Labour’s class war enemies
Tory poster for the capital
Of course it has come as no surprise to Curly that Gordon Brown has twisted Darling’s arm so far up his back and decreed that the out of control public spending must not be tackled by his government, but that the horrendous economic mess should be cleared up by the next residents in Nos. 10 and 11 Downing Street. This has always been the strategy since Brown was handed the job of PM by a gutless Labour Party who were too afraid to challenge a bullying Chancellor when Blair stepped down to make his millions, keep going until you run out of other people’s money to spend, build a mountain of debt, and let the next lot deal with it, in certain knowledge that unpopularity will dog the next government within weeks of taking office. No government has ever had to sort out such an economic catastrophe since the end of WWll in the UK.
But Brown has already been laying out the battleground for the next election, he has tried to use the economy as useful tool bleating on repeatedly about Labour’s investments vs Tory Cuts, but this strategy is now shot to shreds after Alistair Darling’s pre budget report unravelled within hours, and the new strategy has already been trailed during PMQs after Brown accused Cameron of devising policy on “the playing fields of Eton”. It will be class warfare, tribalism on a huge scale, back to basics when it’s backs to the wall for the rest of us.
Trouble is , with Gordon Brown living for free in two well appointed grace and favour properties at our expense, and Labour minister Quentin Davies spending nearly £21000 of our money on his bell tower, Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward (the richest man in the Commons) spending over £21000 of our money on one of his numerous properties, Labour MP Harry Cohen using £2000 of our cash for a new bath, ………..well the list goes on an on, this class war theme is already blowing up in Brown’s neatly decorated toilet (again at our expense).
At a local level here in South Shields and South Tyneside you are unlikely to find any toffs in South Shields Conservative Association, no big wigs from business, no jet set class with huge property portfolios or £millions hidden away in off shore bank accounts, by golly no! You are far more likely to find the elite of the business classes supporting the local Labour Party (hint, past Presidents of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and former MEPs building a fortune from a short life in public service and now mixing it as a successful lobbyist).
No the con of the class war has been revealed sharply by Alistair Darling’s very regressive move to increase NI contributions and all those “well off” folks who earn more than £20000 a year are now to be considered as having the broadest shoulders to carry the years of debt created by Labour’s profligacy! Any left wing economist will know that this measure, along with the VAT increase, will hurt the lowest paid far more than than those on higher bands of remuneration.
The respected Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that Darling’s pre budget report, which postpones all serious pain until after the next election, will cost every family nearly £2500 per year for many years to come to reduce the budget deficit, and that people earning as little as £14000 per year will feel the pain, and that some public services will suffer cash cuts of up to 20%, and that £700m of the child benefit increases will be clawed back in 2011.
At the time the next election is eventually called, when Brown and Darling have ran out of cash and money, when they start fighting politics in a tribal and class atmosphere, we should remind them in the strongest possible way that once again Labour has failed to look after the most important class of electors in the UK, those who work to support their families and those left reliant on benefits because of a lack of entrepreneurial drive in a Britain now turning into a giant Poundland.
Guido suggests that the Irish delivered a budget that ought to have been announced in Westminster.
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Temple Park X Factor live Broadcast from South Shields
Get tickets to see Joe McElderry live now!
Girls Aloud’s Kimberley Walsh band mate of Cheryl Cole, will be presenting from a live broadcast at the Temple Park Centre in South Shields as local lad Joe McElderry gives his final performance in his bid to win this year’s X Factor on ITV this weekend.
As Joe goes through what should be the performance of his life YOU can take part in a live broadcast from South Shields, linked to the show in London on both Saturday and Sunday night this week, invited guests will be talking with the X Factor’s Dermot O’Leary, Simon Cowell et al, and you can get your tickets by booking through this website, these tickets are absolutely FREE to anyone aged over eight (although 8 – 17 year olds need to be accompanied by an adult). Both events start at 17:30.
Oh and it looks as though Kimberley has become one of the latest celebrities to be backing Joe to win this year’s event.
South Tyneside Council had previously worked it’s socks off to entice the X Factor team to stage a live event at either the Town Hall forecourt in South Shields or the South Marine Park when Joe visited the town on Monday, they even tried to persuade the production team to use Temple Park Centre or The Customs House, but ultimately the decision was taken by the X Factor squad to use the Sage at Gateshead, primarily on public safety grounds and because it was easy to fill the venue with students and colleagues of Joe from Newcastle College. Personally I doubt whether they wanted Joe and Cheryl Cole to be hanging around in the South Marine Park on a freezing night and I doubt it would have benefited Joe’s vocal chords!
