The price of timidity

AT A COST OF £20 BILLION to the UK and over 400 young lives lost; the war in Afghanistan is being discussed at a meeting in America between NATO leaders, including David Cameron, in order to thrash out the timing of the retreat from Kabul.

                We were told before we went into Afghanistan, that it had been a graveyard for various foreign armies, and it now seems that for the second time in its history the British army is being chased out by a bunch of tribesmen using weapons barley advanced from those used by the British in the 19^th century.

                While the Taliban are armed with Kalashnikovs and propelled grenades circa 1960-2012 (many of which no doubt were left by the Soviet Army when they were chased out), we on the other hand, have the best technologically advanced weaponry the early part of the 21^st century can provide at a cost of billions.

                So what went wrong? Why are we leaving with our tail between our legs? The answer lies not in any lack of skill or courage on behalf of our servicemen and women. On the contrary, the UK forces are what it says on the bottle - the best in the world.

                Given our superiority in men and weaponry, the Taliban should have been eliminated and could have been, had we shown our enemy the same degree of ruthlessness that was shown to us by them.  Only then could we have won this war        , and could have done it far more quickly than the time it has taken for us to finally retreat in disgrace.

                I supported the war in Afghanistan from its beginning as a response to the 9/11 outrage. Al-Qaeda was the original target, as they were using Afghanistan to launch terrorist attacks against the West. The  main purpose of the mission was, I believe, to hunt down and destroy al-Qaeda and their leader Osama bin-Laden, who was, after all, responsible for the murderous attack upon New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon ,where 3,000 people perished.

                I believe George Bush sought al-Qaeda’s destruction and nothing more than that. Certainly, I do not believe for one moment  that he envisaged occupying Afghanistan and trying to build a nation on democratic foundations. Nation building was  never on George Bush’s or his advisors horizon when he sent his young men and women to Afghanistan.

               

THERE WAS ANOTHER ACTOR on the stage at the time who did seek such an ambition for Afghanistan; and he postulated a strategy known as ‘liberal interventionism’. Tony Blair, no doubt, came by his strategy after it proved successful in the Bosnian conflict between  5^th April 1992 – 14^th December 1995.

                After a standing ovation by Congress following a speech he gave in the aftermath of the tragic events in New York, George Bush became more amenable toward Tony Blair and  his strategy of liberal interventionism. After all, Blair had taken the country by storm, and no doubt George Bush was (as all politicians are) seduced by the Blair approach, just as the British people( including myself) were between 1997-2007.

                The trouble with liberal interventionism is this. It ties the hands of the military who are, as a result, set rules as to how they engage the enemy. Liberal interventionism, is the military equivalent of social liberalism.

                The West has the formidable weaponry to dispose of any nation outside of the bubble that seeks to destroy any part of it – including the Taliban. But, liberal interventionism precludes doing what is needed if it causes the politicians sweaty and sleepless nights in combat with their conscience.

                If Churchill or Roosevelt had followed the precepts of Mr Blair, the bombings over Germany would never have happened, and we would be negotiating with the Germans over sending observers into the concentration camps; just as today we are, through the United Nation, seeking Iran’s approval for investigators to investigate their nuclear programme.

                Churchill knew that war cannot be sanitised in the way that the war in Afghanistan was. It only leads to defeat no matter how much the politicians (in the case of Afghanistan) try to spin it out as a victory based upon the killing of Osama bin-Laden - as it will be, after we leave that wretched, corrupt, and medieval country.

IN AFGHANISTAN our soldiers had their hands tied, not only by the politicians, but also by the liberally educated officers out of Sandhurst. I remember reading…I think in the Daily Telegraph, of a young sniper, who through his scope picked out an unarmed Taliban planting  an improvised explosive…he was, would you believe, obliged to consult a senior officer before he could take aim and kill those Taliban.

                I also remember, as you may, an MoD recruitment advertisement on television that sought to recruit on the basis of such a procedure. The image shown was of a fighter jet targeting Taliban who were also planting an improvised explosive. But those planting the device were allowed to go on their way before the fighter jet blew up the device. The announcement that followed praised the action for not causing any death –except that is, to the soldiers that those who were allowed to flee the scene would seek to kill in the future.

                We have been told that our soldiers were fully educated into the practice of hearts and minds. This kind of social work is better left to the inner city estates of our cities than being taught to fight and kill. We could have done what George Bush originally wanted in less time at less loss in both personnel and time.

