My quotation of the week

goes to UKIP Peer Lord Willoughby de Broke. Not because he's UKIP or because he is very sound, but because I cannot imagine anyone else saying it in the House of Lords or, indeed the Commons:

On the Olympic Games, recently, in London, we had unfortunate demonstrations when some Chinese goons in rather unfortunate track suits were guarding the flame.

It made me smile. And debates from the chambers rarely do so.

In his Press Conference today, Gordon Brown said

any new social care system must respond to the reality of increasing longevity, and provide fairness for those who work hard and save for their retirement.

The old one was quite good until you came along and stole people's retirement from them, you selfish bastard.

The PM said he fully understood people's anxieties and wanted them to be able to save for old age "in a way which insures them and protects their houses and their inheritance".

Why would anyone trust that their pension scheme is safe when you are supposed to be in charge of the country? People don't easily forget that you are a money grabbing tax fiend whose actions have seen thousands of people who should have retired by now still working or doing menial jobs just to keep afloat.

And as for protecting their houses and inheritance, it was your party who started robbing mourners of what was rightfully theirs by your death taxes, which were nothing more than a way of getting back at the people your lot are so jealous of. If you really wanted to help people protect what's theirs you should take a look at the UK Independence Party's policy on IHT: getting rid of it. It only raises about £3bn a year which is what you lot spend finding things you've lost, it's inefficient and it's triple taxation.

Stop talking shite or fuck off you hypocrite!

End of the phillips curve?

Unemployment up by 14,000 to 1.61 million and inflation jumps to 3% in April according to the CPI which normally underestimates the true rate of inflation.

Which would point to the Phillips curve being made null and void by an incompetent government.

Could it be that we are going back to the 1970s and stagflation? Flares are making a comeback after all...

Pot, Kettle

The Lib Dems: All things to All men. Or that's what they'd have you think. The people who instructed their canvassers to lie to people about what the party actually stood for. Whose leader just stood up in the House of Commons and said:

We already knew that the Tories will say anything to get elected - but now it's clear the Prime Minister will try anything to cling to power.

Okay then!

at least 18 months more

I have the unfortunate job of having to read the 87 pages of spin entitled the 'Draft Legislative Programme'. It's clearly written by the sales department and contains nothing meaty in it, apart from the usual communist ideas of 'if you're poor enough and work for us we'll help you buy a house' and 'we must bankrupt this country in the name of climate change by 2050'.

But it does seem to signify that we'll be having a general election in 2010 rather than 2009 because they have lots of things they are announcing in the early part of 2010. Which is a shame.

And what gets me is that there will still be millions of, apparently mentally retarded people, who will vote for them to get into power again!

Although voting for the Tories is only voting for a change of management. By then, the Lisbon Treaty will be in place and the Tories won't want to do anything about that because they love the EU.

It's so depressing. I'll have to cheer myself up with the knowledge that a few more years of being in the EU and led by Communists and soon I will be able to claim political asylum somewhere.

Tory campaign theme tune?

Which makes me think that come the next General Election we could be listening to the sweet strains of


Oh, joy....

How is 'rail workers threaten national strike' a news story? Surely more groundbreaking would be 'rail workers don't threaten national strike'?

A word of warning

Don't buy your phone from Phones 4 u. DO NOT under any circumstances get a Samsung U600 and tell anyone who calls up about some insurance you took out with phones 4 u in store to fuck right off.

I bought a phone from a Phones 4 u store in Edinburgh. They brought me out a nice phone which they said was top of the range blah blah. I asked if it made and received calls, which they said it did, which was ideal for my purposes of using it to make and receive calls.

So I get a phone and I take out insurance with the intention of canceling it after a couple of months when the phone has lost it's value.

The Monday morning I am back in the office when I get a phone call from a company saying they are Phones 4 u and talking about the insurance I purchased, saying that price I had to pay is being cut. Not it's a new deal they're offering me on top of my insurance I've already purchased, because that's the insurance they're talking to me about.

