Archive for February 2008

No longer acceptable to be proud to be English?

February 29, 2008 Anglophobia, Education, England 2 comments

According to that last bastion of objective reporting, the Sun, school children are being punished for wearing clothes with England flags on them or even for being dropped off at school in cars with England flags on them.

Normally I’d take anything the Sun says with a pinch sack of salt but in this case it seems to be genuine.

A lefty think tank, Counterpoint Research, has produced a report called the Childhood Wellbeing report highlighting the racial discrimination against English children iin school – a place where they are supposed to feel safe and happy.  There is no indication that non-English children have been punished for displaying a national flag.

Ed Balls, the Liebour Childrens Secretary, said that “The general perception among parents was that it was no longer acceptable to be proud to be English”.

On what does he base this ridiculous assertion?  Where was the research carried out?  Was it in an area that was predominantly white English or an area that had a large immigrant population?  It certainly wasn’t anywhere around here – white, black and asian children alike wear England football shirts and the English flag can be seen hanging from windows and on stickers in car windows everywhere.  There’s a large number of Ghanaian immigrants living in flats nearby whose children wear England football shirts – some of them don’t even speak English!

The Department for Children, Schools & Education is sending me a copy of the report so I can see how Ed Balls comes to this conclusion.

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Prince Harry in Afghanistan

February 29, 2008 General 2 comments

Prince Harry has been in Afghanistan on active service with the Household Cavalry in Helmand Province for the last 10 weeks.

The media was aware that he was there but had agreed to keep it a secret for his safety in return for access to him for interviews in Afghanistan.

An American website – the Drudge – broke the embargo and made the news public, following which the media have started to release their interviews.

The MOD are now considering how long they can safely keep him out there.  A message has appeared on a website, apparently from the Taliban, saying that they hope that their god will kill him.  He will certainly be the most prized target in Afghanistan.

Prince Harry is the most senior royal to see active service in the armed forces since Prince Andrew fought in the Falklands.

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Challenge to Police DNA database

February 28, 2008 Police State 3 comments

Two men have gone to the European Court of Human Rights in an attempt to get their fingerprints and DNA samples removed from the Police database on the grounds that it’s a breach of their human rights.

In England and Wales – but not in Scotland of course – the Police refuse to destroy the biometric data of people who are arrested but who are found innocent of all charges.

I understand the usefulness of having DNA samples and fingerprints in solving crimes but this has to be balanced against the individual’s right to privacy.  The men are arguing that by the Police holding their biometric data, there is an immediate suspicion that they are criminals.

On balance I think the infringement of civil liberties and right to privacy outweighs the benefits of having biometric data of tens of thousands of innocent people.

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More threats from the Deman mob

February 27, 2008 General 41 comments

Apologies to those who would have like to continue commenting on the post about Dr Suresh Deman, the vexatious litigator who has been banned from taking legal action in England, Scotland and Wales after launching a string of spurious racial discrimination cases against academic institutions.

Although their comments were automatically blacklisted, the number of abusive, threatening and racist comments I was receiving from the Deman mob was getting beyond a joke.

So far I have been called a white supremecist, a racist ignorant, a zionist Labour mafia collaborator, dozy, sexist, a paid harasser or stalker, a firebrand racist, a racist idiotic jerk, a self-entangled racist idiotic jerk, an under achiever and chicken shit variously by Dr D’Silva, Mrs Mayo-Deman and Council for Ethnic Minority. Mostly by Council for Ethnic Minority actually.

Then this morning I received this email which is, to be quite frank, a complete joke considering the racist abuse I’ve been getting from this bunch of illiberal cretins:

Dear Mr Stuart Parr:

Now that you have blocked our comments and many other professionals’ comments exposing your disparaging campaign and white supremacist racist nonsense we have no choice but to contact you by e-mail. It appears you do not want to receive from others as there is not even a shred of evidence that either Mrs Mayo-Deman or Dr DSilva used their employers’ equipments to expose your extremely offencive views and nonsense.

Please be advised to let us know your mailing address so that we could pass it on to our solicitors to serve you a formal Pre Action Protocol Warning of defamation and racial harassment. Let us know how many proxi names you have been using to perpetuate myth of lies and deceits on your website.

We are looking forward to hearing from you ASAP.

