Thursday, April 28, 2011

WILL AND KATE


BY THIS TIME TOMORROW it will all be over. Will and Kate will be married and the celebrations will have begun up and down the land in villages, towns and cities. Union flags and bunting  will be blowing in celebration - while merriment will abound throughout the country. There is nothing like a popular royal occasion to cheer up the hard core royalists for whom the monarchy is impervious to republican sentiment at such times.
            Some two billion people worldwide are expected to watch the event unfolding on television screens and in different time zones. The occasion will bring thousands of extra tourists to London from countries who long since chose the republican road; but whose people nevertheless have a soft spot for a royal wedding.
            Far from being dead, the institution of the British monarchy continues to flourish much to the annoyance of our own republicans who will no doubt, either spend the day hidden under a duvet popping anti-depressants, or sitting miserably in the corner of a pub downing quantities of alcohol, and hoping to consort with like-minded iconoclasts to give vent to their disgust and cynicism at the vile and loathsome display unfolding.
            As for myself I find the monarchy harmless, and therefore have little emotion either for or against the institutions continuance. But on the whole the monarchy is responsible for more good than harm. Having long since vacated the dogma of Divine Right, I see no reason to persecute  the British Monarchy. They match pound for pound any monies they get from the public purse with the amount of tourism they attract to London.
            As far as the Queen is concerned, she has served the nation well and deserves its respect. She stands among the giants of the monarchy such as Elizabeth I, Queen Anne and Queen Victoria. If we have to have a monarch, then we have been incredibly lucky with the female variety. Which may now lead to a change in the constitution to allow the first born irrespective of sex to take the throne. How many, for instance, would not have sooner seen Princess Anne push Charles aside and take the throne?

WE HAVE IN THIS COUNTRY an almost perfect symbiosis between monarchy and parliament. To change this wholly workable state of affairs would, I believe, prove disastrous. For the alternative is a bland republicanism that can only orchestrate a bureaucracy, as we have witnessed in Europe today.
            History is important to any nation, and monarchy exemplifies this principle. This country has, for its size, seen the greatest empire ever built, and left a great democratic legacy behind from its departure from empire. In comparison to other empires who competed with us, we were by no means the worst example of such a phenomenon. Yet it seems that the British Empire has had more antagonism shown toward it in the modern world than it ever deserved; and much of this criticism was due to our own countrymen’s censure and disapproval, rather than from that of other countries.
            Tomorrow at Westminster Abbey, a young couple will get married. It will, if truth be known, be watched outside of the abbey mostly by women and members of the gay community – which means there will be more than one Queen on show tomorrow.
            But what I like about the whole business is how miserable and angry those on the Left will feel about the occasion. If the event upsets the so-called ‘progressives’ then I wish the couple every happiness.

FROM 1968-1983, I myself tiptoing among the radical Left. First of all, as a member of the Labour Party who found the experience un-bohemian and not at all what I was after. Even the Left of the Labour Party fell well short of what I thought Che Guevara would have found acceptable.
            I always voted Labour despite my joining the British Communist Party (BCP) in about 1972. In fact all BCP members did the same knowing full well that the Labour Party was the only realistic engine for socialism. It was a happy time for me in the BCP. I attended branch meetings in my town where a most colourful and somewhat bizarre collection of comrades gathered on many a cold winters night to put the world to rights.
            I eventually lost patience with the Left when the Labour Party picked poor old Michael Foot  to lead them. It was in 1983 when the longest suicide note in history was written in the form of a manifesto for that year’s General Election, that  I began to turn aside from Left-wing politics. Admittedly, my true political and patriotic nature came to the for when the Falkland Crises reared its head and we went to war with Argentina some two years earlier.
            But after the general election  in 1983 I started to believe that socialism was merely a utopian plan constructed from of a time in this nation’s history when the working class were indeed the wage slaves of capitalism.
            Today I support none of the main parties. If there were a Conservative Party to vote for I would willingly oblige. But sadly that now extant body no longer provides the compulsion to do so. All the main parties are much alike and the values that made them have been so compromised that people like myself are forced to turn to fringe parties in order to place their vote. As far I am concerned, I will vote for UKIP wherever one is standing in my constituency. For UKIP is the only party that holds onto what was once regarded as Conservative values.

TOMORROW THE ROYAL wedding will, I hope be successful, not only for the continuance of the monarchy, but also for the young couple getting married.
            But most of all I hope that, as an institution, the monarchy will continue its role within our society. I hope so because it is largely dependent upon the individual that is crowned at any particular coronation.
            I am not an uncritical supporter of this institution and will not bow to the ‘impregnable sovereignty’ of its decision making. If, for instance, Charles is allowed access to the throne, he cannot expect, at least from the likes of me, any kind of support.
            The monarchy will need to justify itself in the future, and this means that the chosen monarch will provide acceptance among the people.
            I truly believe that the current monarch is staying in power to hopefully diminish the time her successor will spend on the throne after her. I believe Queen Elizabeth would sooner wait for William to reach sufficient maturity and for his father to reach sufficient old age to spend as little time as possible on the throne of England.
            If this is the case, I hope Queen Elizabeth lasts another 10 years on the throne; which would leave her 72 year old son limited time to do much arm to the institution of the monarchy.
            Prince Charles, like all of the sovereigns so christened, is unfit for the job and I think his mother is aware of it and is therefore willing to try and hang on until Charles’ time as king is limited by age in the hope that he cannot do much harm to the institution.
             

