English Democrats embracing militancy

February 10, 2013 EDP 2 comments

English Democrats - Bringing English nationalism into disreputeThe English Democrats lost their “celebrity” elected mayor of Doncaster this week when he resigned from the party over the takeover of the party by BNP defectors.

Chairman of the English Democrats, Robin Tilbrook, took the news badly and smeared Mayor Peter Davies accusing him of being a gambling addict and heavily criticising him.  The day before, he was praising him and holding up as a shining example of the English Democrats’ “success” in an article which has since been deleted.

One of their 6 (yes, six) councillors, Mick Glynn, has resigned in disgust at Tilbrook’s outburst leaving them with just 2 parish councillors, 2 district councillors and a county councillor.

The takeover of the party by the BNP is one of the least worrying aspects of the English Democrats’ recent lurch to the far right.  More worrying is the forming of an alliance with anti-Muslim, white supremacist and British nationalist groups and the abandonment of the democratic process:

The political / elections route has always been the main focus for patriotic politics, but in recent years the emphasis has shifted away from elections towards militancy, campaigning and direct action

Thank god the English Democrats are in terminal decline, the thought of this bunch of racists, extremists and white supremacist militants in a position of power doesn’t bear thinking about.

Hippo meat found in sausages

February 8, 2013 Funny One comment

The Ankh Morpork Times

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret!

The Guild of Merchants and Traders has launched a formal investigation into allegations that sausages in Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler’s premium Sausage Inna Bun have been found to contain hippo meat.

Guild Vice President Rerpf said “The Guild was made aware of the allegations by a concerned resident of Ankh Morpork who purchased one of Mr Dibbler’s products in Fat Sally’s coffee shop in Squeezebelly Street. We have launched a full investigation into the allegations and Crysophrase’s Meat Futures Warehouse, which is the suspected source of the hippo meat, has been closed pending the outcome”.

Mr Dibbler of Sator Square said “Every Sausage Inna Bun contains 100% domesticated animal. I am confident that I will be exonner … exonnia … cleared of these malicious accusations”.

Crysophrase the Troll was unavailable for comment.

English Democrats lose their elected mayor

February 5, 2013 EDP 2 comments

Peter DaviesSo the English Democrat elected mayor of Doncaster, Peter Davies, has finally announced his intention to resign from the party over its links with the far right.

Davies claims to have only just discovered his party’s links to racist and extremist groups and is “concerned” about recent claims former BNP members have joined the English Democrats.  The takeover of the English Democrats by the BNP, EDL and other extremist groups has been widely publicised for the last few years and Steve Uncles’ attempt to form a partnership with Sinn Féin is well documented.  It is also well known that 4 in 10 of their candidates at the last local elections were former BNP members.

Hope Not Hate recently announced that they were targeting Peter Davies at the next mayoral election because of the English Democrats’ links to extremists and only a few days ago reported on the English Democrats’ new alliance with a new fascist group, English National Resistance.  Davies is either naive or telling porkies and you don’t get elected as mayor of a large city by being naive.

Dear Jim Telfer …

February 2, 2013 England, Scotland, Sport 2 comments

 

This …

England 38 -v- 18 Scotland

England 38 -v- 18 Scotland

… is why the English team are allowed to be arrogant.

Hot Chocolate

February 1, 2013 Pictures No comments

Hot Chocolate

Defending England on the BBC

February 1, 2013 Anglophobia 6 comments

Rugby Union World Cup 2003 Final England -v- AustraliaWe’ve had a double-dose of England-bashing in the last couple of days with former Scottish rugby coach Jim Telfer declaring the English team arrogant and French journalist Jean Jaffe (probably spelt that wrong) said that the English are arrogant and think they’re the centre of the world.

BBC Radio Five Live phoned me up this morning asking if I would go on their morning show and “defend the English”.  They bumped me even though I’d told them I was delaying going out to do the interview and then didn’t bother calling me back which was a bit rude!  But BBC Radio WM called me at lunchtime and asked me if I’d do an interview on their show instead which I did.

The interview was so well received the producer called me afterwards to tell me that they’d had so much positive feedback, including one person who sent in a text saying that I should be in charge of the country because I talk a lot of common sense.

