Independent writer and Unite activist Owen Jones seems oddly silent about the dispute at Grangemouth.

He is not known to be shy and hesitant.

And yet on Grangemouth he says nothing.

The Portes answer is more immigration

Stewart Jackson MP draws our attention to:  "of 112k EU migrant job seekers 37% in UK had never worked in their country of residence".

Immidately he attracts the ire of Jonathan Portes.

And are we not a little tired of Jonathan Portes setting himself up as a Judge Jeffreys of all immigration statistics?

Whatever the issue of the day, in whatever area of policy, the Portes answer is more immigration.  More and more immigration.  Don't care what the problem is, let's have more immigration.

All you have to do Mr Portes is stand for election on a pro-immigration platform. 

There's no need for you to control policy from within the civil service (as you did under Labour).  There is no need for you to try to influence policy from within a think tank.  There is no need for you to cavil on the sidelines about all these mendacious politicians.

All you have to do is find yourself a constituency and stand for election. 

Then you will have a complete and absolute mandate for what you are advocating. 

And through the brilliance of your statistical interpretations presumably getting elected will be a breeze - the electorate is going to love you and your statistics!

Institutions can project their work down through the centuries

These two graves in Ellington All Saints in Huntingdonshire belong to two sisters who in 1599 set up a small charity for the relief of the poor of the village. 

The charity, known as the Town Lands Dole is still going today, and is a remarkable example of how institutions can project their work down through the centuries.  The income is provided from land (about sixty three acres) which is let out as allotments.  There are eight trustees, which include the vicar and churchwardens. 

The two table-top tombs are listed.  Although they date from Jacobean period the stonework is reused and is 14th century (from the quatrefoil design).  Recently restored.

Is it not the case that Ed Milband's rash announcement that a future Labour government would freeze energy prices if they win in 2015 has led directly to the pre-emptive hikes in prices by energy companies?

Far from helping the cost of living, Labour's economic incompetence has led to immediate hikes in bills for most consumers.

EDL

Above:  a major interview with former EDL leader Tommy Robinson was published in yesterday's Guardian.  The assumptions are what you would expect from such an interview, and in such a newspaper.  However I feel bound to say that I am no wiser as to what Tommy Robinson has done that justifies such excessive discussion about his possible redemption.

He has expressed unfashionable views.  He has taken part in demonstrations (all demonstrations are fatuous in my opinion).  He is supposed to have inculcated "fear" among communities who all too often resort to special pleading when faced with opposition.

Above:  indeed if we look back to March 2009 we see that most of the United Kingdom were expressing what would later become the cornerstone of EDL views.

However, the EDL is reported as having changed over the years.  It has attracted extremists.  It has become so extreme that Mr Robinson feels he can no longer remain a member.

Above:  in today's Observer is a letter about the activity of undercover police teams who infiltrate "extreme" organisations and destabilise them by encouraging ever-more extreme, offensive and illegal behaviour.  We associate this police activity as being within left-leaning organisations.  But it does occur to me whether the extremists who undermined the EDL might have been police agents.

Of course, I realise that writing impartially about the EDL means I will be accused of being a racist sympathiser, but one learns to discount this sort of intimidation.

What a great piece of legislation is the Localism Act

The Sunday Politics earlier today included a very interesting interview with Eric Pickles, which encompassed a (far too short) discussion of the Localism Act:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03cz8p4

The Localism Act includes a little-known provision which allows communities (usually a petition of on thousand people) to declare a building an asset of community value which allows the community to control what happens to that building or even to compulsory purchase the structure.

So far (and disgracefully) redundant churches are not included under the Act, but local pubs are.

I understand that the wonderful Baring Hall Hotel in Lewisham has received such designation.

What a great piece of legislation is the Localism Act - worth more as a legacy than any amount of foreign wars.

More on the Baring Hall Hotel:  http://afroml.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/grove-park-in-south-london.html

Finally (and AT LAST) I have done my tax return.

The dining room is covered in papers.

The disgusting badger cull in the west country is becoming a farce.

It needs to stop now.

The Parliamentary Briefing paper http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN05873.pdf  issued at the start of the badger cull to inform Members of both Houses specifies a MAXIMUM OF SIX WEEKS.

There is a very simple way of raising incomes in this country

Alan Milburn and the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission publishes a report on social mobility today:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24553611

Mr Milburn concludes that while work is "still very important", it is not a cure for poverty.

Which basically means he is saying nothing can be done (except a very limp appeal to employers to pay higher wages).

There is a very simple way of raising incomes in this country.

Close the labour market.  Stop the inward flow of cheap labour.  Ignore the howls of anguish from special interests and STOP entry into the country by cheapo foreign labour.

Then inevitably as labour becomes less plentiful employers will be forced by the market to offer more to attract workers to their companies (not just more in terms of wages and salaries but more in terms of benefits such as non-contributory pensions, free healthcare, free child care etc).

Of course this measure is impossible for Labour to do, and difficult for the Conservatives.

But you will not achieve any meaningful level of social mobility without it.

Centenary plan to commemorate the Great War

The BBC has announced its four-year Centenary plan to commemorate the Great War:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/ww1/

These are broad plans, and no doubt they are flexible enough to allow variations and amendments.

