Not Content

The relations between the democratic state and its armed forces, both internal and external, are endlessly analysed and considered in political science. They are compared with relationships within the authoritarian state (of the left and of the right), the feudal state, in history, under various regimes of international law, and across the borders of the state itself until we arrive at global governance.

The nation state, federal or unitary, invariably seeks to draw the power to use force to itself alone. Even the American citizen's individual right to bear arms, enshrined in its Constitution for historical reasons rooted in the circumstances of the foundation of the state, is under constant attack and equally vigorously defended. In our own state the right to bear arms has shrivelled almost to non-existence; except for members of internal or external state security forces arms are, to all intents and purposes, illegal. No longer is military training even offered to the citizenry in England, let alone required as it is in some countries. The United Kingdom is a highly centralised, even if formally federal, state as well.

So in England democratic control over armed force is crucially important to democracy itself. Yet the ground rules governing the use of force, both within and without the state, like so much else have been profoundly altered during New Labour's regime; and before it, because of the contamination of United Kingdom institutional and constitutional structures by membership of the European Union. While our allegiance to Nato, and to the American super power, has altered the state's relations with, and control over, external armed force, too, as Nato itself has responded to changing circumstances.

But it is contamination by the continental European view of the role of force in the relations between the state and the individual that has most damaged our happiness. There is a world of difference between 'What is not forbidden is permitted', and 'What is not permitted is forbidden'. The latter, europeanist stance requires an internal state control apparatus which we are watching being installed in our society now. It is one of the reasons why our borders have been opened to settlement by those who will notice nothing in the change from a free society to a monitored, rights society - and the rights are not even there under our old and tried Constitution; there is nothing there except the remnants of a rule of law now over-ruled by European arrangements.

And to whom do these hierarchically organised, external military and internal security systems answer? To the permanent structures of the state and its executive, not to the transient occupants of office in elected governance, whose purpose is to legitimise the state's requirements in return for the fruits of temporary office. A caste, not a class, openly hereditary in the case of the head of state, and with in-place recruitment means both over the generations, and for the incorporation of threatening or successful newcomers, controls enforcement of the state's ideals and aims.

We have been fortunate throughout most of our lifetimes in our head of state; there has been coincidence of interest and widespread consent, until recently, to the ideas and practice of rule in this country. We may, within our different classes and societies, have disliked the democratic governance in office, but we were all more or less happy with the state.

No longer; we must find ways of democratically agreeing upon and controlling the use of force in our country.

Basra

Was none who would be foremost
To lead such dire attack:
But those behind cried ‘Forward!’
And those before cried ‘Back!’
And backward now and forward
Wavers the deep array;
And on the tossing sea of steel,
To and fro the standards reel;
And the victorious trumpet-peal
Dies fitfully away.

Who Rules England?

A fascinating discussion is developing on Capitalists@Work on who rules our country. As an opener it seemed worth putting up a list of who has been talking with Elizabeth II since 1952, and when. And when and who not.

When something really important needs sorting out in our family, telephoning, emailing, even skyping doesn't do; face to face, over a decent meal, in private, works.

Incoming

Since 1952:

28 June - 1 July 1954 King Gustaf VI and Queen Louise of Sweden
14-16 October 1954 Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia
25-28 October 1955 President and Madame Craveiro Lopes of Portugal
16-19 July 1956 King Feisal of Iraq
13-16 May 1958 President and Signora Gronchi of Italy
21-23 October 1958 President Heuss of Germany
5-8 May 1959 The Shahanshah of Iran
5-8 April 1960 President and Madame de Gaulle of France
19-21 July 1960 King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit of Thailand
17-20 October 1960 King Mahendra and Queen Ratna of Nepal
10-13 July 1962 President and Mrs. Tubman of Liberia
16-19 October 1962 King Olav V of Norway
14-17 May 1963 King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola of Belgium
12-23 June 1963 President Radhakrishnan of India (a Commonwealth visit)
9-12 July 1963 King Paul I and Queen Frederika of Greece
26 May - 4 June 1964 President Ferik Ibrahim Abbood of Sudan
13-17 July 1965 President and Señora de Frei of Chile
17-21 May 1966 President and Frau Jonas of Austria
19-28 July 1966 King Hussein and The Princess Muna al Hussein of Jordan
17-25 November 1966 President Ayub Khan of Pakistan (a Commonwealth visit)
9-17 May 1967 King Faisal of Saudi Arabia
1-8 November 1967 President and Madame Cevdet Sunay of Turkey
22-30 April 1969 President Saragat and Signora Santacatterina of Italy
15-20 July 1969 President and Madame Kekkonen of Finland
5-8 October 1971 Emperor Hirohito and the Empress of Japan
7-10 December 1971 King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan
11-15 April 1972 Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands
13-16 June 1972 The Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
24-27 October 1972 President and Frau Heinemann of Germany
3-6 April 1973 President and Señora de Echeverria of Mexico
12-15 June 1973 General and Mrs. Gowon of Nigeria
11-14 December 1973 President and Madame Mobutu of Zaire
30 April - 3 May 1974 Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik of Denmark
9-12 July 1974 Yang di-Pertuan Agong and the Raja Permaisuri of Malaysia
8-11 July 1975 King Carl Gustaf of Sweden
18-21 November 1975 President Nyerere of Tanzania
4-7 May 1976 President and Senhora Geisel of Brazil
22-25 June 1976 President and Madame Valery Giscard d'Estaing of France
13-16 June 1978 President and Madame Ceausescu of Romania
14-17 November 1978 President and Senhora Eanes of Portugal
12-15 June 1979 President Arap Moi of Kenya
13-16 November 1979 President and Madame Soeharto of Indonesia
18-21 November 1980 King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya of Nepal
17-20 March 1981 President Shagari of Nigeria
9-12 June 1981 King Khaled of Saudi Arabia
16-19 March 1982 HM Qaboos Bin Al Said, Sultan of Oman
16-19 November 1982 Queen Beatrix and Prince Claus of the Netherlands
22-25 March 1983 President and Mrs. Kaunda of Zambia
10-13 April 1984 His Highness Shaikh Isa bin Sulman Al Khalifa of Bahrain
23-26 October 1984 President and Madame François Mitterrand of France
16-19 April 1985 President Banda of Malawi
11-14 June 1985 President and Señora de la Madrid of Mexico
12-15 November 1985 His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar
22-25 April 1986 King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain
1-4 July 1986 President and Freifrau von Weizsacker of Germany
24-27 March 1987 King Fahd of Saudi Arabia
14-17 July 1987 King Hassan II of Morocco
12-15 April 1988 King Olav V of Norway
12-15 July 1988 President Evren of Turkey
8-11 November 1988 President and Madame Diouf of Senegal
9-12 May 1989 President and Mrs. Babangida of Nigeria
18-21 July 1989 Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan of United Arab Emirates
3-6 April 1990 President and Shrimali Venkataraman of India
23-26 October 1990 President Cossiga of Italy
23-26 April 1991 President and Mrs. Walesa of Poland
23-26 July 1991 President and Mrs. Mubarak of Egypt
3-6 November 1992 The Sultan of Brunei and The Raja Isteri
27-30 April 1993 President and Senhora Soares of Portugal
9-12 November 1993 The Yang di-Pertuan Agong and The Raja Permaisuri Agong of Malaysia
17-20 May 1994 President Mugabe of Zimbabwe
5-8 July 1994 King Harald and Queen Sonja of Norway
23-26 May 1995 Shaikh Jabir al Ahmed Jabir al Sabah (The Amir) of Kuwait
17-20 October 1995 President and Madame Ahtisaari of Finland
14-17 May 1996 President and Madame Chirac of France
9-12 July 1996 President Mandela of South Africa
25-28 February 1997 President and Mrs. Weizman of Israel
2-5 December 1997 President and Senhora Cardoso of Brazil
26-29 May 1998 Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko of Japan
1-4 December 1998 President and Frau Herzog of Germany
22-25 June 1999 President and Mrs. Goncz of Hungary
19-22 October 1999 President and Madame Wang Yeping of China
16-18 February 2000 Queen Margrethe II and Prince Henrik of Denmark
12-15 June 2001 President and Mrs. Mbeki of South Africa
6-9 November 2001 King Abdullah II and Queen Rania of Jordan
24-27 June 2003 President Putin and Mrs. Putina of the Russian Federation
18-21 November 2003 President and Mrs. Bush of the United States of America
5-7 May 2004 President and Mrs. Kwasniewska of Poland
18-19 November 2004
(Official Visit to mark the centenary of the Entente Cordiale) President and Madame Chirac of France
1-3 December 2004 President and Mrs. Roh Moo-Hyun of South Korea
15-17 March 2005 The President of the Italian Republic and Signora Ciampi
25-27 October 2005 King Harald and Queen Sonja of Norway (Official visit)
8-10 November 2005 The President of the People's Republic of China and Madame Liu Yongqing
7-9 March 2006 The President of the Federative Republic of Brazil and Senhora Marisa Letícia Lula da Silva
13-15 March 2007 The President of the Republic of Ghana and Mrs Kufuor
30 October - 1 November 2007 The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia
26-27 March 2008 The President of the French Republic and Madame Nicolas Sarkozy

