A Caution

 

The only legitimate function of government is to provide citizens with personal safety and protection of their property. While the state interferes to an ever increasing extent in the personal lives of everybody and passes ever more restrictive laws on the businesses that provide income, and goods by which we live our lives, it is repeatedly failing to do the job for which it exists.

 

A recent BBC enquiry revealed that in the east of England alone the police issued nearly 30,000 cautions for burglary, sex crimes and assaults in 2005/6. A caution is only given where there is sufficient evidence for a prosecution and yet in this large number of serious offences the police are choosing not to prosecute even though the offender has accepted their guilt.

 

The Home Office website makes a strong point about cannabis having been re-classified as a class B drug (despite the scientific evidence making it very clear that this was not justified) and that personal use of cannabis could result in a prison sentence of up to five years and fourteen years if you sell it. Using cannabis has some risk for the person doing it, although not as much as for some legal and prescription drugs, but it is not something that does harm to other people. Burglary, sex crimes and assault are violent crimes that traumatise victims and cause peoples lives to be seriously limited by fear.

 

We have more police in this country than we have ever had in our history and we also have more laws than ever before. The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has said in today’s Sunday Times that the public are being let down by failures in the criminal justice system. Too many violent criminal and habitual re-offenders are not being dealt with effectively.

 

The public is worried by it and the police are well aware of it, but the government continues to fail to do its only proper job.

 

Our message must be clear. Stop telling us how to live our peaceful lives in our own way; stop spying on everything we do or say; stop taking most of our money away from us in taxes and then wasting it on failed bankers or stupid PC laws. Above all stop violent criminals from damaging our lives by properly enforcing the simple laws that have regulated our society for centuries and which you have now lost sight of.

 

Dangerous criminals must be taken off our streets and the rest of us must be left to live our lives.

Gordon Brown and Afghanistan

 

It is in matters where lives are daily being lost and placed at risk that we need the greatest political clarity about what we are doing and why.

 

The first thing I want to say is that the removal of the Taliban Government in 2001 was an entirely justified action. The Taliban were hosting Al Quaeda and facilitating their campaign of international terror which had culminated at that time in the murder of 3,000 people in the 9/11 attacks.

 

The criminal Taliban government with all of its disgusting oppression of women, ghastly executions and maimings had come about because of repeated international interference by world powers. There was particular responsibility by the USA and Pakistan and the previous involvement of Russia, but many nations also had a hand in it. None of this excuses or justifies the illegitimate Taliban government and its crimes.

 

Al Quaeda is a criminal organisation responsible for mass murder and terrorism. The claims of Bin Laden and his associates for religious justification are of no worth and provide no justification for their crimes. Mafia claims for the moral authority of their ‘family’ values or Somali pirates attempted justifications of ‘policing’ fishing waters in response to loss of livelihood to international fishing are in a similar league to the propaganda of Islamists. Al Quaeda is organised crime like the Mafia or piracy. It is entirely justified to bring these organised criminals to justice and to take measures to destroy their organisations. By the very nature of the threat, these actions have to be international.

 

Dealing with very dangerous crime originating in another country requires military action, but it is very different from a war. As soon as the language of a ‘war on terrorism’ was invoked by George W Bush the necessary action against Al Quaeda and its supporters was misdirected. In his speech today Gordon Brown has shown that he has not yet managed to disentangle the issues in his mind and his government will continue to fail to set clear objectives in Afghanistan which will result in the unnecessary loss of British and Afghan lives for no purpose.

 

The Karzai Government is deeply corrupt and its pretensions to democracy have been exposed as completely fraudulent. These are matters which should be of great concern to the Afghan people, but they are none of our business. It is not possible to impose functioning political systems or moral values with armies and weapons.

 

It is not our business to stop Afghan farmers growing poppies. I will not go into the stupidity of British drug laws, but heroin use in this country cannot be controlled by trying to reduce production in Afghanistan. The demand for drugs in Britain is a British issue which can only be addressed in Britain.

