News roundup 3

Home information packs: pay for the privilege of allowing the government to tax you more. This is Nu Labour at work. The only thing left to tax is your breath.

Partners to get marriage-style financial rights. So much for supporting marriage

Government dumbing down education. We’ve all known it and it’s about time someone said it.

Young boys want male teachers. Perhaps it’s time to stop the feminisation of our education system?

Public bodies are wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers' money a year by selling off old IT equipment at the wrong time, a spending watchdog has said. Sounds like the time Gordon Brown sold all that gold for a 20 year low.

Funding cuts ‘risking UK waterways'. I wonder if anything will be done after the flooding.

Government faces huge payouts after court rules detention of sex offenders if unlawful. Time to make it lawful and keep them in prison indefinitely especially seeing as how there are too many paedophiles to monitor.

Tories pledge referendum in event of election. It’s about time someone did. Brown won’t give us one.

Blog of the month

The blog of the month this month is UK Daily Pundit. In second place is John of Gwent. In third comes Man in a Shed and Wonko’s World.

News roundup 2

BBC may be prosecuted for offering £40,000 to child smugglers. But hey… atleast they will be given truth lessons.

FOREIGN lorry drivers are sticking two fingers up to Britain’s legal system by failing to turn up for trials, ignoring safety standards and refusing to pay speeding tickets. Bloody foreigners…

Junior doctor shortage causes cancelled operations. That’s a good way to save money even if it does put lives at risk. Maybe it’s also because of the shortage of NHS trauma beds?

Vc hero Tul Bahadar Pun was fighting for his life last night after suffering a stroke. If he wasn’t allowed here he would be dead by now. He should be given more than £1584 per year though. No one can live on that here.

Primary schools hit English and maths targets 5 years late. Well atleast Labour have been successful at something even if they are 5 years late.

A Scarborough pleasure boat, which was involved in the Dunkirk troop evacuation, has been prevented from sailing between Scarborough and Whitby because of EU red tape. Bugger off Brussels!

Muslims protest over pet food factory that could ‘rain down’ pork. They could always leave.

Mental problems double among Iraq troops

The number of troops suffering psychiatric disorders including post-traumatic stress, mood swings, and drink and drug problems appears to have doubled in the past year.

The scale of mental health problems suffered by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is revealed in an official study by the Defence Analytical Services Agency.

It says that every month more than 150 members of the Armed Forces who have served in Iraq are being diagnosed with mental health problems.

They don’t actually say the number of suffering from mental problems but in March I blogged that there were more than 2000 troops with mental problems and we only have 13 psychiatrists for the whole of our armed services. No doubt the numbers are much higher than 2000 now.

National shortage of judges

There is a national shortage of judges causing delays in criminal trials. I have already blogged elsewhere about how I would increase judges making justice faster.

The way I see it judges are just referees. They give out the punishments for criminals which have been found guilty. I would change it and make it so that the jury are the ones giving out the sentence too. Of course they wouldn’t give out the exact sentence. They would give a tariff. For arguments sake let’s say that there are 10 tariffs. These would be:

1. Fine
2. Non custodial (asbo, community service etc)
3. 0-6 months prison
4. 6 month – 2 years
5. 2-5 years
6. 5-10 years
7. 10-20 years
8. 25-40
9. Life in prison
10. Death

Those are just examples. It could be organised any way. Once a tariff has been chosen by the jury the judge then decides the exact sentence (between the tariff). Judges would lose their power and would be basically administrators or they would be referees even more than they are now. This would allow less qualified people to become judges and allow the government to lower wages to say around £13000 to £30,000 for ones with experience. This would lower court costs and allow us to double the number of judges that are needed making access to justice faster. The qualifications could mean that those who passed law at A Level could become judges.

Some of our present judges would still be needed for complicated trials like serious fraud and murder but we would split the court system into three – magistrates’ court, middle court, high court.

The magistrates’ court would still deal with petty crime where criminals would normally get 2 years or less in prison while the middle court would deal with everything except the serious crimes.

We would need a lot less of the type of judges we have now. According to this link there are 1305 professional judges (page 12) and magistrates in England and Wales. Unfortunately I don’t know how accurate it is but I will go by this number. I know that professional judges get paid £120,000 per year which means the total if we sacked them all we would save over £156 million. If we were to pay the new judges £13,000 per year and increased the number of them to 3,000 it would cost us £39 million which would be around 25% of the cost that we are paying now however once they have experience (about 20 years) that would rise to £30,000 however it is doubtful that they will be all on that much at the same time but let’s estimate that they are. It would still cost just £90 million compared to the £156 million.

We wouldn’t get rid of all the judges at first because at first the judges might need a bit of supervision. Let’s say we keep 150 of them on paying them £120,000. It would cost us an extra £18 million on top of the £39 million I estimate. This would still be a lot cheaper and we would have faster access to justice.

Any complaints, suggestions or ideas to do with this idea?

Asylum seekers paid to go home then come back

HUNDREDS of failed asylum-seekers who were paid to leave Britain have sneaked back—with many now demanding the handout AGAIN.

Almost 400 of the 5,000 refugees booted out last year with business grants of up to £3,500 in their pockets are known to have returned.

Two-thirds have now been told they can STAY. But the rest want a SECOND handout at British taxpayers' expense.

We were told this was happening in March but nothing has been done. At that time there were about 300 that came back. The government could have done something about that other 100 when they were informed by the newspapers but they haven’t done anything.

News roundup 1

The biggest threat to Britain's carp and pike is no longer environmental change and disease - it's Eastern European migrants.

A woman of 108 is told to wait until she is 110 before getting a hearing aid.

Flood chiefs get 5 figure bonuses and flood victims tell them to give it back. Estimated cost: £100,000

Almost half of all medics' jobs in the armed forces are vacant, and in one specialism only a fifth of the posts are filled.