God Save the Queen! takes on an entirely new urgency.

The Advantages of Hereditary Office

A list of outward State visits undertaken by the Queen, accompanied by The Duke of Edinburgh, since 1952:

24-26 June 1955 Norway, visiting King Haakon VII
8-10 June 1956 Sweden, visiting King Gustaf VI
18-21 February 1957 Portugal, visiting President Craveiro Lopes
8-11 April 1957 France, visiting President René Coty
21-23 May 1957 Denmark, visiting King Frederick IX
17-21 October 1957 USA, visiting President Eisenhower
25-27 March 1958 The Netherlands, visiting Queen Juliana I
26 February - 1 March 1961 Nepal, visiting King Mahendra
2-6 March 1961 Iran, visiting Shahanshah Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlari
2-5 May 1961 Italy, visiting President Gronchi
5 May 1961 Vatican City, visiting Pope John XXIII
23 November 1961 Liberia, visiting President Tubman
1-8 February 1965 Ethiopia, visiting Emperor Haile Selassie I
8-12 February 1965 Sudan, visiting President Dr. El Tigani El Mahi
18-28 May 1965 Germany, visiting President Lübke
9-13 May 1966 Belgium, visiting King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola
5-11 November 1968 Brazil, visiting President da Costa e Silva
11-18 November 1968 Chile, visiting President Frei
5-10 May 1969 Austria, visiting President Jonas
18-25 October 1971 Turkey, visiting President Sunay
10-15 February 1972 Thailand, visiting King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit
13-14 March 1972 Maldives, visiting President Nasir
15-19 May 1972 France, visiting President Pompidou
17-21 October 1972 Yugoslavia, visiting President Tito
15-22 March 1974 Indonesia, visiting President Soeharto
24 February - 1 March 1975 Mexico, visiting President Echeverria
7-12 May 1975 Japan, visiting Emperor Hirohito
25-28 May 1976 Finland, visiting President Kekkonen
6-11 July 1976 USA, visiting President Ford
8-12 November 1976 Luxembourg, visiting The Grand Duke and Grand Duchess
17-19 February 1979 Saudi Arabia
22-26 May 1978 Germany, visiting President Scheel
16-19 May 1979 Denmark, visiting Queen Margrethe
19-22 July 1979 Tanzania, visiting President Nyerere
22-25 July 1979 Malawi, visiting President Banda
25-27 July 1979 Botswana, visiting President Seretse Khama
27 July - 4 August 1979 Zambia, visiting President Kaunda
29 April - 2 May 1980 Switzerland, visiting President Chevallaz
14-17 October 1980 Italy, visiting President Pertini
17 October 1980 Vatican City, visiting Pope John Paul II
21-23 October 1980 Tunisia, visiting President Bourguiba
25-27 October 1980 Algeria, visiting President Chadli
27-30 October 1980 Morocco, visiting King Hassan II
5-8 May 1981 Norway, visiting King Olav V
21-25 October 1981 Sri Lanka, visiting President Jayewardene
25-28 May 1983 Sweden, visiting King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia
10-14 November 1983 Kenya, visiting President Arap Moi
14-17 November 1983 Bangladesh, visiting President Chowdhury
17-26 November 1983 India, visiting President Zail Singh
26-30 March 1984 Jordan, visiting King Hussein and Queen Noor
25-29 March 1985 Portugal, visiting President and Senhora Eanes
17-21 February 1986 Nepal, visiting King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya
12-18 October 1986 China, visiting President Li Xiannian
17-21 October 1988 Spain, visiting King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia
9-11 October 1989 Singapore, visiting President Wee Kim Wee
14-17 October 1989 Malaysia, visiting Yang di-Pertuan Agong
25-27 June 1990 Iceland, visiting President Vigdis Finnbogadottir
14-17 May 1991 USA, visiting President Bush
8-10 October 1991 Namibia, visiting President Nujoma
10-15 October 1991 Zimbabwe, visiting President Mugabe
28-10 May 1992 Malta, visiting President Tabone
9-12 June 1992 France, visiting President Mitterand
19-23 October 1992 Germany, visiting President Von Weizsacker
4-7 May 1993 Hungary, visiting President Goncz
17-20 October 1994 Russia, visiting President Yeltsin
19-25 March 1995 South Africa, visiting President Mandela
25-27 March 1996 Poland, visiting President Kwasniewska
27-29 March 1996 Czech Republic, visiting President Havel
28 October - 1 November 1996 Thailand, visiting King Bhumibol
6-12 October 1997 Pakistan, visiting President Sharma
12-18 October 1997 India, visiting President Narayanan
17-20 September 1998 Brunei, visiting HM Sultan of Brunei
20-23 September 1998 Malaysia, visiting HM The Yang di Pertuan-Agong
19-22 April 1999 South Korea, visiting President Kim Dae-jung
16-19 October 2000 Italy, visiting President Ciampi
30 May - 1 June 2001 Norway, visiting King Harald V and Queen Sonja
5 - 7 April 2004 France, visiting President Chirac
5-7 May 2004 President and Mrs. Kwasniewska of Poland
16-17 October 2006 Lithuania, visiting President Adamkus
18-19 October 2006 Latvia, visiting President Vike-Freiberga
19-20 October 2006 Estonia, visiting President Ilves
5 February 2007 The Netherlands, visiting the Queen of the Netherlands (to mark the 400th Anniversary of the English Church in Amsterdam)
3-8 May 2007 The United States of America, visiting President and Mrs Bush (to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement)
11-12 July 2007 Belgium, visiting the King and Queen of the Belgians (to mark the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Passchendaele)

