AIR FARCE ONE

You might find this a little hard to take so make sure you are sitting down.

The Independent is reporting that David Cameron is to get a scaled down version of the American President's Air Force One. A private plane all to his little prime ministerial self. Sweet.

That's right. As we are cutting and trimming and letting die or indeed actively killing off poor people, closing down offices, hospitals, public heath, reducing expenditure, dismantling the welfare state, Daft Dave the Piggy Fiddler of Old London Town is to get his own private plane.

Well, some of you will say, and so he should. He went to Eton and Oxford.

Of course it has been pointed out that members of the royal family may be able to use it too... so I imagine that Airmiles will have it on permanent loan doing trips from London to St Andrews in accordance with His Royal Fatness's tee times!

The plane will be apparently be refitted at a cost of a mere £10 million (given their ability to get nothing done on time or on budget, call that £20 million) and will replace the cost of chartering flights, because of course someone as important as the Eton Boy couldn't possibly take a scheduled flight like other people, including the Queen!

The story they are putting out is that it will save money in the long term...but it has also come to light that every other attendee at the recent G20 meeting came in his or her own private plane.  Dave was the only leader in the top ranked countries to arrive on the bus. And he doesn't like that at all. Some dreary politician was on the radio this morning whining about the status of the country was at stake. 

It is claimed that the plane will not be luxurious... so why is it costing at least £10 million for the refit? Seriously, if it is to save money transporting the PM about the world, why would refits be necessary? What is good enough for soldiers off to risk their lives should be good enough for a pompous oaf off to agree with everything President Obama says, or a fat useless old man off to play golf.

This idea of a presidential-style plane was previously proposed by Blair, who wanted a "Blair Force One", but Gordon Brown to his credit, stopped the project. I guess it must be a necessary accessory for the warmongering idiot about town... with an inflated opinion of his own worth.  

Ho hum...

I wonder how many people they'll have to throw off Incapacity Benefits to pay for this!

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE LAST FEW DAYS: CHINA, NORTHERN POWERHOUSE AND EVEL

The last day of the charade that is the Golden Era celebration will be over today. After Mr Xi takes a trip to what the English call "The North", he will escape back to China.

In OUR United Kingdom though, "The North" isn't Shetland or Orkney, nor is it the Hebrides, Highlands, Central Belt, nor even the Southern Uplands. 

Nope, it is far south of all of these things. 

It's almost like the Brits drew a map and replaced the word Scotland with "Here be Dragons". Or Haggis!

This is where I left the kid.

The North is Manchester, some 200 kms south of Scotland, from where the Brits are going to build a Northern Powerhouse, presumably with Chinese money, becasue they have none themselves.

The cornerstone of this powerhouse will be, if they ever get it started, the High Speed Train from the centre of the universe that is London, to "The North". HS2.

The costs of the line are difficult to pin down. Having started off at a reasonable price of around £16 billion, the building of the line is now estimated by the English Transport Department to have risen to £43 billion. But we all know thay can;t count much after 20, so it is wise to look at other estimates. Boris Johnson, the London Mayor and MP, has it at £70 billion, and the Institute of Economic Affairs at £80 billion.  Bit of a difference there...

TGV Network running into Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland

A House of Lords Committee has suggested that the cost of building the line will be nine times more expensive than the French equivalent. The French of course had the foresight to build high speed trains (TGV) across the country decades ago when Mitterrand was president and Thatcher was favouring roads and private transport.

You might rub your hands together with glee, thinking that if Mr Osborne was pouring all this money into "The North" then there would be benefits for Scotland in the form of Barnett consequentials. But I fear you would be wrong.

There will be no consequentials, just as there were not for Crossrail or the Olympics.

This despite the fact that the negative impact of the line on certain areas outside of England (particularly including Eastern Scotland and South Wales) will be severe.

And now that we have EVEL, Scottish MPs won't even be allowed to vote on this railway which will have such a negative effect on our country. 

It's not just English foxes that will rue the passing of the EVEL bill last night and the second class status now accorded to our MPs.

(I wonder if that means that Muddle will be excluded from Cabinet when English matters are being discussed, or if the English Members of the Scottish Affairs Committee will now be excluded from the Scottish Affairs Committee... and, given that Scotland was excluded from this state visit, did Muddle have a meeting with President Xi... OK, silly question.)

The last few days have shown where the London government (which we can now reasonably call the English Government) places the Scots in OUR United Kingdom, the one that Cameron goes on and on about ad nauseam.

Roll on the next opportunity to, like Mr Xi, escape from this ridiculous and pathetic little third rate union.

THIS LITTLE PIGGIE WENT TO MANCHESTER

So, excitingly for Brits, today saw the start of their Tory Party Conference in Manchester, England. 

Given that the government is so popular with ordinary hard working people up and down the country, it attracted a lot of attention from their adoring public. People were queuing across the streets to congratulate the likes of Jeremy Hunt for expertly steering the English Health Service through these difficult times and straight into a ditch.

They were clearly overwhelming supportive of the trades union legislation which will see it become almost impossible to strike, no matter what your employers do to you, and the welfare reforms which are not too slowly but very surely killing off the old, the sick and the vulnerable.

So popular have the policies of the Tory Party been that the delegates had to be shut in behind steel barriers and warned not to go out of the hotel wearing anything that would identify them as being Tories.  Still they were getting the booze in just in case they they are marooned. 

On the rooftops there were police marksmen with rifles trained on the great unwashed. Just like the London Olympics. I was looking around for one of their new drones, now that Cameron has decided summary execution forms part of his powers.

There was much mirth as the lowly common people enjoyed recounting the jolly stories of the somewhat naughty activities of their betters who had been at Eton and Oxford and taken part in weird sexual rituals way beyond the understanding of your ordinary hard working family man or woman.

This is the Tory government that was elected only 5 short months ago, as proudly boasted by the Telegraph, albeit with a pretty small majority, on the votes of 27% of the eligible population.

I'd not like to see the security they will need when they come to their party conference in 2019!

Just thought here it would be nice to see a little photograph of our Nicola, our head of government, visiting one of our northern cities and compare it with Cameron visiting one of theirs.

I look forward to our Tory Party Conference. I do hope that it won't cause the same disruption to one of our towns.