Happy and content - you really think so?

I urge you to visit the Birdman to read about how happy everyone in England is.

It really is too funny for words.

...and so am I.

Witan Blog Roundup No. 2

The ealdormen and thegns were gathered in the twilight. Much had been discussed. What was a warming fire had given itself up to dying embers and ash which were eager to signal their inexorable triumph. The mead and the wenching had taken their toll on the gathered group which had been brought together not by the usual joy, such as the harvest, but because they were among the first to notice the darkening skies above.

The evil was drawing closer and wickedness prevailed across the land.

And so, and at the last hour, it was decided that The England Project should carry the proud burden of the Witan Blog Roundup No. 2.

Hello there, is this thing on? Ok. Firstly I’d like to make my apologies for not following the blogosphere as closely as I should have been this past week. I’ve been busy indulging myself in some photography and digital darkroom work and have also been sniffing around the edges of a new blogging project which may or may not come to something. I have been caught slightly off guard so will certainly have missed various items of interest and the arrival of many new Witanagemot club members. Ooops.

Firstly I notice a couple of brave heads just above the parapets. The Yellow Swordfish and CARPE DIEM, TOMORROW!. Watch it chaps, the slings and arrows of the enemy are poison dipped and pointy but, thankfully, not true.

I also notice that Albion's Alchemist has answered an unsolicited email invitation and has joined the club. He gives us a lesson in Old English:

Lo, we find that the original Old English would have us spell an advisor as ‘wita’, but the plural is ‘witena’, not ‘witana’. Alas, it seems that even our language suffers corruption just as England herself. It is to be hoped the new Witanagemot (for so we shall spell it) might help, in some small way to slow the decline of our land.

Or have it recognised as a land in the first place by those who would define such things by their own political machinations.

Welcome to the club.

Talking about the non-existence of England as a nation, Steve of Village Hampden places his standard on the field:

"Those nations may have lost their independence when they joined the Union, but they did not cease to be nations. In spite of what the Government compels me to state on my passport application, my nationality is English, not British. British nationality is a political and legal artifice; English nationality is the real thing, though the Government does not recognise it."

His standard stands close to mine. In the political sense England does not exist but that is exactly why we are here. We know that it does.

Moving on we have Kev from the truthfully named Blog of Kev who spots Neil Kinnock worrying over the crumbling foundations of British Union. But Kinnock is a politician of sorts so can’t be trusted. The real story here, as Kev points out, is the reality challenged trip that the reporter, one Elaine C. Smith of the Sunday Mail, is on. You see, us Witans (check spelling and usage please Mr. Alchemist) have managed to collectively miss a recent referendum on an English Parliament:

When the English were asked if they want their own Parliament, they seemed to have no desire for it - because they have always seen Westminster as THEIR Parliament.

Wrong on ALL counts.

Wonko has reached the pinnacle of his prowess. You can tell when this particular blessing is visited upon you because the MP sitting in the UK parliament, and who should be helping to get your voice heard, decides that you should be ignored completely. Wonko, without permission from his MP, goes to the press and gets a letter published:

From recent stories in the Shropshire Star and information on David Wright's website I see that be is busy trying to sort out the mess at the PRH.

As Mr Wright appears to now be so interested in our health, perhaps he would like to comment on the Government's new plans to make NHS dental treatment fairer?

The Health Minister recently announced plans to make the system fairer by increasing the cost of a check-up on the NHS to £15 while the cost of a check-up in Scotland will go down to zero from 2007.

I would ask Mr Wright myself but he appears to be too busy posing for the Shropshire Star photographer to answer correspondence from his constituents.

He has a point. What he doesn’t have is political representation for the nation upon which this disgrace is being visited. Who talks for England? Silence.

Except for the little people. We whisper and talk and shout and sometimes the din gets so loud that we get noticed. Take the folks over at the Campaign for an English Parliament for instance. They’ve been on the radio. Well done Scilla.

Those scoundrels that organise sport in England and Britain have been rumbled. Alfie at Waking Hereward spots a slip of the pen or some such which has resulted in the alarming omission of one particular nationality from the list of riders who will be competing in the Tour of Britain cycle race. Apparently everyone should be labelled GBR which is their true nationality according to, wait for it, the world governing body. The worst of it is not the clerical error if you ask me but the request from British Cycling for Alfie to declare his motivation behind his line of questioning:

Thanks for your email - please can you identify your motivation behind asking the question - in particular, do you represent any political grouping and what is your current involvement in cycling.

I suppose responding with the truth to enquiries does depend entirely upon ones political grouping.

Moving on we come to postings of note by non-Witan members. This one from Tom Griffin is on that lad Neil Kinnock for his machinations on the state of the Union (as first pointed out by Kev):

"What continues to concern me is not decentralisation of effective administrative and executive power but the fear, and the fear still exists, of the fragmentation of the United Kingdom and the possibility of enmity growing out of it."

Lord Kinnock added, "Unless there is a general pattern of decentralisation throughout the whole of the United Kingdom, the possibility of tensions, misunderstandings, even antagonisms between the different parts of the United Kingdom, continues."

The wicked bit of the MSM article however is right at the beginning. Get a load of this:

The former Labour leader said the devolution of powers at different paces across Britain would lead to misunderstandings and enmity between the nations and the regions.

Guess who falls into the land mass known inside each and every Parliament and Assembly in the UK as the regions. Yup, each and every person in England. Also the rabbits, squirrels and any other animal you care to mention. And stones, and grass.

Now, like the dying embers of our metaphorical fire, we move away from the strict essence of what is the Witanagemot club remit and move to an issue that, whilst still a danger to an endangered land, is not limited to just us poor old regionalistas but even to those blessed with the might of their own representative parliament.

Raised by Chaffinches reminds us that if you give the EU an inch it will take away all your miles:

Britain has been reminded by the European commission of its legal requirement to set a deadline for converting all road signs into metric measures in line with the rest of Europe. BRUSSELS bureaucrats have been in talks with British officials about abolishing the mile, pint and acre in favour of kilometres, litres and hectares.

Well, that’s it for now. Much to do, much to do.

Home-bred traitors

I wonder, which home-bred traitors do you think this prophetic snippet is referring to?

The footsteps of th' invader,
Then England's shore shall know,
While home-bred traitors give the hand
To England's every foe.

Creepy......

Shhhh, keep it under your hats

About this shooting in London. Talking to a rozzer the other night he mentioned that the word in the thin blue line is that the chief rozzer is an upstanding chap, it is extremely unusual for specialist army help to be called in for a surveillance job (wee boy) and it is also hard to believe that an SO19/CO19 rozzer would put that many bullets into a suspected perp particularly when only a few months ago many in SO19 were banging on about handing their guns in.

There are whispers of more specialist army involvement in the whole shooting match.

