pint of Guinness on his way to defend his halting the extradition of IRA terrorists from America and to deny the DUP a voice at his table, the secret service threw almost everyone out of the village.

When he came to stay in the (then £1500 a night) presidential suite at the Coldra Celtic Manor Hotel during his hay on wye festival lecture tour, armed men set up exclusion zones for miles around and created complete bloody havoc. Ambulances were refused access to houses adjacent to the place. And I don't think ANY of the scum in his motorcade paid the severn bridge toll. Mind you I don't think george dubya's motorcade paid the congestion charge when they drove through london either

But news of Obama's Irish roots has set me thinking. Wouldn't it be WONDERFUL to find that the man about to take over the reins of George Dubya's war on terror has a great great grandaddy violently in favour of irish independence ..........

Now that WOULD be a scoop I'd ring Mr Clifford for. Watch this space !

European Union or Argmageddon ?

2008-10-07T08:56:00.002+01:00

A posting I placed on the green arrow forum this morning ...

Did you see Newsnight last night on BBC2 ? If not, you missed the most spectacular news scoop of the century. Only they don't know they have it. In a far ranging in depth analysis of the credit crunch and interviews with the mjor players that only the BBC can stage in the way it does, those who were running last nights programme revealed a few rather interesting facts.

Hands up anyone who remembers Black Wednesday ? Now keep your hands up if you were running a small business at the time. And leave them up if you were part way through the delivery of a major project to a large multi-national in the financial or industrial sector .....

.... Now then, of the small band of us left with our hands in the air, who amongst you watched Norman Lamont shove the interst rate to 22% at 2pm in order to fight off George Sorros' bet that we'd be out of the Narrow band ERM by tea-time. And who amongst you expected that the large multinational that owed you at least ten grand was about to go bust thanks to that crippling interest rate and take your small business with it as a casualty of war .....

Well I still have my hand up and I believe I see my old mucker GA there at the back has his hand in the air too. Because we were both right out there in the line of fire when the Germans decided to teach Norman Lamont a lesson or two about European Economics back then in 1993.

And so it was with little surprise that I read yesterday that shares were in freefall again thanks to the Germans saying one thing and then doing another behind our backs. And last night on newsnight they even sent their ambassador to the Newsnight Studio. And when questioned he said 'he understood Angela Merkel perfectly and perhaps you suffered a mistake in the translation'.

No, I don't really think there was a mistake in translation, Mister Ambassador. Well not in the translation from German to English. I recall your minister of finance on BBC1 in 1993. I remember his bluster and outrage when replying to accusations of collusion at the Bundesbank to destroy the British Economy. And I remember his words spoken in German on the Astra Analogue Sat-Eins-Plus station later that night. For in those days you thought no-one in Britain could receive your television signals, much less understand them. Now to give you credit, you have not made the same mistake this time, but how you must have cringed when your plan was exposed by newsnight, and how you must have gloated when you realised the fools were not 'on to you'.

What am I talking about, I hear you say ? Go find a copy of the programme somehow and watch it.

About half way through a long and very very boring litany of bankers being interviewed saying how sorry they are, and other apologists for the mess wer are in right now, Newsnight shows a graph. On its vertical axis is a measuure of the amout of personal debt each member of the population of the countries affected by this financial situation is in. On the horizontal axis is a measure of the amount of corporate debt the country's businesses and em,ployers are in.

Guess who is top of the list in both cases. Guess which country is out there streets ahead of all the others top of the tree and most dangerously exposed and most likely to take the hardest knock from the continuation of this situation ?

You don't need to guess at all, do you. It's UK plc that's out there most exposed of all, and we lead by quite a few city blocks.

And then Newsnight stumbled on the scoop of the year without knowing it. In posing the question "what is different between us and the united states, what is going on in Europe that is not the same as what is going on in the United States", the journalist reading the lines with all the enthusiasm of the man Maggie found to announce military losses during the Falklands conflict revealed the answer.

The United States are a Federal Unon with a Federal Financial and Legislative structure overseeing the individual states. The European Union has no such equivalent federal legislatitive and financial instutution. Or to be specific, we have the institution all right, but the individual governments of the member states can only be persuaded, and cannot be coerced into taking action, and above all are free to act independently in their own interest.

In other words the only way out of this credit crunch and the disaster it is causing daily is ever closer political union. Those were the very words used and no-one, absolutely no-one even bothered to take that theme any further.

Germany has been plotting its revenge for the snubbing it got over the Lisbon treaty for some time. I say that over the previous weekend it put its plan into motion.

"I feel sorry for the managing directors - they were paid about 50% of their bonus in stock, that's been written off."

2008-09-16T02:52:00.004+01:00

This man's job let him and his fellows cause the credit crunch.

Many years ago I was sitting at a desk in an office near Kingston Upon Thames. As the clock on the wall crept past 18:00 hours I rose from my chair, locked the document I was reviewing in the desk, picked up my bag and strode out into the car park. Driving out of the office complex and up the main road I pulled into a layby opposite a few shops by the roundabout. I walked into one shop bearing the logo of a certain pizza company. Which one ? Think Duff Beer and a family, (indeed a whole town) with severe jaundice and you'll get the idea.

This company 'make' the pizzas for each order starting by making the pizza base from a lump of proven dough. And in this shop the staff did this in front of you, to give you and them the chance to engage in conversation, a lost art in greater London I can tell you.

The woman deftly spinning my pizza base out caught sight of the magazine under my arm. 'Oh, you're a contractor' she said. This caught me unawares. "yes" I replied, and started telling her what little I could of my work across the road without risking getting us both in the old bailey for the same reasons Maggie put Clive Ponting there.

Without breaking stride in her pizza-making, the woman multi-tasked the twin operations of laying out black olives in a symmetrical pattern and looking wistfully in my direction. As she finished and consigned my supper-to-be to the main oven, she sighed, turned to me and said ...

"I wish I could go back to doing what you are doing now, but ever since we got thrown onto the street when the Torus project collapsed I haven't had the nerve"

That was almost a decade and a half ago, but the details of that conversation are etched on my mind. I'm ashamed to say the woman's face isn't. She was one of thousands of people who I paid to prepare or serve food to me in my days as a warrior of the road. Their faces blur into a gestalt, the surroundings blur into a greyscale of memories. But even today her voice uttering those words calls back to me across the years.

When the Torus project was canned it was the Stock exchange's largest IT project failure to date. People were called into a mass meeting and as they waited there, men in peaked capped uniforms entered their offices, unlocked their desks, took out anything apparently personal, put it into a cardboard box and brought the boxes on trollies to the doors of the room in which they were gathered. Only when the trollies arrived did someone stand up and tell the assembled multitude that they were being shown the door. Each person was then taken out of the room, led to a trolley, handed "their" box of posessions and then "escorted" out of the building and into the street.

The fools have not learned. As this BBC news web page points out. The tale os told of many people leaving Lehman Brothers in Canary wharf cardboard box in hand. Some had not even got their feet under the desk. 24-year-old Edouard d'Archimbaud had only just arrived in Canary Wharf from paris for his first day at work. He expected to collect £45,000 a year (plus fat wads of bonus) as a trader. Instead, he got a P45. "I do not know what I will do now. I've taken out a six-month lease on a flat and I don't know how I will pay for it," he said. My heart bleeds piss for him.

But Andy Bevan, three years his senior and thus a man half my age, is my nominee for 'most bizarre quote of the year'. Bevan "works in equity derivative finance" which the correspondent on Radio 4's 6 O'Clock news last night translated into English for me. The Andy Bevans of this world made money by taking all those sub-prime mortgage deals whose borrowers had been allowed to take against unaudited, self-certified declarations of income, wrapping them up with other products into "packages" whose wrapping was so tempting the suckers buying the product - and paying the fat fees added on top - failed to notice the stench of decay and corruption that poured fourth from the rotten core. And others took those packages, added some more, tied them up with more string, added a further fat fee, and found another sucker.

It does not take much intelligence to see that after a few such "derivations" you end up with "derivative packages" that are, like their sellers, all mouth and no trousers, mini-ENRONs all ready to explode.

It is people like Andy Bevan who created the situation where bankers saddled with bad debts in the form of worthless mortgages taken out by people not challenged to prove either their worth or their ability to repay, were not only unaware they were standing in the street wearing just their underpants but were also unable to tell how much of this bad debt they had on their books.

The andy bevans of this world had done the job of selling the king his new clothes to a degree unheard of in recent days and now everyone will suffer as a result.

And what does Andy think ? Well, in one of the most bizarre quotes on the whole story, he says "I am lucky - I don't have any dependants or a mortgage to worry about. I feel sorry for the managing directors - they were paid about 50% of their bonus in stock, that's been written off". And he says he is off back to his team, drinking one last drink in the Canary Wharf Slug and Lettuce.

Enjoy the drink, Andy. I know what happens next. And I can't seem to muster the slightest bit of compassion for you.

Don;t worry. There won't be a Tsunami in Cardiff Bay

2008-09-10T07:10:00.004+01:00

Hot off the press from the BBC News Wales Website is the news that this man who will, they say, later today, kick off the Large Hadron Collider, has promised there will be no Tsunami in Cardiff Bay this morning. Or this afternoon.

Hmmm.

As a raw recruit to the ranks of the scientific profession, with the ink still wet on the piece of paper headed "Universitas Cambrensis" granting me "Baccalaureus Im Scientia Magna Cum Laude" I recall picking up a copy of The Sun from the tea room. Yes, we had the printed word in those days. On the front page was a Sun style enlargement of a very grainy greyscale photograph. A prototype of the sort of photograph now handed round offices across the country by grinning mums-to-be. And underneath that, in typical "Soaraway Sun 48 Point Type" were three little words :-

"IT'S A BOY"

About a fortnight later LOUISE BROWN was born.

You have no idea how much I hope that the stories peddled over the past few days by the successors of those journalists who couldn't tell an umbilical cord from a penis are equally flawed.

But if you'll excuse me, I'm off to prepare to kiss my arse goodnight. Because the chap above is absolutely right. There will be no tsunami in Cardiff Bay, because if it does go horribly wrong all the earth's seawater will fall through the event horizon (!) And remember folks, dive in head first. That way the last thing that will go through your mind will be YOUR arsehole. Jump in feet first and the last thing that will go through your mind is the arse of some like-minded stranger.