So, for the experience of a lifetime, get your FREE tickets booked NOW, demand will be huge and supply will be short, and the rest of the family may get to see you on the X Factor too. It also gives you a chance to help promote the very best of Sanddancer hospitality from South Shields, the publicity will do the area the world of good.
VOTE JOE!
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Hattie bags a Fuji
Just what a good MP needs for the office, I seem to recall South Shields MP and Foreign Secretary David Miliband went through a digital camera and memory card at our expense too.
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The question of the day
PBR to reveal Labour’s failings
With banks about to feel the pain in possible heavy taxation for over threshold bonuses, and the Chancellor already feeling the pain from over threshold spending, it is reasonable to expect Alistair Darling to make some announcement in his Pre Budget Report today about revised spending plans for post 2011. He is unlikely to try and damage Labour’s already slim chances of winning the next general election, yet he still knows that spending needs to be reigned back NOW to offset the fear that Britain may soon lose it’s AAA credit ranking, and he will know that the sooner the size of public debt and the proportion of public spending begin to fall the sooner we might begin to climb out of recession. So today, when we read between the lines, we should understand that we are moving into a period of spending cuts, however he dresses the language and text. Labour’s failings in coming to grip with the economy is about to be revealed after years of profligacy and wasted opportunity to manage the nation’s debt.
The big question of the day then will be, will this mark the end of the Labour investment versus Tory cuts saga?
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One Place
A one stop shop for performance measurement
One Place is a new government website that allows us to see a snapshot of performance indices for our local council as generated by the Comprehensive Area Assessment, if you are keen on seeing the performance of South Tyneside Borough Council and other public local organisations which provide our general services, then you should bookmark this page. As a website, its own performance is pretty dreadful, speed at loading pages is so slow you could probably find the information faster by going to the local library, one hopes that with the huge resources of the taxpayer behind it that the government’s IT people will get it running smoothly sooner rather than later.
You will pleased to note though that South Tyneside Council is neither flagged up for under performing or covered in accolades for being exceedingly outstanding!
As our unelected Scottish Prime Minister might tell us “we are getting on with the job”.
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Although there are often dark days…..
…..someone always has greater troubles
I try hard to stay cheerful, and sometimes lately I find it difficult to comment on matters local and national as my own circumstances beguile and trouble me, but sometimes you read things which put the whole world of blogging into a new perspective. One of my favourite reads has always been Dizzy Thinks and this post from Phil suggests his mind is in far more turmoil than mine, my thoughts and prayers go out to him and his other half.
Do drop him a line, a short message of support.
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Joe McElderry and Cheryl Cole visit South Shields
Cheryl Cole's van leaves Joe's house
Hush, hush flying visit
ITV X Factor star and South Shields lad Joe McElderry made a flying visit to South Shields today under strict secrecy along with his mentor and judge Cheryl Cole, news filtered throughout the town this afternoon by text message and mobile phone after Joe made a surprise visit to his old school Harton Technology College earlier.
McElderry, now the hot favourite to win the X Factor next weekend, took Cheryl home to meet his mother and other members of the family in Westoe and crowds soon thronged around their front door and a police operation was quickly put in place to ensure that there were no silly traffic accidents and to look after the safety of members of the public spilling out from the pavements. A company detailed by ITV to look after today’s arrangements kept the whole visit under strict wraps and at 3:30 Cheryl Cole was quickly whisked into a silver people carrier with darkened windows and teenager McElderry soon joined after a quick smile and wave to his waiting fans.
Rumours spread that a special appearance was to be arranged in the Bents Park this evening but police have confirmed that this is only a rumour and Joe WILL NOT be making a further appearance in South Shields today. I understand that Gateshead and Newcastle have made an arrangement with ITV for Joe and Cheryl to appear at Gateshead’s Sage this evening for a special Tyneside civic reception and a gig.
Joe at The Sage
For pictures of the activities and excitement at Joe’s house see my Twitpic feed.
We can only hope that should Joe deservedly win ITV’s X Factor that he will be able to make home visits again in the near future without necessary mega star security measures, but somehow, I think he may have to get used to the idea!
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What I’m reading this morning
Just enough to make you question the things around you
The most influential tree in the world
Claims that “climategate” scandal is manipulating temperature data:
Its true significance, we can now see, is that what they intended to hide was the awkward fact that, apart from that one tree, the Yamal data showed temperatures not having risen in the late 20th century but declining. What Jones suggested, emulating Mann’s procedure for the “hockey stick” (originally published in Nature), was that tree-ring data after 1960 should be eliminated, and substituted – without explanation – with a line based on the quite different data of measured global temperatures, to convey that temperatures after 1960 had shot up.
1200 limos and 140 private planes
The excesses of Copenhagen:
And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? “Five,” says Ms Jorgensen. “The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don’t have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it’s very Danish.”
