Con your way, Derek

Derek Conway has today been suspended by the Conservatives after getting caught funding his son with his expenses: your money.

Good. But there are still plenty of others that need to go. Like these greedy bastards (sourced from Sky News/Bloomberg):

£185,421: Shahid Malik, Labour MP for Dewsbury
£178,116: Liam Byrne, Labour MP for Hodge Hill
£173,691: Joan Ryan, Labour MP for Enfield North
£172,733: Dan Norris, Labour MP for Wansdyke
£172,327: Tim Farron, Lib Dem MP for Westmorland & Lonsdale

I'm not surprised they are trying to become exempt from the Freedom of Information Act so they can conceal their expenses. It's mad that they can even consider this: expenses should be transparent and honest but as we all know it's anything but. They seem to want to keep it as muddy as possible so nobody can track how much public money they are siphoning off to fund their families' champagne lifestyle.

Check this one out: last year Barry Gardiner, the environment minister, claimed mileage equivalent to driving his own car to Delhi and back. He has an official government car and is a London MP. Unreal.

David McLetchie, the Scottish Tory leader, could not account for why he had claimed £5000 in "personal" taxi fares. He resigned, but only because he was caught.

This is what these bastards get (from timesonline.co.uk):

Staffing allowance

£84,081 To pay for employees’ pay, pensions and perks

Additional costs allowance

£21,634 To cover mortgage interest for a second property, utility bills, grocery bills, council tax and insurance

Incidental expenses allowance

£20,000 To pay for office and surgery costs. MPs can also pick up £250 every month in petty cash from this allowance

Travel expenses

No maximum(!)


The Capitalist Nightmare

I don't blame them for taking everything they can within the rules. Why not? You'd be a fool not to. We are not in a society where morals matter any more, it's the capitalist pinnacle, or rather the capitalist nightmare. Things admired just because they are expensive. People respected based on earnings and status. Greed and wealth above all else.

Why do young girls all want to be Posh Spice? Is it because she's talented and intelligent? No, it's because she wears expensive clothes, has an expensive lifestyle and is married to someone talked about more because of the money they earn than the sporting talent they have.

Why is Tony Blair being talked about lately? Is it because of his role as a United Nations ambassador? Is it because of the things he has done in his career as a MP and Prime Minister? No, it's because he's now being paid half a million per year by JP Morgan and probably a similar amount by Zurich for basically doing nothing and bullshitting about the global hysteria that is "climate change".

His wife's no different. All we know about her is that she's unattractive and gets paid £300,000 per year defending asylum seekers.

Anyway the rules for MPs expenses must be changed.

Currently they state that employees must be: “employed to meet a genuine need in supporting you, the member, in performing your parliamentary duties; [be] able and (if necessary) qualified to do the job; [and] actually doing the job.”

I've decided that MPs should simply be banned from employing their own family. It's quite clearly wrong that MPs can turn their expenses allowance into their own household income, in many cases doubling their money. It stinks.

Take the housewife that would otherwise be doing nothing; perhaps she answers the phone once in a while? Here's £40,000 a year plus pension and perks for your trouble, love.

Unqualified son studying geography full time at uni? £40,000 over 3 years, son. Shame on you Conway.

MPs are set apart from everyone else. They are in it to win it and take as much cash as possible and do as little as possible for it. There are too many examples of greed and arrogance to deny it so there needs to be a crackdown and anyone caught siphoning money unnecessarily should be out.

The UK is bordering on the Italian style Government where as soon as someone gets on the gravy train so do their whole family. Corruption city. The British Government used to have an integrity that it has now lost with scandal after scandal of outright arrogance and in some cases criminality - whether found guilty or not it does not matter.

Once the smoke starts to billow, it no longer matters whether there is a fire. If you think about Blair and the cash for honours for example, does anyone actually think it didn't happen?

All aboard the gravy train

I was really glad to see Peter Hain (right) fall on his sword the other day. I'd been clamouring for him to be booted out by Gordon since the story that he'd not declared over £100,000 in donations hit the news. At the time Bottler Brown didn't have the guts to get rid of him but once the Police stepped in and started the investigation there was only one possible outcome: especially when it was discovered that over half of it had come channeled through the dodgy "Progressive Policy Forum" think tank.

Not that long ago Harriet Harman was also rumbled for accepting donations via a third party, as was Hilary Benn. Both should have gone. Now we hear that Wendy Alexander and Alan Johnson are being investigated for yet more undeclared donations. Johnson's on the ropes a bit at the moment but I think he might just be able to hang on. His line is that he knew nothing about it, thought it was a genuine donation and is blaming the Electoral Commission for making admin errors. One wonders who will be next. Personally I find this hilarious because this is only happening due to reforms brought in by His Holiness the Right Reverend Tony Blair.

Even if Johnson goes, theres nothing to suggest he wont be back. Same with Hain. Handy Mandy went for undeclared loans from Geoffrey Robinson and he'd already been sacked and brought back once!

Supermarket Sweep

The Harman and Benn cases are unusual. Well they're the same case really. David Abrahams - a very rich property developer - had been pumping money to them for 4 years using false identities. This of course is entirely against the rules and Peter Watts, the general secretary of Labour, admitted that he knew what was going on but told everyone it was OK. So he bit the bullet.

