"Britishness"

That very ambiguous term "Britishness" is being thrown around a lot these days, seemingly because we are so haplessly at loss of what it actually means to be British. It is typical for a nation such as this who is unsure of herself, who is trying to please everyone and be everything for everyone, who does not dare to tramp on anyones toes, does not dare to offend a "minority" and as such we have to be everything to everyone which pleases no one.

Here is what I think Britishness constitutes.

Actually, we could start off by stating what Britishness is not, it is not:

1. Much to do with the welfare state which did not exist before 1945.
2. Being part of the EU because we weren’t before 1972 and many/most of us wish we were not now.
3. Anything to do with the “Multicultural Society” and entirely alien concept until recently.
4. Anything to do with “Social Justice” because no-one can agree what this means.
5. Anything at all to do with football since there is no British football team

So what does this leave? Maybe the facts which are:

1. Britain is a large Island with a number of smaller islands and associated territories.
2. Britain is a democracy with a Protestant Christian Constitutional Monarch as Head of State
3. Everyone is equal under English/Scottish Law everyone (or was before recent equalities legislationand the destruction of Mens Rea by the recent New Labour Government).
4. The British are, in general a relativity tolerant society, sometimes even to the point of complacency.
5. The British people are not particularly welcoming to newcomers and expect the newcomers to accommodate themselves to the pre-existing structures but those that do so will be accepted as individuals.
6. The British have in the past (and will in the future) take advantage of their island geography to maintain their independence and freedom.
7. The ONLY official languages of the UK are English, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh. You have to be reasonably fluent at one of these to be British.
8. Being British implies that one’s primary loyalty is to the United Kingdom, rather than any foreign state, society, religious leader or other entity.

Rambling notions of the past [Blur + Blair]

I just watched a documentary about Blur. This in itself is spectacular for two reasons; 1) I have not watched TV since Christmas and 2) it turns out that life in general was a lot more honest back in 1995. I suppose what will not catch your attention is my TV watching habits which are a bit unorthodox - if you find some spare time give me a call.

No, what really struck me after having watched that documentary was how life was so wholesomely different only 15 years ago. We did not have all the fancy gizmos we do now like mobile phones, this computer from whence this little anecdotal essay is being written, nor mocha-chinos in every corner shop. There was not this general zombie-like obsession with possession. You were not socially castigated for not having the latest iPhone or the latest fashion from Paris or New York, it seemed that it was more accepted to just be yourself.

It would appear to my mind at least that one of the potential reasons for the financial crisis we are in right now has been overlooked. Could it just be that the reason the markets are doing so badly is because we do not need anymore pointless shit, we have enough, our houses are filled to the brim with junk, really, that we simply do not have any use for. I had a conversation that with a friend yesterday and he was formally shocked when told him that I only buy things (i.e. not go on random shopping sprees) when I need things. What is the point of having 30 different t-shirts and 10 pair of jeans? This is not an onslaught on capitalism but rather an advocacy for responsible consumerism; what we are doing now is sucking the soul out of people. We pretend that to be something you have to have certain things. Celebrities go to gala parties in £25K dresses and what are you supposed to say to that? A mere mortal as you are? £25K for a fucking dress?

Entschuldigung?

But what more struck me about '95 was that people seemed to be wearing basically only what made them happy. There was no uniform dress code which you would adopt in order to fit in. Now I cannot with hand-on-heart say that I think people should dress differently, women of my age are doing a formidable job in drawing attention to themselves and for that I salute them. However, what I do wonder is this; do they really want to wear all that or are they doing it just to please everyone else. Lets not pretend that males have anywhere near the same social pressure to dress appropriately, so if you are from the Equality Commission you can piss off. Rather, would it not be better if there was not this social stigmata against independence of thought? Why are people more brainwashed by the media today than they were 15 years ago? Surely the internet cannot have had that big an impact and with the dawn of the celebrity culture... Why do people want to be like them? They have nothing to their name but scandal and contort, no desirable virtues and only the worst of vices. They drive everything from government policy to Olympic planning. This used to be a country or art, culture and above all good taste but now it is one of celebrities; those that are famous for being famous.

But really going back to the documentary could it just be that back in the day we were just a bit more upfront about our intentions? We said what we liked and if someone disagreed then so be it. We wore what we did and if someone disagreed then tough luck, same thing with food and entertainment.

But now...

I cannot smoke where I want because it is not allowed anymore

I cannot wear what I want because if I do I will be labelled anti-social and provided with an ASBO

I cannot say what I want for in this culture of hypersensitivity I am sure to insult someone

I cannot write what I want for if I do I will be sued for libel

I cannot question what I want for if I do I will not "conform" and ensuing character-assasination is as sure as Saddam's beard.

I cannot drink what I want for if I do I will labelled a drunk and the prices raised to prevent me from drinking anything but lemonade

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I think life was more honest because the word 'progressive' had not yet entered into mainstream parlance. And the group of progressive had hitherto been hiding in the shadows waiting for the opportune moment to seize the day and the people. When someone declares themselves a progressive, my hackles rise. What they mean in reality is that everyone else must be forced to bend to their vision of society, to conform to the socialist utopia they espouse, to be a good little prole. Progressives have no place for independently minded individuals. Progressives are the enemy of individualism, and are, therefore, the very essence of misanthropy. They choose to forget that society is composed of individuals. Progressives are to be despised utterly and completely. Perhaps, most of all is their mangling of the language. Progressives do not want progress, but regression to the dark days of the cold war eastern bloc style of living – the tractor stats will always be going up, despite the enslavement of the population and the collapse of the economy. There is nothing progressive about a progressive, just as there is nothing liberal about a liberal.