Security services keep burned bomber alive to avoid Muslim backlash. Estimated cost: £150,000

NHS 24 has been accused of putting patients at risk by downgrading the nursing qualifications needed to answer calls and decide on treatment.

£3 million for prisoners “kept in jail too long”.

£484,000 paid to MoD typist for injured caused by typing

Estimated cost for today: £3,734,000

Medic! We have a typing injury!

The Ministry of Defence came under attack after it was revealed a computer clerk with the RAF who suffered a hand injury while typing in numbers was paid almost THIRTY times what a soldier injured in combat might get for the same injury.

The mystery woman, who is in her 20s, cost the MoD £484,000 in damages and legal costs after she was diagnosed with the RSI-style condition de Quervain's tenosynovitis.

Yet a serving soldier who comes home from war suffering from "permanent severely impaired grip in both hands" will only get a one-off payment of £16,500.

Amazingly the official tariff of payments to our boys show they can expect just £28,750 for blindness in one eye, £57,500 for the loss of a leg and just £8,250 for injuries associated with surviving a gunshot wound to the torso.

The MoD calculates injury payments to soldiers on a 15-point sliding scale.

A level 1 injury which can be loss of both legs and arms qualifies for a £285,000 payment while a level 15 injury such as a hernia or a fractured kneecap would qualify for just £1,050.

Just a thought but why didn’t the MoD use the same 15 point scale for their other employees? Wouldn’t it be easier to give out about £1,000 instead of £484,000? I don’t believe she should have received anything. I think it’s a betrayal to the real injured soldiers but if she is going to receive something the scale should be the same for all MoD employees.

1 in 15 senior police under investigation

Almost one in 15 senior police officers in England and Wales is being investigated over criminal or disciplinary offences, The Observer can reveal. The Police Superintendents' Association (PSA) said that 100 of its members are under investigation for claims ranging from high-level corruption to harassment.

In some inquiries as many as five superintendents are being investigated by other police officers over criminal or disciplinary matters. By comparison, less than 1 per cent of the population is under investigation at any one time by the police.

And we wonder why crime is going up. It seems that if you are a senior police officer you are more likely to be in trouble with the law. I wonder how many of these senior police are Muslims seeing as how Muslim police are ten times more corrupt than white officers.

787 foreign criminals still on the run

More than three-quarters of the convicts involved in the foreign prisoner scandal are still at large in Britain, official figures reveal.

The group - who include sex attackers and violent thugs - should have been automatically considered for deportation on release from prison.

Instead, they were allowed to walk free after a series of Home Office blunders.

Figures released to MPs reveal that just 226 of the 1,013 criminals mistakenly freed in the scandal have been removed from the country.

This isn’t really surprising. When John Reid was Home Secretary he said he would move heaven and earth to find them but in September 2006 the story had died down a bit and suddenly the hunt had been disbanded and was no longer a ‘priority’. The fact is they haven’t been trying to locate these criminals. They have just allowed them out onto an unsuspecting public.

Heartless bastards evict 103 year old

A woman of 103 has been served with an eviction notice by nursing home bosses because she cannot afford to pay an extra £100 a week for her room.

Esme Collins, who requires round-the-clock nursing, will be removed from her home of the last ten years unless she meets their demands within 28 days.

Mrs Collins, a great-great-grandmother who retired when she was 75 only to become a volunteer for meals-on-wheels, moved into privately-run Abbeymoor nursing home in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, due to illness.

She suffers from severe osteoporosis and is bed-ridden. Yet officials at the county council claim her needs do not meet the criteria set down for financial support.

Both the council and the care home are heartless bastards. The council should be giving more money to pay for the resident however what kind of heartless monster would evict an elderly lady who is more than 100 years old?

Nick Griffin wins

Nick Griffin has won the leadership election for the BNP. He won with a giant landslide of 91% of the vote. While I did think Nick would win I am surprised that Chris Jackson only received 9% of the vote. I thought he would win 20%, possibly as high as 25%.

Who should be blog of the month?

It’s that time of the months again. It’s time to vote for the blog of the month. There are 4 contestants and the poll ends at the end of the month. The poll is on the sidebar.

So who should be blog of the month? Should it be UK Daily Pundit? Should it be Man in a Shed? Should it be John of Gwent or should it be Wonko’s World?

Blog of the week

The blog of the week this week is Wonko’s World.

This was a hard choice as there were three other blogs that almost won. These were Observations from the Hillside, North East Scotland Nationalists and House of Dumb.

Labour to tax the poor (2?)

Unclaimed money from abandoned bank accounts will fund government plans to provide positive activities for teenagers and reduce youth crime.

The funding - £184m of new money - will be supplemented with money taken from so-called "dormant" bank accounts, which have not been used for 15 years or more.

They are recycling news again. I blogged about this in March and there is still trouble with it which might mean that it affects the poor more but it seems that I am the only one to notice.

Remember those baby bonds worth £250 that every baby will get which they can take out when they reach the age of 18? It seems from birth to adulthood is more than 15 years to me… This means that Brown will be taxing money that he has given you. Who will have left these baby bonds dormant for the longest periods? It will be the poorer families who can’t afford to add extra money to their child’s bank account while the richer members of society will be able to.

Prison service answer FOI request

The Prison Service has finally answered my request about digital TV and game consoles in Holme House Prison after more than 8 months waiting.

They said they purchased a number of games consoles for £500 which are placed the Drug Rehabilitation block to help addicts recover. Apparently playing computer games stops you from being addicted to drugs.

At the time of my request the prison paid a subscription to Sky, which cost £3384 annually. The reason was that they were evaluating options for providing digital TV to cells when analogue reception is discontinued. Why do we have to provide them with anything?

Labour MPs want referendum

A group of Labour MPs has begun pushing for a referendum on the new European Union Treaty in the first serious revolt against Gordon Brown's leadership.