Anyhow, not my opinion (I’ll wait for the report to come out I think) but it is good to know that the rozzers are as keen on a conspiracy theory as us little people are.

Jeff Waynes The War of the Worlds Live Concerts

Eve of the War reports that the UK tour dates for Jeff Waynes The War of the Worlds Musical "Live" concerts have been announced. These dates are subject to change:

Saturday 15 April 2006 - Bournemouth BIC
Sunday 16 April 2006 - Cardiff International Arena
Tuesday 18 April 2006 - London Royal Albert Hall
Wednesday 19 April 2006 - Birmingham NEC
Thursday 20 April 2006 - Nottingham Arena
Saturday 22 April 2006 - Glasgow Clyde Auditorium
Sunday 23 April 2006 - Manchester MEN Arena

It's not that I am obsessed or anything.

Talking about TWOW, I discovered these guys on iTunes last night. Check out their Death By Television album; the War of the Worlds track on that is class....

Aha! My T-shirt is here

The design used is this one, though a very much larger version for print resolution purposes:

I'm seriously consideriing sending one to my MP.

Sport England obfuscation

The following, via information from Gareth of Little Man in a Toque, will prove to be an embarrassment to Sport England who have insisted that England can not be represented in the Tour of Britain cycle race because the UCI does not allow it to do so. Sport England have been mailing concerned people with the following response:

The English riders are not allowed to ride in Team England because the UCI doesn't allow one.

This, seemingly, is obfuscation. Phil Ingham, from British Cycling, was asked:

Can you confirm whether or not the UCI's rules also preclude the participation of an English team?

He responded:

I'm sure they [UCI] don't preclude the inclusion of an England Team in a stage race of this standard (i.e. sub pro-tour)...

His response would seem to be in line with the UCI policy of not discriminating on the basis of nationality.

The whole shooting match (or cycling race) seems to be boiling down to one of funding and of historical happenstance. Phil states the following:

The Welsh, Scottish Feds [cycling federation, which needs to be present for proper English representation at this level in the sport it seems] question is an historic one - both were set up before current funding structures and to establish an English Fed now would be extremely costly an contrary to the way we wish to develop the sport in the UK i.e. to pool funding and resources to the betterment of the sport rather than dilute them in the interests of home nation national identity in 1 or 2 events per year, when virtually every event we send a national team to requires it to be GB.

This is all fine and dandy I suppose. After all, Great Britain is the generally accepted team we put out at a large proportion of international events. However, the whole issue does serve to highlight the way that devolution has and is going to continue to work in the UK.

If British Cycling and Sport England think that they will eventually manage to absorb the Welsh and Scottish cycling federations into a greater GB team for the Tour of Britain then they are dreaming. Indeed, I would be extremely surprised if this is something that they will even attempt to do because any attempt will be doomed to failure. Why? Because the Welsh and the Scottish have representation which is specifically there to further their interests, both political and structural (federations etc).

So we are left at exactly the same point where we began. The agenda of Sport England does not seem to be to further the interests of England as a sporting nation in the discipline of cycling. The reason has nothing to do with the UCI and much more to do with the fact that there is no English cycling federation.

Two questions need to be asked now. Why did Sport England think it appropriate to use the UCI as an excuse and what exactly are they doing to bring into existence an English cycling federation?

Resurrect The Sport

Ian, from An English shooters blog has just launched his Resurrect The Sport initiative.

Thank the ass hats

A 'win' for the bad guys

New element discovered!!!

Kev has all the details:

A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest chemical yet known to science. This new element has been tentatively named "Governmentium".......

Quisling quality in steep decline

Ken Clarke isn't even very good at being the Quisling toad:

"I do not think there has ever been a time when the British could have joined with complete security and confidence. I doubt it is possible for 10 years or more."

So, become Tory leader. See Blair finish out his term and then hand over to Brown. Spend another term in opposition. Hopefully win the election after that and whamo! Well past the ten years and it's time to rock and roll on the Euro front. Ribbit.

My CCTV did exactly the same thing!

It’s really annoying you know. I recently installed a few CCTV cameras at the front of the mansion to record anyone coming to the front door. I then hired a small team of maintenance workers to ensure that the cameras remained in working order and I also got a management team to draw up a best practice document and a suitable maintenance schedule. These cameras were cleaned, checked, reviewed, pampered and oiled for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and all I got were a few tapes of passing cats and dogs. Then someone put a brick though my window and that’s exactly when the equipment decided to fail. The tapes were blank. BLANK!! Sometimes I don’t know why I bother.

Good news is no news

As David says it's well worth taking a look at the comments in this post at Biased BBC. Paul Reynolds (BBC online World Affairs correspondent) graces the comments (good for him) and attempts to defend the BBC predominantly by attacking the anonymity of bloggers/commenters and the less than balanced approach that many of us bloggers take. It's a defence I suppose in a "we are less crap than you" kind of a way but I have just checked over my charter and oddly enough it doesn't mention anything about giving my readers my full name and address or, shockingly, providing balance in my publishing. I know, I know, I should be soliciting the opinion of the EU 'colleagues', Scottish Parliamentarians who denounce the existence of England as a nation, and Guardianistas but honestly, who can be fucked with that?

John in London asks about the lack of BBC optimism regarding Iraq. It's an excellent point because from what I can tell via BBC reporting nothing good has happened in Iraq since the fall of that dictator bloke, you know, Santa:

To take up "John in London"'s points about the use of the word terrorism and the pessimism about Iraq. The BBC does not use the word terrorist in many conflicts, not just the Israeli/Palestinian one. Sri Lanka, Checnya, Colombia are other examples. As for Iraq, I have to say sadly that optimists are few and far between. The US army is now planning on another four years there. Reporters seek to be realists.

It's as if he is saying that the 'terrorist' insurgency will stop when the US army leaves. Do any 'realists' out there really and honestly expect that to be the case?

I also completely fail to see the connection between optimism and balanced reporting. "Hey, I'm feeling really down about the way the Americans are forcing terrorists to blow up Iraqi civilians so you can stick any good news up your backside". Nice.

As a realist I expect there to be continued trouble even when the Americans do finally leave Iraq and, as a realist, I expect the BBC to put out programming denouncing the Americans for leaving the Iraqis to the mercy of the 'insurgency'.

Sport England: Working to prevent embarrassment

Tour of Britain

Devolution has changed all that, the emails of complaint pour in

From this cover story in the Spectator:

Then there is the impact of devolution. The English are a tolerant bunch and, outside elements of the London elite, never much minded the rise of the Scottish Raj: after all, we were British, well-educated, reasonably cultivated and spoke with clear, classless accents. Devolution has changed all that. The English increasingly resent Scots in charge of English affairs now that Scotland has control of its own domestic matters.

