Late home from work and off to the pub. No time for more than a cursory glance at the papers, but that's enough to show that the Brown Gorgon was once more taken for a sucker by the EU.

Baroness Ashtray was in an influential position. She doesn't seem to have been much good at it, but she was there. Now she's High Poohbah which means swanning around looking important while actually doing nothing at all.

Meanwhile the French have grabbed her old job. They've installed a French protectionist who hates free markets as the man in charge of financial regulation.

That's doom for London as a financial centre. Are you listening, Dave?

Time to start drafting that referendum.

Meanwhile, whisky beckons.

Tiny Blur is not EU president. We do now have a president so it's not all good news. We didn't get any say at all in who it would be, nor did we get any say at all in who would be High Poobah. We won't get any say in who the next ones are either nor in when someone else gets the job. Rather like most of the Labour cabinet, in fact. The whole of Europe is run by Mandelson-like unelected and unaccountable people. The thought of it brings a warm glow to my branding iron.

Our new EU president is Rumpole of the Belgians. Who? I don't know either. The Belgians do. He's their Prime Monster and conveniently can continue to be Prime Monster because the EU is just down the road. Double expenses!

(Digression time. The Singleton malt is £8 off in Morrisons at the moment so this might happen more than once.)

In one of his prescient moments, Douglas Adams wrote a few lines in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that might be of note. Ford Prefect was about to use a very bad word. A word, the meaning of which was so unutterably vile and disgusting that it was never, ever used in polite company on any planet in the entire galaxy. Except one, where they don't know what it means. 'Oh, Belgium', said Ford.

We really should pay more attention to those alien broadcasts.


The new High Poobah of Europe is Baroness Ashtray of Upholland. Apparently she's a woman and that's the only reason she got the job. Not my words. The Gorgon said so:

Speaking after the appointment was disclosed, Mr Brown said it would reaffirm Britain’s influence in Europe. “It shows that Britain is at the heart of Europe and it shows that we are leading the way in extending women’s representation in the way we have done,” he said.

Who is this Baroness? It doesn't really matter to us because we don't get to vote on any appointments any more. All the same, she's on Wikipedia so we can go and have a quick nosey at her past. Photo warning - don't have anything in your mouth when you click the link. She's only four years older than me. I've lived a filthy and unhealthy life, I was born so hideous that although I wasn't swapped at birth I'm told my mother tried, often, and she once tried to palm me off as a bulldog pup. I'm better looking than her and my neck does not look like it needs ironing. Whatever she's done all her life it looks like she's had a hell of a great time doing it. Nobody can get into that state by sticking to approved limits on anything.

Here's something else the Brown Gorgon had to say about Baroness Ashtray of Uphalling:

“We feel that it is in Britain’s interests to play a major role in the new EU and don’t forget this is a very important job – not just for its political role but also for its defence role.

Defence role. Defence. She used to be the treasurer, and then a vice-chair, for CND. Oh, she knows all about defence all right. She doesn't approve of it. It's like putting a vegetarian in charge of the butcher's shop and then acting all surprised when it's stocked with nut cutlets and tofu. I'll bet the Russians and Iranians haven't stopped laughing yet.

One thing she doesn't know about is voting. She has never stood for election at any time, ever, according to her Wikipedia entry, and yet she is now the second most powerful nutcase in the EU. President Rumpole of the Belgians was at least voted into office at some stage - not into this one, but at least the Belgians voted for him. The UK's entry into the 'I'm a nonentity, give me power' game has never had a single vote cast in her direction. Never.

Not only unelected to her current role, but unelected to any of the previous public offices she's held in the past. The second most powerful figure in Europe is British but has less of a mandate to govern than the current chairman of your local birdspotter's club.

If the Tories can't rip this appointment into a million tiny pieces, they might as well give up now. If UKIP can't make vast mileage out of this between now and May, they just aren't trying. The BNP must go for this one too.

For those who want out of the EU, this appointment is better than giving Tiny Blur the big car treatment. He was elected into office in the past. This woman has never been elected into any public office. Baroness Ashtray is empty.

Eu-sceptics, give her a week to settle in (so they can't change their minds) and then cry Havoc, and let slip the dogs of politics.

Having to work for a living is hard. Maybe I should become an MP. Once the EU takes over, that'll be one hell of an easy job.

I read the free book, Ten Years On, Britain without the European Union. It's only 108 pages, roughly 30,000 words. With a cover price of £5.99, I doubt I'd have bought it in a shop which would have been a shame. The premise in the book makes a great deal of sense. The authors have thought out all avenues of post-EU Britain with one exception - how to persuade Dai Cameron to do it.

Yes, it's produced by a Tory-backed organisation, but that's irrelevant. The concept is valid no matter where it originates. If the Brown Gorgon were to say tomorrow that he's pulling all troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and indicting Tiny Blur for the crime of starting illegal wars, I would not be shouting him down. I don't hate 'Labour', I hate the people who are currently destroying this country's way of life. It just so happens that they are Labour party members this year. Next year they might not be.

The book does paint a rosy future. Out of the EU, with businesses free of stifling legislation and an extra layer of taxation, we would indeed soar away from the EU in terms of production and wealth creation. We would do so much better precisely because our nearest competitors on the continent would still be having to fill out 'permisson to be off sick' forms and complying with rules concerning the exact shade of yellow used on warning signs. Certainly a future to look forward to.

Will it ever happen? Cameron isn't likely to do it. There are those in the Tory party who would, but are there enough, and do they have enough influence?

Realising that dream would need a lot of Eurosceptic MPs, from any party, after the next election. Enough to force a referendum. Not impossible but really not very likely based on how things appear. Most people still see Government as a straight choice between Tory and Labour. If they live in a 'safe seat' constituency, too many people don't believe their vote matters. So safe seats are 'won' on the basis of around 17% of the voters, as in Glasgow recently.

