This was proven beyond doubt today in Taunton when the local Royal Marine unit 40 Commando, stationed at Norton Manor Camp, held a parade through the town to mark their homecoming after a tour of Afghanistan.

The streets were in places lined more than eight people deep, especially as the parade route converged at the war memorial outside the Market House in the centre of Taunton. In fact, so busy were the pavements that it was quite often impossible to see anything more than the back of another person’s head.

The parade also marked the sad death of three brave 40 Commando Marines who did not return home after losing their lives in service of their country. Two of those commandos were killed when caught in an explosion in Helmand Province, while another died in a separate explosion while taking part in an outreach patrol to disrupt enemy forces north of Sangin.

40 Commando is also the regiment of reservist Lance Corporal Matt Croucher, who has been in the news lately with the recent announcement that he is to receive the George Cross from the Queen in October, for bravely jumping on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades after tripping a wired trap while out on a reconnaissance patrol in Helmand Province in February.

News crews from BBC Points West (or BBC Points Bristol as they should really be known since the vast majority of their news never covers much else) and ITV West were on hand to cover the morning’s events, while the usually non-existent local Police were out in force to mark the route.

To cheering crowds, the Royal Marines of 40 Commando were given a special welcome home and a day that they, and those that were there, will hopefully remember for years to come.

His visit to Germany and much lauded speech in Berlin (in which unsurprisingly he said nothing at all) were met with screaming crowds of zealous fans whose presence did little more than confirm his full transition from man to unthinking cult.

In many ways Obama reminds me very much of Tony Blair when he first became Prime Minister, who arrived in Downing Street to crowds of screaming fans waving Union Flags on a manifesto of ‘hope’, ‘change’ and ‘optimism’. What those words actually meant, nobody was really sure – but it wasn’t long before Blair and his Labour mob had set to work destroying what was left of Britain, and for his once fanatical supporters to slowly drift away.

Similarly praise for Obama has been equally misplaced. Thus far he has cruised along on a wave of meaningless rhetoric and lavish praise from (in this country) the BBC and the types who were so fond of Tony Blair’s comparable variety of emptiness and slogans in the 90s. In the Mail on Sunday, Peter Hitchens asks:

When will Mr Obama’s absurd bubble of adulation burst?

Unfortunately, one has to suspect that the artificial bubble that has enveloped Obama will be sustained by blogs and the media, both in this country and in America, until the Presidential election in November. However, we can, I feel, do the United States and British politics a great service by simply ignoring him altogether.

By continually mentioning his name and his exploits we will only perpetuate or indeed enlarge his bubble of adulation. Deprived of the oxygen of hype and publicity, hopefully the Obama cult may die out and people will, like they did with Blair, eventually begin to see that behind the grand words and spirited speeches there is just a man – not a saviour – with nothing to say at all.

Even before Samuel Coates had left the ConHome fold to work for David Cameron’s bland speechwriting team, the website had become almost entirely sycophantic towards the Conservative party leadership and the site’s front page often resembled little more than an MPs press release area.

In changing the text of the banner I suppose Tim Montgomerie has at least now had the decency to publicly admit that the true purpose of ConservativeHome is to pursue the interests of the Conservative party and that he will use his site to focus almost entirely on the David Cameron project which has itself very little in the way of conservatism behind it.

In recent months ConservativeHome’s pages seem to have been increasingly filled with the strange and often absurd witterings of those like Louise Bagshawe on CentreRight (a woman who is for some peculiar reason taken rather seriously by some few Conservative party members and MPs) and almost entirely devoid of critical comment and opinion. As such it is neither independent in content or comment and therefore, I would have thought, no longer a website that merits more than a cursory glance.

It is also a rare occasion when I will not in some way directly involve mention of the European Union (oh no, I did it again!) or what I would deem similarly serious political matters or events.

So, as it happens, I noticed that a few of the self obsessed egos who involved themselves in 18 Vanity Street (which amusingly collapsed last year) but chose not to move sideways onto Stephan Shakespeare’s PoliticsHome project have reappeared in the team behind a new magazine called TotalPolitics.

Rather unsurprisingly the TotalPolitics magazine (much like its staff) will really only be interested in the soap opera of the Westminster Village rather than anything that could be even considered vaguely serious. I am not the only one of this opinion.

Yet, despite the magazine being funded in part by Lord Ashcroft and released to much fan fare on some few blogs, I think it may now well be a good time to place your bets on how long it will be before it goes the way of Doughty Street down the pan.

