Frank Davis writes some of the best blog posts out there, in my opinion. He is often “Banging on about the Smoking Ban,” but his interest in statistics and science makes for good reading too. (That’s not him in the photo obviously, but he was just down the street from Nigel Farage in Stony Stratford, as part of a demo against one local councillor’s attempt to ban smoking on the streets there.)

Unlike certain bloggers, he tries to post every day, and his offering today is about why he is voting UKIP. He says that, I was actually quite content living in Britain until about 10 years ago, when it started to become another country, and an increasingly alien country.

That’s probably how most people feel, as it has taken so long for the social engineering to kick in to truly discernible levels. My reply to Frank was this:

I would disagree with one thing. The rot has been setting in since the 60s (and before). The “sexual revolution” and hippie subculture were no grassroots movements, but carefully crafted social engineering. The eugenics that led to abortion on demand, the LCP, “family planning” for depopulation purposes, started in the 30s with Marie Stopes and Margaret Sanger, the former craving the creation of a master race through selective breeding and the latter wanting to eradicate the blacks. Our society is now founded on the “principles” of these individuals and many like them.

Now, the Gates Foundation, with UK taxpayers’ money (I thought the Gates’s were billionaires dozens of times over and we were skint?), are using the same techniques in Africa.

The Fabian Society knew in the 19th century that the only way to a fully socialist society was by destroying the family and have been setting about to ensure it becomes a reality slowly-but-surely, hence their tortoise as a symbol. Almost every Western government is guided by Fabian skulduggery.

The global authoritarian movement (One Word Government/Global Governance/NWO: call it what you will) has been brewing for many decades and I see many bloggers, awake to most of it, but still don’t see the whole picture.

For example, “equality” for same-sex relationships is supported by many libertarians, but it is simply another way of destroying the family and our culture. “Population Matters” even supports same-sex relationships as an additional way of reducing the population.

There is rarely, if ever, a genuine grassroots movement. That’s why there are 27,000 fake (i.e. mainly taxpayer-funded) “charities” in the UK. The Government (EU/UN) wants to enact changes as part of the agenda and their “charities” cajole them with “statistics” and weighted opinion polls so that there is an impression that the desire for change is widespread. All done under the guise of “health”, “equality” or “saving the planet/environment”.

So, people who disagree can be discredited with the usual names of “bigot” or “climate change denier” and easily dismissed and the agenda steamrolls ahead.

All with the help of the mass media, which they also control, and why the internet is coming under attack, as the last bastion of free speech, now that soap-box speakers can be arrested if someone who overhears is offended, or a PCSO, fresh from his diversity training, believes that certain opinions (and taking photographs in the High Street) are illegal and the thought criminals must be punished.

No, this all kicked off before anyone who is alive today was even born.

It had to be done dead slowly. Imagine the armed forces coming home after the War (like a man I know who was shot down over France and held as a POW in Germany for two years – still buys flags from me) and everyone celebrating and going off down the pub, ordering a pint and lighting up – then shouted at to stand outside, while the cans of Glade are sprayed around in case the police come in and have them done. The locals wouldn’t have comprehended why they had sacrificed so much for the past six years. And then discovering that while they were distracted with the War that their sixteen year old lad can now legally be buggered by a fifty year old man and their children at primary school are encouraged to wear women’s clothes so they can “express their feminine side” (thanks again, Stonewall) and their own culture and flag, even, is considered racist and criminals have better “human rights” than their victims.

Softly, softly, catchee monkey. And I know I spent far too long allowing myself to be treated like a monkey by going along with most of it. I used to vote Labour until about a decade ago, so I have lived the majority of my adult years as a thicko.

Report the spammers and get them hammered. Click on picture.

In yet another example of their love for our privacy and peace, those meddlesome minions at the EU have decided that companies who constantly spam us with nuisance sales calls are paying far too much to inconvenience us.

The Telegraph reckons that spam calls could double or treble from this Autumn.

One company insider said BT was also worried the changes would see households swamped by even more cold calls, ambulance chasers and automated marketing messages.

The plan is to reduce the spammers’ call charges from an already paltry 0.3p per minute to an almost imperceptible 0.04p.

Andrew Bale, chief executive of telecoms specialist Resilient Networks, said the change would see internet levels of spam flying down the telephone line.

He said: “On the internet it costs nothing to send a million emails and we risk the same thing happening on the phone network.

The alarming prospect comes at a time watchdogs claim the nuisance call industry is already spiralling out of control with British homes receiving more than 3 billion of the calls a year.

I currently receive one or two a day, generally. Usually the same two or three companies trying to sell me solar panels. And the usual mis-sold PPI crowd as well, of course.

As I am registered with the TPS, I shouldn’t be getting these calls at all, but of course, these companies don’t follow the rules and some will promise to remove your number from their database, but don’t. I now report these criminal desk jockeys to the ICO, who recently fined a Cumbernauld bedroom company £90,000 for spamming,

DM Design, based in Glasgow, has been the subject of nearly 2,000 complaints to the ICO and the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). The company consistently failed to check whether individuals had opted out of receiving marketing calls – in clear breach of the law.

The monetary penalty is the first the ICO has issued for a serious breach of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) relating to live marketing calls.

The first? Why has it taken so long? There are many websites out there, like this one, with tales of woe of daily harassment from these companies.

Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, said of the DM Design fine:

“Today’s action sends out a clear message to the marketing industry that this menace will not be tolerated. This company showed a clear disregard for the law and a lamentable attitude toward the people whose day they were disturbing. This is not good enough.

“This fine will not be an isolated penalty. We know other companies are showing a similar disregard for the law and we’ve every intention of taking further enforcement action against companies that continue to bombard people with unlawful marketing texts and calls.

“All of this work has been made possible thanks to the information we are receiving from the public, which has assisted our investigation team in identifying the companies making these calls.”