I see this resentment on the Daily Politics show I present for BBC2. When politicians from Scotland pontificate on English matters, the emails of complaint pour in. Some don’t even like the fact that I, a Scot who has lived in London for over 30 years, question Scottish politicians who have responsibility for English affairs. When do the English have a say? they ask, not unreasonably.

The growing resentment is a consequence of the asymmetric devolution plan, which gave Scotland its own Parliament, but not England. Great Britain has become a two-class state: those with home rule (Scots and Welsh) and those without (the English).

Gradually people are becoming aware of the mess that devolution has deposited on the giant welcome mat at England's front door.

I recently introduced a friend to the issue when sitting in a local pub garden. I started with "you know, England doesn't actually exist" and after absorbing the expected "That's bullshit" remark went on to explain to him the ins and outs of devolution, political representation and the government's plans to regionalise England. You should have seen the look on his face.

No doubt he will tell someone else, and that someone else will also pass it on. At some point someone will come up to me and say "you know, England doesn't actually exist". At that point I will know that victory is not that far away.

Sweet, sweet regret

Sunderland council may be regretting that day, five years ago, when they seized Mr Thoburn's scales.

Exactly.

Milton Abbey

We had the great pleasure of being guests at a most wonderful wedding over the weekend which took place in the remarkable Milton Abbey in Dorset. The history of this Abbey goes back to 933 AD and the original was founded by King Athelstan of Wessex. For more information click here.

For your viewing pleasure here are some of the photographs that I took:

Britblog Roundup

Lots of bloggy goodness again at the Britblog Roundup.

The Tour of Britain cycle race

The Tour of Britain is a cycle race. During this race it is often advantageous for the competitors to do less touring and more really, really fast cycling. Britain is a nice place to tour around but, notwithstanding the niceness, the Tour of Britain is a competitive race and stopping off at every pub on the way is frowned upon.

Local images of England

I took my camera to work yesterday and took these pictures of the English countryside on my drive in. These scenes are only a couple of minutes from my door:

New coinage competition entries

I understand from the Englishman that there is a competition running to redesign some of our coinage:

The redesign of coins was announced yesterday, prompting fresh speculation that the Government has ruled out joining the euro for the foreseeable future.

An open competition to find new designs for the reverse of the 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p and 50p coin is to be held by the Royal Mint.
The designs are to be changed better to "reflect modern Britain, and will need final approval by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor.

This is an excellent idea. I mean, what's the point of hanging on to old fashioned ideas and all that.

So, here are a couple of my designs which I am sure will stand a good chance of success.

Representing the commitment to a multicultural society of HM government

Representing HM treasury - 5 for me, 5 for you

Oh no. Here we go around the unhappy circle of virtue again

Social services spokesman says:

"We need wider understanding and acceptance that the principles of sentencing are not just founded on punishing offenders."

Of course, this all means fewer prison sentences, more early release, more crime and more victims. You may not believe me, and that's fine. We should just wait until the next round of social services style rhetoric comes from the usual quarters. Trust me, their motivation will be high crime, their analysis will be that criminals just need a little help to change, their conclusion will be less punishment and more happy, happy, clappy.

It's easy to criticise, you might think, and in truth it is. But that's not my fault.

My suggestion? Don't treat criminals as if you are answering a cry for help. Attack those things that entice the innocent into crime in the first place. Work harder on changing the effort to reward ratio offered by crime and by that I mean increased crime solving rates and successful prosecutions (note - not detection rates).

Instead we have a situation where the ratio is going in the other direction. Crime should be hard to commit successfully and, when unsuccessful, the criminal should know in no uncertain terms that it was far more trouble than it was worth.

Hello, yes, I wonder if I might have a word

Alfie picks up his telephonically charged mace of justice and phones everyone!.

North Korean resource

If you are interested in North Korean propaganda/news (same thing perhaps) then this resource may be helpful:

NK News is a searchable database of North Korean propaganda. This site contains nearly every article published on the KCNA's website, in English and Spanish, since Dec 2, 1996--over 50 MB of hard-core Stalinist propaganda! And each article written in that unique and indelible style of the KCNA.

Fill your boots.

Guido's competition - only 24 hours to enter

Guido is offering tickets to a contemporary play:

5/11 is a new play commissioned to mark the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. It has obvious contemporary relevance - it is set in 1605 with a war on terror going badly. A group of young religious fanatics is plotting to... well, you get the idea.

All you have to do is email him a piece of juicy gossip or tittle-tattle about a parliamentarian by midday Wednesday. Hurry, hurry, hurry and I strongly encourage those parliamentarians that score highly on the slime scale to shop their buddies. That, I guess, means all of you.

Some medicine, returned

Best headline of the day from Jackie:

Newspaper fat cat gets pay rise as circulation hits rock bottom

Meow!

How many of these, how many of those

Hmmm, someone's been busy adding me to all kinds of blog tracking technologies that require forms to be filled in, accounts to be created or ownership to be taken before they start doing their business. Come on, own up, who is it?

The Witanagemot Adventure - Episode 1

Our adventurers have just left the pub after what turned out to be a fruitless quest for the Holy Oval Ashes of Antioch. Almost immediately they are suffused in ethereal radiance and strange heavenly choir music. The groupies, horselike, take fright for a moment. They whinny and rattle their coconuts. The adventurers fall on their knees. A holy voice booms out.

"Oh get up!"

The adventurers, surprised at the Lord's butch tone, get to their feet.

"Sorry, Lord"

"Now listen very carefully to what I am about to say", the Lord boomed, “You shall make unto yourselves a group and this group shall be good and it shall be named the Witanagemot Club.”

“Good idea, oh Lord.”

“Of course it’s a good idea. What are you doing now?”

“We are averting our eyes.”

“Well, don't. I really don't know where all this got started. It's like those miserable psalms. They're so depressing. Now knock it off”.

“Yes Lord.”

“And this club, of which you shall each be a part, and in which there shall be many parts, will bring light to what is now dark. You will bring reason to what is now madness.”

“Madness Lord?”

“Yes, madness. Don’t interrupt. And you shall bring forth the word in a proud and not too effeminate manner. And that word shall be England.”

And there was a hush and Wonko did spoil his armour.

“He said the ‘E’ word.”

“Shhhhh.”

“Have you all got that then?”

“Yes Lord”

“Good.”

And then the Lord, he did vanish.

“So, anyone know how to pronounce that Watonga club name thingy?”

“Fuck if I know.”

"Then that shall be our first task. We shall not rest until we have found out how to pronounce the Wahhabi club."

"The Whanihani club sir."

"Yes, that one. And also to bring forth the E word so that it may arise from the madness."

Digital photo printing

The prints we have just received from these guys are excellent. If you are looking for a printing firm I can recommend them.

That's the way to do it

In light of Sport England's inability to contemplate supporting English sport it's interesting to note how things could be done:

The quest for Scottish Commonwealth Games medal winners has received a timely million-pound boost.

