The May 7th Election Dilemma

When it comes to elections I've always been a keen supporter of the 'none of the above' candidate. I have, at different stages of my political evolution, voted with a spoilt ballot paper, Green, Labour. That was a long time ago, and even then it was more of 'vote Labour with no illusions' idea that was predeominant on the far Left. Later, when I started thinking rather than knee-jerking, I stopped voting for a long time simply because there was nobody that was even close.

More recently I voted for UKIP, but again it was more of a 'vote UKIP with no illusions' thing that is common with people pissed off with the other three. And so this time round I've got the same dilemma. But now, thanks to a stream of election leaflets from the Lib Dems I've made up my mind to sling my vote at one of the big three. You see, I would be inclined to go for the UKIP protest vote again - but I can't say this with any great joy. There's more that I like in UKIP then the others, but there's also a lot I don't like. But I live in the constituency of a Lib Dem cabinet minister - and thanks to his party's electioneering I now know that the polling shows it's a straigh race between the Tory and the Lib Dem.

And therefore I am now poised to do something I never imagined muself doing - come May 7th I will vote Conservative. Not through any great love for David Cameron or even the personal qualities of the Tory candidate. Nope, it's a simple vote to punish the Lib Dems, who are a poisonous presence. This is about a vote against their statism, there climate change mania, their pro-Europe stance, the anti-science idiocies of their energy policies and more. So, this time it's going to be 'vote Conservative with no illusions' for me.

Maoist Sex Slaves

It was just over a year ago that the story broke about the "Domestic Slavery" case in Brixton. I guessed at the time that the likely culprit was Ara Balakrishnan and his Workers Institue of Mao Tse Tung Thought. Well, the story is in the news again today when the police revealed that charges are to be brought. It turns out that Comrade Balakrishnan is being charged with:

...one count of cruelty to a person under 16, four counts of rape and 19 counts of indecent assault.

Of course there's plenty of precedence for this. Did not the Great Helmsman himself not have a little harem of young women to satisfy his need for dialectics? On a smaller scale there have also been well-publicised cases of sexual exploitation by comrade Gerald Healy (WRP), and lots of stuff going on the in the SWP.

Still, the court case should be interesting...

Scotland Lowers Drink-Drive Limit

According to the BBC this morning, Scotland is lowering the drink-drive level to below that of the rest of the UK. Well, this is the revenge of the SNP - pay-back time for not supporting Yes in the referendum. And they've reduced it not by a tiny bit but by a fairly big chunk (80mg to 50mg in every 100ml of blood).

Well, let's make some predictions then...

1. There will be a rise in the takings in pubs just south of the border.
2. In five years time there will be nobody in Scotland in possession of a valid driving licence except Muslim taxi drivers
3. This is will make practically no difference to death or accident rates on roads in Scotland
4. Activists in England will be demanding that we meet or exceed the lower Scottish limit
5. There will be a rise in the number of junk science 'public health' research papers that will seek to show that the Scots are healthier, wealthier and wiser because of the change

Rochester's poop-powered BioBus

The people of Rochester, Kent, are today celebrating their newest contribution to the rest of the UK. They have announced a new Biobus - a vehicle completely powered by methane and human waste. Reporters were stunned by the arrival of the bus, which was preceded by the LibDem candidate losing his deposit after the party garnered less than 400 votes in the bye-election won by UKIP.

It is hoped that the Rochester example is followed in the rest of the country.

Ched Evans - Twitterati Victory Again

It was bound to happen - the onslaught of the Twitterati mob was bound to win out in the end. It needs balls to stand up to the mob, and it seems balls are a commodity that is scarce in the UK at the moment.

For those not in the UK Ched Evans is a professional soccer player who, along with another man, was accused of raping a woman in a hotel room. The woman herself did not report rape. There was no physical evidence of rape. There was no corroborating evidence. The facts are pretty much not in dispute - she was drunk, agreed to have sex with the first man, asked for oral sex from Ched Evans. She later passed out. In the morning she was upset because she could not remember what happened. When she went to the police she did not report rape. The police suggested it was rape because she was so drunk she could not have consented to sex in their opinion. When asked both men agreed that they had had consensual sex with her. The police decided a crime had been committed, and it went to court. The jury found the first man not guilty, Ched Evans they found guilty. He was sentenced to prison, served his sentence and was released.

