The Ghost of Edmund Burke

What a load of Balls?

2009-11-19T22:35:00.002Z

Of all the Labour MPs that should be sent to the scaffold, ‘Herr E. Balls’ should be at the front of the queue. His new Children, Schools and Family Bill, which he is hoping to pass both Houses before he’s ‘hopefully’ dumped in the unemployment line, is disastrous for children from working class backgrounds. Balls’s boldest statement of intent is to abolish traditionally taught subjects such as Maths, English, History and Geography and roll them into 6 ‘themed lessons’ based around issue based topics, as opposed to the tried and tested methods of teaching rigorous fact and figures.

They will fall under these new ambiguous areas:

Understanding English, Communication and Languages; mathematically understanding, understanding the arts; Historical, geographical and social understanding; physical development, health and well-being; scientific and technological understanding.

Mr Balls is noted for saying he is not “abolishing traditional subjects but reforming the curriculum so teachers have more freedom.” I’m sorry, but this is absurd. ‘More freedom’, coming from his Government, which takes great joy and pleasure from infantile-ling the whole of society, I don’t think so. With youth unemployment at almost half that of the full dole figures; the mythical idea that all can/should go to university and the State will pick up the tab; to dumbed down multiple choice science GCSE’s - this Government needs to be brought to its knees over its abject failure of young Britons.

How on earth can any of these whimsical and wooly-headed thematic lessons allow for freedom, if you ask a teacher to teach History or Maths, they will know where they stand and have no problem understanding what's asked of them. The same goes for the pupils who when asked upon what they learned that day can easily quantify and qualify English from Geography. Riddle me this: What on earth is ‘social understanding’?

They do not need lesson on how to use Google Earth, Twitter or learn how to blog - this they learn for themselves (I learnt it well enough) As kids often are, they appear well ahead of the curve on all things technological and do not need time taken out of official school time to try and condense the meaning of Shakespeare or the reasons for the outbreak of World War II to 140 characters in a tweet.

One prime example of these well-being lessons already happening is one go my friend’s primary school aged children who has to keep a record throughout the weekend on how they were feeling from happy, sad, angry and laughter etc. What happened to real teaching not empathy lessons. Another similar story is that pupils now take ‘big writing’ as opposed to a straight English subject.

What is also strange is how a public educated school boy like Ed Balls knows about struggling comprehensives and how to turn them around? Well, the commonsensical answer would be that he feels they should mirror private primary schools, however these schools stick rigidly to traditional teaching methods and focus not one jot on emotion, just a neat balance between competition and camaraderie. I would know I personally went to one. Although, Mr. Balls thinks it relies in constant tinkering with the system.

It is therefore right that Prince Charles and his chief educational aide, Bernice McCabe, has got involved in denouncing Balls’s latest educational malaise. If the King Elect feels ‘his majesty’s Government is failing children he has a right to voice concerns despite the assertion that the monarch is above politics. This is negated as this isn’t politics, it is a generation of children’s education that Labour’s socialists policies are wrecking.

Mrs. McCabe has said: 'Sometimes there are too many shortcuts into theme-based teaching. That's not what gets children learning.” She is completely correct as are the Prince’s opinion on a ‘cultural disinheritance’ that is occurring under New Labour. It is well known that Labour spends most of it’s nefarious time dreaming up ways to undermine a sense of British History, as it is embarrassed at Britain’s former greatness. But denying a child a right to know the truth about their background is a savage act of mal-governance.

I urge Michael Gove to repeal and outrightly scrap this bill is it ever makes it into law. We need a Conservative administration to public come out against Labour’s latest educational bankruptcy. This should big a flagship element of Tory policy to reclaim the moral authority from Labour to show that it is able to look after the nation’s most vulnerable, be they young, old or in social difficulty - we owe it to great Britons that came before us.

Got Beef? How the Global-Warmists suffer from a case of Mad Cow

2009-10-28T02:00:00.003Z

Words fail me upon hearing Lord Stern’s plan for a Climate Comintern. He says that meat is wasteful and that eating it will become as immoral as drink driving or smoking. Is the man completely insane?

This politics of fear is driving the global warming cult to the forefront of power which is based on illiberal and totalitarian forces.

The Left once said that it was only the Right who use fear-mongering politicking, the latest being based on a War-on-Terror to legitimate a climate of panic. They then go on to say that only ‘they’ can safely protect us, but the catch is you must first hand over certain basic freedoms in order to do so.

However, it is the Left who have been seduced by this notion by harnessing fear and thus spun a web of deception to match the War-on-Terror on the premise of a climate catastrophe.

Only bigger government and its subsequent meddling in our everyday lives is the only solution to this peril. Such threats as not traveling on aeroplanes, banning the use of our cars, and now the dubious moral claim to deny us eating meat are now upon us.

It has hoodwinked thousands of groups (from Oxfam to Apple Mac) and millions of people (from Leftist students with no critical faculties to Presidents and brain dead pop-stars) and by doing so has co-opted them to carry out the greatest of coup d’etats - that of the premise for world government. This Copenhegan Summit is just a precursor of what will await a slumbering nation.

This latest vegetarian putsch, of what can only be described as liberal bile, is so ludicrous it beggers belief. Mankind has been eating meat since time began, it is our God-given right to do so. Riddle me this...why is it only now that certain lunatic sections of society deem it immoral to consume meat?

That aside, the Left have two fundamental problems: One - the moral cause to lift the world out of poverty, more specifically Africa, to do so, or so the theory goes is to give them aid. This helping hand allows for more people to survive infant mortality and lead a more prosperous life. The problem with this is that this new lease on life means they want to consume more resources and of course all staple ingredients - including a diet of meat, which we’ve now been ‘informed’ or should I say ‘instructed’ is a global killer.

The second problem lies with their conversion to human-global warming theory. Lord Stern says that British taxpayers must contribute about £3 billion a year to help poor countries to cope with the inevitable impact of climate change. But surely by doing this more of these people will live and therefore through other aid given by governments have the opportunity to consume more resources, thereby making the problem worse?

Liberals are in a bind - they can’t save everyone! Just like how they can’t be the best friend of both the muslim and homosexual lobby.

Now I am not advocating leaving Africa to rot, but merely highlighting the dilemma Liberals have in who they wish to claim to rescue. I believe strongly that helping Africa and the World will only happen through technological advances. We must trust in man’s creative talents not hide in a cave like many on the Left are suggesting (note a cave in which they are the rulers).

Also the predicament is couched in wider philosophical terms. I assume that most Global Warming converts as also secularists and therefore do not believe in Armageddon, the End Times, and putting it simply - life after death. If we are indeed just mere animals and dust then why the outlook to preserve our world? We are then born only to die and with no greater purpose other than to procreate, it appears that the continuation of our species is at the will of Nature herself. As the human race wasn’t the fittest to survive, the clock will be reset, we will die out and something else will take its place. Isn’t that how the nihilistic evolution story goes?

I can see how a religious person would want to help alleviate plight from millions of people and avoid the destruction of our world, as we will be judge by God on how we looked after the world He created. But for a secularist Liberal to think it was a moral imperative (though aren’t morals now relative?), his Calling if you will, to save the world appears to be a leap of vanity.

Then again maybe the fact that the rhetoric of global warming is tempered in a way that appears to a lost sense of religiosity is why it is having such a marked effect on regular post-modern person.

To deny that man made global warming is occurring is to be a heretic, and blasphemer of the highest order (though they are doing away with blasphemy laws) an act of sacrilege so great that to be one is to be akin to a holocaust denier. The questioning of such a ‘truth’ is subhuman, its reasoning Neanderthal.

All that is left to be said is that I will be exercising my democratic right to purchase two Big Macs instead of one - in full knowledge somewhere in his ivory tower Lord Stern is tucking into his rabbit food.

2009-10-14T17:02:00.004+01:00

Should I be worried about Google? As soon as I hit send on my Postal Strike article up came an advert for the Communication Workers' Union wanting me to join. Could it be that they know I'm after them...

Ah Big Brother continues to roll on at pace...

Reagan-omic Redundancies - a warning to the posties

2009-10-14T16:48:00.009+01:00

The threat of more postal strike action must cease. If we are to defeat this return to cartel-style Trade Union power then drastic measures will have to be issued. The Government must recall the steadfastness and unwavering stance President Reagan took during the air traffic controllers strike of 1981.

Reagan refused to be cowed by an act of Union strong-arm-ism and he ordered all the dissenters to return to work - leaving them with an 48 hour ultimatum - return or be permanently barred from your current employment.

The result meant he fired all 11,000 employees. People thought this plan of action would cripple the US during the holiday season, however after initial problems flights were back to near normal operational levels and air-trade stablilsed.

What we need in the UK is a similar plan of action. We should issue a stark warming to these lay-about posties, branding their actions unpatriotic and that if they do not return to work they will no longer have the right to return.

A way round avoiding even more chronic failures of undelivered post would be to employ, on a temporary basis, the 6 million unemployed we have currently in this country. The number of under 25’s at some estimates is 1.5 million, so how about we give jobs to these people, on the current wage levels those strikers walked out on.

We could resurrect the very British sense of rallying together (WWII-style) and each doing an hour in the post office each week sorting the mail and allowing the unemployed access to postal vans and lorries to deliver the mail (sat-nav included!)

Britain must not bow to the whims of a class of pre-historic socialists, especially at a time when we are all feeling the pinch and most are getting on with the task or duty at hands. Coupled with the one-year pay freeze for public sector workers, we will need a show of unity that this must be the correct course in the long term, and not witness a return to self-centred and individualistic grumbles of Trade Union idleness.

A polemic against the Socialist’s guide to Camping

2009-09-20T18:07:00.009+01:00

I have been meaning to write on this New Statesman article about Socialism for sometime, but the sheer extent of explaining how wrong the late G A Cohen is - has proved a tiresome task. His article was written in the NS and it invokes the warm and cosy idea of a camping trip where we are all happy campers, working for the greater good - sharing numerous things from tools and knowledge to food and individual property.

The fundamental problem with Socialism, as I have repeated on numerous occasions, is that it completely misreads human nature, so from the outset it jettisons any sense of sensibility.

Firstly, no matter how neat the analogy, Life is not comparable to a campsite and never will be. To say people came to this campsite without prejudices, desires, skills and property is utter folly.

Let’s widen this out and replace ‘people’ with ‘nations’, they each have a differing way of conducting themselves, different religions, social customs, views on the family, the list goes on. These are in fact social prejudices.

Taken a stage further with the Socialist’s drive for revolution, it has no regards for generational alteration. The grandfather’s view of the world will slightly differ from the father’s as will the son’s; however we must not forget that each socialises the latter so they will imprint on them a sense of their inherited culture - there is no escape from this, nor should their be, as Burke noted that “no generation has the right to change everything because one generation merely inherited from its ancestors, in trusteeship, ideas and institutions which it handed on to their heirs.”

It is the audacity with which Cohen applies a one-dimensional social harmony that baffles me. To say that people will regulate themselves into societal roles is misguided as he begins with the premise that there is “no hierarchy between us”.

For a start, who governs this belief system?

Surely to join this campsite you have to agree to the principles laid out, but who has made them - your forefathers, social architects, revolutionaries? If there is no hierarchy, somebody must be above to police these values, in case of discontent. Perhaps, a much stronger words should be used - who enforces these societal rules?

