Panicking Dave finally wakes up to the immigration issue - and completely misses the point

(BBC)

Farage and UKIP would have been vilified - and rightly so - if they had suggested what Dave has 'announced' today. 'Announced' because it is not 'law' and will only be applied, subject to the usual fudge and rejection by the EU, if he gets re-elected. And on the evidence of his 'leadership' seen today, that is extremely unlikely.

Fundamentally these measures are designed firstly to make Dave look strong on the issue - which he quite simply and clearly is not - actions not words, at this stage, are the only way for him to restore any kind of credibility. Secondly they seek to address the symptoms of the problem rather than the 'illness' itself and are likely to encourage a sharp rise in immigration in the short term as people seek to beat the deadline on the possible implementation of these measures. They are almost impossible to apply retrospectively.

They are a curb on migrant benefits, not on migrants actually coming in. And when they're coming from countries as poor as Bulgaria and Romania, these curbs are unlikely to be any kind of disincentive - the UK will simply not allow people to starve on the streets, while their own countries probably would.

Let's start with the fundamentals: If immigration is good for the UK - and I think it is if managed in a controlled, logical and fair way - how does this help?

All it is doing is making us less attractive as a place for people to come and live, whether they are skilled and likely to make a positive contribution to our country or not. 'Restricting, deporting, removing, stopping'? The words of panic.

We should, in 2014, be talking about 'attracting, encouraging, accommodating, helping, benefiting from' the right people coming into the UK. And that means controlling the quality and, to a lesser extent so long as we do have a firm grip on the numbers so that we can plan the provision of infrastructure properly, the quantity.

These proposed measures do absolutely nothing to secure control of our own borders - a fundamental requirement of any nation state.

Will it stop criminal gangs bringing people into the UK to be exploited? I think it just makes the situation worse - they will be more likely to come (especially in the short term) and be exploited even more disgracefully when there is no longer any kind of safety net.

'Stopping claims for four years':

Unless they get a job. Work for a couple of months and then the whole thing kicks back in.

'Stopping child benefits for kids living outside the UK'

How the hell did we ever get to the point where this happens? This is just a fairness issue and should be implemented regardless of immigration figures.

'Removing migrants after 6 months if they haven't found work'

Yeah good luck with that Dave. You think they'll come forward and say 'I haven't got a job will you send me home please?' How much will it cost to monitor 250,000 people? Is it even possible?

'Restricting migrants bringing family members to the UK'

From outside the EU we can do this now, but we don't. From the EU we simply cannot enforce this.

'Speeding up deportation of convicted criminals'

Yeah and making appeal court lawyers even richer than they are. Unworkable.

'Longer re-entry bans'

You think criminals won't just change their identity - they don't have to do so in the UK with its legal niceties but can do so in Bulgaria. good luck with that.

'Stopping immigration from poorer countries until their economies have converged more closely'

Decades, at least, if ever. What's the criteria? How will it be judged and enforced?

It's all cloud cuckoo land stuff: An unworkable wish list that dances around the real issue - the only measure that will actually allow us to make the changes we really need, which is the ability to control our own borders.

Only when we have that control can we be generous to people rather than implementing these draconian and frankly nasty measures. As usual, by the time the issue is actually addressed, the pendulum has swung so far and the situation become so difficult and problematic, that the measures designed to tackle them have gone too far in the wrong direction.

And then, finally, after all the 'strong rhetoric' from Dave, he admits that he will only be able to implement most of these measures with the approval of a reformed EU. And if he doesn't succeed in securing those reforms he will... well what will he do?

Campaign for the UK to leave the EU? Withhold our funding of the ridiculous bureaucracy of the unelected fraudsters in Brussels. Simply ignore their directives?

Oh no. Dave, our strong leader, who works for us and should be acting first and foremost in the interests of the UK and the voters who elected him, will, decisively and positively, 'rule nothing out'. Big fucking deal.

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Knights in white transits

Knights in white transits
and their hard-working friends
tweets that I've written
never meaning to send

Snobbery I've always missed
with these eyes before
just what the truth is
we now know for sure

Coz we love you,
now we've heard of you, we love you
Oh how we love you...

Gazing at people some hand in hand
Why they like the George Cross, we can't understand
We always sneer at you, truth we cannot defend
Except when we need your vote - then we're your best friend..

Coz we're fuckwits,
oh snobs and fuckwits
we'll fuck up the country as usual,
if you vote for us again

Knights in white transits
Flying the cross
We say we're the worker's party,
but we don't give a toss

Why would you vote for people who are scared to talk to you?

Well tell me?

