Cricket

DURING THE FIRST TEST AGAINST PAKISTAN my brother poured derision on what was happening -you remember, all those silly dropped catches some of which I, as a disabled person, could have caught. He believed, and has now been proved right to have believed, that if not match fixing then what is known as spot betting was taking place.

To me the Pakistanis were merely having an off- day or two, or three – it happens in cricket as it does in every other sport. Silly me, I wanted to believe that after the summer we had as a footballing nation in South Africa, our cricketers were making up for the summers’ disappointments. Now, the air of corruption is surrounding the great game, and has undermined our national teams true international worth.

I used to watch athletics eagerly, everything from the Grande-pre meets to the European and world championships; and beyond to the crème-de-la-crème - the Olympics. But once again cheating reared its ugly head. This time it was performance enhancing drugs that completed my dissolution with the sport. Today athletics still carries with it the air of suspicion, which is why I have abandoned it.

If people can no longer watch the sport they love because they can no longer trust the result, then it is not worth handing over their hard earned money to sit and watch it (in the case of Test match cricket) for five days. It is a shame because the game of cricket, especially at Test level, does exactly that. It tests over five days the worthiness of batsmen, bowlers and wicket keepers (and yes, even umpires). Unlike any other sport, Test match cricket examines a players level of performancet; and because of its length can redeem a bad performance one day by a great one the next.

I love the game of cricket beyond my love of any other sport including football. But that love is now under threat because certain players can be nobbled by betting syndicates in the Far East. In India and Pakistan where betting is illegal, the market, like in every other sphere of human activity, finds a way. But in the case of cricket, it threatens to undermine and, who knows, ultimately destroy a fine sport.

Justifications are already being made for the current Pakistani team, some of whose players now stand accused. We have been told by at least one Pakistani journalist, that we must remember that the Pakistani players are paid far less than any other international cricketer, as if this provides ample justification for their actions.

We must remember that no Pakistani player has been found guilty; but the Pakistani government are behaving as if they already believe that the News of the World’s disclosure is accurate and that those the paper accuse are indeed guilty.

THE INTERNATIONAL CRICKET COUNCIL (ICC) has had their attention drawn in the past, without action ever being taken, to other such transgressions. Now in the light of the fourth Test at Lords, the ICC has announced that it is going to investigate some 80 other matches involving Pakistan. The number of matches to be investigated relates to the period when matches involving Pakistan had questionable outcomes or contained questionable practices on the field of play.

The ICC has failed the sport they are supposed to represent. The corruption has been allowed to develop through ICC inaction. We are where we are today because of international cricket’s governing body refusing to discipline the games’ corruptors. The ICC has turned a blind eye despite creating an investigating body who in ten years has only brought charges against two players.

Two things now have to happen to restore the lover of the games’ trust. Gambling must be made legal in both India and Pakistan, or world cricket must divide itself between Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, England, the West Indies, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanker: and India and Pakistan who must be left to continually play each other. If the Pakistanis are receiving less in wages than other cricketing professionals, then they must look to their governing body. But do other members of world cricket such as Sri Lanker and Bangladesh also receive more? If so then the Pakistani cricketing authorities must look toward their wage levels for such highly gifted players.

Either way, it is up to the Pakistani cricketing authorities to equalise its payment system with all other countries or see its country embarrassed even further. For instance, a member of the Pakistani Test squad receives only £35,000 per year, while the teams captain receives £150,000 per year.

The sport, if it has to, can survive without India and Pakistan; but it cannot survive if the people who watch the game cannot trust what is happening before their very eyes: and as long as, in particular, the Pakistani players cannot be trusted, then who would want to play them?

BLESS THE DAILY MAIL

How many Guardian readers does it take to change a light bulb?

None, they just form a support group called ‘Coping with Darkness’ - boom, boom!

THE DAILY MAIL IS the party-pooper of liberal Britain. Unashamedly right-wing and populist, it causes the liberalarte to reach for the cloves of garlic at the mere mention of Littlejohn, Hitchens or Phillips. To say that the Mail is disliked by liberal Britain is something of an understatement. The poor old ‘Guardianistas’ (a Littlejohn creation) are reduced to displays of intolerance, the very thing they most despise in life, when talking about its journalism.

