Really, Mr. Redwood?

John Redwood posts on "The Death of Britain - revisiting old fears", a post in which he repeats the basic question I raised yesterday which was why have a government if it can't govern - but I digress. In his post Redwood writes:

"Some things I feared we prevented. We stopped the UK joining the single currency, despite Mr Blair’s enthusiasm. We stopped changes to the voting system for Westminster, though we have them for other layers of government.  We have checked regional government in England, defeating elected regional government and now starting to cut  back the unelected because it is a needless and unaccountable layer." (Emphasis mine)

So John Redwood believes that regional government in England has been checked? Perhaps, as with HS2, he believes all that he is told? Has he never heard of the Committee of the Regions? It would be worth his while to read this post from Ian Parker-Joseph (PJC Journal-IanPJ on Politics).


Regional government has not been checked; elected regional government may have been defeated but it still remains, being carried out by unelected regional government; and quangos may be being 'cut' (at questionable cost) but that too is a charade as it is just an exercise in moving 'remits'. From that BBC report:

"The NAO said departments had underestimated the cost of transferring functions from the axed public bodies to other parts of Whitehall."

Still, nothing like a little bit of spin is there - even from such a self-proclaimed eurosceptic such as John Redwood.


Just saying.................. 

 

Surely we cannot go on like this?

The Daily Telegraph reports that George Osborne told MPs that it may well be necessary for extra support to be provided by Britain to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the global fund to help stricken governments. We read in the Mail that Barroso is calling for Member States to contribute even more to the EU bail-out fund. Ian Parker-Joseph posts on why Member States are unable to reduce their spending and Pixijade posts a most telling graphic on the state of the UK's debt.


Elsewhere, in other news, the Mail breaks the news of the findings of a report, one commissioned by a group of ten Conservative MPs, on events since Britain's subscribed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The report can be downloaded from here (see foot of page) and on that page will be found the names of the ten Conservative MPs concerned. The question of Britain's acceptance of the ECHR is further complicated by the European Union's intention to join the ECHR in its own right; and on that last point Open Europe has a reasonable summary here.


What the above shows is that monies forcibly extracted from us in the form of taxation is being spent by politicians without any referral to those that are providing it - which makes a case for 'referism'; that any Chancellor of the Exchequer's budget is not fully under his control - hence a loss of sovereignty; that politicians, especially Conservatives, seem to speak without engaging brain whilst also seeming to have no idea how to clear debt. What a way to run a country!


All of which also shows that a debate on the type of democracy under which we live is long overdue.

Food for thought

As anyone who takes notice of what is happening around them will know, the European Union is attempting to 'harmonise' the rules on Value Added Tax and negate exemptions that are made for food, clothing and other 'essentials'.


This 'harmonisation' is the subject of an article in the Express by one Padraic Flanagan who writes that the proposals sparked outrage among politicians and public-spending campaigners who attacked the Eurocrats for trying to interfere in ­Britain’s tax affairs. "Trying to interfere in Britain's tax affairs"? Just where have these politicians and public-spending campaigners been for the last heaven knows how long? Trying to interfere - for heavens sake, they are interfering and intend to increase that interference! It is sad to note a newspaper, one that proclaims it is leading the campaign for Britain's cessation of EU membership, treats this subject in what can only be described as a superficial manner.


It is also ironic that on the day the Express publishes that article, the Daily Telegraph publishes an article on the increase in the subsidy of MP's food and drink budget. It has always amazed me that when the average income is circa £20k, those with an income of £65k+ are able to enjoy a level of cuisine about which the public can only dream - likewise the cost. But hey, I suppose this is another facet of representative democracy...........


Just saying......................again.

Wheels within wheels

Fausty today posts the question whether it has been noticed how militarised the United Kingdom is becoming. She also asks the obvious question whether Theresa May is acclimatising us to being 'policed' by the military; does she and the other politicians temporarily in charge of our democracy realise what they're doing and if so, why are they doing it? If not, why are the cretins still in charge?


