The Diversity Game

Creating the conditions for a level playing field is an admirable endeavour. Most of us suffer some form of disadvantage as a consequence of being born, some of us are born into poor families, some of us are born with a disability, some of us are born into societies where women are second class citizens, some of us are born with a skin colour different to the majority. Any or all of these things can affect your chances in life. 

In the grand scheme of things the UK has been one of the better nations at tackling these discriminations, both race and sex discrimination were made illegal in the seventies. Discrimination on the grounds of disability lagged behind for some years but recent legislation has improved matters although not to the extent of race and sex discrimination laws. Curiously religious discrimination remains legal, a Catholic is not allowed to become King, given the arcane interview process for becoming a Monarch I am not sure any Catholics would apply for the job in any case – but that is not my point.

The UK has made a lot of progress in creating the conditions for a fairer society but some aspects remain stubbornly unfair. I am always struck by how poverty hits women the hardest, an all too familiar story to me is the one of a woman in my social circle who built a life with a partner but never formalised the relationship by marriage or civil partnership, only to find that when the relationship broke down there was no safety net. The situation made worse by having had children and a now unaffordable mortgage all based on trust and a misguided notion of being a ‘liberated woman’. From what I have seen being a liberated woman can come with a very harsh end game. There was a reason gay men and women pushed for their rights under marriage, they are not stupid.

I could at this point drone on about how being born into very modest circumstances and attending a state school for my education limited my life chances, to a degree this would be true but when I add in my own idleness (plus the fact that I was a complete head banger for many years) I have to accept my own role in failing to make the grade as an astronaut for NASA. Besides the one disadvantage I did not really have to contend with was the colour of my skin. As a White Anglo-Irish male I probably still enjoyed better life chances than a Black British one – even one who worked harder and studied more than me. This was not only unfair but for a society it was a pretty stupid thing to do, after all we have no idea where the next Einstein will come from or what he or she will look like, strikes me it is a pretty dumb thing to shut out a certain percentage of your population before they even had a shot at things.

Overall I think the British are a fair minded people and most of us are treated reasonably well, the legal framework for removing discrimination is now fairly well established and most of us have a fairly good grasp of what is right and what is wrong in terms of how we treat one another. Yet despite all this progress we see the march of the diversity and inclusion manager – a well paid professional with the role of ensuring organisations treat people fairly, now you could argue that this is what the law requires them to do in any case but clearly one of the consequences of austerity in the public sector at least is a huge demand for these fine people. A cash strapped NHS seems to be able to find the money to promote the cause and hire a battalion of diversity and inclusion managers. Now the private sector can do as they wish, if their shareholders are content with the need for the company they own to spend potential profit on these managers then fine, its their money, the public sector is however different, taxpayers have little say over how their money is spent and building an army of equality and inclusion managers might not be as important to a taxpayer as erm….curing their cancer?

Admittedly this is not the only area where the public sector can be frivolous with taxpayer’s money but it is one of the most bone headed and discriminatory. Demanding that boards and senior roles of organisations reflect the diversity of the population sounds like a reasonable thing to ask. Yet this is where the cult of quotas shows its innumeracy, boards and senior positions in the public sector at least tend to be made of people in their forties and fifties, this cohort when they started work did so before Tony Blair rubbed the nation’s nose in diversity so they probably do represent their own cohort i.e. they started their careers when there were fewer ethnic minorities in the workforce. Demanding that these people now make room for newcomers actually discriminates against them because of their age.

Not convinced? OK – try this one, I live in London, I am constantly hearing how organisations must reflect society, I have no difficulty with this notion – I have real difficulty with the selective approach. London has now been so successful with diversity and inclusion fewer than 40% of the population is white British (you can guess the future direction of travel), so of course we can now insist that organisation reflect that. But here’s the thing, if a regional council in the West Country where the population is 95% white British insisted that only 5% of jobs could go to ethnic minorities there would be uproar (and quite rightly). Yet this is exactly the discrimination that is being legitimised across our public sector and particularly in our cities, social and housing policy designed to displace the indigenous population followed up by employment policy to ensure the few that are left are further discriminated against.

A self declared Liberal elite are pursuing these nation destroying policies, what they hope to achieve I do not know but the hypocrisy and double standards in their approach become more bizarre by the day. No good will come of this. The way we achieve a fairer society is by dialogue and making people aware of unfairness, training a cadre of people to play identity politics at the taxpayers expense is not the way to do it and I fear will provide fuel for a growing resentment at the way ordinary people in this country are being side-lined.

