Showing posts with label #no2eu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #no2eu. Show all posts

Tuesday, 11 August 2015

Swinging the vote

Normal blog service is resumed following a couple of days of being incapable of sitting upright long enough to type the thing. I wish I could say I was that drunk, or so far incapacitated by hallucinogenic intoxicants I thought my fingers were enormous burning cauliflowers and too big to hit the keys accurately; sadly the real story, as is usually the way, is somewhat more prosaic. Damn you, lower back strain! (Surely there’s a much more complicated and tortuous phrase that doesn’t tell the truth that you just lifted and twisted like you’ve been told not to?)

Anyway, once again I was engaged in the odd sally regarding the supposedly forthcoming open and honest debate about Europe and the EU and how the vote will be won... or lost. And here, I think, lies the root of the problem; nobody - and I do mean nobody – knows how the UK would fare outside its suffocating embrace. So all the YES campaign has to do is stay all nice and fluffy, calm and controlled and act like your dad: “You may hate me now, son, but in the end you’ll see, I had your best interests at heart all along.” And given the current cost of housing the lad may well stay on in the family home... although the resentment will simmer beneath the surface forever. Prescient or what?

Meanwhile, the NO campaign is struggling to find a positive message for life beyond because, in the lives of most who will vote, there has never been a world outside the EU and for those who remember Britain before we were railroaded in, it was a pretty shitty time all round; two world wars and the poverty and blight that followed. Although many of those my age and older are anti-‘the EU’ a good proportion will abstain or vote to stay in because they believe their pensions depend on it. This means that the bias of the OUT campaign will necessarily be negative, stating what is wrong with the EU – principally the whole political union thing – rather than what could be beneficial for an independent UK.

Like general elections though, the majority of minds are already made up, with a near fifty/fifty split for each option, leaving only the undecided 20% of those who intend to vote to influence. For the IN lobby to be positive all they have to say is “Look what [unsubstantiated] bounty it brings.” and then point at all the signs that tell you how this school extension and that hospital wing has been built with EU grants, leaving out that the cost of a £50million EU grant is nothing for, say, Spain, but around £100million for the UK. When the NO movement points this out it is seen as mud slinging.

No caption required...

Logically, nobody unsure of the facts – and there are no verifiable ‘facts’ in this propaganda war – would vote to alter a status quo which offers them no apparent harm. And why would those who have never experienced self-determination chance their arm at going it alone? As defeatist as it may sound, a crowd-pleasing monstering campaign against the EU will be much like the Jeremy Corbyn circus – rousing cheers from the converted and the odd round of applause from curious bystanders, but at best a minority translation into actual votes from outside. My forecast, for what it’s worth, is a 60/40 IN vote and just like Scotland, much grumbling and unrest thereafter. The EU won't let go its grip until it ends in total failure.

Monday, 20 July 2015

Fury

I’ve been busy. I’m always bloody busy. But not so busy I didn’t catch the general drift. The Queen’s a secret Nazi, the Tories are trying to sell off the doctors, some obviously made-up story about Iran and ‘nucular’ and Jeremy Corbyn is hot favourite to become glorious leader now they have ‘done the math’ and discovered what an amazing fuck up Ed made of the job. Of course he is; Labour’s answer to a crushing defeat shown to be mostly because of Ed being too far to the left of the people they hope to represent is to lurch even further left. And this brings us, naturally, to the EU.

Monsieur Hollande wants to bring in a Eurozone government to prevent anybody ever daring again to threaten to leave the Euro. Greece’s failings inside the club had nothing to do, he says, with the club and its rules. But to guard against anybody trying to bring that charge to bear he believes we need… a bigger club. In this feature in the Sydney Morning Herald he is quoted as stating: "What threatens us is not an excess of Europe but its insufficiency". In a statement of breath-taking obliviousness he goes on to blame populist movements (code for ‘evil democracy’) for weakening EU institutions.

He also believes that a desire for self-determination has arisen not from the heavy-handed way in which the EU simply ignores things like, you know, national referendums or local legislation or the declared will of the people; neither from the way it routinely ignores agreements and levies fines and financial demands that formerly sovereign nations are powerless to refuse, but because we are "scared of the world, because they want divisions, walls and fences to return". No, Mister Dutch, we’re not afraid of the world; we’re afraid of the future you and your power-crazed co-conspirators want to bring about.

Can't you see how the European Union has ended strife and enmity between nations? Witness how total, unchecked freedom of movement has solved the housing crisis, made our national defences more robust and allowed you to sleep easy at night. Observe the utter extinction of all expressions of malcontent among Europe’s happy and prosperous general population. And witness how everybody has total freedom of expression without the fear of going to jail for challenging the legitimacy of uber-equal treatment for any and all practises and beliefs, however minor or perverse or potentially harmful they may be in the feeble minds of mere citizens. The rise of the ‘ophobia’ is glorious testament to how completely integrated we all now feel. By law.

Do you realise millions actually DIED for you to then let this happen?
What was the fucking point, Europe? What?

If this was a movie we would be rolling in the aisles. If it was a documentary we would be staring at the telly in disbelief and wondering how they could keep a straight face. And if it was in the newspapers we would be tutting about the manipulative agenda of the mainstream media. I watched the movie Fury the other night. If you’d said back then that all that muck and mayhem was for nothing and that the Germans would have no need to park their tanks on our lawn; that we would invite them and the French to take over our governance and meekly lie back and let them shit all over us, they would have said you were mad. But it is true; we are mad. And I, for one, am mad as hell. 

Tuesday, 14 July 2015

EU can not be serious!

So what was the point, eh? Greece rejects the terms of the bailout only to be given harsher ones. Germany, the Wonga of the EU, carves up the family jewels and sells them to its mates and then Juncker, in a fit of pique over the inevitable Nazi jibes, tears up the supposed ‘agreement’ that David Cameron thought he had secured, for a UK opt-out of assisting further Euro-zone bailouts. The pattern is clear and increasingly familiar; whatever you do, you can’t leave the mob once you marry-in. If there ever was a case for allowing a default and run, Greece was it.

But no, even if it bankrupts the lot of us, they WILL remain under the yoke. The EU is actually punishing the Greeks and their children and their grandchildren for the sins of their profligate ruling class and the bandits they did business with; making them an offer they can never refuse. I thought the purpose of the EU was to prevent strife? (Actually, I never did. And in my recollection that was never a stated aim in the early days, rather one confected and trotted out to quell more recent dissent whenever we ingrates got uppity. He who controls the past…)

It’s not because they care, is it? The Greek referendum, they say, is not a binding tool of government. They have a representative democracy, they say, so they can always elect another bunch of representatives. The referendum was no more than an exercise in consultation, they say, seeking the mandate of the masses, which was swiftly ignored. Meanwhile Tsipras, hanging upside down in the meat store, had it explained to him exactly what was going to happen, like or not.

