Tide Turns Against Tories?

Gordon Brown, a politician who in any normal society would be dead and buried appears to have been resurrected in the opinion polls, with his Labour Party only 2 points behind the opposition party according to the newspapers.

Considering the fact that Brown is almost universally despised in much of the country, this is a remarkable fact, and is causing the Conservative Party much anxiety.

The scratching of heads amongst the pundits is a little strange, as the reasons why the Tories have not established and held a good lead is fairly easy to find .... Cameron's tactics.

He has moved so far to the political centre, to try and steal 'New Labour' voters, that there is no longer any clear water between the two parties. The Tories have also left behind many of their own right wing voters behind when they moved to the Left, and this is support (along with white working class former labour voters, who also feel similarly abandoned by the 'New' Labour Party), that may drift to the far right BNP.

Cameron needs to espouse some policies that

• Roll back a decade of socialist bureaucracy,
• Removes the class warfare and anti white policies that Harriet Harman champions,
• Back the Armed forces against budget cuts
• Toughens the criminal penalties for gang membership, and retakes the streets from the etc etc

In fact all the normal Tory policies, that used to be natural to that party, but which now you couldn't be sure that the current leadership believe in.

It now increasingly looks like the next election will result in a hung Parliament (or even a narrow Labour win) because the Tories need a swing of at least 6.5% to just deny Brown a victory ..... there's a 2005 result swingometer here if you want to play forecaster.

Bad Laws Cause Bad Justice

Its an old adage that 'Bad Facts make for Bad Laws' and the total ban smoking law is a case in point .... what should have been a simple business decision (either they were or weren't smoking pubs) was politicised by the health fascists of the left, and became a total ban, enforced by fines and threats of imprisonment.

The result of this legislative overkill was that for simply smoking a cigarette in a 'public' building a subject of the crown could be imprisoned (as opposed to being career criminal who threatens to kill a family, in which case you get a suspended sentence).

Needless to say, someone would eventually be imprisoned by this draconian law and this week saw the first man imprisoned under it, simply because he couldn't pay his fines imposed for smoking in a pub. Ex-publican (tenant landlord) Mr Nick Hogan, from Chorley, Lancashire is now facing six months in prison for failing to pay a fine of £10,000 (£3,000 plus £7,000 costs) imposed for smoking ban breaches that occurred at the two Bolton pubs he ran in January 2008.

His wife said that after he lost his job running the pubs following the court case, he couldn't keep up with his fine repayments but they never expected that he would go to prison.

She said: "He's not a smoking campaigner or anything like that. He didn't want to change the law, he just thought if people wanted to smoke it should be their choice."

"We never expected him to go to jail. He hasn't harmed anybody and he isn't a criminal. He was allowed to ring me from jail last night but we could only speak for just two minutes. He is devastated."

Sadly in a PC Britain she's wrong, he is classed as a 'criminal' and then firstly left unemployed, and then imprisoned, all because they wrongly believed that in Britain "if people wanted to smoke it should be their choice".

Greece Drags The Euro To Hades

I was once chastised by a passing reader about my post on Greece's problems both on the economy and as a nice holiday resort with the words "Never heard so much Rubbish. Simply not true" ..... well I hope that the anonymous reader picks up on the recent news from Greece.

My blog listed all the problems about Greece's spiralling public debts pointing out that Greece was:

• Not as cheap as it used to be
• That 'tourists have looked for cheaper, but equally sunny holiday destinations' elsewhere.
• Greece's economy after many years of strong and uninterrupted growth is today at a critical crossroads
• Its public debt was almost equal to its national output
• Youth unemployment stood at about 19% and overall joblessness at 7.2%

and whilst I can't claim to be a a Nostradamus, if anyone from the German or French finance ministries had read my comments, they might have just been able to tackle to crisis that has affected the Euro currency 15 months later.

Now Greece is in turmoil, as it finally admitted to effectively cooking the books for years (including those used to enter the Euro Zone in the first place) .... could all have been avoided if anyone had looked closely at Greece's finances and social indicators. They didn't match then, and they don't match now.

Here's some interesting facts:

• In the last completed tax year in Greece, and with a population of nearly 12 million, only six (yes 6) people declared that they earned more than €250,000 pa ... I repeat, only 6 people in the land of shipping millionaires and surgeons on 700,000 pa, were even that honest (and these 6 are all likely to have earned 10 times that amount).
• Greece's black economy is estimated at 30% of official gross domestic product.
• The European Commission says it will take Greece to the EU's top court to recover state aid, which it says violated EU single market rules.

Finally the Greeks have resorted to the politics of the scoundrel i.e. Nationalism .... The Prime Minister Mr Pangalos has accused Italy of being more inaccurate with its financial statistics (probably with some element of truth), and said that Germany should not criticise Athens now because of its own actions during the Nazi occupation of Greece.

"They took away the gold that was in the Bank of Greece, they took away Greek money, and they never gave it back. This is an issue that has to be faced sometime in the future," he said.

