COME COMRADES LET US RALLY

THE TUC has drawn a line in the sand, and the smell of braziers will once more enter the nostrils as picket lines begin to assemble throughout the country. The government (rightly) is determined to cut public spending, for to do otherwise would leave this country in a perilous financial strait worse even than that of Greece.

            The TUC says it appreciates the necessity of such cuts but that the Coalition is acting to vigorously, and too soon. This is the same position held by the last Labour government before they were trounced by the popular vote in May of this year.

            The public sector in this country has grown to such an extent that it poses a threat to the private wealth creating sector; the very sector that pays the wages of the public sector. Such an imbalance in favour of the public sector can only spell trouble for a modern viable wealth producing economy.

            We now have more civil servants employed in our various ministries in London, supposedly on our behalf, than at the height of the British Empire when most of the world was painted pink.

            The public sector has to be minimalist. It is needed of course, but not on such a grand scale. For if any economy is to prosper, then it will do so within the wealth creating private sector. This, historically, is a bitter lesson learned by Russia as well as the Guardianistas favourite son, Cuba; especially after Fidel’s’ recent recantation of socialism. We are now told, for instance, that even that ‘Beast’ of Bolsover, Dennis Skinner, is about to put his vote behind the Blairite David Milliband in Labour’s leadership battle.

            If even Dennis can smell the coffee, what is wrong with this particular sense among our trade union leaders?  Bob Crow for one wants us to return to the 1970s. He goes further, as Arthur Scargill did before him, than those class traitors at the TUC wish to go. There is a familiar pattern emerging here for someone who has lived long enough to have experienced it before.

            Whether the TUC’s ambition for a campaign of disapproval via strikes and demonstrations will come to fruition remains to be seen. I hope that such an appeal at this week’s trade union conference will go unrewarded. For this country’s finances are in a perilous state and need to be put on an even keel.

           

THE SIZE OF THE public sector with their guaranteed jobs for life and generous publically subsidised pension to follow ( as well as all sorts of other perks) leave many in the private sector, whose pensions are vulnerable to diminishment, angry. Their anger is justified for they feel the public sector is being cosseted at their expense. If those working in the private sector have to conform to the whims of the market place, then why should the public sector be exempted, as the union’s seek to do.

            Our wealth as a nation depends upon its creation and its fluency. The public sector, any public sector, in an advanced industrial economy where commodities of all sorts are traded and exchanged, depend upon  private wealth creation to oversee their security. However, the great albatross around the neck of such ambition in Europe, but, in particular, the UK, are the Unions representing the public sector.

            Those working in the public sector have to form part of the vagaries of the market place along with their colleagues in the private sector. Every day of the week in good as well as bad times, people in the private sector whose taxes are paying the wages of those in the public sector, are being fired and have to look for other jobs. In the private sector, jobs for life, if not unknown, are rare indeed.

           

THE COALITION NEEDS to reduce our deficit, and if they fail, we as a country will become a third rate economic nation. Our world-wide well regarded financial sector will evaporate and be transported to a more vigorous and sympathetic economy, possibly in the Far East.

            We have been put, financially speaking, on the brink of a precipice by the last government whose Keynesian nostrums failed us with their talk of retarding the cuts to the public sector and leaving the deficit alone to grow for another year in the hope that the economy will be turned around and put us into surplus. By which time deficit reductions could take place.

            What it amounted to was throwing good money after bad, which left the taxpayer with an ever increasing burden, and the country with ever greater borrowing.

            Over the coming winter months, if what the TUC wants actually comes true, then this country will be transported backwards to a darker period in our industrial history when the trade union movement almost became the unelected government of this country. And as such, almost destroyed our international reputation until the rise of Margaret Thatcher – God bless her.

            If everything goes to form, it will not be the first time that the TUC has seen itself as the unelected government of this country. The people and only the people can elect those they wish to govern them: and at the last election the majority of people voted Conservative, but without a sufficient majority to govern, which lead to the coalition with the Liberal- Democrats.

            The unions had no part to play (constitutionally) in such proceedings and should have no part to play in the Coalition’s discussions. The unions are the backers and bankrollers, as well as the ideological brethren of the Labour Party. A situation Tony Blair sought to change when in government: but nevertheless a situation that  Gordon Brown tried to protect.

