Post Script 1

POSTSCRIPT

Little Royal Nazis?   What rubbish!

            When, a few weeks ago, I wrote my farewell bog, it was my firm intention never to blog again.  I was old, my ideas were stale and I wasn’t expressing them half as effectively as once I did.  In short I was a now senile and decrepit early twentieth century man who had somehow made it to the twenty-first century but who didn’t fit in with the spirit of today’s ‘brave new world’

Oscar Wilde once remarked that he could resist anything except temptation and one or two recent events have tempted me to write at least one postscript to my blog series.  Although many of my views have been described as ‘way out left’ and I am now a member of the Green Party I am not, and never have been, a republican. I think that there is a lot to be said for having a Head of State who is outside party politics, is trained from childhood to be a constitutional monarch and who, even before the coronation, is likely to be more knowledgeable about our government and constitution  than any of the here-today-and-gone-tomorrow Prime Ministers who will form a government during his or her reign.

Scandinavian Royal style.  The Queen of Denmark  arrives in London for the Olympic Games.  Photo by my elder son Pete.

I can’t think of any way of achieving this surely desirable end other than by a hereditary constitutional monarchy.  I would prefer our monarchy to be more in the Scandinavian style but perhaps something on those lines will evolve.

I was both angry and contemptuous when I learned that the Sun had used on its front page photographs taken in 1933 of the children of the Royal Family, and their mother, giving the outstretched arm Nazi salute.   I was around in 1933 (an enquiring lad of twelve), which I am quite sure can not be said of either the editor or the owner of the Sun. We had all seen Hitler and the Nazi salute in the newspapers or on the brief cinema newsreels (there was, of course, no tv in those days) and most of us thought that Hitler looked like Charlie Chaplin and that all the heel clicking and saluting was just plain daft.  We practised the Nazi salute and one or two of us even tried goose-stepping!  It was just a laugh. We were taking the mickey. 

 It could be that that is just what those young royals were doing back in 1933.   It was unfortunate that someone had a good camera available at the time.  It was a family photo that the Sun has obtained (by bribery or the proceeds of a theft?  We’ll probably never know) and used to try to undermine trust in the Royal Family.  In 1933 no-one (certainly no-one in our government) foresaw the potential for evil in Adolf Hitler.  Nor, I think did anyone in the press.  Those who did not regard Hitler as a joke, saw in him a politician who was different and would pull Germany together, defeat the communists (they were seen as a much bigger threat than the Fascists and Nazis) and with whom Britain could negotiate with confidence.

I think that it is significant that the owner and ultimate controller of the Sun and other newspapers, radio and tv enterprises, all of which help to mould public opinion, is a former Australian, now USA, citizen who owes and shows no loyalty to the United Kingdom, its constitution and its traditions.  He is the   head of a ‘news’ organisation that is best known for its phone hacking, its obtrusive pursuit and harassment of its victims (who can be any of us), and its bribery of public officials – all of which activities are said to be in exercise of ‘the freedom of the press’; a strange ‘freedom’ that involves control by a foreign multi-millionaire.

I find it strange that Rupert Murdoch is permitted to reside in the UK and even stranger that so many top politicians fraternise with him and seek his favours.  One who, very honourably, declined to do so was Prime Minister John Major – who subsequently suffered at the hands of the Murdoch press.  Among the latest to seek his company and his favour has been Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP.  They have in common a determination to prevent the UK from ever becoming part of a European Federation.  I wonder if both, or either, would be equally determined to keep the UK independent of Federation with the USA – with the ‘A’ tactfully altered to be the initial of ‘Atlantic’ rather than ‘America’?

More of Rupert’s malign influence?

            Among the emails urging me not to give up writing my blog was one from a regular blog reader expressing his concern about the government’s apparent determination to change, or even destroy, the BBC as we know it.   Urging them on in this enterprise are, of course, the BBC’s commercial rivals, prominent among them Mr Rupert Murdoch of Sky tv as well as a number of newspapers.  Below are extracts from my correspondent’s email;

            Literally every day more reports are leaked to undermine the BBC. A Parliamentary Committee has been appointed with a specific brief to investigate and make recommendations about the future role of the BBC. More than half the people nominated to this Committee have previously made public statements about how the BBC needs to be scaled back, or the licence fee should be abolished. And on top of that, they are clearly briefing papers like the Times with more details of their “thinking”, suggesting that the BBC is “too popular” and that they shouldn’t be doing successful programmes with high audiences, and they should not be running such an extensive web site, and they shouldn’t be attempting to cover all of the News in it, and some of the money for the Licence fee (if it continues at all) should be given to other providers, not just the BBC. They have called the Licence Fee “a regressive Tax” – (so unlike their other taxes).  Oh, and ministers saying the BBC Commission is “not fit for purpose” (always a prelude to scrapping something) because of “the Saville scandal and the pay-offs to senior staff who were made redundant”. Clearly it  would be better for them to discredit and then abolish the Commission first, because last time they threatened to axe part of the licence fee, the entire Commission threatened to resign in protest – probably never been forgiven for that piece of insurgency.