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The BBC – British in name only

For all its faults the West has generally been a power of good for the world, the spread of democracy, the triumph of rationalism over religious superstition and the advance of women’s rights are achievements to be proud of. By the late seventies the UK had built a relatively safe, productive, homogeneous society. The Arts and Sciences flourished, new technology was quickly adapted and introduced into society seamlessly and despite the political unrest there was a sense that the future was going to be brighter and not something to fear.
Many studies have concluded that the seventies was the happiest in our nation’s recent history. Without trying to make the case to bring back Bazooka Joe Bubble Gum, flared trousers and the Bay City Rollers I think I am on fairly strong ground to argue that in terms of happiness things have taken a turn for the worst since the Millennium. In the space of a few short decades we have travelled from being a fairly happy, homogeneous society, hopeful about its future to one that is troubled, dysfunctional and fearful of the years ahead. How did this happen to us so quickly?
As a Brexiteer I could point to the fact that it was in the seventies Ted Heath took the nation into the Common Market – what was to become the European Union. However that in itself is not what I see as the change. The plan behind the European Project always relied on a deceit i.e. to achieve full union by any means, I suspect most people have figured that one out for themselves be they for Brexit or Remain. To achieve full union by democratic means involving so many countries would take well over a century, so Brussels instead relied on a ratchet process of acquiring power by other methods – such as treaties, gaining control of the legal systems of nation states and obtaining direct influence over their education systems and media. A Remainer may well argue that the ends justify the means, however this introduces a problem, if you develop a system where the real power and governance over a people is hidden and unseen you create the conditions where very bad people can assume control over a nation state without them knowing until it is too late. This I fear is what has happened to the people of Europe and perhaps more widely across the West.
In the UK our main political parties harvest the votes from people who believe that the party they vote for will represent their interests. Sadly the main parties do not care about the voters, only their votes, this is because they are beholden to their donors and they implement the policies dictated to them by people you cannot see. To conceal this further, surrounding our political parties is an intricate web of think tanks and political charities that enjoy direct influence over decision making at Westminster. The funding of these organisations is murky and often comes from foreign donors who want your Government to work in a certain way. This may provide an explanation as to why, however we vote, we get the same Globalist ‘No Borders’ dogma imposed upon us.
The legal system in this country has effectively been passed under the control of the European Court of Justice. Whilst we do have a Supreme Court, it is Supreme in name only, it cannot make a ruling against the ECJ. For all intents and purposes your judiciary is not independent, it is controlled by Brussels – though it does however enjoy complete independence from the nation and its people.
So how is all this done without the people knowing? Well a key component is our state broadcaster the BBC. I have written a number of blogs on how I have become increasingly concerned over the behaviour of the BBC. The BBC are expert at manipulating the truth and peddling falsehoods, you may note that anyone who takes a stand against the Globalists and their dogma are always labelled with a negative adjective like ‘extreme right’ or ‘controversial’. Messages that fit the narrative come from ‘progressive’ politicians. Oddly enough challenging the imposition of a Stone Age belief system onto a highly advanced society is somehow regressive, defending it is always ‘progressive’. Pardon me for pointing things out but in the Dark Ages of the seventies people did not have to take their children to a Christmas market in an armoured car nor did they carry the burden of a colossal debt thanks to ‘progressive’ politicians and their Ponzi scheme economics.
You may recall the attempts by the BBC in the early part of last year to push the ‘refugee crisis’ narrative and the obvious cover up of the events in Cologne. Clearly that attempt to fool the public into believing millions of neurosurgeons and rocket scientists were heading toward Europe from the Middle East did not gain much traction with a people that had lost patience with uncontrolled immigration. What is rather striking though is the complete silence from the BBC since, thousands of people from the developing world are transported every day across from Libya into Italy by our own Navies and the ships of Non Government Organisations such as Save the Children yet not a word from Auntie Beeb on their people smuggling activities. The policy of transporting so many people from Africa and Asia will have one eventual, predictable outcome, the people of Europe will lose their ancestral homeland. This is known to the BBC, it is also obvious to the rest of our establishment, their quiescence – and in the case of the BBC, censorship of this aspect of the ‘migration crisis’ is rather telling.
In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings one of the story-lines is how King Théoden (one of the good guys) has been slowly poisoned by a powerful sorcerer, the poison ages him prematurely and robs him of his energy and vigour. The King is further controlled by a character called Grima Wormtongue, a dominant figure in the King’s Palace, Grima flatters the King constantly but ensures that the truth is concealed about the dangers that face his Kingdom and a false picture is painted of the evil forces that are moving against him. Fortunately for Théoden a good wizard breaks the spell and Théoden sees the lies and reclaims his strength in the nick of time.
I am compelled by the parallels here, the establishment eco-system has been poisoned from afar. As a people our energy and vigour is slowly being drained away from us, yet daily the BBC (our own personal Grima Wormtongue) feeds us a diet of lies and conceals the truth from us. The British on the whole are a fair and decent people, they sense something is wrong but cannot pin down why this is happening to them or who is doing it. Whilst Grima Wormtongue controls nearly everything we get to hear, read or see, we are extremely unlikely to find why this is happening, who is doing it and how we can stop it.
Our ancient culture and way of life is under a very grave threat, I still believe there is time to save most of it, but to do this we have to break the spell and help our people wake from their stupor. Brexit at least showed there is hope, it showed that what I prefer to call the Dark State has not gained complete control yet, but it is perilously close, if we do not stop the falsehoods and obfuscations of the Wormtongues, then I fear we will face a very bleak future.
We must all of us work now to end the BBC and silence the lies of the Wormtongues. You can do this by cancelling your licence fee (you do not need one to own a television) and start supporting the many campaign groups such as biasedBBC.org that see it for what it is. The BBC is an enemy, it is the night hag sitting on our nation’s chest.
The only thing British about the BBC is the word in the title.
 

