THE POLITICIANS ARE STILL SPENDING FREELY

FIRST OF ALL CAMERON disparages his country’s history  on a visit to Pakistan. He then announces a gift of £650 million in foreign aid from hard pressed British taxpayers to support Pakistani schools. How much of this money will find its way to its intended purpose in this notoriously corrupt country, remains to be seen. But this is neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is, is that it should not have been given in the first place – especially when 20% of cuts in our own education budget are about to take place. Am I not right in thinking that all repairs to schools in this country are being put on hold; while students are being asked to contribute £9,000 toward their higher education?

            Such brazen contempt for the taxpayer is equalled only by the politicians own arrogance, seen fully on display when it comes to the way they distribute that part of the public’s hard earned incomes demanded from them by Her Majesty’s Internal Revenue Service. To demand cuts in public spending while at the same time protecting the billions distributed amongst other countries only adds un-necessarily to the misery the British tax payer will be put through in order to reduce our deficit.

            We know that public expenditure has to be brought under control. But nevertheless we do have some measure of control over the way in which we chose to do it. The billions we need to cut from the national budget can be prioritised in such a way that the tax payer’s exposure to the cuts are minimal.

            This will not be done by, first of all ring-fencing the oversees development budget, followed by a British prime minister vilifying his country in a foreign land to the applause of the very people he is addressing; and about give £650 million to.

            When the Coalition took office last May, I found it bizarre that a Conservative Party should put oversees aid before their country’s defence. The oversees aid budget is between £7-8 billion annually. Instead of forcing cuts upon this dissipation of public taxes, the Coalition allowed those billions to freely continue on their journey to places like India and China whose economies we are told, are bristling with wealth. Indeed, both countries are due dubious honour of replacing America and Europe over the next forty or so years, as the new economic superpowers.

            What on earth can be the justification for distributing, like confetti, British tax payers money to these two economic leviathans in the making?

            At least a half or even three-quarters of the development aid budget could have been taken back. I would however have preferred that the whole of this budget be rescinded for at least five years. By doing so, our defence budget could have been saved much of the cuts this Coalition are about to make. But defence is my hobby horse; others would prefer education or the NHS to be saved from the wretched 20% axe.

BUT THE TEMPORAY REMOVAL of the oversees aid budget is not the only means of reducing our deficit that would allow our defence budget to remain free of all cuts.

            Today Portugal sought a €80 billion bailout from Europe. Although we were not signatories to the European single currency, we are still, it appears faced with making a contribution until 2013 to any failure of the currency in any part of Europe. In Portugal’s case this exposure could amount to a potential £5 billion; but a more conservative estimate is £3 billion is considered more likely. However, when you are talking in billions in an area where trillions are owed, then you are in real trouble.

            Whatever our eventual contribution to altering Portugal’s economic fate; coupled with the oversees aid budget, we would have been able to ease even further our own budget cuts. Conservatively speaking, some £10 billion could have been saved by rescinding the oversees aid budget and by refusing the £3 billion to help bail out Portugal.

            When it comes to priorities, the politicians always become a law unto themselves. They control the money gathered through taxation and will ignore all public opinion utside of metropolitan London.

            I believe that the vast amount of people in this country would have sooner seen our defences ring fenced rather than the oversees aid fund. They would have also preferred that the £3billion assigned to Portugal’s survival would have also been better spent in relieving the assault upon this nations deficit.

            As far as Portugal is concerned, our politicians are at each other’s throats, each blaming the other for agreeing to be signatories to a relief fund that was set up to help Greece and which will run until mid-2013, and requires us to cough-up whenever any European country meets Portugal’s fate between now and 2013.

            Apparently this country agreed to such an arrangement after the last election, but before the Coalition emerged to form a government. This meant that the previous chancellor,      agreed to this procedure that is now expected to cost this country dear. But such is the need for politicians to protect their credulity, the then chancellor, one Alistair Darling, disputes the present chancellor George Osborne account of how this arrangement was made, thus, they hope, either putting the blame on the other, or equally distributing the responsibility for the rather expensive and politically embarrassing manoeuvre.

AS FAR AS EUROPE IS CONCERNED as well as the fate of the Euro; there is only one guilty party responsible for what has happened, and, as always, it results in disaster. The guilty party is idealism. After the last war Europe set about emerging the continent into a kind of United States of Europe. Such an arrangement was supposed to put an end to the wars that had plagued the continent for centuries. By combining nations into a kind of federal super state, the  European Union could emerge on the world stage as a force equal to the USA.

            Almost all of the main party’s leaders in this country were and still are enraptured by such a prospect. In this country Ted Heath started the ball rolling in the 1970s for ever greater union within Europe. Our post war leaders who had participated in the Second World War and witnessed the destruction, were also sympathetic to such an offer of European Union. The trouble was, however, that they were blinded by their idealism.

