And yes, it was the EU that precipitated it all. Everything about the EU was contrary to 1500 years of British history, a history of a permissive society in which the law only intervened to prevent specific harms. European law, formed by an authoritarian papacy, a tyrant Napoleon and a dictatorial tradition culminating in power being taken by the EU, is restrictive. You are only allowed to do that which the State permits you to do. And they've covered all options - a serious offence here is 'Resisting State authority' - covering everything from running away from the police to refusing to dib your mates in.
Of course, our domestic elite - politicians, journalists, broadcasters, local government officials and civil servants, quangocrats, the new fat, bloated cardinals of academia, the vice-chancellors of the learning scam, and the fake charities and their fakenews 'reports' - loved the displacement of British Liberalism by EU authoritarianism. It gave them the opportunity to smother us with a sodden pillow of joyless, dreary regulation. Our pubs and working mens clubs were closed and the sites sold off to Housing Associations, the billions of new money printed since 2008 have all gone to boost the asset values of the wealthy elites whilst our own incomes have stagnated and our opportunities are mired; our children, burdened for a lifetime with a mountain of debt before they start living, now have less chance of owning a home than a Victorian sweep.
What drives our elites so hard to 'Remain' isn't that they love the EU, but that they've come to enjoy the undemocratic power that the EU brings them, and are fearful of losing it to a more democratic and independent Britain.
But don't despair. Win or lose this round of Brexit, we're winning. Britain WILL leave the EU, and we will rebalance power in our nation. 2016 let the genie out of the bottle, and strive as they might they cannot stuff it back inside. Right now, we've paralysed Parliament and virtually destroyed two established Parties, to be reborn in our own image. We've created a gap for a third party (sorry, Gerard, it isn't you) and even a fourth to keep them in discomfort. And we're demanding to be heard.
As Eamonn Butler, the ASI's Director, wrote in 'Abusing the People'
'(populists) see themselves as ignored and exploited by those who are supposed to represent them. And faced with all this, the British public are doing what the British public have always done: poking fun at their leaders and making life as uncomfortable for them as they can. As long as they do not miscalculate and elect someone like Jeremy Corbyn, many of us think that this is actually no bad thing'
24 comments:
Looks like I have my evening reading. Thanks for posting the link to Abusing the People.
Anyone who hasn't read it, I recommend Revolting! How the Establishment are Undermining Democracy and What They'Re Afraid of" by Mick Hume.
Agreed Raedwald...
I was asking my son a couple of weeks back whether I should resign from UKIP or just not renew, since I knew that he had done the latter and he was a bit of a bigwig in that party. He said, just do what ever Nigel does, so I resigned last week in a throwing my toys out of the pram manner. You are correct, I know Gerard Batten personally, and I never thought that he was a leader. His assumption of the leadership was seriously disheartening, but I had just renewed my membership when it happened, "despite Bolton". His subsequent course of action of turning UKIP into a street mob of Tommmmeeee supporters actually makes me feel sick, and as you intimate Raedwald, and as I have commented here, it is doomed.
As for Eamonn Butler, I met him a few years back and I asked him a question about limited liability, I believe it to be a tool of bureaucrats, politicians and corporatists, and essentially bad. I asked him why we needed it, he said it was fundamental to capitalism. It was just then, that I realised that "free markets" and "capitalism" were very different animals. The former being about the human condition, the latter being an attempt at immortality, and it is, in my view, almost as evil as socialism, since it leads to corporatism/fascism... socialism's nastier little cousin.
I remember getting into trouble here defending the feudalist construct, contending that it was part of the free market structure, and I still believe that it is more humane than untrammelled capitalism.
And here we are, approaching the denouement, the point where family is destroyed at the altar of globalism, and real human lives start to be taken in support of one side or the other.
I reckon that we are better off, smoking ourselves to death, at least it is pleasurable doing it.
For me the turning point was the ban on incandescent light bulbs. It's a trivial 'straw' to break a camel's back but the suggested CFL replacements were not ready as a replacement with poor colour and higher costs. It has been said by others that a large firm that had spare CFL manufacturing capacity lobbied for the change.
It's only now that LED replacements are available that wholesale replacement of incandescent lighting makes sense. And since it makes sense there's no need to make it compulsory...
