Friday, October 29, 2010

CAMERON DECEIVES HIS PEOPLE

THE EU ARE ASKING, NAY, DEMANDING, A BUDGETARY INCREASE. Our feted emperors who govern us from Brussels, and whose powers are such that they now render the election of national governments’ meaningless, are now insisting upon an annual increase of between 2.9%  and 6%. The lower figure would require from the British taxpayer an additional cost of £450 million; while the larger percentage increase would require an annual enhancement of £900 million. It should come as little surprise that the larger figure has been conjured up by the EU’s parliamentarians, whose gravy train needs to be kept well oiled and running exorbitantly, because of our European representatives prodigious craving for ever greater financial entitlements.
            Our Coalition has had to make demands upon the British people, and those demands represent a litany of financial constraints and sacrifices. Every department of state, we are told, has to make savings of up to 20%: our defence budget, for instance, will be eviscerated to the point where, somewhat comically, our aircraft carriers will be missing their one vital component – aircraft.
            The public sector faces job losses of 800,000 people; while the welfare budget faces a somewhat innovative attack from the Coalition that seeks to remove all of the parasitic barnacles from its vast hulk.
            Sacrifice on a vast scale will therefore be required, and may result in street protests that will challenge the authority and determination of the Coalition to see their “project” for the nation’s economical recovery through to a satisfactory conclusion.
            Our budget deficit of £170 billion has and will continue to exact its price  on future generations until it is eliminated from this island’s economic history.

SO HOW CAN DAVID CAMERON, under such circumstances demanded by his Coalition, justify any kind of increase to our contribution to the EU budget?
            If the British people have to face such belt tightening that it leads to our ineffectiveness to defend ourselves, then why should we give a penny extra to the European Union? It only makes sense if all of the mainstream political parties have a hidden agenda - to be part of  a European Federalist State .
            This I fear is the journey our politicians, from all parties, have set this nation’s compass too. Cameron will demand the freezing of Europe’s budgetary increase, but will settle upon a compromise of 2.9% and treat it as a victory. Such is the meandering ebbs and flows of the strategy that seeks ultimately, to give birth to a Federal Europe.
            The modern Conservatives under David Cameron will go through the rhetorical motions of nationhood for the sake of his party’s history; a history that Cameron uses for his own purpose in order to retain power. But Cameron is as much a European Federalist as any other mainstream political party.
            The EU budget should, at the very least be frozen if not, like all national budgets, be cut.  We elected this coalition to look after our nation’s interests, and in so doing we are about to be made to pay for the good times. We knew and understood at the last election that whoever was elected would have to tackle the deficit, and we the people knew what this would mean. What we never envisaged was that, given such conditions, our government would increase the number of carriages on the European gravy train.
            If, as I suspect, Cameron agrees to a 2.9% increase to the budget, it will amount to yet another betrayal following on the heels of MP’s expenses. For what will the extra £450 million per annum be spent on? How much of it will, for instance be distributed among  MEPs and bureaucrats to enhance their pensions and salary increases?
            The EU accounts have never been signed off. Corruption abounds; European tax payers money is removed from their wallets at the blink of a pickpockets eye, and the European public, I would like to suggest, remains mystified; but this implies that the European taxpayer has any inkling of what is going on; or, if they do, do they really care? If they did care, then those commissioners would not have the audacity to demand any kind of increase; and our national leaders would not countenance such a demand.
            At least if Cameron had said no to any increase, then the £450 million saved could have at least put aircraft on our carriers and aided in the defence of our nation, instead of lining the pockets of both the unelected as well as the elected, but politically spayed MEPs.
            While the Brussels’ bureaucrats continue to build their palaces, the ordinary European citizen must sacrifice a large part of their and their children’s futures. The people will tolerate sacrifice, but I hope they will not tolerate unfairness.
            Any kind of increase to the EU’s budget cannot under any meaning of the word, be classed as a victory by David Cameron, and will hopefully be seen as iniquitous by the taxpayer.
            

