Chuggers

Charity. Begins at home, by all accounts. And an Englishman’s home is his castle, yes? Ipso facto my charity is in my gift and I get to choose on whom it is bestowed. If that’s not the case, if I am required to give, it is no longer charity but an imposition. I have spent a long time amassing the nothing that I’ve got. It’s just about enough to allow me not to have to rely on others, which is all I’ve ever really wanted. But to give to others what you decide is my duty, you would take from me the most precious thing I possess? Angela Merkel seems to think so.

Charities here at home have been badgering old and sick and senile people into an earlier grave by guilt-tripping them into giving everything they have. Plenty of recent cases show the extreme lengths to which large charities, whose executives often earn fortunes, abuse their status. When charity becomes an industry competing for alms they act no better than the chuggers on street corners, badgering people about whom they know nothing to resort to evasion when they may otherwise have offered a few pennies voluntarily. Aggressive charity – and I include Comic Relief and its imitators, here – is no charity at all.

No man is an island, they say, but Paul Simon sang otherwise. The melancholy solitude of which he crooned was no self-pitying cry for companionship but a longed-for release from the strain of human relationships. I am a rock; I am an island. And so is Britain, and a significant part of our national character is shaped by that geographical accident. It is utter rubbish to talk of Britain being a nation of immigrants, as if we have always allowed anybody to enter without challenge, when in reality our solid sense of identity was largely as a result of our jealously guarded coastal borders and a resistance to rapid change.

Refuge, yes; if our near neighbours with which we share much history and lineage were in deep trouble we would open our arms and give generously of our resources to shelter them until they could return home. But to be aggressively bullied into letting people whose entire heritage is at odds with our values cross the whole of Europe and set up home here forever? Mobs of militant migrants in Budapest chanting the name of the country they wish to ‘take refuge’ in doesn’t smack so much of desperation than demand. Are they not safe in Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Croatia, Austria...? Or are Germany, France Sweden and the UK the only countries with rich enough pickings?

The plain facts are that a majority of most western European populations are already suspicious, if not fearful, of the changes created by the EU’s open borders. We did not ask for any of this and the prospect of further hundreds of thousands of unknown and mostly muslim immigrants flooding in and overwhelming services already past their optimal capacity is unedifying. We know what happens to an area when too many newcomers arrive too quickly and we have plenty enough uncontrollable ghettoes already. How long before these become lawless, armed, police no-go islands of their own, re-creating the very same sort of regimes they fled from?

Merkel, solving 'the English problem'.

We would not be helping refugees escape persecution - they did that when they crossed over into Turkey - we would be importing the means of our own decline. Resentment towards immigrants, even those we invited, is at a level I have never seen before in my life. Ordering us to be charitable towards them is like shaking a Shelter begging tin in our faces just after we have been mugged by a street dweller. Charity begins at home, Frau Merkel and an Englishman’s home is his castle, so excuse us if we pull up the drawbridge and politely ask you to fuck right off.

Say again?

I am no enemy of ‘green’ technologies. I say ‘green’ in quotes because it’s rare that we use any of the Earth’s resources in ways that are truly wise and don’t have an overall negative impact on somebody along the way. Often, Green proponents are dreamers, just as hell-bent as other causes on forcing their policies on those who don’t agree and rarely managing to make a real case. But, if there IS a case for using a low-impact energy source, I’m all for it.

This weekend a story about EU green energy policy caught my eye: Apparently, David Cameron backs the EU's grand design for energy. I’m not entirely sure what his backing of that ‘grand design’ really means, so I am inclined to try and find somebody who really knows. But I know that’s not going to be possible; nobody with interests in the green energy industry will tell you the objective truth. 

Some of you know that I teach electricians for a living. They don't, in the main, understand what electricity really is, how it does what it does and alarmingly, how to make it safe. Although they may do an excellent job of repeating what they have been shown, they REALLY don't understand generation, transmission or storage of electricity. So there’s no point in you asking an electrician. 

David Cameron won’t have asked any electricians either. Neither will he have consulted any engineers, because politics and cold hard facts just don’t mix. No, he will have been advised by ‘advisors’ (again, in quotes) and who will those advisors ALWAYS turn out to have been? That’s right, lobbyists for the technologies they promote… Directors of ‘green’ technology companies, or their willing dupes. 

Humans are on record as being profligate, poor decision-makers. We barely listen to the arguments and then return to our knee-jerk first choice. Or we work out we can’t afford that car/jewellery/suit/suite… and buy it anyway. It’s partly because our true nature is reactive, rather than contemplative, but even so that’s hardly an excuse in government. 

