The Yemen Terror Plot

As more and more information is revealed, it is looking like this Yemen scare yesterday was some really serious stuff.  Initially it was perceived as a dry run, but now it is looking like there was some explosive devices on board these jets.

Therefore it is difficult to say that the attack "failed" in the traditional sense of the word - because when terrorists get explosives on to a plane, they have essentially succeeded in one sense.  They may not have succeeded in their ultimate motives, which was to blow up Jewish centres of worship, but they have succeeded to get explosives on jets, which is a real problem.

My intention in making this point is not to criticise intelligence, quite the opposite - they did a great job.  But it shows once again how important Anglo-American relations are.  The Chicago bound jet was stopped in London, plus an additional jet was stopped at East Midlands Airport in England.  Many flights from these extremist areas stop in some part of England to refuel and then move on to America.  If both British and American intelligence organisations are working together, then they can stop a great many of these attempts before they cause a problem.

Therefore, as voters prepare to enter the voting booth on Tuesday evening, they shouldn't discount the role that Anglo-American relations play in keeping both Britain and America safe.  They should therefore remember which party it is that has been putting Anglo-American relations on ice since they gained the Presidency in 2009.

The only way we can prevent a great deal of these attacks is by international collaboration.  While Obama et al may (rightly) be focusing to a large degree on keeping relations good with the government of Yemen, and the Pakistani authorities etc, he should also look closer to home, to the ally who he has been constantly rejecting since he became President.  His country's security depends on it.

Britain is Losing its Nerve

I told you this wouldn't last long.....

I predicted last week that the announced spending cuts would very quickly be challenged, and soon the government would fall to pieces over it.  In fairness to David Cameron, a week later he is still staying strong, but there are members of his party who are trickling off.  One of the more "controversial" announcements is that housing benefit is to be capped at £400 a week for a family of four.

Despite the fact that this amounts to over £20,000 a year of untaxed housing benefits, the left are still bitching.  Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee said last week that this amounts to nothing less than "a final solution" for the poor, stating that poor people will be "driven out" of nice areas, into squalor and poverty where there are no jobs.  The association with the Holocaust is obvious, and disgusting.

It is also complete nonsense.  £20+K in housing benefits (approx $30K) is a high figure.  It is more than a great deal of people who aren't on housing benefits can afford.  Why should taxpayers pay poor people to live in houses that they themselves cannot afford?  It is nonsense, and the facts get in the way of the leftists fear-mongering, and that is why they scream all the louder to drown out the facts.  All that was necessary was for the government to stand behind their decision, wait for the screaming to die out, and explain just why this was an unfair system, and why it was necessary for it to be reformed.  That was, unless a particular mayor is up for re-election and is a complete coward.

Enter London Mayor Boris Johnson, who is up for re-election very soon.  If you are not familiar with Mr Johnson, he is an extremely popular Conservative MP, who is popular mainly because he occasionally says outrageous things, or appears on a comedy show and makes jokes.  His policies and beliefs however change with whatever the new of the day is.  Occasionally he will look like a hard-right Tory, other days like a socialist nut job.

Today it is the latter, and he has thrown the government under the bus, claiming that he would make sure that "Kosovo style social cleansing" would not happen in London.  Since then he has backtracked and claimed he had been quoted out of context, claiming that he actually does accept the cuts.  I don't believe him, and even if I do, his statement is still insensitive as well as idiotic.  I have listened to what he has said, and he is going along 100% with the line that these cuts are brutal and therefore needs extra interference from him so it doesn't result in social cleansing.

The problem with Boris is that, whether he does believe in the cuts or not, he has gone along with the left-wing narrative.  That narrative is that these cuts will be brutal and unfair, and if we don't do something, the result will be horrific.  Johnson may argue that they are necessary, but he is trying to be a moderate, and accepts that these cuts are unjust and harsh.  What he should have done was hold the line and say that spending a stunning £400 a week on a family on housing benefits is outrageous and needs altering immediately, whether there is a deficit or not.  The debt only makes them more urgent.

He has not done this, and has instead put the government on the defensive, he has given momentum to the opposition.  We should be arguing not that "well, we have to do it", but "this is the just thing to do as it is unfair to the taxpayer, and not good for society to be handing out enormous benefits."  By wussing out of this, Johnson has put conservatives into great difficulty.  He should focus less on his own career, and more on the good of the country.

Conservatives need to stay strong, but at the moment we are crumbling.

Less than a week to go - Remember November

It's all getting very exciting in America.  Less than a week to go until the Republicans storm the House and Senate.  I'm not sure whether the GOP will gain the Senate, but I don't believe that the House is really in doubt.  It will be a massive rebuke to the Obama agenda, and will hopefully cripple it permanently.