            We were right to stay outside of the single currency, but it appears that by doing so it has still cost us dearly because of the Europeanization of all the political parties since Ted Heath first proposed our membership.

            Our nation today needs to count its costs. It cannot spare any monies to any other country, despite what the politicians dictate to the treasury. We must look to ourselves for deliverance from our national debt. No other external source of funding should be allowed to continue while cuts are being made domestically.

            This, I believe, is the only form of recovery that the public will tolerate. If we continue to pour billions that we are told we do not have, into oversees aid and European protection, then the people will sooner or later come to their senses and demand that this largess be stopped. How our politicians can pretend that their spending decisions in any way reflect those wishes of the taxpayer is beyond me. Such arrogance from those who govern us has not been witnessed since the reign of the Sun King.

           

            

OUR ARMED SERVICES ABOVE ALL ELSE

NO OTHER NATION ON this planet has been so well attended by its armed forces as has Britain. Time and time again this island has been saved and kept prosperous by its navy’s deployments to protect our trade routes and counter numerous threats from Europe: while our army has grown to become an enviable institution recognised as second to none in the fighting abilities of its young men and women. As for the RAF; one need do no more than utter the words Battle of Britain.

            This country’s economic progress would never have flourished without the means of defending the gains we made as we developed into an imperial power. The British Empire, for all of its many faults, left a legacy which its many members are happily living with today, some 50 years after the last colony attained its independence.

            Over the past 50 years of national decline and embarrassment, our Imperial past was fretted over and despised by a generation (known colloquially as the ‘baby boomers’), among whom were many who felt guilt, shame and mortification, whenever confronted by a black or brown countenance once persecuted by a long lost empire; but who, nevertheless, still choose to come and live among us despite our past depravities toward them.

            With our nation’s decline, our politicians have sought to keep the same diplomatic prestige on the world stage that only Empire could proffer. This has been done successfully because our diplomatic skills are still well regarded internationally, despite our decline as an economic power.

            But of what use are such skills to a nation if they are ignored or even pitied by those we seek to impress on the world stage. Whatever the diplomatic skills of a nation, they carry little weight with those whom they seek to impress, if all that nation has are words; no matter how well varnished they are by an excellent educational system.

DIPLOMACY MATTERS LITTLE unless its purveyors can ultimately threaten with the force of arms any country that refuses to listen to, or even better, to seek a compromise over any dispute. Usually an opponent can be won over by diplomacy if they know that the extent of the military weight that opposes them is far greater than their own.

            In Libya today, Britain has deployed its navy and air force, as well as some of its special forces to help carry out United Nations resolution 1973; part of which states that a no fly zone should be created in order to protect the Libyan civilian population from Colonel Gadaffi’s assaults.

            At the same time as we deploy a further six Tornado bombers to the conflict, the Coalition announces several thousand redundancies from within our armed forces. This at a time when David Cameron is in Pakistan and promising several hundreds of millions of pounds to its government from the ring-fenced oversees aid budget.

            It is indeed outrageous that we should be cutting our defence budget while hundreds of millions of pounds are being given to a country whose only claim to international recognition, is its many forms of corruption.

            Our modern armed forces, like any others in the Western world, require a special type of person to become part of its structure. Unlike any other time in our military history, today’s soldier, sailor or airman/women requires training in many skills. No other publicly financed institution in this country (with the exception of the medical profession) requires such skills as are demanded by modern technology for the purpose of defending our nation.

            If we cut these skills off, as we were about to do on the eve of Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands, then we deserve our fate.

           

THE MOST IMPORTANT  aspect of nationhood, is a nation’s ability to defend itself. In other words to keep itself afloat as an independent country free from any kind of military incursion onto its territory from any nation that has designs upon it. This is what is meant by having a defence budget.

            The problem today is not one of fear from another European country invading us as it has been in the past. But rather a fear of incorporating our defence budget into a European defence budget. Already this Coalition has determined that only one of the new aircraft carriers currently under construction will be commissioned into service, and her flight deck will occupied by French aircraft.

            It is my belief that this Coalition is determined upon a course of  Europeanization for all of the EU communities armed forces. For why else would Cameron agree to such a massacre of our military? If this is his intention then he must be honest with the people.

            A country, while it remains a country, is best protected not by politicians, but by the armed forces, carefully moulded over centuries, to do what historically they have always done – to protect the very nation state that is also their own homeland.

            If today’s politicians seek to prioritise the international aid budget above the defence of the very realm they were elected to represent; then I am reminded of Enoch Powell’s quotation from the classics, “Those who the Gods’ seek to destroy, they first make mad”.

            I have no idea what  is going on in government today. Our politicians must know that the vast majority of the people they are supposed to represent would sooner see the defence budget ring fenced, rather than that of oversees aid.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE OVERSEES AID BUDGET that so seeks to override the national interest? Why are we transferring unimaginable amounts of British taxpayers money into the coffers of foreign governments while our politicians deliver strictures on the importance of reducing the deficit by demanding 20% cuts in the budget of our armed services as well as all other public provisions.

