Evan Heasley - POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Facts, free speech and democracy

2012-03-01T03:01:00.004-08:00

I was once having a discussion with someone about an issue, and was accused of using facts to back up my argument. I found this to be a bit strange and a little worrying that someone would think because I was using information that is based on facts to formulate an argument that this could be deemed somehow wrong.

We continued our discussion, which then turned into an argument, and the reason it changed was simply because the two people I was having the discussion with knew nothing about the subject matter, and just ended up saying 'no you are wrong' and 'that isn't right'. I found this to be very frustrating and ended up getting quite irritated and annoyed.

The interesting thing is when I discuss many issues with many people they generally have spent very little, if any time looking into the issue that we are discussing. I have spoken to people about; the EU, global warming, the link between heart disease and saturated fat, and many other issues and found that most people will repeat the same arguments time and time again.

Now, don't get me wrong and think that I am boasting, and that I am putting myself on a pedestal and making out that I am special and I am always right, I am not. The point I am making is that for so many of us we just follow the consensus, we never question, we just agree with what is said and go along with it. We either do this because we think that what we are told by 'so called experts' is always right, or we trust those who are 'informing' us. Or we just cannot be bothered to find out or look at a different opinion.

What I have noticed, particularly over the past fifteen years is that much of what we have taken for granted has been removed or has changed. Many of the things that we would have said without any concern have now been removed, whether that is certain jokes or certain words. The fear of offending people is everywhere, many people feel it is their right to be offended, so then follow this through with court cases, this then ends up with the government and organisations bringing in more and more legislation to stop any sort of offence.

You could accuse me of being paranoid, but I do not believe I am. It would be interesting if we could travel back in time and take someone from twenty years ago and bring them forward to now and see if they would be shocked at how things have changed.

And this brings me to may last little point, and highlights how so many people are willing to except things. Do you not think that it is rather concerning that we have two unelected prime ministers running two Democratic countries in Europe and people have just accepted it? Mario Monti (Italy) and Lucas Papademos (Greece). And this to me just shows how so many people are happy to just except what they are being told without questioning whether or not it is right or wrong. After what has happened in Egypt and Libya recently, with many people dying to bring 'democracy' to these two countries. And the UK and France spending millions on defending the Libyan people and supporting their fight for democracy, yet no-one raises even a murmur about the removal of democratically elected prime ministers in Europe!

Let me finish with this from The Times which was written in 2002 in regards to the EU and our further integration:

'It is at first denied that any radical new plan exists; it is then conceded that it exists but ministers swear blind that it is not even on the political agenda; it is then noted that it might well be on the agenda but it is not a serious proposition; it is then conceded that it is a serious proposition, but it will never be implemented; after that it is acknowledged that it will be implemented but in such a diluted form that it could make no difference to the lives of ordinary people; and at some point it is finally recognised that it has made such a difference, but it was always known that it would and voters were told so from the outset'.

That is why I believe it is very important to look at the facts and gain information, because as we have seen in regard to so many issues it is very easy to accept something and be blinded by propaganda, spin and disinformation. And before you know it the 'so-called facts' are not what they seem.

Greece, a disaster!

2012-02-25T04:23:00.005-08:00

I wrote in my previous post about Greece and the disaster that is unfolding. What else can be said about this horrendous situation, well let me just add a few more facts to the already awful fact that Greece is being destroyed.

Greece is heading towards civil war, when the people have nothing else they either just wallow in their misery and except the situation or they rise up. And after what has been happening in Greece over the past few months I do not believe they will wallow.

Greece, whilst in the euro cannot do anything to get themselves out of the mess they are in. In the past four years 25 per cent of private companies have gone bankrupt, that means the only part of their economy which could possibly lift Greece out of debt is disappearing.

The Greeks have been told by the European Central Bank, the EU and the International Monetary Fund that they have to make nearly 3 billion euros worth of cuts. The Greek government has been told by these three organisations that they have to make over 150,000 public sector employees redundant. That is the equivalent to making 800,000 unemployed in the UK.

The Greeks are being forced to borrow £108 billion. Think about it, they are already in massive debt and they are being forced to take on even more. They cannot even afford to service the interest on that debt, let alone service any more. Where is the sense in any of this? None of it makes any sense.

The simple fact is this, Greece needs to leave the euro. But those who are running the show do not want them to because they know if they do it will be the end of this evil political project.

When Greece leaves the euro, they will revert back to the Drachma. For a time they will struggle, but one thing will happen, tourists will flock to Greece because it will be cheap. Tourism is one of the most important industries to Greece, and this will mean much needed income. They will be able to devalue, thus making their exports cheaper, and start to get their economy going. Whilst being in the euro they cannot control their own destiny, but once they leave they can bring much needed prosperity.

Italy, Spain, Portugal etc will see this and they will leave, this will then mean a greater independence and these countries will soon realise they do not need the EU.

This project has always had one goal and that has been total political union. If you go right back to Jean Monnet (the creator of this project), that was his goal. And the euro highlights that it is not working and never will, and this to me sums up those who are in charge. THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE OF GREECE, OR EUROPE!!! They only care about about the project and damn the people of Greece, as long as they can keep this thing going. That is why I will continue to hate this thing that is the EU.

Politics, politicians and idiots

2012-02-19T05:05:00.000-08:00

I have wondered for a while now what drives politicians. I have mused about what goes on in their tiny little brains, because having watched what has happened in the last few years I realise that there really can't be much happening in the space between their ears.

I do not believe that anyone can actually believe that these bunch of numbskulls really know what they are doing, both here and in Europe. The situation in Greece is lurching from disaster to catastrophe and those in charge do not know or really understand what is going on or what needs to be done.

To put it simply, the only way out of this mess is for Greece to leave the euro, plain and simple! Greece is in so much debt they cannot get themselves out of it without being allowed to default and devalue. As long as they are are in the euro they cannot do either. Greece is in debt to the tune of 360 billion euros, it's economy is shrinking (it contracted by 6 per cent last year) and it has no way of generating any income.

The Greeks are being told that if they are to receive more bailout money they have to bring in more austerity. I wonder how much more austerity this country can take! Unemployment is running at 20 per cent, youth unemployment is 50 per cent, practically every job has had to take a pay cut. There have been stories of children going to school and fainting because of a lack of food. People are not heating their homes, the place is a mess and things are not going to get any better.

There are riots on the streets because the people do not see that there is any other way. Just this week Lucas Papademos, the Greek Prime Minister said that 'violence and destruction do not have a place in a democracy'. This is from the euro technocrat given the position by the EU after the last prime minister was forced to resign by Brussels. This lot do not get it!

The situation in Greece is worse than a Greek tragedy. Anyone with any money is leaving and taking their money with them. Greece has been told that to receive the £108 billion bailout they will have to bring in more austerity. But this will not make an ounce of difference. If any country is in debt they need to look at cuts but also at investment and growth. Greece will not get either of the last two without being able to control their own destiny, and they cannot do this whilst being in the euro.

Just think about this, if Greece takes the bailout money they will have to hand over 12 billion euros of that money just to service their debt. The money they get will only help for a little while and then eventually that will have to ask for more money, and this is just going to keep happening. And of course whilst they are locked in this euro prison they cannot do anything to stimulate their economy. They cannot devalue, they cannot reduce interest rates, they cannot do anything! And this is the tragedy of the whole situation, and shows how much politicians know or care. They are completely obsessed with their dream of a united Europe they cannot see that it is just not working.

Greece is in a mess, that is plainly obvious. But so is Italy and if the Italian economy needs a bailout, it is just not going to happen. Italy's economy is seven times the size of Greece's, there is not enough money in Europe to bail them out. And this is what the euro fanatics are frightened of. If the Greeks leaves the euro and reinstates the drachma and manages to survive and actually prosper, the rest of the indebted Mediterranean countries might just follow suit. And that will be the end of the euro and possible the EU.

As much as I do not want to see people impoverished I do want to see this ghastly monstrosity that is the EU come to an end. It has been an absolute disaster and what has happened with the euro shows that this project is never going to work. Politicians will continue to say that the alternative would be worse, but I truly cannot see that it really could get any worse. And before you talk about two world wars and the EU preventing more wars, that just is not true and does not stand up to simple examination. Ironically we could see another war in Europe, a civil war starting in Greece and all because politicians care more about their dream of a united Europe rather than the people they are supposed to serve.

HS2 - A COMPLETE WASTE OF MONEY!

2012-01-13T02:56:00.002-08:00

HS2 is the High Speed 2 railway to Birmingham from London. It is going to cost an estimated £32 billion and possibly start running a service in 2026. The idea behind this project was Labour peer Lord Adonis who first proposed it.

We are told it will knock 30 minutes off the time it takes to travel from London to Birmingham. We are also told it will bring massive economic benefits to the UK; commercial lobbyists have claimed it will be worth £55 billion to business, I don't know where they get their figures from. You would think if big business thinks it is such a good idea they would be investing in it themselves, but of course not, every penny will come from British tax payers.

You might think that by what I am saying that I am against investment in our infrastructure and particularly our railways, but I am not. It is just I cannot see the benefits of this 'vanity project'. On top of the fact it is going to cost a huge amount of money, it is also going to cut its way through some of the most beautiful parts of England's countryside. And this really bothers me.

The government states it will cut 30 minutes off journey times, is this strictly true? It is if you take the figure from the longest journey times, but when you factor in the quickest rail journey between London and Birmingham, you can knock ten minutes off that figure. Then add to this the time it will take to get to the centre of Birmingham from the new station they are going to build outside the centre. You can then take at least another ten minutes off the 30 minutes supposed saving. So there you have a possible saving of ten minutes.

The Whitehall evaluation team looked at the benefit/cost ratio of this project last year. They came to the conclusion that for every £6 spent, only £1 would be gained in economic terms. To be remotely commercial it will have to charge very high fares - projected to rise at 27 per cent above inflation.

Lord Adonis stated it will bring '...low cost mass market, high speed transportation'. It will quite obviously not bring high speed travel to the poor masses, as the cost of this project is going to have to be recouped. So the only people who will be able to afford to travel on this train will be the wealthy.

The government has said this project is going to cost £32 billion, but as you can imagine with most government projects it will cost a lot more. Already the government has allocated £750 million even before the decision has been made for the project to go ahead. Governments are very good at wasting our money, the Olympics is a good example. The initial estimate was for £2.4 billion, that figure has now grown to over £9 billion. The Labour governments decision to invest in an NHS super computer in which to store and access every persons medical details ended up costing £21 billion and was eventually abandoned. The Millennium dome cost millions and was doomed from the outset. The governments decision to build two aircraft carriers has already cost hundred of millions and these ships are not expected to come into service for at least a decade.

The idea behind the HS2 sounds good, but does not stand up to simple economic scrutiny, and the question has to be asked why is the government spending so much money at a time when money is very tight? Last week the chairman of the committee on standards in public life, Sir Christopher Kelly, warned that 'preferential access to decision makers by powerful interests was damaging respect for Whitehall'. This is not confined to one particular area, but HS2 is probably the most expensive.

I believe this HS2 project is going to bring no benefit to the UK. It is going to destroy some of England's most beautiful countryside, and before anyone accuses me of being a NIMBY (not in my back yard), I do not live anywhere near the proposed railway. I love the countryside, and Britain is a very crowded country and I want to see what is left our this beautiful country protected.

I do not see that this has to happen. Our infrastructure, both road and rail is under immense strain, and this railway is going to do very little to alleviate this. Surely what would make sense is to invest in what we already have. Britain has some of the highest rail fares in Europe and is ten times more expensive than the European average. We have a road system which is gradually grinding to a halt, with ever more people coming to this small island, this is just going to get worse. With expected population growth to continue at an astronomical rate surely it would make sense to reduce rail prices, invest in improving our under resourced rail network and relay some of the old lines that were ripped up in the 1960's.

The HS2 is going to bring benefits to very few people, the population of this country is spread out throughout this island, and out of a working population how many people travel between Birmingham and London on a regular basis? Is it really going to bring that many benefits to UK plc?

I don't want to always pour scorn on the government, but I can only see this going the way of so many projects. I have written before about how our government ministers do not have a clue, and unfortunately it is these people who make the decisions. A politician who has very little knowledge about his department and is here today and gone tomorrow can be baffled by professionals. They can be told this will benefit their career, give them a legacy, make them look good. They can be told all sorts of things, but they may have very little understanding of the impact their decision will have upon the people they are paid to serve.

David Cameron and his ministers have made a decision that in reality will only benefit a few business men and wealthy people, because that is all who is going to be able afford to travel on this train. It is going to cost at least £32 billion and bring untold misery to the many thousands who live on the proposed route, it is going to carve a knife through some of the most beautiful countryside in England. All this for a supposed saving of thirty minutes travel time (which in the likelihood will probably only be about 15 minutes). I think that sums up the idiocy of those in charge!!

The Big Issue and Romanians

2012-01-09T09:09:00.000-08:00

If you have walked through any town or city in the UK you will find people selling the magazine - The Big Issue. This magazine was set up by John Bird about twenty years ago to help homeless people. Its vendors, who buy bundles of the magazine and keep the profits when they sell them, are required to declare themselves self-employed with HMRC.

What has happened over the last year or so is Romanians have been coming into the country and exploiting the tax system. They are able to claim welfare payments such as Housing Benefit and Working Tax Credits if they register as vendors of the Big Issue - and then declare themselves self-employed.

The issue has been a particular problem in Manchester; Simon Ashley, a councillor in Manchester said: “I believe The Big Issue in the North is allowing itself to be used as a gateway to benefits dependency. “Fundamentally, these people aren’t homeless – they are all in houses. But because they’ve found a loophole which gives them access to benefits, selling the magazine is now an end in itself and not about genuine self-employment.”

Self-employed status is particularly valuable to Romanian immigrants, as it entitles them to start claiming benefits they would not otherwise receive since the eastern European country only joined the EU in 2007.

This is no longer an issue just for the north of England, but has spread further south, as we have two Romanian Big Issue sellers in the town I live in and I saw another one in the town of Southwold in Suffolk.

I have a major problem with this issue, and the authorities should be cracking down on this problem. I have written before a number of times about my concerns and anger of the issue of mass immigration. I see that for many this issue is not a problem simply because it does not affect them. But for many the impact of immigration has been huge.

Without going into detail, those at the bottom of the social scale are the ones which are affected by the problems in our society. The majority of crime does not impact upon those living on a nice estate in a suburb but impacts upon inner city areas where the poorest live. Finding a house is not an issue for those with plenty of money, for those at the bottom it is; as the vast majority of migrants live in houses which the poorest would live in, those at the bottom of the socio-economic scale then struggle to find a house. Joblessness does not impact upon middle class and upper class people because they do middle class jobs like; doctors, solicitors, bank managers, etc. Those at the lower end of the economic scale are the ones who do the cleaning jobs, catering jobs, caring jobs, factory work, etc. These are the jobs that the vast majority of migrants do, they do not, on the whole do skilled work. This has been borne out by home Office figures which showed that of the 3 million immigrants who have come to this country since 2004 only 18,000 have taken skilled work.

What is now happening is that those at the very very bottom (the homeless), are now being affected, which to be honest makes me very angry! Those who legitimately need the money are now seeing that one area of guaranteed income now being taken away and being handed to those who are do not need it. Those who argue in favour of this idiotic policy of open door immigration do not understand the damage being done to so many lives. For many the Big Issue was a lifeline which gave them hope, but that hope is now being taken away.

As the Manchester councillor says, these Romanians are not homeless, and thus not desperate for the money. They are just exploiting the system to get money out of the British tax payer. This then has a knock on affect upon one of the most vulnerable groups in society.

For years many in the seats of power accused anyone who raised their concerns about immigration as being racist. This is clearly not about race, it is about so many issues which impacts upon this country. I have written many times about this issue and all I can see is that our politicians do not really care, if they did they would close the door and stop all immigration into this country.

This one issue in itself highlights the idiocy, inhumanity and immorality of a system which is destroying the lives of so many people, particularly those at the bottom of the social scale. Unfortunately these people do not have a loud voice and so they are never heard, and their situation can only get worse.

The Big Issue was set up to give people hope, unfortunately this one beacon of hope is now going out.

Responsibility

2012-01-06T04:52:00.000-08:00

Let me quote from a letter that was sent into a newspaper:

'This is the tale of two youngsters whom are well known to me.

The first gained nine GCSE passes and completed a plumbing and heating apprenticeship, qualifying as a heating engineer in 2009. finding no employment, he decided to start his own business. Yet despite trying to quote work with very small margins, he's constantly undercut by 'plumbers' from Eastern Europe and by others who, after a two week plumbing course, claim to be qualified and experienced. If he weren't still living at home, he wouldn't survive.

In the last quarter of 2011, every penny he earned went on overheads - diesel, van tax, insurance, regulatory body fees and other necessary expenses. He made no profit and had to resort to making Christmas presents for his loved ones as he had no money. Buying his own home is impossible - he can't even afford to rent.

Then there's a young woman of the same age who failed at school and has relied on state benefits ever since. She has two children from two different fathers, neither of whom is prepared to marry her. Even if they did, it wouldn't help as neither seems interested in working.

This young woman has been given a three bedroom house with a new bathroom and kitchen, and is never concerned about where her next meal is coming from. she has no incentive to find employment.

Both youngsters began with similar opportunities, in the same neighbourhood with comparable education. One did the right thing, the other didn't.

The one who chose the right path has received nothing; the other has been propped up by our tax money and, oddly, is showered with sympathy and support by her family who see her 'plight' as a result of the system'.

When the welfare state was set up, it was set up as a safety net to catch those who got into difficulty. Now we have a system which is a safety blanket which says you need do nothing to help yourself from the cradle to the grave.

I know for many people the thought of being on benefits is dreadful; there are many who would love to work but cannot, either because there are no jobs or are physically unable to. But there is a percentage of people living in this country who have never worked and have no intention of working, they see it as their god given right to money a house and all the other benefits that come with living in this country.

Someone once said 'with rights come responsibility', and I truly believe this. I know there are many people who end up in situations that they wished they weren't in. There are single mothers whose partner has left them and it isn't their fault. But what I find with many who do not work or make any effort to work is, they are simply too lazy and do not see that they should have to work. Why should they? They are not going to starve or go homeless, so what does it matter?

About a year ago myself and another chap helped move a single mother with two children from a perfectly good two bedroom house to an even better three bedroom house. We did this as part of a charity to help vulnerable people, at no point did she lift a hand to help us, or offer us a cup of tea, and when we had finished she did not even thank us. She was not mentally unstable or for that fact did she seem that vulnerable, she had a boyfriend who seemed like a good man who has a good job. This lady, to put it bluntly was miserable, she complained about social services, even though she had a lady from social services who came in and helped her.

I could give at least half a dozen similar examples of situations like this, and this sums up much of what is wrong with our society. The phrase 'nanny state' has been used to describe the government and how it tries to involve itself in every area of our lives. Some people see this as a good thing, I do not!

Today a news story came out stating that rickets in on the rise in this country; this disease, which is seen as a disease of the poor which basically effects bone strength and is caused by a lack of vitamin D. A lady from some organisation was speaking on the news saying 'the government should be doing something about this', and I thought why should government be doing something about this? Why can't people take responsibility for themselves and their own families?

As a parent I want my children to grow up as well rounded individuals, and eventually I will want them to leave my home and make their own way in life. As they are young, I will instill in them; good values, protect them, feed them, provide for their needs and make sure they are safe. But when they get to a certain age I want them to take responsibility for themselves and their families. I hope they grow up healthy and do well, I hope they get a good job, and do well in life, ultimately I want them to be happy.

For many this way of thinking is alien, they expect to be treated as children all their lives. They expect the government to; feed, cloth, house them and to provide their every need. The government has become, in essence a parent to so many people. As a parent I will always help my children if they need it, I will always be there if they get into trouble, but at some point they will have to take responsibility for themselves. I will encourage that, and that is the behaviour of responsible and good parent. The government is not acting in a good and responsible way, and until they stop treating people like children they are never going to change and take responsibility for their own lives.

Desperation

2012-01-05T01:33:00.000-08:00

The EU is in a very desperate and parlous state. Over the past couple of years the world has watched as politicians within Europe try to sort out the disaster that is the euro. France and Germany are going to meet yet again for a summit on January 9. President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel are meeting up so regularly now they may as well move into together. If anyone was under any illusion that the EU is about twenty seven members making decisions together, this highlights that it is not, the other member states do not have a say, whatever Germany and France say (particularly Germany) goes.

Greece is about to run out of money again, Spain is set to miss their debt target and the European Central Bank (ECB) continues to buy Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Irish bonds because no one in their right will buy them.

The thing that bothers me about all this is the ECB does not have money of its own, it is European tax payers money that funds the ECB. So the European tax payer hands billions to the Greeks who then hand it to the banks to pay off their debts, so who is really benefiting, the bankers of course.

The whole thing is such a mess and EU politicians do not want to admit that the only way out of this mess is if the Greeks, Italians, Spanish etc left the euro. They are so desperate for them to stay in they will destroy the lives of millions of people to keep their dream alive.

The French and Germans will do anything to keep the euro going, France's Europe Minister has revealed that a Financial Transaction Tax will be in place by the end of the year. The proposal for the levy would incur huge and disproportionate costs on the City of London.

France's Europe Minister, Jean Leonetti, announced on French TV that the tax would be in place by the end of 2012. According to Leonotti, France and Germany were in agreement and all bar two countries were against this tax. It is no surprise that the only other country apart from Britain which is unhappy with the Franco-German proposal is Sweden. After all they are the only country to have introduced an FTT. This is what their Finance Minister, Anders Borg had to say on the subject in September: 'When Sweden began taxing financial transactions in the 1980s, between 90%-99% of traders in bonds, equities and derivatives moved out of Stockholm to London. The impact was basically that we did not get any tax revenue. It brought in very little tax money while moving most of the businesses outside of Sweden'.

This sums up these people and their desperation to take money from wherever they can, they will potentially destroy the City of London and put tens of thousands out of work to keep this idiotic dream alive. THEY DO NO CARE, they only care about their dream of a united Europe. Isn't it obvious that it just is not working! Isn't it obvious that this dream is destroying Europe!

Now you would think that David Cameron and George Osborne would be shouting and saying no to this tax, not a murmur! Imagine if Britain put forward a proposal to tax the German car industry out of existence, or the French wine industry to this degree, do you thing the Germans and French would let it happen? OF COURSE THEY WOULDN'T!!!!!! Our dear BRITISH PRIME MINISTER, who is supposed to represent BRITISH interests is going to turn over and let the Germans and French shaft Britain and make us pay for their inhumane, morally and financially bankrupt dream.

If you thought that David Cameron had at last stood up for British interests when he supposedly vetoed the French proposal to destroy the city of London, don't be too sure, he did nothing! As you can see the French and Germans are going to push ahead anyway.

You may have noticed that I am little angry about this. The financial sector is the most important industry in Britain, it employs 2 million people, not just in London but 150,000 in Birmingham and 200,000 in Scotland. It contributes 12 per cent to our GDP, which last year was £62 billion. The French have used the excuse that it was the bankers who got the world into this financial mess so they should be taxed and regulated. There may be some truth in this, but this tax has nothing to do with altruism and righting a wrong, it is about envy, pure and simple.

The French have been wanting an excuse to destroy the City of London for years and now they have it. If you think this tax will benefit the people of Europe, not a chance. These businesses will leave Europe, and even if they stayed and were happy to be taxed out of existence the money will just go to pay off the debt that is accumulating in Greece, Spain, Italy, etc, which they will hand straight to the banks who will then pocket the money. So it will go from one bank to another, and the only people who will benefit are bankers.

The whole mess in the worlds financial markets happened for a number of reasons, not just bankers greed. The mess in the euro is purely and simply down to politicians; the euro was never going to work but the EU's dream of complete political union overruled any of this and now we are paying the consequences of this folly.

Living in a fantasy world!!!

2012-01-02T06:24:00.000-08:00

2011 proved once and for all that politicians really do not have a clue. I genuinely mean that! When I look at the mess the UK, Europe and the USA is in, I really do not think anyone could do a worse job.

We trust these people to make good on their promises, but when they get into power they reneged on much of what they promised. They make excuses for their complete ineptitude, incompetence and lying. But unfortunately these are the ones who are in charge.

I look at Jose Manuel Barroso - President of the EU Commission, the Council president Herman Van Rompuy, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and so many other politicians and I realise that they are cut from the same cloth. They love power, but in reality do not have the ability to use that power in a genuinely intelligent way.

Much of what they decide is either based upon party politics or just some idiotic ideology, it isn't based upon what is good for the people they are paid to serve. The euro is one very good example of this; I don't need to go into detail about this idiotic excuse for a currency. Suffice to say it was never going to work and it isn't working. Whether the politicians like it or not the markets will force the destruction the euro. This will mean social misery for millions on a scale that has not been seen since the Second World War. We can already see this happening in Greece, this has, of course been the fault of politicans and their dream of a unified Europe.

We in Britian cannot gloat, and pat ourselves on the back and thank our lucky stars that we did not join this ill thought out venture. Britain may not have joined but we must not forget that the government continues to borrow £2.5 billion every week. There has been talk of cuts for over a year now, but the simple fact is the government has not cut anything. They continue to spend at an unprecedented rate and our national debt will soon top the £1 trillion mark.

Add to this the government is heading for complete disaster in its utterly idiotic dream of a totally green future, this is being led by the liberals under the increasingly idiotic figure Chris Huhne. This man wants to defile our beautiful country by covering it in 32,000 wind turbines. This is so insane I cannot believe that someone hasn't called the men in white coats to take this nutter off to the nearest mental asylum. The saying 'the lunatics have taken over the asylum' comes to mind.

It does not matter whether Chris Huhnes dream becomes reality the simple fact is the government will have to spend billions on building power stations to back up these turbines when the wind does not blow.

The government has decided to follow a green path with this completely misguided green policy. In the last 20 years CO2 emissions have risen by 50 per cent, and up until the end of 2011 global temperatures measured by NASA satellites stood barely above a 10th of a degree Celsius higher than their average throughout the 32 years since satellite measurements began.

Britain is becoming more and more isolated in its desire to cut carbon emmissions. Whilst the rest of the world ignores any target we carry on regardless of the consequences for our economy.

I started this post by stating that politicians do not have a clue and the more I watch them the more I realise that they really do live in a bubble so far removed from any sort of reality. Unfortunately for you and me these are the people in charge and they are the ones who make the decisions.

Happy new year, and a few thoughts.

2012-01-01T11:36:00.000-08:00

A new year beckons and the outlook for many it seems is quite bleak. With the uncertainty within the eurozone and the likely breakup of this currency it looks like hard times are ahead. Much has been said about David Cameron's so called veto and Britain's supposed isolation from the the EU and the catastrophic impact this is going to have on the UK's economy.

The BBC and many MP's have spoken out against what he did. But the reality of the situation is Britain would be better off out of the EU altogether. The EU as an economic entity is dying and those who believe in this institution are sailing on an ocean liner heading for the rocks, and ultimately disaster.

There are many who believe the EU is a fantastic organisation that has brought much wealth, happiness and stability to Europe. They believe that if we continue pumping money into the euro it will ultimately continue and eventually things will work out okay.

Well here is the reality. In 1973 the western countries of Europe, that is; Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and various small independent states made up about 36 per cent of the world's GDP. Move forward nearly forty years and the EU (27 nations), that figure has dropped to 24 per cent and by 2020 it is expected to be around 15-18 per cent. So as you can see Europe is becoming less important economically.

In 1973 there were only a few nations which made the majority of goods consumers bought, these were USA, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and to a lesser degree Canada, Sweden, Holland, etc. Things of course have changed massively. In 1973 The Soviet Bloc existed, so they made nothing of any worth, China was a communist country and made nothing. India and Brazil were third world countries with very little skills. How times have changed; China is now the second largest economy in the world, Brazil has now overtaken the UK and is now the sixth largest economy. India is growing quickly and will soon be an economic superpower. Europe on the other hand is getting smaller economically.

The simple truth is this, our economy is being destroyed by the EU. Regulation upon regulation is piled upon British business every year which hampers growth. Why on earth do we stay within this economic strait jacket is beyond me, it makes no sense!

Until politicans in this country take this problem seriously Britain as an economic power is going to die. Those who argue in favour of continued membership should just read these facts; Norway's per capita GDP is $51,959, almost twice that of the EU. Only 3.6 per cent of Norwegians are unemployed, inflation is 2.6 per cent. As members of the European Free Trade Association, Norwegians enjoy full access to EU markets and do not have to abide by their ridiculous diktats. They are spared the calamities of the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies. Norwegians export more per capita to the EU from outside than Britain does from inside; and their trade with the EU is in surplus, while ours is in deficit.

I know the Norwegians have oil, but I could also use Switzerland as an example. There you have some simple truths. We will continue to get lies, lies and more lies from polticians, commentators and certain media outlets about the disaster that will engulf us if we leave. Of course this doesn't stand up to simple scrutiny, and I would quite happily argue my point with anyone who thinks otherwise.

Computerless

2011-11-17T09:12:00.000-08:00

Just to let you know I have just moved house and will be without a home computer for the next ten weeks or so. This means I will be unlikely to post anything over that time. I will leave you with these thoughts:

Don't you think it is ironic that the EU supports democracy in Egypt, Tunisia, etc but has set up an undemocratic government in both Greece and Italy?

Does it not seem absolutely ridiculous to keep hoping that somehow the political leaders of the EU are going to sort out this mess in the eurozone? Surely it would be better to have an orderly breakup and let Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and France leave this economic prison? The only thing we can be sure of is that economics will eventually triumph over politics, and when this happens we will see a truly monstrous economic disaster.

Over the next few months the world is going to continue to watch as the EU leaders try to sort out this mess. Ultimately they will be disappointed and the EU idiots will fail.

The economic power house of the world is no longer Europe, this is the reality; until those in the EU realise this the better. But I cannot see this happening. The EU is an organisation that does not like reality, those in charge live in a bubble.

Imagine a family that was once fabulously wealthy that still lives in a massive mansion but can no longer afford to pay the bills or pay for the upkeep of that house. This is like those in the EU, it is crumbling around their ears but they are unwilling to admit that things have changed.

They continue to pile regulation upon regulation and they keep spending billions of pounds of tax payers money on keeping the euro afloat but eventually it will die. Unfortunately for us, the people of Europe we will be the ones who suffer, not the political elite who will walk off into the sunset with a massive pension and a house in the sun.

Anyway there are a few happy thoughts to keep you going.

THE GREAT DECEPTION

2011-10-30T13:47:00.000-07:00

In the book called 'The great Deception' by Christopher Booker and Richard North they explain the history and detail of the drive to bring about a political entity called the European Union. They explain in great detail how we have moved from a Common Market to what we have now. I have to say it is probably one of the most interesting and fascinating books I have ever read. It is incredibly well researched and the authors are able to explain in a very articulate way the deception that is the EU.

So why am I mentioning this? Well, what I have noticed is that there has been a great deception performed by our political leaders and many so called business people. This deception has been this, and has been repeated time and time again: 'if we leave the EU it would be an economic disaster for Britain, and if we left it would destroy us'.

This is complete and utter rubbish and does not stand up to simple scrutiny. I know I have written about this before, but I wanted to be a little more concise. Tory MEP David Campbell Bannerman has produced a pamphlet rubbishing the claims of all the doomsayers.

So here are the basics:

1. The EU sells more to us than we do to them, it would be very much in its interests to enact a free trade agreement with us. In 2009 our trade deficit with the EU in just manufactured goods was £35 billion. If you think we couldn't leave and just set up a trade agreement. Under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty requires the EU to make a trade arrangement with any nation that leaves the EU.

2. With the ascent of China, India and Brazil Britain would do well to leave a trading bloc whose share of world GDP is forecast to fall to under 15 per cent in 2020. In 1980 it was 36 per cent.

3. Britain enjoys trading relationships elsewhere in the world that are not shared by other EU countries. We send 18 per cent of our exports to the US; Germany sends only 7 per cent. The biggest external investor in Britain is America.

4. One of the reasons for the EU's poor competitiveness is over regulation. More than 100,000 regulations and directives have been imposed upon us since we joined the EU in 1973. The working time directive is estimated to cost £11.9 billion a year in lost productivity. The EU renewables target about £22 billion every year, the new part time agency workers regulation is already costing British workers their jobs, as Tesco is going to lay off 21,000 part time workers.

The Open Europe think tank reported last year that EU regulations had cost Britain £124 billion since 1998. The figure is not a partisan invention, but based upon the Governments assessments..

5. We are told that if we left the EU it would mean our influence would disappear. Our membership of the G8, our seat on the UN security council and the World Trade organisation are not dependent upon our being part of the EU.

