And the basis for this claim is…?

Dismissing those who argue that Britain could negotiate a trade deal with the EU once it had left – note carefully the FUD-inducing avoidance of any reference to negotiating before leaving the EU, which Article 50 provides – Kevin Daly, an economist with the universally admired and respected investment bank Goldman Sachs, is quoted by the Daily Telegraph:

Given the size and importance of the UK economy, it is unlikely that the UK could negotiate the same access to the EU single market that Switzerland and Norway have achieved.  In particular, the UK’s ability to conduct business in financial services across the European Union is likely to be severely compromised by a departure from the EU.

And what of the evidence for this assertion?  Come on reader, you didn’t actually expect such a facile claim to be supported with any evidence did you?  That’s not the way FUD works!  But clearly the FUD flood season is upon us.

This is the same Goldman Sachs which encouraged its investors to get their money into gold investments last year as it predicted the value would rise to $1,840 per ounce, then this year, in concert with other investment banks, encouraged its investors to sell out of their ‘paper’ gold positions forcing the price to crash – enabling Goldman and the others to cash in by stocking their own vaults with physical metal on the cheap while their investors were forced to trigger stop losses and pay huge amounts to cover margin calls.

We won’t be taking any lessons from this lot of self interested troughers either.

We won’t take any lessons from these self interested Europhiles

According to a claque of pro-EU corporate captains, we eurosceptics are putting ‘politics before economics’.  In other words, we are being accused of putting democracy and self determination before the money making interests of these extremely wealthy individuals.  How very dare we put the democratic rights of millions of people before the bank balances of the well connected claque.

But even that premise of ‘politics before economics’ is utterly flawed, as there is no earthly reason for us to be trapped in a political union simply to be a part of the single market.  And when they try counter this fact with their claim that in leaving the EU we would allegedly lose our ‘influence’ and have to accept all the rules without shaping them, they are talking utter bullshit.

Do we shape the rules of the Chinese market?  Or the US?  No, but that doesn’t stop us trading with them.  So where do they get the idea that being politically independent means we won’t be able to trade with the EU?

Because of our EU membership, countries like China and the US perversely have more say in shaping our rules than we do – because the EU speaks for the UK in all trade matters on global bodies, whereas China and the US speak for themselves in their own interest.  The UK’s interest, however, is diluted to accommodate the wishes of 26 other countries.  So much for influence.  Norway and Switzerland have more say in shaping the single market trading rules that affect us than we do, and they are non-EU countries with access to the single market.  This is the reality we need to spread far and wide so people with no or little interest in governance understand the contempt this country’s people are held in by the political class and corporate tycoons.  They have some other agenda because their argument does not stand up to scrutiny.

So, terrified of these facts and the reality dawning on a generally disconnected docile nation, we are once again treated to a huge dose of FUD – fear, uncertainty and doubt – which is the only line of Europhile attack.  But, what is also interesting is the history of some of these great sages who presume to tell us to sod our interests, as conveniently collated by Guido…

• Roland Rudd – corporate lobbyist for multinational firms and campaigner for Britain’s membership of the single currency which he still believes in.
• Richard Branson – non domciled, campaigned for Britain to join the Euro and wants a single European army.
• Martin Sorrell – Chief executive of advertising agency WPP – Roland Rudd’s boss who owns Rudd’s Finsbury PR.
• Dame Helen Alexander – former chief executive of the Economist.
• Lord Kerr – Foreign Office and UKREP career as a diplomat who helped draft the EU constitution.
• Sir Andrew Cahn – career civil servant and worked for Lord Kinnock at the EU Commission, who infamously with his wife Glenys received more than £10 million in pay, allowances and pension entitlements during their time working at the European Union in Brussels.
• Sir Nigel Sheinwald – non exec director of Shell, who brokered the ‘deal in the desert’ between Tony Blair and former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
• Sir Roger Carr – Chairman of Centrica who criticises business for their “greed” while hiking energy costs. Outgoing President of the Euro-loving CBI.

Oh yes, these people are really representative of the man on the street who suffers the consequences of living under EU rule.  Why would anyone be bothered about what these people have to say, when they’ve spent their entire business lives servicing their interests at the expense of the rest of us?  They see us as expendable cash cows who are saying we should shut up and stay out of their way.  For heaven’s sake, some of them don’t even live here so they don’t have to put up with that they wish to have imposed on the rest of us.

We should all say no.  The spin, distortions and casual deceptions of the FUDmongers must not be allowed to con and scare the voters into staying part of this anti democratic, corrupt, wasteful club, built by and for a self selecting elite that sees us as nothing more than funding fodder for their games and personal enrichment.

Curious creatures these defecting Tories

Very interesting to read in the Telegraph today that Conservative activists have begun defecting to the UK Independence Party in protest at the Tory leadership’s ‘arrogant and insulting’ attitude towards grassroots members.

So let’s get this straight.

• These Tory activists have stayed part of the Cameronista through broken promises over a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, the craven failure to repeal the Human Rights Act and a raft of conservative principles being torn up.
• They have seen the selection of candidate short lists taken out of their hands.
• They have seen candidates they have voted to select in European elections passed over in favour of women who received far fewer member votes.
• They have hung in there as a raft of EU budgetary demands have been paid in full.  They have sat tight as more and more law-making power has been thrown over the fence to Brussels.
• They have remained in the blue corner as public borrowing and debt has escalated to shocking levels.
• They have put up with Liberal Democrats derailing implementation of fairer parliamentary constituency boundaries.
• They kept up their membership as wasteful and inefficient wind turbines are being imposed on communities against their wishes and reliable power stations are shut down.

