The delusion of some UKIPpers undermines their party

Boredom is a terrible thing.  It can lead to doing things one shouldn’t do, such as scanning through the letters page of the Telegraph.

For it is there we find a UKIP Euro election candidate talking unmitigated rubbish (no, really) about trade after a UK exit from the EU.  The claim made is an old canard that seemingly remains a sacred truth among some ‘Kippers, despite it being debunked in several locations over many months.

Should the media choose to put its microscope over this particular claim about free trade under WTO rules, Janice Atkinson will crumble under it just like her leader crumbled under a little cross examination by Andrew Neil.

If a British exit would result in a free trade agreement within days with the EU under WTO rules, how is it that the US and EU are so far unable to cement a free trade agreement?  How come China and the EU are unable to sign a free trade agreement?  How come a free trade agreement with Canada took around five years to complete?

Why is it Janice Atkinson thinks the UK is solely capable of establishing a free trade agreement with the EU in a matter days after a Brexit, when every other country in the world requires years of painstaking negotiation, internal lobbying by industry and special interests, disagreements over the terms and reference backs, to establish such a deal?

Perhaps Ms Atkinson is banking her hopes on a two-year negotiation with the EU initiated under Article 50, which will primarily focus on governance, having satisfactorily concluded everything that needs to be addressed from a trade perspective?  But then, she doesn’t refer to Article 50, so who knows what her vivid imagination visualises a Brexit will look like and how it will take place.

It is ludicrous assertions like that by Atkinson that have anyone who has ever been involved in any kind of business or trade deal, shaking their heads in disbelief at the sheer ignorance and wanton stupidity of her position.

Only on Planet Atkinson, an entity fuelled by the self deception and immature delusion that denotes UKIP, could a trade deal of such complexity and intricacy between the UK and a bloc of 27 other countries with varying interests and demands – across a wide range of industries and sectors – be concluded more quickly than a transfer negotiation between two football clubs for a Premier League footballer.

There is a very important reason why Parliament isn’t busy

In the Telegraph today, Tom Harris MP is whining about the lack of legislation going through Parliament.  He says that it means there were no votes in the Commons last Monday, none the previous Monday either, there won’t be any next Monday, and there hasn’t been a whipped vote on a Thursday for months.

He places the blame for this at the door of the government.  However, in the comment thread it is apparent that more and more people have grasped the essential point Harris is too unwitting to realise or unwilling to acknowledge – that Parliament has less to do because the EU is our surpreme government and rubber stamping diktat from Brussels doesn’t take very long.

This has been obvious for years.  The ever lengthening recess breaks are not just MPs wanting to take longer holidays, they are a consequence of less parliamentary business being required because the EU determines almost all the laws the people of this land must live by.  This central fact isn’t convenient for Harris, who instead makes his piece an attack on five-year fixed parliaments and government running out of ideas and having nothing to do.  Rooted in the past, when Parliament and UK courts were supreme, Harris declares:

The difference now is that the traditional remedy – to dissolve parliament and allow the various parties to be reinvigorated by a campaign and the judgment of the electorate – is unavailable.

Sadly for Harris, while an election campaign is an exciting wet dream for politicians and the media that faithfully trots alongside them hoping for some scraps to keep them sustained, the reality it is a sham.  For whichever party wins the next election, the electorate can expect more of the same.

With all the decisions of consequence being made in Brussels, or handed down from there after decisions in global committees and commissions, the UK parties have very little in their gift to manage or change.  There is little between the parties because no ideology is required to deal with the limited number of genuine matters of substance that are still governed by the UK.  So even after going through the motions of moving around and changing the colour of the deck chairs, the ship’s direction of travel will remain unchanged, unless the officers in Brussels sitting on the bridge, decide otherwise.

Harris may be upset that he is being denied involvement in big political fights like those of yesteryear, but as part of the political class he shares the blame for that and supporting the surrender of control of the UK to the EU.

Scottish independence campaign being used as a guinea pig for EU referendum campaign

For some people this may be a statement of the bleeding obvious, but listening to BBC Radio 4 Today this morning, it seems the media is using the Scottish independence campaign to test out which arguments should be made and lines taken in any future EU referendum campaign (whenever that might be).

