A chant for the enemy class

What do we want?

More politicians and powers!
When do we want it?
Now!

Hey, that's not fair, the Beeb changed the title to Call for more AMs and powers. Ho hum.

Accidental criminals

Here’s a prediction.

Sooner or later we will see accidental criminals in court over this:

From May, gas-propelled air weapons will be outlawed under anti-social behaviour legislation.

Illegal possession of such weapons could result in a minimum five-year jail term.

An unwanted and forgotten gift or purchase could turn out to be a time bomb for unsuspecting and previously law abiding members of the public.

Obviously, a passing interest in owning and using an air gun must be punished but five years in prison is a little harsh.

Here’s another prediction, no criminal who wants to carry a gun will have to go without.

Patriotic landlord battling for St George

"If you were to tell the Americans that they couldn't have Independence Day or the French they couldn't celebrate Bastille Day, you'd have a fight on your hands," he said.

"It's time we stood up and fought for St George."

Speaking as a non Muslim

Yes, I know that the vast majority of British Muslims are peace loving and patriotic.

Yes, I respect your choice of religion and I know that you respect mine.

Yes, I know that British Muslims are sometimes arrested and released without charge and I know that this also happens to non Muslims.

Yes, I know that when a local Muslim is arrested as a suspected terrorist your first thought is, "holy shit there was a fucking terrorist living near me" instead of "oh look, they are picking on us Muslims again".

Falklands breach

This is the Argentine definition of testing the waters:

Britain has made a formal complaint to Argentina over the activity of one of its naval vessels in waters off the Falkland Islands.

The Argentine ice breaker, the Admiral Irizar, entered Falklands waters in contravention of local shipping rules.

Two weeks ago it challenged trawlers to identify themselves and provide proof of their fishing permits.

This situation is made no less interesting by the recent Blognor Regis posting (I see no ships...) on the decommissioning of the Royal Navy’s Sea Harriers and the follow up by the Plastic Gangster (Messing About In Boats).

Last chance for Cyprus

According to this times article current crucial talks with a possible referendum in both halves of the divided Cyprus could be the Islands last chance before, well, before the World ignores it again.

Without a deal soon, Cyprus will again let the best chance for a fresh start slip through its fingers. The world will then turn its back on such blinkered foolishness.

As a kid I daydreamed of going back to my fathers country to claim back the land that was stolen from us.

I would turn up there and, while ignoring the wails of the invaders, I'd demolish the hotels and other buildings that they would have put up on our orchards; the orchards that my father worked so hard to acquire and maintain.

Needless to say this was an impossible dream. There are no hotels. The invaders have done nothing with the land since the got off their boats and started shooting the place up.

Maybe one day I will be able to return there. I hardly remember it because I was so young when it was taken but I did visit it often in my early carefree years.

The only mementoes we have are a few faded photographs, some old land titles and a fist full of ignored UN resolutions.

Tories are holding a conference on gay issues

What on Earth are the Conservatives up to. I suspect that events like this contribute negatively to the heterosexual majority view on gay rights. I mean surely there are other more important issues that need to be dealt with by the Conservatives right now.

What about a conference on civil liberties or perhaps one on the European constitution and European integration in general. Even better one on family issues, as Ms. Widdecombe said:

Here we are, supposedly the party of the family. We are not offering a family summit, we are not offering a fathers separated from children summit, what we are actually offering is a homosexual summit.

It beggars belief sometimes, it really does.

Missing connection

Here’s a question. How many of us UK bloggers do you think follow up a post on bad government with a letter to their MP, the Home Office or some such?

How many encourage their readers to do so?

Just asking.

Come to Russia

Tim, from We the undersigned has published a travel log about his recent trip to Russia. It's a good read:

Then the biggest, meanest, ugliest looking Russian bloke you've ever seen came and sat at the table across from us. He had a jaw which a hammer couldn't break, a nose which a hammer had broken, and scars all over his face. He was sitting down, talking to his companion, and staring at myself and Katerina. I am not as stupid as I look, which is fortunate. I asked Katerina who he was, and she mumbled something. I asked her to stop mumbling. And then she told me.

Before Katerina went out with Michael Corleone, she was seeing the biggest mafia boss in town, hereafter known as Vito Corleone. Now when they split up, Vito had told her that he would make sure she never had another boyfriend. And this gorilla who was sitting across the table from me was Vito's best friend, or as I interpreted it, his strong man. According to Katerina, she fell out with this ape about something a while back, and they don't speak now. And Vito was not happy that Katerina had started going out with Michael after she had left him, but let it slide because he was in the mafia. I will remind my readers that last time I checked, I was not. I walked out of the bar, and couldn't do it quickly enough.

Go take a look.

Large blue, how are you?

The outrageous demand for cereal crops and carrots by vegetarians in the 1970’s contributed to the extinction of the large blue butterfly in the UK by 1979. Now, thanks significantly to the activities of meat eating scientists and conservationists, the large blue is making a comeback.

Japan's PM and the tied hands of the SDF

An interesting feature by Richard Lloyd Parry and Robert Thomson in The Times on Japan's Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, and the tied hands of Japan's Self-Defence Forces:

By the 1950s, with a war against communism in Korea, and a global Cold War, an unarmed Japan no longer suited the US. A colossal fudge was born — the so-called Self-Defence Forces, or SDF, one of the world’s best funded, largest and most bizarrely restricted armies.

Let's stir things up a bit

Oh oh.

What's your magistrate street name?

I quite fancy being a magistrate. My local area has a shortage and the local press have run a few articles recently calling for volunteers.

Can you imagine how quickly those prisons would fill up under my guiding hand? A characteristic that would no doubt be reflected in my street name, The Imprisonator.

Unlike this magistrate whose street name is The Kindly School Teacher:

Mark Jones, 19, faced fines totalling £417 after admitting a string of driving offences and possessing cannabis.

But instead of making him pay up, Port Talbot magistrates offered to waive the fines - if he sat at the back of the court for 30 minutes until lunchtime.

American robots of destruction

No matter how many sophisticated methods you use to hide your cultural corruption you will eventually be revealed by your robot slave warriors:

The competitions seemed to break down along cultural lines. The Japanese robots dominated the sumo-wrestling, while the European teams performed well in the robot soccer tournament.

As for the American machines, they specialised in demolishing the living hell out of each other in one-on-one robot combat.

And the dog ate my homework

Every now and again a judge makes a decision that is so out of touch with reality, so ridiculous and so transparently wrong that you are left with no other choice but to doubt his very motives. Was he listening to the evidence? Did he turn up to court at all? Does he fancy the defendant? This judge here, for instance:

A Birmingham MP has criticised a judge after he decided not to jail a man who took a loaded gun into a nightclub.

The man told the judge that he found the gun in the car park and thought that it was a cigarette lighter. The judge believed him.