And despite these and numerous other instances of the party leadership treating them with contempt and eroding their autonomy, only now are some choosing to defect to UKIP, apparently because someone in Cameron’s circle is alleged to have described party members as swivel-eyed loons.

While UKIP may be celebrating these additions to its membership, one has to ask if that party really needs to take on people who compromised their political principles for years by staying in the Conservative Party, only leaving when they perceived they had been insulted.  You’ve got to wonder about people that willingly tolerated such a sustained and overt assault on what they claim to stand for, yet leave on the basis of an as-yet unsubstantiated rumour.

Regardless, if it weakens the conservative-in-name-only Tories, then long may the defections continue.

He was wrong then and he is still wrong now

Time has done nothing to diminish the pompous stupidity of the sopping wet Europhile Tory, the Rt Hon Geoffrey Howe – now of course Lord Howe – when it comes to matters of ‘Europe’.

During the recent tributes and look back at some of the key moments in the political career of Margaret Thatcher, Howe’s resignation speech in the House of Commons, was referenced and used in audio/visual clips time and again.  The clip used, that was so devastating back then, has allowed people to see in hindsight just how wrong Howe had been about the Euroclub, its aims and direction and its approach:

We commit a serious error if we think always in terms of “surrendering” sovereignty and seek to stand pat for all time on a given deal–by proclaiming, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister did two weeks ago, that we have “surrendered enough”.

The European enterprise is not and should not be seen like that–as some kind of zero sum game. Sir Winston Churchill put it much more positively 40 years ago, when he said:

“It is also possible and not less agreeable to regard this sacrifice or merger of national sovereignty as the gradual assumption by all the nations concerned of that larger sovereignty which can alone protect their diverse and distinctive customs and characteristics and their national traditions.”

I have to say that I find Winston Churchill’s perception a good deal more convincing, and more encouraging for the interests of our nation, than the nightmare image sometimes conjured up by my right hon. Friend, who seems sometimes to look out upon a continent that is positively teeming with ill- intentioned people, scheming, in her words, to “extinguish democracy”, to “dissolve our national identities” and to lead us “through the back-door into a federal Europe”.

What kind of vision is that for our business people, who trade there each day, for our financiers, who seek to make London the money capital of Europe or for all the young people of today?

These concerns are especially important as we approach the crucial topic of economic and monetary union. We must be positively and centrally involved in this debate and not fearfully and negatively detached. The costs of disengagement here could be very serious indeed.

The nightmare image envisaged by Thatcher was frighteningly accurate.  What has characterised our experience in Europe is being faced with ill-intentioned schemers whose behaviour seeks to further aims that have eroded and continue to erode democracy, that have dissolved national identity and are building a federal Europe.  Howe was wrong then and he is still wrong now – only ignorance can be no defence for Howe after all these years.

As always, the same justifications for this larceny is presented, economic interests and the needs of business and employers.  As always, the question about why economic and trade relationships require this country to give up control over its laws, borders, international relationships and immense sums of our money, is never asked by our agenda-ridden excuse for a media and never volunteered by the likes of Howe and the political class – who slither through the corridors of what used to be a seat of power and influence, but is now a provincial hub of managerialism and execution of the diktats faxed over from Brussels.

Howe has clearly not learned – or more likely not wanted to learn or acknowledge – the reality, which is why the human-cum-dead sheep is still there even today declaring that if a proposed referendum led to the UK leaving the EU, there would be dire consequences for the country’s global influence.  Compounding this quisling’s idiocy is his willingness to perpetuate the impression that not wanting to be governed from overseas by unaccountable politicians and bureaucrats over which we have no democratic control is ‘anti European’:

The ratchet-effect of Euroscepticism has now gone so far that the Conservative leadership is in effect running scared of its own backbenchers, let alone UKIP, having allowed deep anti-Europeanism to infect the very soul of the party.

The Conservative Party’s long, nervous breakdown over Europe continues and what is essentially a Tory problem is now, once again, becoming a national problem.

Serious mistakes have been made, but the situation is not irretrievable.

The ‘situation’ to which he refers is the perceived bad behaviour in some people in the Conservative Party daring to question our EU overlords and having the temerity to disagree with their rule over us from overseas.  For the situation to be retrieved, those who wish to rebuild democracy, maintain a national identity and oppose a federal Europe – namely those things he derided all those years ago as conspiracy theories and scare stories – need to be silenced and beaten into submission by the party leader.

The irony – perhaps that should read hypocrisy – of a man calling for the leader of the Conservative Party to rein in dissenters, when he resigned as a minister for being reined for his dissent against Thatcher, is not lost on us.

Howe and his ilk are the enemy within. These carefully deceitful and treacherous fifth columnists have spent too many years seeking to destroy this country’s status as a nation state to see their anti-democratic enterprise undone now and people given the opportunity to say No to the political class.

Eurobollox

We’ve seen it all now.  Think back to Ireland’s impressive launch of the Riverdance phenomenon and compare that to the Swedish ‘interlude’ on the godawful Eurovision Song Contest tonight.

This is the part of the show that is supposed to showcase a country.  All it is doing is pushing every politically correct, leftist progressive stereotype against a backdrop of the constant mind control message to the audience of millions that ‘we are one’.

It long since became a parody of itself.  But now the politicisation of the event has ceased to be subliminal element of the drive for a united Europe hidden behind a music contest,  the whole thing is now an overt and blatant propaganda exercise where the music is incidental.  Like the EU itself, it’s a joke.

Farage meltdown

Confession time.  No way did I think Nigel Farage would inflict so much damage on himself so quickly after such a high profile improvement in his party’s fortunes.