Abrahams wanted to build a business park on a stretch of Green Belt land near Durham and had applied for permission. He made donations to Labour using the identities of the "directors" of the development. The Government had initially objected to Abrahams' plans but then, all of a sudden, the objections were retracted. It has quite an unpleasant smell about it and a cynic may suggest that Abrahams was attempting to influence decision making without anyone knowing who he was. If this is the case the Government are just as guilty in being influenced by cash. Who's surprised about that though?

We've had cash for honours which put a black cloud above the Labour party after several rich businesspeople that gave secret loans to Labour were nominated for honours. Nobody was surprised to see the Police draw a blank, even though they went through the high profile drama of questioning Tony Blair three times. I suppose this was some attempt to convince people that they were actually investigating an alleged crime!

I've heard politicians bleating on about how the system needs to be changed because so many are being caught by it. No. Whats the point in having rules if you're going to change them when people start getting caught breaking them? If politicians cant be bothered to abide by them then they should lose their jobs and be locked up like anyone else would be for money laundering and fraud. Dave Cameron has already castigated them for arrogance which is quite right. One or two forgetful ministers might be overlooked but when they are queueing up to be investigated by the Police I think what Dave said is absolutely true.

Labour have irreparably harmed the public trust in Government. I know, sleaze was a factor in the Conservatives losing office in 1997 (so were all the Conservative policies that Labour stole) but Labour has really taken sleaze and outright corruption to a new level where only those with no more lives left get booted out. You work in a bank, you launder money, you're out of a job and landed in court. You work in the Government and you can easily spin and squirm your way out of it.

This aside many Members of Parliament are simply cash siphoning non-entities that exist only to profit from you. The myth that MPs are local people that are fighting for your rights is exactly that - a myth. I remember in the mid 1990's when my brother used to be involved with the local Conservatives and I somehow ended up meeting our MP at the time which was Harold Elletson. Elletson was incredibly posh, wasn't from our area at all and quite honestly I would have had no idea who he was. I'd never even heard his name before. He was typical ivory tower material. The stereotypical Tory Boy from Harry Enfield & Chums.

Since the Tories were voted out and kept appointing hopeless leaders (apart from Hague) he jumped ship to become a bleeding heart Liberal Democrat and sits on one of those pointless committees these days. He is clearly mad because he went from a party with not many policies to a party with loads of unworkable "taxation nation" ones. On second thoughts, someone that can get paid £70,000 for doing nothing must have some grey matter between their ears.

I've not made a point here yet, I know. Well the point is that Mr Elletson may well have been their MP but nobody knew, nobody cared and he didn't really seem to do much. He took his massive amount of cash per year, probably siphoned a large chunk of expenses and sailed away into the sunset. Lovely.

I've just Googled Mr Elletson and it shows that his successor in 1997 was Joan Humble of Labour. I didn't know this. I don't know how to contact her. I don't know what she stands for. Of course, Mrs Humble is not even from this area and being a Yorkshirewoman will probably be supplying information to Government on how best to extract further tax from us Lancastrians to give to former mining villages in Yorkshire. Such is my cynicism but I make no apologies for it.

Democracy: Power to the Pillocks

It baffles me that people are suckered in to the belief that politicians do things for them or that MPs listen to local peoples' hopes and concerns and try to push them through with a passion. This isn't the case. How can it be the case? As I have already mentioned, MPs are rarely from the local area: they are professionals. If there's a place with no MP or candidate, they go and try their luck. They cry some crocodile tears about local issues, get their face in the newspaper and then disappear. Nothing ever happens that can be attributed to the MP, they are forgotten about and sit there on a pile of money until the next election. Best job ever.

Rt. Rev "Teflon" Tony won such a landslide because he managed to convince people that they were voting for him and not some former coal miner on an anti-Thatcher crusade. An undeniably good move. Check out their 1997 manifesto cover on the left: You're not voting for Prezza you're voting for me!

I've watched Prime Ministers Questions and the House of Commons is packed with mostly disinterested morons. The questions and answers are all pre-set and everyone is reading from a script including Bottler Brown. One Labour MP asked a question and had to keep pausing as she struggled to read her little sheet of notepaper - it must have been an issue that she was really passionate about then! Or maybe she was one of the true Old Labourites that can empathise with the Jeremy Kyle generation: flunked school, can't read and wants the state to provide everything by taking money from those that have a job.

On normal days the House of Commons is empty apart from one person speaking and a couple of half asleep overweight people listening and occasionally grunting a question. What are the MPs doing to justify the enormous salaries and pensions they get? Why are they allowed to pay their own family with their massive expenses budget?

Money for Nothing and your Pension for Free

The Conservative MP Derek Conway was today hammered for using his expenses money to pay his son just under £12,000 a year as well as dishing out bonuses of a few thousand despite his son being on a full-time university course. He's also paying his wife £40,000 per year from his expenses. She must be some office assistant. Conway should have been booted out immediately for this.

Some might suggest this is typical behaviour and I would tend to agree: there there is a history of MPs with their hands in the till reported in the press. We have already seen Scottish MEPs being probed for claiming full rent on property they have sub-let as well as MPs being rapped for paying relations to "work" for them when the work is in doubt. Even the infamous IDS (former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith) resigned due to allegations that he was paying his wife a salary for no apparent reason. He was eventually found to have done nothing wrong.

This is a bit of a running theme with politicians, but no smoke without fire I say!

I believe it's 100% wrong that MPs can pay members of their family excessive salaries for menial jobs such as secretarial work, especially since we know that they will do far less work than someone employed by a company to do the same work. There should be limits on what is allowed for certain jobs, or alternatively there should be someone that can make judgements on claims for expenses. There probably is, but unsurprisingly I have no idea who it is or what claims they have ever quashed. Probably none.

