Manifesto Clubs calls on schools to stop demonising children

Three years ago one of my kids was punished for “racism” at school after he called one of his black friends a monkey when we was pulling monkey faces and making monkey noises.

The Manifesto Club has finally noticed that something is seriously amiss when primary and nursery school kids are being accused of racism and called for changes to the law that requires English schools to fill out racist incident forms every time a child says something that could be construed as racist.

Most of the children accused of racism on these forms are between 9 and 11 years of age.

Camoron breaks his referendum promise

Conservative Home has confirmed what we’ve been saying along – the Tories will not hold the referendum they promised on the Lisbon Treaty/EU Constitution.

Tim Montgomerie has tried to spin David Camoron‘s treachery claiming that the last line of his cast-iron guarantee to hold a referendum means that no promise is being broken:

No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum

Montgomerie emphasises the word “ratified” because that is apparently the reason why promising a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty/EU Constitution isn’t really a promise to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty/EU Constitution. It means that the bit before …

Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations.

… isn’t a “cast-iron guarantee” to hold a referendum on the EU treaty that emerged from the negotiations – namely the Lisbon Treaty.

Montgomerie then goes on to say that David Camoron, having lied to his party, the Sun and the electorate by saying that he will hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty/EU Constitution when he has no intention of doing so, “deserves the continuing support of eurosceptics”. On what basis?

The next Conservative government will seek a “manifesto mandate” for renegotiation

And this shows how findamentally dishonest David Camoron, the Tories and Conservative Home are. When the Lisbon Treaty/EU Constitution comes into force it is not possible to renegotiate our relationship with the European Empire.

The British government will not be able to repatriate powers from the European Empire without the unanimous agreement of every member state.

The Lisbon Treaty/EU Constitution introduces qualified majority voting – where we no longer have a veto – for a huge amount of policy areas.

The Lisbon Treaty/EU Constitution is not a menu from which we can pick and choose the least damaging and costly clauses – it replaces the Treaty of Rome, the treaty that established the EEC (now the EU). It would be like Puerto Rico joining the United States and picking only half od the US constitution.

The only way to renegotiate our relationship with the European Empire is to leave.

But even if David “I don’t agree Britain would be better off by leaving the European Union” Camoron was forced into holding a referendum on leaving the European Empire it would still require the unanimous agreement of all member states before we could leave following a two year “cooling off period”.

In August 2007, David Camoron told the Shropshire Star:

I don’t agree Britain would be better off by leaving the European Union. Instead, we need to work within the EU to fight for change but on the question of referendums, I do want to see one on the EU Treaty because that’s what everyone was promised. The Conservative Party is campaigning very hard on just this. Other European leaders say the latest EU Treaty is a return of the constitution in all but name so whether or not he keeps the promise to hold the referendum is a real test for Gordon Brown. It will show whether he means what he says when he talks about restoring trust in government, and involving people more in decisions.

Hoisted by his own petard. David Camoron promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty/EU Constiution and he has renaged on that promise. This was a real test for the man widely expected to be prime minister next year and he failed. In his own words, it shows that he doesn’t mean what he says about restoring trust in government and involving people more in decisions.

David Camoron is a fundamentally dishonest man, as is the Conservative and European Unionist party he leads. The vast majority of the Tory membership is opposed to the Lisbon treaty/EU Constitution, they are opposed to the European Empire and the wholesale transfer of our sovereignty to unelected eurocrats on the continent but they have been betrayed by their leader and his euofederalist colleagues.

But don’t have too much sympathy for the eurosceptic Tories who have lost their party to eurofederalist traitors – they have allowed it to happen and they allow it continue happening by continuing to support the party that has betrayed them. And people like Tim Montgomerie – collaborators with, and apologists for, the eurofederalist leadership – deserve no sympathy at all for losing the party they have worked so hard for. They sense that power is within their grasp and even though their party no longer represents their views, they will happily put their principles to one side and betray their country to be part of it.