This is what the French journalist said:

I don’t think the French are very taken you know with Beckham’s brands. You know, I’ve never seen many ads with Beckham in France in magazines or on the Paris Metro. Apparently his wife was a bit snooty and she didn’t want to come to Paris, it was not good enough for her career. Most of the English people you think you are the centre of the world and that we have to care about what happens in your country and we have to love you English and I don’t say the British, the English.

I think I defended the English and represented the normal, tolerant side of English nationalism quite well.  You can hear the interview on YouTube …

HS2 is going to be a hugely expensive white elephant

January 31, 2013 Transport No comments

Gordon the High-Speed EngineI was driving home from a friend’s house on Monday evening and listening to a BBC “local” radio show being broadcast on BBC Radio Shropshire discussing, amongst other things, HS2.  The presenter was clearly quite taken with the idea of high speed rail and even suggested to one listener that the jobs that will be created building HS2 must be a good thing because those people will be paying taxes.

I felt compelled at this point to call in to the show and give my thoughts on HS2 and the suggestion that the taxpayer paying 100% of someone’s wages is a good thing because you can take back 20% of it in taxes.  To my surprise they called me back an hour later to get me on the show.

Here is Telford and indeed the rest of Shropshire we’ll get bugger all benefit from HS2.  Getting from Birmingham to London or to one of the major northern cities isn’t too bad – it’s the journey from Telford to Birmingham that’s the problem with overcrowded, slow trains and the later legs of train journeys if you’re not actually stopping at one of the major locations.  I had to go from Telford to Southend once on the train.  I left early in the morning and it was dark when I arrived.  Including the London Underground, it took five trains to get there.  HS2 would shorten the tolerable section of the journey but do nothing to improve the rest of it.

Having said that, I did go to Leeds on the train last year and the journey back was awful – the train was late and overcrowded all the way to Birmingham for the return leg of the journey.  So on the basis of that one train journey there’s scope for HS2 to improve a trip to Leeds but I’m pretty sure the train we took ended up with two lots of passengers because of a cancelled service.

The problem is, though, that no matter what benefits HS2 might deliver (either real or imagined) will be dwarfed by the £33bn cost and made largely irrelevant by the 20 year build time.  The service will be run by a private company, it’ll probably be financed with a PFI scheme and it’ll almost certainly go over budget.  The £33bn cost will need to recovered by subsidies and ticket sales so it’s not going to be cheap to use and even if you don’t use it, your taxes are going to be used to subsidise it anyway.

HS2 is going to be a hugely expensive white elephant.

How you can help to get cabinet devolution minutes released

January 10, 2013 Anglophobia, Police State 8 comments

The SNP have asked the British government for the minutes of the 1997 cabinet meeting on devolution in which it was decided that the Scots and Welsh would be allowed self government whilst England would not.

This important document has been requested a number of times under the Freedom of Information Act and blocked every time.  The Information Commissioner has ruled that release of the minutes is in the public interest and ordered their release but they were blocked by the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve.

1997 Cabinet

What are these traitors so desperate to hide?

Vetoing FOI requests requires the unanimous agreement of the cabinet.  When Jack Straw and Dominic Grieve vetoed their release in 2009 and 2012, these people conspired to keep the minutes secret:

