The genetics of Multiculturalism

Bradford is very inbred. There is a huge amount of cousins marrying each other there.”

Professor Steve Jones of University College London

PROF. STEVE JONES, the eminent and popularist geneticist has put the cat among the pigeons at the Hay Festival by focusing our attention on the problems of incestuous relationships within the Pakistani community in this country. He speaks as a scientist, without political baggage, in giving warning of a situation which most politicians would rather wish away than having to confront head on.

            Channel IV recently put out a programme on the same subject, but used an ethnic British Pakistani journalist to oversee and report upon the problem in places like Birmingham and Bradford. I believe that had Channel IV been approached by the likes of Prof. Jones to make a similar programme, he would not have been considered unless he had been a Pakistani Muslim, or even - just a Muslim.

            As Prof. Jones is none of these, he now faces the wrath of several of the numerous and dubious Islamic groups who profess to speak on behalf of the Islamic community.

            Of course incest has gone on for centuries among the host culture, but, outside of Royalty, has either been frowned upon or been made illegal, depending upon the familial proximity to each other of the participants and the nature of the relationship.

            According to Prof. Jones, “It is common in the Islamic world to marry your brother’s daughter, which is actually closer than marrying your cousin…” Such an observation would be considered naive and self-destructive for a politician to have made. But such a well regarded scientist speaking as a geneticist  - the study of which he has given his life too – cannot be so easily challenged as a politician speaking on the same subject would have been.

            As the professor says, “We should be concerned about that as there can be a lot of hidden genetic damage. Children are much more likely to get two copies of a damaged gene.” This is the rub. Incest is not only a moral and legal issue, but also a health issue of great significance for the children of such consummations – as was shown in the Channel IV programme.

            According to Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, “Research in Bradford has found that babies born to Pakistani women are twice as likely to die in their first year as babies born to white mothers, with genetic problems linked to inbreeding identified as a “significant” cause.

            Studies have found that within the city, more than 70 per cent of marriages are between relations, with more than half involving first cousins”.

           

PROF. JONES, I predict, will not cause the kind of tsunami effect that would have followed such pronouncements if made by a politician. Indeed, I believe there is even much embarrassment among middle-class Pakistanis regarding such incestuous attachments – but such a liberal approach does not appear to extend to marriages made between different cultures. Which means integration is as far away as ever and made ever more distant by the ideology of Multiculturalism that actively  encourages cultural apartheid.

            Arranged marriages are common within many Asian communities, and is not confined to Pakistan. But this once more leads to health problems – notably death by murder if a refusal to go along with the practice is forthcoming. Yet once again Multiculturalism, by its very nature, allows such criminality to continue, if not unpunished, then as an unintended consequence of the ideology.

            Our liberals still remain silent when it comes to talking about incest among Pakistani Muslims. They fear, as always, having to live with their conscience if they overstep the politically correct mark and voice any disapproval of the practices highlighted at the Hay Festival by Prof. Jones.

            As with the subject of arranged marriages; if such behaviour is to be highlighted then it is better done by a liberal member of the Pakistani community, as seemed to be the case with the Channel IV documentary mentioned earlier.

            The Coalition, like their predecessors going back over 40 years have actively encouraged a Multicultural society to replace the much regarded and parochial England that I have treasured since my childhood in the 1950s.

            If we had to have a mixed ethnic culture then such an experiment would have proved more fruitful if all ethnic groups invited to live among us had been told to live their lives in accordance with the culture they chose to come and live amongst. But instead such aspirants were told that their culture had equal merit with the indigenous one: and as such had equal merit. Such was and still is the message of Multiculturalism.

THE QUESTION OF incest within the Pakistani Islamic community, and the way it has been ignored by governments of all colours, only goes to show how Multiculturalism retains its influence on the national culture, while eating away at its legitimacy.

            Prof. Jones speaks as a  concerned scientist who sees much human suffering with the present arrangement. But we have known for many years about the dangers of births through incest: yet some of the Islamic community’s ‘representatives’ still ask for proof regarding the various claims made against such inbreeding.

            I believe that such practices described by Prof. Jones at the Hay Festival should be outlawed. Until now such laws would have been regarded as being unnecessary and illiberal; but we now have living among us some two million people who find the practice vital to their culture irrespective of Prof. Jones’ warnings - and our politicians who have created and allowed this dangerous procedure to continue in the hope that the general public remain unenlightened of its presence, should be held to account.

            With regards to the practice of incest within our Pakistani community: that community must be told that it must be stopped for the sake of many disabled children that such practices would bring about - there should be no other criteria than this.

            If the Islamic community find such an obligation to the citizenship of this country too much to accept; then they must return to whatever country their culture directs them.

             Since the foundations of Multiculturalism  were laid down by Roy Jenkins over forty- years ago, our politicians have either willingly complied with the full remit demanded of the ideology, or have remained silent for fear of transgressing the new liberalism by finding themselves tainted with racism.

