A Europe Where Giants Are Ruled By Pygmies

It wasn't so long ago that any discussions relating to Europe would have centred around maybe half a dozen of the region's different sovereign states, rather than the continental federation of 28 which now constitute the comparatively new economic and politically driven construct, which is the European Union. Where once the international community spoke about and dealt with the likes of France, Britain, Germany, Holland, Sweden and Denmark, along with a raft of other ancient nation states, now the international community commonly speak to and deal with faceless appointees of the EU, rather than the national representatives of the individual sovereign countries, which for the most part have willingly allowed themselves to be subsumed by the growing continental monstrosity, with its unerring mantra of "ever closer unity".

 

It's hard to imagine that impoverished Portugal once led the western world in sea-borne exploration of the globe, producing some of European history's greatest ever maritime explorers and opening up the western coast of Africa, along with parts of South America, for trade, for settlement and yes for exploitation too! But who will remember all of that rich cultural history, now that Portugal has agreed to sell itself, its people, its future employment prospects, its national currency, all for the prospect of being good little Europeans, rather than remaining proud and independent Portuguese, or even Iberians?

 

The same might be said of their larger neighbours, Spain, the only European nation to have ever truly rivalled Britain on the global stage, in terms of its own imperial ambitions; and that but for the vagaries of the Atlantic weather, might well have become one of those small number of foreign states ever to successfully invade England. Alongside its Iberian neighbours though, Spain too has chosen to essentially abandon its rich cultural and nationalistic past in favour of becoming just another region of the proposed United States of Europe, sacrificing control of its currency, its jobs markets, its national borders and its traditional fishing grounds, simply to become a fairly unremarkable member of this new socio-economic club.

 

As for France! Well, what can one say? For hundreds of years, France and England have shared a love/hate relationship that generally defies rational explanation. Whether we have been fighting one another, or fighting against a common foe, our mutual and traditional antagonisms have never been that far away, but still our political leaders have managed to put them to one side, if only for as long as it takes for disaster to be averted, or for the danger to be confronted and overcome. From a purely French perspective, one can well understand that the emergence and development of the European Union, with its ethos of ever closer union, is generally not regarded as a threat or a danger to France itself. Why would it be, when France was one of the chief architects of the post World War II proposals that brought the first incarnation of the Union into being? Added to that is the fact that France commonly treats EU rules and regulations as a buffet of choice, picking out the bits that it likes and disposing of, or ignoring those parts that it doesn't quite like the look of. Even though France has been called upon to surrender its national currency, its border controls and a multitude of other national competences, in order to comply with the EU's myriad of new rules and regulations, overall, by benefiting from them directly, or by just ignoring those that don't add benefit to their economy or society, one can well understand why France would actually regard the EU as a worthwhile experiment.

 

As regards Britain's attitude to Europe generally and the European Union specifically, one supposes that it depends on who you ask? For the most part, it seems highly likely that a majority of Britons are largely indifferent to "Europe" as a general subject, either because they haven't given the matter a great deal of thought, or don't know enough about the subject to offer an informed opinion about it either way. Likewise, one would assume that most Britons don't really care that much about the EU as an organisation, unless of course it happens to be mentioned with regard to immigration, or the Human Rights Act, both of which tend to receive a significant amount of attention in the British media, often for the most negative sorts of reasons. The truth is though that if someone were to suggest filling in the Channel Tunnel and building a high wall around the southern coast of Britain, the vast majority of us probably wouldn't be that bothered by the plan, providing that some sort of reasonable justification was offered for doing it. We simply don't care enough about Europe, the EU, or anything else on the other side of the Channel, why should we?

 

Okay! So some poor souls might miss their Brie, their Champagne, their French Wine, their Swiss chocolate, but so what? Shit happens! For all such losses though, if someone were to justify the move by telling the British people that virtually all immigration from the continent would stop, or that they wouldn't be seeing any more Islamic clerics abusing our welfare systems through the use of the Human Rights Act, most people would welcome the move; and some would even help build the wall, or fill in the tunnel with their bare hands. Europe was, is and will always remain a nuisance to most Britons, as it simply represents a reminder of the complete waste of British lives, influence and money that have been invested in the place for the past two hundred years or more.

 

In fact, it might well be argued that it is not the success of the European continent or the European Union that has seen Britain attach itself to this particular political experiment, but rather the failure of our own British politicians to come up with a viable alternative. It's little wonder that the British people are so unenthusiastic about Europe and the EU when most of them recognise that in reality it is and always has been a really, really bad idea, but one that we've been forced to choose, because there isn't another on offer. To put it into some sort of perspective, the EU as an idea, is a bit like  pretending that a drainpipe is a bucket; and the user being constantly surprised when the water keeps pissing out of one bottom of it!

 

Of course the initial concept of the EU, a European trading bloc, where tariffs and duties were removed for member states, was a pretty good idea, but as with most politicians, the architects behind the scheme just couldn't stop tinkering with the idea. Clearly never having heard the old adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" they did try and fix it; and screwed it up entirely! Then when they found themselves in a socio-economic hole, they just kept digging, presumably on the basis that if they dig long enough and deep enough, then they'll emerge into daylight at some point in time?

 

Although we'd all like to think that the EU is being run by the brightest and the best, clearly nothing could be further from the truth. Small men having small minds can be the only explanation as to why what started off as a straightforward customs union, has subsequently morphed into a continental sized economic and bureaucratic nightmare that even the likes of Dr Steven Hawking would struggle to explain; and he's a clever fellow, unlike some of the political pygmies who seem to think they're in charge of the EU.

 

The less charitable amongst us might choose to believe that the EU is little more than a giant spider's web of deceit, woven with strands of financial impropriety, political shenanigans and sheer human vanity, at the centre of which sits the likes of Angela Merkel and her political associates in Germany. "She who pays the piper, calls the tune", so they say and there can be little doubt that financially strong and industrially active Germany is definitely pulling all of the various strands that constitute this particular web. There's nothing wrong in that of course, provided that Frau Merkel and her political cohorts are honest enough to admit that they're in charge, because they can be and choose to be, as well as admitting what their true intentions are. If their long term goal is to create a United States of Europe, similar to the USA, then tell people that. If they're determined to recreate some form of Socialist Federation, similar to the old Soviet Union, then they should tell people that also. Because, sure as eggs is eggs, people are going to figure it out for themselves at some point and if they don't like what they see, then what's going to happen then?