Jack Straw Dominic Grieve
The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP The Rt Hon. David Cameron MP
The Rt Hon Harriet Harman QC MP The Rt Hon. Nick Clegg MP
The Rt Hon The Lord Mandelson PC The Rt Hon. William Hague MP
The Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP The Rt Hon. George Osborne MP
The Rt Hon David Miliband MP The Rt Hon. Kenneth Clarke QC MP
The Rt Hon Jack Straw MP The Rt Hon. Theresa May MP
The Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP The Rt Hon. Dr Liam Fox MP
The Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP The Rt Hon. Philip Hammond MP
The Rt Hon Douglas Alexander MP The Rt Hon. Dr Vince Cable MP
The Rt Hon John Denham MP The Rt Hon. Iain Duncan Smith MP
The Rt Hon Ed Balls MP The Rt Hon. Chris Huhne MP
The Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP The Rt Hon. Edward Davey MP
The Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP The Rt Hon. Andrew Lansley CBE MP
The Rt Hon Shaun Woodward MP The Rt Hon. Michael Gove MP
The Rt Hon The Baroness Royall of Blaisdon PC The Rt Hon. Eric Pickles MP
The Rt Hon Tessa Jowell MP The Rt Hon. Philip Hammond MP
The Rt Hon Jim Murphy MP The Rt Hon. Justine Greening MP
The Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP The Rt Hon. Caroline Spelman MP
The Rt Hon Liam Byrne MP The Rt Hon. Andrew Mitchell MP
The Rt Hon Peter Hain MP The Rt Hon. Owen Paterson MP
The Rt Hon Bob Ainsworth MP The Rt Hon. Danny Alexander MP
The Rt Hon The Lord Adonis MP The Rt Hon. Michael Moore MP
The Rt Hon Ben Bradshaw MP The Rt Hon. Cheryl Gillan MP
The Rt Hon Nick Brown MP The Rt Hon. Jeremy Hunt MP
The Rt Hon The Lord Malloch-Brown KCMG PC The Rt Hon. David Laws MP
The Rt Hon John Healey MP The Rt Hon. Danny Alexander MP
The Rt Hon Pat McFadden MP The Rt Hon. The Lord Strathclyde PC
The Rt Hon The Lord Drayson PC The Rt Hon. The Baroness Warsi PC
The Rt Hon Jim Knight MP The Rt Hon. Francis Maude MP
The Rt Hon The Baroness Scotland of Asthal PC QC The Rt Hon. Oliver Letwin MP
The Rt Hon Dawn Primarolo MP The Rt Hon. David Willetts MP
The Rt Hon Rosie Winterton MP The Rt Hon. Sir George Young Bt MP
The Rt Hon Sadiq Khan MP The Rt Hon. Patrick McLoughlin MP
The Rt Hon. Dominic Grieve QC MP

The minutes are really of more interest to the English than the Scots as they got what they wanted and we got shafted so we shouldn’t be leaving it to the Scots to get these minutes into the public domain.  If every English person interested in seeing what decisions were made at the cabinet meeting that have resulted in over 15 years of institutional discrimination against the English made a Freedom of Information request for the minute, it would be extremely damaging to the British government if they tried to block their release to hundreds or thousands of people.

If you want to help force the release of these minutes, you need to send an FOI request for them to foi.team@cabinet-office.gsi.gov.uk.  My request is as follows:

Under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, I am requesting a copy of the minutes of the 1997 Cabinet meetings on devolution. I am also requesting a copy of the Terms of Reference for the cabinet committee headed by Lord Irvine that the minutes relate to and any legal or departmental advice provided to the cabinet in relation to these meetings.

Update:
Kev has started an e-Petition on the British government’s website.

See also:

Man beaten to within 5″ of his life in Wales for being English

January 10, 2013 Anglophobia, Racism, Wales 2 comments

A 27 year old Englishman has been beaten to a pulp and left for dead in Wales for being English.

Paul Meehan was born in London, grew up in Cardiff but now lives in Birmingham.  He was waiting at a taxi rank when he was attacked after the group heard the brummie twang in his accent.  Doctors had to remove a 5″ section of his skull to relieve the pressure on his brain.

Increasing anglophobia over the last decade or so has been recognised but the bulk of the increase in racially motivated attacks against English people has been in Scotland where a 2003 survey found that a quarter of English people living in Scotland had experienced racially motivated harassment or discrimination.  There are a number of prominent examples of that latent anglophobia translating into physical violence in the disabled Englishman who was dragged out of his car and beaten up in Scotland, the half English/half Scottish boy punched in the face in a park in Scotland for wearing an England football shirt, the English carer for a Scottish friend who had his windows smashed and was assaulted for being English.  But the most damning indictment was probably when the head of once of the Scottish police forces said that anti-English attacks had reached epidemic proportions in his force’s area.

However, that violent anglophobia has tended not to manifest itself so much in Wales.  In fact, the worst thing that I recall happening in Wales wasn’t even an assault on a person, it was a horse being slashed a few years ago.  Hopefully this racist attack isn’t the start of a souring of Anglo-Welsh relations.

Man attacked in Cardiff for being English (c) The Sun

University admissions continue to decline in England

January 5, 2013 Apartheid, Education No comments

Last month the SNP reported that university admissions in 2012 were up in Scotland and down in England.

