Be Plateful

The good the mad and the stupid

You could be forgiven for thinking that Labour and the Tories are the same. So who to vote for? UKIP, or the Lib Dems? Many people choose Lib Dem as a 'safe protest vote', but remember that they want “More Europe” than the others. So if you love Brussels, you must VOTE LIB DEM! Personally, I will avoid them like an overworked cliché. As an example of some of their antics, we recently had MP Richard Younger-Ross (Lib Dem, Teignbridge) wanting Britain to pull out of the Eurovision Song Contest because the voting was skewed and unfair. (See below, right). Fine. But our membership of the European Union is far more damaging than if Chirpy Booma Bang gets the elbow from Eastern Europe. A sense of proportion might be useful here. Just down the road from Mr Younger-Ross, may I present Torbay Councillor Colin Charlwood (another Lib Dim, of course) who declared in 2006 that Torquay’s palm trees were a health hazard; the palm leaves could scratch a passer-by’s face or even poke out an eye. Councillor Charlwood explained: “It’s a bit like keeping tigers. They are beautiful to look at, but you wouldn’t want them wandering the streets”. To quote Richard Littlejohn (Littlejohn’s Britain) “it borders on clinical insanity – You don’t get a lot of tigers in Devon. Councillor Charlwood clearly belongs in a padded cell wearing a jacket”…. I couldn’t put it better myself.

Just a few votes more

Paws for thought

In 1965 the American psychologist Martin Seligman made a discovery… He was repeating an established experiment, which involved sounding a bell, then giving a dog a mild electric shock. In time the dogs associated the bell with the shock and jumped up in anticipation of what was coming. Seligman noticed something odd. After conducting the test a few times the dogs stopped jumping. They simply lay down and waited for the shock, even if the kennel door was left open. They had given up hope. He realised that when a creature believes it has no control over its situation and whatever it does is futile, it stops fighting back. The same happened in the concentration camps when the inmates lay down to die, and can be seen today in floods and famines when the victims are so traumatised they are unable to fend for themselves. This is called Learned Helplessness. I suggest that the government has now adopted this same technique against us, hoping that we’ll lie down and give up: they claim to be listening, but ignore us, pursuing their own agenda. The re-named EU Treaty (read Constitution) is a case in point. Labour’s 2005 election-winning manifesto promised a referendum on it. But Gordon Brown has betrayed that promise, is terrified of asking us, and clearly doesn’t give a tinker’s cuss what you think. Seligman observed something else: Not all dogs gave up. About a third continued to resist the shocks. In human political terms many would be UKIP-supporters, with a make-up of resistance and independence. Are you one of them, or have you now rolled over, paws in the air?

Shock and bore

Rich Pickings

Ten old friends met for a drink every weekend at the pub. They usually spent £100, so they worked out a system. The first four paid nothing. The fifth paid £1. The rest paid more according to their wealth. The tenth (the richest) paid £59. One day the landlord came up to them: “I’ve been thinking. You’re good customers – from now on I’m going to cut your bill by £20. Beer for the evening will now cost £80”
They kept the same rules for paying their share, so the first four still paid nothing. The rest divided the £20 windfall in a fair manner. They decided to reduce the remaining six shares by the same amount. For example, the seventh man now paid £5 instead of £7. The ninth paid £14 instead of £18. The tenth man (the richest) paid £49 instead of £59. When they got outside, the seventh man started to complain: “I only got £2 out of that extra £20”. And the eighth man joined in: “That’s right. I only got three quid back when he”, pointing to the richest man, “got £10 – it’s not fair. The rich get all the breaks!”. The four poorest then chimed in: “The system exploits the poor. We didn’t get anything at all”. The nine of them surrounded the tenth and beat him to a pulp. Next week he didn’t turn up. So the rest of them sat down for an evening’s beer. When the bill came they couldn’t raise enough cash to pay even half.…
To quote Professor David Kamerschen, Professor of Economics at the University of Georgia: “And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how the tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they may just not show up anymore. In fact they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is more friendly”.
Please remember that there is no such thing as “Government Money” or “EU Funding”. It all comes from the pocket of somebody who made it in the first place.

Quids In

Safe as houses?

The UK Government has dodgy hips, (or Home Information Packs: a sort of Green MOT for every house in Britain, designed to stop the icecaps melting on Mars). As usual, they planned badly, lacked the manpower, and had temporarily restricted HIPs to 4-bedroomed houses or larger. Again, the EU was behind it, another directive from Brussels costing us billions every year. Typically our own government “gold-plated” it, making things worse. Brussels originally wanted us to have new HIPs every ten years. But Tony Blair insisted that a new Energy Performance Certificate be commissioned every time the house is sold. (Thanks, ex-Prime Minister, enjoy your retirement.) In a recent letter to the Western Morning News, Mike John from Winkleigh in Devon said, “My 16th Century, grade 11 listed farmhouse is of cob construction with a thatched roof. The leaded windows are original and come complete with ventilation gaps, as do the doors. Heating is via a wood-burner and Aga. The house is naturally warm in the winter and cool in the summer, with a degree of dampness essential for its well-being. I defy anybody outside of a yurt to compete with what I have to buy and burn. I could conform to modern energy requirements and install double-glazing, draught excluders and central heating. An expert from Torridge Council would be able to advise how to put a damp course in a cob wall and solar panels in a thatched roof. But then two things would happen....First, a different expert from TDC would take me to court for desecration of a listed building. Second, the house will fall down”. Mr John is spot on, but it’s also a striking metaphor for our membership of the EU, which introduced this expensive lunacy in the first place.

