The Budget: An 'act' for blaming the British people and interfering in all their affairs in order to distract attention from the real causes and the true remedy of this nation’s financial predicament.

"People constantly speak of  'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men." H.L. Mencken

So passes yet another Budget day beginning with the Chancellor posing at the door of No11 with his Red Box, then proceeding to the House of Commons where he reads out a speech containing what amounts to a pack of lies, where upon the Opposition then get their attempt to also spout lies in rebuttal. During this entire process the remainder of the House of Commons behaves like a pack of kindergarten schoolchildren, requiring the obligatory admonishment from their headmaster. This is politics? For heavens sake, we could stick a load of monkeys in a cage and get the same result for far less cost.............. Oh, wait....................


I do not propose to comment on the Budget detail; there are far better qualified than I who can do that, however the Mail seems to have picked up a few salient points which are worth reading. Likewise Open Europe blogs on a little noticed fact in the Budget of a massive discrepancy for the UK’s net contribution to the EU, compared to the figures produced in the pre-budget report back in November. While I have to admit having missed the first 20 minutes of Osborne's speech however I do not recall any mention of that nugget, nor can I spot any mention on Hansard.


Why do we allow ourselves to be put through this charade? Why do we allow politicians the power to extract money from our pocket time and time again, then complain about the fact on each and every occasion? I am now going to take extracts of a speech given by Enoch Powell on 11th May 1968, at Chippenham, when he spoke against yet another Prices and Incomes Bill. Powell believed that Bill had been mislabelled and his suggested replacement title is just as applicable to Budget speeches by Chancellors of the Exchequer; namely that of the heading to this post.

"We live in an age of conspiracies. They are far more successful and well-managed conspiracies than the conspiracies of history. Perhaps the improvement in efficiency is one of the benefits which we owe to the technological revolution. At any rate, the age of the old-fashioned conspirator is no more. He no longer gathers with his fellows in tiny groups, admitted by password to huddle round a dark lantern in a dingy garret. Today the conspirators sit in the seats of the mighty, at the desks of Ministers and editors; they live in the blaze of continual publicity; their weapons are the organs of opinion themselves. The politics of the last few years have been little more than a series of conspiracies conducted by the politicians and the Press against the common sense of the public. They have for the most part been brilliantly, audaciously successful. Opposition, criticism, questioning have been beaten into the ground, not by force but by something much more efficacious: by tacit agreement on the part of those who speak and write to speak and write the same kind of nonsense, year in year out, until ordinary men and women no longer dare trust their own wits but give up the struggle and deliver themselves passively to the guidance and domination of their betters. The Higher Nonsense is a mightier instrument of mass  repression than machine-guns, grapeshot and cavalry charges ever were. The success has been so complete that we fail not only to be astonished at it, but even to perceive it........ 

..........Inflation with all its attendant evils, comes about for one reason and one reason only: the Government causes it. To say anything as plain as that is to arouse a chorus of imprecation. All the clever people start talking at once in a loud voice about ‘cost push’, ‘demand pull’, and ‘monopoly power’. But look who is doing the talking. If it is true that governments cause inflation and that the citizens are the innocent victims, who has the vested interest in denying it? Answer: governments themselves, and all those who thrive on an increase in the power and expenditure of governments. Governments, and their attendant host of commentators and propagandists, have executed what is perhaps the greatest confidence trick of all time, a confidence trick on a gigantic scale: they have caused inflation year after year, and at the same time persuaded everyone that somebody else was to blame. It is equivalent to stealing a man’s wallet and then getting him locked up for theft. The achievement is all the more remarkable because the facts are so blatant."

Enoch Powell provides an impressive, coherent and cogent argument for the introduction of Direct Democracy coupled with the element of 'Referism' (not, I hasten to add, he would have agreed). Have we not suffered enough from the actions of incompetent individuals who believe they know everything, but in fact know nothing? Has our country not been brought to its knees on more than one occasion by these incompetent individuals only for them to be saved by the efforts of the people they have misled? Has the time not come when we, the people, must inform these incompetent individuals:


Enough is enough. We will no longer waste time denouncing you, you are dismissed forthwith as yet another sad, bizarre chapter in our history and we vow never, ever, to allow your like to be reborn.


Update: Richard North, EU Referendum who appears to think the same as I do.

And that is why we are where we are!

"But I don't want to go among mad people", Alice remarked
"Oh, you can't help that", said the Cat, "We're all made here. I'm mad. You're mad!
"How do you know I'm mad?" asked Alice
"You must be", said the Cat. "or you wouldn't be here."
Lewis Carroll

Johannes Laitenberger, head of cabinet to the European Commission president, believes that the European Union, in it's quest for legitimacy, is on the right track as, other than the usual collection of nutcases and fruitcakes, it has the tacit approval of the unspoken majority. Anna Raccoon and Helen, over at Your Freedom and Ours, have posted their views on this statement by Laitenberger, to which not much else can be added.

Laying myself open to charges that what is probably the worst pun with which I have ever come up, 'May' I suggest where the question of our membership of the European Union - and our enforced adherence to the ECHR - is concerned, the Cat is right - do you 'Ken'? That our political elite are mad is no longer a matter of conjecture, however it is worth recalling the words of Albert Einstein who stated that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That, in a nutshell, seems to encapsulate the political thinking of the last few decades, where the continued political belief that we can change the thinking of the EU by remaining a member has become their accepted and so obviously mistaken, policy.

That the logical conclusion it is the people of our nation who are mad for allowing this madness to continue is unfair because the people have yet to be asked the most basic of questions, namely do we wish to continue our membership of the EU - and that the people won't be asked is a result of the democratised dictatorship that passes for our present system of democracy. In this context it is worth recalling words of G.K.Chesteron:

"Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget;
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;
You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:
Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.


The fine French kings came over in a flutter of flags and dames.
We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names.
The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down;
There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.
And the eyes of the King’s Servants turned terribly every way,
And the gold of the King’s Servants rose higher every day.
They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind,
Till there was no bed in a monk’s house, nor food that man could find.
The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak.
The King’s Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.


And the face of the King’s Servants grew greater than the King:
He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.
The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey’s fruits,
And the men of the new religion, with their bibles in their boots,
We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,
And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.
We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;
And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.


A war that we understood not came over the world and woke
Americans, Frenchmen, Irish; but we knew not the things they spoke.
They talked about rights and nature and peace and the people’s reign:
And the squires, our masters, bade us fight; and scorned us never again.
Weak if we be for ever, could none condemn us then;
Men called us serfs and drudges; men knew that we were men.
In foam and flame at Trafalgar, on Albuera plains,
We did and died like lions, to keep ourselves in chains,
We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not
The strange fierce face of the Frenchmen who knew for what they fought,
And the man who seemed to be more than a man we strained against and broke;
And we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke.


Our patch of glory ended; we never heard guns again.
But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in pain,
He leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched a cringing Jew,
He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.
Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house,
Come back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouse:
We only know the last sad squires rode slowly towards the sea,
And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.


They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.


We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia’s wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God’s scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget."

Either the people are asked or, to misquote Enoch Powell, I see the rivers of politics flowing with much blood.