SCOUTS ST. GEORGE'S DAY PARADE

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This afternoon I attended Bedford District Scouts Annual St. George's Day Celebration at Bedford School, followed by a Parade through Bedford town centre. The District Commissioner presented commemorative shields to the Mayor of Bedford, Chief Constable and Head Teacher of Bedford School for supporting the Scouting movement locally.

The Bedford Swan symbol above is the Bedford Scouts logo. The Parade was led by Bedford Scottish Pipe Band, which seemed just a little odd for a St. George's Day celebration. Also when I talked to one of the Scout leaders, who with his group was sporting a red and white cross on his face, he said it had proved difficult to find small English flags for his young scouts to hold - political correctness gone mad?

People of every other country in the world are proud to wave flags, celebrating their nationality, but the English get criticised if they dare to do the same! Personally I am very proud of my English heritage and equally proud that my paternal grandparents were Irish, so I am Anglo Irish and was born in England.

The Scouting movement is the largest youth movement in the world and was started by Lord Robert Baden Powell in 1907 to provide adventurous activities for young people -today volunteers offer 200 different activities to Scouts across the UK. There are 28 million Scouts of both sexes - Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, Explorers and Adults - in almost every country in the world. There are 500,000 scouts in the UK and the local scout groups are led by volunteers, who help young people to learn many different skills including teamworking, leadership, self discipline and loyalty.

SALISBURY CATHEDRAL & ST. GEORGE'S DAY

Hello everyone. On Friday I returned to Elstow from a few days away at a Conference in Salisbury and a flying visit to my widowed brother in Chichester to a mountain of mail and emails, various local crises and an election campaign to plan.

On the morning of St. George's Day, 23 April, before leaving Salisbury I visited its superb Cathedral, with the tallest spire in Britain and the best preserved copy (one of only four)of Magna Carta, signed in 1215, the foundation of our British legal system. The Cathedral also has Europe's oldest working clock and is set in the largest Cathedral close in Britain. A truly amazing building and fine part of quintessential England - a very suitable place for me to visit on St. George's Day. That evening the Cathedral had a concert and a series of poems was lit up on the Cathedral roof as part of the St. George's Day celebrations.

While away I received some panic emails on my Blackberry pc about my new upright wooden bench, donated to the Abbeyfields estate from my Community Leader Fund. I paid £750 to Bedford Borough Council to buy and instal it securely on Abbeyfields parkland. They installed it without telling me, and it was not secured strongly enough so my residents told me it was wrenched out of the ground on the day it arrived. Fortunately I got Council officers to remove it before it disappeared. Now they have to ensure that it is more securely concreted into the ground - a sad indictment on the dishonesty of some people in today's world! Once upon a time people respected the property of others but no longer.

The Budget was a damp squib which failed to address the huge economic crisis facing this country. Gordon Brown continues to spend money like water and refuses to cut back on public sector spending, eg huge sums for the new NHS computer system and the new ID system. Every proposed budget change is delayed until after the 2010 Election. However, the British people have seen through Gordon Brown and his incompetent government who have ruined the sound economy they inherited in 1997 - eg destroying our pensions industry and selling off the gold reserves at a low price.

Every Labour Government in the 20th Century departed leaving the British Economy in a mess and this one is no exception. David Cameron will be left a 'poisoned chalice' to cope with the huge public debts Gordon Brown has amassed in 12 years.

GORDON BROWN'S PUBLIC MAULING ON THE INTERNET BY DANIEL HANNAN

Gordon Brown Prime Minister and Daniel Hannan MEP





Gordon Brown has been publicly exposed on U Tube for his hypocrisy and incompetencer by a young Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan after Brown's appalling speech in the European Parliament this week. The left wing biased BBC and ITV only reported Brown's speech on TV news bulletins but a video of Daniel Hannan's devastating critique of Brown was posted on U Tube and has been seen by 1 million people so far - striking a chord with the British public who are getting increasingly fed up with Brown's meaningless cliches on the global recession.

Daniel Hannan accused Brown of behaving like a "Brezhnev-era apparatchik". Even the Governor of the Bank of England has warned Brown to stop borrowing money. In his speech Brown warned against protectionism but is guilty of hypocrisy, having nationalised banks and parts of the car industry, to say nothing of his proud boast of wanting "British jobs for British workers". As Hannan said:

"Perhaps you would have more authority in this House if your actions matched your words? You would have more legitimacy.. in the world if the UK were not going into this recession in the worst condition of any G20 country. The truth is Prime Minister that you have run out of our money. The country as a whole is now in negative equity. Every British child is born owing around £20,000. Servicing that debt is going to cost more than educating the child.

Now once again today you try to spread the blame around; you spoke about an international recession. Well it is true that we are all sailing together into the squalls. But not every vessel in the convoy is in the same dilapidated condition. Other ships use the good years to caulk their hulls and clear their rigging; in other words to pay off debt. But you used the good years to raise borrowing yet further. As a consequence, under your captaincy, our hull is pressed deep into the water line under the accumulated weight of your debt.

We are now running a deficit that touches 10% of GDP, an almost unbelievable figure. More than Pakistan and Hungary, countries where the International Monetary Fund have been called in.. You're pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility... You're carrying on wilfully worsening our situation, wantonly spending what little we have left...In the last year 100,000 private sector jobs have been lost and yet you created 30,000 public sector jobs....You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.

And when you repeat in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we're "well placed to weather the storm .... you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line. You know and we know..that it's nonsense! Everyone knows that Britain is worse off than any other country as we go into these hard times. The IMF has said so; the European Commission has said so; the markets have said so - which is why our currency has devalued by 30%. ..soon the voters will get their chance to say so. They can see what the markets have already seen; .. you are a devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government"

Gordon Brown has been flying round the world, trying to drum up support for his dtrategy of "saving the world" in countries like Chile and Brazil, while the British economy falls apart at home. In Chile he was embarrassed by their President who said that Chile "had saved in the good times" echoing David Cameron's comment that Brown should have "fixed the roof while the sun was shining".

Roll on the 2010 General Election when we can elect David Cameron as Prime Minister and get rid of this unelected Prime Minister.