            But as I have said in other blogs and will no doubt continue to say in the future, whenever I write on this subject: Roy Jenkins, one of the founding fathers of Multiculturalism, began to have doubts about the ideology toward the end. Yet those politicians who today still lay claim to the success of this wretched creed, do so, not for any principled reason, but purely for the hope of political advancement – the most spurious consideration of all.

            

OBAMA AND THE MIDDLE EAST

PRESIDENT OBAMA has once more pronounced on the Middle East. Once again his subject is the state of Israel and a future Palestinian state living in harmony, each respecting the others sovereignty.

            The President’s ‘solution’ reminds one of that old Coca Cola advert; where hundreds of young, multi-ethnic people stand waving bottles of Coke in a sunny pastoral setting, and singing, ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony…’.

            Those saccharine sentiments were meant to tug at the idealism of youth when, in the 1970s, racism flourished, and Coca Cola sent out the message that as a company, they did not mind who they sold their beverage to – they were not prejudice.

            If President Obama was not such an intelligent and gifted political operator, I would have suggested a streak of naivety in his remarks comparable to the disingenuousness of the lyrics in the Coca Cola jingle.

            The president suggested that (and I hope it was nothing more than that) any future settlement between Israel and the Palestinians should be based upon pre 1967 boarders. As someone who is old enough to understand the events of the 1967 Six Day War, I feel that President Obama (who was, at that time, yet to merit any kind of existence) fails to fully understand the duplicity and treachery displayed by the Arab world at the time as they acted together and in secret, to launch a surprise attack on the state of Israel, only to be surprised themselves by Israel’s own initiative  in pre-empting the Arab aggression.

            The outcome was the capture of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and both the Golan Heights and the Sinai by Israel. Since then the Sinai has been given back to Egypt and the Gaza Strip has been vacated, only to leave it in the control of a terrorist group that refuses to acknowledge the state of Israel.

           

WHAT WOULD ANY KIND OF ‘solution’ involving the pre 1967 boarders would mean? Would it be the movement of a half million people from what the Palestinians describe as the occupied territories, only situate them behind the pre1967 Israeli boarders?

            Now if Prime Minster Netanyahu were to go along with Obama’s ‘solution’, does the American president believe that these vast numbers of people would go quietly into that dark good night. Does Obama really believe that such a movement of people could be set on the ‘right path’ by a mere click of Netanyahu’s fingers?

            Such a process would set Jew amongst Jew threatening civil war. It would divide the country and strengthen the hands of Hamas as well as the Palestinians generally. Even the idea of trading off land proposed by President Obama posed the same threat.

            If I threw a ball through my neighbour’s window; my neighbour would find it contemptible if any request were made by myself for the balls return. A simple analogy, but one with a similar injustice felt by the victim: and the victims in 1967 were the Jews as well as the state of Israel. Right was on their side when they took the pre-emptive action they did at the time: and any land seized was forfeited by the aggressor.

            Prime Minister Netanyahu was right to bring President Obama to task over this issue. The Israeli prime minister is the head of Likud. The Likud Party, like all Right of centre parties carry the tag of being either racist or populist. To be described as being Right Wing (whether you are a politician, journalist or painter and writer) it is a term that immediately conjures up a list of reactionary beliefs.

            Netanyahu has his nation’s very existence at heart. Israel is surrounded by enemies (potentially, even more after the Arab Spring). He cannot talk to people who think his country should not exist. To do so would be admitting that there was some genuine claim to be made on the Jewish state. First of all, all Palestinians must accept the right of the Jewish state to exist. If this is not possible, then a solution is not possible. It is not Israel that has to compromise but Hamas who rule Gaza, and have recently reunited with Abass on the West Bank.

WHEN I READ OBAMA’S COMMENTS, I, like many friends of Israel felt betrayed by them. America has been Israel’s main pillar of support since the state came into existence in 1948. Today the state of Israel is admired for its readiness to keep the Jewish state a solvent entity. Particularly in America, the land of the state of Israel is seen as being the primary source of Christian belief. This land was the womb of Christianity and many Christians in America support the state of Israel because of its significance to their faith.

            But even people like myself, who consider themselves as atheists recognise that the Jewish people were once rooted to a homeland known as Judea; and were replaced by the Romans. From this came the Diaspora that lasted 2000 years culminating in the Holocaust. Throughout those two millennia the Jewish peoples roamed the earth forever persecuted by governments and Kings.

            Never has a people struggled for success and been so despised for achieving it. Because they were never allowed to practice business in many of the societies in which they found themselves either stranded or marginalised, they became what we would call today financiers (money lenders) or traders in precious substances.

            Envy and scapegoating  have persecuted the Jews wherever they took up residency outside of their ancient boundaries. In 1948 they returned to those boundaries and were once more set upon by their neighbours and have been prodded, poked and taunted ever since. If the Holocaust had never happened, then perhaps the call for a Jewish homeland would today be comparable to (in popularity) the call for Scottish Independence. But Zionism gained impetus because of  European nations attempt at exterminating the Jewish race.

