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 It even beats Greece, which has seen €40.5 billion withdrawn.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.  

               

                 

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.

               

               

               

               

               

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[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.

               

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.

               

               

                

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.