Real Racism
"The DNA database has become a national disgrace, stuffed with innocent children and a disproportionate number of black people. "It is time it was limited to those who are guilty or under investigation for sexual or violent crime." (Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil rights group Liberty)
History repeating…
It was thoroughly right for Nigel Hastilow to resign, not because his comments were necessarily wrong, but because of his complete lack of thought. It shouldn’t take much thought at all to realise that Enoch Powell is probably a name best left out of the immigration debate. His comments were inflammatory in 1968, and they’re inflammatory now.
Hastilow criticises the Conservative Party's willingness to toe the metropolitan line
Nigel Hastilow wrote for yesterday's Express & Star. He offered his reflections on recent events. A scan of the full article is published at the bottom of this post (click on it to enlarge) but here are a few key sections:
How does Dave answer the Queen's Speech?
Tony Blair did two things in his last Queen's Speech a year ago. With little left to offer by way of legislation, he spent most of it attacking David Cameron. And he coined the phrase "big clunking fist", a double-edged moniker that some now believe was a crafty way for Tony Blair to flag up both his successor's strength and weakness.
Gordon Brown's re-heated Queen's Speech.
Gordon Brown has been struggling to come up with anything to put in the Queen's speech later today. This is no real surprise seeing as he broke with tradition and announced most of his so called "vision" at the State Opening of Parliament.
My Two Cents...on climate change hysteria
And so the scare stories go on. The Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, Lady Young, has said that the battle to deal with climate change needs to be fought "like World War III". The Environment Secretary Hilary Benn - sounding increasingly as shrill as Hillary Clinton, but without the felonous spouse - said that global warming was a challenge to security, migration, politics and economics, as well as the environment. No hyperbole there then!
Quantity Over Quality
Labour has spent billions of our cash on increasing the number of young people in state education. In 2006-07 it spent £74bn, more than double the £36.4bn spent ten years ago (a 60% increase in real terms). And that leaves out of account the much greater debts higher education students now incur on their own account. Has it been worth it?
Green Party Leader
The Green Party is right now asking its members whether or not it should have a leader. Historically, it has always been leaderless. It currently has two principal speakers - which causes needless confusion when they're being introduced at events or giving interviews. This post is going to list five reasons why it is time for the party to have a leader.
Brussels fudge
It appears that, if you want to drive a coach and horses through EU law, you must fulfil three essential conditions. Firstly, you must be the Italian government, secondly, you act against a friendless, largely penniless group of society – Romanian immigrants – and thirdly, you make sure you have the EU commissioner responsible for the law firmly on your side – i.e., Italian.
The Governor of the Bank of England spills the beans
If anyone had been in any doubt about the importance of Mr Darling in the handling of the Northern Rock crisis, they cannot be this morning. The Governor confirmed that the Chancellor knew well in advance of the difficulties facing Northern Rock, and himself took the decision not to help a takeover of the ailing institution by Lloyds Bank. We already knew that Mr Darling endorsed the decison not to make more money available to UK markets over the summer, and was himself telling the bankers it was all their fault just before the run on Northern Rock took off.
28 days latter - the hypocrisy and corruption of the New Labour government
Its back. A useful Lib Dem idiot is being used by Gordon Brown to whine on about encryption and the possibility that somebody - one day - might require more than 28 days detention to decrypt a hard drive. This is the case for destroying our civil liberties that we are expected to swallow.
Flying blind on the Lib Dem race
The latest Betfair prices on the Lib Dem race have Nick Clegg at 0.36/1 and yesterday’s guest on the site, Chris Huhne at 2.85/1. I did notice that there was a slight movement to Huhne during the morning and I wondered whether his confident performance in our online hustings had given him a boost. Who knows?
Lib Dems recovering in new Populus poll
The latest Populus poll for the Times has topline voting intentions, with changes from last month, of CON 36%(-2), LAB 37%(-3), LDEM 16%(+4). In his commentary Peter Riddell emphasises the parties are virtually neck and neck, the gap is mostly due to rounding with only 2 respondents making the difference between Labour and the Conservatives. Like ICM’s recent poll this suggests the Lib Dems are recovering from their awful ratings last month, presumably thanks to the publicity of their leadership contest.
Summing up on Abortion
Two weeks ago I tried to do something which my many detractors would assume I was incapable of doing, given that I am, as is well known, an unhinged spittle-flecked extremist. That is, I sought a compromise between my own position and that of those who disagree with me. I tried to interest defenders of abortion in a political armistice for a good purpose, aimed at helping to achieve a reform which would - in my view - reduce the instance of a major evil. I hoped to do this in a way which might be acceptable to those who, on principle, regard abortion as a procedure which ought to be available under some circumstances.
No comments:
Post a Comment