British Airports Authority (BAA), the owners of Heathrow Airport, are seeking an injunction preventing birch twig and rifa environmentalists from protesting within 100 metres of the airport or within the same proximity to any tube station along the Piccadilly Line.   Some of these protestors are against a third runway at Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport with almost 70 million passengers annually.  Most appear to be against the concept of mass airline travel per se.  Groups such as Plane Crazy and Camp for Climate Action are very much in evidence here.  Basically these are comprised of frothy coffee dip-sticks who would like nothing better than to see the British people returning to the era of summer holidays in rain-drenched Worthing.  Sorry guys, it ain't happening.  There is a big wide world out there that people increasingly want to discover and they are not going the return to caravans or dingy B&Bs at Selsey Bill so that you morons can claim you're doing your bit for the environment.

No wacko cause would be complete without the vocal endorsement of Ken Livingstone.  He wants the courts to rule against the injunction in the interests of peaceful protest.  Sorry, Ken, I'm not buying it.  The presence of protestors close to Heathrow Airport or the tube system would, I feel, actually be a major hindrance to the travelling public.  Also, the Metropolitan and British Transport police divisions have enough on their plate at the moment trying to stymie mass murderers from your favourite ethnic minority community.  They don't need the added headache of clusters of stentorian 'Swampys' inconveniencing the rest of London's population who desire an escape - albeit a temporary one - from this saturated, overtaxed and overcrowded hell-hole we are pleased to call the United Kingdom of 2007.

We are a strange breed here in the UK.  What I mean to say is our politicians and those in high office are a strange breed.  In other countries politicians tend to show solidarity with the majority population in times of crises.  Here, ours bend over backwards to bring fraternity to communities from which the gravest threats to our country emanate.  Look at Alex 'I hate the English but love the Muslims' Salmond.  In the wake of the Islamic terror attack at Glasgow Airport he is meeting Scottish Muslim leaders to demonstrate just how oh-so-lovely we all find them, and how we all just positively salivate with glee at the fact they live in our country in such numbers and with such self-imposed separation.

This is a time when we should be saying to Muslims: 'Look, you either integrate and show fealty to this country or you sod off somewhere else more accommodating to your never-ending stream of demands.'  We don't have One Scotland, Mr Salmond; we don't have One Britain.  We have an increasing ethno-fragmentation of society caused in small part by mass general immigration and in large part by a restless, ungrateful and poisonous Islamic rabble hell-bent on changing our way of life using the fig leaf of their 'religion' as a constant catalyst for that change.

Salmond pretends that diversity is consistent with a united identification with Scotland.  Hogwash.  It is no more consistent with Scotland than it would be consistent with anywhere else blessed with ruling classes anxious to show solidarity with minorities at the expense of the majority indigenous population.  It is all very well for Muslims at this, or any other, meeting to scream their law-abiding nature and peaceful intent.  The screams fool nobody.  Why?  Because the whole doctrine of Islam cocoons a form of theological, social and cultural apartheid, which at one level isolates and ghettoises areas they move into en masse, and at another level plants the acorns of ideological supremacy from which the oak trees of terrorism flourish.

Tolerance from the British people towards this minority becomes more strained with every new story of their 'demands' and 'rights' and with increased cultural separation from the rest of us.  Pretending everything is hunky-dory by displays of cameraderic obsequiousness at Bute House ain't gonna fool anybody!

'When you aim at the rat, beware of the vase.'

(Traditional)

Butchers Pet Care could shelve plans for a factory in Coton Park, near Rugby, because angry Asian families (are there any other sort these days?) have complained to their residents' association about pork smells drifting into their garden. Muslim residents in the area also claim the pork will effectively "rain down" on their homes and gardens after the factory's 100ft chimney has pumped the meat extracts into the atmosphere. The Coton Park Residential Association said they have received complaints from Muslims - who are directed to not eat pork by the Qur'an - and are taking the matter very seriously.

If you read the link you will se that these Muslim objections are being taken very seriously indeed and I bet the factory will not be built. Once again we see assertive Muslims dictating the new nature of our society and whilst the issue of a location of a pet food factory may seem trivial, we would be barking mad to go along with their intolerance. No one is asking them to EAT the petfood, although I wonder if they own dogs and if so what do they feed them? British Muslims are making a concerted power drive to change our society, presenting their "religious rights" as the trump card. 