Professor John Curtice, wearing his ScotCen Social Research hat, has told the BBC that:

Voters want to hear about the economic and financial consequences of the choice that they make, and it is on the outcome of that debate that the result of the referendum is likely to turn.

This is hardly as surprise when the questions asked focus on economic rather than political matters.

A write up of the story on BBC Online also extracts specific questions that focus on voting intentions based on whether Scots will be £500 better or worse off after independence, or whether the Scottish economy will be better or worse. There is no report on the all-important political factors, which is what the independence debate (and the EU debate for that matter) is all about.

It is important to note that the Today piece included comments from four Scots voters – and only one of them said financial considerations were an important factor to him when it comes to voting on independence.  The other three didn’t focus on economics and instead spoke about variations on the theme of who decides how Scotland is run.  Once this segment had been played, the presenter then ignored the voter contributions and turned the discussion straight back to economics, disregarding what the voters had said; and Curtice himself then introduced identity as an issue rather than politics, to move the conversation further away from the central political dimension.

The feeling is of there being a clear agenda to frame the Scottish debate firmly in terms of economics, while doing everything possible to confine the politics to the wilderness.  While this mirrors the current approach taken to the EU debate by the Europhiles at places such as the Centre for European Reform and the Europlastics at places such as Open Europe, what it does is enable the power of the narrative to be tested on a live electorate and see how effectively the electorate can be manipulated into focusing on issues that are irrelevant to the concept of independence – namely who should run Scotland.

No matter whether one feels the Scots should be independent, or whether the union should be preserved as it is, all should be concerned that the crux of the independence issue is being airbrushed from the discourse by the media, which is taking its line from entities with vested interests in keeping all structures as they are – which suits the European Union perfectly.

Putting patients first? Another example of the unaccountable NHS serving its own interests

The BBC is reporting that a hospital where a girl bled to death has refused to publish the findings of its inquiry for fear of “endangering the mental health” of staff.

Kettering General Hospital conducted a serious incident investigation following the death of 17-year-old Victoria Harrison, who bled to death on a ward after an appendix operation in 2012, but has said it will not be making the full report public despite an FoI request.

The trust has undertaken a public interest test with regard to providing a chronology of events.

It believes that Section 38 (1) (a) should be engaged as it is likely to endanger the mental health of individuals [staff] linked to the events leading up to the tragic death of Victoria Harrison, should the information be in the public domain.

The reason for this is due to the risk of colleagues and peers being able to identify the individuals [staff] involved in the incident, and placing the individuals concerned under additional stress and pressure in addition to that already experienced during the investigation and inquest.

Having made this response, Kettering General refused to say how many staff had been disciplined, or their rank, claiming individuals would be identified, but it did reveal that no staff were dismissed.

An artery had been damaged during surgery, with the surgeon rectifying the issue, but not all nursing staff had been told about the bleeding and a number of nurses – incredibly – did not routinely read medical notes of the patients, or when they did could not always decipher surgeons’ handwriting, the inquest was told.

The last written formal observations were taken nine hours before Miss Harrison was found dead by nursing staff.  It is staggering that Miss Harrison had texted her boyfriend to say she was in pain and bleeding, yet staff apparently did not know about it.  No surprise therefore to hear that the coroner said:

Windows of opportunity to treat Victoria were lost – had these been acted upon the outcome may have been different.

I believe her chances of survival would have significantly increased.

Yet despite these failings, the hospital is telling the public they have no right to know how the failings leading to a preventable death have been addressed.

How are residents, forced to rely on the ‘care’ provided at Kettering General, supposed to have confidence in how they will be treated and subsequently looked after?

The interests of the hospital staff are being put first.  This is another example of the public sector, the servant of the public, acting more like the public’s master in refusing to be held to account.  We are just expected to provide the funding and take pot luck when it comes to putting our lives in their hands.

Police and Bailiffs resort to desperate measures to prevent court case exposing criminal phantom visits and illegal fees

Back in August last year we covered a story that typifies the behaviour of bailiffs, local authorities and the police when they respectively choose to break the law and refuse to take action against such law breaking.

