BNP Egg Humiliation

There's been very little to laugh about in the news recently, but the sight of BNP leader, Nick Griffin, receiving a richly deserved egging has got to be the highlight of the week.

I understand the frustrations that lead people (albeit fairly thick and / or unpleasant people) to vote for the BNP, particularly when, in times of real economic hardship, we are finally presented with inescapable proof that our elected representatives are little more than self-serving scroungers. They wreck the economy, borrow cash by the truckload, admit that taxes will need to go through the roof to pay it off, and then are caught out fiddling their own expenses.

OUR money lining THEIR pockets, while we get to do a real job to pay for it. Infuriating, even to those of us who have long suspected that the entire system was bent. But the BNP is not the answer. No matter how they dress up their poison in superficially reasonable arguments, it's still the same old poison.

You only have to check out the picture gallery and video in this Daily Mirror article (or in just about every other news source) to see the truth behind the BNP. Mr Griffin's pompous swagger as he begins to address the gathered ladies and gentlemen of the press, his initially superscillious sneers and then increasingly nervous squints at the egg-lobbing protesters and his massively undignified high-speed waddle to safety amid a bunch of sinister-looking minder types say it all.

The BNP may have acquired more hair than the average skinhead, and learned to wear a suit (possibly only after intensive training!) for the cameras, but underneath it all lurks the classic fascist - brave and uncompromising when they feel secure, but a scampering, quivering coward when faced with even a little opposition.

For all its apparent success, the BNP remains a protest vote. Very, very few people would really want to see this disgusting group holding any significant power within the UK. BUT, if the leaders of the main parties don't start looking very, very carefully at the issues the BNP has hijacked in order to appear respectable, it might happen almost by accident.

Needless to say, that would be a bad day for everyone in the UK, and one I hope never to see. There's even a fairly vociferous argument in favour of banning the BNP altogether, but I don't think that's viable. No, the best way to see off this vicious apology for a democratic political party is for the other parties to offer a better alternative that really appeals to the ordinary man and woman in the street.

We care about things like post office closures, British jobs for British workers and the undue influence of the EU in our affairs. We want politicians to get their snouts out of the trough and start doing what they're paid for. Not much chance of that with Gordon Brown Trousers clinging on to power, but maybe, just maybe, Crazy Cameron can get his head around the idea - before we end up with Nick Griffin's mob running the country.

Billy Seggars.

The Naked Gnome Caper

What is it about garden gnomes that so gets on the nerves of a certain, small-minded kind of person? I'm starting to think that, in not particularly liking or disliking the things beyond considering them to be a non-functional waste of space, I'm in a minority of one.

Last November, with a delicious irony that I couldn't resist mocking, the Diocese of Bath and Wells banned gnomes and similar "unnatural creatures" from its churchyards, while retaining the usual plethora of equally unnatural angels etc.

Today it's the turn of Bromsgrove District Council, in the West Midlands. According to the Telegraph, this bustling, go-getting local authority has so effectively solved all its local service difficulties as to have enough time on its hands to address the horrifying social impact of ... naked garden gnomes.

It seems that Sandra Smith, of Hunnington, has, for the past 15 years, kept three unclothed garden gnomes in her front garden. In all that time, they haven't bothered anyone, and have, allegedly been nothing more than a bit of fun that have raised a chuckle amongst children and adults alike. That may well be so, although I am saddened that anyone should be so devoid of entertainment as to find garden gnomes amusing, with, or without clothing.

Now, however, a neighbour has complained that the starkers statuary is upsetting her brats. The neighbour - who remains anonymous in the Telegraph article, I suspect out of realisation that she's going to sound like a complete and utter clown - says of the offending gnomes, "They are childish and I think it's pathetic that they are in a front garden in full view of everyone."

Childish and pathetic? Yes, quite possibly, they are. But so, in my opinion, is anyone who would complain about them, and then talk to the media about it. Consider - the basis of the complaint appears to be that the gnomes are upsetting this woman's CILDren. Yet she complains that they are CHILDish. Surely, they can't be both childish and unsuitable for children?

With that sort of reasoning power at her disposal, it's no great surprise that the youngsters in her care are haven't learned not to be "upset" by the gnomes - if that's all it takes to rattle their cage, they're going to be in for one hell of a shock when they get into the real world.

Besides, how can a garden gnome be "naked"? It's a made thing, not a person. You might as well complain about naked lawnmowers or pianos. Oh, that's right, the Victorians did, didn't they - covered up furniture legs, lest they encourage impure thoughts, while being a bunch of randy buggers on the quiet.

The world is getting more crazy by the day, and it's not just these two strange neighbours who have a thing about gnomes. Surfers show up on this blog looking for all kinds of garden gnome related oddness. Full sized garden gnomes are a favourite. Garden gnome statistics and gnome facts and figures are popular, too. I don't understand the attraction, and I probably never will.

Billy Seggars.

Mervyn King - Unlikely Hero

Goodness me! It's been almost two months since I updated this blog, and I never even noticed! That's probably because there never seems to be anything genuinely new or unusual in the news these days.

I don't think many people can have missed the rapid descent of 21st century Britain into New Labour lunacy, and so my commentary seems a little redundant. Besides, what is there to say? Each day, Gordon Brown-Trousers or his chosen minion announces a new scheme designed to mask the government's utter incompetence until after the next election. Each day, the public groans, shakes head and struggles on through the economic chaos created by that same power-mad group.

We know the schemes won't work, can't work and could only be imagined to be useful by someone totally out of touch (Hi Gord!). We also know that we, the taxpayers, are going to be lumbered with paying for this mess for decades, no matter whether Ken Clarke piddles around with inheritance tax or not.

But today is slightly different. With our derranged PM overseas on yet another jaunt aimed at pestering simillarly clueless world leaders into joinining him in a further fiscal stimulus farce, Mervyn King has risen like a rake from the long grass to smack Gordon Brown-Trousers in the face (ughhh). Speaking to the Treasury Select Committee, the normally reserved Mr King made it very, very clear, in language even the Prime Minister can understand, that Britain simply cannot afford yet another round of borrowing to finacne tax cuts and public spending - aka fiscal stimulus.

And quite right too! It's excessive borrowing that's gotten most people - including this joke of a government - into this mess, and the way out does not lie though more of the same. Only a fool would think otherwise, which is probably why, in a speech to the European Parliament, Gordon Brown-Trousers said, "We can together deliver the biggest financial stimulus the world has ever seen, the biggest cut in interest rates, the biggest reform of the international financial system, the first international principles governing banking remuneration, the first comprehensive action against tax havens and for the first time in a world crisis, new help for the poor."

Madness! Sheer, raving financial lunacy! And it doesn't stop there. He also said that the world should abandon the "old Washington consensus" of lightly-regulated free markets and introduce a new European form of capitalism reflecting morality and values. Morality and values? This from the man whose senior ministers (and quite a few juniors, too) are constantly accused of bening on the take, fiddling expenses, claiming for second houses that belong to sisters, parents etc? And who recently recalled and enobled a man who was forced to resign from Tony Blair's cabinet, not once but twice, following allegations of financial dodgy dealings, and who is still facing similar questions now he's back?

As for the European Parliament, it's hardly known for moral values, let alone its ability to effectively regulate anything. On the contrary, it's famous for being a cash sink, where faceless officials obtain lots of money for doing very little - and nothing that anyone would actually want them to do!

No, Mr Kinng couldn't have timed his warning better, both in terms of the looming Budget and as a means of humiliating Gordon Brown-Trousers. How could I possibly resist cheering this valiant little banker on? Go for it Merv, show everyone what a clueless imbecile the PM is - but, if I were you, I'd avoid going near any woodland for a while. Remember what happened to David Kelly when he made the previous PM look stupid!

Billy Seggars.

Gordon Brown "One-eyed Scottish idiot"

Jeremy Clarkson is definitely going up in my estimation. He's funny, doesn't mince his words and is almost certainly in deep shit yet again, worse luck.

What's he done this time? Only referred to Gordon Brown-Trousers as a "One-eyed Scottish idiot" according to the Telegraph. Me, I can't see anything wrong with that - sounds like a perfectly accurate description of our unelected, power-mad, utterly incompetent Prime Minister, who spent 10 years as Chancellor but didn't see a recession coming, thinks he's saved the world and believes the world is in a depression.

Speaking of our Great Leader at a press conference in Australia, and comparing him to the Aussie PM, Clarkson apparently said, "(In the UK) we've got this one-eyed Scottish idiot, he keeps telling us everything's fine and he's saved the world and we know he's lying, but he's smooth at telling us."

I doubt there is anyone who would fail to recognise our dumb (British jobs for Britis workers! And Italian workers, and ...), cowardly (Can't call an election in case I get a reduced majority!) Prime Minister from that description, but the New Labour spin machine is, of course, in well orchestrated uproar. Gordon Banks, Labour MP for Ochil and South Perthshire, branded the comments "unforgivable", but then he would, and his promotion is probably already in the pipeline.

What Clarkson's bosses at New Labour's propaganda HQ, formerly known as the BBC, have to say is probably unrepeatable, but you can bet they're not pleased. Trouble is, Clarkson's popular, and he's captured the public's opinion of Gordon Brown-Trousers perfectly. If he's sacked or disciplined, it will just go to prove that the BBC is now in New Labour's pocket, so I expect he'll be allowed to stay for a while yet.

