Saturday special

There's a rumour spreading round South Shore that the council is opening it's own Pole Dancing Club called Fowlers. Membership courtesy of Conservative HSA -House Selling Agency - on Crystal Avenue.

No minutes and cash only. CIU members cards. (Criminal Investment Utility)

Blackpool blogger returns - welcome

Phil the One is back on his Blackpool blog

Now do not mince your words, Phil. Councillor Callow may or may not have visited his daughter at rate payers expenses, first class on overpriced Rail. Councillor Fowler, the one who so often visited his Ward that he did not know that Waterloo Road was/is an A road, nor that the proposed walkway would ruin some prestigious businesses, certainly travels FIRST CLASS on rail.
You are only a common councillor Ian. You are elected to represent your ward, not laud over it. That overstretched business man with his excessive rates bills is your master, not your servant. If you disagree with his argument, confront him and debate it with him but never hit him with a fait accompli. When the last businessman has left your ward because he is sick of the crippling local costs, who will subsidise your jaunts to the Big City?
Not me. You've already proved your lack of worth.

Is there anyone out there prepared to stand against these established parties? It is time we started now to get rid of them all and gave the council to the people.

Spending others money

Holiday season in Blackpool and many of the lately common faces have disappeared. Gay Gordon is so busy annoying the Speaker with his endless prattle he will have to spend the next three months on Brighton bitch – is that how you spell seashore?- getting over his latest handbagging.

The Kenilworth Clanger has convenienced himself by not attending any of the controversial forums, signing over rate payers money to Conservative benefactors. It is rumoured that he is parked on Westminster Green bewailing the fact that they wont let him in. The last act of a vindictive government was to send a Marstons bailiff out to remove him to the nearest hole in the wall, so that he could return some of his electioneering donations to Blackpool magistrates’ court. It is not true that he died because he had to use his own money, otherwise Philtheone would have blogged it on Blackpool Aloud and the bogus Royal Marine Major would have resurrected himself on his own petard. He died at the hands of the electorate who were not convinced at his soporific outburst at his colleagues’ expenses extravagances. It is the same as generations of MP’s who ignored the theft from public purse by their fellow MP's and did nothing. It is all too easy to admonish the benefit cheat, but to sit, eat and play with those who do real damage to morals is contemptuous.

Word on the Promenade is that Councillor Clanger was advised to go bent. What was meant was for him to emulate Basil Newby – a thoroughly decent egg - and not the First Class travellers of the MeMeMeMe brigade in Pink Hall. When I asked a former SBS man camped by the George if he was impressed with all the shenanigans going on in Town, he just bemoaned the loss of the local post office and slithered off growlin’ “them’s not real ****ing Bootnecks.” No wonder he wasn’t impressed as one of the 4 million pensioners who do not get their rightful entitlements, he would rather stay in penury than submit to Means Testing. Shame of it all is that part of the 5 million pounds sterling loaned to the Blackpool Pleasure Beach Company belongs to this former SBS man, yet there are so few who go out of their way to ensure that he gets what is due to him; certainly not amongst the councillors or MP’s, the highly paid social workers or senior executives of the council. When he has another stroke and succumbs to the inevitable he will be but another statistic and just another idiot who wasted his youth in service of others.

If that does happen, Royal, I will invite Ted Tandy in Morecambe to dip his Royal Marine Association standard for a forgotten hero, one comrade to another.

Blackpool MP slapped in House

Gordon Marsden again slapped by the Speaker.

Now Gordo, you will know what your constituents feel like. You know, the ones who are not homosexual, are disabled veterans and not members of the Laber cabals.

Something stinks in Blackpool

Anger and distaste runs wild in Blackpool as it has been announced that the Council is to be the major financier to the development of the Pleasure Beach.
With the Promenade, still a building site, the area looks more like 1942 inner London than the most prestigious resort in Britain.
What has angered the Blog Brigade is that the meeting of the Finance Committee was attended by 6 councillors only. One of whom, Councillor Lily Henderson MBE, was the subject of one of her treasurers' hasty resignation when he learned that she had delayed the announcement of funding into her election campaign, from no other than Mr Geoffrey Thompson, the late owner of the Pleasure Beach. Politicians may think that this is fair practice, but subsequent events in that cesspit called Westminster showed that this arrogance is not what the ordinary, decent citizen demands. The cry that Councillor Henderson did nothing wrong misunderstands the mood. Jack Dromey and his evil party may have short memories and treat the electorate as idiots, but one day the worm will turn.
The Conservatives ought to have banished evil Labour from our shores for at least a decade but they ignored the murmurings over questionable funding. This should be proof enough that sufficient people were so riled that they would not accept the tainted candidate offered to Blackpool South for the last general election.
This announcement proved again that there is very little transparency in politics.
I await with enthusiasm the call from the council threatening to take me to court for libel as the agents of Councillor Peter Callow allegedly did with Philtheone, hence his blog being removed from the internet. So much for freedom.
I have just added that Councillor Ian Fowler is said to have picked up the contract for the scallolding of the new enterprise. Nice going for a new company.(Read more)

MoD latest on Afghanistan casualties

The rate at which British troops in Afghanistan have been killed has nearly doubled in recent months and is proportionately far higher than their American counterparts, according to the latest figures released today by the Medical Research Council.

