The Slow Death of Disposable Income...

It's that time of year when I need to renew my car insurance. The renewal quote was almost double that of last year. Now a 5 or 10 percent increase I could stomach, even 20 percent, but double? Where has that come from? 

Inflation alone can't explain it, but now it seems even the cheapest quote is over £1000 which means I'll be paying £100 a month.

That's 8% of my monthly salary just paying for car insurance. add that to the increase in energy costs, petrol, food, etc. and the lack of an increase in wages to compensate, you can see my disposable income has vanished. 

I'm now working just to pay bills. 

I have no income available after bills to pay for luxuries like a meal at a restaurant, or to buy for an upgrade of a tech item. 

Like I said last week, the tough times have now hit the middle class. 

The economy is in real trouble. If people can only afford essentials, the retail economy that successive government's have used to replace manufacturing is in serious jeopardy. The economy relies in a significant way upon people having disposable income to pay out on things like eating out or staying at hotels, or holidays.

I've already heard that the holiday market that the middle classes typically spend on, has already suffered a drop in revenue. A significant drop.

The problem is I don't think economists or the government realise how serious this issue is. Disposable income is a major factor greasing the wheels of the economy. Without that money being available, or the perception to people that they have the ability to spend that money without hard times being imminent, then there's trouble.

Perception is everything. The perception is it's not safe to spend money. There will be a serious contraction of the economy as belts are tightened. 

Because the economy is so specifically retail based, with no alternative, no diversification, then the outlook is bleak. Thanks to government short-sightedness we are in for tough times. Especially if right now the Labour party is due to take over government. They don't have the best track record when it comes to fiscal responsibility. Even mad Gordon Brown who was supposed to be fiscally prudent allowed house prices to rise massively on their watch, borrowed aplenty, sold all our gold reserves so we have no way to back up our fiat currency and left the cupboards empty when he left office. 

Buckle up!

I've already lived through the raising of the Pension age, had my pension pot taxed, had to now top up my future pension with the NEST thing and had Liz Truss destroy my pension pot. 

Now it looks like Labour will start to slim down my state pension by removing the triple lock. 

I's a wonder I'm not radicalised against government as at every turn, just as I try to make things better, they fuck things up for me. 

Poverty looms not just for me, but for the middle class as well. And they don't like poverty. I'm surprised they haven't rebelled after seeing their kids unable to get on the housing ladder due to extortionate house prices. 

I don't think it will be long before we start to see extremism in UK politics, because the moderates are not serving a major part of the public.

Why the Sudden Interest in UFOs/UAVs?

First off, I don't believe in little green men, nor do I think that UFOs are from another universe.

The amounts of energy required to either traverse vast distances, travel through time or between universes is beyond the ability to store in a small enough package to make it feasible.

Even the talk of exotic materials doesn't convince me.

What I do believe in, is previously undiscovered atmospheric phenomena. Entirely natural. Combined with sightings of airborne rubbish.

What we are seeing is better radar sensors detecting things that previous radars couldn't detect. In the battle to detect things we didn't see previously like stealth aircraft, we've developed new radar features that can detect smaller items and stealthier aircraft. 

Now we are starting to see things like atmospheric phenomena that can replicate things like objects travelling faster than normal aircraft. Lightning or electrical phenomena can jump incredible distances in a split second. Atmospheric layers can reflect radio signals and create all sorts of effects. 

The shiny objects seen by aircraft at height are probably no more than fancy mylar party balloons floating at altitude. Don't forget that at altitude the jetstream can carry balloons at several hundred miles an hour, replicating the effect of a propulsion system. Fighter pilots, the only people that are in those areas at that height  are not trained and don't have the sensors to analyse the wind speed at that point. 

Different layers in the air can cause visual effects like mirages, so it's not unforeseen that optical ducting could cause effects like objects jumping huge distances. Combine that with disc-shaped (lenticular) clouds, there's a whole lot up there ripe for misinterpretation.

I'm yet to be convinced and I've not yet seen a video that shows something that I cannot explain or that cannot be explained by others.

Yes, the subject requires investigation, if only to identify the phenomena and find ways of ignoring it so it can be removed from radar plots as something that should be ignored.

If it turns out to be aliens from another planet, time-travellers or people from another dimension, well that's just another immigrant problem that needs resolving, isn't it?

Beware Voting for an Ideology..

Because you get what you've got in Scotland.

Vote for the SNP, think you are furthering independence, what you actually get is University Marxist Ideology. 

If you vote for one thing over and above all the other shit the party you are voting for keep doing, then you get the shit that is happening in Scotland.  You need to pay attention to the other stuff the party are saying/doing as well as their main ideological focus.

Scottish voters need to start voting for actual policies rather than prop up the Quasi-Communists of the SNP just because...independence.

It's a salient warning to voters South of the border that keep voting for the main two parties when they only listen to external influence, rather than the voice of their voters. 

Continuing with Net Zero when it's killing people is wrong.

Failing to change policy to ease the financial burden on families is wrong.

Listening to the cult of Davos rather than the voters is wrong.

Continuing to allow thousands of illegal immigrants into our country unchecked, is wrong.

VOTERS, IF THE PARTIES WILL NOT LISTEN TO YOU, DO NOT VOTE FOR THEM.

PARTIES, IF YOU CONTINUE TO IGNORE THE VOTERS, WE WILL NOT VOTE FOR YOU.

What is it Really?

Just in the past week we've seen Islamic extremism described as a mental illness or a far right ideology.

Well, which is it? Who defines these descriptions?

Because I know what it is and it is neither of those. 

I assume it's a mental illness when a Christian converts? After all, how could someone convert from the kind, caring Christian faith to Islamic extremism?

Or maybe it's a far right ideology because it aligns with those Germans from the Thirties that hated Jews?

I do love the mental gymnastics the Media and the Elites use to describe the extremist death cult that is Islam.

More on the Post Office Enquiry.

I was Ill for a few days last week, so ill that listening to the streams from the Post Office enquiry seemed like entertainment. 

Some interesting snippets cropped up though.

An IT expert witness called Jason Coyne was invited to be an expert witness on a case regarding the Cleveleys branch. 

His testimony was very considered and from my pint of view, sensible. He testified in July last year, but somehow I missed it. Mind you, that was when I was having car issues and had to find a way of getting a new car. A bit manic back then.

The video is here: 

Having also watched the testimony of the Fujitsu employee (Jan Holmes)  tasked with essentially rebutting Mr Coyne's report into Horizon, it makes interesting watching. 

Jan Holme's testimonuy is here:

In order to rebut Mr Coyne, Jan Holmes seems to have picked, or be provided with a different set of statistics than the ones Mr Coyne used. Again it's interesting how the information is provided to the  Fujitsu expert and he can't explain why that particular (and incomparable) information was provided.

Mr Coyne makes valid points about the information presented by Post Office Limited (POL) about the Cleveleys branch. Despite POL and Fujitsu saying there were no inherent errors in Horizon, there were calls to the Horizon help desk that were categorised by Fujitsu themselves as software errors. A bunch more were hardware errors. Yet any shortfalls or discrepancies in accounting were always placed on the sub-postmaster. 

Up to the point of prosecution. Yet POL's own evidence shows there was an element of doubt that should have stopped any prosecution in it's tracks. So instead it seems POL went for the tactic of forcing Postmasters to plead guilty to avoid going to court.

Even when it did go to court like in the Cleveleys case, it seems Fujitsu and POL were economic with the evidence, choosing not to disclose information that damaged Horizon. Saying that logs were not available, when in fact later on and in their own investigations, Fujitsu staff were able to recreate or extract the very information that Jason Coyne wanted. It may be that it wasn't held to a forensic standard in a secure archive, but if Fujitsu relied on it to rebut an Expert Witness in a court case, then it should have been made available to the defence.

One last thing: Jason Coyne says during his testimony that it's all very well coding for what he calls the "Happy Path", when everything in the computer program works as it should. But coders rarely code sufficiently for the exceptions and issues that crop up when things don't go exactly to plan. Something I've always banged on about when it comes to coding. If you're going to transmit some important data between sites, it needs to be wrapped up and finished with a checksum, so you know the data sent from a remote branch to a central location is correct. The checksum is returned back to the branch and if it's the same then the transfer is successful. If there is an error, then the transfer is discarded at the central location and the transfer instigated again, ad infinitum until the transfer is successful and accurate.

It seems that this attention to data integrity was missing in the Horizon system.

Even in-branch, something like a barcode scanner can pick up random characters and input it to the system. It doesn't take a genius to realise that once every so often those random characters may form something usable by the system like a valid transaction. Thereby causing a phantom transaction.

The difference between branches could be something as simple as a dirty or marked worktop, which spoofs the scanner into attempting to read the marks on the worktop as barcodes. That could be the difference between error rates in branches. Who knows? Certainly not POL or Fujitsu, because that sort of in-depth investigation was never made apparently.