His badly thought out appearance in Scotland was bad enough.  Requiring a police escort away from protesters was humiliating.  But what has followed – his ill-tempered name calling and undignified petulance in putting the phone down during an radio interview when walked into confirming the somewhat  embarrassing fact UKIP has no elected members north of the border, suggests the shine is coming off the blessed Nigel incredibly quickly.

UKIP insiders are all too well aware of Farage’s ignorant refusal to brook any challenge or opposition to his views.  But Farage’s demonstration of his inability to rise above the abuse he experienced on the street and defuse its sting won’t play well with voters, who are entitled to expect potential leaders to deal with such things in a gracious and magnanimous way.

I honestly pity Farage’s press adviser.  I am certain in my own mind that Farage would have been told how to handle this incident and respond assuredly to the unpleasant and seemingly intimidating experience, but refused to take the advice on board.  He could have told the media that seeing those Scottish protesters enjoying their freedom of speech was a welcome sight because such freedom is essential in a democracy – and that the political class increasingly censors people and the deeper we are integrated in the EU the less democratic this country becomes.  He could have added that while he strongly refutes and disagrees with their arguments and accusations he defends their right to express them and he would respond fully and openly to their claims.

Instead we have seen a senior politician engaging in pathetic namecalling that would be considered immature on a playground.  Far from being the bloke one would he happy to have a pint with, I would now be more concerned he would smash some glasses and kick some tables over if he hears something he doesn’t like.

Farage, as predicted, has just done some damage to UKIP and its credibility.  That party deserves better.

The political class is frit

Writing in the New Statesman’s blog, The Staggers, on Tuesday George Eaton made the following observation about what would happen if the current polling percentages were repeated at a General Election:

The Conservatives can have no complaints about the outcome delivered by an electoral system they have consistently defended and Labour governed for a full term after winning on just 35 per cent of the vote in 2005 (it bagged 55 per cent of the seats). But party figures have told me that they fear Labour could face a “crisis of legitimacy” if it wins an outsized majority on a thin slice of the vote. A share of 34 per cent would be the lowest winning percentage of the vote since 1832.

The language is interesting.  Set aside for a moment the idea of such a large majority for Labour if it only secures 34% of the votes cast at the General Election on a turnout of around 65%.  The real crisis of legitimacy that would finally emerge as a talking point following such an election ‘victory’ is that there would be a Labour government, imposing its will on the entire country without check, balance or accountability to voters, that was voted for by only 22% of registered voters.

There is not just fear within the political class about the impression that would be made by a large Labour majority on a very small percentage of the vote.  There is fear people will wake up and declare it to be unacceptable that with approaching 40% of voters rejecting all the parties, any of them can claim to represent the people.  The illusion of legitimacy for the political class will be crumbling.

We can expect to see another push for Proportional Representation as part of an electoral reform package.  Perhaps even the first moves to make voting compulsory.  Not just because the distribution of votes would make party representation in the House in terms of seats ‘fair’, but because it would allow for the appearance of legitimacy as the political class will seek to focus attention away from turnout and purely on to share of the vote – while increasing numbers of Britons refuse to support any of them.

Does being a Common Purpose graduate mean never resigning for incompetence?

In the news today is Joanna Simons, the lavishly renumerated Chief Executive of Oxfordshire County Council, whose social services department comprehensively failed to help the young girls who were being systematically raped and pimped out by so called British Pakistanis around the south of England.

Despite the catalogue of failings Oxfordshire Social Services, and even one of the abused girls detailing on radio last night how social services had threatened her family not to make waves when they failed to act to safeguard the girls from the abuse, Joanna Simons refuses to accept responsibility and resign.

Being such a familiar pattern, I wondered if there was another similarity between La Simons and a number of other local authority trough plunderers who it transpired were members of the insiduous organisation, Common Purpose.

Well what do you know!  You could knock me down with a feather.  My flabber is well and truly ghasted.

The pattern continues.  Where there is a fat snout in a publicly funded trough, coupled with a catalogue of failure and incompetence, there is a Common Purpose marxist refusing to be accountable and resign.  Clearly taxpayers should ask for their money back – the leadership development Simons has been through at their expense doesn’t seem to have developed any leadership qualities at all.

Labour and Lib Dems ask: What do you think this is, a democracy?

It has long been argued that Labour, and to a lesser extent the Lib Dems, have been waging a class war in this country.  The evidence of this is clear.  The political class has declared war on the class most simply defined as ‘everyone else’.

The defiant refusal of Labour and Lib Dems to support a referendum on our continued membership of the European Union, is the most serious and pressing political story of our time.  It has far reaching implications for the democratic process.  Yet the media, for reasons we understand all too well, is ignoring the most obvious questions this issue poses.  Where has a single BBC, Sky or ITV news journalist asked Ed Miliband or Nick Clegg:

‘Why are you refusing to let the British people decide if this country should be part of the EU?’

This position goes beyond arrogance.  It is the continuation of a nothing less than a coup d’etat.  The British people have never been asked for their permission to consign the independence of the United Kingdom to the dustbin.  They have never been asked if they consent to more than 75% of the laws and regulations by which they are bound to be created by alien bodies overseas.  They have never been asked to approve the wholesale export of billions of tax pounds to Brussels to be spent in the way special interests and other nations see fit.  They have never been asked if they want our borders torn down to enable millions of foreign nationals to set up home here and take advantage of benefits and infrastructure to which they have never contributed a penny of funding.

It is this way because the political class does not want to know or hear the answer.  When the wishes of the people are ignored and even suppressed this country cannot be called a democracy.