Climate emails hijacked to damage summit
Of course they have to discredit the story! But some do it with finesse:
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said that the stolen e-mails looked “very bad” and were fuelling scepticism, but said the media scrutiny was not unwelcome. Mr de Boer said: “I think it’s very good that what is happening is being scrutinised in the media because this process has to be based on solid science. If quality and integrity is being questioned, that has to be examined.”
Gordon Brown’s climate record attacked
Brown ignored former Chief Scientist – claim:
“I kept reminding people in Number 10 who would listen to me that this meant borrowing money from future generations, and this investment therefore should have taken place on behalf of future generations.”
Copenhagen to produce as much CO2 as an African country
Save the planet, or cost the earth?
The UN has confirmed flights, rail and bus travel, food and energy from the conference will generate at least 41,000 tons of carbon dioxide.
That’s more greenhouse gas than produced by Malawi, Afghanistan or Sierra Leone over the same period.
The Danish government says it will offset emissions by planting trees or investing in green projects.
Labour candidate claims she is being elbowed to make room for fiancee of No.10 adviser.
That’s politics dear, these things happen, we are quite used to it in South Shields.
Helen Holt believes she has been the victim of dirty tricks by supporters of Emilie Oldknow, whose boyfriend Jonathan Ashworth is Brown’s deputy political secretary.
Holt said: “I feel I have been totally stitched up. My face does not fit. I believe I am being used in a process that from the outside looks fair but is a way of parachuting a candidate into the position because she has family links to Gordon Brown.”
Tories ready to “trade” with EU
Yes, it didn’t take long for the real politik to emerge, so don’t expect any huge stand offs during Cameron’s first term as PM.
“I don’t think you want to repeat the experience of the beef war” – George Osborne.
Cul-de-sac with 90000 Christmas lights
We’ll be glad that the majority of them are low CO2 emitting leds running on 12 volt supplies! However if you really want to see a winter wonderland take a trip to South Shields and have a walk around the Brosely estate off John Reid Road!
The most festive cul-de-sac in Britain has burst into colour after the homeowners switched on their illuminations – with a total of 90,000 Christmas lights.
All six families on Trinity Close in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, have forked out an estimated £3,000 each for 15,000 fairy lights covering their homes and gardens.
Thousands of visitors flock from miles around to view the spectacular display, helping the residents raise thousands of pounds for charity every year.
This is one of the best pieces of the day as we discover how Labour’s “child protection” regimes are actually tearing families apart and putting too much power in the hands of the state.
I don’t apologise for returning to the subject of children again. It seems to me that in its myriad policies on children – whether the persecution of kids on the street by police seeking DNA samples, the drawing up of huge amounts of information for databases inaccessible to parents, the use of CCTV in classrooms, the introduction of biometric registration systems, the unbelievably impertinent instructions about parents attending school events, the insistence on CRB checks and the production of ID in the most ridiculous circumstances, the treatment of asylum seekers’ children or the fascination with the most intimate details of family life – the government is displaying a mistrust of children and parents, which I seriously suggest has an almost sociopathic nature.
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Single minded atheists
Shields Gazette swamped by anti religionist atheists
You may have noticed that in recent weeks there has been some heated debate in the letters page of the Shields Gazette between a bunch of single minded atheists, who worship science and little else, and some God fearing religionists who have taken the bait. It’s a very one sided single minded debate and the attacks are launched in a solitary direction, the atheists, it appears, are careful only to pick on the followers of Christianity for their barbed insults about sky fairies and the likes. Perhaps it all started after someone wrote favouring the zealously held “creationist” argument, but that is neither here nor there, if you are concerned about the silliness of worshipping a non earthly deity then surely you ought to see it as your duty to be fair, even handed, and non discriminatory in your approach to the issue.
However, this has not been the case recently as folks like Mr. Brian Paget of South Shields resort solely to attacking Christians. Perhaps they find some merit in the religions of Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism, or Islam, but one would suspect that this is not the case if you do not believe in a God or a deity. So why are the followers of these other religions spared the personal insults and attacks on their integrity from the atheists?
Could it be that they would defend their beliefs with far more robustness?
Anyway, what about the religion of science and the Darwin arguments? Primitive men wrote what they believed to be true at the time of writing, that God created the universe and everything in it in seven days, modern intellectuals and scientists take a more realistic view and urge us to accept the symbolism of the Christian Bible’s words, and even those of us with average intelligence can accept Darwin’s findings on evolution of the species. However, to attack people because they have religious faith and have a pattern or righteous path for their life is not what one might expect from fellow humans who want to forge their own path. A religious belief may inform one’s moral judgements and a scientific fact based way of life may just turn you into a great investigator with little faith in others, but how many of the atheists who only believe in fact based scientific outcomes can remember that some of the world’s greatest scientists were also the followers of religion?
