Society Needs Dissent: The Police Disagree.

I don't know Andy Blackwell well, but when I am in Cornwall I always go to his place, 'Blackies', to get my hair cut.

Mr Blackwell is my kind of bloke. We are as near as damn it the same age, he is delightfully eccentric, a businessman, and a Royal Navy veteran. There is a lovely atmosphere in Blackie's, its a nice place to be.

Like many business folk in Liskeard, he is very concerned about parking costs and restrictions that drive potential clients away from the town centre. Liskeard is not an obvious tourist destination, but seasonal and passing trade are very important in that neck of the woods.

Andy Blackwell is not a person you would describe as 'timid'.

In August of this year, he was in the process of cutting my barnet when he broke off to go outside the shop with his megaphone and announce "Danger, parking wardens in the area. Revenue collection in progress. Danger!"

Cornwall is one of those counties that generates massive profits from parking. Moscow has Gazprom, Cornwall has parking wardens.

Andy Blackwell says what most people think.

And so he had to be silenced.

The local council found three parking wardens to come forward and state that they felt 'intimidated' by his behaviour. I am ashamed to say that one of these specimens identified himself as an "ex-RAF officer" who was so traumatised by the experience that he had to go and sit down and have a cup of tea to get over it.

And here we get to the meat of the story.....

The police, who not only feel that they are above the law, but now know that they are indeed above the law, hate it when anybody questions authority. And so they took Mr Blackwood in, turned the screws, and forced him to accept a police caution for quite a serious allegation. They were no doubt pleased to do the bidding of the local authority. I worked in politics long enough to know an orchestrated operation when I see one.

A good man has now been silenced. He now has a police record that will stay with him for life, and he has been subjected to unpleasant press coverage in what is a small and close-knit community.

The British police were politicised during the miner's strike of the 1980s, and the damage has never been undone. Just ask Andrew Mitchell MP.

I do not want to appear flippant, but a police force that does the bidding of its political masters, and whose officers are above the law, is bad for our democracy. In fact, it is more than that; it is a major threat to our democracy. Just ask Andy Blackwell. This decent armed forces veteran, a family man and a taxpayer, has lost his right to speak out in the way that he sees fit about a situation that threatens his livelihood, and that of many other small businessmen and women.

I am never shy in voicing my opinions about London's serial killers and purveyors of fine perjury, the Metropolitan Police. I would argue that rather than promoting the likes of Cressida Dick, who oversaw the murder of an innocent man, and who does not seem to be on record as condemning the subsequent police cover up, we should be sacking these people. The political decapitation of the Met is the only way to return it to its originally intended purpose.

Apparently the problem is spreading. Democracy is in peril: perhaps we should give a lot of thought to what our police forces have become, and how we should deal with the problem.


Blackie's Barbershop

1 Pondbridge Hill

LISKEARD

Cornwall  PL14 3AB

Stay Away From Scabby Whores.

Now you may think that this is a deliberately provocative headline, intended to attract you in much the same way as one might use tags like 'Monica Bellucci Naked' to draw attention to an article about horse riding in Huntingdonshire, for example. But there is a genuine reason for it.
The Belgian press is carrying a couple of interesting stories today concerning health. There are two areas of concern - STDs are on the rise (especially Chlamydia), and there is also a bit of a problem with scabies, particularly in Flanders.

This comes in the same week that I learn of a drastic rise in Rickets in Southwark. This is associated with vitamin D deficiency, and as many as 40% of children in the borough may be potentially affected. Is that the result of a poor diet as a result of poverty, or an inability by some parents to understand that chips are not a breakfast cereal? I suspect its a bit of both.

Southwark has always been an area with acute health problems, and it would have been even worse if it were not for the work of health reformer Dr Alfred Salter, one of my greatest heroes. Salter transformed Bermondsey and its surrounds, but as time moves on, the area is becoming a problem again.

A wee extract here from what is now becoming the longest research project in the history of the galaxy, but which I hope to publish this side of my 80th birthday...

