Sunday, July 29, 2007

How to Save UK Democracy ..?

What an unmitigated shambles for the Tories.

Cameron is being advised by dangerous idiots and presently stands no chance of being elected after all. It seems that only way forward is for ALL the despairing Conservative MPs to cross the floor and join the Labour Party, along with all the LibDems.

From there, they can practise their acerbic brand of disloyalty and teach the Labour and LibDems a thing or to about undermining their respective leaderships.

Then after a brief period of complete chaos perhaps two credible parties might emerge with distinct alignments and policies to deal with the key issues of UK democracy - starting with the UK itself.

This would also be the moment for Scotland to decide if it wanted to be a UK team player, and instead of forever whining on about independence, become properly independent at last, and stop bothering the rest of us. Either way, no Scottish MP should be entitled to vote on non-Scottish affairs of any sort.

Or maybe we will end up with 10 parties, but genuine proportional representation and use of referenda to reflect the changed realities of an online age?

We are fast approaching that point where ANYTHING is better than what we have now.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

A wake up call while Rip van Brown sleep walks on

The current flood crisis in the West country might be a point at which the nation takes a step back to look at what 10 years of metro-Caledonian rule has done for the shires of England.

In two words: "bugger all".

It's no secret that Blair and his freeloading gang of Old Islingtonians had little or no time for the ways of English country folk, so the sight of them stuck floating down shit creek without the aid of their local council's paddle diversity officer won't send tremors through the PLP at Westminster; but the rest of us should perhaps ponder if this is not the precise moment at which we consider the plight of the English and decide once and for all if we are indeed a United Kingdom, or the collection of tribal fiefdoms that Labour has revived so spectacularly over the past 10 years, to the inestimable cost of the disenfranchised English.

That pointless Scottish parliament building cost some £500m, although in view of the ongoing pantomime of "Scottish Democracy", they might as well have adapted the Glasgow Empire for a lot less. Alex Salmond would strike a fine figure as Widow Twankie, along with cries of "No tickee, no washee" as the clarion call of his free spending administration - except that it's still the English picking up the majority of his laundry bill.

We are constantly told we are short of housing - yet we are told we must permit completely unexpected numbers of immigrants to arrive, allegedly to prop up our "stretched" service industries. We are now told the trains are running at bursting point, and that £500m needs to be spent by the travellers. Remember all you English travellers when you find yourself stuffed in like Sardines, that is a number curiously adjacent to the cost of that wretched Palace to the vanity of Scots in Edinburgh.

In fact, every measure that suggests England, if not the UK as a whole, is overflowing seems to be telling us to stop and reconsider the scope of the remaining infrastructure, but yet the process grinds inexorably onwards, and our population is swollen with ever more needing houses and seats on trains.

If the future really is flooding on the scale we have seen, then everyone on a flood plain will need relocating. Perhaps the answer is the return of the £10 assisted passage to get our unwanted English folk on boats to Canada and Australia to make room for all those lovely EU citizens, and the extended families of those many millions of earlier migrants that want in.

If Canada has any sense, it will vigorously encourage the good English country folk of Gloucester to fill up the vast open spaces of Canada (above the flood line) before some smart socialist politician in Ottawa decides to take a leaf from Brown's Book of Gerrymandering, and compete with Gordon to fill them up with more left-sympathetic voters.

And as for the Boy Dave at large in Rwanda, one can only hope that he goes on a fact finding mission on a crocodile farm, and finds himself "all in it together" with a particularly hungry one in need of a good hug.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Cash for dishonours

If anyone imagines that the end of the cash for honours case has left any of those involved with the vestige of any honour or credibility, then they must be living in a parallel universe.

A dodgier bunch of Del-boy alikes is hard to imagine. Talk amongst rich might-be donors of "Ks" and "Ps" cannot be chuckled off with the sort of relieved levity shown by bluff amnesic Welshman Sir Chris Evans without comment from TMP.

Of course the implication is that "they all do it" and have done so for centuries since fiefdoms were bought and sold by Saxons and the rest, so let's have a gentleman's truce now and draw a veil of the current proceedings, since every party that has ever appointed a K or a P has almost certainly got the dirt on everyone else in the club.

In the real world outside Westminster, mortals who are hounded by the unforgiving nature of much petty legislation don't belong to the sort of mutual protection rackets that protect dodgy politicians and their acolytes.

That unfortunate flower seller at the London station who is presently waiting to find out how much a stray petal is going to cost her would probably have got off for nothing if only she had been selling peerages instead of peonies.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Vlad tidings from Russia

Gordon's gang of fresh-faced but inexperienced ministers might like to keep in mind that if Vladimir Putin wants to fire a shot across the UK bow, the last thing he need do would be resort to the sort of gung-ho cold war nonsense that was so pointlessly exhumed with the expulsion of Russian diplomats.

Typically, the UK's entire technical expertise these days seems to be focused on the last physical remnants of that Cold War - the defence technology industry and its close relation, surveillance systems. From a world-leading position in telecoms, we have yet again pretty much abdicated all aspects of a fundamentally crucial core industry - in this case IP routers and switches.

