Rhyl Labour Councillor charged with rape

Labour councillor for Rhyl East, Cllr David Simmons, has been charged with rape.

Cllr Simmons appeared before a magistrate at Flintshire Magistrates' Court for the alleged rape of a woman in 1978. He was given conditional bail and his case transferred to Mold Crown Court.

A preliminary hearing at the crown court will be held on January 8th.

UK contributions to the EU top £503bn since 1976

Research by the Vote Leave campaign has found that the UK has paid £503,000,000,000 in membership fees to the EU since 1976.

The UK's rapidly increasing EU budget contributions would have paid England's NHS cancer budget 56 times and is one and a half times the £340bn that the United Nations has spent worldwide in the 70 years of its existence.

Happy New Year 2016

Well, 2015 has been a bit of a rollercoaster year for UKIP.

We've seen the party gain over 3.9m votes and end up with just one MP, no new UKIP peers were created despite Cameron promising to make Lords match votes, the SNP routed Labour in Scotland, the Lib Dems were virtually wiped out, Nigel Farage resigned as leader for the second time and was convinced to "unresign" by the party's executive and the campaign to leave the EU started in earnest.

2016 promises to be an even more exciting year for UKIP with political pundits putting their money on the EU referendum being held in the next 12 months. With immigration racing out of control and the EU knocking back Cameron's "demands" for renegotiation it's looking unlikely but if 2016 does turn out to be the year we finally got a say on membership of an EU superstate then we're ready to hit the ground running!

UKIP Derby steps in to carry out rubbish collections over Christmas

UKIPpers in Derby have collected over 300 bags of rubbish from households after Derby City Council cancelled Christmas refuse collections for the second year running.

The leader of the UKIP group in Derby, Cllr Alan Graves, received complaints from some residents that they would have to wait until at least 4th January before their Christmas rubbish was taken away and organised a group of volunteers to do the collections between Christmas and New Year.

Labour councillor, Paul Bayliss, dismissed UKIP's volunteering efforts as "daft" and said it was just a cynical ploy to attract votes. The next elections in the wards in question are in 2018 so there's very little electoral gain to be had this far in advance of an election. Cllr Bayliss was the leader of the council last year when Christmas waste collections were cancelled.

Over 100 households benefited from the UKIP's free waste collection this week.

Wiltshire Conservative councillor calls for private landlords to be taxed out of existence

A Conservative councillor has described private landlords as "parasites" that should be "taxed out of existence".

Wiltshire councillor, Chris Devine, made the astonishing remarks in response to an email from a lobbyist regarding the intended changes to private landlord tax exemptions that many in the industry believe will result in higher rents.

So Gareth, how many properties do you own?   Your email is deeply flawed, do you seriously believe that the `buy to let` brigade give a fig for those they are exploiting with high rents and short tenancies.

Stop thinking about your own pocket and think about society, you lot are nothing, but, parasites and the sooner you are taxed out of existence the better.

Just because I am a Conservative does not mean that I do not have a social conscience, well done to George Osbourne.  As for you. Try doing some public service and stop snivelling.

Chris Devine, Cllr

Cllr Devine has been reported to the Conservative group leader and the Chief Executive of Wiltshire Council.

Conservative leader of Worcestershire County Council charged with drink driving

The Conservative leader of Worcestershire County Council has been charged with drink driving.

Cllr Adrian Hardman was arrested on the 22nd and will appear before a magistrate on 18th January.

Cameron promises to "do something" about flooding except the EU won't let him

People in the north of England have been suffering from horrendous flooding this last few weeks with many in Yorkshire and Cumbria spending Christmas in leisure centres or with friends and relatives outside of flooded areas.

And as if the flooding wasn't bad enough, David Cameron has decided to inflict himself on the poor people of York with empty promises of looking at things and doing things better.

What Cameron fails to acknowledge, of course, is that there is nothing that he or the British government can do to prevent the flooding. Barriers aren't the answer, dredging is. For centuries we've dredged rivers and taken advantage of the reclaimed land for farming and building but that doesn't happen any more because the EU Water Framework Directive prohibits dredging of rivers and requires their "management" to reclaim historic flood plains.

There is very little that the British government can do to prevent flooding while we remain members of the EU.

Sorry chaps, we're not allowed to dredge the river so ... same time again next year, eh?

Happy Christmas

No polling cards in our stockings this morning but Santa always delivers ...

