Womble on Tour

Letter To The Boxing Day Daily Mirror

2011-12-25T08:30:00.006Z

Dear Lovely Fluffy, Non-Phone-Hacking (cos they'd never do that, oh no) Daily Mirror,

Just before I shoot the extended relatives whom I hate dearly (wife & children are fine, actually) I'd just like to say "hello" to all your lovely readers because where I'm going the vindictive and evil arms of the Tory-run State will not let me communicate with you. I think you're all gorgeous and your politics is fantastic and your paper has the best picture editor (or whatever she is) in the world. You're very lucky to have her. And she's a Womble.

Have a wonderful 2012, and just remember, we all hate the Sun, don't we ?

Love 'n' revolution,
Womble On Tour

Best Obituary Ever

2011-09-16T19:30:00.002+01:00

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense , who has been with us for many years.No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
- Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
- Why the early bird gets the worm;
- Life isn't always fair;
- and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place.

Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Faith and Truth , by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his sons Trust and Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers;
I Know My Rights
I Want It Now
Someone Else Is To Blame
I'm A Victim

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

Source: from an email sent by a friend

Ruffians in Rushcliffe

2011-06-23T21:47:00.004+01:00

I know I've been quiet recently. If the truth be told, the anger has subsided somewhat. The current government isn't great, but it's decidedly less obnoxious than the last one.

The Womble thrives on fury; if the author isn't angry then nothing gets written. Maybe the blog should cater for a wider range of moods, but it is what it is. It needs sources of resentment; perhaps some mean-spirited, bullying State-sponsored thugs who throw their weight around at the expense of innocent individuals who find it hard to defend themselves.

Step forward, Rushcliffe Borough Council. These bastards have just levied a £35 fine on a 76-year-old disabled bloke who parked his car in a disabled space.

Bet you're thinking "So he isn't registered disabled, then ?"

Actually he is.

Bet you're thinking "Ah, didn't display his disabled badge then ?"

Actually he did.

Bet you're thinking "Must have overstayed his time, then ?"

Actually he didn't.

Bet you're thinking "So why did they fine him ?"

Because...he displayed his disabled badge upside down. Yep, for the heinous offence of showing a disabled badge upside down Rushcliffe Borough Council fleece a pensioner to the tune of £35. No, really.

I did a Google, as I usually do, to see if I could find this story somewhere else, just for the purposes of verification. And I actually found that these guys have previous. They've done it before. They must be proud of the fact.

What is it about local councils that makes them think they're so bloody important that they can treat ordinary people like filth ?

I hope 76-year-old Peter Knott wins his appeal against those pathetic, pen-pushing, pedantic pettifoggers from Rushcliffe Borough Council. I hope when he gets into the hearing he ridicules them, humiliates them, shames them and generally takes them to the cleaners.

In fact, I hope he turns them upside down.

Nun's The Word

2010-09-15T11:45:00.010+01:00

I'm afraid to say that I've had another of my "Oh, for God's sake" moments with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

Students of this blog will already be aware that I really hate the ASA. They have a habit of poking their not inconsiderable noses into places they should be leaving well alone.

The latest Exhibit: this utterly harmless picture, supporting an advertising campaign for ice cream, from the Italian firm Antonio Federici.

Just for the sake of clarity: you are viewing an image of a heavily-pregnant nun, in a church, eating ice cream. The truly tremendous strap-line is: "immaculately conceived". Now I see what marketing gurus get paid for.

The ASA's reason for goose-stepping in on this is that the adverts "mock Roman Catholic beliefs". "So bloody what ?" you may well ask. So might the wider public, it seems. When the images appeared in The Lady and Grazia magazines earlier this year, the poor ASA's switchboard operators were simply inundated - swept aside - by a total of....ten complaints.

Now, let's be fair just for a moment. If an advert had been brought out which was seen as mocking Islam, and the ASA banned that (which they would, without hesitation) we'd all be saying "I bet they wouldn't ban an ad which mocked Christianity". So at least they're wielding their weapons of free-speech destruction in an even-handed way. But it is completely wrong that no one should be able to take the Mickey out of religion in such a mild-mannered form.

It says a lot about the status afforded to religion by the Establishment in this country that it can enjoy such luxurious protection from any form of mockery or even serious challenge. In becoming ever-more draconian about this, our rulers are demonstrating an increasingly serious disconnection from wider society, which itself is growing ever-more sceptical about the messages handed down to us in the name of religious belief.

Fascinatingly, Antonio Federici have said that they intend to produce new posters along a similar theme, in defiance of the ban, and put them up around Westminster Cathedral to coincide with the Pope's visit. Good on 'em. We need people who are prepared to challenge the power exerted by State-sponsored censorship organisations like the ASA. I'm backing them all the way and I wish them well. I may even seek out their ice cream, just to see if it's as wonderful as they claim.

And I really quite fancy that nun...

30 Minutes In The Life Of a Dad

2010-09-05T16:02:00.008+01:00

You know how it is....or at least you do if you're a father. Somehow the day-to-day parental tasks discharged seemingly effortlessly by one's wife suddenly take on a whole new, and impossibly enigmatic dimension when she's not around. Welcome to the non-political world of Womble On Tour, who, when not ranting about the latest excesses of the State or watching his beloved Wimbledon (top of the Conference now, please note) is the proud and loving dad of 13-year-old boy/girl twins.

It all started easily enough. Mrs Womble On Tour is away for the day, taking part in a Crown Green Bowling competition. I've been instructed to pick up the Daughter (hereafter known as D) from cricket coaching and then await the return of the Son (S) from football practice. Then knock up some lunch. OK, no problem.

I duly retrieve D - on time and all - and make her a quick sandwich (she's due to go to the cinema with a mate soon) then decide on spaghetti on toast for S and me. Good call, I reckon; he likes spaghetti.

D eats the sandwich and then sits brooding that her brother hasn't come home yet; she's like an old mother hen. S eventually walks in, which means I can persuade D into the shower ahead of her afternoon out. S announces that he doesn't fancy spaghetti and says he'll make something himself. That'll be chocolate spread on toast, then. Then he goes to see his sister. Next thing I know, there is loud sobbing coming from the bathroom and S comes back, slightly red-faced and embarrassed-looking. "Dad", he tells me, "You need to go and see...she says she's started her periods". Oh, joy.

Men aren't geared up for stuff like this. And what's more, I'm not ready for it either. I know it's been coming - I've got eyes - but that doesn't help.

I knock on the bathroom door and see D, standing there, naked and crying, bloodied knickers on the floor. I don't know whether to hug her, comfort her or turn and flee. "OK, don't panic", I say, panicking.

I root through my wife's things, looking for some sanitary towels. No such luck. They're not in the bathroom cabinet either. D is in the shower by this time, and slightly calmer. "I think it'll stop now," she says hopefully. I'm no expert, but I know enough not to bank on her being right. She's still distinctly tearful. I set off to the village to buy some sanitary towels.

As I drive, I'm conscious that once I get the bloody things I'm not entirely sure how you fit them. Thank God there's an alternative to tampons; I'd be way out of my depth with them. And I'm thinking that really I'm a bit unlucky here, really; the waters breaking, or however you term it, when the wife is away. I was there for S, when he needed his first cricket box; I thought I'd done my bit. I'm also thinking that no daughter should have to go through this without her mum being around.

I get to the shop and of course I can't find what I'm looking for. I ask the Asian Bloke behind the counter and he directs me. Needless to say there's a choice. Well there would be, wouldn't there ? Normal, or Normal - With Wings. How the hell would I know ? I decide that wings sound good. I feel obliged to explain the purchase to the Asian Bloke, who duly sympathises.

I get back to the house. Smoke is pouring from the grill, the kitchen seems near ablaze. Transpires that S, having started making his toast, has then gone to offer D some succour and forgotten all about the grill. I turn it off, open every conceivable door and window, and tell S to bin the toast. "The bin hasn't got a bin liner in it" he says. "So put one in". "Where are they ?" "Kitchen drawer". I'm a bit short with him really, and it occurs to me afterwards that there probably aren't many 13-year-old boys who would try to comfort their sister over such a delicate matter.

Before venturing into the bathroom I open the packet of sanitary towels. "5 signs of protection" it says, but no bloody instructions (pardon the pun). OK, it can't be that difficult. I knock on the bathroom door and D lets me in. Out of the shower, but still naked and very emotional. "I don't know what you do with them", she says through the tears. "Don't worry", I say, trying to sound all parental and knowledgeable, "it's OK".

We open the wrapper on one of the towels. The promised wings are there, I note. One side is sticky. Best not get it the wrong way round, I think to myself. D hands me her fresh pair of knickers and there's an intensely award silence as I try to fit the towel to the right part, towel and fabric going this way and that. At this very moment, S walks in - seemingly oblivious and unashamed - complete with a roll of bin liners, to announce that he can't tear one off. And there we are, the three of us, D standing without a stitch, me fiddling with her knickers, and S with his bloody bin liners. And at this point, looking at one another in our little circle, we can do no more than descend into laughter; there's is just nowhere else to go.

For the record, D departed, suitably sanitised and protected, to the cinema; S eventually managed to bin his cindered toast and make some afresh. And I finally experienced a return to standard heart rate and,when I last looked in the mirror, my face had returned to normal from its brightest pink shade.

But should parenting really be so hard ?

Going Dutch...To Think

2010-08-14T21:43:00.003+01:00

Blogging, light as a feather in recent times, will be non-existent for a couple of weeks as the Womble takes himself and his family to the Netherlands for what (though I say it myself) is a well-earned holiday. I’ve never been there before, never driven on the right-hand-side of the road before (Mrs Womble on Tour may disagree) and will doubtless take time to become accustomed to the Monopoly-style currency otherwise known as the Euro. All things considered, I’m looking forwards to it.

And while I’m out there, I’m going to have a damn good think about the future of this blog. It’s an enigma, is this blogging business.

I started it, three years ago, simply because I love writing and because I could. It seemed ridiculously easy to do, and, at a time when free speech appeared to be in headlong retreat, courtesy of a foul-tempered and malevolent government, it felt deliciously refreshing to be able to say what I thought, anonymously.

I never really expected to start getting an audience; I had no idea where it came from. I was amazed when people started leaving comments. And when they did, I was hugely touched. And I found that an audience, however small (it never exceeded about 30 a day) changes things. I started writing with them in mind. And I felt guilty if I didn’t post anything for few days. I started to think of them as my customers, and how I’d have let them down if they came here and didn’t find anything new.

On the other hand I’ve never had ambitions for a large readership, and I’ve never pursued one as some have. I’ve tried not to be vain about it. I’m sure I could have attracted more visitors if I’d been more sweary or done more “advertising” but I wanted the blog to keep its own character. Not that I'm knocking people who push harder - part of the appeal of blogging is its rich variety and diversity - it's just not for me.

When I was writing at my most prolific, during a somewhat slow work month at the fag end of 2008, I was writing a post a day, and it was taking ages. And there’s the rub. Blogging does take ages. Even if I’m writing something short, it still takes time: time to find the right words and put them in the right order; time to do the research and find the links; time to read through it and correct all the mistakes (well, OK, not all of them). Even a “quickie” can take an hour, and, as the excellent Constantly Furious observed in his valedictory address a couple of months ago, blogging can start to take over.

With long, long hours at work, a wife who is quite wonderfully understanding but who needs and deserves time and attention, and two adorable children who are reaching the end of the time when they’re prepared to be seen dead with me, causing me to treasure every moment with them, there are many other calls on my time. Blogging takes very much a back seat at times.

In addition to all of which, there seems a little less material about at the moment, now that the Scottish Stalinist has left the Kremlin. It got to stage at one point, as a fellow blogger said to me, that I had run out of rage. Which isn’t a bad thing, of course. And yet…

And yet, I can’t completely put it to bed. Even when I wasn’t writing for months, I couldn’t bring myself to put the “Closed” sign up in the way that many have done. Part of me knew that the urge would return at some point, even if not perhaps with the zeal of days gone by. Sometimes when I’m listening to the news, or just going about my humdrum, day-to-day existence, something will cause my ire to ignite. I’ll be seething, as I was earlier this week when I heard that the Ministry of Justice has passed its own arrogant judgement on Sion Jenkins. And when I get like that, something has to give. I need an outlet. Blogging’s good for the soul at times like that. And writing’s the only vaguely artistic thing I’ve ever been able to do.

So there’s a conundrum for me in all of this. I love writing, and a part of me still wants to produce stuff that people will want to read. I can’t let it consume my life, or even a part of it. But I don’t think I want to stop either. So while I’m away, ~~I’ll write home every day, And I’ll send all my loving to you~~ I’m going to give some serious thought to Womble On Tour, and decide upon its future.

The Biter Is Bitten

2010-08-11T17:22:00.004+01:00

There is a vaguely satisfying feeling to be had when the State breaks its own inane rules and consequently bans something that it has, itself, produced; but the news that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has once again been throwing its weight around is not a cause for universal celebration.

I’ve blogged about these people before. Let me put this mildly. I really am not very keen on them. They are, in short, an unelected, unaccountable QUANGO with too much power for anybody’s good.

Synopsis: The Association of Chief Police Officers has commissioned a radio advert encouraging people to snoop on their next-door neighbours and report pretty much anything and everything to the Police lest it be a sign that they’re engaged in terrorism. Does the slightly withdrawn person at the end of your road keep their curtains drawn and generally pay for things in cash ? If so, you need to report it sharpish, because it might mean he’s a terrorist. No, really, it might.

Horrendous advert, you might say. A colossal waste of public money, you might say. Encourages people to spy on their fellow-citizens and potentially provokes a petty, tell-tale society, you might say. Could lead to thousands of innocent people falling under suspicion just because they forgot to say “Good morning” to someone, you might say. Will probably just get used as a lever by the Police for more funding as they have to open scores of new contact centres to deal with all the calls from assorted busy-bodies who’ve got nothing better to do than to report some poor unfortunate soul to the authorities for forgetting their Chip & PIN number, you might say. A shocking indictment on how we law-abiding citizens are seen today by those to whom we pay huge sums supposedly to keep us safe, you might say. Probably counter productive in any case, you might say. And you’d be right, on each and every count. But that is no reason for banning the ad.

So, why has it been banned ? Well, it’s because when it was broadcast on TalkSport, it generated a grand total of: (cue the dramatic drum roll that normally precedes the revelation of a really big number) 18 complaints. From people who had been offended, of course. And so the much-loved ASA stepped heroically in and saved the country from risk of further offence.

Personally, I’m of the opinion that just as individuals and companies should have the right to speak their mind, so should the State. And if the State wants to annoy (or even, heaven help us, offend) a load of right-thinking people whilst trying to disseminate a ridiculous and purile message, that’s up to them. Obviously they should get completely slammed by the Audit Commission for spending our money in that way and whichever sick, uniformed, jack-booted Nazi who dreamed the idea up in the first place should get sacked, but banning free speech is a serious measure and whatever the ASA thinks about likely offence should have nothing to do with it.

So, yes, it’s a stupid advert. Yes, it’s good in one way that we don’t have to listen to it, if nothing else because it demonstrates the utter contempt with which the Police view us as individuals; for that reason alone it never deserved to see the light of day. And yes, it’s amusing that one tentacle of the State has been stopped in its tracks courtesy of the massive extension of power granted to another tentacle by successive governments. But that is no reason to extol the banning of this advert by the ASA. Common decency and plain common sense decree that this ad should never have been made. The fact that it’ll wind a few people up does not.

Underneath it all, this story sends (actually re-enforces, because it’s happened so many times before) the message that nobody can broadcast any advert considered even vaguely controversial any more just in case some dipstick somewhere comes over all offended by it. And that is fundamentally wrong.

When An Acquittal Still Means Guilty

2010-08-10T21:40:00.006+01:00

I might be unusual or even alone in this, but I find the decision not to award compensation to Sion Jenkins distinctly disturbing.

Jenkins, it will be recalled, was convicted of murdering his foster daughter Billie-Jo in 1997. In was a chilling and brutal case and Jenkins was widely reviled. Two appeals later, in 2004, his conviction was quashed when the appeal judge ruled that specks of blood on Jenkins' jacket, previously seen as highly incriminating, might have had an innocent explanation. At each of the two subsequent retrials the jury was unable to reach a verdict, and on 9 February 2006 Sion Jenkins was formally acquitted of the murder of his foster daughter.

Jenkins spent six years in prison. His marriage was destroyed, his life turned upside down, and he's been denied access to his natural daughters, who now live on the other side of the world. Whatever else you think about the case, you cannot deny that the man has paid a penalty.

There is, in English law, an overriding, all-encompassing principle; that an individual is innocent unless proven guilty. There is no burden of prove whatsoever on the accused to establish his innocence. Rather the entire burden lies with the State, to prove guilt. There is no equivalent of the Scottish verdict "Not proven", and nor should there be in my view. That means that in law, Jenkins is innocent of murder, following his acquittal in 2004. But it seems that the Ministry of Justice can unilaterally take a different view.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman is quoted as saying "For the purposes of paying compensation, the applicant must be shown to be 'clearly innocent'." That's an outrageous view. It pays no regard to the rights of a man who, as things stand, has been found to have been as innocent of this appalling crime as anybody else on the planet, and who has therefore been wrongly incarcerated. It seems that for the Justice Ministry, there are not two but three possible outcomes from a criminal trial; guilty, not guilty and not innocent. These are not the freedoms our forefathers fought and died for.

However much in might stick in the throats of some people, Sion Jenkins deserves redress, and the State should pay it.

Blanc Checks The Arrogance

2010-07-24T09:42:00.004+01:00

I'm getting worried. First I side with the Scots, now I'm backing the French.

France's new football coach Laurent Blanc has suspended the entire French World Cup squad for one game; what an inspired decision.

We should do that here. Admittedly the French team's displays of petulance and even incompetence exceeded anything the English managed, but someone needs to show our spoiled, cossetted, over-hyped, under-performing bunch of Casanovas that the nation is displeased.

In fact you can ban most of them for life as far as I'm concerned.

Leave Our Murderers Alone

2010-07-23T22:22:00.004+01:00

I've never liked Jack Straw or Kenny MacAskill, and I don't generally defend the Scottish government. But when it comes to the current row about their non-attendance at the Americans' Senate inquiry, I'm right behind them.