6. We are the sixth largest economy in the world, we remain one of the top ten manufacturing nations in the world. London is the largest financial centre in the world, that is as long as the EU do not destroy this by bringing in the Financial Transactions tax.

7. Britain would not have to pay almost £8.3 billion net to the EU plus the ongoing increase which is expected to hit £10.3 billion by 2013.

8. Switzerland is the richest country per capita in Europe and possibly the world, it does 70 per cent of its trade with the EU, and is not part of the EU.

There you have eight simple points that the government and politicians like to ignore. I have not mentioned immigration and being able to control who comes here to work. So, as you can see there is no benefit to us being part of this great deception. I truly believe if we stay in this economic prison much longer it will eventually destroy this nation that I love.

Can you ever trust this lot again?

2011-10-28T03:07:00.000-07:00

I have always wondered how politicians get away with it. I have always wondered how is it so easy to lie, and not just lie but to do it so brazenly. Imagine this, one of your friends tells you they will help you- say move house, they tell you this whilst speaking to you on camera. You then phone them up to say that you are moving house tomorrow, and could they come and help you because they said they would. They then turn round and say that they can't do it, you say to them that they promised they would help and if they don't help you will have to do it yourself. They then say that they didn't promise to help, and even if they did promise there were conditions attached.

You then play the recording of them promising to help you move and they then say 'I didn't mean that'. Would you trust them again to stick to their promise? Well you might give them another chance, but if they kept breaking promises and kept saying they never said something even though they had officially recorded it, I am sure you would never trust them again.

This is exactly what all three main parties have done in regards to many issues but in particularly in regards to the EU. So this is what the conservatives said, this is quoted directly from the conservative party website:

News story
Join our campaign for an EU referendum
Monday, April 27 2009

Ahead of the European elections on 4th June, David Cameron has launched a campaign to get Gordon Brown to honour his pledge to give the British people a referendum on the EU Treaty.
In their 2005 election manifesto, Labour promised to hold a referendum on the EU Constitution.
David stressed the Lisbon Treaty was a “re-branded” version of that Constitution and attacked Gordon Brown for having “flip-flopped”:

“First he was against the Constitution, then he was for it; one day he promised a referendum, the next he backtracked. While he has chopped and changed, our position has remained exactly the same. We are the only major party to have consistently said that it is up to the British people to decide on our future in Europe.”

David promised that if the Constitution was not in force at the time of the General Election, a Conservative Government would hold a referendum on it, urge a no vote, and reverse Britain’s ratification if successful.
He explained, “I believe that if you make a promise in your manifesto, and the country votes on that manifesto, then you are honour-bound to keep that promise.”
You can join our campaign by signing up to our Facebook page or downloading our 'EU-turn' widget

Well, that looks pretty unequivocal, I don't know about you but that looks very easy to understand. Just look at that last sentence, it doesn't look ambiguous, it is completely straight and down the line. And I suppose if you read that you would actually think they meant what they were saying!

So let us look at what Labour said about holding a referendum:

"We will put it — the EU Constitution — to the British people in a referendum and campaign whole-heartedly for a 'Yes' vote." — Labour Party manifesto, May 2005

"We will have a referendum on the constitution in any event — and that is a Government promise." — Tony Blair, The Sun, May 13, 2005

"Well, if it were necessary to hold a referendum, of course we wouldn't hesitate. I suspect that the best deal for Britain will be won, where we will get what we want, at this summit." — Gordon Brown, GMTV, June 19, 2007

"We would not agree to a deal that crossed the red lines, therefore, we did not believe a referendum would be necessary." — Later that day, Downing Street website

"The manifesto is what we put to the public. We've got to honour that manifesto." — Gordon Brown, BBC 1 Politics Show, June 24, 2007

What do you think about that then? That is also pretty unequivocal. I don't think you could misinterpret that. So what did we get from Gordon Brown when asked to give the British people a vote on the Lisbon Treaty/EU constitution? Excuses! The Lisbon Treaty is not the same as the EU Constitution he said.

So is the EU Constitution the same as the Lisbon Treaty? Well Bill Wedderburn – a QC, a Life Peer and a member of the Labour Party since 1946 analysed the thousands of pages in the Lisbon Treaty, the Constitution and the commentaries about them (most of which were unavailable to the UK public before January 2008) and agrees with the vast majority of European politicians that the Lisbon Treaty contains substantially the same provisions as the draft Constitution.

The Labour government said that it was not the Constitution, just another Treaty. But, according to Lord Wedderburn, you can’t change the substance of a document by giving it new titles, a new style and form or by making it – as the Lisbon Treaty is – virtually unintelligible.

So there you have it, the EU Constitution is the same as the Lisbon Treaty! So I suppose if you looked at what Gordon Brown said in 2007 and read their manifesto promise in 2005 you would think that they would follow through on that promise. Remember they are politicians, and as we know they lie for a living. So of course they are not going to follow through on what they say.

Finally our dear friends the liberal democrats. In my previous post I showed you a copy of a campaign leaflet which they published in the run up to the 2010 General Election. Since the smaller writing wasn't very easy to read I will write here some of what was on that leaflet:

"It's time to give the British people a real Referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union" - Nick Clegg

It's been over thirty years since the British people last had a vote on Britain's membership of the European Union. That's why the liberal democrats want a real referendum on Europe. Only a real referendum on Britain's membership of the EU will let the people decide our country's future.

Whether you agree with Europe or not, it is vital that you the British people have a real say in a real EU referendum.

I haven't misrepresented or misquoted the liberals here, there is nothing on that leaflet that is ambiguous.

So what did David Cameron say in regards to having a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty? I have written in a previous post the full transcript of what our dear prime minister said in the Sun newspaper. So if you haven't seen it before look at it here http://evanheasley-powertothepeople.blogspot.com/2011/08/david-cameron-and-broken-promises.html

There is nothing ambiguous in what he said. He made it clear he wanted a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. David Cameron then reneged on that promise and used the excuse that there was no point having a referendum once the things was signed. Well that does not wash for two reasons. First, David Cameron and most people with any intelligence new it was going to be signed before the tories got into power, so why promise this in the first place? And second, in 1975 we had a referendum on remaining in the then Common Market, why could we not do that now.

The problem I have with the behaviour of our political leaders and so many of our MPs is their duplicity, their lying and their utter contempt for the British people. It is clear from what I have written above that all three main parties have promised a referendum on our relationship with the EU. I have not misquoted or exaggerated anything they have said and I haven't lied, I have just quoted what they said.

What we have seen here is politicians at their worse, they have used every excuse possible to not follow through on their promise. They have used legalise and other language to excuse their complete cowardice, they have used obfuscation, they have squirmed, they have decided that they do not trust us or care about what we think. They have continually lied and lied and lied. How can anyone trust this lot? How can anyone trust anything they will say again?

In the next election each party will set out their manifesto, they will say what they are going to do. Well let's be honest here, there is no point in them saying anything because once they get into power they will do what they want.

There is something we, the general public can do, and that is to not vote for them, but I cannot see that happening, either labour or the tories will be elected again. And I guess that sums up the electorate, I just cannot believe people could ever trust this lot again after so many broken promises. Like I said above, if someone kept letting you down, if they kept promising to help you and did not, if they said one thing and did the opposite would you ever believe them again? I am sure you wouldn't, so why should we ever trust this lot again?

What they really think of you!

2011-10-25T04:40:00.000-07:00

First Labour didn't follow through with their promise to hold a referendum on the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty. Then David Cameron didn't follow through on his promise to have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

Here is a poster advertising what the liberals put in their manifesto in the run up to the 2010 general elections. I am sorry if you can't read it, I couldn't get it any clearer, but having read it myself it is obvious what they are promising. There is nothing in it which could be misunderstood, it is clear what the liberals want.

No wonder people have lost faith in our political class. It just goes to show you what those in power really think of you and me.

I sat and listened to some of the debate in parliament last night on the vote to let the people have a referendum on our relationship with the EU. A liberal democrat MP stood up and said that even though the liberals did promise a referendum they promised that it would only be held under certain circumstances. He then went into a diatribe on why the liberals wouldn't back the motion to let the people have a referendum.

To say it is disingenuous would be an understatement. The above poster is pretty unequivocal. It is very clear what the liberals promised. Just like their promise to stand against tuition fees, they have reneged on that.

This highlights what our elected representatives think of us, they don't care about us! They think we are stupid! They believe they are untouchable! The more I listen to; David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and so many of their followers the more I realise they are totally out of touch with those who have elected them.

The thought police

2011-10-24T04:27:00.000-07:00

Housing association manager Adrian Smith has been demoted and had his pay drastically reduced after he posted comments on his private Facebook page in which he said that celebrating same sex weddings in churches would be an 'equality too far'.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with gay marriage or allowing gays to marry in a church or not, surely this issue goes to the very heart of freedom of speech.

Mr Smith wrote on his private Facebook account to just his friends, he wrote it on his own computer at home. He was having a discussion about a BBC story about the government's plans to lift the ban on homosexual couples holding civil partnerships in churches.

This is what was said:

Adrain Smith:

'An Equality too far'

Gay church marriages get the go ahead. Ministers are to set out plans to make changes to the law which could enable same sex couples to 'marry' in church, it has emerged.

.........: 'Does this mean you don't approve?'

Adrian Smith:

'No not really, I don't understand why people who have no faith and don't believe in Christ would want to get hitched in church.The Bible is quite specific that marriage is for men and women. If the state want to offer civil marriages to same sex couples that is up to the state; but they shouldn't impose its rules on places of faith and conscience.'

That doesn't sound that bad, there was no incitement to go out and beat up gays, or kill; he wasn't even saying he was against gay couples getting 'married'. He just said he was against it happening in a church.

One colleague who is his friend on Facebook sent a complaint to the housing association's thought police, eg 'equality and diversity manager' who then decided to destroy this man's career.

I believe this is very scary, and goes to show you how this country is changing. Every public sector organisation has its own thought police. Depending on the size of the organisation it will employ many people to police their employees thoughts and actions.

The people who run these organisation are so wrapped up in 'diversity and equality' they cannot see outside of this warped little world they live in. They believe that we should all think the same and say the same thing. Ironically it does seem to go against the word 'diversity' which means different; surely that is the point of the word diverse, we all are diverse and have many different points of view, not the same. So if we are different we should be able to state those points of view without fear.

Of course this would not be right in the eyes of these zealots, they believe they are right and everyone who holds a different view is wrong. They are obsessed, they do not care about people, only an ideology. When we go down this road we can only end up with one view which then leads to tyranny; were everyone who speaks out against the the prescribed opinion is seen as not only extreme but actually deranged and very dangerous.

You might think what I am saying a little over the top. But I don't believe it is; to stop people stating their beliefs is the first step to stopping freedom of expression and speech. This in turn can lead to a snowball effect in which many of the things that you say can be seen as 'wrong'. Things which are not unreasonable but just a point of view start to be seen as intolerance, then can be seen as destructive and actually very dangerous. Before you know it you are being labeled a trouble maker, an extremist and thus dangerous. This then has an impact on your job and your ability to find employment. This can then impact upon your children - schools now have to record any racist, homophobic or any other incidents that are deemed extreme. In some cases children have been asked by their teachers if their parents holds certain views. This is very dangerous indeed!

Imagine sitting in a pub and you are having a private conversation and someone from your work is there, you are discussing something which our 'thought police' believe is sacred to their agenda, and you disagree with the policy. That employee then contacts your employee and then you are in front of a panel justifying your beliefs and trying to save your job. You don't think this could happen, I wouldn't be too sure.

Thankfully it seems there are some people who are standing up to this extremism. Mr Smith is taking his employer to a tribunal seeking compensation and an admission that his 'rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion have been broken'. Mr judge, who is overseeing the enquiry said 'There seems to be a culture of fear among companies who feel impelled to launch an Inquisition if anyone doesn't buy into the equality and diversity manifesto in its entirety. This witchhunt has to stop.' So there is hope.

One last point, I wonder if Adrian Smith had been Muslim and made these comments would he have been treated the same?

Arrogance

2011-10-24T03:37:00.001-07:00

I wrote in my previous posting about the lack of democracy in this country. On top of the fact that so many of our politicians don't have a clue how to run the country and sort out the mess we are in, so many have an incredible arrogance. This is so true when we look at the issue of the EU.
In so many countries around the world politicians behave with a total disregard to the people who elected them. In many countries those in charge are not elected and don't actually give any thought or have any care for their people.

When you start to look at the issue of our relationship with the EU you will see that those in power think they know best and they think we the people are just a bunch of ignorant idiots. That may sound like sour grapes, but having listened to the likes of; William Hague, David Cameron, Nick clegg, Ed Miliband, etc stating what they think is the best for us, shows that they have complete contempt for those who elected them.

Ed Miliband only yesterday on the BBC refused to rule out Britain joining the euro. I cannot believe this! This man, who is supposed to be intelligent cannot see that the euro is doomed, it is in a complete mess and is dying and he is saying that we could eventually join the euro.

The euro and the European project is just not working, it is a political project that those who rule are determined to make work. They plough on regardless of the damage this is doing to individual countries. Greece has already received two huge bailouts and is on its way to receiving a third, even though there is no chance they will be able to pay its debt.

Italy is sinking fast and the cost of refinancing its debt next year will be £218 billion. The obvious thing to do is let the Greeks, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese and Irish leave this euro prison and devalue their currency. It makes no sense to just keep handing money over to these countries when they cannot devalue. This would then make their exports cheaper and then their economies will start to grow so they could then get back on their feet.

But the arrogance of those in power is only going to bring destruction on the people of these countries. Regardless whether the politicians want this euro project to keep going the financial markets will have the final say, and that is when this project will finally die. I watched an interesting interview with Peter Oborne - journalist on the Daily Telegraph in which he really hammers the EU, it is well worth a watch. If you want to watch it click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxPFZra8MuM

Today Great Britain's MPs will have a vote on whether we have a referendum and they will ignore the people. This does not surprise me, as many are more concerned about their own political career rather than the people they are supposed to represent.

The simple fact is we, the British people have never been given the opportunity to have a say on whether we want this European Union, NEVER! In a series of polls, within the last year shows that given an 'in' or 'out' referendum, half of Britons would vote to leave. Whilst a quarter would vote to stay in. This highlights the total rejection of democracy by those we elected! This shows their complete arrogance! This shows how far this lot are removed from the people they are supposed to represent! And this highlights why so many people feel totally disenfranchised from the political elite!

The government admits that half of British laws with a significant economic impact come from the EU. Be it home affairs, health and safety, tourism to tax from national security to social security. Bernard Jenkins MP was on the BBC this morning stating that the EU costs the British economy upwards of £60 billion a year. The EU dictates to us in so many areas; every year our parliament is forced to implement 3,000 regulations which originate in the EU. Not once in the last 32 years has Britain received more than it paid into the EU. We have a trade deficit with the EU - basically they sell more to us than we sell to them. There is no economic sense to being part of the EU. I could go on and on.

It is about time the British people had a say in who governed them, that does not sound unreasonable. The British government, whether it be this one or the previous one, or the one before that has continually handed more and more power to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. They have never asked us if this is what we want. They have continually lied, they have promised they will give us a referendum, but have never followed through with that promise.

This is why I believe they will never do anything about the EU, and that is why, if the British people really care about this country and are really bothered about who represents them they need to vote for a different party. One that truly represents them and the views of the majority of the people of this country.

Democracy?

2011-10-22T04:30:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered what world our politicians inhabit? So many do not really care about anything, I believe they would say anything to stay in power. They are so far removed from the reality of everyday life they are like the old Emperors of China or the Tsars of Russia. They do not understand anything except politics and staying in power.

Labour were truly awful ,they made such a mess of this country; I don't think the 'The Monster Raving Loony Party' could have done any worse. The likes of; Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman are lecturing this government on what they are doing wrong and what they should be doing. But they were part of the last government and they could not have been worse.

Let us use this analogy. Imagine asking a builder to build you an extension and you provide the finance and materials. They start off okay, but very quickly they start to make a mess of it, and after 13 years not only have they not built the extension they have left your house in a mess. They have ruptured water pipes, made holes in your roof, knocked down walls they shouldn't have, disconnected your electric and also given the keys to a bunch of Romanian Gypsies who are now living rent free in your basement. And you cannot remove them. You then ask another builder to sort out the mess, and the builder who got you in this mess sits and lectures them on what they should be doing to sort it out.

I have written before how I believe that out politicians do not know what they are doing, and the more I listen and watch them the more I realise they don't have a clue how to run the country. They do not even believe in democracy. The government lectures other countries on democracy and even goes to war over it but ignores the people of this country. They promise so much in the run up to elections but when they get into power they forget those promises and carry on as if the people do not matter.

The government decided they would bring in a semblance of democracy by allowing a debate in parliament if 100,000 people signed a petition on the government's e-petition website. This sounds good but the reality is the government will ignore what the people want and vote against it anyway. Let's take the latest example of 'democracy'; the government are going to have a debate and vote on letting the people have a referendum on our relationship with the EU.

David Cameron has ordered every Tory MP to vote against a referendum, he has said that if any minister votes against the government they will be sacked from government and if any Tory MP votes against them that will be the end of their career. So much for democracy! Labour are no better, they will vote against the proposal, and I don't need to say anything about the extremely pro EU Liberals.

This highlights the complete arrogance of the governing class and how they care about the democratic feelings of the people who elected them. David Cameron has nailed his colours to the mast, he has shown that he does not believe in anything and will doing anything to keep power. He stated in 2007 that he would give the people a referendum on our relationship with the EU but then reneged on that promise. Nick Clegg is even worse; part of his manifesto promise was an in out referendum, that promise has now been dropped. I cannot take anymore of the excuses of having to compromise within a coalition; this just gives them cart blanche to do anything and ignore all their promises.

But let's look at two issues to see what they really think about the people and democracy. Immigration is continually ignored, even though the majority of people want some sort of controls on who comes to this country. Execution, whether you agree or not in this, there is a majority who favour a return to the death penalty. But none of this fits in with how our liberal ruling elite think. They do not care, it is as if we the people are a minor distraction and irritation on their backside that needs to be brushed off, or if it cannot be brushed off it is just ignored.

Whether you believe we should leave the EU or not, or whether you believe in execution or controlling immigration surely these are such big issues that the people should have a direct say over. I believe in our parliamentary democracy, it has worked for years, I know that everything could not go to a referendum, it would not be practical. But surely if there are things that are major issues and the government is not willing to listen to the people, the people should have a direct vote. If a party was voted in on the basis of its manifesto promises but fails to follow through on very little of those promises what is the point of having a manifesto. They could say anything to get elected. Is this then true democracy?

Add to all this, those who walk the corridors of power in Brussels you will quickly realise that there is very little in the way of true democracy in so many countries. Just look at what happened in Germany recently when the German parliament voted in favour of handing more German tax payers money to the Greeks. A majority of Germans did not want to do this but those in power ignored them. The IMF, ECB and EU are now telling the Greeks, Spanish and Italians how they should govern, they are telling them to cut public spending (which they probably need to) or else, That's democracy for you!

The EU ignored the French and Dutch in 2005 in regards to the EU constitution, the Irish in 2008 and made them vote again on the Lisbon Treaty, they got their way. The Slovakian parliament has voted against handing more money to the Greeks, but will have another vote. You could argue that at least they are voting and surely this is democracy. But I cannot see that it is, continually making someone vote until you get the answer you want is not what I call democracy.

This brings me back to our politicians and what world they live in. I do not believe they really understand, nor do I believe that many of them really care about the people who elected them. I do not believe that anything is ever really going to change as long as the people of this country continue to vote for the usual suspects. Until the people start to look elsewhere and vote for someone who really understands and who really cares nothing is going to change.

It's about the economy!

2011-10-17T01:44:00.000-07:00

Every week I watch as the western economies continue to struggle. The eurozone is a disaster waiting to happen, Britain and the US are seeing very little growth and unemployment continues to rise. Yet our politicians do not know what to do.

The Bank of England have just announced £75 billion worth of 'quantitative easing', or in layman's language, printing more money. This seems rather desperate, and shows that those at the reins of power; both politicians and finance chiefs do not know what to do. If something isn't done, and done quickly our economy is going to disappear down an economic plug hole.

We are in a mess, every week unemployment continues to rise; the latest figures for June to August show that unemployment rose by 117,000 to take it to 2.57 million. Today Philips, the Dutch electronics and lighting group has announced 4,500 jobs cuts. The independent forecaster Ernst and Young says the Bank of England's new quantitative easing bout is unlikely to prompt recovery. They have also downgraded its forecast for gross domestic product (GDP) to just 0.9% this year, well below the 1.4% it predicted three months ago.

The latest rescue attempt for the euro - a £385 billion bailout fund falls far short of the estimated £1.75 trillion needed to stop contagion spreading from Greece to Italy and Spain. Confidence isn't very high that any of what our politicians are doing is going to work.

Politicians carry on trying to patch up this sinking ship with sticking plaster in the vain hope that it will stay afloat. The simple fact is it isn't working, it would make more sense now to jump out of this boat and swim to safety, rather than sink and die. We have been told that if we don't save the euro the world economy is doomed and we will go into an even greater recession. It is quite obvious the euro is doomed; if Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland stay in they will just need more and more taxpayers money, and eventually it is going to run out. They need to leave, if they leave now there will be pain, but eventually that pain will become easier as they will have been able to devalue and rescue their own economies. If they stay it will mean disaster for all of us, and long term pain.

What should the UK do? Well we should leave the EU, we should cut immigration, deregulate, cut tax and encourage manufacturing.

If we left the EU would it be a disaster for us? We are told our economy is so entwined in the EU that to leave would be economic suicide. Is this true? No of course not! We hand over in hard cash about £20 billion every year, add to that the £12.32 billion the British tax payer has spent so far in trying to save the euro. Taking the £3.09 billion that was handed over via the IMF that still leaves over £9 billion we have handed directly to the EU.

Our EU membership also brings hidden costs; the Common Agricultural policy, the Common Fisheries Policy (since joining the Common Market ten's of thousands of jobs have been lost in the fishing industry alone), green regulations, which burden business with extra costs and the thousands of regulations which stifle growth.

Brussels is trying to stop Britain from vetoing the Financial Transaction Tax on the City of London. To put it simply this would be a disaster. At the moment the City accounts for 70 per cent of financial services business in the EU area. It accounts for about 10 per cent of the UK's economic output and contributes about £124 billion to the UK economy. This tax would be a disaster and destroy our economy in an instance.

Politicians argue that we need to stay within the EU because of the trade issue; to put it simply this would make no difference as we could still trade outside of the EU, as Switzerland and Norway have shown. The argument doesn't stand up to any scrutiny, they need us more than we need them. If we left would the Germans stop selling us BMW's, Mercedes, etc? Would the French stop selling us wine, cheese, Renault cars? Would the Italians stop selling us Fiats? Would the Swede's stop selling us Volvo's? Would the Finns stop selling us Nokia mobile phones? Would they not want to trade with us and buy JCB diggers and Triumph motor cycles? Of course not! It is just plain daft to think that they wouldn't trade with us.

If we wanted to leave there is nothing they could do to stop us, they need us more than we need them, as I have already written we hand over billions every year with no obvious benefits. What would the EU do without our money? After the Germans we are the largest contributor to the EU coffers.

We could also cut immigration meaning we could get British people back to work. We could stop the many hundreds of thousands of foreign workers coming into this country ever year, thus putting the British worker first in the queue for jobs. If you don't think British people want to work let me relay this story. I was listening to BBC radio 4 last week and there was a lady being interviewed who had lost who job in the public sector, she had applied for 120 jobs and not even got an interview. People want to work, but there are no jobs, were is the sense of importing more and more foreign labour when there are not the jobs for the indigenous population?

We need to encourage manufacturing, just look at the economies that are growing, they all make things. China, India, Brazil, South Korea, etc are continuing to see economic growth. They must be doing something right, why aren't we copying them?

We need to cut regulation, it hampers business and stifles growth! That is obvious, it does not take a genius to work that one out. The recent decision to implement an EU regulation on petrol pumps has meant that 1800 petrol retailers have had to replace their petrol pumps. This idiotic diktat was brought in for a negligible reason, and if you argue that the oil companies can afford it, what about the independent petrol retailers? Can they?

I could go on, but I am sure you get the idea. Something needs to be done, many of the answers are very simple and I have only covered a small part of what could be done. The economy is something that needs to grow, it provides jobs and security and pays for all those things we have come to rely on like the NHS and the welfare state. If we want to keep them and continue to maintain a good standard of living something has got change. Unfortunately our politicians are either too incompetent or just do not care so things are unlikely to change.

If you don't hate the EU, here is at least one good reason to do so

2011-10-13T02:44:00.000-07:00

This is just a short posting. As regular readers of this blog will know I hate the EU; not because I have some irrational hatred of Europe or any European nation. It has nothing to do with Europe, it has to do with an organisation that was set up to control the European people, and it brings no benefits to us or many countries in Europe. We only have to look at what is happening within the eurozone and the disaster it has inflicted upon Greece, Italy, Portugal, etc.

One of the things the EU likes to do is promote how wonderful it is; it will state that it has brought prosperity and united the peoples of Europe. With a little research you will find that the EU is a massive organisation that is hugely bureaucratic, unaccountable and anti-democratic.

On the theme of being anti-democratic, we only have to look at what is happening in Slovakia. They have voted no in their parliament to bailing out the Greeks, for genuine good reasons, but of course this is not what their EU masters want to hear. They will be made to vote again, and this time as usual the EU will get their own way.

That is not the main reason for this post, here is a link to a journalists blog. He mentions the Common Agricultural (CAP) policy and how damaging it is. http://singletonblog.dailymail.co.uk/2011/10/the-eu-isnt-just-killing-economic-growth-it-is-killing-africans.html

It is only a short piece, but if you are really interested in the reality of the EU, just spend a little time researching this hideously grotesque policy and you will see that they just do not care. The CAP has brought disaster and misery to many millions. It has pushed up food prices to the consumers of Europe. It is massively wasteful but will never be reformed, and that sums this lot up.

They don't know what to do!

2011-10-11T08:38:00.000-07:00

We are now about 18 months into this coalition government and the simple question has to be asked, are they doing a good job? I believe they are not, for these reasons.

Things are not getting any better; you could say things are not getting any worse, but that does not mean they are doing a good job. I know that Labour left this country in a complete mess; I have to be honest, I truly think the last government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown was probably one of the worse governments to ever run Britain. They made a complete mess of things and blamed everyone but themselves. They wasted billions of pounds on failed projects -£12.7 billion on a computer system for the NHS which has now been scrapped and £500 million and rising on Regional fire controls for the fire service. These are just two of many examples of politicians arrogance, ignorance and vanity; they decided on these projects without proper consultation, and when they were clearly not working they continued regardless.

This government are no better, they carry on with their projects and continue to waste money just so it makes them look good. One of these things is overseas aid; now you could argue that giving money to those who are in need is good, I cannot argue with that. You could say that we are a rich country and in some way have an obligation to help those who are less fortunate than us, I can see that reasoning.

Britain, this year will spend more than £8 billion on overseas aid, and that is going to increase to about £11 billion by 2015.

But the reason I am against foreign aid is because a massive percentage is wasted and actually goes to propping up ruthless and tyrannical regimes. The governments own Independent Commission on Aid Impact has stated that 27 per cent of aid goes directly to corrupt or tyrannical regimes - to spend as they seem fit.

There is evidence that much aid money is being misused. The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has stated that last year about £1 billion of UK aid has been involved in fraud. Imran Khan, the former Pakistani cricketer has blamed aid for making his country's endemic corruption far worse.

This country is struggling, unemployment has now risen to 2.57 million, the private sector is getting smaller - 20,000 private companies have gone to the wall since May 2010. We are hemorrhaging work to other countries, we are giving £20 billion a year to the EU for no discernible benefit. The bank of England has just printed another £75 billion to put into the economy, this seems to me that they just don't know what to do. And we continue to hand £300 million in aid to the likes of India, which spent £1.5 billion on its nuclear program last year and continues to see growth in its economy. This seems completely bonkers.

The government are trying to do something, but in reality do not know what to do. The reason I believe they do not know what to do is simply because they have never run their own businesses, and many ministers have done nothing else except be involved in politics. They do not really understand what it is like for many businesses at this moment. I know some people who run their businesses and they state that things are very difficult at the moment. But the government, with the help of the EU are doing nothing to stimulate business, they continue to pile one piece of regulation on top of another, thus stifling growth.

I have mentioned before about Bombardier - the train manufacturer, and how they lost out to German company to build trains and carriages for this country. This highlights the complete lack of understanding and arrogance of our politicians.

I honestly believe we are in for an almighty financial crash. Today's jobless figures show that things are continuing to get worse. Britain's jobless total now stands at 2.57 million, a rise of 117,000 between June and August. I do believe if something radical isn't done we are going to sink under our immense debt.

I know my postings are generally quite negative, but the reason for this is, I sit and watch day after day how our leaders make one bad decision after another. They do not seem to know what to do, they are so far removed from the reality of everyday life. They carry on in the vain hope that something is going to happen, but do nothing to help. The EU leaders keep pumping more and more money into the euro, but it is not working. The EU parliament have just voted for a 4.9 per cent increase for their budget, and no-one is shouting about this.

They hamper business with more regulation, hand billions to corrupt regimes, they cannot stop the tide of mass immigration (I don't think they would do anything about it if they could). They have watched as our manufacturing disappears and do nothing to stop it. Why is it that every other country which makes things is continuing to see growth and we are not? Is it not obvious to these complete IDIOTS that what they are doing is just not working.

Everyone I speak to says we should start making things again, and change our focus from the service sector back to manufacturing. It's working for China, India, Brazil, etc, I am sure it would work for us as well. But don't you worry I am sure this lot will carry on regardless and drag us down deeper and deeper into debt. Just remember this when your pension disappears and your savings are worthless; David Cameron George Osborne and the rest of this bunch of complete incompetent, supercilious, self righteous cocks will be alright.

If you don't think this is true just look at David Cameron's hero Tony Blair and how much he has made since leaving parliament. You can be assured David and his friends will be okay.

So many issues

2011-10-09T06:52:00.000-07:00

Those of you who view this blog regularly might be wondering why I haven't written much lately (then again you might not be), it is simply because I have been too busy. There are many things I could write about; the economic situation, the euro crises, the BBC and its decision to drop AD and BC. I will probably look at those issues later, but I wanted to look at something that really irks me and should be reformed.

ADHD and Disability Living Allowance (DLA), this is something which many hundred's of thousands of people claim every year. In some cases there might be a just reason for people to receive this allowance, but in many cases there is no justification for this payment.

Currently the government spends £192 billion every year on welfare; an astronomical sum that is beyond comprehension. £12 billion of this £192 billion is paid out in DLA. You could argue that those who claim DLA must need it, and wouldn't receive it if they did not deserve it. But this simply cannot be true, there cannot be that many people in this country who are in some way disabled and need this benefit.

One of the things you can claim for is a car through this scheme; currently 575,000 people receive a car and out of those, 3,200 families with someone with ADHD receive a car. The questions have to be asked; do they really need a car? And is there such a thing as ADHD? To both of these questions I am going to say NO!!!!!!!

Firstly I do not believe there is such a thing as ADHD; I do not care whether someone says their child is hyperactive and cannot sit still, cannot concentrate or gets in trouble at school. I will never believe in this excuse to drug children.

ADHD as an 'illness' was practically unheard of 20 years ago. Those claiming welfare for someone with ADHD has gone from 800 a decade ago to 99,000 today. In 1991 2,000 prescriptions for Ritalin - which suppresses the symptoms of this so called 'illness', today it is close to 350,000.

I cannot believe that, in this modern day we can dish out so many drugs that changes and stifles the brain. The majority of those who receive this drug are male and children.

We look back at the likes of Lord Shaftsbury who fought to stop child labour with awe and respect. We look back at the creation of the welfare state and applaud this wonderful institution. Successive governments have brought in legislation to protect children and vulnerable people. Many children are taken into care every year for their protection. Many public sector bodies run compulsory courses on child protection. Anyone who goes near children in the course of their work have to have a CRB check to make sure they have never been convicted of any crime to do with children. All schools, youth clubs, scout groups, etc have child protection policies, but every year we feed children drugs that we do not really know or understand what the long term impact will be upon them.

This seems almost tantamount to abuse. I was talking to a friend of mine who is a teacher who said she has a child with ADHD in her class. This boy, she said was very disruptive, but is now no longer disruptive because he is now receiving 'treatment', in the form of drugs. I asked her, did this not concern her? And she said no, she said she was now able to teach the rest of the class without any problems and he was a lot calmer. I was a little shocked by this answer, I said 'if anyone was drugged it would surely have an impact upon the individual, just because their symptoms seem to be better, it does not mean that it is solving the problem.'

