HAPPY NEW YEAR!

HAPPY 2010 to one and all. I'm looking positively into the new year determined to make it a good one. I've been off the air, so to speak, with festivities and family fun. Will attend to the matter of pontificating later.

TWENTY TEN - Well I never!

Tony Blair and his Iraq notions!

So Tony Blair only had a "notion" that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the Middle East region and to the rest of the world. Well I have a "notion" that Blair is a dissembler, a deceiving spinner and a man whose politics were mainly built on the "notion" that all the people he met whilst gallivanting around the world would help him become a multi-millionaire. The bonused bankers achieve wealth through making money out of thin air. He has made money out of hot air.

These are "notions" but what the hell. We all have them these days. Nobody has much to say for politicians mainly because they have too many "notions". I'm glad Blair's gone. He was always on the make with his "well, yeah, so" type of approach to it all.

The fact that he sleeps at night is because he believes his own bullshit. I doubt if he ever will get round to thinking in any other way. What a life, eh?

Bats in Quentin Davies' belfry!

Quentin Davies is an MP who left the Tories in a huff so he could dance to the New Labour tune. Having rubbished Gordon Brown's stewardship of the economy as Chancellor, he praises him as Prime Minister. I once canvassed for the man when he was describing himself as John Davies to the more humble voters of Birmingham. I introduced him to a particularly bewildered high-rise council flat dweller as John Quentin Davies (which was the name the agent was touting!) whereupon Davies had a go at me saying that he didn't want the man to think he was some kind of double-barrelled toff.

So it comes as no surprise that his bell tower needs attention. Too many political bats crapping in the thing. He has denied trying to claim on expenses the £20,700 cost of rebuilding the tower at his constituency home. As usual, it's all a misunderstanding. A bit like the whole of the New Labour regime's time in office. Blair was good at misunderstandings! "Well, yeah, look!" kind of stuff.

I haven't been proved wrong. This nonsense will rumble on and on until someone gives Brown a kick up the backside.

Is CPS wanting to be judge and jury?

It seems to me that the Crown Prosecution Service is never satisfied by the outcome of court cases which involve them taking people to court over politically correct offences. The case over the Christian hotelier and the Muslim convert woman has ended with the judge dismissing the case. Now that more facts have emerged pehaps I was hasty in putting forward a judgement. However, it does appear that the two sides were acting like two dormant volcanoes suddenly erupting on the same day!

My attention was drawn to a comment by CPS senior lawyer Nicola Inskip. She said of the case, "We were satisfied that there was sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction that a religiously aggravated offence should be charged." Implying that she felt the Christian couple was at fault not the woman who was a Muslim convert. They basically took sides and came down in favour of the Muslim.

Each time that a case like this is thrown out the CPS offers up a whining comment that they were right and that, by implication, the judge, and jury if involved, were wrong. It is a sign that the infection of political correctness or more actually political incorrectness has invaded almost every part of our civil structure. It is insiduous and somehow we must put a stop to it.

Christian hotelier 'abused' Muslim guest

The BBC reports that at a court hearing it was revealed that a Muslim woman was asked by a Christian hotelier if she was a terrorist and a murderer because she was wearing Islamic dress. The hotelier is alleged to have been abusive using threatening or insulting words which were religiously aggravated. And there's more!

The man may be from a Christian background but he appears to have left all traces of Christian charity at the back of his brain. An organisation called The Christian Institute demonstrated in support of the couple outside the court. Did they indeed? "By their fruits ye shall know them comes" to mind.

Bugger the bankers!

In a time of deep recession, brought about in part by the headlong scramble by some bankers to make money out of loans that were past their subprime value, it would be nice to think that a kind of patriotic move might not go amiss. The bonus greed currently sweeping the City of London is very unsavoury to say the least. Angela Knight, she of the British Bankers' Association, whines on amount bankers leaving the country if they don't get more money. Even Croesus would have thought better! Well, if they are so hellbent on going, let them go. As George V might have said on his deathbed if confronted by these blackmailing types "Bugger the bankers!". Quite so.

No wedded bliss under New Labour regime

In some ways the New Labour regime mirrors the US Episcopal Church as some kind of secular PC alternative. They are all for a bizarre idea of equality, thrusting alternative lifestyles at us in place of married bliss and generally failing to help the disadvantaged and the wronged because they have a blanket approach to it all.

New Labour heard that some sub-continental brides had been sold into marital slavery and abuse in order to obtain cash dowries for the grasping grooms. At first this was dismissed because no self-respecting New Labour apparatchik could bring himself/herself to accept anything untoward from the Asian community. Then they were forced to admit that forced marriages needed acting upon. Of course, being New Labour, they couldn't construct an act that dealt with the problem. No, they had to include every race, creed and human being possible into their law. So it is that totally innocent people get caught up in this legal minefield.

The Home Office is diligently applying the rules and regulations with vigour. British bride Amber Aguilar, from Friern Barnet, north London, faced the dilemma of having to choose between her career ambitions in the UK or living abroad with her Chilean husband because of the policy. The ‘heartbroken’ 18-year-old chose to live with 19-year-old Diego Andres Aguilar Quila, who had to leave the country recently after his student visa expired. The Home Office has been labelled heartless. I'd say they were just a bunch of jobsworths with a penchant for momentary lapses into jobsworthlessnesses (like losing computer data!).

It is not what Britain should be about. The sooner this lot go the better for all of us!

Pompous little Miliband

All environmental eyes are on Copenhagen. Some scientists do not think the global warming phenomenon is as bad as the majority of climate scientists do. They have studied the matter and concluded certain points and opinions. That is OK. They may be right, they may be wrong. I am no scientist so don't know if all the perceived dangers are rock solid true.

