I mean – was Disraeli pretty? Was Dr Johnson much of a ladies man? Time was, William Gladstone could set out charitably visiting London’s prostitutes without even so much as a whiff of scandal, so sophisticated, in such a supposedly backward time, were the general public. Nobody wagged their fat head or clicked their thick tongue in the obvious assumption the leader of the nation was getting his noble end away.

But that’s all gone. And today we’re so wildly liberated that a man is judged, by women, and shamefully by many slavish men, purely on the basis of whether he’s eligible for partnership with a woman. As for politics – well, that’s just ‘boring’ Er..right.

It’s probably boring because it’s so fucking orthodox and out of touch and reduced to the general level of an interesting ongoing social event for – what was it? – ‘ugly people’?

The idea of an unmarried man going into British politics, at least over the age of 30, is anathema to our small-minded, shopkeeper-soiled feminazi culture of mindless hysteria and indiscriminate sexual repression (sexual repression for men, that is – not women. Not many blokes can face the notorious ‘Vagina Monologues, but take my word for it, they’re pretty much an endorsement of female paedophilia – and no-one blinks an eye, naturally.)

But it’s now obligatory to accept that old women can toss themselves off over pictures of Justin Bieber – which I can’t say I’d be too happy about if he was my son (Christ what a nightmare – ‘I was Justin Bieber’s Dad’ – yyyyyyyuuuuuuurghhhh), but if a bloke over 30 just tells the truth and says he fancies women – adult women – of most or all ages up until they’re just too totally decrepit to be sexually attractive, he’s a filthy horrible old pervert and – thanks to all the mighty convenient and wildly dangerous boundary blurring of public witch-hunts like the laughable Operation Yewtree, (a nauseatingly cynical police PR stunt designed solely to tear public attention away from the genuine scandal of ingrained police corruption set to be exposed this September) – that not only that, but that said harmless isolated bloke probably wants to monsterise everyone’s kids into the bargain. And this officially sanctioned insanity is excused and rationalised by which ludicrously flawed orthodoxy again? Oh yes. Feminism.

It is impossible to get anywhere in mainstream society today without saying that you are a feminist. Not being a feminist will be as damaging to your career – unless you’re completely self made, and even then it’ll hold you way back – as not being a member of the National Socialists in pre-War Germany. Disagree with feminism on any level and you will be not only not listened to, but automatically branded a reactionary bigot. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman – look at what happened to Erin Pizzey.

Conservatives like to complain of the Nanny State, and never was there a more apt word for our pathetic single issue society.

Take the most hypocritical, tyrannical, fucked up Victorian Nanny you could find and set her loose on setting our school curriculums and dictating the conduct of our socialist ‘third sector’ state and it couldn’t get any worse.

Nanny is censor. And anyone who offends her gossipy, ignorant, suspicious little pig eyes simply isn’t admitted to the house of social acceptance.

I mean – get this: I’m an old man. Not elderly perhaps – but old enough for kids to go ‘there goes that old guy’. I mean I think twice before putting on a T-shirt these days – you know what I mean? I don’t do much mirror shopping. End of the day – The Edinburgh Woollen Mill beckons.

So it’s getting to the point that society forces me to be in official denial about certain things – particularly when it comes to sex.

This is partly of course on grounds of taste. As the prospect of an emergency Edinburgh Woollen Mill model – possibly wearing those comfortable laceless shoes you still occasionally see advertised in the Daily Telegraph – having sex becomes more absurd and repugnant – I just have to deny I have a libido.

But it shouldn’t mean that if I’m honest, and don’t deny I have a libido, that – and this is no exaggeration – I’m viewed at worst as a potential rapist, and at best a ‘dirty old man’.

Seriously – these days if I meet an attractive women in her twenties, or even her early thirties, I have to click a switch in my head, pretend I’m her grandfather, and damn well act accordingly, no matter how hot to trot she is.

Draped across the dead centre of mainstream society, drenching a once healthy body politic, is this great sick veil of self-denial and censure that says unless you’re Marlon Brando, or officially approved through marriage, or loaded enough to buy some gold-digging chick whose morality boils down infinitely lower than that of a working prostitute, you have to pretend you fancy knackered old trouts. In fact it’s worse than that – you have to pretend you ‘respect knackered old trouts’ for who they are. Which is generally – well, bigoted, selfish, embittered, knackered old trouts. Great.

Then there’s ‘polite society’ – in which ideas are dead, and the well to do sit numbly hypnotised by formerly informative and now ludicrously dumbed down and feminised radio channels like ‘Radio 4′ – (a badge of supposed intellect that, if you actually listen to any of their wretched broadcasts, is in fact just a barrage of outrageously innacurate and poisonous Fabian and radical feminist propaganda). Knock-kneed mangina presenters vie with insecure young harridans in boots to bray about the ‘terrible isolation’ that childless women, or single men – (a social group who once isolated get further maligned by the crackpots-that-be managing this supposedly liberated and challenging strand of debate as being, if not practising, then closet homosexuals) – in general, socially – (‘socially’ being, for the listeners of Radio 4, the shorthand for ‘at dinner parties.’)