Now I'll admit that I think this sounds a lot like a miscarriage of justice to me. The whole thing is suspect. But let's just accept that he is a rapist who was found guilty and has served his sentence.

Since his release his attempts to get back into football have been dogged with controversy. The mob have decided that it's not enough that he has done time, he has to be made to suffer permanent disgrace. If he was convicted of a violent rape or an abduction it would be understandable. But that's not the case. At worse he has had sex with a woman who was too drunk to make a decision. She didn't struggle. She didn't say no. There is no suggestion of coercion or violence.

But the mantra is 'rape is rape' -- it's another of those simplistic slogans so beloved of the left as it does not leave room for ambiguity, complexity or thought. It effectively short-circuits any kind of consideration of evidence or doubt. And that's why it - like 'tax the rich', 'the war on Islam' and the rest - are so dangerous.

Illiberal Britain

I admit that I know very little about Julien Blanc, and to be honest I don't want to know any more than that. He sounds like a creep, but so what? The world is full of creeps, liars, hypocrites and people I just don't like the look of. Take a peep at any of our leading politicians - you've got a plethora of liars, creeps and bullies to pick from just there. But what I don't expect is that my personal opinion should in any way impinge on their right to free association. I don't expect that my opinions should influence that person's right to travel. Or go about their legal business. But then I'm not part of the Twitterati mob who get to make these decisions.

And, thanks to our deeply illiberal politicians, particularly the Lib Dems and Labour, the mob gets to make the call. And the Home Secretary intervenes and hopes to scour a few of the triumphant Tweets along the way.

Really, this is the pits. Where's the outrage? Why aren't the newspapers demanding that Julien Blanc be allowed into the country? For f*cks sake, I thought we were a democracy that assumed the citizens were adults who could decide for themselves who to like or dislike. But no, we're assumed to be ignorant feral scum who have only listen to someone make stupid comments and then we'd be goaded into violence. We'd listen to Blanc and be turned into rapists.

This is what it comes down to in the end. That Twitterati mob really believes that we are children who cannot decide anything for ourselves. We have to be protected from nasty people or else we will act on whatever it is they are saying. At heart, they think we are a lynch mob ready to rampage at the mere utterance of a provocative word.

Welcome to Britain 2014.

Ed Militard - Trying Too Hard

Sorry to Labour the point - but the latest petulant outburst from young Ed doesn't do him or his comrades many favours. Insisting that you 'absolutely be PM', as he is reported to on the BBC today, just sounds like teenage stroppiness on being told he can't stay up late. Just when you want to be taken seriously, strutting around and pushing out that trembling lower lip is not likely to convince.

It's not helped of course by things like this...

Diane Abbott - Ed Militard: 'not going anywhere'

How very astute of Ms Abbott to outline her beloved comrade Leader's trajectory. Let's hope she's 100% right. Unfortunately, she's normally wrong about everything, so if she's wrong on this as well let's hope he's making a bee-line for the dustbin of history. As it is, the current problems of the Labourious Party give us hope that they implode still further into the internecine warfare that is their normal situation.

Of course, given a constant diet of BBC news there is still time and space for Militard to recover. His attempts to appear like a normal person are destined always to fail, but there might come a time when he abandons the task and just lets the Tories do the job for him.

Riot as recreation

The pics from last night's 'Million Mask March' looked like lots of fun was had by all. Masks, fireworks, naughty words, celebrities - this was an event that had it all. Indeed, a joyful post on Indymedia said it all:

Co-ordinated by the anonymous movement the demonstration was a statement of not just the dissatisfaction with the present system but also a rejection of the so called radical politics we have been offered by the SWP, Anarchism, Black Bloc and the rest of the Middle Class.

Although it was Russel Brand that got most of the mainstream media coverage he was only a very minor part of the night. We took the fight to the gates of Buckingham Palace as the Royals were evacuated by special forces helicopters in scenes reminiscent of the last day of Nicolae Ceaușescu. The cops there knew they no longer had the power - it was us who would decide if they lived or died. We owned the streets, all the streets.

