The Aged P

They’re marching up to the top of the hill again…

About 20 of the UK’s leading scientists and meteorologists are due to meet at the Met Office to discuss Britain’s “unusual” weather patterns.

Stand by for a new raft of taxes….

Young Somerset UKIP candidate Alex Wood did not make those “racist” Facebook comments

You can read about the result of the police investigation here, here and here

Police investigating the incident have said that they are satisfied that comments originally attributed to Alex Wood, 22, had never appeared on his Facebook account and may have been photoshopped or doctored to appear as if from Wood.

Unfortunately this latest news appears not to have been reported yet in the Daily Mail or the Telegraph who both bigged up the original  “story”….

Nothing either from Tory Party HQ who “helpfully” passed the “information” on to those papers.

Doubtless there will be a big spread at the weekend….

Quote of the day from Hot Air comments re Sarah Palin returning to Fox

Here is my bottom line up front: Palin is right far more times than she is wrong, and is right far more times than most of the current elected GOP leadership. The fact that she has yet another platform to get her views and analysis out there is a GOOD thing.

For those folks who have a problem with her accent, her folksy humor, and her overall presentation, I humbly suggest that you turn the monitor volume down, and just be thankful that she is on the side of conservatives who want to save the country.

As a native Philadelphian raised in Upstate NY, I am good with her Alaskan twang, and would rather listen to her than to stomach one more syllable from some jack wagon in the Northeast or Left Coast who think themselves mightier than the rest of us (and thus more capable of running the country).

She’s no goddess, no saint, no single fountain of all that is good and right, but she is still more effective than so many who secretly wish they had her platform, her raw rockstar power, and her blessings.

Living and loving life, while living rent-free in the minds of statists and haters… Sarah Palin is one fortunate woman.

itzWicks on June 13, 2013 at 10:45 PM

Now here’s an idea – why hasn’t anyone else thought of this?

“Our patients are our customers”

A private doctor’s surgery run by Poles is attracting thousands of patients who have given up on the NHS.
Open seven days a week, usually until 11pm, the clinic gives half-hour appointments – three times longer than usual.
And, despite charging £70 a visit, it already has almost 6,000 Britons on its books. Customers are welcomed into the spotless and modern centre by friendly receptionists whose motto is to ‘put patients first’.

 

You mean that these “customers” don’t have to approach the receptionist as a supplicant, grovelling for a favour by pleading for an appointment that day? They can actually spend half an hour with the doctor rather than be part of conveyor belt that jerks back into action after ten minutes? If they can’t be bothered to turn up for their appointment because it clashes with daytime TV they’ll still have to pay £70? Is it possible that being ill at weekends is no longer a cardinal sin interfering with a GP’s round of golf?

OMG….the BBC Question time audience would have a collective nervous breakdown and the health professionals cartels (aka “unions”) would be flooding our screens with messages of doom, shock and horror at this Oliver Twist moment…

The Telegraph goes all BBC and pimps up a “survey” about small businesses opposing a UK exit from the EU without saying much about the source

“Almost two thirds of the 1,600 companies surveyed by SME networking business BNI said staying in the EU would be better for business”

Fortunately, if you look at the comments you will see that readers expended a little more shoeleather on BNI than the DT

BNI is a networking company (http://www.bni.eu) with just under 6300 members.  The survey had 1600 responses, almost two thirds of whom believed Britain would be better off in the EU.  So, under 1100 (less than a fifth of BNI’s UK membership) people thought that Britain should stay in the EU.   It’s not exactly representative, is it?

This…

would like to know, before giving any credence whatsoever to this ‘survey’:
1) Were any of the sample actual exporters to the EU, if so what percentage
2) What EXACTLY was the question
3) How was the data treated in coming to the ‘results’
4) What do the surveyed firms think the situation will be, as far as exporting and trade is concerned, AFTER a negotiated EU exit.

And This..

I always thought that SMEs in this country were represented by the BCC, whose attitude to the EU and its reams of regulation is markedly less enthusiastic.  And of course, there are far more SMEs in the UK (like mine) which do not belong to any trade organisation at all because we consider them to be a waste of money and representative of vested interests that run entirely counter to our own business interests
That this ‘survey’ has beenn presented without reference to such essential background information about the participants makes one conclude that standards at The Telegraph have really slipped, particularly with regard to the misleading headline, since it cannot possibly claim to speak for a majority of UK SMEs

 

Standards slipping at the Telegraph? Surely not….

