No-one likes to get caught by a speed camera - there are few more miserable ways to spend £60, and the suspicion remains that most cameras are about revenue, not safety.

So some wit did this to the signs in Essex:


The police responce:

'We are treating it as an act of vandalism. If we catch whoever is responsible, we intend to throw the book at them.'

Miserable, humourless officious bastards.

In the mean time, robbery is effectively legal in the UK.

A wedge is being driven between the law-abiding and the law. The police harrass the motorist and the criminal justice system fails to punish more serious transgressors adequately. The Police should listen to their rank and file and stop pandering to Ubergruppenfuhrer Tony and his Safety Gestapo. They should listen to the public, who want police to deal with robberies and provide a reassuring presence on the streets, not act as Highwaymen for Zanu Labour.

Finally after Several months of staying with Friends and Sleeping in the Woods - I have finally moved into a new Flat. Although some would say I own it, it feels like I have merely taken a Master - Slave relationship with the bank for the next quarter century or so. Having been a freedom-fetishist for my entire life, this property-owning lark is a double edged sword.

I appologise to my readers for the slow-down of blogging output. For the next 2 weeks or so I will be away from My PC, unpacking boxes and generally nesting.

If any of my friends would like to be the first to come and see it and Have a drink - there is a world outside The Big Smoke*. You can come out to see me!

*I used to get nose-bleeds outside Zone 2 When I was a Londoner.

I'm not being funny - and if anyone can furnish proof that this blogger is actually Iraqi, then I'll eat my words - but I'm not convinced. The english is a little too fluent, the opinions a little to guardianista rather than middle-eastern. Is this just a piece of hoax propaganda? There's no comments allowed, or I would have asked this direct. Nothing I've read furished any information that couldn't be gleaned by a knowledge of arabic and access to Al Jazeera and CNN.

And does anyone know what I am to make of this sequence of posts on the Blog EU referendum. Please tell me it's bollocks too. But if not, the radical islamists are waging a very sophisticated propaganda war, and the western media is lapping it up without sufficient checking.

Sometimes I don't know what to think. I can't trust any media any more - how am I to form an informed opinion? Bloggers are no better than the MSM and everyone's biased.

Help.

For those familiar with my blog - they will realise that I'm right-wing, but not slavish in my devotion to the corporate sector - they are respnsible for much more of the crushing of human freedom than even Government. Banks are the worst of them. An inflexible, profiteering cartel whose idea of customer service is to say "the computer says no".

I was told in January by the manager of my branch that it took 4 working days to clear a cheque and always has done. Today I was told that it takes 5 working days, "and always has done". I discinctly remember 3 working day cheque clearances.

To add to the insult of taking a week to let me use my money, they now lie to me, in a manner reminisent of Lennin airbrushing Trotsky out of history. I have e-mailed my bank manager, instructing him to read 1984.

Why does it take a cheque longer to clear in the UK than in any other developed nation When cheque use is declining at 6% per year? I'll answer with a question:

Who gets the interest while your cheque is clearing? The banks, to the tune of £30,000,000 per year of your money.

According to the association of payment clearing services, "We’ve received little evidence from our market research so far to indicate significant customer demand for faster payments." Which is clearly bollocks.

Banks are profiteering, because they can. They are allowed to hide charges like this because they have to make money and we are unwilling to pay for financial services. If you're old enough to remember widespread bank charges, if you thought they were expensive, now see how much you pay since it's been free. The same is true of missed payment charges, and everything else.

Remember this as a rule of thumb in financial services (and everything else). People need to make a living. If there aren't up front payments for a service, then there are hidden payments. Hidden payments will be bigger. If you are given the option, always pay up front. But people are stupid.

John Reid called for a "debate on immigration" saying "We have to get away from this daft so-called politically correct notion that anybody who wants to talk about immigration is somehow a racist."

Surely this is a situation (think about the last general election, or the one before that) that the Labour party is totaly complicit in creating. As at any point in the last 50 years, if the Tories raised immigration, the Labour party inevitably play the race card by accusing the Tories of "playing the race card". Reid's outburst will not change this.



Does anyone else marvel at the sheer bare faced cheek of the man? No wonder no-one respects politicains when they engage in such blatant double-think.

So at the risk of being accused of racism by a pinko, I'll say what I think on immigration:

The problem is that we have opened our benefits system to immigrants, not our labour market. This is entirely the wrong way round. These Poles, Czechs and others who so excite the "daily mail Tendency" are coming here to work and do not impose a burden on our servces as they pay taxes and are therefore entitled - they can be ignored or welcomed as a boon to our labour market depending on your view.

"Bogus assylum seekers" (Meaning Africans and Afghans, in daily-mailese) probably would work if they could, but aren't allowed to. As these people aren't allowed to work, they therefore have to be supported by the state while their interminable claim is heard. The legal process needs to be speeded up and justice needs to be seen to be done, otherwise assylum seekers' presence at the top of the council housing list will cause resentment amongst the BNP target voter. There needs to be a legal way for an economic migrant to get in, otherwise everyone will continue to claim Somali/Zimbabwean/Afghan/anyviolent3rdworldtoilet nationality and claim assylum on the grounds of imminent murder, as soon as they get to heathrow (which is the only was to get in at present). Failed claims need to be deported quickly.

Simple really, just not easy and I wish anyone with the home-office poison chalice the best of luck. (Except Reid - his lying has ended any sympathy I may have had for him)

Today is the Aniversary of the bloodiest day in the history of Warfare. Not the first day of the Somme in 1916 or Verdun or Passchendale - nor any of the battles of the Eastern Front in 1942 -44. The massacres in the worlds first industrial war, between the States in North America don't come close. If Livy and Polybius are correct (ancient sources often overestimate numbers involved) then Cannae, 2,223 years ago represents one of the worst days in history, with nearly 80,000 deaths.

This took place face to face over a front a mile and a half long and used only the power of human muscle to kill. Men were hacked to pieces by their fellow men.

We are no better and no worse than our ancestors - wars happen - but for all the focus on the lebanon - a war very limited in its scope, the intractible problems in Darfur and recent horrors in Rwanda and elsewhere show we haven't yet learned how to moderate ourselves. The worse the violence, the more intractable the hate, the more powerless the international community is to intervene.

"Those who forget history are condemned forever to repeat it." George Santayana

Imagine for a moment you are a businessman and you have 5 people working for you. They are all equally responsible, hard working and competent. But the male workers get all the really important jobs and the key client relationships. Clear sexism, right? Or good business risk management?

Maternity leave is 26 weeks and is compulsory for all employees- regardless of how long they have been working – in theory a woman could tip up 3 months pregnant, not showing and work for 6 months, before fucking off for 6 months on the company payroll. Why would you risk 20% of your turnover to something as inevitable as childbirth – especially when it can be avoided?

Now I’m infavour of maternity leave – mums should bond with their children. And I’m in favour of equal rights for the ladies – they shouldn’t be penalised professionally for fertility. So by this rationale, you need to have men be just as risky to employ as women, giving no excuses to employers to discriminate. This is the rationale behind paternity leave, and men likewise need to bond with sprogs. The problem is men dislike screaming brats, and can’t wait to get back in the office to get away from the squawking thing which appears to have eaten the part of the brain responsible for his wife’s ability to converse with grown-ups. Men don’t take up paternity leave. We’re back to square one.

TA mobilised service, at 6 months per tour, is about the same as maternity leave. Unfortunately Iraq and the ‘Stan just don’t provide the opportunities for the million or so men of Child-Bearing age in the British population.

We need a proper war. France anyone? Let's take back Normandy and Aquitaine. And all in the name of Gender equality.