In a ‘secret’ document revealed in today’s Daily Telegraph, Labour ministers are planning to slash the number of ships in the Royal Navy from 103 at present to 50 in 2027. While the purchase of two new carriers is confirmed, in others domains news are bleak to say the least. The numbers of frigates is scheduled to be reduced by 8 to just 9 units, of the present 13 submarines, up to 2 might not be replaced, the whole of the minesweeper fleet currently amounting to 16 units is due to be decommissioned and as far as the Auxiliary fleet is concerned, no less than 14 units will disappear.

In the present world climate, with the threat of Islamic terrorism, a resurgent Russia and an ambitious China, these cuts are ill advised to say the least. Before having a look at the offensive capabilities of the Royal Navy, it is also worth to remember that the Royal Navy must protect the home waters, but also waters around our overseas territories, the Falklands, Saint Helena, Pitcairn, Bermuda and twelve others places spread all around the globe. At present this task is devolved to our patrol ships, however since the 9 units are slated for removal by 2027 and perhaps much earlier, it is very fair to say that places like the Falklands will be defenceless by then. One of the reasons why Argentina attacked the islands back in 1982, was pencilled decommission of HMS Endurance, a patrol ship attached to the islands since 1967.

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Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, was interviewed yesterday by ITV News and asked why he would not resign over revelations that the BBC had actively deceived the public in faked competition phone-ins.

His response stated that he would not be standing down because he wished to help re-establish the BBC’s code of conduct throughout the whole corporation, and that he had the full confidence of the BBC Board in this undertaking.

Where have we heard something similar to this before? Ah yes, that’s right, it’s exactly the same type of response elicited from Labour Ministers Charles Clarke and John Reid after successive Home Office scandals. They created or had a hand in the scandal and then claimed to be the solution to fix it. How convenient.

Well, it didn’t work out in the end for either Charles Clarke or John Reid, and I hope that it doesn’t for Mark Thompson either. However, if Thompson goes, the BBC Board will only bring in another equally inadept individual who won’t do anything but persist with the biased status quo of a corporation who continue to take the license fee far too much for granted, and with little regard for those who pay it.

Mark Thompson said that the BBC’s latest problem was down to only a small number of individual staff who did not take fairness, integrity and honesty to heart. But, in reality the BBC itself is the problem – not just any one part of it. The whole corporation is an unaccountable and uncontrollable mess, and until it is abolished or privatised the problems will only grow.

Gordon Brown told the House of Commons today that the Government would research and look carefully at the reclassification of Cannabis from a Class C drug to Class B. In other words, they might reclassify; they might not.

However, regardless of whether Cannabis is classified as Class B or C is largely irrelevant. More often than not, drugs laws are not enforced at a low or personal level. Individual users are rarely prosecuted, if ever, and it is only large scale importers and distributors or dealers that are sporadically targeted.

Celebrity addicts such as Kate Moss and Pete Doherty regularly flout the law without any consequence, other than the minor inconvenience of a court appearance which invariably leads to nothing. In fact, it’s probably fair to say that Pete Doherty is now better known for his drug abuse than his music. Such behaviour and lack of any retribution sends out completely the wrong signals about drug use to ordinary people who read about it in the media.

The use of illegal drugs needs to actually be enforced by the police - though unfortunately this seems unlikely in the foreseeable future since most of our political classes and the liberal media probably have used or continue to use these substances themselves, and so have little or no interest in discouraging their misuse.

Labour’s announcement is nothing more than another meaningless gesture that will do nothing to actually solve the growing drugs problem in Britain.

Today brings news that, once again, the European Union and Britain have taken another worrisome step down the path to becoming a fully-fledged super-state.

In Brussels early this morning, Tony Blair, in one of his final serious acts as Prime Minister, capitulated without any real show of resistance and signed Britain up to what the eurosceptic campaign group, Open Europe describes as, ‘just the old EU Constitution in everything but name’.

On Thursday, Jose Manuel Barroso had asked the British people to have respect for our Parliament – but, with reference to the new treaty, it isn’t our Parliament that will be signing this constitution in disguise, but instead our soon to be departing Prime Minister, Tony Blair. And just why should we respect or take seriously the voice of a man and an institution such as the EU Commission who are unelected and do not serve those it is meant to represent?

Until the Constitution, the process of ‘ever closer union’ had been a slow and subtle one; gradually regulations, laws, treaties and legislation built up over the course of decades, robbing once proud self-governing nations of their sovereignty in exchange for dubious promises, false hopes, increasing levels of bureaucracy, corruption and furthering electoral disillusionment to near breaking point.