           

THE ERA OF COMMUNISM has ended but today’s TUC seems to behave as if the class war is still in continuance. This country’s economy has to sort itself out. It has nothing to do with the Marxist concept of class conflict (as the likes of Bob Crowe Insist); but what is in the best interest of this island nation and its 60 million people.

            Political ideology is the last thing this country needs to promote its recovery from its national debt. Yet the unions are once again determined to blame the ‘capitalist system’ for our current predicament.

            

THE WRONG PRIORITIES

THE DEPARTMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT  (DFID) is a rare beast in today’s economic climate; it is one of only two departments of state (the other being the NHS) whose budget has been ring-fenced. The DFID is responsible for allocating funds to the poorest of the world’s countries. It has a budget ranging between £7 and £9 billion pounds a year, depending upon what you read. Both China and India can be counted among those ‘poorer’ nations that receive British taxpayers money from this department

            The Commonwealth development Corporation (CDC) is, what should one call it, a department of state within a department of state? Whatever, it has access to £2.5 billion and is owned , quite naturally, by the tax payer. However it has become what it was never intended to become when it was set up by the post war Labour government to invest in private sector projects in the poorest countries of the world.

            Since 1995 the CDC has been ‘self-financing’, although it remains a department of a department of state. However no profits have ever been (through its self-financing) returned to the exchequer, but instead have been ‘reinvested’ in the CDC. In other words, this ‘aid’ has been used to make some kind of financial return, all of which is being used to make an ever greater profit for the CDC? If so, this is not what was intended at its inception, but has evolved since.

THE CDC is headed by chief executive, Richard Laing, who has pocketed salary and bonuses totalling  £970,000. Now he and his executives are in the headlines for their claims on expenses. The Daily Mail, under the Freedom of Information Act have discovered that Mr Laing claimed £7,414 in expenses last year, £1,557 of which was spent on London taxis. At the other end of the scale he billed taxpayers for a £3.29 for a note book as well as a £5 taxi tip. These latter two examples (as with the MP’s expenses sandals) say a lot more about the nature and character of the person than does the far larger claims on expenses. But Mr Laing was not the highest expenses claimant; for this dubious honour  goes to Mrs Jemmet-Page who claimed £9,572.

            Shonaid Jemmet-Page, another of the department’s executives claimed £336.54 for a taxi that took her from Brussels to Paris, while another executive, Anubha Shrivastava, claimed £530 for a nights stay at a hotel in Hong Kong, as well as a £661.48 for a two night stay at the five-star Portman Ritz Carlton in Shanghai.

            The one time chairman of the CDC, Sir Malcolm Williamson submitted a bill to the taxpayer for £701.44 for a dinner at L’Autre Pied in Paris.

            The CDC remains a state institution within the DFID whose budget enjoys the luxury being ring-fenced by the Coalition.

WHY SHOULD THE DFID BE exempted at the expense of more important departments of state from the necessary cuts to correct our deficit? This government is about to unleash, in historical terms, the most ruthless, but also the most important cuts to our public services. Yet we exempt oversees aid from the calculation; despite headlines that, if proved correct, will threaten our national defences.

            Today, for instance, the Ministry of Defence (MoD), according to press reports, are about to shave the numbers off our  armed forces even from those serving  in Afghanistan.

            Rumour also has it that the two new aircraft carriers (to be built at a cost of £5 billion) will either not be built at all, or just one will get the go ahead with aircraft loaned from the USA, used to crowd its decks.

            This coalition had better get its cost-cutting priorities right in accordance with the wishes of the British people. The oversees aid budget should never have been ring-fenced to the detriment of our armed services. For our armed services are this nation’s protection in any future conflict; a conflict that no politician today can ever foresee.

            Oversees development aid must take its place within the priorities of any developed nation under strict economical circumstances. In such times any nation looks rightly toward the interests of its own people. When economic recovery occurs, then oversees aid can continue.

            But we turn to our own politicians to look after the interests of the people who elected them. Their interests at the moment do not include the ring-fencing of oversees aid to the detriment of our national defence.