There is no way of scientifically diagnosing ADHD, it is a tick box exercise. Has anyone looked into the long term impact of drugging hundreds of thousands of children? Does anyone truly understand the workings of the human brain? Why are the majority of those who are diagnosed with ADHD boys? Why have the numbers of children being diagnosed with ADHD increased so much in the last twenty years?

I believe there are many reasons why we have seen an increase in diagnoses of a made up illness. Part of it might be bad parenting, another might be children being kept inside in front of the television (especially from an early age). The likes of Cbeebies might be great for harassed parents, but some children are just dumped in front of the TV all day from an early age, surely this cannot be very beneficial and physically stimulating. Many children now have all sorts of gadgets which they can sit in front of and not move anything except their eyes and hands; Wii's, play stations, etc. Has anyone looked at the impact upon the development of children's brains of so much of this type of visual stimulation?

Many children do not get much physical stimulation because of parents paranoia around children being hurt, and being abducted. Also our education system has been feminised, so boys are made to sit down and read and write, but not given much chance to run around and use up all that excess energy. I have two boys and a girl, and I know there is a massive difference between boys and girls. For years we have been told that boys and girls are just the same and it is society which says dictates how they turn out. But this is utter rubbish, boys are different to girls, they need to run around and climb trees and do the things that boys need to do.

In many of our schools there are no male teachers, or even any male members of staff. In my children's infant and junior school there is not one male member of staff; the teachers, teaching assistants, admin staff, cleaners, catering staff, even the person who comes into teach after school football is a woman. I believe this brings many problems and a total imbalance, likewise if there was a school which had all male members of staff there would be problems as well.

Just one other point on this, many of the women teaching are overweight and the thought of running around would be alien to them. Because they do not do any exercise they are unlikely to understand what it is like to have excess energy to burn off. This then means boys are left to sit around, and that is why many end up getting into trouble and being disruptive.

I believe this issue will have repercussions for our future, and I also believe that drugging children with massive quantities of drugs that effect the brain is totally wrong. It is about time someone took this issue seriously and decided to tackle rather than ignoring it.

Mindless optimists or completely deranged?

2011-09-20T08:17:00.000-07:00

In the middle of the biggest recession our country has known in years the Westfield Stratford City has opened its doors - 300 Shops, 70 restaurants, three hotels, a bowling alley, the countries biggest casino and 14 screen cinema.

Now call me cynical, but doesn't this seem somewhat naive, if not down right stupid. One of the reasons we got into this mess was because of people going out and buying things and building up massive debt. This was one of the top stories on the BBC news, they chimed about how wonderful this was; how it was creating lots of jobs, how it was bringing massive benefits to one of the most deprived areas of England and how it was going to bring many flocking when the Olympics arrived.

I am not going to deny that this has brought jobs, it has rejuvenated a very run down area of Britain and, of course when the Olympics does arrive many will shop there. I believe there will be a lot of economic benefits in the short term. But having watched what has happened over the last few years I cannot see this benefiting many in the long term.

If you think about it, this building is not generating anything except revenue for a few shops and a few wealthy people. The question has to be asked has there ever been any long term benefits to opening a new shopping centre? Some would argue that people spending will mean that this will get the economy going, but it would be interesting to find out how many of those who are spending are actually spending their own money or just building up more credit.

Surely what is more important for any economy is to create jobs that are going to bring long term benefits, and are going to be long term jobs. If you go back; forty, fifty, a hundred years you would generally find that if someone went into a certain job their children would follow them; mining for example.

I cannot see this happening today. When Margaret Thatcher decided to focus on service industries rather than manufacturing she destroyed a way of life. She shut many of the coal mines and factories that were the focus for that town or village, and with this she destroyed whole communities. Now I do not believe that everything she did was bad, (she needed to do something to get our economy going), but I believe she did not think about the long term impact upon many of the communties that saw mines and steel works disappear.

What we have now is a large soulless retail outlet that only generates income for those that work there, the owners of this shopping mall and the owners of the shop. Most of the money that is generated in this place will not bring any benefits to those that live locally, it will only create more debt.

I remember talking to a friend of mine who grew up in a Nottinghamshire mining village and she said; 'the one thing she remembers from that time was the sense of community.' She said if her parents were busy one of the families in the village would take her in for tea.' Do you think the same could be said about the area around that shopping mall? Do you think this temple to mammon will generate a sense of community? And do you think this place will bring lasting benefits?

What will happen after the Olympic is gone? What is going to happen over the next few years as the government's austerity measures start to kick in? Where is the money going to come from to keep this place running? You could try and sell the benefits, but I see little, except more debt. Would it not have made more sense to invest some money in the local high street, and encourage local businesses to open up? This would have meant that the money spent in the local community would have stayed within the local community. Much of what is spent in this place will just go into the pockets of shareholders and big business.

I have listened to this government talking about creating jobs, but they have done very little to prove that they really care about helping business grow. Three quarters of all businesses in this country are small to medium size, but every week, month and year more and more regulations are piled upon business which stifles it; much of it comes form the EU. I can blame the EU for a lot of things, but unfortunately for us our civil servants and bureaucrats are only too willing to add to the regulations that come out of Brussels. If you go to other countries around Europe you will probably find, if the regulation does not bring any benefit they will ignore it.

If this or any government wants to stimulate business they have to realise that when we talk about business and jobs we are actually talking about people. It is people who benefit from jobs and thriving businesses, people and business pay tax which then pays for our welfare state and our local services. Business is the foundation which helps the state function -I know; family, the church, marriage, community, etc are the foundation of a well rounded society. But without a strong economy with strong businesses we would not be able to function as a country.

As the recession starts to bite, and more jobs are lost. I only hope that those who run our country start to realise that what they are doing isn't helping, and start to think about the people they are supposed to be serving.

I am still here

2011-09-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting anything for a little while because I have been writing a paper on immigration. I will publish it here soon. Just to let you know that it is my definitive view on what should be done about this very important issue.

Just a few other thoughts; it looks like we are coming to the end of the farce which is the euro. Greece is now in a position in which she will have to leave the euro and default. The simple problem is those in charge of this idiotic project are holding on for dear life. The European Central Bank (ECB) is the only one buying Greek bonds, and this is how the Greeks are managing to stay afloat.

The Greeks will run out of money in October, and the ECB will continue to hand over money for a little while, but this just cannot continue. The Germans have finally realised this cannot continue and are no longer going to continue to bail this lot out. All we need now is for the Euro bureaucrats to finally admit that this whole euro project just cannot continue.

Whether they like it or not they will have no choice and the markets will decide for them. Soon it is going to happen, what is going to happen to the world's economy is anyone's guess, but what ever happens we are in for a bumpy ride.

David Cameron continues to stick to his principles; which basically means that he hasn't got any. He jumped into bed with the Liberals and has continued to allow them to dictate the direction of his party. He has reneged on most of his parties manifesto promises so he can stay in power.

He introduced the 'localism bill'; this bill was meant to hand more power to local councils and people. We have very quickly seen that this man has no integrity or principles, he is planning on making it easier for developers to concrete over what is left of this beautiful country. After saying he was going to give more power to local people and councils he is now going back on this promise. That, I am afraid sums this man up.

He has stated the reason for this decision is to try and stimulate the economy, but we know that is utter rubbish. If he really wanted to support our economy he wouldn't have handed a contract to build trains for a British railway contract to a German company, as he did with Siemens of Germany. This sums this unprincipled man up.

Going back to David Cameron's fight to deregulate the planning process and making it easier for developers to build houses. I wonder how many of the Conservatives backers are developers and builders, it would be interesting to find out.

Anyway there's just a few thoughts to keep you going.

Clueless!!!

2011-09-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

I have written a number of times about immigration, and you might wonder what else can be said about this issue. Well, even though I have explored this issue in depth, and explained why I am against the mass uncontrolled immigration that we have in this country I feel that I must write something else about this subject.

The reason, is because today I was thinking about the recent unemployment figures and net immigration and something obvious which I hadn't thought about before hit me (I will come to that in a little while).

So let us look at some facts (forgive me if I am repeating what I have written before, but I wanted to give some general background to what I am saying before I explain what I was thinking about today).

The government released figures last week which showed that net immigration into this country had increased over the last year from 198,000 to 239,000. Over the past year 400,000 jobs have been created; out of these 400,000 jobs three quarters went to foreigners. Now that seems bad enough, but when you then break these figures down even further you will find that the majority of those British people getting jobs in the last year are over 65 and can claim their pension.

The figure we should be looking at is the figure for those between 17 and 64; when you then look at that group and how many managed to get a job in the last year and how many foreigners took jobs you will find that 90 per cent of jobs went to immigrants. This means that nothing has really changed under the Con/Dems. Even though jobs are being created British people are not getting the jobs.

This is when it hit me, this simple thought. Because we have uncontrolled immigration (it doesn't matter what the government says they cannot control the influx of foreigners), it doesn't matter how many jobs are created, the simple fact is unemployment is not going to go down. This is because the tide of immigration is going to continue and employers have made it quite clear they would rather employ a foreign worker, so British workers (regardless of whether they are hard working and reliable) are always going to stand less of a chance than a foreigner. This then means that unemployment is never going to go down but continue upwards.

So it doesn't matter what our government does, they cannot control immigration, so unfortunately nothing is going to change. That sounds rather depressing, but that is the reality! It does not matter what the government does, it does not matter how many jobs they create or are created (I can't imagine the government are actually creating many jobs, as they seemed determined to destroy what manufacturing we have, and are continuing to stifle business with regulation), the simple fact is the majority will go to foreigners.

If you think that is an exaggeration, it isn't the facts speak for themselves, and to be honest I cannot see this changing. This seems so obvious, I can't for the life of me understand why this lot in charge can't see it. Then again I think they can, but I just think they either don't care or are more concerned with maintaining their so called status quo in which they can keep power and never upset their coalition partners. I have previously written about the liberals, and the more I read about them the more I realise that they truly are living in a world of their own.

So what can be done about this situation? Well, again I have written about that before and until something radical is done; and the tide of immigration is halted and reversed, the benefit system is totally overhauled, and those who do not want to work are given no option except starve or work, nothing will change.

So there you have it, I don't suppose anything will change, and I have now said it twice before and I am going to say it again. Until there is a total sea change in politics and people start to realise that the three main parties are not really going to change anything, nothing is going to change. So, if you want change please don't look to these clueless bunch of numb skulls and hope that something is going to happen, it isn't and that is why I believe we need to look at a totally different party.

Lemmings/Eurofanatics

2011-08-30T02:39:00.000-07:00

One of the things I have come to realise over the years is that so many of our leaders do not have a clue about the reality for so many people. Whether it be business, banking or democracy. They are either; too stupid, too ignorant, too arrogant, naive or they just don't care, I think it is a mix of all these.

Now I know my posting are usually negative and if you read them you might think the world is a dreadful place, but I generally don't think this. I suppose I feel very frustrated by the decisions made by a very small group of people and how so many of these idiotic, ill thought out; laws, regulations and diktats massively affect us and our lives.

I also believe that the reasons for many of the changes in our laws and the rules that are forced on us are done for more sinister reasons. I have mentioned before The Lisbon Treaty; this treaty is massive and incredibly destructive, it removes the ability of nations to make their own decisions and basically destroys democracy. This treaty was drafted by Eurocrats, and its author, former President of France Giscard d'Estaing openly admits that it was written so it would be incomprehensible.

What concerns me most about all of this is that the majority of the population are ignorant of what is going on, and this has been a deliberate ploy by the politicians and the broadcasting media. I wrote about the BBC before and one of the things you will notice if you have ever watched it is, they very rarely, if ever criticise the EU.

Over the years the EU has grabbed more and more power. If the people of a certain country were given the opportunity to have a vote on a treaty and they rejected it they were made to vote again. The eurofanatics have driven on relentlessly in their euro dream of complete political union, and they are determined that nothing or no-one will get in their way.

This determination to take all power and to take total control is now starting to bring disaster to many countries. The euro was never going to work, as any semi competent economist will tell you there has never been a successful currency unless it is underpinned by fiscal and political union. The European Central Bank is currently buying 'bad debt'; they are buying Greek, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Irish bonds because no-one else will buy them. They have done this to try and save their economies but it isn't going to work, the ECB has only a limited amount of money and cannot continue to spend billions every week on this bad debt. On top of this Europe's banks are under immense pressure and the ECB is expected to help them as well. This just cannot continue; regardless of whether you are the most ardent eurofanatic, the ECB and the countries of Europe just do not have the money.

Unfortunately for us this lot in charge do not care, they only care about one thing, and that is continued integration and the continued dream of complete political union. Well, whether they like it or not the simple fact is the euro dream isn't going to happen, it eventually is going to collapse, and I believe it is going to happen very soon.

Yesterday it emerged that Angela Merkal's coalition was in crises as she no longer had enough votes to secure backing to her and Sarkozy's Eurozone 'rescue' plan. Merkel's Bavarian sister party the CSU have rebutted the Franco-German plans and said that EMU countries in crisis should be allowed to default.

So the country that holds the power and money has basically had enough, this means the euro as it stands cannot continue. I have to be honest I have mixed emotions about this. On the one hand I am happy about the euro collapsing as this may start to bring an end to the insanity of the euro fantics dream, but on the other hand it will bring misery to many millions and millions of people.

I hope that what is happening in Europe will eventually give David Cameron a reality check, but I think it unlikely. He is in partnership with the complete eurofanatics, and if you read my previous post you will see what I think of them.

Let me highlight the idiocy of the eurofanatics, and the EU. The EU has brought out a regulation that will force about 1800 petrol stations to change their petrol pumps. The reason for this regulation is to stop these pumps releasing tiny amounts of chemicals into the atmosphere. Instead of ignoring this EU diktat (which any other country in the EU would do) our supine leaders will just enforce this regulation regardless.

This to me shows that those in charge really do not have a clue. As our economy continues to see no growth our politicians and civil servants continue to hamper business with more and more regulations which heap more and more cost onto many businesses, thus hampering growth.

The recent example of the government handing a multi-billion pound contract to build railway carriages for the Thameslink project to a German company highlights the complete idiocy of those in charge. I don't think anything will make these people change, I suppose the only thing that could make them change is if something happened to affect them personally. But until they are going to lose their jobs or houses nothing will make them change, and this is because they are totally insulated from the reality of everyday life. My only hope is that we start to see the people of this country wake up and elect a party that really cares about the people it is supposed to represent.

Incompetent idiots

2011-08-26T02:47:00.000-07:00

I have written a number of times about this issue, I have stated facts and figures, I have stated why I am against it and still it continues. And that is mass uncontrolled immigration!

If you are a regular reader of this blog you might ask yourself, what else can be said? I have written many times about this issue and why I am totally against mass immigration. If you want to know what I think and what I believe should be done about it please look back at my previous postings.

The government announced yesterday that net immigration has increased into this country in the last year, up from 198,000 to 239,000. This is after they stated they were going to reduce it to the 'tens of thousands from the hundreds of thousands.' We can now see that there is nothing they can do about this issue, without taking some radical steps. This isn't going to happen, even if David Cameron had the balls to do something about it, he can't because he is in a coalition with immigration loving liberals.

I have always wondered what world the liberals live in. And I have come to the conclusion that it is a complete fantasy land were everything is; rosy, nice, pink, lovely, squidgy, beautiful, soft, gentle; basically a land were normality does not exist.

If the liberals were in power and had their way they would allow complete uncontrolled immigration (we do have a little bit of control at the moment, not much mind you). They have stated that they would allow anyone who wants to come into this country to do so. How they would stop the more crowded parts of this country becoming even more crowded is to encourage them to go and live in the least crowded parts, like the north of Scotland.

If you think I am making this up, I am not! They stated this quite openly in the run up to last years general election. So let us look at the massive flaws in this ridiculously ill thought out and bone headed policy. Firstly, we cannot force anyone to move anywhere they don't want to, so you can encourage them as much as you want but if they don't want to move you can't make them. Secondly, people go where the work is, there are reasons why the north of Scotland is sparsely populated, it is because there is no work and nothing to do. Thirdly, there are currently 2.5 million people unemployed, why do we need more people coming into this country to do work that isn't there?

On this point of work, government figures have shown that 98 per cent of jobs created under Labour went to foreigners, this government have continued this tradition and two thirds of jobs created in the past year have gone to foreigners. The government have stated that they have created 400,00 new jobs in the past year; that may be true but as you can see the majority have gone to foreigners. That is why unemployment is not going down!

The reason I titled this post incompetent idiots, is because I simply believe that the people running this country are that. We have men and women sitting doing jobs that they have no qualification to do, or if they have the relevant qualification they have no experience in doing the job, but somehow end up in charge and running a government department and making decisions that effect millions of people.

Just because someone has a qualification in something doesn't necessarily mean they will be any good at it. I am a fireman and I have worked with someone who had the right qualifications, they completed the right courses and then they were put in charge of a fire station and firemen. And you know what, they were completely useless, they were so bad, firemen refused to work under him; he eventually had to be moved into an office job.

There are other examples I could use, and this is my point. Many are given the opportunity to prove themselves as able politicians but are simply not suited to do it. Gordon Brown went to university and achieved a good level of education, but made an almighty mess of this countries finances. And the same could be said of many, many politicians, they try new initiatives, they make grandiose promises, but when it comes to the crunch many, many times they make a complete mess and fail. So maybe this shows that many in charge should not be, and are just not competent to be in charge.

If you wanted a new central heating system put in your house, who would you call? A plumber of course, you call the right man for the job. But many of our politicians end up doing work they are just not suited to be doing.

And this brings me back to the issue of immigration. David Cameron and his colleagues are insisting they are doing something about this issue, but the facts speak for themselves and show they are not, they are in fact getting worse. David Cameron cannot control immigration and is lying to us over this issue, he is insisting that things are going to change, but they won't. So, as far as I can see he is not able to do the job he was elected to do, he has promised many things, and has failed to follow through on those promises (by the way he has just broken another promise to shut down all social media sites during riots; he can't do this because of the human rights act). So he has shown, like his predecessor that he is unable to do the job, so surely he should be sacked.

If you employed a builder to build you a house and he kept promising that he would build it by a certain date, but never followed through with what he said, would you employ him? And this is the problem, many politicians promise much but deliver little, most of the time I think it is down to sheer incompetence. Is it not about time we started to look at a different party, maybe if people took a bit more interest in politics they would look at a totally different political party. As far as I can see the three main parties have had their way for so long and have only made a complete mess, surely it is about time we had change, I am sure someone else couldn't do any worse.

David Cameron and broken promises

2011-08-25T08:41:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to add to my list of David Cameron's broken promises, and particularly what he said when he promised the British people a referendum on the Lisbon treaty/EU Constitution. So here it is, this is what he said on 26 September 2007 in The Sun newspaper. He picked The Sun deliberately because he knew it had the most readers of any paper and would have the most influence over the outcome of an election.

'I’ve got a couple of simple questions for Gordon Brown.What makes you think you can break your promises to the British people? And what makes you think you can change the way our country is governed without asking the British people first? There’s a simple answer to both questions: Arrogance. And when it comes to Europe, arrogance is what we’ve seen from Labour time and time again. It’s the arrogance that says: “We, the powerful elites, know best.”It’s the arrogance that puts more and more decisions in the hands of bureaucrats that no one’s ever heard of and no one can ever get rid of if they do a bad job. And it’s the arrogance that Gordon Brown displays when he says we don’t need a referendum on the European constitution.

Labour’s last Election manifesto could not have been clearer on the EU constitution. It said: “We will put it to the British people in a referendum, and campaign wholeheartedly for a Yes vote.”And just two months ago, Gordon Brown said: “The manifesto is what we put to the public. We’ve got to honour that manifesto.“That is an issue of trust with me and the electorate.”Now he’s done a massive EU-turn.

I think this kind of shameless arrogance is the big cancer eating away at trust in politics. Who can be surprised that people have less faith in politicians if they break their promises so casually? Why should anyone bother to vote if the real decisions that affect our lives are made somewhere else? This is the 21st Century. People are demanding? and getting? more and more control over their lives. Many decisions that once used to be made by the “powers that be” are now in your hands? And that’s a great thing.

These days, no one should have to take what they’re given any more. That’s why I believe so strongly that we should have a referendum on the European constitution. Because it would transfer power from our elected Parliament to the EU’s unelected bureaucrats, I would campaign for a resounding NO vote. And because it includes the power to transfer even more power from Westminster to Brussels, without even the need for a new treaty, this could be our last chance to stop the EU juggernaut. Gordon Brown should be in no doubt: If he’s got the courage to hold an early election, as he should, our referendum pledge will be right there in our manifesto, giving the British people a clear choice.

But we shouldn’t have to wait for a General Election to get the referendum we need. Today we are launching a new campaign, “Don’t Let Brown Let EU Down” to keep the pressure up. Labour MPs in Parliament today were elected on a manifesto promise that their Government would hold a referendum on the European constitution. So let’s hold them to it. By going to our website, conservatives.com Sun readers can see if their local MP is Labour, then send them a letter asking them to tell Gordon Brown to keep Labour’s manifesto promise.

When Parliament returns in the autumn, we will hold a vote demanding the Government gives Britain a referendum on the European constitution. Sun readers will then be able to judge whether Labour MPs and Gordon Brown can be trusted. When he took over as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown told us he would be “humble” and that he would listen to the people. Well, if he breaks his referendum promise now, everyone will know that was just the same old spin from a Labour Party that hasn’t changed.'

Well there you have it, I think we can pretty much say that David Cameron is just the same as Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, if you needed proof there it is, in black and white.

The BBC and left wing, politically correct bias.

2011-08-25T03:24:00.000-07:00

One thing I and many people have noticed is how left wing and politically correct the BBC is. This was highlighted by a recent event that many in this country were rejoicing about; England thrashed the Indians at cricket to become the number one side in the world. You might think this rather unimportant, but many people love this sport (myself included) and think this is something that should be celebrated.

Not the BBC of course, in its sports coverage the BBC didn't show any of this series and only gave about a minute to it on its news bulletins. Newsnight (the BBC's flagship news programme) gave a lot more time to this event, and what was Newsnight's response to this great success? Did they highlight the fact that only ten years ago England were the laughing stock of world cricket, languishing at the bottom of the world rankings? Did they look at how England have restructured its whole set up to bring us to this pinnacle of excellence? Did it celebrate a magnificent four nil thrashing of the number one cricket team in the world? Of course not!

Newsnight gave a substantial amount of airtime over to asking why there were no Asians in the team. There then followed film footage from Birmingham and the studio with comments bordering on racism. We heard Asians blaming class discrimination, lack of facilities, bigotry by cricket clubs and the fact that the England cricket team was packed with ex-public school boys (many like Tim Bresnan and Matt Prior did not attend public school).

Maybe the simple fact is that many are not good enough, or many do not feel English and wouldn't want to play for England anyway. What I do find strange is that one of England's captains (Nasser Hussien) was born in India, maybe they should have highlighted that FACT! Rather than focusing on something which is someones politically correct, left wing, liberal opinion.

Unfortunately this does not surprise me; I have watched many programmes and news bulletins and witnessed a bias in favour of left wing dogma, even when talking about so called factual subjects. I have watched a news report by the BBC, and later watched the same story on ITN or Sky and seen that it has been reported differently with no left wing bias.

I used to watch Question Time on a regular basis, but got so fed up with the left wing bias I very seldom watch it. I am amazed that the BBC, which is supposed to be an unbiased, neutral organisation gets away with this, but I am not surprised. One of the problems we have with the BBC, politicians, all public sector bodies is that they are 'institutionally left wing'.

A number of years ago Lord Macpherson looked into the case of the mishandling of the Stephen Lawrence murder case. A black boy was murdered in London by 5 white men, and for whatever reason, probably incompetence more than anything they walked free from court. The government commissioned an inquiry into this appalling miscarriage of justice and Lord Macpherson who chaired it came up with the conclusion that the Metropolitan Police was 'institutionally racist'.

Likewise if a commission looked into the behaviour of the BBC, they would come to the conclusion that this publicly funded body is so biased towards a left wing point of view that the majority of their output could be called left wing propaganda. I believe this to be a problem for this simple reason that the BBC holds massive sway over public opinion and has a responsibility in its news broadcasting to inform the general public of facts not opinion. The left wing politically correct agenda of the BBC is most obvious when reporting on; Israel, immigration, climate change, education, the EU, the recent riots; basically anything!

Now I do not have a problem with the BBC airing programmes in which they let people air their opinions, this is what the BBC is for. But what I do have a problem is when anyone who appears on a current affairs programme; Question time or Newsnight for instance and states a point of view that does not go along with the politically correct, left wing consensus is harangued and verbally abused. I have watched many times as someone states a perfectly reasonable point of view which is right of centre, and the reaction from those watching is complete shock.

The problem with the BBC promoting this left wing, politically correct agenda is that so many people who hold a point of view that is different to this believe that their viewpoints are in the minority and somehow extreme. I have sat and spoken to people about the issue of immigration and their concerns and they have started to automatically speak in a whisper, as if what they are saying is wrong, dangerous and subversive and if they were overheard they could end up in prison, or at the very least sacked from their job for holding such a point of view.

The BBC has a responsibility to bring balance but unfortunately they do not, and this is the problem. Many who work for this organisation only work and talk to those who hold their point of view and anyone who holds a different view point are seen as wrong, so they will always be seen as extreme, so will very rarely be given the opportunity to bring balance. This is why the BBC should be reformed, but unfortunately this left wing balance runs through government so it is unlikely to change.

Unemployment and excuses

2011-08-18T03:05:00.000-07:00

The government has released the latest unemployment figures and these have shown that there has been a rise of 38,000, and it doesn't look like there is going to be a fall in the near future. There are a number of reasons for this increase, and I think the main one is the simple fact that we are in a recession.

The government, Labour and many other people are stating the reason for this are many reasons, but one thing isn't being debated is the effect immigration is having upon our economy and unemployment figures.

I truly believe we are sitting on the edge of a precipice of immense proportions, and if something isn't done about it and done soon these riots that have occurred are going to look like a picnic in comparison to what could happen. What do I mean? Well let's look at some facts, under Labour we had massive economic growth and many jobs were created, mostly in the public sector, but 98 per cent of all jobs created went to immigrants. There were three main reasons for this, those coming from abroad would work for less so employers would employ them on this simple basis. Two, the government increased benefits so much many were better off if they didn't work. And three, many of those on benefits became lazy and didn't have any work ethic.

The number of immigrant workers has reached a record high of 4.1million according to figures from the Office of National Statistics. In the last year 100,000 British people have lost their jobs, but nearly 300,000 foreigners have found work. This is a horrendous statistic and is just not being addressed.

It is feared that unemployment is going to rise by a further 150,000 over the next year. A report by the British Chamber of Commerce released yesterday stated that many school leavers and graduates are unemployable and warned 'In general, younger people lack numerical skills, research skill, ability to focus and read, plus written English.'

Nearly half of 2000 small firms being polled by the BCC said they would be 'fairly or very nervous' about hiring someone who had just finished their A-levels. I think this is appalling, this year for the 29th year in a row has seen an improvement in A-level results, this should raise alarm bells. Only a few years ago if someone went to college, worked hard and managed to get themselves 3 A-levels they were deemed intelligent and very employable, that doesn't seem to be the case today.

There are two issues here; one is the fact that we are continuing to see a rise in unemployment among British people and an increase in employment amongst foreigners. And secondly many people in this country are unemployable.

The simple fact is there is nothing we can do about about employers employing foreigners, as long as we are part of the EU; I have spoken about this before, and until we leave nothing will change. The issue of unemployable British people can be addressed; currently we have a situation in which many have no need to work, this needs to change. Employers argue, and rightly so that they should be able to employ whoever they want, and if the British worker is not capable or willing to do the work they should be able to employ a foreigner. And I agree, if I was running a business I would employ the best person for the job. But this does not solve the fundamental problem of unemployment and unemployable British people.

So what is the solution? As I have stated above there are many who do not need to work so don't, there needs to be a fundamental change in how these people look at life. Many think the world owes them a living, and do not feel they need to take any responsibility for their own life or their families. They pay no rent, pay no bills, pay nothing for their food, they get it all for free off the tax payer. And this is the problem, they take no responsibility and don't need too, well I have a simple solution, if someone does not take a job that is offered to them and has no genuine reason for not doing that job take all their benefits away from them, and their council house, they either starve or work. You might think that sounds harsh but I believe this is the only way someone will work.

The issue of school/college leavers not having the basic skills in reading, writing and maths is a travesty and an outrage, and successive governments, particularly the previous one has to be held to account for this. The government and education system has failed hundreds of thousands of young people, and this needs to be addressed, but until there is a fundamental rethink and change in how we educate our young people nothing will change. The reason I think things are unlikely to change is, I was listening to a debate about the recent riots and a governor of a local school who was a local councillor stated basically that everything was great in her school and nothing needed to change.

The fact that there are many people who are incapable of working doesn't mean that is the same for everyone that is unemployed. And here comes the crux of the issue with immigrant workers; there are many young people, middle aged and older people who are capable and able to work but the simple fact is there is either no jobs or employers who are only willing to take on British workers. The fact of nearly 300,000 foreigners gaining work and 100,000 British losing their jobs speaks for itself.

The public sector is going to continue to cut workers, this means even more looking for work. Whether the government or employers like it or not this issue of immigration needs to be addressed or we are going to end up in a hole we cannot climb out off. We will continue to see a growth in an underclass who will never work and sees work as totally abnormal. We will see a growth in social problems as those who would love to work not being able to simply because there are no jobs or employers who are not willing to because they are British, and see no future. We will see more disenfranchised people who have no hope, so do not care about their community and then descend into crime and then riot. This all sounds rather depressing but the roots of the issue are not being addressed and until they are I cannot see things changing.

Hopeless, incompetant and useless.

2011-08-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple of years I have watched in amazement as our politicians and leaders have lurched from one crises to another. As you may have realised the world is staring at a very dangerous economic situation and unfortunately for all of us those in charge don't really know what to do.

What I have realised over the years is that so many of those who reach the pinnacle of power do so because of how they look, whose palm they have greased and what they say and how they say it. They do not get there through ability and competence, if they did I think we would have a totally different looking government.

How I have come to this conclusion is very simple, I just look at the decisions many of our politicians make and weigh it up against good old fashioned common sense and I have found that they are somewhat wanting. I have mentioned Gordon Brown in the past and looked at many of his decisions he made whilst Chancellor and Prime Minister and a lot of what he did was down right stupid. Here are some examples of his stupidity (and I don't choose these with the benefit of hindsight, I thought they were stupid at the time).

1. Selling 395 tonnes of gold at its lowest price for twenty years; that same amount of gold sold at today's prices would be have raised approximately an extra £13 billion.

2. Taking away the dividend tax relief on private pensions, thus destroying one of the best private pension systems in the world.

3. At a time of massive economic growth instead of paying off the national debt and putting some aside for a rainy day he spent and spent and spent.

4. Handing billions of pounds in benefits to the poor, thus creating an underclass that didn't need to work so they didn't.

There's four quick examples, I am sure if I spent more time I could come up with a lot more. But let's not be too harsh on poor old Gordon he did at least do one good thing and that was to keep us out of the euro, I have to thank him for that. Unfortunately for Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland their politicians didn't do the same. The simple fact is these countries are in a mess of immense proportions and their politicians and those running the EU will not admit that the only option for these countries is to leave the euro zone and devalue their currency. But those in charge of the nut house (or EU) are more concerned with carrying on with their dream of total political union and they are damned if they will let these countries leave the euro.

The reason I believe our politicians don't know what to do is because I believe many don't have a clue, this is because most have only ever lived in the political world and have never done any other type of work. Many leave school, go to college then to university and then they work for some political organisation and then become an MP or MEP. They have never spent anytime working with normal people so they have no understanding of what the reality is like for you and me.

You only have to look at the 3 main leaders of the 3 main parties, then look at those who sit at the top of these parties and it doesn't take long to realise that most have come from very privileged backgrounds. Now don't get me wrong I have nothing against people from privileged backgrounds doing well but I believe that we have an imbalance. I also believe that many who run the EU are doing so for themselves rather than for the people of Europe, this is borne out by the euro crises. If any of these europhiles had any intelligence or compassion they would allow the southern European countries to leave the euro, but they won't. They would rather the people of Europe suffer massive unemployment and economic stagnation than admit that maybe they have got it wrong.

They will blame everyone else but themselves, they will make excuses, they will bluster and even say that those who state the blindingly obvious, that the euro in its present form is dead in the water are 'anti-European'. And this is the problem, these are the people making the decisions and I have said it before and I will say it again 'THEY DO NOT CARE'.