If you want to make a change, it's up to you. Safe seats are only safe as long as 60% of voters don't bother to do anything about it.

I'd like to see that post-EU future. I'd like the UK to be out of there before it all comes crashing down because when it does, it's sure to be unpleasant. I know Labour and Lib Dems won't get us out. SNP? They want to take Scotland away from England and hand it to the EU. Waste of time. I know there are a lot of Tories who would but unfortunately, that doesn't include their leadership. So I won't vote for any of them. I'll place my X elsewhere.

If I achieve nothing else I'll at least reduce the bugger's majority by one.

Lots to post about, especially yesterday's book, but also lots to analyse and write up and bill for before the Christmas post kills my income stream...

...Rant tomorrow, earn today.

A book arrived today. It's a little book and won't take long to read.

There are, I think, still free copies available.

I'll be back when I've finished reading.

Labour's gibbering masses are apparently delighted with their new showcase video. Apparently it's not this one. That's an old one.

It's this one.

I tried to watch it but was driven away by the banality and mindless droning. Fortunately, Sara Bedford is made of stronger stuff and managed to watch it all, then picked it apart bit by bit.

Turns out the first video was more accurate after all. They just needed to adjust the last word.

L is for Lies.

It's all been about children for this outing of the Righteous. They tried to hijack a religion again, Islam this time, but it wasn't going to dance to their tune and had its own agenda. Now they are turning on it and that'll be messy. Instead, they have concentrated on children as their route to control. Lately this has reached the point where all adults are suspected paedophiles unless they pay to prove otherwise and anyone with children must be overseen and studied in their homes, in case they do something non-approved, like getting the child to think for themselves.

Children apparently have to pass 69 'learning targets' before they start school! I wonder what the first one is - a first cry at birth perhaps? If the child fails that one, do they shove it back in and try again? There is no childhood any more. I remember reflecting once that at the age of five, the routine of the working week began and that was it until retirement. Up to that point all you had to do was play. Enjoy it, kid, you won't see these days again for sixty years. Now there is nursery and pre-school school and assessments by pointy-faced people with clipboards and that's all before you even start with the real school. Your future is assessed, calculated and determined before you learn the nine times table. Actually, I bet they don't do that any more. Instead they have 'good citizen classes', a title that sends a shiver down my spine.

Part of these good citizenship classes (for primary schools) is to instil the understanding that stepping on ants is evil. It does include things like not leaving dogs locked in cars on hot days, and not messing with wild birds' nests, which is good, but it then goes to a ridiculous extreme.

The guidance, drawn up by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, says children can learn good citizenship skills by learning about the wellfare of insects because "other living things have needs and they have responsibilities to meet them".

I have no responsibilities to cockroaches, silverfish, wasps, flies of any size or any other insect and I have an array of chemical weapons which I will unleash on them as soon as they show up. Yes they have needs. Wasps need paper to make their nests and they get it by chewing any nearby unprotected wood. Your shed, your fence or your rafters. Flies have a desperate desire to tramp around on long-dead animals and piles of poo and then tramp over your dinner. I don't need that so the interlopers will die. Flies are not citizens and caring for them will not make you a good citizen. It will only make you into a fascinating study for medical students who will run a book on which interesting disease you'll catch next.

As for respecting worms, don't we have enough trouble with all the hooded worms demanding respect now? Are we going to get cornered by an armed gang of Lumbricus terrestris demanding respect and money? If so, all you need do is invite them on a fishing trip. That'll sort them out.

This lot of Righteous want to produce a race of blank-eyed drones who would not step on a beetle but who think it's just fine to kick a random stranger to death. They won't stamp on an ant but they'll stamp on a puppy.

All this results in a whole generation of confused and repressed children who can't even turn to an adult for help because adults run away from them and the child doesn't know why. The Righteous solution? Drug them into compliance.

Prof Timimi cited a 2004 study in which researchers analysed prescriptions in nine countries over a two-year period. It found significant increases in drugs to deal with childhood mental health problems. The lowest rise was in Germany – 13 per cent – and the highest was the UK, with 68 per cent.

This word 'vulnerable' keeps coming up in all these kinds of special-interest groups stories. People wear it as a badge of honour. 'Oh, I'm vulnerable, you have to be nice to me'. Get stuffed. You know what 'vulnerable' means? It means 'weak'. It means 'feeble'. It means 'easily defeated'. It is not something to shout about. If you need therapy and medication just to cope with life, you aren't doing it right. The weird part is, people on permanent mood medication look down on alcoholics as if they are somehow different. Doctor's prescription or supermarket plonk, it's all the same thing and costs about the same too. It's hiding from life. Being vulnerable. Being weak. Just stop it - and if you can't stop it, at least stop being so damn proud of it.

Back to the topic...

Children can now be tracked through their mobiles, and their internet use monitored by a virus that parents are encouraged to install on their computers. No privacy, no hiding place, and when you have nowhere to hide, you have everything to fear.

It looks like a form of brainwashing. Separate the kids from their parents. confuse them with random, conflicting information, distance them from the adults who could tell them actually useful information, then when they're totally baffled, drug them to keep them that way. Get them used to being watched by the State at all times for their own protection and keep them monochrome and subdued. Above all, make them equal, identical, homogenous because that makes social planning so much easier. Why should they not step on that ant? Because ants are the model for the new society. One central control and all workers identical.

It's not working at any level. The Righteous think they are breeding the Eloi but they are turning out Morlocks.

And vulnerable Morlocks at that.

