Why didn't HMS Cornwall fire on the Iranians? Why didn't the helicopter gunship accompanying her? Why the deafening silence from Bush?
It could not be clearer that those being held in Iran have been sent there by Blair as the excuse for an attack on that country. There is no Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The Iranian Supreme Leader has indeed issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad is on the way out anyway. And even he has never called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" in anything like the sense alleged, but only for the Zionist system to be dismantled (without anyone's being killed), precisely as Israel's supporters would have us believe is already the case, since they insist that non-Jewish Israeli Arabs (over half of Israeli Jews are also Arabs) have equal citizenship, a situation incompatible with Zionism.
But some excuse still has to be found to destroy Iran's large and multi-ethnic emerging democracy outside the global hegemony (as in Yugosolavia) and to steal her oil (as in Iraq). The current, wholly contrived, situation is that excuse.
Friday, 30 March 2007
Thursday, 29 March 2007
Silly Milly Out Of His Depth Again
THIS is drivel.
I have met him several times, first when he was Minister for Schools and I was working as a supply teacher. I told him (truthfully, at that point) that the only school in which I had ever worked and to which I would never return was in his constituency, and I asked him what he intended to do about it.
He just giggled, and moved on to the next person.
I have met him several times, first when he was Minister for Schools and I was working as a supply teacher. I told him (truthfully, at that point) that the only school in which I had ever worked and to which I would never return was in his constituency, and I asked him what he intended to do about it.
He just giggled, and moved on to the next person.
She Made Them An Offer They Could Refuse
Well done to the People's Peers for showing more backbone than the Party's Placepersons (there being only one Party while we allow this to be the case) and throwing out the wicked attempt to re-create Las Vegas several times over on this tiny island.
Behind that proposal was, of course, Tessa Jowell (aka Molly, The Godmother, Carmela Soprano, and so forth), whose husband (from whom she falsely claims to be estranged) is on trial in Milan, and who herself has entertained in this country, at public expense, the cream of "Las Vegas casino operators".
Yes, the British Cabinet really is disgraced by a place woman of both the Italian and the American arms of the Mafia. Blair, his underboss Brown, and his consigliere Cameron, must be made to sleep with the fishes.
Behind that proposal was, of course, Tessa Jowell (aka Molly, The Godmother, Carmela Soprano, and so forth), whose husband (from whom she falsely claims to be estranged) is on trial in Milan, and who herself has entertained in this country, at public expense, the cream of "Las Vegas casino operators".
Yes, the British Cabinet really is disgraced by a place woman of both the Italian and the American arms of the Mafia. Blair, his underboss Brown, and his consigliere Cameron, must be made to sleep with the fishes.
The Non-U-Bend
Yesterday, on the very floor of what has clearly become the all-too-common House of Commons, no less a person than The Right Honourable The Honourable Hilary Benn MP used four times a word, meaning "lavatory" and beginning with t, which I find that I am unable to write down. Nancy Mitford, thou shouldst be living at this hour!
Actually, I do in fact have a theory that Nancy Mitford is still alive. For the last dozen years, she has been choosing the candidates to be imposed on safe Labour seats when their sitting MPs retire to the Lords too late for their Constituency Labour Parties to choose their successors. She is still doing this, but is now also responsible for compiling David Cameron's U-list, as it ought properly to be called.
As much as anything else, this would account for how it is possible (which it is...) to fall into both categories.
Actually, I do in fact have a theory that Nancy Mitford is still alive. For the last dozen years, she has been choosing the candidates to be imposed on safe Labour seats when their sitting MPs retire to the Lords too late for their Constituency Labour Parties to choose their successors. She is still doing this, but is now also responsible for compiling David Cameron's U-list, as it ought properly to be called.
As much as anything else, this would account for how it is possible (which it is...) to fall into both categories.
"Justice" versus Liberty
The Home Office is being split up in order to give even greater prominence to the attempts to scare us into surrendering the very liberty that is allegedly under such grave threat from the non-existent "global terror network", especially "Al-Qaeda".
In fact, the only "global terror network" is the one directed from the American Enterprise Institute and related institutions or organisations, and including (among others) Likud, Forza Italia, the Partido Popolar, the renaissance of the Australian Liberal Party under John Howard, the Irish Progressive Democrats, the courts of Sarkozy (or, indeed, Royal) and Merkel, the governing faction in Canada, ACT New Zealand, and, of course, the New Labour Project.
That last includes New Labour ordinarily so called, centred, of course, on Blair, who hates the Labour Party certainly more than anyone else alive, and probably more than anyone else ever. But it also includes, among others, the Cameroons (led even officially by the New Labour Project's real new Leader, Blair's favoured successor as Prime Minister), the Orange Book Tendency, The Henry Jackson Society and the Euston Manifesto.
And yes, that real "global terror network" certainly is doing a very good job of destroying our way of life.
As for "Al-Qaeda", no firm connection has ever been established among the many organistaions and movements, in numerous parts of the world, fighting to organise the State and wider society in accordance with an ideology technically called "Islam". The only connection is Islam, and the only way to counteract them is to counteract Islam, simply as such.
Not that that is the attitude of the global terror network above. On the contrary, it supported Wahabbism in 1980s Afghanistan and in 1990s Bosnia, and still supports it in Kosovo, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Chechnya today. It removed one the Arab worlds two principal bulwarks against it, and is threatening to remove the other one.
Furthermore, the splitting of the Home Office is to have knock on effects on the Department of Constitutional Affairs, even to be renamed "the Ministry of Justice", such as to give yet further effect to the attempt to import into this country the dangerous, and wholly foreign, theory of "the separation of powers". What of the Law Lords? What of the Home Secretary’s role in determining sentences? Or of the numerous quasi-judicial functions of Ministers? Or of the fact that all members of the Executive are required to be members of the Legislature? Or of the fact that the judges make the whole of the Common Law?
This "separation of powers" line was also put about when the position of Lord Chancellor was abolished overnight in favour of something apparently sketched on the back of a beer mat. But the House of Lords is still chaired by someone in much the same outfit, which was actually presented by Blair as a serious, and even conclusive, argument for abolition. It is just that Baroness Hayman is not the Lord Chancellor. But so what, from that point of view? Meanwhile, there is still no Cabinet Minister accountable to the House of Commons either for the major front-line public service that is the Court Service, or for the enormous Legal Aid budget of public money.
Like the other examples given above, the office of Lord Chancellor was often described as an "exception" to "the separation of powers". Quite apart from the fact that such a doctrine cannot, by definition, admit of exceptions, so that their very existence disproves the doctrine itself, there do seem to be an awful lot of these "exceptions", and they do seem to matter rather a lot.
In reality, the "powers" have never been "separate", nor can they ever be so. One of them has to win in the end. In Britain, we have decided that it is to be Parliament, and thus the elected House of Commons within Parliament. Would we rather that the Prime Minister always had the last word? Or that, as in the United States (among other places) an unelected judicial body of lifetime appointees could simply rule that any matter it liked was "constitutional", and thus reserved entirely to itself?
This is why, as is their wont, judicial theorists and constitutional lawyers habitually engage in more than a spot of wishful thinking where "the separation of powers" is concerned. They wish to see an American-style krytocracy in this country, where the judiciary is still drawn (unlike the Bar generally these days) from a very narrow social, socio-economic and educational base indeed. Presumably, that is what makes it so attractive to them, including to our own dear Voice of Reason, drawn as they are, and no doubt as he is, from that same very narrow social, socio-economic and educational base indeed.
The wretched Human Rights Act has been a major step in that direction. But mercifully, we still have instead the supreme legislative, executive and judicial authority of the Crown (i.e., of the nation embodied, regardless of party or anything else), exercised either by Parliament itself or by Ministers drawn from and accountable to Parliament. Within Parliament, the House of Commons has come to be elected by universal adult suffrage and, since the Parliament Act of 1911, to be supreme.
The Crown is the ultimate contradiction of the Franco-American, and in no sense indigenously British, theory of the separation of powers. And it is thus the ultimate guarantee that the United Kingdom (and each of the 15 countries with which we share the Crown) will remain a democracy, unlike either absolutist and historically coup-plagued France, or krytocratic America, to name but two.
Finally, pay no attention to the Tories on any of this, or indeed on anything else. Absolutely nothing enacted by a Blair/Brown Government would actually be repealed by a Cameron/Osborne/Gove/Vaizey/Whoever Government, and absolutely nothing enacted by a Cameron/Osborne/Gove/Vaizey/Whoever Government would actually be repealed by Miliband/Lammy/Balls/Cooper/Whoever Government. And so on, for ever.
That is how British politics now works, and will carry on working for so long as we, out here in the country (where all parties except the ill-fated SDP actually start), continue to allow it to do so. We need entirely new parties. So let's get on with it.
In fact, the only "global terror network" is the one directed from the American Enterprise Institute and related institutions or organisations, and including (among others) Likud, Forza Italia, the Partido Popolar, the renaissance of the Australian Liberal Party under John Howard, the Irish Progressive Democrats, the courts of Sarkozy (or, indeed, Royal) and Merkel, the governing faction in Canada, ACT New Zealand, and, of course, the New Labour Project.
That last includes New Labour ordinarily so called, centred, of course, on Blair, who hates the Labour Party certainly more than anyone else alive, and probably more than anyone else ever. But it also includes, among others, the Cameroons (led even officially by the New Labour Project's real new Leader, Blair's favoured successor as Prime Minister), the Orange Book Tendency, The Henry Jackson Society and the Euston Manifesto.
And yes, that real "global terror network" certainly is doing a very good job of destroying our way of life.
As for "Al-Qaeda", no firm connection has ever been established among the many organistaions and movements, in numerous parts of the world, fighting to organise the State and wider society in accordance with an ideology technically called "Islam". The only connection is Islam, and the only way to counteract them is to counteract Islam, simply as such.
Not that that is the attitude of the global terror network above. On the contrary, it supported Wahabbism in 1980s Afghanistan and in 1990s Bosnia, and still supports it in Kosovo, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Chechnya today. It removed one the Arab worlds two principal bulwarks against it, and is threatening to remove the other one.
Furthermore, the splitting of the Home Office is to have knock on effects on the Department of Constitutional Affairs, even to be renamed "the Ministry of Justice", such as to give yet further effect to the attempt to import into this country the dangerous, and wholly foreign, theory of "the separation of powers". What of the Law Lords? What of the Home Secretary’s role in determining sentences? Or of the numerous quasi-judicial functions of Ministers? Or of the fact that all members of the Executive are required to be members of the Legislature? Or of the fact that the judges make the whole of the Common Law?
This "separation of powers" line was also put about when the position of Lord Chancellor was abolished overnight in favour of something apparently sketched on the back of a beer mat. But the House of Lords is still chaired by someone in much the same outfit, which was actually presented by Blair as a serious, and even conclusive, argument for abolition. It is just that Baroness Hayman is not the Lord Chancellor. But so what, from that point of view? Meanwhile, there is still no Cabinet Minister accountable to the House of Commons either for the major front-line public service that is the Court Service, or for the enormous Legal Aid budget of public money.
Like the other examples given above, the office of Lord Chancellor was often described as an "exception" to "the separation of powers". Quite apart from the fact that such a doctrine cannot, by definition, admit of exceptions, so that their very existence disproves the doctrine itself, there do seem to be an awful lot of these "exceptions", and they do seem to matter rather a lot.
In reality, the "powers" have never been "separate", nor can they ever be so. One of them has to win in the end. In Britain, we have decided that it is to be Parliament, and thus the elected House of Commons within Parliament. Would we rather that the Prime Minister always had the last word? Or that, as in the United States (among other places) an unelected judicial body of lifetime appointees could simply rule that any matter it liked was "constitutional", and thus reserved entirely to itself?
This is why, as is their wont, judicial theorists and constitutional lawyers habitually engage in more than a spot of wishful thinking where "the separation of powers" is concerned. They wish to see an American-style krytocracy in this country, where the judiciary is still drawn (unlike the Bar generally these days) from a very narrow social, socio-economic and educational base indeed. Presumably, that is what makes it so attractive to them, including to our own dear Voice of Reason, drawn as they are, and no doubt as he is, from that same very narrow social, socio-economic and educational base indeed.
The wretched Human Rights Act has been a major step in that direction. But mercifully, we still have instead the supreme legislative, executive and judicial authority of the Crown (i.e., of the nation embodied, regardless of party or anything else), exercised either by Parliament itself or by Ministers drawn from and accountable to Parliament. Within Parliament, the House of Commons has come to be elected by universal adult suffrage and, since the Parliament Act of 1911, to be supreme.
The Crown is the ultimate contradiction of the Franco-American, and in no sense indigenously British, theory of the separation of powers. And it is thus the ultimate guarantee that the United Kingdom (and each of the 15 countries with which we share the Crown) will remain a democracy, unlike either absolutist and historically coup-plagued France, or krytocratic America, to name but two.
Finally, pay no attention to the Tories on any of this, or indeed on anything else. Absolutely nothing enacted by a Blair/Brown Government would actually be repealed by a Cameron/Osborne/Gove/Vaizey/Whoever Government, and absolutely nothing enacted by a Cameron/Osborne/Gove/Vaizey/Whoever Government would actually be repealed by Miliband/Lammy/Balls/Cooper/Whoever Government. And so on, for ever.
That is how British politics now works, and will carry on working for so long as we, out here in the country (where all parties except the ill-fated SDP actually start), continue to allow it to do so. We need entirely new parties. So let's get on with it.
Crossing The Rubicon: 24th March 1999
Neil Clark (http://neilclark66.blogspot.com) writes:
It was a great honour to attend and speak at a recent meeting in the Houses of Parliament to commemorate the 8th anniversary of the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia. 11 honourable MPs voted against the NATO aggression in 1999, including Tony Benn, Alice Mahon, and Bob Wareing, all of whom were present and spoke at the meeting. We must never forget the significance of what happened eight years ago: for the first time NATO launched a war of aggression which was not only in contravention of the UN Charter, but also in contravention of its own constitution, which authorised military action only in the case of an attack on a member state. As Mark Littman QC has stressed, the night of 24th March 1999, when NATO planes took off to bomb Yugoslavia, was a historic landmark in the post-WW2 world. For it was at that moment that the post-war international settlement, based on the respect for the sovereignty of nations and adherence to international law was torn up. As we survey the devastation of Iraq nightly on our television screens, and consider the nightmarish developments in Kosovo, where over 200,000 Serbs, Roma, Jews and other minorities have been ethnically cleansed since the "humanitarian" intervention, we can see quite clearly where contempt for international law, national sovereignty, and the Charter of the United Nations has led us.
Quite.
Only new, bottom-up parties will restore globally exemplary British respect for the sovereignty of nations and adherence to international law, armed with a UN Security Council veto. You know what I am doing in that cause. So, what are you doing?
It was a great honour to attend and speak at a recent meeting in the Houses of Parliament to commemorate the 8th anniversary of the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia. 11 honourable MPs voted against the NATO aggression in 1999, including Tony Benn, Alice Mahon, and Bob Wareing, all of whom were present and spoke at the meeting. We must never forget the significance of what happened eight years ago: for the first time NATO launched a war of aggression which was not only in contravention of the UN Charter, but also in contravention of its own constitution, which authorised military action only in the case of an attack on a member state. As Mark Littman QC has stressed, the night of 24th March 1999, when NATO planes took off to bomb Yugoslavia, was a historic landmark in the post-WW2 world. For it was at that moment that the post-war international settlement, based on the respect for the sovereignty of nations and adherence to international law was torn up. As we survey the devastation of Iraq nightly on our television screens, and consider the nightmarish developments in Kosovo, where over 200,000 Serbs, Roma, Jews and other minorities have been ethnically cleansed since the "humanitarian" intervention, we can see quite clearly where contempt for international law, national sovereignty, and the Charter of the United Nations has led us.
Quite.
Only new, bottom-up parties will restore globally exemplary British respect for the sovereignty of nations and adherence to international law, armed with a UN Security Council veto. You know what I am doing in that cause. So, what are you doing?
Wednesday, 28 March 2007
Mummy Dearest
That Cameron called Thatcher "Mummy", and probably still does, comes as no surprise. His own decadent, libertine social policies are in fact inseparable from her decadent, libertine economic policies, which were designed specifically in order to entrench the collapse of moral standards from the 1960s onwards, and which succeeded only too well.