A sportscotland grant of £1.4m has been unveiled to improve the chances of success at the 2006 event.

...

"This funding will provide vital support to our top Commonwealth athletes, and along with additional medal enhancement funding it will help to maximise Scotland's medal winning potential for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne next year."

Note the lack of commentary regarding the chances of success. Sports Scotland seem to actually want to support grass roots sport in their country. Unlike Sports England who make statements like the following about some of our sportsmen and women:

I am not sure how you would justify putting a team into the event which would not be competitive either individually or collectively.

Yeah, nice one. "Success for the successful". I can hear them chanting it on the sidelines as the British cycling team flies by. Somehow, if the same team were called the English cycling team they would all fall off their bikes, do a funny walk and drink too much tea.

Meanwhile, in local news

"I then saw a police car going up Kingsbury Avenue. The passenger side door was open and a policeman was leaning out with what looked like a Kalashnikov rifle."

Bwahaha. Yeah, right.

Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

Here's something to keep an eye on. It's the Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister:

The ODPM Committee was appointed by the House of Commons on July 13th 2005. Its purpose is to scrutinise the work of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions.

Here's a little snippet of something the committee came up with after the referendum in the North East produced an overwhelming majority of 78% against the establishment of an elected assembly:

Once the electorate had spoken, it was tempting, just to abandon our scrutiny of the draft Bill [on elected regional assemblies]. However, we do not believe devolution will go away. It will return to the agenda. We would go further and argue that with the powers already conferred on unaccountable regional bodies there is a democratic deficit and with the existing devolution of powers and resource allocation to Scotland, Wales and Greater London, devolution in England must be addressed.

We all know what they mean by devolution in England and it has nothing to do with devolution for England.

The things townies don't understand about the countryside......

Simon Kelner, in the Spectator (free subscription required) has a question. After highlighting the fact that a townie friend has stopped bringing him various stimulants now that this friend has moved to the country he wonders:

Why are people in the country obsessed with shooting everything that moves, from pheasants to burglars? And why do they try to camouflage their intentions?

Because if they don’t Simon, the quarry will spot them a mile off.

Witan Blog Roundup #1

Here is the first Witan Blog Roundup. Feast your eyes!

Oh, who will print my T-Shirts?

If any readers know of a good UK based T shirt printing company I would be grateful if you could drop me a line.

john AT theenglandproject DOT net for immediate karma.

Britblog roundup number 26

Tim Worstall's Britblog roundup is up. Lots of blog goodness.

The Witanagemot Club

The Witanagemot Club has been launched:

If you are a blogger, and if you are pissed off with the assymetrical cack-handedness of those crazy imbeciles at Westminster who deny England parity with the other nations of the UK, then this is your big chance: Join The Witanagemot Club today.

The England Project bunker

If anyone is interested in where much of The England Project blogging is done, here is a picture:

Supersize me

Note: All the items in this picture are legal to own without license in England.

I didn't do it, honest

I spotted my first bit of graffiti that hints at disquiet within the Union.

HOME RULE FOR ENGLAND

Painted across an M1 motorway bridge just inside Bedfordshire.

Sport who now?

Wonko is doing a fantastic job at exposing the disgrace that is Sport England, a body which is apparently very keen on funding a British Cycling team but see no merit in an English Cycling team because an English team would be crap somehow. The Scottish and Welsh teams, on the other hand, are permitted to ride by some body called the UCI (don't they also fund rather large cinema screens?). The view of Sport England on how competetive these Scottish and Welsh teams will be is not yet forthcoming.

The reason, apparently, that Wales and Scotland can ride is that the are classified as regional teams which I am sure will come as a surprise to those most excellent of nations. England is, apparently, not a region of something. Can I assume that it is a nation in its own right? No, not really. Apparently Scotland and Wales are nations in their own right whereas England isn't.

Those of you who are confused about the issue (and who can blame you) need to keep in mind the aim of our political masters to downgrade England from a nation into a mere collection of individual and competing regions. The legacy of this is that England is viewed by various semi-official and officious bodies as neither a Nation nor a region in the United Kingdom and positions such as that taken by Sport England and that 'cinema company' are the result.

Wonko is angry:

Sport England is a disgrace to this country and a disgrace to English sport. Scotland and Wales don't need Sport England's support, they have their own bodies. English sport needs an organisation behind it that is interested in England only, not the whole of the UK. Why would a British cycling event that has no English team inspire an English youngster to take up a sport that his or her country is not represented in?

Sport England's attitude towards English sport is absolutely disgusting and I will be making my views known to the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport and anyone else who will listen. When the English people see what blatant disregard Sport England has for the English people I can only hope that those responsible for policy are as quick to resign as they are to disregard their own country.

He also makes the excellent point:

Firstly, the British team presumably has a good chance as it is the first choice of British riders according to you. As Team GB consists entirely of English riders, it therefore follows that all the best British riders are English. Going on this, I fail to understand how an English team would be worse for English sport than not having one at all.

Entirely of English riders. Riders who are not permitted to ride for their own country.

Look to the future when Sport England changes its name to Sport English Regions. It seems that only then will the North East English Region finally manage to ride against their bitter and very different somehow South East English Region rivals. Without such a brave move from Sport England there is no chance of the E word appearing on a cycling shirt any time soon.

No, no, no. It means this not that

Aha! told you so. Lord Falconer wants the independent judiciary to apply the correct interpretation to the convention on human rights.

I may or may not agree with the convention (I don't know because I've not read it) but this is simply sublime.

What goes around comes around

Haha!

Female users of a south Devon swimming pool say they are furious at a decision to allow men to take part in ladies swimming sessions.

It seems that these women only sessions have a tradition going back 20 years. Mind you, they don't have a leg to stand on in these PC times.

For the record, I agree with the girlies on this one. It's no one else’s business if they want to get together with a bunch of other girlies and do some stuff, public pool or not. BUT I also had this opinion about all men's clubs which had traditions going back over a century and which were bullied about their 'exclusivity'.

Just goes to show how careful you have to be about what you wish for. You just might get it.

English Nationalist Blogs

Gareth has a fine idea. He's suggesting an 'English nationalist blog roundup' in the style of Tim Worstall's Britblog roundup and has put up some images that people can use as a logo. Pay him a visit and leave a comment if you are interested.

In the interest of community spirit, and because I love messing about with images, I decided to have a go at a logo for the thing. What I came up with is one which is less inclusive, I suppose, than Gareth's because it implies a certain level of dissatisfaction with things, which not all English Nationalist bloggers may share but I still like it.

Now honestly, you don't really need to know about every little mistake we make

On the subject of high risk offenders walking about on government license it seems that there has been a failure in the governments tracking technology. The Home Office response to this issue was, allegedly, the following:

The Mirror said it had seen leaked documents suggesting ministers were advised the public should not be told.

