Busy, busy, busy

April 24, 2010 St George, Telford No comments

So, how’s your St Georges weekend been so far?  Ours has been busy (not to mention expensive) and it’s not over yet!

Yesterday Mrs Sane and I went to my sisters’ pub for a 3 course St Georges Day lunch.  The garlic mushrooms with tomato and goats cheese probably weren’t very English (although garlic was cultivated in England as early as the 16th century) but the venison, mushroom and bacon pudding main course is pretty English (and so amazingly gorgeous they said it’ll probably stay on the menu). And what can be more English than apple crumble and custard?

Today we went to Telford Town Park where Telford & Wrekin Council had organised a St Georges Day celebration for the first time.  There was a falconry display, a one-man band, plays, morris dancers, a fantastic and enthusiastic storyteller, crafting, hog roast, ice creams, flag making, stilt walker and some other stuff that I can’t think of.  And, of course, then town park itself which occupied the kids for a good hour or so.  We even met BBC Radio Shropshire presenter and tweeter Johnty O’Donty in person at last.

Tomorrow, #2 son will be at the Albrighton St Georges Day parade with 1st Brookside Scouts and while he’s there the rest of us will be at Blists Hill partaking in their annual St Georges Day festivities.

CEP: Another poll showing 7 out of 10 want an English Parliament

April 23, 2010 England 3 comments

Another poll showing 7 out of 10 want an English Parliament

The Campaign for an English Parliament welcomes the findings of the ICM poll commissioned by Power 2010 which confirms that 7 out of 10 people support for an English Parliament.

This result backs up last year’s poll for the Jury Team and the last two independent polls commissioned by the Campaign for an English Parliament, all of which came out with the same figure. The people of England want an English Parliament, it’s a mystery why the British parties go to such great lengths to deny us the same right to self-determination they gave the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish.

Hundreds of thousands of people – perhaps even millions – will celebrate St Georges Day today and over the weekend with local councils, companies, societies and individuals organising fun days and parties. What better way to finish off the St Georges Day celebrations than an announcement from the leaders of the big three parties that they are listening to voters in England and will hold a referendum on creating an English Parliament like they did in Scotland and Wales? They’re all promising change, this is change we want.

To reinforce their message, Power 2010 beamed an English flag with the slogan “Home Rule” onto the side of Westminster Palace tomorrow. The Brits won’t be amused!

CEP: What are you doing for St Georges Day?

April 21, 2010 St George No comments

CEP: What are you doing for St Georges Day?

St Georges Day 2010 is almost upon us (it’s Friday, in case you didn’t know) and we’re interested in what you’re planning to do to mark the day.

It was St Georges Day that first led me to discover the Campaign for an English Parliament all those years ago.  I was looking for St Georges Day events in and around Telford but there weren’t any.  The CEP explained why, quite bluntly – the Brits don’t like England.  It sparked my interest and lead to me joining the CEP, becoming an avowed English nationalist, joining the CEP and eventually being voted onto the National Council.

A lot’s changed in that time and one of those things is that Telford & Wrekin Council are finally, after years of nagging, marking St Georges Day.  They’re doing it on Saturday rather than St Georges Day but at least it means more people can go.  That’s where I’ll be on Saturday with my family.

I have the day booked off work on Friday as I do every year (my unofficial St Georges Day public holiday) and I’m taking my wife to my sister’s pub for a St Georges Day lunch (they’re doing traditional English food and beers all week for St Georges Day).  On Sunday we’re planning to visit Blists Hill who are doing special St Georges Day events all weekend, starting Friday.

But enough about me! What are you doing for St Georges Day? If you haven’t got anything planned, check out the St George Holiday website and if you know of any events that they don’t know about, let them know.

Let’s talk about immigration

April 18, 2010 Free Speech, General 8 comments

If there’s one topic that can cause heated discussion, it’s immigration.  For too long it’s been a taboo subject and public criticism of unfettered discrimination has been left to the far left BNP, assorted nutjob organisations on the fringes of mainstream politics and a relative few individuals prepared to put their heads above the parapet.

But there has been a change lately and immigration is no longer the taboo subject it was.  It seems that the more full the country gets, the less jobs and houses there are to go round the people that already live here, the more people talk about the proverbial elephant in the room.

The facts are quite simple.  At this point in time, according to the Office of National Statistics, there are 2.45m people living in the UK that don’t have a job whilst there are only 480k job vacancies.  That’s 5 people currently living here, relying on unemployment benefits, for every job vacancy.  In 2004 there were half a million homeless people in England alone and the figures are rising year on year.  According to Property World, we need to build a quarter of a million new houses every year just to keep up with population growth and currently about 100,000 per year are being built.

