The accidental Green

Without ever having made any effort to be 'green' I find, somewhat to my chagrin, that I actually have an ecological footprint substantially smaller than Saint Greta's. It emerges that not only is her trans-Atlantic yacht made of carbon fibre, which costs ten tonnes of CO2 per tonne of yacht, and is wholly un-recyclable, but that in place of her single airfare, the boat's five crew will all fly home from the US. In addition, we can expect the BBC to fly out a full crew with a tonne of equipment to report on her arrival, and doubtless the same goes for many other mainstream networks. So all-in-all, Saint Greta's trip is incredibly CO2 heavy. I digress.

For a start, I like old buildings and old cars, prefer to repair and reuse than buy new, eschew air-conditioning, use wholly sustainable bulk local wood for heating and cooking and our electricity here is 84% renewable (a lot of hydro in there). My night-time house is a comfortable 18deg and in Winter only the kitchen and principal living room are over 20deg. For anything other than short local journeys I prefer to use the train, which allows me to do a host of interesting things other than stare at the road and twitch nervously at the stupidities of other road users. And in a couple of years all the oldie discounts will kick in.

For forty years, I've almost exclusively bought only good quality wool, leather, cotton, linen and in minute quantities (pocket squares and ties) silk clothing. It lasts a long time and I can wear it year after year. My shoes are all from good Northampton shoemakers and can be resoled - my oldest pair of Veldtshoen are now thirty years old, and my shoe repairer* told me sadly that they were on their last soles and heels - the welts would not take another stitching. So no microfibres or plastics, no Chinese shoes stuck together with glue that last only three months. Any phobias I had about the sewing box were dispelled long ago when I worked with an incrediby heterosexual ex-RN CPO who spent his lunch hours knitting golf-club covers.

I have long made my own pickles and bottled my own jam (the perfect Piccalilli has taken some years to master - the secret lies in not underdoing the salt in de-watering the raw veg overnight) have never bought what they call 'highly processed foods' which I always suspected were as bad for one as margarine and have long made use of whatever local, seasonal produce is in store. I've always made a point of buying nether Kenyan french beans nor the Spanish strawberries that arrive in the shops here when the snow still caps the landscape.

However, you're not looking at Saint Radders. Though LED lighting is fine for the barn and workshop, I won't have it in the house. And I'm told my internet use is also a carbon-heavy activity. But most of all, I've never, ever, actually tried to be green - it's all thoroughly accidental.

Sock-darning mushroom, turned in the workshop from a scrap of Beech firewood

*Original Cobblers, near Sidcup. Highly recommended. They also maintain the Household Cavalry's boots.

The future after Brexit

It is really time that the EU realised that we are leaving, and not on the terms of their Satrap 'treaty' that would enchain us and castrate our sovereignty. They have attempted to humiliate a proud and capable nation, and have failed. There has been absolutely nothing in the EU's conduct over the past three years that now deserves the hand of friendship. Boris' nuanced verbal description of them as our 'friends' carries exactly the right balance of contempt and malice.

However, the nations of Europe now have it in their hands to prevent Britain turning its face from the mainland. The crazed and unstable fanatics of the EU are personally cushioned against the disruption they will cause by refusing to negotiate. The EU will drain the last Euro of wealth from France, Italy, Spain and Denmark to preserve the power and privileges of the Berlaymont énarques. But the disruption of not concluding a win-win deal with the UK will go far beyond trade.

The last of the BAOR are now headed back for Tidworth, and our NATO training and deployment is now directed largely at the old eastern nations - the Balts, Poland, Hungary, Czecho. A bad-tempered Brexit will turn Britain, as it did the last time we were excommunicated by the European Empire, over the oceans and across the equator. Our face will turn Westwards - maybe for fifty years, some say. This will be as much Europe's loss as it was the last time. 