Could it be that it was not in the public interest? No, no, I'm sure that's not it. Perhaps it was because some members of the public would be a danger to the criminals? Heck, how were the public supposed to know where they were if the government didn't?

Blimey, I'm buggered if I can see who would benefit from keeping this from the public. Oh, wait a minute.

Official - Prescott the mascot

Mary Ann Sieghart, in the Times, sticks the boot into John Prescott in an excellent follow-up article to my little outburst.

Toad exhibits toadish behaviour

Ken Clarke, according to the Guardian, is willing to ditch support for the Euro. When asked why he said*:

Look, I know I said I support the Euro and I still do. But what I am doing here is pretending to not support it anymore to see where that will get me.

* I made that quote up. But it's true nevertheless

Multiculturalism

I thought it was hilarious. The BBC radio “show” I listened to this morning. It seems that multiculturalism, as an idea, is so many different things to so many people. Absence of racism, sharing of cultures, mixing of light and dark people, chips and curry sauce. You name it, multiculturalism is the word for it.

My guess, before I looked it up, was that multiculturalism was pretty much the other end of the monoculture stick. Not the mixing of cultures but the existence of multiple cultures in a given area (say the UK).

Of course, as soon as I started looking things up in the dictionary I realised how wrong I was. Not about multiculturalism itself but about monoculture which is, apparently:

The agricultural practice of cultivating crops consisting of genetically similar organisms.

Pffft. I blame my crappy British state education. I feel forever disadvantaged that I did not have the opportunity, and the right, to frequent a Cypriot school, in London, paid for by the British tax payer. You bustards!

Anyhow, here is a dictionary definition of multiculturalism:

[n] the doctrine that several different cultures (rather than one national culture) can co-exist peacefully and equitably in a single country.

I was close, missing off the most important aspect of the whole thing which is the fact that it is a doctrine, a belief system. An authoritative belief that different cultures can co-exist peacefully side by side.

But that’s not what we are really talking about here is it? What we are really talking about is multiculturalism+. A policy of multiculturalism. A belief that all cultures are equal; that not only can multiple cultures co-exist side by side but that it is actually best for everyone if the existence multiple cultures is encouraged; that the dominant culture should bend the rules to accommodate cultural demands (no school uniform for you young lady); that integration and actual cultural dilution are not really a worthy or desirable aim.

Contrary to the evidence suggested by my bad English above I am actually more qualified to discuss this subject than many others. You see, I spent my formative years living in a multiple culture environment but one that had a single (and very important) advantage over the current state of affairs ie. there was no doctrine or belief that cultural differences should be maintained. It was a free for all with a “may the best bits win” attitude. There was no attempt at maintaining differences, no attempt at appeasing ridiculousness, no attempt to encourage me to take any particular path. The result is a Greek Orthodox who experiments with atheism, who can speak neither Greek nor Italian, and who considers himself primarily English.

I am who I am and what I am is integrated. Overall it is English culture that has won the day but I come bearing gifts. If you want I can teach you how to cook a fantastic pasta sauce (hint: don’t use olive oil and make sure you have at least three hours of simmering time). I can show you how to outrun any angry wooden spoon wielding Italian mother from a standing start. I can show you how to fill your house with the smell of burning frankincense and charcoal, and I can tell you a little something about halva and growing oranges.

I am sure that there are those who write for the Guardian who would think that I am worse off because of my parents' attitude or that it would have been equally fair on me and on the country in which I live if my parents demanded the primacy of one of their cultures. Well, I don’t feel disadvantaged. I feel exactly the opposite.

UKIP petition

UKIP are looking for signatories to their Let the People Decide Campaign and Petition. If you think that politicians lie, and that all of them should be directly accountable to the people whose lives they affect, I urge you to sign it.

Humour test

Oh, how I laughed. Here are some suggestions for building a successful Internet Forum. Now, the writer may be right to suggest that these tactics will lead to eventual success but that's not the point. The point is that some of the suggestions made me laugh. See if they make you laugh too:

- Bulk up the memberlist with false registrations, to make the community more inviting...

- Create multiple aliases - and have them represent different aspects of your own personality and interests. Have them respond to each other, to start conversations...

- Respect your members....

It's the punchline that did it for me.

A little too late

She told them so.

Is it safe for him there now?

I am sure that there is a very good and simple answer to this. How is it that a man with dual Syrian and Lebanese nationality can successfully claim asylum to the UK and then go on holiday to the Lebanon?

Is it that the situation in the Lebanon is now far better for him than it was in the 1980's? I can't immediately think of any other reason.

There is no point throwing the toys out of a pram of your own making

Ken, the Eurealist, spots this piece of state manoeuvring in the Telegraph. It seems that Michael Howard (Tory leader) is a little concerned that the prize of ultimate power is being diluted by those tasked with interpreting and passing judgement on matters of law ie judges. You see, some of these judges are proving to be a little inconvenient, getting in the way of parliamentary desire:

“The Human Rights Act has drawn British judges into areas of political controversy through no fault of their own. It is, however, vital for the future of our country that the judiciary exercises these powers with self-restraint, recognising that Parliament, accountable as it is directly to the people, must be allowed to exercise the supreme responsibility of deciding what powers are to be conferred on the executive.

Parliament must be supreme. Aggressive judicial activism will not only undermine the public's confidence in the impartiality of our judiciary, but it could also put our security at risk - and with it the freedoms the judges seek to defend. That would be a price we cannot be expected to pay."

As Ken points out, Howard is moaning about the very thing that his and his kind are directly responsible for:

But Howard misses or ignores the point that it was Parliament that gave the judges the power, it was Parliament that allowed the Human Rights Act, and it was Parliament that told the judiciary to apply the Human Rights act, and it is now our Government who are trying to ignore the Human Rights Act. It is within the power of Parliament to remove the Human Rights Act and tell the judiciary to apply some other law.

What they cannot do is to have the Human Rights Act or any international treaty which has the same effect of removing the power of Parliament, and then complain that they do not have supreme power.

Quite. Let the toad try to wriggle out of that one. Without spin, any attempt to do so would be an exercise in broadcasting a vacuum.

This issue puts me in mind of Sean Gabb's Free Life Commentary (131) where he argues that there is a counter revolution going on in the judiciary against the runaway state:

The headline news is grim. We have just had imposed on us a Prevention of Terrorism Act more subversive of due process than any law made in peacetime since the 1650s. Add to this the Civil Contingency Act, the abolition of the double jeopardy rule and the allowance of similar fact evidence made by the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the Proceeds of Crime Act, and all the lesser invasions that have come and are yet to come from this current Parliament, and we might suppose all was already lost. And look before this Government, to the Thatcher and Major Governments – those, to be fair, laid the foundations on which the present structure of despotism is now being raised. But look beyond Parliament, to those quiet places where the lawyers gather and discuss what the politicians have in mind for us, and there is a counter revolution under way.

