RuskinBlog

Fracking, guess who pays? Un-fracking-believable!

economics, politics, science, stupid politicians No Responses »

Jul 282014

Today the government is accepting applications for licenses to explore potential fracking sites. The contracts that will be eventually signed will not contain clauses to clean up contaminated water supplies or clauses insisting upon insurance to be taken out to pay in the event of a natural disaster.

$Cheers - it's OK to drink, trust me, I'm a fracker$

Cheers – it’s OK to drink, trust me, I’m a fracker

Instead, here is what the government says to fracking companies “when things go wrong”:-

“How operators manage incidents if something goes wrong:-

Operators must prepare a safety document with an assessment of risks and a plan for responding to incidents and emergencies on site.

If the following happens, it must be reported to the HSE(see below):
a blowout (an uncontrolled flow of well fluids)the unplanned use of blowout prevention equipment
the unexpected detection of hydrogen sulphide
failure to maintain minimum separation distance between wells
mechanical failure of any safety critical element of a well
After an incident, the HSE will ensure appropriate investigations are made into the well safety and stability, and that well integrity is restored as necessary.
Operators may then be required to make improvements to their operations.”

The Health & Safety Executive is a not even a part of the government, it is a toothless, powerless quango set up to avoid ministerial responsibility. Well that’s alright then …Un-fracking-believable!

History repeats itself. Strangely though, our politicians cannot see this simple truth and cannot learn from it because it is not in their interests. The history is this – private companies will hardly ever ever pay if they cause pollution or natural disasters. They will either simply go bust and let “we the people” pay or ensure that the contracts they sign with the government do not contain any annoying clauses that may cost them money.

Since the late 1970′s government ministers, of both main parties, have been creating QUasi Non Governmental Organisations to avoid the responsibility which is rightly theirs to bear. Quangos are given the responsibilities which should be shouldered by ministers, because they are not accountable to the people. Ministers can then blame them when things go wrong. Simple eh?

Remember British Nuclear Fuels, our wonderful British nuclear industry “the energy of the future”? If you are under 40 you probably don’t know the sad tale that means that the tax payer is coughing up £’billions into the unforeseeable future to to deal with spent fuel rods from the 1960′s 1970′s 1980′s 1990s 2000s2010s and so on.

The simple, sickening truth is that if the companies who hope to make a profit from fracking were forced to deal with these costs they wouldn’t frack. The real business costs and risks are just too high as we learn from our privatisation history. Well OK, we don’t. Has the government learned anything from the past?

No, since we the people will be paying they are happy to proceed.

It won’t affect the government ministers pensions, the incompetent criminals who let it all happen, because we will be paying those too. Those who keep making these colossal, criminal errors are never held to account!

Here are links to the who is paying for clean-up in the UK and the USA, read and be warned:-

July 14th 2014 California Halts Injection of Fracking Waste, Warning it May Be Contaminating Aquifers

Frack free Somerset

Would you eat this Californian tomato?

Fracking act loopholes will cost Illinois billions

What should we be doing?

How about funding research & development in our best Universities (the ones not running media studies courses ) on how best to keep the lights on over the next 100 years?
How about ensuring, now, that any new build house is 80% heat efficient?
How about ensuring that new housing estates (say 20 houses or more) have to use centralised ground and air source heat pumps
How about using new carbon capture technology in our coal mines?
How about using the heat in the rivers?
How about researching geo-thermal energy?

They won’t do any of those because there is no quick party political payback – 3 years payback is the most they can wait for.

Cynical? Moi?

No! I’m fracking fuming!!

Birmingham schools Trojan Horse affair & religious extremism

education, philosophy, politics, religion, stupid politicians No Responses »

Jun 062014

There is currently a daft & pointless row between Michael Gove (Education Secretary) and Theresa May (Home Secretary) about who’s ideas are best to fight ‘religious extremism’ in schools.

They have not, and cannot, define extremism, yet the ill-defined argument nevertheless rages in the “poli-news”*¹

Both want to gain credit for “fighting extremism” in the wake of the UKIP earthquake, which has woken up the Tories, if not Cleggy and Millibean!

Gove may but Theresa wont; If looks could kill eh? ;-)

This is a further example of how our party political leaders suffer from a lack of philosophical clarity & backbone. In meBook I explain that a better way forward for British society can only be met by the removal of the useless party political system, but anyway, back to the issue.