            If this Coalition government had ring-fenced defence instead of oversees aid, I would have supported it. But by ring-fencing oversees aid they have betrayed this country’s defences.

            This Coalition has no means of knowing what this country will have to defend itself against in the future; yet they are prepared to put oversees aid before this country’s defences. Such an act of irresponsibility will no doubt, as in the past, come back to haunt us, and, as always is the case, such perpetrators of such irresponsibility will be never face any kind of comeuppance.

            

THE WEAKNESS OF ART

BEING A PHILISTINE THE NAME David Shrigley means very little to me stuck as I am in the flat and barren wilderness of Norfolk. Mr Shrigley however, being at the epicentre of our cultural life has just made an animation defending public funding of the arts. He, along with such luminaries as Hockney, Hirst and Gormley (all of whom are wealthy enough between them to subsidies the arts) , have started a petition at savethearts.org.uk. to prevent cuts to the arts budget; although, to be fair to them, they are prepared to accept some belt tightening. What this means in reality the three minute animation does not spell out.

What is happening is the beginning of an orchestrated campaign to subvert the Coalition’s autumn statement on the departmental cuts needed to alleviate our £170 billion deficit. The arts budget has more influential and extremely wealthy supporters than any other department of government; and no doubt these dignitaries will wield their considerable influence upon the chancellor on behalf of Messer’s Shrigley, Hockney, Hirst and Gormley.

Whether the Chancellor, George Osborn, will listen to such siren voices remains to be seen. In the past such a wealthy oligarchy have managed to ‘persuade’ previous chancellors of the vital need for the nation’s culture, that particularly tax payers money should at least go towards their particular favourite…opera.

The animation makes the point that, like the BBC, our cultural activities are the envy of the world and bring in more finances than the state dishes out. Well, if so, why the need for subsidy in the first place? Art in particular, throughout history, has survived quite well without the state’s dirty hand extorting tax payers money for the purpose of financing the arts.

Has Hockney, Hirst or Gormley ever received an Arts Council grant. If so they should be ashamed of themselves. If not then they prove my point. If you are sufficiently gifted as an artist you build for yourself a reputation within the world of the artist, and in so doing attract purchasers of your (I am sorry for using that appalling word among liberals) product. Hirst’s relationship with the Saatchi brothers is well documented and in the tradition of art…and the Saatchi brothers have done far more good for art in this country than the state could ever do.

The state is the comfort zone. It is a kind of comfort blanket that every artist, given the opportunity will always cling to, for they, like the rest of us, are only human. We have more people calling themselves artists today, than we have scientists or engineers. However, how many of these artists are working free from state bondage?

The arts are indeed important to any culture, but are they as important as the Overseas Aid Budget for instance, which amounts to, according to various estimates, between £7 and £9 billion per year. Think how useful such an amount would be to the Culture Secretary.

Would David Shrigley forgo the ring-fenced Oversees Aid Budget in order to allow the Art’s budget to prosper in the era of belt tightening?

I myself regard our Defence Budget as sacrosanct, even to the exclusion of our Oversees Aid Budget. I based my decision upon the fact that this country’s defences take priority over all else. Can Mr Shrigley make the same argument for the arts? I think not. Art, and great art, has prospered well enough without the State’s intervention. The artist has always furnished his or her identity by their talent in the market place. More often or not, the artist has had to die before their true worth has been recognised - another awful reference - commercially. For it is the business-relationship of art that sticks in the throat of the likes of David Shrigley. How many banks throughout the world, for instance, have bought a Hockney or Hirst painting to display before their clients? The corporate sector are among the largest purchasers and supporters of art. The Sainsbury family, for instance, is about to give £25 million to help build the new extension to the British Museum.

If we go deeper than cheap liberal rhetoric, we will see that Sainsbury’s as well as all public companies, have needed the stock markets and the speculators to provide capital and promote the expansion and wealth of the company; much of which has fallen into the hands of the arts.

But you should not expect Shrigley to be grateful. Shrigley and his ilk seem to look upon such contributions with what amounts to disdain. He blames the very system that built our cultural heritage, in the form of our great museums, galleries (the Tate) and theatres for future cuts to the arts budget.