Even when some tiny vestiges of democracy are permitted by the establishment, such as the requirement put on local authorities to hold a local referendum if they want to increase council tax by more than 2%, the response is a desperate and aggressive campaign by the politicians and bureaucrats to eradicate that need to ask permission to tax people more.  They want our money to fund what is of interest to them, such as first division civil service salaries for senior bureaucrats, index linked pensions far more generous than anything in the private sector, and hugely expensive rafts of sustainability related positions and campaigns to service an repressive and controlling agenda set down by UN bodies and the EU, which have never been put to or approved by the electorate.

This is why we see the Labour, Lib Dem and not a few Tory members of the Local Government Association, a kind of cross-party self interest ‘union’ for councils, demanding the right to extract as much as they like from local taxpayers without the need to get our permission or approval.  They have done this is such a stunningly brazen and transparent manner because the local authorities consider themselves to be above challenge, untouchable by ordinary people.  They believe they should be able to do what they like and feel they can.

Democracy in this country is a myth.  Being allowed – increasingly pressured – to vote every 4-5 years is not democracy.  What marks a democracy is the control the people have over their representatives and public servants between elections.  We have none, because this is not a functioning democracy.  The British people are not permitted to decide how this country is run or by whom.  Every election cycle is characterised by pledges to ‘change’ yet the only changes are the faces of the grubbing parasites that infest our town halls, county council chambers and parliament.  No matter who people vote for the outcome is a continuation of the same agenda handed down from supranational bodies.  The wishes of the people are trampled upon, scoffed at and ultimately ignored by those who like to tell us they know best.

Increasing numbers of people are seeing that voting in elections is meaningless.   They are increasingly rejecting the political process.  Tellingly the political class is becoming nervous about this because they know the lower the percentage gets, the weaker their claims of systemic and personal legitimacy will be.

That is why we see their ideological allies in ‘think tanks’ coming up with ideas such as compelling 18-23 year olds by law to vote in the first general election that takes place after they attain the age of majority, or face a fine.  Other ideas include making voting compulsory for all, or moving voting to the weekend in the hope of increasing turnout.  All these ideas have one objective in mind – preserving the legitimacy of the political class.

Participating in the process gives it legitimacy.  As long as people continue to vote they are validating the political class and enabling it to continue eroding our democracy while continually reducing accountability.  It’s not enough to want to vote the current lot out by voting an identikit lot in.  It plays into the hands of the parasites and maintains the illusion of democracy.

To achieve genuine democracy – and thus take back for ourselves the power to address the vital issues that are before us instead of dancing to the political class’ tune – we need a different approach.  We need to educate and inform people and show them how we can take back power and eject the parasites.  The strategy for doing this is being developed.  More to follow in due course…

EU ‘relationship’ Bullshit Bingo

For those avid players of Bullshit Bingo, we have had a plethora of bovine turd flooding the airwaves and column inches today from a number of Tory tribalists which would have enabled many of you to shout ‘Chateau! at your game cards.  Taking the topics in turn…

Trust in politicians

Gavin Barwell led the way in today’s game with his appearance on BBC Radio 4 Today where he said he would be voting for the amendment to the Queen’s Speech.  His rational was that the vote:

… isn’t an issue about Conservative MPs trusting David Cameron.  It is about using the legislative process to convince the electorate that the clear commitment he gave in his speech in January is going to happen. What we need to do is convince the sceptical electorate that we actually mean it. I think a very effective way of doing that would be bringing forward legislation, so we can go back to our constituents and say look, if you vote Conservative at the next election, here is a guarantee that we will get a referendum.

Presumably little Gavin was out of radio contact when Cast Iron Dave dropped his promise for a referendum on the Lisbon  Treaty, and again in 2010 when Cameron was asked about holding a referendum and opened his response thus:

I do not believe in an in-out referendum for many reasons. I think we are better off in the European Union…

Well Gav, what’s not to trust?

Cameron gets results in ‘Europe’

Tory MEP Martin Callanan, speaking on BBC Radio 4 PM this evening, argued that David Cameron is right to try to renegotiate the UK’s ‘relationship with the EU’ and that Lord Lawson’s claim that any deal Cameron might strike would be ‘inconsequential’ was wrong.  Referring back to the Trust in Politicians line taken by Barwell, he tried to suggest people didn’t trust Labour or the Lib Dems, while pretending Cast Iron Dave had not dropped his own promise to give voters a say on the Lisbon Treaty.

Callanan’s evidence that Cameron could renegotiate a good deal with the EU?  To paraphrase… apparently Cameron has shown he can get results in ‘Europe’ because of his success in reducing the EU budget.  Stop laughing at the back.  Yes, that’s right, this is the same EU Budget coup Cameron supposedly pulled off, that is about to be circumvented as EU finance ministers prepare to vote through extra contributions anyway.  As an EU official succinctly explained last week:

Britain cannot get a blocking minority of countries to stop the first €7.3 billion (£6.2bn) tranche of the €11.2bn the European Commission needs.

There is nothing the British government can do about it as the annual budgets are agreed by majority voting.

Yet despite this being common knowledge, Callanan deceitfully attempted to maintain the budget deal myth to talk up Cameron’s ability to get things done when dealing with the EU as part of the effort to hold the line on the faux renegotiation scam.

Callanan also took the new line rapidly being adopted by Europlastic Tories that if a referendum was being held tomorrow he would likely vote to leave, shamelessly trying to convince us he would vote himself off the gravy train and out of his luxurious Brussels pad! As if.  Clearly the plan of the Eurosceptics is to declare they would leave tomorrow, so in the event of a Cameron-led renegotiation that resulted in nothing of any benefit to the UK, they could all rush to declare a fundamental change and that we should remain firmly in the EU.