But now is not the time to get soft.  We need to keep going, not getting complacent, not doing anything stupid.  This goes for the next week.  Those seats in a toss up can still be won and lost.  This will be a hammering, the only question is how much of a hammering will it be?

If you need some inspiration - take a look at this video, got to love American politics!

In Stockport, England - Liberal Democrats Bow to Islam.....Again!

Let's get this out of the way first.  This story has very little do with Muslims and a LOT to do with the left.

In my hometown of Stockport, England, there is a small business - a sandwich shop called "Beverley's Snack Shack."  The place has been there in one way or another since 2002, but now it is under attack.

There is no doubt that living near a sandwich shop that serves hot food can be unpleasant at times.  Anywhere that cooks food will have some sort of smell coming out of it, and that smell will not always be a pleasant one!  These factors are always considered whenever planning permission is given for a place of business such as this, and when any extensions are made to the business.  Conversely, it is also taken into account when house prices are considered - so someone buying a residence near a place where food is professionally cooked will almost certainly pay a lower price for the property than they would if the restaurant or shop did not exist.  Therefore, the free market allows prospective buyers to place a value on the inconvenience and work out whether the asking price matches compensates enough for that inconvenience and/or discomfort.  So a £160,000 home may sell for $120,000 if there is a strong smell coming from next door.  The prospective buyer has to work out if that added inconvenience of the smell is worth £40,000.  If it is, they buy the house, if not they go elsewhere.

This is what has happened in Shaw Heath in Stockport.  Yet, with the basic replacement of an extractor fan, the next door neighbours to the "Snack Shack" have complained about the smell.  This case would of course not be a case - they knew the risks, they knew the smell, and the replacement of a fan does not alter that.

However, the next door neighbours have been sneaky, and made a political statement that would set alarm bells ringing in the heads of the Stockport Council - a Council which is dominated by the hard-left Liberal Democrats.   The neighbours wisely stated that the smell of bacon was offending Muslim visitors to the house.

Of course, this pushed the panic button in the Chambers of Stockport Borough Council, who immediately retroactively denied the restaurant permission for the fan (can you even do that?) meaning that the store has had to remove the fan.  I am not sure how the business is now operating, but Stockport is an area that was hard hit by the recession, sandwich shops are not exactly corporations and I wouldn't be at all surprised if this decision is not making it extremely difficult for them to stay in business.  Over-sensitive lefties have attacked a hard-working business just on the basis that they might have inconvenienced the most protected group in our society.

Once again it shows that the Left always respond whenever Muslims are seen to be offended - even those who might only be a visitor to somewhere once every blue moon.  We have seen it in the last week with the firing of Juan Williams at NPR, and we see it on a daily basis all over the world - the Left are absolutely terrified of offending Islam in even the most minor way.  The left have no problem putting Christians and other groups through the mill and making all sorts of hateful comments about them, but offend a Muslim even accidentally, and it is as if the world is going to cave in.

This isn't just political correctness, it is cowardice.  These people are sensitive to Islam because they are scared of its radical elements getting angry.  The whole left-wing approach to radical Islam has been to lay down and surrender until they are no longer angry with us, and this has been extended to all Islam.  It is time for this to stop!  It is not Islam that is the problem, it is the left who mollycoddle Muslims as perpetual victims that are the problem.  Do they really believe that this will lead to greater integration in our society?  Do they not see that it will lead to anger, intolerance and divided communities, as it has done already?

Everyone must be treated equally under the law in a civilised democracy - special exceptions made to so-called "persecuted" groups is not the answer.  It also sends a message to radical Islam that there methods are working, as our politicians are bending over backwards to meet their every need, all out of fear.

So, if you live in Stockport - go to Beverley's Snack Shack and buy 10 bacon butties......EACH!!

Time for Britain to Stand Up Against Wikileaks

So, Wikileaks have done it again!  The hard-left, anti-war, terror-loving lunatics have somehow managed to unearth over 400,000 classified US documents, and as their name suggests, they have leaked them.  The security implications of these leaks for the US are huge.

The fact that the left-wing media in America and Britain isn't united in disgust at these leaks tells us a lot about their own attitude to the war and to their national security.  If left-wing media outlets such as The Guardian and The New York Times didn't publish these leaks, then there wouldn't be much of a story.  It would still be a danger, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as bad.  This isn't a First Amendment thing, this is a personal responsibility issue.  NYT etc have not shown any responsibility.