Not All Ruins In Greece Were Germany's Fault

Germany paid Greece about 115m Deutschemarks in 1960 to compensate victims of Nazi persecution, but has refused more recent demands for more money .....after it closed the matter in 1990 when it signed the Two Plus Four Agreement with the former Allied countries of the United States, United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union, but not Greece.

As someone once said "Greece is a poor country, full of rich people." 

UPDATE JUNE 2019:

I have taken a brief re-look at this story and can add this update: Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Syriza party claimed in January 2015, that he was going to ignore the austerity program imposed by the “troika” (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund), but in fact the Greek government was forced to accept even harsher terms from its creditors after he assumed power.

Now 4 years later Greeece has been in primary fiscal budget surplus for the last 4 years, and is predicted to remain so for the next foreseeable years. The economy also returned to growth in 2017 and has remained so since ..... but the cost has been huge.

GDP fell 26 per cent in the crisis, and is still 20 per cent smaller than at the beginning of the crisis of 12 years ago. It is not predicted to return to its pre-crisis size until the early 2030s, and that assumes the economy growing at 2 per cent a year, which isn't by any means certain. So the Greeks have lost at least a quarter of a century or more of growth.

They may not have brought down the euro, but they damn near ruined Greece ..... At one time Greek real GDP per head was about 80 per cent of German levels (at purchasing power parity), and it was this, living like Germans but working like Greeks, that nearly destroyed them. Now real Greek GDP per head runs at about 55 per cent of those levels.

Of course this being Greece the threat of backsliding is huge. For instance the planned 11 per cent jump in the statutory minimum wage, combined with the abolition of the sub-minimum wage for young people, plus the reversal of reforms to collective bargaining agreements dont augur well. The government has also cancelled the pre-legislated 2019 pension reform, while the courts are threatening to reverse the pension reforms of 2012 and 2016.

So this could all re-emerge in the near future, especially if there is another recession .... or if the UK tourists stop going following Brexit.

The Democratic Comrades Of South America

Argentina and its band of democratic brothers in South America ........

Democracy Worth Fighting For

...... you know, Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, or Cuba, have joined together to demand that the UK surrender the Falklands to the loving embraces of Argentina.

Old Friends Make Bad Enemies

This Blog has discussed the general collapse of good will between the Socialists of the UK (aka New Labour Party), and the generally (these days) 'right wing' governments of Israel. In particular we discussed the Anti-Semite accusations by Israel towards the UKs attitudes toward a Jewish state.

It appears that the collapse has reached a new low with accusations that MOSSAD used faked British Passports to kill a Hamas operative buying arms in Dubai. One wonders, if Israel had considered the UK a friend instead of as an increasingly 'islamacised' country, whether they would have used another countries passports?

Interestingly, the US is a much firmer friend of Israel and one wonders if the lefts stance in support of the Islamic dictatorships of the Arab world, won't eventually split the UK from its US alliance?

Anger In Rainbowland

One of the modern myths of our times is that the release of Nelson Mandela meant that South Africa became the tolerant 'rainbow nation'of many cultures and colours, at peace with itself. You would have thought that this idea would have been sadly disabused by now, but the liberal wing of the media is still intent on perpetuating the myths that it formulated at the time, via such movies as "Invictus" (starring American actors .... Morgan Freeman, and Matt Damon).

The sad truth about the 'rainbow nation' is rather different, and it may be a generation or so, for this other 'truth' to be acknowledged.

However this story from the BBC points to the grim reality of post apartheid South African life for the majority of the population. I doubt if Hollywood will ever lend itself to a movie about this alternative dose of reality.

Cross-Eyed Lovers

Do you remember that lunatic cleric Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan who said that women should cover one of their eyes because they inflamed the passions of men i.e. perverts like him and others of his ilk who need locking up?

It gave us a new meaning to the term 'give us a wink'

Well he has a soul mate now, in the form of an Arab country's ambassador to Dubai (who sadly hasn't been named) who found out that a face veil can hide an awful lot of sins. According to the story going around he has been granted a divorce when he was found to have been conned into marrying a very ugly woman by being shown a picture of her sister.

He of course had never seen her face in reality because he could be killed for doing that that ..... apparently after the marriage he pulled up her veil to kiss her for the first time only to discover that she was both cross-eyed and had facial hair.

Now I can understand not noticing that she had facial hair, but how could you miss that she was cross-eyed? Unless of course she was wearing a one eyed Niqab with just the straight eye looking out ........ errm.

A court has annulled the marriage contract, but rejected a $130,000 (£83,000) compensation claim for the gifts he had bought her as wedding gifts ..... the price of stupidity.

Allah, God, Jehovah .... All One?

The Malaysian "Allah Row" continues to rumble on as the Muslim Malays try to exert their power over the non Muslims in their 'unequal' society.

So the labelling of Indian and Chinese Malaysians as "pendatang", or 'immigrants', by a senior ruling party member, Nasir Safar should come as no surprise. The next step will be to call for their forced conversion or expulsion, even though they have been there hundreds of years.

