30th March 2015

Tendring Topics……..on line

‘There’s no point in voting – they’re really all the same!’

          That’s one of the standard reasons given by those who can’t be bothered to vote in Parliamentary Elections.   The really sad thing is that they’re not far out.  In times gone by – certainly before World War II and I think for some time afterwards, political parties had a clearly defined purpose and we all had a pretty good idea of their ultimate aims. Leaders and members of the Conservative Party, as their name suggests, thought that the social order in our country and the way that industry and commerce performed were pretty well OK.  Conservatives agreed that some things might need a slight tweak here or there, but generally speaking they felt that history had come to an end and that we Brits were currently living in the best of all possible worlds.

            The Labour Party on the other hand, believed that there was a great deal wrong with our present social and economic system and wanted to change it.  They were influenced by the great reformers of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, by Christian concern for the poor and disadvantaged (‘He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek..........He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty away) and to some extent by the revolutionary ideas of such thinkers as Marx and Engels.  They thought it possible that they could, by democratic means, create an earthly Paradise – fulfilling William Blake’s prophecy in his great poem Jerusalem ‘I shall not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, till I have built Jerusalem, in England’s green and pleasant land’

            The Liberal Party, originally the Party of the rulers of industry and commerce in conflict with the land-owning gentry of the Conservative Party, sat uneasily between Conservative and Labour, declining in power and influence throughout the twentieth century, though enjoying a temporary popularity at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Love them or hate them, the three parties were quite clear in their objectives and those who had votes (it wasn’t till well after the end of World War I that there was universal adult suffrage, and eighteen year olds didn’t get a vote until after World War II) knew exactly why they voted for the party of their choice.

Now, thanks largely to Tony Blair and his New Labour, all that has changed. All main political Parties now support the Market economy in which everything and everybody has cash value.  Job satisfaction – enjoyed by many thousands (including myself) in the past – has been replaced by a struggle for personal wealth in which everyone grabs as much as he or she can demand for as little as they can get away with.  Leading New Labourites like Lord Mendelson declare that they ‘have no problem with billionaires’; well (while thousands of their fellow Britons are homeless and reliant on voluntary food banks to keep their families fed) they should have problems with billionaires.

            Both Parties accept that top bankers must be paid in millions a year, plus more millions as bonuses – because ‘that’s the only way we can attract the very best brains’ to make Britain great again.  Those ‘best brains’ who demand and receive millions of pounds for their services are the very people who, as was repeatedly affirmed by the recently retired Governor of the Bank of England, caused the current financial crisis.  They were also responsible, if only by default, for the banking scandals that have made the press headlines in recent years.;  miss-selling of insurance (for which the banks have had to pay millions of pounds in compensation),  fiddling interest rates and assisting very wealthy clients to become even richer by tax avoidance.   If those are the kind of things that result from appointing (at enormous expense)  the very best brains to head our banks, perhaps we should find out what the ‘second-best’ brains can do.  At the very least they’d come a bit cheaper – and might not be quite so good at feathering their own nests!

            George Osborne is already set to impose further austerities on a long suffering public sector.  He says that he only proposes to impose the same economies this year as he did last year.  He will be imposing them on already sadly depleted services.  Does he really imagine that if you empty half the water from a bucket one year, you can pour out the same volume of water from that same bucket the next year without emptying it?

So far the competing political parties have been much more eager to denigrate their opponents than to tell us what they themselves propose to do to solve Britain’s problems.  The Conservatives promise more of the same medicine and warn us that electing a Labour Government will create chaos. The New Labourites point out that the Tories are already wrecking the NHS and will probably try to solve its problems by mass privatisation.  Well, my medical practitioner (family doctor) service is certainly not as good as it was when the coalition took over government and the government’s bungled reforms have without doubt played a part in this deterioration.  Now they are proposing that pharmacists should take on some of the tasks previously undertaken by doctors.  That has the potential of creating long queues waiting for service in pharmacies as well as in doctors’ waiting rooms.

              For many years the British government’s annual expenditure has exceeded its annual income resulting in a ‘deficit’ that is filled by borrowing.  Central Government’s strategy must be the reduction, and eventually the elimination, of that deficit.  There are two ways in which this can be done; by reducing expenditure and by increasing income.

            Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats have all chosen the path of reducing expenditure – not on obviously wasteful practices like maintaining a wildly expensive ‘independent nuclear deterrent’ which is neither independent nor an effective deterrent, maintaining an ‘armed presence’ in the Middle East, and unquestioningly  supporting the USA in such military adventures as the invasion of Iraq and of Afghanistan, not to mention blindly backing the Kiev government in the civil conflict in Ukraine.  No, the government has concentrated its demand for economies on benefits for the poor and the unemployed and on local government services – education, maintenance of highways and footpaths, social services, libraries, public parks and gardens, refuse and recyclable collections and so on; all the services in fact that make the difference between civilisation and barbarism.

            All the main parties reject the other way of reducing the deficit; increasing the government’s income by taxation.  There are ways in which this could be done with minimal hardship.  I have suggested in this blog that all state ‘benefits’ should be subject to income tax – winter fuel allowance for the old, children’s allowances, attendance allowance, free tv licence, free prescriptions and so on. This wouldn’t affect at all the really poor who don’t pay income tax.  It would affect the rest of us (several would affect me!) but they wouldn’t impose a crippling burden on anybody.  It would at least reduce the scandal of elderly millionaires getting exactly the same winter fuel allowance and other universal benefits as the rest of us oldies.

            Nor, I think, would a penny or two-pence on the standard and higher rate of income tax cause real hardship to anyone.  We’d only lose a little of the taxable part of our income.   I’m no mathematician but I believe that penny or tuppence on each pound of our taxable income would make a tremendous difference to our country’s finances.   Yet David Cameron promises that a new Conservative Government would not raise the rate of VAT (he could naturally be expected to prefer indirect taxation that disproportionately penalises the poor).  Much more shamefully, Ed Miliband, Labour leader, promises that if he leads a Labour government, there will be no increase in either the standard or the higher rate of income tax.

            Perhaps the cynics are right and they really are ‘all the same’.  They’ve certainly all got the same ultimate aim.  No – it’s not to make our country a better place in which to live.   It’s to get sufficient compliant MPs elected to enable them to form a government and, having done so, to hang on to power for as long as they can manage to get away with it. 

It’s still worth while to vote though – and our duty to those who in the 19^th and early 20^th Century – laboured and endured derision, arrest and imprisonment for the right to do so.  If you can’t bring yourself to vote for a candidate, then vote against the candidate whose policies you most dislike.  Put your cross against the name of the candidate most likely to defeat him or her!