The real question for debate is “Why have primitive cultural practices have been allowed to multiply in our schools?” These practices*³ separate the children of Muslim parents from mainstream British society, are socially divisive and create the breeding ground for a future home grown Islamic jihad of terrifying scale.

A deeply mistaken, and socially divisive pandering to Muslim religious sensitivities is shared by all three main political parties and it all started with Blair’s damned academies.

The unpleasant truth is that many British parents are hypocrites and indirectly and unwittingly provide support for an Islamic extremist future. They send their children to Christian / Jewish faith schools simply because they promote better discipline and, as a result, have quieter classrooms and as a result, better exam results. This is all done under the pretence that they are practising Christians or Jews. Once upon a time we had little to worry about the gentle C of E schools and the slightly more rabid Roman Catholic Schools.

But now, this new tranche of Muslim faith schools are effectively destroying a traditional British identity that took a thousand years to form. I know it’s not perfect, but it is the best set of cultural practices to be found anywhere in the world, and it is being destroyed in a matter of decades by our idiotic party political leaders.

Why? Because party politicians:-

a) dare not risk losing any faith vote
b) are completely at a loss how to deal with this “sensitive” issue
c) dare not appear to be “racist*²”
d) dare not face up to primitive cultural practices because of their fear of violence from our ever increasing Muslim population.

But, now we are faced with a serious and growing threat to traditional British values from 7th century Islam which has to be addressed by an enlightened government.

Hypatia of Alexandia (370 – 415 A.D.) understood the threat of violent extremism caused by teaching the young mind religious dogma as truth:-

“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain, and perhaps tragedy, can he be later relieved of them. Men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth, often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.”

“Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.”

The solution is simple, painful but entirely necessary.

Cease public funding for ALL faith schools and slowly change them all to a secular⁴ ethos but including the missing discipline regimes.

Religion should play no part in a child’s education and Britain should adopt the French Secularism charter which is now established in all French, publicly funded, schools.

The only way forward is a secular and philosophical based government who have the best interests of the whole population of Britain at heart. Those people who have a faith based lifestyle can continue with it, but not in national state funded schools.

*¹ poli-news is my term for the discussion in the media of the politics of the problem rather than the issue itself.

*² There is no definition of the term ‘racist’ in the Oxford English dictionary, yet the word is used everywhere to mean almost anything.

*³ practices include separating boys from girls; divisive cultural clothing practices (hijab, Burkha etc.); separation of children, whose parents are Muslim, from the rest of British society; refusal to teach aspects of science because they challenge religious texts! )

*⁴ secular; the separation of religious belief from any national, publicly funded institution; i.e. government, the legal system and education.

EU 2014 fallout; a ray of hope for the EEC?

politics, stupid politicians No Responses »

May 272014

Our “None of the above” protest vote is still not being heard by any of the political parties.

Clegg in the Poo

What we the people have said is what none of those in power want to hear.

We, the people, have said it, not just in Britain, but, all over Europe.

The knee jerk response to the EU, is UKIP’s “out is best”. I have a fair degree of sympathy with that view, but let’s examine the alternatives.

Notice, I do not mention immigration once and that is where UKIP have gone wrong in my view. The immigration policies of the EU, Labour, Lib-dims and Tory have been crazy for the last 20 years, but that’s not the main problem with Europe. The damage done to the fabric of Britishness is what most upsets many who directly experience the ghettoisation of many cities in the UK. Multi-culturalism was the issue, misunderstood by the political class and never dealt with; these EU election results and UKIP’s success is the result.

We the people never wanted the astonishing intrusion to our national identity, that is the direct result of EU law.

The main problem with the EU is that it was the EEC that we all voted for in the 1975 referendum.
- the EEC was a sensible construct; designed to stop Germany shooting at us all again
- the EEC was an economic collaboration of similar advanced European countries; it made sense
- the EEC morphed into a wishy washy federalist state designed by faceless twits in Brussels
- the EU is far too big and is run by failed politicians from Portugal & Belgium
- the EU is completely undemocratic, therefore, crass decisions are never opposed
- the job of an MEP is pointless; their votes do not count towards policy decisions at all (by design)
- corruption & inefficiency is endemic
- ridiculous situations are perpetuated, e.g.
- the fortnightly move from Brussels to Strasbourg in a fleet of lorries
- the Common Agricultural Policy which favours France to the point of idiocy
- inflated salaries are the norm for jobs that do nothing for we the people
- as for the Euro, words almost fail me. The Euro-zone “crisis” remains un-addressed. Disaster still lurks while they hope it goes away

The required reforms are these:-
- the complete unwinding of the EU back to the EEC (i.e. pre-Maastricht)
- the removal of the Euro from all but Germany, France and perhaps Holland. The rest of the Euro-zone is so economically primitive that it just beggars belief that it was allowed to join.

