Time for the Flexcit approach to Brexit?

I have just read an interesting piece by Lord Hague of Richmond (William Hague) in the Daily Telegraph defending the Prime Minister and her handling of the negotiations over Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. Lord Hague describes how the Conservative Party is stretched to the limit over our relationship with the EU which is hardly a surprise to those of us that follow politics. I take a vicarious enjoyment from this in that the party that took us in to the European Union is the party with the most troubled conscience over it, karma I say.

During the referendum Lord Hague campaigned for us to stay in the European Union and I see little that suggests he has changed his mind; however he has been consistent in respecting the outcome of the vote so I respect his views and acknowledge his democratic credentials so I am prepared to listen to what he has to say.

He rightly identifies the struggle the Prime Minister faces in keeping her party together, the need to keep the Democratic Unionists on board and the seemingly intractable problem of the border in Northern Ireland. Whether by design or poor strategy the Prime Minister has created a situation where the negotiations have moved to a point where we either defend the Union or we accept that part of it remains under EU jurisdiction.

There is of course an argument to throw Northern Ireland under a bus, not sensible in my view but it is an argument – George Galloway has already suggested just that in terms of the need for the unification of the island of Ireland. In isolation it is a valid argument but would strengthen the case of the Scottish Nationalists who see remaining in the EU as their route to independence (I know – lets not do that one right now). In any case I don’t think any Prime Minister wants to go down in history as the one that broke up the Union. For the sake of brevity, right now that dog don’t hunt, the Union has to stay intact – at least for now.

My take on Lord Hague’s intervention is that the shrewder Remainers have made the calculation that if the final months of our membership of the EU reach a point where all the discussion is about protecting the Union and negotiating a deal with the EU takes a back seat then we create the conditions for leaving the EU in the Spring of next year without a deal – the so called Hard Brexit.

Many of my fellow Brexiteers are strongly in favour of a Hard Brexit, I am not one of those and cards on the table here I have long been an advocate of Dr North’s Flexcit plan:

Dr North’s Flexcit Plan

For the purpose of this blog it means invoking Article 50 and dropping into the EEA / EFTA arrangements for a number of years to allow us to catch our breath and prepare for full independence. I won’t go into lengthy details about Flexcit (the plan is over 400 pages long) but I will attempt to summarise why I favour this option.

The notion that any nation is completely sovereign is not an accurate characterisation of the modern world. Even China signs up to international agreements that take certain decisions out of their hands, this is not a bad thing when we consider the good regulations that come from international bodies, for example last year the aviation industry had the safest year ever courtesy of international co-operation. The key difference here is that intergovernmental agreements tend to be transparent and come with accountability. The EU operates a supranational model where decision making is opaque and there is little visibility of the people that exert control over our lives- even in Communist China people know who their leaders are. Put as simplistically as I can the EEA is more of an intergovernmental arrangement – unlike the EU. In general terms the EFTA pillar of the EEA allows us to participate in the single market, negotiate trade deals, frees us from the European Court of Justice and allows a better degree of control over immigration since it reverts back to free movement of labour not free movement of people – i.e. you can’t come here just to sign on. There are a number of models of the EEA / ETA arrangements, my preference would be the Norway model.  I feel I must re-emphasise I see the Norway model as a fairly pain free stepping stone to independence not a final destination.

What struck me about Lord Hague’s piece was that for the first time I have heard a senior Tory float the idea of EFTA arrangements. Whilst this is a good thing in my view I am irritated by his sudden realisation. It was because of Remainers like Lord Hague who insisted on telling people if we left the EU we would lose access to the single market and it was Remainers and their knuckle headed Project Fear that prevented this option for Brexit getting the consideration it was due.

More worryingly, Lord Hague mentioned in passing that Parliament could block any attempt to leave the EU without a deal. I am certain that is exactly what will happen, I am certain that any attempt at a Hard Brexit will ultimately fail – not because of the will of the people but because it provides exactly the excuse our political class need to prevent our country leaving the EU. Of course this will be dressed up as acting in the national interest.

Hopefully I have managed to convince some of you to have a deep think about the Norway option, it may not be exactly the Brexit you wanted but please do think deeply about what I have said. The Hard Brexit many of you wish to see will in my view achieve the exact opposite, your argument does not have the Parliamentary arithmetic on its side, mine probably does. Think about it, I implore you, put emotion to one side and really, really think about it, we only get one shot at this.

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The Dark State Fools

On the rare occasion when my diary is clear from meeting world leaders and strutting the global stage; a nice weekend starts on a Friday evening with a beer in my local tavern in the company of my better half followed by a nice home cooked fish meal. Once fed and watered I like to settle in front of the TV and veg – Friday night is the night when I don’t want anything too taxing so a good comedy fits the bill perfectly.

The trouble is that these days the shows I can actually enjoy seem to be getting fewer and fewer. I still love QI and Room 101 and I found Toast quirky but addictive but most of the others now like Mock the Week just seem to follow the same hate Brexit hate Trump mantra. This is not to say I am a huge fan of Donald Trump – but the hysteria is getting a bit boring now, in any case if misogyny is their pet hate why does the King of Saudi Arabia get a free pass?

