Everyone I meet who is even minimally interested in the EU, knows that Cameraman’s EU negotiations have been pointless from the start. The charade continues to be supported by the BBC and most journalists because “the story” fills up the time available for news broadcasts and keeps everyone busy.
… and anyway, I’m off soon anyway, and then it’s all over to Boris & George…
There is no reason at all to link the date of the promised referendum to what Cameraman is doing. Yet this is being presented as being a necessary step!
Absolute poppycock. (I would have preferred to use the word bollocks, but Chaucerian invective is out of fashion, so I am told).
Jacob Rees Mogg said it if too politely (please watch him by clicking on the “said it” link) ; “what has been asked for is fundamentally trivial”, “two of the four demands are gradually happening anyway”, “the third demand will never be accepted and the fourth part (the time delay for benefits availability) would not make very much difference to the numbers of EU immigrants coming here.
Simple facts have been ignored. Britain is the fifth largest economy in the world with Germany fourth and France sixth. Italy is eighth and the Netherlands seventeenth and the other 23 member states are way down the list. Child benefit in Romania is £2 per week and £16 here. In short, the economies are so diverse that “ever closer union” is just plain daft and a common currency was always daft.
The reason so many people want to come to Britain is that we have a higher standard of living, a humane police force, stability and Radio 4. Well OK, perhaps that last one is more about me than them 😉 , but we have a culture that is the envy of the world and a minimum wage to drool over, if you are Romanian that is.
Cameron’s original idea of “reform” was supposed to apply to all EU members, remember that? Well, the so called ‘trivial’ reforms, if ever agreed, will only ever apply to Britain. The whole process is meaningless, time consuming drivel.
What Cameraman has not demanded are the really important things:
a) Financial competence please: The EU is systemically incapable of financial competence. Nineteen years of accounts which cannot be supported by its auditors! Yup, the EU’s accounts have never provided a “true and fair view” of financial matters.
b) Democracy please: The EU is undemocratic by design. The MEPs (salaries vastly higher than our own MPs) have no say on policy and spend most of their time arguing over wording in committees for legislation that most people in Europe find irritating, pointless or plain daft.
c) Immigration control please. Measures which make sense to you and me.
d) The Euro is a daft currency, based purely on party political desires rather than any economic common sense. Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain are still as bust as they were 3 years ago and the danger of the Euro collapsing has not gone away. The German Central bank is now charging negative interest to some depositors! The whole economics of the Euro is a joke. The EU is hell bent on supporting the banking system rather than the little people (that’s you and me and your Polish plumber whose kids still live in Poland).
e) The EU is too beholden to corporate interests, and the behind-closed-doors negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) confirm this. This poses a huge threat to our environmental standards, consumer protections and workers’ rights. If you don’t know what TTIP is then please find out!
f) We would like the EEC back please – that sort of made sense.
We need to get out of this oversized, potty political union as soon as possible before it bankrupts us.
The only beneficiaries of staying in the EU are globalised business and oversized banks.
I’m a person, just like you dear reader, with common sense.
Peter Brookes says it beautifully in his cartoon which, incidentally, was printed a full six weeks before Saudi Arabia executed 45 ‘enemies of state’.
It’s becoming clear that our view of Saudi Arabia is in need of review (Ed: Understatement of the decade?).
Meanwhile our boys have carried out 4 bombing raids in Syria with absolutely nothing to show for their efforts. All the hoohah in the recent Parliamentary debate was really about being seen to be friends with our friends. There was no sensible plan to remove IS and and there still isn’t. But, hey ho, the vote was won, the party political points scored, and we all move on because the arguments against bombing were a bit too difficult to contemplate.
The West’s hands are tied by commercial considerations, outdated political alignments and our own political system which is far too short sighted for any sensible long term plan to be made. That is the reality of democratic systems such as ours; in the long term it will prove to be the best system for humanity, but in the short term it makes decision making difficult.