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Assange’s WikiLeaks

THE LEAKING OF SECRET GOVERNMENT INFORMATION and plastering it all over the internet for the delectation of political nerds, as well as a country’s enemies (both of whom may benefit by the intelligence it gives them), may be seen by those who release such salacious material as an act representing the public good.
            The cry of ‘the public interest’ has acted as an adrenalin rush for journalists throughout the ages. In a democracy such a war cry is almost without challenge; for where democracy exists there can be only one interest and that is that of the public: and if the politicians put forward another interest – that of the nation  - those like the WikiLeakers pour scorn on such a notion by brandishing the 400,000 documents that, they say, renders the national interest an excuse for torture, dissembling and outright contempt for democracy.
            In the by now, well matured age of 15 minutes of fame, the man from WikiLeaks, Julian Assange,  is enjoying his moment. Having assembled around him a cornucopian array of the very best from liberal journalism, from the New York Times, the Guardian and the Independent  (the natural  allies of anything or anyone that attacks free market capitalism), Mr Assange has managed to ferment debate, and even invite on board those sections of conservative opinion that have an aversion to America, such as some of those writing for the Daily Mail.

WIKILEAKS LATEST disclosures will, I suggest, change very little the opinion of Great Britain. Whatever the West got up to in Iraq, the public, that great mass that so easily overpowers liberal sentiment in terms of their numbers, rightly concludes that in order to beat a ruthless enemy that lives so comfortably outside of the Geneva Convention, we must also depart from the convention’s ideals in order to defeat the greatest threat to Western democracy since Hitler: and in order to defeat this particular tyrant we need do what it is necessary to do; but was rightly needed to be done in secret, until, that is, WikiLeak credulously believed itself to be working in the public interest
            During the Second World War we bombed German cities and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, and in so doing , at a loss of over 70,000 of our own pilots, we adopted the military strategy that our enemy at the time used against country after country in Europe. In so doing, did this turn us into fascists? Of course not. When a democracy is confronted by such a ruthless enemy then ruthlessness is a democracy’s only defence if it is to survive and overcome an enemy.
            The Geneva Convention was signed up to by the Western democracies. Saddam Hussein however saw such a restriction as a challenge to his authority in Iraq; it was an insult. He ignored completely the Geneva convention regarding his own nation. He poured scorn upon the West through their embargos, until it was left with no other choice but to act militarily. For it mattered very little to Saddam how many of his people suffered, either under his own rule, or under the West’s attempts to liberate his people - his only concern was his own and his family’s survival.
            WikiLeaks will do much damage to the Western democratic cause before they are finished. These ardent devotees of  ‘the public interest’  will turn out to be the grave diggers of the very democratic structures (including the public interest) they seek to stand up for.
            How far WikiLeaks has managed to undermine the West’s ability to overcome the Taliban by their release of such documents remains to be seen.
           
JULIAN ASSANGE is a 24 carat gold conspiracy theorist who has struck a rich seam of his favourite minerals of plots, schemes, connivance and torture. This son of  a pair of 1960’s hippy radicals has brought in the mother lode. The self-regarding tribe of liberal opinion choreographed by the New York Times, the Guardian and Independent, as well as Channel4, have all been given priority access to the latest mother lode of some 400,000 documents, detailing the West’s crimes and failings.
            Mr Assange seems to think that public opinion will turn against their leaders in whatever Western country his documents are released. If so Mr Assange lives in his own fantasy world of idealistic endeavour predicated upon a distrust and loathing of the materialism of the West – a mistrust no doubt shared by his parents and inculcated into the young and receptive mind of Julian Assange.
            Unless the next batch out of the oven cooked up by Mr Assange finds evidence of the West’s involvement in genocide; knitting the same pattern of extinction as Hitler exemplified, then I believe, rightly, that the West must show a ruthlessness that our enemies respect when we engage with them.
            If we try to live by example as our leaders (and it appears WikiLeaks insist we do), then our enemies will only take advantage of such an insipid approach and use it against us.
            The Taliban live by their own rules and will not countenance any restriction by international bodies such as the United Nations or the Geneva Convention. Saddam Hussein also followed the same procedure  when he was confronted by the international community without any comment from the likes of Mr Assange.
            The best response to Mr Assange from our leaders, as well as 70 per cent of our press, is to ignore or congratulate the methods uncovered in the 400,000 documents released. For they show that we have Islamism, if not on the run, then at least using their methods to attain victory.
           