Comedy can be cruel and poking fun at the rich and powerful is considered fair game although I think a line needs to be drawn when the target is going through personal turmoil, the rich and powerful people are human like the rest of us. That aside I accept the deal, what I struggle with is that modern comedy seems to focus solely on areas that threaten a Globalist worldview but choose to ignore things that really do deserve to be laughed at. When it comes to religion Christianity and Judaism can be taunted mercilessly but Islam is scarcely touched – at a time when humour really could do some good.

Making fun of people that cannot fight back is moral cowardice; the great comedians of the past like Dave Allen were fearless in their choice of targets. The vast majority of modern comedians (Jonathan Pie being a rare exception) share this same moral cowardice, more than happy to virtue signal over Brexit, Donald Trump and Tommy Robinson they are absent when it comes to very real threats to our lives such as violent Islam.

BBC comedy output in particular now seems to operate exclusively from this playbook, by all means mock Nigel Farage dropping in heavy hints about his racism when he clearly isn’t a racist yet say nothing about Dianne Abbott – who clearly is. The topics and the angles are so predictable now it seems to me that the only way a comedian is ever going to get a slot on a television channel funded by taxpayer’s is to ridicule many of the things people actually support. Put it this way – how many comedians have you heard on a BBC panel show ripping in to the EU? Yep – none. Figure the break.

I have written before about how BBC news does not actually tell the news, it uses news items to push a Globalist agenda. Illegal immigrants are now undocumented migrants (or refugees), the predictable impact of mass immigration is deliberately ignored, instead we have a housing crisis or an NHS crisis – funny how it’s never an immigration crisis? The same dogma is fed to us through comedy and it is becoming less and less subtle.

I do wonder if any of them have the wit to ask themselves why its only their worldview that gets broadcast, doesn’t it occur to any of them that they are there not because they are funny but because they may serve the purpose of some very malign people? Marcus Brigstoke at least made some effort to understand this, not long after the referendum he noticed that when he performed outside of the London area people started to get up and leave when started his jokes about Brexit. Yet too few noticed that people that voted to leave the EU i.e. the majority didn’t take too kindly to paying their hard earned money to be called knuckle dragging troglodytes, I wish Marcus took his thinking to its logical conclusion and asked why the BBC is doing the same thing on a grander scale with licence payer’s money.

I am afraid all too many now do not deserve to be called comedians, they are nothing more than court jesters for the Dark State.

Article 50 and the Ides of March

Few of us that voted to leave the EU have enjoyed a day when it seemed crystal clear that the outcome of the referendum would be respected. Since the vote in 2016 I have not known one moment when there was absolute certainty we were leaving the EU. Straight after the referendum we had to endure weeks of abuse and hysteria from the media and all too many on the Remain side of the debate – not able for one second to enjoy the first ray of sunshine many of us had seen in years. Beyond this our establishment has tried every legal and political device to thwart the decision against a constant background of smears that somehow 17.4 million people were bribed by the Russians/Aaron Banks/Cambridge Analytica (tick one) to vote to leave the EU.

One further piece of law-fare got under the radar when the Labour party conference dominated the news. On Friday 21st September Scottish judges decided to allow the European Court of Justice to rule if Article 50 could be revoked by Parliament. So what? You may ask. Well this matters, it matters a lot. The Government still has the option of referring the decision of the Scottish judges to the Supreme Court (an ironic term when you think about it) but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Until now the understanding of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is that the nation that invoked it could not unilaterally withdraw it – a sensible provision if you think about it since a nation could use the withdrawal mechanism as a form of blackmail to get its way over some aspect of national interest. Notwithstanding this, given the time and effort the EU would need to devote to the process it had to seem like a one way process to deter nations from invoking it lightly. The only way the process could be stopped was if all of the remaining nations agreed for this to happen, not impossible but one or two would probably prefer to see the back of a nation that had caused them so much trouble, in the case of the UK a nation that has been a royal pain in the backside since it joined.

I don’t want to get into a Paddy Ashdown hat eating moment here but I am pretty sure the European Court of Justice will rule that Parliament has the power to revoke Article 50 effectively by-passing the other nations in the EU. What are the odds that this all happens at the time the Prime Minister returns to Parliament to vote on the deal – a deal the Labour Party has already stated it would vote against?

The timing of this is highly suspicious (to me at least), the ruling is expected in December which is about the same time the ‘meaningful’ vote Parliament on the deal Theresa May has negotiated with the EU. Since the EU has been negotiating with someone who does not want to leave, the Prime Minister of Parliament that also does not want to leave there was never any pressure on them to offer anything meaningful.

I have long argued that the simplest and easiest route out for us was by way of membership of European Economic Area (EEA) and then application to re-join the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Time has pretty much run out of that option and we have a Prime Minister determined to negotiate her ‘Chequers Plan’ to a successful conclusion, a plan the EU has made abundantly clear is unacceptable to them.

To be fair to the EU they have been consistent in their message about the single market that there could be no cherry picking, since the Chequers Plan seeks exactly that it is difficult to see what the Prime Minister hopes to achieve here. Now there are many Brexiteers that want to see a clean break with the EU and don’t care for Chequers or the EFTA option – that is a separate argument, what I think is going on here is theatre, my take on it is that Theresa May will return to Parliament with a deal she knows neither side will accept – an achievement in its own right. Parliament will perform a pantomime for the plebs and vote it down and with the clock ticking toward our exit without a deal in March 2019 Parliament will vote to revoke Article 50 ‘ in the national interest’ and the coup against the people of this country will be complete.

