On the Suicide of Simon Hall

I'm quite surprised to hear that Simon Hall has committed suicide whilst in Prison: whilst it is the case that he had made an unusually counterproductiuve fuss about falsely verbally protesting his innocence, it was perhaps a fair comment that his was a Case in which circumstances might have seemed to allow for the possibility that a fatal few stab wounds to the Pensioner he had been burgling might have been significantly accidental. I suppose it was the deccision to carry a knife that made him seem sinister if One presumes that the relatively recent confession can be taken as genuine which I suppose it probably should; it takes a fair bit of thinking to get One's head round the fact that he chose such an item as among the equipment required to burgle a frail woman of approaching eighty insofar as one tends to think of hunger or hardship as a traditional motivation for theft. The matter doesn't bode well in a climate of increasing public mistrust and fear of Politicians and the Criminal Justice System, so many being keen to associate themselves with such hawkish remarks about life meaning life for certain kinds of Murderer and this sort of thing it is easily forgotten that for instance people generally are less likely to relinquish valuable information if all they have to look forward to as the result of confession is dying in Gaol. It is also true that sometimes the families of victims feel prompted to make a contribution to valid and relevant public dialogue on such a serious subject from various perspectives; most often obviously on an inescapably emotive basis but also sometinmes in terms of simply interpreting historical and statistical reality.

On the deaths of Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother

My impulse is to say despite the charade of the nauseating flattery evidenced by so many schoolchildren upon the death of the Queen Mother, most of whom had quite likely never heard of her until the media furore had invaded the TV screen, for which there must be a good reason, that I personally have not met any member of the Royal Family and offhand can conceive of little reason why so many civic notables who usually curse such preeminent members of society quite fully when representatives of the media are not present, should be falling over themselves in an effort to entertain someone who could hardly be in less need of hospitality of any sort.

No Royalist has done anything for me and as far as I am concerned the country is in an appalling state with corruption, nepotism, violence and endless questionable courtroom scenes being about all the civic life that is to be found whilst politicians talk about their non existent Democracy, and to be honest I can see little reason for any kind of smug complacency about the realities of the inherent dangers of indulging in hero worship of individuals as responsible for the parlous state of the world today as the British Royal Family is. If you ask me the late Queen Mother had following the death of her daughter Margaret, expired from sheer boredom at the thought of much further existence with her elder sibling's dreadful boring sycophantic voice droning away and completely unmindful of the circumstances of her fun loving Uncle's abdication.

I find it at least approaching the outrageous that the death of the vivacious Princess Margaret can have occasioned so little healthy debate about the role of the institution of Monarchy and so much blandly insincere fawning on those who like the Queen Mother were keen enough to see their in laws deposed or abdicating for contemplating marriage to a divorcee whilst conveniently overlooking it in her Nieces and Nephews. Neither have we had any input into the question of how this led to the fifty year reign of a Queen whose undeserving and inability has in this nation all too arguably fostered an almost unnatural conservatism and an unwillingness to think about the challenges of the coming century. It hardly needs saying that in a society racked by so much distrust and too many evident shortcomings this is not the way to provide realistic solutions to short and medium term problems: I refer to the fact for example of the matter of a succession of hapless Junior Ministers being consistently blamed for a failure to end the troubles in Ulster. My opinion for what it is worth is that we? British ought to bite the bullet in this respect and admit that eg the hereditary title of King should be consigned to the history books along with those of Dauphin and Kaiser. The arguments that have consistently been advanced for the retention of such a thing are I feel largely irrelevant at best nowadays and I really feel that justice would be served if our cowardly Greek looking Prince were relieved of the responsibility for holding such a title and attempting to be the nation's premier role model. I should point out that Newspaper editors have for example been remarkably quiet about the amount of homicides perpetrated by supporters of the ruling family amongst army recruits in particular since the Chinook Crash and the death of the Princess of Wales, which ensued whilst a certain Provincial Police force have been lying about some of the circumstances of the former mishap.

Recent Events in the House of Lords

AUG 2002
If anyone needed any evidence that there was in fact any sense in at least the semblance or pretence of an attack on the institutions of privilege that once formed part of this Government's ideological identity along with it's ethical foreign policy, it so happens to be the case that the Daily Telegraph this month published details of how a whole raft of ecological measures passed quite democratically by the lower house has been thrown out of the Lords at the instigation of certain members, blatantly bloodsucking financial incentives from the Industries and Organisations that would have been adversely affected by the new legislation which would have, amongst other things set up a number of additional wildlife sanctuaries around our coasts for everyone's long term benefit.

We are often sold the Monarchy and the House of Lords by interested parties feigning to be traditionalists upholding noble values who tell us that our unwritten Constitution allows for a system of 'checks and balances' to be imposed on the will of the people, probably because they are too easily misled by 'dumbing down' newspaper magnates, a point of view which doesn't have no validity at all but could more easily be effected by requiring those wishing to vote to pass an intelligence test insofar as I personally don't see why those who obviously don't know enough to have an opinion worth listening to should be part of the decision making process. In this case however it is all too clearly the case that far from having any kind of altruistic interest in the ignorance of their social inferiors, that the only sort of checks and balances that the peers are really interested in would in the first instance be correctly spelt cheques, and in the second instance are bank accounts held in a good credit 'balance,' and accruing interest.