And, of course, in this General Election we’ll have at least two credible alternatives to those of the three traditional parties.  There’s UKIP and there’s the Green Party.  UKIP consists of Nigel Farage and his followers.  He wants to get us out of the European Union and to limit immigration. For other policies he’ll just jump onto any bandwagon that promises a few extra votes, but generally speaking, his policies are well to the right of the most hard-line Conservatives.  A quite astonishing number of prominent Ukippers – MEPs and other senior party members, have departed from Ukip ‘under a cloud’. I can imagine no circumstances under which a Ukip candidate will get my vote.

The Scots the Welsh and the Northern Irish all have nationalist alternative candidates for whom they can vote.  I shall vote Green because they are working towards a fairer and a more sustainable Britain of which it might truly be said we are all in this together.  They won't achieve this in my time but perhaps my grandchildren’s generation will bring it about. As yet at least, the Greens are not tainted by the determination to achieve office at any price –  and I wish them well.

I’m sorry if any –or all – of the above sounds like a history lesson.  It isn’t that to me.  It’s the story of the United Kingdom during my lifespan, from the first quarter of the 20^th century to the first quarter of the 21^s.  

            

25th March 2015

Tendring Topics……..on line

‘Dear Ernest……….

                                 …….. warm regards, Douglas’

            You would probably imagine that the above was the salutation and farewell of a personal letter from a close friend or relative, and that between that ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ there was a communication of great interest to both ‘Ernest’ and ‘Doug’.   It wasn’t; and although presumably it was of interest to the sender it certainly was not to me.

            It wasn’t a personal letter. I have never met, and almost certainly never will meet the ‘Douglas’ who addresses me by my first name and sends me his ‘warm regards’.  Nor was it a personal letter.  It was a circular letter, probably sent to every Tom, Dick and Harry and every Jane, Mary or Kate in the Clacton-on-Sea parliamentary constituency from Douglas Carswell once our Conservative MP but currently, thanks to a lightning conversion and an expensive and totally unnecessary by-election,  one of two UKIP MPs in the House of Commons.

            A remarkable feature of that by-election was the fact that Douglas Carswell the UKIP candidate, was the only one who seemed to make a real effort to get elected.  I was deluged by UKIP leaflets, brochures and at least one of those ‘personal’ letters from Douglas Carswell.  I received a phone call on behalf of UKIP and a canvasser who called at my front door.  He seemed a little shocked when I assured him that I would never vote for any UKIP candidate. There was also – so I believe – a well-attended public meeting addressed by both Douglas Carswell and his political boss Nigel Farage.   I received just one leaflet from the Conservative candidate, one from the Liberal Democrats and one from Labour.  There were also a Green candidate and two independents from whom I received nothing.

            The General Election is now only a few weeks away.  History seems to be  repeating itself.  During the past week or so I have received three glossy brochures or leaflets extolling Douglas Carswell’s virtues, a canvassing phone call, and today (21st March)  this ‘personal letter’ from the man himself.  The content of the letter confirms my opinion that, apart from leaving the European Union and reducing immigration, UKIP’s policy is simply to jump on any band-wagon that offers the promise of a few extra votes.   I have so far received nothing from any of the other candidates.

            Douglas’ circular letter promises that UKIP will abolish hospital parking charges, funding this by ’cutting overseas aid and EU payments’ (could be a vote winner – parking at Colchester General Hospital is difficult and expensive – and getting worse!).  They’ll also ‘defend the NHS, defend winter fuel payments, bus passes and tv licences for older folk’ (there are lots of ‘older folk’ with votes in this constituency) ‘stand up to big corporations’ (I don’t know quite what that means but it certainly sounds vote-catching!) and ‘introduce an Australian-style points system’ to control immigration (locally our most serious immigration problem is created by fellow-Brits driven from the London area by ridiculously high housing costs and the ‘bedroom tax').

             

            At the end of the letter there is a chart based on figures supplied by www. ElectoralCalculus.co,uk which suggests that UKIP can expect to gain 48 percent of the votes in this area in the general election, and the Conservatives 45 percent.  Douglas Carswell appeals ‘Only UKIP can keep David Cameron’s candidate out of Clacton’.  I’m inclined to reverse that message and proclaim.  Only the Conservatives can keep Nigel Farage’s candidate out of Clacton. 

            Regular blog readers will know that at the by-election I ‘voted strategically’.  For the first, and probably only time in my life I put my cross against the name of the Conservative candidate in the hope of denying the seat to Douglas Carswell.  It didn’t succeed!    The closeness of the two parties in the forecast tempts me to do the same in the General Election – but I won’t.  This time I’ll vote Green because I am convinced that it is only the policies of the Green Party that offer a cure for Britain’s ills.

           

Final Note:  

The reason that, in both the by-election and in the months preceding the coming general election I had so much potentially mind-bending material from the UKIP candidate and so little from the others, is not I am sure, because the Labour, Conservative, Green and Lib.Dem candidates and their supporters lack enthusiasm and conviction, but that they have limited funds – and good quality printing and distribution costs money.  UKIP presumably has some very wealthy and generous financial backers – or perhaps Douglas (as he uses my first name I’m sure he won’t mind my using his) has a very considerable personal fortune that he is prepared to use to secure electoral success.

An Anniversary

          We have recently seen the first anniversary of the annexation/recovery of the Crimea by Russia.  It was marked by a public opinion poll in the Crimea that revealed that 93 percentage of the population were happy to remain as Russians and had no desire to be once again citizens of Ukraine.   Ninety-three percent! That’s the kind of result that one would only get in a place like North Korea – it must have been fiddled or fabricated!   Well, that’s what ‘the west’ would no doubt like to believe.  The only difficulty with that explanation is that the opinion poll was carried out by a Ukrainian polling agency commissioned by the Ukrainian government.  That was not the result for which the government in Kiev was hoping!  Certainly in the 1950s when both Russia and Ukraine were provinces of the Soviet Union, the citizens of the Crimea were not consulted when Nikita Khruschev decided that their land (which had been part of Russia since Tsarist times) should become part of Ukraine.

            Meanwhile the fact that we have heard no recent news from the disputed region of Eastern Ukraine suggests  that the terms of the cease-fire are being observed; that hostilities have ceased and heavy weaponry withdrawn from the front line.   I hope that prisoners are being exchanged by both sides and that talks are in progress about the degree of autonomy to be granted to the Russian speaking eastern areas of Ukraine. Meanwhile the British Government, which played no part in the cease-fire negotiations, has supplied the Ukrainian Government in Kiev with armoured cars, and is sending units from our army (depleted by government cuts and by less-than-totally-successful campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan), to help train the Ukrainian army.  That’s our contribution to the cause of world peace!