Did you know that the Criminal Justice Act 2003 introduced a minimum sentence of five years for possession of a prohibited firearm? Did you know that young sporting shots below the age of 17 were banned recently from carrying their sporting airguns from their homes to their clubs even if they are unloaded and in secure cases? Did you know that the recent Anti-Social behaviour bill made it illegal to carry a toy gun in public without good reason or lawful authority (an authority, I might add, that can never be given)?

All this in the name of tightening up the laws to reduce the tidal wave of gun crime on the streets of Britain.

We have some of the most restrictive and harsh firearms laws in the world and each new one that is passed further restricts the ability of sportsmen and women to pursue their chosen pastime. But that’s just the thing isn’t it? The guaranteed effect of these laws is that the law abiding will obey them, whereas the criminals will continue to ignore them. Yet we see more and more of them and the legislators just never seem to get it.

Another law here, another restriction there, another tweak to this piece of legislation and all in the name of reducing gun crime and kerbing gun culture when year after year, decade after decade all we see are further restrictions on the legitimate and law abiding while the criminals not only continue to ignore the law but actually, when caught, use their old schoolboy excuses to get off.

It's not mine, I found it outside in the playground.

Whatever you might think of the desire of a minority of people to pursue shooting as a hobby you must at least be beginning to think that legislation is no longer the answer. The politicians, anti-liberty campaign groups and the media have been banging on at you for years, decades that gun laws must be tightened and you have nodded and agreed and let the legislators get on with it.

And what have they delivered to you in return?

A Britain where gun crime is rising out of control, where young girls are gunned down at parties, where policemen are shot at by passing cars and where criminals carry the right gun to the right place just to prove they know how to accessorise properly.

Don’t be fooled any longer. When they say to you that we need more gun laws tell them you are no longer interested in their lame excuses and their poor performances.

It’s time they started putting their efforts and money into catching and punishing the criminals.

They have run out of excuses.

I have updated the bit about what act introduced the minimum 5 year sentence for the possession of a prohibited firearm. I said that it was the Anti-Social behaviour bill when in fact it was the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

Soho attacked by giant fat slug

In a tale full of expert warnings of global warming, flash floods and the need for modernisation we are treated to the following astonishing revelation:

The firm [Thames Water] also spends £7m every year removing solidified cooking fat from sewers which is a particular problem in Soho, central London, where a 150ft slug of fat took eight weeks to remove recently.

Dog's tongues, Otter’s noses, Occelot spleens

This, I think, is fantastic news:

Monty Python's film The Life of Brian is to return to US cinemas next month following the success of The Passion of the Christ.

The Biblical satire will be re-released in Los Angeles, New York and other US cities to mark its 25th anniversary.

Adverts will challenge Mel Gibson's blockbuster with the lines "Mel or Monty?", "The Passion or the Python?"

In other news the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea are to merge. Reg, a spokesman for the People’s Front of Judea was quoted as saying:

Fuck off! The only people we hate more than the Romans are the Judean People's Front.

Police cars to be fitted with CCTV cameras

Yay! They should fit them with zoom lenses too. That way there will be even fewer reasons to get out of the car.

Only Jedi mind tricks can be used for self defence

Via Kevin at The Smallest Minority we have this:

A man who stabbed to death an armed intruder at his home was jailed for eight years today.

Carl Lindsay, 25, answered a knock at his door in Salford, Greater Manchester, to find four men armed with a gun.

When the gang tried to rob him he grabbed a samurai sword and stabbed one of them, 37-year-old Stephen Swindells, four times.

Mr Swindells, of Salford, was later found collapsed in an alley and died in hospital.

Lindsay, of Walkden, was found guilty of manslaughter following a three-week trial at Manchester Crown Court.

He was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment.

After the case, Detective Chief Inspector Sam Haworth said: “Four men, including the victim, had set out purposefully to rob Carl Lindsay and this intent ultimately led to Stephen Swindells’ death.

“I believe the sentences passed today reflect the severity of the circumstances.”

Three other men were charged with robbery and firearms offences in connection with the incident, which took place in February last year.

There has to be something more to this case than what was reported in the above. I mean there just has to be.

Oh no, wait a minute, I see it. The crook was stabbed four times. Yes, I suspect that is the reason why Mr. Lindsay is now under lock and key; because while minding his own business in his own home doing his own thing he had the temerity to stab a home invading criminal not once but four times.

Via Glenn Reynolds we are pointed to this news item which indicates that there was indeed more to this story. Mr. Lindsay may not have been the innocent homeowner I thought him to be and my comments on the matter seem somewhat over-egged.

I wonder why I and so many other bloggers jumped to similar conclusions?

Operation Cuetzalan Tiger

Something very strange and unusual is going on in Mexico. Something even stranger than super-fast mice and even more unusual than trying to tell the time simply by shifting the position of donkey testes.

British rescuers are on their way to a remote cave system in central Mexico in an attempt to help six British cavers trapped by flood water.

These six people, five of which are part of a British military expedition, have been trapped by water for a number of days.

The strangeness I allude to is the length of time these six are willing to wait for rescue. They have already turned down an offer of help from a 20 strong Mexican rescue team preferring to wait for two British rescuers to be sent to them all the way from Britain. The local authorities say that they were completely unaware of the presence of these British military cavers and the local media has been using interesting words like uranium and searching.

My spidy senses are tingling.

Gunmen are criminal - not guns

I can't find this article online so will include it in full. It's by Philip Johnstone from the Telegraph and comes to me via cybershooters:

Home Front
(Filed: 15/03/2004)

Consider this. A madman with a grudge against society deliberately drives his high-powered car into a bus queue, killing a dozen people and himself in the process. Would you ban all cars? Would you, perhaps, prohibit the make of car with which he carried out the atrocity? Would you shut down sports associated with the car and put the shops that sell it out of business, compensating the owners with a sum less than the value of the stock?

The answer to each of these propositions, one would guess, is no. But that is precisely what happened to thousands of gun owners and shooting businesses after the appalling murders perpetrated by Thomas Hamilton in Dunblane eight years ago.

In the aftermath of that ghastly event, the political climate made restrictions on handguns impossible to resist. Oddly, answering questions in the Commons last week, Tony Blair imagined that it was all his doing, telling MPs: “Introducing that ban was one of the first things this Government did. We did it with a great deal of opposition from the [Conservatives].”

In fact, a ban on high-calibre hand guns was implemented by Michael Howard when he was home secretary before Mr Blair took office, though Labour extended its scope to cover low-calibre weapons, making prohibition total.

The consequences of the ban were that hundreds of thousands of legally held weapons were outlawed and had to be handed over to the police. Target shooters lost their sport and those competing in this summer’s Olympics must practise abroad. Small businesses went to the wall and a lengthy wrangle took place over compensation, with owners complaining to this day that they did not receive the amount due for the executive seizure of their possessions.