Let’s hope so. So get cracking. Join the fun. They often withhold their number, but by no means always. Some of them simply will not tell you who they are or just hang up if you ask. Others have generic-sounding names which could come from anywhere. I ask if they have a website so I can look at their products. Sometimes this works. Then I know which company I am reporting to the ICO. If you have the time, you could use more imaginative ways.

I got the old chestnut the other day. One I hadn’t had in quite a while, “You or your wife filled in a questionnaire a few months ago.” About solar panels on a house I don’t own? I don’t think so.

Imagine calling strangers and starting off every conversation with a lie. I wonder how that sits with them, or if they can justify it within themselves to feed their families.

Another recent call started off with, “This is not a sales call”. It was from a company selling solar panels, so another lie, essentially.

But keeping us tied up with a mountain of peripheral nonsense (and sport and “entertainment” until it is coming out of our ears) is all part and parcel of creating the conditions for the EU to keep going. While we’re busy answering the same recorded messages from criminal call centres day after day, we have less time and energy for more important matters. Like getting rid of the EU.

Asunción, capital of Paraguay.

Thirty years ago, I became fascinated with Paraguay, for some reason. I discovered back then their claim that it was the only country in the world without any restrictions to settling in it. I wondered if this was still the case and what the country was like now. (I have always been mad on geography.)

Turns out that it is still pretty easy to move there, but you MUST:

Not be carrying any communicable diseases
Have a relatively clean criminal record, and
Either buy property or deposit approximately US$5,000 in a local financial institution (which can be withdrawn in its entirety upon residency approval)

So far so good as far as I am concerned. You could make up jokes about what constitutes a “relatively clean criminal record” in South America, but I’m sure a CCJ for failure to pay the Poll Tax over twenty years ago wouldn’t count against me.

After satisfying the initial demands and filling in the paperwork correctly (which involves visiting the country to do so), a residency document (known as a “cédula”) becomes yours. Three years later and you can apply for citizenship and have your Paraguayan passport issued.

But why would anyone in his right mind want to move to a landlocked South American country that doesn’t make it to the World Cup finals very often?

And isn’t it full of desperadoes roaming around on horseback, chomping on cigars, looking for their next gullible-looking ‘amigo’ to befriend until he is rendered peso-less? (Actually, the Guaraní replaced the peso decades ago.)

Probably not. In a Gallup poll conducted six months ago, the people of Paraguay came top equal (with Panamanians) when it comes to happiness. A recent Canadian ex-pat writes,

What is it that makes people in Paraguay so happy? Is it the fact that they get on balance 2803 hours of sunshine per year, for an average of 7.7 hours per day? Or could it be because the economy is growing at such a fast pace that people are starting to be lifted from poverty?

If you’ve ever been to Paraguay and met with her people, you’ll know very quickly that these polls are accurate. Paraguayans are some of the kindest, warmest people on the planet, with a can-do attitude that permeates the rest of its culture. People are not ruled by clocks or deadlines, but live by a casual nature that doesn’t bring as much stress as much of the Western countries endure. Being late for things isn’t only acceptable, it’s the norm! Paraguayans live by what is known to newcomers as “Paraguayan time,” which means, it’s no big deal if things start a little later than they were posted.

With plenty of great food, music, and an amazing culture, it’s no wonder that Paraguayans are so happy. They’ve been in one of the world’s best kept secrets: Paraguay is an incredible place to live.

Now, this is where it gets really interesting. Paraguay is ranked at 105th in terms of GDP per capita by the IMF for 2012, but has the happiest people in the world (along with Panama, ranked 66th), yet according to this global survey, Singapore’s people are least likely to feel positive emotions, yet live in a much richer country (ranked 10th by the IMF).

(In the happiness stakes, the UK is 25th equal on 77 with seven other countries.)

The top ten are all in Central and South America, other than Thailand and the Philippines, so all get more than their fair share of sunshine. But so does Singapore.

So, if lots of money doesn’t make you happy, what does? Just sunshine? Clearly not that either when you study the happiness table.

But you can see why the pro-EU crowd always – ALWAYS – concentrates on money – on the economy – on trade. Even though those things would likely improve for us if we left the EU, but regardless, that is all they ever talk about, because it is all they have. They never talk about happiness or freedom.

It looks like living without stress is what works in Paraguay, according to the brief summary I quoted from the new arrival there. Something which can be difficult to avoid in the West these days. And eating good food. Supermarket shopping here is increasingly like playing Russian roulette.

I was surprised to see that Paraguay has also succumbed to indoor smoking bans since 2010, but their president-elect takes over in two months and he is a tobacco baron, so let’s see what happens.

My guess is nothing at all,

Mr Cartes, 58, is part of the tiny elite that controls almost everything in Paraguay. His father represented the Cessna aeroplane company in Paraguay, which enabled Mr Cartes to be educated in the US.

The president-elect owns controlling shares in banks, investment funds, agricultural estates and tobacco plantations.

A tiny elite controls everything? Was the writer of that article wearing a “tinfoil hat”? I bet he’s the sort of “nutter” who thinks that the world’s most influential people meet up once a year for a few days of totally secretive meetings and it’s not being done to help us all live in a better world.

But, back to Paraguay. During the Presidential Campaign, Mr Cartes compared homosexuals to monkeys, likened the support of same-sex marriage to believing in the end of the world and said he would shoot himself in the testicles if his son wanted to ‘marry’ another man.

The Colorado Party, led by Cartes, aims to protect the family, claiming that if lesbians and ‘gays’ become visible in society, the traditional family will disappear.

He’s right on that point. That’s why the Fabians, KGB and others have been spreading the poison of social engineering. Destroy the family, you destroy the country. (Lenin)

So there we go. A post about Paraguay and I managed to get some of my pet subjects in too.