What happens if you begin to disagree or wish to alter the rules of this 'social harmony'? Can it be questioned or challenged, if so where can somebody go to ask these questions. All these important queries, require such things as a police force, the media, the family, the legal system and so on.

Another stumbling block is the idea of keeping the notion of social harmony intact. Surely a breed of thought-police would need to be deployed as to maintain the same ‘unifying spirit’? If people didn’t think the same, or rejected the notions of shared property what will happen?

Would they be reprimanded?

This misrepresentation of human nature is seen in Socialism’s myopic drive for equality. For example, when we branch out the simple ownership of the fish or apple tree, to say a favourite toy that may have personal value, or the love between one man and his wife, should the toy be handed out or the wife be shared because that child/man has something that other people do not?

His example: “People who hate cooking, but enjoy the washing up may do all the washing up, and so on? Who legislates for this, or rather who says this is so? This begs the question of value, something the Socialist hates.

Simply asked, is washing up equal in value to cooking? Or put another way, is someone who has a specific skill set above or below another person. Or what about the people who do not work, will they receive benefit from the campsite, even of they do not contribute to the everyday running.

He gives the game away by uttering two exclamations, the first: “I’d rather have my socialism in the warmth of the All Souls College, Oxford”. This shows the armchair philosophical naivety of Socialism that has no regards for the real world. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that All Soul’s College is an idealised space for which the academic is at home, but what about other people - what if they do not like his campsite?

The second is: “Isn’t this socialist way, with collective property and planned mutual giving, rather obviously the best way to run a camping trip, whether or not you like camping?” Yes, in a bloody campsite! But ask yourself this question, how long does the normal family go camping? 3 days, a week maximum? Doesn’t each family, their own flesh and blood, get unbelievably fed up by the end of it!

To see the world as an entity that could cope in this whimsical and idealised way, in the way we view going camping each year, is the crux of this misdiagnosed understanding of the human condition. We can survive a few days, without my favourite pillow, or the misplaced fluffy toy, but very soon, tempers starts to flare, people desire the comfort of their own space, their own time and importantly their own property.

The solution? If people were born into the camp without pre-existing ideas of ownership would it therefore mean these people wouldn’t grow up with any inclinations of personal ownership or desire to be alone and not always in the company or the community or volk?

The more I re-read the article the more it reminds me of Winston in 1984 who begins to value is own time and space. He hates joining in with the chanting and singing and wants nothing more than an individual identity. The society he lives in denies him any such luxuries of freedom of though or expression.

Again, he was brought up with no pre-conceived ideas of personal thought or space, but he still has this burning desire consuming him - human nature. The answer is that you can not keep Man’s expressive or artistic side oppressed and locked away. So for Cohen to agree with Einstein that “Socialism is humanity’s attempt to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development”, highlights his ‘faith position’ that humanity can be perfected in a scientific way, showing how far Socialism goes against the grain of Mankind rather than with slow and steady Arc of History.

I could go on and on, but what saddens me the most is that an obviously very intelligent man, in Cohen, spent his whole life shackled to an idea that made no real world sense and the only way to explain it in his dying days was in the form of a camping site. Surely he would have worked out that by then, that Socialism is merely a dystopian musing on the part of Man which has no regard for freedom or human questioning.

NHS Debate - In defense of Dan Hannan

2009-08-20T01:02:00.003+01:00

A fully functioning NHS in an idealised world is an excellent project and a highly commendable act; however in our fallen world such an aspiration isn’t as clear cut. The American strategy on healthcare is proving to be a hotbed of political consternation on both sides of the Atlantic, not just the political divide!

I can see why the US do not want to see any form of socialised healthcare. It simply isn’t in their constitutional DNA. The view that the State should have any control on the very personal issue of health is a very persuasive philosophical standpoint. However there are always extremes that can be taken too far; the recent debate over the right to die highlights the ethical complications of a legal and political basis for state controlled medical treatment.

On the other hand, I fully agree that the premise that universal health care for all is one that is moral and true. To be able to walk into a hospital or a GPs office and receive treatment without handing over your cash is something everyone should have the right to do. The trickier questions rears its head when people who abuse these privileged - for instance people who are obese or drink too much, or even to an extent the growly population of elderly people placing an economic burden on the rest of the population.

My problem is with the abuse Daniel Hannan is getting, especially from that twat Andy Burnham, who said that Dan is unpatriotic; this is completely uncalled for and utter twaddle. To say Daniel isn’t pro-British is like saying Cricket isn’t a national pastime.

He has single-handedly stood up for the British people against the EU and it’s bureaucratic tentacles, while offering us an alternative vision of parliamentary affairs in his 12 Stage Plan. His patriotism is even reflected in his speeches and the literature he reads - he has a full grasp Shakespeare that he often quotes at lengths during all occasions.

To say that not supporting the NHS’s current state of disarray as unpatriotic implies that the NHS is to make it appear as a part of our British identity and woven into our social fabric. Yes, it is important, but it is hardly the 3 lions on the shirt or the Lord Nelson of the current era. It has become absurdly bureaucratic, while in turn completely unmanageable.

Touching on more personal matters for a moment, the basic human instinct to do whatever it takes to look after your children/spouse/parents when they're sick is hugely important to this debate as it highlights perfectly the lengths people are prepared to go private (or in essence pay over the odds) instead of using the NHS.

It's not immoral or wrong to want our own flesh and blood to live or to get better sooner, if that means paying to be on a shorter waiting list or better care at BUPA then so be it. Yes, the NHS should exist as universal care, but in an unequal life people will go to great depths to ensure personal and family safety it is in our genes to think so.

What we need is the social conditions to save for a rainy day when it comes to healthcare. From an early age if we were encouraged to put money into our own personal health fund knowing realistically that we will need it as we grow old, then when the time comes one has money to spare in order to go private.

The Government could even provide a pension style healthcare system where they pay for example 20% upon your retirement and throughout your own life you stump up the other 80%. If this money was ring-fenced solely for people's health it may well prove money well invested.

The thought now of having a fund for my healthcare, to use when I get older is a comforting idea and one that almost all could experience.

Again, focusing once more on Mr. Hannan's defense, it does appear that people on the Left are playing the man and not the ball or rather a bucket full of ad hominems directed squarely at Daniel. Just because the Left shut down every debate by labelling the smallest dissenter of the NHS as a neo-con bone head doesn't mean the view on offer shouldn't be weighed and viewed like any other argument.

Furthermore, his decision not to tow the party line should be noted as a positive thing (see Paul Goodman on this issue) and Cameron fell into the trap of going all lovie dovie on the NHS again. It needs reform in a drastic way and the only course of action is to tackle the NHS fat controllers head on like Maggie did with the miners. Why should they get paid more than the nurses or the doctors? The system is run like the USSR.

One final point that needs to be cleared up is the mythical gospel that the NHS is in the sole clutches of the Labour Party and they are the ones to defend it. Referring back to an old press cutting from the Telegraph last year I read that William Beveridge, the principle architect of the duly named Beveridge Report was adopted last by the Labour Party and that many on the hard Left showed vehement condemnation of anything resembling the NHS – some claimed it to be 'semi-fascist.

They saw universal welfare as standing in the way of class warfare and thus the end of capitalism. Other socialists derided as the social ambulance scheme – it appeared that they didn't actually care for the proletariat and not for the first time either!

What is also of note is how Beveridge himself wanted a welfare society not a welfare STATE, he sent a two page letter condemning such an idea. His view was that the State should be used as a last resort because it often spent irresponsible and acted to whatever voters demanded to stay in power.

I shall end the post with Beveridges own words: “While there are somethings the State should do, there are many more which should be done in other ways...by self-help and by voluntary helping of citizens by another.” Hmmm isn't that pragmatic conservatism?

This is what a Feminist looks like?!

2009-08-11T23:38:00.007+01:00

Ah Ms Harperson - what will we do with you? Her latest rants on a woman’s place in the world has caused a stir in the papers and the most notable is the work of Janice Turner in the Times supplement.

My take on Harperson’s feminism is that it is retrograde, out-dated marxism. Her drive for egalitarianism, note not actual equality, is based on the foundation that gender parity will be reached through an economic and numeric putsch. A redistribution of wealth or control of the mode and forces of production to fall inline with this worn out socialist narrative. That is why she is wrong.

True equality is something more akin to respect, not figures on a spreadsheet. A man should be able to look at a woman and think of her as an equal, not as something to be used or to be thought less of. It is thus about morality and justice.

Most of my female friends (20 somethings) are no doubt cleverer, more outgoing, more confident and have a greater drive than my male peer group, myself included. So speaking for my generation - Generation Y - girls far outperform boys.

Is there a reason why? Well, the sad thing is the push to equality has led to a severe lack of male role models for boys at school as well as at home. Most recently, the numbers of male primary schools teachers is 1 in 10 and 4 in 10 in secondary schools. Not to mention the surge in absentee fathers. In addition, coursework is favoured over exams , which is shown to suit more girls than it is boys. I do not wish these to sound like excuses, merely that they reflect a skewed gender balance more in line with female strengths.

Turner’s article notes at length the pornification of our culture, which she claims subjugates women further. She is correct.

The cause of such plight is again my bete noir - Liberalism. First allow me to say the idea of female equality is noble and just; however the pursuit of this through Liberal means has proved a disaster, it’s conclusion is the ‘24/7 pleasure-dome of modern youth culture’, as Turner puts it. Women, by seeking to be like men is not equality. The pursuit of drinking way in excess and the poisoned chalice of sexual conquest through one night promiscuity isn’t the glass ceiling women should be looking to break and enter.

Equality should be women having an equal voice to stand up and argue the virtues social decorum, civility, sobriety and fidelity. These traits should be used to make men more equal to women rather than women striving out of a contorted sense of marxist-feminist equality to be more like the stereotyped oppressive all conquering Man.

Turner is right in saying that women of the 00’s have replaced the goal of feminism with narcissism. Debates over enfranchisement have been stifled over talk of shoes, accessories, sex in the city and the latest fake tan. As a man committed to female justice, I love it when I’m on the tube and a woman is reading the Economist or a broadsheet. It makes me want to talk to them about politics, economics, science and social policy as equals.

The problem lies in Liberalism allowing women to think equality means they can do whatever the hell they want, supposedly just like men can. Take the curse of the Nuts and Zoo magazines, they are nothing compared to Hello, OK and Heat - the female counterparts.

The content in them is drivel and doesn’t enhance female freedoms, it compounds them. How is a women meant to find self-worth when she is constantly being told by another woman with an exceedingly low IQ that being skinny is the must have look, or the right fake tan will increase your self confidence. The men in the magazine are barely clothed and offer nothing more than titillation to rival the objectification from the male gaze that women have come to so deplore on Page 3.

Here, so called freedom is just a veil of subjugation - it is a masquerade, nothing more. It is not a woman’s right to act like men, when more often than not male actions are the objectionable acts that true feminism wanted to do away with in the first place. This couldn’t be better conveyed by Turner’s phrase: “Sex used to be something men did to women, today it is perceived as something women perform for men.” Is that the reversal of gender roles that feminists desired?!

