Gary Monro’s blog

The Times prints some examples of questions the Home Office will be asking new entrants to Britain. The entire test takes 45 minutes and the applicant must score more than 75% in order to pass.

The applicant will be pleased to know that the GCSE his kids will take are a lot less rigorous.

The test exposes the hypocrisy of a government which seems not to place any importance on the British native understanding his own history whilst making itself look tough to the electorate by forcing Mr and Mrs Gupta to become near-experts.

It is laughable that new arrivals could well know more about this country than we do. Equally, it is laughable that knowing the answers to a list of questions determines your level of Britishness.

But, then, these measures are about making immigrants jump through hoops for the amusement of small-minded racists - but, for their sins, possible Labour voters - rather than promoting something truly and meaningfully British. This rotten government will never learn that patriotic yearnings will never be assuaged by picking on brown-skinned immigrants. We’re not improved by making their entry into this country difficult or belittling them in any other ways we might dream of. We’re improved by taking only the few immigrants we actually need and then addressing the appalling lack of national cohesion caused by multiculturalism, rampant multiethnicity, moral relativism and the degradation of national confidence and pride that is part of the Left’s on-going project to abolish this country.

Anyway, here are some of the questions which, answered correctly, somehow make a Chinese rice farmer British:

1) Where are Geordie, Cockney, and Scouse spoken?

2) What are MPs?

3) What is the Church of England and who is its head?

4) What is the Queen’s official role and what ceremonial duties does she have?

5) Do many children live in single parent families or step-families?

6) Which TWO telephone numbers can be used to dial the emergency services? 112, 123, 555, 999.

Answers are here (more…)

Conservative MP Anne McIntosh proposes a change in the law to allow householders greater right to use appropriate force against intruders.

At present, the law only allows for reasonable force to be used in defence of the self. One may not use force in defence of one’s property or personal belongings.

I believe that an individual should be allowed to use reasonable force against an intruder attempting to steal their possessions. The police should only take action against a victim of crime when it is clear that the response of that person has been excessive.

It is crucial that this right is given to both homeowners and businesses alike, and that the law is clear. The bill will also restore the balance of rights in favour of the property owner, as opposed to the burglar.

Hear, hear.

Blair’s strongly worded - almost admirable - statement on Iran yesterday may actually have been one of his ‘this’ll sound good so I’ll say it’ moments, designed to detract from the fact that his presidency of the EU has produced nothing and is another area of disappointment for his desire for a legacy. Either way, it was appropriate to the situation caused by the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s remarks:

“As the Imam [the late Ayatollah Khomeini] said, ‘Israel must be wiped off the map’ … The Islamic world will not let its historic enemy live in its heartland.”

Mr Blair responded:

“These sentiments are completely and totally unacceptable. I have never come across a situation where the president of a country says they want to wipe out another country - this is not acceptable. Their attitude towards terrorism, towards the nuclear weapons and towards Israel is not acceptable.

“If they continue down this path, people are going to believe that they are a real threat to our world security and stability.”

“I have been answering questions on Iran with everyone saying to me, ‘Tell us you are not going to do anything about Iran’. If they carry on like this the question people will be asking is, ‘When are you going to something about it?’ “

Iran’s remarks open up all sorts of cans of worms. In the first place, it reminds us that Israel has, for decades, lived in a neighbourhood which contains countries whose greatest desire is to see it eliminated completely. If you can imagine what it is like to live with that hanging over your head - and, I might add, with mini-July 7ths happening here and there, year in, year out (5 killed, 28 wounded Wednesday in the town of Hadera) - it may well add a layer of understanding to Israel’s sometimes apparently harsh treatment of Palestinian terrorism.

Furthermore - and more ominously - this open call for genocide has been made by a country that is probably in the process of creating the means to enact that genocide. It is now impossible, I feel, for the international community to simply stand by and allow that country to continue its nuclear activity. If you doubt this then run this sentence through your mind a couple of times: “We must wipe [insert your country’s name here] off the face of the planet!” and then ask yourself what you might like to do with Iran’s nuclear project.

Then we have a situation where one UN member state is calling for the eradication of another. This requires a bit more than words of condemnation followed by business as usual. If the UN is to do anything at all to rebuild some of its rapidly depleting credibility, Iran’s removal from the UN must be seriously debated now. And if the UN is reluctant to remove it then it should explain clearly why not. The case for removal has already been eloquently made by Iran itself.

I understand the need to tread carefully and avoid doing anything that might worsen an already deteriorating situation. Shaking big sticks at someone you don’t like isn’t always the answer - however much the war-mongers in our countries might desire it. But the stakes in this game are very high - and not only for Israel. An emboldened and armed Islamic state isn’t a source of comfort for any of us; the possible exporting of its nuclear technology to other states could very well be lethal for us.

Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction. Iran may well be obtaining them. If things continue in this vein the west might have more trouble justifying not attacking Iran than they’ve had in actually attacking Iraq.

Geraint Davies, a now-ex Labour MP, claimed more expenses than any other MP last year. His total of £176,026 was more than £7,000 above the MP putting in the next highest claim.

“I am glad I invested my time and energy and allowances in serving my constituency. It clearly seems to me that this shows I was one of the most hard-working MPs in Britain,” he said.

He claimed a massive £38,750 on postage - that’s over £100 per day for every single day of the year. What on earth was he posting?

Call me a reactionary if you like but I want that figure investigated.

Here’s the low-down from the BBC:

Top 5 spenders:

Geraint Jones (Labour) - £176,026
Margaret Moran (Labour) - 168,569
Angus Robertson (SNP) - £160,776
Ashok Kumar (Labour) - £158,844
Peter Duncan (Conservative) - £158,032

Bottom 5 spenders:

Terry Davis (Labour) - £42,709
Iain Wright (Labour) - £61,502
Dennis Skinner (Labour) - £75,487
Michael Portillo (Conservative) - £76,947
David Winnick (Labour) - £78,909

Of course, the MPs are more than willing to discuss their spending of our money:

…the figures are published at 1530 on Thursday afternoon - horribly close to most national newspaper deadlines and at a time when many MPs are either away from the Commons for the weekend or on their way off to their constituencies and can be extremely difficult to track down.

