Let us salute Bomber Command

TODAY THE QUEEN WILL unveil a monument to Bomber Command and the men who flew the missions over Germany; 53,573 of whose members were killed; the highest rate of attrition suffered by any of the armed services during the Second World War.

                The average age of the crews that flew the Lancaster bombers were in the low twenties. They were crammed into, what for so many of them proved to be a flying coffin. If the plane was hit escape was possible but rare. Out of a total of 125,000 men who flew with Bomber Command, only 10,000 were taken prisoner. Death, if you were lucky, would be quick, but only if the plane exploded and vaporised the crew within mere tenths of a second.

                If, however, a Lancaster was fatally wounded and sent tumbling to earth in one piece but leaving a vapour trail from where it was hit; then the crew had some little time to make their escape via their parachutes. But imagine what this must have been like for the crew struggling within such cramped conditions trying to head for the exit before their plane hit the ground.

                Whether you were on the high seas, in the air, or on the land fighting in Europe, Burma or North Africa: there was no easy option in the Second World War. All three services, as well as the merchant service, all paid a heavy price. But those who flew in the raids over Germany were, until tomorrow, nearly 70 years after the war’s end, treated almost with shame by politicians from Churchill onwards.

                It says something about the way these men who flew with Bomber Command were treated, that it has taken this long to acknowledge the service they did to the nation with a monument dedicated to their achievements. But even then, it has been completed largely through private subscription. It was left to the likes of Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees to start the ball rolling. Sadly Mr Gibb died last month of cancer before he could see his work accomplished.

                The government (as well as politicians from all other parties) did nothing to support this monument financially. To them it is an embarrassment. There was no money forthcoming even to cover the cost of  today’s unveiling which amounts to £700,000. While Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are paying for their ex-servicemen to attend the unveiling; this government could not even meet the cost of a train fair for British veterans wishing to attend in London.

                As peerages were handed out after the war to key commanders; Air Marshall Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, who set in motion the bombing raids that flattened cities, particularly Dresden, received not such honour. He became an anathema to the establishment and as such was ill-rewarded.

THE BOMBING OF DRESDEN cost many lives. The tally of such deaths has fluctuated. At the high end 250, 000 were killed, while at the low end 50,000 perished. However, the Germans themselves have claimed that between 100,000 -150,000 of their citizens perished when Dresden was bombed.

                Bombing on such a scale is truly awful; but it was the only means left available to the British at that time in war when we could hit back at Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany had introduced the concept of total war. She introduced the Blitzkrieg, that frightening assault from both air and land on a weaker enemy. The awful whistling Stukar dive bomber, which even the Germans acknowledged was a weapon of terror, was used to dive on Czechoslovakia and Poland; and they cared little where the bombs dropped – civilians were of little consequence to the Fuehrer.

                  If the Germans had had  a long range heavy bomber, like the Lancaster or the American Flying Fortress; they would have exacted the same punishment on us that we were able to exact from them. The Germans introduced the concept of total war which meant the targeting of civilians. When they raided Spain, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland and France; they cared little for the innocent people who clung together in fear of their assault.

                The night when Dresden was bombed, a Jew forced into labour by the Nazis was working in an armaments factory on the outskirts of the city. He was just one of many thousands that were inducted into the slavery of Nazi Germany, before he was rendered no longer serviceable to the  state and sent to one of the many concentration camps that littered Nazi occupied Europe.

                On this particular night; this particular Jew witnessed the Dresden bombings and jumped up and down in celebration of the bombers who carried out the raid. While Churchill, as well as other politicians sought, after the war, to separate themselves from such actions; this particular Jew had little reservation about what had happened.

WHEN WE ARE FORCED INTO a war to defend ourselves then we must use every method available to us in order to secure our civilisation. Nazi Germany sought a 1,000 year Reich. Hitler saw himself as the architect of a greater Germania – a title which, should not be lost today on those who seek a United States of Europe.

                The actions taken by Bomber Command equalised what the Nazis had done to Czechoslovakia, Poland, Holland, France, and, before the war, what they did in Spain at Guernica, where the screaming terror of bombing was captured by Picasso in his portrait of the same name.

                The monument to Bomber Command should be  celebrated. Like every other service, Bomber Command under the general-ship of Sir Arthur Harris did everything necessary to bring a conclusion to the war.

                The air raids on Germany bared comparison with the pounding of a city fortress in the 16^th century with the use of artillery. We had to throw everything we had at the Nazis, and the 1,000 bomber raids brought home to them that they were not, eugenically, some kind of master race that Hitler believed them to be.

                Our bombing raids over Germany were the necessity of victory. A victory that would put paid to the European conflict that, in total, caused the lives  of some 40 million people: such numbers that the allied bombings never ever inflicted, but are nevertheless being held accountable for.

                Our bombers did what was needed to help win victory over Nazi Germany. They were part of the war effort, and as such deserved recognition, just as those who flew in the Battle of Britain did. But it appears that our politicians turned their civilised noses up at such a recognition for Bomber Command’s achievements, believing the subject to be indelicate and, no doubt, shameful.

                This monument was needed, no only as a tribute to the courage of those bomber crews, but also as a permanent reminder to future generations. I believe that in another 30 years those bombing raids will be seen as war crimes and Arthur Harris a war criminal. Without public subscription, this monument would never have been built. The state, in the guise of the modern political class, would sooner have allowed this episode in our country’s history to have been apologised for rather than have a monument erected to it.

                Such is our modern enervated sense of our country’s history – especially among our children, that I doubt that those young lives lost over Germany were worth the sacrifice after all.

               

Labour's rich

THE LABOUR PARTY HAS been the party of spend, while the Conservative party has played the role of the nation’s accountants who had to impose taxes in order to help clear the debts that were the result of Labour spending. Who was it in the Treasury who left a note on his departure from office in 2010 declaring there was no money left? Well, his name matters little, but the message he left demonstrates perfectly the relationship to government of the two main parties

            Tony Blair and Gordon Brown poured billions into their so-called reform agenda for the NHS when they took power. Blair insisted that the public money he was about to spend on the NHS was to be provided, only as part of a package of much needed reforms. The money was to be conditional; New Labour would no longer spend taxpayers money willy-nilly.