LABOUR HAS LOST THE RIGHT TO GOVERN


THE LAST LABOUR GOVERNMENT has much to answer for; but the way it tolerated the recruitment of Islamic terrorist at Finsbury Park mosque in London  must take the biscuit for sheer idiocy. Having encouraged mass immigration as well as becoming signatories to the European  Human Rights Act, that would eventually prevent them from taking meaningful action against many illegal’s  landing on our shore, the Labour government then allowed London to become the main recruiting station in Europe for jihadists. Afraid to provoke the Muslim population, Finsbury Park, Regent’s Park, and the East London mosques were left to fester during the late 1990s.
            London became known contemptuously as Londonistan throughout Western Europe as the recruitment centre for al-Qaeda. We now know, thanks to the latest documents from Wikileaks, that 35 of the Guantánamo detainees passed through Finsbury Park; no doubt under the tutelage of  Abu Hamza  (also known by the tabloids as “hooky”) and Abu Qatada. Hamza was finally brought to justice - but long after the horse had bolted.
            I believe no post war government has so ill-served their nation as did the last Labour administration. What they effectively did was stop all discussion and debate about immigration; they weakened our ability to deal with the problem by signing up to a document that gave precedence to European law over our own. As a result the British government has had to pay out millions of pounds under human rights laws; effectively, to terrorists.
            Islamism found a misguided friend in the last Labour government, who stamped on all debate that questioned the Multicultural society that they gave birth to and sought to pollinate the whole of society with. Multiculturalism was armed with a powerful weapon to use against its opponents - the law.
            For all sorts of legal obstacles had been put in the path of discussing race and culture, ever since Enoch Powell dared speak out in the 1960s. It was partly because of Powell’s actions that the whole idea of Multiculturalism was given so much weight. One of its originators was Roy Jenkins who was, as are politicians today, much concerned with this country’s social cohesion. Following the immigration of the 1950s, Jenkins thought that by allowing other cultures to retain their cultures and live according to them within British society, much unrest could be avoided between the immigrant and the white “aborigines”,  as they should now be known.
            The law started to take a hand in 1968 with the Race Relations Act, making it illegal to refuse housing, employment or public services to people because of their ethnic background. The act was introduced following the now famous (or infamous) speech in April of that year by Enoch Powell.
            From such small acorns great oaks shall grow; and a whole new race relations industry has flourished, and apparently seeded by a single speech by a single politician. A politician who felt he had to speak out for the sake of his country, its history and culture; all of which meant everything to him. More, it seems, in retrospect, than any of these things meant to the Europhile Roy Jenkins. But then it appears that, toward the end, Mr Jenkins began to have his own doubts about the multicultural “experiment” that today causes as much animus among the third generation immigrant as it does among the white British.
            We now have an apartheid cultural exclusion zone where integration is made impossible because Multiculturalism rejects it. Multiculturalism sets cultural boundaries. It says that the national culture of the country in which it is practiced is just another of many different cultures. What was once British culture, has become one of many with no seniority left to it. Is it no wonder that such groups as UKIP, EDL and BNP are gathering the disaffected white British, when all of the main parties have bought into Multiculturalism and abandoned the people who built and made this country strong.
            None of the main parties are what they advertise themselves as being. The Conservatives are no longer conservative; the Labour party are no longer Socialist, and the Liberal Democrats are just a capricious movement that moves happily between the two. For in reality the modern version of all these main parties are synonymous. They no longer pursue the ancient difference that once divided them. Thus they brand any party extremist that stands outside of their meretricious circle.

THE LABOUR PARTY effectively froze debate on immigration by associating it with racism. This was yet another crime against their country that the Labour government relished implementing to retain power by associating the Conservative party as the party of anti-immigration, and thus racism. To the Labour party the two became synonymous; and after Enoch’s performance, the Conservative party feared that the mud thrown at them would stick with the electorate and so set about becoming no longer the “nasty” party.
            All of the main parties are today culpable. We can blame Labour for replacing the working class with millions of immigrants and reinforcing their position through European human rights legislation; but the culpability of other parties in accepting this paradigm as if it were handed down to them from Mount Sinai carved on a tablet of stone, is also unforgivable. But this is what we have today. Cameron, the Conservative leader, cares little, it seems, about what the word Conservative means (tradition). Like Tony Blair before him, who cared little for what the word socialism meant for Labour (the working class); Cameron is more concerned about power and its stickiness, than about the past.
            It is about time that those Conservative voters who know the meaning of the word, turned away from the superficiality of David Cameron’s neo-what party. Conservative Britain exists regardless of class. Conservatism is what keeps a nation alive. Even socialism has  a  conservative (right-wing) streak.
            Modern Conservatism has however become indistinguishable from modern Labour or Liberal Democrat. The so called centre ground of British politics has eviscerated all meaningful ideological differences between the parties and reduced such “differences” to the pace of change rather than the need or desirability of change itself.