But at least Cameron never called Thatcher "Nanny" or "Matron"...
But at least Cameron never called Thatcher "Nanny" or "Matron"...
This is really very strange...
David Cameron and George Osborne (am I alone in having noticed how camp he is?) now sit atop the Conservative Party, having both been MPs only since 2001, and neither having done very much at all, politically or otherwise, up to then. Cameron is MP for Witney, and Osborne for Tatton. These are both super-safe Tory seats.
But in 2001, they were both in peculiar positions. At Witney, Shaun Woodward had defected to Labour, who had then shoe-horned him at St Helens North for the General Election. And at Tatton, Martin Bell had defeated Neil Hamilton in 1997, before standing down (as he had promised to do) in 2001.
So Cameron and Osborne can both claim to have taken back previously Tory seats from someone else, even though, under any normal circumstances (such as obtained in both cases in 2001), the seats in question were both rock-solid Tory, and even though neither has ever had to face a sitting MP seeking re-election.
And now it is, of all Tories, these two Bullingdon Club members, of almost no political or other experience, who are running the Conservative Party, and aspiring to run the country.
It is all very, very strange...
But in 2001, they were both in peculiar positions. At Witney, Shaun Woodward had defected to Labour, who had then shoe-horned him at St Helens North for the General Election. And at Tatton, Martin Bell had defeated Neil Hamilton in 1997, before standing down (as he had promised to do) in 2001.
So Cameron and Osborne can both claim to have taken back previously Tory seats from someone else, even though, under any normal circumstances (such as obtained in both cases in 2001), the seats in question were both rock-solid Tory, and even though neither has ever had to face a sitting MP seeking re-election.
And now it is, of all Tories, these two Bullingdon Club members, of almost no political or other experience, who are running the Conservative Party, and aspiring to run the country.
It is all very, very strange...
And Away We Go
The papers are in for me to re-contest my Lanchester Parish Council seat, and to contest a Derwentside District Council seat, as an Independent.
Tuesday, 27 March 2007
THAT Documentary Last Night
A hugely important programme. Cameron has few uses, but at least his existence draws attention to the overclass, which emerged, in the 1980s and 1990s, as a result of the same processes as produced the underclass, and which is at least as cut off from life as it is normally lived, but which is much less numerous, is concentrated almost exclusively in one corner of the country, and is much more pernicious economically, socially, culturally and politically.
Although related to the old aristocracy, its members have no social conscience, rather regarding their enormous wealth as "merit", and as entitling them to behave in absolutely any way they see fit, not least with regard to drugs. (Cameron has now pulled off the same evil trick twice, first defining "a normal university experience" as necessarily including illegal drug use, and now doing the same thing with secondary schooling. What next? And when is someone going to take him on?)
Between 1688 at the latest and 1914 at the earliest, the political life of the United Kingdom and of her predecessors was defined by the struggle between the expanding middle and the top. There might have been dire consequences for the emerging working class, but the process eventually delivered it the means of redress. Yet the middle class has now been conned into believing, both that its own interests are identical to those of Cameron (demanding that Blair condemn calls for curbs on City bonuses) or of George Osborne (rushing to defend private equity funds), and that the skilled working class (so comparable in income, concerns, and often even tastes these days) is indistinguishable from the characters on 'Shameless'. The actual median wage for full-time work is around £23,000: that is the real middle.
Thank God that Cameron has not seen the last of that Bullingdon Club photograph, and therefore cannot carry on selling himself, Blair-like, as just an ordinary (if vaguely upper-middle-class) husband and father in early middle age. No, he isn't.
That Club is an organisation which exists specifically in order to commit criminal damage and other offences, even including assault, just so that its members can prove their ability to pick up the bill. Imagine if a group of youths the same age, but who got up at six o'clock in the morning to pay for universities, were to organise themselves into a club (complete with a membership list, officers, some sort of uniform, the works) for the express purpose of smashing up pubs. They would rightly be prosecuted as a criminal conspiracy, and could reasonably expect to be imprisoned.
Well, living in rural England, as I have done most of my life and which is a very different matter from merely owning great swathes of it while living in Knightsbridge or Notting Hill, I suspect that the publicans of Oxfordshire are not without connections in the local constabulary and magistracy. How would it look for Cameron if the Bully Boys were to be locked up for just long enough to have themselves sent down? Or how would it look for the University of Oxford if they were not sent down under such circumstances?
In light of recent events, how many black members has the Bullingdon Club ever had? Has it ever even had one?
But, alas, this film did not feature the strange matter of the Tory Leadership Election. There are only 450 active Conservative Associations, and half of those admit publicly to having fewer than 100 members each. Yet more than a quarter of a million people could be found to vote in the Leadership Election, and - would you believe it? - more than two thirds of them voted for a BBC-endorsed, ultraliberal, warmongering toff and Blair clone.
So, who were these people, and where had they been for the previous 10 years? For that matter, where are they now? The failure to ask these questions was the only fault in an otherwise magnificent documentary.
Oh, and now that he's on the telly so much, there ought to be an Alex Deane Show. Seriously. But what form would it take, and why?
Although related to the old aristocracy, its members have no social conscience, rather regarding their enormous wealth as "merit", and as entitling them to behave in absolutely any way they see fit, not least with regard to drugs. (Cameron has now pulled off the same evil trick twice, first defining "a normal university experience" as necessarily including illegal drug use, and now doing the same thing with secondary schooling. What next? And when is someone going to take him on?)
Between 1688 at the latest and 1914 at the earliest, the political life of the United Kingdom and of her predecessors was defined by the struggle between the expanding middle and the top. There might have been dire consequences for the emerging working class, but the process eventually delivered it the means of redress. Yet the middle class has now been conned into believing, both that its own interests are identical to those of Cameron (demanding that Blair condemn calls for curbs on City bonuses) or of George Osborne (rushing to defend private equity funds), and that the skilled working class (so comparable in income, concerns, and often even tastes these days) is indistinguishable from the characters on 'Shameless'. The actual median wage for full-time work is around £23,000: that is the real middle.
Thank God that Cameron has not seen the last of that Bullingdon Club photograph, and therefore cannot carry on selling himself, Blair-like, as just an ordinary (if vaguely upper-middle-class) husband and father in early middle age. No, he isn't.
That Club is an organisation which exists specifically in order to commit criminal damage and other offences, even including assault, just so that its members can prove their ability to pick up the bill. Imagine if a group of youths the same age, but who got up at six o'clock in the morning to pay for universities, were to organise themselves into a club (complete with a membership list, officers, some sort of uniform, the works) for the express purpose of smashing up pubs. They would rightly be prosecuted as a criminal conspiracy, and could reasonably expect to be imprisoned.
Well, living in rural England, as I have done most of my life and which is a very different matter from merely owning great swathes of it while living in Knightsbridge or Notting Hill, I suspect that the publicans of Oxfordshire are not without connections in the local constabulary and magistracy. How would it look for Cameron if the Bully Boys were to be locked up for just long enough to have themselves sent down? Or how would it look for the University of Oxford if they were not sent down under such circumstances?
In light of recent events, how many black members has the Bullingdon Club ever had? Has it ever even had one?
But, alas, this film did not feature the strange matter of the Tory Leadership Election. There are only 450 active Conservative Associations, and half of those admit publicly to having fewer than 100 members each. Yet more than a quarter of a million people could be found to vote in the Leadership Election, and - would you believe it? - more than two thirds of them voted for a BBC-endorsed, ultraliberal, warmongering toff and Blair clone.
So, who were these people, and where had they been for the previous 10 years? For that matter, where are they now? The failure to ask these questions was the only fault in an otherwise magnificent documentary.
Oh, and now that he's on the telly so much, there ought to be an Alex Deane Show. Seriously. But what form would it take, and why?
THAT Picture
The Northern Ireland Election itself was mostly about water rates, with Paisley and Adams equally opposed to them on identical grounds. The fact is that the existing parties in Northern Ireland exist in order to answer a question which is no longer being asked.
As we seek to re-build proper political parties from the grassroots up (and if you are not doing this, then why not?), we should be mindful that those include the grassroots of Northern Ireland. Whatever come after Labour and the Tories should be the main parties there as surely as in England, Scotland and Wales.
As we seek to re-build proper political parties from the grassroots up (and if you are not doing this, then why not?), we should be mindful that those include the grassroots of Northern Ireland. Whatever come after Labour and the Tories should be the main parties there as surely as in England, Scotland and Wales.
Nuclear Strikes Against Iran?
Those poor sailors and marines were only sent to where they were picked up in order to provoke a war with Iran, so as to destroy a large and multi-ethnic emerging democracy outside the global hegemony (as in Yugloslavia), and in order to steal its oil (as in Iraq). But will that war involve the nuclear strikes being demanded by neoconservative bloggers and those ringing in to radio programmes?
Well, the first Bush Administration was the only American Administration that might ever have launched such a strike (no atom bomb was ever dropped even on Korea, no nuclear bomb even on Vietnam), and it never did; even Bush wouldn't do it now. The Russians or the Chinese might, if you annoyed them enough. Likewise the French, though with a much higher provocation threshold. The Israelis haven't yet, which does make you wonder. India and Pakistan might against each other, but probably wouldn't.
But Britain? No chance! As much as anything else, we actually couldn't without American permission, anyway.
So, since everyone in the world knows this about us, why do we have to spend an initial £25 billion, rising to £76 billion, on "renewing" Trident?
Well, the first Bush Administration was the only American Administration that might ever have launched such a strike (no atom bomb was ever dropped even on Korea, no nuclear bomb even on Vietnam), and it never did; even Bush wouldn't do it now. The Russians or the Chinese might, if you annoyed them enough. Likewise the French, though with a much higher provocation threshold. The Israelis haven't yet, which does make you wonder. India and Pakistan might against each other, but probably wouldn't.
But Britain? No chance! As much as anything else, we actually couldn't without American permission, anyway.
So, since everyone in the world knows this about us, why do we have to spend an initial £25 billion, rising to £76 billion, on "renewing" Trident?
Monday, 26 March 2007
We Are The Hostages
The Britons being held in Iran are not "hostages". They were picked up in Iranian waters, where they shouldn't have been, unless anyone can think of any other reasonable explanation as to how the Iranians ever got them, or for that matter why they would ever even have wanted to.
Not that this is their fault personally. It is practically certain (again, unless anyone can think of any other remotely credible explanation) that these teenagers, in some cases, were sent there by Blair in order to provoke a war with Iran, for the reasons that I set out on Saturday, both in terms of why such a war is wanted, and in terms of why something like this has now been deemed necessary in order to bring about such a war.
They'd be sent back tomorrow if we got rid of Blair and installed someone with an independent, pro-British foreign policy, which by definition would not include any threat to Iran, itself certainly no threat to us. And wouldn't you want that, too?
Alas, no such person is available, least of all in either of the forms of Gordon Brown and David Cameron, the latter surrounded by head-banging neocons like Michael Gove, so that Britain, alone in Europe if not the world, has a main right-wing party dedicated, not to the country in question's national interest, but to someone else's. Does that sound like a conservative position to you?
New Labour is, of course, cut from the same cloth. That's why we're in Iraq. That's why we, and not the Americans, have sent in our servicemen and woman to provoke Iran into a war for American companies to steal its oil, just like in Iraq. And that, among so many other reasons, is why we, the British People, need to build entirely new political parties of our own.
Until then, it is we who will continue to be held hostage.
Not that this is their fault personally. It is practically certain (again, unless anyone can think of any other remotely credible explanation) that these teenagers, in some cases, were sent there by Blair in order to provoke a war with Iran, for the reasons that I set out on Saturday, both in terms of why such a war is wanted, and in terms of why something like this has now been deemed necessary in order to bring about such a war.
They'd be sent back tomorrow if we got rid of Blair and installed someone with an independent, pro-British foreign policy, which by definition would not include any threat to Iran, itself certainly no threat to us. And wouldn't you want that, too?
Alas, no such person is available, least of all in either of the forms of Gordon Brown and David Cameron, the latter surrounded by head-banging neocons like Michael Gove, so that Britain, alone in Europe if not the world, has a main right-wing party dedicated, not to the country in question's national interest, but to someone else's. Does that sound like a conservative position to you?
New Labour is, of course, cut from the same cloth. That's why we're in Iraq. That's why we, and not the Americans, have sent in our servicemen and woman to provoke Iran into a war for American companies to steal its oil, just like in Iraq. And that, among so many other reasons, is why we, the British People, need to build entirely new political parties of our own.
Until then, it is we who will continue to be held hostage.
Sunday, 25 March 2007
Caution At The Beeb
Blair would have had to have resigned if the Police had interviewed him under caution. So they didn’t. Understandably, this was a story on Broadcasting House this morning. But it had disappeared by The World At One, and did not reappear on The Westminster Hour, which was largely about cricket and Coldplay. So, has this shocking story been definitively disproved? If so, how, exactly? And if not, then why, exactly, has the BBC killed the story?
Milly Tant
Anyone who believes that David Miliband is capable of being Prime Minister should read his extraordinary review, in the Observer, of Anthony Giddens’s Over To You, Mr Brown: How Labour Can Win Again. There, this alleged genius, who has never had a proper job and who was educated at one of those private schools which have the effrontery to send the bill to the taxpayer so that they can pretend to be normal London comprehensives, writes that he finally knew the Major Government to be doomed when he heard about the cones hotline.
Well, he is certainly very slow on the uptake, in that case. But more to the point, he explains that "the party of monetarism, privatisation and deregulation had become the party of motorway repairs."
Most people assume Milly and his brother to have broken with their father’s Marxism. But in fact it could not be clearer that certainly Milly One, and no doubt Milly Two as well, despise boringly practical attempts by politicians to improve the lives of boringly ordinary people. Such are the grounds on which the sectarian Left, whence came neoconservatism in general and the New Labour Project in particular, has always despised the Labour Movement. Milly is a textbook case.
Oh, and didn’t I read somewhere that they had banned the transatlantic trade in human beings as commodities…?
Well, he is certainly very slow on the uptake, in that case. But more to the point, he explains that "the party of monetarism, privatisation and deregulation had become the party of motorway repairs."
Most people assume Milly and his brother to have broken with their father’s Marxism. But in fact it could not be clearer that certainly Milly One, and no doubt Milly Two as well, despise boringly practical attempts by politicians to improve the lives of boringly ordinary people. Such are the grounds on which the sectarian Left, whence came neoconservatism in general and the New Labour Project in particular, has always despised the Labour Movement. Milly is a textbook case.
Oh, and didn’t I read somewhere that they had banned the transatlantic trade in human beings as commodities…?
The Tory Rebellion They Didn't Tell You About
The Tories could not be bothered to demand a Commons debate on the Forcible Closure of Catholic Adoption Agencies Regulations (as they might as well be called, since they have no other purpose). Not only that, but Cameron, Osborne, the eye-poppingly absurd Letwin and a few toadies voted in favour of this wretched measure, whereas half the Shadow Cabinet abstained, and many other Tory MPs voted against, in a very pointed repudiation of the Conservative Party’s present direction.
But did the media report this significant Tory split? Well, not unless you noticed, which I certainly didn’t. Epitomised by the absurd Steve "All Politicians Are Saints" Richards of the Totally Dependent (whom I recently even heard claim that Blair had honestly believed there to have been WMDs in Iraq!), they have transferred their affections from Blair to Cameron, undoubtedly on Blair’s own instructions.
Hence the torrent of abuse directed at Gordon Brown, as if there were not enough real reasons to oppose his Prime Ministerial ambitions. Hence the newspaper-commissioned opinion polls that keep recording a Tory lead which mysteriously never materialises at actual elections. Hence the talking up of the ludicrous Miliband as a potential Prime Minister. And hence the failure to report this important Tory rebellion.
Expect a lot more of the same.
But did the media report this significant Tory split? Well, not unless you noticed, which I certainly didn’t. Epitomised by the absurd Steve "All Politicians Are Saints" Richards of the Totally Dependent (whom I recently even heard claim that Blair had honestly believed there to have been WMDs in Iraq!), they have transferred their affections from Blair to Cameron, undoubtedly on Blair’s own instructions.
