This from the Guardian:

Last night Tory opposition was also growing with Tim Loughton, the Tory frontbench spokesman on children and MP for Worthing East and Shoreham, cancelling a visit to Birmingham so he could oppose the proposal and Lord Baker, the Tory former cabinet minister, deciding to vote against the measure in the Lords.

At least some politicians appear to care about right and wrong — it’s a shame so many of them are in opposition.

Let’s hope David Cameron can be convinced not to abstain, but instead to show that he believes in democracy and whip up a vote against Gordon Brown’s abuse of power.

The original plans were ill-thought-through but at least allowed areas of land with majority Muslim populations to remain outside of Jewish control and vice versa. Unfortunately attacks from neighbouring countries put paid to that plan and left Israel in control of the west bank of the river Jordan and the Gaza Strip.

The US moved from being strongly against the League of Nations plan to, these days, providing much of Israel’s military capability and being the only Security Council country that does not regularly criticise Israel’s actions.

But this ridiculously quick summary of the history of modern Israel is nowhere near enough and I strongly recommend anyone who doesn’t know the full story reads it on Wikipedia or similar.

From the Telegraph website today:

With Palestinian medics saying the death toll had risen to more than 780, two Hamas rockets hit the Israeli town of Ashkelon.

It’s madness, it really is. You tickle a tiger often enough and it’s going to bite; now if the tiger has bitten the last thing you do is continue to tickle — you hope it speaks and you try and reason with it and apologise for your stupidity.

Hamas may not like Israel and may not believe it ought to exist, but the way to resolve this situation (not just the current crisis) is to engage — nothing, at all, will be achieved by murder and the Israelis deserve kudos for their patience with Hamas thus far.

My reason is relatively simple: Activities carried out at summits or meetings of the European Council of Ministers are carried out for the United Kingdom of England and Wales by the Prime Minister in the name of the Head of State. This means that no-one can carry out any checks or balances on what the person in charge of the largest party in parliament does on our behalf. Since 2005 the de facto Head of State has been chosen by the MPs representing the party voted for by less than 40% of the voting population.

But my support never progressed to membership because of views expressed in Republic that I did not agree with. They were against monarchy per se (which I am not) and were keen for the Royal Family to be made to work like ‘normal’ people. Whereas my gripe is with the hole their presence causes in the constitutional robustness of the country.

I mean how can anyone complain about the Royal Family costing each of us under 70 pence each per year when the European Union is estimated to cost us approximately 50 pence per day?

But following Sunday’s revelations that Prince Charles may take a more active interest in the games that politicians play, my support has evaporated entirely. The non-interventionist Queen has overseen gross attacks on her own power and the power of her Ministers by the European Union — if the next King intends to redress that balance, and provide a little, sensible, check and balance, he is fulfilling his constitutional role. Suddenly the need for an extreme overhaul of the Head of State is removed.

Of course Republic don’t agree and are now livid that the King may want to ‘interfere’ in his Kingdom’s running without being elected. But hang on, isn’t the Prime Minister effectively unelected? Isn’t the present situation much worse? Wouldn’t we be better off having an interested and politically independent Head of State than either of the alternatives: an apathetic Head of State or one elected due to the emotions of a small proportion of the electorate?

The electorate are imperfect and make God-awful decisions some of the time — I am excited by the prospect of actually having a Head of State again.

Elect the Lords

That said, I still think we should Elect the Lords!

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I feel a little sick.

And the answer is sort-of (in my humble opinion):

I believe the protests in London and Paris about the transportation of the Olympic flame through the cities on the way to Beijing was appropriate and laudable. If our government was abusing human rights I would expect us all to be protesting. Now that our government is supporting those that abuse human rights we should still be protesting.

Tibet should be free of oppression by China.

That all said, Britain should not withdraw from the upcoming Olympics because that would be unfair on a generation of athletes, achieve less than nothing and be an inappropriate way of protesting.

First, I think the commentary was wholly unfair when it came to David Beckham. Commentators and pundits all said that Crouch was the only player on form, but I believe Beckham, when he came on eventually, was outstanding.

Second, I must share with you this exclusive scoop from Southern Counties Radio just now. They know the name of the next England coach. Obviously it needs to be a safe pair of hands, someone the English can rely upon. Most of all it needs to be someone we can trust and someone who rarely makes a wrong move.

That is why it will be Alistair Darling.

When the UK gave independence to Mauritius in 1968, Diego Garcia was not included in the group of islands that was granted that independence. However, worse than that, the formerly-inhabited, islands were purged of their people.

This is clearly morally wrong, but now that they have been allowed to reside in the UK, we’re refusing to treat them as British citizens! Surely, having committed such an atrocity, we should (as a caring, compassionate and just nation) be bending over backwards to make the rest of their lives better.

Wandering slightly off topic, it has long been my belief that victims of miscarriages of justice — those people who are not just found to have ‘unsafe’ convictions, but those people who are fully acquitted — should be given more than enough money to live on for the rest of their lives. If you have had your liberty taken, potentially other horrendous things happen to you, you should not then be required to return to the grindstone and continue to pay taxes to the state that wronged you so heinously.

Staggering back to the topic in hand, this is far more sinister than a miscarriage of justice; this is a meditated act by the State and should be resolved with humility, generousity and apology. Act Mr Brown, act like a liberal rather than a left-wing facist.

Instead, we are denying these people the basic rights a citizen is afforded by other taxpayers: benefits. See today’s BBC News article on the Diego Garcians.

The question is, why wouldn’t Boris win? The English have an interesting humour and I would guess the vast majority of English people would vote for him purely because he appeals to them.

Correcting myself, then, the question should be: Is there enough cultural Englishness left in London for the natural winner of this contest to win? The answer will likely be the poll result — I hope and expect the answer to be “Yes”.

Vote for the blue buffoon that we all think is nuts!