British Police State

For the first time in over 400 years a judge has found people in a British Crown Court trial guilty without a jury. If you voted Labour in 1997, 2001 or 2005 I hope you are pleased with yourself.

What price liberty? Here is the breakdown:

"It was estimated that providing protection for the jury would cost in the region of £6 million and need more than 82 police officers, but a trial with only a judge would cost £1.6 million and need 32 officers".

So the jury can piss off! Well done Labour, you really have stuffed the whole country well and truly.

But what worries me is the number of complete muppets who will still vote Labour on May 6th. I only hope you end up on a trumped up charge, preferably under the fascist anti-terror legislation, and get strung up.

But of course if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear have you?

A bit like these people?

Full story here.

The Birth of the Liberal Democrats

Who remembers Spitting Image?

Them were t'days!

Ceca Raznatovic

Spent the morning writing an article about being a Catholic libertarian. Just finished, popped onto Facebook and found a video of the therapeutic warblings of Ceca Raznatovic awaiting me.

Hope you liked her singing too!

Tony Blair-Liar and War Criminal

As Blair wades into the general election campaign today, a quick reminder of what a lying, conniving, scheming hypocrite the man is:



And don't forget, Gordon Brown is no better.

Labour Trying to Buy Football Fans

Labour is so desperate it is now jumping on yet another bandwagon, the ownership of football clubs. Not content with cocking up every other thing it has touched it now wants to take control and ruin football. If it sees a bandwagon it just can't resist jumping on it.

Yes football is in a mess but that is down to FA negligence, verging on criminal complacency in the 1980s. State dabbling will do nothing but screw it up even more. Let's face it when did state control ever produce anything remotely dynamic, innovative and envied outside the small minded obsessive minds of fanatical socialists?

Remember Skoda? The butt of so many jokes when it was a state owned basket case under socialism, now a different thing all together under capitalist ownership. Indeed all socialism, or state ownership, ever does is take what has been built by capitalism and smother it. Name one dynamic improvement or great invention in the twentieth century that sprang from state owned operations rather than capitalist operations.

Following is an excellent piece from today's Times online:

When politicians interfere in sport it’s the mark of a Middle Eastern dictator with psychopathic sons or a Soviet bloc regime. But flushed with its success at saving the world’s banks, Labour is now promising to sort out professional football.

Its proposals include requiring clubs to give a chunk of shares to supporters’ trusts; giving fans the first option to bid if clubs are put up for sale; that the FA restructures its board and leagues be given powers to oversee takeovers.

Labour wants to give clubs back to communities; its ideal is the Spanish giant Barcelona, whose president and board are elected every four years. Fans want an end to clubs such as Portsmouth going into administration, crippling debts at Manchester United and Liverpool and mid-season chaos like that in the Blue Square Premier, where Chester’s collapse provoked expensive legal squabbles.

But government interference isn’t the answer. OK, nobody likes to see their club go down the Swanee — but many, such as Aldershot and Accrington Stanley — come back. English football isn’t in such a bad shape. Each week the Premier League’s internationalism, on the field and off, delivers a product that millions pay good money to follow. We also have the world’s largest professional and semi-pro structure. Every town and village of any size has journeymen pros kicking lumps out of each other for beer money and the dream. My own tastes — I am a supporter of Southport (Blue Square North) — lie in this hardcore direction.

We surely don’t need more employees at another regulator producing more rules. And if private football clubs make a hash of things, it shouldn’t be the business of ministers — football is not vital to the economy.

Nor are supporters’ trusts any panacea. Barcelona’s structure is not perfect, tied up as it is with dodgy doses of Catalan politics. Nor is Spanish football immune to debt: bankers have extended credit lines that would cause Alistair Darling to have a fit of the vapours.

You have to be pretty convinced that management will improve to interfere with private property by redistributing company shares. But supporters are no more forward looking than today’s pantomime villain owners. Fans’ forums are the first to demand the sacking of managers and the purchase of overpriced superstars.

And if trusts fail to deliver hoped-for prudence, the regulator (OffSide?) will surely want more laws. Oh, and a bigger budget. Don’t go there is my advice. It’s only a game.

Professor J. R. (Len) Shackleton is Dean of Royal Docks Business School, University of East London

And if you are naive enough to scream that the government should do something every time there is a problem, just sit back and think. What you are really saying is Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson and all those other stinking parasites you probably loathe should do something. Think about it!

Original article and some excellent comments here.