Meanwhile, the 7th century totalitarian regime of ISIS now holds territory in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Mali, Libya, and Somalia. Support for IS grows in Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen and Nigeria where it is apparently replacing Boko Haram as the main Islamist threat.
Cameraman’s answer to IS extremism?
The announcement yesterday of a £20m scheme to teach Muslim women English. As long as their husbands, uncles and brothers approve, of course!
I wonder, how will all those burqa clad women, who currently can’t speak or read English, find out about his new plan? Hmm. (Ed: you may have a point!)
Perhaps 30 years ago might have been the time to promote integration measures funded by government, but now it is arguably pointless. The mad pluralist, multi cultural society is firmly in place, supported by misguided liberal intellectuals and all the main political parties . The face of many cities in Britain has been changed forever and we are host to a huge minority whose cultural differences threaten former British norms with little sign of integration outside of Londonistahn.
Meanwhile, on British TV, the Islam channel has a fascinating program entitled Islam Q&A, airing each night at 8pm. I have watched it a few times, and I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or to invade Birmingham and Bradford myself.
Why this misogynistic tirade on TV can be tolerated in Britain today is beyond bonkers. Along side the Islam Channel, the largely USA evangelical, supposedly Christian, TV channels are just as bonkers and almost as scary.
Many of the callers to Islam Q&A are women who are being abused or restrained by their husbands. The advice from the scholar or Imam is usually to obey your husband and learn to respect him. Other questions usually concern the minutiae of the practises of Islam, e.g. how to wash correctly. Apparently, Allah will forgive disabled Muslims who have a problem observing the otherwise required rituals.
Scary, alien stuff. It shouldn’t be scary but it is.
Watch the program yourself or, perhaps, if our Dave actually watched it, we might have a politician who could see how far we have fallen into cultural identity loss. The existence of the Islam channel is the strongest argument itself for a rigorous policy review of practical integration measures and, dare I say it, the closure of all the Saudi funded Madrassas in the UK.
To achieve that we would of course have to address the thorny issue of all faith schools and until we do, the Britain we all love will continue to disappear.
My previous article on this scary issue highlighted the ISIS belief that Dabiq (a tiny town in Syria) is the place where Jesus will arrive shortly. Good Muslim as Jesus assuredly is, his arrival will kick start the worldwide Islamic Caliphate. (See the acknowledgements at the end of this article for a history of the village of Dabiq, population 4,000, that is, until IS moved there in 2014.)
Dabiq, strangely enough, is also the name of the ISIS monthly magazine, a full colour job expertly produced and full of interesting snippets of news. (Ed: do I detect irony? Err: Oh well, OK, yes)
The magazine reads a bit like a budget statement from Gordon Brown in his heyday. It drones on, and on, in language that is hypnotic, drab, humourless, boring and pontificating in tone; just like the Qur’an in fact…
Here are a few highlights of issue 11 of Dabiq:
IS now have their own currency, the golden dinar. Twitter hashtag #return_of_the_gold_dinar (Yup, IS uses Twitter to spread its messages)
We ask Allah to support the mujhidin of the Islamic State against the agents of the tawght and the crusaders until the banner of the Khilfah is raised high above Istanbul and Vatican City.
{O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed, he is one of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people} [Al-M?’idah: 51]” [Naw?qid al-Islam]. (The verse reference in the Qur’an).
Yes, those who abandon jihad are akin to the fornicators, the sodomites, and the drunkards, and yet the claimants of Islam request the mujahidin to blindly follow these sinful “scholars,” those who prefer to sit in the shades of the tawght and crusaders rather than perform jihad against the kuffar…
And finally, this about so-called moderate Muslims … “not bothering to educate their readers of the Muslim’s obligation to reject kufr, separate himself from the kuffar, abandon their lands, harbor enmity and hatred towards them, and wage war against them until they submit to the truth.”
… and so on, and on, and on …
We musttake IS as seriously as they take themselves.