Crippling

Food for thought

Being a rural animal, the mole keeps “banging on” about the destruction of British farming and makes no apologies for that. Hitler’s U-boats nearly won the war, because they cut off most of our food supplies showing how food security is vital. The problem with our urban-based New Labour government is that it still thinks that bacon comes from Sainsburys. Take the dairy industry (why not? everyone else has). We once had the Milk Marketing Board. A monopoly that worked, just like the Post Office; and both were crippled by the EU. The Post Office still has another three years or so before it finally dies. But the Milk Marketing Board is already dead, gone, and a dusty memory, along with most dairy farming. A case in point. Her Majesty the Queen is patron of the Ayrshire Cattle Society. But now even she is admitting defeat and selling up. The Windsor Ayrshire herd has grazed Home Park on the Windsor Estate for 56 years, but now it’s up for grabs. A Royal spokesman said: “There have been significant losses over several years, with milk prices failing to cover the high cost of production”. The price was 19p a litre, but production costs were at least 22p. The Competition Commissioner is investigating the low prices paid to farmers by supermarkets and processing companies, but many farmers are reluctant to give evidence to the inquiry, fearing that they will lose contracts. It makes you wonder though: with such suicidally low prices the long-term prospects are about as appealing as a Glastonbury portaloo. If I was a dairy farmer I’d be greatly tempted to give most of the supermarkets a spring-loaded V-sign from the hip…and go into yoghurt.

Fair Trade

National Giveaway

Thomas Llewellyn Jones owns a Cardiff fish and chippie named ‘Llew’s Takeaway’. Mistaking him for a Chinese, Ashuk Miah an ‘advocate’ of the Newport Immigration Advice Centre, sent him a business letter in April 2007. Before I quote the exact words of this advert, please move heavy objects out of reach, lest you feel a sudden urge to throw them out the window. The letter introduces NIAC as: “an independent immigration advisory service for: Advice and application on how to bring your elderly parents or relatives to visit United Kingdom… Advice on how to bring people on work permit… On how to bring newly married wife or husband to UK… On how to bring students to UK… On how to bring elderly people to UK for medical treatment… Application to stay in UK indefinitely if you entered as a newly married spouse…. Application to extend present stay in UK if a visitor…. Application for naturalisation as a British Citizen.”. Miah concludes with the comforting news: “If any of the above applications are refused, I can lodge an appeal on your behalf”. And the depressing truth is that Miah is right. Our Government has surrendered control of our borders (partly thanks to the EU, partly to the insane Human Rights Act, also EU-inspired), hence businesses like the Newport Immigration Advice Centre. I never thought that I would quote Enoch Powell, but here we go: On Britain’s immigration policy (and this was 30 years ago): “It is like watching a nation heaping up its own funeral pyre”. I now have a feeling that Powell might have been right.

Everyone's a winner

Bragging rights

Billy Bragg, (far-leftwing singer and political campaigner), makes a strange bed-fellow for the Bishop of Southwark, (drunken behaviour at a London party, you may recall), Baroness Shirley Williams, and Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, head of the Roman Catholic Church. But surprisingly they came together on 7th May 2007 in Trafalgar Square to launch the “Strangers into Citizens” campaign… The campaign proposes that all migrants who have been in Britain for more than four years should be given a 2-year work permit, then given indefinite leave to remain, if they sit an English test and can produce references…. They were not alone. Thousands of supporters assembled, armed with placards reading: “ABOLISH ALL RACIST IMMIGRATION CONTROLS” and “NO-ONE IS ILLEGAL”… As useful as lipstick on a pig, this is an amnesty parading as a solution. And it will fail. Italy and Spain have each granted five amnesties in the last 20 years. All of them resulted in a further wave of immigrants. Here in Britain we have possibly one million illegal immigrants, let alone hundreds of thousands legally from EU states such as Poland, Rumania etc. Only UKIP voted to prevent this…. Even now, across the Channel the French are busily erecting Camp Sangatte Mk2. We have had enough warnings. The effects upon the NHS, social housing, low wages, sexploitation, working class anger, and urban crime are huge and increasing. The last thing we need is to advertise to the world: “Come on in – Billy Bragg said it’s OK”…

Citizen Smith of Burton Bradstock

Bin there - not doing that

How ironic. I see that 'Bin' Bradshaw MP now wants us to have our refuse collected every fortnight. As Council Tax spiralled out of control, the rest of us could at least console ourselves with the thought: “Oh well, at least they take away the rubbish”. Now they won’t even take the bins on time. It proves that New Labour is still the ‘tax and spend’ party. “If it moves (particularly in four-wheel-drive) then tax it. If it doesn’t move, tax it anyway. The idiots’ll pay”… The real difference is that at least Old Labour actually cared when they inevitably messed everything up because they couldn’t run a bath. 'Bin' Bradshaw’s lot merely smile and ignore. As Peter Hitchens once wrote: “We are governed by people who despise us”. The UK Independence Party is totally committed to weekly rubbish collections. It is one of the basic core services expected from a council, and no amount of weasel words from 'Bin' Bradshaw and his chums will alter that. The British people are paying through the nose for a bad service that is getting worse, and the sooner this utterly useless government is swept away the better for everyone… with the possible exception of Ben Bradshaw MP, who will lose his job. But at least he will get his bins emptied once a week, so he shouldn’t be too downcast.

