Snouts in the Trough

Today I must be very careful with what I write for obvious legal reasons. So I’ll just give a few bits of information and provide a link to a short (1 min 52 secs) piece of film from the BBC’s FROZEN PLANET series. Then readers can make up their own minds.

We all love Sir David Attenborough. He’s a national treasure. For decades he’s brought us some of the best wildlife and natural history documentaries ever made. And his calm, reverent, knowledgeable commentary is so refreshing compared to today’s self-obsessed presenters who seem more interested in themselves than in what they are meant to be showing and will often screech things like “this is incredible” and “oh my God! Oh my God” and even (in a documentary about polar bears) “I’m sh*tting myself!”

Moreover, David Attenborough went out on a limb by warning about the effect the rapidly-rising human population was having on our planet. This immediately led to him being viciously attacked by the usual mob of the politically-correct.

We’ve always known we can trust Attenborough. But is that still true? Or has Attenborough, willingly or unwillingly, allowed himself to be used by the Global Warming propagandists and is he now resorting to what could look like deception to ‘prove’ Global Warming is happening?

The most iconic images ‘proving’ Global Warming are of a sad-looking polar bear stuck on an ice floe far from land or of office-block-sized pieces of glaciers collapsing into the sea. The problem with filming glaciers collapsing is that glaciers move rather slowly – certainly far too slowly for documentary-makers in a hurry who want to scare us about the speed at which supposed “Global Warming” will kill millions of us. So an honest film-maker might have to wait weeks or even months for a big, impressive piece of a glacier to fall into the sea in front of his or her camera. Not all documentary-makers have the time, budget or patience.

On page 16 of his book Reporting Live from the End of the World BBC ‘greenie’ David Shukman reveals what some film-makers do to get some dramatic ‘killer shots’ of collapsing glaciers. They fly a helicopter near to the edge of a glacier, lower explosive charges into some crevasses, retreat to a safe distance, set up their cameras and then set off the explosives by remote control. The result is of course massive pieces of glacier impressively collapsing into the sea, ‘proving’ Global Warming is happening and is happening now. The attitude is, as Shukman explains, “the ice was going to break off sometime anyway, so no big deal”.

The full 7 episodes of the BBC’s FROZEN PLANET were broadcast in the UK. But the BBC chose to make the series’ seventh episode – On Thin Ice – which focuses on climate change, optional for syndication in order to aid sales of the show in countries where the issue is politically sensitive.

Here’s a brief section from Attenborough’s FROZEN PLANET of glaciers ‘collapsing into the sea’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ72d8xYqqQ

Now, although I have used explosives when I was younger, I’m obviously no expert. But looking carefully at this piece of film, (particularly around 40 seconds in) I believe some people might conclude that the pieces of collapsing glacier have been ‘encouraged’ by a series of controlled explosions rather than happening naturally as a result of Global Warming. You can see the snow being thrown up by what I believe are explosions, but Attenborough claims are “ruptures deep within the glacier”.

But I leave it up to you to reach your own conclusions.

However, if this piece of film is a result of BBC Global Warming fakery, perhaps we should get an apology from the BBC and from national treasure Attenborough?

Yesterday I wrote about how many of Bournemouth’s architecturally important and beautiful buildings in the East Cliff supposed Conservation Area were being allowed to become derelict so that developers could raze them and replace them with lucrative flats or care homes. And all of this was being allowed by Bournemouth’s unusually acquiescent Planning Department.

Today I’d like to ask you all to help block the developers’ and planners’ latest act of architectural destruction by getting you to object to their plans to demolish the former merchant’s villa (see pictures on yesterday’s blog) at Radcliffe Court, 51 Manor Road. This will only take you about 2 minutes and you can do this from the comfort of your own computer or phone or tablet.

I would request as many people as possible send an email to planning@bournemouth.gov.uk

The title/subject of your email should be “Objection to planning application number 7-2013-12459-I, 51 Manor Road BH1” (please note, the last part of the application number is the capital letter ‘I’ and not the number ‘1’)

In your email you should write something like the following three paragraphs or else just copy the following three paragraphs into your email

“I would like to lodge an objection to planning application 7-2013-12459-I, Radcliffe Court 51 Manor Road BH1. This former merchant’s villa is a unique part of Bournemouth’s architectural heritage and probably the only example of such a building left in Bournemouth. Moreover, it is situated in a prime spot in the East Cliff Conservation Area. It would be a tragedy for Bournemouth if this stunning architecturally and historically important building was to be demolished to make way for a modern development of luxury flats.