The EU has tried to enchain us in an anti-American, inefficient, third-rate little Empire. We have refused to be so enchained. That doesn't mean we want to be enchained instead as a satrap of an America getting used to the loss of Unipolar status. Most Brits I think would be happy as an Independent country with clout, a nation that punches above its weight, bridging the world between America and Europe, a locus of anglophone alliance, and as the coin says Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations. It's up to the nations of Europe now to disown the EU's destructive folly and take the proffered hand of friendship.

Hammond - Bercow - Juncker - Barnier Axis exposed

Nick Drake had it right

Take a look you may see me coming through
For I am the parasite who travels two by two

Yes, what we all suspected all along is now being confirmed. Allied troops are inside the conquered bunker and finding all the evidence - in this case of a malign and disloyal Axis of sabotage, an Axis in which Hammond, Bercow, Grieve and others conspired with the EU actors who seek to impose on Britain a treaty every bit as humiliating as Versailles or Brest-Litovsk. Bercow, Hammond and their destructive cadre want nothing more than to place their nation under the jackboot heel of an increasingly authoritarian and repressive EU empire. They are true Quislings.

Allister Heath has it in the Telegraph - still the only national newspaper not in the pockets of the Brussels Stasi

(The parasites) are being led by the increasingly ludicrous Philip Hammond, who as chancellor blocked no-deal preparations, vetoed crucial Brexit spending plans and was more responsible than anybody else for Theresa May’s catastrophic treaty. The new team at No  10 keeps uncovering fresh, shocking evidence of his handiwork. His strategy, shared with John Bercow and Dominic Grieve, appears to be to signal to Brussels not to compromise: the rebels will neuter the Government, so the Eurocrats should stick to their guns.

It's all now to play for. The global downturn is here at last and just starting to bite - and the EU is holed so close to the waterline that just a marginal increase in draught or a tiny list will flood the hold. Brexit as soon as possible is the only possible measure to decontaminate the UK from the coming EU implosion; contrary to Hammond's betrayals, Brexit will save our economy and nation from the coming continental turmoil. We are an International nation, whose hands reach in friendship around the world, but our need to protect ourselves from bigger, malign enemies has ever been clear -

This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands

Fasten the harness, all, we're off!

People Vs Parliament - Bring it on!

A poll that has got lost in the noise of the past few days is critically telling. It revealed a massive divide between what MPs think their responsibility is and what those who elect them think it is. Voters, quite naturally, expect MPs to represent the interests of the constituency. MPs, on the contrary, think their job, once elected, is to represent just their own opinions.

I have long supported a General Power of Recall, with the bar set high enough to prevent vexatious use, triggered by a simple motion that 'The electors of Blankshire no longer have confidence that Max Musterman MP can represent their interests in Parliament'. The problem of long-sitting MPs appointed by Party central offices is the deep sense of entitlement and the high degree of pomposity, self-regard and self-love that it engenders. The only one of the demands of the 19th century Chartists not realised by the 21st is that of annual Parliaments - designed specifically to prevent the sort of rogue parliament we've seen for the past three years. Don't let the buggers get settled, the thinking went; their arses will get stuck to the green leather, and they'll forget they're just ordinary people.

Well, it's all now coming to a head. It's now People vs Parliament. Oh, we'll get Brexit, one way or another; if they scupper Boris, we've got Nigel waiting in the wings. They're fighting like cornered rats, but they can't win - we'll pitch them out of their cosy complacency, puncture their egos and throw them on the rubbish heap of history. The People will win.

And the longer they prolong the outcome, the deeper we will cut to root them out from every nook and cranny of public life. For too long have they lorded it over the people of Britain; their day has come. Bring it on!