Labour have been a source of far more sleaze than John Major's Conservatives were in the 1990's and I think the unrequieted devotion by some to Labour is dissipating - especially now that the Rt. Rev Blair has left and in the true spirit of Labour has taken a £500,000 per year position at JP Morgan in the USA as well as another position as some eco warrior with Zurich group.

The taxes, more taxes and even more taxes ethos brought in by New Labour has caused many staunch Labour voters to lose their affinity with Labour and look for alternatives. This is another article for another day, but I think many people would agree that given the conduct of the representatives of the Government there must be some concern as to their real motives when handling the taxes we work so hard to pay.

Strictly Career Reincarnation

Pretty much everyone agrees that television is crap nowadays. The BBC takes more money than ever from us using the archaic TV license but all they ever produce is more and more far fetched storylines in Eastenders and crap programmes featuring holier-than-thou bender John Barrowman.

Meanwhile Channel 4 and ITV have been raking it in with these annoying phone in competitions: the ones they got caught using to rip viewers off. Following Pop Idol and discounting Big Brother, X Factor was the leader in the phone voting shows and is actually enjoyable to watch due to the fact that usually one or two of them can sing and obviously Simon Cowell's trademark patronising put-downs that have earned him significantly more money than discovering Curiosity Killed the Cat.

You can almost let them off the fact that X Factor is a pointless charade to milk money from the general public by selecting contestants not based on their vocal quality but to ensure that most types of viewer are catered for and can find someone they like and will vote for throughout the series. I'd do it. But Louis Walsh always spews that it's a talent competition and I completely disagree with that.

Look at the judges. Simon Cowell apart, you have Louis Walsh who manufactured two boy bands. And that's it. Sharon Osbourne that did what exactly? Married a rocker and got pissed a lot? Finally you have the eye candy that is Danni Minogue. But how can she give an opinion on anything closely relating to talent?

Take the last X Factor which Leon Jackson won. Personally I thought Niki and Beverley were better than him and I thought the final was a farce because it was decided more on social status than on vocal talent and so-called X Factor. The fact is, Rhydian looked a bit weird, was not given songs that his voice worked well with and is a middle class, rugger-playing public schoolboy. Furthermore when it came to the last half an hour or so of voting, Dermot O'Leary bleated that there was only 2% between the two singers: at which point a sob story video clip was played where Jackson was saying how he lives in a council house and was doing it all to give his mum a better life. Cue tears and sympathy votes resulting in Jacko winning it and banking the million quid recording deal.

ITV also sports I'm a Tosspot, get me a Career now and again starring overpaid Geordie duo PJ & Duncan, of "Watch us wreck the mic.. psyche!" fame as the presenters. To be fair they are decent hosts and make an incredibly boring show of unknown Z-listers slightly more interesting. For those that don't know, Tosspot is a show where ITV digs up Z-list celebrities (most of whom you haven't heard of), pays them 80 grand each and puts them in a camp in the Australian outback.

They do various stupid tasks such as eating live insects or riding a motorbike across a small plank of wood that crosses a ravine to earn bonuses which are mainly booze and fags. It's basically like Big Brother except it doesn't go on for as long, it's in the jungle and it has less attractive contestants.

The first winner of Tosspot was Tony Blackburn, the radio broadcaster whose only previous television outings had been cameos on Noel's House Party. Since then his career has ballooned. He now presents competitions on GMTV and recently did a collaboration with The Wurzels.

The BBC have jumped on the phone-voting bandwagon with How do you Solve a Problem like Maria? where viewers voted for the lead in Lloyd Webber's production of The Sound of Music; Any Dream Will Do where viewers voted for the lead in Lloyd Webber's production of Joseph and soon to be Oliver - where viewers will - you guessed it - vote for the lead in Lloyd Webber's upcoming production. Unsurprisingly the Beeb have also used Barrowman extensively in these as well.

This brings me to the latest "surreality" show on ITV. Well, the latest permutation of the generic phone voting format. Dancing on Ice.

Usually on I'm a Tosspot you have heard of some of the celebrities but for this Strictly Come Dancing spinoff ITV have delved even deeper into the mire of jobless Z-listers and have come up with... Greg Rusedski! He makes Peter Crouch look like Justin Timberlake and his dancing partner sounds like she's just inhaled an entire helium balloon.

Add on world famous superstars such as Linda Lusardi: famous for getting her tits out in the paper 32 years ago and being a panelist on Win, Lose or Draw in the mid 1990's and Suzanne Shaw, known from being in the failed manufactured band Hear'Say that sold 3 covers and split up you have a cracking line up. I could go on. All these non-entities are topped off by the constant presence of Jayne Torvill & Chris Dean; the former looking like she's just been taken out of an oven pre-set at 350 degrees.

The show is hosted by the former Childrens' BBC presenter Philip Schofield whose contrasting grey hair, perma-tan and fixed dark-eyed stare makes you think twice about switching off in case he comes after you. I used to watch Phil when he did Going Live and the broom cupboard with Gordon the Gopher but he's a bizarrely scary caricature now.

How far are these TV companies going to dig into that Z-list to fill the ranks of their latest reality show? Why don't they get people that we know, rather than bit-part actors or sports people whose careers are over? Why is it always people that want to launch or relaunch their career? Why is it made out to be a talent contest, when in the end it really doesn't matter who wins because they all get paid a fortune and unlike the singing shows they don't then go on to be world class ice skaters or dancers. Why are they even called reality shows when they are about as far from it as Pluto is to the Sun.

