Archive for wonkotsane

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

May 27, 2008 Come the revolution, Corruption, Sleaze 2 comments

Some of the details of what MPs were spending their second home allowances on were certainly an eye-opener.  Why No Mandate Brown needs the taxpayer to pay his Sky TV subscription as well as a £187k a year salary I don’t know, presumably he has an explanation as to why his £187k salary isn’t enough to live on when minimum wage is less than a tenth of that.

Speaker Martin opposed the disclosure of MPs expenses to the taxpayers who are footing the bill and lost.  But not to worry, he’s got a cunning plan – give all MPs a £23k grant in place of the second home allowance so taxpayers have no way of finding out what they’ve spent on their second homes.  Genius.

When a government will go to such extraordinary lengths to keep their spending of taxpayers money a secret there is something seriously and fatally wrong with the administration.  The British government runs the country because the people choose to subject themselves to its authority.  The principle of trust underpins the establishment – the British government trusts citizens to pay their taxes and be bound by the laws it passes and citizens trust the government to govern according to the wishes of their constituents and to act with honour and integrity.

This rotten government has torn up the contract of trust between the people and Parliament.  They have lied, they have cheated, they have stolen.  Every week sees a further erosion of civil liberties and centuries old rights and privileges.  Every week sees another exposé of sleaze and corruption from the heart of government.  And at every turn MPs insulate themselves further from scrutiny.  Every revelation of theft and corruption is met with more secrecy.

No more!  We need a government that is open to scrutiny and transparent in all it does.  There needs to be a culture at Westminster, at Holyrood, Cardiff Bay, Stormont and wherever the English Parliament decides to seat itself, of intense scrutiny, exposure and accountability to the electorate.  It is simply not acceptable for politicians to grant themselves tens, hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money without allowing the taxpayer to see where every penny of their money is being spent.  Rules on spending taxpayers money should be so tight that politicians are discouraged from spending anything for fear of breaking the rules and the consequence of any wilfull malfeasance should be a mandatory prison sentence.  Breaking into a politicians home and stealing their telly will land you with a lengthy spell at Her Majesty’s pleasure yet and MP stealing tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money in fraudulent expenses is “punished” with a public apology or, if they’re expendable, a “resignation”.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  Well, me for one.

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Fuel protests in London and Cardiff

May 27, 2008 Transport One comment

Hundreds of hauliers are heading to both London and Cardiff to protest at obscene fuel prices.

The Wales protest will be travelling from Llanelli to Cardiff and the London protest is going from Kent to London.

The British government blames high oil prices for the price of fuel but this is bollocks – about 80% of the price of fuel is down to tax and rising oil prices have given the Treasury a massive windfall from fuel duty. If they weren’t pissing it up the wall on fucking stupid things that we don’t want like the EU and ID cards there’d be plenty of money to plug any gap in the budget caused by dropping – or even abolishing – fuel duty. And that’s without even considering the boost to the economy from the reduction of any tax.

Hauliers can bring the country to its knees in days – all they have to do is stop delivering fuel and food and supermarkets will be empty and petrol stations will start running out of fuel. The country would grind to a halt and the British government would probably fail. Of course, that would require the likes of Eddie Stobart and Christian Salvesen to join the protests which is not particularly likely because they base most of their fleet either in France or in the South East of England where they can travel to France to fill up on cheap fuel.

If the hauliers get their way it won’t bring down car tax and it probably won’t bring down the cost of fuel for you and I but it will cut the cost of transport and that will cut the cost of producing and transporting food and other goods.

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Adobe Acrobat upgrader – shit software

May 26, 2008 General No comments

Yesterday Adobe Acrobat popped up and told me that there was an upgrade available and would I mind ever so much if it went ahead and installed the upgrade as it had been asking me for a few weeks.

The upgrade was downloaded and the installer did its business. So did Spybot, asking me if I was happy for the upgrade to install a Browser Helper Object (yes) and a startup entry for the accelerated startup thingy (no). That was where I ran into a small problem.

Adobe Acrobat installer doesn’t like it if it can’t install the accelerated startup thingy and retries if it fails. Forever. In the end I had to hold down the power button of the laptop to turn it off.

