Monday, April 30, 2012

Vote Boris


‘He supports suicide bombing on Israel, and I don’t agree with him on that. But he denounced any attempt to have a terrorist attack in Britain and America [probably through political calculation], he thinks the war should be confined to the Middle East. ‘
Ken Livingstone on Sheik Qaradawi in front of a Jewish audience

BORIS JOHNSON AND KEN LIVINGSTONE, will soon find out which of them are going to run London. I must say, I am truly bewildered by those polls that have shown the candidates running neck and neck. One would have thought that the good people of London would have settled Ken’s fate once he announced himself a candidate.
                Even after Ken’s supreme act of hypocrisy  following his tax arrangements, he has still left Boris with a fight on his hands.
                Ken Livingstone is willing to upset one ethnic group in order to harvest the far larger numbers from a different ethnicity. Thus we had Ken sharing a platform with Sheikh Qaradawi, the Islamasist fanatic who openly supports the suicide bombing of Israelis. This demagogue shares the same faith as between 700,000-1,000,000 Muslims living in London. Livingstone, like Galloway in Bradford, does not care who he offends so long as he speaks for whatever minority can reward him with the most votes and give him the power he craves.
                So when the shitty Sheikh says such things as, ‘Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption…The last punishment was carried out by Hitler…’, Livingstone can ignore the storm he knows will erupt around him because a) he believes the London Jewish community would not vote for him anyway (all to rich apparently), or b) because he knows that there are nearly a million Muslims in London, hundreds of thousands of whom would agree with what Qaradawi says, and will reward Livingstone for his brown- nosing come the mayoral vote.
                Both Livingstone and Galloway[1], as Old Labour socialists, both realise that there is no longer a white working class of any size that they can count upon to secure them the power they need. Like Tony Blair, who came to the same conclusion about the traditional working class Labour voter, this pair sought another constituency that could be relied upon in the same way. Tony Blair sough his new constituency via swamping the country with immigrants in the belief that they would become natural Labour voters.
                In the coming years you will see more and more outspoken Labour candidates standing in constituencies with are large ethnic element. Ken Livingstone and George Galloway are merely the pioneers testing the territory.
                As far as Ken Livingstone is concerned, needs must when you crave power – especially when it involves running our nation’s capital.

IT WOULD BE A CALAMITY for London and its people if they give Ken Livingstone another chance to create for himself an imperium of London.  He will, has he has done all of his political life, seek to divide himself from any person who he disagrees with, or who disagrees with him. He carries upon his shoulders the mantle of destiny and will do all in his power to fulfil that which fate has sought to reward him with – truly a Nero in the making. Let us hope that if he wins he does not acquire a taste for plucking the fiddle.
                Boris Johnson is a truly attractive figure, almost a P G Woodhouse creation. If there were a Drones Club in London, Boris would be there participating in some useless prank like trying to knock the helmets off London coppers.
                Boris was educated at, among other institutions, Eton College and Balliol College Oxford, where he read classics and became head of the Oxford Union (one could hardly imagine Bertie Wooster reaching such heights).
                Unlike Ken Livingstone, Boris is not single-mindedly driven. He is of course ambitious as all people should be. But he does not share Livingstone’s rapacious and predatory nature that leaves little room for any principle that cannot bear the weight of his almost insatiable need for power.
                Ken will do whatever Ken needs to do to wear whatever political crown is within his grasp. He will, as many in the Labour Party have found to their cost, drop them without compunction in order to fulfil his need to gain or remain in power, at whatever level of politics he finds himself engaged in.
                The Labour Party endorses Livingstone, and many of those who once could not bear his name to be spoken in their company are coming out to support him. Such Labour luminaries as Neil Kinnock, Alasdair  Campbell, and Ona King have formed a part of those within the Labour Party who have had nothing but contempt to offer Livingstone in the past; yet now expect the poor Labour voting wretches of London to give this one-dimensional power addicted and unprincipled character the job of overseeing London.
                Labour tribalism is nasty and can be a dangerous quality that can easily back-fire. Labour tribalism is the Party’s equivalent of monarchic loyalty, and if Joseph Stalin himself was standing for the mayor of London as a Labour candidate, then the Labour Party would do all they could to secure Stalin’s ambition.
               