Could you pass the 11+?The reason is obvious: the decline in admissions in England started when the British government’s racist tuition fees were tripled.

I don’t have a problem with less people going to university – in fact, I positively welcome it.  The policy of the last Labour government to have 50% of school leavers in England going to university was absolutely mental and if it was ever achieved, would have made degrees utterly worthless.  Only the academically gifted should go to university.  A degree is a sign of superior academic prowess, it shouldn’t be as commonplace as a NVQ or an A-Level.  If 50% of people had a degree what would you have to do to set yourself apart from the other half of the job seeking population that had the same level of qualification as you?  The A-Level would be the new GCSE, the bachelors degree the new A-Level and the masters degree would be the new bachelors.  School leavers wouldn’t be leaving education and becoming productive members of society until they were at least 26 or 26 and £60k in debt.

That said, the tuition fees system is clearly damaging higher education in England and forcing gifted and talented youngsters to abandon their studies prematurely.  A return not just to nationwide academic selection but proper implementation of the abortive tripartite system started in the 1940’s and a return of free university tuition is the best possible education system we can give English youngsters.  We can pay for this by not subsidising free university education in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for them and anyone else from the EU who decides to study there.

Car on fire at Forge Retail Park, Telford

December 27, 2012 Telford No comments

Not what you expect to see when you walk out of Sainsbury’s …

It’s easy to forget that while we’re all out spending our Christmas money in the sales or sitting at home watching TV, the emergency services are still out there putting their lives at risk and saving lives.  Often both at the same time.  This was only a small car fire but a fireman still had to stand in front of the car and open the bonnet so the fire could be put out – the second picture in the gallery above was taken seconds after he did.

Merry Christmas

December 24, 2012 General One comment

Bad Santa

Opinium jumping the gun on Scottish independence referendum?

December 18, 2012 WTF? 6 comments

I took part in an Opinium opinion poll last night and unusually for them got an “ethnicity” question at the end.  There was something a bit wrong with it though …

Opinium Ethnicity 17-12-12

Needless to say I have expressed my disappointment to Opinium.

Census reveals rise of Englishness and death of Britishness

December 13, 2012 Britishness, England 11 comments

The 2011 census results have been released and they make for interesting reading.  I didn’t take a constructive part in last year’s census (not so much on ideological grounds but because I don’t trust the British government with the information) but it’s interesting reading nonetheless.

England

For the first time, the census allowed us to say if we identified ourselves as English and an overwhelming majority of people did – 37.6m people (67.1% of the respondents) identified themselves as English with 32.4m (57.7%) identifying themselves as solely English.

I have said many times that Britishness is not just in decline but fatally wounded and the census figures bear that out.  Only 16.3m people (29.1%) identified themselves as British and just 10.7m people (19.1%) identified themselves as solely British.  Even as a dual identity Britishness is dead in the water.

The ethnicity figures are a little worrying – only 59.8% of people in London identify themselves as having British ethnicity.  Ignoring the fact that there is no such thing as a British ethnicity, this isn’t a healthy statistic.  London is the political and media capital of the UK, the place where policy is formed and in no way does London give a realistic view of the UK which is one of the reasons why so much British government policy makes no sense.

In 2001, 9% of the population identified themselves as immigrants (ie. born outside of the UK).  Last year it was 13%.  Since 2001, something like 3.8m immigrants moved to England and Wales.  When we are so short of jobs and housing already, this level of immigration is simply unsustainable – it’s over 5% of the population.

The census data is supposed to drive British government policy and provision of services – that’s the reason given for compelling every adult in the country by law to complete the census – so it will be interesting to see how the 2011 census results drive policy.  The promotion of Britishness clearly has to stop, it’s a minority identity which costs tens (if not hundreds) of millions to promote and British government policy is geared around its exclusive promotion.  Most people in England identify themselves as English but this identity is subject to official policies of marginalisation and suppression.

Starbucks bullied into paying tax it doesn’t owe

December 2, 2012 Economy, Federal Europe, Propaganda 4 comments

Starbucks has caved in to pressure from left wingers over their tax avoidance and have promised to “do more” on its tax in the UK.

