Je Suis Charlie

British Democracy?

I've long since lost the fire in my belly I had for politics, which makes blogging difficult, in a word I can't be arsed. Our politicians are as bent as nine bob notes, we are ruled from a stinkingly corrupt Brussels, the system seems to have perfected squeezing cash and independent thought from the populace and government is hand in glove with big business.

Decades of socialism/social democracy have forged a dependency on the state that means we are no longer the masters, we are mere cogs in the wheel of the state, be that London based or Brussels based. There was one chink of light recently when UKIP announced they had been joined by a descendent of Guy Fawkes. Oh good, I thought, they might sneak him into Parliament to complete the good work begun by his esteemed ancestor. Alas, as ever with UKIP, he isn't actually a descendent of  the hero himself at all, false alarm.

I have often wondered why we still have so many MPs when 70% of our laws come from Brussels so was hopeful that the boundary changes would do the job and even things up. But the Lib Dems threw a temper tantrum and blocked the attempt at rebalancing our democracy. No longer are we governed by men with vision, a sense of history and a deeply held belief in freedom and democracy. Instead we are governed by intellectual pygmies whose decisions are based on personality, spite and vengeance, and stuff the electorate. This quote, from parliamentary sketch writer Quentin Letts about the boundary debate says it all:

"In Britain we have long flattered ourselves that we play by the rules. In the Commons on Tuesday, the rules were blatantly broken.

In the 23 years, on and off, I have been reporting Parliament, I have not felt so disgusted by our political class.

The behaviour of Mr Miliband, Mr Clegg and their MPs is worse than cash-for-questions or the expenses scandal.

Those were fuelled by small-minded greed. This is the naked abuse of parliamentary principle. This, I am afraid, is anti-democratic theft". 

Follow the link below to Quentin Letts' full article:


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2270995/Ive-felt-disgust-political-class.html#ixzz2KIXtEMo2

The Peterloo Massacre

Today in 1819 fifteen people died in Manchester when the local magistrates ordered armed militia to arrest radical campaigner Henry Hunt, who was to address a crowd of around 80,000 fighting for parliamentary reform. At that time Lancashire had only two MPs who were elected by the head of a freehold property.

The massacre took place around where Central Library now stands on what was then called St Peter's Fields. The name 'Peterloo' came about as the troops who were involved had returned from the Napoleonic Wars and had taken part in the 1815 Battle of Waterloo.

The massacre was one of the key events in our history and contributed to Manchester becoming a key place, not only in our industrial past, but in the never ending campaign for freedom and democracy. It is right that this event should be remembered as our fight for freedom and liberty continues today as the state works ever harder to control ever more aspects of our lives.

More information on the Peterloo Massacre.

Back To Pleasure Island



Wanted, dead or alive!

We had massive delays in Calais yesterday as some barmpot tried to enter England illegally by walking through the Channel Tunnel. Funny as we were sat there wishing we didn't have to come back. But we eventually did.

We got to Folkestone and made our first mistake, we put the BBC radio on. I really thought we had gone through the Channel Tunnel into some weird kind of parallel universe. The main news item was how a nine year old girl had been banned from photographing her school meals and putting them on her blog, Never Seconds. I immediately stopped for breakfast, convinced that my craving a full monty belly buster brekkie, after two weeks of weedy croissants and baguettes, had created some kind of hallucinogenic effect. But no, it was true.

After brekkie we heard somebody I can only describe as a patronising, moronic twat (aka Executive Director of Community Services) justifying this act of pure Stalinism on behalf of the politburo of Argyll and Bute. Yes, it just had to be in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Scotland didn't it?

To cut a long story short the patronising, moronic twat was whining on about how coverage of Martha's blog in a Scottish newspaper, Pravda I think, had led to dinner ladies in Argyll and Bute threatening mass suicide they were so distraught. If that is true I would sack the lot, bunch of mardy arsed bastards should be in padded cells allowed nothing sharp. Well done Martha I say.

But the most annoying thing was the patronising, moronic twat repeatedly claiming that this was not an attack on free speech because free speech, apparently, does not include the right to upset people, those people being the mard arsed dinner ladies of Argyll and Bute. Bollocks, that's exactly what free speech does allow. Tell you what pal your patronising bullshit really got me angry yesterday, so should you be banned from practising free speech because your inane bullshit angers people?