Some people are  baffled by all this – thinking that everyone liked the BBC and would be pleased that Strictly and Masterchef were runaway successes and that all the news and cooking recipes were published for free on the web site.  I have been trying to explain to them the Right Wing thinking on all of this. First of all, the BBC is making programmes which conflict with the financial interests of Tory Party donors. Secondly they are giving the News and cooking recipes away for free, when others are trying to make money out of them. Thirdly, the Licence Fee is a sort of compulsory subscription, and poor families who have to find £140 a year for the Licence fee may not then be able or willing to buy a subscription to Sky on top of that. And lastly, from the viewpoint of the average Tory back bencher, an “unbiased BBC” which investigates climate change, tries to find the root causes of the migration, tries to explain what cuts in Welfare actually mean, suggests that not many people would actually benefit from reduced Inheritance tax comes over as rampant socialism to them.

 The Friends of Widows and Orphans?

Among the promises that helped the Conservatives to win the May General Election were measures aimed at helping widows and orphans – well, if not actually always widows and orphans those who were left after a house-owner’s death.  There were two measures promised; No inheritance tax (death duties) would be payable on the death of the owner of a property valued at less than a million pounds.   There are more of those than you might imagine – and anyone affected who wasn’t already a Conservative supportet could reasonably be expected to vote to secure a Conservative victory and the honouring of that promise.

The other promise affected a great many more people, including myself.  Folk nearing the end of their lives and needing local authority care, had to pay for that care unless they had very little savings and did not own a property that could be sold to raise the necessary cash.  This meant that many modest family homes had to be sold to pay for the care needed by the owner during his or her final years. Home owners were unable to pass on their most valuable asset to their sons and grandchildren.  The government was to put a cap (I think it was £75,000) on the amount that someone in care could be required to pay.  The family home might still have to be sold but the home-owner’s heirs might, at least, receive a worth-while legacy.

Well, the Conservatives did win the election though (I’m glad to say) without my vote.  Guess what?   They’re implementing at once that freedom from inheritance tax on homes valued at less than a million pounds.   And the cap on those in receipt of care?   Oh yes, they’re going to apply it – but not for another couple of years.

Well, I’m 94 and have stayed out of care so far.   It looks as though, if my heirs are to inherit my modest bungalow, I must try to stay out of the clutches of the official carers for at least another couple of years – or ‘pop my clogs’ without too much further delay!.   

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 23 2014

Tendring Topics……on line

‘The Lights are going out all over Europe………’

          So said Lord Grey, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, as World War I broke out.  I had much the same sinking feeling and presage of doom as the results of the recent European Parliamentary Elections became known.  The voters of practically every one of the EU’s member states had expressed at the polling booths their dissatisfaction at the performance and progress of the institution from which some of us had hoped for so much.

            Extremism triumphed.  Mostly, as in the UK and in France, it was right-wing extremism reminiscent of the nationalism that spawned Fascism and Nazism in Europe in the 1930s.  Nigel Farage took over a small fringe political party and, by finding appropriate scapegoats and urging immediate extreme action to deal with one or two issues that were causing public concern, he transformed it into a political force that seems unstoppable.  It reminded me of Hitler’s takeover of the well-meaning but slightly batty National Socialist German Workers Party and transforming it into the brown shirted,  jack-booted, ruthless and all-conquering Nazis.

            Hitler’s scapegoats for Germany’s defeat in World War I and all the country’s post-war problems were ‘The Jews’ and ‘the Bolsheviks’.  Nigel Farage’s scapegoats for all the UKs 21^st Century problems are ‘the European Union’ and ‘the immigrants’.  Nigel Farage has an advantage over Hitler in that he has an engaging man-of-the-people personality.   He enjoys a pint and a fag and he doesn’t 'talk posh' in meaningless platitudes like most other politicians.  On the surface he‘s ‘one of us’ – an ordinary bloke who believes in straight talking and calling a spade a spade even if it’s sometimes not ‘politically correct’; a politician for those who thought they detested all politicians!

            Well, I have come to distrust all politicians. I am sure that David Cameron and George Osborne do what they believe is best for the country – which means to them best for the seriously wealthy.   ‘If they’re getting richer the whole country’s getting richer.  Prosperity ‘trickles down’ to the lower classes’. I did fall for Nick Clegg’s rhetoric before the last general election; never again!  As for Ed Miliband – surely the Daily Mail’s dubbing him ‘Red Ed’ must be ironic. The 19^th and 20^th century pioneers of the Labour Movement would see him as about as ‘red’ as a pale pink blancmange!