Let's cut to the chase concerning the meeting between UK PM Gordon Brown and President Bush yesterday. Discussing the future of UK troops in Iraq Brown has told Bush he would not delay their exit in order to show unity with the United States. After four hours of talks with the US President at his Camp David retreat, Brown told a joint press conference he would make a Commons statement in October on the future of the 5,500 British troops in the Basra region. The Bush administration has been nervous that a full British withdrawal would add to the criticism. But Mr Brown made clear - and President Bush accepted - that Britain would go its own way, even if that gave the impression the two countries were diverging.

And that's EXACTLY what Al Queda want to see. Divide and Conquer.

Brown has no stomach to FIGHT militant Islam, he would much prefer to find a way to instigate a conflict resolution process with them, involving financial aid no doubt. He does NOT get it in the way that Blair did. The Jihadists seek to cower us into splitting with our allies and Brown will give them what they want. This will give him excellent media headlines and expect those poll numbers to rise even further. Life will be good under Gordon - until the Jihadists strike again, and again....and then what? Brown makes me nauseous. When the US and UK SHOULD be totally united, he's making a virtue out of the fact that he will make us separate. 

David Cameron's attempt to "fight back" against his plummeting poll numbers starts today. Beating his chest in a display of imagined bravado, The Daily Cameron reports that Call Me Dave has declared that in order to help fix the "broken society" (aka his broken poll numbers) he wants to return to teachers the power to manage disruption in their classrooms. Parents would lose the right to appeal to local education authorities when their children are excluded from schools under Tory plans. " I believe schools should be independent but headteachers should be captain of their own ship," he said Good behaviour agreements between parents and schools would also be introduced to set out codes of behaviour that pupils should adhere to. Parents would be obliged to sign the documents before their children gained admission to schools.

What a crock. For starters, there would be dozens of "human rights" lawyers queueing up to take a case against a school that did as Cameron suggests, and the financial risk to any headmaster who excluded some feral youth would be significant. The only way to re-assert REAL discipline in the classroom would be for the UK to withdraw from the Human Rights Act, so providing the freedom for teachers to control their more riotous students. That is not on Cameron's agenda and so it is that he projects more soundbites as poor substitute for substantive policy. People see through Cameron, he's been rumbled as "B" Division Blair with slicked back hair and slicked back PR statements masquerading as policies.

The issue that seems to concern our legal profession most is that couples who are living together should have more legal rights, according to a report from the Law Commission. It says the current law is "unjust" and the 2.2m co-habiting couples in England and Wales should have more protection if they split up. The report says the majority of couples who live together wrongly believe they are protected by what is known as "common law" marriage. But it has denied its proposals will undermine marriage.

Well it would say that, wouldn't it? If people want to live together that's fine. If people want the legal "protection" that marriage affords, then there is a very simple thing to do - get married. This interfering by lawyers is aimed more at feathering their own nests since once the enhanced "protection" is given to unmarried couples then - hey presto - you're going to need lawyers to enforce it, aren't you? £££££'s in their eyes folks. Furthermore, I think that what the issue the Law Commission SHOULD be looking at is how easy is it nowadays for a married couple to separate. I think separation should really be the last resort but sadly for so many it is the first. For me, the institution of marriage is of central importance to our society and I guess that is why it is being subverted and attacked on all fronts - with the Law Commission leading this weeks assault on it. Lawyers - who would trust them? Ahem...

100 years ago,  Lord  Robert Paden-Powell harnessed that unique British genius for inspiring groups of people to do the     proper thing when he organized the Scouting Movement.

Typically British, scouting emphasizes the great outdoors and outdoor adventures.  Scouting teaches a code for living,  a code for a  happy, healthy and productive life, but leaves it up to the individual scout to make the right choices.   Scouting is not proscriptive.

Scouting, democratic in nature,  emphasizes “learning by doing.”  Leadership is decentralized and scout leaders, troops and the scouts, themselves, have free rein within the general framework.

100 years later, scouting thrives and the movement is helping youth throughout the world establish happy, healthy and productive lives. 