           
           

           
            

Thursday, October 21, 2010

CUTTING IN UNSTABLE TIMES

“History repeats itself; first as tragedy, then as farce”
Karl Marx

WHEN IT COMES TO DEFENCE CUTS, it just will not do for this Coalition to blame the previous government for the public service cuts and hope this argument will stand the time of this parliament. The necessary cuts to public expenditure have to take place if we are to continue amongst the world’s leading economies; and only a fool would wish to argue otherwise.
            We are in a terrible mess, and who put us in it is now irrelevant. It is irrelevant because we still have choices to make about where the cuts will fall. It is now about the priorities of necessity. Which means we must protect those parts the of the public purse that are invaluable to this nation’s sovereignty: and so accordingly, it is the first duty of any government to protect their country and its citizens, and therefore defence should be the number one priority: and if ring-fencing is to be applied, then can anyone suggest to me why our nation’s defences should be excluded? Especially when our international aid budget is being ring-fenced and we are now about to give into European demands for an increase in our contribution to the EU’s budget.
            “Defence reviews” have always been used as a synonym for defence cuts by politicians. As we all remember (or those of us over forty), John Knott, the then Defence Secretary under Margaret Thatcher was about to cull our armed forces when, out of the blue, we found ourselves at war with Argentina. At the time many people believed that the Falkland Isles were somewhere off the coast of Scotland, and Argentina’s claim to them laughable.
            In other words an armed conflict occurred that was never seen on the radar by the politicians or the military. It just happened out of the blue to challenge John Knott’s strategic defence review which was based upon Cold War strategic thinking – a strategic thinking that at the time our politicians had no idea that, in just over a decade, communism would put up its hands and surrender.
            The future is difficult to predict and so defence reviews are in a way a gamble -  like the weekly lottery. To pretend that those conducting such a review have an insight into the future that us ordinary mortals do not have, is belied by history – a much abused subject in today’s schools.
            I have written other pieces on my blog about the waste at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and this needs to be seen to - especially the policy of procurement and its criminal waste of public resources. Resources that could be delivered much more cheaply, if the nation’s defences, instead of British jobs commanded priority.
            There is much that needs to be trimmed from the MoD budget, from procurement to civil servants with their Gold Plated pensions to fall back on. But we must protect, and if necessary, expand our military capability.

WHAT IS NOW BEING PROPOSED, if the reports in today’s papers are correct, is the almost treasonable proposition of ordering such a diminishing capability of our armed forces, that our citizens, living as they are on an island, and having been heavily reliant as an island nation upon our navy, are now to expect from our politicians the ultimate betrayal.
            The expected military shrinkage, especially in the navy’s capability, leaves this nation without any influence in the world. We can no longer be expected to be listened to by other nations who will now perceive us as a nation in decomposition.
            Our once considered Rolls Royce Foreign Office will be diminished by these cuts to the MoD. Why, after all, should we be taken seriously by any nation if we sever so ruthlessly our once proud backbone.
            This Coalition has made its choices. It has announced its ring-fenced priorities which excludes our nation’s defences. In so doing it cannot blame the last government for what it now seeks to do.
            I am no fan of the last government. Indeed, at the age of 60, I voted for the Tories for the first time in my life having been a life-long Labour supporter. But there are limits to what you can attribute your actions to regarding any previous government. After-all, as I said above, there are choices to be made, and this government has chosen to ring-fence oversees aid instead of defence. This Coalition government cannot blame its predecessors for what amounts to the unrecoverable diminution of this nation’s defences.
           
IT IS MY VEIW THAT what this Coalition is seeking to do, is to entwine our nation’s armed forces into those of the rest of Europe. We are being herded as a people into the much denied Federal States of Europe. Why, for instance, would we dismantle our defences to such a state as this “review” suggests. We are about to rid the navy of HMS Ark Royal. It has been suggested that the two new carriers built to replace her will be built with the possibility of one of them being sold. While the other will fly either American or French aircraft from its decks.
            What a state of affairs we, a once proud nation find itself in. I believe the reason for such a meagre and miserable betrayal of our national identity, is that this Coalition is set to deliver our military defence capability to a European armed force. This is why this Coalition appears so sanguine about what is to happen regarding our nation’s defences.
            For the Coalition are 90% Europhiles who will happily give our nation’s autonomy over to the most undemocratic system of government since that of communism.
            I find it extraordinary that the Right-wing press and its many commentators still find David Cameron one of them. But sadly they will find out for themselves the awful truth – eventually. I, for instance, was enthralled to Tony Blair after so many years of Tory advance in Government and I suspect that David Cameron is enjoying the same support among Right of centre commentators.

THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY today is a mere parvenu of its former historical self. This great party has finally displaced its authority as the guardian of nationhood and delivered the country it sought keep alive, to Europe.
            We no longer boast an independence backed up by our armed forces. Our nationhood has been replaced by an ever greater dependence upon the rest of Europe: and this, I believe, is what was always intended by the Conservative element of this Coalition.
            David Cameron is as much a social democrat as most parties are within Europe. British Conservatism in the European context means very little to its historical identity as the party of “nationalism” .
            Modern Conservatism is a mere replica of modern Labour or Liberal Democrat. We seem to live in a political system where differences are, at their most radical unprincipled.
            The ring-fenced oversees aid budget must not be allowed to continue in such straightened times. We should also not countenance any kind of increase to our contribution to the European budget. If prime minister Cameron accedes to this command, especially from the Union, then he must explain himself to the nation in the light of his proposed defence cuts.
            Our nation’s shield are our defences; our defences are our shell and must be continually improved upon in the interest of the people whom our politicians say they represent. Above all other interests of government it is the protection of its people that has to be put before all else. For it the country’s survival as a sovereign nation that must always remain preeminent. If in these dire financial times if the verb to ring-fence is used, then our nation’s defences must have first priority.
           

             

           
           
           
           
           
           
           
            

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

THE LADY SPEAKS FOR EUROPE

AT LAST A WESTERN LEADER OF SIGNIFICANCE has dared to tread on a few egg shells in order to say what millions of people throughout Europe have been waiting for one of their leaders to say.
            Of course Angela Merkle was addressing the Christian Democrat (CDU) youth, when she spoke of the failure of Multiculturalism; and many of her colleagues throughout the continent hoped that she said what she did in order to rally her party, whose members have demanded a stronger line to be taken by the party on immigration: an issue that every government in the EU has avoided and allowed to fester until a more vigorous Right-wing politics is emerging as part of  the centre ground.
            If it is the case that Chancellor Merkle is playing politics with this issue by making all of the right noises in order to keep her party with her, then she will be found out and the disillusionment this causes will drive people to ever greater extremes on both the Left as well as the Right.
            Chancellor Merkle has said, “This (multicultural) approach has failed, utterly failed”. At a time when, to criticise this ideology of multiculturalism, amounts to racism, then the German Chancellor has been very brave for saying the things she has on the subject.
            Doubly so because, being a German, she faces, unfairly, the taunt of  history. If  she is genuine, such sneering will only come from the Left, and the Left do not represent the German people any more than they do in this country.
            I hope in the coming days Chancellor Merkle will not seek in any way or form, to either bluntly or diplomatically renege upon her views on multiculturalism. She has said what every other conservative voice throughout the rest of Europe has feared saying including our Prime Minister, David Cameron.
            Because of this pernicious ideology and its Witch-Finder General, “political correctness”, the ordinary people have effectively been gagged from protesting its creation and its spread.