Classic Boddingtons TV Ads

Sadly no longer brewed in Manchester but worth revisiting a couple of classic old TV ads:

Labour Party Throw in the Towel with Tony Blair

I was shocked to hear this morning that Gordon Brown has decided to lose the general election, he's obviously realised how loathed he is. But why didn't he just resign and let some other two faced hypocritical moron take Labour into the election? Asking Tony Blair, liar and war criminal extraordinaire, to make a speech in support of the government tomorrow seems a strange way to make sure you cease to be Prime Minister on May 6th.

Health Fascists and Bus Shelters

Waiting to be picked up for a short break we huddled in a bus shelter. Unbelievably we found the health fascists have been at work. One on each side panel. Hardly an enclosed space is it?

Jihad Jane in Eastenders

I think it's a bloody scandal that my licence fee money is being used to employ Jihad Jane to play Phil Mitchell's bit of rough in Eastenders. She should be behind bars or tied to 'Old Smokey'.

Nick Clegg's Wife

This is an interesting article.

Nick Clegg's wife saying, to a journalist, how she will stay in the background during the general election campaign and concentrate on her children and her job.

Can't imagine how the three pictures of her got into the piece, especially the one of them both having a brew and reading the Times at their kitchen table and the one of them kissing their new born baby.

A bit of advice though. With her Spanish accent I'd keep her away from your Sheffield constituency Mr Clegg, Yorkies aren't very bright and might think you've married a Lancastrian.

But I do like the names they have given their children. Antonio Clegg, Alberto Clegg and Miguel Clegg. They could write at least three hilarious episodes of Last of the Summer Wine with material like that.

Oh aye Mrs Clegg, you're doing right staying in the background.

If you don't know Nick Clegg is the leader of the Liberal Democrats. He's the one you'll see occasionally on TV as the general election campaign lifts off. But don't confuse him with David Cameron, he's the other one. I suppose they are a bit like Ant and Dec really, which one's Dave which one's Nick?

Mithering Bastards!

I'm just about sick of bastards who want to dictate to other people how they should live their lives. Just get off our backs you interfering bastards.

Following is a letter in today's Times from a group of do gooding ponces from assorted medico-fascist bodies:

Sir, A new report launched today by the Royal College of Physicians, Passive Smoking and Children, confirms that passive smoking is a leading cause of death and disease in children. About two million children are currently exposed to cigarette smoke at home, and many more outside the home. In addition to the serious health risks of passive smoking, however, the report also points out the additional health risk to children posed by family smoking, which makes children about twice as likely to become smokers themselves.

These health hazards to children can be avoided entirely by acting to reduce the number of adults who smoke, particularly parents and care-givers, and to reduce still further the exposure of children to smoke and smoking, both in and outside the home. This will require a comprehensive strategy including tobacco price rises, mass media campaigns, more effective health warnings, prohibition of point of sale display, generic packaging and better provision of smoking cessation services.

Smoke-free legislation also needs to be extended much more widely, to include public places visited by children and young people, and including prohibition of all smoking in cars and other vehicles. The Chief Medical Officer, in his foreword to the report, says that we must keep up the momentum to continue to reduce the harm of tobacco use in our communities, and create a truly smoke-free future. As doctors, we agree, and call on governments to take the necessary actions to protect our children’s future.

Professor Ian Gilmore
President, Royal College of Physicians of London

Professor Andy Adam
President, Royal College of Radiologists

Professor Steve Field
President, Royal College of General Practitioners

Professor Alan Maryon Davis
President, UK Faculty of Public Health

Dr Peter Nightingale
President, Royal College of Anaesthetists

Professor Arulkumaran Sabaratnam
President, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

Professor Terence Stephenson
President, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health

Mr Ian W. R. Anderson
President, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow

Professor Dinesh Bhugra
President, Royal College of Psychiatrists

Dr John Donohoe
President, Royal College of Physicians of Ireland

Dr Neil Dewhurst
President, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh

Professor Sir Neil Douglas
Chairman, Academy of Medical Royal Colleges

Professor Peter Furness
President, Royal College of Pathologists

Mr John Heyworth
President, the College of Emergency Medicine

Professor Frank B. V. Keane
President, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland

Mr John Lee
President, Royal College of Ophthalmologists

Professor Adrian Newland
Deputy Chair, Academy of Medical Royal Colleges

Dr Richard Tiner
President, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine

Professor David Tolley
President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (signing in a personal capacity)

Professor Derrick Willmot
Dean, Faculty of Dental Surgery

Tell you what you lot, concentrate on your own children and leave others to bring up theirs. I'm pretty sure it's more dangerous to send your children to Afghanistan and Iraq than to have the odd fag in your own living room or car.