For 24 years I was an avid reader of the Guardian. Almost every day without fail I bought a copy and became fond. But most of the writers who wrote for it then have long since departed and a new politically correct sub-species of liberal has taken control of the tiller. I also, over the same period bought its sister paper the Observer along with the Sunday Times; the latter being the finest of British journalistic creations during the 1960s and the 1970s.

Today my home is the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, and yes, (I have now really gone over to the dark side) to the Daily Mail, as well as the occasional copy of the Spectator. At one time I also bought the occasional copy of the New Statesman.

So, in my time, I have covered all colours of the political spectrum as far as my political preferences are concerned - which, by the way, included the Morning Star when it was kept going by the Soviet Union buying up all of the unsold copies.

I spent many years on the leftward end of the political spectrum of British politics, and having done so I knew how I thought then and how those I left behind think now.

THOSE ON THE LEFT WHO CRITICISE the Daily Mail, do so out of prejudice (or dare I mention the word bigotry) rather than the facts the paper presents them with. Take for instance what the liberals would describe as a typical Daily Mail headline in today’s copy. The headline to the piece reads, ‘Number of immigrants living in the UK long-term SOARS by 20% in one year as England is named most crowded country in the EU’.

As the headline refers to immigrants, it is enough to infuriate many a liberal. Knowing, as they have convinced themselves they do, that the Daily Mail is the anti-Christ; they will read no further than the headline.

Even those who take the trouble to read the article can only offer multicultural platitudes. The facts of the piece go unchallenged, they hope against hope that the Guardian will provide the antidote to this latest Daily Mail virus.

If the liberals challenge the statistics or their interpretation by the Daily Mail, then do so. But to dismiss this paper out of hand in such an infantile manner as they often do because of their characterisation of it as The Great Satan, does very little to enhance democratic debate.

THE LEFT IS AT THE MOMENT in the ascendency throughout the media. The Right has outposts such as the Daily Mail and the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, coupled with their house magazine, The Spectator. The Left on the other hand have not only the monopoly of the written media but also the visual media. The BBC is a liberal concoction supreme. But all the other independent channels to a greater or lesser extent follow the same path.

Fox News on the other hand are unashamedly right of centre, and have been criticised for so being. Fox News and Sky television are both owned by the same owner, Rupert Murdock. But Fox News is the only news broadcaster that gives a right of centre perspective on the news. It does so because it operates in the USA where such a perspective is commercially viable. While, also for commercial reasons, Murdock’s Sky channel in the UK has a liberal taint.

It was a business concept which was something both the union leaders and their Grunwick printers could never have understood in the 1980s because of their class prejudices. Unions will always be the stumbling block to technological advancement because it invariably leads to a depletion in their membership.

The Daily Mail undermines the liberal agenda, and can therefore be attacked at will without any kind of rational attached by its accusers’ accusations. Because we live in a socially liberal society overseen of course by, at every level a liberal elite; any conservative input into the country’s future is traduced by the liberal Left and left barren.

Since the 1960s liberalism has been allowed to dominate every aspect of our cultural advancement. It has been able to do so without complaint. Well not quite; but those who tried to oppose such a direction (especially in the 1960s) where satirised and ridiculed as Victorian reactionaries.

What the Daily Mail does is to strike a chord with its constituency, known as Middle England. This constituency has worked and contributed to their retirement. They are indeed the backbone of the country; and very few of them rely on state benefits. They have managed their financial income to such an extent that they deserve the rewards that the Left seem to begrudge them.

The Daily Mail speaks for these people as well as a sizable portion of the ambitious working class, who want the generation they produce to do better than they did in life; and in doing so they make sacrifices on behalf of their children. If they can afford it they would prefer a private education to a state one. Not because they are snobs, but because they want the best for their children; if their is anything wrong with this view, it has passed me by. While there are many good state comprehensives about, parents are taking pot-luck on finding the right one, and in some cases have had to move house into a catchment area for the best state schools.

It is the outlook of such people that the Daily Mail speaks up for. If the Mail gets a story wrong (and even the Guardian, I suspect has done so), then it deserves criticism. But such criticism must be factually based, and not ideologically based.

