Private Healthcare: Better Value For Money?

Rather amusingly, we now have the think tank “Reform” advising the coalition government to push through their planned health bill regardless of the opposition, at the same time making it appear as though such advice is coming from a completely independent and non-aligned organisation that has no vested interest in the subject generally. Strange then that this same supposedly unconnected think tank (or should that really be lobby group?) continues to publicly refer to itself as independent and non-partisan, despite having been founded by Nick Herbert and Andrew Haldenby, both of whom are inextricably linked to the Conservative Party. Although they openly declare their mission to be the delivery of “better” public services through privatisation and de-regulation of such vital services, it is notable that their donors continue to include the likes of the General Healthcare Group, a “for profit” healthcare company and GlaxoSmithKline, a major commercial pharmaceuticals supplier, so quite how they have the nerve to declare themselves as independent or as non-aligned is a complete mystery to me?

There is no healthcare system on the planet that is perfect and I would challenge anyone to find one that delivers everything at minimal cost, largely because those two objectives are completely at odds with one another in terms of expectation and financial restraints. However, despite the proclamations of supposedly independent think tanks like “Reform”, the British National Health Service is still widely regarded as one of the better health models to follow and in terms of actual value for money certainly outperforms some of the more unproductive private systems that the coalition government would have us copy.

As part of their recent press release, or should that be public pronouncement, Reform was able to cite the case of one American healthcare company, Beacon Health Strategies, of Rhode Island, which managed to reduce costs and improve outcomes by concentrating certain operations and specialist services in a small number of “centres of excellence”. Well, “no shit Sherlock”, that’s brilliant!! Just give us a shout when they manage to do the same thing everywhere else in the US, instead of wasting trillions of dollars, as they do now.

Don’t you just get sick and tired of this rose-tinted view of the American healthcare model that proponents of the system keep raving about, but which when you look at it a bit more closely is little better than some of the world’s poorest banana republics. This will be the much vaunted private healthcare system that’s caused 51 million Americans to be without any sort of health insurance, about 17% of that country’s total population. This’ll be the private healthcare system that despite being the third highest expenditure in the world delivers some of the very worst outcomes; and regularly results in countless personal bankruptcies every single year. This is the private healthcare model that results in an increasing number of its citizens not being able to afford insurance, as year on year the costs of insuring themselves and their families gets higher and higher; and generally more unaffordable for the average man in the street.

Despite paying twice as much for healthcare as their modern day contemporaries elsewhere in the world, the US is reported to lag well behind other developed countries in terms of both infant mortality and whole life expectancy, conclusively exploding the myth that their particular private healthcare system is something that the rest of us should want, or even try to aspire to. Currently America is said to rank 42nd in the world in terms of life expectancy, even though it ranks highest both in terms of cost and responsiveness. In terms of overall performance, compared to any other developed country in the world, the US only ranks 37th, which is thought to contribute to the 18,000 unnecessary deaths that occur in America’s health service, each and every year. In a more recent study undertaken in the United States, it has been suggested that annually an estimated 45,000 Americans perish as a direct result of not having any sort of health insurance.

In comparison with of Europe’s leading economies, the United States is reported to spend twice as much of its total GDP on healthcare, 16% as opposed to the 8-9% spent in the likes of France, Spain and the UK, etc. However, because up to 70% of American health services are owned and operated by private companies (both for profit and non-profit organisations) there is a significant amount of waste and criminal fraud in the system that ensures less value for money in the US model than their European counterparts enjoy. According to some reports, in exceptional cases, healthcare costs in the United States can sometimes be billed to the private insurers at 10 times the basic cost of the medical procedures; such is the level of maladministration and fraud within the various systems. It has also been suggested that anything up to 50% of total health spending in America is accounted for by the top 5% of the population, indicating that healthcare there is rapidly becoming the province of the wealthiest members of society, with the poor and middle class increasingly disenfranchised by the commercially driven healthcare industries.

Interestingly, even though supporters and advocates of such wholly privatised health models point to the financial advantages that they are purported to bring, by way of efficiencies and savings, in actual fact a number of studies tend to suggest that even within these privatised systems there is extensive waste, with figures of up to 30% being quoted. Because commercial profit and/or future investment are deemed to be the driving forces behind such private healthcare services, typically monies made for providing such services tend to find their way into paying shareholder’s dividends, buying new equipment or buildings, improving staff salaries, or purchasing supplies, rather than directly into patient care itself. Notably, despite being one of the most expensive medical systems in the world, generally speaking American hospitals are thought to have fewer doctors and nurses per patient than does our often much maligned National Health Service, which delivers far better outcomes with much less financial investment.

Even both services are so different to one another and proponents of the American model would have our National Health Service privatised in a heartbeat, it is interesting to note the causes for the wholesale failure of the supposedly “superior” US system. Firstly, there is the endemic over-treatment of patients, resulting in vital resources being used to either carry out procedures that are not medically necessary, or that do not substantively add to medical outcomes (e.g. prolonging a terminal patient’s life for no good reason). Secondly, the system is undermined by a lack of co-ordinated care, where different health and social agencies fail to liaise with one another, thereby causing hold-ups within the system (e.g. bed blocking, etc). Thirdly, the American health system suffers from administrative complexity, where different departments and administrators lack the will, equipment, record-keeping, or systems to streamline a patient’s ongoing care and oversight. The fourth major hurdle to making the system efficient are rules that prevent agencies and healthcare personnel being able to communicate and interact with one another in the best interests of the individual patient. Finally, the fifth problem associated with the privatised American model is that of fraud. It is interesting to note that the first four problems identified within the US system are also appropriate to our own Health Service, with structures and systems being the underlying problem and therefore proving beyond doubt that the both public and private health models are almost inevitably beset by such issues, so private is no better or worse than our current system. The major difference arises when money comes into the equation; and bearing in mind that fraud is a major problem within the American system should be a warning to all of us that a potential pot of £60 billion per years will almost inevitably lead to criminality and corruption within a newly privatised or part privatised National Health Service, if it doesn’t do so already.

It is perhaps particularly ironic that while advocates of healthcare privatisation are trying to alter the basis and ethos of the British National Health Service, most independent health experts believe that the American models would do better to copy it. It has been estimated that the United States could offer every single one of its citizens comprehensive healthcare for far less than is currently being spent to cover just 80% of its population. Unfortunately, the private health lobby is so inextricably entwined with the offices of government and personal selfishness so deeply embedded within the national psyche’, most Americans would be aghast at the idea of implementing any sort of national service that might benefit anyone but themselves, so would rather pay “through the nose” for what is widely recognised as a “second rate” health service. So from that point of view I don’t think we need to take any lessons on healthcare from across the Atlantic.

Another healthcare system which is often suggested as a possible model for England is the part-privatised systems currently operating in the likes of France and the Netherlands. Once again both nations are reported to spend around 8% of their GDP on health, although both require that citizens pay particular amounts of money out of their own pockets, in addition to that which is taken through general taxation. From what I can understand the French model operates on the basis of doctors appointments, etc being paid for by individual patient, who then claims about 70% of that cost back from the state, which is all very well if you happen to have the money available in the first place. The Dutch model is slightly different again, being a mix of payments from the state (which is raised from general taxation), plus an obligatory (i.e. compulsory or mandatory) private health insurance policy that on average costs each Dutch citizen around 100 Euros per month. Although low income earners are largely exempt from having to have the compulsory private healthcare insurance, citizens earning in excess of that threshold are required to purchase their own private cover.

The Dutch healthcare system, introduced in 2006 combines two mandatory elements, the first being general taxation and the other compulsory health insurance, although according to a number of international studies does produce some of the best health outcomes in the world. However, a report in 2008, produced by Duke’s University, noted that despite its benefits such a system it also had a number of potential problems, most notably those of controlling costs and the almost inevitable problem of rising insurance premiums, which might potentially exclude certain, less well of, citizens from such a healthcare system as time passes. There was also thought to be an inherent danger with such a public/private healthcare model that costs would rise to such an extent that eventually such a system would not provide good value for money.