Alas, when I open my bank statements, £39.99 has been taken from my account by a company called 'future phones'. These people don't appear to be able to answer their phones and have not bothered to contact me with any records of why they have taken money from me.

Over the few weeks following my purchase from Phones 4 u I was bombarded with calls from people trying to sell me insurance. I asked one girl where my details were published that people felt they could continually call me and she said Phones 4 U had given it out. I also received two letters from a company I had never heard of both informing me of the monthly direct debit they were going to take out of my account (they had my account details) for, guess what! Phone insurance. I asked them who the fuck they were and why they were trying to con me twice over and they said that Phones 4 U had sent them my account details as I wanted more insurance. Oh yes. More fucking insurance.

The irony is, of course, that despite having crooked companies stealing from me left, right and centre, when I actually wanted to use my insurance I can't find the fuckers. I need to use it because the phone I was sold is as feeble as an anorexic after a hike up Everest. I took it out of my handbag and there was a crack on the screen. I hadn't been throwing my bag around since it's a rather expensive Jimmy Choo bag. The other place it had been was on my desk at work. Again, it's a desk. The most vicious thing on it is a tiger, and he's a stuffed toy. It's not made out of bricks and granite and other phone perils.

Nevertheless, having sent my phone off to Phones 4 U for them to repair it, I get a letter back saying that the circuit board was cracked and it's my fault for throwing it around. One minute my phone works fine, the next minute it refuses to take charge. (from the charger, not boss things in my handbag around). This is my fault, they tell me. That's very convenient for them, I say, seeing as it had to be sent off to a warehouse where they 'investigate' it and then they send me a letter saying that if I want it back I am going to have to pay for it. This, of course, means that if I want to get anyone else to look at it I have to pay Phones 4 U.

So I have insurance I can't use, a phone which has been taken from me and won't be returned unless I pay the ransom money and which is broken anyway but they won't fix because they tell me I've been throwing around against walls.

Because if my use of the phone as something I want to keep in my handbag has broken it, then it's not suitable to be imposed on a phone using public. Robust is what we want, not weedy, fragile things that break because you've put them on top of your contacts book rather than in a feather bed.

I think that the managing director of Phones 4 U requires a letter from me which I shall copy into the relevant regulatory authority.

But in the mean time, don't use phones 4 u or get a Samsung U600.

Town Halls cosy clubs for councillors

It is a phrase coined by Nigel Farage MEP, that between Labour, Tories and the Lib Dems, you can not put a cigarette paper between them on major policies.

From Cllr Steve Allison we find out that so close are they, they have joined together into cosy little cabals in town halls:

The Lib/Lab/Con is also united in their determination to hold onto the cosy club they have developed in Town Halls up and down the country. The lib/lab/con club operating in Hartlepool exists to make it very difficult for Independents or even worse any other political party, from getting any significant influence over the local government process.

The Lib-Dems and Tories would much rather see Labour controlling all the Committees in Hartlepool than have Independent or UKIP Councillors anywhere near positions of authority.

UKIP are frequently attacked by people who don't tend to understand politics or, indeed, policy, who say they just 'split the Tory vote' and let Labour get into power. When you have situations like this, surely it's more pertinent to ask the Lib Lab Con why they bother to stand against each other given that they agree on at least 80% of policy decisions; i.e that it should be the EU who make the laws, not Westminster.

Just say no..

From the April 1 edition of the FT:

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Danish prime minister, has said he is not a candidate to become president of the European Union…Conjecture in the Danish media that Mr Rasmussen was positioning himself as a candidate for the permanent EU presidency increased after he said in November that his country would hold a referendum on joining the euro by 2011

News just in is that the Danes will have a referendum on membership of the euro in September.
Ten years since the currency reared it's ugly head and I am very glad that the UK is out of it. It's vital that a country has control over its monetary policy and the slowdown we are currently experiencing and will experience some more requires maximum flexibility which you can't get when your interest rates are controlled from Germany as part of a policy for at least 15 other countries...
You've done it before, Denmark, so do it again. Just say no!