Our establishment betrayed us by taking us into the EU in the first place; does anyone really believe they won’t try to pull the same stunt again? At least one thing, it will finally be as plain as the nose on your face that the people who own our country don’t actually live here.

A post script – a fellow blogger, David John Phipps has written an excellent follow up piece on this subject Article 50 Revocation

The #PeoplesVote – how to steal a country from its people

Until Tony Blair decided to make white people illegal I was a very committed Labour supporter. Nowadays I don’t support any political party or political ideology, preferring instead to focus on more simple observations about the world, a favourite observation is that the poor are so poor because the rich are so rich. This observation is logical – given any finite resource if a small part of a group of people control most of it then the rest of the group has less.

Political ideology attempts to solve the problem of wealth distribution, two of the main ‘solutions’ are either to tax the wealthy and to redistribute their money or to create the conditions where those that have less at least have an opportunity to create more. Both of these approaches have failed, the wealthy are adept at hiding their money (since they own the politicians) and no one has ever really explained how you magically generate more from something that is finite. I suppose we could all keep pretending that printing more money or generating more ones and zeroes in bank computers creates more wealth but that would require a level of collective stupidity normally confined to politicians and economic ‘experts’.

Ideology fails and it will continue to fail because it does not address human nature. In order to save time I will be blunt, the reason the rich are so rich is because a small part of our gene pool produces greedy bastards with no sense of shame and a super inflated sense of entitlement, in the main these people are the wealthy elite and are expert at exploiting decent people. A similar percentage of people are lazy bastards with no sense of shame and a super inflated sense of entitlement, these people are very good at exploiting the welfare system established by decent people. In the middle of these two cohorts are the majority – decent people, the people who work, create and produce and the people the wealthy and the lazy harvest for their parasitic existence.

OK – I have maybe painted society with too broad a brush, but I hope at least you can see what I am getting at. Human society has been plagued by these people since we left the caves and political ideology is not going to change that, I am afraid for the time being the rich are always with us, they have no intention of sharing their wealth with us but expect us to share ours with them and they do not feel the slightest prick of self-consciousness about it.

Wealth and power are connected, whilst it is true some very powerful men in history had little or no money (Adolph Hitler was remarkably austere) money has always bought influence and a great deal of power. The financier George Soros who has never held public office seems to have most of the world’s leaders on speed dial should he require an audience – this despite the fact that he is not a citizen of most of the countries he likes to meddle in. I don’t know a single British person who enjoys the privilege of lobbying the Prime Minister directly at a whim but this is the world we live in.

One of the few checks society has introduced to limit the power of a predatory elite is democracy. The term comes from Greek and means rule by people. Much as the elite refuse to share their wealth they absolutely resent sharing power. The problem for the elite is that modern technology requires an educated workforce, an educated workforce starts to ask awkward questions like ‘who are you and why are you telling me what to do?’. Democracy on the terms of the wealthy elite, much as it pains them, does at least help control a reasonably educated workforce, after all when you own all the political parties you hardly care which one the plebs vote for. This pretty much explains the current predicament across the West since no matter how we vote we get the same no borders globalist dogma inflicted upon us, the most obvious explanation to me is that all main political parties are bought and paid for by the same wealthy elite, we just get to choose which personality to shaft us.

What the wealthy elite really fear is direct democracy, this is where us voters get the chance to vote on decisions that affect our lives and have a say in how our country is run. Politicians don’t like referenda because it limits their power and the wealthy elite really hate referenda because it actually does mean their vote carries no more weight than anyone else’s and what is worse the politicians they own are not able to carry out their master’s orders.

This brings me to the referendum and the decision by the people of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. I don’t intend to revisit the debate over Brexit here but I think most seriously minded people however they voted must have noticed the incredible hysteria once the vote went a different way to that the establishment expected and a result the wealthy elite thought they had paid for.

For the two years since we have seen a constant effort to de-legitimise the result, i.e. it was the Russians, we were lied to (that’s right, I thought we were electing a bus), we were stupid and ill informed (well if we’re stupid we whipped your hide, what’s that say about you?). Against this backdrop has been a very well funded self styled “People’s Vote” – I think very little money for it actually came from the British people, I would wager most of it came from foreign interests. The purpose of this “People’s Vote” is not to endorse any final deal on EU membership, its sole purpose is to cheat the people in a decision they have already taken. If it proceeds the ongoing coup against the people of this country will be completed. We will be finished as people within a generation or two, most have noticed how much our establishment dislike us, never underestimate the spiteful revenge they will exact on us for trying to thwart their plans if they manage to overturn the result.

