Globalism is still destroying America

No apologies today for letting another voice do the speaking - in this case the distinguished American economist Paul Craig Roberts, writing for Zero Hedge:-

I have reported for years that US jobs are no longer middle class jobs. The jobs have been declining for years in terms of value-added and pay. With this decline, aggregate demand declines. We have proof of this in the fact that for years US corporations have been using their profits not for investment in new plant and equipment, but to buy back their own shares. Any economist worthy of the name should instantly recognize that when corporations repurchase their shares rather than invest, they see no demand for increased output. Therefore, they loot their corporations for bonuses, decapitalizing the companies in the process. There is perfect knowledge that this is what is going on, and it is totally inconsistent with a growing economy.

As is the labor force participation rate. Normally, economic growth results in a rising labor force participation rate as people enter the work force to take advantage of the jobs. But throughout the alleged economic boom, the participation rate has been falling, because there are no jobs to be had.

In the 21st century the US has been decapitalized and living standards have declined. For a while the process was kept going by the expansion of debt, but consumer income has not kept pace and consumer debt expansion has reached its limits.

The Fed/Treasury “plunge protection team” can keep the stock market up by purchasing S&P futures. The Fed can pump out more money to drive up financial asset prices. But the money doesn’t drive up production, because the jobs and the economic activity that jobs represent have been sent abroad. What globalism did was to transfer the US economy to China.

Roberts' conclusion is not positive. "The conclusion is that the United States is locked on a path that leads directly to the Third World of 60 years ago. President Trump is helpless to do anything about it."

EU illegal fishing in UK waters Buggered

It's the Express this morning that carries the best story. You'll remember how we're always being told that the EU is a 'rules based organisation'? Indeed the EU has been as tedious as a pub bore on the subject, whilst privately breaking all its own rules when the interests of the, erm, EU are at stake. This is going to work against the EU's fishing nations in a big way, as Bertie Armstrong, Scottish Fishing Federation boss, told the paper.

As HuffPost reported, French agriculture minister Didier Guillaume said earlier this month that "There is no scenario in which French fishermen should be prevented, could be prevented, would be prevented by Boris Johnson, from fishing in British waters. There is no reason for it. So I will keep telling Britain that our fishermen must be allowed to keep fishing in its waters". Brave words, young Kermit - but just bluster.

As the Express reports -

Bertie Armstrong, the CEO of the Scottish Fisherman’s Federation, claimed the European Union would become the "laughing stock of the world" if they did not respect British waters in the event of a no deal Brexit. "The European Union has led the world in the fight against what is referred to as IUU - illegal, unregulated, unreported fishing, off the coast of Africa and elsewhere in the world. If fishing nations in northern Europe were suddenly to engage in fishing which is not approved by the new owners of the waters, then the European Union would be the laughing stock of the world. It would be unacceptable."

This doesn't mean of course that individual French vessels will not seek to break the law - either straying a mile or so inside the marine boundary in acts of calculated defiance, or more seriously by turning off their AIS transmitters. All vessels over a certain size must continuously transmit vessel information under international law - this is the AIS plot of Peterhead harbour this morning, crammed with trawlers. Individual ship details can be brought up to give detailed vessel, course, speed and track information.

So how can we track them if they switch their AIS off? Well, we've just bought 26 new Protector drones, licenced to fly in European airspace and piloted from RAF Waddington. These powerful albatrosses can glide over our fishing grounds, fitted with radar and sensors that can detect and match physical signatures with AIS transmissions, and any vessels with AIS turned off can be closely filmed and photographed and their position legally recorded. As the Express points out, this is exactly the sort of technology that the EU has been championing for African fishing grounds.

One of the RAF's 26 new Protectors

Even if EU27 nations make difficulties after illegal fishing has been established in handing over skippers for trial or vessels for seizure, the trawlers will remain liable for immediate seizure by the Navy if ever they enter British waters again - meaning illegal fishing will be for many a one-time risk.

All in all, the message is Don't Panic - They're Buggered. 

Reversing Blair's poison legacy

There are still a few changes that Blair made to our ancient democracy that must be undone to restore us to health. Brexit will push things along nicely - not least the re-introduction of proper entry and exit controls that will allow the ONS to sharpen their pencils a little. This week it emerged that we have 240,000 fewer Nigerians in the country than we thought, but 240,000 more Poles.

Project Fear III is starting to gear up after its Summer holiday. It seems the theme de jour is to be terrified EU27 citizens in panic and fleeing Britain pre-Brexit. Ahem. The BBC, Sky News and Channel 4, and any other MSM zombies that can't tell their arses from elbows, actually have no evidence for this at all - it's like them reporting that the thunder and lightning is due to the sky giants fighting over a rusk. But that doesn't stop them reporting fake news these days.

There are two main reasons why more EU27 citizens are leaving the UK than arriving right now. One is the pound's very low exchange rate. You can draw a graph that almost exactly correlates EU27 inwards immigration and the £/€; back when it was €1.45, they were rushing the doors. Now it's €1.08 they're moving to fresher fields.