Should I book a one-way ticket to Asunción, take $5,000 in my suitcase and forget to mention my CCJ…?

Mr Speaker [John Bercow]: I wish to report to the House that the rooms of a Member were searched yesterday pursuant to a warrant issued by the circuit judge in Preston Crown court on 16 May. The warrant related to the investigation of a serious arrestable offence.

I should remind Members, as did my predecessor in 2008, that the precincts of Parliament are not a haven from the law. In accordance with the protocol issued by my predecessor on 8 December 2008 on the execution of search warrants within the precincts of the House of Commons, I considered the warrant personally and was advised by Officers of the House that there were no lawful grounds on which it would be proper to refuse its execution. In addition, as provided for in paragraph 6 of the protocol, I consulted the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, who concurred in this advice. I am very grateful to them. The Clerk of the House was kept fully informed throughout, and also concurred.

The Serjeant at Arms and Speaker’s Counsel were present when the search was conducted. Undertakings have been given by the police officers as to the handling of any parliamentary material until such time as any issue of privilege is resolved. The investigation is continuing and it would not be right to comment further. I will not take questions on my statement.

Of course, it was not relating to the astounding and widespread crimes of treason and warmongering on behalf of transnational corporations by many Members. Those days are yet to come. No, it was the office of former Deputy Speaker, Nigel Evans (who very recently unfriended me on Facebook for my views on homosexuality and I hadn’t even realised he had leanings in that direction) and who is being investigated over claims of sexually assaulting two men, which he vigorously denies.

Some politicians have very unfortunate incidents shortly after unfriending or blocking me on the social media. It’s as if I place a curse on them for it, but I don’t. Not intentionally, anyway. Like Labour’s Eric Joyce, with whom I had a strangely friendly rapport on Twitter then I say something “wrong” and that’s it. Over. Thankfully, he was too far away to headbutt me. Perhaps his computer monitor bore the brunt.

“Stitch that, Cowan.”

“Oh %$*&#, not again. Best decision I ever made was to buy these in bulk.”

But shortly after our Twitter “friendship” ended, he spent a night in the cells after refusing to give police a breath test sample after crashing his Rover.

Guards [at Grangemouth refinery, where he had the collision] smelt alcohol on his breath and after concluding that Mr Joyce was either confused or drunk, asked for police assistance.

MPs are not above the law: Eyewitness describes Eric Joyce arrest in House of Commons after he headbutted another MP and tried to fight off police a few months ago.

And I see that the poor tortured soul has just been arrested yet again this week, at Edinburgh Airport this time, for breach of the peace, after leaving his mobile phone on the plane and nobody being prepared to retrieve it for him. I would be a bit peeved myself, but unlikely to need to be pinned down by police after turning into the Incredible Sulk.

Now, to work together to have arrests made for the real offences: the outrageous treason and many other crimes far more grievous than going mental at an airport.

Many politicians and others have been conspiring for decades to bring this country down and as the evidence is there to prove it and we have various documents of old, which still hold sway, which can be used to our advantage, the Blairs and Camerons and a host of “useful idiots” can finally face justice for their heinous crimes against the British people – and many other people.

This is the company that rips off suppliers, workers and customers alike.  The company whose aggressive expansion policy has ripped the heart out of communities resulting in over 450 local campaigns against them according to Tescopoly.  Tesco ensure any local resistance to their presence is bulldozed away, sometimes literally, as in the destruction of popular local beauty spot Titnore Woods.

So let’s not pretend Tesco are in the midst of some grand humanitarian crusade.  Tesco don’t do ethics, they do profit.  Should that change their shareholders might well have something to say about it.

Which brings me onto the inspiration for writing this: this post from Andy Wightman that I discovered because Subrosa recommended it at the weekend (along with one of mine).

Funnily enough, when I link to my post about the Bilderberg Group on the social media, I am often accused of being a “tinfoil hat wearer” (and the other usual Pavlovian responses from those people who have been trained always to link the word “conspiracy” with the word “theory”).

But, as this Tesco story (one of hundreds, apparently) demonstrates, the World runs on conspiracy facts. Many people cannot cope with the idea that things ain’t what they seem – that such things as conspiracies, secret societies and nepotism have such a huge effect on their lives which they want to believe are free, uncomplicated and predictable. It’s known as cognitive dissonance.

This devilish Tesco skulduggery involves the deliberate degeneration of an entire town centre, made possible through property companies set up by Tesco directors and agents as fronts in order to secure the land and drive out the tenants of the former shops, which resulted in the town centre of Linwood, near Glasgow (and most famous as Scotland’s car manufacturing capital until 1981), earning the Carbuncle of the Year Award in 2011 .

Due to property fronts acting on behalf of Tesco's destroying the shopping centre, "The chemist and the optician opted to relocate to portacabins."

But nobody in Linwood was aware of that. Tesco had come to town and was rescuing their shopping centre from the blight of Balmore. Locals worked enthusiastically with Tesco to develop their plans. Some even appeared in their promotional videos.

Then in 2010, the folk of Linwood discovered the truth about what had been going on. Dallas Rhodes’ company Balmore Properties was not an independent retail property company.

It was set up as a front on behalf of Tesco.

Rhodes was approached by Tesco to acquire the lease on the company’s behalf. “It is common for Tesco to use and agent and secure land,” a spokesperson for Tesco said at the time. “Balmore was an agent for Tesco at that time.”

Some commercial property sources will happily claim that this is normal practice, that if owners get wind that a major supermarket chain is sniffing around, the value of the property will double or triple.

That’s why I find the likes of their “vouchers for schools” so offensive. While they tear the heart out of some communities, they give the illusion that they care about your area. And I have noticed how politicians love getting in on the act. They make sure we lose nigh on half our earnings in one tax or another (supposedly to pay for such things as schools) then praise this retail behemoth for giving a miniscule amount of their enormous profit to buy a relatively tiny amount of equipment for schools.