The EU Constitution was a daring move on the part of its constructors; the culmination of years of EU fanaticism had emboldened advocators of a super-union into moving more swiftly and overtly than they should or could. Though they were momentarily put in their place by referendums in France and the Netherlands, as Michael Portillo aptly observed in the Times today, ‘the plan to create a European state never dies. As in a bad sequel movie we discover that the monster so comprehensively destroyed at the end of film one has miraculously regenerated itself’. Once again, it is stealth by which the Europhiles move. They know that the people must be circumnavigated because these EU leaders and union supporters no longer trust their people – if they ever did.

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Our friends, Arleen Ouzounian of Kings College London Conservative Future and Richard Jackson of the University College London Conservative Future have tagged us with the ‘It’s Got To Be Brown’ meme.

I’ve had a very quick go at filling out the questions, though unsurprisingly, I am not expecting Gordon Brown to undertake any of the latter six points any time in the near future - and if he did, I would probably go into shock.

2 things Gordon Brown should be proud of:

• Not losing his hair.
• There really isn’t anything else is there..?

2 things he should apologise for:

• Raiding the pensions pot and leaving many OAPs in effective poverty.
• The massive and unsubstantiated increases in taxation, crime and immigration.

2 things that he should do immediately when he becomes PM:

• Request that Her Majesty dissolve Parliament and initiate a general election.
• Resign.

2 things he should do while he is PM:

• Take Britain out of the European Union immediately.
• Recall all British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Only one week until Gordon Brown becomes our next Prime Minister. I can’t wait… not.

Tonight, Channel Four will be broadcasting a programme called ‘Diana: Witnesses In The Tunnel’. The two Princes, William and Harry have requested that certain sections of the film featuring the last moments of their dying mother, Diana, not be broadcast.

However, Channel Four have claimed that they will not self-censor the independent production and that, as one Channel Four spokesman claimed, showing the footage is in the ‘very much in the public interest’.

Just who exactly do Channel Four think they are when they claim that showing such pictures would be in the public’s interest? I very much suspect that if everyone in this country were asked whether the or not such footage should be shown, most would say it should not. Would you like to see the last moments of your dying mother broadcast to millions of sitting rooms across the country?

Once again, Channel Four are showing a film to cause a stir and controversy. Many people will undoubtedly watch the film because of this – and to that end, the company has achieved its aim. However, is this really the kind of behaviour a publicly funded organisation should be engaging in? I would say not. I am sure I’m not alone.

Perhaps, as unkind as it is to point this out, it is worth noting that the McCann’s have effectively been on an extended holiday without work (no doubt on full pay,) for the past few weeks since their daughter Madeline mysteriously disappeared from their holiday hotel room.

Today, a German programme, on which the McCann’s were appealing for help, accused the parents of being part of the plot – a claim which was immediately and profusely denied.

It’s sad to say that this whole kidnapping affair has been completely over the top and grossly out of proportion. The media at large hasn’t had a child or human tragedy story for a while, much in the style of the Soham murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman whose lives were so callously and brutally snuffed out by the monstrous psychopath Ian Huntley. Presented with another chance to raise newspaper sales and increase ratings, the news corporations have engaged in a widespread outpouring of collective grief, with almost non-stop coverage of the latest events.

At the same time, the McCann family seem to have willingly obliged the media’s lust for keeping the bandwagon story rolling by jetting all over the world to appeal for the support and money to keep up the search for their missing daughter, including an audience with his holiness the Pope at the Vatican and numerous appearances on television stations in different European countries.

The loss of a greatly loved child for anyone is a tragic event almost unimaginable, and the grief and anguish the McCann’s must be living with every day unbearable. This makes the, at times, faux anger and sympathy expressed by the newspapers and televised media in this country surrounding this case quite contemptible.

Sad thought this whole sorry saga may be, many hundreds of children go missing in this country every year without so much as a squeak from the media. Unlike Madeline, little effort will be placed into searching for them, and most will never be seen again. That is the real and ongoing tragedy.

For Britain (and in contrast to the Orange slogan,) the Future’s Bleak, the Future’s Brown. Blair left this country a legacy alright, but it was certainly not a pleasant or favourable one.

While Gordon Brown will want to give the appearance he has made a clean break with the past and Tony Blair, I fear much of what his government will pursue will be along much the same lines. This has most prominently manifested itself in Mr Brown’s pledge to introduce a package of constitutional change. I’m not sure I like the sound of that, especially if it’s anything even vaguely similar to the previous attempts at meddling Labour have partaken in – which I suspect it is.