I STARTED THIS PIECE by describing the last Labour government as idiots. But in the 1990s they proved successful idiots (from their own perspective), by opening our boarders to large scale immigration, and by also charging those within the Conservative party of racism, if they dared question the policy. By doing this they silenced the tongues of their class enemies and kept the flow of immigrants coming in, in the hope that the votes of such people would eventually replace those of the traditional working classes whose votes were done away with by Thatcher in the 1980s.
            The last Labour government was responsible, through a lack of courage, for the training of Islamists in various London mosques. They allowed the proliferation of potential terrorists to be dogmatised in London mosques before travelling to Afghanistan to vent their anger on the many British soldiers serving their politician’s interests.
            It is inexplicable to me how such a government could have got it so wrong. But the then labour government were more concerned with winning the next election than they were with altering the flow of immigrants.
            How many British soldiers serving in Afghanistan will have met their fate at the hands of those 35 Guantánamo detainees will never be known. But the last Labour government’s lack of effort in keeping them out of the country in the first place, or arresting them once they entered, only shows the worthlessness of the last Labour government.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

DENISE DOODY AND MR ATKINSON


ALL ON THE LEFT have a soft spot for Cuba. Through rose tinted spectacles they viewed the romance of the Castro regime; and of the Guevara legend. The legend that was encapsulated in that iconic image of the revolutionary that has decorated the bedrooms of students all over the world since the 1960s.
            The Cuban revolution had, in true Robin Hood fashion, a hero who, through the simplicity of black and white, captured youth culture and hung on to it for over 50 years. Guevara and Castro plied their trade against the Cuban dictator Batista. There is no doubt that the Batista regime deserved what befell it. It was decadent and cruel, and what is more it was negotiating with the mafia to open a gambling empire on Cuban soil. Havana was set to become the Las Vegas of the Caribbean, and no doubt crime would have been the islands main industry with Batista accumulating vast amounts of wealth as his cut from the whole enterprise.
            Batista needed to go and went. In his place was established yet another regime; this time it was driven by an ideology whose proponents turned out to be little better than the mafia puppet that preceded them.
            All revolutions go through a period of idealistic intoxication where progress is made purely on the basis of the people’s enthusiasm for the revolution. There is no doubt that the majority of Cubans supported Batista’s dethronement. But not all Cubans supported what replaced the ancient regime and many fled to  Florida while they still had the chance to do so.
            Soon after the Castro takeover, Guevara had a falling out with Castro. Such splits are an almost daily occurrence on the Left, and Che took himself off to South America to expand the revolution, but was hunted down in Bolivia and killed - which served only to embellish further the romance that western youth had already discovered through the Cuban revolution.
            Guevara’s early death served Castro better than had he lived. The Cuban revolutions  almost religious significance to the youthful leftist idealists in the West, allowed the island of Cuba to be seen differently from other, more conservative Marxist states. All parties on the Marxist Left claimed Che as their own and they protected his name, and would not tolerate any kind of revisionary assessment of the great man’s life or criticism of the way the new Marxist regime was behaving on Cuba.
            The fact that  Castro was locking people up for their political views was axiomatic of all Marxist regimes. But Western leftist sympathisers who wore the progressive soubriquet like a badge of honour professed little knowledge of Castro’s treatment of homosexuals who were rounded up and sent to re-education centres for a ‘cure’.
            When the fall of the Soviet Union occurred, Cuba had its main financial backer taken from it. Like the mafia under Batista, the Soviet Union had promised the Cuban regime prosperity.          
            Marxist Cuba had won a great victory over its main Western enemy, the USA. The victory of the Bay of the Pigs only enhanced the Left’s idolatry as far as the Cuban experiment went. But when Communism crumbled, the rug was taken from under Castro’s feet and showed to the world just how dependent this Caribbean Island was on the Soviet Union. Without its subsidies, Cuba began to stare reality in the face. She may have won a victory at the Bay of Pigs, but, as with Vietnam, the Americans won the peace.

NOW, WE COME TO one Denis Doody (not a name to compare with Castro or Che Guevara), but nevertheless a man steeped in an appreciation of the revolutionary iconoclasts of the Cuban revolution.
            Mr Doody is an environmental manager of a housing association in West Yorkshire. He has on display on one of the walls in his office the aforementioned portrait of Che Guevara, partnered by a display of the great man’s sayings.
            Now Mr Doody (56) and a  national executive council member of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, had cause (as he saw it)  to reprimand one of his staff and threaten him with dismissal if he did not remove an eight inch Christian (remember Easter was approaching) cross from the dashboard of the van he drove on behalf of the housing association he worked for. Now thanks to the attention of the Daily Mail, Mr Atkinson, the offender in question has been allowed to keep his cross on display and Mr Doody has voluntarily removed the portrait of Guevara from his office wall.
            This should be the end of the story but the Daily Mail has looked into Mr Doody’s background  and found that he has visited Cuba 40 times and has a dodgy past, with involvement in the so-called Battle of Fitzwilliam in July 1984, during the National Mineworkers strike: he was arrested and latter discharged, following his participation.
            Mr Doody is a supporter of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign alongside Tony Benn, that corruptor of reason and promulgator of utopian socialism.
            Mr Doody seems to have taken exception to Mr Atkinson, an electrician working for the housing association, for displaying the eight inch Christian cross on the front window of his company van. A devout Christian with little of Mr Doody’s political  concerns, Mr Atkinson, a former soldier, merely chose to celebrate through his display of the cross at this important time in the Christian calendar the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.
            Denis Doody’s actions were indeed petty, but no doubt he saw himself as a warrior against religious superstition, backed-up by the regulations of the housing association. Although, what would have happened if the symbol on display had been from that of a minority religion, God (sic) only knows.
            I suggest that under such circumstances Mr Doody would not only have had to remove the photo of his hero from the walls of his office, but also himself from the housing association to which he was a manager.