Greece going on a national strike is hardly likely to change a thing; populations are powerless as the EU’s naked ambition is starkly revealed. Ever closer union appears to be code for ever more distant separation between rulers and the ruled. If the Greek experience is anything to go by, national governments are mere administrators for a central unelected class of Eurocrats who wield the real power. Remember, just as Nick Clegg insisted they were not? Just as David Cameron insisted they were not. Just as Blair and Mandelson and every politician since Maggie was ordered to say they were not.

The fall of Athens

Strikes will do nothing more than hurt the very people who are staging them. But how long before we smell the burning brands of mass violence and feel the sharp tines of pitchforks raised in anger? From our comfy position in front of the telly we watch and wait for the outcome. The Greeks may be on their streets in protest today, but how long before the troops are sent in and the beatings begin? Too far-fetched? The rule of despots is only ever overturned by force and that process is always begun by the despots themselves. If we are not seeing the start of the overthrow of the EU then I pity us all. 

Monday, 6 July 2015

Got your number

Well, well, well, who could have predicted Greece’s response to the bail out referendum? Actually plenty secretly did but were jinxed by the previously indefatigable persistence of the EU commissars, pushing their message of ruin outside the tender choke-hold of ever closer union. I was willing it all along, as may have been apparent, but still pessimistic as to whether or not the ordinary Greek people, most of whom never had much informed say in the whole EU debacle, would detach themselves from the EU teat.

Today, Greece’s economic troubles begin anew; nothing has changed. Nothing except for one little thing – they dared to say no. Now everybody is watching to see if they hold their nerve; to see how and when the EU make their move to terrorise the population into backing down. Even the most hard-euro-hearted must hope they do because this is really about so much more than money, trade or international reputation; it’s about national pride and personal dignity. Like his politics or not – and I’m naturally averse to left-wing experiments – Alex Tsipras has gained a mandate to stand up for the people who elected him. It was a big, bold, maybe reckless move but one that seems, at least for now, to have paid off.

During the day I got into a lengthy discussion about fairness and advantage and the usual guff about how if we were all so much nicer to each other we could live in a happy world; if only rich people stopped ‘exploiting’ poor people and healthy people looked after sick people and governments redistributed wealth so that we were all so much closer to income parity. Yeah, right, like what we need, is a great big melting pot… the only problem with all that is that we neither have such a pot nor the means to stir it. What we’ve got, all we’ve got is the simple reality of human nature.

We are clever and cooperative, but also opportunistic and competitive. Wealth is relative after all and one of the fundamental ways in which humans measure achievement. Oh but, what about those selfless individuals who volunteer for charity work, you say, to which I reply, “Camila Batmanghelidjh”. You see power corrupts and even the intentionally benign stewardship of freely given charitable donations can become a thing of ugly venality without restraint and proper controls.

Of course we have to look after the sick and genuinely disadvantaged and yes, we do have to do that on a national, even sometimes an international scale, but when you hear the cry “Gas, gas, gas!” you must immediately pull on your own respirator first. When the overhead compartments open and the oxygen masks descend, the in-flight safety presentation you didn’t bother to watch instructed you to don your own mask before assisting others. You are no use to anybody if you need help yourself. And if more of us were capable and inclined to look after our own needs the truly helpless could be granted an easier passage through life’s travails.

The club foot club hobbles on...
Greek Pride March

Looking after number one is simple, it’s honest and if we all did a bit more of it, rather than expecting somebody else to come to our imagined aid, we’d all be better off. Because it’s only when you let those who can create the wealth do so that there is any surplus to go around. In Greece those who had the wealth have already expatriated it; there is no point in going after them. Greece has voted to start over, possibly from scratch. I hope they all pull their weight and gain some self-reliance; it’s dog eat dog until the new alphas emerge and start to take on slaves again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some plates to smash.

Sunday, 5 July 2015

More on Oxi...

The ‘meeja’ has been falling over itself to publish bad puns about the impending ‘Greek tragedy’ and the open hostility displayed by the massed ranks of the EU’s bully boys. They want to punish Greece whichever way the referendum goes. Me? If it isn’t already abundantly clear, I want fair Hellene to stand up for itself and vote no. Not no to further austerity because it really has no choice, but no to forever being in the pocket of a class of bureaucrats who have a lust for power that really must be curtailed. If Greece falls to Brussels it sends the message that Euro-power is omnipotent.

I’ve only been to Greece once; a sailing holiday way back in 1980 and I was charmed by the simple rusticity and dazzling light. Everybody seemed to smile and the pace of life was admirably leisurely. Why would you want to trade that for mere material riches when the price is to sell your descendants into the treadmill existence of trading on the global stage for the enrichment of a very few? The EU project, if it ever had such a mission, has long forgotten its aims of peace in Europe. Instead it is all about power, and controlling a half-billion population is how it exercises that power.

As the hours tick away people are hyping up the hypotheticals; what if, what if? What if Greece just took a holiday from the Euro? Seriously, there are suggestions that people be paid in IOUs, acceptable by business to buy goods and services. They argue that this way, the population can still trade among themselves, sort out their day-to-day needs and then re-enter the Euro when the waters are calmer. Maybe it’s just me but if an IOU can become currency, so can the Drachma. And if this non-Euro money is the way to salvation, what reason would they have to use it for recovery and then return to the ruinous common currency; who wants to be common?

It’s as if the bankers have forgotten that humanity survived before money and it is quite possible that satisfactory lives may be lived without it. In fact Greece could become pioneers for new ways of organising how money is used. And here’s a novel idea; how about everybody starts to live within their means? After all, if you only spend what you earn, you don’t run up debts. If you have no debts the banks become mere safe depositories. And if you teach your kids not to desire what they can’t afford who knows, being thrifty might once again become the new normal.

Much has been said about how true socialism has never been tried. Maybe that’s because it has only ever been tried in populations crushed under the boot of industry and the daily grind, with rich pickings for those who controlled the economy. But how about getting all hippy on the IMF’s ass and going full commune? Seriously, if nobody is getting paid and there is bugger all else to do, why not get the 25% unemployed working for their keep and pay for it by smiling once more at the lovely tourists who will stuff their pockets with cash, if only as a way of sticking two fingers up to the EU?

Mussolini didn't like it up him!
Remember Metaxas - Vote Oxi!

They say money can’t buy you happiness and you can’t take it with you. What are the creditors actually going to do, short of sending in the jackboots and revealing the true ideology behind Euroland? Remember the sayings ‘it’s only money’ and ‘easy come, easy go’? Let’s add to that ‘fuck the EU!’ Come on Greece, show us the way out of this mess. 

Update:

As of 18:30 UK time the voting stands at 60.3% NO!

Sunday, 28 June 2015

Moving on…

One of the non-negotiable planks of the European Union is the free movement of workers, enshrined in the Treaty of Maastricht. EU citizens are entitled to:
·         look for a job in another EU country   
·         work there without needing a work permit
·         reside there for that purpose
·         stay there even after employment has finished
·         enjoy equal treatment with nationals in access to employment, working conditions and all other social and tax advantages

It is held as an entirely settled matter that this is wholly a good thing, much, I imagine, as the rewriting of history to portray the British Empire as unremittingly evil is also seen as ‘a good thing’. There is black and there is white (except when it comes to race) and no gradations in between. The new establishment is simultaneously able, as it did yesterday, to both denounce violence in the name of islam and yet declare without twitching that the same barbarity has nothing to do with islam.