Legal Affairs (sentencing policy)

10 / 01 / 03

Today's awful event of a young tearaway driver facing a maximum ten year sentence for a second killing (this time of the most innocent imaginable six year old) only two months after having been freed for the first, and the public outcry over the philosophy and rationale behind sentencing at a time when reaction to various crime stories especially with War looming, raises a number of question marks about the way that those in power and authority spend their time: which is to say that I am sure it has not escaped the attention of many that killers in Cars get treated far too leniently thanks to the powerful motoring lobby compared to other similar crimes of passion committed with devices that have a primary purpose as weapons. I am personally, not least in view of the fact of the considerable amount of attention having been spent on the Cannabis issue of late, inclined to draw attention to the further debasement of the quality of our criminal justice system in another New Labour propaganda exercise in which they are posturing their responsibility for Conservative audiences who are in reality not facing any challenge from this Administration having got exactly what they wanted from it. The decision to increase sentences whilst apparently downgrading the offence by meaninglessly placing it in another category and the all too nakedly deceitful attempt to manipulate public opinion around the issue whilst saying anything and everything about it is one of the more obvious signs that the political establishment has a profound contempt for the people they are supposedly representing. I'm afraid Mr Blair and Co. will have to do more to convince me that their Art of Government, or should I say Art in Government, has very good reasons for resembling something other than a quaint and badly rehearsed theatrical children's rendition of the Wizard of Oz before I will consider wasting my time in casting a vote.

I'm not quite certain as to exactly what chicanery Mr Bliar is seeking to concoct with this almost entirely meaningless debate but perhaps I am better informed than the average character in today's Britain in that for my money the only single worthwhile conclusion that has evolved from recent debate on the drugs issue for example is that the Government simply does not have the ability to persecute millions of people who are good naturedly minding their own business and that the attempt to persecute Cannabis users or users of soft drugs over the last few decades has been one of the most damaging disingenuous experiments in social engineering that Western European Society has ever inflicted on itself, though this remark should probably be applied to the question of Drug Prohibition in general. Presumably Mr Bliar has some kind of manipulation of conservative audiences in mind with the extremely two faced promulgation of this debate which has ensued from the Labour Party, which is to many quite obviously a complete waste of everyone's resources as it has been concluded eg (especially by themselves) that any attempt to use the Police force to persecute such persons is, if not a logistical impossibility then a massive expensive handicap to the functioning of society in general and the societal management of behaviour that is more obviously worthy of the appellation criminal. It very much seems that what is really happening behind the scenes is that the question of Drug Prohibition in general is breaking down and that the Government is increasingly having to resort to lies and propaganda as an attempt to manipulate an escalating black market, and that Police Officers are having to use their commonsense whilst waiting vainly for sensible legislation from people who are far too busy pretending Democracy and profitably sucking up to the Windsors to be able to do anything much worthwhile for anyone.

In any case the event serves as an unmentionably shocking reminder of the potential disregard for others so commonplace in the unashamedly self seeking world of the 20th century: I honestly wish I hadn't had the profound displeasure to acquire this particular piece of news information and I'm certain that this is one of those sad occasions when the entire human race must surely be unanimous in commiserating with the family in their most unfortunate and profound distress.

The most valuable comment I can make about the disarray of the British CJ system is that knee jerking over party political perspectives and trying to make sense out of its antiquated appearance by applying an approximate interpretational rationale on the basis of party political voting is doing more harm than good, perhaps principally because party political voting is subject to an awful lot of deceit and trickery and it is considerably more difficult to evaluate consensus than one might think at first sight, especially if you have no specialist or personal interest in the doings of relevant institutions.

Sexual Tension

I've simply got to include the gist of an article which appeared in the Ipswich Evening Star on Friday April 18th though it refers to an incident at the Castle Pub, Ketts Hill, Norwich.

Apparently a male customer was asked to leave after chatting up Lesbian drinkers in what he may or may not have realised was a 'Gay Pub.' He returned with a machete and smashed up the windows from outside after staff had locked the door, then put his head through a broken window saying "I am going to kill you," then disappeared and has yet to be caught.

I hope I'm not the only person who can see the funny side of this: I have long been a critic of the holier than thou airs of many members of the pink fraternity who imagine they have some moral basis to regard themselves as superior to ordinary people. Whilst I don't condone violence or threats in any circumstance I have to admit I practically laughed myself into a stroke when I read this particular story. For people who often claim to suffer from insensitivity and prejudice the tale is an exemplar of the fact that prejudice is prejudice whoever practises it and that we should all practise toleration of others' views. I think it is a particularly dangerous practise to allow some people more rights than others on any pretext and the handful of Gays I have known in my petty provincial world have had far too much help in effectively terrorising others whilst feigning an innocuous non violent disposition.

Dying for Drugs (it's a very sick World)

If anyone needed any evidence that the World we live in is rotten to the core and that evil is real, alive, well, and flourishing in our so called Liberal Democracies, the Channel Four Programme Dying for Drugs screened at 20:30 GMT on Sunday April 27th 2004 will have dispelled quite a few illusions about the ethical policy of western civilisation and opened many eyes as to just quite how low one human being will descend in order to exploit another.

