My post on 4 October mentioned that, under its 'foreign aid' budget, DfID (Department for International Development) had paid £1.2 million to its chums in the T.U.C., here in the U.K., for supposed 'advocacy'. 

Let us be clear.  Not a penny of this 'foreign aid' money went abroad.  It went to trade unionists here in the U.K. who, of course, donate money to the Labour Party.  It stinks. 

But the figure of £1.2 million was apparently wrong.

A new report by International Policy Network - A Closer Union - says that the amount of money siphoned off to the T.U.C. out of the 'foreign aid' budget, since 2003, has been £3.6 million.

And what does Mr. Cameron propose to do about this scandal?  He says the Tories will protect the 'foreign aid' budget from any cuts.   

Gillian Low, president of the Girls' Schools Association, has complained that private schools are losing their independence because of endless government regulation and a tick-box culture.

But of course.  The marxoid liberal elite - who detest private schools - have decided that the best way to undermine private education is to stifle it with government regulation.  A 'tick-box culture' is essential in this process precisely because it suppresses independent thought and individual initiative.  Tyrants always want sheep-like obedience.

This is what the Department of Schools says in response to this charge:

The Government is keen to support the delivery of high-quality education by schools in the private sector.

What a downright lie (but we are now inured to that from the government machine).  For 'support' read 'interfere in and undermine'.  But also note the sheer arrogance.  The bumptious bureaucrats - spouting their drivel and mischief - have nothing useful to offer private schools.  On the contrary, parents have gone private to get their children out of the clutches of these public-sector parasites. 

The Department of Schools continues:

But it is right that parents and the wider public are assured that all schools - whether in the maintained or independent sector - provide their pupils with a suitable education in a safe and secure environment.

Notice the sweeping assertion that public-sector bureaucrats - not parents - will decide what education is 'suitable' for children.  Now look at some of the ghastly sink schools that prevail in the state sector.  It is absurd to widen the responsibilities of those responsible for such monstrosities; except that this is not a rational debate.

Be under no illusion.  The marxoid liberal elite regards all children as state property who must be parented and educated in accordance with government diktat.

Notice, also, the phrase 'safe and secure environment'.  This has become a routine mantra for increasing state control over people's lives.  It contains a slimy, and deeply offensive, slur that anyone who objects to state interference is probably a paedophile.

Why do we pay these insolent 'public servants' to insult us in such a manner?  What sort of nation have we become?

Please read the previous posts first.

So, in 1975, what to do about Ted Heath?  Margaret Thatcher stood against him.  Most people expected Heath to win easily, but Airey Neave went round whispering to MPs that 'Margaret hasn't a chance' but, if she got a decent vote, Heath would resign and Willie Whitelaw would stand in a second ballot.  The astonishing result was Thatcher 130; Heath 119; Fraser 15. Heath duly resigned and new candidates emerged for a second ballot, but now the impetus was with Thatcher after her bold challenge.  The result of the second ballot was Thatcher 146; Whitelaw 79; Howe 19; Prior 19; Peyton 11.  Mrs. Thatcher remained Conservative Party leader for 15 years.

In 1990, Mrs. Thatcher, who had become strongly Euro-sceptic, was challenged by Michael Heseltine.  The vote was as follows:  Thatcher 204; Heseltine 152; Abstentions 6; Void/Spoilt 17.  There was a strange rule that the victor needed a margin over the runner-up of 15% of the total electorate, otherwise a second ballot would be held with new candidates allowed.  Mrs. Thatcher was two votes short of achieving this margin of victory.  After pressure from her cabinet colleagues, she resigned.  John Major was her designated successor and won the second ballot: Major 185; Heseltine 131; Hurd 56 - whereupon Heseltine and Hurd withdrew. 

When John Major won the 1992 general election, party disquiet about Thatcher's removal became muted but then disaster struck.  The UK was forced out of the E.R.M. - the European Exchange Rate Mechanism - which had been the keystone of Major's economic policy.  The Tories never recovered electorally and were engulfed in rows about Europe and then sleeze.  In 1995, John Redwood (a former head of Mrs. Thatcher's No. 10 policy unit, who had become an MP) resigned from the cabinet to make a principled challenge against Major's leadership but lost the vote: Major 217; Redwood 89.  In the 1997 general election, the Tories, still led by Major were annihilated by Tony Blair.  Major then duly resigned as leader. 

