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Secret Service job applications

As I pointed out yesterday, if under the new regime you fancy life as secret squirrel, you are not really supposed to tell anyone that you had applied for a job. Frankly applying to be Head of the Mauritius Station on this blog is generally felt by those in that particular line of business to be not really secret enough. Therefore rather than simply provide a downloadable application form; our new clandestine service selection criteria will be a little more subtle. Think of it less of a normal interview process & more as Rowan Atkinson once described it, like a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat … that isn’t there.

It goes without saying that despite being an equal opportunities employer secretive types will be preferred; previous experience with raincoats & sunglasses would be an advantage but not essential. Applicants must be able to keep secrets but at the same time be able to lie like a cheap NAAFI watch if caught in the act (& in view of this requirement, preference will be shown to married men). The job specification will include being seduced by glamorous foreign operatives (seeking our state secrets). These advances must be occasionally spurned for the sake of appearances.

Results of all job applications will remain subject to the provisions of the Official Secrets Act until the new Government has actually discovered the identity of M.

A generous remuneration package is offered together with index linked pension - the details are however secret, so cannot be released until after applicants join the service.

Salaries will be paid into secret bank accounts at secret intervals in unspecified countries under assumed names from a secret slush fund, that the Government does not know exists Successful applicants are expected to find out for themselves where and when, and how much they will earn.

As a preliminary test, applicants are invited to help solve the coded text of a postcard received from the as yet unidentified M and inform the appropriate Minister (who cannot be named) of his real identity and whereabouts at this time. Postcard displays voluptuous thong clad blonde sitting on the beach (obviously intended to mislead). The text on back reads Putting the slush fund to good use finding suitable candidates for under-covers activities, glad you're not here, cheers, M & is postmarked Antigua

Similar cards have been received from Rio, Monaco, Tonga, Gold Coast, & Thailand. The text is obviously a code for some important information, but the code is secret & the code books, whose existence is secret, are hidden in a secret place. The Government will be highly grateful if anyone can shed light on this matter, solve the code and let us know just what M is doing.

Unfortunately we cannot give a PO box number to which applicants can write, as this is secret, & we're not really sure which number it is ourselves, or who is handling the applications. Under no circumstances must the contents of this post be made public by applicants. Please also keep your application secret by writing in an unidentified code & not mentioning which job you are not applying for & why not.

We cannot reply to ridiculous questions such as did I get in or not?, who is that chap in the raincoat standing outside my house all day? or why did you accept me when I didn't even apply in the first place? We have only one response to all such questions ... not telling.

Footnote: This post has been digitally remastered from something that I posted in 2004 that in turn started life on the Rhodesian Government in Exile website

Jobs for the boys ( & girls)

We recently touched upon how you could help, come The Glorious Day & frankly I have to say that I was quite overwhelmed the many generous offers assistance. However this morning I would like to move on from that & assume that the shallow graves have been filled & the crows have picked the bones of the liberals that still hang from the lampposts, clean.

The task that would then sit ahead of us would be how to divi up the loot as well as who wants what job. Contrary to a lot of recent media speculation, I wouldn’t want the post of Benevolent Dictator as it frankly sounds like far too much hard work & I would hope that in a saner world to devote much more time to general carousing activities. Therefore I would seek immediate appointment as Minister of Uniforms on the basis that I hold very sound views on both the proper use of epaulettes, exactly how many medals should be awarded & how often

Jobs in the newly formed Secret Service are highly confidential (but we will deal with the secret selection criteria tomorrow) & in a piece of audacious pre-emptive commenting yesterday morning, Col. Beausaber blagged himself the post of Chief Inspector of Brothels.

Other than that, everything else is up for grabs … so which job do you want?

Government Spending

Paxo & Mr Rascal

Your country will need you

In overnight traffic, Kim made the follow more than generous offer

Mr. FM, as a furriner I would feel it not my place to participate in the Glorious Day's festivities, but I would be happy to perform what some may call "menial" services (oiling the rope, holding your coat etc) while the executions take place. I also know how to reload, very quickly, a Bren gun's magazine, if that would be of any assistance...

Come The Glorious Day, how will you help?

1 Corinthians 9:22

To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I became all things to all men, that I might save all.

This seasons ‘look’

Recently nominated for a lifetime award for his reinterpretation of Italian ice cream vendor chic

North African potentate Colonel ‘Jazzy’ G surpassed himself yesterday, with this seasons Dark Continent leisure & combat shirt.

Although it doesn’t really show up in this photo, the green blobs on the garment in question are in fact depictions of the continent in question – the whole ensemble providing a truly African & Islamic in a sort of a secular single ruling party alternative to Western capitalist disruptive pattern materials

Slaves & bankers

Bl**dy bankers bonuses – it’s not just that I am bored to the back teeth of hearing about them, it’s just that when the Westminster Village strays on to topics such as the blagging of vast sums of money for nothing, its not just that they are on incredibly thin ice but they talk such complete nonsense

High Street banks should be stopped from paying cash bonuses of more than £2,000, shadow chancellor George Osborne is expected to say. In a speech to the City, he is to say lending banks should be allowed to pay "significant" bonuses only in shares.

& what happens next? Unscrupulous traders depress their share price just before the vesting date on the share option scheme & then ramp it shortly afterwards ... because we have never seen that happen before have we dear readers. You might call me an old cynic but Tory Boy Cameron’s Nu Conservative policies seem to be increasingly less about conservatism & more about desperately trying to win as many votes as possible by jumping on every populist cause going. I wonder where he learnt that one. How is Princess Toni’s bid to become EU Emperor going?

Now while we are on the topic of populist causes, the wanabe Wilberforces are out again

The House of Lords is expected to vote later on proposed new laws for England and Wales to deal with what campaigners are calling modern-day slavery. Liberty and Anti-Slavery International say servitude and forced labour remain widespread, with some migrants being held against their will on low wages. They say prosecutions are difficult because of a lack of clear offences criminalising such practices

It’s not that I impervious to the plight of many migrants, legal or otherwise, if you are working legally in this country, there isn’t so much a raft of employment legislation that protects ‘workers rights’...these days it’s a bleeding aircraft carrier. If you are working illegally in this country, how about something along the lines of tough titty – why exactly to we need yet more laws to protect those who have already broken the law. Whatever next, paid maternity leave for illegal workers?

I did however quite like the money quote from Shami Chakrabarti at the end of the item

In an age when new criminal offences have flown out of Westminster like confetti, the lack of an effective anti-slavery law is a gaping hole in the protection of the vulnerable

of course what she should have simply said is

New criminal offences have flown out of Westminster like confetti

but down in these yerrrrr parrrrrts, we have increasingly taken to ignoring the sputum that emanates from the bowels of Westminster

How well can you speak English?

The fact that we simply don’t trust the Government with any information is a given – the main reason that they want it is a) to help them think up new taxes & b) for some pissed up civil servant to leave on a train. However, as a precursor to the tattooing of bar codes onto our forearms, its getting towards census time again...

Ministers are being accused of planning to snoop into citizens' private lives in the most intrusive national census ever carried out. The 2011 survey will demand to know how many bedrooms there are in homes and detailed information about any 'overnight visitors'.

The Conservatives said the attempt to find out sleeping arrangements was particularly objectionable

It does however present any rational whiskey drinking man with the opportunity to at least to contribute in a small way to the Ghost in the Machine. If some faceless Government department really needs to know who my overnight visitors are, I see no reason not to let them know how often Algernon Mouse stays. Incidentally, to the best of my knowledge, A. Mouse Esq continues to take his political duties very very seriously & regularly votes in one of the London constituencies.

Other night time visitors at Free Market Towers include Arthur Fox who dropped by the yard last week, Anna Barn-Owl who unsurprisingly lives in one of the barns, then there is Albert Rabbit & his very extended family who seem to have moved into the top paddock .

We must also not forget the comic opportunities presented by the section on language

It also asks: 'How well can you speak English?... very well, well, not well or not at all.'

& then there is of course much fun & frivolity to be had in the ‘race section’

The specimen census asks 'how would you describe your national identity?,' offering English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, British or 'other', with space to add further details. The section on ethnic groups has also been expanded from 2001, with separate categories for 'Gypsy or Irish Traveller' and 'Arab' for the first time.

Given that race etc are self defined I am considering simply stapling pages from the Holy Koran all over the form & sending the damn thing back together with the supplemental volume listing our overnight visitors, transient or otherwise together with a request that they get my gulag cell ready. Ceasar Augustus, eat your heart out !

Gordon Brown's downfall

Found by Richard here

Mind you, Tory Boy Cameron isn't much better

BNP 2

Just when I thought that we had done Nasty Nick Griffin to death (& mores the shame) but have a look:

Here

Here

Here

Here

Here

Here

... he goes & gets himself a slot on the BBCs Question Time (nothing like the Notting Hill luvvies chasing ratings eh dear readers). Now you could peruse slightly more mainstream coverage on Nothing British but for hopefully the last time, we will do the British National Party thing

Just for the record & for the avoidance of any doubt, I find our homegrown crypto-Nazis as risible & deep unpleasant (in equal amounts) as the other end of the political spectrum; indeed there is little if anything to separate pure fascist or communist ideology. However to return to my original point of months ago, the truly comedic thing about the BNP & their cheap ill fitting blazers is that as a far right wing political party with a pretty radical social agenda goes, they are really really crap. I mean if you are going to go to all the time & trouble of organising a neo-Fascist party, at least make sure that you get some of the good stuff that comes with that, namely great uniforms, Wagnerian torch lit rallies & dive bombers. Griffins rabble aren’t even worth any more bandwidth. That’s all I have to say on this topic. Period.

BNP 1

From reader NH

With reference to Peter Hain's recent comments concerning the legality of the BNP, I thought you might like to publish this snap of a certain Mr Peter Hain being dragged away by the Old Bill

As I recall, the organisation he was a member of went about it's 'peaceful' business by cutting the brake pipes on buses

As if we needed another reason

Since 1997 Nu Labour has trampled all over our ancient freedoms & institutions but when it suits their own self serving duplicitous purposes...

MPs are trying to block a police probe into their expenses. A group of Labour members is understood to have warned Scotland Yard that an inquiry could breach their right of parliamentary privilege. Senior Labour sources have revealed that some MPs have consulted lawyers on whether the ancient right could be used to shield their expenses from outside investigation.

After all of this time, the only rational conclusion is to slaughter their families’, burn their homes to the ground & plough salt into the gardens. Only then might our perfidious political class start to comprehend where the overwhelming majority of stout bulldogs stand in this issue ... at about the same moment as the well oiled rope is slipped around the neck & the stool is kicked away

The Nasty Nick News

I am delighted that the Courts have ruled in the case against the British National Party...

The BNP will be forced to admit black and Asian members after a legal victory for the Government's Equality and Human Rights Commission which will end the party's “white only” policy

The fight began earlier this year when the commission issued proceedings against the party, accusing it of breaching the Race Relations Act. Today Robin Allen QC, counsel for the commission, said party leader Nick Griffin had agreed to present his members with a revised constitution at its general meeting next month

This clears the way for your humble correspondent to sign up having been previously been turned down by Gaultier Griffin on the grounds of race. As some of you may know, one of the findings of the report by Sir William MacPherson of Cluny was that race is self defined & indeed, could change over time. Since then I have classified myself Afro-Tongan with just a whiff of Aztec if the month doesn’t have a Y in it. That & the fact that among other things I had to declare my Chairmanship & position as Grand Reefer of the South West Branch of the Hallie Selassie Society meant that previous attempts to join die Partei were rejected. But what with me being such a rotten racist (posts passim), maybe now our home grown crypto-fascists will be forced to have me as a Parteimitglied

Cameron continues to say sorry

A fat capitalist cigar for RB for this one & while we are on the topic, Gordski needs to pony up the £12,415 he shouldn't have claimed

Waste Part 2: Greedy MPs & pig swill

MPs have threatened to defy an official inquiry into the Commons expenses scandal led by Sir Thomas Legg by refusing “unfair” demands to repay questionable claims.

Independent auditors will on Monday write to up to 500 past and present MPs to highlight concern about their use of parliamentary allowances, before inviting them to refund the public purse. But in an astonishing act of defiance, a spokesman for the MPs complained that many would not accept orders to repay claims which were approved by the Commons fees office.

If you are going to get fined £1,000 for stuffing body parts of the environmental lobby into the wrong wheelie bin (see posts passim), there is absolutely no reason why you don’t go the full nine yards & also get fined for throwing the heads of rapaciously greedy MPs into the pig swill bucket.

The irony is that this second fine wouldn’t be for actually killing & feeding MPs to the pigs – a better fate than the Westminster Village pondlife deserve – in doing so, you would have broken DEFRA regulations because among so many other things, they have banned pig swill as well.

There are also those of you out there that would hold that feeding the body politic to the pigs could constitute an offense under animal welfare regulations, but as we know down in these yerrr parrrts, pigs will eat absolutely anything & it’s a very good way of getting rid of corpses. How we know this, we aren’t saying, even under caution

Waste - Part 1: Utter rubbish

Householders could be fined £1,000 if they throw food scraps and potato peelings into the dustbin under a Government 'zero waste' policy. They will be forced to sift through their rubbish for anything that can be recycled, reused, rotted or burnt for electricity. The crackdown will create so much recyclable material that homes could be given five wheelie bins and waste boxes to cope.

The controversial zero waste policy - part of the Government's drive to cut greenhouse gas emissions - will be unveiled tomorrow by Environment Minister Hilary Benn.

The only question in my mind is will the £1,000 fine still apply if I fail to properly recycle the freshly dismembered body parts of officious government ministers, pernicious local council members & the environmental einsatzgruppen?

Slaughter every last one of them without hesitation or remorse

Blowing smoke

From Gwelicus

This was sent to me by one of our Cousins, with the explanation that Obama was issuing them to Democrat Party workers for use on the American population. Personally, I reckon it could, and should, be called a 'Mandelson Pump', but hey.... I'm not smart enough to avoid prosecution AND get a peerage

Mind you, this evening I have been reading the latest polling of marginal constituencies which has been published this week. Whereas a normal opinion poll has a sample of approx 1,000 and then extrapolates national conclusions from that, this one is different. It focuses its fieldwork on the key marginal constituencies that will decide the election and has a much much larger sample size – some 33,000 this time round.

Given the amount of smoke that is blowing out of Manchester this week, it might fill me with many things, but enthusiasm isn't one of them

Julius and the Pope

The Pope and Julius Malema are on the same stage in front of a huge crowd. The Pope leans towards Julius and says, "Do you know that with one little wave of my hand I can make every person in this crowd go wild with joy? This joy will not be a momentary display, like that of your followers, but go deep into their hearts and they'll forever speak of this day and rejoice!"

Julius replied, "I seriously doubt that. With one little wave of your hand? Show me."

So the Pope slapped him.

There is nothing as dumb as a Tory

Just when the Conservative Party is starting to look electable after more than a decade, it implodes as internecine fighting breaks out again...

David Cameron was tonight struggling to prevent Tory in-fighting over Europe overshadowing his pre-election conference. The Tory leader's hopes of using the Manchester gathering to showcase his commitment to tackle unemployment were badly disrupted by a resurgence of bickering over the Lisbon treaty.

A proposal to use a cut in Employer National Insurance to create 60,000 new jobs was one of the flagship policies unveiled by shadow chancellor George Osborne. But it was overshadowed by a string of grandees and MPs who defied their leader by arguing publicly over whether there should be a referendum on the treaty if it is already law when the Tories next take power

Just remember, it was two Conservative Prime Ministers (Heath & Major) that signed us bulldogs up for some of the most damaging ‘Treaties’ – complete capitulation more bl**dy likely. Do I trust Tory Boy Cameron on Europe? I wouldn’t trust any one of them to sit the right way round on the lavatory seat

The return of My Little Toni

It’s a bit like Nightmare on Elm – Part 34... as soon as at home we have a reasonable prospect of getting rid of one Commie, another socialist scumbag reincarnates himself

Tony Blair could become the first President of Europe within weeks if the Irish vote in favour of the Lisbon Treaty, it has been suggested

Having got rid of Princess Toni once, he now turns up is the sequel, reincarnated, more menacing & with even more extra-judicial powers. I used to get really worked up about this sort of thing & rant about it endlessly, these days, I am rapidly approaching the point of no longer caring & just pulling the trigger

metaphorically of course!

More of the same

Brown promises referendum on scrapping first-past-the-post voting if Labour wins election ... & will that be like the referendum that Gordski was going to give on the Lisbon Treaty or is this just another Nu Labour lie

Why bankers will get bonuses this year

Comrade Brown's Top 10

In 2006, an eloquent Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer said that he was "ready to make the decisions for people and to work with other people to make this country the great country it is at all times." A year later he became Prime Minister, and the rest is history. Here is a list of Gordon's worst financial blunders, the screw-ups which have cost us all dearly and left economists, accountants and the rest of us scratching our heads in disbelief.

In May 1999 Gordon Brown had a plan to sell some gold. There were two problems with this, which concerned his economic advisers deeply. The price of gold had slumped after a decade of stagnation, but was likely to increase in the proceeding years. Added to this, the announcement of a major sell-off would drive the price down further. Little of this worried Gordon. Experts believe that the poorly timed decision to flog our national treasure has cost us all around £3 billion. Granted, that doesn't seem much nowadays, but more of that later.

3. Tripartite financial regulation

Even after he leaves office in 2010, as is almost certain, it seems that we will all be paying for Gordon's gaffes for many years to come.

Bankers & Lap Dancing

It cannot be an unusual evening at Stringfellows, the West End lap-dancing club, that finds an investment banker, drunk, sitting on his hands, beholding a half-naked woman gyrating before him with a wad of what were until recently his £20 notes festooning her garter belt and asking himself the pressing question of the day: “Do we bankers earn too much?”

It is difficult to pursue a line of rational thought under such circumstances. That is their purpose. Which is a shame, because the answer to the question of bankers’ pay can be found by a close examination of lap dancers — or, at least, of the way they are paid.

