Thursday, 22 December 2011

Trappists monks do the Hallelujah Chorus - by Richard... Friday, December 23, 2011



Dun enuff for today. I'm tired and wanna go to bed. Enjoy.

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Words have meanings - by Richard... Thursday, December 22, 2011

A masterful exposition on the word "veto" and The Boy's relationship with it from Your Freedom and Ours. There cannot, as Booker said last Sunday, be many occasions where a political event has been so widely and completely misrepresented, a process which continues to this day. And, as the myth continues its stately progress, we will have to continue pointing out that the emperor ain't got no clothes.

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Have yourself a very merry Christmas - by Richard...


The assistant chief executive at Luton Borough Council, we are told, will receive a bumper pay rise in his Christmas stocking after cuts to the authority's corporate directors saw him promoted. Robin Porter's role has been merged with that of the director of customer and corporate services, Steve Heappey, after the council agreed more cuts to senior management.

Securing the new "director of commercial and transformation services" post will see 38-year-old Porter's salary rise from the current £65,000 to £72,000 range to the £111,000 to £122,000 range commanded by the council's existing corporate directors.

He is currently in charge of the council’s cost-cutting "Luton Excellence" strategy, a role he took on after heading up the authority's £200 million Building Schools for the Future project, which was scrapped by the government last summer.


Then there is this little madam - done alright for herself in a job that was so important that the post is not to be replaced. Another one of the parasite class – basically useless and grossly overpaid.

Before joining Hertfordshire, she worked for five years with Kent County Council, leading on the implementation of new community care legislation. She worked for the NHS for 18 months, managing mental health services, and started her career in Dorset where she trained as a social worker. In her last full year, she took £203,427 salary, £5,857 benefits in kind and £41,906 in pension contributions.


Another madam sitting on her own private pot of gold is Joanna Killian who, for her money tells us "I didn’t have the greatest education, or the sort of background many would expect of a chief executive. There is that dimension which has helped me to want to be in public service and stay in the job I am doing".

She has the nerve to call her pot of gold a "calling", despite being the best paid female chief executive in the country. God knows how much she would want if she was in it for the money, although she is an expert at taking the piss, having taken a highly publicised pay cut of £4,000 in the summer, only then to collect a £6,900 bonus and an extra £1,100 towards her pension.


The looting is not confined to local government, of course, with the parasites just as evident in the NHS. Prof Stephen Smith, who was chief executive of Imperial College Healthcare trust until September, has a pot of £3.3 million - which will pay him between £135,000 and £140,000 a year when he retires, after a lump sum of at least £405,000.

The chief executive, who earned £247,000 a year, announced plans to resign earlier this year, as the London trust admitted it was facing a £40 million black hole in its finances.

Jan Filochowski, chief executive of West Hertfordshire Hospitals trust, paid £280,000 last year, will get an annual payment of between £135,000 and £140,000, on retirement, plus a lump sum of £415,000, thanks to a pot valued at more than £3 million, after 36 years in the public sector. Sir Ron Kerr, chief executive of Guys and St Thomas' Foundation Trust, in London, will swap a salary of £254,000 a year for a pension pot of £3.06 million when he retires.


There is no end to this sort of looting and one wonders how they live with themselves, this one in particular taking home an annual salary equivalent of £300,000. How many hip operations do you get for that sort of loot?


Meanwhile, in order to keep the parasite class in the luxury they most definitely do not deserve, staff – many of whom earn under £20,000 a year - are being charged to go to work. As the song once went, "It's the rich wot gets the pleasure, it's the poor wot gets the blame".


But hey, never mind … I am sure all these gifted public servants look at their payslips and repeat the words of that nauseating television advertisement: "because I'm worth it". Never mind that people are actually starving in this country, while food banks are doing record business. Their needs come first.

And these people are so shocked when they learn what we really think of them? Scum does not even begin to describe it.

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Why we must leave - 2 - by Richard...


You always have to take the Daily Wail with a pinch of salt but, on cross-checking this story with theofficial press release, the paper seems to have got it essentially right. The judgement states that an asylum seeker may not be transferred to a member state where he risks being subjected to inhuman treatment, and further, EU law does not permit a conclusive presumption that member states observe the fundamental rights conferred on asylum seekers.