Unlike the unforgivable, disgraceful behaviour of Russell Brand and Jonathon Ross, this is not a prank gone wrong but an expression of a widely held and pretty accurate opinion of the British Prime Minister. We're ashamed of him, despair of him and can't wait to get rid of him - how is that contrary to the view expressed by Clarkson?

It isn't. In fact, so common is Clarkson's view that he might yet find himself Prime Minister. I'd vote for him any day!

Billy Seggars.

Mandelson Calls British Jobs Protests Xenophobic

The Telegraph reports that "Wildcat strikes across Britain are threatening to escalate after Lord Mandelson dismissed workers' concerns and claimed the protests may be "xenophobic"."

How dare that cheeky, arrogant, good for nothing, doubly-disgraced wast of time dismiss legitimate concerns, and the free discussion thereof? What does the slithering bugger know of an honest day's work? Compare the image of him standing, pristine and pompous in the House of Lords, with that of those he denounces, huddled in the snow, pressing home their point.

Who would you trust to tell the truth? A twice-resigned minister who still needs to explain away his presence in a suspiciously expensive London pad, or a bunch of skilled workers standing out in the cold? Would YOU stand out in the cold if you had paid work to go to, especially in this economic climate?

No, and neither would anyone else. The fact is that things are getting a little uncomfortable for the government, and composures are starting to crack. First it was Brown-Trousers, shitting himself as he blustered that these very legitimate protests are indefensible. Then it was Mandelson, wheeled out to pour snake oil on troubled waters, with assurances that everything was hunky dory. Now it's becoming clear that nobody believes him, and he's getting a little bit ratty.

In the Lords he said, "Membership of the European Union, and taking advantage of the opportunities for trade presented by the EU, are firmly in the UK's national interest. Free movement of labour and the ability to work across the EU has been a condition of membership for decades."

Mistake. People are increasingly of the view that membership of the European Union isn't worth spit to the UK. It imposes upon us a lot of bloody stupid rules and regulations, costs us a lot of money and means that European workers can compete with British workers for British jobs, at a time when there aren't enough to go round. Or, as Mandy seems to be saying, in order to subject ourselves to the expense and inconvenience of being an EU member, we must first allow EU workers to take our jobs!

Further, when people have the temerity to point this out and - shock, horror! - to object to it, he brands them xenophobes. BIG mistake. The British people are not, on the whole, xenophobic. Yes, there are some racist dimwits out there, but racism and xenophobia are not the same thing, or even close to being the same thing. Xenophoboa means, very broadly, fear of strangers or foreigners, and, for the avoidance of Many's cringing, lilly livered doubt, John Bull is not afraid of anyone.

We are, however, annoyed. Very, very annoyed that British jobs are going to foreign workers while British workers look on without a job to go to. Mandelson has done very nicely for himself out of Europe, having made a killing there after his second humiliating departure from the British government. His friend and former boss has barely disguised ambitions in that are, and his current boss thinks he's some kind of superhero - superzero more like! So it's not surprising that our alleged leadership want to keep their collective snouts very firmly in the EU trough, and bugger the consequences for Britain and the British people.

It won't do. The British government, and members thereof, are supposed to stand up for the interests of British people - they are our elected representatives! They are not suppoosed to make vaguely sympathetic sounds about "understanding concerns" and then tell us to get used to the situation, before going on to call us nasty names when we object.

Anyone with any right to represent the British people - and, remember, Lord Sleaze was appointed without winning a democratic election, by a Prime Minister who also wasn't elected and who ran away from his first opportunity to gain his own mandate - does not persistently describe legitimate concerns as "unofficial", hinting that they're in some way illegitimate. That's the talk of a collaborator, a traitor to the Btitish people whose loyalty to the European cause supercedes everything else.

Mandelson has made his position crystal clear, and now there is no way for him to retain even the pretence of legitimacy. He must resign, now, and take his bloody awful boss with him.

Billy Seggars.

British Jobs For British Workers

"British jobs for British workers." That is what Gordon Brown-Trousers, our unelected dictator said. It is not a difficult sentence to understand, even for him, and doesn't offer much scope for wriggling out of the sentiment.

But he's trying. Oh BOY is he trying. Apparently, contrary to all appearances, those four little words don't mean that jobs in Britain should go to people from Britain. Oh no, not by a long shot. He says he really meant that people would be given the skills to compete against other nationalities.

No, he didn't. If he'd meant that, he'd have said that people would be given the skills to compete against other nationalities, and we'd have known that was what he meant because that would have been what he said. Instead, we know exactly what he said - British jobs for British workers - and we know exactly what that means. It means that the British Prime Minister made a throw away comment designed to make him popular, without any intention of following through on the sound bite, and now that he's engulfed in an economic crisis of his own making that he didn't see coming, it's come back to bite him on the arse. Business as usual, in other words.

Obviously, I see no reason to assume that Brown-Trousers isn't lying again, just as he did over his humiliating decision to back out of calling an election. But, just for fun, let's think about his alternative interpretation. If, as both he and Lord Sleaze of Foy himself would have us believe, he really did mean that British people would be given the skills to compete against other nationalities, does that really help him out of the hole he's dug for himself?

No, it doesn't. It means that the British Prime Minister wants British people, living and (trying) to work within the borders of their own country, to have to compete on a level playing field with overseas workers. It means that those same British people, who are currently in financial difficulties and short of work - largely as a result of Brown's facile antics at the Treasury over the past decade - must sit back and stoically accept that the odds of them finding work in an already grim labour market are further reduced by increased competition from abroad. It means that the wages earned by those foreign workers will, at least in part, be shipped back home to their dependants, instead of being spent here in the already struggling British economy.

Where is the sense in any of that? I have nothing against foreign workers per se, but I cannot see how it is beneficial to employ overseas labour while local job seekers look on in increasing desperation. In claiming that he wanted to train the British workforce to compete successfully, thereby providing British jobs for British people, the ever more out of touch Gordon Brown-Trousers misses the point entirely. British workers should not need to compete for British jobs, and so do not need training for that eventuality.

Realising that he's been caught with his pants down, the PM is, of course, unwilling to back down or acknowledge that he's been treating the British people like fools again. No, instead he's trying to bluster his way through, calling the decision of some workers to stike in protest at this stupid situation "not the right thing to do and not defensible."

He just doesn't get it, does he? In a democracy, the right thing to do is what the majority of people want to do, and on this point the protestors have tapped a rich vein of resentment. Frustration has been mounting over foreign workers taking British jobs for some time, just as the electorate has been growing increasingly tired of Gordon Brown-Trousers' attempts to deceieve them. They know who is to blame for their current economic difficulties, and they really don't like his attempts to pass off his own incompetence as a purely global problem. Dissatisfaction is growing, too, with the ever more politically correct, nanny state attitude adopted and encouraged by this government and its minions.

Patient though they are, the British people are becoming restive, and this simple dispute could well be enough to push them into a state of rather more vociferous unrest than has previously been the case. High on their long, long list of grievances is mounting disenchantment with all things European, and many, many people are of the view that increased integration has been a mistake. Naturally, Peter Mandelson and his boss, Gordon Brown-Trousers (or is it the other way round?) still think Europe is wonderful. Mandy has been very quick to point out that so-called protectionism is bad and European rules make it impossible to give precedence to British workers.

So, according to the Sleaziest in the Land, it's European rules that mean British jobs don't necessarily go to British workers. Which, as I've already said, is a bloody stupid state of affairs. This being the case, it doesn't take much to follow the chain of reasoning through to its inevitable conclusion - if we can't have British jobs for British workers because of European rules, and if we really, really want British jobs for British workers (which we do), we must first get rid of the European rules. Since we can't easily do that from within the framework of the EU, because Gordon Brown-Trousers signed away most of our rights in the Lisbon treaty, we must first dump the EU, thereby releasing ourselves from EU rules and consequently ensuring that British jobs go to British people. Simples.

It won't be long before that previously unutterable suggestion is being tentatively mentioned by all manner of mainstream politicians, all of whom can see which way the wind's blowing. The government won't like it, and will be seeking to quell the British jobs for British workers protests by any means possible before it turns muttering disapproval of the Labour government into something much harder to ignore or control. If weasle words don't do the trick, expect to see the British government ordering British policemen to beat the living crap out of British workers who won't come quietly because they want a British job.

No wonder the number of soon-to-be-former British workers emigrating to Australia is up 31% on last year!

Billy Seggars.

Banking on Ken

Now that 2009 is well under way, it's clear that things are just getting worse and worse for the hard pressed people of Britain. Today, Gordon Brown-Trousers, our unspeakable Prime Minister, looks set to unleash another £300 billion of bailout cash to our banks, just weeks after tossing a mere £500 billion their way amid claims that he had saved the world.

Well, no, actually, he hadn't. He didn't save it then, and he isn't saving it now. All he is doing is pouring away hundreds of billions of pounds of taxpayers' money. Of course, he's used to doing that, what with robbing our pensions and flogging off gold reserves, so it won't come as any big problem to him.

