Tories imploding - Ukip killing them and their smugness.

Judgement Day for Wandsworth Tories

Wandsworth Conservatives were once a flagship campaigning force, whose success was emulated across the country. They were held up as a shining example of  what the Tories could do in local government. Fast forward five years and it stands on the brink; riddled with infighting and shamed by accusations of corruption and cover ups. The scandal is centred around the group’s agent at the last election Rob Morritt who was exposed for fraudulently cooking the books to hide more than £30,000 in missing money and a secret £25,000 Addison Lee bill. Blank cheques, dodgy expenses and lies – Morritt used every trick in the book.
When this was exposed internally in 2010 it was ignored and NDAs were drawn up to try make the issue go away, yet Guido exposed the truth. Three years later and Morritt has managed to get himself elected as a Putney councillor but tonight he finally faces losing the whip when the Tory council group meet to determine his fate. They have been shamed into action by an independent report that confirmed the allegations Guido made. The vote tonight requires a two thirds majority to remove the whip. Despite the council leader Ravi Govindia kicking the stool away from his former campaign manager, plus the evidence of two investigations piled up against Morritt, it’s expected to go to the wire. Bizarrely there are still those willing to defend him. It’s time to lance this boil.

Oh! that Blackpool Tories were so brave.  Perhaps we could have avoided the Jim Sa Vile councillor?  By the way, why has everyone forgotten him?
 

Rotten from Council to Government

 Ed Balls learning to clap

Sharon Shoesmith "paid" to protect vulnerable children, but failing only to protect.

The Roller Coast ride between legitimacy and idiocy is exemplified by the decision of the Courts to award a six figure compensation fee to a woman who was incompetent and incapable of fulfilling her contract with her employers, the tax payer. 

By using powers his office did not have, according to the Law Courts, Ed Balls illustrated every dictatorial attribute of the semi-literate know-all that most politicians appear to manifest.  Let us not forget that Mssrs Balls and a great percentage of the leaders of all parties have never held a job of note.  They have no experience to provide the judgment that politicians want the country’s employers to show, a concept they cannot grasp themselves.

Sharon Shoesmith, by taking the right course and relying on the Courts, has put the dilemma under the national conscience microscope.  Yes, she was correct in that she was dismissed unfairly according to her contract.  But what few commentators have raised is who produced that iniquitous contract in the first place? 

Every council in the land has been seduced into overpaying second class employees, the general jobsworths who are the scourge of ordinary decent citizens whenever a need for public services arises.  From the evidence we must gleam that they have only half read their duty rules and standing orders, apparently without the slightest comprehension of what the rules mean.  Let us take their employment contract for instance.  To draw a salary, or to get paid for fulfilling a contract, one has to fulfill the major tenant of all contract law.  Both parties must undertake and complete that contract in full.  That is to say, in simple English, Sharon Shoesmith as head of a dysfunctional and failing organisation could never, in all decency, stand before a Judge and say that she had completed her part of the bargain unless she was contracted to fail.  But we have to be very careful as every soldier could be held liable for the death of a comrade at the height of an action irrespective of how brave their fellow heroes are.  Let us not fall into the trap of the Civil Servants mouthpieces and equate the rotten performances of overpaid public servants with that of those who put themselves in harms way for all our benefits.

The problem is written into the offer.  An offer is an expression of willingness to contract on specified terms, made with the intention that it is to be binding once accepted by the person to whom it is addressed.

A            OFFER

1                 There must be an objective manifestation of intent by the offeror to be bound by the offer if accepted by the other party. Therefore, the offeror will be bound if his words or conduct are such as to induce a reasonable third party observer to believe that he intends to be bound, even if in fact he has no such intention.

2                 An offer may be made expressly (by words) or by conduct.

B.           ACCEPTANCE

3.         An acceptance is a final and unqualified expression of assent to the terms of an offer. Again, there must be an objective manifestation, by the recipient of the offer, of an intention to be bound by its terms

4.         An offer must be accepted in accordance with its precise terms if it is to form an agreement. It must exactly match the offer and ALL terms must be accepted.