 

Obviously I can't speak for other countries, but here in the UK it has become something of a standard joke that most of our failed politicians are simply exported to Europe in order to work for the EU in some or other role, Lord and Lady Kinnock, Lord Mandelsson, Baroness Ashton, to name but a few of the so-called worthies that we've managed to off-load to the continent. Bearing in mind that they've hardly covered themselves with glory on this side of the Channel, therein perhaps lies a clue as to their actual abilities, after all one rarely disregards a star striker, whereas a clapped out old fart is another matter entirely. Sadly though, the fact that the EU accepted them in the first place is noteworthy, suggesting that the entire organisation is being manned and run by a variety of national rejects, has-beens and second stringers, with the odd few political exceptions , like Nigel Farage, Paul Nuttall and Godfrey Bloom, thrown in.

 

The nearest comparison that one could point to when describing the EU and the European Parliament is probably the Eurovision Song Contest, which may in fact be fairly indicative of the way things work on the continent. The judging panel (in this case the Parliament) sits and listens to the individual song (in this case, the particular piece of legislation); and then when it's finished, they consult with their neighbour (in this case, representatives with a similar political outlook); and once they're sure that it's of mutual beneficial interest to them they vote in favour. However, as with Eurovision, any legislation connected with or of benefit to the United Kingdom, is automatically greeted with a "nil" point, so good luck to Mr Cameron when he attempts to recreate that "Bucks Fizz" moment between now and 2017.

 

Of course there's no good reason why our European neighbours should do us any favours, after all they're as indifferent about us, as we are about them. The only people who keep wittering on about being good Europeans are those EU employees, who generous salaries and over-inflated egos are entirely dependent on the project carrying on indefinitely, so a certain amount of self interest needs to be taken into account when considering such things. It would represent a massive failure for the EU project if Britain were to withdraw from the European Union, not least to those countries who are equally exasperated with its excesses, but too timid to say so publicly. Better to let Britain get all of the political grief, while they might gain some of the benefits, from any blood that the UK may be able to draw from the European Parliamentary stone. That's assuming of course that whoever we have as Prime Minister doesn't allow themselves to be as easily hoodwinked as Mr Cameron obviously was over the last round of European budget cuts, or his veto that wasn't a veto, until someone with a bit more commonsense explained it to him, although even then he still believed that he'd scored a victory, which just goes to prove what an embarrassment he really is!

 

Ultimately, the European Union may well have begun life with the noblest of intentions, that of preventing any future wars between Germany and its continental neighbours. The fact that this common treaty eventually evolved into a Common European Market was perhaps inevitable and laudable, had it remained simply that, a common customs union, or common marketplace. Sadly, earlier ill-conceived continental dreams of a Europe wide federation of states have subsequently been adopted by various politicians, often as much for their own personal vanity, or their individual nation's interests, without any real thought being given to how such radical socio-economic developments might impact on those less advanced nations who willingly chose to join the project.

 

One might well regard the European Union like a set of child's building blocks. Typically, the child on first use might simply continue to place the blocks on top of one another, unaware or indifferent to the instability affecting the structure, until eventually it falls over and crashes to the floor. It might take a child a few attempts to figure out that they need to secure the foundations of the pile of bricks, in order to ensure its stability, but eventually they'll work it out and no-one gets hurt in the process (unless of course they happen to be using real house bricks, in which case it's probably not a good idea to let them play with them in the first place) In a sense though that's exactly what the architects of the EU have been doing, allowing children to play with real house bricks, which in real life has resulted in the peoples of Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain and Ireland getting hurt. However, rather than taking the bricks off the child, they're currently in the process of inviting even more children to join in the game, including those from Macedonia, Montenegro, Turkey and Serbia. One wonders if they too will be enticed by the supposedly cheap money, the new roads, the shiny new cars, as were their Greeks, Cypriots and Spanish counterparts, who are now busily extracting themselves from the mountain of debt that engulfed them?

 

It cannot be a coincidence that Germany, one of the chief architects of the European Union and the central financier of the project, also happens to be one of the main beneficiaries of this enlargement and the ongoing European indebtedness. Could it genuinely be the case that the entire EU project is little more than a glorified Ponzi scheme, where new members are constantly required in order to feed the financial rewards given to earlier participants? If that's the case then what happens when you run out of European countries who are desperate to join? Do you move into Asia, Africa, the Middle East? And where do you stop?

 

Maybe a simpler answer, is that the EU is a big project being run by small men, who have neither the capacity, competence, or the personal integrity to handle such a massive undertaking, always assuming that it should have been started in the first place. Big, old countries like Portugal, Spain, France, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Britain haven't become easier to govern, they've become far more complicated, so quite why, the likes of Catherine Ashton, Herman Van Rumpoy or Jose' Manuel Barroso believe they can represent them, understand them, let alone solve their problems is a complete nonsense. Why would Angela Merkel, David Cameron, or Francoise Hollande care about the day-to-day problems of Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Portugal, Denmark or Sweden, when they're elected and paid to look after the interests of their national electorates? And if the answer is that Catherine Ashton, Herman Van Rompuy or Jose' Manuel Barroso are paid to do that job, then I'll pose the obvious question, how on earth would they do that? Small minded men and women dealing with big national and international issues....why would we rely on them to solve what are fairly insurmountable problems? That would be as stupid as asking a history graduate to run the entire British economy, wouldn't it?         

Don't Stop The World, We Want To Stay On!

I have to say that as a definite UKIP voter in any British elections that come along in the next few years, I just love this idea of people like me being regularly parodied as some sort of madly racist neo-colonialist throwbacks, who aimlessly wander the streets of Britain shrieking alarm at the numbers of coloured faces, foreign dress and multiple languages that we happen to encounter on an almost daily basis.

 

Attired as we must be in our Colonel Blimp type safari suits, complete with the mandatory pith helmet, swagger stick and a bottle of Imperial Gin, we must present some sort of fairly comical picture as we supposedly stumble around our city streets, madly pointing to the various foreign looking faces that surround us, jabbing wildly in their direction as they walk quickly away from we mad racist UKIP supporters, who by now would almost certainly be loudly proclaiming to the memsahib and anyone else who looks remotely British who'll listen "LOOK, LOOK , it's another one. Well I never did"!!

 

Alternatively, I suppose we might adopt that other traditional stereotypical look, which the mainstream media has tried so hard to associate with any and all supporters of UKIP; that of the skin-headed, knuckle-dragging, half-wit, who finds some security and reward in tattooing a Union Jack flag onto our foreheads, or any other part of our anatomy for that matter. Armed with flag of St George and attired in our knee length jeans, our Doc Marten boots and our BNP tee-shirts (either because we're dyslexic, or just too stupid to spell UKIP) we've almost always got our can of lager to keep us going, while we wander about the towns or cities of Britain terrorising anyone who doesn't look "indiginous". That means "white" right?