GIFTED ARTISTS HAVE done very well from the free-market system. Of course many artists have resented the commoditisation of their art; yet they have never turned away a generous commission or refused to sell a work for a sum that many ordinary taxpayers would take 10, 20 or even a hundred years to earn. Yet it is the hard earned taxes of such people that Shrigley wants to hang on to, with a mere tip of the hat toward cuts.

Shrigley blames corporatism in the form of banking for bringing us to the position where cuts in the Arts’ budget is now needed. The thing with artists is that they are, on the whole, of a liberal sentiment. Ask them where they would make cuts, they, almost en-mass shout TRIDENT!

With me, as a conservative, I would shout OVERSEES AID! We all have our national priorities as far as public spending is concerned; but historically, the arts and the artists have been at their best when left to flourish in the market place: while our nation’s defence will always need the support of the taxpayer.

The starving artist living in the garret used to be the stereotype until the liberal state took a hand. Of course no artist ever starved to death within such a system, but there is no denying they suffered for their art at either the emotional or financial level. But because it was more than a hobby, than, (unlike many who paint today) a means of livelihood, the artist in the past was placed in a more perilous state than those ‘hobbyists’ practicing today.

Art has always fared well under any free market system, than under a medieval system of the type of which David Shrigley seeks to hang on to. Art, like any other commodity, has a market price – wherein exists a price which someone is prepared to pay. If Shrigley cannot accept this then he should return to his cave painting.

A modern painting should convey the artist’s opinion, and it can only do so through its narrative style. Just as literature is the written word, today’s art should also seek the narrative element to express contemporary society or even times past.

Pastor Terry Jones

AS AN ATHEIST, BOTH THE Bible and the Koran has far less significance to me than, being a Darwinist, any book by Richard Dawkins. To me book burning carries nothing more than a symbolic gesture in the modern world of the printing press where any such cindered tome can be quickly resurrected. If what was being burnt however, was an unpublished original manuscript, then it would be a different matter entirely.

I can see how people of all faiths would react to Pastor Terry Jones, of the Dove World Outreach Centre in Florida, who intends to carry out a Koran burning ceremony this Saturday in remembrance of those who were killed in New York on 9/11. But for those of no religious faith like myself, I find such protests from politicians like Hillary Clinton, somewhat contemptible.

For me, as a none believer, I am left wondering where these liberals were when Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses suffered the same fate as the Koran is about to. Those liberals who today protest at pastor Jones’s intolerance toward Islam, fled in all directions when Mr Rushdie was given the black spot by the Muslim world. No liberal, as I remember it, came to this authors’ defence for fear of being targeted.

Now many believers of all faiths will say that such an argument bares little comparison to a Holy book. Well yes, but I am an atheist and it does indeed bare comparison. This pastor has now had placed upon his shoulder by General Petraus and US oversees aid workers, any death that may occur to the US army or any aid worker following the burning.

Did Rushdie have any support from the American political and military establishment, as the Koran has been given. He certainly had no such support on this side of the pond from those liberals who believe in free speech. While, for instance, Tony Blair has a constant bodyguard protecting him, at the tax-payers expense on his travels, to the tune of £250,000 a year; Rushdie had to pay for his own protection.

Pastor Terry Jones said one thing however that did ring true. The politicians have underestimated the numbers of those Muslims living amongst us who are extremists. I believe that our political leaders are well aware through intelligence reports that the percentage of extremist Muslims living amongst us in the West is far higher than they are prepared to disclose to the public.

All political leaders in Europe and the USA are frightened of the rise of modern Islam which is why they are so panic stricken by the pastor’s interjection. When they coruscate the likes of Pastor Jones, they do so through fear of what they have allowed themselves to unleash upon the people whose trust they asked for when facing their election to office.

ISLAM IS not a passive entity. Like communism that preceded it in its attacks upon ‘decedent’ capitalism, it is a phenomenon that embraces world-wide ambitions and will not stop until it achieves its purpose. As communism was an atheistic creed, it was easy for America to unite against it. But Islam is a religion, and for America, embedded as it is in 57 varieties of the Christian faith, the threat of social disharmony is real.