A notable absentee from the 1997 contest was Michael Portillo, who had lost his Parliamentary seat in the general election.  Kenneth Clarke - a pro-European former Chancellor of the Exchequer - thus faced the Euro-sceptics John Redwood, Peter Lilley, and Michael Howard.  Howard was teamed with William Hague as his deputy.  (Hague had entered the cabinet only two years earlier on Redwood's resignation to challenge Major.)  However, Hague then reneged on this deal and stood himself.  The first round of voting was: Clarke 49; Hague 41; Redwood 27; Lilley 24; Howard 23.  The second round was: Clarke 64; Hague 62; Redwood 38.  On the third round, Hague won: Hague 90; Clarke 72. 

Hague lost heavily to Tony Blair in the 2001 general election, and promptly resigned as Tory leader. The Tories now had a new method of electing their leader.  The MPs had to produce two candidates who would then be voted upon by the entire national party membership.  Much interest centred on Portillo who had re-entered Parliament.

The first round of voting in 2001 was: Portillo 49; Iain Duncan Smith 39; Clarke 36; Michael Ancram 21; David Davis 21.  The first round then had to be repeated because the bottom two candidates had tied, and neither could be eliminated.  The re-run was: Portillo 50; Duncan Smith 42; Clarke 39; Ancram 18; Davis 17.  Davis was duly eliminated, but Ancram also withdrew.  The next round was: Clarke 59; Duncan Smith 54; Portillo 53.  Portillo thereupon retired from serious politics in a huff; and the other two went forward to a national ballot. Iain Duncan Smith polled 155,933 votes (60.76%) to Kenneth Clarke's 100,864 votes (39.28%). 

Iain Duncan Smith was never accepted by the liberal elite within his own party or the media.  They sneered and sniped at his 'unsophisticated' views.  After two years, he was abruptly removed as Conservative party leader in a coup by fellow senior MPs.  The votes of 155,933 ordinary party members counted for nothing against the opinions of the liberal elite.  Michael Howard was declared the new leader with no MP opposing him.

Howard lost the 2005 general election, but managed to reduce Labour's previously huge majority.  He then lingered on as leader long enough to promote George Osborne and David Cameron to the shadow cabinet, thus giving them a platform.  To Howard's surprise, it was Cameron rather than Osborne who challenged for the leadership.  Cameron, a professional P.R. man, made a very slick speech at the Conservative Party conference whereas the favourite, David Davis, made a limp speech.  Whether it was this that scuppered Davis' chances is a moot point.  The liberal elite had decided that Cameron was their man and the media duly built him up. 

The result of the first ballot of MPs in 2007 was Davis 62; Cameron 56; Liam Fox 42; Clarke 38.  The second ballot produced Cameron 90; Davis 57; Fox 51.  In the national ballot of party members, Cameron polled 134,446 votes (67.61%) against 64,398 votes (32.39%) for Davis.

Will future historians say that this vote for David Cameron extinguished the last hope that traditional England could be saved from take-over by a marxoid liberal elite?     

What can be said with some certainty is that the Conservative Party's history of appointing its leaders does not display infallibility or even tidiness.         

Please read the previous post first.

So what did the Conservatives do about their party leadership in May 1940?  Nothing.  Churchill became Prime Minister but Chamberlain remained Tory leader.  Churchill's first war cabinet comprised him, Chamberlain, Lord Halifax, Clement Attlee (Labour leader) and Arther Greenwood (Labour deputy leader).  The key first issue was whether they should negotiate with Hitler.  Halifax was actively putting out feelers, using R.A.Butler as his fixer.  Chamberlain was now dubious about negotiating.  He had finally seen through Hitler, or he was simply livid at having been duped,or both. Attlee and Greenwood took the pragmatic view that if any hint of negotiation became known there would be a collapse in national morale.  So Churchill got his way.  Britain would fight on defiantly.

By October 1940, Chamberlain was dying of cancer and resigned.  (Lord Halifax was packed off abroad).  There was some talk of Churchill remaining above politics but he knew how ruthless the Tory party machine could be.  He wanted it under his control.  So Churchill became leader of the Conservative Party.  He remained such until 1955 when his longstanding heir apparent, Sir Anthony Eden, succeeded him with no serious rival in sight.

