The BBC has a lot to answer for

Given these allegations it would seem an investigation by an authority higher than the BBC Trust is in order...

Fawning over the terrorists

If you've seen Steven Spielberg's film "Munich" you will understand this post. During the film the members of the Israeli assassination team are shown watching a TV interview with one of the surviving Black September terrorists who had been controversially freed by the German authorities after participating in the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The terrorist is answering a question when one of the assassination team, Steve, who is both stunned and disgusted at the spectacle says: "Look at them. They're movie stars!"

In another example of life imitating art, Steve's comment was the first thing that came to mind when I read this story in the Belfast Telegraph. Some people will read it and ask "so what?". But it's notable that once again the very people who have gone out of their way to terrorise others, commit murder, maim innocent people and who should be rotting in prison having never shown any remorse for their violence, are being elevated to the status of movie stars. People like Adams aren't heroes, they're responsible for a legacy of death and destruction because they couldn't get their own way through democratic means. It's sickening.

BNP leader to appear on Question Time

I can't understand why so many people have got so wound up about the BBC inviting Nick Griffin of the British National Party onto the panel of Question Time. The BNP is a legal political party so it's only fair that people should be able to hear the badly thought out and racially motivated positions of its leader. Some people are surprised the BBC has decided to extend the invite to the BNP but I'm not.

Every panel on Question Time is loaded with left wing mouthpieces and the occasional conservative. Putting Nick Griffin on the panel, a National Socialist with a hard left agenda on all major non-racial issues, is just a new way of ensuring the conservative panellists remain in the minority on every edition of the show.

Gordon Brown the member for Tripoli South

Seeing how the Sunday Times has reported that Gordon Brown: "personally vetoed an attempt to force Colonel Muammar Gadaffi to compensate IRA bomb victims because it might have jeopardised British oil deals with Libya"; and the Sunday Telegraph is reporting that: "the British, Scottish and Libyan governments connived to free Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds" it would seem appropriate to designate Gordon Brown as the Dishonourable Member for Tripoli South.

However, there is also an important question that needs to be asked. With the accumulating evidence showing that Gordon Brown is a two-faced liar and his government caved into to Libyan blackmail over trade and oil instead of putting justice first, and mindful of his call for British jobs for British workers, should there now be a rallying cry demanding that we have a "British Prime Minister for British People"?

Afghanistan highlights the two faces of Gordon Brown

Do you know what two things I dislike most about Gordon Brown? His face. The man isn't just incapable of telling the truth or giving a straight answer to a question. He's also unable to maintain a consistent position when he speaks to different audiences.

On Friday it was widely reported that Brown said Britain's military will stay in Afghanistan until the country's own security forces can fight the Taliban and al Qaeda without assistance, dismissing as the Wall Street Journal put it, a call from one of his government's defence aides to begin planning a pullout from the country. Yet from today's Independent on Sunday we learn that:

Gordon Brown has put the United States on notice that he wants to cut UK troop numbers from more than 9,000 to fewer than 5,000 in "three to five years, maximum", according to senior sources at the Ministry of Defence.

Our forces in Afghanistan are already overstretched and the training of Afghan security forces is not delivering the required results, but Brown's answer is to reduce the size of the UK force by nearly half. It's the clearest signal that the UK, having been effectively defeated in southern Iraq, is preparing to pull out from Afghanistan too.

Under Labour the size and capability of our armed forces has been slashed. Despite that our military has been sent all over the world to do much more in terms of operations with far less in terms of men and equipment. It's an insult for Brown to tell the British people that we're in Afghanistan until the job, whatever that might be, is done and at the same time tell the Americans we're going to run away again like we did in Iraq.

A Labour government put our men and women in harm's way without a clear mission and the Ministry of Defence failed them by buying unsuitable equipment for the task at hand resulting in deaths that were avoidable. The nation should be in a raging fury at the unnecessary deaths of too many of our soldiers, the incompetence of the MoD, and lack of leadership and weasel words we have witnessed from the government. It is a disgrace and a humiliation.

The government has corrupted our police

We've all heard the expression "lions led by donkeys". At the moment it's most frequently used in the context British soldiers being tasked with fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, without the right equipment for the job and a lack of logistical and manpower support caused by the useless Ministry of Defence. But there's a domestic version of lions being led by donkeys that people forget about all too quickly.

I'm talking about our ordinary policemen and women who are managed by out of touch and largely useless desk jockey senior officers. The always excellent Inspector Gadget blog has a fantastic example of senior managers focusing on what matters in their bureaucratic parallel universe instead of what matters to people in our towns and cities and the rank and file police officers who are there to protect and serve.

Labour's concerted effort to turn our police into target driven automatons is responsible for this. Police officers have been transformed from a force that exists to enforce of law and order, by investigating crime and arresting criminals, into a curious mix of woolly social workers and crushers of political dissent. The government has corrupted our police forces to serve its needs rather than ours.

