21st April 2015

Tendring Topics……..on line

I’m not alone!

            I had begun to think that I was a solitary voice crying in the wilderness in my dislike of ‘right to buy'  and, if the Conservatives win the general election, its progression from the tenants of local authorities to those of Housing Associations.  However I was pleased to read in the Church Times that Dr. David Walker, Bishop of Manchester, has condemned it as making economic nonsense and being morally indefensible.   David Orr, Chief Executive Officer of the National Housing Federation also describes the extension of ‘right to buy’ to tenants of Housing Associations as fundamentally the wrong answer to our country’s housing problems since it involves the transfer of large sums of money to private individuals who are already some of the best and most cheaply housed people in the country.   Furthermore, he says that it is completely unfair to the tens of thousands of tenants of private landlords who haven’t the remotest possible of ever becoming home owners. 

            With the general election coming ever nearer I might be asked, and I have indeed asked myself, why – since I am so strongly opposed to the present coalition government – I don’t wholeheartedly support the Labour Party, which is the only political force with a realistic possibility of replacing them.

            The reason is that there are a few political objectives about which I feel strongly.  My support, little and feeble as it may be, goes to any party that shares those objectives.

            I believe very strongly that the enormous gap between the incomes of the very wealthiest and the poorest in our country is scandalous – the largest in Europe and one of the largest in the developed world.   Its narrowing should be a government priority.

            During the decade of Labour rule that gap widened and Ed Miliband’s Labour Party has no plans to use income tax, or any other effective means, to narrow it.

            Compelling local authorities and/or Housing Associations to sell dwellings to sitting tenants at discounted prices is a betrayal of earlier and wiser generations who provided those homes for letting to eliminate homelessness, overcrowding and sub-standard housing.  ‘Right to buy’ should be repealed as a major cause of our present housing crisis.

            New Labour failed to repeal ‘right to buy’ when it had the opportunity to do so and Ed Miliband has actually apologised for the Labour Party’s earlier opposition to its introduction.

The possession of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, does not protect our country from attack any more than carrying a knife protects an individual.  It might encourage any ill-disposed country, or terrorist group, possessing similar weapons to use them against us before we had a chance to use ours. The threat of using nuclear weapons is only effective if we are in fact prepared to use them.   If we ever did so we would be guilty of mass murder and possibly responsible for a chain of events that could result in the extinction of the human race.  We should cease our reliance on nuclear weapons as an ‘ultimate deterrent’ and disarm our Trident Nuclear Submarine fleet.  Reliance on Nuclear Defence has been rightly described as Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD!

Meanwhile, the coalition government has run down our regular army which can be used for genuine ‘defence’ as distinct from acts of vengeance, for peacekeeping, and for replacing ‘outsourced’ private enterprises, when they fail to fulfil the public services for which they have been contracted.  Where would we have been had the army not been available to replace the firm that had contracted to provide security for the Olympics and had failed to do so?

David Cameron has announced that a future Conservative Government would replace the existing ageing Trident Submarine fleet with four new state-of-the-art nuclear submarines costing billions of pounds.   Ed Miliband has been at pains to assure the electorate that he would not oppose this.

I believe that a responsible government needs to carry out a thorough review of Britain’s foreign policy, beginning with referendums on our membership of NATO and our ‘special relationship’ with the USA.  These have resulted in our blindly following the American lead into the illegal invasion of Iraq (into which we were led by deliberate lies about Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and its complicity with the outrage of ‘9/11’) and the unwinnable war in Afghanistan, despite our experience of failure in similar wars in that country in the 19^th century!  We have not had reciprocal support from the USA, particularly in the recovery of the Falklands from invasion by Argentina.

More recently, while our EU partners are struggling with the Kiev government, the Russian government and the Ukrainian rebels to secure a lasting peace in Ukraine, our coalition government has given, and is giving, military support to the Kiev government – a government that has lied repeatedly to obtain NATO support, has ruthlessly shelled its own people, and has driven over a million Ukrainians into seeking refuge in Russia.

It might have been expected that UKIP, claiming to be fighting for the UK’s independence, would have agreed with my ideas for a radical revision of Britain’s foreign policy..  It seems though that they’re happy enough having our foreign and defence policies dictated by foreigners from across the Atlantic.

 I have never trusted Nigel Farage whose meteoric rise to fame reminds me too much of Adolf Hitler’s rise in Germany in the late 1920s and early ‘30s.  I hadn’t realized though until the election campaigns got into their stride that he was campaigning under false colours.   Ukip, under Nigel Farage, isn’t battling for UK Independence.  He and his disciples just want to sever our connection with Europe to which we are linked by geography, history and culture, and to the European Union in which Britain has an equal and influential voice..  If they were honest they’d just describe themselves as Europhobes.

Finally, and perhaps most important of all, I’d like the new government to accept the need for early and decisive action to combat and alleviate the effects of the global climate change that is taking place before our eyes. Already we have seen unprecedented drought and bush fires in Australia and parts of the USA. There has also been severe coastal flooding in parts of the USA and a period of unseasonably arctic conditions extending from Canada almost as far as Florida.  Island nations in the Pacific, and parts of the Indian subcontinent have been threatened with extinction. Even in the equable UK there are many households still suffering from the effects of last year’s floods in Somerset and in the Thames valley.