I understand that the current owners have allowed this former merchant’s villa to deteriorate to such an extent that the developers’ architects have declared the building to be unsafe. However, I am sure that the shell of the building can be preserved. So, while I have no objection to flats being constructed within the existing shell, I am absolutely opposed to demolishing the villa completely.

I therefore propose that the developers be allowed to replace the interior of the existing former merchant’s villa with flats, but that the developers be instructed by Bournemouth Council to retain and refurbish the shell of the existing building and thus retain such an important part of Bournemouth’s architectural and historical heritage”

All objections to this planning application have to be received by the Bournemouth Council Planning Department today – Thursday 17 July. So, please just spare a couple of minutes today to send this email. If a few hundred of us email our objections, at the next meeting of the planning committee, it will be difficult for Bournemouth’s corrupt (IMHO) Planning Department to claim that people are not opposed to their latest act of wilful architectural vandalism.

The property developers are called Linwood Park Ltd and the architects who so conveniently declared the building should be demolished are called Brightspace Architects and were appointed by a company called Radcliffe Court Holdings Ltd. I have not been able to find any information on either Linwood Park Ltd or Radcliffe Court Holdings Ltd on Google. Odd that?

We can fight back against the greed and corruption of the ruling elites and their cronies. Many thanks for your help with this.

(Oh and for those amongst you who like music and dance, here’s a brief YouTube video of a Rave Party in Baghdad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTTP61_9Acc )

Hours of media time, acres of newsprint and terabytes of data are being splurged on breathless reports of Dodgy David Cameron’s ‘amazing’, ‘fantastic’, ‘surprising’, ‘ground-breaking’, ‘stunning’, ‘ambitious’, ‘ audacious’, ‘courageous’ etc etc reshuffle of his tired, failing government ministers.

But this pathetic excuse for a reshuffle tells us pretty much all we need to know about our useless, shallow PR PM:

1. There are only eight months before the 2015 General Election campaign starts in earnest. So, isn’t it a bit late for the ‘amazing new talent’ to be brought into government?

2. For almost four of those eight months, our greedy, lazy, expenses-thieving MPs will be either on holiday or at party conferences. So, what exactly are these ‘talented’, new mostly female ministers going to achieve in the remaining four months? Nothing, that’s what.

3. There has been much journalistic wittering about the fact that several new ministers will be female and how talented these ‘up and coming’ new Tory women are. But if Dodgy Dave wanted this wonderful female supposed talent in government, why choose the last few months of a five-year parliamentary term to do it?

This isn’t a serious attempt to improve government. It’s just another cynical PR stunt by our failed PR PM to fool a few more women into voting for Dodgy and his chums in 2015.

And anyway, why do we need all these government ministers? Most of the government’s powers have been handed over to Brussels or to the regional assemblies. Yet we have more than twice as many government ministers as most other European countries (click to see more clearly)

Making so many third-raters into an astonishing and largely unnecessary 51 government ministers and another 55 assorted special positions is just a way for Dodgy to throw buckets of our money at anyone sufficiently sycophantic to keep him on as party leader

So, don’t get fooled by Dodgy’s great ‘reshuffle’ – it’s just another worthless gesture by a Blairite Blairish recidivist liar.

Some people might be tempted to think that allowing more than seven million foreigners, about one million of them illegal immigrants, into the UK since 1997 has not been particularly positive for social cohesion. And there are politically-incorrect individuals who have even suggested that this extra seven million people might have something to do with the fact that the NHS is collapsing, our schools can no longer cope, our roads are congested and there is pressure to carpet the green belt with rabbit-hutch-sized homes.

But the arrival of the seven million may be minor compared to what’s heading our way.

One reader highlighted a blog comparing the immigration pressures on the EU compared to the US:

1. The population of the US is 317 million compared to 515 million in the EU

2. The population of the South American countries most likely to be a source of immigration into the US is 387 million compared to about 1.5bn people in Africa and the failed states of the Middle East who might quite fancy moving to Europe

3. The average US citizen is four or five times as rich as the average Latin American, the average EU citizen is twenty-two times as rich as the average sub-Saharan African

This all means that there is massively more pressure from immigration on the EU than there is on the US. As a result, the level of illegal immigration into the EU has doubled over the last few years from about 70,000 a year to probably nearer 200,000 a year.