We are not dealing with rational people here; our governments, whether through some misplaced sense of moral justice, allegiance to some higher authority or simple blind obedience to the EU creed no longer even pretend to represent their people. Elections are meaningless; simply mechanisms to return MEPs to office where they are then expected to vote like cattle, being milked on command and at regular intervals with entirely predictable results; ever more laws, ever fewer freedoms. There is no democracy here, so if the commissars say free movement is always good then it must be so.

People, taken as a whole, include murderers, rapists, child molesters, madmen, disease carriers, fanatics, zealots, manipulators, traitors, human-haters, psychopaths and a whole different order of untermenschen, barely fit for inclusion under the general definition of humanity. How can a system which allows people who genuinely need to be restrained for the greater good free access, as a near-sacred right, to hide among the masses be acceptable? And why should the control of national borders – a system which has maintained order for centuries – be a bad thing?

By a similarly warped metric, diversity is always good, even where it brings conflict, and segregation into communities is always bad… except where it is a community which self-segregates and then abuses the laws and tolerance of the people it has segregated from. It seems some diktats override others, especially where it involves minorities of any kind. Discrimination is a bad word, but ‘positive discrimination’ is encouraged, especially where it upsets the normal order of things. Equality – an impossible outcome – is the dream of those who believe in all this stuff, yet women-only organisations, events and selection lists are fine

You have complete freedom to do as we say...
Stop thinking for yourselves!!!

I take all this and many similar perversions of the historically natural order to be entirely consistent with the notion that the idea is the thing, whatever the consequences. Just as Labour’s ‘the party comes first’ outburst betrayed their deeper thinking, the EU’s insistence on open borders when it is clearly disastrous to throw together incompatible cultures shows their utter contempt for the lives of ordinary people in pursuit of their goal of a country called Europe. It seems to me that we handed over the word ‘democracy’ to the Newspeak think tank and if we want it back we’re going to have to fight for it.

Monday, 8 June 2015

Fighting Fair?

It will not be a fair fight. And in the end the result that has already been decided will be delivered as some form of triumph for common sense and humanity. If the likes of Lutfur Rahman can rig election results and police forces and social services spokespeople can face the cameras and flatly deny they knew anything about the systematic rape of thousands of teenage girls, it will be simplicity itself for Westminster to finagle the outcome of a referendum in which nobody risks actually getting hurt. And those who can will up-sticks and abandon this land to the totalitarian socialist satellite it threatens to become.

Every day there is a thread of pro-EU propaganda stitched into the news programmes. Every day another cohort of future young Juncker Youth will be inculcated with the party line and despatched to berate their parents for daring to contemplate betraying their glorious future in the land of Oz. The choice of staying in will be presented with a matter-of-fact breeziness with adjectives such as ‘obvious’ and ‘sensible’ and even ‘conservative’ applied to people and policy in favour of in. Likewise the outcome of a vote for inertia will be peppered with happy, contented phrases conjuring up apple-cheeked vitality and children standing up to sing ‘Tomorrow belongs to me’ through lips backed by perfect, white, smiling teeth.

In complete contrast to the reality of future life in the Federation of European Soviets the IN campaign will show expensively filmed flags of all nations waving merrily alongside each other in harmony and common purpose while happy workers go about their joyous, apparently free lives. It will be shown as a Technicolor world of plenty, every bit as optimistic as those long lost days of nineteen-fifties California. The best writers and directors and ‘imagineers’ in the world will be employed in building the fictional future, because money will be no object. Our own money will be spent against us.

In contrast the OUT campaigners have an uphill struggle because whilst all those who remember free speech and genuine hope – as opposed to the ersatz, government-sanctioned, do-as-you-are-bidden, hope-lite – will have to top the golden offerings of the stay-ins. Look out for descriptors such as 'controversial' and 'brave' and anything indicative of untried theory. We will be portrayed as grey pessimists, with bad dentures and failing health, in grainy backward-looking newsreels. And every attempt we make to reveal the regressive nature of the EU project will be seized on as typical of Little Englanders longing for a never-was past. Of course it never was; the EU put the brakes on all we might have become by now.

Even as our annual and solemn reverence for the fallen war dead who gave us the freedom to now vote for our own subjugation has been slowly, year-by-year turned into a maudlin reflection of the evils of all our finest national strengths, it won’t be enough to turn the tide for us to show what is wrong with the European Union. We have to say again and again, what is so right about independence. The nations we conquered by superior force in the past we eventually delivered back to home rule. But when it came to ourselves this fierce island race allowed itself to be led into the stockade and now, like battery hens even with the door open wide we blink yet we don’t understand the meaning of the light.

Inside the European Union we are limited in what we can do. Our borders are not our own and our laws are not of our making. Our trade will be regulated, controlled and ultimately we will achieve what we are ‘allowed’ to achieve – and that will be governed by what others wish to achieve. Our farmers will work to the plan and our military will bolster the police in maintaining civil order. Our politicians will be mere administrators of the taxes we will contribute and the downward pressure of the ‘equality and fairness’ agenda will ensure that in a few generations the very thought of leaving will become near impossible even to articulate.

A leap of faith
Just do it!

See that door, chickens? It is wide open. And on the other side are all the possibilities you ever dreamed of. So instead of trying to counter the IN argument, why argue at all? OUT is freedom, OUT is self-determination and OUT is a whole new adventure. Who’s up for an adventure?

Wednesday, 1 April 2015

Bank Raid Rage

Now that the election campaign proper is under way the gloves are well and truly off, but both sides seem to be flailing about shadow-boxing; swinging at jinking opponents and hardly landing so much as a well-aimed but flimsy fact, with neither side persuading the crowd to cheer them on with any conviction. Meantime, over in France the enormous popularity of Marine le Pen’s Front National is hidden behind their convoluted voting system which allows the minor parties to gang up and relegate the party with the second biggest share of the votes off the table. But all these political willy-waggling gestures merely serve to bury a little-reported EU travesty of enormous import for us all.

Known as L’administration Aggrégation Fiscâle, Brussels has been quietly working on doing to everybody what they did to Cyprus not so long ago; a raid on bank accounts. But unlike the Cypriot harvesting of major chunks of individual capital the intention – indeed it is already a fact in France – is to systematically cream off a small sum per month from every single personal bank account with more than around €2000 deposited, active or not. The modus operandi of AF, as it is referred to, is to extract from the unwitting participants sums small enough to appear as rounding errors and certainly within the value of most current accounts’ paltry interest receipts.

But small though the individual sums are – in the UK it will be barely £1 per person per month on average – all those pennies add up to a considerable sum, which will bypass the UK Treasury altogether and go directly to the EU’s Central Bank. It is estimated that the sums raised from raiding UK accounts alone will amount to around £98,000,000 per annum. Given that the EU’s accounts haven’t been properly audited and signed off in near two decades, who would hold out any hope that this pernicious and underhand measure will be used in any way to further the common good?