I can only hope that the family of the young boy whose death from preventable AIDs related illness was filmed, will derive some tiny crumb of comfort from the humiliation of such an event as begging fruitlessly to TV cameras for the money to pay American investors for drugs they won't give away cheaply to save the lives of desperate individuals in that it is likely to shame those who talk casually of legitimate investment returns. I found the programme shocking and chastening even though I had some idea of what was going to be screened, the sight of the family desperately worrying about their doomed skeletal son and trying to appease his death throes with Spider Man videos made me feel absolutely disgusted, ashamed to be living myself, ashamed of the human race and nauseated at the wolfish morality of so called Christian nations who have just lately been trumpeting their values around the region of the middle east.

Have we really endured so many numerous millennia of progress: the wheel; the pen; the Industrial Revolution; permissive society; and the space age so that we can try screwing money for medicine out of desperately indigent peoples in this utterly shameless manner? Right up to the point of watching impassively whilst an effective death sentence was pronounced to protect profits I wanted to believe it was a joke or a hoax and that people really wouldn't do such a shocking thing. I still cannot quite believe that what I witnessed was true and that anyone could ever possibly wish to be associated with a Nation or a Company that could prevent such things and did not: what greater reward can there be than the gratitude of such simple ordinary people for the life of their child.

I am absolutely at a loss to find words to describe the disgust and contempt I feel for people who would refuse to save another life because of money; all this business about people needing financial incentive and profit is just so much sh*te. I suppose that most who saw the documentary realised that watching Spider Man videos was about the high point of that Kid's what, six seven year life span and he was actually grateful for them: I hope this made a lot of Americans happy. I simply cannot comprehend the vile iniquity that makes people seek to profit from this sort of misfortune and wonder if they call it caring conservatism in the US? Or whether anyone trying to duplicate these expensive medicines without an expensive licence will be labelled a 'terrorist' like anyone who dares to challenge US Imperialism in a military sense, or are they merely thieves?

Contemporary Troubles and the Jacobite claim to the Throne

I thought I'd throw this one in and not just for interest value: we do live in troubled times for all the wealth that is walking in the World (at least this part of it) and replacing the Royal family with for instance a few Jacobites who have been given a brief of sorts to be elaborated upon is but one option that could be considered for a slimmed down monarchy as the new Millennium tries to get underway.

James 2 had a Son called James Edward Stuart (the old pretender) whose son was called Charles Edward Stuart (the young pretender) who passed the right of succession of the Stuart claim to the Throne onto his Brother when he died in 1788. Cardinal Henry agreed to pass the claim onto Charles Emmanuel 4th of the house of Savoy who was a Great Great Grandson of James 2's sister Henrietta. His brother Victor had a daughter called Mary Beatrice who married into the house of Habsburg Lorraine, her granddaughter married into the Bavarian Wittelsbachs who still use the title of Duke, and the present holder would be the King of England by hereditary or divine right if you will, at least according to eg the Will of Elizabeth the First! But why mention this here and now? What's the meaning you may well ask? Well, in turbulent times when so many old certainties are being generally undermined it does serve some purpose to point out that there is this flaw to the British character in terms of perceptions of Law, like a grubby secret half remembered lurking in the consciousness of native Islanders. We British or the British howsoever you may care to view it, are very fond of our notions of fair play etc and the deposition of the Stuart Dynasty however practical for some runs contrary to almost every notion of legality and propriety in a fairly conservative society. Charles Edward was the rightful heir to the throne, he was cheated by underhand espionage which deceived his General Lord George Murray, and in the ensuing military defeat letters were forged by the Usurper's Son to the effect that no prisoners were to have been taken by Jacobite troops. It is a first rate adventure story by any reckoning if also a sad one: no-one ever really wants to depose the rightful head of the family and it remains an almost open wound on the present day body politic in more ways than are easily recognisable. If the Crown had remained in Jacobite hands we would have much more local independence (and much less need for phony tony) and there would probably be no Irish Republic or Irish troubles in the present day.

Music
I see Dolores O Riordan of the Cranberries has been having strange trouble with childminders. Well Dolores we all need to understand just how difficult it is to bring up children, here's hoping you get over it soon and happy warbling!

Developing the Nuclear issue

I'm afraid I'm appalled to find so much careless encouragement of the Nuclear Power programme in the Papers recently. To my mind there's never been enough real justification for creating the kind of risks that any nuclear technology inevitably entails and I have always said so quite categorically. Surely people don't imagine that events like Chernobyl can only occur in countries which have been safely demonised by a docile well fed Fleet Street. I'm personally quite disgusted to find that politicians can concur so readily in an energy policy that can so easily be viewed as a political expedient when the acquisition of cheap green renewable energy as the phrase now has it, for the harnessing of natural forces like wind and waves to generate Electricity is so obviously one of the few real major identifiable and realisable challenges for the political establishment of our time and it's failure to address this all too clearly underlines much of what I have had to say elsewhere about the meaninglessness of our pseudo democracy and abuse of the political will in the name of a Democracy which is effectively supervised by probably less than about a dozen media barons!