Yours sincerely,

C. Kumar & Mrs S. Mahdevan

Coordinators

It was tempting to ignore it because I’ve already told them several times that this blog is published by a limited company and as such all their correspondence should be put in writing to the limited company care of the legal compliance department of the hosting company. After all, when you have a problem with a newspaper article you don’t complain to the journalist, you complain to the publisher. But I replied anyway, generously giving them the same information again in as simple terms as possible.

To be honest, I’m thinking of going to the police and making a complaint about racial harassment. What do you reckon? Should I treat them with the contempt they deserve and ignore them or take the bull by the horns and make a complaint about racial harassment?

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Mike Nattrass MEP cleared

February 25, 2008 UKIP One comment

An industrial tribunal has cleared UKIP MEP, Mike Nattrass, of all charges after a former employee served him with an unfair dismissal claim.

The employee had voluntarily changed his employment status to a self-employed contractor.  A breakdown in their professional relationship ensued which apparently resulted in the employee refusing to meet with him.  Mike decided not to renew his contract when it expired.

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EU Cost/Benefit Analysis petition has 600 signatures

February 25, 2008 Federal Europe One comment

The petition I started calling for a Cost/Benefit Analysis of membership of the EU has just had its 600th signature.

If you haven’t signed it yet, please do so.  If you have signed it, please forward it on to all your contacts and ask them to sign it as well.

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The taxman cometh

February 24, 2008 Corruption, Sleaze 3 comments

We all know that the amount of tax we have to pay is criminal but it turns out that the revenue really are a bunch of crooks.

HMRC paid a crook £100,000 for details of 100 British citizens with accounts at Liechtenstein’s biggest private bank.

The records were stolen by an employee who also sold details of 750 German nationals to the German secret service for £3.2m.  The employee, who has been sacked and convicted of fraud, also attempted to sell records to the US, Canada, Australia and France.

What was Liebour’s election slogan a few years back?  Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime?

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Hat-tip: Englishman’s Castle

Six Nations: England -v France

February 24, 2008 England, Sport No comments

Jonny WilkinsonEngland had a blistering start with 10 points on the board in the first 13 minutes, 5 of which came from what will probably be the try of the tournament by Paul Sachi.

Jonny Wilkinson’s foot was perfect as usual.

England have played an excellent first half and the statistics don’t match the performance.  France have the majority of the possession but, tellingly, they also have the most errors.

The only danger is that we see a repeat of last week’s performance against France where England dominated the first half and then capitulated during the second half and lost the match.

The score at half time was 13-7 to England.

 

The final score was 24-13 to England.  It looked a bit dubious for a little while but England outplayed France. 

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Right is right

February 23, 2008 Labour, Tories No comments

The Conswervative Party in Derby reckon that 300 Liebour members are defecting tonight to the Conswervatives.

So confident are they that it will happen that Caroline Spellman, the Conswervative Party Chairman, is travelling to Derby to receive them.

It would be funny if this was a wind-up and the Tories were left with egg on their faces but I think that it’s genuine.  I don’t support the Conswervatives but right is right.  Liebour is haemoraghing members and struggling to service £30m of debts.  It’s time they did the decent thing and wound the rotten party up.

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Hat-tip: Daily Referendum

Federal Europe attempts to cover up MEP fraud

February 22, 2008 Corruption, Federal Europe, Sleaze No comments

A random audit by anti-fraud investigators at the EU has uncovered £100m of fraud committed by MEPs between 2004 and 2006.

£100m of taxpayers money lost to fraud and corruption over and above the latent fraud, corruption and waste that is estimated to account for up to 25% of their budget.

How the fuck can MPs even attempt to justify giving more power and money to a criminally corrupt organisation that aims to ultimately spread its corrupt, facist regime across the entire continent and beyond?  The rampant fraud in the Liebour Party pales in comparison to corruption on this scale.

Not only is it unbelievable that they have got away with it for 2 years but I find it simply amazing that they have actually tried to keep it secret.  The report is kept in a secure room and MEPs are instructed to sign a confidentiality agreement before going in.

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Abolish Regional Quangos petition – government response

February 21, 2008 Regions No comments

No Mandate Brown took some time out of his busy schedule to tell one of his PR guru’s to send a pointless and evasive answer to the West Midlands NO! petition calling on the British government to abolish regional quangos.