Animal Spirits

To get economic growth there must be saving and investment. Who will save if interest rates are lowered to 1% (effectively zero, liquidity preference cuts in). Do we really want to emulate Japan for another miserable decade? Hasn't a decade of Brown's economic and financial incompetence and lack of foresight been enough? What is this - the plagues of Egypt?

Frogs now.

Our system rewards conformity and subservience rather than creativity because financial betting is protected by the state, while entrepreneurial risk-taking is not.

Our animal spirits have been caged. Indiscriminate protection of employment regardless of merit heightens entrepreneurial risk - there are 2100 too many Alitalia workers who face the sack ('so they effing should', says a frequent flier passing through); are they worth protecting? No. Workfare not welfare is essential or a 'rights' mentality develops.

A fair day's work for a fair day's pay is a more profound statement about our current economic and financial predicament than its status as an inverted 19th century slogan suggests.

Either we release our entrepreneurial spirits or we shall be nothing but a nation of corner shopkeepers.

New Labour Old Enemies

In the immediate post War constitutions were drafted and put into effect for much of continental Europe. Our lawyers and academic advisers contributed a great deal to analysing and formulating institutional and binding responses to various expressions of authoritarianism; they ensured many rights and freedoms were enshrined in these constitutions so that the decade long slide into dictatorship, war and the Holocaust could not happen again.

It did not cross any minds that our own constitution might need reinforcement and safeguarding for democracy. After all, we, with our Commonwealth and American allies had just defeated the Axis authoritarian states.

And until the New Labour Project, with its over riding goal of permanence in power, preferably by vote (however manipulated), but if needed by alteration of the relationships within the state itself, and then force, our constitution served us as it always had.

The New Labour Project has assumed the authority of the monarch almost wholly into the Executive and persistently marginalised the functions of the Head of State; it has destroyed the Parliament as a force against the Executive by downgrading the House of Lords to party appointees, and purchasers of seats in the legislature, and by excluding the Law Lords; the Commons has been emasculated by a Party discipline that replaces any notion of constituency representation of all by the member of parliament; administratively the country has been dismembered, then re-divided with the specific intention of breaking economic, sociocultural/historic links, and non-elected bodies provided with powers and funding that belong in elected local government; a vicious policy masquerading as tolerance of diversity has set sectors of the population, and particularly the poorer sectors, one against the other; education has been down graded into qualification and conformity as a means of accessing low level state jobs; a client state of complacent voters has been bought both with tax-funded work and tax-funded benefits; the entire life records of whole populations have been uploaded onto insecure, regime data bases under the pretence of providing identity cards; means to prevent freedom of movement are already in place; 'security' measures that apply to most do not apply to regime nomenklatura; an external 'terrorist' threat has been manufactured by illegal war and unwise 'multiculturalism' to reinforce regime arbitrary action; tax-raised resources have been used wholesale to redistribute allegiance and purchase acquiescence.

We are now at the codification stage in all this as the regime produces the written constitution that would better have come at a time when all the world, even as much of it lay in ruins, understood the nature of democracy, responsibility for wrong, freedom under the law, and the right to go about life's business without reference to anything else, least of all the state.

Someone, Anyone, Teach Him Some Manners

As we all know, the greeting offered on presentation to a woman is a slight incline of the head and a straightening of the shoulders; this can be accompanied by a bow over the hand, if it is offered.

Between relatives and/or friends the hand is offered, taken, then first one side of the face and then the other is presented to the person being greeted; there is no, or the very lightest, brush of cheeks.

For very close relatives - spouse, parent, child, sibling, there is a hug also.

Never, and then never is there any part of the mouth involved in these formalities, except for the purposes of speech; on presentation to a stranger the surname, or first and surname is spoken, to someone known already - 'how lovely to see you, you're looking wonderful...' and smiling; eyes are used for looking with, not closing.

The British Prime Minister's behaviour offered to Madame Sarkozy, shown in today's photographs is beyond lack of self awareness (as his ill-manners and inability to control his reactions to others are kindly known), goffo doesn't begin to cover it.

Brown is quite literally, aldilà del bene e del male.

Why Are British Troops at Basra Airport?

"Basra is half empty. There are no vehicles and no one is going to work. People are afraid to go out," said a military official in the city, (Reuters).

Why are 4100 British troops sitting in Basra airport when the city and its immediate surroundings, as well as the main road from Basra to the north, are engulfed in fighting?

The Times reports that the government troops who launched the Basra offensive against the Mahdi army militias that control the entire zone of former British command, is a government force that has been the focus of US military training. But the British government has stated repeatedly, as have British military commanders at the airport encampment, that their presence there is precisely to train government Iraqi troops and to provide military assistance in heavy fighting.

This is heavy fighting; these are government Iraqi troops who have been trained by the Americans.

Reports have surfaced repeatedly that there are barely enough British soldiers in the base to protect themselves. They are not offering assistance to Iraqi troops; they are not training the Iraqi troops that are fighting in their own sector. They are not carrying out their own, self-declared mission, or that of the British government.

Brown and Browne need to explain to us all convincingly why over 4000 British troops are in harm's way, or they should leave.

Nuclear Expansion Offers Mutant Production Efficiencies

In a speech to the trade union Unite, John Hutton, Business Minister in the New Labour regime declaimed: "There has never been a greater global demand for finance, equipment and skills to build and operate nuclear power stations...I want Britain to be leading the world in the development and application of this new generation of low carbon power technology."

The largest trade union affiliated to the regime listened to inspirational claims that Britain (which seems not to include Scotland when it comes to nuclear power generation or weapons storage now that New Labour has been ousted from Scottish governance) can be a "gateway to a new nuclear renaissance across Europe". These aspirations were linked to the assertion that countries across Europe wanted more nuclear power generation and accepted that harmful emissions could be reduced by embracing English and Welsh expertise and unionised labour.

The technology "offers tremendous opportunities for highly skilled jobs across the breadth [chains are a measure of length, never mind, Ed.] of the supply chain".

Unfortunately, owing to a present lack of a trained workforce, engineering skills, and nuclear power generation know how in Unite!, France will be taking a leading role in replacing aging nuclear power plants across England and Wales, half of which are currently shut down as too dangerous to run.