So there aren’t enough jobs for the people already living here, nor are there enough houses.  But the British government still allowed a quarter of a million immigrants to move here in 2008.  Where will they live?  Where will they work?  Or, as they have to have somewhere to live and work before they can move here (EU citizens excepted, of course), where are the homeless people already living here going to live and where are the unemployed people already living here going to work?

We cannot sustain economic immigration and it will be a number of years until we are able to do so.  Unemployment and homelessness needs to be down to the 10’s of thousands before we can sustain economic immigration.  It’s not about race or religion or skin colour or any other minority qualification, it’s about maths and logic.  The country is full.  The country is broke.  We can’t afford to pay people not to work because the jobs they could have been doing have gone to people moving here from another country.

The LibLabCon are talking about a fairer society in their general election campaigns but there is nothing fair in increasing the already unsustainable competition for the woefully inadequate supply of jobs and houses.  It’s unfair on everybody who lives here, whether they can trace their ancestry back to the Anglo-Saxon settlers or whether they’re first generation immigrants who’ve been here barely 12 months.  The unemployment and homelessness crisis that’s exacerbated by immigration affects us all.

The BNP and their racist clones aren’t the solution to this problem.  Closing our borders to all immigration and “sending the darkies home” isn’t the answer.  The only party with a sensible and fair policy on immigration is UKIP – ban all economic immigration for 5 years and then introduce a points-based system for all immigrants, including those from the European Empire.  That gives us 5 years to get people already living here into jobs and houses and then allow only the people we need to come and live and work here.

Merlin Entertainment recognises Dyspraxia

April 12, 2010 General No comments

We’ve just returned home from a long weekend darn sarf for a visit to Legoland and Chessington.

Legoland was a bit of a disappointing day out because the queues for everything were just enormous.  Traffic was backed up for miles just to get in the car park.  We had to queue for ages with our advance tickets to get them changed into normal tickets to get through the turnstiles.  All the rides had long queues – the shortest queue was about 15 minutes, the longest was a couple of hours.

Chessington Gate HouseFrom an entire day in Legoland we managed to go on 3 rides because #3 has Dyspraxia and can’t queue for long enough.  While we were waiting for a Legoland maintenance person to come and help us bump start the car (accidentally ran the battery down too far while we were having lunch) a member of staff asked Mrs Sane what sort of day we’d had.  She said it had been a bit disappointing and why and the member of staff said that we should have said when we arrived there because they know children with Dyspraxia can’t queue for long and allow them to queue jump.  A bit late to find out at 6pm!

We went to Chessington World of Adventures on Saturday and headed straight for customer services.  We explained what had happened at Legoland, they took our details and gave #3 a queue jump wrist band.  They recognise things like Dyspraxia and other illnesses that can cause distress or agitation when queueing as a disability which is great and made all the difference for our day out.  The system they operate is pretty fair – on the most popular rides, if you jump the queue they write the time you would have got on the ride if you’d queued and you can’t go on any of the other most popular rides until that time.

Where Legoland was a day of dragging a very unhappy, bored and agitated 7 year old (and his sister) around the park, Chessington was completely different.  We got to go on most rides, we didn’t have to keep dragging him back into the queue or try and find ways of constantly occupying him for half an hour or more.

It’s fantastic that Merlin Entertainment recognises the difficulty kids with Dyspraxia have with queueing and offer this queue jumper service.  It made our day and we’d definitely go back to one of their attractions.  In fact, before we decide to go to anything similar I’ll be checking if they do the same thing.

Brown Calling Election for May 6th

April 5, 2010 General One comment

Vote UKIPNo Mandate Brown has announced that he will be asking the Queen to dissolve parliament tomorrow and call an election.

He is expected to announce a May 6th election.

I can’t wait to see the smug grin wiped off McBroon’s gurning face and the deflated look on Camoron‘s face when he realises that he hasn’t got a majority.  I’m predicting 3 seats for UKIP this time round, I’ll tell you which 3 another time.

Is it any wonder people are turning to the EDL?

April 5, 2010 General 6 comments

Is it any wonder English people of all colours and religions are supporting the English Defence League?