Nigel Farage denies that unprecedented climate change is taking place or – if it is - that human activity has any responsibility for causing it.  Given the opportunity he’d stop all government financial support for wind farms and solar farms.  He’d encourage the extraction of every last ton of coal from British coalfields and the last barrel of oil from our inland and off-shore oil reserves.  He’d tear up the British countryside by ‘fracking’ gas or oil from the beds of shale deep below our feet.

The other party leaders have more respect for the urgent warnings of scientists world-wide and for the need to take urgent action in the face of otherwise inevitable catastrophe.  Both David Cameron and Ed Miliband, on one or other of whom prompt action surely depends, are aware of this.  Both are fully determined to take resolute action…….but not just yet.  Only in the Green Party’s election literature has the threat of climate change featured prominently.   Only the Green Party shares the concerns that are important to me. In Clacton’s by-election I voted tactically for the Conservative Candidate because I thought he had the best chance of defeating the turn-coat former Conservative now Ukipper, Douglas Carswell, who was in fact elected.  For the General Election I shall follow the advice that I quoted in this blog a week or so ago, given by Polonius to his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, ‘This above all, to thine own self be true and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not  then be false to any man’.

I shall vote for Chris Southall, the Green candidate.   He is a local man, living with his family in Burrs Road He is a trained engineer and has been self-employed for most of his life, working as a potter, computer engineer, drummer and with people with special needs.  He has been both a school governor and a parish councillor.  Chris practises what he preaches.  He and his family live in an ‘Eco house’ with a Permaculture Land Centre that is sometimes open to the public. 

He may be unlikely to win the election but a vote for him is not a vote wasted. My vote, together with those of all who vote Green at the General Election, will give national politicians an idea of the growing number of folk in the UK who care passionately about world peace, fairness and justice, and the future of the world in which we live.

            Voting for the whole of Tendring District Council will take place on the same day as the General Election.  In my (Alton Park) ward I have a choice between two Labour and Co-op, two Conservative, and two UKIP candidates.  I shall vote for the Labour and Co-op hopefuls, more in the hope of keeping the Ukippers and the Tories out than of getting those for whom I am voting in!

           

             

              

             

           

           

             

11th April 2015

Tendring Topics……..on line

Oh to be a Non.Dom – in a new Financial Year!

          After I took early retirement from Tendring Council’s service in 1980 I earned a considerable income from freelance writing.  I wrote and had published five commercially successful books on domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage.   I wrote the plumbing section of a number of d-i-y manuals including the ‘Readers Digest Householders’ Manual’.   I wrote and sold dozens of feature articles to magazines and periodicals on domestic hot water supply and drainage, on local government, on camping and caravanning in the UK and mainland Europe and on any other subject about which I had at least some knowledge and experience.  For several years I wrote Advertising Features for Essex County Newspapers, and for ‘Look East,’ a publication promoting commerce and industry in East Anglia.  I also wrote a weekly column, ‘Tendring Topics’ for the Coastal Express’ for twenty-three years.  

  Some of this work was for overseas publishers.  I remember writing about Dedham’s and Harwich’s association with the USA and about the historic village of Bosham near Chichester, one-time home  of both King Canute and the ill-fated King Harold killed at the Battle of Hastings, for a magazine for retired citizens of New England.  I had a lucrative arrangement with an Australian publisher who sought permission to print articles of mine that had already appeared in Do-it-Yourself Magazine in England.

I declared every penny I earned, including those from overseas, to Inland Revenue and I claimed reasonable expenses.  I paid quite a lot (by my standards) of income tax each year.  I didn’t complain.  I enjoyed what I was doing and the tax was only a fraction of my income.

I would have been a lot less happy had I realized that there was a privileged minority of very wealthy people who paid no income tax on money that they received from overseas.  They were the ‘non-doms’ whose ‘domicile’ was said to be elsewhere than in the UK.  It seems that ‘non-dom’ status can be inherited and that having a clever lawyer is much more important than where you or your parents actually live or may sometime have lived.

Now it’s one of the issues that may affect voting in the general election.  Ed Miliband says that if he becomes Prime Minister his government will abolish ‘non-dom’ status altogether.  Apparently though the shadow chancellor has said that to do so would bring in very little extra revenue, and Ed Miliband’s political opponents claim that it would lead to all these wealthy and talented ‘non-doms’ leaving the country and domiciling themselves elsewhere.

It is a sad reflection on the zeitgeist of our wonderful ‘free market’ society that discussion about ‘non-dom’ status has been solely concerned with whether or not the Treasury would benefit from its abolition.  I have heard no-one say that it is clearly wrong for a privileged minority of very wealthy individuals to be exempt from taxation to which ordinary ‘hard-working tax-payers’ (about whom David Cameron claims to be so concerned) are subject.  Morality, it seems, has nothing to do with it.

United Kingdom Independence………but from whom?

It is always interesting to hear what Nigel Farage has to say about any subject other than the European Union.  Recently he was discussing Britain’s defence policy and I was just a little surprised to hear him say that he was all for our spending two percent of our national wealth on ‘defence’, as requested by NATO.  It was the as requested by NATO that astonished me.  Mr Farage believes that the government should comply with ‘the will of the people’.  He’d like to see an immediate in/out referendum on the EU because he is quite sure that the Outs would win.  He’s certain that the British people don’t want to be ruled by ‘foreigners’.