That the future of our nation is no longer in the hands of our politicians is best explained by referring to two related posts by Ian Parker-Joseph; this, first published in 2009, from which:

"The EU idea of European Defence is more akin to that of the old Soviet Union’s, that of ‘taking care’ of internal dissenters, keeping the people harnessed, civilian interrogation methods, militarisation of the police, smudging the lines between civilian and military and the use of the military in internal scenarios."

and this published in 2010, from which:

"Lets go back in time a bit. Back to the days when Tony Blair ruled supreme in the UK, and not long after the horrendous events of 9/11. The UK, like most other western nations started to implement a flood of anti-terror legislation. But who wrote it? (it is all virtually identical in just about every country), and who checked to see if it was being implemented properly."

Do read both posts as they are, with anything that IPJ publishes, informative and they lay bare information that never gets to appear in our supine MSM.


Theresa May, who like her colleagues is but one of Les Marionettes de Bruxelles, knows damn well what she does and why she does it. As to why, as one of the cretins, she is where she is can only be explained by the fact that the public have not the faintest idea what is happening behind their backs - political 'transparency' only goes so far, after all.

Coup - look at this!

That our Parliament, MPs and democracy is a sham behind the facade of which the first two condone, through what can only be described as a Quisling attitude, the undermining of the third, is ironically on show today.

Item 1: Today's Order of Business in the House of Commons contains a debate the EU budget for 2014 – 2020. The European Commission has called for a 5.9% increase in 2014-2020, but the BBC reports that the Treasury has estimated this amounts to an 11% increase on current contributions, thus increasing the UK’s annual contribution to the EU by £1.4 billion. The Commons will also debate a Treasury proposal to object to the EU’s proposals on capital requirements for credit institutions and investment firms, as it proposes maximum limits and wouldn’t allow the Government to impose additional requirements on UK banks. For our 'sovereign' Parliament to spend a maximum of 1½ hours debating the first matter - plus the additional time for the second - when, whatever their decision, they cannot affect any budget increase, or any change to capital requirements, proposed by the EU Commission only bears witness to the truth of the statement contained in the first paragraph of this post.

Item 2: Ian Parker-Joseph, in his post today, also illustrates the sham that our Parliament and MPs have become when he homes in on the editorial in today's Daily Telegraph which highlights the creation of what IPJ correctly calls a Politburo. David Cameron and George Osborne have been adamant that the eurozone countries should come together to resolve their problems - and that suggestion is, I would aver, about to come back and bite them.

Not known much is the fact that the The Lisbon Treaty, in addition to expanding qualified majority voting (QMV), substituted the current voting weights in the Council with new ones based on the population sizes of the member states. These new rules are not yet in force – coming into force in November 2014 (with an option for a state to request a vote follows the old rules until April 2017 - an option the UK may well take). In addition to changing the voting weights, to the benefit of the larger more populous states, the rules also reduce the qualified majority required to pass an EU law from 71% to 65%. These two measures mean the UK will no longer be able to muster a blocking minority with the help of smaller non-eurozone states when the 17 eurozone members vote as a 'caucus', as they surely will do. Under the new rules a group of states needs votes from countries representing 65% of the EU population and the eurozone as a whole already have 66% on their own, giving them a permanent inbuilt majority.

So our self-proclaimed voices of sovereignty wasting 1½ hours of their time - although it could be said that, besides wasting all of their time, they are a complete waste of time - discussing aspects of our governance over which they have no say is indeed ironic, but at the same time extremely sad to witness.


Update: IPJ also Mary Ellen Synon who gives further proof that the EU stinks - an aroma that is now permeating our own government!

Communitarianism

"Either you think – or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you."
F. Scott Fitzgerald

An excellent article by Whig, on the Adam Smith Institute website, highlights how the 'voluntary' sector is being subsumed into the state as a voice of the state, thus enabling the continuance of social engineering to be accomplished.

