How to be Deaf to a National Conversation

The Scottish Government began the national conversation on Scotland's independence shortly after winning the last Scottish general election. The discussion, open to all and conducted on the net, in public meetings and with contributions from all and any interest, has been lively, informed, and innovative while displaying remarkable understanding of the history of Scottish politics, their future settlement both within Scotland and in Scotland's relations with the rest of the world and, particularly, with the federal United Kingdom. An acute grasp of Scotland's economic exploitation and possible independent development is present too.

The form of devolution in Scotland adopted in the last century embodies the effective independence of Scotland when all of its measures are fully implemented. However Scotland's government has decided to consult the Scottish people formally in a referendum, which it will hold in 2010, on whether fully-developed devolution or a more precipitate step into independence is what they choose.

This is driving the United Kingdom Labour regime barmy, in bringing with it the certainty of their own demise, indeed the demise of the United Kingdom as we know it. Cack-handed is a fair description of the New Labour Project's constitutional rearrangements all those wasted years ago.

So Brown set up the Calman Commission on the future of Scottish devolution intending to use the usual focus group post-democratic practices to let the Scots down gently in frustrating their clear intention of de-coupling from the the Honecker-style United Kingdom - Honecker you should be with us at this hour, what a pity you died utterly shamed hiding in Chile - nightmare. Things are going from bad to worse for Brownism, (such an unfortunate colour in the horrid history of authoritarianism).

The sub-committee set up to consider ways in which the Calman Commission on Scottish Devolution can engage with the public and gain feedback has found that the public will not engage appropriately. The minutes of the public engagement group, (doubtless tax-payer funded, where do these money-grubbers spring from?), chaired by Murdoch MacLennan, chief executive of Telegraph Media Group (who chose him?) recommended it should not hold "town hall" meetings across Scotland and open to the general public, (even John McCain wants precisely these kinds of meetings, together with Obama, in the interests of democratic engagement) at least while gathering information. "Such meetings would be difficult to manage...". Fears that the internet site is 'unhelpful' also, (this kangaroo sub committee calls the weight of expressed opinion so far 'hijacking' by 'nationalists' who are, no doubt, shortly to be state-redefined as 'terrorists' together with the 'other critics' mentioned) rules internet consultation out too.

The Commission is, however, to take public evidence during parliament's summer recess, from former First Ministers (otherwise known as Scottish Labour crawlers) Jack McConnell and Henry McLeish, and from George Reid and Lord David Steel, the ex-Presiding Officers, (that is Speakers except in the devolution denigrate-speak adopted by the Westminster Establishment), reports the Herald cheerily. So that's all right then, two Labour time servers and a pair of ex politician quangoistas dependent on the Brown regime for their life style sound as if they might be reliable enough to have their views recorded.

Commission members are also concerned about inviting contributions on the website, because that "carried considerable risks if not approached with caution". It is suggested there should be an online questionnaire only, offering limited answers as options.

It must be remembered, the Calman Commission was set up by the Brown regime with a remit that excludes independence as an option in Scotland's future.
Conservative and Liberal Democrat party leaderships, to their detriment, were foolish enough to have initially allowed themselves to be drawn in. The quicker they abandon Calman and his dishonest 'commission' to its fate, the better.


[Affirming the narrative is the reason for presenting here some arguments made in earlier Angels' posts.]

The Letter

Mervyn King has to write a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to explain the inflation rate. I suppose that's because the two Scottish Labour fools who have been interfering in England's economy for the last 11 years are too stupid to understand what they have done.

The State We Are In

'Mounted and riot police later divided the protesters between two fronts: one on Great George Street and the other at the mouth of Whitehall.', reported the Evening Standard of the demonstrations against the war criminal George Bush and his 'British' Prime Minister nose-picker. So far, so as it always was, although the aluminium lathis have a retrograde, imperial smack to them that was not present in Angels' demonstrating days.

'"Snatch squads" then patrolled the area, arresting people who had earlier been filmed by officers and highlighted as troublemakers.' This is not standard at all. There used to be spotters pointing out people to arrest to officers while the demonstrations were at their height, but sending organised gangs of policemen to arrest demonstrator/by-standers after the struggle has died down, on surveillance camera viewing, is a development from Ireland's Troubles (and doubtless Aden, Malaya and other 'emergencies').

Arresting a demonstrator in the thick of a fight with the police is one thing; picking up suitable accusees chosen solely for propaganda purposes belongs in what were once other political hell-holes.

So now demonstrators face rastrellamento (the Fascist practice of locking in a body of protesters and then holding them there for hours, often in blazing sun or other extreme weather conditions, beating up any attempting to break out or even sit down), armed assault (the Raj practice of permitting an organized, authorised demonstration and then attacking the people with everything from boot and fist, staves, to gunfire), and snatch squads (the Soviet and east European-developed technique, used widely too in Northern Ireland) of arresting nominated victims after the event to cause the greatest fear-inducing effect among potential future dissidents.

The oppressed people learn to cope with all of these, and still the regimes are overthrown. It is our turn to learn now. We have learned there is no longer such a thing in Brown's 'Britain' as a peaceful demonstration; it will be precipitated invariably into violent confrontation and consequent arbitrary arrest.

Tethered Targets

Reporting on Informed Comment (see Angels' Links) describes what is happening in Iraq not in terms of the war but the permanent alteration in the status of a sovereign country after assault.

'These giant bases, rising from the smashed birthplace of Western civilization, were not only built on (and sometimes out of bits of) the ancient ruins of that land, but are functionally modern ziggurats. They are the cherished monuments of the Bush administration. Even though its spokespeople have regularly refused to use the word "permanent" in relation to them - in fact, in relation to any U.S. base on the planet - they have been built to long outlast the Bush administration itself. They were, in fact, clearly meant to be key garrisons of a Pax Americana in the Middle East for generations to come. And, not surprisingly, they reek of permanency. They are the unavoidable essence - unless, like most Americans, you don't know they're there - of Bush administration planning in Iraq. Without them, no discussion of Iraq policy ... really makes sense.'

So what sense can be made of Brown's policy in Iraq, announced after meetings with the outgoing US President, with such permanent bases, as big as towns, in mind.

Brown stated: "There is still work to be done and Britain plays, and will continue to play, its part." What part can the United Kingdom play? It certainly plays no part, and has no presence, in these garrisons.

As today's Herald reports: '4100 British soldiers, desperately needed in Afghanistan, are bunkered down behind fortifications at Basra's airport five miles from the city.
Of these, fewer than 300 are currently playing a direct role in training the Iraqi army or giving tactical guidance to their units on the streets.
The vast bulk of the UK force is simply there to protect the perimeter of its own besieged base. Any fewer than 4000, and the security of the installation would be at serious risk.' The British base at Basra is not the billions of dollars of fortified township with independent power, water, and supply routes of the US permanent bases.

The argument that 'the military justification for British soldiers to remain in Iraq ...is that they sit astride the main US supply route on the highway from Kuwait north to Baghdad.', is arrant nonsense; US ziggurat bases are supplied by air. Some of them have more air traffic than Heathrow.

'Beyond that static [and unused] guard role they lack the offensive power to intervene decisively in any internal power struggle and can barely guarantee their own security.
Depressingly, 'despite claims about progress in training Baghdad's new army... of the 197,000 local soldiers qualified by US or British instructors, at least 27,000 have deserted. That figure represents more men than Britain has in all of its infantry battalions combined.'

In the meantime, US Marines have had to intervene in southern Afghanistan because the army 'is so overstretched it cannot scrape up an extra battle group of 650 fighting soldiers.' (Herald Defence Correspondent).

Bush said: "I just want to remind you that [Brown] has left more troops in Iraq than he initially anticipated. Like me, he will be making his decisions based on the conditions on the ground without an artificial timetable based on politics."

The Iraqi insurgents are faced with numbers of permanent, enormous, wholly independent, garrisoned settlements in their country which will be invulnerable to their attacks and will not be evacuated (if current policies are pursued) when the new administration takes over in the United States. The British troops seem to have two functions: to give face to the 'multinational' nature of the invading forces (after all they are the only other nation left apart from the American principals) and effectively, to be a soft target for Iraqi insurgent attack, leading to justification for further oppression and permanent occupation.

Brown and Browne need to explain to Parliament precisely what is their reason for the siting of sorely needed troops at Basra airport.

Voting in Haltemprice and Howden

Calling a general election at will is one of the greatest powers of a United Kingdom prime minister. Calling a by-election is a power that rests in the hands of every member of parliament.

The Brown-orchestrated venom-spitting at David Davis using this power is a measure of how dangerous it is. Once again some of the electorate has a chance to vote. Like Crewe and Nantwich, Haltemprice and Howden now answer the question.

Everyone with a vote in the constituency, regardless of political party, should be sure to vote, and vote for freedom and an open society.

Brown Loses the Plot

It was desperate for Brown that he should shovel the United Kingdom into the European Union as it is conceived by the Lisbon Constitution. Otherwise Scotland would continue steadily towards asserting its independence and changing its federal relationship with the United Kingdom; so, too, altering the relationships with Wales and Northern Ireland. This spells the end of the Labour party itself, not just the end to Brown's premiership without election or mandate. Once within the Lisbon EU Scotland would have been reduced to a region with its options for leaving either federation, EU or UK, grossly restricted. Terms for smaller countries under the Lisbon EU are so unattractive it might not want to be in the EU at all.