On a different note, watching the sessions with the Post Office "Investigators" it looks like the people POL employed were the sort of people that you find guarding a particular type of camp in a particular country during World War Two. 

Basically enforcers for the Post Office, the Investigators neither investigated, nor it seems wrote their own witness statements, instead showing up at court during prosecutions reading pre-prepared statements. 

All I can say is that it's now gone beyond farcical. It's now criminal. Somewhere in middle-management there was and probably still is a rotten culture in POL. Whether that extended to the senior management and the board I still haven't been able to ascertain. It could well be that senior management were mere placeholders and figureheads, not knowing what was happening underneath them. But in the end, the buck stops very much with them.

I hope that at some point someone in POL is prosecuted for not providing disclosure to the defence in the criminal prosecutions they brought and for continuing to prosecute even when they knew the system was faulty. Even perverting the course of Justice by not providing relevant information to courts. Lawyers, managers and the whole chain involved in providing evidence either hid the evidence of Horizon errors, or they were too incompetent to recognise them.

It will be interesting to see if POL accounting staff are brought to testify for the enquiry. Because somewhere POL earned more than it disclosed, thanks to Horizon. So their accounting was false. I'm intrigued if anyone in the accounting staff raised the issue of excess funds coming into the POL accounts.

Yet another aspect to this shabby story.

Our Economy is Fucked: Even the Middle Class Are Struggling.

The best indicator of an economy is how well the fairly well-off are coping. I'm talking about the people with enough spare income to be able to have a comfortable life.

Well, not any more. A sure-fire indicator that this year is when all the chickens come home to roost is the fact that the middle class and the upper-middle class are struggling.

As you may know, I work selling parts for sports cars. Cars that are generally not primary vehicles, but are sunny Sunday indulgences. Cars that are generally owned by the pretty well-off.

Well, sadly for the economy, we've had a number of calls since Christmas asking us if we would buy cars off customers. Sadly we don't deal in cars, just parts. But the number of calls is shocking.

And a pretty good indicator that even the well-off are feeling the pinch. 

I don't know if it's a lack of disposable income, or the doubling of car insurance costs that is the factor. But it seems that the middle class cannot indulge themselves as much as they used to.

By that metric, I declare the economy Royally Fucked. 

Good luck to anyone getting into power this year in the general election, because you'll need it to sort out the shit-show we have at the moment.

First cull on my list would be removing unnecessary legislation like "hate crimes" and offence laws. We're tying up untold Police resources looking for hurty words. We can't afford the indulgence and government is not your parent. If you can't stand being offended, then tough, grow up or grow a thick skin. If your parents failed to show you how life works, that's not government's problem.

Net zero needs to be abandoned. Why are we bankrupting millions of people to signal how virtuous we are to the world? Why are we spending billions to affect less than 0.1 percent of the worlds CO2 production?

There's a lot more that needs to be culled.

The Barton formula giving Scotland more tax revenue than people South of the border needs review. English and Welsh taxpayers should not be paying for the indulgences of the Scottish Parliament and their Marxist culture. We should not be funding an existential threat to democracy. 

The same goes for any "Woke" or Marxist ideology. It should be defunded, so any charities receiving state funding should have it stopped if they espouse Marxist ideology.

We should not be funding immigrants inside the UK. If they want funding for community centres then they should fund it themselves from their own community. It's not Government's job.

The boat people should be returned directly back to France if they have no ID on them. Again, let's cut the crap and the cost and say that anyone presenting in the UK as a refugee without proof of identity (deliberate or otherwise) will be immediately returned back to whence they came. I'd also add that if the lawyers continue to thwart the government, then out only option would be to protect our borders with machine guns. 

Kids? Women? I don't care. They will get a warning and then I'd be tasking the Navy to stand on the sea border. 

I'd also be using the Navy to board any French vessel that aids and abets the trafficking of migrants across the channel. Captains will be prosecuted under UK people trafficking laws.

If we've created an absolute offense to prosecute truck drivers for landing in the UK for having migrants on their truck unknowingly, then the same applies to Captains on the sea doing the same or providing aid and shadowing dinghies rather than overtly stopping them from crossing.

Anyhow, off my high horse now.

 

Unfettered Capitalism Isn't a Good Thing.

I used to believe in the markets. I thought capitalism was good, it has brought many benefits and has brought the poor out of poverty over the ages.

But there is now a breed of capitalism in place that is damaging the West. 

I call it Criminal Capitalism, mainly because it seeks to maximise profits any way it can, including illegal activity.

Most publicly represented by John DeLorean trying to save his car business by dealing in drugs, Criminal Capitalism is now hell bent on maximising profits by bullying government agencies into not paying tax.

Global Corporations have gutted the high street and replaced most of the shops. They now utilise expensive lawyers and offshore offices to pay zero corporation tax in the UK.

They exploit a loophole that government should plug, but of course these global corporations have powerful lobby organisations to keep MPs sweet and to not rock the boat.

These are part of the parasitical elite. They pay back into society an infinitesimal amount of what they take. A tiny fraction of what would be returned in taxes if the products and services had been transacted on the high street.

A prime example are the Water Companies in the UK. Almost exclusively owned by foreign parent companies, they maximise profits by not investing in the necessary repair work or in work to prevent sewage spills.

The problem of raw sewage being released is getting increasingly common. Only last weekend there was a lot of publicity about e.coli on the Thames whilst the Oxford-Cambridge boat races were being run. But of course there was, because the water companies do not re-invest, because there is no financial benefit for them to do so. To invest in new plant would dent the profits of shareholders, the parent company and the board.

Their lobby group was so strong it appears, they got the Government to relax the regulations regarding sewage release. Instead of it being a criminal offense, which it should be, the Government relaxed the rules and made it easier for water companies to release more sewage without penalty, therefore once again maximising profit over the health of the nation.

Google and eBay have offshore offices that allow them to pay corporation tax outside the UK. They argue that the transaction was done outside the UK because their office and their servers are not inside the UK. Yet the person they transact with and the bank account they receive funds from is inside the UK. Tax legislation needs to change to claw back some of that money in tax. It should be treated as a transaction on the high street with a foreign company based here. The location of the company should be immaterial. 

Or the government could just double the VAT on online transactions with entities that continue to maintain they are outside the UK and outside of UK tax laws. I assume VAT is already being paid at the standard rate on any transactions, of course, so changing the rules to double it in these circumstances should not be a problem. If the online companies start to change their systems and use systems located within the UK then of course corporation tax will be liable on the profits.

This will also affect the City of London. The money-making machine of the mega-rich. Good.

UPDATE:

This report today emphasises my point: Thames water is facing administration as it is close to defaulting on it's debt liabilities. How can a company take on huge debts and at the same time service shareholder dividends and huge executive bonuses?

Taking on debt whilst simultaneously announcing "profits" should be outlawed.

If a company takes out debt, surely that impacts profit. "Profit" should be just that: the amount left over after operating costs and liabilities are met. 

I know debt repayments are included in the liabilities, but surely there should be no bonuses or dividends while the company has any debt. The debt should be repaid and the company should return to ACTUAL profit without debt before any bonuses or dividends are paid surely? Or at least the debt/asset ratio should factor in any payouts?

Is Beyonce's New Country Album a Case of Cultural Appropriation?

 Just asking the above for a friend.

If dreadlocks on white people, dressing up in Red Indian headdress and all the other things that white people have been castigated for is cultural appropriation.

Why isn't a black person playing white music?

Again, double standards.

In the Interest of Fairness and Balance...

I've been looking at more left leaning sites recently. On YouTube I've been watching videos from Novara Media the left leaning organisation.

Some of their opinions and guests I can completely dismiss as fruit-loops, but they've just had Gary Stevenson (From the Gary's Economics YouTube channel) on and he talks a lot of sense. An ex-city trader, he has made a ton of money betting on the collapse of the economy.

I think by now it's clear that the UK is in decline. High Taxes, reduced services (although I have some thoughts on that) and just a general malaise economically.

The reduced services bit could be improved by government getting out of things it shouldn't be involved in. For instance the hate speech laws and protection of people and prosecutions for hurty words.  The government have no business getting involved in being people's parent. It's not there to stop people being offended. That just ties up resources for no good reason. Government shouldn't care if you get offended by someone's opinion and should not get involved.

But back to Gary. He's spent most of his life betting on the decline of the economy. He's made millions.

And a lot of what he says makes sense. It's very similar to what I've been saying. The eye-watering amounts of debt for instance and the government's liabilities for payment of interest. 

I've glossed over his ides on the transfer of wealth and assets from the poor to the rich. To some extent i sympathise because it's not just the oppressor/oppressed diatribe we get from the left, but luckily my eyes didn't glaze over entirely..