Over 4,000 people gathered at an English Defence League demonstration in Dudley to protest against the planned £18m muslim mosque which over 20,000 locals previously objected to in a petition.  The protesters were herded into a large fenced-off car park surrounded by police whilst local fascists and muslims threw bottles and bricks over the fence.  The police stood and watched them do it right up until the EDL protesters pushed over the fences at which point the police ran away.

I’ve read on another website that an EDL marshal was stabbed and another had a glass bottle put in his neck.  The EDL website reports that a marshal was hit by a bottle, which would appear to give some legitimacy to the story.

I’m still not interested in ethnic nationalism or race politics and I’m not about to march with the EDL but it pisses me off that English people exercising their constitutional right to free assembly are treated this way and put in danger by the police while violent left wing fascists and muslim extremists are allowed to roam the streets, incite violence and murder and attack people who oppose them.  I’m half tempted, next time they’re in the area, to go along to one of these protests with a camera and see what happens first hand.

And just in case you’re wondering, there were 9 arrests at the protest: 3 EDL supporters (out of 4,000) and 6 UAF fascists.  The UAF arrests were for possession of offensive weapons and drugs.

Greenpeace: Fascist Thugs

April 5, 2010 Climate Change, Come the revolution, Terrorism One comment

Via Guido, it appears that Greenpeace are planning to branch out into eco-terrorism with this threat to anyone that actively opposes their eco-fascism:

If you’re one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this:

We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.

And we be many, but you be few.

This is written by Gene Hashmi, the communications director for Greenpeace India.  If anyone knows where Gene Hashmi lives, do let me know and I’ll make sure the right people find out where this fascist little weasel lives and in case anyone’s wondering, yes, that’s a fucking threat.

And if any other eco-terrorists were thinking of having a pop: bring it on.  Seriously.

So much for Christian charity

April 4, 2010 General 6 comments

Mrs Sane had to take the dog to the vets this morning.  When he did his business on his morning walk it was full of blood which isn’t a particularly good sign so we called the emergency vet recommended by our normal vet.

It cost £109 for a consultation – triple the normal amount – because it’s Easter Sunday.  Plus £23 for a couple of injections and some rehydration powder.

I thought Easter was supposed to be a time for Christian charity?

Happy Easter

April 4, 2010 General No comments

Look after my eggs, I'll be back in a couple of days

Ask the Chancellors … yawn

March 30, 2010 Economy One comment

So, who was impressed with the Ask the Chancellors programme last night?  Nope, nor me.

The three of them – Darling, Osbourne and Cable – were utterly unconvincing and short on ideas.  Darling and Osbourne were more interested in getting their catchphrases out whilst ignoring Cable who actually came across as the most credible person there which isn’t saying much.

On one occasion, a Scottish doctor in the audience asked if they would guarantee no cuts would be made at his hospital.  Not one of them asked him where his hospital was but answered his question anyway – if his hospital is in Scotland, they have no control of the health budget covering his hospital.  They also talked about social care but failed to mention England once throughout the entire programme.

The Channel 4 poll finished as close as their policies – Darling 33%, Osbourne 33%, Cable 34%.  The Tory Twitterati and bloggers and the Daily Express claimed victory for Osbourne, Liebour and the Mirror claimed victory for Darling and the Guardian (there isn’t a Twitterati or bloggerati for the Limp Dims) claimed victory for Cable.

If the programme proves anything, it’s that the election won’t be won on the strength of economic policy and certainly not by the Chancellors.

Switch on your lights for Earth Hour tonight at 20:30

March 27, 2010 Bullshit, Climate Change, Propaganda One comment

WWF has jumped on the global warming band wagon and organised Earth Hour, where it hopes people around the world will switch off their lights to save the planet.

They’re hoping lots of fools with nothing better to do with their time will get out their solar-powered laptops, connected to their wind powered telephone exchanges and sign the pledge on WWFs website which is, I expect, hosted on recycled servers in a carbon neutral data centre powered by a fast breeder reactor.  What, you mean people don’t solar powered laptops? And the internet doesn’t run on wind power?

I don’t imagine it will come as any great surprise to my regular readers that I will be going round the house turning on all the lights just to piss off the global warming scammers.  I know I won’t be the only one.

So who else is going to be “celebrating” Earth Hour with a big switch-on?  I would have burnt a few tyres in the front garden to try and combat the global cooling we’re currently experiencing but Mrs Sane wouldn’t be best pleased and have you seen the price of tyres lately?  You’d have to buy new ones because they recycle all the old ones!

Bugger the election, we need a purge

March 23, 2010 Come the revolution, Corruption, Sleaze, Traitors 2 comments

The political system is rotten to the core and the coming election isn’t going to provide the purge we need to put it right.