I can see the day coming when the only freedom we will have left is to take these types of people out into the streets and string them up from a lamp post, along with the vile selk-serving greedy vermin in parliament, and to start again.

If this so-called 'democratic' government can use force to impose their idea of democracy on Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, we have the right to use force to reclaim our lost rights and liberties.

King Crimson

Last week I saw a tremendous documentary on BBC 4 about Progressive Rock, which made me quite nostalgic. Strange because at the time, early 1970s, I was much more into Slade, Wizzard and the like, prog rock was for the sixth form lads who were very earnest and wore long hair and army trench coats. But I did always like King Crimson, maybe it was because Fripp and Eno played such a part in Roxy Music, one of my all time favourite groups.

Anyway I thought I would indulge the nostalgia and post a King Crimson classic:

Edinburgh University's Racist Policy!

It seems that Edinburgh University has kicked off a bit of a kerfuffle by deciding to give priority on popular courses to applicants from Scotland and the North of England. Interestingly they do not class Lancashire as the North of England so bang goes my dream of studying there. Bastards!!

Of course there are the usual cries of racism, especially from people in the South of England, not those in Lancashire I might add, but people in Brighton have been quoted as being angry. I wonder if a black person from Durham would get in? I wonder if they are accepting overseas students on courses.

What the decision of Edinburgh shows, rather than racism, is the nasty small minded bigotry that is prevalent in Scotland with the growth in recent years of the SNP. I know many Scots who are not as I have described, so I am not claiming Scots people per se to be small minded bigots but that mindset does seem to be inculcating Scottish culture and it is very sad.

On a visit to Scotland last year I was warned to be careful because I had a Cross of St George sticker on my back bumper. I have never been aware of any threat to Scottish people displaying the Saltyre from people in England and here in North Lancashire we get plenty of overty patriotic Scots visiting us, many displaying stridently nationalistic messages on their vehicles.

What Edinburgh University's policy highlights is the slow breaking up of the United Kingdom, and we might as well get used to it. The break up is largely down to the EU providing an alternative source of subsidy because, without the cash the subsidy junkies north of the border get showered on them, they would be a little more coy about independence.

Tony Blair's shambolic devolution mess has also encouraged the Scots and, let's face it, when you look at Westminster, getting rid of that lot is very appealing even if it means declaring independence.

I don't care if Edinburgh wants to look like a small minded, second rate parochial polytechnic, or if the Scots want to break away and suck on the teat of the EU for years to come. Just get on with it and bugger off and let us English get on with our lives.

Full story here.

Capital Punishment-The Death Penalty

I used to be completely for the death penalty but had a change of heart a few years ago. Every now and then though something happens to make me wonder, and I couldn't help feeling a warm glow when I read the following:

A murderer who wrote a bragging letter to prosecutors when he believed he could not legally face the death penalty has been executed by electric chair. Paul Powell was convicted in the 1999 murder of Stacie Reed and the rape of her 14-year-old sister in their family home in the US state of Virginia.

He was sentenced to death in 2000 but higher courts ruled he could not be executed because the crimes were considered to be separate ones.

Convinced he no longer faced the death penalty, Powell then wrote a letter to prosecutors in which he said he had outsmarted them and also provided more details on the murder.

The details allowed prosecutors to charge Powell a second time for capital murder and win a new conviction and death sentence in 2003.

In his letter Powell wrote: "Since I have already been indicted on first degree murder and the Va. Supreme Court said that I can't be charged with capital murder again, I figured I would tell you the rest of what happened on Jan. 29, 1999, to show you how stupid all of y'all ... are."

He then went on to give more details about his crimes before concluding: "I guess I forgot to mention these events when I was being questioned. Ha Ha! Do you just hate yourself for being so stupid ... and saving me?"

It was the first execution this year in Virginia, which is only second to Texas in the number of executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

Powell was the 11th defendant on death row to be executed this year in the US.

Original article here.

Reggae

Time for some Peter Tosh:

BBC Question Time RIP

I watched Question Time last night and it was total crap. The highlight for me was the admission by Caroline Lucas MEP that the Green Party was indeed a socialist party, something most people with a brain knew from the days of the old Ecology Party.

