Bill Millin, now 86, tried to raise the morale of incoming troops with his tunes, as shells exploded overhead and machinegun fire raked Sword Beach.

The picture of the 21-year-old commando became one of the enduring images of the landings which paved the way to Hitler's defeat in the Second World War.

Now he is to be immortalised in a life-sized statue by the people of Colleville Montgomery, which he helped to liberate in 1944.

Quite right too. It's the weekend here and my blood pressure can't take much more politics. So tonight I'll be raising a few to Piper Bill, the mad bugger. Apparently Millin played "Hieland Laddie" stepping off the landing craft, "Road to the Isles" on Sword Beach, then at the Pegasus Bridge it was "All the Blue Bonnets Are Over the Border" followed by a very brief "Nut Brown Maiden" he played for some French Ladies, cut short by a heavy mortar barrage.

Some time later, German snipers admitted they didn't target him because they thought he was mad. They may have had a point. Millin was portrayed in the 1962 film The Longest Day, by Pipe Major Leslie de Laspee, the official piper to Her Majesty The Queen Mother -

Rajinder Singh, an anti-Islam activist in his late seventies who blames Muslims for the death of his father during the Partition of India in 1947, has been sympathetic towards Britain's far-right party for much of the past decade even though he currently remains barred from becoming a member because of the colour of his skin.

Singh should soon be able to join the BNP.

The reality is that there is widespread concern at the advance of Islam in the United Kingdom and until the main political parties address this, the BNP will grow. This is a shame but if the current political elite are too dhimmified to address major community concerns then they have no one to blame but themselves for this development. It is obvious that Labour and the Lib-Dems have no intention whatsoever with dealing with Islam and the Conservatives seem distinctly luke-warm on the issue. So if no one else will speak up for the people....

However he has now resigned as chairman of the parliamentary standards and privileges committee at the news of a media investigation into his affairs and faces a formal inquiry into his claims.

What confidence can we have into how our politicians manage their affairs when EVEN those charged with policing expenses can be seen to be less than purer than pure?

When asked whether Mr Curry used the house, his next-door neighbour, Valerie Flather, who looks after the property, said: “That is his business.” Questioned as to whether the house represented good value to the taxpayer, she replied: “Damn the bloody taxpayer.” She then hung up

Says it all. They have nothing but contempt for us.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said that even if Britain reduces its deficit in line with other leading nations, it will still have the rich world's biggest deficit from now until 2017 and potentially beyond, casting serious doubt on its economic credibility. The warning coincided with shock public finance statistics showing that public borrowing in October was 88 times what it was in the same month last year, making it likely that the Chancellor will miss his £175bn borrowing forecast this year.

The economic catastrophe that Brown has presided over has yet to become fully visible in my view. It will ONLY be from next July, when the Conservatives actually try to halt the debt spiral that the scale will become clear. I don't like the Conservatives much but I do feel that they are being handed a scorched earth economy and I wish them well in trying to handle it.  

From abcnews.com: 

“…On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.” 

The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.” 

I am told the section applies to exactly one state:  Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.

In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world:  Louisiana.  (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)

Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.

How much does it cost?  According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.”

HT: Hyscience