So how do we get out of this mess? I could sit here and state my opinion, but it is such a mess it is very difficult to know what to do. I don't think closer political integration, as some are calling for is the answer, this would give to much power to Germany to dictate the direction of those within the euro zone. This would mean a death of democracy, and if you take the ability of the people to set their own destiny we will see the rise of extreme nationalism and that can only lead to war.

I believe there has to be a fundamental change within the leadership of these countries, too many of those in charge are not willing to listen to the people and unfortunately because of this we will continue to drift towards economic oblivion. I have stated before what I think should be done and if you want to see what I think click on this link http://evanheasley-powertothepeople.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-to-fix-our-economy.html

I don't want to sound arrogant and I don't think I have all the answers, but I believe that our politicians, economists, bankers and so called financial experts have made an immense cock up of things surely I couldn't do any worse.

Press freedom

2011-07-22T02:53:00.000-07:00

Recently I have watched, read and listened to a lot of talk about Rupert Murdoch and how awful he is. He has been made out to be a master villain, according to some people as bad as Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi. I will agree that Rupert Murdoch has probably over the time in charge of his empire done some unscrupulous things, he has probably been involved in some underhand dealings and is no way perfect. But I believe the behaviour of some of the press, media and our politicians over the 'hacking scandal' that has engulfed us has gone way over the top.

There is no doubt that Rupert Murdoch's news organisations have behaved totally wrong, the hacking of a dead girls phone is appalling. But the amount of press coverage given over to this story has been absolutely ridiculous, there has been a 'witch hunt' and it seems that many within politics have seen this as their opportunity to get their own back on the press over the expenses scandal.

Ex EU Commissioner Neil Kinnock has stated that he would like to see laws put in place to stifle press freedom. This is from the man who was European Commission vice-president responsible for anti-fraud, who not only did everything he could to stop a report being published about the staggering lack of control on EU funds. He was also responsible for sacking Marta Andreasen, the head accountant for the EU because she wanted to reform it and bring to light the appalling fraud within the EU. So when this man is calling for greater controls on the press we really should be concerned.

The BBC on Tuesday night gave their whole Newsnight programme over to maligning Rupert Murdoch, not one person was put up to defend him. I watched the one o'clock news on Wednesday and out of a 25 minute news bulletin 11 minutes was given over to the hacking story. That same bulletin gave one and a half minutes over to the crises in the euro. This sums up the BBC and many of those who work within broadcasting. There seems to me to be a drive from those who work within this organisation to criticise anyone who does not follow their left wing beliefs.

As I have said above I do not in anyway believe that Rupert Murdoch is a saint, and maybe he has been responsible for some of the ills within our society. But the amount of vilification this man has received from so many politicians is beyond the pale. Many of those Labour and Tory politicians who are very quick to criticise him and his papers were not only a very short while ago happy to cosy up to him and his friends. This shows how totally hypocritical our politicians are!

What I hope that does not come out of all of this controversy is controls on the press, I believe it is very important that we have a free press. If we do not I believe our country will be worse off for it. Think about it, if we didn't have a free press would the scandal around MPs expenses been published? Would many of the stories about politicians behaving badly come to light? Whether you like it or not a free press is very important, because if we do not have freedom of the press the government could almost behave anyway it wants.

Benjamin Franklin said 'he would rather have newspapers without government rather than government without newspapers', and I couldn't agree with him more. As I watch as our ability to control ourselves and make new laws is gradually moving to Brussels I believe it is even more important that we continue to allow our press the freedoms it has always had. If we don't this will mean an ever growing control by our leaders and potentially this could lead to very dangerous times.

Many governments over the years have behaved appallingly, and many of them are democratic, without the press and the fear of being held to account I believe that many would behave even worse.

This is my last post for a couple of weeks, as I am off on holiday.

How to fix our economy

2011-07-16T05:52:00.000-07:00

As I have said in my previous post there are many different countries and economies within the EU, so what I believe is right for the UK isn't necessarily right for other countries, but I believe some principles are the same.

Britain needs to change if it is to get out of this economic malaise, unfortunately we are stuck within the EU straitjacket and it is very difficult for us to do this. Recently UKIP MEP Gerard Batten published a study on the costs of the EU to the UK, his conclusions were as follows:

Indirect costs to the UK economy in 2010

The Common Agricultural Policy £16.7 billion
The Common Fisheries Policy £4.7 billion
EU Over-regulation of business £48.7 billion
Add to this our Net contribution and the total comes to £77 billion.

Regulations like the Working Time Directive, Maternity and Paternity pay increases, the EU carbon emissions regulations and Environmental directives are costing us billions and will continue to cost us billions. Regulation in Farming, and the myriad 'health and safety' regulations that businesses have to implement every year cost jobs and money. Adhering to ridiculous EU regulations on bids for Government contracts costs billions of pounds and jobs. You only have to look at the recent Thameslink rail project; the government bureaucrats followed EU regulations precisely and gave the contract to Siemens of Germany, thus, the last manufacturer of trains in the UK will close costing thousands of jobs and costing the economy billions. What I find even more staggering is that Siemens has just won a multi-billion pound contract to build trains for the German railway, so even if they had missed out on the Thameslink deal no German jobs would have been lost. Yet thousands of British jobs will go, what sense is there in this.

It doesn't take long to see that those running the EU do not understand how business works. So how can Britain create growth? Well firstly we need to cut regulations, that is quite obvious, I have looked at this above and it doesn't take too long to see how this restricts business. Small and medium size businesses make up about 75 per cent of companies in this country, it is very difficult, if not impossible for small companies to grow simply because of the high cost of implementing these ridiculous regulations. Remember we are not just competing with those within the EU but the likes of Brazil, China, India, etc and if we don't free up business they will either die or go elsewhere.

We need to cut income tax and National insurance contribution. I have always been amazed that companies have to pay national insurance when they employ someone, surely we should be encouraging business to take people on rather than penalising them when they employ someone. I was speaking to a friend who runs his own firm, he is a one man band and would love to expand but because of what he would have to pay the government just to employ someone he won't do it, on top of this the cost of insurance and EU regulations it just is not worth it. On top of this we should cut business rates for businesses employing less than five people.

In 1978 the higher rate of income tax in this country was running at 83 per cent, the government raised 47 per cent of its income form income tax. In 1984 Margaret Thatcher reduced the higher rate of income tax to 40 per cent and the government raised 54 per cent of its income from income tax. It has been shown by many examples that if you tax people more they are less likely to pay what the government want, especially the rich. If people have more money in their pockets they are more likely to spend more, thus helping the economy grow.

We should cut the public sector, specifically those doing non jobs, we should also cut public sector pay, especially the people at the top. The government needs to encourage the private sector, this is the area which makes the country money, the public sector creates no wealth, except that which people spend in the shops. Private sector does not cost the tax payer anything and brings money into the economy in three ways; those who work for the company spend their money in shops and other business, the company and employees pay tax and it creates wealth by increasing peoples prosperity, and if it is an export company it sells things abroad thus creating more wealth, so we have a win win situation.

The government needs to invest in education and apprentices, when I say education I mean proper qualifications from proper universities. We need engineers, and those with expertise in new technologies not useless degrees in media studies which brings no benefit to anyone including the person with the degree. Companies need to take on apprentices and the only way they will do this is if it is worth their while doing it, this means the government need to give tax breaks and reduce regulation.

The government has to do something about our benefits culture and this means cutting benefits to the long term unemployed. Gordon Brown tried to cut poverty, and the way he went about this was by handing out billions in benefits, this then created an underclass who found they were better off if they did not work, so didn't. Handing money to the poor has been shown to not work and just keeps people in poverty, this cycle needs to be broken. If it isn't we will never see any change. I believe the only way some people will work is if they do not eat, I also believe we have to make it worth their while to work, and that is by reducing income tax. If for instance you earn less than £15,000 a year you pay no tax, this I believe will work because you will take hundreds of thousands off benefits and they will then start spending the money they earn.

Lastly, cut immigration, I have covered this before, so I am not going to go into too much detail, suffice to say there are currently 2.5 million people in this country on unemployment benefits. Why do we need to import many thousands of foreign workers when we do not have enough work for ourselves?

I have not been able to go into much detail, but hopefully you get the general idea about what I am saying. I do find it very frustrating when I listen to so many of our politicians talking about jobs and our economy, but not actually doing anything to create jobs and bring growth. I think the reason for this is because so many of our political class do not have a clue, and do not understand. If you have anytime and can be bothered just spend some time researching the background of our leading politicians and you will quickly find that the majority of them have done nothing else except work within politics or a political organisation. Most will never have run a company so will not know what the reality is like for most ordinary people. All I can say is 'God help us all!'

EU and credibility

2011-07-16T05:14:00.000-07:00

There now seems to be a broad consensus that the Euro in its present form cannot continue, everywhere except Brussels that is. It is no longer a question of whether Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy default on their bonds but a matter of when. Unfortunately those in Brussels do not want to except this simple truth.

Greece, Portugal, etc are saying 'give us more money' and this will get us out of trouble, but to anyone who really cares about the people of Europe this is complete and utter folly. The only people who will pay for this folly are the poor and unemployed, not the leaders, they simply do not care. If these people who run Europe and represent the people of this continent really did care they would do something about it, but many like Jose Manuel Barroso are ex-Marxists and history has shown Marxists and Communists do not actually care about people. They only care about ideology and the ultimate goal of a European Super state, which won't work, is anti-democratic, and if these nutters have their way will ultimately destroy most of the countries in Europe. And as I have said above the only people who will suffer are the poor and unemployed.

So what should be done? This is a big question, when we look at each country within the EU the answer will be different, because every country is different. That is what these Eurofanatics don't realise or care about, you only have to look at Greece and Germany to see the reality of this, and that is why the Euro project can't and won't work. Some would say, look at the USA as an example of many different states and peoples joining together under one flag, but of course the USA is totally different.

If you look at Europe you have many peoples and nations which are hundreds of years old, with many different traditions and cultures. When countries have been forced to serve one flag and government they have eventually turned their backs on it and reverted back to their original state. Just look at Yugoslavia, the USSR, even within the UK many within Scotland want their own independence (ironically the Scottish National Party want an ever closer relationship with the EU, it just goes to show how stupid and naive many of our politicians are).

Recently The True Finns party under its leader Timo Soini rose form 4.1 per cent to 19.1 per cent in the recent Finnish general election, only 1.3 per cent behind the leading party. In a recent poll they now stand at 21.2 per cent, the most popular party in Finland. There are now many nationalist parties rising throughout Europe; in France, Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, etc. This obviously shows that those within the EU do not understand what is happening, or for that matter care.

Economic reality

2011-07-13T05:13:00.000-07:00

Today the government announced that unemployment fell by 26,000 to 2.45 million, good news you might think, but the amount of people claiming job seekers allowance rose by 24,500. How can this be? Surely if unemployment has fallen the amount of people needing unemployment benefits should fall as well? This seems logical.

The government have stated that the reason for this is because there are now more women looking for work. Now there might be some truth in this, but maybe the real reason is the rise in immigration. I know I have written about this issue before, but when I think about how my country has changed over the last ten years it makes me very angry. I have stated previously that the issue is not about race but about numbers and space, you can also tag onto this; jobs, housing, schools, hospitals, benefits, social impact and I am sure a few other issues as well.

I just find it shocking that no-one in government is prepared to do anything about this issue. Immigration has had a major impact upon so many people, mostly the poorest in society. Vince Cable and the Liberals love immigration, they say we need to have an open door immigration policy because that is what business wants. This might be true, as many businesses benefit from cheap labour and many of those coming to this country have a good work ethic, what business wouldn't want that?

But that does not solve the underlying problem of nearly 2.5 million unemployed, I have asked it before and I will ask it again. WHY, IF WE HAVE NEARLY 2.5 MILLION PEOPLE UNEMPLOYED IN THIS COUNTRY DO WE KEEP ALLOWING THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE IN EVERY WEEK? That doesn't seem to me to be an unreasonable question, many have argued that people in this country do not want to work, what, all 2.5 million of them don't? This argument does not add up, yes I will agree that there are a certain number of people in this country who do not want to work. They wouldn't work even if you gave them a good job, went and got them out of bed, made them breakfast, drove them to work and took them home again. But that is only a small percentage, there are many who would love to work but can't because there are not the jobs.

There are many who would love to work but are trapped on benefits, basically if they got a job their benefits would be cut and they would be worse off. This issue needs to be looked at, and many other issues regarding Britain's workshy, but this does not solve the issue of mass immigration and how it is affecting this country.

The simple truth is, there are too many workers and not enough jobs. The government have imported hundreds of thousands of foreign workers and parked hundreds of thousands of home grown workers on benefits, and have allowed our debt fuelled economic growth to keep the show on the road. This of course could not continue and eventually collapsed in August 2007, the government are hoping that somehow we are going to muddle our way through and somehow get out of this mess, but we are still in it up to our necks, and just about surviving.

Something needs to be done, there are many things they could do to help (which I will look at in a later posting), but one of the fundamental things that needs to happen is to get people back to work. This cannot happen whilst cheap foreign labour is flooding the market, and unfortunately those running the show are not going to do anything about it so we will continue to sink ever deeper into economic oblivion.

Anti-European?

2011-07-07T05:55:00.000-07:00

At the moment we are in a mess, that is, a financial mess, and to be honest I cannot see that changing in the near future. The reason for this is, we have politicians in charge who do not really understand, care or are concerned about the underlying reasons for this mess.

Yesterday the Euro and the stock markets tumbled as Europe's debt crises deepened. More than £13 billion was wiped off the value of London's biggest shares, this is because of fears that Portugal like Greece is going to need a second bailout.

It is feared by analysts that it might not stop there and might spread back to Ireland and to Spain and Italy. Currently Greece's borrowing costs are running at 15.9 per cent, Portugal's have reached 12.6 per cent, Ireland's 12.4 per cent and Italy's bond yields hit a three year high above 5 per cent. This is basically what it costs for these countries to borrow any money, the only people who will buy Greek bonds are the European Central Bank, and the Chinese have said they will help. You can only imagine what this means for Greece and the rest of Europe.

If you compare the borrowing costs for the UK 3.2 per cent, the US 3.1 per cent and Germany 2.9 per cent it really puts things into perspective. To put it simply the Euro in its present form is unsaveable.

Portugal is likely to need a second bailout to its original bailout of £70 billion, and Greece is likely to need even more than the initial £98.5 billion agreed last year. Now what is the response from Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission? He has suggested that the credit-ratings agency is, wait for it, 'anti-European', that is the official response from the head of this hideous organisation. German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble said he wanted to 'break the oligopoly of the ratings agencies, to limit their influence'. Greek foreign minister Stavros Lambrinidis said the decision to downgrade Portugal was 'madness'

This is the official response form these politicians, they are so wrapped in the Euro federalism that they cannot see that this dream of a United Europe with one currency is just not working. An analyst working for CMC Markets, said 'Portugal, Greece and Ireland are in a debt spiral and there are fears that Italy could get sucked into that.'

This sort of talk is politically unacceptable to the politicians and fanatics who run the European Union, they are trying and failing to sort out this mess by giving our money to economies which are in such bad debt they are unlikely ever to be able to repay it. They are so wrapped up in this Euro project that they are trying everything they can to keep this political entity going, but it isn't working.

What I find so scary is that these people are running Europe and have the lives of millions of people in their hands. They seem to be hoping that if they keep handing over billions and billions of pounds of our money that somehow this will sort out the problem. I do not understand these people, it seems to me that if you want to get out of debt you do not keep borrowing more money to put yourself into even more debt, that seems to be common sense. But unfortunately these idiots who are in charge do not care, just so long as they can keep this Euro dream going (or should I call it a Euro nightmare).

If the riots on the streets of Athens and the debt that these countries are in isn't a wake up call to these Euro idiots I don't know what is. I genuinely think these people do not care, because if they did they would do something about this dreadful mess. And the only way to sort out this mess is to allow; Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy to leave the Euro, but they are unlikely to let this happen. But I think they may have no option, Portugal will probably need another bailout and Spain is likely to follow, and if this happens there is no way the European Central Bank will be able to cope, and that is when I think we will see the collapse of the Euro.

Now you might think I would be rejoicing in this but I am not. I do not want this European project to succeed, but this desire to Unite Europe under one federalist flag seems to override any sort of compassion. These people do not care, and they have shown by the fact that they have driven on relentlessly with their dream that they have a total disregard for the people they are supposed to represent. And ultimately it is the people of Europe who will suffer, you only have to look at Greece and what is happening there to see what the future will be for many people in Europe. The arrogance of these people is unbelievable, I will repeat it again, THEY DO NOT CARE!!!!! When it eventually crashes the likes of Jose Manuel Barroso will walk off into the sunset with a nice pension and will live out his last days very comfortably, and this is why I believe they do not care, it won't affect them.

If talking up for the people of Europe and stating the blindingly obvious, that this Euro project is doomed is anti-European, so be it. I would rather be anti-European than be associated with these sociopathic thieves, liars and crooks.

Eurosceptics?

2011-07-06T03:43:00.000-07:00

The word Eurosceptic has been used many times to describe anyone who criticises the EU, it is a word with negative connotations. I suppose if I was an MP I would be labeled with this word. When william Hague was Conservative leader he was a fully paid up member of the eurosceptics, he likened membership of the Euro to 'being stuck in a burning building without exits', and was condemned as a 'little englander' and 'crazed extremist.'

But I do wonder who is the crazed extremist, when you only have to look at what is happening in Greece, with rioters on the street and Greece being forced by the EU and IMF to push through austerity measures. This country in reality no longer governs itself, when a country cannot control it's own finances and is told what to do by an outside agency I see this as the death-knell for democracy and self government. This is exactly what has happened in Greece.

When looking at the European project it is important to take a step back and look at things objectively, and when you do it does not take long to realise that the crazed extremists are not the Eurosceptics but the Eurofanatics. Think about it, why would anyone try to squeeze disparate economies into a 'one size' fits all currency?

This drive towards Euro federalism is so extreme, and the people involved in it are so fanatical it does not matter that the EU is gradually disappearing into economic oblivion, that China, India, Brazil, etc are continuing to see massive growth in their economies. It does not matter one iota what happens to the people of Europe as long as this lot can push ahead with their dream, 'sod everyone'.

It goes to show you how out of touch these Eurofanatics are, this week they are demanding a seven per cent increase in the EU budget, when practically every economy in Europe is having to make cuts, when Greece, Portugal, Ireland are nearly bankrupt. Spain is close to having to go to the European Central Bank for a bail out and youth unemployment running at 42 per cent, it shows that this lot who run the EU are either too incompetent or too unconcerned, I fear it is both!

I could go into great detail about the rights and wrongs of the EU, but I have written a number of times about it, so I think you could glean enough information from those previous posts. I have been asked a number of times, if the European Union is so bad why do our politicians love it so much? Why do they continually agree to giving these unelected bureaucrats more and more money? Why do they continually sign away more and more of our democracy? Why do they agree to enforce absolutely ridiculously, ill thought out laws and regulations that do more harm than good (just look at my previous posting as a good illustration of this)?

I think the answer is this, many politicians go into politics for the simple reason they love politics and power. Many politicians do not really care about the people they are supposed to represent, they only care about having a good career and gaining power, and as the saying goes 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'

David Cameron and George Osborne love the power and they love being members of a club called the European Union. Some have said that David Cameron is a Eurosceptic but it does not take long to find proof that this is not true. They signed up to the European investigation order, approved an extension of the European Arrest Warrant, handed over much regulation of the City of London, and a number of other things and they have only been in power for just over a year.

David Cameron has made the same argument that successive Prime Ministers have made for our continued membership of the EU, that we can only influence the EU if we stay at the 'top table'. This has of course been shown over the years to be absolute rubbish, I do not believe that David Cameron is that naive, I believe he is as much a believer in the European project as the rest of those nutters who run it.

Many who got involved in this project when it first started decades ago may have done it out of a desire to bring peace and unity to Europe, after millions of people had died in two world wars, who could blame them? But this European Union, and the people who are running it have shown by their complete contempt for democracy and the people of Europe that all they are bothered about is power and maintaining it, whatever the cost. We are now in the grip of a huge beast that is dangerously out of control and the only way we can gain control is by leaving, I believe this is our only option.

By the way congratulations to Denmark, the Danish Government has asserted its right to control its own borders and have torn up the Shengan agreement, which gave free movement to anyone within the EU. They can now stop anyone who shouldn't be coming into their country coming in. I think this shows that this European project is violently out of step with the people of Europe and the Nation state is still very much alive and kicking.

What is wrong with these people!!!!

2011-07-04T01:38:00.000-07:00

Great Britain is a country which I love, I am proud of our heritage and what this country has stood for over the years. One of the things which I am proud of about this country is its history of manufacturing and the products which we have led the world in. Over recent years we have watched as many of those industries and large companies have either been sold off or have stopped trading; there are many reasons for this which I am not going to go into.

One of those industries that Britain led the way in and invented was the railways, but many of those companies that built trains have gone the way of most British industry and now we have only one company in the UK that builds trains, but that is soon to stop. Bombardier UK has a long history, it has changed its name over the years and ownership, and in 2001 was bought by the Canadian plane and train maker Bombardier.

One thing that stands out about Bombardier is its excellent work, it is a world class company that builds world class products. Recently it bid for a £1.2 billion contract to build carriages for the Thameslink project but unfortunately lost out to Siemens of Germany. Now you might say so what, that's business, and in a capitalist society that is what you might expect, but it is not quite as simple as that.

The decision to award the contract to Seimens will mean the death of railway building in Britain and the loss of over 3000 jobs. This decision was made by bureaucrats, and Rail Minister Theresa Villiers has stated that it is 'the best value for money for taxpayers', although she adds that Bombardier made 'an attractive proposal'.

Her officials admit when looking at the tenders that they were only looking at rolling stock. They did not include the knock on effects in their calculations. They did not consider the cost to the taxpayer of 3000 lost jobs and the knock on effect to other jobs and also the destruction of an entire industry and the disappearance of engineering expertise.

Now Theresa Villiers said that the Government had no choice but to opt for the German bid, she said 'We are bound by legally-binding European Union rules, which mean we have to look objectively at the bids that come in. We are not permitted to take into account the location of the factory in determining which bid is nominated. That is a consequence of our EU membership.'

If you have read my blog before you will know how I feel about the EU, and you might expect me to go on a long rant about this hideous organisation, but not this time. Do you honestly think any other country in the EU which has a thriving, modern, competitive, world class company like Bombardier would hand the contract to a foreign company, thus destroying not only jobs but that thriving industry? The simple answer is of course no! The French rolling stock is 100 per cent French, the Germans is 98 per cent German. The French will structure its bidding process in favour of French companies rather than adhering to some idiotic EU diktat, and rightly so.

This makes no sense whatsoever, why would anyone want to lose jobs to another country? These people are like robots, they do not care about people, they just see figures on a paper and don't worry about the consequences. What makes it even more galling is that only two months ago David Cameron brought his entire cabinet to Derby and said that he wanted to see more emphasis on manufacturing, and then we get this!

The Labour party are trying to make political capital out of this, but they are just as bad. In the dying days of Gordon Browns government they handed the £7.5 billion contract to build a new generation of high speed trains for the Intercity Express Programme to Hitachi of Japan. Again Bombardier put in a good bid, could you see the Japanese buying trains from anywhere but Japan? Of course not, they refuse to buy non Japanese trains, and again rightly so, they are protecting their own jobs.

This sums up our political class, a bunch of ignorant, selfish, self delusioned hypocrites who are willing to destroy peoples lives as long as it does not effect them. The political class in this country do not have a clue about life for ordinary people, and it is quite obvious from these and many other decisions that they do not care.

They talk the talk, David Cameron is a very good speaker, but after so many broken promises I cannot believe a word that comes out of his mouth. Tony Blair introduced spin into government, Gordon Brown followed on but David Cameron has scaled new heights, and this is the latest example of his lying, devious nature. That might sound harsh, but nothing he has done over the last year has proven otherwise. He has lied and lied and lied, he has broken many promises and continues to make excuses for these lies and broken promises, look here to read just a few http://evanheasley-powertothepeople.blogspot.com/2010/12/broken-promises.html

Let me say this last thing, you could argue that it is good that Britain is a fair country and plays by the rules, and I believe that is a good principle to live by. But when we elect a government it has three main purposes: One, to run and manage the country. Two, defend its people, whether that is against direct attack or in another country and three, to represent its citizen's best interests and safeguard jobs. Unfortunately this government has shown its true nature and colours and its unwillingness to care about the people who put it in office.

Utter madness

2011-06-29T04:27:00.000-07:00

As you may have realised if you have read this blog before I am not a fan of this government or the previous one. There are a number of reasons for this; I think if you have lived in this country over the past ten years you would have watched as a government nearly bankrupted this country. They did this and blamed everyone but themselves, they governed at a time when this country had unprecedented growth, Gordon Brown did not pay off any of our national debt and left this country, to put it bluntly in a mess.

This new government have come along and have tried to sort out this mess, or on the face of it they have. But if you look a little closer you will quickly see that they are not doing a very good job.

So let's look at some facts, last year the British government gave away over £38 billion to the EU and IMF; £13 billion to the EU bailout, £8.3 billion - our net contribution to the EU, £7 billion loan to the Irish and £10 billion to the IMF, plus billions of pounds in foreign aid. Whatever way you look at it, this is a lot of money, this is bad enough, but what our leaders have decided to do is increase our contribution to the IMF this year by £9 billion, meaning that we will hand over £19 billion. Add to this our contribution to the EU and the ring fencing of foreign aid, is it any wonder that I think this lot have gone stark raving bonkers.

You would think that our economy is growing at a rapid rate, but it isn't, last year it grew at about 1.3 per cent, compared with Brazil's economy growing by about 7.3 per cent, and China and India continuing to see massive growth.

Now all this is bad enough, but the government have decided to carry on with Labour's complete folly and spend billions on green energy (if you want to see what I think of that, please look here
http://evanheasley-powertothepeople.blogspot.com/2011/03/lunatics-have-taken-over-asylum.html ). The government have decided to push ahead regardless of the economic consequences with a policy that makes no sense at all.

China, the biggest global emitter of CO2 has made it abundantly clear it is not going to accept any restraint to its use of carbon based energy, neither has India or the US. A spokesman for both the Engineering Employers Federation and Energy Intensive users Group have warned of investment and jobs going overseas where energy costs are lower. And so have many other large manufacturing companies.

This government has said it was the previous government that initiated the massively damaging policy of severe and legally binding carbon reduction. This may be true, but the simple question has to be asked is, why is the UK the only country to do this?

I have written before about the government's headlong rush into wind energy, but it is very clear that this type of energy is not going to produce enough power for our economy. The wind does not blow all the time so it is intermittent, so when the wind does not blow we will have to get our energy from somewhere else at extortionate rates.

The government have argued that millions of so called green jobs will be created, but this again is total hogwash. The 19th century economist Frederic Bastiet pointed out, 'if jobs are your yardstick, you may as well go round breaking windows so as to create jobs for glaziers.'

The government are creating jobs, but these require a greater amount of subsidy at the expense of genuinely productive jobs that require no subsidy at all. On top of all of this we have still many millions of people employed within the public sector, creating no wealth. There are still about 2.5 million people unemployed in this country, and that is likely to rise as councils and other government departments have to make cuts. Then add to that the continued influx of immigrants looking for work and it does not take long to realise that we are governed by a bunch of nutters that are completely and utterly mad.

Sexualisation and our children

2011-06-11T06:05:00.000-07:00

Recently on the BBC TV programme Question Time a question was asked about the sexualisation of our children; there has been a bit of an outcry recently about some of the music videos being shown on television and the selling of padded bras to pre-pubescent girls. Germaine Greer, the feminist answered with some pseudo-Freudian psycho babble about girls flirting with their fathers when they kiss them goodnight. And a number of the other panelists answered with the usual politically correct answers. Peter Hitchens, the Mail on Sunday columnist made some interesting points and was laughed at and lambasted by the audience. But what he said was interesting, and if any of the audience had listened to him they would have realised that he was speaking a lot sense.

Prior to the 1960's Great Britain was a very conservative country, having a child outside of marriage was seen as wrong, being a single mother was frowned upon. Marriage was seen as sacred, and divorce was an unusual event, abortion was illegal and so was homosexuality. During the 1960's a revolution occurred, and in 1967 abortion was legalised and homosexuality was legalised as well. In 1961 the contraceptive pill was introduced and during this decade a change happened within society, a new liberal attitude towards sex and relationships grew and people started to look at the world differently.

Now, I do not think these changes were necessarily bad, but what I have seen happen over my lifetime is peoples attitudes change towards sex and sexuality even more. You only have to look at the graphic nature of many modern music videos. Many films that would have been rated as adult only 20 or 30 years ago are now down graded, and those that were rated for adults only almost look innocent to our modern more progressive eyes.

What concerns me is, as we become more open to new ways of thinking those institutions that held our society together start to look old fashioned and those with an agenda are happy to undermine them, particularly the institution of marriage. Marriage, for all its faults has been the bedrock of society for hundreds of years, but many do not believe in its importance anymore, thus we continue to see the growth of a more fractured and unstable society.

As I have said above, during the 1960's many things were legalised and legitimised, with this legitimisation we have seen the growth of a more broken society. As happens within government, those in charge think they know best, so they then legislate against things. So the government may bring in ratings for music videos, outlaw padded bras for children, but in essence does not get to the root of the problem.

Abortion was legalised in 1967 and in 2009 there were 189,100 abortions performed in England and Wales, I personally think this is an appalling statistic. Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe, yet contraception is freely available. If we are to believe those who are in charge the best way to stop all this is to educate, but since the 1960's the teaching of sex education has increased in schools, but we continue to see the rise in teenage pregnancies and abortions. The growth of one parent families has increased unabated, and the amount of children growing up without a father has continued to grow. The statistics do not show things getting any better, but still those in charge think they know best. I am sure the government will bring in some legislation to try to halt the dire state of our nations morals, but they will not get to the root of the problem.

You would think that with all this sex education, the free availability of contraception and the morning after pill things would be getting better, but as the facts show they are not. Until people realise that marriage and the two parent heterosexual relationship is the best way to bring up children nothing will change, but unfortunately for our politically correct leaders they are unlikely to admit this, and we will continue to see a downward spiral. On top of all these problems the open accessibility to pornography via the Internet and on children's phones adds to these problems. I know this all sounds rather negative but if we continue to ignore these issues and do not tackle the fundamental root of the problem things are never going to change.

Political expedience, exaggeration, truth and lies

2011-06-10T08:35:00.000-07:00

Recently David Cameron decided that he would commit this country to ring fencing foreign aid at 0.7 per cent of GDP. This sounds like a very altruistic thing to do, but I have a few concerns about doing this. Over the years Britain, as well as many other nations have given many billions of pounds in aid in the belief that what they are giving is going to change many lives. African countries have received much of what the rich nations have dished out, but as we know most of these nations have remained in poverty. So what is the point of giving aid if it does no good? Well many would argue that some of this money has made a difference, and it may well have done. But in many cases the money that has been handed over to many countries has been used by those in charge (despots) to do more harm and to kill many innocent individuals. Ironically many governments have handed over our money in the belief that it does good but in so many cases causes huge misery.

Dambisa Moyo, a former Goldman Sachs economist said; 'aid programmes have left African countries more debt-laden, more inflation prone, more vulnerable to the vagaries of the currency markets and more likely to experience conflict and unrest. Aid, she declared is an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster.'

I believe there is a place for helping the poor, I am a christian and I believe if you can you should assist were possible, but I also believe that so much of what we do, and our rich governments do are done with very little thought to the consequences of their actions. As I have said above, a great percentage of the money that has been handed over to many poor nations has been used by their leaders to buy weapons, which are then used in turn to kill their own people. A lot of money that was handed to Rwanda in the 90's was used to kill many of the people in that country.

David Cameron is a politician, and I believe he has calculated that if he says he is going to ring fence 'over seas aid' it will make him and his party look warm and cuddly. I do not believe it has anything to do with caring for others but is a cynical kind of political posturing. I suppose you could argue that it does not really matter what reason the government decides to give just as long as they give, but I do not believe we should be handing over billions in aid without first looking at what that money should be spent on.

There are so many issues which the government chooses to ignore the people on, and overseas aid is one which many in this country feel uncomfortable about, I do think in this time of austerity this issue should be looked at carefully.