So at least pissed off Labour voters can turn to the Greens or the socialist British National Party. After all, most old working class Labour supporters a few years back were pretty racist in outlook hence the BNP success in Old Labour areas. So I suspect middle class sandal wearing lefties will go Green, horny handed sons of toil will go fascist.

The pissed off right wing Tories will remain with UKIP whereas those not obsessed with the EU, but pissed off with devolution and the mithering Scots, will turn to the English Democrats. So back to Question Time.

Beckett and Lansley last night talked complete bollocks when they weren't just rambling along aimlessly trying not to actually say anything at all. It's interesting that the country is financially going down the pan, we are becoming a more oppressive police state as every day passes and there is a general election next month but none of the big three parties have got anything worth saying.

QT used to be a lively political debating show, not now. It is just a vehicle for the vile, patronising Dimbleby to preen and pose on. The politicians have been emasculated by their leaderships and the odd person of sound outlook, last night the historian David Starkey, always seems to come over as eccentric at best, at worst downright insane.

Then last night the build up was not that the show was coming from Manchester, oh no. The build up last night was that the show was coming from Wythenshawe. If you don't know Wythenshawe it is, or at least used to be, the biggest council estate in Europe and its immediate neighbour is Manchester Airport. I suppose those middle class patronising BBC types thought that announcing Wythenshawe as the venue would give them street cred, but it didn't.

The reason last night's QT had no credibility was that I didn't hear a single Mancunian accent in the audience, let alone a Wythenshawe accent. If you wonder what a Wythenshawe accent sounds like imagine somebody who makes the Gallagher brothers sound posh. The BBC cocked up yet again and proved that the QT audience is not representative of the area in which it takes place. If it had done last night I suspect that Beckett and Lansley would now be in mixed sex wards in Wythenshawe Hospital, while Charles Kennedy would be just coming round after an almighty session in the Red Beret on cheap lager after being relieved of his wallet, watch and any other valuables.

Just to show what bollocks you find on Wikipedia I want to digress briefly and mention the following bit about Wythenshawe from Wikipedia:

Wythenshawe is the outdoor filming location for the Channel 4 series Shameless, which shows various shots of the local tower-blocks, housing estates and other architecture unique to this area. Wythenshawe also housed the outdoor sets for the show, which were built on private property. Production moved from Miles Platting and Ancoats (in East Manchester) in early 2007, following disruption to filming caused by local youths.

That's bollocks. Shameless was filmed in West Gorton, Manchester 12. Yes they did move to Wythenshawe because the crew and cast kept getting attacked by local yobs. They now film on an enclosed, fortress like set in on a Wythenshawe industrial estate where a replica set of West Gorton has been built. It was not filmed in Miles Platting or Ancoats but yes, I believe the cast and crew were also attacked when they used to film on the streets of Wythenshawe too. The tower blocks curently seen on the show are still the West Gorton tower blocks from the original. Sorry but that is a hobby of mine and I know both Wythenshawe and West Gorton particularly well as I was born in West Gorton and the missus was born in Wythenshawe.

But I suppose that QT, which is what I really should be rambling on about, indeed the BBC as an institution, mirrors the country at the moment. Used to be great, is now run by shallow, money crazed imbeciles who use political correctness to stifle real debate, and impose the tactics of totalitarianism to save us from terrorism, which means in their patronising fascistic minds, actually saving us from ourselves.

RIP Question Time.

St Patrick's Day

Now I don't believe myself to be churlish, but I don't actually care that today is St Patrick's Day. If I had more Irish blood than great grandparents on my mother's side in me perhaps I would. If people who want to celebrate St George's Day weren't treated like xenophobic, racist, homophobic, paraskevidekatriaphobic monsters, and every other phobia you can imagine, I might be slightly sympathetic to St Patrick's Day. But I don't care.

What really pigs me off is Americans claiming to be Irish, especially American politicians claiming to be 'Oirish' to get the Irish vote, on the grounds that their great, great, great grandfather once had a pint of Guinness or once cut a piece of peat out of a bog. It's just wrong. If you want a piss up then have one, you don't have to sing maudling songs about perceived injustices three hundred years ago, wear a stupid green Leprechaun hat and drink vast quantities of Guinness until every bodily fluid oozing from you is jet black. Get over it.