            That which was promised came to very little; and two thirds of the new money went into better pay and conditions for NHS staff, with very little return in the way of reform.

            The Labour Party, even under Tony Blair, saw the public sector as a kind of queen bee to which they worked endlessly to pour billions into feeding, in order that she could increase the population of the public sector hive.

            It is strange indeed that a party whose members and supporters have traditionally assailed the wealthy, should find themselves behaving in the same manner they tell us the wealthy behaves.

            The Labour Party likes wealth as much as the rich. They like spending it as much as the rich. They, like many of the rich, have access to so much money that they care-not if they spend it wrongly or just waste it: one thing is for sure; the Labour politician is as addicted to wealth as the most obese, top-hatted, champagne-swilling, and cigar smoking capitalist that they profess to despise.

            The difference is that  the cigar smoking capitalist spends and wastes his own money, which he is fully entitled to do. But the Labour Party spends and wastes other people’s money, which they are not entitled to do; but behave as if it is their duty to so do.

THE PUBLIC SECTOR has become Labour’s main source of support since their abandonment of the white working class; and it follows therefore, that the more that can be recruited into its fold, the greater will be the Labour voting constituency. Which is why under Labour the population of the public sector has increased during its period in office.

            The Labour Party have become the modern Lady Bountiful, that fictitious wife of the obese capitalist, overseeing the distribution of  charity to those she deemed deserving in Edwardian England.

            Labour accumulates wealth as greedily as does their perceived capitalist, but they do so through the largesse of  public taxation in its many forms of direct and indirect larceny. They look upon themselves as working for the public good, while aiding in the bankruptcy of the nation.

            The Labour Party despises the creation of wealth but are not slow in coming forward when it comes to harvesting taxes, not only from the wealthy, but also from the millions of those who work for them. They are hypocrites par excellence and will no doubt continue upon their merry way once they are re-elected. For there is nothing in Ed Milliband’s background or his elevation to the Labour leadership, that  leads me to believe that he will not follow the age old path of waste that is the Labour Party’s legacy.

            Government should be of a minimalist nature. It should only tax as a last resort, and even then should only do so in areas that help procure the nation’s safety. Taxation is a burden on all of the people whether rich or poor. Its compliance should be commensurate to its affordability. It should not be a cash a cow drawn upon to help the wastefulness of any government; especially a Labour one.

            Politicians spend other people’s money as freely as we all would given the chance to so do if we won the national or European lottery. I have picked on Labour because they believe wholeheartedly in public expenditure; and do so because it entails the spending of other people’s money with little regard for the affordability to the nation and the millions of families that make up the nation.

            Labour in office can only spend; and, as a result, demand ever more in taxation for the purpose of  promoting the public sector. Labour have always been the harbingers of greater taxation through class prejudice. They have always sought to belittle wealth creation in favour of socialist equality.

           

           

             

           

           

           

           

                 

THE BBC MUST BE ALLOWED TO FLOAT ALONE

LATER THIS YEAR, THE Chairman of the BBC, Lord Pattern, will have to find a replacement for Mark Thompson the current Director General of the BBC.

                I have always believed that the BBC has a Left-liberal bias when it comes to their political coverage, as well as its foreign coverage of Europe and Israel. But of course it goes deeper than this and infects the culture of the institution, as a new report produced by the New Culture Forum  demonstrates. Its author, Denis Sewell, worked for the BBC for 22 years and has vindicated many of us on the centre Right who were at one time dismissed as belonging to some kind of flat earth society for even suggesting such bias at the holy Mecca of entertainment.

                But what many on the Right see as an anti-Conservative bias at the BBC, is, in reality, a pro-liberal bias that extends to the appointment of Lord Pattern himself as the organisation’s chairman. Political parties all have their liberal core, and this applies as much to the Conservative Party as it does the Labour Party and, obviously, the Liberal Democrats.

                As part of the British liberal establishment, the BBC has done those of us on the Right who, like everyone else, have had to pay their licence fee, a disservice. The Corporation has demanded, in the case of people like myself, a viewing tax which carries with it the threat of imprisonment if it is not forthcoming. There is no other  country in the world that makes its people pay such a tax and imposes such a penalty.

                It was introduced at a time when the collectivist ideals of the welfare state proved acceptable. If we contributed to a health service, then why not a broadcasting service?  Since then the institution, born out of post war rationing, has become a Leviathan that gorges itself on over £3 billion annually and does not need to compete for its financing, unlike all other broadcasters.

                Such an institution born from such state dependency for its financing, was bound, sooner or later, to take on the cultural mantle of Left wing liberalism. To the BBC, the market place is a kind of Mordor, which they snobbishly try to avoid in fear of being drawn into its dark competitive clutches. Which is why the BBC goes cap in hand to the government every year for an increase in the license fee, instead of seeking freely given subscriptions from the public; which, if as the BBC truly believes itself to be, the best broadcaster in the world; then it would have nothing to fear by seeking advertising revenues as well as subscriptions - as does Sky and ITV.

DENIS SEWELL has delivered a killer punch to the BBC in his report for the New Cultural Forum. He has concentrated upon the BBC’s liberal bias, not only in News and current affairs, but in drama and comedy, ‘Polemical, political drama and comedy continue to be monopolised by Left-of-Centre writers and performers’, is his opening assertion and is backed up by sound reasoning and a polemical flourish; as well as facts and data.

                He writes in today’s Daily Telegraph; ‘Cultural biases may be less obvious than political biases, but they are no less significant. Broadcasting plays an important role in the shaping and embedding of values. It helps set the tone of the national conversation. It plays a major part in establishing what can respectably be thought and said, what is considered mainstream, and what idiosyncratic, maverick, or beyond the pale’.