Up to 40 are considering backing a backbench campaign for a national vote - directly opposing official government policy - with the aim of killing off the treaty for good.

With the Tories and some Liberal Democrats also backing a referendum, the pressure on Mr Brown to give the British people a say is mounting.

Atleast we know that some Labour MPs aren’t complete traitors. Unfortunately Labour have a majority of more than 60 which means even if Brown allowed Parliament to vote on it we would have to hope that a lot of Labour MPs decided not to show up which is probably not going to happen.

Single force to protect UK borders already useless?

Britain's first unified border force is to be set up by the Government, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said today.

Officers from the Border and Immigration Agency, Revenue and Customs and UKVisas will be brought together, creating a single checkpoint for travellers at ports and airports.

It doesn’t really matter what he does. The border police were effectively neutralised in February when the immigration detention centres became full to capacity which meant that they had to stop picking up illegal immigrants.

Maybe Mr Brown’s real concern should be building more immigration detention centres so his changes would actually matter? I guess that’s not going to happen anytime soon though.

Brown lies again

Yesterday I caught Gordon Brown lying about his drive to cut business regulation. The fact is he can’t do it because the EU won’t let him. Today he is lying again. He has pledged to kick out 4000 foreign prisoners but he can’t do this. This is because of the Human Rights Act. It was only a few weeks ago that we found that we can’t kick out convicted terrorists because of the Human Rights Act. How is it going to be different for these 4000 criminals? The fact is they can only leave when they want to. We cannot make them leave.

Brown lies to businessmen (2?)

A drive to cut the regulatory burden on business and reform the risk-averse culture of government departments will be launched by the UK government on Wednesday.

Gordon Brown is determined to make action on red tape a higher government priority, in a bid to outflank the opposition Conservatives on a core business issue.

The prime minister has told the new Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to cut regulation across government, and inculcate a new approach to risk in public policy.

John Hutton, business secretary, will on Wednesday outline to MPs a wide-ranging plan for implementing assorted ministerial pledges, including a 25 per cent cut in the administrative burden imposed by government departments.

Errmmm… Mr Brown, didn’t you say you were going to do this in October? Infact you said almost the exact same thing but as I said last time you won’t be able to succeed without leaving the EU seeing as how most of our regulation comes from the EU.

With your past record I seriously doubt you will leave the EU. Maybe you and the Labour party should be given lessons in telling the truth just like the employees of the BBC?

Lessons in telling truth for BBC employees

More than 16,000 BBC employees are going on a course to teach them that they should not lie and lying is bad. Unfortunately normal people were taught this when they were children.

It’s about time to. They have shown that they can’t be trusted time and time again. When they aren’t lying they are hiding the truth. It’s about time they learnt how to tell the truth.

Is European royalty crazy?

European royalty look as if they are crazy. We all know Prince Charles likes to talk to his plants and vegetables and now it is revealed that a Norwegian Princess likes to talk to angels and is trying to make money out of it by teaching other to do so. You can learn how to talk to angels too for a small sum of £2000…

I wonder which other members of royalty are crazy people.

Experiments on animals soar to 3 million

ANIMAL testing in Britain has reached a 15-year high and is set to go on rising, the government said yesterday.

The growing use of genetically-modified mice in scientific research last year pushed the total number of animals used in laboratory testing to more than three million for the first time since 1991.

I wonder if this is the fault of the EU. In October 2006 I blogged that because of new EU rules tens of millions of animals were facing painful deaths because the EU wanted to retest chemicals, some of which had been on the market for more than 25 years.

I think that animal testing is needed but I don’t think it is needed on this scale. 3 million per year would be a genocide if it was humans being killed.

Fat Buddha is not an option says council

A Buddhist businessman who wants to call his Chinese restaurant Fat Buddha has angered council chiefs - who claim the name will upset Buddhists.

Eddie Fung's £1.3million restaurant will open in Durham next month, creating 60 jobs.

But the restaurateur was astonished when Tracey Ingle, the city council's head of cultural services, demanded he change the name because it was 'provocative'.

Mr Fung, you can’t go around calling Buddha fat. You might offend Buddhists you don’t know and then they might not want to come to Durham anymore which would be tragic. Why don’t you call your restaurant Big Boned Buddha. It would be acceptable and it wouldn’t imply that he is slightly on the obese side. Just a suggestion.

Is it just me or have councils started getting a bit more idiotic than usual?

Council bans St George bandana

A black dustman has been banned from wearing a St George's Cross bandana because council officials say it could be regarded as racist.

Matthew Carter, 35, who was born in Barbados, used the headgear to keep his dreadlocks out of the way while he was on his rounds in Burnley, Lancs. He had done so for seven months before his photograph appeared in a local newspaper. A number of local people complained, and his superiors called him.

"I received a verbal warning," Mr Carter said yesterday. "They told me the St George's Cross was not allowed to be seen on any clothing we wear because it could be considered offensive and racist."

Ian McInery, the operational services manager for Pendle council, defended the decision to discipline Mr Carter. He said: "We have made it clear to staff that they are not allowed to put stickers or flags on bin wagons or wear clothing which shows support for a particular team, group or country.

"We can't make one rule for one person and one for another. It's just a common-sense approach that we are sticking to."

Mr Carter still wears a bandana but one that bears the image of a skull and crossbones.

Since when has banning the cross of St George been about common sense? Which self loathing idiots complained to the council?

What are you doing Mr Carter? You can’t wear a skull and crossbones bandana. It’s un-neighbourly. Take it off immediately!

These people are overpaid and under worked. The lot of them should be sacked until they get a bit of common sense.

Hat tip: Theo Spark.

Britain almost out of troops

The head of the Army has issued a dire warning that Britain has almost run out of troops to defend the country or fight abroad, a secret document obtained by the Daily Telegraph has revealed.