Not what you expect from a company like Adobe.

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Happy days

May 24, 2008 General 6 comments

Number 2 son had his final after-school golf lesson yesterday.  Well, when I say he had his final lesson, what I mean is he had half of it.  The other half was spent in the doctors’ surgery bleeding from the head wound caused by being hit at full swing with a golf club.

The doctor checked him over and put a paper stitch on the wound and sent him home.  This was roughly 4:30pm by the time we got him from school and to the doctors.  It wasn’t a huge cut but it had punctured the deep layer of skin and it bled quite a lot.  And continued to bleed hours later.

We phoned the out of hours doctor who told us that because their surgery is next door to the A&E at the hospital they wouldn’t put some fresh stitches on it.  So Mrs Sane toddled off to A&E with him at about 7:30pm and returned in tears 3 hours later because he’d still not been seen and the nurses kept telling her that he was next in line but sending through adults before him that appeared to have no symptoms at all.

Anyway, I took him back down and they’d just called him not long before we arrived for the second time when we got there so he went through pretty quickly, got seen by a doctor and had the cut glued.  We ended up getting home at about 1am.  Which is nice.

He’s fine anyway, no serious damage but he says he’s not going for golf lessons again!

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It’s not evidence, it’s data

May 24, 2008 BBC Bias, Climate Change, Propaganda One comment

Last night BBC News did a piece on a Canadian Arctic mission that has released video footage of large sections of ice breaking away which the BBC describes as evidence of climate change.

Now let’s be very clear about this – it’s not evidence of climate change, it’s data. Yes, it may indicate that the climate is changing (which of course it is) but it’s just data. The ice could have broken away for a number of reasons. It may have been as a result of climate change, tidal factors or maybe even little green men from Mars. What the data shows is that large blocks of ice are breaking away from the main continent, it doesn’t provide evidence of anything other than the fact that the ice is breaking away.

The BBC went on to tell us that the oldest ice is melting and that this is a terrible thing. But the Arctic ice is an environmental anomaly – it’s a freak leftover from the last ice age and it’s only a fluke that it’s still here now. Despite the prophecies of doom and dire warnings that the permafrost is melting and the ice caps are receding, they are still a long way off where they were during the medieval warm period or the time, about 2,000 years ago, when the vikings colonised Greenland and Newfoundland when it was warm enough to support grape vines for wine productions.

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Tories take Crewe … but don’t get too excited

May 23, 2008 General 2 comments

Well, the predictable battering of Liebour in Crewe & Nantwich happened as predicted. And quite a battering it was too – a swing of about 14,000 votes.

Now, much is being said about the by-election and how the political balance will look come the general election as a result but it’s important to put this into context. In a general election people will vote for their party regardless of whether they’re disillusioned with them or not. This by-election was more about punishing Liebour than supporting the Conswervatives. To get a swing of 14,000 votes, traditional Liebour voters must have voted for the Conswervatives as a punishment to their party for doing non-Liebour things. It doesn’t mean they will vote for the Conswervatives in a couple of years.

I don’t doubt that the Conswervatives will continue to batter Liebour right up to the next election but people are inflicting punishment on Liebour. It must be remembered that a lot of people will vote for someone they don’t want to get rid of someone else they don’t want.

Look at the performance of the English Democrats and UKIP. Audlem, the village that recently voted in an unofficial poll to join Wales, is in the Crewe & Nantwich constituency. The question of proper representation for England and the unfair advantage devolution has brought to their very close neighbours is a subject of interest in Crewe & Nantwich but the EDP only got 275 votes, just 39 more than the Monster Raving Loony Party. The EU not-a-constitution is a subject of interest everywhere yet UKIP only secured 922 votes (although they were only projected to get about 370 so it was a better result than expected).

Until the next general election is done and dusted, nobody is going to get a look in. Some Liebour voters will cast punishment votes but the biggest asset the Conswervatives will have is people who don’t normally vote getting off their arses and voting just to make sure Liebour lose. As those voters return to their usual apathy following the general election, then the smaller parties will be able to make inroads into the entrenched 2.5 party establishment.

