Labour Party Scum

25 years ago the IRA blew up the Grand Hotel in Brighton, where the Tories were holding their annual conference. It was the first Tory conference in a few years that I hadn't attended but I had friends there, some actually in the hotel but none of them died thankfully.

The Labour Party have proved how thoroughly vile they are, despite their 'New Labour' makeover, by inviting Martin McGuiness to their conference, in Brighton this year. Overly polite people may call that insensitive, I think it is far worse and more sinister. McGuiness is totally unrepentant, he and his ilk have got away with murder and are rubbing our noses in it.

Remember too, that it was Labour MPS who, in the '80s and '90s consistently voted against the relatively mild anti-terror legislation of the day, when the IRA were committing atrocities here on a far more regular basis than Al Qaeda. Yet they are the ones now turning the UK into a huge prison island.

I've always believed that Labour, and socialists in general were scum, little has changed.

Daily Mail Report

Gordon Brown Speech-Sit Down by James

I was shocked to see some bloggers claiming that Gordon Brown came onto the platform today to "Sit Down" by Manchester band James.

Last year Big Gordy did the same thing at their conference in Manchester, and got this verbal volley from lead singer Tim Booth.

Is Big Gordy even more stupid than we thought? Or are some bloggers not quite as smart as they think?

TUC-Trade Union Censorship

It seems that the dinosaurs of the trade union movement are still roaming parts of the earth, trying to tell you and me who we should be allowed to listen to on BBC Question Time.

Yes you've guessed it, Gerry Morrissey, of the TV technicians' union Bectu is urging his members to boycott and pull the plug on the BNP leader Nick Griffin's appearance on the current affairs show on 22 October.

General secretary Gerry Morrissey said: "We believe there should be no media coverage of the BNP and I have raised this issue with the director general, Mark Thompson.

"He said they have been invited on to the programme because they have won elections, but we strongly disagree.

"We will be arranging a demonstration and lobby outside the Question Time studios and we will be working with anti-fascist groups to ensure there is a significant turn out."

We all know that those 'anti-fascist groups' largely consist of people just as bad, thoroughly unpleasant and anti-freedom and democracy as the BNP. We need no pious lectures from those idiots about democracy, disagree with them and you're more than likely to get a brick in your face. Two sides of the same coin in my opinion.

When I don't vote BNP I want it to be because I have heard the arguments and used reason. I don't want to not vote BNP because some fascist/anti-fascist trade union zombie has had a word in the shell-like of Mark Thompson, and put another nail in the coffin of free speech and liberty.

Chilling Police Tactics at G20

More available at G20 Media

For a long time I have feared for the future of free speech and am still shocked at the lack of public outry when the tactics of the police state are deployed, be it here or in the USA.

Whether we agree with a group of people or not, we should allow them to demonstrate peacefully without being attacked by paramilitary police. That, surely, is the essence of democracy. When people resort to violence, be it state violence or groups attacking political opponents, it is because they have lost the argument.

When the state increasingly resorts to violence and oppressive legislation, we have a duty to fight back.

Confidentiality Trumps Transparency-Minette Marrin

Occasionally a writer sees a nail and hits it, full thwack on the head, Minette Marrin did it with this article in the Sunday Times:

The curious case of the dinner lady of Great Tey stands for everything that is worst about government in this country today. It demonstrates, in its small way, the disastrous rule of muddled dishonesty to which we are now subject, and how far-reaching are the consequences of the perversion of language we have seen for many years in all government agencies.

The Great Tey story has aroused a frenzy of indignation, understandably enough. Imagine that you as a parent were to discover at an after-school club that your seven-year-old daughter has been horribly bullied at school. Imagine that you find out about it only by accident, because a woman volunteer at the club, who is also a school dinner lady, happens to ask you how the child is feeling, on the assumption that you, the parents, know all about the incident.

Imagine that until that moment you had no idea anything serious had happened. The school has simply informed you of a “skipping rope accident”, and your daughter has said little, but the dinner lady now tells you your child was tied to a fence and whipped by older boys: she saw it herself, and went to the little girl’s rescue.