 

Afghanistan is a multi ethnic place divided by different language, tribal and religious affiliations. For well over a century it has not been effectively ruled by a single government from the centre and there is no likelihood that it will be in the foreseeable future. Whether this problem is resolved by allowing the country to separate into its regional groupings or to form some sort of federal or con-federal relationship is a matter for the Afghan people to work out without outside interference.

 

The immediate problem is obvious. Invading powers have destroyed the military, policing and infrastructure of the country. With immediate withdrawal of the western powers, Karzai’s corrupt state apparatus would probably fall quickly to insurgents. So what is the solution?

 

The coalition forces should immediately stop all non-military activity such as school and road building or the administration of elections. The Karzai government must be told to establish its legitimacy by creating an administration that has public support. That can only be done by negotiating with the people who hold power and influence throughout the country. Some of the people they will have to talk to will be armed and may have been fighting to remove foreign influence from the country. This is not the same as wishing to attack the USA or Britain or having delusions about setting up a worldwide Islamist caliphate.

 

The coalition military should be taken of the streets and withdrawn to defensible bases pending withdrawal. Training of Afghan police and army should be rapidly phased out. If the Afghan government want training for their state forces (and they most certainly need it) such training should be provided by commercial contractors. There are plenty of private companies in the United States, Britain, Russia and elsewhere which are mainly made up of ex military personnel and they would compete for this business.

 

The pursuit of criminals like Bin Laden, Mullah Omar and their associates must continue as must the destruction of terrorist training camps and elimination of the criminal infrastructure. This does not require mass troops on the ground. It can and should be done by increased intelligence work, special forces operations and precision attacks by missiles and pilotless drones on firmly identified terrorist targets.

 

Brown has dithered on most things as Prime Minister and Britain has been too eager to follow bad leads from America. Now is the time for clarity and decisiveness. Recognise that it is a mistake to try to export democracy or western attitudes to Afghanistan and pull out the ground troops rapidly. Re-state our determination to prevent terrorist murder on British streets by eliminating criminal organisations whether they are based in this country or elsewhere.

A Perverted State

Pervert David Sturgess secretly filmed visitors to his holiday cottage in Ceredigion, Wales. He was rightly gaoled for 30 months. The judge said:

“the offences were a gross intrusion into people’s privacy and they were rightly devastated”

The judge is obviously right.

Poole Borough Council secretly filmed Jenny Paton at her private home. Ms Paton is rightly taking legal action against the Council for this gross intrusion into her privacy from which she is rightly devastated.

Will the snooping officials join Sturgess in gaol? Not a chance. The perversion of government intrusion into the private lives of citizens is completely out of control

We condemned East Germany for employing the Stasi secret police to spy on its own citizens. We denounced the Soviet Union for trying to control the lives of its people. We were right to condemn these disgusting tyrannies and they eventually collapsed because their people demanded freedom.

It is time for us to demand freedom. Kick out the national and local governments that take your money away in taxes and then use it to spy on you and force you to do what they demand.

No Council Tax Increase

 This week it has been reported that many London boroughs will freeze Council Tax and some will probably reduce it. The leader of Wirral Council has said that he wants a 5.2% increase in April and then around 4% every year for the next four years.

Steve Foulkes and his colleagues have got to wake up. Thousands of people have lost their jobs, public sector workers pay is being frozen and inflation is so low that there will be no increase in pensions in April. No increase in Council Tax is tolerable or acceptable.

Politicians, bankers and others have responsibility for the bankrupt state of our economy, but the guilty ones are not Council Tax payers and certainly not pensioners or low earners with frozen incomes. Instead of punishing the most vulnerable the Council must put an end to its own waste and excess.

Voters should be saying to all our elected representatives that they will not get a vote next May unless they can show that they have worked to keep taxes down and not supported any tax rise.

Parents lie to get kids in school

Parents are being threatened with court action over telling lies to get their child into the school of their choice. I don’t advocate telling lies, but parents are absolutely right to try to get the best possible education for their children and it is an absolute outrage that the state should be threatening and intimidating parents to force their children into inadequate schools or ones which they consider to be unsuited to their child.