Alas, Eden quickly came to grief.  He was determined not to 'appease' Nasser - whom he likened to Hitler - over Egypt's nationalisation of the Suez Canal.  In 1956, he did a secret deal with France and Israel and sent in the troops.  The Americans, under Eisenhower, were appalled and threatened a run on the pound in the foreign exchanges. Eden ignominiously withdrew the troops, his health collapsed, and early in 1957 he resigned.

Who next to succeed him?  This time - arguably for the first time since Baldwin's appointment in 1923 - the Conservative Party was faced with making a real choice.   There was no ballot; it was all done by an inner clique sounding out opinion.  The grandee was 'Rab' Butler, who had already been acting prime Minister when both Churchill and Eden had been ill; but there were those who had never forgotten - or forgiven - his treachery in 1940.  He was blackballed. 

The new Conservative Party leader, and Prime Minister, was Harold Macmillan.  He quickly pulled the party together again, after the fiasco of Suez, and in October 1959 - saying 'some of our people have never had it so good' - he called a general election and won a landslide victory. So he had not been a bad choice as leader.

In 1963, Macmillan believed he was seriously ill and announced his retirement. As it happened, it soon emerged that he was not very ill at all but the die was cast by then.  Macmillan wanted Quinton Hogg to succeed him, but Hogg promptly made a fool of himself at the Tory party conference and was ruled out.  Who else was plausible except 'Rab' Butler?  The answer was no-one; but some people remained so hostile to Butler that the 14th Earl of Home was chosen instead.  The Earl renounced his title to become Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and was shoe-horned into a safe Scottish seat to become an M.P. (Yes, the Tories had safe seats in Scotland in those days.)

There was uproar in the party about the way in which a 'magic circle' had fixed things.  Home only very narrowly lost the 1964 general election to Harold Wilson, but the Tories lost power and Home stepped down as leader in 1965.  First however he introduced a new system of appointing a leader - by having a vote!  All Conservative M.P.s, but only they, would have an equal say in the matter.

In a fairly close ballot, they voted for Edward Heath over Reginald Maudling (who had been seen as the favourite).  The choice seemed amply vindicated when Maudling (a former Chancellor of the Exchequer) then had to resign from public life over some murky financial dealings in his business life; and even more so when Heath, unexpectedly, won the 1970 general election to become Prime Minister. 

By 1974, however, the choice seemed far less happy. Heath had panicked over inflation and unemployment to make drastic policy U-turns; mishandled a confrontation with the miners' union and put the country on a 3-day week to save fuel; and then bungled a snap election he had called, resulting in Wilson's return as Prime Minister.  Heath survived as party leader to lose another general election (albeit only narrowly again) later in 1974; but by 1975 the Conservative Party had had enough of him.

Who was the best man to replace Heath?  Why good old Willie Whitlaw, of course; it was 'obvious'.  The trouble was that Heath was too vain and proud to resign, and Whitelaw was too loyal to challenge him in a ballot.

So what was to be done?  How was the Conservative Party going to sort out its problem this time?

See the next post, coming shortly. 

In 1905, Arthur Balfour, the Conservative Prime Minister, made a bad miscalculation.  He resigned and let the Liberals form a government, confident that they would make a hash of things.  The following year, 1906, Mr.Campbell-Bannerman called a general election and won a landslide victory for the Liberals.  Oops!  In 1908, Mr. Asquith succeeded as the Liberal Prime Minister and he lasted until 1916 when his colleague, David Lloyd-George - dismayed by the slaughter being suffered in the Great War - did a deal with the Tories to oust him. 

Balfour survived as Tory leader until 1911 when there were two main rivals to succeed him: Austen Chamberlain and Herbert Long.  However, both had broadly similar support and both decided to withdraw in favour of a compromise candidate - Andrew Bonar Law.  Bonar Law brought the Tories back to a limited share in power, if not the premiership, by joining a wartime coalition under Asquith in 1915.  Then, in 1916, he deferred to Lloyd-George as the new premier of a coalition government when Asquith was forced to resign. 

The 1918 general election virtually destroyed the Liberal Party because most of the MPs elected on the coalition ticket to support Lloyd-George were Tories.  The Asquithian Liberals were reduced to a rump - and have never really recovered.