Are you listening Dave?
Acknowledgements: Peter Brookes (The Times Saturday 28th November 2015) for the cartoon.
The strategic importance of Dabiq is discussed in a lengthy but authoritative Guardian article here. Fascinating stuff, please find the time to read it.
Dabiq issue 11, may be downloaded in its full glory here, from my own website, so it’s free from nasties. (Warning: it is 55Mb and some readers may find it distressing.)
… party politics! Party politics has stifled any adult discussion of the threat we face from IS (Islamic State) and no, it’s not ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq & Levant, the Jewish / USA version) or Daesh the Arabic acronym which actually they do not like. For a full discussion of the name(s) of this primitive barbaric organisation see here.
Bombs away, Hurray!
Everywhere in the media, even in our best political discussion programs, journalists and politicians consume 90% of the time discussing the party politics of the issue, the “whipping procedure”, the free vote issue, the future of Corbyn, the “new politics”, to whip or not to whip etc. yawn etc. Anything indeed, apart from the detail required to end this sad bit of history.
It is nonsense of course, but leaders of IS believe a 7th century prophecy. The Syrian town of Dabiq is where the second coming of Jesus will take place imminently. That is why the IS caliphate-in-waiting is centred on Syria.
The Second Coming heralds the start of the world wide caliphate and the end of all of us disbelievers. We Kuffar are anybody who is not a Muslim, and moreover, you have to be the right kind of Muslim and that is Sunni. Pleasefollow the Kuffar link (previous sentence) to read an earnest debate about whether or not Muslims should actually play basketball with the unbelievers; read and weep at the ignorance and stupidity we have to fight.
What we will probably have today, after the vote in parliament, is a concerted effort to bomb Raqqa in Syria, but I suspect that IS are already decentralising as our politicians discuss the shape of the discussion table.
BUT…
Where is the plan for reconstruction of Syria? Who is paying?
Where are the foot soldiers of Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Germany NATO and the USA? Without them, and their money, there can be no lasting solution. We need those boots on the ground to maintain the peace once the bombing stops. We will probably need the boots on the ground for years to come.
Have all these players met to discuss the long term solution? Err, no.
If the last 100 years of Middle East misery have taught us any lessons at all, it is that bombing the enemy might make good copy for the journalists and gung-ho politicians, but it actually achieves nothing. Corbyn is quite right but nobody can listen to the detailed arguments he has put because he has put them so badly. The British population seem not to be ready for the new politics of discussion and the detailed thought it needs.
A bombing campaign is probably required, but as a small part of the overall action we need to take, but only as support for the boots on the ground of a UN led united army.
The murderous, brain-washed, teenagers who carry out the killings and those who command them follow the barbaric rules of the Qur’an to the letter. IS is not interested in discussion. Old men in beards have Allah and the Qur’an as their narrative.
However, the vast majority of Muslims are not the problem, they, like you and me, just want to work, school their children and live in peace.
Islam, however, is the problem along with the West’s politically correct inability to fight back with reason.
I’m tired of repeating this but just read the damn book yourself, you will soon see what I mean!
Acknowledgement: The Spectator magazine for the cartoon
This Tory government has learned nothing from Thatcher’s disastrous reign of myopic, crass decision making or that of New Labour’s 13 incompetent years at the helm. It cannot see beyond Cameraman’s departure two years hence (yes – two) and is making huge errors of mismanagement in three vital areas of Britain’s future.
These are: 1) future electricity generation; 2) food self sufficiency, and 3) basic manufacturing capability.
China’s looming property apocalypse.The empty flats that nobody can afford.
Embracing China’s mad, humourless, greedy, globalised capitalism is a huge mistake. China’s recent stock market corrections are but a hiccup compared to the real correction required to adjust for the debt mountain based on the empty cities all over China. These property investments are still recorded on the Chinese and the world’s banks as assets. They are anything but!