It is also worth pointing out that under the Dutch system, routine medical visits, such as a GP’s appointment, clinic appointments, etc are not free, as they are in the UK, but are paid for by the individual’s private healthcare insurance. Only Geriatric care, terminal illness and mental illness is covered entirely by the state, although given that many of these same future patients will have paid something into the mandatory insurance schemes anyway, it seems likely that costs may eventually be shared by both public and private schemes, as opposed to just the public purse. More positively though, most Dutch hospitals and health providers run their businesses on a not for profit basis, although as in the case with care homes and other such organisations in the UK, ultimately potential profits can be realised through conventional corporate loans, takeovers, buyouts, etc, so clearly the purpose of such businesses are not entirely altruistic.

Regardless of what purported independent think tanks like “Reform” might say regarding the future of our National Health Service, part or full privatisation is clearly not the answer to creating an efficient, cost effective or rational healthcare system. Nobody in their right mind would wish the highly expensive, discriminatory and inefficient American model on another country, not even their worst enemies. Even if you look at other alternative systems, such as the French, the Dutch, the Spanish, or anyone else’s, almost inevitably you’re going to find a healthcare system that has its own unique set of problems, simply because you’re not only managing people’s day to day health, but also more importantly their expectations.

The National Health Service of today is a far cry from that which was launched in 1947, when people had few expectations, other than to live as long as possible and in the best way possible. Today though, we have sections of society who expect to be molly-coddled from the cradle to the grave, but who choose to take no responsibility for their own personal health, safe in the knowledge that we have essentially created a safety net for all of their bad habits, be that smoking, drinking, living dangerously or eating excessively. The NHS is not broken, it doesn’t need breaking up and rebuilding, it is simply acting in the way any large organisation does, when it becomes unwieldy, over bureaucratic and poorly led, as has the American model. Perhaps if ministers used their time more effectively by figuring out how we can stop over-treating people, to help co-ordinate the various agencies that are supposed to work together, to cut down on the administrative complexity and to reduce the amount of legislation that currently binds our hospitals and care-givers, perhaps then the NHS might be able to be the affordable service that everyone wants.

NHS Reforms: Privatisation By Any Other Name

Quite why anyone should be surprised that the Tory’s and their Lib-Dem “lapdogs” are intent on privatising Britain’s last great industrial treasure, England’s National Health Service, is, quite frankly, beyond me. Having ravaged most of the nation’s industrial base, including mining, shipbuilding, utilities, transport and communications, the only great “cash cow” left for private commercial interests to pillage is Britain’s relatively cash rich health industry, which with the help of the Conservatives and their political allies, some of the bigger private health companies now believe is firmly within their grasp.

Rather than being at one with the British electorate over the NHS and the country’s future health needs, increasingly David Cameron, Nick Clegg and their Health Secretary, the chief architect of the planned reforms, Andrew Lansley, find themselves at odds with a majority of the general public, who along with the vast majority of health professionals, are all equally opposed to such sweeping changes in the way our health services are run. Even though the opposition Labour Party are making significant political capital out of the proposed reform, despite having allowed increased levels of commercial involvement in the NHS since 1997, their claim that anything up to 49% of NHS capacity and resources could be given over to the private sector, should be a wake-up call for anyone who believes that the NHS must remain free at the point of delivery for everyone, regardless of their means.

Even though most people recognise that the NHS could do better, the prospect of private healthcare companies being allowed to raid and plunder the vital resources of the English health service, for their shareholders benefit, fills most observers with dread; not least because of the real threat that such providers will not only seek to cherry pick the most profitable areas of the health services for their own corporate benefit, but will also use their newly acquired access to fatally undermine existing NHS institutions, thereby reducing choice to NHS patients. Of course supporters of the proposed health reforms defend the changes by claiming that a newly appointed regulator will be put in place to prevent any widespread “privatisation” or exploitation of health services, suggesting that it will operate in a similar fashion to the likes of OfGen, OfWat and OfCom. However, the only problem with such guarantees, is that although Britain’s electricity generators, water suppliers and telecommunication companies have undoubtedly improved the basic infrastructure of these industries since they were first privatised, all three have done so by imposing huge price increases on the British consumer. Sometimes bordering on being completely unaffordable for the poorest consumers, rampant price increases and excessive profit-taking have been allowed to thrive in these industries, simply because the various regulators don’t have the necessary powers to control these large private corporations, suggesting that any planned health regulator would fare little better, regardless of any government promises to the contrary.

Clearly with an annual budget in excess of £110 billion to spend on English health services, it is perhaps little wonder that numerous private healthcare companies are anxious to gain unlimited access to a market that is currently dominated by the publicly owned and fully accountable National Health Service. However, when one considers that the Cameron-Clegg coalition is currently looking to find savings of 20% from that headline figure then the real health budget figure is probably closer to £88 billion per year. An estimated 20% of that £88 billion is retained by the Department of Health for national services, meaning that the actual amount of money spent within the 150-odd Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities is around £70 billion per year, of which an estimated 60% is reportedly spent on staff costs. A further 20% of the £70 billion is said to be spent on drugs and medical supplies, whilst the remaining 20% is thought to be used to cover the costs of buildings, equipment, training, catering, etc.

Interestingly, according to some commentators, the £20 billion worth of “savings” being demanded by the coalition is significant, in that there is a suggestion that this money is being deliberately withdrawn from the national health budget, in a cynical attempt to purposefully “under-resource” the NHS, thereby strengthening the coalition’s case for further private investment, much the same as the previous Tory government’s did in the case of Britain’s former heavy industries. By withholding this £20, 40 or 60 billion worth of “savings”, it has also been suggested that these monies will subsequently be returned to the NHS, but only after the private healthcare companies have begun to involve themselves in England’s seemingly impoverished health service. That way at least, the Conservative Party will be able to publicly repay their political paymasters by offering them access to a multi-billion health fund, which has in effect been stolen from the English taxpayer in the first place, through the much criticised budget cuts.

Remarkably, England’s National Health Service is reported to employ around 1.4 million people, making NHS (England) one of the world’s largest single employers; and similar in scale to the likes of the Walmart Supermarket Group in the United States, the Indian National Railways and the Chinese People’s Army in terms of manpower. In England alone, the health service is thought to employ some 410,000 qualified nurses, 150,000 scientific, therapeutic and technical staff, 52,000 doctors in training, 40,000 General Practitioners, 37,000 Hospital Consultants, 24,000 Midwives, and 375,000 other medical support staff, as well as a further 200,000 infrastructure staff, who include managers, administrators, secretaries, etc. A significant number of these health workers will be almost certainly be part-time employees, although taken all in all, it is reported that these 1.4 million personnel help to look after the health and welfare of England’s 52 million citizens, with one million patients being treated by the NHS every 36 hours..

One particularly interesting factor, when looking at the various figures relating to the running and associated costs of the English NHS, is to see exactly where the money for staff wages or salaries is being spent each year. Significantly, some of the most avid supporters of the coalition’s proposed health reforms are thought to be an assortment of GP “commissioning” groups from around the country, who are the very same people that under Andrew Lansley’s reforms would have direct control over their own share of the £80 billion health budget, which is currently allocated to the various PCT’s and SHA’s, that will all be abolished under the planned changes.

