The Aged P

A sob story about long term unemployed jobseekers offered work experience placements as Diamond Jubilee stewards being badly treated was too good to miss for the media elite of the left. Frustrated by the widespread support for the Queen exhibited by millions of ordinary people and uncomfortable with the sight of so many union flags being waved the Guardian and BBC jumped with glee into the issue using anonymous sources to buttress accusations of “slave labour”

Unsurprisingly it was also picked up in the USA by the left wing agitprop website Gawker.

Rather than do some real journalism to find out if other stewards embedded in the scheme shared a similar negative experience the Guardian hacks looked around to see if there was any dim witted pompous windbag who could be wound up and propelled into the media spotlight to give the story political legs.

They needed a pea brained dim-witted has been who would be obtuse enough to pontificate loudly and aggressively without bothering to do any homework

Enter John Prescott

They then needed a highly paid and extremely wealthy member of the soft left media elite to highlight the wages of the people who ran the Jubilee Stewards project and to then try to sandbag one of them on BBC Newsnight.

Enter Kirsty Wark

The trouble with anonymous sources, however, is that it is always difficult to validate the truth of their statements by referencing their backgrounds and checking their claims under hostile cross examination so when several fellow stewards went public with their experiences while offering up their names the BBC/Guardianistas should have been delighted.

Unfortunately these people said their experience had been positive and questioned the accuracy of the Prescott/Wark line.

Isn’t it annoying how facts can so often spoil a good left wing fantasy…

Only cursory mentions over here about the Wisconsin Recall election but the victory of tea party supported Governor Scott Walker has sent a massive bolt of lightning into Washington and President Obama’s palace guard in the US media.

Of course, if you were to believe the BBC’s ludicrous Jonny Dymond you would think that Walker’s victory was all down to big business and a vocal and often vicious union/left coalition from within and outside Wisconsin simply did not exist…

Governor Walker got a lot of support from GOP heavyweights over the last few weeks but in the early months of 2011 when the fight was fiercest and Walker and his supporters were under siege only one GOP voice braved the mob and went to Wisconsin to rally the tea party….

No prize for guessing who that was…

Many came into London early, some even camped out overnight….why? Because were British….and, for once, no pontificating weasel popped up to say that sort of phrase was not allowed because it’s old fashioned, xenophobic and contrary to human rights…

A solemn service at London’s own St Paul’s Cathedral, lunch with the Lord Mayor of the City of London then back to Buckingham Palace where more than a million people stood outside cheering, singing and waving union flags…thus ended an amazing three days when, for once, the voices of the normally silent majority drowned out the shallow posturings of a sneering and patronising “cultural elite”

It was a special day. Despite the rain one million people lined the Thames to cheer the Queen at the Diamond Jubilee River pageant held in her honour….and less than a hundred of sour faced anti monarchists waved a collection of agitprop banners.

The figures tell us all we need to know – this was a day when, for once, the silent majority seized the agenda from the self proclaimed “cultural elite” who are usually telling us what we should be doing/thinking via their media pulpits.

If the emotional resonance of the spectacle tightened the throat yesterday, it was surely this unaffected pride of the people in their Queen and their straightforward but no less deep love of their country that really brought tears to the eye.

This is because there is such an enormous, latent, pent-up feeling of patriotism — that most decent and inspiring of emotions which, in our degraded public discourse, has now become all but forbidden to express for fear of being damned as a racist or xenophobe.

Patriotism is thus sneered at by the kind of people who unfortunately tend to dominate our culture and who lose no opportunity to be sour and mean-spirited about the monarchy and the people it so invaluably serves.

OK Melanie Phillips overgushed a little at the close of her piece but the core premise is rock solid – and backed up, surprisingly, in a confessional from the grand panjandrum of the BBC commentariat Jeremy Paxman himself..

So here’s a toast to our flag and our Queen and a remembrance of the second verse of our National Anthem, rarely sung today but which nevertheless probably echoes the feelings of most ordinary folk in our country.

O Lord our God arise
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall
Confound their politics
Frustrate their knavish tricks
On Thee our hopes we fix
God save us all

Amen to that, say I….

When you manage to cut through the dross that is pumped out daily by the “music” industry you can sometimes catch the glint of a tiny diamond….

