Defence Cuts and Libya

I have looked around everywhere for a post or article on this topic; the SDSR with regards to Libya. It seems that people are avoiding this topic like the plague, perhaps because it is monumentally obvious that if we are going to play any part in military action against Libya then we simply cannot go ahead with certain parts of the SDSR. It simply is not possible, why I will explain in a few minutes. First consider in full, again, the cuts as envisaged in the SDSR courtesy of Wikipedia.

British Army

• Challenger 2 tanks will be cut by 40%.
• The British Army presence in Germany will end by 2020.
• Overall personnel numbers will drop by 7,000 to 95,500.
• The number of Challenger 2 tanks will be cut by 40% to an estimated number of just over 200.
• The number of AS-90 heavy artillery will be cut by 35%to an estimated 87.

Royal Air Force

• The Harrier will be retired in order to maintain the Tornado as the RAF's main strike aircraft until the Typhoon matures. The latter and the F-35 Lightning II will constitute the RAF's fast jet fleet in the future.
• Personnel will be reduced by 5,000 to 33,000.
• Nimrod MRA4 project, after spending £3.2 billion and the first aircraft being completed, to be scrapped. RAF Kinloss, where the aircraft were to be based, will close.
• Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft procurement will go ahead, as will the Airbus A400M. These aircraft, along with the current C-17s, will form the future air transport fleet. The VC10 and TriStars are approaching the end of their service lives and the C-130 fleet will be retired 10 years earlier than planned.
• 12 Boeing Chinooks will be added to the current fleet, a cut to the original order for 22.
• The Harrier GR9 will be withdrawn during 2011.
• The RAF's future fast jet fleet will be based on the Typhoon and the F-35 Lightning II. The latter, which will also be flown by the Royal Navy, will be the more capable and cheaper F-35C version. The UK has originally planned to buy the F-35B, a Short Take Off and Vertical Landing aircraft. The F-35C has longer range, greater payload capability and the MOD envisages life cycle costs to be 25% cheaper than the F-35B.
• The Sentinel R1 will be retired once it is no longer required to support forces in Afghanistan.

Royal Navy

• The Royal Navy flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Ark Royal, will be decommissioned "almost immediately" rather than in 2014. The Joint Force Harrier aircraft will be retired. Both of these measures will save money for the purchase of the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers.
• One of the Albion class landing platform dock ships will be placed at extended readiness.
• Either HMS Ocean or HMS Illustrious to be decommissioned, whichever is least capable as a helicopter carrier.This was decided in December 2010, Liam Fox stated "HMS Ocean should be retained to provide our landing platform helicopter capability for the longer term. HMS Illustrious will be withdrawn from service in 2014".
• One of the Bay class landing ship dock vessels (later identified as RFA Largs Bay) would be decommissioned.
• Replacement of the UK's nuclear deterrent, based on the Vanguard class ballistic missile submarines, will be delayed by four years, deferring £500 million in spending. Changes to the size of the missile tubes will save £250 million.
• 7 Astute class submarines will be built as previously planned.
• The surface fleet of frigates and destroyers will be reduced to nineteen ships; the current thirteen Type 23 frigates, the three active Type 45 destroyers, and the three Type 45 destroyers currently under construction. The remaining Type 22 frigates and Type 42 destroyers are to be disposed of. "As soon as possible after 2020", the Type 23 frigates will be replaced by new Type 26 frigates.
• The strength of the RN will be reduced by 5,000 (to a total of about 30,000)

And that is it, few might wonder why we even bother having an armed force when there is no one in it, not our politicians of course they do not wonder any such sensible thoughts.

What is currently being planned to stop Gaddafi going all 15th century on his people, is to impose a no-fly zone. What is this? A no-fly zone is a territory over which aircraft are not permitted to fly. Such zones are usually set up in a military context, somewhat like a demilitarized zone in the sky.

Now the Geography of Libya is somewhat arduous if we are to contemplate using post-SDSR resources to corner Gaddafi. As you will see from the map on the left, Libya is not exactly surrounded by tea-loving cricket monkeys; Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan and Egypt are not our best international allies bluntly put. In the north there is water, a lot of water, so much water in fact that you need a ship. A big ship, something on the scale of an aircraft carrier. Why? Well, the americans have a lot of bases dotted around that region which can accommodate fighters jets of our pedigree, and they also have the tech needed to service them. Moreover the closest ally which uses the Typhoon is Italy, though they might not be over-joyed by the prospect of lending their bases to pesky Brits they would probably relent if leaned upon a bit. But that is a big 'if' and the italians have not been known to favour big expeditionary military missions since about two millennia ago - crossing the Rubicon and all of that. They are more embroiled in their Prime Minister's latest shenanigans. Hence were we to take part in the no-fly zone operation it would almost, without question, be with the help of the Americans. But then one must ask, why should we take part at all when they US Marines boast more fighters jets than our Navy and Airforce combined? Wont we just be in the way of a properly equipped fighting force? Chances are that this would be the case since we have no means of fielding any heavy equipment of our own except for choppers.

We still have a lot of craft which can accommodate choppers, and substantial numbers of them as well; that said a chopper is peanuts compared to a fighter jet and it is like comparing apples and oranges if you are to analyse a no-fly zone whilst only keeping choppers as your option. They are useful for close support but certainly not for patrolling an area four times the size of the UK.

The current UK flag-ship is HMS Albion, a grand lady indeed, but she cannot carry aeroplanes only choppers.

We have sold, scrapped or decommissioned the following Invincible class carriers; HMS Ark Royal and HMS Invincible. What remains is HMS Illustrious due for decommissioning in 2014 after HMS Ocean has undergone extensive refits.

Lets make this abundantly clear to those of you who do not yet realise the significance of an aircraft carrier. It is a floating bit of sovereign space. It is a tiny floating UK which can blow stuff up very quickly should circumstances so require it. Circumstances are not requiring it yet in Libya but if every armed conflict to date is anything to go by, they will. There is a difference between being belligerent and pragmatic and knowing your history and ignoring it. We are terribly good at forgetting our history in the UK and as a result tend to repeat an awful lot of mistakes which could have been avoided if people in command where not being so optimistic about the prospects.

They know that they need Illustrious more than ever, they know that they can halt the sale of HMS Invincible to a Turkish scrapyard and re-install the Rolls-Royce engines at the blink of an eye. But they wont for the simple reason that they will look weak and incompetent for having completed botched the SDSR. If any of them are reading this let me make this very clear; you already look like amateurs for thinking that no aircraft carriers would be needed during an entire decade. It took four months -four months- for your defence review to become obsolete. To save some face, or at the very least, listen to the people in the know, you can reverse some of these decisions. There is waste in the MoD, yes no one denies this, but there is also a time when you have admit and consent that you were wrong. Own up to your shortcomings and move on. These assets are gravely needed for a no-fly zone cannot be established without them, it simply is not possible since no one, down there, likes us enough to lend us their airbases and we would just be in the way of the americans as said.