Europe’s Main Stream Media, education and political elites are under the shared ideological spell that makes it impossible to think the thought that a nation’s character, institutions, wealth, success and fate might have anything to do with the educational levels, inherited qualities and the culture of the people who live there.

They thus fail to grasp that the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people a year from the world’s most corrupt, violent, religiously-backward, venal, primitive failed states might in some way degrade the quality of life of EU countries.

Moreover our rulers, particularly the United Nations, are trying to broaden the definition of ‘asylum seekers’ to cover many people who are just economic migrants looking for a better life. While we should admire people who make the effort to move to Europe to improve their lot, we also need to ask now many millions more we can accommodate before wrecking our own countries.

The majority of people in most European countries now feel that there is too much immigration (click to see more clearly)

But our rulers, worshipping at the altar of political correctness seem obsessed with forcing immigration down our throats while they live in their luxury homes, protected from the effects of their policies by their massive salaries and pensions paid for by us.

Immigration – you ain’t see nothing yet.

Let me introduce Linda ‘Lin’ Homer, possibly the most dangerously incompetent woman in Britain. Yes, possibly even worse than our beloved Baroness Ashton whose negotiating skills allowed the crazies in Iran to develop nuclear weapons and whose insistence that Ukraine choose between Russia and the EU started a minor civil war. Like Ashton, Lin has a long and undistinguished history of botching, bungling and general uselessness.

In 2002 Lin was made the £174,000 a year Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council where she was responsible for a major postal votes scandal that ended up before the courts. Election judge Richard Mawrey said fraud in the city ‘would have disgraced a banana republic’ and claimed Ms Homer, who was the city’s returning officer in her role as chief executive, had ‘thrown the rule book out of the window’.

Following this, in 2005 Lin was chosen by the Home Office to run what was then called the Immigration and Nationality Directorate – this time on £200,000, plus bonuses. She inherited a department which was already in chaos, with asylum claims piling up and staff badly demoralised. But it was on her watch in 2006 that we learned of the mistaken release of 1,000 foreign criminals. The scandal cost then home secretary Charles Clarke his job. His successor, John Reid, declared the immigration system ‘not fit for purpose’. The same year it emerged some 450,000 asylum cases had not been dealt with but left in boxes at the Home Office. These cases would take more than 25 years to clear and so the people involved will almost all be allowed to remain in Britain.

The shake-up that led to the creation of UKBA was meant to clear up the mess and stop similar scandals happening in future. After playing a key role in shaping the new agency, Ms Homer became its first chief executive, on an astonishing £208,000 a year, making her among the highest paid civil servants in Britain.

But her tenure was marked by a string of bad news stories and a series of highly critical reports of UKBA by MPs who concluded she was guilty of a ‘catastrophic’ failure of leadership during her time at UKBA.

But, of course, in Britain’s Civil Service incompetence, stupidity and bungling are not punished. In fact, they are usually rewarded.  And so it was with Lin. In 2012 she got her biggest job to date – running HMRC on a salary of about £180,000 a year. While at HMRC Lin has presided over a fiasco that left millions of workers with the wrong tax code and facing hefty bills. Then came cosy ‘sweetheart’ deals which let Goldman Sachs off a £10m tax bill and Vodafone avoiding hundreds of millions. And, of course, companies like Amazon, Google, Starbucks and others don’t even know what tax is.

That’s the incompetence. But now comes the dangerous bit.

Ms Homer believes that around 17,000 people owing on average £5,800 each are deliberately delaying paying HMRC. So she wants to overturn the whole basis of British law – that one is innocent until proven guilty – and be allowed to take this money directly from people’s bank accounts. Suddenly we are, in Ms Homer’s eyes guilty and are to have our assets confiscated by her bungling, incompetent officials without any proper due process.

Let’s look at the numbers. If 17,000 people owe an average of £5,800, that’s £98m. Income tax receipts in 2012/3 were £155m. Lin’s outrageous example of bureaucratic unaccountability would be aimed at 17,000 out of 33,000,000 UK taxpayers. So, for the sake of 0.064% of revenue due from an asserted 0.05% of UK taxpayers, this worthless bureaucrat wants to overturn the civil rights of all of us.

Naturally, Lin claims this would only be a ‘special measure’. But how often have we seen ‘special measures’ become the norm? Remember, income tax was first introduced as a ‘special measure’ in 1799 to help pay for the Napoleonic Wars.

Lin Homer should have been fired years ago. We must not let this ghastly bureaucrat destroy the whole basis of British law as she tries to make up for her own department’s incompetence.