Time to Scrap the TV Licence

Why should I have to pay for the BBC if I never watch it or if I resent having to fund the many programmes which cross the line of decency?

Personally, I haven’t paid a penny for the BBC in nearly four years – since just after Jerry Springer, the Opera was screened on BBC2 despite tens of thousands of requests by telephone and email to abandon it.

They didn’t, so I abandoned the BBC. Cancelling my licence was well worth doing as I rediscovered the art of reading and began appreciating the beauty of nature and so on. I could sleep at night knowing that I don’t pay for the dumbed-down, out of touch with reality, debauched and debasing BBC.

This latest grizzly instalment of BBC self-destruction comes courtesy of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. The former is allegedly a comedian and Ross is as well known for being grossly overpaid as he is for his speech impediment, although it sadly didn’t impede his ability to shout out, “he f***ed your granddaughter,” onto Andrew Sachs’ answering machine.

In case you’re the one who has missed the story, it is here.

As Melanie Phillips said, “The issue here is not just the use of profanities, but the cruelty and indeed sadism in the desire to torment an unsuspecting elderly man and his family.”

“This is so far beyond the pale that one has to ask whether it was fuelled by either alcohol or drugs. If not, it suggests behaviour bordering on the psychopathic in its total absence of awareness of the effect upon another person of such abuse.”

At a time when people are calling for positive role models for young men, thanks mainly to damage caused by social engineering to deliberately undermine family life, we get Ross and Brand.

Standards at the BBC continue to plummet and it is hard to see a reversal unless people stop giving them the money they need to accommodate six million pound egos like Jonathan Ross’s.

Why pay for sickness? Boycott with me. You can still watch your DVDs and videos – that’s what TV Licensing told me. Especially if you are affected by the ‘credit crunch’ why not cut the umbilical cord to broadcast TV?

TV Licensing

Even without a telly, TV Licensing officers can get carried away by the power they think they have (but do not have).

I have just found this Freedom of Information request that states that Licensing officers have no legal right of entry without the householder’s permission (or a search warrant). Might be worth me printing it off in case the ‘enforcement officers’ try it on.

After a couple of threatening letters (I don’t watch broadcast TV, only DVDs), I telephoned TV Licensing and told them they were not going to get access to my home as in this country one is presumed innocent until proven guilty and that they could park their detector van outside all year if they wanted.

The chap marked me down as not requiring a licence and I’ve not had any trouble from them since. That was about 6 months ago.

You do hear about people being persecuted, though, and I would say that if you know someone who this is happening to – likely a soft target like an old person or a single mother – get the neighbours to rally around if the Licensing officers reappear and meet them with camcorders.

I listened to the broadcast of the Russell Brand Show on YouTube and it is amazing that large wads of licence-payers’ hard-earned cash can be spent on two ‘adults’ behaving like they are yobs with a tape recorder pretending to make a radio show.

BBC Complaints

Eco-Surveillance Agents To Scan Homes

Guardian
Thursday, October 23, 2008

Essential surveillance kit for the new green police: the Energy Saving Partnership has taken out a patent on Heatseekers, thermo-imaging vehicles which, at full potential, have the capacity to identify 1,000 properties an hour, or 5,000 properties a night, that are leaking carbon.

“Once the property has been scanned, a dedicated team of energy advisers will visit householders to show them the thermal image scan of their homes,” says Inspector Knock-on-the-Door.

That’ll go down well after midnight.

This press release from Reading Borough Council states that the city will be adopting the thermal imaging technology.

We also learn that “The revolutionary technology will identify households that don’t have cavity wall and/or loft insulation and are subsequently ‘leaking’ heat.”

Why not just ASK the householder what insulation he has?

I guess it is more Big Brother to have ‘agents’ snooping around in vans as part of surveillance operations.

“The Heatseekers scheme,” we are told, “is being delivered by Reading Borough Council in conjunction with the Energy Saving Partnership, thanks to funding from the Government’s Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) programme.

I’m all for reducing energy use where appropriate, but when I see things like “Carbon Emissions Reduction Target” I assume the worst. The ‘target’ culture has helped destroy the effectiveness and reputation of the police forces. I presume targets in education have a part to play in the rise of semi-literate school leavers.

I wonder what trail of destruction these targets will produce.

Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones

…and no doubt ID cards at a later stage. Of course it’s all to keep us safe from the ‘terrorists’. Sure it is, but who keeps us safe from the Government?

