High Speed Railway 2 - more corrupt practices

Few of us want the expensive and corruption-riddled HS2 project to continue, backed as it is by the European Union (we are meant to talk of its line speeds in kph, not mph) - especially now that another fat-cat passenger has just clambered aboard the public gravy train -

"Mark Bayley is among almost 2,500 senior civil servants who have been paid through secretive 'off payroll' arrangements, which ministers fear could allow them to avoid income tax. Mr Bayley was reappointed recently as the interim commercial director of High Speed 2, an offshoot of the Department for Transport. The department pays a daily rate of between £1,700 and £1,799 for his services, according to documents published on a government website. A proportion of the money is believed to go to the headhunting firm that recruited him."

I wonder who the kickbacks were paid to? If ministers really are "afraid" that he will be avoiding income tax, then perhaps mandarins are taking decisions (and bribes) behind their backs. But on the other hand, ministers are notorious for passing the buck to civil servants for decisions they have made themselves.

Civil service growth areas

John Redwood MP reports on a healthy level of growth in the bureaucracy -

"The Overseas Aid Department tells me they have increased their staff from 2357 in 2010 to 2512 now, a net increase of 155. They have recruited 327 new people to replace leavers as well as grow the staff numbers. The Climate Change Department has also boosted its staff from 1036 in 2010 to 1286 today, a net gain of 250. They have recruited 435 people."

Well done to the government and the civil service for tackling these important staffing issues, which arouse such powerful emotions in our hearts - even though overseas aid means corruption kickbacks and global warming isn't happening.

Strasburg tells us who can vote

Well, we knew that foreigners could vote - EU nationals, postal voters domiciled in Pakistan and so on - but for eight years we've been waiting for the European Court of Human Rights to tell us, finally, once and for all, whether our own prisoners can vote or not. Now we have the answer - they can and they can't.

"The court signalled that the UK government could decide which prisoners should be enfranchised, meaning serious offenders such as murderers and rapists could be excluded."

Or as John Boulton, the blunt former US ambassador to the United Nations puts it   -

"Britain should renounce the jurisdiction of this court. It’s a question of what do British people want to do. Do you want to be an independent nation?"

Now why can't our own politicians put it this way, and then give us a choice - via a referendum, not an easily-broken manifesto promise - on whether we want our independence back, or whether we want to be forced to give sanctuary to terrorists as we are now, and the vote to drug dealers (in ecstasy, say, but not crack)?

Is it because the human rights convention and its court are a convenient way to pack as many foreigners into the country as possible, so as to drive down wages for the benefit of our corrupt politicians' employer friends? What other reason could there be for not giving us a choice? True, membership of the EU is conditional upon Britain remaining signed up to Strasburg. But who wants to go down with a sinking ship?

Dissident IRA groups are no different to the old IRA

Why am I crossposting from the Belfast Telegraph? Because as usual, this kind of news wasn't of any interest to newspaper editors on the British mainland. And contrary to what the cowardly Tories (who started offloading the province to republicans a year after the Brighton bombing) might prefer you to think, Northern Ireland is still part of the United Kingdom.

"Police have questioned a 26-year-old man over an under-car bomb attack bid carried out on the parents of a serving PSNI officer. The man, who is being held at Antrim Serious Crime Suite, was arrested in Londonderry yesterday following a planned search of a house in Pine Trees, Buncrana Road....."

Although police think this would-be killer belongs to an IRA "dissident" organisation, let us not forget that the official IRA started out as a "provisional" dissident group which had split from the original movement because it was no longer violent enough. The fact is that the members of all these groups are terrorists, none worse than the butcher of Bloody Sunday and later Provisional IRA chief of staff Martin McGuinness.

And a genuine "peace" (as opposed to appeasement) process can only begin when these murderers are brought to justice - natural or otherwise.

Welsh Assembly says "please sir, I want some more"

January 2003 - The Guardian - "Public spending in Wales is 18% higher than in England....taxes, interest rates and inflation would soar in Wales if it had to fund its own public services.....There is an historic gap between what is spent and what is raised in tax in Wales."

April 2007 - BBC News - "Patients in Wales are now entitled to free prescriptions, as the cost rises to £6.85 in the rest of the UK......GP and pharmacist representatives in Wales said scrapping the charges was "good news" for those who find paying for medicines difficult.....the aim of the policy is to reduce patient inequality."

May 2010 - Daily Mail - "In the UK as a whole, the taxpayer-funded public sector currently accounts for about 42 per cent of GDP......in Wales.....well over 60 per cent......Westminster’s ‘block grant’ to fund the services managed by the Welsh assembly has more than doubled from £7billion to £16billion since 1999."

July 2011 - This is South Wales - "Universities in Wales will charge tuition fees of up to £9,000 per year.....Welsh students will be shielded from this rise by the Assembly Government....The fee rise is not so good for English students who want to study in Wales as they will have to pay full whack."

May 2012 - Wales Online - "An extraordinary recommendation has been made that would see up to £400,000-a-year spent on translating the written record of every meeting....AMs have convinced themselves that translating every word uttered in English during official Assembly meetings into Welsh should be viewed as a current priority."

OK, that's ENOUGH! Spending per person throughout the UK must be equalised, as the more money English taxpayers throw at the Celtic fringes, the more gets spent on waste, on corruption, and on jobs for the girls and boys - and with the donors forced to put up with second-rate public services. Sign the petition.

UK taxpayer losses if the euro crashes

The Bruges group relates the kind of grim story that you should never tell your children at bedtime. Unless you are German ("haha, soon Tommy vill be up Scheiße kreek like us, kinder - serves zem right for winnink zer var!")

"The UK has a Maximum Possible Loss of €149.2 billion......€110 billion to the European Union, including a €60 billion exposure to the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism..... The second largest exposure is to the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg, €1.9 billion of paid-in capital and €35.7 billion of immediately callable, subscribed capital......The third area of exposure is to the European Central Bank......the ECB reportedly owns €40 billion of Greek government bonds, so a haircut of any size would eliminate its capital and cause it to call upon its shareholders."

And that €149.2 billion doesn't include our potential losses on International Monetary Fund loans, which amount to another £40 billion - just to prop up the euro. It's a funny common currency that needs to be subsidised by sterling.