Did you see that after years of secret preparation, the world’s cheapest car will be unveiled in Delhi this week – delighting millions of Indians as much as it is horrifying environmentalists.

At 100,000 rupees (£1,290), the People’s Car, designed and manufactured by Tata, is being marketed as a safer way of travelling for those who until now have had to transport their families balanced on the back of their motorbikes. Ratan Tata, 70, chairman of the family-run business, who has spearheaded the race for a cut-price car, wrote on the company website: ‘That’s what drove me – a man on a two-wheeler with a child standing in front, his wife sitting behind, add to that the wet roads – a family in potential danger.’

Admirable sentiments and a great example of capitalism in action. But the Green Lobby is horrified at all these extra emissions. Indians don’t care – they see the advantages that this car brings and millions are predicted to buy it. Good for them I say. Of course here in car-hating Britain, I’m sure we will visited with future green taxes to offfset the Tata factor! Maybe Tata should come to the UK?

It’s obvious that Britain has once again become the sick man of Europe – with more than 2.6 MILLION people claiming incapacity benefit. This national scam has been increasing ever since Labour came to power and we now have the risible situation where 120,000 more people claim incapacity benefit than 10 years ago and 52 per cent more under-24s are claiming than in 1997! (Must be all those nut allergies?)

Half a million people under 35 are now claiming the benefit. More than half of the people now claiming incapacity benefit have been receiving it for more than five years. They’ll continue claiming it for another five years unless action is taken to get the workshy off benefit and back to some form of gainful employment and so I welcome any initiative that will force the lazy to get off their backsides and get working. As this article points out, "Going on the Sick" should not be a career option.

Well this one will win me brickbats from predictable sectors but I wanted to say that I was far from impressed by the news that former Progressive Unionist Party leader David Ervine has been remembered at a service at Stormont. The ex-UVF terrorist 53, suffered a heart attack and later a stroke and a brain haemorrhage last January. Among those who attended the service were Sinn Fein’s Alex Maskey and SDLP leader Mark Durkan. PUP leader Dawn Purvis said it was about "celebrating his life and the contribution he made to the future of Northern Ireland".

Let’s just reprise Mr Ervine’s pedigree. He was a convicted UVF terrorist, intercepted by the security services before a BOMB he was carrying reached its destination. He "led" a political party whose leadership almost exclusively consisted of murderers, such as Billy Hutchinson and Gusty Spence. During his time as PUP Leader, the UVF continued to kill and maim, extort and steal. It did not decommission so much as one bullet. Yet he is lionised by the peace processors as a man who made a lasting contribution to life in Northern Ireland, whilst the victims of the organisation to which he once belonged lie in the graves, forgotten by the political and media elite, remembered only by their sorrowing next of kin. Once again, we see Stormont used as a crucible for exhorting that which is wrong.

It is symptomatic of JUST how decadent the Northern Ireland "peace process" actually is to discover that ex-terrorist prisoner groups have received 50 times more in EU PEACE funding than organisations helping former members of the security forces.

Organisations that work to help police officers and soldiers – many permanently maimed by republican atrocities – were awarded £225,000 from PEACE II funds over the past five years. Keep that £225k figure in mind for a second.

Ex-terrorist prisoner groups enjoyed a £11.3 million cash mountain over the same period. And that figure does not include a further £2.1m given to other groups which do not deal exclusively with inmates to "address the needs of ex-prisoners".

One group, Donegal-based Abhaile Aris which works with "the republican ex-prisoner community to bring about their acceptance as equal members of Irish society", received £447,844 in 2002 alone – almost double the total money given to all ex-servicemen’s groups combined during the past five years.                    

I’m afraid this shocking disparity of funding reveals that "peace" has been purchased by bribing the bloody killers on all sides that spent years torturing this society. I start 2008 by once again reminding readers that a peace that has been brought about by betraying every civilised standard is worthless.

One of the contrasts between the USA and the UK is that the current UK Government seems embarrassed and distrusting of its Armed Forces. When in the States, I got the clear impression that the US Government, Media and people all seem pretty proud of its warrior class, and rightly so.

British officialdom contempt for our military is evident in the news that scores of soldiers flying home from Afghanistan on Christmas leave were ordered to change out of their uniforms on a freezing runway before being allowed into a civilian airport terminal. Troops were told not to be seen in public in their uniforms – which they had worn with pride while risking their lives during months of intense fighting against the Taliban.

One soldier, who was ordered to undress for "security reasons", said:

"It is an insult to the entire Army to force guys who’ve been fighting in Afghanistan to obey some jobsworth rule when all they want to do is get home to their families. So much for a nation proud of its servicemen. The temperature was Baltic on the runway but most of just wanted to get home so we cracked on."

As ever, the British Armed Forces do us proud – our national shame is that we have a Government which treats these brave men and women with something akin to loathing.

I’m saddened but not in the least surprised, to read Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester and the Anglican Church’s only Asian bishop, say that people of a different race or faith face physical attack if they live or work in communities dominated by a strict Muslim ideology.

