If you read the following on the BBC News website …

The American housing ministry has invited tenders for the construction of 100 new homes at American settlements in occupied Iraq.

… people would say that it was wrong and that America had no right to build homes for Americans in Iraq against the will of the Iraqi government.  So why is there no international uproar when it reads …

The Israeli housing ministry has invited tenders for the construction of 100 new homes at settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Israel has illegally occupied Palestine for decades, has ignored more UN resolutions than any other nation on earth (remember that frustrating the will of the international community was justification for invading Iraq) and is continuing to expand its settlements in Palestine that have been declared illegal under international law.

If they were muslims would they have been invaded by now?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestine

No Mandate Brown has told a meeting of the UN that “no-one thinks” Mugabe won the Zimbabwean presidential elections.

He then had the audacity to say “The credibility of the democratic process depends on there being a legitimate government”.

What’s that you say?  Legitimate government?  Is that like the leader of the country asking the electorate to vote for them as leader?  The type of mandate that Gordo the Goblin King bottled out of himself?

The Goblin King has made some noises about standing behind the Zimbabwean people (why am I reminded of South Park the Movie?) and making sure their will is upheld.  The man really has no shame considering the way he denies the English equal rights that they want.

Gordo’s speech seems to imply that a little trip to Rhodesia might be on the cards for the army if things aren’t sorted sharpish but there’s no mention of the Chinese in all this – they’ve been priming Zimbabwe as a client state for the past few years and they’ve got a lot of investment in Zimbabwe that they might not be keen on risking if Mugabe gets a forced eviction.

Technorati Tags: Mugabe, Zimbabwe, Gordon Brown, Hypocrite

The signal on my Orange phone has been dropping off all morning so I checked a couple of other Orange mobiles and they’re all doing the same thing so I phoned Orange.

Apparently there’s scheduled work going on with four transmitters nearby resulting in the intermittent coverage.  Which is nice.

So why wasn’t I told about this?  I only live down the road from where I work and I expect the problem is happening at home.  Orange knows exactly where I live and they know where I am to within a few feet, why didn’t I receive a text yesterday warning me that there was work being carried out which would cause disruption to service?  Why wasn’t I sent a text when I moved into range of a transmitter that was being worked on telling me that I was entering an eara of disrupted coverage?

Surely it isn’t beyond the capabilities of one of the world’s biggest mobile phone operators to pre-emptively warn their customers that they are going to experience poor coverage for a time?

Technorati Tags: Orange, Mobile Phones

Tinpot dictator, Robert Mugabe, has called No Mandate Brown “a tiny dot in the world” after Gordo criticised him for holding back results of the Zimbabwean elections.

The Goblin King criticised Mugabe and said “the eyes of the world are on Zimbabwe”.  As the unelected leader of the former colonial power in Zimbabwe, the irony surely can’t been missed (although it clearly has by Camp Gordo).  El Gordo has no mandate to speak on behalf of England, let alone the world.

It’s now been 2 weeks since elections were held in Zimbabwe and the only results released are for parliamentary and senate elections, not presidential elections.  Still nobody but Mugabe and his illegitimate government know what the results are although the opposition MDC claim their candidate won over 50% of the vote, the minimum required to avoid a run-off.

Just one piece of advice for No Mandate Brown before I finish … people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Gordon Brown

Nothing to do with conspiracy theories this, the ginger one has found this rather strange website that plots your website as a graph.  Looks more like a dodgy astrology chart.

Technorati Tags: Blog Graph

Just a reminder about this poll …

I’m going to publish the results pretty soon so if you want to vote, do so quickly.

Technorati Tags: Poll

The island of Sark in the Channel Islands has had a fuedal government for the last 600 years.

Sark is the last feudal administration in Europe and is ruled by 40 unelected “feifs” and 12 deputies chosen by the islanders.  The head of the government is the Seigneur and the head of the judiciary is the Senseschal.

This way of government has worked perfectly well for the last 600 years but a recent referendum came out in favour of a more “democratic” approach and so plans have been drawn up for a 28 member elected assembly to govern the island, retaining the Seigneur and Senechal.

The referendum on the change of government was instigated because the British government has come under increasing pressure to reform the island’s governance from Federal Europe because it breaches EU Human Rights legislation.

I’m glad that the people of Sark have had the chance to determine the form of government best suited to them – it’s a right that the British government refuses for England – but I have to express some concern over the motivation for all this.

Sark is not part of the UK, nor is it a member of the EU.  The Channel Islands are a Crown possession, they belong to the Queen.  It is the Privy Council, not the British Parliament, that governs the islands on behalf of the Crown.  Unless Sark chooses to sign up to EU legislation on human rights it isn’t bound by it and it is not appropriate for the EU to apply pressure on the British government to change the government of Sark.

The Privy Council has approved the proposed changes but the Barclay brothers, owners of the Daily Telegraph, are opposing the changes because they don’t want the Seignour or Senechal to remain part of the government.  They say that this is because the unelected posts are undemocratic but there’s more to it than that.  The Barclay brothers own Becqhou Island which is about 30 yards off the coast of Sark.  It is one of the “tenemants” of Sark and David Barclay is the “tenant” and so gets a seat in the Chief Pleas, the equivalent of a parliament for Sark.  But the Barclay brothers have been disputing Sark’s authority over the island and want political independence for Brecquhou, effectively making them the owners of their own country, albeit under the nominal jurisdiction of the Privy Council.  The chances are, the Barclay outsiders aren’t going to get elected to the Chief Pleas and will have no influence over the Sark government’s stance on their island.  They already break Sark law by driving cars and flying a helicopter and are basically a law unto themselves.

Who’d have thought an island with a population of 600 would produce political intrigue on this scale?

Technorati Tags: Sark, Channel Islands, Feudalism, Federal Europe

Toque submitted a petition to the 10 Downing Street website on eco towns which has been rejected on false grounds.

The petition called on the Prime Minister to build eco towns in Scotland instead of England because England is overcrowded and Scotland is sparsely populated and would benefit from the boosted population.  It was rejected because it is “outside the remit or powers of the Prime Minister and Government” and “this is a devolved matter and should be directed to the Scottish Executive as appropriate”.

Both reasons are entirely spurious.  The Scottish government exercises powers on behalf of the British government, not instead of.  The British government has as much right – more, in fact – to legislate on devolved matters as the Scottish government does and in the event of a disagreement, the British government has the final say.

So, you see, the reasons given for rejecting the petition are false.  It is not outside of the remit of the British government at all and Gordon Brown has every right to insist his eco towns are built in his own country instead of ours.

Technorati Tags: Petitions, Lies

A Commons Commission has concluded that abolishing the lower rate 10p/£ income tax rate has made poor people worse off.  What a leap of fucking logic!

The same pattern keeps repeating itself with Liebour.  They abolish lower tax rates and exemptions that everyone is automatically entitled to and replace them with a tax credit that some will be entitled to and isn’t an automatic entitlement.

But more importantly for the British government, it makes more people reliant on the “benevolence” of the state.
When tax credits was first brought in I couldn’t see the sense in paying a load of people to take more tax off the taxpayer and then pay another load of people to give some of it back.  But this is the way Liebour works – they take as much as possible off you and then drip feed you bits of your tax back if you meet certain criteria.  This way, tax credits can be changed or cut resulting in a higher tax bill without looking like a tax increase.

Smaller government means less interference from the state, more prosperity, more enterprise and lower taxes.  Much lower.

Technorati Tags: Tax