Instead of so many cute little rationalisations about how supremely destructive forces can be safely manipulated which in essence they really cannot, I think we should hear a little more about the other side of the argument and the increasingly respectable seeming viewpoint of those who have opposed their development, including for example the fact that Germany has abolished Nuclear Power which might not be widely known. I'm very concerned that Mr Blair will try and sneak a nuclear programme through whilst palming us off with stories about his Deputy surrendering perquisites which he clearly shouldn't have had in the first place if half what he says is to be believed. I do think the question of energy generation in the long term would be best addressed by serious and large scale works to encourage the construction of wind farms, solar panelling to be a more standard fitment in new houses and a much tougher no nonsense attitude toward getting such innovations used for everyone's benefit. Such a domestic programme really needs to be accompanied by a renewed drive for meaningful international co-operation in the development of such resources. It really is a glaring illustration of various appalling inadequacies for which these characters can reasonably be blamed, that poor folks who have heard so much about what the biggest parliamentary majority in a hundred and fifty odd years is supposed to mean for them, that it is specifically the political will that should seem to be so remarkable by it's absence in so serious a matter that is so clearly the task of the political establishment to deal with.

Paedophiles and the Police

26/11/06 I see that the National Constabulary have been forced into making an embarrassing retreat from remarks made by a senior Policeman that adults having sex with 13-16 yr olds are not paedophiles which they are. Whilst observing that this derives from complaints I have made about my Father having been abused by Latin Teacher with friends in the Church of England including my present demand that this be recognised by Local Bobbies who have conspired with their nominally leftist friends to ignore the consequences of such abuse I suppose I do have to concede that it is a matter of mere labelling.

Anyone who commits a sexual act with a minor in this Country is a Paedophile that is simply a fact and the only exception strictly speaking is in the case of those who are themselves officially minors. What should have been said and what these disgusting corrupt arselickers are plainly too guilty and stupid to remember properly is that eg there is huge difference between someone in their twenties or thirties who has been inveigled into sexual acts with eg a mature 15 year old athlete, and say for example a fifty year old who has been caught sodomising a child of barely more than suckling age, but they are both paedophiles. For the benefit of those who should have looked it up before making comment a Paedophile is someone who has an excessive sexual interest in children and the keyword here is excessive, since a child is in law (in the UK as far as I know) anyone aged below the age of sixteen, anyone who displays or evidences an excessive interest in the sexual behaviour of those aged fifteen or below is in fact therefore a Paedophile. Some instances of Paedophilia are therefore considerably less offensive than others and can be reasonably argued as quite innocuous as in countless cases of eg a seventeen year old committing sexual acts with a fifteen year old: my case is certainly not one of these latter and my Father should have been diagnosed as a mentally ill victim long before he tried to Prostitute me at the of scarcely fourteen.

Whilst I think many interested parties would and probably will given time agree that the Law as it concerns such interactions needs to take increasing account of scientific observations about the mechanisms involved, insofar as many Teachers might seem to have committed all kinds of contact infractions on the basis of arguable fingerprint evidence, it is on the other hand an equally good idea to point out that affairs of the heart and/or the mind are quite easy to differentiate from that/those which are sexual and that in my view it is valid to accept the commonsensical as appropriate in a legalistic perspective. I say this because one often hears stories about Teachers being afraid to discipline children in physical education classes for example.

Cocaine and the Conservative Party Conference

Whilst it may be sad to see putative role models like Robbie Williams in Hospital for addiction to prescriptions drugs as at the end of February 2002 One can't help wondering what the election of a fat blushing pink piggie (for that is exactly what David Cameron reminds of) as leader of the Tory Party might happen to signify, beyond the obvious fact that the rise of someone with a Drug History is inevitable and obviously at least in part an admission that Legislation on the issue is way out of date with Consensus. I can't help but feel that his election constituted among other things the tacit remark that Labour was in a position to get itself re-elected perhaps several times more around the drugs issue whilst the establishment party clings to the assertion that people have to be protected from Drugs and the average floating voter increasingly tends to vote for the party that doesn't seem enthusiastic about continuing with an expensive prohibition policy that obviously achieves little and is held in far more contempt than many on the right of the political spectrum seem to realise. The fact that establishmentarian thinkers have significantly miscalculated their propaganda around the issue was clearly shown in footage of the Conference at which Cameron was elected. He was briefly being quizzed about his views in the Conference Lobby or something such and the only thing which clearly came across as the result of the News Coverage was that this year the Police weren't going to make any fuss about the obviously significant quantities of stimulants and party poppers of one sort or another, and that there wouldn't be any headaches about it or anything. The Tory Party has of course very arguably little to lose in terms of popularity and can afford to use and lose new young faces. I spent some time a few weeks ago explaining the historical significance of the difference between a Cameron and a Campbell to a friend who had considered himself well informed: it being the case that Clan Cameron was the first to come out in support of Bonnie Prince Charlie and that the Campbells are Lowland allies of the Hanoverian dynasty. The interesting point is I suppose that does this mean we might be likely to see more criticism of the role of the Windsorian Monarchy in the Tory Party, divided as it always has been between hard nosed businessman some of whom have had to work quite hard for a living and hereditary interests who have not.

The Great Skunk Swindle

I've absolutely got to take issue with some of the ludicrously offensive arselicking of discredited and out of date drug policy being presently undertaken by various Newspapers on the subject of new strains of Marijuana which is in fact somewhat stronger than the Marijuana that was available in the eighties. Someone seems to have put together a few stories about overly sensitive middle class families who obviously wanted to blame something other than their own inadequacy for various instances of quirky behaviour.

