Have Your Say

(emboldened portions of text my own - Tom)

Dear thomas,

Next week, Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Climate Change, heads to the international climate talks in Copenhagen. It's urgent that the world signs up to a fair, ambitious and binding deal, and real progress at these talks is crucial. This week, we have a brilliant opportunity to urge the minister to push hard for real progress in Copenhagen.

Ed Miliband has agreed to join a phone call with 38 Degrees members before he sets off. He'll answer our questions and hear our concerns at 10am, Saturday 5th December. Thousands of us dialing in to listen and ask questions will be a great way to send a powerful message - he'll go to the summit with our words ringing in his ears.

Register to join the phone call now:

http://www.38degrees.org.uk/phone-call-with-the-secretary-of-state

Joining the phone call is easy, but you need to sign up to take part. [1] Enter your details in a few seconds, and you'll be sent instructions including the number to dial on Saturday and password to join the call.

Together we can send a powerful message to the government that we want them to do all they can to secure a good deal to tackle climate change. Ed Miliband has agreed to join us for this call because by campaigning together we've got the government's attention. Now we can talk to him directly and send a strong message that we want the government to bring back a good deal.

We know that people power is crucial to persuading world leaders to sign up to a strong deal in Copenhagen. Next Saturday afternoon, thousands of people from all over the UK will march through the streets of London to demand a safe climate future for all. Some of us will be there. [2] For those that can't make it down to London, joining a phone call with Ed Miliband that morning will be a great way to still be part of the pressure.

Register to quiz Ed Miliband on the UK's first public phone conference with a cabinet minister:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/phone-call-with-the-secretary-of-state


Thanks for getting involved,

David, Hannah, Johnny, Nina and the 38 Degrees team

PS: Please forward this email to your friends and ask them to join the call too by clicking here: http://38degrees.org.uk/phone-call-with-the-secretary-of-state


NOTES

[1] Once you've registered, we'll provide you with a number to dial and a password to join the call. Calls will cost the same as an ordinary national phone call. You can submit your question to Ed when you register. Later this week you'll have a chance to vote to prioritise the most popular questions. Register here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/phone-call-with-the-secretary-of-state

[2] 38 Degrees will be gathering in Grosvenor Square in central London at 12pm, ready to set off at 1pm. Come and find us - we'll be the ones with the big 38 Degrees banner and we'll have some blue paint if you want to join in with the blue hand stunt around Parliament at 3pm! More info about The Wave and Stop Climate Chaos can be found here: http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/the-wave

38 Degrees brings you together with other people to take action on the issues that matter to you and bring about real change. To find out more visit www.38degrees.org.uk. If you no longer wish to be part of our movement and receive our emails, please click the link below to unsubscribe:
www.38degrees.org.uk/unsubscribe

™ 38 DEGREES 2009 Registered Company No. 6642193


Do your bit for Climate change.

UPDATE: My question to Ed:

Does the recent leak of emails and data from the CRU/UEA groups (dubbed "ClimateGate" in the media) change our position from one supporting mitigation to one supporting adaptation, considering the emails and data cast serious doubt on the entire case for Anthropogenic Global Warming particularly as the main scientists involved represent the scientific arm of the IPCC?

Still need questions regarding what his definition of the Greenhouse effect is, whether he will enforce FoI requests to access all data used in policy formulation and, for fun, Whether he thinks 1 tree rings worth of data from an obscure wilderness in Russia is enough evidence to base a multi-trillion pound, multinational project with the ability to impoverish millions worldwide?

Go on; you know you want to.

If Further Proof Was Needed...

That the establishment, the state, and it's corporate cronies are rent-seeking, nay, bitch-slapping the electorate with impunity this is it.

So on the one hand the banks can dip into your already threadbare trouser pocket with one hand then get government to dip in your other.

Wait I should correct that; the government long ago plundered your trousers for your remaining coppers; there deficit spending means their tucking into your childrens piggy banks and your grandchildrens birthday card money.

"investing in your childrens future"? More like divesting them of it.

-- Post From My iPhone

Politicians Will Do Everything For Our Childrens Education...

..except get off our back.

Steve Bettison at the ASI writes about independant schools advertising subsidised private education on adverts in London; this can only be a good thing.