The elite have never accepted the outcome of the referendum and have sought to undermine it ever since, so learn their tactics and use them against them, de-legitimise the so-called “People’s” Vote, our media is not going to do it so we need to. People’s Vote are desperate to avoid the appearance of this being a second referendum – so challenge them on this as it is their weak point and exposes their dishonesty, if it is not a second referendum then why are they asking people to remain in the EU when they have already voted to leave? Surely if it was a People’s Vote the question on the ballot should be accept the deal the Prime Minister negotiates or leave the EU without a deal? Never pass up an opportunity to ask why it is wealthy foreigners are pouring money into the People’s Vote campaign, never fail to point out that there seem to be an awful lot of very wealthy, privileged people seeking to overturn the referendum. Finally never stop asking exactly what sort of country do people expect they will be living in if 52% of the population have been told their votes don’t count and keep pressing them on this point until they answer.

There is of course a brighter alternative future for us and that involves ensuring the outcome of the referendum is respected and that we leave the EU (hopefully with a good deal). Do that and we can push further, for the first time in decades the people were given an actual say in the running of their country, we have the technology for more direct democracy, direct democracy makes political parties redundant and diminishes the power of the people who have been sitting on our backs for millennia and transfers that power to us.

And of course once the power is transferred to us we can finally ask the question, ‘who are you – and can you explain where you got all this money from?’

Mr Trump’s cold Turkey treatment?

President Trump seems to conduct American policy via Twitter these days – which at least makes it easy for a pleb like me to keep track of where he is going on any particular day. His latest spat is with President Erdogan of Turkey; Mr Trump announced an increase on tariffs for Turkish steel and aluminium in response to the lack of progress over the release of an American pastor held in a Turkish prison. It is unlikely that this is the real reason, I doubt any nation would risk a trade war for the sake of one individual however worthy his or her case but there is little doubt that the relationship between Turkey and the United States has become very strained, particularly over Syria.

Turkey does show worrying signs of heading towards an economic crisis, it is spending more than it earns and is very reliant on imports. The Turkish lira has lost 30% of its value against the dollar since the New Year; this makes imports more expensive and thus fuels inflation. The Turkish stock market is down 40% and government borrowing – even in its own currency is now at an interest rate of 18%.

To add to the countries woes repayments on some of its loans are due very shortly – so refinancing the debt will be required, in addition many Turkish business’s have borrowed in foreign currencies, the weakening Lira has inflated their debt.

Central Banks can intervene to control inflation – most typically by raising interest rates, something President Erdogan has insisted he will not do.

You may well ask that given the aftershocks of the credit crunch many countries around the world (ours included) face financial headwinds – so why am I writing about Turkey? Well Turkey is one of the wealthiest countries in the world ranked 17th in Gross Domestic Product by both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Turkey is also an important member of NATO both militarily and strategically. Moreover Turkey has, since the end of World War Two, formed part of the Liberalist consensus that has spread across the world. It is this consensus that many see as part of the architecture of the Deep State – the Deep State that President Trump seeks to end.

Putting Turkey into a position where it may leave NATO is not without risks, it could lead to a much stronger bloc of powerful anti American countries although it could be argued this is already happening and already spreading given President Trump’s actions over Iran. From the perspective of Europe the more immediate consequence could be a flood of illegal immigrants should Turkey decide it has no longer has any obligation to the EU.

Turkey now faces a perfect storm, a Central Bank that is hamstrung by its President, looming debt repayments and a weakening Lira, a trade war with the US is the last thing it needs.

But then perhaps President Trump already knows this?

The Sound of Silence

“Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be”

– Yogi Berra.

I try to be careful when writing about the world I grew up in, it is easy to remember fond memories of how things were and forget all too easily that some things are better now. In my memories of childhood holidays in Walton on the Naze the sun was always shining and I played on a beach of pure golden sand. Now unless we went through an unreported period of severe climate change during my childhood my memory must be slightly at fault, but I genuinely cannot remember a day when it rained. I guess this is true for all of us, when we remember good times we have simply forgotten the things that tarnish that memory.

So it is with care in mind that I write that twenty years ago Britain was a much better place to live in. The mass immigration instigated by Tony Blair had not yet made that much impact, the economy was doing well, and austerity would have been difficult to comprehend. Many of the technologies we use today were in their infancy, people were beginning to use the web for social purposes, there were concerns over how this technology would develop but most felt it to be benign and beneficial to our lives. The world was not without its problems but I remember that there was still a sense of progress, a sense that the next century would be even better despite our misgivings about technology.

One aspect of life back then was the freedom we had to speak and to hold opinions. Whilst it was true that announcing you had just been promoted to Grand Wizard of your local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan was not a great ice breaker, having views that differed from the line of the BBC was not considered controversial. When it came to religion nothing was really off limits.

Now consider the world we live in now, look at the hysteria following the result of the EU referendum. I live and work in London, the Brexiteers I work with had to put up with quite awful comments and accusations. One girl in my office, a well educated girl, felt she had free reign to shout and scream all sorts of names at people. Fortunately one of my colleagues (a Remainer) had a quiet word with her manager who managed to shut her up. All the London Brexiteers I have spoken to have had similar experiences, we live in a world where we have to keep our beliefs to ourselves whilst others feel entitled to bully everyone else into accepting their sanctimonious world view. Let’s not even get started on the inability to criticise Islam – but funny how you can say what you want about Christianity. Hmmm…

As a joke I nicknamed the girl in the office Polia after Polia Nikolaenko, the “heroic denunciatrix of Kiev”, from the time of Stalin’s purges in the 1930s. Thanks to Polia’s sterling efforts about 8,000 people were sent to the gulags or slow death in an NKVD dungeon. In my case the denunciations normally involved being called a xenophobe – xenophobe because there was absolutely no hope whatsoever of making the racist slur stick. This is not to suggest we are experiencing some Stalinist purge, I do have a sense of perspective- but to point out that the infrastructure is already in place for one.