Then imagine that soon the friendly dinner lady is suspended from her job for breach of pupil confidentiality, and finally, at the age of 60, she is sacked. The school and its governors, including the local vicar, are silent. They merely hide behind repetitions of the word “confidentiality”.

If such a thing happened to my child and to the dinner lady who came to her rescue, I would be tempted to tie up the headmistress and the vicar myself and whip them senseless with a copy of Ofsted’s Safeguarding Children review 2008.

However, it is possible that this is not quite what happened in Great Tey, Essex. Such stories are not usually as simple as reports make them seem and small villages are often cesspits of intrigue. However, the school and its governors do not deny the dinner lady’s allegations. The fact that they haven’t is telling. If her story is untrue, the school would have had absolutely nothing to lose by saying so. In doing so it would have done much to reassure the parents and other children, instead of leaving the community in a limbo of demoralising gossip.

For years Labour has been promising us a new order of openness, transparency, accountability, consultation, empowerment and inclusion. But what do we get, in this case and countless others like it? The precise opposite. Transparency, accountability, consultation and empowerment do not exactly square, policywise, with shooting the messenger, as here.

The awful joke is that in the case of Great Tey all this is being justified by another big word — confidentiality. Yet this too has been turned into a weasel word — a word that has been almost drained of meaning. This government has neither the slightest interest in — nor perhaps the slightest understanding of — confidentiality.

How otherwise could it have imposed the astonishing children’s database, logging countless intimate details and anecdotes about every child onto sites where thousands of people can access them legally and countless others can hack into them? How otherwise could it seriously propose to have a unified NHS information base, with exactly the same grave threats to confidentiality? How else could it force innocent people to leave their DNA profiles on a police database without redress? How else could it have turned us into the most watched society in Europe? Confidentiality is something that Labour has been relentlessly destroying, ever since it came to power, in the interest of ever-greater control.

Yet in Great Tey, when a state-run school faces serious allegations that cry out for transparency and accountability, confidentiality suddenly becomes trumps. (The public may demand to know what happened to all the anti-bullying guidelines and the Keeping Children Safe recommendations that bureaucrats have been so busily imposing on all schools, but too bad.) The head teacher can, apparently, use “confidentiality” to keep things dark.

There is a great deal to be said in favour of confidentiality, of course, particularly where young children are concerned. But here it seems to apply in an odd way. According to the school, the dinner lady broke her duty of pupil confidentiality. Presumably this means she shouldn’t have talked about the bullying out of school. Rather than talk to the child’s own parents, as a teaching union trusty explained on BBC Radio 4, she should have followed proper procedures. That is daft, inhuman and unrealistic: real life in a real, close-knit community of responsible adults isn’t and can’t be and shouldn’t be like that.

In any case, there is no overriding principle in law that whatever happens in school must stay in school. Other principles may apply, such as the principle of public interest, or a duty of care. As for relying on “proper procedures”, it seems that the dinner lady may have had good reason to fear they were already being ignored by the school, in an attempt to cover up the whipping.

Leaving aside any question of the law, it is obvious that cases like this should be sorted out locally and openly, without excluding the proper interest of the wider community. If Carol Hill, a dinner lady of many years’ service, was excessively interfering or indiscreet, a reprimand would have been more than enough and would have been a great deal harsher than the punishment many incompetent teachers receive. It’s odd that it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to sack a useless teacher for good reason, yet it is easy to sack a good dinner lady for reasons most people would question.

That’s what is striking about this case. It seems daft to most people, as do many other gross inconsistencies and follies in the public sector. Think of the political survival of Baroness Scotland. And that’s because all public services and government agencies are now firmly in the grip of a mindset in which words mean what new Labour at the time chooses them to mean.

Befuddled by jargon, frightened by diktats, vaguely aware of a requirement to square circles and believe several impossible things at once, overburdened by unachievable targets — put an end to bullying in schools but never exclude bullies, for example — public servants are losing their common sense, in a toxic combination of fear and folly.