If the Conservative Party no longer represents your views (how could it?) then you have two options. You can either continue to support and vote for the Tories and allow yourself to be part of David Camoron‘s eurofederalist mandate or you can vote for a party that does represent your views, one that will withdraw this once great nation from the European Empire. That party is, of course, UKIP.

Don’t let yourself be conned into believing that you have to vote Conservative to stop Liebour or the Lib Dims from getting into power – why vote for someone you don’t want to keep out someone else you don’t want? Lesser of two evils? Don’t make me laugh – there’s barely a cigarette paper between Liebour and the Tories. David Camoron will never renegotiate our relationship with his beloved European Empire, the Tory policy of “reform from within” is a falacy.

Vote Conservative, get Brussels. Vote UKIP, get our country back.

What is the point of BBC HD?

Can anyone tell me what the point of the BBC HD channel is?  Really, what is the point of broadcasting 8½ hours of crap in HD?

BBC1’s schedule today includes MI High, Newsround, Weakest Link, the One Show, Eastenders, Panorama, Life, the Graham Norton Show and Apprentice USA.  During the same period, BBC HD has LazyTown Extra, My Almost Famous Family, Doctors, Flog It, Panorama, Gardeners World, Life and Scallywagga.  Only two programmes from the BBC1 schedule and not one from BBC2.  What a waste.

Enormous amounts of money have been spent on HDTV and the BBC is wasting an opportunity – not to mention our money – because they’re showing crap on the BBC HD channel.  I’ve had Sky HD for a few months now and I haven’t watched the BBC HD channel once.  There really is nothing worth watching on the BBC HD channel – especially for the 15½ hours a day when it just shows previews.  Why not show an upscaled version of whatever is showing on BBC1 or BBC2 during the day instead of previews?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/BBC_HD.svg/200px-BBC_HD.svg.png

Not suitable for children

It’s traditional to bedeck websites with scary images at Halloween.  Google has this rather tame offering:

I prefer something a bit more scary …

Scary Gordon Brown - Caution

Science Museum poll changes again!

The joke that is the Science Museum’s poll on climate change has taken another bizarre twist with the apparent reversion to the previous poll results prior to the poll being reset back to zero then changed to an almost 50/50 split.  It now shows 5,000 more “count me out” votes than “count me in”.

The Science Museum should be forced to change its name under the Trade Descriptions Act.  There is nothing scientific about this poll.

Girl murdered after meeting Facebook stranger – WTF?

A 17 year old girl has been murdered after meeting a predator on Facebook.

The girl agreed to meet a man who claimed to be a 16 year old boy who allegedly then murdered her.

The usual criticisms of social media have been rolled out by the usual suspects along with the traditional warning of the dangers of meeting complete strangers  you’ve only talked to online and reminder that people online might not be who they claim.

I know it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead but online safety really isn’t rocket science is it?  Common sense tells you that you don’t go and meet a complete stranger you’ve met on Facebook on your own.  What possible steps could Facebook have taken other than reading every interaction between their millions of users and inserting advice such as “are you sure this complete stranger isn’t a pscho murderer?” and “I wouldn’t agree to meet him if I was you” into every message?

Let’s put this into perspective – this wasn’t some 13 year old kid whose naiveity has been exploited, it was a 17 year old young adult, past school age, old enough to be out working, old enough to be married with kids.  Should she have known better?  Yes she should.  Does this mean every other person on social networking sites are sexual deviants or mass murders?  No it doesn’t.  It’s sad that she was murdered but do we really need endless hand wringing and navel gazing every time someone has a common sense bypass involving a social networking site?

West Midlands Police “ban” film in Birmingham

West Midlands Police have advised cinemas in Birmingham not to show an independent film about black gang warfare filmed and produced in Birmingham because it is negatively stereotypical.  Cineworld and Odeon have refused to show the film in Birmingham as a result.