The other reason they're going is the same reason a Brit I knew here has gone home - the grey economy. Now that UK citizens in Europe and EU27 citizens in the UK must show how they get their income, a few thousands or tens of thousands who have slipped under the tax net, or who make or supplement their incomes with illegal work including prostitution are being exposed to the extent that they're packing it in and going home. Good.

And has the NHS collapsed like they said it would? Has it horsefeathers. Here's why -

UK transport planning - post Brexit

For the past forty years, Europe's transport network has evolved on a spoke and hub basis for upgrades, new infrastructure and prioritisation. The hub is somewhere around Frankfurt, with a sort of Zone 1 extending to the Netherlands and Berlin. The rest of us are on the spokes. It's all part of a huge 'transport corridor' masterplan developed by the EU under the 'Tentec' badge. The UK has gone from Airstrip One to Euroroute E15.

The plan's corridors include road, rail and sea routes and it has led, as I have previously posted, to the absurdity of a container from China to Munich taking eleven days longer via Rotterdam or Hamburg than it would need to travel if transshipped at an Adriatic terminal. This is largely due to the route masterplan having been corrupted by the power of national interests rather than being designed on economic, or even ecological, grounds.

Thus the entire HS1 / HS2 concepts are integral parts of an EU transport masterplan, a masterplan that for forty years has set in steel, stone and concrete the EU hub and spoke network. It has less to do with reduced journey times or British economic or business interests than with forced Euro integration. As such, we must welcome the government review, which must now view the UK's transport planning from a fresh perspective.

AEP in the Telegraph cogently dissects why we must now do the same for ports - the predominance of Dover in truck movements, which have grown from 14% to around 30% of UK-EU trade since the early 1990s, has left us wide open to EU blockade (though AEP politely doesn't use that term). Saint Greta would deprecate the waste and pollution of (as AEP writes) trucking Scotch Whisky to a ferry at Dover rather than via a container from the Tyne.

Now that we're no longer under the boot-heel of the EU's transport planners, we can take pointless freight off the roads by better use of container ports, eliminate Romanian and Polish truckers with their dodgy LHD rigs by using ro-ro trailers (hauled by UK rigs on UK roads) and use the Chunnel for what it's meant - a thrumming artery for containerised freight, not a luxury passenger route for our bloated Gauleiters to shuttle back and forth from the Chancellery in Brussels. 

To our transport experts - I'm happy to be corrected on any of the above in the comments. 

G7 Who?

The heads of government gathering for the G7 this week will be familiar with one another; seasoned politicians all they are closely attuned to each-others' domestic standing, approvals and prospects. There will be private commiserations for Italy's Conte, who against early expectations has proven capable. Next year the seven will have to welcome (probably) Prime Minister Salvini.

But hold on, you say. In all those photo calls there are not seven but nine grinning ninnies - who are the two extras? They are, of course, the comedy duo from the EU. Like the smelly kids from the local dysfunctional family with the alcoholic parents, they just have to be invited to other childrens' birthday parties out of common decency (but Mum! Why do they have to come? They never bring presents..) . The duo don't of course understand stuff such as democracy and elections, so all such talk goes over their heads, but they will dutifully stand at either end of the elected heads of government photo-call line-up like bureaucrat bookends and gurn at the camera as though they were normal.

Except this year there will be only one. One bookend is having his sciatica removed or something. But at least the real politicians will recognise the other one - which will not be the case next year.

Toronto 2020. "You're the Presidents of what? Sorry, Lady, you're not on my list, and neither is this little guy.. see we've got Canada, the US, the UK, Japan, Italy, Germany and France right there, and the drunken guy and his pet monkey are probably doing some photocopying somewhere .. they're not coming? You're the new drunken guy? .. er, I mean Lady?..OK let me make a call ..."

Defending Journalism

Years ago membership of the NUJ came with a declaration that the applicant would report fairly and impartially, without omission, distortion or misrepresentation. I've no idea whether it's still there but I think it improbable, given that much national 'journalism' in the UK is now openly partial, and extremist polemicists from Owen Jones to Yaxley-Lemon now masquerade as journalists.

A piece in the Guardian has a BBC film crew complaining that they were shouted at by objectors who called them "BBC paedo scum" and "fake news wankers". Fair comment, I would have thought. The BBC's problem lies in its dishonesty; broadsheet papers still distinguish between news reporting and Op-Ed and Polemic pieces; the BBC still pretends that all of its news output is just news reporting, when eight out of ten viewers and listeners know this to be false. And they did act institutionally to actively hide the activities of several child sex abusers they sheltered, and you only have to read a few posts down to find a prime example of Newsnight fake news.

Unfortunately for the BBC, which has now proven itself as the PR department of the new pro-globalist, metropolitan, privileged, elitist establishment and political class, a journalistic reputation is like virginity; once it's gone, it's gone. There is no way back for the BBC and I expect, once Brexit is over, a sustained campaign to decline to renew the BBC's charter in 2027, allowing them time to develop a pay-to-view or commercial model in good time for the ending of the licence fee in seven years time.