Most Europeans wish the EU to continue - but not in its present form and even less in the Lisbon form, which effectively hands authority to France and Germany. Among his many failings, Gordon Brown is a fool and, in his frantic desire to save himself, his ruling elite, and his precarious claim to rule the UK he will be intensely vulnerable to German and French pretence that he too is part of Europe's ruling group of large countries. The merest glance shows that the UK is not: not part of the euro, not part of Schengen, with a separate nuclear force, unwilling to co-operate even on large defence expenditures such as aircraft carriers with other member states, constantly obstructive and hence much disliked on pan-European tax and welfare measures, civil liberties and justice measures, workplace and union conditions, the list goes on and on.

Conceit assists Brown in his delusion that he matters. Vilified at home for his clumsy, ugly, so public dishonesty and constant stream of lies about what he has done and what he is doing, his personal distastefulness, his twisted authoritarianism, Brown can be bought cheaply by Sarkozy's flattery to his wounded amour propre, as France finds a home for its nuclear waste in England.

We need a general election now to choose a government and prime minister who will advance the UK's interests in Europe, and advance a European Union as an association of equal member-states for the purposes of trade. We cannot allow Brown to blunder on in return for a kiss from Carla Bruni.

[Results Received: 43 of 43]

Yes 46.6% (752,451)
No 53.4% (862,415)

Turnout: 53.13%

No Means No! Brown.

Downing Street moved to reassure its 'partners' that the Leader and his authoritarian junta would still force the ratification of the failed Lisbon Constitution, repudiated today by the Irish people, through the Westminster parliament.

The Treaty has fallen yet he pretends that the votes of the Irish nation count for less than those of nine bought and paid for Orangemen.

UPDATE
The meaning of the term 'partners' is becoming clearer. The failure of the European Union Lisbon Constitution is splitting member state governments between authoritarians and democrats.

The Irish Times reports that the Lisbon Treaty will 'overcome' the Irish No vote:

"Ireland's possible rejection of The Lisbon Treaty should not stop other member states ratifying it, France's Secretary of State for European Affairs Jean-Pierre Jouyet claimed today.

"The most important thing is that ratification should continue in other countries (if Ireland has voted "no") and I have good reasons to think that the process of ratification will continue," Mr Jouyet told LCI television.

"We would have to see with the Irish at the end of the ratification process how we could make it work and what legal arrangement we could come to."

His view of was at odds with comments by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who said yesterday:

"If the Irish people decide to reject the treaty of Lisbon, naturally, there will be no treaty of Lisbon."

Ireland Is Not the Only Impediment to the Lisbon Constitution

Ireland and its people may yet defend the nearly 500 million citizens of Europe against the authoritarian putsch lurking beneath the post democratic, federal European Union.

It is worth noting, too, that of the 27 member states only eight have deposited their acceptance of the European Constitution with the Italian government in Rome, the final ratification stage. Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Hungary, Malta, Rumenia and Slovenia have sold out. Germany awaits its Constitutional Court decisions on the legality of ratifying the Lisbon Constitution. Cyprus, Italy, Spain, and Sweden have not even begun the procedures, zilch, not even a tilt at getting it through the lower house.

The rest have the Constitutional Treaty stuck somewhere in their democratic works, upper houses, head of state acceptance, constitutional challenges, failure to deposit the ratified Treaty in Rome despite all other procedures being completed.

Ireland or no, this is not over.

UPATE

Reports are coming in that Ireland has voted No. All the other national hesitations will be reinforced and confirmed.

What Will You Give Me To Make Me Stay?

David Davis' resignation and refighting of his seat on the chosen ground of civil liberties and the rule of law offers a fascinating potential. Labour has done everything it can to shut down by-elections since 2005; only death has been an acceptable reason for a by-election in a Labour seat (apart from the permanent erasure of Tony Blair from Gordon Brown's world).

Discipline has not extended to the idea that a dissident Labour member of Parliament might wilfully resign and force a by-election; presumably the Party hierarchy assumed that the benefits were too high to be sacrificed to principle. Is that true now?

There are Labour members of Parliament sharply disillusioned with the leadership and its behaviour; there are many who want a new Leader followed by a general election just to limit the melt down; there are older Labour members who can be offered very little post this parliament so unpopular is the current government, and so unlikely are their seats to return a Labour MP after their demise, that they may as well be left to fight and lose. (The Lords and the quango posts and the advisory positions will soon be for the Conservatives.) What have any of these groups to lose (other than a relatively small wage payment for a little longer) from negotiating either policy changes or personal advantage under threat of resigning forthwith and forcing a destructive by-election where Labour will fail to hold in almost any seat in the country?

In breaking disciplinary ranks the Conservative shadow home secretary has highlighted a disciplinary flaw that can be fatal to Gordon Brown.

The Devil's Walk, or New Labour's Long March Through the Institutions

"...I was in a vision, having the angel of God near me, and saw Satan walking leisurely into London." [Southey]

FROM his brimstone bed, at break of day,
A-walking the Devil is gone,
To look at his little, snug farm of the World,
And see how his stock went on.

Over the hill and over the dale,
And he went over the plain;
No matter what was his name,
Whose face with his own when he came to compare
The expression, the look, and the air,
And the character too, as it seemed to a hair,
Such a twin-likeness there was in the pair,
That it made the Devil start and stare;
For he thought there was surely a looking-glass there,
But he could not see the frame.

He saw a Lawyer killing a viper
On a dunghill beside his stable:
"Ho!" quoth he, "thou put'st me in mind
Of the story of Cain and Abel."

An Apothecary on a white horse
Rode by, on his vocation;
And the Devil thought of his old friend
Death in the Revelation.

He passed a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility;
And he owned with a grin
That his favorite sin
Is pride that apes humility.

He saw a pig rapidly
Down a river float:
The pig swam well, but every stroke
Was cutting his own throat;--
10.
And Satan gave thereat his tail
A twirl of admiration;
For he thought of his daughter War,
And her suckling babe Taxation.

Well enough, in sooth, he liked that truth,
And nothing the worse for the jest;
But this was only a first thought,
And in this he did not rest:
Another came presently into his head;
And here it proved, as has often been said,
That second thoughts are best.

For as Piggy plied, with wind and tide,
His way with such celerity,
And at every stroke the water dyed
With his own red blood, the Devil cried,
"Behold a swinish nation's pride
In cotton-spun prosperity!"

He walked into London leisurely;
The streets were dirty and dim;
But there he saw Brothers the Prophet,
And Brothers the Prophet saw him.

He entered a thriving bookseller's shop:
Quoth he, "We are both of one college;
For I myself sate like a Cormorant once
Upon the Tree of Knowledge."

As he passed through Cold-Bath Fields, he looked
At a solitary cell;
And he was well pleased, for it gave him a hint
For improving the prisons of Hell.

He saw a turnkey tie a thief's hands
With a cordial tug and jerk:
"Nimbly," quoth he, "a man's fingers move
When his heart is in his work."

He saw the same turnkey unfettering a man
With little expedition;
And he chuckled to think of his dear slave-trade,
And the long debates and delays that were made
Concerning its abolition.

He met one of his favorite daughters
By an Evangelical Meeting;
And, forgetting himself for joy at her sight,
He would have accosted her outright,
And given her a fatherly greeting;

But she tipped him a wink, drew back, and cried,
"Avaunt! my name's Religion!"
And then she turned to the preacher,
And leered like a love-sick pigeon.

A fine man and a famous Professor was he,
As the great Alexander now may be,
Whose fame not yet o'erpast is;
Or that new Scotch performer,
Who is fiercer and warmer,--
The great Sir Arch-Bombastes;

With throbs and throes, and ahs and ohs,
Far famed his flock for frightening,
And thundering with his voice, the while
His eyes zigzag like lightning.

This Scotch phenomenon, I trow,
Beats Alexander hollow;
Even when most tame,
He breathes more flame
Than ten fire-kings could swallow.

Another daughter he presently met:
With music of fife and drum,
And a consecrated flag,
And shout of tag and rag,
And march of rank and file,
Which had filled the crowded aisle
Of the venerable pile,
From church he saw her come.

He called her aside, and began to chide:
"For what dost thou here?" said he:
"My city of Rome is thy proper home,
And there's work enough there for thee.

"Thou hast confessions to listen,
And bells to christen,
And altars and dolls to dress;
And fools to coax,
And sinners to hoax,
And beads and bones to bless;
And great pardons to sell
For those who pay well,
And small ones for those who pay less."

"Nay, Father, I boast that this is my post,"
She answered; "and thou wilt allow
That the great Harlot,
Who is clothed in scarlet,
Can very well spare me now."

"Upon her business I am come here,
That we may extend her powers;
Whatever lets down this church that we hate,
Is something in favor of ours.

"You will not think, great Cosmocrat!
That I spend my time in fooling;
Many irons, my Sire, have we in the fire,
And I must leave none of them cooling;
For you must know state-councils here
Are held which I bear rule in.
When my liberal notions
Produce mischievous motions,
There's many a man of good intent,
In either house of Parliament,
Whom I shall find a tool in;
And I have hopeful pupils too,
Who all this while are schooling.

"Fine progress they make in our liberal opinions,
My Utilitarians,
My all sorts of --inians
And all sorts of --arians,
My all sorts of --ists,
And my Prigs and my Whigs,
Who have all sorts of twists,
Trained in the very way, I know,
Father, you would have them go;
High and low,
Wise and foolish, great and small,
March-of-Intellect Boys all.

"Well pleased wilt thou be at no very far day,
When the caldroun of mischief boils,
And I bring them forth in battle array,
And bid them suspend their broils,
That they may unite and fall on the prey,
For which we are spreading our toils.
How the nice boys all will give mouth at the call,
'Hark away! hark away to the spoils!'--
My Macs and my Quacks and my lawless Jacks,
My Shields and O'Connells, my pious MacDonnells,
My joke-smith Sydney, and all of his kidney,
My Humes and my Broughams,
My merry old Jerry,
My Lord Kings, and my Doctor Doyles!"