BORIS JOHNSON is, by all media accounts, well liked by the London populace including many Labour supporters. So what I would say to such supporters in London is, vote for your party in the council elections, but vote Boris for mayor: and above all ignore those voices from the past who tell you to vote for Livingstone. Because they, like Livingstone, are the kind of hypocrites they like to portray their enemies of being.
                Vote Boris because he appeals to you as a personality with a political brain of sufficient quality to administer our capital city. Do not vote for an ape with a red rosette at the bequest of so-called Labour elder statesmen who loathed Ken Livingstone when they were at their  peak.
                After an almost life-long support for the Labour Party (I am now 62-years-old), but for the past two years I have supported UKIP. I would have, after much reflection, considering my life-long affiliation to Labour, supported the Conservatives at the last election; but I do not believe they are any  longer fit to call themselves Conservatives. So I satisfy myself with UKIP.
                But if I were a citizen of London, I would look to the man rather than the party, and in doing so would vote unreservedly for Boris Johnson. While I am not a citizen of London, I am a citizen of the UK and London is as much my capital as those who live within its precincts. So I believe I am entitled to as much of an input (short of voting) into who should govern my nation’s capital as anyone else living in London.
               
               
               
               
               




[1] Yes, I know, Galloway now leads a party that demands our Respect

The rise of the Right and the distress of the liberals


 I JUST SAW HELENA KENNEDY on the Andrew Marr Show bemoaning the rise of the extreme Right in Greece; and Andrew thought that the Greeks should have had enough of Right-wing dictators after their experience with the generals in the 1960s and 70s.
                What Ms Kennedy and Mr Marr failed to do was proffer us a reason why that country should be drifting aimlessly toward what they would see as support for fascism.
                Greece is suffering its current circumstances because European idealists of the calibre of Ms Kennedy and Marr  thought it a good idea to create a single currency among the contradictory economies of northern and southern Europe, in the hope of realising the liberal wet dream of a United States of Europe: and as with all ideals, the many warnings against them were dismissed out of hand as Eurosceptic.
                Of course, what was warned of eventually happened, yet those responsible for this Ponzi scheme have shown little contrition. I know Ms Kennedy was not (like millions of other European liberals) part of creating the architecture for the euro zone; but she, like her fellow European elite believed the vision, and who are to this day still pouring billions of European taxes into rescuing the ideal at all costs – to the taxpayer, that is.
                The Greeks should never have been invited to join a single currency; but, as they were, their membership of the currency meant that the northern European economies stood guarantor. Which of course meant that the Greek government could borrow and borrow to their hearts content. They were given cheap loans by the banks with northern Europe standing surety. They were allowed billions of euros that would never have been granted to such an economically backward country had it not been for its membership of the euro zone.
                Ms Kennedy, and the all powerful liberal elite to which she belongs, should not lament or bewail the possible rise of the extreme Right in Greece but only the part played by those, like herself, who believed in the European dream – and sadly, still do.

TODAY GREECE, and possibly Spain and Portugal tomorrow, may also pay for their flirtation with European idealism with a dose of fascism. The austerity measures demanded of the people of Italy and Greece were implemented ( remember?) by EU appointed technocrats who have been effectively ruling  both countries.
                Where was Ms Kennedy when Italian and Greek democracy was taken away from the people by, effectively, France and Germany? If she had spoken out, as a human rights lawyer, against such a gross infringement of the Italian and Greek people’s rights, then I never heard or read of her disquiet.
                Perhaps she did; but she never used it as part of the reason for the growth of the Greek far Right, on Andrew Marr’s Show. She just  shrugged a ‘Well, what can you do?’, leaving those like myself bemused by her apparent  surprise at such a development: after all, it was the politicians of her cut that have caused the rise of the Right. If we add the European euro mess to the pile already built comprising multiculturalism and immigration, then the picture is complete - the liberal Left are culpable in the growth of the Right throughout Europe.

MS KENNEDY  has all the qualities required of a red rag to a bull. When it comes to her liberal views freely and generously aired on the BBC  whenever she requests an appearance, or when one of her ‘sisters’ working in production at the BBC needs a sound liberal voice to be heard in an on air debate, she rises to the challenge.
                If the Right enjoys a resurgence throughout Europe, then it has been gifted them by liberals within all parties who have enjoyed hegemony since the Second World War, especially within the UK. Whether (in the context of the UK) you are a socialist, or conservative; it has been the liberal centre of each of those parties that have sought, and successfully so, the creation of a left of centre liberal agenda.
                The liberal-left has, virus-like, taken occupancy of every institution, academic, educational, or political, as well as other institutions that make and form opinions – like the BBC.
                When will the liberals within all parties and institutions within the UK have that great Damascene conversion that brings them to an admission of being in the wrong ? Liberalism has robbed us of the cultural roots (via multiculturalism) that made us a nation. Our own culture has itself become a mere feature among dozens of others  that are now branded as just another branch on the multicultural tree.
                Is it little wonder that the extreme Right are beginning their successful harvest of the popular vote in other parts of Europe? Does Ms Kennedy not understand that it is the likes of her and her liberal elite that has brought such an impasse about.
                It is the liberal enterprise that has failed and promised through its failure, an unsettled Europe competing for extremes. The three great points to the liberal pyramid within the UK are, at its base, multiculturalism and immigration; while at the pyramid’s apex stands the EU.
                Is it little wonder that so many of Europe’s people are seeking a way out of the austerity measures by contracting themselves to the  political extremes?
                The great liberal wet dream and only the great liberal wet dream is responsible for the rise of the Right in Europe. These romantic optimists believing as they do, in some form or other of a rose-tinted future for humanity within a United States of Europe, are now becoming as vicious through seeking its creation as were the communists that sought the same kind of imperium long before them.
               