Well, maybe not.

I have got to stop doing this…

Had a chit-chat in one of my posts’ comments’ sections with Frank from Rearranging the Deckchairs blog.

I challenged him to list some problems with a voucher system. I said I’d link to his post if he did. So he did. And so I have. You can read it here.

Next time our Euro-fanatical MPs try to kid us that national sovereignty is not endangered by the EU note the words of Mr Chirac, uttered today in Strasbourg:

Mr Chirac said that Europe should never be just a “mere free trade area” but rather a “political and social Europe rooted in solidarity”.

This kind of thing is said quite often of course but it’s always useful to keep in mind that, Constitution or no Constitution, the plan to create a European super-state is at the forefront of our leaders’ minds.

Blair still affects choice whilst keeping a tight grip on actual control. From the Daily Telegraph:

Every secondary school is expected to become an independent, self-governing academy within five years, Tony Blair said yesterday.

Parents would be given power to change the curriculum, replace failing heads and start new schools, he promised. Anticipating today’s education White Paper - “a pivotal moment in the life of this Government” - he outlined radical plans to “complete the reform” of state education in England that Labour started when it came to power eight years ago.

Councils will be stripped of their responsibility for schools; businesses, churches, City livery companies and wealthy individuals will be allowed to take over schools; independent schools will be encouraged to accept state cash and join the state sector; and there is to be a new emphasis on grouping pupils by ability and offering advanced classes to the brightest.

(My emphasis).

Blair will allow schools to run their own budgets but he will not allow them to raise their own money. So ‘their own budgets’ actually aren’t. They’re whatever the government of the day deigns to give them.

And, frankly, I do not believe for one moment most of these claims of new freedom for our schools. I anticipate that for each of these freedoms granted there will be limits, parameters and that the LEA - which will still have a role - will be able to veto those independent decisions made by schools but which the left simply don’t like.

There are signs that Blair’s desperate attempts to secure some sort of positive education legacy - a Guardian/ICM poll shows that just 29% of respondents said schools had improved since 1997 - are forcing common sense - of a sort - to exert itself in his thinking. From The Guardian:

In a swipe at past Labour policies, he said local authority efforts to create equity had resulted in “deadening uniformity”, with child-centred learning and a rigid adherence to mixed-ability teaching too often failing to meet basic standards.

This actually sounds promising - until one realises that this is part of his vision of “self-governing independent state schools” - surely the oxymoron of the century. If it’s state-owned it is simply the beneficiary of devolved power - not independence - and devolved power can be given and it can be taken away. Schools will not be able to raise their own money and they will not have control over their hiring and firing processes.

The only way for the poorest children to achieve world-class education is for world-class education to be the norm. Currently, with half of primary school leavers failing the three Rs - and Ofsted still lamenting that the more effective traditional, synthetic phonics reading method is still ignored in favour of fashionable ‘whole language’ teaching - world-class education is nowhere in sight. Wealthier parents already achieve the best education for their children either by paying directly for it or by buying the more expensive houses within good schools’ catchment areas (and so paying a premium for their children’s education via their mortgage payments). Poorer children get what’s left.

Learning and advancement are not helped or hindered only within schools but since schools are the prime institutions involved in formal education I would suggest we allow them all the freedom they can handle in educating our children.

We really ought to remove the state from schooling and give parents a voucher that a school can redeem for the approx £5,200 per pupil that state education costs. Let schools compete for the vouchers by offering to parents what parents want. And allow schools to raise additional money by charging additional fees or by other means.

Let business agencies (the CBI for example), charities (The Literary Trust, for example), churches and other interested parties contribute to the setting of school educational aims and aspirations. But allow schools the final say in devising their own targets - and let them decide how best to meet them. Let schools determine who they hire to achieve their targets - and how much they pay them.

The government can arrange the provision of a separate set of examinations designed to test the brightest pupils, stretching them to discover who the outstanding children are and giving them the special guidance they need. And recognise that not all pupils will be academically inclined so allow schools to devise vocational programmes for these children.

More than anything else, schools should not be seen as isolated educators but part of a larger, fluid project in developing our children in all the varied ways that a person can be developed with local businesses and institutions being utilised to give them experience and exposure to the realities of life. A society that expects the school system to produce the very best - whatever the very best happens to be - and allows teaching professionals to devise ways of getting there will raise standards for all.

On a slightly lighter note:

It emerged last night that a complete print run of 5,000 copies of the White Paper had to be pulped over the weekend because of spelling mistakes and drafting errors. A revised version will be ready for consideration this morning, a spokesman for the Department for Education said.

David Cameron:

“The Conservative Party has to understand why it has lost three elections in a row and what Blair has achieved over the last eight years. We can’t turn the clock back to 1997 and pretend it has all been a bad dream.”

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is the Conservative Party’s biggest problem. When one of its leadership contenders believes that Blair has achieved things - positive things - over the last 8 years and that those years haven’t been a bad dream one can only wonder then how badly he actually wants to beat this man.

Let’s get one thing straight. All that stuff about the public not wanting to see politicians slagging each other off? Garbage. The public loves it. What the public recognise though - and they definitely don’t like it - is opportunistic name-calling that isn’t backed up by meaningful alternatives, sound policy and a compelling vision. Cameron cannot effectively lead the Conservative Party if he is in thrall to Tony Blair. If Blair has an 8 year record of achievement then what, exactly, does Mr Cameron want to change? You don’t want to mess with success so surely you’re left tinkering at the edges?