What you wheelie wheelie want

Setting the record straight

Sometimes it’s very important to get things on record.
A friend of mine came across the words “Phone Bill” written in red ink in his diary. In his own words: “I knew seven or eight Bills but I couldn’t tell which one it was. In the end I thought stuff it and forgot all about it. Three weeks later BT told me they’d cut me off if I didn’t pay up. That’s when I decided to write everything down properly from now on”. But there are exceptions to this. One local authority recently erected a sign above a communal swimming pool. The sign read: “This has been designated the shallow end”. There was no corresponding notice at the deep end. Perhaps they thought you would find that out for yourself? Or take John Hipkin, former Lib Dem mayor of Cambridge. Responding to Government plans to build 47,000 new homes in his area, he pointed out that the city needed more 3-and-4 bedroomed houses for families. This was a bad mistake in today’s lunatic asylum of political correctness. The Lesbian, Gay, and Transsexual Group on the Council then demanded an official apology from Mr Hipkin for committing “Hetero-sexism - discrimination towards non-heterosexuals due to cultural bias”. In true waffle-speak the leader of Cambridge Council, Mr Nimmo-Smith, said: “His remarks were capable of being interpreted as non-inclusive”. Read the above, and weep for a civilisation dying not with a bang but a whimper.

The Queens English

The mirror doesn't lie

At a private girl’s school in Washington DC, the janitor faced a tricky problem. The girls, some as young as 12, were putting on lipstick and then pressing their lips to the mirror, leaving dozens of tiny lip-prints. Every night the Janitor scrubbed them off. Every morning they would reappear….
The Principal took action. She summoned the girls and the Janitor to a meeting in the washroom, and explained that the lip-prints were difficult to remove and posed a real problem for the cleaning staff…. To show the girls how much effort it took to clean the mirrors every night she asked the Janitor to give a demonstration…
He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it into the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it. There have been no more lip-prints on the mirrors since then. As someone once said: There are teachers. And then there are educators.

Kiss and tell

Brown is not the new black

If you’re one of those who think that Gordon Brown would make a great Prime Minister then we’re about to part company. Mr Brown is certainly a clever man, and very lucky, but he has single-handedly destroyed Britain’s pensions industry, and for that he can never be forgiven.
In 1997 he was warned that taxing private pensions would rob funds of £12-billion. Following a Freedom of Information request by the Daily Mail newspaper, Treasury archive documents clearly show that Mr Brown realised that he could increase his coffers by £11.6-billion in the first two years, all at the expense of pensions savers. The Treasury pinned their hopes on a rise in the stock market to plug the gap. Instead share prices plummeted in 2001/2002, and the proverbial hit the revolving air-agitator.
We now have a crisis leaving huge shortfalls in pensions, forcing hundreds of firms to wind up their final salary schemes, all caused by this apparently prudent Chancellor. In December 2005 the Pensions Commission (headed by Lord Turner) warned: “Voluntary private pension provision is not growing; rather it is in serious and irreversible decline”.
If an orderly transition of power in New Labour results in this man ever becoming Prime Minister, (something that remains in doubt), then please leave the door unlocked when you leave. It saves the squatters damaging the mechanism when they arrive.

In the red

Mood music

I don’t think I’m divulging State Secrets when I tell you that UKIP historically gets its support 25% from Labour voters, 25% from Tory, and the remaining 50% from Lib-Dems and those who don’t normally take an interest in politics. But things have recently changed, and UKIP has welcomed an influx of disillusioned Tories who have suddenly realised that there is no difference between Cameron and Blair. And not all of them have been peers of the realm or high-profile advisors to Ken Clark. Don’t take it from me. Here is a recent letter to the Independent: “Sir, I despair of the Conservatives. They spurned at least three chances to appoint sensible David Davis as their leader, and have lumbered themselves with this namby-pamby, touchy-feely, pseudo-evangelical Tony Blair Mk2; just when we’re sick to death of Blair…. It’s the UKIP for me. Brian Rushton”. Hardly surprising really. David Cameron has utterly failed to demolish Labour for its neglect of our Armed Forces, wrecking of a prosperous economy, high taxes, destruction of personal pensions, rising interest rates, chaos in the NHS, failure of schools to teach children even how to read, and collapse of our borders through uncontrolled immigration and insane multiculturalism, not to mention the general breakdown of law and order; all of it to the accompaniment of a descending ground bass of subservience to Brussels which makes 80% of our laws and costs us a fortune in membership. If you’re looking for an antidote for New Labour you won’t find it in David Cameron, I’m afraid. He’s far too busy hugging hoodies or glaciers…. No, Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP…he’d be your man.