- Isaac Newton was an Anglican Christian
- Albert Einstein was a Jew
- Charles Darwin was a Unitarian Christian
- Neils Bohr was a Jewish Lutheran
- Galileo Galilei was a Roman Catholic
- Johannes Kelper was a Lutheran
- Nicolaus Copernicus was a Roman Catholic priest
- Max Planck was a Protestant
- Rene Descartes was a Roman Catholic
- Michael Faraday was a Presbyterian Christian
- Lord Kelvin was a Christian
In fact Kelvin who wrote the first and second laws of thermodynamics about absolute temperature scales and was responsible for the first trans-Atlantic cable said:
“I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.”
Which brings me to the very argument that the two groups of people who write to the Gazette are embroiled in, “Was there a ‘creation’ or not and is there a supernatural entity?”
The scientific community seem to have come to a consensus (probably after peer review Brian) that a “big bang” singularity marked the beginning of space and time some 13.7 billion years ago, before this point the universe, space, and time, they tell us, simply did not exist. The popular theory is that our universe “expanded” from the collision of two atoms, one of hydrogen the other of helium, and that as a result of the expansion, which still continues, other chemical reactions occurred which resulted in the creation of water and at least one planet capable of sustaining life forms. Nobody within the scientific community can as yet explain where these two atoms appeared from, how they came to be in a “black hole” type vacuum, or why they just happened to be of the correct nuclear composition to cause everything that followed.
Any discussion of the Big Bang theory would be incomplete without asking the question, what about God? This is because cosmogony (the study of the origin of the universe) is an area where science and theology meet. Creation was a supernatural event. That is, it took place outside of the natural realm. This fact begs the question: is there anything else which exists outside of the natural realm? Specifically, is there a master Architect out there? We know that this universe had a beginning. Was God the “First Cause”? We won’t attempt to answer that question in this short article. We just ask the question.
That, dear friends, is as far as science can dare to go, any thought beyond the “singularity” is a matter of faith for both the scientist and the religionist, so I find it grossly unfair that one should accuse the other when neither knows for sure the basis of their argument. What I do know is that it is more than grossly unfair to attack the Christian as though he were the only believer in a supernatural deity, if you are going to unfairly attack one religion then you have to unfairly attack them all, and then you must turn around and attack the scientists for failing to provide the answers.
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Joe McElderry – fit to win!
South Shields X Factor Star urges teens to get fit!
Watching ITV’s X Factor last night confirmed that there can seriously only be one winner this year and I expect it to be South Shields very own Joe McElederry.
Joe has been teaming up with Great Ormond Street Hospital spreading his charm and helping bring a smile to sick children, and he’s joined their campaign to promote fitness for teens, in an interview with GOSH Joe says:
About two years ago, I lost two stone in weight. I was eating rubbish at lunchtime, but at 15 I decided to start a healthy eating plan.
I jog three times a week. It was prompted by just feeling I didn’t have any energy. I was an active child, but when I hit my teens I discovered computers and the weight just piled on.
I started walking and jogging. All my family knew I was doing it and were supportive. I just built it up until I was jogging for 30 minutes five times a week.
Curly knows just what he’s talking about, I’m currently nearing the end of a cardiac rehabilitation programme designed to keep me interested in staying fit and healthy through exercise, it’s hard work but you do feel the benefits. I regularly cycle and make use of a cross trainer at home too, as well as involving myself in group fitness sessions organised by South Tyneside Council’s exercise referral team and South Tyneside District Hospital. I’m delighted that Joe is involved in this campaign which is aimed at promoting a better lifestyle that teenagers can carry forward into adulthood. I haven’t achieved the flat belly of young Joe yet, but there is every chance!
Joe continues:
I did wonder at first if it was having any effect and at first thought ‘What’s the point?’ But then one day I suddenly looked in the mirror and thought ‘Oh my god, I have a flat stomach’. It was amazing.
You can learn more about Teens First for Health – here. There is also a Get Fit Game for you to try – here. The Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity will be releasing a video tomorrow to help promote the campaign.
Meanwhile, it looks as though Joe McElderry is set to become South Shields biggest star since Warney Cresswell in 1922 when he became the record breaking signing for Sunderland when they paid The Mariners £5500 for him! Joe has been back to Great Ormond Street Hospital and here are a few more pictures of him and other X Factor contestants meeting the children there, and if you use Facebook you can follow them - here.
For Twitter users you can follow Great Ormond Street Hospital here, and you can follow Joe McElderry here.
Remember #VoteJoe!
Click the thumbnails to enlarge.
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