But I leave you today with the following two rather pleasant thoughts.

If everything does turn to shit later today, the EU commissioners will go down the black hole into non-existence a few millionths of a second before we do. So UKIP will have delivered on their policy after all. Leaving is to die well, and die free. And better than that, we die knowing Alistair Darling won't get a sodding penny in inheritance tax.

Ok people. It has been a pleasure and a privilege blogging for you. I am going outside now. I may be gone for some time. Or maybe. like Arnie, 'I'll Be Back'. Who knows ? Certainly not the chap pictured above.

"It was a pretty light-hearted petition, so we gave it a light-hearted answer."

2008-08-20T16:06:00.004+01:00

VOTE JEZZA FOR PM !!!

Now let us be honest. Would you want this man as Prime Minister ? Well, speaking personally, I would like to see him in number ten for five reasons.

Just HOW exactly can he POSSIBLY bring a worse poll rating to the Labour Party than the current leader ?
The sight of him heading up the cabinet would give Johnathan Porritt a stroke and that is no bad thing.
The Fuel Duty Escalator (express lift) would be as dead as a dodo.
Clarkson is, according to wikipedia, a renowned Euro-Sceptic. I'd vote for him just because of that.
He knows all about identity theft and how easy it is to hack our banking system. He was stupid enough to say "ID Theft" was a load of cobblers,. He then received a personal lesson when five hundred pictures of the queen's head were lifted from his bank account and handed to charity. I don't know which charity, and I don't care. It would have served him right if it was "Sustrans" but I hope the man was big enough to eat the humble pie and leave the money where it went.

The real point is, don't be fooled by the outward appearance of clumsy oafish stupidity. Clarkson gets to make serious money charging round this country and others and rushing round race tracks in fast cars the rest of us can only DREAM of having on our driveway. Most of us couldn'a afford the cost of a tank of petrol for them, never mind the insurance. So if Clarkson does not have a hard head for the serious business of making money, then he sure as hell has an accountant who does.

So in the spirit of the new openness at number 10 and the e-petition site, rather a lot of people signed a petition demanding Gordon Brown step down and the Queen ask him to lead her government in his place. Not as many as told Gordon Brown to stuff his road pricing and fuel duty rises, but quite a few.

So what is the response of the man his own party denounce as stalinist and who is said to go through several mobile phones a week as he throws them across the office in a fit of temper as the British public see right through him and his phony policies and phonier leadership ?

They waste god knows how many thousands getting someone to put together a swish video telling us to sod off, a video way beyond the quality that used to grace "webcameron", and they try to blag us with a load of bull that some lowly official put this together in his lunch hour. There's only one word that sums up my feelings about that.

Bullocks.

The Sherriff of Nottingham wants his money back

2008-08-15T08:31:00.003+01:00

After hearing how the British Archery Team found a bit of rain and some strong winds a bit of a challenge which led to their losing an Olympic Medal TO THE FRENCH (Zut Alors) maybe it is time we did a little less football, and a little more civic defence (!)

As a man of Gwent I found this particularly galling not least becauase my daughter saw no particular problem in standing one side of caerleon amphitheatre and landing twelve arrows in the centre of a target the other side. And that was on a damp day with a force five coming at her from the side.

Now SHE does it to keep up the tradition in this neck of the woods. The Italian Gladiators (reenactment ones, not those silly sods in lycra leotards on 'Challenge TV') who were on tour to bring roman history to life, and who issued the challenge to her schoolkids, which she took up to "keep our side up", were impressed. Hell. Leonidas's 300 Spartans might have had problems against a few more like her.

So what better place to go see about reviving our Olympic Hopes in the arrow chucking department than where another British Legend originated. I write this sitting in a hotel about five miles from the place where the statue depicted above is erected, right outside the gates of the PRESENT castle at Nottingham. The one the Shire-Reeve of Nottingham used to amass the loot he took was pulled down some time ago and this one built.

All that remains of Robin Hood's old enemy stronghold is the amazing hostelry previously the brewhouse used to make drinkable beer from the undrinkable water in the Trent at the time. A pint of Old Trip now has to make a trip from Suffolk as the brewers were bought out and the brewing facilities moved on, but I can still reccomend the stuff.

But on a sadder note, I regret the Sherriff of Nottingham is busy recoupng the losses he sustained from our stout-willed men with hearts of oak. For on every lamppost in this city a number plate recognition camera is erected, dutifully ensuring you don't travel at more than 29.9 miles an hour to the next one.

One or two are quite understandable. But after you've been surveyed by a fifty of the buggers in a five mile journey from the motorway to the hotel, you are left with the feeling that if an armed gang were to open fire upon the chief constable, you would stand and applaud as he bled to death on the pavement.

Hopefully the same would not happen when the armed gang are bank robbers opening up on the poor bloody beat bobby. But you come up here and make your own mind up.

Where the hell are the BNP and their pledge to destroy this wilful snatch and grab on the ordinary bloke in the street when you need them ??

Eat Kangaroo Or Cow Farts Will Destroy The Planet

2008-08-10T09:41:00.003+01:00

JoeyBurger And Fries.
Coming soon to a McDonalds near you.
Mmmmm......... I'm Lovin' it

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7551125.stm

Is it April the 1st ? No, it's too wet outside. So it must be true then. The Anglo-Saxon habit of rearing cattle for their beef, milk and leather will be the death of us all, as the earth is devoured by a ravening wolf. Or so this Australian chap has declared.

The problem is simple. Cows fart. And what they fart will be the death of us all. The digestive system of the humble friesian is filled to overflowing with bacteria which digest the cellulose in the cell walls of the grass and other fodder the cows eat. Now whilst most of that activity creates short chain fatty acids, and most of them are absorbed by the animal and used as its primary foodstuff, rather a LOT of methane gets produced.

How much ? Well, enough to suggest that the reason the Cow of Nursery rhyme fame "jumped over the moon" because some damn fool farmhand sloped off into the cowshed for a crafty fag and struck a match right next to Ermintrude's arse.

A swift poke round google will turn up dozens of sites, some more scientifically accredited than others, which claim the "greenhouse effect" of methane is many, many times that of an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide.

So there you have it people. The British addiction to roast beef and yorkshire pud is the reason why the "south east asians" are dying from tsunami and tropical storm. Shame on you, you vindictive thougtless eaters of flesh. Repent this minute and turn to fundamentalist veganism.

Er ... actually, no, please DONT do that. Because the second largest source of methane is from waterlogged rotting vegetation under attack from similar bacteria .... on paddy fields across the rice-growing regions of the world. Looks like it's time gentlemen please for Satay sliced Beef with Egg Fried Rice though

Passports ... Get Yer Passports... Only A Pony, Guv...

2008-07-29T08:02:00.003+01:00

An interesting story here on the BBC Website this morning. It seems 3000 passports and visa stickers were stolen en route to an RAF base from where they were to be sent to embassies worldwide. But fear not, says "Not Flash, Just Gordon" 's minions. The items are quite unusable and have no value on the black market as they are fitted with new state of the art ID chips.

No Value On The Black Market ? Really ?

Remind me again what you need to wave to get more than three hundred quid out of a bank these days. Other than a gun, that is. And for that matter what you need to open an account. Or buy a house. Or do just about anything else. After all, it was Gordon Brown that demanded our financial institutions do sod all for you unless you wave one of these documents, so why should he be surprised when a few thousand go missing. And whose fault will it be when the immigration agencies get handed photocopies of the passports handed over by next month's cocklepickers ?

And how many estate agents will have the same technology as fitted to terminal five ? Actually it's just as well they don't. You wouldn't want your solicitor conveyancing a house in Perth Australia while your Laugh A Minute HIP Kit describes a house in Perth, Scotland.

But I wonder just how 'secure' those documents really are and how much technology I'd need to overwrite them. Given the way APACS did Chip and Pin on the cheap, I bet little more than I could fit in the boot of a reliant robin at a car boot sale.

60 years of the NHS and we still stuff doctors mouths with gold - for doing sod all

2008-07-12T07:30:00.004+01:00

If you lived the last three months in a coma you might have missed the efforts of New Liebour to trumpet the 60th Anniversary of the work of this chap.

But fear not, when you come out of the coma the yellowed bunting will still be there adorning your ward. That'll be the bunting they put up in 1948 of course.

So how have we done then ? Well Nye Bevan of course found out that no doctors will agree to anyuthing unless someone has already "stuffed their mouths with gold". And how appropriate it must be then to see this tradition is still ongoing.

Over here you can read how Doctor Amjad Husien has done rather well. Who is Doctor Huisien ? You may well ask. I'm sure his profession would prefer you not be reminded, for their official policy is to punish whistleblowers, bury the mistake and move on quietly. Ask the anaesthetist who blew the whistle on the incometent child killers at Bristol's Child Cardiac Unit in the 80's for a start.

But back to Mr Husien. In 2005 problems were noted in his work in breast cancer screening at Trafford and North Manchester General. Specifically, a total of 22 patients he diagnosed as clear of cancer were nothing of the sort. For each of those came the shock of disclosure that they had been told they were free of disease and were nothing of the sort, and the fear that this killer now had a firm foothold where it might have been previously nipped in the bud. Details of these women's additional pain and suffering are not easy to come by. All that is being said is that one of the 22 died, but of course the doctor's unions will make sure we never know if her death was avoidable or whether Husien has her blood on hios hands.

And although twenty two women were given the worst possible wake-up call to incompetence in the NHS, a total of TWO HUNDRED were sent a letter recalling them for a second time, and some of those were also being recalled two years after the event.

Just stop and imagine that. You've seen all those slushy cancer charity ads with people being told 'you're clear'. Well imagine you were starring in that for real life and TWO YEARS later someone tells you 'actually, we screwed up'.

Hanging is truly too good for this incompetent.

But what punishment was meted out ? Well, it seems the good doctor was sent home to prune his roses, during which time he was able to grow a whole hedge of laurels from which to make a cushion to sit on, and boy was he able to afford to buy them, for he sat suspended ON FULL PAY of £75000 for THREE YEARS.

ALMOST A QUARTER OF A MILLION SMACKEROONIES were suffed into this man's wallet.