Ignore the bubble at your (yellow) peril 😉
Ignoring China’s primitive and barbaric attitude to human rights is a crime and denies everything that Britishness should stand for!
Encouraging China to build our, sadly now necessary, nuclear power stations is beyond stupid! The decision is based on the same incompetent logic of New Labour’s disastrous PFI contracts to build new hospitals and schools etc. The decision is based on presentation rather than economic sense.
Why on earth do they keep on making the same mistake?
The answer is, that PFI does not affect current government debt figures, so Osborne looks good and sounds sensible. However, it pushes the real, and hugely inflated cost, way into the future. Today’s decision makers will have retired on their gold plated pensions and cannot be held to account. Those future PFI costs are far higher than they would be if we did the sensible thing and borrowed the cash now at all time low interest rates.
All the current agreement does is guarantee huge future returns for China but dooms our children’s children to higher than necessary energy costs.
Good for China’s long term economics, but so obviously bad for us.
Government should be borrowing cash now, while it is historically cheap to do so, but it will not because of party political ideology. Bonkers, criminally incompetent financial mismanagement unchallenged by Corbyn’s Labour party because they can’t think straight either.
Labour cannot be too critical here because of the Blair / Brown era of financial incompetence.
Meanwhile, Germany’s steel industry thrives because it is being supported by Merkel’s government, completely ignoring the EU’s rules on state subsidy by the way. We can’t do the same because our steel capability is owned by India plus we keep on following the damn silly EU rules that Germany, France and Italy just laugh at.
Cameraman & Osborne are blindly completing Thatcher’s disastrous short term view of manufacturing and finishing off the population of the north east for good.
Our steel industry is now dead after today’s announcement by Tata (You know, those Indian chappies who bought our steel industry some time back ;-( ).
Meanwhile, Germany is investing heavily in alternative technology to generate green electricity while our Tory twits are removing subsidies. Simply beyond stupid!
Germany took that enlightened, long term decision when Japan’s recent nuclear disaster gave us all a taste of what happens when things go wrong when power generation is too centralised! Remember Eric Schumacher’s 1973 book Small is Beautiful?. Germany’s politicians took note while ours went out to lunch.
Milk production is all but destroyed in Britain while food imports continue to rise to support a supermarket model which is failing. This reign of madness is seemingly unchallenged by Labour because of its own past incompetence.
Our membership of the EU is of course to blame too, effectively stopping Britain from taking a long term view of food production and manufacturing.
Long term thinking is completely missing from our governing and political classes.
China is only thinking long term! Germany is thinking long term too …
Marketwatch.com for the reality of the Chinese economic “miracle”. Please read the comments to this article, they are more realistic than those of the article’s author.
Our Dave wants to defeat the poison of radical Islam, jolly good eh? Well, no, he still defends state funded faith schools. His use of the word poison, copies Blair, his hero, who has used the word poison in the same context many times since 2010. Yet, despite agreeing on the word, neither Blair nor Cameraman have the slightest clue about the nature of so-called radical Islam.
Cameraman’s Birmingham speech on the 21st July was welcome, but several years too late. He announced some short-term measures, but he dared not face, what needs to be done to address the problem.
He missed the reason that so many British educated, intelligent, Muslim young men and women have become radicalised.
I argue that the word radicalised misses the point entirely, and has led Dave, and many others, down the wrong path in search of a solution. He has not yet understood why so many young Muslims are ready to fight in Syria for Islamic State. He has not yet understood how their mind-set was so warped away from that of their parents, most of whom are as clueless as is our Dave.
He said, in his speech, “They start with intolerant views towards democracy, freedom of expression and sexual equality. If this is not challenged they often gravitate to even more extreme views.”
Radical preacher Anjem Choudary has claimed that all Muslim MPs and voters are ‘apostates’. This evil deluded monster walks the streets of Britain subsidised by our welfare system.
