283 days ago
Like many of you I grew up and grew older listening to Steve Wright on the radio. His death at just 69 yesterday was something I regret and he will be missed. The Mrs. and I still listened to his Sunday morning love songs show. Whether it was right to lead the News last night was Wright’s passing is a matter for debate. My instinct is that the troubles of the Labour Party in Rochdale, events in Gaza and the imminent fall of “fortress” Avdiivka in Ukraine where a couple of thousand Ukrainian troops were cut off yesterday were bigger stories.
1611 days ago
Yesterday, the Labour party sacked Rebecca Long Bailey from its Front Bench as she endorsed an article, in the little read online rag the Independent, by an actress who thinks we care what celebs think and which contained a clear antisemitic trope. Yet many in Labour are rushing to her defence, including Guardian columnist Owen Jones and the Corbynite journalist Ash Sarkar whose tweet is below.
1735 days ago
I have not decided, or rather the Mrs has not decided, whether to install a wood burning stove or two in a couple of the 17th century fireplaces at the Welsh Hovel. We may just go with an open hearth. And we will not be troubled by new batshit crazy plans from the Tories to ban the sale of domestic coal and most logs. We have enough of our own wood in our fields and in the old barns and sheds to last not just ourselves but also our neighbours, for a lifetime. However, we are unusual and lucky.
1791 days ago
My sister N is funny, kind, intelligent and thoroughly laudable. Except that like the rest of my family, with the honourable exception of step sister F, she is on matters political utterly deluded. She works for the State, reads the Guardian and her husband, who works for the State, goes on stop Brexit marches, well he did up until recently. I guess after “the people’s vote” on December 12 he might now accept that we smelly thick plebs get to have our way after all. A few years ago, N gave him membership of the Labour party for Christmas. You get my drift…
1815 days ago
Over the next week or so we will run articles by supporters of the three main parties in Britain urging you to vote for their party. If you are some SNP supporting sheep molester or cottage burning Taffy and want to bleat about not having your say, tough. This is about parties that are serious across the UK ….and also the Lib Dems. Our first contributor is my old pal Brian Basham, a lifelong Labour supporter who writes:
1828 days ago
The Sith Lord Zak Mir and the head honcho at Big Dish (DISH) will arrive shortly at the Welsh Hovel to take me to lunch. Some folks have all the luck. Ahead of that I discuss two things where, to me, the numbers do not add up: Cloudcall PLC (CALL) and the Labour Party manifesto. I offer another, non financial, reason NOT to vote Labour HERE
2016 days ago
As I am often abroad at election time I organise a permanent postal vote. Thus from Bristol in the South west region my ballot paper arrives and has been filled in ( and posted0 as you can see below. It is a treble pleasure.
2696 days ago
The debate about public sector pay is predicated on the myth that it has gone up by just 1% since 2013. The liberal media, the Labour party and indeed almost everybody just accepts this is a fact. But it is not true. It is fake news spun and reported by those who cannot be arsed to check their facts. If you actually bother to check the data from the Office of National Statistics you will see that it is a lie.
3038 days ago
Being a member of the Labour Party is so much fun. Seriously it is the cheapest form of entertainment going. Okay, when I say entertainment, it is rather like having front row seats at an illegal dog fight where both contestants emerge bloodied and unfit for anything but, now that fox hunting is illegal, if you like blood sports join the Labour Party.
One of the joys are the almost daily emails from all levels of the party and from the competing factions. Each sender competes with his or her rivals or superiors and inferiors in the party hierarchy to be the most sanctimonious and pious on issues that no-one on this planet cares about, with an occasional undertone of sheer nastiness sometimes about the Tories but usually about fellow Comrades.
The other joy is, of course,
3352 days ago
The pre-election purge of Comrades who might actually believe in Socialism is over and thus I now feel able to admit to greatly liking the works of Billy Bragg without fear of expulsion from the Labour Party. As I drove to and from London yesterday Bragg was my constant companion and there was a particular pleasure in blasting out and singing along to "Between the Wars" as I passed the former Labour HQ under Comrade War Criminal Blair on Millbank and the Houses of Parliament. Listen to the words and remember that this classic was written is 1985.