David Cameraman wants to tinker with bits here and there but still supports the global pro-EU businesses that support the Tory party. Labour still can’t accept that Ed Millibean is a joke, perhaps a number 2, but NOT a leader. The Lib-dims (who dey?) still can’t accept that Nick Clegg (who he?) is unelectable and that the EU needs such fundamental reform that his continued support for it is just ridiculous.

So then, perhaps UKIP are right after all, there’s just too much wrong with the EU. Let’s just get out and renegotiate individual agreements like we used to.
It will be OK, don’t listen to words of fear, its only globalised commerce that’s scared of a smaller EU, less easy money to be made.

Acknowledgement:

Brian Adcock for the cartoon that says it all on Cagle.com

Cameraman learns how to use “Look” and does god too!

politics, religion, stupid politicians No Responses »

Apr 282014

Following on from Tony Blair’s lessons in how to be a successful polishitun, our Dave, the heir to Blair, has learned from his master how to use the “Look” word to convey sincerity, where, of course, there is none.

“This should help the food banks out…”

The use of “Look” sounds chatty, warm and fluffy but masks the real motivation of those who want power. He wants to appear to be your mate and, in this latest instance, wants to be a “mate” to all “people of faith”.

(Ed: Is there an election coming up by any chance?)

His latest use of “Look” comes from his laughably sincere message, repeated (without so many Looks) in the Church Times, please read and have a sick bag ready. It starts “Look, a huge – a warm welcome to everybody. The Bible tells us, actually, to bear one another’s burden and you will fulfil the law of Christ;“. There are lots more “Looks” to look for – and yes there are prizes for finding all of them! (Ed: no there aren’t)

To prove my assertion that our Dave is just as shallow and hypocritical as was Blair, I quote his previous utterances on religious matters:-

“I believe, you know. I am a sort of typical member of the Church of England. As Boris Johnson once said, his religious faith is a bit like the reception for Magic FM in the Chilterns: it sort of comes and goes. That sums up a lot of people in the Church of England. We are racked with doubts, but sort of fundamentally believe, but don’t sort of wear it on our sleeves or make too much of it. I think that is sort of where I am.” The Guardian 2008

Cameraman misses the far more accurate point that we are a culturally Christian country. To say we are a Christian country is just plain daft. Even my assertion, that being culturally Christian, will last another two generations is optimistic. The Anglican church is dead as a dodo. As-Salaam-Alaikum.

Here is wisdom concerning religion expressed some years ago:-

Seneca (4 – 65 BCE) “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 – 1821)

“Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.”

“Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”

“All religions have been made by men.”

Nick Doody

“ …religion was like an enormous dog. “If it’s yours, you love it, but it is terrifying to everyone else. Above all it should be kept away from children.”

Acknowledgement: Peter Brookes for the cartoon

Maria Miller, the ‘story’ is over, time to move on?

philosophy, politics, stupid politicians No Responses »

Apr 102014

Up yours suckers, I’ll be back, just like Liam Fox and David Laws – it won’t be long, see yah …

Once again, we have been handled by the polishituns, and, to a lesser extent, by the meedja. The sad truth is, that the justice that should have flowed from the truth of the situation, is absent and everybody seems quite content to move on; the story is over.

The BBC has let us down, their coverage of this fiasco was fawning and oh so gentle. Democracy was sidestepped by our totally up themselves political class. The independent body set up to stop this expenses crap was overruled by the Westminster Bubble Club of MPs.

What should have happened?

Maria Miller should have paid back £45,000 + a 100% penalty, following standard HMRC practice, the rules of which seem only to apply to the rest of us but not to our beloved leaders – strange that …
Dave Cameraman should have sacked Maria Miller both from the Government and as an MP, for bringing Parliament into disrepute.
Ooh the pain, giggle giggle, he hee!

Are “we all in this together”?

What do you think?

Acknowledgement: veoooz.com for the truth put in a funny way (do follow the link, you will be glad you did!)

