The Countryside Killer

The Countryside Alliance - The Serial Killers in the Countryside

With reference to the ‘Old Etonian’ and former soldier who now heads up the  Countryside Alliance says children should ditch their laptops and embrace country sports.

Our children should put down their computer games, abandon virtual shooting and take up the real thing, the new head of the Countryside Alliance Sir Barney White-Spunner is urging a new generation to take up arms and embrace country sports.

This is a concern as the Countryside Alliance is probably the most pro-active pressure group for the blood sports industry and it continually boasts of its educational campaigns to get more children involved in hunting and shooting in the countryside.

One has only to cast ones mind back to our youth and remember the cruel acts we committed away from adult supervision, whether it be placing a lowly worm in an ants nest or bullying the fat member of the gang. As within each human lies the basic primeval instincts of survival with the weakest members ruthlessly singled out they are expendable for the good of the group. 

Its during our development phase that most of us acquired a more pleasant and socially acceptable personality. The primeval instincts are well catered for in our many and varied sporting and recreational activities. A trip down to the local park and you will soon see the regular battles between opposing teams and duals on the tennis courts

The countryside Alliance has in the past used during it Top Ten Local Hero’s a 10 year old boy fitted out with a shotgun. Many of the population have great unease with activities such as hunting and shooting with our planet under climate change pressures and natural disasters. To promote these activities to children seem totally unnatural and undesirable and will ultimately saddle our society with individuals with a more uncaring and cruel element as research now shows that links exist between animal abuse and wider social abuse of ones partner and children.

Frances Maude - The Gerry-can Jerk of the Tories

Francis Maude, 58, is among a number of Government ministers amassing vast, taxpayer-funded nest eggs.But while the millionaire can look forward to a potential £43,000-plus a year income in his old age, he is cutting schemes for nurses, teachers and public sector workers. The Tory minister ruthlessly slashing the pensions of millions of public sector workers could be in line to pocket a £731,000 retirement pot.

The shocking sum is almost eight times the average £5,600 civil service employee’s pot.

If anyone thought that the planned strikes were nothing more than an inconvenient regarding child care that day or just public sector workers crying ‘Wolf’ over their pension changes then they need to think again.

We have in this collation government a collection of millionaires, members of the aristocracy and wealthy business people waging an all out war on the British workers. David Cameron him self is worth £30M and George Osbourne £5M but he will inherit a lot more. Nick Clegg and his Spanish lawyer wife and simply loaded and so far removed from the day to day financial crisis most people face daily.

Now whether these workers are highway engineers, dustbin men, nurses, teachers or headmasters; they are being targeting for the mistakes of the bankers, hedge fund managers and others in the financial sector.

Good public sector pension are in the front line of the battlefield to be overrun then they will move on to the conditions in work place. 

As the Business Secretary Vince Cable and the Chancellor George Osborne announced that the Government intends to start the dismantling many of the hard fought and long-held employment rights won over many years so that companies could have a more ‘flexible’ and ‘dismissive’ approach towards their employees; i.e. to make it easier for bosses to sack there workers. If these measures gets on the statute books then every employer will be able to tear up their HR policies and replace them with the simple phrase:- "Do as you are told or you are fired". This is just another example of the government being paid by business and applying policy for business needs only. These changes will make it harder for hundreds of thousands of workers to bring cases of victimisation, unfairness and bullying at work and these changes will affect all of us today and our children and grandchildren tomorrow, with all the hard won advances in the working environment starting to evaporate as uncertainty and insecurity become the norm in the workplace.

The rich will get richer and the poor poorer and those in the middle will end up working harder and longer for less. But just to rub salt in the wound, no one voted for this and no one offered it at the last election. Cameron and Clegg have just decided that past mistakes must be paid for and by those who had no part in the making of the crisis!

These are the words of the Governor of the Bank of England and he’s probably a Tory too!

Cameron, Osbourne and Johnson but a few!