            What the ordinary Jew learnt from the Second World War was that wherever they were living on this planet, if the 2000 years of persecution  continued; he or she would be provided for within a Jewish homeland, no longer dependent upon the trials and tribulations of the Diaspora.

WHAT PRESIDENT OBAMA does not seem to comprehend is that Israel is not only a country where Jews can call it their own. But it is also a sanctuary away from the anti-Semitism that, as in Germany, or in 19^th  century Russia, may once more return; where even today, because of the long standing Russian peoples’ prejudice toward Jews, future programs cannot be ruled out.

            So before President Obama makes suggestions about the Middle East conflict between Israel and the Palestinians that leaves the state of Israel weaker and ever more dependent upon the USA; (as well as every other future here today and gone tomorrow president) he had better realise who his, as well as his country’s friend is in the region, and retract his statement about pre-1967 boarders.  The 1967 boarders were established through victory. Those who opposed Israel at the time sought the overthrow of the Jewish state. Had they been successful, would we today be arguing for an Israeli state that would mean asking the Palestinians to forfeit parts of their land?

            The state of Israel is here and will remain here. It will only face ruin if its main ally (the United States) tries to make it obey decisions that Israel knows will lead to the termination of the Jewish state.

            If Israel is put at arm’s length by the Obama administration (as it appears to be the case), then Israel had better play her trump card. This card, according to anti-Semites in America, is money and the Jewish conspiracy. These two long standing grievances regarding the Jews may play well among Afro-Americans, but when it comes to the many different protestant beliefs within America. The part played in them by the Jews and the Old Testament reinforces their Christianity.

            President Obama should rethink his view about the pre-1967 boarders regarding a so-called ‘solution’ to the current impasse in the Middle East. No Israeli leader is going to leave his or her country weaker than he or she finds it. To do so would encourage such ignominy that all that would be left to such a leader would be to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

           

           

           

             

           

Clarke should be sacked

The crime, committed by a man, of forcing another person to have sexual intercourse with him without their consent and against their will, esp. by the threat or use of violence against them

Dictionary definition

KENNETH CLARKE, the Justice Secretary, is being hounded from office by the raucous fraternity of Labour politicians and women’s groups, because of his insensitive treatment of the crime of rape. To the cry of ‘all rape is rape’, the beleaguered Justice Secretary had to trawl the studios in order to undo the calamity of his appearance on Radio 5 yesterday  .

            Trying clumsily to suggest there are differences to be made between different forms of rape, his language reflected his personality. I find Ken Clarke an attractive politician who cares little of what people think of him and prefers bluntness to the spin often used by his colleagues from all parts of the House.

            Rape is second only to murder in the hierarchy of criminal behaviour, and those found guilty should be treated without any consideration for parole and serve the full sentence allotted by the law and unleashed by the judge.

             There should be no plea bargaining which would free the rapist prematurely to reoffend and reoffend again.

            Both Ken Clarke and David Cameron have used the argument that only 6% of men who are accused of rape are ever prosecuted, and if the sentencing were more liberal, then more rapists would be convicted because they would enter a plea of guilty long before the case comes to court, thus saving the victim of the long drawn out procedure of awaiting a trial, as well as the trauma of appearing to give evidence.

            The Justice Secretary’s priority since holding office has been to find ways of reducing the prison population, and by doing so to save the taxpayer and the government many millions of pounds. Ken Clarke is a liberal Tory to whom reform of the criminal justice system, along what would be commonly described as ‘progressive’ lines, would come easily; and if in doing his duty he upsets, shall we say, those who favour the more traditional approach to criminality, then Ken cares little for such opponents.

            But he picked the wrong crime to liberalise. Rape leaves the progressives free of any kind of mercy for the rapist. When it comes to this particular crime the liberal left display all the instincts of the ‘hang ‘em and flog ’em’ brigade they would ordinarily despise.

FROM WHAT I HAVE read, it appears that Ken Clarke sought to make a distinction between a 15 year-old girl giving herself freely to an older man, and the case of a woman being violently raped.

            While the first example may be defined legally as rape (I am no lawyer), the dictionary definition  says that force being used against the will of the victim is the true definition of rape. This does not mean that the older man who has been invited into  intercourse by a girl below the age of consent should not be punished. Indeed he should be, for he would be well aware of the law, and he should be held as accountable as anyone else who breaks any law.

            But could what he was invited to do by this young girl meet any of the dictionaries definition of rape? This, I think, is the only point Ken Clarke was (rather clumsily) trying to make. The Justice Secretary is not, as the feminist sisterhood has sought brand him, a misogynist. He was just living to type.

WHY I THINK Ken Clarke should be given the red card, has little to do with this latest Coalition farce. My problem with Ken is his ideological view of criminal justice that seems to fit so easily into the dire economic condition of the country. For such a state of affairs allows the justice department, under the leadership of its liberal enforcer, to go against the grain of popular opinion when it comes to law and order. Ken Clarke uses the economic argument to oversee the diminution of sentencing in order to free up our overcrowded prisons. He seeks to ease prison overcrowding by reducing the tariff  that the judges decree to be necessary on all forms of crime.