Let's be clear about something, shall we ? We (or even the Scots) are not answerable to them. Personally I hated the decision to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, and I suspected at the time it was in part a politically-motivated stunt designed to wind up the Americans, in which it was spectacularly successful. But what the Scots, or for that matter the English, do with their convicted murderers is up to people on this side of the Atlantic, not that side.

The Americans clearly have it in for BP at the moment, and you can sort of understand why. But Senate hearings are themselves opportunities for political showcasing in which the participants look to score points, win votes and generally serve their own ends. Exactly as Obama has been behaving throughout the oil spill, in fact. BP is the Americans' Public Enemy Number One, so any chance to put them in the dock is gleefully accepted.

I can't believe for one moment that the Scottish government would have released al-Megrahi to serve the interests of a plc, but if there's any investigating to be done, it's for the Scots (or possibly the British) to do, not the Americans. Anyone who gets summoned to some poxy Senate committee should cheerfully tell it to get lost.

ConCensus Reached - Let's Bin It

2010-07-10T11:41:00.013+01:00

Tremendous news from the Telegraph this morning that the government is planning to axe the Census. This colossal (and colossally expensive) exercise in State-sponsored snooping has long been a bug-bear among libertarians, so to have a government prepared to do away with it is really quite refreshing.

Francis Maude, doubtless with one eye on cost but also with one, I hope, on lowering the level of the State's intrusion into our lives, quite rightly says that any useful information gleaned from the Census is already in the government's possession in a myriad of other forms, and only has to be pulled together: "There is a load of data out there in loads of different places”, he says, and he ain't kidding. It would be better still if Mr Maude had said "and actually we don't care how many gay Afghan-born Buddhist undertakers there are in Littlehampton anyway" but I suppose that's just too much to hope for.

I can't help worrying that there may be some Data Protection-related legal challenges coming down the line if government agencies start passing personal data from one to the other but in many ways I hope there aren't. Abolition of the Census seems to me to be a common-sense solution to a long-standing problem, namely that successive governments have wasted millions of pounds asking thoroughly banal and stupid questions which they already knew the answer to or, more likely, didn't need to know the answer to in the first place.

A government-employed
busybody yesterday

It would also be nice to think that the government might have been driven to this by a growing reluctance among the public to tow the line and fill the forms in; in 2001 around 3 million people refused to play ball and another 400,000 extracted the Michael out of the "religion" question by informing the State that they belonged to the Jedi faith.

I have to say there's one thing that does disappoint, which is that they're still going to go ahead with the 2011 tree-killing extravaganza. This is, apparently, because it's "too late" to stop it. This is simply beyond my comprehension. How can it ever be "too late" to stop God knows how many thousand government-employed micro managing oiks taking their unhealthy interest in our private affairs a mite too far ?

Knocking the Census on the head will come as a blow to a few, not least of all the various genealogists and history anoraks who caused the website publishing the results from the 1911 Census to crash last year, but they're just going to have to live with it I'm afraid. And as for the QC / constitutional barrister who's crying and bleating about it on the basis that a population count had been carried out by the monarch or government for almost 1,000 years, he's peddling a bloody silly argument. Monarchs and governments have also been locking innocent people up for 1,000 years - it doesn't make it right.

So, hats off to the Coalition on this one - good call.

What To Do About The Census ?

2010-07-06T08:08:00.010+01:00

I just caught the end of a story on the radio last night about the 2011 Census.

I must have been asleep when the list of questions was first published back in the autumn. Apparently this "questionnaire" runs to 32 pages, asks about your religion (only God knows what that's got to do with the government) your nationality, whether you're in a same-sex relationship, how your house is heated and, get this, the "address, the first name, last name, sex, date of birth, connection to the household or accommodation and usual address or country of usual residence if outside the UK" of every overnight visitor on census night on 27 March 2011.

The Conservatives, having (when in Opposition) talked a good game about the Census being too big and in need of being scaled back are now (in Government) muttering meekly about the expense having already been committed and it being too late to stop the juggernaut.

Which appears to leave us with a few decisions of our own to take. I'm really not sure if I can bring myself to claim to be a Jedi but there must be some pretty decent other potential answers out there.

I can't quite work out why there isn't more noise on the blogosphere about this; perhaps the talk of mass civil disobedience is still to come.

Incidentally, in these days when the government is supposed to be scaling back its Internet presence in order to cut costs, it's good to see, that more than half of the top 20 returns to a Google search for "Census 2011" reveals links to various (and different) government propaganda sites or web pages, including this one, excruciatingly named "My Census", which has the brass front to proclaim "This is your chance to make a difference." Give me strength.

UPDATE: Just found out that there are 54 bloody questions in this Census.
Dizzy's on the case.

Battle Is Joined

2010-07-05T20:06:00.006+01:00

So, the game's afoot. Nick Clegg today launched perhaps the most fascinating political battle of modern times when announcing the referendum on AV.

It's interesting because it's rare for a government to call for a referendum on a change that it doesn't actually agree with. They'll normally only give us a vote on anything if it's something they want and if they think they've got a decent chance of winning. Yet most members of the government do not want AV, and will campaign against it, and we'll have the spectacle of members of the same Cabinet openly taking opposite sides of the argument.

The Womble doesn't want AV either, and would campaign against it if he could be arsed. There is no perfect voting system, but first-past-the-post delivers strong government more often than not and seems preferable to all the alternatives as far as I can see. Whilst this coalition is working so far, it probably won't last and in any proportional system there is always the danger of simply lurching from one failed coalition to the next, with the centre party holding a level of power that their electoral support simply does not justify. In addition to which - and this is important - the comedy value to be had from Clegg being defeated on this would be immense. Just the prospect of seeing the look on his face in the wake of a crushing defeat surely renders any serious constitutional debate on this redundant. The British public should apply a "sense of humour" factor and reject AV just for the sheer fun of it.

There seems to be a bit of a set-to going on about the date for the referendum; the most persuasive argumnent in favour of 7th May is that it annoys the Welsh, and that swings it for me.

That aside, we have the the proposal to reduce the number of MPs to 600 and equalise the number of voters in each constituency. This is a good thing, and will rain on a few socialist parades. Labour benefits greatly from having many of its strongholds in constituencies with relatively few voters so serve them bleeding well right if they lose a few MPs on the back of that being put right. Ditto the Scots; the average number of voters per Scottish seat is far lower than that in England.

And then there's this dissolution of Parliament business. You're going to have to excuse me here, because I must be being thick. As I understand it, when this idea was first announced, there was a row because Clegg wanted to raise the percentage of MPs needed to vote for a dissolution from 50, where it's been since the dawn of time, to 55. That meant that more than half of our elected MPs could vote for a disillusionment, but not actually get one. I'm pretty sure about this bit, and that there was a row, because I joined in. And now, somehow, it's supposed to be better, because the new proposal requires 66% of MPs to vote for dissolution. It must be because I'm just a simple voter and I don't read the Guardian, but I just cannot see for the life of me how this is any better.

Still, I suppose that's why Nick Clegg's running the country and I'm stuck watching people trying to mend computers.

The Right To Hurl Mindless Abuse

2010-07-04T20:36:00.005+01:00

Here is a sign of how far political correctness and the abandonment of free speech has taken us.

As a southerner, it took me while to get the hang of rugby league when I moved to Yorkshire. At first I thought it was some kind of formation mugging. I did get to like it though, and I particularly grew to enjoy the banter of the supporters; coarse and ribald it might have been from time-to-time, but it was generally good-natured and less tribal than what you'd hear on the football terraces. It was, it seemed, a bastion of uninhibited and unpoliced joshing.

Not any more. Castleford have been fined £40,000 because a small group of their supporters threw "homophobic chants" at an openly gay opponent. £40,000's quite a lot of money in rugby; the game is not awash with millions as football is. Thus this will hurt Castleford. But it's not the fine itself that fills me with the most anger or fear. It's the fact that the club is somehow supposed to prevent it. According to Castleford:

"The DVD confirms that this was three faint, short bursts of chanting each of five seconds duration, over a period of four minutes. Two of the chants were drowned out by PA announcements and the third stopped very shortly after commencing as there was no support for it."

OK, so this means that club is supposed to have so many stewards stationed round its ground that it can identify, pretty much immediately, any short chant, song or shout that may offend our lords and masters. Finding where a chant comes from is not easy in a crowd. Preventing a repeat might be even harder, requiring stewarding of sufficent numbers to deal with the supposed perbetrators.

What we've therefore come to is an expectation that private companies such as rugby clubs are expected to do the State's dirty work for it by rooting out behaviour that it (the State) objects to but that few others give a monkey's about. The expense involved, not to mention the restrictions placed on the rights of the fans to vent their frustrations, speaks volumes for the extent to which the State now rules over ever aspect of our lives. You can't go to a rugby game and call someone a poof ?

It really is time the people hit back.

Womble On Tour....On Tour

2010-05-28T22:06:00.002+01:00

The womble family is going away for a few days. Blogging will be even lighter than usual.

Here's to sun, sea and...whatever else I'm supposed to enjoy on holiday at my age.

I Will....Enjoy My Lunchtimes

2010-05-26T19:50:00.005+01:00

Sometimes at lunchtimes I pop into the nearest bookies for a few minutes. I hardly ever bet, I just like watching the races and the punters; you see life in a betting shop. This exchange took place today.

Bloke 1: Trap 3, in this next race. Trap 3's gonna win.
Bloke 2: Yeah ?

Bloke 1: Trap 3, yeah. Trap3.

Bloke 2: Right. Trap 3. Right. OK.

Bloke 2 fills in betting slip, and heads for counter.

Race comes on. It's a computer animiated one. Trap 3 starts slowly, continues slowly, finishes even more slowly. Possibly makes fifth place.

Bloke 2: [Accusational tone] Well what bloody good was that ?

Bloke 1: Eh ?

Bloke 2: "Trap 3", you said. Came bloody nowhere.

Bloke 1: I didn't mean that race. Not that race. I never bet on them computer ones. Newcastle, I meant. Next race at Newcastle.

Bloke 2: What ?

Bloke 1: Trap 3. Newcastle. Next race.

Bloke 2 [Theatrically throws his away his spent betting slip, missing the bin my some margin]

F*** it. I thought you meant that computer race. Right. Newcastle. Trap 3. Newcastle.

Bloke 2 fills in betting slip, and heads for counter. Race comes on. Trap 3 gets a flyer and runs on like Mick the Miller.

Bloke 2: Bloody hell...Trap 3....trap 3.

Trap 3 crosses the line two lengths clear of the rest.

Bloke 1: [Triumphantly] Told you ! Trap 3 ! Trap 3 !

Bloke 2: Trap 3. Too late...I was too late getting to the counter. They didn't let me bet.

Ooooh, Dave Must Be Worried About This Lot

2010-05-22T18:19:00.007+01:00

The Socialist Workers were out in numbers (about three) in the town centre this morning, bellyaching about "the cuts" (I can't say I've noticed any cuts yet, but perhaps it's just me).

I normally give these guys a wide berth because there's always the risk of getting into an argument with them (I had a steaming row with one of them in Halifax once when they were saying that the BNP should be banned from standing in elections. Mrs Womble on Tour was most embarrassed). But I couldn't help smiling today when I saw one of their sweet little posters.

I loved the idea that they're so disorganised they'd forgotten to write "ORGANISE NOW", and had to add it in later.

Bless them. They're trying to convince us they can run run a huge national campaign to derail government policy, when actually they can't even write a poster.

Cheerio

2010-05-17T22:03:00.005+01:00

As I said the last time I took satisfaction at someone losing their job, I don't normally take satisfaction from people losing their job. But where the Scottish Stalinist is concerned, I'm quite happy to make another exception. This cheered me up.

NB It is etiquette in the blogosphere to credit other sites when you use their stuff. Now I have to confess, I saw this somewhere this morning, and cannot for the life of my remember where. So if it's your blog, I'm really really sorry. Tell me, and I'll post a link. Promise.

Thoughts On Coalition Government

2010-05-13T21:34:00.006+01:00

It's been a busy old week in politics and things have moved a great deal faster than this blog has. Ideas for various articles have been overtaken by events so in the end I've written nothing. I was so slow I couldn't even write much in the days it took them to form a government. So instead I thought I'd bring together some of the thoughts I've been having throughout the week in a summary.

1) Government paralysis - don't knock it, it's a great idea. If they're not doing anything then they're not legislating against us.

2) Clegg talking to Labour and the subsequent furore - I don't get it. Coalition politics is all about trying to assess what the best and most likely partnership is. Pretty it isn't, and it's one of the reasons I was dreading a hung parliament with Clegg's lot holding the balance of power. It was always going to be horrible. What he hell did everything expect, given where we were ? Personally I'd have been amazed if Clegg hadn't spoken to Brown to see if they could do a deal. In a way I admire those elements of the Labour party who told him to sling his hook.

3) The Cameron-Clegg love-in - OK, I've moved a bit on this now. I still hate it, I hate the Lib Dems, I don't trust 'em further than I could throw them and it all sticks in the throat. Big time. But if there's a better option out there, given the parliamentary arithmetic, I haven 't seen it. Cameron could have gone it alone in a minority government, but what would he have achieved ? Nothing, probably. I admire him for at least trying to make the best of a bad job, even if the bad job is partly of his own making in that he failed to win an election which was there for the taking. I wish him luck; God knows he's going to need it.

4) How long do you give it ? Well I don't it five years, that is for certain. I can see the Lib Dems walking not long after the going gets really tough. All this "doing what's in the national interest" stuff is moonshine. They're acting in their own self-interest because they've been desperate to get their people round the Cabinet table for the last 70 years. But the moment serving in the Cabinet stops being in their interest, they'll be out of there sooner than you can say "You're on your own, Dave".

5) Political reform - I hate it. The AV+ proposal, which I initially saw as the biggest sell-out of the lot, now strikes me, relatively speaking, as one of the milder ones. At least they'll be a referendum on that and the Tories will be able campaign against it. But fixed-term parliaments and a directly elected House of Lords ? Give me strength. The fixed-term government proposal is a naked attempt at self-preservation, designed to protect the Conservatives when the Lib Dems do a runner. It's underpinned by a proposal that a motion calling for the dissolution of Parliament has to be supported by 55% of voting MPs rather than 50% + 1, as now. In other words, more than half our MPs can vote for an election to be called, and yet that vote can be ignored. That strikes at the very core of our Parliamentary democracy and it stinks. And as for reform of the House of Lords; well, isn't there enough to do as it is ? The Lords is one of the enigmas of our constitution. No one can quite explain how it works, it ought not to work, but it does. As a revising chamber it has few equals in the world. I lost count of the number of times, over the last 13 years, when we owed it a debt of gratitude for reining in the worst of the Stalinist tendencies of New Labour. And that's not down to any political bias, either; the House of Lords gave Mrs Thatcher plenty of trouble during her time, just as it should have done. I haven't quite worked out what a directly-elected (by PR) second chamber is going to give us yet, but an improvement is not high on my list of possibilities.

6) Cabinet make-up. Clegg as deputy PM I suppose we're going to have to live with. At one point Iain Dale was predicting David Davies was going to be the new Home Secretary, which would have been tremendous. That role cries out now for a truly liberal mind, and I don't think Theresa May cuts the mustard in that regard. Keeping Vince Cable out of 11 Downing Street was a wise move, the appointments of Hague and and Fox were no-brainers. One footnote: Iain Duncan-Smith; that man worries me.

Meanwhile....

2010-05-11T21:30:00.004+01:00

...one of the many outrageous legacies of 13 years of socialism is played out by the British legal system.

Garry Mann, arrested, tried and convicted within 48 hours of being found by Portuguese police in the vicinity of a riot by fans during the Euro 2004 football tournament, has had his extradition set.

The courts got this right the first time. Initially deported following a trial in which he was denied proper access to a lawyer and could not understand fully the proceedings, Mann won the first legal round when a British court ruled that he had been denied a fair trial.

Then in 2009 Mann was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant, alleging he was wanted in Portugal to serve a 2 year prison sentence - a sentence he'd been told five years previously by Portuguese authorities he wouldn't have to serve. Earlier this year the High Court decided it had no choice but to grant the extradition request. However, Lord Justice Moses stated in its judgment that he could not “leave this application without remarking upon the inability of this court to rectify what appears to be a serious injustice to Mr Mann”.

At the root of this is another example of legislation supposedly introduced to fight terrorism being used by draconian authorities to mop up relative small fry without the tiresome need to follow what most of us would consider due legal process. Mark my words: Garry Mann will not be the last thoroughly undeserved victim of Europe's fast- track extradition system.

Thank God That's Over

2010-05-11T20:02:00.004+01:00

There may be trouble ahead,
But while there's moonlight, and music
And love and romance,
Let's face the music and dance.

Before the fiddlers have fled,
Before they ask us to pay the bill,
And while we still have that chance,
Let’s face the music and dance.

Nice speech, I have to say.

Well, That's Something At Least

2010-05-10T18:30:00.006+01:00

You arrive, as Hugo Drax might have put it, at a capricious moment: the 2010 General Election's one undisputed contribution to western civilisation; the removal of Gordon Brown.

Praise be and Halleluiah !

Keeping Schtum....Just

2010-05-10T13:03:00.003+01:00

I try not to talk about politics at work. A few workmates know about this blog and a few others know of my allegiences from a time - many years ago - when I was less discreet. Nowadays though, I keep quiet when the conversation turns to current affairs, which, over the past few weeks, has been quite frequently. But I nearly cracked today.

Somehow the conversation turned to the Winter of Discontent, and one wet-behind-the ears twenty-something touchingly asked what it was.

"Oh", said a lady a few desks away who is old enough to know better. "That was when Maggie Thatcher took on the miners who went on strike over pit closures". How I didn't say "Wrong, the Winter of Discontent was the one where you couldn't travel by train, buy any bread or bury your dead, and was the natural product of 15 years of socialism" I don't quite know. Somehow, I managed to keep quiet.

One of these days, I'm going to kick off. Big time.

+++ Cameron Statement at 2.30 this afternoon +++

2010-05-07T11:14:00.003+01:00

....Posted by the Womble, pretending to be Guido

Permission To Swear....

2010-05-07T10:36:00.004+01:00

...very loudly, and very often.