Since TotalPolitics will be sent free of charge to all politicians from our irrelevant MPs down to local district level and also many journalists, this seems to cancel out most of the people who may have actually bothered to buy it in the first place (another reason I think that this is no more than yet another ego trip for its producers and editors.) I mean really, would anyone actually want to pay to read yet more Westminster gossip – especially when (if you so chose) you can read it on the net for free?

Still, until the time that TotalPolitics completely collapses and disappears off the radar, I thought I would take the opportunity to participate in their Top 100 UK Political Blogs. You have to rate your top ten, so here below are mine:

1. EU Referendum
2. Peter Hitchens
3. Sam Tarran
4. Daniel Hannan
5. Archbishop Cranmer
6. ConservativeHome
7. Burning Our Money
8. The Huntsman
9. England Expects
10. Bruno Waterfield

I suspect however that we can all probably guess who will make the top of the final published list – Iain Dale, Paul Staines, Phil Hendren etc. the usual group of self promoting friends who enjoy nothing more than engaging in meaningless tittle-tattle and largely irrelevant gossip.

Much like the red top newspapers these blogs tend to have the most readers (and therefore will accumulate the most votes,) not because they are actually any good in my opinion, but simply because they have become a well established set (due to the fact that they continually promote one another) and that, bar one or two, they publish the sort of Westminster village crap that those in the Westminster village like reading.

In 2006 I managed to make 51st on APCO Wordwide’s list of Top Conservative Blogs – but I have a sneaking suspicion that I won’t be on there this time around. Also I challenge those on the list above to come up with their top ten blogs – not that they will of course but I thought I would just mention it anyway.

Some websites have been wishing Sam Coates well, and I suppose for me not to do so would seem somewhat mean-hearted considering what a golden political opportunity this is for him. So, very well done and congratulations to you Sam – best of luck in your new position.

I remember once meeting Sam outside the Highcliffe hotel on the cliffs of Bournemouth at the Conservative Party Conference in 2006. The poor boy was standing by the garden gate handing out some expensively produced 18 Vanity (Doughty) Street adverts to those leaving that day’s conference proceedings.

I spoke to him for about ten minutes or so and thought he seemed like a decent enough chap – but then most of the people in this party do until you really get to know them. I have also been pretty certain for some time now that Sam would eventually move on from ConservativeHome to pastures new because he had been in a position to build up a long list of contacts.

However, one does have to express more than a little scepticism at the decision by Cameron’s office to bring young Sam into the inner fold. Taking nothing away from Sam who is I’m sure a fine upstanding young man with all the qualities a speechwriter requires, the motivation behind this is actually, I think, a classic case of divide and rule by David Cameron – a tactic of which Tony Blair and the Labour party have in the past been very fond.

As a major part of the ConservativeHome team with Tim Montgomerie, Sam Coates has effectively played an equal part in creating a website that was at one point in time (about two years ago in fact) a major thorn in the Conservative leadership’s side. It was often critical, piercing and thought provoking in its comment and content and very widely read by party members.

In the past two years the Conservative hierarchy has lessened that pain considerably by wining and dining the two ConHome editors. This has been to such an extent that far from seeking the truth and standing up for some traditional conservative values as Tim Montgomerie says, ConservativeHome at times resembles nothing more than an MPs press release area and rarely makes any critical remarks at all concerning the Cameron project.

Yet, despite its decline in recent years, ConHome does at times still have the ability to embarrass certain high profile MPs and the party leadership. Therefore, what better way was there for the Conservatives to help finally finish off the ConHome coalition than offer one of its editors a highly paid speechwriting job working directly for the party leader?

One also has to wonder where Tim Montgomerie has managed to acquire a supposed pot of £25-50k to hire new staff members to replace Sam. I would have thought it highly likely that ConHome is being funded by the Conservative Party itself. Perhaps that is another issue for another time though.

As had been predicted, Mr Davis comfortably won the poll by some fifteen thousand votes against an assortment of twenty seven candidates that conspicuously lacked any representation from the Labour party.

During the early hours and days of his resignation, Mr Davis stirred up quite a media and public storm. Across the country Conservative Associations received phone calls from members of the public telling of their support for David Davis and the issues of freedom despite never having voted Conservative.

However, come the day of the vote and result, the ever fickle media’s interest had worn away and very little was made of the result – which I suppose in part is unsurprising given that Mr Davis received no challenge from a Labour party candidate over the issues of freedom surrounding detention without charge.