To wake the British people from their complacency - apathy, to be more accurate - the Party’s leader must attack government failure at all levels and make people aware of just how truly awful Labour is. The Conservative Party is not there to be a better version of Labour, it’s there to be a clean break from Labour.

No true patriot can look at what Blair has done to the country we love and then talk about what Blair has achieved. Blair’s achievements, if you want to call them that, amount to the ruination of a nation:

deplorable - and worsening - education standards

diminishing economic efficiency

a racially divided and alienated society

endemic sexual disease

industrial scale abortion

ever-deepening welfare dependency

chronic yobbish behaviour

escalating alcohol-related crime

widespread casual, drug use

surrender to the unions over the public sector pensions crisis

the steady flow of British sovereignty to an unelected and foreign parliament

a business environment groaning under the weight of government taxes, regulation and social engineering legislation

total ignorance of the pensions and health timebomb ticking beneath the feet of all our people

the relegation of England to a third-rate region in the nation it founded

And so on and so forth.

New Labour’s record in the UK is an opposition’s dream. There is just so much wrong now - and much of it is directly attributable to Labour policy - that Conservative MPs should be able to wax eloquently for half an hour or so just listing it. To hear a Party leadership hopeful actually praising Blair for the lives he’s ruined and the society he’s degrading fills one with despair.

“There are some in the party who believe that the pendulum will swing back,” he says. “But the Conservative Party has no right to office. It exists because it has principles and ideas and policies that attract people.”

Ain’t that so, Mr Cameron. But these are conservative principles - not social democrat. And here, as a gentle reminder, are some of those principles:

British laws created by a British parliament only

On the whole people run their lives better than governments. Governments only involve themselves in those areas that communities definitely can’t manage themselves

the promotion of enterprise in business, society and family is achieved by government not interfering

the tight control of our own borders and the restriction - or cessation - of immigration that does not directly serve the free-born Briton or the society s/he lives in

a clear recognition of right and wrong behaviour with the former praised and the latter punished

government is a servant which rules with our consent

we only lock up people who have committed crimes

government officials must identify themselves to us, not us to them

family is crucial, its breakdown a national disaster

our history is our birthright; it’s what binds us. We are not ashamed of ourselves.

We are subjects of Her Majesty the Queen.

Cameron - and David Davis for that matter - need to quickly prove that they understand this. Davis, I think, does - but he needs now to work hard to demonstrate he does and translate his understanding into policy. Cameron I’ve doubted and it becomes clearer by the day that, unless he produces something dramatic, we are facing an imitation Blair.

And as we’ve all said before, why would the public vote for Labour-lite when they can have the Real Thing?

…which is looking likely, who would we need in his shadow cabinet?

For those of us concerned that he may not take the right line on drugs and Europe who will we need in the Foreign Office, Home Office etc to help promote conservative principles and help get the country off its back?

Supposing Mr Cameron does indeed win, whom will he choose to be his Chancellor?

Who will give the Conservative Party the heavyweight punch that will be needed to send Labour back into the oblivion in which it belongs?

Who will bring experience, debating finesse and some much-needed attack skills to the Party so that we can jolt our people out of their complacency and show then what’s really happening to their country?

Will David Davis or Liam Fox be offered positions? Will they accept them?

Government isn’t just one man. Granted, the man at the top is its most prominent feature. But a liberal spreading of political talent is a good thing and can give the Party an overall flavour that is conservative and electable. Whoever wins, his choices of shadow cabinet will be vitally important.

Ken Clarke has been knocked out of the Conservative Party leadership race.

Phew.

To which I might reply: If the terror laws were only used against those nasty people you have in mind when you think of terror laws then maybe they’re not so bad.

But once you give a government power it sometimes feels the uncontrollable need to exercise it. So you get this:

34 year old property developer Sally Cameron was arrested under the Terrorism Act for walking along a cycle path in the harbour area of Dundee. She should have been cycling but wasn’t.

She said: “I’ve been walking to work every morning for months and months to keep fit. One day, I was told by a guard on the gate that I couldn’t use the route any more because it was solely a cycle path and he said, if I was caught doing it again, I’d be arrested.

“The next thing I knew, the harbour master had driven up behind me with a megaphone, saying, ‘You’re trespassing, please turn back’. It was totally ridiculous. I started laughing and kept on walking. Cyclists going past were also laughing.

But then two police cars arrived on the scene and Ms Cameron was indeed arrested. Ignoring muggers, rapists and assorted chavs dirtying our streets the police held her for several hours before charging then releasing her.

She said that she was particularly galled by the letter from the procurator fiscal’s office, which said that she would not be prosecuted even though “the evidence is sufficient to justify bringing you before the court on this criminal charge”.

It seems nobody knew why she was arrested. They knew which legislation they were using to make the arrest possible but quite what offence she had actually committed remains a bit of a mystery:

Keith Berry, the harbour master at Forth Ports Dundee, said yesterday that Ms Cameron had been seen as a “security risk”. Speaking about the incident, which took place in May, he said: “We contacted the police in regards to this matter because the woman was in a secure area which forbids people walking. It was seen as a security risk. We were following guidelines in requirement with the port security plan set up by the Government.”

A spokesman for Forth Ports said: “We will robustly prosecute anyone who breaches these new security measures because they have been introduced by the Government and we are obliged to enforce them.”

So these were ’security’ measures used to deal with a ’security’ risk. And they only apply to people with something to hide?

I wonder if Ms Cameron believes she has anything to hide? Maybe she ought to swap notes with Walter Wolfgang to see if he had something to hide when the police used the Terrorism Act to bar him from re-entering Labour’s conference? I bet they don’t come up with much…

[Thanks, The Daily Propaganda]

Haven’t done a news roundup for ages. They’re much more fun than real blogging because you can be sarcastic without having to think too much about whether your sarcasm is warranted.

Conservative Party leadership contender David Davis has taken a few jabs at David Cameron.