Perhaps the best way to finish this little tour-de-force is with a comment on the 'rant'. What used to be perfectly legitimate and sensible commentary on issues which certainly were important to the great majority of people have now become 'rants' and the diminished status which accompanies this particular form of essay. What today for the most part, to me at least, passes for informed and serious debate is cast aside by the media and a lot of bloggers as 'rants' purely because they refuse to listen to what is being said. Where does the imaginary line go between a 'rant' and a 'informed comment' why has the former completely engulfed the territory once housed by the comment? If you complain about something today it is automatically labelled a rant. All papers do it, most bloggs partake in this form of self-censorship and the readers, as a result, do not take the content seriously and merely go on to the next point on their reading list without actually taking onboard the gist of what was read. Like the Tories' favourite phrase "don't bang on about Europe" this is what results from labelling everything a 'rant'; people get pissed off by not being taken seriously. We will bang on about fucking Europe and the EU because it is fucking important, it might not fit your little shitty political agenda but that's life - deal with it. Just because you do not take an active interest in them does not mean they wont take an interest in you and more importantly us, those of us who have to live with the legacy of your incompetent helmsmanship of the country.

Blur might not have been the most suave of bands and they certainly indulged in a lot of profanities at the best of times. But at least they were real, and so were their fans. Could the same thing be said of Lady Gaga?

Elections and the Commonwealth

Is it not very strange that Commonwealth citizens can vote in the UK? In General Elections European Union citizens cannot vote - but Commonwealth and Republic of Ireland citizens can still do so, and so can citizens of Cyprus and Malta, which are EU countries, but also Commonwealth countries.

In this regard, MigrationWatch released a briefing paper on the 21st February 2008 on the right of non-citizens to vote, with particular regard to the puzzling permission allowed "Commonwealth citizens". (See MigrationWatch, "The Right of Non Citizens to Vote in Britain", Briefing paper 8.22)

It had these important points to make (my emphases):

British electoral law provides for the citizens of nearly fifty Commonwealth countries, British Dependent Territories, and the Republic of Ireland to vote in both local and general elections in the UK. The Representation of the People Act, 1918, provided that only British subjects could register as electors. However, the term "British subject" included any person who, at that time, owed allegiance to the Crown, regardless of the crown territory in which they were born. This included Commonwealth citizens and has never been revised.

Entitlement to vote in general elections is reciprocated for UK citizens only in the Republic of Ireland and a small number of (mainly West Indian) countries: Antigua & Barbuda; Dominica; Grenada; Guyana; Jamaica; Mauritius; St. Lucia and St. Vincent & The Grenadines.

It points out that the scale of this extension of the franchise is considerable:

Data on International Migration and the UK provided to the OECD indicates that there were 3,353,000 foreign citizens living in the UK in 2006. Of these 1,057,000 are from named Commonwealth countries and we estimate that a further 105,000 are from other Commonwealth countries making a total of 1,162,000 Commonwealth citizens in the UK.

Some of this total will be children. Children under 18 make up 22% of the UK population but it is likely that they will make up a smaller proportion of the population of foreign citizens. The international migration statistics indicate that under 5% of net migration is of children under 15. Migrants cannot acquire citizenship until 5 years after their arrival in the UK so foreign citizenship will be weighted heavily towards recent arrivals. It is likely therefore that children who are foreign citizens will comprise less than 15% of the total population of foreign citizens leaving a population of nearly a million (988,000) adult Commonwealth citizens in the UK. They will have the right to vote in British elections simply by virtue of their Commonwealth origins.

The fact that these people can vote in Britain, but we cannot vote in their countries, and the fact that in a close election their votes will be critical is:

Not only inequitable, but also illogical. It extends the franchise to a large number of individuals whose allegiance lies in states other than the United Kingdom. It is quite clearly an anachronism which, given the recent sustained increase in immigration, is now potentially significant. It should be removed.

MigrationWatch recommends that in future:

the right to vote in British general elections should be confined to citizens of the UK and those countries that offer reciprocal voting rights, namely the Republic of Ireland and certain West Indian countries. Proof of citizenship should be required on first registration on the Electoral Roll. The right to vote in local elections should be confined to citizens of the same countries plus those of the EU where there are reciprocal voting rights in local elections.

National citizenship - as opposed to universalist concepts of "global citizenship" - is undermined if we throw away its key privileges to people who are not entitled to enjoy them. If national citizenship is to be at all special - if it is to mean anything - then it must confer advantages upon national citizens, which are not enjoyed by non-citizens.

Voting rights is one of those key privileges. Meanwhile in Brussels "no taxation without representation" is proving to be a remarkably hollow statement. Jonathan Mayhew would have been shocked if he had been alive today. Boston politician James Otis had a different rendering which is much closer to the truth "taxation without representation is tyranny".

Defeat implies reading

It appears that any hopes I had of doing any revision (currently) have been completely dashed, in honour of this complete and humiliating defeat I decided to read Churchill's autobiography instead. Just to let you unwilling readers out there know that, whilst there is an election campaign going on out there I will try to ignore it as much as possible, it is nothing but theatre and our laws will still be made in a different land without an almighty Queen, who has the power to strike down a parliament which takes popular support for granted.

Alternative Future Nuclear Deterrent: Resurrection of TSR2

Over this weekend I attended a fantastic event which was extremely interesting. There were lots people there to which I could relate to very easily. The nature of the event led us naturally to consider aspects of Britain's military history, present and future. There are few countries which can be so wholesomely buggered as Britain when it comes to research. We have this inane ability as a people, to have these wonderful, marvellous and quite frankly, crazy ideas - but we never have the money to fund them.

I was once told that what is now ethos in the MoD is to have British scientists dream up the ideas, sell them to American, let America develop the idea into a final product, and finally buy it back and improve it. This have been done a lot over recent years in the UK with regards, at least, to military hardware. The Apache is perhaps a quasi-example; the UK did not buy the supplied avionics software for the apache but instead developed their own, which turned out to be so good that eventually the Americans bought it back from us. Who'da thunk?

