philosophy, politics, education, economics, stupid politicians, atheism, secularism and religion
This is a longer read than usual because I needed to be clearer about how my proposed DFTP (Democracy For The People Party ) could improve matters. I was prompted to write after a recent discussion in my local pub with a friend who strongly disagreed with me. If you disagree with my proposal I would love to hear your thoughts as to how we could get out of the short-term decision-making and economic mess we have been in since
Trump has appeased Putin because he has no understanding of history or Putin’s real ambition. Trump’s ignorance and delusion is shared by 50% of Americans who think the Second Coming is imminent. (Do follow that link above; you won’t believe it, but it is TRUE). Several million Americans follow that website and are packing their bags getting ready for the ‘End Times’. Scary or what? “Trump is in ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land”: – So says General Sir Richard Shirreff speaking on
Available in paperback, hardback, Audible and Kindle versions on Amazon. This is for those of you who have not bought my book but who might be persuaded to read or hear this chapter in full. The first 15 chapters explain, in jaw dropping detail, why our current system disables long term decision making. Those chapters also show how and why all but one of our post war Prime Ministers are ‘crap‘ (I quote Jeremy Paxman) at administering and managing our
The words below are all from We Own It, but this first paragraph is from me. I have supported ‘We Own It’ for several years and this is my small contribution to reverse what Thatcher did to us forty years ago. Please read this and then email Ofwat simply by clicking this link to We Own It. Thames Water have repeatedly broken their license to run a water company in England and the regulator has just fined them £250 million.
The creation of GB Energy sounds like a very positive move from by new Labour government, and indeed it should be! But… … it means that 12% of the profits from it end up in the pocket of King Charles III! Unless of course the government just takes the Crown Estates back into public ownership. That would reverse the armed land grabs made by Edward III in 1337. More on that below. Sir Alec Douglas Home’s main claim to shame
There is no simple solution because we have no charismatic, statesman-like politicians speaking common sense to the people; and we have our own broadcast media talking endlessly about pointless fluff. Until that states-person arrives on the scene, our rivers will continue to be polluted by our poo and China and Russia will continue their aggression unopposed. My book poses a quite possible, but radical solution and I wish all fifth and sixth form school kids and students plus anybody else
Hi All This offer refers to ‘British politics is broken, BUT, how we might just fix it’. The Kindle version can be read on your iPad or phone, just download the Kindle reader app. for your device. Go to the offer page:- If you do use this free download, and read or listen to the book, please write a review on Amazon. Thank you Derek
My main message is that if we carry on with our current ‘Party’ based political system we speed up Britain’s further decline. You might just recognise the cover because I am re-publishing ‘The Normal Curve’ as ‘British politics is broken’. The reason for this is that a thoroughly detailed review of the book was given to me by Tim, who remains a dear friend despite a fair amount of negative but valid criticism 😉 As a result of this critique,
By ‘the West’ I mean the UK, the USA, the EU, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and quite a few other democracies. Do we really want China to move on Taiwan? Do we really want Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to succeed? Our current message to Putin and Xi is “do what you like” we won’t stop you! Madness! The pointless government & media focus on Rwanda Currently our politicians and the BBC seem to think the most important thing is Rishi
Those words, from Ian Duncan Smith this morning, echo what I have been saying here on this blog for fourteen years. How could our politicians and security services be so stupidly incompetent? The reason that our politicians have been so stupid is explained in my latest book ‘British politics is broken, but…‘ From Tony Blair, David Cameron and Gideon Osborne onwards the idiots in Number 10 and 11 Downing Street have been welcoming Chinese spies into our universities with open
A few facts about bank interest rates ‘Like most people of my generation who have lived through the period of hyper interest rates, of as high as 17% and inflation averaging in the teens in the 1970s, I am baffled by how long and how low-interest rates and inflation in the UK have lasted in recent years.'(*1) I find the current media doom-fest of the return to an historically average interest rate just nauseating. The current panic stories all over
Liz Truss announces her resigantion – 46 days! Liz Truss’s main features : Incompetence ignorance pomposity delusion and hopefully her train arrives soon I give her 10 days at most… If you haven’t seen Michael Spicer on YouTube and fancy a belly laugh please watch “An MP said to me”