A few days ago Alastair Campbell, a former Downing Street Press Secretary, tweeted that people who disagree with climate change should be locked up. Personally I am not in the climate change denial camp – but the fact that someone like Alastair feels emboldened to make this demand is just a tad worrying, more troubling is the silence of the elite media over his sinister words, nope not a peep. You can be sure Alastair will continue to be paraded as a regular political pundit on national TV enjoying the same immunity that so far has prevented any serious questions being asked about his involvement in the invasion of Iraq.

In a similar vein Guardian Journalist Owen Jones (who loves to portray himself as a defender of the working class) has also been particularly active in the ongoing Momentum purge taking place in the Labour Party. Owen seems to be doing a great impression of Squealer from Animal Farm by rejoicing at the moves to de-select Kate Hoey and Frank Field – two MPs respected across the spectrum for holding reasonable middle of the road views on things.

This is now the age of the denouncers and the squealers of what I call the Dark State of Liberalism. They have secured almost complete control of the elite media, ensuring that nearly everything we get to hear on radio, watch on TV or read in the legacy media has their voice only. The march of the Liberalists continues across social media. I live in Ealing, a major local story concerned the Marie Stopes abortion clinic and the long running ‘demonstrations’ outside. I am a fairly keen runner and the clinic is on the route of one of my runs so I am familiar with the anti abortion demonstrations – these mainly consisted of a Polish Catholic couple sitting outside offering leaflets. Of course the media would have you believe that the women heading to the clinic had to fight their way through a six deep Spartan Phalanx.

Ealing Council took the deeply worrying step of prohibiting demonstrations within 100 metres of the clinic. My local Facebook page was triumphant – the few people like me who question the morality of abortion as a form of birth control tried in vain to point out that many of us are troubled by abortion and deeply troubled by losing our right of assembly. Naturally we were denounced and hounded for daring to point out that a large number of abortions are repeats i.e. multiple abortions from the same mother.

The relentless march of Liberalism has moved directly into our lives, few of us that hold a different world view are able to speak freely and in time I am sure those few will succumb. Those of us who remember a world where we shared a common culture and language, a world where political views could be expressed and religion rightfully criticised are now being intimidated into silence. Silence however is not enough for the Liberalists, we are required to state things as fact that we know are untrue. I have written before to share my concerns about the real purpose of the transgender narrative, it seems designed to create conditions where it is heresy to point out that nature is not gender fluid when it comes to Homo Sapiens i.e. there is male and there is female and that is it. Give way to this narrative and we face an Orwellian future where two plus two equals five.

I do not identify as a Populist, I reject any ideology in the same way I reject religion, I have concluded that both reveal an inability to think freely and independently and hinder the ability to construct a model of the world based on what is directly experienced. My views, ones that I freely expressed twenty years ago are increasingly becoming heresy – how has this happened so quickly and how much worse is this going to become? Is this the purpose of the poisonous identity politics to set the young against the old? To remove all trace of the people who remember a better world?

My heresy is that I wish to live in an independent democratic nation state, a nation where one is able to think and speak freely, one that is not menaced by a Dark Age cult. How on earth have these beliefs become a thought-crime? We have drifted so far from the country I was born into.

Squealer’s penalty shoot out

If I lived in a country that enjoyed a benign establishment committed to protecting its people I would probably write blogs on one of my passions in life – sport, team sports in particular. I therefore find it a happy coincidence that my addiction to the football world cup has brought into sharp focus the sneering attitude our establishment has for this country and its people.

Since the world cup started I have watched every game either live or the recorded highlights. Being a particularly sad individual I watch the England matches live and the extended highlights. The knockout game against Columbia was a particularly tense affair, given the torment of extra time and penalties I do wonder sometimes why I put myself through it, watching England is more of an ordeal than a pleasure.  For once England won a world cup game on penalties and I went to bed shortly after almost collapsing with nervous exhaustion.

The next day on the train in to work I checked my Twitter feed as I do most days but I found myself ignoring the Brexit conversations and instead focused on the football feeds. Mostly jokes and memes but one drew my attention mainly from the angry responses it generated.

As the social media joke goes – that Tweet aged well. Kevin Maguire is a journalist and associate editor at the Daily Mirror, Kevin is a pretty committed Labour supporter. In many ways I can understand the trajectory of his career, a working class background, grammar school education which took him to University and from there a career as a journalist. No surprise there that he would support Labour, what I struggle with is the disdain he has clearly shown for his fellow countrymen.

Now Kevin is entitled to his opinion and I defend his right to express it, in fact I am pleased he did on this occasion because it helped crystallise my thoughts. You see Kevin’s views are not only acceptable to our establishment; they conform to their way of thinking. Kevin’s tweet was an affirmation of the utter contempt they have for the working class – and in particular the white working class of this country. In Kevin’s case I have a special dislike for him, he is working class but he has decided to become a Squealer, the propaganda minister in the book Animal Farm.