According to a number of sources, many of these same GP Partnerships (those running their own private practices within the NHS) currently earn an average of around £100,000 per year, for an average of a 44 hour week, only 60% of which is thought to involve direct patient contact. It has also been reported that many of these same doctors can and do undertake additional out-of-hours work (formerly part of their standard contractual obligations), sometimes at a rate of anything up to £200 per hour. Additionally, on BBC Panorama programme, screened on Monday 20th September 2010, it was widely reported that there were in excess of 6,500 GP’s, currently being paid more than, the £142,000 a year, David Cameron earns in his role as British Prime Minister. Panorama also discovered that at least one General Practitioner, reportedly employed by the Heart of Birmingham NHS Trust was said to be earning an annual income of £475,000, another one £375,000 per year, while two others General Practitioner’s were said to be earning around £325,000 per year from their NHS contracts. An OECD report also found that British GP’s are paid twice the salary of their French counterparts, even though both nations spend equivalent percentages of their GDP on health services, which perhaps in part explains the parlous state of the NHS finances in England. Surprisingly enough, this situation has little if anything to do with the present coalition government that we now find ourselves saddled with, but is entirely as a result of the previous Labour government’s renegotiation of GP’s contracts in 2004, which not only saw a 30% increase in most GP’s salaries, but also a significant reduction in their hours of work, notably the out-of-hours they had previously been obliged to undertake as part of their contracts.

Yet another piece of research undertaken by the BBC was said to have found that seven of NHS England’s highest paid employees, were in fact GP’s. Although many might argue that GP Partnerships are in a sense private businesses, in that they employ their own staff, manage their own costs, etc, when one considers that a salaried GP (a doctor not within one of these private commercial partnerships) works an average of 39.5 hours per week, but only receives a basic salary of £58,000 per year, it seems to put Partner GP’s seemingly outlandish remunerations into some sort of context. Also, the argument that GP Partnerships have the added expense of staff, buildings, etc. would undoubtedly be a major factor in the hugely different wage scales, were it not for the fact that in most cases such private partnerships often involve a number of GP’s sharing such overheads, so such expenses are often minimised for the individual doctor. The very fact that a small number of GP’s are managing to operate more than one practice at the same time, by using locums, agency staff and salaried GP’s to help maximise the particular “owner’s” income from the NHS might well give an indication of just what the coalition’s new reformed health service will begin to look like in the future. That said of course, the fact that GP’s are more likely to be the core voter for the Conservative or Lib-Dem parties might well suggest that as much as anything, Cameron, Clegg, Lansley, et al, are in fact playing to the gallery with regard to the proposed health changes, believing that personal avarice will allow them to gain support amongst the GP lobby, most of whom will undoubtedly benefit from the new so-called commissioning groups. On this point it is worth considering a recent report, which indicates that anything up to 2.5 million patients are registered as being on various GP’s panels, even though they don’t actually exist, despite the fact that each of these individual surgeries are thought to be receiving a fee of £65 for each of these non-existent patients, at a direct cost of millions of pounds to NHS England.

As an addendum to this, it is also worth considering that a hospital consultant can earn anything between £75,000 and £100,000 per year from the NHS, depending on their grade and specialisation, in addition to any fees that they can earn through their own private practices. These same Consultants are also reported to be able to earn awards or bonuses ranging from £3,000 to £30,000 per year, suggesting that top performing specialists might earn anything up to £130,000 per annum from the NHS, not including their private practice earnings.

Although you don’t need to be a genius, or indeed a Member of Parliament, to recognise that the modern day NHS is struggling to cope with an ageing population, instead of managing budgets, so that this vital resource can then be exploited by those commercial enterprises allied to the various political parties, perhaps governments, regardless of their ideology should be managing peoples and patients expectations. Bearing in mind that the average life expectancy in 1901, just over a century ago, was 45 years for men and 49 years for women, one begins to see the basis for our much reported ageing population, along with the financial difficulties that such changes inevitably create. The major factors in determining our modern day longevity are increased infant mortality, lifestyle, housing, elimination of disease and advances made in medicine generally. Unfortunately, along with living longer, society has begun to see the associated downsides of people living into their late 70’ and early 80’s, with dementia, cataracts, hip replacements, knee replacements being some of the most common health ailments suffered on an almost daily basis.

Our lifestyles too are putting an increasing amount of pressure on our country’s limited financial resources, with obesity, alcoholism and smoking all causing a multitude of associated diseases and symptoms, which at one time would simply have been regarded as a personal lifestyle choice that individuals chose to pursue; and die from, but which now the NHS increasingly finds itself burdened by. Even though it has been calculated that NHS England budgets around £1900 for each member of the population, in reality the vast majority of ordinary people cost our health services absolutely nothing, as they never visit their GP or indeed a hospital, from one year to the next. Instead, an increasing proportion of the country’s escalating health budget is now being spent on maintaining patients that 50 or 60 years ago would almost certainly have died from their conditions, be that a heart attack, obesity, smoking, drinking, etc, but whose lives society now seems duty bound to prolong, at a substantial cost to the national exchequer and to the health service particularly.

Ever since the National Health Service was first conceived, governments of all persuasions have promised to make the service clinically driven, putting doctors and nurses at the heart of medical provision, something that all have parties have singularly failed to do. Instead of more doctors, nurses, carers and hospital beds, successive political administrations have simply tinkered with its management, adding layer upon layer of bureaucracy, which has done little to improve clinical performance, yet at the same time managing to fragment what after all is supposed to be a “national” health service. For all of the thousands of managers, administrators, executives, secretaries and bureaucrats who populate the 150 plus health bodies, even today millions, if not billions of pounds is wasted, simply because it seems beyond their wit to establish and run a centralised supply system, which perhaps explains why the NHS works so badly on a day-to-day basis. Maybe if central government and the Department of Health were to make a start in addressing their own organisational disasters and mistakes, there would be far less need to begin looking for substantial savings at the clinical end of the organisation.

Unfortunately, for a coalition government marked by its own political and economic ineptitude, most commentators believe that Cameron, Clegg and Lansley have invested too much of their own personal reputations to admit that their planned health reforms will be catastrophic, not only to the health service itself, but also to their own long-term political futures. However, given that they owe some of their limited electoral success to the funds provided by many of the private healthcare companies, which even now are lining up to raid a reformed NHS, it seems highly unlikely that Cameron, Clegg and Lansley will put basic morality and a duty of care for the English electorate, before the indebtedness they feel towards their political paymasters. Perhaps instead of trying to convince the general public that they are proposing these changes for the good of the people, Cameron, Clegg and Co should just be honest and call this new Health and Social Care Bill exactly what it is, the Privatisation of the English National Health Service.

Good Idea, Let's Take Britain Back To The Past

It wasn’t until I watching part of the BBC’s Question Time the other night that I was reminded about the proposed elected regional assemblies in England, an idea that was raised as a possible answer to Scottish devolution and the increasing uneasiness regarding the almost gradual dismemberment of the UK by both major political parties. John Prescott having jogged my memory that the idea of these planned assemblies had been rejected by voters in the North East, I was surprised to learn that not only had the idea been flatly rejected by voters living in the region, but the response had been so negative that proposals for ballots elsewhere in the country were very quickly abandoned. Apparently, the North East of England was the area thought to be most likely to adopt these new assemblies, so the fact that the plans were rejected by more than three to one, sort of suggested that if the argument couldn’t be won there, then there was no chance of winning public approval elsewhere. According to figures on Wikipedia, some 696,000 people rejected the idea of a new elected assembly, as against the 197,000 who thought it would probably be a good thing.