Sunday, April 22, 2012

THE LEFT HATES ISRAEL AND THE RIGHT HATES JEWS


Günter Grass, the Left-wing German author and, at 16 one time SS member, has attacked Israel in a poem, which has lead to him being no longer welcome in Israel. Grass, like many representatives of the Left, seek to make phoney moral comparisons in order to justify any immoral behaviour on behalf  of whatever political dictator they support at any given time.
                We have had George Galloway presenting Saddam Hussein with a box of Quality Street, and when challenged about the murderous behaviour  of his ‘indefatigable’ comrade; (he had brought ruin to the Marsh Arabs and inflicted mass murder on the northern Kurds using  poison chemicals) he countered his critics with the ‘moral equivalence’ argument. Which went like this. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children were being reduced to starvation by Western economic sanctions, and thousands more killed by American pilots operating the UN enforced no-fly zone.
                Cuba has always been a favourite of the Left, despite Fidel’s treatment of homosexuals and the thousands of Cubans who have risked life and limb to get to Florida; as well as those political prisoners locked up well away from the West’s scrutiny and the Left’s embarrassment. Yet, as usual, the Left will only respond to any criticism of their support for this dictator, by suggesting ‘comparable’ behaviour by the West, going back centuries.
                Vietnam was always a particular favourite when combating their critics. The Mai Lie massacre was an outrageous act of murder conducted by the Americans in Vietnam; while the evil of napalm was  captured by a press photographer of a naked child with charred skin, peeling from its body. The Vietnam war was filled with such images and stood the Left in good stead for decades afterwards, when in need of moral equivalence arguments(MEA) to justify their support for a particularly nasty regime or revolutionary army they were drawn to ideologogy. Examples of the latter was the civil war in Angola following independence in the 1970s, when the Popular  Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), competed for control of the country with the anti-communist National Union for Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) .
                As a member of the Left myself at the time. I often used the MEA to justify any outrage committed by the MPLA. My equivalence was of course Vietnam as well as that old but particular favourite on the Left, Western colonialism. The West opposed the MPLA and supported UNITA under Joseph Savimbi who was seen as a poodle of imperialism by those like myself at the time.
                There was at the time another Portuguese colony in Africa. Mozambique was suffering a similar fate to Angola; where the European Left’s chosen  heroes were the Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO), a Marxist Leninist  revolutionary force that also sought independence from Portugal. In each case the Left  used MEA if either the MPLA or FRELIMO overstepped the boundaries of civilised behaviour.
                As a one time member of the British Communist Party in the early 1970s, I, like my comrades, stood by the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.  When challenged by our political opponents, the Vietnam War was once more deployed as our MEA.
                When it came to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, many on the Left supported the republicanism of Sine Fein; and when an outrage occurred involving civilian deaths, the Left salvaged their consciences by elusions to the British outrages nearly half a century earlier in Ireland. To the Left, British/ Irish history was replete with possible MEAs, to help them justify the actions of the Provos.
                The British Left, (here I include the liberal Left)  are a self loathing bunch of individuals who take the side of any country other than the one they were born into. I truly believe that the modern Left would have stood full square against a war against German Nazism, as they were against Baathist Iraq.