Representing the very best of the British genius, scouting celebrates its centennial this summer in London.

 

As a forty-something, I'm always keenly aware that the future belongs to those younger than me, in a certain sense. If you get what I'm saying, I am at an age where I realise that my thoughts and opinions were mostly formed from my experiences as a teenager and in my twenties. I guess that's true for most of us, and so now those decades of wild youth are behind me, I find myself anxious not to become too "old" or too "set in my ways" too soon. One must strive to embrace current ways of thinking, new ideas, new approaches, in order to stay "young at heart".

With that in mind, here's a good example of a guy who has clearly got it all wrong, a guy who has not yet taken the modern approach on board. Mr Ake Nilson of London writes thusly in the letters page of the Financial Times:

"Sir, In your editorial "It's time to plan for the next deluge" (July 25) you say that "it is now scientifically incontrovertible that global warming is making heavy rain fall more frequently across the world's temperate latitudes". But less than a year ago, on August 10 2006, you reported: "This year's hot, dry summer will be repeated many times in the future and will become normal in the next 40 to 50 years if climate scientists are correct."

Please could you make up your mind as to the effect of global warming?"

No, no, no, NO, Mr Nilson! You are simply stuck in a bygone age, you are not understanding the modern approach to science at all. Yes, I understand that, like myself, you were taught that science is about first asking a question, then gathering data, then observing results and drawing conclusions therefrom, conclusions which may well contradict any preconceptions you might have had as to the answer to your question.

But that is simply not the way things are done any more; at least not where the issue of "global warming" is concerned. Oh no. You see, the scientifically correct approach is to start with the answer, "It's all down to global warming". You have to get that fixed in your mind as a scientific constant, a given, a fait accompli, right from first principles. A bit like the speed of light, "c", you understand. Only then can you start to frame the questions around it. So, we see that: Too much rain? = Global Warming.  Not enough rain? = Global Warming. Average Rain? (Go on, have a guess... Clue: G----- W------). So, it doesn't matter if it's the hottest, dryest summer on record, or the coolest, wettest summer on record - you start from the basic premise that it's all due to global warming. That's how the scientific consensus works these days. And if last year's predictions seem to contradict this year's predictions, what of it? Have you forgotten doublethink? Oceania is at war with Eastasia: therefore Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. We will cure you eventually.

Noticed a little piece in the news on Sunday where this British Airways plane had been delayed for three hours at Milan's Linate airport by a Qatari sheikh. Seems he boarded the flight complete with the usual entourage of a butler, a chef and three wives, but once his bunch was seated, immediately demanded that other passengers be moved from their seats so that his women be allowed to sit together, and not next to, horror of horrors, men the females did not know!

The news that the Captain was completely unimpressed by this pillock is indeed good news, as he ordered all the fuzzies off the plane forthwith. The three-hour delay resultant was partly caused by the luggage of Sheikh Rattle-an-roll having to be off-loaded before the plane could depart.

The pilot should be immediately given a pay rise, and invited to join Gordon Brown's Government as an Arabic advisor, as he obviously knows all about these camel-jockeys and their ideas that they are the only ones in the universe who count!

At last someone has noticed.  Ministers have been accused by a teaching union of 'dumbing down' educational standards as well as presiding over the expansion of some of the more lunatic courses available at our universities.  Since New Labour decided to turn higher education into a business with bums on seats, as opposed to impressive seats of learning, there has been a significant growth in the number of useless courses at higher education institutions.

Studying off-the-wall crap at PhD level may be all very well for some who aspire to earn a good living imbibing students with knowledge of peculiar subjects that have not a single shred of relevance to real life.  As a graduate of two prestigious universities, I can honestly say that reality is checked in at the door - both in the opinions and attitudes of academic staff and students alike.  Look at this example I found from one of my local universities.  Dr Peter Woodcock of the University of Huddersfield is currently researching the 'political philosophy of the Simpsons'.  What?  Is he joking?  Is he actually getting funding for devoting time to this?  To me, the Simpsons is a cartoon series which is about as funny as brain cancer (Americans do many things well; they do situation comedy appallingly!).  The only philosophy I can see is the stunting of a person's epistemological evolution to the degree where he or she finds such garbage either entertaining, relevant or concealing some sort of hidden political message.

