I'd like to teach the world to sing...

The syrupy tones of The New Seekers fades into the distance as, holding hand in hand, they bring love and peace to the world via the medium of Coca-Cola. Actually, the song and the advertisement pre-date the 1971 hit single, but that isn't important; as always, what's important is the message.

Harmony, they sang, why can't we all get along? If we all did things the same way, if our weights and measures were harmonised, a component made in one country would easily integrate with a machine made elsewhere. If Frankfurter's bolt could slide easily into Nancy's nut we'd all get along, side by side, top to tail, hand in hand, gland in gland.

And if industry, they argued, why not our infrastructure; strategic, political and economic? Hey, here's a plan, let's all use the same money! Of course. It's so much easier to quantify a trade deficit without all that messy currency converting to distort the figures. Oh, and, talking of money, harmonisation doesn't come cheap, you know. Cough up. (Cough up? At the cost of our membership I'm coughing up a lung here!)

Regional variation? You must be kidding! Local produce? Give over! Cornish Pasties, Melton Mowbray pies, Yorkshire pudding; they'll all have to go. In the future we'll have standardised, normalised, harmonised, homogenised Euro-fodder. Victory Pie will become Glorious Project Pie. Coronation Chicken will become Rompuy's Delight (contains traces of chicken) and Upside Down Cake will be, well, it will be just the approved standard cake.

If we could get people to be "shorter in height we could fit twice as many in the same building site; you'll see it's all right." (For any youngsters who click on that link; don't worry, music was LIKE that in the olden days.) Hey, we could even harmonise our terrorists. In the future they will all come with an eye patch and a hook-hand, so we can spot them in a crowd - although this didn't seem to work in the UK when trialled over the last two decades.

Standardised, homogenised Euro-pattern terrorist

David Cameron has said a referendum on Europe is not a priority. It seems we're on our own then. So, join with me. If we all hold hands and huff and puff hard enough we can blow down the house of cards, we can blow the dark, Satanic Euro-windfarms back to Deutschland and we can turn back the tides... or suffer hernias in the process. Were else does the wind go when you strain too hard? Oh yes, Europe - Blow it out your arse!

Acute angina? Thank you very much!

Apologies to regular readers for the paucity of posts thus far this week; there's nothing like a day in the Acute Medical Unit to focus the mind on the important issues of the day. Thank goodness I had the presence of mind to take my Kindle along as I was rushed into an assessment which took the best part of a day, on and off.

Actually, rushed is a tad specious, as it took four days of discomfort and a bit of nagging from somebody-who-knows-better before I deigned to allow the NHS to confirm my diagnosis. In fairness they were all very thorough, patient[sic] and courteous, batting aside my concerns that I was wasting their time and my entreaties that I was only there because I was nagged. The diagnosis? Indigestion... we think.

So, there's nothing to see here, move along the corridor smartly and try to avoid staring at the mad-haired Scots lady trying to manoeuvre a fag past her nasal oxygen cannula whilst reciting... well, it could be anything really, it's in Scottish. Avert your eyes, also, from the grossly be-tattooed, multiply pierced, heavily pregnant teenager and her attendant posse of identically clothed 'individuals' - they're the future, they've got rights, you know. (There should be an exam, really there should.)

With all due respect for the long-suffering staff, the last place you want to be if you're ill is in a hospital. But I'm not, so it's all good. And I did get to put in a spot of reading. Whatever you think of UKIP and in particular, Nigel Farage, you can't deny he has to be one of the most colourful and charismatic politicians out there, right now. In the AMU I was reading Flying Free, his engaging memoir in which he sets out his stall for a retrenchment, at the very least, of our role in Europe.

I've blogged about Europe before; about how I was just one year too young to make my feelings known in 1975; about how I never trusted the shifty Ted Heath and about how I have yet to hear a single fact-supported argument for the travesty of democracy that is the European Union. Nigel's book pointed me at a number of avenues for further research and I append a few links below.

But I don't need to 'do the math' as they say. I don't need to study dry old economic theories and European war histories. I don't need to peruse a balance sheet of pros and cons.I don't need to do any of those things to know that Europe is pure poison. Free movement of people across borders? I used to have that anyway; it was called a British Passport. In fact, even as a post-war, post-empire nation, Britain had far more respect and possibilities than we will ever have again if the spectre of costly, corrosive, creeping Euro-Everything is not halted.

And just as against the Nazis - whose European ambitions were so close to those of the EU Commissioners - the English Channel is a natural border between the European mainland and the last free country this side of the Atlantic. All you need to know about the three main parties is that not one of them has made any serious noise about withdrawing from Europe. What they have all been complicit in is handing over ever more power  while flatly denying it.