The country has bottled it and Nick bloody Clegg is now in a position of huge influence, on the back of 23% of the vote. The pressure for reform of the voting system is going to be massive, and if we get PR you can say goodbye forever to the idea of radical right-wing governments that sweep back the frontiers of the State. Things look grim.

To make matters worse, my pet-Labour hates did pretty well.
Emily "stuff the Electoral Commission" Thornberry - won, with an increased majority
David "my tweets have been tampered with" Wright - won, despite a 6 per cent swing
Jacqui "second homes and dodgy videos" Smith - lost, and looked closed to tears. Good.
Dawn "Barak Obama loves me, you know" Butler - just lost in Brent Central. Serves her bleedin' well right.
Kerry "Twit" McCarthy - won, despite a 4.5 per cent swing

Oh, and Balls won and all. What a duff night.

And I didn't even get drunk.

Wishes For Tonight

2010-05-06T21:07:00.006+01:00

The (half-price, from Morrisons) Champagne is in the fridge, along with a few British beers. The whisky is on stand-by in case things get really rough. Either way, the Womble is getting drunk tonight. For one of two very good reasons:

if Gordon Brown loses, I'm getting drunk to celebrate;

if he wins, I'm getting drunk while it's still legal.

But there are a few specific results which could improve the night immensely. Over the years of Labour rule I've been building, mainly in my head, a list of Labour hate-figures, whom I would dearly like to see get trounced tonight. I've blogged about a few of them in the past, but for the avoidance of doubt, here they are.

Emily Thornberry - Islington South and Finsbury, majority 484; she who altered an official Electoral Commission press release and used Commons stationery for her own political ends.

Jacqui Smith - Redditich, majority 1948, who simply ripped the Michael out of us on expenses and tried to tear the heart out of liberties and freedoms.

Dawn Butler - Brent Central, new seat, who pretended to have a personal endorsement from Barak Obama.

David Wright - Telford, majority 5406, who slated the Conservatives as "scum-sucking pigs" on his Twitter page and then lied to cover up the evidence.

Kerry McCarthy - Bristol East, majority 8,621, recently described by Iain Dale as possibly the thickest person in Parliament, who boasted about the possibility of publishing an illegally obtained list of members of the BNP and who twittered the outcome of postal votes in a clear breach of electoral law.

In the context of a few of the other things that happened with expenses and the extent to which ZaNu Labour have destroyed our country you might argue that this is pretty small beer, and in some ways you'd be right. But this little lot are symtomatic of a corrupt, out-of-touch, arrogant group of Labour MPs who abuse the system because they believe they're better than us. May they all get completely stuffed, and may I get completely hammered for the right reasons.

Divorce !

2010-05-05T21:02:00.004+01:00

I’ve always been a bit cynical about opinion polls but there’s one which has really leapt out at me today. These are its results:

Conservative 17% Labour 37% Lib Dem 22% SNP 21%.

In case you hadn’t already guessed, this is a YouGov survey in Scotland.

It means that for all the progress they have made south of the border, the Conservatives in Scotland would be just over one percentage point up on their showing in 2005.

No one really seems to know what will happen tomorrow. My own gut feeling is that most of the polls are slightly understating the Conservative position, and that Cameron might just sneak an overall majority. Labour are in second place, I think, and the Lib Dems a close third. No science behind this, and it might turn out to be complete rubbish. Part of it, I accept, isn’t based on hard-nosed political analysis, more an emotional anguish (denial ?) about Nick Clegg holding the balance of power, and the orgasmic raptures that would send the BBC into.

Whatever the weather, it is clear that Cameron, who is likely to be the next Prime Minister, is still hugely unpopular in Scotland. Can we really have a situation in which someone rules over one of our countries in which he gets less than one in five of the popular vote ? In mitigation I do know that in 2005 the Conservatives won the most votes in England and yet we still ended up with a Labour (and Scottish) Prime Minister; that the distribution of votes to seats is substantially weighted in Scotland’s favour; and that the Edinburgh Parliament accounts for much of Scotland’s legislation anyway. But that aside, we risk ending up here with something that is just about untenable.

In my eyes every passing day strengthens the argument for a break-up of the United Kingdom. The English have been royally screwed by the Blair-Brown-Cunningham-Dewer-Cook-Darling Raj over the past 13 years but that of itself is no endorsement of an England-centric (virtually England-exclusive) government to do the same back to the Scots. As nations, we are growing wider and wider apart. The Scots have always had a greater faith in a strong State and more centralised control than we have, and these poll results suggest that just at a time when Cameron is at last trying to put forward the argument for a return to individual sovereignty, the Scots endorse yet more of what we’ve been subjected to all these years. The Scottish Parliament emphasises the differences, an English one would just paper over the deepening cracks.

The relationship has been generally been like a stormy marriage. At times, for instance during the first half of the last century when (in a rare show of unity) we saw two World Wars through together, it was a strong and invaluable partnership; two countries united in a common cause. But those days are long gone. That is not to say that we would not once again fight alongside one another if the time came. There is, in the well-worn phrase, more that binds us together than holds us apart. But in terms of nationhood, it is time that went our separate ways. Permanent separation. Leading to divorce. Never to marry again, thanks very much.

Ideally, Scotland would take Northern Ireland with them at the same time. It is, after all, in no small part, a Scottish problem which the English have, in their ignorance, been trying to manage for the last 400 years. When the west-of Scotland Protestants proclaim their support for "the Union", it is that between Scotland and Ulster that they care about most. Let us leave them to it.

And we’ll throw Wales in too. For free.

At Last !

2010-05-02T19:31:00.006+01:00

I haven't been inspired during the election campaign. I care about the outcome, mainly because the idea of another five years of Gordon Brown fills me with nothing short of despair. But no one has grabbed me and instilled enthusiasm in me.

If there was a Libertarian Party candidate in my area, I'd vote for them. I do think they're a bit wacky, and I haven't quite reconciled myself to the abolition of gun control or even the decriminisalisation of all drugs. But I believe the country needs a wholesale reversal of the assualt on liberty that 13 years of scoailism has inflicted upon us. And until now, I haven't seen anyone else who really "gets it". Until now, perhaps ?

But this story did get hold of me. Any party which launches an attack on the "Big Brother State" will do for me. I simply love the idea of a "Great Repeal Bill", in which the worst excesses of ZaNu Labour's nanny, intrusive, "thou shalt not", DNA-retaining, free-speech hating, ever-spying Stasi are rolled back in one go. No ID cards, no HIPs, more limited power of entry of the State into your house. What a truly fantastic thing. If it happens.

Cameron has, at times, touched on civil liberties and just suggested, from time-to-time, that he hates what Labour have done in government and is genuinley concerned by the extenstions in State power at the expense of the individual. But never, as far as I'm aware, has he articulated something as concrete as a single Act of Parliament as a means of starting the fightback.

The best thing about this is that it really should survive a hung parliament. The Liberals, if they are as good as their word (yeah, OK, point taken) really should back it to the hilt. It ought to be the easiest single bill for Cameron to push through. And that being the case, Dave shouldn't stop at HIPs and ID cards. He should carry on, and deal too with imprisonment without trial, restrictions on free speech, the outrageous smoking bans, the rise of the Food Police, the need to carry out CRB checks on all and sundry, child curfews, the increased likelihood of arrest if you take a photograph in the street, the right to run round town in one's underpants, the exponential rise in the number of CCTV cameras, attacks on peple trying to practice Christianity, right through to the practice of teachers to impound our children's Mars Bars.

That should be enough for him to be going on with.

No Token Gesture

2010-04-28T07:51:00.007+01:00

This story caught my eye yesterday: footballer investigated by the police because he allegedly made a gesture to the crowd. And it left me thinking: have the police (and presumably, potentially the courts, the Probations Service and God knows who else) really not got better things to do ?

Since when, in any case, was it illegal to give someone a V-sign (or equivilent) ? Have we really reached the state in this country when you can't even make a gesture without landing yourself in trouble with the authorities ? Don't get me wrong, I'm not condoning what the guy's alleged to have done and if his club or the FA want to discipline him that's fine by me. Need to make sure our players (many of whom need taking down a few pegs anyway) set the right example to kids etc.. But the police ? Seriously ?

Perhaps the time has come to re-write the entire statute book. Instead of listing everything that's illegal, just write down the things we're still allowed to do without the State interfering. Shouldn't take long.

This Phrase Is Driving Me Nuts

2010-04-24T20:30:00.003+01:00

There’s one thing in particular during this General Election campaign that’s driving me up the wall. It’s not Dave’s inability to grab victory from the jaws of, err….victory. It’s not the new fascination with Nick Clegg, grating and highly dangerous though that is. It’s not even the lack of a candidate in my constituency who appears to understand that our freedoms and liberties are being driven away at breakneck speed and that need to be defended for all they are worth. No, what’s really boiling my urine, as our Humble Devil used to say, is one, simple phrase….

“Taking £ 6 billion out of the economy”.

Every time Dave mentions the Tory policy not to increase National Insurance (and that’s what we’re talking about, don’t forget…no one’s arguing about a tax cut) the Scottish Stalinist or one of his obnoxious henchmen come up with this utterly preposterous argument that Dave is advacating….

“Taking £ 6 billion out of the economy”.

Pardon ? The first time I head it I nearly crashed the car (no change there, then).

My God. Does it not say everything about the arrogance of a socialist government that they seriously believe, and have the brass neck to argue, that if you prevent a tax increase, that is it to say, if you prevent money moving from individuals and companies to the State, you are thereby “taking money out of the economy”.

How does that work, exactly ? How, in God’s name, can you be taking money out of the economy if you leave it in people’s pockets and companies’ bank accounts ? It’s there, ready to be spent, indeed being spent, by people on everyday necessities or the occasional luxury, or by companies taking on staff or investing in the future. How more in the economy could it possibly be ?

Labour think that money is only in the economy if the government spends it. Only government spending counts. And only government spending can get us out of the mess we’re in.

Wrong. On every count. The private sector creates jobs and wealth far more efficiently and cheaply than the government could ever dream of. More government spending just means more government debt. And it’s government spending and debt that got us into this almighty hole in the first place. This Labour government has done what every previous Labour government has done: they have run out of our money.

The Scottish Stalinist used this infernal, ridiculous phrase again in this week’s TV debate, and will doubtless use it again next week. Will someone please tell Dave to point out that he is talking total, absolute, 100 per cent twaddle.

Culture of Waste

2010-04-23T12:05:00.002+01:00

OK, I’ve started again now. Dangerous thing, ranting. It’s habit-forming.

This had me swearing at the radio this morning. Birmingham City Council organising a “day of culture” in support of its bid to become the UK’s first City of Culture, whatever that means and however it might differ from European Cities of Culture such as (snigger) Liverpool and (guffaw) Glasgow. And culture means just about anything, it seems. If you’re in Birmingham and you visit an art gallery, the Council are dying to hear from you. If you do a bit of dancing, do tell the Council. If you cook a meal or go out on your skateboard, the Council want to hear about it. No really, they do.

But if you forget to tell them, don’t worry, they’ll find out. From another page on this specially commissioned, taxpayer-funded website: “Throughout the 24 hours there will be roving reporters, out and about, visiting events across the city to report back live on the website on what the city is getting up to. Armed with video cameras they will capture Birmingham enjoying culture in its many forms!”. God Almighty.

And the Conservatives are getting slammed for wanting to save money ?

Birmingham City Council, it will be recalled, was recently the focus of protests and demonstrations when they announced that they need to make 2,000 job cuts over the next year. Birmingham City Council, the organisation that brought us “Winterval”. Birmingham City Council, which has overspent its budget to the tune of £75m. I wonder how they did that, then ?

All this is being fronted by some publicly-funded Council-offshoot called Birmingham Cultural Partnership. They claim to be working to: “Get more local people involved in culture (including arts, libraries, music, dance museums and galleries)”

Well, don’t. Work to educate your kids, keep your streets clean, help the homeless and mend the potholes. Leave the rest to the people. And save them a fortune in the process.

My Ire Is Rising

2010-04-22T13:28:00.004+01:00

My blood’s temperature is rising. My God, is it ever.

I haven’t blogged for ages and ages because I felt all angered out. Utterly dire though the situation that this country funds itself in might be, I thought I’d run out of things to feel completely hacked off about. I thought I couldn’t possibly, under any circumstances, get any more incensed than I already am.

And then Nick Clegg turned up.

Nick bloody Clegg, so-called leader of the most pompous, cynical, self-righteous, wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing and blatantly hypocritical political party on Earth, rises from the gutter like the new Tony Blair and suddenly Britain’s media luvvies are crawling all over each other to laud him as the Nation’s New Saviour. Which he isn’t. The BBC, who have been spinning desperately for a hung parliament all year, think all their Christmases have come at once. Which they might have.

I’m telling you now: if we end up with a hung parliament where Clegg’s Liberals hold the balance of power I am going to be very cross indeed. If David Cameron gets into bed with him and sells out everything that the Conservative party is supposed to stand for and so allows that slippery, scheming little piece of shit and his cohorts places at the Cabinet table, then I am going to be absolutely fucking livid.

And if instead Clegg and his obnoxious, holier-than-thou, we’re-whiter-than-white, narcissistic nannies do a deal with their spiritual Labour sole-mates and keep that thieving, incompetent, snarling Scottish Stalinist in Downing Street then I’m going to go off the scale.

Lib Dems atop the opinion polls ? The country is going absolutely, 100 per cent, stark raving mad. But not half as mad as I’m going to be if this ends up where I think it’s going.

You have been warned.

Becow Has A Job To Do. And It Starts Today.

2009-06-24T07:24:00.009+01:00

John Bercow was, as has been reported elsewhere, a firebrand member of the infamous Federation of Conservative Students (FCS) in the 1980s. I should know; I was there.

He was an interesting character in those days, and a leading light in the right-wing "Sound" faction of the FCS. He was articulate, passionate, well-read and obviously very intelligent (I remember him vigorously debating the meaning of Conservatism with Roger Sruton at a seminar on political philosophy at Smith Square). He was a good speaker, although somewhat animated, and the opposing "Wets" used to send him up by repeatedly pointing in the air, football-fan-style, whenever he was at the microphone. I can also vouch for Guido's assertion of his links with Loyalism; I distinctly recall him trying to teach me the words to "No Pope of Rome" on an overnight coach from Edinburgh to London.

Well, we were all young and idealistic then, and perhaps taken in by some we should have left alone. I don't begrudge him those pro-UDF, pro-Unita and pro-God-knows-what-else days - we're all entitled to go off on one in our twenties. He's certainly moved a long way politically since then, but the beauty of his appointment as speaker is that that doesn't matter. What matters now is his ability to get MPs in order.

The House of Commons is a desperate place. Not just in the sense of its shame over expenses, but also because it is so utterly out of touch and out of keeping with the Britain it is supposed to rule and lead. With its arcane practice and procedure, it is out-dated, outmoded and, thanks to the actions of successive governments and the EU, is fast becoming obsolete. It needs new leadership, and a change of direction. And from today, Bercow has a chance to stamp a new authority upon it.

Prime Minister's Questions is a weekly disgrace to our legislature. The shouting, the bawling and cat-calling, the attempts to drown out opposing points of view; these our not ways in which our governors or would-be governors should behave. Today Bercow can start transforming the event, should he want to. He has a fantastic opportunity to restore a little public respect in our Parliament. MPs who aren't called to speak can shut up until they are, those who make speeches instead of asking questions can do likewise, and Prime Ministers who don't answer the questions put to them can be brought to heel.

And he can put a stop to all that "right Honourable Gentleman" rubbish, too.

I wish John Bercow all the best. I don't much care about his history. What matters to me is what happens now. From today onwards.

Nice People Don't Ban Adverts

2009-06-11T17:12:00.006+01:00

There are many different types of censorship operating in this country. I've only just come to realise how many different tools are at the disposal of our rulers, and how many they use on a day-to-day basis.

For starters there’s the very obvious type of censorship, increasingly regularly used by the Government; quite simple, straightforward and in your face - the “Say-that-and-we’ll-lock-up”-type thing. Examples of this are specific laws against inciting mass murder and so on. This is Censorship By Decree.

Towards the other end of the scale there is censorship on the basis of social acceptability – the “Everyone-will-look-very-shocked-and-uncomfortable-and-say-‘Oooo-you-can’t-say-that’” form. Irish jokes probably fall into this category (although maybe you could be thrown into prison for telling one these days, who knows ?) This category of censorship usually originates from government or from the Establishment more generally, because they set the tone, but they don't actually impose it on us formally. Instead they seek – usually over a period of time - to create an atmosphere in which certain opinions are deemed "unacceptable". This, in which the Government try to get us to do their dirty work for them - is altogether a more subtle form of censorship than the type that ends up in criminal convictions; I’d call this Censorship By Indoctrination.

Somewhere on the middle is something I’m going to call Censorship by Quango; it’s an ever-expanding method to silence people who, in the eyes or our rulers, are off-message, and to my mind it’s the most insidious form of censorship of the lot. It's harder to pin on the Government, and may peopel don't even realise it happens. A pressure group (the Guardian calls it a "charity" but frankly that's bollocks) called Release has just fallen victim to it.

Release put an advert on London buses, bearing the slogan "Nice People Take Drugs". The aim was to point out over a third of adults in England have used illicit drugs, and to generate some debate about the fact that the law is not working. Release believes that there has to be some liberalisation of drugs laws if drug usage is going to be managed. A completely legimimate point of view...or so you might think.

Well, you've guessed it, Release has been told that the adverts have to be taken down. The bus company has taken fright, because they fear controversy and a rap over the knuckles from the authorities. They suspect, and I bet they're right, that if the ads were not taken down, they would be banned anyway. In short they have saved the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) a job.

The bus company are even blaming themselves for the ads' appearance in the first place: "We should have run it past the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP)". CAP, for those who are unaware of its existence, is administered by the ASA. In other words, these ads were taken down before they were banned...by a quango.

We now live in an era where unelected quangos such as the Advertising Standards Authority have a phenomenal degree of power over the way companies and organisations communicate with people. I've complained before about their banning of an advert featuring women dressed as schoolgirls and another one plugging a film about shooting people. Make no mistake, these guys are powerful. Without many people realising it, bodies like the CAP and the ASA are vetting what we are allowed to see. When it comes to free speech, they are the Government's secret police force.