In every Council in the land there has to be scrutiny of contracts offered to employees.  That role should be undertaken by elected Councillors whom must be able to say to the executive that certain contracts are unacceptable.  I.E. Executives on salaries greater than that of the Prime Minister’s should have their contracts rescinded and made proportionate to the Office held. 

As sad as this case is, the pathetic response of the Caring Services to yet another murder of another child, namely Peter Connelly, Sharon Shoesmith’s attitudes reflects more on the Jobsworths in Councils than the ordinary person might suspect.  Like many Degree Nurses in our NHS, they appear to be beyond criticism and that is wrong.  

 It also tells us how abysmal Ed Balls has been as a Minister and how dangerous he will be as an undirectable Exocet in a future Labour Administration.

Politics in South Africa

 

This is South Africa today.  There are many more disturbing pictures which are not published.  Why?  They are too graphic and display the reality of what is evolving in that country.

Ten years on and the debts get bigger

PERSONAL finance calamities like that of the couple whose small loan grew into a £384,000 debt could soon be a thing of the past after measures announced in the Queen’s Speech last week to crack down on loan sharks and curb lending by credit companies.

Tony and Michelle Meadows, of Merseyside, fell behind with the repayments on the £5,750 they borrowed in 1989. By this year their debt was 67 times bigger than the original loan.
At Liverpool County Court, Judge Nigel Howarth set their debt aside. But many borrowers have not been as fortunate.  Successive Directors-General of Fair Trading have grappled with the widespread problem of personal debt for years. In 1991 Sir Gordon Borrie published a report, Unjust Credit Transactions. He had been asked by the Conservative Government to report on what changes in the law were needed. A few months ago, the Office of Fair Trading reminded us that the changes he recommended are still awaited.
Agonising as debt problems are for thousands of families — and Britons are an estimated £1,000 billion in debt — most involve reputable lenders whose terms are not inherently unjust. In the hard core of “unjust” transactions, the lenders are on the fringes of the market and engage in what Sir Gordon called “socially harmful lending”. This phraseology echoes the Crowther committee, which reported in 1971 that there was “a level of cost above which it becomes socially harmful to make loans available at all”, and that some people were of such poor financial standing that they “ought not to be eligible for loans from the private sector”.
Nor is the question simply one of exorbitant interest rates. In the Meadows case the annual percentage rate was 34.9 per cent. Pretty steep, you might think, but actually quite modest in comparison with some of those cited by Sir Gordon, rising to more than 1,000 per cent. What seems to have prompted Judge Howarth’s highly unusual decision is that interest was charged on arrears of interest as well as on the original loan, and that the lender induced the couple, as a condition of lending the £2,000 they had asked for, to take a further loan of £3,750. The judge regarded this as a disguised cost of credit, which meant that the loan had been mis-stated and was thus unenforceable.
The Consumer Credit Act 1974 tried to tackle the problem by introducing the concept of an “extortionate credit bargain”. Section 171 states that if a debtor or surety alleges that a credit bargain is extortionate it is for the creditor to prove the contrary. The Act declares that a credit bargain is extortionate if it requires the debtor to make payments that are grossly exorbitant, or if it otherwise grossly contravenes the ordinary principles of fair dealing. It gives the court wide ranging powers to set aside or alter such an agreement. Judge Howarth expressly found that the agreement before him “does grossly contravene the ordinary principles of fair dealing”.
Yet surprisingly few debtors have made use of these provisions. The optimistic inference is that there are very few extortionate transactions. A more realistic one is that cases are few because the courts have given the impression that it is even harder to show that a bargain is “extortionate” than it was, under the old Moneylenders Acts, to show that it was “harsh and unconscionable”.
One of few cases to have gone as far as the Court of Appeal is Coldunell v Gallon (1986). The creditor had lent money to a very elderly couple on the security of their home, knowing that they intended to lend it to their son. The son ran off with the money, and the Court of Appeal held that the lender had been under no obligation to see that the aged parents received independent advice: it was sufficient that the creditor “acted in the way that an ordinary commercial lender would be expected to act”.
Certain cases have been dealt with more sympathetically by the courts, not under the provisions on “extortionate” lending but under the law on undue influence. Guarantors whose known relationship to the borrower raises a presumption of undue influence have sometimes been relieved of liability if the lender took no steps to ensure that they received independent advice. Such guarantors are often women providing security for a male borrower — leading to what one female academic described as “sexually transmitted debt”.
Decisions such as Judge Howarth’s are likely to remain rare. If there were too many of them, loans for those with a poor credit record would dry up. In the meantime, credit card companies will soon be subject to strict guidelines, loan sharks will be raided, prosecuted and fined, and people who run up massive debts will be able to get help from an independent ombudsman rather than face court procedures. And all lenders will have to explain the costs of credit, before and after an agreement, to protect vulnerable people from taking on far more than they can afford.
The author Christopher Dwyer is a barrister and CAB adviser.