He could be wrong about that but, in any case membership of the EU is one of the few matters about which the British electorate has been consulted in a referendum.  Surely there are several matters of national importance about which we have never been consulted.  One of them is membership of NATO and another, closely related, is our ‘special relationship’ with the USA.  I’d have thought Nigel would be demanding a referendum on these subjects before demanding yet another on EU membership.  Doesn’t NATO consist almost wholly of ‘foreigners’ and isn’t the special relationship a little one-sided? 

We blindly followed the USA into the invasion of Iraq, and the USA and NATO into an unwinnable conflict in Afghanistan.   The USA entered World War II against the Nazis only when Hitler declared war on the USA in accordance with Nazi Germany’s treaty with Japan.  We’ll never know if the USA would have engaged in war in Europe had he not done so.  I think it at least possible that the USA would have decided that their war was against the Japanese and in the Pacific.  They’d have thought about Hitler only after they had defeated the Japanese.

We do know that the USA gave us no support when the Falklands was invaded by Argentina, and actually led an armed and unprovoked invasion of Grenada (the island in the Caribbean, not the town in Spain!) then part of the Commonwealth, in order to force a regime change.

Nigel Farage is righteously indignant about the cost of our membership of the EU.  Perhaps the BBC’s Radio 4 ‘More or Less’ team could discover if our membership of NATO and the Special Relationship have cost us more in cash than our membership of the EU.  Without a shadow of doubt our participation in those two USA-led ‘colonial wars’ in the Middle East have cost us much more in dead and wounded!

All of this simply confirms in my own mind that Farage has no objection to British foreign and defence policy being dictated from the other side of the Atlantic but he dislikes our co-operating with our European cousins and developing into a federal super-power able to co-operate (or compete) on equal terms with the USA, the Russian Federation and China.

 The Fruits of Desperation

            Do you remember how the coalition government, supported in this instance by New Labour, offered concession after concession short of complete independence, to the Scottish nationalists in a successful attempt to secure a majority NO vote in the recent referendum?  Desperate measures were needed because opinion polls suggested that the YES voters might be successful.   It was a tactic that they may now be regretting.  A number of English towns and regions are demanding autonomy comparable with that of the Scots.  At the same time it seems likely that SNP candidates will triumph in the forthcoming General Election and, since Scotland remains part of the UK, may prevent the Conservatives forming a government with a comfortable majority in the House of Commons.

            The leaders of the main political parties are now taking desperate measures to gain, or retain, a few votes.  I mentioned David Cameron’s promise to would-be home buyers of thousands of homes ‘on the cheap’ a blog or so ago.  They’ll be cheap because the developers won’t be required to build any ‘social housing’ or contribute to the provision of public services in the area.  Now there’s the idea of lending would-be tenants the few weeks rent-in-advance that nowadays landlords demand.  It’ll certainly add to the burden of debt that most people have to carry these days.

            There’s a promise to freeze rail-fares (though a BBC analyst says that it’ll actually mean a fare rise!), to pay large firms and public authorities to allow some of their employees a few days off to do voluntary work, to make more apprenticeships and so on, and on, and on!  They make wild promises about what they’ll do – but they’re even better at rubbishing the claims of their opponents.  The SNP threatens to rob the Labour Party of what were once ‘safe parliamentary seats’ in Scotland.   So ED Miliband has toured Scotland today  telling electors that the SNP’s proposed programme can only be carried out by raising taxes and making even deeper austerity cuts than  the Tories have.  Mind you, Ed Miliband has recently been at the receiving end of just such a ‘rubbish your opponent’ campaign.  It’s a bit complicated and depends on lots of ‘mights’, but I’ll do my best to explain.

            It is just possible that Labour might win enough seats in the election to have more parliamentary seats than any other party, but not have an overall majority.  It is also just possible that the SNP might gain enough seats to make up an overall majority and might be prepared to support a minority Labour government.   They would obviously expect a quid pro quo for this – and it is possible that the price they might demand for that support might be that the Labour Government does not renew the Trident Nuclear submarine fleet with its ‘ultimate independent nuclear deterrent’.  If they did so then Ed. Miliband, in order to become Prime Minister, might accept that condition.  According to the Conservative Defence Minister he has already ‘stabbed his brother in the back’ to become leader of the Labour Party so he’d have no hesitation in ‘stabbing his country in the back’ to become Prime Minister..  David Cameron says he supports his Defence Minister in this assertion and proudly announces that only the Conservative Party will present the electorate with four brand-new state-of-the-art Trident submarines.  Goodness, is that a threat or a promise?  It's certainly as good a reason as I know for not voting Conservative.

    

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20th February 2015

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘Immoral Earnings’

          Tax evasion (strictly illegal) and tax avoidance (legal but often distinctly dodgy) have been a recurring theme in this blog. I regard income tax as our annual subscription for the privilege of British citizenship. We should be proud to pay it, not reluctant. There is nowadays a thriving business in advising already-wealthy clients how to avoid paying anything like their fair share of income tax – in some instances how to avoid paying any income tax whatsoever.  This new ‘profession’ is surely parasitic and ’living on immoral earnings’, much the same as brothel keepers and the like; and deserving the same punishments as them if or when they are brought to justice.