But, he did not, or dare not, explain that the source of that very intolerance is the Qur’an itself. The Qur’an is aided and abetted by Hadith(s) (supplementary instructions issued long after the original manual). Democracy is an alien concept to Islam. Muslims must instead submit to the will of Allah, as directed by the Qur’an and follow Sharia, Islamic law. Sharia only applies to Muslims, so it should follow that it can only be implemented in an Islamic state.
Indeed, it is arguable that Sharia is not actually Islamic in the first place. The word is mentioned in the Qur’an, three times, but in a completely different context. Sharia, or Islamic law, is based on older Jewish law and was written some 200 years later than the Qur’an itself. Anyway, I could be paddling up an intellectual creek here because so many Islamic scholars disagree with each other on this point, and who am I to offer help? 😉
(Ed: Ooh stop, it hurts!)
Britain however, is subject to the Rule of Law. One legal system to which all citizens, of whatever religion (or none), are accountable. Aristotle said this more than two thousand years ago, “The rule of law is better than that of any individual.”
Our politicians have pandered to Muslim sensitivities. They have mistakenly allowed Sharia courts to rule on “family matters” for example. This thin end of the wedge stupidity, has all but destroyed the last 1,000 years of western philosophical and legal development. Cultural differences have been allowed to fester into the divisions we see today. For example, the political corruption exposed in Tower Hamlets last month and postal voting corruption in Birmingham, Bradford etc.
ISIS (AKA ISIL or Da’ish) are just implementing the bits of the Qur’an that moderate Muslims had started to ignore. Just read a little of the Qur’an and you will soon see what I mean.
So then, you may ask, just how do we stop young minds becoming so warped?
All religions rely on child minds being in awe of something that is apparently bigger and more powerful than them. Better still if this power is invisible, how can you challenge that eh? Once this awe is instilled in a child’s mind, it becomes very difficult to remove in later life. This innate awe is enthusiastically used by those who radicalise disaffected young minds and by all religions, eager for new followers.
Dickens was quite correct then, but times have changed, even he could not see the rise of Mohammedanism (as it was then called)
Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland have found it almost impossible to accept that their Popes have silently covered up the sexual deviance of their priesthood for centuries. Only now when the evidence is overwhelming, have many Catholics found the strength to see the inherent evils in Roman Catholicism. Many still cannot accept the truth, and remain in awe of the Vatican’s clever use of art, music and pomp to hide its innate delusions. Charles Dickens clearly saw what Catholicism was, even if he was somewhat open to criticism in his own personal life.
Faith schools are therefore the source of the problem. The very idea of faith being taught as a valid and laudable path for young human minds to follow is warped. This thinking was exposed, by European Enlightenment philosophers, in the 17th & 18th centuries. They called for reason to replace faith. Notable amongst those thinkers was John Locke who advocated that religion must occupy the private sphere of life in order for the many different faiths to co-exist peacefully.
There are many contributing factors to radicalisation of course;
US / UK foreign policy in Iraq;
the Qur’an, seen by Muslims as the unalterable word of god;
Muslims must live under Sharia, Islamic law
Saudi funding for Madrassas in the UK;
misguided support for primitive cultural practices by politicians hungry for votes, in the name multiculturalism;
government’s fear of violent reprisals from minority communities;
Those are the starting points for the radicalisation process of those already affected by the awe of the faith virus. The rest follows on quite logically from that!
Yes, our democracy is flawed, but all other methods of political control are considerably worse (echoing the words of Winston Churchill). Humans will probably get there eventually, but not while religious groups all compete for separate privileges in the public sphere. One law, applicable to all please!
Free bus passes for Faith schools? Primitive halal and kosher practices being allowed to bypass the law because of religious exemption? Time off to pray? Bah, Poo & Piffle says I.
Come on Dave, get moving!
