Backlash due to austerity measures

The video below is a news clip from Spain covering the protesting/rioting depending upon who you choose to read.

I do not normally mention Spanish events bit this clip set me to wondering. Dianne Abbott raised the point that a large proportion of the people employed by the government from a BME background have been taken on in recent years. If redundancies are affected on a last in first out basis we could have a high proportion of ethnic minority unemployment. Our own austerity measures have not begun yet but when they do take effect I wonder if we will see similar scenes here.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.0

Queens Gurkha Signals receive Freedom of the Borough of Nuneaton and Bedworth

It gave me great pleasure today to be able to take this footage from the front of the council house.  Being a borough councillor has its privileges and being able to stand in front of the Queens Gurkha Signals today is one of them.  Debbie, Sian, James and Aimee were with me.  Andrew was on duty with the cadets in the town centre along the parade route along with cadets from the other services.

After arriving at the council house and taking our seats we saw the final preparations being put into position.

These are a few of the standard bearers who were on display today and the gentleman walking across the front wearing the beret is local legend Jesse Owens.  Jesse served, as did many of the standard bearers, in theatres of war and looks upon the part that he plays in ceremonial occasions such as today’s as being a great honour.  Jesse is one of the very few that you do not argue with and I for one can certainly imagine him as a formidable Sergeant Major.

The four clips below take in the whole event and if you have the time they are worth a look. 

 

 

 

It gave us as a family a great deal of pleasure to be able to show respect to the troops and I hope the footage gave you the feeling of the ceremony.

Totally hypocritical UK ‘Justice’ system

You may not think that I am the most objective person to seek an opinion from when the discussion comes around to the burning of national flags and religious books.  Namely flags of Christian nations and an Islamic book.

I don’t personally have time for people who wish to disrespect others by burning symbols or books that are precious to them but I have more than a passing respect for justice.  Justice is not served by treating two groups of people differently in the same circumstances.

The clip below is pretty dispassionate and addresses the central point, which is the totally hypocritical treatment of differing groups of people by our so called Justice system.

The great shame is that you the public did not have what it takes to vote for the British National Party at the last General Election.  If you had then this travesty of justice and several other things that you have doubtlessly been moaning about since the General Election would not have happened.

Car Parking rise of 25% abhorrent and unnecessary says BNP councillor

This Wednesday it was decided in the meeting of the all powerful cabinet committee that parking charges on car parks owned by Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council will be going up by twenty five percent from January 2011.  The excuse for this is apparently the increase in VAT from seventeen and a half percent to twenty percent.  Well slap my vitals.  The current leader of the council used to be my economics teacher and would have known that the increase in VAT comes to two pence!  The remainder of the increase is a vicious cash grab from residents prior to the annual budget which he has to present to full council the very next month.  No doubt the Labour group think that it will fill a gap very nicely and reduce the ‘hit’ of bad news then.

Having shown that the increase is not necessary I would like to point out that the borough is largely a commuter area these days.  The obvious implication of this is that many people who live in the borough can, with small alterations to their pattern of life, shop elsewhere.  This the Labour group is encouraging them to do.  It is often said in the meeting rooms of the council that the problem with attracting retail to the borough is the proximity of larger retail centres.  Existing retailers will be very grateful that the increase is not to be phased in until after the crucial Christmas shopping period.  They will not however be relishing the harsh realities of the local retail environment afterwards.  I can foresee stallholders on the shrinking market either seeking a reduction in pitch prices to stay or voting with their feet and seeking pitches elsewhere.

There are many residents of the borough that fall into the lowest economic categories in the county.  These people do not have the luxury of avoiding these overinflated charges by adjusting their existing patterns of life.  They are stuck with paying for this twenty five percent increase if they live far enough from the town centre, and most do, that they have to use the car parks.

This increase is a tax on the poorest sections of society and as such I find it abhorrent!

Sports and leisure has been a ‘holy grail’ of the Labour party within the borough for decades and only recently they agreed to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on an extension to existing facilities at the Pingles leisure complex.  Look at how much council taxpayers money (£1m or £2m I forget) the council has recently spent (borrowed actually) buying the lease on the former Woolworths shop in Nuneaton and refurbishing it for the benefit of the retailer that has agreed to go into it.

