Co-Op To Boycott Israel

I have just received the following message from the British Israel Coalition:

 

The Co-op boycotts Israeli companies. They seek to justify this bigotry by invoking ‘ethical policy’.

 

But when you read their ‘ethical policy’, it is clear that it exists to demonise one country: Israel

This week at the Gmex convention centre in Manchester, there is an international expo hosted by the Co-op. The British Israel Coalition is supporting the activists protesting Co-op's highly discriminatory treatment of Israel and working to get this one-sided boycott removed.

Please come along and help us on Thursday or Friday this week to distribute leaflets and help us get across our case.

If you can help, please get in touch with the activists in Manchester:

 

Here is a link to the British Israel Coalition website.

When Voting Becomes Collaboration

These are strange times indeed. Have politicians ever been quite as despised as they are now? Have protest movements ever been as hysterical and puerile as they are now?

Let's start with the wailing and gnashing of teeth about individuals and businesses not paying enough tax. In the sixties the protest movements would have wanted to pay as little to the state as possible, so that they weren't feeding its war machine in Vietnam for example. Today there is faux moral outrage at people and businesses paying, perfectly legally, as little tax as possible. I suppose those headbangers at UK Uncut are happy to pay ever more tax to fund an increasingly paramilitary police force and ever more morally dubious foreign adventures by our military. Those that pay tax that is.

Another about turn by the lefties is attacking Andrew Mitchell for shouting at a bobby. I howled with laughter at seeing the type of nutters who turn a march into a game shoot, with the police being the game, suddenly wanting to string up evil bastards who call the police names. Suddenly they are fanatically pro-police-nothing to do with Mitchell being a 'posh Tory' of course.

Then you have a government that nobody elected. Yes, I know how our system works and that if a big enough group of MPs can band together and cobble a majority then they form a government. But does that mean it is right? I certainly didn't vote to have idiots like Clegg and Cable lording it over us.

Then, as I've said before hundreds of thousands of us have signed petitions, campaigned and marched for a say in our relationship with the European Union. What do we get? The introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners! I don't remember thousands and thousands of people campaigning for PCCs.

But it isn't enough to blame the state. I've been actively involved in politics since schooldays but eventually became disillusioned with the ever increasing apathy of the public. In many cases it was because they had no idea how the sytem works. They didn't understand that at a local level activists are volunteers who give their time freely to leaflet, stand for election and canvass the voters, admittedly in ever dwindling numbers. In many cases they didn't know the difference between a councillor, an MP and an MEP. So eventually I walked away from active politics.

Back in the 1980s I attended a meeting addressed by Enoch Powell, one of several times I was fortunate enough to hear him speak. During questions he was asked how he felt that people should vote in the upcoming European elections. His immediate response was: "I wouldn't soil my hands on a European ballot paper".  He then explained that taking part in the process was akin to validating it.

In many recent elections I have voted for the least bad option. I have not voted for any party from conviction for many years. But now is the time to say enough is enough, beginning with the elections on November 15 for the PCCs. They are a sham, another gravy train for the political class and I do not accept their validity and am no longer prepared to validate what I no longer believe in by holding my nose and plonking a cross in a box.

Furthermore there is no longer a party in this country that I feel able to vote for. They have lied, cheated and broken promises for far too many years and the forging of this despised cioalition was the final straw. In future I will not be voting as I am no longer prepared to vote for something I do not believe in. And before people cry about people dying for my right to vote, they did not! They fought and died for our freedom and that includes the right to vote or not to vote.

I will no longer be voting as voting has becone collaboration.

The Madness of Tony Blair

Proof, if it were needed, that Tony Blair has finally lost his last few marbles. He has now been in Berlin saying that the only way out of the EU's current shambles is to have a Europe wide election for a European president. And guess who wants to stand?

The man's a complete mad man and should be locked up for the safety of us all.

Report in the Daily Mail.