Trafalgar Square, a fading symbolism of the British Imperialist past was taken over and used as a coordination and party center throughout the night as white, black, sisters and brothers came together to show their refusal to accept the austerity cuts, the rigged vote for Scottish independence, the slaughter in Palestine, the Health Service privatisation and the other policies from the last days of Neo-Tory Liberal Capitalism.

The revolution has begun brothers and sisters !
What will you smash, what will you build ?
Take the power !
Own the streets ! 

Yes, there you have it. The revolution has already begun. Can't you see the difference in the streets today? Don't you realise that the old world has been over thrown and the new world has begun? Sorry, you're too busy working? Too busy sending your kids to school or caring for your family? How very bourgeois of you. Now is the time to invest some of your trust fund in a funky anonymous mask and join the revolution...

Saving Tesco

There was a time, not too long ago, that Tesco was the epitome of high-street evil. It was the supermarket par excellence, the destroyer of all that is good and the target of campaigns of vilification from the middle-class commentariat. They hated Tesco for a variety of reasons - it was successful, it sold cheap food and other goods, it was ferociously competitive and so on. Of course the idea that the proles should have access to a wide range of cheap food was never going to go down well. Personally, I grew up on a south London council estate with only one small supermarket (it was called the Wavy Line if I remember correctly) to serve the entire estate. Like a lot of people we didn't have access to a car for a lot of the time, so our weekly shop was done there. Prices were high and choices limited. Once we got a car we did the decent thing and drove to a Tesco or Sainsbury's where the food was cheaper, fresher and we had a whole lot more choice. And I admit it, I think big supermarkets are miracles of logistical science and that they've been a huge factor in the improvement in peoples diets, they've helped broaden our palates in ways that were unimaginable in the 1970s.

But back to today. With Tesco ailing, profits falling and the company no longer as successful as it once was, I'm wondering how long it is before someone starts campaigning to save it. You see, here's the thing. While Tesco was successful it was the epitome of evil. Now that it's limping there will be those who decide that it's the job of the state to intervene. They'll discover the good things that Tesco does - jobs for local people, for example - and they'll say that it's the job of our tax money to save this wounded giant. Success is equivalent to evil in this mindset, failure is a mark of virtue and virtue must be preserved using our tax money.

The Fake 'People's March'

As a former leftist I still like to look at what the comrades are up and what they have to say. Occasionally one is even surprised to find evidence of intelligent life in the stagnant pond. One port of call for me is the UK Indymedia site, still a good place to catch up with what activists are up to, particularly those not aligned to Respect or the SWP. Which is why it's interesting that there's nothing posted on the site about the People's March for Climate - you know the one, the one advertised on the tube and in a slick PR campaign of co-ordinated marches internationally.

Now the normal thing would be for demonstrations like this - which the anarchoids will see as reformist and led from above - would attract the attention of the more militant types. They will join the march so that they can leaflet and paper-sell in order to propagandise for more 'direct action' tactics. This happens on a range of issues - anti-war, anti-austerity, anti-fracking etc etc.

But in this case there's nothing. Not a sign of interest at all. Is this because the 'People's March' is so devoid of contact with activists that they've decided to ignore it completely? Or is a realisation that the whole anti-climate change tack is busted and of no value at all.

Like I said, I still look for signs of intelligent life in the pond, but these days it's hard to find any signs of life there at all...

Still, the BBC are covering this stroll by a tiny number of people. And the corporate organisers will be happy with that - as though a few lines on the BBC website is a good result for the hundreds of thousands they've spent putting this together.

UK Politicians North of Hadrian's Wall

In a last bid attempt to get the Scots to vote yes, Alex Salmond has managed to persuade David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown to journey north of Hadrian's Wall. Hell, they even got Farage in a job lot. In a fantastic move for the Nationalists, the sight of the UK's 'leading' politicians has probably done more to convince people to dump Westminster than anything that the SNP could dream of. Not even the endorsement of the North Korean's could compare to Ed Miliband trying to convince a sceptical Scots public that he was a politician worth listening to.

If the vote turns out to be a No, then it will have more to do with fear of change than any love for our political classes. And let's not underestimate the effect that various business leaders have had here. The likes of Standard Life and RBS probably carry more weight than our small-minded politicians singing the praises for the Union.