Bonar Law had to resign through ill-health in 1921.  From 1921 to 1922, Austen Chamberlain led the Conservatives in the House of Commons and Lord Curzon in the House of Lords; with Lloyd-George remaining as Prime Minister.  Then, in 1922, the Tory backbenchers revolted.  At a meeting at the Carlton Club, they voted to end the coalition (and, in memory of this dramatic event, the Tory backbenchers, en masse, still rejoice in the name of The 1922 Committee).  Austen Chamberlain had unwisely become too allied with Lloyd-George, and so Bonar Law, his health apparently better, became the new (Tory) Prime Minister.  (This left Austen Chamberlain as the only Tory leader during the 20th Century who had failed to become Prime Minister - until William Hague slipped in as a late entrant to keep him company in 1997.) 

Alas, though, Bonar law's health failed again in 1923; and, after losing his voice, he promptly died from throat cancer. To the utter astonishment of Lord Curzon (who had never been accused of suffering from a lack of self-esteem) the fixers in the Tory Party then plucked out Stanley Baldwin as the new Tory leader and Prime Minister.  Mr. Baldwin (who had been President of the Board of Trade, and a moving spirit in ousting Lloyd-George) was a level-headed sort of chap, and he smoked a pipe - which in those days was re-assuring to people.  He had also made a lot of money in the manufacturing industry - and he decided it was his public duty to donate a good chunk of it to reduce the national debt.  (Question:  Is there any evidence that England has changed a lot over the past three or four generations?)

Mr. Baldwin then played musical chairs with Ramsey McDonald, who was the first Labour (briefly) Prime Minister and who then became another coalition premier relying mainly on Tory support.  'Safety First' Stanley returned to No.10 Downing Street from 1935 to 1937 to handle the abdication of the appalling King Edward VIII, and then he retired. His successor as Tory leader and Prime Minister was never in doubt - he was the outstandingly able Neville Chamberlain (son of Joe Chamberlain by his second marriage, and a younger half-brother of Austen Chamberlain), a vigorous domestic reformer and, by 1938, the hero of a very popular song extolling his merits for having saved the country from going to war.

Things then took a turn for the worse for Neville.

I suppose that most of us have never had to make a national radio broadcast saying that we were back at war with Germany again (and with no option to substitute France, instead); so we should perhaps temper our criticisms of Neville's presentation.  But he was probably unwise, in his radio broadcast, to focus on seeking sympathy for the distress this outcome had caused him personally.  Most regrettably, our Neville was a very vain - and perhaps unduly self-obsessed - man indeed; one who thought ex-Corporal Hitler was merely some mid-European oik who could be cunningly contained by some lofty concessions from his intellectual and social superior.

With the passage of time - and detailed probing of the Churchillian myths - it becomes inescapable that Neville Chamberlain was certainly no buffoon, and that he probably had a clearer strategic grasp of the long-term interests - and weaknesses - of the British Empire (as then constituted) than did Winston Churchill in 1939/1940.

The main point that concerns us here is the attitude of the Conservative Parliamentary Party in May 1940; and what they did about it.  A majority wanted to retain Chamberlain as Prime Minister; but the Labour Party refused to join a national coalition under his leadership.  So he had to go.  The Tories would then have chosen Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary; and Labour would have agreed to this.  But it now seems that Chamberlain scuppered this.  He conveyed a secret message to Churchill that he would be asked whether he would serve under Halifax, and that he should remain silent. This is what happened.  Halifax's nerve broke and he withdrew.  Churchill went to King George VI (who would also have much preferred Halifax at this stage) and was appointed Prime Minister.

What prompted Chamberlain's sudden support for Churchill?  It was his realisation that Halifax was still conducting surreptious peace negotiations with Hitler via third parties (and that his junior minister, R. A. Butler, was scurrying around in support, doing things that were downright treasonable.  This had further repercussions 17 years later, and again 23 years later, in future tussles for leadership of the Conservative Party).  

So then, to the point.  At arguably the supreme crisis in England's history - May 1940 - were the Conservatives any good at picking the right leader of their party?

Not sure?  Well, actually, it's a trick question.  See the next post, coming shortly.

I wonder if future historians will view Mr. Cameron's rather surprising election as leader of the Conservative Party as the extinction of the last, slim hope of rescuing traditional England?

The marxoid liberal left are consolidating their icy grip on power everywhere and we hear not a peep from the Tories. 

We were promised a referendum on the new European Constitution, which effectively ends our sovereignty, and it was a lie.  The promise was broken on the infantile excuse that the new constitution was not really a constitution at all, children, so don't worry your pretty little heads.  Goebbels and Stalin would have been impressed by the flattery of imitation.