Liberal values

What Liberal leader Nick Clegg said in his keynote conference speech:

We will raise the income tax threshold to £10,000, funded by closing loopholes that the wealthy exploit. And by making sure polluters pay for the damage they cause.

But what it should win you is respect, not exemption from your tax bill.

And how does he behave in 'private'...

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader who has championed the reform of MPs’ expenses, claimed the maximum allowed under his parliamentary second home allowance ... as well as submitting regular claims for food, gardening, furniture and decorating at his constituency home in Sheffield Hallam, Mr Clegg put in his telephone costs, including several international calls to Colombia, Vietnam, and Spain.

The disclosure came as Mr Clegg made a series of high profile media appearances criticising the allowances system

Pot, kettle calling ... your a black b*stard

Lets just let them all in

Europe's Justice Commissioner will today demand a change in the law to allow 'Britain-obsessed' asylum seekers into the UK at their earliest convenience. Jacques Barrot, a former French minister, believes the reform would assist migrants who are sleeping rough in Calais, waiting for a chance to enter Britain.

As we well know, one government minster has already capitulated to this latest demand from Brussels

Baroness Scotland looks increasingly likely to lose her post as Attorney General amid signs that Gordon Brown is poised to carry out a Cabinet mini reshuffle. Solicitor General Vera Baird is being lined up to replace Lady Scotland, as concern grows that her employment of an illegal immigrant has made her position untenable. She is facing an official inquiry after the Mail revealed on Wednesday that her Tongan housekeeper Loloahi Tapui, 27, overstayed her student visa by five years.

An Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

By Ken Paxton, Texas State Representative, District 70

Dear Madame Speaker,

Since your party gained control of Congress and the White House, you and your colleagues have proposed federal policies that look like the policies that have recently been used to govern California. I understand you spend most of your time in the beltway, so let me help you become reacquainted with your home state.

The rest is here

The Race Card, Jimmy Carter & Colostomy Bags – Why the USA needs a House of Lords

The US House of Representatives has voted to rebuke Joe Wilson, the Republican lawmaker who heckled President Barack Obama during a speech. Mr Wilson shouted out "You lie" while Mr Obama was delivering an address on healthcare to a joint session of both houses of Congress last week.

The House resolution of disapproval described it as "a breach of decorum". Former President Jimmy Carter said the heckle was "based on racism", but Mr Wilson's son denied this was a factor. Mr Carter told a meeting at his presidential centre in Atlanta that there was "an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president".

Of course Jimmy is completely correct in this, his latest wild assertion – to have the very temerity to heckle a gentleman of colour isn’t a sign that you strongly disagree with their views – it is a sure fire sign that you are racist & probably Caucasian to boot which these days means are almost definitely institutionally racist.

However dear readers what depresses me about this isn’t that Mr Wilson saw fit to heckle his Obamaness with what were undoubtedly racial slurs, it is in fact the content of these slurs. If Mr Wilson’s political career is going to go any further, he really is going to have to improve the quality & content of his racially motivated abuse ... mention watermelons, Uncle Tom etc etc etc . I can’t help but think that in the old days, once Great Britain had a much better system for dealing with this sort of thing

Before My Little Tony set about the systematic destruction of our much loved institutions & traditions, we had a proper House of Lords which served the country well. The Upper House was the perfect place for what are euphemistically known as eldest statesmen to reside. There, in complete privacy, dribbling & increasingly incontinent senile old wrecks could spend their days muttering incoherently into their colostomy bags & everybody else could get on with completely ignoring them.

Isn’t it incumbent upon us to prevail upon our cousins on the left hand side of the pond to create such an institution? The likes old peanut ‘ead & may be Jesse Jackson can then be incarcerated there. They can spend their time passing motions to impeach Speaker Klansman in complete isolation thus freeing up valuable column inches in the political press for the much more weighty issues that really matter to the electorate ... such as salacious stories about Megan Fox & the like.

Unions

It’s a bit like France going to war with the Hun – if the truth be known, what we really want is for both sides to lose. In fact when confronted with such situations if the F&CO had a ounce of common sense which incidentally it does not, it would immediately adopt a sensible foreign policy & sell as many weapons to both opposing factions at the boarder for as long as the hard currency/gold bars/blood diamonds last. When both sides have slaughtered one & other into submission, simply turn off the lights & go for a damn fine gentleman’s lunch. Exactly the same is true of industrial relations in once Great Britain: having destroyed the eminently sensible employment law reforms of the Thatcher years, Comrade Brown is suddenly finding that his Union paymasters are starting to call in their markers...

Union members have backed calls for industrial action against any planned jobs cuts in the public services. Delegates at the TUC congress in Liverpool approved a motion opposing any redundancies in the public sector as a way of making savings. Officials earlier warned the government against "panic measures" to tackle high debt levels, saying moves to cut public spending would "deepen" the crisis

It looks as though the communists in the Union movement are starting to square up to the champagne socialists in Westminster

Unions say any reduction in levels of existing spending now would be disastrous and lengthen the recession

& once the ideological masturbation has finished, the strikes will start

A motion from public service union Unison, saying any cutback in spending would "damage" vital services and "ultimately impair economic recovery", was passed unanimously. It called on members to "support, co-ordinate and encourage joint union action, including industrial action, in pursuit of these objectives".

When confronted with striking civil servants, the country will continue to function & the industrial action should, with just a little bit of luck, highlight where cuts, deep cuts can be made in over staffed superfluous so called public services. So brothers & sisters – take to the streets & picket lines. Demonstrate just how surplus to requirements you all are.

A different view of America

... conceivably, within the first days of an armed revolt, numerous politicians, Obama hacks, federal judges, and media members would be killed. Although the president may order active-duty military forces to supplement local law enforcement, it is doubtful that more than 40% of the military would obey his order to shoot American citizens and most of the military’s trained “gun fighters” are otherwise engaged in overseas combat zones. Additionally, many law enforcement personnel would opt to focus on humanitarian aid for those Americans caught in the crossfire versus taking on a well-armed and determined citizenry. Likewise, Obama could expect little to no support from the governors, as federalizing National Guard troops would not be in a state government’s interest when the focus of the revolt is the federal government. Additionally, it is conceivable that media outlets would be seized to enable communications for those Americans in revolt and voice their demands for a general and unconditional surrender of all politicians — including the president. Undoubtedly, Obama would exacerbate the problem by requesting UN assistance in the form of foreign Soldiers when his own Soldiers refused to shoot Americans.

The rest is here ... & to think I sometimes worry about my view of the world!

& so we go one light in the Fenian terrorist loving liberal plastic Paddy department

Posterity will ne’er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Ted Kennedy
Stop traveller, and p*ss

Before I retire to the pub for the rest of the evening, I would just like to leave you with this one final thought on the al-Megrahi affair

Taken from Rod Liddle's column in The Spectator

The problem with this story is that it is difficult for ordinary people with an averagely developed moral sense to discern upon whom we should turn our guns first. I’ve been mulling this over for a while and decided it should probably be that third party, the Americans, for that familiar stench of hypocrisy now emanating from Washington DC. One by one, American politicians have lined up to condemn Britain for having released the man convicted of having blown up Pan Am Flight 103 in the skies above the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988. Some two thirds of the passengers were American citizens. The director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, called the decision to release the cancer-bedevilled al-Megrahi a ‘mockery of justice’. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama stuck the boot in too, calling the release ‘totally inappropriate’. Well sure, perhaps. But at least al-Megrahi was convicted and served a portion of his sentence. In the single year before the Lockerbie bombing the IRA murdered 20 people, mainly civilians, and maimed thousands of others — 11 dead and many more injured in one single atrocity in Enniskillen in November 1987. That campaign of terror, waged against British citizens for more than 30 years, was bankrolled by donations from the USA — and in those 30 years not a single terrorist was extradited from the US to face charges here, despite our repeated requests. Both federal and local US courts refused extradition requests almost as policy, while the funding of the IRA continued without interruption and was still raking in the money even after 9/11, when the Americans suddenly decided that they ought to start proscribing certain terrorist groups. The IRA was not, for some time, one of the groups so proscribed.

The truth is, Britain has been more successful in appealing to Libya to extradite alleged terrorists than it has been in appealing to our ally, that country with which we enjoy a ‘special relationship’. Not a single extradition granted in 30 years: we should remember that when the likes of Mueller is shouting his fat mouth off about mockeries of justice. We remember faux-Oirish US politicians giving succour to the Provos; we remember the imperviousness of every US regime, Democrat and Republican, to our pleas for justice. So see how you like it now.

& that's it. I am off to find The Englishman & immerse ourselves in pints of finest foaming

Nu Labour & the (Dis) Armed Forces

Found by Richard somewhere on the Torygraph website

As the father of a serving soldier I can tell you now, delivery of the new pikestaff has been seriously delayed along with the new longbow due to shortages of the right kind of wood from Scandinavia.

The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, last seen astride a fence somewhere in his constituency in Edinburgh, was thought to be considering sending Lord Mandelson to negotiate a settlement by ceding Cumbria and Northumbria to the Scottish Government. This would avoid widening the dispute as the Army was already stretched trying to defend the Welsh border.

I want the referendum that you promised in your election pledges ... NOW

Every household will have to pay £257 towards the EU next year after Labour signed away much of Britain's hard-won budget rebate. Official figures show that our share of the EU budget is to soar by almost 60 per cent to £6.4billion.

As usual, the bulk of the budget will go on aid to the EU's poorer countries and agricultural subsidies. This year Britain will pay £4.1billion net to the EU - £800million more than the £3.3billion forecast by the Treasury, By 2010-11 the net figure will be £6.4billion

We continue to plough billions of pounds into the simply enormous bureaucracy that year-on-year is unable to account for where are money is going. If you insist upon driving on the wrong side of the road or throwing goats off church towers, that’s absolutely fine, however quite why Family FM should have to subsidise it remains a complete mystery to me.

Firstly & as a precursor to our withdrawal from the EU, all payments to Brussels should be suspended until such time as properly audited accounts are filed, to the National Audit Office’s satisfaction. This year £4.1 billion will be sent to French framers & to build roads in Romania. I can’t but help think that those funds, in these difficult economic times, would be better spent at home

Lockerbie

When Alex Salmond stood alongside Hillary Clinton for a photo opportunity in Washington earlier this year, the beaming face of the Scottish National Party leader lit up the room. The First Minister said that the meeting heralded the start of what he hoped would be a “deepening friendship and partnership” between America and Scotland.

If Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi is taken from Greenock prison and flown back to Libya, it will mean not only that the case is effectively closed, but also that the relatives and friends of the US victims of the atrocity will be denied the closure that they have long demanded

Before we turn to Mr Al-Margaritas or whatever the hell his name is, I would like to rewind a few weeks to the case of some tosspot that was being released from Guantanamo Bay & returned to one Great Britain. If my increasingly addled memory serves my correctly, there was some sort of idiocy in the Courts about whether or not he could publish an account of his experiences. Before you could say seeking to influence the judicial process, that ghastly Clinton Doris was spouting off that the case could affect the relationships between UK & US agencies. This week, Clinton has been gobbing off again about a case that is currently going through the Scottish Courts, once again seeking to influence the outcome even though it has long been the case (ha ha) that ‘justice’ has had no place in the British legal system – replaced instead with Nu-Labour political correctness & the supremacy of convicted criminal’s so called rights.

Now before we go any further, my personal view is that Mr Al-Margaritas should die a long slow lingering death, preferably starving, in a cold wet darkened prison cell – that just my opinion & lets set it to one side & consider an alternative scenario

Firstly, we have to write David Twat Miliband out of the equation because he is a spineless whimp of the highest order & in a saner world, wouldn’t be trusted to run a bath, let alone this country’s so called foreign policy. However I just wonder what would happen if a most robust Foreign Secretary had on two occasions in two months had sought to influence judicial proceedings in the United States & issued threats if he or she didn’t get their way?

UPDATE: Events have moved on since I typed this up but my comments stand

£500,000,000

That's the cost of Parliament but not if MPs have their way

The cost of MPs' pay and pensions leapt again last year to almost £160million, official figures show. The total bill to taxpayers rose by just under £6million to £157.2million - the largest single outgoing in running both Houses of Parliament. MPs awarded themselves a below-inflation pay rise of 1.9 per cent, but the costs of their final salary pension scheme - one of the most generous in Britain - continued to spiral.

The figures, disclosed in a Parliamentary answer, came as it emerged a string of senior MPs have proposed a large pay rise in exchange for giving up some of their expenses allowances.

Our money, hard at work once again

Of holidays, slurry & exam results

It is currently a very busy time of year at FM Towers – out in the fields contractors are busy cutting the last of the corn. As soon has the last of the harvest is in, no doubt the local branch of the Young Famers will go back to that most ancient of autumnal pastimes – taking a slurry spreader for a trip down to the local council offices. Don’t laugh, it has happened more than once but I am really hoping that this year they make a small break tradition & use liquidified chicken sh1t instead. According to connoisseurs of such things, the aroma lingers just that all important little bit longer & in any case, I feel quite strongly that politicians, be they local or national, should know that we think that they stink. Literally.

The uncharacteristic peace that has reigned in FM Towers (at least during daylight hours) has been shattered by the return home of the tribe – Boy will no doubt spend the next few days shooting every rabbit in a half mile radius with his air rifle; Mrs FM has her work cut out cleaning the body parts that mysteriously seem to have become embedded in Disco Dave’s radiator grille while she was on the Continent.

Even though our political overlords are supposed to be somewhere else – probably someplace like the Italian Lakes all paid for on expenses while their gardens are tended by taxpayer funded gardeners - the exam results season will be upon us over the next few days. This means that the annual education policy hangbagging has already started. It probably is just me, but rather like the start of the dreaded soccer season, the exam results nonsense seems to start that little bit earlier each year.

You could call me a little bit of an old cynic but why do we waste all on this money on a public education system when it would appear that your average slack jawed soap dodging Scousers career aspirations extend no further than nicking BMW’s, claiming as much dole as possible as well as selling copies of the Big Issue, with nothing but a three legged dog for company. Even so, Michael Gove has stuck his head above the parapet & suggested that some A Levels are easier than others

Mr Gove warned that certain universities such as Cambridge, the London School of Economics and others had told prospective students that taking "softer" A-levels such as media studies and dance would count against them. He also said independent reports from the Royal Society of Chemistry and Sir Peter Williams, who carried out the government's maths review, showed there had been an overall fall in standards. "There is objective evidence from people who care about academic standards that they are not what they should be."

Cue vigorous frothing from the Guardianista cardres...

The government has dismissed the Tory proposals. A spokeswoman for the Department of Schools, Families and Children said: "We simply don't recognise the labels 'soft' or 'hard' A-levels - all subjects are rigorously measured against each other to maintain standards, overseen by Ofqual."

Of course a media studies A Level exam pass should carry the same weight as say physics & we could go on like this all day as Dept of Education platitude follows Dept of Education platitude. The bleeding obvious has never been more bleeding obvious you utter utter twats!

Gaddafi, Healthcare Reforms & Caravans

While your humble correspondent has been nanging around in the fields with one of his rifles there seems to have been much general phuquewittery going out in what I sarcastically refer to as the real world. I tend to regard weekends as little havens of peace & alcoholic tranquillity especially as the rest of my all out confrontational family are still in France probably scrapping with striking lorry drivers & generally driving on the left hand side of the road which as all stout bulldogs know, is as the good Lord intended when he invented the motor carriage

Whilst the thick end of 3 tonnes of Land Rover going head to head with Pierre in his funny little Peugeot would produce the sort of result that could get uber-twat & presenter of Cops With Speed Cameras Canine Unit 999 Paramedic Rescue Motorway Madness Massacre , Nick Ross tutting, the sort of confusion in the aforementioned Pierre’s mind, right before the engine block goes through it is nothing in comparison to how confused I am over the rehabilitation of Colonel Gaddafi by what is laughably known as the international community. So he had a couple of lil indiscretions... like raining an airliner onto the ginger haired ones. It the sort of small mistake that any genocidal manic could make & oh so easily overlooked when there are oil rights at stake

Its seems only a couple of cases of decent scotch ago that our cousins on the left hand side of the pond were lobbing bombs through the roof of his tent – doing irreparable damage to his kebab machine & incurring the wrath, in perpetuity, of the Camping & Caravanning community

Now the latter is a bunch of individuals to strike the fear of errrrrrr something into your whatsits. Their paramilitary wing not only utterly ruthless but they even have the common decency not to claim fist loads of state benefits unlike our own home grown Jihadists. It’s worth remembering that Abu Handsfree should really be known as Abu Handout given the amount that he has trousered from the very people that he is sworn to overthrow. But why blow up just one tube train & a bus when you can bring the entire road network to a standstill for the whole summer simply by pulling a few caravans at 25 mph?

Mind you, scoring even higher on the mirth-o-meter than the good Colonel, is the handbagging over healthcare reforms in the US. This I have to say has provided me with nearly as much amusement as the last lot of pikies that tried to camp out in the top paddock & got onto the receiving end of the jerrycan of unleaded/Englands Glory combo

The American political right has been busy slagging off the NHS (& not without good reason in my book) & suddenly the Blitz spirit is being wheeled out & cries of foul are emanating from all sides of the House. I could be missing something here – it wouldn’t be the first time – but is this the same NHS that has nurses that are too posh to wash, doctors that can’t speak the Queen’s English & Ebola like post-operative infection rates?

One Tory MEP is now being vilified because he has gone on the record & very publicly articulated the failings of the NHS: when did the bastard child of post WW2 socialists suddenly become a religion? At the moment you get off more lightly for wiping your arse on a copy of (inset the holy book of your choice here) than pointing out the NHS isn’t a public health service: it’s a rather inefficient taxpayer funded employment scheme that has failed only marginally less catastrophically than the UK’s public education system

Alan, my heart bleeds for you

Alan Duncan, the Conservative frontbencher, has been accused of hypocrisy after he was secretly filmed complaining about MPs' reduced standard of living following the expenses scandal

Having been caught with their fingers well & truly in the till, they all promised on cubs honour to try harder next time ... but clearly that isn’t what our political overlords really think...