            Perhaps things aren’t quite as hopeless as I fear. UKIP made little progress in the north-east and in Scotland, and actually lost ground in London.  Essex – my county – is where they did best.  The only two policies on which all Ukippers are agreed is getting out of the EU (Why bother with a referendum? – We know what ‘the people’ want!) and drastically cutting immigration.

 Funny thing – Ukippers don’t seem to be bothered by the fact that the progress of privatisation of public services means that more and more of them are coming under the control of foreign shareholders, nor about the fact that popular and influential newspapers and radio and tv services, moulders of public opinion, are owned and controlled by wealthy, often foreign, individuals.  I’d have expected that to be anathema to people who really valued the UKs independence.  What about NATO and the ‘special relationship’? Ukippers worry themselves to death about trivial decisions taken in Brussels.  Decisions costing us billions of pounds and hundreds of British lives are similarly taken in Washington.

Sometime between now and the next General Election UKIP will have to make up its mind about its policy on a great many issues other than ‘Europe’ and ‘immigration’ – education, the health service, social services, tax policy and so on.  As they reveal their position on these issue some, perhaps a great deal, of their support is likely to fade away.  Their deputy leader, for instance, would like to see more of the NHS privatised.   There’s talk of a flat-rate tax; another 'poll tax'?  Such hard-right measures such as these will surely alienate Labour, Lib. Dem and at least some of the Conservative voters who have defected to UKIP. 

It wasn’t only UKIP that came well out of the European Parliamentary Election.  I supported – and urged others to support – the Green Party as an alternative to the traditional parties. The Greens offered the promise of a better country, and a better Europe for all, not just for a wealthy minority.  They are a small party without the funds of UKIP who, in this area, managed to leaflet the electorate both at the beginning of the election campaign to catch the postal voters and, at the last minute, to catch the undecided.  UKIP was the only party to do that.

The Greens are still a small Party but they have one MP at Westminster (which is one more than UKIP has!) and, while they previously had only one member from the UK in the European Parliament they now have three!  There, they will join Green EMPs from other EU countries to make sure that the Green Voice is heard, and join in alliance with other parties over matters of mutual concern.   The Greens were, for example, active in the campaign to limit the bonuses paid to bankers within the EU.  Considering the general outrage within the UK about these bonuses, it seems almost incredible that our government opposed that measure. But they did!

Say not ‘the struggle naught availeth

The labour and the wounds are vain;

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been, they remain’

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars,

Perhaps by yonder smoke concealed,

Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,

And but for you, possess the field!

For though the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain;

Far back, through creek and inlet making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main

                                                                            Arthur Clough (mid-Victorian poet)

 An Insane Law?

‘INSANE LAW’  To boot mum from the UK says headline in the ‘Clacton Gazette’  ‘Please don’t take me away from my family’, pleads Clacton housewife fearing deportation.

          Thirty-two year old Mrs Christine North was born in Germany of a German mother and an English service-man father.  She moved with her mum into a British Army base when she was just six months old, attended an English School on the base and moved to England with her mum and step-dad, another British soldier, when she was seven years old.

She grew up, married an English husband, has two children and has lived in Clacton-on-Sea for a quarter of a century!  She has a National Insurance number, has twice served on a jury (that’s something I have never done!) and claims to have voted in every election since she was eighteen.  Her ‘Britishness’ has never been questioned and probably never would have been had she and her family not decided last year to take a holiday in France.  When she applied for a passport it was discovered that her German mother’s name was on her birth certificate but not that of her British father.

Technically, so it seemed, she was not British but German.  Could she be deported and separated from her family?   Was it possible that she could be prosecuted for claiming this, that or the other benefit to which only British citizens are entitled. Somebody has clearly warned her that this could happen  MP Douglas Carswell has taken up her case and says that he has written to Home Secretary Teresa May ‘in the strongest terms possible’  but received, only ‘flat bureaucratic replies saying rules are rules’.

I don’t believe that there is the least danger of her being deported and separated from her family.  Even convicted terrorists are able to avoid deportation by claiming their ‘human right’ to a normal family life.  What’s more, EU rules (that Mr Carswell would like to abolish!) give Germans, as citizens of the European Union, every right to live in Britain if they wish to do so.  As for prosecution; clearly Mrs North had no fraudulent intention and I don’t believe for one moment that she would be prosecuted.

As Teresa May is alleged to have said rules are rules. The obvious solution is for Mrs North now to apply for British Citizenship for which she certainly has an overwhelming case, for our MP to use every ounce of whatever influence he may possess to expedite the process, and for those who wish Mrs North well to assist with whatever cost this may involve.

          This is surely a saga that can- and will – have a happy ending.