And then when the General Medical Council FINALLY got off their arse and banned him from practice for twelve months he tried to appeal against the ruling.

It seems Doctir Husien FINALLY "quit" his post and withdrew his appeal.

I wonder where he is now ?

A tale of two by-elections

2008-06-28T16:56:00.007+01:00

Pictured above, and leaning to the right as always, I give you Mr David Davis, former Shadow cabinet minister, currently feted as the only man with backbone or principles in the Houses of Parliament who threw his rattle out of the pram over the busines of 42 day detention of ..... well who, exactly ? In theory people who the forces of law and order feel are a terrorist threat, but in practice probably anyone who takes a dislike to Gordon Brown's policies and stands up and says so at the next New Liebour Party Conference. After all, that's what happenned to an OAP with the bottle to give Tony Blair a piece of his mind, wasn't it. Tony's plod chums used the anti-terrorist legislation to remove the said OAP from the hall.

So maybe Mr Davis has a point of principle after all. It's such a shame no-one in New Liebour feels inclined to come and stand against him on a 'intern the buggers and throw away the key' ticket. And the "Lib Dems" won't field a candidate because they say they agree with him. Such a shame, and such a waste of time and money.

But fear not, where one door closes another often opens. And enter (or rather exit) the man pictured above. Step forward and take your (farewell) bow Mr David Marshall, currently the New Liebour member for the constituency of Glasgow East. A man with a majority of over 13,000 who has apparently served his country as a Member of Parliament since 1979 (and probably collected a few million in expenses as a result). But Mr Marshall has found ill health is forcing him to take his snout out of the trough and disembark from the gravy train. An act that has precipitated a by-election.

"Not Flash Just" Gordon Brown must be REALLY enjoying his first anniversary in Number Ten. And look, here is a golden opportunity for the sheep to line up and show their appreciation by voting in another red rosette wearer eager to dip their snout in the westminster trough with the others.

I'll tell you what would make me REALLY impressed, David Davis. Why not abandon this waste of money by-election in your old constituency and go stand on the same 'No Erosion Of Personal Freedoms" ticket as the Tory candidate for Glasgow East.

You never know. With the way Gordon's popularity is shrivelling you might just be the start of a Tory revival north of Hadrian's wall.

Two Damn Good Reasons New Liebour Must Be Defeated

2008-06-27T10:14:00.003+01:00

It's been an interesting week.

The British National Party will no doubt see their ranks, and coffers, swelled thanks to the action of Gordon Brown's Equality Minister. As of now, it is no longer illegal to discriminate against a white man. Those of us living west of offas's dyke have always known the ENGLISH-SPEAKING white man is treated like a piece of shit, with Employment Tribunals upholding refusals on the part of Carmarthenshire companies to employ people who can't speak welsh on the grounds that "they would not be able to understand instructions given to them in welsh by their managers", planning consents being refused on the grounds that "they represent an unwarrranted intrustion of english language speaking people", and the Police Force - or at least that part of it bribed by the welsh druids - refusing to employ people who cannot speak the language.

Well, to add to that, it is now legal across the UK for an employer to turn away a white man. Harriet harman says this is to be encouraged to the fullest extent posible. And she should know, she, after all, considers men unneccessary and berates women who choose to stay at home to bring up their children.

And how is Gordon brown this morning, one year in to his Prime Ministership ? Well, he probably choked over his morning toast and cornflakes today, on finding that his party came fifth in the Henley by-election. Now I must admit that henley-upon-thames is hardly the place where fuel poverty would rear its head, so perhaps it is not surprising that some people are still willing to stand up for the green party - who STILL feel we need to be taxed of the roads even more than we are now, and I am surprised to find that a constituency which elected the descendant of a muslim to westminster should boast a level of BNP support in exces of that for New Liebour, but there we are. Today, Gordon Brown's party has come fifth behind David Cameron's man, Nick Clegg's candidate, The Green Man, and Mr Griffin's offering.

Had the BNP been a little more democratic towards the english and fronted a candidate with as much 'front' as two of the "also rans" they might even have made new Liebour's candidate look a bigger tit than they already have been shown to be.

Happy Prime Ministerial Birthday Gordon. Keep this up and you won't get another !

Stonehenge too far ? There's always Barry Island

2008-06-21T07:05:00.004+01:00

It must be a terrible thing to be an eco-pagan. There you are, all excited at your own little 'hajj' to the greatest feat of engineering Britain has ever seen, when you are overcome with a guilt complex that has nothing to do with the worry of footage of you prancing starkers in an english field being plastered on youtube and from there reviewed by a million blogsites....

No, your fears are more primaeval and strike at the heart of your eco-warrior religion. For it occurs to you that in order to travel to this crossroads of our ancient civilisation to worship the earth you have to hammer another nail into the already pretty well crucified body of the earth mother goddess. So to salve your conscience, why not go here instead.

You'll be in good company. A group of pagans are celebrating the summer solstice at Barry Island rather than Stonehenge - because the town's beach offers convenience and quiet. Around a dozen devotees are taking the train to the seaside town to mark the passing of the year's longest day. Their sacred ritual of dance and music finishes with them leaping a bonfire. Organiser Kim Huggens said: "Barry Island will be as sacred to us at that moment as Stonehenge is to the druids."

And the best bit is that they don't have to bunk off college to do it. The members of Cardiff and Swansea universities' pagan societies say the midsummer ritual is a "spontaneous" event as it falls outside of term time.

I've been up since an hour after dawn, in my office loking out across the river. The cloud cover is impressive and it is drizzling in the way that only the welsh weather knows how.

You'll need that bonfire at Barry, Pal. You'll catch your death of pneumonia. And enjoy it while you can. If the carbon footprint Nazi's have their way, you'll end up with a beach bonfire ban like these yanks are facing

"I didn't vote. I couldn't understand it properly"

2008-06-14T05:49:00.002+01:00

Chilling evidence this morning from the BBC website.

If you pop over to here you will find something most unusual. Under a banner headline "EU grapples with Irish 'No' Vote" the BBC say this :-

"Governments in the European Union are exploring what to do after the Irish Republic's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty to reform the expanded EU. France and Germany have described the No vote in the referendum as a serious blow but have urged the EU to press ahead with the project. European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso said the treaty was not dead. But Czech President Vaclav Klaus said the treaty was finished, since any further ratification was impossible. His is a lone voice among EU leaders, but his views will probably resonate with many European voters who did not get a say in a referendum, says the BBC's Oana Lungescu in Brussels."

And then at the right of the page you see a picture of a smiling young woman. Click the image and you are presented with the chilling facts as the slideshow opens to show seven pictures, seven people, and prints their seven opinions. I feel compelled to cut and paste the lot, it is so important, but that would be unfair, so I shall paraphrase.

I click the link and the first picture I see is of a man about half my age with a friendly smile. His hair is short, he wears an open necked denim shirt, sports a large but plain round ear-ring in each ear, and what I suppose used to be called 'designer stubble'. Or maybe he's half way to growing a presentable beard. And yet this man is the saviour of us all. The words under his picture say it all. "I voted No because I believe Ireland's sovereignty and neutrality are extremely important. The whole European Union regime is getting ridiculous and is too underhand to even follow. Ireland was oppressed for 800 years and we've only been free for 80 years. To hand it over to Europe now would be ridiculous"

The next picture is of a clean shaven dark haired younger man. Clean shaven, fresh faced, eyes wide open but with a strange look. He reminds me of a youthful David Nimmo in his role as the curate in All Gas and Gaiters. But his expressionless stare worries me. This chap, with a greek-sounding name, says he voted yes "because there is no point in being separatist" and worryingly for me he believes that "next time we won't be asked to vote". Why is that worrying ? well, the only reason the Irish voted this time is because THEIR constitution demands it. It would be typical of the EU to oil and bribe their way by hook or by crook to a position where they could indeed sidestep this little stumbling block to conquest. Your words, young man, are prophetic, and you know it not.

Next up is a woman of 54. The first thing I notice about her is her hair. When she was half her age I bet those flame-red locks would have turned the heads of every man in the street. Now I see she, like me and like Mrs JoG too, is going grey gracefully at the edges. She voted No and is delighted with the result because she felt a lot of people did not understand the issue, and she felt it was really important to vote No because a lot of people in other countries were denied a vote, and so she was voting for them, too. Thank you, Mrs Doyle. Are you listening, Gordon ?

Next up is a young man of 22 who looks like Bob Geldof did when he was 22 but this chap is ALREADY an accountant. He voted Yes because he "didn't really see it is a major issue. I didn't see that there were going to be that many changes as a result of it - other than make it a more equal union. And I didn't like the No side - they exaggerated things, played on peoples' fears - and told too many lies". Really ?

Next up is a blonde woman about the same age as my eldest daughter who voted No and is glad because "a Yes vote would have been bad for Ireland ... I don't agree with a lot of Europe's policies - which seem to be taking power away from our parliament ... I don't think that's fair". Now then Mr Accountant, can you explain why taking power away from your parliament is not really a major issue ..... It's that sort of talk that will have you denied a voice when the EU Overlords make their next assault.

Last but one is a bloke who bears more than a passing resemblance to my father in his later years. This chap voted yes and had no problem with it, and is astonished the vote was lost, saying that he knows someone voted No because they did not like the present government and feels they have made a big mistake. He may be right, the conquerors often come with beads and trinkets before they come back with swords.

Last up on the list is a girl of 20 with deep red hair and I bet the 54 year old Mrs Doyle, pictured earlier, looked just like her when she was 20. Just like Mrs JoG bore a stunning resemblance to Kate Beckinsale as pictured in the promotional material for Van Helsing. Ah, what it is to be a man of fifty looking back three decades and remembering with a wry smile what it was like to be a man of twenty. But this young student's words worry me most of all. Indeed they chill me to the bone. She admits "I didn't vote. The reason is the brochures they sent out were full of language that was so convoluted I couldn't understand it properly. I didn't really have a clue what I was voting."

