Got home from work and the trick or treaters were out in force.

Made sure they didn’t bother me though, I blocked the path with a wheelie bin.

My parents came to visit and said I was tight.  Be honest, was that tight?

Technorati Tags: Halloween, Trick or Treat

The British government has given the go-ahead to English councils to implement a pay-as-you-throw rubbish tax.

An EU Directive means that unless we cut down on the amount of rubbish sent to landfill, the English taxpayer could end up with a £180m fine per year from Federal Europe.  To try and avoid paying this again (we’re already paying huge fines to our masters in Brussels) the British government wants local authorities to tax residents in England on the amount of rubbish they produce.

I have a suggestion – TELL THE EU TO FUCK OFF!

Why should we pay any fines to Federal Europe?  Our country, our money, our rubbish, our decision.

Council Tax isn’t going to go down as local authorities bring in the rubbish tax, it’ll be extra.  People with large families or poor people will be the ones who suffer the most.  I have four kids and we fill two large recycling boxes and then some every fortnight.  We recycle at least one third of our household waste but we still fill two small wheely bins and one large wheely bin during the same period.

Instead of targetting consumers for throwing away too much rubbish, why not target the manufacturers of goods who insist on wrapping everything up in 2 or 3 layers of packaging?  Unfortunately, the cheaper goods are, the more elaborate the packing tends to be to make it more attractive to the buyer.

Charging for the amount of rubbish produced is going to make fly-tipping a massive problem.  Any potential profit the local authority might make from a pay-as-you-throw rubbish tax will be eaten up by the team of enforcement officers and street cleaners they’re gong to need to employ to deal with fly-tipping.

Technorati Tags: Fly Tipping, Tax, EU

Christian fundamentalists and pro-lifers have celebrated the anniversary of the legalisation of abortion by calling for a reduction in the time limit on abortion from 24 weeks to 20 weeks citing medical advances as a reason for the change.

Anyone know what medical advances these are?

Pregnant women have a detailed scan at 20 weeks where the foetus is checked for abnormalities.  If nothing was suspected prior to the 20 week scan then a detailed scan wouldn’t be done any earlier.

So, assuming the limit was dropped to 20 weeks and a serious problem is found then is the mother to be expected to make a decision there and then whether to keep it?  With the best will in the world, not everyone can cope with a child with serious medical problems.  We have four children and if Mrs Sane was to get pregnant again and it had severe medical problems, we wouldn’t be able to look after our family properly.

I don’t think there is a case for reducing or increasing the limit for abortion.  Increase it and you start getting into the whole ethical issue over when a foetus becomes a person and it’s “wrong” to abort it.  Reduce it and you end up with children being brought up by parents who don’t want them or with serious medical problems – in both cases they would have poor quality of life.

Technorati Tags: Abortion

Fraser Nelson, Political Editor of the Spectator, needs to pay a short visit back to reality before he goes on national television and comes out with anything else like this:

Right now we don’t really notice that we have 14% of the population on benefits, a huge figure.  But if immigrants weren’t here then my god we’d notice.  There’d be huge labour shortages everywhere, we would be forced to actually confront this huge joblessness.

He said this on BBC Question Time in response to a member of the audience saying that yes, we need immigrants, but what about the British people who aren’t working?

Ok Fraser, this is what would actually happen on planet earth.  We stop mass, unfettered immigration and make the lazy scrotes who won’t work get a damn job.

Technorati Tags: Fraser Nelson, Spectator, Immigration

Philip Hollobone, the Tory MP for Kettering, is calling for a change in the law to stop Police from telling asylum seekers to find their own way to immigration centres.

Quite why this is a shock to an MP is a mystery to be honest.  It’s been happening for years and if I remember rightly, somewhere in the region of 50% of asylum seekers are never seen again after being sent on their way.

Even if asylum seekers report to immigration as soon as they get off the banana boat/gravy train/airplane, they are processed and given an appointment at a specified immigration centre.  They are then turfed out and half of them are never seen again.

There is a relatively cheap and simple solution to the problem – stick them on one of these buggers, 5 miles off the coast, and see them do a bunk:

The best place to moor a prison ship full of asylum seekers would be in the middle of the English Channel seeing as how the French are so keen on accidently letting them leave their country for ours.  International law says that you must claim asylum in the first friendly country you set foot in.  As we’re an island that means most asylum claims are going to be invalid and they should be deported back to the first friendly country they arrived in to make a valid claim for asylum.

Technorati Tags: Asylum, Immigration

Results of the Blogging Habits survey:

“Because I’m not Iain Dale, size isn’t everything” … is it Iain?