So, to all intents and purposes, overnight, and courtesy of an unelected, unaccountable group of government-funded administrators, it's illegal to state the bleeding obvious, namely that not all drug users are thugs and hooligans. Except I'm going to say it anyway. If this blog disappears in a few days' time, you'll know why:

NICE PEOPLE TAKE DRUGS

It's been nice knowing you.

A Day's Headlines Under ZaNu Labour

2009-06-10T07:34:00.007+01:00

On the way into work this morning I was struck by the following headlines:

NHS faces record budget shortfall (how can this possibly be, after all the bloody taxes we've had ripped from us to pay for increased spending on public services ?)

Metropolitian Police officers accused of water torture (important to say that these are as yet unproven allegations, but I was very conscious that I felt no real surprise when I heard this story)

London hit by tube strike (in the scheme of things it's a pinprick, but public sector strikes of this sort are always a graphic reminder of Labour's past glories)

Law Lords to rule on the practice, instigated by this government, of withholding supposedly incriminating criminal evidence from defendants on the grounds of "national security" (perhaps the most frightening of the lot - the State can basically have you locked up without allowing you to see the evidence against you)

Oh, and an MEP, elected under a system introduced by this government, is prevented from speaking outside Parliament because of a demonstration against him (some demonstrations are allowed in Parliament Square, it seems)

This is Britain today, under 12 years of socialist rule. God knows what it would be like after another five. Let's hope we never find out.

UPDATE: The Law Lords have just ruled that use of secret evidence in the granting of control orders is illegal. Thank God for the House of Lords; they've dug us out of more holes since 1997 then I care to recall.

Glenys Kinnock - Minister For Europe

2009-06-05T21:18:00.007+01:00

How incredibly apt that we should have an unelected, troughing bureaucrat in a ministry whose job it is to manage our relationship with a load of, err...unelected, troughing bureaucrats.

I can't work out whom it says more about - the EU or ZaNu Labour.

+++ Purnell Resigns And Calls For Brown To Go +++

2009-06-04T22:04:00.001+01:00

The edifice is crumbling. What a wonderful sight.

The Womble's No Show

2009-06-03T20:49:00.004+01:00

I've been doing a bit of agonising over who to vote for tomorrow.

I still consider myself a Conservative by instinct but I've long since come to the conclusion that when it comes down to rolling back the State's frontiers which have enveloped our very existence since 1997, they are not up to the job. Dave may slow the growth of State power, he will not reverse it.

I could never, under any circumstances, bring myself to vote Liberal, and Labour and the BNP (one and the same thing) are completely off limits. UKIP, especially in the context of European Elections, have appealed to me in the past but they just seem a bit wacky to me, and they lack discipline. Nigel Farage is an utterly inspiring leader, and the expenses-grabbing conduct of some of their MEPs suggests to me that they're no better than the rest.

If there were a Libertarian Party candidate, I'd vote for them, but they're not playing out tomorrow. That basically leaves the English Democrats. I like these guys, and I voted for them last time round. But they keep a low profile, they've put nothing through my door and the level of support for them last time was pretty pitiful.

In the end, the words my Dad so loved from a non-voting friend of his hold sway. This friend never voted for politicians because "voting only encourages them". Whether it's my age, cynicism or just the expenses thing, I've decided not to "encourage" anyone tomorrow. Let's face it, if there's anyone we shouldn't be humouring, it's the EU. I bet those tax-grabbing, money-squandering, self-interested federalists in Brussels would love a high turnout; it would feed their egos and help them to self-justify their existence.

So the Womble will "stay at home". But abstaining doesn't mean apathy. On Friday and Sunday I'll be hoping to see New Labour in carnage. And if I see it, boy, will I enjoy it !

Customer Surveys You Do Not Need - No 1

2009-06-03T16:50:00.005+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I took my father-in-law to Headingley Cricket Ground, supposedly to watch a One Day International between England and the West Indies. The weather forecast suggested a bit of early rain and then a fine day.

About an hour before play was due to start, it rained. A lot. When it stopped raining the mopping-up began and there was a lot of it to do; they were using those cart-things with absorbent rollers, and every time one of them went across the outfield it caused a mini-tsunami as the water sloshed ahead of it. Clearly much was being asked of the new drainage system, installed at a cost of £600,000.

Announcements as to what was actually happening were few and far between. But the fact that play hadn't been abandoned kept the crowd hanging on (and spending money in the bars).

We had an unpires' inspection at 2pm, and another one at 3. After the second inspection (by which time the sun was out) it was finally announced that there would be no play - the outfield was still too wet.

So, in sumnmary, we sat there for five hours, with nothing to entertain us and next to no news, before being sent home.

On the back of an experience like that, what you don't need is an email from Yorkshire County Cricket Club headed:

"How was your day at the cricket? We need your feedback."

Grrrrrrrrrrrr

Music To My Ears

2009-06-03T13:18:00.004+01:00

And another one bites the dust. Now Hazel Blears resigns.

If, as I do, you love this country, I guess on one level it's a pretty unedifying spectacle.

One the other hand....

Clegg says "Labour is finished".
Dave says "The Governement is collapsing before our eyes"

....some of us have been waiting 12 years for this.

General Election. Now. Please.

2009-06-01T20:30:00.009+01:00

Whilst on holiday I did a few things that I don't normally have time for (stop it !) such as reading the newspapers. And while playing with my son's balls on the beach (that should get Social Services round) I started thinking a bit more about this expenses malarkey. The results of my ruminations aren't exactly earth-shattering, but I thought I'd share them even so. A few things have become clear to me.

A huge number of MPs, perhaps even the majority, deliberately supplemented their salary by claiming for expenses that weren't necessarily incurred through the performance of their duties.
They were encouraged to do so by the Fees Office, and a culture which said "Get what you can".
This state of affairs was allowed to prevail because there was a consensus that MPs' salaries were not commensurate with their responsibilities - i.e. they believed that they were underpaid.
A surprisingly small number of MPs were alive to the danger that expense claims might be publicised under the FOI Act.
Given that release of data under the FOI was always a possibility, those who claimed what they now admit they should not have claimed showed a quite phenomenal lack of political nous.
It is utterly obvious now why so many MPs fought so hard against publication of expenses, and their fight for secrecy, now it has been lost, makes them look all the worse.
Those who claimed what they now admit they should not have claimed have thereby sacrificed any legitimate qualification to decide how taxpayers' money is spent. On anything.
It is just not credible for our leaders (and by that I mean the likes of Clegg & Dave as well as all of Brown's mob) to pretend that they didn't know what was going on, or that they weren't aware of the extent of it. MPs do talk to each other. It is simply not believable that the party leaders did not get wind of the sorts of behaviour that we all now know about.
The fact that, from each of the parties, we got a whole set of proposals hacked together after the story broke, and put together on the hoof, is itself a desperate indictment of our politicians. They appear incapable of any sort of proactive thinking.
For all the posturing, the supposed self-flagellation and acceptance of blame, no one has put together a really coherent plan to deal with the problem in future.

Collectively these guys have shown that they are not fit to govern us. They have shown a lack of openness and probity that demonstrates we should not trust them. They have shown a lack of judgement that demonstrates we should have no faith in them. They have demonstrated a lack of care in the use of taxpayers' money that demonstrates they are not fit to decree how it is spent.

In a way, what disappoints me the most is that so few of them are now prepared to stand up and defend the system that they benefited from; they quite obviously thought it was fine to claim expenses all over the place because the £64K basic salary wasn't deemed good enough for them. And yet of all those I've heard, only Nadine Dorries has actually had the guts to stand up and say so. I've got a bit of admiration for her because at least she's attempted to explain the prevailing mood among MPs. Other than that, they have actually failed to engage the public in proper debate. Their performance, start to finish, has been abysmal.

Only one thing can even begin to fix this now, and that's a General Election. When Dave called for one a couple of weeks ago I thought that it simply smacked of opportunism, and indeed it does. But there is a greater, more noble principle at play here now; the need to regain the people's trust. The public hold their rulers in complete contempt.

Those MPs who thing they've done no wring can stand up and defend themselves in the "Court of Public Opinion" which Harriet was so keen to talk about only a few short months ago, and find out what their constituents really think. Those that aren't can go and find something else to do. We, and only we, should judge who stays and who goes. And we should do it now.

I May Be Gone Some Time...

2009-05-22T20:43:00.003+01:00

The Womble feels the need to take in some sea air, and has booked a nice little place by the coast.

Oh to be able to claim it on one's Second Home Allowance !

How To Make An Idiot Of Yourself In < 140 Characters

2009-05-20T11:59:00.004+01:00

Via Guido and Tory Bear. This can't mean what everyone thinks it means, can it ?

Election in early autumn, anyone ?

Interestingly, Nick Brown now appears to have blocked his Twittter page, which can only add weight to the consensus that this message went far wider than it was meant to.

On the other hand, if you knew the election date and didn't want the world to know, would you tell Austin Mitchell ?

This Is Pants

2009-05-19T20:30:00.004+01:00

Have you ever felt the urge to run round Swanage in your underpants ? Well, if you ever do, don't tell the Police. Because if you do, you're likely to get a phone call.

Footballer loses a bet. Forfeit - parade in the local town looking stupid. Good for team spirit, drums up a bit of publicity for the club, gives a few people a harmless laugh; everyone's a winner. Unless or until, that is, your local Police Community Support Officer (them again) steps in.

PC Pretend Plod advised the club not to go ahead "...in case we have any complaints. Good natured events of this type have the potential of getting out of hand".

"Getting out of hand" ? A bloke running around in his underpants ? Are they having a laugh ? God Almighty.

I could go on about how utterly useless Police Community Support Officers are at preventing crime (which is why, presumably, their efforts are now seemingly turned to preventing non-crime). I could go on about how nice it would be if police resources were devoted to catching burglars, car thieves or corrupt MPs. But I won't. Instead I'll just lamant this one thing: an entirely lawful pursuit has effectively been declared illegal because it might "get out of hand".

I'd have loved it if Swanage Town and Herston's super-striker had taken these micro-managing morons on, and done the deed anyway. What would happen to anyone who dared to run round Swanage in their underpants ? Would they get arrested, and if so, what for ?

Anyone fancy putting it to the test ?

Hat-tip: Mr Eugenides

One Down, 645 To Go

2009-05-19T12:44:00.004+01:00

It looks as if Michael Martin has finally got the message; I wonder who gave it to him. Whilst there seems some doubt about the exact timing, he will stand down before the next General Election.

I can't say I'm sorry. I hate to see anyone lose their job but he lost any lingering respect I had in him (and I've been more patient than most) through his reaction to the expenses fiasco. He'd clearly lost the plot last week when he had a go at Kate Hoey, and his statement to the House yesterday was lamentable; no evidence of clear thinking about the way ahead, no roadmap, no obvious vision. He is not the man to lead the Commons out of this minefield.

Apparently his resignation means that there'll be a by-election in his Glasgow North East seat; if that's the case I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it being won by a "Clean up politics" independent candidate.

I've been wondering over recent days whether there shouldn't be a General Election anyway. You have to be careful not to over-react at times like this of media fever, but have not our MPs lost, in the public's eyes, their moral authority to govern us ? Is there not now such a generally held contempt for MPs that they should have to put the case before the electorate again, and let us make the call ?

What A Good Idea !

2009-05-13T08:28:00.007+01:00

I just wanted to wish this rather attractive young lady the very best of luck.

When the State starts pushing us around, we need innovative, imaginative people with a bit of mettle to take them on and test the true boundaries.

The concept of the local pub as a "Research Centre", together with its consequential circumnavigation of the scandalous smoking ban, is a simply wonderful thought. Many of us long for an excuse to pop down to our local. The idea that by having a drink and - for those who want one, a smoke - we might be contributing to the world's medical knowledge is simply delicious.

Sadly it looks as if Brown's henchmen are going to kick their jackboots into action and put a stop to it. The local council appear to be having a distinct sense-of-humour failure as do, doubtless for reasons of political expedience, the pub owners.

I cling on to the hope that Miss Fenton might actually have a case, but it looks unlikely. Almost inevitably, the Righteous will drop on her like a ton of Fascists, fine her to Kingdom Come and threaten her with closure, imprisonment and God knows what.

But it was a nice thought while it lasted, wasn't it ?

Here's Another Fine Mess They've Got Themselves Into

2009-05-12T21:54:00.006+01:00

It is, if anything, even uglier than we thought.

The spectacle of MPs trying to defend monstrous expenses designed to shore up their £60K salaries whilst the rest of the country worries about keeping their jobs will do lasting damage to the authority of Parliament.

With its influence already vastly diminished by the dictatorial nature of the government and the ever-expanding empire that is the European Union, Parliament has damaged itself further still over the past few days.

Actually, no, not over the last few days. Rather through years and years of complacent, smug, self-policing and help-yourself-serving payment of expenses. All that's happened over the past few days is that their greed has caught up with them.

Flipping, horse manure, tennis courts, cleaners, capital gains tax loopholes, second homes put out to let, third, fourth and fifth homes...the list is long; a lamentable icon of MPs' gluttony.

Let's be honest, we're seeing the worst cases here, and many MPs will have refused the array of opportunities set before them to take the almost unbelievably lax system for a ride. But the fact remains that scores, possibly hundreds of them have taken advantage of loose rules, a lack of accountability and the cloak of Parliamentary secrecy. No wonder they fought so hard to keep it all under wraps. They deserve the bile and contempt now being fired in towards them from all directions. And even those who did not claim unreasonably cannot fully escape censure. Who among MPs did not know that the system was completely rotten, and yet how many spoke up ?

Not that the Speaker helped yesterday. His barely coherent rants about those who had spoken to the Press and his ludicrous decision to bite Kate Hoey's head off was just about the last thing the House of Commons needed yesterday. I have defended him in the past, but not now. In a crisis he is utterly useless, and boy, is this a crisis.

I have to admit to being desperately disappointed with the Tories identified by the Telegraph today as having their feet and everything else in the trough. I'd expected it from Labour - they regularly show their contempt for the public purse. But I'd somehow hoped that those representing the Conservative Party might have a little more respect for taxpayers' money. Instead, they too, it seems, have been taking the piss out of all of us.

At least Dave has now - belatedly - shown a little honesty. Yes, we have been let down. Big time. Some might say that he's only being honest because the truth has been outed, and there might in turn be an element of truth in that. But he is putting his leadership on the line to try and bring his people into line, and for that he deserves credit.

Many in this country will be delighted to see their rulers squirm with embarrassment while what little esteem they are held in stoops as low as their ethics. I am not among them. I am one of those who thinks it important that Parliamentarians are held in a reasonable level of regard by voters. If not, we risk showing extremists that the door is ajar. As we may well see at the European elections in June. And while their authority sinks, so it gives people like Brown and those in power in Europe the chance to crack the whip like never before. Like 'em or hate 'em, MPs are best-placed to hold this dreadful government to account, and we need them.

So, where do we go from here ? The grotesque competition to find the most outrageous method of stuffing the taxpayer has now instead become a bizarre race among the Party leaders to be seen dealing with the problem. We may, in the short term, get a whole set of different rules, for different parties, policed separately and open to different interpretations. Not much better than what we have now.

I kind of can't get inspired by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which is the body that's been looking at this so far. They have allowed the current system to prevail, and have done nothing while this vast stew-pot of vested interests has been coming so spectacularly to the boil. The situation requires greater rigour than they seem capable of. The Audit Commission might be the best bet, but whoever it is and whatever they come up with, one thing is obvious for all to see: MPs cannot be trusted to police their own affairs.

Time to Get Nasty

2009-05-08T12:31:00.010+01:00

I see that Chelsea players Didier Drogba and Michael Ballack may be in hot water. I so, so hope

they are.

European football's governing body - Uefa - will meet next week to decide what (if any) sanction these two players should face following their outrageous protests to the referee during and after Wednesday night's game against Barcelona.

At some point the football authorities have to draw a red line through the ridiculous standard of behaviour among footballers and managers, and explain that protesting against officials' decisions is simply not acceptable.

It's so easy to do. You just say "Only one player on each side is permitted to talk to the referee during a game, and that's the captain. And if he questions a decision, he's off". It won't happen, of course. The authorities will continue to let things slide until we get scenes even uglier than those at Stamford Bridge. In the meantime, the millions of children who watch football are effectively taught that berating the referee is absolutely OK.

Personally I hope Uefa take a stand and throw the book at these spoilt brats: it's time to set an example.

In a separate development, I think my sat nav has bust. I keyed in "Chelsea" and it said: "Two mins from Rome".

Jacqui Smith's Hate List

2009-05-06T13:06:00.007+01:00

Any idea who this man is ?

He’s Michael Savage, an American talk-show presenter, or “shock-jock”, as they call them over there. Since October he’s been banned from entering the UK. Why ? Is he a terrorist ? A baby-killer ? A rapist, perhaps ? Well no, actually, not as far as we know. He’s been banned because he has strong views, and he expresses them.

He’s previously described the Quran as a "book of hate", and has said of children with autism that in most cases it's "a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out."

Just thought I’d let you know what he thinks, seeing as he can’t tell you himself.

So this is what Britain has now come to.

For four long years to 1945 Britain and America fought alongside each other in defence of freedom against the principles held by ruthless dictatorships intent on silencing millions. For decades since then, our two countries have time-and-again stood side-by-side when it comes to defending basic human rights. Let us, very briefly, compare our two nations’ approach to freedom in 2009.

Michael Savage is unquestionably controversial, and revels in so being. He routinely articulates views to which a minority would subscribe and which many would find distastful. In freedom-loving America, he is allowed to broadcast daily on national radio, to an audience of millions. In New Labour’s Britain, he is banned. What could possible better illustrate the effects of 12 years of socialism on the basic right of the individual to express a point of view ?

If Labour get re-elected then it really, really will not be long before Savage’s views and hundreds more are banned entirely in the UK, irrespective of whether or not the people who want to express them actually live here.

Savage has now described Jacqui Smith as a “lunatic” and says he’s going to sue her for defamation. Good on him. On both counts.

For her part, Smith loftily - and somewhat darkly - proclaims: "I think it's important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here”. Quite. The values we appear to have are these: if we disagree with what you say then you ain’t saying it here.