This is just wrong.  Very wrong.  It is not the place of the police to make up the law as they go along, although West Midlands Police do have form for it.  If they believe that the black “community” in Birmingham is so touchy that they’ll riot over a work of fiction then that doesn’t say a lot about the black “community” in Birmingham but it says even less about West Midlands Police if they’ve lost control of the city to such an extent that they have to lean on cinema’s not to show films in case it upsets the locals.

Help me, I’m turning into my dad

I’m away from home this week on a training course and I took a walk into Watford town centre this evening to find somewhere to eat.

Maybe I’m just getting old or maybe society realy is taking a turn for the worst because I found myself shaking my head in dismay at the sights that greeted me on Watford High Street.

The sight of a good looking woman in a mini skirt is certainly nothing to complain about but when young girls who don’t look old enough to be out on their own after dark (some of them looking no more than 13 or 14 years old) are walking around dressed in something like this * …

… then a) I don’t want to see it and b) what the fuck are they doing out at night in a street full of bars dressed like whores?

Do their parents know where they are?  Do they know they’re tottering down Watford High Street in 6 inch heels and a mini skirt so short it barely covers the cheeks of their arse shouting at gangs of lads?  If not, why not?  And if they do then why do they allow their young daughter to go out dressed like a paedophile’s wet dream?

I swear to god, if my daughter ever came down the stairs dressed like that she’d get through the front door over my cold dead body.

Christ, I’m turning into my dad.  Somebody shoot me!

* The picture isn’t of one of the 13 or 14 year old girls, I’m not a paedophile

Science Museum start again with climate change poll

The excellent Englishman’s Castle tipped us off last week that the Science Museum was asking people to vote on whether they were convinced by climate change propaganda and wanted the British government to negotiate a return to the dark ages (count me in) or whether they were unconvinced (count me out).

The poll was massively in favour of the “count me out” option so, predictably, the museum have cleared the thousands of votes already cast and are inviting visitors to vote again in the hope of getting the “right” answer this time.

So please do visit the Science Museum’s website and cast your vote again.

Edit:
The poll now asks you to click a confirmation link from an email and still gives you the option to read the “evidence” again when you click the “count me out” button.  When you cast your vote you are then given links to five external websites to read  more “evidence” and an invitation to a couple of events about man made climate change and why we’re running out of time.  There is no science involved, just opinion.

Destruction of the Jewish faith, my arse

A court has ruled that a school has broken the law by refusing admission to a child that the Chief Rabbi considered  to not be a proper jew.

Interestingly, the judgement is based on the assertion that “Jewish” is a race, not just a religion.  Which is bollocks.  The rules are that anyone with a Jewish mother is Jewish – they may not have any Hebrew blood in them at all as the child of a Jewish convert is considered Jewish in the Jewish faith.

The Chief Rabbi says that God tells him who is and isn’t a Jew and that the court’s ruling implies that his God is a racist.  Some other Jewish person whose name I didn’t catch has been on Newsnight saying that Jewish schools have prevented the destruction of Jews and that forcing them to take people who the Chief Rabbi says aren’t real Jews puts the “Jewish community” at risk.

I know this is a generalisation but Jews are, sadly, so used to using such extreme terms as “destruction” and “racist” that they use them for something as minor as a schools admission policy.  Forcing Jewish schools to adopt a legal admissions policy will not destroy the Jewish faith, nor does it amount to the state calling God a racist.

Presumably the court ruling was based on the same law that bans the BNP from accepting only white members.  If the Jewish school is successful in getting the ruling overturned then that will give the BNP legitimate grounds to appeal the recent ruling that they must change their admission rules to allow ethnic minorities to join their party.  Is that what the Chief Rabbi wants?

Karadzic show trial begins today

The trial of Radovan Karadzic starts today at the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.

Karadzic is defending himself and has asked for a 10 month adjournment to prepare his defence, a request that has been dismissed as a delaying tactic.