What earthly use would a course on the philosophy of yellow animated characters with utterly stupid haircuts have to a prospective graduate in the real world?  Can you imagine it?

'Well Mr Evans, what makes you think you are suitable for the job of political advisor at Number 10's Policy Unit?'

'Hum, well I studied the political philosophy of the Simpsons at Huddersfield.'

'Next.'

This is one example of many. Trawl through the prospectuses of UK universities and you'll see a myriad of pointless courses or pointless modules within courses.  The lecturers don't care.  They've got their profession with a comfortable salary.  What any prospective student must ask is: 'Will I ever get the same stuffing my mind with irrelevant knowledge?'

Yesterday David commented on the Telegraph story about UKIP's being 'down to its last £5,000'. There's just one problem. It isn't true.

Dr Whittaker said that the article was "a disgraceful piece of journalism" and that it is nonsense that the party is ‘down to it's last £5,000’, as the newspaper alleges.

“During the court case considering Alan Bown’s donations, I was asked how much UKIP has in the bank. But this figure has nothing to do with the party’s solvency. Party expenditure is covered by income from donations and membership subscriptions and this is how it always has been."

Click to read more ...

US conservative writer Thomas Sowell sums it up well. Is America about to become the new France?

By this he refers to the fact that back in the 1930s, the governments of the democratic countries knew what Hitler was doing -- and they knew that they had enough military superiority at that point to stop his military buildup in its tracks. But they did nothing to stop him. Instead, they turned to what is still the magic mantra today -- "negotiations."  At one point, Hitler could have been stopped in his tracks "without the firing of a single shot," Churchill said. That point came in 1936 -- three years before World War II began -- when Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland, in violation of two international treaties. At that point, France alone was so much more powerful than Germany that the German generals had secret orders to retreat immediately at the first sign of French intervention. As Hitler himself confided, the Germans would have had to retreat "with our tail between our legs," because they did not yet have enough military force to put up even a token resistance. Why did the French not act and spare themselves and the world the years of horror that Hitler's aggressions would bring? The French had the means but not the will.

Sowell pointedly reminds us that we KNOW that Iran is moving towards gaining nukes. He points out that the UN will do nothing to stop this, just as the League of Nations did nothing to stop Hitler. As he concludes, Iranian leaders won't stop until they are stopped. The US has the might to stop them - but has it the will? And if not, is history about to repeat itself? We either take out the Iranian nuclear facilities now or wait until we become embroiled in a nuclear stand-off with the mad mullahs. Which is the lesser evil? Remember the lessons of history.

Great article here on The Business which spells out how Europe can solve its' economic problems. In essence it all comes down to a simple solution - tax people less and they will work more! Just why do Americans work harder than Europeans?r 

Could it be restrictions on working hours, labour regulations or the strength of trade unions? The trouble is, it didn’t seem to make much difference to total hours worked whether unions were strong or weak, or whether governments pampered the workforce or left them to their own devices. “Our findings suggest that taxes can account for much of the variation in hours worked both over time and across countries,” Ohanian, Raffo and Rogerson concluded.

Pause to think about it and that makes sense: people work for money. The amount they get taxed makes a big difference to the amount they earn. The higher the taxes, then at the margins some of them will decide not to work. In some cases, they won’t bother putting in any overtime. Mothers might decide they are better off at home with the kids. The low skilled might decide they would make so little extra over what they would receive on welfare that there isn’t any point in finding a job.

Britain has a slightly different problem. It relies on armies of imported workers, while plenty of British people aren’t working. Research by Reform, the think tank, has shown that youth unemployment has risen since 1997. The numbers of people not in education, employment or training is up by 250,000 since 2001, even while the economy has been strong. Cut their taxes, so it is more worthwhile to work, and maybe you will not need so many Poles.