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Chelsea who?

May 23, 2008 Funny 2 comments

I saw this outside the toilet door at work and had to take a picture.  Inspired.

Caution - John Terry

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Governed by Europe? The Tories will RAC to it!

May 21, 2008 UKIP No comments

That Tory Toff, Iain Dale, he’s a card.

Under the title “UKIP: Going nowhere in Crewe” is this picture:

The Land Rover there belongs to Councillor Jill Seymour who took time out from running her business with her husband to take the Land Rover from Telford to Crewe to support the UKIP candidate, Mike Nattrass.  I wonder how many “normal” Conswervative Party members have made a 120 mile daily round trip to Crewe to support their candidate.  Sure, people like Iain and various cabinet members have toddled off the Crewe but politics is their day job – they’re not taking time out from their jobs and businesses to support their man.

Fair play, the picture is just begging for a caption but at least give credit where credit is due.  They’ve even put a poster up while they’re waiting!

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Sick, sick bastards

May 21, 2008 General 3 comments

A couple from Handsworth have been charged with child neglect after starving their six children.

Police and ambulance crews took away the six emaciated children 4 days ago but one died in hospital.

One neighbour said she used to throw bread out for the birds but then the childrens’ stepfather, Junaid Abuhamza (is Abu Hamza his real name?), complained at her for feeding the children. Imagine being so hungry that you would eat scraps of bread off the floor that have been thrown out for birds.

Social Services refused to comment on whether they were aware of the family which is Social Services code for “oh shit, we’ve fucked up and let a kid die again”. The children hadn’t been to school for months, of course Social Services knew about the family. There will no doubt be an investigation, Social Services will apologise for not doing enough to protect the children and a review of processes will take place and nothing will change. One child is dead, five others are seriously ill and the scum that did this to them will get what? A couple of years in an open prison? Death is too good for these people.

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Tamsin “Toff” Dunwoody defends election campaign

May 20, 2008 Labour 3 comments

Tamsin Dunwoody, the granddaughter of Baroness Norah Phillips and daughter of Doctor John Dunwoody, has defended her election campaign which is based almost entirely on telling the people of Crewe & Nantwich that they should vote for her because the Conswervative candidate is a rich and successful lawyer.
She said:

I don’t have a £53m pound fortune supporting me. I don’t have a £1.5m mansion. I am just a single, unemployed mother of five fighting hard for a job.

Fighting for a job you see, not for a chance to perform a public a service but for a job that pays £61k.

Stephen Ladyman, who has been running the disastrous campaign for Liebour said:

Maybe it’s a little crude but it’s trying to get across a legitimate political message that the Conservative candidate hasn’t done anything in the area. He’s a rich man and he won’t understand the problems that people face day-to-day.

Of course, he’d know what problems people face day-to-day on his salary of almost £139k. Just like the previous MP, Tamsin Dunwoody’s mother, knew all about the problems people face day-to-day. She had to struggle on a meagre £61k a year salary – slightly higher than the £26k national average which most of her constituents could only dream of.

So basically, if you’re writing off the other parties, what you’re looking at is a choice between a rich lawyer who doesn’t need the money and who presumably wants the job for what it is – a public service – and an unemployed single mum who wants the job for the salary having been unemployed since losing her seat in the Welsh Assembly to a Tory and who’s so posh she’s got her own entry in Burkes Peerage.

What is it they say about people in glass houses? Who’s the real toff? The rich lawyer or the granddaughter of Baroness Phillips with her own entry in Burkes Peerage?

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Anthem4England: What’s good enough for Wales is good enough for England!

May 20, 2008 Anthem, England, Sport 3 comments

WHAT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR WALES IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ENGLAND! – MULHOLLAND

Embargo: Immediate, Tuesday 20th May 2008

Greg Mulholland, MP for Leeds North West, has said that, after the Welsh National Anthem was played alongside God Save the Queen at Wembley at the weekend to mark the fact that Cardiff City made the final, it is time for an English anthem to mark when English teams compete internationally.

Greg has written to the Football Association to outline these views.