Our much-loved home Secretary yesterday issued a list of 16 people who are banned from entering the UK on the basis of the views they hold and express. Another six names are being kept secret “in the public interest”, whatever that means.

For a reason I don’t even begin to understand, Smith’s list doesn’t even include Geert Wilders MEP, whom she had detained at Heathrow earlier in the year. It makes you wonder how many other people she’s banned and isn’t telling us about.

For the sake of clarity, here is the complete list of people whom Smith is prepared to admit to having banned. Feel free to Google them to find out what they believe in…do it while you can.

Radio talk show host Michael Savage
American Baptist pastor Fred Waldron Phelps Snr
Phelps' daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper
Hamas MP Yunis Al-Astal
Jewish extremist Mike Guzovsky
Ex Klu Klux Klan grand wizared Stephen Donald Black
Neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe
Russian gang leader Artur Ryno
Russian gang leader Pavel Skachevsky
Preacher Wadgy Abd El Hamied Mohamed Ghoneim
Preacher Abdullah Qadri Al Ahdal
Preacher Safwat Hijazi
Preacher Amir Siddique
Muslim activist Abdul Ali Musa
Murderer and Hezbollah terrorist Samir Al Quntar
Kashmiri terror group leader Nasr Javed

Things That Make You Go..."Hurray !"

2009-04-29T07:44:00.004+01:00

A correspondent recently wrote to me saying this blog sounds like something Victor Meldrew might have been proud of, and I know what she meant.

So today I thought I'd post something positive, and what better than a spiritually uplifting tale from the London Marathon ?

Cue Rob, a throughly decent bloke whom I met through work last year, and his run in aid of the Well Child charity, as featured by the online Daily Telegraph here.

WellChild is a charity supporting the care sick children and their families in their own communities.

As the Womble's own running activities are constrained by yet another calf strain, the effort undergone by Rob and thousands like him is humbling. He's raised over £2,500 from his efforts on Sunday, to add to the sums he's raised in previous years.

It's not too late to sponsor Rob, and you can do so here.

Just When You Think Things Couldn't Get Any Worse...

2009-04-28T07:51:00.005+01:00

...it seems we're on the verge of a global pandemic.

Not to panic. We've been here before, with Bird Flu, SARS etc.. Nothing much came of them.

Rather than the somewhat melodramatic face-mask solution favoured by some, the Womble recommends instead the greatest medicinal breakthrough of all time....

The Womble swears by the anti-biotic capabilities of Scotch whisky, and has no hesitation in prescribing liberal quantities to all his readers.

The best thing to come out of Scotland. (With the possible exception of the M6).

Slowly But Surely, The English Awake

2009-04-23T20:55:00.008+01:00

The Womble's heart was gladdened to see so many St George's flags flying today. It seems that the English are finally waking up to the fact that they have a nationality of their own.

The pubs seemed to be keenest of all to fly the colours, doubtless driven in part by the need to generate a celebratory sentimement in these dark socialist days. One village in particular on the outskirts of Bradford made an especially decent effort, and it was good to see plenty of people joining in and celebrating the day. The Womble stopped on his way home to take some photos.

Let's enjoy such images while we can: before the pubs go bust and the flags get banned.

Compliments Of The Day

2009-04-23T07:37:00.008+01:00

Just a quickie to wish my readership a very happy and prosperous (hah!) St. George's Day.

May the day soon come when we govern ourselves.

Quelle Surprise ?

2009-04-22T22:03:00.006+01:00

There have been gasps of amazement and anguish on the back of the figures announced by Alistair Darling in today's Budget. I just don't understand why everyone's so surprised.

Surely everyone knew that we're absolutely broke ? Yes, the sum of £175bn will be ft repeated by the Opposition this summer as a reminder of Darling's Debt, but why is everyone so taken aback by the fact that we're in ruin ?

As sure as night follows day, it is blindingly obvious that:

Every Labour government increases debt
Every Labour government increases unemployment
Every Labour government increases taxes
And yet, every Labour government still runs out of money.

It is true that this budget is dreadful. We are fundamentally bust, and the government is doing nothing to help. Don't be fooled by assertions that public expenditure will be cut. Cutting spending is not something that socialist governments do. They try to look as if they're cutting it, but be assured that they'll carry on spending. "Efficiency savings" is code for "savings we don't actually intend to make".

Instead, they'll do what socialists always do at times like this; take it out on the better off. Fifty per cent tax rates (remember the 1997 Labour election poster "Income Tax rates will not rise" ?) and the abolition of personal allowances are just the start. Worse, much worse, will follow.

And when it does follow, we shouldn't be surprised.

What Alistair Darling Should Do

2009-04-22T07:26:00.003+01:00

1. Resign.

2. Go home.

Being Chancellor's simple, really.

At least, it is when you've presided over the country's entry into the deepest recession in modern times and exacerbated it by creating the biggest national debt in history.

Banned By The State X - Naked Gnomes

2009-04-21T09:43:00.004+01:00

This post is based on a story in The Sun, so the normal health warnings apply. I guess it might have been exaggerated, or conceivably might not be true. But it’s daft enough to be true, and in any case it gives me a chance to rant, and that’s good enough for me.

When I’m Prime Minister, I’m going to abolish Bromsgrove Council. Why ? I’ve got nothing against Bromsgrove – never been there. Are they hugely inefficient ? No idea. Do they charge exorbitant rates of Council Tax ? Not sure. Do they let their residents kills their kids, a la Haringey ? Probably not. I want to abolish Bromsgrove Council because they’ve just abolished naked garden gnomes, and in so doing they epitomise the nannying, snooping, micro-managing, voyeuristic, offence-obsessed, harmless-fun-hating Nazis who run our country these days. I’d dearly like to see the back of every one of them and Bromsgrove seems as good a place to start as any other.

If this blog had the readership to justify it, I think I’d run one of those Iain Dale-type competitions, where you’re invited to finish a sentence with some amusing – but apposite – ending.

The sentence I’d have in my competition would be “You know the State’s getting too big when….”, and my own entry would be, ”…Councils have got time to worry about naked gnomes in people’s gardens”.

Have you ever heard something as ridiculous as the State telling someone to dress a garden gnome ? Well, OK yes, you probably have heard of one or two things which are every bit as ridiculous…perhaps you even heard about some of them on this blog, including but not limited to: bans on feeding the ducks; preventing kids wearing football boots; outlawing bouncy castles; a ban on swimming in the rain and God knows what else (click on the "Banned By The State" label at the bottom to see the full series). But what better illustrates the lengths these people will go to interfere with our lives and to tell us what to do ? And what more powerfully demonstrates that the people who can now exercise such power over us use absolutely no common sense and fail completely to grasp the idea of free expression – the principle we used to call “live and let live” ?

“Live and let live”. Whatever happened to that ? Whatever happened to the idea that if someone wanted to do something which caused absolutely no harm whatsoever to anyone or anything, then they should be allowed to do it ? It died some time ago – probably during the lifetime of this government – and Bromsgrove Council have just cremated the corpse.

So, along with numerous other organisations and people, Bromsgrove Council is on the Womble Hit List. They’d better watch out.

When I see this kind of tyranny from a council I reveal the political make-up of its councillors, so that we can see who's doing this kind of thing to us. Bromsgrove: Conservative. Shame on them.

Now Even The BBC Has It In For Labour

2009-04-20T19:08:00.004+01:00

Those who say (and there are plenty of them, including me, at times) that the BBC panders to the government's agenda, and that they're scared stiff of New Labour, should listen to this clip from the Today programme this morning.

They play a recording from an interview with Ed Balls last week, when he was talking about Damian McBride. Balls said he didn't know and wasn't involved in McBride's "political work".

Without actually using the word "liar", Nick Robinson does all but. ("My eyebrows shot to the ceiling when I heard that" is pretty much as close as it gets). He says that Balls knew McBride very well, and used McBride to promote his own ends, and that No 10 knew and liked his style. And then Jim Naughtie said that Brown's claim that he "knows less about McBride's activities than anyone else in Westminster is not a very credible line". Which for the BBC is powerful stuff.

I Don't Say This Very Often...

2009-04-20T12:18:00.007+01:00

...but hats off to The Sun for giving controversial radio presenter Jon Gaunt a high-profile role.

Gaunt (he's the one on the left, by the way) was sacked by Talk Sport last November for labelling one of those obnoxious anti-smoking tyrants a "Nazi". He offered an apology pretty much on-the-spot, but the little Hitler he had a pop at wouldn't let it go, and Gaunt was dismissed.

TalkSport were roundly criticised at the time by those of us who care about free speech because we saw them as being utterly gutless, bowing as they were to the diktats of political correctness.

So good to see that the Sun has done something vaguely courageous and given him a job fronting their new online audio service.

Gaunt's first job is a tough assignment; to get David Cameron to say something exciting. I wish him the very best of luck.

Hat-tip: Iain Dale.

Green Cleared

2009-04-16T12:28:00.006+01:00

Damian Green MP will not face any charges. Thank God for that.

This means that, despite this Government's worst intentions, we still have a Judiciary which is sufficiently independent such that the Executive can't just push it around and tell it what to do. Much as Brown and his cohorts would love to ignore the law of the land and lock up whomever they like, we're not at the stage where they can. Yet.

Attention should now fall (but it probably won't) on the Civil Servants who tried to stitch up Green and his alleged mole Christopher Galley in the first place. These are the people who claimed that the leaks caused "considerable damage to national security". The leaks, in case you've forgotten, centred around:
....a warning to Jacqui Smith that illegal immigrants were being cleared to work in sensitive Whitehall security jobs (the leak was about the warning, not about the clearances, which were already public knowledge);
....a mail to home office minister Liam Byrne telling him about an illegal Brazilian immigrant who was supposedly working in Parliament using a fake ID;
....a letter from Jacqui Smith to Gordon "Sorry" Brown saying that the recession might lead to a rise in crime;
....a list of Labour MPs expected to rebel against the 42 days proposal.
Highly embarrassing, and damaging to the the government's credibility ? Yes, absolutely.
Threat to national security ? You're having a laugh.

The homes affairs committee, having looked into this, has today lambasted the claims the calims that national security was compromised, and says that the police were misled.

For me this goes to the very heart of all the issues around the politicisation of the Civil Service. In very significant areas now, they are not the servant of "the government". They are instead servants of the Labour Party. And despite the fact that Labour are in government, those are two very different things.

The Civil Servants at the centre of this have behaved appallingly. They should be held to account.

So THIS Is Why They Want To Criminalise Filming The Police

2009-04-15T21:12:00.001+01:00

Komsomol Comes To Britain

2009-04-14T22:35:00.006+01:00

I nearly missed this story from the weekend. It's another sign of New Labour's ardent belief in the standing and power of the State vis-a-vis the individual; that the State is everything, and the individual simply exists to serve it.

They want to introduce compulsory community service for anyone aged 19 or under. Compulsory community service. That is, enforced unpaid labour as directed by the State. Where I come from, that's called slavery.

Gordon Brown is quoted as saying: "It is my ambition to create a Britain in which there is a clear expectation that all young people will undertake some service to their community, and where community service will become a normal part of growing up in Britain."

"...a clear expectation that all young people will undertake some service to their community".

This from the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

If only Joseph Stalin were still alive today...he'd have been so proud.

You Go Away For A Few Days, And...

2009-04-14T13:45:00.003+01:00

My, my…it’s all kicked off on the blogosphere since I’ve been away, hasn’t it ?

In a way it’s quite pleasing that the highly tedious spat between Guido and Derek Draper has actually led to something semi-exciting at last; I don’t know about you but they were driving me to distraction before last Friday. Like a couple of playground kids, they were.

I’ve only been bringing myself up-to-speed with this over the past 24 hours or so (I was away over Easter, with little access to news). A HUGE amount has been written, and everyone’s been getting VERY emotional about it, so I’m not going to detain you long. But I thought I’d ask myself a few questions in a dispassionate way as possible.

The Womble’s general thoughts ?

The sad fact is that no one comes out of this with a lot of credit. Yes, it says a lot about New Labour and how they operate but it says a great deal about politics generally too. When it comes to mudslinging Draper, McBride, Fawkes and a few others besides have shown them to be as capable as each other. The only exception I’d make is Iain Dale, who has, throughout it all, kept a level of circumspection and dignity. As he said himself last week, he’s far too nice for this politics business.

The first thing you have to say is that it is quite disgraceful that taxpayers’ money should be spent paying people (I’m sure McBride isn’t the one who’s at it – he’s just the only one who’s been caught - so far) to engage in blatant party politics. It reveals an utter contempt for the public purse. To try and generate unfounded rumour / lies, and to kick a politician’s wife (whether she’s down or not) is one thing. To do it at our expense is just taking the Mickey.

Did Brown Know About The Emails ?

To me the idea that Brown knew exactly what McBride was up to is just laughable. I appreciate that when Nadine Dorries went on Five Live yesterday she might have been feeling a little fragile but she only just stopped short of saying that Brown sanctioned the whole thing. She’s completely lost the plot, I reckon. It might have been wiser for her to have avoided the media for a couple of days until she could get her head straight.

If you (sorry, we) pay someone to do something completely underhand on your behalf, you also pay them to make sure that you’re completely ignorant of what they’re doing. McBride, out of loyalty to Brown, will have made quite sure that Brown knew nothing of the details of what he was up to.

Who’s To Blame ?

Well, Damian McBride, obviously, for a start. I just cannot understand how the bloke lives with himself, abusing public finances in that way. But the fact is that he’s just the symptom. The cause is politicians’ (especially Labour’s) growing disregard for our money.

Whilst Brown may not have been directly involved in what McBride and Draper were up to, he, and Blair before him, have created the culture in which this kind of behaviour is commonplace. They have surrounded themselves with all sorts of political hacks funded by the taxpayer. So obsessed have they been about their own image, they have created an entire industry out of news management, and that industry is utterly out of control. It’s poetic justice when, once in a while, they themselves get bitten by the monster they have sired.

How much of this goes on ?

My guess is lots. And lots. Politics is a horrible, tough business. The Tories are carrying on as if they’ve never tried to dish the dirt on anyone. Yeah, right. They must think we’re barking mad. Labour have been caught this time….next time, who knows ?

What Of Derek Draper ?

I’m going to try and keep my promise not to swear, here….

Draper is a thoroughly nasty piece of work and clearly a complete idiot into the bargain. I can’t for the life of me work out why the Tory bloggers have been wasting so much disk space on him, or on his ludicrous creation Labour List. Right now they should shut up completely. There are calls for Draper to “go” from his self-appointed role as Labour Blogger-In-Chief. I’d have thought that getting rid of Draper was the last thing anyone who hates Labour wanted them to do; if he goes he might be replaced by someone who knows what they’re doing – someone who could actually make the Left a force on the internet.

There, managed it (just).

Will Anything Improve As A Result Of All This ?

I doubt it. Labour are so immersed in the sea of spin they don’t know there’s an alternative to it. Brown’s request to Gus O’Donnell to tighten up the role of Special Advisors (SPADs) is itself an exercise in news management; a desperate attempt to look as if he’s being decisive and doing something when in fact he couldn’t give a monkey’s what happens anyway. We saw the same behaviour from him last week over parliamentary expenses and I daresay we’ll see the same behaviour next week over something else. Whether you expect the Tories do be any better if and when they come to power depends on your point of view. Personally I won’t be holding my breath.

What Are The Lessons ?

1. Don’t expect politicians to police their own appointees.

2. Don’t expect politicians to behave like normal, level-headed people. Because they’re not, and they don’t.

3. Don’t talk to the media when you’re feely highly emotional about something (Nadine Dorries take note).

4. Don’t, when you're leading 2-1 in the dying minutes of a crucial game and you're standing on the very threshold of promotion, kick the ball out of play because you’ve got a player injured and expect the opposition to give you it you back. (Sorry, wandered off topic – yesterday was a bit emotional for me, too. Don't, on any account, mention "Bromley" to me. No, really....don't).

Serving Many Masters

2009-04-07T12:20:00.003+01:00

The Womble is currently running around like a fly with a blue bottom; working, spending time with the family and trying to keep in some sort of physical shape. Blogging in consequently on the light side.

Please keep checking back; I will be sharing infinite wisdom (!) again very soon.

What The G20 Should Do

2009-04-02T07:36:00.004+01:00

1) Renounce Protectionism outright and reiterate an unshakable commitment to Free Trade.

2) Agree to stop spending money they haven’t got.

3) Agree not to print any, either.

4) Go home.

Five minutes’ work.

I was struck by Daniel Hannan's recollection, earlier in the week, of Lord Salisbury's assessment of the crisis in Bulgaria in the 1880s: "If anything happens, it will be for the worse. It is therefore in our interest that as little should happen as possible."

More Insanity

2009-04-01T12:11:00.004+01:00

I can't work out whether this is a) an attempt at a humourous PR stunt; b) the result of a hack into the company's website by a disgruntled ex-employee or c) just an April Fool.

Government IT Produces Something Useful At Last

2009-04-01T08:38:00.004+01:00

Did you know that under the Freedom of Information Act you can gain access to speed camera offences registered within the last twelve months ?

Details of all such offences are placed on a freely accessible website.

And if you're worried that you might have been snapped recently (in the last couple of weeks) you can use this site to check for any nastu surprises you might be about to receive in the post....

Access the Live Online Vehicle Checking System here, and check your registration number.

We Rely On The Press To Police Our Masters

2009-03-30T12:45:00.002+01:00

If I file an expenses claim at work I expect it to be scrutinised – vigorously. I’m allowed to have a reasonable meal if I’m staying in a hotel, and I’m permitted the odd phone call. If I was away from home for weeks at a time I’d probably be allowed to watch a film in my room from time-to-time but my company would draw the line at porn. Perhaps at other firms it might be seen as permissible. The point is, though, I am policed.

For public sector organisations the scrutiny should be closer still. After all, shareholders have a right to withdraw their funds at any time. As taxpayers, we have no such privilege; we are coerced into funding the State’s activities whether we like it or not. Therefore the State has a duty to ensure that its money is spent properly and that abuse is rooted out. The latest headline-storm surrounding Jacqui Smith shows that this is not happening.