Under normal circumstances, asylum seekers are supposed to claim asylum in the first country in which they land in the EU. When they then move on and seek to claim asylum in a second country, that country (in this case Britain) is entitled under the so-called "Dublin II" Regulation, to return them to their country of entry.

But, the ECJ now says, if the initial recipient country breaks EU law by not providing adequate facilities for asylum seekers, to the extent that they may be subject to "inhuman treatment", that negates the rights of second countries to return them to their country of entry.

This is madness – absolute barking madness. But it is even worse. The rights British citizens are being trampled on wholesale here, by a political court which is attempting to stitch together a failed policy by imposing on those least likely to squeal.

In the Wail piece, we get the usual talking heads saying how terrible this all is – classic of the "he says, she says" school of journalism. But that isn't good enough. This is outrageous. The trouble is that decades of such outrages have blunted our sensibilities.

There is, however, only one answer to this sort of thing. We have to leave the EU … and the sooner the better. If they are so interested on asylum seekers' rights, they can park them on the lawn outside the EU parliament - either Brussels or Strasbourg ... I don't care which. I am sure the MEPs will happily contribute to their upkeep. I don't see why we should.

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Fantasy politics - by Richard...


You can ignore EUReferendum – a lot of people do. But you then have to ignore Booker, Hitchens, and even Hansard and sundry others, if you want to stay unaware of the simple fact that Cameron did not cast a veto on a treaty or anything else at the European Council on the night of 8/9 December.

Such is the ostrich-like behaviour of Tory Boy Blog which for its end of year survey of "Tory" opinion, asks all-comers to comment on such delights as: "The veto has been of exaggerated importance and it won't be long before we realise Britain's relationship with the EU will continue as before".

"Do you think David Cameron was right to veto the recent EU Treaty?", it asks. "Was David Cameron's veto as big a moment in British politics as Margaret Thatcher winning a rebate from the EU?", it wants to know, then inquiring: "Was the veto was David Cameron's best moment as prime minister?".

This is fantasy politics being played out at an advanced level. Such is their desperation to endorse and then conform with the fictional narrative that the CH editors have quite deliberately set their minds against acknowledging reality, and have retreated to their own world of fantasy politics.

These people are no longer serious players. They may have their following amongst those who can't deal with reality, and actually prefer fantasy politics, but as commentators they are on a par with the MSM, having lost the ability to distinguish between the real and the make-believe.

One will, nevertheless, enjoy the result, although it will be difficult to distinguish between the true responses and the irony. After all, given his lack-lustre performance to date, who is to say that the "veto" was not David Cameron's best moment as prime minister?

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Why we must leave - 1 - by Richard...


There are many highly principled reasons why we should leave the EU, but down amongst the weeds, there are equally important practical reasons why we should get out as fast as possible. One such is the absurdity bordering on the insane of the ECJ ruling on car insurance for women with favourable terms prohibited by the EU's Gender Directive, even though women present less costly risks to insurers.

Now we see that, according to a Treasury paper, women drivers in the UK, as a direct result of this ruling, will pay over £900 million more a year for motor insurance than they currently do. But what is so very chilling is that the British government "made very clear" its concerns "about any move to prevent the use of gender as a risk factor in the pricing of individual insurance policies". It told the court that the ability of insurers to price on the basis of risk was integral to their need to conduct business efficiently.

However, "Due to the nature of the ruling … there is no right of appeal against the outcome. The only option available is to implement the ruling, in this case by secondary legislation, which is likely to be made in the spring of 2012" it says.

And that, writ large, underlines the impotence of our government, even when faced with such manifest absurdity. What is more, the Treasury further observes that the ECJ ruling adversely affects both consumers and insurers. Although many male drivers in the motor insurance market stood to benefit from the changes, the "net cost" to motorists would be approximately £300m.

So there we are – this is the EU of which The Boy says we want to be members. But when it comes to the interests of millions of ordinary people, that is simply not true. Here, at least, is £300 million spent that we did not have to spend, to add to the many billions more wasted as a direct result of our membership.

We simply cannot afford this stupidity – the sooner we leave the better.

Posted by Britannia Radio at 23:07