Turn of the TV - Manly P. Hall's take on the World

I am doing a lot of 'interesting-listening/watching-posting' today simply because the topic I wish to write about will require too much of my time and too much of my energy to be worthwhile. Alas, I shall save that for a later date when I have properly collected my thoughts on the subject matter and shall bring it forth, like a ball of fire, upon the great unwashed that constitute the readers of this blog. Oh, I jest. The readers of this blog I am eternally grateful to, and I might add that their numbers have been going up for some time now - why I cannot fathom but I will extend my sincerest gratitude and hope that you will continue to read the collected ramblings of a university student who is presumptuously sick of the world.

Hence, I give you this from Monty P. Hall where thanks is due to Mr. Fausty who has yet again, with his blistering incisiveness for what is libertarian, spotted a very interesting piece -not the best one from Mr. Hall- but certainly worth listening to;

La La Land

Good on Calling England, this wont be a literary comprehensible post - far too late for that and far too much wine for that. A list is in order:

• Protection from Harassment Act (1997),
• the Crime and Disorder Act (1998),
• the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000),
• the Terrorism Act (2000),
• the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001),
• the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001),
• the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002),
• the Criminal Justice Act (2003), the Extradition Act (2003),
• the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003),
• the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004),
• the Civil Contingencies Act (2004),
• the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005),
• the Inquiries Act (2005),
• the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005),
• Identity Cards Bill,
• the Coroners and Justice Bill,
• the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

And to return respect and character to our parliament we need to turn these pieces of paper into fags to be lit, once again, in our pubs and make people responsible for their own decisions.

• Constitutional Reform Act 2005
• House of Lords Act 1999 (Can you tell me with a straight face that hereditary peers could be any worse than the current?)

What a supreme fucking cock-up this country has become. Fret not though I will stay on fighting to the bitter end for in my own, very intoxicated, mind I am the saviour of Britain. I want to go out strong so here is a quote from Wuthering Heights spoken by Heathcliff

"The tyrant grinds down his slaves - and they don't turn against him , they crush those beneath them."

Chilling that this was written well before Orwell and Huxley by a little lady by the name of Emily Brontë in 1847.

(Also note that few people read what I write. I reckon this is because the logic of what I write is too intricate for anyone to understand except for, well, myself).

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.

Well we are here now again the tranquility before the storm, the Irish referendum. I know what I was doing this time last year, reading Dracula by Bram Stoker. Quite a fabulous book I must say, and what is more very appropriate for the time being. I hope you saw what I did there; drew a parallel between vampires trying to establish a new base in England but currently only having a place in Transylvania. Enough of these childish thoughts though, the EU is here and the best we can really do is to make fun out of them and marvel at the many contradictions that mire the entire project. And we shall.

We must ask what precisely do our masters in Brussels think will happen once the Irish vote 'yes' today and when they have beaten every other remaining nation in the EU into submission. They have the passerelle clause of course (A Passerelle Clause also known as an Escalator Clause is a clause within treaties of the European Union that allows the European Council to decide unanimously to replace unanimous voting in the Council of Ministers with qualified majority voting (QMV) in specified areas) which the House of Lords once called the "gangplank clause" there is still some bloodymindedness left in old Westminster I will give her that. They will never have to ask of our opinion again but that does not imply that we are incapable of forming one, that we need a nanny parliament to "represent" our wishes in Brussels. No, if anything this will produce the first true majority of EU rebels.

History always produces its blocks and they come and go like anything else; nothing lasts for ever there are no perpetual states of being. There cannot be any perpetual political states for it violates the second law of thermodynamics which forbids it completely. Perpetuum mobile is naught it cannot happen. We had three different reiches and a Weimar republic in the middle. British, German, French Empire and even a Japanese one. These symbols of power never last because they violate not only laws of nature but laws of man. When the powers themselves eventually realise this they try all sorts of things to extend their state of being, like curtailing human rights, imposing curfews, violently distorting facts even more so than now - and so on. But you cannot stop vox populi.