What is most galling about this latest scandal is not the behaviour of the Home Secretary’s husband, nor even the carefree attitude to spending of public money it demonstrates within the ruling class. It is that it takes a Sunday newspaper to find out about it. It’s bad enough that the rules on MPs’ expenses are as lax as they are – so lax that it actually be doubted whether or not Tony McNulty has broken them in claiming for having two homes in London – but when it takes the Sunday Express to get them enforced, you know things can’t go much lower. To be clear, had they not intervened, Jacqui Smith would not have been found out for claiming inappropriate expenses and her husband would still be getting his rocks off at our cost.

Politicians often complain about having their lives poured over by the media, but by going to huge lengths to surround themselves and their conduct with a “help yourself” expenses culture supposedly watched over by regulatory authorities which are, to all intents and purposes, toothless, they invite ridicule, contempt and external scrutiny in equal measure. They reap what they sow.

There is a somewhat delicious irony that the woman who is going to seemingly inordinate lengths to find out every little detail of our private lives should have her own dirty linen washed so publicly. I’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall when she confronted her husband, just as much as she seems to want to be a fly on the wall of every living room in Britain. For what it’s worth I don’t think she should have to resign over this, but at the same time she can have no complaints about Tory moles in the House of Commons fees office. She is only enduring the embarrassment she deserves.

By the way, much has been written in the last week, in the wake of the Daniel Hannan’s rise to fame via the Internet, about the advance of the new media at the expense of the “dead tree press”. It is true that the electronic age is catching up with traditional newspaper reporting in many ways. But, and it’s a big “but”, if you want investigative journalism done properly, “Fleet Street” is still your best bet. We owe the Sunday Express and their competitors a debt of gratitude; for devoting significant resources to finding ways in which our leaders are taking us for a ride, and for exposing our them when they do.

What A Waste Of Talent

2009-03-25T22:29:00.005Z

Can somebody PLEASE tell me what Daniel Hannan is doing in the European Parliament ? He is absolutely wasted there.

Over a quarter of a million people have now watched his calm, eloquent but ultimately devastating demolition of Gordon Brown's obsession with spending and debt. If you're not one of them, click on this...

This bloke should be in the Shadow Cabinet. Correction - he should be in government.

An Outbreak Of Sense At The BoE

2009-03-25T12:43:00.003Z

So Mr Mervyn King doesn’t want more stimulus; we can’t afford it. Praise be. We’ve finally got someone in the corridors of power who may not be absolutely wedded to the economic theory of Robert Mugabe.

We’ve been waiting a while, but Mr King has finally cottoned on. You really wouldn’t think it would take what has seemed like an eternity for the Governor of the Bank of England to realise that record government spending accompanied by record levels of debt is not exactly the ideal economic policy in the midst of a recession, but we are where we are. He’s with us now, in the Real World, and he’s very welcome. Whether he can bring those idiots Brown and Darling with him is a completely different matter.

The government is worried about deflation, and that’s why it’s taking the advice of the Zimbabwean School of Economics by printing money. But deflation is not the main danger, and getting the photocopier out is not any kind of answer. Whilst it’s true that sustained deflation would be deeply damaging, the greatest risk we face right now is the one we always face; inflation.

For each of the last three months the economic pundits have been predicting plummeting inflation figures (as opposed to gently failing, or even rising ones). And for each of the last three months they’ve been wrong. This time they were insisting that the CPI would be heading back towards the government’s target figure of 2%, and that the RPI (which includes mortgage costs) would go into the “meltdown” territory of negativity. Wrong again. True, the RPI hit zero, but the CPI – the government’s preferred measure - actually went up.

Recessions come and go but true enemy of long-term economic prosperity is, and always has been, inflation. It makes doing business harder, it makes us uncompetitive and it costs jobs. Most governments contribute to inflation in some way, and this one is abusing the privilege. Quite apart from increasing the money supply, which is always inflationary, the gargantuan levels of debt we’re facing causes huge downward pressure on the pound, making imports more expensive and thereby adding still more to inflation. Hence the CPI’s “surprise” hike yesterday. We’re about to enter a classic inflationary spiral, and God alone knows how long it will last. The seeds now being sown by the madmen at the economy’s helm will bear nothing but a truly rotten harvest of economic disaster for years, possibly decades to come.

Mervyn King at long last seems to be waking up. For the rousing of Mr Brown and Mr Bust to the realms of economic sanity, we may be waiting a while longer.

Another Act of Suppression

2009-03-24T21:44:00.007Z

Two stories came together today which demonstrate dramatically why one of them should make us profoundly concerned about the other.

In Sunderland, a coroner blamed "systematic failures" within the Royal Navy for the death of two young English sailors, killed when an oxygen generator exploded aboard HMS Tireless in March 2007.

A chemical oxygen 'candle' which they had just ignited had been so carelessly stored and mishandled during the previous months that it was contaminated with oil, effectively turning it into a powerful bomb which exploded on being lit. The inquest heard how a batch of almost 1,000 Self Contained Oxygen Generators (SCOGs) were taken out of a hazardous waste depot in Plymouth and returned to Royal Navy stocks a year before the accident. Paperwork was altered to classify them as safe to use.

The coroner condemned what he called a 'culture of complacency' within the Navy over the handling of SCOGs, which are used to generate oxygen on board submarines. In particular he criticised the MoD civil servant who made the decision to move hundreds of SCOGs out of the hazardous waste depot in order cut costs. Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth today offered his 'unreserved apologies' to the bereaved families for the 'avoidable failings, for which this department is responsible, which brought about this tragic incident.'

Meanwhile, the House of Commons was muling over its decision last night to allow inquests to be held in private and without a jury in "sensitive" circumstances, such as those where "national security" is at stake. A number of Labour MPs voted against the measure, and the government's majority was cut to 34.

Inquests into armed forces deaths are clearly a pain in the neck to the government, as are inquests into deaths which occur in prison or at the hands of the police. It simply defies belief that the government will not attempt to use this legislation at some point in order to sweep potentially damaging or embarrassing deaths under the carpet. This gives the State the ability to kill you and not even have a proper inquest. They can, essentially, mark their own homework. Or handywork.

Think just how much the government would have loved to have held the inquest of Jean Charles de Menezes in private, or the inquests into the deaths of Corporal Mark William Wright (where the coroner said that those responsible should "hang their heads in shame") or Fusilier Gordon Gentle, who died because he didn't have the right equipment. To name but three.

If we're responsible for someone's death we can expect to be held accountable. Does the same apply to the State ? Don't count on it; we may never know.

A Result To Cheer

2009-03-21T20:22:00.005Z

Not all sporting results went the Womble's way today, but this one certainly did.

Apparently though, the Scots are protesting about the result to the ruling body of the Six Nations.

They're saying that, under the Barnett Formula, they should have been subsidised to the tune of 58 points by England before the match started.

And Another Thing...

2009-03-19T07:44:00.005Z

The Met Office has issued a Severe Weather Warning* in the West Midlands and South West England. For Fog.

Listen, idiots. Fog does not constitute severe weather. By any measure. Severe weather means hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes, drought...that kind of thing. Fog is just....fog.

I know it makes me sound like a grumpy old git, but I really hate the Met Office and its severe weather warnings, seemingly issued whenever the sun goes in. Or comes out. Severe weather ? Here ? They should all go and live in Antarctica....then they'd know something about severe weather.

Incidentally, when you Google "Met Office", you get a link with the strapline "Weather and climate change". No political agenda there, then...

* Link will probably fail at some point because these pages change. Amazingly, there are some days when Britain has no severe weather.

Build Your Own Logo

2009-03-17T12:31:00.005Z

Guido has been having great fun with John Prescott's Tory Logo Site.

Here are a couple more ideas...

Banned By The State IX - Swimming In The Rain

2009-03-16T20:51:00.011Z

It's been a while since I ran a story in my "Banned By The State" series, but that doesn't mean to say that the State hasn't been banning things. Far from it. And following on from mince pies, bouncy castles and football boots comes a new scourge of the Health and Safety Gestapo - swimming in wet weather.

Swimmers at the London Fields Lido in Hackney have been stopped from entering the pool during showers of rain, for Health and Safety reasons.

So, what's the problem ? Slippery pool edges ? Risk of someone getting a chill ? Acid rain ? Oooo, no, far more serious than that. Apparently heavy rain can make it more difficult to see through the water, so the lifegaurds might miss the fact that somebody's drowning. Because the nasty pitta-patta rain drops distort the water. No, really they do. Stop laughing at the back.

Stop what you're doing...it's clouding over !

OK, I know this isn't what one does with Health and Safety issues, but let's just look at this rationally, shall we ? For a start the chances of someone getting into such a level of difficulty are tiny - we all know that. The obessession with having numerous lifegaurds on duty at swimming pools adds little value except to the Council Tax. And the chances of someone getting into trouble when it's raining are even smaller. But just to humour the Gestapo let's just assume it happens, once every five years or so. All you need is:

lifegaurds who can stay awake and watch the water a bit more closely;

worst case, a fellow swimmer comes to the striken citizen's need.

Rocket science ? Well yes, seemingly so for Hackney Council.

As I promised a couple of months ago, when I find council-imposed lunacy like this, I'll identify the party in charge, so that we all know who's responsible.

Hackney council: Labour. As red as a London bus, in fact.

The Womble Abstains - But Only Just

2009-03-15T17:49:00.011Z

I'm making a conscious effort not to swear too much on this blog. I started the blog as something which would allow me to engage in my love of writing, and I think the English language is rich enough such that if you're any good, you ought to be capable of avoiding expletives. But I have to tell you, the medical profession is pushing me to the limit this week.

First of all we had the outrageous concept of a Chocolate Tax. It came fron north of the border, of course - they worship the power of the State up there. The BMA conference to which it was put rejected it by just two votes, which will give sufficient encouragement for the Righteous to try again soon.

And hot on the heels of that attempt to fleece anyone seeking simple solace in these soleful times comes another piece of fascism, this time from the impressively overweight Sir Liam Donaldson, who says that the government should impose a minimum price for alcohol.

If you're old enough, you may recall as I do (just !) the disastrous prices policies of the 1970s, in which socialist governments (led by Heath, Wilson and Callaghan) demonstrated a firm belief that they knew better than the market, and inflicted price controls across large swathes of the British economy, causing inefficiency, market distortion and job losses. Well, this idiot wants us to start again.

If he has his way, you will have to pay at least 50 pence for every unit of alcohol you buy. This would mean your humble four-pack of Boddingtons rising from £2.99 to £3.40 and other products doubling in price. The deeply depressing thing about this government is that you can see them agreeing. As if Alistair Darling's wholesale attack on the pub trade is not enough, now the Righteous are setting their sights on everyone else. And all because some people drink too much.

God knows pretty much anything and everything is harmful if you have too much of it - including water; why not tax that too ? (Shhh, mustn't give them ideas).

Most people can use potentially harmful substances sensibly. It's wonderfully simple really; we balance pleasure with risk and make a simple choice. Some people even know that they're doing harm to themseves but carry on doing it - that's their decision. But not if the Righteous continue their march. The Righteous despise free choice, and they hate not being able to control us. They believe that if some of us choose to harm themselves then we should all suffer.

Of course, 50 pence per unit won't harm Liam Donaldson one jot - not on his salary. And you can bet your willy that the House of Lords won't be affected.

Well Worth A Round Of Applause

2009-03-13T10:59:00.004Z

Let's put to one side the slightly bizarre decision to invite Chris Evans to the Grand Opening. What Claire Robertson is doing in Dorchester should serve as an inspiration to many.

She was one of the thousands of people who lost their job when Woolworths went under. But rather than sitting on her bum for the duration of the recession, she's re-opened the shop premises in which she worked for 18 years under the name Wellworths (nickname: Wellies) and is selling locally-produced toys and crafts. In so doing she's handed 20 former Woolworths employees a job.

And the very best of British luck to you, Claire !

Hat-tip: Sepoy Agent

Jason McCartney Responds

2009-03-12T19:28:00.007Z

Last week I penned (keyboarded ?) an open letter to my local prospective Conservative Party candidate about the destruction of our liberties by ZaNu Labour.

I look to the Conservatives for a coherent, planned and co-ordinated set of measures to restore habeas corpus and the right to trial by jury, protect free speech, prevent us being watched at every turn and basically ensure we are treated as if we lived in something other than a Communist dictatorship. I find it deeply depressing that no such vision appears to exist within Camp Dave, but I thought I'd write to the bloke who could be my next MP to see what he thinks.

Earlier this week I had a reply. What follows is a slightly abridged version of what he wrote. Initially I was going to leave the first paragraph out but then decided to include it because it was a nice touch and showed that he'd taken the trouble to visit the blog.

Gosh, where do I start. Firstly thanks for getting in touch but I do have to ask, politely of course, where have you been the past few years? Maybe following AFC Wimbledon's glorious charge up the non league pyramid - the Blue Square Premier beckons. Your boys have been getting some great crowds. I remember the old Dons winning 4-0 in an FA Cup tie at Huddersfield in the late 1990s, I think Efan Ekoku scored a couple. I guess we may well be united in hoping Huddersfield Town take all 3 points at the MK Dons tomorrow night?

Back to the last couple of years. I'll make an early party political point but one which I'm very proud of. It's been the Conservatives under successive Shadow Home Secretaries (Davis, Grieve and now Grayling) who have stood up for liberty and freedom for law abiding citizens.

We fought tooth and nail against Gordon Brown's draconian extension of 42 days detention which was more about trying to make the opposition appear to be soft on terrorism rather than tackling it effectively.

We've been opposing the most intrusive and potentially costly ID card system in the world. You and I will end up being fined for losing our cards or leaving them at home whilst the organised criminals and terrorists forge and steal false identities. Would you trust this government with your AFC Wimbledon membership number let alone your DNA or biometric data?

We welcome CCTV in strategically placed crime hot spots but not to the extent that there's now a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens in the UK. I studied Orwell's 1984 for O level back in 1984 and Big Brother is well and truly watching now and not the Channel 4 variety.

We have been opposing proposals for council paid snoopers to spy on our lifestyles, the rubbish in our wheelie bins and which school catchment area we're in. We have been gobsmacked by a governing party that lays out the red carpet for the premier of China allowing foreign security thugs to stifle lawful protest on our streets.

We have spoken up for freedom of speech whilst Labour strongmen throw out pensioners who dare to voice concerns at their party conference whilst the likes of Abu Hamza are left to incite violence and hatred.

Much of this occupies precious police time at a time when some crime, not all before Jacqui gets on the phone from her main home wherever that may be, is going up. Year on year in January, robberies involving knives or sharp instruments increased by 18%, domestic burglaries rose 4% and police-recorded drug offences increased by 9%. That's before we even talk about the 70 young people murdered violently on our streets last year.

Many surveys recently show that the number one issue for law abiding folk is the recession and it's consequences but our ability to prosper and enjoy what I hope will be a Conservative led recovery will only be viable if we have our individual freedoms.

I hope that answers some of your questions,

King regards,
Jason

So, what did I think ? Well firstly and most crucially we've since agreed that the 4-0 Wimbledon win simply didn't happen - he must be confusing us with somebody else.

I'm not sure it would be fair to describe it entirely as a typical politician's response; I think it's a little too human for that. But, and it's a big "but", there is a great deal of what I believe really hacks off the public about politicians in here; namely an attempt to rip the opposition apart and very little about what his own party would do. This is in part symptomatic of the politicians' tendency to think that the quickest route to a vote is a negative one but also, it seems to me, a sign of a wider malaise in the Conservative Party when it comes to fighting for our freedom.

It's easy to fight when you're in Opposition; you just stand up and say "We don't agree". It's when you're in government, when you've got to put what you believe in to practice, when BBC News interviews every State-employed, Nanny-loving do-gooder it can lay its hands on, and when you've actually got something to lose, that the real passion and drive is needed. That's when you're tested to the limit. Many fail at that point, and I worry that Dave will fail there too.

I challenged Jason McCartney to say what the Conservatives would do - how they would find and stay on the long and demanding road back to freedom ? But his reply lacks that vision. Reasonable, you might say, for someone who has never even been an MP ? Perhaps, but if the Conservatives cared anything like as much as we need them to care about restoring our liberties, I'd have expected them to furnish their candidates with some sort of plan, a roadmap, which they could use to reassure us. Something, anything, that says how they're planning to reverse these years of socialism.

He seems like a nice guy. I'm sure he'd try and help me out with a constituency problem. He may make a very good MP. But is he, and is his party, capable of delivering on what we need most; the greatest sustained period of personal liberation this country has ever seen ?

Sadly, I doubt it.

Freedom Of Speech Is A Two-Way Street

2009-03-11T20:18:00.005Z

I've been interested today to see some of the reaction to the protests at the army homecoming parade in Luton. It strikes me that there's a whiff of hypocrisy in the air.

The general feeling seems to be one of outrage. The local MP claims to be "a bit stunned" (why can't these people talk proper English ?) "that the police agreed to this kind of demonstration, with pre-prepared banners calling the Army ’baby-killers’ and the like". John Hutton (Defence Secretary) weighed in with "I can only condemn the tiny minority who used this opportunity to make, whatever their personal views, utterly ridiculous and insulting comments". Even Liam Fox (Hutton's shadow) described it as "offensive, appalling and disgraceful". Tim Montgomerie says the Police should not have allowed it to happen. Meanwhile The Sun (bless 'em) wants you to give them a call if you know any of the demonstrators. Nice.

Hang on a minute. We're told that the Army fights for freedom. We're told that they stand for British values of justice, and that we should be proud of them. They have, apparently, helped to bring democracy to Iraq, and kicked out a tyrant, an opponent of freedom.

Well look, people; freedom cuts both ways. Fine, have the army homecoming and let people who think they're heroes proclaim them as such. But if the army puts themselves in the shop window like that they can hardly complain (and nor can the politicians who seek to capitalise on the public support and sympathy they evoke) if approval is not universal. That's what freedom is about.

You might well ask about the rights of other groups, routinely suppressed, to hold counter-demonstrations when Muslims march or when the Anti-Nazi League are on parade. And in doing so you'd doubtless pose some valid questions. We all know that some groups are given far greater right of protest than others. But that's not the point at issue here. Should yesterday's counter-demonstration have been banned ? No.