Now I'm not saying that UKIP is the answer to all our ills, but surely a party willing to draw the line has to be a better bet than all the governments willing to hand over £19.2bn per year, or if you prefer, £53m per day, to the unelected, unimpeachable, bureaucratic nightmare of Brussels.

Yeah. Fuck you, Britain!

If you have a spare hour, have a read/watch of some of these:

http://www.ukipmeps.org/uploads/file/ReferendumStichUp.pdf

http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-news/2777-nigels-birmingham-speech

http://campaignfortruth.com/CTE/realfaceinfo.htm

http://www.forvik.com/index.php/documents/the-eu

See you at the referendum!

An iPhone a day

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, they say, don't they? But right now Apple's blatant built-in-obsolescence marketing model is getting social media all a-froth with indignant mentalists, simultaneously complaining about, yet defending to the death, their whiter than white fetish. Bi-polar syndrome being the lunacy of choice for the discerning Internetter, an Apple announcement a day does much to keep the head-doctors way into 45% tax territory.

One shiny-new iPhone, sir? That's seven-hundred quid and a subscription to The Priory. Or, save yourself the cost of a new bit of kit and simply update your old phone to iOS 6. The price? Free. The cost? Loss of your marbles after an entire weekend spent failing to recover all the stuff you think you can't live without.

In reality it's all bollocks though, isn't it? Apple or Android, almost nobody does more than a tiny fraction of what may be possible. If you use your iThing for music or media you have to recharge it every five minutes and if you try to use it for 'work' you will simply become deranged as your whole intellectual ability tries to tunnel-vision its way onto that tiny screen. Narrow focus; narrow vision; narrow productivity... narrow life possibilities.

Don't even attempt to convince me otherwise. 99% of all smartphone owners use them exclusively for email, messaging, Twitter and the occasional Google search. Apps, you say; it's all about the Apps. Pardon my French, but is it fuck. Apps are what we used to call... now, what was the word?... Oh yes - toys. For every useful app there are a thousand useless, buggy betas, alternatively crashing and freezing their way into the very core of your mental well-being. (I predict a whole new skein of entitlement-based, application-induced insanities to make merry work for the nut-docs.)

Even the pub - once the balance-restoring (or removing; there is that) social haven of happy babble - is now a sterile, strife-inducing continuation of the desperate need to stay in touch with everybody, everywhere, all of the time. The sight of a table of four friends all sitting, eyes-down and thumbs a-blur, is a depressing indictment of the way in which social technology is eroding, not enhancing your all-too-brief experience in this vale of tears we call Earth.

So, wake up and smell the Java, Joe! Get up off your collective backsides and get out into the real world while it and you are still in one piece. Forego the Facebook, get off the Google and avoid the apps! Now, excuse me while I check my Twitter timeline...

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?

Crime and Punishment

Medieval Islamo-Fascists rising up and murdering innocent people because they can’t take a joke. The premeditated murder of two women police officers in Manchester by a known, armed thug. And Nick Clegg’s clumsily timed apology. These are all symptoms of a worldwide failure to address tough problems. 

Predictably, in the aftermath there are debates about routinely arming the British Police, bringing back death as a punishment and, possibly the strongest felt of all, sacking Nick Clegg. 

It is often said that the mark of a civilised society is tolerance and forgiveness. Jesus is regularly quoted as recommending turning the other cheek, as if the fictional words of a hallucinating Arab cannot be bettered two thousand years on. (But what would Jesus do about Nick Clegg?) 

A better mark of a civilised society is one where order prevails, opportunity abounds and living standards are high. And a line is drawn in the sand beyond which aberrant behaviour is no longer tolerated or excused. Turn the other cheek to a rabid Islamist and he’ll take that as a mark of victory. 

Similarly the gun crime culture seen in most of our major cities is a sign that our society’s checks and balances are not enough. That shoring up the breaches is insufficient protection against the barbarians outside. Britain and its interests are under violent siege, because the Jihadis and the gangstas will not be stopped by words. Mere words, as is evident, just make them worse; 'cos you is dissing dem, innit? 

The death penalty does NOT make us as bad as them. The death penalty is NOT state-sanctioned murder. It is a reasoned, last resort to a problem that words and jail sentences will not prevent. The deliberate, planned taking of innocent lives in the interests of crime or religion is the work of primitive hind-brain driven savages. The strategic, judicial use of execution is an advanced civilisation’s way of lancing the boil.

Dead man walking

Talking of which leads us neatly on to the pimple that is Nick Clegg. Hollow words make up the bulk of Lib Dem rhetoric. Powerless out of office; useless in office. It makes no difference what happens to Clegg. Nobody will notice. Nick Who?