Well I’m not invited to many dinner parties. Alright I’m not invited to any dinner parties. But when I can force my presence on any kind of social forum that involves any women I even vaguely like or respect, (generally ones who’ve made a go of marriage against the vicious odds society puts in their way), I have to spend about six hours in a fucking flotation tank beforehand, meditating on the blind azure and generally getting at one with infinity, to clear my mind in readiness for what boils down to an open season volley of the most insulting and depraved abuse about my sexuality they can muster – and that’s generally pretty depraved.

If I were unmarried in medieval Italy, and had been resultantly tied backwards to a donkey and forced to parade the streets for the jolly local townsfolk to throw tomatoes at me – it would be frankly a relief; I mean, you don’t have to condascend to answer a tomato.

It’s unbelievable. Generally it kicks of with some typical bollocks about ‘life goals’ (although one of my friends not-a-little-feisty wife generally just downs a bottle of wine and then cuts to the chase by asking me if I’ve ever had sex with a man – which obviouly makes her very happy but does tend to put her kids off their dessert.)

From ‘life goals’ it’ll whinge inevitable towards, not any longer ‘settling down’, of course, as the prospect of any woman ‘settling down’ with their destitute grandfather becomes less and less appealing, but ‘where are you heading’ – ‘what are your hopes and dreams’ and so on and so on ad nauseam.

Couples, I can never fail to notice, do not get asked these questions. And that’s because all this guff about hopes and passions and vague self-improvement jargon in general actually means this;

‘WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE? HOW LONG CAN YOU CARRY ON JUST WANKING? AREN’T YOU TIRED? WHY ARE YOU SO WEIRD? FUCK OFF! OK JUST TELL ME YOU’RE SECRETLY GAY. THAT WOULD SOMEHOW MAGICALLY EXPLAIN EVERYTHING.’

Yep. Thats what they mean. As surely as if they hired loudhailers for the evening, let off an air raid siren as you entered the porch, and publicly disinfected your cutlery before donning rubber gloves to stow it in a draw marked ‘common diseases of prostitution’.

The reduction to total idiocy of modern society by an out of control state capitalism hell bent on raping us into all becoming concussed and traumatised consumers rather than human beings, the erosion of any respect for intellect, the usurping of moral religion by ridiculous pseudo-tribal quackery whose early doctors would laugh out loud to see still duping such a technologically advanced society, the unquestioned rise of outrageous bigotry and prejudice posing as harmless ‘feminism’, and most insidious of all, the hilarious Dawkins crusade, in which a heavily coiffed TV Don ludicrously over-simplifies outdated and increasingly irrelevant Darwinism for the sole purpose of baiting otherwise relatively harmless rednecks for the entertainment of nasty middle class wankers in Europe and on the East Coast, has led us to a popular culture in which we esteem ourselves according to the lowest possible common denominator. As a bunch of fucking apes.

The awesome Bill Burr is fond of proclaiming to his audience ‘Why the fuck am I here?’, on the basis that he’s 40, doesn’t have any kids, and doesn’t do anything materially useful. He’s a comedian. He’s kidding. Unfortunately – no-one else is.

They’ve been convinced we are all in fact not descended from apes – but not progressed beyond being apes. And a 40 year old single male ape is a waste of space. Whereas a 40 year old single man – is not. Only this now counts for nothing. It’s open season on the solitary monkey, across the board.

If you’re single, and a man, and over 30, or worse, over 40 or 50 – and if you’re not drop dead gorgeous, rich, famous, polyamorous, gay, and last but not least if you won’t bow broken-backed to a load of loathsome feminist bullshit whether you can see straight through it like a fat cheerleaders negligee or not, you’re on your own. But laydees – this isn’t a fucking rainforest village – ok? It is possible for a man to have worth and be ugly, single, eccentric – whatever. You may be weak enough in the head for the Metropolitan Police and a big Plasma TV screen to beat into your frail psyche the insane belief that the single man who doesn’t give up on life and traipse around womens petticoat tails like a lost dog is a – (what was the last unprovable, utterly ridiculous, nutty as a fruitcake claim they made about that dead entertainer no-one much cared about in the first place – oh yeah – a necro-fucking-philiac!) – so a necrophiliac, or a – I don’t know – a bird abuser, or a towel rapist, or a dogsodomiser by royal appointment or whatever – but the rest of us aren’t that thick. Particularly the ever swelling ranks of dispossesed and disadvantaged bright, strong and talented men who have to put up with a society of complete fuckwits shitting on them daily. Men who are increasingly joining Britain’s flood of
political and social exiles, and just leaving you miserable myopic bastards to drown in your own shit. Which is wrong – but hey – what other choice do we have?