            Is it not true that even before Ken gets started we know that as things now stand and  stood throughout the last government’s period in office, was for any sentence given by a judge to be reduced by the simple calculation of halving it. It is this state of affairs that goes against the grain of public opinion (or, as the likes of Ken Clarke would prefer – the grain of ‘populism’).

            If Ken had confined his liberal approach toward crime to all the forms but with the exception of rape, he would today be supported by all of those he finds himself in conflict with – the very liberals who like himself  now form the modern British establishment

KEN CLARKE SHOULD GO. He should do so because his priority seems to be financial rather than, as it should be, applying the characteristics of honesty, fairness and integrity, which are by definition the requirements of justice, especially to the victims of crime.

            Under our criminal justice system, the victim of a crime can become the victim of the justice system itself, especially when that system is overseen by the likes of Ken Clarke.

            Our prisons are indeed overcrowded and have been for the last ten years; during which time not a single extra prison has been built to mop up the overflow from overcrowding in other prisons. Rather, it has been the liberal politician’s view that reduced sentencing leads to reduced numbers – but it also leads to injustice for the victims of crime.

            Rather than build more prisons, our politicians punish the victims of crime by halving the sentences of the criminals that caused their pain in the first place. Even a murderer given 15 years can expect to be released back into the community in seven years providing he behaves himself.

            The building of new prisons are expensive, running into billions of pounds. Our politicians may think the oversees aid budget is worth it, but when it comes to the people’s safety as well as their defence, then that money would be better used on a division between prison building and defence.

            Our justice system is a disgrace and the people to whom it is supposed to support and protect have little confidence in its existence. I can assure Ken Clarke that every piece of his rhetoric on crime and the criminal that seeks to reassure the community, is treated with the utmost cynicism. It is treated as such because of the empirical experience of the communities to which such banalities are aimed.

KENNNETH CLARKE SHOULD GO. He should do so because his prescriptions for the justice system are liberal and as such will fall fowl of what the likes of Ken Clarke would dismiss as ‘populism’ - meaning  of course the majority of the British people.

            This populism that the liberal fraternity are so comfortable in despising, comprises areas of the country where the liberal brotherhood has little place. All over this island nation of ours, people have personal experiences of crime that they feel go ignored by the police: but then, even when a serious crime is brought to trial, we are left with a sentencing policy that is guaranteed to diminish over time until the guilty party is released long before their time is up.

            The British justice system could have at one time counted upon the Conservative Party to put it once more on the right track. But sadly, like the Labour Party, this once great entity has been diminished because of  the lack of faith of its leadership in the conservative values that helped bring this country to its fulfilment .

            Ken Clarke is a creature of the European Union(EU), and as such his ambition is for a Federal States of Europe. His present position on the justice system falls within the charter of the EU. For this is Ken’s real focus for  the law of these islands: to fully integrate its law into European law.

            

DR LIAM FOX MUST ACT NOW

LIAM FOX HAS found yet another of his correspondence to the PM leaked To the press. This time the Defence Secretary has questioned the target of 0.7% of GDP to be given in Oversees Aid by 2013. In particular he is against such a target being enshrined in law, as the Coalition intends it to be. This he suggests, carries the risk of legal challenges from those countries we support in the aid budget; he writes, ‘Creating a statutory requirement to spend 0.7 per cent ODA (overseas development aid) carries more risk in terms of potential future legal challenges than, as we have had for the covenant, putting into statute recognition of the target and a commitment to an annual report against it.’

                If the Coalition sticks to its target of 0.7% of GDP, the tax payer will be paying £4 billion more a year in foreign aid by the time of the next election, as payments grow from £7.5 billion to £11.4 billion per year. This will represent a 34% increase at a time when other ministries (including Dr Foxes own) are having to make cuts of 20% to their budgets.[1]

                David Cameron promised to stick with the previous governments target of 0.7% by 2013 in his election manifesto last year - and Harriet Harman has just appeared  on our screens to demand that the prime minister keeps to his promise.

                The promise was made as a gesture toward renovating his party’s image with the public; in the same way that Blair succeeded in doing in 1997.

                Cameron needed to transform the Conservative party from being the ‘nasty party’ of the Thatcherite era, into a more huggable, compassionate, and generally Teletubby  kind of outfit. This he began doing by changing the party’s mast head from the brutalist flaming torch into the very bucolic image of a tree in full leaf. This, he hoped, would have its appeal to the young and environmentally conscious, as well as the traditional rural Tory who would have preferred the likes of Mr Fox to lead the party.

                But despite such transformations in image and policy, Cameron failed to win the election outright and had to share power with the real cuddly toys.

