BOAT PEOPLE HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME.

Various political figures and organisations are getting their rather nanny-like knickers in a right old twist about people drowning in the Mediterranean. Recent events in which numerous boat passengers have perished while attempting to cross from North Africa to Italy have caused such a stir that demands for 'something to be done' are issuing from every quarter.

 

If I chose to walk across Dartmoor without a compass and in inadequate clothing, it would be no one's fault but my own if I got lost, fell down a hole and died; certainly, no one would start shouting that 'something must be done' in order to prevent such 'tragedies' in the future. However, when hordes of assorted asylum seekers make a similar choice by embarking in large numbers on barely serviceable boats, and end up sinking to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, the world gets all weepy.

 

It may well be that the people in question have endured difficult, even horrible, times but taking ship was their idea; the consequences are on their own heads. There can be no justification for the vast amount of hand-wringing that's going on and certainly no justification for governments and international organisations to be expected to provide hugely enhanced search and rescue services. If anything needs to be done, it's in the countries from which the escapees are fleeing, not by the ones to which they are travelling.

 

Oh what a crazy world we live in.

YELLEN APPOINTMENT MEANS MORE OF THE SAME.

While the appointment of Janet Yellen as head of the US Federal Reserve appears to be a foregone conclusion and stock markets have welcomed the news, the long term outcome for the real world may well be more pain.

 

Yellen comes from a coterie of 'born again Keynesians' who all believe that the answer to our recent woes is to borrow and spend still more. They are believers in state intervention in every aspect of our financial lives and believe that simply making the money revolve around the system ever-faster is the way to ever-greater prosperity. More recently, they've discovered a new wheeze which is the creation of large amounts of money for injection into the economy via the mechanism of 'Quantitative Easing'; what the ultimate effects of this will be are wholly unknown.

 

I don't claim to be an economist of any sort, and I know a lot less than the likes of Yellen and her Keynesian colleagues (2 of whom are Nobel Prize winners) but I still think they're wrong. When the major western economies, not least the USA, are labouring under vast mountains of debt, the way to salvation cannot be to borrow more. If I, as a private citizen, get into debt, I may try to borrow my way out of trouble but I'll eventually go bankrupt; so it is with countries. The current crisis over the existing 'Debt Ceiling' in the US tells us that there are many who are already very unhappy with the state of play and Yellen is unlikely to tighten any belts for a long time yet. It's even reported that her stance may be even more lax than that of her predecessor, Ben Bernanke.

 

There is one difference between a private bankruptcy and a state one; the state bankruptcy takes longer to arrive but is ultimately much worse. Keynesians of the world should all take note - when you're in a hole, stop digging.

USA INVADES LIBYA AND SOMALIA : WHERE IS THE UN ?

So here we go again. The peace loving Yanks have invaded more countries and claim that it's all perfectly legal.

 

Today, American forces have carried out two operations which involved landing troops in Libya and Somalia for the purposes of capturing supposed terrorist suspects. While I have no problem with catching terrorists, I have to wonder what right the Americans have to do it in foreign countries from which they've received no agreement to act.

 

The Libyan government has apparently asked for an explanation of the US action while there's been no published comment from Somalia as yet which, given the state of that country's government, is hardly surprising. Nonetheless, what US troops were doing in Somalia, uninvited, is a question that needs answering.

 

In Libya, the invaders captured a claimed Al Qaeda 'leader' whom they now say is 'lawfully detained outside of Libya'; whose law they are applying would be nice to know, though I doubt that anyone actually has the balls to ask. That this arrogant and overbearing action by the USA is wrong is self-evident but, given the current western paranoia about Islamic terrorists it's unlikely that anyone in the West will complain - it may be a bit different in more eastern parts.

 

The USA has set itself up as the self-appointed arbiter of what is right and wrong in the world. As such, it makes arbitrary decisions, entirely based on what is perceived to be good or bad for the USA, and acts on these; some will recall that it actually invaded the British territory of Grenada in the 1980s on some spurious grounds of defending itself. For no known reason, the rest of the world, as represented by the United Nations, simply stands by and accepts this utterly Imperialistic attitude and, apart from occasional comments from Russia, China and one or two others of rather inconsequential standing, does nothing.

