Throughout life, from our early childhood, through the school system and then in a work environment we’re told, taught and instinctively know that we have to make allowances and concessions in order to reaching our goals at least some of the way.

Clearly this isn’t the case if you are a Political party in the UK, there is very little room for maneuver. It’s almost always a simplistic Black or White, no in-between. In the days since the Election delivered a hung Parliament the idea that members of political parties, be it the grassroots or at the top, are vehemently opposed to team work.  It’s only through gritted teeth that the Conservatives and the Lib Dem’s have agreed to form a coalition government.

The Media have certainly had their role to play in this too, each publication or outlet picking their side and sticking with it no matter what (unless you’re the Guardian, in which case you sort of float around like journalistic flotsam), demanding that all sides make a decision NOW because apparently the country cannot cope without a Prime Minister for more than 5 days.

I know I’m being very idealistic and probably naive but humour me;  wouldn’t it be great if all political parties could regularly make concessions and use a bit of give & take, like the rest of us have to every day of our lives.  Sure, things might take a little while longer to get done but there’d be a lot less hatred in the political spectrum.

On that note, I’d like to wish our new Prime Minister absolutely no luck whatsoever and can’t wait for the moment you fail, you smug, expectant prick the best of luck for the next Parliamentary term.

Merk

DIGITAL ECONOMY BILL

As you are probably aware, the above Bill was passed in Parliament on Tuesday, 6th April. Despite protestations from all sides of the House the Bill was rushed through with only a few hours of debate.

Personally, I was not happy with the way the voting went, so I refused to join the ‘Aye’ (yes) lobby/vote, and abstained to register my disgust at the way this ill-thought through and flawed Bill was rushed through Parliament without correct and proper scrutiny.

Locally, I have been supported by those of differing political views because I am prepared to put common sense before party politics. I hope that my refusal to join the ‘Yes’ lobby on Tuesday has once again underlined my independence of mind on behalf of those issues that really affect the lives and liberties of my constituents.

In my view, the Bill will do immense damage and is fundamentally flawed.

Yours sincerely,
Mark Pritchard MP

In Mark’s view, the bill will do immense damage and is fundamentally flawed, but to show his ‘disgust’ in the way the bill was rushed through Mark abstained from voting?

He hopes that this shows his independence of mind, seriously? He thinks a bill is flawed and will cause damage but he wont vote against it? He choses to abstain. He might as well have voted yes.

We’re not a Conservative family, for a start my parents divorced when I was 3. I grew up on a Council estate and went to a state school (albeit a strange one). Both my brother and I managed to get to Uni (although only one of us, Stavros, finished). We never claimed benefits and our mother worked long long hours to do this.  I have long detested the stereotype of single parent families who sit on their arses all day popping out children and claiming all they can from the state – The Tories push this stereotype too much for my liking.  Just one of the reasons why I will NEVER vote Conservative.

In 2001, I was at University during the election. I registered to vote in Warrington and voted Labour. I felt I’d done my duty and that my vote really did count. Labour won.

A couple of years later, while I was working for a Community radio station in Wolverhampton a friend introduced me to his friend Tom Watson, MP for West Bromwich East. We became friends. Tom loved the idea of starting a similar radio station in his constituency and put me in touch with some people involved in the creative arts projects, namely The Public, a community arts organisation.  Together with the help of some good people at The Public we created a company and submitted a community licence application which we won.

It was my feeling that no other party would have made the commitment to these sort of community arts projects other than Labour; they saw the potential in Community Radio, projects like The Public and people like me.

At this time the Iraq war was kicking off, it was something I didn’t believe in.  I was adamant is was the wrong thing to do, however, in my mind Labour had made my life better.  I stuck with them.  .