Again, the philosophical view of women has clearly not changed, in essence that men use their brains and women use their bodies - logos versus eros. The example used is that lap-dancing clubs are perceived by many young women as being a legitimate source of income and no moral judgement enters the equation. Women as objects is hit home by the borderline unbelievable statistic that more than 25,000 users of Bebo use slut in their users names, or crudely spell out what sort of instantaneous sexual gratification they crave.

Furthermore, Harperson is wrongheaded by using our soundbite-saturated society, by claiming to want a Gender 20 summit to run along aside the ‘male dominated G20’. One, this is completely sexist and divisive. Two, it is the old us and them argument, it causes more struggles than it solves. Three, her utterance that men can’t be left on their own is just plain sexist; if a man said those things about a women he would be socially hung, drawn and quartered. Thus, if women want to be taken seriously then don’t listen to her, she is a relic of marxist thinking, she has nothing new to bring to the table, just like the New Labour facade.

Couple with this, centralised frogmarching of girls into traditional male jobs, isn’t going to breed equality, as it removes freedom of choice. If she doesn’t want to be a builder, don’t force her. So is the EU plan to remove all gendered language from european languages as it is perceived as sexism. This is a waste of our taxes!

As the Conservative knows too well society moves organically and shouldn’t be tampered with by either those who tinker at the centre, or who shout the loudest - as these people are not the defenders of liberty.

Therefore, I propose another word other than equality and that word is balance. Crude equality isn’t some quantitative quest for the same pay or the same hours a man must spend with his child. Realistically, if a woman decided to have children, over time she will earn less than a man, that is not oppression that is just a simple fact. But this does not stop men campaigning for greater paternal leave or fatherhood rights - something I champion to the hilt.

For example, the family chores shouldn’t be divvied up to strict codes, such as equal time changing the nappies or running a bath, but a balance of roles taking on more or less as and when required. If the man is better at disciplining his children then let him get on with the job, if the woman is better at comforting her children, let her - don’t force them to be people they are not.

Traditional values are something not to be sneered at - the nanny shouldn’t be brought in to deal with the trials and tribulations of family life, note nanny refers as much to the State as it does to the child-minder.

Finally, Turner refrains from calling this era retro-sexism, well I challenge her to call it retro-feminism as the ways and means of Ms Harriet Harperson are not the tools to be fighting a woman’s corner in the 21st Century.

A great anti-Harperson website

2009-08-09T02:22:00.002+01:00

http://www.harrietharmansucks.com/

What more can be said other than check this out!

Classic anti-Obama propaganda!

2009-08-09T01:56:00.002+01:00

Lazy Royal Mail 'workers' can't even keep a strike going through lunchtime

2009-07-17T14:02:00.005+01:00

As I stepped out from work in Storey's Gate to go on my lunch hour I was bombarded by Socialist Worker newspapers sellers pushing their dead ideology in my face and lay-about postal workers on stike - banners in toe. It was like being in the 80's!

I've just come back from my lunch an hour later only to find all these 'workers' with a pint in hand and a grin on their faces. What a waste of space...

The Death of Respect - a must watch!!!

2009-07-17T00:16:00.003+01:00

On the back of my last post everyone should watch: "The Death of Respect" and they will see the argument I made about the destruction that Liberalism has had both socially and economically in the 60's and 80's.

The Communitarian Face-Off

2009-07-16T21:55:00.006+01:00

I attended the Communitarian Face-Off: a Left v. Right Debate by the Left wing think tank Compass on Wednesday. Here are my thoughts on the evening:

Firstly, the argument that Equality will bring about democracy. Despite the Compass director, Neal Lawson, saying that we are born into a world that delivers us into an unequal position both biologically and socially, something which I agree with as this is an unalterable fact of life that the conservative is content with. The part of his view that is dangerous is his insistance on tinkering socially with the biological and familial Nature. I say this because this will not breed a democratic nature, but an authoritarianism of the Left. Allow me to explain.

People will become alienated if their created wealth which is used to help their children and family gets snatched and given to people who will receive this in the form of inherited State wealth. This will invariably not go on beneficial life projects for an individual or community. Why should one’s toil and sweat be seized by others, it reduces the sense of work ethic?

We need to change to a culture of giving and helping, not rabid redistribution from the State. For example, by destroying religious group’s willingness to serve their communities, via a liberal view on faith as anti-progressive, rather than organic entities who would otherwise help society; they are prohibited and strangled by the Left wing belief that they are the supposed ‘opiate of the people’ that has no place in the 21st century.

I believe strongly that the issue is not economic or social, but in fact cultural, which leads me to my second point - the infiltration of Liberalism in both parties.

Building on Philip Blond’s points – I believe the question lies with whether you think that Liberalism has poisoned your ideology?

The Libertarian views of morality, most associated with the 60’s, were borne from Left wing philosophical musings bent on the destruction of the old moral order; notably the bourgeois family values. I feel their blood thirsty quest for misguided versions of ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ actually destroyed a sense of communitarianism, as it fostered individual exploits; instantaneous gratification; and the birth of Identity politics. All these disstracted the chattering classes away from community based politics.

Meanwhile, the 80’s saw the forced entry of Liberalism on Conservative economic policy, which ushered in the start of the atomised society. One where commercial goods and the commodity fetish became the ultimate pursuits in life. Any sense of society was usurped by the Individual and helped create a post-modern view of self – a sort of consumerist’s shopping mall of competing and interchangeable identities. One far, far away from a sense of civic and local anchorage. In short, Liberalism dealt a cruel blow to communitarianism of the Left and the Right.

I also object to Neal Lawson’s view that because the world’s resources are finite means that we should therefore distribute these resources equally and fairly (concepts that are never expanded on). It completely misses the point of what the scarcity of such items has on the human condition.

Why should they be handed out fairly when they will run out anyway? What moral order does he get this high and mighty view. Surely, he takes a secular position, from his Enlightenment thinking that there is no God, and thus the survival of the fittest must apply to his logic or human reasoning.

So it goes, the humans who get that natural upper hand via biological superiority in the shape of wars or social upheaval should be allowed the spoils of such victories. Surely, this is the way evolution decrees, it has no place for the Social. If anything the Social seeks to stunt and undo the will of Nature, if one holds a evolutionary view of creation.

This leads to the assertion from Compass that the Market creates chaos. If Lawson takes an evolutionary position, that from chaos of the universe came order, then as the argument goes - ‘eventually’ order will be created from Market chaos, just like the story of a monkey writing a Shakespearean play or composing a work of Mozart. If anything the market actually creates order and brings communities together by allowing all peoples to buy and sell commodities that are valued on a floating an exchange rate.

Having staked out my case for Liberalism’s corrosive effects, a further example is that firstly, social Liberalism and secondly, economic Liberalism forwarded the militant acceptability of sexual exploitation. This was carried out through the view to accept prostitution and immoral behaviour by allowing the once sacred and emotional human act of loving making to be entered into economic exchange, weighed and then sold to the consumer. This was made greater due to the push of pornographic material into our homes and onto our children.

The next assertion I take issue with from Compass is arguing that it is consumer culture that has led to a stupefying of the working class. This position goes against any notion of freedom that one had from the 60's. (The so called liberties that the Left primarily advocated.)

Allow me to elaborate, if you redistribute wealth to poorer people and give them ‘freedoms’ then you must accept that they will buy whatever they wish in a free and democratic society. Therefore, if they choose to buy a brain numbing Heat magazine then sadly so be it. If you deny this, the ‘freedom’ loving Left merely create an authoritarian State in which no one has the ability to choose what he or she wishes to read. In a word Censorship.

Bringing the whole notion of Communitarianism back to the fore - it is the Left that have crushed a sense of common bonds, via their pathological vigour for wiping out the traditional family structure; the elimination of the Church and its moral teachings; the explosion of Identity politics; and the belief that the State can act as mother and father to children, which has turned us into an infantile Man (see Richard Sennett).

In a final conclusion, I believe strongly that the issue no longer revolves a round Class, as we are presented with a large section of society that does not wish to interact with the remaining populous. Their name, the aptly coined Underclass. These people are below Class, they simply do not conform to aspirational or civic goals of either a Tory or Socialist political-framework.

This underclass has no time for other human interaction. No linkage to family, be they mothers of numerous children; fathers who abandon their kids; children who do not respect their parents; no local society to educate or keep them in check. At least the old working class held onto the Protestant work ethic and bourgeois ideas of family structures, moral codes of sobriety, hard work and decency. They were however smashed by Liberal intellectuals, posing as champions of the working class.

The underclass simply do not care for educational attainment or a growth of an altruistic self towards others. They appear to the social scientist to be nothing more than a social virus feeding off the teat of the State, in complete servitude.

This is the true false class consciousness. A real working class would not succumb to such inertia, as they were hard working people who wished to see their conditions improve and their share of the wealth rise - goals which all political hues champion. In sum, this under-class does not possess a human interaction able to constitute a civil society.

This is why communitarianism is so critical, as it will not be a revolution in how the voting system functions, as mentioned by Lawson. His support for proportional representation isn’t going to make these people become engaged in politics. Their everyday needs a fundamental overhaul – one which is more akin to a Conservative nature of society and community.

Tamil demonstrations cost the taxpayer £8 million

2009-06-18T22:59:00.004+01:00

A bizarre expenditure was announced today, but it finally allowed us to know the sheer extent to which ‘demonstrators’ cost the UK.

The police admitted they were extremely stretched with resources and that violent crime was rising 30% through-out the protests in the London area. Suprisingly, the G20 curfuffel cost us less - weighing in at only £7.2 million.

This could have paid for extra nurses, more teaches, or making a ‘small’ cut in our national debt. Why should foreign demonstrations cost the UK money?

What irks me is that only certain types of people are ‘allowed’ to protest. Every morning I get the work-shy, unwashed, woolly liberal complete with megaphone in their dirty festival condition tent, camped out at Parliament square.

The Tamil supporters are trying to gain legitimacy for a terrorist group that has undermined Sri Lanka for almost 60 years. They brought Westminster to a standstill by sitting in the middle of the square with their protestations - with no regard for the rest of us.

People should have the right to demonstrate, however not for 43 days and at such a rate of numbers for something that is happening in another sovereign state. The violence in Iran as a result of its own people rallying against the Government in their own boarders is a right and justly cause, but doing this in another country is not.

Their disregard for the wider consequences, in the form of being a catalyst for rising criminal activity is something they should be ashamed of. This ‘my rights trump all other rights’ in a world which now acts within a postmodern moral vacuum is somewhat ridiculous.

The police should have the powers to move them on after their original protests are over. It would happen at a BNP rally or a group that is deemed politically incorrect. How does the mechanism of democracy function if there is one rule for one group and a different one for someone else?

The UK has now become a vessel for unhealthy dissent towards other nation states.

The End of Trials without Juries

2009-06-18T22:19:00.007+01:00

The Great Charter of Freedoms otherwise known as Magna Carter is a parchment that is yet again under attack from Nu Labour’s progressive agenda.

Today marks a break with almost 800 years of a real form of Human Rights, as Labour has managed to do away with the right to a jury in criminal trials.

This is a very dangerous precept and it is on the constitutional back of a push for 42 day detention. A jury is an unashamed tool of democracy and key for it to function - as the common people are given the duty to sit and act as counter balance to the whims of the ever increasing power of judges.