I see, via Constantly Furious, that the Paul Clarke 'help-the-police-and-go-to-jail' story is now on Twitter and turning into quite a brushfire. The MSM don't seem to have noticed anything yet. They did, however, notice that Scottish Labour want to make possession of a knife a strict liability offence with a mandatory prison sentence (via Samizdata).

Glasgow North East contains a fair number of people who like to smoke, drink and carry a knife. Oh dear, folks, look who you've just voted for.

This Christmas, if you were considering buying someone a set of kitchen knives, don't. Or a saw, plain or electric. Chisels, potato peelers, junior hacksaws, anything that has a bladed edge over 3 inches long and doesn't fold is illegal to have in your possession on the street and Labour want to send you to jail simply for having it. What you intended to do with it is irrelevant. Taking a 12" pruning saw to loan to your pal down the road? Irrelevant. Possession equals prison. No defence.

Ah, you say, but if I just bought it, it's still in its plastic packet and I have the receipt. I'm just carrying it home. Even if you carry it to the police station, you'll get arrested. There is no excusable reason for carrying it because it's a strict liablility offence and you go to jail. At the moment it's legal to have these things in your home (if you can get them there) as long as you don't step outside with them. At the moment.

What the hell, eh? Who's going to know if you have anything like that in your house? As long as you don't take it outside, no problem, right?

Better get hinges on that wall panelling because you'll need to hide a lot of things behind it when this lot come round. Note that this is to prevent 'unintentional injuries'. It is not targeted at child abusers. It is targeted at you.

About 100,000 children are admitted to hospital each year for home injuries at a cost of £146m.

Approximate and most likely hugely inflated number - check. For the cheeeldren - check. Costs the NHS millions - check. Same techniques, recognised by smokers, drinkers and fat people everywhere by now. Well folks, it's rollout time. Now you are all smokers, drinkers, and fatties. Now you can all be censured, fined and punished at will and you'll have no comeback at all. Welcome to our world.

Take another look at Al-Jahom's link. Scroll down the list of Righteous organisations involved. Pretty much all of them. This is supposed to be about children's safety in the home - the national audit commission? The bicycle helmet initiative trust? The department for transport? What in Hell's name are 'the centre for excellence in outcomes' or the 'council for subject associations'? These sound like something the Daily Mash made up! This is a massed Righteous association of vicious, spiteful people who are making one big push for total control before their time runs out. If they succeed, it will be extremely difficult for the Cameroids to unravel, and that's assuming they're even going to try.

For the moment, if you have no children in your house, you are safe. Unless your work or daily life involves any contact at all, at any time, with anyone under 18. So far, they get to you through children. Why do you really think they wanted gay couples to adopt? They've got you too. Also anyone who looks after your children for any period of time. It's now at the stage where, if I see next door's kids waiting in the snow after school for their parents to get home through the Christmas traffic, I'll have no option but to leave them there. The moment they step through the door, in come a thousand government inspectors.

It won't take them long to find a way into childless homes. Children living next door? Better be sure your house won't spontaneously combust and put next door's children at risk. Children living across the street? Best make sure your curtains are up to scratch so they don't inadvertantly see you in the bath. It won't take them long. Remember the days when people left their front doors unlocked? Those days are coming back because if you lock them, the State will batter them down. Why bother with locks when you cannot stop them anyway?

This is what Labour have done to the country and its people. Take a bloody good look, Glasgow North East. You voted for this. YOU voted FOR this.

Those 70% who did not vote, hang your heads. You had the power to slap them down and you stood aside. You could have taken out all four of the idiot bands at once, you couild have relegated Labour, SNP, Lib Dem and Tory to the bottom of the heap and you did nothing. All you needed was an X in a box. Not voting is not a protest. It is submission. Not voting is like standing aside while burglars ransack your house, making them a cup of tea and helping them carry your TV out to the van. Not voting is like starting a game of chess by toppling your king. Not voting sends no message to those in power other than 'Carry on, we don't mind what you do'.

I vote. Every time. I vote for a small party or an independent, never for any of the big parties because to me, they all look the same and they all look very dangerous indeed. Nobody I vote for ever wins. That's not because I wasted my vote. I didn't waste it. I used it. It's because on average, about 60% of people with a vote waste theirs by not using it, then complain when another band of money-grabbing tyrants get in.

These people are getting in on the back of a small percentage of the electorate. If everyone voted, they could be wiped out entirely. Imagine a parliament with not a single Labour, Tory or Lib Dem MP. Imagine it for a while.

Then make it happen. With two strokes of a pencil.

This is disgusting. It's half past one on Sunday morning and I'm sober enough to drive (but not drunk enough to steal a car, so I won't).

I have so much work I'm having to find more and more inventive ways to avoid doing it. None help, it just keeps popping back up on the screen and I'll be in the lab tomorrow again doing even more of it. The silver lining is, of course, that I only get paid when I have work to do and this is Christmas booze cash I'm earning now. After the taxman gets his grubby paws out and I see what's left. Total income for this year is going to be well down on last year and expenses are up. I'd be upset, but hell, it means I'm handing less over to the Labour party for general wastage and that is one seriously cheering thought. Whether I put much effort into boosting business in the next tax year depends on what the Cameroids do, because it looks certain those idiots will take over from the current idiots even though they are doing their best to wreck their chances.

I thought, in sober fashion, of Glasgow North East, because I bet there's nobody sober there right now. Nobody working either, apart from bar staff and nightclub bouncers.

Labour won the by-election. I admit I am disappointed but not surprised. They crow as if it's a great victory but all they did was hold on to what is probably the safest Labour seat in Scotland with a reduced majority. Around 30% of voters bothered to vote. Labour's share was 58% of 30%. Roughly 17% of the people of Glasgow North east actually wanted them in power. Yet they call it a great victory.