The advantages are: the rendering irrelevant of the human/animal mutations Bill now causing difficulties, as mutant species of all and every kind can readily be found close to current decrepit and leaking nuclear plant; and the importing of French nuclear waste, to be stored together with our own nuclear waste, thus creating much needed jobs in this flagship industry, and paying for the clean up of the last 35 years of French nuclear power production, which they would prefer to spread around us all.

Acts of Union to be Disturbed

Ensuring a Protestant royal succession is provided for by the English Act of Settlement of 1701, but until the Union of Parliaments, the Scots could choose their monarch under the Scottish Act of Security of 1704, and have a Catholic monarch. The Act of Settlement runs in Scotland only because of the Acts of Union.

The provisions of the Act of Settlement are restated in, and integral to, the Acts of Union.

Brown and his 'Minister for Justice' Straw are not clever men - cunning, sly, certainly - but they are poorly equipped in understanding and education, as well as narrowly experienced in politics, with their strengths residing in crawling about in the bowels of the Labour Party.

Vision, on the scale required to understand what they are doing in yesterday's proposals to ram the provisions of European-style, post War settlements for defeated continental countries into our arrangements, is not theirs to claim.

Even more interesting is the understanding of state power and its control displayed by the Leader and his junta. Patently apparent is the assertion of the Leader not as an executive holding power devolved from the state that is expressed in the person of the monarch and in constitutional structures, and wielded through a democratically elected parliament, thus answerable to the people.

Rather, it seems the Leader believes that he, not the monarch, is the embodiment of state power, and that the monarchy, constitution and Parliament can be recast, or outcast as he chooses.

Foolishness and conceit are blind to the fact that behind power lies consent, and behind consent lies both long negotiation and settlement, and then force.

'British' Prime Minister Forced to Accept Heart and Conscience Free Vote

Knights of St Columba 1 - Gordon Brown 0

In Heart and Conscience Free

Roman Catholics tend to be working class and tend to vote Labour; some families may have achieved middle class incomes and professional statuses as lawyers or doctors or academics, but their essential class base is derived from their family histories. They are the migrant Irish of the last 150 years who have settled permanently in England and Scotland. Because they are Roman Catholic they marry in, to other Roman Catholics; and because they are working class they tend not to marry up, into the remnants of the English Catholics, who are few and socially grand.

The attempt to force through the hybrid bill on Human Fertilisation by confounding within it desirable reforms as well as moral obscenities is typical of New Labour unattractive, patronizing slyness; at the same time, relying on the tribal Labour instincts of all Labour supporters, including its many Roman Catholic supporters to get away with this is a measure of the Junta's intelligence.

They have set one form of Catholic tribalism - the faith of our fathers, living still in spite of dungeon, fire and sword - against the other form of Catholic tribalism - I shall vote Labour because deep in my heart I am a conservative - at least a social conservative. And when conflicted, the good Catholic turns to the Cardinal Archbishop for guidance - it is one of the consolations of the Faith that such guidance is always there and always given - and follows that guidance.

A good Roman Catholic does not turn to a Protestant Scot with a public record of immoral attitudes to family life implemented for over ten years, who assists in the undermining of Catholic schools and a Catholic upbringing, and who wishes to force all of us into the acceptance of a sin so grave as the crossing of human with other species' life forms.

The pressure to remove Brown and his junta from the leadership and control of the Labour party will be exerted by every means, private, personal, formal, institutional, by associations, and organisations, from every parish in the country.

The man is an occasion of sin.

Jubilate

And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.

His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow:

And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.

And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.

He is not here: for he is risen, as he said.

Or, to borrow from Reverend Farthing: 'if they can do their blood-curdling bayonet practice in the middle of my responses, I can do my jubilate in the middle of their inquiries!'

Happy Easter!

Security Strategy Concordance

"National Security Strategy - bias, omissions and weasel words."

is an analysis by Spyblog (cf Angels' Links) of the Leader's understanding of security and its maintenance in our country.

You are urged to read it if you have not all ready. And no, it's not strictly a concordance but the list of key words and their frequency of occurrence, and another list of words notable for their absence, is a revelatory way of displaying the priorities and political bankruptcy of a regime that claims to be social democratic, and is internationally allied with equally politically bankrupt socialist parties and organisations throughout the world.

Blanket authoritarianism joined with the cheapest of regime propaganda.

Reserve Forces and Special Measures to Contain Jonah Effect

So awful has been the Jonah effect of Brown's Leadership - floods, pestilence (twice), financial instability and economic depression, bank run and bank nationalisation, war on two fronts, the steady decline of the pound, .....that it has been thought wise to have a special, two-tier military/civilian defence force against further threats.

In a statement yesterday that affirmed Mr Chamberlain's view of history, the world, and Britain's former place in it, today's Leader and UK Prime Minister pointed out how, in the good old days, instability in far-off places could be dismissed as of no real consequence to the United Kingdom.

That view has changed. Well it did so dramatically some 70 years ago, but never mind. Now, the Labour regime warns us that the problems of the world and his wife have accepted their invitation and settled in at our hearth.

Committees are being set up, advisory and academic, to co-ordinate with other committees, advisory and police/ military/ spy; reports are to be reported, and drill halls and headquarters of part time and reserve forces reviewed and centralised (oh all right, sold off). The future is to be looked into and dealt with before it even starts.

We are to be numbered, weighed, divided, identified, uploaded, and uplifted into preliminary detentions without charge for ever so long, so watch it.

A serving soldier has been appointed to oversee the looking.

On Capitalists@Work, (see Angels links), Nick Drew a former soldier, brilliantly fisks the fantasy and falsities in all their weasel words.

UPDATE

Arctic fronts are sweeping down from the north of England, New Labour's heartlands, carrying snow, icy rain, driven by high winds, and rendering driving extremely hazardous; ferry escapes to the Continent are being disrupted by storms and heavy seas; railway engineering works, cunningly timed to coincide with the easter holidays, are reducing the already skeletal rail service.

Jonah and his Party is reported to be well ahead with their planning and already has Whitsuntide set for floods, massive airport disruptions in the name of security, and outbursts of viral stomach infections from closing would be escapees in airports for days.

Bought But Not Paid For

"Consumers need to be aware that the mortgages they enjoyed before the credit crunch were priced at unsustainable levels.

"That is why we have had a credit crunch. It is sensible for people to expect that things will not get back to where they were - that would not be desirable." (a senior financial adviser to the Treasury, quoted in the Telegraph).

Are the Labour regime and their apparatchiks so stupid they believe the electorate voted for Blair in 2005 for anything, anything at all other than cheap credit, fake jobs in the public sector, unaffordable mass benefits, and the chance to risk a little moral hazard for themselves?

When people sell their souls they expect the return in this life, not the next; Labour had better find a way to meet our debts, and quickly.