Gen Sir Richard Dannatt has told senior commanders that reinforcements for emergencies or for operations in Iraq or Afghanistan are "now almost non-existent".

In the memorandum to fellow defence leaders, the Chief of the General Staff (CGS) confessed that "we now have almost no capability to react to the unexpected". The "undermanned" Army now has all its units committed to either training for war in Iraq and Afghanistan, on leave or on operations.

There is just one battalion of 500 troops, called the Spearhead Lead Element, available to be used in an emergency, such as a major domestic terrorist attack or a rapid deployment overseas.

After knowing this I wonder which bright spark decided that we should be sending an extra 100 troops to fight in Afghanistan. It would also be a good idea to fix those aircraft seeing as half of the RAF fleet is out of action. I wouldn’t bet on the government doing anything though. They haven’t yet even though they have promised things in the past.

Hat tip: Ranting Stan

Unsafe criminals released

Nearly 1,000 criminals freed early to ease the prison overcrowding crisis had previously been rated too unsafe to be let out with an electronic tag, it has emerged.

They were ordered to remain behind bars because governors rated them a high risk of re-offending.

Despite these fears, they have been freed under Labour's controversial early release scheme announced as an emergency measure last month after the prison population hit a record 81,000.

Yesterday's revelation is yet another blow for the early release policy which the Conservatives described as 'potentially highly dangerous'.

The party's justice spokesman Edward Garnier said: 'If they were not safe to be let out on tags, why are they safe to be let out with taxpayers' cash in their pockets but no tags on their ankles?

The government is totally incompetent. They were put in prison for a reason and now even the ones that are unsafe to be let out with an electronic tag are being let out. Someone needs to get control of this mess and fast. Labour will never be able to do it. They have shown that they can’t succeed at anything.

More troops go to Afghanistan

Yesterday the Ministry of Defence said that troop levels in Afghanistan will increase by 100 by the end of the year and will be boosted by a troop of Viking armoured vehicles.

There is still no sign of the transport aircraft or the helicopters that are needed. You would think that if you increase the number of soldiers there would also be an increase in aircraft to help them complete the job or just to help them get in and out of war zones. The government don’t see it that way though and they have probably forgot that Blair promised the troops whatever they need to complete the job.

Brown plans to destroy any opposition

It looks as if Gordon Brown is going to destroy any opposition to his government by making the House of Lords mostly elected. For atleast the last 10 years the House of Lords have been the only obstacle to this tyrannical government. If it wasn’t for the Lords we would have no choice about ID cards.

An elected House of Lords would not be good for democracy. In a representative democracy you have to have checks and balances for a representative democracy to work. Having two elected chambers will just mean that they owe their position to their party. They will then hold the party line and vote along party lines. If that happens all the Lords will become is a rubber stamp chamber. The Lords have shown time and time again that they are willing to stand up to the government. This is because they owe their position to no party so even if they are members of that party they will not take the party line. They will vote the way they think is best for the government.

Do we really want a rubber stamp chamber? Do we really want to destroy our only check on the government?

Chucky gets ASBO

Kyle Ivison is not the only one who received an ASBO and banned from doing things that are already banned. Take 12 year old Oliver Clinch nicknamed Chucky who was issued with an ASBO after using up 85 per cent of the local police time and committing more than 60 offences.

Little Oliver has been banned from causing harassment, alarm or distress to the public. He is also banned from possessing alcohol. I believe all these are already illegal. I am not sure about possessing alcohol but he is 12.

Albanian mafia in Blair's street

An Albanian gangster has been gunned down amid a bloody turf war over the right to rob the parking metres in Tony Blair's street.

Even as police protections team were assessing security at the former Prime Minister's new London home in Connaught Square, criminals were clashing over who 'owned' metres in the exclusive neighbourhood.

It culminated in a shooting at an Albanian private members' club which left one man dead, and two others wounded.

Two other men in the room hurled themselves out of a second-floor window as they fled for their lives.

Gangster Kujtim Spahiu, 33, has been jailed for 33 years in prison for his part in the shootings after a five-week trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court, east London. Judge David Radford also recommended his deportation.

Don’t ya just love immigration and multiculturalism? Why do we have to import all the criminals of the world? Atleast the good thing is that they are doing it in Blair’s constituency. Let’s hope they mug him and he resists…

Isn't it great that Blair will be experiencing what he brought into the country?

Government to cave in to Lords demands

Yesterday the Corporate Manslaughter Bill was back in the Commons. Yesterday I said that the Lords will win this showdown and it seems as though I am correct. Jack Straw said that the government wished to table "significant amendments" which could mean that they are going to do what the Lords have been saying.

Again, this is a fine example of why we need the House of Lords. They keep the government in check. The government is bad now. Can you just think how bad they would be if there was no resistance?

Forestry Commission tries to destroy forest

When you go on to the Forestry Commission website one of the first things you can see is what they are there for. It says “We are the government department responsible for the protection and expansion of Britain's forests and woodlands”. In this case you would expect that they would do everything that they could to protect the forests. If you thought this you would be wrong.

In Houghton-le-Spring they brought a developer in to knock down 7000 trees to build 20 football pitches. For some reason the Forestry Commission didn’t carry out an environmental impact assessment. The people of the area took it to the high court and the trees were saved.

Maybe the Forestry Commission should actually do their job and protect the forests?

Councillor suspended for having an opinion

A Swansea councillor has been suspended for 1 month for having an opinion on a new welsh language school. He is against it because there are plenty of other schools that have fallen into disrepair and the money could go towards maintaining them.

Who can we blame for this tyrannical decision? It seems like the John Prescott is still with us seeing as it was his diktat that created the rules that councillors now live under. If you can cast your mind back to September 2006 you might be able to remember that some councillors were banned from voting on sites where mobile phones masts might be located if they owned a mobile phone.