But the prosecution has filed over 1m pages of evidence against him which raises concerns.  Whilst the man is clearly guilty – I don’t think there are many that would argue that he didn’t do what he’s accused of – there is no way, even with a team of defence lawyers, that a defence could be mounted against 1m pages of evidence.

There will be no successful defence – you don’t get a million pages of evidence for something that didn’t happen – but everyone has a right to defend themselves and without a defence you don’t have a fair trial.  It is impossible to mount a defence against 1m pages of evidence so Karadzic won’t get a fair trial.  You might not think he deserves one but when you start denying the right to a fair trial, it’s time to worry about the way society is going.

CEP: Glasgow Mean Time

The clocks went back an hour this morning to mark the return to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Every year since 1916 – excluding the second world war years – the clocks have changed twice a year, bringing lighter mornings during the winter at a cost darker evenings.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) has been campaigning for years to do away with the GMT timezone in an effort to cut the number of accidents and deaths during the half year GMT is in force.

RoSPA estimates that the number of deaths on the roads could be reduced by 80% if the clocks were put forward one hour throughout the year as it would result in more daylight during the working day.

There have been attempts to change the law covering timezones but these have failed because it would mean parts of Scotland being in darkness until past 10am during winter.  A bill to introduce the Single Double Summer Time (SDST) timezone recommended by RoSPA to cut annual road deaths by 80% was talked out by an MP elected in Scotland who considered the increased danger for a million people in northern Scotland far more important than increasing the safety of 50m in England.  The bill included an explicit opt-out for Scotland which would allow it to retain the current GMT/BST arrangement so there was no need for Scottish MPs to interfere.

Control of timezones should be devolved in all four home nations because what is best for Scotland and Northern Ireland isn’t what is best for England and Wales.  An English government could (and I imagine would at a very early juncture) adopt the SDST timezone recommended by RoSPA and start saving English lives and money (RoSPA estimates £138.36m per year) whilst Scotland would be free to keep GMT/BST and even rename the timezones to Glasgow Mean Time and Bannockburn Summer Time.

RoSPA’s prediciton of an 80% reduction in road deaths by adopting the SDST timezone is a UK-wide prediction.  Bearing in mind that it would make deaths more likely in Scotland, this means that road deaths in England would be reduced by more than 80%.  But, of course, the first step to saving hundreds of English lives a year from unnecessary deaths on the roads (not to mention over a hundred millions pounds of cost savings)  is to establish an English Parliament and get England governed by politicians who will put the interests of 50m English people before the interests of a million Scots.

Count me out

Via An Englishman’s Castle, the Science Museum is inviting you to tell them if you’re convinced about climate change “evidence” and want the British government to negotiate a dangerous and expensive deal strong, effective, fair deal to return us to the dark ages prove they’re serious about climate change.  It even helpfully invites you to change your uneducated and clearly limited mind if you join the 84% of respondents and tell them to count you out.

You can even send them a message.  So I did …

The “evidence” is opinion, much of it bought with taxpayers money.  The climate is changing as it has done for billions of years and will continue to do so for billions more.  The predictions have all proven to be wrong so far and the suppression of alternative opinions that challenge the climate change religion is completely unscientific.  Climate change “science” isn’t science at all, it’s opinion auctioned to the highest bidder.  Climate change “scientists” are making more money than they could ever have dreamed of from selling propaganda to governments.

On a related note, I’ve had two letters from the Advertising Standards Agency confirming that they’re investigating both the Telegraph’s false claim to be the most informed newspaper for climate change and the British government’s “Act of CO2” child propaganda advert.

The Telegraph falsely claims in a poster that the North West Passage has just opened to commercial traffic for the first time when the Canadian government has been licencing commercial trade to use the North West Passage since the 1920’s with a break only during the second world war.  That’s excluding the Vikings using it in their little wooden boats around the time they discovered Greenland (so named because it wasn’t covered in ice back then).  The poster claims that the Telegraph is the most informed newspaper on climate change when it clearly isn’t.