THERE IS NOTHING ORGANIC OR NATURAL about Multiculturalism. It is a creation of a well-meaning, but innocent mind. It is a philosophy, creed; and now a dogma. In this country, or so I have read, its principle proponent was Roy Jenkins who, just before it was too late to do so, had second thoughts as to its wisdom.
            Multiculturalism is the antitheses of integration - the very concept we are told, it set out to accomplish. By creating a tapestry of  different cultures separated from each other but all of equal worth to each other, including the host culture, was bound to be a recipe for failure. Such a system could have only flowered from an idealistic and well meaning, but ultimately, disastrous, mind.
            I believe that the creed of multiculturalism was erected as a by-product of Liberal guilt for our colonial past. My use of the word liberal is meant to encompass, in this respect, every aspect of the Left-wing diatribe, encompassing all of the main parties.
            Liberalism has created a monster. Multiculturalism wherever it has been practiced has led only to conflict. It has done so because different people of different cultures want only their own country to defend and prosper. When India became independent, over 100,000 people died in the ensuing conflict which lead to the creation of Pakistan: and thousands more were killed when Bangladesh was given birth to.
            Those conflicts mean as much to India and Pakistan nationalism as British history means to our own indigenous culture. We have, as a nation, ever since the invasion of the Anglo Saxons after the retreat of the Romans in the 5th century AD, and the eventual rise of the Anglo Saxon King, Alfred the Great 849-899, became master of our culture, and any other that sought conquest of these isles were at least challenged and fought against.            Any intruders were and had always been defied since the arrival of the Romans and were at least fought with. If not in the end defeated, then at least contained; and this continued until 1066 and the arrival of William the Conqueror whose forces committed the nearest thing to genocide in the medieval world that has landed upon our shores. Yet even William, as we all know from the Battle of Hastings had a less than peaceful conquest.
            On these Isles at least, we have all, in one way or another over the centuries fought for our culture. Much bloodshed has been split between the English and the Scots for instance, as well as the ancient British and Roman, and the Romo-British and Saxon. We also ventured our opposition to Viking and Norman over the centuries. Even today there is a love-hate relationship between England and Scotland, but it is also one of mutual respect.

MULTICULTURALISM will fail because it seeks to equalise all cultures including the host culture. Thus emerges separatism instead of uniformity. Uniformity would entail the acceptance of the host culture as the primary culture under which all others must live according to the laws and traditions of the culture. But if those traditions have been tampered with in order to create a Multicultural society then British culture will be put in the blender and be reduced to the contents of a mere slop pail.
            It is my position not to prohibit other cultures, but only to demand from them that if they chose to live in a host culture , then their own cultural mores must be placed second to those of the host culture: and if this proves impossible then they must return to the country that better suits their own culture.
            The only way that different cultures can live with each other is for the host culture to set the ground rules and if other cultures find themselves in disagreement with them, then they must return to the culture they came from and defend it with as much vigour as the culture they were dislodged from.
            If Germany, like any other country in Europe, wishes to maintain their own cultural identity, they must insist that any minority that wishes to achieve citizenship among them has to put German culture (including the language) before their own; which also includes all lawmaking.
            This is all Chancellor Merkle requires. She is not a racist but a protector of her culture, if, that is, she remains serious about her claims.
            Multiculturalism always diminishes the host culture and its history and cultural traditions. History and tradition comprise that which carves out a nation, and glues its people together. It is only history that creates a nation; and a nation with as proud a history as  should not have diminished by multiculturalism.
           

            

Friday, October 15, 2010

NOAM CHUMPSKY ACCUSES EUROPE OF 'RACISM'

ACCORDING TO THE JERUSALEM POST, Noam Chomsky the world renowned academic, polymath and martyr of Left-wing causes has attacked Europe for its delay in admitting Turkey into the European Union; believing such a delay is based upon racist attitudes rather than any objective assessment of its entitlement to membership.
            As someone who left school at fifteen without any kind of academic qualification, I have always felt inferior to and been wary of any kind of scholarly professional: and now, at the age of 60, while I feel the greatest admiration for academic success, and truly envy such accomplishment; I have however lived long enough to have experienced life for myself which many an academic has been protected from.
            From my late teens to my late twenties I was convinced that the future belonged to Communism. To me Marx’s dialectic was as sane and as logical as Darwin’s theory of Evolution, which I also accepted, and still do accept as reality.
            The point I am making is that no matter how brilliant a mind, its possessor can be as stupid and naive as the rest of us less gifted mortals. The world of academia can be as stifling as it is liberating, and its apostles just as wrong as the rest of us. I may respect an academics’ knowledge, but I no longer feel inferior to it.
            Which is why I take issue with Noam Chomsky and his charge of racism against Europe. I am no lover of the European Union, it seeks to reduce nations to mere cantons and seek to remove from them their sovereignty. The overlordship of this enterprise comprise the European Commissioners…unelected bureaucrats who virtually govern nation states by having the legal right to override the elected wishes of the people of Europe. Which in practice means that the governments the people elect are ultimately answerable to appointed bureaucrats who can override a nation’s law in favour of one concocted by the European Commissioners
            So as someone who is no friend of the European project, I must however take issue with Chomsky’s slander.