Although a pretty patriotic person I don't naturally go for over-the-top demonstrations of patriotism anyway, I don't think it's very English. But I must admit to liking the following very, very much:

Wasting NHS Resources

When seemingly sane people talk about the NHS they so often lose all commonsense. It's a bit like mega successful businessmen who buy a football club, all their business acumen seems to go out of the window and they screw it up.

Here is a commonsense article from a journalist, Jamie Whyte, about GPs missing the point of people wasting their time. Or rather missing the commonsense approach to deterring people from wasting their time:

I like most of the doctors I know. They are earthy and unsqueamish, about minds as well as bodies. Few, however, know much about economics. This normally does not matter. But doctors occasionally stray off piste, get on to health policy issues and make fools of themselves. Yesterday’s letters page of The Times contained a vivid example.

Seventeen health professionals wrote lamenting that about 20 per cent of visits to GPs are for “common disturbances to normal good health, such as coughs and colds”. This costs the NHS about £2 billion a year without making any difference to people’s health, since they could just as effectively treat themselves. According to the medics, “The NHS has become the victim of a demand-led culture.”

Then, having got almost all the way to the answer, they miss it. Reading their letter is like watching your one-year-old with a square peg in hand and the square hole directly in view, trying to stuff it into the round hole. The square peg in the medics’ hand is the word “demand”, and the square hole is the fact that the price of visiting a GP is zero.

Perhaps the most familiar law of economics is that demand increases as price decreases, be it demand for apples, foreign holidays, doctors’ visits or anything else of value. The reason people visit GPs so frivolously is that it costs nothing besides the lost time. The obvious solution to the problem is to charge a fee. £10 should be enough to deter people with sniffles. People with something potentially more threatening will be happy to pay this.

But the medics miss this trick. Instead they fall back on the hoary old distinction between real needs and mere wants, which they combine with the popular modern absurdity that people should be educated into acting against their own interests. Specifically, they call on politicians to “enable GPs and practice nurses to give people the confidence to use the NHS at the point of need, not demand; educate people to manage minor ailments . . .”

If they think this is a good method for rationing GP visits, perhaps they will like this idea for rationing food. Nationalise supermarkets, set the price of all food to zero, then eliminate the problem of wasteful overconsumption by educating people that they should take only the food they need rather than what they want.

The proposal is obviously absurd. No such education could possibly have the desired effect; no one could sensibly specify which food is really needed as opposed to merely wanted; and, even if they could, why should people be allowed to eat only what they need? All the same goes for visiting a GP.

I can already hear the bleeding heart liberals raging about how the bodies of the poor will be piling up in the streets if those callous bastards brought in a £10 charge to see a GP. Bullshit, it's the price of a packet of fags and a pint of bitter for God's sake.

General Election Nutjob Alert-Egality!

As the general election creeps closer more nutters and psychos are crawling out from under their stones. The one I heard about on the radio today is a bunch of deluded misfits called Egality. Here is what they say about their latest loonytunes idea:

"Empowering people in the UK and abroad to directly challenge our unequal world, here and now, by sharing one of our most valuable political rights – the right to vote".

They think that global warming affecting Bangladesh, farmers being shafted in Ghana and the war in Afghanistan are so important that people in those countries should have a vote in our general election. They want you and me to register, and to vote on May 6th, the way some similar lunatic nutjob in one of those countries asks us to.

So stuff voting on ID cards and the police state, schools and education, hospitals and the NHS and so on. No, they want a pissed off farmer in Ghana to vote for you thus practising his new found 'right to vote' by depriving you of yours. I suspect the people at Egality just don't understand democracy.

Haiti-Shane McGowan, Paloma Faith and Others.

This is excellent, and for a very, very good cause. It also includes Paloma Faith which is enough for me:

Vote Labour?

It's very interesting in my constituency of Morecambe and Lunesdale at the moment. The defending MP is the idiot champagne guzzling socialist Geraldine Smith, who is something like 110th on the Tory Party's hitlist of targets for a general election victory. Even after winning a champagne guzzling contest with the prat MP Bill Etherington she'll probably get back in. No leaflets yet though.

The Tories, on the other hand, are sending us regular bumph that would, a few years ago, have ended up on a nail in the bog at the end of the yard. What's interesting about the Tory bumph is that it is mostly fired off from Millbank and carries a photo of chubby cheeks Cameron with a gormless half grin on his face. Having said that it strikes me as odd from a party that claims to want to decentralise power back to us local yokels. In fact, despite all the crap from the Tories I still don't know the name of the local candidate. What I do know is he looks like a gimp middle manager in a grey suit and has a similar chubby cheeked imbecilic half grin on his face to Dave's when I have glimpsed him in a leaflet peering at a cracked pavement or cleaning up a steaming dog turd to show how caring he is.