The Clinton Rush on the Ultimate

Hillary Clinton is a lesson to us all on wrongness in political thinking. Spoken and unspoken her campaign really rides on her gender. Every other aspect of her being is politically repellent - and gender is not a political category. Since Bill Clinton's shameful presidency ended the interests his political constituency represents have been organising his return.

This window-dressing of democracy, with mass attention diverted constantly from real economic and political issues to social issues and cultural dispute has been imported wholesale into our country by New Labour, under the guise of redressing inequality and absolute poverty.

But what the Labour party, political arm of the trade union movement, and what the trade union movement itself once stood against, has passed. Passed in that no-one is absolutely poor in our country, nor has been since before the Second war, and passed in that no group that is not readily open to all should be allowed to claim supremacy in policy and decision-taking over other people's individual lives.

Labour and its factions are the past - essential, even praiseworthy as they have been in the past, their traditions' use, to cloak state authoritarianism and impose cultural conformity, now damages everything a democratic, individualist, pluralist governance and constitution stands for.

The Americans are blessed, as ever, with their magnificent constitution - so powerful in spirit and so splendidly expressed that many generations of its interpretation have resulted in its clarion voice ringing out always louder, never watered down into the drivel of politically correct speech and attitude; always inspiring every new generation with its vision and its capacity to offer an interpretation of history that embodies change with the constant of individual freedom.

Better than to list the attempts to pervert democracy the Clinton regime and its apparatchiks and nomenklatura used to spin and lie their way to the production of their 'managed democracy' and permanence in power, it is more telling, and more familiar, to consider its shadow regime installed in our country by New Labour.

The widening of the gulf between most of us and the illicitly rich; the destruction of real hope of advancement through education and merit under the guise of no discrimination (lack of discrimination can destroy the lives and hopes of the least privileged faster than almost any other system); their tax mulcting that drained the life out of entrepreneurship and favoured their corporate sponsors; their privatisation of social assets to favoured Party donors, producing social service regimes with what was called choice and empowerment that was, in truth, the transfer of privatised economic opportunities to exploit the old, ill, young and disadvantaged; the imposition of false cultural proprieties that created thought crime and damages real social relations; the unforgivable registration of people's lives on insecure state data bases; the stealing of the mantle of social reform that belongs to all of our people - liberals, conservatives, friendly societies and co-operative movements, visionaries and statesmen, religious and humanitarians, in peace and in war.

We have no real defence against this monstrous assault upon our way of life and its organic freedoms; our institutions and constitution were found to be hollowed-out glories, and we are now a democratic basket case.

But in America, where the great assault upon us, the people, and our individual right to pursue happiness, was first fantasized and effected under 'democrat' governance, (only to be halted by another, at least open, choice of using force to take what an imperial vision of America needed), democracy and individual assertion is theirs to choose and theirs to take.

Do not choose Hillary Clinton; and if she is chosen, do not vote for her.

Brass Neck at Northern Rock

The general secretary of the trade union Unite is reported to have said (Telegraph):

"If there are any redundancies we will be seeking redundancy pay rates equivalent to the highest in the EU. In France it can cost up to 10 times more to make [a] worker redundant than in the UK."

As well, shareholdings "held by employees [are] to be treated differently from those of private individuals, the institutions and hedge funds". "As the shareholding was received as part of their remuneration package, it should be treated as deferred wages."

Over £100 billion of our taxes having been put at risk by this incompetent, financially illiterate bank and its employees and still they have their hands out rattling their trade union special interest agendas as if there is coincidence with the general good, or even paramountcy over it.

Still, it might be considered, just, within the remit of a trade union. At least he's not mouthing off about taxation rates or social spending.

The Aristocracy of Labour

Trade Unions have always been intensely vulnerable to the charge that they further the interests of their members at the expense of other working people and other members of low income classes, and the unemployed; most particularly they discriminate against women in family life. They belong to an essentially bread-winner, masculinist culture rooted, quite reasonably considering their historical status, in the century that ended in the 1980s.

With the collapse of heavy and manufacturing industry in the United Kingdom, the closing of the mines, the steel works, the ship building industry, the car industry and all its associated trades, engineering, machine tools, aircraft manufacture (what a horrifying list of industrial degeneration), and the steady focussing of all United Kingdom wealth creation within the financial sector, both economically and geographically located away from former areas of production, the trade unions have learned to regret their former arrogance towards women and the non-unionised sectors of our society.

Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths as they appoint women union officers, and claim as their areas of concerned action such social sectors as child poverty and the young, fuel poverty and the old, tax policy and all of us, health and educational services, pensions, immigration, multiculturalism, outreach, Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all.

Unfortunately those sectors of our lives are no more their business than they are the business of each and every one of us individually; and while the trade unions act as a tightly organised group of politically motivated men (to borrow a phrase), they act with wholesale impropriety in a pluralist, individualist democracy.

The United Kingdom needs a general election to preserve the very notion and existence of democracy in our lives, never mind the opportune removal of an unelected Prime Minister and his lickspittle Executive who have reduced us all in the narrow interests of the once economically productive and their remnant organisations.

Even Lenin regarded them as pernicious.

Merit and Choice

Merit is best for choosing; so we ask 'What is merit?'

It used to have some cruel outcomes when merit was too closely identified with advantage - cultural or economic. Of the two, I find economic advantage alone unacceptable in education.

Cultural is another matter, as education is the transmission of culture. There may be something like raw intelligence, which has been deprived of input, as well there is lesser potential carefully nurtured by fortunate circumstance.
Neither should be ignored.

Examination success is too crude a measure to weigh and filter all these factors. It's just a first sort-out but gets mistaken for achievement, of itself, rather than being something that reinforces confidence and encourages further effort to advance.

None of this complexity can be measured by rules alone. And it's all made even more complex by social and economic opportunity and status attaching to it, at times being used to exclude, or to pretend fairness while really cloaking economic and social privilege.

Perhaps one of the most successful solutions to providing objective assessment and a measure of progress and encouragement is the
public, open-to-all, graded exam system of the Royal Schools of Music. All the A-levels and O- levels used to be similar public examinations open to all.

They are widely regarded as elitist now but there's no egalitarianism in music performance. There is no egalitarianism in anything really, but that need not be used to justify the denigration of high culture, or the denial of greater fitness for a particular task, or course of study, at hand.

On the whole it might be best if examinations were removed from the control of the schools and their internal assessments, and returned to being public examinations to be taken by whoever enters (though obviously most candidates will be school pupils).

And proper recognition returned to the capacities of commissioners, examiners, admissions tutors, to know their job and their duty to fairness as well.

Do They Have to Have GCSE English?

Cambridge University no longer requires a foreign language to meet its minimum entry requirements. The Director of Admissions for the Cambridge Colleges said: "This change would remove something which has, unfortunately, become a significant barrier impeding access to Cambridge."

Well, it would be wouldn't it? No French, German, Italian, or any classical language might be a bit of a handicap for anybody wishing to read philosophy, or history, or the history of art, or music, or archaeology, anthropology, divinity, mathematics, history of science.... you know - the sort of elitist faculties they have in Cambridge.