At this good news, so great
The Devil's pleasure grew,
That, with a joyful swish, he rent
The hole where his tail came through.

His countenance fell for a moment
When he felt the stitches go:
"Ah!" thought he, "there's a job now
That I've made for my tailor below."

"Great news! bloody news!" cried a newsman;
The Devil said, "Stop, let me see!"
"Great news? bloody news?" thought the Devil;
"The bloodier the better for me."

So he bought the newspaper, and no news
At all for his money he had:
"Lying varlet," thought he, "thus to take in old Nick!
But it's some satisfaction, my lad,
To know thou art paid beforehand for the trick;
For the sixpence I gave thee is bad."
....

He went to a coffee-house to dine,
And there he had soy in his dish;
Having ordered some soles for his dinner,
Because he was fond of flat fish.

"They are much to my palate," thought he;
"And now guess the reason who can,
Why no bait should be better than place,
When I fish for a Parliament-man."

...
Now, the morning air was cold for him,
Who was used to a warm abode;
And yet he did not immediately wish
To set out on his homeward road.

For he had some morning calls to make
Before he went back to Hell;
"So," thought he, "I'll step into a gaming-house,
And that will do as well;"
But, just before he could get to the door,
A wonderful chance befell.

For all on a sudden, in a dark place,
He came upon General ----'s burning face;
And it struck him with such consternation
That home in a hurry his way did he take,
Because he thought, by a slight mistake,
'Twas the general conflagration.

Brown Reported to Have Given Orangemen a Seat on the ISC in Part-payment

The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) was established by the Intelligence Services Act 1994 to examine the policy, administration and expenditure of the Security Service, Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). The Committee has developed its oversight remit, with the Government's agreement, to include examination of the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and the Intelligence and Security Secretariat, which includes the Assessments Staff in the Cabinet Office. The Committee also takes evidence from the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), part of the Ministry of Defence (MOD), which assists the Committee in respect of work within the Committee's remit.

The Prime Minister, in consultation [not this time, Ed.] with the leaders of the two main opposition parties, appoints the ISC members. The Committee reports directly to the Prime Minister, and through him to Parliament, by the publication of the Committee's reports.

The Members are subject to Section 1(b) of the Official Secrets Act 1989 and have access to highly classified material in carrying out their duties.

Too Much Information

'After it was announced he had won by nine votes, a relieved Mr Brown embraced the whips behind the Speaker's chair.'

Couldn't he have waited until he got home? The nose-picking and nail-biting in public are quite enough.

Brown Succeeds in Being Ever More Disgusting

More disgusting was a difficult level for Gordon Brown to reach. Relying on Orangemen to introduce internment without trial into England does it though.

It has been said often that the six counties of Ulster that make up Northern Ireland were used as a training ground for the British Army and a trial ground for repressive, authoritarian practice, including torture, to challenge England's civil liberties. How ironic that it is the votes of the protestant unionists that have been used by a Scottish prime minister to subject the English to arbitrary rule.

Ireland Should Speak for Us All Tomorrow, Not Vote Narrowly on the Lisbon Constitution

The citizens of the european countries have been silenced, some by outright lies as in the United Kingdom government's reneging on a manifesto commitment to a referendum and, as a commenter on the previous post says, similarly by the government in Portugal; others by no referendum being proffered and no means to obtain one constitutionally, or consitutional means circumvented, as in Italy, or by a false identification of freedom and the West with the European Union, as in Poland and other eastern European countries.

Ireland speaks tomorrow for us all. This brings another responsibility to every Irish voter. Every vote cast is not cast on whether or not to accept the Lisbon Constitution; it is a vote that can open the way to restoring democratic voice, and democratic choice to every muted European.

To the People of Ireland, Once More With Feeling, Choose Irish Independence

'We ordain that the elected Representatives of the Irish People alone have power to make laws binding on the people of Ireland, and that the Irish Parliament is the only Parliament to which that people will give its allegiance:

'We solemnly declare foreign government in Ireland to be an invasion of our national right which we will never tolerate...

'We claim for our national independence the recognition and support of every free nation in the world, and we proclaim that independence to be a condition precedent to international peace hereafter...'

And

'IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom...

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the last three hundred years they have asserted it to arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.

The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally and oblivious of the differences...

... In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.'

Signed

Thomas J. Clarke,
Sean Mac Diarmada, Thomas MacDonagh,
P. H. Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt,
James Connolly, Joseph Plunkett

(The seven signatories of the Irish Proclamation: Padraig Pearse, James Connolly, Thomas Clarke, Thomas MacDonagh, Sean MacDermott, Joseph Plunkett, and Eamonn Ceannt were executed by the British Government for their efforts to secure a free Ireland.)

Nerve is not Enough

"Have you no consideration for my poor nerves?"

"You mistake me, my dear. I have the utmost respect for your nerves. They've been my constant companion these twenty years."

"Our simple view that 'more nerves' is sufficient to explain 'more brain power' is simply not supported by our study," explained Professor Seth Grant, Head of the Genes to Cognition Programme at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. As leaden-footed scientists do he confirmed the observations of quicksilver pragmatics expert Jane Austen some two centuries earlier that 'nerves' are not indicative of brain power.

Research published in Nature Neuroscience suggests that it is not size alone, or nerves, that count. "We found dramatic differences in the numbers of proteins in the synapses between different species. We studied around 600 proteins that are found in mammalian synapses and were surprised to find that only 50 percent of these are also found in invertebrate (creatures without a backbone..., [isn't that a little hard? Ed.]) synapses, and about 25 percent are in single-cell animals [or Prime Ministers, as we refer to them currently, Ed.] which obviously don't have a brain." Nerves yes, though, just look at those finger nails and nose habits.

'The origins of thinking lie in feeling [Yes! Ed.]: some of the proteins involved in synapse signalling and learning and memory are found in yeast, where they act to respond to signals from their environment, such as stress due to limited food or temperature change.' "It is amazing how a process of Darwinian evolution by tinkering and improvement has generated, from a collection of sensory proteins in yeast, the complex synapse of mammals associated with learning and cognition," added Dr Richard Emes, Lecturer in Bioinformatics at Keele University.

Pity about the single cell, invertebrate bundles of nerves; lack of back bone and no feelings.

Blackout

Thousands of homes suffering power cuts yesterday in south-east London, from half past seven in the morning, as EDF Energy said supplies were isolated 'for safety reasons'- "We are liaising closely with the fire service and apologise for the inconvenience this is causing customers,"- is very bad news.

'Inconvenience' is a wholly inadequate way to describe the problems generated within a modern domestic environment in a first world metropolis by a power failure. Must we recast our lives completely, including our physical environment, to meet the demands of a world where power, food, transport, warmth, water, and shelter are no longer guaranteed?

Those who stocked up on a year's worth of basics last summer have already profited from their foresight and their storage space. But that is the simplest response to give and within the decision-taking aegis of individuals; all it needs is cash, a freezer, a larder and a car (any one of which of which can be in short supply in many city homes).

Private transport is under attack when the private transport of goods as well as family members is becoming an essential for many, particularly women. Heating bills threaten to rise further by up to 40%; we have some private response to this - clothing, 'living cold', and if we are rich enough insulating our dwelling.

Water other than for drinking and cooking is not a private decision-taking area, more a public health disaster threat (cutting off water for non-payment in some high rise blocks in Birmingham was rethought hurriedly at the end of the last century). Others have commented widely on threats to our private control over shelter. Power is outside our private control completely. It cannot be stored and its guaranteed supply cannot be bought by individuals. Indeed they are the first in line for cuts when supply shortages erupt. The graduated loss of private control over essentials of life is total with electricity.

Metropolitan, city, town, even rural life styles are built on long standing assurance of uninterrupted power. Apologies for 'inconvenience' are a measure of the dislocation between what we have built our private lives on, and what we face now.

Easy Peasy

The list of words difficult to read and hard to spell published in the Guardian (and they should know, after all) is surprisingly short and unchallenging. Where is the word most commonly misspelled in comments? 'Independent' must take the prize. That final 'a' instead of an 'e' is like a fist in the eye every time.

Here they are:

100 of the most difficult words

Orange, foreign, rhinoceros, properly, vomit, tambourine, tournament, tourist, heaven, engine, exquisite, opposite, advertisement, gnarled, rigid, risen, sinister, spinach, video, vinegar, tie, wheelie, quiet, science, crier, pliers, soldier, Monday, mongrel, monkey, courage, magic, manage, palace, four, journey, gnash, gnaw, gnome, ghastly, guard, miracle, miserable, pigeon, pity, prison, month, mother, nothing, once, smother, son, sponge, tongue, wonder, almost, both, comb, ghost, gross, most, only, post, programme, deny, reply, July, obey, caterpillar, chapel, damage, dragon, fabulous, family, famished, garage, glacier, habit, hazard, hexagonal, imagine, panic, radish, miaow, powder, cauliflower, plant, pyjamas, raft, rather, salami, task, vast, kiosk, kiwi, machine, encourage, somersault, swollen, souvenir.

Magic and Modernity

Spending hundreds of thousands of pounds to find out why the electorate loathe him seems yet another waste of money by Brown. He could read the blogs, lots of fine and accurate, imaginative analysis there, and available free of charge. The news that he has been refused as a client by a leading advertising company because of the bad effect he would have on its other famous clients suggest too that another aspect of his persona is well recognised.

