Only in Russia huh…

I’m not taken to swearing in writing very often, I will as a policy try to keep it to a minumum, but from time to time I intend to let go, so you have been warned.
Our subject is; some dickhead from the Press Complaints Commission, in fact their director Tim Toulmin wants bloggers to adopt a voluntary code of conduct. Alert, we’re in the territory of twats who don’t know what they’re talking about. To express such a view is to misunderstand the whole nature of both the net and the blogging culture. I won’t expand too much or I will be here all night. But suffice to say there are fundamental freedoms of expression that thrive out in the blogosphere. Yes some people are fuckwits who write such purile crap that it’s likely they’re only talking to themselves, which is probably the best thing. Equally, there are those whose writings are well thought out, come with the authority of good research and background knowledge and afford respect within the community. I think what he is trying to say is that if a newspaper libels someone or is discriminatory, they can be sued or prosecuted.
Yes, there are some allegations made against individuals on the net which are wholly untrue and should the victim of such false information seek to sue the author assuming it contravenes any laws either here in the UK or where the site is hosted (it get’s tricky then) then they are fully entitled to do so.
However, having been on the receiving ends of threats from LibDems to sue me in the past I would simply say this; and if you are wondering, it’s my personal code of conduct. Write what you like about who you like as long as it’s true and you’ve got the evidence to back you up. If you know this then you can safely tell those who threat to sue to fuck off and stop wasting your time. I can guarantee that anything I write has been fairly well researched or comes from the vast expanse of daft information that I have absorbed throughout my lifetime. However, to believe that someone is a fuckwit dickhead wanker twat is purely my personal opinion and is not libelous in anyway, and Mr Toulmin, today you fall into this category.

I’ll start by saying that I used to have a lot of respect for Trevor Phillips, but following his statement yesterday in conjunction with a number of other bits of crap he has come out with since becoming Chair of the CRE I’ve come to the conclusion he neither lives in the real world or is fit to be a spokesman for any organisation on the issue of race relations.
I’m concentrating on his comments reported by the BBC that we need to combat the far-right and the BNP. Up to this point I agree. However, one of his strategies to achieve this is to encourage the use of positive discrimination by local authorities to purely shortlist non-white candidates for job interviews. He also claims that a vast amount of talent has been wasted because black and asian people haven’t got certain jobs in local authorities.
Now just two things wrong here. Might I point out that to exclude white people from shortlists is to negate the fact that they may just be more talented and better qualified than the asian and black candidates. So from losing the talents of some people, we now progress to a situation where we lose the talents of others purely on the basis of race. Strangely enough, I thought that was racial discrimination. Interview processes for jobs in local government should be as in all fields of work, that the person best qualified, suitable and talented for the job should get it irrepective of their race, colour or crede.
However, what really annoyed me about this idea is that he in some way thinks this is going help combat the BNP. On the contrary, and might I say as someone who has spent rather a large proportion of his time combatting and making sure these bastards don’t get into power that he has single handedly just given them another years worth of ammunition. You see, if I was a BNP activist, I’d be straight to the printing press sorting out leaflets picturing the local town hall with a big sign over it saying ‘no whites here’. It doesn’t matter if this is never going to be a policy, but by even coming up with such crap he has given the BNP another stick to beat those of us who do truly believe in a free and equal society where there should be no distinction perceived or otherwise relating to the colour of our skin.
So a message for Mr Phillips, do the world and us poor sods on the ground trying to combat the far-right a favour. Piss off and keep your gob shut.

One of the things that will become apparent over time is my background in International Politics, to be more specific my area of interest is comparative European social welfare models with a particular interest in the Nordic system.
So just a quick post for now and a simple idea. We have a problem in this country when it comes to first-time buyers in the property market, I think that’s something that is pretty universally accepted and not open to political controversy. Up until now a myriad of different schemes have been tried out and experimented with to varying degrees of success. With this in mind I thought I would propose a different idea and get us away from all these complicated shared ownerships and the like for certain public sector workers etc etc.
In Finland, if you are a first time buyer, you simply pay a lower rate of income tax. It’s not sexy, it’s not complicated, it just means that the state accepts that being a first time buyer can be difficult so they take less money out of your pay packet. How simple is that?