It isn't her fault that politicians seek to obfuscate the truth. That is, after all, what they do. When Marcus Brigstoke met the former Tory Front Bencher David Davis ona train to Rugby to do an interview with him on the cynicism of the electorate, the man who walked over the 42 day limit said it wasn't the electorate's job to come up with the answers, thatw as what he and his 650 odd fellows were paid to do. But it was his job to listen to the electorate before coming up with the answers. Prophesising his own actions, no doubt. Mr Davis is being held up simultaneously as "our last honoirable politician" and "a grand egotist pulling a futile stunt".

I don't know which is closer to the mark. But I know that today Gordon Brown will take solace in the words of that young redhead. For while there are people that can be bamboozled into standing idly on the sidelines as he railroads us headlong into oblivion, he can still hope he will get away with it and by the time we realise, it will be too late.

Hurrah For The Irish

2008-06-13T13:16:00.002+01:00

In this post I point out the political ends to which the horse has been put by politician and campaigner alike.

Well, as I got to find out first hand whilst writing software for one of the largest chains of bookies in the country, the Irish know a thing or two about horses and how they behave on a race track. Cheltehham Gold Cup Day and all that.

And the Irish know a thing or two about lying scheming politicians too.

And today I doff my hat to every one of them and offer to stand any I meet this afternoon a pint of Guinness.

For we have, today, been saved from the latest attempt by Brussels to ride roughshod over us.

Read the glorious details here

Please Sir, Can I be arrested as a Terrorist ? I could do with Forty Two GRAND

2008-06-11T13:53:00.002+01:00

Latest in the I just don't fscking believe it line from the bunch of nutters someone (not me, pal) elected to run this godforseken hellhole we call Britain.

If the reports on The Toady Programme are to be believed, New Liebour is so bloody acared of being told NIET to it's "we gotta bang 'em up for six weeks" demands that they are now proposing to pay COMPENSATION to people detained for between 29 and 42 days and rthen released without charge.

How much compensation ?

THREE GRAND A DAY that's how much

As one person e-mailed into the programme, "Excuse Me Mr Policeman, I am an Explosives Inspector and I have many asian friends. Could you please arrange to lock me up on suspicion of imparting my knowledge to them, as we could really do with forty two thousand pounds"

Madness. Utter, utter madness.

Yesterday's Men Recycle Yesterdays News

2008-06-10T00:41:00.003+01:00

There are times I think I have borrowed the little blue home of the green arrow and set the gear lever in reverse. There really are.

A comment left on on one of my earlier posts led me to an Unofficial Wigan and Leigh BNP page where I doff my hat to them for finding this little gem

Hundreds of manufacturing jobs heading to Newport

"Four hundred and sixty manufacturing jobs will be created at Newport, where one of Ireland’s leading companies has purchased the former LG Philips building from the Welsh Assembly Government. The Quinn Group is making a £133 million investment to consolidate and expand its domestic radiator manufacturing operations."

Sounds Good. Until you realise that in order to "relocate" the company destroyed the lives of several hundred workers in its former site at Leigh.

But NOW things get wierd. I decided to see if google would be my friend and dish the dirt on this little number, and star billing in my search went to this page on the Welsh Assembly Government site

It won't take you very long to realise the Welsh Assembly Government page is a word for word clone of the Newport Burghers effort. Even down to quoting "Councillor Erryl Heath, Newport City Council cabinet member for development and employment".

Well so what ? It's merely one arm of government recycling the lies and spin created by another, the gordon brown "say it often enough and the fools will believe it" approach. And maybe it is. But that Welsh Assembly Government Press Release is in the ARCHIVE section of their site and is dated AUGUST 16TH 2005.

And it doesn;'t take much playing with Newport's Find My Councillor page to discover no councillor named Erryl Heath.

We had two momentous local elections in Newport. New Liebour were reduced to scrabbling for scraps from the waste bucket on May 1st, and only last week we hammered the last nail in the coffin by electing three lib dems as the only effective way not to give New Liebour back overall control of tis rotten borough that became a jumped up johnny come lately city a short while ago.

I think Yesterday's men have recycled yesteryear's news

The home of the green arrow

2008-06-05T19:38:00.004+01:00

I would like to take a few moments to shamelessly plug, and shamelessly thank for a similarly shameles plug, an old friend of mine, The Green Arrow. A man who poses such a threat to New Liebour and their professional thugs that they see fit to create a spoof site and indulge in a bit of blogspot identity theft in the process.

But what's this ? I fear we have a security breach. Here for all to see is the secret entrance to the BNP Batcave, sited momentarily just around the corner from the latest employment opportunity for those who "enrich" our society straight after leaping out of the lorry that brought them throught the tunnel.

Well, I am afraid it is time to reveal the secret weapon that GA has at his disposal. You see, he's being a litle bit cheeky here. He's only shown you the rear view of 'Chez GA'.

Here's the view from the other side.....

Ah, The enthusiasm of the young

2008-06-05T18:33:00.006+01:00

Ah, what it is to be twenty two on a bright sunny summer evening. The sun glinting off the river, the long grass swaying gently in the breeze. The scent of wild flowers that almost, but not quite, overpowers the less fragrant aroma wafting downriver from the sewage works ... yes, in the midst of life, we are in shit. And what better way to know it that a stroll along the bank of the River Usk after a hot sunny early summer day....

But today is no ordinary day. Today is the day New Liebour face up to the reality that they no longer call the shots unaided in the Unitary Authority of Newport. For today is the day that the voters of Bettws and St Julians get to elect the final six nails that will be hammered into Labour's coffin.

Bettws of course is the sink estate from hell west of the A4042. Famous in my book for housing the unlicenced taxi cabbie that drove his cab straight through my front lawn, taking my fences with it, and the uninsured piece of shit that shot the red lights to race across into Malpas Road, taking the corner of my Mini with her. Neither of which the plod showed any interest in pursuing. A sink estate from hell that will almost certainly return three New Liebour cronies.

And the sickening thing is, unless I vote for the "Tabibin" Liberal Democrats, staunch supporters of rising petrol prices on the grounds that being unable to drive to work is good for us, even stauncher supporters of the Pikey's right to soil our playing fields with their filth in their illegal caravan encampments, and positively wetting themselves over the fact that jackbooted council workers can sit on their arses paid from the astronomical council tax to sit around by their un-driven dustcarts whilst our streets stink from a fortnight's uncollected refuse, unless I vote for those worthless pieces of shit who think it is an achievement to get a street light working, I will find my home and the land it stands on ruled once again (ridden roughshod over, more like) by the red scum again.

Where the hell are the BNP when you **REALLY** need them, and where the hell is a PROPER electoral system that makes these gravy train rides cower in fear at the thought of being handed a P45 ?

But what's this I hear ? A knock on the door, and a fresh faced youth carrying a collection of 'Vote Labour' leaflets is ushered into my living room by my elder daughter, who recognises him from the time they were in school together just a few years back.

Apparently employed as a researcher by our local MP, the chap has taken a day off to deliver party leaflets. Now this in itself is interesting, because in my day it was illegal to canvass on polling day, but apparently the oficials in charge of this election have agreed it is ok to deliver leaflets today which urge you to vote labour, just so long as the people delivering the leaflets don't ASK you to vote labour, and as long as, when challenged on the subject by people like me who recolelct how the law USED to be upheld, respond that the leaflet itself merely points out what the party has done......

It occurs to me this chap will do rather well for himself in the party. He's already sounding like the Attorney General after the advice of the illegality (sorry, non-illegality) of our participation in Bush's military adventures in Iraq was revealed to all and sundry, and he's quite good at keeping his cool under pressure.

And he's actually looking forward to going to the count tonight which he expects will keep him awake until at least 3am.

I'm impressed.

No, I really am impressed. Im impressed that someone that young is actually interested in getting involved in politics. It's a shame I'm paying his salary out of the bungs Jessica Morden gets courtesy of my tax bill, but hell, at least I'm not funding Lee Jasper.

But I wonder if this fresh faced chap will still be this interested in the subset of Liars Buggers and Thieves led by 'Not Flash, Just Gordon' when he starts paying the sort of tax bills I get.

Still, at least he will know who to blame when the time comes !

Boris Johnson's Rolling Stone Moment

2008-06-04T08:10:00.003+01:00

Could Radio 4 be sensing the mood of the country at last ? And that their persistent fawning over politicians is going to get their heads firmly stuck on a spike ?

So it would seem.

Radio 4's "Front Row" arts programme is not, perhaps, the place you would expect to hear a politician getting "paxoed" in a way I have not heard since John Nott stormed out of the studio after Robin Day correctly identified him as "A humble politician, here today and, if i may say, gone tomorow"

However, at a press conference organised for the purposes of damage control, Boris was savaged by Radio 4's Front Row presenter over his "Rolling Stone Moment". Referring to Mick and Keith's track "You Can't Always Get What You Want" (which I will now forever associate with David Duchovny getting a Blow Job from a nun in the opening moments of "Californication") the normally placid mild mannered reporter crawled out of his Geoffrey Howe Dead Sheep costune and gave Boris the interview from hell.

Boris, of course, made it an election campaign point that he would terminate the competion, launched by yesterday's Man Red Ken, which will see the latest offerings in the line of unmade beds and dead cows in formaldehyde on that hallowed ground, and erect in its place a permanent statue to a world war two veteran. Bit once "in power" he has been forced to admit that Red Ken stitched him up as he has "no powers to do anything to stop the fourth plinth commission" ?

Go listen to the recording while you still can, or download it as a podcast from the BBC Radio 4 website. It is a truly tide-turning moment.

Edit: tell you what, do yourself a favour. Click here and listen for yourself at leisure

The pikeys are coming - and plod is on their side

2008-06-03T06:50:00.004+01:00

Two stories from the BBC news website which should raise alarm bells for every council tax payer in the land.

The first one is from the 28th May where it is now "inappropriate" for pub landlords in North Wales to tell the world that pikeys are not welcome to drink in their homes. Read it for yourself here

"A senior police officer has raised concerns about a "bigoted and unpleasant" sign banning travellers from entering a pub. North Wales Police assistant chief constable Ian Shannon was on a licensing visit when he saw the notice. Writing in his blog, Mr Shannon said it was worrying that the owner did not recognise the sign was inappropriate."

Now if you know ANYTHING about licensing laws you know that a pub landlord has the absolute right to deny admission to his premises and there is **NO** right of appeal. The rationale is simple; the bar and lounge are in law considered part of the landlord's home and you are there as his/her guest. I recall drinking in many establishments up and down this fine country of ours all displaying signs saying "NO TRAVELLERS" and damn fine drinking establishments they were too.