‘Breaking off’ the ‘relationship’ with the EU

The UK remaining firmly in the EU is the stated wish of one half of the Axis of Weasel, Barack Obama.  In between Barwell and Callanan’s appearance on BBC Radio, we were treated to the fortune cookie wisdom of the Chicago community organiser.

While graciously acknowledging that it was for the British people to decide the matter of EU membership – which is more than the other half of the Axis of Weasel, aka Cast Iron Dave, has been prepared to accept – he went on to lie that being subsumed into the EU and denied our own voice in international affairs and trade negotiations, is an “expression” of the UK’s global influence!  Doublespeak is alive and kicking in the White House.  Obama observed his view that Cameron’s:

basic point that you probably want to see if you can fix what is broken in a very important relationship before you break it off – that makes some sense to me.

This of course is complete manure.  Nothing is broken.  The EU is functioning exactly as intended, accumulating ever greater control while neutering nation states and dismantling every vestige of democratic accountability and avenues for people to influence and dictate the direction of government.  And of course, ceasing to be ruled from Brussels does not mean the UK and other member states would cease to trade, cooperate and support each other.

The language is purposely designed to give the impression that leaving the EU signals these isles would figuratively move away from the continental land mass and float off into the Atlantic, exiled and isolated.  Independence, it seems, is to be feared and dismissed for our own good…

Throwing in the Towel

With the odor of dung hanging heavy in the air, it was over to Cameron himself to add to the pungent aroma of stage-managed theatrics.

He called the position held on EU withdrawal by former cabinet ministers Lord Lawson and Michael Portillo ‘very, very strange’.  Presumably he feels every Tory should be in lockstep behind his efforts to bribe voters with a stitched up referendum if only they will consent to him remaining in Downing Street for an additional five years of inactivity, inertia, handwringing, excuses, mismanagement, patronage, debt, erosion of liberty and expansion of state power.

Cameron accused Conservatives wanting to leave the European Union of ‘throwing in the towel’ before negotiations had even started.  Only the most ignorant and delusional of people could kid themselves that they alone can reform the EU and reverse its essential core pillar – that of ever closer union, which entails ever more power surrendered by member states to the Brussels bureaucracy.

One would have thought that on the eve of the extent of Cameron’s impotence being revealed to all, when the EU finance ministers torpedo his supposed victory over the EU budget, he would show a bit more humility and re-engage with reality.  But the great con must go on.  The act must be played out to its conclusion and events in the real world must not be allowed to shatter the illusion that he has carefully created within the political bubble.

Media collusion

We can’t cover these steaming piles of bullshit without a special mention for the other enemy within, our fearless media.

Not once has any journalist pointed out the yawning chasm of difference between the EU and the single market, which are conflated by the europhiles as being one and the same – despite the fact leaving the political union does not automatically mean the UK cannot be part of the single market.

Not once has any journalist asked for an explanation about why it is necessary for national sovereignty and political power to be given up in return for ‘benefits’ that can be enjoyed just as easily through simple treaties.

Not once has any journalist mentioned Article 50 or explained its significance, much less asked for Cameron to explain why he won’t invoke it and makes no mention of it.

Not once has any journalist challenged Cameron to justify his tag of being an ‘instinctive Eurosceptic’ when he is desperately opposing every eurosceptic move being made to bring forward a referendum.

Anyone would think they are being careful not to challenge the politicians too hard in case ordinary people start to, you know, think there is an alternative to being ruled with no good reason by the BBC’s Brussels-based benefactor.

Memo to Nigel Farage: This is why detail matters

When one doesn’t do detail, a bit like a certain Nigel Farage, one is liable to get things wrong.  When one gets things wrong, it is difficult for people to have confidence in what one has to say – particularly when it comes to presenting details of how a particular aim, say, leaving the EU, can be achieved.

While it might not matter much to some people that Farage wrongly stated Sinn Féin’s policy on European Union membership, his high profile means that such errors are not merely a personal embarrassment for him, but are damaging to the credibility of the rest of us who want the UK to leave the EU.

As this blog has argued before, to indignation from some of his supporters, Farage’s ‘cheeky chappie, bloke you would be happy to have a pint with’ persona will only get UKIP so far in electoral terms.  Many undecided and non-voters are more sophisticated than many people give them credit for and will form any voting intentions based on the competence, character and credibility of a candidate or party leader.  If Farage won’t do detail and get his facts right, he won’t just earn the scorn of his rivals, he will be rejected by potential supporters who would have grounds to doubt his claims and question his suitability for office.

UKIP and the true Eurosceptic movement deserve better.

Different day, same old handwringing

It has become so common that people on the taxpayer funded gravy train public payroll abuse the system to enrich themselves financially, the stories reaching mainstream media about the grubbing, self serving behaviour no longer shock, and rarely do they elicit sufficient public anger to generate a campaign designed to remove the said parasite from office.

It suggests people have conceded defeat and reluctantly suppress their disgust at the political class and the well-fed bureaucracy, then, believing that little can be done or that it will be too time consuming or focus the unwelcome attention of the state upon them, focus on other things – like that evening’s TV schedule.

Another example of this can be found in the Mail today where it is reported the Tory Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, Anthony Stansfeld, nominated an ‘office’ location near his home as a detour destination from where he could claim mileage to the force’s Headquarters to which he would not be entitled if he simply drove there from home.  The comments section contains the usual handwringing indignation and disgust, but nothing beyond that.  Although one comment does stand out because its author gets what needs to happen:

Well if we the British people keep throwing our arms up in the air and say “OMG that is terrible, BUT WHAT CAN WE DO” We simply must unite and demand action be taken, we must collectively grievance issues with Councillors and demand that questions be answered not brushed under the carpet. I am not sure if Britain has always been so corrupt and I was blind to it or have things become so bad that I can no longer fail to notice it. I know one thing divided we are conquered but united we are strong. IT IS TIME TO BECOME STRONG.