 

The problems in the world today are many but the USA is one of them. It is a nation run by fanatics; they still believe in the law of the 'wild west' and many are fundamentalist Christians who are just as insane as the fundamentalist Muslims whom they despise; the only difference is that the US has much more powerful weapons and surveillance systems. Once the other lot catch up, all hell will be let loose, and that's why the Americans loonies don't want the Islamic loonies to have access to an atomic bomb.

 

Why doesn't the United Nations do anything about it ? Answer - because the UN is run  by the US and is nothing but a useless waste of money, time and space. We, the majority of the people of the world, are on our own.

MILIBAND v THE 'MAIL' : A LOVE - HATE RELATIONSHIP !

The spat between the Milibands and the 'Daily Mail' and 'Sunday Mail' newspapers really is a bit of a storm in a teacup as well as being a politically inspired piece of largely irrelevant bilge. The real issue is one of perceived right-wing newspapers being pilloried by wealthy, yet supposedly committed, socialists.

 

Journalists have frequently dug up dirt on public figures and splashed it across their front pages. When the subjects of such abuse have been figures from the right wing, little has been said; one needs only to recall the abuse heaped on Margaret Thatcher throughout her time as Prime Minister, during her retirement and even at the time of her death, to see this. The left wing of political thought was cruel and inhuman in much of its coverage of Thatcher's life, notwithstanding that she did more to save this country from disaster than any Labour politician ever has. As far as the socialist left is concerned, anyone espousing right wing views is fair game and can be abused in the most grotesque fashion.

 

When it comes to making comments about left wing figures, matters are somewhat different. The left flies into high dudgeon at any suggestion that their heroes may have had feet of clay. That Ralph Miliband was a Marxist is a simple fact, and that Marxists are the enemies of freedom and democracy follows from any minor consideration of the modern histories of the Soviet Union, China and numerous other totalitarian states. Whatever is claimed by his devotees, Karl Marx was no supporter of traditional British values or society. If Ralph Miliband was a supporter of Marx, then his support for British values and society must also be open to question.

 

The left scream that this is all wrong and that Adolphe Miliband, who later changed his name to the more politically acceptable Ralph, was a man who truly loved 'his country'; the fact that he was actually a Belgian, of Polish extraction, who only came to England in order to escape the NAZIs in 1940 is generally glossed over. Another piece of manipulation by the left is the claim that Miliband must have loved this country because he fought for it in World War 2; yes, he joined the Royal Navy but he served in what was then a 'Belgian section', raising possible questions about which country he actually believed he was fighting for. Additionally, for a committed communist to be fighting against the NAZIs was hardly something unusual or deserving of particular praise in either case.

 

In later years, Miliband maintained a steadfast Marxist approach to politics, finding the Labour Party of Harold Wilson far too moderate; he supported a revolutionary socialist philosophy which he maintained to the end of his life and which was surely something unfriendly to traditional British ways. Along the way, he followed the traditional approach of high-profile left wingers by becoming rather wealthy.

 

The 'Daily Mail' has written that Ralph Miliband did not love Britain and this has caused an uproar from the left and from Ed Miliband in particular. Does anyone really care and does it matter in any context other than a purely political one ? I think not. 'Miliband Minor' is simply using this as a tool in his campaign to become our next Prime Minister and the sooner the manufactured row is consigned to the dustbin of history, the better.

ED MILIBAND : "LET'S ALL GO BACK TO THE '70s !"

Ed Miliband appears determined to turn the clock back and to make the country relive the disasters of the past.

 

Immediately after the Second World War, the Labour government of Clement Attlee introduced a range of measures, some of which laid the foundations for the mess in which we find ourselves today. Nationalisation of a variety of industries led to the eventual destruction of some and to the weak markets which exist today in energy supply and rail transport. The great institution that was the NHS was poorly understood; naively, it was believed that costs would fall as the health of the nation improved, and there was no understanding of the increased demand that would arise from an increasingly aging population, or from medical advances. Far from costs falling over the years, they have risen almost exponentially, and another great socialist ideal has proved to be unsustainable in the long term.