We can't believe we are still till in business! Woo hoo!

We can’t believe we are still in business too! Woo hoo!

Nobody agrees with Nick – or Vince

economics, stupid politicians No Responses »

Apr 022014

Nobody has ‘agreed with Nick‘ for three years. Now, even Vince ‘the’ Cable has joined that club of pollishituns who have shafted the public and refuse to take responsibility by resigning.

Vince gets ready for retirement

Vince Cable, the man who foresaw the financial disaster of 2008, is no more, and should resign after his disastrous mishandling the Royal Mail privatisation. He still speaks, but his words are mealy-mouthed establishment twaddle.

In every privatisation of public assets, since Thatcher’s dark days in the 1980s, the only winners have been the investment bankers who “oversaw” each under-priced share issue. Politicians have been routinely shafted by clever businesses who pay little tax here.

As a result, we the public have been shafted too, our assets raped and pillaged by nameless offshore tax avoiders unprotected by clueless and inept polishituns of both ruling parties.

Do not approach these thieves, they have arms and are dangerous to the public.

Nick Clegg, who many of us once saw as a possible good future for UK politics, self combusted after lying to a whole generation of students over the college tuition fees issue. He continues to support a corrupt, incompetent EU, hell bent on enforcing a uniform Belgian mediocrity for all, in a United States of Europe, and few understand why.

Their Lib Dem and Con-servative party political chums still support Nick & Vince but for how much longer? We the people certainly do not!

Taking responsibility is now a meaningless phrase, which actually means “I’m very sorry, but I need the job, my 11% pay rise and the luvverly pension and benefits. So, piss off please. I am not resigning, and anyway what are you going to do about it?

Remember Chilcot ..? The dodgy dossier et al ..?

politics, stupid politicians 4 Responses »

Mar 242014

Alastair Campbell doing what he does best …

The enquiry under Sir John Chilcot set up in 2009 has yet to report.

The total expenditure since 2009 is £7,479,400, and of course worth every penny! That from the Chilcot Inquiry’s own web page.

If you remember, this enquiry was the 4th attempt to establish the “truth” behind the UK government’s reasons for the Iraq invasion. The other 3 enquiries were so discredited, by the press and others, that “they” thought, they had better have another go.

Sir John said, in 2009, that this enquiry would be “all over in 18 months” and would report by 2011. Hmm, doesn’t time fly?

There have been several articles like this one in the Daily Telegraph, and others, explaining that Lord David Owen thinks there may be an almighty cover-up in progress. [Ed: Shurely not!] It reads like a proper conspiracy theory website, except for the fact that Lord Owen is one of the most rational and respected members of the House of Lords.

When I checked the enquiry’s own website today, the last update was in November 2013. Since they stopped collecting evidence in 2011, one just has to wonder what’s going on? So I emailed them …

I’m just a member of the public who was wondering what on earth you lot are up to?

I write a blog which at least 6 people read and am just about to publish a “Remember Sir John Chilcot” – so don’t worry about your reply going viral

Derek Ruskin

I’ll let you know what they said …

I have had two responses from the Chilcot enquiry and you can read them by clicking on the blue post title or here.

Acknowledgements: Andrew Birch for the cartoon

The EU, silly Millband and daft Dave’s desperate days

economics, politics, stupid politicians No Responses »

Mar 132014

Ed Milliband has never really found his way into our hearts since becoming leader of the New / Old / Labour / Lost / Middle party. The labour party faithful just cannot accept that he is simply not leadership material. He sounds odd and looks weird. If that seems unkind, well tough, it’s simply true! Not PC but true.

Our next PM?

Millibean’s latest desperate pronouncement on not supporting a referendum just shows how incapable of rational thought he is. He is caught in the party political game and cannot think about what is good for the people of Britain.

The alternative? god help us all!
But see below >>>

This latest media fest on the EU referendum, as usual, discusses none of the real reasons for the UK leaving the sinking ship that is the EU. I repeat now what I said last May because the facts are just the same – the only thing that changes is the damn party politicians!

