Ministers admit that the measures Brown is putting forward to raise his popularity have been already proposed and even timetabled-in.
There are two complete, not-getting-it failures here: your popularity, Brown, isn't of the slightest interest to your country, our country, or even your own Party; and most of the people in our country will be parents, are parents, or have been parents of young children, and we all know that it's a hard time (made harder if you only do it when your over 50) but transitory.
Most of the population is struggling with too much tax, too high prices, debt overburdens, shame at Labour's foreign policies, and fear of ignorance, sickness, and old age. As you caused all these problems and have embedded them over the years you were in charge of, but not in touch with, the financial and economic role that government plays in our lives, you will know, or possibly not with your difficulties, how intransigent, nigh on irreversible, they are for a numpty who cannot understand other people. So let us help you with your cognitive response.
Call a general election.
We can hope that someone with a fully functioning brain and normal levels of awareness can be placed in government to help us, not order us about.
Monday, 12 May 2008
Sunday, 11 May 2008
It's About England, not Scotland
The Labour Leader is lying again. Accusing the SNP of a "transparent attempt to manipulate the political system for purely partisan political purposes" would be breath taking from any one other than the politician most responsible for Scotland's enthusiastic departure from the United Kingdom government's miserable control.
It is the Labour party that is being destroyed by Scotland's realisation that none of the horrors of Labour rule apply to Scotland any more. And it is the Labour party that is desperate to oppose the reconvening of the English Parliament. Labour would be consigned not just to permanent Opposition but to oblivion in the English Parliament. Another centre left party would form, there is no lack of centre left views among the English electorate, but the statist, authoritarian, confrontational trade union, high tax, redistribute within the poor party, would disappear into its 20th century grave.
While the reconvening of the English Parliament would require the redrawing of federal relationships with Scotland, and with Wales and Ireland (north and, in a different order, south), it is the removal of that Labour party road block to a proper, progressive, pluralist and democratic party of the centre left that is the prize.
It would bring to an end the vulgar, sub-marxian mind set that expresses itself politically as the Conservatives being the party of Capital and Labour being the party of, well, labour; and bring to an end the patronising, meddling interference in the lives of others practised by the failed intelligentsia that subscribe to and nourish it for their profit.
It is the Labour party that is being destroyed by Scotland's realisation that none of the horrors of Labour rule apply to Scotland any more. And it is the Labour party that is desperate to oppose the reconvening of the English Parliament. Labour would be consigned not just to permanent Opposition but to oblivion in the English Parliament. Another centre left party would form, there is no lack of centre left views among the English electorate, but the statist, authoritarian, confrontational trade union, high tax, redistribute within the poor party, would disappear into its 20th century grave.
While the reconvening of the English Parliament would require the redrawing of federal relationships with Scotland, and with Wales and Ireland (north and, in a different order, south), it is the removal of that Labour party road block to a proper, progressive, pluralist and democratic party of the centre left that is the prize.
It would bring to an end the vulgar, sub-marxian mind set that expresses itself politically as the Conservatives being the party of Capital and Labour being the party of, well, labour; and bring to an end the patronising, meddling interference in the lives of others practised by the failed intelligentsia that subscribe to and nourish it for their profit.
Saturday, 10 May 2008
Unifying the Ministry of Defence and the Scottish Office
The Leader's decision to make Des Browne both Defence and Scotland minister has turned out to have been prescient. It does seem to be taking a toll on the unfortunate minister though - the Afghanistan Front in full fight, the Iraq front hunkered down at the airport (how many months is it now?) but taking a lot of incoming and who can guess their levels of rage at being prevented from fighting by their orders from Messrs Brown and Browne; and the Scottish Front, as yet political and diplomatic but so are the other two, with only the addition of the third ingredient of international dispute, open warfare.
Abnormality
It is not normal to have a society surveilled and registered and hectored like ours.
It is not normal to have a society in devastating indebtedness for assets rapidly declining in value.
It is not normal to have 6 million people of working age on various kinds of benefit.
It is not normal for hospital patients to die of dirt.
It is not normal for 40% of primary school leavers to be unable to read and write or perform simple calculation.
It is not normal for more than a million people to arrive yet make no provision for their reception.
It is not normal for financial monitoring and good practice to be wilfully incompetent or wholly ignored.
It is not normal to attack other countries and kill thousands of their citizens.
It is not normal for policemen to shoot people or for children to kill one another.
It is not normal to drug the old, abort the unborn 5-6 months from conception, to create cross-species half human embryos.
It is not normal to tax the poor and enable the rich.
It is not normal to do what is wrong and not what is right.
It is not normal to have a society in devastating indebtedness for assets rapidly declining in value.
It is not normal to have 6 million people of working age on various kinds of benefit.
It is not normal for hospital patients to die of dirt.
It is not normal for 40% of primary school leavers to be unable to read and write or perform simple calculation.
It is not normal for more than a million people to arrive yet make no provision for their reception.
It is not normal for financial monitoring and good practice to be wilfully incompetent or wholly ignored.