The Labour MP for Bradford South, Gerry Sutcliffe, thinks this is just great.

The scheme itself is celebrating 21 years. Fifty two schools in Bradford South collected over 400,000 vouchers worth £12,000 in equipment in the last year. Gerry was delighted to be asked again to present “goodie boxes” to the twelve schools which collected the most vouchers. He visited the Great Horton, Buttershaw and Queensbury stores to meet pupils and teachers.  The children were excited with their boxes and had many ideas of what resources they would like their schools to purchase.

Gerry said “I have been presenting these awards for the last four years and it has become an enjoyable tradition.  I would like to thank Tesco’s for their commitment to the local community in this and other schemes which benefit local schools”.

Yeah. Right. So that works out at an average of £230.77 per school. One car boot sale in each school car park could have raised more. A jumble sale in the assembly hall with pupils selling cakes and other homemade goods – no horse meat in sight (I had to mention that one too) – could have raised many times this amount.

Wisbech Grammar School raised £1,900 a couple of weeks ago when their hall was transformed into a Spring fayre comprising 38 stalls, where “stylish wares and home baked goodies” raised a big chunk of the money they need to sponsor a guide dog for the blind.

Obviously, their concern for others in their community is more important to them than buying “equipment” for their own use.

Incidentally, Tesco’s give out a voucher for every £10 spent, so those 400,000 vouchers collected in Bradford South cost customers at least four million pounds. All to raise twelve grand for schools. That equates to no more than 0.3% of sales from the people who collected the vouchers during the weeks the scheme runs, so each voucher is worth less than 3p to schools.

Just to show that Tory MPs are just as daft, here’s one (Charlie Elphicke) benefitting from the photo opportunity of handing out some of Tesco’s “boxes of goodies”. What sort of “equipment” are they giving away in such small boxes? I was imagining sports equipment, but I expect it is IT-related gadgets which Tesco imports for next to nothing and so perhaps grossly inflates their perceived generosity of 3p per voucher.

And here’s a Lib Dem (Vince Cable) making the most of it too.

If you still aren’t boycotting Tesco’s, next time, you might want to tell them to keep their almost worthless vouchers and support events at your local schools instead.

According to the Blairgowrie Advertiser, this school in Perthshire now has some “equipment” that the national £80 billion expenditure, at the time, on what passes for education, could not stretch to,

The staff and pupils of Glenisla Primary School thank everyone who kindly donated Tesco vouchers for schools, with an especially big thank you to Mr Rule and his friends at Blairgowrie Probus Club who donated a total of 2500 vouchers.

This year a total of 10,580 vouchers were collected. A total of 21,462 vouchers were banked in previous years, giving a final total of 32,042. The school now has enough for a computer.

Thanks to the locals spending a third of a million pounds in Tesco’s!

But after their utterly outrageous behaviour in towns like Linwood, how can you enjoy your food bought from this parasitical corporation?

Tom Harris no doubt "proudly" wearing his poppy in remembrance of the men and women he helped send to be killed and maimed in fake wars, based on lies. And a kick in the teeth for the millions of Britons who suffered to defend our freedom over centuries, only for these EUrophiles to give away those freedoms to Brussels and elsewhere.

This all happened shortly before the terrible events at the Boston marathon…

I am rarely on Twitter these days and about three weeks ago I wondered if Tom Harris, Labour MP for Glasgow South, had blocked me, like several of his comrades have. I tweeted to him:

“Testing. Am I blocked?”

To which he replied,

@stewartcowan Where the hell have you been?!

— Tom Harris (@TomHarrisMP) April 1, 2013

I commented very regularly on his once-famous blog. I asked why he had never responded to my friend request on Facebook.

@stewartcowan Send again. I rarely visit Facebook these days. — Tom Harris (@TomHarrisMP) April 1, 2013

So a few days later, I did send a friend request, which he duly accepted. The main reason for my barrage of comments on his blog was because he seemed to be of above average intelligence for a Labour politician and I thought (stupidly, as it turns out) that he could maybe be deprogrammed with daily doses of alternative viewpoints.

But for those two or three years, he simply dug his heels in and insisted that everything was a “conspiracy theory”: the easy answer for useful idiots who are unable to face the consequences of their horrendous errors.

I posted a link* [NB for some reason, that link no longer exists. You can read about it and watch the video here.] for him to the recent case of Tony Rooke who refused to buy a television licence under Section 15, Article 3 of the Terrorism Act because the BBC covered up the true events of the 9/11 attacks and had prior knowledge of the collapse of building 7, announcing it over twenty minutes before it fell (which happened in near free-fall speed, despite not being hit by a plane. This could not have happened unless the building had been thoroughly and professionally wired with explosives to produce a controlled demolition: impossible in the time between the Twin Towers attack and the collapse of Building 7).

Under Section 15, Article 3 of the Terrorism Act, a person commits an offence if he—
(a)provides money or other property, and
(b)knows or has reasonable cause to suspect that it will or may be used for the purposes of terrorism.

Considering the expert witnesses prepared to back up Mr Rooke and that the judge found the defendant not guilty, I wondered if Tom Harris might have had second thoughts about his previously held rigid beliefs.

In fact, I wondered if Tom Harris had changed his opinion on certain matters in the years we had not communicated. As you can see, I was not trying to be provocative (to start with!).

What were his uninvited insults all about? Then the “threat” of being unfriended by the great Tom Harris unless I behave myself and agree with everything he stands for. These MPs really think they’re something, don’t they? I was so disgusted with him, I was about to unfriend him, but I thought, no – let him go to the bother and show himself up to be the usual petty little ignoramus, like so many of his comrades. I expect many people suck up to them because they are under the impression that they are important. Some MPs are useful as highly-paid social workers, who can sort out a problem with the council or Benefits Agency by writing a letter. Then they become a “hero” to that constituent.