Which leads us to perhaps the most depressing story yet in Britain's aviation history; the cancellation of the English Electric/Vickers-Armstrong TSR-2 which was terminated in 1964. This aircraft was so revolutionary that even today it would be modern and it was designed 50 years ago. The whole story is drenched in failure and political dereliction. It has produced one of the, to my mind at least, finest but most depressing statements to date

All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR-2 simply got the first three right.

-Sir Sydney Camm

There are of course many theories surrounding the whole sorry story of the project mainly relating to economics and politics. The British economy in the 1960s was in huge financial debt and was still struggling to pay back monies owed to America from WW2. The Labour Government was politely told you will buy the F111E, you have no choice. All tooling and production lines of the TSR2 are to be destroyed. This is the unofficial version of the reason why the project was cancelled. Over the years the government has denied these accusations completely. They of course would, but most people who worked on the project know that this is precisely what happened. All tooling, production lines and blueprints were certainly destroyed, so afraid were the Americans that they had their British embassy personnel shipped into the factories to personally make sure that everything was destroyed.

There is more to this shameful piece of British history than meets the eye. The only remains of the project are the prototypes XR220 and XR222. They only survived because they were shipped around the country for engine testing and evaluation. It would have been a scandal to chop up and burn these aircraft in front of the public. Instead a team was dispatched to the testing grounds and took pick axes to the inside of the prototypes so they could never be flown again. Their internal organs were ripped out like savages, where cold calculated economics destroyed one of the finest machines ever built.

I am in favour of the 'special-relationship' and I have vigorously defended it in times of need on this blog. But 50 years ago American politicians were frightened TSR2 would affect their exports of aircraft. Coupled with Lord Mountbatten's desire for this plane not to succeed and personally telling the Australian government not to pursue its commitment to purchase 30 airframes. Previously before being made aware of the whole TSR2 scandal I would have defended the 'special-relationship' but what they did was just mean to put it politely. There is not even a hint of good sportsmanship and while the defence industry in this country is still going fairly strong, Great Britain has never recovered its lead in the aviation world since the destruction of the TSR2 project.

I am often called an 'old man' by my friends and I think that is because I am very cynical about the world, I think this is fairly obvious when you realise how often we do not end up on top on every sphere of international cooperation. We always manage to get ourselves screwed, this if anything has been the enduring ethos of the past century. There have not been many international cooperations where we have actually benefited. This is not to say that we should not cooperate, we most certainly should, but not in engineering. This is something we do much better on our own and always have done. Look at some current defence cooperations and consider their worth:

A400M - crap and £9 billion over budget

Type 45 destroyer - crap and over budget

Typhoon - crap and over budget

F35 - unbelievably crap and so many many billions over budget

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There is hope though at least if you are willing to look outside the box and look back to a time when we could built very gucci stuff. TSR2 was to be nuclear weapons capable, and also able to carry conventional bombs. The roll of the fighter/Bomber was to fly from a short runway from within the UK to attack Russia, remember the Cold War was very much still on. The aircraft was to enter Russian air-space at extreme altitude over 58,000ft. Then descend to under to under 200ft to avoid ground radar. Once near the chosen Russian target a nuclear bomb or missile would be released to devastating effect. Now the Cold War is over but the Tories are committed to a new nuclear deterrent in the form of nuclear submarines. I suggest you consider the content of the article below if you have not already guessed where I am going with this





The TSR2 story is one of incompetence, mismanagement and failure. It is also a story of brilliance, determination and courage. It might sound crazy but if we want to we can build things like the TSR2 again -if we want to. Someone only needs to tell the boys in Whitehall that British manufacturing is nails.

The TSR2 story ended with XR219, XR221 and XR223 being taken to the shooting ranges at Shoeburyness, all eventually to be destroyed as 'damage to aircraft' targets. XR220 was kept at Boscombe for a year or so for engine noise testing and then placed in storage at RAF Henlow after it had much of its flight test equipment ripped out (even the wires were cut rather than disconnected). It was later transferred to RAF Cosford's Aerospace Museum. XR222 was gifted to the College of Aeronautics at Cranfield for instructional use. She was later donated to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. All the other airframes were scrapped. In the months after cancellation, all the tooling and jigs were destroyed, and a wooden mockup of the TSR2 was burned while BAC men filmed it for publicity purposes. In many ways the destruction of so many aspects of the project reflected the even greater act of vandalism that had been perpretrated on the British aviation industry.

Mr Warner on good form this evening

Jack Straw’s vacuous plan to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with a 300-member “Senate” demonstrates that, to the bitter end, Labour is obsessed with the kind of constitutionally illiterate vandalism that has characterised its 13 disastrous years in office. We already have a completely superfluous Supreme Court, on the American model; now Straw wants to add a Senate. American institutions are first-rate – for Americans. They are totally alien to Britain.

The reason for this persistent constitutional tinkering is that Labour (and now its Vichy Tory clones) thinks that such synthetic constructs are more “modern”. A favourite claim is “No other developed nation has a House of Lords”. That reflects the cultural masochism that leads “progressives” to imagine that every other society is superior to Britain. Most “developed” nations have contrived paper constitutions, cobbled together after the overthrow of their monarchies and other evolved institutions provoked periods of revolution, civil war, totalitarianism, general unrest and instability.

We have the inestimable advantage of an organic, evolved constitution that was traditionally the envy of the world. Yet, because it is enveloped in the trappings of past eras, despite its enduring efficiency and adaptability Labour and Tory modernisers want to smash it. It is a characteristic of modern Lab-Con Britain that everything that is unbroken is gratuitously mended, while the many things that are indeed broken are left unrepaired.

