Archive for wonkotsane

Move over Sherlock

August 18, 2009 WTF? 5 comments

On the front page of the Shropshire Star (yes, the front page) yesterday was a story about the statue of Charles Darwin outside Shresbury Library sprouting a traffic cone over the weekend.

This isn’t about the newsworthiness, or otherwise, of the Shropshire Star’s front page stories but the quote from the librarian, Mrs Buckley:

It’s something that does happen from time to time and I think it’s just people messing about

Erm … if it wasn’t just people messing about, what was it?  Millitant WI members protesting at the blasphemous image of Satan’s worker, Charles Darwin?  Aliens?  Shropshire is supposed to be a bit of a UFO hotspot after all.

Someone’s trying to prove themselves the exception to the laws of evolution I think …

Technorati Technorati Tags: , ,

Goodbye Martin

August 18, 2009 General No comments

Martin de KlerkI had some sad news the other day.

A fellow Leader at the vbCity developers forum, Martin de Klerk (aka emdek), has died of cancer.

He told us that he’d got cancer a while ago and that it was terminal but it doesn’t really make it any easier.

Martin was an excellent role model on vbCity – even handed, friendly and knowledgable.  He will be sorely missed.

Technorati Technorati Tags:

Bloggers4UKIP: UKIP for an English Parliament

August 18, 2009 UKIP No comments

 

Back in July I wrote a fairly lengthy post on why UKIP’s devolution policy is wrong. The relatively few comments it attracted belies the number of UKIP members and sympathisers that hold the same views – I received many more comments away from the blog and through the UKIP members’ forum.

This prompted me to look at setting up a group within UKIP for members who support devolution and disagree with UKIP’s policy of abolishing devolution and setting up grand committees of dual mandate British MPs to do the job.

I am pleased to announce that, along with Maidstone branch chairman, John Botting, enough UKIP members have pledged their support for the group to make it worth the effort of applying to the National Executive Council (NEC) for official recognition.

Don’t let the title of this post mislead you though, this group – the UKIP 1997 Group – isn’t just about an English Parliament. The aim of the group is to influence UKIP’s policy on devolution so that the party supports devolved government in all four home nations on an equal basis.

For more information on the UKIP 1997 Group, click here. There is also a Facebook group related to the UKIP 1997 Group.

Edit:
Just to clarify, the UKIP 1997 Group is not a Bloggers4UKIP project.

Should the BBC licence fee apply to TV on-demand?

August 17, 2009 BBC 3 comments

The Broadcasting Act defines a Television Broadcasting Service as:

(5)In this Part “television broadcasting service” means (subject to subsection (6)) a service consisting in the broadcasting of television programmes for general reception in, or in any area in, the United Kingdom, including a domestic satellite service (as defined by section 43(1)).

The BBC says that the Licence fee is payable if you install equipment in your home for the purpose of, or with the intention of, viewing a Television Broadcasting Service.

Therefore, surely, viewing programmes through BBC iPlayer ITV Player, 4 On Demand, Sky Player or any other peer-to-peer method of watching television programmes is exempt from the licence fee?  Downloading parts of a TV programme from numerous sources isn’t receiving a broadcast and uploading those parts through said peer-to-peer systems is not broadcasting.

So if you only watch TV through an on-demand service you shouldn’t have to pay a licence fee.  Or am I missing something?

Technorati Technorati Tags: ,

I’m Back

August 15, 2009 General 7 comments

I’m back from my English seaside holiday.  Felixstowe was an unusual place to go for a holiday but it was nice – plenty for the kids to do, a nice town centre, very clean and well maintained and surprisingly quiet.

The caravan site we stayed on was a bit of a disappointment.  The caravan hadn’t been cleaned very well when we arrived and the children’s entertainment was rubbish.  There was no mention in the brochure of the trains that passed by all of 100ft away every half an hour some nights.  That said, it was close to the sea front with a McDonalds within walking distance, its own pool and park and only 5 minutes drive from the town centre and its truly awful one way system and traffic lights.  More on the caravan site another time, including the toilet geyser keeping us awake last night.

