Speedpost : Liam Fox tells it like it is

"New Labour is now the most corrosive and corrupting influence in British politics"

What, you mean you've only just noticed?

Speedpost - Crime

I cant find the time or inclination to post much at the moment.

I made a comment on the Duty Sergeant's blog though and am reposting it here :

Mark my words - when the Bertie Humbug party comes to power many things will change when it comes to offenders.

Many will be subject to military style discipline and physical training - especially young offenders.

The few who make life difficult for the many will spend a lot longer inside.

Those who butcher children like baby P will swing.

Those who are extremely damaged by those people who are lower than animals will have much more access to psychological help.

Cons will get more help on release.

Things will change. Mark my words.

The Hypocrisy of the Left

It never ceases to amaze me that those who support Labour seem to think that their party is somehow the party of the less well off.


They consistently manage to ignore the stark facts about just how rich and privileged some of these supposed heroes of the working class actually are. There are plenty of Labourites with substantial material wealth who indulge themselves with the benefits it brings.

There have also been plenty of recent examples where Labourites could have partaken personally in the less than privileged status of some of those they try to make believe they care about so much. Take schools, for example. The children of the little people could go to Gas Street Compo, but these were simply not good enough for the likes of the Harriet Harman or Diane Abbott and they sent their kids elsewhere.



If you're going to give the impression you're down with the undertrodden, the poor, the masses your actions need to speak louder than your words. So often the hypocrisy of these people shines through.

This doesnt stop the left from holding on to their prejudices though of course. I recently read a disjointed and ill concieved post from one of the lefts' number on a webpage somewhere. He seemed to indicate being a 'Tory' was about Garden Parties, champagne and strawberries. Naturally I had to reply.
Here is what I said :

"Maybe you’d like to recall there was a kerfuffle when rich boy Osborne met rich boy Mandelson on an even richer boys yacht.

What do you think Mandelson was doing there – thinking of new and ever more creative ways of improving the lot of the proletariat? Of course not – he was milking the trappings of his rich and privileged position.

Oh and how about your bent former Prime Minister Bliar? What about his £4million house in Central London?

Do you think he has champagne and strawberries in the fridge? I bet he does.

He’s milking the trappings of his privileged position too. But like Mandelson I expect his mind never wanders far from the task of thinking about new and ever more creative ways of improving the lot of the proletariat."

Not.

Thought for the Day

"A breakup is like a bereavement without a death" - Who said that? Oh, I did. Not sure if anyone else did before me. I suspect they did as it has been true for a long time.

I love her, but I know there are things which mean we probably would not work out long term. She's my best friend and I am not sure how I am going to cope without her friendship.

I can't imagine her being with someone else, the thought is horrible. I just wish there was a way forward but I suppose there isn't.

I love her and she knows I do and she feels the same way but I suppose it's for the best.

Breaking up is hard to do. Someone definitely said that before me.

Edit : Sun 12 July 2009 : Thankfully we agreed to meet. I couldnt imagine not having her in my life and she felt the same way about me. We've talked about the issues we've had and we're seeing about a workable way forward! :-)

Andy McNab on Psychological Support for Troops

Labour have screwed over the Armed Forces. Its hard to abuse a body of trained armed men and women but they've done it. What excuse can there ever be for breaking the covenant and sending men off to war zones without proper equipment? Is it the case that Politicians and Civil Servants are there to think and Soldiers exist to die?

The crass negligence and arrogance of Labour is tantamount to criminal behaviour and neatly sums up the kind of people at the top of the Labour hierarchy. An incoming government has much to do with regard to the Armed Forces. Time will tell to what extent the Conservatives sort things out. Cutting the defence budget whilst absurdly leaving the bloated monster of the NHS simply because they're too scared or witless to take on Labour's health and 'investment' lies is no excuse. Defence spending should not be cut.

One thing that most certainly needs careful analysis and assessment is the psychological support for soldiers who have been in warfare. More men killed themselves after the Falklands than died in the war itself. Its safe to say psychological support for these men is severely lacking - this must not be allowed to continue.

The text below is how Andy McNab signs off the end of 'Seven Troop' - his account of his group of comrades in arms in the SAS. There are so many things to take from this but i think the message is very clear.

"Soldiers hit by PTDS are casualties of war just as much as [soldiers injured or killed in combat are]. A major mental health crisis faces those who have served our country.

We need to do something now, before we discover that more soldiers – regular and TA – have killed themselves since returning from Iraq and Afghanistan than were killed there in action.

We need to remove the institutional and cultural barriers discouraging soldiers from counselling, therapy – whatever you chose to call it. Seeking help should be seen as a sign of strength and professionalism, a desire to keep yourself at peak efficiency. The US Delta Force have been doing this for years and I wouldn’t have them down for a bunch of wimps.

We shouldn’t be surprised by what happens to men who have been in conflict. The ancient Greeks recorded signs and symptoms in their soldiers after battle that we would now recognise as PTSD. We shouldn’t need secret places in Wales for soldiers to slink away to. They’re just like anyone else. They’re human. They need support, not just from the government but from all of us. There are hard pressed organisations that can help them recover but its up to us now to remove the stigma.

They need a little understanding and dare I say it? A whole lot of respect."

Met Police Senior Management Don't Like Bloggers

As we know, the Times don't like Bloggers and actively move to destroy them

Well of course its worth remembering that the Met Police Senior Management don't like Bloggers either, especially ones that don't toady to them and tell the bad side of how it is.

