Dennis Benson

Posts Tagged ‘Baroness Warsi’

If this is summer God help us when winter arrives. I haven’t resumed the art of chicken-cleaning yet but felt morally obliged to look in on my pals in action on the allotments. Gumboots, gravel, cursing, sheets of water everywhere – it was not a happy sight. Perhaps we should have bred ducks which, unlike chickens, need no protection from the wet stuff.

Like a News of the World reporter of old I made my excuses and left. I headed for Tesco where I joined hordes of less-than-happy shoppers. For some it seems to have become somewhere to go when all else fails, but I have never become addicted to the idea of examining displays of baked beans as a diversion. But moments such as these do serve to remind one of just how crowded our island is becoming.

It was quite brave of Ed Miliband to speak out about immigration yesterday. Sadly what he said inspired little hope that he has any real plan in mind, but at least he did face up to the fact that his party has been “remarkably soft” on the issue. He was equally correct to say that politicians cannot go on with the pretence that there is no problem given that immigration is often the main topic of conversation in pubs and clubs up and down the land. 

When Theresa May recently ventured to suggest restrictions she was immediately confronted by Baroness Sayeeda Warsi – she of the expenses scandal – who predictably cried racism. It illusrated perfectly the mess we have allowed ourselves to get into. Somewhere along the line the politically-correct brigade have managed to convince everyone that to refuse entry to anyone who is not British by birth is to be racist, the sort of ghastly creature that is covered with tattoos and supports the BNP. It is of course illogical nonsense.

The simple, if unpopular, truth is that this island is becoming dangerously overcrowded. Every part of our social structure is creaking at the seams. Even without the handicap of Lansley, the NHS was losing its ability to cope with an ever increasing population, our social services are collapsing under the weight of rocketing caseloads, unemployment amongst young people is a nightmare, our roads are jam-packed with, er, jams, our commuter train services are the equivalent to cattle-trucks, our primary schools are swamped. Wherever you look things are overcrowded.

Given its obsession with austerity for the lower classes, the government is taking the axe to benefit payments, but no one mentions that over 350,000 of the claimants are recent immigrants. Many inner-city primary schools are under seige and class sizes have almost doubled in the past four years. To make things even worse more than a million children do not speak English as their first language. In the past year alone this total has risen by 50,000.

It all reminds me of the buses I used to catch many moons ago. The conductor would declare standing room only and, after allowing eight passengers to board, would declare that more would create dangerous overcrowding. That is where we are as a nation right now, yet the population projections suggest an increase of another 20 per cent over the next 20 years.

Perhaps the most alarming short-term crisis relates to employment. Miliband pointed to what he called “a collison of large immigration from Eastern Europe and a UK labour market that is becoming too nasty, brutish and short-term”. It is, he said, a “class thing”. If you wanted a conservatory built you are better off as a result of the large number of foreign workers recruited on short-term low-paid deals. If you earn your living by building conservatories you will struggle to find work.

Now that at last a leading politician has had the gumption to mention the unmentionable there is perhaps a ray of hope. There needs to be since over the next few months there is a real risk of large numbers arrivng from various parts of Europe. Someone has to have the courage to face up the EU and to say that the door is shut. And as new members of the EU such as Turkey appear someone has to make clear that unlimited access to the UK is not available.

Up until recently anyone coming out with such proposals would have been labelled a little Englander. No longer, most people now recognise that little England is sinking under the sheer weight of its numbers.

Our dear leader will doubtless respond to Miliband by pointing out the sanctity of the laws of the EU. Since he yesterday lectured the Argentinian President about the importance of referendums, perhaps he would like to hold one here. Polls suggest that his slavish adherence to EU rules is not quite as greatly admired as he imagines!

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QUOTES FOR TODAY;  ” A classic is a book that everyone wants to have read, but nobody wants to read”…..Mark Twain    “I gave my young nephew a book for Christmas. He spent a month looking for where to put the batteries”….Milton Berle     “A hundred thousand sperm and you were the fastest!”……Jim Hightower   “He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death”……Saki    “When they circumcised you they threw away the wrong bit”…..David Lloyd George   “Tony Blair is only Bill Clinton with his zip done up”……Neil Hamilton

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Another very hot day. The main preoccupation on the allotments is now water, an irony not lost on a bunch of codgers who have spent months splashing about in it. But in such temperatures chickens and plants alike consume enough liquid every hour to sink a battleship. So lugging is the order of the day, and we all know what happened to the captain of the lugger. Even the news that the Olympic Torch is due to pass our main gate this week did little to raise exhausted spirits when we sat down for our brew, but as always the morning headlines soon focussed our ancient minds.

The biggest surprise was the record of an interview given by Nick Clegg on yesterday’s Andrew Marr show. Being summoned to appear before Marr is the nearest earthly equivalent to meeting God, those called tend to spill the beans as one might in the confessional box. The difference is of course that what is said is immediately spread around by reporters, people least likely to be found on the Almighty’s right hand.

Asked about the News Corp scandal, Master Clegg was surprisingly frank. He said that the whole affair showed that Britain was being run by a “broken establishment”. “It all confirms my view that it’s high time we cleaned up our broken establishment”, he said and went on to say that his two years in government had convinced him that “power in this country is wrongly distributed, it’s totally wrong”. He didn’t actually mention posh boys but the inference was there, as it was later when Uncle Vince Cable talked of the need to break up the coalition “well before 2014″. Of course as with all Clegg contentions there is an inconsistency here. Clegg is part of the broken establishment.