What is more; the Typhoon cannot fly off aircraft carriers, it is not a carrier jet like the French Mirrage 2000. The Harrier GR9 can, but like everything else useful, it is being scrapped to save money. The Harrier and the Carriers are perhaps our most valuable asset right now, one cannot topple Gaddafi with nuclear submarines nor with Cyber Commands no matter how intriguing the prospect of that might sound.

The Government knows what they have to do in order to remain a significant player in the world, but they wont since they will loose face if they do. We have had so many politicians like that who were afraid to do the right thing, and as a result history only remembers them for their failure to do the right thing. Not for all the good they also did. What will the Coalition be? A Chamberlain or a Churchill?

Update:

Word is catching on...

Since the Libyan crisis began, the Coalition has faced repeated criticism over the decision last year to decommission HMS Ark Royal and the Royal Navy’s Harrier jets, leaving Britain without a functioning aircraft carrier. Dr Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, insisted that such criticism was a “red herring” because the base in Cyprus meant Britain could still operate jets over Libya if required. And would it, pray, still be a "red herring" if this had happened in Zambia instead, where are no conveniently placed RAF stations. I cannot believe that this man is using geography as a defence for scrapping HMS Ark Royal. What an idiot. A five year old could pick holes in that defence.

And for our daily dose of idiotic comments, the Guardian never disappoints when it cannot understand why special forces operations are kept secret and furthermore argues that they should be publicised. Why are lefties so fucking stupid?

Some free advice

Given that the probability that anyone with any form of influence will actually read this blog, is fairly slim. I am fairly comfortable posting my personal advice here for the benefit of politicians who think they know how the real world works.

What has been bothering me as of late is that the government is not able to put across what they really want to do. I do not really care much for their policies (the coalition's) since a) the Liberal Democrats had a hand in writing them, and I despise them as a political entity, b) the Conservative party does not seem to know what it is conserving anymore and might as well re-name itself to something more appropriate akin to the centre left/right policies it now subscribes to.

Me; I am very conservative and never went through the socialist stage which most youngsters seem destined to pass through, as a right of passage, before reaching maturity and embracing a pragmatic and grown-up outlook on the world (and realise that you cannot simply dish-out other people's hard earned money on your bullshit socialist utopia). As the old saying goes, a conservative is a liberal who just got mugged, and a liberal is a conservative who just got arrested. I have never been arrested nor mugged, when I have, I shall update you on my political credence.

But back to the main point behind this post. If you cannot communicate your vision then you will be defined by your enemies. It is a very simple concept. But it seems as if ministers are currently just trying to leave something, anything, just for the sake of changing society, but not saying why they want to change it. Why on earth sell off the forests for example? Who ever asked for that? It is not as if logging is big business in the UK (no it really is not so don't go posting some statistics saying that it is for then I will retort with a statistic from Sweden or Finland, which will dwarf any lumber figure put forth by any of my potential enemies).

It is fairly simple to get past this; formulate what the hell is wrong with the current system be it the armed forces or the NHS. And really hit home why it needs to change. Be a coward and ignore the EU at your own peril, there is still a lot of domestic policy (the EU is domestic policy now as well) which is still quite frankly shit. Noticed lately that no NHS doctors wear white coats? But in every other country in the world with an advanced medical service this is the case. Do some googling on that and you will see for what retard reason those were dropped and subsequently leading to various outbreaks of dangerous viruses. This is a minor issue though; there is a lot more which needs to be changed before the doctors get their coats back. Question is will ministers listen to the people or will they peddle on into oblivion and certain electoral defeat, lest they tell everyone what they are trying to achieve?

100,000 voices

Yours truly does apologise for his unseemly long absences from this blog. University is taking its toll particularly since this blogger is attending a real university and doing a real course (which his arrogance never falters to mention). Exams are due after Christmas holidays so this post in itself is an outlier. But nonetheless things need to be said and since our pointless MSM continues to be just that, we have to say it ourselves, we the people.

100,000 voices will be required to get motions debated in parliament. A lot of people do not like this, one of my favourite bloggers Mr. North at EU Referendum does not like it either. Yet one of my favourite politicians Mr. Hannan likes it so it would appear we are having a good old bout of difference of opinion. I like it not because I am naive enough to think that it will actually improve democracy in this country but because it is a very useful tool for politicians to shot themselves in the foot with. And since our ruling class is monumentally stupid as it is, you can be quite sure that given the opportunity to shot themselves in their feet; they will.

Politicians nowadays despise the electorate, our current ruling class is a testament to this fact. No one voted for the coalition yet the coalition now votes for us. That is not democracy and certainly not representative democracy where they are supposed to represent us, instead they represent themselves since under the aegis of 'coalition' they threw out their election manifestos, wrote a new one and forced it onto the people under the guise of 'compromise'. We were stupid enough, as always, to swallow that, line, hook and sinker.

Thankfully the public will always outshine private politicians. We have the benefit of 60 million minds and they only have 646 of our kind, not even our best kind, a rather mediocre staple they come from. With few scholars, officers and entrepreneurs. They are by and large sheep and followers, not leaders. Hence it is not a surprise at all that they now think this gimmick of a measure is going to help shore up their popularity (read 'the LibDems popularity').

What will happen is this: we will suggest loads of things we want debated and changed by our "sovereign" parliament. We will submit the HRA for expulsion from the legislature, we will demand that immigration is significantly reduced, we will demand a referendum on the EU, we will enforce very convincingly our commitment to the Armed Forces, we will demand the termination of the Human Rights Commission and we will most likely demand that a number of services such rail traffic and postal services are returned to the public sector. And many others.

They will of course ignore every single one of our requests, when we come, cap in hand, and beg that our masters listen to us.

But what they do not seem to have factored into this ploy is that there will be a lot of these 'citizen's initiatives' - because we, as a whole, despise our politicians and what they have done to this country. When the hoi polloi start to realise that their vox populi is being ignored en masse, even they will realise that their politicians are not serving their best interests.

Hence it will follow; motion after motion will be rejected because it is truly what the people want, people's disillusionment with the ruling class will only grow and grow, the ruling class will become more and more aware of their disillusionment until they one day feel compelled to act on one of the requests.

Alas, this act is a pointless play to the galleries for is should not be needed, politicians should by definition hold the executive to account. They should by definition have balls and a firm spine. But what this act will do is to force the public balls and spine onto our politicians, and there is not a single thing they can do about it.

Unfortunately we are a nation which is going nowhere.