The gun lobby in Britain, unlike that in America, has few friends. Only a minority owns guns for sport. To most people, weapons are anathema and there was, undoubtedly, popular support for a ban. Yet, in a democracy, the liberties of minorities are not to be lightly discarded nor their opinions to be gratuitously traduced.

Last week, Patrick Mercer, a Conservative MP, discovered just how intolerant anti-gun campaigners can be when he ventured to suggest that if the intention of banning handguns was to reduce the number of weapons in criminal hands then it had patently failed. Since Dunblane, the number of offences involving illegally held handguns has doubled in England and Wales. The most recent Home Office figures show that in 1996, there were 3,347 crimes in which a handgun was used. The numbers fell in 1997 to 2,636 but rose to 5,871 by March 2002. In England and Wales, handgun crime is now higher than at any time for 10 years, though there has been a fall in Scotland.

On the basis of this evidence, Mr Mercer observed, not unreasonably, that the ban had “no effect on gun crime.” He also suggested that children in rural communities should be taught, as he had been as a youngster, how to use “non-lethal” weapons such as air rifles as a prelude to the safe use of shotguns - which remain legal, after all - in later life.

The response to these fairly innocuous musings was truly breathtaking. Mr Mercer’s comments were denounced as “offensive, crass and appalling” by a group called Mothers Against Murder and Aggression, as though the MP were advocating either. Others demanded that he be sacked from the Tory front bench and have the party whip withdrawn. For good measure, he was pilloried for the insensitive timing of his remarks, just ahead of last Saturday’s anniversary of the Dunblane massacre.

What became clear from this reaction was that some people are not going to rest until all remaining guns are removed from private hands, and gun owners fear there are some in the Government who feel the same way.

Almost without fanfare, a new law came into force in January banning unlicensed ownership of a gas-powered airgun known as a Brocock, owned perfectly legally for many years by around 75,000 people. If they remain in possession of this gun by May 1 without having obtained a firearms licence, they will face a mandatory five years in jail.

Shooting groups say the Home Office has done little to publicise the existence of this law; the British Association for Shooting and Conservation received two posters with which to remind its 120,000 members. Owners who remain ignorant of this new law could find themselves locked away.

The reason for the restriction is that the Brocock can be converted to fire live ammunition, something criminals will no doubt continue to do even when those who would never dream of using the weapon for any nefarious purpose have been incarcerated.

Furthermore, the Home Office is about to embark on another review of firearms legislation, presumably with the intention of tightening the law still further on possession of air rifles and shotguns. We have yet to see any proposals but a consultation paper is due to be published shortly.

The shooting community fears that the Home Office intends to force 600,000 shotgun owners to obtain a firearms licence whose provisions are far more restrictive and require a positive case to be made out for ownership.

The recent, and largely unsung, abolition of the Firearms Consultative Committee, which advised the Home Office on legislation, has left shooters without any forum in which to argue their case and they fear another assault on their sport and way of life in order that the Government can be seen to be “doing something” about guns to cover up its failure to curb violent crime.

When all is said and done, it is not the gun, any more than the car, that is capable of an evil act; it is the user.

Those who criticised Mr Mercer for failing to understand the difference between a gun and a car, should ask themselves this question: do they know the difference between a criminal and a law-abiding citizen?

It's a question of trust

Well, we are informed that the government is minded to log all ID card usage:

The Home Office has tried to assure us that David "Big" Blunkett's plan to impose compulsory National Identity Cards on innocent British citizens is not a threat to privacy. Yesterday that argument was finally blown out of the water.

The Guardian reports that ID Card usage will be tracked centrally. Stephen Harrison, the head of the Home Office's identity card policy unit, admitted yesterday that the Government is "minded" to log every single ID Card usage and store the data centrally.

For me the debate about ID cards is one of trust. When having to make my mind up about whether I support the idea of them or not I ended up asking myself some very simple questions.

Can you see any benefit in ID cards?
Do you trust the current government?
Can you be sure that future governments will be trustworthy?

I answered yes to the first and no to the second and third.

I answered yes to the first because I could imagine operational circumstances where a policeman for instance may be able to (given the time and inclination) extract a valid identification card from an individual who is in fact a criminal.

Further to this, in circumstances where carrying an ID card became compulsory I could imagine certain aspects of a policeman's job becoming easier than they are at present.

For me, however, the answer to the other two questions were critical. So critical in fact as to effectively make it impossible for me to consider the risk of introducing ID cards as one currently worth taking.

For me it's all about trust in the state and I don't just mean in the current version of the state as a Blair led, Blunkett employing incarnation of Labour. I mean the state as it will manifest itself in the future because we all know that once introduced, ID cards are likely never to be withdrawn.

We are rapidly approaching "make your mind up time". It is trust that is the real dividing line between the pro and anti ID card camps and I don't think that anywhere near enough people on the streets of Britain have asked themselves the questions that need to be asked.

Now is your chance!

We have the Estate Agents on the run. Come help finish them off!

Some positive remarks have been left at the BBC web site since I wrote the above. What's the matter with you lot?

Quote of the day

From the moment anyone becomes involved with a terror group and devoted to the murder of a country's citizens to the moment they sever all such links, they have a right to life only in so far as their opponents see advantage in granting it. The killing of terrorists, like the hiring and firing of bureaucrats, is a proper function of the state. We all need to start saying so. - Peter Cuthbertson

A message from Israel

So, what message is Israel sending out with the recent assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin?

I think you need to be contemplating a career path in the upper echelons of Hamas to really get it.

A posh weekend

This weekend, and for a special occasion, my wife and I and a few friends went to the Auberge du Lac restaurant which is situated on the grounds of Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire.

I made a number of observations during the few hours that we were there:

1. It is posh.
2. The Michelin star chef, Jean-Christophe Novelli is a good looking chap. He has an Italian mother you know.
3. Even though the wine list was handed round the 4 couples at the table so that each could choose a wine to be shared by all, not a single French bottle was chosen.
4. Expensive port is expensive.
5. They keep their cigars locked up and will spend five minutes lighting them for you, delivering the results of their labours to you in an individual ashtray.
6. Four and a half hours of fine wines, good food, old port and fine cigars is bloody expensive but good for what ails you.

I will do it again, but not this year.

Tackling problems

Monday, 22 March, 2004 - Saudis criticise US reform plan

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister has criticised US-led calls for reform in the Middle East.

Prince Saud al-Faisal said Arab nations could tackle their problems themselves.

Tuesday, 16 March, 2004 - Saudis 'arrest five reformists'

Saudi authorities have arrested five of the country's best-known reformist intellectuals, sources told the BBC.

Those arrested are both liberal and Islamist figures who have put their names to petitions calling for wide-ranging political and economic reform.