The reasoning behind this prodigious decision was claimed to be to save the town centre and the market in particular.

I have seen many ex-Woolworths shops reopened and they certainly have not had such quantities of public money lavished upon them.

Nuneaton MP Marcus Jones was quoted as saying that car parking charges are one of the reasons that Marks and Spencer are leaving boroughs town centres.  This is opportunistic to say the least.  It is well known that the board in London decided for commercial reasons to only retain shops with enough floor space to stock the entire M&S range, close the smaller ones (including the Nuneaton one), and expand into other larger retail units wherever possible.

The Labour party will be railroaded on this vote of course but it will be interesting to see how the Conservatives vote on the night.  With a chamber of thirty four, precisely half of which are Labour, I think that Labour had better make sure that it has a one  hundred percent attendance record at least on that evening.

Withdraw our troops from Afghanistan.

The video below is of Bob Bailey from London explaining the position of the British National Party to the Russia Today news presenter who does not seem to have grasped that our position is that this war is doing our national security no good what so ever and that our troops have no business there.  This stands in stark contrast to the belief of the coalition Liberal Conservative government.

 

The interviewer in that clip thought that it was a good idea for our troops to stay in Afghanistan to bring about a peaceful resolution like, he claims, the one where the US have been able to withdraw from Iraq.  I have heard a lot about this US withdrawal from Iraq but with fifty thousand troops still on the ground I cannot call that withdrawal.  From what I see in the footage below, from the same station on the same day, I see neither peace nor a quick withdrawal date to come.

I certainly do not wish to see our troops bogged down in Afghanistan for potentially decades to come.  Armies are not trained in a short time.

Impromptu leafleting session.

Just returned home from an impromptu leafleting session with Debbie. Exercise is never a bad thing and I suggested a walk. We had a couple of hours spare before picking the children up and Debbie suggested a leafleting session. The weather is mild here today so we went to see Alwyn for some leaflets and a ward map.

The 'Support our troops' campaign is a good cause and deserves the effort. Every little helps the party and if you have some time spare ring your organiser on the off chance that they are available. There is always something that you can do to be helpful and they will be pleased to hear from you.

I am not totally familiar with every area of the borough and today's session was an eye opener. I shall not name the area concerned but there is considerable room for improvement. I shall never understand the fatalism and complacency that causes people to keep voting the same way.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.9

Every day is April fools day

As I sometimes do I have taken a wander around one of the national comics, in this case the Mail on Sunday, and I am highlighting a few stories which sparked my interest.  As always you are welcome to join me in my perusals of the press.

Britain goes halal but no-one tells the public caught my eye first.  Not news to readers of Nationalist sites but I gave it a glance.  The number of locations regularly using ritually slaughtered meat without telling anyone is increasing which of course it will continue to do.  Much of it is prepared abroad under conditions which do not match our own preparation standards and sold here just because you can these days.  I propose that there should be a visual warning on ritually prepared food as dramatic as the ones seen on cigarette packets.  Something like:

Prepared by torturing animals!

I wonder whether I will receive a seconder for this proposal, or any other suggested strap lines, in the comments section?  I do hope so.  Always good to see the opinions of others.

The Pope admits to being shamed and humiliated while doling out his highest profile apology yet for child abuse by Roman Catholic priests.  This would carry more weight with me if his church would step forward and assist with the prosecution of said priests instead of moving them quietly around.

Lord Ashcroft has done a runner from the Conservative party to show his disappointment with the general election results.  What he is really peeved about of course is that he gave up his non-dom status in the expectation that in return for paying tax he would have much influence in the new government.  How disappointed he must be that they are cuddling the Liberal Democrats.

What do you think made you become a heterosexual? is a question asked at a diversity course.  “God”, would have been my own answer.  I must admit to wondering what others amongst you might have offered.

Workers rights does not seem to be very high on the agenda of the coalition government.  ‘Bring in the scabs’ goes out the call in Whitehall.  As a lorry driver I was asked on two occasions to drive across picket lines and on both I returned the load.  It is a development for Whitehall to get the treatment and provides further evidence, if any were needed, that unions should be concentrating upon workers conditions and rights rather than interfering in the political process.

