Daily archives: June 6, 2009

Norwich North

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I have been coming under a lot of pressure from the Greens who want me to stand aside for them in Norwich North.

This from Norfolk Blogger:

A few lies being spread about the Norwich North By-Election

A few lies are starting to be spread to various websites and blogs which seem to be emanating from the Green Party. So it seems it is right to out these lies in to a factual context.

1) The Greens did not win the popular vote in Norwich North. They came 4th across the whole constituency which includes far more than just the four Norwich Wards.

2) Norwich North is NOT on the same boundaries as Norwich City Council. Half of Norwich North is made up from parts of Broadland District Council, an authority that has no Greens elected.

It seems that the Greens, so keen to position themselves are showing that facts shouldn’t get in the way of misleading the electorate.

http://norfolkblogger.blogspot.com/2009/06/few-lies-being-spead-about-norwich.html

That is not just fourth, it is a very distant fourth, with the Tories miles ahead. A strong independent candidate is needed to stop a simple swap of Labour for the Tories, which won’t improve anything.

I am standing to give the voters a chance to reject all the political parties and put an honest man into parliament.

I will not put my snout in the trough. I have proved I am not motivated by money by giving up an extremely lucrative career as Ambassador on principle in opposition to our complicity in torture.

I am not just a single issue candidate. The sleaze of the expenses scam is not the entire problem. It is a symptom of the situation, where we have very low quality MPs who are just hacks to party machines. These MPs were sleepwalking into the economic disaster of the unregulated casino economy and the banking crash. These MPs have voted through the wholesale erosion of our civil liberties. These MPs voted us in to an illegal and disastrous war that has increased the fundamentalist threat.

I am born and bred in Norfolk and there is hardly a lane in Cawston or Drayton I haven’t cycled down. I know the estates of Hellesdon.

I hope that we shall channel people’s resentment at the corrupt careerists who run our parliament and political systems.

We are going in Norwich North to start a movement for reform that will bring in a flood of Independents at the following general election. It’s a Norfolk movement for people power. We are going to start on Mousehold Heath working for freedom against a corrupt London, just like old Robert Kett.

Only this time, we are going to win.

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Euro Porn

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Here is a photo of something really disgusting at Silvio Berlusconi’s luxury villa.

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Italy is agog with the publication by El Pais in Spain of pictures of naked people during romps at Berlusconi’s villa. Personally, I find war criminals (and that is a photo of Blair on holiday in the villa) much more disgusting than naked girls. I think you would have to be pretty nuts not to realise that Berlusconi is living a dream playboy fantasy, but I don’t regard that aspect of Berlusconi as hugely harmful, except for the fact that he has been abusing state resources to subsidise it.

What is appalling is the man’s racism. He says things as Italian Prime Minister that even the BNP do not say in public. I watched him this morning on EuroNews making a European Election campaign speech. He said:

“How do I feel when I see all these non-Italians walking around Milan? When I look around Milan, I think I am in Africa!”

this kind of inflammatory racism is unacceptable from a European Union head of government, and if the EU cannot find some means of sanctioning such behaviour, then it is not an institution which brings the civilising benefits which its proponents claim.

Turnout at the EU elections has been abysmal throughout Europe, with 12% voting in Slovenia. Given that the European Parliament has – and this is a good thing – steadily increased its powers vis a vis the Commission and Council, particularly through co-decision and co-initiation, the lack of interest is alarming.

So too is the xenophobic turn of European politics. Sarkozy today effectively said “No” to Obama’s lobbying for Turkey to join the EU. Berlusconi’s racist rhetoric would not be unusual in many EU states, among parties who are going to win their national EU elections.

Still more alarming, even Berlusconi is not right wing enough for David Cameron’s Tories and they have allied themselves with some truly horrible nationalist parties from Eastern Europe.

I was First Secretary at the British Embassy in Warsaw heading the Embassy’s political and economic sections. I speak Polish. I can tell you definitively that the Kaczynski’s Law and Justice Party – the British Conservative’s now main ally in the EU parliament – consists of a large number of anti-semitic and ultra-conservative Catholic crazies of the worst kind. I actually know these people, and they are miles to the right of the BNP.

Kaczynski continually condemns anti-semitism in public. You might ask yourself why he has to do that. One prominent member of his party (and of ther Sejm) once walked out of a lunch with me in Warsaw where a girl from the Adenauer Foundation was also present, because she was Jewish. I have heard casual anti-semitism from components of Law and Justice which you would not believe.

I cannot believe the Tories are not aware of this. Chris Patten, Ken Clarke and others have been ridiculed by Tory toadies like Iain Dale for warning strongly against the Conservatives’ new European Alliance. What does it tell you about Cameron’s Tories that they do not care?

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