My sister benefitted from such a scheme at a brilliant all-girls school in Yorkshire; having narrowly missed a total scholarship due to procrastination and a missed deadline she was still able to get a partial subsidy; it was hard going on our family but the options it opened to her even today have been worth it.

Education policy in the UK angers me; it is elitist, it is rent-seeking and it is destructive of the minds of the kids it churns through it; my wife, a teacher, tells me I'm imagining it, that stories like this are over-estimating a problem that is non-existent in her experience; I then have to point out that as her Catholic School is diocese-subsidised the overall resources have been increased for her pupils, and we should look at the experience of our youth group who go to some of the worst schools in Leeds, if they go at all.

She then sits, lips pursed.

We no longer ask the simple questions or debate the logic anymore; my belief is simple and can be summed up thus:

If private schools do better why not make all schools private?

This however needs to be expanded on a little - we tend to misinterpret the word "private" in this setting to mean "state directed, but privately controlled": again the premise is faulty; we are not providing a service to the state but are enabling our children to cope with the world and engage in independant thought- we should not be turning out drones for the state to bleed parasitically but free-thinking individuals who's strength and ingenuity is a benefit to all.

The road here is long and will only be climbed properly if we take the state out of education; out of the curriculum, out of schools and out of teacher training- if it needs to remain anywhere it should stick to funding it, not running it.


-- Post From My iPhone

The PoPo*

* = (Every time I think of cops I think back to the excellent series The Wire and cannot help myself using gangster colloquialisms; I need help I know)

DK, amongst others (rejoicing?) over the head of a private company saying he will resign if the Bory's (power pending) go through with their plans to nationalise their business (one business hopefully the majority of libertarians** and conservatives agree needs it. Badly)

In an interview for BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Sir Hugh said: "Even the perception that the police service of this country… is under any political influence, I think that suggests you cannot argue that you are a proper democratic society. It's as simple and as stark as that.
"Every chief officer fully understands the need to be held accountable. "We must be operationally independent in terms of how we deliver policing. We should not be influenced by anyone who has any potential or suggestion for a political basis."

Let's have a look at a definition of politics:

Politics is a process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic and religious institutions. It consists of "social relations involving authority or power" and refers to the regulation of a political unit, and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy.

So really the problem he has is not with politicisation, which occurs whereever authority and power is wielded over a social group, but with the democracy he states our society is under, i.e. one in which he and his cronies can be ousted for doing a crap job, ignoring local needs and pandering to greater, illiberal power bases that have become the norm under labour.

Many bloggers positions themselves along common themes within their understanding or interest in things that bug them; for me it is the use of words and their understanding- I am well aware that meanings change quite naturally but the coalescence of political pull in the hands of those with a collectivist mindset brings about a perversion of this natural process to suit their needs; George Orwell realised this whilst writing 1984; doublethink and doublespeak have been slipping in the backdoor ever since.

If the individual is to win this assault on our freedoms we first need to identify and fight this most fundamental of enemies- the inversion of meaning and the framing of arguements; noone rebukes Sir Hugh Orde for claiming that democratically electing police chiefs is anti-democratic; noone challenges the premise that printing more money in a world with a fixed number of resources undermines the value of all money.

Noone challenges the legalised plunder of our hard earned cash either from it's dilution or from it's deliberate removal on pain of menaces.

The Bory's plan will become toothless at best, be abandoned at worst when the lobbying of vested interests begins; LPUK's policy won't because we understand that the sheer mental gymnastics and wishfull thinking won't keep the whole charade from collapsing- our government, as has many western governments have effectively traded in what the Americans term chapter 11 bankruptcy; we trade our deficit in for the prosperity of our children and grandchildren. This will end, either way.

Local accountability is the first of many steps in fixing this country; it'll lead to questions and a better understanding of how we've been conned all these years. Let's hope it isn't killed off before it can be born.

Nothing Good...

Dr North at the ever brilliant EU Referendum comes this article in the Brussels Journal about our new fearless and unelected leader, Herman Van Rompuy.

Well worth a read as it illustrates the anti-democratic nature of the EU to a T; it seems the prerequisites are simple enough - you must show a flair for this and a predisposition towards this type of thinking.