Assurances that all this money, for yet more private polling and focus group delving into why he is the worst person on earth to be prime minister, is coming out of Labour party funds and not from the taxpayer is undermined by the reporting of widespread concern that the Labour party is within three weeks of bankruptcy. Its officers and employees are taking advice from lawyers to protect themselves from personal liability, and the unions on terms and conditions of their termination of employment.

It may be helpful to suggest that the better departments of social anthropology - UCL or Cambridge would be a good choice - are well versed in the occurrence, causes, explanations of, and social response to the perceived social malignancy of individuals. Cheaper and quicker too, as their research has been funded and completed already. It offers also, good reasons why using magical methods is really dangerous in the real world. Some of the remedies provided in ethnographic accounts for dealing with the Browns of our societies are pretty elemental (earth, air, water, fire, as in the form of: stones; flying - let's see you; floating as in drowning; and as for fire let's no go there), and Brown (ignorant and unaware as always) is not a Shona spirit medium, though he does resemble Mugabe in other behaviours.

Much safer just to accept the modern, democratic way - go for a vote in a general election and then go away.

The Missing Candidate

The candidate for Vice-President is nominated by the Democratic party convention, as is the candidate for President. That said, effectively the formality impinges on the practice of the nominee choosing the running mate only most indirectly, if at all; an extreme case boundary, nothing more.

So who should the Democratic nominee choose? A political clone, a complementary politico/socio/ cultural figure, a contrast, a weakling, a reassurance to voters of the other party, a consolation prize for the runner up and their primaries' voters, or a defence against assassination by choosing someone so potentially horrific as a replacement the threat is removed?

Obama wants to win the election (twice, so he has to think four years from now as well as November), stay alive, do stuff for America. So he has to have strategy that runs unbroken from getting out the vote this time, to reaching into power centres and governmental areas where he has no constituency, to getting stuff done, for eight years.

Hillary Clinton's claim that she can deliver the Wimmin and the blue-collar workers is clearly another case where she misspoke herself; two more incompatible constituencies would be difficult to devise. The only reason the blue-collar workers voted for her was because they were voting against Obama. That cause is now lost, so the vice- presidential nominee must be someone to attract their votes, not just scoop up protest votes. The Wimmin will vote only for Clinton, as they say, (the harridans), and should be written off as a lost cause in the interests of the blue-collar worker vote. Clinton is irrelevant for the four years hence elections, unless Obama loses this time, which is a wholly different set of considerations.

She has no noteworthy contacts outside of democratic politics on any kind of scale sufficient to affect the outcome of the November election, particularly after her public declarations that all must now unite behind the candidate. As she is to the left of Obama, and in a rather last century way, she is relatively unnattractive to many voters; neither can she be considered socio/culturally interesting to most - she's just an elderly woman with out of date ideas about women and their social status, and anyone staring in despair at our NHS will be determined to refuse entry to her health provision projects - how many times does she have to be told 'No'?. She offers no reassurance whatsoever to wavering small 'c'conservative voters. Her foreign relations 'experience' is laughable, and has been laughed at very widely.

The only grounds, then, for her current claims seem to be that she's so awful that as Vice-President she would act as a good shield to any assault on the President, and that she wants a runner-up prize because she was robbed.

Not good enough. Obama needs a reliable, likeable, political clone who reassures the undecided and doubtful, yet will step into the breach and carry on doing stuff for America in the spirit of the political will expressed in Obama's selection as candidate, if need be, and back him to the hilt throughout his years in office otherwise. If he can be also a link into areas of governance that add to Obama's reach, that will be a great bonus.

Hillary Clinton should never have been alllowed to stand for the Democratic nomination, and Obama needs to find the missing candidate that she displaced, in choosing his vice-presidential companion.

Goodbye Hillary and About Time Too

We are all involved in the election of the new American president, even if most of the world does not have a vote. The United States decides and the rest of us choose, or are forced to follow. Watching the selection of the Democratic party candidate has been a political education in itself; not just in the formal rules of the game, but in the political manoeuvres and policy positions of the candidates and their timing and adjustments of their statements on them.

What stands out from all the detail of events is the sheer, unremitting nastiness of Hillary Clinton. This nastiness is not particularly personal, although she displays it personally, through and through, at every possible juncture, but an aspect of the politics of the last 15 to 20 years. It is an appalling mix of arrogance, self-righteousness, right-on ness, ride rough shod over any opposition no matter how reasonable or principled, do what we say, we are above you voters indeed your voting is a tiresome inconvenience, we are the holders of the truth to bring about the perfect, permanent society, and have the means. This combined with a lot of moralistic whining about what is fair, what is right, what it is time for, and what she stands for. Nothing could make any woman more furious than that such a person, who happens to be a female, should lay claims to representing femaleness when, at the very least, she continues to give countenance and status to a serial sexual predator as if it is enough we should all agree that if we don't like him we shouldn't vote for him. Shameless. Well, we won't have her offering herself as his front woman either, thank goodness.

The seeing-off of the Clintons is the seeing off, too, of a copycat politics that has spoiled our country also in the last 11 years.

And how typical of the mindset of that politics that she cannot accept that she was defeated - she pretends she was robbed.

Watching the Democrats against the Republicans is going to be a far better thing than watching the Clinton's being all things to all men.

Summer Dressing

Linen, square-cut neckline, hanging straight down from the shoulders with a box pleat front and back, and a low belt just above the hips, loosely tied. I brought one in cream and one dark green, self-indulgently old fashioned, particularly in the above the ankle but below the knee length, with sleeves that reach to the elbow but can be cuffed back to just above. It was a private joke, a bow to the heat of summer on the central European plain, the long, dreary afternoons in novels about girls who have lost the chance to live independently and confuse drawing and watercolours, piano and a good education, the finding of a husband when the field has been harrowed by war, with knowing and feeling.

All those novels were written by men. The dress, symbolic of the subjugated girl, is really the only defence against this heat and dust (and looks good on women, not just girls). I've even added the sun hat with the wide, trailing-at-the-back, brim. And the plain, lawn straight slip beats the elasticated grip that welts the body in the torture chamber of modernity. Those girls were in charge of the first and most important aspect of their lives; all the present day talk of being in control of one's own body is arrant nonsense on a summer afternoon in Potsdam without a linen dress and accoutrements. Even the babies have parasols.

Agonised in tight stretch trousers, or shorts, strappy tops cutting into red hot shoulders, slimy with sun lotion and buzzing with midges, red in the face, with hair too short to tie smoothly back flopping on faces sticky with sweat, thongs adhering, they pass through the avenues, today's girls and women, complete anachronisms.

And I bet they can't play the piano either.

Invalid

The invalidity of Gordon Brown extends to every part of his persona. He has no mandate to lead the Labour party and no mandate to be Westminster prime minister; he has no authority to act in major areas of government's proper remit and no history of professional competence or personal capacity to undertake major political roles. His chancellorship is a well-documented disaster and his prime ministership a slow agony into quiessence.

The Scottish people do not want nuclear power stations built in Scotland, nuclear waste stored in Scotland, Trident and nuclear-powered submarines in Scotland, oil in Scottish territory exploited rather than husbanded, Scottish fishing grounds devastated by European Union agreements negotiated by Westminster, indiscriminate immigration into Scotland, fees and charges for services in Scotland that should be part of the social wage, and are not wholly convinced of Scotland's settled future within the European Union on Westminster's terms. Neither do they want Labour party rule in Scotland.

The English people do not want any of the above in England either, plus they do not want a Scottish prime minister from Kirkcaldy when he has his own Parliament to go to. As Labour members of parliament press for Darling, Alexander and Browne to be demoted within the Westminster government not least on the grounds of their Scottishness and the seats they hold, though rank incompetence weighs in to recommend their rapid departure as well, Frank Field underlines that the Labour party's very survival as an English party is at stake, in a new twist to the arguments about relations within the United Kingdom. (today's Telegraph).

England has a natural right of centre of balance. The Conservatives will always represent the majority here. But those voters whose economic and cultural interests are not served by the Conservative view of government as the creation of a civil society under the rule of law within a small and well-defended state, those who see government as the creation of some kind of ideal, large state with government as permanent administration - as many authoritarian ideologies of the left and the right do - are turning increasingly from Labour to the authoritarians of the right, not the left.

It is not just the federation of the United Kingdom that must be re-ordered. The Labour party itself must become a pluralist democratic party of the centre Left and abandon the New Labour Project of imposing a permanent authoritarian governance within a federal European Union state upon the country.

Does Your Labour Party Need You?

In July 2001 the Labour regime announced that the Performance and Innovation Unit, now the Strategy Unit in the Cabinet Office, would undertake a review of the legal and regulatory framework governing charities and the voluntary sector.
They did not consult on specific proposals. Instead they published a number of discussion papers and a list of 71 questions on different aspects of law and regulation. Originally expected to report in February 2002, publication of the report was delayed, partly because of the obvious links with the Treasury [Brown meddles again] review of the role of the voluntary sector in public service delivery.

It is a delicious irony that the Labour Party institutional set up is precisely the kind of entity these reviews and proposals, intended to produce greater transparency and certainty, as well as regulation and oversight, are aimed at. As the Times notes, the Labour Party is like an unincorporated association, a set up more suited to the local cricket club. Here 'members . . . are subject to unlimited personal liability in the event of the association’s insolvency'.

Not the officers of the unincorporated association but, arguably, all the members of the association are liable. The 'list of 71 questions on different aspects of law and regulation.', gives an indication of the turmoil surrounding liability in such a fragile institutional structure as the Labour Party and its Rule Book, particularly when carrying debts and liabilities approaching quarter of a £billion.