One of the reasons I like X Factor is that I feel like I know the judges. Walsh. Manager of West Life. Cowell. Twat. Osbourne. Plastic piss artist. Dead easy, right? But on these dancing shows they pack the judging panel with yet more unknowns. They have some old bloke called Len that always gives high scores to the female contestants. Then there's the token "oh la la" French bloke that comes out with superlatives. Token Aussie that is a bastard and votes everyone down "because thats what he does". A wannabe Simon Cowell but with more aggression than articulation. The rest of the judges are even more unknown than the contestants. Bonza!

But still the lemmings continue to find people to support in generation after regurgitated generation of these shows and the television companies continue to make millions from the phone voting every week. Perhaps I am too cynical, but when I see these shows such as Britain Hasn't Got Any Talent Except for a Fat Opera Singer it makes me want to cry both at the exploitation of the public and the desperation of the contestants.

ITV has another so-called talent show running at the moment called The One and Only. The format is predictable: farm up some nobodies from the cabaret circuit, think of a sizeable carrot to make the show seem "important" (in this case it's a contract doing a show in Las Vegas) and then exploit their lack of talent for several weeks, making millions from phone voting in the process. Complete this package with an uninspiring judging panel comprising of David and Carrie Grant as well as camp Graham "I've done loads of drugs" Norton presenting it.

That summary may sound a little harsh, but the furniture are the least of the show's worries. ITV bosses should look at the so-called talent on display and really wonder whether they should have axed this show before it began. First of all only one of the contestants can even remotely sing, and thats the Tom Jones one but he can't dance and he looks like his beard has been drawn on with a wax crayon. My mother told me I should watch it because the Britney Spears is really good. So I did, and she was terrible. Apparently she's a copper. Exciting.

At least on X Factor they tell the contestants when they sing out of tune or can't dance but on The One and Only the Grants try not to put the contestants down. Sorry but thats just dull. I can't actually imagine any of the contestants being any good in Las Vegas. I'm sure there are plenty of Tom Jones and Frank Sinatra acts in Vegas without ITV tossing another one in there that on a talent scale of 1 to 10 has about -25.

What is it going to take for the public to say enough is enough? The shows will only stop when people stop voting, but it drives me mad that instead of making original funny or interesting programmes they spew out more and more of these phone voting shows. But Britain has a well-known culture of loving the underdog and supporting their chosen act until the end: being voted out or winning. Furthermore I believe a huge chunk of the audience of these shows wishes they were doing it.

The depths of standards that people will reduce themselves to in order to hopefully gain fame and fortune are quite, quite low. I went into work last weekend and I saw the queues for the Britain Hasn't Got Any Talent auditions they were recording: there were thousands of people queueing round the block from the Winter Gardens. They were all wielding their little scripts of whatever they were going to perform for judges Simon Cowell (he gets around doesn't he?), Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan.

As a slight interjection, what has Amanda Holden done that qualifies her as a judge on a talent contest? She's only famous for posing in lads' mags and divorcing Les Dennis. She must be getting on a bit now too.

Anyway what made me laugh most about these people, though, was that it was absolutely hammering it down with rain and these mugs were stood there with almost no chance of being the star they so desire to be. When I walked back to my car I had quite a poignant view. On one hand, along the street there were the thousands of hopefuls. On the other, about 30 metres away from them in a car park below mine and hidden away down an alley was Simon Cowell's £300,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom.

So near, yet so far.

The Government is making us stupid

I remember when Tony Blair came in to power in the UK and one of his main policies used to be improving the "three R's": Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic in schools.

Several years and countless billions later we continue to hear reports that the education system is failing the kids. Furthermore you can see this yourself. In this area at least, kids are not exactly known for intellectual prowess and you can tell. They talk like someone has just smashed them in the face with a cricket bat. Which they probably have.

We have a growing "gang" culture powered by these disillusioned teenagers - and some of them are only just teenagers. Of course, these are not gangs compared to the likes of the Yardie gangs in London or those similar gun wielding gangs in Liverpool. Simply gangs that commit minor offences which makes them feel better about themselves. Underage drinking, intimidation, vandalism, verbal and sometimes physical assault. Happy slapping. Even murder: consider the case of Gary Newlove that was battered to death outside his home by three teenagers in Warrington after he went to stop them kicking his wife's car. (The Police should take a proactive stance with these kids and lock them up before they do something like this. Force them to be educated.)

Anyway. Don't get me wrong here, most of this stuff happened when I was a teenager too. The difference is that only the "hard" kids - usually the ones that were thick - used to do it, and there weren't that many of them. When I used to buy alcohol underage, I didn't buy it to fuel me up for a fight or to brick someones car. I just went back to someones house and got trollied. Now a far larger number seem to do it: they are aggressive and do things that are against what is acceptable seemingly for the sake of doing so. It's got to a stage where an Antisocial Behaviour Order (ASBO) is like a diploma and gives respect on the street.

All this brings me to my point, which is Gordon Brown yet again trying to eradicate private schools by removing their charitable status (and resulting tax breaks). There is always this myth that private schools are available only for the very rich.

I went to a private school, as did several of my junior school friends and none of our parents are anything like what you would call rich (Labour ministers have a far higher income than my parents ever did). Private schools offer bursaries to help those that cannot afford the fees. The main thing is that they can choose who they accept: they don't accept rough kids that have no interest in learning. If they find a kid thats desperate to get the best education but cant afford it, they help them.

