Birmingham bust-up for anti-Islamic protest

Birmingham has been targeted as a suitable place for a march and counter-march leading to a punchup. The so-called English Defence League decided to march down Broad Street demonstrating against Islamic fundamentalism. The so-called Unite Against Fascism group thought they would turn up to stop them. 33 arrests were made and shoppers disadvantaged and businesses put to trouble securing their premises. Peaceful it was not.

The English Defence League is apparently a bunch of football types keen to eradicate the streets of manic preachers of the Islamic terror type. The UAF is keen to silence anyone they think is a fascist and to these ends they are prepared to use violence if necessary. If the government got a grip over the way these anti-British preachers are free to roam around preaching hatred and violence in the name of Islam we would not have to fear people taking a more virile approach.

Most Muslims are no doubt sick and tired of fanatics branding the ills of the world onto the backs of the British people. But we will all be sick and tired if this sort of thing carries on on a regular basis. As with many things currently happening, the answer lies mainly in the hands of the government.

Daily Mail report.

School kids run NHS swine flu hotline

The government is always doing things on the cheap. The war in Afghanistan is a prime example. So is the NHS. Actually, I should say we get the results on the cheap but the method is one of extravagance and profligacy. Now it is revealed that the Swine Flu Hotline, which we were led to believe was being staffed by knowledgeable nursing types is actually full of 16-year olds biding their time whilst they wait for their GCSE results. We are told, as reported in the Daily Mail, by an insider that "many have accents which are difficult to understand and some have difficulty in reading from the prepared script." I can understand that having had experiences with oriental call centres and ending up at cross purposes with them.

The revelation that GCSE students are diagnosing flu comes just days after nine out of ten family doctors said they feared phone diagnosis would lead to serious diseases being missed. And they have. Menegitis being one of them. Andy Burnham continues to waffle on like a double-glazing salesman at 11.45pm desperate to prove he's not in the wrong job. However, the whole swine flu thing has been a complete disaster from an organisational point. If a disease wants to find a population, it could do no better than England. It's a germ's paradise.

The outfit running this call-centre calamity is NHS Professionals. Another outsourced in-house operation at arm's length from anyone who is vaguely responsible for something. On their website, NHS Professionals trumpet that they have "been developed by the Department of Health to provide innovative flexible staffing solutions." So flexible that youngsters can be plucked from school to speak to anxious patients about a pandemic that could kill. One hour's training and they're ready.

I'd say that that was like throwing caution to the wind. Which pretty much sums up the New Labour approach to finance!

Genitals of Briton given Greek-style torching!

I have noticed recently that young British men abroad are becoming increasingly loutish. Some are prone to drunken behaviour leading to street vomiting, others just see the young women of the locality as suitable targets for perverse innuendo of a sexual nature. Nothing remotedly charming about any of it. One wonders why so many people attempt to come to Britain when the exported manhood is well past its use-by-date.

In various cities of Europe inebriated young men, and sometimes women, act like alcoholically-charged vacuum pumps. It is little wonder local mayors want them out. Now there is a case where a Greek woman dowsed a Briton's genitals with alcohol and set fire to his crown jewels. She says she did so after being sexually harassed. I do not condone in any way what the young woman has done, but I have some sympathy for her. Perhaps this may be a message to young British males? Maybe. How would they like it if a drunken Greek molested their nearest and dearest female relatives? Not a lot, I suggest. So what makes it right the other way round?

The one mindblower in this story is the response from the Foreign Office. A spokeswoman said, "We can confirm that in the early hours of Tuesday a 23-year-old British male national was assaulted in Crete. We understand he suffered burns on his chest and abdomen. He has been receiving consular assistance." Chest and abdomen? With that kind of understatement one can appreciate how easy it is for ministers to get the wrong end of the stick with regards to Afghanistan!

On The Buses? No, off them if middle class!

The Local Government Association, which has commissioned a report (more work for consultants!) about bus passes, has come to the conclusion that posh, rich middle class people with cars should not be riding around in buses with free concessionary passes. No way matey! Get in your car, clog up the roads, you're costing us too much. Let some other blighters sort it all out. We're being short-changed by the government, they weep.

After a furore and a hullabaloo, the LGA denied that it was considering introducing means tests. So was this "commissioned report" just jobs for the boys, or was it an opening shot in some inter-governmental showdown? Either way, it's a warning sign to us all.

I would hope that the next general election produces MPs who are representatives of the people and not career politicians cravenly working the system to suit "government" and themselves. As they say, I must declare an interest. I'm in the bass pass queue next year. Unless of course they change the age criterion in which case I won't!

We are supinely good in Britain at listening to waffle and rubbish and just shrugging our shoulders. I'm beginning to get a bit revolutionary. I want the stocks brought back. I'd shove Harriet Harperson in for a day. A few rotten tomatoes in her boat race might bring about a change. The only thing the British Establishment understands, and it understands very little, is latent unrest about to boil over. I suggest we get off the back burner and turn the heat up a bit. They might just get it then.

Birther baloney continues with Chuck Norris

I knew there was talk around the time of the election that Barack Obama may not be a "proper" American. That was all based on him being born in Hawaii and when that state entered the union. But it appears now that there are loads of people who are convincing themselves that the President is not a natural born American at all. As if they are? Anybody who can be convinced of such nonsense is far too loopy to be a natural born anything.