It may be worth giving our support and best wishes to those charismatic outsiders who are now beating on the doors of Parliament. It is still more worth while, though, to thank and support those old men in wigs, whose often pedantic and always long decisions about pounds of bananas and hunting bans are restoring to fact what once seemed the theory of a limited constitutional order.

Howard and his kind have always been aware of the inconvenience of an independent judiciary. There's a triangle you see. It used to be a square before the government decided to knock off one corner with the liberal use of the Parliament Act and self interested reforms. It's The State - An Independent Judiciary - The People. In that triangle the only real threat to the state's ephemeral mandate is the judiciary and it is that particular corner of the triangle that the state is finding itself increasingly pressed up against.

Look for more serious reforms of the judiciary. That's the current front. How far do they dare go?

Spray to disable to protect

A good article in the Times by Robbie Millen (via Citizen Stuart) on pepper spray, a self defence product designed to be non-lethal which is legal in many civilised countries but not in this one. Millen makes exactly the right point about the current state advice to, effectively, run away from criminal thugs and then to report the whole running away incident to the police:

Others object that if people fight back, more incidents might escalate into violence. Instead, we should follow the Met’s advice of flight, not fight. But the result of this advice is not virtuous; it means that neighbourhoods are ceded to hoodlums, making the streets ever more vicious.

Exactly.

Haha!

Take that Jerry!!!

Down & Out in Sheffield & Lincoln

Go and read about Dom's interesting and somewhat scary life. It stops after chapter 4 (the commentary not the life) but he says the rest will follow. I dabbled in the heavy rock culture myself but was strictly a visitor whereas Dom immersed himself in it completely.

Patriots consider themselves in nirvana?

Monbiot in the Guardian:

I'm not ashamed of my nationality, but I have no idea why I should love this country more than any other.

Because if you and others like you don't, you'll loose it.

And how utterly wrong:

To become a patriot is to lie to yourself, to tell yourself that whatever good you might perceive abroad, your own country is, on balance, better than the others.

Patriotism is not as simple as that. To be a patriot you do not have to believe that your country is, on balance, better than the others (I certainly don't believe that to be the case). To want to make it better than it is and to take pride in the good things is a perfectly realistic patriotic position. Heaven knows there were Americans during their civil war that were patriotic in recognition of the fact that their country was in need of major improvement.

A bed named disrepute

Gone are the days when people could say “well, if you break the law you deserve everything you get” and automatically occupy the moral high ground. It is becoming increasingly important to actually look at the law that is being broken before one can pass judgement.

How can Britain survive such stupidity?

Oh for crying out loud. This is exactly wrong. Britain is a union of countries. If you are born in or naturalised to one of those countries you are British. I'm perfectly happy for people to call themselves British, English-British, Irish-British, Scottish-British or Welsh-British, anything else can only continue to weaken the whole idea of Britain. To wear one of these new government allotted labels is an admission of a failure to integrate. Someone has to move on the issue and the government is suggesting that it is Britain that does the moving.

ID card mandarins

So the curtains that have been shrouding the ID debate are opened a little further.

The identity cards saga has, according to critics, now assumed all the characteristics of a classic Whitehall farce.

Labour opponents of the bill claim it was originally cooked up by over-zealous Home Office mandarins who have long wanted to extend the power of the state.

Former Home Office minister Kate Hoey said: ” I know having been through the Home Office in 1998-99 that it was always something that the officials were pushing.”

She added: “It was always floating around even then. Home Office officials have been very keen to bring it up. They are not happy unless they are interfering in our lives.”

When David Blunkett arrived in the job, he enthusiastically seized upon the idea as an antidote to post 9/11 paranoia. However, even supporters of the plans now admit that the government has failed to make a clear case for the cards.

An antidote to paranoia? Whose paranoia? Since when did spending a hundred quatrillion pounds become a reasonable and responsible way of looking like you are doing something?

You know, I never thought I'd say this but I really miss the old fashioned style of politician. The kind that would get up, spout some eloquent and quotable utter nonsense and then go home for a couple of drinks instead of doing anything very much at all. They were so cheap.

The barometer of political health

Of course, you know what the real barometer of the political health of the various parties in the UK is? It’s nothing to do with grass roots membership, nothing to do with popular votes, nothing to do with the results from various focus groups or polls and nothing to do with the frequency at which opposition parties manage to scupper government plans. No, the real barometer of political health in this country is the continuing employment in government office of John Prescott.

His is a scalp that should have been taken many years ago. I mean, the man beats people up, swears at reporters, insults other MPs constituents, hates property rights and is hell bent on starting his own property development empire. And there’s much more where that came from.

In more healthy political times the man would not have lasted anywhere near as long and it is a damning indictment of the opposition parties that New Labour have managed to keep hold of their mascot.

Don’t expect any great things from the opposition until they have managed to dislodge Prescott.

WWF and state incentives to discriminate against England

The above is a snapshot of part of the World Wide Fund for Nature web site. I'm sure that they have their reasons for describing England as the English Regions and I am equally sure that it has something to do with getting more money out of the Government.

However, where they have miscalculated is that it is likely to lead to them getting less money out of the rest of us.

I've written to them and encourage readers to do the same. I also encourage bloggers to spread the word because once this kind of language change really gets hold it's usually too late to do anything about it.

You know, it really is about time that a list was drawn up of some of the organisations that are helping to carry forward the governments deeply unpopular regional agenda. I'll set one up here on The England Project.

So, if you know of any such organisations please let me know in the comments on this post or via email and I'll start the ball rolling. The list will be called Collaborators because that is what they are. They may think they are organising themselves in a way that maximises their income, and they probably are, but only because the state has made this a requirement and it is a requirement that serves the governments purpose.

If you agree to play by this particular rule then you are collaborating and the result will eventually be the blanket acceptance of the "English Regions" as a credible term.

It seems that Wonko has already started on the hard work.

Gareth points us to this letter received from the WWF for Nature which attempts to explain their collaboration on this issue. Nothing in their letter suitably explains away their use of the government approved language that helps to carry forward the meme that England is a collection of regions rather than a nation in its own right.

meme - ... an idea considered as a replicator, especially with the connotation that memes parasitise people into propagating them much as viruses do.

Memes can be considered the unit of cultural evolution.

...

The term is used especially in the phrase "meme complex" denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organised belief system, such as a religion.

There is absolutely no reason for the WWF for Nature to use the artificial term "English Regions" and it is indicative of their lack of subtlety and understanding of the sensibilities of a proud and currently discriminated against nation. There are other organisations that have managed to work within the governments framework without resorting to insulting language (such as this one - the WWF won't like that!!).

