The Last Ditch

What is the point of blogging?

Why am I still here? As I watched the British prisoners suck down to the murderous pixie who leads Iran, my reasons for political blogging died. Britain’s educationalists, for so long more dangerous than any external enemy, have triumphed. Those young sailors and marines displayed the cultural cringe that must now betray us all. Faced with a deadly enemy, they saw an equally-valid culture as worthy of respect as our own.

They  probably, as one of my readers commented,  "don't know who Nelson was". However, I am sure they know all about Britain’s “wicked” imperial past. They will know everything of her role in the slave trade, save for abolishing it within her empire (only the second country to do so) and then using her navy to suppress it elsewhere. They will not know that the Anti-Slavery Squadron of the navy in which they now serve liberated 160,000 slaves between 1811 and 1867 off the coast of Africa.

They probably don't know the history of people abducted into slavery by Muslim rulers from British ships and English coastal towns. They will know, however, of every time their country has fallen short of the high standards set by Ghana, Nigeria or the Islamic world. They will also know, in their guts, that Islamophobia is a terrible thing, though they will not be able to explain why. Frankly, they will have been so brainwashed that you could stick “ophobia” after anything you liked and they would be automatically unmanned.

Why then should they risk a beating - or even the indignity of being mocked for their resemblance to Mr Bean - for a country they have been taught to despise? A country which suspects anyone who respects its flag of being a fascist?

If (happy fantasy) we could now purge our Ministry of Education, Universities, teacher training colleges and the staff rooms of our bog-standard schools, where could we find the people to replace those we defenestrated disinfiltrated? Generations have been lost to this self-loathing indoctrination. As Show of Hands sing in their song Roots;

We learn to be ashamed before we walk,

Of the way we look and the way we talk

The great public schools now teach to the same National Curriculum and even independent-minded teachers tell pupils not to lose marks by, for example, critiquing the poems from different cultures added to the GCSE English curriculum.

“Yes I know it’s technically poor dear, but there are no marks for saying so.”

Our decline and fall will not even feature the fun and games with which Ancient Rome distracted itself at its end. If you Google for examples, it becomes hard to argue that England is hopelessly decadent. Puritanism is still a powerful negative force and every description of a pleasure, even in the advertisments for spas and resorts, is accompanied by a ritual justification to do with how hard we all work. The English don't feel they deserve pleasure. We are unlikely even to fiddle as London burns.

When our time comes, I fear that as a nation we will submit as meekly to dhimmitude as the 15 submitted in Tehran. Perhaps one day, from the ashes of an Islamic Republic, a new England will rise.

Until then, is there any point in wasting breath, ink or bandwidth?

TO BE CONTINUED.

A New Settlement ?

Here is a piece from our guest blogger today, Guthrum. He wrote this while I was in Cannes earlier in the week, but it provides convenient "cover" for me today, while I get steadily sozzled on my birthday. Over to you, G.

As Tom is enjoying the south of France, he has been kind enough to allow me to share some of my thoughts on the constitutional challenges we all face.

 

It has been nearly one hundred and seventy years since the great Reform Act of 1832. This Act was passed as a rational attempt to reorganise political life and to head off the revolutionary undercurrents of the 1820's and 1830'€™s, in the post Napoleonic period.

 

Rotten boroughs like Old Sarum that had eleven houses and could return two MP's in the gift of the local land owning aristocracy, were swept away. Once passed the defects in the Act were apparent - the vote was based on a property qualification, for example. However, the fact that the reasons and conditions that caused it to be passed are barely remembered is evidence of the Act's success. The stability that it engendered spared Britain the convulsions of the revolutions that swept Europe in 1848.

 

In modern business parlance the Management of Change had been effective. Looking at the modern political landscape, I can see no sign of even of a willingness to even acknowledge that change is happening, let alone needs to be managed.

 

The Whitehall village is happy and secure in its two/three party system. Yet  voters are voting with their feet away from the current system, therefore depriving the political system of its legitimacy. The House of Lords has been tainted as a house of "experts"€™ and turned into a place full of appointees who owe their place to the patronage of the Prime Minister of the day. The PM enjoys the rights of the Royal Prerogative, and can safely ignore the wishes of both Parliament and Country.