Today many on the left talk of austerity but here Bragg uses the word three decades before most Comrades regarded it as fashionable. The Bard of Barking
3362 days ago
In today’s Sun Newspaper Comrade Harriet Harman says that she did not realise that she was not old or posh enough to lead the Labour party. This is, of course a clear dig at Comrade Corbyn. It is also a very silly and unfair slur.
Let’s ignore the blatant ageism and deal with the supposed crime of being posh.
3365 days ago
Okay my motives for handing over £3 to join Labour might not have been the purest. I have done the decent thing and voted for Comrade Corbyn but today I actually felt a real pride as Labour – notably Harriet Harman – took on this Government on the issue of immigrants and state sponsored executions.
Please do not think that I admire much of what Harman stands for and has stood for in the past. But today she spoke for the conscience that this nation seems to have forgotten it had, as a smug David Cameron announced that a British drone had executed two British born ISIL jihadists in Syria.
The House of Commons voted two years ago not to intervene militarily in Syria. I am sure that the two men killed were plotting bad acts and the world is no worse place for their demise. But the State cannot go around without any mandate simply executing its own citizens. Harman
3387 days ago
Just a week ago Tara the cat appeared to be a death's door. Now I am £900 worse off but she seems fit as a fiddle.
She semed delighted to see me on Friday morning when I picked her up from the vets, though I was still reeling at the bill. She has a big bald patch on her tummy from the scan and is now on medication six times a day. But that ends in a day or so. She does not appear treatment and has bitten and scratched her impoverished owner several times as I have given her drugs to drink or pills to swallow.
But she is now eating normally, in fact
3528 days ago
I wrote yesterday that I was considering voting Labour because it is only the People’s Party and its local standard bearer Ms Kerry McCarthy that understand the critical important of tackling the seagull menace here in Bristol East and have pledged to put it top of their agenda. My good friend Amanda is cross with me and has sent me a stern email.
Whilst I accept her point that the economy, Europe, crime and other matters are important I am still in two minds. Perhaps her reaction is symptomatic of how out of touch folk in London are with life in the rest of the country? What with their underwater yoga classes and other funny ways I cannot expect them to appreciate the true Seagull peril we face here in the boonies. And only Kerry and the People’s party seem to appreciate this.
On the other hand the smile on the face of the deluded middle class lefty that is the Mrs when I announced that I was thinking of back Ed Miliband thanks to the sterling efforts of Kerry McCathy has made me think again. I cannot give her that pleasure. Okay, fear not Amanda I have stopped floating and am back with the Tories. But I would like them to stop blathering on about things like the economy and to let us know how they plan to tackle the big issue we face down here. What about the Seagulls Mr Cameron? What are you going to do about it?
3569 days ago
Here we are. My 100th postcard on this website and I am again off to Greece in a few days from where many of these postcards have been recorded. In this issue I look at how the West acts in a way that bolsters ISIS recruitment every time we react to the latest savagery. I also look at the muddle and hypocrisy in the Labour party on the matter of tax evasion and the gutless reaction of the Conservatives to the Labour blather.
3838 days ago
Actually I may not be voting Tory. There is mounting evidence that I shall be deprived of the vote completely thanks to Labour Dirty tricks – that is my wife (who explains the Labour case here) neglecting to put me on the electoral roll. If I do vote, choosing a party is like deciding which sort of shit you want smeared in your face for the next five years. But forced to choose there is only one sane choice and that is to vote Tory.
3842 days ago
It is entirely likely that thanks to Labour dirty tricks, that is to say the Mrs neglecting to put me on the electoral roll, I shall not be able to vote at all this week. We will troop over to the polling station near her old flat on Thursday and find out.
If I can vote what should I do? As a dyed in the wool Eurosceptic and someone who believes that the entire political class should be strung up with piano wire my natural inclination is to vote UKIP. After all the European elections do not really matter do they? My guess is that enough folks will view it this way to ensure that Mr Farage and his supporters will be celebrating triumphs in both the local and European elections as I explained HERE earlier.