WHY HE OR HIS advisors felt they had to stick with the previous governments ambition for the overseas aid budget is beyond comprehension, unless Cameron really did believe in such a target. If so, then he is no Tory. For a true Tory would have scrapped such a target and demanded       cuts on top of it. A true Tory would have done so because as a Conservative he would put his nation’s interests before all other international concerns in order to rehabilitate a broken economy.

                The true Tory would have prioritised Mr Fox’s department over an oversees aid budget for instance. For when the country has to form an economic laager in difficult times and there is a choice to be made between services; those services that have nothing to do with the defence, policing, health and education of the country should be savaged before a start is made on domestic departments.

                If there is to be ring fences constructed, then such protection should be given to familial expenditure rather than to other countries such as India, Pakistan, and China.

                The people (and here I mean those living outside of the AV yes zones) would have supported Cameron;  perhaps to the point of gaining a workable majority.

               

IF DR FOX had made it clear that he was opposed to ring-fencing the aid budget, then he would have behaved as a Tory. But as he says in his correspondence, he is not averse to the 0.7% target, only to it being a statuary requirement. He  is said to have harvested a lot of support from his party’s backbenchers for the contents of his letter. However, the fact of its leaking seems more significant than its contents.

                I was led to believe that the Secretary for State had challenged the aid budget’s ring fencing and supported its pruning like every other department. But no, Dr Fox, it appears, is just manoeuvring  for position within what was once qualified to be called the Conservative Party.

                The overseas aid budget has, by its very title, conjured up images of the dispossessed throughout the third world being helped; and this is what the British public have believed to be the case.

                Well it is the case that whenever a natural or human made disaster occurs, then this country is duty bound to help relieve the situation. But it does not require a new government department in order to do so.

                If, however, I am wrong, and it does indeed demand such a body to regulate distribution; it still does not deserve being made untouchable in such troubling times for the British people by this Coalition government, via the ring-fencing of the department.

                As Dr Fox knows; on top of the already announced defence cutbacks such as depriving the nation of its aircraft carrier capability as well as its air potential, we now know that Cameron is demanding even further cutbacks to this country’s defence budget.  If those Conservative backbenchers are serious about their support for the Defence Secretary, then they must persuade Dr Fox to go the last mile and oppose directly what this Coalition is demanding of his department. Only in this way will their support of Dr Fox be justified.

IF DR FOX IS SERIOUS in his intention, then he must come out against any such ring-fencing  of expenditure for a department that does not serve the needs of the British people. In hard times, as we are being told we live in, then hard decisions have to be made and the interests of the British people must be given priority.

                If the 0.7% increase was  abandoned, then £4 billion each year would come to the exchequer and perhaps save both the air craft carriers on order - as well as manning their flight decks with British aircraft. At the moment, while both vessels are under construction, only one will enter service with the Royal Navy, and even then the flight decks will be parked-up with French aircraft.

                If ever there was a time when a Secretary of State should stand up for his or her department, then such a moment has arrived for Dr Fox.

                Does it not seem at all incongruous to the present occupant of the Ministry of Defence that his party leader and  prime minister of his country, that the overseas aid budget should be put before the defence of the country he is supposed to lead? Does not Dr Fox, as a Conservative, realise the absurdity of such a state of affairs?

                If the good doctor is serious about protecting his department’s finances, then he should take measures to justify the confidence his backbenchers have shown in him since his latest loss of correspondence to the media.

               

               

               

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[1] All stats are taken from the Daily Mail 17/05/2011

OSAMA IS DEAD AND WITHOUT ETERNITY

IT WAS A SIGHT TO MAKE THE European political classes weep. Thousands of Americans were celebrating the killing of Osama bin Laden. In Washington and New York, the revellers were finally able to rejoice: after 10 years and  3,747 innocent deaths, the unbounded joy at the death of the West’s cowardly tormentor, brought an end to a brutal chapter that began on 9/11.

            Americans were right to show their public enthusiasm for bin Laden’s killing. There view seemed to be, that this mystic who contrived to use Muslim youths from all over the world to do his vile bidding, while closeting himself away where he thought he was safe, deserved his fate, and that fate deserved to be celebrated by the citizens of the country where he ordered up the deaths of thousands.

            Yet on this side of the pond we have the first stirrings of liberal guilt. We sensitive souls in Europe cannot help feel a certain queasiness for both the celebrations and the manner of bin Laden’s fate.

            The human rights lawyer, Geoffrey Robinson said that ‘justice’ implied properly constituted judge and jury. While dear old Canterbury felt he had to chime in with "The killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling because it does not look as if justice is seen to be done."  It did not seem to register, that for the victims as well as the majority of ordinary people, justice was seen to be done.

            It was seen to be done, by President Obama and his cabinet as it actually happened, thanks to modern technology. They all sat watching the unfolding drama with a mixture of shock and admiration for navy SEALS sent to relieve us of this latter day Rasputin.

            I get the feeling with Rowan Williams that had the target been Adolf Hitler in 1945, his comments would have been exactly the same.