None – unless – ah fuck it. I suppose we could all get into politics

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You hear a lot these days about ‘home working’, ‘networking’, ‘business hubs’ and flexibile work patterns.

And for reasons best known to themselves, Whitehall throw money at what are – to all intents and purposes – businesses that echo this buzz.

In Cornwall, this bizarre new metropolitan trend has spawned something of a parochial monster.

In a dramatic feat of smoke and mirrors, the powers that be in the Duchy have managed to mix this new flexi-work ethic into the affordable housing issue.

Sadly, and as is often the case, what lies behind this baffling political drive is a can of familiar ingredients; the well known political worms of nepotism, self-interest, and blatant cynicism.

At the core of the affordable housing world is the close working relationship between Planning and Housing portfolio holder Mark Kaczmarek and Affordable Housing Manager Louise Dwelly.

I’m reliably informed that Dwelly is fanatical about meeting the affordable housing targets and this new policy adds another string to that bow.

In the current climate where funding is at a premium achieving the targets will involve a lot of networking.

And who better than Louise Dwelly to facilitate that?

After all – her husband just happens to be Tim Dwelly of Penzance, who seems to have fingers in all sorts of pies, including the social housing sector.

Dwelly (47 and born in Cornwall) returned in 1996 after taking a degree in drama and working away.

In 2002 he set up Tim Dwelly in Partnership, ‘a leading (aren’t they all) economic development and regeneration consultancy’.

His clients comprise a worthy list of third sector organisations and government agencies.

In the meantime he’d founded the Digital Peninsula Network, servicing 200 small and medium Cornish enterprises.

This survived on a diet of European, DTI and RDA grants, no doubt both facilitating and benefiting from some feverish networking.

In 2003 Dwelly was one of the team that set up the Live/Work Network.

This brings together information on ‘high quality dual use live/work properties’, in other words combined homes and workplaces.

On its website Live/Work glows with all the self-righteous zeal of the missionary for a new way of living.

But basically, it’s all about renovating and building properties so that they become live/work places.

In the process this might just make them easier to get through planning.

So it’s not all touchy-feely stuff.

Tim Dwelly in Partnership is also consultant to a range of developers, including in Cornwall Poltair Homes and the up-market Rosemullion Homes.

Other clients include those sympathetic developers the Duchy of Cornwall as well as Wharfside Regeneration, a London-based property development company which uses an arts focus to ‘deliver innovative and sustainable regeneration’.

Dwelly’s background is the world of journalism, branching out from that into housing.

He’s a typical product of the late twentieth century digitised economy, in which manipulating language is more important than making things.

This is the world of David Cameron and George Eustice, of public relations, of branding, of public/private partnerships, of networking and hype.

Of course, it would be too cynical to see this as merely hype, as just an insubstantial new economy of signs and symbols wrapped around the old economy of market exploitation.

But nevertheless, it’s not easy to be sure where the one becomes the other. In the most recent (November 2009!) entry in his blog Dwelly ponders on the ‘end of the office economy’.

At face value this looks like radical stuff. The buzz word is homeworking, the future of the globe is at stake and ‘everyone is thinking low carbon’.

Great. A really green entrepreneur. A new clean, digital economy in a green peninsula to go perfectly with our new politics.

Or does it?

Anyone interested in purchasing a live/work property and joining the low carbon economy is directed to Live/Work Homes. Here we find the following

Gweal Pawl can be found in Redruth, ironically on the site of the now demolished hospital in which Dwelly was presumably born. Yet interestingly the town isn’t mentioned by name.

Live/Work Homes is run by Live/Work Network and their registered offices are one and the same.

On the one hand green rhetoric, on the other the same old spivs flogging second homes as ‘westcountry pads’ to up-country punters who’ll drive down in their ‘gas-guzzling’ 4 by 4s along that nice dual carriageway and then pop up to Newquay airport to get their next global lifestyle fix.

Exactly what is new about this?

It looks disturbingly like the old exploitation masquerading as something new. It’s greenwash pasted over a familiar drive for profits.

It’s the same old growth economy only this time one where ‘we can look forward to a … shift from staff with pensions to freelancers with contracts. The live/work economy in other words.’

It’s trapped on the same escalator of endless Cornish population growth. It signs up to the hopelessly contradictory and naïve vision of a ‘green’ Cornwall where unsustainable growth is just brushed under the carpet.

It’s that make-believe Cornwall where no limits exist in terms of resources or capacity,

Networking is a fearsome weapon in the hands of this entrepreneurial greenwash class. And it’s a weapon they have some skill in wielding.

