Black Labradors and Country Pubs Are Far Right

 

According to some cretinous Labour MP Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, warm ale, country pubs and black labradors are far right!

Yet, the internet never forgets, here is a tweet of her being far right a few years ago.

 

Cretin!

 

The name of this cretin is Stella Creasy, MP for Walthamstow.

The Archbishop's Grotesque Failure of Judgement

 

You really couldn't make this up. On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the Archbishop of Canterbury handed a prestigious Church of England award to a Muslim cleric whose past comments about Osama bin Laden were already a matter of public record. Then, when someone finally noticed, she took the award back.

This is not a minor PR embarrassment. It is an astonishing failure of judgement and due diligence at the very top of the Church of England.

Dame Sarah Mullally presented the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation to Pakistani cleric Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi on 11 September — the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The award was supposedly recognition of his “outstanding work as an ambassador of interfaith harmony in Pakistan”.

There was just one rather significant problem.

In 2007, Ashrafi publicly said that Osama bin Laden should be given the Islamic title Saifullah — “Sword of God” — describing him in the context of fighting for Islam. The remarks were reported internationally at the time by Reuters and AFP.

So how on earth did the Church of England not know?

This was not some obscure comment whispered in a mosque 20 years ago and uncovered by an internet sleuth. The remarks were public, reported by major international news agencies and concerned one of the most notorious terrorists in modern history.

Yet somehow nobody at Lambeth Palace appears to have thought: perhaps we should Google the bloke before giving him an award.

That is not a minor administrative error.

It is a colossal failure of due diligence.

And the timing makes an already extraordinary decision almost surreal.

This wasn't an award presented on some forgotten Tuesday in February. It was presented on 11 September, the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, including 67 British citizens.

Of all the days in the calendar, this was the day the Church of England chose to celebrate a man whose past comments about bin Laden subsequently forced it to withdraw the honour.

The symbolism could hardly have been more glaring.

The Church of England then compounded the humiliation by initially defending the award. Lambeth Palace said it recognised Ashrafi's “longstanding support for religious minorities in Pakistan, particularly the Christian community” and stressed the importance of interfaith engagement.

Fine.

Interfaith engagement matters.

Supporting persecuted Christians matters.

But neither requires the Church of England to hand out honours without first checking the public record of the person receiving them.

The Palace eventually folded after the controversy erupted, saying that “previous comments” had come to light and confirming that the award had been withdrawn.

That raises the obvious question:

Why did those comments have to “come to light” after the award had been presented?

They were hardly buried.

The National Secular Society has described the episode as evidence of “appallingly poor judgement and inadequate due diligence”. That criticism goes to the heart of the matter.

And this is not simply about whether Ashrafi's 2007 remarks should ultimately be characterised as an endorsement of bin Laden. His representatives dispute that interpretation. The Church itself clearly decided that the remarks were sufficiently serious to withdraw the award.

So why weren't they considered before the award was given?

That is the failure for which Dame Sarah Mullally must answer.

An Archbishop of Canterbury is not some junior administrator who accidentally put the wrong name on a certificate. The Church of England describes the Archbishop as its most senior bishop and as the figure who leads the Church's vision and direction across much of England.

With that office comes responsibility.

And when an organisation gives a prestigious award to someone, it is not merely honouring the recipient. It is putting its own name and reputation behind that person.

The Church of England did precisely that.

Then, once the embarrassing facts became impossible to ignore, it took the award back.

That is not accountability. It is damage limitation.

The most charitable interpretation is that Lambeth Palace was spectacularly careless.

The less charitable interpretation is that it was so desperate to demonstrate its commitment to interfaith dialogue that it forgot the most basic rule of institutional responsibility: know who you are honouring.

Either way, the Archbishop has a problem.

The Church of England cannot demand trust from the public while displaying such extraordinary carelessness over one of its own honours.

And it cannot credibly preach responsibility, discernment and moral leadership while expecting everyone to forget that it had to discover the recipient's record after putting a medal in his hand.

Dame Sarah Mullally should therefore resign.

Not because every controversial judgement requires resignation. Not because interfaith dialogue is wrong. And not because a person's past remarks can never be understood in context.

She should resign because the buck has to stop somewhere.

The Archbishop presented the award. The award was made in her name. Her institution failed to conduct — or at least failed to act upon — the most basic due diligence. The controversy became public. Only then was the award withdrawn.

If the Archbishop is ultimately responsible for the Church's most senior decisions, she should be prepared to accept responsibility for this one.

The Church of England has spent years telling everyone else about accountability. It is time for the Archbishop of Canterbury to practise it.

Resign.

Bus Conductor in Chief and Nosferatu Plead Ignorance Over Labour’s Financial Shambles

 

🚨NEW: Chancellor John Healey's team claims that he and Andy Burnham didn't realise how bad Britain's fiscal position was before they got inside the Treasury

[@FT]

— GB Politics (@GBPolitcs) September 15, 2026

Which party was running the country before them then? 

Burnham and Healey are Fucking Useless!

 

Even if they did not have Treasury briefings before taking on their roles, they surely would have been aware of what the markets and finance professionals have been saying about the UK economy!