For most of those who rejected the proposed assembly their biggest concern was that any such body would simply be an expensive talking shop that would achieve very little, apart from creating yet another layer of bureaucracy, which would inevitably lead to higher costs and therefore higher council tax bills. Of course for the Labour Party, it was hoped that the establishment of these new assemblies might go some way to offset the effects of their wider devolution experiment, under which the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies have been created. For others though, the idea of regional assemblies smacked of a foreign system, where individual states, regions and provinces, operate independently, but still find themselves under the umbrella of a central federal government. At least one commentator noted that rather than moving the whole country forward, such regional bodies were simply a step backwards to the medieval period, when much of England was ruled by a series of appointed councils populated by the great and the good of the region, overseen by an antiquated feudal system that our country has quite rightly consigned to the history books. Likewise one might well make the argument that the forthcoming elected police commissioners and proposed professional mayors, such as Boris Johnson represents in London, are both in their turn throwbacks to the Sheriffs and Earls who dominated the towns of cities of England hundreds of years ago; and that have little place in our country today. Once again though, you could be forgiven for believing that these newly resurrected posts are simply populist imports from the United States and Europe, of which our current crop of governing politicians seem to be such huge fans.

One wonders just how far these experiments in regionalism, or localism will go before the entire project comes falling down around their individual architect’s ears, where people simply stop regarding themselves as British, or English, or Scottish, or Welsh, or Irish, but begin referring to themselves in territorial or regional terms, be that a Glaswegian, a Cumbrian, a Northumbrian, a Mancunian, etc. etc, etc. What chance for our country then, when we no longer have a national identity, where there is no commonality or link between the peoples of Portsmouth and London, between those living in Norwich and those who reside in Manchester, or between the populations of Birmingham and Glasgow? That master of disaster, Gordon Brown, bemoaned the fact that our country and its people no longer recognised or celebrated their “Britishness”, which shouldn’t really be any great surprise, given that successive generations of national politicians, including Gordon Brown, have worked so hard to undermine that national identity to begin with. After all, why should children growing up today celebrate a history, a culture and traditions that are largely unknown to them; and that are regularly attacked and vilified by politicians, commentators and educators alike? Why should anyone celebrate Britain, when the message seems to be that “Britishness” is bad; and that our country’s rich history is a blood-soaked one, marked by human exploitation, personal enrichment, divisiveness and cruelty to anyone that wasn’t British? Just who in their right mind would want to celebrate that sort of heritage anyway?

No-one should be surprised that the idea of “Britishness” or being British is a rapidly disappearing concept in the UK, or indeed that nationalism in Scotland, Wales and even to an extent in Northern Ireland is beginning to gain ground. In the face of increasing European-ism from the continent, championed by the likes of Clegg, Miliband, Blair, Brown and Cameron (yes, he of the proud Scottish heritage); and the recent antagonism caused by the apartheid messages of the SNP, it is perhaps little wonder that increasingly those that live in England now choose to refer to themselves in that way, as a way of reinforcing their pride in their nation. Quite whether national politicians are concerned about this slow but sure fragmentation of the UK is unclear, although purely from a electoral perspective it has been suggested that the Conservative Party (at one time a staunchly Unionist party) has much to gain from this political dismemberment of the country, because traditionally, Scotland and Wales tend to return more Labour Party representatives to Westminster than they do Tories. As a result, critics have implied that David Cameron’s Conservatives have much to gain from Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalism, which offers their party overwhelming political control of England’s remaining parliamentary constituencies and therefore the Westminster Parliament itself. Even though Cameron and his deputy, the equally Europhile Lib-Dem leader, Nick Clegg, have both dismissed the suggestion of electoral advantage as a consideration in any negotiations regarding Scotland’s proposed independence, the fact that one or both parties would be likely to benefit from purely English elections, should make us all question both men’s commitment to actually holding the union together. The very fact that Cameron chose to try and “bribe” the Scottish electorate into delivering a “no” vote for full Scottish independence, by offering the promise of further devolved powers, might well suggest that his intention was to either deliver Alex Salmond a hefty majority in the forthcoming ballot (thereby guaranteeing an independent Scotland), or to offer the Scottish Parliament such new powers that they would in effect be independent in all but name. It may well be the Coalition’s intention to create a Federal Britain by stealth, first by creating a fully devolved Scotland, then Wales, then Northern Ireland and finally England itself, a creation that would seem to fit in with the federalist principles of the European Union, which believes that no individual state is bigger than the community itself, unless of course you happen to be one of the chief architects of the scheme, such as Germany or France.

If indeed it were the case that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all became federal states, once again history would be repeating itself, restoring a situation that hasn’t existed for well over three hundred years, with England bordered by foreign nations to the north, south, east and west, states that have no cultural or national affiliation to us, save through sometimes tumultuous and antagonistically historic ties, as well as the offices of and the unelected officials from Brussels. One wonders just how accommodating the federal parliaments of a nominally independent Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland would be, in the event that their own national interests conflicted with those of the one at Westminster, especially if the will or the wishes of the European Parliament was brought into play?

It has always been the intention of the European Community to create a “federal” Europe, a single political and economic entity made up of nominally independent states, but where a single body or a central government has control over the individual supposedly sovereign territories. Had former French President, Valerie D’Estaing, had his way, we would already be a member of a formally identified European Federation; and it was only because of British objections that the word Federation was replaced with Community, in what one can only assume was an attempt to deliberately hoodwink people. According to experts on the subject, the only difference between the current “union” and a fully fledged “federation”, is that member states continue to hold the power to change various treaties; and that the EU lacks a real tax and spend policy (something that will undoubtedly change in the very near future in light of the continuing Eurozone crisis)

Although the idea of Britain becoming increasingly fragmented and therefore less influential in the world may seem fanciful, consider this, like it or not, it is in Europe’s long term interest for Britain and her population to become less resistant to further European integration. As one of the world’s leading economies, major military forces and biggest consumer markets, a Britain outside of Europe is not only harmful to the whole European experiment, but might be deemed to be a major obstacle to the ongoing expansion of what is in all but name a federalist bloc, one that has been designed to compete with the likes of America, China, India and Russia. Is it so fanciful perhaps, given that we now have very little say or control over the masses of laws, statutes and legislation that affects every aspect of our everyday lives. So fanciful that our international policies are being dictated by unelected politicians and presidents in continental Europe. So fanciful that our Armed Forces are now in such a parlous state that we have the smallest standing army since Queen Victoria was sitting on the throne. So fanciful that despite being an island state, we have few effective ways of projecting our military power across long distances, assuming of course that we can’t find a willing ally to lend us their territory. So fanciful in fact, that we now have to consider sharing the cost and expertise of our future weaponry with a continental neighbour, who has not only been one of greatest military allies, but also one of our foremost political enemies, depending on which way the winds of opportunity have been blowing at any given time. Its worth remembering that although the Entente Cordiale binds France and England together, another agreement, the Auld Alliance, pre-dates that and having an independent and belligerent Scotland in the north, allied to an antagonistic France in the south, was yet another one of the reasons that eventually drove England to seek a permanent union with our northern cousins, so for all that to be undone, really would be taking us back to the past.

David Cameron: Today's Neville Chamberlain?

When describing Britain’s political leadership during the 1930’s Winston Churchill later stated that it was “a long, dismal, drawling tide of drift and surrender”, which ultimately resulted in millions of deaths, worldwide destruction and a national shame that even after the allied victory in 1945, continued to linger whenever the word appeasement was used. Despite Neville Chamberlain being a decent man, who devoted the latter part of his life to public service, during which he introduced national legislation that benefited the everyday lives of millions of his fellow countrymen, in the end it was his policy of appeasement towards foreign tyrants that has defined his historical and political legacy, rather than any of his other great national achievements.