                Broadcasting does indeed ‘… [play] an important role in the shaping and embedding of values’. This is why the BBC should have been atomised, leaving a much smaller and less costly institution to concentrate upon news coverage and little else. I would prefer, for the sake of democracy, not to have this institution survive at all, but it still retains a nostalgia with the public born from tradition (something the modern BBC sniffs at).

                Denis Sewell puts his finger on the button when he states; ‘Cultural biases operate subtly and insidiously in drama, arts, documentaries, comedy, entertainment and religious programmes. They find a variety of expressions that may be more or less political: a vague, almost nostalgic attachment to some of the tattered remnants of socialist economic thinking; an obsession with identity politics, gender issues and ethnicity; a tepid contempt for traditional institutions such as the Armed Forces and the monarchy; a suspicion of business and enterprise; a belief that religious faith is a hangover from a bygone age; and often a reflexive anti-Americanism. These are the kinds of thing that build perceptions of institutional bias’.

                What a wonderful paragraph. Mr Sewell lists the prejudices of the BBC admirably. I defy any member of the BBC’s staff to contradict such a list of their attachments to bias. They cannot, and will not. They will not, because by reading the charge sheet, they will see little wrong with their liberal partiality.

THE BBC uses drama in the same way that the Soviet Union once did; as a means of social engineering. In the Soviet Union, it was used to promote Communism and its inevitable victory over capitalism.

                Today, instead of Communism, Multiculturalism has become the ism of choice of a state (i.e. publicly funded) broadcaster. The BBC, as  Denis Sewell correctly writes, has a an almost missionary ambition; ‘…an obsession with identity politics, gender issues and ethnicity…;’.  Every soap plot; every vox-pop, as well as every news item and other sundry broadcasts carry a PC brand that if ever abused (remember Carol Thatcher) will result in the abuser’s exile from the BBC.

                Every item broadcast by the BBC (outside of movies) will carry a representative from an ethnic minority. If this is not an example of the subtlety that Denis Sewell refers to, I know  not what is. It astonishes me that the BBC still lays claim to impartiality despite such manifest evidence to the contrary. Even many of the BBC’s finest have written to substantiate such a bias. Andrew Marr, writing in 2006 chimed in; ‘ The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias’ 

                While Jeremy Paxman in his James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture in 2007 wrote, ‘The idea of a tax on the ownership of a television belongs in the 1950s. Why not tax people for owning a washing machine to fund the manufacture of Persil?’

               

I BELIEVE THAT THE BBC should be left to its own devices within the market place. The public should not be forced on punishment of imprisonment to pay their liberal levy. If those who agree with the BBC want to continue with their allegiance, then they must pay a subscription instead of relying upon those of us who have no choice in the matter.

                Like every other element in a market driven economy, freedom of choice is paramount. But such freedom does not exist when it comes to choosing what we can watch on our television screens on penalty of imprisonment. The annual licence fee is now £143, soon, no doubt, to be increased. I would sooner use such a sum to help choose my own entertainment than have entertainment thrust upon me by the politically correct BBC.

               

                 

AMEN TO DR WILLIAMS

WELL, THE OLD BOY HAS TAKEN his parting shot. Describing David Cameron’s ‘big society’ as ‘aspirational waffle’, Dr Rowan Williams, the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, has tied his own liberal waffle to the mast before retiring into academia where he should have been lodged in the first place.

                The insipid and hippy-like leader of the Anglican Church, gave his literary rebuke in the soon to be published best seller Faith in the Public Square - which will also include his past speeches.

                The fact that Cameron’s ‘big society’ is indeed 22 carat waffle does not mean that the Archbishops’ alternative is any less dismissive. Having, in the past, dismissed what he regards as society's acquisitiveness brought about by the pursuit of economic growth;  he now shows himself as ignorant of economics as an economist is of theology.

                Now, I admit I am no economist. But I do know that human beings need to advance themselves material. As consumers they generate not only the wealth that allows governments to tax income and provide them with a health and education service; but they also seek to help their families prosper – or at least make them feel secure.

                Economic growth transforms society. The opportunities it generates lead to advances in science and medicine. The much loathed drug companies invest billions (far more than the state would find themselves able to do) in finding treatments or cures for much of human suffering – suffering which, no doubt, the Archbishop is  now against in light of its acquisitive nature.

                All the main scientific advances have been made within a free market system. I hate to use the word capitalism when writing about the soon to be lamented archbishop; but it is indeed true that humans are driven by ambition, and ambition is no sin. We are competitive by nature, but we are also in search of knowledge, and the two meet admirably. Incentives drive human beings on to further progress. Even in such unprofitable fields (financially that is) as natural history, where material reward is somewhat limited, the reward of finding a new discovery, or advancing a new thesis that captures the imagination of contemporaries is certain to advance the respect of its founder.

                Human nature in the modern age is all wound up in the advancement of our scientific and technological evolution. When an anti-competitive system was introduced under Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the state had to resort to espionage with the West in order to keep abreast of technological and scientific developments. Their scientists were either unsympathetic to the regime they were serving, or lacked the free flow of scientific information that the West denied them, but was much needed if they were to perform to their full competitive ability with the West.

               

DR ROWEN WILLIAMS reminds me of my early association with socialism and communism. Both of which had faith in the state to oversee the material needs of the people without resorting to what Dr Williams would describe as capitalism’s acquisitiveness.

                The dynamic of capitalism is ambition and advancement built upon reward at every level of society, with the one exemption, that of the public sector. It is this exemption that Dr Williams finds himself supporting: '…if the big society is anything better than a slogan looking increasingly threadbare as we look at our society reeling under the impact of public spending cuts, then discussion on this subject has got to take on board some of those issues about what it is to be a citizen and where it is that we most deeply and helpfully acquire the resources of civic identity and dignity.'

