EU - No Thank You

Enough - I no longer ask why. Here's some Jacques Brel:

Blondes Rule, Ok?

A blonde was sent on her way to Heaven. Upon arrival, a concerned St Peter met her at the Pearly Gates. 'I'm sorry,' St Peter said, 'but Heaven is suffering from an overload of goodly souls and we've been forced to have an Entrance Exam for new arrivals to ease the burden of Heavenly Arrivals. It's the right thing to do.'

'That's okay,' said the blonde, 'What does the entrance exam consist of?'

'Just three questions' said St Peter.

'Which are?' asked the blonde.

'The first,' said St Peter, 'is, which two days of the week start with the letter 'T''? The second is 'How many seconds are there in a year?' The third is 'What was the name of the swagman in Waltzing Matilda?'

'Now,' said St Peter, 'Go away and think about those questions and when I call upon you, I shall expect you to have those answers for me.'

So the blonde went away and gave those three questions some considerable thought.

The following morning, St Peter called upon the blonde and asked if she had considered the questions, to which she replied, 'I have.'

'Well then,' said St Peter, 'Which two days of the week start with the letter T?'

The blonde said, 'Today and Tomorrow.'

St Peter pondered this answer for some time, and decided that, indeed, the answer can be applied to the question.

'Well then,' he said, 'can I have your answer to the second of the three questions? How many seconds in a year?'

The Blonde replied, 'Twelve!'

'Only twelve?' exclaimed St Peter, 'How did you arrive at that figure?'

'Easy,' said the blonde, 'there's the second of January, the second of February, right through to the second of December, giving a total of twelve seconds.'

St Peter looked at the blonde and said, 'I need some time to consider your answer before I can give you a decision.' He walked away shaking his head.

A short time later, St Peter returned to the Blonde. 'I'll allow the answer to stand, but you need to get the third and final question absolutely correct to be allowed into Heaven. Now, can you tell me the answer to the name of the swagman in Waltzing Matilda?'

The blonde replied: 'Of the three questions, I found this the easiest to answer.'

'Really!' exclaimed St Peter, 'And what is the answer?'

'It's Andy.'

'Andy??'

'Yes, Andy,' said the blonde.

This perplexed St Peter and he paced this way and that, deliberating the answer. Finally, he couldn't stand the suspense any longer, and turning to the blonde, he asked, 'How in God's name did you arrive at *that* answer?'

'Easy,' said the blonde, 'Andy sat, Andy watched, Andy waited till his billy boiled.'

And the blonde entered Heaven ...


More of Arthur Rackham's work and life here.

The Queen's Speech: Summary

Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was a kingdom - a nation which is shortly to disappear from maps leaving barely a trace and an echoing squeak. By many it was regarded as a beautiful, romantic land, with castles, palaces, a place of forests & fairy-tales; myths & legends. Words like honour & integrity, work ethic & self-respect were held in deep regard.

Fast forward and, like so many actors in a presentation of 'Ruritania Resurrected', members of the Houses of Commons and Lords donned their finest attitudes and turned out en masse for a walk-on part in today's pageantry. Thumbed-up noses, to the right, quick march.

It really was an unbelievable spectacle, one which I've enjoyed over the years, but this year there was a poignancy and more than a touch of regret. The preening hypocrisy on display was tear-jerking. There was no pride, except in self, no honesty, no integrity.

The Queen read out the government's statement with half-swallowed gulps, sighs and hesitation. Will we ever know if she put up a fight against giving the Royal Assent to Lisbon? It's hard to believe she didn't know what was going on or hasn't been complicit but I really wish she'd been able to simply tear up the speech, spit in their eyes and process back to the Palace, leaving the pompous Brown and his government of the not-so-Righteous in disarray.

The  speech itself was very short in comparison with previous years and the main points were:

'Enhancing' governance of the financial sector
Legislation to halve the budget deficit
Widening the provision of free personal care for those in highest need
Legislation guaranteeing to raise educational standards
'Protecting' communities by making parents take responsibility for their children's behaviour
Amending the communications infrastructure to 'make it fit for the digital age'
Supporting carbon capture and storage and helping 'vulnerable households with energy bills'
Protecting communities from flooding and protecting water supplies
Addressing differences in pay between men and women
Ensuring agency workers are treated equally
Pushing on with constitutional reform
Strengthening the bribery law
Banning cluster bombs

Two draft bills were also announced:

To reform the House of Lords and make it substantially or wholly elected
To make binding the commitment for 0.7% of government spending from 2013 to be on International Development.