Nowhere has anyone actually got to grips with the real problems with the EU, just a few of which are these:-

1 – The EU is just too damn big; it is completely unmanageable and is run by bonkers, failed ex-leaders of failed countries (See 10 below)
2 – The EU has forgotten why it was formed in the first place (to stop Germany starting a third world war if you had forgotten or are too young to know)
3 – The EU is incompetent; those in charge are failures in their own countries – farmed out to a slow, but oh so well paid, death in Brussels
4 – The EU bureaucrats are overpaid for doing nothing to benefit the people of Europe
5 – The EU is so inefficient that it makes my teeth hurt
6 – The EU spends most of its time herding cats (people who will never agree on anything)
7 – The EU cannot even balance its books (19 years of audited but inaccurate, qualified final accounts).
8 – The EU is undemocratic; the MEPs have no power and cannot hold the executive to account by design!
9 – The EU wastes so much of our tax money that it’s leaders should be in jail

Boris for PM – Hurray ;-)

10 – The EU is run by a failed former Portuguese Prime Minister and a failed Belgian Prime Minister! Well that’s alright then (Belgium has not had a valid government for years & Portugal is as bust as Greece)
11 – Germany has just announced an astonishing proposal for an 20 fold increase in the EU ‘diplomatic budget’ (but see 13 below)
12 – Oh, I almost forgot the Euro; possibly the most stupid ever invention ever conceived by man
13 – Even Van Rompuy & Baroness Ashton realise the game is up are are quitting in 2014
14 – Above all the EU is NOT what “we the people” want, which is the European Economic Community. We voted for the EEC in 1975 but since then the slow, slimy, sickening morphing into the EU has been quietly and completely undemocratically, foisted upon us.

Those in power are quietly allowing currencies to devalue (The £ by a shocking 35% since 2008!) whilst QE creates a background slow death of inflation so the banks can stay in power.

Nowhere are these fundamentally important issues being discussed – why not?

This is mass madness on such a scale that words are beginning to fail me …OK not quite ;-)

We the people are being ‘handled’ while those who create the acres of meedja crap and spend the people’s money so incompetently are unchallenged by anyone talking common sense.

Here’s what needs to be done:-

Either the EU needs to be reformed back to the size of the EEC (pre Maastricht)

All those counties outside the Euro-zone should leave and let Germany stew in its own Euro fueled bonfire of failed European federalism.

If we can’t really take Dave, Ed, Nigel or Nick, well, there’s always ….Boris!

Note from the Editor: “No real people were hurt when taking these pictures of our beloved ruling elite.”

China – the elephant in the room

economics, politics, stupid politicians No Responses »

Feb 262014

Everywhere I look in today’s news, I see that few see China, as one of the biggest problems in our globalised world. Most commentators see China’s “economic miracle” as something to be admired!

In my view, China’s miracle is an example to be feared, then understood, then faced and dispatched to the history books as a colossal error by the human race. I see, as does dear Robert Peston, who has done his best to explain the simple maths of the debt situation in China which is inevitably leading China (and the world) to a financial crash that will make 2008 look like a small blip.

“In light of the fact that China owns most of the note debt on the US debt, I’d like to announce the following recognition…”

The ruling communist party has its head the the sands of the Gobi desert (there’s lots of oil & minerals there, yet to be exploited). The next financial, debt fuelled, meltdown will start as a response to China’s debt based “miracle” being spotted by the banks who loans cannot be repaid.

There are many growing arguments, mainly economic, against globalisation, but my main criticism is that it dehumanises the human race and diminishes individuality wherever it can, in pursuit of profit. Surely it is obvious to all that globalisation is concentrating power and money in the hands of small elite of ever richer people?

Globalisation was really kick-started around 1980 by China ditching Mao Tse-tung’s vision for China in favour of Deng Xiaoping’s market economy. Margaret Thatcher and a few others followed on in some gob smackingly bad and criminally incompetent decision making in allowing “the market” into areas where they should have been forever banned*1.

Going back to the elephant in the title of this piece, Prince Charles and William’s blind hypocrisy over Africa’s “Ivory trade” is yet another wonderful PR nail in the coffin for the Royal family. This, just days before Wills goes off to Spain to shoot wild boar. Anyone for a spot of bore hunting?

Two bores (geddit?) we would be better off without!

This however is small beer compared to China’s government support by inaction, of the sickening, illegal trade in Africa’s endangered species to cure erectile dysfunction in China’s male population. The Chinese Central Communist party has become far too powerful and threatens not just the people of China, but the rest of us too.

The Yellow river along with the Colorado river in the USA rarely reach the sea since 1975 because of hundreds of new dams and population pressure. See here for an analysis of how the world’s rivers are succumbing to overpopulation and over industrialisation.