The sea front was clean and well looked after with a few amusement arcades, plenty of takeaway places and lifeguards.  The town was really well looked after as well, a good range of shops and a proper independent retro cinema which we visited twice seeing as how it was only £4 for an adult and a quid for a bottle of Coke.

Felixstowe was a nice place and I’d definitely go there again for a holiday but probably not at the same caravan site.

Technorati Technorati Tags: ,

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out

August 1, 2009 Climate Change 8 comments

The Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union (RMT) has claimed that protesters occupying a wind turbine factory are having their human rights breached.

The Vestas factory on the Isle of White is being closed by its owners (announced on the same day the British government announced its fictitious “green jobs” figures) so workers have illegally occupied the building and are staging an illegal sit-in.

The RMT say that the illegal protesters’ human rights are being breached because, allegedly, Vestas aren’t allowing people into the building to give deliver food to them.

So which section of the Human Rights Act covers refusing permission for people to enter a private building to feed protesters illegally occupying said building?  Apparently, it’s the bit that covers depriving someone of their liberty.  Which is odd, because according to the BBC News website, Vestas has been to court to have the illegal protesters removed which would suggest that, far from depriving the protesters of their liberty, Vestas are actively trying to force their liberty on them by way of an eviction.

It’s idiots like this that devalue the Human Rights Act to the extent that it become a national joke.  Nobody’s human rights are being breached.  The protesters, I am sure, are free to walk out of the door any time they feel so inclined and go back to their families.  Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs in the last few months yet, strangely, none of them seem to have felt the need to illegally occupy their former employers’ offices in protest.  If these Vestas workers are looking for sympathy, making patently false and quite ridiculous claims of human rights abuses is a funny way of going about it.

The “green” industry is based on a complete fabrication and is entirely unsistainable.  The general public has neither the money, nor the inclination, to buy into the environmentalist scam.  In the case of wind turbines – the line of business that Vestas is in – they are hugely expensive to make, hugely expensive to run and are so inefficient and ineffectual that most of them will never recoup their manufacturing and operational costs before the end of, in the absence of more appropriate terminology, their “useful” life.  Anyone basing their long term future and financial security on the “green” industry is either a fool or one of the career environmentalists that makes a living spouting bullshit propaganda at TV cameras.

Technorati Technorati Tags: ,

On reflection …

August 1, 2009 General 9 comments

My first reaction when I read this was “what the fuck”?  The taxpayer is going to pay graduates to go on a working holiday?  The British government is actually going to hand over £500 of our hard earned money to a bunch of students so they can go on a taxpayer-funded jolly?  We’re bankrupt, do they have no sense?

But then I thought about the alternative.  What’s the alternative?  It’s a scheme for graduates that can’t afford a gap year and who don’t have a job.  So what would these students be doing if they weren’t going on a gap year?  They’d be at home claiming unemployment benefits.  There aren’t enough jobs to go around so getting rid of a few students is a good thing and £500 for a year is cheaper than a year of unemployment benefits.

The 10 week trip will give the students experience that will make them more employable in future.  Their time will be spent on projects such as building schools in Borneo, Costa Rica, India and Nicaragua.

So, rather thatn seeing it as a bad thing, let’s look at it as an opportunity.  Let’s invest £500 in sending a few more unemployables abroad to do community work and save the cost of paying them unemployment benefits.  Those that can’t afford to stump up the other £1,000 and pay for flights and vaccinations can be put to good use doing community work here in exchange for the benefits they’re receiving.  Which leads nicely back to my post from way back in October 2007 on forcing people on benefits to do community work.  Chris Grayling adopted a watered-down version of what I suggested for the Tories and this is just another half-hearted variation on the theme.

It’s a good idea but 500 students isn’t enough – it needs to be done a much grander scale which will not only save the taxpayer billions in benefits in the short term, it will encourage a work ethic in the wider population that will save money in the long term and will provide a workforce to clean up and improve our towns and cities.