It is also significant that Straw’s plan is expected to include mechanisms for gerrymandering the Senate in favour of the usual suspects – women, “faith groups”, etc – as has already been done in the Commons via all-women and other forms of rigged candidate selection lists. The voter is being deprived of choice and is increasingly an extraneous cipher in the process of engineering an appointed parliament in both chambers.

It is widely assumed that Straw’s plan will not progress: but do not underestimate the potential for the Tory traitors to pick it up and run with it. What could “detoxify” a gang of Etonians more impressively (in their own demented imagination) than abolishing the House of Lords? It typifies the decadence of our times that the only section of the membership in the whole of Parliament that has not been mired in expenses and corruption scandals – the hereditary peers – is the one element that is designated for expulsion.

The implications of all these incoherent attempts to ape less mature and successful constitutional models is ultimately republican. The monarchy is the eventual target of the so-called modernisers. Pomp and pageantry are anathema to them. The grey-suited, serially corrupt apparatchiks of the European Union are their role models – and don’t forget what a plum the office of President would offer to a succession of retiring expenses junkies.

It is not the House of Lords that the public would prefer to abolish, but the House of Commons. The loathsome canaille on the slime-green benches – despite the sycophantic vocabulary of journalists such as “dedicated public servant”, “devoted constituency MP” and suchlike crony-guff – are detested by the electorate. They have banned country sports, driven smokers out of pubs, irresponsibly flooded the country with immigrants, handed us over trussed and gagged to Brussels, harassed the nation with “green” tyranny and political correctness, persecuted Christians and remorselessly robbed every taxpayer in the country.
The public knows, however, that there is no means available to it of abolishing this chamber of horrors. So, cleverly, it has opted to neuter it. An opinion poll recently showed that 34 per cent of voters actively want a hung parliament. That provoked spluttering outrage among the political class. Did these clowns of voters not understand that a hung parliament would destroy confidence in Britain’s ability to fix its economy? How stupid could they get?

The voters are not stupid at all. They know what they are doing: reducing the political class to impotence. And not before time. The transparent lie that the markets will trash Britain because of a hung parliament – when most of the countries whose bonds they purchase are in a state of permanent coalition government – impresses the British public as much as global warming scares. The difficulty about securing a hung parliament is the mechanism for engineering it. The only secure method is to deny votes to the three major parties. It is time to put them – not the peers – out of business.

Fail

A great and mighty world empire a mere 50 years ago, now brought down to a self destructive society, bent on cultural suicide. What is the point of continuing?

The Kiwis know how to get things done

This is quite frankly a remarkable piece by one Maurice P. McTigue who is an ex-minister of the New Zeeland government. The Devil has a much more comprehensive summary of McTigue's extremely interesting piece here, but let me just quote a paragraph:

When we started this process with the Department of Transportation, it had 5,600 employees. When we finished, it had 53. When we started with the Forest Service, it had 17,000 employees. When we finished, it had 17. When we applied it to the Ministry of Works, it had 28,000 employees. I used to be Minister of Works, and ended up being the only employee. In the latter case, most of what the department did was construction and engineering, and there are plenty of people who can do that without government involvement. And if you say to me, “But you killed all those jobs!”—well, that’s just not true. The government stopped employing people in those jobs, but the need for the jobs didn’t disappear. I visited some of the forestry workers some months after they’d lost their government jobs, and they were quite happy. They told me that they were now earning about three times what they used to earn—on top of which, they were surprised to learn that they could do about 60 percent more than they used to! The same lesson applies to the other jobs I mentioned.

He could be talking about Britain safe for the solution proposed and implemented by his government.

Where did the British go?

Have you ever heard of 'balls'? You know a proper pair a cojones as they are called in Spanish. Wikipedia labels it as a "vulgar" word quite how they got to that conclusion I cannot fathom. Yet it stands tall representing the noble synonym for courage. So where did the British balls go? Certainly most of them seem to be converged on Nigel Farage these days and a trickling of that has also reach some other public figures. But mostly if you look at the rag-bag that today constitutes councillors, well most of them are pathetic excuses for human beings not even remotely fit to serve their fellow man. Naturally there are exceptions and one is always overjoyed to take notice of their firm existence, when they are swimming against the bullshit-tide that has become everyday life in the UK.

It used to be different of course, things naturally change but still most things retain at least a modicum of its previous self; be it sport, culture, art, literature, film etcetera. Things change but remain the same in the carefully worded oxymoron. The stark irony of history tells us that the PM with the largest cojones to date was a woman namely Margaret Thatcher. Naturally people have qualms about Thatcher, she made a lot of good decisions but also a lot of bad ones, but what she did do first and foremost was to firmly underline that this was a woman which you do not fuck around with. Unlike our leaders today who are incessantly being tossed around between global political leaders, not stopping for a moment to contemplate what they themselves think, or more importantly what their people think (or their voters for that matter).

Bloggers like to think that they have big cojones, that if the opportunity was given they would swoop on to the world stage, claw back power and put Britain right. Most of the bloggers can talk the talk most certainly (and that is what scares the left) but can they walk the walk? Only time will tell. It seems then that the British went online. What can otherwise be the answer? You will only get a sincere answer from anyone these days if that answer is given whilst on the internet. If you try to get a politician or public figure, to speak from his heart you might as well have asked Achilles to consider the latest high heals from Gucci. You cannot get an honest answer from them. Instead their charisma is centered around their supposed charisma. I know that that sentence does not make semantical sense but read it again. David Cameron is an enigma wrapped in a riddle shrouded in a mystery, who no one likes. Gordon Brown no one likes because he has no charisma at all he only pretends he does. Nick Clegg is so boring to watch and listen to, that even Harriet Harman seems like Angelina Jolie by comparison.