MR ATKINSON has been given his job back thanks to the Daily Mail. But there are still far too many Denis Doody’s left over from the 1980s, still plying their outmoded trade within the trade union movement and are being listened to once more. They will be given new life in these times of economic restraint, blaming the capitalist system for every misery from unemployment to infertility.
            Denis Doody is comparable to a Jehovah Witness, in his relentlessness, while the Atkinson’s only wish is to celebrate the resurrection of their Lord as they see it. They do not proselytise as Mr Doody obviously does to the wider world through his membership of his trade union as well as his membership of the Labour Party (yes, I am only guessing).
            Mr Doody’s infatuation with Cuba has turned him into a cheep groupie of all things to do with Castro and Guevara. Like the follower of a long departed pop icon, Doody continues to brood over the failure of Cuban Communism and its creators.

           


                 

NOBLESSE OBLIGE – NOT THE LAW


            He was speaking on the BBC’s Today programme’s Thought for the Day slot when he made the suggestion that we should have “…a new law that made all Cabinet members and leaders of political parties, editors of national papers and the hundred most successful financiers in the UK spend a couple of hours every year serving dinners in a primary school on a council estate, or cleaning bathrooms in a residential home?'' - and because it would be compulsory, those told to go amongst the poor and presumably wash their feet while carrying the obligatory nosegay, could not receive any credit for so doing.
            I know the Archbishop was making a serious point, as he was when he suggested the possibility of incorporating parts of sharia law into our own. But to legally oblige someone to perform good works is at best naive, and at worse totalitarian.
            I did not listen to the archbishop’s contribution so I cannot say whether it was made with tongue in cheek or not. But the coverage his remarks received would suggest that he meant every word he uttered.
            Did not the archbishop’s God give his children Free Will, either to act in accordance with, or without reference to their consciences? Was there not to be a day of judgement when these matters would finally brought to a head, and mankind would finally be brought face to face with the sins that in life had pursued them to the end?
            You cannot make human beings do what they do not wish to do in a free and open society. If however, that society is part of the Muslim world then it can have a measure of success. But has we have seen in North Africa coercion also has its limits.
            If the archbishop’s law was enacted, then I hope that many of those to whom it was  meant to apply would use their wealth and power to flee abroad, because the country they live in would have had its first religious decree enacted, based as it would have been on Christian teaching according to Archbishop Williams’ long and reflective study of the New Testament. 

IF ROWAN WILLIAMS had left the law free to go about its business in its more usual and suitable area of expertise; while only making his suggestion’s obligatory upon the conscience of those he called upon to act, then perhaps the archbishop’s suggestions would have found greater favour at all points of the moral compass.
            However, once you call up from the shadowy deep, laws to backup your claim as a theologian who wishes to give his somewhat unorthodox views praxis in the real world, you no longer merit any sympathy; especially if those laws have a religious connotation that opens it up to the same hostility that any suggestion of sharia law did – as he well knows.
            Not only does Rowan Williams overstep the mark between church and state with his suggestion, but he also shows a totalitarian streak first displayed with his willingness to accept  encroachment of sharia law into English law.
            Like all apostles of the brotherhood of man, the archbishop is prepared to impose what he would deem necessary sanctions to bring such an ideal about.
            The law is there to stop human nature from overstepping the boundaries of laws society has created to protect the community that such laws are meant to serve. This covers criminal, family, financial and…well, it does not lay claim to enforcing religious laws - and so it should not.
            Rowan Williams admits that the basis of the commandment he wishes the wealthy and powerful to obey is a religious law founded in the teachings of Christianity. As such it is no different from Islamist laws, in the sense that the archbishop has used the law to promote his faith. We live in a secular society; and in such a society the laws are made by the application reason at all times.
            If there are out there, eccentric millionaires and self-publicising politicians who wish to follow the archbishops suggestion, then they are free to do so. But none from such a community need feel obliged by law to act upon Archbishop Williams’ eccentricities.
            I am all for the great and powerful experiencing the lives of those they are either separated from financially or ignored politically. Nevertheless, to suggest that the full force of the law should be used to make such introductions goes beyond democratic values and sadly fits neatly into totalitarian ones.