Striking the right note

Goosing the gander

The UK Independence Party has just been ordered to surrender £363,697 to the Electoral Commission because the gentleman who originally gave them the money – Alan Bown - had dropped off the electoral roll at the time he wrote the cheque. Mr Bown lives in Kent, not the Bahamas. He is a British businessman, employing British workers, and pays taxes and business rates in Britain. He is not a tax-exile nor a foreign donor (the reason these rules were brought in). Every donation to UKIP was properly recorded and reported.
The decision to take this money for what was merely a clerical error is deeply disturbing, verging on Stalinist. It does nothing for British democracy and is rightly seen by the public as a politically inspired attack on this small but growing Party. It also reflects badly on the Electoral Commission, bringing them into disrepute in the public eye. This was a classic “stitch up”, as one member of the public – not a UKIP member - told me on the telephone the other day; and every caller echoed this. They were furious. People are not stupid; they recognise skulduggery when they see it.
I believe the Commission to be guilty of double standards. Perhaps they should take a closer look at our Prime Minister, who makes a habit of taking tea and questions at 10 Downing Street with the Metropolitan Police every Thursday afternoon? Or consider the case of Michael Brown who recently gave £2.4 million to the Liberal Democrats; this came from his firm “5th Avenue Partners”. But under election law company donations can only be accepted from companies “carrying on business in Britain”. Individual donors must also be registered to vote in Britain. Michael Brown was not. He has since been jailed for two years for committing perjury and for making a false passport application… This is rather more sinister than an innocent clerical error made by UKIP’s Alan Bown. Yet amazingly the Lib Dems have been allowed to keep the £2.4 million. If you are getting a distinct smell of fish, then that makes an absolute minimum of two of us.

Ruffling the feathers

Losing your sense of direction

Christian graves traditionally face eastwards, in the belief that the Second Coming of Jesus will be from that direction. But headstones at the new £2.5-million High Wood Cemetery in Bulwell, Nottinghamshire, will be plotted to face northeast, in line with Islamic faith. Moslems believe that the dead look over their shoulder to the holy city of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia towards the southeast…
Nottingham Christians who want to be buried facing east (in the direction of Jerusalem) will now have to pay the Council for “extra maintenance”. The C. of E.(at last standing up for its beliefs) has finally spoken out: the Rev David Gray, from St John’s Church, Bulwell, said: “All faiths should have their beliefs respected… It is an evolving cemetery and should be made for people of all faiths and certainly people of Christian faiths”…
Rachel Farmer, spokeswoman for the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham, added: “Positioning all the graves in the direction of Mecca conflicts with the long-standing Christian burial tradition of graves facing towards the east. We believe the people of Nottingham should have the opportunity to follow the Christian burial traditions if they choose to and the Christian faith should not be discriminated against in this way. The 2001 census showed that 70% of the population considered themselves Christian”…
Nottingham Council was unrepentant: “In the first phase of development it has been agreed that the graves will face north-east. For people of Muslim faith this fits in with a religious requirement, but it will also ensure a tidy appearance for the site as a whole”…
It seems that even in death, the British majority must give way to the demands of a vociferous and belligerent minority. C’est la vie, I suppose.

West meets east

Hot Air Cooling

I am finally cured of Global Warming…
It came just before Christmas, listening to an interview with a climatologist on Radio 4’s Today programme. I didn’t catch the great man’s name, but that’s probably irrelevant. With great solemnity he announced that methane from the rear of farmyard cows was “a not inconsiderable factor in Global Warming”. For me, this was the final breaking point (if you’ll pardon the pun).
Yes, the Earth is warming up at the moment, with ice-caps melting and dormice waking in December, but the point about Climate Change is that climates change; it’s in their nature. The Romans were growing oranges in Kent 2,000 years ago, and had vineyards as far north as Yorkshire. As for rising sea levels, Isle Brewers, Isle Abbots, and Athelney on the Somerset levels were, indeed, once islands; and Wareham was the Roman’s main port on the South West coast. Today you are lucky to get to Wareham drawing 6ft of water on a big tide, and Roman ships drew far more than that.
In 1275 Danish explorers discovered Greenland and gave it that name because it was green and they could cultivate corn there. From 1500 to 1700 there was a mini ice-age, hence the paintings of skaters enjoying themselves on the frozen River Thames.
The icecaps on Venus are apparently melting at the same rate as those on Earth, without the benefit of the internal combustion engine.
In the 1970s, scientists warned of a new Ice Age. When that didn’t happen they switched to the ozone layer, which is now repairing itself. Today, academics who need cash for a research grant, must sign up to the dogma: “Global Warming is Caused by Man”. Those who disagree are ‘mavericks’ or ‘barking’. A bad sign.
I now believe that the whole thing is a self-perpetuating con, with the purpose of extracting taxes and exercising control over the populace. The moral blackmail is designed to make heretics feel guilty: “Don’t you WANT to save the planet?”
Just for the record: I hate pollution, support recycling, and value clean seas and countryside; and if I ever take up farming, it will be organic (and I’m no tree-hugger). But the idea of Britain relying on wind turbines and bicycles just as China has become the third biggest market for Rolls Royce, is muddle-headed.
I suggest that “Global Warming Caused by Man” is all about taxing and controlling us, and needs to be challenged constantly. But even if you disagree, at least acknowledge the possibility. As for “backfiring cows” let’s both consign that to the trashcan.