 

Of course intelligent, rational, non-racist people aren't allowed to vote for UKIP, or indeed become paid-up party members! According to the likes of Lord "Tarzan" Heseltine; that paragon of social and civic responsibility (overlooking his time in the Thatcher government obviously) has publicly stated that UKIP is a racist party; and so by inference implied that its membership therefore must be made up of racists, right? I obviously must have missed those speeches where Nigel Farage, Paul Nuttall, Godfrey Bloom and the rest of the party's leadership publicly proclaimed that "Whites" are superior to "Blacks", or "Asians", or anyone else for that matter. In fact, even the United Nations, the international arbiter of all things human doesn't recognise the term racism, or racist, but rather defines the term racial discrimination as "any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life".

 

Now if UKIP or any other party was seen to be discriminating or advocating discrimination against a specific group purely on the basis of their race, colour, descent, ethnicity, or national origins, then I would probably agree that that is wrong. However, UKIP are not advocating any sort of immigration restrictions on any one particular group, but on anyone who wants to come into the United Kingdom, regardless of whether they're black, white, red, brown, pink, or even bright blue. UKIP's stated policy is to restrict ALL migration into Britain, taking only those who will add benefit to our country, be they Polish, German, French, Dutch, Nigerian, South African, South American, North American, Black, White, Rich, Poor, Clever, Stupid, Capitalist or Communist, which is probably the fairest and least discriminatory migration system of them all.

 

Now if someone can suggest a method of expanding our country's actual geographical surface, so that we can comfortably accommodate every single person on the planet who would like to come and live in Britain, then please put your solutions on a postcard and send it to David Cameron c/o 10 Downing Street, London, England, as I'm sure that he'd like to hear from you, urgently! In the event that no-one has a solution, then perhaps the best idea is to actually accept that we have a problem in the first place; then find a solution to the problem.

 

Like it or not inward immigration is a significant problem for our country; and unless you subscribe to the practice of shutting your eyes, putting your hands over your ears and shouting "La, La, La" very loud, it's an issue that will inevitably have to be dealt with, at some point in time. The only question that remains to be answered is "Do we do it now, or do we do it later, when it will probably be too late to fix the problem?"

 

For anyone to suggest that restricting immigration from mainland Europe into Britain is in anyway racist, or discriminatory, is quite honestly a wholly fatuous argument. Bearing in mind that the only real benefit most Eastern European's bring to our country is as a source of cheap labour, which in itself acts against the employment interests of the indigenous workers of Britain, then one could equally make the counter argument that the foreign migrants are deliberately discriminating against the British workforce by "impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life". 

 

The truth is of course that using the term "racist" and publicly attacking UKIP and its membership as "racists", is the progressive's way of closing down any sort of debate on the subjects of mass immigration, radical Islam, the loss of national sovereignty, the decline of national cultures and the increasing federalisation of the European continent. What better way of undermining a patriotic warning, than by deliberately marginalizing and disparaging the messenger and his underlying motives, regardless of how sincere they are. Where some might call him a visionary, or a patriot and people will listen, others will simply call him a "Little Englander", or a racist and people will turn a deaf ear to the message, no matter how important it may be.

 

What is particularly interesting at present is that representatives such as David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Michael Heseltine and the other British political glitterati of the moment, tend to offer no real meaningful rebuttal to the warnings that are offered by the likes of Nigel Farage, Paul Nuttall and the multitude of equally Eurosceptic messengers. Rather sniffily, the likes of Cameron will offer the British electorate supposedly funny one-liners like "to those who say, stop the world I want to get off....", or Lord Heseltines public pronouncement that "Of course UKIP is a racist party". No detailed analysis there then, no need or reason to substantiate their generally unfounded claims, just a case of I'm opening my mouth and every word's a pearl of wisdom! In other words, just more of the same old political bollocks that we've gotten used to over the past 40 years.

 

One wonders just how bad things need to get before even the most ardent left wing progressive finally has to admit that they were wrong? Will it be when we have full scale race riots on the streets of our major towns and cities? When we've built enough new houses on our country's greenbelt, in order to accommodate our new foreign born citizens, only to find that we can't feed ourselves, because all of our farms and fields have disappeared, or that we have no native wildlife left, or have no countryside left to enjoy? Will it be when every major town and city is dominated by the minarets of the local mosques, where the call to prayer has replaced the Sunday morning peal of church bells, or Sharia courts start making really important social judgements? Will it be when our children are forced to learn another language just to get by in their own country, or to be able to read Polish, German, or even Urdu to know what's going on?

 

Will it be when our national government resides in Brussels, or even Berlin? Perhaps it will be when your local MP will be born and bred in Marseilles, Dusseldorf or Dublin? Will it be when and if we ever have our first foreign born Prime Minister? When we no longer have our own national police force, army, navy, or air force? Maybe it'll be when the UK is no longer a sovereign country but a federal state of the United States of Europe, How about if and when we no longer have free health or education services and everything has to be paid for? Perhaps it will be when you're no longer able to afford to pay your energy bills, or your food bills, as everything has to be imported, because we don't make or grow anything in Britain anymore?

 

I'm having a laugh? Exaggerating the gravity of the situation? Couldn't happen here? Really? Who would have thought that people in modern Britain would be relying on food banks in 2013? Who would have thought that people would be spending their future wages, paying today's bills, by borrowing money at exorbitant rates of interest? Who would have imagined that the average family home would now cost in the region of £200,000 to buy? Who would have thought that Britain would hand a major part of its historic judicial system over to a foreign court? Who would have imagined that a major terrorist sympathiser and facilitator would find safe haven in the UK and be untouchable by the UK government and its security services? Who would have anticipated that numerous foreign criminals, rapists, murderers, war criminals, could safely find refuge in Britain and that the authorities here would be powerless to deport them? Who would have imagined that White Britons would now be a minority in our country's capital city? Who would have thought that foreign criminal gangs would be commuting from the continent to the UK to carry out their nefarious activities, only to jump on a plane and be home by teatime, along with their hard earned illegal swag? Who would have dreamt that Romanian and Bulgarian gypsies would be allowed to set up their illegal camps in the heart of London; and use the local parks as dormitories and toilets, only yards from the most expensive real estate on the planet?

 

A laugh? An exaggeration? Clearly not! And yet people such as myself, who would like to put an end to such abuses are the racists, the bad guys, the Little Englanders, the Colonel Blimps, the knuckle dragging fascists? Really? Well, if the spectacle of Eastern European migrants shitting in the rose bushes of Park Lane is a glimpse of the new progressive left wing non-racist utopia that we're being offered by Mr Cameron, Clegg and Miliband, then quite honestly you can stick it where the sun don't shine! Don't stop the world, I want to stay on, if only to see what a screw-up you and your kind actually make of our country and at least then we'll have the satisfaction of saying "We so-called racists, told you so".