The Socialist Brain of a Liberal Democrat

The hand of Fellowship

It would appear that if you lend the right hand of fellowship to the Liberal Democrats, you are bound to loose at least a few fingers. The tail wags the dog and so on, the Liberal Democrats are wielding and awful lot more power than they have the democratic entitlement to. They lost 6 MPs since the last election yet I cannot help but feel that this government feels very fucking 'progressive' and even more left-wing than New Labour.

There are only 646 of them but 60 million of us, I hope they realise whom is supposed to serve who.

This is what I believe in?

I am sure that I am not alone in feeling very betrayed this evening as the party I nominally and instinctively agree with a lot seems to be fading before my very eyes. Sure I could always fall back on UKIP but they have nowhere near the history and excitement of the Conservative Party (yet it would seem) - who really were the only realistic choice in getting us out of the EU. Perhaps 'lost' is the word which most appropriately describes the situation, a situation where suddenly there is nothing even hinting of right-wing in the Conservative party. David Cameron has made it 'modern' (whatever that means) sure, where principles are exchanged for privilege at the blink of an eye, but what should the rest of us do who do not have luxury of controlling the party of Churchill and Thatcher, who actually stick by with what we believe and think, and are not afraid to air our opinions in the face character-assasination and the PC-brigade? I have no power over my principles and cannot just 'replace' them with others like a lot of Tory activists seem to be doing tonight.

Have they actually read the LD manifesto? Researched Clegg? Cable? Ashdown? They are anathema to everything the conservatives, with a small 'c', stand for. Sure some argue that now we can take the LDs down with us when all the cuts that need to be made are made, and then the media has to blame them as well not just the Tory Toffs. But that is opportunism, a strong leader should take responsibility for his actions however harsh they might seem. I am not sure what actually has passed tonight but it feels very very wrong. I could wish for the coalition to fall apart but the same people who made it happen in the first place will still be there, the same people who notionally appear conservative but are in fact something completely different. But maybe that is alright, as a Court of Law has shown; political parties do not need to honour their manifestos. Why should they then be made to honour their principles? I suppose I ought to wish them all the best, and I do, but I was sort of only half-believing what I was seeing until now. That perhaps there was a plan B for the party, a cunning operation whereby we not only sorted out the welfare state but also told the EU to sod off and reinvigorated Britain with a sense of purpose and direction, a place where one could be proud to live and not a place where 75% of the people want emigrate from.

Tory activist tonight keep saying to people like myself who comment on 'certain' pages that 'the country has moved on' and 'your wing of the party is out of favour with the public'. But if that were really true then why did they vote for the Conservatives in the first place then, why did UKIP double their share of the vote? Why is there a consensus in the media that socialismUK has not worked at all and that toryism should be given a shot? Clearly I have got it all mixed up and I feel that I was born 100 years too late, and perhaps I was, I do not know. I made a promise to myself that if Labour won the election I too would emigrate but here again I am stuck in a limbo since that pledge was on the condition that the tories won, not that they won by teaming up with a gang even worse than Labour. You might think that I am bitter, I really am not, trust me on that, just exceedingly confused.

I am not sure what to do now and neither does Melanchtron it seems, but he has at the very least put it a lot better than myself.

Changing the voting system. Fixed term Parliaments. A vigorous opponent of religious freedom as Education secretary.

Maybe I've been looking at this all wrong. I'd been assuming that I was a Conservative, and that the Conservative Party, though its platform had many elements I approved of, had chosen certain non-Conservative paths (I hoped temporarily) which I considered ill-advised both in Electoral terms but also in terms of integrity - because they were non-Conservative they were not True to Who We Are.

But maybe that's back to front. Maybe the truth is that I am not a Conservative, and that although the Conservative Party (sadly, to a true modern Conservative) continues notionally to support some delusional ideas that a non-Conservative such as myself finds attractive, it has moved considerably in the direction of true modern Conservatism and will shortly purge itself of its last residual delusional aspects.

I am a believer in the classical British constitution, moulded and worked over hundreds of years, a mixed creature in which Platonic guardian and representative democrat ideas were intermingled. I believe that Britain is, or at least should be, (to appropriate Henry VIII's phrase) an empire unto herself, making all of her own laws and applying those laws only within her borders. I believe in constitutional monarchy, in an unelected second chamber, in an elected house of representatives (not delegates) who are spokesmen for their areas. I believe that in voting we elect our rulers - we do not aspire to "rule ourselves". I believe that the prime goal of the constitution is the promotion and preservation of ordered liberty.

I favour a constitution that is organic, husbanded by an establishment class of self-sustaining oligarchs who understand their duty to interpret the constitution anew in each age, and apply it for the promotion of ordered liberty whilst always respecting justice and true religion.

I favour law that conceives of itself as in the first instance about natural or divinely-ordained justice and only secondarily about the arbitrary choices of Man.

I want a tolerant society, not a society that is politically correct and intolerant of deviance from secularist, atheist, amoral, libertine norms.

I believe that there is no true peace without justice and that war can be righteous in a righteous cause.

I believe that our rulers should be encouraged to deport themselves with dignity and honour, not vanity and mawkishness.

I have faith that what is right and true will eventually defeat that which is wrong and false, and that if it does not that matters only a little, for all crookedness will be made straight in a Judgement at the End. In particular, I believe that democratic politics is a battle of ideas, not a struggle of classes or interest groups, and that if we argue for what we believe to be right - of course being pragmatic in respect of what can be achieved in any one age and of course respecting the need to cooperate with others in teams to achieve anything at all - that if we argue for what we believe to be right, then if we are correct in our belief we will eventually be vindicated by events and be recognised as such by a fair and reasonable press and voting public.

I had assumed that such beliefs made me a Conservative. But perhaps not. Perhaps the Conservative Party is actually a liberal and Democrat party, in fact, and would be happier if, as Michael Portillo hopes, it has the opportunity of "ditching the Tory party Right wing" (I presume he means the likes of me) which the removal of first-past-the-post would give it. The Party has obviously considered the likes of me an embarrassment since the mid-1990s, what with our wanting the Party to argue for what it believed in rather than what it considered popular (reversing our repeated error of 2001, 2005 and 2010), that the public would see through a lack of integtrity and not trust us, that we should offer policies we considered in the country's best interests and in particular in the interests of the marginalised and the oppressed, both at home and abroad, even if our methods for so doing were not the Statist solutions favoured by the Left. I'd kind of assumed that what was embarrassing about me was that I was a Conservative. But perhaps, all along, I've misunderstood. Perhaps what was most embarrassing about me was that I wasn't a Conservative but the voters might assume that I was. I thought Cameron hadn't changed the Party enough, that it was still ruled by that vanity and fear of the voters that had plagued it since the mid-1990s. But perhaps it's me that's got this wrong all along. Vanity was not an error - it was a brand. Conservatism is not about organic evolution - it is about revolutionary change. Tolerance, self-discipline, honour, dignity - these are not virtuous, but repressive. Truth is not our ally - it is our enemy.