Mandelson is claiming that Ed Milliband cost them the election which seems a little rich to me.  I naively thought that it was the way in which they had mismanaged the country for the previous three terms but I stand correction.  Personally I suspect that Mandy suspects Ed might actually win and he does not like it.  Meanwhile on the coalition benches Vince Cable has surpassed Margaret Thatcher who said that the jobless should be prepared to ‘get on their bikes’ and job search in other parts of the country.  Vincie boy wants our jobless youngsters to go to India because he believes in ‘a freer flow of labour’.  While Mr Cable has been flouncing his Liberal credentials in a public place James Dyson, of vacuum cleaner fame, has asked the question why are so few of our engineering graduates British?  I would have come up with a different answer but worth a read.

Police are asking motorists to spy on each other.  No, it says what you thought it did.  The East German Stasi and Hitler’s Gestapo asked the public to spy upon each other for their files and in Great Britain our police forces are going to do the same thing.  It has already started in Sussex.  The scheme is run jointly by the police and Council through the Safer Communities Partnership.

You can count on the fact that if such a scheme comes in my direction

I shall scream from the rooftops!

Which terrorists did this in the terminal of Manchester International Airport then?

I do not know what the world is coming to.

I remember rather well when the Provisional IRA were in the swing of things with their bombing campaign on the British mainland that suspect packages were found all over the place and temporary closures of public areas were commonplace.  I must admit that with the declaration of ceasefire by the Provisional IRA I thought that such nuisances might be safely declared as in the past.

Time has moved on and the Real IRA are now threatening to attack mainland British targets since reaffirming authority over loyalist areas in Belfast and Northern Ireland.

• MI5: "Real IRA" preparing attacks on British mainland
• Dissidents 'may target UK mainland'
• Irish terrorists targeting UK mainland, warns MI5

Al Qaida and other smaller Islamic terrorist groups have been prevented by security forces from committing acts of terrorism and I have wondered how long it would be before the old, leave a package and claim its a bomb, routine would take to kick in again.

Historically of course such unattended packages turned out to be someone's misplaced groceries but that is not an assumption that the bomb squad can afford to make.

Manchester International Airport this morning was the location of the most recent example of this:

• Manchester Airport terminal bomb scare
• Delays at Manchester airport after security alert
• Manchester Airport terminal reopens after evacuation

I am wondering how often this kind of thing will happen and how on earth we the public are supposed to know who is trying to terrorise us this time.

In my youth there were signs in all public places asking to ‘Please report all unattended packages’.  We need a new sign now, ‘Would all terrorists please form an orderly queue’.

As a Nationalist I firmly believe that appeasement does not work.  These people are criminals and should be tried to the fullest extent possible under the criminal justice system.

EDL disturbance in Nuneaton

I refuse to use the term demonstration in connection with today’s events.  The EDL seem to protest the building of Mosques or hold marches in big cities.  There are no Mosque applications here, and I would know as I sit on planning, and if their other methods are diversifying then this spectacle could soon come to the town where you live.

Just out of interest I have searched around Facebook, YouTube and Google to see what is being said and most of it is absolute rubbish on both sides.  Much of it clearly from people who have never been to Nuneaton.  Some of what I am about to tell you is personal experience because I have been on the ground today as has Alwyn Deacon.  If anyone tries to blame BNP members we can refute this personally.  Other sources of information are the Warwickshire Police sergeant in charge of the policing operation, officers of Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council, the landlord of the pub where the EDL gathered and members of the local community both Muslim and non Muslim.  As I said.  There is a problem in the community and I have been on the ground talking to people.

As you can tell from the previous post there were a great number of people in the town centre earlier on today to show appreciation and support for the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers as they accepted the Freedom of the Borough.  That event finished several hours earlier and was unconnected to this disturbance in any way.

