PLEASE CAN I HAVE SOME MORE?

Yesterday I received a begging e mail from Iain Duncan Smith asking for a donation of £10 for the Conservative Party. I was flabbergasted, this coming from a man who is intent on ringing every last pound out of the people he is supposed to represent.  

I have been a Conservative supporter all my life, but I can tell you now, that they will never get my support, but nor will I support the other three “main line” parties. They are all, so far removed from the lives of ordinary people, that they all deserve a good shake up, and at the moment the only man who looks capable of doing that is Nigel Farage and the UKIP Party.

Unfortunately our politicians have proved themselves, as a group, to be the most untrustworthy and dishonourable group of people in our country, In fact I would go so far as to say that they have proved themselves to be liars and thieves, and so crooked they couldn’t lie in bed straight. 

A City financier was made a Tory peer on Friday after given the party more than £330,000 just weeks earlier. ‘This appointment further cements the impression that to get into the House of Lords, all you have to do is write a fat cheque to a political. 

A child abuse scandal is threatening to engulf the whole of the political heirachy, and is becoming more and more murky. It was announced recently, that mysteriously, papers that had previously been buried in the archives, relating to senior politicians involved in this scandal, have now disappeared.

In recent years MPs were almost collectively involved in the expenses scandal. They called it a scandal but in fact it was thievery. To use an analogy, can you imagine a shoplifter, who, having been caught, offers to pay for the stolen items, and then is released from custody. It wouldn’t happen. Yet our politicians were caught with their hands in the till, and only a handful managed to get themselves arrested. The rest were allowed to repay their fraudulent expenses. WHY?

Recently we were all asked to remember our dead soldiers from the first world war, and my thoughts were “is our country the place that our relatives died for” and the answer is NO it isn’t. 

Our politicians have let us down badly, and should be ashamed. The speed up of this decline has increased over the past 30 years, and my opinion is that we are ruled by a group of professional politicians, who have not seen a meaningful days work in their lives. They have no idea what everyday living is all about. Recently, Foreign Office minister Mark Simmonds decided to quit, supposedly because he can't 'stretch' £120000 to live in the capital. The whole party wants to come down and smell the coffee.

Cameron is as far removed from normal life as it is possible to get. Coming from a privileged background, when did he ever do the family shop in Tesco. It would do him and us, the world of good if he was forced to live like the rest of us for a month, he would then have the insight into everyday living. 

When the Conservatives came to power they were already at a disadvantage, after the disaster that had been left by the sulking Brown, who had given the impression he knew what he was doing, but proved to be one of the biggest failures in modern day politics. Of course the “socialist” Blair before him, had only one thought in mind, and that has proved to be his biggest success, how to make his bank balance bigger. Despite the financial difficulty our country is in, Cameron still insists on borrowing to be able to give money to failing countries around the world, and would prefer to do that, than look after the interests of his own people who are in financial straights themselves. He has preferred to spend more time on giving “gays” marriage rights than sorting out a failing country.

Osborne, our part time Chancellor has, in fairness, reduced some of our debt, and managed to get the economy moving into positive territory, but at what cost to the ordinary man in the street. Families have been decimated and are poorer now than they were ten years ago. There is still no sign of any improvement in family circumstances after four years of Tory ruke, but I am sure there will be some cynical handouts next year, prior to the General Election.

May has totally destroyed the Police Force, and turned it into a quivering political jelly. The moral of the police Service is so low, that I am amazed that people want to start any sort of police career. She has proved to be inept at sorting out illegal immigrants and even more so at getting convicted illegals dismissed from our country. Dominic Grieve, one of the countries top law officers in the Conservative government, said yesterday that it would be a disaster if Britain walked out of the European human rights court. This is the very court that is binding the hands of our own judges to eject undesireable people from our shores. Many of whom have already entered illegally. What chance do we stand of getting our country back?

Where the police were always proud to say they were apolitical, they have now been dragged into politics by the introduction of Police Commissioners. This was not wanted by the majority of the people, but forced through at great expense.  Proof of its failure can be seen, when you look at the Crime Commissioner for Kent. A schoolteacher who has tried to introduce her policies, as if she was still talking to her young pupils in class. The infighting between the Commissioners for Norfolk and Suffolk has already cost untold waste of money. The list goes on.