- Beam MeUp, Cheshire, United Kingdom, 11/5/2013 23:06

Perhaps the thing holding people back is the sense of powerlessness in the face of the huge parasitic establishment that shields the likes of Stansfeld from proper accountability.  Perhaps it is largely to do with not knowing where on earth to target their campaign in order to remove a grubbing parasite like Stansfeld, because the lines of control and power are not clear to people – and that is intentional on the part of the various authorities.

There are some people I like and respect who believe what is needed is an effective template, developed from apparently successful local campaigns – and ‘flashmob’ national campaigns such as the Fuel Protests – that can be dusted off and rolled out nationally for people to deploy.  Sadly there is a major problem with this.  It doesn’t take into account what exactly the final outcomes of such protests were.

All too often, having been apparently successful in achieving their intial demands after raising thousands of pounds for legal representation and exhausted their physical and emotional capital during a draining protest, the powers that be go away and quietly redefine the rules to overcome the objection – resulting in eventual defeat for people power.  Look at any number of previous targeted protests from recent years and you will find many of the things they stood against have subsequently found their way into being, or are in the process of being pushed through using alternative mechanisms.  The Fuel Protests are a good example as they appeared to gain concessions from the government, but most people do not know the campaign was stamped on in ruthless fashion by Blair’s government when the protest’s leaders were told they would be deprived of their livelihoods through confiscation of their vehicles if they did not bring the protest to an end.  Fuel duty continued to rise and despite sabre rattling no follow up protest took shape.

This is why the answer lies not in improving the organisation and coordination of protests, but in changing the rules of the whole game by taking back power from those who are supposed to be our servants.

Why focus attention and waste energy on challenging power time and again when a carefully developed, thought through, concerted grassroots campaign to take power back would remove the capacity of the establishment to impose on the people that which they oppose?  Not for nothing is the web domain www.peoplepower.co.uk devoted to a local authority energy scheme rather than the promotion of democracy.  Even the image above is being used by ‘Conservative Future’ – a group devoted to furthering the aims of the same Conservative Party that is doing all it can to deny the people their say about how this country is governed.   The establishment has no interest in addressing our interests. So we must take back the power we have allowed to be taken from us.

Over the coming months the Harrogate Agenda will continue to take shape as the foundations are put in place to enable people, who agree with the six core demands that have been developed and want to see democracy – people power – hold sway in this country, to learn where power resides, and how change can be brought about by challenging it and rebalancing the relationship between the state and the people in the people’s favour.

Bring Cameron his booze, fags and easy women

The Barclay Brother Beano carries an unsurprising post election piece, headlined thus:

Start behaving more like Nigel Farage and less like a ‘public school toff’, David Cameron told

David Cameron should behave more like Nigel Farage and less like a “public school toff”, according to the Prime Minister’s former local council leader.

The suggestion from Keith Mitchell, former leader of Oxfordshire County Council, underlines the depressingly shallow mindset of the Conservatives.  Instead of enjoining Cameron to start behaving like a conservative (which he isn’t) and pursue policies that people in the country want to see (which he won’t),  the solution proposed to win public support is to mimic the behaviour of the party whose support among the total electorate in last week’s elections was 6.5%.

Clearly Mr Mitchell hasn’t put very much thought into this.  The mental image of Cameron knocking back pints, smoking cigarettes and chasing younger women around is too much to deal with.  Far better that we have Cameron behaving like the aloof, ignorant, social democrat enemy of representative democracy that he is, so support for him and his band of self serving Europlastics continues to decline.

Nigel Lawson awakens from his long Euroslumber

Okay. Let’s… I tell you what, let’s forget the fact that you’re coming a little late to the party and embrace the fact that you showed up at all.

That line from the West Wing is my message to Nigel Lawson today. I’ve always had something of a crush on Nigella Lawson, and I’m now starting to become fond of her old man too (not in that way).  First he speak sense on climate change, now he is speaking sense on the UK’s membership of the EU.

Setting aside the fact Lord Lawson’s u-turn on the EU is akin to him declaring that, in spite of the warnings and raft of evidence that was available to him, he is thoroughly disappointed that his expensively acquired tulips bulbs did not blossom into the beautiful roses he was convinced he would get, he makes the powerful point that any changes David Cameron might be able to secure from the EU will be equally as inconsequential as the crumbs from the table hailed by Harold Wilson as the outcome of a successful renegotiation with ‘Europe’ in the 1970s.

After years of delusion and self deception, it has finally dawned on Lord Lawson that the EU is a purpose-built bureaucratic construct, with the sole objective of drawing power to itself and eroding the sovereignty of nation states to the point they cease to exist in anything but name.  That aim has never changed, it’s just that Nigel is now saying he can see it for what it is and rightly concludes the UK should have no part in it.

However, what is disappointing is that there is no mention in his comments to suggest Lord Lawson acknowledges the fundamental problem with the EU is that it is anti-democratic by design.  Its very reason for being is to subvert and replace democracy, because allowing the people to determine for themselves what they want would result in the EU’s collapse, which would not suit the corporatist interests it serves.

So Nigel Lawson has correctly identified the remedy, even if it is still not clear to him what the ailment is.  It’s progress of sorts.