Heydon Prowse, an activist, recorded [Alan] Duncan MP complaining: "No one who has done anything in the outside world, or is capable of doing such a thing, will ever come into this place [the House of Commons] ever again, the way we are going. Basically, it's being nationalised. You have to live on rations and are treated like sh1t.”

As unemployment tops nearly 3 million, I feel sure that £65,000 a year plus perks seems very very attractive to a lot of decent hardworking families right now. If Mr Duncan would like to pop down to Free Market Towers this weekend, can run through the arguments in question in a little more detail...

Traffic lights

Although not, this could be London especially when that uber-Commie Ken Livingstone was mayor & he deliberately had traffic lights programmed out of sequence because among so many other things, he hated private car ownership & he wanted to screw around with drivers. He wasn’t known as Red Ken for nothing: may he die slowly & in pain

Food & drink

Deep joy has once again arrived in the form of yet more Government spewtum – first up we learn that if we don’t all start farming in a more sustainable manner (whatever the hell that is supposed to be), climate change will mean that possible we, or certainly our children will starve to death. This is of course a complete & utter load of old cock because if the cost of food increases, so be it. If the poor can’t afford to eat cheap takeaways morn noon & every night, I am sure that it will help their cholesterol counts.

In fact normally I would just ignore such nonsense but I fear that there are much darker & corrosive forces at work here. Treated in isolation any sane & sensible individual would put this sort of tripe to the latest Westminster scheme to spunk away the taxpayers’ money on left of centre think tanks. However food has been much in the news over the last few days.

There was this...
Greater Manchester town has come up with a unique way of fighting back the recent spike in alcohol-related disorder. The council believes promotions such as 2-4-1s, drink as much as you can for £5.99, and free shots, have fuelled an atmosphere of violence. So it decided to review the licences of each of the 22 bars and clubs that sell cut-price drinks. They have been told that if they want to sell alcohol at less than 75p a unit - about £1.88 for a strong pint of lager - they will have to change the way they operate

& then in Tuesday’s edition of The Times...
Buy-one, get-one-free offers could be banished from supermarket shelves under a government plan to reduce Britain’s food waste mountain. Supermarket chiefs will be told instead to offer half-price deals and package food in a greater range of sizes to suit the single person’s fridge as well as the family’s. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is demanding that stores agree to a tough target on reducing food waste or face legislation that forces them to make savings

Start putting this all together & you have both local & central government working to restrict the supply of food & beverages or to use the old fashioned term for it ... rationing. & so we take yet another step towards a totalitarian state

Miliband

Half right there David. We certainly can't stand that one-eyed Scottish git, but on the other hand, we certainly don't want Blair back. The Nu Labour faithfull think to this day that my little Tony would be be welcomed back with open arms - again, half right there David. We would welcome him back with arms ... & volley fire

Six a song of sixpence

Sing a song of Parliament,
Pockets full of cash,
Fraudulently claiming
And adding to their stash;
With their ploy discovered
They said they'll give it back.
If you or I had done the same
We'd promptly get the sack.

Sing a song of freebies,
Snouts all in the trough.
Giving back their ill-got gains
Is just not good enough.
Sponging off our earnings
With a likely tale,
If working folk had done the same
They'd soon end up in jail.

Sing a song of MPs
Who took us for a ride.
It's up to us election time
Their future to decide.
It's gone too far
To bring back trust
Of anyone in power.
To most of us they'll always be
A shifty, crooked shower

Offensive badges

Armed cops patrolling Heathrow Airport have won their fight to wear Union Jack badges on their uniforms supporting British troops. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson today gave officers the go-head to wear the tiny emblems on body armour.

But around 70 armed cops from the CO18 Aviation Branch refused to remove the £1 badges — proceeds of which go to the Help the Heroes fund and British Legion.

Whist I have never seen it, both I suspect that the Met Police’s uniform policy says ‘no badges’ because it is called uniform & that is what it is supposed to be. However it’s a rule that isn’t enforced uniformly (& sorry about that pun). Every time there is the next Gay Pride march, there is a dust up about Peelers wearing pink ribbons. It would appear that VSOs don’t seem to have a problem with that one but they do when officers want to show their support for our Armed Forces. An interesting set of values, eh dear readers?

However, what I find completely unforgivable is that an Immigration Officer complained about cops wearing the Union flag on their kit.

Given that Family FM live in a more sensible part of country, we still have village stocks. At no cost to taxpayer, we will make them available so that said numpty can be incarcerated for free, plus I’ll supply rotting fruit & veg. What a twat. It’s no wonder that we are over run with illegal immigrants if this is the sort of person that the Immigration Service (gang of twats) employ

Taxpayer funded McJobs

A billion pounds is to be spent on creating tens of thousands of "soft" public sector jobs for unemployed people including dance assistants, tourism ambassadors and solar panel engineers ... The £1 billion fund is open to local councils, charities and other voluntary organisations. The bodies bid for the public money from the Government in order to create "socially useful jobs".

I'm sorry, but its the only way forward from this sort of thinking...

Payments

Yesterday we covered the payments that HM Government is happy to make to potential illegal immigrants i.e. potential criminals & to actual criminals – those who are already illegally here. This morning it pains me how the Government is handling payments to our wounded servicemen & women...

The Government has launched a legal challenge to the level of compensation awarded to two injured soldiers which could also limit future payments to combat victims. Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, is seeking a ruling in the Court of Appeal over payments to Light Dragoon Anthony Duncan, who was shot while on patrol in Iraq, and Royal Marine Matthew McWilliams, who fractured his thigh in a military exercise

Interesting how our Government who ....

MPs decided to press ahead with a controversial new allowance that lets them claim thousands of pounds without producing receipts in defiance of Sir Christopher Kelly, head of the official sleaze watchdog

...values different people.

Yesterday our four latest dead from Afghanistan were brought home

Appeasing the IIs

Illegal immigrants queuing to enter Britain are being offered 'bribes' worth £1,700 to return home instead. The British and French Governments are funding the Global Calais Project which targets those staying in squalid makeshift camps near Calais. The immigrants - many of whom have paid people smugglers to help them reach the UK - are told they will be put on a flight home and given help worth 2,000 euros if they agree to go voluntarily ... The UK taxpayer's contribution, likely to run to millions of pounds, is to help the migrants set up a small business once they return to their homeland. It also emerged last night that the Government is reconsidering funding joint flights with the French to take failed migrants home.Last year the French pulled out of a plan to introduce charter flights to repatriate illegal Afghan migrants, citing humanitarian reasons. The Home Office already funds payments worth £4,000 for failed asylum seekers living in the UK who agree to go home. But inducements are now on offer to people who have not even reached the UK.

This free to the illegals money wont of course act as a magnet to anyone will it Mr Brown? Twat! Nu Labour & the immigrant appeasers simply can’t shovel our money out of the door quickly enough. I could at this point type another couple of pages of invective, but fuggit, instead I’m off out to go & join the BNP

Rejoice: Suddenly it’s not so grim up North!

I am man enough to admit when I am wrong & hands up, I retract everything I have said about the Dreaded North because tonight dear readers we celebrate one Peter Davies, retired schoolmaster & now, the newly elected Mayor of Doncaster. Set aside if you can the catastrophic failure of Westminster , the extent of which has become apparent of the last twelve months & let’s review what new Mr Mayor chappie has been up to since the chains of office were placed on his surprisingly broad shoulders

On his first morning as Mayor of Doncaster in South Yorkshire , Peter Davies cut his salary from £73,000 to £30,000 then closed the Council's newspaper for "peddling politics on the rates".

A reasonable start, but since then...?

Now three weeks into his job, Mr Davies is pressing ahead with plans he hopes will see the number of town councillors cut from 63 to just 21, saving taxpayers £800,000. Mr Davies said: "If 100 Senators can run the United States of America , I can't see how 63 councillors are needed to run Doncaster ".

Now I know that many of you on the left hand side of the pond might hold strident views about that particular comment but taking a knife to the size of the political class, if not literally (shame) then figuratively has to be a step in the right direction in the lamentable absence of mass public executions.

Next up...

He has withdrawn Doncaster from the Local Government Association and the Local Government Information Unit, saving another £200,000. Mr Davies said, "They are just talking shops"

...as well as...

" Doncaster is in for some serious untwinning. We are twinned with nine other cities around the world and they are just for people to fly off and have a binge at the Council's expense".

I can find little to fault this chap with thus far & trust me dear readers when I say that it gets better still under the fold....

He has promised to end council funding for Doncaster 's International Women's Day, Black History Month and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month.

This is why if you put his name into Google you can find thousands of links to incandescent tofu munchers who would seem to have taken a break from sitting around all night drinking herbal tea to get really upset about what normal sane people call eminently sensible cost cutting measures. Mind you the removal of free translation services for immigrants seems to have induced a pandemic of apoplectic fits in the trendier parts of Hoxton that it has put swine flu in the shade. Good. I hope you all choke.

Now I know that there are many of you out there that will be asking “what can I do help”. Sadly I am off on holiday shortly so I won’t building any barricades this week & the noose will have to stay on top of the shotguns in the back of the Land Rover for a while longer. However as an interim measure you could always email Mayor Davies & not only commend him on his policies but like me, encourage him to seek higher office in due course.

Loyalty

A senior Labour peer sparked outrage today by accusing Britain's military chiefs of giving “succour” to the Taliban.

Lord Foulkes, an Intelligence and Security Committee member, told Lady Taylor: “In this media dominated age it is even more important than ever to maintain a united front in dealing with ruthless and cunning enemies like the Taliban and al-Qaeda...the public comments of Sir Richard Dannatt and Sir Jock Stirrup threaten to undermine our effort in Afghanistan and give succour to the enemy.”

No invective is required

How the 'equality' industry spunks away your money

The Equalities Watchdog has been heavily criticised for rehiring staff on inflated consultancy contracts months after they had received generous voluntary redundancy payments.

All seven had worked at the Commission for Racial Equality with Trevor Phillips, who headed that organisation and became Chairman of the new Commission when it was merged with two other equalities bodies in October 2007.

In the light of the above & for a hundreds of other offenses against the taxpayer & common sense, come The Glorious Day, Trevor Phillips’ name will be on The List.

However simply to lynch him would have an unacceptable racial connotation – therefore ever mindful of the news cycle & that apparently we are now all good Europeans, a different fate awaits him...

& so it starts all over again

Bloodletting Friday Part 1: Gunning down the political class

With regard to comments I made yesterday over helicoptergate, I have spent some considerable time this evening pondering the best weapon for gunning down socialist MPs. Now I know that many of will have your own personal preferences & that’s fair enough – each to his or her own. However after a few gentleman’s measures of something dark & peaty, I have come to the conclusion we could do a lot worse than lining every last one of the sponging lying cheating duplicitous b*astards against the wall & if this was the last thing they ever saw while being given the full nine yards, the job would be well done

More Vickers MMG frivolity here here & here

Helicopter politics

The head of the Army was accused of playing politics after he flew around Afghanistan in an American helicopter and demanded more equipment for British troops. General Sir Richard Dannatt made clear that he would have flown in a British helicopter if one had been available and called for greater urgency over the supply of new equipment ... When asked why he flew in a Black Hawk General Dannatt replied: “Self-evidently . . . if I moved in an American helicopter it’s because I haven’t got a British helicopter.”

Labour seized on his remarks as a deliberate political comment on the shortage of British helicopters in Afghanistan. One senior Labour MP said: “The Army has a proud record of keeping out of party politics and the Chief of the General Staff should be very careful about his interventions.” A junior minister went farther, accusing General Dannatt of “playing politics” and saying: “This is a very difficult time and he should know better.”

I am probably not alone in longing for the day when the Army plays politics. Properly. & it takes in upon itself to gun down every Labour politician in once Great Britain. The socialists have lied & lied again & again about Iraq, Afghanistan & the lamentably shoddy equipment levels that they have provided our magnificent Armed Forces with.

Dannatt is retiring very shortly – Let hope that he takes the opportunity to open up a new front against Westminster village pondlife. Remember dear readers that the Lying Scotsman cut the defence budget by £1.4 billion in 2004, when he was Chancellor, leading to a shortfall in the number of helicopters available today

Property development & prostitutes

I found the following in a dark dusty corner of the Torygaphs website that was dealing with the destruction of our gardens by greedy property developers. Let’s just say that Abdul Afari possibly isn’t the authors real name...

I wish to defend John Prescott from unfounded attacks, he is a defender of fairness and equality. I understand his government’s latest economic model is Chad. There, apparently, everyone is equal as everyone has nothing.

Developing one’s back garden for example provides a solid link between the people and the political class. This is one of the few democratically supported avenues open to us today where non politicians can stuff their pockets with gold in a fashion that would make even a Home Secretary drool with envy. This is a true egalitarian measure, and we thank Gordon Brown, the Government and their civil servants for preserving it. It goes some way towards the removal of our democratic rights to control our affairs that now appears to be the preserve of a bunch of provincially accented Germans and a range of Frenchmen in somewhat ill fitting suits.

In addition. it is some small relief to me as I contemplate a future run by poorly educated mediocre administrators from sundry European countries for whom I am unable to vote, that the small square of England on which I am raising my family is of such value that it is the object of envy by native developers as well as sundry Eastern Europeans who now flock here in droves.

Abdul Afari

No real surprise

Freedom of Information requests to all councils, devolved assemblies, Westminster and the European Parliament show that, in the financial year 2007/08, just under £500million came from public funds to pay 28,730 professional politicians in the UK.

Not a problem, after all, we don't have to hang them one at a time...

Glaring error

If you take the view that tax incomes are finite...

Did I actually write that in my previous post? (wiping away tears of laughter)

Ideological purity

The more children that are educated privately the better. If you take the view that tax incomes are finite (ha bl**dy ha) then it is in the interests of everyone that as many children as possible are educated privately because this will mean that you will preserve more money to educate the children of those who can’t afford school fees – if you like, the cake wont have to be so thinly sliced.

However as we approach the last days of Nu Labours dictatorship, the quest for ideological purity once again triumphs over common sense because unless you give away free education, the State will penalise you...

Hundreds of independent schools could lose their charitable status unless they increase fees for middle-class parents to fund more bursaries, a landmark ruling indicates today. Two of the first five schools to be investigated by the Charity Commission have failed the tough new requirement of providing “public benefit”.

The independent sector reacted with anger and said it could take legal action against the commission. It said that parents, already struggling in the recession, were likely to end up paying higher school fees to subsidise poorer families. The commission had focused on the financial benefits, it said, while placing little weight on whether less wealthy schools shared their facilities with the community or had forged links with state schools.

The net effect of this ... private education becomes even less affordable & therefore more children end up in State schools & our taxes get spread more thinly among those children
The parallels between what is currently going on in Westminster & the last days of the Third Reich are increasingly uncanny. Yesterday Harriet Herpes features wanted to ensure that you couldn’t get a job with a government quango unless you were a member of Skipton Pigeon Fanciers, today the State is trying to ensure that it can take control on your child’s education. The promulgation of State sponsored socialism is everything. Brown’s realpolitik continues

The new discrimination

Harriet Harman wants to make it illegal for public bodies to discriminate against Northerners.
The equality minister says she wants to encourage those from outside London and the South-East to take on senior jobs at hundreds of quangos ... She also wants to increase the representation of ethnic minorities and people with disabilities

The country isn’t bankrupt, bodies of our servicemen aren’t being flown home on a daily basis which means a government minister has time to worry about these equally important matters

Organisations such as Ofcom and the UK Film Council could be forced to employ Yorkshiremen or Geordies when a vacancy on their board becomes available

What a fantastic idea. From now on the broadcasting regulator & the film quango can be run by people that choose not to speak the Queen’s English because that will really work

How they spend our taxes - Part 293

More than one million jobless Britons have been living off state handouts for more than 12 years, it has emerged. A hardcore army of unemployed have failed to find any sort of work since Labour came to power in 1997.

The true scale of the crisis has been laid bare by figures which break down for the first time the length of time people have been out of work. A further 1.9million have been on benefits for seven years or more, according to the Department of Work and Pensions.

You workshy b*stards...& that’s just the politicians than extort money with menaces from me so that these spongers can do nothing all day while on my nickel.

The Blame Game

Now I know that we all treat the increasingly rabid accusations emanating from Tehran with the same degree of circumspection that is normally reserved for a kosher pork pie however, this concept that for some reason, HM Government is not only seeking to, but is capable of destabilising the Iranian regime has amused your humble correspondent immensely over the last few days. When I say ‘amused’ I don’t mean amused in the same way that shooting posturing advocates or hanging corrupt politicians is amusing because that would be sport of the highest calibre ...preferably 7.62mm calibre. However it has provided slightly more entertainment than making bogus credit card applications on behalf of the BBC’s board of governors & slightly less than the general hilarity from registering that simpering liberal fool the Archbishop of Canterbury on certain dogging websites

To be candid, there was a time when the properly moustached gentlemen were capable or disposing of a tin pot dictatorship in between pudding & the port starting to circulate: sadly those days are an increasingly dim & distant memory. In Blair/Brown’s emasculated Britain the secret services have been reduced to creating works of fiction that would put your average MP’s expenses claim to shame & worrying about HSE regulations.

However, being an optimistic sort of a fellow I have spent some considerable time & about quarter of a bottle of very decent brandy looking for some upside in all of this & there is none. That ineffectual twerp David Miliband has been reduced to a state of cold fury, a condition which is bound to have the Ayatollahs a quaking in their sandals because they know that instead to actually being able to plot their downfall, the head of SIS is busy updating his Facebook page. That news makes Tehran’s wildly misplaced allegations all the more risible

More failings from the Man of Straw

19 murderers and 12 rapists are among almost a thousand criminals who are missing and being hunted by police after they broke the terms of their release from jail. Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, told MPs that senior police officers had ordered forces throughout England and Wales to take “priority action” to find, arrest and return to jail those convicted of sexual or violent offences.