Then you have the smaller parties. They all have leaders and people in them who actually practise what they preach. Farage basically told Von Rumpy to fuck of today (who incidentally is a denizen since he is a man without a country), and naturally I applaud any move which exposes the incompetence as personified by the EU. Nick Griffin, racist wanker and loony as a tosser, but he still took the mick out of Jack Straw on Question Time when calmly announced that Straw's father sat in prison during WWII and Griffin's fought. I do not like racists more than the next person, quite where they got that view from I can only but speculate in, however it is the unrelenting belief which is fascinating and valid of analysis. Imagine if Mr. Brown actually believed that he had saved the world, if he actually believed that he has not ruined the UK then maybe, just maybe, he would be able to do something constructive with the army of civil servants hired under his watch. But as the record stands he is just a big fat tub of shit who does not even have the decency to resign from an office which he has hopelessly rendered meaningless under his tenure as its guardian.

Let me offer your some solace though. The British will be back and they will grow a new pair of bollocks as we call them over here. Hope is a sine curve; it goes up and down periodically, and reaches its peaks and its throughs every so often. Even though most of you would probably just like to emigrate right now, I urge you to stay. Things will and can only get better it is the only possible outcome. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If you piss off the people the people will be pissed off with you. Simples. You do not need a legion of policy advisers to tell you that, a simple job would have done the trick - taught you the skills needed. Therein lies also the problem, most of our MPs never had a real job and just do not have a clue how the rest of us function. Plato said that no minister below the age of 50 should be let into the governing house, Plato said that more than 2500 years ago. Yet under the aegis of equality people without any experience of life are now governing people with experience. It is a paradox without an equal. But a paradox which simply cannot last.

While the proper citizens are currently dormant and accumulating their range, they will have to vent it at some point and I daresay that not a battalion or a brigade of PCSOs can stop that tidal wave of mistrust and disgust aimed at the people who let this country fall of the cliffs of hope and into Dante's inferno.

One day...

Some day someone like me, but someone with real power, will have had enough this shit.

Also I note that the South Americans have started to torch British flags. Well, chaps, you are way behind; we torched our own flag in our own country well before you started. Why? No one gives a shit anymore just as no one will care when you burn our flag down yonder. People will simply ask 'so what else is new?'

The comment hurts, because it is so true

This is a comment, from a reader, from an article over at the Times...

I, not being British, find it funny how people in the UK think they are a small player. You don't have an inkling as to what it is like being a small player. Britain may be going through rough times by its own standards and may not be a superpower but it is still a great power. In that role it still has a role to play. You would have thought that the people of the UK would realise the important role of power projection after the mistakes leading to the Falklands War.

Why are the British now so defeatist?

I cannot answer that, it certainly did not used to be like this, perhaps the PC/Complain-and-Blame society has something to do with it. The only thing I know is that the truth hurts - a lot. It is not easy to face the harsh reality when it could have been so easily avoided if men with honour had entered parliament instead of men who know not even the meaning of the word.

The wit of Churchill

An aide brought Churchill the morning paper with the news that one of his Cabinet Ministers would have to resign because he had been caught having gay sex with a Grenadier Guardsman in Green Park the night before.

Churchill said: "It was cold last night was it not?"
the aide replied: "Yes Sir, only 23 degrees" (that's -5 in new money)
Churchill replied: "Makes you proud to be British"

This is true, Mr. Wadsworth deserves full cred for this little gem.

4,289 illegal activities + Britain = 12 years of New Labour

Having a very busy day hence will leave the floor to another great blogger, Angus Dei on All Sundry;

Labour has introduced 14,300 new offences since taking office in 1997, with Gordon Brown's administration inventing crimes at a rate of more than one a day.

Thanks to Labour, it is now illegal to swim in the wreck of the Titanic or to sell game birds killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day – eventualities overlooked by previous governments.

Labour has made 4,289 activities illegal since the 1997 election, at a rate of about one a day – twice the speed with which the previous Conservative government created crimes.

Gordon Brown was the worst offender, with his government inventing 33 new crimes a month. Tony Blair's administration made 27 new offences each month.

Some of the more inventive crimes dreamt up by Labour include "disturbing a pack of eggs when directed not to by an authorised officer" and reporting the door of a merchant ship to be closed and locked when it isn't.

Labour also introduced laws against activities which would already have been covered by previous legislation – such as "causing a nuclear explosion."

There is one they have missed-it should be illegal to claim to be a government when it is obviously not.

There is one which they quickly removed when entering parliament; the treason laws. Basically as they are gearing up for election to deliver a heap load of new lies we will be working tirelessly to expose them and all the other shit that they have come out with over the years.

UK closing embassies + EU opening embassies = coincidence? No fucking way

Some "coincidences" are just too enticing to ignore. Weeks after the Lisbon Treaty saw Europe's burgeoning overseas diplomacy service finally gain legal status, it has been announced that cash-strapped Britain will be forced to close many embassies because it can no longer afford them. While that was announced it was quietly glossed over that 50 EU embassies are to open.

The Conservatives claim that the Foreign Office has drawn up a "secret list" of posts to be closed. Much of the financial shortfall is down to the fact that £ Sterling has plunged on the foreign currency exchanges over the past two years. Coincidentally, this is around the the time Foreign Secretary David Miliband abolished the Overseas Price Mechanism, which made up for budget shortfalls due to currency fluctuations.

A Labour peer revealed yesterday that anti-extremist activity in Pakistan was being wound down thanks to the budget shortfall. The government says that it will make up the shortfall thanks to the crucial priority the Afghan-Pakistan border region has for British security; the future of our many embassies is less clear, yet more obvious: The EU's Foreign Affairs will rush in where Britons can no longer afford to tread.

