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That’s what we keep being told about all these new Government databases, the ID cards, the NHS Spine, the cameras, the constant intrusions into our lives and the capturing of what we do, where and when we do so. Depends on what you’re trying to hide though, doesn’t it?
A battered wife’s confidential address details were twice passed to her ex-husband by his girlfriend while she was working in a Government tax office.
So, how many work for HMCR? 80,000 or so? And how many will have access to those ever so secret medical records? 250,000 or so isn’t it? And to the ID card database? Another 330,00 I’ve seen it said.
Going to be an interesting society where anyone who wants to beat you up, anyone who wishes you ill, anyone who wants to annoy you or interfere with your life only has to find one person out of 660,000 who is willing to them a “favour”, isn’t it?
Better to simply scrap these schemes rather than build a society like that, don’t you think?
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With students returning back or in my case, starting University in the upcoming days and weeks, Freshers’ Fairs are also kicking off all over the country as Societies attempt to recruit new students. This year, for the first time, UKIP will have a presence at some Universities thanks to the launch of UKIP’s youth wing, Young Independence.
What does this mean? Well, for the first time, as students are courted by Conservative Future, Labour Students, Liberal Democrat Students and other fragmented socialist groups, our Party will now have a voice on that battlefield as well. This is of course extremely important. If we are to expect young people to become aware of issues such as the dangers of the European Union, then we must engage with them at a grassroots, one to one, personable level. After all, despite Nigel Farage’s high impact media appearances, these appearances are sporadic and will act only work in the form of a scattergun, occasionally getting young people interested. Lets not forget that according to polls held in France and Ireland more recently, people aged under 35 are the most eurosceptic part of society that there is.
What Young Independence aims to do is build up groups of young UKIP members at University’s spanning the length and breadth of the country, who will voice an opposing stance on issues just as our elected representatives are doing for the Party. I truly believe that what the UK Independence Party has to offer students and other young people is something completely different and in many ways greatly rebellious against the political system in Britain and the class of people that run it at present.
A full raft of ‘common sense’ domestic policies espoused by the UKIP includes such student pleasers as:
-The abolition of tuition fees.
-A strong opposition to the occupation of Iraq.
-Support for nuclear power.
No other Party supports all three of these policies, yet they are all the types of things students want to hear and will support, myself included. When we consider as well UKIP’s principled and sensible stance on the EU, immigration, crime, education and many other issues, there is now much in UKIP for young people to sink their teeth into.
Finally, as I said in my speech at the Conference, the passion of our UKIP members is truly infectious. This is an exciting Party to be in at the moment as we represent a tide of public opinion that we must now attempt to sway from the ‘Apathy Party’ into our camp. With the European Elections coming our way next year, the future for UKIP looks bright, and it will become even brighter as Young Independence continues to play the crucial role of providing young people with a true political alternative.
Michael Heaver.
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Yes, we as a party say that we need new nuclear stationsand new coal fired power stations. Not because we specifically like them but because we’ll need them: renewables simply won’t fill the energy gap.
There are those of course who disagree, like this piece in The Guardian today.
The report models current UK energy demands across all sectors of the economy and assesses the potential for different renewable sources to replace fossil fuel and nuclear generation. This isn’t wishful thinking; we’ve carefully modelled exactly where and when we use energy, and how we could replace current generation with renewables. The scenario uses a broad spread of different sources – onshore and offshore wind, solar, small-scale hydro and tidal power. It’s true that the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. But we’ve mapped the UK for renewable energy potential and found that by distributing the generation around the country, using storage and managing our energy use intelligently we can even out the ups and downs in supply and demand.
Energy saving is crucial. The scenario requires us to reduce our
energy use by almost half.
So what he’s actually saying is that renewables won’t in fact provide the energy we need or want, they’ll only provide half of it. And this is seriously touted as a reason why we won’t need nuclear and coal?
As is pointed out in the comments, what’s really being said is this:
“A range of tariffs will enable
consumers to choose between high cost uninterruptible
supplies and discounted rates where energy
companies can control appliance use to balance
demand”
No s*** Alex? ” control appliance use “
I’ll summarise the plan for those that don’t want to read the report: they want us to halve energy use - not just leccy, all energy use, they then want us to accept brown-outs, grey-outs and blackouts as routine.
So there you have it. Even those promoting renewables only are saying that in order to prevent blackouts we’ll need to have nuclear and coal. That pretty much ends the argument really, doesn’t it?
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One of the weirder things about these blog things is that you’re not a proper blog unless you have friday catblogging. The origins are lost in the mists of time (umm, a bloke called Kevin Drum about 5 years ago) but if you want to be taken seriously then you’ve got to have a cat on a friday.
Thus, in a bid to be taken seriously, the UKIP blog offers you ninja cat.
