Straight To The Point

...and I say good on them. (From the BBC). If I ever was to sign up to the Army, it would be to defend this country, or attack a direct threat to this country. Not to help George Bush's commercial interests or Blairs ego.

Why would anyone want to fight in a foreign country, risking their lives, especially when the occupied country doesn't even seem to want them there? Who's going to be happy at the end of it? The civilians that manage to survive? The families of dead soldiers? Or just the oil companies?

I've decided to log everywhere and everything I see as blatant proof of the Governments contempt for the electorate; everywhere where they show that they just do not care about the people they are supposed to serve (yes, you read that right - it's easy to forget that they are there to do our bidding).

* Banning protests within 1km of parliament. Even if the argument "in case of terrorists" were true, what about the rest of us? Is it okay for us to die? Which brings me on to...

* No investigation into the July 7th bombing.

* Complete failure to even apologise to 2,700 people wrongly labelled as criminals. To put it another way, 10% of all people barred from jobs were completely innocent.


A few "oldies":-

* The government refused to reveal it's legal advice that proved it was legal to take our country to war.

Tim @ Bloggerheads has a great rundown of the time when Brian Haw was ostracized, but here is a small summary is this blatant abuse of power.

This is what our Police Forces does for us: On Wednesday they confiscated Brain Haw's hand-held bell. When the Chief Inspector was asked what was going on, he informed Brain that that the police had acted in order to "prevent the bell being used as a potential missile". When police finally returned the bell at 3pm, it was found that the clapper inside had been removed. And they returned it immediately after Blair travelled past!

Over 25 of them descended on Brian at 2:30 am in the morning to remove his placards.

What more evidence is there that the police are there solely to protect Tony from the reality of what is going on? God forbid he should see a protestor.

I'm just amazed that the police didn't quote the Anti-Terrorism Act. It seems to be the cure-all for illegal abuses of power. And who's the threat to democracy now?

UPDATE - 26/5/06

The story by the Daily Mail - they say the operation cost over £7,000.

UPDATE 5/6/06

Oh, it actually cost £27,000. Don't worry though - Ian Blair will be looking to find out who leaked this embarrasing information, so we won't have to worry about such things in the future.

"There are a number of people who go on a diet" - Donald Rumsfeld describing the hunger strikers at Gauntanamo.

"I have no idea of motive" - Cmdr. Robert Durand, regarding the prisoners in Guantanamo who attacked the guards.

That last one beggars belief. He's either outright lying, or the second most stupid person in the world.

Well spotted Tim. After the Sun trumpets that "35,000 of it's readers voted to scrap the Human Rights Act", the now-strangely-disappeared realtime results show that 4 times as many voted to keep it. Another victory for distorting the truth, but good on the Sun readers. But why do you read it?

Backdoor Hospital Tax on the Ill and/or Needy:

* Parking: £1/hour at my hospital (what's more annoying about this is how are you supposed to know how long you'll need? Can you get up in the middle of an operation and say "'scuse me, I've just got put a few more pence in the meter cos you're taing longer than I expected".

* Telephone by-the-bed: 39p a minute for off peak calls and 49p a minute at all other times for inbound calls.

It's difficult to argue against it, cos it's a hospital, but nevertheless, it's preying on those most in need. Just like the cost of presecriptions, which seems to go up every month. And to add insult to injury, I spotted this in a BBC report:-

The University Hospital Birmingham said it received £1.5m in car parking charges last year - and paid its contractor Q-Park £1m to operate the car parks.

So two-thirds of the money don't even go to the hospital! It beggars belief. How much does it cost to run a car-park?

..is the Government itself!

Don't worry, though. I'm sure once we've all got ID cards, our personal details (even down to our DNA) will be in safe hands.

I've often thought before that the morality of striking is very dubious, and never more so than the current example of lecturers striking over pay.

Often, striking is the only way to get your voice heard when being exploited by your employer, or circumstances have got worse. However, to use striking as a weapon to gain more than you are entitled to is plain wrong.

By taking a job, you agree to work for a certain amount of money to do a certain thing, and whilst that holds true, striking can never be right. If you don't like what you going to be paid, don't take the job. It's as simple as that.

To take a job and then strike when circumstances haven't changed is basically cheating; people now rely on you, and no-one else, and to then suddenly turn round and say "I'm not doing it until you give me more money" is pure blackmail.