             I was astonished when I learned that BBC investigative journalists had discovered that Britain’s largest Bank HSBC, was among  the foremost of these ‘financial pimps’ – and that one of their multi-millionaire clients had lived in luxury for years without ever paying a penny in income tax.  HMRC – the government department charged with the collection of taxes and customs duties believed that this particular client was living somewhere in Spain, but – surprise, surprise! – had been unable to contact him.

            There seems to have been a remarkably cosy relationship between HSBC, the HMRC and the government that employs the latter to collect money owed to them (our money in fact).   A former Chief Executive, later chairman of HSBC, on leaving the bank was ennobled (just like our own Lord Hanningfield!) and given a job in the government.  Nothing wrong with that perhaps – I have always thought that the Kray brothers would have made excellent Police and Crime Commissioners!    Rather more worrying is the fact that, on retirement, a former senior official of HMCR was given a senior position with HSBC.  Poacher becoming a Gamekeeper is one thing – but Gamekeeper becoming Poacher is something quite different.

           

            I wouldn’t pretend to understand exactly how multi-millionaires were advised on avoiding the taxation that the rest of us have to pay.  It seems though that at the centre of this operation was a Swiss ancillary of HSBC. We are told that that ancillary has now been thoroughly reorganised.  ‘Lessons have been learned’ from the mistakes.  They were made a few years ago and we must now draw a line under the past and move forward into the future.

            I bet that those ‘celebrity paedophiles’ who are serving prison snentences for incidents that occurred forty or fifty years ago, are wishing that they could have said the same thing – and got away with it!

The Prime Minister’s response

          David Cameron’s response to the revelations about HSBC and HMCR was as we have come to expect.  No government, he claimed, has done more than his has to stem aggressive tax avoidance and tax evasion.  That says no more than that no government has ever done very much in that field.   Understandable enough – start taking money from the super-rich and they’ll be less inclined to offer financial support to the party that they had relied upon to look after their interests.

            Probably though Mr Cameron, like me, doesn’t really understand how tax avoidance works, and how it can be prevented.   He swiftly moved on to a field in which he and his chancellor have become experts; penalising the poor and vulnerable to avoid inconveniencing the really wealthy.  They hadn’t previously noticed that some of those who receive benefit do so because they are suffering from obesity or alcohol or other addiction.  These are curable conditions.  Cut their benefit unless they are positively seeking a cure and you’ll not only improve their medical condition but you’ll encourage them to seek work and save a few quid to reduce that deficit.

            I’m reminded of a somewhat cynical story that was circulating in Germany in the early post-war years when every firm and every organisation was struggling to rid itself of the taint of Nazism.    One keen German gardener meets another:   ‘What have you been doing today Fritz?’ ‘I’ve been denazifying my carrot patch’. ‘Denazifying?’   ‘Yes, denazifying – you know; pulling out the little ones so that the big ones will thrive and get bigger’. 

Ukraine

           Three times I have started to put on paper my thoughts about the situation in Ukraine and three times I have failed.  The situation changes day by day, almost hour by hour.  Hope of a peaceful settlement almost dies – and then flickers into life again. One thing that is certain is that the outlook on both sides has hardened as a result of the conflict. Before the killing started I am quite sure that the rebels would have been satisfied with a limited autonomy within a loose Ukrainian Federation.  Now, I think, they’ll be striving for full independence.   Similarly, many on the government side would, I think, have been willing to grant that limited autonomy.  Now hard-liners will be satisfied with nothing less than the ethnic cleansing from Ukraine of all Russophiles (hundreds have already been killed and thousands driven into exile) and the obliteration of the Russian language and of Russian culture from the country.

In this conflict it is the rebels (always referred to in BBC news bulletins as  ‘Russian-backed rebels!) who are the victims.  They feared that the Kiev Government intended to destroy their language and culture.   At first they tried to prevent them by peaceful means – do you remember the tv pictures of unarmed civilians, men, women and little children trying to stop the progress into their country of Kiev government tanks and armoured cars?  Since the fighting started it is the rebels’ homes that have been flattened by shellfire.   The million people driven from their homes and seeking refuge in Russia are all from rebel held towns and villages.  I have little doubt that they comprise most of the 5,500 dead.

Angela Merkel and the French President are at least trying to keep the flame of peace alight.  Our government?   Well, we’ve supplied the Kiev Government with sixty second-hand armoured cars.  They’re unarmed at the moment but the Kiev government can soon mount some machine guns onto them and send them into the conflict.    Oh yes – and our Defence Secretary has announced that any armed Russian incursion into the Baltic States will be resisted by NATO.  Over a quarter of the population of two of those three Baltic states are ethnic Russians. The Defence Secretary (who clearly isn’t old enough to remember the true horror of a European War) would be better occupied urging the governments of those Baltic States not to treat the ethnic Russians as second-class citizens, and to give the Russian language the same status as the local tongue.  Switzerland, Belgium and Wales all have more than one ‘official language’.   So could Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.   

If the Baltic ethnic Russians have no grievances they’ll have no inclination to revolt and seek Russian help.

Some later thoughts

This morning (Friday 20^th February) I have just heard that an influential committee of the House of Lords has declared that, due to inept policies pursued by inexperienced foreign office officials, we have ‘sleep walked’ into the situation in Ukraine.  My own fear is that we may be sleep-walking into World War III.

 Nations, as well as individuals, should make a real effort to see the world through the eyes of their opponents.  Russia sees itself surrounded by a hostile NATO alliance extending from the Baltic, round the frontier of the Russian Federation to the Black Sea.