I spotted this little gem today in the Guardian. Forget the main section of the article, it’s the bit about the Tories calling for a ’statement today from the home secretary, John Reid, on the safety of Russian citizens in the UK’.
Now this is presumably in response to the death of Alexander Litvinenko who as far as I can tell isn’t a Russian national, having successfully applied for British citizenship so perhaps there is some other reason for this call for a statement. Perhaps the Tories have turned over a new leaf and are truly concerned about the safety of immigrant groups in the UK. Or, they simply made a slip-up and showed that whether or not you’ve got a British passport then in their eyes you’ll always be a foreigner.
I was then drawn to exactly what was the point in asking for an official statement from the Home Secretary on this subject, and indeed, how exactly a comprehensive response could be formulated. Is there a special arm of the police that deals solely with the protection of Russian citizens, or indeed for every other nationality that resides in the country, fully kitted out with an army of translators, specialists and producing reams of data on how they are protecting foreign nationals in the UK? If this isn’t the case then surely it would seem the Tories think there should be as they seem so concerned over the issue.
This is of course the same party that not to long ago criticised the amount of money spent by Police Authorities to employ translators because of the number of immigrants living in the country, but of course that was just a cheap swipe at johnny foreigner and what a drain on society they are, the Tories are now the huggy feely party of British politics and have obviously changed.
Note: When I first penned this article, the following section was not in the Guardian article: ‘Although police are resisting calling their investigation a murder inquiry, senior MPs are openly using the term. The shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox, said it was unacceptable for any UK citizen to be murdered inside their own country, while the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells has reportedly spoken of a naturalised British citizen “murdered on British streets by foreign nationals”.’
Perhaps the Tories spotted their slip-up and had to do a bit backtracking. However the point remains, the Tories asked a silly question not designed to aid understanding or supply information but simply for the point of asking it.
Equally, if their intention was to ask specifically about the case involving Mr Litvinenko then they should come out and say it, not hide behind vague terms. It should be given the response that it deserves, simply, that our legal, judicial and law enforcement agencies are there to protect everyone within their jurisdiction and is not aimed at any one particular group in society and in individual cases as it would presume this is what they are really after, then the response should be; it’s a matter for the police to deal with and investigate, oh and how the hell am I supposed to know if the police and secret services don’t.

A little deviation away from politics for todays post. Thinking of Christmas? Possibly thinking of buying a computer for the other half, or even yourself. Here’s a little tip that can save a few bob in the process.
Sadly, most computers these days come pre-packaged with some form of Microsoft operating system usually some derivitive of Windows XP. Now most people will slavishly upon booting up their new machine for the first time, accept the license agreement and that’s it. Well what happens if you don’t accept the license agreement and put another operating system on. Well, legally it means you’re entitled to request your money back for the license of the software from the vendor.
So, say for instance you bought the most basic Dell laptop, currently on offer at £350, OK it’s not the best machine in the world, but hey, it’s a cheap laptop. Then you don’t use the operating system, pick up a Linux system for free and stick that on. You then contact Dell, informing them of what you’ve done and they send you a nice cheque in the post for £60-£70 (prices vary depending on which issue of operating system it is). So that means you get a laptop for £280. Not a bad Christmas present indeed.
Now just to note and a bit of advice. Linux can be a bit tricky to set up for the newbie so if you’re after a simple system that will just work without too much fiddling then I advise trying out Ubuntu as a first port of call. You could of course simply install it on your system, if you don’t like it then put Windows back on - there’s nothing to lose and maybe a bit of wonger to save.

