Chris Whiteside's Blog

Here are some extracts from The Whitehaven News leader article this week calling on the Leader of Copeland Borough Council, Elaine Woodburn, to resign over the council's handling of the Pow Beck fiasco. "POW BECK - WHY HEADS MUST ROLL COPELAND Borough Council has attempted to dupe the public over its failings in the Pow Beck Stadium fiasco. When the multi-million-pound scheme collapsed in 2012 – costing not only public money but also Whitehaven the chance of hosting the Rugby World Cup – people wanted answers. Last week, they thought they finally had them. It turns out, however, that the council’s review of the debacle published last week didn’t even scratch the surface of what went wrong. When the scheme collapsed, a review was quickly ordered and consultant Rob Blanden was drafted in to contribute his over 20 years of experience. A lot of what Mr Blanden found – and reported in his first draft – was damning; systematic failings, lack of clarity at various le...

People who work hard and do the right thing deserve to feel safe in their homes and in their communities. Under Labour, that wasn't the case. Police officers were wrapped in red tape, unable to do their job - and people didn't feel safe on the streets. So since the last election, we've been working through our action plan to tackle crime:  freeing the police to do their job, giving them the powers they need, and protecting communities with tougher sentences for criminals. And our plan is working, with crime down by more than a fifth since the election: But we need to keep going - and we need everyone to get behind our plan. So please add your name today to show you're backing our plan. With your support, we can keep making our streets and our communities safer. So please sign your name today: Thanks, Theresa May Home Secretary

“Tolerance never exists without negative judgment. It is the sentiment of having a negative opinion about something yet still putting up with it.”   (  Criss Jami  )

I am very concerned to learn in today's Whitehaven News that the future of the maternity unit at West Cumberland Hospital is under review again. One of the most difficult decisions of my life concerned a proposal to merge two maternity units when I was a Health Authority member. The proposal was backed very strongly by all three consultant obstetricians at the hospital and they made me realise that the arguments about how to provide safe an sustainable care can be much more complex and difficult than they at first appear. But in that case the two hospitals concerned were ten miles apart and connected by some of the best roads in the country. West Cumberland and the nearest alternative maternity hospitals are forty miles and at least an hour's drive apart, sometimes rather longer, on some of the most difficult main roads on the country. I believe that taking maternity away from WCH is not a runner for that reason. The trust must find a way to continue to provide safe matern...

I don't support the idea of not paying disabled people the minimum wage, and it was right that Lord Freud apologised for some unfortunate remarks on the subject. But there have been some interesting reactions to the ambush against him which the Labour party pulled at PMQs yesterday with the aid of someone's covert recording.. On the BBC Radio 4 "PM" program this afternoon today there was a debate on the subject of parties making covert recordings of one anothers' gatherings to try to embarrass people who were discussing ideas too far outside the box. You can hear the debate 40 minutes into the broadcast here . It is not really healthy for democracy or debate if people cannot try to discuss the issues in what is supposed to be an informal debate without some amateur witchfinder-general clutching a recording device and looking for any opportunity to twist something you say into a PR disaster. And sadly people on all sides of the political spectrum are far too ...

Every Labour government in history has increased unemployment. Almost every government in which the Conservatives have taken part - including the present government - has reduced unemployment. Yesterday's figures showed a big fall in unemployment, and Employment minister Esther McVey writes ... "The biggest annual fall in unemployment since records began - and a record number of people now in work. Yesterday's jobs figures show more and more people with the security of a good job and a regular pay packet. Ed Miliband predicted our plan would lead to the loss of a million jobs - and now can't understand why unemployment is falling. Well, it's simple. The Conservatives are backing small businesses and enterprise with lower jobs taxes and better infrastructure, while reforming welfare so work always pays. And across the country, business owners are working hard to build something of their own and create jobs for others. Our long-term economic plan...

“Tolerance isn't about not having beliefs. It's about how your beliefs lead you to treat people who disagree with you.” ( Timothy Keller )

“People have a hard time accepting free-market economics for the same reason they have a hard time accepting evolution: it is counterintuitive.  Life looks intelligently designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that there must be an intelligent designer--a God.  Similarly, the economy looks designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that we need a designer--a government. In fact, emergence and complexity theory explains how the principles of self-organization and emergence cause complex systems to arise from simple systems without a top-down designer.”   ( Michael Shermer )

"The parallels between UKIP and the Tea Party are not perfect ... "But they are close enought to be worrying to anybody who cares about the future of British politics. "The Impact of the Tea Party in America has been overwhelmingly negative. For all its' reasonable anger at America's dysfunctional political system, it has made that system worse ... "The Tea Party has  ... made it almost impossible for politicians to address America's problems, with its' high octane rhetoric about sending immigrants back over the border and antics such as Senator Ted Cruz's attempt to shut down the government. "The lesson of the rise of the Tea Party is clear: for all the superficial appeal of its' anti-Washington rhetoric it makes dysfunctional politics more dysfunctional and sensible reform all but impossible. The British need to study the US example before it is too late." (Adrian Wooldridge writing in The Sunday Times this week.)