Starbucks Tax Due

It’s really not

This is very disappointing because every single one of us – from the plebs right up to multi-national corporations – have a moral duty to demonstrate the utter stupidity and incompetence that is the UK and EU taxation system in the hope that one day the Chancellor of the Exchequer will realise that the only way to fix it is to burn all three volumes (yes, it’s that big) of the tax rule book and start again.

In the case of Starbucks – as with the left’s other favourite whipping boy, Vodafone – it’s EU rules on double taxation that allow them to get away with avoiding paying little or no tax in the UK.  The EU created the concept of a European company as one of the building blocks of its nationhood and has introduced several directives that allow holding companies or subsidiaries in low tax administrations to hoover up all the profits from other companies in their group to create a loss on paper and avoid paying tax.  Starbucks in the Netherlands receives all the profits from Starbucks in the UK where they pay the Dutch government’s 20% corporation tax instead of the UK’s 30%.  Vodafone operates a shell company in Luxembourg which receives the profits from (amongst others) Vodafone UK and pays Luxembourg’s 20% corporation tax.  Amazon and eBay are owned by holding companies in Luxembourg for the same reason.

All of this is perfectly legal under EU rules and there is nothing the Treasury or HMRC can do about it other than blow smoke and feed propaganda to left wing tax campaigners and anti-capitalists.  And the biggest irony of all is that the most vocal opponents of tax avoidance, the Guardian, operates a number of tax avoidance schemes itself – even the Guardian offices where millionaire socialist class warrior Polly Toynbee pontificates about the evils of capitalism for the half a year she doesn’t spend at her second home in Tuscany is owned by a tax avoidance company in the Cayman Islands.

If there was a Starbucks conveniently located in Telford I’d make a point of not going there as a personal protest at their caving in to hypocritical left wing bullies but we have about 400 Costa Coffee’s (who aren’t on the hit list) instead so I’ll just have to make do with moaning about it until someone uncovers who’s bankrolling UK Uncut.

Snigger

December 2, 2012 Funny, Lib Dems, Tweet 2 comments

Dilbert

December 2, 2012 Funny No comments

Dilbert Fruit & Veg Happiness

England 1-0 Finland at AFC Telford United

November 14, 2012 England, Sport, Telford No comments

AFC Telford United hosted an England -v- Finland U19’s match last night at the New Buck’s Head.  The whole family went along to watch England score a penalty with the last kick of the game to win 1-0.

There was some great play from these youngsters which makes me think there may be hope for the future of the English football team after all!

We were right on the centre line so we had a decent view throughout the game …

The all important penalty in the dying seconds of extra time …

Crowd sourcing mobile phone coverage maps

November 4, 2012 Geekery, Technology 2 comments

A colleague showed me an app the other day that helps produce crowd sourced mobile phone coverage and performance maps.

I’m sure everyone’s seen the mobile phone operators’ own coverage maps which are reasonably accurate but are based on maths rather than user experience and Rootmetrics have seen this as a gap that needs filling.

I have no idea how Rootmetrics make money but that’s their problem, not mine.  The company has already mapped much of America and is now mapping the UK.  Their employees have already driven round London and Hull testing the mobile networks and the gaps are being filled by mobile phone users like me who are running the continuous test on the Rootmetric app when travelling to build up coverage and performance data.  The continuous test only works on the Android version of the app, not the iPhone version for some reason (probably a spurious “security” restriction imposed by Apple) and it’s pretty data hungry – the app has used over 750mb in 4 days – so you’ll only want to use it on an unlimited data plan.

Rootmetrics Coverage Map Telford

The tests produced are a good guide for signal strength at least but the data stats are slightly less convincing which makes the Rootmetric score – a combined score based on signal strength and data speeds – a bit misleading.  For instance, if I check my connection speed on the speedtest.net app I can get some blistering speeds for a 3G connection – 9.39mbit/sec one day this week – but the download speed is fairly average using Rootmetrics’ servers giving it a yellow/orange hexagon – which is more a refelection on Rootmetrics’ infrastructure than Three’s.  I tether my tablet to my phone at work and at least one of my colleagues tethers to it in the office because he’s on Vodafone and they’re rubbish and it’s good enough to watch live TV on more than one device using the same connection.

That said, the idea of crowd sourcing mobile phone coverage data is a great one and I’m certainly doing my bit!

Latte

October 28, 2012 Pictures No comments

Latte

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