Now here is a hypothetical situation for you.
You are a small industrial town. There are falling numbers in the infant and primary schools that surround the town centre. The town centre contains plenty of unused empty factories that sadly went bump in the 80’s thanks to a certain person. The council decides to close down a number of the schools and amalgamate them into one facility. Do you:
a. CPO some land and build a new school on one of these central locations where factories used to be, being of within reasonable walking distance of the previous schools, served by a plentiful supply of public transport, bringing people into the town centre who will shop in local stores and on the market and redevelop currently derelict unused sites that aesthetically look awful or do you:
b. Build a school on a nature reserve right on the border with another local authority where there is one bus route that doesn’t go anywhere near most of the catchmment area of the previous schools (and this bus route actually doesn’t go within a 100 yards of the new school), isn’t within reasonable walking distance of most of the pupils, is on a busy road adjacent to a successful and expanding haulage company with lorries thundering past day in day out and should some obnoctious little bugger come along as sadly sometimes happens with schools and sets light to it, it doesn’t even have a sprinkler system.
Sadly this isn’t a hypothetical situation, it is what Walsall Council has proposed is the best solution for the future education of the children of Willenhall. Oh, and if you were wondering, they picked option ‘b’.
Now perhaps I’m a bit naive, perhaps I know nothing about planning, sustainable development, social impact studies or public finances but for what it’s worth, here’s my thoughts on the situation and a little bit of background information.
From the off I’ll say that neither I nor anyone I know opposed the need for the existing schools to be amalgamated. Yes, some parents weren’t happy but given the poor state of some of the schools in question of which some date back to the nineteenth century, the small and continuing to fall class sizes, there is overwhelming reason to seek to draw the schools together under one roof, allowing access to far better facilities and I even accept that there was no justification for having senior management, maintenance etc replicated across the schools.
Now originally the school was not to be located on the nature reserve, it was originally planned to reside on the playing fields which form part of the town park’s extension. A rather large petition of which I’ll admit to having been involved in was raised that scuppered this plan. However instead of doing the right thing and choosing option ‘a’ the council drew up new plans for locating it on the nature reserve.
I hear you ask where were the political parties while all this was going on? Well, to be fair and for those who don’t know the area here’s a bit of background on that as well. Willenhall is a small industrial town comprised of three wards, Willenhall South, Willenhall North, Short Heath and boasts an adult population of around the 30,000 mark. Willenhall South comprises the actually historic town centre area, Short Heath is pretty much a very large housing estate and suburban sprawl as of which is Willenhall North, although Willenhall North has absorbed the New Invention area which boasts a small shopping area and historically was a settlement in it’s own right. Willenhall South has 3 Labour Councillors, the other two wards combined have 6 LibDem Councillors. The Tories to all extent and purposes are not a viable political force in Willenhall and only turn up at election times.
Right, back to the issue. As all this is taking place in the Willenhall South ward, the Labour Councillors were very active in the campaign against the original plans opposing it every step of the way. The LibDems put out leaflets stating that they had also always been opposed to the scheme. OK, I couldn’t resist putting this dig in. You see, at the time when the original plans were put forward the council was run by a Tory/LibDem coalition and surprisingly the Cabinet member for Education was a LibDem. So what did these LibDems who had ‘always opposed the plans’ do? Well, actually they proposed the plan in the first place something for which I stated very clearly in a leaflet that I wrote, including copies of the LibDem leaflet at the time and the cabinet papers regarding the plan. The result of this was to get the three Labour Councillors referred to the Standards Board, a practice that was very common in Walsall for Labour Councillors but which seems to have waned over the past few months for some strange reason.
So we are left with a situation where we could have had a school in a central location, would allow parents to walk their kids there, or commute via public transport. It could have regenerated a good section of the town centre which to be frank does look a bit crappy. It would have brought parents into the town centre area encouraging local trade and the market. It would have been in an area of relatively low levels of traffic and easy to introduce a speed restriction zone. But no, we will have a school which is nowhere near the areas covered by some of the exisiting schools it will replace, is situated on a road where a haulage company is based, destroys green space, part of a nature reserve and the home of rare newts. Means that the only realistic access for many parents will be by car, increasing congestion and pollution and does nothing to aid trade or have positive knock-on effects for the town centre.
Sadly another crappy mess foisted on the the people of Willenhall by Walsall Council. For me personally as a parent, the only saving grace is that this being Walsall, my son may well be of secondary school age by the time anything gets built.
Final note. I believe, after yet another petition raised by the local Labour Councillors that the council has agreed to cough up £15,000 to put a sprinkler system in. It is also truly wonderful that we are honoured with this little bit of extra money, as Walsall Council usually has far more pressing demands on its finances. I’m thinking half a million quid to do up a twenty yard long alleyway in Walsall, paying off staff who it abuses and forces out of their jobs and coughing up back pay to female cleaners because they’ve been discriminated against on the basis of their sex here.