As for matters of national importance and public safety and guaranteeing our freedoms, they are positive and active menaces.

As Tony Rooke says on the video via the link: go to the police or a lawyer or anyone you have to, but “don’t bother petitioning your MPs; they’re a complete shower of sh*t in my opinion”. Is Tom Harris guilty of ignoring evidence of false flag terrorism? I think that he is.

This same Tom Harris, who doesn’t indulge in “paranoid lies and deception”, believed that Saddam had WMDs and could attack us in 45 minutes. How’s that for believing in paranoid lies and deception? MPs do it better than anyone, so it is hardly surprising when the truth is a stranger to them.

The Nuremberg Trials established that,

Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced.

One thing is for sure, in my opinion. These useful idiots who vote for wars based on lies and who have deliberately subverted our culture far more successfully than the KGB ever could have, should be tried for their crimes against this country and her people.

And what about the cultural genocide happening all across the West? This surely counts as treason. Blair had the law changed in 1998 to make sure that this was no longer a capital offence, but someone pointed out to me the other day that, as he had the law changed with treason in mind, it may not be a valid change. This is something else to consider.

There is already a growing movement to have the Big Boys like Blair and Cameron arrested for treason. I say, let us extend this to all the other useful idiots in politics and the fake charities, like Common Purpose. It is time for Nuremberg-style trials to bring justice and thus help restore the country to pre-subversion values.

The “authorities” love to collect all the information they can about us. I say it is time to gather all the evidence we can against these destroyers of our country.

The “authorities” do not listen to us – mostly. You can see from the attitude of Tom Harris what they really think of us. If you are a blogger, or have spent years on the social media, as I have, and had occasional face-to-face meetings, trying to get through to these individuals, you know this. It should be a matter for the police and courts to sift through the evidence WE PROVIDE to get these traitorous criminals brought to justice.

I don’t remember anyone else’s death producing such a clear-cut division of love and hate. I’m not sure which is more unsettling: the almost deification or the open hatred. I’m sure you have read enough of both already without me offering up some quotes.

I was almost sixteen when she became Prime Minister and 27 when she was ousted. I remember Michael Heseltine on Clive Anderson Talks Back in 1990 (I watched the series many times until my videos all turned mouldy after moving into a damp flat) and he was exasperated that Clive kept asking him if he would like to be PM and what he would do if he were PM. He kept asking to change the subject, denying that he desired to be PM. A few weeks later, he was instrumental in ousting Mrs T and stood in the leadership election.

He finished runner-up in that election to some grey, specky, failed bus conductor who used to be Chancellor of the Exchequer.

But what was life really like during those eleven and a half years of “Thatcherism”? From my perspective, I received a far better education than children seem to get today, although I would call thirteen years of state education rather a waste of time, even then.

I had started a BSc course in electrical engineering in the Autumn of 1981, but dropped out after the first term. That was weird, because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do for a living, other than be an entrepreneur, which I later became (somewhat), aged about forty. I don’t know if it was a discussion with the school’s careers advisor or how it happened, but it was somehow decided that I was to study electrical engineering. I guess they had to do something with me, if they wouldn’t issue me with an office, a loan and loads of business contacts to start my entrepreneurial career!

But at least those three almost intolerable months at Paisley Tech. didn’t leave me in debt. Even though both my parents worked, I was still entitled to a grant, which, if I correctly recall, was over £400 a term, plus my train fares were paid. I had to fork out for books, which weren’t cheap, but I didn’t need to work or take out loans and credit cards. It wasn’t like Labour’s “vision” of education (x 3), where half of school leavers were sent to further education purely for cynical and sadistic political reasons, leaving millions of young people seriously in debt, exposing them to a few more years’ worth of socialist dogma and creating the conditions to help justify mass immigration to subvert our country.

You see, it may be seen as “elitist” that only the most intelligent in society study for degrees, but it’s kind of the point that you need to be reasonably intelligent or you are wasting your time, and nowadays, costing yourself tens of thousands of pounds in tuition fees and living expenses, when you have been sold a lie.

My first attempt at being a businessman, post-college, was a flop, so I took any old part-time job to make ends meet (I refused to sign on). Sometimes I was denied a job for being “over-qualified”. That was irritating, but I managed to convince one lady at a local factory that I could cope with the tedium of making nuts and bolts all day and she gave me the job, but she was right. The tedium was immense – and I only ever got to make the bolts, not the nuts! I lasted three or four months there before having to resign or I would have gone nuts myself.

But there were jobs around, and that was the point. People capable of coping with jobs I found tedious and unfulfilling, seemed to manage fine, while those who were capable of getting a real benefit from university then managed to get decent jobs at the end of their course. Now that we are all supposedly “equal”, the natural order has been mangled and we are much worse off. Bright people are stacking shelves, like I did for a few years (self-imposed, you could argue), and less intelligent folk are at university studying something utterly useless, like Will Self’s course in Uxbridge. He is “Professor of Contemporary Thought” at Brunel University.

No doubt all these courses, which have no apparent value to the future prosperity of the student or country, will produce the next generation of supermarket shelf-stackers – people who will never be able to keep up with the cost of living and pay back their student debts.

I was finally able to get a proper job (of sorts) in 1985 in North Harrow (which is a mile or two northwest of Harrow). Although £100 a week was marvellous compared to the £48 at the factory a year before, I did have to start paying for a bedsit and food, but there was plenty money left to start and finish my collection of Beatles’ LPs and start off my Jethro Tull haul. (I was buying two or three LPs a week in those days from the small independent record shop.) When I moved there 28 years and five days ago, you could buy just about anything from one of dozens of small retailers, from electrical goods to secondhand books. The record shop and book shop had both closed before I left the area in 1992.