It is not normal to attack other countries and kill thousands of their citizens.
It is not normal for policemen to shoot people or for children to kill one another.
It is not normal to drug the old, abort the unborn 5-6 months from conception, to create cross-species half human embryos.
It is not normal to tax the poor and enable the rich.
It is not normal to do what is wrong and not what is right.
Friday, 9 May 2008
A National Conversation on Reconvening the English Parliament
When Andrew Mackinlay, MP for the Essex seat of Thurrock , complains that the constitutional debate is not including England and English MPs and dresses his complaint in the words "It's my UK," he exemplifies the difficulty in there being no forum in which the reconvening of the English Parliament is being argued.
The Irish Parliament could well invite an Ulster representation of Ulster's people, for just as Ulster's MPs sit in the House of Commons as part of the United Kingdom, they might like a representation to sit in the Irish Parliament too, as part of Ireland; as well as having their own Assembly. The Scottish representation sits in the UK Parliament as part of the United Kingdom, as well as having their own Parliament.
The English sit only in the UK Parliament, their own Parliament submerged and voiceless, worse off than the Faroes or the Isle of Man, as England is divided into supranational regions, its reality denied by the United Kingdom Government and the European Union - a lost country that is close to being flooded ever more deeply inside the European Union.
It isn't your UK, Mr Mackinlay. The United Kingdom is a flawed, and lately severely damaged, constitutional reality that is sustained by other countries with other plans and interests, as well as some concern in common advantage.
It is your England, Mr Mackinlay, and you need a Parliament in which to represent it and more specifically, the electors of Thurrock.
The Irish Parliament could well invite an Ulster representation of Ulster's people, for just as Ulster's MPs sit in the House of Commons as part of the United Kingdom, they might like a representation to sit in the Irish Parliament too, as part of Ireland; as well as having their own Assembly. The Scottish representation sits in the UK Parliament as part of the United Kingdom, as well as having their own Parliament.
The English sit only in the UK Parliament, their own Parliament submerged and voiceless, worse off than the Faroes or the Isle of Man, as England is divided into supranational regions, its reality denied by the United Kingdom Government and the European Union - a lost country that is close to being flooded ever more deeply inside the European Union.
It isn't your UK, Mr Mackinlay. The United Kingdom is a flawed, and lately severely damaged, constitutional reality that is sustained by other countries with other plans and interests, as well as some concern in common advantage.
It is your England, Mr Mackinlay, and you need a Parliament in which to represent it and more specifically, the electors of Thurrock.
Thursday, 8 May 2008
What is Brown For?
First Labour loses Scotland to the SNP. Then Labour loses London to the Conservatives. So the UK's main natural resources area is no longer under Labour control and the UK's main wealth producing area is no longer under Labour control. In Scotland the Scottish government is preparing for a referendum on extending devolution and planning for independence. In London forensic accountants have just been appointed to investigate London Government's expenditures back to 2004.
Just what is the unelected Prime Minister Leader of and prime minister of, any longer?
Just what is the unelected Prime Minister Leader of and prime minister of, any longer?
We Need a Scorpio Murtlock for our Widmerpool
Concentrating executive power in the hands of the prime minister has the enormous drawback of requiring a greater concentration on an individual than modern political and historical analytic best practice might prefer. It's also rather dull, particularly when the inappropriate object is Gordon Brown.
This idiot savant, impervious among his spreadsheets and statistics, his Party deals and rule-governed micro managing, presents further and personalised difficulties in the resistance to his removal than do most prime ministers who often prefer a little longer in office. In Brown's case we have lost half the leverage to apply to his removal - there is nowhere for him to go.
International institutions that might have been pressed into service have turned him down already - the World Bank specifically, others by various exclusions that in Brown's case would be vigorously applied: the IMF - he's not American; the European Union - he's kept the UK out of the euro and been grossly ill-mannered and hectoring to more EU power brokers than he (or regrettably the United Kingdom) can afford; the financial world - draw a veil over their reaction to the introduction of the ultimately unclubbable into their company; the United Nations - disrespecting the President of the United States who, regardless of party is identified with the American people by the American people, is not a parole-able offence; and so the no noes go on.
It's so much harder to winkle them out without a pin of enticement.
This idiot savant, impervious among his spreadsheets and statistics, his Party deals and rule-governed micro managing, presents further and personalised difficulties in the resistance to his removal than do most prime ministers who often prefer a little longer in office. In Brown's case we have lost half the leverage to apply to his removal - there is nowhere for him to go.
International institutions that might have been pressed into service have turned him down already - the World Bank specifically, others by various exclusions that in Brown's case would be vigorously applied: the IMF - he's not American; the European Union - he's kept the UK out of the euro and been grossly ill-mannered and hectoring to more EU power brokers than he (or regrettably the United Kingdom) can afford; the financial world - draw a veil over their reaction to the introduction of the ultimately unclubbable into their company; the United Nations - disrespecting the President of the United States who, regardless of party is identified with the American people by the American people, is not a parole-able offence; and so the no noes go on.