Hence the torrent of abuse directed at Gordon Brown, as if there were not enough real reasons to oppose his Prime Ministerial ambitions. Hence the newspaper-commissioned opinion polls that keep recording a Tory lead which mysteriously never materialises at actual elections. Hence the talking up of the ludicrous Miliband as a potential Prime Minister. And hence the failure to report this important Tory rebellion.
Expect a lot more of the same.
But Why Would THEY Want To Join YOU?
Yet more rumours of impending high-level Blairite defections to the Cameroon Party once Brown takes over. Well, best place for them, and that includes Brown. But, like the new-found craven deference of the BBC, and like the talk of alliance or even merger with the Lib Dems, what do Tories think that their party’s attractiveness to such people says about what that party has become?
I'll Drink To That!
Tomorrow (probably today by the time you read this), there will be a rally at Westminster in support of the Sustainable Communities Bill, much of the driving force behind which has been the splendidly conservative desire to invoke the full power of the State against the "free" market and its corporate controllers in order to save small local breweries.
If that is not a good enough reason for MPs of at least the two main parties to vote for it, then I don’t know what possibly could be, and I really do wonder if we will ever again have either a Conservative Party or a Labour Party. Certainly, we will only have either if we rebuild such a thing for ourselves, out here in the saloon bars and pub lounges of Britain.
If that is not a good enough reason for MPs of at least the two main parties to vote for it, then I don’t know what possibly could be, and I really do wonder if we will ever again have either a Conservative Party or a Labour Party. Certainly, we will only have either if we rebuild such a thing for ourselves, out here in the saloon bars and pub lounges of Britain.
We Need British Bayroux
There are things to oppose about François Bayrou, particularly over the EU, although he has lately expressed the sympathy with the France du Non always really necessitated by his Catholic-based, conservative social democracy.
But he is a shining example of how a movement of that kind, transcending Left-Right divisions precisely by including the best aspirations of both (and thus precluding the worst excesses of either), can pose a serious threat to an arrogant, out-of-touch, metropolitan, neoconservative élite determined to present a scorned, despised electorate with Tweedledum and Tweedledee. He would certainly beat either on the second ballot.
Britons, take note: the Christian base will have to be wider than Catholicism alone, but apart from that the message is clear, that it really can be done. So let’s do it!
But he is a shining example of how a movement of that kind, transcending Left-Right divisions precisely by including the best aspirations of both (and thus precluding the worst excesses of either), can pose a serious threat to an arrogant, out-of-touch, metropolitan, neoconservative élite determined to present a scorned, despised electorate with Tweedledum and Tweedledee. He would certainly beat either on the second ballot.
Britons, take note: the Christian base will have to be wider than Catholicism alone, but apart from that the message is clear, that it really can be done. So let’s do it!
Fifty Years On
Fifty years since the Treaty of Rome, eh? Did anyone really notice? Did you have a street party or a fireworks display round your way? Well, fully seven ninths of the countries celebrating this anniversary (or not) did not sign the original Treaty of Rome, and several of them did not exist as independent states in 1957.
If there is an anniversary worth revisiting, it is that of Euratom, which was seen as far more important at the time, in the context of the Cold War and the aftermath of Suez. Then as now, we need nuclear power to protect us from the Russians (who could turn off our gas supply any time they liked) and from dependence on Arab oil.
Every Western European country needs civil nuclear energy, and by all means let there be as much co-operation as necessary to that end, co-operation among sovereign states whose sovereignty is safeguarded precisely by that energy.
If there is an anniversary worth revisiting, it is that of Euratom, which was seen as far more important at the time, in the context of the Cold War and the aftermath of Suez. Then as now, we need nuclear power to protect us from the Russians (who could turn off our gas supply any time they liked) and from dependence on Arab oil.
Every Western European country needs civil nuclear energy, and by all means let there be as much co-operation as necessary to that end, co-operation among sovereign states whose sovereignty is safeguarded precisely by that energy.
Just Because Mugabe Is Bad...
The Rhodesian UDI was, in point of legal fact, an act of treason. Accordingly, the Queen never accepted the title "Queen of Rhodesia", and Rhodesia declared itself a republic early in its history after UDI. But then, Rhodesia was allied to, and dependent on, the Republic of South Africa, itself an act of anti-British Boer revenge by persons who had been interred during the War for their pro-Nazi activities. Indeed, both the UDI and the subsequent declaration of a republic were, by definition, anti-British acts on Rhodesia's own part.
Ian Smith was also a close friend to Salazar, and heavily dependent on his regime in Angola and Mozambique. Salazar’s was at that time one of the last two Fascist dictatorships in Europe (although the neocons later sponsored the creation of another one, in 1990s Croatia). In his memoirs, Smith wrote that if Salazar had lived longer, then Rhodesia would still be in existence today.
Rhodesia was settled by the very sections of British society from which Mosley had drawn his support, and its regime reflected the views of such people. A Mosley-run Britain would have had close ties to the regime idolised by that of apartheid South Africa (and, indeed, to apartheid South Africa itself), and it would also have had close ties to Salazar's Portugal.
All these things taken together, Rhodesia was (mercifully) as near as we will ever see to a model of what Britain would have been like if Hitler and Mosley had won, only with better weather and with someone else to do all the work.
Of course Mugabe is bad. But that doesn't mean that Smith was good. He wasn't.
Ian Smith was also a close friend to Salazar, and heavily dependent on his regime in Angola and Mozambique. Salazar’s was at that time one of the last two Fascist dictatorships in Europe (although the neocons later sponsored the creation of another one, in 1990s Croatia). In his memoirs, Smith wrote that if Salazar had lived longer, then Rhodesia would still be in existence today.
Rhodesia was settled by the very sections of British society from which Mosley had drawn his support, and its regime reflected the views of such people. A Mosley-run Britain would have had close ties to the regime idolised by that of apartheid South Africa (and, indeed, to apartheid South Africa itself), and it would also have had close ties to Salazar's Portugal.
All these things taken together, Rhodesia was (mercifully) as near as we will ever see to a model of what Britain would have been like if Hitler and Mosley had won, only with better weather and with someone else to do all the work.
Of course Mugabe is bad. But that doesn't mean that Smith was good. He wasn't.
Lanchester and the Derwenstide District Council Elections
Now that the Stanley Town Council is to be set up, Derwentside District Council must discontinue in that Town Council’s area any expenditure for which a Parish Council is expected to be responsible here in the existing Parished parts of Derwentside. This would make it possible for the District Council’s Council Tax precept to be reduced.
All candidates for election to Derwentside District Council from Parished Wards should promise to vote against any District spending in Stanley which a Parish Council would have to meet in their own Wards, and to vote to reduce the District’s precept accordingly.
Furthermore, Derwentside District Council (among other bodies) needs to recognise the existence of widespread and serious poverty here in Lanchester. For example, there are more people dependent on benefits in Lanchester than the entire population of Burnhope, where by no means everyone is poor.
I do not want cuts in Burnhope or anywhere else. But I do want the poor members of our relatively rich community in Lanchester to have at least the same chances as the rich members of relatively poor communities elsewhere. I have been arguing this with Alex Watson and others for years.
All candidates for election to Derwentside District Council from Parished Wards should promise to vote against any District spending in Stanley which a Parish Council would have to meet in their own Wards, and to vote to reduce the District’s precept accordingly.
Furthermore, Derwentside District Council (among other bodies) needs to recognise the existence of widespread and serious poverty here in Lanchester. For example, there are more people dependent on benefits in Lanchester than the entire population of Burnhope, where by no means everyone is poor.
I do not want cuts in Burnhope or anywhere else. But I do want the poor members of our relatively rich community in Lanchester to have at least the same chances as the rich members of relatively poor communities elsewhere. I have been arguing this with Alex Watson and others for years.
Saturday, 24 March 2007
Provocation? The Very Idea!
Imagine if Iranian vessels had been patrolling the Channel conducting random searches of other shipping. How would the British authorities have reacted? How should they have reacted?
And surely this cannot have been a deliberately provocative act? After all, people are realising that oil-rich Iran is a huge and multi-ethnic emerging democracy which does not tow the line of the Neocon Empire, but also that it is not developing nuclear weapons, that the Supreme Leader there has indeed issued a fatwa against them, and that the current President is on the way out anyway.
So some other reason now has to concocted to steal its oil, and to dismantle its enormous, ethnically diverse democracy which stubbornly remains outside the Empire, just as was done to Yugoslavia.
And surely this cannot have been a deliberately provocative act? After all, people are realising that oil-rich Iran is a huge and multi-ethnic emerging democracy which does not tow the line of the Neocon Empire, but also that it is not developing nuclear weapons, that the Supreme Leader there has indeed issued a fatwa against them, and that the current President is on the way out anyway.
So some other reason now has to concocted to steal its oil, and to dismantle its enormous, ethnically diverse democracy which stubbornly remains outside the Empire, just as was done to Yugoslavia.
The Real Anglosphere
The theory of the Anglosphere is gaining ground, not least in Washington: within neoconservatism, particular attention must be paid to the total Americanisation of Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
But in fact America has two founding peoples. One is indeed of Anglo-Celtic descent. This compels the strongest possible economic, social, cultural and political ties to each and all of the United Kingdom, the Irish Republic, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But the other is of West African slave descent. That compels ties no less strong with each and all of the English-speaking countries of the Caribbean. And there is a vast common heritage shared by the Anglo-Celtic and the West African slave-descended peoples, throughout the world. Of course, it includes the English language.
But it is also includes blood ties. All African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans have Anglo-Celtic blood. Likewise, huge numbers of Anglo-Celtic people have African blood, not just in the Americas, but right here in the British Isles, and therefore also in later settler societies.
All but two of the English-speaking countries in the Caribbean freely retain the same Head of State as four of the six Anglosphere countries, and vice versa. Those in the former category thereby declare the latter’s Anglo-Celtic identity to be integral to their own, and those in the latter category (including Britain) thereby declare the former’s West African slave-descended identity to be integral to their own. (There is also a Pacific dimension, which is just as important.)
No wonder, then, that neoconservatives identify the Anglosphere in terms exclusive of the African dimension, and wish to Americanise, along neoconservative lines, the economies, cultures, societies and political systems of the countries thus identified. Americanisation must include the abolition of the monarchy, the standing contradiction of the whole ridiculous, racist theory. God Save The Queen!
And God save that other, not unconnected, set of characteristics binding together fully five of the six Anglosphere countries: the universal and comprehensive Welfare State and the strong statutory and other (including trade union) protection of workers, consumers, communities and the environment, the former paid for by progressive taxation, the whole underwitten by full employment, and all these good things delivered by the partnership between a strong Parliament and strong local government. All this, even in aspiration, the neocons would sweep away across these islands, Canada and the Antipodes.
Furthermore, God save God! The tradition common to the Anglo-Celtic and the West African slave-descended peoples, embodied by the monarchy and expressing itself as (among much else) social democracy, is profoundly Christian, contrary to neoconservatism's roots in Shachtmanite Trotskyism, in the writings of Leo Strauss and Ayn Rand, in Zionism, and indeed in the fiercely rationalist and Deist thought of the American Founding Fathers; it also has roots in extremely anti-British conspiracy theories about upper-class Anglophile networks in the US and elsewhere.
To all of this Shactmanite-Trotskyist, Straussian, Randian, Zionist and Jeffersonian racism, anti-monarchism, anti-Socialism, anti-Christianity and anti-British hysteria have you signed up if you sign up to any aspect of the cross-party New Labour Project, even by so much as voting for anyone who has done so. So, if you are not any one or more of a Shachtmanite Trotskyist, a Straussian, a Randian, a Zionist, a Jeffersonian (again, all three of racist, anti-Christian and anti-British), an anti-monarchist, an anti-Socialist, an anti-Christian, or an anti-British hysteric, then have absolutely nothing to do with any one or more of the Blair-Brown Tendency, the Cameron-Osborne Tendency, the Orange Book Tendency, The Henry Jackson Society, the Euston Manifesto, or any other aspect of neoconservatism anywhere in the world.
Above all, do not vote for such people; instead organise candidates against them. Thus can we begin to re-build the real Anglosphere.
But in fact America has two founding peoples. One is indeed of Anglo-Celtic descent. This compels the strongest possible economic, social, cultural and political ties to each and all of the United Kingdom, the Irish Republic, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But the other is of West African slave descent. That compels ties no less strong with each and all of the English-speaking countries of the Caribbean. And there is a vast common heritage shared by the Anglo-Celtic and the West African slave-descended peoples, throughout the world. Of course, it includes the English language.
But it is also includes blood ties. All African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans have Anglo-Celtic blood. Likewise, huge numbers of Anglo-Celtic people have African blood, not just in the Americas, but right here in the British Isles, and therefore also in later settler societies.
All but two of the English-speaking countries in the Caribbean freely retain the same Head of State as four of the six Anglosphere countries, and vice versa. Those in the former category thereby declare the latter’s Anglo-Celtic identity to be integral to their own, and those in the latter category (including Britain) thereby declare the former’s West African slave-descended identity to be integral to their own. (There is also a Pacific dimension, which is just as important.)
No wonder, then, that neoconservatives identify the Anglosphere in terms exclusive of the African dimension, and wish to Americanise, along neoconservative lines, the economies, cultures, societies and political systems of the countries thus identified. Americanisation must include the abolition of the monarchy, the standing contradiction of the whole ridiculous, racist theory. God Save The Queen!
And God save that other, not unconnected, set of characteristics binding together fully five of the six Anglosphere countries: the universal and comprehensive Welfare State and the strong statutory and other (including trade union) protection of workers, consumers, communities and the environment, the former paid for by progressive taxation, the whole underwitten by full employment, and all these good things delivered by the partnership between a strong Parliament and strong local government. All this, even in aspiration, the neocons would sweep away across these islands, Canada and the Antipodes.
Furthermore, God save God! The tradition common to the Anglo-Celtic and the West African slave-descended peoples, embodied by the monarchy and expressing itself as (among much else) social democracy, is profoundly Christian, contrary to neoconservatism's roots in Shachtmanite Trotskyism, in the writings of Leo Strauss and Ayn Rand, in Zionism, and indeed in the fiercely rationalist and Deist thought of the American Founding Fathers; it also has roots in extremely anti-British conspiracy theories about upper-class Anglophile networks in the US and elsewhere.
To all of this Shactmanite-Trotskyist, Straussian, Randian, Zionist and Jeffersonian racism, anti-monarchism, anti-Socialism, anti-Christianity and anti-British hysteria have you signed up if you sign up to any aspect of the cross-party New Labour Project, even by so much as voting for anyone who has done so. So, if you are not any one or more of a Shachtmanite Trotskyist, a Straussian, a Randian, a Zionist, a Jeffersonian (again, all three of racist, anti-Christian and anti-British), an anti-monarchist, an anti-Socialist, an anti-Christian, or an anti-British hysteric, then have absolutely nothing to do with any one or more of the Blair-Brown Tendency, the Cameron-Osborne Tendency, the Orange Book Tendency, The Henry Jackson Society, the Euston Manifesto, or any other aspect of neoconservatism anywhere in the world.
Above all, do not vote for such people; instead organise candidates against them. Thus can we begin to re-build the real Anglosphere.
Friday, 23 March 2007
"No one yet has taken the bait"
From George Osborne's interview on the GMTV Sunday Programme:
Gloria del Piero: There were rumours that you asked David Laws to join the Tories and said he could get a Shadow Cabinet post. Clear that one up for us…
George Osborne: Well it was a private conversation between the two of us and only one person went and told the press about it, I guess, because it wasn’t me, so you’d better go and get David Laws on your programme and he will tell you. Or maybe he won’t.
Gloria del Piero: What were the consequences of that conversation?
George Osborne: He’s still a Liberal Democrat MP.
Gloria del Piero: Do you wish he wasn’t?
George Osborne: We are a big tent. We welcome in people from across the political spectrum. We’ve got councillors who have switched over to us and there’s a real sense at the moment that the excitement is with us, that people are coming to join us. In my own local area people are coming to join my local party. And you know there are quite a lot of ideological soulmates out there who say ‘Well hold on, actually the Conservative party are the future and actually this lot have had their go and they’re the past.’