Yes, the Iraq war is over, but there is a lot that still should not be being released.  This isn't like revealing stuff about the Korean War or whatever, the situation in Iraq is still current, and those at Wikileaks have endangered people just to advance their petty political agenda.

These points are not unique and will be repeated ad nauseam over the next few days.  The point I wish to make is that we Brits should be offended by this as well.  Britain was a central figure in the War in Iraq, and a security breach against America very quickly becomes a security breach against Britain as well.

As a result, Britain shouldn't let America fight these loons on their own.  David Cameron or William Hague should be out first thing tomorrow condemning this outright.  They should state that this put lives at risk, both Iraqi lives and British lives as well as American lives.  Finally, they should tell the public just how damaging security breaches are, and make it clear that this sort of childish, but dangerous behaviour will not be accepted, and that the British government will seek prosecution of these morons.

Wikileaks are beginning to turn this sort of dangerous tactic into a regular occurrence, and both Britain and America have to stop it as soon as possible. The security of Iraq, Britain and America depends on it.

Obama and Clinton's Betrayal of an Ally

My latest article is out in The American Thinker today.  It focuses again on Anglo-American affairs, this time on the spending cuts going on in Great Britain, and how the defence cuts have been made worse by the anti-British attitudes of Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration.

It aims to show how the Obama Administration has sidelined Great Britain, labelling us a second rate power and nothing special, and that as a result, Britain has started acting like a second rate power.  So, when Hillary Clinton starts moaning that our defence cuts are going to damage our contributions to NATO, she has only herself and her administration to blame.

Britain should not have cut their defence spending by 8%, but the Coalition have only been able to do that because the conservative right in Great Britain have lost the argument when it comes to Britain being a first-rate power.  Part of this defeat has come down to the fact that we are no longer able to display our relationship with America.  How can we claim a Special Relationship with America, when the Obama Administration is denying that the relationship ever existed?

Anyway, the article can be found here.

The Only Word We Should Hear From Labour is "Sorry".

Jeff Randall leads The Daily Telegraph today with a scathing criticism of the Labour Party - a party that is currently trying to hurl blame onto the Coalition for the current spending cuts, despite Labour being responsible for putting us into ridiculous levels of debt in the first place.  Randall points to the incredible hypocrisy of Labour who, having spent and spent and spent the country into near oblivion, now turn around and criticise the spending cuts as "harsh" and moan about how it is going to affect the poor, and limit services etc.

Now apart from the fact that the cuts cannot significantly hurt the poor and drag us down into a Dickensian nightmare, because we will still be spending hundreds and hundreds and billions of pounds (well over a trillion dollars for my American friends) on services and welfare etc, it is also a bit rich for Labour to moan about it, even if that was the case.  Why? 

Well, as Randall's article shows, public spending grew by a stunning 50% in real terms under the Labout government!  This rise in spending is Obama-like in both its scale and its destructiveness.  It left us wide open to get nailed by a recession, and sure enough that is exactly what happened in 2008.  They can try and blame "the bankers" all they want, but the fact still remains that Britain was ridiculously unhealthy economically when the recession hit, which then only made things much worse.

As I have said in my previous post, I do not fully agree with the distribution of the spending cuts, but there is no argument that spending cuts were absolutely 100% necessary.  Britain could still double-dip, it could still go bankrupt.  Britain is not out of this crisis yet, and yet Labour still argue that the Coalition is doing too much!!  It really is quite incredible.  They have destroyed business, wrecked the economy, seen our unemployment rate soar and made Britain the sick man of Europe once again - and yet they still don't seem to acknowledge that there is a problem, or that they are the primary figures responsible.

If there was any justification in the world, the only thing we would have heard yesterday from the Labour benches would have been "Sorry about the mess we have caused."  Of course, that didn't happen - all we heard was a mix of mockery of the Tories, and hand-wringing about the "poor and the vulnerable." 

Well, Mr Miliband and Mr Johnson, if government spending is so damn good, and your government was such a great bloody success, would you care to inform me why, after a 50% rise in public spending in real terms, that we even have any poor people?  With all that spending on "poverty" and welfare, shouldn't we have abolished poverty?  Shouldn't we all be living in some sort of healthcare/housing/public services paradise?  Wasn't that the whole reason for all these stupid programmes and schemes that drove us into economic suicide in the first place?!

Of course, we are not living in a welfare paradise, because government spending wrecks economies and lives, it does not fix them.  That is exactly what Britain has discovered in the last 13 years of a Labour government, and it is now time to make it right.  However, it needs the current Coalition to put forward the case for low tax, low spending, small government, or the chance will be wasted, and Labour will capitalise on this ridiculous situation.