 

In the 1960s and 1970s, the governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan took us further down the road of industrial collapse and public sector profligacy and inefficiency. We had state control of prices and incomes, vast government borrowing and regular strikes by workers of all types. The vast swathe of nationalised industries was in a state of constant agitation and their outputs were shambolic in every respect. Inflation was rampant, interest rates high and everyone ended the 1970s much poorer than they'd been a few years earlier. 

 

By 1979, the country was in a state of turmoil with rubbish piled high on the streets and industries such as car making, ship building and aircraft manufacture in terminal decline. It took the strong will of the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, plus a certain amount of luck, to turn things around and recreate a strong economy. When Labour came back into power under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in 1997, the economy was growing strongly and the 'public finances' were in robust good health.

 

Blair and Brown then set about destroying things. With typical left wing abandon, they threw money around and showered it on anyone they considered to be 'poor', at the cost of major industry and those they considered to be 'rich'. They introduced measures such as a 'minimum wage' which is, itself, a ludicrous concept; it does not make anyone better off, it actually makes more people worse off. They invented the shockingly expensive and counter-productive system of 'tax credits' with which we are now saddled, a system which actively encourages people not to work, or to work only limited hours.

Nonetheless, their followers simply saw extra money in their pay packets or benefit cheques, and thought it was wonderful. They tinkered with the education system and ruined it; they poured billions of pounds into the NHS, money which appears to have disappeared without trace, and they played around with the railways to such extent that they, too, are now a mess. They also interfered in many other areas, introducing state controls which have proved anything but beneficial. While doing all of this in the name of 'the people' and 'the poor', Blair became a multi-millionaire, demonstrating beyond any doubt that his overriding interest was in enriching himself rather than in improving the lot of the people he purported to represent.

 

In 2010, the people finally decided that they'd had enough of the Labour government, helped in this decision by the appalling events of the banking crisis and credit crunch. Labour, of course, claimed that this was all the fault of the banks though there is no doubt that much of what affected the UK was a consequence of government action over the preceding 13 years. Since 2010, the coalition government of Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties has striven to bring some sanity back into our lives and the signs are that they may now be beginning to succeed. Inevitably, Labour doesn't agree.

 

Instead of welcoming the signs of improvement in our economy, Miliband seems to be hell-bent on taking us back to the grim old days of state intervention in everything. He proposes to introduce a mandatory 'living wage' in place of the 'minimum wage' something which would increase costs for all companies and, therefore, prices; he wants to introduce state controls over the prices of gas and electricity, further remove children from their parents by bringing about even more state-sponsored childcare. He wants to restore the inequality that existed between private and public sector tenants. In short, he wants to go back to the disastrous days of the 1970s, when Britain suffered the ignominy of being shored up by the International Monetary Fund.

 

The epithet of 'Red Ed' to described Miliband is well deserved. A vote for him and his party in 2015 will be a vote for a return to old-style socialist state control and the associated mess that always develops from such government. Don't be conned, don't do it.

ISLAMIC INSANITY MUST BE TACKLED.

The appalling events in Nairobi show just how irreligious are the Muslim fanatics who now infest our world.

 

Islam does not condone murder and mayhem any more than does Christianity, but these lunatics are so un-Islamic that they should be roundly condemned by every Muslim everywhere in the same way that unholy Christian ministers have been condemned by their colleagues, flocks and media. It is time that the world took real action against these madmen.

 

In this country, we have tolerated an ever increasing degree of sectarianism in our society and we now have well established 'Muslim quarters' in many of our biggest towns and cities. The extreme elements in these communities continually press for more and more 'rights', attempting to gain more and more freedom to exercise Islamic controls over their populations; we see this in the wearing of supposedly cultural clothing, the occurrence of 'honour killings', the building of an ever-increasing number of mosques and Islamic schools and so on. How long will it be before we are confronted with demands for arranged marriages and polygamy to be legalised ? The people who are demanding these things hate us, the white British, and will eventually overwhelm us unless we take urgent action to bring some sanity back to our nation. 