I understand it better now. Pardon my mistake. I withdraw. Might not post in a while whilst I collect my thoughts.

Principles

Well, I for one still despise the Liberal Democrats even if the supposedly conservative Tories (WTF are they 'conserving' ?) have decided to drop that ideological principle. Groucho Marx would have been proud:

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."

Historical juxtaposition in its most serene and ironical take on life. If you want to make the 'put the country first' argument then I ask you this; if they really wanted to put the country first, then why the fuck are they arguing about the electoral system when Athens is burning?

Furthermore here is some free advice for Mr. Cameron or the next Tory party leader: throw the eurosceptics a bone for fucks sake. Anything, drop the CAP, Common Fisheries Policy, Elements of the Maastricht, Amsterdam, Rome treaties or a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, do not just repatriate powers from the social chapter dump the whole damn thing, get us out of the ECHR, make British courts the highest legal offices in the land or something else of similar gravity. Just do something, anything. UKIP lost you the election and they vote by principle and not by tactics and their share will not decrease but increase if you do nothing it really is as simple as that. Give a firm pledge that the treasury will hold a full blown cost-for-benefit analysis of Britain's membership of the EU. But whatever you do, do something, Tory EU policy is not up to scratch for the country, which everyone has been saying for the past two years. Please do listen.

Finally I am about to get very unpopular at my university. I am writing a very long and fairly incisive (I think) article in defence of FPTP system (with boundary changes and fewer MPs). As you might have heard those annoying things with completely random and reactionary principles, commonly known as students, habituate the wast realm of universities. Furthermore they for some reason or another decided to vote, en mass, for the Liberal Democrats. Hopefully I have bulked up enough at the gym to defend myself from UAF-like students who do not handle criticism well. Failing that, I will whip out a copy of Milton Friedman's 'Capitalism and Freedom' - it is to students what crucifixes are to vampires.* Trust me, it works and please try it yourself but whatever you do, do not, I repeat, do not confuse any proper work with Marx' 'A communist manifesto' - a great scholarly theoretical piece but to students who fail to grasp its utter ineffectuality in normal life, it is like ecstasy. Student vampires on ecstasy - would you want that? Did not think so, please take care.

*Hayek's 'The Road to Serfdom' has equal if not greater effect.

Hung Parliament and Proportional Representation Maths

I am going to do some maths now with regards to the voting system know as Proportional Representation. Proportional representation (PR), sometimes referred to as full representation, is a type of voting system aimed at securing a close match between the percentage of votes that groups of candidates obtain in elections, and the percentage of seats they receive (e.g., in legislative assemblies).

Ralph Waldo Emerson said "Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours." I am just not sure the Lib Dems are aware of this nor anyone else for that matter.

Consider the election results in the European Election. Turnout across Great Britain was 15,136,932, representing 34% of the electorate. Which means first of all that no one gave a shit since it was such a profoundly pointless election anyway, more like elected dictatorship.

Conservative, votes received: 4,198,394
UKIP, votes received: 2,498,226
Labour, votes received: 2,381,760
Liberal Democrat, votes received: 2,080,613
Green, votes received: 1,223,303
BNP, votes received: 943,598
SNP, votes received: 321,007
Plaid Cymru, votes received: 126,702

Anyhow, 15,136,932 people turned out and that will form our main body from which the proportional system is based. If PR were used in a national election then a higher turnout would be expected somewhere around 30 million perhaps. But I want to demonstrate what would happen if the above number of voters in the EU Parliament election, were used for Westminster elections.

There are 646 seats in the British Parliament in Westminster.

The maths is trivial: Take the number of votes received per party, divide this by the total number of votes cast and take this number times the number of seats available i.e. 646. Then this is what would happen:

Conservative, seats received: 179
UKIP, seats received: 107
Labour, seats received: 102
Liberal Democrat, seats received: 89
Green, seats received: 52
BNP, seats received: 40
SNP, seats received: 14
Plaid Cymru, seats received: 5

Only the most naive and arrogant political pundit or mandarin would suggest that these results could never happen. This is politics, nothing is certain, who thought that arch-mongrel Nick Clegg would actually have a real shot at Nr 10 a few weeks ago? And this is the fundamental message of this exercise, if you adopt PR you will truly adopt elected dictatorship and the UK will most likely follow in the steps of every other major European nation: revolution, death, war and finally a shit coalition government to sort the mess out. The BNP would get 40 MPs for heavens sake! What is more, the LibDems love the EU yet the do not seem to realise that adopting PR might actually results in the UK leaving the EU. You might wonder then why I am so against the PR if it aids the UK leaving the EU, simple: I want to leave on the strength of argument not simple human shortcomings reflected in the PR system. I want to convince people, make them see and believe that the EU is a very very dangerous concept which does control our lives to a very high degree. If you convince by argument, reason and debate you win, if you do it with a hodgepodge coalition government who gave the people a say on the EU because of political advantage - that is not fair play. I do not care what the current political class or what the current 'Political Science' Degree tells its students; always country before party, those are my principles. Always.

The UK was taken into the EU on a lie, lets take her out on the truth.

Just because the establishment is drenched in dirty politics does not mean that we have to be; raising the bar is no particularly hard seeing as it is set so low already. Perhaps I am just a sucker for historical poetic justice but somehow I think it is wrong to change the constitutional settings for short term political gain. It leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.

However, we do get the final say on PR. The cattle are yet again queuing up to get whacked. Funny how they always fall for the same lame old story: the farmer just pretends that they’re going on a little trip to pastures new where everything is nice and sunny and lovely and the grass is greener etc. Today we have the politicos herding the bovines into the same old queue with the same old yarn and telling them that the politics is greener on far yonder hill, in the next valley, over the hill, just beyond the rainbow, round the bend.

Changing the system is the easy way to out, taking responsibility for their actions is not, clearly why no one is offering that platform.

By the by, you do not have to be a Ladbrokes Mathematician, with a PhD in statistics to work this out; I did it with Excel at 2AM in the morning.

A prediction

There is an awful lot of talk about the Liberal Democrats running around. Apparently they are in the lead in the polls, for the first time in 104 years. I am however going to predict this: people wont so much remember the fact that the LibDem poll share shot up during this period, as much as they marvelled as it comprehensibly deflated down again to previous levels, between now and May 6th. They will call it the greatest lost opportunity in British political history. It is quite easy to see why they wont keep this going: they are a completely pointless party.

The novelty factor will have worn off by election day.