This was seen in another of Tim Dwelly’s recent projects: he was one of the key players in the Future Penzance Facebook campaign and the True Friends of Penzance group that succeeded brilliantly in countering the Penzance Harbour campaign and making Penzance safe for continuing consultancies and spin-off contracts.

Having got the corporate designed Route A back on track they have no intention of stopping there. Penzance’s future is all mapped out.

This greenwash profit-making elite has been nurtured in the blurred spaces created by public/private partnerships and regeneration projects.

It thrives in the networking new world of Brand Cornwall and Eden Project type gormlessness.

The problems of networking lie in its unaccountability, in the way it flourishes out of sight in the dark corners of personal links and private favours, well away from democratic scrutiny.

The ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ culture of networking is the preferred strategy of a regeneration public-private project class which has gradually and without anyone really noticing extended its tentacles throughout Cornish government and society.

Mind out, or it’ll throttle us in its green, green grasp.

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Our Ed – not one to mince his words

It’s difficult to know which bunch of losers making thorough dicks of themselves in the wake of the peaceful, unavenged passing of a democratically elected Prime Minister this week to despise more than the other.

The fascist uber-bureaucratic cretins who forced a presumably otherwise perfectly capable Met Police Officer to resign for expressing a perfectly valid opinion he was more than entitled to on the internet – which is no-one’s god-damned business except his anyway.

Or the sniggering, ever-adolescent forty-something single mothers and Grauniad reading girlyboys borrowing their state-school brainwashed kids iPads to rack up a 99cents bill for a shit song wallowing in the totally irrelevant death of Britain’s most divisive post War leader.

I mean – seriously – who cares?

If it’s possible to sympathise with anyone in the post-Thatcher death debacle, it has to be the teenage Twitterheads posting ‘Who is Market Thatcher?’, and revelling in total, blessed ignorance of the 19bloody80s.

Anyone who bothers to read these columns will know that for me to interject here that ‘I’m no feminist but..’, is somewhat akin to Cliff Richard announcing ‘I’m no ladies man, but…’

(For those of you new to these little rants, suffice it to say that – like many feminists -, I’m confident feminism is not feminism any more, but a bigoted, anti-intellectual dogma preaching hatred of men and responsible for death, misery, and oppression on a grand and unreported scale).

So you may be surprised to hear that I’m no feminist – but I’ve always thought there was something deeply sexist about much of the loathing expressed for Thatcher.

You shouldn’t be surprised – if you actually listen to and absorb the anti-radical feminist arguments not just I but a whole raft of credible and often entertaining commentators subscribe to.

But let’s face it – very few people, or at least very few ‘feminists’ – bother reading or thinking at all.

They see, they react, they go bonkers.

If they did bother to read the anti-radical feminist – or more accurately equity feminist – credo of those who rather than reserving their personal hatred for an individual choose to express loathing for evil ideologies, they’d realise that liberalism, genuine tolerance (as opposed to non-judgemental condascension), and true meritocratic social equality are central beliefs of the anti-radical feminist camp.

And speaking from that viewpoint – well I reckon a lot of Thatcher bashing just boils down to woman-hating.

And I’ll tell you why.

It’s probably true that Thatcher needlessly wrecked much of Britain’s already failing industrial base – although, tellingly, even socialist icon Ken Loach said in his uncompromising statement after her death that the miners leaders of the time – Scargill et al – were equally to blame.

It’s also doubtless true that here was a hellish character; incredibly vain, terribly simple minded for someone who claimed to grasp Hayek and Friedman, and most of all, I suspect, spiteful, and incapable of decent, humane compromise.

It’s probably true that these characteristics, seen as qualities in the domestic, economic war-time scenario she was voted in to sort out in 1979, became grave, terrible failings in later terms of office.

In fact if there’s one big surprise in the Thatcher death media distraction, it’s that no veterans have come forward to blame her for blowing them apart to win a third term – because there can be little doubt that’s chiefly what the Falklands boiled down to.

But the point is this – the people who voted Thatcher in – with the exception of the loadsamoney working classes and yuppies she created, who fawned on her just like single mothers fawn selfishly on Blair and Brown, didn’t so much vote for her as for Liberalism and against Socialism.

Now it turns out, as it so often the case, that they didn’t get Liberalism. They got the Tories – who as we know, tend towards being money-grubbing, self-seeking, snooty, poverty and suffering despising sociopaths in power.

But there can be no doubt that the majority of the country didn’t mind at the time – otherwise Thatcher would never have got in.

People were, sadly, prepared to stand by and watch Thatcher declare an unjustified economic war on her political opponents supporters, (an insanely damaging policy which lost the Conservatives Scotland probably for ever).