Meanwhile, more and more faith schools are created each year (200 more planned currently) to preach their message of otherness, difference and division thereby sowing the seeds of societal destruction that today’s young disaffected Muslims’ parents came here to escape. The irony is that the Birmingham schools at the centre of the Trojan horse scandal were not faith schools, but the exposure of their failings raised major questions marks about how faith schools operate. What is alarming is that if the Birmingham schools had been designated faith schools, then many of the practices condemned, such as limiting the curriculum to exclude lessons about sex education and reinforcing a cultural identity to the exclusion of others, would have been permitted!
I would have this next paragraph used in schools to promote discussion:
There is a reason that some 93% of the planet’s top scientist reject the notion of a personal god. The real mystery is why the other 7% don’t. After all, science is based on evidence and there is no evidence that god exists. None. What we may feel in our hearts is not evidence and neither is the bible since the argument is circular. (The bible is true because it says it is. The Qur’an is true because that is what Qur’an says.)
Simply asking faith schools nicely to be more inclusive will not work. A secular (free from religious dogma) education, for all children, is the only way to heal the divisions caused by faith schools.
Whilst even that will take several generations to work, I submit that there is no other way for human societies to develop in peace.
Vote hungry, party politicians are going to remove religion from schools? Let us hope so!
Or, if you do then you are wilfully misleading the people you lead and represent.
Obama has just said in his speech last Tuesday night, “Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not Islamic.” (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant)
Obama’s policy message in full
On the face of it, that shows his profound ignorance of the Qur’an and Hadith (supplementary Muslim instructions written after their manual was last updated in 1910). However, he is probably doing what all western politicians are doing, and that is, appeasing Muslim voters.
I am pretty sure that the majority of Muslims are just as peaceful as the majority of other faiths together with we poor old rabid atheists, but until the evil message of 143 suras (verses) of the Qur’an is denied by those moderate Muslims we keep hearing about, but not from, the myth of Islam being a religion of peace will persist. The simple truth is repeated endlessly in Qur’an; the duty of all Muslims is to make the whole world into an Islamic Caliphate, however long it takes.
That is why the popular Saudi cleric Mohammad Al-Areefi sounds like the ISIS army chaplain. The man has 9.5 million followers on Twitter (twice as many as Pope Francis has).
More British Muslims have joined the ranks of ISIS than have volunteered to serve in the British armed forces. In fact, this group has managed to attract thousands of recruits from free societies throughout the world to help build a paradise of repression and sectarian slaughter in Syria and Iraq. This is an astonishing phenomenon, and it reveals some very uncomfortable truths about the failures of multiculturalism, the inherent vulnerability of open societies, and the terrifying power of bad ideas.
Are apostates “innocent”? Blasphemers? Polytheists? Atheists? Islam has the answer, and the answer is “no.”
So then “How to fight ISIL”? I can give you the long term answer but a short term response is all that we can expect from the politicians (god help us all! 😉 .
With the rational philosophy of peace based on the European Enlightenment, that’s how! That involves the creation of a secular message being preached from political pulpits and all our school assemblies, in Europe and the USA. It will take 50 years but it is the only answer.
That is what built the American constitution back in 1788 where it separated religion from the politics of government.
I’ll leave you with the words of Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian revolution back in 1979:-
“When anyone studies a little or pays a little attention to the rules of Islamic government, Islamic politics, Islamic society and Islamic economy he will realize that Islam is a very political religion. Anyone who will say that religion is separate from politics is a fool; he does not know Islam or politics.”
Well, he did warn us! A pity our damn stupid politicians dare not listen.
“We’re not afraid of sanctions. We’re not afraid of military invasion. What frightens us is the invasion of western immorality.”
By which he meant, he was fearful of democracy, short skirts, equality for women and therefore the end of male domination over women ratified by the, not so, Holy Qur’an.
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
Can it reallybe that politicians are listeningto the people? It may just be so here in the UK perhaps even so in the USA?. Pity about France …
The people say NO
I hope Congress and President Barak Obama have the balls to say “No” to any more intervention in the Middle East.
