Big Brother database worry

Dizzy debunks the theory

I have to admit that I was extremely worried and annoyed when I read this story in The Times about further moves by New Labour to create yet another huge massive database that intends to peer into our private lives by snooping on our phone calls and emails. People in South Shields should worry over the intent and application of these “Big Brother” tactics and the direction that Gordon Brown’s government is taking as it steadily chips away at our privacy and civil liberties.

However it didn’t take Dizzy long to debunk the whole theory and to rubbish the achievements of Labour’s previous attempts to create working databases, what’s more he does it as a guest commenter in The Times, the boy has done well, showing that there is a role for the new media bloggers sitting comfortably within the mainstream media. Dizzy (Phil Hendron) describes it as “selling out”, I prefer to think of it more as “selling up” and making his views available to a much wider and possibly more discerning audience. Lets hope that we see more of Dizzy in The Times, and perhaps see other newspapers taking the opportunity to widen their appeal by adding a few bloggers to their writing resource 9Iain Dale is a regular with the Daily Telegraph and Paul Linford is a regular with the Newcastle Journal, although in reality he is a blogging journalist rather than a blogger per se.

Whilst we are on the subject of “Big Brother” and the “surveillance society” It is good to see that the Conservative Party is considering moves to restrict and regulate the role of CCTV cameras. Shadow Home Secretary David Davies that of the four million CCTV systems in Britain 90% of them are not fit for purpose and cannot provide images that are of evidence quality.

“There is no argument for having CCTV which both infringes on our civil liberty but is of such poor quality it does nothing to protect us or provide evidence to bring perpetrators of crime to justice - as happens now. Conservatives would ensure any CCTV has to be maintained at sufficiently high standard to provide evidence admissible in court. We would also strictly limit access to these images to the police and other relevant agencies until they get to court, and set a mandatory punishment for breaches of these rules that infringe the privacy of the individual.”

What he is not committing the party to, yet, is to restrict the number of new CCTV systems being added to the plethora that we already see in our streets, shops, buses, taxis etc. Money saved on some of these schemes could be diverted towards improved neighbourhood policing, which in my view will always be a better deterrent and investigative tool that a poorly maintained camera giving a grainy image.

One day, just for the hell of it, I’m going to walk from South Shields Market Place to the Ship and Royal on the corner of Mile End Road and count how many CCTV cameras I can see on the street and in the shops .

It could prove enlightening.

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PM will not go to Crewe and Nantwich

Tamsin will NOT say if Gordon is an asset or not!

Despite being ribbed by David Cameron at PMQs today about his refusal to campaign at the Crewe and Nantwich by election (even though Blair threw convention out of the window), Gordon Brown weathered the storm with his usual ‘I think it’s question Cameron time each Wednesday’. Labour’s candidate in Nantwich and Victoria, meanwhile doesn’t seem to be able answer the basic question of whether she finds the Prime Minister to be an asset.

Here’s a little video of the privileged Tamsin Dunwoody (hoping to inherit her mother’s seat) thrice denying Gordon!

Tamsin thinks he was unanimously elected as Prime Minister by someone.

Does anyone in South Shields think the Scottish unelected Labour Prime Minister is an asset?

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Money on Miliband

Ladbrokes are still taking money on Labour leadership

The Spectator’s Coffee House calls it a curse, but South Shields MP and Foreign Secretary David Miliband is still favourite at Ladbrokes to succeed Gordon Brown should the party decide that it’s had enough of Gordon Brown. For the life of me I cannot understand why money is being staked on some of these names.

I’ve had the sort of day where the unexpected heat has left me too “bothered to blog”, whilst it is a pleasant change I’m finding it all rather tiring. I had intended to have a good rant about MPs voting in favour of the Frankenstein Bill, sibling saviours, and genetically engineered disease resistant humans who live for ever, and how these mindless politicians are quite prepared to create a society which gets ever older and more costly to keep and at the same time commits infanticide against unborn children! Oh well there’s always tomorrow.

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South Tyneside Council pioneers embryonic research

Council Leader happy to be first

South Tyneside Council Leader Cllr. Iain Malcolm has pioneered Britain’s first politically motivated “admixed embryo” before Parliament has finished debating and deciding the ethical and legal issues surrounding this type of research. The multi-headed monster created outside of the normal processes, was developed by taking stem cells from a normal human embryo and they were injected with genetic material from multiple “political animal” sources in the hope of creating a being that would be resistant to normal political protest.

Cllr. Malcolm who funded the research and development said;

“It may look a bit strange and odd, but in the future these hybrids may save us an awful lot of time and money, people will eventually get used to them, and of course if they don’t work we can always destroy them. The ethical issues will soon be agreed, I feel confident that this is the way to go and I’m proud that South Tyneside is pioneering this science, we are so happy to be the first.”

When asked if his development could lead to disease resistant politicians who could outlive all other humans, Cllr Malcolm replied:

“You are starting to think like an Independent now, it’s a silly suggestion, these embryos are all under my ultimate control, I can create life and destroy it at will, but don’t worry I am a responsible man, I instinctively know what is good for us. It is this sort of irresponsible thinking which encouraged me to preclude certain species when we admixed the stem cells”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is reported to be delighted this morning!

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Milishuffle

Foreign Secretary to be dealt a duff hand?