Are you a member of the Labour Party? Should you be? You thought it safe to buy into the demutualisation of Northern Rock; being a member of the Labour Party could be even more financially worrying.

Dementia Is Us

Here is the dementia check list provided by the Alzheimer Society today, worried that too few are diagnosed at a stage early enough to receive beneficial treatment. Others must sail on a Sea of Tranquility if their answers are not 'Yes, but it all depends'.

'Do you struggle to remember recent events while finding it easy to recall things that happened in the past?'

Memory has been shown to be a very personal production, highly edited, and reinforced by subsequent interpretation - like more general history. Surprisingly rarely do we need accurate recall of the recent or distant past; much of what is needed is organised within routines that trigger appropriate responses regardless of actual recall effectiveness. We 'play' our jobs, and to a lesser degree our lives rather as a musician plays, with a great deal of the detail determined below levels of immediate consciousness. Consciousness is used to enhance and refine not remember, which suggests we're up to almost anything with what we commonly call 'memory' anyway.

'Do you find it hard to follow conversations or programmes on TV?'

Echoic effects get in the way here; if the correspondence between the attention-level offered, and the conversation/programme is appropriate, and that depends on a lot outside the viewer's control, as well as surrounding inputs from the viewing environment, then following is not hard; but if the pitch of the programme is wrong I will start entertaining myself with almost anything from shouting at the tv (that seems to be a growing habit amongst us all), idly identifying what imagery has been taken from where, both visual and other, phasing in and out as it's a bit slow, and general reflection (a Catholic childhood does a great deal for developing reflection). Nor does it seem reasonable to class conversation as an alternative to a television programme.

'Do you regularly forget the names of friends or everyday objects?'

No, I do not forget the names of friends; to forget a name is a giveaway of the true status of the forgetee. Everyday objects are as different from friends, not least in their being objects, as tv programmes are from conversations. The names of plants and streets often not so much escape me as wilfully substitute themselves for one another. This is because when I think it tends to be in a first level rough and ready manner - that stuff over there, I'll sort it later or if I need anything I've put there, fashion. So Jesus Lane and Trinity Street are as one, or New Street and Corporation Street - they're all in the centre when doing things like shopping or going to the bank. The plant names over-there heap drives Mr HG to distraction; for him they are all highly distinct, all friends in their latin botanic dress. He forgets anniversaries, birthdays - presents and flowers arrive when he thinks of the person, not the date, so happily they arrive much more often and not necessarily when waking on a birthday in a temper (and who wouldn't given this dementia threat).

'Do you find it difficult to recall things heard, seen or read?'

There's always a remnant of a memory and then it can be used to google. It must have been awful to be Mr Casaubon.

'Do you struggle to make decisions?'

Choices yes, decisions, no. Bossy Boots incarnate.

'Do you repeat yourself in conversation or lose the thread of what you are saying?'
Again, why are these paired? Repeating is a rhetorical device of considerable force, cf any worth listening-to speaker of right or left since always. Losing the thread usually comes on after dinner but is often unnoticed as everybody else has too.

Do you have problems thinking and reasoning?

Honestly, who doesn't. Even being able to contemplate an answer to this one is a shining beacon of sense and sensibility. Can I think straight? Up to a point, my lord.

'Do you feel anxious and depressed or angry about forgetfulness?'

No, It's a fascinating topic, forgetfulness; it deserves a long thoughtfulness all to itself, and others' thoughts too.

'Do other people comment on your forgetfulness?'

Yes, since I was very young forgetfulness has been a lively subject of comment, extending across: what is owed to parents, place (in the sense of my), domestic tasks, homework, consideration of (or perhaps for) others, manners, grooming (hands, before eating, hair, brushing properly, shoes, clothes, changing of before ruining school uniform etc.); comment has lessened in adulthood and covers now: promises, failures, successes, awful moments, unwise remarks - the list is as long as a life.

Lower Fuel Taxes.

Global has become the get out word. Fuel prices are so high in the United Kingdom - a major oil producer - because of Gordon Brown's taxes. There are other factors affecting prices which Brown cannot affect in any way (despite parking a large chunk of the British army at Basra airport after years of helping cause mayhem in another country).

So stop lying by thought, word, deed, and omission Gordon. Cut the taxes, and let go. Even better, just go.

Jonah Strikes More Widely in UK Black Outs

“Nine generating units have become unavailable throughout Tuesday.” the National Grid admitted.

The collapse of the country into the third world under Jonah Brown and his Band of Brothers continues. 'At midday the Sizewell B nuclear power station, run by British Energy in Suffolk, and the Longanett coal-fired power station, run by Scottish Energy in Fife, went offline within two minutes of each other. Later, “generating units” in power stations in Grain, Kent, and Ratcliffe, Nottinghamshire, and at EDF in Cottam, Nottinghamshire, Centrica in South Humber and International Power in Deeside each suffered cuts.' Not just a flicker of the lights and a dip for a moment, the power went off for hours, from High Wycombe to Scotland.

Eleven years of lack of investment in infrastructure, a complete mismanagement of the energy environment in the UK, constant interference in energy markets by Jonah and his tax attacks in all ignorance of the dynamics of energy has got us rolling power cuts. At least Heath was engaged in what he understood and had our authority to act in - a political showdown with political bullies.

Jonah has been a lightning rod for ill-fortune and disaster for 11 years. In his arrogant, uncomprehending meddling he has made the country poorer and uncomfortable compared to the rest of western Europe, but now it is becoming dangerous and unlivable.

Who Needs Social Workers?

Why is every public sector job turning into a social worker job? - Members of Parliament, vicars, police, prison and probation officers, school teachers, local government officers, doctors and nurses, labour exchange clerks, call centre staff, head of state (though that always had a touch to it).

Can there be enough clients for all this client care? And who is governing the country, representing God, keeping the peace, transmitting the culture, placing staff, sorting out complaints, healing the sick, and insisting on a general election to bring a different zeitgeist before the whole country collapses into a slough of despond?

Angels at the Pictures

'The third place jury prize went to Il Divo, Paolo Sorrentino's portrait of the country's former prime minister, Giulio Andreotti.' reports the BBC. How Mr Andreotti will like that - the discreet third place, but not ineffective or unrewarded.

The only politician alive to hold a candle to Giulio Andreotti is Benedict XVI. They share the complex understanding of power.

Metaphorically power is mercury: some part can be separated from the main body, taken and used for an end, but will remain itself and speed back to the mass, seamlessly reintegrating, the moment its temporary controller lacks the will or skill to use it.

We have a Prime Minister who lacks both, but without the humility to go.

A General Election for a Democratic State

The office of prime minister in the United Kingdom has very large amounts of the executive power ceded in a democracy concentrated within it. In all the scary scenarios that have been sketched since the attack upon Iraq - the loss of power in the West as control of natural resources slips away, the loss of economic strength as work moves to the cheapest labour, the loss of financial dominance as the dollar slips and slides (not to mention the pound sterling) and unregulated and ungovernable financial activity webs the globe exporting poverty and the purchase of social peace in one place to other places, and inflation to the least defended, as the authoritarian model of the state tries to assert itself over small governance and the values of choice and freedom; as lies replace some political and moral belief in answerability to the electorate, we are bereft. But nothing is so scary as to have such a man as Gordon Brown as our champion.

Two armies in the field, under-resourced and undirected, the largest parked by our major ally, the other fighting with technology and equipment from decades ago. And not just the first line of our defence, our armed forces in such conditions, but our government in thrall to economic policies of decades ago, long disproved by economic incompetences and inefficiencies, and fiercely rejected by populations across Europe. The people incredulous of all and any word this government says, seizing every opportunity they have to express their contempt for a gang of self-serving tax spendthrifts who have battened on our country. We are poor and undefended, even by our constitution unless some courage is shown by the Head of State.

A general election is our democratic mode of discussing, choosing and putting in place the best people and options for our country's circumstances. Its wilful denial by a handful of liars and failures threatens to be an indictment of our entire system of governance.

Il Palio and the End of Egalitarianism

Bareback we sit on our frenzied horses, trembling and skittering, backing and bullying, neighbours and enemies, barely holding our caparisoned steeds before la Mossa - the rope stretched across the beaten sand of our life's course, three times round the marbled, monumental, towered way, to the finish. The narrow road between the glories of the city, the tight curves, dangerous abutments, the absolute judgement of the Mossiere that the start was fair, governed first by lot as to our mount and starting place, then by his acceptance of the off as the rope twitches downwards and the horse held furthest back soars through, is all we want. That and the roars of will to victory from our contradaioli, massed in the centre of the Campo as they are in life, whose colours and honour we bear.

No more level playing fields, no more equal chances imposed long after the dash through life began. No more denial of our contrada or its visceral importance as our sbandieratori fling our flags, looping intricately high in the air, and our culture is passed through the generations to the beat of our drummers and the certainty that hands will catch and hold the plummeting, tightly furled message bearers that unfurled, bedizen our thoughts as well as our churches.

No-one wants imposed and drab equality when we have so much to win and such joy in winning it.

Conflicts of Interest

"4B.2e Procedure in a vacancy (i) When the party is in government and the party leader is prime minister and the party leader, for whatever reason, becomes permanently unavailable, the Cabinet shall, in consultation with the NEC, appoint one of its members to serve as party leader until a ballot under these rules can be carried out."

'These rules' are too time consuming and would take the country too close to the end of the current Parliament to be operable. The only way Brown will not lead the Labour party into the election that should be held between now and 2010 is either: no election is called; or 'for whatever reason, [Brown, as party leader], becomes permanently unavailable'.