UPDATE:

I most certainly, however, agree with Mr. Clegg when he said:

“When the issue of the UK’s position in the European Union comes up again, as it no doubt will at one point, we think that should be resolved by having a referendum on the big underlying issue.”

Pointless People in British Politics

The Independent

The Liberal Democrats

Why? Because they never ever take a stand they are in the "centre" which is completely useless for everyone.

An admission

Mr. 13th Spitfire has to make an admission which most likely will reveal some of he anonymity which he holds so dear - hopefully not to the extent that people will know who he is.

I am a student.

There you have it the sole reason for my being so utterly absent from this blog and its few but valiant readers who take a moment of their, most likely, very busy day to read the thoughts and comments of one who is not yet even a comparable figure in matters politics and history, to themselves. For this I say thank you and hope that my absence has not opened the flood gates to exit for the previous readers of this blog.

But rather we must ask ourselves what on earth is happening in British politics today - has the country gone utterly mad? The BNP, it appears are, as popular as ever, the Tories are transcending into what we always knew they would; BluLabour (they think positive discrimination towards women is a good thing whereas experience and meritocracy are to be shunned) and the LibDems and Labour are as infantile as a muffin - which is always good news.

What will come of this then? We will most likely see only one term of Mr. Cameron for he is displaying all the same qualities as Tony Blair and the latter is not exactly a popular figure in the UK. Probably a second term though for the Tories but under a new leader most likely Boris Johnson, Osbourne or perhaps David Davies. Definitely a leadership challenge.

Prospects

I really should not be saying this but I will: the Irish 'yes' is actually a lot more interesting because it has turned the entire British political establishment (fuck Ken Clark, who listens to him anyway) into a EU talking club. This is extremely good news because it means that no party can hide and Labour's and the LibDem's ultra pro-EU credentials will be reproduced again and again, loosing them even more votes at the GE (of course not letting it slip that they promised a referendum on the treaty as well but backtracked this promise). It also means that the Tories cannot hide away from the issue despite Cameron's very poor attempt at appeasement in the form of his "news letter". Even more it will give UKIP more air time which is always good since they can hopefully push the Tories to adopt a proper policy before the GE machine is switched on.

And to top it all off, the Irish are not going to like this - did you know they were a satellite state of Britain all along?

When people look back upon this episode of history what will they think I wonder? Well, I believe that this period can be pretty well summed up in these simple words

‘For you, zee referendums are over. Simples’

Ohh wipe that stern look of your face, it is just poking a bit of fun at zee Germans.

Rebuilding a Nation

Does anyone know really how this takes? Any previous experience? We all know that destroying something is far easier than producing something valuable which is beneficial to mankind at large.

For Britain...?

I am having one of these were cynical days again when there seems to be no hope. I base this on very many things. Mostly that our government have fucked up every single echelon of the pillars that constitute our society. What is more they have installed their henchmen in the most odious of places, who force their twisted policies on people who had no interest in politics at all. Take the farmer who employed 55 Brits only to find 44 never showing up, upon which he was slapped with a 120,000 pound fine for employing illegal immigrants. Then he has do prove his innocence because he was presumed guilty.

We used to be a fairly clever people, certainly we came up with some magnificent pieces of engineering and exported both English and parliamentary representation. We fiercely held back the forces of republicanism as sported by Cromwell even to this day.

What happened over the past 13 years?

Where did the common sense of people go? Did it take a holiday? Did it vanish in to thin air even though it is an abstract concept? What happened to it?

What I do know is that the Labour party is going to have the guillotine prepared for them. We are not so much completing the revolution as Lord Fairfax could have done, supposedly, had he stood by Cromwell's side at all times. No, we will be doing something quite different we will be expelling those forces of Marxism from these isles for God knows how long. It seems that New Labour have cemented the viciousness of this doctrine despite them being very capitalist. Perhaps for good then. Of course every government needs and opposition so as to not overstep its authority, pray let it not be the Labour party next time around.

Labour has made 'racist' a nasty word even though it has now lost all its stigmatising properties for being over used. Even the Nazis could easily shrug their shoulders at the word today, had they still been around. I propose that 'Labour' has become the nasty word and though some ministers appear to think they will make a comeback I say; do not count on it. The Conservatives have been out of power for a good 13 years now as have all meaningfull forces of centre-right politics.

When the Thatcher government unleashed their hegemony on British industry to the extent that it barely exists today, they did it with the best interests of the UK at heart. I cannot believe that it was done on orders from higher up despite some very convincing arguments produced by Naomi Klein. Further this seems to have been appreciated by the UK at large as well. There are talks of Mrs. Thatcher being given a state funeral when she dies. The same response for Blair and Brown would probably be to ship them of to the continent or Ireland to have their remains buried. Their legacy is so tainted with malevolence that their mere presence on this island would only serve to upset the people to whom they were buried beside (and they are dead). 'Who is going be buried beside my grandfather? BROWN?! Gordon-fucking-Brown?! I will have none of it, over my dead body. Find somewhere else to put him.'

You see when they are hauled from Parliament next year the Brown&Blair bashing wont end. If anything it will intensify for now we have a new government at the helm and now they will truly be able to examine the full extent of the damage that has been done to Britain. I suspect that their findings will be anything but delightful. Even that is a mere historical construct nowadays; Parliament. Its very purpose seems superfluous now that none of its core values and functions remain. Fraser Nelson got it spot on in his article "The politics of decline" over at the Spectator.

What is more, the changing face of politics in the UK is nigh. The 'main-three' as bloggers and journalists alike call New Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, is also something which is completely out of the window. It used to be very hard to change the perception of the electorate. Those who were firmly to the left stayed there and the same for the right. But most have come to realise that the main-three simply do not represent at all what they used to. New Labour is as capitalist as a dollar bill, the Tories refuse to tackle the immigration problem. The Libdems, well, what is their purpose that remains an enigma.

There are many new players in the game; the Greens, BNP, UKIP and so on. We will gradually see the outfacing of the old main-three for they have no purpose and do not represent the people they sucked up to back in the day. We know this. Question is do they?

The Decline and Fall of Britain

“There is something terribly wrong with this country; Cruelty, injustice, intolerance and oppression.” … ” How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the” government.

One might think it odd that this article is introduced with a quote from a mainstream comic book turned motion picture. Perhaps it might have been more appropriate to inaugurate it with a grandiose statement from a professional political correspondent unlike yours truly. There is a certain reason why this simplistic approach was denounced: The three pillars of power were formerly ascribed to the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the mainstream media. The latter were the ones who were supposed to scrutinise every move that our politicians made on our behalf. Yet as V, from V for Vendetta, so compendiously proclaims you only need to look into a mirror to find the guilty of the surveillance state we now live in. While the media have miserably failed in their dissection of all matters politics you have spectacularly failed in fulfilling your duty as a professional citizen and by that virtue expressing your opinion whenever you feel that than an err has been committed on your behalf. Apathy cannot, must not, reign supreme in a country where the interaction of the people is so fundamental for the continued path of democracy. Evidently that interaction was left lingering in the 20th century.