As I commented previously, I suspect that David Cameron would have rather preferred to back the Government’s plans on detention without charge if he’d had the opportunity. However, I think it was very much down to David Davis’ actions that the Conservative party has now publicly pledged to do away with the legislation if it forms the next Westminster administration.

The new unit will apparently help combat illegal immigration, people and drugs trafficking along with a whole host of other niceties that cross our borders on a day to day basis. However, as is unfortunately the case with so many new Conservative proposals, this mooted Border Force will avoid the true issue and instead tackle an irrelevant one.

The immigration problems that we now face as a country have little to do with the illegal variety which constitutes only a very minor part of our total immigration burden. In fact our real problems (and they are many) lie with what is entirely legal immigration over which we no longer have any say or control.

When we became members of the European Economic Community and later the European Union we accepted the text of the Treaty of Rome which grants the ‘fundamental right’ of free movement to Citizens of the Union across member state borders.

This supposed ‘right’ to free movement was later strengthened by our old friend Directive 2004/38/EC and more recently the Lisbon Treaty (aka. The Constitution) which has now completed its rubberstamping journey through our increasingly irrelevant provincial council (aka. The Houses of Parliament) and will soon come into force once the will of the Irish people has been circumnavigated (aka. basically told to shove it).

Still, one would have thought that while we may not be able to control immigration coming from within the EU we might still be able to control it with countries from outside the Union. Not so. As I explained previously, we really have little control over that either because once someone obtains citizenship within another EU member state (easily done) they have as much ‘right’ to enter Britain as you or I do.

So you see, we really do not have any control over immigration at all, whether illegal or not – and a new Border Police Force will not in any way change that.

Another key activity the proposed Border Force apparently intends to target is drugs smuggling. However, since drug-taking in this country seems to be practically legal you have to wonder why a border force is needed to prevent those supposedly banned substances entering the country.

A Border Police Force tackling drugs smuggling is therefore a token gesture to keep the gullible public happy because it gives the outwards appearance that the Government (or rather would-be Government) are actually doing something to fight drugs smuggling and banned substances when really they are condoning their use by not enforcing the current laws.

So, at face value the Border Police Force sounds vaguely reassuring to the general public, but unfortunately in reality it is not. Much like our national politicians, any such Border Force would be irrelevant and incapable of tackling the real issues.

Yet, despite its obvious failings, other similar party policy groups will keep on churning out useless proposals like this because it is what they think their political masters want to hear. At the same time such policies allow the politicians of all parties to entrench themselves further in the Westminster bubble and again put off the day when they will have to confront the reality that they control nothing and must take the blame for everything.

According to The Independent, the article is apparently ‘an exclusive’ – but truth be told, it is not. In fact the story came to light more than eight years ago in the United States and has cropped up in the global and national media more than a few times since.

Back in August of 2000, The New York Times printed a similar but equally erroneous report suggesting that ‘the North Pole is melting’. Yet, the Times were forced to issue a retraction after it was pointed out by other scientists that in the summertime open stretches of water in the Arctic were a normal occurrence.

Thus, the US-based Capitalist Magazine observed less than a year after the New York Times article:

Objective science reporting has become a casualty of the Kyoto crusade. Last August, for example, the New York Times hastened its slide from respected news source to leftist propaganda rag, by screaming from its front page that ‘The North Pole is melting’.

The story was based, not on scientific data or even computer models, but on the claims of a single scientist – an apparatchik in the UN global warming bureaucracy – who attended a summertime tourist cruise to the North Pole on a Russian icebreaker. The tourists arrived at the pole, the Times breathlessly reported, and saw open water. ‘The last time scientists can be certain the pole was awash in water’, the reporter declared, ‘was more than 50 million years ago’.

Real scientists reminded the Times that stretches of open water in the Arctic are a normal summertime event, caused by shifts in the ice, and the paper was forced to publish an embarrassing retraction.

However, the eco-left were not content to let the story lie forgotten and managed to revive it again in April this year with ABC News claiming that the ‘North Pole Could Be Ice Free in 2008’. Today, eight years after the original claim and two months after its latest appearance in ABC, The Independent has just caught up and republished the falsehood.

What’s more, the Independent article fails to even mention the volcanic eruptions that have very recently been discovered by scientists under the arctic icecap. But then why would The Independent worry about such trivial matters as truth, fact and good journalistic standards and practices? They are convinced that Global Warming is almost solely caused by the activities of humanity and will publish any evidence, whether true or not, to persuade others that they are correct.