It's so much harder to winkle them out without a pin of enticement.
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Restoration
In 1999 the British government was unwise enough to open Pandora's box. New Labour's Leader and British Prime Minister Blair answered the serious misgivings of politicians and many with far better constitutional and historical understanding than he, with the assurance that there was no need for concern, the Scottish Parliament had no more powers than a parish council. Other, more prescient, words, uttered when Ewing was sworn in as the first Member of the Scottish Parliament for 292 years, 'prompted loud applause from colleagues and political opponents alike.'
"The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th of March 1707 is hereby reconvened."
The Treaties of Union came into effect on 1 May 1707, having been ratified first by the Scottish Parliament and then by the English Parliament, and the British Parliament met for the first time on 23 October. The Scottish representation was forty-five MPs and sixteen representative peers.
'After the ratifying act, the Scottish Parliament passed legislation concerning the representation of Scotland in the Parliament at Westminster. This Act was also made part of the Treaty. They decided to elect members of the first Parliament of Great Britain from the membership of the Scottish Parliament, avoiding an election during which Scotland's small electorate would probably express strong dislike of the Union.'
Both the Scottish and the English Parliaments were subsumed into the Parliament of Great Britain, (later Ireland was to be added, in the Parliament of the United Kingdom) but, beneath the constitutional surface, the three parliaments, of England Scotland and Ireland rested, and two have now risen again after centuries of quiescence. Only the English Parliament has not, because of its identity of interest and power with that of United Kingdom Parliament. That identity of interest is gone. The need for the English Parliament is argued widely.
It is patently untrue that the Scottish Parliament has only the powers of a parish council. The British Parliament may have listed areas of reserved powers, and the Scottish representation, as servile in its New Labour guise as ever it was centuries ago, may have voted as told; but no parliament can bind its successors, and history is not so much littered with, as made up of, the rejection of imposed and unjust treaties.
The Scottish Parliament is just that, as unbound by its predecessors or their capitulations as is the Irish Parliament, although it has not yet asserted or availed itself of all its powers. This is in part because the Scottish government is consulting the Scottish people on their wishes, (unlike their predecessors so long ago), as they were elected to do.
England's Parliament too must be restored and a new federation of the British Isles worked out before we are reduced to being provinces of northern France and Denmark.
"The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th of March 1707 is hereby reconvened."
The Treaties of Union came into effect on 1 May 1707, having been ratified first by the Scottish Parliament and then by the English Parliament, and the British Parliament met for the first time on 23 October. The Scottish representation was forty-five MPs and sixteen representative peers.
'After the ratifying act, the Scottish Parliament passed legislation concerning the representation of Scotland in the Parliament at Westminster. This Act was also made part of the Treaty. They decided to elect members of the first Parliament of Great Britain from the membership of the Scottish Parliament, avoiding an election during which Scotland's small electorate would probably express strong dislike of the Union.'
Both the Scottish and the English Parliaments were subsumed into the Parliament of Great Britain, (later Ireland was to be added, in the Parliament of the United Kingdom) but, beneath the constitutional surface, the three parliaments, of England Scotland and Ireland rested, and two have now risen again after centuries of quiescence. Only the English Parliament has not, because of its identity of interest and power with that of United Kingdom Parliament. That identity of interest is gone. The need for the English Parliament is argued widely.
It is patently untrue that the Scottish Parliament has only the powers of a parish council. The British Parliament may have listed areas of reserved powers, and the Scottish representation, as servile in its New Labour guise as ever it was centuries ago, may have voted as told; but no parliament can bind its successors, and history is not so much littered with, as made up of, the rejection of imposed and unjust treaties.
The Scottish Parliament is just that, as unbound by its predecessors or their capitulations as is the Irish Parliament, although it has not yet asserted or availed itself of all its powers. This is in part because the Scottish government is consulting the Scottish people on their wishes, (unlike their predecessors so long ago), as they were elected to do.
England's Parliament too must be restored and a new federation of the British Isles worked out before we are reduced to being provinces of northern France and Denmark.
Tuesday, 6 May 2008
Who Chooses the Timing of a General Election?
Wendy Alexander has been in London consulting senior Labour party politicians, including Gordon Brown, before calling for an immediate referendum on the independence of Scotland from the United Kingdom.
More interestingly still her spokesman said: “A tipping point has been reached and it is now clear that the General Election [in the United Kingdom as a whole, Ed.] will not take place for some time."
While it is normally the case that the Prime Minister chooses the time to recommend a dissolution of Parliament and general election to the Head of State, this is only true when the prime minister has a firm grasp upon the governing party, and the confidence of the constitutional (what remnants still function), political, and financial establishment, as well as the trust and respect of the electorate.
Gordon Brown enjoys none of these. While it is certainly not for Ms Alexander to indicate the timing of a general election, nor is it any longer a choice for the United Kingdom Prime Minister.