Time For A Real Conservative Party?

Cameron is looking increasingly isolated on the question of the European Union. More and more politicians seem to be waking up the nightmare that is the European Union. Except Cameron, who seems to be doing a great impression of a lemming. The only real chance the Tories have of winning the next election is to bin him. But who could replace him?

At the last election I made the mistake of voting Tory as the best of a pitiful bunch of misfit candidates. Sadly David Morris was elected who seems to have a backbone of jelly. I contacted him for his views on gay marriage and he didn't have a view. He informed me that there was a public consultation process and he would await the outcome of that before forming an opinion. What a prize prat. If he had said that he was in favour I would hgave disgreed with him, but would have respected his opinion. But to effecrtively say that he would wait to see which bandwagon to jump on proves to me that he is a man with no principles or genuinely held political beliefs, a waste of space.

This sorry state leaves me unable to vote Tory at the next election. Even if they bin Cameron I could never again vote for a political tart like David Morris. So, in the absence of a serious conservative/right of centre political party that isn't full of sundry loonies, headbangers and galloping egomaniacs it looks like I'll be abstaining at the next election, as I will be on November 15 when the elections to Cameron's latest gravy train take place.

Southern Jukebox Music

The Penguin Cafe Orchestra made some remarkable music, but this one has to take the prize for numero uno:




I may have popped it on here before. If so I don't care as it's well worgth a second hearing.

Racism In Football-Kick It Out

The older I get the less I seem to understand. Earlier I blogged about Police and Crime Commissioners and how I just can't see the point of them. Now it's racism in football and Rio Ferdinand apparently setting up a trade union for black players only. Odd as I thought apartheid was a thing of the past, but so be it.

What I don't understand is why the authorites seem to be allowing virulent racism in football, apparently sweeping it under the carpet much more effectively than professional cycling swept doping under the carpet. Apart from Suarez and Terry behaving like pillocks I'm unaware of galloping racism in football. It seems to me that there are a higher proportion of black players in football today than the proportion of black people in the general population. Or are some clubs actually barring black players? I don't think so.

In the 1970s there were racist chants aimed at black players but the world has moved on and in recent years, watching football virtually weekly, I've been unaware of racism apart from the odd unpleasant individual. Maybe it is rampant in some Eastern European states, but certainly not in the UK.

Rio Ferdinand seems to be in a constant state of rage about race but doesn't stand up and give examples of racism in football. Earning more in a week than most people earn in a few years it doesn't seem to me like racism in football has held Ferdinand, or the many other successful black players.

The more I hear about this rampant racism in football the more I wonder why anybody gets involved with such an unpleasant sport. Maybe we should all boycott until it's cleaned up, as happened with cricket and rugby under apartheid. That Ferdinand should be making such a fortune in such a vile racist industry sickens me. He should walk away and have nothing to do with such a thoroughly unpleasant game. After all, he's probably made enough money from it to live in comfort for the rest of his life.

Police and Crime Commissioner Elections

I really don't see the point of elected police chiefs, it's just another ConDem gimmick. Sadly Cameron seems to have learnt a little too well from Blair and his Tory Party is just a smoothish facade with no substance.

For many years we have had police authorities consisting of the great and the good, and elected representatives. I fail to see how one elected, highly paid police chief is going to make the police more accountable, especially if that chief is John Prescott or some other failed politico.

The only argument anybody has put to me in favour was that being elected will make them accountable to us. Oh yes, just like the elected government?

To date we have had no information from the state about this mammoth breakthrough in democracy, so it is highly unlikely that I will be voting in November to put whatever nitwit stands onto yet another highly paid gravy train.

Maybe somebody could persuade me otherwise.

George Osborne and the Class Warriors

Murderer and hero of the class warriors.

I have failed, and I am the first to admit it. I have searched and searched but I cannot find why George Osborne, the Chancellor, is all over the media for apparently moving from standard class to first class on a train to London. Big deal.