It's okay... AF won't hurt a bit.
The Cypriot Solution

The details are hard to find without a good deal of searching and all references are very carefully worded to sound innocuous, but to find out just how many pee has been extracted from you without your consent and how you can possibly opt out of the raid, you can find out here: What AF means to you. Please spread the word and let us see if we can put an end to this secret Euro-tax.

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PS :12:01 April 1st 2015: This was a partly political broadcast brought to you by the words April and Fool and the numbers some-of-the-people-all-of-the-time. It seems to have worked well enough - hope you enjoyed it.

...but how certain are you that such a move HASN'T been put in train? 

Wednesday, 4 March 2015

Tic-Toc...

Last year Nick Clegg, in the process of being soundly thrashed by Nigel Farage in the television debate he called for, hit out at Farage’s claim that 70% of UK laws came from the EU. In fact for days afterwards this was his only parry and some even wanted desperately to believe him. So the news that two-thirds of UK laws do indeed come via the EU is not only further refutation of Clegg’s credibility and proof of his duplicity, it should come as a stark warning for voters everywhere to wake the fuck up.

The European Union is out for one thing and it is the thing we all suspect many politicians are out for – themselves. But having managed to divert a colossal amount of sovereign wealth into the leaky culverts of bureaucracy where it disappears without trace there is little else for the god-like powers to do but amuse themselves at our expense. One of the ways in which the EU likes to entertain itself in these long, wet winter days is to enact legislation banning things that people rely on. It disrupts industry, delivers poorer outcomes for consumers and impoverishes us all further… and is therefore exactly in tune with what all the evidence points to is the primary purpose of the projekt.

Words, organisations, beliefs, indigenous cultures, self-determination, freedom – of course they love to curtail them, but that is the humdrum day-job. To liven things up they like now and then to prohibit the use of material things; especially those that actually work. Either already banned or in the process of being banned or curtailed are: Cars that drive fast, weed-killers that kill weeds, pesticides that ‘cide’ pests, hair-driers that dry, kettles that boil… and vacuum cleaners that don’t suck because they suck have been replaced with vacuum cleaners that suck because they don’t suck. And now, having banished the good old cheap general lighting service lamp known by generations as a light bulb, they are coming for the rest of your beloved incandescent lamps. Got downlights? Then get ready to fork out for LEDs; at ten-to-twenty quid a pop the future isn’t looking so bright

Back on the subject of social engineering and behaviour modification, Labour MP David Lammy’s astonishing logic suggests that if you steal from, say, Fortnum & Mason you’ve been less dishonest than trousering a Mars bar from the corner shop. Of course, he is bound to have been ‘quoted out of context’ but where does this road lead? Given that the state is the biggest racket of the lot, presumably avoiding tax or defrauding the DWP should be seen as a noble act which should be rewarded. Honours for evasion? Legalised bank robbery? And do rich people deserve to be murdered more than poor people?

Government - dim as a Toc H lamp
Replacement light bulb - EU standard

It’s ludicrous, unnecessary, intrusive and utterly arrogant; the high-handed, rough-shod ride over the plebs. And you know what the EU, Labour and many besides have in common? The belief that people who live their ignoble lives outside the rarefied air of Westminster, the BBC and the right-on, 'progressive' think tanks have no aspirations, no education and must be treated as naughty peasants. But think on, Mr Politician, we peasants can still wield a mean pitchfork. 

Monday, 2 March 2015

Just do it

Well, that was all I needed yesterday. There I was at breakfast, sucking the last bits of sweet, succulent flesh from the bones of the baby we barbecued on Saturday evening – babies are so much better on the barbie ,as all that fresh young fat keeps the flesh marvellously moist – when, out of the blue rinse, a super-annuated ‘committed socialist’ who was ‘passionate about social justice’ decided to call me a racist and condemn my rabid ranting… on account of my having retweeted this. Well, I wasn’t having that, so I reached for a scrap of parchment, made from the flayed skin of some insignificant peasant (it makes great writing paper - nice and thin after a lifetime of regular tanning) settled back into my chair made from an overstuffed relative of Diane Abbott (who is coming along nicely, by the way) and began to pen a reply.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s marvellous that the old dear is still shuffling about, using up oxygen but really, claiming that those who pay virtually ALL the taxes are unable to make rational deductions, run the country fairly and make ethically sound judgements? You’d think that having lived through a fair number of Labour administrations she might have cottoned on to the cycle of bust and bust they always bring about. But no, so here we go again having to explain to the toothless old dinosaurs of a Labour-that-never-was that wantonly spending the workers’ money while never improving the lot of ‘the poor’ is practically the definition of ‘financial illiteracy’. If even the sainted Maggie couldn’t get that through their thick skulls it’s little wonder the rest of us have mostly given up.

But here’s the real nub of it. Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, we have some major problems right now which are beyond our power to solve as long as we remain in the grasp of the unelected commissioners of the socialist comrades' great big European Onion. Our borders are like semi-permeable membranes allowing those who wish us harm to osmotically ooze from one side to the other; our welfare system is out of control and beyond easy reform; our sense of national identity is being systematically eroded year on year and our education system serves a politically driven dogma, rather than the needs of its charges. We have a collective inertia we are powerless to reverse as nobody has their hands on the wheels of this runaway soon-to-be-failed state. Our glorious past is well and truly behind us.

I can’t be a Tory any more, as there are no Tories left. I could never support Labour because its adherence to a culture of equality at the level of the lowest common denominator can only ever end in abjection. And I still have no idea who the Libdems represent… or why. The Greens are a hopeless jumble of communism and new-age, Mother Nature mumbo-jumbo and the SNP hate the English so much I can virtually feel the hot, toxic saliva dripping from their slavering jaws every time they tell us this. Which leaves Ukip.

I liked Ukip when they were the alternative Tory Party. I like them less now they have so many ex-Labour bottom feeders in tow. But one thing is absolutely for certain and that is without Ukip’s relentless focus on the sheer idiocy of rule from Europe we wouldn’t even be close to having a referendum on our continuing membership. But of course it will be rigged. David Cameron’s supposed ‘re-negotiation’ will be nothing of the kind. Instead we will get meaningless, already agreed and insignificant ‘concessions’, dressed up with the aid of EU bribe money and packaged for sale to the gullible public. The date for the referendum will be ‘whenever we think we can guarantee a yes vote’ and – as a whole – the stupid British public will vote to stay shackled.

If Nike was British...

They’ll say we need to be in the EU to have a voice, to be heard, to have power and influence in the world, to keep our friends and trading partners… to effect any change at all. But look around; I’d say ISIS with apparently few friends and little in the way of an economic base or any coherent policies are doing pretty well. They’ve changed the game; they’ve changed the world. And they’ve done it just by doing it. If we don’t leave the EU they won’t let us go. Only we can do it, nobody else will do it for us. So there you go @Hepworthclare OBE, if you think my defending the notion of saving our little island from a life of desolate subservience is racist, then you’re as much an idiot as your bio suggests. Oh and you and your hero Ed ‘Beaker’ Miliband can just do it... fuck off, that is.