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The Notting Hillbillies come to town

Back in 1967 there was a pub in Exeter’s North Street, a real gold mine. One weekend the owner, “Sid”, took nearly £1,500 across the bar. Serious money for those days. But when “Sid” retired, the new owner ignored his own core customers and took just 18 months to wreck the business.
It still happens. Near the Devon village of Ashton, in the Teign Valley, there was a wonderful old pub, with flagged floors, real ale, no music. The very walls breathed history. But new people recently moved in and gutted the place, obliterating the character, and turning it into a Notting Hill wine bar. As one local commented: “Unbelievable”. After this stupid act of vandalism, most people now shun the place, visiting other pubs in the valley.
It’s the same story at Widdecombe-in-the-Moor, where an old inn used to be a place of roaring fires, steaming dogs and a pleasant jumble of walkers and families tucking into trencherman-sized lunches. But alas, no more. The pub has been poncified and given the London treatment. Muddy boots unwelcome. Three café latte’s please, and a soda water for Dominic.
The reason I’m droning on about vandalised watering holes is because they all ignored their core customer base and then paid the price. Tory leader David Cameron is making exactly the same mistake, converting the Conservative ‘local’ into a Notting Hill wine bar, complete with lava lamps and ‘conceptual art’; something that is shallow, and therefore transient. Mr Cameron forgets (or does not care) that voters and party members can always drink elsewhere.

Cheers

On the Lamm

This is a shortened version of a lecture given in Washington DC in November 2006, by Dick Lamm, former governor of Colorado. Even if you disagree you might be interested in reading an opposing viewpoint (unless, of course, you have entirely succumbed to political correctness).
Lamm said: “If you believe that America is too smug, too self-satisfied, too rich; then let’s destroy America. It’s not that hard. Arnold Toynbee observed that ‘an autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide’. Here is how to do it…
First, turn America into a multilingual and bicultural country. No nation can survive the tension and conflict of two competing languages or cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.
Second, invent ‘multiculturalism’ and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture. Celebrate diversity, rather than emphasising our similarities. Make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal and that black and Hispanic dropout rates are due solely to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out of bounds.
My next point for destroying America would be to get big foundations and businesses to give these efforts a lot of money. I would invest in ‘victimology’ and start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population. And I would place all subjects off limits; make it taboo to talk against the cult of ‘diversity’. I would find a word similar to ‘heretic’ in the 16th Century – that stopped discussion and paralysed thinking. Words like ‘racist’ or ‘xenophobe’ halt discussion and debate. And I would enforce a mantra: that because immigration has been good for America, it must always be good.’
Governor Lamm resumed his seat in silence. Every American in that room knew that everything he had said was proceeding methodically, quietly, darkly, yet pervasively.
It all sounds horribly familiar to what has happened here at home.

A diverse view

Junk Mail

Nobody benefits from a Postal Strike, but the recent dispute at the Royal Mail Sorting Office in Exeter is an ongoing part of the destruction of our postal system by the European Union.
The Post Office was that rare thing, a nationalised industry that actually made money. And yes, it was a monopoly, and the better for it. A letter posted in London, addressed to elsewhere in London, subsidised a letter posted in Penzance going to John O’Groats. The system worked well, and acted as part of the social glue that held the country together (along with the network of sub-post offices in towns and villages across the land.)
But then along came Brussels and demanded the “liberalisation” of postal services. This has resulted in private firms such as TNT cherry-picking the most profitable parts like city deliveries, and leaving poor old Royal Mail with the scrag-end. How can it possibly deliver a letter from Redruth to Stornaway for 22p and still make a profit? It can’t, of course. And it is entirely due to the European Union telling us how to run our postal service.
The Labour Government has done its bit, of course. Pensions and TV licences have been taken away from the sub-post offices, which are now closing throughout the country. And there are now proposals from Brussels that VAT will be charged on post, making it 17.5% more expensive (but then VAT was a present to us from Brussels when we joined in the 1970s, so we shouldn’t be too surprised).
As for the postmen, UKIP is 100% behind their attempt to maintain a First Class postal system and we wish them well in their endeavours. But they are fighting not just Royal Mail bosses who are themselves on the rack, but also Brussels and the Labour Government. Perhaps next time we have a General Election all those postal workers will remember that simple fact, and start supporting political parties that really do care about Her Majesty’s Post Office, and the creation of a professional and dedicated postal team; not one composed of students and agency workers many of whom couldn’t give a stuff whether the mail gets there or not.

1st class blog posting

Little things for small minds

Every now and again I realise that God has a great sense of humour and is looking down on this world, studying the race He created, and chuckling to Himself at the absurdities of which we are capable. I don’t mean the big things; the wars, the famines, etc. I mean the small things; the petty things. Take Adam Pressman, a menswear manager in Exeter. He was having a drink in a city wine bar when he went outside for a hand-rolled cigarette. He finished the cigarette, dropped it, put it out with his foot. He was immediately fined £75 by a waiting Litter Enforcement Officer who had been watching him. I do not condone littering, but even a speeding ticket is only £60, and the hate-war that is being waged against otherwise law-abiding smokers is actually driving people out into the street where ashtrays are not exactly plentiful. And you can bet your last euro that the City Councils won’t put the same effort into tackling the burger/fried chicken-and-vomit wrappers littering the city streets on a Friday and Saturday night; too much of a possibility that some drunken yob will lay one on the Litter Enforcement staff, so the authorities will concentrate on the easy targets, those who drop a bio-degradable cigarette butt in their lunch hour. In 2004 these anti-smoking measures were being pushed through the EU Parliament, (That’s right, it’s Brussels again. Couldn’t you guess?). Three of UKIP’s MEPs attended a lunch there. At the end of the meal those on the top table sat back, pushed away their pudding plate and lit up cigarettes. Graham Booth MEP interrupted them: “Excuse me, Gentlemen, but haven’t you seen the notice?” He indicated the NO SMOKING sign literally above their heads… Their response was: “Oh, get a life!” And this from a bunch of politicians in Brussels who had just voted on legislation affecting British smokers. This hypocrisy is like rotten mackerel by moonlight; it shines and stinks. Sorry, but it’s time we governed ourselves.