Hey, erm, welcome to my planet man

Guess who has been voted the nation's favourite ambassador should aliens ever visit planet Earth.

Answer here.

Were you right?

Quote of the day

This one comes from my good Lady after she noticed that "European Summer Time" had been printed in her diary:

Oi, Europe. No!

RAF Museum visit - part 6

Pictures taken during a recent visit to the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon. Click here to expand to the RAF Museum category.

This is the last entry from the visit.

de Havilland Gipsy Moth

Click here for more information on the de Havilland Gipsy Moth.

Sopwith Camel

Click here for more information on the Sopwith Camel.

Men with many shadows

In response to revelations by US officials that four of the five Britons released from Guantanamo Bay were far from innocent wedding party-goers Melanie Phillips asks:

Why are the British authorities passive in the face of all this?

It’s a fair question. Why, Melanie asks, haven't these four been arrested and charged with treason?

I’m guessing that there simply isn’t the evidence to convict in a court of law. The Telegraph article that Melanie links to says:

Officials at the American Embassy in London sent a letter containing detailed allegations about the four men

The key word here is allegations and as far as I can tell there is no indication in the report that these were accompanied with corroborating evidence.

Now, that is not to say that the UK and US governments are not convinced of the culpability of the released men, it’s just that they feel there is nothing they can lawfully do to keep these men locked up.

However, this does not mean that the British authorities are, as Melanie puts it, passive. These four men can be considered useful sources of intelligence even if they are not in custody and I suspect that the authorities and, more specifically, the intelligence services will be very busy.

The spooks are, after all, on to them.

No fat tax

I am surprised, honestly. I'm such a cynic.

Tony Blair has said his aides' idea for a tax on fatty foods such as cakes and biscuits would make Britain too much like a "nanny state".

Yay.

Blunkett looses

So Home Secretary David Blunkett has lost his appeal to keep a Libyan national in prison without trial for as long as Blunkett sees fit. The reason?

The special tribunal's ruling has said the man - known as M - was held on "wholly unreliable evidence".

No doubt this M will now have a rather large board and lodgings bill to pay.

I bet the Home Secretary is fuming. How dare the justice system do this? It needs reforming! Modernising! Crushing!

Good time girls aplenty

The homes where love and peace should dwell
Fierce politics shall vex,
And unsexed woman strive to prove
Herself the coarser sex.

Actually, I don't have a problem with these girls smoking and drinking so much, good luck to them. This just gave me another opportunity to quote from my favorite poem.

An Englishman's appeal

Tim, over at An Englishman's Castle is appealing for sponsors for a charity run/walk he is thinking of doing in aid of the Opportunity Centre based in Devizes, Tim's local town. It looks like a good cause and I have already hit his paypal donation button (on his sidebar, titled Make a Donation). If you want to help simply click the button and you will be taken to Tim's An Englishman's Walk paypal page.

So, the blogosphere - what is it good for? Go ahead, you know you want to.

The Martians are coming!

Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

Oddly enough we've had a whole War with the Maritians category here on the England Project for a while. Now, perhaps, there'll be something to put in it.

RAF Museum visit - part 5

Pictures taken during a recent visit to the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon. Click here to expand to the RAF Museum category.

Hawker Hurricane

Unfortunately I didn't pay much attention to the information available on this aircraft because I was in a bit of a rush. However, a quick google turned up the following on this particular aircraft, HURRICANE P3175:

The RAF's No. 257 Squadron was based in the south east of England throughout the Battle of Britain. By mid August 1940, at the height of the battle, the squadron was based at RAF Debden in north west Essex and operating from there and the forward base of RAF Martlesham Heath near Ipswich in Suffolk.

During the late afternoon of Sunday 18th August 1940, designated as 'the hardest day' of the Battle of Britain by one leading aviation historian, the Hurricanes of 257 Squadron intercepted a raid inbound over the Thames Estuary. In the combat which followed, Pilot Officer Gerard Maffett, flying Hurricane P3175, claimed his first damage to an enemy aircraft. Describing the encounter in a letter home a few days later, the young pilot concluded with a tribute to his own aircraft, "...the Hurricane certainly is a grand aircraft."

As the conflict intensified, Hurricane P3175 eventually succumbed to enemy action. The aircraft fell on the Essex coastal marshes at Walton-on-the-Naze near Harwich. Decades later the substantial remains were recovered by a team of local people; the full story of which is told in the book "One Hurricane One Raid" (Airlife 1990).

Hurricane P3175, DT-S, now lies in the Battle of Britain Hall of the RAF Museum in London, which occupied part of the former site of RAF Hendon where 257 Squadron was formed in 1940.

There's a painting.

Click here for more information on the Hawker Hurricane.

The Spanish vote - revisited

The left and the right are barking at each other over this Spanish vote thing.

Woof woof.

Grr, woof.

Which side are you on?

Me, I’m on the side that thinks it’s a bad idea to remove troops from Iraq right now. One of my reasons is that it’s what the terrorists want. Consequently, I think that those that voted for the new government in Spain knowing this was on the agenda have given the terrorists something they desire.

Those that voted for the new government on the basis of the troop withdrawal alone at the very least deserve the title of deserters in my opinion.

Those that voted for the new government thinking that it would save them from further attacks are appeasers.

Those that voted for the new government because of their socialist policies, economic intentions etc. and who were not particularly interested in the Iraqi thing could, at a push, be described as deserters. You know, more interested in something other than this war on terror thing but it’s not so clear cut in my mind. They may well think that this whole war on terror is a bit of a paper tiger but I find that hard to swallow given the recent events in Madrid.

Anyway, it’s a bit of a mixed bag but none of it brings anything positive into the war.

Lileks

Honestly, do you think that he's an evil genius? He takes us from speaker plugs to double action clicking pens and the whole thing is totally fascinating.

CCRKBA opens London office

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) have opened an office in London. They say that they are here to join:

...with embattled British citizens in their fight to restore their firearms rights.

"British citizens and gun owners from other European countries will be funding this effort," Gottlieb [the CCRKBA Chairman] said. "Just as with America's war against international terrorism, we are taking the fight against international gun control to our enemies. With the attack on gun rights becoming global, it is important to fight these battles on every continent before we find ourselves isolated from an important human civil right.

"Extremist gun control measures have disarmed the British people," Gottlieb continued, "leaving them vulnerable to criminal assault. Incredibly, if they do defend themselves, they can be prosecuted and imprisoned. Since the United Kingdom banned privately owned handguns in 1997, gun crime has nearly doubled. What more appropriate place for the Citizens Committee to be than in the middle of this battleground, offering whatever help we can to British citizens in their efforts to take back their neighborhoods and make their communities safe once again?"

The CCRKBA have employed veteran Conservative Party activist Greg Smith as the organization's European representative.