David Leppard
October 19, 2008
timesonline.co.uk

Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.

Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society.

A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.

The rest of the article is here: timesonline.co.uk

Victory for the Metric Martyrs as Government does a U-turn

Aptly named, the Metric Martyrs were prepared to sacrifice their livelihoods to stand up for what they believed in in their own country – being allowed to sell goods in British weights and measures without mentioning the metric equivalent.

After having been hounded and harassed out of all proportion by the ‘authorities’ for their “crimes” of selling fruit, vegetables and fish by the pound, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills said it was updating the advice given to councils to ensure that action against metric martyrs was “proportionate, consistent and in the public and consumer’s interest”.

Janet Devers, market trader and Metric Martyr, already faced with costs of £4,600 and possible future charges.

I wrote about the Metric Martyr Janet Devers in my article “Constipated by Regulation” as Fruit Police Strike Again in June. Despite no complaint by any member of the public, she had been charged with “using imperial scales to serve customers who asked for goods to be weighed in imperial measures” and “selling goods by the bowl to customers who saw the price and product and made a conscious decision to buy.” Both of these acts are criminal offences and Mrs Devers was convicted last week of selling fruit and vegetables using imperial measures and ordered to pay costs of £4,600.

This is despite the Vice President of the European Commission stating that it had never been the European Commission’s intention to ban imperial measures and that the use of pre-2000 weighing equipment was actually authorised by the European Directive.

September 13th 2007: two Hackney Trading Standards Officers, Russell Fielding and Audrey Lee seized Janet Devers’ scales (pre-2000!), assisted by Police Officers, including PC Andy Stafford.

Thanks to cases like this, Innovations Secretary John Denham is expected to introduce new guidelines “within months” to prevent local councils from taking traders to court.

Mrs Devers faces further charges in the New Year which will hopefully be dropped if the prosecution is deemed not to be in the public interest.

The Daily Mail set up a fighting fund to raise money for the cause which included a £110,000 haul in a single week.

As they reported today, “Now Innovations Secretary John Denham is attempting to stem public outrage by issuing guidance that will effectively make traders immune from prosecution.”

Neil Herron, director of the Metric Martyrs pressure group, hailed the “spectacular victory for people power”. He dedicated the triumph to the memory of his friend Steven Thoburn, the Sunderland greengrocer who died at the age of 39 as he fought a conviction for selling bananas by the pound.

Steve Thoburn, Metric Martyr, died suddenly in 2004, aged 39. He went to the grave a criminal…his crime was to sell a pound of bananas. The campaign will continue until that conviction is overturned or quashed.

Mr Herron said: ‘Finally we have a Government minister with an ounce of common sense’.

“It totally vindicates Steven and our stance on behalf of market traders and shopkeepers up and down the land.’ He added: ‘Who would have thought two guys from Sunderland would take on the might of the Government and the EU and win?”

For what it’s worth, I sell flags in yards, feet and inches and I have already publicly stated I will be keeping it that way, so I am especially grateful to the Martyrs. Some things are worth fighting for. If those who assume the role as an “authority” over us can stop us selling bananas by the pound, I reckon they can try anything to curb our freedom and way of life.

As Mr Herron says. “This isn’t about weights and measures. It’s about the determination of the state to impose its will on people, to show that it knows better. No one voted for metrication. There was no public demand for it. It’s never going to catch on. How many times have you heard anyone go into a shop and ask for a kilo of carrots? What sort of country have we become where it’s a crime to advertise a 6ft by 3ft bed?”

Comments can be left on my blog and donations can be made to the Metric Martyrs’ fund.

EU to ban traditional light bulbs, but at what cost to health and the environment?

Threat to Civilisation?

Several sources have been reporting the imminent demise of the incandescent filament light bulb throughout the EU bloc.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband seemed happy to add traditional light bulbs to the Government’s ‘banned’ list, all in the name of combatting climate change of course.

I could have started this piece in similar vein to an article written last month for World Net Daily (the US is also in line to ban the old bulbs):

“Amidst all the current financial chaos, amidst global pandemonium and the spiraling economy, amidst the dangers from terrorism … you’ll be glad to know that the U.S. government is still hard at work protecting us from a threat so vile, so evil and so dangerous that it dwarfs all those other petty international and domestic concerns we face as a nation. I refer, of course, to the incandescent light bulb.”

Maybe a tad over the top, or is it?