Possibly the greatest symbol and tool of surveillance is the omnipotent and omnipresent CCTV. True surveillance started in 1913 with the photography of imprisoned suffragettes. However it was not until 1994 that ‘surveillance’ and the sense in which we now know the word took its true form, with the publishing of CCTV: Looking out for you by the Home Office under Conservative Prime Minister John Major – Mr. Major was a bit concerned of its publication, but not terribly so “I have no doubt we will hear some protest about a threat to civil liberties. Well, I have no sympathy whatsoever for so-called liberties of that kind.” It is duly understood that Mr. Major was a politician who held the sacrosanct view ‘if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear’ thus apparently giving him and the Conservatives the carte blanche to blitzkrieg the private lives of ordinary citizens. One man’s secret is another man’s revelation and as much one would like to believe that our fellow citizens are true altruists there is still the infinitesimal possibility that CCTV be abused by the higher powers. Yet some might say that it is in fact an aid for London’s finest and its friends. There is one CCTV camera for every fourteenth person and it does certainly act as a deterrent in some places but while CCTV is a valuable tool for investigating crime, footage rarely secures a conviction on its own e.g. only 8% of incidents caught on camera in Midlothian led to arrest. Over the past four years Scotland alone has spent £42 million on CCTV cameras. For the same money 350 full-time police officers could have been hired. Which begs the question is this effective enough to justify the trade off of a less free society, certainly Britain is the only country which appears to believe so having the highest density of CCTV cameras in the world (do remember that countries like China, North Korea and Burma exist).

As technology has become the new autocracy shotgun of the state, the revelation that the United Kingdom National DNA Database (NDNAD) is the largest in the world (Stalin would have been proud) should come as no surprise. The NDNAD traces its roots back to 1994 when the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (CJPOA) was passed in Parliament (introduced by the then Home Secretary Michael Howard with the PM being, you guessed it, John Major). The police could now take samples without assistance from a doctor, gather mouth scrapes and hair roots all this by force if necessary. Furthermore the CJPOA gave the police new powers to search the database for matches between DNA profiles. If a person was subsequently found guilty, their information could be stored on the database and their sample kept indefinitely. However if the suspect was not charged or was acquitted the DNA samples had to be destroyed. The Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 amended the CJPOA which enabled the NDNAD to retain samples indefinitely taken from volunteers participating in mass screenings, on the stipulation that they had given their consent. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 allowed DNA profiles, fingerprints and “other” information to be taken without consent from anyone arrested on suspicion of any recordable offence. The new legislation also allows the police to keep this information indefinitely, even if the person arrested is never charged i.e. a significant change to the initial CJPOA. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 extended the uses of the NDNAD to include the identification of dead people or their limbs. Finally, as if the previous three amendments were not enough, The Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 (CTA) extended police powers to allow DNA and fingerprints to be taken from people subject to control orders. Samples are to be gathered during any authorised surveillance by the intelligence services and of course retained indefinitely. As with most acts which are to be as ambiguous as legally possible the CTA added that the samples were to be used only “in the interest of national security.” The latter amendments were all done in the name of the War on Terror, though who exactly the terrorists are remains open for interpretation. They certainly are not conforming to the stereotypical view; Turban + Kalashnikov + Beard = Terrorist. Naturally though, it has all gone sensationally wrong. In 2008 the Home Office revealed that 2,324,879 recorded criminals, or 40%, in England and Wales did not have their DNA sample stored on the NDNAD. In concert, the Home Office reported that 857,366 innocent individuals’ profiles were currently held on the NDNAD. Labour & Conservatives vs. Lady Liberty: 1 – 0.

Whilst dwelling on the cunning of the state consider further the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000 – known in Whitehall as the RIPA. The government grants itself the right, through RIPA, to access a person's electronic communications in a highly unrestricted manner, thus infringing in the privacy of their correspondence in a way intolerable regarding their postal communications, naturally all is done under the dubious aegis of natural security. In 2003 several addendums were added to the bill, the intelligence service can now also collect data from job centres and local councils. Initially nine organisations could invoke the RIPA but as always when power is shed out the required control to keep that power within its limits is not, alas, today 792 government organisations are allowed to appeal to the act. They must have a hard time keeping all those terrorists in check seeing as 474 councils now have the same power as MI5 with regards to the “snooper’s charter” as it has been christened by civil rights groups. It is a curious coincidence that the notorious Stasi, the East German secret police, also invoked national security in their quest for ‘safety’ and in doing so they eventually had an informer for every seventh citizen. Hence we must ask, in the rhetorical sense, what great means of safety has the act provided thus far. The Dorset council put a family under surveillance to check that they lived in the school catchment area; the same council put local fishermen under surveillance looking for illegal fishing. An investigation by the Guardian showed that several thousand of these kinds of petty misdemeanours are being targeted as threats to national security – every month. If you consider this to be paramount for the continued safety of the nation then certainly the act has been a triumph, the Gestapo could not have done it better them selves.