The BNP were only a few votes shy of 5% of the vote. In Scotland! Where the BNP is widely seen as an English party and usually struggle around the 2% mark. They were beaten, just, by a doubled Tory vote. Doubled. In Scotland and more particularly in Glasgow North East where they eat Tories deep-fried with chips. The Tories were never going to win there. Neither were the BNP. The extent to which they increased their vote size would alarm any sensible Labourite, but no. They won and that's all they care about. The will of 17% of the people trumps the other 83% and you know what? It's their own fault. Seventy percent of the voters of Glasgow North East could not be bothered to spend a few minutes deciding their own future. Because of that, the 83% who did not vote Labour are now subject to Labour rule.

Labour claim it is a disaster for the SNP. If only. I didn't want them to win either but it was a straight Labour/SNP fight for the top spot and the SNP are slightly less deranged. The SNP failed to take an extremely safe seat from Labour. Well, whoop de diddly do. A failure, yes, but a disaster? A disaster is when you lose a safe seat, not when you fail to take someone else's. Labour will find out what that means when the English start voting because those are the people Labour have dumped on hardest. Their effect is less obvious here because Labour are not fully in charge. The SNP, well, campaigning in Glasgow on a 'we hate smokers and boozers even more than Labour' ticket? In retrospect, not the best move they could have made.

Glasgow North East was won on indolence. Seventy percent of them could not get off their backsides to vote. If that attitude continues we can look forward to another five years of exactly the same thing because we'll get Tory or Labour or Lib Dem next year and I don't think it will make one fleck of a lactose-intolerant's milky diarrhoea of difference to the country. If those three are not ousted we won't even have a country. We will be the EU's Airstrip One. This next election might be the last chance we get to decide our future by peaceful means.

Get the votes in. Get those idiots out. You're only fighting against 17% who are in favour of the current band of morons and that's in a very safe seat indeed. It'll be easy.

If people vote.

The Great Lord of the Universe, Saviour of Money, Ruddernosed Champion of Self Service, has acquired another title.

Not by dint of his wonderful demeanour, nor in appreciation of his honesty and integrity, but, as usual, by Labour playing their dirty tricks behind closed doors.

He is now to be known as -

The Right Honourable Baron Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham, Lord President of the Council, First Secretary of State, and Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and Honorary Freeman of the borough of Hartlepool.

Or 'Pete' to his pals. I can think of a few other bloggers who would also shorten his name to four letters, albeit four different ones.

The man's name will soon run to two volumes and his business cards must be A4. I would love to see an interview where the interviewer insisted on reciting the whole thing every time he asked a question.

Well, we have months of Labour yet to stand. He might yet reach a 100-word name before the end.

If anyone's wondering where Ranting Rab went on his holidays, here he is working for the Scottish Parliament's web translation service. He's missing and this appears. Coincidence? I think not!

The Scottish Nationalist-led Scottish Executive says official government literature in Scots is needed to ‘prevent discrimination’.

Nothing to do with vote-grabbing in Labourland then?

The Cameroids are in disarray over the central appointment of candidates for election. Seems people prefer to have someone from the area to represent the area. Who'd have thought that? Certainly not the Tories.

The whole 'oooh, she had an affair once' nonsense over Elizabeth Truss is just the tip of it. Nobody really cares about the affair, it's just the only objection anyone can come up with that can't be instantly dismissed by political correctness. The real objection is that she's been foisted onto the consituency and isn't from around there. As one local puts it -

We're having another one foisted on us. People are very touchy and they don't want someone who's only here for the advancement of her career."

There's the real problem, I think. People have had more than enough of politicians whose sole aim in life is to advance their own careers. Whether this is true of this candidate or not is irrelevant. What the voters think on polling day is what matters and if they think she's been sent by Central Office as another career politician, that safe seat might not be quite so safe. Labour needn't get excited by that. It's Tory country and they won't vote Labour. If they switch it'll probably be UKIP.

Sir Jeremy Bagge insists it's not about her gender. He does come across as a monocled great-uncle who huffs 'Women? Wonderful things. I have one myself. Keep 'er in the kitchen.' I'm not convinced it's not all about gender for him. There is a lot of muttering about Cameron's all-women shortlists though, and I think any sort of exclusive shortlist is absolute madness. Why exclude a whole batch of potential candidates on the basis of gender, race or sexual preference? Oh, it might be a seat so safe they could have an all-badger shortlist and still win but would the winning badger be any use? Wouldn't they be better with the otter who has a lot of real-world experience but who was excluded from standing?

All-anything shortlists are just stupid. Supporters of such things will say 'Well, how else are we supposed to get more women/black/Asian/disabled/gay/ex-convict/illegal immigrant/children/poor people as representatives in Parliament?' To which I can only reply 'Why do we need to?'

An MP is supposed to represent an area. Not an ethnic, social or gender group. An area and everyone in it. What that area needs is the best person for the job and no other consideration matters. Whether male or female or both or neither. Whether black, white, brown, yellow, green, blue or transparent. Whether they like to sleep with the opposite sex, the same sex, both, neither, or whether they are avowed onanists. Whether they believe in one god, ten gods, a hundred gods, the Great Being of Eternal Flushing or no god at all. None of it is relevant.

There is only one question. Will they be a good and effective representative of the people of the area? Yes or no are the only answers.

It's the one question no leader of any party is asking. Instead, they decide who to put where based on who they want as a certainty on their green benches, with no regard at all to what the people of the area might want.

If I were in UKIP I'd be watching this whole thing very closely indeed. Maybe even learning from it.

Ed Balls is to get more powers. X-ray vision so he can still see while blinking, the ability to leap tall children with a single bounce, the power to catch bullets with his eyelids (who wants to test that one?) and a shiny Spandex suit with 'Edikayshun Man' written on it.