Anyone who has been looking at my "quotes of the day" over the past few days will have spotted a theme - about the number of things people believe which range from those which appear strange to others to those which are completely off the wall. I had a collision with the reality of how much some people's thought processes differ from mine about a decade ago, when in conversation with a highly intelligent work colleague who I would not otherwise regard as paranoid or unbalanced I discovered that he believed that NASA had faked the moon landings. Like "Capricorn One" except that in that film the US administration decided that to have any chance of keeping such a fake secret they would have to kill the "astronauts" and make it look like an accident. Now to me the idea that a secret conspiracy known to the number of people who would have to be "in" on something as big as a faked moon mission could possibly fail to leak is so patently absurd...

Hat tip to Cllr Matthew Sephton and Tom Hulme for this Best quote from the Clacton by-election: "Yes I voted UKIP, the Tory MP has done nothing for years" - ( Clacton Resident #NoHope ) For anyone reading this from outside the UK who may not realise why this quote is something between shocking and hysterically funny, the UKIP candidate who this voter supported is the same person who had, until he resigned and triggered the by-election to stand as the UKIP candidate, also been the Tory MP the voter accused of having done nothing for years. There are times when no response seems adequate ...

Most Muslims are ordinary, decent, hardworking and normal people who want nothing to do with Jihadist murderers and are very upset that atrocities like the murders of Lee Rigby, David Haines and Alan Henning have been carried out in their name. Muslims in his home town of Bolton have now raised £30,000 in his memory. In a statement released this week the Bolton Council of Mosques said: "We would now like to support the funds set up to help provide financial support for Alan's family and other ongoing projects to benefit those in need to ensure his legacy continues." It is people like this, and not the extremists, who represent the vast majority of Muslims.

Prime Minister David Cameron writes ... Thirty years ago today, Britain woke up to the news of the Brighton bombing. On a night of unspeakable horror, IRA terrorists tried to wipe out our country's democratically-elected government. Five people were murdered that night - Anthony Berry, Roberta Wakeham, Eric Taylor, Muriel Maclean and Jeanne Shattock - and many more suffered appalling injuries, including Lord Tebbit and his wife Margaret. I will never forget those shocking images as members of the emergency services scrambled over the rubble to rescue those wounded in the blast. But I also remember Margaret Thatcher's defiant response later that day. She declared Britain will never be cowed by terrorists and said their sickening attempts to destroy our democracy would fail. It is a message we repeat today as we face down the threat from violent extremism, whether in the skies over Iraq or on the streets of our towns and cities. As we remember today those killed a...

“Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”   ( Michael Shermer )

A graphic from the Conservative campaign centre with some quotes showing Labour politicians think of Ed Miliband, and a link to an interview of Ed Miliband by Jon Snow. You can get a fair idea of how well Miliband came over in the interview from the fact that the Conservatives are encouraging people to watch it ... DONATE £10 DONATE £20 DONATE £50 DONATE £100 Promoted by Alan Mabbutt on behalf of the Conservative Party, both at 4 Matthew Parker Street, London, SW1H 9HQ

There is very little chance that UKIP will form the next UK government. There is a very real chance that votes for UKIP may affect who does. This creates two very real problems for potential UKIP voters and the country. The first problem that it is extremely difficult to be certain what that impact will be. The second problem is that any belief on the subject which comes to be believed could easily be self-defeating. It is entirely reasonable for David Cameron to argue, as many others believe, that a vote for UKIP could let Ed Miliband and Ed Balls into Downing street, or as he and Grant Shapps have put it, "When you go to bed with Nigel Farage, you wake up with Ed Miliband." If, as has mostly been the case up until now in many parts of the country, the largest block of UKIP votes come from people who would otherwise have voted Conservative, this could well be correct. The frightening thing is that a combination of former Conservative voters turning to UKIP and the ...

“Anachron’s Law: There is no myth which is so irrational that no one will believe it. Anachron’s Corollary: There is no truth which is so obvious that everyone will accept it.”   ( George Hammond )

“New Rule: Never underestimate the ability of a tiny fringe group of losers to ruin everything. We've all been laughing heartily at the wacky antics of the "birthers"--the far-right goofballs who claim Obama wasn't really born in Hawaii, and therefore the job of the president goes to the runner-up, Miss California Carrie Prejean. And there's nothing you can do to convince these people--you could hand them, in person, the original birth certificate, with the placenta, and have a video of Obama emerging from the womb with Don Ho singing in the background...and they still wouldn't believe it. Hey, birthers, wanna hear my theory? My theory is Obama was born in America, and your were born with the umbilical cord around your neck. I don't know what his mother was doing when she was pregnant, but I'm pretty sure yours was drinking. Oh, I kid the birthers, and actually, there is one thing that makes me think they could be right: We're Americans; of course ...