                If we get ourselves involved in such a war, then citizens will inevitably be the casualties and our people have to understand this from the very start.  Blair’s form of nation building is doomed to failure because our enemy will always hold the upper hand when it comes to ruthlessness .

                We cannot take on such people unless our leaders do, like Churchill did,  whatever proves  necessary to bring about  victory. Our enemies in Afghanistan and wherever we fight in the future will see our limits as weakness. They  understand from what they have witnessed with the West’s involvement in and retreat from Afghanistan, that we lack both the ruthlessness and the stamina to defeat a determined enemy.

                 

OUR POLITICIANS LIVE BY  the political menstrual cycle of five yearly elections, and will always fall foul of them when considering military action, strategy and conduct of a conflict.

                It is not true that we could not have won the war in Afghanistan – we could have and should have. First of all we should have stuck to the original limitations of ridding Afghanistan of al-Qaida and, as a bonus, drive out the Taliban. After which we could have removed our ground forces and used air power including the drones that have been so successful in killing many Taliban commanders - but even the use of drones have caused a flurry of concern from human rights. It is little wonder that the West is in decline.

                Any country or continent that cannot defend its interests or the safety of its citizens because the military have had their hands tied by politicians, then decline is the only road to go down.

               

SAVE THE GOLLYWOG

AUSTRALIA IS HAVING its own problems with gollywogs. Remember in 2009 when Carol Thatcher was grassed up in the BBC’s Green Room by Adrian Chiles after she made a reference to a tennis player looking like one of the dolls?

                Well , now shops in Queensland are being attacked by the chairman of the Centre for Indigenous Cultural Policy (of course…who else). Mr Bob Weatherall is the centre’s chairman and has become irate over the sale of these inoffensive dolls. He deems them ‘offensive’ and demands they be banned. ‘It doesn’t bring unity within a community,’  and, ‘It doesn’t bring back equity.’  

            Apparently however, the gollywogs are proving popular with shoppers – many of whom (if they are of my vintage) remember them, not from Enid Blyton, but from jars of Robertson’s jam. Each jar had a gollywog impressed upon it which could be peeled off and collected toward one of a set of gollywog badges that many school children wore proudly on their school uniforms without any thought for causing offence, because there was none to cause, and none meant. They wore them perhaps, because  they had had at one time owned a gollywog doll. At the time almost every child in the country either owned one in one form or another, or at least had heard of the gollywog.

                Gollywogs were part of our popular culture. I say were, because today if a child was seen to be embracing such a rag doll their parents would be questioned by the likes Australia’s Mr Weatherall, on information received by the likes of Adrian Chiles. Yet the gollywogs posed no threat, the children embracing them were not destined to become racists. As far as cultural practices are concerned, ownership of a gollywog pales into insignificance when we are talking about arranged marriages, honour killings, genital mutilations, child exorcism, and the raping of white children by Muslim men.

                I presume that it is not golly but wog that causes such fits of outrage by the PC arbiters of acceptable words and images.

                WOG, I am told, is an acronym that stands for Wiley Oriental Gentlemen. It was never a reference to the colour of a person’s skin and had nothing to do with black people, but rather the trading skills of middle and far eastern market traders who would go overboard to sell a trinket, or what we would call today a souvenir to British soldiers stationed in the Middle and Far East. Of course it also meant that, in particular, the Arab could not be trusted.

                In other words, it was a reference to a specific character of a specific race, and not to the whole compendium of a race. In any case it does deserve the interpretation that the politically correct has put upon it. The gollywog is a much loved character once enjoyed by my generation but vilified by the sinister sounding  PC purists who, like their puritanical Victorian predecessors, seek to change previously acceptable language and custom in order to, in the modern version, foster a multicultural dystopia.

                The politically correct are the modern puritans; the vanguards of what they deem an acceptable uses of the English language. They have in their armoury laws which they can take advantage of, if they deem a particular offence has been committed toward a minority through the wrong use of language. These people are trustees of the ‘hate crime’ and what they say goes.

THE GOLLYWOG MUST NOW BECOME the emblem that we must use to fight back against the new puritans. I suggest a cross of Saint George with a gollywog emblazoned within one of the crosses quarters to suggest the idiocy of those who take themselves seriously enough to want to crush such a display through the use of the courtroom.

                We are in the midst of a new Puritanism, the Puritanism of multiculturalism, and we had better start to fight back or retreat into acceptance of its gruel-like strictures and live in abeyance to their inanities, for fear of whatever they hold in store for those who reject multiculturalism.

