8th February 2010. John Timpson's article in today's Telegraph reminds me why we need Trades Unions. A superb example of "Pull the ladder up, I'm OK so sod the rest of you." Talking about the problem how to handle your employees coming upto retirement.

30th July 2009  ID cards will not display Union Jack They really are determined to kill Britain and its identity.

21st July 2009. Double fatalities for Canadians. I quite agree with the need to improve the equipment for our army, though I'm interested to note that, according to the 'Economist July 18th', the Canadians are suffering double the losses than we are. Canada 124 fatalities from 2830 troops (4.4%) and Britain 184 from 8300 troops (2.2%.)

16th July 2009 A compliment because it's due. For Ordnance Survey. I had emailed because the Longitude markings on Landranger 198 seemed to be in error. I had a delightful conversation with Lesley about the curved longitude lines and ending with finding a "Graticule Intersection" to show where the South Downs Way crosses "0" Longitude near Rodmell. Stunning. It's good to see accuracy, and it's good to see efficient customer service.

12th July 2009 Consultation!! Yet again newspeak has taken over. I have never yet seen any occasion where the body seeking consultation has ever amended their plans or their position because of the views and opinions of the public. It only ever means 'we can tick the box and say we have consulted' ... with who ever. So it's most important never to be any part of the consultation process.

Also I'm in the can-pay / won't-pay team. We don't need the BBC as currently organised, I object to subsidising programmes that I'll never watch. Cleared of the TV Tax, I can then choose which news service to subscribe to - Telegraph, International Herald Tribune, Nature or who ever, may be even the BBC World Service.

18th June 2009. Brilliant. I think Obama's new regulations and Europe's new regulations are brilliant. We just follow Mervyn King's route or separating the retail customer business from the high risk money market strategies business. You have tight financial controls where there are government guarantees and more circumspect ones where investors want to make or to lose millions. The result is that the risk money will leave Europe and America and come to the UK. You can't legislate for every possibility so keep it open.

17th June 2009, There you have it, a key strategic development lost in a welter of party slogans and specifically introducing the Broadband Tax, how incredibly stupid.

16th June 2009. So the millionth word is "Web 2.0" a good choice. Bye-the-bye did you notice that protesters in Teheran were carrying posters in English! Other thoughts - a team has rebuilt Colossus at Bletchley Park, stunning. Delighted with Rolls Royce's success in getting the order from The Gulf and from China. 

10th June 2009. Gordon Brown has 'led' with his latest red herring, namely electoral reform, anything to try to change the key subjects - The Economy and MPs greed.

10th June 2009. Tomorrow it's forecast that the English language will officially have ONE MILLION words. Possibly the millionth word will be "NOOB" a newbie.

9th June 2009. What a fiasco! We're now looking at poor and deteriorating government with second rate politicians desperately trying to get the last penny out of the tax-payers, for the whole of the next twelve months.

10th April 2009. Well! What a surprise! Just one day after the callous treatment of Ian Tomlinson and his death at police hands, we suddenly get a massive terrorist threat, so strong that dear Gordon has to rush disheveled into the media mayhem. Anything to divert your attention from his and his teams appalling cook-ups. Bye the bye, want to guess who's paying for these student courses? I'll bet it's you and me.

7th April 2009. Another right bites the dust. Freedom of speech just got down-graded by the UN Human Rights Council on 26th March. "Defamation of religions" is a "serious affront to human dignity" which can "restrict the freedom of those who are defamed and may also lead to incitement of violence." The original version upheld the rights of individuals not religions, or any other set of beliefs. It upholds the right of people to live infreedom from persecution and arbitrary arrest; to hold any faith or none; to change religion; to enjoy freedom of expression, whichby any fair definition includes the freedom to agree or disagree with the tenets of any religion. The problem is that 'defamation' is being defined as blasphemy.

31st March 2009. Good old Angela Merkel, reaffirming that the Germans will carry on with their export-led economy. This actually means "Stuff you, we're all right." As such we as indivdiuals should say That's fine, you do want you wnt to we however will decide under our own freewill to buy Skodas, Toyotas, Subaru, Kia, Jaguar, Ford, Land Rover, Vauxhall, Lexus and UK Minis. Simialarly we should try to stop buying anything made in China eg Huawei telcoms items."

27th March 2009. Top of the Flops. "Floating point operations per sec" FLOPS what a superb understated acronym. 1940's Colossus 5,000 operations per second. The Earth Simulator 2002 35.86 Billion calculations per second.  The Redwood 2008 40 teraflops. The Roadrunner 2008 1,000 trillion calcualtons per second. Sequoia from IBM 20 petaflops (20 quadrillion calculations per second)

26th March 2009. How many MPs do you want to pay for? There's 646 at Westminster, 129 Scottish parliament, 60 in the Welsh Assembly, and 108 at Stormont. Do they earn their money? What do you want done about it? What do they do?