Labour, ideologically claims to be the party of the people, however it has ceded all power to the Liberal intelligentsia, who believes it has a right to trump our basic inalienable Rights and preside over all decision making. This goes far beyond a soft paternalism, but acts as an overarching State intent on quenching its thirst for power by seizing and centralising public authority.

Most commentary is on how corrupt and morally bankrupt our MPs are and how awful Gordon Brown is as a Prime Minster, however the most menacing threat to our security is Jack Straw. His philosophical tract is one deep rooted in Socialism, which will cease at nothing until all our traditional pillars of society are, firstly undermined, then shattered into oblivion like that of an ancient tribe millennia ago.

He is blind to the dangers of dismantling society out some misplaced quest to see Britain ushered into a Socialist utopia. I have always stated that the Left’s foundational principles have completely misread the Human Condition and that their contorted view of Man has and will continue to have damaging consequences, until the true forces of Conservatism rise again.

Although, what amazes me is this move to hide the criminal process from the public and place sole power to our extremely liberal judiciary. What type of criminal will receive a harsh punishment: a pedophile; a rapist; a drug dealer; or a murderer - I’m assuming not, just a slap on the wrist and more money ploughed into ‘reforming’ them.

It is more likely that Thought Crimes, which do not agree with the Liberal consensus are those that will be handed the most severe punishments. How about Christians who are having their rights taken away through ‘equality laws’; or parents who wish to smack their children; or perhaps global warming deniers (akin to holocaust deniers these day.)

Fundamentally, Labour is causing society to break down because they are not letting us, the People, the chance to participate in it. From not allowing us a vote over the EU treaty; having a general election; the right to religious freedoms; and the right to have a family free from State scrutiny. The list could go on and on.

When Maggie said there is no such thing as society, Labour secretly echoed these distorted sentiments. If placing the individual at the heart of a neo-liberal agenda had caused an atomised society in the 80’s and 90’s then Nu Labour by using the State as a political weapon in the 00’s has dismantled what was left of Society.

Let’s rise up and call for a general election so we can be judge, jury and executioner on Nu Labour and their failed socially engineered project.

ID cards are much more philosphical than they are economic failures

2009-05-08T17:57:00.008+01:00

The great ID card debate, yet again triggered by the trial run in Manchester this week, is being fought by the Conservatives on the wrong premise - that of ‘cost’ to the tax payer.

Yes, the scheme will costs billions and is a complete waste of public money in the current climate, but the very notion of compulsory ID cards is far more philosophical and ideological than they currently make out.

The arguments used by Jackboot Jacqui that ID cards will help combat cyber crime, fraud and illegal immigration is tosh. I say this on firstly a very practical level that anyone and everything can be cracked, copied, stolen, forged - nothing is fully proof. If humans designed it then it is bound to have faults. If anything, ID cards will trigger a black market for people’s biological and physiological data.

On to the ideological, however and we begin to see how at odds this Labour Government is with individual autonomy and personal regulation. For starters, ID cards are not the same as passports because we as individuals exercise our right, granted by our Monarch, of safe passage to a foreign land. Passports, therefore act as a way of external control; in short - a freedom to leave this nation and frequent another. Again, this is your own choice, I am not compelled to leave these lands with a passport.

ID cards work on the completely opposing vision, they are to keep people in and to control them. By making them compulsory, it will be illegal for you not to have one, you have no choice/freedom in the matter. For you to have free movement in your own country you would have to have this ID card, when surely your birth right should be free and unhindered passage in the land of your birth. So it is not a case of needing an identification to leave (a passport) but identification to move within your own boarders.

This corralling and controlling device is utterly against British Liberty and it beggars belief that a British political party is even considering this totalitarian endeavour.

The same principle is applied to a driving license, we only have one if we want to drive a car, those who do not, shouldn’t be forced to get one - you have a choice. While having a driving license is sensible, having an ID card with biometric data is not, as any choice in the matter is strangled at birth. Imagine ID tagging babies the moment they come out of the womb, it would be like Auschwitz - Hair/eyes/blood/finger prints - it’s a complete invasion of human dignity not to mention liberty.

Taking finger prints should be if you are found guilty of a crime, so when we hear stories of the police storing finger prints of innocent people and will continue to keep this information for years to come, it undermines the fundamental principle of innocent until proven guilty. This appears against the backdrop of allowing criminals the vote on the grounds of their human rights. What about UK citizens and their rights to a free and non-coerced life in their homeland?

There are also schools which have taken to finger printing their pupils in cases of stolen library books, with a more widespread agenda to roll this out for the register and school meals. We will make our children feel like barcodes not young citizens.

In addition, the underhand ‘co-opting’ of new students to be imposed with an ID card scheme in return for a student bank account smacks of blatant blackmail as it looks to dictate to impressionable young people who may not know their full rights as citizens.

Jackboot’s rationality is that: "We want to be able to prevent those here illegally from benefiting from the privileges of Britain.” How about for a start not letting a flood of people to enter the UK every day. We could tighten our boarder police force; make it more difficult for unqualified migrants to enter the UK; and abandon this failed multicultural mission.

This lunacy is compounded by people who clearly hate this country and wish to see it destroyed being found not guilty in our biased-liberal courts system. Or if they are found guilty, but complain on the grounds of their human rights at the EU court they are as a result set free.

Without going too populist with headlines such as ‘Big Brother State’ and ‘CCTV capital of the world’, the UK does have large philosophical issues to discuss; if the ruling elite really does think that a free and democratic citizen needs to be compelled to receive an ID card at their own expense, then we really do need a revival of civic debate on such a constitutional and intrinsic position.

My Political leanings so far...

2009-04-29T14:26:00.009+01:00

I just retook the Political Compass test for the fourth time in as many years (I appear to be heading in a more authoritarian manner!) While the other chart is the latest EU poll regarding how you should vote come June 4th; however the questions are appalling - too many are leading or loaded questions, which give a skewed account of your political sensibilities.

For instance, one question is: Should the EU speak with one voice on foreign matters? I said yes, not out of any desire to see the EU power base to grow further, but more out of practicality for example when the UK wants to go to war, but France is too scared. Although the preceding question is: Do you think the EU should have a fully functioning army? In short, they both infer the same political outcome.

Also, being socially liberal, but economically right wing will alter and misrepresent the x-axis which highlights both positions on a single line.

Its only saving grace is that it allows you to select or de-select certain criteria at the end, so you can see how you fair on specific issues raised during this rather closed questionnaire.

GCSE Parenting - State institutionalised parenthood that will destroy the Family

2009-04-20T01:06:00.005+01:00

Why does the Liberal/Left civil partnership insist on the State running our whole lives? The latest example of this is giving a GCSE equivalent certificate for teenage parenting.

They have already destroyed what it means to be a father by allowing women and their offspring married to the State through over-supporting single parents over married couples and getting the man’s name off the birth certificate. Now they seek to become mothers to these children as well as Fathers - this really is a Brave New World.

I can’t fathom this Left wing idea of institutionalising parenthood - surely the family is a private institution and should have little tampering with by the overarching State? These kids shouldn’t need to take a course, which proscribes through modules how to be a parent, as it will no doubt come from a Lib/Left post-modern view point of how to raise a child, which has already led to the problem children we currently have fathering their own offspring.

The result will be that no sense of discipline will be instilled because of the anti-smacking laws; the absurd notion of children’s rights trumping parental commonsense; the support for children to keep underage sexual activity secret from their parents; and the idea that parents should be their kid’s friends over teaching them right from wrong.

The problem lies with this utter parasitic obsession of Left wing policy makers that everyone must have ‘qualifications’ in order to be equal. This stems from the skewed ideological belief in ‘equality’. So it goes: ‘We all must be the same to be equal’.

In this county we have people from a different era doing their jobs perfectly well, but have no ‘qualification’ other than their apprenticeships and 40 years practical service up against people competing for the same jobs who have all the ‘qualifications’ in the world, but no practical skills, or even the soft skills needed for the world of work. This crusade to be appear equal is destroying UK business and young people’s careers. Now the Left want to do this to people’s families as well.

It begs the question: Will we soon all need the State’s approved parental GCSE to be allow to reproduce? The course is only a D to G worth of a GCSE, what does that hope to achieve? It is completely pointless.

The breakdown of traditional family life has led parents not educating their children in the ‘private’ sphere on how to be a parent. As a result, we are currently witnessing almost three generations who have had no such life lessons.

The Mail is correct in saying that by devising this course it sends out a message that getting pregnant at 15 is an achievement and an academic qualification is the correct way in supporting this decision.

This is State-sponsored ticket to welfare dependency!

Furthermore, education confers respectability, so by having this course it will infer that underage sex and pregnancy is the social norm and the respectable thing to be doing - hey you’ve got a piece of paper congratulating you on doing it!

The solution to all this mess isn’t the ‘State’s guide to parenthood’, rather we need a seizing back of power from children to adults. That means abolishing the idea of liberal children’s rights - which are to have the right to do/question anything they like. We need a children’s rights system that resembles moral and social rights, which are both public (a right to an education) and private (parents taking responsibility in educating their kids right from wrong)

We also need a seismic shift away from uniform ‘qualification’ culture. Every child has a talent that shouldn’t be standardised and our education system should reflect all talents.

This can be done through the rebirth of apprenticeships; a return to grammar school type selection; lowering the school leaving age so kids can leave pursue other talents, which are not necessarily connected with academic performance as some aren’t wired that way; and finally a strong sense of civic duty through a modern style national service - not necessarily military drills, but authoritarian and disciplinary in nature.

For example, tasks which revolve around the military idea that if one person fails the whole team fail. Over time this would increase team work and interaction, therefore breaking the atomised youth who has an outlook only for himself.

However, this can only happen if the State is curtailed significantly, so that other private institutions can be given a chance to show their social worth be they religious organisations, the family unit, charities or local businesses.

Hannan calls for a 'Revolutionary' turning of the political wheel

2009-04-18T22:04:00.003+01:00

I heard a stellar speech from Daniel Hannan MEP at Ascot today. He has the apt nuances to deliver the Conservative message far beyond its ideological boarders. This is in stark contrast when I have heard David Cameron speak, as he appears insincere and at times disingenuous; while Mr. Hannan fills any room with an eloquence that is not only clear, but resoundingly powerful to the heart and mind.

The impression he left on me most was his use of the term ‘revolution’. This politically loaded word stimulates any archaic Socialist or woolly-minded Liberal, however Hannan described Britain needing a revolution so to ‘turn the wheel’ of current public policy. He uses the term in the more practical and technical definition as an act of ‘rotational motion.’

In short, a complete turn around from the ever increased encroachment of centralising tendencies of New Labour and the EU to the ultra-devolution of political power.

This was a call to arms not just against the undemocratic European project but also the clunking hand of Whitehall administration. At his most strongest he produced a sound political synergy between the EU regulation running our lives and voter apathy by explaining that people do not vote because they feel their vote is meaningless. The UK’s decision making abilities are seized from the elected officials, which are then rented out in the form of competing technocracies and ‘quangocracies’ under the New Labour Mis-Government.