            As for Geoffrey Robinson; well, while America is renowned for the ambulance chasing  attorney, we, sadly, have the human rights variety. Thanks to Europe, these legal representatives are enjoying their well rewarded day in the sun acting on behalf of the likes of bin Laden, with financial contributions from the taxpayer; most of whom have nothing but contempt for kind of clientele they represent.

            The ordinary man and women believe in court justice for the ordinary but not the exceptional crime. The ordinary crimes of burglary, shoplifting, GBH, rape, and murder, (whether pre-meditated or not), and yes, also that which the ordinary person regards as falling within the remit human rights – which they rightly believe Osama bin Laden does not

            The exceptional crime is that engineered by the likes of Osama bin-Laden. For it was not only the thousands of deaths he was responsible for; but also the recruitment of the young to carry such acts out. Such youths as were harvested in this country via the Finsbury Park, as well as other London mosques; where imams acted as bin Laden’s recruiting sergeants and sent them off to Pakistan to become jihadists. Young lives sacrificed: young and vulnerable idealists drawn to bin Laden’s idea of an Islamic utopia - only to give themselves up to a pipe dream, as many young men and women have done in the past.

IT SEEMS THAT the blogosphere is being used by many Americans who seem somewhat puzzled by Europe’s lack of enthusiasm for the wicked witch’s death. Well they have to understand that Europe’s political class are sensitive to the means. They all, of course, desire the same ends as do the Americans, but they are left somewhat  repugnant by the way in which it was tackled.

            I can well imagine many a European liberal lifting a nosegay scented handkerchief to their nostrils like an18^th century French aristocrat, in a display of their disapproval at the vulgarity of its execution, as the facts finally emerged about bin Laden’s death,    

            While once more demurring American vulgarity, the Europeans nevertheless still saw the necessity, no matter  how uncivilised its execution, of being rid of this irritant.

            America has once more done as it did in the past, and helped Europe out of a hole. It did so this time because it had its own national interest in killing this arch-killer.

            Europe has always stood to one side and let America take the blame while benefitting from her actions on behalf of the West. America has supported our continent through two world wars, a cold war, and a war upon terrorism; but those American bloggers who now criticise  Europe for its lack of enthusiasm for their country’s latest contribution to this continents survival had better get used to the fact that, apart from the UK, no European country will ever display its gratitude for your country’s help.

            Gratitude will always play second fiddle to resentment, coupled with envy, to any act carried out by the United States of America. European powers that, having had their day, still believe that America’s enemy is emotionally speaking, Europe’s last hope for seeing this superpower put in its place.

           

OSAMA BIN LADEN was executed, not through the proceedings of a court of law, as the likes the Arch Bishop and Geoffrey Robinson would have liked, but rather it was an execution on behalf of his victims irrespective of the feelings of these two much respected liberals whose finer feelings were sadly assaulted by America’s actions.

            The truth is, is that nobody outside of al-Qaeda truly regrets the fate of bin Laden. No matter how he was brought to book, he fully deserved his fate. To have sought to bring him to a form of civilised justice as Mr Robinson would have put it, would have caused many more deaths of innocent people. Both the Arch Bishop and Mr Robinson are presumably intelligent enough to know what this would have meant as far as the growth in terrorism was concerned.

            Osama bin-Laden was killed and buried at sea according to Islamic ritual. To have captured him alive and sought to put him on trial would have, in the first instance, led to the kidnapping of socially prominent people in order to bargain an exchange. Or he would have become another Che Guevara to the Muslim world; or he would have had the likes of Geoffrey Robinson representing him in court. All such scenarios would have prolonged the life and enlarged the popularity of al-Qaeda, and led to the deaths of ever more people as a consequence.

            He is dead and let him lay where he can hopefully do no more harm. This man orchestrated the greatest terrorist advance on the innocent that all other terrorist groups have so far managed to achieve. He now lies with the fishes without an afterlife decorated with the many virgins his religion promised him. He is now ignorant of all such things; he lies in blackness without memory or suffering; without, in fact, any kind of conscious awareness – for he is now dead and without all he had hoped for and believed in, in death.

           

           

           

ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES SEEK TO GOVERN

YOU DID NOT NEED to be a genius to realise that last May’s general election was a contest best lost. For whichever party had won it, that party was guaranteed to suffer the wrath of an angry electorate, irate at the cuts that would prove pressing just days after the ‘victory’.

            How does it go? For every £8 billion in cuts this government will be forced to make,  the Labour party would have made £6 billion? This is the extent of the difference between the Coalition and the Her Majesty’s Opposition; yet to hear the opposition’s complaints one would have thought the differences between the parties were of great ideological significance; as they indeed were 30 years ago.

            The people of Lilliput went to war with their neighbours over what each felt was to be the correct end of a boiled egg to slice open before eating it. This was Swift’s way of illuminating the lack of meaningful differences between the political parties, and the hyperbole and exaggerated anger each deployed against the other on the public stage.