While Prescott doesn’t have any responsibilities anymore his decisions still influence democracy. It seems that the buffoon has more of a legacy than Blair.

Al Gore is a hypocrite

ONLY one week after Live Earth, Al Gore's green credentials slipped while hosting his daughter's wedding in Beverly Hills.

Gore and his guests at the weekend ceremony dined on Chilean sea bass - arguably one of the world's most threatened fish species.

Also known as Patagonian toothfish, the species is under pressure from illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing activities in the Southern Ocean, jeopardising the sustainability of remaining stocks.

Blog of the week

The blog of the week this week is John of Gwent.

TV appeal cancelled over racism fears

A police force withdrew plans for a televised appeal to help catch an Afghan suspected of sexually assaulting women after a race watchdog warned that it might spark a violent backlash.

Detectives were due to appear on an episode of ITV's Manhunt to ask for help finding Noorullah Seddiqi, 34.

The Afghan had absconded from bail after being arrested in connection with the rape of one woman and the sexual assault of three others.

Officers working on the case believed the appeal, due to be shown in May, could have proved vital in the search for Seddiqi. They thought he might be working as an unlicensed taxi driver in the south of England.

But the Chief Constable of the Devon and Cornwall force, Stephen Otter, told officers not to go ahead with the programme after the Devon Racial Equality Council, funded by and affiliated to the Commission for Racial Equality, said the appeal could lead to a racist backlash.

Do these idiots seriously think that we are going to hunt down every afghan man and beat him to a pulp? If they do they are seriously deluded and should never be given jobs where they are paid by the state. If you lack common sense you shouldn’t be making decisions especially if taxpayers are paying your wages.

What about the risk to public safety? Why don’t they care that he could rape some other woman? Why does the risk of perceived racism trump the need for public safety?

Hat tip: Bel is thinking.

3 gurkhas per week refused entry into UK

Remember Tul Bahadur Pun the Gurkha who was eventually allowed into Britain? After reading that I was curious about the treatment of Gurkhas so I sent off a request to the foreign office to ask about how many Gurkhas applied to come to Britain. Their response was that I didn’t specify the country so it would be too expensive to find the information but they would try to be helpful and get the info from Kathmandu where the bulk of the Gurkhas are from.

As people who request information from the government will know the government is never helpful when you get things wrong and they do their best to not give you any information so I was surprised that they gave me the information. Maybe the civil servants want it to be publicised? Or maybe it’s just the way the foreign office does it?

To cut a long story short since 1988 there have been 1984 applications from Gurkhas that have been turned down for them and their dependents. There are many more than that though. The Gurkhas can also apply under Armed Forces Concession. Under Armed Forces Concession there have been 2840 applications and 1196 of them have been refused. That is not the final say though. They also have an appeal. 414 Gurkhas are still in the appeals process and there have been 48 applications for appeal that have been withdrawn by the Gurkha himself, the reason wasn’t made clear

This means that in the last 19 years there has been 3180 Gurkhas that have been refused entry to the UK. This means that around 167 Gurkhas are refused entry into the UK every year or making it simpler it is around 3 per week.

Parliament plays political tennis

The House of Commons and House of Lords are going up against each other once again. The Lords are showing that they are holding the government to account which the House of Commons is failing to do.

The Lords want a "lifeboat fund" for the 125,000 affected ex-employees who lost out when their final salary schemes went bust. Unfortunately in the House of Commons voting was 303 to 253 against the measure which means it now goes back to the Lords.

It seems as though Parliament is playing a game of political tennis. The latest legislation to show that is the Corporate Manslaughter Bill which the Lords want to include state institutions but the government don’t. Yesterday it was back in the Lords and they voted 186 to 157 for it to include state institutions so it once again will go back to the Commons for them to decide. It seems likely that the Lords will win this. If both houses hold their ground then the legislation dies at a certain date meaning that the government don’t get their legislation through. If they want to get it through they will have to change the legislation for it to include state institutions thereby making the Lords win.

This is a fine example of why we need the Lords. An elected lords would never behave like this which is why they should remain unelected.

4000 terror suspects in UK

Don’t ya love how many terror suspects there are? Apparently there are 4,000 terror suspects and their sympathisers in this country. This seems to be a lot more especially seeing at the start of the month there were only 1700 terror suspects. In October 2006 the number of terror suspects was at 1500 so the numbers have almost tripled in about 9 months.

Is this scare mongering or is it real?

Midlothian Council was right?

Remember when I blogged about Midlothian Council leaving the lights on in an abandoned school in case an intruder hurt themselves?

As it turns out they were right to do that as this story shows. A pupil who injured himself after breaking into a school was paid £5,700 compensation. The secondary school pupil was swinging on a gate of a primary school when it collapsed. Despite the fact he was trespassing, Leicestershire County Council was forced to compensate him because it could not prove that the gate had been maintained.

SAS Commander forced to quit

What do you do when you have an SAS commander who has been decorated in battle against insurgents who is brave enough to stay with his men and lead operations against terrorists? You relieve him of command and make him quit of course.

You couldn’t make it up.

Good news or a lie?

A rationalisation of repair work on RAF Harrier and Tornado jets has saved the Ministry of Defence £1.4 billion and cut the time needed to fix damaged planes, according to a new report.

Operational availability of Harriers, which was already below the required level, dipped at the outset of the change programme in 2003, but since the end of last year the number of planes fit for action has met the RAF's targets, said the National Audit Office report.

Congratulations to the government, well not really. At first I did think this was something good that they did but then I remember that almost half of their transport aircraft in the war zones are unsafe to fly. If they were doing a good job don’t you think we would have many more aircraft ready to fly? Do you think it would take 7 hours to evacuate wounded soldiers?

If the military have saved money why wasn’t it spent on giving our soldiers whatever they need to complete the job in the war zones that they are in?