            

           

           

           

     

18th January 2015

Tendring Topics……….on line

The Parliamentary General Election

          There was a time when political parties existed to promote specific policies – the Conservative Party on retaining the status quo and, in general, observing the sage advice, ‘If it ain’t bust, don’t fix it’.  They were naturally the party of the ‘haves’ rather than the ‘have nots’.  The Labour Party on the other hand, was the party of change.  They wanted a fairer, more equal Britain, a Britain without nuclear weapons and without imperial pretensions or ambitions.  They argued that these objectives could best be achieved if most or all public services were owned and run by the public.   They were the party of the ‘have nots’.  Both parties tried to persuade a majority of the electorate to support them.

            Now both main parties, and what’s left of the Liberals, claim to serve the interests of the whole country.  In reality they all have just one overriding policy. It’s the same policy; to win elections, gain political power – and keep it.  To this end the Conservatives under Mrs Thatcher became a party of revolutionary change; among other things selling off most public services to private enterprise and compelling local authorities, who had built houses to rid their districts of overcrowding and homelessness, to sell them to sitting tenants at bargain basement prices; thus very cleverly buying votes with other people’s money.

            New Labour, ‘to make itself electable’, sold its own soul by going along with the retention of a nuclear ‘deterrent’, accepting the revolutionary changes that had been introduced by Mrs Thatcher and erasing ‘Clause 4’ from its own constitution.  I have little doubt that many party members voted for the removal of Clause 4 imagining that they were simply acknowledging that some activities were best carried out by private enterprise.  If fact they were accepting the wholesale privatisation of every public service.  In addition, they allowed our country to become the puppet of the most reactionary American president in living memory.  This resulted in our engagement in two ‘colonial’ wars – one illegal and the other unwinnable – resulting in the loss of billions of pounds and the sacrifice of hundreds of British lives

            Party policies are decided nowadays, not by principles or by the exercise of reason and compassion, but by the findings of the latest opinion polls.  And influencing opinion polls is the popular press, owned largely by foreign billionaires who owe no loyalty to the United Kingdom and care only about ‘circulation and profit’. I don’t find it in the least surprising that thousands of electors are now disillusioned with the traditional political parties.  It is upon the way that they react to that disillusion that the future of our country depends.

Don’t bother to vote

            Probably the commonest reaction is to decline to vote.  What’s the point?  They’re all the same – feathering their own nests.  If voting changed anything they’d ban it. Our first-past-the-post electoral system makes sure that the voice of those who can’t bring themselves to vote for any of the main parties, is never heard. The Chartists of the nineteenth and the Suffragettes of the twentieth century must be turning in their graves.  They suffered and died to make sure that everyone had a vote – and they really believed that universal suffrage would change the world.

           

Those who don’t bother to vote have no right to complain when they find themselves represented by someone whose views they thoroughly detest.  Those who can’t bring themselves to vote for any of the candidates must surely be able to select one of them whose policies and attitudes they detest more than those of the others. Vote for the candidate most likely to defeat him or her.  For the much-publicised recent Clacton-on-Sea by-election I voted Conservative for the first (and probably only) time of my life.  Although I disliked the Conservative candidate’s policies, he seemed to be a nice enough chap and I thought he was the candidate most likely to defeat Douglas Carswell who had defected to UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party).   He didn’t do so and Clacton had the dubious honour of returning the very first UKIP MP to Westminster!  Still – I did my best. 

Vote for one of the ‘minority’ candidates

            We don’t yet know how many candidates there will be for our own constituencies in next May’s General Election. In every English constituency there will certainly be representatives of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal-Democrat Party.  There will almost certainly be a Ukipper (in my Clacton constituency he’ll be the sitting MP) and a Green Party Candidate.  Also there’s likely to be a variety of fringe party and special-interest candidates ranging from the Official Raving Loony Party to those eager to publicise local or special concerns like ‘saving a hospital from closure’, ‘building a new bypass’ or, as we had for the Clacton by-election, a lady who wanted to raise the status and ensure the safety of ‘sex workers’.   

            My guess (and you can’t exaggerate how much I’d like to be proved wrong!) is that in the Clacton-on-Sea Constituency Douglas Carswell (the sitting UKIP MP) will retain his seat though with a smaller majority, The Conservative Candidate will come next but with only a few more votes than  his Labour opponent, followed by the Green, the Lib.Dem. the Official Raving Loony Candidate and the various ‘special interest’ candidates who will get only a tiny handful of votes each.

UKIP versus GREEN

            In my constituency (Clacton-on-Sea) our sitting MP is a Ukipper.  That is true of only one other constituency in the United Kingdom.  In most other constituencies there will be a Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat MP who will be looking nervously over his or her shoulder at the UKIP contestant and wondering what effect this new and apparently growing party will have on the election result.

            UKIP and its leader Nigel Farage, remind me uncomfortably of the NAZI party and its leader, Adolf Hitler, in Germany in the 1920s and early ‘30s.   There too, the electorate was disillusioned and tired of the old political parties and their failing policies.  In Adolf Hitler they found someone who was a fervent German nationalist, just as Nigel Farage is a fervent British Nationalist, who disliked the ‘old politics’ and offered a new path for Germany of action rather than talk.  What’s more he assured the Germans that they weren’t to blame for their country’s problems – it was all the fault of ‘the Jews’.  At first most Germans thought that he was a bit of a joke,  Then the wealthy thought they could manipulate him for their own purposes.   One morning though they woke up to discover that he and his brown-shirted followers had taken over their country. – Hitler’s Third Reich had arrived.

            Nigel Farage also assures us that outside forces – the European Union (demonised as ‘Brussels’) and all those foreign immigrants for which the EU, so he says, was largely responsible – were the cause of Britain’s problems.  Shake off the European yoke and get rid of all those foreigners, and Britain would be great again!  At first everyone thought that Nigel Farage – usually seen holding ‘a fag and a pint’ to assure those who saw him that he was ‘one of us’ - was a bit of a joke.  Then, as with Hitler, the wealthy and powerful thought they could use him for their purposes. They have poured their spare thousands of pounds into his party’s coffers. The story is on-going……….. UKIP is essentially a ‘one-objective party’.   The EU and immigrants are its main target.  Other causes are taken up as seems opportune, but generally UKIP policies are those of the extreme right of the Conservative Party.  Abolish ‘green taxes’ and cease subsidising solar and wind power schemes.  Encourage ‘fracking’ for cheap oil and gas.  Ignore the warnings about climate change and global warming.  It either isn’t happening or, if it is, it’s got nothing to do with human activities so there’s nothing to be done about it.  Vote for UKIP and cheaper fuel oil!  I have little doubt that thousands will be short-sighted enough to do so.