The WWF are being discriminatory. Their excuse is that it simply reflects the way they have organised their charity. Most charities, organisations and companies do not ask their web design team to reflect their internal structures and operating regimes in such a high profile manner in their design proposals but for some reason the WWF for Nature has been seduced into doing so.

Here is the question: If the WWF for Nature were to replace "WWF English Regions" with "WWF England" would they receive less money for their cause? If the answer to that is no then someone in the WWF should prevent further damage by putting a stop to this insulting behaviour.

Experimental blogging

When I was a child I was fascinated by a particular phenomenon that existed in abundance in Science Fiction writing. Many of the books that I read avidly had chapters that started with a quote from either a fully fledged book character or a character that is only hinted at within the story line. To my shame this fascination has stayed with me into adulthood.

I found myself sometimes pausing after reading them, often not wanting to hurry into the chapter’s storyline text. They gave insight into the wider political, social or military world that the novel was set in, often making historical references to great events or ideas that moved humanity forwards or, sometimes, that lead it to move backwards.

Here’s an example from Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon:

The personal, as everyone's so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here - it is slow and cold, and it is theirs. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes- between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.

Quellcrist Falconer, Things You Should Have Learned by Now. Volume II

I wanted to know more, to read more about this Quellcrist Falconer whose politics, from other references in the book and its sequels, had clearly shaped the world in which the novel’s characters lived. I wanted a copy of Things You Should Have Learned by Now, Volume II. I could sure use it.

Blogging should be fun or it should be well paid. The only alternative is for it to be both. I’m also of the mind that it is partly theatre. Of course not all blogs are but some, which include a number of my favourites, egg on the character of the blogger to the extent that they become a little bit exaggerated, a little bit of a parody of themselves. I’ve run a single issue blog (anonymously of course), a semi-business blog briefly (anonymously of course) and The England Project (also anonymously and of a wider interest area) and now I am ready to change a little again. To alter my blogging experience a little more into the theatrical. A little more fictional.

I experimented with the notion a little in a test blog called The Earthling Files which was to be a post apocalyptic style diary of a survivor of an invasion by our old enemies the Martians. I didn’t take it further through lack of confidence but I was very interested in the invention involved.

And so to the change. I’m going to be posting (and already have on one occasion) things that are akin to those mentioned chapter beginnings. I considered doing it on a completely different blog but have decided just to put them up on The England Project for now, which will avoid disappointment and more wasted effort than is strictly necessary when the whole thing comes crashing down around my ears.

The character I have invented to do this is, as you can tell from the mentioned posting, a guy called Ingram deLacy. He’s a dead 22nd century revolutionary. Not particularly original (as you can tell from the Quellism quote above) but if I were an original kind of person I would be a lot wealthier than I am now.

Here’s a thought though. Perhaps this little bit of theatre will interest others. Perhaps there are other bloggers who might want to jump on board with this experiment. Who might want to become puppet master to a distinct character of their own from the deLacy future history. If that is the case let me know and will create a blog under The England Project that we can all post to.

It might be interesting. Who knows where it will go. What kind of history it might create. All kinds of things can be hinted at and it will be an excruciating exercise for posters to ensure that their quotes complement and don’t tread on the toes of other quotes.

Doomed to failure I’m sure but if you are interested or have anything to say on the subject I will leave the comments open for a time (or you could email me).

Oh how I laughed

Listening to BBC Radio 5 Live this morning (why do I do it?) I caught a story about the Licensing Act 2003 which comes into affect in November this year. Basically this Act requires businesses that supply alcohol, hot food and ‘entertainment’ to apply for licenses (as if they were extending an existing license) to continue to do so. If they miss the November deadline they will have to apply as if it were a new license which is a more complex and long winded process.

The main thrust of the BBC radio story was how discriminatory the application process is. You see, the application forms are (warning) WRITTEN IN ENGLISH (shock). They even had an ‘expert’ on to talk about how dreadful this was for minute after dreary minute, completely missing what should have been the main story, ie that having to ask the state for a license to entertain your customers is a bloody crime.

It was at the point where they introduced their ‘expert’ that I laughed. Fancy that. Written in bloody English! It’s almost as if there was a sudden and violent event in the space-time continuum that caused a completely unexpected and alien behavioural crossover to occur in our own Universe. It’s written in English? English! How can that be?

Not speaking the native language is a serious disadvantage in business and in all other walks of life where one comes into regular contact with the odd sounding natives. The solution to this problem is to learn the language. A non-solution to the problem is to automatically supply translations of the states paper trail into any number of languages.

Official: ID cards crapper than we said

Here’s a statement on ID cards from the New Labour Party: The government has admitted "overselling" the advantages of national identity cards. The question is who has been a victim of this “overselling”? I speculate that it has been the Tory Party which has failed to take advantage of the normal 14 day cooling off period.

Roll up, roll up, come see the marvel that is Clarke and Blunkett's universal cure all and flatulence remedy - "Snakeoil merchant"

The state of the Union

It's great TV - someone tell the critics

Via SciFi Daily comes this interesting article on the way TV critics view the science fiction genre and how they are doing themselves no favours by their lack of understanding. Basically they are showing themselves up as not being very good at their jobs. But hey, you knew that already.

A vice president in the TV industry recently asked me what TV shows I watch for enjoyment. I mentioned my favorite is "Battlestar Galactica" on Sci Fi Channel. She laughed. I asked if she'd seen it. No, she said, and laughed again. Did she know, I asked, that it's a gritty adult drama of family members and colleagues in deep-rooted conflict not unlike that of "The Sopranos"? That they're part of a civilization struggling not only to survive but to define itself amid messy terrorist warfare? That it explores the values of competing societies that demonize each other's spiritual beliefs? That it's full of gutsy acting by the likes of Edward James Olmos and sophisticated allegory mirroring today's global politics?

She laughed again.

Dirty little secrets

When we were on holiday the other week in Spain we had the pleasure of the company of an ex Tory councillor and his wife for a day and a night. During this time the casual conversation around the pool (egged on by any number of gin and tonics) turned to politics. I know, shocking. Anyhow the news of the demise of Edward Heath, a British Prime Minister, reached us a little earlier and our guest remarked that Mr. Heath was his political hero.

I was dumbstruck. "You do realise that the man was a traitor don’t you?" I said. Of course the terms in which I put the actions of Mr. Heath (he brought us into the precursor of the European Union) were pretty strong but, in truth, not all of it was the drink talking. I received no reply and didn’t press the issue. Instead I allowed myself to be seduced by the various pleasantries that were fairly abundant at the time.

I’ve also been deliberately trying to reign in my tendency to drag conversations into the various indignant realms that torment my inner self. Who wants to talk about serious business with the angry guy these days? Not many people I can tell you. They are all far too comfortable to even consider the possibility that they might, you know, find out that they are actually living in interesting times.