As I wrote elsewhere recently, I left that job to become an insurance salesman (another job which only lasted for a few months). I was the worst insurance salesman ever – total number of policies sold was minus one. I say that because I went to see a customer about taking out another policy and he cancelled his existing one instead.

But the office, in London’s Oxford Street, was staffed by an incredibly mixed bunch. My best friend was probably an Algerian Muslim and there were two other Scots, a Welshman, at least one Ulsterman, a French woman, an American woman, an Arab fella, a Nigerian bloke (planning a clever major scam then legging it back to Lagos), two Indian girls and even (believe it or not) a couple of Londoners. My boss was half Irish and half Indian and referred to herself as an “Irish Paki”. (Her words, not mine.)

We all got on well with each other and had lunch together in various groups (my posse was usually at the shop in Argyll Street? that sold pizza and salad for a pound (I think we were all skint) and a few drinks after work in some lovely smoky atmospheric pub down one of the side streets.

I don’t know if anyone was homosexual, bisexual or was attracted to parking meters. It wasn’t discussed.

Then a few years later along came “New” Labour and imposed reams of legislation to force us to get along with each other. As we can see with hindsight, it all worked very badly, but fully as intended, for divide and conquer purposes.

It was in those days I received my only County Court Judgements – for not paying my Poll Tax. I had started drinking heavily, so sorry, when the choice was between the desperate need for a drink and paying tax, the drink won hands down.

Now that I live in a big house for business purposes with a correspondingly high council tax band and an annual bill that could easily be confused with the defence budget of a medium-sized African country, I could do with the old poll tax back again! That’s me being selfish now.

Not that I’m wealthy. After paying the rent, rates and bills on this place, I’m merely a pauper with lots of rooms. I changed my gas and electricity supplier to E-on a year and a bit ago, because one of those comparison sites showed they were the best value for my usage. Up until ten months ago, I was paying £109.00 per month. The three increases since have seen the cost rise to £374.00 a month. That’s every month, not just the ones with the white global warming covering the daffodils. Prices have risen, but what has happened is that the “Plan” I had been on before ended and I’m on a plan with no contract, so they think they can charge what they like now.

Beware meercats bearing gifts! Actually, I don’t think it was them. I didn’t get my free meercat toy in the post anyway.

What do all these “regulators” do all day, apart from twiddling their thumbs in between collecting pay cheques? They don’t even manage to cope with dealing with the constant stream of unsolicited calls from companies trying to sell me solar panels. The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) appears to be another pig-in-a-poke, giving the “stakeholder” pretend control over his life.

Which brings me to another controversial Thatcherite policy: selling off the family silver. I was outraged at the time and never bought any shares in any of these sell-offs. I considered that I already owned the utilities, along with my sixty million fellow citizens, so why would I buy what I already owned? Of course, the shares were sold at a price which was almost guaranteed to produce an instant profit, so the people could be bought with that idea.

Maybe the cost of the bills these days wouldn’t be so high if people hadn’t bought into this illogical campaign of selling just about every state asset.

I had to laugh back then at how gullible people can be. Before the telephone service was privatised, you could call directory enquiries on one easy to remember number, which was effective and free, but that all changed to give the consumer “choice”. So there became dozens of numbers operated by private companies which cost a fair bit to call. But we now had “choice” and that was marvellous, wasn’t it? So much better than something that worked and was without charge. At least we no longer had to rent a bog standard telephone from the GPO, I suppose.

Another supposedly marvellous thing Maggie did was to increase home ownership by selling off council houses, again, often at very low prices. I am all for everyone owning their own home as far as is possible, but selling off the council houses and not replacing them for council tenants is irresponsible at best. What we have is private landlords owning, sometimes hundreds of ex-council flats and houses, renting them out privately, and the council paying the housing benefit on them.

So, now we have a shortage of council houses. A Tory MP on Facebook attempted to blame Labour for this, but I tried to get a council flat or house in the London Borough of Bexley in 1993-94. I was told I’d need to wait for at least five years unless I was pregnant. I had a bit of a beer belly, but I wouldn’t have got away with it. So, I had to rent privately in Catford and get the council (Lewisham, by this time) to pay for it.

Sean Gabb writes on The Libertarian Alliance blog,

She started the transformation of this country into a politically correct police state. Her Government behaved with an almost gloating disregard for constitutional norms. She brought in money laundering laws that have now been extended to a general supervision over our financial dealings. She relaxed the conditions for searches and seizure by the police. She increased the numbers and powers of the police. She weakened trial by jury. She weakened the due process protections of the accused. She gave executive agencies the power to fine and punish without due process. She began the first steps towards total criminalisation of gun possession.

She did not cut government spending. Instead, she allowed the conversion of local government and the lower administration into a system of sinecures for the Enemy Class. She allowed political correctness to take hold in local government. When she did oppose this, it involved giving central government powers of supervision and control useful to a future politically correct government. She extended and tightened the laws constraining free speech about race and immigration.

To her credit, she did give us Section 28, which prevented local councils (including schools) promoting homosexuality. This was arguably her most popular policy in Scotland, where seven out of eight people wanted to keep it. And of course, Scotland is hardly the most Tory of places. Nowadays, even the Tories are falling over themselves to distance themselves from this “homophobia”.

This aspect from Gabb is interesting,

Her encouragement of enterprise never amounted to more than a liking for big business corporatism. Genuine enterprise was progressively heaped with taxes and regulations that made it hard to do business. Big business, on the other hand, was showered with praise and legal indulgences. Indeed, her privatisation policies were less about introducing competition and choice into public services than in turning public monopolies into corporate monsters pampered by the State with subsidies and favourable regulations – corporate monsters that were expected in return to lavish financial rewards on the political class.