Labour’s highly contentious devolution of Scotland and Wales began the now irreversible break up of the Union, which Gordon Brown now rather curiously (and hypocritically) claims to somehow be in favour of protecting. The House of Lords and hereditary peers worked well, and yet Labour entered government and engaged in constitutional vandalism without any clear idea of an end outcome – effectively change for change’s sake. Labour are now going to use their own potentially illegal dealings as an excuse for further reform, and as a measure to head off the Loans-for-Peerages scandal which engulfed Blair’s premiership.

Worse still, perhaps, was that within days of entering office, Labour enacted a law allowing unelected special advisors to give direct orders to civil servants. This lead to a fundamental change in the very nature of the relationship between state and government.

The Chancellor tells us that no challengers were able to run for the leadership because Labour are wholly united in their determination not to return to the past. Does anyone really believe that? In reality, Labour MPs were fearful of a leadership contest that would highlight Labour’s divisions in the eyes of the electorate, and the differences between what they publicly said and privately believed.

I believe that Gordon Brown will be ruthless in any changes he will want to make to this country. Some believe the new Prime Minister will be a relatively easy push-over. I am not so sure.

As said yesterday, the controversy sparked by the possible venue of the BNP leader Nick Griffin in Bath, was the reason why an extraordinary meeting was called in today, in Elements. Attendance was very high and the BBC was even here recording the meeting. The fact that a 2/3 voting majority was considered before the meeting, but subsequently dropped, highlighted the fears coming from the Student Union.

Two votes were scheduled on the meeting agenda, the first one about a ‘statement of belief’ condemning the BNP and the second one about the decision of allowing Nick Griffin to speak on campus. In fact no real vote took place as far as the ‘statement of belief’ was concerned, the blue ballot paper provided ended up being unused. Hot debates erupted though, mostly concerning amendments to the statement, with the sentence ‘The BNP is not a viable option for a political vote’ removed from the statement. The amended statement of belief was nevertheless passed without a real vote, a very negotiable measure considering the fact that the statement was written by Adam Laird, the chairman of the Liberal Democrat society in person, in terms of political neutrality no one could have chosen a better writer.

The discussion about University’s decision to allow Nick Griffin to come was, very heated to say the least. Three sides clearly emerged in the room, with a good proportion of members coming from the homosexual (the politically incorrect word for LGBT) group, another in favour of letting Nick Griffin come on the basis of freedom of speech and final one of mostly neutral students more concerned by the potential disruptions to exams. A representative from the homosexual group said that, ‘our group voted unanimously against the University’s decision, on the basis that the safe space policy is violated’. If they felt that threatened, then instead of making such a fuss about Nick Griffin visit, they should just simply stay at home. I also doubt that such an opposition would have occurred, if a radical Muslim cleric most of whom simply think that homosexuals should be burnt at the stake, had decided to make a speech here in Bath. Same remark as well, for someone like George Galloway.

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Just recently, the University of Bath, received a request for the Leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, to speak at an event on campus. Nick Griffin is scheduled to arrive on the 14th of May; just six days time – and this announcement has already sparked a somewhat heated debate in certain circles.

The Bath University Secretary, Mark Humphriss, recently sent out an internal news item saying that the meeting would go ahead as planned, as the University of Bath website claims that:

So far as is reasonably practicable, no premises of the University shall be denied to any individual or body of persons on any grounds connected with the beliefs or views of that individual or of that body, or the policy or objectives of that body.

This seems a perfectly good and sensible policy to me, however, there has been much dissension among, what could ostensibly labelled as the authoritarian liberal-left of the student and university body. The three campus trade unions, UCU, Unison and Amicus have jointly released a document stating:

We are extremely disappointed that the University has made this decision, as we do not think it is a freedom of speech issue, but a freedom from harassment issue.

Though they have said they will peacefully protest against the BNP meeting and will not actively try to stop it, I think this gives a good insight into their general mindset. I wonder though, would these Unions have been protesting so profusely; or indeed at all, if for example an archaic Communist such as Hugo Chavez wished to speak at a similar event?

In addition, the useless Bath Student Union even went as far as to call an ‘extraordinary meeting’ to discuss the proposal in detail, in the Elements Bar (any excuse,) and numerous Bath students have signed up to a number of the now seemingly obligatory and pointless facebook groups that never achieve anything except to further inflate the egos of their creators.

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