At first sight it is a interesting and comprehensive programme, although I found the comment "it is incumbent upon us to offer differing interpretations of the war and we won’t shy away from doing that" rather ominous (there is a danger that the usual claque of lefty loudmouths will attempt to hi-jack the commemorations as part of their on-going agenda). 

However I was disappointed and concerned that no particular focus seems to be planned on the impact of the Great War on the English countryside.  This was the moment when the countryside was depopulated.  Millions of farmers and farmworkers (and squires too let us not forget) gathered-in the harvest of 1914, went off to the war, and far too many did not come back again.  Many millions of farmhorses went off to the war and did not come back again.  The impact this had on the communities that remained is one of the most moving and tragic of the whole conflict.  The men and horses were replaced by machines, and a whole way of life vanished.  

The legacy of the war also lingers longer in rural areas.  Often I have stood before lists of village war fatalities with the children and grandchildren of the men named and heard their stories come alive.  You cannot understand the modern countryside without reference to the Great War.

More:

http://afroml.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/armistice-day.html

http://afroml.blogspot.co.uk/2006/11/it-was-local-holocaust.html

http://afroml.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/war-was-shamelessly-used-as-instrument.html

http://afroml.blogspot.co.uk/2007/11/in-more-ways-than-we-realise-that-war.html

http://afroml.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/perhaps-he-was-thinking-this-is-it.html

http://afroml.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-first-world-war-only-makes-sense-in.html

A slighting reference to boiled cabbage was made

In the jokey spot at the end of the Today programme this morning, where they usually discuss trivial subjects (or serious subjects in a trivial way) there was a discussion about English cooking.

There was an assumption that English cuisine was bland and boring, and a slighting reference to boiled cabbage was made (although personally I like well-boiled cabbage and cannot stand "crispy" vegetables).

What was noticeable about the discussion was that none of the participants was English-heritage.  The presenter was Asian-heritage (and made the slighting remark about cabbage), one of the contributors was Jewish-heritage and the other was Italian-heritage.  Of course you do not need to be English-heritage to discuss an aspect of English culture but considering the premise of the discussion (that there was a "problem" with English cooking) it did seem insensitive, even for the jokey throwaway spot.

Everyone has their likes and dislikes.

To me Asian cuisine consists of smelly nauseating slops.  But usually I refrain from saying so.  And certainly there would be an outcry if I were to say so on national radio.

And on the subject of cultural sensitivities, I feel an opportunity was missed on the Today programme this morning when Greg Dyke was interviewed and was not invited to comment on the disgusting whiteness of the Polish national football team.

Andrew Mitchell owed an apology - including from the opposition front bench.

And what about all those Tweeters who defamed him?

Zaha Hadad's design for a yatch seems to have been inspired by the humble string vest:  http://www.designboom.com/design/zaha-hadid-designs-128m-superyacht-for-blohm-voss-10-15-2013/

Retweeted by Janan Ganesh:

"FTreader: Simple way to introduce sense into UK immigration debate. One day next year all those not born here should withdraw their labour."

And perhaps the day after they could make arrangements to go back where they came from?

"Democracies do not have good taste" Grayson Perry tells us.

Which presumably means dictators have excellent taste.

I'm not happy that Channel 4 News has just referred to the terrorists caught last night as "British men".

They are not British men.

They are immigrants who have somehow acquired British citizenship.

How can the Museum of Immigration at 19 Princelet Street justify its charitable status when it is continually intervening in party politics?

Corruption in the Labour Party

Peter Willsman writes with passion about corruption in the Labour Party:  http://www.leftfutures.org/2013/10/illegitimate-interference-by-party-staff-into-our-internal-elections/

This is a different sort of corruption to the Unite corruption in Falkirk and other constituencies.

This is apparantly an internal corruption:  "Party members do not want to be in an organisation where paid officials whose wages members pay are subverting internal democracy. All decent members want to see these degrading practices ended and not again brushed under the carpet. Party members believe that cheats should not be allowed to prosper."

Faked

Is the BBC slipping back into its old fakery ways?

There is an intriguing image that pops up in a BBC film about discrimination in the London housing market:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24372509

What is the provenance of this photograph?  Who was the photographer and when and where was it taken?  The reason I ask is that it looks so obviously faked.  It looks as if an existing notice in a window has been photoshopped and somewhat clumsily had a new message put on, with none of the variations in tone that you would expect in an unedited photograph.  Because the image has been inserted into a film there is no clue as to where this photograph has come from.  And such an inflammatory image would surely be well-known would it not?  If it was genuine we would see it everywhere.  Diane Abbott MP would be referring to it on Question Time.  Lee Jasper would be repetitively twittering about it day after day.

If it turns out to be a fake whoever was responsible at the BBC needs to be sacked.

Deliberately ignorant article about immigration by James Kirkup:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jameskirkup/100241161/in-their-hearts-senior-tories-think-immigration-could-be-a-good-thing-but-how-do-they-tell-the-voters/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Mr Kirkup, there is a difference between tourists who come here for a couple of weeks and then go home again and permanent immigrants who intrude themselves into our society without democratic permission.

And as for your statement "In their secret hearts, some senior Conservatives believe that immigration is not the problem that many voters believe it to be" if this were true it would only confirm how out of touch the political elite (all parties) are.