It seems there was an awful lot to complain about when that awful weasel Sir Ian Blair was in charge - thankfully now he's been binned.

Its a real shame that this anti-democratic tendency in the MPS killed off World Weary Detective for example. However, his posts remain at http://worldwearydetective.blogspot.com/

Reminder : MPs aren't full time!

What with all this expenses stuff, the other interesting thing which hasn't quite blown up yet but might, is the subject of MPs other jobs. On July the 1st MPs have to 'detail the time they spend on outside jobs' according to the Times(boo!). (*1)

A couple of examples of Conservatives who work for other employers apart from their constituents on Parliamentary time are John Redwood and Oliver Letwin.


I am in two minds about this, i.e. whether this is a good thing or not. I have to say I am inclined towards the 'not' though maybe an exception could be made when Parliament is not sitting.

Letwin spends eight hours a week on his extra job, netting him £60k/yr - and he's supposed to be cooking up the Cons' election manifesto! Most people don't have enough time to do their jobs in an ordinary working week, and OL's main job is extremely important.


Everyone else has to work for their employer exclusively and gets 20 to 25 days holiday a year. MP dont have to work for their constituents all year and get a notional 'holiday' rather longer than that.

I can appreciate there is a need to withdraw from politics for a good period each year to recoup. However, demands from an external job during parliamentary time is unacceptable as far as I am concerned. The public have a right to expect a full time MP when Parliament is sitting.

I expect there is some sense in the notion of MPs retaining paid links with some organisations though i am not sure the 'keeping in touch with reality' excuse is very valid. Do MPs not have enough contact with non Political types aready? Is that contact not somehow not 'real' enough?

The difficult one for me is while supply and demand has an important role in setting salary level so does the 'if you pay peanuts you get monkeys' notion. Both Oliver Letwin and John Redwood could earn a massive amount more in the private sector and external pay must help keep them in politics where we need them.

There's only so far you can take altruism.

*1 - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6571901.ece

Screw the Times!

Following a post about a fave journalist, here's a post about one who deserves little or no respect. I am insensed that the imbeciles at the Times have wrecked NightJack's blog and his career by outing him.

Journalists often wax lyrical about going to prison to protect their sources and this kind of thing. Enter modern times and the phenomenon of the Blogger. We have a situation where an individual has cut out the middle man and taken the reality of Policing in 21st century Britain straight to the people.

This was clearly too much for the Times and one of their hacks called Patrick Foster.

NightJack went to court to try and protect himself from the Times and lost.

No doubt Journalists would cite a lofty public interest defence in not disclosing their sources. But when someone has cut out the middle man, i.e. Journalists, it would seem these same journalists don't care any more about the public interest.

With this kind of hypocrisy, and these kinds of Journalists and Newpapers - who can blame someone for wanting to cut them out of the process of talking directly to the public in a blog?

Patrick Foster and the Times deserve your comments on their actions - feel free to email Foster at Patrick.Foster@newsint.co.uk. Remember to tell him what a complete tosser he is.

Jeff Randall is a legend

You've got to love Jeff Randall. Amongst a desert of myopic liberal left Journos he stands out, decisively telling it how it is.

He wrote a great piece this week in the Telegraph - here's some highlights :

In a recent YouGov poll for The Economist, the proportion of people who thought that Britain's membership of the European Union was a good thing was down to 31 per cent, from 43 per cent 25 years ago.

Those who saw it as a bad thing rose in the same period from 30 per cent to 37 per cent. Support for loosening Britain's ties jumped from 36 per cent to 51 per cent, and those in favour of complete withdrawal rose from 12 per cent to 21 per cent.

Many decent people, who are not xenophobic but feel under siege by alien cultures, want an end to mass immigration before the melting pot boils over.In a different YouGov poll, this one for the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration, 35 per cent cited immigration as an issue that influenced their voting decisions. That compares with 12 per cent for the NHS, 12 per cent for crime and seven per cent for education.

As the architect of a policy that has dismantled border controls and allowed a quadrupling of net inward migration since 1997, it would have to admit to a catastrophic error. That will not happen because, as we know, Mr Brown doesn't do contrition.
Very few British people are happy with the prospect of immigration adding seven million to our population by 2028. We were never consulted; it was foisted upon us. This is the democratic deficit that the BNP exploits.

In a well-timed report for the think tank Civitas, Mervyn Stone, professor of statistics at University College London, accuses the Government of "sidelining honesty and truth in some of its major policy-making decisions".

He highlights the "research", if it can be so dignified, that led the Home Office in 2004 to predict between 5,000 and 13,000 arrivals a year from the EU's eight new nations. In fact, 600,000 turned up within the first 24 months.
As its authority crumbles, Labour's leadership is resorting to what George Orwell called "political language". This, he said, was "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind".
In effect, the Prime Minister was trying to repeat the scare tactic that had worked so well for Labour at the last election in 2005, ie the Tories will obliterate our public services.

Mr Brown's use of the word "investment" that was so telling. In truth, much of Labour's spending is naked consumption, money burned in the pursuit of votes, with no return for the taxpayer.

Source article here.

A link worth clicking on

'Unsung and underappreciated, the British Army deserves a country more worthy of its valor. '

An American article about the British Military past and present. Well worth a read - unusual for an American article on such a subject.