Gary get's hung up about who owns the debt. He lies the blame at the rich, which to some extent is true but then he spurs off blaming the rich for buying up resources like housing and then renting them out to the poor at high rents. Which is true. But Government debt is a peripheral to that. Instead we are looking at States investing in Government bonds and as I've said before, those states not only buy that debt, they use that debt to exert influence. The only nations that can invest that sort of money are cash-rich ones, like the oil-producing states of the Middle-East, or China. States that do not have the interests of Britain at heart or certainly don't care enough about us to just take the interest and be quiet. I expect there to be some extortion from these states.

The Middle-Eastern states I've already talked about and how they use their influence to change the UK. Not only by investing in Mosques and supplying extremist Imams spouting anti-Western rhetoric, but by buying our debt or our businesses and using that leverage to nudge the government in a certain direction. Extortion, essentially.

Gary blames the rich elite class, and to some extent I agree. The rich have turned their back on altruism and there's now a class of rich that are all about how much money they can accrue. Not actual liquid cash, you understand. We're not talking about Scrooge McDuck style piles of cash, because that's too risky. 

No, we're talking about property portfolios, using holding companies to maximise profits, carefully skirting round the legal and tax issues owning a large investment can raise.

Gary's answer is tax the rich, but that's an over-simplification. Just how do you tax them? How do you distinguish between the rich person holding assets using a public limited company, and a "legitimate" PLC doing legitimate business stuff?

Because it's easy to identify someone owning a few properties as buy-to-let properties, or just plain owning the properties to let them out. But as soon as you start to tax multiple property private ownership, then they'll just wrap them up in a PLC and then you're into the business tax regime rather than the private individual tax regime.

So how do you tax the Rich?

It's a difficult one to answer, because you have to involve legitimate businesses. Do you increase tax on profits? Do you increase tax on dividends? How do you identify a private individual running a property empire if they set up a PLC, the PLC owns the property and the board is made up of the kids and the dog and they all receive dividends from the PLC? 

I've no simple answer unfortunately and it's one that the left really needs to address.

I'd certainly like inheritance tax to be abolished, or reviewed. Now, thanks to government policy, even ex-council houses could be subject to inheritance tax. That's not what it should be used for. It should not be a stick to beat the poor at their lowest point. These days a million pound house can be owned by someone who is poor. But there's the rub: they're not technically rich. They are poor because they are not leveraging the value of the asset they own. It's their home and they wouldn't take the risk of losing it. Where a rich person would get advice, probably have a few properties and be maximising their potential revenue generation. That, I guess is the difference between rich and poor: the rich make money and assets work for them, or at least have enough to mitigate any risk from doing so. 

Certainly I have a lot of sympathy with Gary's viewpoint, I'm just not convinced that the "cure" to excessive personal wealth is so simple.

Certainly we need to dissuade people from having second homes or more and leaving them empty. That's a criminal act that should be heavily punished by government. It's not a jealousy thing either. It's a practical solution to freeing up housing stock.

The rich as I said are rich enough to mitigate risk (and tax burdens). The question is can you leverage that to level the playing field? Can you make being rich more risky to ever the odds?

Also it would be a good idea to start looking at companies that hold property and keep it deliberately empty for long periods. Along with companies that "LandBank", holding onto land for development.

I've also said we need to stop money flowing outside the UK. If you earn it in the UK, you pay tax in the UK. So end the Non-Dom tax breaks and the ability to offshore tax responsibilities. Also legislation needs to be created by government to State that when a company transacts with a UK citizen and receives payment from a UK bank account, that tax should be paid on that transaction in the UK, irrespective of where the server is, or where the head office of the company supplying the goods or services is located. 

We need to catch up with the digital age and make online companies repair the hole in the exchequer they have created by decimating the high street. 

Also a high-street brand should not be on the high street one day, go bust the next day and then a month later start trading online with a regime that pays hardly any UK tax. 

There are ways to tax the rich, but it's not as easy as the left want to make out unfortunately.

I shall watch more of Gary, he sounds like a top bloke. Obviously politically we might be different, but not that far apart to be honest. For instance I do not think that labour will be our saviours.

For instance immigration. I do understand that mass immigration is a symptom of the system rather than the cause of all ills. Yes, immigration does affect access to services and availability of houses and rent prices, but it's not the main issue. It's more to do with corporations not investing in our population. Instead of training people they want to bring in people from other countries that are trained. It's cheaper than training someone that already lives here. They can generally pay the immigrant a lot less too.

The relentless drive to maximise profits is to blame. Buy low and sell high. Pay as low as possible and sell as obscenely high as you can get away with. 

The problem is unfettered capitalism, the worst excess of corporate greed, where global corporations are now big enough to bully governments, or at least government departments like on tax. They even have the power to manipulate public opinion against governments.

How you limit those excesses I have no idea. I can't imagine a mechanism that would reduce the greed of the global corporations, or make excessive profits er, unprofitable.

Black Swan, Black Swan, I repeat, Black Swan...

Putin has just had his. Pretty neat to get Muslims to do the work. Ostensibly ISIS claimed responsibility, but is anyone buying that? Really? ISIS? 

I expect ours will come within the next 6 months, possibly sooner.

No idea what form it will take, but if the voting intentions of the masses starts to veer away from the requirements of the elites, then we will be virtually guaranteed one.

I have yet to form intelligence on the form it will take. Will Russia be pushed to deploy Nukes? I've said before that Antwerp or Zebrugge would be targets to stop the influx of heavy armour from the US (one of the few things they fear along with Western fighter aircraft). Would NATO respond if they were hit?

Could Russia target France or the UK for having troops on the ground in Ukraine? 

Or would this be a wholly fabricated attack by the West on itself?

Never before have I seen Western governments so Sociopathic and with such disregard for their own citizens that I think such an act on a huge scale could be a possibility.

GCHQ... What's Going on?

A work of fiction....?

He went to work as normal, but his trained eye caught the first suspect. Someone stood supposedly waiting for a lift outside the train station, except he was positioned in a place that wasn't obvious for a lift-getting perspective. He was placed instead to give a good field of view of the station entrance.

The young girl on the platform that passed him a few minutes after he picked his spot appeared too interested in him and too clean. A tail has to have a story, something that fits into a niche. Being too clinical stands out. 

The watchword is subtlety. Eyeing someone like you'd try and look at a celebrity: you know, the looking but not looking type thing is not subtle.

I do like the touch of the two middle-eastern guys, you wouldn't suspect them. 

But then one of them very very obviously breaks from the other guy right beside me. 

Fieldcraft appears to be a dying art. At least before breaking off and tailing a suspect, you need to exchange some pleasantries, or at least go through the motions.

Otherwise breaking off "cold" becomes a deliberate and quite obvious act. To everyone.

The dayglo-clad workman leaning against the wall reading a paper? Really? Not since the Sun had page three girls in it have I ever seen a workman reading a paper he thought. Plus those dayglo overalls are way too clean. 

Let's see if they do better tonight on my way home from work, he mused. 

And that's all I'm doing, going to and from work. You'd think I was marked down as some terrorist or something. Have my words have hit a nerve? 

Maybe I'll have a play tonight. It's a while since I did anything like this and it might be entertaining. 

Might get me in more trouble though as I "clear baffles" and do the odd "Crazy Ivan" in sub-speak.

Red Tory Social Democrat Globalist Shills Facing Drubbing in the Polls

Well, well, well, it's about time and I hope upon hope that the Tory party finally get the kicking they deserve at the next election. 

IN this article, it shows that reform are now at 11% in third place after the Tories at 26%, but there is a hill to climb to beat Labour on 44%. Hopefully by the election, that Tory figure will be negligible and Reform can win seats and replace the Tories as the party of true Conservatism.

I just pray the Tories are pushed into oblivion for their disservice to the voters.

We vote Tories in to well, be Tories. Be the political hard men, make the tough choices, get the country back on track. And yes, DELIVER THE MANDATE THEY WERE ELECTED WITH.

We gave them an 80-seat majority. They could have enacted primary legislation and told the Lords where to go if they so much as wag a finger at their mandated policies.

But instead we got Boris the baby-maker, so enthralled by his Missus playing with his dick, he forgot what his job was. We suddenly had "Green Boris", bringing in legislation he had no mandate for and ignoring his primary mission: to deliver a Brexit that benefitted the UK and to stop immigration in it's tracks. 

Then once the Tories had had enough of his preoccupation with his not-so-right-honourable member, the Tory membership elected Liz Truss. She who defected from the Liberal Democrats. That's the main choice they had to turn things around.

She got kicked out in less than 50 days after a disastrous budget, where the elite played her and her chancellor like a fiddle. The markets in lockstep with the media made short work of her.

So Rishi, who was never elected to the role, was appointed as predicted by me weeks before to the position of PM. 