 

The Monarchy is to be passed to a man, who appears to think that his constitutional position is a soap box to influence public policy. Charles Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Battenburg is not an elected politician and his views may be of interest to the readers of Hello magazine, but should have no more bearing on an elected government than those of any other citizen.

This Government has fought a war on the whim of one man, and is betraying the freedoms that have been fought for.

 

The political landscape needs to be managed. There needs to be an acknowledgement of our fundamental freedoms in the form of a written constitution with arrangements to strike down attempts to collect our personal data, correspondence and break into our homes.

 

Political power should be returned to the towns and cities of this country, with any position of real power being an elected one; police chiefs, Mayors etc. Unelected quangos should be declared unconstitutional if they handle public funds. Tax raising should be on a local level, with funds for national defence passed upwards, not taxation collected centrally then distributed downwards. Education should be on the basis of excellence and need. We need as many superb engineers as we need lawyers. This can only be done at local level. Education must stop being a political football.

 

The House of Commons should be reduced by about half, and instead of involving themselves like over paid social workers in the minutiae of our lives, MP's should restrict themselves to matters of state, foreign affairs and defence.

 

Personally I see no constitutional role for a hereditary Monarchy.

 

Unless the management of this constitutional crisis is addressed, the State will assume more and more power over our lives, simply to protect itself. It will be the end of any pretence of this country being a representative democracy, let alone a participatory democracy.

 

Manchester taxpayer? Here's where your money goes.

In the world of public sector "investment promotion", some of the money that is taken from businesses in taxes is spent on persuading them to invest again (so as to be taxed again).

I hasten to stress that Manchester is by no means the worst culprit. You should see the scale of the "marketing" efforts of London, Paris and some Russian cities you will never have heard of. The Manchester yacht, for all I know, may well be at least partly sponsored by private companies.

Still, I thought Manchester's council tax payers might like to see where some of their city's public servants are this week.

Praguetory: Rock da House

Link: Praguetory: Rock da House.

Always good value, Praguetory kicks off a debate about House of Lords reform. Every new proposal from the Government and what passes for HM Opposition seems to be less and less democratic, so some new ideas are certainly needed. The whole issue is, of course, complicated by the West Lothian Question and the need to avoid new layers of government and further waste of public money.

I made my own humble suggestion just over a year ago, the updated crux of which is (amended to include Northern Ireland):

The present House of Commons should remain, but with fair representation for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales (i.e. fewer Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh MP's). The House of Lords should be abolished. An English Senate should be elected. The Welsh Assembly should become the Welsh Senate, the Northern Ireland Assembly the Northern Ireland Senate and the Scottish Parliament the Scottish Senate. The four "Petty Senates" should meet separately on issues solely relating to England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales respectively as unicameral local parliaments with specific delegated powers (identical in each case, rather than the present mishmash).

The four Senates combined (the "Grand Senate") should fulfil the present functions of the House of Lords.

The appointment of judges should be delegated to the chairmen of each of the Petty Senates, so that independent local judiciaries can emerge over time. The Grand Senate should be charged with forming a new constitution for the United Kingdom. That constitution could include entrenched provisions (e.g. on civil liberties) which could only be amended with the consent of all four Petty Senates. This would prevent any repetition of the kind of onslaught on liberty that has happened in the last 10 years.

In the short term this would provide fairness and improve parliamentary democracy. In the long term it would create "constitutional perforations" which could later be torn to separate one, two, or three of the nations if they so require.

I anticipate it would be England that first decides to go. At least its Petty Senate, rather than the Scots-infiltrated House of Commons, could then provide the negotiating team for the constitutional settlement that would follow.

This idea is thoroughly democratic, yet avoids any conflict between the roles of the lower and upper houses of Parliament. It has the virtue of requiring only one new election to implement - that to elect the "Petty Senate of England". It integrates the Scottish "wee pretendy Parliament", the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly into something useful. It answers the West Lothian Question and it avoids the need (as both the English Senate and the Grand Senate would meet in the present House of Lords Chamber) for any expensive new Parliament buildings, while using the existing ones in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland.

It also provides England with a team to negotiate the terms of Scottish Independence, which cannot surely now be long in coming. Views?