A TANGLED WEB

TROUBLE IN THE RANKS...

I see that there are growing signs of disquiet amid the DUP rank-and-file and supporters over details of the St Andrews Agreement with just over ten days before all the parties are required to say whether they are signing up.

While the party leadership has clearly signalled it is, on balance, in favour of the St Andrews package, it is this week continuing its province-wide series of consultations with grassroots members. A former councillor meanwhile has called on the party's MPs, Assembly members and councillors to "have the courage of their convictions" and tell the leadership it is wrong.

Walter Millar, who served on Cookstown council until 1993, said he found it "beyond belief" that Ian Paisley and the DUP would agree to a coalition government with "Sinn Fein/IRA as a result of the Belfast Agreement Mark Two."  In a letter to the News Letter today, he argued the present deal is worse than the 1974 Sunningdale and 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. Deputy leader Peter Robinson, meanwhile, did not deny that at one meeting he and party leader Ian Paisley were told that people would rather pay the higher water charges than see Martin McGuinness in government.

Mr Millar is right - but there is one subtle difference. With the UUP slavishly pro-power sharing with terrorists, the DUP leadership figure that there is relatively little threat to their prospects at the ballot box when they endorse the Belfast Agreement Part 2.

So, I hope there are more like Millar, unionists who realise when they are being sold a pup.

THE STERN GANG...

Just back to ATW central after a little break and I see that the sky is about to fall in all our all heads!!! Or at least that is what we would conclude if we swallowed the guff trotted out by the Government appointed Sir Roger Stern, the latest recruit to the "We're all doomed" global warming hysteria gang.

According to Sir Roger, global warming could shrink the global economy by 20%.  But taking action now would cost just 1% of global gross domestic product, the 700-page study says. Tony Blair, responding to what his Puppet says informs us that scientific evidence of global warming was "overwhelming" and its consequences "disastrous".  According to David Milliband, the "debate" on global warming is OVER, and the only way forward is...to RAISE taxes! LOL - what a nonsense this all is. I enjoyed Melanie Phillips in the Mail today exposing Stern's fraud...

As the distinguished American meteorologist Professor Richard Lindzen observed last weekend, the computer modelling performed at the Hadley Centre, one of Britain’s most vociferous proponents of man-made climate change, was seriously at odds with the actual warming that was taking place.

The facts are that the rise in temperature over the past century, 0.6C (plus or minus 0.2C), is unexceptional; and that clouds and water vapour are far more significant presences in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

Yet this is an issue where ideology is simply driving out evidence. Sir Nicholas will apparently highlight the threat of catastrophic rises in sea level. But according to the IPCC, the seas are not rising. Although they were higher in the last century than in the previous one, it says in its Third Scientific Report: ‘No significant acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise during the 20th century has been detected.’

Attributing global warming to anthropogenic activity is just another scam for lefties to CRANK up your taxes, to try and limit where you can travel, and to punish you for driving a car bigger than a kettle on wheels. Contrary to Blair, Milliband and Stern, the DEBATE is just starting, and the apostles for global apocalypse need to find some science to back up their wild claims.

"Now this is what's known as a 'Bayonet'!

British Government spending on International Development will increase to more than £5.3 billion a year by 2007-08 compared to £3.8 billion in 2004-05; an average annual increase of 9.2 per cent in real terms. Debt relief for mainly African countries amounts to some £2.2 billion last year, while N.H.S. spending has increased by fifty percent to £96 billion; Home Office spending has increased by sixty percent since 1997, Education, teaching the mainly unteachable has increased by 51 percent: while Defence spending at £28 billion has increased during Labour’s term in office by three percent! In real terms, Defence spending has declined by over thirty-five percent!

That means we are spending less and less on supplying and paying the people we expect to lay their lives on the line for us! For purely financial and political means, the Regimental system, which has served this country for over three hundred years has been gutted; the six Military Policemen killed in Iraq died because their bloody radios wouldn’t work in an urban environment, despite the Para’s being a mile down the road! We are outfitting our soldiers with the most expensive pieces of crap ever designed, while other nations buy the best! The Royal Navy has to do more with less now than at any time since before the start of the Second World War, and has only one-and-a-half small carriers. The two promised large carriers remain just that, PROMISED! But that’s not all, the best aircraft in the world, the Harrier FA-2, designed and built in Britain, capable of take-off and landing on these carriers, was taken out of service without a replacement in sight, again purely on grounds of cost! The Royal Air Force has lost more than half it’s capability to fight, and is at present lumbered with the Eurofighter which can’t fight it’s way out of a paper bag; and is outfitted, amongst other items, with eight Chinook helicopters not allowed to fly in anything else than bright sunshine, as the Nav. systems don’t work!