The Government believes there are issues which extend beyond the boundaries of even the largest local authority, and that a regional approach is necessary to analyse and address the causes of economic disparity; ensure planning and investment decisions are properly integrated; and co-ordinate sub-national government activity.

The Review of sub-national economic development and regeneration (SNR) published in July 2007 set out a number of reforms to ensure the regional tier is streamlined and effective. Regional Assemblies in their current form and function will not continue. Instead Regional Development Agencies (reporting to the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) will be responsible for developing and agreeing with local authorities in their regions integrated Regional Strategies promoting sustainable economic development. Parliamentary scrutiny of RDAs will be strengthened, alongside continuing Government oversight of RDA impact and value for money.

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That was unexpected

February 20, 2008 General 2 comments

I had to go to the hospital today to get measured up for braces for my knees (not Forrest Gump style braces) which involved a trip of almost an hour to Gobowen near Oswestry which has the best orthopaedic hospital in England.

Anyway, I’m making good time and am about 3 or 4 miles from the hospital when I passed a lay-by and noticed a man lying over the kerb trying to flag down traffic.  Nobody stopped and I saw him too late to pull into the lay-by so I went further down the road, phoned 999 and turned around at the next island.

By the time I got back a truck driver had managed to stop and had got the man sitting up.  He was complaining of chest pains and said his eyes were funny.  His family started to turn up after a few minutes, he had presumably phoned them when he’d pulled over.  He was sitting up with help, a bit out of it and then he just keeled over and died minutes before the ambulance arrived.

The ambulance crew tried to revive him at the side of the road but they hadn’t managed by the time they’d loaded him onto the ambulance.  I did my best to comfort his relatives but it’s a bit of a blur, I think I may have just talked shit.

It was really disappointing that so many people passed by without stopping, I don’t know how long he was there on his own.  It also exposes the folly of closing A&E wards in hospitals – they did this a few years ago at Gobowen and as a result the ambulance had a 20 minute drive to Shrewsbury to the nearest hospital.  The bean counters probably thought it was a good idea to close the A&E ward, I wonder what this man’s family think.

As for what happened to the man who had the heart attack – I don’t know.  It didn’t look hopeful.

Bloody global warming

February 20, 2008 Climate Change No comments

I was looking forward to a bit of global warming, the warm weather does wonders for my arthritis.  But I’m very disappointed with the latest bit of global warming which means that in places, the frost hasn’t left the ground for about 3 days now in Telford.

It was -3oC yesterday morning and -5oC the morning before.  I was de-icing my car windows 2 mornings ago with a bowl of warm water (if you try this at home, make sure you just take the chill off the water otherwise you’ll crack your windscreen) and by the time I’d got back round to the front of the car, the windscreen was iced up again.

The British government promised global warming.  They promised heatwaves and droughts and they’ve failed to deliver.  Shocking.

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Castro retires

February 20, 2008 General One comment

Fidel Castro has announced his resignation as president of Cuba and his brother Raul, who is currently standing in as president, is expected to be “elected” as his permanent replacement.

The BBC has been gushing about Comrade Castro all day.  He introduced free medical care for all and literacy rates are comparable with any western nation.  Which is nice.  He also introduced abitary arrest and imprisonment and destroyed the Cuban economy.  Which isn’t quite so nice if you live in Cuba.  Even his own daughter lives in exile in Miami saying that it’s preferable to living under her father’s dictatorial rule.

Castro has done some good stuff and some bad stuff.  Unfortunately, the bad stuff is really quite bad.  Communism just doesn’t work, the same patterns repeat themselves under every communist regime.  Cuba is much better off without Castro just as long as they get someone half decent in exchange.

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Telford won’t be marking St Georges Day

February 19, 2008 St George No comments

Telford & Wrekin have confirmed that they will not be marking St Georges Day again this year.

I spoke to them today to find out what they were planning after hearing a couple of councillors at the recent Telford & Wrekin Question Time event saying how pleased they were to be marking Chinese New Year and Holocaust Day assuming, somewhat naïvely, that they would be extending the same courtesy to the 95 or so percent of the population of the borough that’s English.

But no, there will be no borough-wide events. The only event they know of is Hadley Parish Council’s annual St Georges Day dinner which will be attended by the mayor. Which isn’t really good enough is it?