I CAN UNDERSTAND AS a one time socialist and member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, how our social liberals must feel toward the Daily Mail’s journalism. But they must ask themselves why they hate it so. Is it really because you believe they publish a compendium of half truths and downright lies based upon your knowledge of the facts; or is because your own politics run contrary to those of the majority of the country.

The liberal agenda is supreme in every sphere of what Marx tagged the social superstructure. In all walks of the visual and written media; coupled with the educational, legal, and of course political establishment; every department, in other words, of our social and cultural superstructure is in the hands of a small ‘l’ liberal consensus – even the current coalition is dominated by the ‘middle ground’; a euphemism for liberalism.

The Daily Mail offers people an alternative to the awful nanny and politically correct state. It may not win any newspaper of the year awards because of its conservative ambitions, but those ambitions have the same legitimacy within a democracy as any other part of the political spectrum.

I hope the Daily Mail continues to upset the liberalarte, for its conservative values have stood the test of centuries, and if in a 100 years’ time this paper has to be printed in some cave in the wilderness – then the liberal left will have won, and become as intolerant as those they accuse of being today.

THE BBC

I DO NOT LIKE THE BBC BECAUSE IT is biased and it demands its income on penalty of either a fine or the imprisonment of any citizen who refuses payment. In other words what is known as the license fee, is in reality another tax, and like all of the other taxes, it is a criminal act to avoid paying it.

Of course you can go without a television set, which is something only the people in the poorest regions of, what was once known as the third world, have to do. But there is no other corner of the world, to my knowledge, that demands you pay a tax just to own one.

I am sure that those who work for this institution see it rather quaintly as a uniquely British concept, like cheese rolling or, for many, the unfathomable rules of the game of cricket. The BBC would like to be seen as part of such a British tradition that goes back centuries: in other words an institution whose modus operandi appears somewhat eccentric to the outside world, but for all of that, a much loved and integral part of our culture, supported by the majority of the British people.

Well fair enough; if it is as popular as the BBC claims and I have no evidence to the contrary; then why does it not function by public subscription freely given; and not demanded through taxation backed up by the law?

At the moment the BBC receives over £3 billion in taxes, and I bet by the time this coalition government exhausts itself in five years time, its income will have risen to £4 billion or more - despite any conservative promise given before the last election to reign in its munificence, on the back of the belt-tightening we are told to expect. All politicians find the BBC useful to them. For every political party is nowadays lead by a liberal consensus, the kind of which the BBC is there to serve.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO the issue of the BBC’s bias. The BBC today weaves the spell of multiculturalism into almost every programme they show (especially children’s programming). I believe that multiculturalism is an unworkable ideology like socialism and communism. What the BBC seeks to do, like state television in the old Soviet Union, is to socially engineer its acceptance.

The BBC’s bias is not a party political one, but a small ‘l’ liberal one. The whole edifice of that institution was high-jacked from its original purpose in the 1960’s to entertain and educate. Even then it may not have been completely free from ideological considerations (small ‘c’ conservatism then being in vogue), but even then I would have objected to being given a demand by the state to pay a tax on my television set. Is it not enough that we have to pay VAT, due to be increased in January to 20% on every new television bought? But that we should also have to pay a yearly tax on its ownership is bizarre to the rest of the world and to be resented.

This is a ridiculous state of affairs which no other country tolerates, and hopefully never will. Only the BBC, backed by successive governments, has been allowed to survive for so long. Let the people choose freely how to spend their money, after all it is their money. If the BBC is the much loved institution numerous celebrities have described it as, then it will survive by private subscription.

But why should I not have a choice as to what I wish to watch? Apparently to mouth such a wish goes against the state’s determination to keep the BBC in operation. There appears to be a consensus within all of the major political parties that for their own support of a multicultural society, the BBC must continue.

What after all does the BBC represent. No-one can deny that this institution has a broad spectrum liberal agenda. And no-one can deny that it is also the wish of the three main parties to pursue such a liberal agenda.

So, for all of the political parties, the BBC represents a publically funded mouth-piece. The BBC is not a party politically biased institution but a liberal one; which exempts millions of British people. Which is why those of us who do not share such an agenda are forced by law to hand over our hard earned cash to support it.