This is yet another example of how Britain has been turned into a soviet style tyranny where the state knows best, individuals are forced to do what the government demands and dissenters are criminalised.. The choice of education for a child is a matter to be decided between parents, their chosen school and the child themselves. It is nothing whatever to do with either national or local government, they must keep out of it completely.

Schools need to be freed from local education authorities and the dictation of what they can or cannot teach, but what needs to be done immediately is to provide vouchers to cover the cost of education for each child up to the normal school leaving age. The family will then be free to choose the schools that their children will attend irrespective of where they live, what religion they have or any other criteria. The voucher will cover the full cost of state education, but if the parents choose to send their child to a school in the private sector that has higher costs they top up their voucher from their own resources.

Education is too important for decisions about it to be stolen from families by authoritarian governments who insist that they know best when all of history tells us that they always result in the worst. The Soviet Union collapsed because it made the lives of its citizens a misery with wrong headed attempts to control every part of their lives. Our government is heading the same way. Throw it out before it is too late.

Drugs and the Law

The Home Secretary has sacked Professor David Nutt from his position as Chairman of the supposedly independent Drug Advisory Committee. The alleged reason was that Nutt was lobbying for a change in government policy when the reality is that the government insisted on re-classifying cannabis against the evidence presented by the experts and refuses to accept the expert advice on the proper handling of ecstasy.

The simple truth is that the government has no interest at all in professional advice. What it really wants is to be able to use the experts to justify the decisions that it is determined to take irrespective of where the truth may lie.

When cannabis was reduced from a class B to a class C drug in accordance with expert advice and with the support of police who wanted to concentrate on real crime there was not an increase in cannabis use as anti drug campaigners predicted. There was actually a reduction in cannabis use when it was regarded as a less serious offence. This should not be too much of a surprise. Forbidden things always have an attraction and if it is recognised as not being such a big deal, the excitement and pull reduces.

It is not sensible risk mental and physical wellbeing by harmful drug use. That applies to alcohol and tobacco as much as it does to the misuse of medicines or taking illegal, recreational drugs. The point is that humans have always done these things and no amount of laws will stop them. Masking it illegal to take certain drugs causes death, injury and serious ill health because the drug users do dangerous things like sharing needles and taking contaminated products supplied by the criminals who are the only source of the drug they want.

Illegailty also creates a vast amount of crime. This ranges from the international multi millionaires who produce the drugs to the street corner gangs who murder and maim to protect their territory. Very few societies have had the courage to leave drug users alone, but those who have tried, such as Holland and Portugal, have found enormous benefit from it.

It is impossible to stop people from trying to use escapist substances. The best way to minimise the harm and risk is to provide the free and prosperous society from which people do not need to try to escape. Our police should also be left to stop rape, violence, burglary and terrorism.

We should throw out a government that sacks people for telling the truth.

Royal Mail and The Government

  With another round of strikes announced we are all having to use other ways to communicate than the post. Of course that was happening anyway, but Royal Mail bosses and Unions have shown themselves incapable of dealing with that change and are simply making it faster.

The Government wanted to part privatise the mail, but Gordon Brown is incapable of leading his own party so he got scared and ran away from that decision as he has done with the Territorial Army, the Ghurkas, calling an election and so much else. The truth is that part privatisation would not have been a solution anyway. It was just another fudge that could not get to the heart of the problem.

That problem is that delivery of letters and parcels is now a competitive industry and no state run organisation can ever survive against the efficiency of the market. Email, texting, Skype and instant messaging are virtually free at the point of use and available to the vast majority of people. Package delivery by DHL, TNT and the host of other carriers is fast, efficient and in many cases lower cost than Parcel Force as well as providing superior tracking information and time guarantees.

While the communications union try to do a King Canute job of hanging on to the past the bosses thrash about employing casual staff and having no solutions. Soon there will be nothing left for the government to sell and the poor postal workers will all be out of a job instead of just some of them.