"The British example," Smith said, "is conclusive proof to anyone who proposes gun control that it simply does not work. You can take guns away from law-abiding citizens, whose only desire is to protect their homes and families. However, our experience has proved that you cannot stop criminals, who are reportedly bringing guns into the country illegally, while honest citizens find it nearly impossible to even own a sporting shotgun."

I'm not sure what affect this will have on actual firearms legislation but I'm convinced that it will cause fits in the pseudo-offices of the UK's Gun Control Network. All of its six or seven members must be spitting teeth right about now.

Avoidance and the budget

Now, I wonder why Gordon Brown's budget includes this little gem.

Accountancy firms will have to register tax avoidance schemes with the Inland Revenue.

Do you think that all the complexity is getting too much for them? Is this the start of a new area of tax avoidance scheme registration avoidance schemes?

RAF Museum visit - part 4

Pictures taken during a recent visit to the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon. Click here to expand to the RAF Museum category.

This extra posting today shows the underside of a German Junkers Ju88 fighter/bomber. The bit I found interesting is the iconic BMW symbol sported by the engine housing. It seemed such an odd place to see one, though I guess retrospectively I shouldn't have been so surprised.

The BMW symbol is so ubiquitous round these parts that it just kind of jumped out at me. It seemed so out of place, like getting a glimpse of a digital wrist watch on a Roman centurion when watching a film.

Junkers Ju88 engine housing

Click here for more information on the Junkers Ju88.

Dairylee triangle of death

Let’s just eat nuts and berries like friendly forest creatures.

Dairy food as deadly as tobacco

People should avoid milk and cheese as much as tobacco, a scientist has said.

Professor Jane Plant says there is strong evidence that dairy products promote breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men.

Actually, nuts are bad for some people. Berries it is then!

RAF Museum visit - part 3

Pictures taken during a recent visit to the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon. Click here to expand to the RAF Museum category.

Messerschmitt Bf 109G

Click here for more information on the Messerschmitt Bf 109G.

What?

13%!

Attacks on the US by al Qaida or other groups were viewed as justified by 13% of the 500 British Muslims questioned.

Another 15% said they did not know whether the such attacks are wrong or right.

More Texas, less Knightsbridge

Actually, even though I believe the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Major of London when they say that it is inevitable that terrorists will succeed in attacking London they are, frankly, beginning to annoy me.

I’m not sure it’s the kind of message that these men, the ones that have some responsibility for our safety, should be giving out to us, to the rest of the World and to the terrorists themselves. Its message is hardly a warning to anyone planning a terrorist act.

Stronger talk please. There are cowards with bombs watching.

Unlikely sentence award

The winner of today's "Most unlikely sentence" award goes to the BBC team that put together this story on the marking of 60th anniversary of "The Great Escape":

The prisoners then focused their efforts on Harry, depositing the sand in the partially excavated Dick.

Quote of the day

In tiny dribs and drabs, through lots of small errors, slants, distortions and descents into narcissism, the Old Media, at least, have squandered their credibility and their audience appeal until it's gotten to the point where the audience has noticed, and isn't accepting excuses any more. - Glenn Reynolds

RAF Museum visit - part 2

Pictures taken during a recent visit to the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon. Click here to expand to the RAF Museum category.

North American P-51 Mustang

Click here for more information on the P-51 Mustang.

This aircraft was visually very impressive. If anyone would like to be mailed the larger versions (about 200k each) of the above pictures please let me know.

The Blunkett Zone

Stephen Pollard is writing David Blunkett’s biography and it seems to me that he’s a bit of a fan:

Take Mr Blunkett. The caricature view is that he’s the most ‘right wing’ Home Secretary since…well, since whom? Jack Straw? Or Michael Howard? The facts say something rather different. Rather than the ‘lock ’em up and throw away the key’ caricature, Mr Blunkett is engaged in a fascinating experiment to see whether it is indeed possible to be both tough and tender, and to be severe where necessary and lenient where permissible.

Unfortunately it seems that the fascinating experiment that Blunkett is engaging in has been leaking fumes which, by this account, has severely affected Mr. Blunkett’s judgement.

WHAT do you give someone who’s been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn’t commit?

An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if you’re David Blunkett, the Labour Home Secretary, the choice is simple: you give them a big, fat bill for the cost of board and lodgings for the time they spent freeloading at Her Majesty's Pleasure in British prisons.

Did I say it affected his judgement? Obviously I meant his sanity.

I have a great respect for most of Stephen’s writing and am an avid fan of his blog but I think that Blunkett has managed to cast a spell on him. This would be in keeping with the rising opinion that Blunkett is indeed evil. Not so much as having something of the night about him but rather more like being the Prince of Darkness himself, manifest in almost human form.

Now being a blogger, and therefore entrenched as a member of the chattering class I was surprised to read Stephen’s opinion of us:

The typical chattering class response when I tell people that I am writing Mr Blunkett’s biography is an asinine variation on that ‘right wing’ theme, followed by self-congratulatory guffaw at their having had so astonishingly original a thought. That there might be more to the policies emerging from the Home Office – that it might be possible to want retribution and rehabilitation, for example – doesn’t cross their mind. In part, that’s because of the Home Secretary’s remarkable ability to say what people outside Islington think.

Indeed, and people outside of planet Earth.

I wonder what this biography will be called? Here are some ideas.

1. The Evil Deed
2. The Sceptical Human
3. I’m an Idiot and so is my Boss
4. When Experiments go Wrong
5. Franken-Blunkett

Why not have a go yourself? And remember, try not to indulge in any self-congratulatory guffawing.

Barking?

Trafalgar plinth

I think that today is the day that the piece of contemporary art that will 'grace' the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square is to be chosen. As I have said before I suspect we are in for a series of national embarrassments.

The contenders are here.

I would have preferred a statue of a contemporary artists covered in bird droppings but hey, what do I know?

An old vision of Europe

I love this little snippet posted by Dumb Jon over at the House of Dumb:

Europe Minister Denis Macshane has launched a fierce attack on former French president Valery Giscard D'Estaing, calling his vision for Europe "Napoleonic".

He pointed to an article by the man who drew up the draft European constitution saying Europe could not really respond to the Madrid bombings because it had no single president.

Mr Macshane said the comments were "old ideas from an old man about an old vision of Europe".

Next time someone suggests to me that closer European integration is the future I'm going to be so tempted to say something similar.

Cr@ppy TV

I think that the channel 4 commercial that Melanie Phillips refers to here is available on the Internet and that is where it should stay in my opinion. Its audio is work unsafe so don't say that you haven't been warned.

RAF Museum visit

On Sunday, a group of England Project acolytes went to the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon.

If you’ve not been there and you ever get the chance to go you should jump at it because it really is one of those museums that is worth the trouble. Entrance is free though the experience is worth much more. Indeed, this is the first museum I have been to where we actually shoved paper money into the donation box at the exit.