            The Green Party is almost the exact opposite of UKIP.  Below is a brief account of their policies and intentions.

We live in unsettling times. Many of the securities that our parents and grandparents fought for – a functioning National Health Service, free education, and an affordable home – now look out of reach for most of us. Coupled with this, climate change is bringing unpredictable and threatening weather patterns. People feel let down by politicians, and yet there has been an explosion in political activism. People want to do things differently and aren’t afraid to be bold and challenging.

We believe that public services should be for the benefit of the public, not sold off in bits; we believe that education is worth investing in and not something that should mean a lifetime of debt; we believe in leaving behind a better world for our children and grandchildren. This is the only world we have and its welfare, above all things, should be the highest priority for us all.

Politics should work for the benefit of all, not just those who shout the loudest or have the deepest pockets.  We believe in “The Common Good”. A vote for the Green Party is a vote for The Common Good.

            Like UKIP, the Green Party is growing.   They have just one MP – in Brighton – but in the European Parliament elections and in recent by-elections (including that in Clacton) Green candidates received more votes than the Liberal Democrats. Currently there is controversy as to whether The Green Party’s President is to join with the leaders of the Conservative Party, Liberal-Democratic Party, Labour Party and UKIP in public televised debate before next May’s general election.  David Cameron is refusing to take part in the debate unless the Greens are also invited.  He is probably wise to do so.   Green arguments, persuasively presented, are far more likely to draw voters from Labour, Liberal Democrat, and even UKIP than they are from the Conservatives.

            If (and it’s quite a big ‘if’) I’m still around in May, I shall vote for the Green Candidate.  I hope that a great many other people will do the same.    

           

Week 37a 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

More Refugees

          2014 is becoming the Year of the Refugees.  We have seen harrowing pictures on the tv of thousands of Syrian refugees seeking shelter and asylum in make-shift camps in Turkey, Lebanon and other nearby countries, from the cruel war in their own homeland from which there seems to be no end in sight.  We have seen similar refugees from Gaza trying to escape relentless shelling and bombing from Israel.  They didn’t even have the option of fleeing to a safer country because the Israeli blockade prevented them from escaping from the strip of land that has been described as ‘the world’s biggest concentration camp’.  More recently we have seen thousands more refugees from northern Iraq, many of them members of Christian communities who have lived peaceably with their Muslim neighbours for centuries, fleeing from the bloodthirsty murderers and torturers of the so-called Islamic State. 

            A brief mention on a BBC news bulletin this (2^nd Sept) evening persuaded me to seek more information about at flood of refugees of which I had previously heard virtually nothing.  Did you know (I certainly didn’t before I consulted Google) that over a million refugees from eastern Ukraine had fled into Russia to escape from the relentless bombardment of their towns and villages by the forces of the Kiev government? No wonder the Russians sent a convoy of humanitarian aid vehicles to the south!  I also discovered that there have been over 2,000 fatal casualties from the civil war in the Ukraine  - most of them among the ‘rebel’ population and many, as in Gaza, civilians including women and little children. Isn’t bombing and shelling his own people one of the war crimes of which we constantly accuse President Assad of Syria?   But, as I have remarked before in this blog, It’s not what is done – it’s who it is does it, that matters as far as ‘the west’ is concerned.  The Kiev government has the support of the UK, the USA and NATO, and the refugees in this case are rebels said to be backed by Russia. They clearly ‘don’t deserve our sympathy and aren’t going to get any help from us!’

             The UK, the USA and NATO’s response to this civil war has been to blame it all onto Russia, to impose ever stronger economic sanctions on Russia and to carry out troop manoeuvres in Poland and naval exercises in the Baltic Sea. These highly provocative activities have produced a response from Russia.  They too are strengthening their armed forces and carrying out military exercises.

            A few weeks ago I wrote in this blog about the way in which, as a result of a series of military alliances, the great powers of Europe had ‘sleep walked’ into World War I.  I think that Vladimir Putin, David Cameron, Angela Merkel and Barak Obama, have sufficient sense not to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors in 1914, but some of the more bullish US Senators and Congressmen may be eager for a confrontation: ‘Sure we should teach them Rooskies a lesson  – and our boys could he do it and be home again before Christmas’. I have little doubt that within the Russian parliament there are similar irresponsible idiots.  World-wide the number of those who remember the devastation of World War II is getting smaller and smaller. 

            Certainly the Kiev Ukrainian government has been doing all it can to lure their west European friends into the conflict.  Remember how its spokesman announced that the ‘black boxes’ on that ill-fated air liner had revealed that the ill-fated Malaysian air-liner had been shot down by pro-Russian rebels. (We haven’t yet received any official word about those black boxes or about the report of the team of international experts who inspected the crash site).  The latest claim is that two Russian armoured divisions have crossed the frontier and are fighting with the rebels.  Really? I reckon that if the Russian government really had sent two armoured divisions to support the rebels, the Russian flag would by now be flying over Kiev Town Hall!

            The bloody advance of Kiev government forces has been halted (possibly with Russian help).  Now, before a counter- offensive by the pro-Russian rebels begins, is surely the time for peace talks to begin.   It should be noted that the pro-Russian rebels have never sought to take over the whole of Ukraine.  All they ask is to be allowed to keep their own language and customs and to make their own international friendships, perhaps within a loosely Federal Ukraine.  Is that really too much to ask?

            It is, of course, a very ill wind that blows nobody any good. The blood-thirsty fanatics of IS (Islamic State) and their counterparts and supporters world wide, are delighted to see their infidel opponents – the enemies of jihadist Islam in the Russian Federation and those within NATO - at each-other’s throats.  They’d like to see a real ‘shooting war’ break out between the warring infidels, hoping that when half the world had been reduced to a radio-active wilderness, the jihadists would be able to move in and enforce their evil perversion of Islam on whoever was left alive.   

Later News

            I wrote the above four or five days ago.  I am writing this on Saturday 6^th September.  Yesterday afternoon we learned that a cease-fire has been agreed between the forces of the Kiev government and the pro-Russian rebels.  The ceasefire involves a cessation of hostilities, an exchange of prisoners and negotiations on a permanent peace based, almost exactly, on the suggestions made in the paragraph above that I have now italicised and emboldened.

            I am unreservedly thankful and very much hope that the cease-fire will hold* and that the negotiations will be successful.  The response from our government and NATO has been, to say the least, ungracious.  The increased sanctions against Russia will be put into effect and there’s to be a ‘rapid response force, stationed in Poland, ready to counter any ‘act of aggression’ on Russia’s part!   Do they really want a third world war?  I am beginning to wonder.

