One of my spies tells me that the council took the £75 fine I sent to them for leaving my bins in the road to a meeting with their contractor, TWS.

Apparently TWS thought it was funny but the council weren’t amused and told them to sort it out.  Needless to say, my bins were put back where they got them from today.

I did ask my spy if I was going to get a cheque for £75 but they thought it unlikely.

Technorati Tags: Telford & Wrekin Council, TWS, Bins, Fixed Penalty, Walls Have Ears

The British government has announced that it is nationalising the East Coast railway franchise after National Express made a half year loss of £20m.

Lord Adonis, the unelected Transport Minister for England, said that they wouldn’t renegotiate the London to Edinburgh franchise contract as National Express had asked because “I’m simply not prepared to bail out companies that are unable to meet their commitments”.  Unless they’re banks, of course.  Or car manufacturers.  Sorry, that wasn’t the unelected Transport Minister for England, that was the unelected Business and Enterprise Minister for England, Peter Mandelson.

Lord Adonis added:

It is simply unacceptable to reap the benefits of contracts when times are good, only to walk away from them when times become more challenging

Quite.  Much better for a company struggling to cope with £1.2bn of debt to carry on losing £40m a year on a contract and pay the British government £1.4bn for the privelege.  That way National Express could be nationalised as well and we’d be another step closer to the socialist republic that’s being built.

Technorati Tags: Transport, Railways, National Express, Lord Adonis

The British government has abandoned its plans to force airside workers in London City and Manchester airports to sign up for ID cards after workers and unions kicked up a fuss.

No2ID and others are calling it a humiliating climb down but don’t get too excited about the demise of the ID card scheme because it’s far from dead.  Airside workers will no longer be required to have the ID cards (yet) but Mancunians are going to be spammed relentlessly from the end of the year telling them to volunteer for ID cards and the rest of the North West and London will be offered voluntary ID cards from next year.  And every over-75 is going to be given a free ID card.

The amounts of money being spent on this particular white elephant are obscene, especially when the national debt has reached 150% of GDP and the Tories have said they will cancel the whole ID card scheme after the next election.  Of course, you generally can’t trust Camoron to tell the truth (his lies about the EU constitution are a prime example), but the Tories have written to the 5 main companies bidding for ID card contracts warning them not to invest any serious money in them because they’re going to be cancelled.

That said, I wouldn’t be surprised to find an incoming Tory government saying that the cost of cancelling the contracts would be too high and continuing the ID cards scam.

Technorati Tags: ID Cards

My trusty Netgear ADSL router gave up the ghost yesterday which was a bit inconvenient.

Some investigations pinned it down to a problem with the wireless on the router so I phoned Sky technical support.  I was most surprised to get an answer at 10pm and even more surprised to speak to someone who spoke passable English (they were from Scotland, not Mumbai).

In total I spent an hour and 20 minutes on the phone to technical support convincing them that the evidence pointed to a problem with the router and not my laptop as the router couldn’t be found on my wife’s laptop either, nor on my phone, the desktop computer or the printer.

I eventually convinced them of the need to replace the router and a 2 minute conversation with the customer support team this morning secured the replacement which is being posted out to me.

Interestingly, the woman I spoke to in technical support said that my exchange is one of the first to get the upgrade from 16mbit to 20mbit and a quick test she did on my line suggests that I’ll get over 21mbit (I currently connect to the exchange at about 16.7mbit).  Which is nice.

Edit:
The postman delivered the replacement modem at 6:45 this morning.  Are they supposed to ring the doorbell at that time of the morning?

Technorati Tags: Customer Service, Sky, Broadband

El Gordo wants to set up a £60bn climate change fund to help poor countries come up with bullshit ways to deal with climate change.

Meanwhile, BBC News is reporting this morning (on the TV but not on the website for some reason) that an extra half a million families could be forced into fuel poverty because electricity companies are being forced to spend billions on expensive, inefficient and unreliable windmills instead of cheap, reliable power stations to hit bullshit government targets.

This is just getting beyond a fucking joke.  Climate change has been happening for millions of years and it will continues to happen for millions of fucking years.  There is no proof - not one single piece of evidence that stands up to the briefest of scrutiny - that the climate is being changed by human activity in any significant or detrimental way.

Windmills and solar panels can’t even come close to producing enough electricity to meet demand.  Relying on “renewable” energy will turn electricity into a luxury that only the ruling classes can afford which will, of course, solve the problem of electricity rationing which we will be seeing in the next few years.

And to rub salt into the wound, we’re going to be contributing our “fair share” of a £60bn fund so that corrupt third world despots can come up with similar bullshit claimte change policies while an extra half a million people are expected to be spending 10% of their income on gas and electricity in the next 12 months.

Where on earth can I get away from this fucking bullshit?  I swear to god, much more of this and I’m going to go postal in Westminster Palace.

