Why should employees have an opt-out of the minimum wage (.pdf)? What does it achieve?

It just makes the vulnerable even more vulnerable by enabling unscrupulous employers to put pressure on an employee to waiver the’re right to it.

You can say there will be sanctions for employers that will do this, just as there are employers that don’t play by the rules already. This just gives them something else to fuck people with and, realisticaly, if people are getting fucked over now when everyone has to be paid a certain amount this is not going to make the system more robust, is it?

(via TheNatFantastic)

I got bored of waiting for my comment to be moderated on this post about the suggestion that prayers at the start of the day in the main chamber should be abolished by Edward Leigh at The Cornerstone Group, so here it is in all it’s majestic glory…

they provide a short opportunity to meditate or even collect one’s thoughts at the start of the day.

Can’t you collect your thoughts before the working day starts, like on the journey in, or something?

Irrespective of one’s religious view, is three minutes in 24 hours too much to think about God, the creator of all that is?

Yes, especially if you don’t believe in a god.

Is three minutes too long for the members of the National Executive to pause and remember their place, their duties and their responsibility for wellbeing of their nation?

I should hope the members of the National Executive would be able to remember where they are and their responsibilities without having to stop everything they are doing and have a think about it for a while. Most other people don’t seem to have such bad memories.

Christians, I believe, must be prepared to stand up for their belief in public life. If they don’t, their views will fast be marginalised or driven out because they would be considered eccentric to hold them – even in a nation with a Christian heritage.

Oh, give over with the ‘persecuted Christian’ nonsense. It’s rubbish and you know it, unless you’ve been reading the daily Mail/Express.

The Speaker of the House position maybe up for change, if Iain Fale is right, with Ming Campbell offering himself up.

The uprising is lead by, amongst others, Nadine Dorries. But why the buggery is there the focus on John Bercows wife?

Political Betting…

So is Ming going to do it? That’s hard to say but there’s one strong point in his favour – his wife, Lady Elspeth, is never in a million years going to make an arse of herself on Twitter

Mrs Bercow has bugger all to with with House business, and neither will anybody elses spouse unless they are elected.

Maybe it would be a better course of action to look who is leading this and how much of an arse they are rather than their other halves before deciding which way to vote on Bercow.

Does anybody want a hung parliament? We know they’re a bit rubbish and can lead to all sorts of sorry things happening and all sorts of good and necessary things not happening due to squabbles and back room deals.

We know all this. Stop fucking telling us. What are we supposed to do about it?

The electorate isn’t a single being that has one mind. We’re not all thinking that the best way to show the political classes how unhappy we are, with how Westminster politics has degenerated, is to give the third place guys some power and see what happens.

Some people will be party loyalist and will be voting for who ever is their parties candidate, never mind who it is. Some people will be voting for a candidate because of who he or she is, not what party they belong to. There will be some tactical voting, but it is not going to be on a large enough scale to affect the national outcome.

Personally, I don’t have any party allegiance, but my choice of voting for LibDem Dr Evan Harris is because of him as an MP. Not because I want to stick to Labour or I think the Lib Dems will save the country, but because of his voting record. But I shouldn’t be voting for Evan Harris because that’ll cause UK plc to go into meltdown. Apparently.

So. What are my choices? A tin pot party that’ll get bugger all done and wouldn’t know their arse from their elbow (which would probably be the prefered option according to Labour and the Tories if I wasn’t voting for them two) which is going to achieve nothing. Then there’s Labour who, well, look at the last thirteen years. Whatever good they’ve done has more than been undone by the bad bits.

And finally Conservative, To which I reply like this.

I’m not gonna vote in a way just to avoid a hung parliament. For a start who do I vote for? How do I know which party needs my vote to avoid a hung parliament? I don’t.

People are split and the result is most likely a hung parliament for many reasons, but because the people want it is not one of them.

If there’s a hung parliament, it won’t be ‘the peoples’ fault. It’ll be the politicians.

Over the weekend something called ‘Operation Freedom’ was launched.

I have heard or seen no news over the weekend and being a lazy arse, I’m just gonna go straight into it.

Well, according to the BNP, for it is they who have sent it, Fat Nick and his ex-NF buddy (whatever his name is) are going to be banned from the House of Commons.

Under a headline, in big, bold red type, they procliam…

ELECTED BNP PARLIAMENTARIANS BANNED FROM THE HOUSE OF COMMONS!

…a bit like that, really, there is an awful lot of waffle about Marxist state and totalitarian experiment and a fucking big history lesson, which also includes Simon de Montfort, which according to my l33t Wikipedia skilz was either a French nobleman, a son of a French nobleman or the grandson of a French noble man.

Anyway, blah blah blah, EU, blah blah blah, dictatorship, waffle waffle waffle, only credible aternative, rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb.

And then… BLAM!

Just recently, crooked diabolical MP’s led by the arch-traitor Harriet Harman voted in favour to BAN the recently elected BNP MEPs, Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons, from the House of Parliament!

Hahahaha! Cunts.

Aw, fuck it. I wasn’t gonna swear in this post.

As far as I was aware, MEPs’ had traditionally had access to the Houses of Parliament, or at least the commons areas, as a favour. Y’know, they’re all working to the same ends, making Britain better etc, but never any formal right to go anywhere more than a normal prole does. I am prepared to be corrected on this point.

This effectively means they have banned 1 MILLION British voters and two democratically elected parliamentary representatives from the highest democratic institution in the country! They have banned YOU!

A little bit of confusion in the teeny-tiny minds of the racist fuckwits.

Because Fat Nick and his sicko side-kick are democratically elected representatives, but not to the House of Commons. Those one million voters already have someone that they can go to, representatives that were actually elected to the House of Commons in the last general election. Their MPs’. (Once again, lazy shit that I am, you’ll have to find out for yourself who them MPs’ are, but rest assured, each and every one of those one million voters will have an MP that they can got to.)

Fat Nicks’ and what’s-his-names’ arena is the EU parliament, not Westminster.

One little bit of success, that wasn’t even down to the them, and it’s gone right to their heads.

ORIGINAL DOWNING ST SMEARS VICTIM
RETURNS TO HAUNT NEW LABOUR

Thatcher Room
Portcullis House
Tuesday 28 April 1.45pm
Formal Evidence Session on UK Complicity in Torture
Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights
Witness: Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan
(currently Rector of the University of Dundee).

In 2004, Craig Murray told us that:

– The British Government was complicit in the most vicious forms of torture
– He had been the victim of a lurid smear campaign initiated by New Labour
– The government was lying about all this

In 2004, much of the public and media was not willing to accept that the government would cooperate with torture or with false allegations against an innocent man. Many still had trust in the basic honesty and decency of government.

The evidence that Craig Murray was telling the truth about torture has now become overwhelming, including from the case of Binyam Mohammed. The UK “benefited” continually from intelligence passed on from the CIA waterboarding programme and from torture in countries including Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Egypt.

Craig Murray suffered the most high profile sacking of any British Ambassador for a century. But in 2005 the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee refused to hear him in evidence, despite allowing Jack Straw to appear and attack him.

Astonishingly, this is the first time Craig Murray will ever have been allowed to give formal evidence in the UK on his grave allegations, and be questioned on the truth of his testimony.

As the Scotland Yard investigation proceeds into MI5 and MI6 collusion in 16 cases of torture, Craig Murray will argue that it is not the security service operatives, but the Ministers who set the policy – and specifically Jack Straw – who should be facing criminal charges.

Contact: Craig Murray on 07979 691085 or craigmurray@mail.ru
Transcript of Craig Murray’s formal evidence statement is at http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/trying_again_my.html