With my sparkies I tell them, tell them again, get them to repeat it several times, then tell them again. Then when I ask them what I just told them they often reply, “Sorry, what?” It’s the calculators in primary school argument all over again; there is no substitute for hard graft and if you don’t grasp the fundamentals you just aren’t ready for the rest. 

A politician is unlikely to be able to grasp the technical principles behind policies he is being lobbied to promote. But he can at least ask again. And then again and again until that chink of light appears. 

So, Mr Cameron, before you engage in yet more unnecessary spending of money we can’t afford in pursuit of ideals we generally don’t hold, achieved by means we don’t really understand and making profits for anybody but us, you might want to hang on to this handy crib-sheet of questions for the green lobbyists:

DOES it work? HOW does it work? Can you PROVE to me that it works? How much will it COST in total to set up? How long will it last? What will it save? If it doesn’t save anything, why should we consider it? How many jobs will be lost? How many of the jobs created will go to British workers? Can you prove all of that? If not, why are you here? Now, tell me again why you’re asking for public money? If it’s as good as you claim it is, surely you can get private funding? Next! 

Next... Ah yes, the European Union. Tell me Mrs Merkel, “DOES it work? HOW does it work? Can you PROVE to me that it works? How much will it COST?...”

Europe, in or out?

A very easy decision to make? Or a logistical nightmare?

Politicians afraid of making decisions will lead you to believe the latter. So much of this or that is dependent on European stuff an' t'ing. If we pull out we risk exclusion and worse. Our trade will be affected, our world standing will be eroded... will we sink forever or just thrash about in the shallow end? How will we feed ourselves, defend ourselves, feel good about ourselves?

The plain and simple answer is right there in the midst of that thrashing about, shilly-shallying and dilly-dallying like a procrastinator's wet dream. The time is not right, they say. It's what they've always said. If you put off until the day after tomorrow what you should have done the day before yesterday, pretty soon it's the middle of next week and before long a month of Mondays has passed you by like the flicking corners of a school exercise book stick-man cartoon and you're starting all over again on page one.

Sometimes (often) it is far better to make a decision and live with the consequences than to agonise about whether to make the decision at all. Occasionally procrastination is fortuitous - wait long enough and the problem goes away. But Europe isn't going anywhere and for better or for worse it has declared its hand. The Nazis Eurocrats want nothing less than a fully fledged Federal Superstate.

~~> And we don't. <~~ 

Right there. There's your answer.

We don't want what Rompuy wants, what Barroso wants, what Merkel wants.We don't want to be involved with it and we don't want it imposed on us. The only real option is out, right out and stay out. Daniel Hannan has been pushing and prodding at this for yonks; it's about time somebody listened.

Britain on its own would have no hiding place, nobody else to blame, nobody to pick up the tab, nobody else to bail out. We could stand on our own two feet, as we have for centuries. Britain on its own could finally start to make a real difference for its people, unshackled by the Über-Socialism of an aspirationally challenged European Juggernaut. (Did you ever notice how much German you need to describe Europe?)

If only we had what the balls for it.

All Prime Ministers want to leave a legacy but few of them have a real choice in what that legacy is. David Cameron has a real opportunity here to do the right thing for Britain and be remembered, possibly even revered, as a deliverer. Churchill saved us from the Nazis, Cameron could save us from their natural successors. Gotta be worth a punt, eh, Shiny Dave?

Or shall we put off the procrastination for another day?

Marathon Man

That the sacred Olympic flame sputtered and died before it could light the torch last week might be seen as a prophetic sooth for Greece itself.

Stock markets tumble yet again as Hellene stumbles in her marathon, brought to her knees by greed and corruption and the utterly fraudulent behaviour of the Eurocrats. Unable to form a government - wrong answer from the first vote - the bewildered electorate are going to be asked to vote again. In the cradle of democracy, democracy is being asked to fix something it isn't able to do.

As other people's money pours in to the bottomless pit that is Euro-wide false accounting, the politicians appeal on platforms built from the answer they seek , rather than the answer they need. Wrong answer? We'll keep asking until we get the number we already thought of. But the people don't have the answer. If they did and if the elected ones allowed, we'd all be celebrating blue skies and a return to sanity.

Instead, the politicos are wedded to a future they appear to have no control over and little faith in, yet they universally feel incapable of acting in the interests of their countrymen. The European monster lumbers on and on, making its own mythology and  lurching into ever deeper crisis while the voice of the populace goes unheard.

While the world predicts the utter collapse of European democracy, the inquisitor Angela Merkel and her cabal will persist in asking Greece - and then others -  the same question,over and over again, until the exhausted demos gives them the answer they want to hear. "Is it safe?"