            To listen to the present mooing and exotic displays of outrage by all parties at 12 noon on a Wednesday, one would have thought that serious differences were being chartered by the party leaders as they face each other over the dispatch box; rather than the infantile point scoring, whose sole function is to be declared a winner on that evenings news.

            What is needed today is another Jonathon Swift to satirise this modern variant of Lilliputian politics. But unfortunately there is no such successor to his crown – although we are in dire need of one.

           

THIS COUNTRY NEEDS to reduce its budget deficit to the tune of some £170 billion. It needs to do so because this nation’s economic credibility is at stake. We see today what is happening in Ireland, Portugal, and, worse of all to come, Greece.

            There are many in this country, who I venture to suggest, are working in the public sector who think in terms of spending our way out of every conceivable economic crises. They demand that their life-long employment, and final salary pension schemes, should be exempt from the various outrageous fortunes usually encountered within the private sector due to the tidal ebbs and flows of capitalism.

            It is to this vast and ever growing group of people that the Labour opposition seeks to make their appeal. It is in this context that their rhetoric implies chasms of separation between themselves and the Coalition: they give the impression that if they were once more in power the much needed cuts in the public sector would be made in such a way so as to avoid the need for any public sector worker to fear for their job. This is because, so their rhetoric goes, they would seek a longer timeline for making the cuts – but, in the meantime, their rhetoric continues to give the impression that such cuts were the fault solely of that nasty Coalition.

            To pretend to people that there is a comfortable way through our present predicament only debases further the reputation of the politicians among the people who it will be incumbent upon to pay-up.

           

WOULD IT NOT HAVE BEEN better for the country if the last Labour government had managed to claw to their embrace the Liberal Democrats into coalition and continued to govern? For having had more than a passing hand in the economic calamity that befell us, surely both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats should have, from a purely Conservative point of view, been allowed to govern the nation.

            Both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats have far more in common than does the Conservative Party with either of them. If things had been different, and, after May 5^th 2010, Labour had indeed formed a Coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative Party would have been in a much stronger position today. But ambitious politicians eager to rule, are incapable of seeing the big picture.

AS I SAID AT THE BEGINNING, this was an election that disadvantaged the winner. Today we have a coalition of opposites who have declared that they put party politics before the interests of the country. Unfortunately politicians are not generals who seek to win wars, but rather battles. The Conservatives were so desperate to grab the levers of government once more after the 2010 general election, that their leader sought to coalesce in coalition with a party that previous Conservative governments would sooner have faced a firing squad over, than had dealings with.

            Today, many Liberal Democrats are wishing that they had indeed accepted Gordon Browns enticements, including the AV (and yes) without a referendum to stand in the way.

            To those within the Liberal Democrats who now wish their ambition for power had been differently arranged by their leader Nick Clegg, I wish them nothing but bad luck for the future.

            As for David Cameron; if he were my chess opponent, I would have long since tired of check-mating him. This is not because of my brilliance at chess, but because David Cameron wanted his ambition to come true so much that he was prepared to countenance a  coalition in order to gain power.

            Like all leaders of their parties in parliament, they wish either to be  prime minister or, in Nick Clegg’s case, as leader of a party that has only periodically tasted any kind of power since the first half of the last century, to be once more invited to share the Holy Grail in order to partake of power.

            By taking power as he did, David Cameron has effectively given the Labour Party a further go at spending whatever he manages to salvage in the way of surplus after reducing or eliminating our national debt. He could have allowed Gordon Brown to seek a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and by so doing, he would have delivered the country once more to Conservatism. But as things now stand; if the deficit has not been three-quarters eliminated by the next election, what has managed to be salvaged will be hurriedly spent by the next Labour government.

           

           

           

              

            

13,013,123 people cannot be wrong

OR COULD THEY? If only we had, as a nation, listened to various spokespeople from the ‘progressive coalition’ speaking in the weeks before the AV result; then last Friday morning would have seen the beginnings of a new era for progressive politics. If only the electorate had not been so pig ignorant as to dismiss the progressive’s logic in such vast numbers, there would have been no further need or possibility of a Conservative administration in the future; as the country would have been permanently cemented by the liberal elite.

            This, anyway was the hope. It would not have happened of course, at least not under AV. But AV was meant to be merely the beginning of the journey. Other more lucrative systems of proportional representation would no doubt have followed. The weaknesses of the AV system was there for all to see. The late Roy Jenkins had dismissed it, as did Nick Clegg before he found that it was all that was on offer after last year’s general election. But this did not stop various Liberal Democrats from throwing a hissy fit when the polls told them that they were on to a loser.

            Chris Hune and Vince Cable became over emotional and used unflattering language to describe their fellow coalition partners. Mr Cable described his Conservative partners as “ruthless, calculating and thoroughly tribal”, while Chris Hune was reported as showing his anger in Cabinet by banging the table – we will have to await the publication of his diaries to find out what he actually said to the prime minister.