Now we just hope more people will listen to this political heavyweight and see through Cameron’s pathetic charade of a loosely defined ‘re-negotiation’ before he declares success and recommends the UK stays part of the EU, regardless of how little control over our own affairs he repatriates from Brussels.

Nigel Farage – UKIP’s electoral asset or liability?

For those UKIP supporters who hold Nigel Farage in high esteem and hurl brickbats in the general direction of this blog (which supports most of the UKIP policy platform, such as it is) when deference is not forthcoming for the blessed Nigel, a poll by YouGov for The Times will not make happy reading.

The format follows the favourable/unfavourable methodology used in the US in identifying whether voters have a positive or negative view of political leaders.  The question asked was, ‘Generally speaking, do you have a positive or negative opinion of the following people?’  The responses (as displayed on Politicalbetting.com) were:

Positive

Negative

In addition to the personal ratings shown above, 36% or respondents said they would never consider voting for UKIP, which is more than the 33% who would never consider voting Conservative, 32% against the Lib Dems and 23% against Labour.  This means for UKIP that Farage is more unpopular than his party.

The message looks pretty clear.  If UKIP are basing a strategy to build more support on the back of a Farage personality blitz, they are going in the wrong direction.  Farage is not the electoral asset his fans think he is.

Segregated Britain? The real segregation is this (pt.2)

Prompting the previous post was this piece today in the Daily Mail.

In my view the description ‘white flight’ wrongly ascribes a racial motive for people moving away from areas where ethnic minorities have grown to become a substantial number of people or even a majority.  It is not the race or colour of the skin of people living in an area which is driving this phenomenon.  It is the pronounced cultural differences between members of the community, that have been encouraged and entrenched by the political class as it pursued its own nefarious agenda to dilute and erode the sense of nationhood as part of a wider political agenda.

Although there are plenty of differences within a population that shares the same race, ethnic characteristics, heritage, values and way of life, these were not sufficient to enable the undermining of the nation state, as part of the political objective of developing a world order, where populations that are bound together by their shared similarities and values have strong enough cohesion to reject and resist what the politicians want.

Whenever I have lived overseas I conformed to the norms of the community I became part of.  Many migrants to these shores have done the same thing and where that integration has happened we don’t see this ‘white flight’ phenomenon.  We see relaxed people where aspirations, values and language are the same, resulting in cohesion.

Conversely, where people have come here and transplanted their own cultural norms that are alien to the community, we see a lack of cohesion.  The politicians are to blame for actively seeking and encouraging this.  It comes as no surprise to find the left wing, pro-immigration ‘think tank’ DEMOS claiming that a ‘retreat’ of white Britons from areas where minorities live is limiting cultural integration.  As usual, in a cynical effort to distort the findings and perpetuate the political agenda they have actively been in involved in crafting, they deny the reality which is that the refusal of some migrants to integrate culturally coupled with their desire to create a cultural colony, is actually the cause of increasing segregation.

How many times have we been ordered by the political class to ‘embrace’ the changes being forced on the community, with the implicit assertion that failure to do so denotes you as xenophobic or racist?  How many times have we witnessed neighbourhoods become fragmented because these differences are being aggressively entrenched by an arriving migrant minority that demands acceptance of their alien culture being transplanted into the community?  How many times have we seen the arriving migrants seek out people who share their cultural heritage and values so they do not have to integrate or conform to the societal norms of the host community, resulting in the ghetto phenomenon?  How many times, when this has happened, have we then been instructed by the political class to ‘celebrate’ this, despite the lack of consent for the transformation and the unwelcome and undesired impacts this has on the community?  Why is it acceptable for an aggressive cultural supremacy to be implemented by an arriving migrant population, yet any attempt to preserve the cultural norms of the host community is considered wrong and unacceptable?

What has never made stood up to any scrutiny is the notion that migrants want to come here for a better life, when on arrival they do all they can to maintain the same life they supposedly sought to leave behind them in their home country.  It is entirely understandable that people draw the conclusion the new arrivals have not come to enrich our community and become part of what made this country attractive in the first place, as the political class claims, but only to take economic advantage of what has been built up over generations while rejecting our values, language and norms.

The blame for this ‘white flight’ which is so exercising the politicians, and the breakdown in community cohesion which suits their aims, has to be firmly laid at the door of the concept of multiculturalism, advanced by the likes of DEMOS, the Labour party, and legions of politicians across Europe.

Having a multiethnic community is fine and can work wonderfully well.  Often it is integrated migrants who are most vocal alongside us in opposing the contemptible behaviour of the political class as it seeks to dismantle what made this country attractive and proud in the first place.  Where people come together as a community regardless of colour and race we do not see the problems that arise in areas where part of the community chooses to emphasise and reinforce pronounced differences and seeks separation from the host community due to a desire for their imported culture to have supremacy – and seeks to strengthen that separation by bringing more people from their country of origin to build a rival community.

It is not a racial or colour issue, it is to do with culture.  The political class actively pursued this without seeking the consent of the British people.  If I had refused to conform to the cultural norms of my hosts overseas I would not have been welcome and encouraged to leave.  So why is it wrong for Britons to apply the same conditions  and make clear to migrants that if they will not conform to our norms and be part of an integrated community they have no place living here?  Oh yes, because the political class says so, as it doesn’t fit in with their objectives.

Don’t be angry and frustrated with those who have been able to come here and build a rival community steeped in their own culture and values.  Be angry and frustrated with the political class that allowed it, encouraged it, stamped on dissent against it, and sought to stigmatise those who refused to compromise their principles – and take action against them.

The real segregation in this country is that between the political class and bureaucrats, and we ordinary people who they abuse and treat with contempt.