Again, I voted Labour in 2005, they won.  I didn’t want Tony Blair as Prime Minister but I was sure that he was probably best of a bad bunch of leaders and I’d always hoped that he would have been ousted as leader and Gordon Brown would take over, I had faith in Gordon Brown to do a good job. I even joined the Party at some stage

All did not go well with The Public and they soon went into administration, this meant that the great support and staff that was instrumental in our Community Radio station’s progress all but stopped.  The Administrators made it clear that my project was now not financially viable, it was a great blow to our project as a whole and to me personally.

Over this period my unease with Labour’s governance was growing, from my outrage over the Iraq war and it’s atrocities to the seemingly increasing efforts to throw away our much loved (but not constitutionally bound) civil liberties.  I still hoped, deep down that Labour were the party for me.

For the past 5 years I have worked for an Internet Service Provider as a network/systems engineer, it’s a relatively small company with 100-/+ employees.  I still have a love and desire to do radio and I’m working on another project which will hopefully come to fruition in the next 12 months (more on that soon).  Yesterday a sweepingly wide bill, The Digital Economy was rushed through Parliament before the General Election.   This bill stands to have serious detrimental effects to my industry and at it’s very worst could cost jobs or even businesses.

Less and 40 MP’s debated the bill for it’s third reading yet it was whipped though the house with 189 votes to 47.   187 members voted without even being present for the debate (419 didn’t turn up), the whole bill with a few amendments was voted within a total of 7.5 hours of parliamentary time.  Despite calls from major players in the industry such as Google & Microsoft, Twenty thousand emails or letters to MP’s and serious concerns of a few knowledgeable MP’s to halt the bill and debate in the new parliamentary term.

The bill covers such a sweeping list of area’s such as copyright infringement, Digital Radio, Photographic works, Ofcom powers and many more that for the Government to push this bill through the ‘wash up’ stage of Parliament is a disgrace and slaps the democratic process firmly in the face.

This was the final straw for me, and looking back I’m wondering why I didn’t say this when I was so outraged at the Iraq War, the slaying of Jean Charles de Menezes, the conduct of the police at the G20 protest or the persistence of the ID cards issue.   For that I feel ashamed, that I did not protest my anger then, but now is the time.

Labour no longer have my vote.  It is sad, because for years I’ve believed in Labour but it’s more than evident that they no longer believe in me.  I really do hate the idea of the next 5 years being lorded over by the horribly saccharine David Cameron and his band of Bullingdon chums, I really do.  It makes me feel sick.

Labour haven’t lost my vote forever, they could get it back.  To do so they have to be prepared to listen, for too long they have simply pretended to.

For years I harangued any friends who said they wouldn’t  bother voting; “Well, they’re all the same aren’t they Merk”.  I’m starting to think they were right*.

My ballot paper will be spoiled this year, if I vote at all.

*Tom Watson’s dedication to opposing elements of this bill is to be commended, Tom is one of a few constituency MP’s who is caring, dedicated and knowledgeable. Regardless of my anger with Labour, Tom remains a friend and I wish him luck for the Election.

heh.

It’s my take that while the calls were inappropriate, it certainly isn’t something which should result in the sacking of two of TV and Radio’s biggest names, apologies have been made – Ofcom will investigate and that make a judgement and that should be that.  No one died.

For me there are some issues relating to all this brouhaha (yes, I did just say brouhaha);

I find it amazing that only 2 people made complaints after the show went out and now over 10,000 people have complained since reading about it in their favourite right wing shit rag.  That means that all but 2 people listening to the show were not offended by the broadcast, if that is the case then the matter is entirely between Andrew Sachs and BBC radio 2.

Sach’s granddaughter is a Burlesque dancer who appears in the a dance troupe, she (according to her myspace) calls herself a ‘swinger’ and a ‘groupie’ and has appeared with very little clothing in more than one newspaper – yet she is somehow embarrassed enough about the revelation that she shagged one of the most sexually active ‘celebs’ in the country to quit the ‘Satanic Sluts’ European tour?