Blowing away the smoke

Royal Mail’s case for change
Royal Mail believes SBP will bring its pricing structure more into line with the costs it incurs for processing different types of mail. In particular, Royal Mail considers that items that cannot be machine sorted or take up more space in mailbags, incur more costs to handle than those items that can. The items in the former category tend to be large letters (‘flats’) and packets. Conversely, Royal Mail believes that current prices for heavier weight items are significantly in excess of the cost of handling these items. This, in part, reflects historical factors such as a desire to limit price increases on the basic weight step, which include the ‘headline’ prices for first and second class public tariffs.
Royal Mail also believes its SBP proposal is a necessary step to prepare it to face increasing competition. Royal Mail has not felt the need to improve the cost reflectivity of its pricing structure until now. This might be because it has benefited from a monopoly over a large part of the UK postal market, and therefore, faced very limited competitive pressures. The European Postal Directive’s requirements to liberalise European postal markets coupled with Postcomm’s market opening strategy are making material changes to the market in which Royal Mail is operating. Postcomm’s market opening strategy means that by April 2007 at the latest, the last elements of Royal Mail’s monopoly over the UK letters market will have been removed and the market will be fully open to competition. Royal Mail believes that SBP meets the need for more cost reflective pricing that is identified within the European Directive and is one of the criteria in Paragraph 13 of Condition 19 of its licence, against which the SBP proposal will be assessed.
Royal Mail believes that its present pricing structure could distort the development of competition. This may happen if competitors are encouraged to attack their artificially high profit margins for heavier weight items more than has been the case in the past (items weighing more than 350g and/ or costing more than £1 have been open to competition since 1981). It might also happen if competitors are discouraged from offering rival products for customers using lighter flats and packets services because the available profit margins are suppressed, as is arguably the case today.
Royal Mail also believes that its proposal will make it simpler and easier for consumers and small businesses to post mail. Royal Mail argues it will be simpler because there will be fewer price points and it will be easier because most mail will be able to be priced by sight rather than requiring the use of weighing scales.
Royal Mail has also noted that a number of postal operators in other countries have price structures that take account of size. These countries include Australia, Canada, Japan, the USA and some European countries.

Posted by the Purple Postman

Who-Dunn-It?

In Autumn 2007 Bill Newton-Dunn (Lib Dem MEP) asked Brussels for 250,000 euros (£173,000) to promote an EU wide police force.
At their Lisbon Summit in October 2007 the EU signed a treaty establishing the Eurogendfor (EU Gendarmerie) and Mr Newton-Dunn clearly wanted a slice of the action…. This is predictable for a Lib Dem, but his UKIP opponent in the East Midlands, Derek Clark MEP, issued an immediate press release: “I do not wish to see Euro-cops, armed with a handgun and legal immunity swaggering around the East Midlands with a European Arrest Warrant from a European prosecutor ready to drag one of my constituents back to a country for a crime that may not even exist in the UK. I will be voting against Newton-Dunn’s scheme.”
Shortly afterwards Bob Spink (Tory MP at the time, but now UKIP) stood up in Westminster and asked the Foreign Secretary: “Will you give an assurance that this paramilitary force will not be allowed to operate on British soil?”
Setting aside his milkshake, wiping his mouth, and standing up, David Milliband replied that he could give no such assurance. Eurogendfor had to be invited into any country by its government..
As Bob Spink said: “This gives no confidence at all to the British people, since we know from experience that we cannot trust this government. I note that they haven’t ruled out giving permission for Eurogendfor to enter Britain, for instance during the 2012 Olympic Games.”
Still going to vote for one of these Brussels-friendly parties?

Euro-goons-r-us

Spring Bulbs

They call them ‘light-bulb moments’… (St Paul had one on the road to Damascus), the moment when realisation hits and the scales suddenly fall from your eyes. For Roger Knapman MEP (former leader of UKIP) it happened in 1985, shortly before he was elected as a Conservative MP. He was in Germany at the time, as guest of the Konrad Adeneur Stiftung (Foundation).
Along with other British visitors, Roger was observing 6,000 NATO forces on military manoeuvres on the bleak North German Plain. It was a cold day, with a damp mist rolling in across the battlefield, obscuring the action. As time wore on the observers gradually lost the feeling in their toes, so the Bundswehr Colonel invited them into the nearby officer’s mess for ‘a little something’…
Over a glass of colourless liquid the visitors gradually thawed out. As the others talked with the officers, Roger looked around the mess. He noticed a big coloured map fixed to the wall: “EUROPE OF THE REGIONS”, with 116 ‘regions’ listed, stretching right across Europe, from Portugal to Poland, from Finland to the toe of Italy. Yet barely anyone in Britain at the time had ever heard of ‘regions’. This was an eye-opener.
We all have our light-bulb moments. For Roger Knapman it came in 1985. I wonder when you’ll have yours.