His examples are the Treasury doesn’t run the economy - the FSA does; The Department for Schools doesn’t run education - the LEAs do; we don’t control our agricultural or fishing rights - the unelected EU Commission do; even our weekly bin collections are sent down via unaccountable EU diktats.

He gave an example of when he took his child to school and heard other parents complaining about the booster seats directive enforced upon all children under a certain height. Anyone would be forgiven for thinking we lived under Communist rule whose State production figures were down on last year, so Stalin demands we all must buy a useless piece of crappy plastic to protect our children as to re-inflate the economy.

Again, he asked ‘why vote?’ when the people you elect have no decision making powers, as we cede this to back-room deals in Brussels.

He repeatedly made the point that the mother of modern democracy (UK) has withered beyond all recognition due to the undemocratic nature of the EU. He gives a blistering example of the lady who replaced replaced Lord Mandy as Trade Commissar - sorry Commissioner, Baroness Ashton.

She has never stood for a democratic election in her life, as she knows she would lose. She received only two cheers when appearing before the Commission during her ‘coronation’ - the first for declaring that she would be the first woman to do the job (who cares what she is!) The second for claiming she had single handedly navigated the Lords away from ever allowing a referendum on the EU Lisbon Treaty! Is this the resultant modern day British Democracy?!

Mr. Hannan spoke about the EU’s obsession with technocrats over elected representation - the sneer for the common man. The point made was that the man who solely labours on one task becomes blind to all others that are around him.

There was also the mention of Gordon Brown not bringing the stimulus packages and the ‘Bail Out’ to a House of Commons votes so amendments could be made, let alone before the House to discuss. This was an announcement akin to the USSR’s declaration of yet another ‘5 year economic plan’. Mr. Hannan posed the question MPs should be asking themselves: Why are we even here then? We might as well go home.

Even the Obama led administration had to go before the US Congress three times to get theirs approved, which shows the democratic process alive and well; he has even won an election with a legitimate mandate from the American people.

The UK does not live in a democracy if we can not challenge, amend or give advise to our governors - this is pure tyranny.

Leaving the speech to one side, I feel Daniel Hannan sees his duty as protecting the UK against the EU, despite calls for this fine statesman to be brought into the Westminster fold. I do hate the cliche, ‘If you can’t beat them join them’, however I say this with a twist. if Hannan wasn’t in the EU Parliament who would be protecting the British interest.?

If 85% of our Laws do come from Brussels then I want to see Mr. Hannan help to make each a better one for Britain, because being an MP would give him absolutely no decision making abilities at all, which he profoundly explained to the audience today.

A call for the Separation of Church and (EU) State

2009-04-13T19:57:00.002+01:00

It has come to my attention that there is a serious breach of English liberty regarding the separation of Church and State. In the Telegraph last week, it reported on one in the long line of EU directives that will force faith schools to accept non-believers and the push for Churches to perform gay marriage ceremonies.

Within the article Dan Hannan MEP, said that the EU shouldn’t be allow to rule on how churches are governed. This allows me to question the perceived view of why we have a separation of Church and State. In Europe, it is fundamentally in place to protect the State from active religious interference at the expense all other voices.

However, in the US it is often viewed as the protection of the Church against the all pervasive tentacles of the State, which highlights the American philosophy that the State can not be trusted with the regulation of individual freedom, both in thought and action. In this European case, it is apt to adopt the American view that the Church should be free from the State’s interference, notably a foreign power’s (EU).

This ‘second’ phase of the Enlightenment is disturbing as it appears to have no regard for people’s religious liberty and has entered into a game of ‘rights’ trumping other ‘rights’. We have reached an era where moral relativism has reduced all claims to ‘rights’ of equal merit (through a twisted view and misrepresentation of egalitarianism)

At a time when the more conservative ideals of the right to private property and the protection of that property is being eroded (see the G20 demonstrations), we have a further assault on our personal consciousness.

The EU has become a dangerous enemy of Faith, but also of Human Reason. It’s obsession with control and overregulation of our lives with French or German translated legal gibberish reeks of yet another Socialist experiment. The EU is making us look less human - it is destroying our Democracy - via its low turn outs on election day; an unelected Commission; and it’s closed door deals and lack of accountability.

This is coupled with the attacks on the right to religious liberty; the right to generate and accumulate wealth and to spend it how we see fit. We need a new compact that sees the Church separated from EU super-State for its own protection.

Bravo! Mr. Montgomerie - A powerful call for 21st social Conservatism

2009-03-19T18:49:00.008Z

Like arguments, it is very hard to blog about things you agree with. If two people agree you always nod and smile and move on as there’s little point of patting each other on the back on how good their argument is. However, I feel that praise has to be heaped upon Tim Montgomerie’s piece in the Telegraph today.

His vision of a new chapter of moral Conservatism is one that Edmund Burke’s ghost agrees with fundamentally. Tim’s article rests on the premise that: “Social reform is the missing ingredient of modern conservatism,” and quite rightly so. For too long the party has been contaminated by crude laissez-faire reductionism, which has poured its way into our social fabric and left it stained for the past 30 years.

Yes, the cleansing of a creeping Socialism needed to be stopped. Maggie and Reagan should be congratulated on killing this dangerous entity; however their economic coup and subsequent trend for 3 decades was not matched by a Conservative rebalancing of the social sphere.

Tim is right that these include: the end of the Liberal’s blind eye on family breakdown; crime; benefit culture; and the total failure of our education system under New Labour - the latter of which I sadly am a product of. Although this point of the article is for the battle within the conservative ranks, not the liberal detractors.

The point couldn’t be clearer that: “Without a moral purpose, a political party will never inspire.” Just as Maggie offered hope to millions with her economic revolution, so a social rejuvenation must be the sceptre that taken up but 21st Conservatism.

Tim notes that: “Conservatives need to articulate a moral ambition.” Again eloquently written and highlights that Labour, often to the layman in the street, is perceived has rallying to a higher purpose or an ideal that is meant to help all - something which is often a vote winning.

As Conservatives, we all need to steal this ideological ground from Labour, forget DC running to the centre as that will only lead to stagnant politics. The battle will be how much can new conservative initiatives can inspire and help the average person and nurse the nation back to social health. Cameron is courting the idealism that is associated with the NHS, but perhaps he should modify his approach and call for a social NHS on conservative terms - ‘Staterun’, but small state run - as it must oil the gears to get society moving again.

This task however isn’t just to convince the electorate, but the more social liberal wing of the party, which is of a formidable size. That task has started today, courtesy of Tim Montgomerie’s article - may this be the first of many a rally cry.

Gaza, BBC, Hamas and the Left - the intolerance of them all

2009-01-26T22:18:00.006Z

I really don't know where to start with the Gaza debate as things have gotten way out of control. Firstly, the Left wing attacks have got to stop – I'm fed up – totally fed up! I walk past Westminster every morning and I am sickened by the demonstrators who like social parasites spew their hatred towards others, as normal citizens who have jobs, walk on to work.

It is almost like they have every anti-Israeli banner already painted and every placard written out before the Israeli military advancement.

For people who say they are “enlightened, objective and rational”, why have the Left swallowed the biggest lie that the UK, US and Israel are infidels and must be destroyed. I had to hear a woman on a megaphone for 5 minutes waiting for the lights to change on Bridge Street, blaming me for all the blood shed. I wanted to sing the Offspring's – Why don't you get a job, at her!

The next thing to tick me off was one of the biggest banners demanded we “Strike for Gaza” Bloody hell is there not a time when the Left won't pull out the ol' let go on a strike as we are too lazy to do anything, lets jump on a campaign that we have never read the history about, because that would make us informed and mean we'd have to engage our brains – no.

Strike for the mines, strike in the French revolution, Strike in the Russian Revolution, Strike over Israel. How about we have a strike over striking, would that be clever, or a protest about protesting – delightful.

I apologise over the lack of clarity in this post, but I am so enraged over the Left's attitude this time.

The next thing I witnessed had me seething...seeing graffiti which read: Israel=Nazism and Israel are Nazis, the worst one was on my nearby bus shelter, which had the Israeli flag having replaced the star of David with a swastika. You might as well buy a golliwog for a black man and say he's looking in the mirror – pure evil and utterly virile.

My point is that this time anti-semitism isn't being conducted by the Right, but by the Left, of all the creeds who 'preach' tolerance, peace and cultural understanding. Instead what do they do – cause social upheaval by demanding strikes, burning down the Starbucks in South Kensington and hurling rocks at the Israeli embassy. You'd thing we were in the 1930's and Hitler was in charge.

Are we going to see another Kristallnacht before the Left realise what they have started?

This boils down to petty and juvenile anarchic tendencies in the Left's ambitions to subvert Western values through terror, intimidation and violence. They simply are not tolerant people.

The can be seen with the latest anti-BBC demonstrations, which resembled the vigor of China's Tiananmen Square incident in the 80's. These people talk of social justice, but for me its a poisoned chalice, as they stand united as nothing more than an angry mob, and the mob to a conservative is a very combustible and explosive composition.

Group mentality can turn even 'peaceful' acts of resistance into vehicles for hate. Obama's social movement was truly democratic, but the Gaza appeals have turned into a bloodlust against Israel; and the Arab world is laughing at ranks in our own civilisation who they have turned against us.

How can the Left now hate the BBC when its a hugely biased left-wing institution – it boils down to 'they' haven't gone 'far' enough, through history we have seen when members of a cause in Left wing ranks ask questions or develop a conscious – denunciations, calls of sabotage and then exclusion either forcibly or worse.

Moving to Question Time a few weeks ago again had me at pains as the 'balanced' audience were cheering that Lib Dem Baroness Tonge who hadn't read a history book in her life and then jeered Stephen Pollard after he tried to exercise his democratic right to speak.

However, in that audience we heard a lady who said “Israel only has to lose once and then its all over.” This should have been the wake up call for the Left – the resonance these few words have shake the foundations of any Left wing heckle.

In my closing paragraphs I want to heap praise on Melanie Phillips and Daniel Finkelstein because they have written two fantastic articles outlining the case for Israel.

Finkelstein's article shows how Israel can't rely on world opinion if it is to survive, this latest showing in Western countries is clear in that message. His example is: “World opinion weeps for Anne Frank, but world opinion did not save her” – chilling and thoroughly true.

He speaks of how Zionism isn't a pseudo-religious doctrine that will destroy the world, but rather “the bitter conclusion that world opinion could not be relied upon to protect the Jewish people”.

Israel has on many times come to the peace table offering vast reconciliations, only to have them knocked back with violence from Muslims of all sects. Finkelstein says all Muslims need to do is say that they will allow Israel to live in peace; however most Arabs want to kill the Jewish people much like Hitler wanted to do across Europe.

Melanie Phillips states this is even better in regards of the many charities who bully the BBC: “The contribution that these charities have made is helping form the monstrous view that Israel is a demonic aggressor rather than the historic victim of exterminatory aggression.”

What this all boils down to see the reemergence of 2,000 years of persecution of the Jewish people, which looks cyclical and appears every 50-60 years or so. The problem now is that the attacks come from the Left, who mask their hatred in self-righteousness and in a cloak of revolutionary violence in the name of some pseudo-altruistic Utopian goal – which does sound oddly familiar...Islamic fundamentalism...