Headlines like "Great Train Snobbery" may be amusing and clever but does that mean that I am some kind of outrageous upper crust snob because I have occasionally travelled first class on a train?

The Guardian in this piece of usual pinko drivel tries to make it into something by claiming that an aide of the Chancellor tried to have him moved into first class without paying. But the supplement was paid so end of story.

In this country there is an overwhelming tide of inverted snobbery because we happen to have a goverment with a certain number of ex-public schoolboys in it. I thought in the twenty-first century we were supposed to treat people fairly whatever their race, class, religion, shoe size etc etc. That seems to be the case unless you happen to be from what the class warriors perceive as a 'privileged background', then it's open season in the most small minded, petty and unpleasant manner imagineable.

I've always found class warfare vulgar and nasty in the extreme. This nonsense with George Osborne proves that a sizeable proportion of people in this country still thrive and feed on hatred of people they see as privileged.

The reality is that they thrive on hatred for people who are more successful than themselves. It's called socialism.

Christians, Gays and Freedom

This is my reaction to this story.

First of all if I had a hotel, which I haven't, I would not care whether a same sex couple using my establishment was gay or straight. What they do in the privacy of their bedroom is no concern of mine.

Secondly I would not stay in a hotel that advertised itself as a 'gay hotel'. I wouldn't have a problem with a hotel advertising itself as such, I would just prefer not to stay there. Similarly I would prefer not to stay at a hotel that described itself as a 'christian hotel', despite being a practising Roman Catholic. Both designations imply to me establishlishments whose owners are so obsessed with one aspect of their lives that they forget that they are actually a plain old hotel and would probably bore me to death within minutes.

But I see no reason why christians can't refuse to accomodate gay couples or why gay hotels shouldn't be allowed to refuse heterosexual couples accomodation. I wouldn't stay in a hotel where people of whatever persuasion or belief  were banned, but it should be the decision of the owners and the state should keep out.

Police Plebs?

A few years ago Halford's supplied the police in Lancashire with mountain bikes. One particular bobby, in Preston, refused to use his bike as although he was perfectly capable of riding it, he hadn't had specific training in riding a police bike. Health and safety and all that.

Today I read about a blind man in Chorley, not far from Preston, who was tasered by a bobby hunting a man with a Samurai sword. Apparently the bobby mistook the blind man's white stick for a Samurai sword. I can't help wondering if it was the same bobby who refused to ride his bike, but have found no reports that said taser happy cop was on a Halford's mountain bike.

Alternatively maybe the bike bobby had gone for health and safety instruction/training and they'd found that his eyesight was too poor to ride a bike on the open road, hence he managed to mistake a white stick for a Samurai sword.

On a slightly more serious note I can't help wondering why the bobby felt so threatened by the blind man that he felt the need to taser him. After all, if he was too far away to differentiate between a white stick and a Samurai sword then the officer could hardly have been in immediate danger.

So my advice if you visit our beautiful county of Lancashire is to be very careful what you carry, just in case it could be mistaken for a lethal weapon. And if you don't heed that advice I only hope it's a taser toting rather than a gun toting cop that bags you.

And finally will people in the media, the Police Federation and Ed Miliband, now be big enough to admit that the police do actually have a fair proportion of plebs among their ranks?

Ricky Gervais, Religion and Science

 

I'll admit that I've never understood why people like Ricky Gervais. To me he's smug and totally unfunny. To top it all he is nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is. So I wasn't in the least bit surprised to see one of his childish Tweets bobbing up in various places on the internet.

 

Interestingly he doesn't thank science for the nuclear bomb.

BBC and Free Speech

In response to the announcement that the EU had been awarded the totally ludicrous and discredited Nobel Peace Prize a good friend left the following comment on the BBC News website:

Surely Berlusconi should now get a nobel prize for his services to women and his
fight against corruption?