All this was a decade ago and the authorities have done nothing.  Debt has escalated and there are those who rejoice in the present situation.  We still have a ‘new people’ who believe that debt is acceptable and is preferable to ‘doing without’.  When ‘doing without’ is mentioned it is rammed down every ones throat that we all have the Right to Have!  No, we do not!  If you cannot afford something, then you cannot afford it.  That is why it is cruel, cynical and just plain wrong to tell the whole nation that they should purchase their own homes. If, by purchasing, they mean being in a permanent condition of unaffordable debt, then that it wrong.  If the Germans and French can survive and in the German situation prosper by renting, so be it!  Let’s get back to living comfortably and not dying in poverty. 

When we die all those material gains disappear as easily as our ashes get blown away in the winds.

In the above sections it mentions interest rates of under 40% as being excessive.  Wonga charges over 4000% (that is four thousand percent), and the queues outside their shops says this is more than acceptable?  I will just shake my head in angst for the coming generations.

Highfield Ward Forum

South Shore Area Forum - Highfield Ward

Dates of next Area Forum meetings

Marketplace*** at 6.00pm and Main meeting at 6.30pm

Wednesday 23 October 2013 - Highfield Humanities College, Highfield Road, Blackpool, FY4 3JZ

For those who do not understand ridiculous Computerspeak, Marketplace*** refers to the council and ancillary stalls that are available for public scrutiny.  

Immigration debate

Who has the smartest immigration policy?