Gloria del Piero: So are you and your colleagues talking to other Liberal Democrats?
George Osborne: We talk to lots of people. Labour MPs are well.
Gloria del Piero: You’re talking to Labour MPs?
George Osborne: Let me just tell you, let me just tell you, I’m not sure I can promise you that on GMTV we would reveal any defections first, but I promise you I will certainly come on this programme if we get anyone defecting.
Gloria del Piero: But are you telling me that you’ve had conversations with Labour MPs
George Osborne: Well, I’ve had conversations with Labour MPs and Liberal Democrats but no one yet has taken the bait.
Whoever could they be? Of course, the place for Eurofanatical, anti-family, pro-crime, pro-drugs Lib Dems is in the party of the Eurofanatical, anti-family, pro-crime, pro-drugs Cameron and Osborne. But people like Frank Field and Kate Hoey are too conservative for the Cameroon Party. Cameron is the Leader of what is now the otherwise leaderless New Labour Project in all three parties, so that both the Blairite remnant and the Orange Book Tendency should defect to his gang, which conservatives (not Thatcherites, conservatives) should leave. Then they really could hook up with Field, Hoey, and actually quite a lot of the Labour Party and the trade union movement.
But why should the rest of us wait for MPs? Unless I am very much mistaken, the only party ever actually to have been founded within Parliament, before attempting to spread itself outside to the country at large, was the SDP. And look what happened to that.
It is we who should be taking the initiative. I am. Why aren't you?
Gloria del Piero: There were rumours that you asked David Laws to join the Tories and said he could get a Shadow Cabinet post. Clear that one up for us…
George Osborne: Well it was a private conversation between the two of us and only one person went and told the press about it, I guess, because it wasn’t me, so you’d better go and get David Laws on your programme and he will tell you. Or maybe he won’t.
Gloria del Piero: What were the consequences of that conversation?
George Osborne: He’s still a Liberal Democrat MP.
Gloria del Piero: Do you wish he wasn’t?
George Osborne: We are a big tent. We welcome in people from across the political spectrum. We’ve got councillors who have switched over to us and there’s a real sense at the moment that the excitement is with us, that people are coming to join us. In my own local area people are coming to join my local party. And you know there are quite a lot of ideological soulmates out there who say ‘Well hold on, actually the Conservative party are the future and actually this lot have had their go and they’re the past.’
Gloria del Piero: So are you and your colleagues talking to other Liberal Democrats?
George Osborne: We talk to lots of people. Labour MPs are well.
Gloria del Piero: You’re talking to Labour MPs?
George Osborne: Let me just tell you, let me just tell you, I’m not sure I can promise you that on GMTV we would reveal any defections first, but I promise you I will certainly come on this programme if we get anyone defecting.
Gloria del Piero: But are you telling me that you’ve had conversations with Labour MPs
George Osborne: Well, I’ve had conversations with Labour MPs and Liberal Democrats but no one yet has taken the bait.
Whoever could they be? Of course, the place for Eurofanatical, anti-family, pro-crime, pro-drugs Lib Dems is in the party of the Eurofanatical, anti-family, pro-crime, pro-drugs Cameron and Osborne. But people like Frank Field and Kate Hoey are too conservative for the Cameroon Party. Cameron is the Leader of what is now the otherwise leaderless New Labour Project in all three parties, so that both the Blairite remnant and the Orange Book Tendency should defect to his gang, which conservatives (not Thatcherites, conservatives) should leave. Then they really could hook up with Field, Hoey, and actually quite a lot of the Labour Party and the trade union movement.
But why should the rest of us wait for MPs? Unless I am very much mistaken, the only party ever actually to have been founded within Parliament, before attempting to spread itself outside to the country at large, was the SDP. And look what happened to that.
It is we who should be taking the initiative. I am. Why aren't you?
Thursday, 22 March 2007
Zimbabwe and Foreign-Nationalism
Once again, as during most of the post-War period, we in Britain face two threats from foreign-nationalism in our midst, each with a small clique of hired help and a wider circle of fellow-travellers, commanding almost no popular support but enjoying enormous influence where power resides. Once again, each of these owes specifically patriotic allegiance, not to this country, but to something extraneous and indeed hostile. Today, one foreign-nationalism is neoconservatism, and the other is Islam. Not "a perversion of Islam", but Islam itself.
Neoconservatism entails strong support for America and Israel, and therefore also, as anyone reading the Statement of Principles of The Henry Jackson Society can see, for the American-sponsored project of European federalism, which is what that project has been ever since the 1940s, both in its American sponsorship and in its federalist intent. But that support does, up to a point, depend on American, and arguably even Israeli, adherence to certain explictly neoconservative policies.
And then there is Islam.
By contrast, there was no such vagueness about foreign-nationalism in its two older forms. One of those forms used to defend even the invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, such was its devotion to the Soviet Union. The other used to defend even an act of high treason against The Queen, because the territory in question thus became a satellite and client of the Boer Republic, set up as an explicit act of anti-British revenge in a former Dominion of the Crown by persons who had been interred during the Second World War because of their pro-Nazi activities.
Which brings us to Zimbabwe. For the treason in question was in Rhodesia, while Mugabe and others like him were Soviet-backed. I cannot help thinking that the present fuss being made on the British Right over Zimbabwe, justified though it is in many ways, is because of nostalgia for the days when pseudo-Tories were expected to worship at the altar, not of a foreign and rabidly anti-British ideology called neoconservatism, but of a foreign, rabidly anti-British, and very solid entity called the Republic of South Africa.
Likewise, I cannot help thinking that the British Government's lukewarm response is because so many of its members and closest advisors have their roots, not in the Labour Movement, but on the sectarian Left, where they were often active in the period between the Rhodesian UDI and formal Zimbabwean independence, a time when, again, things must have seemed so much simpler, for the very good reason that they were.
Neoconservatism entails strong support for America and Israel, and therefore also, as anyone reading the Statement of Principles of The Henry Jackson Society can see, for the American-sponsored project of European federalism, which is what that project has been ever since the 1940s, both in its American sponsorship and in its federalist intent. But that support does, up to a point, depend on American, and arguably even Israeli, adherence to certain explictly neoconservative policies.
And then there is Islam.
By contrast, there was no such vagueness about foreign-nationalism in its two older forms. One of those forms used to defend even the invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, such was its devotion to the Soviet Union. The other used to defend even an act of high treason against The Queen, because the territory in question thus became a satellite and client of the Boer Republic, set up as an explicit act of anti-British revenge in a former Dominion of the Crown by persons who had been interred during the Second World War because of their pro-Nazi activities.
Which brings us to Zimbabwe. For the treason in question was in Rhodesia, while Mugabe and others like him were Soviet-backed. I cannot help thinking that the present fuss being made on the British Right over Zimbabwe, justified though it is in many ways, is because of nostalgia for the days when pseudo-Tories were expected to worship at the altar, not of a foreign and rabidly anti-British ideology called neoconservatism, but of a foreign, rabidly anti-British, and very solid entity called the Republic of South Africa.
Likewise, I cannot help thinking that the British Government's lukewarm response is because so many of its members and closest advisors have their roots, not in the Labour Movement, but on the sectarian Left, where they were often active in the period between the Rhodesian UDI and formal Zimbabwean independence, a time when, again, things must have seemed so much simpler, for the very good reason that they were.
Yo, Cameron!
Cameron stands encircled by zealous Anglo-neocons
An influential coterie of Tory MPs is bent on a foreign policy driven not by Britain's interests, but those of the US and Israel
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Thursday March 22, 2007
The Guardian
Last September, David Cameron queried Tony Blair's unwavering (and unrewarded) loyalty to the Bush administration. The speech made Cameron unpopular in Washington, but that should have done him no harm with the British electorate, given what most of them think of George Bush. Yet however welcome Cameron's apparent turn in foreign policy might be with the public, he has a problem with his own parliamentary party. For years past the Tories have been infiltrated by Anglo-neoconservatives, a species easily defined. Several of the younger MPs are fanatical adherents of the creed with its three prongs: ardent support for the Iraq war, for the US and for Israel.
You might think that the first of those prongs was dented after the disaster which has unfolded. What would have happened if the Tories had opposed the war is one of the more fascinating "ifs" of history; but they didn't, and the moment has passed when they could have adroitly dissociated themselves from the war because of the false claims on which it was begun and the incompetence with which it was conducted.
Even then, Iraq might have made Tories hesitate before continuing to cheer the US, but Stephen Crabb does just that. The MP was in Washington at the time of Cameron's speech, where, he said, there was "disappointment expressed". Many would have taken that as a compliment, but not Crabb, who says in best Vichy spirit: "We do need to be careful about how the Americans see us."
In most European countries there is a party of the right whose basic definition is its attachment to the national interest of that country. Only here is there a Conservative party, and Tory press, largely in the hands of people whose basic commitment is to the national interest of another country, or countries.
There was once a vigorous high Tory tradition of independence from - if not hostility to - America. It was found in the Morning Post before the war, and it continued down to Enoch Powell and Alan Clark. But now members of the shadow cabinet, such as George Osborne (whom even Cameron is said to tease as a neocon), vie in fealty to Washington - and this when US policy is driven by neocon thinktanks and evangelical fundamentalists, with whom Toryism should have nothing in common.
Attempts by younger Tories to justify their allegiance to Washington and Israel are curious. One more from the latest vintage is Douglas Carswell MP, who insists that "it is in our national interest to support Israel". He would never wish to say anything critical of Israel, "because I believe they are a front-line ally in a war against people who wish to destroy our democratic way of life. Others may take a nuanced view. I don't."
This is extreme, but not unique. The Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) are a successful force, now claiming a large majority of Tory MPs as members. It is frankly perverse for Charles Moore to complain in the Daily Telegraph that the Conservatives have gone awry since the good old days, when the natural Tory outlook included "a greater sympathy for Israel than for those who were trying to destroy her", since if anything the change has been the other way round.
When does he think that greater sympathy for Israel was ever a distinctively Conservative position? In the days when I attended Tory conferences, you could be entertained one evening by the CFI, with the late Duke of Devonshire in the chair, but on the next by the Council for Arab-British Understanding and such luminaries as Ian Gilmour and Dennis Walters. Going further back, AJ Balfour was the Tory premier and then foreign secretary who signed the eponymous declaration in 1917 favouring a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and came to favour a Jewish state (as with many gentile Zionists, his attitude to Jews was highly ambiguous; he described privately how uneasy he once felt at a dinner party where "Hebrews were in an actual majority").
And yet his successor as foreign secretary took the opposite view. That highest of high Tories Lord Curzon deplored the Balfour declaration. He thought that a Jewish homeland could only mean a grave injustice to the inhabitants of Palestine. It would inflame hundreds of millions of Muslim subjects of the British empire. And as to the Jewish people themselves and the idea of transporting them to the Levant, "I cannot think of a worse fate for an advanced and intellectual community," Curzon said.
In his day Curzon might have seemed the truer Tory than Balfour, and it's only recently that his spirit has been stifled in his old party. That is all the more so with the arrival of MPs such as Crabb, Carswell, and the egregious Michael Gove, the Times columnist and MP for Surrey Heath, a copy of whose Muslim-bashing diatribe Celsius 7/7 is given to every lucky person who joins the CFI.
Despite these Anglo-neocons, many people would say that endorsing every US action has damaged British interests. As to Carswell's "in our national interest to support Israel", the words are plainly absurd, and his "frontline ally" comment is terrifying. Cameron himself is "proud not just to be a Conservative, but a Conservative Friend of Israel," he says; but does he share Carswell's belief that the British army in Basra and Helmand is fighting on behalf of Israel? And does he imagine that our troops want to be told that? They have enough problems as it is.
What Cameron might by now have grasped is that the position represented by those zealous Anglo-neocons on his benches doesn't actually enjoy much popular support. No US president has been more disliked in this country than Bush the Younger, no adventure more regretted than the Iraq war. Most British people are neither enemies of Israel nor "friends" in the CFI sense. They hope for a just settlement and deplore needless violence: during the bombardment of Lebanon last summer, one poll found that only 22% thought the Israeli response was justified. When Crabb says that the Anglo-US alliance has been "the single most important foreign policy relationship since the second world war", he could also recognise that never since then has the British electorate felt less enthusiastic about it.
No one expects Cameron to become the Hugo Chávez of Notting Hill. But if he's serious about winning an election, he could at least begin to forge a foreign policy which, unlike Blair's, is based on the national interest of this country and not another, and which expresses the views of the British people.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft is the author of Yo, Blair!
wheaty@compuserve.com
An influential coterie of Tory MPs is bent on a foreign policy driven not by Britain's interests, but those of the US and Israel
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Thursday March 22, 2007
The Guardian
Last September, David Cameron queried Tony Blair's unwavering (and unrewarded) loyalty to the Bush administration. The speech made Cameron unpopular in Washington, but that should have done him no harm with the British electorate, given what most of them think of George Bush. Yet however welcome Cameron's apparent turn in foreign policy might be with the public, he has a problem with his own parliamentary party. For years past the Tories have been infiltrated by Anglo-neoconservatives, a species easily defined. Several of the younger MPs are fanatical adherents of the creed with its three prongs: ardent support for the Iraq war, for the US and for Israel.
You might think that the first of those prongs was dented after the disaster which has unfolded. What would have happened if the Tories had opposed the war is one of the more fascinating "ifs" of history; but they didn't, and the moment has passed when they could have adroitly dissociated themselves from the war because of the false claims on which it was begun and the incompetence with which it was conducted.
Even then, Iraq might have made Tories hesitate before continuing to cheer the US, but Stephen Crabb does just that. The MP was in Washington at the time of Cameron's speech, where, he said, there was "disappointment expressed". Many would have taken that as a compliment, but not Crabb, who says in best Vichy spirit: "We do need to be careful about how the Americans see us."
In most European countries there is a party of the right whose basic definition is its attachment to the national interest of that country. Only here is there a Conservative party, and Tory press, largely in the hands of people whose basic commitment is to the national interest of another country, or countries.
There was once a vigorous high Tory tradition of independence from - if not hostility to - America. It was found in the Morning Post before the war, and it continued down to Enoch Powell and Alan Clark. But now members of the shadow cabinet, such as George Osborne (whom even Cameron is said to tease as a neocon), vie in fealty to Washington - and this when US policy is driven by neocon thinktanks and evangelical fundamentalists, with whom Toryism should have nothing in common.
Attempts by younger Tories to justify their allegiance to Washington and Israel are curious. One more from the latest vintage is Douglas Carswell MP, who insists that "it is in our national interest to support Israel". He would never wish to say anything critical of Israel, "because I believe they are a front-line ally in a war against people who wish to destroy our democratic way of life. Others may take a nuanced view. I don't."
This is extreme, but not unique. The Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) are a successful force, now claiming a large majority of Tory MPs as members. It is frankly perverse for Charles Moore to complain in the Daily Telegraph that the Conservatives have gone awry since the good old days, when the natural Tory outlook included "a greater sympathy for Israel than for those who were trying to destroy her", since if anything the change has been the other way round.
When does he think that greater sympathy for Israel was ever a distinctively Conservative position? In the days when I attended Tory conferences, you could be entertained one evening by the CFI, with the late Duke of Devonshire in the chair, but on the next by the Council for Arab-British Understanding and such luminaries as Ian Gilmour and Dennis Walters. Going further back, AJ Balfour was the Tory premier and then foreign secretary who signed the eponymous declaration in 1917 favouring a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and came to favour a Jewish state (as with many gentile Zionists, his attitude to Jews was highly ambiguous; he described privately how uneasy he once felt at a dinner party where "Hebrews were in an actual majority").
And yet his successor as foreign secretary took the opposite view. That highest of high Tories Lord Curzon deplored the Balfour declaration. He thought that a Jewish homeland could only mean a grave injustice to the inhabitants of Palestine. It would inflame hundreds of millions of Muslim subjects of the British empire. And as to the Jewish people themselves and the idea of transporting them to the Levant, "I cannot think of a worse fate for an advanced and intellectual community," Curzon said.
In his day Curzon might have seemed the truer Tory than Balfour, and it's only recently that his spirit has been stifled in his old party. That is all the more so with the arrival of MPs such as Crabb, Carswell, and the egregious Michael Gove, the Times columnist and MP for Surrey Heath, a copy of whose Muslim-bashing diatribe Celsius 7/7 is given to every lucky person who joins the CFI.