To all intent and purposes, it was an enormous waste of money.  Sound & fury signifying nothing - well, not even that really, there is plenty of sound but no fury, no guts in this dying government.  It was a worthless, graceless speech and there is very little chance of any legislation being enacted before the next GE - for which we can give thanks for small mercies.  After all, how scorched does the earth have to be before it's acknowledged as being well and truly scorched?  Or, perhaps, the government is just salting the ground behind them.

*Live Chat: State Opening of Parliament*

At 11am with Swiss Bob & Co at The Daily Politics
Live Parliament - the State Opening & Queen's Speech

TPA Cinema Advert

Extracts from Lee Rotherham's book, 'Britain without the European Union', here.
Here's Dan Hannan talking to the TPA:


 Now that the Lisbon Treaty will take legal effect on 1st December the comrades see no need for subterfuge; here's more 'unity in diversity' bollox from front-runner for EC President, Belgian PM Van Rompuy:

The Daily Telegraph can disclose that the Flemish Christian Democrat was an architect of his party’s federalist manifesto which calls for a massive extension of the presence of the EU in town halls, schools and sporting events.
The manifesto says: “Apart from the euro, also other national symbols need to be replaced by European symbols (licence plates, identity cards, presence of more EU flags, one time EU sports events, …).”

O/T: Some of you might want to join in with this: #SaySorryBrown, from Tim Montgomerie at Con Home.  Here are some of the tweets so far:
#saysorrybrown for surrendering the common law and signing away the Queen's sovereignty without an electoral mandate of any kind
#saysorrybrown for your shameful treatment of the Gurkhas
#saysorrybrown for the highest rate of youth unemployment
#saysorryBrown for failing to equip our soldiers properly
#saysorrybrown for 111 tax rises when your party promised us none!
#saysorrybrown for presiding over declining social mobility, worsening poverty and widening inequality
#saysorryBrown for claiming Britain was 'best placed' to deal with the recession
#saysorrybrown for more climbdowns than Sir Edmund Hilary
#saysorryBrown For wrecking my pension plans & deterring millions of others from saving
#saysorrybrown For not asking the British people for permission to ratify the Lisbon Treaty
#saysorrybrown For creating a climate of smears and innuendo at 10 Downing Street
#saysorryBrown Killing off the RAF
#saysorryBrown For squandering a strong economy and reducing our country to a basket case

The Fabian Society & The Tavistock Institute

Basic bite-size info on the Fabians & Communitarianism:



More posts tagged 'Fabians' here - some are just examples of Fabian influence but others have more in-depth info.

Here's some more info on the Tavistock Institute:

Orff: Musica Poetica

Sunday Reflection

I Almost Forgot

It's Friday the 13th:

With thanks to Dazed & Confused for the picture that speaks a thousand words.

I'll Be Back...

... once I'm home in England - I'll still try to do occasional round-ups and Sunday Reflections in the meantime.

Thank you so much to everyone who's commented and made this blog better than it deserved.

Who's The Daddy?

(Click to enlarge)

The following are all replies that Manchester women have written on Child Support Agency Forms in the section for listing "father's details."   Believe it or not, they're all genuine excerpts from the forms, apparently.

1. Regarding the identity of the father of my twins, Makeeshia was fathered by Maclearndon McKinley I am unsure as to the identity of the father of Marlinda, but I believe that she was conceived on the same night.

2. I am unsure, as to the identity of the father of my child as I was being sick out of a window when taken unexpectedly from behind. I can provide you with a list of names of men that I think were at the party if this helps.

3. I do not know the name of the father of my little girl. She was conceived at a party at 360 East Bolton Avenue where I had sex with a man I met that night. I do remember that the sex was so good that I fainted. If you do manage to track down the father, can you please send me his phone number? Thanks.

4. I don't know the identity of the father of my daughter. He drives a BMW that now has a hole made by my stiletto in one of the door panels. Perhaps you can contact BMW service stations in this area and see if he's had it replaced.

5. I have never had sex with a man. I am still a Virginian. I am awaiting a letter from the Pope confirming that my son's conception was ejaculate and that he is the Saver risen again.

6. I cannot tell you the name of Alleshia dad as he informs me that to do so would blow his cover and that would have cataclysmic implications for the economy. I am torn between doing right by you and right by the country . Please advise.

7.Tyrone Hairston is the father of child A..  If you do catch up with him, can you ask him what he did with my AC/DC CDs? Child B who was also borned at the same time.... well, I don't have clue.