What I do know is that in an adult debate people's sincerely held views should be respected. The Milliband brothers appear to be some kind of reborn Zealots, keenly rubbishing opponents' opinions with a mixture of highbrow disdain and vulgar put-downs.

So it was that Ed Miliband pompously dismissed Lord Lawson yesterday with "I think you are being profoundly irresponsible by saying we can stick our heads in the sand and just hope this thing goes away. It's not going to." Nobody is taking the ostrich approach. Lord Lawson responded by saying it was also profoundly irresponsible not to allow an "honest, rational, reasoned debate".

And that is the nub. Miliband is like some preacher on speed. All he spouts is gospel truth to be believed hook like and sinker. Anyone else who has a contrary view must be made to look foolish and ridiculed. I don't know if Lord Lawson's views hold credence but he has a right to express them without pompous little prats sounding all prophetic!

People in glass pools shouldn't sink any lower!

The Episcopal Church seems hellbent on being the modern day version of the Synagogue of the Libertines. All things to all men, women, and 101 genders in between. The episcopacy is modelled in their image and for their designs and fancies. Out goes anything much that St.Paul spoke about. Sin is now an optional extra in the polity of the church. In fact, the only sin that can be committed in the Episcopal Church is gainsaying the liberal agenda.

It's a farflung experience from the days when the church had some moral backbone. Now the essence of faith is that there are virtually no wrongs that can be done other than be a follower of traditional doctrine.

Mary Glasspool has been elected as a female prelate in the diocese of Los Angeles. Exactly what the angels think is not credited to the shinanigans. Ms Glasspool is the very model of a modern Episcopalian. She is also a lesbian in a 21 year-old relationship. Her lifestyle is at odds with traditional teaching. She has turned the received wisdom of understanding what sin is into a rejection of the faith in favour of her own views on moral conduct. It is far more than the Pick 'N Mix at Woolworths. This is like walking into the old Woolies and demanding that the selection of chocolates and candies on offer be removed so that a whole new range can be brought in just for personal satisfaction.

When Jesus met with the woman caught in adultery he forgave her. Her accusers had fled not willing to condemn her because of their own sins. He said to her, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more". The whole thing about that was not sinning anymore. It is a state of being seemingly lost on the hierachy of the diocese of Los Angeles.

This has caused a stir in the press. They love a good contretemps in the church. But the one comment that is a bit rich is from Canon Giles Fraser, Chancellor of St Paul's and one of the founders of the liberal Inclusive Church network. He says it "is another nail in the coffin of Christian homophobia". Utter tripe, but there you go. Those opposed to rewriting the Faith are not phobic of anyone, but want sinfulness rightly explained and explored.

I do not come to the blogosphere as some paragon of virtue. We all do things we should not. But I would be very much against getting my personal baggage encoded as some sort of new sacramental doctrine for others to follow.

I see that the Archbishop of Canterbury is somewhat uneasy about the whole thing. Difficulty for him is that he has helped to get the door open a bit. He's now trying to put a brand new self-closing mechanism on it. Best really to let the Episcopal Church leave the Anglican Communion so they can follow their hearts and desires in a new direction. I don't have anything against Ms Glasspool and her beliefs. Everyone is entitled to freedom of expression and belief. I just don't want her trying to force me to follow in her footsteps.

Tony Blair lied about Iraq says Bob Ainsworth

Bob Ainsworth knows what's what. Stick a pin in him and he warbles about almost anything. He's got two chips on his shoulder (a bit like John Prescott) which are that he came from humble beginnings and that he thinks people take him for a fool. Well, I for one don't knock him for either. Good on him getting to be Defence Secretary. Just as the Earl of Onslow suggested to Prescott that he should feel proud of his achievements rather than to feel irked, the same goes for Bob.

My beef with Mr. Ainsworth is this. He knows more than he is letting on. Or at least letting on to those that should be knowing about his thoughts and his views. Bob was at a public meeting in Coventry at the Aldermoor Farm Primary School. At the meeting he was apparently asked about Iraq. To astonishment he said that "Tony Blair had fed lies" to the Labour Party about the war. He then went on to say that he "was an ordinary man from a council estate in Coventry. I don't sit in ivory towers".

So the audience got to hear that he thinks Tony Blair is a liar but that he didn't do anything about this because he is basically too naively simple to take it further. Wow! And how did I hear of this? Via the BNP website, because the BNP candidate for Coventry North-East, Tom Gower, was at the meeting and reported it all on the BNP site.

Do I believe Gower's reporting? I don't know, but why should I not? Interestingly, this has not been reported anywhere else as far as I can see. The only piece I can find is on the Coventry Telegraph's site, where Bob Ainsworth talked blandly about Afghanistan not Iraq. That's nearly three weeks ago and is all a very different take on Mr.Gower's.

So is the BNP making it all up and Ainsworth never said anything about Blair being a liar? Or is the mainstream media suppressing it because this was "leaked" by the BNP? Or what?

The truth is not quite as it seems. My point in revealing this is that it will only aid the BNP's election chances if the mainstream gives them cause to reveal unpalatable facts and allows them the chance to dress up the information revealed. I think we need to know if Bob Ainsworth actually called Tony Blair a liar ("fed lies") because it drives a coach and horses through the Labour party's defence of the war.

The next election will be fought over transparency. The truth getters against the obfuscators, liars, spinners and cheats. I just hope someone other than a BNP candidate can unearth the prattling lies.

Coughs and sneezes!

I just popped up to say that I'm trying to rid myself of a sudden bout of a cold type thing. It's not swine flu, or any other flu, but it's just not letting me think straight, so I've not got a lot to say at the moment. Thinking, yes, but that's another matter!