Okay, in this case the Vice Chancellors might have awarded themselves more money than they are passing on to lecturers, and I'm not saying that's a good thing. But to me, the lecturers sound like spoilt children pointing at another child's toy and saying "I want one of those".

Home Secretary John Reid has rejected suggestions London bomber Sidique Khan blamed his actions on the Iraq war, just because it wasn't specifically mentioned in any note he left.

If Khan had individually listed all the atrocities that might have affected his decision, it would have turned any "suicide note" into War and Peace. What Khan did say was:

"Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetrate atrocities against my people all over the world."

Isn't that clear enough for Mr. Reid?

A lot of people seem to be wondering about the "radicalisation" of the people who committed the July 7th bombings. Do they not read the news? Iraq? Guantanamo? Thousands of civilan deaths? Hello??

Sometimes the simplest answers are the best. The ugly face of Congestion Charging is rearing it's ugly head again, and the Government is wasting millions of pounds developing new technologies to keep track of when and where we drive. Excuse me! Can someone tell me why we don't just add the charges onto the price of petrol? The more you drive, the more it costs, it's as simple as that. And while you're at it, why not get rid of road tax as well?

It's not that I want the price of petrol to go up any more, but I'd rather that than the constant spending on news ways to charge the motorist. The main problem is, once you've bought a car and paid for the tax, MOT, insurance etc.. etc.., what's the point of using public transport? It's cheaper to use the car!

In a "Nu-Labour personal attack"-stylee, he does look at least 70. I think the Lib Dems have shot themselves in the foot with voting him leader. Could you really see him rubbing shoulders with other world leaders? It would be a bit embarassing, and I do think it's a major "subconcious" decision when voting - "who would we be most proud of as our leader?"

Yes, I've come out and said it. It should be mandatory for British citizens to vote in American elections, since decisions made by the US Govt affect us far more than our own do. America decides when we go to war; we are subject to American laws; and given that most large companies in the UK are American owned, what's left?

Like many others, I saw the report on ITN about Ms Vandenberghe, the whistleblower who revealed some of the truth behind the shooting of De Menezes. The truth seems to be a very rare thing especially in this circumstance. All of the following are untrue:-

• He was acting strangely
• He was wearing a bulky coat
• He vaulted over a barrier
• He was wanted for rape
• The CCTV footage had been "lost"
  

Someone like her should be given a knighthood, not someone who's donated money to Labour. She lost her home and her job. She didn't have to do anything, but she chose to because she knew the police were lying out of their arses. And she paid the price; 10 policeman invaded her home, she was kept ina cell without toilet paper. And then, as seems to be very common these days, she was released without charge.

To put it bluntly, someone high up in the police force has authorised the shooting of innocent people. It's thanks to her that we now know this.

It seems that Brian Haw has lost the case the Govt brought against him. They said he was "a potential security risk". Why? Because he had an opinion on the war that disagreed with the Government? I hope Brian applies for permission to protest there (which you have to do under our Police State). Not that I expect him to win, just to see what the excuse is; though I doubt they even have to give one, or it will just be "he's a potential threat", a definition which can be applied to anything.

Is it any wonder? What is the point in voting - though I'm not talking about the fact that politicians never do what they say they will do. I'm talking about the "first past the post" system. In the last election, out of people who actually voted, Labour only got one-third of the vote (they only got one-fifth of the vote from all those eligible). So more people didn't want Labour than wanted them, but they still stayed in power! The rest of the votes were spread out among the other parties, so no single party got more than Labour.

I've got the same conundrum next time I vote that everyone else has - who do I vote for since I don't want Labour to win? I have to try and guess who everyone else might vote for. So voting has turned into guesswork, which may or may not be the right answer. So what's the point of bothering?

Charles Clarke wants tougher rules on deportation. Erm, what's the point of tougher rules if even the supposed "soft" rules aren't even followed? This is just a blatant attempt to make it look like the "rules" were what was wrong, and not the imbeciles who should have been following them. The whole problem is that "hundreds of foreign prisoners have been freed without the required investigation into whether they should be deported."

What does a Home Secretary have to do to lose their job if losing track of over 250 (under his watch) criminals isn't enough? Murder someone himself? At least it gives even more credence to the argument that the Government couldn't organise an ID Card party in a brewery.