This has been happening the world over. The giant transnationals have been taking over. In the USA, it has come to such a ridiculous stage that children now need a business licence costing $50 a day, in this case, to sell lemonade. Now these ones are doing “extra chores” to make money, but how long before health and safety regulations prevent them, insisting on insurance in case they break a vase while dusting?

Talking to the man who does a few things round the garden here, he says that people these days can’t just go round offering gardening services without having insurance. You could probably find a million instances where people cannot work due to some recent change in the law. In 1991, after my brief and disastrous attempt at selling insurance, I tried window cleaning for a few weeks. Had I needed insurance, it would never have happened. Although, had I broken a few windows or fallen through an extension roof, I would have wished I hadn’t bothered.

Sean Gabb continues,

She virtually began the war on freedom of choice where smoking is concerned. She started the modern obsession with health and safety as an excuse for controlling our lives. She vastly expended state powers of supervision and control over parenting, and immensely expanded the numbers and powers of social workers.

He goes on to criticise her because she “made the environmental nonsense politically fashionable”, ” hardly cut taxes”, “ruthlessly pushed the speed of European integration” and “her militaristic foreign policy and slavish obedience to Washington mostly worked against the interests of this country. The one war she fought that might have some justification was only necessary because her own colleagues had effectively told the Argentine Government to invade the Falkland Islands.”

Even her reforms of the trade union movement had malevolent effects. Before her, trade unions were run by ordinary working class people who used the strike and violence to achieve their ends. She ensured that the unions were taken over by the usual Enemy Class graduates. These were the only people capable of using the health and safety and workplace discrimination laws and so forth that were brought in to replace the older methods of advancing working class interests. The result has been the co-option of the trade unions to purposes that have done nothing at all to advance working class interests.

Forget Margaret Thatcher as some hero of our Movement. She was at best the midwife of the New Labour Revolution. She did not just make the world safe for New Labour – she created New Labour. Without her precedents and her general transformation of our laws and institutions, Tony Blair would have been impossible.

I am inclined to wish James Callaghan had won in 1979. If things had turned nasty thereafter, it would at least have been an honest despotism. No libertarians or genuine conservatives would have been making idiots of themselves a third of a century later trying to tell themselves and everyone else that it was other than it was.

But I remember her most for the way she dealt with the miners. She didn’t like the power of the unions. Fair enough, but to engage in the wholesale slaughter of the industries which sustained many communities all over the country was, in my opinion, evil. So when John Healey, Labour MP for Rotherham refused to attend the memorial recall of Parliament last week, I don’t blame him.

I have a large framed poster on the wall of my constituency office in Wath upon Dearne.

It displays the names and badges of each British coalmine closed by the Tories after the miners’ strike up until 1994 when the last pit in our constituency closed at Silverwood. A total of 203; 64 in Yorkshire alone.

But as I reminded him on Facebook, Labour’s Climate Change Act 2008 will likely cost even more jobs.

I will be fifty in the summer and you probably need to reach a certain age before you realise that the secret of “good” government is to keep the masses with just enough money after tax to pay for their little houses and cars and an annual holiday and to put some food on the table and pay the crippling utility bills. Then they’re happy to continue to play the Labour – Tory – Labour – Tory game every few years because they believe that’s the only political game in town, even though nothing really changes for the better.

Perhaps if the masses ever manage to leave Plato’s cave and face reality, things will change.

This poor love doesn't realise that she'll lose 20p in the pound from today.

Today sees the start of the “Bedroom Tax”

The aim is to tackle overcrowding and encourage a more efficient use of social housing.

Says the government, as they keep allowing in millions of migrants and giving them council houses. As many as 660,000 people will be affected and the saving will be a paltry £465m a year – or about nine days’ EU contributions.

There are many other savings being made in the next few days at the expense of the poor, but this latest “initiative” – taxing pocket money – takes the Farley’s rusk.

Of course, the Tories have been quick to defend their callous actions, although many have refused to answer the telephone from journalists out of shame, at least proving that they are not completely devoid of the emotion. Chancellor Osborne earlier explained that every boy and girl who receives earnings above the staggered children’s personal allowance is obliged to pay tax on it. The allowances for children have been set as follows:

Age up to 4 – 50p per week

5-7 – 75p per week

8-10 – £1.00 per week

11-13 – £1.25 per week

14 and over £1.75 per week.

Income tax will be 20% on earnings above these allowances, with a high rate of 45% tax where pocket money exceeds £5.00 per week.

A rather tipsy David Cameron said at some meeting or other that, “In times of extreme national hardship, it is only fair that all our people contribute to digging us out of the hole we have dug for them. I mean, that the last Labour government dug.”

He went on, “Children already pay VAT on their toys and sweets, so this is simply a natural progression. You wanted progressive politics, right?”

He added, “And who do you think pays for all those vaccinations they get? The tooth fairy? Fair’s fair: it’s time for the children to pay.”

Labour’s condemnation has been swift. Ed Balls, who wants five year olds given sex education, insisted he wasn’t a pervert, but said that taxing children was morally wrong.

The other Ed: Miliband, reacted furiously, “I can’t tell you how furious I am”, he said, furiously.

Of course, this all stems from EU directive 2385/2013, which demands that all national governments implement the tax from today. The Germans now have a dedicated minister for children’s taxation, Herr Aprilscherz, who says that children must bear some of the responsibility for their future stupid actions.

The UK Government stopped short of imposing a bedroom tax on dolls’ houses where the number of bedrooms exceeds the family of dolls who live in the house, although they are considering legislation to ensure that doll collections reflect the social mix of the new Britain, in terms of ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual orientation.

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Photo credit.

"Hope not Hate" have their sights set on UKIP, despite most people wanting less immigration.