Despite these Anglo-neocons, many people would say that endorsing every US action has damaged British interests. As to Carswell's "in our national interest to support Israel", the words are plainly absurd, and his "frontline ally" comment is terrifying. Cameron himself is "proud not just to be a Conservative, but a Conservative Friend of Israel," he says; but does he share Carswell's belief that the British army in Basra and Helmand is fighting on behalf of Israel? And does he imagine that our troops want to be told that? They have enough problems as it is.
What Cameron might by now have grasped is that the position represented by those zealous Anglo-neocons on his benches doesn't actually enjoy much popular support. No US president has been more disliked in this country than Bush the Younger, no adventure more regretted than the Iraq war. Most British people are neither enemies of Israel nor "friends" in the CFI sense. They hope for a just settlement and deplore needless violence: during the bombardment of Lebanon last summer, one poll found that only 22% thought the Israeli response was justified. When Crabb says that the Anglo-US alliance has been "the single most important foreign policy relationship since the second world war", he could also recognise that never since then has the British electorate felt less enthusiastic about it.
No one expects Cameron to become the Hugo Chávez of Notting Hill. But if he's serious about winning an election, he could at least begin to forge a foreign policy which, unlike Blair's, is based on the national interest of this country and not another, and which expresses the views of the British people.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft is the author of Yo, Blair!
wheaty@compuserve.com
Where Is George Osborne?
From the Today programme to Jeremy Vine, there is no avoiding either Gordon Brown or his Lib Dem Shadow, Vince Cable, on this Budget Day Plus One. Which is as it should be, of course. But where is George Osborne, "free"-marketeer in action where narcotic goods and sexual services are concerned? Is he in any fit state to be seen, or must the public be denied the spectacle of capitalism's effects incarnate?
After all, we deserve as many opportunities as possible to gaze in awe on a man who was given one of the safest seats in the House at the age of 28, despite never having had any job except of the undemanding Milibandian kind for newly-graduated posh boys, following a politician about (at public expense) so that that politician could write him a reference for a startstruck local party, in the unlikely event of that party's being given the slightest say in who was to be its parliamentary candidate. (Ruth Kelly also became an MP at 28, but she had written for Guardian and worked for the Bank of England, and in any case she has a marginal seat.)
What a nuisance it must have been for Osborne to have had to turn up to these non-jobs when he had no need to draw a salary from the taxpayer, or anyone else, in order to keep himself drugged up and well-whored. But what a thing it must be to be the heir to a baronetcy, to have attended one of the original nine public schools, and for one's erstwhile Headmaster to be a Tory peer. Clearly, it makes one brilliant to the point of fitness to be Chancellor the Exchequer (and after that, I think we all know what - he is several years younger than Cameron) without even having to appear in public the day after the Budget.
Like Blair, or Miliband, or Ernie Armstrong's daughter, born to rule...
After all, we deserve as many opportunities as possible to gaze in awe on a man who was given one of the safest seats in the House at the age of 28, despite never having had any job except of the undemanding Milibandian kind for newly-graduated posh boys, following a politician about (at public expense) so that that politician could write him a reference for a startstruck local party, in the unlikely event of that party's being given the slightest say in who was to be its parliamentary candidate. (Ruth Kelly also became an MP at 28, but she had written for Guardian and worked for the Bank of England, and in any case she has a marginal seat.)
What a nuisance it must have been for Osborne to have had to turn up to these non-jobs when he had no need to draw a salary from the taxpayer, or anyone else, in order to keep himself drugged up and well-whored. But what a thing it must be to be the heir to a baronetcy, to have attended one of the original nine public schools, and for one's erstwhile Headmaster to be a Tory peer. Clearly, it makes one brilliant to the point of fitness to be Chancellor the Exchequer (and after that, I think we all know what - he is several years younger than Cameron) without even having to appear in public the day after the Budget.
Like Blair, or Miliband, or Ernie Armstrong's daughter, born to rule...
Something To Look Forward To
From http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk:
For the past few weeks I've been making a programme about David Cameron, without his help. The result will be shown on Channel Four on Monday evening (March 26th) at 8pm, under the title 'Toff at the Top'. I make no pretence of being an unbiased observer, and make it clear in the programme that I am not (as I wish more broadcasters would do - the pretence of impartiality is increasingly absurd).
But I think many supporters of Mr Cameron will be struck by the conclusions of our interviewees about what his approach to politics is. I trust they will also be interested in Michael Gove's defence of his leader ( Michael, an old friend, generously agreed to put the Cameron case when he didn't have to). I hope to discuss the whole thing at greater length here next week - but I make one small point. Isn't it interesting that Channel Four came to me, a disaffected conservative, rather than - as you might have expected - a left-wing journalist, to make a programme critical of the new Tory leader? This is a sign of how the political categories are shifting, in a way the opinion polls continue to hide. Some of the most passionate supporters of Mr Cameron are now to be found amongst the ranks of the now leaderless Blairites.
But will this film feature the strange matter of the Tory Leadership Election? There are only 450 active Conservative Associations, and half of those admit publicly to having fewer than 100 members each. Yet more than a quarter of a million people could be found to vote in the Leadership Election, and - would you believe it? - more than two thirds of them voted for a BBC-endorsed, ultraliberal, warmongering toff and Blair clone.
So, who were these people, and where had they been for the previous 10 years? For that matter, where are they now?
For the past few weeks I've been making a programme about David Cameron, without his help. The result will be shown on Channel Four on Monday evening (March 26th) at 8pm, under the title 'Toff at the Top'. I make no pretence of being an unbiased observer, and make it clear in the programme that I am not (as I wish more broadcasters would do - the pretence of impartiality is increasingly absurd).
But I think many supporters of Mr Cameron will be struck by the conclusions of our interviewees about what his approach to politics is. I trust they will also be interested in Michael Gove's defence of his leader ( Michael, an old friend, generously agreed to put the Cameron case when he didn't have to). I hope to discuss the whole thing at greater length here next week - but I make one small point. Isn't it interesting that Channel Four came to me, a disaffected conservative, rather than - as you might have expected - a left-wing journalist, to make a programme critical of the new Tory leader? This is a sign of how the political categories are shifting, in a way the opinion polls continue to hide. Some of the most passionate supporters of Mr Cameron are now to be found amongst the ranks of the now leaderless Blairites.
But will this film feature the strange matter of the Tory Leadership Election? There are only 450 active Conservative Associations, and half of those admit publicly to having fewer than 100 members each. Yet more than a quarter of a million people could be found to vote in the Leadership Election, and - would you believe it? - more than two thirds of them voted for a BBC-endorsed, ultraliberal, warmongering toff and Blair clone.
So, who were these people, and where had they been for the previous 10 years? For that matter, where are they now?
Wednesday, 21 March 2007
Who's The Stalinist?
Is Gordon Brown a Stalinist? No, but his archenemy Charles Clarke was. However, Clarke's chum Alan Milburn wasn't. He was a Trotskyist.
Is the past tense appropriate in the last three sentences, or should it be the present tense? After all, they are both utterly unrepentant, like so many Blairites and other neocons with such backgrounds. They still don't accept that they were doing anything wrong at the time. Why not?
Is the past tense appropriate in the last three sentences, or should it be the present tense? After all, they are both utterly unrepentant, like so many Blairites and other neocons with such backgrounds. They still don't accept that they were doing anything wrong at the time. Why not?
The Party's Over
Tonight sees the finale of Party Animals, moderately entertaining dross (although I feel asleep half way through the first one) about two tribally Labour brothers in junior Westminster positions. No such people could exist any more in real life. For one thing, they have regional accents, which would never be tolerated in, in the heavier-accented one's case, a Blairite Minister's office. They appear to have been educated at perfectly normal state schools, ditto.
But most importantly, Westminster Villagers in their twenties and thirties now seldom, if ever, have fixed political loyalties or even opinions. Just as the older members of the Notting Hill and Primrose Hill dining sets are not even expected to join a political party until their peerages are bought and paid for, and duly delivered, so likewise the younger members are not so expected until a safe seat (such as most seats are, and which might as well be a peerage) of any party has been arranged for them, with little or no reference to the elderly remnant of party activists in the constituency, of which the Chosen One will never previously have heard or even be able to locate on a map, and which he or she will almost never visit except for the count once every four years. He or she then joins the party in question (it matters not in the slightest which party this is), and a totally false back history of long-term involvement is duly invented, if even that is felt necessary these days. Does money change hands? Merely to ask this question answers it.
By such means will well over half of seats be filled at the next Election (it is probably around fifty per cent even now), and practically all of them at the Election after that. Undoubtedly, safe seats whose MPs are likely to retire in 2013 have already been earmarked for named individuals currently in the Sixth Form at Eton and comparable institutions. And I don't just mean Tory safe seats.
But this only goes on because we let it. So, what are you doing to stop it?
But most importantly, Westminster Villagers in their twenties and thirties now seldom, if ever, have fixed political loyalties or even opinions. Just as the older members of the Notting Hill and Primrose Hill dining sets are not even expected to join a political party until their peerages are bought and paid for, and duly delivered, so likewise the younger members are not so expected until a safe seat (such as most seats are, and which might as well be a peerage) of any party has been arranged for them, with little or no reference to the elderly remnant of party activists in the constituency, of which the Chosen One will never previously have heard or even be able to locate on a map, and which he or she will almost never visit except for the count once every four years. He or she then joins the party in question (it matters not in the slightest which party this is), and a totally false back history of long-term involvement is duly invented, if even that is felt necessary these days. Does money change hands? Merely to ask this question answers it.
By such means will well over half of seats be filled at the next Election (it is probably around fifty per cent even now), and practically all of them at the Election after that. Undoubtedly, safe seats whose MPs are likely to retire in 2013 have already been earmarked for named individuals currently in the Sixth Form at Eton and comparable institutions. And I don't just mean Tory safe seats.
But this only goes on because we let it. So, what are you doing to stop it?
The Madness of Princess Tony
I'm not going to bother with the Budget and its "surprise", although I'd be interested, out of sheer bemused curiosity, to hear from anyone at all who didn't know about it in advance. No, PMQs was much more interesting: we now know that poor old Blair really has gone completely doo-lally.
Sir Menzies Campbell asked about the falling incomes of the poor over the last 10 years, and Blair simply denied that this had happened. Campbell then tried him on the fact that the poor pay a much higher percentage of their incomes in tax than do the rich. But, again, Blair simply contradicted reality. Just as well that there was no question about Iraq, or Blair would have denied that the war was taking place; he long ago started denying that it had ever had anything to do with WMDs.
It is now time to start calling Blair "Cleopatra", the Queen of Denial.
Sir Menzies Campbell asked about the falling incomes of the poor over the last 10 years, and Blair simply denied that this had happened. Campbell then tried him on the fact that the poor pay a much higher percentage of their incomes in tax than do the rich. But, again, Blair simply contradicted reality. Just as well that there was no question about Iraq, or Blair would have denied that the war was taking place; he long ago started denying that it had ever had anything to do with WMDs.
It is now time to start calling Blair "Cleopatra", the Queen of Denial.
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
Yet Another Cameron "Poll Lead"
This time in the Guardian, on which see below. Don't believe a word of it. It is psephologically impossible for the Tories to win the next Election, the swings involved being off the chart of reasonable possibility.
The Guardian now might as well be called the Cameron, since (without changing one jot of its editorial position) it is the nearest thing to a fanzine among the national newspapers, and contains nothing of the critical approach found in the Daily Telegraph or the Daily Mail. Why do those crowing about this "lead" wish to side with the Guardian? And why do they want the same outcome as Tony Blair wants, and for which he is undoubtedly going to vote in the privacy of a polling booth? Be in no doubt, Blair is going to vote Tory: he wants to be succeeded by David Cameron rather than by Gordon Brown. And that, of course, is purely for class reasons, since there is no political difference.
In any case, the aim of opinion polls is not to measure public opinion, but to influence it. In this case, it is to influence it in favour of making Labour feel compelled to choose an Oxonian Leader instead of Gordon Brown. PMs are allowed to have an Oxford degree, or no degree: that is The Rule. And Brown falls into neither category.
Anyone who really does think that polls are there to measure public opinion should have stopped paying attention to them 15 years ago, when they mis-predicted the 1992 General Election by more people than there were living in the United Kingdom at the time, or whatever it was.
This latest one, like all of them these days, has had to be recalculated to exclude the constant 34-37% that says, not that it "doesn't know", but rather that it is determined not to vote next time. What if, between now and then, a movement were to arise which was capable of taking even half of those missing votes?
And where was this polling actually conducted? No doubt in the South-East, where the Tories already hold most of the seats anyway, having re-captured most of their 1997 losses there. A fat lot of good that has done them. Meanwhile, they are in a worse state than ever in Scotland, Wales, the North and the Midlands, where their loss of first many and then most of their seats first nearly and then actually cost them office in 1992 and 1997 respectively; and in the West Country, where their battle against the Liberals makes the difference between a majority Government and a hung Parliament at every General Election.
But will anyone have been polled in Scotland, Wales, the North, the Midlands or the West Country? No, of course not!
The Guardian now might as well be called the Cameron, since (without changing one jot of its editorial position) it is the nearest thing to a fanzine among the national newspapers, and contains nothing of the critical approach found in the Daily Telegraph or the Daily Mail. Why do those crowing about this "lead" wish to side with the Guardian? And why do they want the same outcome as Tony Blair wants, and for which he is undoubtedly going to vote in the privacy of a polling booth? Be in no doubt, Blair is going to vote Tory: he wants to be succeeded by David Cameron rather than by Gordon Brown. And that, of course, is purely for class reasons, since there is no political difference.
In any case, the aim of opinion polls is not to measure public opinion, but to influence it. In this case, it is to influence it in favour of making Labour feel compelled to choose an Oxonian Leader instead of Gordon Brown. PMs are allowed to have an Oxford degree, or no degree: that is The Rule. And Brown falls into neither category.
Anyone who really does think that polls are there to measure public opinion should have stopped paying attention to them 15 years ago, when they mis-predicted the 1992 General Election by more people than there were living in the United Kingdom at the time, or whatever it was.
This latest one, like all of them these days, has had to be recalculated to exclude the constant 34-37% that says, not that it "doesn't know", but rather that it is determined not to vote next time. What if, between now and then, a movement were to arise which was capable of taking even half of those missing votes?
And where was this polling actually conducted? No doubt in the South-East, where the Tories already hold most of the seats anyway, having re-captured most of their 1997 losses there. A fat lot of good that has done them. Meanwhile, they are in a worse state than ever in Scotland, Wales, the North and the Midlands, where their loss of first many and then most of their seats first nearly and then actually cost them office in 1992 and 1997 respectively; and in the West Country, where their battle against the Liberals makes the difference between a majority Government and a hung Parliament at every General Election.
But will anyone have been polled in Scotland, Wales, the North, the Midlands or the West Country? No, of course not!
Monday, 19 March 2007
Tax Simplification
Like me, you probably don't much care what a prostitute-visiting cokehead thinks about anything, even if (again, like me) you do find it amusing that he is what passes for "diversity" in the Cameron Shadow Cabinet, since he went to Saint Paul's rather than to Eton. But tax simplification is not actually his idea.
And it is a good idea: flat rates of income tax and corporation tax, with only a much higher basic allowance, which I'd set at national median earnings for income tax, and at the amount necessary to pay every employee a much higher minimum wage for corporation tax. A simplified benefits system would give everyone an income not lower than half national median earnings.
Along with so much else, this would easily be affordable from the closure of so many loopholes (all of them, in fact) for Cameron's and Osborne's freeloading overclass. Which is why it will never actually be done by Cameron, or Osborne, or anyone else from that overclass's all-party New Labour Project. Yet another reason why we, the British People, need to be building new parties of our own.
And it is a good idea: flat rates of income tax and corporation tax, with only a much higher basic allowance, which I'd set at national median earnings for income tax, and at the amount necessary to pay every employee a much higher minimum wage for corporation tax. A simplified benefits system would give everyone an income not lower than half national median earnings.
