Cllr. Gavin Ayling

The government did something right…

I stopped to let that sink in…

I’m having trouble believing it too.

The government usually has an unhealthy obsession with motorists speeding; it usually uses speed cameras as semi-voluntary tax collectors; it usually places adverts on the TV about how you’re more likely to kill someone if you speed than if you were to drive with your head turned to the passenger chatting (well maybe not the last one). But today they had an advert telling pedestrians not to be so damn stupid. The advert depicted a group of teenagers playing with a video mobile and ends with the strapline “55 teenagers a week wish they’d given the road their full attention” (Click here for an online copy)

Given the cost of fatal accidents (about £1m per accident), this is a good use of public money and focuses in a more balanced way the attention of other road users to be aware of the clear risk that cars pose when they hit things and people.

The Solution
On the other hand, drivers who flout speed laws and assume pedestrians should not be in the road to be run over, should stop and think how hard it must be to cross a road if you are unable to walk briskly. Councils should place zebra crossings at more locations and drivers should be educated more deliberately about the danger of parking on the areas approaching zebra crossings. The solution is vehemently not to place speed cameras on roads such as the Falmer Road in Woodingdean as the following cartoon excellently illustrates:

Speed is a cause of some car accidents, and it does make the results more serious. But the alternative to letting cars drive at a safe speed for the conditions (as 90% of drivers do, regardless of the limit) is to impose arbitrary limits on drivers, as now, or to stop cars moving at all - as then they’d surely be safe. The victimisation of drivers by the socialists is despite the fact that there is no viable alternative infrastructure for many non-town locations and I doubt there ever will be.

The government should be making every immediate effort to provide an alternative to fossil fuelled cars, but it mustn’t stop people from being independent of state provided or so-called ‘public’ transport.

Just a link: Tour of Britain

Have you ever been annoyed by a customer in the queue in front of you paying for a high-value purchase using bags of coins? Usually, despite knowing how much the, bus fare for example, is going to cost, these people still wait until they reach the front of the queue before counting the money.

Well, if you have experienced this, you will probably find it interesting to note that retailers do not have to accept coins if the transaction value is a certain amount depending on the coin type!

The Royal Mint has a list of coin denominations and the amounts they can be used as part of: click herea

This weeks Spectator has an excellent article by Rod Liddle “The protocols of the elders of the BBC” which, while strongly toned, captures the public mood about the Islamic faith. Most people accept and welcome immigrants generally and refugees unquestioningly. The time, however, has come to question whether Islam is compatible with western civilisation.

I don’t know or pretend to know what the answer is, but I think it is everyone’s duty to look at the Muslim Council of Baritain and the Commission for Racial Equality and ask whether they actually treat England with the respect that they should.

I would also direct you to the following excellent article on the Tangled Web

I believe England should have its own parliament. I believe this without prejudice to the way England’s legislature would be set up and without expectations about the party or political wing that would run the country.

I am a Conservative and also a social libertarian and economic free market supporter. I don’t agree with George W Bush’s social policies and I especially do not agree with his attitude to science. Equally, I don’t agree with the social governance of Margaret Thatcher and John Major - I believe that anyone should be allowed to do anything so long as it does not hurt anyone else either physically or financially. That’s a rather brief statement but I am sure as I post in the future, this will be embelished so that you understand that cruelty to animals is not acceptable to me and etc.

With this in mind, I have an additional optimistic reason for eagerly anticipating an England ruled by the English. My feeling from visits to Wales and Scotland is that the people of those countries have a different political ideology. For all the damage it is doing to Scotland, they are still happy with their Lib/Lab coalition in the Scottish Parliament.

I know that ideologies do not encompass sufficient numbers of people in any country that they can be supported by a political party and that be enough for them to be elected - this is why the Conservatives embrace Ken Clarke and John Redwood under the same heading. Equally Labour has the Tony Blair’s of the world and the George Galloway’s (though obviously he is no longer in the party). As if to illustrate this for us, the Liberal Democrats don’t have a particularly “broad house” and so garner little support from the public.

I believe there are two types of right-wing and two types of left wing:

• The social left-wingers believe in freedom of the individual and, stupidly, positive discrimination.
• Economic left-wingers are protectionist at best and communist at worst. In other words, merit is of no consequence.
• The social right-wing believes in telling people how to live, censoring video tapes for adult consumption and telling people that homosexuality is wrong. These people tend to take their Christianity into their politics.
• The economic right-wingers believe in capitalist markets and low taxes at the less extreme, and a flat tax and sparce regulation with no social care at the most right-wing.

