RANDOM THOUGHTS

You'll love this one (well most of you will).

Suffolk Tories apparently accepted an illegal donation of £3,000 during the last election. There's no question about it. They owned up. The person who donated the money was not on the electoral register at the time the money was given.

The electoral commission ruled that they should be fined the sum of £1,100, but should not be required to return the donation.

If my arithmetic is right, they get a donation of £3,000, they are fined £1,100, so their net gain is £1,900. Not much of a punishment; not much of a disincentive to repeat the crime next time round.

Still, it's the Tories. They appear do whatever they want and walk off laughing.
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Erm, has Harriet joined the Tory party? We all know she is aristocratic and it wouldn't be stretching the imagination much to guess that she loathes Mr Corbyn, but what's this about. Don't tell us they just banged into each other.  

Waitrose I might just about swallow, but ASDA? Please!

Dodgy Dave down with people again, innit? Top button undone, not singing God Save the Queen (tut tut, what would your mother say Dodge?), but wearing a suit that cost more that the bloke he's talking to earns in a year. 
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A few months ago, the gross old duke of York was unhappy that he couldn't get through the gates at Windsor Great Park, where he has one of his houses...well, one of OUR houses. Apparently the mechanism for automatic opening had failed. So the fat boy decided that, as he had a great big 2.5 tonne, £80,000 Range Rover, he'd just smash the gates down...as you would, if a £5,000 repair to your car were of no interest.

The alternative would have been a 1 mile... yes a whole mile...detour. How utterly ghastly!

Well obviously a royal highness couldn't be expected to put up with that kind of inconvenience, so he broke the gates down. OUR gates that WE paid for.

If you lived in your own home and you decided that you would trash your gates to save yourself a little inconvenience, that would be your business. If you lived in a council house, or one owned by a housing association or the state, then it becomes their business.

Most people would call it criminal damage and charges would be brought.

Needless to say Air Miles is getting off Scot free.
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The same goes for tax pounds. 

Every so often David Cameron reminds us we are a Christian country. I can't imagine why he would do that unless he was trying to stir up bad feeling with Muslims or Jews or some other religious groups: Ya know, make them feel ill at ease, not at home?

But the very people who might be considered to know a little bit more about Christian values than Dodgy Dave, that is to say the bishops of the State Church, are rather less than enthusiastic about his policies.

Not that Church of England bishops are the only ones to criticise. The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has also laid into the Tories for their heartlessness in welfare reforms. Odd given what a devout Catholic Iain Duncan Smith is.

And even odder that his replacement is one of these OTT Christians that tells us prayer can cure anything... and apparently people with Parkinson's should just get out there and get a job.

Every year some of us (admittedly a dwindling number) listen to Her Majesty's Christmas message. It's a mixture of her family news, the stuff some folk write in long tedious letters at Christmas, but she gets to put on the BBC (ya know, Andrew losing his rag with a gate; the number of holidays that the blood princesses have taken; how little work William and Kate have done; how much money they screwed out of the people of Cornwall to keep Mrs Parker Bowles in diamond tiaras, etc) together with a religious message. 

She invariably talks about how she has tried to follow the teachings of Christ all of her life in everything she does. Clearly she misses out the bit about the rich man and the eye of the needle, given her immense wealth, and the "suffer the little children" bit of these teachings. 

Probably feeding the 5000 passes her by, as within a few miles of Buckingham Palace some of her loyal subjects are sleeping in cardboard boxes and eating out of soup kitchens. Children subjects of hers have little or noting to eat due to the policies that she reads out from her gold throne with her multi million pound hat on her head, having stepped out of a gold coach.

It's a long time since I was forced, in this Christian country, to read the bible as part of my core curriculum, but I can recall all of those things even if I maybe don't always live up to them. It's strange that the queen has such problems with them, having dedicated her life to following such teachings.

WHAT IS LABOUR FOR?

So, what is Labour for?

I've certainly criticised them and other opposition parties in the past, for opposing for the sake of opposing. The Willie Bain philosophy of politics was never going to make it into the pages of tomes on great political thinking. 

But, by the same token, never opposing anything because, well, that's what people voted for, is plain stupid. Specially when the government majority is so slender and was elected on a 37% vote. David Cameron must be rubbing his privileged hands together with glee at the capitulation of Labour.

It's almost like they said... "Well, we lost. We should just let them get on with running the country. We'll just head for the bars".

The leadership rivals seem to be with Harman in accepting that even with a majority of 12, the Tories should be allowed a free run at destroying the welfare state.

Burnham sent out mixed messages saying that he opposed the cuts, but then abstained, because Harriet Harman told him to. Yvette Cooper likewise abstained, but wasn't available for comment. This is amazing in a leadership contender, but presumably she thinks "least said...soonest forgotten about".

Liz Kendall also abstained, but she's such an outsider that no one much cares. She so right wing, I'm surprised that she didn't vote WITH the government.

Alone, Jeremy Corbyn voted against the cuts. He was joined by 46 Labour MPs. Needless to say the real opposition parties voted against. The SNP, Plaid, Green, UUP, DUP and Liberal Democrats went into the no lobby.

Jeremy seems to me to be the only hope they have of not being subsumed into the Tory party.

How proud the founding fathers must be of this shambles. Heaven only knows what the answer in the Scottish branch is, but it's not Ken or Kezia.

