Clare Short yesterday announced that she would not stand as a Labour MP again as she is embarassed by Labour policy.
Today she is threatened with expulsion from the Labour Party for being disloyal – a charge also levelled at the last batch of MP’s that resigned a week ago.
MP’s should be loyal to their country and the constituents they are elected to serve, not to the political party they belong to. That’s communism.
I wrote to Telford & Wrekin Council a couple of weeks ago asking them how much they charge the EU to advertise on Telford road signs.
Under the Town and Country Planning Act, the EU flag is an advertisment. As well as flying this advertisment from the council HQ, the boundary signs as you enter Telford and the signs around the town centre area feature an EU flag. This advertisment is, presumably, free of charge yet local businesses have to pay for this premium advertising space.
Here’s what I got today:
Dear Mr Parr
I apologise for the delay in responding to you in this matter but I have sort advice from other departments in the Council on this issue.
I am told that a working group was held with Public Relations and various Members when the Borough became a Unitary Authority who agreed that from a political point of view the EU flag should be put on the signs. The cost of sign production was sponsored by private businesses including Telewest, PSM and Merrythought (costs £30k approx). I also assume that the Borough has benefited from European Regional Development Funding (ERDF) on a number of projects and it is not uncommon on scheme boards associated with projects to display logos of contributors.
I hope this information is satisfactory.
Nick Kitchen
Senior Traffic Engineer
Traffic Team
Tel 01952 202177
email nick.kitchen@telford.gov.uk
Nice of him to make an effort but it doesn’t actually answer my questions which is kind of pointless.
Nick,
Thanks for getting back to me.
My original query was that the EU flag is an advertisment under the Town & Country Planning Act. I asked how much the council was paid in return for carrying these advertisments on boundary signs and signs around the town centre.
I’m not sure what political reason would justify giving free advertisments to the EU, especially when other companies are paying to advertise on the signs. Surely this puts the council in a difficult position in that they are charging local businesses who are less able to afford advertising but give free advertising to the EU which has a multi-billion pound budget courtesy of the taxpayer.
The signing convention for projects funded by the EU is to put a sign up by the project. I don’t recall the EU having any involvment in building either Telford or the town centre. Are you saying that without putting an advertisment for the EU on every boundary sign that Telford wouldn’t have received funding for any projects? That’s extortion surely? Are there any guidelines or rules on advertising for local authorities? Can I have a copy of any please?
If the EU isn’t going to be charged for its advertisments can I have a free one too?
Chairman Blair is really getting some stick lately. He’s lost the support of the electorate, friends, colleagues and party members and he’s even getting stick from the Congress of People’s Deputies Trade Union Congress.
While Chairman Blair gave his speech to the TUC conference, some members left the hall whilst others heckled him when he made untrue claims on health, education, law & order, being the messiah, etc.
I kind of feel sorry for Princess Tony. Nobody wants him, he’s crap at his job and everyone keeps trying to get him to resign. Actually, I lied – don’t feel sorry for him at all. He’s a vacuous little shit who deserves every bit of grief he gets. Tosser.
Hard Rock Café (or perhaps, judging by their latest financial figures, that should be Hard Luck Café) have an excellent store selector where you can find all their sites anywhere in the world.
Unfortunately, their web monkey’s flunked GCSE geography and can’t seem to tell the difference between the United Kingdom and England. North Britain and West Britain are, apparently, no longer part of the United Kingdom. Does this mean we don’t have to pay for them any more?
Can someone settle an argument?
If you are inside a sealed tunnel shaped object travelling through space at the speed of light, would you be able to move forward in that tunnel shaped object?
I think not but my colleague disagrees. He says that because it’s a sealed object then your speed is relative to the object that you’re in. However, I think that the speed of light is a constant regardless of the environment you’re in otherwise you could fire something at the speed of light down the tunnel shaped object which is also travelling at the speed of light and that object would have travelled at twice the speed of light.
Another colleague says that if I’m in a car travelling at 70mph I’m not travelling at 70mph sitting inside the car as I’m in a sealed environment and that backs up my other colleagues theory. However, if the car were to suddenly disappear I would continue moving (albeit briefly and very painfully) at 70mph because I am still moving at 70mph through space. The same applies (I think) to the speed of light – it is a universal constant, not a relative one.