But no more it seems. these days we are required to roll over and take it up the arse. For the story goes on "The matter was reported to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the sign has been removed."

Ominously this worthless piece of shit in uniform went on to suggest that "the prejudice that underlies" violence against italian gypsies cannot be allowed to lurk in the background here.

Really ? Well Mr Shannon I suggest you keep your Taser fully charged pal as you are quite likely to need it. Because while you are telling the law abiding, tax paying majority of good citizens on their patch that they must be nice to pikey scum, you refuse point blank to do anything about a horde of them that have decided to set up home without asking for planning permission to do so on land outside Wrexham.

Frankly, I am surprised you have done nothing, Mr Shanon. After all, your boss Mr Blue Clown Brunstrom is on record as saying heroin should be legalised so you can concentrate on the real criminals in your community - motorists. And we all know that every pikey wagon is towed by a clapped out, un-MOT'd. uninsured transit with a guinness label where the tax disc should be.

Now I was going to insert in here a link to the fact that MY council tax bill included the cost of the SEVENTY THOUDSAND POUNDS the council spent clearing up an illegal pikey site round the corner from Junction 28of the M4 but when I went to look for it I found something MUCH, MUCH Better. As the NUJ guidelines require that I must, when discussing pikey's, always give THEIR point of view, I thought I'd put in a link to THIS BBC News Talking Point page, where I will quote the comment our TV licence fees are giving the oxygen of publicity

On that comment page you will see "RG, Traveller" has said As a traveller, I don't see why I should pay taxes to a country that neither welcomes me or caters to my needs. Why should I contribute to a system which is weighted against me?

I'll tell you why, you thieving, tax avoiding piece of shit. Because this bloody government, and the one before it, and the one before that has done piss all for ME and taxed MY arse off, that's why. Because this bloody government has forced a man who lived round the corner to demolish the conservatory he had built to enjoy his garden before he died of cancer after some piss-head of a jobsworth found it was six inches too big, that's why. because while they were forcing a dying man to knock down his only chance of enjoying his garden for one last summer they were at the same time taking a SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND POUND BACKHANDER laundered by a property developer who wanted to say thank you for swinging a planning decision his way, that's why.

And because if you want to live in a bloody caravan then pay Haven Holidays Five Thousand Pounds a Year to have it put in one of their holiday parks you piece of shit.

Musings on the resurrection of Christ

2008-05-30T13:55:00.002+01:00

No pictures in this one - I wouldn't want to piss off the iconoclasts.

I've been having a little bit of fun. It seems a cultist who has swallowed the so called holy word of the cult of the dead paedophile has been popping up all over forums all over the net proclaiming his desire as a cultist to debate the resurrection of christ.

Now the problem with this can be seen if you read, and click as you see fit on anyn of the following, which I confess I have shamelessly nicked from Wikipedia. I'm even going to leave the links in, so you can go check their references.

Islam holds Jesus (Arabic: عيسى‎ `Īsā) to have been a messenger of God who had been sent to guide the Children of Israel (banī isrā'īl) with a new scripture, the Injīl (gospel).^[134] According to the Qur'an, believed by Muslims to be God's final revelation, Jesus was born to Mary (Arabic: Maryam) as the result of virginal conception, a miraculous event which occurred by the decree of God (Arabic: Allah). To aid him in his quest, Jesus was given the ability to perform miracles. These included speaking from the cradle, curing the blind and the lepers, as well as raising the dead; all by the permission of God. Furthermore, Jesus was helped by a band of disciples (the ḥawāriyūn). Islam states that Jesus was not killed nor crucified by the Jews, but that he had been raised alive up to heaven.

Oh yeah, the cultists also say Jesus Christ was a cultist too. You'll have to go to the wikipedia site to check THAT one.

But I got a little brassed off at the chap's tossings on UK DEBATE. So I thought I'd put up here my musings on the subject....

I'll start "no-crucifixion"'s entry thus :-

Quote from: no_crucifixion on May 29, 2008, 08:50:30 pm
I will only respond and refute to the alleged resurrection topics here.

None has been able to refute single arguement I have raised so far. You may try.

I beg to differ.

Where people have made statements central to the question you posed, you have merely thrown back quotations from "YOUR" holy book (The accuracy and authenticity of which I utterly reject, at swordpoint if need be. As it probably will be if you get half a chance to do things your way in this country).

Others will have noticed, even though you chose to ignore, my reply in this thread in which I provided you with ample testimony from what I once regarded as *MY* holy book from multiple persons who bore witness to the truth as they saw it of the good news as preached by the holy evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, by the disciples of christ, and by Paul formerly Saul of Tarsus in his ministry to the earliest believers in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ The Son of God.

Those witnesses make it quite plain that the Lord Jesus Christ The Son Of God was indeed born to a woman and did indeed DIE upon the cross.

I also provided you with quotations from that same holy book which describe the actions of several who came to the place of execution, took down the lifeless body of Christ from the cross, and bore his corpse from the place of his execution unto the tomb in which he was laid out in the manner fitting the religion of the jews, by persons accustomed to carrying out the funerary rites required for the jewish faith at that time and in that place.

I am absolutely, 100% convinced that a man whose preachings caused a great deal of unrest and political disquiet was indeed killed by the romans circa 29AD and was taken from the place of his death, and borne away to a tomb according to the religious practices of his friends and companions.

Where I have a problem is in what the evangelists say happened three days later. And at first I thought you'd be interested in considering the views of others on that subject.

As I have already pointed out earlier, even Dan Browne found a way to have Mary Magdalene, pregant with Christ's unborn child, flee the holy land after the child's father's death and not arrange some miraculous non-death and migration to india (which was another story doing the rounds in the early 1970's)

The imams that provided you with what you now call your particular belief require that you accept the existence of a conspiracy to furtively remove a still living, STILL BLEEDING man from the cross and bear him off AS IF he was dead when in fact he was as far gone as the famed norwegian blue parrot.

But just as Dan Browne and the authors of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail before him wrote of a conspiracy on the part of the holy christian church to defraud its believers, so it is absolutely vital to your imams that your views of this conspiracy to conceal the NON-DEATH of Christ be accepted as the truth, for without that, and without the stain upon the testimony, life and works of the first century christians that it must bring, you have no hope of overthrowing The Man Who Walks In The Shoes Of The Fisherman as Christ's Vicar Upon Earth.

And for that reason, should push come to shove, I shall with good humour offer my sword-hand (well, both of them actually, I fight my re-enactments with a sword in each hand, it will be little hardship to sharpen both and put each to the same use my ancestors found for similar items) to stand in line shoulder to shoulder with those who oppose you.

Now if your imams have done their job properly you will now take chunks of this, all out of context to each other, mix it with chunks of other peoples posts, all equally out of context, and find obscure references in your so called holy books to chuck back at me. Most of them being distorted so as to mean nothing like they were supposed to. And it's a good game too. To see what I mean, go see what happens when you juxtapose the latter part of Matthew, 27 v 5 and Luke, 10 v37 for example.

SEVEN Power Stations Go Down At Once ? I think a call to CTU is needed

2008-05-30T08:18:00.004+01:00

Call Me paranoid is you like. But more than once I have not been paranoid enough.

I *KNOW* what goes into designing a power station. I have made money out of writing their pre-commission test plan. But not as much as the 'Chartered Engineer' who got six times my fee just for flourishing a pen over the 'certification' page of my work of three months.

So when I hear stories like this it rings alarm bells in my head louder than those I fitted to my "Chernobyl Syndrome Detection" module

"Half a million people were hit by unscheduled power cuts on Tuesday after seven power stations, including Sizewell B in Suffolk, unexpectedly stopped working within hours of each other. The other power stations which suffered power outages included the coal-fired Longannet plant in Fife, and sites in Kent, Nottinghamshire, South Humber and Deeside."

"The outages forced the price of wholesale electricity up 35% to a new record high of £95 a MW hour."

"According to David Porter, chief executive of the Association of Electricity Producers, the disruption was due to a "gigantic coincidence".

I don't believe in coincidence on this scale.

Not least because my software was designed to stop it.

Which means one of two things. Either some Indian outfit has been outsourced to replace what I wrote and offerings from the Curry Capital have once again been proven to be inferior to the home-grown product, or maybe, just maybe, someone wants to teach us a lesson. I don't know if it's Greenpeace trying to salvage something from the brutal drubbing they have justly received now that even the Gordon And Alistair Show accept they are hell bent on destroying our way of life in the interests of shubbery, OR someone in Saudi wants to remind us who we are beholden to.

Either way, I say it's time to give this man a call ...

Knife Killings More Likely Than Road Death in London

2008-05-29T13:16:00.004+01:00

I've been trying to get my hands on some images to go with this blog entry, but to be honest. the sort of images I keep finding are more in line with my former occupation, and certain pro-islamist websites, than wnything I'd find useful. So for much of this I'll just put the text up and hope you aren't Sun Readers

A bunch of shady characters who go under the acronym 'LARSOA' have been attempting to persuade rural pedestrians that they are three times more likely to die from a car crash on a rural road than on an urban one. Very true, but as always with the lying scum in our government, never for the reasons they claim.

A brief google for 'Ambulance Callout Response Times' will soon show you the dirty truth behind this black propaganda campaign. The fact is that road crash victims will die in the gutter of the A4054 between Newport and Abergavenny long before the Ambulance gets to them, three times more often than they will on our urban roads.

But today there is one more reason why our rural motorists have become mass murderers compared to their urban counterparts. The Online ToryGraph has done us proud. The figures they quote directly from government sources show that more people are going to die in the gutter in london with a knife in their back than will ever die behind the wheel of the car they were walking to unlock.

I think I will have a picture after all. Here you go.

And now I need your help.

Newport Unitary Authority published Local Election Candidate Information Packs for every ward in the recent local election. They said nothing about how to stand for electuion, but they gave raftloads of information on the ethnic and religious makeup of each ward, from information gleaned from the last census and other sources. Wouldn't it be grand to compare those Knife Crime figures with population mix pie charts.