He has warned Conservatives not to take chances with a leader who is inexperienced - which possibly describes 39-year old Mr Cameron quite well.

And, while Mr Cameron faces uncomfortable questions about his student days, Mr Davis has backed a police crackdown on middle-class drug users (so we working class types can puff to our hearts’ content, then?)

Furthermore, reflecting perhaps that Cameron has been described in the past as ‘Tory Blair’ Mr Davis promised to be “the antidote to Brown, not the heir to Blair”.

I would advise Mr Davis - and I’m sure he reads my blog - to be very careful. Too much of anything that even whiffs of bad-mouthing will turn people away from him. There is an unwritten rule that leadership hopefuls concentrate on promoting themselves rather than doing down their opponents.

Some Conservatives will take a very dim view of anyone who breaks with this tradition…

In 2002, our masters, the EU, slapped a travel ban on Mugabe. He’s not allowed to come to any EU country.

Then the UN invites him to a conference (on world hunger can you believe?) that took place in Rome - which is in an EU country (that information given for the benefit of the UN’s geography department).

Apparently the ban doesn’t apply to UN functions since these are held to be above the jurisdiction of any individual state. So Mugabe uses them as a platform for his delusional denouncements of the west - and makes fools of us all in the process.

The EU should prepare its bans more carefully because it ought to know by now the UN provides a tradesman’s entrance for all the world’s despots and dictators.

Beef from Britain - and some other European countries - is banned in the US.

Britain donated food - including beef - to the Hurricane Katrina victims and, for a while, the fact that our banned beef was being fed to people wasn’t noticed. Now it has been and so products containing the offending item are being kept in storage.

US officials are looking to forward the stuff to countries who are less fussy about eating our meat. In the meantime, they may eventually discover that, the UK having sorted out our infected beef problem, they might be better of with ours than theirs.

David Cameron’s lack of judgement in this ‘did you take drugs when you were younger’ business is worrying.

In an unfair world if you do not deny it then you are tacitly admitting it. I would hazard a guess that the only reason he’s not saying ‘I did not take any drugs’ is because he knows the instant he does somebody who saw him do it will sell the story to the highest bidder and, for Cameron, the leadership campaign would be over.

From The Times:

“I’m allowed to have had a private life before politics, in which we make mistakes and we do things that we should not — and we are all human and we err and stray,” Mr Cameron said on ‘Question Time.

All this talk about ‘erring’ and ’straying’ and ‘mistakes made’ (a typically weedy phrase of denial, often used by MPs caught in flagrante delicto with their secretaries and prompting one to wonder how the ‘lady’ in question feels about being regarded as a ‘mistake’) just makes him look bad.

Why not admit what everybody now knows to be true, express your regrets and move on?

PS About the ’sue me’ bit in the title… You wouldn’t really, would you? I mean, I was just kidding…. I made a mistake… I erred…. I strayed…

If you live in Holland and the burka’s your kind of fashion statement then the news is all bad.

The country’s hardline Integration Minister, Rita Verdonk, known as the Iron Lady for her series of tough anti-immigration measures, told Parliament that she was going to investigate where and when the burka should be banned.

Mrs Verdonk gave warning that the “time of cosy tea-drinking” with Muslim groups had passed and that natives and immigrants should have the courage to be critical of each other. She recently cancelled a meeting with Muslim leaders who refused to shake her hand because she was a woman.

An outright ban would conflict with Holland’s religious freedom legislation. However, on grounds of public safety the garment may be banned in shops, public buildings, cinemas, train and bus stations and airports, as well as on trains and buses. Which is just about everywhere, is it not?

Elsewhere, some European towns have banned the burka locally.

Last year several Belgian towns, including Antwerp and Ghent, banned the wearing of the burka in public, and recently started issuing £100 spot fines for breaking the municipal ordinance. Several towns in Italy, including Como, have invoked legislation introduced by Mussolini that bans hiding one’s face in public to impose fines on burka-wearers. France and several regions of Germany have followed Turkey and Tunisia in banning the wearing of the hijab, which leaves the face visible, in public buildings, most controversially in schools.

And in Holland itself Utrecht City Council has decided to cut the benefits paid to women whose wearing of the burka prevents them from getting a job.

Utrecht based its decision on the Work and Social Security Act, which states that somebody receiving welfare must not do anything to prevent getting work. The city also noted that the Equality Commission, an official anti-discrimination body, backed employers who refused to give jobs to people wearing burkas, because being able to see someone’s face was an essential part of many jobs.

Personally, I’m not for banning items of clothes like the burka despite them being an ugly blot on our streets. If we’re to ban the burka I’d first like to ban the wearing of jeans that ride half-way down their chav owner’s arses to reveal their tacky Anne Summers thongs…

Typhoo has been bought by Indian company, Apeejay Surrendra Group.

One of the brands that come with the deal is the London Fruit and Herb company. Ironic indeed that something with our nation’s capital in the title should be foreign-owned.

It reminds me of an Irish grocer shop that was, for many years, Irish owned and run. It specialised in all those home-grown Irish products and brands that the average ex-pat Irishman misses when he’s abroad. I imagine it was a little piece of heaven for its customers. One day my then house-mate went there for his weekly dose of home and found himself being served by an Indian. It turned out the owners had sold up and an Indian family had bought the place. When I last knew about it the shop hadn’t changed one bit and the new owners had remained loyal to the needs and requirements of their Irish customers.

Typhoo is Britain’s third largest tea brand behind Tetley and PG Tips. Tetley is also Indian owned - by the Tata group. I wonder if they’ll ever try to market Indian-class spiced tea - chai - in this country? It’s an amazing drink - definitely an acquired taste - and I’ve never tasted it in its proper form outside of India. I actually doubt it can be mass-produced but maybe I’ll be proved wrong.