For many of our political elite the issues that concern many people are ignored, immigration is a good example. As you can imagine this issue does not affect those in power, because they have jobs, houses and can afford to send their children to good schools. The EU, human rights, crime, poor education, 2.5 million unemployed, over stretched public services, etc. These and many other issues concern many people, but I believe because these issues do not affect those in power and the 'chattering classes' they do not really care. And because they do not care they will not do anything about these real issues. David Cameron and those around him somehow think that if they are seen to be giving poor people in foreign countries money it will somehow salve their conscience. They believe this is what the population wants, but because of their arrogance and ignorance they will continue to ignore and sneer at those who question the wisdom of this policy.

Many people feel disenfranchised from politics and this will just drive a greater wedge between those who are in power and those who elect them. I can only hope that one day we will have politicians who are willing to listen, but unfortunately for us this is very unlikely whilst we have this lot in power.

Imbeciles, idiots and Greens

2011-05-30T04:11:00.000-07:00

The German Government announced today that it is to shut all its nuclear power stations by 2022, this is in the wake of the Fukushima crises in Japan. Environmentalists will argue this is a good thing, they will say this is a step towards a green future, I think it's a step towards a medieval future, a future in which we will continue to see the decline of European industry.

What I have realised over the years, and have always argued here is that it is important that we base our opinions upon facts rather than subjective emotional arguments. If you listen to the environmentalist, you would think that if we don't change our whole way of life our world is destined for imminent destruction. Well the facts do not add up, since 1988 we have been told by many scientists and so called experts that the Earth is heating up and if we do not do something quickly we are going to be consumed by an overwhelmingly hot planet. Well let's wake up and look at the reality, IT HASN'T HAPPENED! Twenty three years after these cataclysmic prophecies not much has changed, except the world has got cooler. 500 years ago these people would have been burned at the stake for being false prophets or witches, but because these people are supposedly experts, and because we are supposed to be more enlightened we continue to put our faith in these idiots.

I know my language might seem a little strong, but I am continually amazed at how gullible and naive people are. So lets look at some facts, if you were to believe the Greens, nuclear energy is the most dangerous thing that has ever been produced. I will agree that nuclear energy has the potential to be dangerous in the wrong hands, but history shows that nuclear energy is incredibly reliable, efficient and safe.

There have been three major incidents involving nuclear energy: Three Mile Island in the USA on March 28 1979, no one died or were injured in the community around the power plant or amongst the plant workers.

Chernobyl on April 26 1986: 5 per cent of the radioactive core was released into the atmosphere. The report into this accident stated, the reason for this accident was because of: 'a flawed reactor design and inadequately trained personnel', two Chernobyl plant workers died and a further 28 people died. There is no evidence of a major public health impact. The report also stated that 'the design of the reactor is unique and the accident is thus of little relevance to the rest of the Nuclear industry'.

Fukushima on March 12 2011, a nuclear power plant which is 40 years old and sits on a fault line was hit by a tsunami and released radiation into the atmosphere, no one has been killed. George Monbiot who writes for the Guardian, and is a true believer in 'man-made climate change' said this in March: 'You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.'A c****y old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.'

So, based upon this evidence Germany is going to shut down its nuclear industry, who will follow suit? I am sure now the Greens have had this success they will then head to the next country in Europe (probably Britain). What concerns me most in all of this is that emotional blackmail has now taken over from sound science. Those with an agenda, however well intentioned have closed their minds to the reality, they cannot see anything else except green issues. I have many times sat down and had discussions with people about a range of issues, and what I have found is that even when I produce facts to support my argument, they are not willing to listen and will carry on believing the propaganda.

If you listen to the green argument, nuclear energy is inherently evil and incredibly dangerous, but with a little bit of research it is quite obvious that this not true, just look at the three incidences above. The first Nuclear power station was built in 1956 in the UK and in 55 years there has been 3 major accidents and 30 fatalities. Now I am not taking anything away from those 30 deaths, any death from an accident is a tragedy, but if you look at coal mining I am sure you will find over the same period that there have been many hundreds if not thousands of deaths. Even in the 'green energy' industry I am sure you will find that there have been deaths. If you spend anytime researching wind turbines you will find that the metal that is mined for the magnates on these wind turbines has a lot of very hazardous properties and is very damaging to the environment and has caused a lot of health problems for those who mine it. On top of this France produces 78 per cent of its energy using nuclear power and they seem to be doing okay.

If we let the Greens have their way they would take us back to medieval times, they would shut all nuclear, coal and gas power stations. They would spend billions on wind turbines (the government are doing that anyway), they would tell us that we should walk everywhere, or use public transport and tax us to the point that we could not drive anywhere. They would stop all air transport and stop people taking holidays abroad, they would force us to use renewable energy for our industry. But the simple truth is this is not practical, the sums do not add up; wind power only contributed 1.6 per cent to our energy needs last year and that was with 3250 wind turbines, and that was intermittent.

I believe strongly in environmental issues, I believe we need to protect out planet, we need to save the rain forests and we need to re-use and re-cycle as much as possible, but I also believe we need to be practical. Over the next few years China, India and other developing countries will continue to see their economies grow, and economic power will move from its traditional ground (Europe and the US) to the far east. At the moment Europe makes up about 15-18 per cent of the worlds GDP, that is expected to decline to 8 per cent by 2020. The simple truth is Europe is on the decline and our ability to influence the world is diminishing, our wealth is disappearing and we cannot carry on the way we are going. With an ever increasing population it is very difficult to see how we can sustain our standard of living, especially if we decide to rely on green energy.

In an ideal world we could all live in harmony with each other, there would be no violence, no wars, no crime, no sickness, wealth shared equally and we would have no impact upon the planet. But that is not the reality, I truly believe that many people live in a little bubble and only come out to lecture us on how evil our way of life is, but never consider the impact their idiotic policies would have on the country they live in. In years to come I believe future generations will look back at the complete folly of the green agenda with as much incredulity as we look back at those who burned witches at the stake. I believe if someone does not stop these green zealots we will all be heading down a road to complete economic oblivion and by that point we will be too poor to do anything about it.

Gimmicks and PR

2011-05-28T03:06:00.000-07:00

One of the things I have noticed with politics nowadays is that so many of our politicans are more concerned with style over substance. Under New Labour and Tony Blair this took on a new level of professionalism, Tony Blair even employed a spin doctor and in some ways he was just as powerful as the Prime Minister himself. When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister he followed Tony Blairs example and David Cameron has carried on were New Labour left off. The unfortunate thing in all of this is that so many people have got so used to this sort of politics they think nothing of it.

David Cameron has continued to offer; vapid, vacuous, shallow displays on incinserity since becoming Prime Minister; his most recent example was his sycophantic behaviour towards Barack Obama.

What concerns me most is that when you look at our country you will very quickly realise that there are a lot of very important issues that need to be dealt, but our Prime Minister does not seem to be dealing with it.

The first issue that David Cameron needs to deal with is the war in Libya, our involvement in this war is complete folly. You would have thought that he would have learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, but no, we were told it was going to cost tens of millions but it is expected to cost us over a £1 billion. On top of this, what are we going to do if and when Gaddafi is removed? What will happen to that country? Will it decend into tribal war? And if it does, surely, because we have been instumental in removing him we will have a duty to get involved in restoring some sort of order, and that of course will mean putting troops on the ground. This could then lead us into another Iraq. It does not bear thinking about!

The next issue is our level of debt; last month the government borrowed £10 billion and our economy is not growing. The Government is struggling to find a way out of this problem, with an ever increasing amount of regulation coming out of the EU (working time regulations, extra maternity and paternity leave and pay, to name just two), this is hampering business, so it cannot grow. The Government does not seem to realise the problem and seems to be hoping that something is going to change, but unless they doing something radical and quickly are problems will increase. I cannot see things changing, as long as we have a coaltition nothing much will change.

The simple fact is many of our politicians do not live in the real world, many have never known hardship, have never run their own business, and have come from privileged backgrounds (I am not against anyone from privileged backgrounds doing well, but I do believe many do not have a clue about the reality for normal people). The simple fact is our economy is struggling and something needs to be done.

On top of all this we have a continued problem with immigration. In the year up to last September, the figure for net migration (the difference between immigration and emigration) was 242,000. Because we are part of the EU we cannot do anything about this problem. If the Prime Minister was serious about this issue he would do something about it instead of issuing platitudes, but he is unlikely to do anything because he is in partnership with the Liberals and I think he is more concerned about remaining as Prime Minister and does not want to upset them.

The issue of mass immigration brings many problems, with so many people arriving in this country every week this brings many problems with our creaking infrastucture. With not enough; houses, school places, hospitals struggling to cope, with more vehicles on the road and a transport system fit to burst. If someting isn't done, and done soon I do not believe this can carry on and something has to give.

With these and other problems, we need a Prime Minister that is going to do something dramatic and radical, but I cannot see this happening. I trully believe that there needs to be a total change within the established parties. I know I am a member of UKIP and you could say that I am only saying this because of that, but something needs to change and we need some new blood at the top who aren't afraid of making decisions which will turn this country around. Unfortunately I cannot see this happening in the near future, so I can only see things getting worse.

The cracks start to appear!!

2011-04-18T04:45:00.001-07:00

At last the people are starting to wake up to the reality of the EU, hurray!! Today the Finns have taken a step in the right direction and put two fingers up to the dictators of the EU. The True Finns party under Timo Soini won 19 per cent of the vote in their elections. You might hear headlines stating that they came third, and that would be right, The National Coalition Conservatives won 20.4 per cent and the Social Democrats won 19.1 per cent. So the True Finns were only 1.4 per cent behind the leading party, it is hardly anything.

This has given me real hope that one day very soon the rest of the people of Europe will start to wake up to the reality of this hideous organisation. I have written before about the lack of accountability, democracy and massive corruption within the EU, but hopefully more people are starting to see the light.

Over recent times we have started to see the rise of nationalist parties throughout Europe and I for one think this is a good thing. Many would argue that Nationalism is what led to so many wars in the past and this can only be a bad thing. But I would disagree, firstly the EU have only themselves to blame, they have continually ignored the people of Europe and driven ahead with their agenda regardless of the consequences, just look what has happened with the Euro. The Euro was a political dream based upon very unstable foundations. The Euro had nothing to do with economics but all about control and now we can see that it is going to come crashing down around the heads of the states of Europe. Greece, Ireland and now Portugal, who is going to be next?

The one thing that bothers me is, because of this Euro fanaticism we are going to see many countries economies collapse, because politicians have bought into the Euro dream they have sold their people down the economic sewer. If you do not think that is true, just look at what is happening in Greece and Portugal, and the problems are spreading. Because these countries economies are tied to the Euro they cannot do what an independent country can do and that is devalue its currency and reduce interest rates. Because they are tied to the German economy they have to do what they are told regardless of the consequences. And the only people who suffer are the population of that country, NOT THE POLITICIANS!!!!! This is the main problem with this EU dream it does not care about the will of the people, it is only bothered about complete submission to the Euro elite. Nigel Farage has stated this continually, it is a politicians dream, they love it, it is one great big gravy train in which every MEP costs us, the taxpayer £2 million a year.

I think the people who should be most bothered about this EU dream and the Euro are the Germans, because they are the biggest and strongest economy in Europe they are the ones who are having to bail out these other economies. There is one argument that says that the Euro has been hugely beneficial for the German economy because prior to setting the Euro up the Mark was so strong it made German exports quite expensive. Since being part of the Euro Germany's economy has continued to grow even in the depth of the financial collapse because this has made German exports a lot cheaper. Anyway back to the great news in Finland. I feel this gives everyone who love democracy hope and as this hope spreads I believe we can finally bring this organisation to its knees, and we can try and build a new society in which the politicians have no choice but to listen to the people, I suppose that is what democracy is. As someone once said 'it isn't rocket science'.

CO2, climate change and massive waste!!

2011-04-11T09:49:00.000-07:00

I am going to have to put another disclaimer at the beginning of this post and explain that I have still not worked out how to change the format, and cannot seperate my posts into paragraphs. I thought I would copy this from Christopher Monckton because he puts it a lot better than I could. So I take no credit whatsoever for any of the words written here, I just thought this was quite interesting and scary!! So here it is: ' Chris Huhne babbles insanely that carbon trading is the "most cost-effective" method of making "global warming" go away. However, as recently as last summer his department admitted that it had done no calculations whatsoever to demonstrate how much "global warming" would be forestalled by the £36,000 per household - the price of a used Porsche - that the Climate Change Act has committed us to spend on Planet-Saving measures between now and 2050. The Department had not got around to doing the calculations because its chief number-cruncher did not know how to do them. So, working with scientists on several continents, I have had the sums done. Here are the results. Carbon trading in the EU, which directly increases the cost of electricity, gasoline, and all manufactures, transport industries and services dependent upon them, is running at $92 billion a year, according to the World Bank. Make that $920 billion by 2020, by which time the EU aims to forestall 20% of its emissions. EU emissions are about a sixth of global emissions. So that $920 billion will buy us a 3.3% reduction in global emissions. According to the IPCC, the business-as-usual CO2 concentration in the absence of any "global warming" policies would be 412 ppmv by 2020, falling to - wait for it, wait for it, - 411.267 ppmv in that year as a result of the EU’s carbon trading scheme. This tiny reduction in CO2 concentration means a tiny reduction in global temperature. Warming forestalled by 2020 would be a dizzying one two-hundred-and-fiftieth of a Celsius degree, at a cost of $920 billion. So the cost-effectiveness of the EU's carbon-trading scheme in making "global warming" not happen - even if we generously assume that the only thing the EU is doing to address supposed "catastrophic climate change" is carbon trading - would be $228 trillion per Celsius degree of "global warming" forestalled. What does this mean? If the cost-effectiveness of all CO2-reduction policies worldwide were equivalent to that of the EU’s carbon trading scheme, forestalling the IPCC’s predicted 3.4 Celsius of "global warming" in the 21st-century (none of which has happened in the first decade of the century), would cost 13% of global GDP throughout the century. More than one-eighth of everything the world produces would have to be spent on stopping "global warming". These eye-watering figures make it quite plain why the King Canute Department has not gotten around to publishing any cost-effectiveness calculations. It knows perfectly well that all measures to forestall "global warming" by regulating or taxing carbon dioxide are cost-ineffective, and that carbon trading is less cost-effective than most. True, the Thanet Wind Array, with its $2 billion subsidy, is even less cost-effective than the EU's carbon trading scam (er, "scheme"). If all measures to make "global warming" go away were as cost-ineffective as the Thanet wind-farm, almost 30% of everything we make and do would have to be spent on stopping this century's predicted "global warming". Mr. Huhne, it seems, has an unerring instinct for picking losers. It is time to close down the King Canute Department, lock, stock and barrel, and to blow up the wind farms that are the monuments to his folly (those of them that have not already been sabotaged by bird-lovers, that is). Enjoy the sunshine while it lasts - the next Ice Age is already more than 5000 years overdue. If it comes, Huhne will really have something to blub about.'

Absurdity

2011-04-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

Again I would like to apologise about the layout of this posting, if anyone has any idea on what is going wrong with my computer or this progamme I would be very grateful to know. One of the things I have realised over the years is that the larger the organisation becomes the greater waste becomes. I have spent a little time recently looking and thinking about the mess this country is in. I have tried to look at how, with some very simple steps we could reduce waste and over spending, and turn our countries finances around without reducing front line services. So what I wanted to do is to list a number of things which could be changed that would benefit all of us. Currently we spend £152billion on benefits; the last government dished money out to everyone, and created dozens of new benefits. By cutting the number of benefits people can claim, and creating a one 'universal benefit' we could reduce the bureaucracy and administration, thus reducing costs. On top of this (the government are starting to do this) reform the disability benefits system, I am sure many of those who are claiming disability benefits are perfectly able to work. Our net contribution to the EU will rise to over £9.6billion by 2013, by leaving this organisation we could not only save that money but an estimated £77 billion a year because of over regulation, I touched on this in my previous post. Let me add one thing to my issues with the EU and that is the Common Fisheries policy, here is a quote from the Taxpayers alliance: '.... the ecological impact of the CFP is severe. In particular, just counting three species, in just the North Sea, according to Government estimates, in just one year the CFP forced the dumping of 23,600 tonnes of cod, 31,048 tonnes of haddock and 6,000 tonnes of whiting. That 60,000 tonnes of dumped fish is enough to fill a 200 metre long supramax bulk carrier ship or keep Billingsgate fish market stocked for two and a half years. At the same time, the economic cost is huge. In our report, we estimate £2.81 billion a year.' I think that is all that needs to be said about this most destructive and idiotic policy. The government are committed to spending £12.6billion a year in foreign aid by 2015, that's very commendable, but considering this year we will hand over £744 million to the Russians, and they are committed to spending £454 billion over the next 4 years on defence, doesn't that seem wrong and completely absurd! I am all for helping people, but as our country is in such a financial mess wouldn't it be prudent to get our finances sorted out before we hand over money that we do not have. I am very much in favour of helping people but a government has two basic functions and that is to firstly to run and govern the country and secondly look after its people, and that is it, foreign aid is a luxury and we should only be doing it if we can afford to. Many councils around the country are still employing people on ridiculous wages, one example of this is a certain London borough which is employing someone as an Interim Head of Parking on £500/£600 a day. I think there is something mentally wrong with these people. My last point. Over the last year as I have written this blog I have probably repeated a number of things, and one of them is my views on immigration. I have stated previously why I do not agree with 'mass immigration' , but I have decided to write here what I believe should be done about this problem. Lets first be honest and admit, this is a very important issue and concerns many people, in every poll that is taken, this issue is generally in the top five, and during the last election it never dropped out of the top two. I believe, and so do many others that something needs to change, the government say they are doing something, but they are not, they are trying to stop immigration from outside the EU. The main problem is not with those who come from outside but those who live in the EU, this year it is estimated that our population will grow by 150,000 because of immigration, and most of it from Eastern Europe. In May this year all immigrants from within the EU will be allowed to claim full benefits, and there is nothing the government can do about it. There is huge pressure on; housing, jobs and space. The government cannot afford to build enough new housing for the indigenous population let alone those who are arriving on our shores every day. Most immigrants who come to this country do unskilled work and will work for the minimum wage so those who lose their jobs over the coming years will not be able to find a job. Most of those who come to this country bring their families and settle, this means they then use local services, like schools and GPs surgeries. Many studies have shown that mass immigration brings no economic benefits to a developed country. So this is what I would do; I would stop ALL immigration for a certain amount of time, I would round up all illegal immigrants and kick them out of the country with no right to appeal. I would then tell everyone who is living in this country and is not British to register with the government, then I would look at what job they are doing, if it is a specialist job like a doctor or engineer, or something that our country needs they could stay, I would then force everyone else to leave. You might argue that our country needs these overseas workers to do the jobs that British people won't do, well, there are over 2.5 million unemployed in this country, I am sure some of them would love a job. On top of this, I would increase the minimum wage and increase the personal tax allowance so it would be worth working and not being on benefits. If you want to see what I think should be done about those who do not want to work look at my previous blog http://evanheasley-powertothepeople.blogspot.com/2010/10/benefit-scroungers.html So there you have it, I think it is about time for something radical, because if we don't do something nothing will change.

The danger and stupidity of the EU

2011-03-31T01:01:00.000-07:00

Can I say at the begining of this post, that I am sorry for its layout, I have tried to split it into paragraphs but some reason my computer won't let me .Over the years I have sat and read, watched and listened to many politicians trying to justify some ridiculous policy or law that is being brought out. I have often wondered if they really believe what they are saying is right, and if they don't believe in it how do they sit there and speak as if they really think it is a good idea. I think this also applies to the EU and the constant erosion of our countries ability to control its own destiny and set its own laws. Most politicians, whatever you think of them are not stupid, and they must realise what is happening to this country, and because they are not stupid it concerns me that they are quite happy to sit and watch as we hand over more and more power to unelected individuals. We joined the Common Market in 1973 and since that time consecutive governments have lied to the British people, they have told us that the Common Market, EEC, EC and now the EU is a good thing for this country. But having spent a number of years of looking into the behaviour of this organisation and I have found there are very little benefits for us. So I wanted to look at two areas in which the EU affects us, and that is democracy (or rather lack of) and economically. I have written about these things before, but I wanted to put these two issues in one post so forgive me if I am repeating what I have said before. One of the things that I have written about before is the EU's total lack of democracy and there are reasons for this. Over the years the EU's leaders have shown their complete contempt for democracy, in 1990 they made the Danes vote again after they had a referendum and rejected the Maastricht Treaty. In 2001 the Irish voted in a referendum and rejected the Treaty of Nice and the EU made them vote again, and in October 2002 the Irish voted yes. In 2005 the French people rejected the EU Constitution in a referendum by 55 per cent to 45 per cent and the Dutch by an even bigger margin, by 61.6 per cent to 38.4 per cent. It was left to a Dublin Correspondent to the letters page of the Daily Telegraph, Jonathan Wilson, to sum up the likely outcome of these events. 'The French "non" will not stop the EU or even make it think again,' he wrote. 'The hallmark of the the EU is its contempt for democracy and the will of the people, which are viewed as inconvenient. The EU will push ahead regardless. When Ireland previously voted "no", we were, in effect, sent to bed without any supper and told to vote the correct way the next time, which, to our shame we did.' And of course he was right, The EU ignored the French and Dutch people and renamed the the EU Constitution the Lisbon Treaty and no country in Europe were allowed to have a referendum except little old Ireland, this is because their constitution has a clause in it which states any changes to the Irish constitution has to go before the people. So in 2008 the Irish voted "NO" and of course our EU leaders did not like this so they made the Irish vote again, the EU spent millions of Euros of taxpayers money on propaganda, and stupidly the Irish voted "yes". I have a question, what is the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship? Answer ,the government of a democracy rule with the consent of the people, in a dictatorship they do not. This sums up the EU and its contempt for the people of Europe!! Now to the economics of the EU, this is a massive subject and I could spend a long time on this subject, but I will try and be as brief as possible. In 1973 the 6 members of the Common Market and the United Kingdom made up about 35 per cent of the worlds GDP, since then it has diminished to between 15 and 18 per cent, it is expected to continue to fall to about 9 per cent by 2020. So the EU's importance as an economic block is gradually disappearing. As this continues to happen those who govern us seem to be living in a world completely separated from the real world. Their behaviour is very similar to the Tsar of Russia who in the early part of the 20th century ruled supremely but by 1917 was dead. They do not realise that the world is changing and they are not willing or able to see it. Over the past 40 years the EU has produced huge amounts of regulations, and the pace of this regulation has started to speed up. David Cameron spoke recently about reducing regulation and red tape for business, but quickly realised there was little he could do as the EU produces about 30 new pieces of regulation every single day. Recently the EU increased maternity and paternity leave for parents, this of course puts added pressure onto business, especially small and medium size businesses. At a time when many countries within Europe are struggling the EU are strangling them with red tape. We have the 'working time directive', limiting working time to a maximum of 48 hours a week, and I am sure if the EU bureaucrats had their way they would reduce that further. On top of this there are thousands of 'health and safety' regulations, one of these is the 'working at height regulations', I work for the fire service and we have been forced to adopt this piece of legislation, as you can imagine it is a nightmare to implement as my job is quite dynamic and it isn't always practical to wear a harness. Add to all this, we have environmental regulations governing CO2 emissions, which again is going to have a major impact upon our energy prices and ability to produce enough energy for our needs. On top of all of this the Euro is struggling, Greece and Ireland have had to go cap in hand to the European Central Bank (ECB) and they have been bailed out. Britain, even though it is not part of the Euro has had to dig deep and pay towards this bail out. Alastair Darling, just prior to leaving office signed us up to bailing out any EU country that gets into trouble. So when Portugal's economy implodes we will have to give them £7 billion. At the moment the ECB is buying Portuguese bonds on the stock market (because no one else wants them) trying to keep this from happening, but it won't work. In an ever changing world we need to be able to adapt and move with the times. In an ideal world we could all work 30 hours a week, have 10 weeks paid holiday, sick pay for as long as we needed, a lovely big pension when we retire, we could work in a totally safe environment away from any danger, we could produce enough energy through renewables, and everyone could have the job they want. But that isn't the reality, in many countries around the world they are seeing their economies grow and in the not too distant future they will grow bigger than ours, and whether we like it or not this world is changing and if we do not change and adapt our economies will continue to die and our wonderful standard of living will diminish. I know my postings are generally negative, but unfortunately this is the reality and those within the EU who govern us cannot see it. They are so wrapped up in the dream of a Europe ruled from Brussels they cannot see that they are building on very unstable ground and sooner or later it is going to come crashing down around them. Unfortunately before this happens we may well see internal strife within many countries, we will see people on the streets rioting, as is already happening in Greece. Many people within Europe are starting to wake up to the reality of the EU, I hope that soon more people realise that the EU does not care about them but only about ruling them and we will see this empire die like so many others.

The USA and Isreal, the great Satans?

2011-03-15T05:11:00.000-07:00

Over the years many countries have behaved badly, many individuals who run these countries have behaved in a barbaric manner and committed some abominable crimes. Some of these people (generally men) have been brought to justice and some have got away with their crimes. I have found when looking at history, many people have acted in an extraordinarily evil way, and unfortunately many will continue to do so.

Many countries have been forged in the blood of innocent people and if we look at the history of most countries you will probably find there is some event or incident that the people of that country look back on with shame.

In recent times two countries in particular have come under attack for their supposed evil behaviour, and that is the USA and Israel. These two countries, if you are to believe what you read and hear from certain media sources have been almost responsible for most of the evil events that have occurred in recent history (that might be little bit of an exaggeration). Many on the left have blamed the USA for much of the injustice that has occurred throughout the world, or at the very least of having an influence on what happens.

I remember sitting listening to two people I know having a conversation about the 9/11 attacks in New York. These two intelligent individuals sat and blamed the USA for these attacks, they used phrases like 'the great Satan' and 'the altar of capitalism' to describe the United States and the Twin Towers. They sat and agreed that this event was of Americas making and they basically deserved it. I have to be honest, I was incredulous, I could not believe that these two people could talk so judgementally on something they knew absolutely nothing about.

Likewise Israel has for many years come under attack from the left for its supposed evil behaviour towards the Palestinians. Many intelligent, rational people have spoken incredibly irrationally when it comes to the issue of Israel. In practically every news story from the Middle East which involves Israel, Israel are made out to be the 'baddies', it doesn't matter what they do they will always in many commentators eyes be the aggressor.

Melanie Phillipps in her book 'The World turned upside down' says this in connection to Israel
'....subjected to an unprecedented level of scrutiny should be presented in such a way as to drive out truth and rationality. History is turned on its head; facts and falsehoods, victims and victimizers are reversed; logic is suspended, and a fictional narrative is now accepted as incontrovertible truth. This fundamental error has been spun into a global web of potentially catastrophic false conclusions.'

I couldn't have put it better myself, when it comes to this issue, over the years the facts have been driven out, many left wing news outlets have painted a one sided picture in which Israel is always wrong. I have always wondered why this is, if you believed everything you read or hear about Israel you would think that this country is on a par with the Nazi's in its treatment of the Palestinians. Israel over the years has been attacked without any provocation, the Israelies have endured thousands of rockets attacks from Palestine with no mention of this by any media organisation, yet when they retaliate they are labelled the aggressor. Many would argue that Israel has treated the Palestinians badly by kicking them out of their homeland, but if you believe this nonsense you have swallowed the lefts propaganda.

Most people who argued against Israel, usually do not take anytime to look at both sides, they have never spent anytime in Israel or Palestine and know very little about the Middle East. They know nothing of Hamas, the Government of Palestine whose stated aim is to "kill every Jew wherever you can find him", I think that is pretty unequivocal. Recently five members of one Israeli family were murdered by Arab terrorists, one a baby of 3 months had his throat slashed (if you want to read about it click here http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=212017 ). You will probably not have heard anything about this atrocity as most of the media ignored it, of those in the West who did report it described these poor victims as 'hard line settlers' or 'extremists'. I hardly think 3 young children can be described as hard liners or extremists, I am sure they didn't even know what these words meant. And this sums up the whole argument around Israel.

You would think Israel is the most evil nation ever to inhabit the Earth, yet no one mentions that this is the only country in the Middle East which has had a democratically elected Government, with Arabs sitting in its parliament (Knesset). Jews, Israeli Arabs have full political rights, Arab students attend Israeli universities, they serve in the courts and as police officers, they are equal. Yet if you travel to many Arab states you will find discrimination against, not only Jews, but women, homosexuals, Christians. You never hear Syria mentioned in the news and its human rights record, or Saudi Arabia. You only have to look at what is happening right now in the Middle East to quickly realise that many countries human rights records are appalling, yet they are not condemned.

Israel and the United States aren't perfect, who is? Many within these countries would agree that their behaviour has not always been morally correct. But again what countries history is unblemished? You only have to spend a little time looking at history to quickly realise that many have a lot to be ashamed of. Many Choose to focus their anger and vitriol upon Israel and the United States but when I look at countries like; Burma, Zimbabwe, China, North Korea, to name but a few it does make me wonder what world many people live in.

The lunatics have taken over the asylum!

2011-03-12T02:40:00.000-08:00

Over the past few years 'man-made global warming' has become an obsession, the Government have completely swallowed every peace of propaganda hook, line and sinker. One of the ways this Government and the previous one has shown its commitment to the warmists obsession is by setting our national energy policy by EU targets on renewables.

Now let me say this before I start to look at this issue; I am an environmentalist, I believe we should look after the planet, I believe we should use renewable energy, I believe we should protect endangered areas and peoples, I believe we should be investing in renewables. But the problem I have with our Government and its energy policy is, it is based upon completely ridiculous targets and will not meet our needs in the future. The policy is this, Britain is committed to generating nearly a third of its energy within ten years from renewables, mainly through erecting thousands of wind turbines.

At the moment there are about 3500 wind turbines in and around this country, last year they contributed about 1.6 per cent of our energy needs, the Government want to build about 12,500 of these, shut down 6 coal fired power stations and hope that these wind turbines will meet the demand. Well they won't, anyone with half an ounce of common sense would realise that the wind does not blow all the time and when there is very little wind we will need to get our energy from somewhere, this will mean we will have to import it at astronomical expense.

Wind turbines are so expensive that Holland recently became the first country in Europe to abandon its EU renewable energy target, announcing that it is to slash its annual subsidy by billions of Euros. The Danes, who have built more wind turbines per head than any other country have the highest electricity prices in Europe. In Spain the rush for wind and solar energy has been a national disaster. In Germany, having built more wind turbines than any other nation in the world they are now building new coal fired power stations like crazy.

The first lie peddled by the wind industry and repeated like parrots by our politicians is to exaggerate their output, they talk in terms of 'capacity', as if this is what they will actually produce. This is what they have the potential to produce, but never do because the wind does not blow all the time. Here are two examples; there is a 350ft wind turbine beside the M4 near Reading, it only worked at 15 per cent of its 'capacity' last year, the Government subsidy was £130,000 given to its owners and it produced £100,000 worth of energy.

A Swedish firm recently opened what is now the largest off shore windfarm in the world, off the coast of Kent and stated it would power thousands of homes with its 'capacity' of 300 megawatts. What we were not told is that its average output will only be 80 megawatts, a tenth of that supplied by a gas fired power station, we will be paying a subsidy of £60 million a year, or £1.5 billion over its 25 year lifespan.

We are told its is worth it if we can cut down on CO2 emissions, but when you take into account the smelting of metals used, the carbon intensive concrete used for the massive foundations, the building of miles of roads to get to these turbines, and the releasing of immense quantities of CO2 locked up in the peat bogs were many turbines are built there is probably no benefit. On top of this you need to keep the traditional power stations on tick over 24 hours a day to provide back up for when the wind does not blow.

A recent newspaper article exposed the immense human and ecological catastrophe being inflicted on Northern China by extraction of the rare earth minerals needed to make the giant magnates that every turbine in the west uses to generate its power.

The cost to the British consumer in a few years time will be immense, the Government have signed up to the 'Renewable Obligation Certificate subsidy scheme', whereby for every megawatt hour of energy produced, the wind turbine will earn £49 for its owners and it is twice that amount for off shore wind turbines. The industry is dominated by foreign owned companies and will not even benefit British companies.

I could blame the EU for all of this, but no one was more keener than Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband and now David Cameron and Chris Huhne to sign us up to these ridiculous targets. To meet their targets the Government are committed to spending £100 billion building these monstrosities, plus another £40 billion on connecting them to the National Grid. According to the electricity industry we will need to spend another £100 billion on upgrading the existing power station to provide back up, which adds up to £240 billion, or nearly a quarter of a trillion pounds. This will mean it will increase energy bills for every house hold by about £1000 a year.