For your viewing pleasure, The England Project will be trying to put up a picture or two a day of what we saw all grouped under the category RAF Museum. The images were taken with a Canon s20 digital camera often under very poor lighting conditions.

Spitfire MkIX

Spitfire MkIX. Just a model this one I think, but full size and a very welcoming sight as you drive into the museum car park.

Spitfire MkVbSpitfire MkVb with one of its engines in the foreground. Click here for details.

Can it be true?

Is it really true that the Spanish have allowed their election results to be influenced by a single act of terrorism?

Frankly, I don’t think the answer to that actually matters. What does matter is that the terrorists will believe that the tool they have chosen (that is large scale murder) actually works on Western democracies.

It now falls to another Western democracy to prove that it does not.

The BBC are doing one of their have your say thingies.

The Righteous One by Alexander Baron

The Righteous One is one of those poems that just about nails down my own emotions and feelings towards terrorists and their 'ideals'. I've been meaning to post it for some time but have only recently contacted the author for permission to do so which he has kindly given.

The Righteous One

And when they face you with the evidence
So overwhelming it can't be denied,
Hold your tongue, do not say in self-defence
It is for your beliefs you will be tried.

Don't say you did it for your countrymen,
Like all decent folk they spit on your name,
Don't say you did it for your children when
You've seen them cry and hang their heads in shame.

And when they pull the bodies from the wreck
Of what was once a church, a ship or plane,
When of compassion you have not a speck,
Be silent, no one wants you to explain.

Don't take your son aside and say to him:
Blood of my blood, I did this deed for you.
The photographs of severed heads and limbs
That haunt his dreams remind him that's untrue.

And when they lock you up until you rot,
Don't think yourself a martyr to the cause;
The myriad innocents you've bombed and shot
Were victims of murder, not of just wars.

Yet still you justify your bloody spree
Claiming that out of evil will come good,
Just when and how it will we've yet to see,
(Who but a madman would believe it could?)

The perverse, twisted logic of your kind
Is so sick the imagination reels,
That any fanatic could be so blind:
None stoop so low as those with high ideals.

Alexander Baron

The Diameter of the Bomb

I can't remember where I found this poem. It's been in my little quotes file for some time:

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.

Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000) - The Diameter of the Bomb

The terrorists did it

Understanding a particular terrorist group's cause is only ever necessary for one reason and one reason only. It has nothing to do with negotiation, nothing to do with sympathy and absolutely nothing to do with appeasement. The only reason to consider a group's cause is as a source of intelligence to help catch or kill those terrorists. Period.

The killers in Madrid. ETA or Al Qaeda? The question is basically one of which division of terror is responsible for the attack? Where is this division likely to be operating from? Who do we know who has contacts with this division? Do we have any of them in custody? Who can we lean on? Where do we need our resources? How can we kill them?

As soon as you start using bombs, guns, knives, gas etc. you give up any right to a sympathetic consideration of a cause. Effectively you have made the decision to fight until you die.

Go here to read some of the terribly sad submissions to the BBC comments section on the Madrid attack. This one by Patricia had me struggling:

My sister has just called me. She is a doctor and works in Hospital Clínico in Madrid, far from Atocha Station. She had a 26 year old girl who can't talk, with many injuries, and her mobile rang. My sister answered and it was her cousin, trying to find her. She had to tell her to call the family and went there. She's now in the intensive care unit. There are priests in the hospital... is just terrible.

They don't make yobs like they used to

The trouble with yobs these days is that they call the police at the first sign of trouble.

In the old days if an old woman started taking photographs of you and your mates while you were taking drugs, drinking heavily, vandalising a few cars and what-not you would usually just put a brick through her window and that would be that.

But no, not these days. Yobs don't want to take responsibility for their own problems any more. Instead, they just pick up the phone and say that someone is pointing a gun at them. Then they relax and watch someone else do all the terrorising:

A DISABLED grandmother who tried to film yobs terrorising her neighbourhood was ordered out of her home by a police Swat team who suspected she was armed and dangerous.

Terrified Maureen Jennings, who is only 4ft 10in tall, received a call from a police negotiator at 1.30 am telling her to look out of the window of her bungalow.

A police Armed Response Unit had surrounded the house and Mrs Jennings, who suffers from a chronic heart condition and diabetes, was told to put her hands in the air and step outside while police searched her home.

Maureen is at her wits end:

"It is terrible living here," she said. "We've all had enough and I can't sleep at night."

"I have had them boozing and taking drugs on my front steps. I can't take this anymore. Doctors have sent notes to the council because of what it is doing to my health. But nothing ever happens.

"I love my bungalow but I want out of this estate. It is ruining my life."

…

She has regularly complained to police about the gang on The Moss estate in Macclesfield but claims that officers rarely bother to investigate.

Wise up Maureen, there is a way you can get the police to turn up and investigate and you'll probably be able to get a few good snaps of some helicopters too.

It's almost as if...

...the Internet treats taxation as damage and routes around it.

Quote of the day

Dan, over at Jackalope pursuivant points us to an article by Thomas Strathclyde in the Telegraph which contains today’s quote of the day:

This is one of the unremarked fault lines in modern politics. Conservatives, old Labour and many traditional Liberals have an instinctive affinity for our ancient liberties, and the practices and conventions that balance our constitution.

The neo-rationalists - New Labour and the Roundhead tendency among Liberal Democrats - lack any such affinity. They think offices such as the Lord Chancellorship are bad because they are old. They fail to appreciate they have become old because they are good.

Monsters in front of the bench, monsters behind

Handing out community service sentences to those that abuse children should not be tolerated.

Two young children were forced to drink washing up liquid by their foster parents, a court has heard.

Lesley Broughton, 31, and Lynne Sheridan, 30, from Greater Manchester, were arrested after neighbours became concerned about their foster daughters.

The couple pleaded guilty at Minshull Street Crown Court to child cruelty charges involving the seven and nine-year-old girls.

They were given community sentences of 180 and 240 hours each.

This sentence is made even more sickening by the fact that these two child abusing women were doing it for years:

But secretly they put the two sisters, aged 11 and nine, through two years of hell, a jury heard.

They punched and slapped them, made them drink washing up liquid, stand in silence for hours and sit with their noses pressed against a wall.

Neighbours at Little Holton, near Bolton, called police after seeing the girls frogmarched around the garden.

Sometimes Daily Mail sentiments are right and this is one of those times. Giving out such a ‘Touchy feely’ sentence to this couple is inexcusable and sends out exactly the wrong kind of message to other abusers. This is what you get even if you are caught!. Outrageous.

Isn’t this good news?

Via Glenn Reynolds we have Jay Manifold blogging on a possible asteroid impact on the Earth 500 years ago. This ‘roid was quite possible a full kilometre in diameter.