Wednesday, 11 February 2015

Small minded

Small is beautiful, they say. They also say keep it in the family. When we were kids our dad used to protect us from harm. For instance he taught us that the filling in a Cornish pasty was poisonous to small children, so he ate that bit for us, leaving us with that delicious bit of folded pastry at the edge. Exactly the same danger awaited us with all forms of joined-up meat, so he made sure that steaks and chops never displaced the nutritious mince and sausages on our plates. To safeguard our delicate hopes he kindly pointed out, too, that when the ice cream van jingles played it was an announcement that he had run out of all but those nasty, bitter, cheap, raspberry lollies.

It’s easier to command and control a small tribe, when we all know who is who and where everybody’s allegiance lies, but the bigger it grows the greater the potential for dissent. And the kids eventually outgrow parental control, leave home and strike out for independence and individual success. It seems to be the same with business; as a corporation grows, so does its distance from the individual. For every karma-controlled, new-age hippy success that looks after its evangelists there are a thousand lumbering faceless behemoths with a huge turnover of unloved minions.

That facelessness reaches its pinnacle with state-owned monopolies where fat-cattery is high, worker drone malcontent off the scale and accountability nil; at least with private enterprise you can, nominally at least , stop buying what they’re selling. Of course big business is corrupt; even where continued success depends on keeping the buyers sweet the temptation to engage in forming cartels, hiding profits, avoiding tax and posing as a kindly uncle is strong. But even the biggest can and do fail, taking millions of shareholders down with them.

So why do European governments seem so wedded to an essentially failed business model? Did they not see what happened to the former Soviet Union, a union only held together by force and fear? Even within a single British political party the whips only keep a lid on revolt by the gathering of personal and damning information and the use of threats of disclosure against its own members who rely on election to stay in office and favour to stay in post. So why would we imagine a largely unelected legislature, using the apparent democracy of powerless MEPs as cover for ever more enlargement and ever more power, would be a thing we would want?

The only reason the British Chambers of Commerce is calling for an early referendum on EU membership, should the Tories win in May, is that they think the fear and ignorance levels are currently high enough to ensure a vote to stay in. But a delay until 2017 would enable a newly confident, conservative-minded electorate to rally support for an independence bid. Calling for an early ballot is nothing to do with calming market jitters and everything to do with furthering the aims of the big boys; pick your battles, they say.

Back off, Brussels!
Where's George wen you need him?

I have never made a secret of where my loyalties lie. It’s possible an independent Britain might control its borders, police its population appropriately, root out those who use our tolerant ignorance against us and become British again. I want out of the inefficient, wasteful, costly and controlling European Union. Small is not weak, small is human. And why shouldn’t we get to eat the filling, instead of just the pastry?

Friday, 2 January 2015

Europe or the open sea? A fable

The storm approaches and sturdy men lash themselves to masts and spars as they brave The European Seaway, formerly known as the English Channel. Clouds gather, darkening and lowering as, laden with foreboding, they advance on the good ship Great Britain. For millennia great tumults have assaulted our weather-beaten hull but we manage to float on. But now we doubt our ability to sail alone and seek to join a flotilla of uneasy alliances and uncertain allegiances. Assurances our ship’s company will be cared for by our partners are cold comfort but then our numbers no longer function as a crew with a shared mission, so we all keep one eye on the exits.

Crewed by mercenaries, steered this way then that, yet ever closer to that uneasy union and uncertain end, our clear sense of purpose is gone. Being part of something bigger means being a smaller part of that bigger thing and the bigger it gets the more we recede from view. The far-off and foreign land which used to be called Europe now looms large in the captain’s glass as he wonders what course to set. It doesn’t seem to matter very much; in his madness, everywhere he turns he sees only the gaping maw of the relentless great whale pursuing him.

The numbers swell as we pick up drifters and scavengers and allow others to board without question. The ship becomes unstable and with so few who now understand how to sail her she lurches from port to starboard, left to right… until the lookout calls. Nobody listens at first; this Chicken Licken has been warning of danger for years and so far we have ridden every wave, but this time it is different. He points at the great whirlpool astern, into which the ship is being dragged. The morbid fear of all our past masters is now upon us. Instead of making European landfall when we could we dithered and now we face the danger alone.

As the maelstrom drags us away from land and we teeter on the outer rim of the vortex everybody panics. Those who are able seize the lifeboats and strike out alone, leaving the old and sick, the weak and the loyal to make the best of their fate. Certain doom is all they expect, all they have been taught to deserve, and as the revolutions increase and the ship tilts alarmingly to head down to the depths of the ocean they brace themselves for oblivion as Europe disappears beneath their new and shrunken horizon.

The EU - it sucks!
Europe - going down the plughole

With an undramatic bump the ship suddenly arrests its descent and with a small shudder it cants slightly to one side, then all movement ceases. Opening their eyes those who remain on board nervously peer over the gunwales and look down. The last of the water is gurgling down the plughole and HMS Great Britain sits easily, securely and safely on drying land. In the distance, those who took to the lifeboats are stranded and those who actually reached Europe are cut off and forgotten. The fearful and mighty ocean deep of unilateral UK Independence, warned about for years, turns out to have been just a puddle.

Tuesday, 16 December 2014

Coming Clubbing?

Remember singing “If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club.” Or, if you prefer, “I’m in with the in crowd”. It doesn’t matter whether or not Groucho Marx said “I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member” we all really want to belong to something. Whether it’s a family, a church, a cult, an exclusive private members organisation, the jet set, the golf club, even just comfortably fitting into an age group - the justified and ancient – being part of something seems to be a fundamental human desire. Even the Sydney siege-artist appeared to want to be part of something, albeit a murderous, barbarous something which would see the rest of us dead. My club’s better than your club, perhaps?

Clubs have rules and generally you have to abide by them to become a member and continue to abide by them to remain a member. Most people have no problem with this. The more desirable a club, the more stringently it can vet its applicants and the greater the rewards for those who make the grade. As your club’s success becomes visible and unless you actively enforce uniformity, diversity will ensue. Successful companies attract diverse workforces from the cream of the world’s talent; mistaking diversity for the cause of their success is just a trap the left willingly fall for. Over and over again.

They do a lot of that, the left, conflating, concatenating and coming to crap conclusions. And so yesterday, just after the leaking of the ‘don’t talk about immigration’ strategy, Ed Miliband launched his ‘let’s talk about immigration’ pledge. It seems Ed may not even be a part of the inner circle of the club he was elected to lead. And as for his latest offering, criminalising employers for… what, exactly? The Labour spokesthing was crucified by John Humphrys on the Today programme, unable to answer whether a prosecution could be brought for pay discrimination against an immigrant worker paid above the minimum wage. Fag packet politics again, Labour? Come on; you must have one coherent policy at least?