Brexit – chlorinated chickens or a chance to improve animal welfare?

The subject of animal welfare and free trade has become quite topical of late with the current media obsession about chlorinated chickens. Since I know only the basics about global trade and even less about regulation for animal products there is little I can add to the subject. However I do want to write about a subject close to my heart, what I see as a excellent opportunity we now have to improve the welfare of animals in a post Brexit world.
As I will explain further in the piece, the EU is not exactly first in class when it comes to animal welfare, but then again none of us are. In terms of animal experiments, transportation and cruelty every nation on earth has made little progress. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, we are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars but before expanding on what I see as a way out of the gutter I thought it useful to explain some aspects of animal welfare under the current EU regime.

Animal experiments
Perhaps the aspect of animal welfare I feel the most strongly about is the use of animals for experiments. I can understand the argument that one animal’s life can save thousands of humans, I accept that argument at face value, I would merely state that I believe there is no moral case for inflicting suffering on a sentient being, none whatsoever, the argument is so alien to my way of thinking in the way that I presume mine is to theirs. However the one aspect of animal testing that can quickly bring me to a hulk like rage is the use of animals for cosmetic and other household product testing. All the cosmetics that exist now have all been brought to market making use of this ‘science’, there is no further need to any more animal testing, we do not need new cosmetics and for the life of me I cannot understand why allow manufacturers to bring a constant flow of new cosmetics and other household products to market when we already have all the ones we need. Do we really need yet another ‘improved’ shampoo? No, we don’t and because we don’t we could end animal experiments in this sector quite quickly.
The latest figures show that in 2011 almost 11.5 million animals were used in experiments across Europe, only a slight decrease on 2008. France, Germany and the UK were the top 3 users of animals in experiments, in that order. The countries of the EU in 2011 reported that they used 17,896 dogs, 3,713 cats, 358,213 rabbits, 6,686 horses, 6,095 monkeys, 675,065 birds, 77,280 pigs, 28,892 sheep, 30,914 cattle, over 1,000,000 fish and over 8,500,000 rodents. Fundamental biological research accounts for 46% of the total number of experiments, while the use of animals for research and development of human and veterinary medicines only accounts for 19% of the total number used. 34% of old world monkeys are still imported from non-EU countries. France, Germany and the UK are the biggest users of monkeys, in that order. Six of the EU countries conducted a total of 977 animal tests for household products, with Denmark as the biggest tester.

Now let that number sink in, 11.5 million animals are experimented on every year.
Every year.

Animal Transportation
Whilst the topic of eating meat is a debate in itself it is generally accepted that an animal should be reared and eventually slaughtered as near as possible to where it was born. It is difficult to argue for an end to all animal transportation, breeders need to get livestock to market, but given the intent here is to sell the animal, welfare would form a necessary part of the process. Long distance transportation of live stock is however particularly stressful for animals, the EU permits the transport of animals enormous distances – often to parts of the world outside of the EU such as the Middle East with lower or even non existent standards of animal welfare. There is no moral argument to transport animals thousands of miles to be slaughtered, the animal can be dispatched locally – and in the UK this means reasonably humanely and the carcass transported in refrigerated vehicles.

Animal cruelty
Article 13 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union does require member nations to consider the welfare requirements of animals but provides no legal base leaving it up to member nations to decide. This might help explain why bullfighting is still permitted in Spain.
I spend a lot of time in the country and bullfighting goes out on prime time TV – a clue to the Spanish government’s view on the matter. Toward the end of the summer most villages in Spain have a fiesta, I like to visit a particular village near Valencia. This village has the custom of setting fire to a bull’s horns for it to be then taunted and chased by the local men – who are normally fortified with alcohol (not that I am completely sober myself at the time). Since I am a guest in the village I try to join in with the festivities, but I always leave with a sense of shame that I did not speak out about the suffering of an innocent animal. I don’t enjoy it, sometimes I feel that a part of my soul has been tainted by watching the terror and bewilderment of another creature in the name of entertainment.
In fairness to the Spanish, I am pleased to relate that a growing number of the younger generation of Spaniards find bullfighting and animal cruelty in general as objectionable as the rest of us, unfortunately that does not help bulls due for la Corrida de Torros and the festivals this summer.
In a further defence of the Spaniards I am also mindful that this country does not have a very good track record in terms of organised animal cruelty, there is still a lot of evidence of a illegal dog fights. I also acknowledge that fox hunting and hare coursing have only recently been made illegal.

