A cunning plan

If reforms costing £540m have failed to improve the CSA, and in some aspects even worsened it (!), on what basis does the Government think that spending another £560m will improve the CSA by 2010?

Is it the same logic that suggests spending just another £x bn will reduce poverty in Africa?

Where did the electorate go?

Labour party chairman Hazel Blears has described the Bromley by-election result as an "absolute disaster" for the Conservatives, even though they retained the seat despite haemorraging 12,000 votes!

Despite Hazel's claims, tactical voting appears to have broken down in Bromley, Labour lost 8,000 votes yet the Liberal Democrat vote only increased by 1,600.

The real disaster in Bromley is that not even half the electorate were sufficiently engaged with politics to vote, nearly 20,000 voters disappeared!

Freed foreign prisoner

has killed, but has he paid his council tax!?!

No remission

Murderers do it, thieves do it, rapists do it but those imprisoned for non-payment of council tax or fines don't...

Qualify for parole half way through their sentence.

Courtesy of Laban Tall.

Institutional religious intolerance

Is the UK government guilty of "institutional religious intolerance" if it prevents children possessed by witchcraft from being 'cured'!?!

If such cases are acceptable in Africa, should the UK make an exception for them here!?! What a delicious dilemma for white, middle class liberals...

Whatever happened to the Christian missionaries who were supposed to convert them!?!

Net pay

Now that Tony Blair endorses "equal prize money" at Wimblemdon and Roger Federer considers the disparity to be "so small that you might as well just make it equal", will he be troubled if the men's prize is reduced by £30,000 to the women's level!?!

Why should men be expected to play an extra set in future if their pay is the same!?!

Institutionally racist prisons?

Would prison staff have been guilty of 'racism' if they have only allowed white prisoners to share a prison cell with psychopathic killer Robert Stewart?
Stewart "should have stood out" two years before he attacked Zahid Mubarek but apparently a tattoo, "RIP", on his forehead didn't suggest anything untoward in his personality!

I certainly wouldn't want to share a cell with him!

So what!

Are Britons really so stupid that they listen to what two washed up singers, Bob Geldof and Annie Lennox, think about whether promises made in haste last July about Africa have been kept or not?

KKK

If no official complaints have been made about two members of the public gate crashing a carnival dressed as members of the Klu Klux Klan, why has Cumbria Police decided to investigate whether any race hate laws have been breached?

Would Police time be better spent focusing on violent crime in Cumbria?

Euro apologies

Will people who called for the UK to join the Euro "otherwise foreign direct investment will dry up" apologise for the error of their ways!?!

The UK received more foreign direct investment than any other country in the world last year.

Naturally, the BBC can't let this story pass without praising Gordon Brown - "It's a vision of Britain that Gordon Brown has promoted."!

Easy porridge!

If nearly half of all Scottish prisoners are back in prison within two years of their release, does this show that prisons are not working or life inside should be harder if prison is to act as a deterrent?

Why not increase all prison sentences by an extra two years!?!

Smoking pays...

Why is a healthy baby not a sufficient reward for pregnant women in Tayside who stop smoking? They will be rewarded for not smoking by being offered cinema tickets and grocery vouchers.

Will non-smoking mothers be penalised for being sensible and be denied the cinema tickets and grocery vouchers!?!

Positive protest

If a proposed National Front march has been banned in Bedfordshire "as no positives can be taken from [it] being allowed to go ahead", what "positives" did Police expect from a certain protest in February?

New Labour Varnish

"In fact, we have done exactly what it said on the tin." - Tony Blair.

New Labour Varnish - Applied to the UK in 1997, 2001 and 2005. Gives everything a smooth, new appearance that looks great for a couple of years but does nothing to prevent the decay beneath the surface.

With apologies to Ronseal.

Real life maths lessons

To keep England's teenagers more interested in maths, new "real life" lessons are planned using examples about football, fashion and the Olympics, not that teenagers are one-dimensional stereotypes or anything...

Liverpool are playing Manchester United, if Liverpool score one goal, what is the minimum number of goals Manchester United need to win the match?

If a football game lasts 90 minutes and the teams have been playing for 33 minutes, how many minutes of the game remain?

300 hooligans riot following a football match, if Police only manage to arrest 1% of them, how many escape to riot another day?

