The seriously delusional berk, Balls, has got himself embroiled in a fantastic spat with Fraser Nelson the Spectator columnist. You can read it HERE.
All I want is for Balls and his other loony Labour luvvies to bugger off. . .all they need to do is leave their offices tidy for the Conservative that will follow them.
Last year there was a good deal of controversy over the fact that Tony Blair shredded much of the information surrounding his parliamentary expense claims. Here is the heavily 'redacted' claim from September 2007 for £305.50. So not only did the spinmeister shred the evidence, but we paid for it! Really you could make none fo this up and of course nothing will happen to millionaire Blair. The whole thing is almost too amazing for words.
At the weekend we had Alan and Maurice, two experts, come to look inside our owl box. Alan, the man up the ladder, is a bird-ringer who went and opened the lid – inside was the female and two, maybe three young. They were too small to ring and he'll come back in about a month to do it.
Muriel Gray knows a thing or two about the telly so it's very revealing what she has written in the Herald on Sunday about Alan Sugar's appointment as 'business tsar' – whatever the hell that is. No one in their right mind can honestly believe that Sugar can do anything for British business; he is after all just a TV presenter. However, what his appointment is ultimately all about is the mindlessness of Brown and his henchman Lord Mandy.
Most damning of all in Ms Gray's piece is this. "Nothing wrong with any of that. It's a terrific show. Sugar does what he's told by the producers, appears to follow a script as he often stumbles over the words, and is probably, if other reality shows are the benchmark, told by the production team which contestant to fire each week."
Read the whole thing and weep for what a nonsense this government has become. Maybe instead of elections we should have Simon Cowell and half a dozen other celebrity judges should help select our politicians. Pick our Politicians or The Ballot Box on the box? We'd probably get more people voting and would they be any less competent or qualified?
So let's get this straight. Gordon Brown, a man elected to serve his constituency in Fife by 24,278, who then becomes Prime Minister in some kind of stitch-up with Tony Blair wants change. He's a man who has brought into government as his de facto No.2 someone who has been disgraced twice and continues to show little more than contempt for everyone who comes into contact with him. He's also a man who has added more unelected people to his front bench than any Prime Minister in living memory. This is the man who is now proposing electoral reform of our democracy. It's bloody staggering!
You'll pardon me for being somewhat sceptical of his reasons. At best he's looking for ways to deflect yet more criticism of his patched up government. At worst he's trying to save his own skin. In fact everything that Gordon Brown does is about 'me', not about the country and the people he constantly claims to serve. Naturally to do a job like PM you have to have a highly, a very highly, developed ego. It seems like we have a man who is so convinced of his own rightness that he does not tolerate dissent, is prepared to sell his soul (to Mandelsdon, if not the Devil) and who is more focused on himself than the job he has to do. Despite all the talk of getting on with the job all he has succeeded in doing is getting on our collective nerves. In a random poll across the country I doubt that Brown would make double figures in the popularity stakes.
And we all thought it couldn't get any worse.
Gordon Brown when he became PM promised us a government of all the talents and set about granting peerages left, right and centre to bring in people to positions as 'ultra special advisers'. But with this latest reshuffle Brown seems to be bringing in more and more talent' to do jobs that others could just as easily do. Mrs Kinnock, while experienced in Europe, gets a great gig to boost her personal standing and do precisely what? Is there really nobody among the 350 Labour MPs who could do the job?
The opening this week of the Whitelee wind farm outside Glasgow exposes the lying and deceitfulness of both the wind farm industry and Alex Salmond.
Hurrah they all trumpeted! The 322-megawatt wind farm is going to be able to power the whole of Glasgow. Except it isn't. Government figures show that it will likely operate at a capacity of 28% which means it will be far from effective but just as expensive. It will do little more than keep half of Glasgow’s lights on, and not do anything to power TVs, dishwashers, tumble dryers et al.
Of course it will make a lot of people a lot of money because of the subsidies that are paid. Especially the Spanish owned company that built it and the landowners on whose land it's built. We will be paying massive subsidies so that these ultimate examples of gesture politics can keep turning.