From what I have been able to piece together from the sources above.  The police knew that the EDL were going to be in town today supporting the troops but that no official action had been called (I didn’t in case you were wondering).  After the parade the majority dispersed and went home to Leicester/Derby mainly.  Some however went to The Crew and started winding up locals the vast majority of whom left.  When the trouble started Warwickshire Police asked the landlord to remain open so that the EDL could be contained in the one area rather than on the move.  As time passed police numbers grew as they were drafted in from the length and breadth of Warwickshire and the West Midlands.

While this time was passing the following events did occur: -

There was a bottle thrown and that person was arrested.

There was an incident where a group of angry young Asian youths kicked a car door – look at it this way though – if you are driving by a scene where there are two opposing angry groups hurling abuse at each other separated by police and you react to this by driving your car slowly at one of the groups whilst blaring your horn, stopping only to hurl an insult out of the window yourself, you are not going to be surprised if they kick your car are you?

A small group of Muslims did appear wearing scarves across their faces and it did look for a while as if it could get wild but they were sent packing by a combination of the police and the local Muslim community who did not recognise them.  If this was a pre-arranged fight between the EDL and a Muslim group they did not arrange it very well.  I would suggest a big field in the middle of nowhere!

At approximately twenty past three I was driving up Queens Road and there was obviously something going on ahead.  I slowed down to a crawl with the rest of the traffic and saw a group of men holding St George’s Cross flags at the side of The Crew pub, all facing the same way and shouting together.  On the other side of the road at this time were shoppers, just ordinary people taking shopping home and generally walking by, looking across the road wondering what the hell was going on.  There was a single line of police there but nothing like the numbers that came quite quickly afterwards.

The crowd from the local community grew quite quickly as did the number of police, some with dogs.

By four ‘o’ clockish the police numbers were sufficient that they escorted the EDL supporters to the train station where they remained until they had all left Nuneaton.

This part of Nuneaton still had a very high police presence for hours afterwards in case troublemakers returned and will have all night.  There has been, as you would expect, large numbers of people walking around looking at the scene and talking about what went on.  Many of these are people who stayed at home until it was all over.

Much credit must go to the landlord and staff of The Crew who have an excellent relationship with everyone locally.  Warwickshire Police for ensuring that today remained peaceful.  Council officers for their behind the scenes work and knowledge.  Community leaders and one chap especially.  There are several clips on YouTube from today and if you ignore the text that users have added and watch the clip you will see a man in white running around wherever there looked as if there may be a flashpoint and visibly encouraging people not to respond to provocation and go home.  That man did a lot to calm down the situation.

As a Nationalist I was ashamed today to see men using the national flag in this way.  They were an absolute disgrace.  No positive outcome could possibly come from their actions.  I have never been so pleased that the EDL is a proscribed organisation for members of the British National Party.  We no more condone getting drunk and hurling abuse at innocent passers by than we do the burning of flags or books.

Bestowing the Freedom of the Borough of Nuneaton and Bedworth on the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers

Sometimes it has to be said that being a Councillor is an absolute pleasure and this is one of them.  Respect is due to all of the armed forces but on this occasion we gathered to bestow the highest honour that it lies within the power of a council to bestow.  The Freedom of the Borough.  By making the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers freemen of the borough we have given them the right to march through the borough with bayonets fixed, flags unfurled and drums beating.

I normally take plenty of photos on civic occasions and there are a few in a Facebook album which you are more than welcome to visit.  there are not as many as there would have been because I decided to shoot some footage and upload it to YouTube so that you would be able to share the atmosphere.

This first clip is of the regiment when they first marched through the town centre.  The welcome from the crowd was nothing less than rapturous.  These guys are in no doubt what so ever that they are appreciated.  The sound is not done justice but you will definitely feel the atmosphere.

 

This clip is of the Fusiliers forming up outside the council house and the Mayor leading the civic party through the standard bearers to begin the ceremony.

 

The Mayor of the borough of Nuneaton and Bedworth Cllr Don Navarro bestowing the Freedom of the Borough on the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.

 

The Fusiliers acceptance speech.

 

Last and definitely the least impressive clip of them all is of me saying thank you.

Privatisation of Royal Mail Confirmed

Vince Cable has confirmed plans to privatise the Royal Mail in what I am sure will turn into the messiest shambles that a privatisation has ever been.