List of MPs who voted against the Welfare Bill.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Trawling through Twitter this evening I was amused to see that the reactions from Labour supporters to Ms Harman's total capitulation to Gideonomics and the austerity budget, were far from enthusiastic.

Even Kezia Dugdale has tweeted that she cannot and will not support taking money away from the poorest (for which credit), and there are tweets from councillors reminding Ms Harman that she is a caretaker leader only and will be gone in September.

Of course Kezia herself, only last week, was talking about how the Labour Party must  try to appeal to a wider audience than the core vote... the aspirational classes. 

I'm wondering if she's not finding a little hard to be all things to all voters!

I've tweeted her inviting her to square the circle. If she can't and won't support Labour Party Policy made in London, will she support a separate Scottish Party which makes its own policies. I don't expect a reply.
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When is Stephen House going to resign? His record as head of Police Scotland has been pretty awful. Even in friendly newspapers I don't remember hearing one good thing about him. From his stop and search of children to the fleet of luxury chauffeur driven cars used to transport the elite of Police Scotland at the extreme displeasure of the Justice Secretary. 

Last week's total failure of the public by a member of his staff, which led to two deaths, was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Clearly it's not directly his fault, but the buck has to stop somewhere and that's what he gets the big bucks for.

I can't help thinking that if he doesn't go soon of his own volition, it will be the job of the justice secretary to sack his useless backside.
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It's comforting to know that in these hard times when only MPs can expect to get a decent pay rise, that HRH The Duchess of Cambridge has plenty of money to spend.

Willy got himself a nice little wedding present from the Queen in the shape of a Hall. No, not a lobby... I'm talking a proper Hall here. In fact Anmer Hall, which is on his grandma's estate in Sandringham.  Apparently it wasn't up to Kate's high standards, so she spent £2.5 million doing it up. And now, the damned tennis court is in the wrong place, wouldn't you just know it. 

What a blow. 

But fear not, money is no object to the Saxe-Cobergs, so Kate is having it moved 36 ft to improve her view. And all for the knock down price of £60,000. (Anyone work out how many hours work that is at the new minimum/living wage (private sector only)that you can't live on?)

Munguin's readers will be relieved to know that, unlike the horrifically expensive £4.5 million renovations carried out at Kensington Palace, the royal family is paying for this work out of its own money...although where that comes from no one really seems to know. Us, I suspect!
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Some thoughts on Austerity...

Trickle down theory

"If it were not for my crumbs, how would you get any bread?"

"I'm the baker."

And sitting on... and talking to

THEY RESPECTED WHITE VAN MAN; NOW THEY RESPECT PINK VAN LADY

How completely out of touch with people is Labour?

Harriet turns up at ASDA: That's the place to find women! 

You really have to wonder what on Earth Harriet Harman was thinking about when she dreamt up the idea of touring England in a pink van to talk to women.

You might have thought that Labour would have learned some sort of lesson from the scorn that was poured on them and their Tory mates in Scotland when the 'patronising woman' ad for the NO campaign was released. 

You'll doubtless remember that that particular campaign featured a woman drinking a mug of coffee in her kitchen, and telling us all that she didn't really understanding the finer points of the politics. Instead she spoke about "that man aff the telly"; she didn't know who he was or what he was... (the First Minister) and worried about her kids and getting her husband's breakfast.

You may also recall that it went down like a lead balloon, and was mercilessly satirised on social media.

The idea that women only take an interest in politics when they are engaged by another woman, preferably in the  kitchen or supermarket, or involved in a domestic task, talking about children, or bedecked in pink, is surely something belonging to the 1950s. I don't know a single woman who has been impressed by this and I do know a few who have been pretty much angered by it. 

Rumour has it that Jim Murphy (the sexy beast)
 is out there talking to the ladies!

That all this was the brainchild of arch-feminist Harriet Harman is almost beyond belief. And like the patronising woman and her "eat your cereal" broadcast, it has rightly been pulled apart on social media and on television.

Clearly the Tories think it is a good idea!

ERM... WHAT?

Scottish Labour is not a political party any more that Yorkshire Labour is a political party. It is a branch office of the British Labour Party.

In reality, although they did elect Johann and Anas as their leaders, any matters of importance are dealt with by London, where the authority lies. 

And even before the referendum if is unlikely that they were Scotland's largest party. Prior to Friday the SNP had just over 25,500 members. Although Labour won't tell us how many members they have in Scotland (apparently it's a secret) someone on Twitter guestimated that they might have around 13,000-14,000, or just over half the SNP's number.

Since the referendum and Mr Miliband's assertion that there are more important things to do than bother with the vow (what is he doing, competing for the Nick pledge broken promise prize of 2014 or does he just want to find out if Gordon Brown has lost his Nokia aim, now that he's been made to be a liar?) the SNP's membership has soared to over 60,000 (Just heard from Roseanna Cunningham ast 22.00 hrs).

And for extra measure the SNP has 494 politicians in Scotland, whilst Labour has 485. 

Labour tells us that they have had a few hundred people join in the last few months though, so it's not all bad for them...

The only way they can be Scotland's largest party is if we are talking about British Labour with a couple of hundred thousand members... but in that case, aren't Milibean and Harperson their leaders?

ALL IN THIS (BETTER) TOGETHER...ALL US ORDINARY PEOPLE

Thanks to "Trying Hard on Twitter for this collection of reprobates