                To the likes of Dr Rowan Williams, money is the root of all evil, and its accumulation ever more so. He  sees a nation’s sovereign deficit as little more than monopoly money; while he himself,  no doubt, lives well within his financial means; It  is not always true of society generally

                Money and wealth to Dr Rowan Williams are like alcohol and cocaine. They ill-serve society and whatever replaces them will prove sufficient, providing it has a rigorous Anglican teaching as part of the menu.

DR ROWEN WILLIAMS should confine himself to theology, the discipline he excels in; and not attempt an incursion into a subject he knows little of, but through Christian prejudice he feels himself entitled to comment upon - the quality of such remains commensurate with his ignorance.

                Those like Canterbury who speak out against growth, capitalism, bankers and tax avoiders, offer us no alternative. The last anti-capitalist who did so, ended up creating a murderous system; built on good intensions such as the brotherhood of man and equality, but whose legacy embraced the killing of millions of Russians, Chinese, Koreans, Polish, Czechs, as well as many from the other nations that put their faith in communism.

                Cameron’s big society was a piece of Blairite gruel served up as a headline but about as nourishing as a piece of rice paper. The ‘big society’, like ‘education, education, education’ were fabricated as sound bites. To believe they had any intellectual depth attached to them, as no doubt, the good Doctor did; only goes to show why he should be heading off to academia.

                One would have thought there was more to occupy an Anglican than the words of a politician – namely the dismemberment of the Anglican church itself, which the archbishop has helped bring about.

                We have had women priests, and now, the slippery slope has led to the inevitable call for women bishops: while gays are seeking to have their relationships sanctified by being allowed to marry in a church with the blessing of an Anglican priest.

                It is true that Anglicanism, in this country at least, is merely a follower of fashion. The ancient ties and beliefs that the Bible has provided them with since the Reformation have been, it seems, all for nothing.

                The church has replaced its duty to God with a duty to a liberal agenda, described as progressive. We all know that the Bible, from what we know of the time it was written, that neither women or gays come out of it very well. Yet liberal progressives within and without the Anglican church seek to overturn the centuries of biblical teaching that contradicts what they feel is right and proper today – thankfully the Catholic church remains immune from the advances of the ‘progressive’ virus, and may  outlive the great Protestant Reformation – in this country at least.

               

DR WILLIAMS HAS CHOSEN WELL the timing of his departure; for his church is in a far worse state than the country. Instead of attacking David Cameron’s big society, he would have done a far better service to his church by offering solutions to its own predicament. A predicament that may see the Anglican church dissolve after over 500 years of painstaking and often bloody ascendency.

                The Anglican church faces a schism over its current liberal rapture with those more conservative high Anglicans finally giving up the ghost and deciding to live within the quadrangles of the church of Rome, instead of having to kow-tow to fashion and trend in order to appease ‘progressive’ modernism.

                There are two forms of religious teaching. First there is the Holy Book which is sacrosanct. Then there is the teaching of the institution of the church which elaborates the duties a believer owes to the church which he or she is a part of. It is this aspect of the churches’ role that caused the Reformation.

                While there were doctrinal disputes, it was the demands and practices (such as indulgences) of the church of Rome that helped cause the 16^th century schism known as the Reformation.

                In the Anglican church today we can happily replace indulgences with ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’, and arrive at the same destiny that the church of Rome arrived at during the Reformation.

                The Anglican church has, particularly under the administration of Dr Rowan Williams, been allotted  such a dire position. Dr Williams is himself a liberal by both instinct and intellectual capacity. He, you will remember, suggested that sharia law would find a home in English law; which led to his first debunking in the British press. His liberalism has brought the Anglican church to this illiberal position where conflict reigns within.

                The wretched and soon to be former Archbishop of Canterbury, leaves the field of battle at a time when his church, through his own lake of endeavour, is about to enter schism if women Bishops are allowed to  come into existence or gays allowed the blessing of the Church of England.

                Yet all Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, can concern himself with in his final essay, is a flippant posting of a headline making (and nothing more) comment by a politician that will amount to mere confetti thrown on the political landscape.

                Dr Rowan Williams will retire to his academic retreat in the knowledge that whatever befalls the Anglican church after his administration of it, he will no longer be held accountable -  even if he began the journey that eventually led to schism within the Anglican church.

                               

               

                 

A prime minister and a comedian

IT IS NOT IMMORAL to legally avoid paying taxes. The over mighty state in the manifestation of one David Cameron, shamed the comedian Jimmy Carr into making an apology for parking his money in Jersey to avoid the tax man. It is money he has earned, and it is his money, not the states. He never made it from drugs or any other illegal practice; he merely took the option of not allowing as much of it as he could, from being taken from him, only to find it being spent by wasteful politicians and civil servants.

                Billions of tax payers pounds have been wasted by such sources; the list is endless, but the most eye-watering example of such larceny by a public body is the Ministry of Defence and its dire procurement department where tax pounds are doled out rather than efficiently spent. Project after project has been blundered into, as if what they were spending was being printed as they spent it.

                Remember the millions wasted on a new high tech computer programme for the NHS? And what of all those private consultants, Quangos and abuses of the expenses system by those now describing a comedians behaviour as immoral.

                Cameron knows all too well the billions in waste that an administration accrues over a period in office. It ill behoves our prime minister to chastise a single individual as if he were merely the custodian, instead of the proprietor of his own wealth.

                The Conservative Party used to believe in low taxes as an incentive – after all, there is nothing fare about taxation. What it means is, that the tax payer or employee works for the state instead of for him or herself and their families for part of their working week. If the state takes 20 percent of their salary in taxes, it amounts to a fifth of their wages, or, if someone earns £400 per week it would amount to a day’s wages of £80 (based on a five day week) – so for one day of their working week, they would be working for the state.

                In one sense, the working population is working either wholly or partly for the state. What is more, the politicians no longer sees taxation as a sad but necessary obligation on the part of the people (if , that is, they ever did); but they behave today as if part of the citizens salary is theirs to harvest, almost by Divine Right.