This corruption of sense leads directly to the desperate silliness of the case of the dinner lady of Great Tey, and to a much wider corruption as well.

I've long thought that 'confidentiality' has been used to counter openness and honesty, as Minette Marrin says, but could never put it as eloquently as Minette Marrin. Which is why she writes for The Times, and I blog.

Lady Mandy of Mandelson

So Lady Mandy declares himself happy to work for a Tory government. No surprise there, after all he is just a political prostitute.

What's more interesting is that he would probably be at home with the Tories, they are only New Labour Mk II after all, with Dave the new Tony.

Food for thought.

Penguin Cafe Orchestra

This is pure class. Had the joy of seeing the Penguin Cafe Orchestra live in Blackheath, London about 1993 or '94, certainly when Simon Jeffes was still alive:



Now don't you feel better for having listened to that?

Harriet Harman-Potty Old Slapper-The Stranglers

Here's one for the Bitchfinder General, determined to get old slags in positions of power regardless of how thick they are, yes Harriet Harperson:



Yes I've used it before, but I like it.

I like this one too, it's a true classic and I remember the girl I worked with at the Industrial Tribunal singing it while we worked, about '82 in Manchester. God, what was her name?

Magic Mushrooms

This is a perfectly legal activity, unlike making soup with magic mushrooms. Try it:



Good isn't it?

Got it from Stephen Fry on Twitter That's not name dropping, 771 000 other people follow him on Twitter too.

Nanny State

This story, from The Times, shows what happens when a democracy is being dismantled. Wherever the overly powerful state sees people using their own initiative and commonsense, it intervenes and destroys:

Two women who work part-time for the same company have been told that they cannot care for each other’s child unless they register as childminders and undergo Ofsted inspections.

The women, who wish to remain anonymous, gave birth to girls at similar times. They set up a job share, with both working half a week in the same post. They are also close friends, so when one was at work the other cared for both children.

Ofsted, however, has put an end to the arrangement. It said that, according to legislation, caring for another person’s child “for reward” was classed as childminding. This means that both mothers will have to register with Ofsted and follow the same regulations as normal childminders. The financial “reward” they receive is free care for their daughters.

A protest petition on the Downing Street website had gathered almost 1,700 signatures by last night. The Open Eye group, which campaigns for fewer restrictions on childminders, wants the meaning of “reward” to be changed to money or gifts. Kim Simpson, one of the campaigners, said: “Something akin to a kind of anxiety-driven psychosis seems to have engulfed government policymaking in the realms of children and family life.”

Ofsted said: “The law sets out that childminding requires registration where a person cares for one or more children for reward, and at least one child attends for more than two hours in any one day.”

The Government indicated last night that Ofsted could be made to withdraw its opposition to the women’s childcare arrangements.

Vernon Coaker, the Children’s Minister, said: “We need to be sure that the legislation does not penalise hard-working families. My department is discussing with Ofsted the interpretation of the word ‘reward’.”

Signs You're Getting Old

Enjoying a pleasant glass of red before getting an early night (on a Friday!) to watch a Wallander, Mrs B and I were ruminating on how our lifestyle had changed since plighting the troth in '88. Below is our little list of ageing signs:

1-We used to go to the pub, then a club, then go for a curry. Then we dropped the club and went straight from pub to curry house. Now we have wine in the house and have a curry delivered.

2-Bed was for sex and sleep. Now we get an early night to watch a bit of telly before kipping.

3-You start sharing a portion of fish and chips.

4-When you're out for the day you're more likely to pop into a cafe for a brew than a pub for a pint.

5-The Sex Pistols make you all misty eyed and nostalgic.

6-You no longer have road rage, but your cautious driving causes it in others. (That's Mrs B I think).

7-When you go to see your favourite band the drummer has to be helped off the stage by a couple of roadies.

8-You take a photo at above concert and when developed (another sign of age) there is a sea of bald heads between you and the stage.

9-Rather than getting angered by prats, pillocks and arseholes you just think "life's too short", probably because it actually is!

10-People start exclaiming "God, you were alive when England won the World Cup?!"

11-You remember when Tetley were more famous for beer than tea bags.

