As so often, Mr. Eugenides gets to the heart of the matter.
No problem blogging if you’re Margot, of course: hell, they’ll even subsidise it for you. Just so long as it’s earnest and supportive.
Gawain tells us the truth about the European Union and they threaten him with a fine for doing so. Margot Wallstrom spouts any old soft soap propaganda and we have to subsidise her to do so.
Always the same, isn’t it? One rule for them and another for us.
It’s simply amazing some of the things that politicians comeup with. We’ve had reports that the government want to change the rules about Catholics being able to become the Monarch and also that first born daughters would inherit, not just first sons as at present.
But as The Anglo Saxon Chronicle points out, it doesn’t actually work like that. The government in Westminster cannot change that law.
For they have to ask all of the other countries (some 17 at the moment, isn’t it?) where the Queen is indeed Queen as well.
So not only are they proposing this in their fourth term (yeah, right, like that’s going to happen), they can’t even do it anyway.
A number of us pointed out a few months back that if there was going to be a stamp duty holiday or there wasn’t going to be someone had to take the decision quickly.
If there’s going to be a few months of rumours about whether there will or won’t be a change then that will make the housing market seize up anyway, the uncertainty. And guess what’s happened?
The British Bankers’ Association has now revealed the extent of the damage caused by this uncertainty. The number of home loans approved for new house purchases plummeted in August by 64 per cent, year on year, to a new low of 21,086. As it takes two to three months from a mortgage being approved to the completion of a sale, this suggests that the number of housing transactions, already at the lowest level since records began in 1977, could fall even farther. As the number of transactions falls, so do prices, as sellers have to slash their prices to attract buyers.
This could cost us all billions as bank losses rise, just think of the number of mortgages we own through Northern Rock. And all because the politicians who rule us don’t understand the most basic things about markets: what kills them is uncertainty.
It didn’t really matter whether they had a stamp duty holiday or not. What did matter was that they made the decision in the early summer, when the rumours started, and stuck to it.
As any businessman knows, it’s almost always better to take a decision, even the wrong one, than it is to vacillate.
This story enrages.
Sheffield City Council said it did not allow funerals to be held at weekends, except for Muslims because Islam deems that the dead must be buried as soon as possible.
Special treatment for a specific group or religion? That’s not how we do things here.
This part of the story is wonderful though.
Abdool Gooljar, president of the Sheffield branch of the Society of Islam, said: “I, firstly as a Muslim and secondly as a citizen, do not want preferential treatment. We are living in a multi-faith, multi-cultural society and we should endeavour to meet the needs of every citizen in this city.”
Mr. Gooljar seems to have a better idea of Britishness than Sheffield City Council.
I’ve long thought that Islam isn’t of any great danger to us or our way of life. But our reaction to it might be. If we ever lose that knowledge that as British citizens we are all equal then we’ll be stuffed.
We’ve already mentioned that “inquiry” (scandalous insinuation is closer to the truth) by Hans Gert Pottering into the funding of Libertas in Ireland. That it might be CIA money being used to spread the words of freedom and liberty.
A purely personal opinion is of course that that would be a marvellously productive use of both taxpayers’ and spymasters’ money. That is the point of the whole game, after all, to maximise freedom and liberty. There is of course no evidence that the money did come from such a source, just those insinuations. That Declan Ganley sells to the US military, that he funded Libertas himself in part, so thus….
But as Vindico points out, the EU funded propaganda missions to Ireland during the referendum.
So it’s perfectly OK for the EU to throw taxpayers’ cash at winning a referendum by manipulating the debate, but when the USA does this it is very bad. Again, for clarity - Brussels throws taxpayers money at manipulating the Irish referendum; the USA does the same. One is bad and one is good.
War is peace. Security is freedom.
Good to get the Orwell in when discussing the EU of course. But please, a word in Brussel’s shell-like? 1984 was a dystopian satire, not an instruction manual.
Health Secretary Alan Johnson wants patients to challenge doctors and nurses to wash their hands
I beg your pardon?
If we’re going to have a National Health Service, if we’re going to have a system whereby every family in the country is taxed so that the Government will provide the health care, isn’t it actually part of the deal that the government, perhaps in the person of the Health Secretary, tells the doctors and nurses what to do?
Like, for example, you’re all professionals with years of training under your belt so wash your damn hands?
Jeepers, after all, the germ theory of disease is only, what, 150 years old now?
You might have seen this around but if not, here’s the story. One of our own, Gawain Towler, has been banned from blogging by the powers that be in the European Parliament. Apparently, having your own opinions and expressing them is frowned upon. To the extent that you can be fined four months wages if you do so.
The full story is here.
Well, OK, we all knew they didn’t like people taking the mickey out of their pretentions but there’s a much larger point to make behind this as well.
As Lord Pearson has been saying repeatedly in the House of Lords, there are a number of peers who are in receipt of (substantial, up to €80,000 a year,) pensions from the EU and they are subject to the same gagging clauses. In theory, as has just happened to Gawain in practice, they can be threatened with cuts in or even the abolition of their pension if they do not support the aims of the Union at all times.
However, as Malcolm Pearson has been pointing out, those peers do not have to declare such an interest when speaking in the Lords: not even on a debate about that very European Union.
One rule for the common man, another for the Masters, don’t you think? And a situation we might want to change as well.
That’s a fair old image, that one at the top, isn’t it? Been used on leaflets with great success by the East Sussex Branch.
For of course we know that the problems we’re all suffering with post office closures are indeed as a result of the EU insisting that we cannot any longer do things as we would wish, only as they insist.
But things get better. Kris, of that same East Sussex branch, has been adding that image to those handy shopping bags you can see in the second photo. You can contact her here to purchase one.
Not just to carry the shopping home in of course (and without having to use those plastic bags to boot!) but a great way of campaigning while out and about. You will get people asking “what’s that all about then” and what better way to bring someone into the fold?
Yes, there’s been another dippy idea from a dippy MEP. This latest one is that blogs should be regulated at the European level. Apparently some take their rights to free speech a little to seriously or something. There are details here and here (be aware, that latter uses language perhaps more suitable for sailors and fishwives than maiden aunts).
The entire idea is of course wrong for this reason:
My “credentials” are that I am a citizen of your much-vaunted Union, with the democratic right to say what I like about whomever I like. Those are all the credentials I need, or will ever need. It is not in your power to withdraw that right simply because you do not care for the way I exercise it.
As I myself said on my own blog when this matter was first mooted. You can have my blog when you pry it from my cold dead hands. Unitl then, I’m a free person in a free country and I’ll continue to express myself as I wish, using the language and technology I desire, to say what I desire to say.
And if you don’t like my views or what I say well, diddums is the only possible adult response.
It looks liike Declan Ganley has the federasts a little worried.
THE RUMOURS and accusations of American involvement, swirling for months, have always been flatly denied. Now there are calls for a full and formal investigation of exactly who has funded Libertas, the policy group that played a high-profile role in pushing for Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon treaty.
Hans-Gert Poettering, president of the European Parliament, is demanding a probe into Libertas, its founder Declan Ganley….
Oooh, my, can’t have anyone upsetting the applecart now, can we? Encouraging people to use their vote to decide upon the future of the European Unikon. Wouldn’t be right now, would it, having democracy?
That’s what the investigation is about.