            The people of this country are right to smell a rat.  Why should they forgo any part of our defence capability in order to send many millions of their hard earned taxes to a corrupt government, who will no doubt seek to harvest a share for themselves?

            I believe that this Coalition is Europhile addicted. Leaders of both parties seek all kinds of convergences between this Island and the continent of Europe, including military union. Which is no doubt why Cameron felt comfortable with French jets occupying the flight deck of the next British aircraft carrier.

            For those who voted Conservative at the last election, believing David Cameron to be the protector of all British traditions that Conservatism is supposed to represent, then I feel sorry for you. For Conservatism has well and truly been put on the back foot by the Coalition government

            Today we face a calamitous reduction in our nation’s defences, bought, or so it appears, by ring-fencing oversees aid to multifarious forms of corrupt governments in the third world. What a contemptible bunch are our present generation of politicians. They have no semblance of their past masters skills and abilities to govern.

            This country needs its armed forces to be paramount. All other public services depend upon them as the ultimate protection against the designs of any other country upon our  soil.

NORTH AFRICA CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO FAIL

UNLIKE THE UNITED STATES, we Europeans have a stake in what is happening throughout north Africa. The earlier conflicts in Tunisia and Egypt, and now in Libya will affect us one way or another. If we had ignored the plight of Libya’s people and allowed Gaddafi’s forces to overwhelm them, the blood would have flowed liberally through the streets of Benghazi – a city of one million people. Such would have been the reckoning that Gadaffi would have wrought on his rebellious citizens, that the international community would have once more disgraced itself as it did over Rwanda.

            Perhaps we in Europe could have carried on with our lives regardless of Gadaffi’s brutalities; Libya is after all a far off country whose fate is not Europe’s responsibility, any more than was Rwanda. We cannot police the world; people just have to find their own way in life as we in the UK have had to do. Is it not enough that we, a medium sized military power should have punched above our weight and given so much in terms of money and our young men and women’s lives to Afghanistan and Iraq?

            If Gadaffi is indeed a monster, then why (asks  those who oppose our intervention) was he courted and kow-towed to by politicians and academics alike? The likes of Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, as well as academics belonging to the London School of Economics (LSE), all of whom paid homage to the Libyan orchestrator of international terrorism from shipping guns to the IRA, to arranging Lockerbie: and did the LSE not take £1.5 million from the beast of Benghazi as payment for guaranteeing that a PhD was awarded to his somewhat dim son?

THE PEOPLE ARE RIGHT to be cynical about our involvement in Libya, and, as a consequence, withhold their support.

            But what is happening in North Africa will indeed impinge upon our lives in Europe (and yes, also the UK). For the elephant in the room which our politicians chose to ignore is once more immigration. I believe that those two designers of the concept of a no fly zone for Libya, Cameron and Sarkozy, were torn between helping prevent a human tragedy and avoiding an equal tragedy on Europe’s mainland.

            What I would like to do is ask people to imagine the consequences of ignoring not only Libya but the whole ‘Arab spring’ in North Africa.

            Lampedusa is a tiny Mediterranean island belonging to Italy, described by the New York Times (NYT) as “a kind of Ellis Island”. It is to this small Italian community that, in the past two months some 6,000 refugees, mainly from Tunisia, have sought refuge. It comprises, again according to the NYT, “Young men in hooded jackets [who] smoke cigarettes [and] await transfer to the mainland – a prospect that is striking fear in many European hearts”.

            In Italy panic is just another boat load away. When Gadaffi launched his revenge upon those who dared oppose him, and threatened the inhabitants of Benghazi; many hundreds and thousands of Libyan citizens fled the city to go where?

            Luckily the no fly zone became operable and drove Gadaffi’s forces back. In so doing it allowed those thousands who fled the city to return. If we had not taken a hand, then those who fled would have sooner or later turned up on some European shore…and yes, it does mean the UK.

            At the moment those seeking asylum in Europe via Lampedusa are, in  the main Tunisian. But had we not intervened when we did, yet another language could be added to the dozens we are confronted with in the UK today. We stopped Gadaffi and allowed the rebels to briefly enjoy their pursuit of his forces as they retreated in the face of Western bombs.

THE PEOPLE OF THE TINY ISLAND of Lampedusa were visited by the Italian president Berlusconi. He told them that the immigration centre on their small island would begin to disperse the Tunisians. He also rather bizarrely promised the Lampedusan community that he would put forward their small island’s name on to the Nobel Prize Committee  as a contestant for the peace prize.  

            To accommodate those that would now leave Lampedusa, a new hastily built camp in Manduria, in the Puglia region of Italy (the heel), would be made available. This camp which holds a mere 1300 people, will prove insufficient unless the influx of North Africans can be halted.