China has been lambasting the west for at least thirty years We have been scared to death of upsetting them because of our increasing dependency on their cheap (and largely crap) goods. We are to blame in not publicly seeing their stated desire to replace the the largely democratic West with a tyranny based on Thatcherism / Reaganomics on steroids. Since Xi Jinping voted himself in for eternity things have just gone from bad to completely unacceptable. USA’s president Joe
Water privatisation? Thatcher’s legacy? Gimme strength! All of us should understand why we are in such a mess with our water supply. In reality, only a few of us do, certainly not the BBC interviewers when questioning the water supply companies. Their ignorance is jaw dropping. The simple fact is that the UK of GB has more than enough water, even now, to supply everybody’s needs. The UK is very lucky in this respect. To quote Paul Waugh of the i
This post first appeared in 2021 and several more earlier should have alerted western governments to the danger that the Chinese tyranny has become. In ten years time China will have destroyed everything we hold dear. Democracy human rights control of the world’s natural resources etc. The UK, the USA, the UN, the EU and all other democratic countries must act NOW! Recognise Taiwan as a sovereign state Accelerate the return of manufacturing stuff back to where it came from
Time to act on China, I link to a Sunday Times article written in July 2020 A page or so down, I link to a Sunday Times article written in July 2020. It traces Covid-19 from 2011 to 2019. An illuminating article which few seem to have read. It is long but worth the effort. It reinforces the position that Covid-19 really is “the Chinese virus”. I read it, open mouthed, when it first appeared in print last year. Back
.. and what we should do about it in 2021. My sources are all blue, bold, italics and underlined. Clicking on them reveals a good read! What we should do in 2021 having learned our lessons: Stop buying cheap stuff from China. It is NOT cheap. China’s goods were never cheap because we now know the real cost; global pollution; climate change and failed capitalism. We must realise that local just has to be better than ever increasing the global
I was going to entitle this article “The current BAME*1 game diversion”. I changed the title using Greta Thunberg’s words which are far more powerful exactly to the point. Dr Erich Schumacher made strong arguments against economic growth in his 1973 book “Small is beautiful (Economics as if people mattered)”. It is the most important guide to a sustainable future written in the last 100 years. I wish our business leaders and politicians had read it and then acted on
For the last 40 years or so, China’s financial, business, political and cultural effect on our world has been a disaster. A disaster both for the Chinese themselves and for most of us. China’s cultural attitudes to selling “fresh” food and massively increased exports have exported their native bat diseases. Lessons have NOT been learned. SARS and MERS were both created in the same way. Fresh, wriggling and fluttering food is sold all over China in open market conditions that would
Reading the news, since the 12th December2019 election, has been quite illuminating but equally depressing. I’m not talking about global warming, plastic waste pollution or the ever increasing ability of our politicians to “take responsibility” by just saying the words but remaining in place. I’m talking about the ridiculous decisions being taken, about to be taken, not taken or avoided by those whose job it is to make competent decisions. Many of the decision making processes used by our clever
Yippeee! Another general election 😉 the third since the five year fixed term parliament act came into err “force” in 2011. Your Christmas General Election quiz starts here. Just 10 questions to answer. There may be prizes (Ed: I doubt it …) The biggest question left for me is “does this Boris Johnson’s exit deal actually give us freedom from the EU?”. My current understanding is that it still ties us into EU rules (for some years) and we continue
May I try to put the childish, irrelevant “furious backlash“, as reported today by the BrBC (British Remoaning Broadcasting Corporation), into some logical context? You may have guessed that I am for leaving the EU by now 😉 The Remainers have been told effectively to shut by Boris. Hurrah for him! This is why: Our MPs are simply ignoring the wishes of the British people. In 2016 the people were asked by our government to make the decision, for the
Here is Pat Condell, a man even grumpier than me – eight minutes of well argued grumpiness explaining why he, and I, voted to leave the EU and why we must vote for an Independent Candidate in the next election. Discuss 😉
There are a few simple truths at the heart of our disillusion with politics & politicians No political party has dared to tell us that we can’t afford to pay for all our pensions, the NHS, social care and all those public services that we now demand “as of right”. The welfare state has weakened the government’s ability to break even? It was never envisaged, back in 1947, that is was to become such a huge part of the economy.