WHEN GÜNTER GRASS wrote his poem he apparently drew a moral equivalence between Israel and Iran. Like all such similar comparisons by the Left, Günter’s is misjudged. Israel has never admitted her ownership of a nuclear bomb or any other such means of delivery. Yet we all know that she has a nuclear capability.
                Iran, however, denies she has any such nuclear weapon, and would, at this time be correct. But we all know that Iran is pretty close to realising her ambition and is in the process of playing for time with the international community.
                Israel has had nuclear weapons for several decades, and has had plenty of opportunities to be provoked into using them, surrounded as she is by Hamas in Gaza, and Hezbollah on her northern border with Lebanon; as well as Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and now Iran. Israel is still at this moment, despite the so-called Arab Spring, the only democratic state within the region.
                Can Günter guarantee that Iran, once she has her own nuclear deterrent; would be less likely to use it than Israel would hers? I think not. Iran is an Islamist society where not party politics or political ideology rules, as it once did in the old Soviet Union - but religion. But no ordinary religion; but one still fuelled by medieval  beliefs, customs and practices that treat death as a mere passage to elsewhere.
                Yet Günter believes that Israel and only Israel will be responsible for the  apocalypse he believes will come to the region. As he has written in his poem; "Why only now, grown old, and with what ink remains, do I say: Israel's atomic power endangers an already fragile world peace?".
                ‘…grown old, and with what ink remains…’ This is a sad old man appealing for pity. If he believes Israel’s nuclear capacity is the one and only source of destruction for the region, then he is behaving like the short-sighted Leftie, once fascist, that he is. Throughout her various conflicts with her Arab neighbours, Israel has never mentioned, let alone threatened her neighbours with annihilation; unlike Iran.
                Israel wants to live in peace, but it will not be allowed to do so for as long as the Jewish people seek to, as they should, remain as much a part of the region as they have for 3000 years. The Jews have, since 1948, turned a dessert region into an arable pasture where various crops can be grown and the sands driven back. Their achievements since 1948 were never mastered by any Arab occupancy of the land now covering the modern state of Israel.
                Fertile soil has replaced barren sand. Israel is a modern nation; it elects its government and learns to put up with it until the opportunity is given the people to vote in another. My one and only criticism of the Israeli voting system is comparable to my distrust of the European model.
                First Past the Post gives strong governance and leadership. It is a system best suited to argumentative Jews and Israel should adopt it. For Jews may turn out to be their own worst enemy, and not the Arabs, if they remain tied to their present voting system.

THE LEFT I ONCE KNEW and belonged to were anti-fascist. This anti-fascism encompassed a dislike of racism including anti-Semitism. But the more I study the internet, the more I feel that the differences between the great polar opposites of the political Left and Right are drawing closer together.
                The Left is in a quandary. Driven as they are by a liberal conscience, they cannot bare to be seen as anti-Semites. Yet they are driven by a wish to see the Jews removed from the land known as Israel and the Palestinians left occupying the land.
                The Left are part of the new Right as far as the state of Israel is concerned. It is the Left who conjured up the latest formula for ridding the Middle East of Jewry. Instead of a Two State Solution that has been the preferred option for decades; the Western Left  have come up with not a Two State Solution but a One State Solution. This requires that all Palestinians should have an automatic right to citizenship within the  territories of the state of Israel, including all those Palestinians throughout the world.
                This would tip the demographic balance in favour of the Palestinians within a Jewish state and against the Jews which would ultimately lead to a referendum that was certain to hand the lands of Israel over to the Palestinians. How the Left seeks to bring such a catastrophe about for the Jews without human conflict, remains to be seen. But already the Left are preparing the ground by  seeking to persuade the world that Israel is an apartheid state.

BOTH FAR RIGHT AND LEFT can now find common ground over the issue of the Jews and the state of Israel. The extreme Right calls a spade a spade and is openly and proudly anti-Semitic. The far Left however quibbles over terms. They see themselves as anti-Zionists and believe the term not to be anti-Semitic, which, of course it is.
                The dictionary definition of Zionism is, a movement of world Jewry that arose late in the 19th century with the aim of creating a Jewish state in Palestine’. This definition is the raw bones of the matter. The Jews right to return to the land of ancient Judea from which they were driven is long overdue;  and if anyone questions such a right to reclaim such a past, then they must face the consequences.
                Israel is not and never has been an apartheid state, as those on the Left who seek to lay the charge already know. Because of the suicide bombers from Gaza finding easy access into Israel to kill hundreds of Jews; the state of Israel built a wall to prevent such horrific intrusions.
                Now, because of this wall, the European Left are interpreting its existence as a part of an apartheid Jewish state.
                Günter Grass , like other leftists throughout Europe, are romantically drawn to the Palestinian plight. To such people the Palestinian predicament touches all of their liberal buttons, as well as, in a minority of  cases, their anti-Semitic ones.
                But the Jews are here to stay, and now live in a land fully prepared to defend itself if pushed to do so; for Israel has never sought any kind of imperial conquest of its neighbour’s territory; only the survival of the one it has mapped out for itself based upon ancient and incontestable boundaries whatever the politically correct so easily discard.
               

               
                

Monday, April 16, 2012

YOU WILL VOTE…OR ELSE!