            In Libya last week it was temporarily halted because the no fly zone was activated. But if Gadaffi wins, a tsunami of people will cross the Mediterranean come what may in fear of their lives.

            So those in this country who think that by ignoring the events in North Africa we can carry on as normal, must think again. These uprisings in North Africa must be supported by the West and Europe in particular. We have far stronger (be it selfish) reason for participating in Libya than we ever had for so doing in Afghanistan.

           

ACCORDING TO MOST OF THE POLLS, the most important priority for the British people is immigration. The politicians know this and they know that the Mediterranean is no more than a lake that separates us from North Africa.

            If Gadaffi wins we will have another migration crisis on our hands in Europe to further exacerbate those we already have. This fact alone should encourage support for intervention in Libya. This is what the politicians fear most and is why the likes of Cameron and Sarkozy are hell bent upon the destruction of Gadaffi.

            The interpretation of UN Resolution 1973 will be fought over in the coming days and weeks. Does it allow the arming of the rebels? Lawyers, it seems, will once more protract the arguments, thus allowing those who are for and against in the political arena to undermine what is needed.

            Europe must support the Libyan people if only out of self-interest. By overthrowing Gadaffi and supporting a Libyan transition to democracy, the Libyan people will feel safe where they are.

            So, for the sake of Europe, we must do whatever is required to preserve its peace. If NATO says that arming the rebels is not part of UN Resolution 1973, then we must proceed anyway. For the harmony of Europe requires such an approach.

            Much talk about al-Qaeda infiltrating the Libyan rebels has been ignited by a passing reference by NATO’s General Secretary. This reference has caused the media to question the international alliance’s ability to separate the wheat from the chaff when talking to the rebels.

IT HAS NOW COME OUT that CIA operatives have been at work in Libya for weeks studying the opposition and passing on their view of the oppositions reliability. In other words, the USA has pre-empted the dangers of al-Qaeda infiltration into the rebel forces.

            In addition to the presence of the CIA, British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are also working inside Libya. In addition, “American spies are meeting with rebels to try to fill in gaps in understanding who their leaders are  and the allegiances of the groups opposed to Colonel Qaddafi”, according to United States  government officials.

            What we in Europe have to consider is the safety of our boarders, and in so doing, we must act to help the Libyan people overcome their tormenter. For to forgo this challenge only invites another addition to our multicultural experiment.

            So those who think that the events in Libya can go unchallenged by the West in the hope that they will sort themselves out, had better think again.

           

             

THE RULE OF LAW IS PARAMOUNT

AMONG THE MANY STUPID acts carried out by New Labour during its period in office, signing  us up to the European Human Rights Act in 1998 was perhaps the most disgraceful example of a free nation voluntarily giving away the one momentous characteristic of its sovereignty – the right of democratically elected MPS to enact laws without such laws being undermined by a foreign power.

            But this is just what the last Labour government did; and by doing so enfeebled our judicial system, and made our parliament’s legislative activities subject to decisions made by Strasbourg judges.

            The only meaningful function of a parliament is to repeal and create laws. Government polices and promises require the stamp of parliamentary process for them to be enacted, and once that process is complete, new laws become part of our everyday lives. Thus, in such a manner, has this country functioned for centuries, creating a stable society where parliament has always had the final say.

            However, now our laws are being challenged by an outside foreign body that  has sovereignty over our judicial machinery including parliament, thus bringing into question the whole purpose of going to the polls and voting. For if we have forfeited our right to make our own laws and see them enacted without interference; then why indeed should we vote at all?

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE, Lord Judge, has just given a talk in Jerusalem on this very subject. Quite rightly, Lord Judge points the finger of blame at the politicians who effectively signed  away our independent law making ability. He points to the fact that whenever a judge makes a decision that runs contrary to common sense as well as public opinion, it is because our judiciary are obliged to enact it. They do not create laws, only use them when sentencing.

            We have seen uncountable examples of judges making decision that have enraged the general public. But those decisions are invariably based upon the obedience the judges owe to the EU’s Court of Justice. In the words of Lord Judge ‘The words “human rights” are sometimes described in language which might suggest they stand not for the noblest ideals, but, using polite language, as woolly nonsense,’  but such decisions, ‘must be applied whether we judges in the United Kingdom agree with them or not’.

            What is happening is that our national laws – the laws we elect our politicians to enact, are being overruled by non-elected bureaucrats (for want of a better word).

            The latest example of this European hegemony over our ability to govern ourselves was the issue of voting rights for prisoners. Europe said we must have them and the Strasbourg judges have given Britain until August to obey their ruling: which left the majority of the British public rightly outraged at such a demand.

            The European Court of Human Rights stands above English law and frustrates all common sense. Yet we seem to be trapped within its ambit without the ability to break free. It is as if we are chained by gravity to forever obey its remit. For no politician of the three main parties will offer the people the opportunity to break free from its influence. Even the arch Europhile Kenneth Clarke has come forward to say the Human Rights Act needs reform – but stops at modification.

