Nail bomb plot

Six Muslim men have apparently admitted trying to plant a nail bomb in Dewsbury.  Their plot was foiled by chance, and what a lucky chance that was.

The next time a group of Muslims plan a nail bomb attack, we might not be so lucky.  Where will you be when the next nail bomb explodes?

Another storm in the UKIP tea cup

Am I obsessed with UKIP right now?  The national press certainly are.

So it seems one of their candidates has posted a photo of himself online making a Nazi salute, although I'm not sure Nazi salutes are made with the left arm.  Maybe he is really just reaching out for something, which is apparently what he maintains.

While at least one national newspaper wants us to find this sickening, I find it disgusting that millions of people in this country vote for political parties which are run by warmongers.  Britain is a terror state which bombs and occupies other countries.  If you vote for terrorist parties, then what does that say about your moral values?  What moral values?

But why is animal cruelty on the rise?

The RSPCA is struggling to cope with the rising number of animal cruelty cases in the UK  While others are calling for tougher laws or tougher penalties, I would like to know why the number of animal cruelty cases is on the rise.

Is it perhaps because of immigration?

Some people might be outraged that I should dare to equate the one with the other, but we have a right to know the truth.  It is already widely known that an influx of east Europeans in recent years has been linked to an increase in poaching in many parts of England.

Perhaps the RSPCA would like to publish details of the ethnic background of people who are prosecuted for animal cruelty.

The high price of child maintenance

Simon Pritchard took his life because he was worried about the cost of paying child maintenance payments to his ex-girlfriend.  He is not the first man to commit suicide because of child maintenance, and we have no idea how many men have contemplated suicide because of child maintenance.

So now his children have no father.  Is this really good for them?  How many more children have to lose their father before the government wakes up to the need for reform?

The UKIP hamster - who is to blame?

I was talking to a man back in 2004.  The European Parliament elections were looming, and he told me that he would be voting UKIP.  I reminded him that there was another election the same day, and he did not reply that he would be voting UKIP in that election as well.

That is the nub of the matter.  UKIP is a protest vote for the European Parliament elections.  People who are serious about UKIP will vote for them in every election in which there is a UKIP candidate - and yes that includes town council and parish council elections.

Suppose you are a member of UKIP.  You campaign in the European Parliament elections, and are impressed with the positive response you receive.  Then a few months later you stand for election to your local council in a byelection, and poll a couple of dozen votes.  Why should you bother being a member of UKIP if people ignore you in almost every election?  Are you seriously going to wait patiently for the next European Parliament elections?  Or are you going to quit the party and stop wasting your time on politics?

Things do seem to be changing now, with a lot of people saying they will vote UKIP on Thursday, and yet the party is still being tipped to win just fourteen percent of the vote overall.  Depending on how the votes are spread, that might not win them a single council seat.

Basically there are two problems with UKIP making an electoral breakthrough.  The first is the unwillingness of many people to vote for them in elections other than for the EU.  The second is the fact that the party has a history of being very badly led.

Whether under the leadership of Nigel Farage or Lord Pearson, UKIP have treated their rank and file members with utter contempt.  Councillors often feel that they are not supported, and at the last general election UKIP leader Lord Pearson urged people to vote Conservative in seats with UKIP candidates.

I make no apologies for comparing UKIP with a hamster.

The Tories are running scared

With just a few days to go before the local elections, not only are the Conservatives expecting to lose up to five hundred seats, but they are also expected to lose at least some of them to UKIP.  You may ask whether or not this actually matters.  Surely losing seats to UKIP is no worse than losing seats to any other party.

Senior Tories are courting publicity with attacks on UKIP, which is unsurprising.  If they were expecting to lose seats to Labour, then they would be attacking Labour.  But wait - they are expecting to lose seats to Labour.  Frankly I will be very surprised if UKIP pick up even a quarter of the seats that Labour will gain, and I will be even more surprised if UKIP win control of a single local authority.

Also, the attacks on UKIP are not like attacks on Labour.  Some of the comments, such as those made recently by Lord Ashcroft, are fairly tame.  Nevertheless at least one senior Tory is repeating the fruitcakes and closet racists allegation made by David Cameron back in 2006.  You never hear the Tories describe Labour or Liberal Democrat politicians as racists, and so it is safe to assume that they are running very scared indeed.