More interestingly still her spokesman said: “A tipping point has been reached and it is now clear that the General Election [in the United Kingdom as a whole, Ed.] will not take place for some time."
While it is normally the case that the Prime Minister chooses the time to recommend a dissolution of Parliament and general election to the Head of State, this is only true when the prime minister has a firm grasp upon the governing party, and the confidence of the constitutional (what remnants still function), political, and financial establishment, as well as the trust and respect of the electorate.
Gordon Brown enjoys none of these. While it is certainly not for Ms Alexander to indicate the timing of a general election, nor is it any longer a choice for the United Kingdom Prime Minister.
Scottish Labour Leaders Locked in Folie a Deux
SNP deputy leader and deputy first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, accused the Scottish parliament Labour leader, Wendy Alexander, of "erratic behaviour".
"It's only a few weeks ago she said she was implacably opposed to a referendum, she's just set up a constitutional commission that expressly excludes the option of independence."
Gordon Brown, the Scottish Leader of the UK Labour party is now reported to have supported a referendum in Scotland on membership of the Union (Union of the United Kingdom, that is). Brown is widely accused of 'erratic behaviour', so that makes two of them. It is equally widely recognised that when it comes to referendums on membership of Unions and Federations in Europe, Brown is a liar, so it is reasonable to assume that he is lying about a Scottish independence referendum, and so is Wendy Alexander.
Certainly they are both unstable.
"It's only a few weeks ago she said she was implacably opposed to a referendum, she's just set up a constitutional commission that expressly excludes the option of independence."
Gordon Brown, the Scottish Leader of the UK Labour party is now reported to have supported a referendum in Scotland on membership of the Union (Union of the United Kingdom, that is). Brown is widely accused of 'erratic behaviour', so that makes two of them. It is equally widely recognised that when it comes to referendums on membership of Unions and Federations in Europe, Brown is a liar, so it is reasonable to assume that he is lying about a Scottish independence referendum, and so is Wendy Alexander.
Certainly they are both unstable.
Taking a Holiday is Different from Taking a Risk
Travelling with infants is not easy. Even short distances within England, when we got in the car at the front door at one end and got out of the car at my parents' front door at the other, presented their moments. Memorable was the evening when the lupin plants in the boot yielded their cargo of large, black garden spiders that swarmed over the back seat onto the shrieking, strapped in, small HGs, half way along the M6. Not a lot of stopping places on the motorway. Never was a service area so welcome; I hope the spiders are thriving in the curiously suburban lupin patch at the field's edge.
Tuscany was an expeditionary force affair, and the stay was for all summer. At the other end was house, community, perfect linguistic communications, cars, doctors, the village, and all the rooms and toys that lived there, from last time. Still we would sink exhausted into familiarity and shadowed respite from the brilliant sunlit world. Even then, things went wrong. Arriving at the airport without passport (classic) in those days it was possible to leave with a stern warning that it might be tricky getting back in. At Rome the control officer gave up on my Italian, turned to the seething Italian families beyond the barriers and yelled "who owns this Signora and babies?". Mr HG (who had driven previously with the baggage train) stepped smartly forward "Mine!" So off we went. Not like that now.
What ever are people thinking of, going without support, without language, without child care, for a few days to places at the ends of the earth? The Earth ends where there is no connexion, no infrastructure, no permanence. Go to some of these holiday villages in the winter and then the isolation, the desolation can be understood. There is a reason why these places were undeveloped or abandoned until very recently. As well, during the summer vacation it isn't just the schools that shut from early June to early September - all services close down because everyone is on the beach or up a mountain. The sight of the halt, the lame and the sick caring for one another in a summer ward in hospital is for those lucky enough to get to a hospital and be admitted at all, in case of need.
Adults can cope, and it's their choice. Infants should be denied exit visas so great are the risks to which they are exposed on so-called holidays.
Tuscany was an expeditionary force affair, and the stay was for all summer. At the other end was house, community, perfect linguistic communications, cars, doctors, the village, and all the rooms and toys that lived there, from last time. Still we would sink exhausted into familiarity and shadowed respite from the brilliant sunlit world. Even then, things went wrong. Arriving at the airport without passport (classic) in those days it was possible to leave with a stern warning that it might be tricky getting back in. At Rome the control officer gave up on my Italian, turned to the seething Italian families beyond the barriers and yelled "who owns this Signora and babies?". Mr HG (who had driven previously with the baggage train) stepped smartly forward "Mine!" So off we went. Not like that now.
What ever are people thinking of, going without support, without language, without child care, for a few days to places at the ends of the earth? The Earth ends where there is no connexion, no infrastructure, no permanence. Go to some of these holiday villages in the winter and then the isolation, the desolation can be understood. There is a reason why these places were undeveloped or abandoned until very recently. As well, during the summer vacation it isn't just the schools that shut from early June to early September - all services close down because everyone is on the beach or up a mountain. The sight of the halt, the lame and the sick caring for one another in a summer ward in hospital is for those lucky enough to get to a hospital and be admitted at all, in case of need.