If forcing someone to pay a tax on the ownership of a television set is deemed right by the liberals who undoubtedly support it; then it is an illiberal act in the first instance. The BBC is an institution that was created when state control was in fashion in this country under the Attlee government.

HOW THE BBC SURVIVED FOR so long under its present arrangement is due to working class sentimentality that goes back to such programmes as Dixon of Dock Green in the late1950s. It is on the back of such over-romanticising that the BBC’s reputation has been built. At the beginning, the state had to take a hand in the building of the modern television network. The BBC then served this purpose.

But when the independent sector kicked in using advertising there was no need for the BBC to exist. Yet our politicians persisted and built the BBC into the Gormenghast we see before us today.

When the Independent sector produced shows such as Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, and William Tell, I can remember nagging and my poor father into renting a new aerial so that we could receive the Anglia television network, which included all of the above programmes free.

For the independent sector relied solely on income from advertisement, just as it had always done in the USA.

The BBC has no place in the modern world, unless it relinquishes its funding from the taxpayer and chooses to do what all other broadcasters do and seek a private living. The BBC is a relic waiting to be given its last rights. But it has many celebrities who have grown wealthy on its existence, and who wish to continue receiving at some time in the future the taxpayers bounty.

FATHER CHESNEY – THE CATHOLIC PRIEST AND TERRORIST

THE LATE WILLIAM WHITELAW AND CARDINAL CONWAY, conspired with the Royal Ulster Constabulary to cover up a catholic priest’s act of terrorism in Northern Ireland. Father Chesney was the mastermind behind one of Northern Ireland’s worst terrorist attacks in 1972, causing the deaths of nine people including a nine-year-old girl (another case of child abuse by a member of the Catholic church), and leaving 30 others injured. This was the verdict of the long awaited findings of the police ombudsman Al Hutchinson, into the bombings.

Father Chesney, like the others involved, have never faced prosecution. The wretched Chesney was protected by his church by being moved to another parish (sounds familiar) south of the boarder. Chesney died in 1980 protesting, no doubt, his innocence, but Hutchinson’s bulleted findings stated that*:

§ Detectives believed Father Chesney was the IRA's director of operations in south Derry and was a prime suspect in the Claudy attack and other terrorist incidents.

§ A detective's request to arrest the cleric was refused by an assistant chief constable of RUC Special Branch who instead said 'matters are in hand'.

§ The same senior officer wrote to the government about what action could be taken to "render harmless a dangerous priest" and asked if the matter could be raised with the Church's hierarchy.

§ In December 1972 Mr Whitelaw met Cardinal Conway to discuss the issue. According to a Northern Ireland Office official, "the cardinal said he knew the priest was a very bad man and would see what could be done". The church leader mentioned "the possibility of transferring him to Donegal..."

In response to this memo, RUC chief constable Sir Graham noted: "I would prefer a transfer to Tipperary."

§ An entry in Cardinal Conway's diary on December 5 1972 confirmed a meeting with Mr Whitelaw took place and stated there had been "a rather disturbing tete-a-tete at the end about C".

§ In another diary entry two months later, the cardinal noted that he had discussed the issue with Father Chesney's superior and that "the superior however had given him orders to stay where he was on sick leave until further notice".

WE ARE NOW BEING asked to consider the times we then lived through before reaching a judgement. Which under normal consideration, would be perfectly reasonable. They were difficult times in a particularly difficult year: and the authorities were afraid of exacerbating catholic dissent if this priest was to have been arrested for what he was – a terrorist. The argument is familiar today in the age of Islamic terrorism, where our politicians are constantly looking toward the two million Muslims living among us before reaching a decision on any strategy in the war against Islamic terrorism.

Chesney was a priest in the catholic church and could easily have been a member of MI5 or the CIA considering the way he was protected. He escaped any kind of punishment; but as a priest his transgression from the teachings of his faith should have counted for something when Cardinal Conway (who died in 1977) was given the details of his turbulent priest’s activities. But no, like the child abusers of today, this specimen was just moved on and forgotten about.