Natural News reports that “according to health advocates including the Skin Care Campaign, Spectrum and even the British Association of Dermatologists, fluorescent light bulbs are known to worsen skin rashes in people with a variety of diseases and conditions including dermatitis, eczema, lupus, photosensitivity, porphyria and Xeroderma Pigmentosum.”

“Fluorescent bulbs have also been known to cause migraines and even seizures in epileptics.”

“Approximately 100,000 people in the United Kingdom have medical conditions that make their skin sensitive to fluorescent light.”

“The groups warned that a complete ban on incandescent lighting for people with such conditions would violate the Disability Discrimination Act, and that employers should also be allowed to purchase incandescent lights if their employees have a need for them.”

Normal lightbulbs on prescription perhaps? I wonder what the ‘street’ value would be.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has studied the dangers of broken compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and cleanup concerns.

Some of their conclusions are worrying to say the least:

“Mercury concentration in the study room air often exceeds the Maine Ambient Air Guideline (MAAG) of 300 nanograms per cubic meter (ng/m3) for some period of time, with short excursions over 25,000 ng/m3, sometimes over 50,000 ng/m3, and possibly over 100,000 ng/m3 from the breakage of a single compact fluorescent lamp.”

“all types of flooring surfaces tested can retain mercury sources even when visibly clean. Flooring surfaces, once visibly clean, can emit mercury immediately at the source that can be greater than 50,000 ng/m3. Flooring surfaces that still contain mercury sources emit more mercury when agitated than when not agitated. This mercury source in the carpeting has particular significance for children rolling around on a floor, babies crawling, or non mobile infants placed on the floor.”

“Cleaning up a broken CFL by vacuuming up the smaller debris particles in an un-vented room can elevate mercury concentrations over the MAAG in the room and it can linger at these levels for hours. A vacuum can become contaminated by mercury such that it cannot be easily decontaminated. Vacuuming a carpet where a lamp has broken and been visibly cleaned up, even weeks after the cleanup, can elevate the mercury readings over the MAAG in an un-vented room.”

I have never bought any of the new bulbs, but I received two free ones in the post a few months ago from my electricity supplier, neither of which has any warning whatsoever about potential hazards or advice on correct disposal and both are staying in their boxes.

Did they never do their own tests or are we considered nothing more than consumers? Perhaps they thought that as infants we received jabs containing mercury-based preservatives, so a bit more of the poison wouldn’t make much difference.

Many drinks and crisp-type snacks aimed at children (and adults) contain aspartame (NutraSweet). There has been concern for years about the health implications of this substance. A private individual has conducted her own experiments with aspartame on rats with terrifying results.

Is this one reason cancers in humans have been rising exponentially?

I just mention this as we are taking into our bodies, one way or another, so many chemicals, ostensibly to make modern life better, but we often seem to end up paying for it. Consider some of the ‘e-numbers’ and their effects, especially on children.

Back to lightbulbs and the comments under this Daily Mail piece suggest that there are big issues with fluorescent lighting and health.

Patrice Lewis continues on WND,

“As an aside, it’s never been explained to me why, if compact fluorescent light bulbs are so superior, they warrant their own personal disposal facility to keep from poisoning the air, groundwater, etc. Nor has it apparently occurred to anyone that the energy required to conduct this specialized recycling of CFLs and corral the dangerous mercury completely offsets the potential energy savings over incandescents. The extra time, energy, cost and gas requirements for people to deliver their used CFLs to recycling facilities also counterbalance any individual savings in energy consumption. And how about the fact that almost all CFLs are manufactured in China under staggeringly hazardous and environmentally dangerous conditions by non-union state slaves?”

As for the millions of new bulbs which will be disposed of irresponsibly, what effect will they have on the environment?

This company sells light bulb recycling kits and warns “Each year, an estimated 600 million fluorescent lamps are disposed of in U.S. landfills amounting to 30,000 pounds of mercury waste.”

They also state that “It is unlawful for anyone to dispose of fluorescent bulbs as universal waste in the states of California, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin,” so wait for even more gestapo tactics in waste removal/recycling here in the UK via the EU down to local councils.

I reckon that the whole environment movement, outside of genuine do-gooders who believe everything they read, is about a) control and b) taxation.

I know I’ll be stocking up on plenty of normal light bulbs, but there was talk a while ago that council snoopers will be able to enter our homes to check what bulbs we are using.