Just as those building the mosque near ground zero have used America’s First Amendment to support their actions, then so has Pastor Jones. When the founding fathers wrote that part of the country’s constitution , they could ever have foresaw the role Islam is now playing in world.

Any sympathy one may have for Muslims over the Pastor Jones episode (and I hope it comes to nothing more than an episode), it wears thin when Islam seeks to emulate the communist ethic of world conquest. Our politicians in Europe and America must understand that Islam is a medieval force. It has never felt the need to succumb to any form of Reformation that Christianity went through in the 16^th century. There was no Luther in the Islamic world to divide the faith and temporize it.

ISALM IS A medieval religion that has evolved very little, despite its early and successful courtship with science. Islam managed however to destroy the culture of scientific investigation because, as with the Catholic Church at one time, scientific truth came into conflict with their particular Holy Book.

Today the West is in retreat; it lacks the ruthlessness of its enemy, indeed, denies it has one, by continually insisting that the Islamisists are merely a minority whom the majority of Muslims dissociate themselves from. This is naivety at it most deadly. It means very little in our everyday lives to act in a gullible fashion, for no one but the individual who behaves so suffers any kind of repercussion.

But we are talking about our political leaders making decisions on our behalf that have the power to either make our lives more secure and pleasurable, or scar them forever.

It is all about numbers as the Pastor made reference to in a television interview. Of course nobody (or I hope this to be the case) believes that every Muslim is an enemy of the West. All most of them want is to improve their own and their families lives and live in freedom. But the minority of those who are fighting the West is far larger in numbers than our politicians have been prepared to admit too publically.

You can see the concern written on our politician’s faces. Having allowed so many Muslims to live among us in the West, they now fear their reaction to anti-Muslim sentiment, such as that of Pastor Terry Jones.

Forty years ago Pastor Terry Jones would not have merited a single column inch in the Florida, whatever; let alone gain worldwide notoriety. It is because the West has harboured Muslims in their millions over the past two decades as part of Globalisation, that the Pastor has gained such notoriety.

If there is nothing to be concerned about, why does Europe keep refusing European entry to Turkey? I can offer a suggestion: throughout many parts of Europe, the birth rate of the indigenous populations are falling, while Muslim families who do not believe in abortion, are on the increase. As we stand at the moment we have 15 million Muslims living within Europe; while Turkey would introduce a further 80 million.

Two weeks ago Channel 4 bravely touched upon a subject that, particularly the multicultural BBC would have feared to pursue. It concerned first cousin marriages within the Pakistani community and the genetic abnormalities that are part and parcel of such an arrangement.

During the programme MPs (usually Labour) representing large Muslim communities were invited to comment upon first cousin marriages and how much such an arrangement they turn a blind eye too, cost the NHS. Only one Labour MP could be found to comment.

I proffer this as an example of what we can expect when our MP’s rely for their political careers upon a large Muslim constituency.

THE ISLAMISATION of the world is the purpose of this faith – in other words; it seeks to conquer, just as every Empire, including the British, did so in the past.

This crude, stilted and antiquated Islamic faith is now on our doorsteps; but at the moment merely knocking at our door. Will we, in Europe’s case, let it in? Well yes, if we are the British government who represents 1.5 million Muslims and think that 80 million Turkish Muslims would only add to European democracy.

Islamism is opposed to every tenet of our democratic values, but nevertheless uses them to seek power for itself. By so doing they build up a constituency that over generations will harvest great rewards for Islam. Islam is the opportunist supreme and it uses liberal society for its own advantage playing the racist card whenever challenged - this religion is

bound to succeed in a Western liberal dominated West. And what is more the charge of being racist delivers all opponents to its expansion, to either the British or European Human Rights legislation.

NEVER IN THE FIELD OF HUMAN CONFLICT

DRESDEN’S MAYOR, Helma Orosz, is on a visit to London to open an exhibition detailing the bombing of London, her home city of Dresden, and Coventry. She is being pressured by the press at home, in particular by Blind, to try and persuade the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, not to go ahead with a planned memorial to Bomber Command set to be created in Green Park, London.