Meanwhile, according to Jason Ormiston the former PR windbag for Scottish Renewables, which represents the wind industry, the vast majority of wind farms were sited out with highly sensitive landscape areas. What utter bollocks. Try coming to the Lammermuir Hills where most of the wind farms are built on AGLVs (officially designated Areas of Great Landscape Vale) and a SSSI in the case of the Aikengall wind farm. He also said, "One of the biggest threats to wild land is climate change and one of the most effective responses to it is the sensible development of renewable energy." He said this in his capacity of Chief Executive of Scottish Renewables, having been promoted from PR spokesman.
He went on to say, "The industry will continue to work with a rigorous planning system so that the building of productive renewable energy projects in the right places continues to follow good practice." He, and his organization, cares not a jot where they are built, just as long as they are. The wind farm planned by that defender of the Scottish Borders landscape, the Duke of Roxburghe on land he owns in the Lammermuir Hills at Fallago Ridge is case in point. It s on peat bogs that will be forever ruined by the concrete bases that are the size of football pitches that will be needed if the wind farm gets approval. It has been awaiting a decision by the Scottish Government's reporter following a public inquiry for over a year now. The reason that none has been forthcoming is nothing to do with the fact that it will complete the decimation of these remote hills, but because the MOD objected. Their radar will not work properly, creating 'holes' in its effectiveness. Ironically it would not be able to 'see' if an aircraft was approaching the Torness Nuclear Power station.
So desperate is the Duke’s company to develop this wind farm that they have got the former Conservative minister and now MP for Kensington and Chelsea, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, to write to Des Browne and another Labour Minister pointing out that they are acting contrary to the Prime Minster’s stated aims.
"As you know, the Prime Minister has indicated very recently the importance the government attaches to the development of alternative energy projects, and clearly wind farms must be a very important part of this overall strategy. It would be unfortunate if one arm of the government was pursuing a policy with such rigidity that it conflicted with the broader arms of the government."
Now that’s a first. A Tory helping the Prime Minister!
Then we have the downright untruths spouted by the great leader who opened the Whitelee wind farm. According to Alex Salmond, "Whitelee in its current form is already flying the flag for onshore wind power in Europe. The benefits of this investment go beyond South Lanarkshire and beyond our real economy. It is an investment in Scotland's potential and ambition to lead the clean, green energy revolution."
Back in January 2007 Alex Salmond was unequivocal. "There is a real difficulty with public acceptance of onshore wind. There should be a cap on future developments. We should concentrate the development of onshore wind into suitable areas.”
He went to say that financial support for onshore wind farms should be looked at again as he believed there was a danger onshore wind developers were getting too much financial support. Of course all that was done in order to help the SNP get elected and gain votes in areas where there was rising opposition to wind farms being built against public opinion.
This volte-face from Mr. Salmond is not totally unexpected; he is after all a politician. But such is the courting of the Scottish government by the renewables industry that even I’m staggered by the complete change in attitude. Does he not understand that wind turbines are inefficient, make little money for Scotland – other than for the landowners and the renewable companies, which are often foreign owned?
Are there any wind farms in Mr. Salmond’s constituencies? In fact how many wind farms have been approved in SNP constituencies as opposed to opposition constituencies? It might make for interesting analysis.
Nadine Dorries the Tory MP has had her blog taken down overnight. Apparently her less than well thought out remarks on the Barclay Brothers having some kind of agenda against British politics has caught up with her. As I said yesterday her new media profile could back fire on her, and it has. I read her blog last evening before I went to bed and I have to say it made pretty dire reading. Having read it occasionally I didn't think it was that well written and having watched her on Question Time a couple of weeks ago my immediate reaction was, thinks she's smarter than she is. She is/was clearly in a bit of a spin over all the Telegraph's coverage and she announced on her blog that she is going on holiday. I think she needs one. I bet David Cameron thinks likewise.
Update
There's a short article by Ms Dorries in the Indy, it does not reflect well on her. She calls what is happening to MPs, "torture" – a very poor choice of words. She also complains that MPs should be paid what they are worth; I think a lot of us feel that too. I get offered some small amounts to write some books, I accept it and get on with it, or I don't and I don't. I'm not complaining, it's the way things are. She's been in the House for 4 years and already she's a fully paid up member of the club.