12-You keep referring to last year as 1998 or even 1988. That one's a bit worrying actually.

13-Referring to friends other halves as 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend' sounds absurd, verging on kinky.

Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera (Quiet Sun)

Carry On Colonel

The more I see of Gaddafi the more convinced I am that the man is just on one long piss take. It's like he's playing out Carry on Colonel on the world stage.

This week his interpreter passed out during an epic speech to the UN crying: "I can't take any more". Priceless. Aparently Gaddafi had brought the interpreter from Tripoli, rather than using a UN interpreter. I bet they planned it to give us all a giggle.

But it has to be Gaddafi's uniforms, hairstyle and Village Peoplemoustaches and general image that take the biscuit. What kind of fevered sexual imagination does he have when you see his female bodyguards and their 'uniforms'? Here they are in Kiev:



I almost expected Syd James to pop up at one point, with a quick phworr and a comment about her lovely pair of epaulettes.

Then you look at dreary old Gordon Brown.

Home Office: Independent Safeguarding Authority

The Independent Safeguarding Authority is the government's latest tool in its imposition of a police state. It was set up in response to the Bichard inquiry into the Soham murders which means that the gullible will fall for it assuming it will protect children. It won't, but will further increase the surveillance/database state that is slowly imprisoning us.

To put it into some context here is an article in The Times by Chris Stevenson, a senior detective in the Soham investigation. He has a sense of perspective on the current paranoia that those of us fortunate enough to have never seen the things that he had to see, could learn a great deal from. Especially the 'nothing to hide nothing to fear' brigade.

It means that anybody wanting to work or volunteer with vulnerable people, children or adults, will have to be registered with the ISA as well as having a police check. Here is how the ISA website describes it:

The new Vetting and Barring Scheme will operate under the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 and under Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups (Northern Ireland) Order 2007 in its application to Northern Ireland. It will replace the current List 99, PoCA, PoVA, POCVA, Unsuitable Persons and Disqualification Orders regimes.

Once the scheme is fully rolled out (there will be a phased introduction), it will be illegal to hire in regulated activity someone, who is not registered with the ISA. The new scheme will cover employees and volunteers in for example the education, care and health sectors who come into contact with children or vulnerable adults on a frequent or intensive basis and, when fully implemented, will affect some 11.3 million people.

This document is particularly worth looking at:

Guidance Notes for the Barring Decision Making Process

Even an acquittal in court can be ignored if the ISA decide they don't like the cut of your jib:

5.6. Acquittals

5.6.1.

There could be any number of reasons why a person charged with an offence is acquitted: perhaps the victim decided not to testify and the CPS (Public Prosecution Service (PPS) in Northern Ireland) had to withdraw the case; perhaps the acquittal was based on a technicality; and even where a jury has found someone not guilty of having done something, you must always remember that, at most, this means is that the court did not find that someone did something “beyond a reasonable doubt” (the criminal standard of proof). The test applied by the ISA in relation to barring considerations is ‘on the balance of probability’ (the civil standard of proof). Therefore, even if there has been an acquittal, the ISA must still consider the case for itself on the basis of the balance of probabilities. A barring decision can, therefore, be made, having regard to all the circumstances, if the ISA is satisfied that the events concerned happened, on the balance of probabilities, notwithstanding an acquittal at court. This could become even more relevant where the substance of the offence or the attendant circumstances give cause for concern.

There is also a facility for people to report others to the ISA if they think they may be 'a bit dodgy' and it will be investigated.

The problem is that under the scheme almost everybody is classed as 'vulnerable'.

Under the scheme anybody not registered with the ISA will not be allowed to even apply to work with 'vulnerable people'. That means doctors, nurses, youth workers, social workers, charity workers etc., etc.

Even if a school has organised an exchange visit, the school will have to ensure that at least one parent hosting a foreign pupil is registered with the ISA.

I suggest, if you value your freedom, or what's left of it, you support No2ID.

No2ID is an excellent campaign but there is also a political party fighting to restore our freedoms, the Libertarian Party.