The legitimate job of government is to protect the safety and property of its citizens and nothing else. The state should not run businesses and it has no right to waste taxes, our money, on organisations that have been bypassed by change.

Centuries ago the King commanded that his word should be transported throughout the realm without hindrance by highwaymen and a Royal Mail might then have made some sense. If we are to have a universal postal service in the twenty first century it has got to compete effectively with the other commercial carriers. Whichever way you look at it that can only be done if it is privately owned and freed from interference by Brown, Mandelson & Co. That is the only way that any postal worker has a future.

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The Sixth Commandment

You Shall Not Murder

 

This obviously didn’t apply to war or execution. God was always encouraging the Israelites to go to war and massacre their enemies and when you get to the laws of Moses there is plenty about people being put to death.

 

It seems then that it is OK for the state, tribe or whatever authority structure to kill people for the reasons that it decides, but individuals are not allowed to.

 

Well that seems a pretty reasonable rule on the face of it although I am against capital punishment in all circumstances (all justice systems are fallible and killing people for things they have not done is morally repulsive) and the way that the god of Abraham approved war is no guide that anybody should follow. Let us also not forget that this god would not have been a fan of the Geneva Conventions. He was entirely happy with genocide and killing prisoners.

 

Even when it comes to individual murder it seems that god himself was exempt from his rules. He was happy enough to kill poor Mrs Lot for the terrible crime of looking back. In the case of his chosen he also seems to have different standards.

 

When Moses killed the Egyptian overseer because of his cruelty there is no censure of him. Apparently the ten commandments did not apply to Moses himself. He cannot be allowed the excuse of self defence, because he was not personally under attack. The fact is that he took the law into his own hands. He killed an official of the Pharoah who was acting in accordance with the norms of his government. As is the case throughout the old testament, the life of an Egyptian did not have the value (in the eyes of god and Moses) of a Jewish life.

 

We should not be surprised that the old testament is racist, that merely reflects the times in which it was written, but it does mean that we cannot take biblical commandments as having any relevance to modern life.

 

I certainly think that you should not murder and that applies to everybody at all times. Not just to those who are alleged to be approved by god. We need universal standards not hypocritical and partial ones.

For The Love Of Little Children

A report was published yesterday on the abuse of children by Catholic Church organisations in Ireland. In many cases abusive priests were moved on and nothing done to stop the abuse or bring the perpetrators to justice.

 

For The Love Of Little Children

 

Hello! I’m Brother Blessed.

I have taken holy orders.

So that I may praise the Lord

and love the little children.

 

Straight out from the seminary

I was a brother teacher

Helping the sweet little ones

in learning to be good.

 

The wickedness within them

was the greatest of my burdens

The devil fought with vigour

before it left their

striped red cheeks.

 

I inject the love of Jesus

to the sobbing contrite cherub

and forgive him

for the pain he’s brought

by letting evil in.

 

My Lord the Bishop

thanked me for the

depth of my devotion

and gave me my own parish

to build the congregation.

 

I am Father Blessed

and all my little children

are angel faced, angel voiced

angelic of complexion.

 

My choir is a glory

of unbroken vocal chords

I love them each and every one

A love unknown, unspoken.

 

I devoted many hours

to more coaching in my room

bringing sacred music

to the mouths of

my best boys.

 

His eminence the cardinal

honoured my achievements.

On the holy Father’s orders

I was raised to greater things.

 

I am Father Blessed

Head and overseer

of the many teaching orders

spread throughout the land.

 

All the best and brightest scholars

are brought to my attention

that I might admire their qualities

and guide them on myself.

 

The lord has blessed us beyond words

with the beauty of creation.

I worship at the altar

of young bodies beautiful.

 

Now upon my later years

there is time for reflection.

Dear Mother Church has granted me

a care home and a pension.

 

I pray for the misguided

and the wicked lies they utter.

The dear lord will reward me soon

for I loved his little children.