BEING AS HE HAS, the compass of the Left, Noam Chomsky no doubt felt that he had to give backbone to Europe’s Left as they challenge their various ‘racist’ government’s exclusion of Turkey from the European brotherhood… if I were the elected president of Turkey I would have welcomed, if not demanded, my exclusion from such an enterprise.
            But if Mr Chomsky insists, as his comments reported in the Jerusalem Post suggest, that Turkey should be admitted to the European Union immediately, then who are we to oppose such a request from such a academically gifted intruder. I am sure he has many followers among the idealistic youth of Europe who are prepared to take to the streets on behalf  of Mr Chomsky .
            Mr Chomsky has to understand, as a ‘Marxist/anarchist/socialist’, the titles he has been variously described as holding, that the working classes of Europe stand four square with Angela Merkle, the German president, when she insisted, according to Chomsky, that Muslims in the country must accept that Germany's culture is based on Christian and Jewish values - was a pretty extreme and racist statement from a major political figure in Europe.”
            Chomsky declares that this is a racist comment. It is no such thing, and this much adored  prince of academia has finally hit the buffer. The reason that Europe does not wish to entertain  this medieval religion, and to add further to its numbers in Europe, is because we already have living among us some 15 million Muslims. We do not require the admittance of a further 80 million from Turkey; and if Europe agreed to such an avalanche, I for one hope that the people of Europe would finally rebel over something so significant.
            The continent of Europe has always been a continent of nations. It has often been a struggle to meet the requirement of nationhood; but once reached through great sacrifice the instinct was always to hang on to it. This continent has values in conflict with a medieval religion; a religion that has never fostered a Reformation or been part of a great age of Enlightenment.
            For all of its  faults, and they are many and varied, Europe is right to keep its distance from Turkey, until such a time when the Islamic world starts to believe in the democratic values that the West has spilt buckets of blood creating and defending. I have no doubt that the Islamic world wishes total religious hegemony over the planet.
            If this is paranoia, it is no more so than when it was Communism and Fascism seeking the same objective. Christianity during the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries also sought the same intent as does present day Islam.
            Chomsky has had his day. Remember, he chooses his current battle in light of the failures of his earlier ones; just as today’s Marxists, socialists and anarchists also conspire, in ever fewer numbers, for the overthrow of capitalism.
            Like petulant children who have had their toys taken from them, Chomsky and his merry band of radical chic would rather give their support to a medieval religion and its followers than ever countenance any rapprochement  with the evil that is capitalism.

TO CHOMSKY, NO ACT undertaken by Western leaders bodes particularly well for  the rest of mankind. It seems to an uneducated mind like my own that Chomsky would sooner sip from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's table than President Obama’s. He would sooner give his allegiance to medievalism than ever admit that his precious dialectic had been unhinged by history; the very force that Marx determined would change mankind forever and bring them into equilibrium with each other.
            The so called ‘progressive’ Left have been made barren by historical developments. Their ideas of how society should be orchestrated, are insane simply because no society can be orchestrated, especially by the state. In a democracy the people speak and the politician’s listen. In the kind of society the Left has mapped out for us, the people’s mouths are gagged tightly shut on penalty of imprisonment.
            I suppose, for the likes of Chomsky, today’s Islamists are comparable to those who stormed the Winter Palace. They stand full square against the West and capitalism. To Chomsky and his like, it matters little what they would replace the West with as long as the machinery of capitalism was destroyed.
            For, in a way, socialism no longer matters to the Left. All what matters is that the wretched itch of capitalism should be relieved. 