All Vlad needs to do to send a message of stark clarity to the amateur politicians on Brown's steep learning curve would be to instruct one of his teams of hackers to switch off the Internet to the UK for 5 minutes. Moreover they would use any one of probably several thousand zombie/sleeper systems that they almost undoubtedly control sitting patiently on the ends of innocent UK broadband connections. Better still, since you are no doubt monitoring this blog, Comrade, why not redirect all UK government websites to http://themajorityparty.co.uk/blog/2007/07/vlad-tidings-from-russia.html ..?

It's very easily done.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Priorities and the NHS

What do the majority of British people need more?

The cost of subsidising Scotland (with its free elderly care and university places), stealth speed cameras, growing legions of council officials doing mindless work on stupid EU legislation ...or more CT and MRI scanners, and operators?

The wondrous amount of (mostly English) cash poured down the NHS drain over the past 10 years has resulted in many GPs on £200k+ PA, almost no "proper" evening and weekend cover, and hospitals that are top heavy with witless administrators, busily firing highly qualified nurses, and offering them employment back as lowly health care assistants, the NHS equivalent of those cheap CSOs being used bulk out the plod.

Yet fast growing medical issues such the remarkable rise in allergies and asthma in recent years remain almost entirely a mystery, and no one seems much closer to isolating and treating the specific causes of most common types of cancer.

Most cancer treatments available are still based around flushing the hapless and terrified patient with some variant of a ghastly toxin akin to Jeyes Fluid, where US drugs outfits charge £30k per course of treatment. Which begs the crucial question, is a proper understanding of how to prevent cancer actually in the financial interest of a large slice of an "industry" that thrives on people at their most vulnerable and desperate, and willing to pay anything ..?

The biggest medical (diagnostic) advance in recent times involves the unravelling of genetics, which opens up as yet unimagined cans of worms that must surely result in all forms of health and life insurance becoming the responsibility of the state (yes this is still TMP, you have not accidentally found your way to the Social Workers' Party website), and no longer in the hands of what is now essentially a cartel of "posh bookmakers". We chose the word "cartel" in the light of that recorded message that you now get when calling a car insurer that tells you about possible collusion with competitors over any information provided.

What a shame the UK leads the world in surveillance technology instead of diagnostic medical instrumentation - and don't forget the CT scanner was yet another UK invention that was developed overseas. The real value to the community attributable to speed cameras seems to be spun in various directions, but the benefits of wider availability of medical diagnostics are blatantly obvious.

And do we do need more (any?) community diversity and tree care officers?

The TMP thinks that there are probably better uses for OUR money.

A place in the sun

The other side of the immigration debate is the emigration story.

TV shows like A Place in the Sun trail around after generally very modest UK families who are looking to escape Brown's Beneficent Britain to create a better life for themselves. Astonishingly few have any command of the language at all, but yet they press on with bizarre disregard for the challenges that this provides.

The housing is cheaper, the food is cheaper, the way of life is less fraught, the weather is better; and even the drunks are generally far better natured than their violent and surly UK counterparts. And the PM of Spain is unlikely to ever be a dour Scot.

It seems that the UK government is happy to watch indigenous families totalling some 350k people with a bit of pioneering spirit and chutzpah disappear and create vacancies being filled by 600k immigrants.

Consider the historic voting tendencies of those with "pioneering spirit and chutzpah" versus traditional immigrant allegiances (complete with dodgy postal votes) for the Labour Party. Lady Shirley Porter got into deep brown stuff when messing around with a few thousand votes in Westminster, the Labour Party is gerrymandering with influence on a national scale and few seem bothered.

Bizarre.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Gordon's Honeymoon

Recent opinion polls putting Brown comfortably ahead of Cameron may have more to with relief that Tony finally did the decent thing, than belief in Brown and his 2nd division substitute lineup. Relief is generally not a wholly objective emotion. In this case, it masks yet another fundamental misjudgement - just as happened when far too many supposedly intelligent commentators attributed a modestly talented and adequately deluded actor like Blair with the characteristics of statesmanship.

That Gordon Brown should have the effrontery to pretend that his paw marks are not actually all over 10 years of New Labour misrule is the sort of amazing insolence that might just be a big enough lie to go so far off the credulity scale that he gets away with it, as long as he is permitted to avoid answering direct questions.

However, the Majority Party welcomes any opportunity for the democratic process to be exercised, but what we have in the UK is not democracy as long as the outcome of English politics at Westminster is determined by Scottish voters and their Scottish PM and Scottish Chancellor.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Rainman stops play

Our recent allusion to "skiers" being struck by the new government was wildly over optimistic. They may never even connect bat with ball. John Humphries' interview with Gordon Brown on Radio 4 today was more a case of the groundsman having being pressed into urgent service after the only batting talent had been compulsorily retired hurt.

Humphries bowled him comprehensively with just about every delivery as Gordon ducked into bouncers, flailed hopelessly outside the off stump and generally began to prove what we had all suspected about his fundamental lack of fitness for purpose. He simply does not answer any question he is given, but carries on taking guard somewhere around square leg.