Superb quotation from a colleague of the man involved in the shooting in Chelsea yesterday:

One said: "This is a personal tragedy. It is nothing to do with the chambers. Our thoughts are with his family.

Just in case you didn't get that, he worked for them but it's nothing to do with the chambers. Sorry and all that, but 'leave us out of it!'

Polly: why is she still employed?

I for one can't believe that someone pays her to write this god-awful shite, not to mention the glaring inaccuracies:

Victory will stifle Tory Euro-frenzy, letting Cameron escape his mad pledge to take Conservative MEPs out of the mainstream EPP into a little ragbag of neo-fascist stragglers. Where Cameron sees obstacles he will deftly side-step them, for the Conservatives are no longer the stupid party. Watch them win the Crewe and Nantwich byelection, easy.

For your information, Pol, the EPP is lead by Joseph Daul:

Joseph Daul, who was elected on Tuesday by the centre-right European People's party, is part of an inquiry into the diversion of €16m (£10.6m) of agricultural money in the 1990s that has also ensnared three former agriculture ministers. The eurosceptic UK Independence party unearthed the allegations yesterday.

Whereas the ragbags you speak of, you hateful, bile filled spiteful harridan, are people who risk their salaries to campaign for what the voters elected them to do. You know, like campaign for a referendum and unearth what is really going on in the EU? Campaign to stop the tide of directives from an unelected Commission and to bring about some kind of accountablility until the day we can, I hope to sweet Jesus and all his lovely sandals, leave this monstrous organisation.

But since the EU is a socialist wank fest you'll love it, Pol. Bet you wish you were an MEP so you can splash around in it all to your hearts content.

Royal Mail, royal mess up.

I had the enjoyable task of trawling through the Post Office review today and, as I have been saying for over a year now, the dramatic changes in the postal market have been brought about because of EU legislation.

In 2006 the UK's postal market was fully open to competition and in 2006/07 Royal Mail reported their first losses of £29 million in 350 years.

The report said that small businesses and domestic consumers haven't benefited but they weren't likely to as those areas of the market are costly. Businesses come in and cream off the profitable business post, leaving Royal Mail to fulfill the Universal Service Obligation of post box collection and door to door delivery a minimum of six days a week.

Of course, Post Office Limited is part of the Royal Mail Group who used to help subsidise the POL with the profits they made from their business post. But since they don't have those profits anymore, they are taking every last penny they can from renting out the sub post office buildings etc. and the government have to help keep POL alive with state aid, which of course they have to ask EU permission to do.

So 2,500 post offices close because the UK government cannot possibly keep subsidising the post office under the Common Market rules without substantial changes being promised. And don't forget the former article 308 which says

If action by the Community should prove necessary to attain, in the course of the operation of the common market, one of the objectives of the Community, and this Treaty has not provided the necessary powers, the Council shall, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the European Parliament, take the appropriate measures

Essentially, if you can say that something is 'in the course of the Common Market' then the Commission can do what they like, irrespective of opposition. Nice, eh? Good old democracy.

You see, post offices as such aren't a Service of General and Economic Interest which would allow them to have state aid under article 88(3) of the EC Treaty and it's only the facility which provides cash to people which is considered as such. Ergo, if these services can be performed in another way or location then subsidy is not required and the post office closes. The difference is about £50 million a year. The government has permission from Neelie Kroes in the European Commission for roughly £150 million for the next three years but since maintaining the post office network costs £4 million a week according to Alastair Darling, that leaves a £58 million shortfall.

As the former South East chairman of postwatch said to me:

It says the obvious: that the whole change and downturn in Royal Mail's fortunes is driven by the EU and there is no prospect of EU policy changing.

The other huge problem for Royal Mail is the backward looking Communication Workers Union who, in order to keep jobs for the boys, like to sort mail three times. Other countries have automatic sorting for upwards of 75% of their deliveries but in the UK it's only about 50%. For the others, the mail is collected, sorted and then thrown into sacks and then sent to another sorting office where it's once again sorted and then thrown into sacks and then driven somewhere else. Clearly, this is not a good use of money or labour.