A bill of rights for animals
The United Kingdom was the first country in the world to implement laws protecting animals. In 1822 an Act to Prevent the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle was passed by Parliament. I strongly believe that once we leave the EU we should once again show leadership in animal welfare and introduce the first bill of rights for animals.
The Animal Welfare Act 2006 does provide a degree of protection for animals in terms of welfare but only applies to domesticated animals. I would like to see these same basic rights extended to all animals and I would go further, I would prohibit the long distance transportation of live animals to slaughter and I would abolish animal experimentation for non medical research.
Personally I like to see a complete ban on all animal experimentation but I doubt that argument can be won at the moment but I really do feel that now is the time for us to be the first to introduce a basic minimum of rights for all animals. People say what would a post Brexit world look like, my view is that it is the one we seek to create for ourselves. It is not just humans that live on these islands, we share it with other flora and fauna, if there is a dividend from Brexit, let us share it with them.

Brexit – the Sisiphus of democracy

It is over a year now since the referendum on membership of the EU. After many decades of frustration with our membership of a supranational body I was finally given an opportunity for my voice to be heard. 17.5 million people voted to leave the EU, I was one of them.

One year on and I have not known one single day where it feels like the democratic will of the people will be carried out by Parliament. One year on and still our will is constantly frustrated – our wish to decide for ourselves mocked and sneered at by a supercilious middle class, the legitimacy of our democratic mandate constantly undermined by the fake hysteria of the BBC and large sections of the elite media. One year on we have had another General Election where 85% of the electorate voted for parties that made a manifesto commitment to leave the EU. Yet still powerful elements are committed to thwarting the wishes of the people.

Whether you voted Leave or Remain the past year provides an insight into how our Parliament operates. Think of the position in reverse, not a single party had a mandate by way of a manifesto commitment or the validation of a referendum to sign the Maastricht Treaty or the Lisbon Treaty despite in the case of Lisbon a referendum being promised by all three main parties. Barely a word of protest was heard in Parliament, barely a peep from the elite media as these treaties handed more and more of our country away from our democratic control to a foreign unaccountable bureaucracy. No Gina Miller and crowdfunded legal challenges, no procedural trench warfare in Westminster to thwart the transfer, no acknowledgement that Parliament had no mandate to do any of this.

Now consider what happens when you do obtain a mandate, the Conservatives under David Cameron won an unexpected majority in the Commons in the 2015 General Election, the Conservative manifesto promised a straight in / out referendum on EU membership. Parliament passed the required procedures to allow the referendum to take place in 2017. For unexplained reasons David Cameron made the vote advisory rather than binding, however if this was a ruse it was neutralised soon after when the Government used tax payer’s money sending a booklet to every household to set out the case to remain in the EU and stating quite clearly the Government would act on their wishes.

Setting the merits of Brexit aside, the leave campaign won the referendum, for two weeks after the BBC and irresponsible politicians whipped up hysteria across the nation in what I felt was an attempt to sow the seeds of social unrest. It was deeply irresponsible, I was only too aware that many EU nationals felt unwelcome in the country, their discomfort was amplified by the BBC and their spiteful caricature of Brexit supporters as the UK branch of the Ku Klux Klan. Legal and procedural challenges followed both in the courts and Parliament itself. It became all about stopping Brexit and de-legitimising the vote – the mood music being that since it was mainly the working classes that voted to leave they were too stupid and too uneducated to be taken seriously and their votes were somehow lesser than the educated middle classes.

More recently we have had a further general election, both main parties made commitments in their manifesto to implement the will of the people. Once more this commitment faces constant legal challenges, the BBC pushing a daily narrative that somehow there is something wrong with carrying out the democratic wishes of the people and that there is something virtuous and noble in those who believe the EU should just be forced on people by their self appointed superiors.

So what is the lesson from all of this? Well for me it is quite clear, we have a political system that can pretty much do as it likes provided it is not mentioned in a manifesto or is the outcome of a referendum but woe betide anyone who does seek a plebiscite, you will find yourself enduring the fate of a political Sisyphus, doomed to pushing the rock of democracy up a hill only to see it cast down each and every time by a sneering elite who think only their votes should be counted.

I have long felt the EU is anti democratic, and it was for reasons of democracy that I campaigned to leave the EU. One year on and all of my fears remain, it no longer feels I live in a democracy, it feels like there is some secret, hidden Government that is in control of my country, one that is desperately trying to maintain the veneer of democracy and conceal the true nature of the Potemkin’s village that we seem to live in.

Defining Terms

Independent Britain

One of the odder characteristics of what is called the Brexit debate is the tendency of people to adopt alternative definitions for familiar terms.

The sui generis example must surely be Mrs May’s circular, “Brexit means Brexit”, which, taken seriously, can only mean, “Brexit means what I tell you it means”.

Picking up that particular baton and running with it, several politicians and journalists have taken to saying that, “hard Brexit” means Brexit but “soft Brexit” means Remain. When is a Brexit not a Brexit? There is a joke in there somewhere.