8. From the dates it seems that my daughter was conceived at Euro-Disney World; maybe it really is the Magic Kingdom.

9. So much about that night is a blur. The only thing that I remember for sure is Gordon Ramsey did a programme about eggs earlier in the evening. If I had stayed in and watched more TV rather than going to the party at 56 Miller St, mine might have remained unfertilized.

10. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of my baby, after all, like when you eat a can of beans you can't be sure which one made you fart.

Guess what? I don't think it's funny at all.  I know it's a 'funny' email doing the rounds but twelve and a half years of Labour govt has wreaked such chaos on this nation that I don't know if the damage can ever be undone.

No-one's asking to go back to 1927 or even 1978; all we want is one law for all and everyone equal under it -  all religious faiths, all genders, all abilities - and that includes MPs as well.  We don't want skewed social engineering.  There are too many laws saying what we can do and that's  the European way of Corpus Juris, with immunity for the elite.  Too many rights have been taken from us in the cause of 'harmonisation'.

It's noticeable that when Brown made his statement that it wasn't racist to question immigration he turned it into a question of 'what it means to be British'; what are 'British vahl-yews'? Fuck you Brown, and the rest of your Party and think-tanks.  I know what it means to be British you despicable f@cktard.  Don' t you dare lecture me, you with your 'mis-speak' of their/our Armed Forces; you with your global economic eye, you with your self-aggrandisement, you, who thinks the pain borne by this country is a pain to be borne for the sake of a New World Order.  Fuck you Gordon Brown.

Thank You BFI

I'm still suffering from the after-effects of the lurgi - at first I thought it was just an extreme reaction to the Czechs ratifying the Lisbon Treaty but it seems it was just a common or garden vomiting bug instead (how was I to know the difference?)

One of my boys emailed me this YouTube link and I thought it could be interesting for history lovers. It's a silent film and there's no backing music so you can choose your own.  Eighty-two years ago London was the final stop in a marathon journey around Britain filmed in early colour as a series of cinema travelogues. I find the wording of the captions as fascinating as the scenes they describe, innit m8?

PMQs: For The Record

I've just caught up with yesterday's PMQs (yes, I did record it ... sad) and it was an angry, rowdy affair - mostly from the Labour backbenchers who, in Bercow's words, were 'excitable' and there was some barracking of the PM when he reeled off youth unemployment figures.  Usually the heckling is fairly polite with MPs of all sides opting for a collective intake of breath or cries of 'Shame, Shame' but this was something quite different.

It happened at about six minutes in when Brown said, in response to Cameron's question, "I have to say about the figures that he quotes on youth employment as well that 250,000 of the number he quotes are full-time students looking for part-time work and they are not fully unemployed [interruption]... "

Brown's Honourable Mention: "I've spoken to President Obama and I expect him to announce in a few days what his numbers for Afghanistan will be." Didn't the White House come out almost immediately and say there'd be no definite announcement for, 'possibly weeks'? No corroborating back-up there from Obama.

Brown's Dishonourable Mention, about 15mins in: In response to a question from Shona McIsaac(Lab, Cleethorpes): "... an outstanding tribute of the British people to their - er, our - Armed Forces."

Not earth-shattering but I just wanted to record that last 'mis-speak' - I can't find a video - because I think it shows where Brown's head & heart are - and they're not with our Armed Forces.

Coroners & Justice Ping-Pong

I'm still rather woozy and that must explain why it took three readings of this article on the BBC website: 'New defeat over homophobia laws' to make sense of it.

Nowhere does it mention that it's part of the EU's Equal Treatment Directive.

The defence provides protection for "discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practice" to the law on incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation.
Lord Waddington said his amendment did not weaken the offence of stirring up homophobic hatred but paralleled "that in the religious hatred offence".

The bill is going back to the HoC today.

More here: Equal Treatment Directive

Lobby Reporting Shake-up

Baron Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham; First Secretary of State; Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills; President of the Board of Trade, and Lord President of the Council will soon add another title to his war-chest.

"... In a move that will see yet more power passed to the First Secretary, Lord Mandelson is expected to be increasingly used by Downing Street as the minister put up to “sell” the Government's message to the public ... also make history as the first minister to make weekly televised briefings. They would be broadcast direct through the Downing Street website ... the opening up of Westminster reporting to a wider audience is also a reflection of the changing way the journalism works in the new multi-media age, Downing Street said."

Minister of Public Enlightenment & Propaganda