Flick that switch

Pay days

The world is mad. I’ve always suspected it. Now here’s the proof, courtesy of Richard Littlejohn (You Couldn’t Make it Up, 18/12/2007)
The Home Office is giving illegal immigrants grants of £4,000 each to go home and set up a business. An ostrich farm in Iran, an Albanian vineyard, a fish farm in Angola, a shoe factory in China, and a beauty salon in Zimbabwe.
An undercover reporter from a Sunday newspaper turned up at the International Organisation of Migration and told them he’d been living here illegally for 11 years, selling drugs, and now wanted to return to India to open a travel agency, to help illegal immigrants come to Britain. The official didn’t bat an eyelid, and promised him a grant of £4,000 to pay for his flight, a car, office equipment, and three months salary for two employees.
As Mr Littlejohn explains: “The scheme is being advertised in foreign language newspapers. There’s nothing to prevent anyone turning up on a day trip to London, claiming to have been here for years and volunteering to go home in exchange for a grant to open a tattoo parlour in Tirana.”
Among other enterprises funded by your hard-earned taxes are a car dealership in Kenya, an Islamic dress shop in Sudan, a ferry in the Congo, a vehicle repair shop in Kosovo, and a farm in Armenia. The bill has reached £36 million. By the time you read this, it will be far more. Please remember this, next time you’re writing out that cheque for the Poll Tax. And remember which political parties are so consumed by political correctness that they support this appalling crassness.

Business as usual

Bog-of

Politics can be rough. In Parliament it is said that you face your opponents, but your real enemies are sitting behind you. Winning a seat is difficult. Keeping it is harder. Eric Lubbock (now Lord Avebury) remarked wryly: “In 1962 the wise, far-seeing people of Orpington elected me as their member. In 1970 the fools threw me out.” Even if you gain power you are constantly at the mercy of “events”. Opposition is a luxury where you can promise the earth, safe in the knowledge that you’ll never have to deliver; but it comes as a bit of a shock if you win unexpectedly. This happened last year in Israel when the Palestinians turned away from Fatah and voted for Hamas. There was panic in the Hamas camp when they suddenly realised that they now had to start running the place, not just indulge themselves by shouting in the streets, spraying bullets into the air with an AK47 (I’ve often wondered where all those bullets land, but that’s for another time). It’s not quite the Gaza strip, but Gordon Brown is about to learn how tough politics can get. He is trying to stuff the renamed EU Constitution through Parliament without asking the people in a referendum (breaking a solemn promise that helped get him elected). This is bad enough, but his hated Treaty will mean that Britain gets the Euro Currency. Before the inevitable cries of “Codswallop” may I quote from Article 3 of the Treaty: “The Union shall establish an economic and monetary union whose currency is the euro.” It then expresses the desire of: “ever closer co-ordination of economic policies… pending the euro becoming the currency of all Member States of the Union.” No wriggle room for Gordon Brown there. Vote for the Treaty and get the Euro as an extra. In other words Buy One Get One Free!

Funny money

Drink up

“There’s nothing wrong with your fruitcake, Mother. It’s just that I have to drive home, and after your sherry trifle I’ll be way over the limit”. You might think this extreme. But think again. The Government is considering plans to lower the blood /alcohol limit by almost half, to 50 milligrams in 100 millilitres of blood. One pint of ale could easily take you over the threshold.
If the smoking ban wasn’t enough to kill off the pub trade, these proposals will bang another handful of nails into the coffin lid. New Labour dislikes pubs, because they contain people who gather and exchange politically incorrect views – and sometimes…(this may shock you)…sometimes they might even agree that New Labour couldn’t run a party in a brewery. And that will never do.
Of course drink driving is a crime and should be punished. Last year 540 people died in drink-related accidents, a tragedy for all involved. But it is impossible to eliminate all risks from life, whether in a conker fight or having a quiet pint in a public bar - unless we ban conkers, motorists and pubs. Don’t laugh. Under the cultural Marxists running this country it could happen sooner than you’d think.
There’s another angle to this. Those pushing to lower the alcohol limit, say: “This will bring us into line with most countries in the European Union.” And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the real thinking behind this. Hadn’t you guessed?

Drowning in sorrow

Van man turns white

We all value clean air, but Ken Livingstone, London Mayor, has produced a stinker called “The Low Emission Zone for Greater London”. In fairness it means well: the aim is to improve air quality in the capital city. But if you have a modest little vehicle - say a 7.5 tonne diesel van a few years old but still sailing through the MOT – you’ll soon have to pay £200 a day to enter London. Don’t blame Livingstone. Blame the Government for letting him get away with it… First, what is the point in having a national MOT if Baron Ken can ignore it inside his own fiefdom?… Second, if he’s allowed to impose his own rules, it’s probable that future “elected Mayors” will follow suit. Gordon Brown won’t like that. In the words of the song: “There could be trouble ahead”… Third, at £200 a day for a van, a typical 250-day year would cost £50,000, so old vehicles will need to be replaced by new. Think of the massive pollution caused by manufacturing them (but the old ones will still be on the M25 and beyond)... Finally, the DVLA will need to inform vehicle owners to avoid London or incur a penalty. This is ongoing, constant, and expensive…. As one traffic commentator said: “It is typical of New Labour’s uncoordinated thinking. With the zeal of the convert, they have failed to take account of practicality or good sense”. The only thing to add is that Boris Johnson (Tory remember) would probably be just as bad as Red Ken.