The sudden rush to recognise uncontrolled mass immigration as an issue after years of denial, of trying to paint it pretty, after years of denouncing as racist anybody who dared point out the obvious is pitiful. How about this for a policy: People are dying – quite literally – trying to get into our little exclusive island club; we must be doing something right. So, why can’t we control our membership? This just doesn’t seem like such a tricky principle to grasp; we have something people want, but not enough of it to go around. It strikes me that raising the bar to entry is a no-brainer; funnily enough it seems exactly that amount of brain has been exercised in debating the issue to date.

Can you tell..?
New club memberships available!

And if the EU will not allow us to do just that, doesn’t that tell us everything we need to know about the subjugation of our sovereignty to unelected foreign rule? Why should we give a fig about staying in the EU club when it is quite clearly Europe’s citizens who appear to be queueing up to join ours? I don’t know how much chocolate you prefer, but making that decision for you without your consent would surely be taking the biscuit? 

Thursday, 13 November 2014

All change!

Forgive me, Blogger, for I have sinned. It has been many days since my last rant; I have committed a sin of omission. (Been busy, innit?) Now, where do I start? Did we, or didn’t we ‘halve’ the EU demand for more of ‘our’ dosh? Did we, or didn’t we have a debate on the European arrest warrant? And did we, or didn’t we regain powers to limit benefit receipt by new immigrants to this country? (Hint: We didn’t, we didn’t & we didn’t) Events over the last week or so have only confirmed, to any who would listen, that Westminster is so firmly in thrall to Jean Monnet’s  Federal European Project that without some form of revolution Britain will soon become a mere collection of European regions, if it isn’t already.

But I no longer want a referendum. Michael Portillo is right; the euro-sceptics will lose and then we will be fucked for at least another lost generation or two. But despite hollow promises to reform the EU the intention of all three of the main parties – beyond a very small number of rebels – is for us to remain in the European Union, whatever their ultimate plan for the demise of European nation states. The Conservatives are bought and paid for and Labour has long lost its validity as the party of the working man. Ed Miliband clearly showed that, siding with the CBI over Europe. Why would the CBI not support a movement which gave it unfettered access to the cheapest work force, knowing the state would take up the slack of those unwaged as a result?

And what of the likes of Russell Brand and Owen Jones? Juvenile politics based on wild dreams and unsubstantiated theories, waved on by the flags of a million foot-stamping children who think the world is just not fair? Of course it’s not fair; have you seen humans? Their faux revolution is perfect for the established parties because while it gathers no real momentum and has no policies to speak of, its muddled supporters – the radfems, the loonies, the greens, ‘da kidz'; the fucking idiots in the ‘V’ masks – while they are not squabbling amongst themselves know deep within their anti-corporate souls that UKIP is their enemy because the people who sell them their ‘barista’ coffee, customise their iPhones and sweatshop their tee-shirts have told them so.

Not the bankers. Not royalty. Not the business leaders. Not politicians. Who is going to lead us, anarchists? No, dear Holmes, once you have eliminated the usual, you are left with the inevitable, which brings us to UKIP themselves and the fact that nobody realising quite what they stand for is one of their biggest assets. What UKIP really stands for is very simply ‘none of the above’. The traditional parties’ response to UKIP’s popularity surge? To repeatedly call them ‘populist’, opportunist racists and fruitcakes. Nigel himself could not have dreamed up a better campaign. With every dispossessed voter roundly insulted for even considering the switch is it even surprising that this rebellious surge has not been halted?

Those polls that everybody likes to disregard when they arrive at the ‘wrong’ conclusions? Well, the public on the whole doesn’t have an informed opinion on anything very much until the polls themselves tell them what to think – it’s like propaganda, don’tcha know - and while nobody expects UKIP to have any of the answers to any of the problems, with each upward notch their support grows. You don’t have to be politically engaged to see that nobody knows how to fix the NHS, border control, wages, rents, energy, trade, transport, foreign policy, law and order and any of the other issues that successive government have failed to satisfactorily order, but there is one answer that nobody has yet tried. Leave the EU and see what happens.

It only takes one to topple the lot.
Once one falls, they all fall.

The mere fact that the Europhile failures who have led us for so many years are so desperate to cling onto their posts is evidence enough, in the eyes of many more than just potential UKIP voters that something has to change. In Britain’s parliamentary democracy, such as it is, long-term incumbent governments eventually get thrown out, if only from sheer boredom at the monotony of it all. Why should it be any wonder that people are finally directing their ire at the longest incumbent government of all, the one blamed by every British government, for at least something, since its inception? I don’t want a referendum; I just want out.

Wednesday, 4 June 2014

Hearth and Home

The Nationwide Building Society announced yesterday that house prices had risen by 11% across the UK in the past twelve months. If that’s the case, Mr Nationwide, perhaps you can tell me why my own house is not only worth considerably less than I paid for it eight years ago (despite being fully renovated in that period) but is likely to fetch not a penny more than it would have done last year… or the year before? As always, supposedly ‘national’ statistics are pretty much useless in painting an accurate picture.

It’s like the weather forecast; no matter what the general prognosis, the majority’s experience of specific conditions will differ. In one village an enormous cumulonimbus dumps hundreds of tonnes of the wet stuff in under half an hour while in the next the cricket continues unabated until only the cucumber sandwiches stop play. Similarly, recession or not, companies fail and people are made redundant while others prosper and profit, yet the statistics deal only with aggregated productivity and fail to tell the real stories of the majority of individuals.

What’s my beef? It’s the fact that not only will our own government rarely properly consider and accommodate regional variations, acting instead on overall figures that are representative of almost nobody, but that the EU feels compelled to butt in and do the same. Help to buy has been a real boon to people trying to buy their first house in areas outside central Londonistan yet the commissars are now ‘suggesting’ to Westminster that they take steps to curb this apparent economic bubble by cutting off the only means many people may ever have to own their own home.

How dare the EU, having shown utter profligacy throughout its existence, turn its attention to dictating the detailed policies of supposedly sovereign nations, especially those who thank their lucky stars they didn’t adopt the euro. “Tractor production at an all-time high, comrades. Cease making tractors and divert all resources to bringing in the glorious turnip harvest!” Cue the mighty tractor army of the south-east gathering in a record tonnage of the favourite communist comestible while in the tractor-deprived north the crops rot in the fields. The national statistics show only good news, while in some parts of the country the only growth industries are undertakers and clothes recyclers.

The human rights industry grants rights to criminals whilst denying justice to victims. Discrimination legislation discriminates and criminalises the majority. Employment law puts people out of work. The common agricultural policy makes farming unprofitable and food scarce. Energy policy makes electricity unaffordable, or a luxury item for some. And importing ‘vibrant’ third-world multiculturalism makes no-go areas of our inner cities. For every blue-flagged leisure centre or community outreach hub apparently paid for with ‘EU money’ we have paid IN ten or twenty-fold.

Home sweet hovel
House? Luxury!