Commenting on the opening Greg said:

“It is rather odd that the welsh national anthem was used for a welsh team playing in the FA Cup Final, yet the English Football Association continues to ignore the obvious fact that the England football team should use an English national anthem.

“It is time this blind spot was addressed. I am all for Scotland and Wales having their own anthems and using them when appropriate, but how long must we endure England being overlooked or lazily confused with Great Britain and the UK.

“It is time English sporting associations, starting with the FA woke up to this. In 1966 England fans waved union jacks, now they proudly and correctly fly the cross of St George. “

“It is time we made the same logical step with the anthem and left God Save the Queen for its correct usage such as at the Olympics when we are competing as Great Britain or the United Kingdom”.

ENDS

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It’s not looking good for Gordo

May 19, 2008 Funny, Labour 6 comments

Following yesterday’s revelation in the press that Liebour is on the brink of bankruptcy, I did some digging of my own.

According to the list of loans at the Electoral Commission’s website, Liebour has almost £13m of loans due for repayment this year.

It also transpires that in quarter 4 of last year, even the Illiberal Dumbocrats took more in donations than Liebour did.  The Conswervatives, meanwhile, took around four times as much in donations than Liebour.

I’m currently waiting on someone from the Elecoral Commission to tell me what happens when the party in government is declared insolvent …

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Brace yourself

May 18, 2008 General No comments

I’ve been wearing my braces every day like a good boy, as much as I’d love to chuck the bloody things in a cupboard and forget about them.

I’ve been wearing them for about an hour a day but today I managed to keep them on for about 3 hours.  When I took them off I’d got a perfect red imprint of the braces on my legs.

They’ve given me braces to wear to try and shift my knee joint over a bit and take the weight off the normally weight-bearing inside of the joint because the cartilage is all rough and missing in parts.  The braces push the knee joint over from the outside so the weight shifts to the centre.  Believe it or not, just 3mm of lateral force (yes I know millimetres aren’t a measurement of force but you know what I mean) is enough to move the weight from the inside of my knee to the centre.

It’ll be a while until we find out if they’re making a difference.  If they do then I gather the plan is that I’ll wear them all day eventually.

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Gosh

May 18, 2008 General 9 comments

Today I have finally arrived in the world of blogging.

No, I haven’t been offered a book deal or a newspaper column or a blog on the BBC.

I have … wait for it … I’ve been insulted by Pigdogfucker.  It’s terribly exciting to have been verbally abused from someone so close to God.  Not only is he atop his high horse but he’s also at the summit of the moral high ground.  He’s almost at the pearly gates already.  Either that or he’s a gobshite with a superiority complex and a stunted vocabulary.  I’ll let you choose which.

But it gets better.  Not only have I been insulted by someone so obviously special (possibly special needs but special nonetheless) but Chicken Yoghurt has taken the piss out of the Liebour nazi picture I made a couple of years ago.  I’m not worthy.

Truly I have arrived in the blogging world.

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Chief Constable wants more over-representation for BME officers

May 18, 2008 Political Correctness 3 comments

The Chief Constable of Cheshire, Peter Fahey, has said that “whispering campaigns” might be happening to prevent black or asian police officers from getting promoted and has called for a “fairer” system to ensure more of them get promotions.

Fahey has previously called for a change in the law so that police forces will be able to operate quota on promotions to ensure that more black and asian officers are promoted.

The BBC says that only 7 out of more than 200 senior police officers are black or asian.  What they fail to mention is what percentage of police officers are black or asian.  If it’s more than 3.5% then it’s possible, based on the law of averages, that they are being overlooked but if it’s less than 3.5% then they’re already over-represented.

So what percentage of police officers are black or asian?  According to this 2006 report by the Internet Journal of Criminology it’s 3% so the 3.5% of senior police officers that are black or asian is actually and over-representation and Fahey wants to introduce more discrimination against white officers to ensure that black and asian officers are even more over-represented.

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Referendums will not be devolved

May 18, 2008 Scotland One comment

The Commons Scottish Affairs Committee of British MPs has decided that responsibility for holding ballots should not be transferred to the Scottish Parliament.