We may well think of that NATO alliance as being purely defensive – but how would we feel if the Irish Republic, the Netherlands, Belgium and France were to become part of a potentially hostile alliance?   How would the USA feel if Mexico and Canada did the same?

In the case of the USA we know what would happen.  In the 1962 the Soviet Union attempted to supply its ally Cuba with missiles to defend itself from the very real threat of invasion from the USA. President Kennedy – by no means the most bellicose of American presidents – was prepared to bring the world to nuclear war to prevent it.   Fortunately Nikita Khruschev, then President of the USSR, had more sense.  He withdrew the missiles – but there was no further attempt to invade Cuba from the USA.

February 2015

Tendring Topics……..on line

Tendring Topics……..on line

The tragedy of Ukraine

            Regular blog readers will know that I have a personal concern about the conflict in Eastern Ukraine because of the thought that those engaged on both sides in that conflict may be that grandchildren of the Russian and Ukrainian conscripted ‘slave workers’ who were my good friends and comrades in Germany from 1943 till 1945 when I was an ‘other rank’ British POW also compelled to work there.

            I was delighted when the political leaders of France and Germany, having had talks with the President of the Kiev Ukrainian government, discussed with Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, their plans for an immediate cease-fire leading to a permanent peace   I had hoped that these talks would be successful though I was not convinced that either the Ukrainian President had absolute control of the government forces (there are, I believe, a number of private ‘militia’ groups supporting the Kiev government)  or Vladimir Putin control of the rebels..

            There have now been over 5,000 fatal casualties in this unnecessary civil war.  Although we don’t know who these casualties are I’d be very surprised if the majority of them are not civilians and victims of the relentless shelling by the government forces of towns and villages under rebel control.  Certainly most of the thousands of  refugees whose homes have been destroyed and who are seeking refuge in Russia, are from rebel-held areas under constant attack.

             It wasn’t really surprising that that first peace initiative failed. It was never likely that an agreement that had been welcomed by the Ukrainian President could possibly be immediately acceptable to the rebels.  Both sides needed to compromise if there were to be a lasting cease-fire.  A few weeks ago there had been hope as the prisoner of war exchange agreed in Minsk in September took place.  Since then the fighting has flared up again.  It is assumed by our press and the BBC that the rebels were responsible – but were they?  It really does take two to make a quarrel – or a war.

            After the failure of the German and French peace initiative, hopes of a cease-fire flickered but were not totally extinguished.  Fortunately, neither Angela Merkel or her French counterpart were prepared to take ‘no’ for an answer.  They arranged a meeting on 11^th February, this time with both Vladimir Putin and Barak Obama, Presidents of the Russian Federation and of the USA, taking part. Once again there were no representatives of Russian speaking East Ukraine present.  This was not because no representative of the rebels was prepared to come, nor yet because President Putin had advised them against coming; but simply because the representatives of the Kiev government refused to speak to them!

It must have been a strange peace conference that barred one of the combatants from participation.  However it permitted the Kiev government to persist in the fiction that the rebels were under the direct command of Russia, and effectively prevented them from publicising their reasons for armed resistance to a government take-over.

           

            Discussions went on throughout the night.  With the dawn came news of a hard-won agreement that German Chancellor Angela Merkel said gave ‘just a glimmer’ of hope.  There is to be a complete cease-fire effective from midnight on Saturday 14^th February.  Both sides are then to withdraw their forces to leave a ‘peace corridor’ between them.  Prisoners are to be exchanged and talks to begin about the degree of autonomy that is to be accorded to East Ukraine.

            The Foreign Minister of the Kiev Government has already said publicly that the plan will fail and, of course, his government has the power to make sure that it does so – and to put the blame squarely onto the rebels!

            The only way to ensure that the peace plan has any chance of succeeding is for the cease-fire to be rigorously policed by a considerable number of neutral observers from France and Germany.  They might, at the same time, see if there is evidence of the Russian Army Units that ‘the west’ seems to be quite certain are now fighting in Eastern Ukraine.  On the BBC tv news recently we have had several reports from correspondents behind the rebel lines in Eastern Ukraine. None of them has mentioned the presence of Russian Military Units.

            My own guess is that the Russian government probably has given the rebels some artillery because we have recently heard of the rebels shelling government army positions.  Previously it was the government troops doing all the shelling.  I think too, that it is probable that Russian Army volunteers have been granted leave to allow them to support their brethren across the frontier.  Had the Russians sent an armoured division in to help the rebels – as has been claimed by the Ukrainian President – I believe that the Russian flag would now be hoisted over the Kiev Parliament!

            I believe that by far the best solution would be for both sides in Ukraine to be disarmed and for Ukraine’s neutrality to be guaranteed by both NATO and the Russian Federation.  Further I believe that both the Russian and Ukrainian languages (are they really very different?) should be made official languages in Ukraine and given equal status, and that Ukraine should be given free trading access to both the EU and the Russian Federation.

             Without the financial burden of defence spending, with easy access to the world’s markets, and with the financial help needed to rebuild their shattered country provided by their fellow Europeans both in the EU and in Russia, Ukraine’s recovery could be spectacular, and a model for other defence-burdened countries to follow. No – of course I know it isn’t going to happen.  It would spell the end of civilisation as we know it.  Think of all the jobs that would be lost in the ‘defence industries’ (not to mention the loss of dividends to share holders!) if it did!