We might then even get our Ambulance Callout Times revamped. On the grounds that only white men are left to bleed to death in the street.

Musings on a Rainy Monday - Part 2

2008-05-26T18:34:00.004+01:00

This afternoon was a strange one. No doubt about it. If I were an impressionable teenager I would almost certainly be thinking now, as I sit here writing about it, that God wanted me to do what I did this afternoon in order to show me something of his world and those who live in it.

As a man of fifty who has turned his back on religion in disgust after seeing how it empowers the mysogynist, the nepotist and the bigot alike (and one bloke who was all three rolled into one) I sit here marvelling at the opportunity this afternoon brought for me to realise that it is, after all, a wonderful world.

A few months ago I sat in front of my TV on a similarly rainy sunday afternoon and watched in wonder as a Discovery Programme called "The Wreck Detectives" covered the story of the discovery of the wreck of a Sunderland Flying Boat in the waters off Pembroke Dock. The programme explained how the wreck was found, how strenuous efforts were made to identify it, and how it was rediscovered and bits of it were raised for renovation and display.

But the programme succeeded beyond what might have been thought its wildest dream. For not only did the team raise bits of the aircraft, but they found some of the men who flew in her.

And this afternoon, by sheer chance and luck, I was privileged to meet one of those men, and his friend.

I knew the conservators of the raised items were planning to show some of the items in a local museum. And I also knew that the 'Martello Tower' in Pembroke Dock had recently been reopened as a museum. SO on the offchance that I might catch a piece of history, I took some time out today to go and have a look.

I never realised just how much history I was going to bump into.

I went round the tower not least because I have a more than slight interest in gunnery. In days when we were a sovereign state of which people sat up and took notice of, we had a three mile limit around out shores which we called our territorial waters. And it was three miles for a good reason. Our finest shore mounted artillery was able RELIABLY fire on a target three miles distant but beyond that our threats were empty. And as a naval friend once told me, we can claim as much water as we like around our shores, but unless we can reliably sink a transgressor at the point of their transgression upon our claimed territory, our words are empty rhetoric.

Now there's food for thought. Gordon Brown would do well to read and mark those thoughts.

But to return to the point. I went to the powder store where now a video presentation of the martello towers and their role along with the palmerston forts was explained. I already knew it from my O Levels of thirty years ago but it still stirs the soul to recall a time when we had a country worth fighting for. And then I saw what I had come to see. Pieces of the engine from the Sunderland, raised from the sea bed and apparently now in a glass case for all to witness.

I went upstairs and asked the staff if they were indeed parts of the engine from the flying boat that featured in the documentary. I wasn't prepared for the answer.

"Yes, they are, and here's a man who flew in her". And the man she was speaking to turned round. Standing before me was a gentleman whose blazer insignia needed little explanation. He must have been a kid hardly as old as my daughter with me at the time, but now easily an octogenarian he told me of his days when he was transferred to the base at Pembroke Dock having accompanied one of the aircraft in which he served as engineer when it left Singapore.

Standing with him was a similarly venerable, wiry gentleman with a blazer badge proclaiming his part in a small operation you might have heard of in a hell-hole called Normandy, in 1944.

There are times when you think Doctor Who's Tardis is parked round the corner, there really are.

I don't recall the names of these two gentlemen and it doesn't matter because to me they represent a generation of teenagers and little more than teenagers that "did its bit" when push came to shove.

It was a pleasure to meet these gentlemen and I wish them well.

But there is no god. For if there were, he would have sent Rhodri "I'd Rather Go Golfing Than Go To Normandy" Morgan to walk in the door just as I was chatting to this chap and his D-Day veteran friend.

Musings on a Rainy Monday Afternoon – Part 1

2008-05-26T18:26:00.002+01:00

“Dark Skies, Torrential Rain and Howling Winds - It must be a Bank Holiday Monday”. Not my words; I stole them from John Brayne’s 17:54 news bulletin on BBC News 24.

Earlier this morning I sat in my static caravan sited on the Carmarthenshire / Pembrokeshire border, digital TV dongle in the laptop’s USB socket, and watched the latest halfwit attempt by the BBC News Team to get me on their side. It seems camping and mobile caravanning sites have seen a 5% increase in their occupancy rate from this time last year, and a 10% increase in advanced bookings, and I am to believe that this is down to the ‘credit crunch’ making it impossible for the British to holiday abroad in the costa del ripoff as they have in recent years. So the halfwit BBC fetch out a £35,000 mobile caravan that gets the full Attention of Alistair Darling’s £500 first year car tax penalty, AND gets the legacy from Red Ken of a £200 surcharge to start the engine in Inner London, and tell me that THIS is the way to avoid the blues of the credit crunch.

Yeah, right. You’ll be telling me Gordon Brown wants to lead us out of the wilderness next.

Personally I suggest the increase in people prepared to face a monsoon in South West England and South West Wales has more to do with the guarantee that you will arrive at your holiday destination together with your luggage, which is more than those jetting off from Terminal Five can say.

And one more thing. No-one would be able to detonate a bomb on one of those campsites. There’s so much rain the electrics would short out and the fuse on the classic black round object would be so damp it would never light, even if you could find two boy scouts to rub together to create the necessary spark.

Whatever happenend to the little red boxes ?

2008-05-14T07:01:00.005+01:00

Many years ago I heard an anecdote about surveillance that suggested the spy satellites being used by the US to observe military movements on the ground were so good they not only showed a russian peasant taking a piss against a tree, but gave yankee condom makers grounds for believing there might be a market for the extra-large product in the russian steppelands.

Urban Myth ? God I hope so.

But this morning I wonder if Caroline Flint still feels that the "surveillance society" which has been imposed on us by the paranoid control freak that led her government for the past ten years, and maintained and indeed some say made worse by the bumbling idiot he made way for, is a GOOD thing.

I recall hearing that "Dear Prudence" himself was unimpressed by the revelation to the public of how much this government spends on the little red boxes. But I must say, Gordon, that your demands for economy and the adoption of a protection mechanism for state secrets that seems to borrow from the world of Hans Christian Anderson is an economy too far.

Medical Research Council bans Scientists from lobbying Parliament

2008-05-10T07:10:00.003+01:00

What are we to make of the Medical Research Council ?

They are a body of whom I should, I suppose, have a soft spot. After all, they provided my salary until Margaret Thatcher decided we did not need Medical Research done in the UK, and ripped their budget to shreds, throwing me on the dole and from there into the military weapons design, development and manufacturing business.

This morning I read that they have discouraged scientists paid by them from lobbying parliament to SUPPORT the furtherance of science in this country.

Fearing some sort of 'backlash' they have instructed the heads of the largest bodies funded by them to make it known to all their staff that they "cannot support" any who decide to lobby their Member of Parliament to advise them of of their feelings over the scientific research they carry out, which pays their wages and at least attempts to keep this country where it once was, and where it should be, in the ingenuity and brains business - at the top.

But now they treaten "not to support" scientists who choose to exercise their legal right to talk to their MP at their MP's place of work. And that's another issue rather close to my heart too. For I am one of a thousand or so who took part in the most delightfully troublesome (for new Liebour's control freaks) mass lobby of Parliament, the largest ever seen, and the largest that will ever be seen again until we get a government who pay more than lip service to the rights enshrined in law for the electorate to come and make their feelings known to their MP.

I wonder what "not supporting" means ? well, when the MRC stopped "supporting" me it meant a trip to the dole queue.

So what is behind this ? Well I wonder. Their man at the top has made a name for himself in the very technologies this loby of parliament was intended to show support for.

So is it that the man at the top feels he can get further by a quiet word in the ear of those who matter, or is it that they wish to avoid challenging the rabid rantings of the nearest thing we have in this country to the yankee "religious right" ?

Certainly the Roman Catholic Church - who are almost as afraid of scientific progress as the moslems, have not been terribly truthful in their vociferous noises against the latest reserch moves. They rant at "hybrid embryo stem cell" research knowing full well the technique involves nothing more than placing fully adult cell nuclei into the denucleated cytoplasm of animal cells and therefore seeks to COMPLETELY REMOVE the need for human embryonic cells in that most contrversial - and most hopeful - area of research.

So could those who took up Galilleo's job now be getting back into bed with the Holy Inquisition ? I don't know, but I don't like the idea of those charged with progressing science through the interation of theory and experiment trying to deny the right to lobby one's MP as enshrined in law.

Not Flash. Just Gordon

2008-05-07T20:00:00.002+01:00

How the hell did I miss this first time round.

With the panache of the people that brought you 'Labour's Not Working' the ideas merchants at saatchi and saatchi came up with THIS as a poster to bid for the labour party account last year. Strange really, I didn't think New Liebour had any money to pay for the likes of the ideas men. AH ! That was BEFORE they had to get rid of their party general secretary for turning a blind eye to moneylaundering and claiming to have no knowledge of it after the fact was uncovered. So they thought they's have six hundred grand to pay the Saatchi Lads. That makes sense now.

But hang on a minute. 'Labour's not working' was a con done with actors. Yet in this campaign there seems to have been a little more than just a ring of truth.

Indeed, what part of 'he's a boring old fart and he just has to go' do the New Liebour cronies not understand.

Oh well. They might just have shot themselves in the foot anyway. It seems that "58% of people questioned wanting something" is the key threshold after which New Liebour chuck the expensively purchased expert advice away and follow the demands of the focus group. Well that's what Jacqui Smith says about cannabis reclassification.

But what's this ? Fifty FIVE per cent of people questioned want gordy to pack his bags and go. Only another three per cent and they cross the threshold ....

Whatever Happened to Yesterday's Man ?

2008-05-05T09:33:00.005+01:00

It was a good fifteen yars ago now. I was working on a defence software project for a company just up the road from what I knew as a kid as Chessington Zoo. Now the animals have been usurped by roller-coasters and it's called a world of adventures.

World of adventures ? Don't make me larf. There's a whole world of adventures right on your doorstep mate, and it's called life. And what you make of it, and how good you are at picking yourself up from the gutter into which you've been kicked. And I should know.

But to return to the story... Across the road from the main site was a BIG roundabout, one big enough to have side roads and shops adorning it. And one of those was a Domino's Pizza. I parked up outside, went in, and ordered their "meal deal for one". Yes the life of the offsite IT contractor is an endless round of expense account lunches ... (!)