And it has been disaster after disaster with him in charge. Immigration up instead of down as promised at the election. Several failed attempts to stop illegal immigration and to deport those costing us millions to house. No changes to primary legislation despite the huge majority in the Commons. 

Then we get David Cameron back in the cabinet of all things. Really a kick in the teeth for Brexit supporters, you know, the majority of the country.

Yes, they deserve to be obliterated as a party for ignoring the mandate they were given and instead listening to supra-national organisations that do not have our best interests at heart. Whether it's the U.N. the WEF, or global corporations like Blackrock and Vanguard, those are the voices that the government is listening to, not the voice of the people.

Reform must be getting close now, the real smear campaigns have started, with the BBC labelling them as far-right. Reform have quite rightly threatened lawsuits against the BBC that created the report and anyone using it as an example. Quite right.

Because this is how it starts. Some NGO or fake charity somewhere quietly labels someone or something as a nasty label and it sits for a while, until the mainstream start to pick up and use it, whereupon you are then forever labelled that slur.

Good on Reform for threatening the lawsuit. Would the BBC call the Tories far-right? Nope. 

Mind you, are the Tories any form of right-leaning political party at the moment? Centre-Left best describes them at the moment.

Sadly it looks like we are on course for a Labour government this year, with all their far-left Communist ideology. I would say Marxist, but their ides go far beyond that. They will continue to ruin the country, just like the Red Tories have.

Really Reform needs to gain traction as a viable alternative to the globalist-controlled puppets ion both sides of Parliament we have now. Get them all out, get rid of them and elect an uncorrupted set of MPs into power.

Covid Illegal DNRs: Is the Mainstream Waking up to this scandal?

 Well, yes and no. 

This article in the Independent is the first real mention of the scandal I knew about back at the height of Covid. It's not been reported on much at all by mainstream media even when the Care Industry media started to take note.

Now this report says an investigation by the  Parliamentary Health Industry Ombudsman has ruled the DNRs were issued "wrongly". Without the knowledge of the patient, their friends, family or carers, which infringed their human rights.

That not wrong, that's plain illegal.

But it seems it's going to be swept under the carpet yet again so that the sick and elderly can be culled or left to die without treatment come the next pandemic.

Diane Abbott: The Perennial Victim.

Diane Abbott is the embodiment of the "victim culture" that inhabits the middle classes at the moment.

She's the perennial victim, excusing criticism of her as "racist" or "Misogynist", but never, ever taking responsibility for doing the things that cause people to criticise her.

No matter how crass, how stupid how racist her remarks, any pushback is met with "I'm the victim, support me".

It's not what we expect from a politician. We expect politicians to be held to public scrutiny, we expect them to have a thick enough skin to withstand criticism. 

Diane Abbott is none of those things. 

She really shouldn't be where she is. She should be anywhere but politics.

Politics requires certain features: intellect, a robust personality, cognitive ability (yes, I'm alluding to America there), a sharp wit and above all not a sense of being the victim all the bloody time.

Just think if Diane had been an MP when Nazi Germany smashed through France. Would she stand up to their tyranny or would she cower under a table somewhere?

I think she'd have taken the table option, because I haven't seen anything any action, any words from her that convinces me otherwise.

Nukes and Yemen

I've always been fascinated by the collective amnesia regarding the use of nuclear weapons.

For instance, Israel has nukes. Although they don't make a big deal of it, it's common knowledge they have a working nuclear weapon and could if all else fails use it.

So when people are shouting at Israel to be more restrained, they forget Israel are already being restrained by the use of conventional weapons. They could quite easily turn parts of the Gaza strip into glass if they so wished. I'm not sure what stage Israel have got to with their nukes, but the modern variety of nukes are fairly clean with minimal fallout. 

There are even enhanced nuclear weapon varieties like the neutron bomb that are specifically designed to produce a highly deadly dose of radiation without much in the way of blast, so they don't cause damage or create an irradiated wasteland. Maybe you don't nuke your own backyard, which is fair enough. Maybe it's is too small an area to guarantee the effects of the bomb wouldn't be felt outside Gaza.

Which brings me to Yemen. Those Houthi rebels, backed by Iran buggering about throwing missiles at international shipping in the Red Sea.

I'd say they'd be an ideal target to try out a nuke or two. Especially to give Iran a heads-up.

Yes, they are close to Saudi Arabia, but if Saudi received assurances that the bomb or bombs used wouldn't be dirty and cause them an issue, why not nuke a few Yemeni cities as a lesson to their sponsor? Limited airstrikes my arse. A couple of nukes on the coastline where the missiles are located should be an abject lesson in not fucking about.

After all, buggering up global supply chains is not a trivial act. 

Which brings me to George Galloway in a roundabout way. What now for the UK "independent" nuclear deterrent give that it seems the Muslim block vote is gaining ascendency? I did blog many years ago that the number of Muslims entering the country could quite quickly start to tug on the reins of power and put our reliance on America in jeopardy.

George Galloway is a symbol of this power. "This is for Gaza" he said in his acceptance speech, not "I will serve the people of Rochdale".

And only last week we had a chancellor stand up and pledge a million pounds for a war memorial specifically for Muslims killed in the world wars. Again, pandering to the significant Muslim block vote. The power of that vote is now recognised by the government of the UK.

It won't be long before all government decisions are Muslim decisions. After all, if we are pandering to a minority when they are still a minority of 10-20 percent of the country, what happens when they hold a 40 or 50 percent share of the vote? 

What happens then when the Muslims have control of our nuclear deterrent. Will it be used as a deterrent, or will it be used as a stick to beat other nations into submission? After all, the very nature of Islam is Imperialist and expansionist, requiring followers to convert infidels (by force if necessary).

Will America still allow us to use their technology? Will the agreement to allow use Trident and other weapons be withdrawn.?

Because it must be a factor in decision-making across the pond now. How long can the UK be trusted to have that sort of power?

Has anyone else thought about that?

GCHQ I see You.

Right, this has gone on for a few days now.  Contact me directly. 

Spying.

I don't know which post of mine triggered your investigation, but just to let you know, I can see you.

That is all.

No need to spy, no need for illicit software.

I assume you are quite new at this. Young? inexperienced? Or poorly trained? 

Do better. 

Political Class Not Mentally Equipped to Defeat Extremism.

Rishi Sunak's speech in Downing Street the other day shows that the political class in this country are not mentally equipped to deal with the very real threat toward them and democracy.

Islamic extremism I can get, because it was palpable last week outside Parliament, as it has been for several weeks on the streets of our towns and cities, waving Palestinian flags and shouting anti-Semitic chants. Or for several years in our neighbourhoods. With no pushback from the Police, it must be added.

But to then mention far-right extremism? Who exactly is this far right he is talking about? Was that a sop to Labour.

Because I know who is running the streets of our cities, I know who is running a parallel economy, sending money to terrorist organisations, living by different laws, recruiting in jails and on the streets.

And it's not the far-right.

And this is my criticism of the political class and the middle class. They have some sort of mental block when it comes to Islamic extremism, it's as if it doesn't exist. Maybe it's cultural racism, maybe the middle class think that's how ALL Muslims act? Maybe they just don't understand the culture and can't define the difference between the religion and the politics of Islam. I'm forming the opinion that the political and middle classes just think that extremism and child rape are just part of Muslim culture. It's just something Muslims do. That is such a racist way of thinking, that Muslims are not intelligent or educated enough to act in a civil manner or understand what they are doing. They understand alright.

The political and middle classes see it as tolerance, as some sore of virtue they want to signal. That they are tolerant and not bigoted...right up to the point of extinction. Of course they will look at my words and be horrified, they do not understand I am not intolerant. I have seen a threat to democracy and the Western Way of life, a threat to our culture. It has consumed communities across the country. Bit by bit, drip by drip. I'm a practical person and say what I seen. It's just that it came to my community decades before yours.

Maybe they see far-right fascists in every rowdy working-class person with a bit of a gob and a dislike of their heritage being destroyed? Maybe that "type" is easier to see because they think that's what far-right is?

No idea, but having lived with and amongst immigrants all my life (one of my mates as a kid back in the 60's was Indian) , I don't have that middle-class blindness. I saw when the Muslim extremists started to arrive and push all the decent (Indian) immigrants out of the way, or brainwash the children of moderate Muslims. It came with Islamic money, the money to convert Christian Churches to Mosques (what a laugh they had about that), the money to install a completely separate lifestyle and provide an insulated community, with no need to integrate. 

The money was there to set people up in Business to involve themselves in local politics where the power is and to promote the Muslims above others. 

Deutschland Uber Alles? White Supremacists? Far Right? Don't make me laugh. Muslims now have the money and power to ensure supremacy. 

Read about what sparked the so-called race riots in Oldham. The earmarking of money to beautify Muslim areas but none for predominantly white areas, chasing the Muslim bloc vote. Decades ago.