With the UK having the highest level of teenage pregnancies in Europe, would it be more appropriate if lessons were focused on the welfare benefits available...

You are 19 years old, unemployed with one child, how much extra benefits will you receive if you have a second child?

Top heavy top shelf!

Claire Curtis-Thomas MP wants magazines like 'Zoo' and 'Nuts' to be restricted to the top shelf as they are "repulsive" and "degrading to women".

Does she also want magazines such as New Woman - currently featuring a guide on kinky sex, "Spanking paddles at the ready, girls" - moved to the top shelf?

Would any magazines be left on the bottom shelves!?!

Number crunching

3 month prison sentence for:

Hit and run driver who killed a three year old girl and admitted careless driving, having no licence or insurance, failing to stop and failing to report an accident.

Not paying your council tax.

The Respect Squad

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the Respect Squad.

However, unlike the A-team, they will not spring into action but "offer the chance of a swift resolution" by coming up with "recommendations" to tackle anti-social behaviour that "will be passed to the chairman of the crime disorder reduction partnership (CDRP)"...

What can the CDRP do next? It has to be assumed that the Respect squad would only be used when existing agencies, including the CDRP, have failed to achieve anything.

John Reid is simply adding another layer of bureaucracy destined for failure. Meanwhile, discipline in many schools is in freefall.

Formula politics

Why is there no mention of the Liberal Democrat's review of the Barnett formula on the BBC's England section?

If The SNP warn[s] that changing the system would result in Scottish spending cuts, it should mean there is more money to waste / spend in England!

Why has the Labour Party got no plans to review the formula when a Scottish Labour Party spokesman recognises the "£11bn black hole at the heart of the nationalist plan to divorce Scotland from the rest of Britain" if the English subsidy was scrapped?

The white man's burden?

Has the Education Department really delayed publishing a report into "witch child" abuse amongst African children as they are more concerned about upsetting race-relations than preventing child cruelty?

I think it is almost as crude as white, liberal, middle-class people thinking they can’t be seen to be telling black people what they are doing wrong. It is ridiculous when you are dealing with children’s rights. - Richard Hoskins, visiting research fellow in the sociology of religion at King’s College London

Contextually adds nothing

How many civil servants are employed in the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) to calculate the contextual value added that adjusts pupils' test performance according to gender, ethnicity and poverty?

Unfortunately for DfES, beyond schools and colleges, the commercial world needs the best pupils from whatever background.

Gender, ethnicity and poverty should never be used as excuses for poor performance.

Cadbury's Creme Eggs

Now salmonella free too!

Footballs

Assistant Chief Constable Stephen Thomas says that German police only arrested 100 English fans after they "started singing racist and quite insulting songs about quite a lot of people, throwing some chairs, bottles and tables".

He can only be concerned that chairs, bottles and tables were being thrown, racist and insulting chants don't disturb UK Police!

Moron

Andrew Hawkins has apologised on behalf of his more illustrious ancestor, Sir John Hawkins, for taking part in the "African holocaust", slavery.

How many of the Africans present would be leading better lives in America if only their ancestors had been victims of the slave trade!?!

And the survey says...

If 56% of British Muslims don't think that Arabs destroyed the World Trade Centre in September 2001, who do they think did!?!

Monkey nuts

How can a black seven year old be so energised about his ethnicity that he is upset to be cast as a monkey in a school play? Are his parents raising him as a victim of society or using his ethnicity as a negotiating position at the school?

Garage clearance politics!

If a group of MPs are "astonished" that the majority of garages across the UK are not used to store vehicles overnight, when will legislation be introduced to force garage owners to use them more responsibly!?!

Impartial BBC

Just how out of touch is Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski!?! He has praised the BBC for being "impartial on domestic politics"!

Educational balls

What is the educational value in sending 400 UK schoolchildren to watch a World Cup match in Germany!?!

Have they learnt that Tony Blair can perform miracles!?!

Can the English have their £11.3bn back!?!

Will Scottish Police investigate the racist attacks on two English fans in Edinburgh and Aberdeen as vigorously as the Met. would if, say, two Ghanaians were attacked for wearing their national shirts in London!?!

In Dumfries and Galloway, other vandals removed an England flag from a building and tried to set it on fire!

It can't be long before many in England will question why they have to subsidise such thuggery by £11.3bn per year!

Will anyone be celebrating the 1707 Act of Union next year, either north or south of the border!?!