So, instead of discussing the various important issues relating to Britain’s future relationship with the EU and EU Member States (not to mention the rest of the world), politicians, journalists and academics seem to be more interested in divining the Platonic ideal of the one true Brexit.

That is precisely what the Flexcit plan attempts to avoid. In…

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Hand in Glove — dissent angle

I’ve tried tackling this issue already and the only successful effort I could manage was here. My main feelings are still those of powerlessness and depression; and there is little to be said that hasn’t already been, but no amount of political platitudes, pink balloons, playlists, hashtag prayers or I ♥ MCR from people who […]

via Hand in Glove — dissent angle

The weak and unstable Kingdom

It is a sunny morning as I write this, but this sunny morning is different. Two days ago I awoke to the events in Manchester Arena where a Muslim slaughtered innocent children. For two days now the rage has burned in me silently, for two days now I have pondered why I should accept a world like this and do nothing. Like I say, this morning is different, I have rarely had such clarity on what needs to be done.

In June we have a general election, we go to vote with soldiers on our streets, unsure where the next attack is coming from. Our media pours out lies and distortions of the truth, concealing inconvenient facts, peddling falsehoods that we are united against terrorism – perhaps someone needs to explain that to the terrorists and the community that produces them?

In June we go to the polls as a nation crippled by debt, a debt run up by the shadow banking system and transferred in plain sight onto the tax payer without a murmur from the media or our political class. Take a look at your tax statement, there it is about fourth on the list, the amount you paid in interest on the debt. That’s right interest, the debt is still going up, and next year you will pay even more interest on even more debt.

In June we go to the polls not as a nation that is somehow united, we go there as a dysfunctional zoo, the indigenous population feeling less and less that this is their homeland, the more settled sons and daughters of invited, legal migrants now worried about their future as they feel the country they call home no longer offers the sense of comfort and prosperity that brought their forefathers here.

This is the world our politicians have created for us – no longer a United Kingdom, no we are now a weak, unstable nation, a battered broken people ruled over a political class that hates its own people, a political class that never seems to miss an opportunity to insult them. This is the world our politicians have created for us, a world of lies, fear and terror, a sick perversion of what we once were, a world where our children are murdered or sexually abused and where we risk going to jail for having the nerve to complain about the people doing it.

I do not want this world, few outside of the establishment do either. So we either do something or we fade, the good thing is we can do something. However you voted in the EU referendum, Brexit does carry a lesson, it shows that the people of this country reject the lies of our media, it shows we reject the established order and it shows we want to change direction. I take encouragement from Brexit, at the risk of sounding like a character from a George Orwell novel I feel that if there is hope, it is to be found in us, the proles, not in our establishment.

We have too little time to organise ourselves for this coming election, all I would do say now is to urge every one of you to stop voting along tribal lines, vote tactically. If you are pro Brexit then you have little choice but to vote Conservative unless you live in a constituency where UKIP are the only viable alternative to Labour. If you oppose Brexit then this gets more tricky, the Liberals and the Greens are unlikely to form the next government and Labour seem more opaque by the day on what their plans are, so I would suggest getting behind the pro Remain candidate you think most likely to win irrespective of their party.

Whoever wins in June will be there for five years. This means we have a further five years of this world, it is not going to get better, and it is going to get worse. At the end of their term you will be even further in debt than you are now, hundreds more of us would have died at the hands of Muslims, hundreds more children abused, the lies and distortions will get worse, you will be even more fearful of the future and even more scared to speak out. Over the next five years at least another million people will be allowed to settle on our over-crowded island. More houses and infrastructure will need to be provided for them, more nature will succumb to the bulldozer, wildflowers and songbirds replaced with concrete and bitumen.

Five years from now you will be poorer, more despondent and enjoy fewer and fewer moments in your life where you can live without fear. You will be mocked and provoked further and further by an establishment that despises you, insults you and will not protect you. For those of you who voted for Brexit the odds are that there will be one last final betrayal.

And you know what I am saying will come true – but you can change it.

We have five years to organise ourselves, five years until the next General Election. In five years we can reshape the future, we must all of us stop being taken for granted, stop blindly voting along tribal lines, there must be no such thing as a safe seat ever again. Over the coming five years every MP must be made to feel as insecure as they have made us, they must really sense that if they don’t respond to our concerns through action rather than the usual lies and platitudes we will withdraw our support.

There are already promising signs of the change we need to bring about, the recent local elections saw a huge swing to the Conservatives, this masked out a very interesting trend, the rise of the independent councillors. These are councillors who have no political affiliation and (in theory at least) more likely to take account of the voter’s wishes rather than the Globalist dogma of a party machine.

Over the coming weeks I will write more about how we can field more and more independent candidates both at local and at a national level. Please do get in touch with me with ideas and suggestions if you feel you can help, I am quite easy to find on social media.

We have five years, these five years will be difficult ones for us, but there is hope and that hope lies within each and every one us.