Maybe the problem is that the Tories feel that seats lost to UKIP would be hard to win back, but it is a simple fact that UKIP have a truly abysmal record of holding onto council seats.  In fact they have a real talent for losing council seats either by defection or as a result of their councillors deciding not to stand for a second term.

Then again, maybe the Tories are worried about the symbolic nature of the UKIP vote.  A lot of people regard UKIP as being the lost conscience of the Conservative Party.  They feel that UKIP policies are the policies which ought to grace the Conservative manifesto.  But of course people have felt that way before.

UKIP have had false dawns before now.  For example they won two seats in the London Assembly elections in 2004, whereas in 2008 they were outpolled by the National Front.  I have no doubt that UKIP will win seats on Thursday, but I also see no reason for the headlines in the national newspapers on Friday to read anything other than "Another false dawn for UKIP".

The Tories are running scared, but they do not need to be.  UKIP is about as terrifying as a hamster.

From Stockwell to Stedham ...

Councillor John Cherry has been forced to leave the Tory Party and also to say sorry for remarks he made about a proposed new school in West Sussex.  Apparently he is also being investigated by the police for thought crime.

The Durand Academy in Stockwell wants to turn a disused school in the village of Stedham into a boarding school.  Stockwell is a heavily enriched area of south London, and its proposals would result in a vast number of black and Asian children descending on the as yet unenriched Stedham.

While I accept that many local people may find this prospect a trifle daunting, I would urge them to remember that the whole of Britain will one day be multiracial and multicultural.  Our inner cities have been largely taken over by immigrants, and yet the immigrants continue to pour into this country.  Face reality - there are only so many immigrants who can live in Stockwell and Tottenham.  In due course they will spread out and occupy the shire counties as well.

There is not one corner of England or Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland which will not in due course be awash with immigrants unless immigration is stopped in the very near future.

John Cherry, if you want your English village to continue to resemble an English village - as opposed to a village in Jamaica or Somalia or Pakistan - then stop whining about the Durand Academy, and start looking at the bigger picture.

The ongoing slide into communism

There are a few things in today's newspapers which I could reasonably comment on, but first let me beg you to read this enlightening essay by Robin Page in which he argues that local councils now serve the government first, and their communities second - if at all.  Do you have local elections on Thursday?  I do, but I will not be voting for candidates from the three main parties, and I am not yet aware of any independent candidates.

Another fascinating news item is that apparently there has been a survey in Nijmegen in Holland which has found that school pupils are less likely to be tolerant of other races and cultures if they have been taught to be tolerant.  This does not surprise me in the slightest.  Tolerance lessons are basically a form of communist indoctrination, and some people do actually resent having communism rammed down their throats.

Although Education Secretary Michael Gove is intent on removing at least some of this indoctrination from our classrooms, I nevertheless still regard him as a communist.  Some of you may think I am being unfair, or even fantastical, but no - the three main political parties in this country are all communist parties.

Under every Prime Minister in my lifetime there has been an increase in the scope of the state in this country - more spending, more regulation, higher taxes.  There has also been an increase in state interference in the way we think, as witnessed by Robin Page in the essay I link to above.  Make no mistake - Britain is a communist state in the making.  Occasionally a government minister will argue for some small concession, but this is merely a ploy to confuse the general public.  Gove is as much a communist as Ed Miliband.

Do Oxford and Cambridge matter that much?

A perennial topic in British newspapers is whether or not the country’s two most prestigious universities, Oxford and Cambridge, operate a fair admissions policy.  Rather than enter that particular debate, I will list some of the more famous alumni of these august seats of learning: David Cameron, Ed Miliband, George Osborne, and Nick Clegg. 

In fact a list of leading British politicians who studied at Oxford and Cambridge would be very long indeed.  I cannot help but wonder why so many leading politicians should emerge from just two universities, and also why they are such an absolute shower.  Do Oxford and Cambridge offer their students tutorials on how to become atrociously bad politicians?