Along with so much else, this would easily be affordable from the closure of so many loopholes (all of them, in fact) for Cameron's and Osborne's freeloading overclass. Which is why it will never actually be done by Cameron, or Osborne, or anyone else from that overclass's all-party New Labour Project. Yet another reason why we, the British People, need to be building new parties of our own.
How about this instead, Ms Harman?
Harriet Harman, whose name cannot be the correct answer to any sensible question, has today called for parents to have statutory paid time off when their children are ill. I have a better idea (which is not saying much, I grant you): how about the State's paying one parent (in practice, probably the mother) to stay at home with children all the time, thus relieving small business of this extra expense while removing the necessity of the State's paying for mothers to farm out even their very small, and thus very distressed, children to strangers? Furthermore, how about we all become less greedy and materialistic in the first place, and thus stop feeling any need to conscript mothers into the workforce?
Course They Were, Dear
After repeated telephone requests, and simply because I happened to be in Consett for something else this afternoon, I actually took myself to the Civic Centre to collect my nomination papers for the local elections. Apparently, they were about to be posted out to me. Course they were, dear.
Even Though The Sound Of Her Is Something Quite Atrocious
The Tories couldn't care less about health, and have nothing to say about it. But another million people must decide to vote Tory after every radio or television outing for Patricia Hewitt, hence the current Tory-initiated "debate". The sooner that Hewitt unfurls her umbrella and flies away, the better. A spoonful of her sugar most certainly does not help the medicine go down in anything remotely resembling the most delightful way.
Sunday, 18 March 2007
The Great Global Warming Swindle?
Well, is it? I do not mean this as a rhetorical question.
Has not reducing CO2 emissions a long history as a solution in search of a problem, having been held up in the 1970s as the answer to global cooling? Does it not conveniently involve destroying where they still exist, and not restoring where they have already been destroyed, the high-skill, high-wage, high-status jobs of the working class? (And is it not striking that its proponents are also opposed to such jobs in the form of nuclear power, an obvious solution to global warming caused by fossil fuel use?)
Does it not conveniently arrest the economic development of the poorer parts of the world, even presuming to tell Africans and others that they might not do as Europeans once did and use their natural resources to end thousands of years of cancer for their women and asphyxiation for the children as a result of cooking over indoor fires? Does it not conveniently seek to prevent people of modest means from travelling? And are not its proponents immensely privileged figures such as Al Gore, Zac Goldsmith and George Monbiot?
Well? I'd really like someone to answer this.
Has not reducing CO2 emissions a long history as a solution in search of a problem, having been held up in the 1970s as the answer to global cooling? Does it not conveniently involve destroying where they still exist, and not restoring where they have already been destroyed, the high-skill, high-wage, high-status jobs of the working class? (And is it not striking that its proponents are also opposed to such jobs in the form of nuclear power, an obvious solution to global warming caused by fossil fuel use?)
Does it not conveniently arrest the economic development of the poorer parts of the world, even presuming to tell Africans and others that they might not do as Europeans once did and use their natural resources to end thousands of years of cancer for their women and asphyxiation for the children as a result of cooking over indoor fires? Does it not conveniently seek to prevent people of modest means from travelling? And are not its proponents immensely privileged figures such as Al Gore, Zac Goldsmith and George Monbiot?
Well? I'd really like someone to answer this.
"It's not what you know,...
...it's who you don't know"? Has it really come to this?
It has always been beyond me what anything to do with universities had to do with people's parents. When people the same age (including 17-year-olds) work, or sign on, nobody asks about their parents. So what do their parents have to do with admissions, or student funding, or anything else connected with universities?
It has always been beyond me what anything to do with universities had to do with people's parents. When people the same age (including 17-year-olds) work, or sign on, nobody asks about their parents. So what do their parents have to do with admissions, or student funding, or anything else connected with universities?
John Bolton
This undesirable alien is to appear on Question Time this week, to mark what the post-Hutton BBC cravenly calls "the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War", as it were no longer going on. Other American citizens, such as David Duke and Louis Farrakhan, are banned from this country. Should not Bolton, along with any signatory to the Project for The New American Century orother identifiable member of the junta (Patrons of The Henry Jackson Society, that sort of thing), be likewise subject an Exclusion Order? If not, why not?
More Joy In Heaven
The Independent on Sunday has recanted its support for the legalisation of cannabis. The tide is turning against this wicked poison, which (contrary to what is often asserted) it is not at all normal to use or ever to have used, but the enforecemnt of the law against which be far too close to the homes and families of many politicians and commentators. The same is now true of cocaine, and possibly also of heroin.
Thank God that a voice in the liberal media is at last standing up to this vile, vicious combination of snobbery, the ruination of young lives, and the horrific oppression of people in the developing world. By so doing, it is standing up to the "free" market now espoused by the entire political class: there cannot be a "free" market in goods and services generally but not in drugs, or indeed alcohol, gambling, prostitution and pornography. And such a market corrodes everything that conservatives exist in order to conserve. Just go through the list (national sovereignty, family life, and so forth), and the point is made.
Thank God that a voice in the liberal media is at last standing up to this vile, vicious combination of snobbery, the ruination of young lives, and the horrific oppression of people in the developing world. By so doing, it is standing up to the "free" market now espoused by the entire political class: there cannot be a "free" market in goods and services generally but not in drugs, or indeed alcohol, gambling, prostitution and pornography. And such a market corrodes everything that conservatives exist in order to conserve. Just go through the list (national sovereignty, family life, and so forth), and the point is made.
The Not So Grand Coalition
Everyone seems to assume that the more-likely-than-not hung Parliament next time will make kingmakers of the Liberal Democrats, but I see no reason why this need be the case. On the contrary, this country is already being run by a coalition between the Tories and the Government (but not the Labour Party -- almost no Labour MP voted for Trident who was not either a Minister or a PPS).
For many years now, the Conservative Party has existed purely as a bogeyman with which to fighten Labour MPs and activists into line, except for when its votes were needed in order to bale out Blair and Brown (over Iraq, or top-up fees, or Trident) because the first tactic had not worked.
Thus has Britain been governed for a decade, so that a coalition between the politically indistinguishable Brown and Cameron would merely formalise an arrangement to which we all ought really to be more than used by now. Of course, being used to something is not at all the same as wishing to leave it in place.
For many years now, the Conservative Party has existed purely as a bogeyman with which to fighten Labour MPs and activists into line, except for when its votes were needed in order to bale out Blair and Brown (over Iraq, or top-up fees, or Trident) because the first tactic had not worked.
Thus has Britain been governed for a decade, so that a coalition between the politically indistinguishable Brown and Cameron would merely formalise an arrangement to which we all ought really to be more than used by now. Of course, being used to something is not at all the same as wishing to leave it in place.
Their Ladyships' House
This week saw the publication of an authoritative list of Britain's 10 most influential black women, including fully three members of the House of Lords (with two in the two top spots), one of them Britain's first ever black woman Cabinet Minister. Three is one more than the total number of black women in the House of Commons, neither of whom was listed.
In this of all years, those who would fill up legislative time with pointless changes to the House of Lords (the problem of the sale of seats in which is a simple matter of the enforcement of the existing criminal law) should instead apply the Attlee Test, and concentrate on the relief of poverty and of everything that accompanies it, leaving alone, or indeed positively using, any aspect of the Constitution which does not necessarily impede that relief.
In this of all years, those who would fill up legislative time with pointless changes to the House of Lords (the problem of the sale of seats in which is a simple matter of the enforcement of the existing criminal law) should instead apply the Attlee Test, and concentrate on the relief of poverty and of everything that accompanies it, leaving alone, or indeed positively using, any aspect of the Constitution which does not necessarily impede that relief.
Brown's Banana Republic?
Reports reach us that Gordon Brown is planning to bring into Government Lord Stevens, formerly head of that trigger-happy state within the State which is the Metropolitan Police. Could that be the same Metropolitan Police which, even a year into its "investigation", has mysteriously failed to charge anyone is relation to the flagrant sale of the knighthoods and peerages with which the Met itself is so liberally and routinely endowed? Silly me, I had fondly imagined that John "Banana" Yates (bent and yellow) was merely concerned for his own and his superiors' Ks and Big Ps, and was only for that reason refusing to do his publicly-funded job and sworn duty. But there is clearly more to it even than that. Can we look forward to ministerial office for Lord Yates of The Yard?
Saturday, 17 March 2007
Thoughts on Saint Patrick's Day
Another year, another Saint Patrick's Day. The recent elections in Northern Ireland represented the point at which Irish Nationalism finally died in Ireland (although it retains a following in the Diaspora, but has had next to none in the Republic for donkey's years now) and the "Never, Never, Never" school of Unionist reaction against it duly died at the same time. For, in relation either to support for the Police or to the Saint Andrews Agreement, no rejectionist candidate on either side was elected; indeed, I believe it is correct to say that none even made it past the first round.
The main issue seemed to be water rates. And why not? But none of the existing parties in Northern Ireland is suitable for contesting an election about bread-and-butter politics of that kind: each exists purely to fight a certain corner in a constitutional dispute which no longer obtains. If elections are going to be fought over things like water rates, then the correct parties to fight them must be those which will come to replace the dying Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.
The main issue seemed to be water rates. And why not? But none of the existing parties in Northern Ireland is suitable for contesting an election about bread-and-butter politics of that kind: each exists purely to fight a certain corner in a constitutional dispute which no longer obtains. If elections are going to be fought over things like water rates, then the correct parties to fight them must be those which will come to replace the dying Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.
Friday, 16 March 2007
Just Say No
If a political party cannot persuade anyone to give it any money, then it does not deserve to exist. But such is politicians’ and party hacks’ self-importance that they refuse to accept this self-evident fact. Their nationalisation of political parties would only make a baleful situation even worse. State funding of anything means state control. It has to, and in many cases it needs to.
Already, the only designation other than “Independent” permitted on a ballot paper is the name of a political party approved by the Electoral Commission. That Commission must approve the party’s constitution (including its aims and objectives), and must approve the Party Leader.
Some commission or committee would have to decide which parties or candidates deserved to be held up to the public teat. We can imagine only too easily who those commissioners or committee members would be, and therefore on what basis they would make their judgements.
All this merely to end the dying Labour Party’s dependence on the thriving trade unions, the only clean money left in British politics. Trade unions’ millions of members live, work and pay taxes the length and breadth of Britain. Unions have to ballot their members about maintaining a political fund, and even then individuals have to opt into it.
But that is precisely the problem so far as the political class is concerned: the combination of popularity, ordinariness, provincialism, democracy, liberty, and the vulgar practice of working for a living. That class wants to destroy the influence of the popular, the ordinary, the provincial, the democratic, the free and the hard-working. Indeed, it wants to destroy these social-democratic, socially conservative, patriotic things themselves, in order to destroy social democracy, social conservatism, and patriotism.
State funding of political parties is a key weapon in that destruction. Just say no.
Already, the only designation other than “Independent” permitted on a ballot paper is the name of a political party approved by the Electoral Commission. That Commission must approve the party’s constitution (including its aims and objectives), and must approve the Party Leader.
Some commission or committee would have to decide which parties or candidates deserved to be held up to the public teat. We can imagine only too easily who those commissioners or committee members would be, and therefore on what basis they would make their judgements.
All this merely to end the dying Labour Party’s dependence on the thriving trade unions, the only clean money left in British politics. Trade unions’ millions of members live, work and pay taxes the length and breadth of Britain. Unions have to ballot their members about maintaining a political fund, and even then individuals have to opt into it.
But that is precisely the problem so far as the political class is concerned: the combination of popularity, ordinariness, provincialism, democracy, liberty, and the vulgar practice of working for a living. That class wants to destroy the influence of the popular, the ordinary, the provincial, the democratic, the free and the hard-working. Indeed, it wants to destroy these social-democratic, socially conservative, patriotic things themselves, in order to destroy social democracy, social conservatism, and patriotism.
State funding of political parties is a key weapon in that destruction. Just say no.
The People's Prince
When the Archbishop of Canterbury hands the Sword of State to the newly crowned monarch, he charges as follows: "With this sword do justice, stop the growth of iniquity, protect the holy Church of God, help and defend widows and orphans, restore the things that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored, punish and reform what is amiss, and confirm what is in good order."
Who is doing this in Britain today, or even trying to do so? Not Tony Blair. Not Gordon Brown. Not David Cameron. Nor, frankly, was there ever anything very Dianese about such concerns.
But there is one public figure who was making such an effort 10 years ago, and who is still making it today. All hail, Charles, The People's Prince.
Who is doing this in Britain today, or even trying to do so? Not Tony Blair. Not Gordon Brown. Not David Cameron. Nor, frankly, was there ever anything very Dianese about such concerns.
But there is one public figure who was making such an effort 10 years ago, and who is still making it today. All hail, Charles, The People's Prince.
Relief Tomorrow
Proper television schedules instead of noisy "celebrity" self-publicity, and no more bullied deviation from the thoroughly sound principle that, where charity is concerned, the left hand should not know what the right hand is doing. Now, that's what I call relief. For another two years, at least.
Thursday, 15 March 2007
New Parties: The Necessary Nuclear Option
Thanks to the Tories, though continued by Labour, our "Army" is now technically only a defence force, because it is so small; it now does next to nothing except amateur policing and social work under the aegis of the UN. Thanks to the Tories, though continued by Labour, our Navy has been reduced to a coastal defence force, defending an unthreatened coast. And thanks to the Tories, though continued by Labour, the following is now a serious threat: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=1&subID=482.
The author, Colonel Tim Collins, is a signatory to The Henry Jackson Society. No wonder even David Cameron, albeit in a bit of would-be Straussian deception of the common herd, now claims not to be a neoconservative. In addition to wanting a single European defence capability (yes, that means you Michael Gove, Ed Vaizey, Andrew Roberts, Denis MacShane and the rest) under overall American command, the neocons, who run the two main parties and are the rising generation in the third, also want to abolish the RAF.
But at least £25 billion can somehow be found for Trident! The case for new political parties is unanswerable.
The author, Colonel Tim Collins, is a signatory to The Henry Jackson Society. No wonder even David Cameron, albeit in a bit of would-be Straussian deception of the common herd, now claims not to be a neoconservative. In addition to wanting a single European defence capability (yes, that means you Michael Gove, Ed Vaizey, Andrew Roberts, Denis MacShane and the rest) under overall American command, the neocons, who run the two main parties and are the rising generation in the third, also want to abolish the RAF.
But at least £25 billion can somehow be found for Trident! The case for new political parties is unanswerable.
Wednesday, 14 March 2007
Enough To Make You Swear
In best BBC fashion, yesterday's You and Yours (well, they have to fill it up with something) suggested that the Scouts were out of place in today's world, since they pledge allegiance "to God and the Queen". Well, I for one don't remember any sort of time limit, and when, in view of that consideration, you think about just how many of us old Scouts and Guides there are in this country...
And then comes today's blogosphere rumour that Gordon Brown is to make Neil Kinnock Leader of the House of Lords. Which would win out, Kinnock's Privy Council Oath, or his oath as a European Commissioner to be unmoved by national considerations? Here's hoping that it's 2:1 to Britain, because he has promised on his honour to do his duty to God and the Queen, to help other people, and to keep the Scout Law.
And then comes today's blogosphere rumour that Gordon Brown is to make Neil Kinnock Leader of the House of Lords. Which would win out, Kinnock's Privy Council Oath, or his oath as a European Commissioner to be unmoved by national considerations? Here's hoping that it's 2:1 to Britain, because he has promised on his honour to do his duty to God and the Queen, to help other people, and to keep the Scout Law.
Sophists, Economists and Calculators
After the death of Marie Antoinette, Edmund Burke commented that the world had fallen into the hands of sophists, economists and calculators. I feel the same way on learning that the new twenty pound note will feature, no longer Sir Edward Elgar, but Adam Smith.
Tuesday, 13 March 2007
Not So Sure A Start
Yes, many women in prison have mental health problems, or have drug addictions, or have histories of abuse in childhood, or have combinations of these things. So, of course, do many men in prison, and most people of both sexes living on the streets thanks to the cross-party consensus (the "centre", as we must therefore no doubt call it) on these matters.
Well, how many more of these problems, and of the people afflicted by them, are we going to have if we continue to tear away toddlers from their mothers, causing the poor little souls extreme distress, in order to sacrifice those mothers, and thus also those toddlers, to Mammon?