The unions will turn this into the biggest show in town to appease their membership. The taxpayer gets to suffer the tripple whammy of funding the pension deficit, seeing private investors and bankers make a mint whilst enduring a lesser service at no doubt a higher cost.

Governments have been whittling away at the Royal Mail for years. Cable is simply using the financial crisis as a cover and Cameron wants to come out of this with a reputation like Thatchers after the miners strike.

Deluded fools.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.9

Andrew Brons MEP talking sense in the European parliament

It does my heart good to see someone speaking sense in an official capacity. Nothing further needs saying by me really. Please enjoy the video.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.9

Police and Benefit cuts, Royal Mail Privatisation, State owned banks and the EU, Passport Control, Education and WAR!

Current policing levels will indeed become unsustainable if the governments spending cuts are passed: -

Policing and criminal justice minister Nick Herbert said: 'I understand the Police Federation wants to make its case and protect every job, but we must be careful not to frighten the public.

'Police forces can make savings. They can become more efficient. They can share services and procure equipment better.'

The Home Office said the future funding for the police would be decided by the spending review, which is due to report in October.

A spokesman said the Government's priority was to cut the deficit and get the economy moving again, and added that the police service would need to play its part in achieving that.

As a Nationalist I cringe at the impact upon community that will be felt if thousands of police officers jobs are indeed culled.  There are areas of the country where police officers are not seen as often as the public might like.  After such cuts they may be more akin to an endangered species.  No doubt the Liberal Conservative Labour alliance sees this as headline grabbing to keep our eyes away from whatever else they are planning in the Home Office.

The coalition government is moving forward with plans to cut benefits by up to £4bn without even discussing them with its own MP’s.  More from the government that seems determined not to be re-elected comes from Nick Clegg in his claim that, “My generation has wrecked the country”.  Shame he does not know what to do about it then isn’t it?

Will they or won’t they privatise the Royal Mail?  I think they will at some point but not yet.  What do you think?  Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary might have an opinion, he is being slated for saying that scientists only talked up climate change to secure funding for their research.  Quite a rant he had.  Gone up slightly in my estimation.

The madness continues unabated at the state owned banks.  Not content with being majority state owned and dealing in many billions in public debt that was only created to keep them in existence they are now charging 19% interest on overdrafts to taxpayers when they borrow money from taxpayers at 0.5%.  They know not when to stop.  This madness will be encouraged to continue in an attempt to ‘fix’ their balance sheets.  Utter madness!  Even madder still if you are prepared to believe the possibility is the news that the Europe's Single Market Commissar admits that they want to know who is doing what in the financial markets.  He is lying of course.  What he means is that now they have the power they want to control who can do what.  Similar sentences but with entirely different connotations.  The end result could quite easily be the complete dissolution of the advantages that the City of London financial sector has over its European contempories.  Maybe it’s time to do something for our manufacturing industries?  Staying on the European theme it is revealed that Great Britain doles out most passports in the EU to foreign nationals.  I know I am a Nationalist and I am allowed to dream but I yearn for the day which must come that only British citizens can get a British passport.  Not too much to ask is it?

In the sphere of education Michael Grove has got something right, I kid you not, in that he is bringing back technical skills to train students in crafts so that there will be no shortage of home grown trades people.  His proposals do not seem to be fully fleshed out yet but he is at least aiming in the right direction with this.  Meanwhile, in the darker recesses,  someone in education has come up with the bright idea that to save money employing teachers in this country they will pay tutors in India to teach our children online.  This hypocrisy comes from  government that does not like home education.