BBC News channel are showing their impartiality by covering this story to death, apparently there is nothing else going on in the world. Honest.

Shit newspapers who love a good bit of BBC bashing are baying for blood in this and will use this as any excuse to whip up a frenzy of anti-licence fee idiots to do their best ‘Angry of Tunbridge Wells‘ impression even though I’m willing to take a punt that a great deal of those 10,000 complainants haven’t even heard the broadcast.

As someone with experience in radio (albeit not the heady heights of Radio 2) – it was a shit piece of radio, really really bad, but not sackable shit.  Christ, if only this baying mob had heard some of the shit my co-presenter and I used to come out with (Lockerbie the Musical anyone?) we’d have had our head on spikes before you could blurt out “He fucked your Granddaughter“.

As I write this I see on the BBC News channel have announced that Brand and Ross have been suspended pending investigation, perhaps this is the correct thing to do and should have happened (and those involved in the decision making process for it to go out) as soon as this looked as it was going to blow out of all proportion.

The best thing the Beeb can do now is let this settle and wait for the Springfield Mob to move onto the next subject, then re-instate two of their most popular broadcasters (even Sachs has himself said he didn’t want to put any more pressure on Ross after a personal apology) on the understanding that when the OFCOM ruling comes in, Ross and Brand pay the fine (which is likely to be a big one now).

This is the answer to the threat of Terrorism

This is the answer to Identity Theft

This is the answer to Benefit Fraud

This is the answer to Illigal Immigation

This is the answer to Labour losing the next election.

Just one of the reasons why New Labour have thrown away the chance of running the country come the next general election, the reason we’ll have some smug, PR-savy, posh twat at the helm. 

Nice one.  :(

The latest being the best yet;

1. Take flashy packaging (?) away from Cigarettes and stop selling packs of ten in order to stop young people buying them.

2. Prosecute parents of kids who are regularly found with alcohol.

Now the idea that any kid buys fags because of their ‘snazzy’ packaging is laughable. ‘Ohhh shiny packet of Benson & Hedges I must buy some’ isn’t something that goes through the mind of a young would be smoker. So restricting the sale of smaller packets of ciggies isn’t going to stop little Johnny buying fags, he’ll just club together with little Billy and buy a pack of 20?

The alcohol thing is daft too; criminalising parents because their brat has been sold some bottles of WKD by a dodgy off licence just doesn’t seem right. If you must, ban alcohol in some public places (like a lot of towns and cities do already), monitor and hit hard shops who are caught selling booze to under 18′s. Some organisations want to go further, by raising the price of booze in order to curb the availability of teenagers; something that really gets my goat.

In my mind the price of alcohol has shot almost beyond belief in the last couple of years anyway. I regularly pay £2.70-£2.90 for a pint of lager in my local boozers and £3.50 in the local nightclub! I don’t drink much at home as it is but should I decide to start then why shouldn’t I be able to buy a slab of beer from Tesco for as little as possible just of the off chance that some little shit might puke up in a bus stop?

I believe in the sanctity of life and I believe that the unborn need protecting from an abortion industry that is increasingly relied on for social reasons. I’m not against abortion, but I think it should be on medical grounds, not for social convenience.

Mark belives in the sanctity of life, that’s nice. Before I move on here’s some pictures of Mark.

It could be suggested he’s also a Liar; During the commons debate Mark suggested that he represented ‘the overwhelming opinion of women in my constituency, three quarters of whom support a reduction in the current limit.‘ Which I imagine would come as news to three quaters of women in his constituency as no one in the Wrekin appears to be have been asked their opinion, no local radio coverage, no local newspaper poll not even one of Mark’s famous petitions on his website. So where did he get that figure from? Perhaps it was from this poll?

Michael Richard was executed in Texas, USA, on 25 September after a state courthouse refused to stay open an extra 15 minutes to allow the filing of an appeal based on the constitutionality of lethal injections.