            Late News – I have just (13^th February) heard that if the cease-fire to begin at midnight on the 14th is broken, further sanctions will be imposed on Russia by the EU.   Don’t those blinkered idiots even consider the possibility that the cease-fire might be broken by Ukrainian government forces?

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27th October 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

The EU isn’t some hostile foreign alliance!

          …….but sadly, that’s how some newspapers and some politicians behave as though it were.  The European Union is a political and economic association of European States that Britain joined for its own advantage.  Over its policies and activities we have as much power and influence as any other member.   What’s more, it is the only international association of which the UK is a member and of which we – the members of the public - have already been asked in a referendum whether or not we wished for membership.

            The Scots have recently been able to say whether or not they wished to be part of the United Kingdom – but neither the English, the Welsh nor the Northern Irish, nor any of our ancestors have ever been asked in a referendum whether we want to be part of it.  Probably there’s little doubt that most of us would vote ‘yes’ to continued membership – but a resounding ‘yes’ is much less certain about our continued membership of the United Nations or of NATO, or our ‘special relationship’ with the USA.  I would not have voted yes to the last two of those.  I think it’s quite likely that they have cost us more in pounds and pence (keeping that Trident submarine fleet active for instance) than the EU ever has and they have certainly cost us much more in British lives.   They have dragged us into an illegal war in Iraq that has made us thousands of implacable enemies world-wide and has certainly not made Iraq a happier, more peaceful and more tolerant country in which to live; and into an unwinnable war in Afghanistan from which we are now withdrawing if not in defeat, certainly not victoriously.  When the Falklands were invaded and we could have done with some help from the ‘allies’ we support so loyally, we received none.

            Freedom of movement of goods, capital and people was an important feature of the European Union when we joined and for some years no-one objected.  We wanted a ‘level playing field’ for our exporters and importers so there naturally had to be union-wide labour and health and safety regulation.  The membership, when the UK joined, was of nations with similar economies and public services.  There was no influx of workers into Britain from Germany, or the Netherlands or Denmark or any of the ‘old EU’ member countries.  If anything the flow of migrants was in the other direction.  The popular tv comedy series Auf Wiedersehen Pet was, at least in the first instance, about a group of British building workers who found employment in Germany.  My grandson, an international Tourism Publicity Consultant, lives in Brussels but commutes to his office in Ashford in Kent (near the Eurostar station).   His business takes him to every part of Europe and indeed the world but, thanks to Britain’s membership of the EU, travelling in most of Europe is much simpler than it once was.

Some years ago the then existing members considered making their union a united political and economic bloc capable of co-operating and where appropriate competing on equal terms with the USA and China, or expanding to include former members of the Soviet bloc like Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.  Tony Blair, then Britain’s prime minister, was one of the keenest and most determined of European leaders to draw these countries into the EU fold.  The problems that this could lead to were fairly obvious. Their economies and public services were in no way comparable with those of existing members.  The uncharitable thought crossed my mind that his enthusiasm for expansion could have been to ensure that Europe would never unite into a strong federal political force – a United States of Europe – that might not please his bosom friend across the Atlantic, George W. Bush.

            Well, the expansionists got their way, and provided Nigel Farage and his Ukippers with some ammunition, though hardly as much as they had hoped for. Do you remember the imaginary coach-loads of eager immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria who, according to the popular press, were just waiting for the gates to open so that they could flood in, swamping us poor natives and taking our homes and jobs?   Some turned up – mostly those who had jobs waiting for them, but in a trickle rather than a flood.  The swarm of migrants who now seem to be permanently camped near Calais waiting for an illegal opportunity to enter the UK are not from EU countries.

            The strange thing is that the worry about immigrants from the EU seems, at least from a casual glance, to be in inverse proportion to the number of EU immigrants in the area.  We clearly have some Polish immigrants here in Clacton because I note that there is now a shop here dealing with Polish delicacies. Perhaps if I were a Roman Catholic and going to mass at Our Lady of Light Roman Catholic church, I would meet some of them - and be pleased to do so.  As it is, I don’t think I have ever encountered a Pole in this town, though a Polish worker was one of the team from Enfield that very efficiently, insulated my roof space a year or two ago.  As a former public health inspector I have met Greek and Italian restaurant owners – but they were here before we were EU members!

            Clacton’s immigration problems are mostly home-grown and all-British. They relate to the fact that we are within easy reach of London, have generally dry weather (a help for those in b. and b. or sleeping rough!) and that cheap accommodation of a sort can usually be found on the Brooklands Estate, Jaywick or elsewhere in the area.  None of this has anything to do with the European Union – yet Essex’s seaside holiday coast is real Ukip country, with many of its residents worried to death about EU immigration and the fact that 70 percent of our laws are now ‘made in Brussels! – a blatant lie that Ukippers accept as a fact.

            Ukippers have convinced themselves that if there is a simple IN or OUT referendum  on EU membership, there will be an overwhelming OUT majority.   They may well be surprised at the result.  I voted NO to EU membership in that earlier referendum because I had a romantic notion that the Commonwealth could be moulded into a viable political and economic unit.  It was a stupid idea that I have outgrown.  In any future referendum I shall vote for continued membership, hoping that the EU will become more politically and economically united and that there will be fewer UK opt-outs.