Akin To Scrawling On Toilet Walls

Even though I'm no huge fan of Ed Miliband, or indeed of his personal politics, it speaks volumes about both the ownership and the editorship of the Daily Mail, when it judges that it is perfectly acceptable to publicly denigrate the political and personal reputation of a dead man, simply to undermine the firmly held beliefs and ideologies of his surviving sons, David and Ed Miliband. Whether or not Ralph Miliband wrote that he "hated" Britain when he was a 17-year-old refugee is generally immaterial, the same as Nigel Farage being a complete pain in the arse when he was a schoolboy is! To suggest otherwise is to try and make the rather senseless argument that people don't change as they get older, grow wiser, or become better informed, which they generally do of course. In fact, if these latest instances of the Daily Mail headlines are anything to go by, the only people who appear to be living in the past; and who are fundamentally opposed to change, to new ideas, are the owners and editors of that particular newspaper, the very same people who are happy to point out everyone else's failings, whilst refusing to recognise their own.

 

Had the editors and writers of the Daily Mail existed during the 16th and 17th centuries, one could have easily imagined them issuing the sorts of half-truths, gossip, rumour, or innuendo that would have consigned the entirely genuine Protestant or Catholic believer to their fate on the fiery stake, or sent the wholly innocent woman to her death because of their claims that she was a witch. In truth they are reminiscent of the rabble rousers who initially raise the mob of public indignation, the old crones who gleefully observe as the guillotine of civic outrage shreds the reputation of anyone who inspires their editorial wrath; yet like cowards, they are often the first to run away when any sort of reckoning beckons.

 

It seems both extremely ironic and deeply hypocritical that a newspaper which will so easily bemoan the fate of a teenager bullied into suicide, will quite contentedly bully a celebrity, besmirch a politician, or even the dead, without seeming to have the slightest sense of public or moral responsibility, regarding the effects that such stories might have on the individual themselves, on their families, or even on their reputations. Were it not so tragic, it would be funny to consider that a newspaper which regularly displays headlines closely akin to the sort of anonymous scrawling that one might witness on a toilet wall, then has the temerity to criticise other publishers and media providers for their behaviour, as if the Daily Mail is somehow any better!  

 

It is interesting that the Daily Mail is the same newspaper that has tried so hard to establish a link between UKIP, its leadership and its membership with the far right of British politics, yet seems to have conveniently forgotten that prior to World War II, its proprietor, Lord Rothermere, was said to be on friendly terms with both Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini, the leaders of Europe's two main fascist parties. And that its owner, Lord Rothermere was also reported to have penned an article, printed in his own media group, praising Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, for promoting sound, commonsense Conservative doctrine.

 

Having previously tried to establish its own political party within the British electoral system, with very little success, the owners of the Daily Mail have subsequently pinned their hopes on the coat-tails of the Conservative Party, the most suitable home for their anti-welfare, anti-immigration, anti-Labour, pro-business, low tax, minimal regulation, small government agenda.

 

In what has turned out to be a mutually beneficial relationship, the Daily Mail has become a public herald for the low tax, small government and pro-business ideology of the modern day Conservative Party, helping to find or sometimes simply inventing the newspaper headlines that will effectively underpin their chosen political partner's ideological thinking. If a story is required to undermine the Conservatives political opponents, the Trade Unions, the Labour Party, UKIP, or even the Liberal Democrats, the Daily Mail can be relied upon to furnish the goods. If the Conservatives need to promote a given policy, part privatisation of the NHS, Workfare, Welfare Cuts, massive reductions in the Public Sector Workforce, again the Daily Mail can be relied upon to supply the stories to help substantiate the government's "urgent need" to carry out their entirely ideological policies.

 

It is little wonder perhaps that health workers, the disabled and the unemployed have become the targets for the Daily Mail's army of avid reporters and feature writers. One can only imagine the sense of self satisfaction that they must glean from achieving their desired objectives, of undermining the work of the countless doctors, the nurses and the healthcares who struggle to cope in the most onerous of conditions, yet you can bet your bottom dollar that the Daily Mail reporters will somehow find those very small numbers of health employees who have failed in their task. After all, they're not really interested in the 99% of doctors, nurses, or healthcare workers who do their job properly, caringly, even lovingly, they're only interested in the 1% who don't!

 

The same Daily Mail ethos is obviously applied to the unemployed and welfare claimants. The fact that there are 2.5 million people out of work in the UK, the vast majority of whom are genuine claimants, is largely immaterial to the Mail's researchers and reporters, who are only interested in finding that very small minority who aren't genuine and who are cheating the system. Even assuming that they could find one benefit cheat per day, which they most certainly don't, that would equate to 365 benefit cheats per year, which as a percentage of the 2.5 million unemployed equates to 0.014% of the total number of benefit claimants, which probably wouldn't raise a ripple with any other news organisation in the world. For the Daily Mail however, such a insignificant number could quite easily be used to build a Conservative inspired house-of-cards, one that would publicly be regarded as being of such epic proportions that the government would be forced to act to stamp out such widespread abuse. Building mountains out of molehills is after all the Daily Mail's main line of business, as opposed to just blandly reporting the news as it happened, or as it is. Embellishment, elaboration and exaggeration are this particular newspaper's USP (Unique Selling Point); and if that helps convince their largely uninformed readership that the Conservative way is the right way, then so much the better.

 

Although the Daily Mail is currently trying to justify its reporting of Mr Miliband's father by implying that it is in the public interest, because of Ed Miliband's position as Labour leader and therefore potential future Prime Minister, the fact that it is and remains an organ of the Conservative Party, would tend to suggest that public interest is only part of the reason for its wholly unwarranted attack on the late Mr Miliband's reputation. Clearly, the still outstanding matter of the Leveson Report on Press Standards will have played a significant part in their decision making process, but how unwise it seems to try and publicly humiliate a Labour leader who might one day hold the political authority to impose legal regulations on the entire British media, including of course the Daily Mail.

 

The British mainstream media has never really been about educating or informing the masses. It's almost always been about exerting influence over the British people, making the political case and trying to shape public opinion, either through honest discourse or sometimes via deliberate misrepresentation. Ironically perhaps, Daily Mail readers probably consider themselves to be better informed than say a Sun, Daily Express or Daily Mirror reader, presumably on the basis of the "news" content that the paper claims to contain, or that they believe it contains. Nothing could be further from the truth of course, as the Daily Mail is first and foremost little more than a carrier for the views and opinions of its wealthy owner, its editors and writers, rather than a properly informed news publication. If you want one of those, then you need to pay a bit more for one of the quality papers, or better still use the power of the internet, which offers virtually everything you need, including completely unbiased reporting, all in one place. 