It is an incredibly important and far reaching story with implications for many people and the way the law is applied in this country by the police, in what is a biased and uneven way which treats ordinary people differently to the agents of local authorities.  As we explained at the time:

A compelling and detailed case history has been sent to Detective Inspector Caroline Stainer by Peter North.  North’s stand against the illegal fees and refusal to pay for phantom visits has so far resulted in Rundles clamping his vehicle, even though they had no right to do so, North being convicted of criminal damage for removing it by cutting the padlock and Rundles then reporting his car as stolen even though they were not entitled to possession of the vehicle and did not have possession of the vehicle.

Avon & Somerset Police, like forces up and down the country, have turned a blind eye to such criminal behaviour by bailiffs, because they consider the activity of recovering debts on behalf of branches of the establishment – even by illegal means – as upholding law and good order.

Yesterday the case came to court.  Peter North, with barrister representation ready to fight the charges on clear points of law, was confident of victory.  Yet despite months passing since it was known that this case would come to court and be vigorously contested, the bailiffs and police hatched a new plan in front of the judge.  North picks up the tale in detail on his blog which is dedicated to this matter:

Click here to visit the blog

We were well prepared to go in there and knock their socks off. But Avon and Scummerset Plod had different ideas.  They sabotaged the trial by suggesting to the prosecution that they are “considering” filing a complaint of contempt of court and, get this… Witness Intimidation!

These claims are based on North having published the email address of a witness on his blog; but more pertinently he posted a scanned image of a witness statement, which could be considered contempt of court if he did not remove it, but which was removed immediately – months ago – when he was made aware of the situation. Although North was firmly within his rights to publish the email address of Nicola Spring, a Rundles employee who had anonymously posted comments in an effort to undermine North on a public advice forum, attempting to discredit and libel him while ironically using the forum username ‘truthful and honest’, posting the witness statement was an issue, hence his action to edit both of his blog posts.

Even so, subsequent to this, Rundles made a complaint of witness intimidation (ironic considering their behaviour in the matter over a period of months) on the basis of North publishing the witnesses email address.  Rundles have had months to do this if they felt there was a case to answer for what they are alledging and the police have had months to consider whether arrest is appropriate and have the the Crown Prosecution Service assess the merits of the case, if they believe there is one and if there is a substantial chance of winning such a case.

Yet neither party have done anything about it until the very moment a judge, the police (who would otherwise be on duty, you know, supposedly catching real criminals), two bailiffs, prosecution barrister, defence barrister and a defendant who would otherwise be at work earning his pay in gainful employment, have been assembled in court.  The only reasons they would have done this are:

1. because Rundles realise their case is wafer thin (their case notes are apparently in complete disarray) and is being contested by a defendant who is rather more clued up and motivated than most people
2. North has employed a barrister who is doing more than go through the motions and is seeking to make the law work
3. Avon & Somerset Police consider the activity of recovering debts on behalf of branches of the establishment – even by illegal means – as upholding law and good order, and are desperate not to have the floodgates opened, forcing them to deal with bailiffs who act in a criminal manner when appointed as representatives of local authorities

The blatant abuse of the law, use of illegal methods to enforce collection of debts and even false reports of a vehicle theft to ensure harrassment of the debtor, as exhibited by Rundles, needs to be put to an end and punished severely.  The actions of Avon & Somerset Police yesterday appear to be a conscious attempt to prevent that from happening – to prevent the establishment from being held to account by the law when its agents break the law.

Readers should draw their own conclusions from what North has presented on his blog, but as we said last August, it seems the police have been backed into a corner over bailiff phantom visits and illegal fees.  Now they, with Rundles, seem to be resorting to desperate measures to prevent North having his day in court to expose this contemptible inaction and have it held to account.

Another steaming pile of Europlastic bullshit

The Europlastics are at it again today in the Telegraph, again in the shape of Jacob Rees-Mogg – aka Pooh Bear, on account of him being an MP of very little brain.