Nor would I be alone. Recent MORI and Ugov public opinion polls, publicised in the London Evening Standard, indicate that nationwide, despite the rise of Ukip and although there is a big worry about immigration, a comfortable majority favour retaining EU membership and that this majority is even larger in the London area.

A Boost for the Ukippers

          The shock was considerable.  The timing calculated to bring maximum joy into the hearts of Nigel Farage and his motley band of followers.  If I were a believer in ‘conspiracies’ I’d be considering the possibility that an under-cover Ukipper had   penetrated the inner defences of Brussels and, just when Europhiles were rejoicing at opinion polls showing that most Brits would prefer to stay within the EU, arranged for ’Brussels’ to send the UK a peremptory demand for the almost immediate payment of the eye-watering sum of £1.7 billion pounds!  And, adding insult to injury, they were proposing to give substantial cash hand-outs to France and Germany.

            Rarely has there been such agreement between British political leaders.   They were unanimous.  We weren’t going to pay it and we asked our Prime Minister to make that clear to other European leaders.  No one, it seems, even considered the fact that the criteria that decided whether EU members were to get a hand out or a demand had been agreed by our representative as well as that of other members. Nor was much said about other countries who had received demands that seemed at least as ridiculous as ours.  The Netherlands is probably as well able to pay as we are, but are scarcely likely to be any more eager than us to do so.  How about Greece?  We haven’t heard much about the Greeks recently but not long ago many of them were literally starving.  Then there was Cyprus and the Irish Republic. All three have received similar demands and all three are poverty-stricken compared with either France or Germany.

            The decision to demand payment from us is at least partly because of our much-trumpeted economic recovery and growth. It had been more than expected.   The anger of the public, reflected in that of the top politicians, has been strengthened by the fact that very few of us have noticed any improvement whatsoever in our daily lives as a result of George Osborne’s economic triumph.  Inflation is low but wage rises are even lower – in the case of thousands of public servants – non-existent.  Due to ridiculously low interest rates, thousands of life savings, mine included, are steadily losing their value in Bank or Building Society savings accounts.

            Only the very wealthy have benefited from that recovery and there has, so far, been no sign of that wealth ‘trickling down’ to the rest of us.  I have no doubt that somehow some kind of an agreement will be reached in connection with the EU’s wealth redistribution.  I wish I felt equally sure that the anomaly that working people on low wages pay a much bigger proportion of their income to the government in taxes, VAT and customs duties than the bankers with their telephone number salaries and bonuses, the big property owners, financial fiddlers and tax evaders, will also be put right.

Blog readers

     Only last week I wrote that I would not, in the future, be able to write so long a blog, nor would I be able to publish it every Monday - yet here I am, with a blog that is every bit as long as usual, and is published on Monday morning!

      I did say though that I would write and publish it 'as and when' the situation might demand.  Last week there were two news items in quick succession that seemed to me to demand immediate comment; the two pro-EU opinion polls, and the demand from the EU that the UK should pay up £1.7 billion pounds -  so I duly commented.  I could have published my comments on Saturday 25th October, but decided to wait to see if there were any new developments over the weekend.

         Next week?  Who knows?

           

      

Week 38 2014

Tendring Topics ……….on line

‘Don’t tear our happy family apart!’

            That is the message that David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, leaders of the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour Parties, took with them on their separate journeys to Scotland last week in a desperate attempt to boost the number of NO votes in the referendum to be held in that country on 18^th September (only three days away as this blog is published!). This will decide whether or not Scotland becomes an independent nation or remains part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as it is at this moment.

            They have left it a little late. Over 150 years ago Benjamin Disraeli, destined to become a distinguished Prime Minister and to be regarded as the founder of the modern Conservative Party, declared in his political novel, ‘Sybil, or the Two Nations’  that Great Britain had already been torn apart ‘horizontally’ into a nation of the rich and a nation of the poor.  He wrote vivid descriptions of the squalor and abject poverty in which  working people lived in the early part of Queen Victoria’s reign.  Since then circumstances have improved for all of us. However, the yawning gap between rich and poor caused by that ‘horizontal tear’, dividing Britain into two nations grows wider year by year. This is a direct result of the actions and failure to take action of the political predecessors of Cameron, Clegg and Miliband.  It widened during the decade of Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ rule, and is widening again today as the coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats rewards the wealthy and penalises the poor!

            No government ever agrees to a referendum unless it feels confident that a majority will vote the way that that government prefers. Two years ago, David Cameron felt quite sure that a referendum on Scottish Independence to be held in September 2014 would yield a comfortable NO majority vote. He was happy to agree to its being held. He insisted on a simple IN or OUT vote because he thought, probably quite correctly, that there might well be a large number of voters who would hesitate to vote for full independence but would like greater autonomy for Scotland.   I have little doubt that he now wishes that he had offered Scottish voters that ‘middle way’.   If the Scots had been offered the choice of greater autonomy within a looser British federation, it would certainly have split the nationalist vote and might well have made it possible for the present system to continue unchanged.  Now – faced with the real possibility of a majority YES vote, he is having to offer ‘greater autonomy within the UK’ as a bribe to try to win over a few thousand still-undecided or YES voters. Thus, even if the Scots Nationalists fail to get a majority YES vote they will have achieved considerably greater autonomy – as well as having retained the possibility of full independence at a later date; not perhaps a win/win situation but far from being a total defeat either.