What saddens me most is that over the next few years our politicians will destroy huge swaves of our beautiful countryside and our coastline with this complete folly. They are willing to follow a policy that is going to blight this country for years to come, not only in destroying our countryside but we will not be able to produce enough energy for our industry and conventional use. When the rest of the world is moving on and their economies are growing, and at a time when we need to invest to keep pace with the rest of the world our politicians are following a crazy fantasy and unfortunately it isn't a bad dream but reality.

What I find so amazing is, if you spend a little time researching this issue like I have done you will quickly realise the sums do not add up. It is quite obvious that the wind does not blow all the time, even those who are obsessed with 'man-made global warming' would agree with that, so why on earth are we wasting billions of pounds on this ridiculous fantasy. When other countries in Europe are moving away from wind energy why is our Government following this absolutely moronic policy? It does seem that our leaders have really lost the plot, but unfortunately for you and me they are in charge and they are following a path that eventually will lead to complete catastrophe.

The EU again and our stupid poiticians

2011-03-07T01:46:00.000-08:00

I have always wondered how our politicians get away with so many lies, it does seem to be an occupational requirement that when you become a politician you have to be able to lie, and lie convincingly. At one time or another a politician will have to throw their principles out and feed the electorate a load of rubbish. I know not all politcians are liars and many are very principled and have integrity, but it seems that if you want to get on you have to swallow all your morals (if you had any in the first place) and tow the party line whatever that is.

Over the years billions of pounds have been wasted on grandiose schemes and ill thought out projects. Many of these projects were found to be a complete waste of money at the very beginning but because of pride or corruption they continued and the British taxpayer had to fund the bill.

The two greatest wastes of our money over recent years have been the EU and the 'man made global warming' industry. Both Labour and our current government have frittered away billions and no-one has ever been held to account. Has anyone ever sat down and questioned the sanity of our politicians and their ability to run anything, let alone a country and the destiny of millions of people? It seems to me that the answer is a resounding, NO!

I have written about the EU before so I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I want to say this. This year we will hand over to this; unaccountable, undemocratic, corrupt organisation £50 million every day, that works our to be £18.25 billion this year, of that £8.3 billion is our net contribution. I have spoken to many people about this organisation and what I have always come up against is ignorance and a total lack of facts. People point out to me about the economic benefits without realising that out of the other 26 member states we have a deficit with 25 of them (the only one we do not have a deficit with is Slovenia). If we left tomorrow it would not effect our economy whatsoever, as the two riches countries in Europe per capita are Switzerland and Norway and they are not part of the EU, they are part of the European Free Trade Area and have trading agreements with the EU.

David Cameron and previous Prime Ministers have spoken about us being in the EU and reforming from within, after 40 years of being part of this organisation we have not been able to reform it and now we are signatories to the Lisbon Treaty there is nothing we can do about it. Under article 8 of the Lisbon Treaty the EU Commission do not need to consult with any National Government and can change any part of this treaty and there isn't anything that David Cameron can do about it, THAT IS THE TRUTH!!! You will never hear David Cameron admit this, so either he is a liar or stupid, you take your pick!

Gay rights?

2011-02-21T06:42:00.000-08:00

Recently the government has decided to bring in legislation which will allow homosexuals the right to 'marry' in a church building. It is argued by some it should be the right of anyone who wants to get married to marry wherever they like. And because of equality legislation, these people should not be discriminated against. Most people I know do not have an issue with homosexuals, I don't either, what these people do in the privacy of their own homes is up to them. What I have a problem with is the drive to normalise homosexuality, and this drive has almost become religious in its intensity.

A number of years ago homosexuals were given the right to enter into civil partnerships, with very little outcry from the established church. I do not what to enter the debate about the rights and wrongs of homosexuals being able to 'marry', but what concerns me with this piece of legislation is what could happen if a homosexual couple want to get 'married' in a church but the vicar refuses. The government has said that the legislation allows for religious beliefs, and churches will not be forced to allow this to happen, but for how long?

What if a homosexual couple want to 'marry' in their local Anglican church and the vicar refuses, will we then see the church taken to court? The government says this won't happen but as has happened before, many within the 'gay rights' movement who act like religious zealots will see this as discrimination and will then try to dismantle this last bastion of traditional beliefs.

Recently a Christian couple were taken to court and sued because they would not allow a homosexual couple to have a room with a double bed in their B&B. You could argue this is a different case, but I don't think it is. This couple had religious beliefs that did not allow them to condone homosexuality, likewise many Christians feel the same as this couple including many church ministers. What if a homosexual couple wanted to get married in a church and went to court, and used the recent equality legislation could we not see the same result as the above case? I think we could, and as a Christian that really concerns me.

One thing that really bothers me about this legislation is the simple question of why? Why do the government feel they need to push forward this piece of legislation? Were there any homosexuals complaining about not being able to get 'married' in a church? Does every homosexual couple feel it is an issue that they are denied this 'right'? Probably not, so what is the reason behind it?

For the past 40 years there has been a gradual undermining of the traditional values that have underpinned this country, and the two main ones have been the church and the traditional two parent heterosexual family. I believe the drive to destroy these traditions is gathering pace and this is another nail in that coffin. I wonder where we will end up? Will we end up with a situation were I will not even be able to write what I am writing here for fear of prosecution or imprisonment? I do not think we are too far away from that stage. You might say it won't come to that but don't be too sure.

Just one other point, does this legislation include getting married in mosques?

Traditions

2011-02-05T08:41:00.000-08:00

I am very proud of being British, I love my country, I am a royalist and greatly respect the Queen, I was bought a mug for my birthday with a picture of our dear Queen on. I believe in traditions and am a great believer in the old adage 'if it isn't broken don't try and fix it'.

One of the things which I have loved about this country is imperial measurements; miles, yards, feet, inches, stones, pounds, ounces. I know some people will say these are old fashioned measurements and we should look to the future and move with the rest of the world. I have to ask the simple question, why? I do not see why I should be told what I can and cannot measure in, I do not see that measuring things in imperial measures has a detrimental effect upon our country and its economy. Just look at America, the most successful economy and the most technologically advanced country in the world, and it still uses imperial measures. It is interesting that its next door neighbour Canada, which has tried to enforce metric measures on its population has had to abandon this and still uses; pounds ounces, feet, etc.

I suppose my main problem with the metric system is being forced to use it, what other country would enforce a ridiculous law that actually makes it illegal to sell goods in imperial measures? I have nothing against the metric system, if you want to use it fell free, but I would like to be able to use it when I go to the shops and so would many millions of others. What is interesting is this drive to force us to use metric measurements has been gradual, but over recent years it has increased in speed. Chefs now only use metric measurements on TV and in their cook books, the BBC seems to be obsessed with them as you may have noticed recently when giving the depth of snow in their weather forecasts.

Some weights are still given in imperial measurements, such as babies weights, even the arch Europhile Tony Blair announced his babies weight in pounds and ounces. You might argue that it is better to have one system or another because it will confuse people, especially our children, but I learned both. My children seem to be able to cope, as when they are helping cook they speak in pounds and ounces, and if they have ever weighed themselves have spoken their weight in stones and pounds.

In 2001 market trader Steve Thorburn was prosecuted for selling his fruit and veg in pounds. He said he would sell his goods in kilos and grams if that was what his customers wanted but in all the time he was trading he said he had only one person ask for their fruit in metric. Off course this held no weight with the trading standards zealots who wasted £1000's of tax payers money taking him to court, they also forced many hundreds of thousands of businesses to replace their old scales on pain of prosecution. Sadly in 2004 at the age of 39 Steve Thorburn died of a heart attack, many thought it was brought on by the stress of fighting these jobsworths and petty bureaucrats.

You may argue that in the grand scheme of things it does not really matter, and there are more important things to worry about, and in some ways you would be right. But I believe there are some fundamental points here about freedom, does it really matter what we sell or buy our goods in? Does it really matter if I say my weight in stone, pounds and ounces? I believe not, and that is my point, over recent years we have been forced to endure change after change and most of the time it is change for changes sake. Many changes have been forced on us over recent years without any consultation and have not been for the better.

I believe strongly in freedom, and I believe I should be free to deal in imperial measurements if I want and so should anyone else. So if you believe in traditions and like them carry on using them and don't let anyone tell you you can't!

Facts

2011-01-30T08:42:00.000-08:00

One of the people I work with drinks only water, I asked him why he didn't drink tea or coffee, he said they are diuretics, supposedly they dehydrate you. I said how do you know that? He said it is what he was told. This led onto a conversation about what we are told and what we believe and then as I left work and drove home I started to think about all the things that we think are true, and whether they are true or not.

Most of us will believe certain things but never spend any time researching it, all we do is repeat what we are told by some so-called expert, media organisation or what some bloke down the pub told you. I have looked at this subject before in my postings, but I wanted to list a number of things and I want you to ask yourself two questions. Firstly,what do you believe about the subject? Secondly have you spent any time researching it?

ADHD, is there such a thing?
Dyslexia, same as above!
Heart disease and its correlation to a) saturated fat and b) cholesterol.
Man made global warming.
Asbestos.
Passive smoking, is it really bad for you?
Eating five pieces of fruit and veg a day, is it really as good for you as we are told?
Drinking whilst pregnant, does it do the baby any harm?
Isreal, does this country deserve the amount of vitriol it gets?
Sell by dates, are they just a money spinner for the supermarkets and food companies?
Water, is Drinking eight glasses of it a day better for you than drinking eight cups of tea or coffee?

There's a few to be going on with, you might have strong opinions on none, some or all of these issues. But if you haven't spent anytime researching any of these subjects how do you know what the truth is? That is all I am asking. There is no objective, scientific way of diagnosing ADHD, yet every year thousand's of children are drugged and no one bats an eyelid.

The government issues advice on many different things, but a lot of the time this advice isn't based upon sound science, but so many people follow it like sheep. Look at the recent outbreak of swine flu in which we were told many, many thousand's of people were going to die, it hasn't happened. CJD, the human form of mad cow disease was, we were told going to kill hundreds of thousands of people, again it hasn't.

For years every job that has required a medical has used the Body Mass Index (BMI)as a way of deciding whether someone is overweight or not. Even now it is still used by many organisations to gauge the suitability of candidates. BMI was invented by a Belgian man in 1869 when the average height of men was 5'6", it is two dimensional and does not take into consideration the persons build and the amount of muscle they have. It is only in very recent times after a little research that people have started to question BMI and its ability to gauge someones health.

Many people believe what they hear without questioning and all I would ask is spend a little time researching and you will quickly see that there are usually at least one other point of view which is just as valid.

Completely bonkers

2011-01-27T03:50:00.000-08:00

Richard Keys and Andy Gray make sexist comments, shock horror! This story makes front page headlines, it is one of the leading stories on the BBC, ITN and Sky news, it has been discussed on Radio 5 live. And I am sure if I watch Question Time tonight someone will ask the panelists about this issue.

We have had many people stating their opinion, we have had the feminist lobby almost calling for their execution. Karren Brady, vice chairman of West Ham football club won't return Richard Keys phone calls, a leading English woman's footballer has called the remarks made by these two men evil! This has been running now as a front page story all this week, it fills seven pages of the Daily Mirror today. I truly believe those within the media have gone completely stark raving bonkers.

You may have an opinion on this, but what I have found when talking to the people I work with, both men and women that they cannot believe the hype about this story. I work for an organisation that is wrapped in political correctness, there are many women who I work with and talk to who think this story is a 'storm in a teacup'. I have sat and listened and read about this story and to be quite frank I cannot believe how much publicity it has got. When you look around the world and within the UK and look at the events which are happening every week this whole issue pales into insignificance.

This week four little children from one family died in a house fire, it didn't even make front page news, it was buried somewhere on page ten in most newspapers. It was story number four or five on the BBC, the mother of these four little darlings has been left to bury her children, I cannot even begin to imagine how this woman feels. I have three children of my own and if one died I would be heartbroken, let alone all three, why did this story and many others not make headline news? Why did a story about two men having a private conversation which was overheard and taped make headline news? Almost every fire service within the country is going to make cuts to its fire fighter establishment, which will mean less fire engines going to more fires, should this not be making headline news? Should cuts in front line services not be making headline news?

Unfortunately it seems to me that the world has gone bonkers, political correctness has taken over, to make a sexist comment, even when joking can now lead to dismissal. You could argue that these sorts of attitudes are from the dark ages and we need to move on from a culture in which people feel threatened, bullied and intimidated and being sexist is part of that culture, but how far do we go? What I find interesting is, it seems it is wrong to say anything disrespectful to women but okay to do it to men, just take the programme 'Take me out' on ITV in which a man stands in front of a group of women and is ridiculed. If someone suggested making a programme in which a woman stood in front of a group of men and the same happened to them I am sure it would be very quickly binned.

We do not live in a perfect world, there have been many times in my life in which someone has said something which has irritated me, I am sure most people can think of some incident in their own life, but would that be a good reason to sack someone? I don't know these two men, they might be a couple of idiots who are always making sexist comments, I am sure we have all said something offensive at times. But I believe the sacking of these two men has been a total over reaction, I believe a little word in their ear and a slap on the wrist would have sufficed, I am sure if someone had said to them to watch what they were saying they would have done. The interesting thing in all of this is it seems is that the woman linesman who the comment was aimed at wasn't even bothered.

I hope that these two men get another job, I personally believe this has been a witch hunt very similar to 'Macarthyism' in the US in the 1950's. I can see this sort of thing happening more and more, and I do not believe it is a good thing. We all know what bullying is and it isn't very nice and should be stamped out, but how far are we going to go? Are we going to end up living in a country in which almost anything will be taken as offensive? Unfortunately and frighteningly I think we are almost there, so watch out BIG BROTHER is watching and listening and could be coming to; a street, workplace, church, your home very soon!

Sitting on the edge of a precipice

2011-01-21T01:42:00.000-08:00

Over the last 9 months I have watched and listened to many commentators talk about; the state of our economy, the coalition Government and the rights and wrongs of what they are doing. I have to be honest I do not believe they are doing a very good job, but neither do I believe Labour would have done any better.

When watching discussion programmes like Newsnight, Question Time, etc I generally find there are many opinions about the state of our country and most people will state that what our Government are doing isn't thought out enough. They will state that the cuts they are making are going to far and this will send us into a double dip recession, this might well happen, who knows? But until you really look at the mess this country is in I do not believe it is very easy to make a judgement.

People have accused the Conservatives of being the same old Conservatives; a party of cuts and toffs! But the truth is this, Labour left this country in a mess and if something wasn't done quickly this country would be looking at bankruptcy.

So the Government are making cuts, which I believe they need to do but I do not believe this is going to make a huge amount of difference. This country is massively in debt, the only thing that is keeping us afloat are the financial markets and its confidence in our ability to pay back our debt. The Government have managed to maintain its triple A rating on the bond markets, which as I have mentioned in a previous post means we can borrow at a low interest rate. I am no expert but basically how bonds work is, the Government issue a bond and sell it to a trader who will know that in, say one years time he can then resell that back to the Government at a profit, and this is all based upon confidence. If the financial markets have no confidence in a countries economic position they will not buy their bonds and that is when they then end up in a situation like Greece and Ireland.

As I have said above the Government need to make cuts, but I believe front line services should not be affected. We have many chief executives on ridiculous wages, like Andrea Hill of Suffolk County Council who is paid £218,000 a year, I really believe this is far too much. This year many people are going to lose their jobs, already Norfolk County council have announced 1000 job losses, Hampshire have announced job cuts and so have many other local authorities. I wonder how many of these Chief Executives and equality and diversity managers will lose their jobs? The Government are hoping the private sector are going to grow and employ those who have lost their job in the public sector, but this is not happening. The private sector is not growing, there are companies out there who are making cuts, this week unemployment officially hit 2.5 million, and it is expected to hit 2.7 million this year.

Over the next few years money is going to be scarce, jobs are going to be hard to come by, many people will lose their jobs in the public and private sector. You would think Government would want to stimulate business but unfortunately not, these bunch of idiots in charge have decided to adopt a piece of European legislation which can only have been thought up by some boneheaded dickhead sitting in an ivory tower in the middle of a Brussels office block who has never had to run their own business. They have decided to increase maternity and paternity leave to ten months, we are in the middle of a recession and you would think that they would want to encourage business, but no, what world do these people inhabit?

Local authorities are going to have to make the money they have go further, invariably those who need the help the most will be most affected by these cuts. Next year the money local authorities get from the Government is being reduced but that ever shrinking pot of money is going to have to be spent on more and more people. Last year 215,000 immigrants settled in this country, this year that will continue, next year it will continue and so on and so forth. This means we will have more people coming here to work, use public services, schools, hospitals, etc. They will need to be housed, that means the ever decreasing housing stock will get smaller, the government cannot afford to keep building more houses so were are all these people going to live and work?

I generally think most people are not bothered about things until they start to affect them personally. I believe that when many people lose their job and then start to look for a job and find there are not any out there or they are very low paid they will start to feel resentment. When they see more people coming to this country and getting jobs and houses before them this could lead to anger and then civil disorder. That may sound very pessimistic, but I believe we are not far away from this situation. The Government are trying to do something about the mess Labour left this country in, but because they are in a coalition with a bunch of numbskull's they are struggling to do anything that is really going to sort out our countries situation.

In five years time the Government will not have started to pay off our national debt, that is when those who have invested in this country will see that things are never going to really change and they may well pull their investments out. Then we will be disappearing over a precipice and it will be years before we get out of it. I believe we need to be realistic, I know I sound very negative, but this is the situation our country is in. Someone needs to be honest, someone needs to help business, someone needs to stick two fingers up to European regulation which is strangling business. Someone needs to cull the QUANGO's and over paid public sector workers, someone needs to get rid of all non essential workers and focus on what a local authority is there do. Someone needs to stop immigration now, before our country sinks!! These issues need to be sorted, but unfortunately they are not going to be and those who are going to be affected the most are going to be you and me.

Why I hate the EU!

2011-01-18T05:49:00.000-08:00

Hate is a very strong word and I would never use it lightly, there are many things I dislike but I would say there are only a very few I hate, the EU is one of them. When putting forward an argument I believe it is very important to look at the facts, and try to remain objective, unfortunately in this world we now live in it is very difficult to get to the truth. One person will argue something and will view what they say through personal experience and then insist that is the truth. If you look at the discussions around parenthood and how to raise children you will find many people will have many ideas on what is the right way to raise a child and will insist it is right. But as you can imagine it isn't always as simple as that because children are all different and what is good for one isn't necessarily good for another.

Many people would say the same about my argument about the EU, they would say it is my opinion and there are others who would argue that the EU is good so their opinion is just as valid. I would agree with their right to their opinion but I would not agree that their opinion is right, as most people who argue in favour of the benefits of the EU have not looked into the workings of this organisation, and their argument would be based upon their opinion rather than fact.

So why do I hate the EU so much? I have stated previously that the EU is unaccountable, undemocratic and corrupt and if you want to see what I have said previously please feel free to do so. But I wanted to explain some of the fundamental reasons for my hatred. Firstly the British people were lied to about the reason for us joining what was then in the Common Market. In 1975 the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson allowed the British people a referendum on its continued membership of the Common Market, he said it was purely an economic entity, he knew it was not and he lied. On the basis of the economic argument an overwhelming majority voted in favour. At the time Britain's economy was struggling and the six members of the Common Market were doing very well, so the British people were told it would benefit us, they were lied to. Ever since that time the Common Market has morphed into the EEC, the EC and now the EU without any consent or agreement from the people of Europe. Just one other point about the economic benefits, in 1975 the six members of the Common Market and the UK made up 35 per cent of the worlds GDP, now the 27 nations of the EU make up 15 per cent of the worlds GDP. It does seem strange that we have thrown our lot in with these shrinking economies.

Great Britain has a judicial system in which you are innocent until proven guilty, it's parliament is known throughout the world as the Mother of Parliaments. Britain has always been a country which values freedom of speech, it is a place which is tolerant, this is shown by how we have accepted so many people from around this world. Britain has many traditions and characteristics; fairness, politeness, good manners, these are all things which I am proud of. Over recent years I have watched as everyone of these things has been undermined and it has happened gradually, but I can now see the pace of change getting quicker.

The EU does not believe in innocent until proven guilty, this has been shown by its adoption of the European Arrest Warrant . This piece of legislation means you can be accused of a crime in another country and as long as the prosecutors in that country fill in the forms correctly you will be extradited and there is nothing anyone can do about it. 'Trials in Absentia' will become EU law very soon and when this is adopted I would recommend not going on holiday anywhere in the EU, because if you are accused of a crime you could be tried and convicted in your absence. And the first thing you will know about it is when you get the knock on the door and are heading off to serve a prison sentence in a foreign land with no right of appeal. Here is a link explaining this piece of legislation http://www.openeurope.org.uk/research/tia.pdf.

I have mentioned the problems about the EU's lack of democracy before so I am not going to write about it here. The EU is corrupt and cannot be reformed, it's auditors have refused for the 16th year in a row to sign off it's budget, this sums up the corrupt nature of the EU.

Now you may argue that that is my point of view and as far as you are concerned the EU is good. You might like everything about the EU, you might be happy to overlook the problems with; corruption, lack of democracy, the Euro, an unelected President, its huge wastefulness, its declining importance economically. You might think it is the most wonderful thing that has ever been invented, and be the most Europhile person in the world, you might be happy to be ruled from Brussels. Surely it is right to tell the people of Britain the truth about the European Union; the truth about the laws which are made and affect us, the truth about the reason for Post Office closures; the truth about how many laws are now made in Brussels and are not decided by our own elected MPs. Surely it is only fair, just and right to allow the people of Britain to at least have a say on whether we want to be ruled by a group of unelected individuals. And that is my point, as I have said above the British people were lied to in 1975, they were told it was not ever going to be a political union, those who said it was going to be were ridiculed, the likes of Tony Benn and Hugh Gaitskell explained this to the British people but were laughed at. Unfortunately these two men were right!

I do not want to be ruled by people in Brussels, that does not mean I am Xenophobic, I do not hate foreigners, I am not 'a little englander', I do not hate Europe, or do not want to trade with them. I just want to have a say on whether we hand over our sovereignty to these people. As Hugh Gaitskell the former leader of the Labour Party once said;

"We must be clear about this; it does not mean, if this is the idea, the end of Britain as an independent European state, it means the end of a thousand years of history. You may say "let it end". But my goodness, it is a decision which needs a little care and thought".

This is my main point, no one in this country has ever been allowed to have a vote on our being part of a European super state, no one has ever been told the truth by any Prime Minister that this is the way it is heading. If you spoke to David Cameron about this he would say it is not happening, but it is! I want to be governed by my own Government and as long as this is not happening I will never agree with the EU and everything it stands for. No one in Europe has ever been allowed to have a say on whether they want a European super state. The EU do not believe in democracy, this was shown to be true when they took no notice of the French and Dutch people's rejection of the EU Constitution in 2005 and the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. This sums up this organisation and all it stands for and that is why I hate it!!!!

A right mess!

2011-01-14T06:05:00.000-08:00

Labour were in power for 13 years, they sat in government for a period when this country had tremendous economic growth, this country went from being the 6th largest economy in the world to the 4th largest. Gordon Brown when Chancellor raised unprecedented sums of money through tax, he was able to spend at will, he increased the amount of people working for the government hugely. You would think that with all this money coming in he would have put a little aside for a rainy day, but unfortunately not, he spent and spent and spent.

So let's look at some facts. When Labour came to power we had a deficit of £6 billion and a national debt of £350 billion, that sounds like a lot of money, but when you look at the size of our economy it was very manageable. When they left power we had a deficit of £157 billion and were in debt to the tune of £1.3 trillion. That is good going! Gordon Brown argued that it was a global financial crises, which it was, but out of the top 20 economies in the world our economy was worst hit. Our economy was the last one to come out of recession, instead of paying off the national debt which he could have easily done, he carried on spending and then blamed everyone else for his stupid mistakes.

The reason we are in the mess we are in now is because of Labour's wastefulness. Labour allowed the public sector to get out of control, and did not help the private sector, so the profit making part of our economy got smaller and the part which created no wealth got bigger. Some people would argue that it does not matter what sector people are employed in, as long as they are spending money which drives the economy. But this has been shown to be very short sited, the problem is our economy is almost a one trick pony. Our economy is so reliant on people spending money, when anything goes wrong our economy struggles. Labour focused on this very one sided view and they almost forgot about the rest of the economy.

Labour neglected manufacturing to the point that in 1997 when they came to power it made up 20 per cent of our economy now it makes up less than 13 per cent. They deregulated the City of London which meant we saw huge growth in the financial sector, and now the largest profit making part of our economy is the finance sector. This means we are very reliant on this sector, if the big finance companies decide to go elsewhere our economy will be 'buggered'. It has been shown by the fact that the quickest growing economies in the world, China and India that manufacturing things works and keeps the economy growing, China and India have not really been affected by the recession and have continued to see growth.

A lot of people believe the Conservatives are evil, and whatever they do are bad. They believe the cuts they are making are bad, and they should not be doing it. But the simple truth is this, if Labour were in power they would have to do exactly the same thing, this country is in massive debt and if we do not cut we will lose our triple A rating which means it will cost us more to borrow. Labour were the ones who let councils employ chief executives on over £200,000 a year, Labour wasted Billions, they let our public sector get so big and employed millions of people doing none jobs. One example is the Ministry of Defence which employs £85,000 pen pushers and only has 160,000 armed personnel.

An interesting aside, did you know that in the dying days of the last government Alaister Darling was summoned to Brussels and ordered to hand over £13 billion to prop up the Euro, even though Britain has never joined the single currency. We have handed Ireland £7 billion, our net contribution to the EU this year is £8.3 billion, So in the last year we have handed over £28 billion for no return, we are in massive debt and the government are making massive cuts in public services. Doesn't that seem a little obscene?

I think the best thing that ever happened to Labour was losing the last election, they would have had to sort out the mess but now they are going to be out of office for a few years and the Conservatives will have to try and sort out the mess they made. When the next election comes around Labour will accuse the Conservatives of being the party of cuts and will make them out to be the bad guys. They will then be re-elected and we will be in an even worse mess. I am not a fan of this government but I do believe whoever got elected were going to have to make some painful decisions. Whatever happens over the next few years isn't going to be pleasant and whoever is in power is going to struggle, but I do believe if Labour had remained in power we would be heading into a huge black hole with no way of getting out.

Freedom of speech

2011-01-11T05:42:00.000-08:00

This week Jack Straw MP, former foreign secretary has stated that the grooming of young girls for sex by Pakistani Muslims is a problem. As you can imagine he has received the usual accusation of racism. This is a problem in many towns around the north of England and has been for a number of years, but unfortunately many who know about this problem have been too afraid to speak out about it. It is a shame that Jack Straw didn't say anything when he was in government.

For a number of years now Muslim gangs have driven around the towns and cities of northern England looking for vulnerable young girls to pick up for sex, some of these girls have been as young as 11. The police have stated that they have cases of this sort of thing happening as far back as 1996. Mr Straw has been accused of being inflammatory or stereotyping.

These attackers have been labeled as 'Asian', in using the word Asian these men could be Sikhs, Hindus, Chinese, etc but they are not, they are Muslims. These Muslims have not just preyed on white girls but also Sikhs and Hindus too.

The main reason why these Muslim men attack white women is because they are seen as 'sluts'. Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation says 'these people think that white girls have fewer morals and are less valuable than our girls'. In essence they view white women as playthings, they do not view them as human. I think this highlights many issues within Muslim society, especially the treatment of women.

In our right-on liberal society, feminists and other liberals are very quick to shout and holler when women are seen to be discriminated against. But many Muslim women are treated abominably within their local communities, and have very little rights. We have seen the growth of Muslim extremism throughout the world, and in many places Sharia law has become the prevailing ideology. This ideology is very strict, and women who live under Sharia law have very little if any human rights. The only sound from the feminists and liberals is the cry of 'racist' or 'bigot' when anyone like Jack Straw complains.

The shame of it all is, this sort of behaviour is still happening, but because of our multicultural society those who would like to speak out against it are drowned out by those who are more concerned about this hideous ideology. I think this sums up the topsy turvy society in which we live and unfortunately this sickeningly behaviour will continue.

Unhappy

2011-01-03T02:06:00.000-08:00

I have felt unhappy about a number of things over recent years, if you have read my blog before you will quickly realise that a lot of things frustrate me. Something which I have found myself getting increasingly angry about is the 'rights culture'. We live at a time in which self-designated victim groups can do no wrong, while the majority culture can do no right. White men are wrong, whilst women are right, women are seen to be the victim in all cases of abuse, yet when you look at the facts men are just as likely to be 'battered' as much as women.

Homosexuals have been victimised in the past, that cannot be denied but we now live in a culture in which homosexuality is deemed 'normal'. What I find annoying about the 'rights culture' and anti-discrimination legislation is that certain groups rights supersede other groups rights. This seems to go against the nature of anti-discrimination, society is told that it cannot discriminate against someones; sexuality, gender, religion, age, disability, height, weight, or basically anything. But the problem with the legislation is, it tries to be all things to all men (or should I say all people), the legislation has been shown to not work, especially when it comes to Christians and what they believe.

There have been a number of cases in which Christians have stated their beliefs and been discriminated against, one was the case of the Christian registrar who was sacked because she said that she did not want to perform a marriage for same sex couples, as this goes against her beliefs. A Christian was forced to step down from an adoption panel because he refused to place children with gay couples. A Catholic adoption agency was forced to close because they had the same approach. When a Scottish heroin addict was judged unfit to care for her four year old daughter and five year old son, their grandparents' request to adopt them was turned down and the children were instead given up for adoption to a gay male couple against strong opposition by the grandparents. The grandparents were told that if they objected they would never see their grandchildren again. It seems to me that being offended is a one way street, if you complain that something offends your religious beliefs, because it goes against the politically correct minority belief, the minority will mostly win the argument.

This brings me onto the adoption of a child by Elton John and his partner, to be totally honest I find this to be totally repulsive on a number of fronts. Firstly lets look at Elton Johns age, he is 63 years old, when his 'son' is 16 he will be 79. It seems strange to me that Elton John has lived all these years and had plenty of opportunities to adopt a child but at the grand old age of 63 decides it is the right time. Well I have to be honest I think being able to adopt a child at this age is wrong as it goes against everything that is natural.

Secondly I believe that 2 homosexual males adopting is morally wrong and again goes against everything that is natural. By the very nature that they are 2 men means they cannot physically have children. Elton John and his partner are gay, I believe they should just except that because they are gay they cannot have children and should not be able to adopt. We live in a topsy-turvy world in which the 'norms' of society have been turned on their head. We are constantly being forced fed propaganda which tells us that our views are wrong if they go against the politically correct point of view. We are told that all lifestyles are equal, but I do not agree, the facts speak for themselves, children who are raised in a traditional 'nuclear family' have got a greater advantage of succeeding and turning out to be normal than those who don't. 80 per cent of all young offenders come from single mother families. Elton John and his partner may well be loving 'parents' but they are homosexuals and this child will grow up with no mother, likewise a lesbian couple who adopt will have a child that grows up with no father. Many children who are adopted find that when they get older they have a desire to find their natural parents, what will Elton John say to this child if he asks who his mother is?

Many would argue that as long as a child ends up with loving parents whatever their sexuality, that is all that counts. But what has happened over the years, is the ideology of political correctness has engulfed all areas of life, and particularly our social services. The decision was taken a few years ago not to put black children with white parents, and many of these black children ended up living out their childhood years moving from one foster parent to another, or being stuck in children's home, just because of a hideous ideology which puts their beliefs above human beings lives. Many married couples who cannot have children have given up trying to adopt because of the nightmare of working their way through the jungle of social services ideology, and many children have never known the love of a father and mother because of this. I will never agree with homosexuals adopting because I believe the best way for a child to be brought up is with the love of a mother and father, and this is the way it was always meant to be!

Weathermen, wind turbines and global warming.

2010-12-28T07:22:00.000-08:00

The British taxpayer was charged by the Met office this year £200 million. For that we were given wildly inaccurate weather forecasts, the Met Office spent £33 million of taxpayers money in 2008 on a super computer which was supposed to be able to predict the weather for the coming year. In July 2009 the Met office predicted that August 2009 was going to be exceptionally hot, off course it wasn't, it was wet and cold, in that same year the Met office (using their super computer) told us that the coming winter was going to be wet and mild, it was one of the coldest winters in recent years. In early 2010 the Met office said they would not be giving seasonal weather forecasts anymore because they could not predict the weather. The winters of 2008 and 2009 were incredibly cold and the Met office dismissed these winters as 'random events', the Met Office put the odds on a third cold winter at 20-1. Someone told me this week that they were listening to a Radio 4 program which had someone from the Met Office on it and they were questioned about this computer and its inability to predict the weather and they said the computer wasn't powerful enough and they needed a more powerful computer.