Obama's Speech: There's no room for 'Change'

2009-01-20T22:07:00.003Z

"I feel Obama's speech has actually provided the smelling salts to his own intoxicating dream that has duped and stultified the nation for nearly a year."

I was surprised by Obama's speech today, simply because it was as if it wasn't his. Gone were the whimsical and idealistic rhetoric of change and hope. Try 'find' on Word and they'll appear fleetingly twice. In past speeches you would run out of note paper tallying down the times he mentioned 'change.'

In a 'radical' departure, he used the term 'change' somewhat 'conservatively' which I guess will sum up his presidential era.
For all his liberal or progressive heart, it will give way to his more pragmatic mind. The economy is in freefall, fighting in two dusty theatres of war and an arab-Israeli conflict ready to explode – he isn't going to actually change that much.

What I did however, pick up on from the speech, was that the West's problem is more psychological than people make out, forget economics for the moment, the Western world is mentally having doubts, and Obama on the face of it looks like the man who can restore that confidence.

However, going back to the speech, I felt the tone was dark and authoritative, and to sum extent grave in nature. The start of the speech threw me, as there were no heady and lofty notes of hope and of a new dawn, more a wake up call.

I think he has the power to tell American's what they don't want to hear, which wouldn't have come from a Bush presidency. This is best exemplified by this passage:

“Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.”

His attacks in the Bush administration were laser guided and clinically executed and were not cheap shots like David Cameron does with Gordon Brown:

“On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

If DC could get within a mile of this kind of utterance then we'd be looking at a new PM by now.

What I did like was the lack of race as an overarching issue for Obama, yes there's no denying the socio-political significance, but his race should really have nothing to do with it – so I'm glad he dealt with it in a warm and light-heart manner – no glaring references to Martin Luther King were welcome.

Unlike the BBC's coverage which was borderline sycophantic over the blackness of his skin – more to come on that issue!

Forget the question is Obama post-racial, as that answer clearly is no, but what I want to add is: Is Obama post-ideological? I feel this is in part true and will be a theme running though his presidency. Two examples point the way:

“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works...

“Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.”

These comments have put to bed the left-right divide for years to come and put an outward lenses on things – I feel the 21st century struggle will be globalism not ideology of the past – Obama to his credit has the vision to see that.

The next part of the speech I was dumbfounded to hear him spill was this:

“Honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths.”

These surely are the words of a conservative?! When he said them, I really felt they jarred the speech. 'A return to these truths' aren't the progressive revolutionary words of a man people uphold as a nation changer.

All in all I felt Obama's speech has actually provided the smelling salts to his own intoxicating dream that has duped and stultified the nation for nearly a year.

I do actually agree with Will Smith, who the BBC habitually had on repeat in some quasi-homage to racial America, in that Obama is the embodiment of an idea that no man can take away from him.

Obama - the man, may fail after 4 years in office by changing little, but Obama – the idea, i.e. the notion that the US can turn on a six-pence and volte-face to energise its flagging stature, then no one can really argue with the potency of that man – Barak Hussein Obama II.

Brown stands over a VAT of waste...oh borrow borrow toil and trouble!

2008-12-12T18:45:00.007Z

The Ghost of Reagan should haunt the hallway of Number 10 and the corridors of Parliament in a parody of the Scrooges' visitation in the hope Gordon is to be shocked out of his fatally damaging head strong charge of borrowing his way out of a recession.

I therefore strongly advocate a return to Reaganomics and a tight embrace of the Luffer Curve. Without going into a huge theoretical explanation I will briefly touch upon a general understanding of such terms. Reaganomincs was the notion that you could actually raise the tax revenue by cutting taxes. This appears at first glance paradoxical.

What doesn't however, is Luffer's Curve that posits that there is a certain point at which the incentive to work is destroyed as a result of too high a tax policy. The result of this mentality means people stop working as hard, produce less, innovate less, have less income to spend on goods and services and generally become miserable.

So by cutting tax, the incentive to earn more when people climb the pay ladder remains high; thus more taxes means a great disincentive to work more. Also if people feel taxes are fair they are less likely of finding ways of avoiding it, thus more inclined to pay it.

However, the biggest positive that Reaganomics has to offer is that it stimulates economics growth. For instance, if individuals are allowed to keep more of their cash then they are more likely to spend it on goods and products, which will increase the economic livelihood of other people who produce these goods that will in-turn buy a different set of goods.

People wanting more goods, thanks to more money in their pocket, will results in businesses needing to hire more people to cope with demand. This demand may even lead to desiring after more goods to accompany their purchases. For example, a TV will require a DVD recorder, Sky TV, a games console etc.

Staying with Businesses, a cut in corporation tax would make generating even greater wealth more appealing. To do this you would need to design new products (as the demand for new goods is now there), thus requiring more innovative workers, or constructing more offices, therefore keeping the construction/plumbing/electrical etc. business alive.

In short – this is a prosperous circle and will help the British economy and her people get back on their feet again.

Therefore, how does cutting VAT do anything? This doesn't put money in people's pocket as Gordon Brown exclaims. People still have the same amount of money, i.e. not that much of it because we are too highly taxed. Morally, people need to see their bank balance at a higher figure each month to start spending, not be lured in by a price drop on the selves, when they can ill-afford to spend.

What needs to happen first is an Income Tax cut of biblical proportions. This does, literally, put more money back into peoples' pockets, this physical manifestation of cash in hand will make people mentally feel like they have money to spend and thus more likely to do so.

Secondly, by also cutting National Insurance – a tax on work in all but name, businesses can keep on workers or even expand their enterprise. This will keep tax revenue up to its current levels, despite my advocation of tax cuts.

With more people in work than before or by maintaining current workers who do pay tax in a job and off the dole, the actual amount of money generated will be higher, as more people are paying tax, rather than living on benefits, slurping up the Government's money on layabouts.

The public may even receive a culture shift and start to save more in these times. Thus thirdly, higher interest rates might also increase people to save and therefore put money back into banks, giving these banks greater funds to act as a stimulus and trade with one another again.

The confidence will be re-established via this culture of saving.

Instead of the Government giving banks money that they don't have, which will make us all in even more debt and weakening our purchasing power via the fall in sterling... (owing to our higher tariff to imported goods that we all enjoy.)

...We should therefore give more freely to banks our the extra money that has been granted to us by lower taxes, rather of always asking banks for loan after loan after loan.

Banks can then get back to the business of competing with one another by offering more seductive savers rates, thus accumulating wealth that they can then give to small and big business alike in the form of cheaper business loans to expand their enterprise, via hiring new workers or building new empires.

In light of this, how can Brown ask the banks to tighten their belts and not be reckless, in essence not lend to people who are unable to pay them back, then in the same near instance hold a gun to bankers heads and ask them to start lending again in a wanton fashion, which is exactly what got everyone into this mess.

Why should tax-payers lend their money to a government that can't tighten its own purse strings and has been exposed as a nation who isn't trusted by any other power to make good on their loans?

An individual wouldn't lend to someone who has a history of non-repayments or who is spend-thrift with their surplus, or for that matter their gold reserves at a wrong time. Individuals shouldn't do it so neither should Governments, especially one that has such a poor command of economic prudence.

If only Cameron had the gumption to say these things. We need a change of direction fast, if we are to avoid what the German Finance minster called 'Lemmings falling off a cliff mentality' duping ourselves into thinking Brown's fiscal stimulus is the right course to weather the economic tsunami.

Two Irish referendums don't make a EU right.

2008-12-12T18:33:00.003Z

Ah! The ultimate tool of direct democracy – the referendum. Is the EU altruistically trying to set up a Greco-style polis so that member states can enjoy the fruits of direct and bottom up decision making? The blunt answer – NON!

We have reached a sad state of affairs when after fighting a War against two authoritarian regime in Europe, we resort to using what we fought in defense of (democracy) as a means to force people to think again.

When something is blatantly a wrong, the EU forces its member states, through legal bafflement and obfuscation, to except it or if that fails, dupe their inhabitants into saying its a positive thing and thus we do not require a direct democratic vote.

However, only when the decision goes against the EU, do these technocrats pray to a false idol posing as the Goddess of Liberty, asking to be showered with referendums and free-choice.

It's like Hitler having elections in Nazi Germany, when voters would walk into a booth knowing if they didn't put the right cross in the box then, they'd be asked to vote again; more often than not compelled by the butt of a rifle.

Can this supra-state really hold its supposed people in such contempt like this? Britons must be baffled by Ireland receiving not just one, but two referendums – a triumph of democracy you cry? I find it impossible to trust an entity that only allows voting when thing don't go their way.

Democracy shouldn't be used as a final device that acts in a subservient manner to the Cause, whatever that may be. It is like the EU talks to us like children : We allow you democracy when you get it wrong, so you can learn from your mistake and get it right the next time.

Coupled with the imperial posturing of Sarkozy, chasing after the ghost of token Bonaparte-ism, is certainly a distinct concern. His inability to sit politically still for more than 3 minutes in European affairs, bossing nations around like an EU President-elect, should send shock waves running with the democratic world, who elected him – France and who else?

When the people have spoken, their voice shouldn't fall on deaf Euro-ears. Yes, Europe is a rapidly aging population, but there's no need to ask it's children to speak up and answer again. Perhaps the EU suffers from another age-related ailment – memory loss, although no will always mean no.

A National Government in times of crisis, Gordon?

2008-11-28T21:40:00.002Z

If Gordon Brown keeps referring to this Financial Crisis as a global one that needs the efforts of every nation to come a universal solution. This blog feels that Gordon wants to be the Churchill of out times – a national leader in times of crisis.

But he would be good to remember that although Churchill was a Tory, he presided and ruled in a national government – a collection of all parties striving for the greater good.

Perhaps if Gordon could stop being so drugged up on his Socialist obsession with Power and ultimate rule, the idea of a national government to free us form this crisis isn't a bad idea.

Vince Cable and George Osborne would make fine additions to an economic cabinet to deal with this enemy. Though the controlling Gordon wouldn't dream of this power-share knowing that Churchill lost the election after the war. So much for non-partisan politics.

Time is up on the Brown Solution

2008-11-28T21:38:00.005Z

Gordon Brown's constant mention that the whole world is in his hands is an outright lie. Take the evidence of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, speaking earlier this week.

She feels that Brown's remedy of throwing cheap money at the economy to boost it, which I might add is borrowed money, is exactly the same act as what got us here in the first place – a debt ridden society.

Ms. Merkel states: "I am deeply concerned about whether we are now reinforcing this trend through measures being adopted in the US and elsewhere and whether we could find ourselves in five years facing the exact same crisis."

The difference in her rhetoric can be traced back to the way Germany built a large surplus in times of plenty, something that slipped Gordon's mind as he was to busy fantasising over the end of 'boom and busts.' Hence we now have Gordon lunging around calling for a fiscal stimulus.

She believes that this course of action is nothing more than short term solutions of stimulating the economy rather than overhauling huge global problems in the way we borrow and save. Her chief economic advisor echoes her sentiments:

“How good is a policy package if it has to be changed every other week? How good is it for confidence? The latest British decisions on VAT and income tax, for instance, are inconsistent. Better to wait a bit longer and put forward more durable solutions,"

These type of aggressive utterances should be what Cameron and Osborne should be mounting as a direct attack on Gordon. They must shatter the lie that all other nations are following his economic ways and furthermore, that these nations ever followed him in the first place by allowing one's nation to borrow disproportionately against its surplus.