Bishop Nazir-Ali, who was born in Pakistan, gives warning that attempts are being made to give Britain an increasingly Islamic character by introducing the call to prayer and wider use of sharia law, a legal system based on the Koran. In an attack on the Government’s response to immigration and the influx of "people of other faiths to these shores", he blames its "novel philosophy of multiculturalism" for allowing society to become deeply divided, and accuses ministers of lacking a "moral and spiritual vision".

I think it is worse than this though since it is my view that those politicians who embrace the "novel multiculti" agenda do so from a profound sense of loathing their own Nation, their own historical and cultural values. Britain, along with other parts of Europe, has been sold out by a rancid political elite, who have actually encouraged Islamics to create the "No Go" areas of which the Bishop rightly warns. The spread of the malignant Shar’ia law, the carving out of little mini-Islamic areas, is  but the beginning. What follows will be evident when cities like Birmingham, for example, have a majority Muslim Council with powers to further accelerate the growth of the caliphate. This is the state into which our State has fallen - primarily because too many British politicians have been inculcated with the virus of multiculturalism and even now, play word games rather than seriously face the menace that they have helped create. I congratulate the Bishop – an Asian himself remember – for speaking up on this vital subject.

Also at JWF

We sit in front of the screens which show either the violence in Kenya after the fraudulent elections, or the forthcoming elections in Georgia, brought on by a well-meaning excess by a Western-leaning incumbent President, or even the shambles which passes for politics in Pakistan, and smugly tell ourselves that it couldn’t happen here! We tell ourselves that, living in a true Democracy such as ours, that sort of shenanigans couldn’t come to pass! Well, if you care to think rather hard, it already has!

Just cast your mind back to the last period of electoral fervour in this our own land, and especially the Scottish elections which resulted in the emergence of the smug face of Alec Salmond as the First Minister, wittering on about a National Conversation about Independence from The United Kingdom, amongst other pipe-dreams. Let me remind you about how he got there. The S.N.P. gained it’s hold on power as a direct result of a mixture of Westminster and Edinburgh Ministerial incompetence, arrogant local bureaucrats, and a complete lack of understanding of how ordinary people react when faced with unusual circumstances.

The Scots Parliament elections, which are fixed as a ‘first-past-the-post’ result, were set to be held independently, but the Westminster Labour shower pushed the Scots Labour executive into holding the vote on the same day as the local elections, which are run under some weird mathematical formula which is supposed to supply balance to voter’s intentions. They also attached a new, completely untested electronic counting scanning system to the polls, just to add to the general fun!

So over 140,000 electoral votes were declared null and void because ordinary people couldn’t grasp that they had to fill in two complicated forms in an entirely different fashion, an untried scanning sysytem aborted a count after fifteen minutes, and candidates who should have won seats lost out.

Just cast your mind back to the local elections in the Birmingham area just over two years ago, when a Judge was able to remark that the voting system would "Disgrace a Banana Republic". This despite warnings from just about everyone else that the postal voting system was open to fraud on a ‘massive scale’.

Oh, and just in case you think that that last example was an isolated case, the same system is still in place today! Just imagine, what happened when a handful of sleazy Muslim politicians decided to make a grab for power can be easily duplicated on the national stage today, because our Labour boys anf girls are fast learners!

When I worked in London, I traveled back and forth like many thousands of others, because ‘down there’was where the work was, but ‘up North’ was my wife, my family and my home! One of the first things I completed, when I realised I would be a nomad in my own country was to register for a postal vote, and in those days, I had to prove I had a valid reason for registering! Today, they hand them out with the milk! It is easier to get a postal vote than it is to get a passport or a bank account, and which, of those three things, is the deadlier? Your vote, in the wrong hands, is deadlier than a bomb, because the effect of wrongful use is more insidious than an explosive device! But will the Labour Party listen? Will they hell! 

This is my favorite during storms. During desert thunderstorms, things can get a wee bit intense. A friend of mine was a DJ and he put another live version of this on and we went outside to watch the lightning show — and the station’s transmission tower get zapped.

Enjoy.

Did you see that those skiers who exceed 19 mph may be fined?

Switzerland – where else? - is introducing speed cameras on the slopes to try to reduce the increasing number of accidents. The first such nationwide controls will treat skiers like cars on the motorway. Speeders will be caught with hand-held radar devices carried by hidden personnel. Persistent offenders could be fined or have ski passes confiscated.

The scheme is being introduced after figures revealed a drastic increase in serious ski-related accidents in Switzerland. The booming winter tourism trade has led to overcrowding (Surely with all the global warming this is a bit of a shocker?) at the most popular resorts and a sharp rise in accidents. Impeccable pistes and new skiing equipment also encourages skiers and snowboarders of all levels to go ever faster.

I’ve never been skiing but would quite like it. It’s unlikely I would ever reach 19mph but I would imagine that those who can may well be piste off with this latest bit of interference from  busy bodies. Look, skiing is by definition a risky sport but people should be allowed to make their own mistakes rather than exposed to radar gun detection. This is the slippery slope to more State Nannyism!