And while it might no longer be a formal requirement, being monolingual isn't going to help; formal requirements are the very least that is needed for entry into Cambridge.

Managing Local Democracy

The sensation that politicians, even politics itself, are a waste of time, is as widely reported as it is experienced. The explanation put forward most often is a nebulous ' disillusionment'.

Nonsense. Political boundaries on the ground and political categories of policy and action have been decoupled from administrative, expenditure, and statistics-gathering categories, under New Labour's' 'managed democracy'.

We vote for local representatives - They grid the United Kingdom with need/homogeneity/relations-to-central-plans-expenditure sectors. Our elected representatives and the electorate to whom they respond match none of this gridding and can do only their limited best to liaise with like others who are trying also to cope with unresponsive central administration physical and policy agendas.

Power lies where the money goes, and our money goes where the central government's gridding decides; our electoral and democratic power collapses.

The Conservative party has published a list of those grid areas where more than 50% of the inhabitants survive solely on tax-funded benefit payments; not the parishes, local or even metropolitan council areas, the grid sectors.

Which Superoutput Area do you live in?

Another Day, Another Run

The three, separate runs on Northern Rock ended in the very public disgrace of queues on the streets by desperate retail depositors (the last to realise it was time to run) trying to get their money out, being shown across the world.

The only reason we are not reacting quite so sharply to the run on Bear Stearns is because, as at Northern Rock, the wholesale run,the panicked withdrawal of capital by leading financial institutions from an investment bank, won't lead to queues in the street. In this case there will not be a retail run to follow as there are no retail depositors; but if I had deposits in any bank with a similar structure to Northern Rock or Bear Stearns, I would be waiting for the doors to open on Monday morning.

Two for the Price of One.

The Economist notes that if Geoffrey Howe had sold 12.7 million ounces of gold at the 1980 peak price of $850 he would have received almost $11 billion. Invested in Treasury Bonds this would have yielded 7% a year, so the tax payer would be around $90 billion up on the transaction.

Come on Gordon (or your puppet), retrieve your disaster in selling gold at $276 an ounce (all 12.7m of them), and cover your Northern Rock disaster too.

Are We Nearly There Yet?

Yes. Not long now before the headlines of the business pages transform into daily experiences and unaffordably high prices for everyday purchases; we are already exhausting obvious substitutions like cheaper cuts of meat, usually chicken, fresh fish almost never and then farmed salmon, avoiding salad products for frozen basic greens, bulking out meals with rice, pastas, pulses and bread. Already we pass Waitrose on the way to our local no-frills. We've stopped redecorating, and the domestic equipment is going to have to do another year, as will the curtains.

Clothes are separates, no longer the pretty summer dress from Fenwicks, the well cut jacket and skirt that costs a bit but will last for years, a silk or linen blouse; but 'tops' with jeans or machine washables.

There might be a 'do', an evening out with our local club, but otherwise we'll be eating at home and cooking from quite close to scratch, though the frozen vegetables are easier (as well as cheaper). And after supper? Once we're in for the evening, we usually stay - there's not a lot of going out for a stroll and a drink when it's cold, and the streets are hardly friendly, are they? We've cut back on the pub.

We thought we might remortgage to replace the car - the children's school seems to cost more and more, now they're bigger - and have a little holiday, but the bank doesn't want to know and the rates are through the roof; the fixed rate ends this year too.

The unemployment hasn't really started yet but the taxes just go up and up to pay for those already out. And the council's services are rubbish: the library closed half the time, old stock, you wouldn't think they'd heard of books, just videos; the swimming pool is usually given over to special groups and it's none too clean anyway. The new houses were built on the playing fields and sports pitches.

Dreary. Making do. That's how it feels at first. Then comes scary, as your house is worth less than your mortgage, and the rate on your savings is lower than inflation; then comes cold, as energy prices drop your living temperatures, and then comes no car and all the impossibilities of using a collapsed transport system; then getting ill from poorish diet and exposure to forgotten effects of poverty like rising levels of dirt.

Everybody's in the same boat. Precisely, so services are pushed until they break, which happens quite quickly as there's little elasticity inbuilt. And the socially more vulnerable, and more isolated, fail to cope entirely. People go mad, become criminal, burden families that are already under pressure with chronic illness, depression, and crises generated by infrastructure failure.

Life expectancy starts to fall as social cooperation shrinks, social order is first maintained by force and then degenerates anyway. Hope and reasonable aspiration fades for all but the toughest-minded, the best organised, those determined not to suffer the inner colllapse that comes with great loss.

And the loss is enormous; delivered by the ideological malevolence and, worse, the technical incompetence of the last 11 years of New Labour.

Freedom of Conscience

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill should be voted down, it makes provision for creating monstrosity.

And Mr Cameron's principled view that such a Bill must have a free vote is the only possible stance that can "respect the conscience", as the Prime Minister puts it, of our members of Parliament and respect our consciences in placing our trust in our elected representatives.

It is not enough to permit abstention - staying away is both avoidance of responsibility, and effective acquiescence, as the Liberal Democrats showed us all last week. How contemptible that the Labour Whip, Hoon, has conceded such a cop-out, for those who get his permission first. On what grounds and behind what documentation is permission given? Chit from the parish priest? Would the vicar or minister or rabbi do too? Certified anti-eugenics activism?

Is there any aspect of authoritarianism, and eugenic experimentation must be first in its catalogue of horrors, neglected by this regime?

They want to make fish soup out of the aquarium (in E-K's devastating image).

So What?

Balls asks the correct question in the face of the United Kingdom having the highest tax burden in its history.

So what? when only the little people pay tax. So what? when work is not so much a productive activity, but increasingly a therapeutic, life-style accessory provided as a pastime for the unemployed and unemployable clients of the New Labour regime. So what? when a system of the poor servicing the poor within a closed system of low-level regime-provision has been cemented into place, and any wealth produced serendipitously is siphoned off by consumption tax farming.

Children are unhappier and worse educated than any of their European peers, hospital treatment is delayed and often offered in filthy and dangerous conditions, the elderly must beg for 'allowances' and 'special payments' (and the fuel allowance increase is for one year only) with their taxes doubled from 10 to 20%, and their pensions stolen over the last 11 years of New Labour; and in the name of 'battling' climate change, everyone's cheap holidays are moved out of reach or blighted by inflicted chaos in travel arrangements in the name of yet another 'war'; while on the real battlefronts of the regime's illegal wars, troops are maimed and die for New Labour's refusal to fund their equipment.

So What? when the permanent, managed democracy is yielding power and wealth to its monopolists, living their dream in a separate fiscal world of life-costs paid as expenses, and privatised riches created by the sale and exchange of state power.

Laffable

The success of Gordon Brown's fiscal policy is the dubious creation of ideal conditions for the Laffer Curve and its perverse effects. The point is being passed or has been passed already where higher rates of taxation lead to lower absolute levels of tax revenue.

The curve, and its curviness, is empirically unproven. Except for Russia.