It was removed and following is the BBC's reason for censoring it, which was emailed to my friend:

Thank you for contributing to the BBC web site.  Unfortunately we've had to
remove the content below (above now) because it contravened one of our House Rules.

Your comment was considered to have broken the following House Rule:

"We reserve the right to fail comments which...

Contain potentially defamatory statements.”
 

The sooner the taxpayer funded BBC is abolished the better.

Nobel Peace Prize-European Union

It seems that the European Union is about to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Well if true, after awarding it to Obama for winning an election, it puts the final nail in the coffin of the whole stupid process. What a joke!

I am pre-empting the announcement. If it's not the EU I will donate £20 to St John's Hospice, Lancaster.

Jimmy Savile and Lance Armstrong

This week it's been interesting hearing peoples' reactions to the accusations against Jimmy Savile and Lance Armstrong. In the case of Lance Armstrong the people I've spoken to, like me, have defended him when I expected to be in a minority, possibly of one.

After defending him on Twitter yesterday I was invited to defend him on the BBC World Service, a programme called World Have Your Say. The thrust of my defence of Armstrong was that he had around 500 drug tests during his cycling career and did not fail a single one. The report produced by USADA contains nothing but hearsay, maybe from people with a grudge or people who knew they would receive a lighter ban for admitting their own doping if they fingered Armstrong. Let's face it, USADA have hounded Armstrong for years and were determined to get him one way or another.

With Jimmy Savile the questions are even more far reaching. Why did people wait until he was dead and buried to make the accusations? Why did social workers, police and other agencies seemingly ignore accusations against Savile going back 50 years? Why did hospital authorities allow Savile to wander at will around wards with no supervision if, as is claimed, nurses and other hospital staff suspected or saw him sexually abusing patients? As with Hillsborough, where people in authority at the time are likely to be charged now with manslaughter, I would hope that anybody in any position to have acted against Savile, be it a nurse, a doctor a BBC manager or whoever but didn't, faces investigation and charges if the accusations are proved correct.

There is also the question of women now coming forward claiming to have been victims of sexual misbehaviour, by people other than Jimmy Savile, when working for the BBC. One question here is what constitutes sexual harassment or sexual abuse? Over recent decades what is seen as acceptable behaviour by a man towards a woman has changed dramatically. Could what they are looking back on have been what was regarded at the time as 'banter', but with twenty first century eyes it becomes harassment or abuse? And again, why did these apparently strong women, building successful careers in the tough world of broadcasting, not act at the time?

This morning I read that social workers in Rochdale ignored reports that a 13 year old girl was involved in prostitution claiming that she had made a 'lifestyle choice'. All these things show one thing, that the authorites (the state) cannot be trusted. They need to be questioned and challenged constantly and in many cases agencies of the state should be abolished, only then will people start taking individual responsibility.

Have Eurosceptic MEPs Gone Native?

In the 1990s I was involved with Alan Sked's Anti Federalist League. Around 1995 it became the UK Independence Party and I didn't join, firmly believing that a single issue party would not achieve my aim of leaving the European Union.

In 2000 I was invited, as a local councillor, to address a meeeting of the local UKIP branch. John Whittaker, who became an MEP in 2004, convinced me that UKIP MEPs would use their positions to build a credible and effective political movement in this country to fight domestic elections. I then joined UKIP. John did work hard to do just that when he was elected, but I believe that he is the only UKIP MEP who did.

The other MEP to work hard in this country is Nikki Sinclaire. It was her petition that forced the referendum debate in Parliament. Nikki was forced out of UKIP for refusing to sit with right-wing extremists in their group in the European Parliament. I can't think of anything useful that any other UKIP MEPs have done.

While I respect Nikki I no longer believe that Eurosceptic parties, including her We Want A Referendum Party, will achieve their aims by getting people elected to the European Parliament. I firmly believe that Eurosceptics in the European Parliament have been seduced by the money and status. If all 70+ MEPs for the UK were Eurosceptic it would not bring us one minute closer to exiting. Only the EU imploding or our own Westminster Parliament will achieve that.