"The National Health Service tells us that even now, at the beginning of the 21st century, child mortality rates in Southwark remain higher than the average for England and Wales. A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, published in August 1997, showed that Bethnal Green also remains blighted by high, indeed rising, mortality rates. Interestingly, the same report also highlights the fact that men between the ages of 15-44 are still twice as likely to die in Southwark as the national average for their age group. In 2001, four academics from Bristol and Leeds universities, in a critical paper on health inequalities, cited Southwark, and Bermondsey in particular, as being amongst the very worst places in the UK for premature deaths. Indeed, in June 2011, the Southwark News reported that "There have been more cot deaths in Southwark in the last five years than anywhere else in London".

Figures also suggested that teenage mothers are four times more likely to have a cot death than older mums, leading experts to link the terrifying record to the borough’s high rates of teen pregnancy."

 

What am I saying here? In Flanders, and in Southwark, we are seeing frightening rises in instances of health issues related to poverty (as well as to poor education).

 

The Southwark News also reports an increase in the number of women turning to prostitution in order to pay their bills. Will we also see STD rates rise in the borough, as in Flanders, as a result?

 

 

Making A Monkey Of The Law!

Just A Bunch Of Regular Guys?

 

Plato once wrote about rights and equality that matters would go so far the "even domestic pets will rise on their hind legs and demand equality".

A few years ago I was reminded of his words when I read of a move to ban the docking of dog's tails. Quite right too, in my opinion, as this is a cruel practice. But this was not a decision based on the cruelty involved, but on the basis that as dogs show happiness by wagging their tails, docking infringes upon their right to freedom of expression. Domestic pets now enjoy the right to freedom of expression. I am not actually saying that this is wrong, I am simply pointing out that Plato got it right. I wonder what else he will be proven right about..... That's a thought that makes me shudder.

Today I learn from the BBC that a New York court has been asked to give 'legal person' status to a chimpanzee. The Nonhuman Rights Project wants a chimp named Tommy to be granted "legal personhood" and thus to be entitled to the "fundamental right of bodily liberty". The group wants Tommy, and 3 other chimps to be released from captivity. Again, I'm right behind them on the motive, but because keeping animals in captivity is generally a cruel thing, not because they are really chaps like us.

I am going to put Plato's hat on now, and make a prediction.

There are often difficult issues when a person passes away and leaves money to a pet. It happens, and relatives sometimes dispute the will. I think I know where we are going with this.

I predict that in the not so distant future, there will exist a form of civil partnership that one can enter into with a pet, thus giving a legal status which ensures that the pet can inherit.

If that sounds crazy, then how about a New York court being asked to grant 'person status' to a chimp? It is crazy, but it is happening now.

If You Have Time To Remember......

RAF Swinderby, 1978, when I was still innocent.

I just want to give this website a bit of a push.

http://www.nivets.org.uk/forums/content.php

Obviously I have a personal interest in all of this, I talk and write often enough about this chapter in our history, and indeed a very important chapter in my own life.

Please do us a favour, and if nothing else, please
don't forget us. And do not try to airbrush us out of history.

Let There Be Beer!

Its really nice when we get folks from home come over to talk to us. Especially when the folks concerned are brewers from the South West of England, and they bring some of their finest ales with them.

And so, last night the Brewers of Europe put on show no less than 57 different beers from the West Country.

I'll declare an interest here, I used to work for Fuller's, the London brewery, and I do own shares in more than one brewery, so I am also very keen to promote the art.

Last night we learned of a campaign to encourage people to drink beer with food. Of course, you wouldn't want a pint of Skol with your belly of pork, but we are talking about something a bit more classy here.

I didn't try all 57 beers, as much as I tried to justify an attempt, because I quickly identified a few that clearly warranted a full half pint. But there was one that really stood out, and I like to give credit where credit is due.

1913 Stout is made by Walter Hick's famous brewery in St Austell, Cornwall. Lighter and easier to drink than Guiness, but with all the flavour. Bloody marvellous, and I must admit that something slightly over a half pint may have been consumed.

I have family a little more than a stone's throw from St Austell, and I plan to be there at Christmas, so I suspect that my brother and I may well seek out Mr Hick's excellent brewery at some point over the festive season. Cheers!

http://lettherebebeer.com/

http://www.staustellbrewery.co.uk/beers.html

Violence Against Women - When Does It Stop?

I was delighted to be able to speak on behalf of Nikki Sinclaire MEP at a conference in the European Parliament yesterday to discuss the elimination of violence against women in conflict zones. Nikki has emerged as a leading defender of human rights during her first term as an MEP, and I am very proud to be a part of that.