                A simple doll has caused outrage, not by the people, but by those who seek to protect all forms of minority culture. Which means diminishing the host culture to the level of those allowed citizenship, as in the UK.

                Multiculturalism should fail, but its promoters strive to rid the country of people like myself who are embarking upon the last few laps of their lives, and who are, they believe, the one obstacle that stands between them and the realisation of their dystopian vision.

               

               

               

               

               

Social democracy seeks a cure for a disease of its own spreading

PRESIDENT FRANCOIS HOLLANDE is famously quoted as saying ‘I hate rich people’. He also threatened a 75 per cent tax on millionaires if elected. The French people rewarded him with the French presidency. While other European politicians like Angela Merkle and David Cameron, hoped that, like them, Mr Hollande’s pre-election rhetoric was just that – a populist message dished up to the great unwashed in order to solicit their votes; followed by backtracking once in power. Indeed, the very formula used by Mr Cameron himself two years ago.

                But President Hollande is made of sterner stuff, for he actually believes in what he says and has every intention to tax and spend to procure growth in the French economy. Austerity has suddenly become yesterday’s economic model. It is now to be a return to the classical Keynesian formula of government spending to ignite growth.

                I do not think in my lifetime have I seen a worse bunch of politicians governing Europe than our present assortment. They are an arrogant, sad, hapless and ill-fated bunch if ever there was. We are in the middle of the greatest economic threat to our survival, and it has been solely the creation of the very people who are now collectively scratching their heads and demanding more oil in the form of taxpayers’ money to be poured onto the pyre of the European ideal, hoping to salvage something from their great love affair with super statehood.

PRESIDENT HOLLANDE, having thrown a spanner into the austerity works, must now fulfil his promise to the French people and tax the rich. The 75 per cent he has announced in advance of the French elections has caused a boom in the sale residential properties in London. According to Der Spiegel  ‘…the wealthy French have been looking for ways to get themselves and their money out of the country. And nowhere looks more attractive than millionaire-friendly London’.

                But the French are not the only ones . Wealthy Greeks, Italians, and Spaniards are also salting their money abroad, and who can blame them. More than 300,000 French people are now living in London, more than, according to Der Spiegel , the populations of ‘… Rennes, Reims or Avignon’. Estate agents have seen a boom at the high end of London property market  - we are talking  many millions of pounds. Houses are being eagerly sought within the price range of 5-15 million pounds.

                Boris Johnson, the London Mayor, is exorbitant (nothing new there)in his welcome for the latest exiles from France. Indeed I can imagine Boris as a latter day Sir Percy Blakeney, in heavy disguise, venturing forth across the channel to save French millionaire’s from President Hollande’s rapacious grasp.

                Hollande had hoped to garner a harvest of  €300 million from his wealth tax, a paltry amount considering the amount of money that will leave France as a consequence of the French president’s bigotry.

                Why is it, that whenever socialist politicians run out of spending money, they first vilify and then seek to loot the wealthy in order to waste further billions. Socialists love spending other people’s money and no more so than with the rich who they have a phobia toward.

WHAT IS France’s loss will be London’s gain – and potentially, France stands to lose far more than she seeks to gain from the 75 per cent tax on the wealthy. It is asinine  and self-defeating for a politician to allow their prejudices to cloud their judgement.

                The rich will always find a more favourable occupancy within a truly free market. Why should they, after all, be made by politicians to pay for their own squandering of the public purse?  If President Hollande truly hates such people, then what would he replace them with? Commissars? Food queues of people that snaked for miles in order to get a loaf of bread because the state was so incompetent at running business?

                Socialist’s hate wealth. They believe it to have been extracted from their beloved proletariat to help finance the lifestyle of their capitalist employers. Such people know little of ambition and innovation. No doubt our socialist French president uses a computer. If he uses Microsoft software, then Bill Gates is one of those he would demand a 75 per cent tax from if were a citizen of France, which, thankfully, in the present climate, he is not. Which, in Mr Gate’s case would mean him no longer pouring vast amounts of his billions into the conquest of malaria throughout the developing world. Mr Gates is rich and President Hollande hates rich people; therefore President Hollande hates Bill Gates. I am sure he does not, but the logic of his position tells a different story.