They stood by because they’d vote for anything that didn’t mean James bloody Callaghan, the selfish, bullying, spoiled and completely out of control not to mention inherently undemocratic unions, and that twat Ken Livingstone, who was not then and has not since been either clever, funny, or humane. He was a vainglorious neo-fascist and he became a vainglorious drunkard who kissed the Queens arse.

And all this meant people voted for the Conservatives. Not necessarily for Thatcher (popular as she occassionally was) – but for her party.

Would the reaction to ‘Thatcherism’ – which wasn’t Thatcherism at all, it was Josephism if anything – have been quite so personal and rabid if Enoch Powell, once set to inheret the mantle of leadership from the One Nation brigade and an unswerving free marketeer, hadn’t taken his big and horrible gamble on the race card and torpedoed his electoral chances for ever?

It’s not as if Powell would have been the sole racist in the Tory Party. It’s not even decided today whether Powell – a man who joined Tony Benn in the division chamber and was feted as the great intellectual liberal of his age – really did feel hate towards other races – surely the definition of racism.

So what if he’d just dropped it? Come to the conclusion that the teething problems of multiculturalism in his constituency were an inevitable consequence of a liberal immigration policy which by rights he should have supported?

Powell will probably remain an enigma for ever; terrifying to those he wittingly or unwittingly threatened, and something of a gross embarrassment to those who shared his free market, politically liberal views.

I personally suspect that as a classicist, he lived in a bit of a dreamworld, and as a man ‘d’un certain age’ – a war veteran, notably – he did have archaic, and what are now considered obnoxious views about immigrants to the UK.

If I had to put money on it, I’d say this rather tragic combination led him, when considering a run at the Tory leadership, to fall foul of his own understandable intellectual arrogance, and consider any ticket that would put him at the top was worth riding.

But back to the question of what if he hadn’t? What if he’d never embarked on his self-destructive crusade? Or – if you take the popular view he was just a dyed in the wool racist; and it’s a thorny question – what if he hadn’t been?

Well, there can be little doubt that in that alternate universe Powell could well have been the choice of the free marketeers for leader in 1979.

Would Powell have been quite so demonised as Thatcher?

I doubt it. Because he was a bloke. He’d have set out, in the main, on many of the exact same policies as Thatcher, and people wouldn’t have minded taking a bit of stick from a bloke – but a woman – that was another matter..

True, later in her controversial and increasingly dictatorial reign, she did go way over the top (or arguably off the rails, after Keith Joseph died), in a way that the most dedicated free marketeers in her party considered counter-productive, greedy, and ultimately just anti-social.

Maybe that was something to do with her gender. Or maybe not. Reagan certainly wasn’t a girl.

But the bottom line has to be, that much of the hysterical hatred coming to the fore for Margaret Thatcher – and of course much of the pathetic, OTT ‘state funeral’ brigade fawning too – boils down to the fact that she was a girl.

Women on the left hated her all the more for it. Bigoted as they were and are, they couldn’t deal with the fact that people of their own gender could so violently disagree with their increasingly, trite, unthinking, and Marxist brand of ‘radical feminism’.

In fact – if there’s anything truly pathetic and laughable about the response to Thatcher’s death, it’s the response – you guessed it – of Britain’s mainstream ‘feminist’ sheeple.

If I have to hear some daft tit say one more time that ‘Thatcher was a bitch, but I ‘salute her’ as a successful woman’ (spare us), I think I’ll be sick.

I mean – that’s just indefensible. It would be like me saying ‘Augusto Pinochet was a murderer, but I salute him as a successful man.” Could there be a stupider statement? Probably, if you can hack reading any of the crap passing for modern feminist ‘opinion’ or even worse their pseudo-academic ‘texts’.

But mainstream feminazi dullards aside, men on the left certainly never respected Thatcher as a woman – they simply made her their mother in law. I mean – just consider the primeval imagery of this childish song.

Meanwhile thinking men like Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson were widely patronised, in an equally sexist way, as being the new Boadicea’s quivering male underlings.

Time showed nothing could have been farther from the truth. But the left, which so prides itself on its equality awareness, simply couldn’t deal with the fact that men and women might inter-relate equably and disagree with their flawed bullshit, even if one of those women was in charge, (not to mention pretty damn bossy.)

Fifty percent of the whole Thatcher hate parade boils down to her being female.

At the end of the day, as a Tory grandee once famously quipped; ‘The trouble with Margaret is – she’s not a gentleman….’

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The Stadium for Cornwall has got the go ahead from Cornwall Council’s strategic planning committee.

But big questions still remain as to whether the £16 million or so needed to take the project forward will ever be found.

In terms of the application being discussed today, it is clear that the proposers had listened to previous concerns and modified their design as a result.

The stands are lower profile and the pitch will now have a 4G surface to enable it to be used more frequently.

I share the worries of my colleague Rob Nolan.