We do this because the born-rich, married-richer (and often divorced-into-filthy-rich) 1970s throwbacks who have controlled social policy for the last 30 years, several of whom now sit in or near the Cabinet, simply cannot imagine why anyone whom they consider fully human would wish to be in the company of a small child. (They themselves are probably unable to name, or even to enumerate, any sons that they might ever have produced over the years.) But they are prepared to farm them out to the lower orders, some of whom do not even have degrees.
If we had either a Labour Party or a Conservative Party properly so called, then we would be paying mothers of small children to stay at home with them. Both parties still trading under those names are now bankrupt, practically memberless, and supported at the polls (i.e., the real polls, the ones in polling stations) by ever-dwindling numbers of voters. So we have the opportunity to re-create proper parties. The restoration of real motherhood, so esteemed by society as to be supported financially and otherwise by the State, must (indeed, must by definition) be a key element in that re-creation, itself the re-enfranchisement of the British People.
Well, how many more of these problems, and of the people afflicted by them, are we going to have if we continue to tear away toddlers from their mothers, causing the poor little souls extreme distress, in order to sacrifice those mothers, and thus also those toddlers, to Mammon?
We do this because the born-rich, married-richer (and often divorced-into-filthy-rich) 1970s throwbacks who have controlled social policy for the last 30 years, several of whom now sit in or near the Cabinet, simply cannot imagine why anyone whom they consider fully human would wish to be in the company of a small child. (They themselves are probably unable to name, or even to enumerate, any sons that they might ever have produced over the years.) But they are prepared to farm them out to the lower orders, some of whom do not even have degrees.
If we had either a Labour Party or a Conservative Party properly so called, then we would be paying mothers of small children to stay at home with them. Both parties still trading under those names are now bankrupt, practically memberless, and supported at the polls (i.e., the real polls, the ones in polling stations) by ever-dwindling numbers of voters. So we have the opportunity to re-create proper parties. The restoration of real motherhood, so esteemed by society as to be supported financially and otherwise by the State, must (indeed, must by definition) be a key element in that re-creation, itself the re-enfranchisement of the British People.
The House of Lords
The Lords are going to vote for 100% appointment, and the 95 Labour MPs who voted for 100% election after voting against 80% election were mostly, if not entirely, wreckers.
So, how about this for a compromise? Within a generally appointed House of Lords as at present, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and each of the nine English regions (though with their boundaries altered to reflect those of the historic counties) might each elect, from two lists, eight peers.
On one list would be party candidates: vote for one and the top five would be declared elected at the end. And on the other list would be Independents: vote for one and the top three would be declared elected at the end. This would give 96 in all, sitting for life, but with the procedure repeated every 15 years.
Furthermore, since peers, unlike MPs, currently have responsibilities only to the whole nation and not to individual constituencies, there would also be a life peerage for any person independent of party who, by the close of nominations for the above election every 15 years, secured the nominations of at least two thousand registered voters in each constituency used for elections to the House of Commons.
These would therefore be a very few people whom a very significant section of politically the more engaged section of society felt belonged within the parliamentary process, in place of the current arrangements for "People's Peers".
Regarding party nominees, after each General Election, each party represented in the House of Commons and whose members took their seats would be permitted to nominate a number of life peers based on where they came among the parties so represented: two for the smallest, four for the second-smallest, and so on up.
A list of up to 20 (just in case) to be nominated would be published by each party prior to each General Election, having been determined by seeking nominations from branches (including of affiliates in Labour's or its successor's case) and including the top 20 in order of the number of such nominations that they received.
And the Lords Spiritual might be elected every five years, from among those of the Church of England's diocesan bishops who expressed a willingness to be so elected, by a body comprising three politically independent nominees of each of MP (including not fewer than one constituent at the time of nomination, nor more than two) as guardians of moral and spiritual values, holding office for life and with each new MP nominating three.
Yes, there would be some non-Christians, including atheists. But there would also be plenty of Catholics, Evangelicals, Anglo-Catholics, old-style Middle Churchmen, Scottish Presbyterians, and others a very long way indeed from the Liberal Establishment within the Church of England.
I am not saying that any of this would be ideal: no change would be ideal, as it would have been in 1999. But that ideal is no longer an option in practice. And I suspect that a lot of people, including in both Houses, would be a lot more favourable towards the above than towards "election" from party lists.
So, how about this for a compromise? Within a generally appointed House of Lords as at present, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and each of the nine English regions (though with their boundaries altered to reflect those of the historic counties) might each elect, from two lists, eight peers.
On one list would be party candidates: vote for one and the top five would be declared elected at the end. And on the other list would be Independents: vote for one and the top three would be declared elected at the end. This would give 96 in all, sitting for life, but with the procedure repeated every 15 years.
Furthermore, since peers, unlike MPs, currently have responsibilities only to the whole nation and not to individual constituencies, there would also be a life peerage for any person independent of party who, by the close of nominations for the above election every 15 years, secured the nominations of at least two thousand registered voters in each constituency used for elections to the House of Commons.
These would therefore be a very few people whom a very significant section of politically the more engaged section of society felt belonged within the parliamentary process, in place of the current arrangements for "People's Peers".
Regarding party nominees, after each General Election, each party represented in the House of Commons and whose members took their seats would be permitted to nominate a number of life peers based on where they came among the parties so represented: two for the smallest, four for the second-smallest, and so on up.
A list of up to 20 (just in case) to be nominated would be published by each party prior to each General Election, having been determined by seeking nominations from branches (including of affiliates in Labour's or its successor's case) and including the top 20 in order of the number of such nominations that they received.
And the Lords Spiritual might be elected every five years, from among those of the Church of England's diocesan bishops who expressed a willingness to be so elected, by a body comprising three politically independent nominees of each of MP (including not fewer than one constituent at the time of nomination, nor more than two) as guardians of moral and spiritual values, holding office for life and with each new MP nominating three.
Yes, there would be some non-Christians, including atheists. But there would also be plenty of Catholics, Evangelicals, Anglo-Catholics, old-style Middle Churchmen, Scottish Presbyterians, and others a very long way indeed from the Liberal Establishment within the Church of England.
I am not saying that any of this would be ideal: no change would be ideal, as it would have been in 1999. But that ideal is no longer an option in practice. And I suspect that a lot of people, including in both Houses, would be a lot more favourable towards the above than towards "election" from party lists.
Monday, 12 March 2007
After Trident: Time To Grow Up
Trident was at least useless only in its own ostensibly defensive terms, whereas any new programme would be useless in any terms whatever, in addition to the fact that nuclear weapons (like radiological, chemical and biological weapons) are morally repugnant simply in themselves.
They offer not the slightest defence against a range of loosely-knit, if at all connected, terrorist organisations pursuing a range of loosely-knit, if at all connected, aims in relation to a range of countries while actually governing no state. Where would any such organisation keep nuclear weapons in the first place?
Furthermore, the possession of nuclear weapons, in addition to offending against Islamic (and much other) theological opinion, serves to convey to terrorists and their supporters that Britain wishes to "play with the big boys", thereby contributing to making Britain a target for the terrorist activity against which such weapons are defensively useless. It is high time for Britain to grow up.
Britain's permanent seat on the UN Security Council could not be taken away without British consent, and so does not depend in any way on her possession of nuclear weapons; on the contrary, the world needs and deserves a non-nuclear permanent member of that Council.
Most European countries do not have nuclear weapons, and nor does Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Are these therefore in greater danger? On the contrary, the London bombings of 7th July 2005 were attacks on a country with nuclear weapons, while the attacks of 11th September 2001 were against a country with by far the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. The only "nuclear power" in the Middle East is Israel; is Israel the most secure state in the Middle East?
It is mind-boggling to hear people go on about Iran, whose President is in any case on the way out, is in any case many years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and in any case only wants one (if he does, and see above about Islam) to use against the only Middle Eastern country that already has them. What does any of this have to do with us?
A new nuclear weapons programme could only be commissioned on grounds purely ideological in the most irrational and doctrinaire sense of the word.
Nor would any such programme represent or effect national pride or independence, but rather the wholesale subjugation of Britain's defence capability to a foreign power (however friendly). That power maintains at least no less friendly relations with numerous other countries, of which almost none have nuclear weapons.
Diverting enormous sums of money towards public services, and towards the relief of poverty at home and abroad, precisely by reasserting control over our own defence capability, would represent a most significant step towards One Nation politics, with an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation.
They offer not the slightest defence against a range of loosely-knit, if at all connected, terrorist organisations pursuing a range of loosely-knit, if at all connected, aims in relation to a range of countries while actually governing no state. Where would any such organisation keep nuclear weapons in the first place?
Furthermore, the possession of nuclear weapons, in addition to offending against Islamic (and much other) theological opinion, serves to convey to terrorists and their supporters that Britain wishes to "play with the big boys", thereby contributing to making Britain a target for the terrorist activity against which such weapons are defensively useless. It is high time for Britain to grow up.
Britain's permanent seat on the UN Security Council could not be taken away without British consent, and so does not depend in any way on her possession of nuclear weapons; on the contrary, the world needs and deserves a non-nuclear permanent member of that Council.
Most European countries do not have nuclear weapons, and nor does Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Are these therefore in greater danger? On the contrary, the London bombings of 7th July 2005 were attacks on a country with nuclear weapons, while the attacks of 11th September 2001 were against a country with by far the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. The only "nuclear power" in the Middle East is Israel; is Israel the most secure state in the Middle East?
It is mind-boggling to hear people go on about Iran, whose President is in any case on the way out, is in any case many years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and in any case only wants one (if he does, and see above about Islam) to use against the only Middle Eastern country that already has them. What does any of this have to do with us?
A new nuclear weapons programme could only be commissioned on grounds purely ideological in the most irrational and doctrinaire sense of the word.
Nor would any such programme represent or effect national pride or independence, but rather the wholesale subjugation of Britain's defence capability to a foreign power (however friendly). That power maintains at least no less friendly relations with numerous other countries, of which almost none have nuclear weapons.
Diverting enormous sums of money towards public services, and towards the relief of poverty at home and abroad, precisely by reasserting control over our own defence capability, would represent a most significant step towards One Nation politics, with an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation.
Cameron The Criminal Conspirator
The more that I think about the Bullingdon Club, the nastier it appears. Yes, I am a founder-member of, and indeed named, a thriving (mixed) dining club which now has chapters internationally and even a Wikpiedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Club). And yes, I am a Past President of an all-male one, and seem to have become the de facto Life President thereof, at least while it remains in exile and continues to await its glorious restoration to its rightful place upon the casting down of The Enemy.
But there is no similarity at all between either of these and an organisation which exists specifically in order to commit criminal damage and other offences, even including assault, just so that its members can prove their ability to pick up the bill.
Imagine if a group of youths the same age, but who got up at six o'clock in the morning to pay for universities, were to organise themselves into a club (complete with a membership list, officers, some sort of uniform, the works) for the express purpose of smashing up pubs. They would rightly be prosecuted as a criminal conspiracy, and could reasonably expect to be imprisoned.
Well, living in rural England, as I have done most of my life and which is a very different matter from merely owning great swathes of it while living in Knightsbridge or Notting Hill, I suspect that the publicans of Oxfordshire are not without connections in the local constabulary and magistracy. How would it look for Cameron if the Bully Boys were to be locked up for just long enough to have themselves sent down? Or how would it look for the University of Oxford if they were not sent down under such circumstances?
Oh, and in light of recent events, how many black members has the Bullingdon Club ever had? Has it ever even had one?
But there is no similarity at all between either of these and an organisation which exists specifically in order to commit criminal damage and other offences, even including assault, just so that its members can prove their ability to pick up the bill.
Imagine if a group of youths the same age, but who got up at six o'clock in the morning to pay for universities, were to organise themselves into a club (complete with a membership list, officers, some sort of uniform, the works) for the express purpose of smashing up pubs. They would rightly be prosecuted as a criminal conspiracy, and could reasonably expect to be imprisoned.
Well, living in rural England, as I have done most of my life and which is a very different matter from merely owning great swathes of it while living in Knightsbridge or Notting Hill, I suspect that the publicans of Oxfordshire are not without connections in the local constabulary and magistracy. How would it look for Cameron if the Bully Boys were to be locked up for just long enough to have themselves sent down? Or how would it look for the University of Oxford if they were not sent down under such circumstances?
Oh, and in light of recent events, how many black members has the Bullingdon Club ever had? Has it ever even had one?
"Tell A Lie Big Enough"
This superb post appears at http://neilclark66.blogspot.com:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” It's worth remembering the words of Dr Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda around the first anniversary of the death of Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague.
The 'official version' of the Milosevic story, brought to you by CNN, BBC, Newsweek and other media outlets of the New World Order, was that Slobo (aka 'The Butcher of the Balkans'), rose to power by whipping up dormant Serb nationalism and through his maniacal desire to create a 'Greater Serbia' provoked the break-up of Yugoslavia and the decade of bloodshed which ensued. Not content with starting wars with Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, the genocidal Slobo then turned his attention to the hapless Kosovan Albanians and started to carry out a systematic programme of 'ethnic cleansing' on a scale unseen in Europe since the days of the Third Reich.
Slobo would have succeeded in his evil designs had it not been for the timely intervention of NATO, whose humanitarian bombing campaign defeated the wicked dictator and restored peace to Kosovo. The following year, the wicked dictator was toppled by a popular uprising of his own people and then sent to The Hague to be held to account for his many crimes. Unfortunately, before the guilty sentence could be passed, 'The Butcher' died, cheating justice.
There's just one thing wrong with the above version of events. It's bullshit.
Not a single aspect of the narrative - the narrative we have heard ad nauseam in the West for the past decade and a half - is true.
Milosevic, the 'aggressive nationalist', was in fact a lifelong socialist who never once made a racist speech. The 1989 Kosovo Polje address where it was claimed that Milosevic incited ethnic hatred, was a call for socialist unity: you can read the speech in full in English at http://www.swans.com/library/art8/smilos01.html
Milosevic the 'dictator' was a politician who won three democratic election victories in a country where 21 political parties and a well-financed opposition media freely operated. Even Adam Lebor, Milosevic's far from sympathetic biographer, concedes that to call Milosevic a 'dictator' is 'incorrect'.
Milosevic 'the serial warmonger', started no wars. He wasn't even in charge of Yugoslavia when Slovenia and Croatia, at the encouragement of Germany, illegally broke away from the Yugoslav Federation, while the war in Bosnia was caused by the US ambassador Warren Zimmerman's last-minute intervention to persuade the Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic to renege from the 1992 Lisbon agreement, which provided for the peaceful division of the republic. As for Kosovo, we already have British defence minister Lord Gilbert's admission that at the Rambouillet 'peace' conference the West deliberately produced a document whose terms were so onerous that they knew the Yugoslav delegation would not be able to sign. The hostilities in Kosovo were triggered by the US's funding and arming of the terrorist Kosovan Liberation Army, in a deliberate attempt to provoke a civil war, which would then give NATO the pretext to occupy the rump Yugoslavia.
As for bringing peace to Kosovo, Western intervention did the opposite: since 1999 more than 200,000 Serbs, Roma, Jews and other minorities have been ethnically cleansed from the province by the KLA, under the watchful eye of Western forces. The fall from power of Milosevic in October 2000 was not a demonstration of 'people power', but an undemocratic coup d'état, orchestrated and funded by the U.S., who bankrolled the anti-socialist opposition to the tune of $70m. And as for Milosevic 'cheating justice' at The Hague, over 300 prosecution witnesses appeared at the trial and not a single one testified that he had ordered war crimes or other such atrocities. Justice was certainly denied by Milosevic's death - but not in the way the New World Order would like us to believe.
The more one considers the facts, the more clear it is that that Milosevic was the victim of the most cynical demonisation campaign of recent times. Why was it done? The problem with Milosevic from the NWO's perspective, was not that he was a war-mongering nationalist hell-bent on destroying Yugoslavia, but that he wasn't.
The West wanted the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia broken up into as many separate parts as possible: in the words of George Kenney of the US State Department "in post-cold war Europe no place remained for a large, independent-minded socialist state that resisted globalisation." Milosevic stood in the way of Western economic and military hegemony in the Balkans and for doing so he paid the ultimate price.