The Tory Party was bad enough, but these snivelling Socialists, with their love of some fellow-traveller’s Human Rights, their hatred of the British way-of-life, as well as our military and maritime history, their self-centred dependence on ‘consultants’ and ‘focus groups’; their complete disavowal of anything which sniffs of competency or correct thinking is legendary, their unsavoury tactics in such activities as ‘Cash-for-Peerages’ and general sleaziness, far outreaching anything perpetrated by the Tories is making our country a by-word in everything which is second-rate!

But what are we promised as an Opposition? Why, it’s Our Dave, the Green whiz-kid!

I really do despair!

Talking Point - 29.10.06

'If the UK ceased all CO2 production tomorrow, China would surpass our average annual output in only 79 days.  Proof that 'green' issues are about fleecing the UK public, not saving planet Earth'.  Discuss.

Empty Promises, Empty Heads

'We have secured the world, the universe and everything therein' were the words of DUP 'negotiators' after they had completed their talks on shared government with IRA apologists.  Indeed, the DUP website highlights a list of alleged treats the majority population should relish.  One of these concerns a significant package from Gordon Brown.  There has also been talk of lowering the corporation tax in Ulster to bring it more into line with the celtic meerkat to its south.

In truth the only thing promised in the St Andrews Agreement was a hearing with Gordy to assess financial possibilities.  It now looks like the reduction in corporation tax will come to nothing, as rumblings in Scotland effectively prohibit the Chancellor from giving exemptions to only one part of the United Kingdom.  Brown knows full well (as SNP leader, Alex Salmond, correctly points out) that pressure to adapt the tax system in more peripheral areas of the country would become irresistible.  You can also place a reasonably safe bet that where the issue of corporation tax had led, the question of a massive financial package will follow.

These consequential disappointments say much about the amateurish posturing of the Democratic Unionists.  They say even more about a Chancellor heralded by the MSM as a sound financier.  Gordon Brown is a unreconstructed socialist and his stance on corporation tax proves just that.  Rather than waiting to see the natural outworkings of business investment on the back of favourable taxation conditions, Brown would prefer to keep taxes high and determine levels in the immediate term.  Socialist economics are self-perpetuating: tax the rich, redistribute to the poor, and thus keep the poor in an indefinite state of dependence on the existence of socialist principles.  This is what we see in the UK.  London effectively keeps the rest of the Union going.  Its share of government money is lower than in Wales or in Scotland, and in the case of Scotland, the government largesse is wholly unjust.  Gordon Brown would rather tax the hell out of Londoners and those in the south east to keep the likes of Scotland in their accustomed manner, instead of creating a climate of entrepreneurial culture north of the border, in Northern Ireland or, for that matter, in many parts of northern England.

When the DUP meet the Chancellor soon, we will witness the clash of unreconstructed devolutionists and unreconstructed socialists.  What a horrible prospect!

On This Day...

1618 - Sir Walter Raleigh, once a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, is beheaded in Whitehall, London.

1964 - The union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar becomes law, forming the new state of Tanzania.

1972 - Palestinian terrorists hi-jack a German airliner and demand the release of three Arab terrorists captured during the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich.

1975 - 20 people are seriously injured in an IRA bomb attack on a restaurant in London's Mayfair district.

1986 - The world's longest bypass, the London Orbital M25, is formally opened by Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.  The motorway took 14 years to construct.

2003 - Iain Duncan Smith is ousted as leader of the Conservative Party in a no-confidence vote.

SEEING THROUGH THE VEIL....

How interesting. You will all remember the recent furore concerning Aishah Azmi, the Muslim teacher who insisted on wearing a full face veil in class and who found subsequently herself in the middle of a national row about integration when she took her school to an employment tribunal after it suspended her for refusing to remove the Islamic mask in class.

Ms Azmi insisted it was her RIGHT to don the mask of Islam. Many lemming-like liberals rushed to support HER decision.

EXCEPT it now transpires that she had  received a fatwa, or religious ruling, from Mufti Yusuf Sacha, a Muslim cleric in West Yorkshire and so she was only following Islamic orders.

It appears that in the fatwa Sacha issued to Azmi he ruled that it was obligatory for women to wear the niqab (face-veil) in the presence of men who were not their blood relatives. Sacha is one of several hundred Islamic clerics in Britain with the status of mufti, entitling him to issue fatwas based on Islamic law. Although Muslims are expected to follow fatwas, they are not obliged to do so, particularly if they live in a non-Muslim state. But it's a good idea if they do - if you catch my drift.

Let's leave Azmi aside - she has gained enough publicity. It's this Yorkshire Mufti - and those other hundreds like him, that we need to focus our attention on. These guys are seeking to operate a form of Shari'a law in OUR country. They are the de facto formentors of upheavel, of the advance of a more militant form of Islam that will not integrate but which prefers to subjugate. Are they not the enemy within - and why do we so tolerate them?