Just listen to Ed Sheeran making us realise that a miscarriage can also be a heartbreaking time for a prospective father..

Lyrics here…

We walked into this field and had one of those moments when you wonder if you are looking at a Claude Monet painting….

Horses in the buttercup field

Quote of the week from “Autoamerican” spotted here…

This is hysterical. The mainstream media boasts teams of Harvard graduates, gleaming, high-rise headquarters in our largest cities, far-flung foreign bureaus streaming information 24/7, and universal coverage via newspaper circulation, channel space and satellite relay. Yet Sarah Palin, sitting in her living room in the middle of the Alaskan tundra – probably with Trig seated on her lap – continues to control America’s political narrative.

The US media is beginning, reluctantly, to acknowledge that fact – but dare they ever ask the key question which is WHY?

‘Fat cat’ doctors to hold 24-hour strike for routine operations and GP appointments

That was the headline in the Evening Standard – and it upset some of the chaps at the BMA.

Thousands of patients are to have operations and appointments cancelled as doctors take industrial action for the first time in nearly 40 years.
GPs and hospital doctors will stop routine work to protest at government pension reforms.
Emergency operations and treatment will still be carried out on the day of action, June 21. But the strike will mean the postponement of non-urgent cases such as knee and hip surgery.
The British Medical Association said doctors will see anyone who is ill, or who believes they are ill, but will not do paperwork

Average pay £100,000 per year.
Thanks to an over generous deal with the previous Labour government no compulsory out of hours cover
Minimal weekend hospital cover by consultants
Very few doctors surgeries open at user friendly times in the evenings/weekends
Most doctors starting in 2015 will retire on an annual pension of £68,000

In the 1940s Bevan bribed them into the NHS by “stuffing their mouths with gold” and the stream of gold continues to this day – and it’s all out of the taxpayers pockets.

The BMA is part of the producers cartel that aims to run the NHS strictly for the benefit and convenience of the people who work in it. For years they have dined out on the angels/saints narrative that convinced previous generations to regard them as selfless moral beings dedicated to serve – and quite a number are, of course. Nevertheless they get paid very well and maybe this is the moment for us, the customers who, via taxation, pay them their wages, to draw the line and make our demands that they start organising their working routines to benefit us.

Perhaps also this is the moment when some politician might dare to query the “free at the point of entry NHS” mantra that has thus far blocked any serious attempt at reform. The simple truth is that we can no longer sustain this model of the NHS – at some time in the future we shall have to introduce a contributory social insurance structure. Then, of course, we shall all realise we are paying customers and start querying why we aren’t getting value for money – and that should mark the end of the NHS as a producers cartel.

Terry Leahy (or Sir Terry since his audience with the Queen) is the man who in twenty years transformed Tesco from third rate shabbiness to one of the biggest retail businesses in the world.

He was brought up on a tough council estate in Liverpool and, like his brothers and most of his friends, he expected to leave school at the earliest opportunity and drift into low level jobs.

But one of his teachers, Mr McCann, lit a spark of ambition in young Terry

Mr McCann would talk about life beyond the council estate — he’d say such things as: “When you grow up you’re going to be a lawyer or an accountant or a businessman,” ’ says Sir Terry. ‘He talked about things you never dared imagine. He made them seem possible. He made me realise that if you worked hard, you could do as well as anyone else.’

His teacher’s words motivated him to grammar school and university and into the rather unfashionable world of retail management

Isn’t that what education should be about – not just learning facts and doing well in tests, but also inspiring young people to have confidence in their own ability to fashion their own futures by hard graft, determination and a sense of vision. A good teacher is someone who can sow the seed of inspiration in young minds and make them realise that all things are possible.

Sounds a bit old fashioned, doesn’t it – maybe because we appear nowadays to celebrate the idea of not rewarding/celebrating achievement for fear of offending those without ambition….

Not much room for inspiration in the cultivation of mediocrity…….

Robert Mugabe appointed UN ‘leader for tourism’

You’re kidding me, right?

You mean this Robert Mugabe?

The one who is under investigation?

I kid you not……

Never ever underestimate the ability of the United Nations to shove it’s head right up its anterior orifice….