What are the British thoughts on the EU then you might ask? Well it looks like a very moribund project at grassroots level, but naturally that is not where the power lies until at the very end. All the data from the following polls except the last one can be found here at Democracy Movement (my emphasis).

• Nov 06 - Power 100 Poll, Times:

81% of UK businesses believed that Britain should not reconsider membership of the Euro.

• Harris Poll for the Financial Times, Jun 07:

A referendum on the new treaty is wanted by 69% of Britons, 75% of Spaniards, 71% of Germans, 68% of Italians, and 64% of French

• Populous for Global Vision 8-10 June 07:

83% wanted a referendum before the constitutional treaty becomes law;

14% were against.

• Ipsos Mori poll, 11/8/07:

81% of British people want a referendum on the new EU treaty. Only 17% agreed with Gordon Brown that Parliament should decide.

• ICM Poll for Global Vision, Nov 9-11, 07

73% wanted a Referendum on the EU Treaty,

18% did not.

23% wanted to leave the EU;

47% wanted a looser arrangement with the EU, based on free trade;

24% wanted us to remain a full member

• You-Gov Poll for Open Europe, June 08

Only 29% of Britons support full EU membership

In a YouGov poll commissioned by Open Europe, 24% said "the UK should leave the EU altogether" while a further 38% said that "The UK should stay in the single market but pull out of the other political elements of the EU", making a total of 62% opposed to membership of the EU as it stands.

• Survey for Radio 4's The World at One. Jan 09:

71% against adopting the Euro, 15% in favour

• ICM Poll for the Taxpayers Alliance, 22 May 09

69% want the Government to start ignoring EU rules

60% say that fines for disobedience to our Brussels masters should be ignored

75% want a referendum before any more powers are given to the EU

57% want to take back powers already given to the EU

• Com Res Poll for BBC Daily Politics, 19 Mar 09

55% wanted to leave the EU but maintain close trading links

84% said that voters should decide whether any further powers should be transferred to the EU

51% did not think there was any benefit in trade or jobs from EU membership

• Conservative Home poll of Conservative Parliamentary candidates, Aug 09

84% want Cameron to hold a referendum on Lisbon, even if it has already been ratified

60% want a complete renegotiation of Britain's relationship with the EU

Only 6% want to be "at the heart of Europe"

• YouGov poll for the Telegraph, 14 September 2009

43% said the EU should leave the UK altogether

57% of those questioned believe that a future Conservative government should offer a referendum on the ratified treaty, with only 15 percent saying there should be no such vote.

These polls show a growing sector of the electorate who are exceedingly unhappy with the EU and want to withdraw altogether. At the same time, of course, voting turnout in European Elections have been falling steadily over the years.

Only 34.7% of eligible voters even bothered to turnout this year compared to 38.5% in 2004. Why is this then, well it simply does not matter who we elect for parliament they cannot propose laws anyway, they have no real power and cannot possibly express the wishes of the electorate without it. They can express the wishes of the British electorate even less because most of us do not want the UK in the EU at all. UKIP could get all the British MEPs but they still would not hold the power to withdraw the UK from the EU. That powers lies ultimately with Westminster, well at least until the Irish vote 'yes' then the EU has to be consulted if a nation wants to withdraw, a process which will take at least two years during which time of course the EU will do all in its power to reverse that decision, like they have done in Ireland and did in Denmark with the Maastricht Treaty. In the words of the timeless Václav Klaus who called whole system to be abolished. "It's pointless to have European elections," he said. "That's like holding semi-elections." Quite.

I was always told to end my 'essays' with a quote, something which would really ram in the message which I was trying to convey. And I will do this not because I was told to but because there are so many quotes that survive on this issue and it is beyond me why we always ignore ancient immortal wisdom, this has happened before and it will happen again yet we always turn a blind eye. 'Hate' is not mankind's foulest trait, 'ignorance' has that blessing.

"Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed." - Barry Goldwater

Bonfire on Databases

I am not too sure what I am to write about today. It seems as if most things have been exhausted e.g. there is so preciously little we appear to be able to do about the malaise that infest our daily lives. When freedom and justice has died in the heart of man how are we, who still cultivate this belief, going to raise it from the dead like Jesus did Lazarus?

Why is it that no one cares anymore? Why is it permissible for the Independent Safeguarding Authority to even be set up - which sole purpose it is to check and see if people wanting to work with children are pedophiles or not. You might scream 'child protection' yet for all that we stand for, no other nation in the world has gone this overboard with databases. In Sweden your name appears, on average, on 300 databases ranging from private to public. Are we even to dare to estimate that number for the UK, I certainly would not like to know. It is one of these areas where ignorance truly is bliss where one is happier not knowing how many people know about my first failed exam - ever. Yet do you honestly think we will be safer if we are registered on 2000 databases or even 10,000 databases? Even if our name appeared on every single institutions' databases, that we came in contact with, that is not going to stop a wicked mind from being wicked. How could it?

What is wrong with us? Why is not Dave mentioning this when he is doing very well in making the easy choices, the superficial ones that will amount to a difference for you and me to the tune of naught. Yet the soon-to-be eradicated Labour Government have so much British blood on their hands it is almost difficult not to damn them for every act they have passed since coming into power. People make the argument that we elected them and as such have to stand by our choice. We made that choice on the premise that the people we elected were honest and descent, that is what it previously meant to be publicly elected. Yet we get a government that now is actively indulging in social engineering and is not ashamed of it, take Carol Ann Duffy's poem, 'Education for Leisure'. The exam board AQA has removed the poem from its GCSE anthology, and has asked schools to destroy old copies containing the poem, because it supposedly glorified knife crime.

What is poetry? There are as many definitions of poetry as there are poets. Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings;" Emily Dickinson said, "If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry;" and Dylan Thomas defined poetry this way: "Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing." Poetry is a lot of things to a lot of people. Poetry is what our heart tells us the words mean together, in their glorious, doomed escapade trying to explain and alleviate life in the eye of the beholder. Even if the message of a poem is so blindingly obvious - that in itself is a contradiction for being obvious is not a necessity of a poem nor is beauty only understanding. But understanding is also a personal concept, like meaning it cannot be thrust upon the stronger minds who seek to question the power lurking behind the cloak of words. That power however is now contained by the government which tells us, through decrees, what we can and cannot read. Recall that most films about autocracy always feature a 'blacklist' were artifacts of culture are hidden away from the public away because they are 'dangerous' and can corrupt feeble minds.

A cull on quangos indeed, all 1,162 of them. But what about these?

ContactPoint: To hold name, address, gender, date of birth, school and health provider of every child in England

National DNA database: Of 4.5m people whose genetic fingerprints are on the database, more than 500,000 are innocent, including 39,000 children

Communications database: Plan to centralise details of calls and websites visited from phone companies and internet providers, open to 510 public authorities

Onset: A profiling tool which examines a child's behaviour and social background to identify potential child offenders

Detailed Care Record: When rolled out, will allow hospitals, GPs nurses and social workers to update patient's records with unmonitored "wikipedia-style" entries

>>>>PROPOSED<<<<

Communications database Would bring together details of emails, telephone calls and web use

National Identity Register Will store biographical information and biometric data linked to ID cards

The NHS Detailed Care Record Will hold GP and hospital records

The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, pointed to significant legal and practical problems with a further 29 databases, including the national childhood obesity one and the planned NHS summary care record system...

It goes without mentioning that the ones we "share" with the EU are not exactly libertarian either.

What is wrong with us? Perhaps that is the key question, perhaps that is the Magnus Opus feat of this government, this seemingly Herculean question, not so much the question itself but the very fact that we are now so desperately in need for guidance that the only people who cannot escape from the disaster, unlike this government and its immasculated purpose, who are responsible - we are those people. Their victory lies in us having to ask ourselves that question instead of those whom we elected.

Huxley or Orwell?

Who do you reckon was right? Well use this to aid your judgement.