We have been ripped off, lied to, insulted, affronted, subjugated and treated as vassals throughout our whole sorry history of association with this shabby ‘communism-lite’ experiment. And still the arguments always spring from an assumption that without the EU nothing good could have come to pass, because whatever successes we do achieve it is easy to turn the passive fact that we are a member into the triumphal and causal claim that it is because we are a member. Just remember all that when your EU-fawning offspring are still eating you out of the family home at the age of 40.

Monday, 2 June 2014

Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it

Does anybody remember who won the local council elections? Surely it has to have been
Labour with a 324 seat gain. The overall picture still puts the Conservatives ahead with 8296 seats overall, but they lost 236 in the election; that’s a comparative gain of 560 seats by Labour. So it’s no wonder the Tories have been quiet about it all, allowing UKIP to take the limelight a little over the subsequent Euro elections; burying bad news, so to speak. My thanks to the always interesting Peter Hitchens for highlighting this.

His blog neatly sums up how tricky it is to separate fact from fiction in politics and indeed even in the news. If you have an area of intellectual expertise – the law, technology, business, the sciences – you already know how the newspapers are almost universally incapable of relaying the truth to their readers. And even worse, they indulge our confirmation bias with astonishing brazenness. Thus the planning of a new wind turbine is either: a harmful attack on people’s health and sanity (Daily Mail) a progressive and necessary step towards fuel sustainability (Guardian) lining the back pockets of Britain’s parasitic land-owning classes (Socialist Worker) or a new holy temple of enlightenment and salvation (Green Party News).

There is no real place for the truth in all of this as there is no such thing as the truth when it comes to politics. Oh, there are facts all right, but facts are difficult and often need specialist knowledge (we used to call it education) to analyse them. Raw data can be difficult to discover and even more difficult to convert into meaning and even in the supposedly open information exchange of the internet most of us rely on others to do the donkey work. My blog for instance, is always written from my own perspective of what is right and wrong and while obviously always showing the one true path, might not be to everybody’s taste.

So the next few years are going to be really interesting. Let’s assume that whoever wins the general election next year will have had to offer some form of referendum on our membership, or otherwise, of the European Union. Like our party political system there are die-hard Europhiles and Europhobes whose minds will not be changed, but the opinions of probably half the electorate are up for grabs. How are they going to be able to decide which way to vote? And I’m serious about this; whose version of ‘the truth’ will they go with?

Them 'as wants' to stay in the EU have years of momentum on their side. The project rumbles on, crushing all in its path and nobody dares challenge the received wisdom that we are better off on the train pissing out than running along the platform trying to piss in. But who said we needed to piss in, or on, anything anyway? Some supposedly foregone conclusions are nothing of the sort yet remain unchallenged.

They say that Britain couldn’t survive without immigration. They say our coffee shops would grind to a halt, our offices would never get cleaned, cars never get made and crops never get picked if we had to rely on British workers. What on earth did we do for the thousands of years BEFORE the EU then? It’s only because successive socialist-inclined governments over the last half century have allowed our values to be steadily eroded and have taken easier options – easier for them. Instead of doing the hard things – maintaining or improving education, guarding morals against a rising tide of laissez-faire, do-what-you-like individualism, instilling civic pride and a healthy level of patriotism and yes, putting Britain and the British first.

Oh it’s all very old-fashioned, I know, especially with the seductive myths of happy multicultural diversity and all that shite, but those who make policy have almost exclusively NEVER had to suffer the consequences. Even those politicians from relatively humble backgrounds know that having risen to cabinet level it is unthinkable that they will ever have to return to the type of lives the greater majority of their constituents put up with. I still believe it is up to the individual to make their own way in life, but if government has one purpose, surely it is to protect the environment that makes aspiration achievable.

What if, unencumbered by EU regulation and socio-political group-think, Britain could home-grow and train, as we used to, the very best in the world? What if life outside the tired, old union sluggard is not mere survival but confident and successful and vibrant and the UK has in its grasp the possibility of becoming a world powerhouse again? Yesterday’s ‘The Big Questions’ single enquiry was “Is there life after death” and despite all the confident assertions, nobody really had any truthful answers. Nobody knows until they go and there wasn’t one audience member who had actually come back from the dead to tell us what lies beyond.

Brexit or bust?
Brexit or bust?

Well as sure as eggs is eggs the European Union will, like all administrations, run its course and decline into obscurity. Indeed, we may already have witnessed its early heart attacks. Nobody knows what awaits our part of the world after the EU shuffles off its mortal coil and joins the choir-invisible and it’s certain that nobody in the here and now can say. Independence might not only be new and interesting and exciting, it might be the start of a whole new global success story, but one thing IS for sure. If we don’t try it we’ll never know. 

Saturday, 31 May 2014

Don’t even think about it

Remind me, again, of the relevance of John Major? All of a sudden the dinosaurs are being wheeled out to warn of the murky waters beyond the known world, the leviathans that lurk where the charts end and the deep, dark seas of despair that await all who would venture beyond the maternal embrace of Mother Europe. Ken Clarke, of course, never went away, but it seems that his constant insistence that life outside Europe would be a geo-political death sentence is no longer enough.

What the grey man said was that a British departure was unthinkable, by which he meant a waggy fingered “Don’t even think about it.” He even used that form of words on Radio 4 yesterday morning. Furthermore he insisted that David Cameron would emerge triumphant from reform negotiations and we would all move forward in harmony and peace and prosperity. I thought it was interesting how he was happy to predict the positive outcome of a process that has always failed in the past, yet utterly denounced the possibility that an independent Britain might not only survive but thrive, free from its Eurochains.

As evidence of Cameron’s statesmanlike stature Major cited his supposed negotiated reduction in the EU budget over a year ago, which fabricated victory was not only effectively rebuffed by every analyst in the land at the time, but has also been comprehensively trashed by last week’s demand for a half-billion quid more from British coffers. It’s fitting that the best example he could offer of Britain’s negotiating power was an abject failure to negotiate a single thing of substance.

If you want more examples just look at forty years progressive loss of sovereignty despite all the promises and posturing. “Up yours, Delors”? Don’t make me laugh. The EU institutions ride contemptuously roughshod over the wishes of formerly independent nations and the best that those nations’ leaders can offer is to repeat John Major’s advice “don’t even think about it”. But the prospects for a Britain outside the EU is exactly what we should be thinking about. And thinking about it long and hard and often and openly.

Because, if we don’t, there will be nothing to debate come a possible 2017 referendum. If people quietly lie down and “don’t even think about it” we will have a referendum that effectively asks you to choose between a well-rehearsed and heavily-funded ‘IN’ position which has been quietly propagandising for years with fearful predictions for calamity on Brexit, and a poorly researched ‘OUT’ campaign that asks you to vote on a gut feeling that we might be better off out. The in campaign needs no evidence, its job has already been done, but the out camp needs to do some real leg work to counter the non-arguments of the ardent Europhiles.