 

The only part of his prophecy that Enoch Powell got wrong was the timing.

MILIBAND : AN EMPTY MAN IN AN EMPTY SUIT.

Listening to Ed Miliband on television this morning laves one wondering how anyone could possibly vote for this man. To borrow from Winston Churchill "An empty programme came on and Ed Miliband was it's star"

 

While insisting on his rather silly re-branding of the old "New Labour" to his bright and sparkly "One Nation Labour", Miliband failed to answer any of Andrew Marr's questions though Marr, as a bit of a BBC leftie himself, also failed miserably to press home his own points. Miliband simply made a whole load of incredibly vague comments, which some will undoubtedly pick up as actual policies, and basically said that he'd make sure we were all better off, except those "very rich" people who'd pay for all his largesse.

 

Miliband is a typical, but rather poor, politician. He wipes away the past with a sweep of the hand as if he was in no way associated with it. He tells us that he would do everything very differently from his predecessors, notwithstanding that his real freedom to do so would be heavily restricted. He promises the earth with loads of sugary nonsense and, in common with all of his predecessors, would deliver nothing but misery for us all. In common with his recent predecessors of all parties, his overriding aim is to gain power and he'll promise whatever he needs to in order to achieve it, regardless of whether it's good for the country and its people or not or whether he could actually Implement it or not.

 

Shockingly, today's "Andrew Marr Show" also presented us with the maniacally left wing Polly Toynbee and the even more bonkers Caroline Lucas, with only the very middle of the road Matthew Parris as a counterweight. It was, in effect, a perfect example of the BBC's version of balance and political impartiality. I can't wait to see how they approach the Conservative Party conference nest week.

WILL MILIBAND AND HIS ILK NEVER LEARN ?

You can always rely on Labour to promise to spend money that isn't there.

 

With their annual conference about to get underway, Ed Miliband has finally come out with a few scraps in an effort to keep his followers happy. Unfortunately, the latest round of promises are nothing but political cant and attached to the usual rhetoric about 'taxing the rich'.

 

The only possible reason that Miliband and his clan should promise to reverse the current government's changes to housing benefit is vote-catching. That tenants in council-owned property have historically been able to claim a higher level of housing benefit than those in privately owned homes was a nonsense and needed to be stopped. The claims Labour has made about the change being a 'bedroom tax' are ridiculous and to reverse the change would be a shocking and unwarranted act. It will also cost money which the government does not have.

Something that would cost us all is his additional commitment to increase the minimum wage. Rather than extolling people to live within their means, or reducing taxes, it's always been Labour philosophy to hand out cash, someone else's that is, in a pointless effort to make the lower paid better off. All it actually achieves is a general uplift of all wages which can only be paid for by increasing prices, taxes and borrowing; the supposed 'poor' don't benefit in any way and everyone suffers, as we all know only too well from the efforts of the previous Labour government.
 

Next, Rachel Reeves, a horribly nasal and earnest shadow treasury person, has separately said that people earning up to £60,000 are not rich and will not be taxed more under a Labour government. That the first part of her statement is blatantly true can't be denied, but the second will deserve serious scrutiny. We already know that Labour, under the Blair / Brown axis, made similar promises about income tax and promptly increased national insurance. There is nothing to say that a future Labour government would be any less weasel-worded and anyone with anything will be well advised to think very carefully before accepting Ms Reeves words at face value. Anyone with an income of more than £150,000 pa, the 'rich' according to Labour, can expect to be absolutely hammered, of course.