THE PRESENT ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY should have been the commandant of a seminary instead of leading  the Church of England. It was Tony Blair who proposed this man for such high office, and like many other acts of the last Labour government, the country has come to regret ever voting them into power.
            The Anglican Church today is a weak and insipid concoction of various examples of political correctness. Its Christian values have been downgraded by society’s acceptance of all forms of behaviour  thought of by the Christian church for 2000 years, as being immoral.
            Rowan Williams is fast becoming  an eccentric who is either to be pitied or condemned. How such a man became the leader of the Church of England beggars’ belief -  but then I write as an atheist.
            Nevertheless, I still believe that the Christian religion has a primary role to play in society; and it is because of this that Rowan Williams’ suggestion will only aggravate and enhance the further development of secularism in this country.
            To me religion has only a cultural significance. Its responsibility is primarily to do with the ‘spiritual’ side of men. Religion, all religion, harbours the spiritual welfare as the primary function of its activities; and as such should be tolerated – especially by us atheists who do not believe in the concept of a soul. The material state of mankind must therefore be of secondary interest to the church. This does not mean the poor should be ignored, but rather that they should be brought closer to the church spiritually and not materially.
            The Anglican church under its present leader lacks authority and standing. To have done what the present archbishop did on the Today programme only further mineralises his worth to the Anglican community.
            This servant of the church may have been blessed with an intellectual grasp of theology that others who share his faith can only envy; but I am afraid that the Archbishop has promoted his own irrelevance by his insistence upon a law to make men behave morally, when they should only do so according to their consciences. Which many of them quite happily do. The head of Microsoft, Bill Gates has poured millions of dollars into combating malaria in Africa and other regions of the world; and hopes to pour further billions on such projects.
            Many of the rich do not need to make the gesture of going among the poor and derelict to “…  spend a couple of hours every year serving dinners in a primary school on a council estate, or cleaning bathrooms in a residential home”; they spend their time creating wealth, a generous portion of which is given freely to charity.
           
             

Friday, April 22, 2011

THE KINNOCKS AND THE PUBLIC TIT


LIKE THE MANY THOUSANDS OF OTHER recidivist benefit claimants who have managed to steer clear of a proper job in the private sector, the Kinnocks have spent their working lives sticking limpet like to the hull of the state. Whether here or in Europe, the ex-leader of the Labour Party has never had to weather the inclement environment of the wealth creating sector. When he gave up his leadership of the Labour Party, the word went out that to the effect that “something must be done for Neil”: and so it turned out, when in 1995 he became a European Commissioner no less, on a basic salary of €20,000 per month (£13,000). As European Commissioner for Administrative Reform, he put paid to a whistle blower who was intent upon exposing the expense fiddling and nonexistent financial controls that was eating away at the EU’s credibility 
            On leaving this lucrative position after nine years, he of course received the generous and obligatory final salary pension which is a common feature of the public sector in all its many forms. After he left the Commissariat, he found himself (or friends appointed him to) running a quango from the 4th February 2004; this went by the name of the British Council. The British Council, by the time Neil stepped forth was only paying expenses - although his predecessor and friend, the lawyer  Helena Kennedy, received, according to Hansard in 2004, £35,000 prior to Neil’s appointment. However the great man obliged the nation once more with his talents and served without Ms Kennedy’s stipend, along with the added gift of his son at the British Council.
           
KINNOCK WAS LABOUR LEADER from 1983-1992. There were three memorable moments to his leadership of the Party. The first occurred just after he won the leadership, when finding himself with his wife Glennys  on the Brighton shoreline in what was meant to convey a man of destiny moment, he fell over and got drenched by an incoming wave. This was captured by the media (as he had no doubt intended it to be) and he never fully recovered from this, his first of many faux pas while serving as leader.
            However, the next memorable moment was much kinder to him, and as a result made the Labour Party electable again and put him in the party’s debt. This was what was to be known as his St. Swithin’s Day speech at the Labour Party conference in 1985.
            For years the Militant Tendency had sought to take over the Labour Party. It was a Trotskyite organisation based in Liverpool and its leader was also the leader of Liverpool City council. Derek Hatton played right into Kinnock’s hands and his organisation, as well its many sympathizers on the Left of the Labour Party were routed. The speech was a bravura performance and should have given him the premiership of our nation.
            However, saving as he did the Labour Party as an electoral force, was to represent the full extent of Kinnock’s political progress in British politics.
            At the 1992 General Election, Kinnock grabbed defeat from what could have been the jaws of victory. The event that put paid to the Welsh windbag took place in Sheffield, just hours before polling day. The Sheffield Rally was meant to put the icing on the cake of the campaign that Labour felt they were about to win, be it narrowly. However, it seems the expectation of holding the highest position in the land went to Kinnock’s head.
            I was a staunch Labour supporter at the time, and I remember standing in my kitchen filled with great despondency, as I heard the radio broadcast passages from Kinnock’s eve of poll address in Sheffield. I went into my living room and gloomily announced to my brother that Kinnock had blown the election. Later that night we watched and cringed, as the welsh windbag fully justified the moniker that we, up until this moment, had felt aggrieved at.
            Rather than a statesman, we beheld a fair-ground barker. He stood alone at the lectern on that night, roaring like a football hooligan who had seen his side win the Champions League; while behind him stood his future cabinet wishing the floor would open up under them.
            Yet this man went on to accumulate a publicly funded nest egg, from the public (i.e. through the private sector). On top of which Glennys became a Euro MP and also has a handy retirement package to add to her husband’s.
           