At that time you could do just as well at other normal comprehensive schools although there is no doubt that the quality and experience of the teaching staff was very high at the school I went to; and the discipline was too.

Fast forward 10 years or so and it's a whole different zeitgeist. You can see how things have changed. Pupils at comprehensive schools just don't want to know. Many of them are what I would class as thick, or no-hopers. I accept that the education system has a part to play in that. Basically I believe the education system in this country has become a joke: key exams are easier than ever to pass, many of the teaching staff are inexperienced; core subjects are dumbed down in favour of easy subjects like media. All this despite Gordon Brown and previously Tony Blair pumping billions of pounds into the system, buying the latest IT suites, latest science labs, books etc.

Consider the private sector and you can see that many of them are scrapping the GCSE and A level and opting for the internationally recognised International Baccalaureate. Compare this to the normal education system where exams are trivialised more and more each year and you can see why there is a problem.

In a comprehensive, teachers do not have the powers to control a class that those in private schools do. Any parent will tell you that once a child gets away with doing something they shouldn't they will keep doing it so it's no wonder classes in these schools are often disrupted by pupils. It's no wonder kids are antisocial when they are outside school because they can get away with it.

Society has removed all means of discipline. You can't smack your kids any more, you can't punish them. The Police never crack down on gang culture like they claim to and certainly don't enforce curfews and no-loitering zones. Many of those that go to comprehensive schools only have single mother to look after them. No father figure. I certainly used to be afraid of upsetting my dad but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I guess when you're a child in a single parent situation you go either completely off the rails and become a reprobate or you set off climbing the ladder to greatness. Not many climb the ladder.

As I said earlier, one of the common complaints from those perpetual benefits claimants that want to send their kids to the best private schools but cant afford it is that only super rich families can afford to send their kids there. Labour often spout about it too but the irony is that almost all Members of Parliament are products of private schools and send their kids to private schools.

What does Gordon Brown think will happen if the charitable status is removed from private schools? Prices will obviously go up. Meaning that Gordon will be the instigator of something he hates: exclusivity. You see, if this happens it really will only be the super rich that can afford these schools, and certainly some will have to close or reduce in size. For what benefit? Is this miraculously going to improve Gordon's awful education system?

No it's not. Private schools are an example that privatization works. Removing them removes choice for a select number and removes the top schools because people on benefits with kids that have been expelled from school already can't send their kids there. It removes the example of high quality education that Britain is known for around the world. What's next after Eton and Rugby have gone, demolish Oxford and Cambridge?

It is an example of Labour removing yet another choice. Soon there wont be any left.

There are monsters out there!

I'm getting a bit tired of seeing stuff in the media about paedophiles. Don't get me wrong, I think it's appalling what they do and that they should bring in the death penalty for these people but the hype and scaremongering that goes with it drives me mad - because people believe it.

The media would have you believe that round every corner a paedophile was waiting in the bushes wanking over your kids and was going to kidnap them and commit appalling acts on them later. It's bollocks. In the grand scheme of UK PLC paedophilia is relatively insignificant in number and the authorities know where they all are anyway, except the odd one of course.

But I do belive that the media hype inspires senseless mob culture as well as causing some kids to be effectively locked away like prized posessions by overprotective parents. I remember reading one story in the newspaper a while ago where a woman had her windows smashed and her car daubed in paint with "PAEDO". She was a paediatrician.

More recently in the local news a development of a 4-story high block of flats was mentioned and local residents were kicking off about it. It's a development that has been on and off for about 2 years now due to various complaints and so on. But this time they are complaining that someone that buys one of these flats might be a paedophile and might want to take photos of children in the nursery that is across the road. A seemingly desperate attempt to stop the development given that it's basically complete now.

I browsed the website of the newspaper in question to read that several comments had been made on there following the story. The first five or six were jovial: one querying whether the next move would be to build 30 foot high walls around every school as a preventative measure and another being that they should step it up more and build domes in case paedophiles fly over in helicopters.

At the end, though, one woman was totally in agreement that the development of flats should be stopped because a prospective owner might actually be a paedophile. Even more bizarrely she went on to say that paedophiles come from all backgrounds and aren't a specific category of person therefore any of the buyers of these flats could be one. She is right of course, but what are the chances? You can't live your life thinking that everyone is a paedophile, murderer, or any other criminal. She kept quoting "there are monsters round every corner" and saying "don't you watch the news?!" I do watch the news, and paedophilia certainly isn't the pandemic she would have you believe. The media has her convinced though.

The mind boggles.

Fake guns, pointless laws

Today the home secretary Jacqui Smith announced a new law banning deactivated firearms. She said,

"Tackling gun crime is key to making people feel safer and more secure in their communities. We already have the tightest controls in Europe but there is more we can do to remove the threat of gun crime."

In this nanny state we have the tightest controls on just about everything, Jacqui. So why is it that according to the Centre for Defence Studies at King's College since 1997 (when legally owned guns were banned in the UK) gun crime figures have gone up year on year? Don't tell me it's because of fake guns.

It's no coincidence that more guns from Eastern Europe are entering the UK just as more people from Eastern Europe are. It's no coincidence that about half of the gun crime in the UK happens in London. Bizarrely, over 50% of gun crime is actually air guns. I thought these were banned?

It doesn't take a genius to see that making legally owned firearms illegal makes no difference to crime, unless you actually think that criminals used to obtain a firearms license before committing armed robbery. Looking at the figures they don't and at least now they don't have to either.