But though Milosevic is dead, the warmongering forces that destroyed both him and his country are still at large, with the rich pickings of the Iranian economy now in their sights. Eight years ago Slobo was 'The New Hitler', now it's the turn of President Ahmadinejad. The reality is that when it comes to the use of Nazi propaganda techniques in order to dupe the public into supporting illegal wars of conquest, the real successors of Adolf and co are not those accused, but those doing the accusing.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” It's worth remembering the words of Dr Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda around the first anniversary of the death of Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague.
The 'official version' of the Milosevic story, brought to you by CNN, BBC, Newsweek and other media outlets of the New World Order, was that Slobo (aka 'The Butcher of the Balkans'), rose to power by whipping up dormant Serb nationalism and through his maniacal desire to create a 'Greater Serbia' provoked the break-up of Yugoslavia and the decade of bloodshed which ensued. Not content with starting wars with Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, the genocidal Slobo then turned his attention to the hapless Kosovan Albanians and started to carry out a systematic programme of 'ethnic cleansing' on a scale unseen in Europe since the days of the Third Reich.
Slobo would have succeeded in his evil designs had it not been for the timely intervention of NATO, whose humanitarian bombing campaign defeated the wicked dictator and restored peace to Kosovo. The following year, the wicked dictator was toppled by a popular uprising of his own people and then sent to The Hague to be held to account for his many crimes. Unfortunately, before the guilty sentence could be passed, 'The Butcher' died, cheating justice.
There's just one thing wrong with the above version of events. It's bullshit.
Not a single aspect of the narrative - the narrative we have heard ad nauseam in the West for the past decade and a half - is true.
Milosevic, the 'aggressive nationalist', was in fact a lifelong socialist who never once made a racist speech. The 1989 Kosovo Polje address where it was claimed that Milosevic incited ethnic hatred, was a call for socialist unity: you can read the speech in full in English at http://www.swans.com/library/art8/smilos01.html
Milosevic the 'dictator' was a politician who won three democratic election victories in a country where 21 political parties and a well-financed opposition media freely operated. Even Adam Lebor, Milosevic's far from sympathetic biographer, concedes that to call Milosevic a 'dictator' is 'incorrect'.
Milosevic 'the serial warmonger', started no wars. He wasn't even in charge of Yugoslavia when Slovenia and Croatia, at the encouragement of Germany, illegally broke away from the Yugoslav Federation, while the war in Bosnia was caused by the US ambassador Warren Zimmerman's last-minute intervention to persuade the Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic to renege from the 1992 Lisbon agreement, which provided for the peaceful division of the republic. As for Kosovo, we already have British defence minister Lord Gilbert's admission that at the Rambouillet 'peace' conference the West deliberately produced a document whose terms were so onerous that they knew the Yugoslav delegation would not be able to sign. The hostilities in Kosovo were triggered by the US's funding and arming of the terrorist Kosovan Liberation Army, in a deliberate attempt to provoke a civil war, which would then give NATO the pretext to occupy the rump Yugoslavia.
As for bringing peace to Kosovo, Western intervention did the opposite: since 1999 more than 200,000 Serbs, Roma, Jews and other minorities have been ethnically cleansed from the province by the KLA, under the watchful eye of Western forces. The fall from power of Milosevic in October 2000 was not a demonstration of 'people power', but an undemocratic coup d'état, orchestrated and funded by the U.S., who bankrolled the anti-socialist opposition to the tune of $70m. And as for Milosevic 'cheating justice' at The Hague, over 300 prosecution witnesses appeared at the trial and not a single one testified that he had ordered war crimes or other such atrocities. Justice was certainly denied by Milosevic's death - but not in the way the New World Order would like us to believe.
The more one considers the facts, the more clear it is that that Milosevic was the victim of the most cynical demonisation campaign of recent times. Why was it done? The problem with Milosevic from the NWO's perspective, was not that he was a war-mongering nationalist hell-bent on destroying Yugoslavia, but that he wasn't.
The West wanted the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia broken up into as many separate parts as possible: in the words of George Kenney of the US State Department "in post-cold war Europe no place remained for a large, independent-minded socialist state that resisted globalisation." Milosevic stood in the way of Western economic and military hegemony in the Balkans and for doing so he paid the ultimate price.
But though Milosevic is dead, the warmongering forces that destroyed both him and his country are still at large, with the rich pickings of the Iranian economy now in their sights. Eight years ago Slobo was 'The New Hitler', now it's the turn of President Ahmadinejad. The reality is that when it comes to the use of Nazi propaganda techniques in order to dupe the public into supporting illegal wars of conquest, the real successors of Adolf and co are not those accused, but those doing the accusing.
Thursday, 8 March 2007
An Elected Second Chamber
Now that we are to have this unnecessary monstrosity, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and each of the nine English regions (though with their boundaries altered to reflect those of the historic counties) should each elect, from two lists, eight Senators every two years, for six-year terms. On one list would be party candidates: vote for one and the top five would be declared elected at the end. And on the other list would be Independents: vote for one and the top three would be declared elected at the end. This would give 288 in all.
Furthermore, since peers, unlike MPs, currently have responsibilities only to the whole nation and not to individual constituencies, there would also be a six-year term as a Senator for any person independent of party who, by the close of nominations for that election, secured the nominations of at least two thousand registered voters in each constituency used for elections to the House of Commons. There could never be more than about 40 such Senators, and even half of that number would be unlikely in practice; they would be people whom a very significant section of politically the more engaged section of society felt belonged within the parliamentary process.
Furthermore, since peers, unlike MPs, currently have responsibilities only to the whole nation and not to individual constituencies, there would also be a six-year term as a Senator for any person independent of party who, by the close of nominations for that election, secured the nominations of at least two thousand registered voters in each constituency used for elections to the House of Commons. There could never be more than about 40 such Senators, and even half of that number would be unlikely in practice; they would be people whom a very significant section of politically the more engaged section of society felt belonged within the parliamentary process.
Who needs politicians when you can have Paxo?
Last night's Newsnight managed to report as fact that Gordon Brown was planning state funding of political parties, an elected second chamber, and the Alternative Vote system of "Proportional" "Representation", without producing anything so vulgar as evidence. But, of course, all of these things have long been favoured by the BBC, and especially by Newsnight. So who would a mere Prime Minister be to argue?
Of Newsmen and The News
Funny how the BBC could suddenly be bothered to report the cash for seats scandal once the BBC itself was story...
Levy Doesn't Just LOOK Cheap...
Michael Levy's rabbi and apparent new spokesman has come as near as doesn't matter to accusing the media and the Police of anti-Semitism. So, is the conviction of Lewis Libby anti-Semitic, too? I have yet to Google for this, but I bet that if I did, then I'd find the neocons in full cry to exactly that effect. Utterly, utterly, utterly beneath contempt.
Victory
It is now two weeks since the date on which the Standards Board for England promised to act against me, in obedience to Hilary Armstrong, in order to prevent me from contesting either the forthcoming local elections or the next General Election. No action has been taken.
Uses For Gordon
If anyone else stood against Gordon Brown and won, then what would they do with Gordon Brown? They'd be insane to keep his Chancellor, and not much more sensible to make him Foreign Secretary or Home Secretary. He'd just walk out if offered anything more junior than that. On the backbenches, he spend all day and all evening plotting with MPs and briefing journalists. Even if he were made an ambassador, then it would really have to be to Washington or the UN, enabling him to conduct his own foreign and trade policies, effectively independently, and with the ear of whoever happened to be the President of the United States, a country his own political links to which go back a lot further than those of Tony Blair himself, never mind of any Blairite successor (including David Cameron). All in all, Number 10 is actually where Brown can do the least damage.
Monday, 5 March 2007
Saturday, 3 March 2007
"Institutional Racism"
I don't like this term, coined by a man who was banned from entering this country and who strongly opposed the closest possible economic, social, cultural and political co-operation, both within the United States and throughout the world, between the people of West African slave descent (primarily concentrated in the United States and in the Commonwealth countries of the Caribbean) and the people of English, Scots, Welsh and Irish descent (primarily concentrated in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Irish Republic, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), on the basis of their shared economic, social, cultural and political Christian heritage, including their shared English language and their shared blood ties.
But, if we must use it, then it seems clear to me to whom it actually applies. It actually applies to those who maintain that there is something inherent in that common tradition's pedagogical principles which renders Afro-Caribbean boys, in particular, effectively unteachable in accordance therewith, and accordingly something inherent in Afro-Caribbean boys to the same unhappy effect. Can someone please explain to me, in that case, why schools in the Caribbean are famously disciplined and orderly places, delivering excellent education to pupils of both sexes who are routinely poorer than almost anyone in Britain? Indeed, those schools are often so good that British parents of Afro-Caribbean extraction send their children to them in order to avoid what has been done to the British institutions on which they were originally modelled.
Having worked as a supply teacher in a number of all-white schools, I can assure anyone that the behaviour in some of them (not all, but some) was so bad that I simply cannot imagine how that anywhere else, while it might be just as bad, could possibly be any worse.
But, if we must use it, then it seems clear to me to whom it actually applies. It actually applies to those who maintain that there is something inherent in that common tradition's pedagogical principles which renders Afro-Caribbean boys, in particular, effectively unteachable in accordance therewith, and accordingly something inherent in Afro-Caribbean boys to the same unhappy effect. Can someone please explain to me, in that case, why schools in the Caribbean are famously disciplined and orderly places, delivering excellent education to pupils of both sexes who are routinely poorer than almost anyone in Britain? Indeed, those schools are often so good that British parents of Afro-Caribbean extraction send their children to them in order to avoid what has been done to the British institutions on which they were originally modelled.
Having worked as a supply teacher in a number of all-white schools, I can assure anyone that the behaviour in some of them (not all, but some) was so bad that I simply cannot imagine how that anywhere else, while it might be just as bad, could possibly be any worse.
Time To Stop Worrying?
The most notable thing about the ghastly duo of Bush and Ahmadinejad is that they are both on the way out, Bush because he has to be (and because no serious Presidential contender, not even Bomber Clinton's erstwhile "Co-President", has the slightest intention of pursuing his foreign policy agenda quite as he does, although she still must be stopped), and Ahmadinejad at the hands of the electorate (if he lasts that long). So, might it not be time to stop worrying about either of them?
In which case, Rudy who?
I am not as hostile to the Republican Party as one might expect: in the period that shaped the current American party system, there was a score draw between the Democrats (Civil Rights) and the Republicans (opposition to the Vietnam War). With America's primaries, caucuses, and so forth, it strikes me as obvious that one should register as a Republican in a staunchly Republican state or district.
However, at the recent midterms, and at long last, naturally and historically Democratic interests, which have for so long been strung along by the party of Wall Street and its utterly unbridled consumer-capitalism (which cannot function without abortion, among many other nasty things), have woken up to the fact that that party would actually cease to exist if it ever did limit abortion, which is why it will never do so.
For to do so would be the kill the goose that lays the Republican Party’s electoral golden egg. Huge numbers of people who were Democrats at least until 1968, or in many cases until as late as 1980, and who ought still to be so in socio-economic terms, would simply declare "Mission Accomplished" and go home to the Democratic Party.
To prevent this from happening, Republican leaders have to pretend to oppose abortion while doing absolutely nothing contrary to the pro-abortion views of Barbara Bush, of Laura Bush, probably of George Bush the Elder, and certainly of several enormous donors to Republican funds. American readers might be interested to learn that, within minutes of the result of the last American Presidential Elections, officers of the London Chapter of Republicans Abroad, as such, had taken to the British airwaves to dismiss as "scare-mongering" the suggestion that there might now be any change to America’s abortion law.
The recent Congressional results suggest that the orthodox Catholics and white Evangelical Protestants are now about as taken in by this as the latter’s black brethren have always been, i.e., not at all. They have worked out that the abortion law is going to stay exactly the same under either party, or, to put it another way, that there is at least no less chance of changing it through the Democrats as through the Republicans. Furthermore, they might also have realised that the strong influence of the black churches among the Democrats might well make it easier to do this, and to pursue other objectives in the field of family values, through that party rather than through its rival. Certainly, the Alliance for Marriage would seem to suggest this, as well as having the decidedly anti-capitalist edge that anyone familiar with Catholic Social Teaching and Distributism knows any truly pro-family movement to need.
Like the Labour Parties in Britain, Ireland and the Old Commonwealth, the American Democratic Party was much more left-wing (in American terms, "populist") economically when it was much more conservative socially and based in churches (not least, Catholic churches), and indeed precisely for that reason. Parties that chase after decadent social libertinism rapidly end up at decadent economic libertinism, as surely as vice versa (on which, just look at what has become the British Conservative Party). Again, this is axiomatic to anyone who has ever read Chesterton, Belloc, or any Pope since Leo XIII.
The different structure of American parties, compared to British ones, has made possible the return of the Democratic Party to its economically populist, socially conservative, and thus doubly patriotic, Christian roots, utterly inimical to neoconservatism on all four points. Or rather, as it were, the return of those roots to that party. A presidential candidacy in that vein would not only be good for America, but would also light touchpapers across Europe, Canada and the Antipodes. So half of the Democrats should be down on their knees begging Senator Jim Webb to run, and the other half should be out finding him an economically left-wing, socially conservative, anti-war running mate and potential successor who is either a churchgoing African-American or an orthodox Catholic (easy), and preferably both (also perfectly feasible).
In which case, Rudy who?
However, at the recent midterms, and at long last, naturally and historically Democratic interests, which have for so long been strung along by the party of Wall Street and its utterly unbridled consumer-capitalism (which cannot function without abortion, among many other nasty things), have woken up to the fact that that party would actually cease to exist if it ever did limit abortion, which is why it will never do so.
For to do so would be the kill the goose that lays the Republican Party’s electoral golden egg. Huge numbers of people who were Democrats at least until 1968, or in many cases until as late as 1980, and who ought still to be so in socio-economic terms, would simply declare "Mission Accomplished" and go home to the Democratic Party.
To prevent this from happening, Republican leaders have to pretend to oppose abortion while doing absolutely nothing contrary to the pro-abortion views of Barbara Bush, of Laura Bush, probably of George Bush the Elder, and certainly of several enormous donors to Republican funds. American readers might be interested to learn that, within minutes of the result of the last American Presidential Elections, officers of the London Chapter of Republicans Abroad, as such, had taken to the British airwaves to dismiss as "scare-mongering" the suggestion that there might now be any change to America’s abortion law.
The recent Congressional results suggest that the orthodox Catholics and white Evangelical Protestants are now about as taken in by this as the latter’s black brethren have always been, i.e., not at all. They have worked out that the abortion law is going to stay exactly the same under either party, or, to put it another way, that there is at least no less chance of changing it through the Democrats as through the Republicans. Furthermore, they might also have realised that the strong influence of the black churches among the Democrats might well make it easier to do this, and to pursue other objectives in the field of family values, through that party rather than through its rival. Certainly, the Alliance for Marriage would seem to suggest this, as well as having the decidedly anti-capitalist edge that anyone familiar with Catholic Social Teaching and Distributism knows any truly pro-family movement to need.
Like the Labour Parties in Britain, Ireland and the Old Commonwealth, the American Democratic Party was much more left-wing (in American terms, "populist") economically when it was much more conservative socially and based in churches (not least, Catholic churches), and indeed precisely for that reason. Parties that chase after decadent social libertinism rapidly end up at decadent economic libertinism, as surely as vice versa (on which, just look at what has become the British Conservative Party). Again, this is axiomatic to anyone who has ever read Chesterton, Belloc, or any Pope since Leo XIII.
The different structure of American parties, compared to British ones, has made possible the return of the Democratic Party to its economically populist, socially conservative, and thus doubly patriotic, Christian roots, utterly inimical to neoconservatism on all four points. Or rather, as it were, the return of those roots to that party. A presidential candidacy in that vein would not only be good for America, but would also light touchpapers across Europe, Canada and the Antipodes. So half of the Democrats should be down on their knees begging Senator Jim Webb to run, and the other half should be out finding him an economically left-wing, socially conservative, anti-war running mate and potential successor who is either a churchgoing African-American or an orthodox Catholic (easy), and preferably both (also perfectly feasible).
In which case, Rudy who?
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