One other really annoying thing was the twat's accent. I do find patronising bastards with Scottish accents really, really annoyingly patronising. Their speech is so clipped and precise every sentence seems to say 'just listen little person, unlike you I know what is right and correct'. If you don't believe me just listen, if you can bare it, to George Galloway, he's the prime exponent.

Anyway, by the time we got to Milton Keynes, the Supreme Leader of the Argyll and Bute politburo had overturned the ban, realising what a load of bollocks it was. I only hope he sent the patronising, moronic twat to Siberia. Well, maybe the Shetland Isles.

Police State?

I admit that on many occasions I have raged about the police state we are living in. Actually, I think we are living in more of a 'special constable state' at the moment. For a true police state you need to have completely infantilised the population, and we are only halfway there.

Socialism/political correctness infantilises the populace. Take the old Soviet Union. The state did everything for the poplulace, the citizens didn't have to think for themselves. Indeed those that did think for themselves ended up in labour camps or worse. They didn't have to choose a car, or a fridge, they joined the queue for a state provided one, usually after waiting a few years because there were constant shortages. When the communists went the suicide rate rocketed, people weren't used to having to think for themselves and make decisions about their own lives.

What we have in this country is socialism lite. People are told that the assorted anti-terror legislation brought in over the last few years is for their own good, and they believe it. They attack those of a libertarian persuasion for being scare mongers. Until that is, an old boy is arrested at a Labour conference for heckling, or a young lad or a businessman faces deportation to the US as the legislation is abused and used for other than terrorist offences. Then people ask what can be done after ignoring the warnings because it's uncomfortable to face the truth. So many genuine, decent people give up on politics because banging your head against a brick wall is no fun. A further consequence of people's apathy towards genuine people in politics is that politics is left to the unscrupulous or plain greedy and malign.

Now the US government/security services can restrict peoples' air travel to and from third party states. I will not travel to the US anyway because I am not prepared to be treated like a criminal with ever more intrusive and humiliating security checks.

We are watched virtually everywhere we go by ever more intrusive CCTV cameras and are told that it's for our own good. It's virtually impossible to work in the charity world any more, where I spent nearly twenty five years of my working life, without state approval via a police check. You can't get a licence to serve alcohol without having a police check. Most volunteering roles now require a police check. The list gets longer by the day it seems.

Soon the government will give itself power to snoop on our emails and internet activity. Imagine if you had to place a copy of every letter you ever wrote with a government agency just in case they wanted to check what you had written at some future date. Imagine if you had to leave a copy of every magazine or book you read, every film or TV programme you watched similarly. Take away the 'electronic' and what we are talking is the kind of state intrusion that the Soviets, the Nazis, the North Koreans and every other totalitarian regime imposed on their people.

Secret trials are in the news today. Little Nicky Clegg is arguing against Kenneth Clarke's proposals but little Nicky will just roll over and allow it, poodles are good at rolling over to have their tummies tickled and let's face it, that's all the Tories are doing giving him the pointless job of Deputy Prime Minister in a government that nobody voted for. Yet another policy u-turn by Cameron after claiming he would restore our freedoms and liberties stolen or eroded by the Blair/Brown axis between 1997 and 2010.

Sadly there is no alternative to three tired old parties at the moment. I've been searching for years and found most parties full of madmen, led by sociopathic egomaniacs or plain greedy bastards in it for money, especially when the European Union gravy train is involved. So I can only think that we, as individuals, have to lobby MPs of whatever party and get involved with worthwhile pressure groups. Below is a list of those that I support and believe do a great job:

Big Brother Watch

No2ID

Libertarian Alliance

Society for Individual Freedom

If we don't start doing something now it won't be long until we have the lost the freedom to make any kind of protest.

Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press

OK I wasn't going to, but it's a blog not a tablet of stone.

I'm in a quandary. I instinctively dislike censorship, but I also respect peoples' desire for privacy.

I believe in freedom of the press, but find the seedier elements of the press, the tittle tattle tendency, vile and obnoxious.