            What they should be doing is making sure that those Baltic countries ‘the west’ is so eager to protect – don’t deliberately provoke Russian action.  Estonia, where Barak Obama made a bellicose speech, has an ethnic Russian minority of 25 percent of the population.  That means that one quarter of the population use the Russian language and have a Russian culture.  Do we, before we make unreserved promises of protection, make sure that these Russian speakers are not treated as second class citizens?  Is Russian an official language?  There’s certainly nothing unprecedented about a country having more than one official language – Belgium, Switzerland, Wales and Canada for instance are just a few examples.

            We should also ask ourselves how we British would react if the Republic of Ireland or possibly an independent Scotland, entered into a hostile military alliance against us and had a ‘rapid response’ unit stationed within its borders as a defence against British aggression.  We do know how the USA would react.  In order to prevent a successful repetition of the ‘Bay of Pigs’ failed attempt at invasion from the USA, the Cuban Government invited the USSR to position missiles and their launchers on its territory.  The USA was so concerned about this that they were prepared to risk  a nuclear war to prevent it.  Fortunately Nikita Khruschev, the Soviet President, was not prepared to risk such a conflict and withdrew the missiles.  This was hailed as a great American victory – but it’s worth noting that there was no further attempt to invade Cuba from the USA!

            Blessed are the peace-makers………………for it is upon them (not on those who constantly prepare for war) that the survival of the human race depends

Monday - 8th September (7.55 a.m.)

            Yesterday there were reports of the cease-fire being broken - probably by both sides.  As I pointed out earlier in this blog, neither side has a monopoly of irresponsible idiots.  I switched on the TV for BBC's 7.00 am news bulletin with some trepidation.  Ukraine wasn't mentioned.  No doubt it will have been later on, but a major breach of the truce would surely have been given headline status.

                I'm still hoping, and praying, for peace.

Meanwhile – back in sunny Clacton-on-Sea…………………

,

          ………………..the political parties are getting ready for the unexpected by-election caused by Douglas Carswell's defection to UKIP, which we now know is to be held on 9^th October.   UKIP has the advantage of knowing for certain who is to be their candidate and beginning their cempaign early.   There’s no honour among thieves and, so it seems, precious little among Ukippers.  Douglas Carswell has deserted the political party that helped him win his seat in two general elections at just about the worst possible moment, publishing and distributing two self-advertising leaflets before announcing his defection. Local Ukippers have cast aside the local candidate they had democratically elected only a few weeks earlier, in favour of this defector from the Conservatives.  Mr Ling has not taken his sacking quietly.  He has resigned from UKIP, intends to resign his UKIP seat on Essex County Council and to take no further interest in politics.  Who can blame him?

            I have just received another circular and what appears to be a personal letter from Mr Carswell (but I bet dozens of people have received them!) in which he addresses me as ‘Dear Ernest’ – and I had no idea we were on first-name terms!

            I do think that the local Conservative Party has hit on a very good idea in having an unofficial ‘primary election’, even though it means that their election campaign will begin later than those of UKIP or the Lib.Dems.  .Local residents of any or no political persuasion are invited to a public meeting to help select the Party’s candidate from a short list of hopefuls who will briefly address the meeting and answer questions.  There’s also a questionnaire especially for those who won’t be attending this meeting.

            I won’t be going to the meeting and I won’t be filling in the questionnaire. To do either would give a false impression.  If I vote for the Conservative Candidate in the forthcoming by-election (which seems quite likely) it won’t be because I want him or her to be my representative in parliament.  It’ll be simply because I want to keep Douglas Carswell – or any other Ukipper - out!   The election of someone of another party (any other party) as an MP is likely to be the only way of ensuring that. So I shall vote for whoever has the best chance of defeating Douglas Carswell and that at the moment seems to be the Conservative, whoever he or she may be..

            

Week 21 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

Thursday’s Vote

          This Thursday (22^nd May 2014) is voting day for the European Parliamentary Elections.  Please don’t just yawn and ignore it.  The European Parliament is the one truly democratic institution of the European Union.  It is more democratic than our own parliament in Westminster since its members are elected by proportional representation instead of ‘first past the post’ as in UK parliamentary elections.  That means that every vote for any party can count.  It is impossible for a candidate to be elected by a minority of the electorate, as is possible in UK parliamentary elections..  It also means that minority parties’ voices are heard – in proportion to the number of electors who voted for them.

            That is why in European parliamentary elections we vote for the party rather than the individual candidate (though the names of the candidates from each party are listed).  That’s how it is that there are UKIP members of the European Parliament with no purpose other than to destroy the institution that made it possible for their voices to be heard!  It is true that, thanks to the determination of some national governments (including our own) to limit the European Parliament’s powers, these are not as wide and all-embracing as they should be.   However European parliamentary power is steadily increasing and will continue to do so if we, the electors, demand it.

The claim made by UKIP’s leader that 70 percent of British laws now come from the European Parliament is totally untrue. Although exposed as false in Radio 4’s More or Less programme on Friday 2^nd May, it continues to be quoted as a fact.

Our own European Constituency covers the whole of ‘Greater East Anglia’ and there are no less than nine parties hoping for seats.   They are ‘Independence from Europe’, ‘British National Party (BNP), Christian People’s Alliance, Conservatives, English Democrats’, ‘Labour’,’ Liberal Democrats’, NO2EU, and ‘Green’.

            Some of those parties you will never have heard of – and the chances are you’ll never hear of them again!  I think that those which may reasonably hope to secure enough votes to get at least one member from East Anglia in the European Parliament are Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP and Green.

            Many people who are entitled to vote are totally disillusioned with the main traditional parties.  Conservative policies have widened the gap between wealthy and poor that is, I believe, at the root of many of Britain’s troubles today.   They have run down our conventional armed forces that can have a peace-making and peace-keeping role (as well as being a disciplined force available to help with civil emergencies) while slavishly preserving our nuclear weapons and our Trident submarine fleet. These weapons and the submarine fleet have no purpose other than destroying our fellow men, women and children.  They have totally failed to deter the many acts of aggression, violence and terrorism that have sullied recent history.  If nuclear weapons were ever to be used it would probably herald the end of civilisation as we know it – possibly the extinction of human-kind.

            Sadly, Labour Governments have failed even to try to follow the lead of pioneers of the Labour Movement like Kier Hardy and George Lansbury.  In ten years of New Labour Government the gap between the incomes of the wealthiest and poorest actually increased.   They too are prepared to spend millions on a nuclear ‘ultimate deterrent’ that doesn’t deter!  Ramsey MacDonald is said to have failed because he was ‘dazzled by duchesses’.  Tony Blair and his New Labour colleagues have been ‘blinded by billionaires!’ and their policies are merely modifications of those of the Conservatives.