They are turning thousands of British Muslims into radical fanatics who have no regard for our laws. Therefore, should we not just either deport these clerics from whence they came from -assuming some of them have not been born here - or lock 'em up until they swear loyalty to British law? Time for a Fatwa against all fatwas?

Too draconian for you? Mmm..in a war you have to make tough decisions. And these Muftis ain't listening to reason...

A BENEDICTINE BLESSING?

You have to laugh at the duplicity of the Democratic Unionist Party declaring that a visit to Northern Ireland by Pope Benedict next Spring, coinciding perhaps with a visit by Her Majesty the Queen to the Republic, might be "difficult" for it's Leader, and likely First Minister of a restored and thoroughy corrupted devolved Assembly by that date - Dr. Ian Paisley.

Clearly there is a plan in place to prop up a potentially restored Assembly by that date - and a visit by the Pope to Northern Ireland would be just the ticket for good news headlines. Except, of course, for Dr Paisley who whilst he may not be required to kiss the Pope's actual ring, will certainly have to be photographed beside the man who he doctrinally believes to be an anti-Christ.

What amuses me is that Paisley may well be content to be photographed standing beside IRA Godfathers, whose organisation has been responsible for thousands of deaths, but bridles at the prospect of being photographed beside Pope Benedict - a man who has done no harm to anyone!

I get very fed up with the sectarian bigotry of Northern Ireland and as far as I am concerned, there is no sin to be found in greeting the Pope should he decide to visit this part of the United Kingdom. However sharing power with terrorist apologists is an immense sin. Surely the leader of the Free Presbyterian Church does not require this sinner to point that out to him????

PRESCOTT TO THE RESCUE...

Not only is John Prescott the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, he is also a man whom Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have publicly described as "indispensable."

To the rest of us, he is lecherous moron who has brought shame on the office he occupies.

And as if we needed ANY further evidence of the monumental ignorance of this buffoon, we read today that he has been praising Malaysia's Muslim-dominated regime for its "success" in achieving "peaceful co-existence" between religious groups. As John puts it...

"I've come to Malaysia, not just to represent my government - but also to listen and to learn about your approach to achieving peaceful co-existence in your communities"

And just how does Malaysia achieve this alleged state of Nirvana? Well, listen to the head of the country's religious police, Mohammed Zin Dollah, who openly admits detaining Muslims who stray from Islam and making them read the Koran every day. He said: "They are brainwashed to become better Muslims."

But these injustices are as nothing compared to the persecutions suffered by the minority Hindus who have watched to 15,000 of their temples swept away to build new roads, offices and apartment blocks. As Western Resistance points out, Malaysia IS a Muslim tyranny. Read the details here. And yet, the UK's Deputy Prime Minister applauds it as a model we can all learn from - and the majority of the UK remains mute on his gaffe.   

UNTIL THE PIPS SQUEAK....

It was a previous Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healy, who said that he wanted to tax "the rich until the pips squeak." Socialists never change in their deep seated hatred of those who create a decent life for themselves without the State having a say and ever since Margaret Thatcher transformed the United Kingdom into a property owning democracy, the Lefties have been working out way to tax all but their most favoured client groups.

So comes the news that people who live in areas with good schools, clean streets and low crime rates face huge increases in their council tax bills. Home owners and tenants will be charged hundreds, and possibly thousands, of pounds extra if they live in a "locality" deemed by ministers and officials to be more desirable than others. The rises could be as great as four times, sending some bills spiralling from £1,000 to £4,000. In other words, you will be economically punished for living in a decent house in a decent area.

Sophisticated computer equipment will be used in the forthcoming revaluation of all 21 million homes in England, and will allow a precise value to be put on each home, not only by its size and features but also its location. A system described as "intelligent proximity analysis" will allow valuation officials to differentiate between thousands of neighbourhoods and adjust bills accordingly. The computer model will be able to classify each household on the basis of 287 "lifestyle variables".

For the first time, data provided by the national census, school exam results and crime statistics will be fed into the calculations. Householder income, cohabitation and, in what many MPs will regard as a highly contentious move, ethnicity will be taken into account. The information being used by the Government distinguishes between "farming communities", for example, and "multi-ethnic, crowded flats".

In effect, this is a variation on the Rates experiment that Government is about to conduct here in Northern Ireland against the wishes of all of the local Parties - an experiment which I have condemned as morally, politically and economically obscene - to the Minister in charge of implementing it. Labour is out to squeeze us ALL and to extract as much money as possible from us. It will then pass these huge revenues to those minority interest groups that it favours, so buying their loyalty. Wanna bet Muzzie areas will suffer huge rates increases...or those areas where key votes necessary to NuLabour could in any way be compromised???

This is all part of the monumental folly of a British electorate which has returned Socialists into Government. You end up paying for your folly.