                I find it incredulous for David Cameron to suggest a person is behaving immorally in trying to hold on to as much of his income as he can. What used once to be immoral in this country (until the 18^th century) was the very idea of taxation at all. The soliciting of funds from working people by politicians has grown incrementally in accordance with the wastefulness and ill- timed foolish policies of our democratic representatives.

               

I HAVE NO SYMAPTHY for Jimmy Carr as a person; but as a taxpayer, he is surely entitled to keep as much of his earned income as he can legally secure. If politicians leave loop-holes for the rich to take advantage of then they should do so. They should do so because the state penalises the accumulation of wealth as if it were a criminal activity instead of a vehicle for ambition and new job creation resulting in financial security for families as well as growth for the country.

                If the rich have to pay more than say five pence in the pound more than any other citizen, then it is their moral duty to find legal ways of ridding themselves of this burden. The rich are not averse to reasonable forms of taxation, but the politicians (especially those who call themselves socialist) have a system of fairness that does not correspond with any form of reason, but has the accumulated history of class hatred attached to it.

                The rich, like everyone else has to pay taxes, but why they have to pay more than a reasonable amount above those taken from the ordinary taxpayer, has more to do with envy than any concept of justice. In France today the rich are about to be milked of 75 per cent (in the UK, for part of the 1970s,  it was 90 per cent) of the yearly income under the presidency of Hollande. I never felt I would feel sorry for people in a much more favourable state of wealth than myself; but what is about to happen in France will only discourage wealth creation and will ultimately add to France’s deficit and pull a veil over the country’s free market approach to wealth creation.

                We in this country must welcome those ill-treated by their new government’s profligacy to our shores. They may turn out to be the modern Huguenots who also escaped persecution in France.

JIMMY CARR IS THE HYPOCRITE SUPREME. He has, through his stage act,  satirised the greedy bankers, and opened himself up to the charge of being a charlatan. Mr Carr is a supporter of the Labour Party and he deserves his present embarrassment. He does so because he has sought a legal means of protecting as much of his earnings as he may, while traducing Labours spiritual enemies – the wretched bonus taking bankers.

                Mr Carr would have, had it not been for David Cameron’s intervention, regarded himself as being part of the popular ‘progressive’ Left, and therefore exempt from the Left’s barbs.

                But David Cameron drew him out and brought forth his contrition. If only Carr had not blinked when faced with the prime minister’s rebuke; he could have carried on doing what he was ‘morally’ obliged to do – this was to secure his own and his families prospect.

                It now seems that Mr Carr has fallen fowl of his own supporters on the comedy circuit. Reports of being booed have accompanied him on his latest ‘gigs’.

                Mr Carr is a hypocrite for condemning wealth and the various ways by which it avoids paying taxes. He is now contrite and hopefully exonerated by the public he draws to himself. Please let me earn more, seems to be his appeal to his public, and I will in future pay the taxes accordingly.

                But he should not have the charge of acting immorally thrust at him by, of all people, a prime minister no less. Cameron should have kept his mouth shut, for now a witch-hunt may ensue and one wonders how many of our prime ministers friends and associates will all foul of the pursuers.

Welcome to Bognor Regis

AFTER SEEING a poster stapled to a wall in the prison baring the message ‘Come to Bognor Regis’, the prisoner, upon his release, took up the posters’ invitation to pay a visit. Here he fell into his old ways and was arrested by the police. He told them about the poster with its invitation; since then other criminals have decided to visit and start a new life in Bognor Regis.

                I should have mentioned that the prison and the prisoner are both Polish. Now West Sussex police say they are facing an increase in Eastern Europeans operating in the area whose criminal specialties are theft, burglary and perhaps human trafficking among migrant agricultural workers.

                The local police say that 18 per cent of all crime is now being committed by Eastern Europeans. However, the police are unable to say whether the offending poster is one of many being pasted throughout Eastern Europe’s prisons. Nevertheless, they still feel that the one poster is evidence enough to explain the sudden influx of criminals from Eastern Europe into Bognor Regis.

                I have no doubt that Bognor Regis is suffering an acceleration in criminal activity 18 per cent of which is due to the influx of Eastern Europeans. But the poster is neither here nor there, unless there is a proliferation of them throughout the penal systems of Eastern Europe - brought about, no doubt, by an over enthusiastic Bognor Regis tourist board.

                A specious connection between a poster and a crime wave is not helping the West Sussex police’s credibility. They had a very serious story to tell about Eastern European criminals turning up in Bognor Regis; a story that could be repeated in towns and cities all over the country. In the Bognor Regis area alone, it is thought that some 6,000 Eastern Europeans have made it their home.

                According to West Sussex’s police Inspector Bowman; 'Some of these individuals who are criminals in their home countries come over here and develop organised crime groups where they are making a huge amount of money.

'When they get what they think is sufficient they'll go back to their own country and build a big house.

'They have considered themselves untouchable, but that is not the case.'

WHEN OUR politicians decided to sign up to the Schengen agreement which allowed the flow of people from Eastern Europe into the UK, they did not (so it seems) demand safeguards such as refusing entry to anyone with a criminal record. When they allowed Somalis and Nigerians into the country either legally or illegally, the same restraint was never imposed on the former and  proved hopeless when confronting the illegal’s.

                This country has allowed the criminal fraternity from all four points of the compass to live among, what is fast becoming known as, our aboriginal population. There are criminal gangs, committing crimes that would never have been committed if it were not for the ignorance and complacency of our politicians who naively believed in a multicultural society built on diversity and protected by political correctness, and the almost medieval sounding ‘hate crime’.

                The politicians will argue, as they always have, that those from Eastern Europe are only doing the jobs we British refuse to do. The answer was always simple. We British must expect to pay more for our vegetables if we wish to keep immigration at bay – or at least down to workable levels.