Adults can cope, and it's their choice. Infants should be denied exit visas so great are the risks to which they are exposed on so-called holidays.
Labour in Scotland Offers the Referendum on Independence Now
If Wendy Alexander, unelected leader of the parliamentary Labour party in Scotland (what is it about Labour and election avoidance?) wants a referendum on Scottish independence she has a straightforward route to it. Put it to the Scottish Parliament. Chances are it would be accepted.
A simple 'yes' or 'no' vote would be fine despite recent polling suggesting only 19% would vote for outright independence now. Because, of course, the poll was asking rather more sophisticated questions, and the respondents were applying sophisticated understanding of the notion of independence and federal relations within the United Kingdom. Being a numpty, Alexander would not have grasped that and thinks she's onto a winner, in playground bully style - 'Go on, I dare you.'
People have been engaged in a National Conversation about their hopes and plans for Scotland for almost a year. There was to to have been a referendum 18 months from now, on what Scotland needs to realise those hopes and plans - further devolution to include fiscal autonomy, future relations with the rest of the United Kingdom, with the European Union, with the Scottish diaspora. It seems the Scottish Labour parliamentary leader hasn't been part of it.
She is so out of it she hasn't noted either that the Leader of the United Kingdom Labour party is averse to referendums. So that's another source of derogatory, even derisive comparison, between Scotland's enjoyment of democratic and responsive governance with that delivered to England, to put together with the health, education, care of the very young and elderly, housing plans, council tax, environmental and energy advantages already enjoyed in Scotland.
Now, if Labour in the Scottish parliament are to be believed, the Scottish people are to have a referendum on their independence that will extend, of course, to their relations with the European Union.
Lucky them.
A simple 'yes' or 'no' vote would be fine despite recent polling suggesting only 19% would vote for outright independence now. Because, of course, the poll was asking rather more sophisticated questions, and the respondents were applying sophisticated understanding of the notion of independence and federal relations within the United Kingdom. Being a numpty, Alexander would not have grasped that and thinks she's onto a winner, in playground bully style - 'Go on, I dare you.'
People have been engaged in a National Conversation about their hopes and plans for Scotland for almost a year. There was to to have been a referendum 18 months from now, on what Scotland needs to realise those hopes and plans - further devolution to include fiscal autonomy, future relations with the rest of the United Kingdom, with the European Union, with the Scottish diaspora. It seems the Scottish Labour parliamentary leader hasn't been part of it.
She is so out of it she hasn't noted either that the Leader of the United Kingdom Labour party is averse to referendums. So that's another source of derogatory, even derisive comparison, between Scotland's enjoyment of democratic and responsive governance with that delivered to England, to put together with the health, education, care of the very young and elderly, housing plans, council tax, environmental and energy advantages already enjoyed in Scotland.
Now, if Labour in the Scottish parliament are to be believed, the Scottish people are to have a referendum on their independence that will extend, of course, to their relations with the European Union.
Lucky them.
Monday, 5 May 2008
Lorenzo de' Medici on the Brain
For Angels' Italian readership, to leave you all with this singing through your heads for the rest of the day:
Quant'è bella giovinezza
che si fugge tuttavia!
Chi vuol essere lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.
Quest'è Bacco e Arianna,
belli, e l'un dell'altro ardenti:
perché 'l tempo fugge e inganna,
sempre insieme stan contenti.
Queste ninfe ed altre genti
sono allegre tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.
Questi lieti satiretti,
delle ninfe innamorati,
per caverne e per boschetti
han lor posto cento agguati;
or da Bacco riscaldati,
ballon, salton tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.
Queste ninfe anche hanno caro
da lor esser ingannate:
ora insieme mescolate
suonon, canton tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.
Questa soma, che vien drieto
sopra l'asino, è Sileno:
così vecchio è ebbro e lieto,
già di carne e d'anni pieno;
se non può star ritto, almeno
ride e gode tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.
Mida vien drieto a costoro:
ciò che tocca, oro diventa.
E che giova aver tesoro,
s'altri poi non si accontenta?
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
del doman non c'è certezza.
Ciascun apra ben gli orecchi,
di doman nessun si paschi;
oggi sian, giovani e vecchi,
lieti ognun, femmine e maschi;
ogni tristo pensier caschi:
facciam festa tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.
Donne e giovinetti amanti,
viva Bacco e viva Amore!
Ciascun suoni, balli e canti!
Arda di dolcezza il core!
Non fatica, non dolore!
Ciò c'ha esser, convien sia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.
Quant'è bella giovinezza
che si fugge tuttavia!
Chi vuol essere lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.
Quest'è Bacco e Arianna,
belli, e l'un dell'altro ardenti:
perché 'l tempo fugge e inganna,
sempre insieme stan contenti.
Queste ninfe ed altre genti
sono allegre tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.
Questi lieti satiretti,
delle ninfe innamorati,
per caverne e per boschetti
han lor posto cento agguati;
or da Bacco riscaldati,
ballon, salton tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.