I waited with anticipation this morning for the BBC Breakfast news coverage of Mrs Thatcher’s 80th birthday. They promised to explore her legacy - which to me meant we ought to hear about the routing of the trade unions, the defeat of socialism, the end of the Cold War, extended property rights, the diminishing of local democracy and the failure to address escalating social breakdown. Possibly it would mention her devoted husband, her wayward son and her relentless work ethic. It should end with some detail of how she was deposed.

I shouldn’t have bothered waiting.

The BBC’s coverage was a blatant and pathetic attempt to score points against the Conservative Party on account of it not having more female MPs. On were wheeled two female MPs - one Conservative, one Labour - and the Labour MP proceeded to demonstrate just why it is that all-female lists - such a patronising way of selecting by gender - are no good. She - like a number of her New Labour female counterparts - was abysmal.

Of course, the unstated undercurrent of the whole business is that if women don’t represent 50% of Parliament then there’s discrimination taking place (what else could it possibly be?) and that, in the scheme of things the Conservatives - predictably - are the most discriminatory of the lot. Yawn.

I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores of social engineering parliament so that it has the ‘correct’ number of blacks, Hindus, Muslims, women, gays, one-legged single-parent lesbians…. But I am enraged that, days after the BBC has the nerve to demand more of our cash it then shows us so unashamedly what it is our cash will be spent on.

The Scotsman on a report written by economists at Scottish Enterprise:

The astonishing extent to which state spending is propping up Scotland’s economy is laid bare in new figures which suggest the ballooning public sector is strangling wealth creation.

The findings show that in some areas, three-quarters of the local economy is made up solely of the billions of pounds pumped in by the government.

I think I might replace the sentence ’state spending is propping up Scotland’s economy ‘ with something a lot closer to the truth - such as, ’state spending is propping up Labour’s tartan vote block’. Our tax-and-spend government maintains artificially low unemployment by moving unemployed onto disability benefit and by buying public sector jobs - as if the country needs them.

Such is the size of the public sector in these areas, business chiefs and economists fear it is swallowing up private enterprise, hoovering up talented workers and making it nearly impossible for companies to prosper.

The findings shed fresh light on Scotland’s chronic dependency culture - in which the economy is becoming increasingly reliant upon state handouts to provide wages for the ever rising army of public sector workers.

Some of the findings are pitiful. Just how does a person have any pride in a town or area when all that it is has been provided by tax-payers - via the government?

In Argyll and Clyde, 76% of the economy is generated from the state, in the form of spending by councils, health boards and through other forms of government activity. In Ayrshire and Arran, the figure is 74%. In Lanarkshire, it is 72%.

Only in oil-rich Grampian (35%) and finance-friendly Lothians (39%) do the figures fall below comparable English levels. Across the UK, state spending accounts for approximately 40% of the economy.

The figures have almost certainly been boosted by the rocketing sums spent by Scotland’s government since devolution. By 2008, Scottish Executive spending will be double that of 1999. Scotland’s benefits bill has also rocketed. Scottish Enterprise claims that total public spending in Scotland in 2002-03 reached £40bn, or 55% of Scotland’s total economy.

The warnings are stark - and probably set to be ignored:

Business chiefs warned that the high levels were ruining hopes of boosting growth.

Alan Mitchell of CBI Scotland said: “To have that much of the economy generated by wealth spending rather than wealth creating can’t be good for the Scottish economy long term.

“It has a major effect on the ability of companies to recruit and retain staff. Their margins are tight and they cannot compete in terms of holidays, pensions, childcare and all the other add-ons that the public sector can offer. If we don’t have ambitious small to medium size businesses growing then we aren’t going to develop that economy long term.”

Even the Scottish National Party is concerned:

Jim Mather, enterprise spokesman for the SNP said high levels of public spending would leave Scotland dangerously exposed when government funding was cut back.

Which is plain common sense (if you’re not a card-carrying member of the Blairite Tendency).

No wonder the Scottish National Party only secured 6 seats in the May General Election. Independence is just what Scotland doesn’t want.

[Thanks, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle]

There is a suggestion that Tehran is arming and training insurgents in Iraq to kill British soldiers. The British government’s response to evidence that foreign powers may be killing our soldiers differs quite markedly from their attitude when they couldn’t find WMDs that they didn’t really know that Iraq even possessed:

“The particular nature of those devices lead us either to Iranian elements or to Hezbollah… however, we can’t be sure of this,” [said Mr Blair].

Despite the qualification, Mr Blair said there could be “no justification” for interfering in Iraq. The Ministry of Defence said these new claims supported the prime minister’s comments. A spokesman said the evidence pointed towards Iranian involvement, but it did not have decisive proof.

Reiterating the prime minister’s statement he said: “What is clear is that there are new types of explosives being used by insurgents in Basra and elsewhere in Iraq. “The particular nature of them leads us to think of Iranian elements or Hezbollah”.

But he said there was no clear proof Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was involved.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the UK hoped to discuss the evidence with Iran.

So we invade a country that may or may not have some nasty weapons and which definitely has not killed our soldiers but require rigorous proof - and discussion - with a power that may very well be doing its level-best to harm our soldiers wherever it can?

I don’t think we should have invaded Iraq (been into all that here) but I do very much care about what happens to our soldiers. And since we aren’t attacking Iran but they are attacking us then I believe there is a strong case for sending them some high-explosive greetings from HM Forces.

In the meantime, in what passes for a show of strength these days, the British authorities showed they mean business in Basra by promising to pay compensation for the damage caused to a police station they raided in order to rescue two of their captured comrades. They also apologised for rescuing their comrades.

“We hope to avoid a repetition of such incidents.”

We’ll only avoid a repetition of such incidents if none of our soldiers are kidnapped by Iraqi police or militia. Otherwise, I very much hope to see such incidents repeated as often as is necessary.

Chinese attempts to demonstrate its superpower status were boosted by a televised launching of their second manned space mission.