Put aside Brexit, the effects of mass immigration, the ever present menace of the religion of peace – here is the real threat to us, almost the entirety of our establishment are made up of people that think like Kevin. We now have a self perpetuating system of people that hate their own country and its people that now run our media, our judiciary, civil service, academia and political system. To flourish in any of these sectors you must conform to a certain worldview.

This is a worldview that denounces and increasingly imprisons those who try to speak out about Muslim rape gangs. One where the EU is some wonderful harmonious project and those that don’t quite see it that way are ignorant xenophobes whose votes are ill informed and therefore to be ignored. It is a worldview that seeks to extinguish the British as a race but cruelly brands them as the racists for the crime of trying to ensure their children grow up in world with the freedoms and security they enjoyed as children, not one menaced by a violent Dark Age cult.

People are of course entitled to their opinions and these must be protected if we wish to live in a free country – but what nation, what system or organisation could possibly survive where its upper echelons despise it and wish it to fail? Would shareholders allow a company to be run by someone that constantly bad mouths its products and ceaselessly plays mind games with its employees? Would the chairman of a football club persist with a manager who psychologically undermines his players and champions the virtues of other teams?

But this is where Britain is now, a cabal that despise the country and its people now run it, their corrosive narrative bouncing backwards and forwards within the echo chamber they have created, creating a growing crescendo with each self affirmation on how right and virtuous they all are. The humble voices of the people of this country, their victims, unheard in the main, the few leaders they produce to speak on their behalf denounced, ridiculed by a media that they alone control.

I care little for religion but I am very aware of a spiritual component of my nature, this aspect of me tells me it is foolish to hate people. So I don’t hate these people in the way that they hate me but I do hate what it is they do. If and when we leave the EU our country does at least have a chance of a better future but we are doomed if we continue to allow such people anywhere near positions of power and influence. Surely loyalty to the country and its people must be a prerequisite for those who seek power? For our country to succeed in a post Brexit world the Squealers that sit above us must never be trusted with power ever again.

They must be removed, for good.

All hail the NHS

A well known political ploy is to release bad news at the same time as some other major issue hits the headlines. The past few weeks have seen a lot of media focus on the EU withdrawal bill, the World Cup and President Trump’s actions over illegal immigration. The announcement that the NHS will receive additional funding (from higher taxes) also dominated the headlines. Buried in all of this was the latest scandal from the NHS – the needless deaths of hundreds of patients at Gosport War Memorial Hospital.

A report authored by the former Bishop of Liverpool James Jones (who also ran the Hillsborough inquiry) found that of 1,500 deaths studied at the hospital 456 died following inappropriate administration of opioid drugs and possibly 200 more patients died prematurely as a consequence. The report named Dr Jane Barton, a GP who worked as a clinical assistant and found that she had been overprescribing opioids to patients from the mid 1990s. What is particularly disturbing is evidence that other professionals and managers at the hospital knew about it and not only did nothing; they bullied whistle blowers into silence. The matter has been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for consideration so we don’t know if Dr Barton was at fault, all we do know is that she was named and we also know that 456 people were killed. Whatever the truth of it, the calls from some quarters to consider this as a crime of mass murder I find hard to ignore – a simple test for you, don’t say 456 people died, say 456 people were killed as I have just done, then see how you think.

A rogue nurse or physician has a particular dread given the trust that is placed in medical professionals. Fortunately such rogues are rare and they are certainly not unique to this country. However they do seem to be able to operate more freely and thus kill more people if they work for the NHS. This is not the first time hundreds of people have died at the hands of the NHS, Between 1975 and 1998 Harold Frederick Shipman killed an estimated 250 people most of whom were elderly women. Shipman’s murderous activities were not halted by anyone from the NHS; it was John Shaw, a taxi driver who reported to the Police that he suspected Shipman of murdering his patients.

The Alder Hey scandal although not involving the deaths of patients provides a further example of how malpractice flourishes within the NHS. Professor van Velzen retained organs from children’s post mortems at the Alder Hey hospital without the consent of the parents. The anguish this caused to grieving parents who yet again had to attend a beloved child’s graveside is unimaginable but a troubling aspect is that there were already concerns about Professor van Velzen before he was appointed to the post, perhaps what is worse there was no monitoring of his performance thereafter.

Once again it was not the NHS that halted Professor van Velzen’ s pitiless practices, it was the determination of Helen Rickard who lost her 11 month year old daughter (who died undergoing open heart surgery). Helen demanded to see a copy of her daughter’s medical notes and found out that the pathologist had retained her daughter’s heart. This took place at a different hospital – the Bristol Royal Infirmary but thanks to Helen an inquiry was set up that uncovered what was going on at Alder Hey.

The Gosport report was not the result of any action from the NHS it was the result of campaigning over two decades by the families affected. The NHS not only seems incapable of intervening where medical malpractice is concerned it does its utmost to conceal it, to punish those who to speak out and to protect the perpetrators. How many more examples do we need before people realise the NHS is not the shining guardian of the nation’s health it would have us believe?