In the whole history of the troubles in Northern Ireland not one member of the IRA faced excommunication from the catholic faith. They were allowed to kill and maim at will without facing the ultimate sanction of the catholic church. A sanction, considering their religious faith, that may have well made a difference to the bombers practising their evil art.

Rome never once lifted a hand to end the bombings in Northern Ireland, except to issue platitudes about the murder of the innocence. Father Chesney not only killed protestants, an act that he undoubtedly felt had kept him solid with Vatican, but also catholic’s which he no doubt felt expendable in the greater cause of the catholic advancement on the island of Ireland.

I have always believed that many catholic priests in Ireland, while not ever going as far as Chesney (he was indeed a rotten apple) would nevertheless have sympathy for the IRA, if not in their terrorist actions, then in their ideal of a United Catholic Ireland.

But by allowing themselves to be drawn into protecting this priest by the British establishment, the catholic church went against all Christian teaching whatever tricks their theologians choose to weave in support of Chesney’s acquittal .

CHESNEY WAS A TERRORIST AND A PRIEST, perhaps the first catholic terrorist priest to add another stain upon the faith - to be added to the many others. The catholic church professes a devotion to Christianity that can easily be manipulated like putty to keep the church alive at the expense of, if necessary, its teaching.

We now have or had among the catholic priesthood both child abusers and hopefully just one terrorist priest. I know that the catholic church supported Irish republicanism because of its catholic identity. In so doing it has left its Christian character prone to contempt within these isles.

Roman Catholicism is, like Islam, trying to proselytise the world on behalf of their faith. In so doing they are each prepared to overreach themselves. This is what appears to have happened with Father Chesney in Northern Island to the detriment of his faith..

But hopefully Chesney was a one off: while in Islam such an action would be rewarded by martyrdom , the catholic church would never have offered Chesney such a reward - but then, neither did they excommunicate this priest. Which is the minimum of punishment that should have been enacted.

If members of the IRA as well as Father Chesney cannot be excommunicated from the catholic faith then who can?

IRAN'S 'AMBASSADOR OF DEATH'

VERY shortly Iran will be producing nuclear energy, and it is being said that they will be producing weapon grade uranium in another year; and yesterday President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presented to the world the Karar or ‘assailant’. The Kara is a drone that carries, according to Iranian state television ‘…four stealth cruise missiles…and, depending on the mission, it can carry two bombs of 250lbs each or a precision missile of 500lbs,'. Ahmadinejad promises another announcement along such lines shortly.

Israel has been wanting to take action against Iran for some time, but was talked out of it by its greatest ally, America. America did so in the hope rather than the expectation that the Iranian government would be overthrown by the opposition in a kind of ‘velvet revolution’ of the type seen in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

First of all any new technologically sophisticated weapon, like that of the Karar drone, will draw nothing but admiration from the Muslim world (if not among many of its governments).

The West has soft peddled with Iran; its imposition of sanctions has had little effect; indeed, if they had, then there would no doubt have been a liberal backlash in the West, similar to that in Iraq; where we were told at the time of hundreds of thousands of people dying because of them.

Sanctions are the default position of the international community when they cannot face up to the reality of their position. The West does not believe that their imposition of sanctions against the regime will actually bring Ahmadinejad to the negotiating table; indeed they just sit on their hands hoping that ‘something will turn up’. Meanwhile the only nation who has been prepared to do something has been warned off from doing so.

Israel’s intelligence service has been, historically, much admired in the West. It has to be clever when being surrounded by enemies. Twice in the last century she has had to fight wars for her very survival against her neighbours; and on both occasions it was Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, that proved its effectiveness – especially during the Six Day War of 1967, when Israel garnered intelligence that convinced the Israeli government that her Arab neighbours were about to invade. Israel used such knowledge to pre-empt the attack, and struck first.

I BELIEVE THAT, WITH IRAN, Israel knows that another war is imminent, but cannot persuade the West of its view. Which means that Iran will develop weapon grade uranium, (yes, despite the UNs inspectors) and will be able to produce ever more sophisticated weaponry like the Karar drone, because she has been given time by the West to do so. Historical comparisons are a dodgy business. But Germany, after the First World War, had similar restrictions imposed as Iran has today. Under theTreaty of Versailles, limits were imposed by the victors on Germany’s military capabilities. But as we know, when Hitler attained power he managed to defy the Treaty and built up a dangerous level of military force that nearly overwhelmed Europe and caused millions of deaths.