And what of these deactivated firearms that people like to collect, for example old guns from World Wars. Now they are banned, what difference is it going to make? Are all the criminals that use them going to hand them in? Me no think so.

"The police tell me these pre-1995 weapons are turning up more and more in gun related crime and I want to address these concerns to effectively eliminate the threat from our streets."

Oh really? You mean like the last gun law effectively eliminated real gun crime? Wait a minute...

Call me Brave

So Dave Cameron has been in the news today with his latest suggestion for tackling perpetual benefits claimants and that is to make them all do community work in order to get their wages (benefits). He is right that the benefits system needs a reform, however I am not sure this almost communist idea is the one that will do it.

Apparently benefits cost the UK £100 billion per year which seems like a lot, although I'm not really surprised when for those that are on benefits there is no incentive to try to get a job.

Benefits are the gold paving on the streets that many people crave. Get on benefits and you get all your dental and optometric care for free, you get a free house, a free car (in many cases as its cheaper than paying bus & taxi fares), free money and you can sit on your arse all day watching Judge Judy on Sky. If you aren't on about £20,000 you are probably better off on benefits when you consider all the free stuff you get.

Why would you get a job on minimum wage and be worse off than having no job? It doesn't make sense to me, and evidently not to those on benefits as they don't apply for jobs either. Indeed, a large percentage of those that apply for jobs in this area are Polish immigrants - it's the indigenous lazy Brits that are the ones claiming. People on benefits create jobs though - I daren't think how many civil servants are employed to administer the benefits system. In addition people on benefits create jobs for patronising wrong-righting, crime-fighting (maybe) talkshow hosts like Jeremy Kyle.

You have to bear in mind that people are on benefits either because they can't be arsed to get a job; they can't work due to disability; they have 5 million children by 3 million different partners or because they have criminal records, no qualifications and are on drugs.

They took an example of a mid twenties chav on the BBC News this evening and asked him what he thought of Dave's great new idea. He said he thought people on benefits already did community work and that many are on benefits because they can't get a job. He was obviously on drugs.

I have trouble being sympathetic to people like him because he ruined his own life by getting a criminal record and by skipping school. The result being a youth with no aspirations and no qualifications that is a drain on society. The kind of person that probably aspires to go to prison in order to get a better life. Making him do community work for his benefits wont solve the root cause of this guy's problems, wont make him any more appealing to an employer and wont make him any less of a drain on society. He will still be an unqualified convict.

I guess Dave is thinking that if those on benefits that are doing the community work they might think "hey! I could be doing the same amount of work in a proper job and get paid more!" Unfortunately when you get a job you lose all the stuff you were getting for free as well.

Dave also said he plans to punish people that refuse to work. How? He's not going to let them starve or kick them out of their council houses, so whats the plan? Send them to jail? It costs the state 40 grand a year to jail a single person but in this age of crazed judges that dish out completely bizarre sentences such as giving people that are a danger to society a community sentence and jailing an old lady for not paying her Council Tax I would not be surprised if jail was the threat.

I'm sure many on benefits would be glad to go there.

Brown and Out

There's a brand new Labour reform on the agenda this week, publicised by pensions thief Gordon Brown today. Apparently doctors are going to monitor people that have certain hereditary illnesses in their family to catch any warning signs that they may also be affected by these conditions.

Shame they've been doing it for ages isn't it? It seems the story of Labour is to keep reinventing old policies simply by claiming they are new.

Globally boring

Just seen an interview on Sky with the Director of Friends of the Earth. Can't remember his name but he had grey hair and black eyebrows and reminded me of Alistair Darling.

He actually said something that I agree with, and that is that IF Government wants people to care about global warming they need to make people feel like the small things they do affect the bigger picture rather than issuing negative warnings that the world is going to explode in 2025 unless everyone recycles their empty cans of baked beans and pays more council tax.

It's a strange one. What is global warming? It could either be a genuine climatic condition that the world is affected by. Or it could be propaganda on a grand scale that lures us into believing we're all going to die unless we pay the Government loads more tax on stuff we can't live without, like fuel.

This Friends of the Earth bloke on Sky was ranting on about the world being less congested, fuel being cheaper, more jobs, bigger houses, less poverty, cure for cancer and so on IF and only if we use energy saving bulbs, switch our lights off when we leave the room religiously and continue to get down on our knees and pay the ridiculous so-called green taxes that the hypocritical Government ministers keep slapping us in the face with.

You see, I don't really think the UK Government is interested in global warming in the environmental sense. Of course, there's no doubt they love the guilt tax they can keep applying to life's pleasures in the name of it but other countries have provided incentives to be greener. In Germany for example their Government introduced incentives for people to get solar panels in 2000. They have the world's largest solar farm in Germany. I don't see our Government subsidising solar or any renewable energy for that matter. I don't see our Government doing anything about the crisis they claim to be imminent other than making money from it.

What difference does me paying 200 quid or 300 quid for my car tax make? None whatsoever other than to fund Gordon Brown's wasteful public spending plans that reform all the things Labour manifested to reform when they were voted in in 1997. Does it even pay to build new roads? No. Does it pay to improve bus travel or rail travel or subsidise their use? No.

Even so-called eco friendly fuels such as LPG are not cheap enough for people to want to spend thousands to convert their cars, devaluing them in the process. Where's the incentive?

They have the right idea in London. Making people pay £8 per day to drive into the city probably pushes car travel up to similar prices as rail travel. It's a shame it's gone that way rather than rail prices coming down.