The Foreign Office played down a German newspaper report on Sunday that Foreign Secretary David Miliband would move to Brussels to become European Union foreign affairs chief.

The German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, citing unnamed “high-ranking EU diplomats”, reported that Miliband was set to become the EU’s next high representative for foreign and security policy next year, succeeding Javier Solana.

Makes you wonder if the “Brownies” are trying to shuffle the South Shields MP out of the way, just in case there’s a leadership election this autumn. Anything would be possible to save Gordon’s skin, rule nothing in, and rule nothing out!

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Memory’s buttocks beaten

Daring to tread where the mainstream media fear to go

Centre Right needs to be praised for it’s courageous decision to go ahead and publish pictures which The Daily Mail found too graphic to show it’s readers, Tim Montgomerie has decided to bring to us the story of a young woman named Memory who had her buttocks thrashed with wooden poles by Robert Mugabe’s thugs in Zimbabwe.

Her crime? She supported the opposition MDC in defiance of the ageing African dictator. This post deserves a much wider audience, please do not click “continue reading” if you are disturbed by graphic gruesome images of a bloodied body.

Memory’s story is so symptomatic of the brutal Mugabe regime’s attempt to cling on to it’s power and illustrates horrifyingly the extent to which they are trying to manipulate Zimbabwe’s re-run election. Her extreme human suffering is a testament to the suffering of a nation that was once looked upon as the bread basket of Africa, now, with the appropriation of formerly white owned farming land they can hardly produce a bean to feed themselves.

I am heartily fed up with the pious weasly words of superficial condemnation from Brown, (South Shields MP and Foreign Secretary) Miliband, and other western leaders, we were all prepared to seek “regime change” in Iraq, but Mugabe’s crew and the  generals of Myanmar/Burma (who are rounding up survivors of the cyclone and forcing them to work in labour camps) are apparently left to their own devices!

Cranmer has another post on Zimbabwe asking where is our so called ethical foreign policy?

Continue reading.

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Government ordered to Crewe

Go there and save me says Brown

Gordon Brown has ordered his entire government to get along to Crewe this weekend and save his sorry skin, but he has no intentions of going there himself (even after Tony Blair broke the convention by campaigning in a by election). South Shields MP and Foreign Secretary David Miliband has already campigned in Crewe and Nantwich, but does he have to do it all over again and miss out on an opportunity to be in South Shields this weekend? He won’t be happy to be ordered about by Gordon.

“Apparently I’m supposed to give up a chance to see my kids to try to save face for Gordon. It’s ridiculous – it’s lost and we’re not going to change that now,” said one minister. Another said: “If it’s that important, why’s he not going himself? Because he knows it’s pointless.”

Not that he knows it’s pointless, but in his way of warping reality he knows that the people of Crewe and Nantwich don’t deserve to be the focus of a large scale security blanket and don’t need to become a target for terrorists, and that they deserve something far bigger than a by election, they deserve a referendum on the European Constitution, and hordes of marauding Scottish followers of Raith Rovers can only be effectively policed in much larger cities!

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Gordon under pressure

Warping the external world to make it fit

Writing in The Times today Matthew Parris conjures a bewildering scene where the Prime Minister finds it so difficult to use the word “I”, denies the facts, and warps the external world around him to suit circumstances.

After Brown’s ‘pitiful’ interviews over the past week and yet another ‘relaunch’ Parris gives an excellent analysis of the PM’s psyche:

I’ll tell you what scares me, and scares (I believe) a wider public who may not always be consciously aware why. It’s not the thought that the Prime Minister may be lying. It’s a more disturbing thought: that he may not. That under the terrible internal pressure created in his own head by a refusal to accept either that his will may be thwarted or his judgement questioned, the PM is having to warp the external world to make it fit.

Could it be that it is to himself, and not to us, that Mr Brown is unable to acknowledge reality? That he really doesn’t now think he did change his mind about that snap election for fear of losing it? That the main reason for a Budget U-turn was a need he suddenly saw for economic stimulus? That Wendy Alexander was not calling for an earlier referendum on Scottish independence? That the May local and mayoral elections were not a tremendous rebuke to his administration?

But a cold, angry repudiation of the evidence itself, a look that suggests a different prism, a different picture; a strange, knotted, jaw-clenching, fact-defying, interview-wrecking rejection of what the rest of us see plain as daylight . . . this disturbs more deeply than everyday mendacity ever can. Where could a national conversation with such a man begin?

If you want to try to understand why this government led by Gordon Brown is disintegrating so visibly can I recommend that you read the whole of this article - here.

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Gordon “Chubby” Brown

Funny impersonation of Gordon Brown in this video from Bremner, Bird, and Fortune.

“I’ve got a lousy tax policy to finish with”

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An extra £120

What could I do with it?

Thinking of the average person in South Shields, just what could we all do with the £120 bribe being offered later this year by Brown and Darling?

• Save it for a rainy day, council taxes might just go up again next year!
• Use it to pay for the increased price of petrol (it might cover 24 tank fulls.)
• Put it towards the expected 30% increase in gas bills seeing as the government is doing little to secure energy supplies.
• Put it towards the costs of repairing aunty Mabel’s council toppled headstone.
• Use it to pay the extra tax on the family car.
• Allow it to be swallowed up by the mortgage increases.
• Put it towards the increase in council house rents.
• Buy 66 school meals at next year’s price.

Feel free to add any other suggestions.

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