           

WHEN WE GO TO VOTE we expect our votes to mean something. We elect 640 MP’s whose £65,000 salaries plus expenses are paid for out of general taxation. For this we expect them to govern and pass laws that their manifestoes’ promise.

            If they prove unable to make such laws work because of any kind of displacement          brought about by a willingness to forfeit their powers of law making through a signature on a piece of paper; then why should we vote for such a neutered institution as the British Parliament?

            The last government left our parliament much weakened by this one act alone: but as we know there were many more to follow. New Labour sought to chain this country to Europe. Our national sovereignty was seen as nothing more than an imperial throwback by these modern men and women who were now in control of a party that once represented the working class, but now sought to entice, via immigration,  new and various ethnic minorities to replace them with; which will no doubt, in another piece, bring us on to another of New Labour’s stupid acts.

            Like Europe, uncontrolled immigration  was seen by New Labour as an opportunity to keep the Labour Party afloat after the decline of socialism and the working class politics it represented.

            But our laws are what makes us what we are as a people. They should remain our property and no one else’s. Whether considered by the rest of the world as either good or bad matters little. Laws are what gives us our identity as a nation and should be in the control of no other body, than we the people.

            It is indeed an outrage that the laws we pass can be subjected to the inspection and censorship of an outside body, whether elected or not. It is we the people who pick our representatives to govern us and enact the laws they promised us in their manifestoes; without interference from foreign soil.

           

I BELIEVE THAT THE LAST GOVERNMENT of this country did real harm to its sovereignty, and it did so deliberately. For how could it have been otherwise, considering the intelligence of the Blairite New Labour assemblage that governed us from 1997- 2010.

            New Labour sought ultimately,  not to keep this country as a country, but a mere district/province of Europe. As part of this process of creating a Federal States of Europe, Tony Blair, early in his premiership, signed both his party and his nation up to the European Human Rights Act in 1998. An act that in itself removed legal sovereignty (the embodiment of any democracy) from the country he was prime minister of.

            I find it almost beyond belief that a people could so calmly hand over its legal sovereignty to an outside force so benignly without any form of  physical opposition from them. We have indeed (or so it appears) gone quietly into that dark goodnight.

            The rule of law is paramount and should be in the ownership of democratic nations to determine. Once we freely, without objection, allow foreign laws to trespass over our own creations, then we are without national identity, whether we be Irish, Scottish, Welsh or English. We become mere vassals of something called a Federal European Union which discounts all national identity and seeks to drown us in all things Europeans.

PETULENT YOUTH ONCE MORE AT WORK IN LONDON

YESTERDAY THERE WERE TWO DEMONSTRATIONS taking place in London. One was organised by the TUC, and involved 250,000 people marching peacefully in protest at the Coalition’s cuts; while the other comprised several hundred members of various groups including anarchists and an organisation called UKuncut.

            The anarchist/UKuncut groups had come for one thing only - to use violence against any business like Top Shop and Fortnum and Mason whom they perceived of as robbing the exchequer of funds through various tax avoidance schemes. They also attacked various banks like Lloyds and Santander who they blamed, along with their kind, for causing the economic crises.

            As far as the peaceful majority and their Alternative rally is concerned; the ‘alternative’ to which they refer seems to comprise more or less the same solution as the anarchist/UKuncut, but without the frenzied and malicious behaviour. For it seems that the banks and the rich tax avoiders could, if the political will was there, be made to pay off the deficit without cutting public services.

            It must be said that the vast majority of those 250,000 marchers work in the public sector and as such will no doubt be seen by many of those working in the private sector as  being comparable to, what with their final salary pension and early retirement, the rich bankers they were marching against yesterday. For in the private sector, working men and women, create the wealth that not only keeps this economy afloat, but whose taxes keep those in the public sector afloat; and it is unfair that those working in the private sector should have to forfeit their pension rights while supplementing those far more generous ones in the private sector.

            When interviewed in vox-pop fashion by the media, I failed to hear from a single protester who agreed with Ed Milliband’s disingenuous position on cutting public services, which amounts to doing the same thing as the Coalition but over a longer period of time. It is a deceitful position to hold, and I think many of those who were on yesterday’s demonstration would have still been there had we had a Labour government implementing such a policy.

            This country needs to make serious inroads into its deficit, and it can only be done by making sacrifices that sadly, will cause much displeasure and anger. But if the deficit is not tackled and tackled quickly, then the markets will react as they have done to the news of the Portuguese parliament’s  attempt at defying the economic realities of its position.

            This country may be economically better off than Portugal, Greece and Ireland, but the road to ruin still stares us in the face if we detract in any way from deficit reduction, and the Labour Party’s nuanced position is such a detraction. For to follow it would be to invite scepticism from the markets, and lumber our children and grandchildren with the financial consequences of our greed.