Douglas Carswell to UKIP

While it's a being seen as something of a coup for UKIP, the defection of Tory MP Douglas Carswell to the party might turn out not to be the unalloyed joy that supporters think it is. For one a set-back in the by-election will signal yet again that voters are not convinced that the party is fit for Westminster. More importantly Carswell represents a different beast to those that Nigel Farage prefers to surround himself with. If Carswell stays and does well, by winning his seat back for example, then he naturally becomes a counter-weight to the great leader himself...

Owen Paterson - Not Green Enough?

How Ed Davey and the rest of the Limp Dums, and environmentalists in general, must be pleased that the latest reshuffle sees Owen Paterson out as Environment Secretary. Having someone not sufficiently alarmist in the position was always too much for them to cope with. And he was known for being a Eurosceptic. A double whammy. No wonder he's out...

And of course the NUT and other teaching unions are probably deliriously joyful at Gove's departure from Education.

Nazi, Pedo, Conspiracy

With all the hysteria about historic child abuse - and persistent rumours of cover-ups and conspiracy - I'm starting to wonder whether the spotlight will eventually turn to one dark corner of 1970's Britain that most people seem to have forgotten existed: the far-Right. Now most people will associate neo-Nazism with the most extreme homophobia, but it's also a fact that the far-Right has been riddled with gay men in leading roles. And, it has to be said, some of these gay men had a penchant for teenage boys.

Off the top of my head, I can name Martin Webster (then a leading figure in the National Front), Ray Hill (at the time in the British Movement, later to be outed as working for the state), Peter Marriner and Nicky Crane. All were gay men in leading roles in the neo-Nazi movement, and all were associated with rumours of involvement with under-age boys. And, for example, there were persistent rumours that right-wing Tory MP Harvey Proctor had had links with the National Front, who procured boys for him. Another name from the neo-Nazi scene who is rumoured to be linked to the Elm House scandal is Colin Jordan, one-time World Fuhrer of the Nazi scene.

The combination of secrecy, danger and access to tough young men made the Nazi scene a magnet for some paedophiles - and they made sure they exploited it to the hilt. For those of us on the anti-fascist side of things, there was surprisingly very little made about this at the time. Perhaps it was an unwillingness to be seen to be engaging in activity that might be interpreted as 'homophobic' -- or at the very least to be siding with the Daily Mail and its ilk.

Lib Dems To Ban The Wheel

Following internal discussions, leading Lib Dems are set to announce a range of new green policies. In addition to a plan to phase out the internal combustion engine for cars, a policy said to have support from the highest reaches of the coalition party, the new policies include a plan to ban the use of the wheel. An unnamed source within the party claimed that banning petrol and diesel engines in cars was only the start. For too long, the source claimed, the wheel had dominated. "No wheel, no transport, no transport and you've got the perfect solution to many of our environmental problems".



Leading Tories are said to be furious. "To be honest," a spokesperson from Conservative Central HQ is quoted as saying, "this is policy that is completely consistent with our policy of putting local first. Without the wheel pretty much everything will be local. So really, even though the Lib Dems are set to announce this first, it's really one of our policies."

Following an enthusiastic reaction to this leaked policy from the BBC, with both Matt McGrath and Roger Harrabin tumescent over the idea, other parties have been quick to respond.

Labour leaders are privately said to be angry because they have long been looking at this as a policy option too. "The wheel, basically a circle if we're going to be technical, has dominated other shapes for far too long. Why should our transport and industrial systems be geared around a circle and not, say, a triangle or a rectangle? As part of our diversity strategy we are going to pump public money into a transportation system that gives equal access to other shapes".

The reaction of the green party has been less positive. "You think this is a green policy? It's a cynical attempt to put a green tinge on neo-liberal policies. Think that's green? We're going to ban humans, now that's really green".

Round-faced Lib Dem minister Ed Davey has denied that he's banning the wheel because his face looks like one.

Guess What?

I was stunned, stunned I was, to read the headline on the BBC website: "Fracking 'could harm wildlife'".