An investigation by the BBC has found 400 occasions where MPs have broken their own rules on declaring gifts of travel and hospitality.  Four hundred breaches by just 22 MPs, all of which were from the LibLabCon.

Three Liebour MPs have been suspended today for offering to take bribes from lobbing firms – it might have been more but the Channel 4 Dispatches investigator was rumbled at least once.

All this a couple of weeks after 3 MPs and a Lord appeared in court on a charge of false accounting relating to their fraudulent expenses.

The whole rotten lot are corrupt beyond redemption.  They hold the entire population – 60 million people – in contempt.

Stephen Byers thinks that referring himself to the parliamentary authorities makes everything fine.  It doesn’t.  He offered to take a bribe.  He bragged about taking bribes in the past.  He likened himself to a taxi for hire for fuck’s sake.  If he wasn’t an MP he’d be in a cell now waiting for a bail hearing – bribery is a common law and criminal offence, the first act of parliament criminalising bribery dating back to the 14th Century.  Byers is a crook, no better than a petty thief and should be treated as such.

The election is weeks away and what change will it bring?  A probable rotation of Prime Minister from one faction of the LibLabCon to another but ultimately more of the same.  More corrupt politicians.  More tired politics.  More sleaze.

Vote for change?  Nothing’s going to change.  A future fair for all?  Where’s the fairness in a corrupt political system that allows the people entrusted with the fate of 60 million people to lie, cheat and steal with impunity?

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

“Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

“Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d; your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean Stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings, and which by God’s help and the strength He has given me, I now come to do.

“I command ye, therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!

Oliver Cromwell

An election isn’t going to fix politics, nor is a shuffling of the deckchairs.  We need another Cromwell, just without the God thing.

Telford & Wreking Council

March 18, 2010 Telford One comment

Some people shouldn’t be allowed to breed, let alone run major engineering projects.

Quite a few schools in Telford are being rebuilt and one of them is a few miles away from where I live.  The council have chosen a hill covered in woodland as the site of the playing fields for this new school.  Work has already started on preparing the site in the form of hacking down the decades old (if not older) woodland from all over the hill, including the sides.

The feel of the whole area is different now the trees are gone and feels a lot worse.  It’s bright and airy but it’s lost its character.  But there’s a problem which the highly paid and highly qualified consultants and engineers seem to have missed.

There are houses at the bottom of the hill and the hill is very steep.  What happens next time it rains heavily – an April shower perhaps – when you cut down all the trees off the side of a steep hill?  Ask anyone from Boscastle, they’ll tell you.

NHS Database: All or Nothing

March 11, 2010 Health 9 comments

I arrived home from work this evening to find a letter from the NHS.

This letter was informing me that unless I opt out by the 31st of May, the NHS will create a “summary care record” in their spangly new multi-billion pound database.  The pitch informs me that in the first instance only details of any allergies, bad reactions to medicines and any medication I’m currently on will be included but “other important information such as serious illnesses, long term conditions and/or test results” will be added to the record.

Now I don’t have a problem with the whole NHS knowing that I have an allergy to penicillin, nor do I have a problem with them knowing that I have an inhaler for asthma.  In fact, not only don’t I have a problem with it, I positively welcome that information being available to anyone in the NHS that needs it because if I was taken into hospital for some reason and was unable to speak for myself, it’s important that the medical staff know that I have asthma and that I have an allergy to penicillin.

It makes sense that a serious illness should be on the record but if I’m knocked unconscious and taken to hospital, do they need to know that I have arthritis?  If I’d been to the doctors and had a routine blood test, would they need to know?  I don’t think they do and I’m not prepared to give the NHS or any other agency that plugs into the database in the future (and there is very little doubt in my mind that this database will be added to, shared and linked into other databases in the future) permission to record any medical details they see fit about me in a database that’s available to tens of thousands of people in the NHS and beyond.

There is no way to control the amount of information that they record in the “summary care record” – you either agree to nothing or you agree to whatever they decide to put on there and whilst you can view your own record any time you want, you can’t remove anything from it.  If it was possible to choose what type of information was recorded on the “summary care record” I would happily agree to it but as I’m not allowed any control over what goes on it and where it goes I’m going to opt out.

It’s time to do away with BMI and start using common sense

March 6, 2010 Health 2 comments

A year and a half ago I wrote about English PCTs weighing and measuring children and sending letters to parents telling them if their child is classed as obese on the fundamentally flawed BMI chart.