Chris Davies MEP: Another Lib Dem Fraud

What a giggle yesterday hearing an MEP in a rage about politicians' expenses. Yes that's right, a Member of The European Parliament ranting, from the biggest gravy train in the world, about a few MEPs buying gear on expenses, allegedly. What a prat! So that you too can have a laugh at this conman here it is:



But bear in mind this is a man who will have received over £2m in expenses, sorry 'allowances' as if changing the word makes a difference, during his time as an MEP, on top of his salary. It makes me laugh when MEPs look all hurt and say: "No, not us, we receive allowances not expenses". Tell you what then chaps, try robbing a bank and in your defence state: "I wasn't robbing it your honour, it was merely an unauthorised loan". It's all playing with words.

Chris Davies is fond of these false outbursts of righteous indignation, known to people outside politics as stinking hypocrisy. If the expenses scandal had just broken as he was about to make his speech then fair enough, rage, which is spontaneous. But why didn't he expose it before the EU elections in June? Because he was protecting his tribe of politicos, first and foremost, against our tribe, the electorate.

It wasn't spontaneous, it is a smokescren,I can imagine this little toad spending the night before his speech in front of some pimply researcher asking: "Are my nostrils inflamed enough when I shout bastards?" Little researcher responding: "Fine Mr Davies, but could you make your neck bulge a little more?" He was play acting, if he'd been in that kind of rage all these months his heart would have conked out by now, or he'd be in a straightjacket, where he actually does belong.

Bear in mind this was the media whore who intentionally got himself arrested in Stockport by walking into a police station with a tiny piece of cannabis to publicise himself. The man is a misfit.

Also remember this is the man who resigned as leader of the Lib Dems in the EU Parliament prompting this article including the following:

A reader of Jewish News sent him an angry e-mail criticising him for a remark that he made a couple of weeks ago (the whole correspondence is available here) in which he said that after a visit to Auschwitz, he found it difficult to understand why "those whose history is one of such terrible oppression", ie Jews, "appear not to care that they have themselves become oppressors". She criticized him for comparing current Israeli policy to the Holocaust. He replied with a one-line e-mail: "Sounds like racism to me. I hope you enjoying wallowing in your own filth."

The man is a complete lunatic and we should thank the Lib Dems for one thing, safely keeping him out of our way in Brussels. The time to worry is if the loony ever gets to become a commissioner, now they have real power.

The British Aristocracy and the Liberal Democrats. Oh yes, and Mandelson

The fact that the leader of the Liberal Democrats thinks Baroness Scotland should not resign, and at least part of his reasoning is because she is black, shows what a total irreleveance and illiberal shower the so-called Liberal Democrats really are. Racism is using a person's colour to treat them differently to people of another colour. The Lib Dem leader is a racist.

Not only is Ms Scotland senior law officer but she played a key part in framing the ludicrous legislation that is so barely workable that even she came a cropper through it. The fact that Clegg is so patronising in his defence of her shows exactly why the Lib Dems can never be trusted anywhere near the reigns of power.

It also indicates a far deeper malais than patronising faux liberals and traditional wreckers in the Labour Party. This government is now infested with the unelected. Brown's pals, appointed to the upper house, now literally lord it over you and me. And to think we have sent troops to fight and die in Iraq and Afghanistan to enforce democracy while at home the British government is returning us to a 21st century form of feudal serfdom. To top it all the Saxe Coburg Gothas sit atop the pile, watching our freedoms and liberties being destroyed while swanning around playing out some kind of scene from the 18th century as royals there by divine right. How bizarre after 12 years of New Labour arch modernisers, supposedly.

So on to Lady Mandy of Mandelson, 'Lord President of the Council, First Secretary of State, and Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills', the kind of title you would expect Peter Sellars to have bore in a film about some imaginary European despotism. But no, it's real, and if you doubt that the title gives Lady Mandy power, remember that he sits on 35 out of 43 cabinet committees, more than any other minister in Brown's government including the Chancellor and Home Secretary. He also has 11 ministers 'under him' (nudge, nudge, wink, wink), which is also more than any other cabinet member.

