Campaign for an English Parliament

Good old BBC, you can always rely on them for a bit of revisionism.  According to one of the BBC’s tame gardeners, the 1600s was the best time to be British.

At first I was a little confused on account of there not being a British nation until 1707, then I thought perhaps she was being incredibly clever saying that the best time to be British when when there was no such thing as Britain.  But in the end I plumped for it being the usual BBC revisionism.

A comment has been sent to the One Show to ask them to explain.

Jim McMurphy, the new Secretary of State for Scotland, has got off to a flying start.

He apparently told Gordon McBrown that he would only take the job on the condition that it was full time and not combined with another cabinet position like it was with Des McBrowne.  At a time when the British government has the least relevance to the people of Scotland as it has for over 300 years, appointing a full-time minister for Scotland is quite bizarre.  Especially when taking into account that there uis no Secretary fo State for England and no England Office despite the British government having absolute control over England.

But that’s not all, he’s been a busy boy.  He’s also backing up Alex the Salmon over funding for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the 2012 Olympic Games.  Using the SNP’s unique approach to mathematics the London Olympics is going to cost Scotland £150m in lost grants from the National Lottery and Jim McMurphy thinks something should be done about it.  He doesn’t say what should be done about it but presumably he’s aware that Scotland will be receiving a bonus Barnett Formula payout of 15% of the capital expenditure on the London Olympics on top of the £11bn+ extra that they get in their block grant just for being Scottish.

I wonder how many MPs with English constituencies will be calling for England to be given a cut of the capital expenditure on the Glasgow Commonwealth Games …

My long-suffering wife dispatched me with to Ironbridge today with my 3 boys.

I got a passport allowing unlimited access to all the Ironbridge museums for the bargain price of £24 through my employer not long ago. We’ve certainly made full use of the passport since getting it - we’ve been to Blists Hill a couple of times and Enginuity about 5 times.

Enginuity is brilliant but there’s only so many times you can go to the same place and play with the same stuff so we went for a look around the Tile Museum and then went to the Ironbridge for a look round the toll house. That’s when we came across these guys:

I’ve lived no more than 10 minutes away from Ironbridge my whole life and didn’t even know there was a morris dancing group in Ironbridge! These lot are called the Iron Men and Severn Gilders. It was really nice to see some traditional English public entertainment - even the obligatory 5 million Japanese tourists that frequent Ironbridge every weekend (ok, there were actually about 10) found it most entertaining.

Here are some pictures and the original 3gp video file which is much better quality than the YouTube version above …

The Shropshire branch of the CEP is holding a rally on Saturday the 18th of October in Shrewsbury.

We’ll be meeting somewhere central - probably Pride Hill or near the hideous Market Hall - at around 10am and hand out leaflets.

The theme of the rally will be the NHS. Just over the border in Wales they have free prescriptions and free hospital parking. The Welsh government doesn’t even pay the going rate for their treatment in English hospitals, costing the hospitals in Shrewsbury, Oswestry & Telford over £1m per year in lost revenues. In Scotland they will all be entitled to free prescriptions from April next year and in Northern Ireland prescriptions will be only £3 next year and free for all from 2010.

Please get in touch for more details.

The artists who put up a Welcome to Scotland sign outside Carlisle to start a “fun debate” are spitting feathers after someone destroyed their sign.

The five artists are calling the sign a piece of art and said they put it up to highlight the plight of artists who get much more support north of the border thanks to the English subsidy.  But rather than address the cause of the issue - the lack of any politicians representing English interests complaining about taxes from Carlisle subsidising Scotland - they instead want Carlisle to leave England and join Scotland.

According to the Cumberland News, the Police are investigating the vandalism of their “artwork” which has naturally been blamed on nasty English nationalists.  I wonder if the Police are also investigating the illegal erection of an inaccurate mock road sign on the side of a motorway?  Anti-metric campaigners are able to legally deface or remove metric road signs because they are not lawful.  What is the difference between an illegal metric road sign and an illegal fake road sign?

Heopfully the artists in question have enjoyed their “fun debate” and will accept the fairly unequivocal answer that the English people of Carlisle have given them - Carlisle is an English town and English it will remain.  If you want to live in Scotland, there’s a coach leaving Carlisle on Monday morning headed for Edinburgh and the best part is, it’ll only set you back £17.30 each which even a struggling artist should be able to afford.

Think of England #35 is now available for download.

Printed copies are available to non-members for £1.00 by contacting the Newsletter Editor.

The front page article on Seb Coe’s “F**k em” outburst in the London Paper has been removed from their website after Lord Coe apparently called in the lawyers.

According to the Glorious People’s London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, Comrade Coe’s lawyers are thrashing out the wording of a retraction with the London Paper although no retraction has been published as yet.

Wales Online has noted that “It was subsequently removed from the paper’s website, but was commented upon on numerous blogs, as well as being reproduced on other websites, including that of the Campaign for an English Parliament.”

Lord Coe’s lawyers would do well to remember what happened when the News of the World tried to prevent pictures of their “Fake Sheikh” from being published after George Galloway exposed him.  Or when Schillings tried to censor Craig Murray’s criticism of Alisher Usanov.

If Comrade Coe didn’t say it then the London Paper will be unable to prove it and will have no choice but to issue a retraction - they certainly don’t have the infite resources of the Olympics propaganda machine with which to defend themselves.  However, if he did say it then he should be big enough to admit it.  The Scots and Welsh really have very little interest in the Olympics other than the huge wads of Barnett Formula cash that will flow over the border to match the capital expenditure in London.