The Act on CO2 advert I won’t go into too much detail on because it makes my blood boil every time I see it.  Suffice to say, when you have to resort to broadcasting a cartoon showing a crying little bunny rabbit and a drowning puppy you’ve quite clearly lost the argument (and the plot).  Propaganda aimed at children is illegal, even when it’s the British government disseminating it.  The advert was commissioned when a poll showed that 60% of people were unconvinced by the bullshit propaganda the British government puts out aboAdd New Post ‹ Wonko’s World — WordPressut climate change.  Judging by the fact that’s increased to 84% according to the Science Museum’s poll and that the Advertising Standards Agency had received 357 complaints about the advert as of Wednesday, the argument has been well and truly lost.

Griffin was shit … but not as shit as Straw

So how did Nick Griffin’s first outing on Question Time go?  A mixed bag in my opinion.

Most of the programme was dedicated to attacks on the BNP or Nick Griffin, most of which was lapped up by a baying audience that was disproportionately full of black and asian people.  Nick Griffin looked uncomfortable and nervous the whole way through.

Jack Straw was by far the weakest panelist on the programme, spinning so fast they could have hooked him up to the national grid.  Chris Huhne was the least confrontational of the LibLabCon panelists (who’d have thought it from a Lib Dim?).  Baroness Waarsi was the best of the politicos on the panel by far.  She attacked Griffin – sometimes weakly – but she also treated Jack Straw as fair game, especially when he denied that Liebour’s open door policy was to blame for the rise in the BNP’s popularity.

Interesting, whilst everything Nick Griffin said was met with jeers from the crowd, when he said there were too many people coming into the country and that it should be stopped there were no jeers from the predominantly black and asian audience.

Griffin was strongest on Islam – when he was asked to explain why he believed that Islam was a cruel and wicked faith he did so quite openly, citing the stoning of female rape victims for “adultary” and the Koran’s instructions to murder non-believers as evidence of its cruelty.  There were a few disagreements from the audience and from Baroness Waarsi who insisted that that wasn’t what Islam is about (despite it being in the Koran).

The funniest part of the programme was when Jack Straw was pontificating about Winston Churchill and the contribution of black and asians to the war effort during the Second World War and Nick Griffin pointed out that his grandfather was an RAF pilot during the war whilst Jack Straw’s grandfather spent the war in prison for refusing to fight.  To be fair to Jack Straw, he barely flinched but it was a priceless moment.

On balance, Nick Griffin came across badly.  He was unconvincing during most of the programme but he was certainly not the weakest panelist – I would put him above Straw and Huhne.  If the programme encourages people to join the BNP it will be because of the attacks on Nick Griffin – the negative politics throughout – rather than what Griffin said.  After all, are naturally attracted to the underdog.

And the best panelist?  Not Griffin, not Straw, not Huhne and not Waarsi.  The best panelist was some black woman from a museum who calmly and intelligently wiped the floor with Nick Griffin.  She did more to put down the BNP than the LibLabCon panelists put together and she did it without insulting him, without raising her voice and without feigning anger.  It is people like her that will keep the BNP down, not failed politicians whose refusal to tackle immigration gives oxygen to the BNP.

Nick Griffin on Question Time and UAF thugs strike again

Nick Griffin will be on Question Time tonight in front of what is probably going to be the bigget TV audience Question Time has ever had.

And the reason why Griffin is going to be getting this huge amount of publicity?  Because the anti-democratic, anti-BNP idiots have made such a fuss about him appearing on the BBC that almost every news channel and major newspaper at home and abroad has been talking about nothing but the BNP and Question Time.

The Tories have obvously got jealous of the publicity that Liebour is getting from the fascist left wing thugs at Unite Against Fascism and set up their own anti-BNP protest group called “Nothing British”.  I wonder if Camoron will leave UAF and join “Nothing British” instead.