As anyone would know with an ounce of respect for history Hitler was, amongst other things famed for persecuting Jews, Poles, Roma, Jehovah’s witnesses, homosexuals, ethnic minorities, Catholic clergy and other people he did not like. On the first of January 1939 Hitler announced that all Jews must carry Identification cards. In November 2008 Jacqui Smith, British Home Secretary, announced that all foreigners living in Britain must carry Identification Cards. Mrs. Smith further announced that British Nationals would start carrying ID cards in 2009. Perhaps it is deemed too harsh or downright insulting to draw parallels between the symbolism of the persecution and the British ID cards, possibly, but then again that might just be what is required to reignite public awareness of what Britain is turning into: We concede to being monitored 300 times a day, we concede to having our human rights curtailed and we say nothing - life goes on as usual. Why must we also concede to, on top of all this, to have our personal data stored in a register, stored neatly in a little plastic card? This is a rhetorical question which does not deserve an answer for it is so fundamentally obvious that it would be insulting to produce one. Unfortunately the scheme took legal form with the Identity Cards Act 2006 and it is substantially more than just a card. The proposed National Identity Management System: The National Identity Register (NIR), personal details to be registered and updated with the government, biometrics registration, the card itself (and other documents made equivalent to an ID card), persons to be numbered and checked, a extensive scanner and computer terminal network connected to a central database, prevalent use of compulsory identity verification and data-sharing between organisations on an unprecedented scale and finally the truly breathtaking part: you have to pay for it yourself, not in the form of taxes, in the form of an ‘ID-card fee’. To even begin addressing all the faults in this scheme, both practical and ethical, would be a monumental task so we shall only consider the most obvious ones. To begin with, what the government does not seem to comprehend, in spite of the multitude of brilliant civil servants at its bequest; less liberty does not imply greater security. It is basic logic. If they were truly stuck they should have consulted the Mathematics department. Logic, at times, can be quite tricky especially if your helmsmen are Blair & Brown. Further, Dame Stella Rimington said that most documents could be forged and this would render ID cards "useless" Dame Rimington was an ex Director-General of the MI5. If an ex Director-General says that they do not need the card and furthermore that it will be to their detriment, it is in your best interest to listen. But then again this is New Labour’s government so you should never be surprised by the stupidity of their decisions or their replies, Downing Street’s reply to Dame Rimington’s remark “Dame Stella is a private individual who was [sic] entitled to her views.”
The cards in conjunction with the database will hold so much private data (50+ categories which could be added to) that if they were lost you would loose your life, for once the cards are properly introduced you will need one to get around (recent statistics show that almost 17,000 civil service passes have been lost or stolen over the past two years. Around two thirds of the misplaced cards have been misplaced by staff at the Ministry of Defence). How precisely the government intends to tackle this problem remains unknown since they are statistically loosing at least one government computer a week, only last year the MoD lost 600,000 personal records of servicemen and women – this is only the tip of the iceberg. Finally we have the ever so amusing particulars of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. The ID cards will be available for all from 2012 "I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don't want to wait that long.” to which Phil Booth, national coordinator of the No2ID campaign, replied "She must be ignoring twice the number of people who are coming up to her and saying I don't want my details on any database whatsoever." On the Home Office’s website we find one of the reasons for introducing the scheme “ID cards will: help protect people from identity fraud and theft” Last year four people were arrested after the BBC bought a driving licence and utility bills in the name of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith of the internet. As a representative of the government Mrs. Smith is nothing short of a pontificating, ambivalent debauchee who lacks the common decency to understand the criticism bestowed upon her by her fellow Argonauts – this being the only explanation imaginable which would elucidate her behaviour in the face of the tidal waves of critique she has received (and done nothing about) and undoubtedly will receive until the end of her Home Secretary mandate. Mrs. Smith, ‘1984’ was a novel not a manual.

Nearly 60 new powers contained in more than 25 Acts of Parliament have stymied our freedoms and broken pledges set out in the Magna Carta (1215) and Bill of Rights (1689), thanks to New Labour. Whilst our indigenous political parties are doing a formidable job in eating away our freedom, there is also another player on the stage; the white elephant (which incidentally also has a healthy appetite), the one the media rarely refers to with a preference for populist sensationalism and for lack of audacity, namely the EU. As with the so many obvious flaws with the ID card scheme there are even more with the supposedly democratic legitimacy of the EU and its civil liberties record. All laws that arrogate civil liberties are important but a complete exegesis of them all is not possible due to the sheer amount of laws being created. To begin with lets cement our gaze on the EU Data Retention Directive (2006). The directive aims to harmonise member states' provisions relating to the retention of communications data. The data, which can identify the caller, the time and the means of communication, is available for the purpose of the investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime and terrorism. Telecommunications companies have to store this information for at least six months. We make hundreds even thousands of calls each year the details of which, not contents, are stored. Further the directive also covers Internet access, Internet email and Internet telephony. 42 human rights and civil liberties organisations banded together to oppose the directive in the European Court of Justice (where they eventually lost) “No research has been conducted anywhere in Europe that supports the need and necessity of creating such a large-scale database containing such sensitive data for the purpose of fighting crime and terrorism.” said a representative of the group. This is all good and well but here is the irony, a European Parliament report found that it had "sizeable doubts concerning the choice of legal basis and proportionality of the measures" and was concerned it placed "enormous burdens" on the telecommunications industry.
Brussels thus imposed a highly unpopular law which would damage the people, the industry and not in the least the credibility of themselves. Effectively this leaves the security services cherry picking as to which law they shall use to violate our fundamental human right to privacy. This directive can be linked with another long held desire of the EU’s: to regulate bloggs. The ambition is enshrined in fancy document called “Draft Report, on concentration and pluralism in the media in the European Union” (2004) which is probably the finest euphemism around for ‘censorship’. On the European Parliament’s website we find an article with the actual title “User-generated content and weblogs – a new challenge” the report was drafted by Estonian Socialist Marianne Mikko. Asked if she considered bloggers to be "a threat", she replied "we do not see the bloggers as a threat. They are in position, however, to considerably pollute cyberspace. We already have too much spam, misinformation and malicious intent in cyberspace". Apparently voicing your opinion is now ‘polluting’ in EU circles, quite a re-labelling of freedom of speech. We can safely assume however that the bloggs written by EU officials however are neither ‘misinformation’ nor ‘malicious’. The European Parliament is particularly keen to strike down bloggers with "malicious intent" or "hidden agenda" which again cannot apply to their own staff since they are not even bloggers but promoters of an official organization that, most definitely, has an agenda, though hidden it is not. The EU for example is going to spend €1.8 million on propaganda in Ireland to force them, in their second referendum on the same question, to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. After the first rejection a leaked document from the European Commission read “The internet has allowed increased communication between citizen groups away from Government and traditional media dominated sources.” –Horror– the Irish are thinking for themselves. The report went on to say “Because of the many different sources of No campaigners on the internet, classic rebuttals is made impossible.” Thus the No campaigners are the villains for using the blogosphere, where the Yes campaigners cannot instigate an effective counter offensive where they do not control the battle field (In 2008 alone, the EU spent more than €2.4 billion on propaganda, which is more than Coca Cola’s entire global advertising budget). Since they are incapable of creating good arguments for the EU online they are compelled to regulate the opposition, much like ‘President’ Lukashenko in Belarus, apparently ‘unregulated’ is synonymous with ‘illegal’. One cannot but think that good sportsmanship is a fairly alien concept to the EU apparatchiks. Then again Mikko does have a degree in journalism from the Soviet Union and rather ominously she graduated in 1984.

