Chris Whiteside's Blog

Three Muslim students have been shot dead in what appears to be a religiously motivated terrorist attack by a self-described “anti-theist.” The victims, 23-year-old Deah Shaddy Barakat, his 21-year-old wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were murdered at their home on Tuesday night in  Chapel Hill, a quiet town in North Carolina . Their neighbour, Craig Stephen Hicks, has been arrested and charged with three counts of first-degree murder, after reportedly handing himself in to police. Hicks, a white 46-year-old, described himself as a supporter of “Atheists for Equality”, according to his Facebook page, as well as a fan of  Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion . He regularly posted condeming all religions . As hours went by with mainstream US news outlets failing to cover the attack, social media users expressed outrage at what the New Statesman called "the media's refusal t...

Today when popping into the kitchen between work-related calls I caught the last thirty seconds of a radio broadcast of the episode "Rolling in it" from the series "The Men from the Ministry" which was first broadcast in 1971. And almost instantly recognised the story as one that a classmate at school had described to me the following day having heard it at the time. I checked on the BBC website and the memory was entirely accurate. It's a very funny episode which describes government idiocy of a kind which, alas, is very much still with us. You can access the episode at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jnvj  for the next 29 days. My classmate may have been listening to a repeat two or three years later rather than the original broadcast, but we are still talking about a conversation more than forty years ago. And somehow my brain was able to access the memory of that remembered conversation, put it together with a short clip on the radio which wo...

The Ancient Romans had a God called Janus who had a face on both the front and back of his head so that he could face in both directions at once. Janus is alive and well, and sits in the Labour shadow cabinet as Shadow Health Secretary. Andy Burnham, Labour's last Health Secretary and their Shadow Health Secretary today, often attacks the outsourcing of NHS services as though it was a Conservative policy which he opposed and yet, as was pointed out recently on Newsnight, when he was Health Secretary he increased such outsourcing at almost exactly the same rate that the coalition subsequently has. About 94% of NHS care is still provided in house. Something over two-thirds of the health services being outsourced today were also outsourced at the conclusion of Andy Burnham's watch, as this graphic shows. His position on NHS "cuts" is equally ambiguous, as his comments in an interview in the Fabian Review magazine in 2013 demonstrate. ...

Conservative chairman Grant Shapps lends his support to the campaign to allow Scots-Americans to buy Haggis and end current US trade restrictions as part of the current trade negotiations ...

Copeland Borough Council's Labour executive this evening rubberstamped a proposed council budget which will now go to a full council meeting on 26th February. The budget proposals include savings on office accommodation and sharing services with other councils, bringing dog enforcement charges in line with other councils, reintroducing charges for replacement rubbish bins in certain circumstances and an annual fee of £35 per bin for collection of additional garden waste. The council claims it is facing a budget deficit of £1.484 million for next year. Every council in the country is facing difficult times, but these numbers would have had a lot more credibility had Copeland BC not slashed services earlier this financial year, closing public toilets and the civic, then tried to reverse some of the cuts later on the basis that the council was significantly better off than they had projected.

I am very pleased that the government has announced today they are to make it mandatory to report instances of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). All forms of child abuse should be stamped out, and this is one of the worst. The government has tabled amendments to the Serious Crime Bill to ensure the new duty is legislated for ahead of the dissolution of Parliament. The government will also include a measure to provide multi-agency statutory guidance for front line professionals. The move follows a public consultation which sought views from a wide range of professionals, community groups, survivors and law enforcement on how a mandatory reporting duty could work and who it should apply to. A summary of responses to the consultation has also been published today. The intention to introduce the measure was announced by the Prime Minister at the Girl Summit 2014, the first global summit to mobilise domestic and international efforts to end FGM within a generation. Crime Preventi...

There will be a torchlight procession in Whitehaven this Sunday to support the campaign to keep services at West Cumberland Hospital. Meet at St Nicholas's Gardens shortly before 6pm if you would like to support the campaign. Thirty-three torches will be paraded from St Nicholas Gardens, from 6pm on Sunday, to WCH Organisers are inviting people to join. The procession has been organised by the “We Need West Cumberland Hospital” campaign group to raise awareness about the issues around the future of services at the hospital. Once the procession arrives at the hospital, at about 6.45pm, each of the torches will be switched off. There are proposals being looked at by the North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust to strip West Cumberland Hospital of its full maternity service as well as downgrading other services including children’s ward. It would mean thousands of people having to travel to access hospital care. More details at the "Support West Cumbria Hospitals" ...