I do not care if UKIP contains more than a smattering of prize loons that does not deter me.
However, I find that when Mr Farage moves away from Europe, where I agree with him 100%, to other matters I get rather agitated. He is clearly now trying to appeal to traditional Labour voters and so he supports a minimum wage (a tax on jobs) and there is talk in UKIP circles of backing the living wage. This is not a pro-business agenda but it will also not assist the poor since it will destroy jobs.
I remember wincing when I heard him at UK Investor Show 2013
3856 days ago
Ed Miliband wants the Government to step in and at least investigate if not block the proposed purchase of AstraZeneca (AZN) by Pfizer. He is wrong and showing a touch of UKIP style nastiness to boot.
The leader of the Labour Party reckons that takeovers of big UK firms by foreigners should be checked out to see if they are in the National Interest. He hints that Pfizer have a poor record of cutting jobs post takeovers. To paraphrase: They are foreign and nasty foreigners to boot. If Pfizer buys AstraZeneca jobs of British workers are at risk. It sounds almost like something you might hear from UKIP. It is unpleasant and it is also just plain wrong.
3907 days ago
The veteran Labour politician Tony Benn has this morning died aged 88. As is the case, even for Bob Crow, his family have my sympathies. So what to make of Wedgie? This may rather surprise you.
Anthony Wedgwood Benn was an aristocrat who renounced his seat in the Lords to fight for what he believed in from the House of Commons. And he certainly had strong beliefs. During the 70s and 80s as Energy Minister in the appalling Callaghan Government and then in opposition he tried to swerve the Labour party violently to the left and he almost succeeded. He did his part in making Labour utterly unelectable and thus gave the blessed Margaret a good stretch in office. For that he deserves our eternal gratitude.
My grandfather, Sir John Winnifrith, was a Bennite. After retiring from the Civil Service he was for the first time in his live, as head of the National Trust & War Graves Commission, able to speak his mind. And thus in the 1975 EU referendum campaign he found himself now and again speaking on the same platform as his hero. Their reasoning for opposing staying in the Evil Empire was that it was a construct to make rich farmers and industrialists richer at the expense, largely via food prices, of the working classes.
I am not sure that I follow their logic but at least I could agree with my Grandfather and Benn on one thing, the EU was a bad thing.
In his declining years Benn came to be seen as a bit of a National Treasure.
3952 days ago
Sirs. Yesterday the two main political parties were at a conference organised by the Federation of Small Businesses and pitched their plans to rejuvenate the SME sector. Given that the House of Commons contains almost no entrepreneurs but is stacked with career politicians it is no surprise that both of you, David Cameron and Labour business spokesman Chuka Umunna, spouted total bollocks. I write as someone who runs an SME.
4016 days ago
The shamed ex Co-Op chairman, ex Labour party councillor and ex-Methodist Minister Paul Flowers reckons that in this whole great story the real victim is …HIM. How utterly predictable in a society which celebrates rights without responsibility.
Flowers has a right to run his bank into the ground, he has a right to have gay porn on his Council owned PC, he has a right to buy illegal drugs, he has a right to take those drugs and bugger rent boys on hotel rooms being paid for by the Co-Op, he has a right to use rent boys (itself an exploitative relationship by definition) and he had a right to fiddle his expenses from his last employer.
But he has no responsibility to do minor things like not break the law, exploit vulnerable young men or do his frigging job properly. That is because
4017 days ago
Tom is, as you can see in this video, sporting a truly stupid tash. He is doing this for Movember and seeking your sponsorship to raise money to fight prostate and testicular cancer?
Tom covers this in the video.
If you wish to sponsor Tom Winnifrith for Movember go HERE
Tom also tackles Neil Hamilton, the disgraced ex MP and now UKIP spokesman and his disgraceful deceit on Bulgarian & Romanian immigration
Then Tom addresses the financial issues at the heart of the Co-op’s unacceptable financial arrangements with the Labour Party
Tom’s financial video postcard covers the lies by Crony capitalists on AIM and how to deal with them and also the fate of mining stocks and it can be viewed HERE
4035 days ago
The latest cunning wheeze from the Labour Party to create unemployment and send small businesses to the wall is the “Living Wage” – it is madness writ large. It will not reduce poverty it will create it.