Cameron needs to pick up this sceptre laid down by Chancellor Merkel, that conveyed the doubts people had over using fiscal brute force to reverse the current economic cycle. Merkel adds: “Our goal is not to try and overcome the crisis, but to build a bridge so that we at least can start recovering in 2010.”

So the 'do nothing' rhetoric Brown is trying to pin on Cameron could actually be embraced by the Tories, by using Merkel's political significance, as a reason to work for a long term solution to the current economic woes, not supermarket give-away sales in the form of tax-holidays that will no doubt have to be paid for later down the line.

Labour has a moral claim to answer for with its duplicity in the Financial Crisis.

2008-11-28T21:24:00.008Z

Many commentators have branded the pre-budget report the death knell of the New Labour Project, but this blog takes a different view believing that Britain itself, including its Government, has gone absent without leave.

The economic dimension for the current crisis is starkly obvious, but the moral rudiments are scarcely muttered. We have a Government that bought up cheap credit and thus went on a credit binge, this was echoed by the banking sector that gave everyone under the sun access to credit.

My argument is this pseudo-morality claim to end boom and bust encouraged normal citizens to follow suit to borrow and subsequently get into copious amounts of debt.

The moral compass, to use a Brownite phrase, was placed next to a magnet and from henceforth became utterly distorted in a positive social direction. People, including Labour, felt it had a moral right to spend money on things, to fitter money away and it was a sign of a bad citizen if one was a poor consumer in essence a saver.

This all came crashing down hence our current predicament, however it is the supposed 'solution' that Labour are putting forward that has me lost for words. How can anyone justify spending their way out of recession, both in Government and in public consumption habits?

Surely our culture of debt has gotten us into this hole in the first place? People are in debt, coupled with house prices plummeting and food and energy prices climbing, the public are on no position mentally or physically to start spending.

The same goes for Labour, if they have no money, because they didn't save in times of plenty, borrowing more will surely just rack up a larger debt we can't pay off.

The blame-game on the banks is equally a futile endeavour, people have slagged them off because they lent to people who couldn't pay them back, now in a complete volte face the banks are not lending to anyone, included themselves, to which people are demanding their heads.

Banks have been polarised by fear, from lending recklessly to recklessly not lending at all.

In addition, Labour are treating its supposed voters the working class with total contempt with its policy on VAT. Labour have spoken about getting people to open there wallets and who better to do that than the working classes! It was this solution to boost economic growth that has led to this current crisis.

To get poorer people in society to purchase goods they don't need, especially now they are in debt, caused by this deranged morality to borrow, is an outrage to helping poorer people everywhere. For Labour to think, 'they' (the working class) don't have the faculties to save and not to spend recklessly is abominable. What good is a cut in VAT to stimulate growth if you have no job in which is earn a wage?

This is why the Conservatives have to weave a thread that unites, firstly their successful campaign to pin Britain's 'broken society' narrative onto Labour's time in government, with the economic crisis.

In essence, Britain has become financially corrupt because of her moral debasement in the art of prudence and thrift, caused by Gordon Brown's 11 year legacy borrowing and not saving, which should be written on his tombstone.

If Cameron can successfully make this socio-economic argument for Britain's broken society
clear in people's minds then he has a huge opportunity to hang Labour with it. In short, the attack should read:

'Brown isn't at all economically strong, because he has morally weakened our societal sense of proper economic conduct thus we have entered into a broken society' – to which the Conservatives exist to only fix what is truly broken, this is Cameron's calling I hope to God he answers it.

The BBC is now 'hideously black'

2008-11-07T18:00:00.006Z

The BBC's post coverage of the US elections was totally unprofessional and utterly biased. I watched the news every hour only to be greeted by Huw Edwards exclaiming that Barak Obama is the 1st black President of the United States.

The amount of times the word black was mentioned was astonishing; perhaps it makes up for all the times they have barred its presenters from using the term when discussing a murder case or violent crime, in case they 'appeared' racist for even mentioning a vague description of the criminal.

It was as if all other terminology went out the window - he was 'black' and nothing else mattered! What astounds me is that the once labelled 'hideously white' institution was bending over backwards to accommodate this notion ahead of all other attributes. Obama has spent this whole campaign not even mentioning race, yet the BBC is still stumbling around in the murky rhetoric that white and black alike wanted to avoid.

The BBC made little reference to the fact that that he is in fact mixed-race and that it would have been more appropriate to run with a narrative that spoke of Obama's mixed cultural and biological make-up transforming race relations. This unique and modern synergy being the ties that could bind America into a post-racial nation. His story spans 3 continents - Africa, Asia and of course the US (Hawaii and the continental US) His story is a migrant story, it is an American story.

Obama's aim has been to transcend the black-white divide, as he may never feel comfortable as one or the other. For example, not fitting in during his stay in Indonesia as he looked too 'dark skinned,' flip that over to his stay in Chicago where the black population viewed him with suspicion as too 'white' in nature, too intellectual and too foreign to understand their plight. In his books he has made it clear he decided to anchor himself to America after years of living a nomadic life.

None of this made in into the BBC's version of events, preferring to highlight skin deep actualities over the man's substance. It flies in the face of Martin Luther King's icon statement:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. "

If only the BBC has the gumption to not tip-toe around racial issues, to not opt for tokenism as they usually default to, but to appoint BBC staffers by the content of their character.

I hope all sides see Obama not as Black, but as empty, devoid of any real change and above all a dawn of false hope

2008-10-31T19:42:00.011Z

In T minus five days we will be looking at the end of History...oops sorry didn't we hear that back in 1989 from neo-liberals who deceived us into thinking the Fall of the Berlin Wall had led to a triumphant win for the West?

Well were are back again standing on the precipice of History, teetering on the brink of an acclaimed post-racial society, where race ceases to be an issue.

We couldn't be more deluded.

In effect Obama's run for the White House has made many Liberal Americans colour 'blind,' not in the sense that people don't notice his colour, but in fact the exact opposite has happened. This social story has turned people blind to the pitfalls of Obama being President, simply because of what it means 'Historically' for a black man to enter the highest office.

Obama has done well not to mention race explicitly himself, as previous incantations of the Black American Dream. But for all his silence on race, this mute issue has somehow fueled the passions of many Americans who wish to see the stain of slavery expunged from their consciousness, by any means necessary.

A cult of Celebrity has followed Obama around since his elevation to the higher echelons of the Democrat Party. His parade appears dripped in rhetoric with nothing of substance and this election has turned more into a grass roots social movement than a political race.

What are we voting for exactly? Change? Has Obama would have you believe? Or is it a continuation of the civil rights movement from the 60's? This Liberal blindness to get a black man in the Oval office will prove to be their downfall, as Hillary was the better pick and the wisest head in her Party. Her defeat a few months ago, shows how far certain ideologues are willing to go – What Obama signifies, appears far more important than what he can do.

Obama, for all intents and purposes, is the Liberal white man's choice, he is highly educated in a liberal establishment, has worked previously as a lecturer in Law and has conducted himself in a manner that is intellectual, Western, and most importantly white in nature.

Other outspoken civil rights leaders were heavily engaged in racial tension and often inflated their blackness to demonstrate this was the only entity they could be, hence why many white Americans were put off and rightly scared by these racist by-products of a different age.

Counter to this, Obama isn't aggressive, full of pent up frustration or walking around with a chip on his shoulder; the only thing Obama has which is remotely black is his skin, something that people should never judge a man on. He is electable because he isn't culturally black. And for some Afro-Americans he isn't even black enough.

The problem I have is that the people who often shout 'Racist' when a person talks about Obama's race, are often the ones who believe McCain is too old to be President. Racism and Ageism are surely two sides of the same coin – prejudice. So for one group to denounce one and use the other speaks of hypocrisy of the highest order.

We live in an age where the thirst for the fountain of youth quenches our desire to read from the tree of knowledge. We now value naïve and youthful promises over age-learned experience. For example the Queen, she has presided over countless Prime Ministers, not to mention numerous acts of History, she has far more knowledge of the World's situation and her dutiful demeanour throughout is something we should stand in awe of.

Obama merely offers petty sentiment and a lack of Historical judgement, just like our youth of today who have no grasp of History due to the ideological push of the Left to re-write History as they see fit. McCain offers us a time line of events not a one off epochal triumph, unlike our accelerated generation whose only pleasure is instantaneous gratification, not delayed enjoyment.

The danger is people are simply not listening to what Obama is saying, they have been swept away in the moment of this cult of Obama, his words don't actually matter just the fact he is talking is good enough for them.

If someone in that audience, who hold the placards of 'Change,' could quantify what this 'Change' actually amounts to I'd be surprised. This 'Change' is superficial and vacuous, yes people are fed-up of the Bush years, but I can't envisaged a fundamental shift in the way the American psyche is configured. It has been set in stone since America's inception and is unlikely to have cortex-tual shift in thinking with Obama at the helm.

Obama isn't non-partisan nor for that matter is he pragmatic, meanwhile McCain eschews going across the aisle to get things done. His long stint in DC has granted and enabled him to be a Statesman that the US needs in a time of conflict. His military record outlines his dedication to the Stars and Stripes.

His age should be seen as a great asset, as it speaks of years of experience and wise decision making, up against the enemy who is full of youthful exuberance and idealist fervour that will come tumbling down in the political arena, which is all about diplomacy, concession, and pragmatism.

All Obama amounts to is, two years as a senator plus two more years that saw him followed by millions in myopic idolatrous throws. These anthropolatry passions destroy all sense of reason from this election.

To be blinded by History is the saddest fate of all. I hope all sides see Obama not as Black, but as empty, devoid of any real change and above all a dawn of false hope.

2008-10-28T22:54:00.003Z

During my daily, always delayed, Metropolitan line commute to and from Parliament my eye keeps wondering and catches the new Maestro Tube ad, which states: 'Cash has Retired.'

My problem is that my own Maestro card is as compatible as £2 coins are with the UK's vending machines. Prime example: The parking at my local car park accepts every other card for the ridiculous £4 charge except my bloody Maestro!

So I am left to contemplate life with heavily weighed down pockets and the burden, not of 'retirement age' cash, but of my work-shy Maestro card. *sigh*

5-year old sex education is a thought crime

2008-10-25T01:23:00.002+01:00

Labour's latest bright idea to curb the excesses of teenage nihilism is to court them young into the arms of the nanny state, with institutional sex education lessons for 5-year olds. Couple this with a move to have a 2-year old national curriculum for toddlers really is sending a message for indoctrination from cradle to grave.

The problem with Labour's motives is that after a decade or so of a full liberalising of our media content, both TV and Internet, the ability for children to educate themselves in sexual matters has been sadly all around us, so why bother?

The stumbling block about teaching sex education is that it is not like biology or any other subject that uses logic or knowledge, but rather emotions and feelings, something that a national curriculum is devoid of.

I have no problem with a year 7 entering secondary school receiving sex education, which is when the body starts to undergo changes to go along with the social upheaval every child faces at the 'big' school. Children under 11 have a limited concept, often labeled as innocence, of sexual matters; just that when a man and a woman love each other certain things can happen.