THE RICH EMPLOY millions of people, and in doing so provide the means by which, for instance, families can grow and own their own homes. Today’s rich employers know the benefits to their yearly profits of a well looked after work force. Today’s multinational manufacturers, if for no other reason than to keep ahead of the game, nurture the skills of their workforces.

                Socialists (because of their prejudices) live in a world where 19^th century mine and cotton mill owners were calling the shots, and children were climbing up chimneys . President Hollande’s attitude toward the rich fits neatly into this antiquated appreciation of capitalism.

                The rich, like the poor, are always with us; unless socialism rids us of the rich, which no doubt the new French president would celebrate.

                President Hollande will do great harm to his people if, through the prejudices he freely admits of toward the rich, he drives them out of France like some Bourbon aristocracy, which seems likely if he pursues his collectivist ambition for France.

                Those French who seek a home in London should, as Boris Johnson has already done, be welcomed. For they are no different to the Huguenots that also escaped oppression from bigoted attitudes over the channel.

TAX AND SPEND as an engine of growth was given credibility in America during the 1930s by  President Roosevelt , and  merited some success - but only because of the Second World War, which did indeed encourage vast amounts of state spending to prepare for a war that came at the right time for such a model.

                ‘Austerity’ is nowhere to be seen in Europe. If we go back once more to the 1930s with the soup kitchens, children with rickets, the ashen faced unemployed standing aimlessly on street corners, or working on municipal projects, not for money but food - then we had austerity.

                Today we have European citizens being asked to retire two or three years later, accept less generous pensions, and work longer than the required 35 hour week that President Hollande’s party introduced as part of the woeful social contract that Jack Delores implemented.

                It is true that people are feeling the pinch and are truly fearful for their future; this is undeniable, and austerity in its historical sense may be the eventual outcome following the euro-politicians next peace of magic - the one that President Hollande now seeks to weave.

               

               

               

               

               

               

               

                                                                                 

HISTORY AS PROPAGNDA

SPARE OUR  CHILDRENS young minds from the abuses of politicians who wish to eviscerate objectivity in the teaching of history in order to advance their own particular cause.

                When the world was more prolific regarding communist states than, thankfully, it is today; the leaders of  such grotesquery set about indoctrinating their up and coming generations into the virtues of communism, the cruelties of Western Imperialism, and the insights provided by Historical Materialism.

                When the world was more prolific regarding Nazi states than, thankfully, it is today; the leaders of such grotesquery  set about indoctrinating their up and coming generations into the virtues of anti-Semitism, the Jewish world conspiracy that was capitalism, Arian perfection, and the inferiority of the black races.

                During the days of the British Empire the children of our ruling class were taught to believe themselves part of a people chosen by God to oversee the affairs of the world; and many stupid, not to say cruel things were done in the name of such an empire; and for the past forty years our children have been indoctrinated into an equally dangerous notion – that the British Empire was wholly evil.

                The Empire did marvellous things for the different cultures they colonised; and, as far as colonisation went, the pink coloured part of the map was better served than those parts that fell afoul of French, German, and, worst of all, Belgium colonialism.

                In India we built the city of Bombay, created a fully functioning civil service and administrative centre, and built a railway system which is in use today. What is more we left the country better than we found it. If the Empire had been as evil and tyrannical as many of our own liberals like to paint it; we would not be host to so many from the Indian sub-continent today.  

WE MUST ALWAYS BE ON OUR guard when politicians seek to rearrange the educational deck, especially when it comes to the teaching of their nation’s history.

                The latest such manoeuvring is becoming evident across the border where it is said the Scottish National Party (SNP) are seeking such nefarious alterations to the history curriculum in Scottish schools.

                Now, a nation’s history is meant to be a truthful and balanced record of events and episodes in the progress of a nation’s unfolding. It is meant to be a trusted record, constantly being challenged by historians when a new insight into a particular event or chapter challenges the accepted wisdom. This is the correct approach to the teaching of history. It must not be used as a weapon by politicians to wheedle their way into the minds of children through changing the school curriculum, and then removing those parts that may distort the historical narrative they wish to impose. If this is not another form of child abuse, then I know not what is.

                Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, is about to repeat the stupidities of stupid men in times past; men who, like him, had a conviction that warranted the censoring of history for the good of the nation. As a nationalist, Salmond has a view of Scottish history which he wants  all children in Scotland to learn. This history, however, has been  made somewhat anorexic  by what it is prepared to leave out. Instead of a feast of learning, the pupils of Scotland will be left to the unfulfilling mercies of Alec Salmond’s thin gruel of the kind which Ebenezer Scrooge once enjoyed,  and believed  perfectly adequate.