Facing the music

Fixing the drips

If your plumber starts giving you pensions advice, tell him: “Leaking taps, yes. Pensions advice, no, thanks”…
Some people can’t help meddling. Take Lord Justice Sedley, one of our most left-wing judges. He wants the whole UK population to have its DNA recorded on the police national database…. Justice Sedley is a former Communist – his old chambers, Cloisters, were known as ‘the Kremlin’. In the 1970s he even tutored at the Communist University in London. It seems to me that he should stick to the day job, not try to introduce new laws suitable for George Orwell’s vision of the future. Needless to say, UKIP is totally opposed to his proposals and will fight them while we draw breath…
The other recent example is Lord Malloch Brown recommending that Britain should surrender its seat on the UN Security Council. He stated in Brussels that he is a “huge fan of the European Union having just one place at the international table. I think it will go in stages, institution by institution. It is not going to happen with a bang”. But he wants it to happen “as quickly as possible”. …
The problem here is that Malloch Brown is a top government adviser, yet his language deliberately undermines Britain’s independence. In another age, this would be called treason and he could have been locked in the Tower, deservedly so in my opinion - he can be grateful for a more enlightened age. But this is not just a case of one man’s personal opinion; this really matters because he is employed to advise our Prime Minister….
As William Hague said: “It is alarming that Gordon Brown has chosen to put in charge of UN reform the man who thinks we should give up our UN Security Council seat to the EU”…. I agree with William Hague. Personally I’d rather give my plumber the job. At least he could handle any leaks.

On the record

Running on empty

Alistair Campbell was New Labour’s master of spin. In his diaries he describes the way they approached things. He and Blair instinctively knew, instinctively recognised, that the Great Britain of 1997 had lapped up Big Brother and Pop Idol, celebrating celebrity for its own sake. Britain didn’t want a leader. It wanted a cuddle. The message was “Vote Labour – we’re nicer than that horrible lot”. New Labour’s media approach was more Richard & Judy, than Newsnight or Panorama. As biographer Stephen Pollard wrote recently: “Nothing illustrates how perfectly suited the fundamental shallowness of New Labour was to the modern electorate than the one occasion when Blair ignored its triviality, in the aftermath of 9/11. He was firm on Iraq….And he was repaid with a kick in the political groin by an electorate for which such things are far too troubling to be thinking about. [Alistair Campbell] has exposed, unwittingly, the deliberate emptiness at the heart of New Labour – and at the heart of a Britain which lapped it up”. Mr Pollard is a gifted writer, and I think he has a point (even if Iraq has become a near-total disaster). We get the politicians we deserve. It seems that back in 1997 much of Britain wanted to be governed by nannies, treated like imbeciles. The downside is that 300,000 Britons fled abroad last year, mostly to Australia and other Commonwealth countries. This is such a terrible waste of the very people - the entrepreneurs- needed to get us back on our feet once we leave the EU and start repairing the huge damage it has wrought upon our country.

Cut and run

Rally Round

John Prescott once said: “The Green belt is a Labour achievement, and we mean to build on it”, but it’s a cheap shot on my part. Prescott was only there as a fig leaf to Labour’s Working Class voters, and his gaffes are so numerous that I (almost) feel guilty mentioning them. But while we’re at it, my favourite is what he’s meant to have said after a rough flight: “It’s great to be back on terra cotta”. I’m sorry. I’ll stop it. The reason for mentioning Prescott is that there is a vast difference between him and Gordon Brown, who is a clever, hard-working and generally bright man. Idiots don’t become Prime Minister… True, he has destroyed our pensions industry, so that anyone with both cash and brains is now putting everything into property, but we’ll pass on that for now. The point is that Gordon Brown is refusing to hold a referendum on the renamed EU Treaty (read Constitution). At the time of writing forty Labour MPs and four large Trades Unions are in revolt, along with the Tories, UKIP, the Liberal Party, the CIB, and the cross-party Democracy Movement (not to mention the Sun, the Daily Mail, and the Daily Telegraph. Even the Guardian is starting to get in on the act). For Gordon Brown to ignore this is a colossal mistake, beyond belief in its cack-handedness. Prescott, yes. Brown, I would never have believed it. But it shows that he is not his own man. I don’t know whose pocket he is in, but it sure isn’t ours, or why break an election pledge?. On Sunday October 27th the Pro-Referendum Rally will be holding a march in London. They need every person in Britain who cares about this surrender of our sovereignty to come to the capital and protest. It doesn’t matter whether you are Labour, Tory, UKIP, Lib Dem, even George Galloway’s Respect Party. This is too important for petty political differences. We are mobilising. For details please visit www.proreferendumrally.co.uk - or call UKIP on FREEPHONE 0800-587-6587 and we will pass you the information. Think of it this way: at least it’ll make a change from your usual Sunday!

Just do it

Moving Abroad?

If you want to move abroad to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iraq etc, here is the politically correct guide of how to do it….......Ignore immigration quotas, visas, international law etc. Once you arrive, demand free medical care for your family, and bilingual doctors, nurses, and teachers. Fly the Union Jack from your car. Demand classes in British culture in the Muslim school system. Speak only English at home, and insist that your children do the same. Don’t stop there. You’ll need a driving licence, so show them your existing UK document and demand a local equivalent. If they object, then shout loudly enough and they will understand. Then drive around without car insurance and ignore local traffic rules. When the locals complain (and they will) organise protest marches against your host country, inciting violence against the institutions of the country that originally let you in (the government, police, TV c