As for the Liberal Democrats.  There’s really no point in heeding any of their pre-election promises.  The issue of student fees has illustrated that they’ll abandon any of their high principles for the sake of a few seats in the government and the empty title of ‘Deputy Prime Minister. 

            No, I can’t summon up any enthusiasm for Conservatives, Labour or Lib.Dems.  Neither can thousands of others – many for quite different reasons than mine.    This disillusion could give UKIP its chance – Nigel Farage, its leader, is quite sure that it will.  I do urge readers of this blog not to let it. Apart from a determination to leave the EU nobody can be quite sure what UKIP’s policies are because its leader has disowned everything on its former manifesto.  Leaving the EU will not solve all, or any of Britain’s problems.  We are inextricably part of Europe, historically, geographically and economically.  The EU gives our exporters, of both goods and services a ‘level playing field’ in which to conduct their services.  Those ‘petty regulations’ that some find so irksome ensure the health and safety of all EU workers.   The countries of the EU are our biggest market. Of course we need to sell our goods and services elsewhere as well.  There is nothing that the EU does to prevent or discourage this.  Exporters are almost unanimous in their support of EU membership.  Leaving would cost thousands of jobs.  Is that really what we want?

            Apart from getting out of Europe the speeches of prominent Ukippers suggest  that, on the whole, they support the policies and the attitudes of the extreme right-wing of the Conservatives.  They don’t believe in man-made climate change and would stop the provision of wind turbines and solar farms.  They’d encourage ‘fracking’ -  provided it wasn’t carried out in their own back yard!  They’d permit fox-hunting again and allow smoking in pubs and public places where it is now forbidden.  Is that really what we want?

            Fortunately it is possible to react to disillusion with the main parties by voting for a party whose policies are almost the exact opposite of UKIP.   The Green Party, already a force to be reckoned with within Europe, and (unlike UKIP) with representation in our House of Commons, realizes that, unless we do something about it, climate change will destroy ‘the best-laid plans of mice, men’ and political parties.  Have we already forgotten the storms and devastating floods that caused such havoc in this country just a few months ago, the typhoons in the Philippines and the Indian sub-continent, the bush fires in Australia and the arctic conditions in the USA?  The policies of ‘the Greens’ give human-kind its best chance of survival.  They support continued membership of the EU because they realize that to be effective in protecting us from the worst effects of climate change, action needs to be taken on a regional and global level.

Polling day is on Thursday but thousands of us, who vote by post, have already voted.  I have, and I voted GREEN!   Those who wish their grand-children and great grand-children to inherit a world worth living in, will do the same!

Cause and Effect

The devastating mine disaster in a recently privatised coal mine in Turkey that claimed over 300 lives is a timely warning of the possible result of a free market economy, unfettered by the kind of ‘pettifogging health and safety provisions’ imposed by Brussels, from which Nigel Farage and, rather less stridently, David Cameron and George Osborne, are promising to free us!  It certainly does produce higher dividends for shareholders and encourage investment; tough about all the widows and orphans, but you can’t make omelettes……………

Green Party Policies

Since I wrote the above, the Green Party has launched its campaign for the European and local government elections.  Afterwards leader Natalie Bennet was interviewed by the BBC.  Below is the BBC report of that interview.

Speaking to the BBC after the campaign launch, Natalie Bennett said the party hoped to treble its number of MEPs to six, and would need a swing of just 1.6% to do so.  Even with a small number of representatives in the European Parliament, it is "possible to make a real difference" she continued, "as we have done on issues like bankers' bonuses, on fishing policy, on making Europe more friendly and more social".

The party aims to scrap tuition fees and prescription charges in England and Wales, increase child benefit, and renationalise the railways and energy companies These policies would be costed by the 2015 general election, she said, but the party was considering imposing a top rate of income tax of more than 50% on the highest earners"We need a society that works for the common good, not just the good of the few, which it does at the moment," Ms Bennett said. "We need real change in our society. It's working for the 1%, not the 99% of us. We need decent benefits, we need to make the minimum wage a living wage, and we need to insure that privatisation doesn't keep costing us an absolute fortune.  "What we need is for multinational companies, rich individuals, to be paying their taxes, which they're simply not doing at the moment."

Later, appearing on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Ms Bennett acknowledged that the Greens were "identified with" campaigns against the extraction of shale gas, or fracking. It was, she said, a "very uncertain industry that may very well not get off the ground", she added, and there is "massive and growing public resistance to it" with her party on the "front line" of protests against fracking.

Having read the above, I am now more than ever glad that I voted 'Green' in the European parliamentary elections.  Every one of those Green policies was among those that I included among my political aims a fortnight ago in this blog.

             

                                          

Week 19 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line          

‘Call the Midwife!’

          Clacton isn’t a town noted for its political activists and its violent (or even non-violent) marches and demonstrations. It is astonishing therefore that there were two protest marches, for the same cause, one on Saturday 26^th April and one on the following day. The cause was the hospital authority’s decision to close the Maternity Units in the Clacton-on-Sea and in Harwich and to concentrate maternity services in Colchester.   The reason is not because of shortage of midwives or other staff in either Clacton or Harwich – but because of a shortage of midwives in Colchester!   They need Clacton’s and Harwich’s midwives to make up the numbers.

            This is said to be a ‘temporary arrangement’ but we suspicious Clactonians suspect that it’s one of those ‘temporary arrangements’ that go on for longer than expected – until, in fact, everyone comes to accept them and it is then decided to make them permanent. `

            No-one likes to see a local service closed down and local people compelled to go further to a larger more distant centre, but the nature of the maternity service and the geographical situation of both Clacton and Harwich make it doubly undesirable in our Tendring district. A glance at a large-scale map of south-eastern East Anglia will make it clear that the Tendring peninsula is almost-an-island bounded by the estuaries of the rivers Stour and Colne, a relatively narrow isthmus extending from Colchester to Manningtree, and a wide length of coastline with the port of Harwich/Parkeston and the popular holiday seaside resorts of Dovercourt, Walton-on-the-Naze, Frinton-on-Sea, Holland-on-Sea, Clacton-on-Sea, Jaywick Sands, St Osyth and Brightingsea.

            The only road access is through that Colchester/Manningtree isthmus from which highways fan out to serve resorts which attract motorists from London, the Midlands and the whole of East Anglia to their safe, sandy beaches, seaside holiday attractions – and the lowest average annual rainfall in the United Kingdom!  It follows that throughout all the summer and at weekends in the spring and autumn (particularly bank holiday weekends) those roads are often clogged up with holiday traffic, sometimes reduced to a snail’s pace by sheer numbers, or by the occasional road accident.