Immigration and crime increase in rural areas

The number of immigrants in rural England has more than trebled in the past three years, a Government report reveals today. The "sheer scale and speed of immigration" is putting a big strain on rural local authorities as they struggle to provide services and maintain community relations, warns the Commission for Rural Communities study.

From 2003 to 2006, rural areas across England saw a 209 per cent rise in migrant workers, as measured by National Insurance registrations, up from 21,000 to 65,000. The real figure is likely to be far higher, as some workers - particularly illegal immigrants - do not register, and dependent partners and children are not included. ...The sharpest increase was in Herefordshire, where the number of foreign NI registrations rose tenfold in three years, while eight rural districts across the country saw sixfold rises in foreign workers.

There has also been a 25% increase in robberies in rural communities too. Is it a coincidence? Either way Labour cannot be trusted to solve these problems.

More crimes committed by early released prisoners

It looks like the early release to ease prison overcrowding isn’t going well. As well as committing a robbery within days of being released they have also committed other offences and are now back in prison or are on the run.

Maybe the government will learn from this and not do it again. Well it isn’t likely seeing as they have done it before and it lead to more than 1000 crimes by prisoners who had been released early to ease overcrowding.

NHS bosses in taxpayer funded Japan trip

What do you do when you run a cash strapped hospital that can’t afford drugs to treat some patients? You organise an £84,000 trip to a Japanese car factory for 14 doctors of course. It was all to learn about efficiency apparently.

These 14 doctors can’t have passed their doctor exams. If they had they would realise that cars aren’t people and giving the kiss of life to many cars would just be weird and may get you locked up for being mentally ill. Let’s not get into that though, some people love their cars.

Calls for amnesty (3)

Once again there are calls for an amnesty for illegal immigrants. This story just won’t go away. This time it is a think tank with close links to the Labour party. In March it was in the news and it was called the ‘Strangers into Citizens scheme’. In June 2006 it was the Home Office who raised the prospect of an amnesty.

If they are allowed to break the law and get away with it why can’t I break the law and face no prospect of being sent to prison? These illegal immigrants are breaking the law and should be found and deported immediately. If I can’t break the law why should they be allowed to?

Schools told mix or fail

In May I blogged that schools will be labelled failing schools if they don’t promote race relations by twinning with multiethnic schools and striking up partnerships with Muslim schools. Well it seems that the newspapers are recycling the story because it’s in the Daily Mail.

There are a few differences in the stories though. Last time it said that they “should be twinned with ethnically mixed schools”. They have changed it to “Schools in rural or suburban areas will be urged to twin with multi-ethnic schools”. Read it? “Urged” seems like it will be voluntary but the fact that they are going to be closed down if they don’t shows that it’s just spin. They won’t be urged. They will be forced.

Police want unlimited detention without trial

Police chiefs are demanding the power to lock up terror suspects indefinitely, it has emerged.

Reopening the debate over detention without trial, the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) called for some suspects to be held for "as long as it takes".

Acpo president Ken Jones said police were struggling to operate within the 28-day limit, stressing the global scale of terror investigations and the need to arrest suspects early.

"We are now arguing for judicially supervised detention for as long as it takes," he told the Observer.

"We are up against the buffers on the 28-day limit.

"We understand people will be concerned and nervous, but we need to create a system with sufficient judicial checks and balances which holds people, but no longer than a day necessary."

The idea is said to have been discussed with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has signalled his intention to re-visit the subject of detention without trial this year.

Gordon Brown should not give them this right. If they were guilty they should be sent to trial. They should not be sent to prison forever just because they suspect they might be guilty of something.

I am even iffy about the 28 day period. I am not sure it should even be that long but I definitely think locking people up forever without trial is unnecessary. If they are guilty they should prove it in a court of law with a jury finding them guilty.

24% of terror suspects are asylum seekers

THE government faces new embarrassment over Britain’s porous borders with the revelation that one in four terrorist suspects arrested in Britain is an asylum seeker.

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, there have been more than 1,100 arrests under antiterrorism legislation. While some of the most serious threats come from Al-Qaeda supporters born in the UK, there is new evidence of many suspects exploiting loopholes in the country’s immigration laws.

It was confirmed last week that Muktar Said Ibrahim, one of the bombers involved in the failed suicide attacks of July 21, 2005, was given a passport even though he had convictions for indecent assault and robbery. Gordon Brown has said an applicant in similar circumstances would not now be granted citizenship.

This is certainly a reason to keep our asylum system going seeing as a significant proportion of terror suspects are asylum seekers. I have something I have noticed that could mean it is even more. When their applications are accepted they are no longer called asylum seekers. I wonder what percentage of these terror suspects have been given indefinite leave to remain?

Surely this should be a reason to close our boarders and tell the asylum seekers that if they wanted asylum they should have went to the nearest safe country to their own and not passed sometimes over a dozen countries just to get to Britain.

Trevor Phillips threatens to quit

The head of Britain's equal rights watchdog has accused Gordon Brown of appointing too few ethnic minorities and women to his Cabinet, provoking a furious row about sex and race discrimination.

Mr Phillips issued the warning in a telephone call to No 10 last week and threatened he would quit his high-profile role unless the Government took the issue of equality seriously.

Atleast one good thing has come out of Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister and that is that Trevor Phillips might quit. When can the celebrating begin?

Blogpower votes to expel

There’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news is that Blogpower expelled me (not too bad then) but the good news is that I will be spending 1 hour less per day going through the blogs and I can delete some of the blogs from my blogroll which I have been meaning to do. Silver linings and all…

UPDATE

On the awards blogroll (blog of month/week) I have had to delete Martine Martin, God Help Britain, Spicy Cauldron, Deakin is blue, Cynical Chatter, BNP Aberdeen, BNP Falkirk and A big stick. I am also considering Labour Watch seeing as I can’t see it. I’ll give them another month.