The current Tory incumbent of 10 Downing Street, David Cameron, is a decent man, no doubt, but sadly also seems to share his now infamous predecessor’s willingness to meekly accommodate his opponents, rather than confront them, when the UK’s national interests are at stake. Rather than confront his coalition partners with the realistic threat of electoral annihilation, in the event that they choose to oppose government policy, he compromises and retreats. In the face of Tory backbench rebellions, he first bullies and harasses them, blames his coalition partners, then offers compromises that he has no intention of keeping. In Europe, like Chamberlain, Cameron returned with his own agreement, this time the mythical and much publicised veto; that was actually nothing of the sort, but was in fact yet another compromise of sorts, that at some point in time he’ll no doubt try and sneak past the British electorate when they’re not paying attention. More money for the IMF to rescue the failing Euro experiment will be yet another compromise to be added to the list, just as soon as he and Gideon can find a form of words that will allow the new loans to pass through the Commons unscathed. The best compromise to date though is that offered to the Scottish electorate yesterday. Where a determined and worthwhile British Prime Minister might have confronted First Minister Salmond with a “have your referendum and be damned”, or even arranged for a legally binding ballot to be held on the matter, sooner rather than later, Cameron sought to bribe the Scottish electorate, by offering the promise of “Devo-Max”, but only if they vote no to full independence!

Quite why anyone within the Tory Party imagined that David Cameron would make a good Prime Minister beggars belief, unless of course he was only chosen for his background in PR and the similarly slick characteristics he shares with Tony Blair. At least poor old Neville Chamberlain had the excuse of confronting the likes of Hitler and Mussolini, much more serious and threatening adversaries who both had large military armies to enforce their demands, whereas Cameron is faced by nothing more threatening than a bunch of unelected bureaucrats, third-rate political partners and a nationalist cause that suddenly senses weakness at the heart of central government. Even today, some 70-odd years after the event, Chamberlain is still derided as an appeaser, an apologist, a man prepared to compromise international reputations and sovereign territories in order to avoid making those hard and inevitable decisions that came as part of the biggest job in British politics, that of Prime Minister. Sadly, to date there is little sign that David Cameron is prepared to make those hard decisions either, which begs the question, will his term of office be as short, ignoble and disastrous as his unfortunate Tory predecessor?

What We Need Is Salesmen, Not Greedy Profit Takers

If the current debate over Europe has done nothing else, it has at least made the people of Britain begin to question our country’s relationship with the wider world; and forced us to recognise some unpalatable home truths regarding the UK’s lack of manufacturing capacity, which has not only helped to tie us to the unholy alliance that is the European Union, but has fundamentally limited our ability to trade openly and competitively with the rest of the world. Despite what some may believe, Britain is still a nation of entrepreneurs, designers, engineers, builders, inventors and visionaries, but all too often they are creators frustrated by a lack of commercial insight, investment and infrastructure, the very resources that they need to bring their creations to life within the UK. As a result they are left with little option but to take their ideas, their designs and their innovative concepts outside of Britain simply to see them realised, built, or manufactured elsewhere in the world, so the even though the design itself is “Made In Britain”, the actual products are not. However, even though the lack of a credible and vibrant industrial base is one of the major factors affecting Britain’s ability to make things, it is also true to say that the British habit of unfettered and sometimes clearly unashamed profit taking by owners and investors alike has played an equal part in helping to ensure that the nations industrial capacity will never be rebuilt, unless steps are taken to curb the rapacious appetites of our modern day banks, investment groups, shareholders and business leaders.

According to a report issued by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), Britain’s current industrial malaise is not simply the result of the emergence of the newly industrialised BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China), whose development was a significant factor, but was also the result of commercial laziness, a lack of financial investment and a failure to provide effective representation for goods and products in these newly emerging markets, by British manufacturing companies themselves. Where once Britain had some form of commercial representative on every continent around the world, be they public or private, nowadays Britain’s manufacturers are largely left to their own devices to try and sell their wares to the world, a highly costly and often troublesome arrangement that most small manufacturing companies simply cannot afford to implement. For those larger multi-nationals with a stake in these emerging markets, or those government sponsored defence companies whose sales matter to Britain’s economy, no such financial restraints exist and as a result they are generally well represented in Russia and the Far East, as a means to gaining access to the lucrative contracts that will inevitably spring from the modernisation of these developing nations. Increasingly however, even though British manufacturers are gaining a fair share of the medium to high end technological equipment required by the likes of Brazil, Russia, India and China, this does little to help those numerous small to medium sized British producers who would like to gain access to the native populations of the BRIC countries in order to sell them British made products.

As a result many of these smaller manufacturers tend to stay within the confines of the European Union, which is not only geographically closer to their factories, but also offers the advantage of lower transport costs, no tariffs and well established trading relationships. Unfortunately, this reluctance or inability to trade with the likes of Brazil, Russia, India or China simply helps to preserve the existing status quo with regard to our country’s often troublesome membership of the EU, which will almost certainly persist, if British manufacturers and traders are unable to increase our trade with other non-EU countries, such as the BRIC’s, the Commonwealth, as well as North and South America. However, with most medium to large sized companies quietly content to maintain their generally trouble-free and highly profitable trade with their European customers, they generally have little incentive to invest both time and money in investigating new foreign markets; so as a result little is being done to claim a share of these new markets for Britain’s struggling industrial companies.

Sadly this is rather typical of the short-sighted commercial thinking that has come to dominate British industry over the past three or four decades, where minimal investment and maximum profit-taking, low risk and high returns, have typically become the order of the day. Allied to this stagnation in Britain’s manufacturing sector has been the evolution of the UK’s burgeoning financial sector, elements of which have been incorporated into the country’s official trade figures, as export and import services, as opposed to actual physical goods that are bought and sold around the world. It is thought to be increases in these non-manufactured goods that has helped to support Britain’s languishing export figures, helping to give the impression that the country’s export driven industries are in a far better shape than they actually are. According to the same BIS report, between 1998 and 2008, British exports in goods increased by around 72%, while exports in services increased by more than twice that amount, by 156%, illustrating the disparity between the sectors and the UK’s greater reliance on non-manufactured products. During the same period, Japan was said to have increased its exports by 100%, Germany by 176%, France by 100%, and the United States by 95%, putting the UK’s figure into some sort of perspective, at least internationally. However, all of these figures paled in comparison to the 700% increase in exports reported by China, which has become the main manufacturing engine of the world’s economy, often at a direct cost to the workforces of the United States and the UK. Much of the UK’s export in goods was thought to have comprised the previously mentioned medium to high end technological goods that are typically purchased by governments or large industries, typically aspirational equipment, rather than those utilitarian items bought by individual consumers, underlying the fact that it is Britain’s larger international companies that are managing to find foreign markets, rather than smaller British manufacturers, the ones that would undoubtedly add strength to the UK industrial base and create new opportunities and employment.

It is also worth pointing out perhaps that a reliance on services to support the country’s export figures might prove to be troublesome, given that such services are generally tied into the mood and behaviour of international markets, which as previous events have proved can be erratic and highly costly, as in the case of Lehman’s and the 2008 financial crash. Billions of pounds of investors, savers and taxpayer’s money was reported to have been lost, a situation that might have been less critical and cataclysmic had the monies in question been invested in real manufactured goods, as opposed to non-physical financial services like mortgages, insurances and future speculations.

In the decade 1998 to 2008 and despite the development of these new export services, Britain’s share of total world trade was reported to have fallen to 4% in 2008, from a figure of 5.8% in 1998, begging the question, what would have happened to that figure if Britain hadn’t had its growth in export services to support it. Over the same 10 year period Britain’s share of the world’s total imports had also fallen to 6.2% in 1998 to 4.5% in 2008 implying that our country’s impact on world trade was weakening, rather than strengthening, even though during 2007 and 2008 the value of sterling was said to have fallen, meaning that British made goods should have been more popular with overseas customers, but that wasn’t the case. When asked about this some 60% of exporters were said to have been reluctant to put more resources into exploiting sterling’s weakness to generate greater sales, a staggering admission from producers whose life-blood is supposed to be international trade. Out of these same exporters only 27% of them felt that a weaker pound was beneficial for their businesses, reinforcing the view that a large majority of Britain’s manufacturing were unwilling to exploit this opportunity, although the reasons for this remain unclear, although it is surmised that many preferred profit-taking to committing further financial resources to their businesses, seemingly an ongoing attitude amongst the UK’s business community.