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The mad, bad policies of the Soylent Green Party

When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned, you will
realize that you cannot eat money

Native American proverb

Alanis Obomsawin a Canadian film maker observed that Canada operates a depletion economy that leaves destruction in its wake. I think this statement holds true for the world as a whole. Thinkers and commentators have been observing this point from ancient times. Yet still we fail to mend our ways and use the gift of our intelligence to live a more sustainable, harmonious life with nature.

I don’t hark for some mythical Eden, I am not sure there really has been a period where mankind has lived sustainably with the environment, even when we lived in caves we hunted mega fauna like Mammoths to extinction. Given our direction of travel my guess is that if mankind somehow manages to survive for another thousand years the largest predators left on the planet will be Chihuahuas.

No, to my mind the folly is that we understand our nature, we understand that wherever we live, if there is enough land for everyone to graze two goats some of us will graze three, this will of course mean thinner goats for everyone – but hey I now have three goats you only have two is our mentality. You may consider yourself a two goat person but it makes no difference to nature, you may not have done the damage but our species has. Our species has a damaging element within its number that will demand and exploit for more because that is what drives them. Now we can bemoan this until the cows come home it does not alter the reality of the way human beings are.

Most of us are responsible but we carry a destructive element with us and we have failed to develop the mechanisms to control their greed. This failure affects us all and I fear we are close coming to the point that if we do not act nature will step in and control our greed for us.

All is not doom an gloom though, there is the more decent kinder aspect of our nature, amongst the apes, humans are amongst the more altruistic, compared to Chimpanzees we are positively angelic. Most of us have experienced at some point in our lives an animal in distress seeking our help, this tells me that there is something hopeful and healing about humans that nature senses. I truly believe that it is this quality in us that can save both ourselves and the world we live in. On another day and on a cheerier topic I would argue that if we want Eden then we can build it ourselves, we are that capable.

Since no leader or Government has made a serious attempt at dealing with the darker aspect of our nature the only viable solution I can see for us is to instead control our numbers. The fewer greedy people there are the less damage they can cause. More widely the fewer of us there are the less pollution there will be. If our numbers were controlled adequately nature could probably cope.

Given the pressing need for the human race to address over population one would have thought the Green Party of all of our political parties would be taking the lead on this – particularly with a General Election coming up in 2017. So here are the main ticket items for the Green Party that will sweep them into power.

Imagine a political system that puts the public first. Imagine an economy that gives everyone their fair share. In other words we have no plans to move away from the Globalists depletion economic model.

Imagine a society capable of supporting everyone’s needs. Imagine a planet protected from the threat of climate change now and for the generations to come. That’s the world we want to create and we believe we have the means to do it. There are currently 7.5 billion human beings on the planet, this is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 – and the Green Party wants to ensure they all get a car, a TV and cheap air travel.

By ensuring that everyone has access to a secure job that pays at least the Living Wage we will build an economy that works for the common good, not just the privileged few. By restoring public services to public hands we will ensure they are run in the interests of the people that use them. Fair enough – although I should point out it was your beloved EU that forced us to privatise most of them in the first place.

By investing in renewable energy and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, we will build a stable and sustainable society that protects our planet from climate change. I am all for renewables but wind turbines are not reliable enough and short of covering the UK in photovoltaic cells solar power is not going to do it either. There is no mention here of the role of nuclear power in energy production. Closing nuclear plants will mean we have to burn more fossil fuels which undermines any effort to reduce reliance on them.

By building more social rented homes and bringing abandoned buildings back into use we will ensure that everyone has a secure and affordable place to live. So here we have a Green Party that instead of addressing the need to control population in an already over crowded island their response is to concrete over what little nature that is left to house even more people.

So what other plans do the Green Party have to deal with the most important issue facing mankind? Well on their news page we have a Full Social Justice Warrior piece on dealing with Islamophobia (natch). A commitment to fairness and democracy by running a second referendum on EU membership to overturn the democratic will of the people (fairly of course). A demand for sixteen year olds to get the vote and some more Social Justice Warrior stuff about the need to give away the taxes of poor people in foreign aid so that they can feel good about themselves.

And this makes me angry.

It makes me angry because at a time when our planet is dying, as we live through one of the great mass extinctions caused solely by man, the one political movement that should be campaigning to steer us away from our insane economic policies is more interested in stopping people complaining about getting blown up or mown down by religious zealots and thinks giving votes to two year olds is somehow going to save the planet.

We’re doomed if we stick with this lot.

The EU- the Empire Strikes Back

A week or so has passed since the PM invoked Article 50. A weeks or so on and one of the things I had hoped would begin to tail off is the vile caricature Brexiteers have to put up with from some on the Remain side. This week however has seen no respite. We had the usual lynch mob response over the assault of an asylum seeker with the BBC going into full Social Justice Warrior mode – before of course some inconvenient facts emerged i.e. the alleged attackers were not white and – well even the BBC would find that one hard to pin on Brexit. So another week of casual insults and vile name calling. They seem to come in waves, but normally follow the pattern that;

1. I am stupid and ignorant.
2. I am a racist (xenophobic for the SJW who went to public school).
3. I did not really mean it and will change my mind.