Save the environment - drive a car

It can be greener to drive than catch the train, according to a rail industry study which reveals that trains are losing their environmental advantage.

Modern diesel-powered trains are so polluting that a family of three or more would be responsible for at least double the carbon dioxide emissions on many routes when travelling by rail compared with driving in a typical medium-sized car.

The study concludes that the Virgin Voyager, the most advanced diesel train on the network, has the highest emissions of any British train and that its performance compared with cars is steadily worsening as motor manufacturers improve efficiency.

Doesn’t this mean that the government should be encouraging cars and not doing everything they can to price people out of them? If we are causing global warming wouldn’t it we be environmentally better off if took the car instead of the train?

Hat tip: The ThunderDragon

How to stop the destruction of the education system

It is becoming increasingly clear that I am right when I have said that the government should never be allowed to control essential services like education, health and policing. Governments of the last 60 years have done everything to destroy those services. Whether they meant to or not is simply irrelevant. These services must be protected for future generations so even if you have a government now that gets these systems in good shape you cannot guarantee that they will be in good shape in the future when future governments take over.

I have stated many times what I think should happen to those services. You can read it here. Please read the education part because the rest of this blog post will be about the education system.

The education of our children has been so dumbed down that they can now pass with just 30% of the marks. Not content with doing that they want to go further and introduce lessons that are only 5 minutes long. Have you ever heard such nonsense?

They don’t want to stop at just the destruction of lessons they also want to destroy our history. They want to stop our children from ever knowing about the triumphs of Britain, they want to stop them from knowing the history of Britain. How can you teach history without referring to Churchill and Hitler? Well that’s what the government want to do. It seems that lessons in feelings will be much more important.

If the government is allowed to control the education system it will be impossible to stop them from destroying the education system even if they don’t mean too. The government just can’t resist micromanaging these things. Even if we had a government which didn’t do all that the education system is just a short way from disaster as any government can take over.

The only way to have a successful education system is by handing the responsibility to an elected education commission who have experience within the education system and not leave it with people most of whom have probably never worked in the education system so have no idea what they are doing.

Even if a few of the education destroyers were elected it would not affect the rest of the nation as each county would have their own. Once parents realise that they have made a bad choice they can reverse it. It is not as simple as that with governments. When electing governments you do not consider just one aspect so even if they are doing terrible within the education system you will vote for them anyway, whether it’s because they are doing well with everything else they do or you simply voted for them because your parents voted for them and their parents voted for them. With one area of policy it is not as simple as that. Would you vote for a member of your own party even if he was destroying education? I know I wouldn’t. I would be just as likely to vote liberal as I would BNP in the circumstances of one policy area.

EU admits opt outs are worthless

Senior European Union officials confirmed yesterday that Britain's "red line" opt-out from the European Charter of Fundamental Rights is not worth the paper it is written on.

Margot Wallström, the European Commission Vice-President, insisted that the charter will apply to huge swathes of British law, the 75 per cent or more that is derived from EU legislation.

Can we now have a referendum? Why aren’t the anti EU organisations organising protests? Where are they when we need them? They should be at the front of the queue doing their best to make sure we have a referendum by organising strikes and protests but they aren’t doing anything. They are just complaining about it. The time for complaining is over. It is time to do something.

Bye bye Blogpower

It looks like that I am going to be kicked out of Blogpower as the polls aren’t in my favour and they close tomorrow. I would just like to say that there are no hard feelings and I will still be visiting some of the blogs especially those that have won ‘blog of the week’ even if they did vote against me.

The blogs that I will continue to visit (which haven’t won anything from me yet) are A View from the Right, Bel is thinking, Chicken Yoghurt, Crushed By Ingsoc, Hell’s Handmaiden, Looking For a Voice, Lord Nazh, Observations from the Hillside, The Cityunslicker, The Conscious Earth, The Last Ditch and Ruthie Zaftig.

Have fun blogging.

Government get it wrong

The House of Lords have again voted against the Corporate Manslaughter Bill because it does not include the public sector. Justice Minister Maria Eagle said the government accepted the principle of including deaths in custody and the scope of the legislation could be extended in the future to cover deaths in custody or on specified premises.

While Gordon Brown announced that he wants 3 million new homes by 2020 he seemed to be making it hard for himself to achieve that goal seeing as has said that he is considering making developers who build on flood plains liable for insurance cover for 20 years. To me that just sounds like developers will either stop building so many houses (which will hamper his goals) or they will charge even more for houses in a market which is already overpriced which will mean that the price of houses will not go down no matter how many are built making it even more difficult for first time buyers to get on the property ladder.

Happy Birthday: Central News

It was on this day 2 years ago that Central News was created. Therefore Central News is 2 today YIPPEE!

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Central News
Happy Birthday to you!

Hip hip hurray

Hip hip hurray

Hip hip hurray

Blog of the week

The blog of the week this week is Man in a Shed.

BNP leadership election

As mentioned earlier in this blog the BNP are about to have an election for the leadership at the end of the month. Members have been provided with a link to 800 word statements by both candidates. The link has not been provided to the general public so I will not provide the link and I will not provide the full statements here. I will however show extracts of the statements.

Nick Griffin

While I welcome the opportunity this election gives to obtain a mandate to continue to steer the BNP on its current uniquely successful course, I believe his ‘challenge’ is not only a grubby affair involving lies and baseless smears but would, if successful, plunge our party back into the political Stone Age; it is not a serious proposal for a different way to run a successful party, but the last gasp effort of the pre-1999 ‘old guard’ to drag us back to their extremist past, bungling amateurism and guaranteed failure.

Mr. Jackson’s statement while seeking nominations was that I am “unacceptable to the National Front” and to other tiny extreme groups, and hence a block to ‘nationalist unity’. Well, I am very happy to be ‘unacceptable’ to anti-social extremists – are they the kind of people with whom you wish to be associated, let alone ‘united’?