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

THESE JELLEBIES ARE BEYOND BELIEF

CHARITIES WORKING IN PAKISTAN are seeking to have the stars and stripes removed from the sacks of grain given by America in response to the needs of Pakistan’s flood victims.
            In a letter signed by 11 charities including Oxfam, Save the Children and Care International, the signatories believe that their aid workers will be targeted by the Taliban for distributing American aid. They apparently have no evidence for this fear, only prejudice.
            The USA receives very little credit for the aid she gives to the unfortunate of the world. So if she stamps the stars and stripes on a sack of grain, then she is perfectly entitled to do so. The charities prefer the world to remain ignorant of America’s contribution, as they blame the superpower for all of the world’s ills.
            If America removed her flag from the sacks of aid, it would not make the slightest difference to how the Taliban would react. For the Taliban knows that the primary source of such aid is the West as a whole; and to them the West is the Great Satan, and would consider any attack on aid worker justified, not because of an American flag, but because they know that all such aid originated from the West.
            If these charities believe what they are saying, then let them remove their aid workers from Pakistan, and let another solution be found to aid distribution. But America must not succumb to such infantilism by the charities.
            All that should matter is that such aid should get to the flood’s victims, and if the charities feel they cannot do this, then let them leave the field; they are not, as they may think, irreplaceable. Some way or another help will get through to those wretched victims of nature.
            If the charities feel the need to hit out, then why not hit out at the likes of France and the EU generally. America has given more than the whole of Europe put together, which is probably why so many American flags are in evidence on the sacks of aid.

AMERICA HAS GIVEN aid despite the corruption in Pakistan, which has deterred other countries from giving as generously as they would usually do considering the magnitude of the disaster.
            All that this intervention from the amalgam of the Great and Good does, is to convince the cynical that charity does indeed begin at home. These charities have become an industry, replacing coal and steel among our nation’s best employers.
            I do not believe for one moment that any aid worker that is targeted by the Taliban for distributing sacks of aid stamped with the flag of America, would have not been targeted had the flag been removed.
            I think this whole episode has more to do with the various charities’ antipathy toward America than it has to do with concern for their aid worker’s welfare. As far as the charities are concerned the world would be a better place without America’s role in it; and this is the bottom line.
I AM SURE THAT  SUCH A COMMENT, if read, would cause a fit of the vapours amongst the charity’s directors. They would protest that their only concern was for the well being of those who need their help – and if that help is financed and provided by America, what then?
            The charity industry in this country has become a player whose currency is exploiting the genuine concerns of the British public. But they must be careful when counting on such good will, not to expose their bigotry against the USA. For there are millions of people in this country who give much support to the nation that gave thousands of its young men’s lives to help us defeat Nazism in Europe.
            The charity industry is a vacuous entity reliant upon pure sentiment …that standard bearer of the modern age. All the charities’ rely upon, is nothing less than raw emotion which they bombard  frightened politicians with, afraid as they are of popular disapproval.
            If America agrees to the signatories wishes, and removes their flag, then  I hope the current government will be driven from office by the American electorate come the next presidential election.
            This American government has nothing to apologise for and should not kow-tow the  wishes of the charity industry, whose only leverage is emotion. They should stand fast and continue to provide the assistance needed by any country that, through a natural disaster, needs it.
            It is the charities that have become political, not the aid contributors. It is they, the charities, who are showing  where their antipathies’ lay, and they lay in Washington. It is not that they fear Taliban reprisals against their workers, but rather they themselves feel uncomfortable with the sympathetic response that the Great Satan may glean from the product placement on the sacks of grain.
           

           
            

Sunday, October 10, 2010

NICK AND TG AT THE NT (OH, AND NOT FORGETTING MT AT THE BBC)

SIR NICHOLAS HYTNER, the  luvvie superior at the National Theatre has refused to apologise for a reference in the theatre’s  current production of  Blood and Gifts by T G Rogers, to his wished for sodomy of Mrs Thatcher for the spending cuts she made whilst in power. If you remember the Great Lady did indeed show much disfavour, particularly to the arts, believing as she did, that if an artist, writer, or musician were worth their salt then the market place would decide their true importance. For, despite resenting the fact, an artist’s true worth is a commercial one; and if financed by the taxpayer through the likes of the Arts Council then the artist’s worth is judged by a committee who are ordained by, presumably, the politicians, to spend other people’s money, to finance what they deem Great Art.
            Hytner need not apologise however for the author of a play he has allowed to be performed. But the charge of being inherently Left-wing is another case. According to the Daily Telegraph, it was Libby Purvis who took Hytner to task over the reference to Margaret Thatcher. She asked Hytner if he felt such a reference fashioned a view that his theatre was “Leftie”.
            Hytner gave a press conference at which he addressed Ms Purvis’s enquiry with the following comment, “The days when the arts were run by monolithically Leftist individuals have long gone.”
            The great man’s repost reminded me of another tribune  for the arts. The head of the BBC, who also admitted to liberal bias, but also put it in the past tense. Perhaps Sir Nicholas Hytner took his cue from Mark Thompson, the Director General of the BBC, who recently admitted of a liberal bias at the BBC, but like Hytner, said it was all in the past.
           