The numbers of British military deaths are well above the threshold for "major combat" operations and now match those suffered by Soviet troops fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The figures, compiled by the MRC Biostatistics Unit at Cambridge, show that the rate of British military fatalities is higher now than at any time since the unit started making records in 2006, the year of the first significant deployment of British troops in Afghanistan.

Tony Blair initially sent 3,300 soldiers to Helmand province in the spring of 2006 and there are now 10,000 UK troops in southern Afghanistan, including 500 special forces.

The MRC figures show that in 160 weeks up to May last year, 152 British troops were killed in Afghanistan. In the 60 weeks since then, 155 were killed.

This represents an increase from 7.4 to 14 deaths per 1,000 personnel years (the MRC's measure, which takes into account the number of soldiers deployed in Afghanistan over a calendar year). While Britain's fatality rate nearly doubled over the two periods, the US rate increased by only about a fifth.

In the last 10 weeks, 32 British troops have been killed, or 17 per 1,000 personnel years, according to the figures. The US figure was just 6.8.

Six deaths per 1,000 personnel years is considered the yardstick for "major combat", Prof Sheila Bird, from the MRC Biostatistics Unit, said today.

Four British troops died within 24 hours in four separate incidents in Helmand at the end of last week. While ministers imply they are confident that conditions will be right for Britain to start withdrawing troops next July, and that all combat troops will be out by the end of 2014, they have warned of a potentially high rate of casualties throughout this summer. Britain can expect an average of two fatalities a week this year, the MRC said.

Overall, more than half the foreign troops killed in Afghanistan in the past few years have been victims of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). But a very small proportion, about 4%, have been killed by suicide bombers, whose victims have been mainly Afghan civilians.

A total of 322 British forces personnel have been died in Afghanistan since 2001, according to the Ministry of Defence. More than 100 were killed last year, twice as many as in 2008. More than 50 have been killed so far this year.

Fromelles

Governor-General Quentin Bryce, right, and Prince Charles follow the coffin of an unknown Australian soldier during a ceremony at Fromelles, northern France, last night. Picture: AP Source: AP

IN a French village, Australians stand in reverence at a new memorial as Fromelles enters into the national consciousness.

But as she rises to speak, at the dedication of Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery, Governor-General Quentin Bryce speaks of a deeper and harder silence.

"We are here to observe the end of a long silence," she says.

"A near-century of questioning and not knowing, of loving hearts unrequited, generations of absence, lives extinguished without explanation, missing without proper account.

"That is, until today, 94 years since the slaughter, maiming and displacement of thousands of soldiers on the nearby field: no-man's land, the theatre of the devastating Battle of Fromelles."

Thousands of Australians travelled to Fromelles to honour a family member or loved one who fell in the worst 24 hours of Australian history. The bloody battle of Fromelles in July 1916 saw casualties, either killed, wounded or missing, amount to 7800 in one division alone.

Tips for Handling Telemarketers

Three Little Words That Work!!

(1)The three little words are: 'Hold On, Please...'

Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.

Then when you eventually hear the phone company's 'beep-beep-beep' tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset, which has efficiently completed its task.

These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting..

(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?

This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.

This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a 'real' sales person to call back and get someone at home.

What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialed the call, and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer!!!


Junk mail and spam telephone calls? Subscribe to the telephone preferential service and have them removed.

Remember who also bombed London

A scene from the 7/7 bombings

New research shows the majority of Islamic terrorists in the UK are British born and in full-time employment.

The Centre for Social Cohesion has put together data on 119 individuals convicted of 'Islamism inspired terrorism offences' between 1999 and 2009.

Its research found that the average Islamic terrorist in the UK is under 30, well-educated, employed and British.

The youngest individual on file was 16 and the oldest was 48. Men are far more prevalent than women, with only five women figuring on the list at all - and then only for assisting offenders or possessing false documents.

Only a third of those convicted had direct links with proscribed organisations.

Nearly half lived in the Greater London area, with Birmingham and West Yorkshire also containing large numbers.

Over two-thirds (69%) were born in the UK and held British passports.

The work done by the Centre for Social Cohesion is essentially a substitute for government research, the absence of which came in for heavy criticism from the Intelligence and Security Committee inquiry into the 7/7 London bombings.