I believe in parliamentary privilege, but not irresponsible flouting of the law hiding behind parliamentary privilege.

Was Ryan Giggs' superinjunction there to protect his privacy, from allegations of infidelity in a pretty seedy media, or was it an attempt at curtailing the freedom of the press?

If you oppose the superinjunction would you care to write on the internet, about every little indiscretion you've ever committed, everything you've ever done wrong, no matter how excruciatingly embarassing, for all the world to read?

What's the difference between press intrusion and press freedom? Indeed is there one?

I'm just wondering, because I don't think this issue is black and white.

Well Done Coalition-It's A Start

I've attacked successive governments over the years, especially on the creeping police state that has turned the citizens of the UK into the most spied upon and watched in the world. But credit where it's due, the current coalition government has taken a smallish step in the right direction with the Freedom Bill.

I've blogged before about some of the most pernicious elements of Labour's police state here and here and yes, I would like it to go further and hope it continues, but for now, credit where it's due.

It's easy to be idealistic and criticise because things don't go far enough, and I'm often guilty of that myself. But there is the idealogical world and there is the real world. Ideology informs the politicians who have to adapt it for general consumption. To be too dogmatic about your beliefs only ensures that they never see the light of day. It might give the idealogue a nice warm, self-righteous glow, but achieves absolutely nothing. So I'm glad that the government has done something positive, and am pleased to say so.


Telegraph Online Report.

A polemic from the leader of the UK Libertarian Party

My friends,

We are broke. Our country—whatever it may once have been—is now laden with debt. And this isn't "the government's debt": it is our debt.

The government has no money but what it takes—what it extorts—from us.

We have gone beyond consensus politics: if a man were to come to your door, with a gun, and demand half of everything that you earned—on pain of severe punishment, on pain of the total ruination of your life—would you not protest?

For a moment, lay aside those dutiful thoughts of those starving millions beyond your gate, and think, instead, of those within your own household—within your own family: would you not rather protect them first?

Of course you would: they are your kith and kin and you would expect—would you not?—that everyone, like you, would defend theirs against you were you the one holding the gun.

The government has now utterly removed from you the means of protecting yourself and your family against the man with the gun: indeed, you dare not defend yourself because you fear that it is you, not the mugger, who would end up in the dock.

For the government is the man with the gun, demanding tithes from you: the government is here, at your door. But not randomly.

No.

The government has gone out and bought itself nice things—plasma TVs, second homes, duckhouses, moats. And jobs, and votes. All of those things that you could not afford—because it has been here before: at your door, with a gun.

Five years ago, it was here—threatening you with prison if you did not pay up—for the sake of all of those children who were not yours. You paid, because you had no option.

Four years ago, it was here—threatening you with prison if you did not pay up—for the sake of all of those unhealthy who were not yours. You paid, because you had no option.

Three years ago, it was here—threatening you with prison if you did not pay up—for the sake of all of those uneducated who were not yours. You paid, because you had no option.

Two years ago, it was here—threatening you with prison if you did not pay up—for the sake of all of those feckless bankers who were not yours. You paid, because you had no option.

One year ago, it was here—threatening you with prison if you did not pay up—for the sake of all of those MPs who had no duck-houses or second homes or moats. You paid, because you had no option.

And now the government has spent everything that you had to give, and more, on its pet projects—on buying its second homes, on buying its duckhouses, on buying its votes—and none of it benefited you and yours. Not even by one iota.

The government didn't care that you couldn't afford to give any more: it didn't care that you had no money.

The government didn't care that you had lost your job: the government didn't care that all of those thousands of pounds it took in National Insurance payments translated into a few hundred when you were in need.

And now, when you are getting back on your feet—back in a job that is not as good as the one the government destroyed, back struggling to look after your family on the pittance you are paid, back paying off your debts—the government, too, is back: it's back with the gun.

The government is back—demanding half of what you broke your back to earn—because it has more grand schemes, more votes to buy, more trinkets to deliver to its favoured ones.

Will you so willingly hand over the sweat of your brow? Will you so willingly condemn you and yours to penury? Will you capitulate again?

Or will you fight?

Join us—and help us to stop the extortion.

Join us—and understand that providing for you and yours is not a sin.