But other more consistent vultures were hovering yesterday. Over on the Sky News ‘Murmaghan’ programme David Mellor was sharpening his talons. The former Tory cabinet minister said that there will be many scalps resulting from the Leveson Inquiry. The first to go will be Jeremy Hunt who should have realised that he could not take on a quasi-judicial role, having already expressed his determination to see the Murdoch bid through. But Mellor’s greatest venom was reserved for our dear leader.

Cameron, according to Mellor, won’t resign but his credibility is “blown away”. He went on to give his appraisal of David Cameron. “He has been exposed as a shallow callow sort of guy who doesn’t have too many aims and ambitions and can’t even get basic judgement calls right”. Oh dear. Considering that Mellor is still at the heart of the Conservative establishment that must have spoiled our dear leader’s weekend chillax. 

Several other leading-lights lined up to earn interview fees by condemning their own government. Usually Baroness Warsi can be relied upon to rush to the rescue by speaking out for the good, honest guys. Sadly she was somewhat preoccupied defending herself. The fact that the normally supportive Telegraph has this morning published a whole page of ‘evidence’ regarding her expenses suggests that Knacker may be calling. Leading Lib Demmer Lord Oakeshott was quick to point out that like Ceasar’s wife, she must be above suspicion. He added that “I’m afraid the story so far looks seriously suspicious”.

But there is perhaps hope for an establishment under attack if one of the assailants is Nick Clegg, given his habit of invariably advocating that which the bulk of the nation opposes. Having earlier implied that the Tory part of the coalition would struggle to run a gentleman’s club – posh boys never run chip shops – he turned on Theresa May for suggesting that we may have to limit immigration from Greece if it finally collapses. “This is unhelpful, we are all Europeans”, he boomed. Maybe, but does he seriously believe that our crowded island can go on accepting whoever fancies drawing benefits here?

However, despair not. The British establishment may be broken but it ain’t broke. Today we learn that Cameron has over £4 million in his piggy bank, Hunt £4.7 million, Spelman £4.5 million, Hague £4.8 million, Osborne £4.5 million, Strathclyde £9.5 million and Hammond £8.2 million.

So even if the vultures finally dive, our dear leader and his pals can head for a cave and still have enough of the readies to order supplies from Harrods!

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A THOUGHT FOR TODAY!

“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly – you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over!”…..Eckhart Tolle

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We have just returned from sun-kissed Snowdonia. Several of us share ownership of a holiday home which stands on the edge of the beach. Our usual experience is of a Scott’s last journey vintage with gale-force winds rattling our false teeth, this weekend was somewhat different. Even our fellow Welshmen were too drained to sing along with the Eurovision Song Contest, surely the utimate cure for insomnia.

We left Albert and several other chickenmen in charge. Albert has never been involved with the Welsh ventures, he regards us as a bunch of Welsh gits. We take no offence since his racism extends to most other parts of the Kingdom. Anyone not born in Lancashire is personna non-grata with titchy Al.

It is always interesting to chat to the villagers in North Wales. At the best of times they are less than keen on what they see as posh boys in distant Westminster. Now they are finally alienated. They may dwell in what our friends regard as God’s country far removed from English hell, but they read the same newspapers. And this weekend has finally confirmed their worst prejudices. We used to scorn their comments about posh boys as bent as hairpins, but suddenly that is exactly how it appears.

The political scandal over Murdoch’s battle to buy BSkyB moved closer to David Cameron yesterday after new evidence undermined the prime minister’s claim that his Government was scrupulously even handed in deciding on the £8 billion deal. A memo, released by the Leveson Inquiry, revealed for the first time that Mr Cameron already knew his Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt was in favour of the bid, before he handed him quasi-judicial power to rule on it after Vince Cable had been mysteriously trapped in to revealing his dislike for the Murdochs. In the private message to the PM, Mr Hunt told that James Murdoch was furious at the delay and stressed the importance of the deal going through.

It has also emerged that Mr Hunt may have misled parliament by claiming that contacts with his sacked adviser did not involve him. In fact Hunt himself exchanged personal texts with Murdoch’s adviser, even to the extent of personal chat about their respective children. In total more than 1000 texts were exchanged between News Corp and Mr Hunt’s department.

Both Cameron and Hunt have great PR skills, but even their verbal sleight of hand cannot explain away the mass of revelations that show that they were both hell-bent on waving through the bid. Had it not been for the Millie Dowler affair the planned emasculation of the BBC would now be underway. Web of deceit hardly covers what has been going on. The so-called Chipping Norton set was perhaps the first indication that the Prime Minister was inappropriately involved with vested interests. Now we know that the stories of regular parties and get-togethers were but the tip of a corrupt iceberg.

In most organisations such a state of affairs would by now have been referred to the Chairman, someone who can normally be relied upon to stand apart from any misconduct. But the Conservative Party chairman is Baroness Warsi. This morning’s Sunday Torygraph has front page headlines that feature her, and for all the wrong reasons. The Baroness has admitted that she failed to declare a source of income for more than  a year. And on this evenings’ BBC news a GP landlord has claimed that she paid no rent for accomodation on his proerty yet claimed expenses. 

The Telegraph headline related to income from a London property she had bought and rented out. In normal times the Baroness might have escaped too much attention, but after so much talk by both her and our dear leader of a “commitment to be one of the most transparent governments in the world” it is very bad news indeed for the coaltion’s credibility.

Mr Hunt’s position is already untenable, the idea that he is not responsible for what his adviser does is ludicrous, especially since we now know that he condoned what was happening. And the web is beginning to close around the dear leader who still faces revelations at the various criminal cases being lined up by Knacker.

The latest polls show that the public now trusts Miliband and Balls more than Cameron et al. It isn’t that they have done anything to earn that trust, but they need do nothing given that ministers are sinking quickly into a quicksand from which escape looks as likely as the Welsh Nationalists lining up to applaud them!

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