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, Bullshit

This animation was made by my 11 year old son and a couple of his mates at school. Step aside Nick Park!

Technorati Tags: Animation, Animals on Ice

Setanta went into administration today owing £3m to the Scottish Premier League and £30m to the English Premier League.

The Scottish Premier League is looking for a new buyer for £125m of broadcasting rights for the next 4 years and the English Premier League is looking to offload the rest of the matches Setanta had already won the rights to after ESPN took the 45 games that would have been on Setanta next season.

Good.  Serves the greedy bastards right.  £125m for 4 years of what is, to be perfectly honest, amateur football?  They’re taking the piss.  And the English Premier League are really taking the piss.  They may be some of the world’s best football teams but they’re partly responsible for Setanta running out of cash through their greed.

Liverpool are desperately trying to refinance their £350m of debt to avoid bankruptcy with an announcement that RBS have virtually guaranteed to refinance their share of Liverpool’s debt coming on the same day that they announced a £17.5m transfer for Portsmouth’s Glen Johnson.  How can they even contemplate spending £17.5m for a player when they could be days away from going into administration?  The future of their LiverpoolTV channel - a lucrative source of income - is also in doubt as it was being shown exclusively on Setanta and they haven’t got anyone else to broadcast it.

The English Premier League and Premiership clubs have been pissing money up the wall thinking the amount of money involved is just too big for their pyramid scheme to collapse.  Guess what.  It’s not.

Technorati Tags: Setanta, Premiership

Wimbledon has started and the BBC are excited about the prospects of British Scottish British Scottish British Scottish Sour Faced Tosser, Andy Murray.

Personally, I couldn’t give a flying fuck which round he crashes out in as long as he cries like a baby.

Amusingly, the above image is the first match in a Google image search for “Anyone But Murray”.

For followers of the perpetual British/Scottish schizophrenia of Andy “Anyone but England” Murray, the Andymurrayometer is worth a visit for a bit of a giggle.

Technorati Tags: Anyone but Murray, Andy Murray, Wimbledon, BBC

Printed on a box of raisins from Asda:

Do we really a list of ingredients in a box of raisins?  And is there anyone, anywhere on the planet (except Glasgow) who doesn’t realise that fruit is suitable for vegetarians?

As the late, great Douglas Adams said in So Long and Thanks for all the Fish (Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy):

Madness.

Technorati Tags: Asda, Fruit, Douglas Adams, Insanity

Just checking the referrers for Bloggers4UKIP and a strange one came up:

The url doesn’t work but Google turns up the url on a lot of Blogger blogs.  The wording of the url would suggest that Blogger are notifying Deloitte whenever some or all blogs are updated.

Anyone know what it’s all about?

Technorati Tags: Blogger, Deloitte

So the House of Commons have released details of MPs expenses, self-censored by the MPs themselves.  Did your thieving bastard MP make any inappropriate claims?

Here’s a couple of examples from the two thieving bastard MPs in Telford:

David Wright, thieving bastard MP for Telford, claimed over £7k for a photocopier and £300 for an accountant to do his self assessment tax returns.

Mark Pritchard, thieving bastard MP for the Wrekin, claimed 31p for an air freshner, £170 for bed and breakfast at a hotel a mile away from his house and hundreds of pounds for short taxi journey’s (how far does £4 get you in a black cab?) in London.

I have just sent Mark Pritchard an email about his expenses …

Technorati Tags: David Wright, Mark Pritchard, MPs Expenses

Some people accuse me of being a piss-taker, how can they say such things?

This will be in the post today.

Technorati Tags: Telford, Wheelie Bins, Fixed Penalty

The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales has ruled that a trial can take place without a jury for the first time.

The trial in question is for an armed robbery at Heathrow Airport which will be heard for a fourth time because of alleged jury tampering.  It was because of the jury tampering that Lord Judge ruled the trial can be held without a jury.

Whilst it is important for the defendents to be tried for their alleged crimes, to do so without a jury is unconstitutional.  If the defendents are interfering with the jury and their trials are being abandoned then they will simply spend longer in prison until a fair trial can be held.

This ruling sets a dangerous precedent.  How long will it be before the British government uses this ruling in “terrorism” cases?  They already have people under house arrest or subject to curfew and tagging orders after they’ve been found innocent by a jury on the orders of the Home Secretary, how long will it be before the constitutional right to a trial by jury is swept aside and kangaroo courts are set up with secret trials?

There is a reason why we have jury trials and open courts.  The jury consists of laymen who consider the evidence and give their opinion on whether they think the evidence is good enough for a reasonable person to believe the accused has done what they’re accused of and whether it is wrong while open courts allow members of the public to see that justice is being done and that nobody is being deprived of their liberty or otherwise pubished without just cause.

Technorati Tags: Constitution, Jury Trial, Police State

The English Democrats have been a largely benign force in English politics for a few years but recently they’ve become more aggressive in their self-promotion and in doing so have become toxic to the cause of English nationalism.