But anybody thinking of voting Labour should remember that Gordon Brown's "new start" includes Lady Mandy Mandelson, Charlie Whelan,Damian McBride and Derek "Dolly" Draper. What a team of spivs, shysters and utterly devious and deviant knobheads.

So if you want more of the same old authoritarian bullshit, government mithering and lies then vote Labour.

On the other hand, if you want more of the same old authoritarian bullshit, government mithering and lies then vote Conservative.

What's the difference?

Eddie Izzard at the Munch Box

We have a little Sunday morning ritual. I tootle off to Mass at St Mary of the Angels in Bolton-le-Sands at 9-00am, then bring in bacon butties from the Munch Box for brekkie on my way back.

If you don't know, the Munch Box is one of the finest dining establishments in Lancashire, great bacon butties, a great chinwag and usually a good laugh while your choice of breakfast butty is being freshly prepared to order. It's situated in the lay-bye on the A6 at Bolton-le-Sands with wonderful views across the Bay to the Lake District mountains.

Last night, recovering from yet another political gathering in London, I was lounging in the west wing, enjoying a reviving glass of Laphroig while Mrs B gently snoozed in her armchair, and on came Eddie Izzard in a series about his heroic marathon jaunt last year for Sport Relief. Very sensibly he stops at the Munch Box for a refuelling stop proving that he is a man of taste and discernment. Here is his visit to the Munch Box from his video diary:



That was a lovely bacon, black pudding and tomato butty this morning Bob, many thanks, and I look forward to seeing your "By Appointment to His Izzardness" plaque going up above the hatch.

Morrissey

After today in Manchester, then London on the milk train for a meeting tomorrow back later on tomorrow, it's time for some music from the genius that is Morrissey.


Top man!

Nick Hogan-Hero or Clown?

If like me you have been away, or extremely busy recently, you may have missed the fact that anti-smoking ban pub landlord Nick Hogan has been sent to prison, but has now been released. He wasn't imprisoned for breaching the smoking ban, but for non payment of fines in relation to breaches of the smoking ban in his pub. On many blogs he has become something of a cause celebre.

I don't accept that his actions are a great blow for libertarianism even though I heartily oppose the smoking ban, though no longer smoke. If I ignored every law I oppose I would have spent most of the last thirty years in Strangeways. What we all need to do is to campaign and fight against all those things that we find oppressive. There are issues that require civil disobedience but first we have to garner the support of the general population. The general population see those who stood in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square as heroes, somebody going to prison over the smoking ban they are more likely to see as a clown.

If real progress is to be made then libertarianism has to be seen as a credible philosophy. Too many people see libertarians as a group of people who just want to scrap laws so they can do what the hell they want and stuff everybody else, legalising drugs being the easiest thing to beat us with. I don't want to get bogged down in the drugs issue but I'm sure any libertarian knows the arguments back to front.

Supporting somebody over an issue such as the smoking ban, which is even supported by many smokers now, is picking the wrong fight at the wrong time. In a nutshell very few people give a shit. We can either tilt at windmills or we can fight a savvy and credible political war. Supporting Nick Hogan is clearly tilting at windmills.

What it really comes down to is a choice between libertarians posturing and posing on the internet for the next however many years, or building credibility, getting people to vote for them and getting people elected then making a real change. Supporting somebody who stamps his feet and throws a tantrum because he hasn't got what he wants invites ridicule and ultimate failure.

National No Smoking Day

In case you didn't know today is 'National No Smoking Day' when the government, and assorted hysterical anti-tobacco nuts and health fascists, badger us about having a drag on a fag. No doubt the government propaganda device in your living room will be pumping cancer and bronchitis warnings at you all day in between telling you how they will crush your car if you even think about not taxing it or will remove your finger nails with pliers if you forget to get your TV licence.

I gave up smoking three years ago but feel it is our patriotic duty to support our oppressed fellow citizens who are forced, by fascistic authoritarian government automatons, to brave the elements whenever they fancy a smoke, be they at work, in the pub or even at home it seems. Even on a railway station platform with no roof and a howling wind, smokers will be shot if they light up according to the tannoy announcements about not smoking or blowing up a train at Lancaster Station.