As usual with these events, once we get used to living without embassies in unglamorous nations and political backwaters, the closure of British missions will become more and more widespread, with the ever-eager EU taking up the slack. We might even make a few quid selling off our abandoned premises to Brussels. Before long, our independent diplomatic service will consist of a couple of "cultural centres" in Paris, Washington and Beijing.

The Conservatives of course are having great fun at the misfortunes of their Labour stunt doubles. Yet David Cameron and George Osborne promise an even harsher age of austerity than that Labour threatens.

Can we have a commitment from the Conservatives to keep our embassies open, however the Pound Sterling performs?

No? Didn't think so.

Good man EUROSOC always on the ball.

What will happen eventually is that the UK is going to be broken up and Scotland, NI and Wales will go their separate ways. Upon which England will finally leave the EU and stand alone once again on the world stage. It is a sad future but regrettably the only realistic one we face. Hence we will leave, I do not doubt this, but it will be at the price of the union. To Scottish nationalists I can only say this; it is all very well when you gained independence of your own accord, it gives semblance to a patriotic notion of consciousness. But having it served on a plate from a foreign interlocutor is just not very noble. Though you may gain independence, as will we, you will not have done it on your own and that, I must say, I find less than honourable (no doubt I will receive a lot of criticism from scots who disagree with my harsh future - fine, that is what discussion is all about).

Finally, I find it a bit sad that EU Referendum has not written anything about this yet. Mr. North and Co. are usually very up to date on issues pertaining or relating to the mischievous footnotes of the "democratically negotiated" EU treaties. But, alas, it has yet to materialise.

Note to the reader: I try to keep the cursing to a minimum on this blog for I do not find it a respectable activity to partake in, nor does it convey the message one tries to put forth without a semblance of sensationalism. This time however I have employed the f-word in the title of the post, for I cannot believe what set of low-life and treacherous morals a man bears when he happily sells of his country to the highest bidder. For make no mistake none of the politicians who voted through the Lisbon Treaty in parliament did so on the strength of it actually helping Britain. No, I have read it, so have most people vaguely interest in the EU, and it was clear for all to see what precisely would happen to nation states when passed. This was Judecca-politics of the most disgusting kind. I have not doubt however that they will all get what they deserve in the end.

Update: Victory! EU Referendum has now mentioned it. And defeat on my part for it turns out that they indeed have written about it, lots of times. I should have known... The student remains the student and the master remains the master.

This is British Politics Today

These subtle few lines encapsulate what it means (mostly) to be a Political party in today's 'Modern Britain'

We Have Principles, vote for us! If you do not like them we have others!

But hey at least we have our beer.

Au Contraire we can do something

Have you ever stopped for a second and started being really un-PC? Well I do not think I was ever properly PC at all, certainly my friends seem to squirm when I even mention the word 'immigration' my family, similar, I explain that I am not a racist that I have read far more reports on immigration pros and cons than they, I spent a few hours reading a particular House of Lords report on the subject making my own red notes, and finally I devise my conclusions that arch echelon of Political Correctness, immigration, is too high and I spent the last 15 minutes explaining why. Yet, even by logical deduction...

-small country

-most densely packed country on planet

-bankrupt

-fuel truly dangerous parties NF or the BNP

-null economic benefit

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.

.

I am still being regarded by strange eyes which seem to ask through their blurring stupidity why am I diverging from my box of conformity? Do I not know that I must hold the line? That talking about immigration is a kin to blasphemy? I know all of that which is precisely what I do. Luckily enough I know how to back up my arguments and have written extensively on the subject here on this blog and elsewhere so I know what I am talking about. Yet... I am still a racist in their eyes. You have to give it to the powers that be that they have certainly done a fine job when it comes to conformity of the masses.

The funny thing is though, if you as a person have adopted that quintessentially un-PC stance which is to say an anti-government stance on every issue: anti-EU, cap on immigration, anti-surveillance state and so on you will quite often find, so I have at least, that people readily hop on that bandwagon, for they do agree, they are just too afraid of breaking cover and actually unleashing their bottled up feelings of the derelict state of society and the nation at large. I cannot imagine what they think might happen? We do not yet have an equivalent of STASI in the UK, they are sure to come, but not yet, the cameras only actually work if you are wearing your address on your t-shirt when you commit that unsocial act. They only aid the police in 1 of 1000 instances. They are shit, useless and completely unnecessary but exist primarily for you to know that you are being watched. That they cannot actually do anything with it matters little.

Why I ask, can we make a difference, those us who bereave the government of all its honour day-by-day online and expose its darkest secrets, find the patterns they wish to be hidden and generally being a massive thorn in their side, like France. Honestly, I think not, those of us who write are generally more socially aware than the rest of the population who consider X-factor the prime happening of the week and not the state of democracy in the UK. You cannot really blame them however, it is not really their fault, if the state wants you to be dumb you will be dumb. Thankfully it does not extend across the board. But are to we to say once peaceful revolution has been hampered and violent revolution is just around the corner, that 'we told you so?'. I hope it will never come to that and if it does, rather than gloating about our foresight we can act as a candle in the wind when things really turn nasty and be quite sure they will; Peter Mandelson, an unelected Politician seized total control of the Internet in the UK, an unelected man has become "President" of half a billion people in Europe and a scheme to actually steal unimaginable amounts of money from the next three generations of the worlds people has been made public. All of this was just last week. Pessimism is not a populism it is a realism when enemies of the state are running it.

You are never alone when you take a stand - remember that.

Kings and Queens

This is a quite good, very dumbed down, description of the Kings and Queens of England and Great Britain to date.

How and Why?