But what really irritates me about this whole situation is that people simply aren't being told the truth. Take the comments of that rodent lookalike, Sarah Teather:

"The Government really should have seen this coming. Asking the Royal Mail to compete on the open market, without first making sure it had the resources to do so, was always bound to compromise the company.

Successive Conservative and Labour Governments have starved Royal Mail of investment. Royal Mail urgently needs a cash injection to allow it to modernise and compete with the private sector. Selling 49% of the Royal Mail shares would allow major investment without breaking the public purse.

Liberalisation appears to have had little impact on choice for the consumer and small businesses. Investment in the Royal Mail would allow it to innovate and compete properly, without one hand tied behind its back.

The Liberal Democrats who voted for Postal Market liberalisation way back in the 1990s despite these cautions being made at the time, and repeatedly since as we're now on the third postal services directive. See, fucking liars. The Tories are no better, of course, since they like to parade around their towns and villages talking about saving the local post offices when their MEPs also voted for the liberalisation and they also want to stay in the EU which has hamstrung successive governments over so many issues.

And Labour, well. For cabinet ministers to parade around trying to 'save' their local post offices when it's their lot who have overseen this huge fiasco is, admittedly what we expect of them but disgraceful none the less.

And the media? Well, they're none too keen on even mentioning the EU angle. A journalist at the BBC told me that the EU directive wasn't mentioned in the report. How they can possibly say that when I had the report in front of me and it repeatedly mentioned it is quite astonishing. I suspect they just don't like to admit that the Parliament they are monitoring and the politicians they know don't have the power they think they have. It's easier to ignore it than find out how laws in this country are really made. Just think if they had to monitor the work of the European Parliament, or if they covered the number of new laws the European Commission makes every week!

Much easier to just pretend it isn't there. So we don't get to find out the real reason behind so many decisions made in this country. And it makes me sick, it really does.

What is it about the German speaking people at the moment?

The bodies of three German babies have been found stuffed in a basement freezer and their mother has been arrested...There have been a number of similar cases in Germany.
In February, police were called to a home in northern Germany where a dead child was discovered in the cellar.
In January, a 28-year-old German woman was charged with manslaughter after the remains of three babies were discovered in her house and the home of a relative. That woman has denied killing the three babies.
Another woman was convicted of manslaughter in 2006 for killing eight of her babies in eastern Germany.

Just stop it, will you!

Back to the grindstone

After a lovely few days I come back to the news and find that nothing has changed in politics world. Gordon Brown is still a cunt, the Tories are basically still centre left and MPs are still stabbing each other in the back.

Today's prize for 'person you'd least like to have as a colleague' goes to Tony Lloyd MP who says:

the only MPs who wanted to depose the leader were "malicious" or had "personality defects"

You should know, eh, Tone?

Brown has decided he's going to do something to turn around this disastrous phase in Labour's life. Alas, it doesn't involve retiring or getting someone who has studied economics to make his policies for him which is a pity, but there we go.

Instead, he's going to tinker around with the exterior:
The Prime Minister could veto plans for a national pay-as-you-throw bin scheme and scrap a deeply unpopular 2p rise in fuel duty in a bid to woo back disaffected voters.

There is also speculation that he will act to keep food costs down, as well as introducing help for home-owners threatened with repossession and an extension of shared equity schemes for first-time buyers.

Don't buck the market, Mr Brown. I have a feeling that the downturn in house prices is coming about because the market is overvalued and houses are trying to find the equilibrium. That means that people like me might actually be able to afford a house without joining one of your communist 'key worker' schemes. And as for keeping food prices down, what are you going to do? Abandon the ridiculous EU bio fuels policy and stick two fingers up to the CAP?

Unlikely. You'll just dither around and we'll have more fucking posturing but nothing fundamental will change. No, how could it when at the centre is a hard line authoritarian socialist fuckwit with a power fantasy?

Honestly. Was it worth coming back, I ask myself.