A LAW MAKING IT ILLEGAL not to vote comes ever nearer. First of all you make it illegal for a citizen to refuse to register to vote. Then once this is bedded down and we are all learning, like the sheep we are, to accept such an illiberal measure; our  politicians then decide to make us vote for them on penalty of a fine.
                According to today’s Mail on Sunday, Mark Harper, Nick Clegg’s deputy wrote to  Clegg and members of the  Cabinet Home Affairs Committee. He proposed ‘…that we should introduce a civil penalty for  individuals who fail to make an application to register when required to do so by an ERO [electoral registration officer]’.
                 The Mail on Sunday’s  James Forsyth suggests; ‘Clegg and Harper’s reasoning for wanting to fine individuals is that the system of electoral registration is changing. In an attempt to reduce fraud, the Coalition is planning to move to a system where each person has to register themselves rather than having one person fill in the form on behalf of the whole household’.
                Their intention to be so proscriptive will, they hope, solicit much sympathy once fraud is used as the reason. But as we know the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.  Remember earlier this month when there were proposals to spy on people’s emails? The good intention then was to help prevent terrorist acts and criminal behaviour. All good reasons: but as we know; over time, the net is cast far wider than originally intended: and so it will prove to be the case with making people register to vote.
                Modern politicians, are professional politicians. They have little or no experience with any corner of life, other than that set in Oxbridge and Westminster. Our leaders like to think they have the Midas touch, but instead of gold, lead is the only metal they are capable of producing. Everything they touch has the stamp of failure marked out for it.
                We as a people are ill-served by the inadequacies of those who are meant to represent us. Politicians as a class have never held the love of the people. But what we had in the past, are politicians who have participated in war; who owned a business or worked on the factory floor. Even Churchill who was to the manor born served his apprenticeship in what we like to call the ‘real world’. In his case it took him to South Africa as a journalist to report on the Boer War, where he was captured and escaped his internment.
                 Margaret Thatcher was the daughter of a family grocer. Dennis Healy, Tony Benn, and Ted Heath were among dozens of other post war MPs who served in the armed forces during the Second World War, and all of them had experience of life outside of Oxbridge or the London School of Economic (LSE).
                The point I am making is that today’s career politicians are of an inferior stamp to those who preceded them in British political history and are ill-qualified to lead the nation, let alone call themselves politicians or statesmen. Moreover I believe they are themselves becoming increasingly aware of their substandard qualities. They are surrounded by spin doctors and others recruited from outside the civil service. They preen themselves before for the camera; they take lessons in media communication; their reference back to what they think is the real world, is done through focus groups and opinion polls. No longer do we have the hustings at election time, when all the different candidates faced hostile question s and even the crudest of insults from the public in the local market place. Such experiences helped mould the politician worthy of such a name and prepared him for the debating chamber; as well as sharpen his or her wit ready for the bear pit of parliament.

THE VOTER is being short changed. Today we have the televised debate, first tried in 2010, where it became wholly responsible for the coalition government we are currently having to put up with . At the time Nick Clegg was the washing powder that the viewers preferred, and it left the country via the resultant coalition, more hesitant than at any other time in its past. Right or Left, a strong first past the post government is always the preferred option – everything else is obfuscation.
                If I never see another televised debate during a general election, it will please me no end. Democracy is not served by such a circus: it is a popularity contest where white teeth and the facial structure of a potential leader seems to count for far more than what they believe in; which is, after all, nowadays much of a sameness within all the main parties. Which is no doubt why looks and personality matter more to the British public than policy: because all of the parties and their leaders are seen as fighting over  the same middle ground at the expense of the principles they once represented, then personality is the only reference point left for the floating voter.
                It is partly because of this very sameness that  the public should be left to decide whether they vote at all; by staying at home  the voter is saying ‘a plague on your houses’.  For  our politicians to suggest that we should be made to register to vote, says more  about their own inadequacies than those who choose to sit at home.

I DO NOT THINK THAT the politicians will press this issue because to do so would meet with such resentment. We are already treated as potential criminals by the state when it comes to paying taxes in order to watch a television set.
                Nick Clegg obviously agrees with his deputy in what is being proposed, if not, why did he allow Mark Harper to write his letter?
                No one should be forced by the state to either register or be made to vote as in Australia. To propose such a measure would only be seen as normal , if proposed by an illiberal conservative: but to have it prospered by a Liberal Party, is frankly wacky .
                Before our so-called politicians demand that we should be made to register to vote; they should first of all retrieve those ideological boundaries that once separated them and allowed a choice to be made, from which the people would have a genuine alternative to make. At the moment the public are treated to the same bland menu.  To find any kind of difference between our parties you have to chose from the likes of the Greens, UKIP, Respect, and the BNP. Even voting for the once Raving Loony Party would have been of significantly more value than choosing between, the three main parties in their modern garb.
               


Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Mr Hooky goes to Washington




AT LONG LAST, AFTER EIGHT years of Abu Hamza’s lawyers milking the  legal aid system, the mad Mullah is finally being extradited to the USA following a decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Along with four others, he played the judicial system for all it was worth at the taxpayers expense.  Appeal after appeal meant delay after delay and rich rewards for his lawyers, in whose financial interest it was to keep Mr Hamza a client.
                Finally the legal hoops ran out, and hopefully the country will shortly be well rid of these Islamists: whether guilty or not, it will be for the American courts to decide, but either way, they will no longer be guests of the British taxpayer.
                No doubt there will be one final try-on to keep these people in our company, but after the decision by the ECHR, any such further appeal could only add to the lawyers chest of lucre.
                Last week President Sarkozy deported his own troublesome Islamist with apparently  the kind of panache one associates with our Gallic cousins. Any long drawn out legal process (especially one that takes eight years to complete)  would horrify the French president particularly in election year.
                People like Abu Hamza should never be allowed to become such a bane on the taxpayer’s pocket or their patience . He should have departed these shores in the same exemplary fashion demonstrated by  President Sarkozy. The vast majority of people in this country (including many Muslims) cared not one iota whether Hamza was given sufficient hoops to jump through in order to by time for himself.
                It is outrageous that our politicians as well as our legal system allowed this tortuous process to happen. President Sarkozy has demonstrated that where there is a will, there is always a way. The trouble was, that there was no such will ever shown by our political class. Frightened by the ECHR and the human rights fashionista -  who are the celebrity diners at numerous tables of the metropolitan elite. Our politicians feign due-process  as their sole concern, no matter  how they feel personally toward the accused.

THOSE WHO SUPPORT the European Union will no doubt make reference to the decision today by the ECHR to justify their undermining of British law by supporting  its jurisdiction over our own lawmakers.
                The ECHR comprise 47 judges who are, according to the convention, ‘of high moral character and to have qualifications suitable for high judicial office, or be a jurisconsult[1] of recognised competence’. The fact is, is that such jurisconsults have been regarded (In many of the 47 cases) as nothing more than imposters with very little legal experience. The Convention description referred to above says very little about any previous judicial service as a qualification for sitting as a judge on the ECHR.
                Yet this country has handed over to the ECHR the final say on any particular judgement, or the suitability of any piece of legislation that the electors of the United Kingdom chooses to bring into law. The ECHR has done nothing to convince the British people of its right to oversee the decisions we the British people elected our politicians to make.
                The ECHR has no democratic pedigree that engages the people of Europe. Like all  components (and yes, I know the ECHR is separate) of the EU, the democratic pedigree is a counterfeit.
                Yet we obey its every decision to the letter, which is partly why  Abu Hamza managed to outstay any welcome he thought he had for so long. The case of Abu Hamza does little to help the ECHR to recover any kind of legitimacy it once thought it had.
                In fact, if one were cynical enough, one could suggest that the ECHR judgement was  given to counter its critics, whose voices have recently become so plentiful and deafening; that the ECHR feared that dreaded disease associated with such staid and amateurish institutions – reform. Which would soon come knocking if they did not in some way appease their critics.

ABU HAMZA AND HIS associates, if that is not a too personal term, have become the pawns of ECHR politics; if that is, our cynic is correct.
                People like Hamza were, under the previous government, treated as eccentrics and so were allowed to speak as freely as they were eager to do. The last Labour government was a complete and utter disgrace. They never took the man seriously until the  Finsbury Park Mosque in London was raided and various weapons were found.
                The last Labour government that sat astride the governance of this country between 1997-2010, did untold damage to our nation’s culture. They charged their critics with racism at every opportunity, and allowed the likes of Hamza to go freely about his nefarious business.
                It was not until 9/11 that such people as Hamza were taken seriously by the then Labour government. London had earned the sobriquet Londonistan from the rest of Europe. We were a laughing stock. Then came the 7 July 2005 London bombings when 52 people were killed and 700 more injured. At last, at a sad cost, the Labour government took the Islamic threat seriously; but, as with the present coalition, they deferred ultimately to the ECHR, and so they set themselves upon such masochistic behaviour.
                They knew that the British people cared little for the niceties of due  process when it came to the likes of suspected Islamic terrorists. Yet our political class stood with straight backs saluting, like some colonial governor, the flag of due-process. Even in extremis, our politicians sought to suggest to us, due-process needs to take place.
                Due-process the people could understand; if such a process had not had the ECHR tagged on to it. The people could always accept, if not fully understand the intricacies of British justice. They  had, after all, elected those who did understand it to act on their behalf. But then those elected gave their one true democratic responsibility away to a European court.
                Is it little wonder that our politicians are held in such low esteem by so many of the voters? It has taken eight years to deport Hamza. It is a fact to be ashamed of, not a justification for the existence of the European Court of Human Rights.