A budget for austerity or one for the aristocracy?

As we all look forward to the budget on Wednesday and wonder if it will be one about austerity or one for the aristocracy?

We now have George Gideon Oliver Osborne and Old Etonian as chancellor who is the son and heir of a 17th Baronet and perhaps when he assumes ownership of that Baronetcy he would like to see the return the country to as is was a few centuries ago with a few wealthy ruling Barons and a sea of peasants trapped in poverty, uneducated and living in poor housing conditions.

The Prime Minster David Cameron is also an Old Etonian also but he has married into the aristocracy, with Lord Astor is his father-in-law. Again so far removed from the lives of ordinary people but he and his elitist cabinet will decide the lives of so many people.

At the top level of society Chancellor George Osbourne seeks to continue to divide and rule as a member of the aristocracy, as he attacks the public sector workers and there terms and conditions stating that the private sector needs to be able to compete with the unnatural higher wages in the public sector.

I think we all know that the private sector is driven by profit and share dividends for the few and we any need to look at the disasters that the private care homes have caused in or see the private health care responses to the poor quality breast implants undertaken. No rush to sort out the problem only a rush to protect profits and any costly liabilities!

It’s the same old tactic of divide and rule with the ‘sound byte’ taxpayers money should not be used for union work! But on the other hand it’s OK for many private companies to be supported by the taxpayer either during startup or the expansion phase; and many given National Insurance holidays and tax breaks for taking on staff.

No one likes to see taxpayers money  being used inappropriately and so one should cast our minds back a few years to the ‘Expenses Scandal’ when David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne were in opposition and acted with greed as both are fabulously rich with David Cameron having in excess of £30m, and George Osborne estimated worth is £4m and will inherit a great deal more as heir to the Osborne baronetcy. Yet these two men had structured their personal affairs so that British taxpayers financed mortgages on their second homes of about £300,000. Neither needed to have mortgages on their second home, and neither man needed to claim the second home allowance from the taxpayer, yet they both did they ‘milked’ the situation. 

These changes to many in the public sector are being progressed by a Chancellor and Prime Minster born into a life so privileged and one wonders what the full impact was with the Rupert Murdoch supporting the Conservative party together with all the captains of industry, all singing from the same hymn book that free market forces and private investment is the only way forward.

The rich have inherited the Earth and soon a camel will be able to pass through the eye of a needle!

Shame on those people who did not vote and more shame on those who voted Liberal Democrat.

Whose Horse Will David Cameron Ride Next?

I must scream hear we go again as what we have in David Cameron is a Public Relations Prime Minister following an endless of PR stunts . This time around its the Tory Math’s guru Carol Voderman added to his team of millionaire advisors, Carol is most famous for Countdown but less well known for all the lives she destroyed with her consolidation loans (sub-prime lending), remember those nasty adverts for Firstplus loans fronted by Carol Voderman. As a mathematician she must have known that the last thing people in debit need to do is borrow more! They were  many financial commentators begging her to stop fronting the FirstPlus remortgaging and consolidating home loads bank. All this with a third class engineering degree, my how standards are falling! But I am sure her bank balance grew nicely.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Education said: "We want the vast majority of young people to study maths up to 18 within a decade to meet the growing demand for employees with high level and intermediate maths skills. 

"We are undertaking a root-and-branch review of how maths is taught in schools, attracting the best maths graduates into the profession." 

The study which was originally commissioned by the Tories in opposition as part of the ‘scare tactic’ they used to oust New Labour, warns that English pupils are already around two years behind peers in the Far East and are less likely to study math’s to a high standard than in most other developed nations. 

But hold on a minute, how are you going to get the best maths graduates when public sector wages and pensions are under such a concerted attack; gone are the teachers ‘gold plated’ pensions, “aren't they?” And don’t teachers have too much time off with many inset days and long school holidays, I mean we all know they only work 9 to 3:30 each day!