           

AS FOR THOSE SPAWN OF THE MIDDLE CLASS who chose to take the law into their own hands yesterday and create havoc on the streets of London -  one thing is for sure; they will not be treated like working class football hooligans by the police, despite the fact that their behaviour merits far worse.

            Over 200 of these middle class reprobates were arrested and will no doubt be either released with a caution or taken to court and daddy’s cheque book brought into use.

            They will then set about organising their next spat with the police over the internet when the TUC calls another day of action against public sector cuts.

            In any other Western country, class would not be an issue and tear gas and water canon would be deployed against these favoured sons and daughters of the middle classes. It is only in modern Britain that the police can be humiliated in such a way as they were in London yesterday by this country’s favoured youth.

            The people cry out for these little emperors to be dealt with forcefully by the police; but sadly the police are governed by an hierarchy of university educated liberal senior officers among whom such measures are to be found objectionable.

            What, however, was welcomed by these senior officers, was the presence of the human rights group Liberty in their control box overseeing the whole drama as it unfolded. The police felt they needed to persuade these people that they were not the KGB or the Stasi and no doubt pleaded for their understanding.

            What a farce this has turned out to be. Was, for instance, the police’s action on the day retarded by the presence of Liberty in the control room? Did senior officers pass down through the ranks orders to the effect that they must be seen to be in control but without any kind of behaviour deployed that could cause Liberty to challenge their actions?

IN CONCLUDING, one of the main targets for UKuncut’s attention was Fortnum and Mason, who they believed to be part of a rich set up of tax avoiders in this country whose retrievable tax evasion could help reduce the nation’s deficit.

            These wretched creatures managed to invade this company’s premises and frighten and intimidate its clientele. They were convinced that, like their other targets, Fortnum and Mason were part of capitalism’s tax evading bourgeoisie who, through their wealth, were able to forgo their full quota of taxes.

            But if these chosen sons and daughters of the middle class, many of whom will, in all probability, become the next generation of MPs, had forsaken their prejudices, if only temporarily, to enquire into the nature of Fortnum and Mason’s business, they would have discovered, as I did, that the company is owned by a charity. The trustees of which spend £40 million annually on grants to various good causes. Among which are the Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign (£1million), as well as Cancer Research UK who received £500,000.

            The bulk of such giving is distributed among the Art (£5,680,500) and education (£11,985,166) categories. On top of which a grant of £3 million was made to the British museum. But then perhaps those gestures will only inflame anarchist/UKuncut even further in their determination, especially when Fortnum and Mason also gives £1million to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

              There can be no justification for such a display on London’s streets of the kind that was witnessed last night. Such deliberate and calculated menacing of the public’s right to move freely without being intimidated by these middle class yobos, who believe they hold some kind of moral high ground defended by their parent’s wallets should they fall foul of the law, must not be tolerated.

           

SILENCE IS GOLDEN – FROM A ‘NATIONAL TREASURE’

THERE IS LITTLE LOVE in much of the West for the Jewish settlers of Israel. They are seen as the main obstacle to any Middle East settlement involving Jews and Palestinians - and even many Israelis’ wish they would just somehow disappear. Even the present Right-wing government finds them an embarrassment on occasions. For the settlers are doing what their ancestors did in 1947 after Germany had done its worst. They retreated back to a land that was once ancient Judea long before the Romans’ re-christened (excuse the pun) it Palestine. Once settled on this land they sought to widen its boundaries, especially after the Six Day War in 1967, which brought victory and more land to Israel.

            Now settlements are mushrooming over the West Bank, much to the consternation of the international community. The Palestinians want this stopped and the Israeli government to oversee the settlers departure.

           

ON FRIDAY MARCH 11 in the West bank settlement of Itamar near Nablus a 12 year-old girl returned home to find that her family had become the victims of a terrorist attack. This in itself would be considered bad enough; but the nature of her family’s homicide was like something out of slasher movie.

            What Tamar Fogel came across were the bodies of her parents, both stabbed to death; the throat of her 11-year old brother, Yoav, had been slit; while her four year-old brother , Elad’s throat had also been cut but was still, barely, alive. He died later. But perhaps the most shocking discovery this 12 year-old made was that of her sister, Hadas, just three months old, who had had her head sawn off.

            But perhaps from a ‘newsworthy’ perspective, the most shocking feature of this terrible terrorist attack, was that it received the minimal of coverage in this country’s media. In particular the one news outlet that we are all taxed to watch – the BBC.

            I am no friend of this institution and resent having to make a financial contribution to its existence; so I declare my prejudice now.

            The reason I abjure this organization is because of its political bias, that, under threat of prosecution, takes taxes from those of us who do not share its predisposition toward a liberal agenda.