                I take it that those farmers who employ such pickers are obliged to pay them the minimum wage? If so, then those unemployed British should be made to take such jobs instead of rotting away on the dole. Up until to now, the unemployed have felt they have the option of refusal. They have been lead to this believe by successive generations of politicians who have been frightened of imposing stricter measures on the unemployed.

                Now, thankfully,  we seem to have a system that removes benefit from any unemployed person who turns down more than one (or is it two) jobs. Surely, under such an arrangement, the picking fields of Britain could be populated (or even over-populated) by the indigenous unemployed instead of immigrants from whatever corner of the world.

CRIME AMONG the immigrant population never seemed to register as a concept with those politicians who, driven either by colonial guilt or a reckless idealism, invited to our shores millions of immigrants. They only see what they naively believe to be a  harmony between peoples (like the old Coca Cola advert of the 1970s).

                No such harmony is possible when the politicians, in full knowledge of their people feelings,  continue to ignore them and allow the country to be ’swamped’, as Margaret Thatcher once described the influx of immigration into Britain.

                The police in Bognor Regis have at least had the courage to identify ethnic minorities as those culpable for 18 per cent of the increase in the crime they are experiencing.

                The police in Bognor Regis are, however, in a minority among their profession to target minorities and hold them responsible for an increase in any kind of criminal activity.

OTHER POLICE FORCES, instead of facing the criminal activities of migrants head on, are being trained in diversity awareness, gender awareness and homophobia; as well as anti-racism in order to create an atmosphere of welcome and pacification. In practice this means whenever a crime is committed on their patch; they have to proceed with a great deal of care, for accusations of racism by a suspect is taken very seriously by, in particular, the Metropolitan police, who have never lived down the charge of being ‘institutionally racist’ following the Stephen Lawrence case.

                Today’s police forces are having to become an extension of social services. At one time the police services one and only preoccupation was to investigate crime  and to catch the criminal. Now our policemen are either being sent on courses or are being taught during training to help administer a multicultural society.

                We have become an attraction for all sorts of criminal activity from all sorts of countries. This island nation has protected itself from all forms of foreign invasion in its near thousand year history – if , that is, we date it from the our last invasion in 1066, when Normans defeated our earlier Saxon invaders.

                In both cases the intruders had to fight their way in. Today such intruders from Eastern Europe are openly welcomed in the spirit of multiculturalism.

               

               

               

               

                 

               

The Centenary Of Enoch Powell’s Birth

WHEN ENOCH POWELL MADE his ‘Tiber foaming with much blood’ speech in April 1968, I was 18-years old and starting my young at heart Marxist phase (upon reflection, childlike phase would be more accurate)  which lasted 12 years. As a stalwart of the Left and believing myself to have the answers (thanks to Marx) to every political and philosophical question against capitalism, and ready to join the argument – not, as one would suppose, against my class enemies: but, as is often the case with the Left, part of a continuing internecine conflict between the various chapters of the Marxist faith (Leninism, Trotskyism etcetera).

            To me Enoch Powell was evil incarnate. Physically, he reminded me of an earlier period. He was old-fashioned looking; as if he had walked straight out of  an Edwardian  England long gone. A colonial England which he represented and I loathed. I, like many at the time, felt their liberal consciences stirred by the way our Empire treated its ‘subject races’. So when Enoch began to speak out against immigration, much of which at the time came from parts of our earlier empire; I became outraged and sickened when I saw London porters and Dockers leap to his support. I was bemused, not to say, confused to see my beloved proletariat beating a way to Enoch’s door.

            Powell was racist. That is what the whole of the political culture believed; from the Left of the Tory Party, the Labour Party, Liberal Party, the British Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party, Workers Revolutionary Party, and even the Monster Raving Loony Party.

            Enoch Powel was truly isolated. As his authorised biographer, Simon Heffer has written in today’s Daily Mail, ‘Because of his famous — or notorious — speech on immigration, delivered in Birmingham in April 1968, Powell’s wider achievements have been largely ignored…’.

            The so-called 'Rivers of Blood' reference was based upon a scene from  Book VI  of Virgil’s Aeneid, ‘I see wars, horrible wars, and the Tiber foaming with much blood.’
            This one reference eviscerated Powell’s future in mainstream politics. I myself, in my naive, ignorant, not to mention stupid and arrogant way; wanted to see Powell crucified for his racist, colonialist, and imperialist comments (remember I was a Marxist).

 POWELL however, proved himself the greatest political and parliamentary mind of the last century. He was no Karl Marx – that incredulous mountebank of a the philosopher, who wanted to change the world and did so briefly at such a great cost to those parts of humanity that were served his nostrums and had them systemized into a Hammer House of Horror that followed the Nazi Holocaust.

            Enoch Powell ill deserved posterity’s judgement of him. At the time the Tory leader, Ted Heath, sacked him for his ‘racist’ comments. Since then the Tory Party has been fearful of any association with perhaps the greatest intellect that chose to live among them – and what has been the outcome of their disavowal? Why, David Cameron of course.

            A racist, as I understand it, is someone who thinks his or herself superior to other races. Powell thought such a belief a wholly unbalanced state to be in mentally. Enoch, I remember back then was interviewed by David Frost and he put the racist charge to him. As I remember he loathed any such concept of racial superiority and would never countenance it. No human being of whatever colour is superior to the next.

            But what Enoch Powell was talking of was culture. He was a Tory, unlike many of those who see themselves as such today. Powell believed in the superiority of our culture, just as did the French theirs, as well as the Italians, Spanish, Indian, and the amalgam of all other cultures.

            Cultural superiority is not racial superiority. But Enoch did warn that uncontrolled numbers of immigrants could jeopardise British culture, and it was this he was speaking out against.            Multiculturalism was anathema to Enoch Powell. He had seen what had happened in India and what it had led to. He called it communalism. It set Hindu and Muslim against each other after independence and led to hundreds of thousands of deaths as a consequence; until India’s Muslim population were given a country of their own, Pakistan - which then created a separate state known as Bangladesh.