According to Dutch soldier Major-General Patrick Cammaert, former commander of UN peacekeeping forces in the eastern Congo, and who is internationally renowned for his experience and his commitment in the area of peacekeeping. “You destroy communities. You punish the men, and you punish the women, by doing it in front of the men. It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in armed conflict.”

 

I find that heartbreaking. I abhor violence completely. I have experienced active service, including in a situation where civilians were targeted, by the IRA, and it sickens me.

 

No one person can change the world, but together we can at least have an influence on events, and on the future our children will live in.

 

I was reassured by the turnout at last night's conference, and by the passion of the human rights activists - people from all backgrounds and all walks of life - who had come along to support the event.

Many thanks to our friends at  the Global Network for Rights & Development for making it happen.

 

Let the Train Take the Strain? Yeah, Right.....

Armed soldiers patrolling the station... Hundreds of people boarding a decrepit train with no food or water on board... A slow grind through a snowy landscape... The train breaks down at a previously unheard of village station... Passsengers thrown off the train and forced to wait in sub-zero temperatures without knowing when they will see their homes again...

Is it Yuri's epic journey from Dr Zhivago?

No, it is the train from Strasbourg to Brussels.

All that was missing was Anton Diffring and a bunch of armed Chekists demanding to see our papers, followed by a 12 hour shift in the salt mines on arrival, and then it would have been the perfect European nostalgia trip.

But this is normal. I well remember a trip from Strasbourg to Brussels in February 2005 in serious sub-zero temperatures. The train moved at walking pace, and the heating had broken down. There were icicles inside the carriages, and we literally had to go into survival mode. It was sort of worth it to see my colleague unpack her suitcase and wrap woolen tights around her head, but probably not an experience one would like to repeat.

I didn't take the train to Strasbourg for a couple of years, but as the panzer has developed a glitch, I thought I make take advantage and get in some reading time. I didn't bank on getting quite so much reading time though - even the train east arrived in Strasbourg over an hour late - and I only took 2 books and a newspaper with me. I ran out of reading material just after the train departed from Metz.

The service was, as always, totally useless, and for this I had to pay €168. Nice!

All I Want For Christmas.....

Eight year old boys are great fun.

On the way to school this morning, George told me that he had finally decided on what he wants for Christmas. (I had previously told him that "no", he could not have a Grand Theft Auto Playstation game).

So he has whittled his wish list down, and he now knows exactly what he needs.

A Bazooka.

Not a toy one, mind you, but the real thing.

He had his pitch ready. He would be careful with it, and he would not let his sister near it.

How can you be careful with a Bazooka? "Its alright Dad, I'll only take out one bus full of innocent people", or maybe "don't worry Dad, I'll make sure I only hit the policemen."

Of course, it is still only mid-November, so he will change his mind dozens of times between now and when Santa pops in for a glass of Armagnac (I know its supposed to be Sherry, but like myself Santa is not so keen on that).

George still has plenty of time to discover the existence of nuclear weapons!

The Beauty Of Ukraine...

I am having a bit of a 'proud dad' moment. This is actually not the first time that my daughter has been published (although she is only 17 years old), but this one is really nice.

I know Alena, the subject of the article reasonably well, and you could not meet a nicer young lady. She is totally commited to preserving her national culture, as this picture shows.

It is so important, in an increasingly globalised world, that we keep local, regional,  and national traditions alive like this.
That two such young women could collaborate on such a project and present our traditional Christian culture in such a nice, non-confrontational way, gives me hope for the future.

The article is here http://www.eureporter.co/magazine/2013/11/07/the-beauty-of-ukraine/

European Union (Referendum) Bill comes up for review.

It was, I seem to recall, a Tuesday evening and I was sat at my desk in the EP. Nikki Sinclaire was in the adjoining office. Some time earlier we had been talking about the government's offer to debate matters in parliament if 100,000 citizens would present a request by petition. There was no mechanism in place at that time, nor did there appear to be any real hurry to put one in place. Nikki had identified this as an opportunity to call for a referendum on our country's continued membership of the EU.

Nikki suggested some words, I put them down and sent them through to her, she e-mailed me back some changes, I finished it off. It didn't look bad at all....