"Offensive, appalling and disgraceful" ? Perhaps - to some. But no more so than the army parade was to others. Please, let's not fall into the trap of saying something should be banned just because we might find it offensive.

Low Cost Air Travel

2009-03-10T08:47:00.001Z

Where Zimbabwe leads...

2009-03-06T22:42:00.006Z

Three months ago an Opposition spokesman was arrested; although it might be a rare event in the UK, in Zimbabwe that's pretty much business as usual.

This week, the government has started printing money - business as usual in Zimbabwe.

Now, in Harare, Morgan Tsvangirai has been in injured in a mysterious car crash car crash, and his wife has been killed.

How long do you give Samantha Cameron ?

An Open Letter To A Conservative Candidate

2009-03-04T22:29:00.006Z

The following is the text of a letter I have sent to Jason McCartney, propsective Conservative candidate for the Colne Valley, where the Womble currently resides. I strongly suspect it's a waste of time because I think the Conservative Party is finished as a fighting-for-freedom force, but I enjoyed writing it and you never know.

I fully confess to having nicked the idea following correspondence with the excellent Dick Puddlecote.

Dear Jason

I wonder if you can help me. I am trying to work out where (if anywhere) to place my support at the next General Election. As a resident of Netherton, I am a Colne Valley constituent.

Let me set out my stall. One matter, and one only, transcends all others in my opinion. It is not the economy. It is not the National Health Service, education or, for that matter, this government’s ludicrous obsession with poking its nose into the affairs of other countries like Iraq or Afghanistan. It is the issue that describes our very existence; that of individual freedom.

The past eleven years have seen the most systematic and extensive advance of the power of the State this country has ever seen. We have witnessed the extension of imprisonment without trial - the government would love to have extended the allowable period to 42 days, and was only thwarted by the House of Lords; the fundamental right of trial by jury has been taken away in some cases, and such right will doubtless be further corroded should this government remain in office; we are faced with a government seemingly hell bent on implementing identity cards for every citizen and desperately fighting to retain the DNA details of entirely innocent people; restrictions on freedom of expression (witness the nurse suspended from her job for offering to pray for a patient and people being denied entry to the UK on the grounds of their beliefs) are being imposed at every opportunity; an Opposition spokesman arrested for speaking the truth; a stated desire to be able to track every mobile phone call, every email, every internet enquiry; dark threats to curb the increasingly troublesome blogosphere; growing restrictions on the right of individuals to take photographs in public places.

Since 1997 the balance between State and individual has changed fundamentally. We are being watched as never before: there are four million CCTV cameras in this country - one couple even suffered the indignity of having one installed in their own bedroom; ten people who walked up Whitehall in face masks were stopped by the Police; innocent children in rough areas are rounded up by the Police and sent home, or into the possession of Social Services. Meanwhile we are also being micro-managed as never before: quite apart from the seemingly relentless march of Health and Safety nonsense which threatens to denude us all of almost any personal responsibility whatsoever, State interference extends its tentacles almost daily, from Food Police in Herefordshire to councils who ban couples fostering children because the husband smacked a child once, the State is consistently imposing its nit-picking, draconian, authoritarian values on a nation that was once, but is no longer free.

At the local level the power of the Police is affecting innocent people in frightening ways. Only this week we read a story of a Huddersfield man whose garage was broken into – and inadequately repaired – by the Police, who, entirely in error, suspected him of growing cannabis, a conclusion they had reached because they had been monitoring the distribution of heat within his property from a Police helicopter. No apology was forthcoming, and he was forced to journey to the Police Station himself in order to do so much as to enforce a process of compensation to pay for the repair.

I consider myself, by nature, to be sympathetic to the Conservative cause. I am a staunch free-marketeer. I am a patriot (all be it one who believes that England should assert her sovereignty and free herself from the manacles of both the United Kingdom and the EU), I despise socialism and all it stands for. But now, of all times, I look to the Conservatives and I search for an appetite to dismantle the Statist structures that Blair and Brown have installed since 1997; and I do not see it.

To even begin reversing the juggernaut of the expansion of State power will take a super-human effort. Vested interests are everywhere. All manner of government departments benefit from the increasing power and influence of the State. The Police, local councils and Social Services groups can all boast increased staffing and budgets as a result of New Labour’s assault on freedom. The Health and Safety Executive, most solicitors and education services have recession-beating reasons to take on more staff. Anyone who tries to roll back the frontiers of the State has a colossal battle on their hands. It cannot be done in a day, a year or even a decade. But it can be started, by any government which has the will to do it and the belief that it must be done.

When, in the mid-seventies, Margaret Thatcher took control of the Conservative Party, she saw an economy in ruins through decades of increasing State intervention. For years before gaining office, she surrounded herself with those whom she trusted, plotting and planning what had to be done. Together they researched, debated and prepared Britain’s march from economic tyranny; perhaps the greatest Escape Committee in peacetime history. Now we look once more to the Conservatives to fight for our freedom. The question I find myself asking is: have they got what it takes ?

David Davies raised the standard in the wake of the government’s attempts to impose 42 days interment without trial upon the British people; few Conservatives rallied to his cause. I remain highly sceptical that the libertarian elements within his party have sufficient numbers, influence or stomach to win the gargantuan battle that lies ahead; but I would vote for someone who was, at least willing to try, not least of all because there is so little on offer by way of alternative.

So, on which side of the debate do you fall ? Do you share my concern that our basic freedoms are threatened as never before ? And, if you do, do you have the passion to fight for them with every ounce of energy ? Or, do you believe that there is, in fact little or nothing to worry about, or that the State is right in its endless advance ?

Yours sincerely,

xxxxx xxxxx

I'll post the reply on here (assuming I get one and he gives me permission to do so),

Goodwin Intentions

2009-03-01T13:30:00.012Z

I'm going to be very, very interested to see what the Government does about Fred Goodwin's pension.

They seem adamant that the pension cannot stand as it is. While the Womble was shouting himself hoarse encouraging his son's football team this morning, Harriet Harman (she of the divine looks 20 years ago) was busy doing some pontificating of her own on the Andrew Marr Show.

"Sir Fred Goodwin should not count on being £650,000 a year better off because it is not going to happen," Harman said. "It will not be accepted and the government will take action. This contract might be enforceable in a court of law, but it's not enforceable in the court of public opinion, and that's where the government steps in".

So, the contract through which Goodwin received this pension is entirely legal, it seems. Which suggests that taking any of the money off him would be illegal. But the government's going to do it anyway ? Or legislate in this one particular case ? That's to say they're either going to ignore the law or create a new one, just to turn Goodwin over ? Jumping Jesus.

Have you ever heard such priggish, righteous hubris in all your life ? Whatever we might feel about Goodwin taking £650K a year for doing nothing post his work at RBS, the facts are these:

His pension was agreed through fair and legitimate negotiation as part of his contract, either before or during is time at RBS;
Government ministers effectively sanctioned the pension as part of Goodwin's exit from RBS in the autumn.

The second point is absolutely crucial here. If' you get "asked to leave" a company, you negotiate, making damn sure that the conditions of your departure are as good for you as they can be, and you get them formally agreed and documented before you go. If you manage to get your bosses to agree to something that many would think outrageous, that's not your fault.

By all accounts, the minister at the centre of it all, Lord Myners, knew just what Goodwin's pension would amount to at the time. He now whinges that he hadn't known that the pension agreement in place for Goodwin was not contractually binding. Well, tough. Tough on him, and tough on us too, because we have to pay for his ignorance; but the government cannot now go back on their word and claw back money from Goodwin which they had agreed to give him.

We appear to be faced either with the government's lawyers finding some gift of a loophole in the Goodwin arrangements (unlikely), or the government legislating retrospectively to reverse what would otherise be a contractualy binding agreement. The second option really, really stinks, even by New Labour standards. It would mark a new low in their relationship with personal liberty were they to introduce a new law especially to deal with the ramifications from their own cock up.

Incidentally, on the subject of "rewards for failure", I bet Harriet isn't likely to renounce her own pension rights at the end of her lamentable career in the House of Commons; a pension to which taxpayers will have contributed roughly twice as much as the average private sector company contributes to their own employees' schemes.

Shut your noise, darlin' ! You might have aroused the Womble at around the time Mrs T was at the helm, but you're out of line on this one !

Sign Here, Please

2009-02-28T20:02:00.002Z

Downing Street petition proclaiming that Jerusalem should become the National Anhem of England.

Thy Circle Overhead, Analysing Our Heat Consumption

2009-02-27T12:26:00.008Z

Today I came across this story, which I think says a great deal about Britain today.

A bloke has his home raided by the Police because they've identified what they think are suspcious patterns of heat movement from within. How have they come to this conclusion ? By using infra-red deat detention equipment from a Police helicopter. This leads them to conclude that the occupant is harbouring a cannabis factory. As it would do, I suppose, if you've got an ultra-suspicious mind and nothing better to think about.

And you thought they were looking for murderers...

So Plod breaks into this man's garage. They find nothing more than a wood-burning stove, used to heat a workshop. In forcing entry they leave a big hole in the garage door, which they patch up with a bit of loose-fitting chipboard. They don't bother to clear up the mess they've made. They stick a search warrant through the letter box along with a bit of paper which said they hadn't taken anything as evidence. And that's it. No apology. No post-raid phone call to say why they'd broken into the home of an innocent man. Not even a compensation form so that the occupant could claim for the damage - he had to go to the Police Station to get that.

So, faced with rising levels of violent crime and conveying an almost total disregard for victims of muggings, or for people whose houses have been burgled or whose cars have been broken into, the Police have, it seems, got the time and the money to go up in a bloody helicopter and monitor our heat consumption. (For God's sake, is there any way in which they are not watching us ?) And having found something they think might indicate use of a drug which might as well be legalised anyway, they've then got the time and resources to break into a locked garage, just so that they can find...nothing. But having then been shown to be totally wrong, they are incapable of an apology or of any practical help to make good the damage they've caused.

I used to respect and admire the Police. I used to think they were on my side, as an innocent law-abiding person. But my support of them has been corroded in recent years by stories such as this, which betray an overuse of power, a lack of respect for the people they're supposed to be protecting and absolutely dire prioritisation. And I'm not alone.

Thinking Of The Camerons

2009-02-25T12:34:00.002Z

I cannot imagine what it must be like to lose a child. I hope to God I go before my kids do. My thoughts are with David and Samantha Cameron, and to their two other children.

I understand Gordon Brown has spoken very movingly in the Camerons' support. He's been through it too, of course.

Its puts things into perspective. Normal ranting temporarily suspended.

Information or Propaganda ?

2009-02-24T08:15:00.006Z

There's a fine line between genuine government information about what it's doing and blatant propaganda.

This web site, called "Real Help Now", was launched by Gordon Brown yesterday.

Prominently plugging Brown's call for a "new global deal" and the G20 "London Summit", publicising the Cabinet's meeting in Southamption, giving space to Jim Murphy's Press Release about another meeting in Glasgow and featuring at least one Gordon Brown video, this falls quite firmly the wrong side of that line for me. Short of calling it "Not Doing Nothing Now" Number 10 could scarcely have come up with something more partisan and self-serving.

What do you think ? Bear in mind you're paying for it !

Where's That Petrol Bomb ?

2009-02-23T21:38:00.003Z

OK, what were you doing on the morning of 21st February 2008 ?

Well, I don't know about you but I was ranting. Ranting about the latest EU cover-up on MEPs' expenses.

Lib Dem Chris Davies had been allowed to see the report of an EU internal auditor. To see it he had to be a member of the relevant committee, subject himself to a biometrics test, be locked in a room and sign a confidentiality agreement. The EU was desperate to keep the report under wraps. And one year on, we now know why.

The Taxpayers' Alliance (TA) has obtained a leaked copy of the report. It is, as Chris Davies publicly stated at the time, dynamite. Via Devil's Kitchen, here are some extracts from the TA's press release, giving highlights of the report's findings.

Serious and repeated anomalies in payments for office assistance and services, including money being paid to seemingly irrelevant firms (including a creche and a company engaged in "the trading of wood"), and to companies which on further investigation did not exist, were untraceable or had registered no financial activity in their accounts. Some MEPs were found to be paying out their full assistance allowances, but had no assistants accredited or registered with the Parliament.
A culture of huge "bonuses" being paid to staff members or handling firms at the end of the financial year, ranging from 3 times to 19 and a half times the employees' monthly salaries.
Loose rules which allow payments to be made without invoicing, and only require bills to be provided 12 months after payment. The audit found that less than 5% of audited accounts actually submitted the required documentation by that 12 month deadline.
Widespread failure to comply with tax, company and social security laws. 79% of transactions that should have been subject to VAT displayed no evidence of either VAT payment or exemption. 83% of the companies through which MEPs paid their allowances for office services failed in their legal obligation to register with the Belgian national company database.
Evidence of MEPs using their allowances and expenses to bankroll their political parties is also revealed.

Small wonder that at the time Chris Davies said "I think the allegations within this report from our own auditors should lead to the imprisonment of a number of MEPs”. By comparison this makes our own MP's look positively law-abiding, which many are but some are not. It betrays systemic, institutionalised corruption and total contempt for EU citizens.

Davies was right - if all this is true then people should be locked up.

What will happen instead, however, is a bit fat zero.

Who fancies taking to the streets ?

Tescos Thinks Balloons Are Dangerous

2009-02-22T21:33:00.011Z

The thing that angers Womble On Tour most about the spread of Health and Safety fascism is the extent to its obsession with restricting life's simple pleasures has caught on in the previously liberal-leaning private sector. The private sector used to stand apart from the State in its attitude to ridiculous safety measures. Not any more it seems.

After all, as pleasures go, you can't get much simpler than a balloon. Or more harmless, you'd have thought. That is, unless, you're in charge of security at Tescos in Poole.

If you're in charge of security at Tescos in Poole a balloon, filled with helium, is potentially a highly dangerous object. and you have to ban it. Because once let go, a helium balloon rises to the ceiling, and can interfere with the sprinker system.

You can't bring that in here, love.

Really ? You wouldn't have thought that a balloon could prevent water spurting out from a fire prevention system, would you ? Still, Tescos know best.

Not surprisingly, the idea that a balloon could become akin to a weapon of mass destruction was beyond the understanding of the nine-year-old child in charge of it. Still, she did, in a way, have the last word in a way that Tescos might at least comprehend. She took her pocket money elsewhere.

Womble On Tour does not normally shout. He thinks he should be able to vent his feelings through normal use of the Englaish language. Occasionally though, someone deserves the hair-dryer treatment, and Tescos in Poole are a fine example. So, here goes:

GET A GRIP, YOU MORONS !

Up Your Game, Shami

2009-02-20T20:36:00.007Z

I think I used to fancy Shami Chakrabarti at one point. But I'm going off her now.

For those who don't know, she is Director of Liberty, the pressure group which is supposed to protect civil liberties and promote human rights. As its leader, Chakrabarti should be leading the charge against this government's attempts to dismantle our rights to free speech.

Chakrabarti was interviewed on Radio 4's PM programme this evening, apropos of the Home Secretary's decisions to ban first Geert Wilders (Dutch MP) and then Fred Phelps and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper (anti-gay campaigners) from entry into the UK.

As I highlighted on this blog yesterday these cases speak volumes for the government's attitude towards our freedom. They are suppressing the message that these people want to bring to the UK because they do not want to hear it, and they don't think we should hear it either. It stinks. Personally I don't care if the government wants to put its fingers in its ears and shouting "Na-na-na-not-listening", but they have no business covering our ears too.

I was expecting Chakrabarti to stand up for the rights of people to express opinion, and for ours to hear it. But she stopped short.

On the plus side she talked about the "high principle" that "free speech is the lifeblood of the free world". But then she went onto to talk about the "practical realities" of public order problems that might arise if someone came here and said "hateful things". Police resourcing has to be considered. In other words, the mob can rule. She then went onto to talk about the counter-productive result of this kind of ban, in that through being banned they can gain more publicity than they'd have got if they'd been allowed in.

What a cop out. You're either in favour of free speech or you're not. Free speech is not a tactical nicety to be granted to someone just because they'll cause you more trouble if they're denied it. The danger of "elevating crackpots to martyrdom status" as she put it is no consideration.

You were right the first time, Shami. Free speech is a high principle, and one the government should protect. Whatever the cost.

God Almighty. If we can't even rely on groups like Liberty to defend our rights to freedom of expression. we are well and truly stuffed.

The Brown Curtain

2009-02-19T20:49:00.009Z

When I was a kid there was a thing called the Iron Curtain. It divided Europe in two, and it stood for dictatorship, suppression and the denial of basic freedoms.

Now a modern equivalent is coming into being. It too stands for suppression and for the elimination of the liberty we once assumed was ours by right but which, perhaps, we took too much for granted. It will stand for dictatorship too if the people responsible for its creation think they can get away with it.

A curtain denies people the ability to see through it. It hides things. People on the outside cannot see in and those on the inside cannot see what is happening on the outside.

The people who established the Iron Curtain were determined to silence those with whose views they did not agree. They did this in two ways. For those inside the curtain, the authorities imposed draconian laws; they controlled newspapers and TV, they banned demonstration of opposition and they instilled fear in those who felt like speaking out. To silence those on the outside, it was simple; they just didn't let them in.

As a young man I recall viewing Eastern Europe from afar (and, for one week never forgotten, from the inside) with disdain. I hated the enforced silence of opinion. I despised the authorities for their imposition of ruthless border controls. We would hear stories that so-and-so had been denied entry or detained, or that another radio station had been jammed. For the inhabitants of East Germany, the Soviet Union and all the rest, the receipt of freely-expressed opinion was, in the eyes of their rulers, a luxury they could not afford.

And so, from the isolated Eastern Europeans of the 20th century, we come to the increasingly-suppressed Britons of the 21st. It is, truly, as if another curtain were descending, this time surrounding the island that once stood, bravely but horribly alone, as the free world's one remaining opponent of German Fascism. I shall call it the Brown Curtain, after the man who seeks to wrap his country in a cloak of silent suppression.

The silence, you see, is being imposed upon us. We on the inside are being denied the access to free opinion expressed on outside. Last week it was Geert Wilders, a democratically elected European MP turned away from Britain's borders. Officially he posed a "threat to security". Translation: his visit would offend Muslims, and therefore could not be permitted.