From CNN:

The mission, reportedly due to last up to five days, is an effort by the communist government to declare its status as a rising world power with technological triumphs to match its rapid economic growth. It is only the third country to launch a human into orbit on its own, after Russia and the United States.

Much of the technology however is Russian in origin albeit extensively modified. The two astronauts are thought to be spending five days in space having orbitted the earth 80 times. Chinese confidence in the project was sufficiently high that they screened the take-off live on television.

The manned space program is a key prestige project for China’s ruling Communist Party, which hopes that patriotic pride at its triumphs will help to shore up the party’s public standing amid frustration at official corruption and social problems.

I wonder if a certain Mr Blair ought to be thinking of sending something into space soon - for rather similar reasons…

I realise this story is over a year old but I have had a hell of a day today finding something worth blogging about - a bit of blogger’s block I think - and I stumbled on this at the Daily Propaganda as I attempted to steal something newsworthy from somebody else.

Some train companies may lengthen journey times to improve punctuality, it has been revealed.

Network Rail proposed train companies add up to five minutes onto every journey when the summer timetable is published in May.

Network Rail said the plan could boost train punctuality figures from 80% to 83% before the next general election.

Its head of operational planning, John Conway, reportedly told January’s monthly meeting of the railways’ national task force the plan would give the government the “quick win” it wanted.

This attempt to make the train timetables more realistic actually makes one laugh at their gall. In other words, “let’s see how badly we’re doing then move the goalposts to make it look like we’re always scoring goals - that will please the government.”

If everything is going to be minutes later than it was before then won’t the day have to be made a bit longer? Can Network Rail conjure up a 25 hour day for us?

Fastcompany magazine suggests working long hours is not the same as working hard at all. Working hard has little to do with hours spent in the office.

Today, working hard is about taking apparent risk. Not a crazy risk like betting the entire company on an untested product. No, an apparent risk: something that the competition (and your coworkers) believe is unsafe but that you realize is far more conservative than sticking with the status quo.

Hard work is about facing difficult situations, going beyond your comfort zone, risking rejection. Which, to me, means it’s about personal development as much as about anything else. This requires that one has qualities, of course, but it seems that the qualities required aren’t the ones you’d normally expect.

None of the people who are racking up amazing success stories and creating cool stuff are doing it just by working more hours than you are. And I hate to say it, but they’re not smarter than you either. They’re succeeding by doing hard work.

As the economy plods along, many of us are choosing to take the easy way out. We’re going to work for the Man, letting him do the hard work while we work the long hours. We’re going back to the future, to a definition of work that embraces the grindstone.

This all makes sense. It’s those that work long hours in frustrating conditions (such as, being responsible to customers for the poor work of others without having any influence over the poor workers) who die earliest. The further up the tree you get the less ‘hard’ work you really do. I’m not sure the top dogs are going home earlier than the rest of us but they certainly aren’t facing the same pressures.

From a Conservative Party member, these comments would be condemned as evidence of our nasty, cruel, dismissive attitude of all those ‘less fortunate’ than us. From Blunkett they are reported in The Guardian as if they were as sensible as looking both ways before crossing the road:

The work and pensions secretary, David Blunkett, today urged hundreds of thousands of people on incapacity benefit to stop watching daytime TV and start looking for work.

He insisted those who needed long-term care would be comfortably provided for. But for others currently on the benefit, Mr Blunkett said getting back to work “will overcome depression and stress a lot more than people sitting at home watching daytime television”.

Blunkett points out a disgraceful statistic without either him or The Guardian wondering how this came about:

There are four times the number of people claiming incapacity benefit than there were on invalidity benefit 25 to 30 years ago, Mr Blunkett said.

“Health has got better, medical science is improving by the day, technology has changed the nature of work so that people can work part-time,” he said.

Surely the facts of increasing health technology and yet more people on invalidity benefit requires further digging? Why don’t we do that? Afraid of what we might find..?

Blunkett then garbles a bit but makes enough sense to sound like Norman Tebbit:

Echoing Norman Tebbit’s famous phrase, Mr Blunkett said: “We are not actually talking about saying to people we will give you benefits but it is entirely up to you to get on your bike and do this.”

So a government minister tells people to get on their bikes. Ooh, the brute. Good job he’s not a Conservative. There’d be no mercy shown then.

How do we feel about David Cameron ousting Ken Clarke for second place (behind David Davis) in the Conservative Party leadership contest?

My personal preference is Davis and Liam Fox in the final - a result that will have me celebrating for a week (scheduling the hangover into my diary even now). But Davis and Cameron means it’s not Davis and Clarke.

Although it’s a pity that one speech in a Party conference can have so much bearing on a leadership outcome - particularly when it seems that it was presentation skills wot won it rather than content - the silver lining must surely be that we hopefully won’t be electing our own version of Tony Blair.

But what if Cameron won…?

From today’s Daily Telegraph:

Cast your eye over some of the stories in today’s newspaper. Cars are to be installed with chips making it easier to incriminate their drivers. Fluoridisation is to be extended to most of England. Smoking may be banned from pubs and restaurants. Work is going ahead on an identity card scheme in anticipation of parliamentary ratification. A law lord says the Government’s anti-terrorist laws are exorbitant and unnecessary. Employers will be forced to grant paternity leave to their staff. A Bill outlawing religious hatred is about to go before the Lords.

As the writer points out, taken individually, one can make a case for each of these new pieces of legislation. One can also make a case against them. But what each one represents in itself is the steady drip drip of our freedoms being eroded and the state winning more influence, more legislated control over the stuff of our lives.

The writer quotes JS Mill:

“If the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great jointstock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards became departments of the central administration; if the employees of all these different enterprises were appointed and paid by the government, and looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this country free otherwise than in name.”

For so long as the British public prefer security (such that it is) to liberty - and so long as Her Majesty’s Opposition is not actually opposing - this steady erosion will continue.