At the same time the UK’s share of the world’s total export market has fallen from 5.3% to 3.1% between 1994 and 2009 indicating the seriousness of the situation that is facing Britain’s manufacturing companies; as well as the mountain they have to climb if they have any intention of becoming a major international trading nation in the near future. Even though the likes of Germany and Holland have followed Britain’s lead in producing medium to high end technological products for the world’s markets, more significantly both of these countries have retained their low to medium end manufacturing industries as well, giving them a distinct advantage over the UK, which has very little of this sector operating in Britain. Where German and Dutch businesses are willing to produce cheaper, better value for money products, the UK tends to go to extremes, producing cheaper goods that no-one wants, or expensive products that very few can afford, rather than copying the much more commercially successful Dutch and German models that are aimed in the middle, thereby attracting both ends of the price range. Even though the BRIC nations are reported to have bought up to 6% of Britain’s total exports at one time or another, in reality this is far from being a success story and much more needs to be done, to achieve the sort of double-digit figures that some of our European competitors regularly attain with the likes of China, Russia and Brazil, so there is still much work to be done.

Given that the BRIC nations on their own are widely expected to increase their economies as much as seven times that of existing ones (7 times the growth) then surely it makes sense for British manufacturers to be committing far more money and time into tapping the commercial potential of China, Russia, India and Brazil, rather than just taking the view that it’s all just too much trouble. Much of Germany’s industrial strength is centred on their production of heavy plant and equipment, a model that Britain would do well to copy if it has any intention of being equally successful in the years ahead. But perhaps Britain’s future prosperity is far too important to be left to the private commercial sector alone, who have clearly demonstrated their indifference to growth, while their current profit margins are deemed to be acceptable to bosses and shareholders alike. Maybe for Britain to be a truly successful manufacturing centre again, it will take direct government involvement to motivate and encourage private enterprise to look beyond our existing European borders, to see that there are huge business opportunities in the big wide world, but British business needs to go out and get it, before the competition does.

The Biggest And Longest Lie In Britain's Political History

And Britain’s apathetic population probably deserve everything they get, having allowed themselves to become immune and indifferent to the Europhile propagandist mood music that they have listened to and then learnt to ignore over the past 40 years or so. It’s hard to believe that we are the same nation of people who were quite prepared to stand alone during the 1940’s to confront a heavily armed European menace, yet 70 years later we wet ourselves over the prospect of being threatened by a bunch of biro-wielding bureaucrats, who wrongly claim that it’ll be the end of our country if we don’t agree to follow them over the edge of an economic cliff. Are we really still the country of Nelson, Wellington and Churchill, or have we simply become a nation of highly indebted, cringing lemmings who are content to follow their political leaders into the abyss, just because they tell them it’s the right thing to do?

Likewise, it is truly staggering and surely a source of national shame that so many people in Britain continue to believe without question the same sort of propaganda and outright lies regarding the costs of our continuing membership of the European Union that were first deployed in the 1970’s, and which in the intervening years been largely discredited by economists and statisticians alike. Even today we have Europhile politicians informing us that a British withdrawal from the EU would cost an estimate 3 million jobs here in the UK and yet have offered no evidence to substantiate this rather alarming claim. However, according to some sources, the first politician to mention this mythical 3 million jobs was thought to be our former Premier, Tony Blair, who was the same man who also claimed that the UK could and would survive outside of the European Union, despite being a European supporter of the first order. Blair too refused to explain exactly where these 3 million British jobs would be lost and for most reporters on the subject, the only measure of millions of jobs being lost in the UK has come from Britain actually joining the EEC in the 1970’s, when a similar 3 million employment posts were said to have been lost as a result of Britain’s Coal mining, Shipbuilding, Fishing, Agricultural, Steel and other manufacturing jobs being closed largely because of our European membership.

At one time an estimated 300,000 people were said to have been employed in Britain’s numerous shipyards, building the ferries, tankers and warships that sailed the earth’s oceans, carrying cargoes to and from Britain to the great trading nations of the world. However, come the EU and the free market Conservative Party of the 1970’s and 1980’s and most of Britain’s vast shipyards were either closed or sold off into private foreign ownership, which in most cases resulted in the same thing, as other European States sought to protect their own shipbuilding industries largely at the expense of Britain’s. The intention of Thatcher’s government to decimate the country’s historic shipyards, often at the behest of or with the complicity of the EEC is perhaps exemplified by two significant instances. The first of these was our current Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, standing before the House of Commons and announcing that he could see no future in British shipbuilding, despite the fact that we are an island race and a trading one at that, a moment of breathtaking irrationality that helped consign our shipbuilding yards to the history books. The second of these significant events took place in the same year that Mr Clarke drew his devastating conclusion, in 1988, when the Conservative government took the decision to close North East Shipbuilders, at the time one of the best equipped yards in all of Europe, which the government closed with the loss of 2500 jobs, largely because of EU concerns about the overcapacity of shipbuilding facilities within the community, as a result of which it was decided that the North East yards had to go. Even today, British governments continue to sacrifice British manufacturing for the sake of our foreign competitors, as was the case with the train maker Bombardier, who lost a £1.4 billion contract to the German company Siemens, without taking any account of the devastation that that decision would cause to the 1400 Bombardier who subsequently lost their jobs as a result of yet another Tory government’s EU driven choice. These are some of the most highly skilled workers in the country and yet the Coalition Government is content to throw these vital employees onto the scrapheap, all in an effort to satisfy our European neighbours.

Unfortunately for British manufacturing and unlike our European neighbours, successive administrations at Westminster have chosen to play by the rules of the game, whilst our competitors choose to deliberately skew contracts to benefit their native workforces, a system that the French and German governments are particularly adept at. However, rather than replicate their foreign counterparts, British government would rather see their home manufacturing base slowly but surely disappear, rather than copying the continental model of buying and supporting home-grown products. It is absurd for anyone to claim that British jobs rely on our membership of the European Union, as history clearly proves that this multi-billion pound common market has actually costs thousands, if not millions of British jobs, as opposed to creating any. How long one wonders before proposed defence treaties lead to the loss of our British aircraft, ship and tank building jobs, or worse still the loss of tens of thousands of British ground troops, as we get ever closer to sharing our defence industries with our continental partners, all for the sake of a highly disparate, unethical and questionable political union?

Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, Simon Hughes, David Cameron, George Osborne, et al would have us all believe that outside of the EU, Britain would be a much weaker nation state, which would hold little if any sway within the international community. In fact, Nick Clegg went further by implying that without the EU, Britain was in danger of becoming a “Pygmy” state, isolated and ignored. Of course in reality, the only thing that is pygmy-sized is Mr Clegg’s own intellect, which becomes more and more evident as each day goes by. So completely enamoured by his own perceived importance, he and his Lib Dem colleagues would already have Britain fully signed up to every European treaty, including the Euro, were he able, safe in his own mind that the lies, half-truths and propaganda that he peddles is somehow right. Mind you, David Cameron is little different in believing the spin that his Europhile coalition partners, European leaders and the numerous technocrats in Brussels spew out at an ever increasing rate. Even though they have no mandate in Britain, or indeed allegiance to our country, it is widely reported that millions of Euro’s have been spent in helping to persuade, cajole and mislead the British public into believing that the European Community is the best thing since sliced bread; and in the process, dragging us into the biggest hole ever dug by mankind.