He said that the Association of Chief Police Officers had also asked forces to review and renew their efforts to arrest the other offenders on the list. Overall, 954 offenders released from prisons before March this year had not been found and returned to jail by the end of last month, the Ministry of Justice disclosed yesterday. One murderer has been at large for 25 years after being recalled to jail for violating his licence

On July 20, 2008, two months after learning that MPs’ expenses would be made public, Mr Straw sent a handwritten note to the fees office confessing that he had spotted an error and enclosing a cheque to refund the money. In the two-page note, marked “in confidence”, Mr Straw admitted that since 2004, when he was foreign secretary, he had filed expenses claims for council tax at his constituency house in Blackburn, Lancs, at the full rate, receiving between £807 and £943 a year.

Mr Straw detailed how much he had claimed, then noted that due to a “50% zero occupancy discount” the actual amount paid was “significantly lower”. “I am sorry about this,” he wrote. “I am afraid that the reality of life over the last few years is that I’ve often had to complete the claims in marginal time and without recourse to all the records.” With the note, he included a cheque for £1,395.88 to compensate for the over-claims. A month later, he realised that his sums were out, and wrote to the fees office: “Sorry about that too – accountancy does not appear to be my strongest suit.”

Forget your shortcomings at maths at least until The Reckoning...its your complete inability to run the criminal justice system, a job you are paid a lot of money to do, that really worries us

Monday morning roundup

The effects of Alzheimer's disease could be reversed by drinking just a few cups of coffee a day, new research suggests

All well & good but what about those of use that have clinical addictions to caffeine

Andy Murray likely to become Britain’s highest-earning sports star

No, he lost. He can now go back to being Scottish with our blessings. But while on the subject to Murray

Millions of Sun readers were upset when Andy Murray crashed out in the semi-finals of Wimbledon - and not just because he could have been the first British winner in decades. The gorgeous Katie Green had promised us a saucy tennis shoot if Andy had made the final.
Luckily for her legion of fans though, Katie has still come through on her promise of a Wimbledon final to remember

Huzzzzzah

The use of unmanned drones as weapons of war in conflicts around the world has been called into question by one of Britain's most senior judges. Lord Bingham, until last year the senior law lord, said that some weapons were so "cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance".

Twat!

BBC staff ran up a massive £14million bill for taxis last year , more than £38,000 a day

Progammes waste like this can only be brought to you by the unique way in which the BBC is funded. & finally, we can always depend on the Daily Star to cover the really important stories

Katie Price is fuming after Peter Andre sneaked Chantelle Houghton into their daughter’s birthday bash. The singer fuelled rumours he is dating the Celebrity Big Brother beauty by inviting her to his home yesterday

Errrrrrr right

A further formal apology

A few days ago I published the following apology over comments I had made likening Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson & our Labour Government to a bunch of Nazis

I wish to make an unreserved retraction of those comments because it is now clear to me that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s cabinet & government bears no resemblance that of Nazi Germany’s

I would like to reiterate that apology once more this morning

Piccies from Peter & more of the same from Double Tapper

This is how you do it

This glorious insult is from an era before the English language was boiled down to 4-letter words...

A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease."

"That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."

Found by Alan

A government climbdown? Not for long

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has dropped plans to make ID cards compulsory for pilots and airside workers at Manchester and London City airports. The cards were due to be trialled there - sparking trade union anger.

He said the national roll-out of a voluntary scheme was being speeded-up - with London to get them a year early in 2010 and over-75s to get free cards

A national roll-out of a voluntary scheme ... what's the bl*ody point ... or to look at it slightly differently, voluntary but for how long?

Some Iraq War food for thought

Found by Richard

John Kampfner unveils the ignominious truth about Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq inquiry and reveals Peter Mandelson’s demand, when Brown’s future hung in the balance in early June, that the hearings be held in private. Even now Mandelson’s priority is to protect Brand Blair

The charge sheet is long and yet the dock is empty. One of the most extraordinary aspects of Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war has been the ability of those responsible to evade any form of reckoning. For that they have many people to thank, including incurious journalists and pliant judges. But most of all, Tony Blair is in debt to his New Labour friends for their efforts to get him off the hook — in recent days, Peter Mandelson and Gordon Brown.

The man who presided over the greatest foreign policy calamity of more than half a century has still not been nailed for it, and will not be nailed for it. For that he has his friends to thank.

Mud, money & festival free enterprise (Reprised)

I know that I continually get accused of living in the past but I can help but comparing the young men that appear in our In This Day entries with the slack jawed Playstation obsessed yoof of today, who also seem to wallow in the mud … but on the mud of the Somme. That has been replaced by the mud of Glastonbury, which takes place this weekend . This means by now just about every Vets surgery in South West England has been stripped of Ketamine

Lucky for the young'uns, these days the heavy metal isn’t red hot shrapnel fired by the Boche at our grandfathers when then were that age – it’s a sheeeeeeeek of equally long haired chavs with laces undone & tousers halfway down to their ankles, belting the merry hell out of some electric guitars with lumps of lead piping … & there was me thinking that white noise was what they subjected you to during resistance to interegation training. I am starting to feel my age

Now it isnt just your humble corrspondent who is somewhat bemused by the whole Glastonbury vibe. Clarkson-san, writing in The Times …

On Friday morning my wife got dressed up like Worzel Gummidge, put some bog roll in a bag and roared off in her Aston Martin to watch a bunch of useless teenagers singing in the rain at Glastonbury. I think she may have gone mad. And she’s not alone. Helicopter companies all over the southwest have reported a booming demand for charters. Everyone in the de luxe tenting business is now on a beach in Barbados and all last week Brixton was doubtless awash with hedge fund managers and BBC programme controllers trying to buy drugs.
And getting the wrong sort. “Yeah, man. You gotta try some of this horse tranquilliser. It’ll even you out.” Honestly, I bet that this morning Glastonbury is full to overflowing with your accountant calling all the policemen pigs and trying to reverse onto a selection of other men, having ingested six gallons of crystal meth.

I have no problem with that. I’m not going to spend the next foot of newsprint berating you for not acting your age and laughing at you as you try to remember how to roll a joint. But I do have a problem with Glastonbury.

Now whilst getting soaked to the skin whilst sewage contaminated mud swills over the tops of your wellies might not be your idea of fun, but the whole Glasto concept is one that we should all embrace … & why, might come as a little surprise. Forget all the tie dye hippy Nu-Earth festival nonesense that get trotted out on occasions, what Gastonbury is all about & make no mistake about this, is not naked new age travellers – its bare faced CAPITALISM.

The Somerset ‘levels’ has, well to put it politely, a very limited genetic pool – eleven toes is pretty much the norm & opposed thumbs a novelty. Yet one farmer has sought ride pretty much roughshod over the UK’s inequitous planning system, to redeploy one of the factors of production more efficently & produce a global brand in the process. How much is a ticket, £150? Nearly 180,0000 people pay that to go & stand in a waterlogged field. That’s over 25 million quid in turnover. Talk about diversification of agricultureal income streams. With that sort of cashflow you don’t need to worry about trying to get permission to convert the old cow sheds to holiday homes

& what does all this money produce? People travel huge distances to establish a new community where all kinds of trade & commerce take place on land that was previously, much less productive. No figures are available for what is produced in three days in terms of GDP but I will bet you penny to a pound that is sure beats goat farming.

The whole event has changed over the years form when it started as a haven for refugees from the 1960’s & the brand has refined itself. These days local lads charge £50 a time to pull BMWs out of the car park gloop with their tractors. Hells teeth, the place requires a 30 MW power supply to keep peoples iPods & mobile phones charged – that’s about what the City of Bath consumes. So much for the carbon footprint,eh? Want a colestoral free fairtrade yak burger? £8.50 & yes sir, we do accept Amex.

So this morning dear readers, we applude the free enterprise of this business model & we embrace the concept of relieving stupid people of large amounts of cash so that they can go & sink in the mire. They do so of their own volition but let’s just be sure that we Hoover their wallets on the way. Forget Flanders, that never turned a profit. & before anyone asks, next year the Free Market Corporation will be taking a trade stand to peddle useless wares to the terminally stupid.

As Gordon Gekko so perceptively pointed out, it isnt that the fool & his money are soon parted, it’s a miricle that they even got together in the first place & no doubt our exclusive range of wellington boots (bought from the local farm shop for a fiver a pair) will sell very very well at the special festival offer price of £40

Just when you thought that the expenses row was dying down...(Updated)

The BBC is poised to provoke a fresh row over expenses by refusing to disclose how much its executives spend on entertainment for their stars. Days after MPs caused public outrage by blacking out details of their expenses, the BBC is refusing to reveal how much is spent on hospitality and gifts for its best-paid celebrities

& if you want a example of the supreme arrogance & the complete & utter distain that the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation treats everyone including the taxpayers that fund it...

The BBC has repeatedly used freedom of information exemptions to block inquiries about staff pay and expenses, refusing even to tell the National Audit Office how much its radio presenters were paid

Mind you, to give this post a spot of editorial balance – something that the BBC has lacked for years - let’s look at this from a slightly different perspective

The Corporation is to publish claims by senior executives, some totalling more than £1,000 a month, amid accusations that it is wasting millions of pounds of public funds

A grand on month on your X’s ? That isn’t wasting huge amounts of money, that’s simply gay. The boys clearly need a Free Market Masterclass on how to properly roust an expense account. & to put that assertion into context, when I get into the office this morning, I shall ask go & have a word with my Accounts Department & see what my expenses were for 2008. My bet is that they must have been in the region of £100,000 - £150,000. That’s how a proper chap beasts his expense account

Update: Lunch today which I paid for was £603.05 including tip. I also got a printout of my expenses for last year & I was a long way wide of the mark with my estimate of this morning ... they were a lot lot more

Is John Bercow a metaphor for the Conservative Party?

The question that is being asked in the corridors of the Palace of Westminster today is not to what extent will the new speaker of the House of Commons seek reform or indeed has he reformed from his right wing past, it relates to his trouble & strife, Sally Bercow...

Hot or not?

Aside from Mrs Bercow’s score on the MILF-o-meter, dear dear Johnny is quite an interesting character as even the most perfunctory look at his record reveals

If anyone deserves the title of "son of Tebbit" it is John Bercow, the Tory MP for Buckingham. A pint sized chap with short arms and endless ambitions, his biting Commons performances and his win in 1997 against the grain of Tory losses catapulted him from the backbenches into Ann Widdecombe's home affairs team, despite his record as a former member of the far-right Monday Club

There is one difference between Norman Tebbit and John Bercow. John's father did not need to "get on his bike" because he was a minicab driver. Otherwise, everything Mr Bercow does reminds old timers of Mr Tebbit: a savage political streetfighter

Prior to all of that Bercow had been national chairman of the ultra-right Federation of Conservative Students in 1986. These days he is in the political middle centre ground, married to a Labour supporter & nearly crossed the floor to join the evil empire a couple of years ago

It’s all rather like the Tory Party itself – not so long ago it was committed to individual freedom & low taxes – these days it feels as though it has to compete for what is laughably known as the centre ground... European socialist democracy by any other name. The parabola of Bercow’s political views seem to have followed the sorry path trodden by the Conservative Party - & despite a promising start, ended up just another Westminster jobsworth those name remains very much on The List until such time as his merit is otherwise proven

The croissant issue

Again, a little follow up ... but this time its last weeks disastrous conference theatre workshop utter load of old the b*llocks : the croissants were pretty good. Even better were these little puff pastry thing-a-mes that had sausages in ‘em. Smeared with mustard & Sauce OR* they were definitely the highpoint of the day

I hope that clears that point up to your satisfaction. Sadly I don’t suspect that I will we invited back to sample them again

*Sauce OR:– Sauce, Other Ranks; HP Sauce

A formal apology

Earlier this week I published what I thought at the time was a whimsical piece comparing the unelected First Secretary of State the Right Honourable the Lord Mandelson PC, with the democratically elected Adolf Hilter. I am deeply sorry & embarrassed to have compared British Labour Party of 2009 with the German National Socialist Party of 1939. I wish to make an unreserved retraction of those comments because it is now clear to me that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s cabinet & government bears no resemblance that of Nazi Germany’s

I realise that such comparisons are completely incorrect, have no basis whatsoever in fact. The Policies that the Labour Party have pursued since 1997 have at no time sought to discriminate against certain sections of society to the advantage of others.

I therefore redact my previous erroneous comments without limitation & hereby undertake not to be nasty about law abiding politicians again. Not.

& yes, it was worse than even my most pessimistic predictions

So the first question on the day was that we were all asked what was the single largest issue that would face the capital markets over the next 10 to 15 years...

Academic No.1: Climate change

Fund Manager No.1: I completely agree

Banker No.1: & to add to that, corporate & social responsibility

Broad murmers of agreement

YHC (in already agitated tone): No its not & in fact thats all utter utter tosh. The single biggest issue that faces the market is that over the last 24 months we have been responsible for the destruction of hundreds of billions of pounds of investor & shareholder value

Cue collective intakes of breath

Clearly none of you sit in the same investor meetings that I do but three of my large institutional shareholders are represented around this table & I can assure you all that they dont give a stuff if baby penguins drown, all they want to know is how we propose to earn back the money we have lost

At this point one or two of the delegates actually hissed me. Funny & lets just say that I went on more a wee while longer...

If what are laughably known as industry leaders are more interested in the next tree hug-a-thon than creating shareholder value, the economy is in much worse shape than indicators show. Let’s just say that I don’t think that I am going to be invited back anytime soon

When horizon scanning no longer has anything to do with U-boats

This morning you find me en-route to some one day beano that has been organised by one of the business information services & a firm of consultants. However these are not ordinary consultants as a swift check of their website revealed last night. These people

are a strategic futures consultancy helping clients to anticipate, interpret and act upon important developments in the external world

Among a lot & I do mean a lot to jargon it would appear that they specialise in strategic facilitation as well as horizon scanning. I really hope that that means they serve decent croissants at breakfast because I really fancy a couple of really good croissants for breakfast this morning when the 20 industry leaders that have been invited take a break from shaping the market to 2020 & beyond.

Even more intriguing is that I will personally help this shaping of the market by employing outside-in-thinking. Gosh! So I have promised the boss that I will be on my best behaviour & be a good corporate robot, even if it is just for one day. However I swear that I one of these shinny suited consultants uses the term horizon scanning just once, I am going to kill everyone in the room

So the Iranians are killing one another in the streets

What's there not to like about this story ?

How they spend our money

MPs on the justice select committee were supposed to be going to South Africa - to find out more about prisons - on a five-day trip next week. It’s purely a “co-incidence” that they would have been there for the Lions tour of SA, according to officials. Naturally. But sport-loving MPs may now be rather unhappy that the trip has been cancelled because of the Speaker’s election

Its a real shame that actually doing the job you were elected to do gets in the way of all the freebees - mind you, the other week when the House of Commons was supposed to be debating defence, only 10 MPs bothered to turn up...

With breathtaking cynicism, the Government arranged for the annual Commons debate on "Defence and the World' to take place last Thursday, to coincide with polling day in the local and Euro-elections. This, and the hysteria over our incredible exploding Government, ensured that only 10 MPs turned up. These included just one Labour backbencher, someone called Madeleine Moon, who assured the House that the only reason why Europe has been at peace since 1945 was the creation of the European Union (she is apparently too young to have heard of Nato)

Just two more reasons, as if we needed them, for the lynching to start

Something to ponder over your Corn Flakes

The European famine in the 1840s forced farmers into other activities which helped catalyse the first Industrial Revolution

Widespread unemployment during the Great Depression during the 1930s pushed workers into new sectors which ultimately created the Service Economy of the second half of the 20th Century

During the 1970s downturn, two of the giants of computing - Apple & Microsoft - were born, ushering in the Information Age

I wonder what the legacy of the current global economic difficulties will be?

Red skoi at noight, get orf moi laaaaand

There is no justice at the Ministry of Justice & certainly no culture at that Ministry - therefore this shouldn't come as any surprise....

New Farming Minister appointed to champion ailing livestock industry is a vegetarian (and so is the man he reports to) He's been appointed to champion the ailing livestock industry. But Labour's new Farming Minister might have to wrestle with his conscience as he does so. He's a vegetarian. Jim Fitzpatrick, also a fierce opponent of hunting, will report to Environment Secretary Hilary Benn - who does not eat meat either.

However I hear that our new minister is visiting the Vale next week so I have been making a few small modifications to the trusty old tractor in preparation

About right

Kann I Park meine panzers im Parlaments-Quadrat, bitte?

I have to confess that whilst I didn’t vote for the British Nationalsozialistische Party in the recent elections that we have all so enjoyed, it was a damn close run thing. It’s not that your humble correspondent has any truck with ‘Der Dicke’ Nasty Nick & his ersatz Nazis, it just that at the moment, the more that the Westminster untermensch tell me not to do anything – damn it, the more likely I am to do it

The Tories won with 28.6 per cent, but the most symbolic results were the two seats won by the British National Party in the North West region, by party leader Nick Griffin, and in the Yorkshire and Humber area. It was the first time the party had won seats at national elections

Mr Griffin said that his party had gained from Labour's failures: "It is a historic breakthrough. It is a great moment for democracy." But Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, said: "It is a sad moment... We have got to understand why people have voted for the BNP. We should redouble our determination to take them on and take them out of British politics."

Lets just take a step back from the histrionics emanating from the bowls of the Palace of Westminster in those five minutes a day when our MP’s are not making spurious expenses claims, on Mr. Hilter’s Lebensraum–o-meter, our Birmingham Braunhemden really aren’t terribly good: they don’t even have decent uniforms. Bandenbekämpfung is all well & good if you are playing Scrabble, but if you don’t at least get to wear some highly polished Eastern Europe oppressing jackboots, you are never going to get it on a triple word score.