The political class has yet to understand Islam is not JUST a religion. Sure, it is that , but also much more. It's an ideology that perfuses every aspect of a Muslim's life. It is a religion, it is political, it is above all a conquering, Empire-building ideology. It wants to consume, take over and make what is yours, theirs. If you do not understand that, then you do not understand Islam.

Muslims don't need wars to take over countries. They settle, they move in, they multiply and then start to take over political power thanks to their block vote. The political class don't see it coming until it's too late and they lose power but I have, ever since they came to the UK. I saw that this new wave of immigrants were different. They didn't integrate, they didn't set up their own self-help centres. They set up ghettos, they demanded community centres, Mosques, interpreters and they wanted special treatment. Ever since the Seventies, we have pandered to the Muslim mob. Now it's biting the political class in the backside.

Far-right. Fuck me, the government couldn't identify a threat even if it was lobbing firebombs through the windows of Parliament. They'd still deny the real culprits and blame it on some non-existent bogeyman.

George Galloway Win In Rochdale: The Power of the Muslim Block Vote.

 I've said before that I've seen the power of the Muslim block vote. The George Galloway win in Rochdale is a classic example of how a minority like the Muslims can get their candidate in office against the main parties.

The turnout was just under 40%, so a minority demographic can win under those circumstances, especially when they ALL vote the same way. 

The news is about how the Labour Party assumed the Muslim bloc vote would be for them. But they can't compare with Galloway, the Muslim champion that has criticised the various Western campaigns in Muslim countries.

You're now seeing the power of the Muslim minority for real. They can win elections in all the major cities of the country. 

Unless the white majority starts to vote in numbers, the Muslim minority will have a undue affect un the politics of the country. I've been warning about this for over a decade, where the Muslim bloc vote starts to outweigh the power of the white majority and their disparate voting intentions.

The only way to sty the Muslims from gaining ever more power over policy is to introduce Mandatory voting. Making sure that EVERYONE votes so that the lazy majority don't fail in their duty to keep this country working for them and not get taken over by a minority. 

Galloway has played a very good game. Naming his party the Worker's party disguises it's true intentions. He talks the talk of people at the bottom being raised up and given back power. But it's all a front.: Galloway always backs the Muslims over the poor white working class. Just listen to his words. He talks much of the war in Gaza, not so much about globalist corporations exploiting the poor. 

Much has been said of introducing proportional representation. I'm not sure that will work, especially with low turnout. Mandatory voting is the only way to restore the primacy of the majority and vote the way the majority of the public want and therefore empower polices that the majority want.

Lee Anderson Islamist Story: Quick Political Condemnation a Sign of Corruption?

 I'm intrigued about the Lee Anderson Islamist affair. Not because of the comments he made, but more about the fallout around it and the people condemning Mr Anderson, including his own colleagues in the Conservative Party.

I've long since alluded to the amount of Gulf Money Invested in our Economy and how much influence that might have over our politicians. I mean, if someone owns 20% of the money invested in your economy, be it money in the City of London or in real estate, or both, they would have tyhe power to severely cripple our economy if they had the will to withdraw that money.

And Muslims and especially the Gulf states act as a bloc and can have that influence over the actions of our politicians. 

That's the downside of allowing foreign i9nfluence into your country that don't have your country's best interests at heart. It goes further that just making profits. It's making profits without returning some reward back to the country you are exploiting. It's even worse if you extort the country for your own benefit.

And that's where we are at right now.

Even worse, you can see the people directly influenced by these bad actors. The corrupt people in the pockets of the actors that extort us for their gain.

In the Lee Anderson case, it's the Gulf States, Muslims and especially Islamists or Islamic Fundamentalists (a euphemism for Saudi Arabia).  I cannot make the accusation of direct payments without proof, but we all know the way it works with indirect payment. You scratch my back, I'll look after your interests. A free holiday for my Family means I'll have your back in Parliament. Keep the money rolling in for arms deals and we'll turn a blind eye to you funding extremist Mosques. Donate to my foundation and I'll lobby on your behalf in Parliament.

But it need not be state actors: for instance global corporations also exploit us for their benefit, with no return. In the cases of corporations like Google, eBay, Amazon and the like, it's taking profits and then making agreements with HMRC on how much tax they want to pay, or paying corporation tax outside the UK so none of the profits they earn as a result of doing business here actually gets returned to the UK exchequer.

It needs to stop. 

We need to have the confidence to tell the truth and be transparent. These bad actors need to be identified and exposed to the public, so we can say cast them out, despite the cost. 

State actors need to be expelled and if necessary they money seized. The corporate actors need to be told to work within UK law and not get beneficial treatment. If the law allows a loophole, then it needs to be closed.

During his campaign Hilary Clinton criticised Donald Trump for making millions and not paying any tax. He retorted he used the same rules her donors were using. He challenged her to close the loopholes that allowed him to avoid paying taxes. 

And that needs to be done here. No more extortion from states or corporations. No more corruption.

New Balloon a Load of Hot Air, or is There More to the Story?

Yet another balloon entered U.S. airspace last week. Apparently it has now left U.S. airspace and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief that the embarrassing spectacle of a Billion dollar fighter and a hundred thousand dollar missile being sent to dispatch a spy balloon costing thousands of dollars to build are not repeated.

Notice I didn't say thousands to operate. Such a spy balloon, if it was relaying data back to China in real-time that would require satellite communications: something that costs as much as the F-22 fighter to achieve.

Anyhoo, the new balloon has drifted off I assume over Canada so it's now someone else's problem. Someone with less capability in high-altitude interception: Sorry, no capability in high altitude interception or interdiction.

Strangely, the U.S. government are downplaying this latest balloon incursion into U.S. airspace. Why exactly would they do that, given the balloon that was shot down previously was confirmed to be a data-gathering device. i.e. a spy balloon. The only thing the U.S. could verify was if it had the ability to relay that data back to Beijing in real time. 

Which, given the strength and number of Chinese space assets is probably a foregone conclusion. I assume that the U.S. authorities know it was transmitting real time data, it's just that they couldn't verify the satellite network the Chinese were using to intercept the signals and transmit them back to Beijing.

Even if the new balloon didn't fly over the U.S. it still could gather intelligence on radar signals used to pick up the balloon, the readiness of assets used to identify the balloon and the type of assets used, etc. Intelligence gathering doesn't have to be blatant and obvious. 

I think I've said previously that the Huwawei affair is tied up with the spy balloons being launched by China. It sort of confirms that the Chinese did have software within Chinese-made routers that were syphoning off data to China. The raid on the Solar Observatory near White Sands Missile Range also reinforces the issue of Chinese espionage.

Now it's come to light the Chinese are buying up Farmland close to strategic military assets such as testing grounds for new tech. Also airbases operating the latest tech like the B-2 stealth bomber.

It wouldn't be an issue if the Chinese were buying land all over the U.S. but they are not. The majority of the land is clustered close to U.S. military assets. 

Again, what the Chinese are doing with that land has not yet been verified. They may just be being good landlords for American farmers. They could be installing intelligence-gathering assets. Currently there is no confirmation by U.S. intelligence regarding this issue. 

It seems that without the spy routers, the Chinese are finding other ways to try and spy in the signals around the U.S. in order to gather intelligence. And don't think that land that is not close to military bases has not intelligence value. There may be communications between bases that has value if intercepted.

It sort of reminds me of the U.K. intelligence services tapping into telephone conversations between England and Northern Ireland during the "troubles".

M.I.5 built a tower at Capenhurst when they found out the government nuclear facility there was in between two microwave towers that transmitted all the telephone conversations between England and Northern Ireland. Unwilling to arouse suspicion by applying for a formal tap of the telephone calls, they built a tower at capenhurst that intercepted the microwave beams and listened in to the conversations.  No need for a formal request to tap individual channels, they had the whole lot. Thousands of telephone conversations could be listened into by that tower.

The tower could be explained as something to to with the Nuclear facility. It was a secret for years.

It has long since been decommissioned and demolished, but it shows you have to be aware of signal security and also the attempts by bad actors to intercept those signals. Signals intelligence should work both ways.

It would be interesting if the grain silos on these Chinese Farms all started to look the same and come from the same supplier in China...

Shammima Begum Appeal Denied

Thankfully some common sense in the courts. Shammima Begum's appeal against her being stripped of her citizenship and banned from the country has been denied.

Thankfully that might be the last we hear from her legally, but I doubt it. 

I expect now she'll try the ECHR route to gain access to the country.

The question I'd like to ask is: who is funding all of these appeals and all of this legal work? Because I don't think she has the money herself, being so impoverished and lonely, stuck in a refugee camp. So who exactly is stumping up the cash for the lawyers? Especially given now there has been like three attempts to legally challenge the government and three unsuccessful appeal.

Interesting to note that this time one of the grounds for appeal was she was traffiked for sex. Hard luck love, you weren't. You went of your own volition with a group of other girls to Turkey and then crossed the border to ISIS-land. 