I wonder how long the Government are going to continue to pay for this group of so called specialists to waste millions of pounds of taxpayers money claiming they can somehow predict the weather? I wonder how much money this organisation are going to waste before they admit that they cannot predict the weather a month in advance let alone predict what the weather is going to be like in 20 years time?

What I find amazing is how the warmists like to move the goal posts. For the past 15 years there has not been an increase in global temperatures, so because of this they no longer call it global warming but 'climate change'. This deception started in 1988 when a group of supposed experts brought the worlds press together and stated as fact that the world was on cataclysmic collision with disaster unless we changed our lifestyles. They said the world was heating up at such a fast rate the worlds ice caps would melt, low lying land would be engulfed by the rising oceans and places would be inhabitable because of extreme heat. 22 years on from this, nothing has really changed except that the world has gone crazy and we are now spending billions of pounds every year on green energy that doesn't work.

What I find so frustrating is that all rational argument has disappeared. When any extreme weather event happens it is put down to 'climate change'. When parts of Cumbria flooded this year that was put down to 'climate change', how has it come to this? How have these so called experts persuaded so many people to take leave of their senses? Think about it, the original reason for all of this hysteria was to do with a few tenths of a degree increase in temperature, but because there are no obvious signs that there is any increase in global temperatures they have changed their position. Surely if there has been a drop in global temperatures those same scientists must now admit that their theories are now wrong?

At the moment Britain has 3,150 turbines blighting this green and pleasant land, what percentage of energy have these supplied to the National Grid this year? Answer, 1.6 per cent, the Government are committed to building 12,500 of these monstrosities and they will contribute a negligible amount to our energy supply. There is no way of storing the energy these things produce, they have to be switched off in high winds to prevent damage and when it is exceptionally cold they have to be heated to prevent them seizing up, thus consuming more energy than they produce. On top of all this, none of these turbines are going to be built by British companies and the majority are going to be installed by foreign companies. So whilst the Government wastes billions of pounds of our money, that money won't even be going to help the British economy.

There you have it, you can choose to believe the 'warmists' propaganda or you can spend a little time researching it for yourself and see that it is all a load of rubbish and if we do not change soon this country will be bankrupt and have no ability to provide enough energy for itself.

A few thoughts

2010-12-25T07:01:00.000-08:00

It is now nearly 2011 and we are coming to the end of an eventful year. For anyone who reads my postings, I hope you have a good Christmas and New year. It is very easy to focus on ourselves at this time of year, and I am not going to try and make anyone feel guilty for doing just that. But it is important to remember others who are less fortunate, so over the coming year if you have an opportunity to help someone, however little that is give it a go. It's interesting that it is sometimes the little things that can make a big difference. Sometimes just speaking to someone in the street or in a queue at the supermarket can make their day. Making a cake for someone or going and visiting that person you have been meaning to visit for ages can really bless them, and you.

Over the coming year I am going to continue to question the consensus, and I hope that you do as well. Over the weeks, months and years to come we will continue to be fed a lot of so called facts. Unfortunately these facts will be based upon subjective opinion and have no basis in fact. One of the things that has happened over recent years is that as we have gained more and more knowledge but we seem to have gained less and less objectivity.

I started to feel this more and more over the last 3 or 4 years, when I started to read more material which questioned the established view point. Whether that be; man-made global warming, ADHD, mass immigration being beneficial, the dangers of asbestos, etc. The more I read the more I realised that the majority of research into so many issues was based upon no more than subjective, unscientific opinion. And what I came to realise even more was that anyone who questioned the consensus was demonized and made to feel they were the lunatic, and even questioning some so called facts was actually wrong.

Reality seems to have changed and even truths that can be demonstrated by clear evidence is now dismissed as a matter of opinion. Anyone who complains and asks questions can be dismissed as a conspiracy theorist or 'right-wing' extremist. Anyone who questions the wrongs of the ideology of political correctness or so called equality legislation is made to feel guilty for even disagreeing. We now live in a world were everyone has the right to be offended and we now have 'victim groups'. Within the fire service we have a group for; women, ethnic minorities, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (whatever that is) but of course none for white men; I wonder what would if I started up a group, maybe I should do it.

Anyway I didn't intend to write all that, but through everything just remember the truth is out there and don't always believe everything you hear on the news, even from reputable news agencies. Someone once said 'power has now hijacked truth and made it subservient to its own ends', I believe this to be true.

Let me finish with this. We now live in a society which is obsessed with celebrity, many non-entities have been accorded fame and fortune through no other reason than being famous. Many have done nothing except appeared on a TV show, even our politicians have become celebrities. What they look like and how they sound seems to be more important than what they say and what they stand for. I believe the person who has achieved the most through this obsession has been the US President Barack Obama who was accorded cult status through being the first black President. Barack Obama got carried away with his cult like status when he won the Democratic Party nomination, he declared that "this would be seen as the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal". Oprah Winfrey proclaimed Obama to be "the one. He is the one!" She was likened to John the Baptist leading the way for Obama to win. I think the peak of hysteria of Obamamania came when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2009 for 'creating a new climate in international politics' even though he had achieved absolutely nothing. I cannot see this obsession with celebrity changing in the near future but you never know. Anyway, hopefully that will give you something to mull over the next few days.

Incredulous!!

2010-12-17T07:03:00.000-08:00

In November 2003 whilst banned from driving, having no insurance, MOT or driving licence Aso Muhammed Ibrahim ploughed into 12 year old Amy Houston, he ran from the scene of the accident and left her trapped under the car he was driving. Six hours later her father made the agonising decision to turn off her life support machine. Despite running from the scene and admitting driving whilst disqualified he served 4 months in prison.

All of that is bad enough but let's now add a few more ingredients into the mix. Firstly Mr Ibrahim should not have been in the country because he was a failed asylum seeker, then lets look at his criminal record.
2002: Caution for criminal damage
Jan 2003: Fined for driving without insurance, a licence or MOT.
June 2003: Six month ban for the same offence.
Oct 2003: Banned for a further nine months for driving without insurance, having no licence and having insufficient tyre tread.
Nov 2003: Driving whilst banned, he hits Amy Houston and kills her. Sentence to four months in prison.
2004: Convicted of possession of cannabis.
2005: Conviction for burglary.
2006: Convicted of driving while disqualified and without insurance. Given a two year supervision order, banned from driving for three years and given a curfew.
2009: Convicted of harassment.

What I find so amazing about all this is, what crime do you need to commit before our judicial system takes you seriously? This man had been banned from driving 3 times yet still drove, he did not even hold a licence, what is the point of a law if our courts don't uphold it. This man has not only committed a number of crimes but is actually in this country illegally. Each one of those crimes should have ended with Mr Ibrahim serving a prison sentence. I am a strong believer in tolerance and justice and what I see here is these two things being abused. This man has abused our society, he has high jacked our tolerant society and stuck two fingers up at it. He has abused our justice system, and used the insidious European Human Rights Act (EHRA)to stay in this country when he should have been thrown out.

Imagine being Paul Houston, the father of Amy, how would you feel? This man was not asking that Mr Ibrahim serve a longer sentence, he just wanted him to be forced to leave this country. Mr Ibrahim's lawyers used Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which guarantees his right to a private and family life with his children. At the court hearing Ibrahim told the court that he had become a father figure to two children which his partner had had from a previous relationship, he said he even helped them with their homework . This was dismissed by the judge as 'clearly not credible' after Ibrahim admitted he could barely speak a word of English. The judge accepted that Ibrahim's behaviour was abhorrent and branded his evidence as contradictory and unsatisfactory, yet he still ruled in his favour. I find all of this absolutely incredible.

I suppose you could look at it through purely legal eyes and detach yourself from the emotion of the case, and I suppose these judges have to. But when you hear the evidence of Paul Houston it is very hard to do this, and I think you would have to be totally heartless and callous not to feel at least a little bit of sympathy with him. Paul Houston wrote this:

"On the evening of November 23 2003, Mr Ibrahim struck Amy. He didn't kill her outright, she was still conscious. She was fully aware of what was happening around her even though she had the full weight of the engine block of the car on top of her, she was crying because she was in a lot of pain...he could have at least tried to help.
Amy suffered for six hours before the doctors advised me to switch off the life support machine... it was highly unlikely she would survive and if she was to live she would be a 'cabbage'.
The image of Amy taking her final breath, dying a foot away from me as I sat by her bedside holding her hand praying for a miracle, will stay with me till the day I die"

What I can't get away from thinking is, what if that happened to me? What is even more heartbreaking is, Paul Houston for medical reasons cannot father anymore children and Amy was his only child. In all of this Paul Houston has asked this simple question, what about his right to a family? Ibrahim on that November day took that away from him.

I do believe this case and many others highlights the problem with the European Human Rights Act, according to government figures, 350 foreign criminals have escaped deportation under this so called human rights act, and we are talking about murderers and rapists. I believe it is about time we withdrew from the EHRA , as too often it has been abused by those who would have under normal circumstances been thrown out of the country.

David Cameron when in opposition said this "The problem for this (Labour) Government is that the Human Rights Act is their legislation and they appear to be blind to its failings. We ought to abolish the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights that we can write ourselves that sets out clearly our rights and responsibilities". Since these word were spoken Mr Cameron has done nothing about this scandal. Just a little aside, we already have an English Bill of Rights which was signed in 1679.

The main problem with the EHRA is, it is probably one of the most ambiguous pieces of legislation ever created. In each country around Europe they interpret it differently, but unfortunately for us our judges seem to take so called 'human rights' to the extreme. They almost seem to think that anyone who commits any crime has the right to a three course meal, a TV, selection of DVDs, use of gym facilities and off course the right to vote. I just feel that justice has been turned on its head when someone can commit so many crimes and not serve one day in prison, and has only served 4 months for killing someone. I have spoken to a number of people about this and I get the same reaction, and that is disgust and a sense of powerlessness. Many people feel that those who are in power do not care and do not listen. When we end up with people feeling like this I believe the country can go one of two ways and that is either total apathy or anger, which could then lead to civil unrest.

I have mentioned before about civil unrest and I do believe it could come to this, because I do not feel the Government are listening to the people. If the people do not feel listened to they may react and it might end up with violence on the streets. This one case highlights how far the people who make and enforce our laws are removed from the people they are supposed to serve. This European Human Rights Act has had a corrosive effect on British life. If we want to continue to live in a tolerant society I believe the Government should repeal this law and bring back common sense to our judicial system.

Disappearing Britain

2010-12-14T04:40:00.000-08:00

In 1998 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) projected that the UK population would peak at about 65 million in 2051. The latest projection by the ONS revised in 2008 takes into account the unprecedented levels of immigration under Labour and says Britain's population will rise to 77 million by 2051. This really bothers me, we already live in a country which is overcrowded; many parts of the UK, particularly the South East, Midlands and areas around Lancashire are incredibly over populated. I went to see my parents who live in Grays Essex recently and I have to be honest I found it to be shocking how many people live in this area and how crowded it is. I drove to the Lakeside shopping centre which is about 4 miles down the road and it took me about half an hour to get there, because of the sheer weight of traffic.

A recent YouGov opinion poll revealed that the majority of British people are concerned at the current levels of immigration. Even a majority of Liberal voters, 55 per cent were concerned about the open door immigration policy.

We cannot carry on with the amount of immigration into this country. I read a recent leaflet form the Conservatives which was posted through a friends door, and it said immigration was now under control, what a load of rubbish. The truth is, it is not, the Government cannot stop anyone coming to this country from the EU and that is were the majority of immigrants come from. In 2014 under the Lisbon Treaty we will not be able to control immigration from anywhere in the world. The Government have made it no secret they want Turkey to join the EU; a country with a population of 72 million will have the right to move and live anywhere in the EU.

The reason most people are concerned about mass immigration is because Britain does not have the infrastructure to cope. More than 2 million homes will have to be built over the next 25 years, and with the current financial situation it is unlikely this can be achieved. All areas of Government are having to make cuts, even in front line services, the NHS has had its budget frozen which is basically a cut as most costs continue to rise, particularly drugs. Many of our schools are overcrowded and under increasing pressure and with more people coming into Britain this can only get worse. The MigrationWatch think tank estimates that more than a million additional places will be needed over the next decade, at a cost of over £100 billion. The Government are committed to spending £200 billion over the next 10 years on so-called green energy, which is not going to provide enough energy for our needs. The Government are committed to giving the EU over £100 billion over the next 5 to 10 years. With all of these cuts happening to front line services and our GDP shrinking, how on earth can we afford to carry on like this?

The Government are cutting the Welfare budget, which means many who are needy are going to be affected, yet we continue to allow more people into the country who are entitled to welfare. All local authorities are making cuts to every service, including front line services as that means the amount of money that councils have to spend is becoming less and less, yet the population is increasing and that small amount of money is having to go further and further. Does this make sense?

I believe, and I do not believe this is an exaggeration to say that something urgent needs to be done about this. If something isn't done soon, the ticking time bomb of public unrest will explode and will end in complete disaster. The recent YouGov poll reveals this to be true, many people are not just concerned about services and housing but are really concerned about the loss of identity, they are concerned about the loss of Britishness and do not support the huge demographic change immigration has brought.

Professor Coleman, who works with MigrationWatch says this. 'Some argue that a changed population would be for the better, and in any case inevitable in a globalised world. So long as there was an adequate degree of integration, a more diverse population would be more creative, innovative, stimulating, open-minded and tolerant'. This, says the professor, is a view 'that has become orthodox among the educated elite, though not with the UK population as a whole'. His comments register with a large majority of the population, as most feel they have never been consulted by politicians on whether they wanted over 3 million people to enter the UK between 1997 and 2010. And I am one of them!!

We have had no proper debate, as under New Labour anyone who raised concerns over the levels of immigration were shouted down as racist. The view of the elite was highlighted when Rochdale Grandmother Gillian Duffy raised her concerns with Gordon Brown at the election and was branded a bigot.

In a democracy it is only reasonable to be able to debate this, unfortunately our leaders no longer like debate and unless this changes we will eventually see a backlash. Whatever your view, nobody should disagree with someones desire to at least see the subject fully and maturely debated.

Students

2010-12-12T07:40:00.000-08:00

Students go on the warpath over tuition fees, the press are shouting from the roof tops that these students are wrong in what they are doing. Unfortunately the truth has been mired by what has happened, if you asked most people why the students are demonstrating they would probably say it is because these students are going to have to pay £9000 per year in fees. To most people that seems outrages that they are going to have to pay so much for an education. As usual there are more issues than this one simple point.

At the moment about 50 per cent of all school leavers go onto higher education, which if I am honest is far to many. If we go back in time to the mid 70's about 12 per cent of all school leavers went onto university, this of course meant those who graduated were likely to walk into a good job. Move forward to 2010 only a very few of those leaving after spending 3 years at university will end up with a good job. We are constantly told that those who go to university will earn more over their lifetime than someone who doesn't, to a certain point that may be true. If 50 per cent leave university with a degree they are likely to get a job eventually. Of the other 50 per cent who don't go to university some will get a job that isn't all that great, some will start at the bottom and work their way up and eventually earn a good wage and some will never work. If you take it as an average, yes those who do go to university will earn more than those who don't. But if you take those who leave school and get a job and put them against those who have got a run of the mill degree you will probably find that the university graduate does not earn anymore than the one who didn't get a degree.

In the 1970's and 80's Britain could afford to pay for people to go onto university because there were so few who were doing this, but with so many going onto university this is no longer possible. The question has to be asked, do we need so many people with degrees? And the simple answer is no, if all these people had a qualification which was of any use I would agree that it was a good idea for them to go to university. Those with degrees in engineering, science, Maths, law, etc can probably be sure they will eventually get a reasonable job. Those who have what is called a 'mickey mouse degree' from a 'mickey mouse university' will probably struggle to find any useful employment, that is the truth. I know many people with degrees and the majority of them do not earn any more than me, and will probably never do, and I do not earn a good wage, and that is my point. There has to be a point to going to university, I have discussed this point before so if you want to see what I think please look at my posting from May.

One of the placards which the students were holding said that they have the right to a free education, and they would be right. Up until the age of 18 they get a free education, after that they have a choice, either go and get a job or go onto higher education. Many would argue that because they are more likely to get a good job they will pay more in tax over the years in employment so they should be entitled to free university education. Of course as we know that is no longer the case, as I have said above. Some would argue that only the richest will be able to afford to do this, but that is not true, they do not have to pay the money up front and secondly they will only pay back the money if they get a job which pays over £21,000 a year. And once they start earning more than that they will only have to pay back about £7 a month, that doesn't sound too bad to me.

I believe our education system needs to be looked at and reformed, from the bottom up, many eleven year olds are leaving primary school not able to read, and we have far to many children getting such high results in their GCSE's. Surely that is a good thing? I hear you cry, but the problem is we have so many young people with A's and A*'s at GCSE and A Level it is very difficult to differentiate between those who are talented and who are not. It's almost like our school sports days in which everyone is given a prize and no one is allowed to be a loser.

We have so many universities now it is almost impossible to tell what is a good degree and what isn't, in the late 80's all polytechnics were allowed to call themselves university's so we have now ended up with too many pointless universities dishing out worthless degrees. It is about time our politicians spoke out about this, it is about time our education system was totally reformed, unfortunately I cannot see this happening, so the problems will continue.

We do have an unequal system in the United Kingdom, in Scotland students do not pay for their university education. If you come from a country within the EU and go to a Scottish university you do not pay, if you come from England and go to a Scottish University you pay, that does seem wrong to me. If you are Welsh you won't have to pay from next year, again that does seem rather unfair, so if you are a British tax payer and are English you are paying for the Scots and Welsh to get a free university education. I do think it strange that so many degrees run over 3 years when I am sure they could be reduced and secondly, having known a lot of people who have gone to university and seeing how much free time they have, surely they could get a part time job and work and pay for themselves.

I wrote about broken promises in my previous blog, and I do think Nick Clegg and his MP's who signed a pledge not to raise tuition fees have a lot to answer for. I don't think their excuses about not knowing the financial situation and about compromise hold much wait. The simple truth is they did not stick to their promise and I think this will come back to haunt them at the next election.

In September 2009 400,000 people graduated from university, this year it is even more, that means over the last year more than 800,000 young people entered the workplace and many of them will never put their degree to any use whatsoever. That seems to me to be a waste of three years, I would say to anyone thinking about going to university, don't take the decision lightly. And don't complain when after three years there isn't an employer with arms open and a job waiting. That might sound rather negative, but that is the truth.

Broken promises

2010-12-09T01:35:00.000-08:00

I think a lot of people had a lot of hope that this Government were going to be different to the previous one but unfortunately they are just the same. The only difference between the Conservatives, the Liberals and Labour is the names of their parties. One of the things New Labour will be remembered for is their; broken promises, lies and spin and as I have said above this Government are no different.

This Government have been in power now for about eight months and they have broken a number of election promises. I am going to list some of their broken promises.
1. The Liberals promised not to raise tuition fees.
2. The Tories promised proposals to get rid of the Human Rights Act.
3.They promised to repatriate powers back from Europe.
4. Mr Cameron said 'We have no plans to raise VAT', it goes up on January 1. Also Nick Clegg promised his party would not raise VAT.
5. The Tories had no plans to increase capital gains tax, which has already risen for higher rate tax payers.
6. Mr Cameron promised that anyone carrying a knife would expect a prison sentence, he set that one aside just this week.

Prior to the election there was no mention they would deprive people of child benefits. There was no mention of reducing prisoner numbers. Chris Huhne promised that his party would oppose the building of any new nuclear power stations, once in power he has changed his tune.

I have heard many excuses from our leaders for reneging on promises, one of them has been that they did not know the state of our finances, but this one does not really wash, no one can really take that excuse seriously. The line taken by both sides is that within a coalition you have to compromise, well if this is what having a coalition Government is about I'll be honest I do not really want one. Surely the whole point of having a manifesto is to stick to your pledges, what makes me so angry with how politicians have behaved over recent years, is that they promise so much and then when they get into power they do not follow through with so many of their promises.

What is the point of a manifesto if you do not follow through with your pledges! Every time a promise is broken and a politician is pulled up about it, the same old excuses are brought out. The same is true for this lot, they have used the financial situation, even though anyone with half a brain knew the state of our countries finances. They use the excuse of having to compromise within a coalition, but how long are they going to keep using this excuse.

This government have been in power for eight months and have broken so many promises, how many more promises are they going to break before the next election. I wonder what their legacy will be, will we look back on this Government and remember them for what they did or what they said and didn't do?

I am a great believer in honesty and integrity, and I know there are some politicians out there who still believe in these virtues, but unfortunately there are many who do not. I believe in life we all have choices to make, I know sometimes we promise our children we will do something and then circumstances overtake us and we then are not able to go through with our promise. I know running a country isn't an easy thing and sometimes circumstances can overtake a Government which are beyond their control. But a lot of these promises were made and as soon as they got elected they chose to either ignore them or make excuses why they could not follow them through.

What I have realised is that people do not like being lied to, we can understand that circumstances change which are beyond the Governments control. But what people do not want is for politicians to promise one thing and then do another time after time. I wonder how long people will put up with it, or will people just get so used to lying politicians that they will no longer care and not bother voting, let's hope not.

Global warming myths.

2010-12-05T07:44:00.000-08:00

Here we go again, the British Meteorological Office has stated that 2010 is on course to be the warmest or second warmest year since current records began, even though Britain and many parts of Europe have experienced one of the coldest Novembers on record. Many would argue that that is only Europe, what about the rest of the world? Well if you take the whole world into consideration and look at the data, you will quickly find out that there has been no increase in Global temperatures in 15 years.

One of the things I have argued in my short time doing this blog, is that it is important to look at the facts. Many people argue their point using emotive language, they argue using subjective opinion and base what they believe on what they hear from the media and don't look into it for themselves.

Global warming is a good example of this, as I have said above the Met Office have stated that global warming is still happening, but if you spend a little time and research it for yourself you will very quickly find that the truth is somewhat different. I want to ask one question, how long do we have to see global temperatures not rise before the argument in favour of man-made global warming starts to collapse?

An interesting point about the global warming discussion is the recent photo publish by the warmists of a mother polar bear carrying its pup on its back. This was published by a global warming lobbyist group to suggest that this was more proof that global warming was happening. This of course has proved nothing, as this was taken in July 2006 by a Mrs Angela Plumb. Jon Aars, a Norwegian polar bear specialist has said that polar bears have been doing this for years. So what does this prove? As usual, absolutely nothing!

Micheal Mann, one of the warmists leading lights and the author of the infamous 'hockey stick graph'. This was the graph that Al Gore, in his film An Inconvenient Truth used to show that global temperatures stayed the same for about 2000 years and then suddenly rose in the latter part of the twentieth century. He has finally admitted there was a 'medieval warm period' around 1000 AD and the world was hotter than it is now.

Even Phil Jones, of the Climate Research Unit, and someone who has pushed forward the theory of global warming has admitted that there has been 'no statistical significant warming' since 1995.

I am fed up with propaganda, in whatever area that is, unfortunately spin and propaganda has been around for years and will probably never change. It is important that we find out and research things for ourselves and don't just believe what some so called expert says. It isn't really that difficult to find out things for yourself, especially with the internet. So I would urge anyone who is interested to spend a little time researching and you will quickly find that the reality can be totally different to what you hear in the media.

Corruption

2010-12-03T08:45:00.001-08:00

I heard some very good news yesterday, England didn't win the right to host the World Cup. To be honest I am not surprised, FIFA is probably one of the most corrupt organisations on this planet. For years journalists have been trying to highlight the corruption within this organisation. FIFA behaves with total immunity and flies to many countries around the world and are accorded huge status by Prime Ministers, Presidents and other world leaders.

On Monday BBC's Panorama showed in full detail the activities of this odious organisation; it produced evidence of huge amounts of bribery. This programme also produced evidence that FIFA insist that countries change their laws, including one, governing Banks and Foreign Exchange Operations. FIFA had asked for 'the unrestricted import and export of all foreign currencies to and from the UK'. And the UK Government agreed to this, so if England had hosted the World Cup, FIFA executives were free to move around with sacks of unexplained cash and customs would not be allowed to ask any questions.

After Panorama's programme (The Times had also been investigating FIFA) on Monday, many people within England's bid team were critical of the BBC, including Government Ministers. David Beckham, David Cameron and, Prince William were quite happy to cosy up to the leaders of FIFA and even ignore what the BBC had said. Andy Anson, the leader of England's bid had spent the previous year railing against anyone who criticised football's governing body as unpatriotic. He is now railing against FIFA's executive committee and is calling them duplicitous.

That is the reason I am happy England lost the right to hold the World Cup. I feel that in some way those who have cosied up to the FIFA executives and ignored their behaviour to be as guilty as they are. People criticised the timing of the Panorama programme, but if they had shown it after Thursday nothing would have been said and this would have been just another BBC programme. The people who decided to show this programme when they did, did us all a favour; hopefully there might be some investigation into the behaviour of FIFA and the power it holds. I personally think that a separate organisation should be set up and all FIFA executives should stand trial.

England lost out to Russia, probably one of the most corrupt countries in the world, I think that sums up FIFA. The 2022 World Cup is to be held in Qatar, a country with a population of 1.7 million, an oil rich country whose day time temperatures in the summer can rise to over 50 degrees Celsius (even the best athlete in the world would struggle to run around for ninety minutes in that heat). Russia has a long history of racism and FIFA talks about stamping out racism, that of course didn't matter, the fans do not matter, money of course is the overriding drive behind this organisation of crooks.

England tried to sell their bid on the basis of the legacy it would leave, believe you me FIFA do not care. I shouldn't think there is one altruistic bone in any FIFA executives body, I don't suppose they would even know what the word means. What legacy did the South Africa World Cup bring, when 50 per cent of the population remain below the poverty line. Russia banned all exports of wheat for fear of famine this winter and is now going to spend millions on building nine new stadiums, what are the locals going to eat, concrete?

What I feel is the most disappointing thing in all of this is not that England lost out to hosting the World Cup. It is that the England delegation, including the Prime Minister and our Government danced to the tune of this putrid organisation. They have spent the last few months schmoozing, lobbying and bending over backwards to every demand of these hideous group of people. What I wonder would the British Government have done to achieve the hosting of the World Cup. I don't suppose selling their soul to the devil and agreeing to sacrifice everything they hold dear would have been to much. If these people had asked to sleep with every member of the English bid teams wives including; Kate Middleton, Victoria Beckham and Samantha Cameron would they have agreed to it? I wonder!

So while there are many who feel disappointed in losing out to Russia and Qatar, don't be too deflated. At least it has now been highlighted how corrupt this organisation is and we can be proud that our press has the freedom to report this sort of corruption unlike the press in Russia and Qatar. Let them have the World Cup, better to save your integrity than to sacrifice it on the alter of greed and corruption.

A few concerns

2010-11-29T03:12:00.000-08:00

Recently I was told I could be made redundant in the very near future, I must be honest I was a little surprised by this as I always thought my job was safe. I suppose what bothers me most about this news is, if I could lose my job that means almost anyone could lose theirs. My job is a front line job, I suppose it is one of those jobs that every society needs to function. The situation is this, all local authorities have been told they have to save money, and Suffolk Fire and Rescue has got to make about 25 per cent savings over the next 4 years. Suffolk fire and Rescue has the smallest budget per person of any fire service in the UK and 75 per cent of its budget goes on wages, as you can imagine there aren't really any savings to be made, this means front line fire fighters will have to be cut.

Putting aside my personal feelings about my job and its uncertainties, what concerns me is that with our countries parlous financial situation why are we continuing to give more and more money away? Why is our Government not looking to protect British workers? What I have come to realise is that for an awful lot of people, if something doesn't effect them they are not really bothered about it. So for example the issue of Travellers buying a field and building a permanent camp on it is something that for most people does not effect them so they are not bothered. But if one day you woke up to find a group travellers setting up camp on your doorstep you would be bothered and I am sure even those who are very politically correct would soon be complaining.

I just wanted to look at a few areas and ask the question, why are we as a country continuing to put up with it? I have in the past talked about waste, and I am sure with some very simple auditing we as a country could save billions. What I continue to find amazing is that people are not talking about the elephant in the room, and that is immigration. If you have read my blog before you might be thinking, 'here he goes again, same old same old, think of something new to say'. But I just wanted to look at it again, because until someone starts to do something about it I will continue to write about it.

Over the years we have been told that immigration continues to bring benefits, but having looked into it, it is quite obvious that there are no obvious benefits. I have said this before but I want to reiterate it; there are currently 2.5 million unemployed in this country, the Government are looking to remove 1.5 million off incapacity benefits onto the unemployment register. Public sector cuts will mean that about 500,000 people will lose their jobs and the possible knock on effect will be another 500,000 losing their jobs in the private sector because many private companies rely on public sector work. There you have nearly 5 million unemployed including many graduates and over a million 16-24 year olds, why on earth do we need more immigrants? On top of this, with the continued influx of foreigners there is more pressure on our schools; I was talking to a friend who works in a school which has a lot of immigrants from many different countries and she was telling me it is very difficult to teach these children because many do not speak a word of English. Can you imagine sending your English speaking child to this school, what sort of education are they going to get when the teacher has to spend so much time focusing on the non English speakers?

With the added pressure of having smaller budgets, local authorities are having to make the money go further, and with a rising population this means every individual will have less money spent on them. As you can imagine it will be the poorest and most vulnerable who will be effected the most, as they are the ones who rely on services more than the wealthy.

Most local authorities continue to waste huge sums, there has been no change in many of our chief executives wages and public sector bodies continue to pay extravagantly. I was talking to someone recently and they were telling me that a head teacher of a state school near where his family lives is paid £200,000 a year, that is more than the Prime Minister. As much as I think teachers do a good job, I do not think that a head of a comprehensive school should be paid so much.

There are many things which concern me, I read every week of huge waste, of people being employed doing non jobs, and what I find so amazing is that when these concerns are raised by local tax payers and the press the local authority spokesman issue the same platitudes, about value for money and understanding peoples concerns.

I wonder at what point people will start to take direct action; recently we had students going on the rampage, I personally don't think it is everyones right to go onto higher education. Having seen so many people I know leaving university with a degree that is as much use as a chocolate teapot and struggle to get a job I do think this issue needs to be seriously looked at. But there is a point here about people starting to fight back, with so much pressure on so many people I do believe something will eventually give. We have many countries throughout Europe on the verge of bankruptcy, we have already watched as Greece and Ireland have had to go cap in had to the EU and IMF. It is very likely that Portugal will be next and Spain, Italy and Belgium are not looking very safe either. If these countries go under there is no way their economies will be saved by the EU. When this happens I believe we could potentially have massive civil unrest.

The UK is not out of the woods by any means, and for many they have not felt the effect but none of us knows the future. I believe that unless our leaders start to listen to the people and start to do something about the issues I have spoken about our country could well head in the same direction as many other countries, and then we could end up with massive civil unrest as well. I know that sounds very gloomy but until our leaders start being honest, start listening and start doing something I believe we could see this happening.

Utopian ideals

2010-11-22T00:51:00.000-08:00

Over recent years we have seen the introduction of more and more legislation in every area of our lives, it seems those who sit in the seats of power think they know best. To confirm this they legislate and regulate everything, the last Government brought in 1000's of new laws, the amount of new legislation coming out of the EU increased hugely. You would think with all these new laws and increasing controls our society would be a better place to live, we would have; less crime, a better standard of living, fantastic education, a fantastic health service and generally all round well being and happiness. Actually you would think this would almost make our society into a utopian paradise in which everyone obeys the law of the land, no one is discriminated against, no one feels any fear and everyone lives in harmony with their neighbours. Of course this isn't happening, why is that?

I don't think there is one clear answer to this huge question, I do believe there are some fundamental problems within our society that no legislation is going to change. A lot of the laws that are brought in are a knee jerk reaction to some event, eg anti terrorism laws; it's interesting that for about 30 years we had terrorists committing some sort of violent act practically everyday somewhere in the UK, yet we didn't see an increase in legislation to do with restricting our freedoms, yet one act in July 2005 galvanised the Government to bring in greater controls over our lives.

Society has changed massively since the sixties, you could almost say there has been a revolution. If you took someone who was living in the early sixties and transported them to 2010 they wouldn't recognise this country. There has been huge changes in every area of our lives, not just technological, but in societies attitudes. Kate Adie (the TV journalist) grew up in Sunderland in the 1960's and she worked in the most impoverished area of that city, but she said one of the overriding memories from that time was people's kindness. Move forward 45 years and I wonder if the same could be said, probably not.