A few entirely unsubstantiated reports have been circulated about ex hippies and present day smokers having supposedly condemned the stuff as too strong and potentially dangerous being up to 25 times the strength of the Weed that was available in the eighties. This is nasty, insidious, malicious and deceitful propaganda at its very worst. All prophecies are to some extent self fulfilling by their very nature so when you ask people with problems what they think is their cause, they will always prefer to blame some other agency than their own human fallibility. the Skunk Weed that has been bred by ingenious Dutch scientists is perhaps several times the strength of the imported Weed, certainly not ten times or twenty five times as has been alleged. What is not for example being said is that at the same time the reverse has happened with Cannabis (a solid block of refined Marijuana extract) which is in fact several times weaker than the soft sticky Black resin from Pakistan and Afghanistan that used to be widely available in the early eighties (especially before the War in the Lebanon) which can no longer be found and had been replaced by cheap adulterated products that constituted a much amplified health hazard, until often Home Grown Skunk Weed started appearing at around the turn of the Century. Most of those I know simply use less of the Skunk to obtain the same effect and are glad of the health benefits. Lets not forget either, that Doctors in this Country used to tell people to smoke cigarettes for their nerves and those who are addicted and smoke routinely are in fact victims of official state managed exploitation that has been extremely hazardous to public health.

Here is the gist of an email I sent to the Independent berating its tergiversation.

Like to say how disappointed I was with the Paper's retraction of it's stance on the Cannabis issue.

I think the reaction is prompted by a curious kind of quirky, conservative, insincere, knee jerk moralising occasioned by a Government that is appearing dangerously aimless, has already decided to fawn on the Royal family and failed to make any serious quibble over US hegemony.

This being the case our Representatives are as much the cause of Teenagers wanting to sensationalise their habits for various third rate analyses and ill informed speculation designed to disguise the truth than any self interested News Editor. They having already made up their minds to do as they're told and really ought to be thinking more seriously about how new IT is going to be further impacting on the Prime Minister's much loved consensual democracy, increasingly exposed as a two party system of dangerously inept and well managed stereotypes which is impossibly ill equipped to deal with the massive convulsions in news media and various associated forms of signals traffic. I'd like to see this sort of thing exposed as seeking to hide the unsavoury truth about the PM's cosy vision which is all the ideological debate that one can really find nowadays; the truth being that far from conducting a serious policy debate these leaders and role models are unable to even collect tax on half the tobacco smoked in the Country much less raise the age for it's legal purchase to eighteen or correctly assess the necessity for an accurate global perspective on various weighty matters. Truths quoted in isolation are quite meaningless and usually intended to hide the truth: to say for example that Cannabis can cause this or that sort of reaction in behavioural terms is a statement that is almost always potentially true, but so is the statement that if you go walking out of doors you might get hit by a falling meteorite and most would agree that it's really not worth remembering to worry about such an eventuality. Different preparations of Cannabis can have contrasting and opposite effects and for example it is not possible to assess correctly what strains with what likely effects may or may not be available on a rapidly shifting black market which should perhaps be viewed as the real enemy and any claims that it can are nonsense. Techniques for acquiring accurate behavioural data from statistics are as varied as the means by which one might go about searching for a needle in a haystack, all may have some validity but it is a fairly simple piece of logic which suggests they are nevertheless inevitably, in both cases going to fail in their object. Less statistical quackery if you please

On the Resignation of Tony Blair

Good Riddance is what the voter usually says when his putative representatives are dismissed; I never had any use for the Creature and neither do I have any use for a fat lying Scotsman. I'm simply not interested in our so called Democracy, first one must have a fair and functioning Legal System.

On MP's Expenses

I view the so called controversy as a smokescreen to disguise what a disgusting load of greedy backsliding Proselytes the theoretically most serious minded among us are . One could go on about the fact endlessly and whilst it is a good idea to take issue with corrupt practices what we are witnessing is really a whitewash or fudge of the fact that Parliament especially since the Blair era, has portrayed itself as a thinking nerve centre when the truth is that they have taken the money and ran as far as doing anything but accepting monarchical direction is concerned. I find Nick Clegg's noises particularly frightening in that he seems to be addressing what he considers to be an audience of naive and rather backward adolescents and this I find extremely disturbing, especially when you consider the seriousness of what it is that he is actually thinking of doing. I can't help but wonder if he actually believes any of the fatuous asseverations he has made or if he has actually watched any recordings of some of his recent pronouncements.

Chris Lewis and the Cocaine Cover Up

If anyone needed any evidence that the Royal Family and senior members of the establishment here are seriously worried about the potential publicity of some of what they were up to in the 1960's look no further. Last week the onetime England Cricketer Chris Lewis was sentenced to 16 years for smuggling Cocaine worth the equivalent of a poxy terraced house in a low grade Essex suburb. It cannot have escaped the attention of many that this is considerably more than is presently being handed down for the Rape and Murder of a two year old Child known as Baby P. No-one in the least concerned for the reputation of this nation can be anything other than utterly shocked to consider such a fact is absolutely unforgivable. If you ask me our Princes want to stop touring the ex colonies in the silly out of date clothes their Grandad has given them and get back here and do some work instead. This, I am afraid is one of those occasions when the simple cliche, 'that is absolutely disgusting' just has to be placed as a straightforward and simple piece of truth that is incapable of exaggeration. How can someone who is peaceably minding his own business possibly be considered a greater evil than someone who has raped and murdered a small child? The notion is completely flabbergasting: has God deserted the British Isles or am I hallucinating over the text in my copy of the Daily Torygraph? Apart from the cost of keeping him incarcerated the fact is that there are thousands of deprived children who could benefit from something like a Community Service Order and we'd all be much better served. A large Army of many thousands of souls were wiped out in fighting over the Cocaine trade in Mexico last year and I'm sick and tired of hearing about increasingly specious looking justifications for Drug Prohibition.