Duncan Smith has proved to be one of the biggest bullies, politics has ever seen. Whilst most people are in agreement that the benefits system has got to be reformed, his manner in going about it has amounted to the behaviour of the classic bully. Putting in place the bedroom tax, knowing full well that there was not enough affordable housing for people to move to, resulting in them paying more tax, is almost like committing robbery.

He threw a tantrum, after being told by the EU Court that his refusal to pay the winter fuel allowance to pensioners, was illegal, simply because they had taken up the right to live elsewhere in Europe. He then huffed and puffed, and has come up with an idea to remove the winter fuel allowance to pensioners living abroad, by using spurious statistics. First he set the temperature in one town in the south west of England as the bench mark to receive the winter fuel payment. He then set his eyes on Portugal as a whole, and decided that it was too warm for pensioners to receive their payment. Next came Spain, and once again, forgetting that the north of Spain is as cold as anywhere in the UK, the temperature in the narrow southern strip of Coast, was used to boost the overall average temperature for the whole of the country. Then came France, and Oh shock, horror, the average temperature was lower, and so the pensioners living there would be eligible. ‘But how do we get around it’, he asked. Include the tropical territorial islands of Guadaloupe, Reunion, Tahiti. In that way the average temperature is now higher.  After came Italy, but whichever way Duncan Smith wriggled he couldn’t get over the fact, that because of the mountainous spine of Italy, the temperature is lower, and so pensioners would still receive their winter fuel payment. The only other EU countries coming within the scope of “hotter” being Greece, Malta, and Cyprus. And so we have another two tier system of benefits, good for some, but not for others.

Not content with hitting overseas pensioners in this way. The new debate, is to also remove their personal allowance on Tax. This is the tax free allowance that all taxpayers get, and could cause a loss of income of £4000 per year. This is still under discussion, but if implemented, could cause a mass return of OAPs living throughout Europe, putting even more strain on the UK infrastructure than at present. 

The question is how can a government get away with ideas like this, for a large group of its citizens? Well the answer is easy. DENY them the vote. In that way they can have no effect on any decisions made about them.

Deny them the vote? You may ask. Surely not! We live in a democracy, where everyone has a vote? But no, many millions of our own citizens are denied the vote, simply because they chose to live elsewhere in Europe. This is, at the same time as our troops are fighting and dying in Afghanistan to introduce democracy. Crazy isn’t it?

Gove, who is like Marmite, either loved or loathed. He has brought about so many changes to the education system that teachers spent more time reading the regulations than teaching. He then introduced one of the most hated and spiteful pieces of legislation, preventing parents taking their children away from school for a two week holiday, without getting fined. As the saying goes, “what is good for the goose is good for the gander”. Why didn’t he at the same time introduce a penalty for teachers closing schools at a whim, for striking, or teacher meetings, or bad weather. We all know that the unions wouldn’t allow it.

Fox and Hammond, our erstwhile defence ministers have supervised the run down of our military to dangerous levels, sacking many experienced and valuable soldiers, sailors and airmen, some of whom had just come back from the front line. They then promptly spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on advertising for new recruits, whose pay would obviously be lower. It is unknown how many very senior officers litter the offices of the Ministry of Defence, but you can bet that with the old boys network in place they will be well protected.

You may well ask, “Are there any honest politicians”. Of course there are, but unfortunately they are in the minority, and invariably are sidetracked in order to cause less waves. In my lifetime I can single out one of the honest politicians who was ridiculed at the time, but who predicted so much that has come true and that is Enoch Powell.

I am hoping that Nigel Farage will have the same honesty, and that even though he is unlikely to form a government, he will cause a enough ripples in British politics, that politicians will start listening to the people they represent again. For that reason I will be encouraging as many of my friends and relatives to vote UKIP in next years elections.

Will you be able to vote in the UK general election in 2015?
The answer is “no” if you are a child, an individual suffering from mental illness (such that you are confined within a mental institution), an imprisoned criminal or an expat having lived abroad for more than 15 years.

But is this really fair? An increasing number of expats think not.

