Last year Telford & Wrekin Council, under the previous Liebour administration, launched a company by the name of Transforming Telford to perform some of its statutory obligations.

I’ve mentioned the funny story around the company before but I’ll touch on it again because it’s a brilliant example of residents getting one over corrupt civil servants. The company was supposed to be called Telford First and had been operating in a shadow form, in secret, for over a year when a resident (John) spotted a reference to it in the £50k variances in the council budget. He did some digging and found that this company had spent thousands of pounds of taxpayers money but appeared to have done nothing. The “company” refused to publicise itself and both they and the council were withholding information. Eventually, John went to the local paper and outed them and they announced they would be starting trading the following Monday. But they hadn’t registered their company name at Companies House. So John – along with another resident called John – registered the name Telford First Limited with Companies House and told the council they could have the name back if they just came clean with residents and told them what this company was doing and how much it was costing. You’ll notice that I called the company Transforming Telford at the start of this post – the council, naturally, chose to maintain the veil of secrecy.

Anyway, that’s the brief history of this quango (which is part owned by the unelected regional development agency, Advantage West Midlands). I put in an FOI a few months ago to the council, which they have finally replied to, asking how much money this quango has spent and received. They have received almost £1.3m of taxpayers money and just over £74k of private money. They’ve spent their entire income which includes £112k on press and media yet the only adverts anyone has seen for them are job adverts offering hughly paid jobs to budding quangocrats.

The big question is, if private enterprise is only stumping up 5% of the funding, why are only 2 of the board members representatives of the taxpayers giving this quango 95% of its funding? Why is this almost exclusively publicly-funded quango controlled by unelected bureaucrats and businessmen when they are making such a pitiful contribution to the coffers?

Traitor Bliar held his last cabinet meeting today before he finally does the decent thing for the first time in his career and resigns.

He pledged “unswerving support” for No Mandate Brown during the Liebour lovefest in which ministers gushed at each other and generally reminisced about how great the last few years have been on their planet, wherever the fuck that is.

Fatty Prescott, who is resigning with Princess Tony, said he would “leave office with his head held high”.  Shame nobody will notice on account of the 5 chins that fill the half inch gap between his jowls and the flap of lard filled skin that hangs off his neck.

The Demon Headmaster said that Bliar would be remembered as one of the most successful Prime Ministers ever who had tackled racial and gender prejudice and created a society “at ease with itself” and not, as everyone else keeps saying, as a lying, cheating, war-mongering, coniving little shit.

No Mandate Brown said people would “look back in 100 years time and see the achievements Tony Blair has made”.  They’ll look back at the uncontrolled immigration responsible for English being an ethnic minority in 2107.  They’ll look back at the dark days before President Bliar brought the country into the light of European Federalism.  They’ll look back and give thanks that Lord Bliar of Twatsville resisted the unreasonable demands of the regions not to have their country broken up for the good of the European Federation.

William Hague, I think, sums up Bliar’s career pretty well:

Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, for the Conservatives, said Mr Blair had “amazing” political talents and had been “good at winning elections”.

But he added: “I think he has been a much better party leader than prime minister.

“He wouldn’t get a standing ovation from most of the country.”

Gareth has tagged me on the Gordon Meme …

Two things Gordon Brown should be proud of

1. Not only holding on to his job but his nickname of “Iron Chancellor” when he’s overseen the introduction of a record number of new taxes and incompetence such as telling the world that he’s selling half our gold reserves months in advance, thus devaluing the price of gold and getting half of it’s previous value.
2. Sticking with Liebour and Traitor Bliar in clear defiance of logic and common sense.

Two things he should apologise for

1. Voting on English laws.
2. Breathing.

Two things he should do immediately when he becomes PM

1. Take part in the English Constitutional Convention and sign an English Claim of Right.
2. Resign and call a general election.

Two things he should do while he is PM

1. Sack Charlie Falconer.
2. Call a referendum on an English Parliament.

My turn to tag another 8 people …

Andi from Views from the Asylum
Chris from Devils Kitchen
Kev from the Blog of Kev
Tom from CEP Oxfordshire
Gav from Gav Politics
Pete from West Brom Blog
Jack from Grocer Jack
Andy from Yellow Swordfish

NEWS RELEASE

Wednesday 20th June 2007
For immediate release

“How can Gordon Brown, who took this oath, become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?”

When Gordon Brown was an ordinary Scottish MP he signed the declaration of the “Scottish Claim of Right”. This document was a public oath committing those who took it to put the interests of the people of Scotland before all other considerations.

Now Gordon Brown is to become Prime Minister for the whole of the United Kingdom, the Campaign for an English Parliament is calling on Gordon Brown to publicly declare that he will not put the interests of any one part of the United Kingdom above any other part of the United Kingdom.

The Claim of Right, signed by Gordon Brown in 1988, read:

We, gathered as the Scottish Constitutional Convention, do hereby acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs, and do hereby declare and pledge that in all our actions and deliberations their interests shall be paramount.

CEP Chairman, Scilla Cullen, said, “There is another nation within the UK- that of England. Will Gordon Brown extend to its people the right of self-determination that he espoused for his own nation when he signed the Scottish Claim of Right?”

CEP Vice Chairman, Tom Waterhouse, said, “The Claim of Right was a public oath, and those who took it pledged to put the interests of the Scottish people before all others. How can Gordon Brown, who took this oath, become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom? He must declare that he will put the interests of the whole of the UK before those of Scotland”.

National Council, Campaign for an English Parliament

Contact: cep-mediaunit@thecep.org.uk

Traitor Bliar has told the Commons Select Committee – thankfully the last he will face as Prime Minister – that he supports an appointed House of Lords.