It will be one hell of a big problem for the rest of us, though, long after the McBean is evicted from Downing St, either by ballot or pitchfork. We are going to be paying for his mindless folly for decades, and I'm starting to wonder whether he's just deliberately creating chaos for his successors, in the fairly certain knowledge that Crazy Cameron and his merry men will be taking over any minute now.

Even if he holds out for the full term, Brown-Trousers hasn't got a hope of staying in office. Ordinary men and women, without a particularly political bone in their body, are feeling the pinch. Even staunch Labour voters, who would normally make excuses for our apology of a government, are telling me they will be voting blue next time round. Of course, a lot can change in 18 months or so, and it probably will - for the worse. Real jobs, belonging to real people, are vanishing fast, and those who are still in work are very, very worried that will be next to go.

As far as I can tell from talking to the real people I meet on my daily rounds, the feared deflationary spiral is already here. People are unwilling to buy items today because they will be cheaper next week or next month. At the moment it's only applying to larger items over, say £150, but it won't be long before that changes. How long will it be before the pundits notice that it's now a reality instead of a feared bogeyman and start writing about it in those terms? Probably not too long, and when they do, the effect will snowball. The British economy is in very deep trouble, exacerbated by the antics of a token Chancellor, an idiotic PM and the Prince of Darkness, Lord Sleaze himself.

Speaking of whom, I see Crazy Cameron is set to announce the return of Ken Clarke as the Tories' Shadow Mandy. Not, I think, a brilliant move. True, Clarke was a pretty good Chancellor, he's promised to keep his pro-Europe views to himself, and he's a sharp orator. But is he any match for the fresh piles of steaming deciet deliverd direct from the Government's spin doctors, via Mandy? At first I doubted it, but it may be that his blunt, straight style is just the thing to counter the double talk. We shall see.

Billy Seggars.

Cats Amongst The Pigeons

Anyone who's lived in the UK for a few years will be familiar with the perennial "I saw a big cat" story that crops up in the media from time to time.

Broadly, it goes something like this: A fairly ordinary individual catches sight of something very much out of the ordinary but of a large and feline persuasion. Until recently, being an ordinary individual, they almost never had a camera about their person and so were unable to substantiate their claim. More recently, some of them have been carrying mobile phones with on board cameras, enabling them to (sometimes) grab a quick, indistinct snap of something that might be a cat.

Unfortunately, cellphone cameras being what they are, detail is lacking. Worse, handled by rank amateurs, they show nothing to prove the size of the alleged animal, or how far away it was. Even when the pictures are definitely cat shaped, there's nothing to conclusively prove whether we're looking at a tiger or Tiddles.

These hapless individuals dutifully report their sighting to the police, who may, or may not, take them seriously, and eventually the press get hold of the story. The pictures are produced, printed and instantly ridiculed by armchair critics who - quite rightly - point out that they don't prove anything. I imagine that the poor buggers who spot the creatures and report them become the butt of many a jolly jape, and live to regret the public spirited instinct that led them to open their mouths about what they saw.

All of which is, of course, human nature at its finest. We love scare stories, we like mysteries and simply adore mocking those who have been mysteriously scared witless by something they cannot now prove to have existed. Until today, that is. For, according to both the Telegraph and the Sun, the Forestry Commission - a Government agency, no less - has been aware of the existence of these beasts since 2002 and has said nothing.

It's taken a request under the Freedom of Information Act to lever confirmation of two positive sightings out of them, but it turns out that the sightings were made in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, during the three-yearly deer surveys of 2002 and 2005. Deputy surveyor Rob Guest caught sight of the big cats while using thermal imaging equipment, although he couldn't identify their species beyond "a large, full cat".

So there you have it. Anyone who's ever been mocked for reporting a big cat on the loose, particularly in the Forest of Dean area, can rest assured that they weren't, in fact, losing the plot, they were, in fact, right, and those big buggers really are out there - if that's the sort of thing that makes you rest assured, that is. Of course, there's still the question of compensation to consider. After all, many of these people will have suffered needless ridicule for up to 7 years, during which time a Government agency has been aware of the truth of their claims but has chosen to keep it secret. I'd have thought some sort of cash apology might be in order.

I'd also suggest that this is just one more example of how New Labour likes to keep secrets. What else haven't we been told? UFOs? Loch Ness monster? Gordon Brown-Trousers saves the world? Don't believe what they tell you - believe what they DON'T tell you!

Billy Seggars.

Santa's Sleigh Slain By Parking Ticket

There was a cracking article in Saturday's Sun about Santa getting a parking ticket. It seems that the festive fellows at NCP Services, who are contracted to enforce parking regulations in and around Nottingham's Tudor Square, slapped a parking ticket on a car belonging to Richard Walters from West Bridgford Round Table.

According to Mr Walters, he pulled over for a mere three minutes while he unhooked Santa's sleigh from the back of his car and pushed it onto the pavement. When he returned to the car, with a view, he claims, to taking it off to the car park having unhooked it's festive load, he was confronted by a parking attendant who was busily earning their little bit of corn by writing out a ticket for good old Rudolph Richard Walters. The Swine! BOO! HISSSS! Shame nobody got into the festive spirit by calling out "HE'S BEHIND YOU!" but we all know how quick of quill those dratted parking enforcers are, eh?

Of course, NCP Services have a slightly different perspective. THEY say the car MUST have been parked for more than the three minutes that Mr Walters proclaims because it takes at least five minutes to write out the ticket. They go on to say that the car was parked on some of those zigzag white lines just by a pedestrian corssing, where nobody is supposed to park, ever, ever, ever, was completely unattended and didn't have a sleigh next to it.

Hmmm, interesting. Parking enforcers are, of course, the scum of the Earth, lurking in shadows to mug perfectly innocent - or at least hassled, harried, hard-working, busy people who are just trying to get through the day - of an outrageous sum for daring to think about slowing down without paying the local tithe. They're over zealous, unpopular (for obvous reasons) and don't have anything else going for them, either, as far as I can tell. Certainly I wouldn't necessarily trust or believe one, particularly where bad publicity might cast them in a poor light.

BUT, and it's a BIG but, IF it's true that the car in question was parked illegally in a very dangerous position, I can't quite see what the problem is. Just because this car was used to convey a representation of a fictitious sleigh to a shopping precinct does not mean that its owner is entitled to break the law and / or put pedestrians at risk, no matter how minor that risk may be.

I've had two unpleasantly close encounters with my local (not Nottingham) Round Table in the past week, and this incident doesn't doesn't do anything to improve my rapidly dimming view of them. In my case, I was not at all pleased to find the self-righteous buggers blocking quiet side roads with their car-drawn sleigh. If I'm out and about on these cold winter evenings, instead of lurking in front of the telly with Mrs S, a smoke and a cold beer, it's because of necessity. I need to be somewhere, probably fairly urgently, and I do not want to find my route blocked by a bloody great sleigh mounted on the back a trailer being towed by a clapped out Volvo. Nor do I appreciate "HO! HO! HO!" as a response to my frantic gesticulations and demands to "Get off the bloody road, you daft old bugger!"

To cap it all, I really, REALLY, don't want to find the road and pavements infested by six - SIX, I COUNTED THEM - officious-looking individuals wearing high-visibility vests and carrying buckets with, I assume, a view to soliciting donations. What do they say to people? "Cough up, or we'll block your road some more?" Yes, I know the Round Table does some very good work, and, if I hadn't been in a tearing hurry (TWICE) I would probably have appreciated their efforts a little more - the sleigh + Santa was actually rather fetchingly done.

But I was, and I didn't, and if I find my way blocked by them again I will be even more pissed off with them than I already am. Just because they're doing "good works" doesn't mean they can inconvenience everyone else, or park illegally or dangerously, for that matter, either. It is not a licence to be a prat, or arrogantly disregard those of us who have different priorities, although I'm inclided to think the Round Table here, and possibly in Nottingham, may not see it that way. If they remember that, and behave accourdingly, they may find people are rather more willing to support them. If they don't, I fear their cause may find itself rather underwhelmingly endowed until they come to their senses.

Billy Seggars.

Hide And Smoke

There's a degree of unwarranted optimism in the British Government's latest pro health fascist, anti-smoking crusade: according to the Telegraph, Ministers have said that cigarettes displays will be banned from shops by 2013. Yet, I haven't spoken to anyone in the past few months who thinks the NuLab NutJobs will still be in power after the next election, or who thinks that the election can come soon enough.

With any luck, they'll be out on their ear long before they can impose this further example of Nanny State bullshit upon us, but some of their fellow hang-wringing Nannies won't be happy:

The Telegraph goes on to report that Dr Vivienne Nathanson, Head of Science and Ethics at the British Medical Association, said: "We don't understand this delay. While we accept that new shop equipment is necessary to implement the new rules we still believe the delay should be shorter and the date should be the same for all shops. This legislation is vitally important to prevent young people smoking so the sooner it is introduced the better.

"The BMA is disappointed that the Government is not planning to ban cigarette vending machines. We hope the proposals to make vending machines 'child-proof' will be rigidly enforced and that if they do not work then this issue will be revisited by ministers."

