Weathermen, wind turbines and global warming.

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

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!!

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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!!

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

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!

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!

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

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!!!!

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

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?

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.

Changing times

'The times they are a changing'. These words were written by Bob Dylan in the 1960's, and I think these words could be sung every year. We do live in an ever changing world and as we go on things will probably change quicker and quicker. Prior to World War 1 our society and many others around the world hadn't changed in centuries; the old way of doing things, the class division and royal families throughout Europe had existed for centuries. After the war many things started to change; communism raised its ugly head, then along came fascism and many of the royal houses disappeared. Within Britain the old way of doing things changed as well, we didn't have a revolution but the old class divisions started to break down.

If we move forward to the sixties we then had a total social revolution, and most commentators would agree that this period saw the greatest change. As we move forward to today I believe we are going to see a greater change than at any point in history. I believe that the next 10 years will have a greater effect upon our lives in this country and many others than at any other time in recent history.

I believe (and of course these are only my opinions) that the western world and particularly this country is going to change dramatically. Over the last couple of days George Osborne has announced dramatic cuts to public spending, and in my view he had no choice. Labour politicians, economists and some other so called influential people have said that cutting too quickly will send us into another recession. They could be right, then again they could be wrong, no one can see the future.

One of the things I have learned over the years is that we have many people who are called experts. These experts state their opinion and because they have a qualification and some experience in a field, people listen to them and put them on pedestals. Economists are people who have many opinions and most of the time it isn't based on fact, just on educated guesses or conjecture. Gordon Brown talked of an economist called John Maynard Keynes, he was an economist and he is best known for his proposal that when national economies suffer a downturn, governments should borrow and spend money to boost economic activity. Part of the proceeds of the resulting economic growth should then be used to repay the debt. This economist was put on a pedestal by Gordon Brown and towards the end of his premiership he put a lot of faith in Keynesian policy. Winston Churchill said of Keynes, that if he had 3 economist in a room and one was Keynes, he would get two different opinions from 2 of the economists and 2 different opinions from Keynes himself.

As you can imagine I am very sceptical about a lot of what many people say, I believe people in the western world have to start waking up to the reality of what is happening in our world. I mentioned in my previous post about the increase in full maternity pay to 20 weeks; the simple question is, who is going to pay for this increase? It is reckoned it could cost £2.5billion to Britain alone, as you can imagine with the cuts that are happening the government can hardly afford to pay this, so the only people who will pay is business. We also have French workers striking about the increase in the retirement age to 62, and many countries in the western world are starting to see change, both in government and in attitudes. In the last week Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkal denounced multiculturalism, and in June this year Belgium elected a separatist Government, I could give you plenty of other examples.

The point I am making is that we in the rich western world have had it good for so long, we have continued to see growth in our economies and we haven't had to worry about any real disaster hitting our countries. What we are seeing now is the balance of power changing, and if we are not careful we will see our economies drop into the second division. Countries like China and India are constantly changing and are continuing to see massive growth, and many of the countries of the west are limping along.

Britain for a number of years has seen continued growth, not only in the economy but in standards of living, but I believe this cannot continue and the cuts that have been made will show that to be true.

I want to quickly look at how I think things could change over the next few years. Our economy has changed dramatically in the past 50 years, from being a country which was heavily reliant upon manufacturing to an economy which is now reliant upon the service industry (I have explored this in a previous post). We have been able to rely upon our financial sector to bail us out, but I now believe this could change. Recently our Chancellor and Prime Minister signed up to EU financial regulations, this basically means the EU will be able to regulate our finance industry. Some people might argue that this is a good thing, and if the finance industry had been regulated properly in the first place we would not be in the mess we are now (there might be some truth in that).

Putting aside the rights and wrongs of the past, let us to look to a possible future. Currently manufacturing makes up about 12.5 per cent of our economy, and with the current cut backs we will see that decline. With the regulation being brought into the City of London we sill see companies leaving, thus taking revenue away from this country. Just one little aside the EU are bringing in regulations that will affect hedge funds, hedge funds had nothing to do with the financial collapse and were worth £5.4 Billion to this countries economy last year. I can imagine many of these companies going elsewhere. Many people argue that we should hit the finance industry hard, but even though I agree that speculators and bankers have reeked havoc on our economy, we have to work with these people or they will go where the money is. Whether you like it or not we live in a capitalist country and business wants to make money, if business leaves are economy will die.

We in this country have been very fortunate, even with most of our manufacturing industry gone we are still a rich country, at the moment countries like China and India still need us because of our finance industry. I believe this will soon change, China is going to continue to grow and as it does it will gain more expertise in finance and will then start to persuade the big finance companies to move. Because our economy is so reliant on these companies we will then see a downturn in our GDP and then our standard of living. Don't think that any of these big companies have any loyalty to Britain, they don't, they are capitalists and will move if it benefits them.

I know this sounds rather gloomy, but I believe if we don't change the world will march on and we will be left behind wandering what went wrong. So what can we do? I believe it isn't too late to change things, but only if we implement the right policies, I will look into that in my next post.