Chuck Norris has entered the fray. He now wants to see the presidential birth certificate. What for I cannot know. Perhaps we can see Chuck's and wonder if his is real or fake. This trouble and strife all stems from the "natural born" reference. It has come to be implied to those born in the United States. However, it was originally put into the constitution to clarify the position of those born in the Colonies as British subjects who became American citizens as a direct result of the status of independence. Ten presidents were affected by this clarification.

In the sense of 18th Century English, "natural born" meant just being born in the United States of American parents. Birth meant citizenship, automatically. However, because a territorial description was not added conclusively a natural born person could possibly be born elsewhere to American parents. Because it is a quandary the US Government no longer refers to such in current laws regarding citizenship.

The inhabitants of the US Virgin Islands are citizens, probably natural born ones, but they cannot vote in presidential elections let alone be president. They can, though, vote in the primaries. A crumb of electoral comfort there then. So with this confusion comes the conspiracy theorists. Some may think anyone born in Hawaii isn't a proper American. Some may think that if your father is foreign you are no American. But then all this started with making the former Colonists into natural born Americans. They were born on the continent, but not in the USA, they started out as British and ended up as American, all the while being "natural born"!

Chuck Norris should just reckon that all this birther baloney is not natural. It is very unnatural. Instead of begging to see a certificate, he should be getting the Congress to write a definitive law on the matter. I bet Norris wouldn't have batted an eyelid if Bob Hope had ever wanted to be president. But Bob was born British, as was Jerry Springer and loads of other Americans who just missed being born naturally. In Jerry Springer's case he definitely was born unnaturally. In a tube station in London. His mother got him an audience that night!

Church, lepers and leaders

Our parish church has succumbed to the government's advice on pandemic flu. The stoups have been closed, the peace is a brave wave and a smile and we are no longer to receive communion on the tongue. Swine flu has intervened in faith, has diminished hope and is acting in a very uncharitable way.

The cynic in me suggests that this is nothing about contracting this disease rather it is the old hoary chestnut of not being sued. The churches could well do without a legal dispute over a contaminated font. Which leads me to wonder about baptism. Is this banned under the government's advice to "faith communities"?

I have serious doubts about all this. We are advised not to shake hands or touch each other during the Peace. However, in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, people are still shaking hands each day. The Prime Minister shakes hands with visiting dignitaries. Does he have a stand with hand gel and washing facilities as his advisers are impressing on the church? Now I know why the Queen wears gloves. You never know where people have been.

Helpfully the government tells the "faith communities" that this advice 'refers only to pandemic flu as defined by the World Health Organisation; it does not refer to seasonal flu or to outbreaks of other communicable diseases'. So those with regular diseases are alright to shake hands, except that they can't because of swine flu.

The whole aspect of faith communicated in the Mass has been hijacked by a secular world obsessed with controls and regulations. Sneezing from seasonal flu in public is OK, if a tad anti-social, but swine flu sneezers watch out. I've never ever considered receiving communion as anything other than a sacramental thing. Now I get flashes of pictures of germs and disease floating about my brain. Again, the cynic in me suggests this might be a crafty way to put me off believing.

When the leper came forth to ask to be made clean my Jesus it was because he had faith. One suspects that if he had had swine flu the pharisees would be out like a shot clearing the streets.

I agree very much with hand-washing but I have a severe aversion to hand-wringing. If everyone had a decent approach to personal hygiene, we'd all be a lot better off. However, over zealous dictats and contradictory instructions will get us nowhere. I suspect it isn't the swine flu virus that the government is afraid of, more the feckless nature of some people. I bet there are still those who think they are indispensible and go to work with fevered brows and sweaty palms. Common sense will defeat the virus, selfish activity and contradictions will not.

Alky Ada and the Spooks!

I am currently reading Matthew Parris' autobiography. A good read with some really good insights into the human existence, his as much as others. In one part of his life, just after Cambridge, the MI6 or 5 brigade thought he would make a good spook. He thought so too, but came to realise that he was not cut out for spying. The problem was they didn't. They offered him a job! Parris puts it brilliantly - "On reflection it struck me I was too unreliable to be a spy. I am not discreet, not self-effacing, not patient, not heterosexual and besides, there was, as Mrs.Thatcher would have put it and probably has, 'something not quite right about that boy'. It's a matter of relief that I had noticed my unsuitability for British intelligence. It's a matter of concern that British intelligence never did." And he goes on to say that if you ever thought British Intelligence was just like the books, all Oxbridge dons and closed door meetings, then it is "just like that".

I have heard some accounts of friends' friends passing through the hallowed halls of these spying types. Joining all the tales together and it does give the impression of a service to our country that is more wing and a prayer than anything else. So it comes as no surprise that MI5 may have mistakenly recruited Al Queda operatives as willing Muslim informants.

Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Home Affairs counter-terror sub-committee, said he was told six recruits were ejected after worries about their past. Questions are now being asked. Good, because if these six wonders were still operating what sort of fantasies would MI5 chiefs be living under? The mind boggles. An Arab once said to me, "You British, you can be such fools," and he meant it kindly, as if to urge remedial treatment in an alpine clinic.

As they say, this story has legs.