In an earlier blog I argued that whilst I support the provision of universal healthcare, I maintain the NHS is one of the worst systems that could be designed to deliver it. Spain and the Netherlands are two examples of countries that have much better systems – and much better outcomes for their patients. Yet here we are – throwing more taxpayer’s money at a system that systematically kills hundreds of its patients and carries on as though there is nothing wrong.

Of all the countries in the world that have adopted universal healthcare not a single one of them has copied the NHS model but rather than considering a different approach our politicians have weaponised the NHS, Labour sees it as some form of medical Stormtrooper to be sent into battle in every election campaign, the Conservatives too timid and too weak to touch it for fear of a public backlash.

I doubt the money being given to the NHS will much to improve patient outcomes, more likely is that some of it will be used to hire even more Diversity Managers and LBGT Outreach workers, even more will be wasted providing services to people who are not entitled to it and right now, right this minute at a hospital near you people are dying before their time, killed using our money, killed by a bureaucratic machine that has a dark heart.

And that girl had a wooden leg – how the Dark State media lie to you

For some time now I have been observing the way the establishment and their mouthpieces in the elite media manipulate information. To a certain extent I think this manipulation can be beneficial to a society, the AIDS campaign during the 1980s managed to scare the pants off (or should I say pants on?) the entire nation but I am quite sure many lives were saved as a consequence. I would also accept the argument that in times of war a Government has the right to misinform or conceal information that would harm the war effort. Perhaps more borderline is the observation many historians have made about the way journalists covered the war in Vietnam, whilst high command had learned to button their lips, the war was presented to the free world as unwinnable. Some have long argued the war was lost on TV screens at home, personally I feel the press for once did their job and told the world what was really happening and helped shorten the war and saved thousands of lives on both sides.

So having accepted that in certain circumstances a Government has a level of justification for misinformation then where is the line to be drawn? For me the two examples of protecting public health and the prosecution of war could be justified but I have a real problem when a government is not at war or trying to protect the public from a biological threat. I have a really big problem when Government misinformation is used instead against the interests of the people it is supposed to protect.

You may recall the confected outrage over the treatment of the so called ‘Windrush’ people. The name comes from one of the first boats to arrive in the UK bringing people from the Caribbean to British shores to start a new life here. I have no particular issue with the event, I went to school with some of their children, they formed part of my life. My focus is on how their story was manipulated to achieve something else. Quite clearly some of them had been unfairly treated and most decent minded people accepted this and wanted it put right. However I would believe that our establishment deliberately threw some of them under a bus to orchestrate something else. The story was whipped up in the media and a cabinet minister was forced to resign – the narrative of a ‘hostile environment’ in terms of the Home Office attitude to immigration was subtly planted in our minds.

Having managed to create a media storm over the affair and generate a sense of misrule within a Government department the path was clear to appoint a new Home Secretary, one who could now implement a softer approach and begin to remove the few remaining controls we had over illegal immigration throwing open the gates to the biggest source of illegal immigration to the UK, student visas from the Asian sub-continent. This I think was the real intent of the Windrush saga. The past week or so has provided yet another example of this form of manipulation. A mother was prevented from bringing cannabis oil into the country, the oil was to be used as a treatment for her child who suffers from terrible convulsions, she maintains the oil alleviates the condition. The Home Secretary (the same one removing our border controls) issued a special licence to permit her to have the oil which at present is illegal in the UK.

It is difficult not to feel sympathy with the mother for bringing in an illegal substance to treat a sick child – after all what parent wouldn’t do the same? Yet there is something that does not ring true for me. Given our lax border controls what are the odds on the mother being stopped in the first place? After all she hardly fits the profile of a drug smuggler. Why the rush to issue the licence? Why issue a licence when there is little evidence that cannabis oil has any therapeutic value for any ailment?

Yet the story unfolds, William Hague, the former Conservative Party leader quickly follows up with comments that the war on cannabis has been lost (as though it was ever fought). Cue now a manufactured debate about the legalisation of cannabis (which inevitably will lead to legalisation of all illicit drugs). It is worth pointing out that as a younger man I was familiar with cannabis – and a few other drugs besides. I stopped many years ago, I did not like the lifestyle changes cannabis brought, I became lazy and self-obsessed, happy to withdraw from the world into the comfort of an artificial drug induced one. I saw with my own eyes the damage drugs did to some of my friends, I remember a friend breaking down in tears before me crying ‘Charlie’s got me by the b*lls and there’s nothing I can do’. Drugs are bad, drugs are very, very bad and only the bad or the deluded would want them legalised.

Sadly there is a very vocal, very influential group of bad / deluded people that have sought to legalise drugs, some because they have no concept of the damage drugs do to the poorest in our society, some because it is that very damage they seek to achieve.

The manipulation technique follows a pattern, don’t tell people your real intentions, find a human interest story instead – a young child at a refugee camp in Calais, a sweet girl in a wheelchair from Syria. Tug on the nation’s heartstrings, create a media storm that something must be done then quietly implement what you really wanted to do under the guise of reacting to ‘public pressure’.

The events in America over the past few days are directly from the Liberalists playbook, President Trump, who has a democratic mandate to control illegal immigration, has been vilified by the elite media for separating families. Whilst I would agree he does appear to have been a bit heavy handed, pictures of children in cages have not been used to attack his approach – they have been used to silence anyone who thinks nations must control their borders or they cease to be nations. Notwithstanding the fake hysteria it is the sheer hypocrisy of the Liberalists and their attacks that I find hard to stomach, shipping millions of military aged men across the Mediterranean Sea is separating families on an industrial scale but that’s OK because that’s a ‘Liberal’ policy? For real?