25th March 2009. Economies are not led from the top, they are created and maintained by funds flowing up the chain. They may be controlled at the top, regulated from the top, but they all rely on one thing. The purchasing power of individuals and business at the bottom.
We all know that the car industry does not need funds from government to survive, that will only lead to standstill, it needs buyers of the vehicles that it produces.

To reduce basic income tax at all levels to a standard 10% would increase the disposable income of 90% of the working population. These funds would immediately be used to pay off debt, reduce bank overdrafts and credit card balances, put into savings, spent on pension funds, purchase new goods in shops, which in turn would increase the manufacturers orders to the suppliers of raw materials, in short it would stimulate the entire economy. It would also have the added benefit of removing much of the Bank's vice like dominance of the financial sector.

23rd March 2009. "Ripped Off" v "Rippers Off." The Conservatives seem determined to stay within the ranks of the "Rippers Off". Well, believe me, I'm one of the "Ripped off". and I want recompense and damages, come and join me.

Key phrases from the weekend papers: 1. Combination of economic downturn, credit crunch and environmental catastrophe does suggest the need for a new way of approaching economics, politics and the labour-market. 2. Need to look upon people as producers rather than as consumers. 3. The country is in the most terrible economic mess. 4. .... the people who try to make their own way in the wold are getting poorer versus the undeserving rich and the un-sackable bureaucrats. 5.Titanic economic failure ... by Gordon Brown. 6. Nanny-knows-best attitude that stifles enterprise and initiative.

So who are my most likely allies, who will join the tribe, people who:
- own and run small businesses
- have reduced pensions because of the Gordon Brown theft
- have investment and pensions losses, damaging their savings and their future, because of the northern and scottish banking incompetence
- want to get back into work, jobs lost because of the economic catastrophe
- want better education and better opportunities for their children
- want better health and police services, locally controlled
- want more freedom and less nick-picking laws, because of the European Union
- want a balanced approach to immigration
- want to create a better world, a better future

20th March 2009 Excellent news, according to the IMF "UK will have the wrost deficit in Western World", EXCELLENT NEWS. Why? Because both the government and its loyal opposition should both be discredited by their incompetence. If we can get rid of them than we can show the b....y world what we can really do.

17th March 2009. Heavens above, more nanny state. First the binge drinkers,as someone suggested why nor reduce the duty of low strength ale and beer and increase the duty on spirits and alcopops. Then the proposition to limit mortgages to three years salary. OR is all this just a distraction so that we forget we had to rescue the two scottish banks, to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds. Yes they were Scottish banks not English banks. The big mistake was bailing out Northern Rock.

16th March. Extract from their web site. New research for the Centre for Policy Studies shows that gas-fired electricity will account for 70% of all the UK’s conventional generating capacity by 2020. This over-reliance on one fuel will be undesirable. Government must act now to end this dangerous dependency. To reduce dependency on gas, the Government should:

• Extend the lives of the UK’s existing nuclear and coal stations. It should therefore seek an urgent derogation from new EU emissions rules which will, without a derogation, mean that Britain’s older coal and oil stations close by 2015.

• Grant approval to the numerous clean coal projects awaiting approval around the UK. They should be encouraged and supported. Kingsnorth in particular represents an opportunity for the UK to lead with clean coal technology and carbon capture and storage (CCS). In this light, the continuing delay in granting approval to Kingsnorth is particularly regrettable.

12th March 2009. Well I recommended a national speed limit of 50mph but in conjunction with a 100mph speed limit on motorways after 2300 and before 0600 so that those who want to get to their destination quickly.

I also recommended releasing land from local authority parks etc and from the National Trust for use for allotments, but Gordon Brown is frightened of upsetting the local councils let alone frightening the voters with the urgent need to grow their own vegetables.

11th March 2009. As from 31st March 2009 on the spot fine £120, sorry deposit, for vehicles stopped and being found to have less than 1mm tread on their tyres. (New Statutory Instrument) Other fines, sorry deposits, if you can't prove your permanent address.

11th March 2009. And I thought teachers were intelligent - apparently they're thinking about taking strike action over a pay claim. Don't they know that the latest strike action by teachers was in Ireland aand it was because they'd been hit by a monthly pensions charge of 9%. DO THEY REALLY THINK WE DON'T NOTICE.

11th March 2009. Yet another murder of a member of the security services yesterday, following the two soldiers at the weekend. Is it possible ever to end this strife? Is it possible to ensure the safety of our fellow Britons? The borders are so long and complex as to be indefensible and regretfully enough people agree or support the murderers' objective as to enable them to survive. Would the protestants agree to their homes and land being purchased by Eire so that they can come and join us by re-locating to mainland Britain?