The response to Pooh’s piece is very simple and I left it in the comment thread.  However it is reproduced below for the benefit of readers who are not minded to venture onto the Barclay Brothers’ online circus…

What part of surrendering political control (sovereignty) to the EU over a number of decades is it that Rees-Mogg doesn’t understand?

Parliament accepted the EU’s plan for ever closer integration without ever asking the people if we agreed. The Tories even championed enlargement so more foreign entities would help determine how Britain will be run. Now they don’t like being powerless and pretend EU control was not part of the plan.

The European project, even since the 1920s and Monnet and Salter’s plans for a United States of Europe, has always been about governance from the centre and outside of democratic control. It has never been a secret. The European Scrutiny Committee’s proposal to give Parliament an emergency brake is therefore ridiculous. It is fantasy politics, signing up to the rules then complaining about their impact.

The fantasy continues as the Tories pretend they can unpick 80 years of European efforts to create a United States of Europe with their unknown ‘reforms’. Britain can’t force a treaty change, it can’t convene an Intergovernmental Conference and it can’t persuade enough EU states to agree to sweeping away the very foundations of what they also signed up to.

There is one choice. In, or out. No mythical reforms, no fake renegotiations. No pathetic ‘Fresh Starts’ or Matthew Elliott wheezes. No more moronic pieces in the Telegraph talking about non-starter plans that can never be realised. Just give us a straight choice where the people decide in a BINDING referendum who should run Britain. Anything else is just game playing.

A dose of EU realism that the BBC seems keen to play down

Very curious.  Tuning in to Radio 4’s Today this morning, a little earlier than usual, I was able to hear a short interview of the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schultz.

While Richard has published a full transcript of the interview on EU Referendum, the words alone do not come close to conveying the bombastic and intolerant nature of the man.  But even that does not detract from the dose of realism Schultz injected into the confused morass of verbiage that passes for discussion about the fantasy of negotiated reform of the central pillars of the EU itself, or the in-out referendum that could not possibly be delivered with a treaty negotiation almost certainly well in train.

Perhaps this explains why even though the audio of the interview is contained deep within the UK pages of BBC online, it is not written up or commented upon anywhere on the BBC’s News page, Politics page, or even the Europe page.  It has to be searched for in the God-awful search engine on the site.  It has become the broadcast equivalent of the embarrassing ginger haired stepchild, being kept firmly out of sight, never to be discussed or mentioned again.  Which as I say is very curious.

Schultz was refreshingly realistic.  From his assertion that governments and heads of states such as David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and Nickolas Sarkozy, declare themselves to be the government of Europe, yet it is Schultz’s beloved parliament that comes in for media and public criticism; to the satisfying moment where Today’s pisspoor token asian female presenter, Mishal Husain, was slapped down for talking of the UK’s ‘relationship’ with the EU with Schultz saying…

The United Kingdom is a member of the European Union so to speak about relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union sounds as if the United Kingdom would not be a part of the European Union. It is the United Kingdom Government which is a co-legislator in the Council of Ministers. There are 72 members of the United Kingdom as law makers in the European institution, the UK is part of Europe so this description, our relationship with Europe sounds to me strange.

This is a point made repeatedly on this blog, so it’s nice to see it challenged, albeit by a federalist opponent.  One point Husain made that was useful was that MEPs are very well-paid parliamentarians and voters in the UK generally have absolutely no idea who their MEP is.  Schultz dodged this, choosing instead to compare turnouts here with the higher ones in Germany.  But as Political Betting just happened to point out today, we have a nonsense voting system in Euro elections that is designed in the interest of parties and their whipping systems, not voters.

But Schultz did not duck away from the main message he wanted to get across, his vision for the EU after Barroso.  It was a clear message for David Cameron, Open Europe, the Fresh Start Group and the likes of the self serving Matthew Elliott, who all seem to think the EU can be brought to heel and made to reform to suit their deluded vision of an EU – where the political is replaced by the economic.  Schultz wants:

… to fill the gap between citizens and between member states in the European Union. That some have an enormous profit and others pay. And, because I’m speaking with BBC, the United Kingdom as a full-fledged member of the European Union. That would be my vision, a United Kingdom which is taking part in the development in a common Europe and not speaking about a specific relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom.