The bombing of Dresden in 1945, which killed 25,000 civilians, including women and children, would no doubt be seen in the febrile liberal atmosphere we live in today, as a ‘war crime’. After the war, the numbers killed were, in the light of the latest evidence by German historians, greatly exaggerated. At the time the numbers believed killed amounted to 250,000 and this figure was quoted as fact for many years as an accurate, and definitive one.

The allies have been criticised for such an attack toward the end of the war, and many reasons have been given for such censure , most of them criticising Air Vice-Marshal Arthur ‘bomber’ Harris, who believed the war against Germany could be won by a campaign of heavy bombardment, a theory much disputed. However Churchill allowed Harris to prove his worth in the certain knowledge that any failure would be placed on Harris’s shoulders.

Where Harris was wrong was in presuming that bombs would prove to be of greater value than that of mere adjutant status to the war at sea and on the ground. He, like many high ranking officers throughout history, made many unsubstantiated claims upon the politician’s ear, and found little reward for their efforts.

‘Bomber’ Harris was not, as some would like to suggest today, a war criminal; but, like Air Chief Marshal Dowding in the Battle of Britain, was a national hero. He was a man faced with the overrunning of his country by Nazism and took whatever measures that were needed to prevent such an intrusion – an intrusion that, had it been successful, we would be living with today – what then for a multicultural Britain?

My guess is that the events of the Dresden raid in 1945, was meant as a warning to Germany. Remember, Germany had been responsible for two world wars in the 20^th century that almost destroyed Europe and caused some 40 million deaths on all sides; the need to put Germany in its place must have been a great temptation to the allies.

IF GERMANY HAD HAD our heavy bombers then she would no doubt have caused greater havoc than she managed to do on her bombing raids. But Germany was used to the tactics of the blitzkrieg against countries that had little to defend themselves with. Indeed, were it not for Churchill and his ‘war mongering’ on the British peoples’ behalf in parliament during the 1930s, we would also have been in the position (and nearly were) of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, France and Holland.

Nazi Germany cared little for human life while creating their Thousand Year Reich: anything the allies did was very small beer in comparison to what Nazism did, and had in store for world had she won. So if Mayor Helma Orosz does what she has been asked to do by Germany’s most popular paper; then I hope she will be given short shrift for her efforts. We, as a nation, have nothing to feel ashamed about. Nazi Germany was a cancer that required radical surgery to remove it from the continent of Europe, and if the modern political representatives of that nation cannot grasp the obvious then so be it. But if we in any way succumb to their overtures for the abandonment of this memorial; then our politicians will had to their reputation with another layer of shame.

BUT BY WAY OF A KIND OF FOOTNOTE, I would like to remind the mayor of London, Boris Johnson , that he should remember that our capital city which he represents was bombed by the Nazis for 57 consecutive nights, and should, if the subject of the abandonment of the Bomber Command memorial, be mentioned by Mayor Helma Orosz, then I hope he will stand by the 70,000 bomber crews that served and died for this country.

Let me give him a few statistics to counter Helma Orosz’s argument, if she makes it. Almost 43,000 civilians were killed and 71,000 injured in the blitz on London, and, as I have referred to above; if the German Luftwaffe had had heavy long range bombers, they could have devastated London and would have done so for no other reason than by doing so they would have advanced the ambitions of Third Reich.

So I hope Boris will not take any lectures, if she feels obliged to give them, from Helma Orosz. This country behaved like any country would with the capabilities it had at hand, when confronted by such a behemoth of the Nazi variety.

What we did between 1939-1945 never reduced us to our enemies levels despite the popular wisdom of today. We are not a nation of Nazis because we had to use their measures to guarantee our survival as a democracy. Nazism, just like communism and socialism, was driven purely by ideology. All of which sought to suppress human freedom.

The monument to Bomber Command should go ahead. If not, then how long will it be before the French asks for the removal of Nelson from his plinth in Trafalgar Square, and for the same reasons as those given by Helma Orosz for the cancellation of the monument to Bomber Command.

Having lost some 70,000 of our airmen in the raids over Germany, it would be the grossest form of insult to abandon this memorial. For the Second World War was fought for the freedom of all European nations, including those currently enjoyed by modern Germans.

