... web monitoring plans, well if you want my emails you only had to ask !

The Liberal Democratic poltroon Tim Farron has said he "would kill plans" for more monitoring of emails and internet use if they were not watered down.  The man is his party president with a sense of importance larger than his rural life.

In fact the government (GCHQ) proposals are an indication of poor performance, change from an "Intelligence" organisation to a "fishing" fleet, it's the lazy way out and the majority of sane, honest British people know this.

To protest the massive invasion of privacy there is a way out sometimes called "Denial of Service".  It is where an organisation orchestrates a massive use of a particular web site to the extent the web site crashes in digital flames, I have a far more personal proposal ...

Copy the home secretary to each of the emails you send as a F(or)Y(our)I(information), I'm sure this would have the desired effect, just to make sure the point is not lost probably best to let her know all your thoughts, your every thoughts, you might even write extra thoughts consisting of local trivia to keep their attention,  ................

Theresa May (Home Secretary) mayt@parliament.uk 

Politicians don't really think through problems ............. send them your emails so the (not so) security services know your life is as humdrum as your neighbours, they can cross you off their "might be WANTED list".

And Liberal Democratic Tim Farron, I'm happy some other sucker has him as MP .......

Well David, what about Cheryl ...

... and her assumed posture of angry defiance !

Recently a internal vacancy came about at the place I work, there were four candidates.  One candidate told me that if the job wasn't given to him he would leave.  After a series of interviews, during which consideration was given to his attempt at coercion, he wasn't chosen and he subsequently submitted his notice to leave, Friday is his last day.

At Westminster you have a similar dilemma, our Secretary of State for Wales has publicly stated that if she is not given a free vote she will resign the whip, its the case of the High-speed rail project that will link London to Birmingham and on to Manchester and Leeds, fair enough, she was elected by the people of the Chilterns, and like "Nimbys" the world over the people of the Chilterns would prefer it if the project passed through the backyards of someone else.

But she has made an attempt to coerce the government.

Ministers are reported to have said "It is about bringing the United Kingdom together. It is about closing the North-South gap and stimulating economic growth, a 21st-century infrastructure for a 21st-century country."  Not just a speed issue, but a socio-economic project to link those parts of Britain that will stimulate regional economies, Wales included if our local politicians are correct.

The local political voices around Cardiff Bay have been crass in their opposition to Cheryl Gillan because her constituency is not in Wales, I don't think it matters personally, after all Wales is Britain and Britain is Wales, anybody from any-part can be the Secretary of State for Wales as long as they have the necessary political skills, civil servants do the rest.

But back to Cheryl (do what I ask or I will cross the floor) Gillan, I'm sorry David, but if you do not let her go now the message you will send to the electorate will be a message of weakness, that's not why you were elected, if we wanted weak we could have voted for the Miliband tribe.

It's nothing to do with the rights or wrongs of the High Speed train, that's for debate, it's all about who is in charge.

If she is not with you she is agin you, you should do as we did, let her go, you see, we marked our employee down because he was a bully in waiting, how are you going to mark Cheryl ?

Power and Responsibility, those ...

... attributes we naively thought the great and the good would exercise on our behalf as a norm with its excesses only appearing rarely, how wrong we have been.

As a subscriber to The Times and The Sunday Times, paper and on-line, I have helped finance through News International Newspapers Limited some of the excesses of public life being debated in the media around the world.  As Matthew Paris wrote in today's Times ...

Please don't protest: "I didna ken." C'mon reader, ye ken ...

1. prison officers complicit in the supply of drugs ...
2. banks or energy suppliers. ... cartels, robbing their customers.
3.  Many sporting records that still stand ... have been fuelled by performance-enhancing drugs
4. Insider trading. It’s absolutely endemic
5. The stock exchange has all but lost its original purpose — the financing of new business...
6. Insurance has become an almighty racket, ... citizens parted from billions by the unscrupulous sale ...
7. The policing of the criminal law is riddled with corruption.
8. This goes for the Crown Prosecution Service too.
9. The easing of credit ... that will strangle (us) them when interest rates rise.
10. Dentistry and the NHS ... Where’s the market?
11. The way that British ministers and mandarins ... to take up positions on the boards of companies in the fields that they have until recently supervised is an absolute disgrace. We’re not talking shades of grey here. It’s outrageous.
12. So is the “government-relations” lobbying industry.
13. The social services departments of local authorities are an incompetent and occasionally vicious element in public administration, particularly as regards child protection.
14. The way children get allocated to state schools is indefensible, and a huge anxiety to parents.
15. The public sector is chronically incapable even of understanding, let alone managing, large IT projects; and private sector contractors are guilty of daylight robbery.
16. When all is told there will have been some shocking war crimes in Afghanistan
17. Euro-MPs’ expenses. Enough said.
18. EU budgeting. Enough said.
19. Lawyers. That the practice of law in England has for centuries been a stitch-up to enrich a professional monopoly
20. August will be unusually dry or wet.

... there is a perfect storm coming, and now is the best time for that storm when money is tight, when the people who will always pick up the tab have nothing else to lose, when politics and politicians will be held to account for the excesses, because Power and Responsibility rests with "Parliaments" ... and with those people who manage the organisations we do business with, every aspect of the business from employee welfare to customer satisfaction.

I discovered recently that parliament is a collective noun for a group of owls or rooks, wise owls or noisy rooks I wonder.

Carwyn Jones and the Welsh Assembly Government would do well to keep their heads down for some of the debris caused by this perfect storm in waiting could very well be coming our way.


... the thunderer reminds us that ".. you must own your mistakes, or your mistakes will own you", Bethan Jenkins might like to take that little ditty on board.