This coming Friday marks the first year since Gordon Brown inherited the role of UK Prime Minister from Tony Blair. So, how has our Gordon done?

Well, the disastrous decline in Brown’s ratings since he became Prime Minister is underlined in a new poll today showing he has been overtaken by David Cameron in virtually every regard. The Conservative leader has built up such a massive personal lead over the Prime Minister that it will take a political miracle for Mr Brown to recover in time for the next General Election.

A staggering 85 per cent say Mr Brown has performed worse than they expected since becoming leader, against 55 per cent who think Mr Cameron has exceeded expectations. In key areas, the gap between Mr Brown and Mr Cameron has become a chasm. A total of 50 per cent say the Conservative leader is charismatic, compared with just three per cent for Mr Brown. The survey also shows Conservative support at 49 per cent – equal to their highest score under Mr Cameron – with Labour trailing 23 points behind on a lowly 26.

As I said yesterday, Labour will LOSE the next general election and Brown’s period as PM will be viewed as a disaster. In a way he has been unlucky but not as unlucky as those of us who have seen our tax burden relentlessly hiked when Brown was Chancellor. It’s now ALL coming home to roost – NuLabour is toast, and all the Conservatives have to do is watch the meltdown of the NuLabour project under Gordon Brown’s clunky fist. 

Representative T. McCotter (R – Michigan) offers a primer in speaking  Democrat . 

At 2:20:    "Diplomacy" in Global Democrat  means "magic" in plain English.  Used in a sentence:

"Democrats will protect America from Iranian nukes through tough, principled diplomacy"  actually means "Democrats will protect America from Iranian nukes through tough, principled magic."

Former New York Giant Football player George Martin has completed his 3003 mile walk across the United States to raise money for people who responded to the 9/11 attack and are now suffering from respiratory illness.  He walked from New York to California. Went through 24 pairs of shoes and raised 2 million dollars.  George was born in 1953 which makes him ten years older than me and I don’t even walk to the train station I can see from my house.  He started this September and went through winds, ice, heat, mountains and deserts to reach San Diego California today.  His cause is very special because many of the rescue workers who responded on 9/11 are suffering from respiratory illness and the 9/11 fatigue has kept their problem off of the front pages.  Martin was always a humble man and announced that what he did wasn’t heroic, and that the real heroes are the people he walked for.   Well you are my hero today Mr. Martin.   

So, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pledged that he will step down at "some point" during the next parliament should he beat the Conservatives in two years. Mr Brown has let a few senior Cabinet colleagues know that he intends to quit in time to allow his successor at least a year to fight the election after next, a move designed to stop speculation about his leadership.

Well, he won’t be doing any of that since he will LOSE the next election in 2010 and thus all the above is irrelevant conjecture. Brown will fight one election and he will lose one election. If he held a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, he would also lose that. So we have the remarkable situation of a Prime Minister who dare not seek the view of the British people since to do so would finish his political career! Tells you plenty about the state of our democracy. Maybe Plato was right.

Wonder what you make of the news that the government is examining ways to allow anonymous evidence in court cases, in the wake of this week’s Law Lords ruling that defendants have a right to know who is in the witness box?

Justice Secretary Jack Straw said he wanted to tackle the issue "urgently" to appease the high level of fear felt by witnesses. Senior police officers have admitted a string of convicted criminals could now appeal, after a double murder conviction was quashed because it relied too heavily upon anonymous evidence given at trial. Lord Bingham, who headed the panel of judges considering the case of Iain Davis, said a conviction would not have been achieved without anonymity but that "hampered the defence" in a way which was unlawful and rendered the trial unfair.

Do you think it is fair and reasonable that you could be convicted of any crime based on the evidence of someone you do not know and that do not see? Is there a danger that once the right to give evidence anonymously is secured, there is a real threat of abuse – including by the State itself? We need to safeguard our liberties and this is a government determined to erode these. 

It all seems so reasonable.

Smokers in the "poorest" areas of Dundee in Scotland are being offered £150 worth of groceries by the health service if they are able to give up cigarettes. Participants in a 12-week scheme will be given £12.50 a week by NHS Tayside if a carbon monoxide breath test proves they have not been smoking. The money will be credited onto an electronic card which cannot be used for cigarettes or alcohol. There are 36,000 smokers in Dundee, about half of whom allegedly live in poverty.

Four points here.

1. What about those who do not fall into this group – does the NHS stop caring after a certain income level? Shall we let the better off smoke themselves to death?

2. There are NOT 18,000 smokers in Dundee living in poverty. This is a lie. There may be some people living in what the government and NGO’s have defined as "relative poverty" but that caveat needs inserted.

3. This is a scam waiting to happen. The intrepid smokers of Dundee will take the tax-payers money and find creative ways around this. I predict that some of the money handed over for stopping smoking will go on tobacco and alcohol. There are ALWAYS ways.

4. The State, via the NHS,  has NO right to be directing this form of social engineering. I know that Scotland is run by a socialist junta these days – always on the take for hand-outs – but why should government be buying people’s groceries for them??? 

I laughed at the news that Peter Mandelson has been blamed by the French last night for the Irish No vote… and the world’s starving children!!

Nicolas Sarkozy’s outburst electrified an EU summit bogged down by rows over Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty. And it brought unlikely support from Gordon Brown, Mr Mandelson’s most bitter enemy in politics. EU leaders stayed up late arguing over how much pressure to put on Dublin to vote again, amid fears that the constitutional project could collapse. Asked who should take responsibility for the outpouring of public hostility to the EU in Ireland, Mr Sarkozy said just one word: ‘Mandelson’.

Really? Now Mandelson is a rogue – a disgraced politician who was forced to resign not once but twice, but Sarkozy is way off the mark. Those to "blame" for the Irish vote are the Eurocrats – including Sarkozy – who FAIL to listen to the people. Rather than giving poor old BIFFO four months to "reflect" on how the Irish can say YES, it would do the EU better to take the four months themselves and reflect on the EUSSR they are creating, dividing the elite from the people of Europe. This way lies revolution.

You will recall that BBC reporter Alan Johnston was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists in the Hamas stronghold of Gaza. He was held captive for four months and then released as an act of  "goodwill" by the deranged Palestinian killers – a group that the British government had been in "dialogue" with leading up to his release.

Speaking from jail last summer, Abu Qatada himself offered to help mediate the prisoner exchange. Hamas sources and Israeli diplomatic sources familiar with the Johnston release talks confirmed to WND last summer there were third-party discussions between Gaza’s Hamas rulers, a mediator and the British government for the release of Johnston. A second track of negotiations were opened between Hamas and the Army of Islam kidnappers, the sources said. Also, the BBC was in direct contact with Hamas, said the sources.

Palestinian sources involved in the Johnston negotiations said Hamas passed to the British government the Army of Islam’s demand for the freedom of Abu Qatada. They also warned if Hamas stormed the Gaza compound in which Johnston was known to have been held, the BBC reporter likely would have been killed during any rescue attempt.

Abu Oubaida, a spokesman for Hamas, would not confirm any deal was reached. The British embassy in Tel Aviv did not return calls for comment on the issue. Officials from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ office said they believe a deal was made for the release of Johnston. They also accused Hamas of paying off the Army of Islam.

So, is it possible that the British government and the BBC have colluded to engineer the release of a BBC journalist by doing a shoddy deal that gets an alleged Islamic terrorist mastermind a "get out of jail free" card? I think we should be told, don’t you? Can we trust the BBC to tell us?  

The schools in Northern Ireland are just about breaking up for the summer holidays and I thought this song was appropriate!  Great song from a real trooper…and I’m sure all teenagers appreciate the words!