Mr. Jackson wants to return to the old policy of compulsory repatriation. I am sure this would be political suicide - utterly ‘unsaleable’ to the vast majority of British voters. It would put our members at even greater risk of persecution as ‘racists’. It would strip us of all legal protection under Human Rights laws.

Chris Jackson

Chris Jackson, is Chairman of the ‘Reform Group’ and is challenging for leadership of the British National Party. The ‘Reform Group’ came into being because many members, particularly established members, believed the Party was being run in an erratic way and some member were not renewing as a result. As a talking point, I believe, the current leader has, and the founder leader had, enormous talent in some directions but it seems none in others. This has meant the Party has not been developed in a balanced manner.

In particular, the Chairman authorises the spending of Party money. He also appoints the Treasurer and Auditor. This is I believe is quite contrary to established, prudent, practice. Further it should be noted that Nick Griffin was once declared bankrupt, though now discharged, no prudent organisation would allow someone with his history to be responsible for Party funds.

I believe that the Party Constitution should be changed to one that is a recognisable as normal for a corporate body under English law.

The new Constitution will provide for a compulsory Annual General Meeting at which all paid up members are entitled to attend, propose resolutions and vote.

The Party must adopt a set of basic principles, for example the declaration that***:
1. Our homeland is the United Kingdom. No-one else can live permanently in our homeland.
2. We are an independent nation. We must leave the EU.
3. We want to live and be ruled by our traditional laws and customs.

I will be voting Nick Griffin.

Osama bin Laden to be given visa

It looks like Osama bin Laden is going to be allowed into Britain after marrying a British councillor. All he needs now is a visa. I am not joking about this either however it is not the terrorist bin laden it is his son Omar Osama bin Laden who married someone 24 years older than him.

WHAT THE FUCK?

UK needs a 2 child limit

Families should restrict themselves to having a maximum of two children to stabilise the effect on the environment of Britain's rapidly growing population, a thinktank warns today.

According to the Optimum Population Trust, Britain's rising birth rate, currently growing at the highest rate for nearly 30 years, should be considered an environmental liability.

I have been saying for a long time that we should be reducing our population numbers. I have also said that we should be limiting child benefit to the first two children and in overpopulated areas like the South East we should be limiting it to one child.

We should be making having more than the specified number of children too costly by revoking all benefits that people get including the child benefit that they get for the other children, housing benefit, unemployment benefit and tax credits.

Once people realise that the costs outweigh the benefits of having a large family they will stop and then we will be able to finally reduce the population to more manageable levels.

Sex offenders at open prison

Sex offenders are among the 'very high-risk inmates' being held in open jails that have little security, the Government's prisons watchdog has said.

Convicts were also not properly risk assessed before being sent to a jail that does not have a perimeter fence, said Anne Owers.

The revelations are another blow to the Government, which has faced claims that open jails are being used for inappropriate inmates because of the overcrowding crisis.

Mrs Owers's report is confirmation that - despite official denials - proper checks on who should be sent to relaxed conditions are not taking place.

To have any idea how easy it is to escape from an open prison we need only look at the experience of George Bateman a 71 year old frail pensioner who managed to escape from an open prison before being found drunk in a bar.

I think you will agree that housing sex offenders in an open prison is madness. At the very least they should be in a high security prison so they are unable to carry out any more sexual offences.

Yesterday in Parliament

The House of Lords have shown once again why we need them. They are an effective check on the government. Yesterday the fate of the corporate manslaughter bill looked like it was in jeopardy after the lords voted for the legislation to include government institutions like the prison service. The government don’t seem to want this.

The government was also defeated when peers voted to give more control over the pre-release of official figures to an independent statistics board - rather than to ministers.

Voting was 181 to 151 during debate on the statistics and registration service bill, which aims to give greater independence to the Office for National Statistics.

Teddy Bear Picnic Day

Today is Teddy Bear Picnic Day. This day reminds me of a song that you might remember from your childhood:

If you go down to the woods today
You're sure of a big surprise
If you go down to the woods today
You'd better go in disguise

For ev'ry bear that ever there was will gather there for certain because
Today's the day the Teddy Bears have their picnic

Ev'ry Teddy Bear who's been good
Is sure of a treat today.
There's lotst of marvelous things to eat
And wonderful games to play

Beneatht the trees wher nobody sees
They'll hide and seek as long as they please
'Cause that's the way the Teddy Bears have their picnic

If you go down to the woods today
You'd better not go alone
It's lovely down in the woods today
But safer to stay at home

For ev'ry bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today's the day the Teddy Bears have their picnic.

Picnic Time for Teddy Bears
The little Teddy Bears are having a lovely time today
Watch the, catch them unawares
And see them picnic on their holiday

See them gaily gad about
They love to play and shout;
They never have any care;

At six o'clock their Mummies and Daddies,
Will take them home to bed,
Because they're tired little Teddy Bears.

Nude Recreation Week

Congratulations to those who like to get naked because this week is Nude Recreation Week. This will give you a chance to wash the dishes while naked, mow the lawn while naked or simply watching porn while naked… Anything is possible.

If anyone complains tell them why you are doing it.

One man crime spree gets ASBO

What happens when to commit 40% of the crime in your area? Well if the experience of Kyle Ivison is anything to go by you get an ASBO banning you from doing certain things including some things that are already illegal as far as I know (you would think the law would actually ban him from doing those things). I think these are already illegal. Please correct me if I am wrong:

1. Prohibited from causing harassment, alarm or distress
2. Must not enter premises from which he has been excluded (trespassing?)
3. Must not remain in any premises having been asked to leave
4. Must not consume or be in possession of any intoxicant in a public place
5. Must not be present in a public place while under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs

As far as I can see the ASBO is just banning him from doing things which are already banned. Am I wrong?