I was told that because Telford is a multi-national town they would have to celebrate every patron saint to keep everybody happy but as I pointed out, there are only four patron saints in the UK and as we’re in England there’s only one that matters. I also pointed out that regardless of whether they are white, black or asian, most people living in Telford will consider themselves English.

I’ve asked for my comments to be passed on to the Leader, Andrew Eade, but I may pre-empt it with a phone call this evening. It’s a little disappointing after Andrew got off to such a good start by taking down the EU flag and replacing it with the Cross of St George when he took over as leader last year.

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Is history repeating itself?

February 17, 2008 General No comments

Kosova Dardania flagKosovo is planning to issue a unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia today.

I believe this is an important event for England because it sets a precedent for emerging nations.  English independence isn’t one of the CEP’s policies but it’s an inportant precedent nonetheless because it recognises a nation’s right to determine how they are governed whether the “occupying power” agrees or not.

I was reading through Wikipedia for some background information on Kosovo and came across this:

After Yugoslavia’s name change to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Serbia’s to the Socialist Republic of Serbia in 1953, Kosovo gained inner autonomy in the 1960s. In the 1974 constitution, the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo’s government received higher powers, including the highest governmental titles – President and Prime Minister and a seat in the Federal Presidency which made it a de facto Socialist Republic within the Federation, but remaining as a Socialist Autonomous Province within the Socialist Republic of Serbia. Tito had pursued a policy of weakening Serbia, as he believed that a “Weak Serbia equals a strong Yugoslavia”. To this end Vojvodina and Kosovo became autonomous regions and were given the above entitled privileges as de facto republics. Serbo-Croatian, Albanian and Turkish were defined as official languages on the provincial level marking the two largest linguistic Kosovan groups: Albanians and Serbs. In the 1970s, an Albanian nationalist movement pursued full recognition of the Province of Kosovo as another Republic within the Federation, while the most extreme elements aimed for full-scale independence. Tito’s arbitrary regime dealt with the situation swiftly, but only giving it a temporary solution.

This could quite easily read:

Scotland gained inner autonomy in the 1850s. In the 1997 constitution, the Socialist Autonomous Province of Scotland’s government received higher powers, including the highest governmental title – First [Prime] Minister and a seat in the Federal Parliament which made it a de facto Socialist Republic within the Federation, but remaining as a Socialist Autonomous Province within the United Kingdom. The British establishment had pursued a policy of weakening England, as they believed that a “Weak England equals a strong Britain”. To this end Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland became autonomous regions and were given the above entitled privileges as de facto republics. Welsh and Gaelic were defined as official languages on the provincial level marking the three largest linguistic Celtic groups: Scotland, Welsh and Irish. In the 1960s, a Scottish nationalist movement pursued full recognition of the Province of Scotland as another Republic within the Federation, while the most extreme elements aimed for full-scale independence. The British estblishment’s arbitrary regime dealt with the situation swiftly, but only giving it a temporary solution.

It’s taken 34 years for Kosovo to get from being given autonomy to the point of declaring independence.  Scotland has had 11 years so far, will it take another 23 years before Scotland finally declares independence?

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English children to get unique ID number

February 14, 2008 Education, England, Police State No comments

The British government plans to allocate every 14 year old child in England a unique ID number which could be tied to the national ID database and will be used to provide access to school records for potential employers and the state.

The Education & Skills Bill – which only applies to England, not the whole of the UK as the press are reporting – will introduce the “Learning Number” which will be the key to a national database of state CVs for every child in England.  The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills – one of No Mandate Brown’s made up government departments – said “It is just a way of making life easier for learners and employers. It is something we think will help people looking for work”.  What a load of shit.  It is a way of introducing 14 year old children to the concept of being numbered and monitored for the rest of their lives and the state taking control of their identity.

The same spokesman also said the database will be “cast-iron in terms of integrity” whilst the Information Commissioner said “We have provided advice and assistance to help ensure that this system is watertight and secure – but no system is immune to human error and breaches can and do occur”.

Just like HMRC losing the details of 25 million recipients, just like the MOD officer losing a laptop containing secret data, just like all the other recent admissions of data loss by British government departments – the data will be vulnerable to inaccuracy, loss and fraud.  Your identity isn’t like a bank account – it can’t be changed if it falls into the wrong hands – your identity is unique and identity theft will cause you problems for the rest of your life in Liebour’s database state.