Let us instead promote the values and reason of the European Enlightenment upon which the USA was founded and wait 500 years while the Middle East catches up (yes – it will take that long)! We can start by disestablishing our church from the administration of the country and follow reason and evidence instead.
OK the USA has lost the plot for the last 100 years or so but perhaps John Adams, Tom Paine and the other founding fathers may be heard again?
Acknowledgement: Thanks to Rainer Hatchfield and The Cagle Post USA for the cartoon showing how the USA sees us.
PS: Who made the nerve gas used in Syria?
Ooops, oh dear me – don’t read this if you thought it was Russia – sadly the answer may just be a bit closer to home.
This week Tony Blair has been trying out new destroyer class super-yachts (including the Pelorus, owned by U.S. music mogul David Geffen, pictured), but still has been unable to refine his latest choice about which has the best drinks fridge and best mounting platform for cruise missiles.
One of his spokespersons said that “Tony was feeling a bit left out after being ejected from New Labour by former loyal chums and wanted to take a few matters into his own hands. Apparently the voices in his head have become louder recently and that they were telling him that now was a really good time to blow something up.” (That spokesperson has just been found floating head down under a tree by a Mediterranean beach.)
A new spokesperson later said that Tony felt that once Syria had been sorted out, it was an opportune time for him to invade North Korea, Zimbabwe, Columbia, Swaziland and Burma as none of the those had invited him to speak on international relations. He was about to include Kazakhstan but it appears that his former dark lord & master Lord Peter Mandelmort has developed many business interests there.
Blair with old friends
Sadly the reality back home is that Cameraman (‘the heir to Blair’) has learned nothing from history and seems hell bent on taking us all to hell by taken ‘action’ in Syria.
Apart from being good news for the £ (of which more later*), the lack of a majority for any one Italian party, in yesterday’s general election, is giving the political classes the same lesson that they failed to learn in 2010. “We the people” have nobody credible to vote for. When an Italian comedian can get 25% of the vote, then I think we may say that conventional political parties have been rumbled as the comedians.
The lesson that “we the people” all recognise that party political politics, if not yet quite dead, is increasingly irrelevant in an age where ‘we the people‘ are better informed than ever before and where individual issues transcend party political dogma.
What’s not to love eh? Trust me – I’m a dick!
Clowns like Berlusconi are in a funny little world of self delusion, as are our own ” Ed Millipede”, “call me Dave” Cameraman and “Nobody told me” Cleggy. That so many actually voted for Berlusconi is a sad reflection on the Italians and a hint for those who still think the Euro can be saved.
Poor Cleggy. He made a promise he thought we would never have to keep. What odds he would have been in Government?
‘They‘ are all seemingly incapable of realising that the gravy train days are over and that the people want sensible, but of course boring, competent management of our human and physical resources.
* As I have mentioned before and analyse in depth in meBook, the Euro is a ridiculous and entirely illogical construct, doomed to fail, but being kept alive by a financial and political class who believe that “money” actually exists and has value in itself. Whereas the simple truth is that most of today’s ‘money’ is actually indebtedness created by a mad banking system supporting an irrational globalist business class that worshipped growth as its only aim. OK – I have to admit that many of “We the people” were seduced by the ‘need’ for the shiny new stuff now rather than later 🙁 . Grandma, however, has been proved right! Are today’s multiple gadget owners happier as a result?
The probable good news for Sterling is that the Euro has been hit because the “markets” hate Euro uncertainty – ah bless!
There are no Keynesian solutions to the mess created by the consumer society madness; Keynes himself would recognise that the whole indebtedness thing is just too big now. Keynes would laugh at Ed Balls’ silly wafflings.
To all those who still say that Economic Growth is the only way out I say GROW UP! The answer was laid out in 1973 in Schumacher’s book “Small is Beautiful” – essential reading if you actually want a real solution to the world’s woes – sadly I have have to say “fat chance”.
The quest for growth is what caused the 2007/8 crisis and until they admit that, there is no hope for “we the people”.