I find it hard to take academic results seriously.  One reason is that people who excel in one subject often struggle in other subjects.  For example, humanities graduates often have a very poor grasp of mathematics.  Another reason is that intelligence, however defined, is at best a poor substitute for judgment.  One of the many Oxford-educated cabinet ministers in my lifetime was Lord Kelvedon.  His daughter Olivia Channon was smart enough to get into St Hilda's College, but not smart enough to know that illegal drugs are illegal for a reason.  She died at a drug-fuelled party in 1986.

Consider this list of famous people: Diane Abbott and John Major (politicians), Hugh Grant and Jonathan Rhys Meyers (film stars), Max Hastings and Richard Littlejohn (journalists), Sarah-Jane Honeywell and Konnie Huq (television presenters).  Do you know, or can you guess, which of them are graduates of either Oxford or Cambridge?

Diane Abbott, Hugh Grant, Max Hastings, and Konnie Huq are.  The other four, so far as I am aware, did not even go to university.  Does anyone really think less of them for that reason?

People get into university on the basis of academic results achieved in most cases at the age of eighteen.  Therefore to judge someone on the basis of which university they went to is akin to judging them on their abilities as a teenager.  Add to this the fact that any university course is only as good as its teaching staff.  The teaching staff at my university varied in quality (to put it mildly), and I see no reason to assume that Oxford and Cambridge are any different in this respect.

Another important point to make is that people have a natural tendency towards self-interest.  Entering a career – whether it be politics or accountancy or the civil service or whatever else – can be like joining a club.  The club has rules, and it usually makes sense to obey them, whether or not you agree with them.  As a former public sector employee, I know that a lot of people in the public sector are motivated more by a belief in their own divine right to a job for life than by any concept of public service.  The unwritten rule of that particular club appears to be that you never admit publicly to being a parasite.

Being academically inclined does not make people less likely to be selfish.  That is a matter of character.  Sometimes the self-interest tendency can lead to astonishing results.  When the parliamentary expenses scandal broke a few years ago, it became obvious that almost all of our MPs had blithely assumed that they could help themselves to our money and that doing so would not come back to haunt them.

I sincerely believe that academic qualifications are at best only a roughly reliable measure of intellect, and very poor indicators of character.  Intellect needs to be nurtured, and this is not achieved through arrogance and complacency.  The truly intelligent person will always be receptive to new thinking, and will not settle into established patterns of thought.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States 1801 - 1809

What exactly is hate speech?

It is reported in the press that the son of Labour MP Ian Lavery has made a rude remark about Katie Price's disabled son.  Apparently Price has called for this to be treated as a hate crime, like racism.

Thanks to the Labour Party and their friends in the Conservative and LibDem parties, we live in a society in which any remark or action which can possibly be construed as racist can land you in very serious trouble.  So why isn't Lavery's son being dragged through the courts for what he said about Harvey?

Surely one offensive remark should be treated as seriously as any other offensive remark, but that is not the way things are in pre-communist Britain.  I smell hypocrisy.

Another Islamic terror cell

So it seems that a group of eleven men are awaiting their sentences for organising a bombing campaign which could have killed hundreds or even thousands of people in this country - and of course these men are Muslims.

I have read The Koran, and this does not surprise me at all.  What surprises me is that so few Muslims take part in bombing campaigns.  If you have not yet read The Koran, then here are a couple of quotes:

The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His apostle and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they shall be murdered (5:33)

Fight those who do not believe in Allah (9:29)

In search of Rutland

When I was a child, my parents had a map of Britain on which the counties of England were labelled.  One of them was called Rutland - a small county which has long since been swallowed up by Leicestershire.  Other lost counties of England include Middlesex, Westmoreland, and Huntingdonshire.

It is reported that a goverment minister called Eric Pickles - a Conservative - wants us to start using these old county names once again.  As it happens it was a Conservative government back in the 1970s which was largely responsible to redrawing the local government map so as to alter the boundaries of many of our historic counties.

But then of course not that many people nowadays are in a position to remember the county boundaries that existed in England in 1970, and even those boundaries were not the same as those that had existed just ten years previously.

So is this change aimed at winning the votes of the small number of voters who can remember the good old days?  Maybe.  I suspect that most people in this country care little for traditional county names, and are far more interested in things like the state of the economy or the condition of their local roads.