Queste ninfe anche hanno caro
da lor esser ingannate:
ora insieme mescolate
suonon, canton tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.
Questa soma, che vien drieto
sopra l'asino, è Sileno:
così vecchio è ebbro e lieto,
già di carne e d'anni pieno;
se non può star ritto, almeno
ride e gode tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.
Mida vien drieto a costoro:
ciò che tocca, oro diventa.
E che giova aver tesoro,
s'altri poi non si accontenta?
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
del doman non c'è certezza.
Ciascun apra ben gli orecchi,
di doman nessun si paschi;
oggi sian, giovani e vecchi,
lieti ognun, femmine e maschi;
ogni tristo pensier caschi:
facciam festa tuttavia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.
Donne e giovinetti amanti,
viva Bacco e viva Amore!
Ciascun suoni, balli e canti!
Arda di dolcezza il core!
Non fatica, non dolore!
Ciò c'ha esser, convien sia.
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non c'è certezza.
Sunday, 4 May 2008
Suffer the Little Children to Sing Up the Airy Mountain, Down the Rushy Glen
The cultural imperialists have struck again. The idea of a National Songbook of 30 songs all primary school children could sing from has been abandoned. You may be unsurprised - after all, thirty songs is very few for an eleven year old to know and sing, but that is not the reason. No agreement could be reached because there is no agreement on our culture of song.
There is no agreement on our literary culture either, so no body of poems and prose writing is offered as a secure base for enjoying and understanding English culture. English history? Well, no, not that either. Particularly not that.
These are small children who need to make sense of the world immediately around them; and they are in England. To deny them the keys to English culture is to exclude them, deprive them, impoverish their development and life chances. That is true for all the children not just those with other cultures and other countries upon which they draw for part of their identity. No-one denies the importance of the language and culture of a family's country of origin. I expended years and continental shifts in ensuring the children acquired fully the cultures into which they are born. As do many, many Anglo-something families.
Undeniably there are culture clashes. The First World War viewed through Italian eyes is not a blood and mud bath in Flanders, and its consequences were wholly different from its English consequences. But these are clashes that occur after primary years, when young students begin to realise the complexities of learning and knowing.
It should be acceptable for little ones in schools to sing the local songs - plus Waltzing Matilda and Kumbaya of course.
There is no agreement on our literary culture either, so no body of poems and prose writing is offered as a secure base for enjoying and understanding English culture. English history? Well, no, not that either. Particularly not that.
These are small children who need to make sense of the world immediately around them; and they are in England. To deny them the keys to English culture is to exclude them, deprive them, impoverish their development and life chances. That is true for all the children not just those with other cultures and other countries upon which they draw for part of their identity. No-one denies the importance of the language and culture of a family's country of origin. I expended years and continental shifts in ensuring the children acquired fully the cultures into which they are born. As do many, many Anglo-something families.
Undeniably there are culture clashes. The First World War viewed through Italian eyes is not a blood and mud bath in Flanders, and its consequences were wholly different from its English consequences. But these are clashes that occur after primary years, when young students begin to realise the complexities of learning and knowing.
It should be acceptable for little ones in schools to sing the local songs - plus Waltzing Matilda and Kumbaya of course.
Saturday, 3 May 2008
Ramsay MacDonald, the Other Scottish Prime Minister
It is time to stop this constant harping on John Major and the parallels with New Labour's wipe-out. The true comparison is with Ramsay MacDonald.
"On August 24, 1931 MacDonald submitted his resignation and then agreed to form a National Government including the Conservatives and Liberals. MacDonald, Snowden and Thomas were expelled from the Labour Party and subsequently formed a new National Labour Party, but this had little support in the country or the unions.
Great anger in the labour movement greeted MacDonald's move. Mass riots by unemployed people took place in protest in Glasgow and Manchester...
MacDonald did not want an immediate election, but the Conservatives forced him to agree to one in October 1931. The National Government won 554 seats, comprising 470 Conservatives, 13 National Labour, 68 Liberals (Liberal National and Liberal) and various others, while Labour won only 52 and the Lloyd George Liberals four. This was the largest mandate ever won by a British Prime Minister at a democratic election, but it left MacDonald at the beck-and-call of the Conservatives. Neville Chamberlain became Chancellor of the Exchequer while Baldwin held the real power in the government as Lord President.
Effectively powerless at home, MacDonald involved himself heavily in foreign policy, and attended in two conferences in 1932; the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the Lausanne Conference, which was concerned with German reparations...' (Wiki, and anywhere else you care to consult).
Go on, look it all up. Here we go again.
"On August 24, 1931 MacDonald submitted his resignation and then agreed to form a National Government including the Conservatives and Liberals. MacDonald, Snowden and Thomas were expelled from the Labour Party and subsequently formed a new National Labour Party, but this had little support in the country or the unions.
Great anger in the labour movement greeted MacDonald's move. Mass riots by unemployed people took place in protest in Glasgow and Manchester...