I don’t doubt the Government will try this in the ongoing process of enslaving us. They must, of course, be stopped!

Why is Labour so afraid of the BNP?

First of all, I don’t usually comment on the BNP for the simple reason that it is hard to tell fact from fiction from the misinformation provided by mainstream media and other political parties who like to express their ‘disgust’ of the party to try and gain the moral high ground.

This piece on LabourHome by Mike Ion, Labour’s PPC for Shrewsbury in 2005 and occasional Guardian Comment is Free writer, begins:

“According to Jon Cruddas (Tuesday’s Evening Standard) the far-Right BNP is busy exploiting the present economic crisis and could easily end up winning seats in the European Parliament for the first time.”

It is always worthwhile to prefix BNP with ‘the far right’ to try and scare potential deserters from leaving your party.

Ion states twice that the BNP is racist, but gives no further information and seems to have conveniently forgotten about Harriet Harman’s racism against whites and sexism against men, e.g.

Harriet Harman in plan to give parties all-black shortlists

White men face jobs ban as new law favours ethnic minorities and women

Of course, what Labour is best at is bringing in ridiculous, unfair, unworkable legislation in order to set neighbour against neighbour on a whole range of issues. It’s called divide and rule.

We cannot let Labour get away with inferring that they are the party for a peaceful and fair society when they have done just about everything they could to ensure the opposite will be the reality.

Ion finishes by saying:

“What Britain needs is a broad anti-fascist coalition, a new coalition of the willing. This broadest possible coalition against the BNP must be constructed nationally, regionally and locally. It needs to involve trade unions, black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, faith groups, lesbian and gay groups and every other community threatened by the rise of the far right.”

White British heterosexuals can stay at home then?

He sounds very scared of the BNP’s potential to harvest his comrades as they jump from the rotting hull of the good ship New Labour before it sinks under the weight of its lies, treachery and bloodshed.

Could the BNP be any worse than Lib/Lab/Con? You decide!

The smack of too much government

First off, I must concede that I pinched the title from Tom Harris MP’s website.

Amazingly, I found myself agreeing with this Labour MP, who was until last week, a minister for transport. This is what he wrote:

THERE may well be a vote later on today on the vexed question of whether parents should be allowed legally to smack their children

The amendment to the Children and Young Persons Bill has been tabled by Kevin Barron MP, who also proposed the full smoking ban two years ago.

Should parents smack their children? Probably not. Are those who smack their kids child abusers, or even bad parents? Not usually. Should parents who smack their children be criminalised at the stroke of a parliamentary clerk’s pen? Of course not.

And should police officers’ time be spent investigating the complaint of a three-year-old who’s annoyed because he got a smack on the legs from his harrassed mother? Is that the best use of police resources?

Finally, is it the role of the state to raise other people’s children? Of course not.

Physical chastisement isn’t necessarily (or even usually) abuse. And an unenforceable law would end up being obeyed only by those who are no risk to their children and completely ignored by those who are the worst offenders.

So if we reach that particular amendment while I’m still here, I’ll be voting against.

As it turned out, there was no vote, so parents can still use reasonable chastisement without being locked up and the key thrown away.

As I commented on Tom Harris’s blog:

I only remember getting two major beltings from my dad, so I must have deserved them. Maybe a third would have done the trick, but I’m grateful now for the chastisement.

What the government has been doing is slowly-but-surely making normal things criminal to get more people into the ‘system’.

What is also absurd is that the same people want to make abortion easier still, like Mary Honeyball MEP and friends.

You can have your unborn child crushed to death and sucked out the womb, but if you let him live, don’t dare smack him or you’ll have the police round for assault.

I often wonder what can be excused due to mental illness and what is just pure evil.

———————————

This article from New Zealand shows one of the negative effects of a smacking ban: turning children against their parents…

An eleven year old reported his dad to the police for hitting him five times on the bottom with a wooden spoon after he was disobedient and about a week later he “clipped” his son around the face.

“Several days later, he was cooking dinner when the police arrested him.”

We can see in our society a deliberate agenda of divide and rule tactics and anti-family legislation.

I think pro-ban people are so overtaken with the ‘equality’ conditioning that they cannot see that smacking a naughty child is totally different from punching an adult.

Under New Labour, “democracy” and “equality” should be rationed*

Labour MEP for London, Mary Honeyball, has recently seen controversy over her opinions of the beliefs of Roman Catholics.