As for Gleichschaltung, the Toxteth Totenkopf can’t even spell rassenhygiene ... & yet apparently Gauleiter Andrew ‘Blut und Boden’ Brons is the greatest threat to Parliamentary democracy since Nu Labour were elected in 1997 lo-alcohol lager was introduced

Some Labour MPs have said the election of BNP members would be an indictment of Mr Brown’s premiership. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, last week said it would be a “day of shame” for Britain

& there was me thinking that the British National Party was a properly constituted political party, whose electoral ambitions & activities be they Kameradschafts und Gemeinschaftsstärkung or otherwise, are over seen by The Electoral Commission.

In fact when it comes to the assertion made by that uber-numpty Miliband (may he enjoy a long debilitating & painful death for his crimes against the Ermächtigungsgesetz) - I have tried doing the Google thing for a couple of hours but I can’t find record of any Griffin’s crypto- Verfügungstruppe claiming for moat extensions, duck houses, faux mortgage payments or (ahem) adult movies such as Red Nights of the Gestapo. This is more than can be said for the Tories, ZaNu Liebour & the la la Liberals.

However its worth considering that under the Größter Feldherr aller Zeiten, the Brown Creed meant one thing: under the one eyed Scottish git, it means quite another. Then again we now have a completely unelected Deputy Prime Minister “First Secretary of State” & when it comes to Peter ‘Mandy’ Mandelson, the Brown Creed means something altogether quite different...

Some more Euro Election fun ...

European Election Results (Updated)

Labour could be on course to dip below 20% of the vote ...

Labour's Harriet Harman told the BBC: "We are bracing ourselves for very dismal results, there is no doubt about that."

Ha ha ha

Monday morning update: Labour was beaten into third place by the UK Independence Party, securing only 15.3% of the vote

Ha ha ha ha

& this evening

James Purnell ( he of fake photo fame )

has stepped down from the cabinet and told Prime Minister Gordon Brown to "stand aside". In a letter to the Sun and the Times, the work and pensions secretary said he was not seeking the leadership but wanted to trigger a debate. Mr Purnell is the third cabinet member to announce in the past few days they are standing down from cabinet.

Ha ha ha ha ha !

Benefit Fraud

From the Department of Work & Pensions website

Deliberately withholding information that affects your claim is stealing. That’s why we are targeting benefit thieves! The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) takes benefit theft very seriously. Although the vast majority of people who claim benefits are honest, those who steal benefits are picking the pockets of law-abiding taxpayers

& thanks to reader HR, we can see an advanced draft of the DWP's new advertisment

In fact there is even an online form for reporting fraudsters

Where theres a will, theres a ... bank

Half a dozen shotguns in the Land Rover, ready for the call to arms

Via Kim, this excellent summary of foul deeds at Westminster from Mr Alawsat

Is England on the verge of revolution? To those who know this most peaceful of nations intimately, the question is bound to sound bizarre. Boasting attachment to the rule of law and democratic government, the English have not had a revolution since the 17th century. Nevertheless, these days it is hard to be in the company of Englishmen without hearing talk of the need, indeed the imminence, of revolution.

However his is oh so wrong when he aserts

England may not experience a classical revolution with barricades and gallows in public places.

Forget the European & local elections later this week, some of us already have cached several years supply of canned food & grain alcohol because food supplies might be disrupted once we march on the Westminster Village

The Lord loves a good hanging

Regulars will know the I regularly advocate the wholesale lynching of Members of Parliament & that I normally accompany such statements with a suitable graphic. After all, we can but dream. However last week, The Times carried the following cartoon...

Can we conclude from this that mainstream opinion is starting to move towards your humble correspondent’s?

Bombs

Finally, I believe that my next hundred days will be so successful I will be able to complete them in 72 days. (cue adoring sycophantic laughter from the audience) And on the 73rd day, I will rest. (cue unrestrained adulation from the impartial media )

North Korea says it has staged a "successful" underground nuclear test, prompting international condemnation

So Mr President chappie, you're the big man...what are you going to fella?
(Hint: Why not ask the one-eyed Scottish git what to do? After all, he is always having to save the World.)

Giz a job

Following from my recent post on the role of the National Audit Office in contemporary government I am pleased to report that as opposed to being appointed as Inquisitor Generalis for Life, Torquemada Free Market is prepared to accept the recently vacated post of Speaker of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. Frankly Mr Torquemada doesn’t really care if the post doesn’t become vacant for another month, the sooner that we repatriate without right of return, yet another corrupt Scottish socialist, the better.

I suspect that your humble correspondent isn’t alone in being horrified at the systemic financial abuse (although not really surprised) while also now being rather fed up with the daily tsunami of salacious revelations. Therefore immediately upon being confirmed as Speaker, I would thank the Daily Torygraph for the excellent work that it has done to date. However the public demands a swift & final conclusion to any unfinished business. Therefore I hereby & in public declare that this insidious situation will be brought to an expeditious conclusion.

As for the likes of Gorbals Mick & every other piece of bottom feeding Westminster pondlife that has been on the take for years & years – you can forget your job, any as yet unpaid expense claims & then there will be the not insubstantial matter of those fat public sector pensions. They can forget those to boot & should any Westminster Villager have the temerity to try & sue, the mood we are in at the moment, we won’t string ‘em up after the trial, we will lynch every one of the ba*tards over the Court steps, on the way in.

I always try to be as self effacing as possible however once again I offer the long suffering British public a swift & simple solution to a seemingly intractable problem: & one that will save the taxpayer money to boot. I can do no more than that

Ceylonese round up

So what about those Tamil nobbers that insist of protesting in blocking Parliament Square over something that has nothing to do with this country. If their government wants to bomb the b’jesus out of its own civilians, my only concern is that said government is using munitions that have been supplied by Armscos that I own shares in

However sticking with the Ceylonese theme for just a moment, there seem to be even more numpties in Colombo . Why the hell are you burning effigies of David Miliband when they should be torching that smarmy little runt himself?

For goodness sake if that’s the best that you can manage, no wonder you took you 26 years to beat terrorists whose main claim to fame seems to be considering the comedy moustache to be the height of sartorial elegance

The Scottish hegemony might like to take note

We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle

Winston Churchill

"You are whoremasters and drunkards, corrupt and unjust men, how can you be a Parliament for God’s People? "

As much as it loath Tory Boy Cameron along with just about any other High Tory you care to mention he has thus far, just about kept ahead of the tsunami of sleaze revelations that are consuming the Westminster Trough...

David Cameron today warned Tory MPs to pay back dodgy' expenses or be sacked.The Conservative leader ordered shadow ministers and grandees alike to repay any claims that failed a “smell test”.

However, as any visitor to the Palace of Westminster will know, right outside is a rather prominent statue of Oliver Cromwell & tonight I can’t but recall the words he used to dismiss the Rump Parliament in April 1653…

Come come!. We have had enough of this. I will put an end to your prating. It is not fit that you should sit here any longer! You have sat here too long here for any good you have been doing lately. You shall give this place to better men! Call them in! Call them in! (the musketeers). You call yourselves a Parliament. You are no Parliament; I say you are no Parliament! You are whoremasters and drunkards, corrupt and unjust men, how can you be a Parliament for God’s People? Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

As your humble correspondent remarked last summer, what price Cromwell today dear readers

Now the exact words that Cromwell used are not known, but this version is just as applicable

“...It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

“I command ye, therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!”

Snouts to the ready

The surprising thing about the whole MPs expenses scandal is that anyone is surprised about the Westminster Village’s profligacy – be it porno movies or swimming pool repairs – they simply can’t spend our money quickly enough in very much the same way that when it comes to policy, every pound of our taxes & more are simply spunked away each year on the latest political whim. & yesterday we had Brown, Cameron & Clegg all trying to say that they were sorry not because of what they & their chummies have done but because they have be caught, to so much with a hand in the cookie jar as looting the biscuit factory.

Despite the lamentations emanating from the bowls of Westminster, the thing that I don’t understand is the entire premise on which MPs are allowed to claim expenses. Because I am a reasonably bloody minded individual, I actually took the time to read my employers expenses policy yesterday afternoon. My, how I laughed! It states right at I top of page 1 that as an underlying principle, when it comes to personal expenses, an employee should be no better or worse off as a result of discharging his or her duties. I suspect that a lot of you have similar clauses in your respective employers T&Cs. Not so in the House of Commons on the Gravy Train & this is why come The Glorious Day, I shall be billing the taxpayer for every foot of rope that I use. I have a sneaking feeling that that that would be the one bill that, in the absence of corporate sponsorship, the overwhelming majority of the electorate wouldn’t mind ponying up for

Joanna Lumley: The next Mrs T?

30 years ago yesterday, Maggie moved into 10 Downing Street which is why, over the weekend, the papers were full of retrospectives ... well at least a few column inches covered that happiest part of our recent history: the rest of my Sunday Torygraph seemed to be devoted to dire predictions of the forthcoming flu pandemic that somewhat embarrassingly hasn’t really happened yet. Inconvenient I know, but I really don’t want to be drawn into making comparisons between killer swine flu & impending global environmental catastrophe – yes, I’m a bit of an old cynic but until the entire population of Bangladesh has been drowned I will continue to drive my Land Rover Globalwarmer. Once the entire population of Bangladesh is doing a passable imitation of the General Belgrano, it will be way too late for those tiresome Irish minstrels to hold a Snorkel Aid concert & we can send the newly reformed Black & Tans to sort of Sir Bob & Boneo once & for all. What a blessing that would be.

However to return to this mornings little theme, in the same way that Maggie (may blessings be upon her name) stormed into Westminster, for a few glorious moments last week, it looked like the redoubtable Ms Lumley might just do the same...

Given our complete lack of electoral choices, a party formed of retired Gurkhas led by Ms Lumley, standing for compulsory goat curry & promising to sort out our dumded down chav-culture with judicious use of their kukris would certainly get my unsteady tick in the box. Think of it as casting a protest vote – successive administrations have allowed once Great Britain to be overrun by just about every whinging ethnic minority load of bl**dy wogs with an open hand & a grievance you care to mention. However when it comes to those who have done nothing but loyally serve Her Majesty, the Westminster pondlife treat them with nothing but utter distain.

In fact, forget an electoral mandate, much better that Ms Lumley were to unleash both her & our anger upon Parliament, & let Johnny get well & truly stuck in. That might well help the Parliament Channel’s ratings.

I think this just about sums up Gordon Brown at the moment

Your Mayday Bank Holiday stock tips

Yesterday, Gweilicus sent me this....

So I called my stockbroker today and asked, "what do you recommend buying”? His answer: Canned goods and ammunition.

What with global financial meltdown & the impending flu pandemic, it has a particular pertinence however a swift review of the markets reveals that this stockbroker is right on the money because if you look at how both firearms manufacturers & Hormel (the makers of Spam in the US) have significantly outperformed the S&P 500 over the last quarter as pointed out by the Market Oracle

Exchange-traded examples include Sturm, Ruger & Company (RGR) and Smith & Wesson (SWHC). Smith & Wesson has been a doormat until recently. But both it and Ruger enjoyed nice moves in the past couple weeks. While Smith & Wesson has announced big plans for future growth, I prefer Ruger. Its revenues and earnings are increasing, and the company's backlog in orders jumped 72 percent from the 3rd quarter to the 4th quarter.

Why is the outlook improving for gun manufacturers? Maybe because while other industries are sliding down a slippery slope of lower demand, the output of U.S. small arms manufacturing is forecast to grow at an annual compounded rate of 2 percent between 2008 and 2013, as seen on the following chart …

& canned goods?

Hormel's net earnings fell 8 percent in the most recent quarter … but it still delivered 60 cents a share, which was better than the 51 cents a share that analysts had expected. This was mainly due to sales of Spam and Hormel's Dinty Moore Stew, another product that is greater than the sum of its parts.

What's more … Hormel affirmed its 2009 earnings outlook, saying it still expected to earn $2.15 to $2.25 per share. And while other companies are ducking for cover from the recession, Hormel plans to spend more on advertising this year than it spent last year, in part to market new products. So Hormel is obviously optimistic about its future, despite a worsening recession.

Consumer confidence is the blue line on the bottom of the chart above. It plunged more than expected in February, falling to a new low of 25 — the worst level since the index began in 1967. And it's dragging the S&P 500 down with it … and that makes Hormel, Ruger and gold look all the better

Wednesdays star of the day is ... Michael O’Leary

...for this

The outspoken head of the Irish budget airline Ryanair has dismissed apocalyptic warnings of a global swine flu pandemic, saying that the virus was only a risk to Asians and Mexicans “living in slums”.

Of course, never having had the pleasure of flying Ryanair, I still hold Mr O'Leary in high regard

MPs expenses & a money making idea

Continuing tonight’s porcine theme, can we just for a moment turn the spotlight of commonsense on the continuing debacle that surrounds MP’s expenses & allowances – because these people have had their snouts in the trough for way to long for my liking & just about everybody else’s liking come to that. Frankly I really can’t see what is the problem with MPs having to provide receipts for the expenses that they claim... just as you have to do if you have a real job. Of course, the one thing that the Westminster Village pondlife hate above all else & that is being called to account for exactly where the money goes. I mean it’s not like it’s our money, is it?

Therefore tonight I would like to suggest the following very simply plan that not only will provide greater scrutiny of MPs expenditure & cut costs, it would also turn a profit for the taxpayer & it goes something like this...

1. With immediate effect, all of the many spineless Parliamentary committees that are supposed to monitor MPs allowances & expenses are to be wound up, their responsibilities & powers vested in the National Audit Office which will be renamed the Holy Office

2. The head of the NAO’s job title to be changed from Comptroller & Auditor General to Inquisitor Generalis

3. Torquemada Free Market to be appointed Inquisitor Generalis for Life. (In recognition of the length of his appointment, Torquemada hereby waives all rights to receive a salary in return for getting a cut of all of the savings/profits he makes)

4. The Inquistor Generalis will be empowered to delegate his inquisitorial faculties to other Inquisitors of his own choosing

5. The proceedings of the Holy Office will henceforth be televised, the television rights being sold to the highest bidder & the receipts to be rebated to the taxpayer (less the Inquisitor Generalis’s cut of course)

& now tell me that if some of the pondlife that inhabit the Westminster Village ended up like this on prime time...

... that we wouldn’t make a fortune from the advertising revenues & frankly it would make for much more compelling viewing than that Britain’s Got Talent load of old rubbish

Tax Nazis

It really doesn’t matter which way the statisticians want to cut it, at some time over the next year or so, Gordon Brown or maybe even his successor is going to face Gotterdamarung at the polls. The fact that politically Nu-Labour is finished hasn’t stopped its exponents pursuing its their amoral creed & poisonous ideology, for one moment.

Last week we saw the imposition of a top rate of income tax of 50% to which National Insurance contributions are added on. & this isn't to pay back the loans required to bale out its profligate economic policy, Brown & Darling in their socialist heart of hearts, hate the wealthy. Forget that poftah Manny’s assertion that Labour is relaxed about people having money ... trust me, they are not.

The new 50% band will be levied on the estimated 350,000 people with incomes above £150,000 a year – well not quite...

Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling imposed the controversial new 50p top rate of tax on higher earners despite an official Treasury prediction that more than two-thirds of people earning more than £150,000 would not pay it. A pre-Budget "modelling" exercise conducted by the Treasury forecast that 69 per cent of those hit by the new levy – to come in next year – would find ways of avoiding it. Yet ministers pressed ahead with the measure anyway.

So despite being advised that only approximately 108,500 people would pay this new pernicious tax, that grey haired twat Darling went ahead with it. The fact that it will raise next to no extra cash to pay off Labours debts isn't important - it is to punish the sucessful. & that isn’t my opinion, that is the view of the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

But that was last week & its already water under the bridge money down the drain. This week its the ever ghastly Harriet Harman who is waging her brand of class war while she still can...

Harriet Harman is to unveil her Equalities Bill, which will dump another bucket-load of regulations upon businesses already struggling to keep their heads above water in the recession. Both developments advertise the final death throes of a government that has absolutely no idea how to run a country rather than run it into the ground.

The 50p tax rate has left the out-manoeuvred Blairites aghast for the very reasons that the fossilised Left is triumphant. By singling out the wealthy as scapegoats for the failure of government policy, it implicitly classifies as the enemies of society people whose efforts are essential to its prosperity... If the 50p rate was a symbolic signal of the death of New Labour, Harriet Harman is now driving a stake through its heart. For her Equalities Bill marries the class war to the gender war.

In exactly the same way that the Nazi’s killings didn’t stop even when their regime was in its death throes, Labour won’t call a halt to its attacks on the better off, even though their cause is now utterly lost. On a personal level, I am chuffed at being able to pay a lot more income tax to help cover Blair, Brown & Darlings' mistakes

What crisis?

Just Go

There is a petition asking Gordon Brown to resign as Prime Minister now listed on the Number 10 website which is getting a few signatures. When I signed, there were approx 10,000 signatures. I just wonder how many there will be by lunchtime

Economic woes

Bugg*red

Take a close look at the post above this & what Kipling wrote in 1920 has a special resonance this morning...

If, in spite of this, the domestic situation became too much for him he could always take a ship and go to sea, and there seek or impose the peace which the Papal Legate, or the Mediaeval Trade Union, or a profligate Chancellor of the Exchequer denied to him at home

Alistair Darling cited “fairness” as his motivation for raising income tax from next April for people earning more than £150,000 a year, cheering many Labour MPs but in doing so, breaking a manifesto commitment that there would be no raising of income tax in this Parliament. That’s how desperate Labour is.

It is a brazen attempt to rake in more cash from those who they deem can afford it under the guise of "fairness."

The Labour government started with Peter Mandelson saying the party was intensely relaxed about people being filthy rich. Now, as the administration heads towards terminal decay, the Labour Party, with its 50p tax rate, has done something vaguely

This is why by the time that your humble correspondent gets to his office this morning, it is highly likely that the Chancellor will have personally couriered me a large tub of this...