On The Forthcoming Local Elections

A curious air of unreality hangs over the usual low key electioneering for Local Government Posts and European Offices this year. Whilst I don't consider myself an interested party I will predict that the one salient feature apparent in voting patterns will be a clearly visible swing toward the Eurosceptics which will reflect highly justified concerns that Sovereignty over much domestic policy is being secretly eroded. The BNP will not make the breakthrough it is hoping for despite the fact that loose or liberal attitudes toward immigration is causing problems but fringe parties generally will make some unusual significant gains as voter disillusionment will (also highly justifiably) be a very key factor.

Coalition what Coalition

It's been a long time since anyone seriously talked about the prospect of a Coalition Government and that was way back in the days of Harold Wilson and Jeremy Thorpe when major topics were the Cold War, Miner's strikes and the Oil Crisis. I've personally never been particularly understanding of why it is that we're supposed to be so addicted to our present version of party politics as a necessary mainstay of our so called Democracy and have always rather thought it a healthy thing that members of the same political parties should have significant differences of opinion, it being the case that our Newspapers are typically shrieking about splits and disunity whenever a figure on the national political scene is noted as having diverged from the official Party line on a given subject. When it is of course the fact that those who have lots of cash, own their own homes, or have lucrative interests of one sort or another are trying to make out that these things can be obtained by voting and that Voters are conspicuously in charge of running the Country, when it happens to be the case that it is rather managed by Property Holders, similarly anonymous Business Interests and to a lesser extent Taxpayers. It is always significantly the case that Conservatives are in power so to speak even when there is a Labour Government and this was especially the case with the last Labour Government in that Tony Blair sacrificed almost every traditional feature of Labour policy to obtain Election as a clear cut case of having arranged a continuation of Thatcherism and many traditionally working class voters obviously did find this irksome.

It seems a reasonable supposition that this was quite inevitable for ongoing historical reasons rather than for those of short term political expediency or matters relating directly to party political policy and so for such reasons I would tend to suggest that the recent Coalition Government is a perhaps favourable development in terms of party politics however much I frequently despair at the lack of Vision on the part of certain characters like our dumpy, grinning new Chancellor. Some of the attacks being made on the Welfare State evidence far too much of the rhetoric of 19th century Dickensian Capitalism and don't really as far as I can see make a great deal of sense in the 21st century. Party Politics in the UK tended to develop as the Monarch made use of various groups to govern through Parliament since the Civil War outstandingly placed limitations on his or her courses of action in managing the Country. The UK's Democracy has never had change imposed on it from above or outside as the result for instance of defeat in War as is reflected in most continental systems which tend to be more proportionally representative of votes cast for different Parties.

I sought to make the point in the early years of the Iron Lady's regime that in the big picture as it were, surely the object of centuries of Industrialisation and Mass Production is in general to free the population from toil and drudgery not to maintain it as One would think from listening to the sort of rehashed Thatcherite rationale that seems to underpin most of what is coming from the Tory benches in the Commons. In an age of ever accelerating progress when the Nation's relative primacy as a world leader and political visionary has been severely diminished, it is first and foremost absolutely essential that someone should have the clear foresight to say with some certainty what is going to happen or at least what might be likely to happen with regard to a number of key issues. Whilst I might be willing to consider some traditional Conservative emphasis on social responsibility can go hand in hand with some sort of radical Liberalism, there is far too much confusion and uncertainty in the air as regards domestic issues when a new Government should be displaying some clear sense of purpose with regard to what it is about. Part of such a perceived problem may be that we are all far too used to being fed preconceived notions about how our typically two party system can manage our comfortably compartmentalised class orientated existences.

I would appreciate as I'm sure would many some more honest and straightforward clarification of the truth about the Nation's finances as there are some remarkably contradictory statements being bandied about in the Media with regard to the truth or falsehood of various assertions about economic realities: some say that the Nation is in worse debt than it ever has been; some say that we are in worse debt than we have been since the War; others, merely that the national debt is the worst it has been for a generation; others that the national debt has in fact been quite stable since the turn of the nineteenth century at around a few percent of the Country's estimable value. It is without question that God is not a Banker, that there is only one World that the Taxpayers know of for certain, and that within it the human population is continuing to burgeon alarmingly whilst all kinds of natural resources including impressive, useful and beautiful animal and plant species disappear. So there does have to be some sense to the notion that we should take a fresh look at our values but in what way and from whose point of view, are obviously questions that our Politicians should have answered before the General Election rather than leaving Voters to ask afterwards.

The emergence of the Chinese Economy and the prospect of increasing European Federalisation are two significant factors obviously bearing upon the thinking of those well informed on specifically economic issues and such considerations obviously underline the increasing complexity and manipulability of Domestic and International economies: it's far more easy for boom or bust to take place overnight nowadays. I'd really like to see more explanation of these factors in terms of general overview than the battery of conflicting assertions we have seen that only tend toward confusion and the presumption of dishonesty on the part of our Leaders. The Chancellor seems in many respects to have left us to assume that our spend and slash two party Democracy has left us with a similar situation with which we were (allegedly) faced when Thacher came into power and this week we have witnessed some highly emotive scenes on our TV's Evening News in reaction to austerity measures. If the nation is so hard up, and we need to deal with a culture of dishonesty as our 'Honest John' Chancellor has it in aiming to cut 5 billion from the welfare bill by tackling questionable and fraudulent claims, why doesn't he, as Len Mcluskey of Unite sensibly enquires, take stern measures to deal with the culture of Tax Avoidance among business cronies which is quite reliably estimated to cost the nation at least several times more?