The MEP is a “passionate campaigner for women’s rights” and is a member of the European Parliament Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee.

She states that she is not “prejudiced against any religion.” Judging by what I have read about her, she is prejudiced against ALL religions as she seems to consider that they all preach against her feminist ideals.

She is a member of the recently formed Labour Humanists. She says in her review of 2007 (page 14) that the humanists “are, amongst other things, doing good work pointing out the problems associated with faith schools and opposing Church of England bishops having seats in a reformed second chamber”.

She starts her review of religion with the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks. This strikes me as a particularly dishonest and disturbing introduction in an attempt to promote her feminist humanist agenda.

She is a signatory of the Brussels Declaration, which calls for a secular Europe.

On her blog on 2nd October, she wrote:

“The Embryology Bill is an extremely important piece of legislation, to women and their families. It is contained in the Labour manifesto on which the party was elected this term.”

The reply I left was this:

Aah, the Labour manifesto “ON WHICH THE PARTY WAS ELECTED THIS TERM?” (My emphasis)

The same worthless document that promised a referendum on the changing face of Europe? (One of your correspondents used the phrase “a Woolworth’s Pick’n’Mix” on a different matter.)

Mary Honeyball, you seem to think that by believing Catholics should be allowed on the throne again makes everything all right with your previous comments.

You wrote on that post: “I am against certain dogmas proclaimed by the Catholic Church where they undermine and attack the lives and aspirations of women.”

I’m not a Catholic, but I guess you mean it’s terrible to deny a woman the ‘right’ to have her unborn children killed by chemical or surgical means or the ‘right’ to deny her children a father.

What more can a woman aspire to than to marry a good man and bear his children?

What more can a man aspire to than to find a righteous woman?

New Labour has been systematically destroying the laws and institutions that have protected family life.

Who wins in New Labour’s New Britain? Not men, not women and not children, because the natural place to be is in a family. New Labour and the EU have created tensions between people through divide and rule tactics.

I am not saying that everyone has always been treated fairly, that would be ridiculous, but to try and address certain issues by destroying decent society itself is beyond gross negligence – it is either wilful destruction or unparalleled ignorance.

Either way, I reckon there are many in your Party guilty of crimes against humanity, not only with regards to the unwarranted warmongering.

As for your insistence that everyone in the Party must toe the line on the Government’s social engineering projects, you are probably aware of Conor McGinn who resigned as vice chairman of Young Labour because of hostility towards Catholics and the pro-life movement.

As he rightly said about the Embryology Bill, it is “an issue of conscience and not party politics.” He also quoted you, Mary Honeyball, as describing Catholicism as having a “a “vice-like grip” across Europe, and accusing Catholics of “interfering in the democratic process”.

So, only people or organisations who agree with the Government are allowed to have a say in this ‘democracy’? You are reported to have said that “democracy and religion do not mix.”

When one considers the surveillance society and squads of state snoopers; fingerprinting of children at school; banning people from taking photographs; the many arrests of law-abiding citizens making a stand; turning of the state into a surrogate parent and allowing the ‘authorities’ to execute people like Jean Charles de Menezes, would you say the country is becoming more like East Germany or Stalin’s Russia? Or potentially even worse?

*P.S. Of course if “democracy” and “equality” are rationed then neither exists.

Mandelson to return to Government

The biggest news so far in today’s Cabinet reshuffle (a good word for a pack of jokers!) is that Peter Mandelson is back. Unbelievable, but true. He is the new Business Secretary.

Despite having to resign twice before from the Cabinet (he was cleared of one of his alleged misdemeanours) and despite his previous antagonism towards Gordon Brown and despite New Labour’s already disastrous image with trust, EU Trade Commissioner Mandelson gets a free pass back to Government.

The BBC reports that “Former Home Secretary David Blunkett describes Peter Mandelson’s return as a “masterstroke”. But John McDonnell is extremely unhappy, telling the BBC it will “ruin” the reshuffle and “undermine” the credibility of the government.”

The Daily Mail reports John McDonnell saying he was ‘absolutely gobsmacked’. ‘The whole Labour movement will be utterly perplexed at what the Prime Minister’s motives are,’ he said. ‘This is an extraordinary step backwards into the worst elements of the Blair era, to reinstate possibly the most divisive figure in Labour’s recent history.’

What it shows me is more contempt by the Government for the British people to reappoint this unsuitable candidate.