If this is winning Radders, I'd hate to think what losing looks like?
We've been well and truly done up like a kipper (and I don't mean Ukipper either), the amendments by Grieve et al will see to that.
What will the next election bring? Corbyn? Good luck with that.
We've tried the ballot box, and that turned out well didn't it? Not.
So now, there is only one option left.
Discovered JOys - that was the moment for me too.
I think Radders is correct, it is no accident that Britain is the way it is, it is that way because of the nature, patient decent but cussed in adversity, of its inhabitants.
I share Radders' optimism, expressed very well by Allister Heath in the telegraph as well by the way a couple of days back.
It is the nature of the British in all our wars to lose the first round due mainly to our not being a militaristic aggressive nation on a permanent war footing, unlike those who usually start them. I'm looking at you Prussia.
THere was a headline this morning that Selmayr wants to take over the negotiation with the UK.
That would have the inestimable benefit of guaranteeing a clean break. The fact that the eurocrats don't understand that tells you all you need to know about the EU.
Beatings will continue until morale improves.
Gosh, RW! It was only in 2007 you decided that? For me it was far earlier. I've been interested in shooting all my life, though I do less now since the (English) countryside is getting so crowded and shrinking; first, in 1967 the Act passed by Roy Jenkins put shotguns on registration (very interesting background, but that's for another time); then in 1988 when I was planning to get an AR-15 we lost semi-automatic rifles; in 1997 we lost handguns, and I had to give up my Colt 1911 .45...
I dare say not everyone here is interested in guns or shooting: but I suggest that for anyone interested in both political liberty, and the political process, a study of firearms legislation (with particular regard to the UK) is highly instructive. It's also depressing, for anyone keen on democracy... In sum, we've only had real "gun control" stuff for approaching 100 years, prior to which gun ownership was far more widespread, virtually unrestricted, and gun crime was at lower levels proportionately than today; since then, successive Firearms Acts (all but one passed by Conservative administrations...) have ramped up the controls, while gun crime has increased in parallel.
I could go on, but I won't. Really, it's hugely more instructive & interesting even than the history of government hypocrisy over tobacco.
@Tony Harrison:
Sean Gabb tells a great story about the old days when the police were rarely armed, but ordinary folk might well be, as they went about their business.
He says that it was not unusual for a policeman, witnessing an armed robbery taking place, obtaining a pearl handled handbag gun from a little old lady in order to detain the robber. The point being that there was more than one reason to NOT take a firearm with you when you went out to commit crime.
The first being that you didn't know which of your victims was armed or not, so it was not a simple matter.
The second was that WHEN you were caught, there was a real chance that the hangman's noose would be at the end of your road.
Even the thickest of felon, realised this and thought twice before embarking on such an adventure.
The valuable input of clever politicians was unnecessary, it was self policing, and as you say, "gun crime" was unusual, rather than the norm.
Politicians and bureaucrats are the real criminals in our modern world and very expensive to-boot.
@right-writes: I haven't read Sean Gabb for some years, but I'm aware of the phenomenon you mention. Can't recall the details, but there's a fairly well recorded instance from pre-WW1 when London plods were pursuing miscreants, and along the way various gentlemen (maybe ladies too) proffered the loan of their pocket pistols in case of need...
In those days, my grandfathers and other Brits could buy and own just about any gun they wanted, without hindrance or registration, including automatics. England was certainly not crime-free, but gun crime was at significantly lower levels than today.
I wish I could share your optimism, Radders, but unfortunately just now I cannot.
The endless screeching of the Remoaners and their dags in the media, reinforced by the risible - yet somehow believed by millions - nonsense of "Project Hysteria" mean that ordinary non-geeky people just want the whole thing sewn up and off the front pages at practically any cost. Principles mean nothing to them.
Any delay or extension now will become indefinite, to be followed in a few years' time by a quiet reversal into the status quo. It might only take and Order in Council.
And make no mistake, this is our last and only chance; the elites will never again make the mistake of asking the people their views.
As long as the bread and circuses continue, we're screwed, imho.
Oh and btw, would everyone please forget about UKIP?
When Cameron made his famous remark about fruitcakes and swivel-eyed loons, it was meant to be an insult, and it was; now - not so much so.