Technorati Technorati Tags: ,

Met Office gets it wrong again

July 31, 2009 Climate Change 2 comments

The Met Office has, for the umpteenth year in a row, revised its summer weather warning down.

Earlier in the year we were told that there would be a blistering heat wave throughout the summer – a BBQ summer as the Met Office put it.  But even the Met Office couldn’t ignore the fact that, but for a couple of weeks, it’s been a cold and damp summer.

The Met Office can’t predict the weather a few months in advance – they can’t even predict the weather 10 days in advance – but they expect us to believe their bullshit climate change propaganda.  The Met Office’s short term weather forecasts aren’t that reliable, their medium term forecasts are decidedly iffy and their long term climate forecasts are pure fiction, constantly and consistently discredited and disproved.

Still, they weren’t entirely inaccurate in their prediction of a BBQ summer – every time we have a BBQ it rains!

Technorati Technorati Tags: ,

No British flag on ID card shock – who cares?

July 31, 2009 Police State 6 comments

The British government has unveiled the design of its ID card and shock horror, it doesn’t have a British flag on it.  Instead, it will have four symbols to represent the four nations (the British government’s words) of the UK.
There was a suggestion that it would have the European Empire’s ring of stars on it but no, it’s not going ot have any flag on.  Apparently, it was thought that the butchers apron might upset the Irish.  Diddums.  The British Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, says that Northern Irish people will be able to have an ID card that says they’re Irish instead of British.  That’ll please the Scots and Welsh.  Will English people be able to get an ID card that says they’re English?
Personally I don’t care what they put on the ID card (although the recognition of England as a nation by this English-hating British government is welcome) because I won’t be having one.  I won’t be having one when they’re voluntary and if the dishonest Tories stay true to form and don’t abolish ID cards when they get into power, I won’t be having one when they’re compulsary.

Technorati Technorati Tags: ,

For fuck’s sake

July 29, 2009 Political Correctness One comment

David Camoron said “twat” on the radio when he was talking about Twitter.

Whoop de fucking do.

OFCOM said it was on their list of offensive words.  If you’re offended by the word “twat” then you are, quite frankly, a twat.  How could anyone be offended by an Old English word for a forest clearing?

Camoron has apologised which just shows how much of a spineless twat he really is.

Technorati Technorati Tags:

CEP: Mandelson considers increase in English tuition fees

July 27, 2009 Education, No Mandate No comments

Peter Mandelson, the unelected Minister for English Business and Enterprise, who also has responsibility for English Higher Education, is considering allowing an increase in English university tuition fees.

Tuition fees were introduced in England after Scottish Labour MPs were whipped to vote in favour because a majority of English MPs were opposed to them.  Without Labour’s MPs from Scottish constituencies, English MPs would have defeated the bill and university students in England wouldn’t be leaving education with tens of thousands of pounds of debt.  Labour’s MSPs subsequently voted against the introduction of tuition fees in the Scottish Parliament.

We’re constantly told by the British government that we don’t need an English Parliament because we have more MPs elected in England than the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs put together.  The original introduction of tuition fees in England, with Scottish MPs overturning a majority vote of English MPs, destroys that argument.  That an unelected peer who has twice resigned from the British government in desgrace can have responsibility for a review into increasing the illegitimate fees makes a mockery of any claim the British establishment might have that democracy exists in England whatsoever.

With national debt running at 150% of GDP, tax income down by 8.2% and the social security burden up 9.7%, perhaps adopting the American revolutionary policy of “No Taxation without Representation” would force the Scottish Raj to listen to the voice of the English majority?

Technorati Technorati Tags: ,

The Wrekin

July 25, 2009 Telford 7 comments

I walked up the Wrekin today with Mrs Sane, three of the kids and Charlie (the dog).