George Osborne: Long On Rhetoric, But Short On Ideas

Now, although it wouldn't have been my personal choice to listen to George Osborne wittering away to the party faithful in Manchester, as it turned out, having to listen to his 35 minute speech and watch as he pushed against an open door was no great hardship really, considering that he made such a half-assed job of it in the end. I'm not quite sure whether his new hairstyle was designed to make him more likeable, or possibly more electable, but whatever the reason, he still came across to me as a faltering, out-of-touch and deeply dishonest spiv, which probably accounted for the content of his conference speech, with its overspill of political and personal hyperbole, jingoism and rhetoric.

 

I've said it before, but I'll say it again, I'm no financial expert! However, as far as I'm concerned neither are many of our elected representatives, most of whom couldn't run a bath, let alone a multi billion pound economy like our own; and Osborne has to be one of our least capable politicians, with a degree in history! Mind you considering that we have a modern day snake oil salesman actually running the country, we really shouldn't be surprised at the sorts of second-raters that Mr Cameron chooses to surround himself with. Compared to the likes of Osborne, Gove, May, Duncan Smith and Hague, Cameron probably looks golden, although it's a shame that in reality he's nothing more than Iron Pyrite.

 

Anyhow, to get back to Mr Osborne and his set-piece speech to the Conservative party faithful! Even though it had been heavily trailed beforehand, the central announcement was to inform the country that true to their party values and based on the ideology that they had inherited from the late Lady Thatcher; that they were going to give the unemployed yet another severe kicking. In line with the ethos of the Daily Mail's readership, all of the welfare scroungers, layabouts and shirkers were going to be targeted by SS (Social Security) Chief Iain Duncan Smith and his department, in order to ensure that they earned the £70 per week that was allowing them to live the "high life" at ordinary taxpayers expense. From now on, the 200,000 long term unemployed would be required to attend their local jobcentre each and every working day, or made to cook meals for the elderly, would be compelled to pick up litter, or if they were unemployed through addiction, lack of education, or training, then they'd receive as much help as was needed to get them back onto the right path.

 

Unfortunately, Mr Osborne failed to explain how this new shiny Welfare programme would help the remaining 90% of the country's unemployed. Bearing in mind that we currently have 2.5 million people out of work and that the 200,000 mentioned only represents 10% of that total figure, what is he going to do about the other 2.3 million that are looking for work? Also, on a basic calculation, the cost of the scheme is reported to be in the region of £300 million, which if divided by 200,000 jobseekers, works out at £1500 per person. Just who is going to monitor and oversee these unemployed jobseekers, when they turn up at the various jobcentres, when they are cooking meals for the elderly, when they are picking up litter, or when they're being retrained, re-educated, or weaned off their various addictions? And how is £1500 per person going to pay for that in the long term?

 

Even though most Conservative politician's seem loathe to describe the new programme as a workfare project, in essence that is exactly what it is, a more modern version of the Victorian workhouse, where inmates (or in this case claimants) are compelled to work for their supper (or benefits). The danger is of course, is that in common with the old workhouses, how can one ensure that abuses within such a wholly compulsive work programme do not arise through the actions of those people overseeing the project; and the compliance of the participants, or indeed at the hands of some of the various commercial organisations that will ultimately benefit, from what is after all a free labour resource. It is no great secret that a significant number of Britain's major employers made full use of jobseekers under the terms of the Coalition government's previous employment scheme, to the extent that some high street businesses were able to save themselves the regular cost of paid worker's wages, simply by accepting jobseekers from the government's work scheme, at no cost to themselves. At the time, the Coalition were openly accused of offering "cheap labour" to some of the UK's wealthiest employers, a charge that both vigorously denied, but which continues to taint their corporate reputations right through to the present day.

 

It cannot be a coincidence that Britain's 2.5 million unemployed closely mirrors the 2.9 million foreign workers that both Labour and Conservative parties have allowed to come into our country over the past two decades, something that Mr Osborne was keen to lay at Labour's door alone. Although no-one should doubt the serious damage that both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's administrations actually did to the indigenous population's employment prospects, the harm done by John Major and that continues to be done by David Cameron and Nick Clegg's parties in coalition should not be understated especially by George Osborne, one of the chief architects of their overall strategy. After all, it wasn't Tony Blair or Gordon Brown who decided to take a fiscal knife to the UK's Public Sector workforce, to the NHS, to the Police Force, to the Armed Forces; and in the process putting tens of thousands of workers on the dole. That was entirely the work of the Coalition government, of David Cameron, Nick Clegg, George Osborne, Liam Fox, Philip Hammond, Andrew Lansley and their own cost cutting cohort.

 

But of course the financial probity of George Osborne's Coalition government is another one of those great deceits that have become a characteristic of British government over the past few decades. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer, one would expect Mr Osborne to know the difference between the Government's Borrowing Deficit and the UK's National Debt, which are entirely different to one another, but often confused, either accidentally, or sometimes deliberately, to confuse the general public.

 

The Deficit is actually known as Public Sector Net Cash Requirement, which was previously known as the Public Sector Borrowing requirement. This is the rate that the UK government must borrow in order to maintain its financial commitments on an annual basis. In his speech today, George Osborne told his party conference that he had cut the deficit, the PSNCR (or the PSBR) by one third, even though at the beginning of the coalition's first term in office, the intention had been to cut the deficit entirely by the end of their first five year term, an objective that has now been put back until 2018 at the earliest. Bearing in mind the austerity measures introduced by the coalition government, including the billions saved on the cost of the NHS, Public Sector workforces, the Armed Forces, etc. this explains the reduction of one third in the deficit claimed by Mr Osborne. As he is spending less on government projects, he therefore needs to borrow less from the international markets, hence the overall reduction in the deficit. However, the deficit is entirely different to the UK's National Debt, which is still rising and that is explained below. As an example in the year 2011/12 the UK government's total spending was an estimated £710 billion, while its total income was only £589 billion, leaving a shortfall of £121 billion, which it had to borrow from the international markets. This £121 billion then became the deficit and currently cost some £2 billion per week on the National Debt simply to service it.

 

The UK's National Debt is the total amount of money owed at any one time through the issue of securities (gilts, etc) by the UK government. As of the first quarter of 2013 the UK's total National Debt was said to equal £1,377.4 billion, or 90.7% of Gross Domestic Product. The cost of servicing the UK's National debt was estimated to be £43 billion per year, or 3% of GDP. Forecasts suggest that the UK's National Debt is expected to rise to 95.6% of GDP by the end of 2013, to 98.7% of GDP in 2014. Because of the still relatively high Budget Deficit, as mentioned above, the Coalition government's National Debt is reported to be increasing by £121 billion per annum, or £2.3 billion per week. It was in part due to this stubbornly high Deficit that the International Credit Rating Agency Moody's downgraded the UK's Debt worthiness from AAA to Aa1.