At the end of WW2 my dad was demobbed from the army after nearly five years of service. Finishing up as a sergeant he was offered the chance of a commission if he stayed but, like most men of his time he’d had enough of military life and chose to return to civvie street.

Before the war he had worked in a grocer’s shop but, instead of returning to slicing bacon he decided to get a job on the buses working for London Transport. After a brief spell as a conductor he finally qualified as a driver, operating mainly from garages in South London.

London Transport was a closed shop which meant that drivers and conductors had to be members of the powerful Transport and General Workers Union – the TGWU. He’d never been in  a union before so began to attend meetings in the garage.

The first thing that puzzled him was the size of the meetings. In a garage that employed several hundred staff attendance rarely went above a dozen – including the three officials who chaired the meeting. As a new boy he kept quiet for a while until at one meeting most of the agenda was taken up with a motion congratulating the Communist governments of Poland and Hungary for their success in establishing a true workers democracy.

Seeing that those governments were really just puppet regimes imposed by the occupying Russian armies my dad not only voted against the motion but voiced his concern that the meeting was claiming to be the voice of several hundred when in fact only a handful ever intended.

He was immediately marked out as a troublemaker. He found himself placed on awkward shifts and the most difficult routes by a management that was intimidated by the union. He stopped going to union meetings and began to resent the weekly event on pay day when staff had to line up at the union table to pay their compulsory dues. Being short of temper and not easily intimidated he used to throw the money onto the table and declare, in a loud voice “ Here’s your blood money”

Things came to a head when the TGWU called a 24 hour bus strike to start at noon on a certain day. Dad’s bus was about ten minutes from the garage when his conductor rang the bell and told the passengers to get off. Several of them started arguing, pointing out they had already paid the fare to the end of the route.

Dad got out of his cab to find out what was going on. When the conductor said she was pitching the passengers off because it was time for the strike to start my dad told them to stay and he would finish the route. When they reached the garage all the passengers got off and came round to shake his hand.

Nothing more was said that day but, when the strike was over and dad went to collect his bike at the end of his shift to cycle home he discovered about half a dozen people around his bike which was on the floor, bent and broken. One of the union men, scarcely able to suppress a grin said that it had been “accidently” run over by a bus being moved around the garage.

Since his was the only bike damaged and it was in an area where buses didn’t usually turn he quickly got the picture. It was a punishment for breaking union solidarity.

He didn’t say anything, just left and carried the bike home.

At the beginning of his next shift he arrived early and went to the union office and found the TGWU rep.  “About my bike” he said and seized the man by the arms and pushed him up against the wall

“Each time any little “accident” happens again” he said “I’ll come round and punch you on the nose”

At the end of his shift he fully expected to be hauled in by the boss and/or the police but nothing happened and, oddly enough, there never were any more “accidents”……

It has always puzzled me why such a smooth operator as David Cameron should have nailed his colours to the UAF (Unite Against Fascism) mast. Anyone with any sense of historical perspective or political savvy would have recognised the UAF’s true nature as a hard left designed “front” by looking down its list of officers.

Since the earliest days of the Bolsheviks the authoritarian left have crafted “front” organisations that attract the soft left as self indulgent “ornaments” to mask the fact that the organisation is actually controlled by professional agitators. If, like me, you had been a trade union activist during the 60s and 70s you would have been constantly aware of how these people operate. At least the naive students attracted to such fronts can cite ignorance as their excuse. That someone like Cameron, with his squadrons of advisors, should have fallen for this just beggars belief.

But then if you delve deeper into the news over the last few weeks Cameron’s motives might be more rational than first glance might indicate.

Dave has obviously been rattled by the emergence of UKIP as a serious political force that threatens to make inroads not just into the Tory rank and file but also across party lines towards the urban working class. Sneering put downs from Tory ministers and tame political hacks have failed to dent UKIP’s reputation – indeed, since so many people hold both our political class and their symbiotic media elite in contempt, these attacks have backfired in spectacular fashion.