Including Lady Mandy there are 20 unelected members of Brown's government. So we have 646 elected MPs of which 349 are Labour, but Brown can't find, within their swollen ranks, enough people to man a government. I would suggest we could abolish the unelected House of Lords, reduce the number of MPs and still, with a proper system in place, have more than enough talent to run the whole shebang. Especially when swollen government and the bloated bureaucracy are shrunk to the size that the whole civil service can hold their Christmas party in Whitehall's Banqueting House, from where King Charles I was led out to his execution incidentally.

The unelected aristos riding roughshod over our democracy include the likes of Glenys (Mrs Kinnock), Alan (the crap computer fella) and such as Lord Adonis, Lord Drayson, Lord Carter, Lord Davies etc., etc. What an array of talent!

If you feel sympathetic you might like to visit this website: Republic

Piers Merchant

I've just arrived home from a dinner at Lancashire County Cricket Club to be told of the sad death of Piers Merchant.

I first met Piers in the '90s when he was MP for Beckenham and I was Deputy Director of Bromley Centre for Voluntary Service. I used to escort him around various charity events in his constituency, given the task largely because of my political sympathies I think.

Our paths crossed again in 2004 when he joined UKIP and stood in the North East in the EU elections and I stood in the North West. While working for UKIP I lobbied hard for Piers to be appointed General Secretary but to no avail, I'm not sure he ever ever actually wanted the job.

When I left UKIP last year I spoke regularly with Piers and greatly valued his wisdom and honesty at a very difficult time. He was honest, politically astute, a gentleman and a character. We never actually spent a great deal of time in each other's company, but it felt that way he was so easy to get along with and such good company when you did spend time with him.

He will be greatly missed, and my thoughts and prayers are with his family.

Vile Racism!

On the radio today I heard that a footballer is to be interviewed by police for allegedly making racist remarks to a ballboy at Goodison Park, home of Everton FC, yesterday. My immediate reaction was to wonder why, yet again, soft Everton fans have gone complaining to the police about something. They do seem to have a habit of it.

My feeling is that football should be a man's game, if you are so soft that you can't take a bit of verbal then don't go. Banter is part of the game and letting off steam after a hard week at work is one of the pluses of watching football. Of course Everton being a Liverpool club they probably don't have the pressure of work, but that's another thing.

Let's face it fans give players the most vile abuse at times so, when a player has had enough, let him have a go back and don't go whining about it. I was at Selhurst Park when Eric Cantona did his famous act of retribution. Instead of being rewarded the mardy lardheads at the FA banned him. Outrageous miscarriage of justice that one.

So what was this vile act of racism that so distraught the little Scouse ballboy? Apparently Blackburn's El Hadji Diouf is alleged to have said: "Fuck off white boy!"

Now my reaction would have been to reply: "Fuck off yourself you prick", or something similar. I would have then got on with the rest of my life. But then again Scousers do lack a sense of proportion, as the nation sees whenever a Scouser gets a cold and the whole place goes into grieving mode.

It's nice to know that Scouse plod has no real work to do though. Perhaps Scousers have collectively gone into a state of shock at this evil remark to such an extent that they can't even bring themselves to nick cars, stab any grannies or sell cocaine from an ice cream van any more, but I doubt it.

I've said it before and will say it again, bloody grow up!

Fighting Politicians

Now if our politicians showed this kind of passion, they might, just might, garner a little respect from the electorate.



In fact it would be a much better way of settling international disputes. Blair could have saved thousands of lives by just contacting Sadam Hussein and asking him to send his 50 hardest politicians to, let's say Geneva. Blair sends his hardest 50 and they settle it that way. Don't tell me that is less civilised than British squaddies having to give their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The only problem we would have is finding 50 politicians with any bottle. You wouldn't immediately think "oh, I'll send Lady Mandy of Mandelson" would you? On second thoughts.....

Manchester United-Michael Owen-Heaven!

Not bad for a free transfer:



Oh to have been back in Manchester last night. That would have been some party.

It's on my other blog too: This Sporting Life