The Chinese have a philosophy which states that those who prosper singlemindedly are in fact plagiarising or using up the good fortune which belongs to others or to people in general. Without wishing to encourage any sort of shiftlessness, in many respects I think this makes surprisingly practical good sense. The Dickensian age is long gone and the Thatcher era fast receding. One ought to have something other than harsh words and reactionary economics to offer the genuinely unfortunate in our Society. Where is the Vision and the insight necessary to persuade people that there is any sincerity in this notion of caring Conservatism that is in principle supposed to be an alternative to lunatic, leftist, legislative, levellerism? I hope Simon Hughes is right and that the Government fails to get the sum of the all too draconian measures planned for Housing Benefits in particular through Parliament. I think it one of the more worthwhile and well considered aspects of our Social Security system is, that it has been possible for a welfare claimant to hope for somewhere to live that isn't an appalling curse from many aspects of conventional value judgements insofar as poverty begets poverty and deliberately presenting the poor and disadvantaged with more and more deliberately humiliating options makes it even more difficult for people to work their way out of the poverty trap. I hope very much that George isn't going to live up to the reputation of his demonic namesake of Comic Book fiction, Harry Osborne the Green Goblin.

In the way of further observations I must suggest that anyone who really believes the Tories are concerned with Justice for the low paid is either incredibly naive, extremely stupid or congenitally insane: it's a new one on me I definitely know that. If this was true in principle then as a logical proposition it is surely at least equally logical they should pay them more at the expense of the very well off. Most of the Welfare legislation current in the UK derives the mid century with a widely held view that Society was corrupt and unjust which is to say amongst other things that I don't believe for instance that many War Veterans think a great deal of Mr Osborne's definitions of honest acquisition and that even Mrs Thatcher wouldn't have dreamed of the swingeing and unprecedented nature of the attack on Welfare Claimants which looks increasingly like a cheap and nasty attack on the defenceless and vulnerable elements of Society which are more reminiscent of a right wing US Bible Belt state in the 1950's than a 21st Century European Nation. All that is necessary to reduce the Housing Benefit Bill for Government and Taxpayers is to allow Local Authorities to buy up properties with the huge funds that are disbursed for Housing necessities instead of allowing the Chancellor's Landowning supporters who can afford Lobbyists and Legal Assistance to constantly bleed the State under the guise of honest Capitalism.

I personally can fathom little or nothing of what is being said about the matter of Housing Grants in particular and I'm sure most feel the same, All that the lack of accurate or unquestioned information on the subject is achieving is a deepening distrust of Government in general. It is a sad shame that it seems to be the unwholesome fact of the matter that it really takes a World War to get the issue of social justice taken seriously and this is sadly it seems, true of the docile British media who have as I say been quoting all sorts of contradictory statements about the Nation's finances. Since the Coalition was elected by an electoral system that is considered morally bankrupt by its junior partner, the Royal Family have been awarded an extremely benficial package and it hasn't attracted more than an isolated comment or two but what really strikes me as quite outrageous is the manner in which the Windsors have consistently been allowed to calculate their allowances at less than a quarter of its actual cost, a handy device which will certainly appeal to most welfare claimants. The fact that a well oiled media machine has managed to persuade many voters that Housing Allowance claimants are prospering at the expense the low paid looks ludicrous in such a light. Nothing has been said of the fact that even those working on low incomes who may seem badly done by compared to some claimants are managing to pay mortgages, have better career prospects, and do tend to be in the process of acquring assets that Welfare claimants cannot or do not as well as having long term security. Neither has anything been made of the impact these measures will have on the Courts where for instance at presemt Magistrates, Social Workers and Solicitors are able to enforce Local Authorities to House deserving cases it being the case for example that a cap of £250 is being proposed on a one bedroom property and I haven't heard of anything being available at such a price since the early eighties. In terms of social justice I think it is absurd to persecute welfare claimants before multiple property holders and I feel that massive dislocations will occur, society will become far more polarised and Ghettos like those of the 1930's will reappear.

For the Country to remain generally prosperous the work force has to retain and acquire marketable skills and my belief is that what is required is some essential long term vision into economic trends not some questionably motivated knee jerking recidivist dogma which takes little account of the fact that it is unlikely that future societies if there is one, or any, will feature mass employment in anything like the traditional model. Most people nowadays tend to think in terms of generally helping each other out rather than enforcing an out of date Protestant Work Ethic or of the fact that many are proud of belonging to a nation with a reasonably good welfare system the diminution of which will have many unforeseen, unpleasant and retrograde consequences. Many others with some genuine sense of insight feel that mixing up different people in different housing zones has many beneficial effects on the social fabric and realise that depriving individuals and institutions of any ability to do this will also have many unwholesome repercussions not least in respect of the fact that a good welfare system does instil a sense of belonging to a nation among many disavantaged sections of society who will otherwise feel themselves merely statistics to be exploited.