Sanctions mean very little to dictators, for they care very little for their people; and providing they have command of a strong military to suppress any descent, then sanctions will not work

Hitler knew that after the Great War, Western politicians were not prepared to fight another such conflict. So many of them became appeasers, like those today who ‘hope that something will turn up’: and it took the rhetorical skills of a single politician to bring the country round.

President Ahmadinejad will sooner or later bring round many of those opposition activists that the West hope will relieve them from their squeamishness. He will do it by demonstrating Iran’s military prowess as he did with the Karar project. He has plenty of time on his hands to win round the unbelievers in his own country because we in the West have provided him with that time, just as we provided the rise of Hitler with time to take on the rest of the world.

TODAY ISRAEL IS TRYING TO do what Churchill was eventually successful in doing, but so far without any result. Israel is seen by many in the West as the villain depriving the Palestinians of their homeland. The state of Israel is hated throughout the Muslim world as well as amongst the millions of Muslims allowed to live amongst us in the West.

If Israel goes under then so will the Western democracies. Israel represents true democracy in the Middle East, yet, it appears, it also has enemies in the West – if only of a liberal persuasion that may be limited in number, but mighty powerful within the culture.

There is a part of me that wishes Ahmadinejad well. For he is exposing the wretched state of the West’s ability to defend their values: and if any nation cannot hold on to its values then it deserve such a fate as the Muslim world has lined up for it.

We in the UK have long forgotten the values that made us a nation, as well as the sacrifices made in order to achieve it. Today, how many people can even describe the tenets of a democracy, let alone live by them? Maybe, just maybe, it is because our nation’s history has been politically corrected in the interests of our multicultural society by the educational establishment, and is no longer taught.

IT APPEARS THAT ISRAEL is the only democratic nation to still believe in itself as such; which is why it remains prepared to fight for its survival. Iran knows this and so defies the West so successfully. Iran threatens the West and the West bows down to Iran’s needs; be it under the ‘threat’ of sanctions.

I feel that the Western democracies are up for the taking by Islam. I believe this because our democratic leaders wish to introduce the ideology of a multicultural society, which no member of the Islamic community believes in, and seeks to dominate in the future. Perhaps Ahmadinejad knows that the multicultural intrusion into the West, will in the future, provide Islam with the superior numbers backed up by effective military technology.

Who are we to give warning to any nation?

ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE Lockerbie bomber’s release, the government has ‘warned’ the Libyan’s not to celebrate Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi’s release. In the words of the Foreign Office such celebrations would be “tasteless, offensive and deeply insensitive”.

I hope that the Libyan regime puts us in our place and swamp the streets of Tripoli with state organised celebrants. I also hope that al-Megrahi puts in an appearance to rub salt into our government’s wounds. If such festivities do take place then we will have truly reaped what we had sown.

The decision taken was the wrong decision, and all those involved in making it also know that, deep down, it has made a laughing stock of the Scottish Executive, and in particular Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish justice minister. It was he who after all rubber stamped the decision and now protests that he did everything according to Scottish law; which is no doubt correct, but, having gone through a process of pass the parcel it had to land sooner or later in Mr MacAskill’s lap to make it his decision; and he made the wrong one.

But for the UK government to caution the Libyans against celebrating the anniversary of al-Megrahi’s release leaves me somewhat embarrassed. The Libyans’ know we are a spent force on the world stage, and to see our government and diplomatic service behaving in the way they are over this issue, by issuing a warning, as if we had something to back it up with, is absurd.

Richard Northern is our man in Tripoli and he has apparently sought assurances that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the colonel, will not attend the celebrations – but why not? After all, judging by the way this whole episode has been handled, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Kenny MacAskill might even attend.

BUT THERE IS A MUCH BROADER ISSUE, untouched upon by the press in their reporting of our government’s warning to the Libyans.

The UK is about to scale-down its defences to help alleviate our debt crisis. Now, any nation who seeks a place on the world stage and to be respected by the rest of the world, as well as to be taken seriously, had better have a military backbone strong enough to concentrate the minds of those you wish to influence.