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Labour is “finished”, and so maybe it’s time for Nick Clegg’s “new type of government”. Few details so far from Clegg himself, but for those eager to know how good the prospects are and how the new politics works, a few indications from Chris Davies, one of the party’s senior MEPs. “The Liberal Democrat leadership must change its approach to the next European elections or the party risks humiliation,” he said in an email to activists, later reprinted at conference. “The 2009 elections will see the Liberal Democrats lose seats in the European parliament unless the party injects passion and aggression into its campaigning style.” We can learn from Ukip, he said. “In 2004 it had a simple anti-European message, it courted controversy, and it used the backing of media personalities to secure publicity.”
Just a little hint for Chris. It’s not just the passion with which you put the message over, it’s also the message itself. We did well in the last euro elections not just because of our passion, aggression or media issues.
We beat you because our message was and is right. We simply need to leave the European Union and become a free and sovereign nation once again. And if you’re going to try and ignore that point and the vast majority of the British who agree then your future in politics might be shorter than you’d hoped.
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Turning to serious matters just for a moment we’ve got this news that Brussels has decided to increase maternity pay.
Women will be entitled to full pay for the first 18 weeks of maternity leave under radical plans being drafted in Brussels.
This more than triples the amount currently received by new mothers in Britain but would saddle businesses and the taxpayer with a massive bill.
Ministers face an uphill battle to block the controversial proposals, which will be unveiled next month and enjoy the support of most other EU countries.
Brussels sets minimum levels of maternity leave and pay, while countries may apply their own rules beyond these provisions.
Now this may or may not be a good idea: different people will have different views on it no doubt. The point is that this is only one side of a coin. The other side is the gender pay gap.
A few years back, when I first started saying such things, it was considered extreme, even swivel eyed lunacy ( thanks one D. Cameron for that phrase) to say that one of the causes of the gender pay gap was the length of maternity leave and the costs to firms of providing it. You might recall the stick Godfrey Bloom got for suggesting that no rational employer would hire a woman of childbearing age.
Fast forward a few years to now and we find that this is now a commonplace, an accepted truth in The Guardian, we’ve even had people at the Equalities Commission stating it as obvious fact.
Which it is: of course, if the law says that one group of people are going to be more expensive to employ then it’s obvious that that same group will be paid less.
What makes this EU rule making so infuriating is that we’ve got another arm of the organisation bleating about the gender pay gap and how we’ve got to do something to reduce it. But, as the above makes obvious, we can’t do both.
We can’t have longer maternity leave, higher maternity pay and also reduce the gender pay gap. We have to choose one over the other. And as the EU seems to be incapable of understanding that point it’s better that we leave and then make up our own minds, don’t you think?
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From our friends at the TPA.
Here.
Make sure you’ve got your sound turned on.
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When wheelie bins began to go missing from outside their homes, residents wondered whether they should call the police.
But when the thieves were unmasked, their identities proved to be something a shock.
The two men responsible were council officers assigned to secretly snoop in back gardens.
They were employed to find out which residents were using extra ‘unauthorised’ wheelie bins to dispose of their rubbish – and took those bins away if they considered them to be unlawful.
Since it’s the council that hands out the bins in the first place, you’d think they had enough already, wouldn’t you?
But there is method in their madness.
It insists its policy of one rubbish bin per household will cut landfill costs and boost recycling.
Councillor Alan Cottam, of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition-led council, said: ‘The council has recently been carrying out checks to see how many unauthorised bins are in the borough.
And why would they want to reduce landfill and increase recycling? We’ve no shortage of holes inhhte ground in this country, after all. Well, that would be the European Union’s rules insisting that we must in fact reduce our landfilling and increase recycling.
No one’s ever given a decent reason why we should have to do this other than we’ve been told to do so.
But at least if anyone ever asks you what the EU has done for us now you can tell them. They’ve made our local councils spend our council tax on peeping toms to see how many rubbish bins we have.
Well worth all those billions we pay to get that result, isn’t it?
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Charles goes looking for reasons to be cheerful in these chaotic times.
Another reason to be chipper came out of Brussels yesterday. The European Commission has agreed to raise the age at which cattle need to be tested for BSE from 30 months to 48 months, according to the meat processors.
It’s a little sad when you have to include amongst your reasons to be cheerful the fact that the bureaucracy has decided to stop doing sometihng so damn stupid, isn’t it?
What would actually be more cheering would be being free of the people who make such silly decisions in the first place.
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At a loose end tomorrow, Saturday? Around London?
Fancy a bit of rugger?
Why not pick up a ticket for the Help for Heroes Game?
Stars of old, up and coming youngsters mixed in with players who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq to raise money for the rehabilitation of the wounded.
Wish I could be there so if you do go, raise a cheer and a pint to our military for me, would you?