The union of England and Scotland came about in 1707 because the Scots had lost all their life-savings in a reckless financial adventure which went bust (the colony at Damien).  Now the Royal Bank of Scotland and Bank of Scotland have come to even greater financial disaster.  Cocky, stupid, greedy managers have lost all the banks' reserves, and partly by paying huge taxes to their chums in the Labour government who were expanding jobs in the public sector.  The U.K. government finances have been grotesquely distorted - in a way that was unimaginable before it happened - to try to pretend that all this shareholder money has not really been lost.

The obvious approach to tackling this crisis would be to start by hacking back every job created in the public sector since 1997.  In many cases, by eliminating bossy, interfering regulators, this would directly benefit the productive part of the economy.  But how is the debate couched?  In liberal elite terms of the pain to be caused by small cuts in useful services.  And, of course, the complete bollocks of treating 'foreign aid' as sacrosanct.  Forget the corruption overseas and just look at an earlier post about how this so-called 'aid' money is grossly misused in the U.K.

With the expansion of the public sector, and its powers of procurement in the private sector, it is now impossible to embark on a successful career without kowtowing to the new gods of 'equality' and 'diversity'.  If you wouldn't simply love to have your children brought up by a couple of black gays -  or rather, to pretend that you would - you are a pariah.  Don't even think of asking to train as a teacher.  Did you read about the woman who has just been sacked because she asked, only once, if the mother would like her to pray for her child. 

We have already become a police state.  Did you read about the business man charged with VAT fraud?  Before his trial, HMRC used the 'Proceeds of Crime Act' passed in 2007 to freeze his personal assets; and thus to prevent him from commissioning an expert accountant's report.  His subsequent requests for legal aid were refused.  He was sent to prison on the same day that a court was shown an accountant's report, produced free of charge, showing that there had probably been a mistake; his companies did not owe any VAT and were probably due for a rebate.  

And do you remember the man who wanted to save his wife from a burning building?  The police had arrived and an officious officer barred his way in the name of elf and safety.  Desperate, the man shoved his fingers in his pocket, said he had a gun, pushed past the startled officer and dashed inside.  He duly emerged with his wife, whose life he had manifestly saved.  He was then prosecuted and sent to prison for pretending he had a gun.  One can only hope that every public official involved in this viciously spiteful prosecution - which shows the state's utter contempt for the institution of marriage as compared with maintaining the powers of its jumped-up henchmen - suffers a painfully lingering death from natural causes.  A new law for the public execution of egregious public officials, pour encourager les autres, would of course be even better.   

And the chap just sent to prison for beating up a thug who had broken into his home and terrorised his family?  'He had taken the law into his own hands,' prattled the idiotic and pompous judge.  And who the hell does the judge think is enforcing the law against violent burglars.  The police?  The courts?  Ha, bloody ha!   The liberal elite sympathise with violent burglars (as long as they keep away from their posh homes, of course) because they are part of the deprived, drugged and depraved underclass which is the raw material for the highly lucrative and cushy (but so draining, my dear) 'caring' professions.

It is no accident that the police jumped on the opportunity of the Hungerford killings to ban hand guns.  For the protection of the public?  Jest not.  For the protection of police when they are bullying ordinary members of the public (or sometimes shooting them dead by mistake).  The Nazis were also very keen on banning guns in private hands. As others have suggested, it is difficult to imagine that gun-toting Texans would allow state officials to grab their children and herd them off in cattle trucks. 

Granted that the Conservative Party is faced with an electorate that, on three occasions, was stupid enough to elect Mr. Blair as Prime Minister.  (Although the Tories still seem to have no plans to make England independent of Scotland again; which would eliminate a large part of this blatantly obvious electoral problem.)  And perhaps it was mainly bad luck that they chose Mr. Cameron as a Blair look-alike just before Mr. Blair's reputation went up in a puff of smoke.  But what now? 

After the next election, would it perhaps be best if a Labour-Liberal coalition limped on until the scale of the disaster was plain to a large majority of voters, and whilst the Tories were conducting a bloody civil war to produce a leadership with a true grasp of the issues and solutions?

In another post, I will shortly be musing about the Conservative Party's colourful record in appointing its leaders.

The Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 still governs divorce in this country. At least it would if the judges obeyed and enforced it, which they don't.

A petitioner for divorce must show irretrievable breakdown of the marriage for one of five reasons; the most common of which is 'that the respondent has behaved in such a way that the petitioner cannot reasonably be expected to live with the respondent.' 