I have forgotten the name of the movie but I remember a scene where a man is presenting an inspiring story to an audience describing the triumphs of a little girl, he concludes to his audience ‘and that little girl had a wooden leg’. The film was a comedy, the speaker later confided he had made the story up but the scene perfectly captured how we can get manipulated by the use of a personal tale that touches our hearts.

This is how our establishment and the elite media work against us – so beware the next time you hear a little girl with a wooden leg story. Something else is going on and it almost certainly is not to our benefit.

 

Tommy Robinson – criminal or dissident?

A couple of years ago I went with some friends to see an exhibition at the Royal Academy of the work of the contemporary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Ai is held in high regard within art circles and I did find many of his works interesting, although I was not particularly impressed by the way he sometimes destroys antiques and antiquities to create an artwork and I am certainly not convinced by someone who uses the work of an artisan to create a piece even if they are the inspiration. This is however beside the point, Ai Weiwei is also famous as a Chinese dissident. Ai grew up in China under Mao, in 1958 his father was denounced by the regime and his family sent to a Labour camp.

Ai Weiwei has long opposed the regime in China and used his art as a form of resistance. This aspect to his art I find much more engaging, few can doubt his bravery given the consequences of falling foul of the Chinese regime. An example of the clever way he uses art is a piece called Straight, made up of 150 tons of twisted steel reinforcement recovered from the rubble of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The story behind the exhibit is even more impressive; Ai felt that the Government was covering up the truth about how poor building standards had contributed to the death toll from the earthquake. Ai launched a Citizen’s Investigation and managed to compile a list of over 5000 people who had died in the earthquake, many as a consequence of corruption between local politicians and construction companies. Ai was arrested and beaten by the police so badly he later needed brain surgery.

I am struck by the parallels between the treatment of Ai Weiwei and the increasing number of arrests of activists in the United Kingdom. Set aside your views on some of them and consider this instead. Ai Weiwei broke the law, he broke the laws of the regime in China and as a consequence the regime moved against him – their laws legitimised their actions. I think most fair minded people are sympathetic to the cause of Ai Weiwei (and many other Chinese dissidents) because the only way they can express their views or question the regime is to break the law.

Now consider the recent case of Tommy Robinson. For clarity I am not one of his followers though I would defend his right to express his opinion – I just don’t like the provocative way he goes about it. Tommy was filming outside a court where a trial was taking place that had reporting restrictions. Tommy also had restrictions placed on him from a previous court case. The police arrested him for breach of the peace and a judge sent him to prison for contempt of court in respect of existing conditions.

From what I can gather Tommy is no angel, he had a recent run in with the law over a mortgage application. Tommy is not however a stupid man, he would have known the consequences if he had been arrested. This is at the heart of this post and the point I am trying to convey – for all his faults Tommy was prepared to go to prison, the deeper question is not why he broke the law, it is to ask why he felt he needed to?

We live in a country where the true scale and horror of Muslim rape gangs is being concealed by the establishment, at times it almost feels as though they are not only being concealed, they also enjoy some level of protection. Our media fails to do its job, one or two newspapers will run a hand-wringing piece from time to time but there is a consistent failure to ask the simple question – why is it that the followers of a particular religion seems to feel it is acceptable to operate in this way?

The victims of these gangs are mainly white working class (Sikhs are also targeted), yet whenever a working class person tries to speak out they are denounced and vilified, branded a xenophobe, a cruel label when it is they who are the victims of xenophobia not the perpetrators.

So ask yourself this – when the ordinary people, already reeling in the wake of terror attacks, are hearing of gang rapes of children happening all over the country, the perpetrators protected and their crimes ignored, are you really surprised when they turn to a brave individual like Tommy? When leaders no longer protect their citizens then they turn to people who can. When a State acts as though it hates its own people what options do you leave them?

We can call Tommy all the names we want to, we can join in with the smug delight of the bien pensants over his imprisonment, yet none of this addresses the perception both here and increasingly around the world that this country does not have a Government, it has a regime and this regime will brook no dissent, it is a regime that really does not like its people very much.

You don’t need to believe me, you can find out for yourself how the story was run on foreign news outlets, it doesn’t look good. Self righteousness on our behalf does not alter the fact that the Government and our media have lost the narrative. Put more bluntly it doesn’t matter what we may think about it if it is not how the rest of the world sees it.

So to all of those who are happy to see Tommy in jail I say this – why do you assume a regime that will willingly lock people up that it doesn’t like will always lock people up that you also don’t like? What happens when they start locking people up you do agree with? Because one day that will almost certainly happen if we say nothing.

Recently a statue of the suffragette Millicent Fawcett was erected in London; she is depicted holding a banner stating ‘Courage calls to courage everywhere’. Whatever your views on Tommy he did have the courage to try and get the truth about what is going on to the outside world and he has succeeded in that. He was arrested and convicted, yes he was, no argument about that, the question for us all is whether this makes him a criminal or a dissident?