No reform agenda in sight. Economic carrots dangled to maintain political power seeping to Brussels.  There is a disconnect between what Cameron and his front organisations think they can ask for and get, and what the EU mandarins are prepared to give.  At some point, sooner rather than later, reality is going to bite and the UK’s political class is going to realise it is powerless unless it accepts the one option it has always rejected out of hand – leaving the EU.  Small wonder the BBC, having chosen to put Schultz on before the bulk of their Today audience tunes in, has chosen to bury this story as deep as they can.  It doesn’t fit the establishment narrative.

EU debate: Open Europe plumbs new depths of fantasy

While it is accepted that the writers of opinion editorials (op-eds) do not choose the headline under which their piece is published, there is a certain, there is nevertheless a sense that they and the media are all in it together.  The this for instance:

What we have here is Mats Persson spouting more rubbish into the EU debate and his Tory-front organisation doing the exact opposite of what the headline tells Telegraph readers.

One can forgive the Telegraph its confusion, after all, Persson refers to Europhiles in the third person despite the Open Europe position being in favour of UK membership of the EU.  Open Europe is continuing along its fantasy path of EU reform, where the reform required necessitates the EU to tear up its founding principles and its raison d’etre.  It is not so much a call for reform as a call for re-creating the EU as something wholly new – a free trade area instead of a single political entity.

The problem and what has held things back, according to Persson, is that the conversation about the EU is confined to the Westminster bubble.  The Telegraph sub editor has widened this to include the Brussels bubble too in the headline.  But one can only draw such a conclusion if they are part of that bubble, because there is a debate taking place across the country – only the pro-EU media ignores what is happening outside the all important Political bubble.

Open Europe’s solution to the Westminster echo chamber is taking the conversation beyond Westminster.  So what are they doing?  Going out to the real world to talk to ordinary people and small businesses whose views and opinions are discounted?  Of course not. That might result in reality making an appearance.

No, they are creating a new carefully selected subset of the Political bubble in which likeminded souls who believe in fantasies such as the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny and EU Reform, can all reinforce each other’s ignorance and come up with unworkable and impossible proposals and solutions that ignore the basic reality of EU structures, processes and its manner of governance.  A group of the supposedly great and good who will ignore what Jose Manuel Barosso’s likely successor, Martin Schultz, has made crystal clear, that the tenets of the EU are non- negotiable and will not be changed.

So ‘eurosceptic’ Open Europe sallies forth alongside the ludicrous ‘Fresh Start’ group, assembling a group of 300 prestigious politicians and ‘opinion formers’ that does not include a single eurosceptic – let alone anyone with an understanding of the EU structures or processes that render any meaningful reform a complete non-starter – and rushes off to the Telegraph to be handed free of charge a substantial platform to publicise their stupidity.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the rest of us are stuck watching disbelieving as the fictional story line develops like a pisspoor soap opera around us; and the EU metaphorically shakes its head at the laughable and deluded challenge to its transparent and decades-old plan for governance of Europe, embodying the pillars of statehood comprising the inviolable four freedoms.

(hyperlinks to relevant material to follow shortly)

A knowingly untrue media narrative

Time to ease back into blogging after a bit of a rest.  The BBC is once again playing political agendas rather than simply reporting the news today, on the subject of banker bonuses.

Whether you like the Tories or not, the fact is the BBC is biased against them and will score cheap points at every opportunity.  This would be more acceptable if the BBC did the same with Labour and the Lib Dems, but they don’t.  The corporation is content to align itself with parties and causes it identifies as sharing the BBC’s ‘progressive’ worldview.  Hence the pathetic effort to ’embarrass’ George Osborne today.

Due, we are told, to EU rules, banker’s bonuses are capped at 100% of salary.  However, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is applying to UKFI as representatives of the majority shareholder (the taxpayer) to be allowed to set a bonus level for staff of 200% of salary.  The BBC this morning has described this action as ‘trying to get around the rules’.  However the reality is this is strictly within the EU rules.