BUT IMMIGRATION was not the only question that Enoch Powell tackled and proved himself right about. Europe also attracted Enoch’s attention.  In the 1974 general election he, as member of the Tory Party advised Tory voters to vote for a party that promised a referendum on our continued membership of the Common Market. While his arguments were largely ignored then, they have now been accepted as being right by many millions who used at one time to discount them.

            When Enoch chose, through principle, to advise the British public to vote for a party that promised a referendum, he was barracked by Tory supporters; and a classic exchange took place between  himself and one of his accusers.

            ‘Judas’, a heckler cried.

            ‘Judas was paid!’ Was Powell’s instant reply. ‘I am making a sacrifice!’ He was more of a Tory than was his  heckler. He also knew what such advice to the electorate would mean to his future – a future of near isolation from within the Tory Party, as well as national villain for his views on immigration.

            I believe that Powell is due for revision, especially in light of the events surrounding the euro. Events that he forewarned his country of; events that would lead to the loss national sovereignty and national statehood, if our leaders pursued (as Ted Heath was intent upon doing) greater monetary and political union, from which the euro has become the ill-developed foetus that once aborted threatens economic chaos in Europe.

            Enoch was a great man. He has no equal in modern politics; he would not recognise the modern Conservative Party as anything of the sort. Today the party is being led by social democrats; they are pro-Europe but somewhat spineless when it comes to the advocacy of a Federal Europe which they believe in, but know all too well (as Enoch did) that the British people would not willingly demolish their nation state, and allow Europe to collect and spend their taxes, and make their laws.

            I think that Enoch was hated more for his views on Europe than immigration by the Tory leadership under Ted Heath. The so-called ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech presented Heath with the perfect opportunity to rid himself of Powell, and this is what he did.

POWELL WAS much more than a single speech about immigration that disfigured his reputation and allowed his enemies within his own party to rid themselves of his influence. Immigration, Europe, the dangers of an overinflated public sector, and a belief in the operation of free markets with the minimum of  regulation by the state. These were just some of the bullet points that Powell would still have addressed the nation with today, as he tried to do in the 1960s. He would have done so because, as we all now know, Powell’s earlier message to us is more relevant today than it was then.

            Immigration has grown beyond Powell’s earlier expectations. While Europe has exceeded his own expectations of stupidity in the way the euro was given birth too; the public sector is now catching up to the private in terms of the country’s economy.

            Today, throughout the continent of Europe, social democracy has inveigled itself upon the body politic[1] of all European nations. This has led to a narrowing of the private/public sector divide, and threatens private sector competition via European edicts that seek to put a stranglehold on the free market and competition.

            If the likes of David Cameron, as well as other youthful and modern Tories, had ever taken the trouble, despite the finest education this country could give them, to engage in a passing interest in Powell; they might have understood the power and sobriety of his arguments, and may have found the courage to pursue them – but, of course, ambition is everything in politics.

           

           

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[1] By the ‘body politic’ I mean each and every one of the main political parties throughout Europe.

The people want a referendum

SO IT HAS BEEN CONFIRMED by an opinion poll. Eighty per cent of the British public would like to have a referendum on Europe. Of course the Populus poll for the Times only corroborated what the British public all knew anyway; but it was nice to have it emblazoned over the front page of Monday’s Times.

            In recent days politicians who were once frightened of  letting the people who elect them have their say on their nation’s destiny, are now making the right noises; but these only take the form of hints.         

            The euro crises has moved things forward, and in Europe the politicians are now navigating the continent to full economic and political union. The United States of Europe (USE), which many British Europhiles believed were decades away, is now confronting the British people and they will not go quietly into their nation’s last goodnight, without the chance to have a vote on their destiny.

            Lord Tebbit suggests that the whole euro crises was the deliberate creation of the European political elite, in order to make full European Union the only option left out of the current crises. Whether such devious means were deployed or not. The euro crises does seem to have worked in the Europhiles favour.

            Another couple of months of this crises, and countries within the union will be begging for full political and monetary union. Driven by fear, nations will sell their histories at bargain basement prices, and hand over their independence to a central authority to which they will be made accountable. They will no longer have any say on how the taxes that are now raised nationally will be distributed among their own peoples; and despite what the politicians may tell them, national parliaments (if they exist all) will be, in terms of their status, of no higher merit than a county council.

            Lord Tebbit is no conspiracy theorist and should be listened to. He has spent the last 20-years warning of what is now about to happen and has always been seen as a Right-wing extremist for his troubles by his Europhile contemporaries such as Kenneth Clarke; whose haughty dismissal, even today, of a referendum on in/out Europe leaves one thinking that the onetime bulldog of the Tory party has become almost rabid in his support of the USE.

IF THE BRITISH public were given their referendum on an in/out question and the people voted yes, then democrats like myself would have to live with the consequences – at least the people would have had a say on their destiny and not have had a decision made for them by politicians.

            All of those, like myself want, is the voice of the British people to be heard. Such a formidable transition cannot be left to the judgement of politicians. The nation state is at stake and the nation must be heard. Anything less would invite and legitimise social unrest which I for one would not wish to see.

            It is now in our politician’s hands. They must announce an in/out referendum. All politicians from all parties must now give the people what the Populus poll is telling them they want.

            The sooner they are given their say, the better for the country. It is no good hoping, as the Europhiles within all the political parties do, that events will turn in their favour and the euro crises will become a nasty little dream. This nasty little dream may turn into a nightmare for the British Europhiles; but for the rest of Europe’s Europhiles, such events will force the hand of the 26 members (the UK being exempt for the moment) into signing away their national identity.

            It is pathetic, pitiful, and contemptible that the middle class baby-boomer 1960s generation in this country should have themselves been so willing to so easily dismiss the sacrifices their  fathers and mothers, made during the Second World to keep this country free and independent. It is shameful that the legacy their parents left should have been so easily trashed by their offspring.