Protesters have been causing trouble outside the BBC studio all day and 25-30 people managed to break in and had to be removed by the police.  Can you guess who the protesters are?  Yep, Unite Against Fascism.  Again.  The lawless far left extremist thugs supported by the Liebour Party, David Camoron and senior civil servants and police officers all over the country.

The BNP are a nasty, racist party but they are a legal political party (despite what that idiot Peter Hain says) with two MEPs and have a right to impartial representation on the BBC.  The “no platform” policy hasn’t worked, nor have the senseless, anti-democratic attacks on them by fascists like Searchlight and UAF.

The BNP need to be given enough rope to hang themselves, the more they’re attacked, the more support they get.  The BBC were absolutely correct to invite Nick Griffin to appear on Question Time as the leader of a legitimate political party and a democratically elected MEP and I can’t wait to see Nick Griffin make a complete dick of himself in front of millions of people.

As I was typing this, I noticed that Old Holborn has previously found details of the Home Office funding Unite Against Fascism.  State sponsored thugs violently supressing opposition to the government … why does George Orwell come to mind?

Stop the BNP: Vote UKIP

Oh dear, oh dear, another leaked BNP membership list.  Things aren’t looking up for the BNP are they?

Last week Nick Griffin was forced to accept that the BNP cannot lawfully refuse membership to non-white or non-“British” people.  A court ruled – using a bill that isn’t a law yet, it seems – that the BNP isn’t allowed to refuse membership to non-whites even if it means allowing members that don’t subscribe to the party’s aims and objectives.  Expect a concerted effort to flood the BNP with muslims some time soon.

A new anti-BNP group has been formed by the Tories who are presumably jealous of Liebour’s anti-BNP far left extremist groups, Unite Against Fascism and Searchlight.  This new campaign group has done a sterling job of keeping the BNP in the news by publishing a letter written by former military commanders calling on the BNP to stop using wartime imagary because it gives the military a bad name.

And now a new version of the BNP’s membership list has been leaked on the Wikileaks website, prompting yet another investigation by the Information Commissioner.  A number of people on the list contacted by the Telegraph were at great pains to make it known they were no longer members of the BNP and most seem to have said they were only members for a short time.

It’s commonly accepted that the security services have moles in the BNP – they wouldn’t be doing their job if they didn’t.  The Liebour Party will undoubtedly have its own moles in the BNP (where they would be more easily camouflaged as fellow left wing extremists).  The British government knows that it doesn’t have any legal grounds to ban the BNP so it is instead using both legal and illegal means to try and put them out of business.  The same is true of UKIP, where the British government is trying to bankrupt the party using the corrupt Electoral Commission as a sockpuppet.  The trigger in both cases is electoral success that threatens to relegate Liebour to electoral irrelevance and challenges the established LibLabCon doctrine of unfettered immigration, eurofederalism and national shame.

The thing with the BNP is that most of their members have joined either because they’re racists or making a protest at the LibLabCon.  Most of them couldn’t name a BNP policy other than “immigration” and “sending th darkings back home” and most of them couldn’t argue their way out of a wet paper bag.  Let them have as much publicity as they crave because if you give them enough rope they hang themselves and the more rope they have, the more hangings there will be.  The “no platform” policy hasn’t worked, nor has denouncing them as bunny killing right wing nazi’s (socialism is left wing, not right).

The only way to undermine the BNP is to take away the reasons why people support them in the first place – restrict immigration and leave the EU.  This is what most people want and this is why people are voting for the BNP.  Unfortunately, the LibLabCon aren’t going to listen so the only way to stop the BNP is by voting UKIP who will restrict immigration and take us out of the European Empire but don’t have policies of forced repatriation of non-indigenous people, restricting freedom of the press and forcing anyone wanting to take part in English politics to have a DNA test to prove their anglo-saxon descent.