Segregated Britain? The real segregation is this (pt.1)

The facts are inescapable.  They don’t look the same as us. They don’t speak our language properly if at all. They only attempt to engage with us when it suits them. They demand that we tolerate them while they are intolerant of us. They prefer to only mix with their own kind and gravitate to huddle together as a defined community where weight of numbers gives them a sense of strength. They are only interested in everyone’s lives being lived by their rules. They expect everyone else to conform to accommodate them and their wishes, and when we refuse to play the game their way they resort to law to compel us to validate them and grant them special status – irrespective of the code and culture that we developed over many hundreds of years.

Of course this leads to ‘retreat’.  Of course it leads to rejection of what has been foisted upon us.  Of course people are going to decide they want to live the life that they are comfortable with, surrounded by people who share the same views, aspirations and values.

I am happy to nail my colours to the mast and declare that I too have been doing all I can to ‘retreat’ from these people, in an effort to enjoy a way of life that my parents and their parents had.  Both generations fought for my future freedom and that of my children. But nevertheless this country has been overrun by people who are different, who are determined to impose their values and norms on the rest of us, who want Britain to be transformed to resemble something that they feel comfortable with regardless of what the majority thinks.

The only solution is for these people to go.

That’s right. The only solution is to tell all the politicians and bureaucrats who infest this country and make life for the majority a misery, to go.  The majority in this country is sick to the back teeth of the political class, the bureaucrats and the establishment.  If they don’t like the Britain we want, they should clear off.

Farage attempts to snatch defeat before getting anywhere close to victory

Within hours of the party he has forged in his own image record its best ever results in local elections, if reports are to be believed, Nigel Farage has demonstrated yet again his complete lack of strategic thinking – which may arrest UKIP’s momentum and cost him essential votes from wavering Labour and Lib Dem supporters.

Having spent the election campaign delivering the message that UKIP offers something to Labour and Lib Dem voters who are unhappy with EU membership and the ongoing net influx of migrants, Farage has perhaps supped a few too many pints while posing for the media and, according to the Daily Wail, informally offered entertained the idea of [edited to reflect observations in comments] an electoral pact and coalition with the Conservatives as long as they drop David Cameron.

In many ways it’s not news because he’s said it before.  But in doing so now, just after making a comparatively major advance, Farage has blinked figuratively and shown weakness when he should be portraying strength and confidence.  Compounding this political illieracy Farage has also undermined UKIP’s apparent appeal as an entity that stands apart from the discredited three main parties; for instead of occupying the high ground above the political class in the eyes of jaded voters he has instead signalled his desperation to join with them.

What was supposed to be an insurgency designed to break the mould in British politics is now being revealed to those less schooled in the ways of Farage to have an altogether different aim.  UKIP candidates who enjoin voters to reject the Lib-Lab-Con will now have to explain why given UKIP’s plan is to cosy up to the Conservatives. As Richard eloquently explained yesterday to the Campaign for an Independent Britain, we are no further forward.

In the final analysis what this means for voters, desperate for a change to the political system and for this country to become democratic, is that real change is not on the agenda.  Farage’s objective is to be part of the political equivalent of the Royston Vasey community, which will result in the Lib-Lab-UKIP-Con.  Clearly the message to voters is that this league of gentlemen is a local bubble for local politicians and there’s nothing for us ordinary people here.

Cameron’s arrogance and idiocy shine through yet again

David Cameron has long been UKIP’s biggest and most insulting critic, famously employing his most smartarse comment when describing the party as made up of:

…fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly.

Today, having seen UKIP figuratively tear his party a new orifice, Cameron laughably attempted to portray himself as being above the very fray he personally stoked, by declaring:

It is no good insulting a political party that people have chosen to vote for.

One of the many things people in this country are sick and tired of is politicians attempting to dispense lessons to them that only the politicians didn’t understand in the first place.  It is utterly pathetic and it only serves to make Cameron look even more stupid.  He may as well have delivered his little monologue to a mirror, because that way his message would have been targeted at the correct audience.

And the scales begin to fall from their eyes…

There is a problem with the people at the top of our political parties. They just don’t listen. They don’t listen to ordinary people or our concerns. The European Union referendum is a good example. David Cameron says he’ll have a referendum, but no-one believes a word he says. I don’t believe a word he says, and I’m a lifelong Conservative.

So says former Councillor Alexis McEvoy, writing in the Telegraph, after being defeated in the South Waterside ward of Hampshire County Council.

The question is, feeling the way she claims to, why did she continue to work for and prop up the Conservative party machine?  Perhaps in losing the council seat her paramount reason for remaining a Tory and supporting a party that had long ceased to be conservative, has now evaporated.  Too little, too late, Lexi.

It’s a bit rich of people like McEvoy to be bleating now about the Conservative leadership ditching conservative values and principles.  It’s been happening for years, which is why many principled people – and I count myself among that number – resigned from the party and walked away long ago.Perhaps the ConservativeHome narrative, propagated by Tim Montgomerie and others, that Cameron would suddenly uncloak himself to reveal his ‘inner conservative’, is responsible for so many Tories clinging to their delusional belief that Cameron was one of them and just executing a cunning strategy.

It is looking more likely that the complaint that the mainstream parties don’t listen to people’s wishes is becoming redundant. Growing numbers of people are now showing they don’t care about being listened to by this lot any more because they are not interested in being represented by these politicians.  Similarly they are no longer bothering to listen to what the mainstream parties have to say.  They’ve heard it all before.  Evidence the fact Labour’s share of the vote has failed to reach even 2005 levels.

People have seen too many crucial promises broken on a whim.  Now it seems there is a move is underway to remove the self serving charlatans from the stage, piece at a time.