There's nothing rare in a politician not answering a direct question, even when bowled underarm; but there is something quite painfully maladroit and uncoordinated where Gordon is concerned.

Humphries maintained a perfect line and length when repeatedly asking about the effect 600k unscheduled immigrants were having on stressed UK housing requirements on some 4 successive occasions. Brown played down the wrong line and missed each time, and only the most starry-eyed ardent Labour sympathiser could have failed to hear the regular clatter of the stumps being flattened.

Interviewing Our Beloved New Leader is not so much a case for Hawkeye as ensuring that Gordon's endless requirement for new stumps comes from ecologically managed sustainable forests.

Gordon's command of statistics is legendary. He has bored for England (and Scotland) on many budget occasions with his reams of tedium: to adapt that famous quotation, Gordon knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Would it be too extreme to suggest there may even be a glimpse of the Aspergers variant of autism going on here? As far as John Humphries was concerned, it was clearly a matter of "Rainman stops play".

Monday, July 09, 2007

Restating the obvious

Claiming ownership of the obvious as core policy is a fine political traditional going down through the ages, but why does the fact that children brought up in a stable 2-parent family generally create less havoc and lead more successful lives than children of broken/single parent homes, need to be quite so regularly "rediscovered"..?

Ian Duncan Smith's latest contribution to the reinvention of Tory policy has made the latest of these rediscoveries, but stops short on the precarious and mine-strewn path of analysis - so permit TMP to take a stab. What's a foot or two amongst friends? We'll just get some of those nifty springs fitted instead, and then no one will be able to catch us again. But if we can identify some reasons for the astonishing denial of the obvious over the past couple of decades, we might get nearer a long term solution.

[In the style of a Tom Baker narration:]

So much of chattering-class media and education has been progressively controlled by confirmed bachelors and strident spinsters for the past 20 years since homosexuality became compulsory in Little Britain, that the subversive assertion that two parent families are an irrelevant bourgeois anachronism has almost been accepted as a given. It isn't; it never was and, crucially, never will be: so would the pink mafia kindly please get over it, and move on.

The fact that many "single" people are disproportionately successful with respect to limited talent owes a fair bit to the fundamentally selfish nature of their persuasion, leading to the reality that helping to bring up kids in stable family relationships can be a huge and expensive distraction for those who choose to be boringly conventional in their view of society. Some (many?) employers also practise a form of subtle discrimination since they are aware that "married with children" workers inevitably have priorities outside the company.

If being determinedly single means riding around in a pristine Porsche Boxter instead of a Vauxhall Zafira littered with chocolate biscuit crumbs and home to an escaped hamster, then it's little wonder that metrosexuals like David Walliams keep their options so ambiguously open.

Once upon a time, the argument in favour of pretending that single parents and broken homes were not an impediment might have been attributed to a need to consider the feelings of kids of broken homes so they they are not immediately provided an excuse for underachievement. However, the facts are inescapable, and denial has done no party to this fundamental social deceit, any discernible favours. Now is the time to enlist kids to put pressure on their parents to act responsibly once again.

The modern tendency to have kids late is also a mistake. Apart from the physiological issues, by the age of 30 most parents, after a pampered upbringing by their own guilt-ridden parents and 10 years of dinky time (dual-income, no kids yet) , have grown comfortable on assorted selfish indulgences, and simply do not understand the sacrifices that traditional parenthood entails.

Maybe the most selfish indulgence of all is looking forward to having grown up kids off your hands in your early fifties. Spend that inheritance while you still can; and not on stair lifts.

So perhaps the theft of pension funds was actually a subtle way of reminding the population that since Gordon and his nanny state has blown the savings on surveillance cameras, ex-PM's perks, immigrant housing and diversity assertion training, he and it won't be around to look after you in your old age, and a caring family might be your only option. It's too bad that Gordon's kids will be nagging for university top-up funding just as he's hitting 65...

Friday, July 06, 2007

New New Labour, same old old story

Well, it's been quite a baptism for the "new government", but clearly Gordon is not going to be up to it in the long run. He and his woefully talent-free team are almost certain to hit a few skiers within the first few months - possibly the collapse of the credit economy that he did so much to encourage, or yet more uneasy revelations about immigration and political gerrymandering. And the cash for gongs affair is still far from out of the way.

The only question is if David Cameron is going to drop the catch. Too bad the country remains so polarised where William Hague, the safest pair of debating hands on the opposition benches, and the best political talent left standing, is concerned.

The awful truth is that the public would probably vote for Chantelle Houghton in an effort to relieve the boredom that seems inevitable.

But watch this space. Whilst Tony was a subtle Scot, Gordon is the full blown wode-wearing, sporran swinging, claymore swishing thoroughly Caledonian thing. Remember readers, he occupies No 10 as the result of the thoroughly gerrymandered Scottish vote - not the English vote. Moreover, the Scots have their own regime, embarrassingly headed up by the next best political talent to Hague in the UK, the redoubtable Alex Salmond. It could well suit Alex to see Gordon trip up and land sporran-first in the thistle patch.

As interest rates continue to climb and our faux economy falters, the very Scottish and very dour Alistair Darling will be ruffling English feathers aplenty. Things are warming up.