Be brave, be for Brexit
Be brave, be for Brexit

Whether your doubts are based on the loss of control of our national borders and laws, or the detachment and indifference of the political establishment; whether your antipathy for the EU is based on the over-regulation of your thoughts and actions; or whether you oppose major policies on energy, climate, economics and trade, if you want a genuinely informed and fair ballot the OUT lobby has to offer a viable vision of Britain outside the EU. If it doesn’t, the vote will go only one, predictable way and we will be dragged, not even screaming, deeper into a mongrel country called Europe. I don’t even want to think about that.

Wednesday, 30 April 2014

Voting Rights

How can anybody hope to vote ‘the right way’? If Twitter is any guide – and in the new connected world we keep hearing about it must surely be representative of those who HAVE an opinion – it is unlikely. Given that most opinions are deeply embedded, formed from an agglomeration of our background and our experiences and our flocking with birds of similar plumage, entrenched views can be hard to shift. It is doubly difficult given that we filter even relatively dispassionate news reporting through our own biased mindset. But how are we to process the news that UKIP is to be condemned by a cross-party alliance for running a 'racist' campaign?

Really? Farage’s Army is so evil that only a concerted campaign by parties normally at war with each other can possibly stop them? Disaffected ex-Labour and Conservative voters are actually The Nazis now? I seem to recall the union rallies of the 1970s and 80s having far more in common with Goebbels’ dogma chanting mobs than the KIPpers’ cheerful gatherings in homely pubs. And see how easily people believe what they WANT to believe. Reaction to a recent distorted story about Roger Helmer was visceral; the story taken at face value and people expressing disgust rather than incredulity. I doubt that many bothered to read his rebuttal.

So your mind is made up? Forget the policies and concentrate on one emotive thing - opposition to uncontrolled immigration is purely racist and not prompted by any economic argument. Inward migration of low-skilled workers – despite all logic – is unremittingly good, essential even? Odd then, that a newspaper that has often been called racist itself, but has also happily headlined spurious examples of racism, today carries the news that 150,000 EU migrants effectively pay no tax at all and many others are a net drain on UK taxpayers. (I may have pointed this out a few hundred times before.)

As a sovereign island nation we've never been fully comfortable with the notion of being European and even after forty years of EU membership there is a vague fifty-fifty split for IN or OUT, but based on what? For almost certainly the majority of UK citizens it would make no immediate difference but the machine is on the move to claim their minds. The current spin – recently adopted by a variety of otherwise antipathetic ideologues – is that for all those years we have only ever heard bad things and not enough has been done by the pro-debate to illustrate the benefits. This is of course code for “We've had a meeting and realised we may be losing the argument, so we've decided what you need to be told. But sod facts, we know you’re not good with facts; we’re going to stick with unquantifiable emotive stuff like racism.”

Why do I want out of the EU federal projekt? Quite simply because I have little enough faith in our own elected representatives to tell the truth, but at least we have a slight chance of rattling their cages every five years. The EU is largely run – and very expensively at that – by hordes of unknowns, many of them with solid socialist and even communist credentials and with absolutely no interest in the unique concerns of the UK. I want control of our national interests entirely within our borders. And that’s it. A fully accountable UK government; one we can change if they don’t perform.

Snack time in the EU - is this what you want?

So, what’s to be done? The truth will never gain what they now call ‘traction’ so in a dirty war of words, what trumps racism? I’m pretty sure a bit of inventive spinning and media distortion could easily portray Van Rompuy as looking like a low-grade paedophile. And Martin Shulz could be rumoured to be a coprophiliac – a charge oft-levelled at a certain former German leader. With a knowing wink we could say, “allegations are unproven” and thereby firmly plant the notion that a vote for the EU is vote to be ruled by a bunch of Nazi, shit-eating, kiddy-fiddling perverts… and foreigners to boot. 

Monday, 21 April 2014

Seasonal Adjustments

Twitter seems to have spent the entire Easter weekend going on about food banks, the Trussell Trust’s insistence that almost a million people rely on them to eat and the Daily Mail’s low tech ‘exposé’ of the relative ease with which they can be abused. Lots of name calling on all sides, as you would expect, but never a plea for common sense. This is how everything works today, it appears, ideological battles waged across the interweb while in reality nothing changes. Look, if people really ARE starving, where are all the reports of pantry burglaries and the hijacking of food trucks? With the exception of well-organised imported street begging, where are our indigenous beggars on every corner? And where are all these starving people housed and entertained; where are the resettlement camps and municipal soup kitchens? It’s poverty Jim, but not as we know it.

Browsing about I stumbled upon this article by Midlands UKIP MEP Roger Helmer about the way the simplest truths can be distorted. Put aside your automatic - and largely media-driven - abhorrence for a minute and have a read; it’s really rather illustrative of the mores of the mainstream media who know that people make up their mind based on headlines and captions rather than any detailed understanding of the issues, the facts, or their own common sense.

So I’m wondering what the manipulated masses will make of news that the EU has recently set up a Ministry of Weather. Pretty chancy even by their record, this is on top of the whole climate change industry which, as Roger’s blog makes clear, currently spends its time working out ways of making energy as expensive as possible. The Weather Commissioner, or to give him his full title Commissioner for Daylight, Precipitation and Air Quality, is an unelected and (at just over £220,000 per annum) highly paid official who is also a former crony of EU President José Manuel Barroso. As he has absolutely no power whatsoever to alter the weather it has to be asked just how, exactly, will he spend his days in office?

Well, contrary to expectations the department has actually been pretty busy and after consultation with the currently independent meteorological services of the member nations a number of reports have been issued and proposals drafted. The Commissioner obviously can’t change the weather but he has done - in the eyes of the EU - the next best thing and codified it. With immediate effect actual day to day weather summaries will be passed to the database and compared with seasonal norms. And any weather patterns falling outside those seasonal norms will be subject to sanctions. In the UK for instance, both last year’s exceptionally sunny summer and this year’s heavy rainfall would have attracted hefty fines.

Much of the EU’s legislative workload is taken up by this sort of crap, with penalties levied for transgressions over which member states have little or no control. For instance, did you know that on top of having to accommodate our high immigration intake we are effectively fined for exceeding certain unfixed quotas? So on the one hand we must bear the infrastructure and subsequent welfare costs of uncontrolled immigration and on the other we must compensate those countries from where the immigrants originate for their loss of skilled workers. And on top of all that they just banned Milk of Magnesia for having too much milk of magnesia in it.

Wild Weather? That'll be £50k a day!

Of course, the EU does things like this every working day of the year and so much of what we formerly took as freedoms are being corralled into the EU pen to be controlled that we just can’t keep up. People notice things like the Milk of Magnesia story because sooner or later somebody points out its absence. But it’s unsurprising you have heard nothing about the weather business for two reasons. The first is that while the EU likes to spend lots of cash propagandising its supposed benefits it doesn’t trumpet the myriad petty rulings that spew from its chambers every day.

The second reason is that I just invented it. But how could you have known? Research (that I once again just invented) shows that most news is accepted at face value; instead of challenging the truth of it or querying the source it’s so much easier to just adopt a position. Hands up all those who already formed an opinion about it?