“I think if we want it to be a proper revising chamber it’s best for it to be a different type of chamber,” he said.  How about … I don’t know … a hereditary House of Lords, perhaps?  That’s different.

Electing members of the Upper House, as I have said many times before, will be a disaster for democracy.  You’d think that, as a nation, we’d be grown up enough to realise that the utopian dream of every public official being elected and every decision being taken by a referendum is just that – a dream.  The upper house does not have to be elected to improve democracy.

In a handful of bullet points I can outline my argument for a traditional hereditary upper house:

• An hereditary upper house doesn’t guarantee any party a majority
• Hereditary peers don’t rely on a party for their position of power
• The party whip either doesn’t exist or is useless
• Hereditary peers are more likely to rebel against their party on points of conscience
• Hereditary peers are more likely to make an unpopular decision if they think it’s right because they don’t have to worry about their public image or popularity
• Hereditary peers are part of our culture and heritage and are more likely to defend it than supress it to appease vocal minorities
• Absolute power corrupts absolutely – people who seek power are generally unfit to wield it

When Liebour first “reformed” the House of Lords, the upper house had a Tory majority.  Less than a year later Liebour had appointed itself a majority.  How can the ruling party in the lower house being in charge of appointments to the upper house possibly be more democratic than the traditional hereditary system?  The House of Lords is responsible for keeping the Commons in check, to challenge their bills when they think that they are wrong and to scrutinise their work to ensure that they are acting in the ebst interests of the country.  An appointed upper house is like the lunatics running the asylum, the inmates running the prison, John Prescott running the pork pie factory.

There is the issue of who keeps an eye on the Lords and who makes sure they are acting in the best interests of the country.  Quis custodiet ipsos custodes – who watches the watchers – as Juneval famously said all those centuries ago.  The solution at the moment lies in the Parliament Act which allows the Commons to over-ride the upper house if they reject a bill 3 times in one session of Parliament but this is being systematically abused by this Liebour government who have used it more times to force through legislation against the will of the Lords than every previous government combined since the bill was passed into law at the beginning of the last century.

I offered a solution to this problem back when I debated the issue with Gavin Ayling a good couple of years ago now and I’ve yet to see a reasonable argument against it.  Amend the Parliament Act so that instead of allowing the Commons to over-rule the Lords in cases of dispute, the matter is simply put to a binding public referendum in which both sides submit a brief explanation of their reasons for supporting or opposing the bill in plain English.  No media circus, no spin doctors, just 100 words or less on why the voter should support or oppose the bill.

Combined with restoring the traditional hereditary upper house, this solution would engage the electorate in important decision making, force both the Commons and Lords to consider both public opinion and the value of their proposal and put the people before the party again.  Surely this is the holy grail of political reformists?

A YouGov poll has found that most English and Scottish people believe that Gordon Brown has no mandate to govern the UK.

The poll found that on average only 33% of English people and 47% of Scots felt that Gordon Brown has a mandate to govern the country.

There is no indication as to why they feel that Gordon Brown has no mandate but there can be only to reasons really.  Firstly, he has never contested an election as leader of a party and potential prime minister and secondly, as Prime Minister of the Disunited Kingdom he is the de-facto First Minister of England but was elected in a Scottish constituency.

Hat-tip: The CEP

I’ve finally (or so I thought) got the Snap Preview plugin to behave itself after re-registering countless times, disabling and enabling the plugin and fiddling with the settings.

I like the Snap Preview plugin – it gives you a small preview of the website behind a link, a bit like Vista does when you hover over a button on the taskbar.  It should display previews only for external links but for some reason, under Firefox and Safari it displays them for every link which is a bit of an irritation.

Anyway, if you don’t like the previews you can disable them by hovering over a link to make the preview pop up and clicking the small “disable” link in the top right hand corner of the preview.

Last year Palestine held elections which were accepted as free and fair elections with the only interference in the democratic process coming from Israeli troops in Jerusalem.  The election resulted in a victory for the political wing of Hamas.

Hamas is a bit like the IRA and Sinn Féin.  The IRA were the terrorists and Sinn Féin were the “acceptable” political arm of the group.  Hamas has both a militant and political wing, both of which are called Hamas.

Since Hamas were elected by the Palestinians, Israel, the US, the UK and the EU have all stopped direct aid and refuse to deal with the Palestinian government, choosing to go directly to the President who belongs to the Fatah movement.

This last week has seen what is basically a Fatah-sponsored attempted coup d’etat.  There have been gun fights in the streets, kidnappings and executions.  Hamas troops have taken back control of Gaza but the Fatah insurgency has moved to the West Bank where they have stormed the Parliament building.

The President is expected to swear in a Fatah Prime Minister and “emergency government” in defiance of last years election result.

Now all this is pretty much par for the course in the Middle East where regime changes happen more often than they change their underpants.  However, there is a legitimate government in Palestine democratically elected in a free and fair election.  What are the champions of justice and democracy doing to ensure that the legitimate, democratically elected Palestinian government isn’t ousted in a bloody coup?  Nothing.  In fact, that’s not strictly true – Israel controls Palestine’s borders and for Fatah troops to get from Gaza to the West Bank they would have to pass through Israeli checkpoints.  Known insurgents, probably carrying weapons.  That doesn’t happen if they don’t want it to.  But that’s understandable, Israel has been sponsoring terrorist activity in Palestine as an excuse to bomb them into the stone age for years but the UK and the US invaded Iraq in the name of democracy, surely they’ve got something to say about it?

Yep.  The UK, US, EU and Israel are all prepared to welcome the new “emergency government” and maybe even reinstate direct aid.  There’s a word on the tip of my tongue … yep, got it – hypocracy.