The truth of the matter is this, rather than being some sort of pygmy nation, Britain is one of the world’s foremost economies, in spite of the best efforts of the EU to hobble our economic, diplomatic and political power for themselves. Not only are we one of the largest and most vibrant economies on the planet, but also a permanent member of the United Nations, a member of the G20, a founding member of the IMF, as well as the WTO and a member of the Commonwealth of Nations……..some pygmy indeed! It is also worth noting that only around 10% of Britain’s total GDP is traded with the European Union, a significant part of which is not actually destined for EU states, but is simply transited through a European state or port, so the much acclaimed 40% of our trade that the Europhiles constantly trumpet, as a reason for being in the EU, is not quite as important as it first may appear. If the EU disappeared tomorrow, much of that transitory trade would remain intact and would still need British workers to produce it and would continue to earn revenue for our country. In a report from 1999-2000 it was estimated that 93% of the world’s independent states operate outside of the Eurozone, whilst 94% of these same independent states have NOT joined a single currency union. Additionally, 95% of the world’s population live outside of the Eurozone, making the much vaunted 500 million person market of Europe look singularly unimpressive by comparison. One India, or China would probably outnumber the EU population by some way, so quite why we’re so worried about losing access to 500 million people in Europe absurd. But then again that’s another lie isn’t it, the threat that by withdrawing from Europe would somehow lose us these European markets, because in reality that wouldn’t or couldn’t happen.

Consider this, in reality the European Union has been in decline for the past decade or so as other Asian-Pacific markets emerge, leaving Europe as very much a thing of the past and the likes of Brazil, Russia, India and China reflecting the future of international trade; and somewhere that Britain’s manufacturing and marketing efforts should be firmly focused. Equally interesting is that of the 200 or so nations that can and do trade with other countries, the EU has trade agreements with approximately 180 of them, but NOT with Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, most of which are historic trading partners with Britain, but which are now largely closed to the UK because of our continuing European membership. Not only is this commercial suicide for British manufacturers, but a indirect snub to those former trading partners who played a significant role in helping to build Britain’s earlier global business empire.

Another interesting aspect of the perceived threat to Britain’s trade should we choose to leave the European Union is that Europe would be legally bound to allow us to continue trading with our current partners under the terms of both EFTA and the WTO, the world’s two major trading organisations. Although the EU would be able to impose a charge for granting us access to their “enclosed” market, this has not discouraged the likes of Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein, who all have superior GDP per capita figures than most countries in the EU, suggesting that being outside of the Union has proved to be highly beneficial to their own economies. In other words they are generally twice a wealthy as their EU counterparts, which begs the question…why? Not only are they reported to be wealthier, but on average also have lower inflation, higher employment, healthier budget surpluses and lower interest rates; and yet they operate outside of the supposedly more successful and prosperous European Union…….dispelling yet another Europhile lie perhaps? More importantly perhaps in a British context, all of these nation states have retained control of the territorial waters and their national borders and are largely free of the mountainous legal and social legislation that threatens to drown most of their European neighbours, including the UK. Additionally, all of these four countries are free to make their own trade agreements with the likes of Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, etc. the very same partners that Britain is prevented from dealing with on a national basis, two of which are Commonwealth members!

According to Daniel Hannan MEP for every one piece of EU legislation that these countries receive from Brussels, most of which they can refuse to adopt, fully signed up Union members such as Britain receive six, a total of around 18,000 laws that are said to cost our country anything up to £20 billion. For anyone to suggest that Britain cannot survive outside of the cloying arms of the EU is not only laughable, but clearly delusional when you consider that Switzerland with 7.5 million citizens, Norway with 4.5 million, Iceland with 300,000 and Liechtenstein with 20,000 people can survive perfectly well and prosper too, whilst some 60 million Briton’s can’t, is just complete and utter nonsense, never mind it being an out and out lie!

Remember this, 40 years ago the British people were told that Britain couldn’t survive outside of the European Economic Community, now the EU and that membership of this exclusive club would bring us nothing but growth and prosperity. We were told that the EEC was purely a trading body that had no intention of growing into a political experiment that would cede control of member states to an unelected body in Brussels and Strasbourg, let alone to foreign leaders in France and Germany. No loss of sovereignty, job creation, financial success and peace on earth and goodwill to all would be the result of this great experiment; and politicians from all parties, from home and abroad, all conspired to mislead and lie to the British public about their ultimate intentions. So here we are some 40 years later, a whole lot poorer, a lot less enthused and with a much smaller pot to piss in. Our great industries, the backbone of our nation that once accounted for around 30% of our economy has now shrunk to a struggling 10% and employs a little over 2 million workers. Millions of our former fishermen, farmers, miners, shipbuilders, engineers, welders, etc who helped forge Britain’s place in the world are either retired, unemployed, been re-trained as call centre workers, or have left to pastures new, to countries where their talents are appreciated and valued. Our territorial waters and their native fish stocks are now regularly trawled, exploited and decimated by EU fisherman who use every legal loophole to hide their abuses, whilst British owned trawlers have been abandoned or broken up, because there’s no work for them. Similarly, we are now importing significant amounts of coal from beyond our shores, because we lack the mines, equipment and miners to exploit the hundreds of years of supplies that still lie beneath our feet. What a waste….what nonsense…..what a complete and utter farce!

The old adage of “lies, damn lies and statistics” being used to describe an argument that is largely weak and supported by highly questionable evidence couldn’t be more appropriate for the subject of the European Union and the supposed benefits that its supporters claim it has brought to our country. I don’t claim to be any sort of expert, but I don’t need to be to see that Europe is and always was a leech, a parasite, on the British economy and its people, a self inflicted wound that the British people must decide to deal with before it kills the patient; and the only way for that to happen is for the British electorate to finally enforce its will on Parliament through the only way possible………the ballot box.

Canada - Britain's Greatest North Atlantic Ally II

Although Canada was entirely independent of Britain by September 1939, when the Second World War erupted, the Canadian government declared war against Nazi Germany on 10th September nonetheless and the following day issued a similar declaration against Mussolini’s Italy. As was the case elsewhere with many of the western allies, during the inter-war years Canada was thought to have put little investment into its armed forces and in common with its pre-First World War status had a relatively small full-time army of several thousand which was supplemented by a part-time militia, both of which were poorly trained and ill-equipped.

In common with most democratic countries of the time, Canada, along with its former allies, Britain, France, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, etc. had believed that the losses of the Great War would prevent such an event ever happening again, but as with all of the other allied nations, they were wrong. Fortunately for the allied cause, in common with the United States, Canada was reported to have had the capacity to become one of the world’s greatest industrial producers and like its southern neighbour was able to mobilise these vast manufacturing facilities to produce materials for the war, including ships, aircraft and wheeled vehicles. However, according to some sources, the most important products supplied by Canada during the Second World War were the vast amounts of both aluminium and nickel, both of which were necessary components of the allied war effort. The first military supply convoy reportedly left Canada just days after war had been officially declared and by June 1940, the first Canadian troops were said to have been landed in Europe, in an attempt to reinforce the British and French forces that were being forced back to Dunkirk by the advancing German army. Unfortunately, the Canadian troops were thought to have reached France far too late to prevent the large scale evacuation of the allied expeditionary force and were subsequently forced to withdraw from Europe, back to the isolated British mainland.

Rather frustratingly perhaps, for the Canadian troops, with Britain generally besieged and few foreign theatres in which to operate effectively against Germany and her Axis allies, most of these Canadian forces were thought to have been largely restricted to defending Britain’s mainland from the threat of an impending German invasion, which never actually happened. Thanks largely to a British Air Force which contained numerous Commonwealth pilots from around the world, including many from Canada itself; the German Luftwaffe was prevented from gaining air superiority, which was a prerequisite for the planned military invasion of Britain. With the Battle of Britain won by the RAF and its limited numbers of pilots and planes, Germany subsequently turned its attention to Russia, fatally wounding its own long term military ambitions by fighting on two separate fronts, one to the east and one to the west.