One thing which has changed massively is peoples attitudes to marriage and pregnancy. Again if you go back in time to the fifties you would not find very many unmarried mothers, you would probably not find anyone co-habiting. Some people would probably argue that what we have now is better because there isn't the stigma surrounding single mothers, and in some ways they would be right. But I believe that with this lack of stigma and shame we have condemned many children to grow up in broken families, and I do mean the word condemned. The facts speak for themselves, 80 per cent of all young offenders come from single parent (usually single mother) families. More relationships break up with those who are co-habiting than those who married, this brings huge social problems as those who grow up without the love of two parents do not know what a good family should look like.

This country has the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Europe, why is that? You would think with all this legislation and education we would see the levels of teenage pregnancy drop, unfortunately not. The previous Government spent huge amounts of money on advisers on; teenage pregnancy, sex education, the morning after pill, relationship councillors and many other groups but it hasn't made any difference, teenage pregnancy in this country continue to rise, and we continue to see an increase in absent fathers.

I believe the Government have focused on the wrong thing, we had 13 years of a Labour Government who threw huge sums of money at childcare and encouraged more mothers to go to work, this means many children do not see their parents for the majority of the day. The Government spent huge amounts of money on welfare and benefits, and without thinking about it, encouraged welfare dependency. This meant it was better for someone to stay on benefits and keep having children than to go to work; now I am not saying the majority of people who have more than one child are doing it to get more money, but it would be interesting if people only got child benefits for two children.

As I have said above, the last Government brought in huge amounts of legislation, I think looking at what has happened in our society you have to come to the conclusion that it hasn't worked. What I find frustrating is the Government seems to think they know best and if we look at the last 20 years it is quite obvious that they do not. I do not believe the problems within our society can be solved by legislating and controlling peoples lives more and more, and until those who sit in power realise this I don't think things will change or get better.

Deceit!!

2010-11-19T01:15:00.000-08:00

It is interesting that many people continue to believe the EU is some sort of benevolent organisation with only the welfare of all Europeans as its main concern. I hope you realise that isn't true, I have for a number of years now questioned the legitimacy of the EU and its ability to run our lives. Not only its ability to run our lives but its right to, one of the main reasons I am against the EU is this: at no point has anyone in this country been told the real reason behind the EU, the only people who have been given the opportunity to decide our countries destiny is our politicians. You could argue that they are our elected representatives and they are the ones who are paid to make difficult choices, and they are the ones who run our country. But at no point have any of the electorate been allowed to have a say in the direction our country is going. Hugh Gaitskell (Labour leader in 1961) said this "We must be clear about this; it does mean, if this is the idea, the end of Britain as an independent European state... it means the end of a thousand years of history. You may say "let it end". But my goodness, it is a decision which needs a little care and thought"

What infuriates me more than anything is the huge deceit, I am a strong believer in honesty, however unpalatable. What I have come to realise is that so many of our politicians do not like honesty, we only have to look at the expenses affair to confirm that. This is not a new thing, many politicians have lied over the years and I would say one of the greatest liars was Ted Heath, the Prime Minister who took us into the Common Market.

In 1970 he said this "There will be no blue print for a federal Europe".

In 1971 he said "There is no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty" and "There are some in this country who fear that, in going into Europe, we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified".

In 1975 "There is no danger of a single currency"

1 November 1991 in an interview with Peter Sissons

Sissons"The single currency, the United States of Europe: was that on your mind when you took Britain in?"
Heath "Of course yes".

There you have it, Ted Heath, our elected Prime Minister, the man who was elected to represent Britain's best interests and the British people, lied and gave away our power to unelected foreigners. And subsequent Prime Ministers have continued this tradition. Since the time of Ted Heath the EU has expanded and has continued to grab more and more power; even when countries in Europe are given the opportunity to have a referendum on anymore transfers of power, the EU ignores the outcome of the referendum and makes them have another vote or just goes ahead with it anyway. The one country which would probably vote against anymore power being handed over to the EU has never been given a say, and that is the UK. Right from the start we have been lied to and continue to be lied to.

Many people within this country think we are more intelligent and more enlightened than previous generations. We live in a time when the ability to gain information is unparalleled, I can go onto the internet and find information on anything. We live in a time of 24 hour news coverage, we have many people who class themselves as experts in many fields who appear regularly on TV and write for newspapers. Many in this generation are growing up believing we are the most privileged of any previous generation. To me this shows how great the deceit has been, even when I talk to intelligent rational people they still believe the EU is a good thing, they still believe the EU is some organisation that occasionally brings out some stupid regulation but has no real effect upon our nation. Many people still think our Government still runs the country, but as you can imagine our ability to control our destiny has been gradually eroded and our ability to govern ourselves has been given away.

Here is a list of powers which have been ceded and are irreversible as long as we remain in the EU. Some have been handed totally to the EU, some are nearly there and some are a little while off yet but will eventually be handed over.

Fishing and farming - EU 100% total control
Trade - EU 100% total control
Legal Supremacy - EU 100% total control

We still control these areas but are under steadily encroaching EU control:

Law making
Criminal justice
Policing
Economy
Local Government
Finance (the Government are allowing the EU to regulate our finance industry, so it won't be long before that will be under 100% control)
Business red tape (over the past 20 years thousands of businesses have closed because of EU regulations)
Defence (We have just signed a defence treaty with the French, we are very close to handing our armed forces over to the EU)
Foreign policy (The EU now has its own foreign diplomats and foreign affairs secretary which will soon supersede our own diplomats)
Social health & education policy
Tax (it won't be long before the EU controls this, they are making noises about controlling our ability to to raise and lower taxes)

You might think that is okay but having seen what has happened over the past 40 years, I know if we do not leave this organisation we will lose total control. With loss of control, the people can no longer decide their own destiny and can no longer remove the Government. If you can no longer remove the Government that means we are then living under a dictatorship, and I don't know about you but I like freedom of speech and democracy.

65 years ago World War 2 ended, thousands of men and women died fighting against a tyrannical regime; they died in the name of freedom. After the war the Soviet Union ruled half of Europe for 45 years and brought misery to the lives of millions, they did not like people to have freedom. Ironically 65 years after the end of the worse war this world has ever seen and 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, we are now closer to living under a regime that does not believe in freedom and democracy and the majority of the people who are living under this nefarious organisation cannot see it. I believe this is the greatest deceit in human history.

Ambition, lies and selfishnes

2010-11-12T02:39:00.000-08:00

It is interesting how people can put their own interests above the interests of other people. Many people think only of themselves and what they can get out of life rather than what is better for the greater good. I know this isn't a new thing but what I have noticed as I have got older is that many people have got to the position they have got to, not through ability but because they have 'towed the party line' or have walked over someone else.

In every walk of life many have forged ahead and achieved a lot for themselves and many have achieved much for others, I wonder which category you fall into. I wonder if you were asked to compromise your beliefs, would you do it? Most people would answer no to that question, but I wonder if you were told that if you didn't compromise it would affect your job or life would you then do it?

What I have realised is that many people are unwilling to speak out, for fear it will have a detrimental affect upon them, their family, their career, etc. I believe it is very important to speak out against what is wrong and not to compromise your principles. Edmund Burke famously said "All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do NOTHING", I believe this is true.

Over the years many many nations have been ruled by tyrannical regimes, there are countries today which have rulers who are only bothered about maintaining power and not bothered about anything else. There are many people who own and work for large companies who are only bothered about making as much money as possible, and are not bothered how this effects others. There are many people who work for public sector bodies who have lined and continue to line their pockets with your money and mine, and who behave with total disregard to those they are paid to serve. This issue of selfish ambition is not a new thing and I do not believe we will ever see the end of it but I do believe it is important to speak out, because if we don't, those who are evil will prevail.

I have been writing this blog now for nearly nine months and as you may have realised I don't really write about my life and what I am up to, I write about mostly political things. The reason I write about this is because that is what I am really interested in (obviously), what I want to to do is highlight what is wrong, and hopefully make you think and hopefully not just think but act as well.

I have an obsession with the EU and its wrongs and I have written many times about this, I have tried to show people that this organisation is not interested in the people of Europe but only about furthering its own ambitions. It is run by people who are only bothered about feathering their own nests and about maintaining power and as the saying goes 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely', and I can see this happening.

What I believe is important is that people investigate things for themselves and don't just listen to the propaganda that we get from so many media organisations. I think most people would agree that most newspapers have an agenda and that you cannot believe everything you read in them, I would say this is also true for the BBC. I mentioned in my previous post about spin, lets be honest here it is just lies dressed up in fancy language.

I want to leave you with this. At the moment the EU is walking towards financial oblivion, and no one is really talking about it. If anyone does talk about it, as some have been in the EU parliament they have been shouted down as scaremongers and dissenters. I want to mention it briefly here, then I will go into greater detail in a later post. Earlier this year Greece's economy nearly disappeared into financial oblivion, the EU bailed them out, but unfortunately this is not going to make any difference in the long term. When the money runs out Greece will be in the same position it was earlier this year and the EU will not bail them out. Ireland have just gone to the EU for money because their economy is nearly bankrupt, Spain, Portugal and Italy are nearly at the bankruptcy stage, and will probably have to go to the EU for handouts. Not many people know this, and you don't hear this on the news, but unfortunately for the people of Europe this is going to effect us all.

I believe the main reason for all of these problems is because of pure selfishness and the ambition of a few unsavoury individuals. These people have put their dream of an ever closer Europe which is ruled from Brussels above anything else. I believe the EU will eventually collapse, I believe this because it has been built upon peoples own ambitions, upon selfishness and upon lies. I am going to repeat what I have said before; this organisation is run by thieves, liars and crooks and you usually find with these type of people they do not care about anything else except themselves.

Complete Capitulation!

2010-11-10T04:41:00.000-08:00

One of the things I have come to realise is that it doesn't really matter who is in power they are not going to stand up for British interests. Since Ted Heath took us into the Common Market we have had one Prime Minister after another surrender power to unelected bureaucrats. What has always amazed me is that they always spin the same lie and this is how the lie is spun:

'It is at first denied that any radical new plan exists; it is then conceded that it exists but ministers swear blind that it is not even on the political agenda; it is then noted that it might well be on the agenda but it is not a serious proposition; it is then conceded that it is a serious proposition, but that it will never be implemented; after that it is acknowledged that it will be implemented but in such a diluted form that it could make no difference to the lives of ordinary people; and at some point it is finally recognised that it has made such a difference, but it was always known that it would and voters were told from the outset'.

Since 1973 this country has watched powerless as our elected representatives have continued to give power away but have never once let the people of Britain have a say in whether we want to relinquish more power. I feel incredible anger towards our MP's whose salaries we pay, who are supposed to represent our best interests but seem more bothered about excepting the rule of unelected people.

I thought New Labour were bad, I thought it couldn't possibly get any worse but David Cameron has shown his true colours. In six months as Prime Minister he has given way and surrendered on a number of fronts. David Cameron's first surrender came before he was Prime Minister; he gave us, the British people a 'cast iron guarantee' that we would have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, he very quickly reneged on that promise. He used the excuse that there was no point giving us a referendum since the treaty was already ratified. The question has to be asked 'why did he give the promise when he new it was going to be ratified?' Anyone with any political awareness new it was going to be ratified before he won power, so that was the start of his empty promises.

Next we had David Cameron promising that he would give the British people a referendum on any more power being handed to Brussels, another empty promise! This year his Government voted through the European Investigation Order, this gives power to foreign countries and means anyone in this country can be investigated by someone from outside Britain. They can enter this country and ask the police for YOUR information and there is nothing anyone in this country can do to stop them. I don't know about you but that sounds like handing power to the EU!

He promised he would cap immigration, not only has he not capped immigration but he is going to have to allow people to come to this country from outside the EU and there is nothing he can do to stop them. He has agreed to allow people to come to this country from Bosnia Herzigova, Albania and India, again another promise he has not kept! He has also promised this week that he would kick out foreign criminals after they have served their sentence, how many of these people do you think will be made to leave? I don't think I need to say.

He promised he would get the EU to freeze their budget this year, again he could not deliver on that promise and he called a 2.9 per cent a 'SPECTACULAR SUCCESS', I hardly think giving £450 million to a group of thieves, liars and crooks is a success. Just a little aside, if anyone knows anything about the EU this won't surprise you; today the EU have announced that the EU's auditors have refused to sign off the EU's budget now for the 16th year in a row. They have only signed off 8 per cent, and we are going to give them an extra £450 million on top of £8.3 billion we are already giving this year!

David Cameron has allowed the EU to regulate our financial sector this year, practically the only profit making part of our economy. He is going to allow people who have no record or experience in finance to regulate the largest financial centre in the world. David Cameron and George Osborne signed away our ability to regulate ourselves without so much as a murmur.

In the last week David Cameron signed a defence co-operation treaty with the French, this is the first step towards an EU army; this will mean that if any of our people are threatened in a foreign country the British Government cannot send troops to aide them unless the French give their say so. David Cameron says this will have no affect upon our ability to defend our interests but looking at what he has said in the past few months you know that they are only words and he does not mean any of it. David Cameron failed to mention that Britain's ability to defend itself and act by itself was effectively ended on December 4 1998 in St Malo when Tony Blair signed the St Malo agreement. This basically means the EU have created their own armed forces and the fact that British troops sign allegiance to the Queen is a complete irrelevance. William Hague said this in 1998 when leader of the Conservatives: 'Like the little boy who cried wolf too many times, nobody now believes the Prime Minister when he says he will fight to protect Britain's interests in Europe'. Don't you think he could be saying this now to our current Prime Minister?

Now back to broken promises. In the run up to the general election David Cameron promised to pass a 'British Bill of Rights', and of course has now broken that promise and will not deliver the promised Bill of Rights. David Cameron's claim that he had no choice but to give into the demands of a nutter and give votes to prisoners (Ian Huntley will now be able to vote) does make me incredibly angry. He knows he could have done something, he could have pulled out of the Strasbourg court, but like his predecessors he preferred the easy option and gave in. David Cameron has made a habit over recent times of making promises, I generally find that when I make a promise I stick to it, and before I make a promise I always make sure I can stick to it.

There we have a list of broken promises, and he has only been in power for six months. This sums up this rather pathetic and feeble man.

Immigration, again!

2010-11-08T01:49:00.000-08:00

I wanted to quickly look at this issue again because I believe it is very important. In the last two weeks figures have been released that show nearly nine out of ten jobs created by Labour went to foreign workers. Figures released by the Office of National Statistics have shown that under Labour 2 million jobs were created, of those 1.8 million went to those classed as 'non-UK born'. Under Labour foreign-born workers nearly doubled from 7 per cent to 13 per cent.

Andrew Green, chairman of the Migrationwatch think-tank said 'as long as foreign skills can be obtained "off the shelf", employers will have no incentive to train British workers'. I think this highlights a really big problem within our society, we have many young people who would love a job, but unfortunately it is easier for an employer to employ someone who is coming from abroad.

The facts speak for themselves, in 1997 there were just over 26 million people aged between 16-64 in employment. Of those 1,946,000 were foreign born, leaving 24,058,000 born in the UK. By the same period this year, the total in jobs was up more than two million, to 28,107,000. Of those 3,787,000 were born abroad, and 24,314,000 born in the UK. This means 88 per cent of the rise in employment was accounted for by foreign workers.

Immigration Minister Damien Green said 'These figures show just why the Government is introducing a limit on immigration, so that new jobs are available for UK workers'. Let's be honest here, this is a load of rubbish, firstly we cannot stop workers coming from the EU, and that is where the majority of foreign workers are coming from. Secondly, Gordon Brown introduced a points based system, but under his leadership foreign workers actually increased by about 20 per cent and foreign students by about 30 per cent.

Last week the EU announced a deal with India, this will allow Indian firms to transfer unlimited numbers of staff to the the UK without first offering the posts to British workers. So not only can we not control those who are coming to this country from the EU, not only can we not put British workers before those who come from within the EU, we will not be able to put British workers before those who come from India. This blows a massive whole in David Cameron's boast about controlling immigration.

Another thing. We are constantly being told by David Cameron that his Government will only allow those workers to come into the country that we need to fill skilled posts. This has been shown to be untrue as well, Home Office figures have shown that just one in four of the 18,780 'highly skilled' migrants allowed in last year managed to find a highly skilled job. He would argue that that was under Labour, but having seen how often he has acquiesced I cannot see this changing.

I know I have covered this subject before but until someone starts to tell the truth about this subject, until someone starts to do something about mass immigration, until someone starts to listen to the British people I will keep writing about it!!

Oaths

2010-11-04T03:35:00.000-07:00

The word oath is rather an old fashioned word and basically means 'a solemn promise'. There are some professions that require an oath before you start e.g. MPs, doctors, those in the armed forces, but on the whole the thought of making an oath for most of us is strange. Our society has changed over recent years; since the sixties things have moved on quite rapidly, and recently there has been a drive from our leaders to change almost everything. It seems to me that our Government and particularly the previous Government seemed to look at everything that happened in the past as bad. If you look at 'New Labours' record you will see that they tried to change Britain totally. With the influx of immigrants 'New Labour' tried and I think almost succeeded in destroying certain parts of our society. They tried to destroy Parliamentary traditions; one of the things Tony Blair did was change Prime Ministers question time from being a twice weekly affair to once a week. His Government changed the House of Lords and also brought in a 'Supreme Court', as if the old way of doing things was bad.

I have highlighted just a few things there but if we look at our history you will quickly find many, many things have changed. I am not against change, I just do not see the reason for changing things for changes sake, which is what I believe has happened in a lot of cases.

I believe it is very important that if we agree to something we shouldn't change our mind. I believe that as our society evolves we need to keep some absolutes and I believe one of these is marriage and the 'marriage vows or oath'. When I married Val I went into my marriage with the clear intention of being married to her until the day I die. I have been married for over 13 years and I love her to bits. Within our society many people no longer marry and many of those who do marry end up getting divorced. I believe that over recent years the marriage vows have been said without much thought as to what is being said. Here is a version of the marriage vows:

I, ____, take you, ____, to be my (husband/wife). I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honour you all the days of my life. I, ____, take you, ____, for my lawful (husband/wife), to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.

Today for many people those words are just that, words, they do not consider what they are saying. Over recent times these words have been diluted to the point that people do not even consider them to be a vow or an oath. I am a Christian and unfortunately I know many Christian marriages which have ended in divorce; I know that sometimes there are irreconcilable differences, I know there can be severe problems within any marriage. I know that one partner can be abusive, a partner can commit adultery, there are many reasons people can divorce. I am not against divorce, and I do understand why some people get divorced. What I do not understand is why someone who makes a solemn oath does not commit to that oath, and what I do not understand is if someone commits adultery and divorces their wife, for example, how can they then remarry and repeat vows to the person they are marrying that they said to their previous wife!!!!

Think about it, you make an oath, a promise, a vow, a covenant, call it what you like to 'forsake all others until death us do part', think about those words and what they mean. And then after you have left your wife and run off with another woman you decide to get married to them and you repeat those same words, don't you think that is a bit perverse? As a Christian the marriage vows take on an added level because not only do you make an oath unto your wife but you make an oath unto God. To me this makes adultery and divorce even more repellent, then add to this repellent behaviour you then marry the person you have committed adultery with in a religious ceremony and repeat vows that you made in your previous marriage.

If you start to think about the oath and what is said during the marriage ceremony, and what you as the couple are saying it really is important. They are not 'just words', they are a covenant which, as is said within the marriage ceremony 'no-one should enter into lightly'.

Society has changed and is constantly changing but that does not mean that everything that went on in the past was bad or old fashioned or out of date. I believe God created marriage for a reason and I believe that in our modern day, ever changing world we need things which do not change. As society continues to change I believe marriage is something that can hold society together and bring stability into many peoples lives, especially children. The facts speak for themselves, more relationships break down from those who are co-habiting than those are married. Children need stability and marriage brings that. So if you are not married and are thinking about getting married, don't enter into into it lightly, because when you make those vows they are lifelong.

FURIOUS!!!!

2010-10-30T03:23:00.001-07:00

The reason I started this blog was for two reasons, firstly to vent some of my frustration, and hoping it would have a cathartic affect and secondly to put out a different opinion and hopefully make people think. I thought the words Power to the People would help anyone who reads this understand that I want the truth and empower people to look for it themselves.

One of the problems I have with our society is the total lack of truth coming out of our politicians mouths, this week we had a prime example from David Cameron. Our Prime Minister has tried to sell us a lie, he has followed the example of so many of his predecessors. Yesterday David Cameron claimed that letting the EU increase their budget by an extra 2.9 per cent was a 'spectacular success'. I don't know how anyone can claim that giving away an extra £450 million a success let alone a spectacular success!

The main problem I have is that this year our net contribution to the EU will be £8.3 billion, and next year that will rise to over £10 billion. Add to this Tony Blair's sell out on our rebate, this means that our net contribution will rise to over £13 billion by 2013. At the moment we contribute £45 million a day, that will mean we will give the EU over the next 5 years £82 billion, I find this quite repulsive!!

Let's look at a few details, I have mentioned this before but the EU's auditors have refused to sign off the EU's budget for the past 15 YEARS, unfortunately this is going to continue. At what point will anyone be brought to account for the billions of pounds of our money that is going missing every year!

You have to understand that the majority of those working within the EU have no understanding of what it is like for ordinary people. It wants £512 million to cover its salaries and allowances next year. Interestingly EU bureaucrats do not have to pay for their meals in their canteens, that means you and I pay. It costs over £400 million a year to have a building in Strasbourg sitting empty for over 40 weeks of the year just to please the French. The EU now want an extra £10 million a year just for new buildings for the new EU foreign service.

Mr Cameron claimed that he stopped the European juggernaut yesterday, but in August this year the French and Germans said they wanted the budget increase to be limited to 2.9 per cent and David Cameron wanted a freeze. How on earth has he stopped this so called juggernaut when most people who are involved within the EU know that the likely increase to the EU's budget will probably end up being even higher!

Now let's get back to that 'spectacular success' David Cameron was talking about. Last week his Government announced £83 billion cuts, this means that a possible 490,000 people are going to lose their jobs. I would like Mr Cameron to go and knock on every persons door who loses their job over the next 5 years and justify to them why he is giving so much money to unaccountable people. I would like this man to justify to every man and women in this country why he is giving every year over £16 billion to the EU. I would like him to justify the closure of; fire stations, police stations, the lack of funds for schools, social services, the elderly and then try and call the giving of an extra £450 million a year a spectacular success!!! What I find so amazing is that every country within the EU is having to make cuts yet the EU are increasing their budget.

David Cameron has called this a success, it is like rejoicing after being mugged and having your wallet, watch and jewellery stolen and being left with your just your clothes. Unfortunately for us David Cameron has followed the tradition of so many of our Prime Ministers and he has caved into the EU, even Margaret Thatcher did this on occasion.

President Sarkozy and Angela Merkel have proposed a new treaty and the likelihood is we will get one. David Cameron announced that he would give the people a referendum on any transfers of new powers to the EU, this new treaty will involve the transfer of economic sovereignty to the European central Bank. David Cameron has said that there is no need for a referendum because a new treaty will not entail a further shift of sovereignty from Westminster to Brussels as we are not part of the euro. This is not quite the truth, European Commissioner Olli Rehn has already said that stringent new rules should apply to all member states including Britain. Remember the Government have already yielded power to the EU when they agreed to opt-in to the European Investigation order, which allows prosecuters from other members states unprecedented powers of investigation over British citizens. If this isn't a transfer of power I don't know what is

I have written a number of times about the EU, I have tried to paint a picture of what the reality of this organisation is. I have spoken to many people about how this organisation behaves and what their ultimate goal is. What I have found is that most people do not believe me or at the very least think I am exaggerating, well I hope this has finally proved that I am not.

I want to remind you of the EU's behaviour over the past 20 years and what they think of democracy. In 1990 the Danish people were made to vote again after they voted against the Mastricht Treaty. In 2002 the Irish were made to vote again after they voted against the Treaty of Nice. In 2005 the French and Dutch rejected the EU Constitution, the EU changed the name and called it the Lisbon Treaty. The Lisbon Treaty is basically the same thing, the French and Dutch were not allowed to vote again. In 2009 the Irish were made to vote again on the Lisbon Treaty after they voted against it. This sums up this bunch of crooks, liars and thieves, I make no apology for my language as this is the truth!!

Finally, I wanted to put to bed the lie about immigration having a beneficial affect to our economy. This week The Office of National Statistics has announced that 9 out 10 jobs created in the past 13 years has gone to foreign workers. Many British citizens who were working doing unskilled jobs are now on benefits. I have written about this before, but I want to look at a few other points which I will leave for another posting.

Execution

2010-10-28T04:27:00.002-07:00

As you can imagine this subject is a very controversial subject, there are many who will argue that executing people is just legalised murder. I hold a different view, I have for a long time felt that we should reintroduce the death penalty. Unfortunately whilst we are part of the EU we cannot reintroduce the death penalty. The last executions in this country where on the 13th August 1964; execution as a punishment was abolished on the 9th November 1998.

For many people the thought of executing someone is quite abhorrent, but for me personally the alternative is even more abhorrent. At this time in this country, life for the vast majority of murderers does not mean life, it usually means 12 maybe 15 years, for me that is wrong. In the worse cases a tariff of at least 30 years is given, and very rare cases the judge will pass a sentence of life meaning life. I believe that if you are sentenced to life, it should mean life with no chance of parole.

I do think it a strange situation in which we have armed police in this country who can legally kill someone without a trial, you could argue that people who are shot are only shot when they are a danger to other people, but not in every case.

Today we live in a society in which people are murdered every day, if you return to 1964 the numbers of murdered was a lot less and since the abolition of the death penalty murders have increased year on year. We live in a totally different time now than pre 1970's, today our society is a lot more violent, most crime is on the increase. In the 1950's the majority of people would not have witnessed any crime even in our inner cities, unfortunately now in many of our big towns and cities we have a lot of crime and much of it violent.

We now have a police force which is reactive, it is very unusual for a police officer to catch a criminal 'in the act'. Because of the way policing has changed over the years we no longer have beat officers who patrol on foot but the vast majority drive around in cars and chase criminals after the incident. The change in the way the police 'policed' our country changed in the 1960's and it was decided that the police should move into cars and off the 'beat'. This change has brought about many problems, because of the lack of police patrolling on foot criminals have a free range to do what they want. Prior to 1966 a police officer had a certain 'beat' in which he would patrol and would usually pass the same spot every 20 minutes or so, as you can imagine if a criminal thinks there is going to be a police officer walking past a certain place he is less likely to commit a crime. We have also seen the closing down of many police stations and many are now only open between certain hours in the day, this of course creates problems within many towns and cities as those who commit crimes know that they are never going to be caught.

For many criminals the thought of going to prison is not a deterrent, as many of our prisons are not harsh places of punishment. They are more like hotels to many people, the simple fact is that for most people going to prison would be horrendous and the loss of freedom would awful. There are a group which do not care about the loss of their freedom, they do not see prison as a punishment because they have 'rights' and they are allowed so much. A prisoner can have a TV, radio, CD player, access to a gym, three good meals a day with a choice of food and they can learn a trade, to many criminals this is an easy life . With no deterrent crime will continue to rise.

I believe the death penalty is the ultimate deterrent (I don't want to look at other countries and the rights and wrongs there, I just want to look at Britain). I believe if someone had a chance of being executed for murder he would think twice about committing that crime. A number of people have said that Albert Pierrepoint who was the number one executioner in Britain for 30 years and executed 100's was against the death penalty. He wrote in his autobiography in 1973 that he did not agree with the death penalty but by 1976 his opinion was changing and Steve Fielding, his biographer said that he believed that "it was only a good line to sell the book"

One of the things that has changed in society is that it has gone from being a predominantly Christian society to a secular society. Peter Hitchens in his book 'The Abolition of Britain' says this:

'In a Christian society, execution merely refers it to a higher court, allowing the condemned man the chance of repentance in this life, and salvation in the world to come. But in a post-Christian society, the idea of a death penalty is quite abhorrent. A man's greatest position is not his soul, which does not exist, but his life, which is all he has. In that case the very idea of execution is quite intolerable, even if the alternative is as it turned out to be is a grave increase in armed police and the gradual arming of the police force'.

For me the reason for execution, in what ever it's form is not about revenge, it is about deterrent and punishment. For many Christians the idea of execution seems to go against Jesus's teaching on grace. I do not believe it does, grace isn't about doing what you want, grace is about forgiveness, grace does not give everyone the right to behave as they feel. Jesus did not preach against execution, when he was on the cross he did not turn round to the men on either side of him and say they did not deserve to be hanging like him.

I believe we need to look at where our society is headed, I believe we will continue to see lawlessness grow. What I have found interesting is that as I look back on the past 20 years I have noticed a gradual increase in bad behaviour and an increase in crime, there are many reasons for this which I am not going to go into. What I have noticed is that a lot of this is very gradual so people do not really notice it. Many towns have witnessed an increase in anti social behaviour, which in the courts eyes is a minor crime but for those who it affects is a major problem. Over the years more premises have erected higher fences and CCTV, and yet police stations have continued to shut, and the police have remained in their cars, thus taking them further away from the people who need them.

I have said already that execution is the ultimate deterrent and I believe it should be reintroduced, I believe the likes of Ian Huntley should have been hanged and I will continue to believe the same. People might ask, what about mistakes? What if someone is convicted of a crime he did not commit? I think there is less chance of this happening now than ever and I believe it is a risk worth taking or else we will continue to see; crime, especially violent crime and murders increase. Over the next few years we will see the gradual arming of our police force, which I think will then ironically increase the amount of shootings and murders on our streets.

Economic growth?

2010-10-24T06:09:00.000-07:00

I wrote in my previous posting that I was going to spell out what should be done to improve our economy, I have decided after a little thought that that sounds a bit arrogant. I am sure like me, no one likes a big head and I do not want to come across like that, so I am sorry. I did want to write down here what I feel could be done to improve the situation and as I am not some sort of expert these thoughts are based upon my personal feelings.

I do believe that something needs to change, I am sure even the most ardent Union member would agree, I suppose we would disagree with how we should bring change. So I want to quickly write down here what I think.

The simple fact is, are economy is in a mess and something needs to be done, we have a benefits system which is way out of control and too many people are claiming many different benefits. I have written about this before in a previous posting this month and I called it 'benefit scroungers', so if you want to see what I think about that, look at this posting.

I believe we need to invest in manufacturing, particularly in our defence industry, unlike most of our manufacturing our defence industry has continued to do very well. BAE Systems is now the second largest defence company in the world, in 2009 sales totalled £22.4Billion. CEO Mike Turner has said that BAE would quit the UK if defence spending went below a certain level, with the defence cuts that have been announced this week I believe that level has been reached. The simple truth is BAE contributes 100's million's of pounds every year in taxes and employs tens of thousands of people. If this company left it would be a disaster for our economy and for many people.

The Government has announced cuts in the public sector and we have the usual people shouting and screaming about huge job losses. It is reckoned that there will be 500,000 job losses in the public sector and this may well happen. One of the important things that shouldn't happen is front line services being reduced. Over the past 13 years Labour created a huge bureaucratic monster, wages in the public sector increased at a ridiculous rate and we now have many people doing non jobs. Our public sector bodies are overflowing with 'Equality and Diversity managers' and I must be honest one of the first things I would do would be to get rid of these hideous political posts. I would go even further and make it illegal to employ anyone as an Equality manager. I believe, and so would most people that the chief executives of councils are paid too much, I would force these people to take a massive pay cut. Some people might think that a bit harsh, but I wander if many of our council heads went for a job in the private sector would a private employer employ them, and then pay them such inflated wages?

One of the things our Government has continued to do is waste money on Green energy, over the next 10 years the Government has committed to spending about £200 billion on this very dubious policy. One of the things that concerns me is that over the next 10 years as the Government spends our money on building many 1000's of wind turbines we are going to be left with no real coherent energy policy and no energy. Wind turbines by there very nature do not produce energy all the time, so we need to rely on energy from elsewhere. If we do not build power stations we will see our energy costs rise, that isn't just for the domestic consumer but also for business as well. As you can imagine if costs rise for business they will just pass that onto the consumer, so we will be losing out twice.

I have mentioned immigration many times and I don't want to sound boring, but I just want to say this. There are 2.5 million people unemployed in this country, the Government have announced cuts in the public sector that could add 500,000 to the unemployment register. The Government are reviewing our benefits system and they reckon they will take 1.5 million people off incapacity benefits, this is a total of 4.5 million unemployed. Why on earth are we allowing more people into the UK to do work that many people in this country could do!!

Our Net contribution to the EU is £8.3 billion this year and next year it is going to increase to £10.3 billion, that seems totally ridiculous at this time.

There are many things that bother me, and what is happening to our country really concerns me. Our economy is in a mess and needs to change, unfortunately I do not believe we are going about it the right way.