THE KINNOCKS have never competed for anything. It is true that Neil did so when standing for the leadership of the Labour Party. But was it really such a formidable task after being seen as a Left of centre candidate with a history within the party?
            The Trade Unions were brought on board; especially after the 1983 election when the party delivered what was to be known as the longest suicide note in history.
            I remember poor old Michael Foot humiliating himself at the time. He came to speak in my constituency and made for grim listening. He was a an outstanding scholar; and had served as a minister. But he was no leader of a party competing for power.
            After the 1983 general election, the party itself began to have the stirrings of enlightenment, that would give us Neil Kinnock – but more importantly, one Tony Blair.
            Neil Kinnock will turn out to be a mere footnote in Labour history. He was kept in work by the old boy network, and paid, by most people’s standards, handsomely, by various public bodies.
            Blair felt he owed Kinnock and made sure that he would not suffer the embarrassment of the dole queue. Being a natural supporter of the public sector, Neil Kinnock became one of its most successful beneficiaries.
             
            

ANOTHER £600 MILLION PLEASE


THE EU HAS CHOOSEN not to cut back on its spending like the various nation states that make up the union, but rather, to increase it. As far as Britain is concerned this means having to pay an extra £600 million into the wasteful coffers of the EU.
            We have been told that this amount has to be paid regardless of the feelings of the people in Britain who are paying it. For, like all other laws and regulations made and administered by the unelected commissioners and civil servants in Europe, our government can only nod its ascent without even questioning the amount.
            Commissioners, MEPs, and civil servants will be the main beneficiaries of this increase, in the form of enhanced pay and pensions.
            All representatives of the EU are fast becoming a European oligarchy answerable to nobody; this is because national governments have given away so many of their powers that the people of Europe are beginning to question whether there is much point in electing what is fast becoming sterile national parliaments, whose lawmakers are increasingly having to look over their shoulders to Brussels before legislating.
            If the EU managed to spend the people’s money wisely and judiciously, then at least they could find an argument for keeping the whole show on the road. But sadly, politicians and civil servants overseeing the European continent have an unconvincing record on spending our money that cannot be equalled, even by national governments.
            At least the people have the ability to change national governments. The European commissioners on the other hand, are literally a law unto themselves. A commissioner has a salary and expenses envied by those who had to take to the stump and win the support of the people in an election. They are then rewarded with an equally generous public pension. At least the City bankers create prosperity, pay generous taxes, and are not reliant upon a percentage of the working man and women’s monthly salary to pay their wages and finance their retirement.

IT IS TO THE EU’S eternal shame that the continents’ auditors have produced16 years of critical reports into the way European finances are spent and managed. Of a budget that in 2009 totalled £102 billion, £94 billion was “materially affected” by irregularities according to the auditors. Irregularities that included the one reported by the Daily Telegraph of spending  £350,000 “improving the lifestyle and living standards of dogs” in Hungary.
            Now there is no greater animal lover than myself, but I am left wondering whether, in the first instance, this money should have ever been given to such a cause; and secondly, whether this money actually found its way to such a cause. For there is another issue regarding European spending. This is, just how much of the money ends up where it is intended to go and attends to its described purpose?
            All sorts of financial shenanigans have corrupted the EU. When billions of public money are handed over to EU politicians and bureaucratic place men to distribute as is their want, without accountability to national governments: under rules that can be ignored completely or, in extremis, deliberately bent or, more subtly finessed.
            Corruption is a dirty word and requires hard evidence to substantiate it. But the auditors found “systemic weaknesses” and a high proportion of “quantifiable errors” meaning, according to today’s Daily Telegraph, “irregular payments, in 214 audited transactions of agriculture and rural development subsidies”.  In one incident, according to the same source, “the same sheep were counted for two different farmers". According to the president of the Court of Auditors,  Vitor Manuel da Silva Caldeira, "Errors come mainly from incorrect claims for payment and public procurement errors."
            Of the £102 billion EU budget quoted above, the agricultural part of the budget comprised £48.5 billion in 2009. It is in this area, and, in the main, in southern European countries, where many of the abuses occur. It is the region where most of the EU budget is spent: and it is in those same regions where help is being sought from the rest of the EU and the IMF to help  repair their deficits. First of all Greece and then Ireland made a claim for financial help from other European countries within the Euro zone to relieve their deficits. The next in line for such an arrangement are reported to be Portugal, Spain and, in extremis, Italy.
            Many Eurosceptic MPs in this country warned against the implementation of a single currency, but, in a display of rapturous idealism, the continent went ahead anyway - there were even politicians within this country who wanted us to join a single currency at the time.
            Now the most successful and wealthiest country in Europe has been put upon to help bail out those countries that should never have been part of a single country in the first place. Germany is now shouldering most of the financial demand as a consequence of introducing a single currency for the whole of Europe, instead of a two track system supported by many at the time.
           
THE BUDGETARY INCREASE DEMANDED by Europe to its annual budget totals a further £5.5 billion in extra spending, and the EU will get whatever it demands from national governments as national governments become mere cantons within the continent of Europe. This, I fear, is what the main parties in this country have long since wanted - a United States of Europe; a cornucopia of idealism that is meant to wipe away the memory of all European wars and leave us resplendent in our European brotherhood on a continent made up of milk and honey.           
           