[1] ‘[A] jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage. ...Wikipedia

Monday, April 9, 2012

IT IS THAT ‘NUT’ TIME OF THE YEAR


EASTER HAS COME ONCE MORE. It is a time for remembering Christ’s crucifixion and his resurrection; it is a time for stuffing chocolate eggs; as well as the traditional family short break. But most memorable of all, it is the National Union of Teachers (NUT) spring conference; where the great British public can witness for themselves the kind of people they leave their children with to be educated.
                First up is a delegate called Tony Dowling[1]. Tony is a teacher from Gateshead whose views are by no means extreme in the context of such a gathering. Tony believes his colleagues should emulate the Arab Spring by organising “mass resistance on the streets”. Rather impatiently, he believes; “We can’t wait until 2015 to get rid of this government,”  adding that. “By then education, the NHS and many other services that we cherish will have been destroyed.” He then enthuses upon the possibility of bringing the masses onto the streets to show the government how despised they are.
                Also addressing the conference was Jane Bassett, a teacher from Hackney. Her gripe follows the government’s stated intention to link local pay to rates within the private sector. Ms Bassett opines; “We need to resist it. It will lead to factory-style teaching. It will lead to massively demoralised teachers. It will lead to massive recruitment crisis.”
                If these two characters represented some kind of militant tendency within the union, then we could dismiss these disgruntled revolutionaries as the dystopian visionaries that they undoubtedly are. Sadly for the children they teach, the majority of the NUT think along the same lines as this pair, all of whom hold the futures of generations in the palm of their hands.
                Another union  gripe, is the creation of the governments’ successful  independent  academies, which are proving popular with parents. But the NUT are not going to let the mere wishes of parents stand in their way; so the union has backed a call for strike action  in all schools that leave local council control to become academies.
                On top of pensions, and boycotting reading tests for six-year-olds, this union shows that it has only its member’s interests at its heart; and those of the children they teach somewhat negligible in their scheme of things. Of course they will go on about how the children’s interests will be ill-served by all the much needed reforms to our children’s education – but it is all self-serving cant: which the NUT would not be the NUT without.

THESE PEOPLE ARE intending strike action on a number of fronts over various issues. One of them, quoted by Graeme Paton, the Daily Telegraphs excellent Education Editor, even  declared “It is a fact that we’re living in an unelected dictatorship.”
                Democracy and unions are an ill-pared amalgam, especially when it comes to electing a new Labour leader. So for one delegate to suggest that this Coalition government lacks democratic authenticity, is an insult to the people of this country who elected it as an alternative to their bankrupting predecessors, who, as one of its own government ministers, wrote at the time of his own sacking by the people in 2010, “There is no money left”.  
                To call this government an “unelected dictatorship”, shows just how far away these people are from reality. Even the Coalition’s worst enemies would not seek to undermine its right to govern, let alone use such juvenile and irrational  language – so why is this “teacher” still being left in charge of young minds?
                In this country today we have over a million young people not in education or training. We have universities complaining about the numeracy and literacy levels of students being enrolled on courses from the state comprehensive sector. Each August, when the exam results are published, charges of dumbing down have been levelled, and until now, to no avail. Dumbing down of exams has happened, but the government’s Education Secretary, Michael Gove, is set to apply new standards to the A level curriculum to challenge pupils and make their results truly worthy of the grade they accomplish.

TODAY WE FACE A lack of discipline in our schools that the NUT should have put as its main subject at conference. Physical punishment of pupils is no longer acceptable, and the main opponents of such a form of discipline have been the teachers themselves. Yet the teachers are the first to complain about assaults that have been made upon their person.
                Our children no longer care about being expelled; they know they have the upper hand over the teachers. Detention can either be ignored or become a source of entertainment for such pupils; and as with an ASBO, a veritable source of honour among their peers in the communities where they live.
                If we had kept physical punishment in our schools for use in extremis, then we would not today be confronted by hapless teachers and arrogant yobs. But to try and reinstate physical punishment today would only count among the pupils as a further (higher ranking?)tribute to be compared with an ASBO. Those liberal minded, middle class politicians and educationalists, who sought to ban the cane and slipper from the teacher’s armoury have left them without any kind of deterrent beyond the application of reason which they thought would appeal to pupils more successfully than the cane or slipper.
                But all cannot be blamed on the teachers. Parenting is in flux. We have one parent families where the partner has foreclosed on his responsibilities: as well as two parents who were married but divorced. Parents used to put their trust in the teachers. If children behaved badly, then the parents knew that their child warranted the punishment meted out, because they knew what their children were capable of and would be on the side of the teacher.
                Today we have parents who have themselves been pupils under the liberal educational regime, and as such have learnt to put two fingers up to the teaching profession, as they did when they were pupils. These are the very parents who assault teachers for disciplining their children – and the teachers and politicians have brought it all upon themselves.
               


