Really? I'm disappointed that the BMA still exists and that Nanny Viv is still killing time there instead of doing what she was trained - at taxpayers' expense - to do, namely, get off her soap box and start treating patients. I don't understand how the BMA can justify poking its collective snout into free choice of the British public, and do so in our name, yet. I suggest they mind their own business, and get a propper job (if they should turn out to be employable). If we want them, we'll send for them, and in the meantime they should stop bothering us.

The same goes for Harpal Kumar and his colleagues from Cancer Research UK. Kumar reportedly said: "We are very encouraged by the announcement to put cigarettes out of sight but disappointed that vending machines will still be available."

"We urge the Government to introduce these measures as soon as possible, and to consider further measures that are needed. In particular we hope they will work quickly towards developing and implementing tobacco control plans that are ambitious, comprehensive and well funded."

Just get on with the research, guys. That's what you're paid to do, isn't it? Although, I must say, it's taking you an inordinately long time to come up with viable solutions despite being ambitious, allegedly comprehensive and well enough funded to afford a high(ish) profile Chief Executive. Hmmm.

On the other hand, Stephen Robertson, Director General of the British Retail Consortium, seems to have his head screwed on right. He said: "This will hit small stores, which lack the space and resources, particularly hard.

"The Government is right to try to stop children smoking but banning displays in shops is just not the way. It will impose thousands of pounds of pointless refit costs on stores, ultimately met by customers, and create delays and inconvenience for customers and staff."

Absolutely right, Stephen. I don't want to be waiting in line in a small newsagent (not that there are many of them left) while the poor sap behind the counter has to keep scurrying into the back room to get smokes for his customers. And what's going to happen when someone asks for a brand that's out of stock? Into the back to check, back out front to report the absence of smokes, around the back again for an alternative, while the rest of us quietly fume.

No, this is stupid, pointless, Nannying legislation from a Government that just can't resist the temptation to interfere in every aspect of its citizens' lives. Just like every other change they've introduced since the hard of thinking majority imposed them on us in 1997. Still, not long now.

Billy Seggars.

Damian Green Scandal

The Damian Green scandal just isn't going to go away, is it? I've been avoiding the issue because, well, what can I say that hasn't already been said or at least thought by everyone who's read a newspaper over the past week?

For slow readers, the story goes something like this: officious looking bobbies from London's Metropolitan Police arrested Conservative MP Damian Green last week, detained him for 9 hours and searched his home, his constituency offices and, most controversially, his office at the House of Commons. Why would the rozzers do this, apart from the obvious reason that Green is an MP and therefore shady by definition?

Cast your mind back a few months to a time before the news was dominated by the credit crunch, when Gordon Brown-Trousers' job was in daily peril and the Home Office was being battered by a storm of dodgy revelations about illegal immigrants - how many were working in the security industry, one employed in the House of Commons, etc. The government, and particularly the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and PM Gordon Brown-Trousers, were being exposed as ever more incompetent, a laughing stock and a political liability.

Damian Green was, and is, the Conservative Shadow Immigration bod, and his was the delightful task of publicly humiliating the Home Secretary and Prime Minister. Information was allegedly passed to him by a mole in the Home Office, which he then felt obliged to reveal in the public interest, and quite right, too. As a member of the public, I found the revelations fascinating, though I'm afraid the news that the country was being run by a bunch of brainless incompetents didn't come as any surprise.

As you might imagine, Smith and her conies didn't like this one little bit. The idea that people - ordinary people, such as might vote in Parliamentary elections - should find out quite how badly their elected representatives were screwing things up was just unacceptable, and a police investigation into the leak was launched at the request of the Home Office. That led to the arrest of a civil servant, which, in turn, brought plod to Green's door.

It doesn't take a political genius to imagine the circumstances surrounding the investigation. Smith, in fits of indignant fury at being so soundly exposed as a prize prat, calls in the dibbles. As Home Secretary, she's responsible for appointing the Met's Commissioner - the then politically beleaguered and now ousted Sir Ian Blair - making her his boss, of sorts. Nobody ever kept their job by pissing off their boss, and Blair was badly in need of support at the time. Can it be coincidence that Green's arrest took place on Blair's last day in the job? Plod obliged by investigating the "leak" in the Home Office, suggesting that the much-vaunted "police independence" that Smith and Brown-Trousers keep harping on about is illusory, at best.

It must have seemed like an ideal revenge - an inconveniently well-informed MP arrested, the Tories humiliated and shown to be sleazy yet again, just as Gordon Brown-Trousers sucks his way into deeper financial ruin to the cheers of millions. Only it didn't quite work out like that, did it? MPs of all colours, particularly the wonderfully vicious Vince Cable, are outraged by the prospect of big booted policemen barging into an MP's office, not to mention the arrest of an MP on such a petty matter. They're all being very careful to stress that MPs are not above the law, but they're equally concerned that those laws should not be used to prevent an MP from exposing deficiencies in the government. That is the job of an opposition MP, and to interfere with that is a serious threat to democracy.

Of course, Smith, Brown-Trousers and all the other unsavoury characters involved in this saga deny any political motivation, but they would, wouldn't they? They even deny knowing about the arrest and search until after it happened. A look at their record in office, the company they keep, who they accept donations from and a host of other interesting news articles about their conduct is enough to seal their fate as far as I'm concerned - it looks to me like a stitchup that went very badly wrong and is going wronger by the day.

For a while, it looked like Gorbels Mick, Speaker of the House Michael Martin, Mr Sleaze himself, was going to carry the can for allowing coppers into an MP's office without bloody good justification. But now even he's ducked his responsibility, passing the buck to the Serjeant at Arms, Mrs Jill Pay. She, it seems, took it upon herself to let Smith's enforcers rampage around an MP's office on her own authority, without a search warrant. Can you say scapegoat?

Of course, Mrs Pay should have done no such thing, and plod should have advised her that she didn't have to. Then again, the Met is not famous for telling people what they can do, only what they can't, even if they have to bend things a little to get their own way, as this article in the Register points out [New Terror Guidelines on Photography]. Strangely, the Met weren't too keen on being photographed as they took Green's office apart, either, demanding that Andrew Mackay, Senior Parliamentary and Political Adviser to the Conservative leader, should go away and take the film crew with him, according to the Telegraph and this video:

Isn't it odd that police officers - whom we, the public, employ - don't like the public to see them working, and really, really don't like us to commemorate those rare occasions by snapping photographic evidence? Yet they watch us working, via CCTV and other means, 24/7 - all in the name of our own protection, of course. A little more in the way of transparency and a little less of the sweeping new powers to demand identity papers etc wouldn't go amiss there, I think.

Until this story broke, I've always been pretty tolerant of the Great British Bobby. They're not necessarily the sharpest knives in the draw, especially those commonly found on the beat, and they do have a liking for off duty beer and totty that puts most larger louts to shame. But, by and large, they're ok. They work hard as well as playing hard, job conditions are getting worse for them all the time, pay isn't great, but they do their best, such as it is. Can't fault them for trying, has always been my view, even if I was a little concerned about the extra powers they seemed to be acquiring.

But the revelation that accepting information that embarrasses the government from a civil servant can lead to an MP's arrest has changed all that. It seems that some elements of the police, at least, have given up on their duty to protect the public in favour of enforcing the political will of Smith and Brown-Trousers. Oh yes, there have been veiled hints that there was more at stake than just some toe-curlingly embarrassing immigration figures, but do we believe that when we consider who's making those allegations, and when? I don't, and I'm very much afraid that the il-judged actions of one or two over zealous bobbies have tarnished the cherished reputation of the British Bobby and damaged public trust in them.

Besides, Damian Green isn't the first MP to accept leaked information from a Government department and gleefully use it for political gain in the "public interest". Cast your mind back to 1985, when a much younger, far less grey and flabby Gordon Brown (this was before he shit himself over not calling an election) cheerfully told Frank Bough about information he'd obtained from a mole, just as Green has now been accused of doing:

Didn't he look smug? Haven't heard anything about the PM being arrested, though, despite his admission to doing exactly the same thing as Damian Green. Didn't Brown-Trousers think this interview would come back to haunt him? Did he and his cronies really think they would be allowed to bring the full force of the state down on an opposition MP in revenge for a little humiliation without the whole thing going badly wrong? Apparently so, clearly demonstrating that our government is not just corrupt, but dangerously stupid too.

Can we have an election now? Please? Before it's too late?

Billy Seggars.

Budget, Fudge It

Can there be anyone at all left in the UK who thinks the British government is anything other than a very sick joke? The news has been so universally glum of late that I really haven't felt inclined to blog about it. I can't imagine that there's anyone left to whom evidence that "The World's Gone Mad" would come as any surprise, and watching Gordon Brown-Trousers strut around the world stage as though he knows what he's doing is grim beyond measure.

In fact, the only thing worse than watching the blundering buffoon that is our Prime Minister pretending he's some kind of ... well, anything, really ... is watching other world leaders nodding sagely and following his lead. If any proof were needed that the world is not only mad, but in very deep shit and sinking further by the day, it is the sight of other countries so bereft of ideas that the best thing they can come up with is to copy Gordon Brown-Trousers.