So, why is this good news? Well, it’s all down to statistics really. The experts tell us that such a ‘roid should hit us every one hundred thousand years or so (if memory serves) and that we are long overdue. Well, now it seems that we are not. Yay!

Disclaimer: Some statistics are wrong. Also, we may be hit by a large asteroid again and soon regardless of how recently we have been hit. We will not accept any litigation arising from asteroid strikes on you or your property caused either directly or indirectly by decisions you make based upon the observation made by The England Project above. Space is big and dangerous and the Earth, whilst mostly harmless, is a target for other stone throwing celestial bodies such as Jupiter, which has never really liked us.

The Internet, we love it.

On Tuesday this week, my good Lady googled for a replacement rear light cluster for our brand spanking new second hand folding camper. She emailed one of the companies that google moogled (or whatever the word is for a google result) and within 4 hours a very nice man from the company was on our doorstep with the correct part.

We paid him in cash and, in spite of the involvement of the Internet, no evil was involved.

Of course, this is just a fluke made possible by the proximity of the shop but without the moogling by google the path from part number to part would have been a much more stressful undertaking.

So again, the Internet, we love it!

Gordon's brown underpants

Like a star feasting on itself just before it goes nova:

The trouble is that most of the country's economic growth...has been generated by the expansion of the public sector, which doesn't produce the bonanza in corporation tax revenues that would come from private-sector led growth.

My emphasis.

I want to say Booooooooom! when I actually mean bust.

Mother Nature's perfect timing

Accipiter nisus Vs Turdus migratorius and this time it's personal:

Birdwatchers from all over Britain who gathered in Grimsby to catch sight of a rare American robin were horrified to see her eaten by a passing sparrowhawk.

Fecking right wing sparrowhawks, Lording it up at the expense of yer working class immigrant robin. Something must be done.

Artist's impression

Free money? Please….

When the left say “free money” what they actually mean is “our money” and when they say given back “to those who have private care already” they mean “back to those who would like to use it on private healthcare that they don’t yet have because they are on a tight budget”.

An astonishing start to the morning

What is the last thing on earth you would expect a politician to suggest?

Children 'should get gun lessons'.

Astonishing I know.

A member of the shadow cabinet has called for the ban on handguns introduced after the Dunblane massacre to be revoked.
Conservative homeland security spokesman Patrick Mercer insists the move was a mistake.

I just heard Mr. Mercer on a Radio 5 Live interview and I thought that he came across very well. His main line was that in rural areas where, for instance, firearms were often a tool of the trade, children should be trained to respect and use firearms safely and, for instance, this was a perfectly valid use for bb guns and air guns.

There was not really that much discussion of the handgun ban other than Mr. Mercer pointing out that, at the time, the most obvious thing to do for some was to ban handguns but since then there has actually been a massive increase in crime committed specifically with these banned weapons and that, effectively, the ban was a knee jerk reaction.

The interviewer allowed Mr. Mercer uninterrupted time to answer the questions which were not particularly aggressively put.

Whatever next?

Hey, those of you who 'believe in the BBC'....

...one day you might get the chance to put your money where your mouth is:

Two-thirds of the public believes the licence fee should be scrapped and the BBC should be funded by either subscription or advertising.

I can't wait until they have to ask people to pay for their service. What a reality check that's going to be.

Girls are great aren't they?

Girls girls, girls.

Girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls. Actually, the more you say it the stranger it sounds. Girls, girls, girls, girls..........

The Safety House

My secondary school was a rather good one. I started there only a few years after it had changed from a grammar school into a state comprehensive one and the legacy was there for all to see. The old school buildings just oozed history with wooden panelling everywhere occasionally graced with the names of boys and masters who had been involved in one conflict or another. These from the boar war, those from the Great War, more from the Second World War.

We were taught rugby and cricket (football, though not frowned upon in the playground, was not taught as part of the curriculum) and we were able to take lessons on things such as the classics. Indeed one of the most animated and dedicated teachers I ever had was a classics teacher. Whilst the class was going through one of Homer’s books he looked up from the page and said that he was jealous of us because we had so much time left to us in which to enjoy such great works. "There are too many books and so little time left to me" he said.

Another interesting subject we were taught was commerce, which was an odd mixture of business economics and politics. Probably a product of a tight timetable schedule this odd subject produced what was for me a gem of a statement from a teacher. One particular day I was struggling a little with the idea of a second chamber at the houses of parliament. I couldn’t see the point of it so I asked the teacher the typical "yes but why" kind of question privately towards the end of a lesson. Mr. Green (I think that was his name) was obviously a little, well perhaps not annoyed but maybe frustrated that I had not got the gist of it from the comprehensive lesson I had just been given. And then he said "think of it as a safely valve for government".

There was one of those sharp focus moments when everything became much clearer. It was the missing piece for me and made perfect sense. In-fact at that point the second chamber changed from being a superfluous and impenetrable artefact of tradition into an essential part of government.

Which brings me, in a round-a-bout way, to my point.

If there has ever been a time when the value of an independent House of Lords has been there for all to see it has been during this Labour government.

When a powerful government, with a huge mandate from a disinterested people decides to railroad over the traditional values and processes of our great country the House of Lords is there. You can tell when it’s working because government ministers effectively tell you it is. They say things like what the Lords is doing is "completely undemocratic" or they use weasel words like "modernisation". These phrases are replacements for valid argument and are a dead give away that the Lords valve has opened. They are the same kind of statements used by the playground bully who is determined to get his own way for no other reason than it suits his purpose. A purpose that has little to do with the welfare of the kid whose dinner money he has just stolen.

I am a firm believer in a strong and independent House of Lords in its traditional form. Any government that is not is a government that you should look upon with even greater suspicion than usual. They are up to no good.

William Rees-Mogg wades in on this governments meddling in our traditional institutions and positions.

More from The Times online:

THE most serious clash yet between Labour and the House of Lords was looming last night as ministers threatened drastic retaliation to prevent peers blocking new laws.

Another skirmish. This governments need and willingness to invoke the parliament act (or threatening to) is astonishing:

Withdrawing the Bill and putting it into the Commons would add to the pressure on the Government’s timetable. But ministers could be sure of being able to force it through. For while peers would block the Bill when it reached them, it would be reintroduced in the next parliamentary session and pushed through under the Parliament Act, which stops the Lords blocking a measure in two successive sessions.

What happens when a pressure valve is closed off or removed? What happens when our old traditions and safeguards are diminished while pressure exists for closer EU integration and the adoption of foreign constitutions? What benefit have you personally felt to date from all this erosion of our traditional safeguards by New Labour?

That last one is an important question because the dangers are great. If the benefits to you as a citizen of this country are not substantial and felt then you should be asking yourself why the government is taking these risks.