I can’t be bothered to deal with the first two points, knock yourself out, I am past caring, some of best friends are Remainers etc. etc. As for point 3 dream on sunshine, dream on. All that said I am quite impressed with a more inventive insult being levelled at me. This one emerged on social media over the weekend. Apparently I want to rebuild the empire. Yes you heard it right, when I went in to the polling booth to put my cross in the box that said Leave the EU I failed to read the terms and conditions that clearly stated I wanted to recreate the British Empire. Silly me, I thought I was voting for my country to become an independent state.

My musings developed further after reading an excellent blog from Pete North – Blue passports and all that.

I thought it useful to look at the meaning of the term independent state. So I consulted Dr Google and found this definition

Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over the territory.

The definition pretty much confirmed what independence means to me, I doubt too many Brexiteers would argue that this is what we want for our country.

What about Empire? I hear you say, so I searched again and this took me to a load of cinema listings which had no relevance to this blog other than to jog my memory to go and see The Founder this weekend. I refined my search under ‘Empire meaning’, this is one of the definitions

An extensive group of states or countries ruled over by a single monarch, an oligarchy, or a sovereign state.

Hmm…Now this does seem at odds with my desire to live in a free, democratic independent nation. However if you think more deeply about the definition it seems to describe the EU more than it does the UK.

Because it does, the EU is not a democracy – please don’t give me twaddle about the EU Parliament, not even the BBC tries to peddle that lie. The EU is run by powerful, unaccountable people. Countries under its dominion have surrendered much of their sovereignty, their political leaders are merely Viziers of the Empire, Viziers chosen by their people but Viziers nonetheless.

Like all Empires the EU has territorial ambitions, until recently it had designs on Turkey. It has already meddled in Ukraine and succeeded in antagonising Russia and as it pushes its Empire further east the risk of a confrontation grows.

Empires are about territory and establishing systems within subject nations to control the people. The divide and rule strategy so cleverly deployed by the Romans is at work in this country evidenced by fake nationalist movements that don’t actually seek independence, they wish instead to move their capital city to Brussels and be ruled directly from there.

How about our state media? Funded in part by the EU, it should come as little surprise that it pushes their propaganda. Academia? Well of course, since a valuable source of income comes from the Empire what harm is there in making sure our young people kowtow to the Emperor.

Empires flood subject nations with their colonists to dilute the sense of identity of the indigenous population. Do you really think the influx of nearly five million people into this country after the Lisbon Treaty was signed was an unforeseen consequence?

Empires seek to crush the spirit of a people and diminish their cultural heritage. Next time you are on the continent take a look at the Euro bank notes, there is no Mozart or Voltaire shown in a thoughtful pose, no rose, no eagle, no Little Mermaid. No, what you see are the meaningless, anodyne symbols of the Empire.

I sense this is what is planned for the people of the Empire, the destruction of their culture and their ancient way of life to be forged into a new super state of people that have no bonds to anyone or anything. People with no cultural heritage, no notion of the enlightenment and the magnificent achievements of their once proud nations. Just a mass of individuals who have been raised to believe that they now live in a country called Eutopia.

In a way I am grateful to the Remain die-hards for their accusation, it made me think about a response. As I thought more deeply about the notion of Empire the more my thinking crystallised. To my mind we have become a subject nation of an Empire, an Empire that does not want to lose its territory. This Empire does not care the people that live on these islands, it never has, far from it, its wants them removed or at least diminished to a point where they can do little to resist. This is not about us, it is about the control of the wealth and treasure of this nation.

So my question is now, is the Hard Brexit strategy being adopted by our political leaders really a method to ensure our desire for independence becomes unpalatable? Is the purpose of the Article 50 negotiations really a hiatus to allow the Empire and the Vizier time to work up a fig leaf that will convince enough of us that we are somehow an independent nation state? I don’t know the answers – but the thought troubles me deeply and the signs are not good.

9 25

 

 

Brexit Day – the people’s victory

I have no sense of joy at leaving the EU, just relief. I always saw Brexit as a grim duty. I still do. I don’t want to re-open the Brexit debate itself here, what I want to do is draw attention to the role of independent bloggers and campaigners who I feel were never given credit for the role they played in the campaign.

Today sees the start of a new path for my country, one that I felt would be forever denied to us. In terms of our economy I do not know how Brexit will pan out for us; being more on the soft Brexit side of the debate I feel the EEA/EFTA option was a missed opportunity. Nonetheless, regrettable as it seems (to me at least) I am thankful that we are now finally leaving the EU, I have seldom been clearer in my mind about anything; it is the right thing to do. The journey for me has been a hard one, mentally and physically demanding during the campaign, battered by some of the vitriol I experienced subsequent to the vote by some within my social circle for the crime of exercising my democratic right.

The news on the morning after the referendum came as much of surprise to me as everyone else. I had campaigned hard in the months leading up to the referendum and with a couple of weeks to go I really felt we were going to do it. However the sad murder of Jo Cox I felt changed the mood – for both sides and I sensed a more sombre atmosphere in the week before the vote.