Back then I said:

The parents getting the “very overweight” letter will presumably put their child on a diet and the parents getting the “underweight” letter will presumably start trying to fatten their kids up.  Both sets of parents, you would hope, will be fretting over the health of their child.

But what if the BMI is wrong and the child isn’t obese or underweight but is a perfectly healthy child that simply has a large or small frame?

Too much faith is put in statistics and arbitrary scales and targets and not enough in common sense.

Mrs Sane showed me an article in Reveal magazine today about a woman whose daughter was weighed and measured and then a letter was sent to her to tell her that her daughter was obese.  She isn’t obese, she’s normal and one of four children, none of which have problems with their weight.  But because she was 1lb over the “normal” weight for an “average” child with an “average” build her mother got a letter telling her her daughter was obese and therefore at increased risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, type two diabetes and cancer.

Luckily for the young girl in question – who, from the photos, looks perfectly healthy – her mother didn’t believe a word of it and has kicked off instead.  But like I said a year and a half ago, what about the parents that get the letter and inappropriately start to fatten up their child or put them on a diet?

It’s time to do away the BMI scale and start using some common sense before we end up with a generation of children pushed into an obsession with weight and body image by British government propaganda.

Mark Pritchard MP getting his priorities right?

March 6, 2010 General No comments

Mark Pritchard, the Tory MP for Telford, has made a cryptic announcement on his website:

Under Parliamentary rules governing the pre-election period, this website will not be updated from 1st January 2010 until the General Election.

What rules say that a sitting MP can’t update their official website before an election has been called?  I’m not aware of any but I am aware of new rules on election expenses during a “long election campaign” which are the rules that I suspect he is misleadingly referring to.  These rules cover the 6 month period prior to an election and place strict limits on the amount of money that can be spent on an election campaign.  His website would, of course, be included as election expenditure which would limit the amount of money he can spend on leaflets, public meetings and driving tanks up the wrekin.

If those are the rules he’s referring to then I’m sure his constituents would prefer that he was spending money telling them what he’s doing for them rather than saving up a few quid for leaflets.

Regionalisation putting lives at risk again

February 26, 2010 Regions, Telford 3 comments

Yesterday I got a call from Mrs Sane who was out on the road asking me to phone the police for her and tell them that some clever person had lobbed a traffic cone off an island onto the dual carriageway below and that just after the cone was a broken down and the two were causing a danger.

I phoned West Mercia police and asked to be put through to the control room at Telford and they duly put me through to the communications centre in Worcester.  I explained which dual carriageway it was (the A442) in Telford and which interchange had the problem.

“Would you say it was Shifnal to Telford or Shifnal to Bridgnorth?”  Completely different bit of road, not a dual carriageway and miles away from where I said it was.  I explained, yet again, where it was and that it was only a quarter of the way from the police station and that the local police will know exactly where I’m talking about.

“What’s nearby, so I can tell them?” Arrrrgh! I told him to trust me, just to put down what I had told him and the local police who, as I’d just mentioned, were only a quarter of a mile away, would know where I was talking about.

He finally accepted it and after a couple of minutes taking my home address and phone number and asking me if I wanted a reference number for the call I managed to get him off the phone.  All in all it took me a good 10 minutes to report a dangerous obstruction on the main arterial route through a busy town at rush hour and all because it’s no longer possible to speak to your local police station thanks to pointless regionalisation of public services.

Say England, Gordon

February 24, 2010 Education 7 comments

The MP for Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath in Scotland standing in front of a British flag talking telling us his latest plan to balls up the English education system.

Brown Excellence In Education

Perverse.

And does No Mandate Brown mention the country he’s talking about once in his 30 minute election address speech? Of course not!  But he does talk about:

  • Teaching in Britain
  • National pride in our education system
  • Our country
  • Some that have concluded that Britain should follow the Swedish system
  • Our national challenge

In every place where you would expect the word “England” he said “this country” or “the country” or, bizarrely, “our country”.  What a wanker.

Twat of the Week: Gordon Brown

February 23, 2010 Twat of the Week One comment

That’s right, he’s done it again.  Despite a strong performance from Herman van Rumpy-Pumpy, El Gordo managed to maintain a convincing lead from early on in the voting and finished up with 62% of the vote in a head-to-head contest with the Emperor of the European Commission.

No Mandate Brown was nominated for using the death of his daughter for political advantage on the Piers Morgan show and that, combined with his general twattishness, seems to have secured the award.

Gordon Brown, you are officially a twat.  Again.

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