 

Thirdly, another of  the old guard, Yvette Cooper aka Mrs Balls, has said that Labour would guarantee what she refers to as "wraparound" childcare for the parents of all primary care children, meaning that they would not have to bother about little Johnny or young Tilly at all between the hours of 8am and 6pm. Why this is considered to be a good thing escapes me. Far too many parents already give far too little attention to their children and pass them over to others at every opportunity, some of the consequences being the appalling behaviour of hordes of our teenagers, their addiction to their 'phones and the internet, their lack of meaningful educational achievement and their total lack of any moral compass and sense of decency or self respect. What we need is a reduction in the outsourcing of our childcare and much more input from parents, not even more state intervention and support.

 

How they would pay for all these promises hasn't been explained but I think we can all be pretty certain that anyone who has anything will find that they become poorer. Buying and owning a house will become even more expensive, indirect taxes will rise dramatically and inflation will soar. While you can take the boy out of Labour, there's no known way of taking Labour out of the boy, and Miliband and his friends still have a basic belief in a big state funded by excessive taxation, despite the shocking consequences of the Blair / Brown years from which we are only just beginning to recover.

 

We can only hope and pray that enough of the population has enough sense to ensure that Labour never again gets the chance to destroy our nation as it so nearly did between 1997 and 2010.

 

BAN THE BURKA !

Yesterday a government minister, the Liberal Democrat Jeremy Browne, suggested that it was time we had a debate about the wearing of Islamic clothing such as the burka and niqab, particularly in places such as schools.

 

He is, of course, right though I would go much further. These outlandish forms of dress are utterly alien to British culture and tradition and should be banned - full stop.

 

When westerners visit Islamic countries, they are expected to  abide by the laws and customs of the particular state they are in. This means that women, whether Islamic or not, are expected to at least cover their limbs and hair; failure to do so will almost certainly result in arrest and some uncomfortable time spent in a filthy prison cell. At worst, a lengthy prison sentence will be passed down.

 

When these same Islamic people come to Britain and other non-Islamic countries, many seem to expect us to allow them to carry on as if they were still 'at home'; any suggestion that they should embrace our ways, as we are expected to do in their countries, is rebuffed as racist and anti-Islamic. Successive governments in the UK have allowed this ridiculous situation to persist and develop to a point at which it now threatens the very basis of our society.

 

School children in class with their entire bodies covered and women in court in similar fashion. Is this right ? Can it possibly be justified ? Of course it can't. This is Britain, not Iran; it is England, not Afghanistan. It is not just time for a debate, it is time for serious action to stop this continued take over of our nation by alien forces.

DANIEL PELKA : A CHILD OF OUR TIMES ?

While the Americans get their kicks from shooting people, it seems that the British get theirs from the abuse and murder of children.

 

Despite the repeated promises of the past, another small child has been killed and now an inquiry has determined that everyone failed and yet no one was specifically to blame; it says that "critical lessons" must be "translated into action", whatever such gobbledygook might mean in practice.

 

The child, Daniel Pelka, aged 4, suffered what is described as terrifying and dreadful abuse by his mother and her partner and yet no one appears to have either noticed or done anything about it. He was starved and beaten for months until he finally died at his Coventry home in March 2012.

 

The family apparently had contact with an assortment of state bodies including the police, social services and education services and yet no one noticed what was going on. The child is reported to have been seen scavenging for food in dustbins, and yet no one did anything about it.

 

Year after year, we hear of similar instances and, every time, we are told that lessons must be, and will be, learned and that such things must never be allowed to happen again; year after year they do. The utter incompetence of the services that are supposed to safeguard children is mind-blowing; they react to every instance by trying to impose ever greater security while actually doing nothing. They lock school gates and doors, impose meaningless and time wasting 'CRB' checks and impose photography bans on parents.

 

In the meantime, children like Daniel Pelka continued to be abused and murdered.

WASHINGTON SHOOTINGS : WILL THEY NEVER LEARN ?

Will the Americans never learn ?

 

Yet again, there is national angst in the USA after another lunatic with a gun has gone on the rampage. This time, a man with a history of using a gun in anger has managed to murder 12 people in a navy yard in Washington DC. Where he got the gun from and how he got into the yard will no doubt be questions that are mulled over in the coming days.