                If reports prove correct then those children in Scotland preparing to study their Highers will be told that Britain is an ‘arch-imperialist villain’, while the Empire will be restricted to lessons about slavery.

                The Great War also suffers from the censors pen; as the SNP finds it sufficient to teach it only from the perspective of those Scots that took part. As for Scottish history…well, you have guessed it. Hollywood will play its role – for where else could a disseminator of historical distortion turn for some kind of support after the success of Braveheart? Braveheart history will ornament the history curriculum in Scottish schools.

                Scottish victories over England will be the history curriculums’ main focus, as it has been for Alec Salmond for most of his life. Scottish Nationalism has long suffered from a deep vein thrombosis they believe was inflicted by the old enemy that had led them on a far, far too long journey of bitter disappointment.

                Now Scotland has an opportunity to rid itself of English rule and Alec Salmond sees himself as Scottish histories’ prodder. He believes that once Scotland emerges from the gloom of any association with England; he will deliver Scotland into the open arms Europe, where nationhood no longer has any part to play in a United Sates of Europe.

                As with Irish nationalism; Scottish nationalism will sell their sovereignty to Europe and become a mere canton within Europe. Which, further down the line, will prompt the question  - what was their nationalism all about in the first place?

ALEC SALMOND knows all too well where Scotland is heading, but chooses to play the nationalist card in order to rid Scotland of England beforehand. As a nationalist, Salmond is a fraud. He is as much a part of the Federal European dream as the French and Germans, to name but two.

                If Scotland, through the use of nationalist rhetoric, manages to divest itself of any association with England, then Alec Salmond will immediately sell Scotland out to a Greater Europe and gladly see his country reduced to a canton within such a dystopia.

                History is a nation’s record and should not be tampered with by politicians who may have a resentment  to address, such as Alec Salmond seems to have.

                If what we read comes about, then Salmond will have created a very dangerous precedent – one which will confuse the children as they grow up and experience a more rational and objective knowledge of their nation’s past.

                Politicians, whether north of the border or south, must be prohibited from altering the history curriculum. If changes are perceived as being needed then be advised by academic historians, whose heads are not polluted either by narrow nationalism or class consciousness.  

                

THE EURO CRISES IS AT AN END POINT

THE TALK IS OF a run on Greek and Spanish banks. Santander and other Spanish banks have been downgraded by Moody the credit agency. With Santander falling fowl of the credit agencies, the British public are now left to consider whether their deposits are safe with Santander here in the UK.

                Since last January Spanish banks have faced withdrawals of €50.6 billion[1], the largest removal of depositors’ money within the whole of the eurozone. It even beats Greece, which has seen €40.5 billion withdrawn.

                If panic does set in, as we saw briefly when Northern Rock faced bankruptcy, then such a panic within the eurozone  will be a thousand times worse; and will involve the savings of hundreds of thousands of British people living in Spain, who have their savings and pensions paid to them in euros.

                If Greece, as now seems likely, defaults and has to leave the eurozone and return to the Drachma, Greek depositors will make heavy loses unless they manage to transfer their money to a German or French bank were the euro will remain strong and their euro deposits remain protected.

                The Drachma would face a heavy devaluation which would in turn erode any of the Greek depositor’s savings, that had chosen not to re-deposit their savings in other European banks. So it would come as no surprise if there was a run on Greek banks once it became clear that a return to the Drachma had become the only way forward.

                As for Spain, at the very least, it could get caught up in the panic that would ensue with Greece’s return to the Drachma. In such a climate emotion governs people’s responses, when someone believes their  life savings are at risk.

                This unfolding tragedy of the euro was predicted from its very foundation, but the warnings went ignored. So today we have the gravest of economic crises that will, if it is not in some way tamed by those who created it in the first place, bring ruin to the continent and may prove the final chapter of European civilisation several decades before it is due.

                I can hear the gasps of horror at the mere suggestion of such an outcome. If this piece were to fall into the hands of those European dilettantes who thought a single currency the perfect counteraction  to the United States hegemony when it was first promoted, then I would find myself bemused by their gasps of dismay.

                I am not an economist, and I failed my 11-plus 51 years ago. But even I knew (like Napoleon and Hitler), that for a whole continent to be drawn into a super state, political union (in the cases of both Hitler and Napoleon, through conquest) would have to precede monetary union by several decades before uniting the many currencies under one roof.