           
           



 

Thursday, April 14, 2011

HERE WE GO AGAIN


THE SUREST SIGN THAT there is an election in the offing is for a party leader (supposedly of the Right) to raise the issue of mass immigration. This morning, David Cameron addressed his party faithful with a full frontal attack on mass immigration; linking it to welfare benefits, and accusing the last Labour government of actively encouraging the influx of over 2 million migrants to fill the vacancies in those sectors of the economy where British workers refused to go; preferring to stay idle on welfare – a situation the last government did little to change: but a state of affairs Cameron’s speech sought to highlight in order to damage Labour.
            Now Cameron’s Business Secretary, Vince Cable has responded to his leaders speech, describing it as “unwise” and in danger of harvesting support for extremist groups. Cable has, like many business leaders, proposed no limit on immigration, as well as supporting an amnesty.
            Cameron talked a great deal of sense, but, as one ordinary citizen said when interviewed on Sky this morning “he’s [Cameron] 20 years too late…”. The horse has bolted; the genie is out of the bottle. Now what our leader proposes is too little too late. No-one, not even in his own party, believes that the problem of immigration can be resolved satisfactorily to the future harmony of our society. By the middle of this century this small island will be home to some 70 million people living in separate communities; speaking in over a 100 different tongues and each segregating their own cultures from the other. For this is the multicultural ideal; an ideal constructed on liberal tolerance, and a belief in separate identities. A modern Babel where many cultures lead separate lives on a somewhat congested island - cultures that defy integration because it runs contrary to the ideology of Multiculturalism.
            Immigration, as a rhetorical force will once more go into hiding once the May elections are complete. On  May 6th  Cameron will decide whether raising the issue did his party any good. If  the Conservatives (as opposed to the Coalition) make generous gains, he will feel vindicated by today’s address.

HOWEVER, VINCE CABLE need not worry. The Conservatives will not make any gains as a result of this issue. They will not do so, simply because the electorate have been caught out once too often in the past by Conservative rhetoric on this issue, and besides, there is an alternative which those concerned with immigration can turn to and rely upon.
            Both the BNP and the EDL are the bête noire of immigration. The former of these two are indeed racists who would, given the chance, replicate Nazism’s attraction for force in dealing with immigrants. The EDL, on the other hand, are a nationalist party who see Islam as the greatest threat to this country, and must be viewed (for now at least) in a different light to the BNP. The EDL expresses a major concern that overrides even that of immigration and attracts many none-Islamic minorities to its cause. For the medieval theology of Islam is, as far as I have been able to judge, the EDL’s modus operandi. If I am wrong time will tell.
            The only party of the Right that serves the needs of conservatism in this country today are UKIP. Once seen as a single issue party, UKIP are slowly attracting conservatives away from Cameron’s (conservative Light) all things to all people party. Today British Conservatism’s only outlet are UKIP.
            At the moment it is seen as a one issue party – but what an issue! For the very soul of nationhood is UKIP’s raison d’être. UKIP are however starting to transplant from the Conservative party many of its once proud values by absorbing many of its one time supporters; while, on a lesser scale, the party also attracts many traditional working class Labour supporters.
            Of course it may amount to nothing: especially if Cameron turns out to be a mere aberration, whose successor returns the once great party to its traditional roots.

FUTURE IMMIGRATION CAN BE stopped. However those currently residing in this country legally cannot be removed unless you turn the problem over to the BNP, whose methods are brutal and racist.
            I am afraid that we have made our bed (or the Labour Party has made it for us) and now we must lose much sleep in finding comfort with the results. At least, if it had been made clear to those invited by Labour to live among us, that they should integrate and obey our laws and customs, or return home to the customs and culture they left behind and feel most at home with, then, perhaps, we would not be swamped today.
            Now, the main thing to do is to abandon Multiculturalism and make it clear to other cultures that they fully integrate within the mother culture, or return, whether the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) agree or not, to the land where their customs and culture are practiced; and where, in many instances, other cultures are not tolerated in any true meaning of the word, without any comment from the ECHR.
            The only way forward for this country is to do in part what Cameron is seeking to do, by making the welfare state more befitting its original purpose of acting as a safety net when Capitalism limits its capacity through recession. Those who fought for and introduced the  welfare state saw it as a temporary measure while the economy once more found its feet. But the post war years have seen permanence introduced to the system of welfare.

THIS COUNTRY CANNOT for long remain at peace with itself if it remains under the yolk of Multiculturalism. For such an ideology is by its very nature divisive and violent. The great mistake of the ideology’s founding fathers was to assume that immigration was a black and white issue. But Multiculturalism provides ample reward for many colours whose cultures are in political disagreement with each other, like India and Pakistan, to ferment social unrest.
            Perhaps the most significant of the founding fathers of the Multicultural ideology was one Roy Jenkins, who saw it as a means of somehow combating what he thought to be the exhibitionism of Enoch Powell.
            However, it appears that Jenkins himself felt, toward the end of his life, that the concept had, like that of other human creations, proved fallible.
            There is no point today in seeking to return home immigrant families who have been with us for generations. To do so would require methods of repatriation that would boarder on fascist. But every culture, whether they have resided with us over the past three days or the past three decades, should be given the opportunity to return to their own country, or stay and obey the laws and customs of the British culture. If they cannot make such a transition, then, and only then should they be sent back to whatever country their culture is perfectly assimilated with.
            Immigration is to important for a politician to use as a means of either improving or retaining power for either himself or his party. David Cameron has merely scratched the surface on the issue of immigration.            
             