            Tough on the mother in labour, perhaps with her first baby, stuck in a traffic jam somewhere between Clacton – or Harwich – and Colchester!  I don’t suppose that the time-and-motion experts who calculated that under ‘normal circumstances’ neither journey should take much more than half an hour, even thought about that.  Babies in a hurry to be born know nothing about normal circumstances, holiday traffic or traffic jams.

            I’m not surprised that Clactonians have protested, marched and demonstrated against this stupid and thoughtless decision of the hospital authorities.  Why though were there two almost identical marches with two lots of protesters?   The Saturday march was the Conservative march, organised and led by Conervative Tendring District Council.  The Sunday march was the Labour march and was organised by the local Labour Party and led by the prospective Labour candidate Tim Young..  The closure of Clacton and Harwich’s maternity units is not a political issue.  Gilbert and Sullivan wrote in one of their comic operas ‘Every little man-child that is born alive is either a little Liberal or a little Conservative’.  Luckily they don’t know that and, luckily or not, nowadays it isn’t only male babies involved, nor is it limited to just two parties.

            I think it a great pity that the two main parties hadn’t got together for a united protest march, thus demonstrating that compassion and common sense aren’t the sole prerogative of one party, and that they can unite when the occasion demands it.  They might have persuaded some of the others to join in – the Lib-Dems, the Greens and the Ukippers (I’m sure they’re convinced that it’s all the fault of ‘Brussels’) might well have joined them!

Those Market Forces

            I don’t like living in a society with an economy reliant on Market Forces.  I believe   that co-operation is better than competition, that we shouldn’t all be trying to get as much as we can for as little as we can get away with, and that we shouldn’t need to follow the advice to ‘shop around’ and change our power supplier, our banker, our savings account, whenever it may seem that it would pay us to do so. Old people - and there are a lot of us in this area - don't like unnecessary change. The cheapest is rarely the best and the supplier or the banker may change his charges as soon as you put your phone down. In the 17^th and 18^th century Quaker businessmen – grocers, brewers, bankers, manufacturers – made their fortunes by declining to yield to market forces.  They bought in or made the products they sold, added just sufficient to make themselves a reasonable living and stuck to that price and to that quality of goods.  Quaker businesses may not always have sold the cheapest goods but customers could be quite sure that they hadn’t been watered down or adulterated, that the price wouldn’t be put up if there were to be a sudden shortage and  that there would be no hidden ‘extra charges’.   That policy benefited both the buyer and the seller.

            Oscar Wilde once defined a cynic as someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.  The ethics of the market place have made us a nation of cynics.   We’re interested only in prices.  The only ‘value’ market traders recognise is the highest price that goods or services can command at any given time ‘in the open market’.   A diamond ring commands a higher price than a shovel (though there are situations in which a shovel could save your life and a diamond ring would have no value whatsoever), and a merchant banker (a money lender) can demand a higher price for his services than a brain surgeon!

            Market prices depend upon supply and demand.  Increase the demand for any desirable product without increasing its supply will raise that product’s price as surely as night follows day. 

            It was this axiom that made me predict confidently in this blog that the government’s help to buy scheme for would-be house buyers would have the effect of raising house prices.  You will recall that a major factor in the creation of the financial crisis from which we hope we are now emerging, was the unwise lending of large sums of money for the purchase of homes.  Because there were not enough homes for hopeful would-be purchasers to buy, the price went up…and up, until it toppled over.

            Many house-buyers had taken on a debt they couldn’t hope to pay off.  Hundreds were rendered homeless and lenders were left with bad debts that could have rendered them bankrupt had the government not bailed them out – with our money!

            Determined not to make the same mistake again, banks and building societies increased the deposit they required from would-be buyers to as much as 25 percent of the price of the property, effectively putting home ownership out of the reach of most first-time buyers.  However David Cameron and George Osborne, determined to pursue the chimera of ‘a nation of home-owners’ introduced their ‘help to buy’ scheme which offered an additional loan to help with that deposit so that the initial sum required by the house-purchaser would be no more than 5 percent of the price of the property.

            This has had two totally predictable effects. Demand for homes once more greatly exceeds supply and – as I had foreseen – house prices are again rising well ahead of general inflation.  The other effect is that the government has, by guaranteeing most of the required deposit, taken on a debt that the professional money lenders had thought was too risky – and, without consulting the electorate – has done so with taxpayers’ money!   This has clearly worried the professionals and they are now asking would-be borrowers a series of very intrusive questions before they will arrange a mortgage. ‘How much do they spend on holidays, on dining out, on alcohol, on entertaining, on children’s education and other financial commitments, and how they would manage their mortgage repayments if – or rather when - interest rates rise?

            The best response?  It’s surely to accept that home ownership is not everybody’s obvious choice.  Repeal the ‘Right to Buy’ legislation and encourage local authorities to build homes for letting as they did for a century before the advent of Margaret Thatcher – and allow those same authorities to allocate those homes as they think best.  In a word; to restore some of the democratic local decision making that is an important aspect of the ‘localism’ to which the government pays lip-service but has been systematically destroying since taking office.

Week 42 2013

Tendring Topics……on line

Syria – a Glimmer of Hope.

            Greek mythology has it that when Pandora opened the forbidden box (rather as, in Hebrew mythology, Eve ate the forbidden fruit) all the evils of the world escaped to plague mankind – greed, cruelty, hatred, death, famine and disease.   Right at the end, when the box had seemed to be empty, came hope – and, in the face of every disaster, hope has remained with humankind ever since.

            The Middle East and in particular Syria has had a surfeit of all those evils during the past two years.  Armed rebellion against the regime of President Assad, and the resistance to it of forces loyal to the President, have brought death and destruction on an unprecedented scale to that unhappy country.  Thousands have been killed or mutilated, thousands more – refugees from death and violence - have been rendered homeless and have sought shelter either in their own or neighbouring countries.  The situation has been made worse by foreign interference.  Britain, France and the USA have joined Saudi Arabia and other Arabian Peninsula states (unlikely champions of freedom, tolerance and democracy!) in supporting the rebels, while Russia and Iran support the Syrian government.  Surely non-one can possibly imagine that ‘victory’ for either side can justify the carnage and destruction of this Civil War made even worse by the use of chemical weapon attacks, for which both sides claim their opponents were responsible.