Why would you want to support, to vote into office, people who are scared to talk to you?

People who will not answer any of your questions, who will not engage with you. Who, by definition, do not want to hear what you have to say.

Why on earth would you want to cast your vote for them?

Because your family always has voted Labour, or Tory or Lib Dem?

This is not about them it's about you. Do you have your own mind, your own choices, your own views?

Is it about 'what's in it for 'me'? Or about what's best for the future of this country. That is up to you of course.

Small minded, selfish or generous. It's entirely your choice.

But if you vote for people who are so scared of you that they won't even credit you with a brain; who will avoid you and not even listen to your views, you are a fucking idiot and deserve everything you get.

Sorry to swear. I happen to want to be listened to before I decide who to vote for.

Thanks for reading.

Major's EU speech

Tim Montgomerie, The Times:

Stop treating Britain like the bad boy of Europe because for forty years we've given more to the EU than we've received from it.

And then there's France. It misses its borrowing obligations under the Maastricht treaty but the rules are bent for it. Why aren't rules occasionally bent for us?

And what happened to the single market? Europe signed up to the principles of the Single European Act a full 25 years ago but while Britain is fully open to German cars and manufactured goods, Germany still isn't open to Britain's financial, professional and digital services. Some foundations of the EU – like freedom of movement – are sacrosanct only when it is Britain that is expected to implement them.

These complaints (paraphrased by me) weren't made by Nigel Farage or Bill Cash but by John Major, often seen as David Cameron's special ambassador on big moments and one of the Tories' leading pro-Europeans.

His basic message yesterday was "Wake up Germany!" If you continue to be obstinate towards Britain and refuse to give some ground to Cameron - in his desire for some ability to control immigration - there is a more than 50 per cent chance that your most important ally on economic policy will vote to become an independent nation.

Sir John's intervention almost certainly represents frustration inside Downing Street that the German chancellor does not appreciate how strongly the tide of Euroscepticism is flowing inside Britain.

Full text here. 

Me, the blog:

If the EU doesn't wake up very soon to what John Major and others are saying, the UK will be forced to leave the EU - or at least Dave et al will have little choice but to campaign for Brexit. They are all now pinning their hopes on significant reforms and the repatriation of powers to the UK government from Brussels.

But in the meantime, Brussels is powering on with its 'ever closer union'; young people in southern Europe continue to suffer with more than 50% out of work and with no prospects of finding a career; the Eurozone economy is stagnating (Germany has just announced that it did not go into recession in the last quarter but only grew by 0,1%) and yet we continue to be sneered at by ivory tower Eurocrats whose policies have been the direct cause of what is currently the only failing global trading bloc.

I think we'd be much better off out - more here on our standing in the world outside the EU - and I also think that many places other than the UK would also be much better off if they were able to devalue their currencies and rebalance their economies. One thing is for sure, the EU is destined for failure unless it listens to Pro-EU but 'critical friend' people like John Major. Personally I hope they don't, and I don't think they will, but you have to praise Major for this thoughtful and powerful intervention.

Thanks for reading.

'We're trying to help ordinary hard-working people' - so why do you never engage with them?

Having watched Ed Miliband's stage-managed relaunch today - his tenth I think and there are fewer than 6 months between now and a General Election - I couldn't help thinking that there weren't any non-Labour supporters in the audience; no sign of dissent at all, other than from the journalists who were clearly unwelcome in the hall.

I don't necessarily blame Ed for this as far as today is concerned - he is clinging on by his fingernails as it is, but it's not just today is it?

And Dave is far from exempt from this criticism. Most of his public appearances are very carefully stage managed.

Mr Clegg, to his credit, does his weekly radio show but he has very little to lose at this stage so the danger of him being cornered is not exactly a make-or-break issue. Still, it is to his credit I think - perhaps the only thing I'd have to give him credit for. He wouldn't recognise a principle if it bit him on the arse after all.

The point is that these people claim to represent the interests of ordinary hard-working people and yet they probably wouldn't recognise someone from that group if they stood up in their soup. None of them.

It's why we get automatons for MPs, certainly for ministers. Most have never had a real job. For most their view of real life is provided by lobbyists with an agenda. They look at the world via stats and focus groups.

A cynic might conclude that these people are not interested in ordinary people until they need their vote every five years. At which point they will promise them (the voter) just about anything. In the meantime, nothing.

It's funny to behold actually. The arrogance of four years - 'I've been elected so you can't question me' - turning to 'please vote for me, I'll be your best friend'.

Parasites.

Like him or loathe him, but Mr Farage does seem to have the bottle to stand up in front of 'ordinary' people. He seems to enjoy the debate, he does seem to believe in what he is advocating and he does seem to understand what real people are thinking.