Still, copying him they are, and it is surely only a matter of time before he begins to shift away from pretending to be the "saviour" of the economic world and positions himself as its leader instead. World President Brown-Trousers, anyone? It's a nasty, terrifying thought, and one upon which I will not dwell for now. Our lunatic government has no shortage of terrifying ideas, and the current economic crisis has become to financial sanity and the free market what perceived terrorist threats are to privacy and freedom - an excuse to sweep them aside in favour of New Labour imposed ideology that will not work and cannot be maintained without constant state intervention and control.

Of course, state intervention and control is no bad thing - as far as the state is concerned, anyway. For the rest of us, it's a bloody awful way to run a country, but our leaders want to try it all the same. Having mismanaged the economy to the extent where banks have run riot and gotten themselves into the mire, Gordon Brown-Trousers has grabbed control of a large part of the banking sector in the name of stability. Maybe it was necessary, maybe it wasn't, but it's done now and there's not much we can do to reverse it until Crazy Cameron moves in to Number 10.

But things aren't stopping there. Like all power crazed dictators, one taste of control isn't enough for Gordon Brown-Trousers, and in the past few weeks I've heard him issuing stern comments and veiled threats to other large industries too; he expects utility companies to cut prices, demands that fuel prices should fall, insists that credit card companies behave well and so on. I've no doubt that people who are seriously struggling under the economic conditions that Gordon Brown-Trousers, as Chancellor and PM, has created are delighted to hear the proposals, but they won't forget who created this whole mess in the first place.

Moreover, it's no way to run an economy. More and more state control, be it direct intervention or subtle nods and winks, gestures towards how the PM expects an industry to behave and will legislate to achieve if necessary, is a very bad thing. For one thing, the only way to maintain that control is to impose ever more of it. For another, Gordon Brown-Trousers has a reputation for micro-management, and it is his will that is being imposed on a supposedly free market. It seems rather unreasonable that a man who doesn't even have a mandate to govern should seek to control every little detail, particularly when the results of his actions to date are nothing short of chaos.

Then again, that missing mandate is what it's all about, isn't it? Gordon Brown-Trousers wants to be a LEGITIMATE Primer Minister, with his own mandate to govern instead of a second-hand, badly worn mandate wrested from the grip of his predecessor. Hence the economic hero act. We all know that he's no hero - in fact, his years at the Treasury have left the UK stunningly incapable of coping with an international economic downturn - but it's a chance for him to pretend to serve some useful function and he's hanging on to it like a limpet.

The plan is clear enough - be seen to take a tough line with all those industries that are daring to make a profit by charging people for services, especially those industries that are commonly perceived to be "over charging" or whose bills are a source of irritation for the public. Yes, that's going to cost some money in lost taxes, but hey, it's only money and no price is too high to pay for power, is it?

Next, make some sweeping changes to "stimulate" the economy. Cut VAT, for example, that will hit the headlines. Yes, it will cost a lot more money in lost taxes and won't make much of a real difference to real people on the real street, but it will make an impression. Any anyway, some of the lost money can be recouped by stealthily hiking duty on petrol, alcohol and tobacco, and some more can be clawed back by changes to National Insurance, hacking down the personal allowance and introducing a new tax band for "high" earners.

Then announce massive government borrowing on a scale never seen before. The numbers should be so staggeringly vast that critics will be stunned into silence and won't be able to point out that a) the Chancellor's estimates for economic recovery seem stupidly optimistic; and, b) this Government has never, ever been right about borrowing estimates in the past, always overshooting by some considerable margin so why should they be right now; and, c) these estimates are made by the same people who totally failed to estimate in the last budget, just a few months ago, that by the end of the year the entire economy would be utterly screwed and would need such radical measures to keep it out of total meltdown, despite the warning signs having been blatantly apparent for at least 12 months.

None of these measures will - or could - have any real, lasting beneficial effects on the economy, but they might - MIGHT - mask the symptoms of collapse for a short time. Just long enough, say, for the public to be fooled into voting for New Labour at a snap election to be held early next year. Of course, all that borrowing will have to be repaid, and that means taxes are going to have to rise pretty sharply for a long time, but the beauty of it is that this will pretty much have to happen whoever wins the next election. Money will have already been borrowed, spending will be under way and a new government won't be able to do anything about that without imposing yet more financial hardship on the UK.

So even if Gordon Brown-Trousers loses an election, his successors will be in a very difficult position indeed. Pre-emptive revenge, and an incentive, maybe, to stick with the current regime on the basis that the worst of the damage is (you hope!) already done and the promises of jam tomorrow might just be true.

Of course, this all seems pretty sophisticated thinking for a man who, only a few weeks ago, looked incapable of keeping his job or keeping out of trouble for more than a day at a time. It's hardly the PM's style, but it does seem remarkably like the devious, twisted plots reputed to spin forth from the now Lord of Darkness himself. And if HE - or other spin doctors - are behind these bloody awful policies we should be even more worried. For spin is just smoke and mirrors without substance, designed only to look superficially good.

Darling, at the behest of his boss, who, in turn, is dancing to the tune of a master spin doctor, has just made the biggest financial gamble ever - with our money, yet - and, when you look at the reasoning behind it, there doesn't look to be any financial justification for the bet, just political expediency.

Grim, isn't it? No wonder Britain is in such terrible shape, so badly positioned to cope with an unexpected (to the government) international economic slowdown, when the first - and only - instinct of its leaders is to make themselves look good and manipulate the situation to retain their grip on power.

Billy Seggars.

Unnatural Creatures - God Squad Bans Garden Gnomes, Plastic Flowers

I'm not a big fan of garden gnomes. I think they're tacky, pointless and, broadly, a waste of valuable garden space that could be used for something more productive. On the other hand, I also appreciate that some people like them, and I see no reason to frown upon their preference even though I don't share it.

I'm not a big fan of religion, either, for much the same reasons that I don't like garden gnomes, with the addition of pig-headed arrogance, mutton-headed stupidity and ostrich-headed denial of reality to the charge sheet. Again, though, I don't object to people carrying out their religious rituals as long as it's not harming anyone else and doesn't cost me any time or money.

Apart from their similarly pointless existences, you could be forgiven for thinking that there isn't much connection between garden gnomes and religion, and, generally, you'd be right. However, according to the Telegraph, the Diocese of Bath and Wells has forged a link between the two, albeit an unwelcome one. For those God (and aparently Gnome) fearing individuals have banned garden gnomes from the cemeteries under their control on the basis that they (the gnomes, not the folks from the Diocese - a distinction well worth making!) are "unnatural creatures". A spokesman for the Diocese said, "There is no such thing as a real gnome, so why should we have such unnatural creatures in churchyards."

Unnatural creatures in a cemetery, eh? Obviously, that will never do, and I expect to hear that the Worshipful Timothy Briden, Chancellor of the Diocese will be taking an equally firm line with all those angels, cherubs and other "unnatural" statuary that so inappropriately clutters up the region's dead body disposal sites. After all, whether you claim that angels and associated items of religious paraphenalia exist or not, you can't easily claim that they're "natural" creatures, can you? They're either divine or they don't exist!

So hop to it guys, and lets see the back of all those "unnatural" tomb decorations. Yes, I know, many of them are traditional, of historical signifcance and, when all's said an done, they're often quite impressive works of art. But I'm sure the under-smart, over-zealous minions of the Diocese won't let that impede their desire to follow Briden's new instructions. Whilst they're about it, they might like to consider removing Briden from his post, and, indeed, the post and the Diosece itself - purely in the interests of preserving an entirely "natural" environment, you understand.

This policy has to be one of the best examples of pot-kettle-black mentallity that I've ever seen, even in the context of normal background stupidity usually encountered in religious communities. Being something of a traditionalist (although not traditionalist enough to want or need any religious affiliations) I don't particularly like garden gnomes in cemeteries myself. But for an institution whose entire stock-in-trade is the furtherance of an unproven and inherently unprovable belief system to object on the basis that garden gnomes and plastic flowers are "unnatural" is ludicrous.

No wonder church attendance figures are falling - even the British education system is now incapable of producing citizens stupid enough get suckered in by this kind of argument! How long will it be before gnomes are joined in the nation's gardens by minature vicars, priests and other equally unnatural figures?

Billy Seggars.

Tea Up Pet

Think back to your school days. Go on, right back to primary school. What do you remember? The sounds? The smells? The images? The rituals? For me, primary school was a long time ago, but if I had to distil the tangled memories into a coherent impression it would be something like this: a rampaging hoard of barely controlled little gits screaming, shouting and fighting over the crayons, covered in glue, smelling of paint (and, in some cases, of wee) and eager for the bell to ring.

Teachers came and went - probably suffering from stress, come to think of it - but that was ok because they were all pretty interchangeable anyway. Sir or Miss, it didn't matter - they were just some harried and hassled authority figure whose will was only slightly important to most of the kids, and not important at all to some.

But, in their quest to impose education on the unruly mob, they had allies. The sneaks, the swots, the telltales and, chiefly, the Monitors. I have no idea if what passes for the education system in Britain today still uses the concept of Monitors, or whether they have been found to be old fashioned, useful, effective, and therefore unacceptable, just like the cane and the three Rs, but anyone old enough to have learned to spell at school will remember them.

For the rest, on the assumption that anything educational is unlikely to have survied in today's schools, they were kids who were given small, useful tasks to perfom on behalf of the teacher, usually as a reward for some kind of achievement or display of academic prowess - getting 10 out of 10 in a test, for eg.