"Professor Milton Friedman (Boo!) has been writing to The Daily Telegraph (Boo!) about Chile (Boo!).   The poor devil has been trying to persuade them that he is not Economic Advisor to the Chilean Junta, which he is not, and that he never has been, which is likewise so, and I call him a poor devil because he has about as much chance of dislodging that particular myth from the minds of the left as he has of persuading them that the Blessed Martyr Allende (Hooray! - I mean Boo!) was no better than the people who now rule in his stead." (Bernard Levin, writing in The Times in the 1970's, a few years after the Pinochet Junta took power in Chile)

"For a man whose party is supported - according to the polls - by 6% of the electorate, Nick Clegg was issuing an awful lot of demands and ultimatums yesterday." (Daily Mail Comment 7th October)

I did not think the idiotic proposal from Labour and Lib/Dem county councillors in Cumbria to hammer our town centres with onstreet parking charges could get any more ridiculous. I was wrong. I could not believe my eyes yesterday when a concerned trader showed me the consultation letter proposing a charge of £1.80 per hour to park on street in Whitehaven. Afterwards I thought I must have remembered incorrectly and went back to the website to check Last week I was charged less than half of that at parking meters and less than a third in surface car parks when parking near the centre of Birmingham, for heaven's sake! All the town centres involved risk losing business to the internet and out-of-town centres like Gretna through these charges, but CCC are also proposing to hit some centres harder, which risk the possibility that they will also lose business to the towns with lower charges, or to towns not affected by this round of charges - though that will not last long. In K...

Treasury minister Priti Patel writes ... After 13 long years of Labour, Britain was down - but we weren't out. We did what British people do - rolled up our sleeves and got stuck in.  And after four short years, there are 400,000 more businesses, 1.8 million more people in work, and a record number of apprenticeships  are helping young people get on in life. But we need to keep going to secure a better future for you, your family and everyone in Britain.  That's what this must-watch film is all about. Please share it with as many people as possible:  on Facebook ,  on Twitter  - or by forwarding this email to your friends and family.   Thank you, Priti Patel Treasury Minister

“Never rebel for the sake of rebelling, but always rebel for the sake of truth.” (Criss Jami)

"The businesses and town centres of Cumbria need on-street parking charges like they need the proverbial hole in the head." (Chris Whiteside - my comment on the proposed charges on which Cumbria County Council went out to final consultation this week.)

John Philpot Curran, or whoever else first used the phrase which was my quote of the day for today, was absolutely right to say that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance (or something similar). It's worth remembering that this applies as much to the threat to freedom which can be caused by overzealous action on behalf of society's own guardians as well as external threats. And in the internet age, it is equally true that if you don't want to be defrauded of your money, you have to be constantly alert. Especially against those who pretend to be defending you against fraudsters! Most of those who attempt to trick people into giving out their account details give themselves away by errors in English or by something which does not quite match the tone used by the company they are pretending to be. But some are very clever indeed. Take the fraudulent email below which I received today from some thief pretending to be Amazon. (Don't bother posting an...

"The price of freedom is eternal vigiliance" (Admiral Tolwyn, who turns out to be the villain, at the start of "Wing Comander IV") There are a lot of arguments over who said something along these lines first: it is often attributed to Jefferson as "The condition on which God has given Liberty to men is eternal vigilance" but apparently there is no hard evidence of this. The first person to use the words was probably the Irish orator John Philpot Curran.  Similar statements were made by Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, while  Leonard H Courtney said "The Price of Peace is eternal vigiliance."

Alan Henning, who has apparently been murdered by so-called "Islamic State" terrorists was not a soldier, and never had been. He was not a missionary, and never had been. He was not acting on behalf of the British government in any way shape or form, and never had been. He went to Syria out of compassion to help the sick and injured victims of the war in that country, particularly children. He wanted to help those victims regardless of their religion and most of those he helped were Muslims. When Alan Henning was kidnapped, in his wife's words, "He was driving an ambulance full of food and water to be handed out to anyone in need. His purpose for being there was no more and no less. This was an act of sheer compassion." The people who murdered him may claim to act in the name of Islam but this claim is an insult to Islam Even the local leader of Al Qaeda recognised that holding Alan Henning as a hostage for tying to help sick and injured Muslim kid...

Just had an astonishingly heavy freak hailstorm in this part of Whitehaven. Garden now covered with hailstorms - my daughter had to put a pair of frightened rabbits back in their hutch. After the driest September on record (though not, I suspect, in West Cumbria), winter appears to be approaching.

"At home, though we’ve brought it down, there remains a large budget deficit and our national debt is dangerously high. The budget deficit is approaching half what it was when we came to office, but it is still far too high. So we will see through our plan to eliminate it. And then to ensure our country is never in this position again, we must run surpluses in the good years. And when I say surpluses, I mean the government raising more than it spends. Labour claim they will balance the books. But independent experts tell you the truth: their plans would mean they would borrow £28 billion more each year. Running an overall surplus is the only sure way of getting our dangerously high national debt down. Let the message go out from this conference: We will fix the roof when the sun is shining." (Extracts from Chancellor George Osborne's speech this week)

"Power without responsibility never ends well" (Eric Pickles, speaking at Conservative conference this week)