As I say you may not agree with his views, but at least he has the balls to stand up in front of people. I wish the other parties had the same courage of their convictions.

The disconnect between the government 'elite' and real people has become a massive issue and until they address it, the 'legacy parties' will continue to lose support.

If you really think about this honestly, why would you cast your vote for someone who is clearly afraid of you and what you might say? How did we get to this madness?

Thanks for reading.

Facts. Not really important any more are they?

It seems to me, increasingly, that we're living in a world in which facts are in extremely short supply - or at least where indisputable facts can simply be ignored if they don't fit a political agenda.

Where spin and interpretation carries more weight than reality.

Where the Juggernaut of 'what we're doing' takes precedence over why we're doing it. (I personally think that nice Mr Blair has much to answer for in this regard - he took us into an Iraq war that was not based on fact or reality, but on his pre-agreed support for his mate Bush, which he then 'fitted' the facts to justify).

Where, inevitably, vested interests are more important than reality. And we're falling for it.

In a month's time, according to Al Gore in 2007, the Arctic will be free of ice. By 2012 there should have been 50 million climate refugees forced out of their home countries because of climate change.

Yet we ignore the fact that these ridiculous forecasts have not come to fruition and we carry on regarding man-made climate change as real.

While every prediction of climate doom and gloom fail to arise in reality, we continue to base our global energy policies on this fairy tale view and the belief that we can control the climate.

To the detriment of developing countries and the detriment of our own prosperity and energy security.

But the facts don't matter a jot. I'm all for renewable energy and the development of 'cleaner' and 'sustainable' alternatives but not on the basis of our having this ludicrous gun to our heads whereby we must 'act now or it'll be a global disaster' and where this faux urgency means that we have to subsidise green energy to a ridiculous extent.

I also think it's ludicrous to discard plentiful supplies of reliable and accessible energy like coal, oil and gas in order to reduce CO2 levels which simply are not having a detrimental effect on our climate. The IPCC, via it's endless scaremongering and predictions which have never materialised over the past 20 years or so, has effectively proved it's central thesis to be totally wrong. And yet we're still paying for it and idiots like our successive Energy Secretaries Ed Miliband, Chris Huhne and Ed Davey continue to risk our energy security by this blind green agenda.

More on 'green energy' here.

There are many other examples of where the facts simply don't stack up but politicians continue to tell the lie regardless.

The major one that concerns me is about our potentially leaving the EU: Ken Clarke, Mandelson, Clegg, Danny Alexander and Miliband continue to tell us that our leaving the EU would be a disaster for the UK economy.

Without having a single verifiable fact to support what they say. The tired old '3.5 million UK jobs at stake' bollocks continues to be rolled out when there is simply no evidence that it is true. Tell a big enough lie often enough and it will eventually be believed.

The fact is that the EU is a failing, bankrupt project. It is the only major global economic bloc that is shrinking and yet these people think we should tie our prosperity ever more closely with these unelected muppets in Brussels. Look at Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal where more than 50% of 16-14 year olds are unemployed and have very little prospect of having any kind of prosperous future. Look at France which has been bankrupt for years, propped up by the EU to keep them sweet. Germany is on the brink of another recession having effectively blown its recent boom years which have been achieved on the back of economic meltdown in southern Europe.

We (UK) are the Eurozone's biggest customer. There is a £46billion a year trade deficit in the Eurozone's favour on it's trade with the UK. If you think that the EU would impose punitive sanctions against UK trade if we left, you're a moron. They simply could not even begin to think about such a thing. It would tip the entire Eurozone from its current depression (not too strong a word) into total collapse.

But these 'facts' are not even mentioned in the EU debate. We are the 5th or 6th biggest economy on the planet. Would we not be able to organise our own trade deals with our commonwealth friends in India, Canada, Australia, parts of Africa, without the EU? We're better connected with these and other countries like China and the USA than any other country in the EU. So by handing over our  trade negotiations to the EU we are effectively reducing the positive effect of our good relations with these major trading powers to an inefficient 'collective' that has much less clout than we do.

More on our status in the world here.

Once again, the facts are there, readily available, but ignored by our politicians and main stream media for purely political reasons.

I could respect and respond to people putting forward 'facts' that contradict what I'm saying. I could examine them and if correct, could adjust my views accordingly. But there simply aren't any that hold water. And yet we're being told these things as if they're true, over and over again, to the point where people who can't be arsed to engage and actually do some research, believe them.Most are too busy watching xfaxtor or some other such cheap, humiliation TV bollocks and don't realise that their futures are being put at risk by these muppets.

