As ye go to the electorate...

Norwich is soon to be bothered with one of Mr Browns "eco-towns" which will not be "eco" nor a "town" for that matter. I was going to write a suitably harsh appraisal but Simon Jenkins in Teh Grauniad has done it for me. And a good job he's done of it.

LPUK in No 2 Slot

The postal ballots are out

LPUK Leader to visit Norwich North

Wednesday 15th July 17:30

Libertarian Party leader - Ian Parker-Joseph, colloquially known as IanPJ, will be visiting Norwich North on Thursday through to Sunday morning to help bolster the Libertarian Party campaign of candidate Thomas Burridge.

Mr Parker-Joseph said of the campaign:

"We are pleased with the way things have been developing in this campaign so far. Support has been coming in from far and wide, with LPUK activists arriving last weekend from all over the country to help Thomas in Norwich City centre and elsewhere in the constituency. Thomas has attracted a good deal of media attention, has spent a lot of time talking with potential voters about their concerns and issues, and helping them to understand how the Libertarian Party would deliver honest, people first policies in parliament".

He went on to say: "Giving people back their everyday lives free from government interference and intrusion, lower overall taxation, scrapping IHT and CGT to help pensioners, reducing corporation tax to stimulate more companies to expand and create new jobs, reform of the NHS to make Hospitals and clinics as effecient and cost effective as private hospitals, reform of the education sector to put the parents firmly in control of exactly how, where and when their children are educated, putting the local people back in charge of their local services by removing the corporate entanglements with government and curtailing the powers of the RDA's are all Libertarian Party policies that have been well received by the voters of Norwich North"

Having IanPJ's experience to hand will raise the game in this important first parliamentary election outing for the Libertarian Party.

Andrew Withers Party Chairman visited Norwich last week to meet local Party members and put the final touches to the local leaflet campaign

Rob Waller the LPUK South East Regional organiser spent Saturday with volunteers from London and the South East giving out leaflets and talking to shoppers in the city centre. Sarah McCartney the South West Regional organiser has travelled all the way from Calstock in Cornwall to support the by election.


ENDS

For more information, or to arrange an interview, contact the Libertarian Party Norwich North Campaign Office on 01603 850573 or the media enquiries mobile on 07505 228618.

Further details are available on our campaign website: http://www.thomasburridge.com
Alternatively, visit the Libertarian Party website: http://www.lpuk.org

Brown lies about helicopter procurement.

The Daily Politics has the (somewhat foul-mouthed) story.

The acquisition of military equipment should never, repeat NEVER, be a jobs programme. How many times do we need to learn that particular lesson? The aircraft carriers we need like a hole in the f**king head, but which are being built, conveniently, in Gordon Brown’s backyard being another such disgraceful example.

Peelian Principles Fail

Treating this with caution with it being from the Daily Mail, but Peelian Principles 2 and 3 are looking very shaky indeed...

• The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.
• Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.

Fail.

Shady dealings

Does anyone remember Air America?

Air America is a 1990 film starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr. as Air America pilots, during the Vietnam War, flying missions in Laos. The plot is adapted from Christopher Robbins' 1979 non-fiction book, chronicling the CIA financed "civillian" airline during the Vietnam War to transport weapons and supplies (and heroin) within Laos and other areas of Indochina subsequent to the North Vietnamese invasion of Laos.

Well, it seems we have our very own sub-contracted version in Afghanistan...

Defence secretary Bob Ainsworth, it seems, has been rather less than frank about the availability of helicopter support for "Our Boys" in Afghanistan – but in a rather unusual way. There was one more helicopter available to deliver supplies than he was admitting.

The downside of this intriguing piece of news, however, might just explain his reticence. The additional machine was leased via Nato, operated by a Moldovan charter company, Pecotox Air, which has been banned from EU airspace for safety reasons and which has been implicated in arms trafficking.

These embarrassing details would not have emerged but for the unfortunate incident yesterday when it was reported the helicopter, a giant Mi-26T, registration ER-MCV (pictured above), was shot down by the Taleban a mile from the British military base in Sangin.

Misleadingly, the AP report (link above) cited the Moldovan operator claiming that the aircraft had been "ferrying humanitarian aid" when the crash took place, a detail quickly corrected by Reuters which had Western forces confirming that the helicopter had been "bringing supplies to a British base at Sangin." According to the Los Angeles Times, it was contracted specifically to supply British forces.

Read the whole thing. Dr Richard North is following the story on Defence of the Realm. Apparently the print media have been subject to "D notices" preventing them from releasing the details. Bloggers, on the other hand, have no such restrictions. Stay tuned.

European Unity

EU parliament gets a new head - does anyone care? asks Darren Ennis of Reuters.

Let's see... Daily Referendum... PMQ's, EU Referendum... Helicopters in Afghanistan, Iain Fale... nothing of any consequence (as usual). In fact the only blog so far giving it the light of day is Tory Diary. Proof indeed that nobody gives a rats ass.

At last the nation is united on Europe! We're all bored to death by it.