But if Lord Coe and the Olympic committee think they will be able to use bully boy tactics against anyone that gives them bad publicity then they’re going to find themselves seriously short of bullies.

The following letter was published in tonight’s Shropshire Star.  Unfortunately, whilst editing it they took out “in England” from the end of the first line which makes the whole letter ambiguous.

Kind of PM to think of England

How kind of Gordon Brown, the MP for Kikcaldy and Cowdenbeath in Scotland, to find some loose change down the back of the sofa to pay for free prescriptions for cancer patients.

I remember when my own mother was recovering from cancer the last thing she needed was the worry of how to pay for prescriptions when she was unable to work.

However, when considering Mr Brown’s generosity, it should be remembered that in Wales nobody has paid for a prescription for nearly two years now.

And any of Gordon Brown’s constituents in Scotland suffering from long-term of permanent illnesses haven’t paid for prescriptions for some time.  Already 92 per cent of prescriptions dispensed in Scotland are free of charge.

Stuart Parr
Telford 

CEP: Scots-led Ministry of Defence continues to favour Scottish naval shipyards at England’s expense

Tuesday, 30 Sep 2008 09:34

The MoD press notice last Friday sounded sweet and innocent enough: ‘The Royal Navy frigate HMS Campbeltown left her base port in Plymouth last week for exercises off the Scottish coast’, until, as CEP Secretary and West Country organiser Veronica Newman pointed out to her Devon members, one read the next line: ‘The ship is currently heading into Rosyth for a 12-month overhaul.’

‘What that means,’ stated Mrs Newman, ‘is that multi-million-pound refit work on a West Country warship has been switched from Devonport to Scotland. It is the first time that a refit of any Type 22 frigate has been undertaken outside Devonport since the ships entered service in the 1980s; and what it means is more employment for Scottish naval shipyards and, as the GMB convenors in the Devonport dockyards have said, a loss of work for those in England.

‘It isn’t an accident that this has happened. It is all taking place under the watchful eye of the UK Scottish Secretary of State for Defence, Des Browne MP for Kilmarnock. It is his department, and specifically his department’s Surface Ship Supports arrangements section, that has agreed with Babcock Marine this switch of work from England to Scotland. Babock Marine has been responsible for warship upkeep since it took over Devonport Management Ltd (DML)’. It paid £350 million for DML in July 2007 but then in February of this year announced plans to axe up to 600 posts – more than 10 per cent of its Plymouth workforce.

‘Mr Browne’s decisions are all part of a pattern’, stated Mrs Newman. ‘There is growing evidence of preference for employment in the Scottish naval shipyards over those of England, even though historically it has been the English navy over centuries which has defended these islands and English sailors who have been among the greatest naval explorers and sea captains in world history. England had a navy under Alfred the Great when Scotland was still just a country of scattered clans. Only in July of this year Mr Browne’s ministry announced that Scotland will get 64% of the work on the two new giant aircraft carriers while England, with 80% of the UK population, will get a mere 34%.

‘|As the Warships International Fleet Review had said on receiving notice of this switch of work from Devonport to Rosyth, ‘It does seem extraordinary bearing in mind the experience that Devonport has in refitting Type 22s since they entered service.’ However, said Mrs Newman, given how Scotland has benefited at England’s expense since devolution, it is not surprising at all.

The London Paper has the following article on its website:

Seb Coe confirms football team for Team GB in 2012, regardless of opposition from by Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish

by Dominic Midgeley

Tuesday, 30 September 2008

Team Britain? Hell no!

TEAM GB will have a football team for the 2012 Games, Seb Coe has confirmed, whatever opposition is put up by the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish.The creation of the team has been opposed by the Football Associations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who are concerned it may compromise their individual status within Fifa.

But he said the BOA, which selects teams for the Games, has decided to press ahead with a football squad despite the opposition.When asked last night about the opposition from the Welsh and Scots, Coe replied bluntly: “F*** em!”

The Olympics chief also revealed that Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson has agreed to act as manager of a Great Britain team at the Games.

Speaking to thelondonpaper at a reception hosted by the British Olympic Association at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Coe confirmed: “He’s told me he’ll do it”.

This represents a U-turn by the United boss who said in July that he was unlikely to accept such a post..

“I will be 70 in 2012,” Ferguson said then. “I’ve not made any commitment to anything like that.

“I would not, in any way, shape or form, try and commit myself to something that is four years ahead.”

However, Ferguson does plan to leave Old Trafford at some point in the next three years and appears to have relented in the face of persistent lobbying by Coe.

Coe, himself a former Olympic gold medalist, who celebrated his 52nd birthday last night, is on the record as saying of Ferguson: “I would love to have him there because he is a phenomenal coach and a great man manager. Who else would you want to have that mentoring role?”

A British Olympic Association spokeswoman said: “We have already said that we are committed to entering a men and women’s football team at the 2012 Olympics. How those teams are made up is still under discussion and obviously we would like the involvement of all the home nations.”

A spokesman for the Welsh FA said: “If that is what he said, clearly it’s disappointing.”

Disappointing?  That’s not the half of it!  A British football team is to be created consisting only of English players with a Scottish manager.  Sport truly is a microcosm of society.