Not really. He'll have to wait until he's finished his ice lair at the North Pole before he gets those. For the moment he'll have to settle for the power to whack teachers because their little charges aren't learning anything. It doesn't sound much of a power but he can do it from a long way away. He also gets henchmen with this power, dressed in black shirts labelled with 'Thug #1' and so on.

If a school gets a lot of low exam results, it's embarrassing for a government that expects everyone to have at least fifteen A-levels in beer-can-opening, X-factor watching and glossy magazine buying so they are fully prepared for their place in Labour's world. Therefore if they fail it's the teacher's fault for teaching them nonsense about physics, maths and history and expecting them to understand within the 0.05 seconds they pay attention in each class.

There will be no disciplining of the children. That is right out. There will instead be disciplining of the teachers. So if you're thinking about teaching, you should be aware that Balls will attack you from on high, the children will attack you in the classroom and if you make so much as a peep in complaint, the parents will come round and attack you too. Then they'll complain to the Balls Brigade and they'll attack you again. Then you'll get done for child abuse and your CRB check will come up 'Gary Glitter' forever.

In other words, if you're thinking about joining the teaching profession, don't bother. You'll be stuck in between kids who don't want to learn and a system that doesn't want you to teach them. In that system, it is impossible to succeed and failure is your fault.

There is a very simple way to improve the schools. Stop treating children as if they are some kind of holy caste who must never be touched and who can never be wrong. Return actual discipline to schools and if the parents attack the schools for applying it, arrest and charge them for assault. Complaints should not be automatically assumed to be correct. Those proved to be malicious must be removed from the record, not left there as unfounded allegations to haunt a teacher's career for ever.

Unless the core problem - absolute absence of any discipline at all - is addressed, nothing else is going to work. Closing schools moves the problems elsewhere. Adding the lunatic fringe to a well-performing school is going to drag the good one down.

The socialist answer is always the same - they're poor, underpriviliged, and we need to throw money at them. An argument that has been proved to be total cobblers over and over. People cause trouble and the socialists give them more money. What lesson have they learned? Our education monster hasn't grasped it. The lesson is, if you kick up and cause trouble, you get money. If you keep your head down and learn, you don't.

It has nothing to do with money. It has everything to do with looking at your surroundings and thinking 'I can do better than this'. When I was young, that was true, the dole was not a desirable option at all and any job of any kind was better than dole money. Now, with all the attached benefits, all of which are lost as soon as someone says 'Yes' to a job as a burger-bar floor sweeper, it is not so easy to get out of the trap. There's little point in trying when that first job pays the same as benefits, so you're working for the same money as your neighbour who does nothing. Why learn? Why get those qualifications? What are they for? So you can sign on as Joe Scroat, PhD?

There is no discipline so kids can do what they like, and they know it. Those whose families are in work don't know about the benefits trap. Those whose families are long-term unemployed know all about it. They know, and will explain to their kids, that the best way to get on in life is to learn the benefits system because there's no way out of it. Put more money into benefits and the trap gets deeper. The only career available is giropractor.

None of this is even considered by Edikayshun Man and his henchmen. They like to keep people in that benefits trap because, well, look at Glasgow North East. Once they're well and truly stuck, they have no option but to vote to keep it.

How to improve education?

One. Bring back discipline.

Two. Give the kids a reason to learn. Give them a ladder out of that benefit trap by taking £1 off benefits for every £3 earned (numbers might go up or down, this isn't a policy decision). When they lose £1 for every £1 earned, there is no point trying and therefore no point getting qualifications. If they come home better off for working, there's a reason to do it. Eventually they'll be off the benefits altogether.

But then, of course, they won't vote Labour. And that is the sole purpose of every Labour policy ever produced. People will vote for them if they have no choice.

They are not benefactors of the poor. They are imprisoners of the poor.

I have often laughed loud and long at all those appeals by the police for anyone who might have photographed a crime to contact them. We are all too aware of how the police regard photographers. Photographers are terrorists or maybe tourists, the authorities no longer make the distinction. They can be stopped and searched and if they are arrested under anti-tourist legislation, their DNA will be stored forever, even where they are immediately released without charge. Not a hope in hell of any job that requires a CRB check, and that will soon mean not a hope in hell of any job other than criminal. So there's no way I'd volunteer information that would implicate me in the new non-crime-but-we'll-get-you-anyway of photography.

Nor would I feed the ducks. I'll eat them, but I won't feed them. That's illegal too. I also won't call the police to my house if I'm in the middle of decorating. That will get you reported to the council. If you have children, you must allow them to run riot in supermarkets because disciplining them is illegal. If you see other people's children acting like the monkey house at feeding time, just enjoy the show. Don't dare intervene, even if they are battering a pensioner, because that will get you a child abuse charge. The law in this country used to be an ass. Now it's a rabid stoat with mental health issues. The best thing to do is keep well away from it.

Even so, I'd have thought that if you found a gun and took it to the police station, they'd still be quite pleased about that. Finding a stray weapon and handing it in must surely be a good and sensible thing to do. Well, it's apparently not a good idea at all.

Via Old Holborn, it seems that if you were to find a gun and take it to the police, you are then in possession of that gun, you have absolutely no defence to that charge, and you will be arrested, convicted and sentenced accordingly. What you planned to do with it is irrelevant to the law. Even though all you planned to do with this illegal weapon is to take it to the police and hand it in, you are in possession of that weapon and you get five years in clink. Automatic. No defence. The jury has no option but to return a guilty verdict because the only thing you are charged with is possession. Did the defendant have the weapon at any time? Yes or no? The defendant does not deny taking it to the police, so the only possible verdict is guilty. The jury has no power to acquit.