Anyhow, Heath. It’s never nice to speak ill of the dead so I will leave you with someone else’s truth about the Heath government and it’s deliberate (and successful) attempts at fooling people into accepting the tragic events that lead to the UK joining the EEC.

From Depleted Uranium:

Cabinet papers pre-1970 show the Heath government to have had full knowledge of the EEC (EU precursor) being a long-term plan for a unitary European State with its own currency; but the facts were suppressed by this and succeeding governments with the deliberate intention of keeping the nation in the dark.

I think that it's about time that all government documents are released before each general election. Can you imaging how the face of politics would change if this were the case. Holy smokes, nothing would ever be the same again.

Mmmmmm, phytoplankton bloom

What happens when there is an abundance of Co2 in the atmosphere? Ask these guys.

...and not a drop to drink

No doubt Prescott will simply demand that it rains more. It has about as much chance of working as any of his other policies.

You do realise you are going to have to pay for all that?

The preasure mounts for a Welsh Parliament based upon the Edinburgh model. It seems very likely that at the very least the Welsh will have their assembly powers extended somewhat but my gut feeling is that, in the long run, they will eventually get the referendum that they are calling for. The one thing that may prevent this particular New Labour ball from rolling further out of central government control is the “English Problem”. Further devolution in Wales is likely to put the lack of proper English Parliamentary representation even further into the spotlight to the point where even the most English ambivalent of mainstream media outlets will find it impossible to continue to ignore the issue.

The only mantra that the New Labour Demolishers have in their hymn book against an English Parliament is that England is too big and too diverse for a Parliament of its own. But if this argument is to be applied at all (false as it is) it should also be applied to the current UK wide Parliament. It too must be at the very least as unrepresentative on the local level as they assume an English Parliament would be.

So, if the ball continues to roll we will have a Union in which both Wales and Scotland have their own Parliaments designed to represent the interests of the Nation of Wales and the Nation of Scotland and the English will be left with a UK Parliament that is unable to represent them properly (if one uses the argument of the New Labour Destroyers).

Let us not be mistaken here. The issue is about national representation, not local representation no matter what spin the New Labour Bull tries to put on the crashing crockery of British Union. Which Labour minister would look at a Scotsman and say ”if your country were bigger we would have denied you your Parliament. If there were more millions of your countrymen out there we would have been forced to decline your request.” Not one. Not a single one. Indeed, they would probably have used it to declare that it was because of this imaginary large Scotland that a Scottish Parliament was essential.

When the last piece of crockery, the last glass shelf and the last crystal vase has settled to the floor and the china shop is finally quiet the New Labour Bull will eventually have to leave through the front door and walk out into the street. There it will find millions of the English, arms folded across their chests, tapping their feet. ”Of course, you do realise you are going to have to pay for all that?”

Airsoft and the Violent Crime Reduction Bill

Airsoft in the news.

The people who rule

The people who rule over us, who run things, who tell us what we can and cannot do, they're not particularly unique or especially clever. They are not the best qualified, the most reliable or the best value for our money. They do however excel at one thing. It is the thing that brings them wealth and power and it is a thing that to us is virtually useless. It is politics.

Other than that they are distinctly unremarkable. Nothing special. Ordinary. And yet this one thing that they are good at is only useful as a means to their own desired ends. It serves no other master and no other purpose. You may be better than them at organising an industry, keeping the peace or building a car but these merits are meaningless unless you can master politics. The reverse is not true. If you can master politics how good you are at other things is not especially important.

Politics is their game, their sphere, their manufactured domain. If this shell is stripped away it will reveal, with alarming frequency, an individual who is unqualified for the position that they hold.

- Ingram deLacy.

Reload, fire, reload, fire

It’s been hectic. After coming back from holiday we had less than a day at home before we had to rush off to a stag weekend down south. The groom to be is my brother-in-law and the best man is to be my good lady. I suppose that little fact could be seen as confirming our credentials as new liberals who don’t hold with tradition. Nothing could be further from the truth which is that I am too frightened of Mrs. England Project to make an attempt at preventing this particular attack on the foundations that hold up this great country of ours.

Anyhow, to the point. This is a posting about shooting. With guns.

The stag was a day of events finished off with a large dose of extreme drinking. One of these events was a clay pigeon shoot and it was during this particular event that I had the pleasure of taking part in a couple of clay formats that I had not seen before.

Effectively there were two shooting points each containing a shooter (murderous and evil user of a deadly and easily converted into a machine gun shotgun user) and a scorer/loader. The single trap (thing that fires off clays) was placed far ahead of the shooting points and, on command, it would put two clays into the air simultaneously with one clay flying approximately towards each shooter. The idea was to break your own clay and then attempt to break your opponents clay.

What fun. The temptation to snap at the first clay was almost overwhelming because the longer you took to take the shot the more likely it was that your opponent would shoot your target out from underneath you.

The second interesting format also involved two shooters but this time the targets were rabbits. For those that don’t know these are clays that are rolled down an incline (in this instance from right to left). It’s an interesting discipline because the clays tend to jump off the ground at every bumpy opportunity sometimes to a height of a couple of yards or so. I’ve shot rabbits before but the particularly interesting thing about this format was the rapidity that they clays came out of the trap.

The trap operator was asked to fire 15 clays at his own discretion (as fast or as slow as he liked) which effectively meant as fast as he could load them into the trap. Meanwhile the two shooters were tasked with taking any clay at any time in any order whilst quickly breaking his/her barrels to allow the loader/scorer to replace the spent cartridges. It made for what seemed like a very brief spell of furious activity at the end of which each shooter was standing in an impossible pile of spent cartridges viewing a scene of orange rabbit armageddon.

Great fun and, if you run a shoot of your own, thoroughly recommended.

That smooth satisfying taste

Anoneumouse writes to point out that he has become a law breaker. On the subject of smoking I was wandering through a Spanish airport when I spotted a box of 50 King Edward Invincibles for about 40 Euros. These are normally about £15 for 5 which just goes to show how much we are fleeced in this great country of ours. Needless to say I bought them.

Hello again

I'm back. Things are hectic at the moment what with all the catching up I need to do and all the blogging you lot have been indulging in (oi, stop it) but I hope to have things up and running round here soon.

In the meantime those of you who have been watching Neil Herron’s fascinating war games might want to take a look at this summary of the state of play for one of his campaigns. Looks like checkmate in three moves from here. Mind you, in this particular game one side is able (and sometimes keen) to change the rules which just makes Neil’s campaign effectiveness all the more remarkable.

As for the holiday, well, it was great. I spent a lot of my time reading some excellent sci-fi around the swimming pool. Old Man’s War by John Scali and three books by Richard Morgan - Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies. I enjoyed Old Man’s War a great deal but the Morgan books are in a class of their own and I can thoroughly recommend them.