“The Greeks have made it impossible, unless they come up with some brilliant solution, to stay in the Euro.” (Ken Clarke, interviewed at Conservative Home here .) I have been posting quotes on intelligence this week: today the above is one of many great quotes from an article which displays it. Ken Clarke would certainly have been leader of the Conservative party and very possibly Prime Minister were it not for the tragedy that his views on Europe were so different from those of most Conservatives. (Just imagine how different the 2005 election would have been if the Conservatives had fought it with a  leader who had opposed the Iraq war at the time, for instance.) But whether you agree with Ken or not - and I certainly don't agree with him on everything - I don't think there will be many intelligent and open minded people who can read the article from which I took the above quote without at least one or two of his comments provoking a reaction along the lin...

I loved this graphic which Guido Fawkes tweeted this morning ...

"It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well." (Rene Descartes)

Prime Minister David Cameron writes ...    "There is a debate going on in British politics which I never thought I'd see. Because whatever else I disagreed with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown about, we always agreed that businesses are the backbone of Britain's economy, creating jobs and giving people the security of a pay packet. But now Ed Miliband's Labour Party have decided that business is the enemy. They want to hit Britain's businesses by raising their taxes and fixing prices. They've opposed our measures to cut red tape and help businesses grow and create more jobs. Even worse, Ed Miliband's plans for more borrowing and more debt would lead to higher interest rates and instability for businesses. Everyone who works in a business or runs a business has reason to fear a Labour Government. We have to stop Labour getting into power and costing jobs. Please donate £20 to our campaign today and let's make sure Britain stays on the r...

I was interested to read on Andrew Kennedy's excellent "Floating and Boating" blog this  post about the link below which is apparently doing the rounds on social media Before clicking on this link and putting down your name, address, postcode and email address " to see how common your name is in the UK " watch out for small print. Slightly later in the process this message appears: And in case you don't have an electron microscope near your computer screen to read that message, I will copy Andrew's example and repeat the first line of the words in that green box in rather larger writing: "The Labour Party and its elected representatives may contact you about issues we think you may be interested in or with campaign updates."

"It is wiser to find out than to suppose." (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain)

Margaret Thatcher's death has not stopped the left spreading silly myths about her - if anything they seem to have got worse I don't follow any of the people who have been retweeting the latest pointless slur against Mrs T, a daft campaign against something which was never proposed in the first place which has been promoted by a badly misinformed bunch of sad anoraks called "38 degrees" but learned about it from Conservative Home. Following Baroness Thatcher's death last year, it was proposed to set up a memorial foundation and library in her memory. Fundraising started and was backed by David Cameron in this article in the Daily Telegraph. The article states that the trustees are looking to raise £15 million for the project. It does not suggest that one penny of that money is to be extorted from taxpayers. Unfortunately, as Mark Wallace all too accurately pointed out on Conservative Home, a large chunk of the left simply do not get the distinction betwee...

I had a very funny title which I was tempted to use for a post which I put on this blog yesterday and which I was also tempted to tweet. Unfortunately it would have been all too easy for a malicious person or political opponent to misrepresent it as a sneer against the people of West Cumbria. It wouldn't have been, and most people reading it would not have taken it that way, but it only takes one person of ill-intent to quote something out of context and you're in trouble - look what happened to Emily Thornberry when she tweeted a picture of a house with a white van outside and some large England flags and the words "Image from Rochester." So I didn't use the joke. Boris Johnson and one or two other people that I know seem to be able to get away with it, but sadly these days one has to exercise a degree of self-censorship which takes a lot of the fun and spontaneity out of politics.

“Blowing a whistle on council corruption doesn’t warrant undercover surveillance. A front page that embarrasses a senior politician is not a threat to national security. Journalism is not terrorism.” (Sajid Javid MP, Culture secretary)

Martin Woolf, in the Financial Times, here: “Creating the eurozone is the second-worst monetary idea its members are ever likely to have. Breaking it up is the worst." Not convinced those two opinions fit well together.

Take care if you are driving anywhere in West Cumbria today - it has been very misty all morning in Whitehaven and, I understand, over much of the rest of the county.

The government is reviewing the abuse of anti-terror legislation to snoop on legitimate journalism. The Conservative culture secretary Sajid Javid  said on Thursday that the government will rapidly introduce safeguards to prevent the police accessing the phone records of reporters without approval of a judge, and added that “journalism is not terrorism”. Javid said he would like to see the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (usually nicknamed RIPA) amended before the election in May after it emerged 608 journalists’ phone records had been accessed by police in investigating leaks. The revelation was contained in a report by the interception of communications commissioner Sir Anthony May, which was accepted in full by the government. May’s report found RIPA did not “ provide adequate safeguards to protect journalistic sources ” and recommended that “ judicial authorisation is obtained in cases where communications data is sought to determine the source of jou...