Ken Clarke is articulate and well-presented and his attractiveness to the floating voter is undeniable. He’ll make a great Party leader - for Labour.

For conservatives he’s totally unsuitable. He seems to have little sympathy with freedom from the state and, of course, is a strong advocate for Britain’s absorption into the EU Superstate. Don’t believe him when he says Europe is a non-issue. Each and every second of every minute of every hour we live our lives in the shadow of that foreign institution’s power. It makes many of our laws and will continue to make many more of them. Where British law - the law made by us for us - contradicts the EU State’s laws then one has to go - and it’s always ours.

So whoever wins the Conservative Party leadership contest we do not want it to be Ken Clarke. To emphasise the point, EU Serf has set up a blog called Anyone But Ken.

Visit regularly….

Fascist wannabe Princess Tony Blair got his police buddies to arrest a 20 year old lady for wearing a t-shirt bearing a vulgar - but heartfelt - summation of her attitude to Our Glorious Leader.

If this was a crackdown on bad language in public I’d be all for it - but as the masses are still wearing their chav-art t-shirts advertising that they’re ‘too tired to FCUK’ and that they’re oh so ‘cool as FCUK’ that theory is out of the window. Instead, I think Blair just can’t take the criticism.

Seems Bush is similarly protected.

A Washington state woman intends to press a civil-rights case against Southwest Airlines for booting her off a flight in Reno after fellow passengers complained about a message on her T-shirt.

Lorrie Heasley, of Woodland, Wash., was halfway home on a flight Tuesday that began in Los Angeles, wearing a T-shirt with the pictures of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a phrase similar to the popular film, Meet the Fockers.

Now, I must admit: if the t-shirt says what I think it says then, frankly, I would complain too. There are standards of decency to be maintained (however old fashioned that sounds) and such language in a public place is unacceptable. The American example is far worse than the British one (because ‘bollocks’ - the word used in the English lady’s case - whilst generally used as a slang term for testicles, can be shown to have Anglo-Saxon origins - and you wouldn’t want to be dissin’ my culture now, would you?)

I hope these incidents are coincidence rather than the start of a trend. Josef Blair has already used anti-terrorism law to ban from a party conference a man who has been in the Labour Party longer than Bliar has been alive. Blair’s victim’s crime was a one-word heckle. Bliar has also banned demonstrations near Parliament - using anti-terrorism reasoning once more. Coupled with his highly-developed methods of manipulating access to his speeches and public appearances (party workers and their families only) you wouldn’t be paranoid for thinking the communist revolution is happening, in slow motion, before our very eyes.

I asked last week whether conservative MPs might vote tactically to squeeze out Ken Clarke and make the final two-horse race one between Liam Fox and David Davis.

The papers today suggest some Davis support has flowed to Fox in light of their respective conference speeches. Some has flowed to Cameron also.

I wonder if this turn events could itself deliver the ultimate in conservative dream tickets?

The BBC reports:

A gay couple have become the first to get “married” in Pakistan, according to reports from the region.

On hearing of the wedding, a tribal council told the pair to leave the area or be killed for breaking religious and tribal “values and ethics”.

Although it remains a taboo subject, homosexuality is relatively common in Pakistan, says the BBC’s correspondent Aamer Ahmed Khan in Islamabad.

Increasingly, gay couples are living together in some of the big cities such as Karachi and Islamabad, but gay marriages remain unheard of, he says.

And here’s the punch-line:

A gay couple caught having sex were lashed publicly in the Khyber region in May.

(Non-UK readers should consult their book of London Rhyming slang in order to get the joke…)

From the Daily Telegraph:

Here is an interesting statistic. What was the most watched comedy show on British television over the past two years? Now you might think it was The Office, or maybe Little Britain. But it was neither. Twenty Years of the Two Ronnies, a highlights package of skits and bobs from a programme last made in 1986, garnered nearly twice as many viewers as either of those two modern totems of BBC humour.

The problem with The Office (which I quite like) and Little Britain (which I’m not so keen on) is that they require a certain mind-set to be enjoyed. Nothing wrong with that of course and variety is the spice of life but Ronnie Barker (and Morcombe and Wise and others) were clever enough to be able to be funny to the widest audience. As a kid my entire family - me, my sister, parents and grandparents - watched The Two Ronnies. When we went to school the next day all our friends had watched it too.

For the controllers of British television, such ratings must have made sobering reading. A bit like Hollywood studio bosses discovering that, never mind Brad Pitt, it is James Dean who still sets the moviegoer’s pulse racing. Or record company executives finding out that Coldplay are being outsold two to one by the Rolling Stones.

For those convinced that British television is engaged in a depressing downward slide, here was proof positive that they really don’t make them like that any more.

Which in turn makes you wonder: why not? Is this just another case of the pubilc being told what it wants rather than being asked?

Here are a few of Ronnie’s best gags:

“The search for the man who terrorises nudist camps with a bacon slicer goes on. Inspector Lemuel Jones had a tip-off this morning, but hopes to be back on duty tomorrow.”

“Have you heard the one about the retired general who said he had not had sex since 1956? His friend said, ‘That’s a long time ago.’ ‘I don’t know,’ the general replied. ‘It’s only 20.27 now.”

“There was a strange happening during a performance of Elgar’s Sea Pictures at a concert hall in Bermuda tonight, when the man playing the triangle disappeared.”

“We’ll continue our investigation into the political beliefs of nudists. We’ve already noticed a definite swing to the left.”

“The man who invented the zip fastener was today honoured with a lifetime peerage. He will now be known as the Lord of the Flies.”

“The toilets at a local police station have been stolen. Police say they have nothing to go on.”