So, back to our patriotic duty. You get knobhead celebrities, like Prince Harry or William (which one's Ant which one's Dec?) kipping in cardboard boxes to support the homeless, smokers are much more deserving, at least they pay taxes, so each and every one of us should support the oppressed smokers of the UK and go out, buy a packet of ciggies and light up in solidarity.

Can you still get 5 Park Drive and a book of matches?

Sean Gabb on Compulsory Voting

There is much talk of falling voter turnout and compulsory voting is a ploy used to divert attention away from the truth; that people don't vote because most of the parties standing in our election are vermin.

OK, so people have fought and died for the right to vote. They have also fought and died for the right NOT to vote. Being forced to do something means it is no longer a 'right'. Are you proud of your 'right' to pay council tax? Exactly!

Here is a brief clip of Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance on compulsory voting:

Sean Gabb, Should Voting be Compulsory? from Sean Gabb on Vimeo.

CCTV- State Surveillance

I've just discovered the following film on YouTube. The documentary, looking at the ever expanding use of CCTV, includes Sean Gabb, Tim Evans and Brian Micklethwait of the Libertarian Alliance.

Nikki Sinclaire UKIP MEP-A Statement

Poor old Nikki, one of the few if not the only UKIP MEP, with any principles is being attacked again by the Party Leadership. Here is her latest video statement:



I've told her before and I'll say it again, UKIP are a lost cause. They are now in it for the money, nothing more. She would do much more for the cause outside UKIP and within a proper political party.

Frank Skinner-A Catholic

Having just spent the week at the wonderful Pantasaph Franciscan Retreat Centre, I really enjoyed the following article by Frank Skinner in The Times today:

I’m a Roman Catholic and I go to church every Sunday. Towards the end of Mass, there’s a thing called the Sign of Peace. We all shake hands with everyone in shaking distance and say “peace be with you”. Last Sunday the priest told us to drop the handshaking element to show our solidarity with Wayne Bridge.

That’s one of the things I love about being Catholic. You can tell the highly suspicious non-Catholics — their imaginations fired by talk of kissed statues and venerated fibulas — about almost any odd behaviour in a Roman Catholic church and they’ll believe you.

To many British people, Christianity seems like a weird but unexciting theme park. Personally, I like our ever-dwindling status. I even like our ever-dwindling numbers. There was a time when social pressure made people go to church. If anything the reverse is now true. Most adults you see in church nowadays are there because they want to be there. That’s not decline, it’s progress. The wheat has been separated from the chaff. We get quality, not quantity, in the churches and the chaff can enjoy a nice lie-in. That’s just as well, because there’ll be little opportunity for slumber when they’ve got a demon’s pitchfork up their arse.

Christians have always worked best as an unpopular minority. We were surely at our most dynamic when we knelt, eyes to Heaven, hands clasped in prayer, with a Colosseum lion bounding towards us.

That’s why I think Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, is wrong to get his cassock in a twist about changing attitudes to Christianity in this country. He speaks of a “strident and bullying campaign” to marginalise Christianity. But that’s great news. “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.”

We’re going to have Brownie points coming out of our ears. The evidence of such bullying, many Christians would argue, was evident in two recent incidents when a teacher was sacked and a nurse suspended — both because they offered to pray for sick people. I agree that those punishments seem wrong-headed but both women will receive huge blessings for enduring such injustice. Surely their mistake was up-fronting their intentions.

I’ve prayed for loads of friends, most of them atheists. I tend not to tell them. If I do tell them I fear my motivation for doing so is largely ego-based. I’m just trying to show how nice and caring I am. It’s much healthier to do it on the sly. “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”

Lord Carey feels that Christians have been too soft. He said that if you behave like a doormat, you get treated like one. I’m a little wary of muscular Christianity. It’s been used to justify everything from the Crusades to the shooting of abortion doctors. It seems to be in direct contradiction to “Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also”.

This is the doormat as positive role model — a doormat who’s more concerned about the “welcome” than the muddy feet. Surely the central image of Christianity is someone who can shoot fireballs out of his fingertips allowing himself to be nailed to a wooden cross — submission as the ultimate show of strength — love as impenetrable armour. Most British Christians are badly dressed, unattractive people. We’re not pushy and aggressive members of society. We’re a bit like Goths — no one can remember us being fashionable and we talk about death a lot. I love the glorious un-coolness of that.

The oppression of Christians in some other countries is completely unacceptable. I obviously wouldn’t want to see such genuine persecution of Christians in the UK, though that blessing for the reviled and that championing of the turned cheek would, strictly speaking, still apply.