However on 2 March 2010 Carol Vorderman publicly launched her new commercial venture of an online mathematics coaching system for 4 – 12 year old children under the name of the MathsFactor. Here in Chard we are often subjected to a glossy Carol on Car Insurance flyers; she sure has a love of figures, especially whose with ‘£’ in front of them.

She is par of a long line of Tory Guru’s that our PR Prime Minster roles out; with James Dyson the Technology Guru; he sees himself move up the ‘Rich List'; probably helped by the shedding over 800  UK  jobs to Maylisa. Is this the way ahead for British manufacturing as Dyson cleans up!

Then we have the Welfare to Work Guru Emma Harrison who recently stepped down amidst financial irregularities, not going empty handed as she was pain £8.6 in dividends last year.

You only need to look at who funds the Conservative party to understand the drive to cuts corporation and top earners 50p tax. It will be interesting to see if Clegg and Cable can win the argument of lifting the tax threshold for the low paid or will they suffer other defeats the like AV vote and Tuition Fees and be blamed for the NHS reforms which they failed to get the required safe guards.

The 7th Year of the Hunting Act

If ever there was a case of everyone taking the time to understand the threat that our wildlife is under from the pressures that are building up to overturn the Hunting Act of 2004.

The main political pressure group of the blood sports fanatics is the Countryside Alliance now headed by Old Etonian and Former head of the UK Field Army, Lieutenant General Sir Barney White-Spunner and like former military Editors of the Baileys Hunting Directory they seem to have found time to edit this ‘Hunting Bible’  while serving in volatile conflict zones of Afghanistan or Iraqi. Barney White-Spunner is a writer and countryman and a long term supporter of all country pursuits and was President of the Association of Masters of Harriers and Beagles and well ‘blooded’ to lead this war on our wildlife.

The greatest threat to our wildlife is the possible bill that will allow some sort of new self-regulating body in attempt to make repeal of the ban on hunting with dogs acceptable and necessary to the general public. These secret plans to reintroduce hunting foxes, stags, hares and minks have been drawn up with the backing of many Conservative MPs. Details of the controversial scheme include the creation of a Hunt Regulatory Authority (HRA) to monitor the behavior of hunts. The plans were drawn up by lawyers and the Countryside Alliance, but aren’t these the people who hunt? This HRA has the blessing of many high profile Tories including the Prime Minster, himself a hunter, William Hague, and Dominic Grieve, the current Attorney General. 

Well what a novel idea especially following the banking crisis where the hunters regulate themselves. It’s rather like putting a sex offender in charge of playground duty!

Currently we have hunts claiming to be ‘Trail Hunting’ but time and time again we keep getting reports of Hunt Havoc in towns and villages up and down the country: 

“A few hounds strayed into the garden and unfortunately mistakenly attacked the families pet cat. The huntsman did make every effort to call the hounds off but it was too late”.

“The incident was the result of a misunderstanding over a right of way between fields and the road”.

“The hounds ventured off the trail and got into the back of the village”.

“The hounds took off after a fox while out trail hunting, it was an unfortunate accident.” 

Many of these incidents take place on private property where people have set aside parcels of land for the benefit of local wildlife.

No doubt we will hear from the hunters that the law is not working and this I agree with this. We need the police to enforce it and if they have problems then get the act modified to close the many silly loop holes that are so ruthlessly exploited by the cruel hunters.

Tory Fat Cats - Built on Wealth

Fundraising Auction at the Battersea Evolution venue in London - Feb 2012

If anyone still thinks that David Cameron has the interest of the common people then they need to think again. So much for Cameron’s pre-election promise of ‘Openness and transparency’ as the Tories went to great lengths to keep the black-and-white-tie fund raising party a secret to avoid letting the big fat cat lie out of the bag!

The list of people able and willing to denote thousands to the party’s funds in order to win an outright election and be free of any calming effects that the Liberal Democrats may think they exert. It was almost a Bankers and Hedge Fund Managers Ball.