 

By peacetime standards the UK's National Debt is fairly high, but during World War II Britain's National Debt was reported to have risen to 180% of GDP, although given the circumstances such a high rate was hardly remarkable. Depending on who you ask, some sources believe that the UK's total National Debt, including all outstanding government pensions, etc might be as high as £5 trillion, whilst most other estimates suggest a figure of between £845 to £900 billion, around 35% of which is owed to overseas investors.

 

The point is this. Along with David Cameron and many other politician's, there is a suggestion that Mr Osborne likes to play fast and loose when talking about both the Deficit and the National Debt and how exactly that message is being put across to the viewing public. Although Mr Osborne has undoubtedly reduced the deficit, mainly through introducing austerity measures to big spending sections of the economy, it is clear that the National Debt has continued to grow; and will continue to do so. As of 2012, it is reported that the National debt costs every British household around £2000 per year to service, a situation that is likely to get worse in the coming years.

 

The other great announcements made by Mr Osborne at conference were the "Help To Buy" campaign and his support for the proposed HS2 Rail Scheme, both of which he believes will be hugely beneficial to the UK economy. Making the point that house prices are falling in the North, as opposed to rising in London and the South, Mr Osborne's entire argument was flawed right from the start, although he didn't seem to let a little thing like that get in the way of his argument. Surely if house prices are artificially high, due to a shortage of homes, then maintaining the high prices with government backed mortgages is simply going to drive prices even higher again, as affordable homes become an even scarcer commodity. Surely commonsense would dictate that prices need to be allowed to fall, thereby making properties more affordable. Rather than London and the South being the exception, by maintaining the high property prices, the Coalition is simply replicating the London price model nationally? The last recession was caused in part by the huge sub-prime market in America, where house buyers were actively encouraged to take on excessive debt, only for their investment to go belly-up when the interest rates increased. So George Osborne is encouraging first-time home buyers to take on excessive debt with government help, when interest rates are almost non-existent, so what happens when interest rates start to rise, which they inevitably will at some point in time, possibly when the unemployment rates reach 7%, as suggested by Mark Carney, the new Governor of the Bank of England.

 

Like I say, I'm no expert, but neither does it appear that George Osborne is either. Most experts believe that you have one of two options to drive an economy forward, you either save your way out, or you spend your way out. Clearly the former option, as adopted by George Osborne, with all of his cost cutting, services cutting, welfare cutting, jobs cutting and every other sort of cutting, is still driving our National debt through the roof. What began as a five year plan to eliminate the deficit completely, has now become an eight year plan, assuming of course that he doesn't change his mind again in the next couple of years. That's the trouble though when you appoint someone who isn't an economist, to do an economist's job, they're almost certain to screw it up! But then maybe that's why you get a speech like Mr Osborne gave today, long on rhetoric and short on good ideas, because that's what people do when they haven't got a clue? 

Coalition Politics, Awash With Vanity, Pride & Ignorance

For some individuals, going into politics has never been about that relatively old-fashioned idea of committing oneself to public service, for the wider public good; simply because, for certain people, politics is all about access to and the acquisition of power; power to influence people, events or the existing environment. In other words, for some people, the entire point of their being involved in politics, be it at a local, national, or even international level, is purely in order for them to have some form of personal involvement in the big issues of the day, to possibly help frame the debate, to gain some individual kudos from the decisions that are ultimately reached; and possibly helping to create a long term legacy for themselves, if only by association. If that were the true motivation behind most politician's decision to stand for office, then shouldn't we be worried by the fact that a significant number of our legislators, be they in local council chambers, the Palace of Westminster, or in Brussels, are not really there to represent us, the electorate, but are there to achieve their own self aggrandisement, their own enrichment, to satisfy their own personal vanity and to establish their own individual legacy, rather than having anything to do with us, the voter?

Given that it's a well established fact that most of our national legislators are independently wealthy people before they even enter Parliament, one can only speculate as to why each and every Member of the Commons ultimately decides to stand for selection in the first place. No doubt a small number of candidates will see it as a purely financial move, no different than any other job of work, only cleaner and with much more influence attached, but a relatively well paid job nonetheless. The vast majority though, the former lawyers, businessmen, journalists, trade unionists, stockbrokers, teachers, actors and the idle sons of millionaires, will undoubtedly sit in Parliament for any number of reasons, including the yearning desire to give something back, to shape the future of our country, because they're bored and are incapable of holding down a proper job, or often because they're wealthy enough and vain enough to believe that they have all the solutions to our country's many and varied problems.

How else would one explain the likes of David Cameron, Nick Clegg and George Osborne holding the levers of power in our country, when between the three of them they have nearly zero work-life experience, but bags of money. In addition to these three, our daily lives are also directly affected by the likes of William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Danny Alexander, three more perennial underachievers who now wield significant influence as Foreign Secretary, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions; and Chief Secretary to the Treasury

Outside of having worked as a Management Consultant for Mckinsey and Company, one of the firms directly responsible for the remodelling and reorganisation of the NHS, William Hague is yet another one of those professional politician's who has sought to build his personal legacy through his political career, although not always successfully. As leader of the Conservative Party between 1997 and 2001, he was reported to be a disaster, trying to unite a divided Tory Party, concentrating on issues that held little interest for the wider electorate; and publicly participating in stunts that simply made him look foolish in the public's eyes, including his infamous log flume picture that many of his fellow MP's later described as "juvenile".

For his part, Iain Duncan Smith inadvertently set himself up for public derision by describing himself as the "Quiet Man" of British politics, as a result of his natural way of speaking. He previously served as a Lieutenant in the British Army; and unlike some of his cabinet colleagues is not the wealthiest of men, but is fortunate enough to have married the daughter of a fairly wealthy man, so it pretty much amounts to the same thing. Reported to have held a specific interest in Welfare Issues, research indicates that Mr Duncan Smith has been largely informed on that particular subject by what might commonly be referred to as "right wing" policy sources, which would clearly explain his generally insensitive and obdurate approach to welfare matters since taking office as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the current Coalition government.

As for Mr Alexander's elevation to High Office, well one can only assume that this is related to the comparatively small number of MP's that the Liberal Democrats got elected into Parliament, allied to the fact that he has previously worked closely with both Charles Kennedy and Nick Clegg, so was almost certainly appointed to his current post because of his political connections, rather than on the strength of his own natural gifts. Along with his party leader, Mr Alexander would never in his wildest dreams have envisioned the day when he might have had the opportunity to place his sticky fingers on the levers of power; and it has become abundantly clear over time that he has allowed himself to become completely infatuated with his once-in-a-lifetime chance to be on the centre stage of Britain's political establishment. One wonders what he'll do when his 15-minutes-of-fame is over?