MacDonald did not want an immediate election, but the Conservatives forced him to agree to one in October 1931. The National Government won 554 seats, comprising 470 Conservatives, 13 National Labour, 68 Liberals (Liberal National and Liberal) and various others, while Labour won only 52 and the Lloyd George Liberals four. This was the largest mandate ever won by a British Prime Minister at a democratic election, but it left MacDonald at the beck-and-call of the Conservatives. Neville Chamberlain became Chancellor of the Exchequer while Baldwin held the real power in the government as Lord President.
Effectively powerless at home, MacDonald involved himself heavily in foreign policy, and attended in two conferences in 1932; the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the Lausanne Conference, which was concerned with German reparations...' (Wiki, and anywhere else you care to consult).
Go on, look it all up. Here we go again.
Coup d'Etat
The people have spoken. The unelected Leader never had legitimacy, his Party has just had the dregs of the last elected prime minister's popular democratic support drained away.
The Junta are all at Chequers planning an announcement on 'major constitutional change'.
It would be a very small, self-contained operation to take them all away to safe-keeping, they've already rounded themselves up.
And it is a Bank Holiday weekend. It could all be done and dusted by Tuesday morning.
The Junta are all at Chequers planning an announcement on 'major constitutional change'.
It would be a very small, self-contained operation to take them all away to safe-keeping, they've already rounded themselves up.
And it is a Bank Holiday weekend. It could all be done and dusted by Tuesday morning.
Friday, 2 May 2008
Time For a General Election
The unelected Leader is required to face his first election and is blown away in the expressions of loathing for his government and his vision. It is not just Brown who is unacceptable. Because there is much less distinction between the state and governance in the United Kingdom than in other advanced countries, the state itself is suffering unacceptable blows to its authority and cohesion as a result of New Labour policies and their failure.
Every devolved part of the United Kingdom has rejected New Labour. Worse, the Westminster prime minister is singularly ill-favoured and ill-adapted to dealing with countries and regions that are run by other administrations, even within the United Kingdom, never mind his appalling foreign relations blunders and ineptitudes.
The Scottish government has enjoyed the highest esteem and satisfaction from its electors in the year it has been in office, delivering much of the political and social policies people want on health, education, care of the elderly and very young, ecological issues and cutting back the quango nomenklatura. Wales has just voted widely against New Labour and its enormous, centralising state. Elected representatives at various levels of local governance in Wales can expect the same kind of obstructive, childish response from the New Labour Executive as the Scots have been suffering and coping with.
Now London, the third devolved realm, is facing these recalcitrant, deluded, ideological control freaks, led by a man without intellectual capacity or empathy, whose emotions move from rage to fawning acceptance with no intervening stage of concerned comprehension.
The absence of a properly constituted state, with a head of state, and constitutional courts to defend it, exacerbates the situation. Italy has elected Berlusconi, Fini and Bossi, but Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, or Sicily, or the Veneto will all remain in a wholly stable relationship with the state of Italy and its President and its constitution; they will be on affable and politically balanced terms with the central government and with one another too.
Demonstrably this is not true of the United Kingdom. The British Constitution has been too damaged by the New Labour Project perverting the spirit, even more than the letter of the law, of an organic structure and uncodified practice. The visceral commitment of its ideologues, expressed through the BBC and other supported media, tax-diverted funded think tanks, and academia of the Left, will not permit reasonable dealings with parts of the country that have voted to get out from under their patronizing, interfering, social and political experimentation, and tax and imposts to pay for it all, including their elevated living standards. In Italy there is a sanction to overstepping the line into the people's lives, families, and culture paid by politicians and busybodies. And there is the film and the photographs and the writings of the horror to show, if needed.
That, thanks to the bravery of many and our good fortune, has not been the experience in England, and so a horrible regime has installed itself. The people are looking about for means to defend themselves. This vote has done a great deal. There should be another one, a general election, before those films and photographs become part of our heritage too.
Every devolved part of the United Kingdom has rejected New Labour. Worse, the Westminster prime minister is singularly ill-favoured and ill-adapted to dealing with countries and regions that are run by other administrations, even within the United Kingdom, never mind his appalling foreign relations blunders and ineptitudes.
The Scottish government has enjoyed the highest esteem and satisfaction from its electors in the year it has been in office, delivering much of the political and social policies people want on health, education, care of the elderly and very young, ecological issues and cutting back the quango nomenklatura. Wales has just voted widely against New Labour and its enormous, centralising state. Elected representatives at various levels of local governance in Wales can expect the same kind of obstructive, childish response from the New Labour Executive as the Scots have been suffering and coping with.
Now London, the third devolved realm, is facing these recalcitrant, deluded, ideological control freaks, led by a man without intellectual capacity or empathy, whose emotions move from rage to fawning acceptance with no intervening stage of concerned comprehension.