"We the undersigned call for a binding national referendum to decide whether Her Majesty's Government should invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to negociate the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union...."

The campaign was launched at a meeting in Torquay on September 3rd 2010, and so we set out to find 100,000 signatures.

There was uncertainty as to whether 10 Downing Street would accept the petition. They accepted it, in fact they took in over 200,000 signatures.

There was uncertainty as to whether the Commons Backbench Business Committee would debate the matter. They debated it, and we saw the biggest backbench revolt the government had experienced up to that point.

The idea of a referendum was voted down, but the matter would not go away. Nikki's polling proved that the people wanted to have their say.

This coming Friday, Nov 8th, we will see the Commons review the European Union (Referendum) Bill.

 

 

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What impressed me was the level of cross-party support for the petition. Only UKIP failed to support us. Indeed, a UKIP member who had asked if he should support the petition kindly forwarded to me a letter he had received from the UKIP leader's office. Here is a short extract: "Petitions, I may say, are useful for publicising issues and recruiting activists; but, where such a fundamental policy as rejecting the EU is concerned, there is no prospect whatever of a pro-EU government's acceding to a petition."

 

 

However, once it became clear that we were winning the battle, the referendum suddenly became UKIP's 'greatest achievement'.

 

 

As recently as last month, a journalist in Strasbourg reported to me that two UKIP MEPs had told him that they were opposed to a referendum on this matter.

 

 

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Of course, this is not an isolated case. During the 2010 General Election campaign, HS2 was the main issue on the doorstep. This is a project that will have serious implications for West Midlanders and indeed many people in the UK.

 

UKIP's manifesto for that election included the party's desire to: 'introduce three high-speed lines linking London to the Midlands, northern England and Birmingham.' That reads to me like an approval of HS2!

 

Now that opposition to HS2 has become a major dynamic, guess what? UKIP is now 'the only party that has consistently opposed HS2'.

 

There have been attempts to airbrush the 2010 manifesto out of existence, but you can find all you need to know here. 

Simon Hughes, and that taxi....

I am going to put my hand up here and confess to having adorned the back of Simon Hughes' taxi with a 'Maloney 4 Mayor' sticker when I found it parked outside my home. It was 2004, and I was working with Frank Maloney, who was running for mayor of London. Hughes was the Lib Dem candidate. It was one of the most enjoyable campaigns I have ever worked on, and you couldn't meet a nicer bloke than Frank.

As much as Hughes has always irritated me - he was my MP for many years - I do think however that these guys might have gone a wee bit too far. There was also an attack on Hughes' office. There is a fine line between protest and intimidation, and an even finer one between intimidation and violence.

Some years ago I was working on what we generally call 'Gulf War Syndrome'. The Ministry of Defence were pulling out all the stops to shut us up, and to discredit the campaign. One aquaintance, a very sick ex-Para, was actually physically threatened by what we assume to have been MoD police - Mod Plod.

There came a point when we realised that depleted uranium poisoning was a major factor, thanks to the US Veteran's Administration and a leaked document from Porton Down. One veteran had been diagnosed in the US, and shortly afterwards Mod Plod raided his home, and took away all his medical records and his computers. HMG can play dirty when it wants to cover something up. The longer they could string it out, the more people would die, and then they would have less to pay out.

Before we went live with all this, I asked Hughes, who was then the Lib Dem health spokesman, for his opinion. He clearly did not have one, and simply repeated the official MoD whitewash line. His office also claimed, through the Southwark News, that I was an extremist, and that I myself had never served. This was grossly offensive to me. I did get my revenge a few years later through the Sun newspaper. Revenge is truly a dish savoured cold!

On one memorable night, the Porton Down document was faxed to as many relevant people as possible. I received 15-20 copies that night from people across the country as we broke through the wall of silence. They could hardly arrest every recipient!

There are many politicians who talk a lot, but actually do very little of any substance. I put Hughes into that category. I do not, however, condone attacks such as those that he has been subjected to, no more than I condone the vile campaign his party conducted against Peter Tatchell during the Bermondsey by election of 1983. People who live in glass houses......

How not to park a car...............

Remembering John G. Magee - the Pilot Poet

J. G. Magee 1922-1941

 Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.