They cited the lack of faith amongst the electorate for the electronic voting system used in Scotland as a reason for keeping the responsibility with the British government’s Scottish Office.

Alex the Salmon won’t be very happy, though, he’s been pushing for this responsibility to be devolved which is the real reason why it won’t.  It’s nothing to do with the voting system used in Scotland, it’s because devolving responsibility for ballots to the Scottish government would enable the SNP to hold a legitimate referendum on independence.

Turkey’s don’t vote for Christmas.

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Eurofederalist regionalist professor defends AWM

May 17, 2008 Federal Europe, Regions No comments

The Birmingham Post is claiming that a Tory plan to strip Regional Development Agencies of some of their powers will damage the economy of the West Midlands and centralise decision making.

This is absolute nonsense. Removing the regional quangocracy will empower local communities, increase democratic accountability in the decision-making process and could provide a vital boost to the local economy at a time when the global economy is taking a nosedive.

Not convinced?

Planning and transport are important areas of policy – the West Midlands has a population the size of Scotland (about 5 million) and the policy that determines when and where a road will be built, the buses and trains run and houses and factories are built is in the hands of an unelected quango with a Birmingham-centric view. Birmingham may be the largest city in the West Midlands but it’s not the only place to live or do business. There are about a million people living in Birmingham – that leaves another 4 million “West Midlanders” treated as an afterthought by the quango that’s supposed to represent their interests.

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland planning and transport has its own ministry with dedicated, qualified staff and elected ministers answerable to the electorate for the actions of their department. In the West Midlands we have unelected quangos unanswerable to the 4 million or so voters in the West Midlands.

It is wrong to assume that abolishing regional quangos will result in centralisation – there is no reason why the powers given to regional quangos shouldn’t be given back to the local authorities that they were taken from in the first place.

The Birmingham Post cites the collapse of MG Rover as an example of the value of the Regional Development Agency, Advantage West Midlands. “Whilst the MG Rover collapse was a very substantial shock to the West Midlands economy, the impact would have been much greater if the firm had collapsed in 2000? says David Bailey, the author of the Birmingham Post article. True, the collapse of MG Rover had a major impact on the West Midlands conurbation. It had an impact all over the country but the main impact was felt in Longbridge and the urban core of the West Midlands. The effect of the collapse of MG Rover was probably no worse in Worcester or Oswestry or Stafford than it was in Edinburgh or London or Cardiff.

There is no doubt that the collapse of MG Rover required a response on a grander scale than the local authority covering Longbridge but is the Birmingham Post really suggesting that it is beyond the wit of our elected local councils, who themselves manage multi-million pound budgets and provide hundreds of services under close scrutiny of the electorate, to work with each other to cope with the fallout from the collapse of MG Rover or any other “big issue”?

Whilst Advantage West Midlands was diverting all its energies into buying the Longbridge site and providing advice to businesses in Longbridge and the surrounding area, other parts of the West Midlands were losing out. Making certain polices and functions the sole responsibility of Advantage West Midlands is rather like putting all your eggs in one basket. Local authorities either aren’t allowed – or don’t have the resources – to provide the services Advantage West Midlands would have provided if they weren’t concentrating on MG Rover.

Just like a local solution to a problem isn’t always appropriate, a regional answer isn’t always right either – especially in a euroregion so economically and demographically diverse as to contain England’s second city and most rural county. This is why regional quangos like Advantage West Midlands need to be wound up and loose alliances formed on an issue by issue basis by local authorities and other interested parties. This way decision making remains in the hands of democratically accountable local councils but a “joined up” response to bigger issues is still perfectly workable when it’s needed. And more importantly, from the point of view of the local economy, businesses can be reassured that they won’t be subject to the whim of an unelected, undemocratic quango based in Birmingham.

Perhaps Professor David Bailey’s profile at the Birmingham University website might shed some light on his defence of the indefensible:

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Industrial policy, economic development policy, policy towards transnational corporations and FDI, transition in Central and Eastern Europe, European integration and enlargement particularly with reference to EU Structural Funding and Regional Policy, structural change in the Japanese economy, economic freedom, the automotive industry.