The secret event was sponsored by the investment group Shore Capital with party supporters dining on spectacular banquet feast with of course the very best French wines to wash it all down.

Wealthy donors paid up to £10,000 for tables with the top prices being paid for those close to Cameron and his Minsters. The former party treasurer Michael Spencer the Chief Executive of ICAP the worlds largest inter-dealer broker and the owner of ‘Spread Betting’ firm City Index was present along with the current treasurer Baron Fink the Godfather of the UK hedge fund industry and a frequent guest at the Prime Minster official country home of Chequers. Others in attendance was another hedge fund boss Michael Hintze and the Swiss banker Henry Angest.

The auction was conducted by Tory supporter Sotheby’s chairman Henry Wyndham and for a taste of some items sold during the night see the list below:-

• A bronze status of Baroness Thatcher was sold for £120,000

• Shooting for a party of eight on the Tusmore Park estate in Oxfordshire, with pheasants, partridges and ducks as the targets’.

• Dinner for eight with Boris Johnson at a top London restaurant went for £55,000.

• An Everest trek with adventurer David Hempleman-Adams sold for £20,000.

• An offer of a self portrait painted by artist Darren Baker sold for £40,000.

• A day's shooting for eight guns in Oxfordshire with Lunch thrown in sold for £55,000

They were many other bloodspots events on offer with some selling for £55,000 and stalking at Buckhurst Park was sold but the winning bid was not released.

However unlike last year’s event they were no internships with top City firms available for auction. These usually sell for thousands of pounds for the benefit of the children of party donors. That is now seen as sheer favouritism and perhaps buying success for ones offspring, so reluctantly removed from the auction this year.

Conservative Party treasurer Baron Fink addressed the party supporters and told them that we need to raise enough money to govern this country without the Liberal Democrates. This time we ‘the Conservatives’ must blow all opposition to us out of the water.

The Big Badger Bash of 2012

I have managed to catch a few of the SpringWatch and AutumnWatch over the years and it was always fascinating to see the presenters interaction with the badgers. However this SpringWatch may be the last time badgers will be featured as come the autumn this first of the two trial badger culls will commence. 

A veritable army of Elma Fudds’ will descend into these cull areas for a night-time gun fest.

Who would have thought that the badger a protected species after a long battle to uplift it from its terrible past of badger baiting and abuse. 

It will now feature in a brand new blood sport of ‘Night Time Badger Shooting’; one can only assume that in this war against the badger the countryside army will be made up of Agriculture Students, Young Farmer Club members, Terrier-men (or Countrymen as they are now called) and of course people who are members of the Shotgun Conservation Club (SCC).

In the past SCC members were looking at wild goats in Cheddar or the wild boar in the Forest of Dean for possible new conservation shooting projects, but now with this badger cull in Gloucestershire and away days on Exmoor the Mecca of the blood sports killing fields.

However come the autumn AutumnWatch will be like watching wildlife in a parallel universe where presenters were so keen to show foxes, deer and badgers together with all the other diversity of wildlife in our areas of outstanding natural beauty.

Now we may see the badgers that were featured on SpringWatch now being shot on AutumnWatch and the pressure to class the fox as a pest as an aid to repeal the hunting act.

It is a great shame that this small snippet of time remaining for enjoying the local wildlife will not last much longer as this animal hostile Government puts in place the framework to undertake a mass cull of Badgers, and against all the best scientific evidence in a futile and absurd attempt to curb TB in cattle.

If we consider the view of most of the newly elected MPs into this parliament, which are in the main Career Conservatives or Tory supporting Liberals. Most will support a badger cull when presented with ‘cherry picked’ evidence; and should the Government get there way we may see next year the BBC SpringWatch program being replaced by HuntWatch, where local hunts explain their tally of ‘accidental’ kills for the season and choose the best hounds of the pack. This will be a sad day for our wildlife as culling, hunting and shooting are expanded and the countryside treated rather like a fairground attraction – stack them up and butcher them down!