If I should ever stumble across any kind of weapon, anywhere, I'm not going to touch it. I'll leave it where it is and proceed in the general direction of 'away'. I will not report it, because even knowing where it is might amount to 'possession', especially towards the end of the month when targets have to be met. I see nothing. I hear nothing. I remember nothing. It's the only way to avoid arrest.

Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to be helpful to the police. It's illegal and they will arrest you for it.

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear? The only time you have nothing to fear is when every aspect of your life is hidden.

It's the Labour way.


UPDATE: Via an anonymous commenter on OH's post, it seems this might be a case of 'we didn't get him last time but...'

It's very hard to feel sympathy for a lawyer.

This one just lost her £150,000 job because her DNA is on the national database.

She must have done something terrible, surely? Well, it turns out she hasn't done anything at all. She's one of those who was arrested but not charged, but her DNA is on file anyway. Her employer's check showed that her DNA was on file for an unfounded allegation, and they sacked her.

That's her crime - being on the database. So, I wonder how keen Paul Flynn, a Labour MP in Newport, is to be on that database? He's one of the loudest 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' shouters out there. He has commiited no crime so being on the database holds no fear for him. So he says. He has yet to prove that.

Simply being on the database can get you fired. Even if you are never charged with anything. Even if the heinous crime you were arrested for amounts to trying to get your child into a good nursery, and you weren't even charged with that. Even if you're a high-powered City lawyer. Is it any wonder that the rest of us aren't too happy about it?

This must be good news though, surely? Now it's affected a high-flying lawyer, she'll champion the anti-snooper cause and get all those innocents off the database. Well, no.

Ms Elliott was just about to take up working on the government's own national identity card scheme which required the routine checks to be made before she was 'cleared' for the role.
But she is now fighting Home Office red tape to have her name removed from the database as an 'exceptional case' - and relaunch her legal career.

No, she's only interested in herself. To hell with the rest of us. She wants to work on a national database so she needs the rest of us on it. She just doesn't want to be on it herself. Everyone else is going to suffer exactly what she has just suffered, and yet her goal is to help run the very system she's just been ruined by.

It's very hard indeed to feel any sympathy for this particular lawyer.

So I won't.

UPDATE: The story has mysteriously vanished. Already. Winston Smith must be in overdrive.

UPDATE2: Longrider has a link to a Telegraph copy of the story that hasn't been cut yet.

I'm losing count. I think it's 11 weeks on Saturday. Last week I missed a post. Whoops.

Still haven't burned out any parts. The magic box that holds a battery, spare atomiser and two loaded tips is great but if you don't use the tips, they dry out and have to be reloaded. That might not apply if you use ready-loaded tips because they're in sealed plastic bags. The magic box charges in 4 hours on a USB line, which is no problem if you're on the computer anyway. You can also use those plugs you buy for phones that have a USB socket, a line and a set of connectors. It uses the mini-USB connector, the one you use for some Motorola phones.

One thing to watch with the magic box is that if you leave a battery in there for too long it'll kill the box battery. They need to be swapped around. Normally the box is good for at least three battery charges but it's trickle-charging all the time so while there's an electrofag battery in place, the box battery is running down. I've been at home a lot, writing reports, so didn't use the box but left a battery in there. Best leave the battery out of the box until you're going out.

The magic box is a cool gadget. It's about the size and shape of a 10-cigarette pack and opens the same way. Inside are The Bits To Make Electrofag. Just don't leave it in your pocket for days with a battery loaded.

Another thing - spare atomisers come with a dummy tip attached. Leave that on in the magic box or the atomiser rattles around.

I haven't spent one further penny on Electrofag for about a month. I still have plenty of smoking juice, haven't burned out an atomiser (that's luck, the ones I've been using are well past their guaranteed lifespan) and haven't ruined a battery. It's working out, so far, way cheaper than tobacco. However, if we were to take the punitive taxes out of the equation, it might not look so good.

Then again, next time a pal comes back from overseas with a box of baccy, a combination of Electrofag and tobacco is going to be very cheap indeed.

That cheap baccy will last twice as long as before. That'll be twice as long without paying taxes to people who encourage violence and revulsion against me.

There is no downside.


Next weekend is three months. Any gadget that last that long becomes a fixture. I've had laptops that didn't make it that far.

Burning our Money has an excellent round-up of rage. The Gorgon's immigration idiocy, the waste of money, the bonuses given to those who kill our soldiers while those who deal with money lose theirs, and why it's a really stupid idea to demand that all nurses have degrees.

All in one post. I have nothing to add to any of it.

I had planned to rant about the mysterious 'council official' who fined a woman for feeding the ducks. However, Al-Jahom has it covered. The Telegraph article has no photos but the Mail has a close-up of what the official wrote down as the reason for the fine. The crime defined is 'throwing bread for birds'. That's illegal now. Someday soon, one of these people will be found floating in that pond. If I see it happen, I didn't see a thing.

The format of such stories is always the same. An anonymous uniformed arse does something indefensively stupid and the authorities defend it as quite right and proper. No apology is ever forthcoming. No official is ever disciplined. Nobody is to blame other than the poor sap who has to take the fine for something that's been deemed illegal on the spur of the moment by someone who should not be entrusted with the care of a compost heap.

The only way I will ever accept any kind of fine from anyone is if they can show me their ID. I don't mean a flash of a card that could be a bus pass. I mean show me ID that I can read the name on. I want that name. No name, no ID, I don't believe you are genuine and will not accept the paper. If I'm ever in a position to talk to the newspapers about some idiotic council moron i will not say 'council official'. I will give them that name. The papers are good at tracking people down and getting photos of them.

The uniform means nothing. Anyone can dress up in a uniform. Demand ID or it's no fine. They are ordering you around and demanding money, they have to prove they have the right to do that. Get the name. Remember it. Name these people. If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear.