[1] All quotes taken from the Daily Telegraph  and its Education Editor Graeme Paton, 09/04/2012

Sunday, April 8, 2012

AN EASY TARGET


I HAVE NO IDEA WHETHER elitism leads to tyranny, but one thing is for sure, it can lead to a silly prat throwing himself into the Thames, only to prove to the world that he is a hypocrite by so doing.
                Trenton Oldfield 35, was raised in Australia and attended one of Sidney’s exclusive private schools; he now lives in London, where he attended the London School of Economics (LSE) studying contemporary urbanism . He is also a fellow Royal Society of Arts (RSA).
                In 2007, Mr Oldfield created  an organisation called  This is Not Gateway , which he describes as a not for profit organisation which has set out to; 'inject a criticality into discussions about cities via creating a platform for existing, though overlooked multi-disciplinary critical actors and provocateurs'. Although not being run for profit, his organisation is being funded by the Arts Council if today’s Sunday Times is to be believed. In other words, funded from the public tit; and as we all know the Arts Council, is not elitist in any way.
                Mr Oldfield describes himself as an ‘urbanist’ ‘guerrilla architect’: ‘Open-minded, multi-disciplinary, efficient, focused, intelligent, honest, unique,’[1]who seeks to, 'inject a criticality into discussions about cities via creating a platform for existing, though overlooked multi-disciplinary critical actors and provocateurs'.
                This 35-year-old teenager  has[2] worked for more than a decade in nongovernmental organisations specialising in urban renewal, cultural and environmental programmes. Working for a nongovernmental organisation, however, does not mean (as the name implies) that you are not being funded by the tax payer. Unless such bodies (and there 44,000 in the UK) are funded from the private sector or have been given charity status; in any event, as they are not profit making bodies, the public one way or another keeps them in existence.
                Mr Oldfield takes (or so it seems) exceptional delight in the fact that his own organisation, as well as the ones he has spent a decade working for, are non-profit making. Is there a better example of an elitist attitude than this? He sniffily turns his back on the greedy profit motive of capitalism; and demonstrates this by immersing himself in the public sector, which no doubt he feels is above the deviant and avaricious accumulation of capital – i.e., profit.

WHEN HE DECIDED  to take his stand against elitism did our Trenton (now there is a name that suggest the very thing he opposes) realise that the message he sought to deliver would be ignored by the stunt itself? As one commentator suggested; his actions will have made the Oxbridge boat race once more become as popular as it once was.
                Judging by the extracts  from  what Trenton has written, and collected by the Sunday press, I would suggest that his website would provide Private Eye magazine with enough copy to fill Pseud’s Corner for a decade.
                If ever the charge of elitism could be targeted, then such a target is Trenton Oldfield. He represents the arty –farty elite that has sat atop every summit of the humanities in this country for decades, and has sought to help set the zeitgeist of contemporary culture for the last five decades .
                Trenton Oldfield exemplifies the naivety and idealism of a contemporary teenager who, because he cannot get his own way, stamps his feet in continuous rebellion with cries of ‘I hate you!’ He hate’s elitism. If he were from the working class who felt embittered by the hand  he was dealt, then, coming from where he started in society, I would at least understood him if he were the one diving into the Thames yesterday.
                But honestly Trenton, do you really think you did your cause any good? Even if I supported what the hell it is you are trying to do – I would have suggested to you that yesterdays shenanigans could backfire, given the media’s understandable enthusiasm for learning the detailed background and nature of such an irascible individual.
                Trenton should have understood that he would be the news, and not his message. A mistake all such callow idealists make when they journey into such self-promotion as we witnessed on the Thames yesterday.

I BELIEVE IN ELITISM. Not one based upon class, but on ability. There are great minds in all classes of society, and they should be nurtured and not despised by anybody because of class. They should be encouraged for the sake of our economy, our knowledge, and our culture. The best and only the best should be elevated within society.
                We have practiced for far too long the egalitarian spirit in education; which has meant the dumbing down of exam results, in order to allow as many young people to enter university as possible: and in order to meet this requirement the old polytechnics were croowned universities.
                We have seen how Trenton Oldfield’s mind works regarding his animosity toward elitism over the past 30 years expressed on the Thames. If he disavows elitism, then in order to elect all comers, standards must fall irretrievably to the point where this nation becomes, intellectually speaking, a Neanderthal  enclave within a world where elitism is the gold standard for learning and achievement.
                Oxbridge and Durham are the elite academies of excellence. The nation’s best pass through them and leave with academic qualifications honoured as the very best throughout the world. It has nothing to do with class but an excellent mind, on top of exceptional qualifications. The true merit is excellence – not egalitarianism of the kind that Trenton Oldfield suggests should be the norm by his anti-elitist comments.
                This young man of 35, will spend the next 35 years as he has spent the previous 35 – living, in one way or another, off the public tit. He may even merit a honour at the end, which in his dotage, he will, like all of his previous anti-establishment figures, accept.
                I am sorry to say that Trenton Oldfield, if he is remembered at all, will be done so by a small fraternity of sport historians, who rightly care very little for the message he sought to deliver, but only for the way the boat race was disrupted by him.
                Whatever Trenton Oldfield sought to achieve for his perplexing and seemingly infantile cause by taking a dip in the Thames; I know not that this poor creature will not have advanced his cause one iota among the general public; and so it should not.
               


[1] On LinkedIn
[2] According to the This is Not a Gateway website