The Russian introduction of a flat tax at around 10% raised total tax revenue, and we all Laffed.

It stands to reason that with a 43% average tax burden and far higher marginal rates, the United Kingdom too has become Laffable.

All Things Bright and Beautiful

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.

Well, I used to enjoy singing it in Assembly, and lots of other hymns; made us feel very much as if we belonged. Try a verse or two of We Plough the Fields and Scatter...

Hand on heart swearing allegiance to the Queen and Brown's British state doesn't do it for me.

A Tissue of Lies

Telling lies, imaginatively, determinedly, consistently, with appropriate adjustments in investigable areas of life such as bank accounts, addresses, health records, age and other statuses, must be the only way forward in the face of council taxes, income taxes, insurances, falling wages, and social engineering with malice.

We have been lied to by the New Labour regime on war, sovereignty, immigration, public services - particularly health and education which no-one in their right mind would use from choice - policing and public safety, and on votes cast, for which parties and by whom, in local and national elections.

Lies are our national culture; and we should all partake of our Britishness, together in our various diversities.

What Governance Is This?

'Police believe there is a network of four secret rooms at the home but have struggled to access the bricked-up chambers.

Fragments of bone, blood spots and graffiti reading "I've been bad for years and years" were found in the first room.

Police are still awaiting tests on the bone and blood samples to help them trace and date the finds.'

Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, North Eastern England, the Midlands, Islington - the list goes on and on for years and years.

Angels Slightly Foxed

Bonds always fox me. The more people want them the lower they pay; the more worry about their provenance the better their yield.

100 points spread sounds like a lot to the uninformed, but that's only one per cent interest rate differential in the cost of new borrowing. This is neither going to push Italy and Greece into bankruptcy, nor discourage existing lenders from holding old debt; they can avoid the capital loss on falling bond prices by just waiting for them to mature.

The rising spread is a problem that belongs to debtor countries - such as Greece, Italy and Spain - anyway; and it's a problem too for creditors, should these countries default, which they won’t, they're nowhere near default.

What it is not, is a problem for the Euro; nor for any other Euro-zone country that is not suffering from internal or external imbalances. The state of New York could go bust without affecting the value of the US dollar.

So why such euro-centred economic catastrophism? The Dollar and the Pound are looking much iffier even if their bonds are yielding less than Italy's.

Golden Slumbers

Digging up and then re-vaulting gold isn't a very smart human endeavour. It yields no interest, its only yield is capital appreciation, and its massive capital appreciation has been in terms of that depreciating asset the US dollar.

Gold has no significant monetary use any longer, it is over-priced in terms of industrial and of decorative use;higher incomes bring better taste in modes of expressing wealth, let alone the chavvier aspects of wearing golden chains.
Further, malleabiity and durability lose importance with increasing wealth and sophisticated alternative investment instruments.

A year ago unsophisticated demand assured continued gold appreciation, but it's all over. The psychological $1000 an ounce threshold can easily be crossed when dollars are worth less and less. But in terms of purchasing power parities the price of gold cannot be sustained. Gold belongs in stone age economics and cheap cultures.

Gold was the place to be. Normally it isn't, and it isn't now for those awake to economic realities.

Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise;
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby.

Bestialising Humanity

The calculation lying within the Bill to allow mixing of human and animal embryos to create hybrids being confounded with allowing lesbian couples to register as joint legal parents of a child born through fertility treatment, is obvious.

To finance and encourage the breeding of partly-human and partly other-species embryos is the encouragement of an unnatural act to which the recognition of a valid lifestyle is wholly unrelated; we are all able to love in many ways; the predominant pattern of loving can take any form in anyone, depending upon whom we meet and circumstance.

But the evil of producing chimeras, experimenting upon these living entities, then killing them before a maturity that is found challenging by those who countenance such actions, could not be further from the loving, recognized, upbringing of a human child.

For shame to have sought the acceptance of one, by such unnatural coupling with the other.

Just for England

"enjoy the two key benefits of the National Identity Scheme - improved protection and greater convenience". The Westminster Home Secretary.

"We are opposed to the concept of compulsory ID cards. We feel the UK Government is attempting to introduce this measure by stealth. We will be making representations to them to make clear our vehement opposition to it." Spokesman for the Scottish Government.

Whoops.

Then As Now

" In this country the living reality is Parliament itself. In a sense, our constitution is an abstraction: it is what is said about, and what attempts to describe, the living reality of Parliament.

... In this country the guarantee of the supremacy of Parliament and of our legislative independence as a nation does not lie in words on paper. It does not lie in vellum and parchments. It lies in a political will and the continued exercise of that will, the political will of those of whom the House of Commons is the expression. The people themselves, their political will and their determination to exert it, are the ultimate guarantee, and the only ultimate guarantee, of the sovereignty of this House and of the legislative and political independence of the nation.

That fact, which I do not believe can be contested, is the reason why to pass this Bill lies outside that unwritten contract which all Members of this House have with those who sent them here. We have not been charged by that political will, on which alone rests the independence and sovereignty of Parliament and of this country, with the duty or the permission to share it or to abrogate it.

In their own consciences my hon. Friends must speak for themselves. But if it be open to dispute what these digital majorities betoken—under all the influences of power and patronage, which we well know operate in this House, and amid all the cross-currents which we understand and are familiar with—whatever be the judgment of the atmosphere here, there can be no doubt about the sense out of doors. The most determined attempts which have been made month after month by all forms of persuasion to shake the political disinclination of the great body of the people towards what is being done by this Bill have proved unsuccessful.

Whether it has been presented on the one hand as a fait accompli, as something which is over and done, something which is all over bar the shouting, which people must make shift to get used to, or whether it has been presented in the most glowing colours as new opportunity, as accretion of sovereignty or power, the great mass of the people, whose sovereign expression in this House is at stake, have remained unmoved. The only practical effect of this long Committee stage has been to expose to those outside even more clearly what is at stake. Their reaction to that clearer understanding, to which perhaps our debates have contributed, is such that it is a usurpation for a House of Commons, well knowing the state of opinion in the country, to seek by the Bill to surrender or diminish the sovereignty of Parliament, and the ultimate authority of our courts, including the High Court of Parliament over the subject in all matters and causes.

(Mr. J. Enoch Powell (Wolverhampton, South-West) Hansard 5 July 1972)

Scotland may prefer not to be dragged into the European Federal State

Twelve members of the Westminster Parliament are elected by Scottish voters as Liberal Democrat MPs.

Here is the Early Day Motion tabled recently by Alistair Carmichael, who has just resigned from his shadow Liberal Democrat front bench position over the amendment seeking a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty which the Liberal Democrat leadership sought to defeat.

- That this House notes with concern clause 27 (Jurisdiction to try offences committed in the UK) in the Counter Terrorism Bill which would allow terrorism offences committed in Scotland to be tried in any court in the United Kingdom; recognises that the constitutional independence of the Scottish legal system was recognised in the Act of the Union in 1707; believes Clause 27 represents an unjustified and unconstitutional attack on the integrity of the independent Scottish legal system; and this House calls on UK ministers to support an amendment to remove clause 27 from the Counter Terrorism Bill.