4122 days ago
In the 1950s the Tory Party had 3 million members. When Call Me Dave was elected leader it had 258,000 members. These days the Tories won’t say how many members they have but it seems that the number is sub 100,000. And with an average age of almost 70 and each year seeing Councillors (the main local recruiters) lose seats won during the hated Labour Government that number will carry on falling.
Some blame call Me Dave for pissing off traditional Tories
4222 days ago
As I sit at Bristol Temple Meads preparing to head up to London it is 8.30 AM and just 7 of 34 councils have declared the local results from last night. But already it is clear that the ONLY clear winner is UKIP. There is little doubt that Nigel Farage’s party will make further big gains from the other 27 counts and that it is a triumph. But does it mean much?
The results are pretty spectacular given that four years ago UKIP stood in few of these seats. In other words they have come from nowhere. As things stand UKIP is on 42 seats (level pegging with Labour) and a net 42 ahead. The Tories are 66 down, the Lib Dems 15 down and Labour 30 ahead. Where UKIP has stood it has averaged 27% of the vote and should gain c20% overall – well ahead of the Lib Dems and not far behind Labour.
So what does it mean? The easy calls first.
Together with its abject result in the South Shields by-election (the worst by a major party since 1948) the locals are a disaster for Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems. There will be yet more angry beardy weirdies
4223 days ago
My partner is a lifelong deluded lefty. She has always voted for the People’s Party. But I can report a mini triumph of a shift away from the loons here in the Clifton Ward of Bristol.
Naturally my partner would rather drink her own urine than vote for the wicked Tories. The Lib Dem’s murdered a forest of trees in an attempt to win support for their ageing hippy of a candidate. But however many new park benches this old fool has managed to get set up around here my partner cannot forgive the Lib Dems for being in coalition with the wicked Tories so that was a non-starter.
And that left the People’s Party (no leaflet) and a nice young man with a Polish name standing for UKIP. He promised to end political correctness on the Council which I though sounded like a good idea although my partner was not so sure. And he also promised to end immigration from Eastern Europe. I guess he doesn’t like his relatives much.
4267 days ago
Yesterday David Cameron climbed down and agreed to the demands of Labour, the Lib Dems and Hacked off Campaigners like Hugh Grant (who was not at the time getting a blow job from a roadside hooker) and has agreed to State regulation of the press. Indeed it is worse than that since the new body set up will also cover anyone who publishes news related information in the UK. So that might get my Dad involved. The Shipston on Stour Parish newsletter is within the scope of this new legislation and should my father wish to moralise about the domestic arrangements of local celebs Tessa Jowell MP and David Mills, now happy reconciled as of one week after she stepped down from front line politics, Jowell could in theory report my poor father to the new regulator. And any blog is potentially within this remit if its primary discussion matter is news related – which includes celebs and hookers.
The press were not involved in agreeing the new Royal Charter and oppose it. But most big news organisations will eventually sign up to the code although the Telegraph appears to be. If you do not and the political stooges who manage it find you have breached you could face company destroying damages. And as things stand you may have to pay damages if you are hauled before the new body and found innocent.
This is therefore a fundamental assault not just on the press but on free speech.
It is a sad day. It will make it easier for the same MPs who have pushed through this legislation to lie, cheat and steal. It will make it easier for celebs to portray one image and get you to buy their merchandise while doing whatever they wish on the side. It will make it less likely that the crimes of future Jimmy Savile’s, expense fiddling MPs, hooker using politicians (Archer) or celebs (Grant) will be exposed. It truly marks an acceleration towards the world of Airstrip One.
However,
4268 days ago
Today the three party leaders will sit down and agree to ever tighter controls on the press. Assuming that he is not getting a blow job from a hooker at the time, Hugh Grant will then invoke the name of Milly Dowler and a 300 year tradition of a free press will draw to a close.