I have no idea of the truth about Tommy Robinson, but of one thing I am certain: the mere mention of his name will cause all reasonable voters to run for the hills. It seems the current UKIP "leadership" don't understand this. They are finished; ignore them, point and laugh if you must, but you cannot take them seriously, and we need a serious party.
Oh and btw, would everyone please forget about UKIP?
A couple of months back when Raed proposed a March Of Millions, I warned that the most important thing would be not to let UKIP or Tommy Robinson near it.
@Battenburk, you know when you've consigned your party to the political dustbin when there are more coppers at your march of THOUSANDS than protesters! 17.345 million (and that's being generous) LEAVE voters just told you they do not want to be associated in any way with the yakking Lemon. But worse than that-its your party and if you want to wreck it channeling the AfD then that's your choice-is that you have accomplished what Remainers never could (not for want of trying I might add), namely linked Brexit inedibly with the Nazism.
UKIP were the original populist party - that expression didn't really exist until UKIP united sufficient people to encourage the Government to have the Referendum. We might denigrate UKIP now but let's not forget what they started.
But the PRINCIPLES imparted by UKIP still hold fast with many people - yes it's sad that such principles have been hijacked (although the actual reasons behind that are laudable) but as other commenters infer, the idea that the people might lay back and accept what's coming is sheer nonsense. The genie is indeed out of the bottle.
For me this is no longer about the politics - this is about the mindset, a mindset that is being betrayed and manipulated by a media that is itself a 'quasi-political' construct that needs to be dismantled.
We've turned on the politicians - we need to direct our ire on the media.
@ Jack Ketch: Your excitable post about Tommy Robinson (call him by his real name if you like, makes no difference) says more about you than it does about him and his alleged failings. To link the present UKIP with Nazism is the sort of crass, puerile smear one associates with Guardian columnists: to suggest that UKIP is somehow aping the AfD is laughable, and your implication that the AfD is even "far right" (pigeonholing cant beloved of the dimwit MSM) or proto-Nazi makes your regular claims to know something about Germany deeply suspect. AfD is now the third-biggest group in the Bundestag, and has representatives in all state parliaments. It doesn't seem to have peaked. Were I German I'd vote AfD in a heartbeat, and I wish devoutly we had a similar Party for England.
Sorry Tony but unusually, I make Jack right here...
UKIP is going nowhere decent with Batten.
But you are on the nail regarding the meeja, somehow the globalists, control the language, they control the meeja, they control the bureaucracy and the agenda.
Perhaps my Dad was making a very sentient point when he told me that as a young man in the 1930's and an avid Marxist, that brownie points were to be had by getting to the kiddies. The best way to do that was through the education system.
I routinely disregard people that offer up their superiority over me by talking about their superior education... Indeed, I regard such things as a warning that bollocks might be about to erupt from their facial and other apertures.
Populism has its roots not in the libertarian right, which was what UKIP was when I joined it, rather it relates to a left wing US political party from the back end of the 19th C. However the recent attacks on UKIP from the meeja and globalists in general indicate that the party is closer to populism than it ever was under Nigel.
Hopefully something more liberal is on the way, there have been rumours.
DiscoveredJoys - and there was me thinking that I was pretty much on my own. The CFL at 5x the price and usually a shorter life never seemed worth the saving of a watt or two, but LEDs with a tenth of the wattage do seem to me to be worth the (smaller) price differential, especially if you buy them cheaply and not some of the overpriced brands.
They do have a downside, and that is that you can't use LEDs to keep baby chicks warm like you could with an incandescent bulb!
right-writes: You could be right about UKIP/Batten, but this does not affect my opinion that Ketch is wrong again - not just a bit wrong either, but supremely daft in trying to attach any degree of "Nazi" label to Tommy R and/or UKIP. I am sick of seeing the MSM (not just The Guardian) labelling anyone as "far right" who seems slightly to the right of the soggy social democrats of the Tory Party.
There has been no significant change in UKIP. The party rules are the same; the democratically elected NEC works the same way; even the current manifesto is based on the 2015 manifesto. UKIP's prime policy is to cleanly leave the EU, something that the LibLabCon have betrayed after they promised to implement our vote.