It is hard to imagine such a fractious, ambitious and undistinguished Cabinet being able to agree on an appointee. It is clear that any appointee would run in the election for Leader that must take place unless no opposition to confirmation as Leader is offered. And the chances of that, after the disaster resulting from such action in making Brown leader, are negligible. The proposal that Brown should appoint a deputy to be groomed for leadership takeover runs headlong into the Party rules as there is a deputy Leader already, Harman, who would take over the Party until leadership elections could be held should Brown become 'unavailable'. Brown has refused already to make her deputy prime minister - an office of doubtful validity anyway. Furthermore, the Labour party cannot spend its last effective parliamentary term conducting a leadership election which promises to be particularly vicious as it would involve, too, the dismantling or confirmation of the New Labour Project.


If the New Labour Project is to survive, (and its primary purpose is its own permanence in power), Brown must be supported in office; as he is an electoral disaster under our current democratic arrangements, there seems to be a direct conflict between the Project, the Labour party Rules, and the UK's constitutional system that expects a general election at least once every five years.

Meanwhile the country has an utterly incompetent person holding the barely restricted executive powers of a British Prime Minister.

Gardening Leave

The gardens of Liguria and the French coast are beckoning, and should be looking spectacular after such a wet Spring. So Angels will be quiet until Sunday.

The votes on the Fertilisation and Embryo Bill are deeply depressing and demand some thought in any case.

Spinning the Dice of Life

The passing of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is a propaganda exercise undertaken by the worst, propaganda-driven regime in our history. All the 'research' that it pretends to authorise is taking place already, some in our country. It is not at the forefront of scientific endeavour. Rather, so well understood and established are its techniques and objects of enquiry, it is the development of therapeutic availability that is being hindered by widespread cultural and legal prohibition, and lesser hindrances expressed through religious and other ethical institutions and viewpoints.

The objective in this matter is to establish, in a first world advanced capitalist country, state authorisation and public acceptance of a 'grey area' of submerged, half-hidden and wholly unacceptable behaviour by universities, the health industries, funding (both tax- paid funding and private funding),some parts of some governments, and their individual actors in this.

Once the United Kingdom has authorised the use of humans and part humans with other animals to provide genetic material for therapeutic use, destroying the creatures deliberately brought into life for no other purpose than to serve others in the process, then the way is open, such practices justified, for anywhere in the world and any organisation to do the same. It can all come in from the cold.

The deliberate bundling of the measures within the Bill, which will have also enabling powers for activities as yet unspecified for later implementation by administrative act, underlines the true purpose of the Bill as that of cultural and ethical shift - a moral regime change under guise of seeking and destroying the causes of mass suffering. Saviour siblings - such evocative and misleading words; what is under way is the provision of genetic spare material designed for specific recipients, inter- as well as intra-generational, at all and any cost, including the abandonment of attributing full humanity to the providers. The increased life span of the recipients will be purchased with the attenuation of the life span of the helpless donors.

The grounds of argument for the Bill will be as shifting sands, moving from medical, to political, to cultural, to ethical as fast as opponents of this monstrosity build reasoned refutation of any of its diverse parts. There can be only one effective response: vote it down.

Vote it down in its entirety - no deals, no adjustment, no conscience voting where it doesn't matter and Party discipline acceptance when it does. No dissection can separate out any good, or provide an excuse for letting it through. Our representatives must sink their differences and unite. Not against the current government but for our human society.

Early this morning

Czech is an unfamiliar language but the 6.30 am announcement echoing through the rooms was unmistakeable. Then it was repeated in English 'The building is insecure; I repeat the building is insecure. Leave at once. Do not.....'

What happens next is inevitable: first I cannot believe it so sit up considering waiting a bit in case it goes away; then I can't remember the code for the safe; then the flurry of slamming doors becomes complete silence. Off like a hare once everyone else is too, we're all doing the stairs - should I overtake or is that rude? Do I care? Outside sheepish staff explain that steam from the kitchen has upset the building and over-riding its panic takes procedures. We shiver back indoors from the rainy morning and take our revenge on the assembled cereals, order poached eggs (that always takes the chef badly) and eat all the croissants before those who returned to their rooms to tidy up get downstairs again.

What shall I do now? it's still only half past seven and I've breakfasted for a week.

The Absinthe Drinker

Ever willing to try, Angels stepped into an absinthe den. Head full of 19th century images, Gymnopedie playing in the mind, admiring the translucent green, the glass neared the angelic nose. If Florence Nightingale had been swabbing the floor of the entire Crimea it couldn't have been worse. How could anyone drink absinthe?

A retreat to a courtyard cafe and a small pilsner to take away even the smell was needed.

Cabinets Belong in the Capital and Local Governance in the Town Halls

Communities Secretary Hazel Blears' suggestion that to revive interest in politics and enable cabinet ministers to remain what she called 'grounded' and in touch with the real world, the cabinet should meet in local halls and community centres up and down the country is more than silly, it is quite frightening. It is frightening because it displays the complete abandonment of any accepted idea of the range and function of local government by this Labour regime.

We have town halls in every local government authority area, purpose built for local realities and local politics. We have a democratic electoral system to choose our local representatives. What has been removed from us, and from democratic local governance, is both political power and responsibility, and funding.

Give it back, give it all back. Disband the quangoes, the regional appointed administrations, the centralised meddling in local affairs that comes from London. We neither need nor want ministries to run our local schools, hospitals, housing, sport, parks and leisure facilities, etc. They are nothing to do with cabinet government.

Do your own jobs, make policy that is of national scope, deliver it, according to your Party manifesto, a good start would be a referendum you committed to on the Lisbon Treaty. Foreign policy is what cabinet does, and we have thousands of troops sitting at Basra airport taking missiles and not coming home, also a commitment by your liar of a Leader. Sort the disastrous tax structure out and recover the desperate mess made of pensions. There is a long list of national-level undertakings you are failing in.

Hazel Blears needs to ensure that power is devolved to its lowest level of competent use, and wielded by elected councillors. The rest of the cabinet needs to remember what they are for, which is not micro-managing our lives.

Daft by Name Daft by Nature

Imagining that I had arrived, an angelic visitor to Crewe, sent to vote with only command of the English language and its infinite connexions to guide me. Who would I vote for:

Edward Timpson - or Tamsin Dunwoody.

A no-brainer. Wherever did she get that ridiculous name?

Be Popular, Call a General Election

Ministers admit that the measures Brown is putting forward to raise his popularity have been already proposed and even timetabled-in.

There are two complete, not-getting-it failures here: your popularity, Brown, isn't of the slightest interest to your country, our country, or even your own Party; and most of the people in our country will be parents, are parents, or have been parents of young children, and we all know that it's a hard time (made harder if you only do it when your over 50) but transitory.

Most of the population is struggling with too much tax, too high prices, debt overburdens, shame at Labour's foreign policies, and fear of ignorance, sickness, and old age. As you caused all these problems and have embedded them over the years you were in charge of, but not in touch with, the financial and economic role that government plays in our lives, you will know, or possibly not with your difficulties, how intransigent, nigh on irreversible, they are for a numpty who cannot understand other people. So let us help you with your cognitive response.

Call a general election.

We can hope that someone with a fully functioning brain and normal levels of awareness can be placed in government to help us, not order us about.

It's About England, not Scotland

The Labour Leader is lying again. Accusing the SNP of a "transparent attempt to manipulate the political system for purely partisan political purposes" would be breath taking from any one other than the politician most responsible for Scotland's enthusiastic departure from the United Kingdom government's miserable control.

It is the Labour party that is being destroyed by Scotland's realisation that none of the horrors of Labour rule apply to Scotland any more. And it is the Labour party that is desperate to oppose the reconvening of the English Parliament. Labour would be consigned not just to permanent Opposition but to oblivion in the English Parliament. Another centre left party would form, there is no lack of centre left views among the English electorate, but the statist, authoritarian, confrontational trade union, high tax, redistribute within the poor party, would disappear into its 20th century grave.

While the reconvening of the English Parliament would require the redrawing of federal relationships with Scotland, and with Wales and Ireland (north and, in a different order, south), it is the removal of that Labour party road block to a proper, progressive, pluralist and democratic party of the centre left that is the prize.

It would bring to an end the vulgar, sub-marxian mind set that expresses itself politically as the Conservatives being the party of Capital and Labour being the party of, well, labour; and bring to an end the patronising, meddling interference in the lives of others practised by the failed intelligentsia that subscribe to and nourish it for their profit.

Unifying the Ministry of Defence and the Scottish Office

The Leader's decision to make Des Browne both Defence and Scotland minister has turned out to have been prescient. It does seem to be taking a toll on the unfortunate minister though - the Afghanistan Front in full fight, the Iraq front hunkered down at the airport (how many months is it now?) but taking a lot of incoming and who can guess their levels of rage at being prevented from fighting by their orders from Messrs Brown and Browne; and the Scottish Front, as yet political and diplomatic but so are the other two, with only the addition of the third ingredient of international dispute, open warfare.

Abnormality

It is not normal to have a society surveilled and registered and hectored like ours.

It is not normal to have a society in devastating indebtedness for assets rapidly declining in value.

It is not normal to have 6 million people of working age on various kinds of benefit.

It is not normal for hospital patients to die of dirt.

It is not normal for 40% of primary school leavers to be unable to read and write or perform simple calculation.

It is not normal for more than a million people to arrive yet make no provision for their reception.

It is not normal for financial monitoring and good practice to be wilfully incompetent or wholly ignored.

It is not normal to attack other countries and kill thousands of their citizens.

It is not normal for policemen to shoot people or for children to kill one another.

It is not normal to drug the old, abort the unborn 5-6 months from conception, to create cross-species half human embryos.