As Lord Carey admits, here it’s more about some local council not wanting to call Christmas “Christmas” in case it offends someone. I’m hoping that, with the rise of secularisation, Christians will be able to claim Christmas as exclusively their own again. I’m sure the new atheists, many of whom point out that Christianity cynically appropriated pagan festivals, would not want to be guilty of similar hypocrisy. Don’t come begging for church weddings or christenings either. Maybe a bit of strictly observed us-and-them will lead to a new Christian unity.

I went to a debate this week. The motion was “England should be a Catholic country again”. I ended up voting against. The marriage of Church, any church, and State seems alien to the teachings of Christ. Power corrupts and British Christians should be happy to continue relinquishing it.The Catholic Church lost more than it gained when it got into bed with the Emperor Constantine.

Christians tend to save their best work for the “voice in the wilderness” genre. We are most impressive when operating as a secret sect, kneeling in small, candle-lit rooms and scrawling fishes on walls. I’m enjoying this current dose of persecution. It’s definitely good for the soul.

Man Made Global Warming

If you're still daft enough to believe in Man Made Global Warming then this news will finally convince you that it isn't.

"Man is responsible for global warming, according to a new report that hits back at the growing scepticism around climate change.

The Met Office-led report looked at the latest figures on global temperatures, melting sea ice and humidity. It also considered new evidence on the extent of warming in the Antarctic, rainfall patterns and salinity of the oceans.

It concluded that is was "human influence" that is changing the climate".

If the Met Office says it's man made, it must be bollocks! In fact, if the Met Office predict a drought this winter, I'll start building an ark.

Choosing the Common Good

I'll be interested to study the document Choosing the Common Good properly over the next day or two. It is the Catholic Church's position on social and moral teaching in readiness for the general election and the visit, later this year, of Pope Benedict XVI to England.

The following quote from the Most Rev Peter Smith, Archbishop of Cardiff, in today's Telegraph is very encouraging though:

“If you simply try to enforce behaviour by law, it doesn’t work terribly well in practice. Governments can’t do everything, and there’s been a tendency in recent years to think government has to do everything. The downside of that is that people think ‘well, I don't have to bother’

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Nikki Sinclaire and UKIP-yet again!

While I've been away on my retreat this week poor old Nikki Sinclaire has been further abused and mistreated by Farage and his henchmen. I would hope that UKIP's North West Chairman Phil Griffiths voted against her expulsion now he has sold his soul, sorry, joined the Party's NEC.

You see, Phil was the chap, as North West Chairman, who despised Paul Nuttall so deeply that he even refused to accept a drink from him at the hustings meetings for the NW EU elections list ballots in 2008. Imagine my shock when, in 2009, he was elected to the Party NEC, proposed by Paul Nuttall.

Furthermore, it was Phil Griffiths who, as Chairman of the North West Committee, urged me to stay within UKIP as lead candidate for the Euro elections, rather than walking as I did, but resign from the Party as soon as I was elected to sit as an independent. That was so fundamentally dishonest I was saddened that Phil could even suggest it. But that, sadly, is now par for the course in UKIP it seems. Or perhaps Phil did vote for it, in a rather confused state, believing he was doing what he suggested in 2007! Who knows?

So to Nikki. Following is her statement on the latest abuse of their powers by UKIP's NEC:

It is with great disappointment that I have today received a letter from the Party Secretary, Michael Zuckerman that removes me as a UKIP MEP. A decision that has lost UKIP it's status as the official opposition in the European Parliament and the UK's 2nd largest party.

There has been no disciplinary procedure and no right of reply. I find this course of action incredulous after 16 years of service. This decision has been made despite expression of absolue support for the Party and intention to continue as a UKIP MEP/Candidate. There was an agreed position between myself, Lord Pearson and fellow UKIP West MIdlands MEP, Mike Nattrass

With only eight weeks before a General Election I find it absolutely amazing that the Party decided to open a sore wound rather than fight the real enemy.

I reserve the right to defend my reputation, my political career and the aims of UKIP by all available means.

Nikki

Following is the letter she received from the Party secretary:



Here is how The Times covered the story today.

I find it difficult to believe that the never ending crisis that is UKIP, was caused accidentally. I don't accept coincidences, especially in politics, but, 'coincidentally', there is always one man at the heart of every crisis that UKIP stumbles into. That man is Nigel Farage.