(Note an early warning sign of sloppiness.  This reason is commonly referred to - even in court and other official documents - as 'unreasonable behaviour'.  By implying an objective rather than subjective test, this is plainly not an accurate summary.  For example, an Inuit lifestyle, though perfectly reasonable, might prove unendurable for a woman previously used to being a Surrey housewife.) 

Section 1(3) of the Act states 'it shall be the duty of the court to enquire, so far as it reasonably can, into the facts alleged by the petitioner...'

Do the District Judges carry out this duty?  No, they don't.  They can't be bothered.

Virtually all divorces are undefended and go on the wholly-misnamed 'special' list.  The District Judges then proceed as if they were dealing with a settlement of a run-of-the-mill civil action; whereby neither side accepts any liabilility. 

This means there is, indeed, little point in contesting a divorce petition because no-one cares whether the allegations it contains are true.

This wholesale dereliction of duty by the District Judges is connived at all the way up to the Court of Appeal. The allegations in a 'sufficently proven' divorce petition are NOT treated as previous findings of fact for the purpose of any other civil litigation; and a respondent who has agreed to a divorce is NOT thereby estopped from subsequently denying the truth of the facts relied on by the court.  

In short, a family court dealing with divorce is a Mickey Mouse court, unrelated to other civil litigation.

There is a clue to this in the casual nature of the official guidance notes to petitioners: 'In most cases one or two sentences will do... If you have alleged unreasonable behaviour ... give details of particular incidents, including dates, but it should not be necessary to give more than about half a dozen of the more serious incidents, including the most recent.'  This is officialspeak for 'For goodness' sake don't take it too seriously, old chap.'

This wholesale abnegation by the judiciary epitomises the contempt in which our ruling elite hold the institution of marriage; which has been the bedrock of our traditional way of life.

Talking of Edward IV and Henry IV (see a previous post) has reminded me of Ravenspur.  A crucial harbour.  You see it was at Ravenspur that both of them - 72 years apart - landed to depose the ruling monarch and become king of England.

Henry IV landed at Ravenspur in 1399 to depose Richard II (and then have him killed, as one does in these circumstances).  Edward IV landed at Ravenspur in 1471 to depose Henry VI (for the second time; and this time, having learned his lesson, to have him duly killed in the normal manner). 

What do you mean, where's Ravenspur?  How the hell should I know.  It was somewhere in the Humber estuary but it fell into the sea ages ago and no-one now knows exactly where it was.  A victim of coastal erosion, or something.

But how have we managed without it?  Goodness knows, but somehow we seem to have done. 

I wonder if anyone did a survey 500 years ago asking which would have the greater effect on England if they were to disappear into the sea - Ravenspur or the Maldives?  ('Ooh-arh, good sir, I shouldn't like to catch maldives.  Very unpleasant it sounds, by my troth.') 

This has then prompted me to think about polar bears.  I've never met one; and I'm told they can run at 25 mph and they attack people with a view to eating them.  Looking at my diary, I'm not sure it would really cause me any great problem in the next year or so if there weren't any polar bears.

However, I am obviously wary about species becoming extinct. 

Most notably, I am very worried about the smallpox virus.  Apparently there are only a very few left, kept in test tubes, and there are long-established plans to exterminate them as a 'final solution'.  This seems very 'anti-planet' when the smallpox virus has done so much in the past to cut down an alleged source of global-warming - human beings.

The people convicted of the death of 17 month-old Peter Connelly were his mother (Tracey Connelly), her lover (Steven Barker) and his brother (Jason Owen); low-life parasites who would lower the tone of a zoo if they were caged there.  To a great extent, scum of this nature are a natural product of the marxoid social policies pursued by this country for the past 40 or 50 years; but as individuals they must bear responsibility for their own disgusting actions.

Haringey social services had multiple opportunities to remove little Peter from the clutches of these evil slobs, but they did nothing useful.  Why?  Because they were grossly incompetent, obviously.  But also because social workers have been programmed with a mindset that tolerates - indeed tacitly encourages - the anti-social, parasitic lifestyle of our underclass.  This underclass is the raw material for a huge 'industry' of public-sector 'carers', and their support workers (including lawyers, of course), who generally make a cushy living out of holding meetings and wittering self-righteously about people.  The taxpayer foots the bill for it all.

Baby P has already been a goldmine for all the professionals involved in the criminal proceedings and enquiries.  But now comes the real pay-off.