Thatcher once said:

There will always be threats to freedom, not only from frontal assaults, but more insidiously by erosion from within.

And she was right. We ignore this at our peril.

Melanie Phillips gets on the case:

In other words, what we have here is a breakdown of the conventions that have governed us. Both judiciary and government are at fault; but ultimately it is the government which, through its autocratic, legally illiterate, mob-rule, Jacobin-lite approach has provoked this crisis.

Natalie Solent, as part of a gang of three wades in on the case:

As Iain Murray put it in the comments to a Samizdata post introducing Sean Gabb's article, this is no more than the usual practice of a conqueror: to "destroy an icon of the conquered people."

Battle of Britain fighter production

I found the following passage interesting and thought that I’d share it with you. It comes from the Roy Jenkins biography on Churchill and provides some interesting figures on the number of fighter aircraft produced during the year in which the Battle of Britain took place.

The battles of that summer never reduced the strength of Fighter Command or of the RAF generally. This was partly due to the success of Beaverbrook in his first months as Minister of Aircraft Production. He inherited a favourable upward swing, but his ruthless improvisation considerably fortified this. The so-called Harrogate Programme of January 1940 provided for a year’s output of 3,602 fighters (very precise). The total achieved was 4,283, which meant that nearly 352 fighters a month were forthcoming over the crucial summer and autumn months. The German output was barely half that. - Roy Jenkins, Churchill, p633.

I was frankly surprised at the numbers and expected them to have been much lower. Never did I imagine them to be so much greater than the German output. Of course the whole picture cannot be gleamed from just the number of aircraft produced as there is much more that needs to be done to get them into the air as part of an active squadron.

Indeed, this is borne out by two more paragraphs from the same chapter.

On the 15th (another Sunday), the most intense day in the Battle of Britain, he [Churchill] drove over from Chequers to visit Air Vice-Marshal Park at his Uxbridge headquarters of II Group of Fighter Command. The Group controlled the fighter squadrons covering the whole of Essex, Kent, Sussex and Hampshire. As they watched the lights on the key indicator boards it became apparent that there were no longer any reserve squadrons left on the board, and Churchill asked Park, ‘What other reserves have we?’ ‘There are none,’ Park answered. Fortunately the German planes almost immediately began to go home. – Roy Jenkins, Churchill, p643.

And:

He [Churchill] was immensely busy. Most of his work was self-generated. It was not that he had to deal with a vast mass of paper which came up to him from subordinates. It was rather that he was constantly initiating, asking why programmes were not fulfilled, why there were so many on headquarter staffs, why so many more aircraft were manufactured than found their way into front-line service, ….. – Roy Jenkins, Churchill, p644.

More on fighter numbers and the Battle of Britain in this posting.

The future of fox hunting....

...is not what you think:

A Serb inventor claims he has designed a tiny robot which he claims can hunt foxes better than hounds.

Zoran Kostic, 43, from Vinca, hopes to market his fox-hunting robot in the UK, reports Glas Javnosti.

I'd love to see the model that can deal effectively with hunt saboteurs.

"I am the Kostic 9000."

"You have 10 seconds to drop your baseball bat".

"9..8.."

Behind the lines

I’m not saying that this mistake was a deliberate one because that would be pure unfounded speculation of the worst kind. Anyhow, such rumours would only jeopardise the position of our man on the inside. Ooops, no I made that up. Honest.

More martyrs please

This popular notion of not wanting to create martyrs really gets up my nose. It’s becoming an excuse to do nothing.

Party chairman Ian McCartney last week ruled out taking any action which would make Ms Short "a martyr".

Frankly, the less martyrs there are the more important each martyr is. It’s like the effect supply and demand has on prices.

More martyrs means cheaper martyrs and that’s got to be good for everyone.

Ms Armstrong is expected to make a recommendation on Ms Short's future in a week's time although a spokesman for Labour insisted there would be no "show trials".

Booooo. More show trials too. That'll learn them traitors good and proper.

Quote of the day

If the continentals couldn't maintain an independent judicial system, then that's their fault. We've managed it perfectly well for centuries, and, as Conservatives realise but leftists can't even comprehend, the tradition is the guarantee. Break the tradition and you break the guarantee. - Iain Murray

Over at The Edge of England's Sword.

New Labour's answer to crime

A three pronged approach has been chosen by New Labour to battle the criminal element in this great land of ours. The first two are described here and the third is described personally by the home secretary, Citizen Blunkett, every time a crime comes to his attention. The approach:

1. Rename Her Majesty's Prison Service to the National Offender Management Service.
2. Rename the Crown Prosecution Service to the Public Prosecution Service.
3. Issue identification papers to all British citizens.

This strategy will then be followed up by allowing most criminals to vote while they are serving out their sentences. I would have said prison sentences but many will never see the arse end of a prison, serving instead a few hours in the community or alternatively being required to wear a tag.

In the old days these tags used to consist of a heavy iron ball and chain and would most often be worn whilst the prisoner was actually incarcerated. These days, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, the tags are very light and made of plastic and do not require the attention of prison officers on a daily basis.

To back up this assault on the criminal element New Labour now employs more police officers than ever before, a fact which is so obvious it is hardly worth mentioning. I mean, they are everywhere. You can't make a move without seeing them.

Unless, that is, you decide not to drive.

NASA rocks – but not my world

From the dawn of time, that is ever since I can remember, I have been interested in all things astronomical. Mars in particular has been the source of some fascination for me probably due to a combination of its prominence in various sci-fi novels and its potential for exploration.

This means that I have been taking more than a passing interest in all the various missions to Mars and all the bits and bobs and scraps reported in the news. This interest has altered my perception and expectations of the planet over the years and I find it interesting how my position has changed.

I have moved from a position of potential surprise should it be found that Mars once had great seas and lakes of water to a position of surprise if it did not. This expectation changed some years back.

Another change is that of the chances of life being discovered. My position here changed in line with my expectations of the discovery of standing and free flowing water and confirmed microbial discoveries would no longer be a surprise for me.

This all makes me somewhat jaded. Reports like this one (Mars rocks once 'water drenched') just continue to confirm something I have already made my mind up about which is why I am finding it hard to get excited about the whole thing.

For me, what this whole Mars and solar system exploration business is missing is the WOW event. Something unexpected. Something amazing.

Sexy state?

Do you think Polly Toynbee gets all hot and bothered whenever she sees a picture of the Houses of Parliament?

Too often the left's over-devotion to individual rights usurps what should be its natural role as the defender of the power of the state - and of its servants." - Polly Toynbee

If she thinks this about the left imagine how her feeble mind would snap if she ever bumped into this lot. You’d hear the twang for miles around.

Sean Gabb sound file

The sound file for the incident where the BBC cut off Sean Gabb is available here. Look for the Yasmin Alibhai-Brown interview.