Or did they simply ignore the warnings?

Tourist Tax: Another Rip-Off That Will Drive Visitors Away

 

Ministers call it a 5% levy. Tourists will see it as yet another tax on an already sky-high hotel bill — and the Treasury will even take VAT on the tax.

Britain has a tourism problem.

So naturally, the Government's answer is to make holidays more expensive.

Ministers want to hand local mayors the power to impose a new tax on overnight stays — dressed up in the soothing language of an “Overnight Visitor Levy”.

Don't be fooled by the jargon.

It is a tourist tax.

And the consequences could be disastrous for the very towns and cities it is supposed to help.

The great 5% con

We're told the charge could be around 5%.

Five per cent.

Sounds harmless, doesn't it?

It isn't.

Take a hotel room costing £100 before VAT.

Add a 5% tourist tax and the bill becomes £105.

Then comes the sting.

VAT is charged on the higher amount.

At Britain's standard 20% VAT rate, that means £21 VAT rather than £20.

The visitor therefore pays £126 instead of £120.

That's a 6% increase, not 5%.

So the Government takes a tax.

Then it takes VAT on the tax.

Tax on tax.

And somehow this is supposed to make Britain's tourism industry more competitive.

You couldn't make it up.

Britain's hotels are already taxed heavily

Here's the real scandal.

Britain already charges 20% VAT on hotel accommodation.

Across Europe, many countries recognise that tourism is highly price-sensitive and apply reduced VAT rates to hotels and accommodation.

Britain doesn't.

So a hotel in Britain can already face a 20% VAT burden while a rival hotel elsewhere in Europe may operate with a much lower rate.

Now politicians want to pile another percentage charge on top.

What happens next?

The hotel room gets more expensive.

The visitor thinks twice.

And the money that doesn't get spent in Britain gets spent somewhere else.

The tourist doesn't just buy a hotel room

This is where the Government's thinking falls apart.

A tourist isn't a walking hotel bill.

They spend money everywhere.

Breakfast in the café.

Lunch in the pub.

Dinner in the restaurant.

A taxi to the theatre.

A ticket to the attraction.

A few drinks.

A bit of shopping.

Maybe another night in the hotel.

That spending supports thousands of local businesses.

So when you make the hotel room more expensive, you aren't simply taxing hotels.

You're putting a tax on the entire visitor economy.

And visitors have choices.

If Britain becomes too expensive, they'll go elsewhere.

If one British town adds a 5% levy and the town down the road doesn't, why wouldn't the visitor compare prices?

Mayors get a new tax lever

And here's another nasty little detail.

There is no national cap on the proposed levy.

The Government may talk about 5%, but today's 5% could become tomorrow's 6%, 7% or more.

Once councils and mayors become dependent on the money, do we really believe they will voluntarily give it up?

Of course not.

A new tax has a remarkable habit of becoming a permanent tax.

And once the spending commitments are made, removing it becomes politically almost impossible.

“But other countries have tourist taxes!”

Yes.

And many of them have something Britain doesn't:

much lower VAT rates on hotels.

This is the bit supporters of a British tourist tax conveniently leave out.

You cannot compare one tax in isolation.

You have to compare the total price paid by the visitor.

A country can charge a tourist tax and still offer cheaper accommodation because its underlying VAT rate is lower.

Britain already starts with a 20% VAT rate.

Adding another tax and then charging VAT on that tax is hardly a recipe for attracting international visitors.

Who pays?

The Government will say the levy is paid by visitors.

But businesses know better.

The cost will either be passed on to customers or absorbed by hotels and guest houses.

If it is passed on, the room becomes more expensive.

If it is absorbed, margins get squeezed.

Either way, someone pays.

And when margins are already under pressure from wages, energy, food, insurance, business rates and other costs, telling hospitality businesses to absorb another hit is simply unrealistic.

The great economic irony

The Government says the money will be used to support local economies.

But what if the tax damages those economies?

What if visitors stay one night instead of two?

What if they choose a different town?

What if a family decides to holiday abroad instead?

What if a conference organiser chooses a cheaper destination?

What if a restaurant loses the customers who never made the trip?

The Treasury may collect a few pounds from every taxed room.

But the local economy could lose hundreds of pounds in spending that never happens.

You cannot tax your way to prosperity.

There is a much simpler answer

Want more money flowing into local economies?

Get more visitors.

Want more visitors?

Make Britain competitive.

Want Britain to be competitive?

Stop piling taxes onto the cost of visiting.

A lower rate of VAT on accommodation and hospitality would be a far more sensible starting point.

It would allow businesses to cut prices, improve facilities, invest and employ more people.

It would encourage visitors to stay longer.

And longer stays mean more spending across the local economy.

That is how you grow tourism.

Not by putting a “5%” sign on the hotel bill and pretending it doesn't matter.

Don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg

Britain's tourism industry is an enormous economic asset.

Hotels, guest houses, restaurants, pubs, attractions, theatres, shops, taxi firms and countless other businesses depend on visitors.

They don't need politicians to find another way of taking money from their customers.

They need politicians to get out of the way and let t

Advice To The Bus Conductor in Chief

 

Without effective national security, you won't have social security!