A working party has looked into the utter uselessness of the social workers in this matter.  It has concluded:

1. Social workers should get a big pay rise.

2. A Royal College of Social Workers should be set up to provide extra jobs and to ensure that even more time is spent in chatting about things and in marxoid indoctrination. (Cf the nurses, in earlier posts).

Another sleazy con trick by our ruling elite.  Get the punters cooing about poor little Baby P and then clobber them with another big expansion of the public sector.  More jobs for the lefty boys and girls, and pay rises as well, all at the taxpayers' expense.

Public sector cuts?  You must be joking, sunshine.  Not real ones.

Channel 4 has just broadcast a documentary stating, repeatedly, that some Australian bloke is King of England.  Does this sort of piffle now pass for public service broadcasting?

This absurd claim turns on some recently discovered evidence that, in 1441, Richard, Duke of York (NOT Richard III, but his dad, see below) was probably away campaigning when his eldest 'son', later to become Edward IV, was conceived; hence that Edward IV was illegitimate, and his daughter, Elizabeth, also had no claim to the throne.

A little background is needed here.  Edward III had a big family.  His eldest son (the Black Prince) pre-deceased him and the Black Prince's son (Richard II) became king (1377 - 1399).  Richard II was incompetent and was deposed by the son (Henry IV) of Edward III's third son (John of Gaunt).  Henry IV was succeeded in turn by his son, Henry V, and then his son, Henry VI, but who also then proved incompetent. 

Duke Richard had female descent from Edward III's second son (Lionel, Duke of Clarence) which gave him a competing claim to the throne against Henry VI.

Duke Richard eventually asserted his claim against Henry VI in the Wars of the Roses but he got killed in battle.  Edward IV thereupon inherited his dad's claim (which he should not have done if he were illegitimate); promptly triumphed at the battle of Towton (1461); and thereby became king.  Not bad going for a lad of 19 (who was as tall as Bill Clinton at 6 ft, 4 inches; looked uncannily like Bill Clinton; and had a similar reputation with the ladies).

Tony Robinson, the Channel 4 presenter, declared that Edward IV's illegitimacy meant that our Queen Elizabeth II has no right to be queen.  He said the throne should have passed down via the daughter (Margaret, Countess of Salisbury) of Edward IV's younger brother (George, Duke of Clarence).  What utter and complete piffle.

There was never the remotest prospect of this Margaret becoming queen. Her father, the Duke of Clarence, had been executed on attainder for high treason against his own brother, Edward IV; Margaret's brother, who was simple, had precedence over her; and, in those days, a queen regnant was not deemed feasible.  The monarch had to be male, and very preferably (after all the recent fighting) an adult and a soldier. 

Edward IV was succeeded by his son, Edward V, who was very quickly deposed by Richard III (Edward IV's youngest brother).  This was partly on the loudly proclaimed grounds that Edward IV had indeed been illegitimate.  So the Channel 4 view of illegitimacy was acted upon at the time.  However, most people then took exception to the apparent murder of young Edward V and his brother ('the princes in the tower') and they blamed Richard III who became deeply unpopular.  All the Lancastrians, and part of the Yorkists, thereupon championed Henry Tudor to depose Richard III.  Henry encouraged them by agreeing to marry Edward IV's daughter, Elizabeth, to heal the bad blood.

A little more background is needed.  Henry Tudor was descended from John of Gaunt (see above) via his mistress, Katherine Swinford, who subsequently became his third wife and thereby to, arguably, legitimise their issue as claimants to the English throne. (Paradoxically, Henry VII's grandmother was Catherine de Valois, the widow of Henry V and the daughter of King Charles VI of France; but these even posher relatives carried no rights of inheritance to the English crown.)  However, the main thing was a groundswell of opinion in favour of Henry to depose Richard; which he duly did at the Battle of Bosworth (1485) where Richard III was killed on the battlefield.

Henry VII then went out of his way to emphasise that he claimed the throne in his own right and NOT via marriage to Edward IV's daughter.  He made Parliament acknowledge his authority before he married Elizabeth.  He then married her on 18 January 1486 but waited until November 1487 to have her crowned as his queen. 

In short, the points raised by Channel 4 were widely aired and settled over 500 years ago; which makes the programme, with its sensational claims against the Queen, complete piffle. 

The final insult to viewers was a fleeting and dismissive reference to Sir John Conroy; which might have been a far more interesting line of enquiry.