If you trust your politicians to behave with honesty and integrity that is perhaps fine. If you are happy for celebs like Grant to give you the hard sell on their latest movies or useless designer products without knowing why their public image is a sham that is again fine. If you are happy for scandals involving taxpayers cash being wasted, paedophile rings run within local councils and at the BBC to stay hidden and protected, then that is fine.
I suspect that none of us are happy that scandal and corruption will now become harder to expose. I am not.
The established press has done itself no favours. Phone hacking was a disgrace. It was also illegal under existing laws. There is no need for a new law to (in due course) get the collar of Piers Moron and others felt. And the press/Westminster cosy club
4269 days ago
Cyprus has become the fifth Eurozone nation to get a bailout but this one is different. At the insistence of the Germans one condition of the bailout is that private citizen’s pay and they will do so via a tax of up to 10% levied on all bank deposits in the Mediterranean island. This is pure socialism in action – the idea that the legitimate savings made by an individual as a result of fully taxed income can just be seized by the State. It is a horrific precedent.
For having established that the State can effectively seize whatever it wants whenever it wants you rather accept that you have no private property or savings. You can work your socks off, pay taxes to support those who do not work, save prudently so that you will not be a burden on the State or your family in the future and then one day the State just seizes your money. Heck why stop at 10% of bank deposits? Why not seize land, houses, etc.? The precedent is now there and this is an EU precedent.
David Cameron wishes to remain part of an organisation which thinks that State sponsored theft of private wealth is acceptable. I do not and nor, I suspect, do most British people. If the Conservative party and for that matter the Lib Dems and Labour support State sponsored theft that is fine they should be honest about it and we can all vote UKIP. But will the established parties stand up to the political elite in the Evil Empire and say
4276 days ago
I am not sure what the Lib Dems are meant to stand for these days and in a couple of years’ time they will be an electoral irrelevancy anyway. But I always thought that a party with the word Liberal in its name might have some sort of core beliefs in the liberty of the citizen against an all-powerful state. Unless I have read my John Stuart Mill very incorrectly I think that should be the case.
However, under current plans which the Lib Dems in parliament have largely supported, the law will change to extend secret hearings across the civil justice system. In a secret hearing defendants or claimants will not be allowed to be present, know or challenge the case against them and must be represented by a security-cleared special advocate, rather than their own lawyer. Right now these procedures are used in tiny numbers of immigration and deportation hearings, but the Government wants to extend them across the civil courts in cases deemed to involve national security.
Now, I am sure you can spot the flaw in this proposal. It is the State that decides when the security of the State is threatened. In a country where burning a poppy on twitter and where calling a police horse “gay” have both been deemed by the State to be offences, I simply do not trust the State.
That may trivialise the point. What about the whistleblower? The David Kelly figure. As the law stands now he is just murdered in the woods, sorry I meant allowed a public trial if charged. But as the law may stand in future someone who exposed how a crazed leader started an illegal war with a pack of lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction
4277 days ago
I never thought I’d find myself wring this but someone close to Harrods’s owner the Phony Pharaoh is talking common sense. The man is Michael Ward the managing director of the ghastly West London emporium and he has lashed out at the mainstream political parties on the subject of immigration. His point is that the Labour/Conservative alliance are so terrified of being soft on immigration that they are making it damn hard for those we would all like to move here to actually get in. Spot on.
The British public has no problem with folks turning up here who wish to work hard, pay taxes etc. The problem we all have is those who turn up in the UK and then become a drain on the State. Frankly we have enough Heather Frost type home grown talent in that department without needing to import any.
But in order to be seen to be tough on immigration the mainstream parties have both supported policies such as reducing the number of highly skilled migrants who are allowed in each year. My ex-girlfriend is an Indian National. She is highly skilled, has never claimed a penny in benefits and paid vast amounts in tax. Yet
4279 days ago
And you in the audience said Dimbleby as he picked out a rather plain looking young lady who then ripped into the poor UKIP lady basically accusing her of being an out and out racist. This young lady was allowed time to have a go again and again again. Gosh the local citizens of Dover seemed very well briefed about UKIP campaign literature in Eastleigh.