In fact, at over 50% income tax, maybe I won’t bother setting my alarm clock for its usual five thirty tomorrow morning – maybe I’ll just have a few more hours in bed...maybe this weekend I will start seriously planning as to how the hell I am going to get Family Free Market off this sinking ship as quickly as possible

Mr Darling, the Chancellor, has delivered a Budget that makes it clear he wants those on higher incomes - be it wages or savings - to stump up.

You can forget stumping up more cash, its time to draw stumps...

He says that since the autumn we have put the banks on a firmer footing ‘cleaning up their balance sheet.’ What about cleaning up his own?

The sums dwarf any supposed ‘efficiency savings’ to reduce spending by £10 billion and certainly dwarf anything that might be raised by the 50 per cent tax on those earning over £150,000, instead of the 45 per cent planned. This is a naked political gimmick which the Institute for Fiscal Studies doubts will raise a bean. Still it should cheer us up that he is socking it to the rich and driving them out of the country.

& when you add to that, taxes on fuel, booze & smokos have all gone up heaping further misery upon the taxpayer, what is exactly the point point pf sticking around here?

The State of the Economy under Nu Labour

Today is Budget Day

& this morning's Matt cartoon just about sums up my feelings on the matter...

Like I really care

It is a measure of the shear arrogance of the Westminster Village that they continue to think that we give a stuff about whether Labour Lackeys were going to make unsubstantiated claims about Tories Tossers on some spurious website...

The row over Labour smears has been "resolved" and ministers must focus on other issues, Lord Mandelson has said. Reports that the Labour Party's general secretary met the men caught up in the smear campaign row to discuss online strategy was "tittle-tattle", he said. Ray Collins met Damian McBride and Derek Draper a month before the e-mails - smearing leading Conservatives - were sent, the News of the World reported.

...as The Englishman so correctly points out, the cheapest & quickest way to bring an end to this & so many of our so-called ‘issues’ is to buy more lamp posts. I for one look forward to the day when my correspondent from the other side of The Vale points his tractor & fully laden trailer eastwards along the M4 motorway. I will be right behind him in Larry Land Rover, loaded to the gills with firearms, ammunition & improvised explosives – even the most cursory glance at the newspapers must cause the rational to ask “Why shouldn’t regime change being at home?” The irrational such as me simply want to string 'em all up - its the only language this pondlife will understand

The Obama's dog arrives...

... & the whole world rejoices

Princes & potentates are queuing up to congratulate the new President on his stunningly astute canine selection. Meanwhile those of us who are not utterly enraptured at the First Dogs arrival are heartened by Michelle’s bold choices of dress designer & how her insights into organic farming will expedite global economic recovery

Berlusconi & the Final Fiscal Solution

Reported in the Brussels Diary column of Prospect

It has taken a global crisis, but the ideas of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s millionaire premier, are finally starting to sound almost sensible. At a summit of Europe’s biggest economies in Berlin in February, Berlusconi contributed little until pressed by Merkel.

Put on the spot, Berlusconi said that he was far from an expert but that the solution seemed simple: nationalise all the banks. Though there was a sharp intake of breath, the Italian prime minister for once sounded bold, radical & possibly ahead of the curve.

Inevitably it was too good to last. According to account, at the leaders’ dinner later, Berlusconi repeated the idea, this time adding that the tactic has worked for Mussolini.

& of Turkish membership of the EU

... Mr Obama also said Washington supported Turkey's efforts to join the EU. ...

May I humbly refer the President to the wise words of Sir Archibald Clerk Kerr

& the G20 conference protests start

White riot - I wanna riot, white riot - a riot of my own

So if the creek down rise & the damn don’t burst, the 1st of April could see an almighty punch up in London

Police are describing the threat to London from G20 protesters as "unprecedented", with seven different protests expected in the capital on the day of next week's summit.

& already the dope smoking roman sandal wearing malcontents are trying to cut up rough

An organiser of G20 protests has been suspended from his job as a university professor after he warned bankers could be "hanging from lampposts". Chris Knight, professor of anthropology at the University of East London, is organising protests under the banner G20 Meltdown. He told BBC Radio 4's PM programme: "We are going to be hanging a lot of people like Fred the Shred from lampposts on April Fool's Day and I can only say let's hope they are just effigies."

Pardon me while I don't poo myself ! However, it is in fact a national disgrace that we seem to be unable to put on a half recent riot anymore, something that even the French can manage at short notice & with aplomb. Now of course your humble correspondent will be going along – just for the violence & to give the Old Bill a bit of a hand.

Never has All Fools Day been more aptly named & all I ask for to make my shabby life whole is the opportunity to beat some climate change protestors brains out while he is in the process of striking a blow against globalisation by nicking the till from MacDonalds

Just a quick round up of the UK political scene

Tony McNulty, the Employment Minister, is facing an official inquiry after claiming more than £60,000 in Parliamentary expenses for the home where his parents live.

&

Senior Labour MP Nigel Griffiths faces a Parliamentary sleaze inquiry after admitting that he cheated on his wife by having a sexual liaison with another woman in his House of Commons office.

Need I say more ?

Forget the global financial crisis, this is what really matters

Amateur fishermen and women may have to declare any catches at sea so they can count against the UK's fish quotas, the European Commission has said

Time to go back to dealing with the Europeans the old way...

Inspired

She has never been one to shy away from controversy. So when Heather Mills decided to buy a popular fish restaurant near her home, her first move was obvious: take fish off the menu. Miss Mills plans to turn the seaside eaterie into a vegan restaurant, believed to be the first in a planned worldwide chain.

Whilst my first reaction on reading this was “twat!”, on not quite sober reflection, this is an excellent idea & I wish Miss Mills all the very best in establishing a global chain of vegan restaurants … that way when the time comes to settle the score, the emaciated ones will all be in one place. Rounding them all up will be much easier & hence their recycling as human landfill, much quicker.

& you wonder why we will build barricades

The implications of the Government’s latest Big Brother E-Boarders scheme are simply horrendous…

Anyone departing the UK by land, sea or air will have their trip recorded and stored on a database for a decade. Passengers leaving every international sea port, station or airport will have to supply detailed personal information as well as their travel plans. So-called "booze crusiers" who cross the Channel for a couple of hours to stock up on wine, beer and cigarettes will be subject to the rules.

The full extent of the impact of the government's "e-borders" scheme emerged amid warnings that passengers face increased congestion as air, rail and ferry companies introduce some of the changes over the Easter holidays.

& how long before these details are sold to some doggy contractor in exactly the same way that the DVLA sells information about car ownership? Maybe another concenious civil servant will leave this data on a train. But we have nothing to fear cheap suit wearing mininsters & their acolytes asure us

A UK Border Agency spokesman defended the e-borders scheme. "It allows us to secure the UK's Borders by screening people as they travel in and out of the UK. The e-Borders scheme has already screened over 82m passengers travelling to Britain, leading to more than 2,900 arrests, for crimes including murder, drug dealing and sex offences. e-borders helps the police catch criminals attempt to escape justice.

Well here’s my concept justice – having hanged anyone that has anything to do with these proposals, we start burning down government buildings

“But,” splutters government when we jib at this, “it's for your own good! We're protecting you!” The same tone of hurt ministerial outrage will be heard more and more as people come to realise exactly what is involved in the vast new “e-borders” system, currently being set up to track everybody's international travel just because a tiny minority are up to no good.

& remember the next time that you are refused exit from the country because you have used up your "carbon allowance" for the year that it is all for the common good

& on the US economy

From reader MK

Think destroying the mighty economy of the United States is too big a job for you? Relax. Anyone can do it. A friend sent me a handy-dandy no-fuss 12-step program for wrecking financial havoc among even the world’s most advanced economies. I adapted it below for your edification. Your congressmen probably already have a copy. The White House certainly does. But you might want to print it out in case some opportunity for spreading unhappiness comes your way:

4. A sufficiently generous larding of pork can help ensure the destruction of bi-partisanship, so squandering the initial goodwill is definitely a very good move. After all, it’s hard to get things done when you’ve alienated people whose help you need.

5. Undermine the ability of those who create jobs by increasing their taxes so there’s less money available for investment.

My friend stresses that this list is not exhaustive. Ask your elected representatives for further tips. Or write to the White House: they have loads of ideas for making things worse. But be patient. Ruining the greatest economy the world is not something you can do overnight. But it’s amazing, isn’t it, how much progress the President has made in less than two months? Five days before the election, he told his followers that they were that many days away “from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” Poor things. They thought he intended to make America stronger. Fat chance.

I fought the law & the law ...

Clashes broke out between police and protesters in Pakistan yesterday as authorities extended their clampdown on demonstrators seeking to march to the capital.

In a move that highlighted the government's determination to prevent thousands of lawyers and political opponents from gathering in Islamabad, police in Karachi detained a number of senior figures. Having initially allowed several hundred lawyers to begin their march from the centre of the city, they then prevented them from entering the main highway.

Of course we have seen this all before & the only question in my mind when we see Pakistani riot police beating lawyers in the streets is what can we learn from others cultures?

I can't for the life of me remember who coined the phrase with regard to this topic but whoever it was, they are truely bless'd

Another great Nu Labour idea

Bankers and other people who have lost their jobs in the recession will be able to qualify as British teachers in just six months and the best people fast-tracked to head schools under government plans announced on Tuesday ... Schools Minister Jim Knight said the plans were designed to attract "more outstanding people" to the profession, allowing them to achieve Qualified Teacher Status in the half the current one-year time period

More Euro nonsense

So while we are all having to work even longer hours in a vainglorious attempt to get the economy moving again, when we collectively keel over, our NHS, which is “the envy of the World” won’t have anyone to treat us…

The key pledge of Labour's NHS reform has been to reduce waiting lists and now the majority of patients are treated within the target of 18 weeks from seeing their GP. However this will be reversed as junior doctors will be limited to working a 48-hour week, from their current 56 hours, it is claimed.

The extension of the European Working Time Directive will effectively result in the loss of thousands of doctor shifts, John Black, President of the Royal College of Surgeons said. And the Government fears there will be a lack of locum doctors available to step in and help fill the gaps, following changes in doctors' recruitment. It means patients will have to wait months for routine operations as surgeons prioritise emergencies rather than scheduled cases.

Let the carpet bombing recommence. Look at the period since 1945 as a lull, while we plugged in some new target co-ordinates (as well as now dusting down some of the old ones)

& Paddy is back to his old tricks

I am sure that it was only the Westminster Village that really thought that Gerry Adams et al had miraculously transformed themselves into born again lo calorie cuddly republican politicians - anyone with a sense of history will know that the Irish dig ditches, drink to excess & perpetrate murderous grudges. It’s what they do. It’s in the blood. However my little Tony & the rest of his Nu Labour cronies all knew better – if we released all the terrorists & allowed murderers to go onto the public payroll, everything was going to be better. Nangers!

The real Ponzi scheme

Regulators were stunned on Wednesday night by Gordon Brownoff’s admission that he had for a decade been running a giant Ponzi scheme. Across the UK, investors were seduced by his pledge of never-ending returns & his promise that there would be no return to boom & bust. Some say there were red flags that were obvious to anyone who took the trouble to look. They point to his claim to have abolished the business cycle & the constant flow of cash into public sector salaries – all of it funded by debt & promises of ever greater tax returns

For years he was giving money to one group by taking it from another. Nurses were paid by money raised from utilities; utilities were paid by cuts in corporation tax; women were paid by money raised from men & men paid by money raised on women.

Teachers were financed by smokers & smokers by drivers. Even to the end Brownoff was seeking new victims. Last month he offered existing investors a £20bn payout – paid
through a complex VAT reduction mechanism. Delighted investors pocketed the cash & Brownoff’s opinion poll stock rose steadily.

But investigators say he never had the money for the payout & intended to get it back from those same investors over the next three years, trying to sell new Brownoff bonds to
credulous overseas buyers.

The secretive Brownoff for years resisted having his books audited independently, preferring instead to use a husband-and-wife firm in Pontefract, Balls Cooper. Part of his success was he seemed so well-connected. “He even knew Peter Mandelson”, said one investor.

A fat capitalist cigar to Tricky for finding this one

History bites back?

As reader Mike points out - First this…

A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to [Former President] George W Bush from the Government's art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back

Then that…

Obama, breaking with precedent, wouldn't grant the prime minister the customary honor of standing beside him in front of the two nations' flags for the TV cameras

Baldilocks has an interesting theory about the Washington Messiah’s behavior over the last few days…

If you recall, before Kenya became Kenya (1963) it was a British colony known as British East Africa. Between 1952 and 1960, there was this little “difference of opinion” between the UK and the natives of British East Africa—primarily from the Kikuyu tribe. That conflict is known as the Mau Mau Uprising. There were tens of thousands of African civilians killed and, according to Wiki, seven to ten thousand Africans interned by the British colonial masters. In Dreams from My Father, President Obama says that his grandfather was tortured by the British during the conflict, though he was not a Kikuyu but a Luo. Guess which prime minister ordered the Mau Mau insurgency to be put down.

Mystery solved. It seems that the president is seeking to humiliate the progeny of those who humiliated his ancestors. Revenge isn’t that complicated a motive. However, a question remains. Is this any way for a President of the United States to behave?

Your humble correspondent has a slightly take on recent events. Imagine this, you have have just finished moving into the house of your dreams when suddenly the one eyed Scottish idiot turns up – if it were me, I’d have shot the Brown one on the doorstep.

In any case, our treatment of the Mau Mau was very sound.

Brian down at the range, served in British East Africa during the Uprising. He’s an old man these days but still shoots very very straight.

A Labour MP telling the truth? Whatever next!

When Carolyn was in hospital, having just delivered us of wee Reggie, a very young girl in the bed opposite was also celebrating the arrival of her newborn. As was her proud father, who made great play to anyone who might have been listening (me) of how proud he was of his daughter. She was, I guess, about 16.

I’m a Labour MP, so some will undoubtedly be surprised, and shocked that I’m writing this. But I can no longer pretend that the army of teenage mothers living off the state is anything other than a national catastrophe.

Of course, despite this uncharacteristic honesty from the government benches, the Labour Party & indeed the wider Westminster Village is in complete denial about the only solution to the problems that these people cause – withdraw all social security payments immediately.

Why the hell should I have to pay for their lifestyle choices? Trust me when I say that I don’t care if these people end up destitute on the street. I ask no one to subsidise the way that I live my life & quite why the government thinks that I should want to contribute to these spongers is the reason that come the Glorious Day, the gallows will be busy disposing of our political overlords.

Phuque that!

For once even I am utterly speechless…

Veteran US senator Ted Kennedy, 77, is to be awarded an honorary knighthood. The Queen has agreed the honour for the brother of former US president John F Kennedy for services to the US-UK relationship and to Northern Ireland. Gordon Brown is to formally announce the award during his address to both houses of Congress on Wednesday.

When they say that Lord Ahmed is currently being detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure they don’t mean that tea is overrunning at Buckingham Palace, so it should come as no surprise that that the one eyed idiot has decided to elevate a terrorist loving feinian drunkard. Pah & double pah!

& Brown goes to the US

On behalf of all stout bulldogs I would to apologise to all readers from the left hand side of the pond for that the one-eyed Scottish idiot being in your country. Fell free to take any measures you deem necessary, without limitation or recourse.

For the avoidance of any doubt, AJDS found this open letter to Mr Brown that neatly sums up the man...

The Right Honourable Gordon Brown MP
10 Downing Street,
London
SW1A 2AA

I list below some of the mistakes made by you during your time in public office. If as a director of a limited company you had made similar mistakes you would be subject to criminal prosecution and banned from being a company director. As a Government minister the standards exercised should be significantly higher than those exercised by a company director,
you have failed to maintain those standards and are unfit for public office.

Banking Supervision: You transferred responsibility for banking supervision to the Financial Services Authority from the Bank of England so directly laying the seeds of the current banking crisis.

Steven Katirai

I think that should just about cover it!

Fat chavs, fat cats & Hatty Harperson

Just like this morning’s Fat Chav feature (see posts passim), there is so much about the Fred the Shred fiasco to enjoy. Indeed the latest parsimonious outburst from that hatchet faced old harridan Harriet Harman tells you just about all that you need to know about Nu Labour

Harriet Harman has said former Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) chief Sir Fred Goodwin should not "count on" keeping his full £650,000 a year pension.

The deputy Labour leader described the pension settlement - agreed by the RBS board - as "money for nothing". The sum was unacceptable in "the court of public opinion," she told the BBC, and the government "would step in".

So, the Government would seem to be conceding that rightly or wrongly, Sir Fred Goodwin has an enforceable contract that entitles him to a £650,000 a year pension. However as we all know, Labour & indeed politicians of whichever hue come to that, are always very keen on the law when it comes to taking away our rights, freedoms or processions, but when it goes the other way its suddenly forget the legal system & get ye down to the Court of Public Opinion, whatever that may be but I strongly suspect that it has something to do with the editorial column in the Daily Star which manages to opine on the most complex issues without recourse to a single three syllable word.

Just stopping to ponder for a moment, is this the same Court of Public Opinion that wants to lynch paedophiles & rid the country of the blight inflicted on it by the Mohammedans? I don't suppose that our Harriet is quite so keen on that Court of Public Opinion!

Heads you win, tails you change the law retrospectively – that’s Harman’s proposal – which should cone as no surprise because during the 1970s & 80s she was under MI5 surveillance as a suspected communist sympathiser & commies as we know love a bit of extra-judicial justice when it suits their ends. So it should come as no surprise when she comes out with lines like this

And it might be enforceable in a court of law, this contract, but it is not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that is where the government steps in.