RadioFreeUK - Godfrey Bloom joins the line up, and the Facebook page is open for discussion.

WWW: http://www.radiofreeuk.org/
RSS: http://www.radiofreeuk.org/feed.xml
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/id991527053
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/radiofreeuk/

Now the whole programme is cross posted to Youtube too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKaPtlracG4&list=PL4Ya62dyEn0tCJi0eQGwbPSm1hv0RQu7g

The roll of regular contributors continues to grow and now includes...

Me, Vanessa Coleman, Alan Taylor-Shearer, Scottie K and new addition Godfrey Bloom.

Godfrey is probably best known as the outspoken former UKIP MEP, but has a long track record of leadership and success in the military, as an economist and in business. He also has a number of published books to his name, and is a regular speaker at a number of universities on military and economic issuses. We are (of course) delighted to have him on board!

This weeks programme includes sections on:-

- EU powergrabs and damp squibs,

- A radical 'Thought for the Day' - nice one Godfrey!

- Human interest

- ISIS, Turkey, Nato

- Choice items from US liberarians Tom Woods and The Cato Institute

- A belly laugh from Batsby, read by Alan Tayler-Shearer.

And Facebook? All items in the programme are cross posted to our Facebook page and we will be working on developing an active facebook presence to generate discussion, support and feedback on our output - please do visit, like the page and please comment!

New content, new contributors are always *welcome*.

www.RadioFreeUK.org

Conservative Rajoy loses majority in Spanish elections

Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, has been punished at the polls with his party losing its majority.

When jobs and money start to run out, people instinctively turn to the left for the illusion of financial security that it provides and in Spain they veered to the far left.

Rajoy's Popular Party still won the most seats but only managed 123 out of the 350 on offer, down from 186 before the election. The socialist party went from 110 seats to 90 but two new far left parties - Podemos and Citizens - came out of obscurity to gain 69 and 49 seats respectively. The chances of Rajoy forming a majority coalition are pretty slim with so few prospective partners and a rainbow coalition highly unlikely due to the highly polarised nature of Spanish politics.

The significant performance of Podemos will hurt the Catalonian independence movement as they are fiercely opposed to the region's secession. If Rajoy muddles on with a minority government he can, at least, rely on support from the far left in trying to stop the Catalonian government from continuing their preparations for statehood following a referendum which saw an 80% vote in favour of independence.

Ah, mierda

Conservative MP for Telford who doctored constituent's email accused of bullying members of staff

Conservative MP for Telford, Lucy Allan, has been accused of bullying members of staff and recordings of phone calls left on an answerphone and given to the Evening Standard would seem to back that up.

Allan hit the news earlier this month after adding an abusive comment to the end of an email she had received from a constituent and posting it on her Facebook page. She initially denied inventing the comment before backtracking and claiming the abusive comment was from another email and she was adding abusive comments she was getting to the post. The post only contained the entire email from a constituent with the words "Unless you die" - apparently sent by someone else - added to the end, the post hadn't been edited and nothing was subsequently added to it but that's her story and she's sticking to it.

A few days after #Rustygate (as local residents started calling it after the pseudonym of the constituent who wrote the original email) Lucy Allan claimed that the police were investigating what was now being described as a "death threat" and her office started informally briefing influential locals they thought would be sympathetic to her cause that a Labour borough councillor was involved. "Rusty" went to the press revealing his true identity as the son of a Labour councillor rather than the councillor himself.

Things were starting to die down but Allan couldn't resist scratching that itch and decided to post what many believed to be a late night drunken Facebook post naming Labour borough councillors (ill-advisedly starting with Cllr Shaun Davies, cabinet member for anything in the papers and a practising solicitor) as the people behind a campaign of harassment, abuse and bullying of her, a "happy, friendly female" and her staff.

The post was deleted, along with her social media accounts but Allan still couldn't keep herself out of trouble. She is now accused of bullying and threatening a member of her staff, accusing her of stealing a computer and being an alcoholic and telling her that if she takes time off sick on advice of her doctor then should would be sacked. Allan has been through a few members of staff and some of them - her former campaign manager included - have come forward to corroborate the accusations made by Arianne Plumbly, telling the Evening Standard that Allan is a bully and that at least two complaints about her conduct have been made to the Conservative Party.