It is not about you MPs – it is about the 17.4 million of us! The sight of those silly school girls & boys skipping down the road away from their political parties was just sickening. Who do those adolescent MPs, who have never created anything of worth, think they are? It is simply not about them or their failed political parties. It is about us, the 17.4 million of “We the People” remember them / us / we? Qualification
On 16 August 1819 Mary Fildes and members of the Female Reform Society marched to St.Peter’s Fields in the centre of Manchester with many other people to angrily demand the end of political corruption , hunger and unemployment. MPs are now so disconnected from the public that the current situation echoes events just prior to PeterLoo* in 1819. I saw the film PeterLoo last Friday and the political & economic similarities are hard to miss. Parliament and the Prince Regent
There are many serious and rational voices in support of a No Deal, despite the BBC’s overwhelming Project Fear coverage, and, to my surprise, by Channel 4’s Jon Snow (more on this below) which you just have to watch. The pity is that these views are hidden from our view, but they are there, if you look. So then, who are these misguided, treacherous, thick, ill educated No Deal supporters? I have collected a few of the best arguments supplied by these
A short constitutional overview A referendum is the most powerful democratic tool we have. It is, and was in 2016, a direct call to ” we the people ” to have our say. But our confused party politicians hate that level of direct democracy because it sidesteps what they think is their job 😉 This explains why around 500 members of parliament are doing all they can to reverse the clear instruction given to them in 2016. Our voice is
I am quoting Daniel Hannan an MEP writing in the Telegraph (on-line) a few days ago. Daniel is a Conservative MEP and someone who has been very critical of the EU’s systemic hypocrisy, inefficiency and financial incompetence for many years, as have I. Whether or not you are or were a Remainer or leaver, this current policy direction is beyond daft; it is criminal incompetence from Theresa May who is either so confused by what she thinks she ought to
I thank Gary Barker for permission to use this cartoon[/caption] The BBC’s ridiculous pro-Remain stance is irritating enough, but the Salzburg EU Brexit meeting has exposed Theresa May, yet again, to be completely clueless. I have been saying this for months here and here and here. Do the BBC, Theresa May & Dominic Raab really think we are all stupid? The EU’s delusional bureaucracy is simply fighting for its very existence. It is scared shitless of the domino effect once
So now we know why she said and did nothing for the last two years. Saying nothing meant she avoided lying to us until the very last moment, she was always a Remainer. “Brexit means Brexit” was always a shallow lie hidden behind her meaningless words. Instead of accepting the referendum result, she is supporting big business, bankers, hedge funds, the bankrupt EU who are all shouting, at her, louder than we can. She is supporting anybody it seems, other
As Nigel Farage has said today “We sold out fisheries when we joined the EEC and we’re selling them out now as we leave.” I could not agree more, but it seems that almost nobody else can see that “we the people” are being screwed both by the EU and our own government. I think the two cartoons below tell the story better than I can but where would we be without a sense of humour? (Answer: at foot of this
Brexit hater-in-chief Andrew Adonis has finally left his cushy government job at the National Infrastructure Commission. A government source says: “He’s been moving closer towards the exit door with each new onslaught he makes against Brexit. He’s now walked through the door before he was pushed.” At last. Guido said last month that Adonis had been driven mad by Brexit – his resignation letter confirms that. He says Theresa May has become the “voice of UKIP and the extreme nationalist
Perhaps you may be wondering why the TV, radio and papers are so full of endless discussions about the need for a deal with the EU and why we are “getting nowhere” and “time is running out”? That is, unless like me, you are so heartily sick of it that the news has lost its onetime appeal 😉 Those who report the “news” inhabit the same bubble of unreality as do most of our MPs. They feed off each other
“We are so sorry to have upset you Mr & Mrs EU, but now we see that your requests for all our money were quite justified.” Mrs May says “The fact that you, the EU, have proved your financial ineptitude on so many occasions means that we should have foreseen your desperate need for our money and we are so sorry to have caused you pain, so here it is. “Please come and take all the cash you need for
Theresa May is robotic in her endless “strong & stable” meanderings containing little detail and has no interesting vision for Britain. She has repeatedly shown she cannot handle ordinary people whereas Corbyn has scored well. I can’t remember a general election where I have found it so difficult to summon up the enthusiasm to vote. I have voted in every general election since I was in my mid twenties. Both May & Corbyn look and sound like geography teachers instead of British leaders
The Supreme Court is today ruling on something that really does not matter very much to ‘we the people’. Lawyers, who form the largest and probably the most vocal part of our so-called democracy have missed a very simple fact, on purpose. That fact is that a referendum is a direct approach to the people, and is the most powerful democratic tool that ‘we the people’ have. The executive, that is our government ministers, devolved the question of EU membership to
This is a truly appalling and criminally incompetent decision by Theresa May. Thirty odd years of indecision and delay in addressing our electricity requirements from both Labour and the Tories have led us to this ridiculous point. Yet again, party politics and our 4/5 year election cycle have been obstacles to logical and rational long term decision making. The technology of the proposed reactor is unproven. The PFI business deal is so stupid that EDF & China must be laughing all the
…for someone to bring philosophical and visionary leadership to post Brexit Britain. Don’t get me wrong, I am a Britain first, and Englishman second but staunch European third. Remember the European Enlightenment? Few seem to, yet this was the flowering pinnacle of human philosophical rational thought, started by Confucius, Buddha and Socrates ending with Nietzsche telling us that ‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of
… for our politicians to accept the reality of what the British people have told them. This result is quite a shock for them and most will be in denial for some time. I suspect the best positive way forward is a mixed party coalition executive (government) based around Boris Johnson, Daniel Hannan, Michael Gove and a few of the impressive economists from the campaign group The Economists for Brexit. I know this idea not quite perfect, BUT its a