Rob fears the location might be the wrong one – and that it will enable the development of more (unwelcome) houses.

But it is clear that the design itself is good.

Still though, the question will remain as to how the development will ever be paid for.

Cornwall councillors have voted against any idea of giving the scheme any public money.

My personal view is that there needs to be a clear idea of the community benefit before public funding can be considered – and also that it was wrong to rule it out entirely at this time.

But any consideration of public money is particularly difficult at a time when all councils are seeing services cut.

With planning permission now secured, the scheme’s proposers now have a much better chance of attracting grant and private funding for the scheme.

As ever, time will tell.

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So the coalition government has recognised the problem of people here paying much much more for water than everywhere else in the UK.

Of course it must be welcomed that water bills in Cornwall will drop.

It must be welcomed that South West Water are announcing investement in sewerage works, flood defences and the water system.

But lets be realistic.

We’re still getting ripped off.

The government need to do more than divert taxpayers money to subsidising not only bills but South West Water’s parent group Pennon’s profits.

Water should be a human right.

We can’t live without fresh clean water – and there are obvious health benefits to a modern sewerage system.

So its reprehensible that we still regularly have raw sewage entering the sea from overflow drains during storms and heavy rain.

I don’t believe water should be a profit making venture – and I’m no fan of privatisation.

I don’t think public services and utilities should have shareholders and investors interests as a motivating factor in operation.

Public services should be run in the public interest, any savings that can be made should be to the benefit of the tax payer.

This is not the system we have with water.

It’s a very profitable enterprise.

The main concern of the Pennon group is South West Water, and the groups is in the FTSE 250.

In other words its in the top tier of UK companies.

As a press release from Pennon revealed late last year:

“South West Water is continuing its strong operational performance against the 2010/15 regulatory contract with further advances in operating efficiency and customer service. Rigorous cost control, efficiency delivery and stable interest costs are expected to deliver profit before tax for the half year for South West Water up 10% to more than £83m.

We expect to report Pennon Group profit before tax for the half year up over 3% to £111m and to announce an interim dividend up 6.6% to 8.76p per share.”

That’s a staggering amount of money.

Although it’s obviously good value for the company and it’s investors, we have to ask – is it good value for the public purse is it good value for users?

It’s lamentable that the last Tory government sold off the water boards. And it’s lamentable that this one’s only solution is to use more public money to further subsdise operating profits.

They say they’re cutting the cost of our bills – but in reality, they’ve billed the taxpayer twice.

First the Government have sat back while we’ve paid spiralling bills demanded by a private company for a public utility.

Then when the bills have become so high they’re an electoral risk – they announce they’ll subsidise the bills to keep them down.

But with whose money?

Yours!

Maybe the government should have looked to the company itself to alleviate water bills?

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A think tank closely aligned to the Conservative Party has today produced a report which could see some of the most expensive parts of Cornwall ‘cleansed’ of social housing.

The Policy Exchange report, which has been enthusiastically endorsed by Housing Minister Grant Shapps, recommends that, when social housing in an expensive area becomes vacant then it should be sold off and the money used to buy or build social housing in cheaper places.

Note that ‘becoming vacant’ often means the tenant dying even if they still have family who live in the home.

The biggest problem with this plan is that it will lead to many towns and villages – particularly coastal communities – becoming completely free of social housing.

Low income families from the area will lose any chance they had of getting a home in the village, even if they have lived there all their lives, and will be forced to move elsewhere. In many cases, the property will simply become yet another second home.

Instead, we should be looking at genuinely mixed communities in all parts of Cornwall.

Nowhere should become a social housing ghetto and nowhere should be cleansed of all social housing.

Andrew George, Lib Dem MP for St Ives and West Cornwall said this on the plans:

“If they really want to ‘socially cleanse’ our villages of local families who are most in need of affordable housing then they’ll have a fight on their hands.”

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It’s a must. And it hit me as I was talking to some people about sex the other day – as you do now and then.

I mentioned in passing that they’d probably each had more of it in the last month than I have in my life when one of them piped up – ‘But you have a kid’.

As if – the more you have it away – the more you breed.

Hmmm, I thought. There’s a good idea.

Maybe pregnancy should be cumulative?

Now, the more I think about this, the more I like it.

In fact – if any evidence were ever needed that either Richard Dawkins or Depeche Mode are right, it’s all right here.

In another fact, when biotech speeds us all full circle or whatever, points-based pregnancy will surely be first on the superman’s manifesto.

And in yet another scintillating fact, if it isn’t, I’m going to bury the idea in a Blue bloody Peter time capsule so he can dig it up with his intergalactic virtual metal detector with folding leopard print minibar handy 12v AC/DC converter and three-in-one conditioner in 2112.