Our politicians have continued to believe since, before, during and after the Falkland’s campaign that we are capable of punching above our weight. And this has been true. Militarily this country has had the best trained armed forces on the planet, and it continues to be the case today. Our fighting men and women retain the respect of all other armies.

In historical terms, a countrys’ armed forces are indeed the backbone of a nation’s diplomacy. The age of gun-boat diplomacy may have ended, but if government’s today wish to spout off in the manner that this coalition has done over the anniversary of al-Megrahi’s release, then they had better give their words substance by protecting this country’s armed forces instead of seeking to reduce them.

I GET THE IMPRESSION THAT our politicians want their cake and eat it. If we truly believe that this country deserves to be listened to by the rest of the world, then ultimately, the rest of the world will look to our armed forces as the ultimate test of our worthiness to be listened to.

We may be a small nation, but if we are to continue trying to persuade the rest of the world as an independent nation living within it; then our military capability must be respected. But if, as is planned, oversees development aid takes precedence over our country’s defence then what are the British people to make of it?

Our political class, including of course the present coalition government, are about to once more lay waste to our armed services, as many a government in the past have done. But for a majority conservative coalition to allow such a thing to happen will have consequences long after David Cameron has retired to the lecture circuit at a £100,000 a time.

It appears that the age of traditional conservatism is now over. Cameron represents the means by which this country’s full political and economic integration into Europe will be sold. If you believe, as I believe David Cameron does, in a United States of Europe; then paring down the one public sector that has kept this island an independent nation afloat for 2,000 years, is the logical step forward. What Cameron foresees is a European army, and a European Foreign Office to dictate military course of action. A procedure that we will have to, being no longer an independent nation, comply with.

This nation is on its last legs. It is in no position to warn any other nation with regard to their actions. We crossed the Rubicon when we signed up to the Lisbon Treaty. All we can do now is lay back and think of Europe.

The EU Gestapo

A PROPOSAL BY THE EU to give officers from any EU country the power to demand information on anyone in the UK, including personal details such as DNA, bank accounts, and telephone records, is being put forward for acceptance by the UK. This is the latest directive following the EU’s earlier announcement this month, allowing all nurses from within the EU to practice in the UK without undergoing the necessary safety checks by the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

According to reports this latest directive is being supported by Nick Clegg: although David Cameron has so far remained silent, he did say during the election that any changes imposed on the British people from Europe in the future, would have to face a referendum.

What is happening is European federalism by stealth? These directives are being slid under the door in the hope that their introduction will go unchallenged by the public – and both Clegg and Cameron hope for the very same thing.

It is astounding how a nation can be so conquered without defending themselves. Instead of battalions of soldiers invading our shores, we have an army of bureaucrats who have been given their powers by our very own politicians over decades to prowl our sovereignty before taking it away from us.

The EU directive is the artillery that destroys our independence of law-making, defence, foreign policy and every other facility we have established over hundreds of years, to build and retain our nation state.

BOTH MAASTRICHT and the Lisbon Treaty were, to continue the military analogy, the battles lost, for us Euro-sceptics. These treaties represent the EU’s legitimacy for all that is to follow, within their paragraphs and bulleted items lay the groundwork for this nation’s and every other European nation’s demise.

A United States of Europe(USE) is the unspoken ambition of our European leaders and the EU’s bureaucrats. While Euro-scepticism remains a force in all the European countries, any talk of a USE will be regarded as the outpourings of Euro-sceptic nutters.

But time, they know, is on their side, the Europhiles have only to sit and wait for the next generation to fall willingly into their arms. For our EU friendly, multicultural friendly children, are being taught that they are part of a greater whole far bigger than any nation; and too many people have died trying to defend this antiquity in the past.

A United States of Europe is, at the moment, the love that dare not speak its name. But when the immediate post-war generation like myself are having their ashes spread over some long remembered, and long cherished spot, this nation will be long on the road to being nothing more than just another canton existing in a federal state of Europe.

When will the people express their true contempt?