WAR is a topic that is not to be taken lightly.  Especially I would say if you are a member of parliament in a nation that is currently engaged in one which constantly sends home its own offspring in coffins.  This was the first time since war commenced in 2001 that a debate has been allowed on the conflict and fewer than one hundred of the *******s turned up for the debate.  More were rallied in for the vote to push through the funds to continue the war.  Britain’s top General in Afghanistan says that things will get worse before they get better which to my mind shows that he is not singing from the same hymn sheet as the muppets in parliament that sent him there who think that the war is being won.  Don’t get me started.  Good news from Afghanistan is that the enemy leaders are being killed on an industrial scale by the SAS.  Your MP probably does not care but the SAS is facing the largest cuts that it has had to endure since World War Two.  Having read the article thoroughly the implications for special forces are considerable.  Do not be fooled into thinking that those experienced hands that are allowed to stay on are being ‘favoured’ in any way.  The living library of knowledge that is ever accessible in the heads of the experienced men of a regiment that can not afford to lose the benefits of its often tortuously hard learned lessons has a greater value than can be measured in coin of the realm.  This should be the very last cut that the Ministry of defence considers.  The very last!

God bless.

This economic model is not sustainable.

We have recently been reported as having approximately twenty two percent of the working age population works for the Government either nationally or locally, roughly twenty eight percent are economically inactive and most of the remaining private sector workers claim benefit in some form.

Government growth figures include the banking sector which is significantly propped up by quantitative easing. This economic model is simply not sustainable. The coalition government is doing nothing positive to correct this and only Nationalism can lead us out of this malaise.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.8

Tony Blair, Bradford Conservatives, Sham Marriages, Budget Deficit, Immigration, Labour leadership challengers, Quantitative Easing and the European Union.

I am delighted that Tony Blair has abandoned his book signing in London later this week after the demonstrations that took place in Dublin.  London would have been far, far worse with far left and far right groups protesting side by side.  Quite how that would work out I know not but it would have been an eventful demonstration.

Moving North to Bradford it turns out that five Conservatives including two former councillors have been jailed for electoral fraud.  They were not very good at it because they lost the election anyway.

Meanwhile down in leafy Sussex a vicar has been jailed, but only for four years sadly, for carrying out the largest sham marriage scam I have ever heard of.  Three hundred and sixty that are known about in a four year period that has been investigated.  once their appeals process had been exhausted men were simply paying to turn up and ‘marry’ a woman they had never previously met, even if they did not speak the same language.  There is no way that he did not know what was going on and this menial sentence is nowhere near harsh enough.  Personally I would defend one year per offence with no remission.

The budget deficit has managed to get a little coverage.  When asked by pollsters sixty percent of the public asked said that they were in favour of reducing the deficit.  Some of these suggested that they did not want cuts to in health, education and military spending.  The poll is therefore said to be ‘suggesting’ that reducing the deficit would be a good idea.  I have no need to consult with anyone at all to know that reducing a burgeoning public sector debt, still expanding at £2 - 3bn per week, is an absolute necessity.  Unlike the other parties the British National Party has no problem at all in identifying many billions of pounds worth of expenditure before having to touch taxation or current budgets at all.

Immigration Minister Damian Green has noticed that the number of foreign students let into the UK is unsustainable.  Noticing is one thing whereas saying something is quite another.  Actually having what it takes to do something about it would take a paradigm shift in policy which I cannot envision with the current Liberal\Conservative\Labour Coalition in power.  While all three parties agree that more immigration is a good thing, all be it for different philosophical reasons, ending this immigration route remains I fear the pipe dream of Nationalists.

I include this link to information about the contenders in the Labour Party leadership challenge for amusement purposes only if any of you can stomach it.  I have not read it and accept no responsibility for nausea caused.

The USA is not somewhere that I normally comment upon because they are nothing to do with me but on this occasion I am going to make an exception.  Future Quantitative Easing (printing money) will be spent on infrastructure projects rather than being handed to bankers in one guise or another.  Capital Economists in the UK are suggesting that further QE is needed here ‘with gusto’.  Unlike in the USA they are suggesting all sorts of financial instruments that could be used for the job.  Infrastructure projects employ real people in the real economy.  By putting money into the pockets of workers you gain in genuine tax revenue from people who actually make something and the infrastructure of the country actually improves.  Wouldn’t that be something?  I shall not be holding my breath for common sense to prevail in the UK.  For many years now successive governments have spoken in terms of a ‘financial’ and ‘services’ based economy.

I have saved this for last because you just know how much I love the former European Economic Community.  The EU Budget Commissioner himself has called for the UK rebate to end.  Just what we need.