Now I said I wouldn’t get into outright Tory or LibDem bashing without a valid reason at the end or a serious point to make. Reading through my last post I realise that I didn’t really get on to the serious point. This is in part is due to me having to finish up quickly because Little Penguin had woken up and needed feeding so I cut things a bit short.
The serious point is that the Tory’s site does nothing to help those who are in serious financial difficulty. Equally it does not suggest anything like a serious policy (yes I know I mentioned the word policy) to tackle the problem as it stands or indeed the underlying causes of the problem.
Now just for the record, I finished my education with a sum total of 12 GCSE’s, 4 ‘A’ Levels and went on to do a Bachelors Degree. However, at no point during my time in education did I ever get taught how to budget. I have my parents to thank for my realistic outlook on life when it comes to personal finance and it’s stood me in good stead ever since. I also own a credit card which I have used personally once in the last 9 years and that was only because my normal bank card broke during the evening and I needed a tenner.
So here is another bit of advice for the Tories. If you’re really serious about combatting the problems of debt in our society, and indeed they are significant, not just a financial problem but it also leads to many social problems, the failures of marriages and relationships, abuse, depression, drug habits, alcohol dependencies and even violence. How about some cast iron good ideas - I won’t even push for policies.
Should Tory HQ be reading, here are a few to be getting on with:

Ban the advertising of loan and finance companies on television who actively promote the concept of lending money for non-essential purposes. I’m thinking those that show glossy pictures of people enjoying themselves on sunny beaches then encouraging people to take out loans to fund a holiday. A holiday is not an essential and any amount of stress relief you obtain from getting away for a bit will more than easily be cancelled out by the stress of the loan you have to pay off when you get back.
Relax the regulations on credit unions to allow them to borrow against capital assets allowing lower rate loans to those most needy instead of foistering them on to ever higher rate repayment loans to cover existing debts.
Restrict companies ability to offer credit. It is sadly too easy to gain access to a plethera of credit cards and loans in the UK and restrict the credit limits on these cards. I currently possess a credit card that I could buy a reasonably sized family saloon with absolutely no ability to pay back the money.
Teach budgeting in school, it’s hardly a difficult skill, but amazing how many do not possess it.
Finally, and this is the really hard one. Seek to change the culture of want and consumerism that is forced down our throats day in day out. That propagates the belief in many that they ‘need’ vast quantities of consumer goods to attain happiness and fulfillment in their lives, that in some way we are entitled to things that we simply can’t afford in the first place.
On that, I will sign off for the evening.

When I first saw screenshots of the new Tories website I immediately thought they were mock ups, piss takes, no party that boasted the second largest number of MP’s in the mother of all Parliaments could possibly come up with this could they?
There have been some comments on the new site by fellow West Midlands bloggers who admit themselves that they don’t fall into the age category that apparently this website is aimed at; the under thirty so called i-pod generation. So, as someone who actually falls into this age category, minus the i-pod, can’t afford one and wouldn’t want one anyway (there’s a very good reason, I’ll leave that for another post). I thought I’d give my opinion on the site purely from the perspective of someone in their target audience. Utter shite.
Now far be it for a humble person like myself to criticise what people who are obviously experts in marketting and publicity can come up with but here are a few tips that I’ve picked up over the years that in terms of mobilising support for your party are well worth a thought.