I say ‘He’, because I’m assuming if the race is going to advance, we’ll at some point stop bickering over who’s called what, what complete idiot is showing any lack of respect to any other insufferable retard, and generally ditch feminism, totalitarianism, communism, corporatism, Muslim Fundamentalism and general ‘we are a race of titstick limpets grown legs’ -ism in favour of modern civilisation.

So: here we are on day one of the new dawn and we’re drawing up the rules. Number one on the agenda – happiness.

Prudence wants mass castration. Borgia wants free love. But I automatically win with my plan for cumulative pregnancy.

No more Elvis conceptions.
No more wrangling over who’s the Daddy.
No more welcome to Vicky Pollard Hell.

From now on – you play by the great liberator’s rules. And my rules are;

1. Men get pregnant
2. They only get pregnant once they’ve had sex on more than 1,000 occasions.
3. Everything else stays the same

Think of it.

For a head start, in one foul swoop, you’ve eradicated the single mother state .

Discrimination, family breakdown, and the general fascistic erosion of civilised society ends.

Our laughable one-party school and undemocratic worker state goes out of the window and we get taught to use our brains like they are in Singapore.

As a result, proper academics replace morons and we get democracy back.

Once that head start’s assured, you’re all set for a convincing lead, as it becomes clear you’ve completely levelled the sexual playing field.

Because let’s be honest – it needs levelling.

I mean – guys are ugly. They smell bad. They lose hair and teeth. And no matter how much brighter and better they are than a woman despite it all – they’d rather die than let it show.

Because they know. They know they’ve got to lay on the sort of show Barnum and Bailey would balk at just to meet a basic human need and they know that wittering, inane idiot in the knee-length Nazi boots and with the third sector name badge and hire-purchase friendly salary and mortgage is the one they’re forced to play to.

Girls though – girls are pretty. They smell nice. They keep their hair and teeth and the whole damn thing and no matter how much dumber, or generally worse they are than a man despite it all – it’ll never matter how much it shows.

Because they too know. They know they’ve only got to walk into the nearest bar to meet a basic human need that posing, pontificating desperado in the feminazi issue crew cut with the £1,000 a month pay cheque and the bedsit and the alimony payments has to leap at any chance to get.

This is why – sorry to break it to you fellers – all girls at all times get around and have fun all over the place while guys – yep, guys in general, even those mythical Alpha Males we all hear about – just don’t.

The genetic sexual chips are all stacked in one direction because only one sex produces the next generation.

That’s why genetics gave guys consecutive thought. So they could fight back.

But hey – change Nature – no more grief! Ever!

No more blokes struggling all their lives to earn stupid money to impress women into doing something that’s the most fun you can have without laughing anyway only to be rewarded with shit health care no human rights and a greedy old soul-less hag breathing all over you as you die of Cancer first.

No more the pathetic single Western mans life of misery and oppression as unmarriageable women pick them off for use as all-in-one spermbanks and cash machines..

Nope – game’s over.

Girls: you want a kid – you better make damn sure either you and your lover go at it like a social worker and her favourite dildo for the next year or three – or get some rest and let him out to stud.

I mean – the more I think about it – the more it’s perfect.

No more lone, stressed angry men eye-balling you over spilled drinks at parties.

They’re all too busy having group sex with each other’s maternity-starved wives upstairs.

I mean – they were going to beat you up out of misplaced anger because of that hat/suit/face you’re wearing – but, sadly, their wives (or one of them anyway) took them to one side before the dodgy Spanish wine was even half-chilled.

Jane: ‘Let’s face it love – you’re 37 already – unless you have sex with me, my younger sister and the rest of the MILF Rovers Netball all-stars right now and every night all night for the next six months, I may never get to have a child of my own!”

Dick: “Oh all-right”

And come to think of it – what about that ‘child of my own’ anyway? Surely – child of ours?

So – even less brawling now – and there’s another far more toxic social disease cured as sure as a Harry Windsor’s a fighting lad.

Child Welfare concerns? Call a Government official? Forget about it! That’s your kid in there – go sort old Vicky out yourself!.

And no nagging and bitching about the terrible awful day you had when you get home to your exhausted, sated, carefree partner when you get home either.

After all – he’s the one having the baby.

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This afternoon, Cornwall Council backed a Lib Dem motion opposing any move towards regional pay or regional benefit levels – both of which would hit Cornwall very hard.

As far as I could see there were no Councillors who voted against and only three who abstained.

Sadly, one of these was the Cabinet Member for Finance.

My colleague Edwina Hannaford and I put forward the motion because of the noises that Chancellor George Osborne has made about local or regional pay deals.

As Cllr Andrew Wallis said; “Regional pay is not about fair pay, it is about cutting pay.”

If we had regional pay based on relative housing prices, on water charges, on public transport or leisure prices then the levels of pay would surely rise not fall. But we know that this isn’t the case and that the only effect would be to drive down pay levels.