Why do we exist and does what we do make any significant or material difference to the world we are fortunate (well...) to be part of? Is the pen (keyboard) really mightier than the sword when the enemy (New Labour and the government) command nothing less than a small legion of forces with which it can swiftly and quickly deny or block a story altogether. Are those forces in turn completely demented or are they just that corrupted that they do anything for money? How is it that 27 people are to decide the potentially mightiest politician in the EU and they say nothing? How can it be conceivable that a newspaper calls its reader idiots after they refuse the global warming shenanigans? Surely that is the newspaper's fault for not doing enough brainwashing to get its message across?

These questions have all terribly simple answers to normal people who still have a sense of duty and moral conviction that something is terribly wrong with this country. When grave stones are being consecrated by the authorities for they have become a health and safety hazard. I am trying to put myself into that person's clothes, how do you think when you have been tasked with such a mission to kick over graves... 'I am about to tip over these century old graves because my council says so - Jolly Good Then!' It is that last part of the person's hypothetical mind waves that have become and issue in this country; the blind acceptance and conformity where before there was a moral objection to something so monumentally stupid as tipping over a grave stone. This of course is something of an extreme example and I expect it wont be long before we hear heads rolling on this one, I know that I would be all the rage if someone (if that 'someone' turned out to be employed by my council there would be hell to pay, sure this is the internet and empty threats are ubiquitous but this is not one of them) kicked over my grandfather's grave stone. You would see nothing short of ballistic blitzkrieg on my behalf and I am a fairly sensible person - imagine someone who is a bit off the hook. Murder she wrote.

What we write now, this and many posts before it and what people like Mr. North, Guido and Iain Dale or Leg Iron, write - does it make a difference and does it matter? Perhaps, the fundamental difference between the MSM and bloggers is that we retain our common sense where the rest have fundamentally lost it. The Guardian yesterday ran a completely non-story about the M0D helping out Top Gear, where their twist was that they had spent taxpayer money and soldiering hours (which simply was not true and it was a downright lie). We know that this is complete BS, not because it is the Guardian, they sometimes have very incisive cover on the most fascinating of issues even though they are Labourites, and so it appears do most comments. Which is why we must consider what makes the media abandon its common sense when it is writing the simplest of issues and why don't they huff-and-puff more when something really paradoxically cockeyed has taken place. They instead insist that because they are a media outlet they must remain impartial. But we all know this is complete crap as well, it is ridiculously easy to put a political label of media outlets today, whereas they are pretending that 'bias' is like French to them - c'est quoi monsieur?

Why the charade? Be honest for once in your miserable lives.

Not exactly a rush for the Tories

I have for the past 30 minutes been floating around the blogosphere in search for something interesting to read for my morning tea. I realise that at the time of this writing is 2.30PM and any tea drinking should have been done ages ago. Well, I say this; I am student, yesterday was Saturday, you do the maths. Alas, moving on one is desperately struggling to find something very interesting to read mostly because my fellow bloggers probably have not arisen yet from their rosy slumbers dreaming of a better future. I am sure that once they do wake the full wrath of their malcontent will spring forth like Labour in 1997.

Now, whilst there might not be any grand posts to read right now there surely will be by tonight. But on this note I wish to go quite on a different subject altogether. Most of you will have noticed how Labour won the Glasgow North by-election by 58% when only 30% bothered to vote, put in other terms that means that only 17% of people actually wanted Labour to be in power for another shitty term. Fair enough, it is their vote and their opinion and one cannot but criticise their judgement but not their conviction.

But why did the Tories not win? Why were they almost beaten to fourth place by a gang of non-politicians who barely have a penny to their name (BNP) and where the Tories have millions upon millions of pounds pouring in from gullible donors wishing to get their hands on the next piece of British social architecture waiting to be privatised during their incoming reign. What will it be this time you ask? The BBC, Royal Mint, Royal Mail, Met Office and maybe even the MoD?

Just because something is mismanaged due to another government's misgivings does not give you the right to sell of our ancient institutions. We know you want to and you know we do not want to, we have told you time and time again; we like our national institutions, they provide pride where our government consistently fails - well 'pride' may perhaps not be the best word but I for one would have lunch with the head of the Queen Elizabeth Conference centre any day, before any one of the ministers from this government or the incoming.

So why is that when Labour are universally despised and will most likely become the third party at next election, HM Opposition are not cashing in on it? Sure they are consistently ahead 10% points in the polls but that is nothing compared to Blair before the election in 1997. The BNP are cashing in like never before and even the Greens and UKIP are hopping on that bandwagon. The latest poll on this issue has the minor parties on 18% where they previously only attained around 9%. Why are they not cashing in then? Everything Labour touches turns to rust and eventually dust - they are wholly incapable and fully incompetent when it comes to running this country and even the French could probably do a better job. We have sold of our electricity grid to them (EDF) so might we not follow suite with our government as well?

On a more serious note though, the Tories are not being honest about what they are going to do and certainly, probably, do not know what they are going to do. But most importantly they are wholly oblivious to what we want them to do.

Recall this poll, posted a few days ago. According to it Defence and Armed Forces, Immigration, Relationship with Europe (I presume they intended for this to be the EU since we seem to have little problem with the 47 nation entity that entails 'Europe' but are in a world of trouble when it comes to the 27 nation conglomerate known collectively as the EU) and Unemployment.

If we look at two of these areas one-by-one I think we will get a very clear picture of how the Tories, by this time in 2013, will be as despised as Labour are now. Any Tory supporters feel free to oblige me on the erroneous points I am, perhaps, about to make.