The state stealing the identity of our children has surely got to be a breach of their Human Rights.

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CEP, CEP, Where for art thou CEP?

February 13, 2008 General No comments

Regular purveyors of the CEP blog may have noticed that it disappeared on Saturday and still hasn’t come back.  A brief explanation …

On Saturday the company running the data centre that the servers were located in told our hosting company that the power station supplying the building had had a fire which had knocked out a transformer.

On Sunday they told the hosting company that actually it was them that had the fire, that the 2 web servers hosting our site had gone up in smoke.  Oh yes, and also that the off-site backups they were being paid to do daily hadn’t actually been done and everything had been lost in the fire.  Sorry about that.

Obviously this is a bit of a blow.  I have some backups but not enough to restore the blog to its former glory.  I’ve personally lost the West Midlands NO! site and my wife’s card business which was located on the same servers.  Which means I’m going to be busy for the foreseeable future.  The hosting company have been really helpful – they had new servers up and running by Sunday evening and have been in touch pretty much constantly since it happened.

The CEP now has a holding page with a list of branch blogs which will be spreading the word while we work on getting a new CEP site up and running.  If any CEP members are interested in writing a branch blog then let me know and I’ll set it up.

If anyone is interested in contributing to development of the CEP site and has PHP, Joomla and WordPress skills (coding more than using) or Flash/graphics skills then drop me a line and I’m more than happy to keep you busy!

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Microsoft tries to run before it can walk

February 11, 2008 Technology No comments

Yahoo has rejected a takeover offer of $41bn (nearly £21bn) from Micro$oft saying that it undervalued the company!

Shares in Yahoo closed at $19.18 (about £10) on the 1st February when Micro$oft made their offer and the $41bn offer would have been worth $31 (about £15) per share.  Amazingly, the Wall Street Journal reckons that Yahoo won’t accept less than $40 per share and that Micro$oft will probably pay it.

A combined MSN/Yahoo will put Google back in the position of plucky underdog which can only be a good thing because they’ve been turning corporate lately.  But increasing the dominance of Micro$oft is generally a bad thing for the consumer and, of course, merging MSN and Yahoo reduces consumer choice.

Micro$oft reckons that by merging with Yahoo it can offer a better and cheaper service but Google already offers a better search engine and better free web applications than Yahoo and Micro$oft for nothing.  As painful as it is to admit it, Micro$oft is good at writing software.  Ok, it tends to be bloated and full of features that are useless to most people, not to mention incredibly expensive, but technology would be nowhere near where it is today if it wasn’t for Micro$oft.  They now need to move away from the desktop and look at ways of better supporting remote working but for that they need the communications industry to “grow up”.  Micro$oft are approaching the challenge the wrong way – at this stage they would be better off investing their $40bn in the communications industry to develop the technology that will allow them to deliver their bloated applications into the home over residential internet connections than investing in a company attempting (and failing) to create a market for online content that only a relatively small percentage of the population can fully benefit from.

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Ahern & Brown push NI to take on more devolution

February 11, 2008 Northern Ireland No comments

No Mandate Brown and Bertie Ahern have urged the Stormont Assembly to complete the devolution process in Northern Ireland by taking on police and justice even though the DUP isn’t keen on taking on those powers.

Talk about taking the piss!  Northern Ireland is being pushed into accepting more devolution that it doesn’t want while England is being refused any form of devolution that doesn’t involve abolishing our country and replacing it with regional pseudo-parliaments.

I just sent this to the Taoiseach Press Office:

To whom it may concern,

Mr Ahern has issued a joint statement with the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, urging the Northern Ireland Assembly to take on more devolved powers in the areas of policing and justice despite the DUP and others being reluctant to take on those powers.

As Mr Ahern is taking such a keen interest in devolution in the UK, could he please encourage Mr Brown when next they meet to extend devolution to England as well?  We are 85% of the population of the UK yet we have no form of devolved government in England.  MPs elected in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – such as Mr Brown – vote on issues that are devolved in their own constituencies yet MPs elected in England cannot vote on those same issues in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Does Mr Ahern think this situation is fair on the people of England and does he think it appropriate to press the Northern Irish government to “complete the devolution process” in Northern Ireland whilst England remains the only nation in Europe that doesn’t have direct political representation?

Kind Regards, 

Stuart Parr
Campaign for an English Parliament

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