Posted: 22 Oct 2013 02:00 AM PDT

Thanks to UKIP’s continuing displays of strength in local by-elections following the excellent results in the May local elections, issues which were once considered taboo in political discourse are gaining considerable traction.
One such issue is immigration, a topic which was seemingly permanently tainted by the outcry raised after Enoch Powell made his “Rivers of Blood” speech. Discussions about what he meant and the context of his comments possibly need to be had since this one occasion has blighted the legacy of an incredibly intelligent and remarkably liberal and forward-thinking politician who was decades ahead of his time on a variety of social and economic issues.
But that is not what this article is about – I want to talk about immigration, UKIP, and the other parties’ immigration positions. After all, it did not take long for the media/left-wing chatteratti/sneering Conservatives to switch their UKIP-directed pejoratives from “just about Europe” to “just about Europe and immigration”. Immigration is a defining part of UKIP’s appeal and will form a key part of the 2015 general election campaign.
Firstly, let us deal with an incontrovertible truth – you cannot look at the immigration issue without also looking at the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU). The mass migration of EU nationals to the UK over the past decade has occurred in numbers unprecedented in the history of these islands. While other demographics continue to enter this country from the rest of the world, overwhelmingly the EU member states represent the primary source of people coming to this country. Clamping down on the numbers of non-EU immigrants is a “sticking-plaster” solution, something for the beleaguered Tory front-bench to claim as a success while they remain collectively in denial about the true source of the “problem”.
While we are members of the EU, we have no way to regain control of our borders and the numbers of incoming migrants, something which will become very plain when the restrictions on migrants from Bulgaria and Romania are lifted at the end of this year.
UKIP favours a “points-based” system of controlled immigration, similar to that used by Australia and Canada. People who possess skills that can add to our economic and social prosperity can apply for a work/residence visa, followed by the normal mechanisms for permanent and full naturalisation after a period of time. The value and desirability of any given “skill set” will be determined through objective evaluation of the needs of our economy and institutions and periodically re-evaluated to adjust to changing circumstances. Current non-British residents would not be “shipped home”, but would instead receive temporary visas which may or may not become permanent depending on their economic contributions. There would be provision made for sustainable numbers of genuine refugees and asylum seekers, although passing through other safe countries to reach our shores would be discouraged.
This system would be totally non-discriminatory when it comes to country of origin, ethnicity or religion. It would not favour a group because they happen to be European. It would not result in “fewer non-white faces” on our streets, it would mean that anyone who does come to our country is able and willing to support themselves, add to the economy, and assimilate/integrate into the fabric of our society – ethnicity is entirely irrelevant. We would not see fewer nurses and doctors from the Commonwealth (or Europe for that matter) working in our NHS, but we would see fewer unskilled labourers and those who make the journey to the UK to partake of our benefits largesse (around 600,000 from the EU alone according to the EU’s own figures).
This is a pragmatic, common-sense approach. It allows the control of incoming numbers to maintain sustainable levels, it acknowledges the economic benefits of skilled immigration, it is not based on any discriminatory criteria other than the potential immigrant being able to add to this country in a meaningful and positive way. What’s not to like?
The Conservatives, knowing that they cannot enact any meaningful reductions in immigration numbers whilst remaining in the EU, have chosen to turn “nasty”. They have targeted legitimate foreign students alongside the fallacious “English as a Second Language (ESL)” illegal immigrant inroads. They have made it harder for British nationals to attain residency for their spouses if said spouse happens to not be European. They have sponsored rather disturbing “immigrant go home” vans. In desperately seeking to appear “tough”, they have disproportionately cracked down upon immigration from Commonwealth countries, places which have ties of history, law, culture and societal values with our own.
Labour remains in denial about the cynical way that they encouraged mass immigration to change voting demographics and create an immigrant client-base that would, by default, vote for them (as confirmed by former Labour adviser Andrew Neather).
They reluctantly admit that they “made mistakes”, but have stopped short of a proper apology for executing mass societal change without regard to the wishes of that society. They offer no solutions to the problem, and indeed with their pro-EU inclinations are as unlikely as the Conservatives to ever address the real core issue, which is that we cannot control immigrant numbers while we have surrendered powers over our own borders to Brussels.
The Liberal Democrats have come up with ideas that make the “immigrants go home” vans look non-threatening. Nick Clegg wants everyone from a country which represents a “high-risk” of overstaying an entry visa (thereby becoming an illegal immigrant) to pay a monetary surety that they will leave when they are supposed to – a bond if you will. Of course, the “high-risk” countries are almost all in Asia, Africa or the Caribbean, so this policy is blatantly discriminatory – as far as Nick Clegg is concerned, if you are black or brown you are automatically a potential illegal immigrant and must pay a deposit on your eventually “going home”. Once again, there is no chance that the Lib Dems would address the EU migration question – if they had their way we would be signatories to Schengen and have no controls or inhibitions of any sort when it comes to their masters in Brussels.
The Greens? Well, to grant them the dignity of parity with real political parties, they have an immigration policy too. It boils down to “let everyone from everywhere who wants to come here do so”, which is an amazing position for a group whose dogma is based on the idea of “sustainability”. What is sustainable in a societal or environmental sense about mass immigration? Absolutely nothing. Not that one expects much when it comes to logic (or even reality) when speaking about the Greens.
When looking at the relative policy positions, taking into account the other parties’ feverish avoidance of the fact that EU membership means that controlling immigration numbers in any meaningful sense is completely out of our control, and indeed at the measures suggested by the Tories and LibDems, the least non-discriminatory and most sustainable alternative is that offered by UKIP.
But whey should immigration numbers be controlled at all? As a free-trade, libertarian party, should UKIP not be embracing the free movement of labour? The answer is again rooted in the common-sense pragmatism that defines UKIP. While there is undeniable economic benefits to skilled immigration, and arguably significant benefits from low-skilled and unskilled immigration to certain agricultural/service/industrial sectors (at least to the employers), the wider impact of immigration on the scale that we have seen has some extremely negative impacts.
Wages for semi-skilled (and some skilled) work have been deflated. The lack of available unskilled “entry-level” jobs has contributed to more than a million young people being unemployed in this country. Communities have been torn apart through rapid change, with de-facto “apartheid” manifesting in towns and cities across the country as immigrant communities establish themselves in numbers which allow many to exist without ever interacting with, or integrating into, wider British society. The mass growth in population has put pressure on essential services, housing, the National Health Service, and schools, not only due to the enormous numbers involved, but due to the increased costs of logistically catering for the vast number of languages spoken by the migrants.
Some control needs to be re-established, and UKIP seems to be the only party which wants to implement the two basic measures to make sure that we can do that – leaving the EU to regain sovereignty over our own borders, and putting in place immigration mechanisms to make sure that we only get the best and brightest people (in sustainable numbers) from around the world to come to our country and add to its prosperity. When it comes to immigration, the choice is clear – UKIP is head and shoulders above the rest.
Barry Cooper is Chairman of UKIP Buckinghamshire and a prospective UKIP MEP Candidate for the South East Region
The post Who has the smartest immigration policy? appeared first on Trending Central.