I stayed up for a couple of hours to watch the earlier results, these seemed to suggest we were close but not close enough, the media kept reporting that Nigel Farage had already conceded. I was tired and drained by it all and I had an early start at work next day, so I turned in believing we had lost.

When I got up I did not listen to the radio as I normally do when I have my breakfast, I simply could not stomach the gloating of the BBC. I waited until I went to have my shower; my radio there is tuned to music rather than talk radio. So I was stunned that instead of the latest sounds all I got was the news that we had won, against all odds, we had won.

So what motivated me to become an independent Brexit campaigner in the first place? Well for me the path started in the early noughties. I probably had made up my mind about the EU around about the time of the signing of the EU constitution – poorly disguised as the Lisbon treaty. All three main parties had promised the British people a referendum on the treaty; all three ensured that was never offered. It was then that I realised that the EU was something being done to us rather than something being done for us, it confirmed something that I had long suspected, that the EU was anti democratic.

The decade that followed I, like millions of others was denied a voice but I always carried the hope of a referendum on our membership of the EU. The unexpected election of a Conservative government in 2015 with a mandate to hold one made this suddenly possible. It was about September 2015 when I started to seriously consider how to campaign, at that time David Cameron had promised the referendum before 2018 so I knew if I was going to do something it had to be done fairly soon so I started work on building a campaign web site.

In terms of content for the site, I had studied the EU for a number of years so was quite familiar with its structure and had a reasonable understanding of how it operates – a lacuna in the knowledge of many of my pro EU friends, many of whom still believe (even now) that the EU Parliament somehow exercises democratic control. Pardon the digression but it strikes me that the only useful thing the EU Parliament does is to provide an income stream to UKIP. The irony is not lost on me.

Returning to the subject of content, as an independent I knew I would need a source for some of the more detailed and technical arguments. I reasoned that the economic case was always going to be the Remain campaign’s strongest suit having seen it played in the Scottish referendum.

I was not in complete agreement with all of UKIPs policies and although I no longer vote Labour the tribal part of me found it difficult to align with anything coming from the Conservative Party. The movement closest to my heart, the Green Party, were so absurdly pro EU there was little value in looking for support there. So after a number of weeks of researching I found Leave EU. I was quite inspired by the Flexcit plan of Dr North and knew about his connections to Christopher Booker, a Telegraph journalist whose articles I find engaging and thought provoking. I was also quite impressed with their stable of bloggers like Pete North and Lost Leonardo, Sam Hooper and Roland Smith. These were campaigners that made the case for Brexit through logic and not the emotive arguments made by UKIP and the official Leave campaign.

The official Leave campaign looked too much of an establishment stitch up to me, when the Conservative Party gets to run both sides of the argument you can pretty much guess the Conservative Party is going to win the argument. As an aside – a shocking revelation from a Brexiteer to Remain voters – no I didn’t believe the £350 million for the NHS either, when I saw that one I wanted to hide behind the sofa. Well done Boris et al. That one will follow us around for a couple of years.

So I entered the campaign with a web site, informal contacts with Leave EU and an active Twitter account (a form of social media I used to hate). I had also managed to build up quite a circle on the Daily Telegraph’s comments page before it was shut down just before the referendum – fortunately a number of us managed to stay in contact on other platforms. This formed a fairly good network of Brexiteers across the political spectrum for me to transmit messages from Leave EU, useful stuff from other Brexit groups as well as my own contributions – which of course won the day.

As the excitement built to the three month lead up to the campaign I was amazed at how many like minded people there were out there who took the time to contact me and coordinate things. There was Tim who prepared his own pretty neat poster – I posted it on my web site to allow others to download, 500 copies of which I delivered in my area per Tim’s instructions. There was Graham, a UKIP supporter and active participant on the Disqus forums who acted as my wing man fighting pro EU trolls on many occasions and totally understood that we needed to counter the lies of the BBC. There was Bella Sassin, a comedienne who loves to stick it to the Liberal elite. It was to Bella that I wrote and confided that something compelled me to get involved, I simply did not want to grow old wishing I had done something. And there was Daniel, a fanatical Chelsea fan, limited in his movements due to illness who helped manage my Twitter account during the day.

Beyond this, thousands of people on Twitter, Facebook and Disqus, thousands I have never met who engaged with me, helped me construct better arguments, corrected my grammar, helped me summarise, helped me sharpen my thoughts.

So to all of you out there, Pete North, Lost Leonardo, Roland Smith, Sam Hooper, Bella Sassin, Chauncey Tinker, Graham, Tim and Daniel, here’s to you, all of you who got off your backsides to do something. Your story will be told one day by a better writer than me – but that does not matter right now, it was your victory as much as anyone else’s.

Here’s to all the independent Brexiteers, ‘the little ships’ of the referendum campaign that saved our nation. Against all odds we did it, we did it.