You then met and married a man from Holland. Now are you saying that your Muslim brothers assaulted you, molested you and used you for sexual use? Because then you're reinforcing and confirming the stereotype of the Muslim groomer. And apparently they don't exist according to most Muslims. 

What it does look like is a normal traditional Muslim marriage to a Muslim guy. No coercion, no trafficking, certainly no extra-marital sex, otherwise you'd be stoned to death by your fundamentalist brethren.  

This is yet again a case of a Muslim trying to game the system and rely on the ignorance of those in the Legal Profession on Muslim affairs.

Voices from the Past in Politics

It's interesting that various voices from past governments keep cropping up or even worse, getting jobs in current governments.

Notwithstanding Kier Starmer, who is a left-over from the Blair government (why anyone who identifies themselves as of the left would vote for anyone that had anything to do with that government I do not know). But I digress. Starmer is a voice and an ideology from that government. He's in charge and it's hard to argue that things will be different under him.

We'll get the same Globalist, don't care about the poor guy policies that Blair instigated back in the Nineties. I will not vote for Starmer or a government run by him, because I know that government will not work in the interests of the people that vote it into power. It will be instead favour corporate sponsors and supra-national undemocratic organisations.

The Tories are no better. They've just brought "Blair Mk2" David Cameron back into the cabinet. Another globalist, who is now foreign secretary. A soothing voice for the globalists after the wobble of Liz Truss being voted in by the Tory party members. Truss was dispatched by the media with suspiciously extreme haste in order to anoint another globalist in the form of Rishi Sunak.

So we now have David Cameron back on the News, telling us we need another war. In a replay of the Libya playbook, we're now bombing the Huthi rebels in Yemen. And we know how well that went for Libya, the West and David Cameron. It wasn't the spectacularly successful military campaign the media made it out to be.

Of course the dark horse is Blair himself. The globalist warmonger-in-chief with the dodgy dossier is still around, every so often popping up and giving his opinion. As if we needed his advice.

I just wonder, why can't these people slip into retirement quietly? There used to be in the past an unwritten rule about making comment about current government policy. In other words keeping quiet.

This is just one more indicator of the globalist elites and how they rule over us, rather than governments ruling FOR us. 

I'm really sick of it. I'm sick of hearing their voices, sick of their policies that favour global corporations, sick of their endless warmongering that benefits no-one, sick of their endless virtue signalling at the expense of the people that put them in power.

The Post-Office Enquiry Just Keeps on Giving and A Memory. When Incompetents Collide.

Sadly a couple of weeks ago my Mother passed away. As you do at these times, there was a lot of reminiscing.

One thing that came up was the various jobs I'd done and the tale of the HR manager manager for ICL knocking on my Mum's door asking for me back in the days before everyone had telephones.

My Mum, bless her assumed that he was a friend of mine and kept him on the doorstep while I came downstairs.

Basically he was offering me a job at ICL after I'd done a couple of months as a temp but then been let go.

Could I start next week? You betcha!

Of he walked back to the factory about 200 yards away. Yeah, not everyone had cars back in the early eighties either.

Anyway, ICL eventually got took over by Fujitsu, but one of the policies that crept in while I was there was the parachuting of graduates into senior positions straight from University.

And I wonder if it was a Fujitsu policy that was being adopted, because the singular thing that came out of that policy was the incompetence of those parachuted in place. I had been working as the effective network manager at the factory for a while by then after the previous manager Ralph, phoned in one day and said he wasn't coming back in. Ever. 

Given that the factory was about to go through the very serious rework of the network, going from point-to-point networking to the (then) new fangled open systems like Ethernet, management of the project on a technical and fiscal level was required. So muggins here got stuck in and started the upgrade (completed under budget and in time I'll have you know).

So there I was, hoping my position was going to be made permanent eventually, when along comes a graduate parachuted into the network manager's position above me. It was quite obvious that he wasn't a technical guy. He wasn't even much of a manager either. When he opened his mouth at technical meetings with other factories in the wider network, it was very obvious. The remedy was for the techies to band together and just get the job done.

But it seemed the longer he was in his position, the more he wanted to interfere and meddle in the technical aspects, or the financials, or just basically take over the project to try and take the credit. 

A while later I left, because I could see the writing on the wall: all the good technical people were leaving and it was pretty likely that the manufacturing arm was going to be sold off because it was making a loss due to mismanagement.

I went working for an American firm down South and doubled my salary. The factory I left bled away all it's competent people and eventually the only people left were the managers. Sadly the non-technical staff got shafted when it was sold and then moved abroad. They lost their jobs.

Now I can't say that with more competent management the factory would have stood up to the outside pressures from competition, but I could see a lot of "faffing around" with vanity projects that maybe looked good in technical journals, but cost huge amounts of money and staff resources. Certainly they never saved any money, or improved efficiency. The sort of impractical and expensive stuff that Universities love. One that came to mind was the installation of delivery robots, that were supposed to deliver PCBS and components to assembly workers and then assembled PCBs and chassis' to the final assembly line. 

Robots that cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and broke down a lot replaced a very reliable old guy with a trolley that you could have employed for years for the same money. 

I get the same vibe from the Post Office enquiry. The technical guys knew what was what and it seems they tried to avoid making legally binding statements in court and it was left to managers to go up before the judges and make statements that it appears they couldn't back up. Managers that from the current enquiry, were sleepwalking in their jobs. I mean, to not be aware of the implications of the faulty software, or to be complicit in prosecutions when they knew the cause could be the software is borderline criminal let alone incompetent.

It seems that for some reason that the procedures weren't put in place to involve and inform all levels at Fujitsu of the shortcomings of Horizon and no effort was spend resolving the issues. In fact it appears that when the work involved got too substantial and the technical guys said it might impact other areas of the Horizon system, the managers just decided not to implement the changes. 

It seems that possibly that Fujitsu management liaised with the Post Office about the issues, but no-one took the seriousness of them seriously. 

Instead the machine plodded on and put people in prison. 

I assume somewhere people were too afraid to admit they were out of their depth, both at Fujitsu and the Post Office.

A case of when incompetents collide. Management at Fujitsu and the Post Office appear as incompetent as each other and it just may have become a culture of "I won't tell if you don't" as to the incompetence of the various management teams.

<Sigh> something we see across the whole country, across the public and private sector. And even to the civil service and politics.

What's Going on in America? Lawyers Want No-Risk Operations Now?

 In America, an Obstetric surgeon has been charged with Homicide after a baby being delivered was decapitated during the birthing process. 

By decapitated it's meant the neck was broken.

The neck was broken during the birth as the doctor manipulated the baby to allow it's passage through the birth canal after it's shoulders got stuck.

It's fait to say there is a risk in every medical procedure, but the lawyers successfully argued that excessive force was used to manipulate the baby. Says who? Were they there on the day? Did they take into consideration that the same force had been applied on other babies under the same circumstances and they survived? Do lawyers understand the concept of risk?

Now they have successfully argued for a payout for their clients and no doubt caused a criminal enquiry against the doctor, they have set the profession of obstetrics back decades.

Because now, faced with the same circumstances, would an obstetric surgeon do the same thing? I doubt it. The risk (to the surgeon) is too high. Who cares if the baby dies, or worse the baby and the mother dies. The doctor doesn't want to go to jail, nor does the hospital want to be sued.

So we now have a situation where doctors will now have to wait until the baby and the mother are at real risk of death before they act, so that they can argue in court that they had no choice but to use the force they did to save the mother and it's unfortunate that the baby died. 

Good old litigious America, setting the course of medicine back decades.

Breweries and Piss-ups the Absolute State of UK Management

I've said it before: thanks to various things, the management class of the UK cannot manage a piss-up in a brewery. We are completely fucked and bereft of the sort of intelligent manager that can do engineering.

The HS2 debacle is one classic example of our abject failure to manage large projects. The Horizon computer system involved in the Post Office scandal is another alongside the lying and deceitful managers at the post office. 

The country is fucked, especially if that same mindset catches hold in the militar.... oh, shit, it has.

The second of our flag ships, the HMS Price of Wales suffered a catastrophic failure of it's propulsion system a while ago. It took several months to rectify.

It's sister ship, the HMS Queen Elizabeth was checked at the time and it was reported that the same issue wasn't present on that ship.

That was then, this is now: It's been reported that just before sailing, the HMS Queen Elizabeth has suffered a failure of it's propulsion system.

The aircraft carrier will be replaced by four plastic patrol craft, each with five crew aboard. 

I'm sorry about the state of our Navy, I really am. I remember Plymouth Navy days back when I was a kid, walking from ship to ship and still not seeing the whole fleet in dock. Now I could quite easily walk round the whole Navy in the same time. 

The Tories Don't Need a New Leader, They Need Leadership.