The absence of a properly constituted state, with a head of state, and constitutional courts to defend it, exacerbates the situation. Italy has elected Berlusconi, Fini and Bossi, but Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, or Sicily, or the Veneto will all remain in a wholly stable relationship with the state of Italy and its President and its constitution; they will be on affable and politically balanced terms with the central government and with one another too.
Demonstrably this is not true of the United Kingdom. The British Constitution has been too damaged by the New Labour Project perverting the spirit, even more than the letter of the law, of an organic structure and uncodified practice. The visceral commitment of its ideologues, expressed through the BBC and other supported media, tax-diverted funded think tanks, and academia of the Left, will not permit reasonable dealings with parts of the country that have voted to get out from under their patronizing, interfering, social and political experimentation, and tax and imposts to pay for it all, including their elevated living standards. In Italy there is a sanction to overstepping the line into the people's lives, families, and culture paid by politicians and busybodies. And there is the film and the photographs and the writings of the horror to show, if needed.
That, thanks to the bravery of many and our good fortune, has not been the experience in England, and so a horrible regime has installed itself. The people are looking about for means to defend themselves. This vote has done a great deal. There should be another one, a general election, before those films and photographs become part of our heritage too.
Hatfield Results
The election count was completed at 3.58am
The new make up of Welwyn Hatfield Council is:
Conservative 40
Labour 5
Lib Dems 3
The new make up of Welwyn Hatfield Council is:
Conservative 40
Labour 5
Lib Dems 3
Thursday, 1 May 2008
New Labour's Purpose Explained
"Whether the Labour Government has two or seven years left in office, its strategic goal must be to embed and Tory-proof a progressive Labour legacy against future political change," said Sunder Katwala, the Fabian Society's general secretary.
There we have the core vision of New Labour. Not the provision of government in keeping with long-settled and agreed constitutional practices; not delivery of manifesto promises to reduce poverty, improve education, assist the people as the global economy asserts itself to cope with changing economic opportunity and protect the country from adverse effects. Not opening choices and chances in life to all of us. It turned out to be the few, not the many who benefitted from 10 years of Brown's chancellorship. Never has inequality been so marked and increased so fast, since the watershed of 1945, as it has in this last decade. We are indebted, impoverished, and have done nothing to reconstitute a manufacturing and industrial base to replace the aging, collapsed industries and infrastructures that failed in the 70s and 80's. Where are our new coal, ship building, steel, processing industries? Where are our machine tool, vehicle production, new textiles industries, our advanced research and design-based technological development sectors?
Other countries in Europe have them all. It isn't true that China and India are the workshops of the world. New Labour have created a vast tax haven and its concomitant services, and an equally vast welfare-dependent bureaucracy and workless underclass client voter-base.
They would, wouldn't they? Their purpose is to embed Labour against future political change - to end democracy itself in our country and turn us into an administered province of the European Union, with their nomenklatura running this sector.
This is one of the last, unreformed, votes in our country. It may be local, limited in its scope, but it is also occurring across the country, and is as concerned with the vaunting of democratic practice as it is with electing particular candidates.
Angels voted.
There we have the core vision of New Labour. Not the provision of government in keeping with long-settled and agreed constitutional practices; not delivery of manifesto promises to reduce poverty, improve education, assist the people as the global economy asserts itself to cope with changing economic opportunity and protect the country from adverse effects. Not opening choices and chances in life to all of us. It turned out to be the few, not the many who benefitted from 10 years of Brown's chancellorship. Never has inequality been so marked and increased so fast, since the watershed of 1945, as it has in this last decade. We are indebted, impoverished, and have done nothing to reconstitute a manufacturing and industrial base to replace the aging, collapsed industries and infrastructures that failed in the 70s and 80's. Where are our new coal, ship building, steel, processing industries? Where are our machine tool, vehicle production, new textiles industries, our advanced research and design-based technological development sectors?
Other countries in Europe have them all. It isn't true that China and India are the workshops of the world. New Labour have created a vast tax haven and its concomitant services, and an equally vast welfare-dependent bureaucracy and workless underclass client voter-base.
They would, wouldn't they? Their purpose is to embed Labour against future political change - to end democracy itself in our country and turn us into an administered province of the European Union, with their nomenklatura running this sector.
This is one of the last, unreformed, votes in our country. It may be local, limited in its scope, but it is also occurring across the country, and is as concerned with the vaunting of democratic practice as it is with electing particular candidates.
Angels voted.
Vote to Stop Prisoners' Hostels in Your Community
Mr Brown is planning to unveil a draft Queen’s Speech at the end of this month. It is expected to include measures on involving the community in tackling crime, reports this morning's Times. The outrage and real fear expressed at the opening of bail hostels for remand and early release prisoners, without consultation with residents or local councils, in residential areas of towns and cities across England, is not going to stop him. We don't like it? We think it will seed criminality and danger in every community? Gordon Brown is going to legislate to do just that; no doubt he thinks it is right.
Vote. Today should be a plebiscite against everything New Labour has ruined already, and its destructive intentions.
Vote. Today should be a plebiscite against everything New Labour has ruined already, and its destructive intentions.
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