Treasury minister Priti Patel writes ...   See how much our income tax cuts will save you - try our quick calculator today. The Conservatives believe in cutting taxes. If you're working hard to provide for your family, you should keep more of the money you earn. That's why we've cut income tax every year we've been in office - and why we're committed to keep on cutting income tax after the next election. Over 24 million people have had their income tax cut. To find out how much you'll save, use our simple tax cut calculator today: Yours, Priti Patel

"Labour's shadow education spokesman was born with a silver foot in his mouth." ( Toby Young  writing in the Telegraph about The Honorable Tristram Julian William Hunt MP, son of  Baron Hunt of Chesterton , in an article called " Tristram Hunt's 12 most embarrassing gaffes " - and that was before Hunt's attack on nuns last Thursday.)

There is a thoughtful article on the Washington Post website by Fareed Zakaria following the barbaric murder by DAESH of the Jordanian pilot  Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh , called " Deny the Islamic State the overreaction that it wants ." He suggests that the savagery of the so-called "Islamic State" may be more a sign of weakness than strength, though there is no doubt that they want it to be interpreted that way. His article is not an argument for doing nothing, just a warning against falling into the traps that terrorists set for us. He points out some of the occasions when terrorists have tricked their opponents into defeating themselves, referring extensively to the historian David Fromkin, who has written  an essay in Foreign Affairs  making a number of relevant points and finishing by quoting the conclusion of that essay that “though terrorism cannot always be prevented, it can always be defeated. You can always refuse to do what they want you to...

There is a great article at the Breitbart site by Alex Wickham called " Why does Labour keep offending people? " As he points out instead of going on the offensive Labour seem determined to offend as many people as possible - business leaders, White van man, patriots, and this week the shadow education secretary went after both catholics and teachers - as well as his "nuns" gaffe on Newsnight he told a teacher on Monday “Stop moaning. Read the speeches. Do some work. Your industry will be rewarded”. Alex asks "Why does Labour keep offending people? It’s almost as if they are a party made up of clueless metropolitan lefties with no idea how to communicate with the public. Or perhaps they are just unlucky…"

Copeland Conservatives' website has been relaunched at   http://copelandconservatives.com/

The language in which a subject is discussed often affects the way the debate goes and can sometimes be more powerful than the actual arguments. The left's biggest linguistic victory in the second half of the 20th century was getting everyone to use the expression "poll tax" for the community charge. I was never a huge fan of the community charge but calling it the poll tax was a gross oversimplification - and a political stroke of genius. "Poll Tax" has seven letters and two syllables instead of fifteen letters and four syllables, had just enough truth to be defensible, and immediately saddled the new tax with a host of perjorative connotations, some accurate, some not. Worst of all, the impression was soon created that if you liked it you called it the Community Charge, if you didn't you called it the poll tax - and because the latter term is so much easier and quicker to say that meant it appeared to have even less support than it did. If we'r...

Labour under Ed Miliband has shown repeatedly that it is not a party for everyone in Britain - they have a long list of people they do not like, and it seems to be getting longer by the day. We already knew that ... If you are a successful businessman - Labour doesn't like you If you are a patriot who likes to display the England flag on your house -  Labour doesn't like you If you dare to disagree with them - Labour doesn't like you And now shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt has demonstrated another group who Labour disdains: If you are a nun - Labour doesn't like you In a discussion on routes into teaching on Thursday night's "Question Time" Cristina Odone was talking about some of the inspirational teachers she had met or worked with when the Honorable Tristram Hunt MP, son of Baron Hunt of Chesterton, interrupted with what came over as an aggressive attack on nuns. "These were all nuns, weren’t they?” he said, and sneered...

The letter which outgoing Labour treasury secretary Liam Byrne left for his successor, Danny Alexander in 2010. This should be a reminder to everyone who has had to cope with the difficult decisions the present coalition government has taken, about the mess the inherited from Labour which so often meant a choice between bad options. It should also be a reminder to anyone who is considering handing the keys back to the people who crashed the car by voting Labour; this is why you shouldn't.

I have just learned of the sad death of Reginald Holyoak Braddon, invariably known as "Reg," who was chief executive of the Council of the City and District of St Albans for more than ten years finishing in 1989. His final two years coincided with my first two years as a very young member of that council in my twenties. Reg was head of the permanent organisation of the council during a period of great change in local government, and implemented the consolidation of council services under one roof. (That included the move of the depot out of the old Victoria Road HQ, the front door of which was, unbeknown to most of them, a familiar sight to millions of TV viewers as the prison door which slammed shut in the title sequence of the Ronnie Barker comedy, "Porridge.") He had a formidable presence, matched by an equally formidable intellect and a sense of humour which was all the more powerful when he did allow it to show for the fact that much of the time he kept it ...