For those of you not familiar with the Wrekin, it’s a 978ft hill on the outskirts of Telford in Shropshire.  It’s not the most challenging walk for most people but as you may know, both my knees are pretty much buggered.

Since the age of about 7 (co-incidentally, the age I was when I last walked up the Wrekin my mother tells me) I’ve had osteochronditis in both my knees.  It’s quite rare – only 15-30 people in every 100,000 will get it – and I’ve had every type of surgical intervention there is for it.  I’ve had osteochronditis in my knees since I was a teenager as a result of it all.

We all made it to the top and I’ve got the pictures to prove it!

View from the top of the Wrekin

Technorati Technorati Tags: , , ,

Telford quango on its last legs

July 24, 2009 Telford 3 comments

Transforming Telford, the unelected and expensive “regeneration” quango set up by Telford & Wrekin Council and a couple of unelected regional quangos, has had its “contract” withdrawn.

The previous Liebour administration at Telford & Wrekin Council was responsible for setting up the quango that costs Telford council taxpayers a million pounds a year.  In return for a million pounds of taxpayers money, Transforming Telford has declared itself responsible for creating a handful of jobs and was almost responsible for scuppering the private redevelopment of the Telford Centre.

The excellent residents group, Telford Council Watch, was tipped off that Transforming Telford was being wound up this week.  The council voted last night to withdraw their “contract” and repatriate their powers and responsibilities back to the elected council where they belong.  Transforming Telford hasn’t been wound up yet – the council only got 2 seats on the board of directors in return for their “investment” and can’t force the decision – but the company was set up for the sole purpose of spending our council tax on regeneration and as they’re no longer required to do so, there’s no reason for the company to continue to exist.

Hopefully most of the staff of Transforming Telford will be transferred to the council rather than being made redundant but as far as I’m concerned – and I’m sure most residents would agree – there is no place for Chief Executive Sarah Raper or the other “top brass” quangocrats in the council.

Technorati Technorati Tags: ,

Is Gordon Brown responsible for swine flu panic?

July 20, 2009 Health 8 comments

I went to the doctors this morning because of an irritating bad chest I’ve had for weeks and while I was there I asked him about the swine flu vaccinations and whether they have a list of at-risk patients already (#2 has a heart condition so I’m naturally interested to know).  He said they do have a list of people who are high risk, #2 is low risk with his heart condition as it’s not chronic but as a young child he’ll be one of the first to be offered the vaccine.

Interestingly and perhaps a little unsurprisingly, he said they were being inundated with calls about swine flu and the majority of the calls were from people anxious about swine flu or convinced they had it when they didn’t.  This is presumably why I got an engaged tone for 15 minutes this morning trying to get an appointment.  Does it help that the British government has told the general public that up to 65k people could die from swine flu?  In his opinion it wasn’t the best move, let’s just leave it at that.

The thing is, for the amount of people who have contracted swine flu, the number of deaths has been low.  Lower than you would expect with seasonal flu.  Yes, swine flu is spreading round the population faster than seasonal flu but that’s because we don’t have an immunity to it.  Having said that, Europeans seem to have a better natural defence to swine flu than Americans which would suggest that it may be something we’ve had here before.  Tens of thousands of people already have immunity to swine flu by virtue of having contracted it in the last couple of months.  By the end of the year, if all goes to plan, the whole population will be offered a vaccine.

So why the panic?  Why are the NHS (or, more properly, the British government) putting out information that’s causing panic?  We’re in an era of unprecedented access to information, it’s possible to lay your hands on more information about virtually anything from your living room than ever before.  This is the first major domestic public health problem we’ve had since most of the population got access to Google so perhaps the British government is thinking that the best way to satisfy peoples’ thirst for information is to give it to them, warts and all.  Or perhaps not …

There is a theory (you might call it a conspiracy theory) which quite a few people have arrived at that the Prime Mentalist is behind this.  Not that he has unleashed a swine flu virus created in a secret laboratory in a disused tube station (although I bet you could find someone who thinks that) but that he has presided over mismanagement of the epidemic to give him a crisis that he can use to increase his popularity and stop talk of an election.  How could we have an election in the middle of a swine flu pandemic?  Think of the public health risks.  Think of the disruption when we’re in the middle of a potentially disasterous flu epidemic.  How could you call an election under such circumstances and claim to have the interests of the country at heart?