Anyway, I let the duck story slide because I found a funnier one.

Autumn leaves are now litter. Expect to see fixed penalty notices pinned to offending trees soon, or more likely to the door of anyone who has a deciduous tree in their garden. These leaves cannot be composted, they must be deemed irretrievable rubbish and sent to landfill. Something that recycles naturally without anyone sorting it into any bins is taking up landfill space, while the rest of us have to sort the bottles and tins so that we don't put so much in landfill... does your head hurt yet? Try not to think about it too hard. Your councils and government aren't thinking about it at all.

Councils say they are unable to compost even those from otherwise clean suburban streets because of fears they may be “contaminated” with rubbish and cigarette ends.

Oooh, cigarette ends. Guess what cigarettes are made of? Leaves. The filters? Cellulose. That's the stuff leaves are made of. It's entirely compostable. Especially when mixed with the plant material it originated from. It won't make your nasturtiums into nicotine addicts. You won't find your dahlias having a quick puff behind the shed. The amount of tobacco involved when you sweep up a few fag-ends with a ton of leaves is trivial. It will have no effect on the composting process and there will be no detectable nicotine in the final product. There will be absolutely zero uptake of nicotine by your vegetables. Zero.

However those collected from parks and gardens can be used to make “food grade” compost because they are more likely to be litter free.

Parks and gardens have no litter? Really? When the wind blows on bin day, every garden around here looks like landfill. And what, precisely, is 'food grade' compost? Who eats the stuff? They must mean 'free of toxins' such as the terrible, terrible traces of tobacco. They do not, of course, separate yew or laburnum from those leaves they pick up in the park. Those toxins are just fine. They are, of course, nothing to worry about because they will be degraded in the compost almost as fast as a tobacco residue and since you don't eat compost, they aren't important.

A spokesman said: “Councils aren’t doing this because they enjoy throwing leaves into landfill, they would not be doing it if there was any other choice.”

There is a choice. In my shed there's a round thing with holes in. I call it a 'sieve' and I use it to get the twigs and other crap out of compost so I plant things in a good fine lump-free material. Compost the crappy leaves and then use a big shaking sieve to get out any cans or bottles that might have gone in with them. If they are so desperately concerned that a smoker might have contaminated them, sell it as low-grade compost for flower beds, marked 'not for food-growing use'. I don't believe it makes a scrap of difference but people stupid enough not to realise that tobacco is made of leaves will regard it as vitally important. So I'd buy the cheaper low-grade stuff all the time.

It's not about the leaves, though, is it? It's all about the only thing this government cares about at all.

It means that local authorities in England and Wales are paying up to £1.5 million collectively in landfill tax every year just to dispose of autumn leaves, it is estimated.

An estimated figure with a lot of zeros after it. What could be coming next? Smokers are contaminating that lovely compost and must pay more to compensate. Anyone caught littering should have their house emptied and their bank accounts frozen. That guy who dropped the (also compostable) match should be bankrupted. He's costing us all money!

These council officials will never stop litter. They target someone who drops a match or someone who throws bread to ducks. They will never approach the hoodied horde dropping their plastic takeaway trays or the rowdy drunks leaving cans and bottles lying around everywhere. Never. That lone guy smoking - watch him like a hawk, he might drop the end on the floor. The gang shouting and shoving people and leaving a trail of debris, no, leave them, they might get rough. The litter will never stop because nobody is really trying to stop it. They are out collecting fines from easy targets.

One day, that 'easy target' they pick will prove to be the local psychotic madman. I hope I'm around when that happens.

Of course, I'd never be able to identify the guy who pulverised the Stasi official and impaled him on that car aerial. It all happened so fast.

Still, he can go in the compost so he won't be wasted.

SteveShark is a relatively new blog to me but it's well worth a visit. Today he has that master of Green (as in nosegoblins), Sting from the Police. The band, not the paramilitary wing of the Labour party. It's not that easy to tell, except that Sting looks more like an ecoprotester than a policeman, goes about with a dishcloth around his waist and has hair in a distinctive 'electrocuted' style.

(The 30th anniversary issue of Viz magazine features Sting's Tantric helicopter invention, if anyone hasn't seen that yet.)

Anyway, Mrs. Sting was apparently asked how she justified herself and ElectroHead campaigning on green issues while having seven houses and flying everywhere in jets while pouring burning aviation fuel out of the window and all the rest of it. She said:

“I would like to think that we both work hard for the rights of indigenous people… but we do need to get around.”

Oh. They need to get around. Nobody else does so everyone else can make do with mud huts and all gather around the smouldering remains of the local power station after the Green Saviours have torched it. Everyone else can walk from Paris to New York, stuffing coal back into the sea bed along the way, while Mr. and Mrs. Sting fly overhead at vast fuel-burning expense because they need to get around. It's fine to tear the last fiver out of every poor bugger's wallet to pay for ever-rising green taxes because Mr. And Mrs. Sting have declared it's in the best interests of the planet, from the patio-heated balcony atop their lights-blazing mansion (one of seven).

Sounds like they are following in the footsteps of the Climate Change Pope, Gory Al himself, and their likewise ecohypocrite pals Bonio and Bob Gelding. Everyone else can go out and wreck the power stations and businesses, everyone else can huddle around a candle and shiver, everyone else can suffer cattle-class travel. Not the Green Elite. They have to get home and turn the heating up to tropical before roasting a couple of those evil methane-belching cows over the searchlight-illuminated barbecue.

And to think, all those activists listen to what these people tell them. They believe it!