Mr Carmichael stated:

“The independence of the Scottish legal system has been recognised and protected since Scotland entered the Union in 1707. The Government is now trying to rip that up for no good reason...
“This clause goes much further than the Government claims. Although they justify it by speaking of offences where there is action on both sides of the border, the impact is much wider than that. It is unnecessary, unwanted and unsustainable.”

How many other Scottish-elected Liberal Democrats might be reconsidering their allegiances?

European Union membership for Scotland is considerably less advantageous than it is for Brown's 'Labour' party, who are regarded as having irretrievably blotted their Scottish copybook after half a century of degradation and misrule of Scotland.

Slithy Toves

The Liberal Democrats could have struck a deal with the Conservatives and with the Labour rump party: it is the only explanation for the ridiculousness of imposing a three line whip on an abstention.

For the Conservatives an abstention by the Liberal Democrats provides the opportunity for a principled stand on trying their very best for the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty without the risk of getting one, which would be so divisive for the Conservatives - wins all round with Labour looking what they are, a lying, corrupt reneging, authoritarian junta.

For the Labour rump, the advantage is that there is no defeat, even though a subsequent vote of confidence would put that right (well rightish), and no loss of face and apparent unity under Brown.

For Brown everyone would have been made to do as they are told. For Cameron he could pretend no one needed telling.

The price is the same to both sides: the alteration of the system of election to benefit a minority party, and places in an Executive of either side.

Clegg's, and many members of the Liberal Democrat party's misjudgement is thinking they could look, indeed remain, honourable, and keep their vote in the country, by pretending to another referendum altogether that is neither wanted by the majority, nor needed in this instance.


`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

That'll be the Liberal Democrats.

A Fool's Bauble or Representative Democracy

Three parties committed to a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Those three parties are sitting in a Parliament of such doubtful legitimacy, with an Executive led by an unelected Prime Minister from a Scottish seat, (whose country has its own elected Parliament), claiming to wield the majority of an ousted Leader; a majority which could be used to end the independence of our country.

A discredited Speaker (returned, too, by a Scottish electorate) sits before the Mace, presiding over a symbol of the authority of Parliament won from autocratic rule.

We shall see today if the members of our Parliament are Jugglers, Whoremasters, and Drunkards who have cheated the Publick.

Liberal Democrats Must Keep Their Manifesto Commitments

A referendum on the new European Constitutional Treaty is what was assured in the manifestos of all three main political parties. The Conservative party is trying to hold Labour and the Liberal Democrats to their commitment.

The position that there should be a referendum on leaving the European Union, adopted by the Liberal Democrat leader, is dishonest: it fails to meet the centrality of holding to manifesto commitments upon which voters decide their votes. We, the people, made voting choices in the belief that our constitutional relationship with the European Union was subject to a referendum no matter which party we voted for and, thus we moved on to choices determined by other criteria.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats have chosen different acts of dishonesty to cover their falsity to their manifesto commitments - not promises, not objectives - commitments.

Labour's pretence that Lisbon is not a fundamental alteration in the constitutional status of the United Kingdom, both internally and vis a vis the European Union, is the Big Lie technique. The Liberal Democrat technique is the Drive out the Better with the Unwanted Best manoeuvre.

We do not want a referendum on leaving the European Union while what is being rammed through Parliament by whipped votes and Blair's stolen majority is a profound alteration of our internal and external governmental relations. We want what was committed -to by all parties, and by our last elected Prime Minister, a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

The concerned left of centre, who have passed from supporting Labour after its revelation as a corporatist, authoritarian, state regime, to supporting the Liberal Democrats, have now another party which can realise their wish for a social and compassionate governance that values our traditions and manages carefully the crueller results of changing economic and social circumstance. The Liberal Democrats should consider carefully too that those who have paused in their party as they flood out of the party of statist corruption will move on to a political party that keeps its word unless the Liberal Democrats keep theirs.

Held Close in Brown's Embrace

Choosing Ken Livingstone as Labour's candidate for London mayor was a disservice to the Labour Party (at least the Labour party I used to look at with concerned regard). This was argued here when the nomination (without opposition) was accepted. Ken Livingstone may have re-entered the Labour Party, but entrist is what he, and his 'loyal' praetorians, are.

However, when he stood as an independent, who could resist voting for Ken and poking Brown into yet another unrestrained fit of hysterics, as his hold over the Party was shown to be less than perfect, (Blair didn't mind a bit, his hold was over the country), and his judgement in insisting that Ken should be drummed out shown up as yet another fit of pique.

Now the enjoyment of poking Brown yet again with a sharp stick is offered by voting Official-Labour-Regime Ken down, who can resist?

If there had not been the disgusting Lee Jasper, Redmond O'Neill and John Ross (are the last two undercover agents for MI Something?), and Labour and its grey governance had backed one of theirs - some conformist apparatchik from their seemingly bottomless (well, bottomless might be a disqualifier in New Labour) pit, we would all have gone for Ken again.

But as Jonah Brown's endorsed candidate, Ken is going to lose it unless he tells us all what he thinks of Brown and his decade of vicious incompetence at the Treasury.

You know it makes sense Ken, and you've nothing to lose, for either you do for Brown or his clammy embrace will do for you.

British Homes for British Workers

The New Order Leader has done it again. What, you wince in horror, has he done again?

Any citizen of the European Union can buy a house wherever they choose in the EU. No ifs, no buts, no Brownspeak. Except for people in the United Kingdom buying in the United Kingdom. They must have permission from the Labour regime.

Considering Labour members of the Westminster parliament are using their second home financing possibilities to pollute Tuscany, that is out of order. At least they've been confined to Sinalunga - no one wants to live there anyway.

Secondary School Place Allocation

Tomorrow, the children born on the day "a new dawn has broken, yes it has',will discover the rest of their life chances, wholly moulded under New Labour.

Already many of them have not learned to read or write in their own language, and certainly they have not learned any foreign language; already they are functionally innumerate; they will have no musical skills of worth - for to play an instrument to any serious level requires the same early start as to learn mathematics or another language, it is a function of the development of the brain and nervous system, as has been known for much more than a decade.

Many will be fat and without sports' fields to exercise, nor competitions to win. Swimming lessons will have been denied in the interests of avoiding offence to cultural groups that choose to see sin in diversity of gender.

And a culture of contempt for interest, curiosity, learning and achievement will have been fostered by a unionised workforce determined to assert its priority over the interests of the children and families they ought to serve.

If you have provided all that is, by diktat, lacking in your children's primary schooling, you will find your efforts derided and disgraced as your beloved daughters and sons are thrust into precisely the company and cultural milieu from which you have sought to protect them.

Unless you have the money to buy them out. For the rest, if you're white, it's not all right, if you're brown there's no stick around, and if you're black, along with all the others, get back.