And, of course, there is the vaccine.  The UK is the only country in the world to order enough vaccine for the whole population.  If and when the vaccine materialises – and assuming it doesn’t kill more people than swine flu does like the vaccine the Americans used in 1976 – then El Gordo will have been the Prime Minister that saved us all from the killer flu that would have killed up to 65k people but for his intervention.

The theory that he has allowed swine flu to take hold and spread scare stories in the media just so he can avoid an election and look good when it fails to wipe out half the population hinges on whether El Gordo’s insanity is so pronounced that he would sacrifice the lives of hundreds of people for personal gain.  I’m quite prepared to believe that he would do it, the only question for me is whether he will get caught out.

Technorati Technorati Tags: ,

Total Politics Top Blogs

July 17, 2009 General One comment

Total Politics (Iain Dale‘s latest venture) are running the annual top blogs poll.

Send your top ten list of UK blogs to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com to take part in the poll.

If you included Wonko’s World, Bloggers4UKIP or the Campaign for an English Parliament in your top 10 list that would be lovely. 🙂

Technorati Technorati Tags:

CEP: £200m sticking plaster for English schools

July 13, 2009 Education, England No comments

Campaign for an English Parliament logo 

The British government is putting an extra £200m into the English education budget to fund extra places as shortages have reported.

The extra £200m will, of course, trigger a corresponding bonus for the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish budgets whether they need it or not thanks to the Barnett Bribe.  The population of Scotland, Wales and NI is increasing at a fraction of the rate it is in England so they aren’t suffering the same shortage of spaces as we are south of the border.

The British government says that the shortage of primary school places is down to rising birth rates and the recession meaning people can’t afford to send their kids to private schools.  Nothing to do with annual net immigration of about a quarter of million people.

Technorati Technorati Tags: , ,

Clever mini-wonko’s

July 10, 2009 Education 3 comments

My boys came home from school today with their school reports.

#1 goes to secondary school in September so this is his final report from primary school.  The expectation for the average child in his year was 4a or 4b – he got five 5a’s.  A child geting a level 5 in year 9 at secondary school (that’s 3rd year to us old forgey’s) would be expected to get C’s in their GCSE’s and he’s got three years at the best sate school in the country before he gets to year 9!

#2 has two years left at primary school and the expectation for his year was 3b or 3c and he got four 3a’s which is the expectation for the end of the following year.

#3 is in year 2 and he got a 3c and two 2a’s.  The expectation for his year is 2b or 2c.  Considering he’s got dyspraxia and struggles with co-ordination, concentration and mood swings, exceeding expectations for all subjects is even more of an achievement.

Obviously very pround of my four little brainboxes (#4 hasn’t got her report from nursery yet but she’s miles ahead of all the other kids in nursery so we expect it to be good).

Technorati Technorati Tags: ,

Asda starts fuel price war

July 9, 2009 Transport 4 comments

Asda have dropped the price of their petrol and diesel to below a pound a litre, saying “There is no justification for any major retailer selling fuel above £1 per litre”.

Good for Asda, there is indeed no excuse for selling fuel about £1 per litre.  Oil prices have risen slightly in the last month but in the last week or so they have actually dropped.  The price of a barrel of oil is less than half what it was last year when the price of fuel went through the roof.

Asda has made a welcome gesture in reducing the price of its fuel to 99.9p/litre but it needs to go down more.  Much more.  In reality, there is no reason for the price of a litre of fuel to be more than about 70p/litre.  The fuel companies will still make eye-watering profits and the Treasury will still rake in billions of pounds of fuel tax.  More importantly, it will help bring the recession to an end by putting more money in our pockets which we can spend reinvigorating the economy.