And the woman maybe a few years younger than my three and a half decades who came out to take my order and make my pizza spotted the Computer Contractor magazine in which I was doing the crossword while I waited.

She went slightly misty-eyed and said "Oh, you're a freelancer". That got my attention, big time. But not half as much as what she said next "I wish I could go back into that, but ever since TORUS I haven't had the nerve to go back".

I went as cold as it the Nazgul's master of Tolklen's epic had focussed his steely gaze on me. Then fleeting pity went to cold fury. Not at her, but at the masters of her misfortune.

For those who don't know, TORUS (is that the right spelling) was the first big IT disaster. An upgrade to the Stock Exchange Trading Floor. Big money. Big egos. And Big expense account lunches. And then one day everyone got called into a meeting. And while they were in it, uniformed security men cleared their desks, separating 'personal effects' from anything remotely to do with the company. And then one by one those people were called from the meeting to the lobby where they were given their P45 and the cardboard box filled by the security men, and then they were shown the door.

I never worked on it. The account I give above was extracted from a colleague who did suffer this, who told me about it over several beers after a particularly good project at an earlier client came to an end.

For there is a way to hire and fire your staff, and this wasn't it.

So this morning I perused websites galore, hoping that some lucky paparazzi sod had been standing in the right place, at the right time, to photograph Red Ken slinking off from his former mayoral office, clutching HIS cardboard box and P45.

No such luck. But I did turn up a few interesting snippets in the Independent and a few other sites. I wrote an article about it for the green arrow blog to give The Arrow a hand while he's recuperating from a brief one man survey of the NHS in South Wales.

So I'm going to shamelessly plug both his blog, and my article.

But don't shed any tears for Red Ken. hHe's off to make millions on the after dinner speaking circuit. He needs to with all those children and their mothers to support.

Hey, now that's a funny thing. With all those demands from the Child Support Agency you'd think Red Ken would have thrown his weight behind Matt O'Connor's bid to take his job. Strangely though, Ken seems to have had other ideas. Maybe if he's ben a little less hostile to the ordinary people, including those who see Fathers For Justice as holding a torch for their plight, he might still be in office.

On the other hand, Thank God he didn't.

Dont be fooled by crocodile tears

2008-05-03T11:56:00.004+01:00

As I mentioned in this post, Newport Council is six seats short of an election. As a result of the death of two sitting councilors who were both standing for re-election, last night's celebrations carryu with them the sense of anticlimax in this neck of the woods.

The two wards affected are Bettws ans St Julians.

Bettws is the sink estate of the universe, home to uninsured motorists galore and a secondary school the inside of which, when I was called upon to visit it as an official of the PTA of one of its feeder schools, left me with the profound impression that I should have the army blow it up as a service to humanity. It will come as no surprise to hear all three of its councillors were Liebour through and through.

And the best thing one can say about St Julians is that its councillors consider it the height of political achievement to get the street lights fixed. And by god do you need them, lest you trip in the dark over the piles of black bags of rotting rubbish left in the streets by dustmen who have found, in the three councillors elected from that area, a champion for their newly-found status as non-collectors of rubbish.

New Liebour were dealt a pretty crushing blow last week. But not crushing enough. One must take it as read that unless a feat of ethnic cleansing the likes of which has not been seen since kosovo takes place in Bettws, they will hand all three seats to New Liebour stooges.

So that leaves the St Julians Ward. And ANY Liebour success here would rescue them from to the state of 'no overall control' into which they have been plunged. All they need to do to keep hold of the reins of power is follow the example of Rhodri "Golfer" Morgan and kiss the arse of Plaid Cymru Dynasty Founder Mohammed Asghar and they suddenly have a workable majority.

I wouldn't mind betting a lot of New Liebour scum are going to be treading the streets of St Julians over the next couple of months peddling a tale of lessons learned and contrite tears shed.

We must remember at all costs that one can NEVER trust a word the liars buggers and thieves utter.

The Writing Is STILL In The Sand

2008-05-03T07:28:00.006+01:00

The horse has a curious place in politics. Perhaps my first introducation to the power of the horse as a political instrument came in 1974 when I was studying for my history O Level. With the wonders of modern tethnolgy I can now, thirty four years later, bring you the images that led me to this conclusion.
Here's a good one to start with. From a time when our parliaments were elected by those owning property worth ten pounds or more at 1830's prices, a rather militant young woman by the name of Emily Davison takes matters into her own hands.

Ironically, her death was totally unneccessary. In a few short months a hotheaded chap called Gavrilo Princip would provoke such carnage that the women of Britain would find their place forever changed as they took the jobs our men left undone as they died in their thousands in the trenches.

I suppose another example of the use of the horse as a political weapon actually dates from around the same time as the clip above, but it would be almost fifty years before David Lean would bring it to our cinemas. I refer of course to the cavalry charge upon the Bolsheviks filmed by David Lean in Doctor Zhivago.

It would be another twenty yeears again until another woman who no man could speak to with any hope of being heeded would take the hint provided by David Lean. Do you remember these scenes from Orgreave Colliery in the mid 1980's ?

Yes the cavalry charge, or the modern day equivalent thereof. Almost without exception the finest way to deal with a disordery rabble on foot. And the choice of dictators everywhere as the way to keep disquiet from becoming revolution. Unfortunately though, the latest example of their use by a totalitarian control freak may just have backfired. Do you remember the New Liebour Party Conference ? And the slogan in the sand ? The one erased by these chaps:-

You may recall the distaste on the face of certain New Liebour "leaders" caught by camera crews as journalists sought to get a reaction to the actions of one brave soul who risked all to write the words I WANT A REFERENDUM on the beach below the Liebour Conference Cantre. And how the reaction from the "I'm not listening to you" Gordy and Tony Show was to send in the cavalry to erase the evidence.

Well it didn't work did it ?

The Daily ToryGraph carries the news that will really put the icing on the cake for Gordon "I Want No Casinos" Brown. Having made a mint out of the peculiar art of "spread betting", the only form of gambling subjected to regulation by the Financial Services Authority owing to its rather stange classification as an "investment", mr Stuart Wheeler - a man who clearly knows a thing or two about the gee-gees - has won his first skirmish with the government over their denial of a referendum to the people.

enjoy the rest of your bank holiday Gordon. I think by Tuesday you'll be wishing that you'd used that beach to copy the actions of Reggie Perrin, not Maggie Thatcher.

OK You Lot. Back On Yer Heads

2008-05-03T06:35:00.003+01:00

There's a very old joke about (insert the name of your favourite politician here) who suddenly dies unexpectedly and goes to hell. Lucifer's little helpers aren't quite ready for him, and don't know where to put him, so they pick up the Bat-Phone and call Head Office. Old Nick himself comes to the reception lobby, and whilst absent-mindledly cranking the spit in the main arena on which (insert another name of another favourite politician here) is impaled, wriggling and soundlesly screaming as juices drip from his obese form as he rotates over the cauldron of a volcanic chamber, The Great Horned One turns to the new arrival and says ...

"Look here old chap, your arrival is a bit unexpected, and well, as with all things, its HELL in our admin department, so we're not sure where to put you. There's three rooms over there, pick one" ..

So the imps open the door to the first one, where we see thousands of people up to their necks in shit. Gagging, our late but not much lamented fiddler of the expenses list opens the second door, to find thousands of people, up to their waists in shit, and here he spots (inseert the name of two former leaders of the party opposig the guy). Not wishing to spent eternity in political hell, he opens the third door, where he finds a few hundred people, standing in shit a few inches above their ankles, drinking coffee.

Oh well, he thinks, I suppose spending an eternity in hell in shit it's my just reward for spouting all that shit from party head office and making like I believe it. And then he thinks 'well ok it's not that deep, and they do get coffee'. So he picks room number three. He goes in, and the door clangs shut. And then a whole load of imps, with pitchforks, their faces covered by paper and card masks of (insert his current party leader) turn up, stab viciously at the crowd and say

"OK You Lot. Break Time Over. Back On Your Heads"

And so it is today. Last night if Caesar was not exactly murdered then certainly he underwent the death of a thousand cuts. Or maybe, as the Eagles sang on "Hotel California" .... "they stabbed it with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast". Personally I prefer the Boys of Summer lyric about the Death's Head Sticker on a Cadillac.

Right now, those whose gravy train was stolen from under them, those who blindly regurgitated the political shit from Gordon Brown, have woken from the nightmare and are back in the land of reality. Yes Ken Livingstone has gone. Was it because of his love of courting the islamic vote vital to his survival ? Was it because of his insane support of a "professional black" man so obviously "on the take" ? Or was it because Londoners know that a man who demands an ambulance driver pay £200 to bring medical aid to the sick and injured is no friend to them.

I don't know.

But I know this. This morning the defeated are out there plotting their revenge. They'll call it their "comeback". But it is revenge they require. So now the work begins.

Coffe Break''s Over Lads. Back On Yer Heads.

"No Overall Control" = The New Liebour / Cottage Burners Alliance

2008-05-02T13:55:00.003+01:00

It is indeed a black day for Wales.

As I look at the map of England and Wales on the BBC Website I see large swathes of Wales turning black as Labour are portrayed as losing their grip on the welsh.

But as with many things it's all spin and New Liebour.

Because at Assembly level Rhodri's band of Liars Buggers and Thieves are in bed with the Friends of The Holiday Cottage Burners.

And if you take a look at the details of all those black boroughs you'll quickly see that this unholy alliance is alive and well at local level.

So whilst Brown might have been given a kicking by the middle englanders, he secretly knows that actually it's all right jack, or gordon, and it's business as usual.

Swansea Election Signature Forgery Puzzle.

2008-04-27T18:39:00.006+01:00

The rules under which a person may stand as a candidate in a local election require nomination forms be signed by a proposer, a seconder and eight other people eligible to vote in that area. And let's be honest, if you can't find eight people willing to support you as a candidate, then why bother ?

So what are we to make of this tale then.

In This Is South wales we hear the tale of one Norman Whitlock, accused of forging signatures on the nomination forms of Uplands Conservative candidate Simon Bright. It would seem two of the 'signatures' on Mr Brights nomination papers were about as kosher as a parma ham. Two fine and upstanding citizens of the area seem not at all pleased that their names have been used, and their signatures forged, to bear witness to Mr Bright's candidature. Mr Whitlock has resigned and has declined to comment to the newspaper carrying the report.