Although these three individuals only play a small part in the coalition government; and the political legacy that it will inevitably leave to our country, always assuming of course that any subsequent political administration doesn't sweep it all away, which seems highly unlikely, it still begs the question as to whether or not their current implementation of coalition policies are based on their own personal socio-economic principles, those that they would try and sell to their local electorates, or are they simply part of a much larger Liberal Democrat / Conservative vanity project that they hope to be revered for by the masses in the future.

Big, far reaching and time enduring political projects seem to have become very much the norm nowadays, just as private home ownership, commercial privatisation and de-industrialisation did in the UK during the Thatcher era, thus creating an almost endless series of social and economic legacies that we can all still point to as significant moments in our nation's history. The question still remains though, were those fundamental and often traumatic changes to our society brought about by Mrs Thatcher's ideological principles, or because of her personal vanity? If vanity is defined as an excessive belief in one's own abilities (and consequently one's own ideas) then is it possible that the wholesale sell off of Britain's social housing stocks, the privatisation of the various national utilities and the widespread de-industrialisation of Britain's main manufacturing centres, were simply a part of Mrs Thatcher's own personal vanity project, rather than the vitally necessary socio-economic measure it was described as at the time?

Where Mrs Thatcher justified the sell off of the country's housing stock, publicly owned utilities and manufacturing centres, she did so by pointing to the purported yearning of the aspirational classes, the inefficiencies of publicly owned businesses, the militancy of the unionised workforces and the promise that things would be much improved in the future. She and her government then spent the next decade or more, spending billions of pounds of North Sea oil and gas revenues, having to secure those promises, as the much vaunted private sector struggled to fill the vacuum that those lost homes and industries left behind them, some of which continue to exist through to today, some thirty years later. Fast forward to 2010 and we have a similar situation with David Cameron, Nick Clegg and their own version of a personal vanity project, only this one involves much more vital services like the NHS, Public Welfare, Railways, the Royal Mail and of course Europe. We have no money for more Nurses, Doctors, or life saving Medicines, but we can find £100 million for Syria. We have no spare public money for Extra Bedrooms or our most disabled citizens, but we can find £12 billion per year for Overseas Aid. We can find £50 billion for the planned HS2, but we can't afford to maintain our military forces. Royal Mail is publicly owned, but that still hasn't prevented the Coalition from selling it off to the private sector for an estimated £3 billion, yet we're still paying £53 million per day to the EU.

Going back to the definition of vanity; as in an excessive belief in one's own abilities (and therefore in one's own beliefs and ideas), it surely must be the height of vanity for David Cameron, Nick Clegg and their cohorts to believe that they know better than a majority of the British public, half of whom would likely vote for a British exit from the financial, political and social constraints of the European Union. How arrogant they are to believe that they know so much more than we do; that they are better informed than we are; or that only they are qualified to make any judgement regarding our country's future direction. According to Samuel Butler "The truest characters of ignorance are vanity, pride and arrogance", a description that well befits a number of our elected representatives, most especially the few dozen Conservative and Liberal Democrat MP's who have been charged with taking care of our country's fortunes at this present moment in time. Perhaps they all might do well to remember another well known expression regarding one of the Seven Deadly Sins; that of Pride, which is said to come before a fall. Roll on 2015!!    

Let Politician's Reap What They Sow - Part One!

If anyone truly believes that Britain is a far better place now, than it was maybe even forty years ago, in terms of jobs, housing, health, education, transport, manufacturing, international trade, politics, or perhaps more importantly our society, then quite honestly they must have been living under some isolated rock somewhere, for much of that time.

 

The coalition has made much recently of the fact that some one million or so new jobs have been created within the private commercial sector since they came into office in May 2010. What they fail to point out however, is that these increases in the private sector workforce has been almost entirely fuelled by part-time jobs, typically of 25 hours per week or less, most of which are aimed at women. At the same time, it seems to have escaped the government's notice that an estimated 300,000 former full-time employees, have been compelled to accept part-time hours by their employers, presumably on the basis of part-time work being better than no work at all? Even though most of these new part-time and often heavily subsidised posts (as many part-time workers are in receipt of Family and Working Tax Credits) are filled by female employees, it is worth noting that approximately 2.1 million men, out of a total male workforce of 16 million, are regularly employed on part-time hours as well.

 

Between 2003 and 2012 the numbers of unemployed workers in the UK was reported to have risen from 5% of the workforce to 8%, an estimated 2.5 million people. Between 2008 and 2013, the numbers of workers actively underemployed (wanting more hours than they could get) was said to have doubled, from 700,000 to around 1.5 million, suggesting that between the two distinct worker groups, roughly 4 million British workers were unable to achieve the levels of employment they actually wanted, often as a result of the various government's employment strategies. Within this 4 million strong underused workforce, will be some of the nearly 1 million young people who have left school looking for work, whilst tens of thousands of others will be temporarily off-the-books, as they participate in any one of the numerous government training schemes, purportedly designed to help them get back into full-time work. Fortunately for national governments, aiding them in their attempts to downplay Britain's actual unemployment figures, is the fact that some 40% of secondary school leavers now choose to go onto Higher Education, rather than paid work, meaning that they don't actually show up on any official employment statistics, until such time as they enter the jobs market after they have graduated.

 

Needless to say, assuming that many of these students and graduates ever manage to find a full-time, well paid job, once they leave Higher Education, then at some point in time they're going to want their own homes, away from mum and dad. But that then leads them into a whole new world beset by a range of various problems, do they have three years of student loans to repay (potentially 3 x £9000 = £27,000), can they attract a high enough salary to warrant and comfortably afford a 25 year mortgage (assuming that interest rates won't remain at record low levels forever); and does that then inform their decisions about having children, pets, annual holidays, a car, etc. etc?

 

Don't forget, things are bad enough now, so quite what they'll be like in the future is anyone's guess? Despite our international status as a modern developed western economy, we are reported to be one of the worst EU countries for available housing, a situation that will not have been helped by successive governments devotion to both the private rental market and wholesale inward foreign migration. According to informed sources, each and every year an estimated 250,000 new households are founded within the UK, each of which requires a house or property to operate from. According to these same sources between 2011 and 2012 less than 20,000 new building starts were begun, around 10% of the actual number required just to keep pace, a figure that the Conservative Party Chairman, Grant Schapps, referred to as "impressive", perhaps suggesting the source of the problem for Britain and its people!