      
             The possibility that an independent Scottish Government might try, in at least one part of Britain, to narrow the gap caused by that horizontal tear that makes one nation into two, the poor and the wealthy, is one of the reasons why if I were a Scot, I’d be voting YES in that fateful referendum in a few days time.  Other reasons are the hope that independence might result in country free of nuclear weapons and without Trident nuclear submarines, and a country that wished to remain in a more closely integrated European Union but was questioning whether it benefited from membership of NATO and from a very one-sided ‘special relationship’ with the USA.

            Within the United Kingdom these are all issues that are not available for negotiation and (except for EU membership) on which we will never be given a chance to vote.  Oh yes – and it would be nice to live in a country virtually free of the neo-Fascism of Ukip!

And the effect of a YES majority on the rest of us?

           I don’t live in Scotland and, as far as I know, I don’t have a single Scottish ancestor.  I am about as southern-English as it is possible to be.  On several happy camping holidays though, my family and I have travelled the length and breadth of Scotland from the border to John o’ Groats and from the Isle of Skye to the east coast.  We liked the Scottish people and the mountains and the lochs – though we never learned to love the Scottish midges and few would deny that we generally get better weather at home on the north-east Essex coast!  We don't call a drizzle a 'Scotch Mist' for no reason!

            If the referendum on the 18^th yields a YES majority I’ll congratulate our Scottish neighbours and wish them well.  If I were half a century younger I’d be considering emigrating there! I can’t though ignore the fact that we English would miss them badly.  There would be no group of Scottish MPs to challenge the more outrageous of the coalition government’s policies. It is very likely that we would have to endure a Conservative/Ukip coalition government – perhaps a succession of them! We would probably leave the EU without bothering to go to the expense and trouble of a referendum. Outrageous Ukip demands would be likely to result in many responsible Conservatives repudiating the coalition, and the Ukip leader deciding that ‘because of the mess we have inherited from the previous Con/Lib.Dem. coalition government it will be necessary to have temporary single-party government under firm leadership, to ensure the speedy implementation of necessary emergency measures. The country’s political leader will adopt the traditional English title of Lord-Protector and will continue in office until those measures have been introduced and enforced’.

            No, I don’t really suppose that England’s future would be quite as dire as that in the event of a YES majority. During what is proving to be an unconscionably long lifetime I have discovered that, particularly where political issues are concerned, outcomes are very rarely as good as optimists had hoped – but are even less frequently as bad as pessimists had feared.   I do remember though how, in Germany in the late 1920s and early '30s, many people first dismissed Hitler as a funny little man with a Charlie Chaplin moustache and some really daft ideas – a bit of a fruit-cake in fact.  Later, major German industrialists and traditional military leaders thought they could control him and use him for their purposes – but he and his brown-shirted followers controlled and used them – and the Third Reich was born.  I hope that I didn’t spend seven years of my late teens and early twenties playing a tiny role in the destruction of that Third Reich, only to live to see comparable developments in 21^st century Britain!

 Our own by-election

            The possibility that Ukip could develop into an Anglicised NAZI Party and its leader into an Anglo-Saxon Adolf Hitler will certainly be in my mind when I place my cross on the ballot paper on 9^th October. United Kingdom Independence Party sounds innocent enough, and Nigel Farage seems a pleasant enough fellow – enjoying a fag and a drink, and not a bit like everyone’s idea of a scheming politician.  Quite so, but then who would have expected the mildly cranky National Socialist German Workers’ Party to become a movement of extreme right-wing nationalist thugs prepared to use any means – mass murder, torture, genocide – to achieve their ends.  Hitler too; we think of him as being an unscrupulous raving rabble-rouser, but he had an unquestionably magnetic personality and could be good company when he chose to be.  Certainly he too was no-one’s idea of a scheming politician.

             The national press is forecasting a landslide victory for Douglas Carswell and his Ukippers.  I can’t think why. Our former MP has deserted the political party that has loyally supported him and has forced a totally unnecessary by-election only seven months before a scheduled general election. That by-election will cost us taxpayers something like £100,000.  He presumably hopes to bask in the glory of being Ukip’s very first Member of Parliament.  That should guarantee him  a top job if and when Nigel Farage forms his first government!

            Douglas Carswell and his Ukippers are certainly working hard for his election and don’t appear to be short of funds.  I, and presumably all Clactonians, have been deluged by leaflets – I’ve had at least five of them (two a couple of weeks before his defection!) telling us what a wonderful fellow he is and how lucky we have been to have had him as our MP.  I have also had a leaflet from the Labour Party.  The Conservatives have been handicapped by not having a new candidate waiting to be selected, but they’ve chosen one now and I wish local man Giles Watling, actor and Frinton town and district councillor, success in this expensive, absurd and totally unnecessary by-election.

            I had a doorstep Ukip canvasser calling at my home before the Conservative candidate had been selected.  He was armed with a list of voters, a clip-board and a ballpoint pen. He seemed to have expected me to be an enthusiastic Ukipper and  may have been a little taken aback when I told him I was hoping that Douglas Carswell would be roundly defeated in this by-election, and that all Ukip contestants in all future elections would have the same fate.  I intended to vote for the candidate most likely to defeat him, and that - for this by-election and for the very first time in my long life – I intended to vote for the Conservative Candidate, whoever he or she might be!

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..