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Survey

Up to 200 muslim prisoners in a high security prison in Leeds are planning to sue the British government because they were offered ham sandwiches during Ramadan.

The menus were printed in error and given to the prisoners who kicked up a fuss because they’re not allowed to eat pork.  Most of them chose cheese instead but some of them were forced to eat the hame because they were so hungry.

Ok, they chose not to eat all day because they’re such devout muslims but then they ate ham sandwiches because they were hungry even though their religion says they’re not allowed.  Would they have starved to death if they hadn’t committed this heinous sin?  Of course they wouldn’t but I bet they saw an opportunity to expose the infidels for the godless heathens that they are, stir up a bit or racial and religious hatred and get some money out of the zionist pig-dogs.

Regardless of their race or religion, this raises some fundamental (no pun intended) questions.  Prison is supposed to be a punishment.  You are deprived of your right to liberty as punishment for your crimes.  Why should you keep the right to practice religious ceremonies?  There is also the seperate question of whether prisoners should be allowed to take legal action against the state for financial benefit when they’re banged up.  If all they were offered every day was pork sandwiches then fair enough, let them take legal action.  But only to change what is happening, not to make money out of it.  Would a Christian in a prison in a muslim country be able to sue for not being offered fish on a Friday?

Technorati Tags: Prison, Punishment, Muslim

The Welsh Assembly is trying to get control of bilingualism from the British government so that it can extend its language rules to the private sector.

Large numbers of public sector jobs are restricted to Welsh speakers only in an attempt to force more Welsh people to learn the language.  The Welsh Assembly, responding in part to pressure from border-line militant groups, are seeking to extend legislation to the private sector requiring companies based in Wales to provide services in Welsh as well as English.

Out of approximately 3 million people that live in Wales, only 30% speak Welsh and for most adults it’s a matter of choice (lots of children now have compulsary Welsh lessons).  Millions of pounds of taxpayers money is thrown at promoting the Welsh language including dual language road signs and translation services.

British Sign Language (BSL) is the first language of between 50,000 and 70,000 people in the UK.  Deaf people really don’t have a choice whether they speak BSL or English – it’s hard enough to speak when you’ve lost your hearing over time, it’s pretty much impossible if you were born deaf.  BSL is an official minority language recognised by the British government and has a similar legal status to Welsh and Gaelic.  Try getting a BSL interpreter in a hospital or a signed version of a DVD though and the difference is immediately obvious.  Interpreters are available on the end of a phone within minutes if you speak Polish or Punjabi or some other foreign tongue but if you’re deaf you get get a piece of paper and a pen.

The Disability Discrimination Act says that a deaf person is entitled to the same access to services that an able-bodied person is.  That should include translation services, interpreters, even things that you wouldn’t think twice about like a TV with Teletext if you stop in a hotel which has TV’s in the room.  In reality this doesn’t happen though.  My father-in-law went deaf over a period of years and has some über-rare disease but when he goes to hospital he doesn’t have a sign-language interpreter.

Technorati Tags: Welsh, Deaf, BSL

The One Eyed Wonder of Wankistan is still harping on about his new Bill of Rights and how important a British Bill of Rights is going to be and how it’ll prevent the Prime Minister from going to war without a vote of MPs first.

Now David Camoron is promising to introduce his own British Bill of Rights which will replace the Human Rights Act and stop lengthy appeals to European courts.

Firstly, WE ALREADY HAVE A BILL OF RIGHTS!  It’s been there since 1689 and is still in force now.  Rather than creating a new 5 million page document full of multi-culti Britishness bullshit, just stop depriving us of the rights that we already have.  There is no way in the world that a new Bill of Rights will give us the freedom and protection we already have in the 1689 Bill of Rights.  The right not to be ruled by the someone other than our own government and the right not to be fined or have our possessions taken away unless we’ve been convicted of a crime for example.  The 1689 Bill of Rights makes summary justice and on-the-spot fines illegal and void but the establishment turns a blind eye because they rake in billions and what judge is now going to rule that the hundreds of billions of pounds of illegal fines and forfeitures the British government has received are illegal?  But they are and one of our ancient and fundamental rights has been eroded forever.

Secondly, MPs might get a vote on going to war under No Mandate Brown’s Bill of Rights but it won’t stop them being lied to like last time.

Finally, Camoron‘s Bill of Rights is a non-starter.  Gordon the Goblin King just signed the EU not-a-constitution which means that the highest court in the land is European.

Technorati Tags: Bill of Rights

Orange sent me one of these yesterday …

Technorati Tags: Orange, HTC Touch, Gadgets