            Poor old Nick Clegg has been dumped on from all sides within his party for his leadership. He has been blamed for being unpopular in the country, for the overwhelming defeat in the referendum. The spurious argument goes like this; the voters had little against the AV system as such, but plenty to turn on Nick Clegg for, and punish him. This particular excuse for failure is perhaps the most pitiful of all presented by the liberals for last Thursday’s AV result.

            Thankfully for Mr Clegg it had a short shelf-life. As it began to sink into the progressive coalition’s conscience that the vote was so overwhelmingly against the AV system that it had to be, not the messengers fault, but the message itself; it became clear that the people rejected the system, and any system that is entangled in academic complexity that only certain advantaged people in Oxford, Cambridge, and Glasgow Kelvin would so readily understand, deserves its fate.

            Of course, liberal ‘progressive’ types have made a life-long study of the various electoral arrangements, in order to outwit a small ‘c’ conservative nation and allow themselves to govern in perpetuity. Many put such an issue before health, education, defence, and foreign affairs. In other words, to the likes of the Liberal Democrats and the Left generally, some form of proportionality in our system of voting represents a blue print for governance which is needed before those other national issues can be tackled in a progressive way.

THE AV VOTE WAS lost, not through the ignorance or retaliation of the electorate, but because the electorate found the First Past the Post system the fairest and easiest way of electing their representatives - and long may this be the case.

            The trouble was, that the electorate understood AV all too well; and it met with the appropriate response. Indeed, I bet many of those who voted for it were, shall we say, less than enthusiastic about it as a proportional system.

            This country has always been, and hopefully will remain, traditional and sceptical of change. Its people, I believe feel that any innovation, particularly regarding their role in electing their government, should be both simple and fair. In this country our parliament has always been governed by two great parties: Tories and Whigs, and Conservatives and Liberals in the modern era, leading finally to Labour and Conservative; and through all the great reforms that  have accompanied this nation’s development, the nation settled upon a system of election that was equal and rewarded the winner. The First Past the Post system has proved successful and people know this. Whenever the nation has found itself  in difficulty all parties have formed coalitions irrespective of any vote. This is what happened during the Second World War and will no doubt happen again at some time in the future, should the nation be imperilled.

            People understand that in any race in life; whether in sport, business, and yes, politics; there can only be one winner. For good or bad; in politics the people choose whom they wish to represent them and First Past the Post delivers a winner who can be voted out and replaced.

            It is up to the smaller parties to capture the imagination of the voter, if they seek to govern. After all Whigs and Tories, followed by their modern equivalence had enjoyed decades of power between them before the Labour Party replaced one of them. The Conservative Party has managed a permanent presence as one of the main parties because the English, in particular, are conservative by nature (despite 40 years of comprehensive education).

            Conservatism, whether in the form of the Labour or Liberal Right-wing will always remain. Time, after all, is all that separates modern progressive policies from tradition and that reactionary behemoth - conservatism.

            Probably the biggest conservative in our current parliament is Dennis Skinner, the so-called ‘Beast of Bolsover’ himself. He exemplifies the rakes progress of the progressive. Being an old Marxist class war warrior whose ideological heritage was once described as being ‘progressive’, but now suffers the meant to be ignominious epithet, ‘Old Labour’.

ALTERATIVE VOTING was meant, as a system of proportional representation, to deliver the nation up to a permanent coalition where reason would overtake tribal party politics and deliver right and proper government. But addictive debate would become a hindrance, not to decision making, but to making the right decision. Coalitions have decorated post war European history. In every country, what is right has been replaced by some shabby compromise that rarely solves a problem, but only prolongs its damaging propensity.

            This country has been well served on the whole by our electoral system. A single government delivered of the power to govern by a system of First Past the Post will invariably be allowed to govern decisively on behalf of the nation. Any compromise within such a government would be due to the internal politics of the party being elected to power.

            The people who rejected the AV system understood all too well what it would mean for the country.

            I believe those liberal-progressives who favoured this system, or any kind of such a system, believed that their kind of politics would enjoy support outside of London (for why, otherwise, would they hold such a vote?) and the university cities, where the likes of Polly Toynbee and her ilk fluttered over; believing that such constituencies decided the fate the nation.

            I am glad that the British people rejected what was, even by the standards of Nick Clegg, a shabby compromise. But I warn the British people. This is only the beginning of a  determined attempt to overcome our First Past the Post system of government.

            Remember Ireland and how they were encouraged to vote again and again until they said yes to the Lisbon Treaty? Well the progressives  will no doubt come up with another system of proportional representation that they will try to sell to the British people: and we will, I hope,  also reject such an intrusion; but sadly we can expect another and another attempt will appear on the horizon, like some never-ending cloud formation. Like a computer virus, the liberal progressives will attack whenever the opportunity presents itself.

            The British people made the right decision last Thursday. Their No vote proved overwhelming. It left those supporters of the Yes vote without a plausible excuse that did not take cognisance of the wisdom of the electorate.