Some years ago my friend JonJon and I went to the Leeds Film Festival Night of the Dead and saw a Belgium film called The Ordeal; normally not a lot phases us, being veteran horror buffs but this film's tale of unrelenting misery and cruelty is unmatched in any film we've seen in the near-decade we've been going to the festival; not because it was scary but because it was also depressing.

Since then we have had a maxim we've never been able to disprove (though I open to proof to the contrary):

Nothing Good Ever Comes From Belgium

Time to leave.

Prostitution

Directed to this website of an idiot MEP by Dick Puddlecote (see my blogroll) I left this comment (Collectivists tend not to like challenges to their ideas or thinking; it frightens them*)

I take it Ms. Honeyball that youhave read this? I would submit this article to Geoffrey Jackson's viewing in particular just so he can see the extent of how this problem, essentially non-existent, and then ask him if he would see a large proportion of finite police resources spent on it which could be spent on a problem like gang activity, gun-running or muggings with greater effect?

The truth is that politically directed policing operations make great copy, but make little difference and have a tendency to ignore bigger problems while focusing attention on smaller, more media/pressure group friendly problems- meanwhile old ladies are beat up in their homes, pre-teens are murdered by gangs and drug dealers peddle their substandard and potentially dangerous concoctions to the lower dregs of society, perpetuating misery.

Prostitution is treated bizarrely in this country; how can we think the act itself is fine between consenting adults but then benefitting from it monetarily is a bad thing? Do we treat similar transactions to the same sort of insecure, swivel eyed nonsense? If I like food, and start a business as a chef am I going to be put in jail for providing a service I love to others with similar feelings/desires?

This is a beautifully emotive subject and I am not saying the problemdoes not exist; but by criminalising it in the way we do we exacerbate it to the detriment of the prostitutes, the punters and give a helping hand to those groups who benefit (whether you be a pimp, human trafficker or an MEP or pressure group with an ideological axe to grind).

Again we see a solution to these problems; liberalising, legalising and acknowledging the existence of a market for sex protects the most vulnerable within it- in New Zealand we have licensing authorities which register and protect the most vulnerable; income taxes are collected which can then be used to deal with the health and criminal concerns of the industry and reduce it to non-existent levels; Portugal have done a similar thing with drug legalisation which is transforming the face of drug use their in a way which protects the most vulnerable.

Only we, the so called birthplace of democracy and enlightenment, are stepping backwards and in so doing allowing chaos to rule.

Do not mistake me- as a follower of Jesus Christ's teachings I find the act of selling that most wonderful and precious gift between man and woman as upsetting as the next; I would however direct my fellow Christians to this; take care as to who you side with, whether wittingly or otherwise. If we have a problem with how a peoples conduct their business or live their lives we should tell them with love and seek out our own salvation first with fear and trembling; we should not use the force of the law to push our agenda - that is the broad road and has created this mess which allows the kind of abuses we see with human trafficking, White slavery and pimping to continue. The law should be an extrapolation of the maxim Freedom from...:

Freedom from coercion.

Freedom from Interference.

Freedom from oppression.

We undermine all freedoms when we forget any one of these freedoms; this allows those who prey on others to prosper.

As I've said in previous posts I like sex; it's the most wonderful union you can have between man and women; I think that those with multiple partners build up a lot of emotional baggage God doesn't want them to be burdened with, but that doesn't give me licence to proscribe the act itself and under what terms it is conducted; if we do this we ultimately drive it into the hands of worse people who oppress whole peoples.

Like drugs, prostitution should be legal and clarity on this needs to be given for the sake of those few trafficked or damaged women who the law should protect, not reject for ideologies sake.

-- Post From My iPhone

Hindsight & Agit Prop

On immigration, the UK maintains control over its own borders and immigration from non-EU states. The UK has always recognised the benefits of legal migration. Over 90 million people visit the UK each year and this openness ensures the UK has a vibrant society and a strong economy. Under EU rules, just as British people have the right to live and work elsewhere in the EU, other EU nationals can live and work in Britain.

A portion of the answer given to the original e-petition to abolishing the 1972 European Communities Act.