THE ARTS, HISTORICALLY speaking, flourished  and found their true worth without state i.e. tax payers intervention. We live today in a society where the arts, of all varieties, have become in some way dependent upon the state. This does not mean that those practicing readily succumb. There are many who manage to survive without aid from the taxpayer.
            In the past artists, whether of  a literary, musical or an artistic bent, had to take their given ability seriously. For their day to day living depended upon it. Thus in every field of the arts was the very best created.
            In such times the state was replaced by a patron . People’s taxes today have replaced the  patron .
            Sir Nick is quite right in refusing an apology. If such a request is demanded then it must come from the author T G Rogers, who it seems thinks a lot of himself. However, if I judge my modern authors correctly, TG will only seek further acclaim from any such criticism. He (I presume he is a he) will see his work as a success because of the criticism he has attracted and will seek to take advantage of such a controversy in his future writings.

THE NATIONAL THEATRE  has itself  (if I am not mistaken) lived off the public tit, and like all other such benefactors of the taxpayer’s generosity, they have come to believe that they have a natural entitlement to extractions from the public purse, bequeathed them by whatever of the Muses they seek their inspiration from.
            Mrs Thatcher could not understand why the Arts needed encouragement from the taxpayer at all. All any of the arts need in order to flourish is the freedom in which to prosper;  to question without fear of imprisonment; to speak freely and to condemn, criticise, and yes, to offend if needs be in the name free expression. All of these democratic entitlements are, Mrs Thatcher’ believed, worth far more to the artist than any kind of financial handout from the state.
            Democracy was to her the only handout that any artist should need in order to create. Where there was need for financial help, then the backbone for such aid would be the private sector. If there is a need for state expenditure on the arts then it should be used for the upkeep of our great galleries and museums built from private capital. For instance, the Tate Gallery was built by the finances of capitalism in the form of Tate and Lyle, the producers of a substance that today is regarded almost as sinful as tobacco – sugar.
            Once these great cultural institutions have been set in motion by private wealth, then indeed the state does have an obligation to be the insurers of last resort if they face desperate financial straits that may result in closure. This is why our major galleries and museums were told by a Tory government to charge an entrance fee; for such a fee would  make them less reliant on the taxpayer while, if not making them wholly self-sufficient, would relieve the tax burden on, not the patrons of the arts, but the ordinary man in the street whose main focus outside of work is the football stadium. For them Old Trafford, Stanford Bridge and (in my case) Carrow Road, are the complimentary cultural equivalences to the National, Tate, or Tate Modern galleries.

DESPITE WHAT THE LIKES OF Sir Nicholas Hytner or Mark Thompson say, the Liberal-Left is still well and truly in charge of  all political and cultural activity in this country, and have  been since the 1960s.
            To pretend otherwise, as I believe both representatives of their particular cultural fields are doing in order to appease what they regard as the dreaded Tory dominated Coalition, as well as to avoid cuts in funding to the Arts and the BBC, is merely a ruse which they hope will be believed, and stands a very good chance of so being believed, because both  parties representing the Coalition are themselves of a liberal persuasion.
            Liberalism has been the sole occupier of our culture, beginning in the late 1950s. It has, during its period, managed to capture and nurture every aspect of our cultural life and has managed to do so by deriding its ‘antiquated reactionary’ predecessor.  By deriding what it perceived as its reactionary past, modern liberalism accomplished the relativist mess we live with today.
            The world of the Arts has grown ever larger and ever more dependent upon the taxpayer; but why should they need the taxes of (for instance) a dustman in order to continue  with their latest ‘project’?
            Why should the arts be exempt from market forces when all other industries are not?