The lady was in fact Amy Rutland and you can find her twitter account here.
On it she tweets conversations to woth Stephen Twigg, labour’s uber-smug panellist on QT, boast on twitter how she termed the UKIP lady as “disgusting” on QT and oh, er…she works full time for the Labour party. Oh and she does not live in Dover. So just your normal BBC balance then.
Oh...that twitter account seems to have been changed. Let's rewrite history then. Sorry Amy you smug little bitch the cat is already out of the bag. And just for the record why is it that if UKIP says immigration is an issue it is disgusting but when your own party now says that immigration is an issue it is acting like a party of Government? Are only lefties allowed to talk about immigration on the grounds that they cannot be racist whereas you think anyone on the right must be?
4294 days ago
Like all politicians Boris Johnson likes signing off on big grandiose projects. He looks good at the opening ceremony. The ego is swollen. And heck he is not paying. I have noted before (here ) how BoJo has rather lost the plot in advocating that a bankrupt Government swells its deficit for “capital projects”. So far the Labour party has rejected his leadership application. But now in small detail we see one of Bojo’s little “capital projects” for London unravelling in a most embarrassing fashion
I refer to the £60 million cable car which links the Greenwich Peninsular to the Excel Centre. It was promised that this obvious folly would be self-funding thanks to passenger fares. Oh dear. Check out the graph below. It does not seem like many folks are using it. And apparently it is now pissing away £50,000 a week of taxpayers’ money off to money heaven.
So who will rescue BoJo? Well it is unlikely to be his non-pal Call Me Dave. Who likes pissing away cash big time? Yes, of course. Someone once said:
The EU budget will never be properly policed because the cash doesn’t properly belong to any nation — it belongs to “everybody”. And since it belongs to everybody, each individual country cynically reasons that there isn’t that much harm if its own citizens quietly loot as much of it as they reasonably can.”
Very wise. Who was that? Oh.. A Mr Boris Johnson. And so later this year Bojo will be picking up a cheque for £8 million from the European Regional Development Fund. Bingo. Happy days. How exactly does this encourage sustainable development? Er… as Boris would say…cripes..that’s a bit of a beastly question. You stinker.”
It is simply another white elephant conceived by a vain politician being bailed out with taxpayers cash. Well done Boris. What with your new found love for the EU you become an ever more credible party leader every day. That is of the Labour party.
4310 days ago
Windfarm and general all round global warming nutter and Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne has for months protested his innocence on the charge of perverting the course of justice – that is to say getting his ex wife to take speeding points for him. Today he has pleaded guilty in Court. So Huhne is not only a liar but will very shortly be a convicted criminal too and, fingers crossed, heading off to gaol. Given that during his period of procrastination and lies he has continued to claim MP’s expenses might this multi millionaire now be required to pay them back? I doubt it. Does he get an MP’s normal payoff? I expect so.
And now we face a by-election in Eastleigh, formerly a Tory/Lib Dem marginal. It is hard not to see the Lib Dem vote collapsing given that they are nationally hated and the circumstances of the contest. In that part of the world Labour is about as popular as the late Jimmy Saville and so UKIP will be licking its lips. There is no threat of “letting Labour in” by voting UKIP in this one-off contest. One imagines that the traditional Tories of Eastleigh are not exactly enthused by the tone of Call Me Dave’s conservatism. And so this may be the day. The odds have to be on a result of Conservative, UKIP, Lib Dem, Labour and then the assorted loons, but you never know. I would imagine that round at UKIP headquarters the excitement is tangible.
4311 days ago
The EU has announced that it is to spend £2 million “monitoring” twitter and other new media outlets in the run up to the 2014 European elections. Of this around 40% will not come from existing budgets in the Evil Empire’s Ministry of Truth but is new cash, part of the EU budget increase. The aim of this is explicitly to counteract Euroscepticism. In other words the EU is pissing away your cash to monitor folks like me who write and tweet stuff pointing out what an inefficient, misguided crook factory this edifice is. The stated aim is in persuading voters not to listen (and I presume vote UKIP or for other sceptical parties in Europe) but to “see the light” and vote for Eurofanatics (i.e. Labour, Lib Dems or Call Me Dave’s Tory party).