Bloggers4UKIP: Court of Appeal rules in favour of Electoral Commission

As reported in the media today, the Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of the corrupt Electoral Commission and ordered Westminster Magistrates Court to change its ruling that UKIP only has to forfeit £18,481 of the £363,697 in impermissible donations received from Alan Bown.

The donations were found to be impermissible because Alan Bown was mysteriously removed from the electoral register without his knowledge and only put back on when he found that he wasn’t on the register. Under a law designed to prevent foreigners from donating to UK political parties, donors who give more than £200 to a political party must be on the electoral register at the time of the donation to be legal.

The Electoral Commission insisted on a full forfeiture of the £363,697 but UKIP opted to go to court where the magistrate ruled that it was a genuine administrative oversight and ordered that only £18,481 be repayed. The Electoral Commission appealed and today the Court of Appeal ruled in their favour.

The Court of Appeal’s judgement doesn’t mean that Westminster Magistrates Court has to order a full forfeiture and there is always the option to appeal. There are certainly good grounds to appeal – the Lib Dims were found to have taken £2.4m in donations from someone not on the electoral register (who is currently in prison having been convicted of fraud) at around the same time but the Electoral Commission chose not to pursue them for the forfeiture of their impermissible donations.

UKIP is a relatively small party, punching above its weight and embarrassing the LibLabCon. The Electoral Commission is a corrupt quango and sockpuppet of the British government. Going after UKIP and ignoring the Lib Dims is contra bonos mores – so unfair that a reasonable man would never come to the same conclusion (see Wednesbury Unreasonableness).

The ironic thing is that the ultimate court of appeal is not the new “Supreme” Court (which isn’t supreme at all) but an EU court and UKIP’s continued existence as a party may lie in the hands of the corrupt, anti-democratic super-quango that it is trying to undermine.

In UKIP’s 2008 accounts, no provision was put aside for the forfeiture because Alan Bown pledged to underwrite it as he accepted the blame for not being on the electoral register. If he still intends to cover the cost of the forfeiture – estimated to reach around £750k with costs – then there are going to be a lot of very disappointed UKIP hating politicians and civil servants looking for a new way to try and do away with the thorn in their side.

Adonis and Hain want to sit in House of Commons

The unelected English Transport Minister, Lord Adonis, says that he and the unelected English Business Secretary, Peter Mandelson, would love to sit in the House of Commons to answer MPs’ questions directly instead of by proxy in the House of Lords.

The BBC points out that the Shadow English Transport Minister and the Shadow English Business Secretary never get to directly face their opposite numbers in the Commons.

There is a simple solution to this democratic deficit – stop stuffing the cabinet with useless, unelected peers.  There should be no unelected peers in the cabinet.

Details, details …

Orange has this clever feature when you ring customer services where you enter your password on your phone keypad – 2 for abc, 3 for def, etc.  It’s a great idea, assuming you don’t have one of these:

You’ll note that, unlike regular mobile phones, the number keys don’t have a set of letters on them on account of the phone having a qwerty keyboard.  The same applies to the Cackberry and every other mobile phone with a qwerty keyboard.  I once pointed this out to someone at Orange customer services who said I was the second person that day to say it.  It was a while ago now and it still asks.

And while I’m complaining, Sky still have their old phone number that changed months ago on the phone number list on the Interactive service.  The “new” number is free for Sky Talk customers to clal but the old one isn’t.

This is a local cafe for local people

Our poor precious MPs aren’t very happy MPs Onlythat the number of seats reserved for them and their guests in the Strangers Cafe in the House of Commons has been reduced so that the peasants don’t have to wait so long while the MP’s reserved seating area sits half empty.

Fifteen MPs have signed a motion complaining that:

[there is] often insufficient capacity for hon Members and their guests

… and …

that no consultation of Honourable Members took place prior to the decision

I rather think that the MPs in question may have answered their own complaint.  There is sufficient capacity for honourable members in the back of my car and I have no doubt the parliamentary authorities would have debated the decision with honourable members were they able to find some that hadn’t done the honourable thing and resigned.