It is not normal to tax the poor and enable the rich.

It is not normal to do what is wrong and not what is right.

A National Conversation on Reconvening the English Parliament

When Andrew Mackinlay, MP for the Essex seat of Thurrock , complains that the constitutional debate is not including England and English MPs and dresses his complaint in the words "It's my UK," he exemplifies the difficulty in there being no forum in which the reconvening of the English Parliament is being argued.

The Irish Parliament could well invite an Ulster representation of Ulster's people, for just as Ulster's MPs sit in the House of Commons as part of the United Kingdom, they might like a representation to sit in the Irish Parliament too, as part of Ireland; as well as having their own Assembly. The Scottish representation sits in the UK Parliament as part of the United Kingdom, as well as having their own Parliament.

The English sit only in the UK Parliament, their own Parliament submerged and voiceless, worse off than the Faroes or the Isle of Man, as England is divided into supranational regions, its reality denied by the United Kingdom Government and the European Union - a lost country that is close to being flooded ever more deeply inside the European Union.

It isn't your UK, Mr Mackinlay. The United Kingdom is a flawed, and lately severely damaged, constitutional reality that is sustained by other countries with other plans and interests, as well as some concern in common advantage.

It is your England, Mr Mackinlay, and you need a Parliament in which to represent it and more specifically, the electors of Thurrock.

What is Brown For?

First Labour loses Scotland to the SNP. Then Labour loses London to the Conservatives. So the UK's main natural resources area is no longer under Labour control and the UK's main wealth producing area is no longer under Labour control. In Scotland the Scottish government is preparing for a referendum on extending devolution and planning for independence. In London forensic accountants have just been appointed to investigate London Government's expenditures back to 2004.

Just what is the unelected Prime Minister Leader of and prime minister of, any longer?

We Need a Scorpio Murtlock for our Widmerpool

Concentrating executive power in the hands of the prime minister has the enormous drawback of requiring a greater concentration on an individual than modern political and historical analytic best practice might prefer. It's also rather dull, particularly when the inappropriate object is Gordon Brown.

This idiot savant, impervious among his spreadsheets and statistics, his Party deals and rule-governed micro managing, presents further and personalised difficulties in the resistance to his removal than do most prime ministers who often prefer a little longer in office. In Brown's case we have lost half the leverage to apply to his removal - there is nowhere for him to go.

International institutions that might have been pressed into service have turned him down already - the World Bank specifically, others by various exclusions that in Brown's case would be vigorously applied: the IMF - he's not American; the European Union - he's kept the UK out of the euro and been grossly ill-mannered and hectoring to more EU power brokers than he (or regrettably the United Kingdom) can afford; the financial world - draw a veil over their reaction to the introduction of the ultimately unclubbable into their company; the United Nations - disrespecting the President of the United States who, regardless of party is identified with the American people by the American people, is not a parole-able offence; and so the no noes go on.

It's so much harder to winkle them out without a pin of enticement.

Restoration

In 1999 the British government was unwise enough to open Pandora's box. New Labour's Leader and British Prime Minister Blair answered the serious misgivings of politicians and many with far better constitutional and historical understanding than he, with the assurance that there was no need for concern, the Scottish Parliament had no more powers than a parish council. Other, more prescient, words, uttered when Ewing was sworn in as the first Member of the Scottish Parliament for 292 years, 'prompted loud applause from colleagues and political opponents alike.'

"The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th of March 1707 is hereby reconvened."

The Treaties of Union came into effect on 1 May 1707, having been ratified first by the Scottish Parliament and then by the English Parliament, and the British Parliament met for the first time on 23 October. The Scottish representation was forty-five MPs and sixteen representative peers.

'After the ratifying act, the Scottish Parliament passed legislation concerning the representation of Scotland in the Parliament at Westminster. This Act was also made part of the Treaty. They decided to elect members of the first Parliament of Great Britain from the membership of the Scottish Parliament, avoiding an election during which Scotland's small electorate would probably express strong dislike of the Union.'

Both the Scottish and the English Parliaments were subsumed into the Parliament of Great Britain, (later Ireland was to be added, in the Parliament of the United Kingdom) but, beneath the constitutional surface, the three parliaments, of England Scotland and Ireland rested, and two have now risen again after centuries of quiescence. Only the English Parliament has not, because of its identity of interest and power with that of United Kingdom Parliament. That identity of interest is gone. The need for the English Parliament is argued widely.

It is patently untrue that the Scottish Parliament has only the powers of a parish council. The British Parliament may have listed areas of reserved powers, and the Scottish representation, as servile in its New Labour guise as ever it was centuries ago, may have voted as told; but no parliament can bind its successors, and history is not so much littered with, as made up of, the rejection of imposed and unjust treaties.

The Scottish Parliament is just that, as unbound by its predecessors or their capitulations as is the Irish Parliament, although it has not yet asserted or availed itself of all its powers. This is in part because the Scottish government is consulting the Scottish people on their wishes, (unlike their predecessors so long ago), as they were elected to do.

England's Parliament too must be restored and a new federation of the British Isles worked out before we are reduced to being provinces of northern France and Denmark.

Who Chooses the Timing of a General Election?

Wendy Alexander has been in London consulting senior Labour party politicians, including Gordon Brown, before calling for an immediate referendum on the independence of Scotland from the United Kingdom.

More interestingly still her spokesman said: “A tipping point has been reached and it is now clear that the General Election [in the United Kingdom as a whole, Ed.] will not take place for some time."

While it is normally the case that the Prime Minister chooses the time to recommend a dissolution of Parliament and general election to the Head of State, this is only true when the prime minister has a firm grasp upon the governing party, and the confidence of the constitutional (what remnants still function), political, and financial establishment, as well as the trust and respect of the electorate.

Gordon Brown enjoys none of these. While it is certainly not for Ms Alexander to indicate the timing of a general election, nor is it any longer a choice for the United Kingdom Prime Minister.

Scottish Labour Leaders Locked in Folie a Deux

SNP deputy leader and deputy first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, accused the Scottish parliament Labour leader, Wendy Alexander, of "erratic behaviour".

"It's only a few weeks ago she said she was implacably opposed to a referendum, she's just set up a constitutional commission that expressly excludes the option of independence."

Gordon Brown, the Scottish Leader of the UK Labour party is now reported to have supported a referendum in Scotland on membership of the Union (Union of the United Kingdom, that is). Brown is widely accused of 'erratic behaviour', so that makes two of them. It is equally widely recognised that when it comes to referendums on membership of Unions and Federations in Europe, Brown is a liar, so it is reasonable to assume that he is lying about a Scottish independence referendum, and so is Wendy Alexander.

Certainly they are both unstable.

Taking a Holiday is Different from Taking a Risk

Travelling with infants is not easy. Even short distances within England, when we got in the car at the front door at one end and got out of the car at my parents' front door at the other, presented their moments. Memorable was the evening when the lupin plants in the boot yielded their cargo of large, black garden spiders that swarmed over the back seat onto the shrieking, strapped in, small HGs, half way along the M6. Not a lot of stopping places on the motorway. Never was a service area so welcome; I hope the spiders are thriving in the curiously suburban lupin patch at the field's edge.

Tuscany was an expeditionary force affair, and the stay was for all summer. At the other end was house, community, perfect linguistic communications, cars, doctors, the village, and all the rooms and toys that lived there, from last time. Still we would sink exhausted into familiarity and shadowed respite from the brilliant sunlit world. Even then, things went wrong. Arriving at the airport without passport (classic) in those days it was possible to leave with a stern warning that it might be tricky getting back in. At Rome the control officer gave up on my Italian, turned to the seething Italian families beyond the barriers and yelled "who owns this Signora and babies?". Mr HG (who had driven previously with the baggage train) stepped smartly forward "Mine!" So off we went. Not like that now.

What ever are people thinking of, going without support, without language, without child care, for a few days to places at the ends of the earth? The Earth ends where there is no connexion, no infrastructure, no permanence. Go to some of these holiday villages in the winter and then the isolation, the desolation can be understood. There is a reason why these places were undeveloped or abandoned until very recently. As well, during the summer vacation it isn't just the schools that shut from early June to early September - all services close down because everyone is on the beach or up a mountain. The sight of the halt, the lame and the sick caring for one another in a summer ward in hospital is for those lucky enough to get to a hospital and be admitted at all, in case of need.

Adults can cope, and it's their choice. Infants should be denied exit visas so great are the risks to which they are exposed on so-called holidays.

Labour in Scotland Offers the Referendum on Independence Now

If Wendy Alexander, unelected leader of the parliamentary Labour party in Scotland (what is it about Labour and election avoidance?) wants a referendum on Scottish independence she has a straightforward route to it. Put it to the Scottish Parliament. Chances are it would be accepted.

A simple 'yes' or 'no' vote would be fine despite recent polling suggesting only 19% would vote for outright independence now. Because, of course, the poll was asking rather more sophisticated questions, and the respondents were applying sophisticated understanding of the notion of independence and federal relations within the United Kingdom. Being a numpty, Alexander would not have grasped that and thinks she's onto a winner, in playground bully style - 'Go on, I dare you.'

People have been engaged in a National Conversation about their hopes and plans for Scotland for almost a year. There was to to have been a referendum 18 months from now, on what Scotland needs to realise those hopes and plans - further devolution to include fiscal autonomy, future relations with the rest of the United Kingdom, with the European Union, with the Scottish diaspora. It seems the Scottish Labour parliamentary leader hasn't been part of it.