But you won’t see this view on the BBC’s 6′o clock news today, but my guess is that you will soon!

*1 Privatisation of Britain’s water supply and electricity supply grid in the late 1980s + the deregulation of high street banks allowing them to act like merchant banks (that went well!)

Palestine / Israel & the Single State Solution (SSS)

politics, religion, stupid politicians No Responses »

Feb 182014

Ariel Sharon’s recent death, after 8 years in a coma, marks the end of what was the last, but slim best chance for a solution to the Israeli / Palestinian turmoil. Sharon was hardly a beacon of hope for the region, but his last few actions, as prime minister, were moving in a positive direction.

It’s all god’s fault

Age might have been slowly bringing wisdom to this former soldier and enthusiastic, Arab bashing Zionist hero of the 1967 Arab Israeli war. Sharon, in 2006, just before his terminal stroke, as Prime Minister, was at the start of a realistic peace process with ‘Palestine’. Despite his long military career, where he was responsible for thousands of Palestinian & Lebanese deaths, parts of the Palestinian leadership were listening to him as was the Israeli Zionist right. He had begun the process of removing the laughably so called “settlers” from the West Bank and many Israelis were thinking he was right to do so. Sharon’s life story will fill many books but this blog is about a possible future.

Sharon was a secular Prime Minister, his Jewishness was cultural rather than faith based, but he was not a supporter of, what really is the only lasting solution to this horrific mess, the “Single State Solution”.

“Single State Solution”?

The SSS is explained later in this piece, but, ‘bear-with’, first we need a quick summary of the last 100 years; I’ll keep it short.

At the risk of sounding like a pompous arse, I have to say this has bugged me for several years (that’s one pompous arse bit), and while it has been of more serious concern for others, and for much longer, I will, at least, have my own thinking sorted out. The solution became suddenly obvious to me (that’s another pompous arse bit), but when I looked for similar views, many others had seen it years ago.

When Israel was carved out of bits of the Middle East in 1948 the usual territorial cockups were made by Britain and a fledgling U.N. (then called the ‘League of Nations’) in an understandable but nevertheless emotional response to the recent Nazi atrocities against the Jews. Arabs were turfed out of their farms and family homes to make way for a huge migration of Jews into Israel. The fact that Jew and Arab had lived side by side in the region for millennia was ignored and the fuel that created today’s Islamism was lit!

The events leading up to the creation of Israel are complex, and I would be the last to say that I fully understood them. However, I see clearly that the failure to create a Palestinian state at the same time as Israel was formed, was a huge error, and, it has to be said, partly of the Arabs own making. It is now far too late for a viable Palestinian state to be made out of the paltry parcels of scrub land left after Israel’s many illegal, but totally unchallenged, land and water grabs. See here for a truly shocking map view of what has happened to Arab Palestine since 1948. It is therefore far too late for a Two State Solution to be viable or just.

Although the cartoon says it was god’s fault, the real culprits are Britain, France and latterly, the USA. Lies were told to fledgling Arab states as is well told in Lawrence of Arabia. The, openly flawed, Balfour Declaration of 1917 is seen today as obfuscation at best and incompetent hypocrisy at worst.

This continuing tragedy has to be stopped, but the West’s reticence (I, of course, mean that of the USA and UK) to stand up to Israel’s repeated illegal land grabs is the largest elephant in the room! Party politics, here and in the USA, is the cause of this global tragedy. Statesmanship is the answer, not politics. What a tragedy that Obama wasn’t the man we thought he might become, but I suspect his hands are tied by a powerful Congress and an even more powerful Jewish lobby.

Everywhere we see politicians asking for a “Two State” solution to the current crisis in Israel & Palestine as if this is the only grown up and realistic compromise solution. Indeed, this is even what the current Palestinian Authorities are asking for in the United Nations a few months ago, although even that news was hardly being discussed at the time.

Perhaps more newsworthy might be the 10 to 1 death ratio of Palestinians to Israelis in the recent years escalations of violence, except that is hardly mentioned in the media either. Our media’s brave reporters donned their bullet proof vests, stood on smoking piles of rubble, and described the latest bomb damage and small child’s death with serious faces.