Now I've been trying to avoid the BBC news site since I saw the Matt McGrath's article that pretty much said that climate change 'deniers' had come round to the truth because they now accepted that CO2 was a greenhouse gas and that the world had warmed. Either McGrath is a moron, or he's a slimy motherfucker deliberately playing the warmist game of 'we were right all along ...'. It really is one of the most outrageous bits of warmist propaganda I have ever seen, anywhere.

Anyway, mustn't think about it now, because my blood pressure rises and I end up ranting that we should privatise the BBC, or better yet just close it down completely. Our state broadcast is as despicably Orwellian as you can get when it comes to climate, environment, immigration, the EU, the cuts...ad infinitum.

So, back to the shock horror that fracking could - note the weasel word right there in the headline - harm wildlife. The source of this is a report from a completely disinterested group of environmental and green group, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (you know, the green charity that has tireless campaigned against wind turbines - or not, because chopping up birds is fine if they are collateral damage in the fight against global warming). The summary report, which is what the headlines are based on is available here: http://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/shale_gas_summary_tcm9-365778.pdf

One would assume that such a document would largely be about the damage to wildlife that fracking has been shown to cause in countries where the technology has been used extensively - in other words based on the experience of the US. So I looked in the report for the evidence of extensive damage to wildlife habitats and the harm that this had done to wildlife. But no, there are some vague mentions of damage, but nothing substantive and most of the report is about climate change, methane, and vague 'could do...' prognostications. It's a science-light propaganda piece that is there just to agitate for tough restrictions on fracking because fracking is bad in and of itself. At the end of the day, these people would rather have birds sliced by wind turbines and the environment scarred by wind farms than go for a lower carbon fossil fuel like shale gas.

And of course, no such exercise would be complete without the BBC there to cheer-lead the way.

Harriet Harman, Moral Panics and the 1970s

It's all very well for Patricia Hewitt, Jack Dromey and Harriet Harman and their supporters to complain that they are being smeared by the Daily Mail regarding their role at the National Council for Civil Liberties when it was working with the Paedophile Information Exchange, but aren't these the same people who are leading the case for the prosecution of celebrities from the 1970s for sexual abuse? They are the same people who argue that it is right to prosecute historic abuse cases. The same people who want to go after those in positions of 'power' who may have commited sexual offences. The same people driving a moral panic that suggests that the 1970s were rife with the abuse of children and that we should apply the mores of today to what happened back then.

So it's OK to challenge minor celebrities and to seek evidence of paedophile abuse in every corner, but not OK to suggest that leading Labour figures were involved in supporting campaigns by paedophiles to lower the age of consent, to legalise sex with children and to seek the 'liberation' of paedophiles from negative stereotypes. The NCCL were not the only group to have flirted with paedophile rights at the time. Leading leftist figures such as Daniel Cohn-Bendit (now a leading Green politician in the European Parliament) even admitted to sexual relations with kids. And as a working class boy at school at the time I can remember that there were lefty teachers who passed out copies of the 'little red schoolbook', which was also paedo friendly if I remember correctly.

This isn't to excuse anybody, it's a reminder that the 1970s were very different and that the leftist mantra to question everything extended to things like legalising sex with children. People like the NCCL were not out on a limb as far as the left were concerned, they were very much mainstream. And for Harman and co to pretend otherwise is to lie in the face of the evidence. The decent thing to do is to admit they were wrong and to quit playing the victim here.

Ed Militard - Climatologist

I must have missed the announcement that Ed Miliband had studied meteorology, climatology or any ology that involved physics, mathematics or joined up writing. Indeed, I was convinced until his recent statements about the flooding in the UK and climate change, that his area of expertise was wankology, a discipline that he seems to have mastered effortlessly. But now, only weeks after David Cameron showed us his expertise in the field, Militard has decisively intervened in the non-debate to tell us that 'climate change' is likely to make flooding worse. Except when it doesn't, and causes drought. Or blizzards. Or plagues of locusts.

FFS. When will these fuck-wits learn to just shut the fuck up and stick to taxing the hell out of us and intervening in our social lives, the latter being done for our own good of course.

Politicians, there is no situation they cannot make worse...

Tim Yeo Deselected

Good. A shame there's not a court case to go with the de-selection. He's another green spiv like Chris Huhne and deserves to spend some time in prison. Not that being a jail-bird has done much to dent Chris Huhne's green credentials...