            The events that occurred at the Itamar settlement should have been within in the first three or four items of any news broadcast, even if Japan and Libya were hogging the headlines. But according to Louise Bagshawe, the MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire, and writing in the Daily Telegraph, the BBC mentioned this act of terrorism just once – on the Today programme.

            There has been no other reference to it in other news bulletins on that day or since. This from a supposedly world trusted news organisation that is continually blowing its own trumpet as the most reliable news organisation on the planet.

I WAS SHOCKED WHEN I read Louise Bagshawe’s account. It was the first time I had heard of this crime, and her description was based upon her own investigation via Twitter, where she came across a piece written by Mark Steyn.

            The BBC supports the Palestinian cause to the point where they have, or did have, a Gaza correspondent, on hand to report upon the latest Israeli  ‘massacre’.

            It is shameful that such an incident that occurred in Itamar could not be reported upon (not because of its newsworthiness) but because to have done so would have thrown into bad odour the very Palestinian cause and its people, that the BBC unashamedly support.  

THERE WAS HOWEVER, one place where these appalling events did not go ignored. In New York, members of the Jewish community gathered to pay tribute to those who perished at Itamar. Almost 1,000 people gathered at the Orthodox synagogue, while at least 2,000 followed on line. This memorial service was sponsored  by various Jewish organisations including the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.

            Among those attending were the Conference of Presidents Executive Vice Chairman, Malcolm Hoenlein who had played a part in organizing the memorial and spoke during the proceedings.

            In all probability there were more people attending this gathering in New York and tuning in on line who were aware of the tragic events, than there were British citizens outside of our Jewish community. It is only so because the BBC, the nations prime broadcaster, chose not to advertise what would have been an anti-Palestinian storey of the most pitiless kind.

           

THE JEWISH SETTLERS believe in recovering land taken from the Hebrew race. They see this part of the Middle East as their homeland and have every historical and moral right to lay claim to it.

            The international community represented by the UN say that the Jewish state has a right to exist. But how many of its members believe in such a right? The settlements now under construction will continue in order to advance the boundaries of the state of Israel. But these boundaries cannot be never-ending, despite the justice of the claim of the Jewish people to have a nation state.

            But even so, this does not mean that a three month old baby can have her head decapitated in a terrorist attack.

            It takes something more than an ideal to decapitate a three month old baby. It requires a psychopathic personality with a sense of injustice to do such a thing. Those who carried out this abomination against this family were cowardly in their actions and a curse to their cause; and it was up to the BBC to point this out to its listeners and viewers.

            But this they never did; preferring instead to ignore the whole wretched business apart from the merest of mentions that could waylay charges of bias.

           

THE NEXT CHAIRMAN OF the BBC Trust  is one Lord Patten of Barnes. Louise Bagshawe asked him about political neutrality. As a member of a Palestinian aid organisation, he promised to give up his membership and he denied any BBC bias against Israel. Asked what he would do if such bias was indeed proven, the noble Lord promised to refer such evidence to the very BBC Trust of which he is chairman.

            Now Louise Bradshaw regards the BBC as a national treasure. She is not a BBC basher. But if the likes of Ms Bradshaw feels uncomfortable with the BBC’s Palestinian bias (at least as far as the events in Itamar are concerned) should we not also feel the same distrust, if not outright contempt, for those who treated human beings as animals to be slaughtered  and salivated over by their assassins?

           

            

AND ON THE FOURTH DAY THE UN…

ON THE FOURTH DAY of  the allied no fly zone over Libya, questions are being asked that should have been asked before allied raids began at the weekend. First of all Colonel Gadaffi’s status is now being argued over between politicians and the head of our armed forces (believe me, only the lawyers will do well out of this).  For all the wickedness perpetrated by Gadaffi on his own people over the past forty years, we are actually debating as to whether he should be targeted or left alone in the hope that someday he will face  trial in the Hague as a war criminal.

                The mealy mouthed western politicians and diplomats dance merrily on the head of a pin, debating whether the egg should be cracked open at its pointed end or its more rotund end. Like the people of Lilliput the international community represented by the United Nations have managed to make a legal pigs-ear out of getting rid of Gadaffi.

                David Cameron, Hillary Clinton and Nicolas Sarkozy have all said that Gadaffi has to go, but to deliberately target him would be tantamount to regime change, which was not part of  UN Resolution 1973. However,  to leave him safely holed up somewhere in Tripoli orchestrating his fight back from his near death  experience of a few weeks ago, invites stalemate in what is fast becoming  a civil war.

                According to resolution 1973 the Libyan people are to be protected from Gadaffi’s forces by a no fly zone. Now, if the rebel forces were well armed and capable, a no fly zone would have been enough to tip Gadaffi’s forces over the edge. But the rebel forces are ill equipped , ill-trained and ill-disciplined as well as argumentative and without a cohesive political central leadership and military structure.