Correspondents in Israel stood in leafy, prosperous Tel Aviv looking at the occasional window smashed by Guy Fawkes sized rockets. Gaza based correspondents stood on a 3rd world rubbish dump with a level of overcrowding that makes Mexico City look like Shropshire! (Biased? Moi?)

News, in November 2012, that the UK abstained in the UN vote, on Palestine being granted ‘UN Observer Status’, was truly sickening. I listened to William Hague’s weasel worded political claptrap with a growing sense of rage at our government’s weakness and lack of vision. He mentioned several times that the only solution is a negotiated ‘Two State’ solution. Even more sickening, is the recent announcement from Israel of yet another illegal ‘settlement’ to be built on the West Bank. I am ashamed of my government for missing an opportunity to right the wrongs we help make between 1916 & 1946 when Palestine was a British Protectorate.

The Two State Solution cannot ever provide a lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians because it does not resolve, or even address, the errors made, by the UN and Great Britain and France, when Palestine & Israel were “created” in 1948.

This article was started about three years ago and I felt distinctly uneasy in publishing it then for several reasons, the main one being, that I have never visited Palestine or Israel and yet dare to pontificate on the subject. My unease was removed by the last bout of retribution by Israel where yet again the Palestinian death toll was 10 times that of Israel.

Even senior, battle hardened ex Mossad leaders have called for Netanyahu to change direction because they realised that Israel has little time left to get away with it’s truly atrocious behaviour to the Palestinians and its continuing decimation of what was Palestine in 1948.

The Single State Solution discussion is completely absent from mainstream news, although, if you look below the surface, you will find many politicians, academics, philosophers and even a few religious leaders giving this subject realistic thinking time.

Here then, is the Single State Solution advocated by many wise people, both Jew & Arab (see end of article for details):-

Israel and Palestine are merged, their populations become one nation, under one secular government;

The disgusting wall, cutting through lemon groves on former Arab owned land, is torn down and Zionists are told to shut up, by the USA;

The Palestinian authority and Hamas denounce their version of terror and recognise that Judaism has as much right to exist as does Islam, Christianity and Atheism.

That will take 50 years to achieve but with help from the Arab League, The UN and most of all the USA, Russia, France and China, it can happen.

To put this SSS into an historical perspective, at the time of Herod, Palestine incorporated today’s Israel, the whole of Jordan and a few other land parcels. Neither Jew nor Arab has ever had an exclusive right to this land and if they could only ignore their respective gods (different names but the same non-existent chap) there might yet be a chance for peace.

On the one hand the Israelis might seem to have most to lose, but, on the other, much to gain. What price for everlasting peace?

West Germany has absorbed, and is still absorbing, East Germany; South African apartheid has gone, two almost unbelievable events at the time. OK the jury is still out on the aftermath and Mandela’s declining influence but at least the seemingly impossible does happen.

Here are the main plus points for the SSS:

It is simply the most logical solution for the beleaguered people of Israel and Palestine
- Economically
- Socially
- Morally
It saves uncountable future lives
It gives a moral validity for the 1948 creation of Israel (which in the view of many is highly dubious)
It rights the wrongs done when Arabs were forcibly evicted from their own homes when Israel was created
It saves Israel a huge amount of money (defence budget cuts)
It saves a fortune for the Europe Union. Guess how much we and the EU fund Gaza/Palestine each year?
Jerusalem becomes a little more peaceful
Everybody’s god would be happy
It gives Islamism a much needed kick in the balls
It will put a few arms dealers out of business
There are a few precedents that politicians can do the right thing:-
- Germany, East absorbed into West (walls will always be torn down!)
- South Africa abolishing apartheid
and finally, and in any case, it has already happened see here and here

These are the main arguments against the SSS:

“Don’t be so damn naive / stupid, that could never work”
The monstrously powerful Jewish political lobby in the USA
Religion
Jingoism
Religion
Jingoism
Religion
It will put quite a few arms dealers out of business. Jobs will be lost in the USA, Russia, England, Iran, China and France
Jingoism
… did I mention religion?

What is the alternative? Another 100 years of what we have seen for the last 100?

Here it is being discussed rationally:-

- Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine

- A Wikipedia overview

- http://www.redress.cc/palestine/rtucker20100618#bio

- Radical Middle Newsletter from the USA

- Israel and Palestine Conflict (a reformed Zionist’s view)

and many many more …

Einstein said: “Only two things are infinite; the universe and man’s stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe”.

Acknowledgement: Cartoon by Baloo