Boris takes on EU financial regulation

It's a pleasant change to see a Mayor of London going overseas to fight for the interests of Londoners and London's economy, rather than going to Cuba and Venezuela to pay homage to dictatorial leaders who commit human rights abuses. Mayor Boris Johnson is going to Brussels to defend London's financial service industry from over regulation, an EU action that has been instigated by France and Germany who resent London being the world's leading financial centre and want to clip its wings for the benefit of Paris and Frankfurt.

Isn't shameful that it falls to the capital's Mayor to stand up for the interests of this country's financial centre? It shows we can't rely on our plastic Prime Minister who is too busy trying to give the EU anything it wants in the hope of securing a handsomely paid post in Brussels once he is kicked out of office at the next election.

Brown lies on economy exposed by report

SPIN ALERT! The Times is reporting an amusing story that Gordon Brown is to try to convince voters that the British economy is through the worst of the recession, and that it was the Labour government that navigated the country through the choppy waters. Apparently Alistair Darling said yesterday that he expected the British economy to start growing again around the end of this year as a result of measures such as the bank bailouts, emergency tax cuts and the fiscal stimulus package.

While Brown and Darling are trying to paint themselves as heroes who have slain the recessionary beast, a report from across the pond tells a very different story. The Wall Street Journal is reporting market information that Brown and Darling are hoping people will not understand or will simply not notice:

The U.K.'s economic recovery may take longer than expected, as data Tuesday showed manufacturing activity unexpectedly declined in August while lending to consumers fell for the first time on record in July.

If the economy was through the worst as Brown suggests, then it would have already started growing again. But the figures show that things are worse than Brown will admit and the economy will continue shrinking until the end of the year. Even when the growth that Darling is predicting commences it will be take a long time for the economy to recover the strength and size it was before the recession started. This is further evidence that Brown is completely dishonest and is continuing his pathetic spin operation.

Energy gap crisis looms large

Official figures show that demand for power will exceed supply from the national grid "within eight years". While the Labour government should have been dealing with this looming energy crisis it preferred to spend more time banning hunting with dogs, making it illegal to take photographs of policemen and pretending wind turbines are the answer to our needs. The Lib Dems have been inhabiting a parallel universe as this problem has got worse, with Nick Clegg previously claiming that similar findings were an attempt to scaremonger people and that the only challenge we've got is to make our energy generation "greener":

"The government has spooked everyone into thinking that we need nuclear by saying there's going to be a terrible energy gap - the lights are going to go out in the middle of the next decade.

"There's actually no evidence that's the case at all. They've raised the wrong problem in order to push the wrong solution."

It's a fact that wind turbines and other renewables are incapable of forming the baseload for our energy generation because they're so unreliable. For every 1GW of energy generated from wind we need 1GW of nuclear, coal or gas fired generation capacity standing by as back up. Nuclear is no good as a back up because it takes time to increase energy output when demand peaks suddenly. That leaves coal and gas. Politicians are frightened of the green lobby so they shy away from coal, and we're competing more than ever with other European countries for Norwegian and Russian gas, which is forcing prices up ever higher.

We've got to pay for our energy generation through our electricity and gas bills, so why are we being forced to pay twice for our energy just to have some wind turbines producing a fraction of the energy we need?

Labour have been a waste of space and the Lib Dems are living in a dream world. So the Conservatives are the last hope for presenting the country with a realistic energy policy that meets our current and future needs. It would mean ignoring EU rules. But if we don't the lights will be going off within a decade. It could even be sooner if any of the existing power stations develop faults. Tinkering around with renewables because they're portrayed as eco-friendly and make money for some businesses that have invested in them isn't going to fill the coming energy gap. The Conservatives have to accept that and push for more conventional energy generation capacity right now.

Obama's oil based contradiction on terrorism?

After the release of the Libyan bomber of Pan Am 103, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, are we now discovering the hypocritical side of President Barack Obama. On the one hand we see Obama denouncing al-Megrahi's release as a "mistake" because of the signal it sends terrorists about the type of justice they could expect if caught. But on the other we see Obama bullying Honduras into reinstating its deposed President, Manuel Zelaya.

So far the United States has suspended visa services for Hondurans and is warning that $135 million in bilateral aid to Honduras might be cut because Obama says Zelaya's removal as leader was not legal. Mary O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal puts the matter into context when she explains:

To recap, the Honduran military in June executed a Supreme Court arrest warrant against Mr. Zelaya for trying to hold a referendum on whether he should be able to run for a second term. Article 239 of the Honduran constitution states that any president who tries for a second term automatically loses the privilege of his office. By insisting that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power, the U.S. is trying to force Honduras to violate its own constitution.

What makes this all the more remarkable is that, as O'Grady points out, Zelaya is allied to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, a man whose example he was trying to follow in a strategy to become president for life. And Chavez is a sponsor of terrorism as he equips and provides safe haven to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC as they are better known. FARC is the group waging a terrorist campaign against the Colombian government. Why is Obama trying to prop up a key member of Latin America's left-wing alliance by claiming Zelaya was deposed illegally, even when the Honduran constitution gave legitimacy to the action?

Could it be perhaps that Obama thinks it would be a "mistake" for the interests of the United States to upset Chavez because America needs Venezuelan oil? Obama's Democrat friends have certainly gone out of their way to keep their ally Colombia at arms length as tension between that country and Venezuela has increased.

