Common Purpose

Founded in 1985, Common Purpose is an organisation the purpose of which is increasingly being questioned by those who wonder just why Br*tain is quite as whacky and authoritarian as it is these days. This video about the activities and influence of Common Purpose, a 'charity' that seems routinely to break the law with impunity, selectively recruits its members from the upper echelons of government, the Civil Service, armed forces, local authorities, regional development agencies, police forces and business and industry, and takes great care to keep its activities, at the tax payers expense, secret, provides food for thought.
It's lengthy but worth watching, although some of the lecturer Brian Gerrish's claims may seem far-fetched and his language a little alarmist to those inclined to dismiss 'conspiracy theories' out of hand, often because uninformed cynicism is fashionable:

It may all be a paranoid fantasy but we can lose nothing by looking a little deeper and asking some probing questions: Those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear, have they?

Gruff thanks to Harry Hook, at The Final Redoubt, for the link.

Getting One's Priorities Right.

The recent announcement that Her Majesty The Queen has expressed concerns about global warming while apparently unconcerned that her government is rapidly destroying the hard won liberties of her subjects as it works to subsume her realm into a despotically bureaucratic European superstate merely illustrates why the monarchy is increasingly seen as of decreasing relevance in whacky Br*tain. With the decline of the monarchy goes a decline in the need for regal spectacle and it is not unjust to question whether our critically (and cynically) depleted army can reasonably be expected to continue to maintain the pomp and splendour of the household division. That notwithstanding, it is certainly justifiable to question whether it is defensible to spend £321,000.00, in the past five years alone, on bearskins for the foot guards whilst pleading poverty as the excuse for failing to provide body armour to those of Her Majesty's soldiers serving her interests overseas.

Whether or not one's concerns are for the bears, ill-equipped troops on active service or simply the absurd cost of self-serving, archaic and decreasingly relevant rituals of imperial majesty, a petition to stop the purchase of skins by the MoD can be signed here.