UPDATE: The political wings I have shown are explained in detail at the following site: click here.

None of the British major parties restrict themselves to any of the social or economic wings of ideological thought.

If the major parties have such wide ideological stomping grounds some of which don’t just overlap but positively conflict, we must assume that ideology is not the basis for the voting choice of the electorate. This is the unfortunate product of an electorate which votes on personality, whim and gut feeling. This is the best system there is, however, so we should be content with it.

The smaller the electorate, the more closely the general ideological will of the people will be reflected by those they elect. This might sound like an argument for the government’s ridiculous regions, but it is not. The smallest ideal electorate size is that which most closely reflects its electorate’s general ideology and which also contains a recognised unit of cultural unity. Drawing lines of separation would be almost impossible (and yet the Electoral Commission tries hard to keep elections fair while bearing this sort of thing in mind), but history and cultural inevitablility has given us nations within the United Kingdom which suit this requirement. I would not expect a single person in the south east of England to say, when asked, that they consider themselves to be ‘Southeastish’. The majority would describe themselves as English or British (you may get the rare person who describes themselves as European - but they’re in such a minority we can safely ignore them).

To clarify, the Campaign for an English Parliament does not support or endorse or hint at any of this - it is non-partisan and has purely English interests at heart. However, I believe England would govern itself far more effectively and with far more sympathy to the population’s beliefs than it does now. The late 20th century and early 21st century governance has given us half-measures and no brave, but sensible radicalism. Hopefully any party elected by the English would have a clearer mandate to make England a vibrant and competitive place to do business and so a wealthy, prosperous and safe place to live.

WARNING: This post should not be read if you have high blood pressure! Stuart Parr has written to Sport England about their sponsorship of non-English sporting events. Click here, it is certainly worth a read.

Sometimes I worry that my cheerful, zealous personality does not come across in my blog entries. To clear this up I am publishing the first draft of my entirely whimsical and mostly made up “Dictionary of Terms used, Deliberately or Not”, or “Gavtionary”. To view this work of nonsense click here.

Please bear in mind that I do not expect this document to have any merit except that to my (and probably only my) mind, this is amusing!

I’ve discovered that this blogging thing is a little addictive. I am having trouble, it turns out, limiting myself to one post per day! I have, therefore, decided not to restrict myself in this way and will now post more often.

I have only just found this and though Tim Worstall posted it a long time ago, I think it is worthy of linkage. The heading of this post of Latin for “The European Union must be destroyed” and is, without question, not too strong in sentiment!

Tim has asked for graphics to help spread the use of this latin phrase and the following is my modest contribution which, I hope, shows that England, at least within the UK, is anti-EU. Click the image to see his post:

The England flag in this image is courtesy of Pictures of England

In my last post on the issue I made it clear that as events became clearer I was feeling less sure of my post in Terrorism Part 2.

As Snafu says, we have now come to learn that the eye witnesses were sadly mistaken as were, more sadly, the police.

My heart goes out to the Brazilian man’s family at this time.

The 1952 Committee came to my attention today. It is a group of blogs who have all turned their backs on the Conservative Party following Michael Howard’s indefensible support of ID cards.

ID cards are a mistake, there is no question, and Howard’s support of them suggests he does not share the dream of a libertarian nation or, and this is scarier, he was more concerned about accusations of being soft on terrorism than the freedom of the Queen’s subjects.

The approach these blogs are taking, however, is not the one I would recommend. The Conservative Party has flawed policies on several items, ID cards is one, the EU and the need for an English Parliament are two other obvious ones. Overall, though, the Conservatives are far and away better than the party formerly known as Labour or the Liberal Democrats (who I succinctly name: “The party that wants to give the country to the EU only after it has given children, paedophiles and murderers the vote”).

Time is Tight is a Brighton based site for NIMBYs and people who have a justifiable complaint against a planning proposal too.

I’ve not looked into the Patcham Park and Ride proposal in too much detail, but on first glance it seems an obviously bad idea. The hill that it will be situated on is exposed and looked upon from housing all around. I look forward to e-mails on the subject, for and against: click here.

