Anti-Dog Jobsworths In Weymouth
This gate opens onto farmland and scrub stretching just half a mile from the Jurassic coast, up and over the Dorset ridgeway.
If you head due east, maybe a touch to the north, you can walk with your dog (or dogs) for five or six miles and never come across a building nor even a road.
Yet Weymouth and Portland Borough Council choose to threaten us with a £5000 fine for not having our dogs on a lead, or £1000 for allowing them to, ahem, shit (for want of a better word).
The path leads away from the main road through Sutton Poyntz and the signs can’t be directed at people coming towards the village because they’re impossible to see from that direction.
Half a mile further west it’s the same thing on Chalbury Rings, the bronze age hill fort, which is as remote as anywhere. In five years, walking there regularly, I might have bumped into someone else once, perhaps twice.
The nasty, dog-hating, money-wasting, officious ‘little Hitlers’ that devise and operate this policy are the very worst of Britain. Local government seems to be infested with them.
The British Press Shamed By Prince Harry
I don’t know about you but I found the sequence where he is in the middle of being interviewed and then is ‘scrambled’ to take-off, WWII Battle of Britain style, extraordinarily moving.
He is right about the lowlife exploiters who work in Fleet Street. They are the very worst of Britain and need to be taken down.
Lincoln
Great movie. Hero worship of Lincoln. Daniel Day-Lewis is the greatest actor in the world. Reminded me of the West Wing in places.
Appalling Portrait Does Kate No Justice
What a dreadful result! It puts at least 20 years on her, captures nothing of her personality and beauty and deserves only incarceration in the Tower.
Perhaps, mercifully, the artist, Paul Emsley, may retain his head but have his hands removed so that he can never commit such an atrocious act again! The National Portrait Gallery should take it down immediately.
Not All Our Police Are Wonderful
Ex-Detective Chief Inspector April Casburn
Some are corrupt, self-serving scumbags who deserve exemplary punishment. See here.
Sixth-Form ‘A’ Level Course In PR Omnishambles
Utterly humiliating, amateur, empty, ridiculous, incompetent, shameful.
Barclay Bros Tax Avoidance Inc (Offshore) #taxcheats
Great Panorama expose on the scumbag Barclay brothers this evening.
The Ritz has paid no tax whatsoever in 17 years!
A disgrace.
Of course, Cameron and Osborne wouldn’t comment. They reserve their condemnation of tax avoidance for Jimmy Carr.
The Barclay Brothers. Tax Avoiders.
All Over The World The Media Are Self-Serving, Out of Control Renegades
‘Freedom of the press’ has nothing to do with the crass and irresponsible behaviour of two scumbag Australian DJs. Nor is it anything to with the Daily Mail’s intrusive and tasteless 20 page feature on the 12 week pregnancy of the Duchess of Cambridge. Nor has it anything to do with the Independent’s publication of false science and sensationalism about cannabis and exploitation of those with mental illness.
These are the self-serving calculations of an out of control media that has politicians in its pocket or terrified to confront its immoral and disgraceful practices.
It seems they can drive a woman to such international humilation that she takes her own life, a princess at high speed into the walls of a Paris tunnel or government policies in any direction they want based on their proprietor’s personal agenda.
They can break the law with impunity, bribing and blackmailing police to leave them alone.
Then, when their actions are challenged and they are called to account, they launch their well-oiled machine of deception, untruth and propaganda and try to seize the high moral ground as if they are protectors of freedom. In fact, mostly, they are exactly the opposite.
We need an independent media that is required to report truthfully, to moral standards that are enforced by law.
Nothing else will do. Dacre, Murdoch and their cronies cannot be trusted at all, anywhere. First we need freedom from the press enforced, strictly, by an independent regulator free from the state by force of law.
Reefer Madness In A Final Frenzy
“In years to come, the attitudes that now prevail towards people that choose cannabis will be as politically incorrect as racism, homophobia or denying women the vote.
Cannabis is one of God’s greatest gifts with which mankind has had a symbiotic relationship since the dawn of time.
The prohibition experiment of the last 80 years has been a disaster. A rational approach will bring enormous benefits to our country, save billions in wasted expenditure, create thousands of new jobs, cut crime and disorder, provide tremendously safe and effective relief to millions in pain and disability.
The time has come to embrace cannabis as the miraculous plant that it is.”
An Open Letter To My MP, Richard Drax, On The Leveson Report
Dear Richard,
You suggested in your speech in the House this evening that implementing the Leveson report would mean legislating on ethical standards for the press.
This is nonsense and I find it difficult to believe you could advance such an idea in good faith. What Leveson recommends is legislating to create an independent regulator which would set ethical standards based on consultation and agreement. This is exactly what we need.
I could not disagree with you more when you say “non-statutory, self-regulation” is the only option. I believe precisely the reverse is the case. The press has been given seven ‘last chances’ in 70 years to put its house in order and without fail has returned to abusive, corrupt and unacceptable conduct.
You will recall, I hope, that I too am a journalist and real ‘freedom of the press’ is something I value highly – but with freedom comes responsibility. It is preposterous, as you seem to suggest, that there should be no rules and all journalists must be trusted without question!
I regret that in your speech I found you pompous, apparently completely detached from the reality of most people’s day to day lives and, most of all, out of touch. You appear to be a caricature of an MP from an age that is long, long past..
The press barons, owners and editors, are flexing their muscles, saturating our country with propaganda which blatantly misleads about the urgent necessity for independent regulation. Their furious disinformation, trying to frighten and intimidate with nonsensical allegations about state control of the press is the dishonesty and manipulation of Fleet Street exemplified.
Independent regulation, backed by statute, is essential. As proposed it will enshrine a newspaper industry as independent from the state. It is a necessary and progressive move in support of freedom and liberty and against the corruption and vested interests of the media megalomaniacs.
I reject entirely your position on this vital issue.
Peter Reynolds
Peter Reynolds 