 

In the meantime, 12 people are dead and their families will be mourning. There will, as usual, be much gnashing of teeth and soul searching, accompanied by little if any action. The outdated and childish American obsession with guns will continue, unabated.

PLASTIC BAG TAX ON THE WAY.

So now we're to have a "Plastic Bag Tax".

 

On the excuse that the use of plastic bags is bad for the environment, Nick Clegg is going to announce that there will be a new levy of 5p for every plastic bag used by the customers of supermarkets and other large store, to be introduced after the next general election in 2015. That this is simply another tax on an already overtaxed populace is obvious.

 

All stores already charge for plastic bags: the cost of their acquisition is included in their overall costs and their selling prices reflect these total costs, including the bags. The cost per bag is tiny and the effect on prices equally so, meaning that everyone is happy except, of course, the Environment Police, led by the Greens, Liberal Democrats and other left-leaning loonies of assorted labels.

 

Quite possibly in common with many other people, I use a mixture of my own bags and shop bags. Any shop bags that I need are recycled as bin liners, thus I avoid buying the much more substantial and environmentally unfriendly bags that  are offered for this purpose. This seems to me to be a perfectly sensible approach, but I would stop it if this charge is brought in.

 

The proposal for a 5p per bag charge is outrageous, the indication that the proceeds will go to charities simply a smokescreen. Part of the charge will actually be allocated to the stores as compensation for the administration costs that they will incur, which really means they'll make a further profit as they're unlikely to incur any real additional costs. As for the rest of the proceeds going to charity, what this really means is that government will be able to reduce what it currently allocates to charities through various channels, exactly as they did when the National Lottery was introduced.

 

While claims that the "Spare room subsidy" is really a "Bedroom tax" are simply unfounded and untrue, this proposed plastic bag charge is nothing but a tax. At 5p per bag and assuming that 2 billion of the current 7 billion bags continue to be used, the government will steal another £100 million pounds from us. This is just politicians seeing an opportunity and taking it.

 

The real problem is not plastic bags, however many we use, it is the vast amount of plastic packaging with which we are confronted. Our milk and much of our fruit, vegetables and meat is presented in plastic coverings. Sauces, cheeses, salads, shampoo and other bath products, bleach and a huge range of cleaning products, are all packaged in plastic. Compared with the weight of the claimed 7 billion plastic bags, I wonder what is the tonnage of all of these other elements of packaging.

 

I've already heard someone from the taxpayers' alliance speaking out against this new tax and I can only hope that many more people of influence and common sense make sufficient noise to prevent this ridiculous impost from being implemented.  

 

 

HOUSE PRICES : Rics SAYS "BLAH, BLAH, BLAH !"

"Experts" from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) has today told the Bank of England that it should take action to restrict the annual rise in house prices to no more than an average of 5%; this would be achieved not by controlling house prices directly but by introducing strict limits on the amounts that purchasers could borrow. Other "experts" have already suggested that such an idea would be unworkable.

 

In my simple mind, the fact that such a scheme wouldn't work is so blindingly obvious that one has to wonder who are these "experts" from the Rics and why should any of us ever again take the advice of a surveyor seriously. They seem to have ignored the enormous diversity in the housing market across the country and come up with a piece of nonsense.

 

It is a fact that house prices in some parts, notably London and the south east of England, are very much higher than in other parts, notably Wales; it's also a fact that prices are increasing fairly rapidly in the south east while they're falling in Wales. How can a policy such as that proposed by the Rics cater for both of these scenarios ?

 

We are told constantly that there's an inadequate supply of houses and that this is the principal reason for the rise in prices - so why are prices still falling, or at least not rising, in many parts ? There can, of course, be no doubt that prices in the south east have risen much more than in the rest of the country over a period of many years, but it costs no more to build a house in London than it does in Lancashire, Durham or south Wales, so why is there the huge disparity in the ultimate price charged for new homes in these areas ? Partly the answer is demand, partly it's the price of land and partly it's profiteering by the builders; the biggest element in all of this is the price of land.