BUT EVEN TODAY, those Europhiles that set this whole madness in motion, still believe that they were right to plough ahead with the euro. They set the  conditions for entry: the main one of which was that the national debt of any nation should not amount to more than 3% of a nation’s GDP.

                We now know of course that the southern European countries, in their eagerness to become part of the single currency, cheated their way forward through creative accountancy which, given Europe’s own predilection for  such practices, they managed to turn a blind eye too.

                Both Greece and Italy cheated their way in. While those who let them in were fully prepared to do so in the full knowledge that they were being given fraudulent statistics regarding their countries level of debt to GDP.

                The European project was all that mattered; and when Chancellor Koll of Germany (Angela Merkle’s predecessor) finally learnt of Italy’s creative accountancy in order to join; he just shrugged and said it would all work itself out in the end – such was the slackness regarding any kind of European attempt at the creation of a United States of Europe.

                Europhile blindness has driven this adventure from its very beginning. Wiser voices were dismissed as Eurosceptic and Right-wing. Instead of sound economics, faith born of idealism took its place leaving us where we are today.

                In the 1950s there was talk of not ever having to fight another war on European soil between nations. This was the idealistic impetus for what has come about today. It is why so many of  the early post war British Conservative  politicians - especially among those who fought gallantly in the Second World War, sought full Europeanization of the UK as a solution for  what had proved to be a bloody continent for hundreds of years.

                They in turn passed their experiences on to the next generation, who had by their own devices reached the same conclusion, and were the willing apostles of a European super state – thus ended a purely British Conservatism.

                However when it was temporally revived in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher, the following generation of Conservative leaders sought to disassociate themselves from her historically accurate  portrayal of traditional Conservatism. They termed themselves as the ‘nasty party’ in order to regain the centre ground and separate themselves from Thatcherism.

THE PROBLEMS OF the eurozone have been self-inflicted by  the political classes throughout Europe, including the political classes of the UK. For the Conservative and Labour parties to say that they  both refused Britain’s entry to the eurozone is not enough, because given the right conditions both parties would sell their nation’s soul to the European ideal, if it had proved itself successful as both parties had hoped would have been the case.

                 Both of this country’s main parties would have joined the eurozone if it had been created by sound reasoning instead of romantic idealism which allowed the southern European countries to join. If the eurozone had been a northern European ambition, then I have no doubt that our politicians from whatever party would have exposed their people to its enticements -  but without a referendum of course.

                 We now have a situation that demands a decision to be taken by the people of the UK regarding the demise of this country from a nation state within Europe into a mere canton of Europe.             

                An in or out referendum must now take place. We should have a say upon whether we remain a nation state or subjugate ourselves to the Europeanization virus  where we will value ourselves as nothing more than a canton within the Greater Europe. If this is to be the case then our people must be allowed a vote upon such a destiny.

               

               

               

                 

               

               

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[1] Source: the Daily Mail

ISRAEL-THE JEWISH ALAMO

I FIND IT ALMOST frightening that the greatest act of human brutality launched against a single race of people, should have been diluted over the decades to the point where it no longer merits the horror it did to my generation. The Holocaust was the culmination of 2,000 years of racist abuse, and gentile brutality, the nature of which depended upon which part of the world the Jews were ‘settled’.

                In parts of Eastern Europe the Jews were scapegoats to be attacked and assailed by bigots in orchestrated programs. Whenever a prince or politician brought economic devastation to his or her country or kingdom; blaming the ‘greedy’, ‘miserly’ Jew, became the favoured fallback position adopted to dig the rulers out of a hole they had dug for themselves.

                Russian Tsars tempered the anger of their people toward themselves by unleashing them upon Jewish communities. The Jews, to this extent were useful to incompetent rulers - just as we in the UK helped General Galtieri  divert the Argentinean people’s anger from a ruined economy to the Falklands: so were the Jews so treated within the Diaspora.

                But such rulers could never have stirred the passions of their people against the Jews, unless there was anti-Semitism aplenty to be harvested from them in the first place.

                In England, the Jews were banned from the reign of  Edward I ‘Longshanks’ 1239-1307, until the rule of Oliver Cromwell, who thought highly of the Jewish people, and returned to them their right to citizenship. Edward had borrowed heavily of Jewish finance and refused to pay back what was borrowed; so he banned the Israelites from England as an easy way of relieving himself of his financial burden.