In recordings of phone calls given to the Evening Standard, Allan can be heard swearing at Plumbly when she found out that she was off work sick and threatening to fire her if she didn't come into work. She also tells her that she has no rights and can't go to an employment tribunal. Allan owns an employment law consultancy which makes her bullying even more unacceptable.

Only last month the International Development Minister, Grant Shapps, resigned from his post after a young Conservative Party activist took his own life due to bullying and sexual assault from within the party.

Racist internet troll convicted of inciting racial hatred

Former Conservative internet troll, Joshua Bonehill-Paine, has been convicted of incitement to racial hatred.

Bonhehill-Paine is a domestic extremist who has somehow managed to escape being sent to prison despite convictions for harassment and malicious communications. Every conviction resulting in a slapped wrist has made him bolder, culminating in him trying to organise an anti-Jew protest in Golders Green complete with Nazi imagery. It was this abortive attempt at an anti-Jew protest (which he was unable to see through to the end because of bail conditions that banned him from London) which convinced a jury at Southwark Crown Court to convict him. Hopefully he will be given a substantial custodial sentence and ordered to undergo treatment for what is almost certainly a mental health issue.

Philip Hammond asks EU to suggest a compromise on Dave's compromised compromise

The Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, has invited EU member states to come up with alternatives to temporarily removing the right to in-work benefits for EU immigrants after the idea was rejected by every other EU leader.

David Cameron has been promising for years that the Tories would get net immigration down into the tens of thousands whilst every year it goes up and up with net immigration for the 12 months to quarter three of this year standing at 336,000 people. Knowing that it is impossible to prevent unlimited immigration from the EU without leaving, Cameron decided that discouraging EU immigrants coming here for work by removing their right to in-work benefits whilst leaving full access to benefits for unemployed EU immigrants would be just as effective as removing the rights of nearly half a billion citizens of EU member states to live here.

Philip Hammond has told a meeting of EU foreign ministers that the British government is ready to drop Cameron's "demand" for restricting benefits if they can suggest something else equally ineffectual that they can mislead voters into believing is in our interests for long enough to get them to vote to stay in the EU:

We haven’t heard any alternative suggestions that will deliver the same effect [remove benefits from working immigrants but not unemployment benefits, child tax credit, child benefit, council tax rebate, housing benefit, disability benefit, sickness benefit, maternity benefit, etc] in a different way.

But we have made very clear if people have other ideas that will deliver on this very important agenda for British people we are absolutely prepared to listen to them and we are prepared to enter into a dialogue about them, but at the moment the only proposition on the table is our four-year proposal.

Compromising on a compromise that would, at best, result in a compromise on the compromised compromise is so pathetically weak that it's embarrassing.

David Cameron's spokesman responded to Boris Johnson's pronouncement that the UK should seek a Danish-style opt-out on EU immigration by incorrectly claiming that Denmark's opt-out is on the "niche" issue of restrictions on second home ownership. Denmark actually has permanent and automatic opt-outs on adoption of the €uro, defence, justice and home affairs and EU citizenship. Securing such an opt-out (which has already been ruled out) would require treaty change (which has also been ruled out).

There is only one way to limit EU immigration and that is to leave the EU and introduce a fair and unbiased points-based system like the one they use in Australia that doesn't discriminate against people because of their nationality.

Image credit: Guido

EU planning to ban under 16s registering on websites without parental consent

The EU is due to approve new harmonised data protection regulations today that will see under-16s banned from providing their personal details to any website - including social media - without their parents' permission.

The typically ill-thought-out regulations would make it illegal for the likes of Facebook and Twitter to allow under-16s to sign up for their services and prevent charities offering personalised support services for victims of bullying or sexual abuse. Breaching the regulations will attract fines of up to 4% of the company's turnover.

The idea that a child can be held criminally responsible at the age of 10 but needs "protecting" from giving their name to Facebook is ridiculous but you only have to look at the EU cookie directive to see how utterly clueless the EU where technology is concerned.

[UPDATED] Pre-school teacher in Paris stabbed by ISIS terrorist

French police are interviewing the teacher who has apparently admitted to making up the whole story.

A pre-school teacher in France has been stabbed in the side and throat by an Islamic terrorist.

The attack took place at the Préscolaire Jean-Perrin in Paris whilst the teacher was preparing for classes. There were no children present and the teacher's life is not in danger. The attacker said "This is for Daesh. It's a warning". Daesh is another name for ISIS.

A French-language ISIS magazine recently told supporters to kill French teachers for the sin of teaching secularism.