1. Don’t patronise the electorate.
2. Don’t think that you can put an entire age group into one box.
3. Don’t assume that people aren’t clever enough to see through cheap publicity stunts.
4. Don’t call the electorate tossers… Tends not to go down too well on the doorstep. In fact, I’d quite happily invite whichever dipstick thought up this scheme to a very nice area called Heath Town in Wolverhampton, plant them on the doorstep of someone in financial difficulty and see what the response of that person is to being called a tosser.
There are many reasons why people get into difficulty financially, not all because they’re obsessed with buying Prada shoes or fifty handbags of which I’m not going to go into right now, maybe another later post but I’ll finish on this point. There is a section in the Tories site about who can help if you have financial problems. At no point does it say the Conservative Party. Enough said.

OK OK, I lifted the headline direct from Unity over at Ministry of Truth. For one main reason. Apart from it being another excellent article from Unity, there is one area which he touches on, that of the countries Romania and Bulgaria that are due to join the EU at the start of next year but deserves a little more elaboration.
The figures used in his article and indeed by the Express in their pointless headline that Unity takes apart are derived from the workers registration scheme introduced by the government for those East European countries that joined the EU in 2004. At the time I was of the opinion that such a registration system was discriminatory, treated other EU member state’s populations as second-class citizens and I still hold those views today. However when it comes to having such controls and registration in place it is rather useful that such statistics can be derived to prove the myth that the country isn’t indeed flooded full of wasters after our paltry benefits but actually they’re here to work and are contributing financially to our society. Not to mention keeping the buses moving in the West Midlands where I believe 1 in 10 drivers are now Polish.
What is also notable to mention is that when the registration system came in, there were significant numbers who signed up who were already in the UK without proper visa accreditation, presumably working in the black economy without working rights and all the protection that is offered to those officially working.
Now before we start going down the line of naughty foreigners working in the black economy, lets get one thing straight. So far as unregistered work is concerned I’d hazard a good guess that unlike what the Daily Mail et al would like us to believe, it’s not foreigners that are responsible for the vast majority of activity on the black economy but our own indigenous population. From that friend of a friend who’s an electrician who’ll do some wiring work for £20 cash to that bloke down the pub who can get you the latest film on DVD before it’s released or a hooky version of Windows XP. So before we start pillorying johnny foreigner lets not forget we’re the worst perperators of this practice.
That said, it is important to note that there were indeed people from these countries already working in our country, unregistered, not paying tax and at risk of severe exploitation. I’d also hazard a good guess there’s some Bulgarians and Romanians somewhere in our country doing the same thing right now.
So that leads me on to my main gripe. Our Labour Government, sadly gripped in a contest of who can be the ‘toughest’ on whichever group the right-wing press decide deserve a good linching this week, is looking likely to restrict workers from these two countries coming here, unless of course they’re the ‘type of worker we want’ ie. dentists, doctors, profesionals etc. If you’re an unskilled labourer who would quite happily work hard, sorry but you’re not welcome. So lets flip the coin for a second, we are Bulgaria or Romania, this big country that’s a hell of a lot better of than us is saying that they’re happy to cream off our most educated workforce that cost us shitloads of money to train in the first place but we can keep all the uneducated unqualified ones because they don’t want riff-raff like that in their country.
Apart from this being completely insensitive to these countries and potentially leaving them facing skills gaps in essential services, it’s also two-faced and not worthy of the high moral principles that I believe our party should seek to attain.
What it will mean when these countries join the EU is that those who want to come here to work but can’t get access legally will just slip into the black economy as a fresh influx of easily exploitable labour by unscrupulous employers. Oh, and they won’t be paying any tax either. In some respects it’s sad to see the Government take such a weak position and ultimately ill-informed. Anyone with a fair bit of knowledge of these countries might tell you that they are much more cultural alligned with southern European countries like Italy or Spain where there are already sizable migrant populations and if anything, that’s where the vast majority of these people will be heading, not to our little wind-swept island.
Equally, for all those Brits who are currently or planning in the future to pick up a cheap holiday place in Bulgaria (apparently it’s very popular at the moment, big dacha’s with a few acres going for £15,000) you might be running out of time. You see in Bulgaria, if you’re not a national or resident, to own a property you must first register a company there which officially owns it. Problem is, the Bulgarians might be looking at restricting this and work entitlement for us Brits. What goes around comes around heh?