HOW MUCH MORE CAN THE BRITISH PUBLIC take of the kind of criminal behaviour that lead to the death of 90-year-old Geoffrey Bacon, who was brutally attacked on his doorstep and killed by a mugger who escaped with the princely sum of £40.

Mr Bacon loved his country and served it well during the last war. He served as personal driver to both Montgomery and Eisenhower, and volunteered for secret missions against the Nazis.

Of course what was meted out to Mr Bacon was not a one off. If it were then maybe there would be a far greater display of public outrage than has occurred. This is because such wickedness is almost a daily occurrence on our streets and in our homes; and sadly the public have been made immune to its awful nature. A crime that would have at one time caused outrage because of its unique character, is today just another statistic that has joined a list - a list that once never existed: and no, I am not looking through rose tinted spectacles.

I am 60-years-old and live in a seaside town on the east coast. When I was a child there was a murder in the town, and the town talked of nothing for days on end. But in the last ten or so years there have been several murders with the local people taking nothing more than a passing interest – just another statistic which they feel impotent to do anything about.

The fact is, is that the people know all too well that when or if Mr Bacon’s murderer is caught, and the criminal justice system intervenes to first of all, prosecute and send him to trial, and once found guilty punish him; then the people know that the punishment will not fit the crime. Life rarely means life and the criminal knows it; and the people know it. The idiocy behind our criminal justice system has no deterrent effect whatsoever. Yet, Ken Clarke, our new Justice Secretary, believes that many in prison should not be there because they are adding to overcrowding…and this is a ‘conservative’.

What if Mr Bacon’s killer turns out to have reams of previous stored on a Scotland Yard computer; what if he turns out to be another Bradley Wernham the serial burglar (700 at the last count) who recently appeared before a judge and was given 5-years, and probably out in two?

NO WONDER THE public are apathetic – or maybe they do seethe, but silently, knowing that they cannot use effectively the only power they have in a democracy; the power to vote. In theory, as was once so in practice, the political class were in tune with the wishes of the people on the issue of crime, as well as the forms of punishment dished out.

But today politicians of every party have learnt and abused the art of rhetoric. The first rule of which is to tell the people what they want to hear in opposition…those seeking power will prostitute every principle they may or may not hold, in order to gain power.

Once in power, the hard rhetoric of opposition – the kind the electorate believes in, particularly on the issue of crime, is put on the back burner and the liberal consensus once more overwhelms. Politicians who are in power, or hope someday to be in power are either large or small ‘l’ liberals. Just as in decades past, the political class (and by this I mean those in power) were of a centre right disposition; so, for the past 45 years, on social issues, we have had the tyranny of liberal values; and this is why Mr Bacon may never have true justice meted out to his murderer.

I DO NOT BELIEVE FOR one moment that our politicians would ever allow a vote on the return of hanging; in the same way that all three of the main parties stopped short of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. But if such a proposition on hanging magically appeared to be voted upon, then, if opinion polls were to be believed, capital punishment would once more have to be written into statue.

However, this does not mean that any modern jury would convict for a capital offence. So what we are left with is what the people of this country once thought would happen as a compromise. This is that Life should mean Life for murder. Today, however, you have to wipe out a whole community before the justice system honours what was supposed to be an assurance by the state in the 1960s.

I would also disbar prisoners from challenging their living conditions under legislation drawn up by the European Court of Human Rights. Too many lawyers are getting fat at the expense off the legal aid budget. A budget, I hope, in the interest of saving the British economy, this ‘government’ will trim back as freely as they feel ready to do with the Defence Budget.

WHAT MR BACON’S MURDER shows is that the world he belonged to in his youth had well anchored values that today no longer exist; and must have lead, at some point to the confusion those members of his generation still alive today also feel.

These values incorporated patriotism, and would never have displaced the nation state - the very entity they were sent abroad to fight and die for. They were men who were forced to leave their families and friends to fight on foreign soil. They may not have wished for the fate they were given, but they fought because of their country’s history, just as those serving today in Afghanistan also do, as well as their regimental history; but they are a diminishing few.

Geoffrey Bacon belonged to such a brotherhood. The kind of military brotherhood that today, in the febrile atmosphere of dominant liberalism, produces a squeezing of the nostrils accompanied by a snooty disdain from everything military.