As Wat Tyler has pointed out ad nauseum in his immigration posts there has been little benefit. Personally I think immigration is a benefit to any country; what we have been experiencing is a balancing act between those who do come to look for work and those who come to rinse the benefits system because their is no impediment to this. That doesn't even take into account non-EU immigration; whole peoples brutalised and belittled; doctors scrubbing toilets; physicists and philosophers washing cars or serving drunk chavs on nights out with congealed minced lamb in a nan. All the while hated by all the knuckle dragging, daily sport reading, BNP Luddites lounging on their DFS sofas watching Jeremy Kyle, smoking and drinking up their benefits all the while.

And whilst person A gets angry at person B, person C is creaming the EU gravy train for all it's worth, laughing as one lot doesn't vote in any meaningful way whilst the other group is sent back to whatever hole they crawled out of.

It may be good to look through a few more of these early petition answers to realise how much nonsense has really been spouted.

Speaking of Anger...

...this got my blood boiling:

The Prime Minister is completely focussed on restoring the economy, getting people back to work and improving standards in public services. As the Prime Minister has consistently said, he is determined to build a stronger, fairer, better Britain for all.

I know I shouldn't expect much from these petitions being that they are little more than agit prop in a can, but I did hold out some hope this might be the push he needed.

Do you like the use of language that is as evasive as it is meaningless? I think it needs a fair, open and honest retort:

Gordon, to make sure you understand the mood and language of those who signed this petition we weren't asking you to "try harder" or "make Britain fairer", I don't want you to "get me back to work"; I want you to get out of the way of the wealth creators left in Britain so that they can provide me with the oportunities I need to make a worthwhile contribution to the UK, and be compensated well without a gouging on payday.

I want "public services" to be just that: public - not in the hands of idiot, box-ticking commisars or rent-seeking big business donors; I most certainly want as a new father health and education system that responds to me as a consumer, not a pleb to be marshalled into action by diktat. In short I want you to give this country what it is crying out for: less of you, the odious floaters you call a cabinet and the assorted wooden tops and vultures who occupy Parliament.

And if this is still too much for you to take in Gordo here's the abridged version: you and your answer to this petition can kiss my hairy ballsack.

JD is Angry...

...very angry indeed. With no discernable cause; I would be worried, but maybe it's simply that there are too many nowadays to discern in all the chaos.

In the West today, we all join hands and sing ring a ring a roses when we talk about the Nazis of the 1930s. We all agree, oh so easily, that they were evil and wrong and what they did was disgusting and the treatment of the Jews was awful.

This follows an interesting illustration of the anatomy of rage and anger, and reminds me of some stories Oma tells me.

Oma is my wife's grandmother, so called because she was born and raised in Germany, moving to the UK shortly after the war to become a nanny for several families.

During the war a sprightly Oma in her tweens was sent as part of the Hitler youth to work on a farm plantation whilst the war machine rattled all over Europe; she has described the entirety of this experience to us in vivid living colours, in many ways as real and remarkable as Em's grandfather's experience, who rode the tanks onto the beaches at Normandy and was even responsible for the Queens training as an engineer (sadly he passed away last year but his stories were incredible).

Anyway back to Oma; one thing is clear - in between the stories of rationing, of scarcity and of military marches, both beginning with the reichs armies outward and ending with the Allies inward, we see a clear pattern emerging of good people, good German people, being made to do very bad things, or, and in some ways this is worse, do nothing at all, by very evil people. My wife's grandma tilled fields and worked in veritable slave labour on a farm as part of her "civic" duty (best to remember this when Obama uses oxymorons like "compulsory volunteer work" or Cambo pushes for his own version of the Hitler youth; it's the tools of fascism if ever I saw them). These are the Group C lot who are instigating the hatred between 2 counter groups in society to capitalise on it.

What JD is pointing out is that good people can do bad things; it is not without reason that Jesus Christ warned that anger was as much murder as murder is.

What I think is that we are finally figuring out who Group C are and what they are doing to the rest of us; we no longer get mad at each other because we can see the true cause of the worlds problems rest with a small band of elites who thrive on out capitulation and consent- many are saying no more.

This isn't rage.

This is a righteous anger. The lens of our vitriol is slowly being focused on those who need it; we need to be careful where we direct this anger.