Smokin'

If smokers are already prepared to risk their health by smoking, how can a potential Government campaign possibly reduce demand for cheap smuggled cigarettes even if they are higher risk!?!

Childish logic

David Cameron is calling for working parents to qualify for tax relief on childacre as it is "pretty offensive" that a working man gets tax relief on his mobile phone bill but a working woman cannot if she uses a child minder.

It is "pretty offensive" that working people don't get tax relief on their rent or mortgage payments but will that change!?!

How much would childcare costs increase if the state effectively subsidises them?

Public Service Broadcasting?

Why is the BBC unable to provide any further details about two teenagers arrested on suspicion of the murder of a 16 year old boy in Kent?

The Telegraph reports they are former asylum seekers in foster care and granted permission to remain in the country indefinitely. How inconvenient for the BBC!

Number crunching

2 1/2 years: Prison term for Sarah Jane Porter who "recklessly" infected a lover with HIV.

8 years: Prison term for Mohammed Dica who infected two lovers with HIV.

The A380, a symbol of European incompetence?

When the A380 superjumbo recently landed at Heathrow for the first time, Gordon Brown was able to praise it as a symbol of European co-operation.
I think it's a great success story for European co-operation. I think it's also a big triumph for British manufacturing, British technology, British science

Unfortunately for Gordon, The Times now reports that the "A380 has become a symbol of all that is wrong with Europe — incompetence, misplaced ambition, greed and bickering".

France and Germany are now squabbling over who is to blame for a six month delay in delivering the first A380s.

Green with envy

If Sir Philip Green has managed to avoid paying £300m in income tax in 2004/5 by partly living in Monaco, is he still worthy of a knighthood!?!

Prison Overcrowding

If British prisons are nearly full, why has the UK government agreed to imprison former Liberian leader Charles Taylor for war crimes when other European governments have refused to host him!?!

Out of Office

I'll be on holiday until June 17th. Normal service will resume then!

Home truths

As the son of a Polish exile, Denis (Matyjaszek) MacShane should appreciate that Germans often made themselves "feel at home in other people's countries" more than most!

Welsh racism

Should English fans be allowed to fly the Cross of St. George from their cars whilst in Wales?

The deputy chief constable of North Wales Police fears Welsh fans could be provoked into violence or racism by English fans flying the flag. Would he arrest the Welsh 'patriots' or the English fans who provoked them?

Would any senior English Police official advise 'foreign nationals' not to antagonise latent English racism by flying their own flags!?!

Liberal Democrats to cut income tax!

When will one of the main political parties promise to reduce income tax by cutting back on welfare payments or reducing the number of quangos?

Business lessons from the public sector?

David Cameron says that banks, insurance companies and utilities firms are guilty of poor customer care and could learn from the public sector.

What could Tescos learn from them?

Vet bills

If animal welfar suffers when farmers "cannot afford veterinary bills", will vets be reducing their bills in future!?!

Conservative cynicism

If David Cameron feels it necessary to praise 5m public sector workers to shatter the Labour party's 5m block vote, how long will it be before Dave wants welfare benefits to be increased for everyone who wants them?

Aylum seeking boomerangs

If 2,000 asylum seekers have been tempted to leave the UK with a £3,000 bounty so far this year, were they really asylum seekeres in the first place!?!

How many will be tempted to come back to the UK to claim the bounty again?

Benefits of the NHS?

Will the NHS be apologising for the eleven week delay that would have proved fatal for Gary Harris had he not opted for a private brain scan costing £700?

If my workmates hadn't paid for that scan I would be dead now

They more than saved my life - they saved my daughters from growing up without a dad and saved my wife from having to bury a young husband.

Pride of England

Why did British Airways name their aircraft ferrying the England World cup squad to Germany "Pride of the nation" when it should have been "Pride of England"!?!

Tax credit overpayments "acceptable"?

Tax credits worth £1.8bn were overpaid in 2004/5 yet when measures to reduce such overpayments are "fully implemented", they will be only reduced by a third. Why?

Conservatives accept high taxes

Does the Conservative Party stop attacking Labour's tax rises since 1997 if George Osborne is unable to promise tax cuts following a future Conservative general election victory?

The Conservative party has stymied public debate on the growth of the public sector by meekly accepting Labour's view and funding of it.