If that is the case then surely it is rank hypocrisy on the part of Obama to criticise the UK/Scottish decision to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi. After all, as we are learning, the decision (disgraceful as it was) was supposedly made in the interests of the United Kingdom's oil industry. In the circumstances maybe Obama should stop putting on his morally superior indignation. After all isn't this a case of what's good for the goose...?

Times survey shows party politics waning

Today's Times has a report about a survey of most parliamentary candidates by the left-wing think tank, the New Local Government Network (NLGN). The thrust of it is that three out of four parliamentary candidates for the next general election come from political backgrounds, are mostly male and have got little experience of the world outside their party machines. The NLGN says this shows the age of the career politician is set to continue. NLGN director, former Labour MP Chris Leslie, argues that politics needs people from a wider range of backgrounds that the man in the street can identify with if there is to be "a renaissance in civic involvement".

But the report and the survey miss a more important issue. They both fail to question why this is happening and what it tells us about the state of politics in this country. The age of the career politician is being cemented by the slow death of political parties. Parties are being forced to fish ever sparser ponds for their candidates because more people are turning their back on party politics. A note in the House of Commons Library about Membership of UK Political Parties shows the decline with brutal clarity.

(click images to enlarge)

Instead of casting around their membership for people from different backgrounds to contest parliamentary elections, the parties have been increasingly forced to look inwards and adopt candidates from their back office team. Young ambitious people who want to enter Parliament have in turn been forced to join the party machine and work to get noticed and earn the favour of the all-powerful who can influence their selection. Others have sought election as councillors, treating their terms as elected members as no more than an apprenticeship on the path to a seat in the Commons.

That's a big part of why the parties are becoming more remote and irrelevant to people. In 1983 the percentage of the UK population who were members of one of the main three political parties stood at 3.8%. By 2005 that figure had dropped by nearly two thirds to just 1.3%. As the disengagement continues the figure will continue to fall. It isn't helped by the party leaders all trying to camp on the same narrow piece of political ground so people can't see any difference between the parties and say they're all the same.

Over the years parties have taken more and more decision making power away from ordinary members. Party conferences used to be interesting forums for debate and policy development. Now they're just glitzy presentations where party leaders and parliamentarians talk at members, who are supposed to fawn over their wisdom and applaud on cue. The grassroots members of parties have been cut out of the loop and the decisions are now taken by the leader and his small band of trustees. All too frequently the principles for which the parties stood have been torn up and members told to accept it because it's necessary to win power.

If politics is to become relevant again the parties need to rediscover principle and start to oppose their rivals on ideological grounds instead of tribal ones. If people see real political opposition and a battle of differing ideas on issues that really matter, then the political parties have a chance. But this won't happen all the while parties rely on focus groups, spin and media manipulation. Unless there is real change in the political process the next NLGN survey will see even more candidates coming from the ranks of the political careerists. If David Cameron is serious about political reform he should use this as a starting point.

Gordon Brown's Libya lies exposed

When people wanted to know what Gordon Brown thought of the Scottish decision to free Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi from prison on compassionate grounds, he refused to say. In typical cowardly fashion he claimed it was a matter for the devolved Scottish Parliament and put as much distance between him and the issue as possible. Now we know why.

The Prime Minister of this country and his government of incompetents decided in 2007 to put commercial interests ahead of justice and use al-Megrahi as a pawn in a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal between Libya and BP. The punishment of the man convicted of the mass murder of 270 people was reduced to a mere bargaining chip as the Labour Prime Minister put the interests of business first.

Gordon Brown talks about his moral compass and takes every opportunity to portray himself as a moral man because his father was a church minister. But Brown has no integrity and no honour. His sum total is a self centred desire to be the man in charge for no other purpose than the thrill of wielding power. His premiership is limited to playing political games of one-upmanship, like this example of trumping David Cameron's trip to Afghanistan. He is completely shameless. He is fundamentally dishonest. He is a coward of the worst kind.

Joining the blogosphere

The political blogosphere is a mish mash of the good, the bad and the insane. Despite that I've avidly read many blogs for a long time and even left the occasional comment. I've told myself time and again I wouldn't start my own blog because of the time it might take to write it and because I don't think I can write as well as some of the people I enjoy reading. But things are getting interesting in politics and I've realised I've got more to say than I can write in comments on other people's blogs. So I've spent a couple of days putting a blog together and opening a Twitter account so I can join in the mish mash. I don't know how it's going to go, but here I am without any readers, ready to write about things that matter to me.

I'm a grassroots Conservative party member, but not the slavish type who agrees with everything the party says. It's the party that most closely matches my views. But politics is about opinions and inevitably some of mine differ from the party line. When that happens I like to think of myself as a loyal, critical friend who believes in being honest and standing up to say why I think the party's got something wrong. One thing that's certain is Labour and the Lib Dems have got it wrong on too many things. The vision of the former has dragged this country down and the vision of the latter would make things even worse. As for the minor parties, they would be even worse.

Well, that's me. Now you've arrived at my little blog I hope you'll find it interesting enough to keep coming back and point some people in this direction.