And now, one week on, it's happened again. This time it's two anti-gay campaigners who have been banned. Fred Phelps and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper belong to the Westboro Baptist Church in the US. They were planning to visit the UK to protest against a performance of a youth play called The Laramie Project, which recounts the death of a gay university student who was killed in Wyoming in 1998.

You have to say that these two are pretty much off the "freedom radar" themselves. They have been known to picket the funerals of US soldiers killed in Afghanistan because they think their deaths are God's punishment for America's tolerance of gays. Just as Wilders does, these people are fighting for illiberalism and suppression. But as with Wilders, that isn't the point.

It is characteristic of a liberal democracy that it allows the expression of views that run counter to the principles it is supposed to uphold. The foundations of freedom are strong enough that words alone cannot shift them.

Not so in Britain. Here the government does not like such views, so it bans those who wish to express them. The UK Border Agency is quoted as saying of our would-be visitors from America: "Both these individuals have engaged in unacceptable behaviour by inciting hatred against a number of communities". "Unacceptable behaviour". "Inciting hatred". These are the words not of those who seek to protect our liberty. It is the language of dictatorship.

The Brown Curtain encircles us. Next, it will smother us. Unless we stop it.

Change Gear, Attack Govt, Apologise, Have Coffee, Attack Govt, Apologise....

2009-02-18T21:31:00.007Z

There seems to be a trend developing for people stating the bleedin' obvious and then apologising.

Jeremy Clarkson - he of "one-eyed Scottish idiot" fame - was the first to give it a go. Personally I thought is was a crying shame when Clarkson apologised for the "one-eyed" bit, although at least by doing so at least he pointedly let the "Scottish idiot" part stand. It did leave me wondering though, what the point of being an outspoken TV presenter is if you have to apologise whenever you're...err, outspoken.

Now the chairman of Starbucks has followed Clarkson's lead, and caused Lord Mandy of Hissy Fit to throw a major dander by saying that Britain's economy is "in a spiral". Howard Schultz was talking about the global downturn but committed the cardinal sin of saying that the UK was not actually best-placed to survive it.

"The place that concerns us the most is western Europe, and specifically the UK", Schultz is reported to have said, adding "I think consumer confidence, particularly in the UK, is very, very poor."

Toys out of the pram time for Mandy, who is said to have wailed as follows at a diplomatic (nbo, really) drinks party in the UK.

"Who the fuck is he? How the hell are they [Starbucks] doing?", and then, ominously "Why should I have that guy running down the country ?" Expect to see legislation before Parliament any now day making it illegal for business leaders to do anything other than sing "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands" when questioned about the UK economy.

Oooo, get her....

Disappointingly, it seems that Schultz has taken fright and apologised. A Starbucks spokesman said there had been no intention by the company to criticise the UK economy, according to the BBC's spinning machine.

Why ? Why does a business leader have to apologise for saying something that is so obviously and demonstrably true ? Why does a TV presenter see fit to apologise for being no more obnoxious than he usually is ?

What is it about ZaNu Labour that these guys are so scared of ?

Catch A Load Of This Nonsense

2009-02-16T21:34:00.009Z

Beautiful, isn't it ? It's Foremark Reservoir in Derbyshire. And if you were a fisherperson (which I'm not) and lived in the area, you might fancy a trip there to indulge in your pastime; to do some fishing.

Fishing ? That's banned, fishing is. It's dangerous, see ?

Why's that then ? Oooo, two very good reasons.

For a start, there are some rocks near the water's edge. And being near the water's edge, they get wet sometimes. And some of the poor fisherpeople have slipped on the nasty, horrible wet rocks, and hurt themselves.

And then there's the fear that a stray fishing line might hit a passer-by. Has it ever happened at the reservoir ? No, but it might.

Oh well, better ban it then.

You can't do that here, mate...

Another Lion-Feeding Frenzy

2009-02-13T20:41:00.010Z

Another day, another story about State-sponsored Christian-bashing.

I saw this one in the Daily Mail when I was at the gym and I didn't believe it. Partly because it was in the Daily Mail, and partly because I just didn't want to believe that my country has come to this. When I got home I did a Google and I saw that it's quite widely covered, so now I'm thinking it must be true. After all, the BBC has it, and if even they've got an anti-Christian story then there must be something in it.

So, the facts as they appear to be:
....a five-year old girl tells her classmate that if you don't believe in God then you're going to Hell;
....the girl is admonished by a teacher and is told that it's "not OK to say that, but it is OK to discuss what you believe with others" (what on earth is a five-year-old supposed to make of that ?);
....having first comforted her highly upset daughter, the mother, who works at the school, sends a private email to a group of friends describing what had happened and asking for her friends' prayers;
....she is then hauled before the headteacher, to be told that she was to be placed under investigation in suspicion of professional misconduct because she had been "making allegations about the school and staff".

........................""You can't write an email like that, love"

Hells' bells, where to start ?

Well, let's try the child. She's five. She's reciting the stuff her mum and dad have told her. Things are black-and-white at that age anyway; kids call it as they see it, and good on 'em. Apparently the child she was talking to was didn't like it, and it was her mother who complained.

It's probably a good job I'm not a headteacher. Because if any parent came into my office complaining that their offspring had been upset by another child telling them they might go to Hell, they'd get pretty short shrift from me. Something along the lines of:

"Your child will hear far worse than that before they've finished school. I will not wrap kids up in cotton wool and isolate them from hearing completely legitimate theological views. I will not deny them access to free debate, and I will not admonish a five-year-old pupil for expressing a religious opinion. If you don't like it, you can bloody well take your spoilt little brat somewhere else. Now stop wasting my time, I've got hundreds of kids to teach how to read, write and add up in the face of relentless opposition from the government and the education establishment".

I can well remember giving my best friend at primary school the hump by telling him that God didn't exist. The resulting bottom-lip display and cold shoulder treatment lasted around two hours. After that we were mates again. Kids are far more resillient than many give them credit for. They give and receive different points of view all the time. Or at least, they should do. By putting them in the naughty corner for expressing opinion we deny them the ability to learn how to debate and we extend the ever-expanding notion that they have an inalienable right not to be offended.

Secondly, the mother. So, one of her so-called friends leaked her private email and grassed her up to the headteacher. Some bloody friend. But for the headteacher to call her into the office and put her on some sort of charge is nothing short of outrageous. Where's this going to end ? If I have a bad day at work and a row with the boss I might go home and tell Mrs Womble On Tour all about it. Am I to assume that if details of that private conversation get back to my workplace then my boss can discipline me ? Or can that only happen if I'm a Christian and I ask for someone's prayers ? Either way, I should be allowed to express a point of view in a private email without my boss poking his nose in.

Just for completeness, we'll briefly apply the Test of Islam. If a Muslim child says, for instance, that he would sooner befriend a fellow-Muslim than a non-beleiver, as encouraged by the Koran, would that child be similarly admonished ? No need to answer that.

What happens to Jennie Cain remains to be seen. But let me tell you this. This comes hot on the heels of Geert Wilders being kicked out of our country, the Caroline Pertrie case and a host of others in which free expression, religious or otherwise, is being treated as a crime by the State. One day something's going to snap. We are a quiet, tolerant nation. We have let our government walk all over us for a long time, first diminshing and more latterly destroying our freedoms. But it will not go on forever. At some point, there will be a backlash. Something, or some cause, will trigger a point of no return. I don't know when it will happen, but it will. One day that State will take on one free-speaker too many. And then there will be hell to pay.

I just hope I'm still around to see it.

Spotted...

2009-02-12T21:50:00.004Z

...on the BBC's interactive weather forecast this evening:

Apparently, at 9 o'clock tonight, we were expecting rain, with sunny intervals.

There must be something in this global warming business after all....

Thought Police

2009-02-12T19:43:00.021Z

So Geert Wilders has been denied entry into the UK. A man democratically elected as a member of parliament in a EU nation has been turfed out of our supposedly free country. His crime ? God knows, you tell me. His intention ? To attend a screening of his film in the House of Lords in front of an invited audience of around 30 people.

The authorities' "explanation" is that Mr Wilders posed a "threat to security"; a comment which could have been lifted straight from any country east of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago. It's pitiful, and ............ You can't come in here, mate... ....deeply worrying.

Such is this government's fear of free debate on racial and religious issues now that they want to ban anyone the Islamisc community might not care for. And such is the government's power after ten years of socialism, they can do it.

Apparently the Dutch government are none too pleased. Maxime Verhagen, their Foreign Affairs Minister, phoned David Miliband to protest. Fat lot of good that'll do him. He clearly doesn't understand that protest and debate aren't permitted here.

You might think it poetic justice that someone who has called for the Koran to be banned is himself prevented from speaking, and in some ways it is. But it's not natural justice. Natural justice occurs when people are given the right to say what they think and let others come to their own conclusions.

The name of Wilders' film is Fitna. There are a few different versions of it on Youtube, so I'm not sure which is the real one. But this certainly looks like something ZaNu Labour would love to ban.

Inncocent, And Sentened For Life

2009-02-12T12:19:00.007Z

It would be easy for me to go into full-scale rant mode here, but as it's a story about children I'll try to temper my anger.

In 2004 Nicky and Mark Webster were forced to hand their three children over for adoption because a court had concluded that they had intentionally hurt one of them. Doctors diagnosed leg fractures as being the result of child abuse.

In 2006, with Nicky pregnant again, they fled to Ireland to protect their unborn child from the UK authorities, but vowed to continue the fight to clear their names. Their fourth child, Brandon, was allowed to stay with his parents but yesterday lost their legal battle to get their other three children back. All well and good, you might say, if they'd been found guilty of child abuse. Except they haven't.

In 2007 a court decided that the injuries previously attributed to child abuse may have been caused by scurvy. This was believed to have been brought about by the family GP's advice that the child should be fed on soya milk, which is lacking in vitamin C. Thus we have a couple who are, in the eyes of the law and the new medical evidence, entirely innocent of any crime, but who cannot win their children back.

The reason is that adoption is seen as final. Once an order is granted, it cannot be revoked. You can see the reasoning behind this, I guess. Children need stability and certainty, and do not deserve to have the threat of claim and counter-claim hanging over them once the adoption orders have been granted.

But there is another principle at stake here, and it concerns one of punishment by the State. To me any sentence or penalty imposed by the State should be reversible. If I am fined for an offence which I am later found not to have committed I should be reimbursed. If I am incarcerated unjustly I cannot have my time given back to me but I should at least be released once my innocence is proven. But for the Websters, who will never see their kids again, there is no release; their sentence is life-long, and more painful that most of us can imagine. As it is for their children, forever denied access to their biological parents, and for little Brandon, who will never see his siblings.

This is fundamentally wrong. The State has no right to treat parents in this way. Adoption may be a complex, heart-rendering business, and it may be a legal minefield already. But something, somewhere has to change to give wrongly-accused parents the right to get their children back.

Full story here.

Tablets Of Stone

2009-02-11T20:38:00.008Z

I heard this man interviewed on the radio this morning. And having done so, I unleashed a stream of language so long, strong and vulgar that I surprised even myself. Why so ?

The man in question is Ian Johnston, president of the Police Superintendents' Association. He was talking about the the recommendation of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) that ecstasy be downgraded from a Class A to a Class B drug.

The Chairman of the ACMD, the unfortunately named Professor David Nutt, had trialed the proposal at the weekend, claiming that taking ecstasy is roughly as risky as getting on board a horse. Whatever the statistical basis of the argument, the message is clear: the Establishment's continued insistence in putting ecstasy in the same bracket as drugs like crack cocaine in just plain daft and not remotely based upon fact or risk. To many of us, his comments were simply common sense. Ludicrously, his candour earned him a rebuke from Jacqui Smith and some campaigners called for him to resign. This morning, post publication of ACMD's report, Ian Johnston waded in with the usual emotional tirade.

"This is not some academic or scientific exercise, this is dealing with people's lives," railed Johnston. "If we downgrade ecstasy, we are in danger of sending mixed messages out to young and vulnerable people". And on the Today Programme, he went on to claim that young people in night clubs are incapable of telling the difference between the risks of taking ecstasy and other Class A drugs. This was when I got seriously angry, because it is absolute and demonstrable tosh.

The point is obvious. Many young people in nightclubs clearly do know the difference in the risks, which is why ecstasy is the most popular illicit drug (police estimate that 5 million tablets are taken every month) and yet causes a such strikingly low level of harm.

Johnston's assertion that downgrading ecstasy would send mixed messages is also complete nonsense. It is far more dangerous to have a banding of illegal drugs which people know to be fundamentally flawed.

The State's attitude to drugs is not particularly based on their danger; it is based on history and what they think they can get away with. If the State thought it could ban alcohol, it would. On the other hand newly available drugs are treated with automatic hostility. The government's position, and its refusal to change outdated and clearly refuted policy seemingly cast in tablets of stone, is irrational.

Why is this important ? Because the war on drugs is lost. The government cannot even control the movement of drugs within the prison system, never mind anywhere itself. The law is widely treated contemptuously or ignored altogether by huge sections of the population, and the artificially high price caused by drugs' status as illegal itself accounts for a huge proportion of the nation's crime. The police are engaged in a constant and soul destroying tail-chasing exercise which sees them trailing in the wake of the suppliers and crisis-managing the antics of the users. To my mind the arguments in favour of widespread legalisation get stronger by the day. In many ways, the ACMD have come up a long way short, because the time has come for liberalisation, and we may as well start with ecstasy. Yes, it causes deaths. Big deal. So does crossing the road.

Whatever the best solution might be, we quite obviously need an entirely different approach, based on an open and honest debate, to which Professor Nutt and his team have at least tried to make some sort of contribution. What we don't need is knee-jerking coppers flying off the handle.

Working Womble

2009-02-10T12:04:00.003Z

Blogging is light at the moment, for Womble On Tour is going through a busy period at work. Shouldn't last too long, but it does restrict output somewhat.

It's not just the fact that long days at work leave less time for the act of blogging; more to the point they leave less time for thinking about blogging - and yes, you may not have thought it, but the Womble does like to think before he writes !

Wombles aren't very good at multi-tasking, you see...and generally can only think about one thing at once.

Will be back soon.

Surveying The Damage

2009-02-08T21:29:00.003Z

The House of Lords is a strange organisation. By every judgement it ought not to work, but it seems to.

As a revising chamber it has, from time-to-time in recent years, come to our rescue by refusing to accept the very worst of the government’s dreadful measures, not least of all on 42 days. And on Friday the Lords Constitution Committee published a damning report on the extent to which the government is spying on us.

The facts, and the scale of the problem, are quite staggering. In addition to the government’s insane obsession with a national identity card scheme, we are faced with:
...refusal of the Home Secretary to comply with the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that innocent people should have their details removed from the massive DNA database, which already holds information on 7% of us;
...the government’s desire to track everyone’s emails, phone calls, text messages and internet usage;
...the ridiculous use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which has seen councils employ kids to try and catch people dropping litter and tailing parents in cars because they think they might be sending kids to schools in the wrong catchment area;
...the fact that the number of CCTV cameras in use is now thought to be, wait for it, 4 million.

Lord Goodlad, chairman of the Committee concludes in ringing tones: “There can be no justification for this gradual but incessant creep towards every detail about us being recorded and pored over by the state.”

The report is unequivocal in its call for the government to comply with the European Court’s ruling, says RIPA should not be employed for the trivial purposes used by councils at present and makes over 50 recommendations in all, mostly aimed at curbing the burgeoning powers of a micro-managing, power-crazed government. It is one of the best documents to have come out of Parliament for some time. Even so, it does little more than try to prevent the rampaging fire spreading any further.

The government’s surveillance bandwagon is completely out of control. The fact that they can even consider tracking every email I write is in itself a shocking indictment of how far things have come, and a sure sign of the contempt with which Jacqui Smith and her henchmen in the Home Office have for our freedom and our privacy. Regrettably, no House of Lords report is going to change that.

What is needed is nothing short of a revolution. To stop, never mind to reverse the shattering juggernaut will take a monumental effort and a revolution in thinking. It has long been clear that this government is capable of neither even if it cared about the issue. I regret to say that right now the Conservatives scarcely look much better. It is one thing to be opportunistic, and hence make the right noises, in opposition; it is quite another to effect fundamental change once in government. The vested interests in surveillance are huge – almost every government department benefits in some way at the expense of the individual. We are desperate for someone to champion our cause; who will it be ?

House of Lords report is here.

Diversity Nonsense

2009-02-06T08:09:00.003Z

I had one of those “swear at the radio” moments this morning. And it was over a religion-related story, which isn’t usually something that can get my hackles raised. As an atheist, I don’t normally get excited about such things.

But when I heard about the nurse who had been suspended for offering to pray for a patient I was furious. Yes, mate, you heard right, a nurse in North Somerset was suspended from her post (without pay, according to one account I’ve since read) for offering to pray for an elderly patient.

Caroline Petrie says she often offers to pray for her patients. I imagine many of them are grateful and a few take her up on the offer. One woman apparently took offence and complained. The next thing Mrs. Petrie knew she was being hauled before the hospital trust being accused of, get this, “failing to demonstrate a personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity”. Actually you could accuse the trust of exactly the same thing.

The story has a happy ending, it seems. The reason it was covered on the news today was that Mrs Petrie has been reinstated, although I can’t find anything online to substantiate that.

A couple of things occur to me here. Firstly, would a Muslim nurse have been suspended under the same circumstances ? Answer: don’t be silly. Secondly, on the wider question of people “thrusting their religion” onto others, which is what this seems to come down to: it’s a question of extent, clearly. If a nurse waves the Bible in the face of the same patient day after day and says things like “If you believed in God you wouldn’t be in here” then that would be unacceptable. This, though, appears to have been a three-line conversation: “Would you like me to pray for you ?”, “No thanks”, “OK”. Not exactly the Crusades, is it ?

I’m afraid this is another example of a gross over-reaction to someone expressing a point of view and of how “causing offence” is rapidly becoming seen as the gravest crime known to man.

And to the hopelessly miserable patient who complained I have this to say (assuming God hasn’t dispatched her already, which, if I'd were Him, I'd have been sorely tempted to do): the nurse was showing she cared and was trying to help; get over it.