Gordon has a new job?

Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South, Labour) to the Transport Committee.

I thank the Minister for clarifying, but does he not accept that there is a difference between the specific effects of the proposals? He is absolutely right to say that what is happening in the coastguard does not formally affect the RNLI or the various other services he mentions, but surely he would accept that, for good reasons or otherwise, when the area of coverage is widened, as under the proposals, there are implications for how the service is co-ordinated. The Department should be considering better ways—there are always better ways—of co-ordinating with the other services. 

Gordon Marsden goes from strength to strength. Having alienated almost all former Regular Service Personnel - soldiers to me and you - as Minister responsible for Veteran Affairs (most Vets I know are responsible for their own affairs), having achieved nothing in some obscure department on Trade or Whatever in the Region, he will now conduct microscopic examinations of our Maritime needs, Safety and Security from his office in Brighton.

Clever!  Bloody clever!  But how does that square with looking after the affairs of the Blackpool electorate from Brighton whilst condemning the Coast Guard for doing precisely that?

Crikey! I'd best be very circumspect with my language as criticism and opposition is a hanging offense under Labour.  Silly me.  He is explaining how others can't be as able as he is himself, nor as adaptable.

In a week where a topic close to Blackpool hearts was being discussed on the floor of the House, Mr Marsden was more than conspicuous by his absence.  There can be nothing more urgent than supporting Nicola Blackwood in her attempts to protect children against exploitation.  The Blackpool Labour Party has finally decided that they should dip their toes into Derby Baths and put into place measures to protect vulnerable kids.  This is a nonsense as implementation of law and untying of investigators blinds may have prevented the disappearance of local girls whilst Town Hall played silly petty games with their less admirable Tory comrades.

So back to Jobsworths Westminster:

Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute, Liberal Democrat)

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman is highlighting these concerns. He speaks as the Labour party spokesperson, so perhaps he will tell us whether the Labour party would, if it won the next election, propose to have an ETV on the west coast?

Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South, Labour)

That is a nice try, but the hon. Gentleman knows that we cannot make commitments to future funding until we have seen the books, after the next election. He also knows that the first step in making decisions in this area is to do a proper analysis, which the Government have failed to do.
When the Government responded, initially—

If Parliament is telling each other little, how much less are they telling the electorate?

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