Robots?

I’m just wondering if large numbers of Britons have become like robots, programmed to do whatever we expected to do regardless of anything else.

Two days ago at least the Met Office was warning of atrocious conditions heading for the north of England and Scotland with gale force winds, heavy snow and freezing temperatures. Despite these warnings, today a coach carrying school children on a trip to Alton Towers set off in the early hours into the teeth of this meteorological onslaught and sadly crashed leaving the road and ending up on it’s side in a brook. Several children injured, some seriously. In Leith near Edinburgh huge waves broke through the defences and crashed over a sea wall and onto the road. A video taken shows traffic still trying to go past even when a van trying to reverse back is almost swept onto it’s side. What has happened to the mindset that will risk a life just to make a delivery or get to work?

A secondary thought is that I can understand and applaud a school trip to a museum, an ancient house or to a beach to study rock pools and so on but a trip to Alton Towers!

BBC & Strike Breaking

Interesting that at a time when the BA strike is in progress and Railway workers Union have announced the date for a strike, although negotiations continue, the BBC chose to give a plug on Saturday Live to a new book by Stephen Whyles, a strike breaker ( a scab or a blackleg) from the miners strike in 1984.

Coincidence or something more sinister afoot?

Poverty… Why?

A report out recently shows that the gap between the richest in Britain and the poorest has widened. I can’t say that it surprised me. In the usual and expected politician double speak Gordon Brown said “The report illustrates starkly that despite a levelling-off of inequality in the last decade we still have much further to go.” No Gordon, it didn’t say a ‘levelling off’ it said ‘widened’. We have indeed got further to go, in fact we actually need to make a start.

Those that know me often say that I lay the blame for almost all of the ills in this country at the feet of Margaret Thatcher, including this severe winter. Well, she did waste the windfall of North Sea oil and closed down 300 years supply of coal but that’s another story. What Thatcher did, very cleverly, was to break the strength of the Trade Unions and at the same time make the working population believe that this was a good thing. She then set about selling off most of our publicly owned assets such as our gas (remember ‘Tell Sid?), electricity, water and railways. She knew perfectly well that shares would largely end up with the financial institutions but fooled many into believing that they were ‘part of a share holding democracy’. Above all she put the notion of individualism, get what you can for yourself and the devil take the hindmost into the national psyche.  In 1997 the nation with a collective sigh of relief elected New Labour with most not realising that Tony Blair was but a toned down Thatcher with a smiling face. The result being that the inequality gap has widened still further.

The Labour Party was originally brought into being by the Trade Unions to fight for the rights of it’s members and to bring about a more equal and fair society and forced through enormous benefits, the National Health Service being just one example. The (New) Labour Party of today has morphed into just another wing of the capitalist system that lies at the root of all our ills. The budget of yesterday, despite the crying need to balance the books, made it easier to buy a house and saddle the working population with a life long mortgage around their necks and thus restricting their ability to dissent.  In addition this reliance on house prices ever increasing, played a large part in the recent economic crash and yet the Chancellor encourages more of the same.

So is it ‘Time for Change’ and bring back the Tories? Definitely not, New Labour is still the lessor of the evils but an evil non-the-less and although it’s perhaps worth voting for Lib Dems where they have a chance, real change will only come about when the people accept the hardest thing of all and realise that they have been duped for several generations and rise up with one voice and demand a new way.

Stephen Byers A Different Angle

There is justifiable outrage at the antics of Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon apparently offering their services to lobby groups in order to further feather their own nests. Cynic that I am of course, I wasn’t in the least surprised which goes to show how low politicians have sunk in my estimation. However, that’s another matter.

What struck me though was the expected going rate for this ‘service’. Three to five thousand Pounds per day for advice and I use that word advisedly.  Now that is around ten times more than the average worker gets for a whole week never mind for just a few hours in a day. It just goes to show what a rarified atmosphere these people live in and is symptomatic of the greed that has helped to bring our country to parlous state that it is today.

European Islamic Community

I think it’s fair to say that we as a nation and indeed a large part of Europe have become all but paralysed by political correctness. Although our eyes see and our ears hear what is happening all around us most of us unconsciously self censor this information. Those that do recognise what is transforming our country and speak out run a great risk of being accused of racisism. The blight of pc is all pervading, preventing truth from seeping out beneath it’s repressive fog.

I believe in the equality of all human beings and appreciate and enjoy the rich diversity of the various traditions and I am certainly no apologist for the BNP  or any other racist group. I also enjoy and appreciate the traditions of my own country, England and of neighbouring Wales, Scotland and Ireland, linking to make the UK. The historic connection with the near countries of western Europe are also a cultural link that I appreciate.

Blowing away for a moment the mist of political correctness then we will see that all that I love of my country and it’s heritage are fast being lost and indeed will probably be lost forever. Huge and rapid immigration of muslims mainly from the Indian sub continent but also from Africa are swamping the British identity. Western white Europeans are breeding at a rate approximating to 1.8 children per couple, in other words they are not replacing themselves and so the indigenous population is falling. Not so with the immigrant families who replicate at a rate of between 4 and 8 children per couple, in other words, they more than double themselves and even quadruple themselves.

Again rub the pc dust from our eyes and do a little mathematics and we’ll find that in about 50 years time muslims will be the majority population of not only the UK but also of Europe. The Islamic European Community is far from unlikely it is almost a certainty.  What a legacy to leave to perhaps not our children but certainly to our  grandchildren.

The best that we can do now is to close our borders to all further immigration and slow up the inevitable. We can only do this if we force our way though the mist and murk of political correctness.

Freedom Diminished

A couple of days ago the Commons voted for restrictions to the Freedom of Information Act so that senior members of the Royal family are exempt for FOI requests. This is a disaster for democracy.

Should this Bill make it through the process and let’s hope it fails of course, then we will not know what lobbying Prince Charles, for example, has been doing on behalf of his architectural preferences or some of his other crack pot schemes. We will not know if Government decisions are being made in the interests of the people or of the Royals.

As long as we have an unelected and hereditary head of state then Royals should be subject to more scrutiny not less.

Election for Sale

I’m not going to go into the obvious scandal of Lord Ashcroft but it does point to a big fault line in our weak democracy.

The cost of elections escalates with every one of them so it doesn’t take a genius to realise that eventually, if not already, that the party that can lay claim to the most money stands a far greater chance of winning. That is not democracy that is akin to buying votes. Surely it is time that a limit is set to what can be spent by any party both at an election and also and perhaps even more importantly, on any one constituency between elections.

In addition we must have a fully elected 2nd chamber and therefore do away with buying seats in the Lords, Bishops and aristocracy influencing our laws and while we’re at it lets have an elected head of state. Then and only then can we lay any sort of claim to actually being a democracy.