Richard’s attorneys had been unable to file the appeal on time because of computer problems; problems they had already brought to the court’s attention. The US Supreme Court then refused to stop the execution. Earlier in the day, however, it had agreed in a Kentucky case to review the lethal injection issue, a decision that led to a de facto moratorium on all other lethal injection executions around the country. The Supreme Court’s ruling is expected later this year.

…and we know how that turned out.

15 minutes!

From that list, the fact that the USA is the only ‘Western’ country – that they are still partaking in state authorised murder beggars belief.

Link from: Chicken Yoghurt

What I don’t care about is the Olympics, I enjoy watching sport – I don’t enjoy watching people chuck things or running round a track. That said, I can live with it. What I can’t live with is the constant bollocks spouted from people involved in the games oraganisation that it’s great for a country to host the Olympics, that it’s somehow going to change my life because London has it in 2012. Which brings me to todays torch carrying pantomime today in our capital. The Torch was run from Wembley Stadium to the O2 Arena (the dome) by famous athletes ( Steve Redgrave, Tim Henman, Kelly Holmes) and of course the plethora of ‘celebrities’ including ex Big Breakfast weather girl Denise Van Outen and Blue Peter’s Konnie Huq!

Seriously who fucking cares? I was actually cheering the protesters who tried to have their voices heard and the bloke who tried to extinguish the flame deserves a medal, podium and the the National Anthem.

Of course it was a bit of an embarrassment to the Met who put their finest cyclist forces in charge of ‘guarding’ the flame but once the protesters got a bit more eager they pulled out their over the top policing trump card by way of what I like to call the Police-ring; A shit load of coppers forming a circle around the Torch and then another load of non cyclist plod formed a ring around them, while the Athlete/Celebrity swapped the torch with another Athlete/Celebrity. All in all I counted about 40 police officers protecting what is essentially a candle through the streets of London. Brilliant.

I look forward to watching the Paris leg tomorrow.

Update: Ha, I didn’t realise until I’d read Justin‘s post that ‘The idea of carrying a lit torch from the Temple of Hera in Greece was invented by Hitler.’   Nice.

The latest announcement is that the Conservative party are going to spend Half a Million pounds targeting ‘online friends’; In an echo of Radiohead’s recent album launch, there will be no fixed charge for becoming a Conservative supporter on Facebook, MySpace, iVillage or Bebo.

WHAT? The party wants people to pay to effectively become a ‘fan’ (in Facebook terms) of the Tory Party? That’s right, George Osborne says; “People can pay as little or as much as they want to”, which is nice of him but prey tell what do I get for my generous donation?

…regular updates on party activity and invitations to take part in social action projects in their area..

and that, says Mr Osborne is ground breaking in UK Politics. I’m inclined to agree, asking people to cough up (as much or as little as you want) to get a couple of emails a week is a joke, no one is going to take them up on this especially given that these online ‘friends’ will not be able to vote in leadership elections or any of the other activities open to a full party member.

According to the report Labour and the Lib Dems already do an online supporters network and do not even consider asking for a donation until you want to become a member. Social networking sites are just that however they are fast becoming a mass marketing tool for anyone who has enough money to line the pockets of News Corp or Facebook inc.

The reason Myspace lost millions of regular visitors to Facebook was because of Facebook’s ease of use and minimal intrusion from people trying to sell you stuff, this puts punters off. We don’t expect services for free so can live with ads but users do not want to be bombarded with targeted marketing every time they log in to see what their friends are up to. Of course facebook is going the way of myspace by becoming more and more difficult to use because of it’s applications platform.

Which brings me back to the Tories spending £500,000 on this form of marketing; I’m not aware of how much money the Conservative party has to piss up the wall trying to get new supporters but I’m willing to bet the uptake vie Myspace, Facebook and the like isn’t going to make a great return on their investment. I don’t know who’s idea this was, but they certainly haven’t spoken to anyone who uses these sites on a regular basis.