More proof, as if we needed any, that the Labour Party doesn’t care in the slightest about what the laws that we have to obey say, if they don’t like it, they are going to “step in”. But just for a second, lets recall what Leo McKinstry, Harman’s former parliamentary aide said about her when he portrayed her as an ambitious hypocrite over her failed attempt to oust Brown. Apparently she

possessed of shallow competence and intelligence, she could barely run her office, far less the country

Indeed, it was her colleague, the late Gwyneth Dunwoody who described her as

one of those women who were of the opinion that they had a God-given right to be among the chosen

Me, I’m with Sir Fred on this one & I really don’t care about the rights or wrongs of the issue. He has a binding contract with RBS which he has every right to enforce. I hope he phuques over Harperson with exactly the same thoroughness with which he turned over his former shareholders at Royal Bank of Scotland. If however hideous Hatty is allowed to change the law retrospectively (a move that will incidentally end up with her in front of an institution that she loves dearly, the European Court of Human Rights) with just a little luck, she will get completely hung out to dry & it will keep her busy until The Glorious Day when we will hang her properly.

What financial controls?

Money grabbing, opportunistic, control freaks that reward failure … & I am not talking about the likes of Fred the Shred & his ilk

The City of London and other financial institutions should be supervised by a new pan-European risk watchdog, a European Commission report recommends. Its proposals, written by ex-Bank of France Governor Jacques de Larosiere, include an EU-wide scheme to oversee risks and give early warnings.

They never miss a trick or an opportunity to expand the size of the burgeoning EU State but because we a ruled by whimps

the UK government will wait to see the details before responding

as opposed to giving ex-Bank of France Governor, Jacques de Larosiere, who drafted this nonsense in the first place, a formal measured well thought through & structured response. Maybe something along the lines of this peut-être?

I am currently having a bonus dilemma have been granted a raft of share options yesterday

This just about sums it up...

Aside from that, reader Alan got this memo yesterday...

Dear Staff Member

Managing Director

The funny thing is that on Monday, I got a memo that wasn't a million miles away for that.

Auto industry bail out frivolity

Found by Hugh

Industry's position on both sides of the Pond

Interesting how prophetic a comic strip can be sometimes. Calvin's explanation of his lemonade stand business perspective has a resonance today. It is worth pointing out that this cartoon strip was drawn fifteen years ago!

Reader Martin gets a seven trillion pound government bailout for finding this one

The Free Market is dead. Long live the Free Market

From the pen of Mr. PJ himself, in yesterdays FT

The free market is dead. It was killed by the Bolshevik Revolution, fascist dirigisme, Keynesianism, the Great Depression, the second world war economic controls, the Labour party victory of 1945, Keynesianism again, the Arab oil embargo, Anthony Giddens’s “third way” and the current financial crisis. The free market has died at least 10 times in the past century. And whenever the market expires people want to know what Adam Smith would say. It is a moment of, “Hello, God, how’s my atheism going?”

Adam Smith would be laughing too hard to say anything. Smith spotted the precise cause of our economic calamity not just before it happened but 232 years before – probably a record for going short.

“A dwelling-house, as such, contributes nothing to the revenue of its inhabitant,” Smith said in The Wealth of Nations. “If it is lett [sic] to a tenant for rent, as the house itself can produce nothing, the tenant must always pay the rent out of some other revenue.” Therefore Smith concluded that, although a house can make money for its owner if it is rented, “the revenue of the whole body of the people can never be in the smallest degree increased by it”. [281]*

And we could nationalise our economies. But Smith said: “The state cannot be very great of which the sovereign has leisure to carry on the trade of a wine merchant or apothecary”. [818] Or chairman of General Motors.

* Bracketed numbers in the text refer to pages in ‘The Wealth of Nations’, Glasgow Edition of the Works of Adam Smith, Oxford University Press, 1976

Obey the suits

Goodness knows that I have done some stupid things when drunk or at least that was the excuse I gave to the awfully nice magistrate who thankfully recognised my old school tie & dismissed all charges. Rather like Jacques the Famous French Aviator, when I go down I want to go down in flames & not for protesting against Asil Nadir being allowed to flee the country by trying to ram a rather large British Telecom compressor trailer through the main entrance of the Polly Peck group headquarters it a fit of post-port patriotic indignation. Then there was the time that I bought some land in New Mexico on eBay after a proper gentleman’s luncheon but that’s a story for another day bottle of Glenlivet.

Now while we are on the subject of decent lunches, in the second half of 2008 Gordon Brown, after what I can only assume was a lunch that had morphed into a Gary Player*, had the monetary equivalent of a complete rectal prolapse & reconverted from a post-socialist free marketeer back to an old school state interventionist … & boy-oh-boy those nice City chaps didn’t so much as leg him over as give Broooone a full on fiscal reach around

Having basically bankrupted themselves, spunking away trillions of pounds worth of shareholder value in the process, they then blag the Scottish Git into buying the rotting carcasses of their once proud financial institutions (cushty!) before invoking the Student Paradigm - I now need even more of your money, to provide me with liquidity.

So why shouldn’t they pay themselves huge bonuses after all, in a normal market equity raising costs you +/- 5% in fees & the chaps must be due some huge fees having errrrrrr ‘raised’ so much fresh equity. Of course the Westminster village is incandescent because hell hath no fury like a politician scorned but if you are going to extort money, don’t kidnap some poor sod’s wife & kids just so you demand a measly twenty five grand for their release: hold the government to ransom & demand billions. It’s amazing what wearing an immaculately cut suit can do for you & before you know it, we will be back to business as usual.

* Gary Player – (rhyming slang) all dayer i.e. a lunch that lasts until well after dinner should have finished & you end up off your Chevy Chase

Thought for the day

Conservatives tend to respond to several moral senses while liberals focus on just two - harm & fairness - in which they have become particularly discerning

Jonathan Haidt

Special Relationships

If you have glanced at this mornings On This Day entry, you will see that it is the anniversary, in 1783, of Great Britain’s formal cessation of hostilities with its American colonies. As if by coincidence, I suspect that a lot of you saw pictures like this on last night’s news…

…shortly before you saw your supper for the second time. Notwithstanding the bout of projectile vomiting brought on by the mere sight of Miliband & Clinton, this morning we return to the special relationship between Britannia & Uncle Sam.

Back in 2003, Boy aged 6 at the time was playing with one of his chums. Little chum was & still is a good kid, notwithstanding his parents misguided liberalism. During the afternoon, my little beacon of transatlantic solidarity was overheard saying,

No, America is our friend because they helped us in the War

Of course, that flies in the face of the truth that most of Europe despises America for many many reasons. Any form of historic analysis reveals that half of Continental Europe could only get itself liberated with vast amounts of US aid; the other half got its collective arses kicked in the process but after that process was over, was able to be rebuilt with American taxpayers dollars, under the Marshall Plan.

From the stout bulldogs perspective, just remember that we won the Battle of Britain our own, & despite what Hollywood might think, we also didn’t need a lot of help to from the left hand side of the pond to crack the German Enigma codes. However looking at the whole of World War II, 25% of our ammunition & 50% of our tanks were supplied by the United States.

In addition, almost all our replacement merchant shipping & nearly all of our transport aircraft came with Made in America on the label.

In the normal course of events, the cries of yank-lover are drowned out by the sound of gunfire coming from FM Towers but I make no bones about being a pro-US & this being a pro-US blog. As regular readers will know, I'm no expert in so many things & geo-politics is one of those, so at this point I shall defer to Sir Winston Churchill & his 1943 broadcast from Washington

The experience of a long life & the promptings of my blood have wrought in me the conviction that there is nothing more important for the future of the world than the fraternal association of our two peoples in righteous work both in war & peace.

Of course the Euro-weenies continue to drone on that America is populated by narrow-minded cowboys that have no comprehension of the World stage, pursues a damaging unilateral foreign policy, think of Disneyland as a cultural peak & only want to eat in Taco Bell. It is the view of your humble correspondent however, that European non-intervention causes more problems that it solves; take for example Bosnia. The exception to this is of course, Germany - they have a nasty habit of invading everybody in an attempt to force entire populations to listen to 3-day Wagnerian operas. Best that the boxheads stay at home for the next couple of hundred years.

However, the Continentals dislike of America is deep seated & to a greater extent, has blinded EU leaders to recent World events. Most of Europe is at best spinelessly ambivalent to the War on Terrorism; France & Germany actively collaborating in their opposition (nothing new about the French collaborating with the Germans eh readers?).

But this loathing goes much deeper and steams from envy - Europeans hate America basically because it is so much richer & has higher standards of living. Forget the current economic woes, America’s socio-economic model will ensure that given time, they will pull through because basically American working folks produce more of just about everything in any year than their European counterparts. My concern comes from a slightly different direction & let us once again revert to the wise words of our skipper, Sir Winston, in his address to the House of Commons on 1 March 1955

We must also never allow the growing sense of unity and brotherhood between the United Kingdom & the United States & throughout the English-speaking world to be injured or retarded

This most special relationship is now being managed by that ghastly Clinton woman & the uber-numpty David Boy Miliband.

Doh!

What question? (Reposted)

The government has unveiled plans for "memory clinics"

Will these memory clinics also help politicians remember their manifesto pledges?

An apology & a rather large graphic

Actually, it’s more of an apology for posting such a large picture, but could I just point out that the scale of the investment banks losses can’t really be comprehended on a 150 x 150 jpeg

Nice work lads …that’s what I call delivering shareholder value!

Your Wednesday morning starter for 10: Alistair Darling …

…do you trust him to revive your flagging fortunes & the once Great British economy to boot?

Because thats the bottom line here. Regular readers know that your humble correspondent wouldn’t trust one of ‘em to even sit the right way round on the lavatory seat.

Bottom line. Gettttit?

Marx Brothers: what a good name for a publicly owned investment bank

From Reader Rufus

Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks which will have to be nationalized and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism - Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867

Go though this might sound good, Mr. Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was possibly unlikely to use a word like technolgy in say 1867. So a couple of minutes of Google reveals that the full quotation comes from here & is…

In the wake of the cataclysmic failure of free market capitalism and the nationalization of the country’s banks, Americans over the age of seven will be forced to complete a reeducation program designed to re-instill lessons learned in preschool that have been deemed essential to functioning in a communist society by the federal government… citing Karl Marx, who presaged: "The owners of capital will stimulate the need of the working class to take expensive, collateral loans to buy their condos, houses and technological products; and, at the end, these unpaid debts will result in the nationalization of the banks upon their bankruptcy, and so the state will be on the pathway to communism"

Still a good quotation though !

Back to banking

This morning dear readers we return to the current turmoil in the global economy but before we get going, I would like to make one thing clear: despite some speculation over the course of last year, your humble correspondent works for neither an i-bank nor a hedge fund. Lets just say that whilst I know a thing to two about the capital markets, my current social pariah status is entirely of my own marking – I didn’t need somebody else’s failed balance sheet to achieve it. So to mark the stock market losses that we are all so enjoying (go on, have that cigarette, that way you don’t have to worry about your underfunded pension scheme) this morning we take that most vilified of professions as our topic – yes, its back to banking.

On Tuesday night, I had the pleasure of flying from Hong Kong to London first class. So, drunk & recumbent on my bed I was flicking through the movie selection while waiting for the stewardess to bring my next little drinkypoos when I noticed that they were showing Fight Club.

As you would expect, I don’t subscribe to Brad worship but it is interesting to draw parallels between some of the themes in that particular film (nilistic anti-establishmentarianism) & the increasingly virulent attacks that are currently being mounted upon the benfits of free markets & free trade from the op-ed pages of the liberal-left media.

However, rather than debate this particular topic with learned dicourse, forgive me dear readers if we go interllectual absailing & I reduce the topic to my own twardy level. As opposed to elegant & well constructed arugment I would like to set a little scenario for you all…

Imagine if you will that you are one of the former masters of the universe, an investment banker -against both your better judgement & repeated pleading the meme sahib has dragged to screaming like a five year old to a dinner party hosted by Mr & Mrs Progressive. Whilst this very action in itself is grounds for immediate divorce, you think of the children, throw both caution & common sense to the wind quicker that a socialist politican casts fiscal responsibilty to the dustbin & actually show up. Through gritted teeth the pleasentaries as dispensed with & with growing dismay as you sit down to dinner, you are greeted by a scene of such diabolical invention that the Devil himself would have been pleased with his handiwork: an entire table of Guardian types who look really of embark upon a 6 hour Obama-is-the-new-Massiah-athon.

The correct course of action in this sort of circumstance is as quickly as possible slaughter the hosts & other guests before finishing off all the booze because it would be churlish not to empty your now straining bladder over the still bleeding corpses ... before politely making your excuses & leaving.

However, I can guarantee you that you didn't kill everyone in the room you would have to endure that Great British tradition of the blame game that is currently gripping the UK in the same way the chlamydia grips a university campus.

City Minister Lord Myners attacks bankers for greed and arrogance

& of course, the “creatives” are getting in on the act as well

The author of best-selling novels including Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, saying that the country's wealthy should be "strung up". In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, broadcast this morning, Sillitoe appeared to take a swipe at the greed of rich bankers and City workers, some of whom have been blamed for fuelling the current economic crisis.

It is the most unpleasent side of our national characteristic: envy. Market conditions are such that every class warrior, crypto-communist is getting in on the act. The current financial crisis is apparently all the fault of the big banks & has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the pofligate fiscial policies of those who have lorded it over us since 1997.

As for me, it is of course worth remembering that Andy Warhol once said that “Art is what you can get away with” - so until the next time dear readers...

Decline & Fall

The Scottish Legacy

From todays Torygraph, Simon Heffer...

As Scots the world over prepare to celebrate tomorrow their third best poet (after Henrysoun and Dunbar, of course) by eating sheep's intestines filled with what always seems to be gravel, it is appropriate that there should be stunning new evidence of the vast contribution their little nation continues to make to Britain. As recession is declared official, the pound sinks, the stock market totters, banks wobble and misery abounds, let's salute the Scotsmen who did it.

The sooner the bunch of Scots who govern us are booted into history the better. I don't say that the English would be any better, but at least we would be paying for our own mistakes rather than someone else's. Never has the case for English independence from the Scots been so overwhelming. Sadly, I suspect that in the present state of penury England will be saddled with them for another 302 years of high-end welfarism at least.

Hedge Funds

The following cartoon came from a Barclays Capital publication on hedge funds, published in 2003

& we never saw this coming?

Sterling:Dollar Rates

Sterling's slide has continued, with the pound touching US$1.3622, as concerns about the UK economy and the banking sector intensified.

Sterling fell to its weakest level against the dollar since September 1985, before rising to $1.4015 ... last summer the pound was trading at more than $2

Over the last week, I have sat through several briefings that predicted that the Sterling:Dollar exchange rate will go to 1:1 over this year. If this happens, it will of course be the fault of evil currency speculators shorting Sterling & have nothing to do with the market correctly valuing the disastrous impact of Gordon Brown’s failed economic policies

Proof that at least one government minister has been smoking “green shoots”

Business minister Baroness Vadera has denied she is out of touch after claiming she could see "a few green shoots" of economic recovery

Another candidate for the lamp post tango

I seem to recall that I have been saying this for some time...

Ex-trade minister Lord Digby Jones says he was "amazed" to discover how many civil servants "deserved the sack". He told a committee of MPs he thought the civil service could "frankly... be done with half as many" people.

& I am always happy to lend a hand

This picture just about sums up gormless Gordon

Why exactly am I having to pay for this?

Taxpayers are funding the repatriation of hundreds of homeless Eastern European immigrants who have been living on the streets. Hundreds of thousands of pounds is being spent annually on travel costs for the immigrants, mainly Polish, who have been unable to find work in Britain and have no access to benefits.

Now we all believe in the free movement of goods, services & labour but if these people came to the UK under their own steam, is it not unreasonable for the taxpayer to assume that they can also get home under their own steam – or maybe the Polish taxpayer might want to pay for the safe repatriation of their countrymen?The first rule of working abroad is always ensure that you have enough money in your pocket to get home if it all goes tits up.

Its not that I am without compassion for the plight of these people & the flip side of the argument is that the taxpayer is currently baling out everybody & everything. Therefore why shouldn’t we pay to bale out foreign nationals. After all, we have been doing the same in Africa for decades.

& the now the news on the jobs market

Government Debt - Part 3

So simply printing money didn’t work in Germany, Argentia but according to Tax & Waste Brown, it will work in once Great Britain - just like it worked so well in Zimbabwe where they now have such hyper-inflation that they ended up having to print One Hundred Billion Dollar notes.

At that point, exchange rates just about have no meaning but in terms of relative values (all currency is a store of value) what does One Hundred Billion Zimbabwean Dollars buy you?

& thats all. If Brown has his way, Sterling will soon be going in the same direction

Government Debt - Part 2

Having very briefly looked an US indebtedness last night, it is worth considering that proportionally, the UK is in an even worse position. This situation is further compounded because the Government that got us into this mess, is now having to borrow even more money. It does this by auctioning off government bonds which it will have to pay back at some point in the future. The problem is that we are now fast approaching the point where the global markets are at the point where there is no longer any appetite from potential investors for this paper. This is not a good place to be when the Government is planning to sell £146.6 billon of debt before the end of March

Britain may overwhelm bond investors with a record number of quarterly debt sales, risking the first failed auctions since 2002 as the economy sinks into the worst recession since World War II.

“I’m not predicting that we will have failed auctions, but I can’t rule that out,” Robert Stheeman, chief executive officer of the U.K. Debt Management Office, or DMO, said in an interview last month. “It’s a big amount of debt to be sold. We are in a very different world than we were six months or a year ago.”

& the latest numpty answer from Prime Mininster Gordon ‘Prudence’ Brown is to follow the economic model that worked so well in Germany during the 1920’s & in Agentina during the 1970’s …& literally print more money. Lots of it.

The Government may resort to printing extra money if interest rates keep falling. It is being considered as a desperate measure if base rates fall so far that they cease to work as an economic lever.

Chancellor Alistair Darling and Bank of England governor Mervyn King are considering whether to embark on a new policy of expanding the money supply

Thank you Nu Labour for your catastrophic mismanagement of the economy since 1997. I hope you all die very slowly. In pain.

Government Debt - Part 1

The USA's Outstanding Public Debt as at 07 Jan 2009 at 10:20:11 PM GMT, was

but here is a little thought for you all...