I quote from a document produced by the Evil Empire:
“Particular attention needs to be paid to the countries that have experienced a surge in Euroscepticism…Parliament’s institutional communicators must have the ability to monitor public conversation and sentiment on the ground and in real time, to understand ‘trending topics’ and have the capacity to react quickly, in a targeted and relevant manner, to join in and influence the conversation, for example, by providing facts and figures to deconstructing myths.”
But what is a myth? The EU tried to tell us that the bent banana directive was a myth until it was shown to be true. Would it say that my statement “The EU is the world’s largest donor of foreign aid and much of this cash is wasted or stolen” is a myth?
4338 days ago
Britain is getting fatter. The strain of treating a stack of lardbuckets like myself for diabetes (my issue), heart attacks, etc is a very real financial burden. All of that is a given. But calls to ban Frosties ( Labour health spokesman Andy Burnham) and Fried Chicken shops ( general lefty fruitcake and a bit of a lardbucket herself, Dianne Abbot) do not address the problem. Prohibition never works. It fails with drugs, it failed with alcohol in 1920s Chicago and it will fail with Frosties.
4363 days ago
I am again engaged on family matters and so sitting in Shipston with my father. He is aware that i am about to report back on today’s deluded lefty activities from my family. They are (with the glorious exception of little step sister Flea) utterly deluded.
We will shortly light the fire here. It is freezing. My Dad trousers his pensioner’s winter fuel allowance but amid a heated debate about global warming the actual heating is never switched on. I have tweaked the dial without telling him. It is still freezing. And so yesterday’s Guardian will once again start its useful life in a few minutes with Toynbee’s gibberish and the rest going up in smoke.
But there is, I am proud to reveal, another useful purpose for the BBC’s sister publication.
4376 days ago
UKIP was never going to win any of the three by-elections last night. The mainstream press knew that but happily suggested it might in order that the political and media establishment in the Westminster bubble could say that UKIP had not done as well as expected. UKIP is not a party of the establishment and it will thus get no favours from the established media. The way that papers such as the Telegraph took the spin from the established parties is the sort of dirty trick UKIP will have to get used to as it grows. And it will grow.
I write this not as a UKIP member or indeed committed supporter. Pro tem I am clearly a sympathiser. I think that the party has a good few loons in its ranks. Don’t they all? It strikes me that it can appear not to be libertarian at times on social issues. That may be unfair on it, but it is the impression one gets. However on a range of issues, notably the EU, smoking in public places and deficit reduction it is, for me, bang on the money. And though it wants to have MPs, right now it has nothing to do with the sleaze club of Westminster to which the other three main parties all belong.
4391 days ago
Zak Mir tells me that he feels like death after leading me astray with our all night drinking session. Good. It serves him right. I feel the same way but have now realised the truly horrible consequences of my actions. That is to say I appear to have arranged at some stage during the evening to meet someone else for supper tonight. You can safely assume that I shall not be drinking alcohol and that I will not be staying out late. I am too old for all of this.
Meanwhile Corby goes to the polls today in a by-election caused by the resignation of the frightful Louise Mensch.
4403 days ago
Last night Newsnight said it was going to expose a top Tory who was a serial and active paedophile. But it did not name him. Well as it happens we all know of one dead senior Tory (Peter Morrison) and most of us know a far more famous dead leading Tory in this camp. As for the one still alive: I do also know at least one name but in paedo-obsessed Britain no doubt others will emerge. I say will emerge … they are already out there.
I have just been sent a link to a blog outing 4 senior Tories as part of a paedo-ring. I have no intention of landing in Court over this since I am 99% sure that at least two of those named are 100-% innocent but you can find it without too much bother if you wish. Meanwhile #Newsnight on twitter throws up a few other candidates for this week’s Jimmy Savile prize, Westminster edition.