                For 2000 years the Jews have been pushed from pillar to post, either through blind anti-Semitic hatred, or just the mean, but subtle prejudice, they have experienced in the past by, for instance,  the English establishment, who, through envy more than anti-Semitism, practiced their exclusion via the machinery of Whitehall; and the whispers of Oxbridge, as well as the outright prejudice of much of this country’s pre-war aristocracy.

                But it says much, that two of this country’s finest leaders shared Oliver Cromwell’s opinion of the Jewish people. Both Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher admired  the Jewish people their ability to create wealth; the Jews nevertheless, for hundreds of years, had to remain on the fringes of  the enterprise culture, which restricted their commercial activities to money lending and the buying and selling of precious jewels.

                The Jews were banned from the normal avenues of business activity that were enjoyed by gentile businessmen. What the Jews did is what under similar circumstance we would all have done to feed our families. As money lenders they were useful, and no doubt, many an anti-Semite borrowed and hated the Jew for agreeing to lend him the money that in all probability kept his household fed.

IT IS NO ACCIDENT THAT, when Hitler came to power in Germany, his anti-Semitic ranting attracted so many Germans to his cause. The Jews were once more to fulfil their 2000-year-old  function. They took the blame for Germany’s ruined economy and its hyperinflation. In truth France and Britain were more to blame for Germany’s ruined economy than the Jews; but the Jews were the fuehrer’s favoured culprits.

                It was the Treaty of Versailles drawn up after the First World War by the allies; which imposed  such vindictive reparations that gave birth to the extremism that led to Hitler 20 years later, and his anti-Semitic ideology that so readily appealed to his own, and his people’s prejudices.

                The gas chambers; the human skin turned into lampshades; the precious gold removed from human teeth. The human ‘medical’ experimentation that never involved anaesthetics; the starvation that turned the human body into a skeleton  only fit for the gas chamber; and women separated from husbands and children, never to be seen again.

                People were cattled into showers by their millions throughout Germany and Poland, believing themselves about to be given their first wash in many days, only to find themselves showered not by hot steaming water but by clouds of poisoned gas which left them in a state of fearful panic and crying, wailing, and clawing to be left alive.

THIS IS WHAT THE Jews were escaping from when Zionism promised them their return to their biblical homeland of Judea which the Roman Empire had driven them from, and then called it Palestine.

                The Jews were determined, after the Holocaust, not be found wanting again. If any people inflicted with Nazi-like hatred wished once more to condemn them to the same horrors that nearly wiped them out as a people; then this time they would have to come and get them in their own homeland.

                The state of Israel is a return to ancient pastures that the Jews had had taken from them in the past. It is the Jewish people’s line drawn in the sand. The state of Israel will take down any other predator nation or people that wishes to deny them their 2000 year heritage.

                If the Jewish state dies, it will follow the way of the West. But it will not go down without a fight, unlike the West. If Israel is threatened with extinction; either through Iranian nuclear power, or by the Left’s attempts to label Israel an apartheid state, then they will not go gently into the night.

                If the state of Israel dies as its many enemies including Hamas, Abbas, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan - as well as the Western Left wishes; then Israel will indeed die from such an assault unless America remains loyal, which is doubtful under Obama. This will backs against the wall time for Israel using every military device left at its disposal to help keep the Jewish state alive and functioning as a nation on the world stage.

                No Jew will ever be forced back into the Diaspora as roaming nomads to be victimised by both Left and Right. The state of Israel is the Jews final stand. Without such a democratic state of their own, human prejudice will once more rise to the surface, and leave the Jewish people once more preyed upon, either physically or  by ‘hate criminals’ within the new Diaspora.

                Death before the Diaspora. The Diaspora has killed millions of Jews. Even in America they cannot be considered safe, and so they must remain in the state of Israel where they can flourish independently just as any other nation does, reliant upon a democratic system of government.

               

                

Pay by results…you’re having a laugh!

A CROSS PARTY group of MPs has suggested that teachers should be paid by results. The National Union of Teachers (NUT) obviously opposes this, as they do to every innovation by whoever is the education secretary at any given time.

                The NUT is overseen by a cabal of Left-wing ideologues , elected in all probability, by a mere fraction of their members. They have always put their member’s interests before those of the children their members teach: which is why it is hard to rid the profession of its incompetent teachers  - which in turn is why the Commons cross party education select committee has dreamed up the wheeze of pay by results.

