It's a gas

Free market or planned economy? No constraints at all on trade or the microscopic examination of every detail by government agencies to determine what is and isn’t ‘for the greater good’? These are the two extreme economic models that have been fought over for generations and the answer is always neither. Go for the free market, grab-what-you-can format and a few people get national-budget-rich at the expense of all those who have nothing to offer the market. In the wild, so to speak, the over-populated low producers would eventually die out and stabilise their numbers at some wage equilibrium. On the other hand, control everything we say and do and we may as well be in prison.

So, somewhere in the middle it is generally accepted, is where we end up and for all the political warfare engaged in by left and right alike the outcome is generally a pendulum shift to either side of some supposed centre ground. VW/Audi is showing what happens when the highly visible hand of government intervenes. Some favoured climate-ideology, emissions control and fuel prices combined to create the diesel monster, based on only one minor consideration. Diesel cars produce a bit less CO₂ than petrol, so all the manufacturer had to do was fiddle the monitoring of other pollutants to produce a marketing advantage. Lower road tax, better ‘gas mileage’ and hey-presto, a scandal created by government's good intentions.

Whatever talents those attracted to seek political office possess, being capable of discerning truth from fiction is rarely one of them. If genuine experts in a field can’t agree they split into camps and then it becomes a simple matter of funding. For many years the tobacco giants, in the full knowledge of the harm done by smoking their product, pursued highly effective lobbying tactics and staved off (bought off) control of their hugely profitable industry. Today it is the spuriously titled ‘climate scientists’ who have the funding to manipulate decision-making in favour of their own, often also highly profitable, visions.

Forget the high ideals of the save-the-planet brigade, it is money that makes the world go round, or at the very least determines which way it turns. And those who control the purse strings know this very well. Forget also the notion of moral balance-sheet decision making, very few policies are decided by what is genuinely, altruistically best, rather what will deliver the best voting outcome. Political parties are in the business of gaining and holding onto power and while individuals may hold strong principled views, if they don’t fit the party narrative they will be whipped into submission or side-lined out of influence

And thus to Europe. For those on the front line, watching hordes of often aggressive aliens invade their lives, syphoning off their resources, taking precedence over their own disadvantaged, the dangers of open borders are clear. But the little people have no influence outside of election time and even then they can be manipulated by cries of racism and appeals to common decency. The palpably erroneous ‘migrants good, indigenous lazy’ storyline is still being peddled by those who gain from it. But don’t think that the opinions of ordinary people play no part; Philip Hammond has said the migrant crisis is playing into the UK’s imagined renegotiation of EU rules.

Preparing to welcome Europe's saviours...

Indeed it does. It generates sufficient anger on the ground for the majority to support those who will make great play of taking a stand. Watch as the argument develops before the referendum and this government does what all ‘democratic’ governments have to do and tell us the story of why they are the ‘least worst’ option. Because that’s all we will ever get. Cheap travel comes with higher pollution, saving the Earth is an easy sell, no matter how spurious the ‘science’ that supports it. The next government will perpetuate the myth that no matter how different or how dangerous our new citizens are, only ever more immigrants will save our economy. Vote for humanity, vote for decency, vote Volkswagen.