Unemployment: They will roll out a massive programme of apprenticeships. That sounds good but quite where are all these apprenticeships going to come from? The manufacturing sector only accounts for 12% or Britain's Economy and if you think that lads of 15-18years are going to be content with working in a boutique as part of their educations you are sadly mistaken. Boys are boys, presumably they will be given a choice as where to get their apprenticeship then? What about girls then? Well, if we are to believe the government's demonising statistics the problem makers are the white middle class boys ergo there wont be any problem with the girls. That seems to be the current orthodoxy at least. Lord Mandelson said something, for a change, clever, he figured we ought to start building 'stuff' again. Quite right Mr. Mandelson. What is more there is enough coal supply left to supply the nation for another 600 years. Dig the damn thing up, process it, invest in clean technology and burn it. Mr. Cameron would never do such a thing of course because it would piss of the Greenies and interfere with the housing schemes being built where the old coal mines once stood (there are a 1 million empty homes in London alone, what is that figure nationwide, why must we destroy the Green Belt when there simply is no need?)

Of course there is the elephant in the room which no one ever discusses. I was speaking to a Polish friend the other day and he was saying that he could not believe how tolerant we are in this country upon which I went into a tirade of why this was, connecting it with relevant pieces of history showing why extremist parties have had such a hard time (until now) in the UK. He went 'aha' and only concluded that if 2 million Brits had flowed into his country the equivalent of the BNP there would have got a majority and formed a government. What this little analogy is to purport is that immigrants do take jobs and if the government has a back-up plan to find jobs for the domestic youth then that is fine, problem is of course that there are not nearly enough jobs to go around since there is no back-up plan. We get the regular government pundits telling us that immigrants are not stealing jobs and how they add lots to the economy. This is another one of those common sense areas where it simply is not worth the time and energy listening to what the government has to say on the issue. You must have balanced immigration or quacks like the BNP start to rise up and demand to be counted. This ties nicely in with the unemployment issue in that people will be unemployed if there are not enough jobs to go around and haranguing the leader of the BNP on the BBC is not going to help particularly if the entire show is patronising the person whom more and more people are, wrongly in my opinion, starting to associate with.

Immigration: As the above paragraph hopefully showed there is a problem with immigration in this country in that it is far far too high. The tories propose to put a cap on these numbers yet they refuse to tell us what that cap might be set at. 10,000 or 100,000 we just do not know why they are completely untrustworthy on this issue. What is more they have not said if they are going to end the practise whereby immigrants are allowed to bring their spouses and children into the country after having settled down - a practise banned in every single european country but which the Labour government lifted in the UK in 1997, presumably as part of their plan to create a "truly multicultural Britain". What of the illegal immigrants then? There are as many as 1,000,000 - 2,000,000 illegals who bring absolutely nothing to this country at all. Going by what Boris said they will all get an amnesty if he were in command. Then we have the asylum seekers who Baroness Warsi so haphazardly told us was a legal term. Quite. However whilst she might be content that it is a legal term having reminded a man with a Law degree (Nick Griffin, and I know we should not take him seriously but we will damn well have to start to unless we want BNP MPs in the HoC - get of your lazy arse PC buts and write something constructive to aid the debate against the BNP instead of ostracising me for having reminded you that while Nick Griffin may have some pretty dodgy views he is not a stupid man) that was so, she seems to have forgotten what the 1951 Geneva Convention has to say on the issue. It says that an asylum seeker must seek refuge in the first country he/she passes through on his/her escape. Well Britain is at the end of the world as far as they are concerned and there is a whole swathe of countries between us and wherever they are coming from. They are by that token illegal asylum seekers who are preventing the truly desperate ones from reaching the UK and getting help. Why are they coming here? Simple, we have a very cushy benefits system where asylum seekers get £40 a week for their abode - an astronomical sum in some countries. If you want a really good analysis on the judicial aspect of them system please go here.

If you think I am telling you all this because I am cold-hearted capitalist scum you are wrong. I am telling you this because we cannot help people anymore who really need British help. What will the Tories do about all this? Nothing, everything they have proposed so far smacks well below average for they might lose voters in their quest to make the UK a better place, why they refuse to make the tough choices. Which is why I will reiterate my diktat time and time again; the Tories will not win in 2013 but neither will Labour - the oligopoly on British politics has ended.

The Albion Alliance

I you kept your ears and eyes screwed on for the past few days you will have heard about the Albion Alliance which seemingly is only an internet phenomenon as of yet but perhaps they will spring forth and become one in the myriad of 'pseudo-think tank/cross party alliance -thing-ish' which act to purport a united front on an issue. Good for them I say and good riddance.

However, (there is always a 'however' if you are British and a 'but' if you from the American school of ambivalence) the Alliance was formed to bring together people from all parties who want a referendum on the EU. Though this is good news surely they could have made a better job on their webpage which looks like a drunken monkey made it. My blog looks better - and that is not being conceited that is just the honest truth (and this is basic template with a few tweaks). Appearance matters particularly if you have the Guardianistas and BBC-mongs breathing down your neck. They will pull you apart piece by piece and convey to the deluded public that you were the ones who were in the wrong for wanting a referendum on something as trivial as the EU - stupid people! Ignorance is strength did you not know? And that is that Fraser Nelson over at the Spectator has some interesting thoughts on this whole EU caboodle - well worth the read, I am more inclined to agree with the comments to the piece though; no real change in the UK's relationship with the EU will come as long as Cameron is PM.

Get your act together before the Guardian does its "take" on the Albion Alliance which they are destined to say is 'doomed'. If you read my previous post however you will see that the reality is another and the EU is becoming an election issue. Splendid I say to that. As Ceasar would have said on this issue, "alea iacta est".

UPDATE: Having received a very courteous response form Mr. Higham of the Albion Alliance I should let it be know that I wholeheartedly support the endeavour and will offer my services as far as they go. This post was merely intended to give warning of the immense power of the MSM. To put Mr. Higham at ease possibly it should be reminded that 'a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has'. The only problem of course being that we are not a small group anymore.