According to Wikipedia "Communitarianism" is an ideology that maintains the responsibility of the individual is to their community, emphasizing the family unit. The European Union and politicians have usurped this and applied it in order to further their own ends - in other words they intend us to believe we are all one community and of one family and that our responsibility is to them and the state. We can call this communism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, or any other name you may wish to apply, but at the end of the day it boils to down to one word: 'control' - control of the people and their minds. Ian Parker-Joseph uses the term 'Marxism', a post in which he mentions Cameron's 'Big Society' idea, an idea that continues the subservience of volunteers in that each group of volunteers will have the 'assistance' of the government in the form of a minister or bureaucrat to 'guide' them.

The people of this country are in the process of being brainwashed to ask only those questions the political elite will allow and are, at the same time, being programmed to see every political decision as one that is unquestionably correct. This brainwashing, or social engineering, has now reached a stage where it appears that Britons are no longer able to see what is happening to them and their country.

As I have posted previously, the media are complicit in this process of brainwashing, or social engineering, because if the public does not receive all the information required for them to make an informed decision on any particular subject, it must follow that some form of news censorship is taking place. Whilst the media deliberately 'overlook' some news stories, or cover them superficially, others are covered to distraction - the latter which may be termed as 'junk news'.

That our governments both at home and abroad are making it a crime to have an opinion, limiting our freedom of action and choice, are themselves committing a crime- and it is about time that the people of this country exercised their right of making a citizen's arrest.

Just saying..................

Fe-fi-faux-fum

I smell the blood of an Englishman - and blood there may well be some time in the future when the people will, no doubt wake up far too late, regardless of what may be thought by others.

It is conference time again and where the Conservative Party are concerned that means a change of attire, whereby the don their 'anti-EU' garb in order to impress fool the electorate yet again. As Richard North, EU Referendum, so rightly says, this story is nothing but another attempt to make the Conservative Party appear anti-EU, something which we know to be the exact opposite bearing in mind the words of his Party Leader who has stated that out future lies in continued membership of the EU. In order to ensure that EU memebership does not become 'the' topic of the Conservative Party conference we get this article from the BBC featuring a plea by Nick Boles that the topics with which the British public are most concerned about are growth, jobs and the rising cost of fuel, not their little petty obsessions. The fact that the rising cost of fuel can be laid at the very door of those about which he does not want his party to become obsessed illustrates just what a narrow and small mind Master Boles possesses - but hey, fairs fair, he is but a Conservative politician. With regard to Boles, it has long been held that he is the unofficial mouthpiece of Cameron - presumably the 'bottom' one - so anything that Boles says can be taken with the required sheets of Andrex.

During the run-up to the Conservative Party conference we have been presented with an 'alternative' view of what that party should stand for with the publication of a paper authored by Dominic Raab, Andrea Leadsom and others. Lo and behold, yet another view has been authored by Graham Brady, Geoffrey Cox, Edward Leigh, Colin Moynihan, John Baron and David Davis. In his introduction to this new 'alternative' view of what the Conservative Party should stand for John Redwood uses the word 'we', so one can but presume he is in full agreement with its stated aims. Redwood writes:

"We want affordable and effective government, doing those things which only government can do. We prefer our government to be more enabler than provider. We like government to remember that the best answer for most people most of the time is that they be left free enough to take responsibility for their own lives." (Emphasis mine)

We all know that government can 'do' squat diddly, as they have demonstrated time and time again, so it must surely be that government butts-out of trying to 'do' anything - other than that which the people have said they want done. To state that government should be more enabler than provider is but code for allowing people to do whatever they want, providing our elected dictators have permitted same. As for the part in which Redwood states that people should be left free to take responsibility for their own lives, then why the hell is he a proponent for government?

That Open Europe has long been held as a mouthpiece for Cameron's vision of EU membership is amply demonstrated by this post. For an organisation which appears to pride itself on the research papers that it produces, it is totally amazing that they fail to mention that which Richard North highlighted, namely the hand of Blair. At the same time, whilst FactCheck are correct when they write:

"Given this dubious evidence base, Mr Duncan Smith’s comments are going to stay firmly down at the Fiction end of the FactCheck-o-meter for the time being."

it would seem that they need to get the full facts.

If the Conservative Party 'faux eurosceptics' really wished to 'stir the pot' then they would be discussing this snippet of news, one supplied by Ian Parker-Joseph!