                Apparently the bad teachers will remain in situ but on lower salaries than their more competent colleagues. This does not address the fundamental problem  however. These ineffectual and damaging individuals will remain teaching our children. It is the children that are important here, and this committee is suggesting  they continue to be taught by the inept.

                For once, I agree with the NUT in their response where they list the many means by which such teachers can cheat such a system and continue with the same pay scale.

                Firstly according to the NUT performance related pay would lead teachers to exaggerate their charges progress to ‘secure lucrative bonuses’; and lead to divisions in schools as individual teachers ‘over-claim’ the effect they are having on a child’s grades.

                If the NUT believe their members are capable of such stunts, then the politicians had better take the NUT’s claims seriously. If at some stage pay by results is brought in then the ways around it will test the ingenuity of teachers. New scams will evolve and be passed from school to school, all ultimately to the detriment of the pupils whose futures are being moulded by people who should never be in a classroom.

               

THE TRUTH IS, that this proposal gives a temporary lift to those conservatives like myself who believe that the education of children to be the most socially useful practice that any human can aspire to. For where would our doctors and nurses be if they had not had a grounding within the education system?

                It has been a scandal for decades that it is almost impossible to sack a teacher. Any teacher the head of a school believes to be falling short, knows will turn to his or her union, if they are faced with expulsion. Headmasters, now fearing the inevitable backlash by the NUT and other unions, are all too willing to pass the teachers on to another school where they continue to ruin the life-chances of even more children.

                There is only one way you can improve the educational chances of our children; and that is by not allowing them to go anywhere near an incompetent teacher. In other words, such teachers must be gotten rid of and not passed down through the system.

                Those MP’s on the education select committee are it seems, as fearful of the teaching unions as many head masters seem to be. The solution, like all good solutions, is simple. Bad teachers must be told to leave the profession and allow our children to be well educated by those thousands of good and driven professionals who continue to learn themselves while bringing the best out of the pupils under his or her tutelage.

                Until bad teachers are driven once and for all from our schools, then the education of thousands of our children will fall well short of what is required of  them. The school staff-room should be a no-go zone for the bolshie-pedagogue, or the time serving cynic.

                Many thousands of our teachers understand what is required of them. They have entered a vocation knowing full well that the money they earn will not make them rich. But they know that the money is secondary to the vocation. This does not mean however, that politicians of any colour can abuse our teacher’s enthusiasm by buying them cheaply.

WHO WAS IT WHO SAID education, education, education? Well as far as sifting out the rotten apples from the bottom of the barrel, Tony Blair fell well short of the sound-bite: and since then sound bite after sound bite has been the preferred light artillery of all our politicians irrespective of party.

                The pay by results idea appears  at first glance attractive, as all such popularist enticements usually are. But as with all such cure-alls, a moment’s pause to reflect will quickly disabuse even those stalwarts within all the parties who want to believe that there is finally a workable solution to this most shameful state of affairs.

                It is shameful that so many young people are being given a second or even third rate education by teachers who are either ill qualified academically, and rely upon their membership of a union to remain in post, or because they no longer have the same enthusiasm that brought them into teaching in the first place.

                Either way, they should make way, in the interests of children - if they still warm to such interests. The trouble is that the teaching profession, like all other professions within the public sector, has enjoyed privileges that do not exist in the private sector, like pension entitlements that have long since disappeared from the private sector.

THE TEACHING UNIONS must have standards of their own. It must be in their interest that teachers are of the finest quality and those who fall short should have their membership denied; thus separating them from any opportunity to ‘teach’ our children.

                This would immediately put paid to being paid by results. If the unions wish to continue with their protection of inept teachers, then they will have to come to terms with whatever is thrown at them. Pay by results may be a weak and insipid response to the scourge of inadequate teachers still being allowed to teach; but it is the teaching unions that must allow head-teachers to sack individual teachers; if not the politicians will act in the somewhat jaundice manner of pay by results.

                The NUT as well as other teaching unions had better re-distribute the balance between their concern for their members and the children they teach. It is the children that the people of this country care about above all other considerations. It may seem unfair to the teaching unions, but people care about the next generation and their chances in life; and those chances are minimised if inept and bungling ill-equipped teachers are sent into the classroom protected by their unions.

                If the education unions cannot acclimatise themselves to the eradication of those of their members who are ill-fit to teach, then they will have to accommodate themselves with ‘solutions’, the architects of whom, will be politicians.