If you are British citizen and have been registered to vote in the UK in the last 15 years, you are still entitled to vote in the UK general election and European elections even if you live abroad. You need only to complete a simple registration process. However, if you have not been a registered voter in the UK within this time frame your right to vote is defunct.

Unlike the United States, Switzerland and most other developed countries in the world, among which most of the member states of the EU, including France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain are included, the UK does not allow citizens having resided overseas for more than 15 years to participate in parliamentary elections.

This issue is of particular note as we approach the next general election in 2015. Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to hold a referendum on the question of whether the UK should leave the European Union if a Conservative government is elected.

“It seems profoundly wrong to me that British citizens living in EU member states, whose lives and livelihoods would be directly and dramatically affected by a withdrawal from the EU, should not be allowed a vote in the general election next year,” says Graham Richards of the Votes for Expat Brits Campaign. “It could also mean that, in the event of a referendum, these British citizens would not be able to express themselves on one of the most important issues in their lives.”

What do you think?
If you would like to support the campaign poll click here:

 http://votes-for-expat-brits.com/Sign-up-Poll.php.

This sums up the UK

Government advisor on Policing


There is not a day goes by without some story of how policing in the UK is going wrong, and the government are always seeking answers. I came across something today that will answer all their problems. They just need to hire this policeman as their advisor, and do away with all the expensive police commissioners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=F1HqiUeKpyg

a 'laughing stock'

According to the Government, Police and crime commissioners have the job of ‘bringing communities closer to the police, building confidence in the system and restoring trust’, but in reality it has just brought the independent Police Forces of the UK into political control.

They were brought in across England and Wales in November 2012 by the Conservatives to set budgets and decide on strategies while also holding chief constables to account.

But lack of enthusiasm for the reform meant the polls were held with little publicity, and a record low 15 per cent of voters turned out, that has resulted in some very unsatisfactory appointments

At the time of the election for Kent Crime Commissioner the turnout was so low for the poll, that Mrs Ann Barnes was elected with a total of 114,137votes from a registered electorate of 1,281,968.

Most people were uninterested, and were of a mind that this whole process was a waste of money, but Cameron, once again pressed ahead with his pet plan, and once again showed total disregard of the wishes of the people whom he was elected to represent.

Last night police officers branded the Kent Crime Commissioner a 'laughing stock' following an 'embarrassing' Channel 4 documentary about her job.

Viewers reacted with fury to last night's Meet The Police Commissioner programme in which Ann Barnes, elected crime chief for Kent, struggled to explain her £85,000-a-year taxpayer-funded role.

The documentary showed Mrs Barnes travelling in a van she dubs 'Ann Force 1', having difficulty explaining an approach to policing priorities.

In the sequence, Mrs Barnes is shown in front of a flipchart on which is a hand-drawn diagram of concentric circles. Mrs Barnes explains that "These are all the various things, different kinds of policing, OK, in Kent," waving a hand in a circular motion around the circles. "And these are the different kinds of policing priorities, in terms of priority."

When asked by the interviewer What would be a crime on the outside of the diagram, she replies “Oh God, no idea, I can't tell you actually, I mean I wasn't thinking I was going to talk about the onion as we call it. Erm, oh, I don't know really”

When further questioned about her role as Police Commissioner  she says, “Well, it's a strange job this, it's a strange role, there's actually no job description at all."

Looking at the expressions on the faces of senior police officers sat in meetings being chaired by this woman was embarrasing. Who thought putting a retired teacher with zero experience in policing, in charge of policing resources and budgets was a good idea? She spoke to her Chief a Constable as though he was a naughty little child.

Mrs Barnes was elected as the first PCC in Kent in November 2012 despite previously branding the Government's plan to increase police accountability a 'wilful waste of money'.

She became the most high-profile of the country’s 41 crime tsars a year ago when The Mail on Sunday revealed her £15,000 youth commissioner, Paris Brown, 17, had posted a series of highly offensive comments online.

Mrs Barnes is an 'embarrassment' to Kent Police, and should have stuck to teaching or was that beyond her too?