But then we find that Auntie Beeb has a slightly different slant on the case. Read it here.

Now it is a 54 year old woman who has been arrested and released on police bail, and Mr Whitlock, who we are now told has resigned from the party, is himself standing as a candidate and it is too late for his name to be removed from the ballot paper.

Why is it too late ? The man is no longer a member of the party he applied to be a candidate for and whilst some may say he has done the 'honourable thing' I say he is a crook, a swindler and a criminal who is quite likely to reap a nice little reward for hie heinous behaviour.

Hangin's too good for 'im I say.

One way of stopping the election, I suppose

2008-04-26T10:21:00.004+01:00

I have this morning received a communication from the Returning Officer that the election scheduled for 1st May, 2008 in my ward is countermanded due to the death of one of the candidates.

And i'd JUST done my postal vote too. Damn.

Well it's one way of Labour avoiding the humilation of defeat, I suppose.

But it seems a bit extreme to me.

EDIT: I had terrible trouble finding out who had shuffled off this mortal coil. None of the party websites had anything to say at all. So it was left to Newport Council's own website to reveal that it was Councillor Pat Bull, who certainly seemed to have a finger in a lot of pies. Her entry has been blanked on the newport council page, but google has a cache. She had a finger in the HR Appeals Panel, the Licensing Committee, the Licensing Sub Committee, the Newport Taxi Drivers' Association Consultative Group, the Overview & Scrutiny Forum Public Affairs, the School Transport Appeals Panel, the Social Services Complaints and Charging Appeals Panel and the St Julians Neighbourhood Committee. That's when she wasn't indulging in her posts on the Governing Bodies of Durham Road Infants and Durham Road Junior and her "External Membership" of St Julians Community Centre and St Julian's Senior Citizens Association

New Liebour in Punch Up Over Election Leaflets

2008-04-25T07:21:00.003+01:00

I don't know much about Amir Khan. I confess that I have little interest in the 'sport' he proclaims championship status in. But I have seen for myself a little of what it is like to be hounded by paparazzi and I am thankful that I am not subjected on a daily basis to the unwanted attentions of a horde scrabbling to photograph me at 3am as I stagger back to my limmo after a night on the lash.

But having undisputable proof that you neglected to don any underwear last night on the front page of The Sun - or google (!!) is not the only problem 'celebrities' face at this time of year. Take a look at this page on The Asian News for example.

I confess I stole the image above this blog from that site. To Mr Khan I will apologise if pushed. To most others I shall make a cup of tea with my nice shiny new kettle while you hold the venerable blackened earthenware casserole dish in my greenhouse as you vent your spleen. But to any from New Liebour who come complaining, I regret I have no bowl blackened enough for you.

Why would I wish to suggest New Liebour of being a pot calling a kettle black ? Well, go read the story. It would seem that in a most bitterly-contested election battle, Mrs Amina Lone, who is standing in Manchester's Whalley Range ward for Labour, and who hopes to unseat Liberal Democrat John Grant in on May 1, seems to have decided to violate Mr Khan's right to privacy in his political views and electoral behaviour.

Ms Lone, who works for the Race Equality Foundation, put out a leaflet with a picture of her landing a mock blow on the Olympic medal-winner's jaw and put with it the caption 'Amina shows Amir Khan who is the champion in Whalley Range'.

Well, one might think this is fair game, and after all, if one poses to have one's photograph taken in a situation where a woman candidate for the local elections is apparently landing an uppercut on one's chin, one cannot perhaps complain that one's image is being used for political ends.

But Mr Khan is a boxer. A man who makes his living from standing in a confined space with another man, in a combat situation which neither can leave until one has beaten the other senseless with his gloved hands. A 'sport' whose 'finest' are seldom seen in their twilight years because of the damage they have sustained.

And so Mr Khan's management team have moved in to land the killer blow for him. Claiming that "He did not know about it and no permission has been given for a picture to be used", Asif Vali, Amir's manager went on to say "He is not a political figure and I am surprised this has been done. They should have come through our office and the answer would have been 'no'. Amir is not involved in politics. He has not even voted."

I well recall the day that Brian Redhead rebutted a chancellor of the exchequer on Radio 4 with a demand fro a two minute silence, one minute for the damage he had done to the british economy, and another for his arrogance in having the temerity to suggest he was aware of how he (redhead) had voted. So I will add my voice to those crying 'foul' and 'shame' at the conduct of a New Liebour candidate prepared to violate the basic tenets of taste, decency, honest and electoral law to use a celebrity's picture to political ends for her own reward.

And to Mr Khan I will apologise for stealing his image, if pushed to do so. To his claim, expressed through his manager, that he has no interest in politics, I bow in respect.

To his manager's further claim that mr Khan has vever even voted I will say the right NOT to vote, for whatever reason, including disinterest, is his by right. His claim that he has never voted brings dishonour on no-one except the politicians who have clearly failed to engage his interest at any level. All I would say in response is that if he, or anyone else who is old enough to vote, and eligible to vote, does not actually vote, then they have no grounds whatsoever for complaining at the people that then ride roughshod over them in local and national government.

So I end this post by asking Mr Khan, and the millions out there like him, if it is really in THEIR best interest to do nothing and let people like Amina Lone land their killer blows on this country.

Polygamist Father of 100 (77 still alive, 23 dead) advises 'dont get married and use contraception'

2008-04-24T08:24:00.008+01:00

As a younger man, I often wondered how Mormons and Islamists dealt with the problems that having so many mothers-in-law must surely bring.

Today, thanks to the internet and the wider understanding of differently-oriented societies that it brings, I now understand a little better.

I'm still a little hazy about the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints, not least because the chaps in the "slightly darker than IBM Blue" suits who knocked on my door in 2007 wouldn't discuss it any more than the identicaly-attired chaps who knocked on my door in 1977, but at least I now understand how, by maintaining a society in which the "Double-X Chromosomed" are institutionally subservient, the cult of Mohammedanism has kept its men on top of the situation.

So what are we to make of this story on the BBC Africa page ?

In a wicked parody of the scene on almost every sink estate in this country, 56 year old Mr Ayattu Nure, an Ethiopian who lives in Giwe Abossa village - about 120 miles from Addis Ababa - with his eleven wives and seventy-seven children, blames Ethiopia's government for not doing more to help him. It appears Mr Nure's harem actually spawned ONE HUNDRED offspring but 23 of them became victims to Ethiopia's abysmal infant mortality rate.

He says "I know I have done wrong by marrying many wives and begetting many children but I think I deserve help from the government."

Well, I can see his point.

According to the most recent 1994 National Census, Christians make up 61.6% of the country's population, Muslims 32.8%, and practitioners of traditional faiths 5.6%.

Now if only the cult of Mohammedanism would enforce the limit on the number of wives allowed to its followers, with castration being the obvious penalty for excess, and if only the Christians had denounced him, then perhaps he would not be in this state.

And in this case the sins of the father are, it seems, being held up as an example for his sons to follow. Although Mr Ayattu's eldest son, Dagne Ayattu, does not have a job, at the age of 33, he has seven children and is about to marry his fourth wife.

Here's a little family portrait for you.

Personally, whilst I think the country owes a debt of gratitude to Mr Ayattu for his single-handed (or should that be single-dicked) attempts to restore Ethiopia's population to the levels it enjoyed prior to the "famine of Biblical proportions" we in the west were urged by Mr Geldof to "give the fscking money" to alleviate, I think the family portrait above suggests that there is an urgent need for Cable TV in Ethiopia. And perhaps it also shows far better than any TV advert the need for the BNP's policy in immigration, right here, right now. Because the way New Liebour are taking us, these scenes will shortly be repeated on a sink estate near you.

What sort of people live next to eleven metre high reservoirs of shit ?

2008-04-21T12:08:00.002+01:00

A good question.

I have developed a habit of keeping the radio on while having meals. Maybe because I am a child of the cold war years from the days when any moment we expected Patrick Allen to tell us to crawl under the table and kiss our arses goodbye. Maybe because I find that mealtimes are the only time anything decent is on.

Either way, I was about to tuck into an early lunch last Saturday morning when radio 4 ran 'From Our Own Correspondent'. And what fascinating stories they dug up. The one that particularly interestd me was from their man in Gaza.

The tale is told of this woman whose five month old kid lies in the dirt infested by flies outside a tin shack. A scene I imagine typical of any refugee camp.

But this is Gaza. Where the 'authorities' have built earth-walled dams to hold lakes of piss and shit that cannot be disposed of. These are, by all accounts, ten metres higher than the surrounding land level. And last year, the earth retaining wall on one broke.

This woman heard shouting urging her to get out of the house and run for her life. Picking up her kid, she ran. Then she realised she did not have her headscarf. Running back into the house to grab it cost her dear, for the tidal wave of piss and shit that hit the building knocked the child from her arms. They found the corpse washed up at the wall of the mosque to which the torrent of sewage had rushed.

She's got another kid now. They named him mohammed after his dead brother.

As I heard this story unfold on the radio I asked myself what sort of woman would rush back into a house to fetch an item of clothing in such circumstances. But then of course I remembered. To be seen in the street without proper islamic dress is a capital offence. Too bad then her need to abide by this mediaeval code of conduct meant a death sentence for her child.

But there is another question too. What sort of people build earth walled dams thirty feet high, fill them with piss and shit, and then live next to them ?

The answer of course, is moslems.

Winston Churchill had certain opinions about the cult of mohammedanism. And he was right.

Want to hear the story fopr yourself ? Grab Saturday 19th April's From Our Own Correspondent from BBC IPlayer. Or if you can play Ogg Vorbis files, grab this

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

2008-03-27T19:32:00.005Z

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 ?

2008-03-20T18:38:00.005Z

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"

2008-03-19T11:22:00.004Z

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

2008-03-13T17:19:00.002Z

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

2008-03-11T10:31:00.003Z

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 ...

2008-03-09T12:14:00.008Z

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

2008-03-07T16:14:00.013Z

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

2008-03-05T11:04:00.006Z

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.