 

Today, those who already own property in London and the south east are asset rich compared with their counterparts elsewhere in the country. They can afford to sell and move almost anywhere that they choose, quite probably buying a better property for less money and putting a tidy profit in the bank; those who live outside of this privileged area can rarely, if ever, afford to move into it without being prepared to take a massive cut in their living standards. The concept of a "2-nation country" can rarely have been more plainly apparent.

 

Bringing my simplistic mind to this issue, I see a simple solution which will at least limit any further increase in the nationwide disparities that exist. Firstly, introduce controls on land prices, either making the land on which houses stand a 'free good' or introduce a standard price for land across the country; there would have to be transitional arrangements for all existing properties but I'm sure that the "experts" at the Rics could work something out. Secondly, extend capital gains tax to include any profit resulting from a house sale that exceeds the increase in CPI over the period from when the property was purchased; all such excessive surpluses would be subject to tax at 100%.

 

These measures would ensure that the artificial and highly damaging house price bubbles of recent years don't recur, though there might be some short-term pain. Individuals who'd hoped to spend the profit from their nice London house on buying a villa in Spain or a Lamborghini or 2 might be upset; meanwhile, the government would be able to use the forfeited surplus to build more houses and/or invest in other parts of the country.

 

I am no economist and these ideas might be every bit as unworkable as those put forward by the Rics, but then I don't claim to be an "expert". Then again, they, or some part of them, might just work.

WEST SHOULD STAY AWAY FROM SYRIAN CONFLICT.

Despite the lessons of recent history, national leaders such as Barack Obama, David Cameron and Francois Hollande seem desperate to sign up for yet another foreign war. As if Iraq, twice, and Afghanistan were not enough, they now want to declare war on Syria.

 

In the UK, the House of Commons had the sense to tell Cameron to get lost; he's now hamstrung in his attempts to have more of our troops killed in a pointless foreign conflict which has nothing to do with us. In the US, Obama has possibly put himself in a difficult position by asking Congress to approve the deployment of US forces though he'll probably get the necessary backing in the end. In France, President Hollande appears to have no such issues and is itching for war.

 

While the claimed actions of the Assad regime are horrible, it is a civil war; the opposition forces are probably guilty of much the same atrocities as are the government side. What it all has to do with the USA, UK, France or any other country has yet to be adequately explained. If any international body should be taking action, it is the United Nations, for they, alone, have the authority to act if their members so decide. At present, the principal members of this august assembly cannot agree, so the UN does very little.

 

This situation is not dissimilar to those which existed in Iraq and Afghanistan and it is, essentially, insoluble by any western power. Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria are Islamic nations which operate under different social arrangements than does the West; while we may not like these arrangements, it is not for us to interfere. Sadly, we have and we've encouraged dissident groups to attack their legally constituted governments which have then responded with massive force; this does not justify the use of means that are banned by international agreements such as chemical weapons, but it is for the sanctioning bodies to act in such cases and not for individual war-mongering countries.

 

Following the nonsense of the western inspired 'Arab Spring', Iraq is still a mess, Egypt is in chaos  and Syria is in bloody civil war. God, or Allah, save us from yet more interference from arrogant and self-serving western nations.

BBC AT WAR WITH ITSELF.

The disaster that is the BBC continues to make the news rather than fulfilling its role as a reporter of the same.

 

The saga of unwarranted termination payments is rumbling on with ever-increasing intensity as members of the governing body, the 'BBC Trust', throw mud at officers of the corporation and the officers, notably former Director General Mark Thompson, hurl it back with interest.

 

When being questioned by a House of Common's committee, Patten stated that he and his Trust colleagues knew nothing of an assortment of excessive payments; Thompson's response to these remarks effectively calls Patten a liar. Surely, Thompson would not have done this if his version of events was not true; he would have been better advised to keep quiet. Patten, on the other hand, has his reputation and position to think of and may well be more than happy to pass the blame for the mess on to others.   

 

Who's telling the truth ? Who will ultimately carry the can once the mud-slinging stops ? I can hardly wait for the next instalment !