Still, every little helps.  Or is that the other one …

Technorati Technorati Tags: ,

Dear Mr Burnham

July 9, 2009 Health 4 comments

A few weeks ago, I emailed Andy Burnham’s office at the Department of Health after watching him talk to the BBC for 5 minutes about the English NHS without once mentioning England.

Dear Mr Burnham,

I just listened to you talk about the English NHS for 5 minutes yet you didn’t mention the word England or English once.  You talked about “the NHS”, “the health service” and “the country” but all the time you were talking about the English NHS, the English health service and England.

You are an English Secretary of State for an English government department talking on national TV, broadcast to the whole of the UK and didn’t once point out that you were only talking about England.

I wonder how many Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people you worried that they might be losing their free prescriptions, free hospital parking and expensive life-saving cancer drugs that your department says we can’t afford in England and how many English people you misled into believing that the rest of the UK would be helping to plug the gaping hole in the British budget when that’s not the case.

Is there any chance of you using the word England at any point during your job as Secretary of State for the English NHS?

Stuart

They replied a week and a half later …

Dear Mr Parr

Thank you for your email dated 10 June to Andy Burnham about England and the NHS.  I have been asked to reply.

The Department appreciates that not everybody in the UK will be aware that most matters of health policy have been devolved, and that Mr Burnham will generally only comment on the NHS in England.

I would like to thank you for your comments, which have been noted.

I hope this is helpful.

Yours sincerely,

Martin Gatty
Customer Service Centre

Right, so they appreciate that he’s been misleading the entire population but they’re going to do chuff all about it?

Hi,

Thank you for acknowledging my concerns and making note of my comments.

Perhaps you could now explain what you intend to do to ensure that most people do understand that Andy Burnham is only talking about England?

A simple solution would be to use the word “England” when he’s talking about England rather than “Britain” or “this country”.  I’m sure that would help people understand which country he is talking about.  Or perhaps the Minister has a better solution?

I look forward to hearing of your plans.

Regards,

Stuart

I got another reply shortly afterwards …

Dear Mr Parr,

Thank you for your further email to Andy Burnham about England and the NHS.  I have been asked to reply.

I regret that the Department cannot add to its previous reply to you dated 18 June or comment any further on this issue.

I am sorry I cannot be more helpful.

Yours sincerely,

Martin Gatty
Customer Service Centre

Right, so they appreciate my concerns, don’t answer my questions and then refuse to comment further.  That’s not on …

Thank you for your further response.

Can I assume, then, that the English Health Minister and English Department of Health will continue to pursue a policy of deliberately omitting the word “England” from publications or to refer to England as “Britain” or “the country”?

Stuart

And their predictable response …

Dear Mr Parr,

Thank you for your further email to the Department of Health about England , the UK and the NHS. I have been asked to reply.

As you are aware, the Department has already written to you previously regarding this matter, and I can only reiterate to you that there is nothing further the Department can add, and it will not be corresponding further with you on this issue.

Should you have any new concerns in the future that you wish to raise with the Department, then we will be happy to address those issues. I am sorry I cannot be more helpful.

Yours sincerely,

Martin Gatty
Customer Service Centre

Tossers.  I’ve just found Andy Burnham’s parliament email address so I’ll forward the email trail on to him and see if he thinks his department dealt with my email in an appropriate manner.

Technorati Technorati Tags: ,

Finger Licking Expert

July 9, 2009 Funny One comment

We went to KFC the other night.  The chicken was great, of course, as you would expect from KFC.  Must be the battery farmed, force-fed chickens.

Anyway, I noticed that they’ve all got new name badges with new job titles such as “Front Till Expert” and “Window Till Expert”.  In fact, every name badge I saw had the word “Expert” on it.  I’m not entirely convinced that anyone working in KFC is an expert in anything.

Technorati Technorati Tags:

« Older Entries   Recent Entries »