 

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Britain is expected to have a shortage of around 1 million homes by 2022, which was based on the market requirement of 210,000 and a market delivery of only 155,000, leaving an annual shortfall of around 50,000 homes over each of the next 20 years, thereby equalling the million homes mentioned. Considering that some 1.8 million houses were sold between 1980 and 2013 under the Right To Buy Scheme, introduced by the Thatcher government, the scale of the problem becomes fairly evident, especially when one adds in the 3 million foreign migrants who have arrived in the UK during the past decade or so; and the burgeoning numbers of Buy-To-Let investors who have been busily purchasing the nations housing stocks over the same extended period.

 

With the country's social housing stocks having been nearly exhausted by natural community growth, foreign migration and pure selfish greed, it is perhaps little wonder that Britain's ability to actually house its indigenous population has become so troublesome. However, the fact that an estimated 709,000 properties were reported as being empty in 2012 might offer some clue as to why the situation has been allowed to become so bad. As with any market that is governed by the potential financial benefits offered by a supply and demand economy, the prospect of initiating yet another property bubble, where the housing stock is in short supply, to help stimulate people's spending must have an attraction for any government, whatever their political ideology; and conversely the production of a housing surplus would not be such an attractive proposition.

 

Unfortunately, those who are outside of the housing market will ultimately bear the associated costs of a limited property market, although this is clearly a social cost that most governments are more than happy to accept. Over-inflated private rents, overcrowding, homelessness, property repossessions and rent arrears are just a few of the many social issues that can arise from a the pitifully thin social housing portfolios held by many local authorities, yet in response the coalition has simply helped to make matters even worse, through the introduction of its now fairly infamous Spare Room Supplement, or Bedroom Tax.

 

According to figures reported by the national housing charity, Shelter, the numbers of families living in emergency Bed & Breakfast accommodation has reached a new ten year high, with more than 2000 families living in such conditions in England alone. In total an estimated 9000 families with children are thought to have lost their homes within the last year.

 

Some 60% of people living in private rented accommodation consider themselves to be on a financial "knife-edge" regarding their homes, believing that any additional living expenses of £100 or more will almost certainly push them over the edge into hardship. 40% of private property renters stated that they had absolutely no flexibility at all in terms of their finances and were simply unable to absorb any further additional living costs, a significant admission given that interest rates are at an all time low. Even though home repossessions are thought to have fallen to a new 5 year low, due to the UK's historically low interest rates, an estimated 160,000 households are currently in arrears with their mortgages, suggesting that even modest interest rate rises could prove to be fairly catastrophic for some individuals in the future.

 

On any given night in February 2012, there were thought to be in excess of 2000 people sleeping rough in England, a rise of 31% on previous figures. Also, according to one London based homelessness charity during 2012/2013 there were reported to be a total of 6500 people sleeping rough in the capital city, an increase of some 13% on previous figures. 47% of those interviewed by the charity were thought to be UK nationals, whilst some 28% of the rough sleepers were said to be from other EU states.

 

Finally, even though Social Housing Tenants are generally more secure than their private counterparts, following the introduction of the previously mentioned Spare Room Supplement, or Bedroom Tax, an estimated 50,000 social housing tenants are reported to have gone into arrears with their rents, as they struggle to balance the losses to their housing benefits, with their other incomes. Aware of the growing problem, the Coalition government still insist that reductions to claimants housing benefit for any spare rooms that they happen to have in their homes, is a fair and equitable measure, despite any evidence to the contrary.

 

In closing the first part of this blog article entitled "Governments Reap What They Sow", it is perhaps appropriate to comment on the various aspects of the two main subjects covered by the post; that of jobs and housing.

 

It goes without saying really that in a modern western economy largely devoid of heavy labour intensive manufacturing industries and where women make up as much of the national workforce as do men; that the idea of full employment, as we might once have recognised it, is a wholly outdated concept that has inevitably been consigned to the past; and yet successive British government's continue to pursue the notion regardless of the fact that it is probably unachievable, be that in the short-term, long-term or any-term.

 

It cannot have escaped people's notice that in an earlier blog post regarding Mr Miliband's Magical Manifesto Show, I mentioned that some 2.9 million foreign migrants were reported to have arrived here in the UK between 1991 and 2001, a strikingly similar figure to the 2.5 million people who are reported to be unemployed in the UK at this very moment in time. Neither can it be a coincidence that the numbers of these foreign workers seems to accord with the levels of housing that some experts suggest that we currently need simply to meet our own people's basic accommodation requirements.

 

This is not to attach blame to the migrant workers themselves, who for the most part are simply looking for a better life for them and their families, but rather it is to accuse the various British governments, who have not only signed away our country's national sovereignty, our border controls and our independence, but also singularly failed to plan for the inevitable effects of their own ill-thought out party political actions. Did it not occur to John Major, Tony Blair or Gordon Brown that the arrival of nearly 3 million migrant workers might have an adverse effect on the people of Britain, as well as their jobs and their homes? Did they not think about the possible consequences for our country, or didn't they really care to begin with?

 

If it happens to be true that Tony Blair's only motivation was party political advantage, or ramming the idea of multiculturalism down the throats of his more resistant adversaries, then shame on him and the Labour Party for having essentially betrayed the British people. With that particular lesson learned one would hope that a majority of the electorate might return the favour in any of our forthcoming elections, thus ensuring that such a trick cannot be played on us for a second time.

 

Of course, Tony Blair's actions cannot and do not alleviate the blame that attaches itself to the Conservative Party and its then leader and Prime Minister, John Major, who was just as culpable for the ruination of our country, as was Mr Blair. Even during his unremarkable tenure in Downing Street, an estimated 350,000 foreign workers were thought to have arrived in our country, the initial trickle that would later become the flood, which has wrought so much damage to the socio-economic fabric of Britain.

 

Adding insult to injury of course is a typical Conservative trait; and by way of doing so its latest reinvention as leader, the wholly unimpressive Mr Cameron, along with the quietly oppressive Mr Duncan Smith have sought to make good on the injuries that their party inflicted on British workers, by punishing them even more. Not content with undercutting British employees with cheap foreign labour, they have subsequently decided to penalise the British people even more by cutting their benefit entitlements, freezing their wages, creating a new form of tax especially for those in social housing, cutting huge numbers of public service posts, part privatised the NHS and are now in the process of selling off the publicly owned Royal Mail.

 

The fact that Grant Schapps described a 10% achievement rate on new housing starts as "impressive", tells us all we need know about the Conservatives and their underlying ideological priorities. For a party which promised 3 million homes by 2020, it is clear that their electoral promises are as empty as their heads, so any hopes that things might prove to be better in the future are obviously forlorn ones. Yes, the days of full employment are long gone, but obviously so are those when politician's promises actually meant a damn thing. It is hardly surprising that the majority of British voters are so disillusioned with the political classes, but it still remains in each person's power to deny them their vote come election time, thereby teaching them the age old lesson of "you reap what you sow".