I’m not big on conspiracy theories but I don’t much trust government either. I’ll deal with that contradiction in my own time… Anyway, an American chap writes at Infowars.com that he believes he’s found a device in his laptop that records his every keystroke. Which means:

Devices capture everything you ever type, then can send it via your ethernet card to the Dept. of Homeland Security without your knowledge, consent or a search warrant each time you log onto the internet!

He does provide photographs and a moderately technical explanation of how he came to find the devices necessary to tap his keyboard - all Greek to me though. He concludes:

The real life implications of this are plain: Computer manufacturers appear to be cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security to make every person who buys a new computer subject to immediate, unrestricted government recording of everything they do on those computers! EVERYTHING!

I wonder if Mr Blair has woken up to the possibilities of reading everything we tap into our computers? He’ll salivate at the very thought…

Update: Seems this whole story might be a hoax. Check out Lascivious’s blog for the necessary links. In future, I think I’ll run any slightly suspect stories by him before embarrassing myself. I’m off to strangle my source now - toodle pip….

“I think our political weakness has been our lack of courage in defining what price we are not willing to pay for European membership,”

Liam Fox (Shadow Foreign Secretary)

[Thanks, EU Serf]

US generals are saying publicly now that the insurgency in Iraq could go on for many years and that, in fact, holding out until it’s over is a non-runner. The emphasis must be on training the Iraqis to deal with it themselves.

Herein lies a problem, however. Leaving aside the relative inability of the very average Iraqi army to fill in for the mighty US one to combat a fierce and murderous suicide campaign, the very presence of the US military means the Iraqi Army will never learn to stand on its own two feet.

Furthermore, according to the Generals, it may well be that the US presence in Iraq is actually fuelling the very insurgency they are fighting.

During a trip to Washington, the generals said the presence of U.S. forces was fueling the insurgency, fostering an undesirable dependency on American troops among the nascent Iraqi armed forces and energizing terrorists across the Middle East.

“This has been hinted at before, but it’s a big shift for them to be saying that publicly,” said Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution in Washington. “It means they recognize that there is a cost to staying just as there is a benefit to staying. And this has not really been factored in as a central part of the strategy before.”

I doubt the insurgency will decrease significantly until all the coalition troops are gone - and even then the killing may go on against what the insurgents will see as collaborators. This will include most of the Iraqi security and police forces.

Additionally, an ideal exit strategy is going to be difficult - if impossible - to come by. If staying in Iraq until the insurgency is defeated is now not an option then the US has to be extremely careful that any pullout does not appear to be surrender in the insurgents’ eyes. Every attempt will be made to ensure it’s seen as one.

This war between the west and Muslim terrorists is being played out on battlefield Iraq. The world is watching but it is the US who has most to lose if the world concludes that it blinked first…

Yesterday we found out what we already knew: children are better off cared for by their mothers than by nurseries and childminders - and even other relatives.

Today, the boringly predictable response courtesy of the taxpayer-funded Equal Opportunities Commission: It’s sexist to say children are better off with their mothers. See how the left mixes up fact with their utopian dreaming:

Jenny Watson, the commission’s acting chairman, said: “We are sorry to see the National Childminding Association following the assumptions of decades ago by restricting its research on the needs of children to the role of mothers, ignoring the contribution increasingly played by fathers.”

The commission is due to publish research which it says “proved that both men and women had more confidence in men’s child care abilities”.

“Four in five new fathers are happy to stay at home to look after the baby,” Miss Watson said. “Fewer and fewer people believe in the inflexible model of a stay-at-home mother and breadwinner father.”

Do they miss the point deliberately or because they’re not following the plot? There is a world of difference between creating the social conditions that make it easier for a father to be the stay-at-home parent and it being the best possible arrangement for the child’s benefit. Just because fathers want to spend more time in child-rearing does not mean they are as effective as women.

I’d happily stay at home to raise our kids; in fact, it makes economic sense since my Mrs can out-earn me anyway. Bottom line though is she wants to do it and will provide our kids with more of the right kind of nurturing during their early years than I can. That’s no failing on my part, just one of those leftist-unfriendly facts of life that the left just can’t come to terms with.

From The Daily Telegraph:

Prison staff have been told to stop wearing Cross of St George tiepins because they could be “misinterpreted'’ as a racist symbol.

Maybe these cultural awareness courses that white people are sometimes compelled to attend should be opened up for others. If people construe the English flag as a racist symbol then maybe it is they who need some education rather than the badge wearers be forced to remove the badge.

Inspectors said several black or minority ethnic prisoners reported that “white staff had a lack of cultural understanding of their background and they were disadvantaged in systematic small ways that were not recognised'’. In addition, “the canteen list had an inadequate range of affordable skin and hair products for black prisoners”.

Are our prisons too soft? When the lack of appropriate hair-care products is cause for complaint I think they might just well be…

The Conservative Party leadership contest isn’t just about choosing a conservative leader - it’s about whether conservatism itself is the Conservative Party’s preferred ideology. The current contest’s declared runners include at least one - a frontrunner, no less - who is not recognisable as a conservative in any meaningful sense of the word.

A central problem for the Party - and one for which I can come up with no immediate solution - is that although the party’s name contains the word ‘Conservative’ there is, in fact, no compulsion on anyone to actually be a ‘conservative’. Whether there should be compulsion is, of course, a different matter. But wouldn’t it be useful if the Party’s rules stated that one must be at least aligned to a set of broadly defined beliefs? I wonder if it’s unreasonable for the Party to have an identity, an ongoing manifesto that describes the basic principles for which the organisation stands?

In this way, the leadership contest transcends basic philosophy because the basic philosophy of the Party formed one of the entry conditions to the Party in the first place. If you don’t agree with the broad philosophy of the Party don’t join.

Then, instead of having a leadership contest that determines whether or not the Party is conservative we would have a leadership contest between people who were certainly conservatives and we, the members simply have to choose whose particular brand of conservatism - and whose presentation, ideas and so on - best suits.

The timeless ideals of the Conservative Party live on regardless.