            The glimmer of hope appeared when, after a particularly appalling chemical weapons attack the USA, convinced that the Syrian Government had been responsible, threatened missile strikes on government targets.  The Syrian Government declared that they were not responsible for that outrage, but that they were prepared to surrender all their chemical weapons to the United Nations for destruction.  There was considerable scepticism in London and Washington about the genuineness of this offer – and anger from the rebels and their Arab (Sunni Muslim) allies who had hoped that missile strikes from the U.S. would give them a decisive advantage.

            But, confounding the sceptics, the Syrian government has given the United Nations’ inspectors all the access they demanded, and destruction of these dreadful weapons has begun.  The civil war with conventional weapons (and heaven knows they are terrible enough!) rages on, but the Russian Government is urging that both sides should be brought together at a Peace Conference to be held in November.

            There surely lies at least the hope of peace.  I have little doubt that the Russian Government will be able to coerce the Syrian Government into attending the Conference prepared to compromise, but will the rebels be ready to do the same?   They consist of a number of quite separate groups sometimes (so it is reported) fighting among themselves and with quite different objectives. Those enjoying the support of ‘the west’ believe they are fighting for a new democratic and tolerant secular state in which Sunni and Shia Muslims will live at peace with each other and with Christians.  It seems quite likely that they would be prepared to compromise to reach agreement with the Government in the interest of peace and reconciliation.

 How about the fervent jihadists, some of them members or supporters of Al Qaida? They are determined to turn Syria into their own kind of Muslim state enforcing their interpretation of Sharia law and tolerating neither ‘infidels’ nor Muslims of other traditions.  These are the people who massacred the Pakistani Christians in Peshawa; who shot sixteen year old Malala, the heroic Pakistani girl who campaigned for girls’ education; who punish ‘unchaste’ women by burying them to their waists and then throwing stones at them until a merciful death releases them. 

They may be in a minority among the rebels but I fear that because of their determination, their conviction that God is on their side, and their willingness to die (and to kill!) for their cause, their will is likely to prevail.  I wish I could imagine them reaching a compromise agreement with the Syrian government – and keeping it!

We can only hope – and pray.  The God revealed to us in Jesus Christ loves all his human children – Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists; even those who deny his existence.  I believe though that there may be just one human action, the ultimate blasphemy, that always provokes God’s wrath.  That is deliberately harming a fellow human being – and claiming that it is being done in his service!

             ‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways’

                                                  John Greenleaf Whittier, 19^th Century American Poet and Quaker

A 21^st Century Heroine

          Mention of Pakistani teenager Malala above reminded me of the thought-provoking Panorama programme on BBC tv on Monday evening 7^th October, in which she and her family were interviewed about the attempted assassination that brought her to the front pages of the world’s press – and, thanks to British surgery, her almost miraculous recovery.

            I presume that English is not Malala’s first language yet this unassuming sixteen-year-old spoke fluently and eloquently in English of her campaign, in defiance of death threats, to be educated herself and to achieve education for girls world-wide.  To silence her, a Taliban assassin had boarded a school bus and shot her twice in the head.  Thanks to the fact that she had been immediately rushed to her local hospital and thence to Britain for extensive surgery she had lived to tell the tale.  Now, with the full support of her family, she  is determined to continue her campaign for girls to have the same right as boys to a proper education.

What a contrast between this Pakistani teenager who fought, and is fighting, against tremendous odds, for education for herself and others and the many British children who have to be bribed (sorry ‘offered incentives’) to get to school regularly, who do not value education for themselves and who, by disruptive behaviour, do their best to deny it to others!

Just the day after that Panorama programme we learned that a world-wide survey of standards of literacy and numeracy among young people between the ages of 16 and 24 had revealed that British young people within that age-group had come near the bottom!  How sad it is that oldies like me are not greatly surprised.

A Glad Farewell to Party Conferences

          I am glad that the political party conferences are over.  I find listening to top politicians, whichever party they support, is a depressing experience. One regular blog reader who emailed me after the Conservative Conference seemed even more angry than I was – perhaps he had paid more attention than me!

            ‘I really don’t think even Mrs Thatcher so skilfully turned public opinion against one minority after another, blaming each for our economic woes.  It has been the migrants, the not-so-disabled, the subsidised tenants, the ones with subsidised bedrooms, and now the 200,000 ‘life style choice’ claimants who have been unemployed for more than 2 years.  And each pronouncement has been lapped up by a willing public and press eager to find someone else to blame.  No attempt to explain how any of these issues could possibly have caused the economic crisis.  It is really easy to see how easily Hitler was able to use the same tactics to turn a nation against the Jews!  And there were the pre-conference announcements that “we don’t need to be at the forefront of green energy, and it is adding too much to fuel bills and – we are minded to block all future land wind farms” (which are actually the cheapest form of green energy), on the very day that the worlds scientific community warned of the consequences of climate change.

I felt that the Conferences of all three main parties reinforced my conviction that they really all have the same policy –  to get elected at all costs and to remain in office as long as they can persuade a gullible electorate to let them. Gone are the days of conviction politics – when political parties had fairly clearly defined final objectives and devoted their efforts to persuading the public that those objectives were desirable and attainable, and that they were the ones who could achieve them.  Nowadays not even the Mail and the Express ever refer to the Labour Party as Socialists.  Nor can the Conservatives claim to be ‘conservative’. Mrs Thatcher’s governments made more revolutionary changes to the British way of life than any of her predecessors or successors.  It was under her governments that we lost our manufacturing base and became reliant on ‘service industries’ (money lending, share juggling and the like), and the policy of wholesale privatisation began. Our efforts were to become directed towards satisfying the shareholders rather than serving the public.

An exception is sadly the one Party whose policies I believe to be totally mischievous and, if they were implemented, disastrous. UKIP has one principal aim; to get the UK out of the European Union.  It is obvious to me that the United Kingdom, on its own, cannot hope to compete or to co-operate effectively with other world political or economic blocs.  As an active part of a more closely integrated European Union we could do either or both.  Europe is the biggest recipient of our exports.  We are Europeans – geographically, historically and culturally.  Of course the EU is imperfect – but its imperfections are largely due to the determination of individual states to pursue their own short-term interests rather than those of Europe as a whole.  The EU is not some alien and hostile state.  We are an important part of it. We have helped to create it and make it what it is. We, if we summon the will to do so, can perfect it.  For all our sakes I pray that we will not fall for the Neo-Fascist nationalist charms of Nigel Farage and his disciples.  Their policies, including that of a rapid exit from Europe, are simply those of the ‘raving right’ of the Conservative Party.  If that is really what we want, I am glad that at 92 I am unlikely to have to live under the UKIP/Conservative coalition government that I can see on the not-so-distant horizon..

.