Logically therefore, we Eurosceptics have nothing at all to gain from sending MEPs off on the gravy train that they claim to abhor and wish to leave. In recent weeks I have asked numerous people in the North West if they can name any of their MEPs. None could. I have also asked if they can name the parties their MEPs represent. Most thought they were Liberal Democrat or Labour, only one included a Tory, none knew that there was a UKIP MEP, and only one knew there was a BNP MEP. I asked how many MEPs there were in the North West. None got the answer right. So in terms of connecting with the electorate I would say that all MEPs have failed completely. There is virtually no awareness of them or their role. No consultation on any issues, it seems, is done by any of the North West MEPs. So what is the point?

In my opinion the only logical reason for any Eurosceptic remaining an MEP is that they have gone native. And that applies to Europhile MEPs too.

Conservative Party Variety Show

A few years ago I attended a number of party conferences and Tory conferences in the 1980s used to be great affairs. Although policy couldn't be changed there were serious politicians and serious debates with excellent contributions by the membership from the floor. When did it change? Was it Blair, and the Tories copying his slick PR style that did it?

This year's Tory conference is more like a variety show. At times it looks they're using a breakfast TV studio and then there is music blaring out from Take That, or somebody else seen as 'trendy' by Tory grandees, while a dreary video is shown. The tedious habit of making speeches while strolling around the stage is another instant turn-off. How apt that geeky Miliband uses that particular technique.

We've gone, these past weeks, from the pantomime that is the UKIP conference, through the Labour and Lib Dem charades to the Tory variety show this week. If nothing else they have shown what a busted flush most of our political parties are. They have also confirmed that none of them will be getting my vote next time around.

Sadly theses conferences can't be called victories of style over substance, even the style is dreary and tedious. Bring back the statesmen and serious political thinkers of yesteryear. Or am I just becoming an old fart?

Growing Up In Public

Increasingly I despair for the future of this country. We seem to have bred a generation of useless parents who have no clue how to raise children. But unlike past generations, I'll bet the useless ones have had soppy lessons at school on parenting skills or similar.

We have busy lives and a couple of mornings a week we like to have breakfast together in local cafes before we go our seperate ways to earn a crust. Increasingly it is becoming more and more a bad idea as kids increasingly run amok while their mothers sit twiddling their mobile phones. This morning the brats were running around, helping themselves from drinks cabinets, with no shoes on and looking as if they were still in pyjamas.

But it isn't all single mothers. On Saturday it was a couple who sat twiddling on their mobiles while their brat looked around screaming, probably for a little parental attention. Said parents looked blankly towards their offspring occasionally before carrying on with their mobiles. They only became animated when a friend turned up who they could boast to about how drunk they'd been the night before.

I think I'll be cooking breakfast at home in future.

British Railways and the NHS

So the franchise process for the West Coast Mainline was cocked up by civil servants. No surprise there.

Nationalising our railways would effectively put them back under the control of politicians (the government) and civil servants. Do you trust our politicians and the state to get anything right? And remember, the Beeching Axe fell when our railways were nationalised, not when they were privately owned.

So who in their right minds would want government involved in any aspect of our railway system? In fact if our railway sytem is too important to leave to politicians and civil servants to cock up, then what about our healthcare?

Just a thought.

Eric Hobsbawm

The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm always epitomised to me the hypocrisy of the twentieth century political classes. It was, and still is, socially unacceptable to profess any kind of sympathy with any aspect of fascism but was, and still is, acceptable to embrace communism. Surely murdering millions in the pursuit of an ideology should be condemned whatever that ideology is?

Rather than go into detail about Hobsbawm, who died yesterday, I would invite you to read the two following objective pieces about him:

This one from The Commentator

This one from Helen Szamuely's Your Freedom and Ours Blog