The cynically minded will note the irony of this proposition - you work your ass off to do well, and your reward is ... more work. For somebody else, yet. Joy. The educational value of this life lesson cannot be overstated, teaching kids that, no matter how hard they work, most people will draw life's short straws.

But monitorship was highly sought after, a prized responsibility to brag about to your gran - "I've been made blackboard / stationery / bell monitor for a WHOLE WEEK!" Of course, that was in the days before the competetive instinct was expelled from our schools, to be replaced with lowest possible common intellectual denominator.

And anyway, even if some rebellious teacher were inclined to encourage competiton, it wouldn't be possible. Blackboards may have long ago been replaced by the politically correct chalkboards (no objection to "whiteboards" though, I notice) but can you seriously see health and safely regulations allowing a child to (gasp) step to the front of the class and (shudder) WIPE THE CHALK OFF THE BOARD?? What if they trip? What if they drop the board rubber? Who will train them on how to pick it up safely?

And as for dishing out stationery - are you MAD? What if they get a paper cut? Who's going to stick a plaster on it? Not the teacher, that's NOT ALLOWED. Bell monitor, then? HELL NO! Those old fashioned school bells with the long wooden handle that you need to shake to make a noise - they must have weighed, ooh, very nearly a fraction as much as those cans of pop we're trying to ban, what if they drop it? And the NOISE - might harm the poor little darlings' ears!

But, outside of our terminally diminished educational establishments, the concept of Monitors lives on, albeit in a twisted, politically correct, 21st Century way. Gone is the idea of teaching responsibility, of course, because, after all, nothing is anybody's fault in this day and age, so what do we need responsibility for? Instead it's been replaced with the petty authority so common in office managers, bus conductors and dog wardens everywhere.

Give such minds the opportunity to interfere with something, to gum up daily life with pointless rules, regulations, dos and don'ts and they're in Heaven - unlike the rest of us, to whom their pathetic power trips are more like Hell on Earth. And nothing seems to be sacred, nothing is beyond their desire to meddle.

Take the common cup of tea, for example. It's practially our national drink. Life could not carry on in Britain without it, and yet, even here, the Monitors are at work. According to the Telegraph, the quango Envirowise is calling on employers to appoint a "tea monitor" to make sure staff don't overfill the office kettle. Funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Envirowise estimates that in excess of 30 billion cups of water are needlessly boiled each year in British offices. It has advised that companies re-introduce tea urns and encourage staff to brew collectively, in tea pots.

They're mad. Barking mad. I wonder how many office eco-Hitlers will find themselves "accidentally" locked in the stationery cupboard over this one? But this doesn't seem to the full (or even close to full) extent of DEFRA's insanity. For, also according to the Telegraph, the lunatics running that particular Asylum are say that failing to notice your dog is getting fat, feeding it at the table and chocolate treats are all animal cruelty that could end up putting someone in jail under new government guidelines.

Now, I prefer animals to most people, and I'm all in favour of looking after them properly. But do people really need this sort of inane crap? Of course not. Bill Wiggin, Tory spokesman on animal wellfare called the proposals "absurd" and that's probably the biggest understatement of the century so far. Animals of all kinds have been living in domesticated harmony with humans for millions of years. Dogs, cats and just about every other creature known to man are treated as favoured friends in most households.

Certainly, it's helpful to know how to treat them, what's good and bad for them etc. But there are books, advice leaflets, charities and even vets for that. Do we need further legislation to tell us not to feed our dogs chocolate or keep cats away from washing machines? NO. Sure, there are stupid people who dry their cat in the microwave. But will a new law change that? If they're too dumb to know how a microwave works, what are the chances of them knowing about the law?

But other people will. They will look around at this increasingly petty minded, intrusive surveillance state, where anti-terror laws are invoked against people who let their dog crap in the street or put their bins out on the wrong day, where the Government wants to log every phone call they make, every web site they look at, every email they send, and store it in a database along with their ID card info, their health records and their DNA, and they will draw the obvious conclusion: Keeping Fido is just too much of risk and he'll have to go.

Loved and pamperd pets will be dumped, or destroyed, by the score as people realise that they are now just an invitation for politically corect loonies to have a pop at their owners. Far from protecting the animals whose welfare is supposedly so important to them, DEFRA, with this insane proposal is set to bring about their suffering and downfall.

Then again, that's been Government policy for all aspects of British life since 1997. No change there, then.

Billy Seggars.

Gordon Brown-Trousers Is Amazed

Gordon Brown-Trousers is a class act, isn't he? Today, it was confirmed - as if any confirmation were needed for anyone with any common sense whatsoever - that the British economy contracted by 0.5% in the last quarter. Just in case you missed the news reports, that's the first time in 16 years that the economy has actually shrunk, and it's a bigger contraction than even the most gloomy forecasters predicted.

Naturally, there's no suggestion that things will pick up in the next quarter. Far from it, in fact. All the predictions are that we're in for a very hard landing as the economy falls apart around us, and then a very long climb back to prosperity which may - it's not guaranteed by any means - first start to manifest in spring 2010. Unemployment will be rife, money will be in short supply, credit non-existent.

I predicted recession on this blog months ago, not because I'm an expert economist (anything but!) but because I could see the way the wind was blowing and how ineffectual Gordon Brown-Trousers' government was. The papers have been babbling about it in open panic for weeks, torn between terror and fascination as the banks and stock markets teeter on the brink of disaster. So how is it that Gordon Brown-Trousers, our Prime Minister and former (for 10 years!) Chancellor of the Exchequor, only managed to mention the possibility earlier this week?

And wasn't that sly mention done in a sneaky little way? In the Commons, he said, “Having taken action on the banking system, we must now take action on the global financial recession, which is likely to cause recession in America, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and – because no country can insulate itself from it – Britain too.” Or, in other words, he used one of the oldest tricks in the book to avoid amitting that Britain - the country he's supposed to be running - is in deep shit. No, it's a global problem, see? Look, all these big, important countries (though how France and Italy get into that list is a mystery) are in trouble too, so we're not alone and, most importantly, IT'S NOT MY FAULT is what he's actually saying.

Of course it's his bloody fault. He's been Chancellor since Tony Blair oiled his way into office in 1997, and is reputed to have been a micromanaging control freak to boot. Economic policy was his one and only remit (apart from plotting to overthrow his boss) for an entire decade. Who the hell else should we blame for Britain not having planned ahead for this eventuality? The fact is that GORDON BROWN-TROUSERS did not see this crisis coming. GORDON BROWN-TROUSERS did not act to reduce our exposure to the obviously deteriorating economic climate. And now the shit has hit the fan, coming as a massive surprise to absolutely nobody but GORDON BROWN-TROUSERS, and the rest of us have to pay for his mind boggling incompetence.

But it doesn't stop there. Yesterday, the only British Prime Minister ever to be likened to Mr Bean said, "This is a global financial recession and we're fighting it every way we know how, working with other countries, trying to get the banks moving here in Britain, trying to help people with mortgages, at the same time increasing the winter allowance for pensioners, the tax cut of £120 going to basic rate taxpayers. We're fighting this recession but we need other countries to work with us."

Every way they know how? Current policy is every way they know how? Oh BOY, no wonder we're in the shit, but that's not the point. Note, once again, the emphasis on international problems, and the need for other countries to work with us. We know what that's all about, don't we? When the wheels fall completely off and Gordon Brown-Trousers is sent packing north of the border by the very few people left in England who can afford a pitchfork, he can bleat "It wasn't my fault, all those other countries wouldn't co-operate. They wouldn't do what I told them to do. It's not my fault, it would have worked if they'd done it my way."

In further self-defensive bleatings yesterday, Gordon Brown-Trousers was heard to confess that the ever-deepending economic crisis has his "undivided attention" when he gets up in the morning and when he goes to bed at night. WHAT ABOUT ALL THE HOURS INBETWEEN? Besides, he's a bit bloody late. If the economy, rather than his misplaced schemes to become Prime Minister had had his undivided attention for the past decade, we might be in a slightly better position today.

It is, of course, a global problem. But it's been on the cards for months, if not years. A canny, PRUDENT Chancellor would have taken precautions to ensure that global problems did not become a local disaster. Instead, we're nosdiving into probably the worst economic downturn since the 1930s and Gordon Brown-Trousers' only responses are to introduce ever more governement intervention in free markets. Control of banks, demands for fairnes (?!?!?!) in stockmarket trading, insistence that fuel prices should fall... the list is endless.

Certainly, all of these things are desirable, but if government intervention in a free market - even a market in panic - is the price then it's too high. Like everyone else, I cringed at news of OPEC's plans to increase the price of oil, and thus fuel, although, in truth, Mrs S and I don't need to do nearly as much motoring as we used to these days. But, if Gordon Brown-Trousers trully wants to make life easier and cheaper for recession hit motorists, how about cutting fuel duty? A huge proportion of the price motorists pay at the pump is tax - both VAT and extra fuel duty - and the tooth-sucking one could ease the pain by cutting the tax.