I laughed at what an environmentalist on Sky News said when questioned as to his views about the opinion that global warming was a load of rubbish. He claimed that it must be true because all the world leaders support it.

How many of them have a clue about science?

6 billion quid

Just before New Years we were surprised by a gift of a trip to London to see Lloyd Webber's perennial money spinner, Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat featuring Lee Mead - winner of the BBC's talent show "I'm out of my depth on this show - Get me out of here!". Everything was paid for: the travel, the accommodation, the show and as it happened most of the booze too.

The arrangements were to travel down to London by train which on previous journeys has taken less than three hours between Preston and Euston. However, there were some major engineering works around Rugby which essentially cut off the entire West Coast Mainline from London. At one of the busiest times for families travelling.

Fortunately the person that arranged this trip - my brother - had the foresight to visit the station to reserve seats on the train and at that point he was told the train he had booked was not going to be running because of these engineering works and that there were two alternate routes: one involving three changes and the other involving four. Both options were scheduled to take around double the travel time. We opted for the route via Manchester and Sheffield, arriving at St Pancras "International" station: the newly modernised Eurostar terminal.

Not so bad is it, a couple of changes on the way and a bit of a delay so why moan about it? Well, given that the main direct train route from Glasgow through to London had been closed it meant the trains were busier. Much busier.

Every train we boarded was packed to the rafters. Well actually no, not strictly true. The first one from Blackpool to Preston wasn't quite as bad but most seats were taken. This train had seen better days - in about 1950. The seats were like those from old 1980's buses - benches crammed together and made from really cheap velvety stuff that was flattened and torn. The windows all had "Kev 4 Sharon 2006" type messages etched into them. The train also had the heating turned up so much it was like sitting in a blast furnace full of the likes of people you might find on Jeremy Kyle.

Fortunately this train was just 30 minutes and we boarded a slightly more modern - and evidently more popular - train at Preston. The aisles were full of luggage and people standing up that had not reserved seats. In fact on every train we boarded our reserved seats had sullen faced, half asleep students slumped in them so we had to go through the drama of shifting them and their luggage out of our seats to take a standing position whilst already crammed in by standing passengers.

Eventually we got into our seats and the train got moving. The train was equipped with a buffet car but forget the 15 minute battle through people and suitcases packing the aisles. Even if you needed the toilet it was the same battle. Arriving at Manchester we hoped the train through to Sheffield would be quieter but it was busier. Upon arriving at Sheffield, the door areas between the carriages of the train were full of people sitting on the floor with tons of luggage totally blocking entry and exit and being reluctant to move out of the way when people wanted to disembark the train.

The train from Sheffield to London was not too bad once we had kicked people out of our reserved seats again. The buffet car and toilets were still inaccessible due to people standing though. So after about 6 hours we arrived at St. Pancras.

The return journey was worse. We had to travel from Paddington to Reading, Reading to Birmingham and then Birmingham to Preston. The train from Paddington to Reading was busy, but this was nothing compared to the Birmingham train. It was literally full with people and luggage occupying every square foot of floor space. Quite claustrophobic and very hot as a result. The train manager came on the intercom explaining that whilst she realised that it was approaching New Year and that the West Coast Mainline had been cut off, her train only had 4 carriages today and she was really sorry. Awesome.

Now, I accept that engineering works have to be done but honestly why do it over Christmas and New Year when people are travelling long distances and are stressed enough already without needing to have their travel arrangements completely messed up by train operators. Further to this you really have to look at the cost of these trains. Our tickets cost £70 return each. They were standard seats so I think it's fair to assume that people in general would have been paying a similar price per mile. They are not now though - the rail networks have rammed the prices up another 10% since. It's funny though - because the trains were so busy the ticket inspector was not able to traverse the train. Therefore anyone could have travelled for free.

When you book a ticket for a train that does not guarantee you a seat like it would if you were travelling by air. Personally I find this appalling given the price of a ticket. It's free to go to a station and reserve a seat but why should you have to? Even if all the seats are reserved they will still let you on, but my view is that if you have to stand for the duration of your train journey then it should cost you nothing. What I experienced during the two days of travelling made me think of those TV images you see of absolutely packed trains in India.

You would have thought by now there would be allocated seating, TV screens in the back of seats and trolly dolly service like you get on a plane. But all you get on the most modern trains are some lousy headphone jack somewhere that plays boring music selections in low quality. You can always listen to the MP3's that the gang of chavs sat opposite you are blasting out of their mobile phones: it's better quality. Even modern coaches have a couple of TV screens, but trains dont? Barmy.

We could have done our journey in the car and saved around 2 hours each way and over £200 and the Government wonders why people are so reluctant to leave their cars for public transport. I read somewhere that they spend 6 billion quid a year on the train tracks, but do trains ever get any faster? Richard Branson has leased some new "Pendolino" tilting trains that look more modern on the outside than on the inside and have shaved a bit of time off Preston to London but I don't hear much else happening that's new, innovative, time saving or cost effective. OK there's that new section of track that opened for the Eurostar: apparently it saves 15 minutes on a trip to Paris from London and cost 10 billion quid. I'm just baffled that all our tracks are not of this quality, then we can knock time off all our journeys and make rail viable.