The face of a haunted leader 

Poor old Clegg looking worn out and red eyed. So what! He has brought this on himself with his self serving arrogance and "I know best" attitude.
Pressure is on Nick Clegg to quit as Lib Dem leader after the party’s wipeout in the European elections.

Following a catastrophic night, which cost him all but one of his MEPs, he was forced to admit he had lost the argument over Europe.

In an emotional interview, the Deputy Prime Minister said being beaten into fifth place by the Greens had been ‘gutting and heartbreaking’

As the leader of a political party he should get back to some fundamentals.

As individuals we cannot all turn up in the house of commons to argue our case. There are not enough chairs for a start. So we choose a representative to present our case for us. If enough people have the same view then laws are passed and society changes. This is called representative government. Laws come from the people up, not from the government down (most of europe is the latter).

Nick you forgot this. Your job is to represent the peoples' wishes not to reject them or espouse your ideas. The people do not wish to be in a european superstate so you must stop harping on about your beliefs.

They are irrelevant. Reflect the views of the people.
As someone once said. "Think not of what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" I think all the LibLabCon politicians need to think on that one.

It's time for politicians to listen

After local elections in the UK David Cameron admits his party must deliver some "answers" after UKIP's election "earthquake" shakes politics.

The Prime Minister conceded his party had to start delivering on immigration and welfare reform, and said the public had become "frustrated" with the status quo. There is no group of people more frustrated than those expats living in Europe who are denied the vote.

It is time that politicians in the UK started listening to the people instead of forcing through their doctrine policies.

Ed Miliband defended the party's campaign and said “people were turning to UKIP to express their discontent with the way the country is run”. “ people feeling that the country just does not work for them and so what you are seeing in some parts of the country is people turning to UKIP as an expression of that discontent and that desire for change."

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg admitted the party had had a bad night but said: "Actually I think in the areas where we have MPs where we have good organisation on the ground ... we are actually doing well."

THEY STILL DO NOT UNDERSTAND. The electorate want politicians working for them.

UK politicians are looked upon as pariahs. They have lied continuously, they have flouted their positions and ignored the wishes of the electorate, and finally they were caught with their hands in the till. No wonder Brits are disenchanted with British politics,

And that explains the rise and rise of Nigel Farage and his anti EU party. Or is it just in the UK that voters are disenchanted with Europe

A recent poll is the latest evidence that voters in France and across the continent perceive the EU as remote and unaccountable, which is expected to boost support for far-right, anti-EU parties in countries such as France, Britain, the Netherlands and Hungary.

A mere 18 percent of the 1,048 people questioned late last month said they were “confident” about the future of the European Union, with just 2 percent claiming to be “enthusiastic”.

 Only 51 percent of French still want their country to belong to the 28-nation bloc. That was down from 67 percent a decade ago, according to the CSA survey for BFMTV news channel.

The CSA poll showed that voters - 70 percent of them - are disillusioned with the European Union because of its failure to help stem rising unemployment in France, which has a record 3.3 million people out of work.

Sixty-three percent of those surveyed said they were disappointed with the EU because of the decline of social protection, while 60 percent cited growing numbers of immigrants as another reason for falling out of love with the European project masterminded by France and Germany.

France’s far-right Front National, led by Marine Le Pen, is tipped to spearhead a surge by populist parties across Europe in the vote for the EU's only directly elected body.

Polls show that the anti-immigrant French party is in pole position alongside the mainstream centre-right UMP, with President François Hollande's ruling Socialists trailing in third place. 

This looks all too familiar in the UK.

In the same way that UKIP are frightening the mainstream party’s in the UK, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front party is poised to win a double-digit percentage of France’s 74 seats in the 751-member Parliament.

Do expats care? Of course they do

Being disenfranchised back home has left expats starving to participate in the democratic process, but for British expats in France the stakes are also uniquely personal.  Apart from the local elections, the EU elections are the only election some expats are allowed to vote in.

I'm British, I live outside the UK and I've done so for more than 15 years. Accordingly, the British government very unfairly denies me, and people like me, the right to vote in parliamentary elections,

Expats are free to live and work in France as long as they like without any special authorization from the government, and for that they are denied the vote.

Most of those same expats however are obliged to pay their taxes to the UK government. One without the other is WRONG!