Sunday, April 10, 2011

SHAME ON THE GRAND NATIONAL


THE BBC HAVE QUITE RIGHTLY TAKEN a lot of stick over their covering-up of certain incidents that occurred during the running of yesterday’s Grand National at Aintree.
            Two horses died during the race, bringing the total to 20 since 2000, according to Animal Aid. Ornais broke his neck, while Dooneys Gate broke his back. Tarpaulin was with embarrassing haste brought  on to cover the wretched animals, and for the first time in the race’s history, the jockey’s were forced to circumnavigate a fence on the second circuit of the race because of what one of the commentators described as an ‘obstacle’ preventing the horses from taking the fence - of course the impediment to race’s progress was a dead horse.
            The BBC however kept the ugly secret hush-hush until some 40 minutes had elapsed after the race. By which time the main focus was on the jockey Jason Maguire and his ride Ballabriggs. But even then further embarrassment followed when Maguire received a five race ban because of over use of the whip. No wonder Ballabriggs needed several buckets of water thrown over him on his way back to the stables to keep his body cool – this was further accompanied by the necessity of giving Ballabriggs oxygen.
            I know why the BBC tried to ignore these events; for to have done otherwise would have probably handed future coverage of the race over to Sky Sport. By describing two dead horses, neither of whom had had any choice regarding their participation in the race, as ‘obstacles’ hindering the race’s proper progression, was the most stupid of euphemisms to apply in order to merely varnish over the embarrassing reality.
            It was the kind amateurishly enacted spin of the kind deployed by Col. Gadaffi in order to distract the public from his brutal reality.
            As I wrote above, some 20 horses have failed the test of Aintree by dying since 2000. It now averages two horses per showing of the event. These are not isolated incidents and cannot be dismissed as such. Over the past 10 years, such a pattern of death among the horses participating in the Grand National should be the cause for a great deal of concern and reflection by the racing authorities – and not, as the BBC attempted to do, become a reason for covering-up.

I NO LONGER WATCH THIS EVENT. But there was a time when my father, whose only real pleasure in life was the racing form and his sixpenny bets, let my brother and I pick a horse from the Grand National. This race was seen, like Christmas and Easter, as part of the yearly ritual for us. As for most people in the country, the Grand National was when people who never bet on a horse, did so.
            In 1964, I picked a little horse called Team Spirit ridden by Fuke Walwyn. It came in first, and I won a few shillings. My father died the following February when I was approaching my 15th birthday and this put an end to a family tradition.
            My father’s death did not stop me watching the Grand National however. I watched Red Rum between 1973-77 win three times, and it was his character and personality, rather than that of his jockeys, Brian Fletcher and Tommy Stack, that impressed me as well as the public. Red Rum’s impact on the public conscience was so great that Aintree commissioned a bronze statue to the great horse.
            Now, when you start to spend thousands of pounds on creating a statue of a horse in tribute to its accomplishments, then by doing so you also acknowledge that these animals deserve better than being referred to by a here today and gone tomorrow commentator, as an ‘obstacle’ to the public’s enjoyment of the race.


I NOW BELIEVE THAT this race has become too dangerous and is in danger of becoming a modern Roman Circus where life is secondary to the excitement and pleasure of those paying to watch it. There is little the racing authorities can do to prevent such casualties among the horses, apart from lowering the fences to such an extent that the Grand National becomes just another national hunt meet. The Grand National’s prestige is built upon the demanding nature of the hurdles the horses are driven to jump; and for the authorities to claim, as they probably will after this latest tragedy, that more can be done short of such a major overhaul to improve the safety record of the event, is mere sophistry.
            When I was a child, I cannot remember a tarpaulin covered horse lying dead on the Aintree course. Perhaps then it was expected of the broadcaster to keep hidden such an occurrence considering the family nature of this yearly event. But today the public will not tolerate such concealment.

ALL RACE HORSES, whether racing on the flat or over fences, have been bread for the purpose and enjoy the experience. They know of no other life and no doubt would have not wanted any other life having experienced the one they were bred for.
            But the Grand National has no equivalent throughout the world. The horses perform, as they must, in this event, regardless of their fate.
            The horses are given obstacles that exceed those given to them in any other race; the horses are racing over a course that will challenge their ability but once. The Grand National is an aberration not an everyday experience for the horses.
            I find it deeply disturbing that a horse can be subjected to such a test as the Grand National. Each year the BBC in its build up, shows us the punishment the horses are about to be put through.
            Beeches Brook intimidates, and the BBC commentator stands  with the Brook towering above him, to give fair warning of what these horses will be facing.
            I do  not believe that this circus  should continue. Yesterday two horses met their fate, as did 18 others over the past 11 years. Next year, more through luck and nothing more, every entrant may be left alive; but purely through luck. For the course they will be sent to overcome will test not only themselves, but also their jockeys.
            For what hand if any, have the jockey’s themselves had in the destruction of their mounts during this event? Did ambition overcome compassion? The rewards are truly great for the winner of this event.
            The Grand National will, like the ancient Roman Circus, survive until the nation that allowed it to continue declines. Which may be many years from now; but considering the way of the world today, I doubt it will remain beyond the second half of this century. But by then the baby will have been thrown out with the bath water and all forms of horse racing will face abandonment by those in the future who exaggerate and overplay my own position and wish to abandon every aspect of the sport of horse racing – truly the sport of Kings and proletariat.