In general the busy routes are still too busy, the ticket prices are far overpriced and the gas-guzzling world-destroying car is massively more cost effective, more refined and in many cases faster. Gordon and his bunch of out of touch idiots in the Government must realise sooner or later why people love to stay in their cars:

People don't want to sit next to smelly abusive chavs.
People want their journey to be in their own hands, not that of an anonymous rail operator that does not give a toss.
People want to sit in comfortable, well maintained seats that can be adjusted rather than rock hard upright fabric seats that are often damaged and ridden with chewing gum.
People like high quality entertainment, not tinny repetitive crap.
People don't like having to stare into the back of a seat for hours on end listening to other peoples conversations either between each other or on a mobile phone.

And most of all - people don't like paying shit loads of money for slow, dirty, overcrowded crap. And that's what the rail service in the UK is. Other countries are testing futuristic 350MPH Maglev trains, but we are only just getting round to upgrading our track for trains technology that was designed in the 1970's.

Cop out

I drove over to Leeds this weekend to visit Mike. On previous visits I have travelled on the A59 from Preston through past Skipton, through Ilkley and into the north of Leeds which is where Mike lives. It's a nice run through rural areas which can sometimes get busy around Ilkley but usually it's not too much of a slowdown. However this weekend I decided to go on the M62 for a change.

Making good progress on the quiet motorways I was travelling slightly above the speed limit but not excessively so - and certainly not dangerously. Having had one crash 10 years ago I gave up the aggressive boy racer thing as soon as I saw how much my insurance premium went up!

When I joined the M62 there were a few packs of cars which I passed. All of them were exceeding the speed limit, and I was not doing more than about 90MPH for the few seconds it took to pass them. Following this I slotted into the middle lane and cruised at around 80MPH which was about the same speed as all the other traffic behind me. The road ahead was clear, the weather was fine, there were no unusual circumstances. It's nothing I haven't done a million times before.

But one thing was different. On previous journeys on the motorway I have been in an inconspicuous dark metallic green Ford Escort 1.6. A nice car that served me well for 7 years. This time I was in my bright orange Nissan 350Z. And this time a Police X5 BMW came hammering it up in my mirrors. His lights were not flashing but I had spotted him in my mirrors very early as he accelerated past all the cars that I had just passed. I had obviously heard all the stories about Police picking on certain cars for whatever reasons and it was in the back of my mind that I was about to be stopped by this guy. I'd also heard all the stories about BMW drivers! After swerving in behind me he proceeded to tailgate me for about half a mile whilst I'm sat there - still doing around 80MPH - expecting the blues and twos to come on and the resulting patronising castration for driving "dangerously" in a straight line at 80MPH and the accompanying penalty points.

Still behind me, the Police cruiser moved into the inside lane and I thought perhaps that was the end of it. But then suddenly and without signalling he proceeded to cut across all three lanes into the overtaking lane, accelerate past me and cut right in front of me. Then he slammed his brakes on.

Prior to the arrival of this Police vehicle the traffic was moving smoothly and progressively. As any motorway driver will know, as soon as a Police vehicle or a speed camera is spotted by someone the anchors come slamming on to bring everyone to bang on the speed limit. I didn't do that. I don't think slamming brakes on at high speed is a safe thing to do unless there is no other option. As a result the Police decided to cause me to do it by cutting me up and hitting the brakes.

I appreciate that I didn't get any punishment for exceeding the speed limit from this so the officer in question must have had one or two caring bones in his body but did this officer think that he was promoting safe driving by cutting me up and then hitting the brakes at 80MPH?

Did he really believe that targetting the relatively young driver with the performance car that was not driving erratically, not swerving and not tailgating anyone but committing the apparently heinous crime of driving 10MPH above the speed limit would really make a difference to anything, ever, except my insurance premiums? I prefer to drive with the flow of traffic rather than to be a blockage that causes people to have to brake or make maneuvres. If everyone drove at the same speed there would be far less accidents. Indeed, the Police obviously agree with that to a degree after slapping that old lady with a driving ban last week for driving at 10mph on the motorway she turned on to by mistake.

I just don't see why the Police have the right to drive at such high speeds when patrolling: furthermore I don't see why they do it. People already hate the Police. You would think they would want to improve their reputation (in fairness the guy that harassed me did this slightly by not stopping me, but spoiled it by driving like an idiot and trying to cause a crash). There is an inherent hesitation when it comes to the Police nowadays as there have been so many incidents of ridiculous inflexible traffic law enforcement, sneaky speed cameras placed not in accident spots but in money making spots and so on. This can even be extended to other forms of Police enforcement or lack of: victims of crime being prosecuted for retaliating against intruders or attackers, or the fact that the Police never come quickly for real crime that really matters to people such as burglary - unless you tell them you have killed the burglar and within 5 minutes the helicopter is above your house.

But back to motoring, having experienced what I did yesterday I can see why so many people die each year due to either their vehicle or their person being hit by Police vehicles doing stupid maneuvres at ridiculous speeds. Yet what do we see in the media an awful lot lately? Police wasting thousands of pounds of resources chasing up joyriders that film themselves speeding on Youtube to issue them with a pathetic slap on the wrists and penalty points that mean nothing to people that drive with no license or insurance anyway - if you aren't going to jail them then what's the point? Police drivers going to court for driving over 150MPH and getting off. Chief Constables getting caught on speed cameras and getting off. They always bleat about being trained to drive fast and therefore there's less risk but what level of skill does it take to drive at 80MPH in a relatively straight line with no obstacles? None more than to drive at 70MPH.

Why is it so difficult for the Police to realise that Gordon Brown and his tax loving Government are more than capable of persecuting motorists without their assistance?