What is being said about deserving is ridiculous and far better economic results would be obtained by murdering a percentage of the children of welfare claimants cluttering up expensive Schools with their unwanted offspring: I have to maintain that the unprincipled attack on Core Benefits is short sighted, mean spirited and a generally shabby symptom of highly selective news coverage targeting those who are effectively defenceless in a nation where Justice is far too readily seen to be available for those with money, all of which is bad in terms of a sense of community or of the patriotic ideal. This in turn only serves to underline the allegation that we are being failed by an underachieving political leadership in respect of a wide range of separate and indentifiable issues such as the perception that the legal system can easily be viewed as anachronistic. So I don't like this grubby looking assault on something as central to our post war sense of nationhood as the criterion for basic welfare allowances in this respect. Thatcher wouldn't have contemplated it, there is no discussional mandate for it and I consider it is a natural tendency to spend a larger percentage of national income on Housing in various perspectives as progress enables more visibly discriminating macrobehaviour in the population: evidence of which is at least partly evidenced by a healthy suspicion on the part of Taxpayers that the Iraq War has in fact cost a very great deal.

About the Alternative Vote

Not one person has explained to me how the new system is supposed to work ! I also found it too difficult to find anything online that clearly states what is being proposed and neither have I seen a single newspaper article explaining how the proposed system will work. I think it is both true that the plan's advocates have shot themselves in the foot by not being clear about what it is that is being proposed even before the no campaign set about some particularly cheap and grubby campaigning which it seems will not have been necessary as the explanations or rather arguments being proferred by the Yes camp seems nothing but hopeful if perhaps well intentioned propaganda supporting little but gibberish and hopeless confusion.

I would view an AV system whereby candidates failing to obtain 50% of votes cast should then have their second and third preference votes added until someone has, as a great step forward for representative democracy but I don't think that's what's being proposed. I think it's a tragedy because something like this is clearly needed to reform and rejuvenate our so called Democracy and an inherently sound general proposition could not have been more badly managed than it has. In view of the fact that I don't know what the Yes campaigners are actually advocating I shall have to pass. So many variations on the idea ought to have been discussed before now such as the idea that second and third preferences could also be valued at half a vote and in either case I think it would be more democratic

It is absurd that the referendum should have been called when very few know what it is actually about and the ship basically sank at the moorings. Without a sincere attempt to inform the public the whole thing is simply a waste of money: I think Cameron will bitterly regret playing up to the dumb down!

Army Major's Son Caught Defrauding Taxpayer With Fake Civil List Claim

Gruesome eh ! Who was it that said, "if a picture could paint a thousand words?"

Pictures were from a Telegraph Article I think.

I'm sorry young man but you are not a blood relative of the Windsors or whatever it is that they should properly be called. Which is, obviously why someone didn't teach you to put a proper Windsor knot in your Tie isn't it.

Europe Ablaze? What is happening with the EU

I believe strongly that it needs to be recognised that a lot of what is surfacing in terms of debate about the future of the EU reflects the difference between the nature of historical realities underlying what we call our Democracy and the actual capabilty of voters as compared to the sort of expectations and illusions built up by the media since WW2. What is for instance very much of the remark that not just many but perhaps most voters have only just begun to understand what happened in WW2 since the mid nineties when the Internet arrived. Talking about Europe is too easy a way of disguising the incapacit, incompetence and downright iniquity of national society.

The Killing of Mark Duggan: a Nation on Trial

The scenes at the Inquest into the death of Mark Duggan this week expose the dark heart and ideological confusion of Britain's Urban Society. The lack of engagement between parties bodes ill for the future in making an alarming blueprint for social conflict. While there clearly is some strong argument that Mr Duggan was not the most exemplary of citizens I think that many sections of the general public will find it disturbing that an unarmed man was gunned down with two lethal shots and that the trigger man will face no censure at all. There have been too many instances of British Policemen behaving like gung ho National Guardsmen just lately.

A Nation on Trial: Porn Filter Peer Outed for illegal Images

A senior aide to David Cameron resigned from Downing Street last month the day before being arrested on allegations relating to child abuse images. Patrick Rock, who was involved in drawing up the government's policy for the large internet firms on online pornography filters, resigned after No 10 was alerted to the allegations. The arrest of Rock, 62, who had been tipped for a Tory peerage, will have come as a severe shock to the PM and the Tory establishment. Cameron and Rock worked together as special advisers to Michael Howard in his time as home secretary in the mid 1990s. Rock later worked for Lord Patten alongside Cameron's chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, during his time as a European commissioner in Brussels.

UK Government fuelling the destruction of Africa’s Forest of the Great Apes

Forest Crime Files
April 10 2002

The Cabinet Office refurbishment project was raided by Greenpeace today, it is using more than £400,000 worth of Sapele from Central and West Africa for doors and windows. Greenpeace has uncovered a chain of supply that ultimately links the UK Cabinet Office to a number of the most notorious international logging companies operating in Africa’s last ancient forests, all with records of unsustainable, destructive and illegal logging: so much for ethical Tony eh ! It hardly needs to be added that ecological infractions are so widespread that contrary rumours should be considered to be routinely faked and that the Government doesn't give a sh*t about anyone's Forest unless there is a Reporter on hand to provide them with undeserved publicity about a shambolic green policy, is a rather disturbingly plausible conclusion. Nice one Greenpeace, keep up the good work!