Today is the 5 year anniversary of that momentous occassion … when Mrs Sane and I got engaged. Was I going to let the worlds worst terrorist attack put me off when I’d finally plucked up the courage and carefully laid my plans? Was I buggery!
Sad to think that apparently no lessons have been learnt because we are more at risk now than we were then.
The legal age at which you can smoke in North Britain is to change to 18 in an attempt to make the country more healthy. Smoking is already banned in all public places.
The full ban in England was diluted by an MP elected in North Britain and then voted on and passed by MP’s elected in all four home nations despite only having effect in England. Any attempt to raise the age limit in England would, of course, be scuppered by MP’s who have no business getting involved in English legislation.
As DK points out, Labour has an interest in making sure the tobacco companies keep turning huge profits – the North British Executive’s pension scheme has invested heavily in the tobacco industry.
Iain Dale sums up Chairman Blair‘s sense of priorities perfectly when he says they are “arse about face”.
Two examples he gives are:
Chairman Blair has never attended a UK military funeral, visited an injured soldier or the families of soldiers killed in action but manages to motivate himself to visit the families of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers that sparked the fruitless invasion of Lebanon and;
Soldiers serving in Iraq get a free 20 minute phone call every week (subject to availability) to their families back home whilst criminals in prison get 30.
Both good examples Iain but I’d like to point out another one:
Chairman Blair sucks up to the North Britons for votes even though the majority of them now want independence whilst a small number of them are threatening to poison England’s water supply.
We’ve got a dodgy combi boiler which will now only dispense hot water anywhere in the house if we turn on the tap we want to use (or shower) and then turn on the hot tap in the downstairs bathroom on full until the hot water kicks in.
A British Gas engineer came out a few months ago and replaced the heat transfer plate but since then it’s got worse and sometimes we have to turn the hot tap in the bathroom on and off several times before the hot water kicks in.
Now, I’ve done my research and the symptoms seem to point to the same 4 possible faults. Either the diaphragm is buggered (this is something to do with operating the switch that kicks the heater in), the Domestic Hot Water Sensor is buggered (this senses when the water is hot), the diverter is buggered (this decides whether the water goes past the heat transfer plate or not) or the flow valve is buggered (this regulates the amount of water flowing through the boiler).
I’m not a plumber or gas engineer but I can see how all 4 of those could affect the boiler. Question is, will the British Gas engineer coming tomorrow?
England is once again under the threat of terrorism from people living within our borders. But this time it’s not one of Chairman Blair‘s special muslim terrorists, it’s the master race we have to worry about.
The North British National Liberation Army (SNLA) has sent an email to the offices of the Sunday Times in Glasgow threatening to poison English water supplies. The political wing of the SNLA, the North British Separatist Group (SSG), has published details on how to permanently contaminate the water supply of a large city on its website.
The article can be read here.
Who’s heading up Labour’s North British election campaign next year?
Britishness Brown, the Ignorant Jock, of course. Good choice.
The Labour Party has diligently ignored, abused and discriminated against England in order to curry favour with the North Britons since 1997. They have given them thousands of pounds per head every year in public spending over and above what your average English person receives. They have given them their own government, kept their country united (whilst dividing England in regions) and even allowed North British Law to extend into England in the case of the River Tweed. All this to secure North British vote and ensure that Labour gets the support it needs to continue its minority rule of England.
The YouGov poll commissioned by the Sunday Times and published today must therefore be slightly worrying for the architects of the British apartheid system. The poll shows that 44% of North Britons want independence with only 42% favouring the status-quo. In an ICM poll commissioned in 2000, only 23% wanted independence. The poll also shows the SNP neck-and-neck with Labour and the leader of the SNP, Alex Salmond, is more popular than the Labour First Minister, Jack McConnell.
Labour have made their beds and now they can sleep in them.
Boris Johnson really does make me laugh, I think he’s brilliant. If there’s another leadership campaign before the next election Boris has got to be a vote winner.