With the insightful knowledge that the EU wishes to censor the internet lets consider some other jolly clauses in the impending Lisbon Treaty. Enter the European Union criminal intelligence agency, Europol: Article 69G(2) of the Lisbon Treaty says "The European Parliament and the Council, by means of regulations adopted in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure [i.e. majority voting] shall determine Europol's structure, operation, field of action and tasks." A fine piece of literature indeed, however what is fails to mention is that Europol's officers have long had broad immunity from criminal prosecution for acts performed in the course of their "official functions". Europol is unaccountable to the European Parliament (power in the EU lies with another institution: the European Commission. They are the executive branch of the Union and they are unelected, but this is a minor detail) as well as national parliaments, as such they are immune to prosecution. Power, unchecked, spells disaster, in the UK MI5 & Friends are still accountable to parliament regardless of what mischief they get up to but Europol is not and has supranational authority and in 2010 they are set to become a full agency. That said the moral high ground is neither held by the law enforcement agencies in this country. Recall for example that the only person hitherto to be arrested in the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes by the Metropolitan Police is a television journalist who revealed the police blunders leading up to the shooting and furthermore the attempted cover up by the Met with regard to the implementation of Menezes arrest. The Europol in conjunction with the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) creates are very malign tool for claiming power and furthermore enforcing it. The warrant is a judicial judgment by a court of the member state for the arrest or surrender of a requested person that is in another member state. It is designed to meet the needs of justice, liberty and security within a single region. It strips the British Government of action to stop European officers from coming into the country and taking whomsoever they want away for incarceration. It is fairly easy to spot the flaw in this law. A judicial conundrum is created if a person were to be extradited for a crime that was not an offence in his or her home country. This happened in 2008 when Frederick Toben was arrested at Heathrow for denying the Holocaust. The German government, who had initiated the EAW, eventually backed down when Britain refused to hand him over as denial of the holocaust is not a crime here. Andrew Symeou, 19, did not have the same luck; he was shipped of to Greece (where the judicial system is at best lacking) on manslaughter allegations. All that is required for the deportation of a suspect under an EAW is basic information about their identity and the alleged offence. They do not need to possess the warrant. There does not even need to be a warrant. But perhaps the most astonishing part is that the EAW was designed to fast track terrorists from one state to another in the EU, not 19-year old teenagers. One must ask why not a single MP nor a representative of the judiciary said anything? Possibly because the Advocate-General of the ECJ, European Court of Justice, gave a legal opinion (ref. case C-274/99) that criticism of the EU was akin to blasphemy, punishing someone for allegedly criticising the EU, whether such allegations were proven or not, were (he said) not an infringement of free speech. The nation that insists on drawing a broad line of demarcation between justice and law is liable to find its laws being written by fools and its judicial practise done by cowards.

This is the New Labour, Conservative and EU created leviathan that today is Britain: A realm where freedom of speech is delivered a blow day after day, where democracy and liberty are shackled, tortured and are screaming in their closed confinements that once was the birth of a proud democracy, the Palace of Westminster. Has “Oderint dum metuant” (“Let them hate as long as they fear” – Caligula, Roman Emperor) suddenly become the new state maxim of the UK? The indifference shown by this country in the face of previous and current governments’ war on basic human rights has clearly displayed the true spirit of a people that has forgotten its history and “A nation which forgets its past has no future” – Sir Winston S. Churchill. If we do not care about our civil liberties then we do not deserve our freedom.

Surprise Surprise

What can it be, what can it be?

(Click on the link my underlings).

Sneak a Peak...

Keith Hill (Streatham) (Lab): Is the right hon. Lady aware of the note from the Library that reveals that a maximum of 10 per cent. of the statutory instruments considered by the House originate in Europe? Can she offer the House the evidence she has for her assertion that 60 to 70 per cent. of our legislation originates in Europe?

Mrs. May: I am tempted to say to the right hon. Gentleman that I am happy to offer supporting evidence, but I am sure that some of my hon. Friends will also be happy to provide it.

Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory (Wells) (Con): The 50 per cent. estimate is an underestimate. It is more like 80 per cent.—at least, that was the conclusion of the Bundestag committee that examined this issue. It is not only statutory instruments that implement EU legislation: all EU regulations are implemented directly, without any implementing legislation, although that is done under the authority of this House. If we take into account the totality of statute and regulation, the figure is nearly 80 per cent., and my right hon. Friend was being characteristically modest and cautious in her estimate.
On another much funnier note.

Have a look at this from the Independent. We have the non-partisan party, the LibDems, and their leader Nick Clegg saying "Tories will 'turn Britain into safe-house for criminals', warns Clegg" by adopting an EU sceptic stance. Here is the funny part there is not one single comment that agrees with Clegg. What is more this always seems to happen when some dick head politician tries to demonise a party for being Eurosceptic they get the boot from the public.
Do not hope for a mandate Mr. Clegg.

What a thought I had

I just had this positively amazing lapse of mind (it must have been a lapse of mind since no one else can have thought of it). What if, and please bear with me on this one it is quite a tough nut to crack, there was a party out there that actually dared to speak? Truly speak not the kind of ad hoc politics they are currently engorged in but rather fundamentally at a grass-roots level talk about the topics that most do not. I say most and the I obviously refer to New Labour, The Conservatives and the party-without-a-purpose Liberal Democrats.






What if they actually did say something (clearly they mention each item briefly, now and again, in some dusty boring policy paper with no real relevance to the issue at hand) about the issues that people really really REALLY want to talk about:

EU
Defence
Immigration

I call them the triangle issues because of the geometrical shape they resemble when typed in the fashion above. Is there a party out there that wants to talk about these things? Well yes it is the BNP but they add an element of race into everything which make them beyond contempt in my opinion but can one really claim that the all the other race associations out there are much better, how about the BPA (Black Police Association) - are they not discriminating as well, clearly they are. The BNP are loonies. But they are loonies with an agenda and they unlike the three despicable main parties actually do enage in the triangle issues which makes them dangerous, regardless of what their opinion of the issues might be, the very fact that they dare to undertake an exegesis of the issues at all, speaks volumes about their courage (despite the fact that they are racists pigs) when taking into account the other parties' stance towards the triangle issues. If it really came down to it, they would all most likely, be more than happy for the EU to assume responsiblity for all those issues - this way they can engulf their clever minds in issues of greater importance. What these issues are I am not sure.

I might just be stark raving mad myself but I thought that if you were a politician, who runs your country would be rather important. When 85% are externally imposed, well possibly that is a bad thing. I do not know I am just musing on like the rest of us. In this ripe old age of "Global Terrorism" where pirates are stealing all our TVs of the coast of Africa and the guilty of the financial crisis are sent on a bonus holiday - ought not Defence be an issue for a politician? I thought that if you were a politician then your duty, first and foremost, was to protect your electorate let the ends justify the means as long as they are safe. That would be a tad altruistic I must admist since the British armed forces have been in steady decline since the 1990s. They must have thought, back in the day, that the Evils of the world would disaper with the bye-bye of the Gulag-socialists in Borstch land. Britain is the the third most populated country in the world, but lets let some more people in before we sort out our domestic problems such as housing, benefts, schooling and all that not-so-important stuff - this makes sense in LibLabCon world.

Well if it makes sense to them them maybe I should not complain since they know what is best for us; the hoi-polloi.