But he won't do that, will he? No, he'd rather interfere, yet again, in the free market and try to force prices down. That won't - and can't - work. It's like pushing down air bubbles under freshly hung wallpaper - the more you try to push it down in one place, the more it pops up in another, leading ultimately to ruined wallpaper that STILL has bubbles under it.

Papering over the cracks and micromanaging the consequences has always been Labour's way, and Gordon Brown-Trousers' way in particular. Now, as he keeps on telling us, the bubbles are international and he just can't control the outcome any more. The price of his economic folly is now due - and we're going to have to foot the bill. Labour, be they old or new, have always been incapable of handling the economy, as history very clearly shows. It was inevitable that, once they gained office, they would utterly destroy the UK and its economy - the only mystery was how it would happen, how soon it would happen and how the hell the rest of us would survive the chaos.

Those who voted for the ever-grinning Tony Blair in 1997 and subsequently are now reaping the rewards of their foolish trust in a party of buffoons, and I can't say that I have much sympathy for their plight. In fact, I'd find it hilarious if only other, honest, decent citizens weren't forced to share it. Thanks a lot, guys.

Billy Seggars.

Gordon Brown-Trousers Writes A Letter

Gordon Brown-Trousers has made a mistake. I know, that's hardly breaking news - his entire career in government has been little more than cock-up after disaster, but this time he's excelled himself.

Most people will have noticed that financial turmoil stalks the land, and the prospect of a viciously deep recession is now rather more than a mere "prospect". And very few of those observant victims of New Labour's abortive attempt at government will have failed to fix the blame for this chaos squarely on our tooth-sucking Prime Minister. After all, he's been Chancellor of the Exchequer since 1997, although, in fairness, he probably spent a fair amount of his time at the Treasury plotting become Prime Minister.

Does that make him any less responsible for the mess he's made? Hell, NO. We all know that he has presided over the total destruction of the British economy, hitting hard working citizens in the wallet time and again to finance his crazy socialist schemes. But so smug, self-centred and arrogant is Gordon Brown-Trousers - the only PM ever to avoid calling an election in case he won it (with a reduced majority) - that he thinks writing a snivelling "trust me" kind of letter to the Daily Telegraph is going to make everyone forget the catastrophe he has brought upon them.

This mind boggling, nauseating attack on reality can be found here, for anyone sad enough to want to read it. IF - and it's a big if - they can get to the end of it without vomiting, or, indeed, at all, they should not fail to read the comments section. Those comments just about sum up national feeling about the Prime Minister in a nutshell - he's incompetent, foolish, arrogant, smug, deceitful, a disgrace, unfit to govern and unworthy of his office etc.

Yes, I know, many of them will have been posted by his political opponents, and so cannot be entirely trusted. But many will have been posted by ordinary men and women, whose lives, careers and futures have been ruined by Gordon Brown-Trousers and his systematic destruction of our once-healthy economy.

I'm not going to vent my own opinions on the way our land has been mismanaged and betrayed by NuLab - I've done that often enough on these posts for the general gist of my opinions to be fairly obvious. But, looking at the Brown-Trousers letter, a few points spring to mind.

Even the first sentence made me suspicious - the author (who I doubt was really Gordon Brown-Trousers) was clearly trying to establish a degree of commonality between themselves and the reader. Who would do that, apart from someone who really didn't have very much in common to start with? Still, there it was - the PM proclaiming the virtues of enterprise and the importance of taking responsibility.

Responsibility? Gordon Brown-Trousers? The man who, as Chancellor, was always nowhere to be seen when the political shit was flying? The man who wouldn't even be seen to sign the hated EU Treaty with all the other, equally scurrilous, European leaders? Yes, the very same. Responsibility my foot!

Then we have the bit about ancestral farming, that still goes on in his family, and the way it's made him appreciate markets. Yet more "common man" bobbins, of course, and nobody is ever going to believe that this foolish man has any love for markets of any kind. You see, the idea of a market - any kind of market - is trade. That means that people buy goods and services from other people. Money changes hands. Traders try to sell as little product as possible for as money as they can get, while buyers try to get as much product as they can for the least amount of money.

If either party has too much power or influence, the other suffers. But that very rarely happens for long, or at all. The dynamic interactions between buyers and sellers, their wants and needs in response to factors beyond the control of either of them combine to ensure that, for the most part, supply and demand settle at point roughly midway between the interests of both sides.

This kind of self regulation happens everywhere, in all free markets, all the time. It is easily influenced, often by rumour and suspicion, gut feelings and hunches, but is very, very difficult to control. The more politicians try to control markets, the more their natural balance is disturbed, leading to greater and more damaging swings. Meddling with them is financial folly on an unimaginable scale, yet that is exactly what Gordon Brown-Trousers proposes.

He wants to introduce the concepts of fairness, responsibility and co-operation to the market place. Aren't they there already, built into the very fabric of a market economy? Apparently, New Labour think not. The touchy-feely, warm-hearted New Labour bullshit is laid on with a trowel, but what it boils down to is yet more government meddling in things that do not concern it.

For example: "We celebrate those who profit from creativity and hard work but not those who make reckless gambles with other people's money. " Ah, right. And how do we tell which is which? Who decides what is reckless and what is merely insightful interpretation of market trends? Simple, I suppose - those who make money are creative, those who don't are reckless.

Or, to put it another way, fear of failure - of being thought of as reckless - will quickly become the prevailing reason for trading, or not trading, as the case may be. Celebrations in aid of creativity and hard work will be few and far between as the really smart operators take refuge in tedious, humdrum, SAFE transactions with no risk and no returns.

As for the financial mess that he can no longer hide under the rug, well, that's ok, it's not his fault. No, it's a global problem, from way beyond our shores. Nothing to be done but work together with other countries, do everthing Gord says, trust him, and all will be well. Crap. Utter CRAP. Yes, there's a global problem. But the UK is far worse affected than anywhere else. The UK is also the country under the Gordon Brown-Trousers oppressive heel. Coincidence? I think not, and neither do the commentors in the Telegraph.

So there we have it. Gordon's brave new world, where the timid thrive, anyone with any idea has already left the country and when we can't hide the problems anymore we blame them on the rest of the world. It's cosy, designed to appeal to world-owes-me-a-living benefit scrounging scum, but it's not cutting much ice with the rest of us. Gordon Brown-Trousers should sack his script-writer, and whoever advised him that exposing himself to such an unquenchable tide of ridicule as he has roused in Telegraph readers was a good idea.

I have my suspicions that they might be one and the same person, the newly resurrected Prince of Darkness. The question is, was it his idea or was he just powerless (or unwilling) to stop the PM from humiliating himself this way? Time will tell, but Tony Blair's remaining cronies must be clapping their hands in glee at the way Brown's unpopularity has been so ably - and legitimately - demonstrated in response to something that he purports to have written himself. BIG mistake.

Billy Seggars.

In For A Penny, In For A Pounding

I love this story from the Telegraph about a church choir mistress who paid a hospital parking fine in pennies.

It seems that Susan Catcheside, 74, from Longney, Gloucester, had been visiting an 83-year-old friend at Gloucester Royal Hospital, when she copped for a £70 parking fine. Not being over well herself, the good lady apparently didn't notice that the parking space she occupied was reserved for permit holders, and fell victim to the local Gloucester City Council's cash acquirement scheme.

Her appeal against the Council's insatiable demand for cash was unsuccessful, and her only option was to pay up. Even though the Council pledges to only extort a mere £35 if victims pay up within two weeks, Mrs Catcheside was - quite rightly, in my opinion - enraged at the inhuman "Hitler-ite" actions of officials involved in this fiasco.

She determined to make the buggers work for their ill-gotten gains, and paid £35 fine in pennies. Well done, Mrs C! The Telegraph says she extracted 35 bags of pennies from her bank, presumably containing one hundred pennies each, which she took to the Council offices in a sweet jar in a wheelbarrow. Again, an excellent plan, in my opinion, but, in her position, I'd have made sure that some bags contained less than one hundred pennies, while others contained more - the Council would have received exactly the amount they had set out to deprive her of, but they'd have had to bloody well count it all, every penny.

The whole business of fining individuals who park at hospitals - and, come to that, imposing parking fees at hospitals at all - is nothing more than a scam, a means of parting the sick and their worried relatives from their cash at a time when they are most vulnerable. It is disgraceful, inhuman, unacceptable and I very strongly urge all who find themselves on the wrong end of such treatment to use any means at their disposal to make the experience difficult for the officialdom that preys so unjustly upon them.

As for Gloucester City Council, a spokesman said, "If she wants to pay in pennies that's fine. Cash payments are accepted." Yes, I just bet pennies are fine. In fact, right now, I should imagine that just about anything, including a reasonably believable IOU will do nicely. You see, accodring to this article in the Telegraph, they're a bit financially embarassed at the moment, to the tune of around £2 million invested in Icelandic banks. You know, those banks that have recently collapsed? The ones that it might have been just a little bit silly to trust with public money?

True, Gloucester City Council is hardly alone in such finacial stupidity, and its exposure to this kind of massive risk isn't on quite the same scale as that of other councils, but it was still a bloody stupid thing to do with two million quid, and you can see why they'd be out to, metaphorically, mug old ladies in hospital car parks with a view to making up the shortfall. Shame on them.

Billy Seggars.