At lunchtime today I drove from where I work in Hove to the drive-thru McDonalds in Shoreham. The green lobby will be mad at me, but what the hell - they should be mad at the government for sitting on their hands over oil-dependency by promoting alternative fuel infrastructure. Anyway, on my way I drove past the King Alfred Leisure Centre in Hove (google map). It needs redeveloping and needs it soon and the proposals as originally drawn up would have made for one of the most eye-catching and exciting buildings in England. The proposals have changed but the prospect is still very interesting.

Much is made in the press and among the Conservatives in Hove of the NIMBYs complaints about the King Alfred development. Now, I don’t know about you, but my feeling is that the people most entitled to complain are those who may have to live literally in its shadow, or those who lose a view. As I stopped at the traffic lights, I counted the number of windows in the buildings opposite the site who had a ‘No’ poster in their window. There were three - hardly a massive swaive of criticism considering the number of homes opposite. Maybe this is why Hove was not gained at the last election (on which more in a post I haven’t yet written). Anyone not affected in the ways I’ve listed (unless I’ve forgotten any) don’t really have any grounds to complain and are just against change.

On a similar note, if something doesn’t affect you, why should you complain? That is the main problem with the Brighton Marina development’s complainers - it is out to sea to all intents and purposes and only improves the area generally. Anyone with a coastal view from Marine Gate, will see an improved skyline with as much sea as they could wish to see, but augmented by a beautiful piece of architecture. For goodness sake, even the Regency Society are for it. The previous link includes excellent photos, but the following one is so good I thought I’d include it:

If you hold copyright on this image, please accept my apologies and let me know.

Buckingham Ward Conservatives are holding a nearly new sale of men and women’s clothes, shoes, handbags and jewellery at St Giles Church Hall, Upper Shoreham Road, Shoreham on 20th August from 10.30am to 12.30pm.

Admission costs 50p including tea, coffee and biscuits.

If you have any donations, please call 01273 464 *** (removed post-event) to have the items collected.

The EU has mooted plans for a ban on pre-pay mobile phones. Click here for the Australian BC news article.

Once again the EU completely fails to understand that while no-one wants terrorism to claim more innocent lives, draconian anti-freedom legislation such as this must never be accepted. Radio Four’s PM programme gave the news as if it was an obvious oversight by the state to allow a part of our life to be free of monitoring for the sake of monitoring. What a shame that the best broadcaster in the world continues to act as a state broadcaster in the worst sense of the phrase.

I have today written a letter to David Davis MP on the Campaign for an English Parliament and to congratulate him on the interview mentioned in my post of the 10 August.

When I receive a reply I shall publish my letter and that reply to this site for your information and comment. If you wish to add your opinion on the need for an English Parliament, please write to me and write to your local MP.

ITV, not known for its excellent documentaries, had a very interesting programme late on Sunday evening. The programme broached the difficult subject of atheism, humanism and the ignorance of those who continue to believe in the major religions of the world despite a complete lack of evidence.

Amongst other gem statements, was the following (or words to that affect) by Richard Dawkins:
"I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world."

Unfortunately I cannot remember the name of the politician who was on the programme (let me know if you do know) but his words were magical. If you can get hold of a tape of that programme I heartily recommend it. If you would like to engage me in debate on theological issues, please e-mail me and I would be happy to oblige.

People who know me know that I do not know there isn’t a God, just that it seems incredibly unlikely (to the point of comedy) and incredibly unnecessary to the existence of the universe and impossible to prove. Without lowering the tone too much, it is difficult to say what would be needed as evidence: Stargate has provided an entire series of excellent Sci-Fi on the basis that ‘Gods’ of the ancient world were actually advanced aliens. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to suggest that someone from the time of Moses being confronted by a spontaneously burning bush containing a radio issuing a voice purporting to be from God would be convinced far more easily than if the same were to happen today. Technology and our understanding and expectance that it will continue to develop, would make most people cynical were someone to approach them and say “I saw God on the mountain over there and he gave me these stone tablets”.

I am not shy about stating my atheism and, in a non-confrontational way, I do not believe religion has any place in debates on politics, science or any other part of life. Religion should be down to an individual’s conscience and should not be provided by the state, either by publicly funded faith schools (as a libertarian, I have no problem with privately funded faith schools), or through a non-secular government. It seems obviously wrong to me that the head of state is also head of a denomination of Christianity despite the obvious comfort it gives us against the possibility of a future Muslim-majority imposing Sharia law on England.