Every sneer and expression of bigotry attacking Batten has previously been made about Farage. In a curious twist, Farage has now been absorbed by the establishment, so all the bile directed towards him has been "forgotten". But the bile wasn't true about Farage then, and it's not true about Batten now. Typically Jack Ketch describes UKIP as Nazi as he channels Nick Cohen's incoherent hatred (eg Observer 2015). It is absolutely false: UKIP is a liberal party.
The irony is that those who froth about UKIP being fascist are themselves usually supporters of the EU. Yet the EU looks like an odd amalgam of National and International Socialism to me. The EU is completely undemocratic, its parliament a joke; the powerful have risen in the same way as those in the Politburo, not by elections; it works hand in glove with the corporates to increase its power as did the Nazis; it is morally, politically, and economically bankrupt. The EU is of the eurocrats, for the eurocrats, by the eurocrats.
In 1975 the establishment/europhile(Remain)/EU used every trick, and every lie, in the book. But they majored on relentless ad hominem personal smears. I will not fall for that again.
Tony Harrison - as a fellow gun enthusiast I am luckier in that in Italy there is a much bigger gun lobby and the laws are correspondingly more sensible, and that is the main reason I have no plans to return to blighty.
I am not particualry well informed about the history of the disarmament of the UK populace but I wholly agree with you that it is a microcosm of the loss of liberties more generally.
Re Batten and UKIP - you must remember that we are talking about politics, and electability, and as a result what things look like.
UKIP has to be about Brexit and is partly responsible for the mess we are in now by taking its eye off the ball, and that is Farage's fault. I don't say we'd be in a much different situation if he'd stayed but it might have helped keep the tories in line, a bit. He was a charismatic, telegenic
and quick witted leader of the party.
The whole issue of islamisation is important as well, but it cannot be allowed to interfere with Brexit, and politically it needs handling with kid gloves and tact. It should be quite obvious that regardless of the facts about Tommy Robinson, he is media poison and it is idiotic to allow the media to paint ukip as a fascist party (which it wasn't, I don't know now) and thereby undermine Brexit by association.
As I say regardless of the facts. The media is not about facts it is about messages.
Batten, by failing to see that or ignoring it, is doing us all a massive disservice.
So the can has been kicked again, and the same ridiculous woman, in ill-fitting outfits and oversize jewellery, trying for all the world to look "young and relevant" will go on a debasement tour with her begging bowl. And who can say they are surprised?
Europe (particularly France) at it's lowest ebb ever, literally starved of money and she cannot see any advantage in taking a strong position, or starting preparations for the inevitable conclusion to scare the shit out of the EU. I am talking patrol vessels, bonded warehouses and upgraded port facilities, sending out business men to non-EU countries to solicit deals would also be helpful.
And Raedwald is casting around for the next political party when he should be promoting the individualist that says fuck-em-all seventy years of decline is enough, turf out the political and bureaucrat class, lets get some MPs with dirt under their fingernails and possibly a chavvy accent.
I would take Tommy Robinson over Winnie Flabbot, Teresa Appeaser or the camoron any day. Sure he is uncouth, but he believes in the country which is more than can be said of 70% of the supine conmen MPs.
Cascadian, Indeed. With May trotting off to Brussels for a re-re-renegotiation (Cameron's renegotiation followed by the first and now second May efforts) we are a joke nation. And anyway our supremely thick MPs were told by us in the Referendum we didn't want a renegotiated EU deal, we wanted to leave.
My view on Brexit has long been thus: its a divorce thats started by one party out of the blue saying 'I want a divorce!'. And while there may be interminable periods of reconciliation, and agreements to move forward etc etc, those words cannot be unsaid, any more than toothpaste stuffed back in the tube. Regardless of what transpires, the UK is never going to be a fully paid up member of the EU again, and from here on the rift will widen and widen, if for no other reason the EU will drift away from the UK, rather than the other way around. Its not a legalistic or political analysis, its an emotional one, and I'll back the emotional over the legalistic every day, as society comprises people, not legal entities.
The PM statement to the house, received as it should be with disdain. If there is any doubt that the commons wish to carry out the will of the referendum skip to 6:00 and listen to the question and the their response.
DisMay has lost all credibility.
The only course left to brexiters is civil disobedience on a wide and continuing scale.
Doh!
A link to thast statement would be helpful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELoh_sXx83Q
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