She is so out of it she hasn't noted either that the Leader of the United Kingdom Labour party is averse to referendums. So that's another source of derogatory, even derisive comparison, between Scotland's enjoyment of democratic and responsive governance with that delivered to England, to put together with the health, education, care of the very young and elderly, housing plans, council tax, environmental and energy advantages already enjoyed in Scotland.

Now, if Labour in the Scottish parliament are to be believed, the Scottish people are to have a referendum on their independence that will extend, of course, to their relations with the European Union.

Lucky them.

Lorenzo de' Medici on the Brain

For Angels' Italian readership, to leave you all with this singing through your heads for the rest of the day:

Quant'è bella giovinezza
che si fugge tuttavia!
Chi vuol essere lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.

Quest'è Bacco e Arianna,
belli, e l'un dell'altro ardenti:
perché 'l tempo fugge e inganna,
sempre insieme stan contenti.
Queste ninfe ed altre genti
sono allegre tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.

Questi lieti satiretti,
delle ninfe innamorati,
per caverne e per boschetti
han lor posto cento agguati;
or da Bacco riscaldati,
ballon, salton tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.

Queste ninfe anche hanno caro
da lor esser ingannate:
ora insieme mescolate
suonon, canton tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.

Questa soma, che vien drieto
sopra l'asino, è Sileno:
così vecchio è ebbro e lieto,
già di carne e d'anni pieno;
se non può star ritto, almeno
ride e gode tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.

Mida vien drieto a costoro:
ciò che tocca, oro diventa.
E che giova aver tesoro,
s'altri poi non si accontenta?
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
del doman non c'è certezza.

Ciascun apra ben gli orecchi,
di doman nessun si paschi;
oggi sian, giovani e vecchi,
lieti ognun, femmine e maschi;
ogni tristo pensier caschi:
facciam festa tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.

Donne e giovinetti amanti,
viva Bacco e viva Amore!
Ciascun suoni, balli e canti!
Arda di dolcezza il core!
Non fatica, non dolore!
Ciò c'ha esser, convien sia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.

Suffer the Little Children to Sing Up the Airy Mountain, Down the Rushy Glen

The cultural imperialists have struck again. The idea of a National Songbook of 30 songs all primary school children could sing from has been abandoned. You may be unsurprised - after all, thirty songs is very few for an eleven year old to know and sing, but that is not the reason. No agreement could be reached because there is no agreement on our culture of song.

There is no agreement on our literary culture either, so no body of poems and prose writing is offered as a secure base for enjoying and understanding English culture. English history? Well, no, not that either. Particularly not that.

These are small children who need to make sense of the world immediately around them; and they are in England. To deny them the keys to English culture is to exclude them, deprive them, impoverish their development and life chances. That is true for all the children not just those with other cultures and other countries upon which they draw for part of their identity. No-one denies the importance of the language and culture of a family's country of origin. I expended years and continental shifts in ensuring the children acquired fully the cultures into which they are born. As do many, many Anglo-something families.

Undeniably there are culture clashes. The First World War viewed through Italian eyes is not a blood and mud bath in Flanders, and its consequences were wholly different from its English consequences. But these are clashes that occur after primary years, when young students begin to realise the complexities of learning and knowing.

It should be acceptable for little ones in schools to sing the local songs - plus Waltzing Matilda and Kumbaya of course.

Ramsay MacDonald, the Other Scottish Prime Minister

It is time to stop this constant harping on John Major and the parallels with New Labour's wipe-out. The true comparison is with Ramsay MacDonald.

"On August 24, 1931 MacDonald submitted his resignation and then agreed to form a National Government including the Conservatives and Liberals. MacDonald, Snowden and Thomas were expelled from the Labour Party and subsequently formed a new National Labour Party, but this had little support in the country or the unions.
Great anger in the labour movement greeted MacDonald's move. Mass riots by unemployed people took place in protest in Glasgow and Manchester...

MacDonald did not want an immediate election, but the Conservatives forced him to agree to one in October 1931. The National Government won 554 seats, comprising 470 Conservatives, 13 National Labour, 68 Liberals (Liberal National and Liberal) and various others, while Labour won only 52 and the Lloyd George Liberals four. This was the largest mandate ever won by a British Prime Minister at a democratic election, but it left MacDonald at the beck-and-call of the Conservatives. Neville Chamberlain became Chancellor of the Exchequer while Baldwin held the real power in the government as Lord President.
Effectively powerless at home, MacDonald involved himself heavily in foreign policy, and attended in two conferences in 1932; the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the Lausanne Conference, which was concerned with German reparations...' (Wiki, and anywhere else you care to consult).

Go on, look it all up. Here we go again.

Coup d'Etat

The people have spoken. The unelected Leader never had legitimacy, his Party has just had the dregs of the last elected prime minister's popular democratic support drained away.

The Junta are all at Chequers planning an announcement on 'major constitutional change'.

It would be a very small, self-contained operation to take them all away to safe-keeping, they've already rounded themselves up.

And it is a Bank Holiday weekend. It could all be done and dusted by Tuesday morning.

Time For a General Election

The unelected Leader is required to face his first election and is blown away in the expressions of loathing for his government and his vision. It is not just Brown who is unacceptable. Because there is much less distinction between the state and governance in the United Kingdom than in other advanced countries, the state itself is suffering unacceptable blows to its authority and cohesion as a result of New Labour policies and their failure.

Every devolved part of the United Kingdom has rejected New Labour. Worse, the Westminster prime minister is singularly ill-favoured and ill-adapted to dealing with countries and regions that are run by other administrations, even within the United Kingdom, never mind his appalling foreign relations blunders and ineptitudes.

The Scottish government has enjoyed the highest esteem and satisfaction from its electors in the year it has been in office, delivering much of the political and social policies people want on health, education, care of the elderly and very young, ecological issues and cutting back the quango nomenklatura. Wales has just voted widely against New Labour and its enormous, centralising state. Elected representatives at various levels of local governance in Wales can expect the same kind of obstructive, childish response from the New Labour Executive as the Scots have been suffering and coping with.

Now London, the third devolved realm, is facing these recalcitrant, deluded, ideological control freaks, led by a man without intellectual capacity or empathy, whose emotions move from rage to fawning acceptance with no intervening stage of concerned comprehension.

The absence of a properly constituted state, with a head of state, and constitutional courts to defend it, exacerbates the situation. Italy has elected Berlusconi, Fini and Bossi, but Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, or Sicily, or the Veneto will all remain in a wholly stable relationship with the state of Italy and its President and its constitution; they will be on affable and politically balanced terms with the central government and with one another too.

Demonstrably this is not true of the United Kingdom. The British Constitution has been too damaged by the New Labour Project perverting the spirit, even more than the letter of the law, of an organic structure and uncodified practice. The visceral commitment of its ideologues, expressed through the BBC and other supported media, tax-diverted funded think tanks, and academia of the Left, will not permit reasonable dealings with parts of the country that have voted to get out from under their patronizing, interfering, social and political experimentation, and tax and imposts to pay for it all, including their elevated living standards. In Italy there is a sanction to overstepping the line into the people's lives, families, and culture paid by politicians and busybodies. And there is the film and the photographs and the writings of the horror to show, if needed.

That, thanks to the bravery of many and our good fortune, has not been the experience in England, and so a horrible regime has installed itself. The people are looking about for means to defend themselves. This vote has done a great deal. There should be another one, a general election, before those films and photographs become part of our heritage too.

Hatfield Results

The election count was completed at 3.58am

The new make up of Welwyn Hatfield Council is:

Conservative 40

Labour 5

Lib Dems 3

New Labour's Purpose Explained

"Whether the Labour Government has two or seven years left in office, its strategic goal must be to embed and Tory-proof a progressive Labour legacy against future political change," said Sunder Katwala, the Fabian Society's general secretary.

There we have the core vision of New Labour. Not the provision of government in keeping with long-settled and agreed constitutional practices; not delivery of manifesto promises to reduce poverty, improve education, assist the people as the global economy asserts itself to cope with changing economic opportunity and protect the country from adverse effects. Not opening choices and chances in life to all of us. It turned out to be the few, not the many who benefitted from 10 years of Brown's chancellorship. Never has inequality been so marked and increased so fast, since the watershed of 1945, as it has in this last decade. We are indebted, impoverished, and have done nothing to reconstitute a manufacturing and industrial base to replace the aging, collapsed industries and infrastructures that failed in the 70s and 80's. Where are our new coal, ship building, steel, processing industries? Where are our machine tool, vehicle production, new textiles industries, our advanced research and design-based technological development sectors?

Other countries in Europe have them all. It isn't true that China and India are the workshops of the world. New Labour have created a vast tax haven and its concomitant services, and an equally vast welfare-dependent bureaucracy and workless underclass client voter-base.

They would, wouldn't they? Their purpose is to embed Labour against future political change - to end democracy itself in our country and turn us into an administered province of the European Union, with their nomenklatura running this sector.

This is one of the last, unreformed, votes in our country. It may be local, limited in its scope, but it is also occurring across the country, and is as concerned with the vaunting of democratic practice as it is with electing particular candidates.

Angels voted.

Vote to Stop Prisoners' Hostels in Your Community

Mr Brown is planning to unveil a draft Queen’s Speech at the end of this month. It is expected to include measures on involving the community in tackling crime, reports this morning's Times. The outrage and real fear expressed at the opening of bail hostels for remand and early release prisoners, without consultation with residents or local councils, in residential areas of towns and cities across England, is not going to stop him. We don't like it? We think it will seed criminality and danger in every community? Gordon Brown is going to legislate to do just that; no doubt he thinks it is right.

Vote. Today should be a plebiscite against everything New Labour has ruined already, and its destructive intentions.