 As above, yet again the Tories squabble about who should lead the party, and yet again they squander an 80-seat majority.

They could get any legislation run through Parliament with that sort of majority, but instead they're focussed on infighting.

JUST STOP IT!!

Get the Rwanda deal through Parliament. That's the most important thing right now.

What we are seeing yet again are the various paid-for MPs trying to derail the deportation of illegal immigrants. Why? Who is paying for their loyalty? What is the end game?

Is this the rank and file once again trying to usurp the globalist faction the Rishi Sunak represents?  Unfortunately they tried that with Liz Truss and failed to break through the globalist media monopoly on truth and information. 

I think it's about time we went for something completely new. I'm loathe to support Reform, because I don't think it's that much different from the Tories. Maybe I'm wrong and it's independent from the globalist elites, but the problem is the voices leading reform are very globalist elitist. Not one working class voice seems to come from Reform. 

24 Hours in A&E: Wouldn't be Much Of a Programme at Tameside Hospital.

 My Mother has just gone into Tameside Hospital A&E For the Third time in as many weeks. 

And for the third time in as Many weeks it's been over 12 hours before she's seen a Doctor and been admitted to a ward.

If they filmed "24 Hours in A&E" at Tameside, they'd just have film of people sat around waiting.... and waiting.

Many people make much of how the NHS is available 24 Hours a day, 7 days a week. But that's not true. Some parts of the NHS only work weekdays and only office hours.

For instance we all know if we are on a ward it will be at least 3pm before we get to see a Doctor to be able to be cleared to be sent home.

We all know that we'll be in A&E for at least 4 hours going through triage and the "process" before we get to see a Doctor. And if we pitch up late at night, surprise surprise a Doctor will show up around 8am when the day shift starts.

We all know that the NHS isn't a 24-hour service for certain parts of it. Senior doctors don't cover 24 Hours. Laboratory workers don't cover 24 Hours.

And this is where the NHS creates most of it's inefficiencies. If I were PM I'd be insisting that ALL parts of the NHS work 24 hours a day. I'd make sure that any delays caused by a process or a person not being available would be result in the management of the NHS trust being penalised. 

You see, it's all well and good the Doctors and Nurses having to negotiate their salary and the Government having some control, but there's a huge swath of the NHS that escape unscathed from the eye of the government. A huge proportion of staff that can work inefficiently and get away with it. 

The administrators, managers, etc. All need to be on some performance based pay. Senior managers need to lose their bonuses pro rata with certain targets. 

I'd try and make the NHS work like the private sector. For sure per person they get paid a lot more than the private sector, so the NHS should be up there efficiency and service wise.

No matter when you turn up at the NHS, there should be no reason why you shouldn't be seen by a doctor, prioritised, had bloods taken, etc. within an hour of arriving. The lab should be working 24/7 to process blood samples, the same for radiography.

Now, if we are saying that only junior doctors work in A&E and they take longer than an hour to diagnose a patient and have to wait until they get advice from a more senior doctor, then that senior doctor should be on the premises and available 24/7 and there should be no delay in getting a diagnosis and treatment. None of this waiting until 8am until the specialist swans in.

And if the BMA fights with the government against these reforms, then we'll all know it's about the money and not about treatment of patients. 

I doubt the public would have any sympathy with that stance. 

Measles Outbreak, What's REALLY Going on?

The BBC is reporting on the most recent measles outbreak, skirting around the actual cause of the outbreak and instead making rambling statements about how children in school at various ages hadn't had the vaccine.

Now, let's look at this a bit more objectively and without a politically correct Kommissar looking over our shoulder.

The MMR vaccine is issued to all kids in the UK around the age of 18 months. Only a small minority refuse to get their kids vaccinated. Those are the extremely small vaccine-hesitant minority of the white community, but by far the majority of those refusing the MMR jab are in the migrant community, mainly the Muslim immigrant community.

The clue is in the Locations: Certain parts of London, Birmingham, Bradford, Leeds, etc. All areas with high/majority immigrant populations.

The fact is that parts of the Muslim community in the UK still class vaccinations as Haram and will not therefore partake of any vaccination effort whatever the NHS say. 

The fact that a lot of immigrants come from countries where there is no childhood vaccination program because of this only exacerbates the problems and strains put on the NHS by an infected adult population. We now have a large adult population that wasn't vaccinated as children and still refuses to be vaccinated into adulthood. 

When you talk about the National Security of this country, you not only refer to the threat of terrorists and bad actors entering the country, you also need to understand that the health of the nation is also covered. 

What sort of outbreak does it take to make the virtue-signalling middle-class wake up? Do we need a TB outbreak, do we need Cholera, Diphtheria or Polio to make a return? 

Mass Mental Illness.

I  think I've about had it with the world, there seems to be a mass Psychosis, some mass delusion or mental illness gripping the Western World.

Yes, the gender ideology is part of that, but this rush for collectivism, this rush to embrace Marxism, the absolute antithesis of the capitalism that has brought much of the West out of poverty.

Not only the gender nutjaobs, but the climate nutjobs, the anti-farming nutjobs, and all the other clinically mentally ill people that governments around the West are using to bring in authoritarian regimes. 

I've had enough. Much like Douglas Murray has had enough of them. I've had enough of an absolutely tiny (but loud) minority dominating government policy. As parents we understand that there are times we need to ignore the screams and pleadings of a child if it's in the interests of the child. We don't pander to bad behaviour and improper thoughts. If little Timmy bullies his sister, we deal with the bad behaviour and reinforce the good behaviour. That's good parenting, good government.

It's time to ignore the behaviour that is causing so much issue in the West.

Of course I blame the parasitic elites, those that amass huge personal fortunes. They give the nutjobs the fuel with which to stoke the fire. Look, they say, if only we could bring in Communism, we would all be sharing in the profits. Except "we" never do. Communism, Marxism they never work and no matter how much you say that "it hasn't been done properly yet", we know the score and the body count.

No, it's time for those parasitic 1%-ers to realise their role in the downfall of the West. They need to start pulling their weight and paying their way. No more tax breaks for Amazon, no more offshoring tax liabilities. Earn it here, pay it here. You transact with a person in the UK then UK tax is liable. Tax law needs to be changed to reflect it doesn't matter if your head office is in Luxembourg, it doesn't matter if your server is in Wisconsin. If you transact or contract with a UK citizen, then tax needs to be paid to the UK exchequer. Replace the UK high street if you want, but you replace the tax shortfall too.

No special tax deals, no offshoring tax liabilities, no holding onto huge fortunes. 

End. Of.

Boeing 737 Max in the News Again.

 I've waited a few days to get the salient information on the latest Boeing 737 issue, the blow-out in flight of a "plug door" on an Alaska Airlines Max 737-9.

The plug door in question is not actually a door. It's a plug in a door-shaped hole. The Max-9 has different variants with different seating arrangements, but to save assembly complexity and cost the same fuselage. The Fuselage has the same number of openings, but not all of them are used.

The Max-9 can seat a maximum of 230 passengers. On higher density versions with over 189 seats the door just behind the wings is actually a fully working emergency exit. On variants with seating for under 189 passengers, the emergency door is not required and instead the door shaped hole is plugged by... a plug.

The plug panel has a window in it and it is firmly held in place. On the inside of the aircraft the plug is covered by a panel with just a window in it. The only thing you'd notice inside the aircraft would may be a difference in the spacing of the window compared to others. 

The plug is not supposed to be removed, although it can be removed with difficulty for maintenance. To open the plug, you need to remove four locking bolts that firmly stop any action of the door to open. Once the bolts are removed  The bolts are torqued to spec and have castellated nuts. The nut then have cotter or split pins inserted so the nut cannot loosen.

Anyone that knows castellated nuts and split pins, know it a pretty secure method for holding a nut on a bolt. The main failure mode of split pins is metal fatigue by reusing old pins. But everyone knows you ALWAYS fit a brand new pin....right?

What seems to have happened is all 4 bolts have removed themselves from the door so it was able to release itself from the fuselage in flight.

The FAA have instructed Mazx-9 operators to check the plug door installations. It's already been reported that loose bolts have been found. Not just the locking bolts that prevent the plug from opening, but also bolts holding the hardware to the door and/or fuselage.

Now, the issue has been identified, the issue needs to be tracked back to where the bolts failed to be tightened and inspected correctly. Was it a Boeing after the fuselage assemblies had been delivered, or was it at Spirit where the fuselages were manufactured?

With two variants with two different door assemblies, were the assembly instructions up to scratch covering both options? Was there an issue with the instructions that allowed a plug door to be fitted incorrectly? For instance was a check sheet not followed for the locking bolts? For instance the emergency exit option doesn't have them, so was there enough clarity in the assembly instructions that on the plug option that the locking bolts should be fitted, torqued and split pins fitted and the installation checked before the cabin trim was installed over the plug?