On this day, the 8th January 1835, the United States national debt was percisely zero.

The United States has had public debt since its inception. Debts incurred during the American War of Independence and under the Articles of Confederation led to the first yearly reported value of $75,463,476.52 on January 1, 1791. Over the following 45 years, the debt grew, briefly contracted to zero on January 8, 1835 under President Andrew Jackson but then quickly grew

A swift check of the US Treasury website gives a total debt number on the 6th of $10,638,425,746,293.80. That figure breaks down to:

Intragovernmental Holdings - $4,319,616,621,638.24
Debt Held by the Public - $6,318,809,124,655.56

I'm off to bed now, I wonder what the clock will be reading by the time I get up & have Part 2 of this post written

Willie Peter makes you a believer

We first touched upon White Phosphorus back in November 2005 when the Septics were doling out the good news to insurgents terrorists in Fulluja. Needless to say, at that time the MSM was getting a tad angsty about its use…

Of course, comments like this wont stop the finger pointing & salacious accusations from the al-Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation.

Now as then, WP is coming in for a slating but this time from The Times

Israel is believed to be using controversial white phosphorus shells to screen its assault on the heavily populated Gaza Strip yesterday. The weapon, used by British and US forces in Iraq, can cause horrific burns but is not illegal if used as a smokescreen.

For those of you that have never played with White Phosphorus or WP, it is known in the trade a Willie Peter & it is said of it that Willie Peter makes you a believer. Ironic eh? Aside from that, it is ideal for making the most excellent smoke screens & if a few terrorists get crispy crittered in the process, so much the better.

Has there been collateral damage? Yes of course there has & civilian casualties are always regreable however the residents of the Sunset Strip are all culpable by allowing Hamas terrorists to fire hundreds if not thousands of rockets into Israel. It’s a joint & several liabilty thing: Germans & the Japanese understand.

From the beginning of [2008] until June 19, Israel was struck by 2,660 projectiles fired from Gaza. From June 19, when the ceasefire went into effect, to Nov. 4, the total was 65. From Nov. 5 to Dec. 10, 237 mortar shells and rockets have been fired from Gaza at towns in Southern Israel

That chap who runs the UN, Willie Wonka or whatever the hell his name is, keeps banging on about proportionality but I have not yet seen a table that properly shows the mathematical relationship between a Hamas terrorist’s rocket fired indiscriminately at Israeli civilians & an Izzie 1,000 lb laser guided bomb aimed back at said terrorists. Maybe Mr Wonka should confine himself to sorting out UN’s unpaid parking tickets until such time as he can come up with such a relationship.

More liberal fun

Also from Martin

The liberal paradox

A wave of the fat capitalist cigar to Martin for this one

A Wednesday morning thought

Does anyone out there remember My Little Tony - we finally go rid of the little swine...

& afterwards he showed up again, this time as the UN's Peace Envoy for the Middle East. That worked out well then!

from Gaza City to the City of London

So Homous or what ever the hell they are called decided to unilaterally declare an end to the ceasefire with the Zionists. Smart move. The next smart move ... deciding that they would rain their rockets on the heads of the occupiers so that they are consumed by the flames of Islam as so instructed by the Prophet (PBUH)

… & exactly what did you think was going to happen next you intellectual spastics? Let’s be honest here, the Red Sea pedestrians don’t have much of a track record when it comes to the turning the other cheek. So when Sayed & Ahmed, having gotten themselves well & truly ideologically pissed (in both senses of the word) start lobbing their Toy Town pyrotechnics into Israel – 150 since Saturday - how exactly did they think it was going to end:

Option A
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert & his government with the overwhelming support of its electorate agree to unilaterally dismantle every vestige of Israeli state & allow a new Caliphate to be established in Jerusalem as soon as possible but definitely before prayers on Friday; or

Option B

Now to say that there is anger on the streets of Gaza City & throughout the Islamic world is nothing when compared to the collective gnashing of teeth from North London ‘progressives’, loony left champagne socialists & the usual Mohammedan-rent-a-mob. Indeed Sami, Salam & the Hamas apologists have been creating a little ruckus on the streets of London

& that when blended with a fair amount of something dark n peaty got me to thinking late last night…

Despite the vainglorious assertions of the porridge wog Brown, we are plunging into a seemingly bottomless recession but now have a conservative Mayor of London who is allegedly committed to such unfashionable ideas such as cutting the cost of public services. Therefore, why not outsource the policing of these demonstrations to …wait for it … the Izzies & save the taxpayer some money?

After all, shall we just say that they probably have more experience in dealing with these sorts of situations than the Metropolitan Police are incapable of arresting even one of our perfidious MPs without getting into a right royal hand bagging.

Now before anyone starts sending me angry emails asserting that I have finally taken leave of what little remains of my alcohol ravaged senses, there is a precedent for this. Recall if you will the passage of the Olympic Torch through London – the government seemed to be quite content to allow the Chinese paramilitary police kick the cr*p out of those protesters: why then don’t we extend the same courtesy to the Israelis? I for one would be straight down to Kensington to buy tickets for the matinee performance!

How much?

I would like to think that this little bastion of capitalism’s readership enjoy better than average remuneration – not so much the fruits of others labours as proper recompense from a free market that accurately prices goods & services. Take for example reader Richard’s December salary cheque…

Sadly however & as the more observant among you will have noticed, Richard is paid in Zimbabwean Dollars.

Forget the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee’s inflation targets, as failed African dictators economic policies go, that’s real mans inflation. When I was sent this on 19th December, that cheque was worth a tad over US$23 - by now its worth a lot less against just about every major currency you care to mention except Sterling which is fast approaching parity with the Zim $ !

Daddy, what did you do during the credit crunch?

or Where Do Bailouts Come From?

Junior had been watching Mom and Dad sulk around the house for weeks, wondering what was going on. Mom still tucked him in at night, and Dad played stick ball with him on weekends. Yet both parents seemed distracted and detached.

“You mean, someone should punish them for being rich? That would be like Coach putting me on the bench after hitting that grand-slam home run in the bottom of the fifth in the Little League championships. Why would Coach Perkins want to do that?”

More of the same here

Like any of us really care

In the finest traditions of the season of goodwill to all men, the Met & the Tories have started to indulge in a spot of festive handbagging (as if any of us stout bulldogs really care) & this is how the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation was reporting it on Sunday night…

A row has erupted between the senior police officer investigating Home Office leaks and the Conservatives. Anti-terror chief Bob Quick said the Tories were trying to undermine his inquiry following a newspaper story that he said endangered his family. Mr Quick says he was forced to move his family after details of their home were published. The Conservatives denied having anything to do with the story

However what the Mail comes at the same story in a slightly different light, quoting the same said copper …

The Tory machinery and their press friends are mobilised against this investigation in a wholly corrupt way, and I feel very disappointed in the country I am living in

So now we have the police accusing the Conservative Party of corruption – fantastic. You just can't make this sort of thing up. However dear readers, you have to remember that since 1997 our police haven't become at all politicised but ZaNu Labour think that they might - well at least according to Home Secretary Jacqui "Jackboots" Smith…

Proposals for direct elections to police authorities have been scrapped after the Home Secretary caved in to growing concerns about the politicisation of the police.

Now while most of us feel that Jacqui Smith is only fit for human landfill, at least her husband thinks that she is doing a good job ...

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s husband has been unmasked as the author of a letter-writing campaign defending the Government to her local newspaper – without revealing that they are married. Richard Timney has had a series of angry letters published in the Redditch Advertiser in Worcestershire attacking the Tories over schools and backing Ms Smith’s controversial identity-cards plan

But he conveniently neglected to point out that his wife Mrs Smith, 46, MP for the marginal seat of Redditch and a former Schools Minister, was responsible for both policies. Nor did he say that he is paid £40,000 a year as her Commons adviser..

The more of this sort of nonsensical behaviour that I read & there are reams of it out there on a daily basis, the more that my policy of stretching the necks of anyone who has anything to do with the Westminster Village looks completely vindicated

There are many of us out there in the Shires whose earnest Christmas wish is to see the boughs festooned the still twitching corpses of these pondlife.

Now that is what I would call a properly decorated Christmas Tree

Iraqi shoe bomber update

This from McHugh

Flying footware

Aside from managing to sneak in a couple of hours trigger time on Saturday afternoon, it is fair to say that your humble corresondent devoted a lot of the weekend ducking current events in Albion in a somewhat similar manner to which GWB ended up dodging the Slippers of Jihad. Good lord, these insurgents have absolutely no sense of what is sartorial acceptable. If you are going to throw your shoes at the President of the United States, at least lob some Lobbs & not those sort of cheapo nasty shoes that are normally reserved for social workers & teachers.

Frankly wouldn’t No.10’s press conferences be a lot more watchable if our painfully liberal political correspondents started raining fairtrade espadrilles down on Brown, everytime that lying Scottish git opened his duplicitous mouth. In fact this entire concept could do more to revive the fortunes of manufacturing industry far more than hollow political gestures like cutting 2% off VAT. The sight of a proper Empire building hobnailed boot ricocheting off the bridge of the Prime Minister's nose would certainly cause an immediate revival of interest in the political process as the snot & claret started squirting over the front row of Nu Labour sycophants reporters.

Therefore dear readers, in the words of (former) PC Dave Copperfield, the first question we should ask ourselves this morning is what can we learn from other cultures?

Another victory for the taxpayer

A government efficiency drive designed to save £57m has left taxpayers with an £81m bill, a report by MPs has claimed

Forget the National Audit Office...there is only one course of action that makes any sense in instances like this

When ‘no’ is simply not an option

Hell hath no fury like a politician scorned & absolutely nothing, not even radical Islam hath fury like a Euro-politician scorned. This morning dear readers, please pity poor poor Ireland. A few months back, the Paddies had the temerity to tell Brussels to stuff their constitution treaty. Failed. Wrong answer. How predictable was it that they would be forced to sit the exam again.

I am not sure if Brown’s Britain is a metaphor for the European Union or the European Union is a metaphor for Brown’s Britain – which ever way round it is, the result is the same. Democracy is considered to be a good thing just so long as it produces the answer that the political elite want. If the prols don’t vote the way that is required of them they will keep being asked the same question until they come up with the answer that is required. All resistance is futile. Dissent will not be permitted.

Recall if you will dear readers that both the Dutch & the French rejected the EU Constitution in referenda – despite that, in both instances the respective governments went ahead & ratified the Lisbon Treaty against the wishes of their electorates. If that isn't the perfect example of European Democracy in action, try this for size ….

The Brussels executive's term of office ends on Oct 31 2009, but the Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, has said there were plans to extend his mandate until the end of the year.

Indeed the hypocrasy becomes more blatant on the daily basis. It is being reported that Gordon Brown thinks that the Irish should ratify the constitution … yet he wont keep his own party's election pledge to give us stout bulldogs a referendum on this issue.

For perpetrating such a massive electoral fraud & for that reason alone, I hope that the Jihadis sneak one through & the Palace of Westminster together with all of its occupants are consumed in a single apoclyptic confligration. It’s a far far better end than they deserve as well as being a lot quicker & less painful fate when compared to what I would do to every last one of these b*stards if I could get my hands on ‘em

Uppity huns

Goodness knows that I am no fan of our Government but when some bl**dy Boche starts to criticize our domestic policies (which incidentally is in the finest traditions of the EU) a robust rebuttal is required.

Downing Street has hit back at an outspoken attack by Germany's finance minister's on the government's plans to combat the economic downturn. Peer Steinbruck had criticised the UK's decision to cut VAT and raise the national debt to record levels. He said Britain's switch from financial prudence to heavy borrowing was both "crass" and "breathtaking".

The fact the Herr Minister is probably 100% correct has nothing to do with it. “Sources close to” are already leaking like a Panamanian bum boat but once again could I humbly point out that both our grandparents & parents knew much better exactly how to deal with meddling Teutons…

Of course, that Scottish git is way too important to get dragged into this one - he has much loftier matters to attend to...

Prime Minister Gordon Brown made himself the butt of merciless mockery in the House of Commons when a slip of the tongue led him to boast "we have saved the world".

Git!

They would rather we sat in the dark

Aside from being deeply depressing, economically the European Union is in a deep depression. Greece is being swept by riots & all across the continent, financial institutions are staring into the abyss of insolvency. Illegal immigration is rampent, wasteful spending is out of control while bloated & unsustainable social welfare programmes consume more of GDP. In the face of this what does the EU find time to worry itself with ...?

A European Union report has recommended banning conventional incandescent light bulbs by 2012 to save energy and cut down on greenhouse gas emissions

& to think that my old granddad spent 4 years bayoneting Huns in the mud at Wipers for it to come to this

5 before 9

1. The open display of tobacco in shops is to be banned in England, the government is expected to announce later

In effect, they want to ban the sale of tobacco from shops. This should come as no surprise given that Nu Labour seems to be spending an inordinate amount of time trying to ban the sale of alcohol in pubs

2. A trial version of the first virtual world aimed at the Muslim community has been launched. Called Muxlim Pal, it allows Muslims to look after a cartoon avatar that inhabits the virtual world. Based loosely on other virtual worlds such as The Sims, Muxlim Pal lets members customise the look of their avatar and its private room. Aimed at Muslims in Western nations, Muxlim Pal's creators hope it will also foster understanding among non-Muslims.

Excellent. Will women characters have to wear black sacks? Will there be a jihad function? Is there a Sharia Law preset? Can we have suicide bomber characters?

3. Women are more skilled than men at assembling flatpack furniture, according to a female boss at furniture store Ikea

Wonderful. Now you have an excuse for leaving it to the Mrs to build that sturdy new Ikea shelf unit

4. More than £2 billion a year is lost through tax evasion

Good

5. The alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks and four co-defendants last night confessed to murdering nearly 3,000 people in America's worst terrorist atrocity. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed stunned a pre-trial hearing in Guantanamo Bay by declaring that he and his alleged accomplices plan to plead guilty. All five demanded an 'immediate' court session to announce their full confessions

More good news. Time to start oiling that rope. Looks like it will be needed sooner than expected.

Serves 'em all right

Predictably & in exactly the same way that you always find flies on a fresh cow pat, Labour lackies are trying to protect one of their own as the level of criticism of the Speaker of the House of Commons continues to rise…

Housing minister Margaret Beckett said it was a "long-standing tradition" that MPs did not criticise the Speaker's Office and she urged all members to refrain from this.

& now that smug little git Ed “Blame Everybody Else” Balls is also trying to get in on the act

Labour ministers have rallied round the Commons Speaker after 32 MPs told the BBC that they no longer had confidence in him after the Damian Green affair. Fifty MPs said Michael Martin was at fault over the Tory MP's arrest and his Commons office search in a leaks probe. Ninety MPs replied to the BBC research. Children's secretary Ed Balls said the criticism by Conservative MPs was "undermining" the Speaker.

Well it just strikes me that firstly, the more of the Westminster Village that get locked up the better – if I could prevail upon you to look at my previous post on how Parliament has both politicized & at the same time destroyed our once magnificent police service – any of the incumbents that get nicked – to hell with them. If a few more get tinned from their tax payer funded jobs in the process … so much the better

& they wonder why we loath them?

I was much taken by this piece that appeared in the Torygraph yesterday

the truth is that the deepest divide in British politics today is not between Labour and the Tories; or between Speaker Michael Martin and irate backbench MPs; or between members of Gordon Brown's Cabinet and each other. It is between Britain's whole political class and the great majority of the British people. On the far side of a chasm stand politicians of all parties and their hangers-on. On the near side is almost everyone else

This of course isn’t surprising given that since 1997, our political overlords feel that they can now act with complete impunity & the whole notion of political accountability seems to have been thrown out of the window. Anthony King who penned the article goes on to list just a few of the “failures” that we have all so enjoyed & had to pay for:

BSE debacle
Poll tax
Child Support Agency
Britain's ignominious expulsion from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism
Millennium Dome
Massive cost-overruns and the partial or total failure of IT projects across the public sector
Failure to control immigration
Bungled introduction of home information packs
Fiasco of the cost-ineffective Assets Recovery Agency
Collapse of Metronet
Cash for honours
GPs' and dentists' ill-drafted contracts
Northern Rock; the failure of government regulation across the financial sector
Botched marking of last summer's Sats exams
Mishandling of Post Office card accounts

In fact the list is practically endless & should include the shameful way in which Nu Labour has treated our magnificent Armed Forces as well as the erosion of our basic rights & freedoms. But please remember, we still have ID cards and the London Olympics to look forward to.

Over the last few days the arrest of some previously unknown Tory MP in what increasingly looks to be an arbitrary police action & the searches of his home & offices without a warrant is only the latest example of how Parliament & Parliament alone has sought to create a society that doesn’t give a damn about the rights of the individual. The fact that it is a member of the Westminster Village that is on the receiving end of some rough justice is the most delicious irony of all.

However, in response to the police’s extra-judicial actions & the appalling lack of judgment shown by the Speaker of the House Michael Martin, what is going to happen? The Speaker’s actions are to be investigated by an all party committee of MPs appointed by … wait for it … the Speak of the House. & they wonder why Joe Public has become disillusioned by politics. That nice Mr Fawkes was right all along

Bombay

As I type this through the usual haze of beer, red wine & whiskey somewhere over the North Atlantic, I can’t help but ponder the events in Bombay & contrast what would have happened if the same had occurred at my point of arrival this morning (London) or indeed Dallas, from whence I have come.

Firstly, why on earth are so many commentators so surprised that Islamo-fascism hasn’t gone away? It might be reeling from 7 years of near all out military assaults & the attention the most sophisticated intelligence agencies in the world have managed to curtail some of its nefarious activities, but back in Blighty the Government remains committed to completely ruinous two pronged strategy: uncontrolled immigration continues unabated & numerous agencies are unstinting in their efforts to appease the Mohammedans in a manner not seen since Marshal Petain launched his award winning “Nazis are nice” advertising campaign.

In fact, in once-Great Britain, the police seem more interested in covering up information that might embarrass t