Banks are allowed to set bonuses at 200% of salary with shareholder permission.  All RBS is doing is seeking that permission.  A guest speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme made this clear, and rebutted the claim by the BBC that RBS is trying to get around the rules and that George Osborne is being put in an embarrassing position by being asked to approve a 200% of salary bonus figure.

Yet in the news headlines at 8.00am, some time after the guest speaker had corrected the false assertion, the BBC once again reported the story as RBS trying to get around the rules.  The facts and the reality have been deliberately ignored by the public service broadcaster because the truth did not fit with the narrative it wanted to portray for political reasons.

The same has been true with the recent nonsense about EU reform and various ‘ideas’ being spouted that, despite completely setting aside what is possible and permissible within the EU, are given airtime as if they were genuine alternatives to leaving the EU.

This casual bias and partisan propagandising is not permitted as part of the BBC charter, but it continues without official challenge.  It does not serve the public, it manipulates the public and such blatant dishonesty demonstrates the contempt in which the public is held by the BBC.  It is another example of why we cannot trust the media in this country.

Cameron’s trivial sideshow must not distract us from the real issue

The Daily Mail reports that, ‘millions of pounds in child benefit paid to families living outside the UK will be axed under David Cameron’s plan to claw back powers from Brussels.

Cameron has insisted that it was wrong that the British taxpayer is giving cash to 40,000 children who live elsewhere in the European Union, and went on to reveal that stopping migrant workers in the UK from claiming child benefit for their offspring back home would be a ‘key demand’ of his plans to renegotiate a fresh deal with the EU before staging an in-out referendum by 2017.

This of course underlines the vacuous nature of the supposed renegotiation.  The whole thing is a complete sham.  If the detail above is a key demand, we can see that the essential issue of ‘Who should run Britain?‘ will remain a no-go area.  There is to be no change, the UK will remain firmly under the control of Brussels and parliament will remain a hollow, rubber stamping shell of its former self.

The separation of the political from the economic is the only way to ensure people see the real issue that has to be addressed – yet which the political class is determined to keep off the table.

There are various economic settlements that can be negotiated to mutual EU-British benefit to ensure concerns about access to the single market are mitigated in the event of a Brexit, but political control of the UK is a binary condition… either the British have self determination, or we are ruled by a foreign entity.  That is the only issue and we must not allow it to be kept off limits by focus being diverted to trivial sideshows such as Cameron’s pledge today.

One of many reasons why the establishment must be taken on

If this story (shown in full below) from Christopher Booker (not an isolated case by any means) doesn’t make every reader of it simmer with anger and righteous indignation then there is more wrong in the world than we already realised.

The lunatics take over the
asylum in ‘caring’ Britain

This story, if accurately and truthfully recited to Booker, demonstrates the state – which is supposed to serve the public and be accountable to it – is now dangerously out of control, having already long since asserted itself as our master and dictator.  It no longer seeks to serve, it seeks to control.  For the state to behave in this way in response to lawful and appropriate challenge to its self-conferred authority and unscrutinised decision making, is an outrage in the proper sense of the word.

The only way the state will relinquish the power it has granted itself is for consent to be withdrawn by the people so as to make it impossible for the state to govern us how it chooses.  Then power can be taken back by the people, as per the strategy of The Harrogate Agenda.  Seeking change through the party political process is a forlorn hope that will not succeed.

No, the EU has not gone off the rails; we are seeing what was always intended

The Tories are at it again, pushing their lie that the “Common Market” started off with good intentions and somehow went off the rails.  It is laughable because this argument cannot withstand the merest wisp of a breeze of scrutiny of the substantial mountain of evidence that underlines the truth. What we are seeing is what was always intended.

The European project has not lost its way or gone beyond its original plan.  It is firmly on track to achieve what its architects set out to do.

But that doesn’t stop the likes of John Redwood and an assortment of nice/nasty but dim Europlastics in the Conservative Party, and their corporatist proxies such as Open Europe, from chuntering about a mythical renegotation of UK membership and wider reform of the EU, because the union has supposedly gone further than they ‘believe’ was intended.  These people need only to trouble themselves to read the substantial body of documents and speeches by the European project’s leading lights, dating from the present all the way back as far as the end of World War I, to see how deluded and ignorant their ‘off the rails’ argument is.