IMMIGRATION! (always the elephant in the room)

IT HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED THAT there is a shortfall of over 300,000 places in our schools. The elephant in the room of course is the large number of immigrants living here and increasing yearly; on top of which we learn that one in five new births are also among immigrants. As this trend continues, this country’s population is due to increase to 70 million by the middle of this century.

Yet our business leaders take a dim view of any restriction on numbers, particularly among skilled entrants - an understandable position to advance considering the dumbing down of our examinations, as well as the generous welfare state which discourages people from taking jobs that immigrants are all too willing to do.

However the solution does not lie with bringing ever greater numbers of immigrants from outside the EU; but with the urgent need to reform both our educational and welfare systems. To overcrowd these isles with ever greater numbers, will not lead to any significant changes in this country’s economic fortunes, because of the added financial pressure placed upon our social infrastructure and the antagonism such a influx would cause.

The British public are being flattered on an almost daily basis by our politicians for our perceived tolerance. But tolerance can wear thin, even among the British. Those MPs who returned to their constituencies to fight the last election understood only too well the public sentiment regarding immigration.

I suggest the issue of most importance for the vast majority of the voters last May; even more vital than that of the economy, was immigration.

The good thing is, is that our politicians can no longer bray racist at anyone who has the nerve to refer to the subject. The facts now speak for themselves, and what is more, they were deliberately created as part of a form of social engineering known as multiculturalism by the last government, after Tony Blaire took power.

New Labour sought to replace the traditional working classes with an immigrant population who would repay them with their votes. Rather than doing what the Coalition are now seeking to do – to get as many people off welfare as they can; the last regime, from its very beginnings, added to the many products on the shelves of the welfare supermarket. In other words, while using populist rhetoric they continued with the welfare profligacy that had even continued under Margaret Thatcher.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED IS THAT we have replaced part of our population while adding to its numbers. Having given up on those who appear happy to continue to draw on the public purse without penalty, as well as, for political purposes, lowered our educational standards , we will may well prove to have brought this country to its knees.

Our business leaders are not satisfied with the educational standards of those leaving our schools or universities, which is why they plead for the government to allow, particularly skilled workers, from abroad to enter this country.

The primary reason our businessmen do what they do is for profit which accumulates their wealth over time. But in so doing they need to employ people, and those people need the skills demanded by a particular industry. The employer would of course prefer home educated labour of a sufficient standard, but can no longer put their trust in our educational system - while other employers cannot get the right unskilled labour because they are better off on benefits.

This is a recipe, either for national bankruptcy, or interracial strife. Either way it will be the politicians of a liberal persuasion, from whatever party over the past 40 years, who have brought us to this sorry pass.

First of all liberal values in education have, on the principle of all should have prizes, ruined our standards of educational excellence and, as a result dumbed down the requirements demanded of this nation’s employers. No other modern European nation I hope, has been dragged into such a hole – but if so, the whole continent faces a steady decline into obscurity.

If something is not done to attend to this issue then the British public may either turn to a party that best represents their concerns, or sit on their hands come the next election. I believe all the main parties know by now how important the subject of immigration is to the people, including many second and third generation Afro-Caribbean’s and Asians, many of whom also favour a block to be placed on immigration.

Immigration is the greatest threat to this country’s social stability and our cultural history. The last government was ruthless toward anyone who broached the subject in anything other than a sympathetic light: the last government hounded those who, like Immigration Watch, sought to enlighten the British public on the subject.

I believe the last Labour government did more to harm the interests of our country, its history and culture, than any other political party…and my God, they have had many challengers for such an honour. Indeed, if the Guinness Book of Records(GBR) contained such a category as the record for the Greatest Political Contribution to National Suicide, then the last government would have been awarded the much sought-after GBR certificate – and, who knows, given their gift for self-publicity, the last government would probably have arranged photo-calls for a handing over ceremony.

Once more unto the brink

"Today marks the start of direct negotiations between someone who has no right to represent the Palestinian people and the brutal occupier, to provide a cover for Judaizing Jerusalem and stealing the land," Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar

IT IS DEVELOPING INTO A TRADITION for any new American President, dating back to Jimmy Carter’s efforts at Camp David back in the 1970s. Yes, it’s time once more for another failed attempt at resolving the Middle East’s most troublesome of problems - a settlement between Palestinians and Jews.