They have introduced 'sharia' penalties for non Muslims, such as caning for a woman who drank a beer, arrest for young unmarried couples for "close proximity", and the cancellation of a concert by US singer Beyonce, all signs that Islam is now ceasing (if it ever was) to be tolerant of the non Muslims beliefs or lifestyles. The list of matters judged to be under the jurisdiction of Islamic laws has expanded over the decades, as 'Islamic Institutions' have been created.

Oddly, if they go the Malays would be bankrupt because they only get jobs because their constitution says that they simply be given certain jobs such as those in the civil service ...... all the wealth creation is done by the non Muslims.

However that won't stop the rush towards the persecution of the non Muslims. Just imagine the fuss in the Islamic world if it was non Muslims doing all this to Muslims?

They really are the mother of all hypocrites.

European or Not European?

The draw for the 2012 "European" football tournament was made:

• Group A: Germany, Turkey, Austria, Belgium, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan
• Group B: Russia, Slovakia, REPUBLIC OF IRELAND, FYR Macedonia, Armenia, Andorra
• Group C: Italy, Serbia, NORTHERN IRELAND Slovenia, Estonia, Faroe Islands
• Group D: France, Romania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Belarus, Albania, Luxembourg
• Group E: Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Hungary, Moldova, San Marino
• Group F: Croatia, Greece, Israel, Latvia, Georgia, Malta
• Group G: ENGLAND, Switzerland, Bulgaria, WALES, Montenegro
• Group H: Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Cyprus, Iceland
• Group I: Spain, Czech Republic, SCOTLAND Lithuania, Liechtenstein

...... now ignoring any football questions, and I may be a bit hazy on geography, but are Turkey, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, and Israel really European?

The map of the Caucasus region includes all nearly all these countries.

The map includes Kazakhstan (a Turkic peoples of mainly Muslim faith), and shows that its only connection to Europe is a border with its old master Russia ..... equally it shares a border with China, or a lot of Turkic states with names ending in 'stan'..... which is a sure sign that you are not ethnically or geographically "European".

OK, so what about Azerbaijan? Well, as the map shows it shares a border with Russia, which appears to be its only claim to being European. It's another majority-Turkic and majority-Muslim population country that has no ethnic or cultural ties to Europe.

Israel ...... well no need for a map ...... this simply FIFA's cowardice in allowing Arabs to refuse to play Israel, and not simply expelling them from world football. End result they have helped perpetuate the conflict. But in any event they are not European.

Armenia and Georgia are a little trickier because they have occasionally interacted with European affairs such as the crusades, but geographically they are next to Azerbaijan, so can't really be anymore "European" than them, despite being Christian in a largely Muslim part of the world.

Finally Turkey, a country that as this blog has pointed out before, claims its 'European' status based on less than 10% of its territory being in Europe, and a history of violence, genocide and aggression towards non Muslim and European races.

It appears that in the near future Syria, Pakistan, and Iran will be able to compete in UEFA's idea of what is "Europe".

Its a strange world we now live in.

Mugabe, Lord Of Corruption

The disgrace of Africa, Robert Mugabe is still wielding terrible power over the country he has all but destroyed.

His latest little scam is to stop the 'register of land holdings' being completed, because it will prove that he, his family, and his cronies have benefited most from the theft of 'white farmer' lands over the last couple of decades.

Northern Mashonaland Central province is a favoured area with prime agricultural land and the ownership of the 'appropriated farms' reads like a 'who's who' in Mugabe's government. Even within that corruption, there are further layers of criminality with many top officials owning more than one farm, which is in direct violation of the dictators own rule of "one man, one farm".

"They are registered under different names, relatives - even children" says one 'resettled' farmer.

However as it's common knowledge that Mr Mugabe owns Highfield Farm, in Norton, about 40km (25 miles) outside Harare and he and his wife have also appeared on state TV declaring that they jointly owned Gushungo Dairy Farm in Mashonaland Central, then its fair to assume that the "one man, one farm" policy is really just an aspiration.

Indeed one unnamed cabinet minister has defended the president's conduct, saying: "If it's true that Mugabe owned more than one farm, we mustn't forget he is the father of the nation. He spent over a decade in jail fighting for your freedom. Don't compare yourself, or even me, with him."

Keep Your Pecker In Your Pants Pal

The Story of the South African Presidents inability to keep it in his trousers has more legs than I supposed. Pres Zuma's reputation has taken a bit of a battering, at least internationally, with more stories concerning his large number of wives and the fact that this still doesn't stop him having extra marital affairs.

This has provoked much comment both in and out of South Africa with one MP suggesting that he should seek treatment for "sex addiction"..... shades of Tiger Woods.

Now his family have joined in the fun by rushing to his defence, with one of his twenty acknowledged children , the 27 yr old Duduzani Zuma saying that "We as a family are content with the polygamous nature of our household. It is my father's right within the context of his culture to have as many children as he wishes."

He added that "It has been most inhumane to be treated as mere objects of curiosity, sensational reports and headlines." .... apparently he is not married.

Well he had better get used to the attention because his father who has been married five times in all, most recently in January, is also engaged to another woman, so marriage number six is on the cards.