The Union Flag flies proudly at Belfast City Hall this morning.  This achievement is in no small measure thanks to the presence of HM Army who served actively in Northern Ireland for 38 years, and whose formal deployment on the streets there comes to an end at midnight tonight.  This piece is not about arguments over whether the Army should cease Operation Banner at this time (I think it is premature).  It is simply to say 'thank you' to those men and women from Northern Ireland, mainland UK and, yes, the Republic also, who fought to preserve Northern Ireland's place within the Union and protect its innocent citizens from a sustained terrorist insurgency.  Five thousands soldiers (mostly home-grown recruits) will remain as a permanent garrison, as is only to be expected in a part of a country's sovereign territory.  In time it is to be hoped that soldiers will be able to live normal lives as they do elsewhere in the UK.  A recent report said that, since 2005, there had been a huge increase in applications from Catholics to join the Royal Navy.  What is to say that interest will not be repeated with the Army a few years down the line?

David Sharrock has some amazing statistics.  763 soldiers killed as a result of terrorism; 28,000 deployed since 1969; 14,000 illegal weapons recovered; but only 309 terrorists and innocent civilians killed (despite attempts by separatists to claim the Army systematically targeted people because of their Catholic background.  The IRA had a fraction of that number and murdered nearly 2,000 people in the same timeframe.  It just goes to show who had the greatest inclination to terminate human life, eh Gerry and Martin?

So 5,000 soldiers and 10 army bases will remain in Northern Ireland.  Let's hope the need for mass Army deployment never again surfaces in the province.  From tonight routine security passes solely to the PSNI.  I just wish I had sufficient faith in that force to carry out that task without the need for politically correct baggage.  Time will tell.

'There is always work available for the willing man.'

(Traditional)

What do you make of the news that a woman aged 108 has been told she must wait 18 months before the Health Service will give her the hearing aid she needs? Former piano teacher Olive Beal, one of the oldest people in Britain, has poor eyesight and uses a wheelchair. Now her family have said that realistically Mrs Beal is unlikely ever to receive the digital hearing aid that will save her from isolation. The one-time suffragette is one of hundreds of thousands of older people made to wait up to two years and sometimes more for modern digital hearing aids that make a dramatic difference to their ability to hear and communicate.

Two points here;

1. Once again we see how cold and inhuman the NHS can be. The individual's circumstances are as nothing to the bureaucratic juggernaut that runs the NHS. The woman is 108 - surely someone somewhere saw that fact?

2. Why can't her family go and BUY her one? Stop waiting on the State to help your Mum, help her yourself by buying her the digital hearing aid.

UK PM Gordon Brown holds his first meeting with US President George W Bush today and the UK media is full of it. I listened to the BBC coverage earlier this morning and in summary they are putting forward the view that Brown must not become a "poodle" to Bush "like Blair was", that Brown needs to assert the importance of an orderly withdrawal from Iraq, that Brown must call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay and that there is no "special relationship" between the two nations anyway.

First, when a UK Prime Minister develops a close relationship with a US President, he or she is instantly portrayed as a "poodle". But when a UK PM adopts a close relationship to the EU, why that's progressiveness personified. Following on from this is the yearning need from the UK media for the UK not to have a special relationship with the US. I listened to a former "special adviser" to the Blair government on the radio state that there is absolutely NO special relationship with the US and that it is a conceit to think so. Then there's the small matter of the need to run away from Iraq. Brown won't say it in those words and will put on a show of support but isn't it clear that the way he plans to retrieve lost popularity and win favourable media exposure is to bring our boys home and to hell with the war on terror? Best to fight  'em in Piccadilly Circus, right? The UK media is endemically anti-American, and especially when the US has a Republican President. It wants to see Brown stick two fingers up to Bush but knows he won't. And so the fear and loathing intensifies....

Oh dear! More than a third of British Asians do not feel British. Research for the Asian Network discovered 38% of the UK residents of South Asian origin polled felt only slightly or not at all British. More than a third agreed to get on in the UK they needed to be a "coconut", a term for somebody who is "brown on the outside but white on the inside". Three-quarters felt their culture was being diluted by living in the UK and nearly half believed white people do not treat them as British.

Herein lies the problem. They are very happy to live amongst us but they want to retain their own cultural ways and keep apart from is and THIS is where it all goes wrong. For far too long we have indulged this multiculti nonsense. Bottom-line - IF you want to live in the UK then you adopt our ways, you integrate into our society, and you accept our laws. As for feeling like a coconut -isn't that a bit of a racist thing to say?