How does he do it, eh?  Teflon Tony has somehow managed to avoid a proper inquiry into the lies and deceit that resulted in him taking us into an illegal war in Iraq on the back of completely fabricated “intelligence”.

Despite the fact that Labour’s wafer thin majority was already at risk by rebels in their own ranks, Bliar couldn’t even be bothered to turn up for the vote.

With a bit of luck he spent the time writing his resignation letter.

The power-mad, money grabbing British government is losing the media war on global warming already.  The Stern Report has been rubbished and criticised by the media – even the Labour Press Office BBC.

Cobbett Rides Again puts the report into perspective superbly and the Adam Smith Institute gives the report a metaphorical kick in the teeth.  An Englishman’s Castle has a graph produced by the Met Office showing that temperatures in Central England rose an average of 1.5 degrees between 1695 and 1737, obviously caused by time travelling 4×4 drivers and those dastardly oil companies sending their polution back 400 years through a secret wormhole using techniques the Roswell aliens showed them.  Slightly more up-to-date, he gives the report a good going over pointing out some fundamental errors.

Still, at least Labour can pretend to be doing something in the run-up to next years local elections.

Update:
Ranting Stan has a transcript of an interview with historical climatologist, Dr Tim Ball, which basically debunks the whole global warming crap and proves the Stern Report to be worthless by pointing out that since 1940 – when we started pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in serious quantities – the earth has actually been cooling down.

The Ignorant Jock is expected to hike up all sorts of taxes to combat global warming following a summit today that Tim Worstall abandoned his live reporting on because it was inaccurate and designed to come out with one answer – global warming is happening and it’s going to cost lots of money.

DK points out (again) that back in the 70’s the worlds scientists were almost unanimous in their belief that global cooling was happening and this was going to lead to war and famine and the end of civillisation as we know it.  Today they are almost unanimous in their belief that global warming is happening with the same reprecussions.

Forgive me for being a bit cynical in my belief that this report is a load of bollocks and an excuse to put up taxes.

Bank of England £20 notes are having the picture of Elgar replaced with a picture of the North British economist, Adam Smith.

Can anybody, under any possible circumstances, imagine an English person ever appearing on the back of a Royal Bank of Scotland, HBoS or Clydesdale bank note?  Hell would freeze over first.

The British government is, let’s be honest here, crap.  They do what they want which is mostly what we don’t want them to do.  They do what is in their own best interests which is mostly bad for us.  They discriminate against the English to secure the celtic vote and when we try and do something about it they tell us we’re racists or trying to break up the country.

And they cost the taxpayer the princely sum of … £85,000,000.  That’s right, count the zeroes – that’s 85 million English pounds of our money that could be better spent on hospitals, schools, police, etc. rather than spin doctors, propaganda merchants and piss poor self-serving dishonest politicians.

The worst thing is though, the MP’s that claimed the most money were those MP’s elected in North Britain where, unlike their English counterparts, they are prevented from doing pretty much anything for their constitutents because the Scottish Parliament runs the country.  Talk about overpaid and underworked!

The “security barrier” on the Israeli-Palestine border (or quite often not on the border but cutting into Palestine) has attracted worldwide criticism.  The Israeli’s have been accused of creating a modern-day Berlin wall and criticised for the damaging effects the barrier will have on Palestine and future relations with Israel and its neighbours.

The Americans rarely criticise Israel but when it’s something that attracts universal criticism – even within Israel itself – they will usually make a half-hearted criticism.  But not on this occassion.  I wonder what possible reason they could have for allowing Israel to steal large chunks of Palestine and cut them off from the rest of the world without a murmour … oh, I see.

There was a black and white film from the 60’s (I think it was the 60’s anyway) that had, as it’s soundtrack, “I wanna be a hippy and I wanna get stoned”.  The film was really funny and all the way through it there was this talking fish smoking a spliff.

Anyone know what the film was called?

The British government is releasing a white paper on local government reforms in England.

The white paper from Ruth Kelly’s department will pledge more powers to local authorities in return for new rules imposing elected mayors and giving the electorate the right to challenge their local authorities.

Lord Bruce-Lockhart, a Conservative peer, said “It is time for Whitehall to decentralise, devolve and deregulate to set people free of bureaucracy and improve the lives of millions of people”.  I agree but this isn’t devolution, it’s tokenism – the only devolution we need is to an English Parliament so we can tackle the real problems facing England such as the Barnett Formula, the denial of medical treatments on the basis of cost and the interference in English matters of foreign MP’s.

But back on the subject of this white paper, it could be a good move provided that this is only about localisation and not an attempt to sell localisation as the answer to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly.  Local authorities are loose cannons – when they deign to hold public consultation they are merely paying lip service, the decisions have usually been made and often the wheels set in motion before the consultation.  For example, consultation has been promised in Telford for the City Region.  The decision was made months ago to join it, the council has committed itself to the City Region, their strategies are all centred on the City Region – and this is before the public consultation exercise.  Hopefully this change in local government will enable people to bring rogue local authorities to account but my guess is that they will continue to be free to do what they want as long as they’re following party policy.

A leaked document from Jack Straw’s office contains plans for further “reforms” to the House of Lords in a barely disguised attempt to remove all opposition from the upper house by having 50% elected and 50% appointed Lords.

As I’ve said before, the “reforms” to the House of Lords are nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with politicising the upper house.  An elected House of Lords will be a disaster for democracy.