It's infuriating. And depressing.

Sometimes it makes one consider giving up pointing this stuff out.

But the consolation is that Facts are facts. They don't change just because some powerful people wish them to. The planet is not warming (climate is changing, always has, always will) and we cannot control the planet's climate via CO2 emissions. As the earth cools, cyclically as it always has, and warms as it always has, someday - and I think soon - we will realise that the scaremongering is just that. Maybe then science will return to being about finding stuff out rather than trying to prove a  pre-ordained result which is both stupid and inflicting massive damage upon the credibility of our global scientific community.

And if, (oh happy day, not only for the UK but also for everyone who is now trapped in the Eurozone) we do manage to extract ourselves from this utterly flawed EU project that has caused so much damage to so many people; we will also see that the facts of our being a trading nation that doesn't need the EU (whereas it needs us to survive and continue its destruction of ordinary people's lives), will also be borne out.

So I'm not giving up. Any. Day. Soon.

Thanks for reading.

How can we defend the British way of life if we can't control our borders? (sweary, warned)

It's a headline that suggests 'little Englander' doesn't it? Someone who is against change and wants to hide their head in the sand about real life and modern developments. Someone who harks back to former glories and hasn't yet moved on and embraced the modern world.

Well it does doesn't it?

Off you jolly-well fuck with that notion.

How have we been made to feel embarrassed about our core values as a nation? About fairness. About generosity and respect to others? About the promotion of equal opportunity for all. About valuing hard work, abiding by our long established laws. About our sense of community, goodwill to others, a live and let live society?

These are things that we value as a nation. We can put up with - embrace even - our lot. Delayed trains, warm beer, terrible food. Unfathomable sports like cricket, rugby, polo - our fifth biggest industry is horse racing!

We are eccentric, we often care more for our dogs than our family members. We go to village fétes in the rain and trudge through the mud with a smile on our faces. We give more to charities and to emerging causes like Ebola than any other nation on earth. We keep our promises. If we pledge money we deliver it. (most don't).

We may sometimes have an over-inflated view of our place in the world. We think we're bigger and more important than we actually are. We're a bit like a Yorkshire terrier in that regard. But our overarching view is that people should be free to live their lives if they obey the laws of the land. Our land in any case.

I think we should stop being embarrassed about our traditional values. I think they should be a template for the world. For women's rights, for gay rights, for our live and let live approach. It's not 'little Englander' it's what the world should aspire to.

You are welcome to disagree. But if you do, please fuck off back to the shithole your views have created in your own country. We neither want nor need you. We're fine and you are, quite rightly jealous of what we have. It's not backward looking, it's the only possible peaceful future we have as a species.

The question is: how can we defend and uphold our values if we don't control our borders and can't make sure that incomers share our values?

Isn't that why they're coming to live here? If not we shouldn't make them welcome. But we can't do this if we can't control our borders.

Listen to this. I love it! 

Thanks for reading.

Climate change, it's just getting funny now.

There were a couple of pieces in the Telegraph over the past two days on climate change which made me smile. At least I'd smile if this ridiculous stuff wasn't costing me - and you - hundreds of pounds a year to solve a problem which simply doesn't exist.

This whole situation is becoming simply ludicrous as the real world facts just do not bear any relation to what these people are saying and claiming.

In this one the reporter dutifully recorded the fact that many climate change NGOs have exaggerated claims about the threat we face and then went on to report some additional ludicrous threats with absolutely zero factual substance. Whatever your views on this issue, if you take a step back, you'd have to see this as funny, if it wasn't quite so serious.

Here is the second piece, linked in the first, same journalist. Read the thing please otherwise the following will make no sense.

This may sound trite but I'll come back to the rationale shortly.

My response to the paragraphs are thus:

Pars 1, 2, 3 and 4: No it isn't.

Par 5 Not it won't.

Pars 6, 7 8, 9, 10 and 11: no it isn't.

Par 12: No it isn't we do not control the climate and nor can we.

Par 13: There is zero scientific evidence for this claim.

The rest is 'line by line' bollocks. That I can't be arsed to fisk. These people said we were going into an ice age in 1974. They told us we'd have 50 million climate refugees by now. That snow would be a thing of the past by now. That the polar ice caps would have melted by now.

And yet the MSM (Main Stream Media) still gives them space and credibility? It has nothing to do with the impossible control of climate and everything to do with control of you.  How and where you live, how you travel, how many kids you have, access to the countryside. How you heat your home. What you eat. How you live.

It's past time that we woke up to this utter bullshit.

More background here and here.

Thanks for reading.