I’m all for political parties to engage supporters and prospective supporters via the web, but stop trying to be my Cool Dad. Please.

Whilst info is sketchy at the moment but it appears that it all relates to some posts and linkage about Russian Billionaire Alisher Usmanov. My understanding is that the comments his law team objected to were removed when requested days ago. This is a disgrace.

For those who blog this is fast becoming a risky business if those with unlimited cash can effectively bully those without into the submission of their supposed free speech – even after the comments are removed as requested!

Please feel free to comment but do bear in mind that I’ll be liable in court and I really need to keep hold of the 16pence credit in my bank and my 7 year old Vauxhall Astra!

Heads up to Iain Dale , Tom Watson , Chicken Yoghurt , Obsolete

1. Do the Tory leadership know that Mr Lit was rubbing shoulders (and possibly making a donation) with Blair’s boys before he jumped ship to them.

2. How can anyone trust a man who chops and changes his allegiance, and presumably his political stance enough to vote for him.

3. Do Labour have to give the money back or can they use it to fund campaigning against this indecisive man.

Update: it doesn’t look like a rumour.

I don’t think that ID Cards will threaten personal privacy. Rather the reverse; they will likely reduce the number of times you have to reveal personal information and increase the security of your personal data. Maybe we should start arguing the case that ID Cards will reduce the threat of the Surveillance Society and help safeguard civil liberties.

James Hall – Head of ID Card Scheme (link)

and this;

Will it be compulsory to carry a card?

No. You will not have to carry a card, although you may find it simple and convenient to do so. The police have no new powers associated with the scheme and they will not be able to stop you and demand to see your card.

Home Office website (link)

To this;

Stop and quiz powers considered

The government is considering giving all police officers across the UK “stop and question” powers, the Home Office has confirmed.

The proposal, allowing police to ask people about their identity and movement, is among measures being considered for a new anti-terror bill.

The measure is so far used only in Northern Ireland.

Police elsewhere have to have “reasonable suspicion” a crime has been committed before they can stop people.

BBC News Report (link)

Can you see where this is going?

I’m afraid I can’t talk about it here but I’m pretty certain it would have massive implications for Mr and Mrs Blair, showing what a scheming, self loving, manipulative, presidential wife wanna be little cow that she really is. The truth will out Cherie , so in the meantime I’d keep your pointy little nose out of your husbands affairs.

Update: Cherie denies Brown ‘liar’ attack

(via)

“You could argue that Britain has not seen lines like this since World War II,” said Mark Pritchard, a member of Parliament who represents part of Shropshire, where the situation is just as grim. “Churchill once said that the British are great queuers, but I don’t think he meant that in connection to dental care.”

This quote is from a New York Times article which talks about the lack of public dentists in England.

Mark seems to think that there is a massive shortage of NHS dentists in his area, I’m afraid I have to disagree I waited no time at all to get to a NHS dentist last month – I phoned up and I booked an appointment for the next day.

Both Dawley Family Dental and Whitecross Dental at Stafford park have NHS places begging, sure – neither of them are in his consituency but they’re in the same town. Add to that that plans have been submitted to T&WC for a new surgery in Muxton which will handle 2000 patients. Wellington, Shrewsbury and Telford both have new centres opened in the last six months. A new centre has 450 places in Bridgenorth.

Shrosphire Health bosses recon that 90,000 NHS places would have been created by the end of March. Even if you cant find a permanent place NHS Direct will find you somewhere within driving distance.

I only feel strongly about this beacuse of the recent dental treatment I’ve had to had (and becuase Pritchard is pompus fool).

Rant over

p.s. Shane McGowan is not from Shropshire

Frank Zappa defends the right of artists not to be censored from 1986. Frank Zappa rips these dinosaurs apart!

“You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you’d like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are — ”
Harry Taylor to George Bush

America needs more people like Harry Taylor.