My attention was drawn to this piece on Hope Not Hate’s website: Hope not hate takes a position on UKIP. Because these people are “celebrating Britain’s diverse society” anyone who wants to preserve our own culture is quarry to be eyed with suspicion and therefore “monitored “.

There seems to be a great desire for two-thirds of these multi-cultists to go UKIP-hunting, “The response has been incredible. Over 1200 people replied to our email within the first 48 hours and hundreds more gave us their views via Facebook, twitter and email. These numbers show the interest in this subject and justifies us asking the question in the first place.”

And where there is talk of the possibility of UKIP being “racist” there is mention of the BNP, that is clearly run on racial lines, as they have a list of acceptable northern European people groups eligible to become members. As far as I know, UKIP is the only party which bars former BNP and National Front members from joining. But in the mind of the brainwashed cultist, if you want to preserve your own society, as people have tried to do for centuries and much blood has been spilled in the process, then you are, all-of-a-sudden, someone who needs monitoring and opposing when necessary.

These people believe in such nonsense as “strength through diversity” and that it will lead to some wonderful, enlightened society. They are too far gone to realise that they believe in an oxymoron – a guaranteed impossibility. Strength only comes from rigid bonds through shared values and via traditional families – the opposite of multiculturalism and “diversity” generally, which is all being carried out to subvert our culture to bring it down.

As there was an email address at the foot of the article, I replied to “Nick” with this….

Good evening,

I have just read your post about UKIP – about how two-thirds of your members want to campaign against possibly the last political hope this country has.

I suppose they see “racism” everywhere, because the system has trained them to see it everywhere, to aid with the government’s divide and rule policies.

I’m not a UKIP member, but I sure vote for them and not for the mainstream parties led by traitors. And your organisation, I am quite sure, has been fabricated, to aid in the silencing of legitimate debate.

I am certainly not a “racist”. In fact, as a God-fearing Creationist, I believe we are all of one blood, as scripture says, and all related through Adam and later, Noah. On the 2011 census question about ethnicity, I wrote “human race” because it is the only race.

To be patriotic and want controlled immigration and to preserve your country’s sovereignty is normal. It’s what non-brainwashed people the World over have always done. People only see “racism” where absolutely none exists (I cannot speak for every UKIP member or voter, of course) because they have been taught that their own culture is inferior and that to try to protect your own culture is wrong, when it is what our forebears fought to preserve for many centuries.

To check that I am right, just consider how many other people throughout the world who try to protect their cultures are deemed to be “racist”. It is just the Europeans who get that label, for reasons that I will not go into right now.

I recently read evidence that the EDL may actually be a fake government front and I am sure that your organisation is. Our rulers – the ones who really pull the strings in the banks and corporations – love to control the government and control the opposition and the media. And I am not daft enough to be absolutely sure that UKIP isn’t part of the controlled opposition too. The sooner we give them power to help us, the sooner we will know.

You could ask your members if Winston McKenzie, a black man, who stood for UKIP in the recent Croydon by-election, is a “racist” or just a patriot who happens to have more melanin than the average Brit. The biggest and most pathetic “racists” are people who fall for this propaganda and start hating their own country and its culture and their fellow citizens. That’s what at least two-thirds of your people are like, based on this evidence. I call that hate, not hope.

Recent surveys have shown that three-quarters of the public believes there is too much immigration, including many immigrants themselves!

I hope you can educate your people that being patriotic is not “racist”, else there are an awful lot of racist immigrants. I fear that concept would confuse them immensely!

I also hope that you see through Hope Not Hate, because you come across as fascist and normal people just won’t put up with that, especially when the thinking processes which influence the opinion of the majority of your members is clearly highly flawed.

Kind regards,

Stewart Cowan
Scotland, UK

But who will replace him in the next few weeks? Needless to say, the bookies have odds worked out already. The front runners are all cardinals with the odd archbishop thrown in. But guess who Ladbrokes have at a whopping great five hundred to one? The man of faith and peace himself: Tony Blair is 500-1 to become the next pope. I can’t see that price lasting for long. It has to tumble faster than a clumsy person trying to climb up a steep cliff wearing flip flops and carrying a canoe under one arm.

Blair sounds a better bet than Richard Dawkins, who is 666/1 at Paddy Power. They may think that’s a joke, but if the Vatican are looking for a moderniser, he’s their man.

There is a comparison website for all the main bookmakers and I see that you can actually get a stonking 5,000 to 1 for Blair at a bookies called Stan James. That’s the kind of name that sounds like it should be prefixed with the word “Honest”.

You can get a thousand to one on Bob Gelfof and Bono at Corel. Jose Mourinho is also 1,000 – 1, and Madonna and Oprah Winfrey are 2,000 – 1.

Then it just gets silly! The two surviving priests from Craggy Island, Dougal Maguire and Jack Hackett, are 10,000 to 1 with Stan James – but Dougal is only 1,000 – 1 with Paddy Power, which suggests there may be money being wagered on him. Mrs Doyle’s probably been gambling away this week’s housekeeping money.

As for me, I haven’t gambled in about fifteen years and I don’t intend restarting now, even though a £200 bet on Blair with Honest Stan James could make me a millionaire. With Blair’s proven record as a gold star useful idiot and the Beast system being set up good and proper, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that this Hellish man could find himself with the job. A crook with a crook.

All this pope stuff has a very serious side to it, but at the moment I feel a bit like Jack Hackett after he’s drunk half a bottle of Toilet Duck, so I’ll leave the theological talk until later. I’ll probably wait until after Pope Antonio Bliar is elected.

£200 to make a million? Mmmm.

Nah. If you believe Malachy’s 16th century prophesy, this next pope is to be the last before the Judgment and his name will be Peter.

I wonder what odds I can get on Peter Mandelson…