Boris is in a spot of bother again though. It seems that he’s offended the Papua New Guineans by saying that they’re into canibalism and chief killing. Canibalism is against the law in Papua New Guinea now but it still goes on. Some parts of Papua New Guinea are so remote that they have never encountered outsiders before and canibalism undoubtedly still goes on there like it has for thousands of years.
Anyway, this is all academic. Boris has been a very naughty boy upsetting a whole country but he has said sorry so I think he could be forgiven.
Boris for Prime Minister!
Charles Clarke has been sniping at the Ignorant Jock, telling everyone how crap he is (like we don’t already know). Chairman Blair has called for the sniping to stop so that they can get on with trying to win the next election.
Tony, forget it. The next 2 or 3 elections at least are a complete write-off for Labour. It’s not going to happen. Resign. Now. Please. I’ll pay you.
A cyclist was fined here in Telford a couple of weeks ago for inconsiderate riding. He was riding down the road at 20mph and causing cars to slow down because the road had solid white lines down the middle (for those that don’t know, that means no overtaking). The judge said that he should have used the cycle lane instead of the road and fined him a couple of hundred quid.
If proof be needed that fate takes the piss then this is it: his brother was riding in a cycle lane yesterday when a car clipped the back of his bike and then sped off.
Almost enough to make you believe there really is a god up there with a warped sense of humour. Almost.
The Ignorant Jock has kicked off his leadership campaign with a speech in North Britain on Britishness.
The speech is, frankly, bizarre for someone who has constantly displayed his North British credentials and the timing is particularly strange given that next year sees elections in England, North Britain and West Britain and Labour are seriously lagging behind in the popularity stakes all over the dis-United Kingdom.
The speech is just full of Britishness and bullshit and I really can’t be bothered to pick it to pieces, especially when DK has done such a fabulous job.
Comrade Bliar has started to buckle under the pressure and has announced that he will resign in the next 12 months. He has stopped short of announcing an actual date despite daily calls for him to name a date or to just go from all sides, including from within the Labour Party itself.
I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that he’ll be gone before Christmas with the Ignorant Jock taking his place.
Andy Murray, the North British tennis player who supports anyone but England, has been knocked out of the US Open.
What a shame.
That should be the headlines for all of tomorrow’s newspapers and if it is, I want royalties.
Seven MP’s, including a Junior Minister, have resigned over Traitor Blair‘s refusal to do the honourable thing for the first time in his miserable career and fall on his sword. What is most gobsmacking about these resignations is that my own Labour MP, David Wright, is one of those who have resigned. He’s not resigned from being an MP though, he’s just resigned from his job as parliamentary aide to John Hutton, the Secretary of State for the DWP.
Tony, nobody likes you. The average man or woman on the street doesn’t like you. Your cabinet doesn’t like you. Your MP’s don’t like you. Everyone wants you to resign so please, do us all a favour and go. Don’t bother with a resignation letter or working notice – just leave. Preferably leave the country. Put it on your expenses, nobody will object just so long as you go and take that hideous troll Cherie with you.
The Princess Royal Hospital in Telford has been threatened with cuts to its A&E service as the NHS trust in Shropshire tries to cut its £31m debts. The A&E service has supposedly been saved but at the expense of the consultant-led paediatrics unit meaning that any children taken seriously ill at night will have to be taken about 15 miles to the Royal shrewsbury Hospital instead.
Earlier this year the Shrewsbury & Telford NHS Trust was forced to hand over a chunk of this years budget to a regional NHS bank set up by the Department of Health. They then had to borrow back that money – and more – in the form of a loan from that bank. Shortly afterwards a West Midlands regional health authority was created and the NHS Trust subsumed into it. The NHS Trust had no say in any of this and there was no public consultation.
The regional health authority put a stop to the plans that Shrewsbury & Telford had drawn up to deal with their debts on the basis that someone in Birmingham who has nothing to do with the hospitals is better placed to make a decision about those hospitals and it is the reigonal health authority who have made the decision to cut the level of care at Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital.
The regionalisation of England continues unchecked, in secret and unopposed. The Tories are opposed to it but where are they when services are regionalised and cut back? Where is Telford’s Tory MP, Mark Pritchard, when these decisions are taken?