Update
=====
Survation poll 14/8, polling 9th - 11th August
Preferred outcome of the Brexit process
Leave with or without a deal - 53%
Remain - 47%

Don't knows 9%

Poll - Public trust Boris more than Parliament

Another Humdinger of a poll today - Comres for the Telegraph, with the paper's write-up here. However, here are my highlights -

Parliament is out of touch with the British public
Agree - 88%
Disagree - 12%

Don't knows were 12%

On Brexit, most MPs seem to ignore the wishes of voters and push their own agendas
Agree - 90%
Disagree - 10%

Don't knows 12%

Parliament is more in tune than Boris with the British public 
Agree - 38%
Disagree - 62%

And that's the tone of the poll; we don't wholly trust Boris, we don't think he can unite the country and the jury's out on his competence but by God he's miles better than this shoddy, anti-democratic Parliament, the country is saying. And that helps to understand the Telegraph headline from Q7

Boris needs to deliver Brexit by any means, including suspending parliament if necessary, in order to prevent MPs from stopping it
Agree - 54%
Disagree - 46%

It confirms the growing support from the last Opinium poll for 'Brexit now - deal or no deal'. And confirms my recent point that in any people vs parliament election if they force a vote of no confidence next month, they'll get slaughtered - rarely have I seen a parliament held in such contempt by the British people.

Right. Next .... the Lords.

Who will be the Petain of their Government of National Surrender?

Remainiacs were scrambling over the weekend to place themselves as candidates to head a new Government of National Surrender to follow the imagined defeat of our government in September. Caroline Lucas was first out of the traps, volunteering to head an all-female LBGTQB (including trans) government of yellow-greens with a bit of pink. Chukka Ummummumma was not far behind, and Dominic Grieve has been hanging around outside the studios to lig more air time. @RoryWanksOn has turned around and is heading back to Westminster and even Anna Soubry is considering which outfits would do best against the background of a big glossy black door.

They are all, of course, living in a fantasy world, away in a bunker. Any such moves would see them slaughtered in an election pitched as 'people vs. parliament' - I can tell you the result now. People will win big. I can only imagine the heat had addled their brains; one doesn't have to dig far to discover the deep contempt in which Petain, Laval and Darlan are still held in France.

Saturday's Opinium poll may also just start to sink in -

Opinium - Fieldwork 8th/9th August

Opinion is shifting week by week behind a clean Brexit. The big issue that remains unresolved for the Autumn election is any pact between my party and The Brexit Party; don't believe the early denials. If that's what it takes to secure a thumping Leave majority in the House, it will happen.

Politics is cruel. Several papers print the eyespymp snap of Philip Hammond sans armoured jag and armed bodyguards with his bags on a tube at Piccadilly station. He's just a backbench MP now, and may not even be that by Christmas.

Did they have to show him how to use an Oyster card?

BBC Lies, Distortion and fear mongering

A better example of BBC lies and distortion than the '45,000 cows to be culled because of Brexit' I have yet to find. 'Newsnight' put the story out as part of an ongoing and now quite open bias that has seen almost all BBC news output propagating silly 'Project Fear' stories. Even the ex-minister Robert Goodwill in the clip rubbished the story. The first 3 or 4 minutes of this lying rubbish are sufficient.



The simple facts are these. A third of Northern Ireland's milk currently goes to the Republic for processing, largely into cheese. The Republic then exports some 80,000 tonnes of cheddar a year made in part with this milk back into the UK*. After Brexit, there will be a 40% tariff on the milk going south and a 40% tariff on the Cheddar coming into the UK. Of course it won't continue.

The solution of course is very simple - if the EU remain obdurate and refuse to see sense, in no short time some enterprising individual will throw up a cheese factory in the province, making 80,000 tonnes a year of cheddar from UK milk for UK consumption. Result? Jobs, wealth, GDP and taxes for the UK - gainers - and job losses, benefit costs, tax shortfalls and falling GDP for the Republic - losers.

Whilst the new Ulster cheese factories are under construction, the government could buy the milk and give it away to schools, hospitals, food banks, the elderly and so on.

Do the people of Ireland really want us to come to this? Isn't it about time ordinary Irish voters told Varadkar to stop posing and get back to his Kylie fan club posters?

* It takes 10 litres of milk to make 1kg of cheddar, so the 700m - 800m litres of milk exported from North to South each year makes 70,000 - 80,000 tonnes of cheese - almost exactly equivalent to the UK's Cheddar imports from Ireland.