RANDOM THOUGHTS ON SUNDAY MORNING

The London Government has been accused sharing the results of more than £140,000 worth of taxpayer funded private polling with Ukok, BT, No Thanks, or whatever they are calling themselves this week.

London has refused to share the polls with the public, despite the public paying for them, but The Sunday Post has learned that the polls have been shared with the NO campaign, which did not pay for them.  Odd?

Nice hair net matey, Makes you look  like Ena Sharples

Secretary of State for the UK, Alistair Carmichael said the his Government would not release this information for the baffling reason that: “the principle is it is government research and we don't release it.” In other words …erm… “NO, because NO”.

However, it has since emerged some of the findings have been shared with Better Together. So what Mr Carmichael, maybe not the most articulate of ministers meant, was: “When I say it was government polling what I meant was that we will only share this information with our own side, and not charge them for it, because… just because… OK? Remember who I am. I'm a very senior politician in London, next to Danny Alexander the most senior North Brit in the South Brit cabinet. You know sometimes they even allow me to speak at Cabinet. Would you like a bit of my biscuit?”

I can't help wondering if supporters of independence shouldn’t demand that part of their taxes back, or that the government should make a similar amount available to the YES campaign. After all, British Values, that is values exclusive to Great Britain, and which lesser people don't have, are supposed to include 'decency' and 'fair play' and 'cricket, old chap', aren't they?

According to a Better Together spokesman said: “This is private UK Government polling and has never been formally shared with the Bitter campaign.”

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Oh the misery of having foreigners in the family

Talking of British values, Nob Orders has published this (according to my twitter feed a genuine ad), using, as far as i can see, a real live child.

Obviously, the best way to ensure that children grow up with these Great British values firmly instilled into them is to point out the utter horror of having a foreigner for a grandfather or a grandmother...or worse, both.

Clearly this must be because foreigners are vile, scary creatures not to be loved and cherished as grandparents so often are (even in lesser countries with not so many values, and certainly not British ones), but to be shunned, mistrusted. It's a good way to bring up kids in a world where people travel more and more for education, training and employment, and it will fit British children to continue to believe in their superiority over everyone else.

Seriously though, I don't know how old this child is, but does anyone really think that this little dude "keeps asking, why grandad?". No, me neither. I mean do kids do that? Especially as he lives in England and presumably Grandpa and Grandma live in Scotland adn it's not like that even now they see each other every day. 

Or is it all lies designed to feed on that well known British value of Xenophobia? And does that not make you feel sick?

UPDATE: Stuart has just tweeted NobOrders asking them why they failed to include the mandatory hyperlink to the picture they used in their ad. http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=19826
They really aren't very good for a professional lobbying company, sorry, grassroots organisation, are they?

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Why are they standing at an angle?

Days after the  three stooges from the Labour Party, the Conservatives and the Irrelevants were photoshopped into a picture with their hands appearing to be sticking out at odd angles, all agreeing on their "more devolution guaranteed as long as you vote no" plans, the Scottish Conservatives chairman has rubbished the scheme as "incoherent, unworkable and confused". 

So that little bit of being Better Together lasted only a couple of days. 

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I'm always intrigued to see British Clout in action.

After all, for all this clout we pay dearly: People die for lack of money to pay them incapacity benefits; roads go unrepaired; train services are the worst and most expensive in Europe; pensions are the lowest in the developed world; and in England the NHS is being sold off and students have to pay £9,000 a year for what is free, or next to free ,everywhere else in the continent, to mention but a few points. And all for clout.

Small price to pay, you might think for all that clout; all that respect from our friends and fear from our enemies that Mr Cameron so likes to boast about, and of course that special relationship with the most important country on earth.

So I was interested to read the other day that Mr Obama had phoned Frau Merkel and President Hollande to discuss the next steps to be taken over the débacle in The Ukraine. I'm sure he had just mislaid Mr Cameron's phone number.

Is it me or does he look sort of mad here?

I also couldn't stifle a little smirk this morning when I read that Mr Cameron's plans, along with the other right of centre party leaders in Britain, to keep Jean Claude Juncker from the EU presidency, look like falling on hard ground.

Not only has the right backed him, but so has the left. And Mr Cameron has been left pretty much isolated, along with his friends Mr Miliband and Mr Clegg, the Netherlands and Sweden. The other 25 countries appear to favour M Juncker.

The main reason of course is that Great British value, democracy. 

The EPP, which backs M Juncker, remains the largest group in the Brussels parliament, the parliament that was set up at HUGE cost to lend some democratic legitimacy to the EU. 

Democracy demands its candidate for the job, M Juncker, must be considered first for the job.

But Mr Cameron has made direct appeals to voters in Ireland, Germany and France for backing against what is, after all, "foreign" democracy... not the Great British kind as represented by the House of Lords, hereditary head of state, FPTP whipped lower chambers, etc. 

So, we can only imagine that the famed British clout will win the day and the 25 countries backing M Juncker will be democratically ignored while Mr Cameron's Great British Values candidate (as yet unnamed, but who knows, maybe a disgraced Tory MP?) will be installed.

Oh the clout all our sacrifice buys!

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