Join us—and realise that a society that pulls together is a society that stays together.

Join us—and help us fight for a future in which people help each other voluntarily, because it is right and fitting to do so.

Join us—and help to build a future in which men, women and children take back their work, their birthrights, their dignity and their compassion from a government that cares nothing for you.

Join us.

Because—whether the government is Tory, Labour or LibDem—soon you will have nothing left to lose.

Chris Mounsey
Leader-Libertarian Party (UK)

Libertarian Party website.
Devil's Kitchen blog.

Fascist State-The Bitch Is Back

Here is the story about the Dutch MP being banned from the UK, taken from the BBC website:

A Dutch MP who called the Koran a "fascist book" has boarded a flight to the UK despite being banned on public security grounds.

Freedom Party MP Geert Wilders was invited to show his controversial film - which links the Islamic holy book to terrorism - in the UK's House of Lords.

But Mr Wilders, who faces trial in his own country for inciting hatred, has been denied entry by the Home Office.

UKIP peer Lord Pearson invited him to show the film.

This man has been found guilty of nothing. He is critical of Islam. If European Union laws forbid us from stopping plumbers coming here from Poland from where does the Home Secretary get the power to ban a democratically elected MP from entering the country?

Conversely the ban seems to justify Wilders attacks on Islam. If a critic of a religion is banned for fear of the reaction from its adherents, then doesn't that prove that particular religion to be exactly what the critic says?

Perhaps our fascist Home Secretary is really trying to take attention away from her expenses fiddle.

Gaunt Sacked

I've blogged before about my views on Jon Gaunt. In a nutshell I think he's just a big gobby nitwit with little to offer, however, that does not mean I want him sacking, just that I don't like him.

In yet another erosion of free speech Gaunt has now been sacked by TalkSport. His crime? Calling a Nazi councillor from Rebridge a Nazi for supporting a ban on smokers fostering children.

Jon Gaunt And Health And Safety Nazis

I'm no great fan of Jon Gaunt and didn't listen to the show that got him suspended from TalkSport Radio, but on what I have read he has my sympathy on this one.

The PC brigade throw the word "Nazi" at anybody who they disagree with, whether they do show sympathies towards the National Socialist German Workers' Party or not. Why such uproar when one of the PC brigade gets it thrown back at them? Let's face it, the word Nazi means bugger all these days it is so overused by most of us.

I wonder if Gaunt, and last week Clarkson, would have copped so much stick if Brand and Woss hadn't been such plonkers. I fear now that any group who dislike a particular broadcaster will be able to organise themselves, fired up with righteous indignation, to make enough complaints to the authorities that the wimps in charge will suspend or fire said broadcaster.

RIP free speech.

What Price Freedom?

An interesting week in La Belle France is drawing to a close, well it can`t be bad when you can still get a five course lunch for two with a litre of vin rouge for 22 Euro things. We are now in Normandy before floating back to Blighty tomorrow, due back in good time for a Sunday roast.

Yesterday we visited the Bayeux Tapestry Museum, where I had to buy what looks a promising book on England`s five year resistance to the Norman occupation. We then visited Omaha and Juno Beaches, where the heroes of D Day landed to restore freedom to Europe with incredible bravery and sacrifice. Many thanks to Phil and Edwin for letting us know the result of the Irish referendum, just as we were looking at the remains of a Mulberry Harbour on Juno Beach, quite apt really. Thank you to the voters of Ireland, but prepare for the introduction of the major elements of the Lisbon Treaty anyway, by some devious mechanism or other.

I must also salute the bravery of David Davies for resigning his seat in protest at the erosion of our liberties, it`s a shame a few more politicians don`t have as much principle. What is annoying about the current erosion of our freedoms is the number of self-declared 'libertarians' who consistently vote for erosion of freedom. To hide behind 'voting the way my constituents wanted', as many of them do, demonstrates a serious lack of backbone and moral fibre. So if your constituents wanted the slaughtering of the first born in every household, would you vote for it? Thought not!

One thing to learn from this is that it is now quite trendy to label yourself 'libertarian', so we must be getting the message across. The other lesson is that it is quite easy to spot a charlatan masqerading as a libertarian, when it suits him.