So the news that the agitprop merchants at the UAF, spearheaded by the dynamic duo of political has beens Ken Livingstone and Diane Abbott, have now set their sights on UKIP as their prime target must have lit a little flame in Dave’s heart.

As recent events in Hove indicate the storm troopers of the UAF, a motley crowd of “students”, professional race card operatives and opponents of free speech have been given their orders to cause maximum disruption at any significant UKIP event particularly where Nigel Farage is present. The aim is to link the party with reports and pictures of violence and mayhem initiated by UAF with the hope that the public will begin to  associate UKIP with disorder by default – and turn back to the traditional parties.

So, as far as  Cameron is concerned…..job done!!!!!

Far fetched? You be the judge. But of course Cameron could, with one move, prove me wrong – by publicly disassociating himself from UAF….

An afterthought – how many UAF operatives have been present at these protests about the increasing authoritarian nature of the Erdogan regime in Turkey?

Just asking….

Equalities Minister Maria Miller continued the Tory Party’s war on mothers with yet another attack on stay-at-home mums, hitting them with a double edged guilt trip

A shortage of successful women is holding Britain’s economy back, Cabinet Minister Maria Miller will warn today.

The equalities minister will warn that it is unacceptable that highly-skilled and talent women continue to languish behind men in the workplace.

More help will be offered to school girls to get ahead in business while employers will be urged to hire women over 50.

The call comes as a government-backed report says stay-at-home mothers should go back into the workforce to boost economic growth.

So,  selfish and bone idle mothers, you are not only being traitors to your country by sabotaging the economy – but you’re also betraying the sisterhood.

Ms Miller could even see into the future…..thanks to those marvellous “experts”

Getting those women back to work would boost economic growth by 0.5 per cent a year or 10 per cent by 2030 – vital if Britain is to emerge from the financial crisis, experts said.

Funny how those experts can be so specific about how women are needed to get us out of the financial crisis when they were unable to predict the crisis in the first place….

In truth the figures are meaningless, conjured up out of thin air like the cost/benefit analysis of HS2. Moreover, in a period when unemployment is still relatively high from where are these jobs expected to come?

It seems strange that at the very moment when the concept of the family is under attack – high divorce rates, more and more children being born out of wedlock,  the heterosexual nature of marriage being undermined – Tory politicians like Miller should be devaluing the nature of motherhood. Perhaps that’s one reason why the party is losing it’s core support.

The tragedy is that Maria Miller, unlike most of her Cabinet colleagues attended a comprehensive school  and  has considerable business experience. She should have been a bonus to the government – instead she is a damp squib.

This report is just busywork to give the impression of “something being done” – so just file it under PP….Permanent Pending because nothing will ever come of it…..apart from the fact it will make a few more stay-at-home mums (or dads) feel even more worthless…

Do you still believe David Cameron – or do you, like me, suspect a con?

Maybe this Polish politician has let the cat out of the bag and the European political elite has been given the inside story.

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski:Nick Clegg told me this afternoon it was extremely unlikely Britain would vote to leave EU #newsnight

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) May 29, 2013

They really think we are stupid. They believe their own agitprop that the the surge of support for UKIP is just a nine day wonder, a brief blip of protest that will disappear as the spin merchants and their media pimps attempt to switch the narrative. Tory Chairman Grant Shapps, we are told, has written a letter to local activists. William Hague might soon be wheeled out to assure the doubtful that all is well. Samantha Cameron should make herself available to secure the female vote.

They hold us in contempt – but they are rattled. Keep up the pressure and we can beat  them.

Can’t help agreeing with the old windbag here. Syria ia a hornets nest and the last thing we need to do is poke a stick into it. Indeed “a pox on all your houses” should be our watchword here. Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard proxies duking it out with AQ leaning Jihadist fanatics from all over the world should not be unwelcome news. Remember the split between Mao and the late unlamented Soviet Union?  It was very good  for us in the west because it meant the Russians were always looking over their shoulder.

The Foreign Office and elements of the North London dinner party circuit are itching to pimp their consciences here with dreams of intervention but, as sure as eggs is eggs it would all end in tears.

When thieves fall out it’s honest folk who benefit….