The last twenty years' trend. Thats what they go on about. The last twenty. They can't go back further than that because it brings them into 'the next ice age' territory. So for about nine years the world showed a bit of warming, then nothing for ten years, and for the last few years it's been cooling. That is the last twenty year's records. So they change it from 'global warming' to 'climate change' because now it's cooling rather than warming and yet they propose exactly the same solutions to an entirely opposite problem. All the while worshipping the biggest carbon footprinters on the planet and doing what they are told by these smug and controlling self-enrichers. Idiots.

Buried away in the newspapers is a report on just how much human-induced CO2 is being absorbed by the Earth. It's nowhere near capacity, it seems. And yet the comments are filled with the Green Zealots who cannot imagine a world in which they are not doomed at all, but could get on with actually having a life instead of obsessing about the end of it. Meanwhile those who play them like chess pieces, Bonio, Stink, Gelding, Gory and the rest, just laugh and watch it all on the wall-sized TVs installed in their megajets while nipping across to Monte Carlo for a coffee.

I know the British have a long tradition of complaining about the weather but these people are taking it way too far. It was meant to be a conversation opener, not a religion.

The climate will change. It's never been constant. It will warm and cool. Sure, we should work on alternative energy sources to coal and we should recycle what can be recycled because that's all good. But don't tell us we are killing the world, because we're not. That's all lies.

Consider those who tell you to restrict your lives to Trappist monk levels and look hard at how they live. Do they look worried about their carbon footprints?

Until they do, neither will I.

Remember when Question Time became the Nick Griffin Show? A few people noticed some of the other people present. One of them was our own Strawman Jack who dodged questions on immigration by effectively pointing at Nick the Griff and saying 'Well, his policies are worse'. One of the Strawman's arguments was along the lines of 'the rate of immigration is slowing'. At first glance, that sounds good but all it means is that the country is getting more crowded still, just not as fast as last year.

Then we have 'the rate of unemployment is decreasing' which sounds as if unemployment is decreasing but it's not. It's increasing still, just not as fast as in the last quarter. In fact, we now have a situation where around 20% of the working age population are doing nothing productive at all.

The best one of the day referred to the government's refusal to obey the EU court ruling that keeping the DNA of innocent people forever is immoral and repugnant and illegal. They will now keep innocent people's DNA for six years, and here's the quiet lie:

The watered down proposals are similar to those operating in Scotland where the DNA of those convicted of serious crimes is retained for two years and then, if the courts agree, for a further three years.

Keeping innocent people's DNA for six years bears no relation at all to the way the Scottish system operates. In Scotland, if you are released without charge, no DNA is kept. If you are found not guilty, no DNA is kept. In the event of a guilty verdict, the DNA is stored for two years and it takes the permission of the court for those samples to be retained any longer than that - and in any event, no more than five years. As long as the offender does not reoffend for five years, there's no sample. Here, the view is that if you're going to be a career criminal you'll do it more often than twice a decade. South of the border, the view is that you must be up to something if the police notice you at all and if you happen to have the same name as a criminal, you're a criminal too.

The police here do not raid pensioner's homes at dawn, nor do they follow mothers home, nor do they race to catch litterbugs. They are not DNA collection officials as the English police are. I wonder if those English police get a bounty for every sample they collect? The difference? We don't have a Labour government here. The SNP do some lunatic things but they are not a patch on the level of insanity that pours daily from Westminster.

Oh, and that six year limit you've just been promised? Forget it if you're sampled under anti-terror laws. Photographers, trainspotters, tourists, anyone with a map or a camera or anyone who the police think looks a little shifty - as soon as they say 'anti-terror laws' your DNA is on record for life. Even if you are not actually charged with photographing that butterfly, you will nonetheless be on the database until they find out you've died. That will happen when the overloaded database throws up your name as a match for a crime, your home is raided at 5 am and the police won't believe your half-asleep relatives when they try to explain that you were buried six months earlier.

The whole thing is a sham. This government couldn't tell the truth if their lives depended on it. Every word they utter is a lie, a twisted platitude to silence you and make you think they're listening. They want that database of everyone and they will cheat and lie to get it.

The database is already too big. It's a haystack of innocent straw hiding a few criminal needles. As it grows, its usefulness declines. The only thing it is good for is terrorising the population. Don't you dare step out of line. We'll find you. We have your DNA and we'll know it's you. Except they won't.

Let's be very generous and say that on average, only one in a million will give a false match. When you have sixty million samples, that means an average of fifty-nine false matches for each correct one. Average. It will depend on how big your family is. If your name is Smith, you might find the daily visits from the DNA Police will become rather wearing after a few months. If you're an MP, you won't have to worry because you and your family won't be on the database. This vast DNA database is utterly useless as a crime prevention tool. As a population repression tool it's a marvellous thing and Stalin would have absolutely loved it.

Yet we are told it's 'to prevent terrorism'. It's about as useful in preventing terrorism as monitoring where people send their children to school and what they put in their bins. It will prevent nothing at all. It would, as a database of known habitual criminals, solve a lot of crimes. As a database of everyone it will be functionless. Just like our government.

No database can prevent crime because no database can be queried until after the crime has been committed. Then, a sensibly constructed database could help solve the crime before the criminal strikes again. There is no sense in hiding the real evidence under a mountain of irrelevant samples. Criminals will soon realise that the DNA database contains around sixty matches for them and we're back to having to crack an alibi. Just like the old days. A massively expensive pile of worthless junk will just get in the way of police work and the police are the ones building it. The politicians know what it is really for. The Tories know what it is for. Will they ditch it or is it too much of a temptation?

Get ready for an onslaught of lies in the next few moths. There'll be plenty to deflect us from the handover to the EU on December 1st, and to help in that deflection, Dark Lord Mandelson is getting his own TV show. How long before he televises the confessions of dissidents just before they vanish?

There is not one voice in Government that can be trusted now. Not one. Worse, I don't see much chance of any trustworthy ones appearing after the next election.