While the EUphile media in the UK laps up the Tory ‘off the rails’ lie and reports the faux fightback it as if it were a defining issue of our time – because like the media the Tories want to keep the UK firmly under the control of the supreme government in Brussels – in reality this hoo-haa is just for domestic consumption by a British audience, to service the vested interests of corporations that benefit from EU membership and rule by bureaucracy, while the negative consequences of membership are experienced by ordinary people as the democratic process is eroded and the capacity of people to effect change is eradicated.

But in the corridors of EU power, this renegotiation/reform ‘debate’ so beloved of the Europlastics barely registers, as Mary Ellen Synon explained to the Bruges Group recently, because David Cameron reassured the EU last April that he would not take Britain out of the EU just because a referendum result was a vote to get Out.  Renegotiation and reform is a singularly British monologue and it doesn’t even make it into the EU’s in-tray.

The fact is there is no great crisis of confidence in the EU.  In fact the EU is supremely confident and relatively content with its patient implementation of the decades-old plan, hatched by the likes of Monnet and Salter, to develop one overall government for all of continental Europe.  It was never about creating a continent-wide free trade area.  The customs union was not the aim, just a consequence of creating a single political jurisdiction. In José Manuel Barroso’s own words, the agenda is ever closer union and ‘the EU needs to be big on big things and smaller on smaller things’.  Governance is a big thing and the EU will be big in governing, as per the long standing plan.

The European project was always intended, slowly and deliberately, to relegate national governance to nothing more than a rubber stamping operation.  By keeping nominal national governments in place, the distracted and barely cognisant populus would retain an impression of national sovereignty where none exists.  The Tories are either too stupid to read the evidence and grasp this; or too dishonest to admit it, lest their complicity in this long planned and slowly implemented subversion of national self determination is eventually recognised, understood and punished by the electorate.

Until the reality of the European project, and the EU it has spawned, is understood so people see the lies, delusion and misrepresentations for what they are, we will never have an honest debate about the UK’s future and this country’s place in the world.  Remember, those suitcases on the baggage carousels at Brussels airport so vividly described by Mary Ellen Synon in her Bruges Group speech linked above, have stickers that say “Europe is my country”, not ‘Europe is my free trade area’.  The reality of what has always been intended is no secret. It is ludicrous in light of so much evidence that the Tories are allowed to get away with their lie.

So long as the Tories and their proxies are allowed to keep presenting their distorted and false narrative unchallenged, the British people will never be able to make an informed decision about the central and vital question of who should run Britain.

Please help more people to understand the reality by spreading it far and wide, in general discussion and on comment threads.  It’s time that people had the chance to  debate and decide Britain’s future in an informed way with knowledge of the realities, not the politically-motivated myths that currently hold sway.

New Year, but same old hypocritical Labour

Today could not go unmarked following the speculation, hype, scaremongering and bitter argument in the run up to the entitlement of Bulgarians and Romanians to live and work without restriction as ‘EU citizens’ in the UK.

The Guardian, as always, chooses to report on Labour’s words of condemnation – that the government has failed to introduce measures to protect the rights of low-skilled British workers whose jobs may be threatened by the new migrants.

The Daily Mail, however, focuses on Labour actions – as their Chairman of the Home Affairs select committee, Keith Vaz, waited at Luton airport to welcome migrants landing on the first flight of the morning from Romania, even buying some a coffee and having a chat to ask why they had come… as if that wasn’t patently obvious.

This is Labour at its hypocritical worst.  In one breath extolling the virtues and necessities of EU membership and deeper integration, in the next complaining that British workers are being disadvantaged by cheaper foreign labour afforded the right to come here under EU law.

Similarly, while they want to be seen as standing by the working class they serve so poorly and railing against migration Labour has actively encouraged, they also cynically work to position themselves as the friend of the migrants in the hope of electoral reward in the future.

As always, we should judge these political pygmies not by their words, but by their deeds.  They speak louder than words ever can.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year dear reader. Wishing you and yours happiness, health and prosperity throughout 2014.