At present, Cornwall has many excellent public sector staff. But how many would still be here if they could be paid more in Hampshire or Essex for doing the same job? A regional pay system would take tens of millions of pounds out of Cornwall’s economy and lead a downward spiral of pay as the public sector levels help to keep private sector pay up too.

Since the motion was submitted three weeks ago, Nick Clegg has made it clear that the Lib Dems won’t back regional pay and David Cameron’s proposed announcement of regional benefit levels never occurred after Lib Dems in Government said they would not back it.

Cornwall doesn’t want second class services and local residents deserve to keep the first class public sector workers we have.

The debate also allowed council leader Alec Robertson to clarify a comment he made in a public meeting in Launceston a few months ago. Asked about local pay deals, Cllr Robertson said that he was “generally in favour of anything with the word local in it”. Today Cllr Robertson made it clear that he would not support a move towards lower pay levels and he backed our motion.

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The news is trickling through that Bodmin councillor Lance Kennedy has made it through onto the shortlist to be the Conservative candidate for police commissioner in Devon and Cornwall.

This is quite a triumph for Lance, who has been set against by the party machine locally which seemed to be desperate to find anyone but him to be the candidate.

Lance (and the other shortlisted candidates) will now have to face the selectorate in three hustings events next week. But, contradicting their earlier statements on the issue, the Tory Party have decided that the hustings will be open only to Tory Party members and electors. It seems that people who usually back other parties (or no party at all) will be excluded and the appeal of the shortlisted candidates to reach across the political spectrum for votes will therefore not be tested.

The other interesting factor in the Tory selection is that it will be conducted using the Alternative Vote. Remember that a year ago the Conservatives were campaigning against this very system being used for parliamentary elections. So why are they using it for their own elections? Is First Past the Post not good enough for them?

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Why is it that, if the Jubilee celebrations leave you cold, you are marked out as a party pooper?

I have nothing against the Royal Family personally. I have only ever met the Duke of Cornwall and the only thing that sticks in my memory of that meeting is that he has a severe case of dandruff. However, I don’t see why I should celebrate being ruled by a family that has enjoyed centuries of privilege, hereditary wealth and influence. It’s not the people that I object to but the system. I don’t want to be a subject I want to be a citizen and I don’t want to celebrate being ruled by a person I have never had a chance to vote for.

Does this make me a party pooper? Well it shouldn’t should it? I accept that a lot of people want to celebrate the Jubilee – good luck to you all, I sincerely hope you all had a great time and remember it for years to come.

We should encourage community interaction and break down barriers between people.

Nevertheless, if we are living under the rule of a democratic monarchy, shouldn’t I be allowed to just let the whole occasion pass me by if I’m not interested.

I don’t want to join in with the celebrations and I don’t want to poop on any parties either.

This is the principle that is is really making me angry at the moment. It seems that being a republican is tantamount to social heresy.

Fair enough, we are told that the monarchy has a 80% approval rating.

Does this justify a fierce subliminal campaign that aims to have those opposed to the establishment view labelled at best as ‘party poopers’ and, more worryingly, as extremists or anarchists.

Surely the BBC is supposed to be impartial. Yet we are bombarded every evening with fawning coverage – not just of factual events but with opinion as to “how hard the Queen works”, “what a great institution the monarchy is” or “how the world is looking on with envy”.

Take this typical BBC ‘news’ report.

At first read it seems fairly balanced – hell, they even mention that Republicans are holding a protest. It must be reasonably balanced – right?

Yet it isn’t. The BBC manages to report as fact what is opinion when it supports the pro-monarchy stance and as opinion what is fact when it doesn’t.

For example:

“Prime Minister David Cameron, who will attend a Jubilee party in Downing Street, paid tribute to the 86-year-old Queen during an interview on BBC One’s Andrew Marr programme, saying: “Her insight and her sharpness is extraordinary and I don’t see any sign of her working less hard.”

This extract shows how great importance is given to the the opinion that the Queen is hard working and has excellent judgement. It is an opinion held by our elected Prime Minister so it must be factually correct.

On the other jand we are told:

“The anti-monarchy group, Republic, has said it will hold a demonstration against what they call an unelected, unaccountable monarch.”

So the indisputable facts that the monarchy is unelected and unaccountable are brushed under the carpet as being a mere opinion.

This type of subliminal bias is wrong and is the anathema of truly independent and factual reporting.

Is it any wonder that that with type of relentless, dip-feed propaganda, the monarchy has such a high approval rating. I wonder what would happen if there were more reporting of Royal scandals and abuses.

The thing is, this isn’t likely to happen and even now I can hear the sound of me being labelled as an extremist and a trouble maker – or, perhaps, just a party pooper.

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