            As the poll demonstrates, it is the social liberal elite that represents the two in ten who oppose the referendum. Small in number they may be. But it is their influence that matters considering the power they wield in the nation’s institutions – including parliament.

            In ages past such a small elite would have comprised the aristocracy whose influence we all know was paramount. Today we have the social liberal select few who taint every institution in modern Britain and bares comparison to the earlier nobility.

I DO NOT BELIEVE that the English public can so easily be enticed into giving up their nationhood and its 1,000 year history as effortlessly as those who wish it to happen supposes. If I am wrong, then so be it. But I will only know if my compatriots are given a say through a referendum.

            I find it frightening that the people of France, Holland, Germany, Sweden, Austria, and Belgium, could so easily disband the architecture of their nation sates. The architecture that has given them their very cultural identity as citizens in this world of nations.

            National identity will go immediately if a USE is introduced. But  the loss of cultural identity will take many further decades to achieve, during which period the generations will no doubt be ‘educated’ into the Bork.

            The nation state, whether it be the United Kingdom or the United State of America, still has a long life before it. The nation state represents the traditions and cultures of an indigenous people whose history involved the very protection of their nation through military sacrifice, when the nation is threatened.

            The British people will hopefully be given their say on the relinquishing of their national identity. It is, however, a matter of timing as far as those who wish such a process not to occur. The current crises, they believe, will be overcome, and the need for a referendum will diminish as a consequence.

            Such is the naiveté of the British Europhile, that they hopelessly believe that their ambitions will attract the support of ordinary British people. If not, then somehow or other they will, through fear, help drag the UK  into a USE.

           

           

           

                       

           

           

             

            

ONE MORE PUSH BROTHERS

THE MONEY GRABBING FRED KITES at UNITE are at it again. This time threatening disruption of the Olympic games unless their 20,000 bus drivers are each given a £500 bonus for working between July 27 to August 12.

            I have no love for the spectacle of the Olympics as I once did. Since many of the athletes became tempted by performance enhancing drugs, I can no longer watch them with the same appreciation and respect for their performance that I once did.

            So the event matters little to me; but what does matter is seeing an avaricious union boss timing strike action to meet a great public event where it is thought an extra 800,000 people will be in need of London’s transport service.

            Modern trade unionism is still garnishing sympathy because of their early history when they were a force for good that stood up for the interests of the truly impoverished and exploited workers, of which there were many millions before the Second World War. As with socialism, the unions were performing a progressive task by standing up to the industrial oligarchy that ran our manufacturing base. The social history of Britain from the mid 18^th century until the mid 20^th century proves that the trade unions had much to do to overcome the exploitation of the factory owners and their arbitrary treatment of their workforce.

             The unions then, were a truly progressive force that did much to promote social reform by their actions, including the creation of a political party to represent trade unionists in parliament.

            Today, however, the piping chimneys that poured their smoke into the atmosphere and clouded many northern towns and cities, have long since gone and with it the many casualties that such industries caused among their workforce.

            Today the coalmines have been (largely) erased from the landscape as well as the many deaths such a vile industry caused - either through cave-ins or disease. The miners held the admiration and sympathy of the country. But thankfully such sacrifices (for this what they were) are longer part of the social history of Britain.

THE UNIONS TODAY have become like the employers of old – out, not for their members, but purely for themselves as well as their own political agendas. They seek to orchestrate their members into bringing down or damaging a Tory or Lib Dem government (or both in a coalition) whenever the chance presents itself. They also practice the same strategy with the party they helped create; but only if it is led by a week leader – one that has been chosen by themselves to do their bidding, under the ridiculous voting system that the party they created have been forced to adopt.

            In the age of steam, the unions provided the working people with their only hope; in the age of electrical capacity, they still mattered greatly; for the change in the nature of energy was yet to resolve the many injustices that the beginnings of the industrial revolution set in motion - but resolved, they eventually were.

            We no longer send children up chimneys; we no longer send children down mines, or in the many mills that dotted the North of England. Modern governments of all political persuasions, have, through reforms, rightly brought an end to the cruelties of the past. No-one can possibly contest that the London bus drivers’ conditions bare any kind of comparison with any of those working people who I have referred to above.

            No- one today has to visit a workhouse; no-one today is brought to penury and has to beg on the streets in the hope of avoiding the workhouse. If such inhuman and degrading social conditions existed today, then I would welcome UNITE’s decision to call a strike during the UK Olympics. But of course, such evil conditions no longer exist.

            The modern trade unions, but especially those who represent the public sector, are trying to still live off the respect gained by their union antecedents, at a time when much work was needed to be done to elevate the conditions of the British working class.

UNITE’S THREAT to disrupt the Olympics will only lower their standing among the British public, and will no doubt, in the future, cause ordinary people, including all of  the many millions of people the various unions have on their books, to wonder whether their union’s representation is indeed needed.

            Whenever a union calls a ballot for strike action, the turnout is miserable; more so even at a local government election. Yet the union leaders, defiant as usual, proclaim such ballots a success: they do so on a low turnout of say 50 per cent. This means that, from this turnout, no vote in favour of a strike could possibly encompass any kind of majority among the union’s members. In the current vote, for instance, among UNITE’s membership, 70 per cent of the union never voted. So the real ballot encompassed only 30 per cent of UNITE’s bus drivers; of which a majority voted for the action the union proposes to take.

            Is it little wonder that modern trade unionism is unpopular – especially when they always chose the most inconvenient moment (for the general public), in order to strike. We have had threats from railway unions, as well as baggage handlers at our airports, who all chose their moment to strike at the most vulnerable time for the traveller.

            If the modern public service union movement is not careful, they will render themselves as unpopular as the 19^th century industrialists from whom they gained their raison d’être. They will find themselves unpopular in the country as well as history. Something they cannot afford to be, especially in the light of being the beacon for the Labour Party; who they will drag down with them.