                The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, was vilified when he sent a diplomat guarded by eight special forces personnel into Libya to make contact with the rebels in order to set up a conduit between the rebels and the allies, in order to establish a workable network of contacts between the West and the rebels on the ground. But as we know, the rebels threw what was their one chance of defeating Gadaffi on land, out of the country.

                We are now in a position where it is becoming necessary to have feet on the ground because the rebels are in no position to deliver a quick end to Gadaffi and his regime.

                Resolution 1973 states that there cannot be any kind of foreign occupying force in Libya; but the allies would not be in violation of this if they deployed a sufficient but not overwhelming ground force that would be perceived as a occupying force, to end what will otherwise become a costly stalemate lasting many years.

                Only a madman of Gadaffi’s stature would want to govern this country, let alone occupy it. If we do not end this problem quickly then it will come back to haunt us. Let us just get rid of the whole Gadaffi menagerie and let the Libyan people argue their future out among themselves. In this way our collective consciences will be clear – which, after all, is it not what most appeals to a good liberal?

                By implementing the no fly zone we have bought time for the people of Benghazi who were being threatened from the mouth of Gadaffi with genocide - and it was no idle threat. The success of the no fly zone brought back the thousands of Benghazi citizens who had fled when Gaddafi’s forces were entering the outskirts of Benghazi.

                David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy were both right in fighting for a no fly zone to be created by the UN. For to have stood by and done nothing would have incurred the wrath of those very same croakers who today express their opposition to the no fly zone. For if we had ignored what was about to befall  the people of Benghazi; and images of the inevitable carnage had reached western news outlets; those who today express their scepticism would have been the first to castigate their leaders.

               

NOW, WE ARE WHERE WE ARE. I supported the no fly zone in order to stop what would surely have become an even bigger migration problem for Europe. Many of those escaping Gadaffi’s revenge would have made their way up the spine of Italy into the broader Europe, and yes, into the UK.  As far as I am concerned the allies success would have prevented a further foreign language I could not understand, from walking down my street.

                As soon as the no fly zone became operable people began to return to Benghazi from where they had fled hours earlier. What the Libyan people want is to be rid of the Gadaffi tribe and we should accommodate such a request, and in doing so should not balk at killing the head of that tribe, irrespective of the legal perceptions.

                This whole business is not about the oil cliché. After all, Libya’s production amounts to little more than 2% of world production. Now if it were Saudi Arabia those martyrs to the West’s greed for oil would have a point.

                We do however have an interest in North Africa that does not embrace oil. We are witnessing a domino effect throughout the Arab world; and depending upon how these numerous explosions of public descent end; we in Europe may face masses of migrants ending up on our shores.

                Our people cannot pretend that Libya is a distant land that cannot impinge on our lives. Our politicians have used the argument that should Gadaffi be victorious all sorts of things may happen related to various acts of terrorism. But they only, in the most obscure of terms mention migration.

               

IF WE DO NOT put feet on the ground to bring this man and his sons to heel  then he will once more manage to survive in some capacity, even if it is as a ruler of just three quarters of his country.

                I believe that Gadaffi need not take up much of the West’s time if the West did what was required of the situation they find themselves in. Libya is a country of eight million people. Gadaffi’s army requires the inclusion of mercenaries from other parts of Africa to make up its numbers. We are not dealing with any of the following, Vietnam, Serbia, Afghanistan or Iraq.

                Gadaffi can be manipulated like a lump of putty; his forces, if at all loyal in every circumstance required of them, are in insufficient numbers to challenge the West.

                If the Libyan problem is to go away then it will require some kind of land presence by the West to help it do so. But I fear that neither the UN or America are open to such an arrangement. In the end one of two things will have to happen. Gadaffi will have, in some way or other,  to be gotten rid of, or have an accident. Or Britain, France and whomsoever we can bring on board from other European nations will have to put military personnel on the ground ; if need be in violation of resolution 1973.

               

OVER THE COMING DAYS the USA is going to leave Europe holding the baby. Obama has made it plain that he does not wish the USA to permanently hold a position of leadership over the UN forces arranged against Libya. It was hoped that NATO would take on the overseeing role, but Turkey has opposed this, and so where now for the alliance against genocide?

                It is wonderful to think that, for all the problems the West now faces with Libya; it would only take few words from their arch enemy to let the West off the hook. If only Gadaffi would announce his intent to take up residence either in Zimbabwe or South America we could all breathe a sigh of relief - and in doing so the Colonel may even avoid a war crimes trial.

                I believe he is testing us as he has always done. He knows we are hemmed in by international law and a softness that he despises but welcomes. Gadaffi knows just how weak and feeble are Western moral values when turned upon someone like him.

                If we are to rid ourselves of this creature then we must act in accordance with our military might and not some UN resolution that effectively ties our arm behind our back and allows Gadaffi to prolong, perhaps for many years, his fate.

                Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya need not drag on for years. It can be ended if the West shows the necessary ruthlessness that may, on occasions, contradict resolution 1973.