The problem of teenage pregnancies and STIs will not be cured by bombarding little youngsters with basic 'emotional' and biological terminologies that the Government wish to see taught from 5 years. I feel it is all this pervasive sexual 'education' in our society from all areas that has lead to absentee fathers, single mothers, teenage pregnancies and growing sexual exploits.

Labour is offering the easy way out for parents to abdicate all their responsibility as parents and allow the State to pick up the pieces, via welfare provision and teachers having to act as parents during lesson hours.

Parents should take back control and educate their children with traditional moral diktats and social mores, as taking away knowledge-control from parents and handing it to children is a bastardised form of democracy. It gives the adolescent unadulterated power to make choices which they are too young to decide.

It should also be noted that murmurs of allowing children of 16 the vote is yet another example of giving children too many rights, without them being able to master the responsibilities of the rights they were previously given.

A recent Closer magazine article shows a 12-year old girl who has had sex with numerous partners, smokes 15 cigarettes a day and has the occasional joint; all with her mother's approval. What is worrying is how smug the mother is, claiming it is the soft teachers that has been the cause of all this.

This woman is devoid of any parental responsibility, preferring to cede power back to the State, so she can live her life without having the burden of raising her own child.
A true parent doesn't leave their responsibilities of child-rearing to teachers when at school, but they actually keep their child's well-being central to them when dropping them off at school, as they go to work and bring home a wage to secure their family's financial security. Surely working for your family either at home or at work is society's benefit as well as your family's personal success.

When you decide to have children you shouldn't do things for your own selfish gain, but help others and educate your children to help society, not to live a privatized closed off existence. However, this doesn't give the Government the right to nationalise our families at a time when they have nationalised our banks.

What has happened is parents have given up and allowed their children to turn to physical acts of deprecation, be it sexual misdemeanors, knife and gun crime, casual drug abuse, the list goes on. This out and out belief in nothingness, a total lack of hope, has lead to a generation so afloat, without social anchorage, that social brakes need to be applied to this accelerated culture or face a train wreck.

What needs to be done is for parents to wake up to the gravity of the situation at hand, the need for parents to set up new schools that our free from State meddling; a social education given by all families to all children that is centred on traditional family values; the return of national service; the push for more vocational apprenticeships, by allowing businesses into schools so to demonstrate what they require of the future workforce.

And finally the moral imperative that sexual relationships should be enacted during adulthood that centre around stable loving relationships, not an empty meaningless act of rebellion from a bored and unmotivated child-culture.

Brown topples Masters of the Universe and tries to create the 5th International

2008-10-17T16:18:00.003+01:00

The world is dubbing Gordon Brown the 'Economic Saviour', as his strategy for bail-out turned to buy-out has been copied by almost every Western power. The mass media knee-jerk reaction to this was to send out plaudits and acclaim to dour old Gord, but I couldn't help think wider problems are afoot.

I couldn't help be reminded of a specific part of Marx's assertion of historical teleos, whereby Marx sees Capitalism as a necessary evil on the road to the end of History i.e. Total communism. As the story goes, Capitalism is needed as a necessary marker, or turning point in History, just like Feudalism shifted to Capitalism, so too will Capitalism morph into Communism.

Marx believed Capitalism would destroy itself from within, which with the current Credit-Crisis fiasco burned in the minds of most, the Left have been ideologically resuscitated, after years of paralysis courtesy of Maggie's iron handbag dealing a supposed knock-out blow for Socialism.

What Marx wanted to achieve was an International Labour movement to overthrow Capitalism's monopoly on the mode of production, with the composition of the forces and means of production significantly altered. The international movements failed spectacularly on numerous occasions because world Capitalism wasn't truly global, and perhaps still isn't even global yet.

The current elixir archaic Socialists are sipping on is, that with Capitalism's financial reach widening it has entered a form of overstretch; when Capitalism turns to Globalisation the hope is Socialists will have the ripe conditions to form a successful International Labour movement doing away with nation states to forge a new international order.

So it comes as little surprise that the Old Labour Party behmouth has clunked back into action. Gordon has ditched New Labour rhetoric and plunged deep into the BIG Government playbook to scare the public into the arms of the State: a Comforter that gives with one hand and takes away with the other.

The omission that frightens anyone who is on the Right or Libertarian in outlook is this...

“We need globally accepted and supervised standards of regulation applied equally in all countries. We need stronger arrangements for cross-border supervision of global firms…We now have global financial markets, global corporations, global financial flows. But what we do not have is anything other than national and regional regulation and supervision. We need a global way of supervising our financial system.”

Brown's monstrous New World Order of global regulation through his omniscient leadership resembles the all powerful all controlling, Inner Party of Orwell, pulling all the strings while mere mortals stand around and watch the carnage, stupefied by spin and double-speak.

Marx believed it was all about Power and Brown fully agrees. What worries, is that instead of the workers of the world uniting in an international coalition as Marx envisaged, it is rather a minute number of powerful men manipulating world affairs acting as World Controllers, much like the bureaucratic EU as unelected 'super-officials.'

It appears we have Gorden Brown returning to the poisonous Socialist roots of his youth trying to forge a 5th International, while less myopic men remember the horrors of real-life Socialism, which instead of breeding the theoretical belief of egalitarianism, merely hyper-centralises Power into the hands of the few and shackles mankind into the chains of economic and social bondage witnessed in USSR and China.

Brown's speaks to save not just his skin, but his Party

2008-09-23T16:37:00.002+01:00

A nifty blow struck with a duel-edged sword from Gordon when he mentioned he's all for apprenticeships, but not up for a novice ruling the country, said in relation firstly to George Osborne supposed lack of experience in the economy, then secondly attacking David Miliband for any presumptive challenge to his tenure as PM.

I liked his speech centring around Fairness, which is a sharp distinction from each of the Obama and McCain platforms of the whimsical word of Change. People can more easily identify quickly with fairness than they can with change.

However, the problems may start coming thick and fast when the actual figures of funding such bold pledges such as free cancer drugs; free subscriptions for long term illnesses; free child care extended to two-year olds; and a free health assessment for everyone over 40. With borrowing set to double this year from £38billion to some speculating an almost £100 Billion sum, our country's debt deficit will plunge us onto bankruptcy.

The old-age solutions are either you raise more taxes, which are already too high and won't kick start the economy, or you cut public spending in a big way. Coupled with this is the problem of Britain's aging population overtaking births. With the demographic in the dependency ratio of workers-to non workers becoming a heavy burden it will most likely lead to a huge hike in taxes to pay for all the above.

Another problem is ideological on the ground of institutional care given to two-year olds, when from a conservative stand-point the family, private or religious groups should be provided better play, educational and social provisions.

One aspect I did find worrying but extremely valid, is the mention that laissez-faire and unregulated markets have been severely challenged after last week's global turbulence. Brown's position was certainly that of the centre ground, as he stated on a few occasions that he and his Labour party to be pro-market, although the poignant exclamation is that we may be witnessing a shift in how economy ideological foundations are run.

This will cause the Tory party, Mr. Cameron in particular, to look at what legacy Maggie Thatcher left on the party and re-think the arguments on all-out neo-liberal policies, but all the while clinging to the pillar that a free market makes a freer society, much like Gordon has tried to do today. All in all a rather impressive speech in rhetoric, but future policy may be diluted due to financial predicaments and our precarious state of borrowing – 8/10.

Tory Tandem: David and George Show

2008-09-23T00:52:00.003+01:00

It was an intriguing week for Tory HQ with their magazine exposures of the two Conservative front men. While Cameron secured a rather glorifying exploration of his historic rise by Time magazine in a Statesman-esque mould.

We saw George Osborne going a little lower by making front cover of the Daily Mail's Sunday Live dressed like 007 under the headline The Osborne Supremacy. What I wanted to comment on was how down-to-earth Osborne appeared to be, something which Cameron tries, but fails spectacularly.

Having personally heard Cameron speak at a few events, I can strongly say he is an unparalleled orator and supremely comfortable on stage; however when in the crowd he mutates into a different man. In the Time exclusive, his biographer calls him glassy and cold and thats is exactly how I considered him to be.

Cameron appeared to look through me and unable to connect, not just on the question at hand, but more worrying with the person delivering it. His pitch is polished, another adjective his biographer enlightens us with, this Time article is one such example, but when dealing with the unscripted, the un-choreographed and the role of chance playing its hand, Cameron seizes up and becomes uneasy.

Compare this with Osborne's warm and light-hearted interview, allowing the glassy demeanor of Cameron to fall flat. Commenting on one of his part-time Selfridge's jobs George's quips “I'm a very good towel-folder now.”

Couple this with his NHS job where he entered into a computer a list of all the people who had died that week, an account of this morbid job is told with such a subtle humour it makes the reader smirk.

As a commentator, I've wanted to see less of Cameron's presidential stage play and more of the other shadow cabinet cameos, notably George Osborne, not just on policy, but also the man. I hope to see Mr. Osborne continue to step out of Cameron's glassy shadow.

Matthew Parris's attack on Christian Values

2008-09-19T01:59:00.006+01:00

I begin my blogging life against the alarming rhetoric of Times' Matthew Parris with his clamour for Socialism to drop Christianity's help of your fellow man: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article4743772.ece.

Upon reading his harrowing argument I couldn't help feeling he was purporting the dark and dank dystoptic vision of 1984. Parris states “Marx is about Power,” this worryingly echoes Big Brother: “We are interested solely in power, only power, pure power...the power over human beings-p275.”

Furthermore, Parris talks about 'muscular govt.' in a dangerous allusion to a boot stamping on the face of humanity. Twin this with his poisonous ideas like spurning 'nursing the weak' and not 'hearkening to disability' reads like like a pamphlet on eugenics where only the powerful should survive akin to Hitler's or Stalinist rhetoric on the superiority of the Volk or Collective.

A powerful arm of the State will not help people realise their true 'power' or strength, but a vast decentralisation and a shift to the local, where people have the 'power' to make free choices, not the State offering a final solution.

His view that “Socialism should never be divorced from...oiling the cogs and driving the pistons,” clearly shows Socialism is certainly not human – it treats Man like a cog in a machine or an animal to be herded.

“Socialism should see little value in personal freedom” is a frightening statement along with his dogma of the 'Power of the Collective.' For me, this collective doesn't have to just mean the State or anti the individual. The church 'collective' can heal the sick and cure the infirm in a more societal way than Socialism, for example it was Paul who said “If a man does not work he shall not eat.”

If all Marxism cares about is the economic superstructure then Christian values do much more re-educate Marx's beloved 'Proles' by being less work-shy, sober and a non-gambling entity.

What scares me most about Parris is his utterance that the Left must find a 'Class.' But whose class will they find? As always History WILL repeat itself, not in a Marxist teleos way, as it will not be the Proles, but the Inner Party or lib/left intelligentsia that tell people what to think like Stalin, Mao or the Guardian.

Parris's final battle cry for the Left to be “Unashamedly in taking command” reads like a revolutionary jibe that declares war on the fundamentals of democracy, as if Socialism had a 'divine' right to rule.

“What ever disunites Man from God, also disunites Man from Man.” E.B.