PROFILE

David is Professor of Economic Policy and International Business and Head of the Industrial and Labour Economics (ILE) Group at the Birmingham Business School. He is also an attached member of staff of the University’s European Research Institute and co-chairs the University’s Europe Group.

Outside of Birmingham, David is Chair of the Regional Studies Association and is a member of the ESRC Virtual College. He is also an Academician of the Social Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Of course, you’d have to be one of life’s cynics to think that his defence of Advantage West Midlands is influenced at all by the funding Advantage West Midlands provides to his department or his support for European integration and regionalisation.

Liebour Party Bankrupt

May 17, 2008 Labour 38 comments

The Liebour Party is on the verge of bankruptcy and needs an extra £4m funding before auditors will sign off its accounts as a going concern.

In 1997 Liebour had 400,000 paying members, today they have less than 200,000. In the last quarter of 2007 they had £2.86m in funding from members, in the first quarter of 2008 they had £581,000. They are struggling to pay staff wages and are only able to pay the bills because the unions have increased their donations from £1.6m in the last quarter of 2007 to £4.5m in the first quarter of 2008.

Liebour is now £21m in debt.

I don’t think there is a precedent for what would happen if the party in power went into administration but I’m looking forward to finding out!

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When did evidence become optional?

May 16, 2008 Police State 3 comments

Via An Englishman’s Castle, a 73 year old former Grenadier has been tagged for failing to stop at the scene of an accident which he says he wasn’t involved in.

He says that a woman ran out in front of a car and the car knocked her over and then drove off.  He says that he stopped to see if she was ok and when a passer by said they’d phoned the police he went on his way.

The following day he stopped at a police station to find out if the woman was ok and was arrested on suspicion of running the woman over.

Apparently the woman’s DNA was found on the man’s car but when it came to court the Crown offered no evidence so he was found innocent of having run the woman over but was convicted of failing to report the accident he was found innocent of being involved in.

New Liebour, New Britain, No Justice.

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Bye Bye Jaguar

May 16, 2008 Federal Europe, Transport One comment

Federal Europe is currently working on plans to fine car manufacturers for every vehicle they produce that exceeds the finger in the air figure of 130g/km of Carbon Dioxide emissions.  The fine is expected to be £68 per gramme.

Of course, with this being the EU, the regulations are ridiculously ill conceived and designed to benefit only the largest continental producers.  The limit of 130g/km is an average across their entire product range so a large manufacturer just needs a couple of token low carbon matchbox cars to bring its average down, even if they produce a 4 litre V8 monster.

The example I’ve been given by Mike Nattrass MEP (good luck in Crewe & Nantwich, Mike) shows just how ridiculous the new regulations are.  Jaguar and Land Rover have been sold by Ford to Tata.  Across Ford’s entire product range they have managed to stay below the 130g/km limit – even when they produce cars like the 4.6l, 300bhp V8 Mustang or the 5.4l, 550bhp V8 Ford GT.  Tata, however, don’t have a range of toy cars like Ford to bring down their average so they will have to pay fines on every Jaguar or Land Rover they produce.  A 2l diesel X-Type Jag will attract a fine of £1,292 per car whilst a V8 Range Rover will attract a whopping £16,728 fine per vehicle.

So what will happen to Jaguar and Land Rover?  They simply won’t sell anything with a tax like that on top of the price of the car so they’ll just shift production outside of Federal Europe, jobs will be lost and a piece of history will come to an end.

The British government must be worried at the loss of jobs and the inevitable loss of Land Rover and Jaguar from these shores?  Liebour MP, Richard Burden, asked the Treasury and got the following garbled and essentially meaningless message:

I am happy to assure him that the Government are aware of the points that he makes and are keeping a close eye on the progress of discussions about the development of EU regulations in Europe

Wow!  They’re “keeping a close eye on the progress of discussions”.  Here’s a suggestion – have some discussions of your own.  Perhaps something along the lines of “this is a stupid fucking tax and there’s no way you’re destroying our economy with your punitive and utterly pointless eco taxes so fuck off back under your rock you clueless facists”.  Or words to that effect.

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