Anyone criticising the English Democrats, and particularly Steve Uncles, is generally treated to threats of legal action or worse.  One prominent English nationalist blogger says he has received threats against himself and his family for daring to criticise the party.  A mentally ill blogger who was opposed to an English Parliament and the English Democrats committed suicide seems to have amused Steve Uncles at the time.  PigDogFucker was impressed with Uncles’ behaviour.

You see, Steve Uncles thinks that if you don’t support the English Democrats you can’t be an English nationalist, you are an enemy of the English nation.  I have, of course, committed what amounts to a capital crime in Steve’s book - I joined UKIP, a party that not only doesn’t believe in the same type of English Parliament that the English Democrats (and myself) believe in but has the audacity to keep defying his pronouncements that it is dead and will be beaten by the English Democrats.  I am quite prepared to accept people being anti-EU and not joining UKIP but the reverse, for Steve, isn’t true - you can’t be pro-English and not join the English Democrats.

I could have joined the English Democrats of course but I was never comfortable with them.  I was asked to join the EDP (as they called themselves a few years ago) several times, was asked to run a local branch in Telford (the branch chairman at the time was suffering from a long term illness) and was offered whatever support I needed as a PPC.  I was tempted for a time but thankfully went with my gut feeling.

England needs an English political party and it may as well be the English Democrats.  They are, at least, more acceptable than the England First Party - a BNP splinter group - which the English Democrats have an electoral pact with.  But if they are going to represent England they need to get rid of the members that bring not only their party but the whole English nationalist cause into disrepute.  Unfortunately, the ring leader happens to be one of their biggest creditors, having loaned the party somewhere in the region of £30k if memory serves me.

I must point out here that I don’t tar all English Democrats members with the same brush.  Quite the opposite in fact.  The leader of the English Democrats, Robin Tilbrook, has always been friendly with me, even when I’ve been complaining about something they’ve done.  He’s even given me some very useful advice in the past.  Ed Abrams is another prominent English Democrat who I’ve never had a problem with and think his vision of uniting left and right behind the cause of an English Parliament is an excellent one.  There are, naturally, many Campaign for an English Parliament members that are also members of the English Democrats and I have never had a problem with any of them, even when they’re getting enthusiastic about why I shouldn’t be a UKIP member.  There are some people who are in the English Democrats who are good friends.  But then I have friends who are also BNP members and even though I know they have joined the party in protest at the way the country is being run, they don’t make the BNP a party I could support when elements of their leadership are rotten and some of their policies are equally so.

Rewinding slightly to the complaining about things the English Democrats (or rather, Steve Uncles) have done.  I used to be a member of quite a lot of English groups on Facebook until I checked one of them and found that it had sprouted English Democrats logos and was no longer the group I joined but a group for supporters of the English Democrats.  I have since found loads of groups that were once groups supporting St Georges Day public holidays or just English and proud groups but have been given the same English Democrats treatment.  I complained in the groups before I left them and got messages from Steve Uncles and Robin Tilbrook saying what they were doing - fraudulently implying that people were supporters of their party when they were just supporting England - was legitimate and that they would carry on doing it.  Steve Uncles said they intended to take over ever English group on Facebook.  Billy Bragg’s office is now threatening to sue them for setting up a group fraudulently claiming that he is a supporter of their party.

Until recently, Steve frequented the British Democracy Forum, banging the drum for the English Democrats, attacking anyone who criticised them and posting the odd offensive joke.  He has now, for some reason, removed all the references to the English Democrats from his profile on the forum (even changing his username) and replaced them with the Campaign for an English Parliament logo, name and website.  Why he would seek to associate the CEP with his poor behaviour on a public forum I don’t know but I suspect that having attracted widespread criticism from English nationalists and apparently facing deselection by his own branch, he has decided to go on a wrecking spree to try and do as much damage to the movement as possible before he goes.

England needs a Parliament and an English equivalent of the SNP but right now the English Democrats aren’t the party to represent England and they’re doing more harm than good.  They don’t exactly have a very good reputation at the moment but they’re a small fish in a big pond.  They’ve got one of their number elected as mayor of Doncaster which will get them some more publicity and that means that if they aren’t going to set us back years they need to clean their act up.

Technorati Tags: English Democrats, Steve Uncles

The English Democrats have been spamming Facebook for months now, setting up groups for England and St Georges Day and then re-branding them as English Democrats supporters groups when they get a few members in a desperateyl pathetic attempt to look like they have some support.

Every group I was a member of that they hijacked I left a message on complaining, left and then reported to Facebook.  I had messages from Steve Uncles and Robin Tilbrook saying what they were doing was perfectly legitimate and that they intended to carry on.

But they took it too far - they didn’t just dupe ordinary Facebook users into putting their name do