Was there a oversight in the instructions that allowed a plug door to not be assembled?

I can imagine a scenario where due to assembly pressures the interior trim was installed before the plug door bolts were properly installed and checked, but the assembly instructions said once the trim was installed there was no need to check the door, because it was assumed that at that point the door had been checked and inspected. I just wonder if there was a gaping hole in the plug door inspection sign-off process that allowed the trim to be installed before the door inspection, unless someone falsified the inspection records..... That would be a pretty severe lapse in safety though.

All speculation at the moment, but having experience of manufacturing processes, I can imagine a few scenarios where assembly instructions didn't clearly indicate the hierarchy of processes i.e. that the interior trim should not be installed until the door was checked and signed off. 

It there even was a process to check and sign off the door installation. Maybe it wasn't classed as a safety issue because it wasn't a safety exit? Maybe it didn't receive the appropriate scrutiny?

Another issue is were aviation experts involved in the writing of the assembly instructions? Were they aware of the severity of an in-flight door loss? Did they have enough experience, instruction or training to understand the repercussions of an insecure door plug?

The final aspect could be that the door didn't fit the frame correctly. That's a slim possibility because it's already been established the locking bolts are missing on the Alsaka Airplanes aircraft, but not impossible. There may not have been instructions concerning the fit of the door in the frame. It may have just been assumed it would be an accurate fit and there were no instructions regarding clearances between the plug and the frame.

Who knows. Only time will tell, but I get the impression so far that Boeing and Spirit will be let off once again with a slap on the wrist and no meaningful sanctions will be applied for this lapse in safety. 

UPDATE 25/03/2024:

Looks like I was pretty close to the mark on this one. The plug in question was opened for remedial work and then closed again. Somehow the plug was closed without the important locking bolts being fitted at all. Even worse, an employee took a picture of the plug without the bolts in place, not realising the importance of the locking bolts to the safety of the aircraft!

So was the procedure to do the repair faulty? Was the step to replace the locking bolts not included? The employee looks to be happy to take a picture without the important bolts in place, so were they a member of the team that fitted the interior trim and weren't aware of the importance of the bolts? Did they even know of the existence of the bolts?

Boeing have allegedly failed to produce sufficient information regarding the closure of the door plug to the FAA. What appears to signal is either a lock of instruction for a procedure that wasn't planned for or a malicious disregard of instructions and a "just wing it" attitude at the factory.

I was wrong on the consequences for Boeing employees though. The CEO has just gone and board positions are being reshuffled. We'll see how that impacts aircraft safety. I suspect the effect will be minimal. 

Stephanie Pope becomes the new CEO with immediate effect. With her coming from the financial and services sector, sadly it appears to confirm the emphasis on the board at Boeing is not engineering. 

The Biggest Software Scandal in the UK: The Horizon Postal System.

 At work there's a big hubbub about the series "Mr Bates Vs The Post Office", the series that relates the sad tale of the Royal Mail Postmasters/mistresses that were prosecuted for missing funds. Funds that were not missing, but inaccurately calculated by a faulty software system called Horizon.

I was aware of it from the beginning and was stunned at the viciousness of the prosecutions based on what exactly? A computer program that was clearly faulty?

I talked in my previous post about poorly written code that uses a subroutine maybe once in a blue moon under very special circumstances that never gets tested and could continue to harbour faulty code unless the test regime was very strict and tested every single scenario.

That's what I suspect happened in the case of the Horizon system: that under normal day-to-day operations there wasn't an issue, but the unfortunate postal workers that created a rare scenario that used the faulty code came across the issue and through no fault of their own suffered from the effects of bad code.

That the people in charge of the system didn't start to doubt the system when more people started to report issues was a black mark against them. Certainly there was poor management of the situation at the middle management level and above.

It's one thing to ignore issues and possibly lie to cover up bad code, but when it gets to the level of court cases, prosecutions and jail time, the software must not be trusted. It needs to be forensically checked to confirm if the software is doing what it's supposed to do and it shouldn't be assumed that the code is perfect. It very rarely is. 

There's always the chance of an undetected bug in the code and it's the responsibility of the software department to investigate thoroughly. It should also be the remit of the court to bring in independent investigators to check the accuracy of the code and run through the scenarios the people accused of fraud went through, to eliminate software errors. 

It's pretty damning that the Post Office covered up the issues when they knew they were there. When people in the Post Office couldn't themselves make the system work like it should.

The people involved in managing the situation should hang their heads in shame. Those at the top should be prosecuted for misuse of public office. The fact that the Post Office has extraordinary powers to criminally prosecute people in court without the Crown being involved should also mean that those in charge have a duty to not misuse those powers and should themselves face prosecution if they do.

Not Being Aware of How Good You Are....

 We've just had a new computer system go in at work. Lets say that it works, sort of, but it leaves a lot to be desired and there is a lot of tweaking that isn't tweaking. Stuff that should have been caught during testing.

It reminds me of back when I wrote applications for Blue-Chip companies. I wrote the first HSBC telephone banking application, the first B.T. 150/151 call steering application, and managed installations and upgrades for the likes of Goldman-Sachs and Commerzbank. 

Had 9/11 not happened I might be still doing the same sort of job. Actually I might have been retired by now. But 9/11 sort of changed my aspect on family and rather than fly all over the world and rake in the money, instead I concentrated on the family and my disabled son. The IR35 tax rules sort of provided a perfect storm of circumstances that persuaded me it wasn't worth the hassle.

It's interesting and a little frustrating to watch other people's programming standards. I get that this application is a little website and associated back end system, no -one is going to die or lose millions if it doesn't work correctly, but it just annoys me a bit that other people aren't as fastidious about their adherence to good practice. 

For instance there's supposed to be a functional spec, but none of us users have seen it, so we've not had any input on the way the application works for example. That's been done and signed off by someone that has never visited us and seen how we work. Instead we've been presented with an application that accepts orders from a website and that's about it. All the "Fun" stuff like cancelling orders for customers before shipping, or amending the order before shipping? Nah, not there. Oh, you want to create orders for foreign customers and send them details in advance so they can pay by PayPal outside the system? Oh, we didn't know you did that. 

Using an off-the-shelf open-source system to create the website and all the back end functionality isn't the best option and I get it, there are limitations. But if you can't program round the limitations of the platform, then really it isn't up to the job. But then that's the job of the Project manager to assess the suitability of the chosen platform and if necessary change it. It's a bit strange selecting a platform and then bludgeoning it to suit your requirements. That reminds me of the HSBC job, where the original contractor writing the program coded himself into a corner and swanned off to the other side of the World at short notice. I stepped in and sorted that one out with a bit of lateral thinking. That earned me 70K.

I was just struck this morning that as an independent IT contractor back ooh, 23 years ago, that I must have been working at a heck of a level and never realised it. For instance working for a bank: when you have £4m public liability insurance, that would cover maybe a slow couple of hours of downtime if something you did caused the bank's systems to go down. That sort of focusses you on being definitely on the money and delivering a system that works.

I wrote applications for British Telecom, I managed the first successful upgrade of the Goldman-Sachs call-recording system that Thales had installed. That was a £14m project. 

I just didn't realise at the time how big a deal it was. 

My colleagues are currently highly focussed on IT issues by this install and are also now watching the new TV series about the False Accusations of Fraud created by the Horizon System used by the Post Office. I used to work for ICL that eventually became Fujitsu, so I was aware of the Post Office debacle as it happened in real time and I could never understand how the victims could never get a forensic analysis of the Horizon code done in order to identify any issues in the code.

It's arrogant to assume a system is foolproof and error free. There are many examples of unintended consequences where you write a bit of code and it inadvertently affects the code somewhere else in the system. I always tried to boil my applications down to a known set of subroutines that do specific tasks. The processes are built up by calling each subroutine in turn so that if there is an error in a subroutine, it happens everywhere that subroutine is called and it's easily and quickly identified and dealt with.

But I have seen some sloppy code where every process is a new routine, so it's entirely possible that in some rare instance a routine is called that is incorrect, but it's called so rarely, under special circumstances that it's virtually impossible to identify the issue and rectify it. That is, unless you have a VERY accurate test regime that tests for EVERY option and has the correct result already in the test results, so the error can be spotted.

But those were the days, co-ordinating huge call centres to stress-test my applications, Fully documented test regimes and pretty flawless applications. My last one at Carlsson Marketing ran so well we kept getting calls and visits from senior staff asking if it was actually live, because they'd had no complaints, no errors, no issues. The app kept on doing what it was supposed to be doing even if customers tried to break it. 

And that's what I liked the most: coding for exceptions and issues and making sure they were handled in a correct manner, making the computer handle the issue politely, if you like. After all a phone line can go down, the link to a server can fail, anything could happen. It's up to the programmer to code for the unexpected and handle it in a manner that doesn't crash the system and informs the human using the system exactly what has happened and why.