Seeing The Light

Anyone remember this Reuters press release from March 9th 2007? It said, "BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European homes, offices and streets will have to use energy-efficient lighting by the end of the decade, EU leaders decided on Friday."

The name of the game was efficiency, of course. Being inescapably gripped by the madness of mental enviroism, the meddlesome bods in Brussels just couldn't resist the chance to impose yet more tree-hugging piety on their long suffering citizens. Like biofuel, energy efficient light bulbs were vitally important to the future of ... well, everything, really.

And now look what's happened. Last week, in the "ban the bag" Daily Mail, whose campaign to abolish the plastic bag has imposed mass inconvenience on supermarket shoppers up and down the land, I saw a combination of words that I never expected to see side by side - "harmful biofuels".

But it gets better. Today, most of the papers are featuring this little gem, as reported in the Telegraph: "Energy saving light bulb radiation 'could be harmful'." It turns out that CF bulbs - that's Compact Fluorescent for those of us not well up on enviro-speak - could be kicking out as much UV light (Ultraviolet) as a bright sunny day.

Boffins "don't think" they pose a risk of skin cancer, but then, boffins didn't think the Titanic would sink, either, and were pretty sure biofuel was a good idea before reality and human nature proved their naievety. Apparently, it's not all CF lightbulbs, though. No, it's just the funny shaped ones - you know, the prongs and whorly things that look like electric spaghetti. Those enclosed in an outer globe, that look like real like bulbs, are supposed to be safer.

The trouble seems to be that the things consume much less power (isn't that the idea?) and so don't get as hot as an ordinary incandescent bulb, leading people to bring them nearer to their person when used in reading lamps and desk lights. I can't imagine many people wanting to sit with a light right in front of them unless they have to, no matter how cool it may be, and the unwritten truth of the matter is that people have to - the quality of light these things put out is slightly worse than an ailing glowworm.

Consequently, people are sitting within 30 cms of these CF lights, and are turning red in the face as a result. Not, I hasten to add, as a result of embarassment at being found with one of those ugly, pointless things in their posession, but because they've been getting a tan from it. And that's not good, as this Jan 2007 headline from the Daily Mail shows: "Sunbed skin cancer danger has trebled." The article went on to say "The risk of developing skin cancer from using sunbeds has trebled in just a decade, experts have warned." Ergo, tanning = bad, no matter how it's achieved.

But that's ok, because similar experts today say, "We do not believe that these [CF] lights pose any significant risk in terms of skin cancer. This is precautionary advice and people should not be thinking of removing these energy saving light bulbs from their homes. We are advising people to avoid using the open light bulbs for prolonged close work until the problem is sorted out and to use encapsulated bulbs instead. In other situations, where people are not very likely to be very close to the bulbs for any length of time, all types of compact fluorescent light bulbs are safe to use."

Precautionary, eh? Oh, good, I'm glad about that. Of course, if there wasn't ANY risk, there'd be no need for precautions, would there? I'd suggest some slightly different precautions, myself.

1) Visit nearest shop still so non-PC as to be stocking incandescent bulbs - not all large retailers are massively influenced by hype, and there are still some around.
2) Buy all available incandescent bulbs - you'll be amazed at how cheap they are, compared to CF bulbs.
3) Return home, rip out all CF bulbs and replace with incandescent, remembering to wait until daylight or have a suitable source of light to hand while doing so - you will need to turn the lights off for this!
4) Pull out of Europe with speed, making it quite clear that the EU's head is so far up its collective legislative backside that it couldn't tell the difference between CF lights and incandescent bulbs at 3 cms, let alone 30.

Clear? Good. It's just a precaution, you understand, against the chance that the EU is advised, governed and run by utter morons, but why take the risk? After all, it took 27 of them to change a light bulb - how many will it take to change it back?

Now all we need to do is worry about those rising leccy bills, but I'm working on that...

Billy Seggars.

Raising The Dead - Peter Mandelson Returns

The return to government of the disgraced (twice) Peter Mandelson has produced some of the most sustained and vitriolic newspaper comments that I have seen for quite some time. Today, the Sun refers to him as Lord Stench, and the Daily Mail - fairly vibrating with righteous ire - ran the headline "Arise Lord Sleaze".

Of course, they both refer to the need to shoe-horn Mandy into the House of Lords so he can wiggle his way back in to Gordon Brown-Trousers' cabinet. That's hardly surprising, is it? Nobody in their right mind would vote for him, so the chances of the Prince of Darkness getting his old job back through the conventional, democratic method of being elected as an MP in a by election are effectively zero.

Still, nobody elected Gordon Brown-Trousers as Prime Minister, either, did they, so I don't suppose he'll be too worried about the undemocratic imposition of Mandy upon an already struggling nation. The plan seems to be to quash all the Labour in-fighting by recruiting Blair's henchman, suggesting that the former PM wants everyone, including the Blairite survivors, to unite behind the PM.

That's quite a tall order, and although calls for the PM's head are noticabley diminished this week, I doubt it can all be attributed to Many - the deepening fincial crisis has probably had a sobering effect on the more rebellious Labour MPs, as they begin to realise that they now have even less hope of finding a job when the lose their seats at the next election.

Whatever the tactical reasons for digging up the political corpse of Peter Mandelson's career, it's done nothing to improve Gordon Brown-Trousers' populatity. Everyone knows that they've been mortal enemies for years, and recalling him now looks far more like an act of total desperation than statesmanship. People also remember that Mandy stepped down in disgrace, not once but TWICE.

Anyone can make a mistake, and should be allowed a second chance. But two mistakes, both equally sleazy-looking, by one of the most influential figures in the government of the day are just not acceptable. To reward the perpetrator with a peerage and drag him back into government, on a generous salary together with other perks, smaks of rewarding sleaze and scraping the very bottom of a dirty barrel.

It's difficult to imagine anyone less likely to make a return to mainstream politics, or less welcome to do so, and the expressions on the faces of various TV reporters when his return was announced last week were a sight to behold. Even these erudite individuals were almost struck dumb by the sheer improbability of the story they were forced to report, and their staggered disbelief was, I am sure, echoed in living rooms up and down the land.

Only an arrogant, out of touch Prime Minister with no regard for the British population, or a PM at the absolute end of his tether, with no other options, would dream of making such an overwhelmingly unpopular appointment. Clearly, all of the above applied and the result is that we are now saddled, yet again, with Peter Mandelson in the cabinet.

I doubt he'll be there very long, though, and it will be interesting to see whether his departure comes through resignation (AGAIN), New Labour's landslide loss at the next election or the PM sacking him when he realises that he's after his job. But even when the odious man has been evicted, yet again, from the cabinet, he'll still be Lord M, entitled to hand around in the Lords doing nothing very much and getting paid to turn up. Nice work if you can get it.

Billy Seggars.

Crazy Cameron, Man With A Plan?

I have to confess that I didn't catch all of Crazy Cameron's big speech yesterday. The thought of spending over an hour watching his forehead waggling was just too much, so I chickened out and caught the highlights and media reports later.

I gather he made a big thing of Gordon Brown-Trousers' "not the time for a novice" jibe, as well he should have done. It was a typically foolish thing for the PM to say, leaving him wide open to the obvious response that the only experience Brown-Trousers has is of how to screw things up. We can live without the dubious benefits of that kind of experience, and, in contrast, Cameron's crew look positively appealing, novices or not.

Cameron seems to have taken aim at the things that really, really annoy Joe Public, too. Political correctness has run riot in recent years, and Cameron promised to control the Human Rights culture, reign in Health and Safety Madness and generally introduce some badly needed common sense into the proceedings. So far, so good, and he didn't look too bad on the economic front either, being careful not promise things that clearly can't be done - for the moment, at any rate.

Doing well, ticking all the right boxes, looking like a PM-in-waiting and yet, and yet... well, it's Crazy Cameron saying these things, isn't it? Let us not forget that until Gordon Brown-Trousers shot himself so effectively in the foot, Cameron was hated by his own party, and it was touch and go whether he would survive long after last year's conference.

He cycles to work and he's got a windmill nailed on his house. Yesterday's speech was rewritten to avoid too many swipes at the Prime Minister that would have made him look less serious and statesman-like in a time of economic crisis - scoring points by being seen not to score points, in other words. A few days ago he was offering to slap taxes on junk food to "encourage" people to eat healthy meals, and claiming to have taken up jogging and quit smoking.

You can see the pattern, can't you? And this is why I'm not convinced by this sudden commitment to common sense from a bloke who hasn't shown much interest in it before. He, or more likely someone in his party who actually reads the papers, has realised that the vast majority of people are totally fed up with political correctness, and he's seized upon it as yet another "niche" bandwagon to leap on.

For all his comforting words, Crazy Cameron lacks substance. Does it matter? Perhaps not, for the moment. Anyone will be a more welcome PM than Gordon Brown-Trousers, any party more popular than New Labour, and, let's face it, nobody could do the country more damage than Blair and Brown already have.

In other circumstances, Cameron would be a long way from being my first choice. But this isn't an ideal world and, depressingly, he's about the best of a very bad lot. Let him in, let him have a go, let's see what he can do. He might surprise us by being better than we expect. And if he doesn't, there's always William Hauge, waiting in the wings...

Billy Seggars.