If it was not so serious the whole business would sound like a Hollywood franchise, with sequel after sequel spanning the decades. How many times have we seen, lined up in front of the Whitehouse Palestinian, Jewish and American leaders, giving hope where in reality there is very little? The one difference this time is that there is less hope than usual.

Today Palestinians are divided between Gaza and the West Bank. Like the old East and West Germany, the Palestinians are living (and evolving) within two different societies. The Gaza strip, which is under the control of Hamas, with its uncompromising hatred of the Jewish state and its retarded economy relying upon outside help for the minimum of sustenance for its people (or so we are being told), and the West Bank whose economy is flourishing by comparison, and whose people are living, for first time, a comparatively well- off existence in many decades.

HAMAS HAS PROMISED to scale-up its attacks on Israel in order to undermine the peace negotiations. The Hamas Godfather in Gaza, Mahmoud Zahar, is determined upon the destruction of the state of Israel and replace what they see as an occupation by Jews with a fully merged single Palestinian state.

Mahmoud Abbas ,who is the leader of Fata on the West Bank seeks a two state solution to the Middle East crisis, and harbours no Zaharian ambitions for driving out the Jews; quite rightly believing that this is an impossible ambition to achieve, even if he had nurtured, at some time, a sympathy for its ultimate achievement.

Because of this division between the Palestinian people, President Obama’s invitation could not have come at a worse time: for America’s traditional ally, Israel, has prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing difficulties of his own. The cessation of settlement building comes to an end this month, and Netanyahu is under pressure from the Americans to prolong the pause in such settlement building.

If he agrees, he faces internal conflict at home which Hamas would look upon as an opportunity. For if the people of Israel begin fighting among themselves, then the real possibility of a single Palestinian state begins to be believed in – not only in Gaza, but also on the West Bank.

The Americans have to think carefully about how far they wish to push Netanyahu toward an agreement that they must know he cannot take back to his people with any chance of success. It will be a heavy price to pay if they do. A few moments grandstanding on the White House lawn is a silly price to pay for an American President, who by doing so, may have lit the blue touch paper in Israel.

NETANYAHU IS NO FOOL HOWEVER, and I cannot believe he would cause division among his (unruly at the best of times) people. The issue of Jewish settlements and their continuation, should not be part of any bargain that may be reached. If Mahmoud Abbas does what he has threatened to do and walk away from the talks if Israel continues with its settlements policy, then he must do so; and we must wait for another day and another US president, to be rewarded with a workable solution.

This conflict, it seems, like poverty, is always with us. But I believe there will be a solution in the future. As you will have gathered from the above, I, when forced to pick a side, will always be behind the Israeli state. I do so because the fate of the Jewish people have never in the past, when living in the Diaspora, been on a comfortable journey. They have served as the scapegoats of kings and tyrants; they have been victimised for failures of almost every society they found themselves barely tolerated in.

The infamous Russian programs that, when the economy went wrong, the Jews were the chosen ones to be burdened with the blame. The Jewish people have always had to be resourceful people in order to survive: and in every corner of the pre 21^st century world where they have tried to settle, they have faced at one time or another their persecution, culminating in the greatest monstrosity of inhuman behaviour ever enacted – the Holocaust.

The Holocaust was the ultimate attempt to rid the planet of the Jew. Some six million were sent to the gas chambers by the Nazis, their hair and gold teeth removed, and their skin turned into lampshades.

NOW, WHO IN THE MODERN WORLD would blame them if they sought out their ancient homelands and once occupied steadfastly defend them? In literature, philosophy and music, Germany was considered exemplarily. But it degenerated into Nazism, whose ideological theme was ridding the world of the Jew.

Israel is where she is today because the Jewish people needed their own sanctuary to retreat to and live and prosper in - this is the state of Israel. It is a homeland that was taken from them and renamed as Palestine by the Romans. Today its historical significance, in terms of its independence, is as important as that of America in the 18^th century, and I hope President Obama realises this.