Apart from the ill-fated and largely unsuccessful raid on the French port of Dieppe in August 1942, most Canadian troops had to wait until 1943 before they could become formerly engaged on the European continent, when they were fully employed in both the invasion of Sicily and later the Italian mainland. However, elements of the Canadian army were said to have been involved with one of the conflicts most notable Special Forces units, the Devil’s Brigade, a mixed force made up of both American and Canadian troops. Although they were reportedly tasked for a number of extremely difficult missions, the unit’s first high profile operation was reportedly against Monte La Defensa in Italy, during December 1943, where they were reported to have scaled a seemingly impenetrable cliff face to overcome German positions that were stationed there. Having overcome their initial target, the Brigade were then said to have been used to attack a number of similarly difficult mountain targets, as a result of which some 70% of the unit was thought to have been either killed or wounded.

By January of the following year the Brigade was said to have been reinforced and put back into the frontline at Anzio, where they were first referred to as the “Devils Brigade”, having terrified the life out of the German forces that were opposing them. With the approach of the allied invasion of mainland Europe planned for June 1944, the Canadian forces were said to have allocated their own section of the Normandy coastline, codenamed “Juno” beach, where they suffered heavy casualties as they hurled themselves ashore to begin the long awaited liberation of Europe. Despite incurring heavier losses than any other allied force on the day, with the exception of the American troops on “Omaha” beach, the Canadian troops were reported to have still managed to penetrate deeper into occupied France than any other allied soldiers, save for those paratroopers who had been deliberately dropped inland in order to disable German communication systems, thereby preventing them from reinforcing their coastal defences, which were being attacked and overrun by the allies.

Canadian forces were later instrumental in helping to secure the port of Antwerp, leading a mixed British, Polish Belgian and Dutch force to secure the Scheldt estuary, which was still held by the Germans, thereby preventing the allies from using Antwerp as a supply point for their military operations in Europe. Suffering extremely heavy losses, of which some six thousand were reportedly Canadians, this force was said to have spent several weeks helping to secure the area around Antwerp, before turning their attention to the liberation of the Netherlands. Throughout the entire course of the Second World War, the Canadian people were reported to have contributed hundreds of thousands of their young men and women to the allied cause, who subsequently served in virtually every service, from the Army and Navy, to the Air Force and the auxiliary services, including Nursing and the Merchant Marine. Some one hundred thousand Canadian’s were thought to have been killed or wounded during the conflict, amongst which a significant number of gallantry awards were said to have been earned by Canada’s fighting forces, including several Victoria Crosses, the highest award that could be issued by the British military authorities.

Canada - Britain's Greatest North Atlantic Ally

Watching a TV programme about the last heroes of World War II, I was struck by the numbers of former US and to a lesser extent British soldiers who fought in the final battles leading to the defeat of Nazi Germany and its wartime allies. Speaking personally, I have always believed that if Britain has one true ally across the Atlantic, then it is Canada, rather than the USA, who are our truest friends across the ocean, a fact that they have proved when our country has faced its darkest moments, but which has been largely overlooked by many commentators and historians. The following is an extract from my book “Mariners, Merchants and the Military Too – A History of the British Empire” relating Canada’s contribution to the British Empire during World War I alone…….

“As with many of Great Britain’s self governing colonies and dominions, the outbreak of the First World War proved to be a pivotal moment in the history of these former Imperial territories, marking their change from being an historic dependency of the British Crown, to becoming a recognisable international state in its own right. Through its political decision making, but more importantly through the valour and commitment of its armed forces, Canada was reported to have finally emerged upon the world stage as an independent democratic nation which willingly submitted itself to upholding the ideals of freedom and democracy. As in the other great British colonies and dominions throughout the globe, including India, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, tens of thousands of young Canadian’s, both men and women, were reported to have rallied to Britain’s cause, willingly committing themselves to her defence. Despite only having a relatively small standing army of some several thousand men, within a matter of months, some thirty thousand Canadians were said to have volunteered to serve in Western Europe and were making their way across the Atlantic to take their place on the Western front. The first Canadian troops were thought to have arrived in France by the beginning of 1915 and elements of their 1st Division were reportedly some of the first allied troops to have been attacked with the poison chlorine gas which was commonly used by the German army. While large numbers of British and French troops were said to have fled the threat of this new weapon, the Canadians were thought to have quickly realised that the effects of the gas could be neutralised by the use of urine soaked rags being placed over their nose and mouths, helping them to hold their positions and preventing the enemy forces from advancing. However, even with their homemade defence against the poisonous clouds that were unleashed on their lines, it was still reported that some six thousand Canadian troops were affected by the gas, of which, a full third were thought to have died as a direct result of it being deployed against them.

Canadian forces were also an intrinsic part of the allied force that was marshalled in 1916 in preparation for the Battle of the Somme, which ultimately resulted in the largest number of allied casualties ever suffered by British and Dominion forces, nearly fifty eight thousand men killed or wounded in a single day. As much the result of poor planning, communications and inadequate leadership, as it was of complete incompetence, such enormous human losses were thought to have become a common feature of the First World War overall, although for the Canadian’s specifically, the Somme campaign alone was thought to have accounted for some twenty five thousand casualties, either killed or wounded. Despite such losses however, Canada’s frontline troops, continued to enhance their military reputation, reportedly being prepared to take on any military assignment, seemingly regardless of the cost and earning the everlasting esteem of their civilian contemporaries, as well as their political masters in equal measure. Vimy Ridge was said to be just one of the many battles which saw the Canadian military divisions take their place in the vanguard of various allied operations, designed to capture the German army’s well established defensive lines. Beginning on the morning of the 9th April 1917, a “creeping artillery barrage” was said to have cleared the way for the following Canadian troops, who then cleared the trenches of their German defenders, slowly, but surely moving the allied lines forward of their previous positions. By the afternoon of the following day the Canadian troops had not only taken a great deal of ground, but also captured several thousand German prisoners and killed many hundreds more. However, the victory had not come without a high price for Canada’s own young troops, who were reported to have suffered some eleven thousand casualties, either dead or wounded, a figure which underpinned their utter determination to achieve the objectives that they had been given.

Seven months later and largely because of their tenacious reputation, Canadian troops were reported to have been redeployed to the Ypres area, in readiness for yet another allied offensive that later became known as the Second Battle of Passchendaele, which was fought between October and November 1917. In conjunction with British and Anzac troops, Canadian soldiers were tasked with pushing the German’s front line back, allowing the allied positions to be advanced, so that the town of Passchendaele could be recovered by the allies. Although there were several instances of allied reversals and occasional failures to reach individual objectives, the operation itself proved to be successful, although the entire campaign was said to have cost some sixteen thousand Canadian casualties, with at least a quarter of that number being killed. Despite these losses though, Canadian troops were thought to have been so vital to the allied offensive strategy that they were intensively employed throughout much of 1918, most notably during the famous One Hundred Days Offensive, which saw Canadian troops and others, participate in the Battle of Amiens, Cambrai and the vital breaking of the Hindenburg Line which ultimately forced Germany to agree an Armistice on 11th November 1918. As with a number of other former British colonies, including Australia and New Zealand, by the end of the First World War, Canada’s international reputation as one of the principal victorious allied nations, had been assured and the military worth of its fighting forces had likewise been enhanced. Back in Canada itself, its own people began to see themselves as an integral part of the international community, a country with its own culture, traditions and now with a reputation and standing that was equal to its previously more dominant American and British counterparts. Although Canada was thought to have been largely independent of Britain, since the beginning of the 20th century, its emergence after World War I, was thought to mark the period when most Canadians began to see themselves as Canadians, rather than being historically tied to or associated with Britain or indeed the United States”

(Extract from: Mariners, Merchants and the Military Too by Phillip E Jones)