The true test for the BBC, and one that it failed spectacularly, was the mass child sex abuse in our old industrial towns and cities that went on almost openly for many years. Sure, the BBC, like the police, social services, pub landlords and local papers knew all about it - but didn't think it worth reporting. Not, I think, as many of you will believe because of the BBC's partiality towards a certain faith group, but because the BBC, in common with the police and local government, simply didn't think that the lives of poor working-class children were worth much. Plus ça change.

I miss my old drinking chum Sandy Fawkes. Not only did she report the Yom Kippur war and cross the continental USA with a mass murderer, her proudest accomplishment was getting an unpopular story run. Back when she was working for the Daily Express in the Lubianka days. The killing of Maria Colwell by her stepfather was doing the rounds of Fleet Street, but none of the papers was biting. Her editor killed the story saying "no one's interested in reading about some slum kid getting killed". Sandy had a stand-up blazing row with him and was ready to walk. Her passion and indignation persuaded him that there just might be some public interest there, ran her piece and the rest is history. That was the job of newspapers. That was the job of journalists. Sandy's Telegraph Obit actually understates her character. Emily Maitlis and Cathy Newman are talentless pygmies in comparison.

Steady in the comments please - usual restrictions apply.

Sandy in the French, about 2003

Hammond beware; leaking ex-ministers should be jailed

During the remainiacs' long campaign of sabotage and attrition from inside government against Brexit, they made full use of an often willing and compliant civil service in creating material to support their Project Fear narrative. Such, we suspect, was the Yellowhammer file, a document that has Hammond's Treasury all over it. Yellowhammer was a scare too far. Sunday's papers reported that even civil service hearts weren't really in it, so absurd and far-fetched were some of the inventions. The May-sanctioned semi-official leakers from Cabinet clearly decided at the time that the thing was just too ludicrous to be credibly leaked.

And so Mr Hammond, it seems, was left with this unused carefully constructed work of semi-fiction. All that creative energy to no end. Until it seems the last few days, when a copy was mysteriously left in a Whitehall pub used by journalists. Mr Hammond has denied that he was responsible, and we must believe him.

However, if Mr Hammond should ever be tempted to leak any other cabinet documents, or material that he is bound both by his privy-council oath and the Official Secrets Act not to disclose, he should be aware that this is not a government inclined to forgiveness, and any such actions could leave him banged up in Belmarsh. 

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.

EU nations divided by visceral self-interest

Here's a paradox. You want to ship a 20' container of tools from Shanghai to Munich. You'd think the best route, after Suez, would be a port as close as possible to Munich, wouldn't you? Somewhere in the north Adriatic? Suez to Koper is about 1,750nm and 7 days at sea. From Koper, the Adriatic's largest container port, to Munich is also only 500km by road. Well, the freight rate Shanghai to Koper is around $1,750. However, if, after Suez, your container turns west and makes passage to Gibraltar, the entire length of the Med,  then north through the straits of Dover, and the North Sea, then finally east to Hamburg (4,250 nm, 18 days at sea) the freight cost will be, erm, around $1,350. $400 cheaper for an extra 11 days steaming. Road distance to Munich is about 800km.

The insanity of receiving substantially more freight from China through Rotterdam, Bremerhaven and Hamburg rather than through EU ports closest to Suez has escaped the attention of neither the Chinese nor the Italians. And just as Germany has shown two fingers to the EU in a deal with Putin to deliver Nordstream II, Italy has done likewise by signing up to China's BRI in a deal that would prioritize development of five key ports in the north Adriatic as a primary point of entry for Chinese goods into Europe. Even Saint Greta couldn't complain at the Eco-sense of it. However, the Dutch and Germans will be very cross.

Meanwhile, the US is seriously considering starting to move its 50,000 troops and defence personnel from Germany, which fails to pay for NATO, to Poland, which pays its full 2% of GDP. Given that the German armed forces under vdL were reportedly down to just one working helicopter at one time, the famed Leopard tanks are rusted and immobile and the army trains with broomsticks, America's departure would leave Germany militarily helpless but again paradoxically make many Germans, who like all true EUphiles loath the USA, very happy.

And so as the Italian government fragments, a blanket of choking tear-gas smothers Paris, German industry disintegrates and the Eurozone shudders just like Mrs Merkel on a hot day, the fiction of an EU united in purpose becomes every day more apparent.

Ignore the doomsters and gloomsters. We're actually going to be in a good place if we Brexit on Hallow'een.

O'Shaughnessy and Tanner - Trashed by their own spin

I do love our informed public. This is the story. Either the think-tank 'Onward' or the website 'Politico' commissioned a large poll from Hanbury polling, one presumes to support an opinion they wanted to promote. The poll didn't quite produce the results they wanted. The two blokes behind 'Onward' are soft remainian ex-SPADs, so they weren't going to let that stop them. They penned a piece for the Telegraph - poorly written, semi-coherent. It barely lasted 12 hours online, uninamously rubbished by every single one of the BTL comments, before the paper decently buried it. In addition, at around 4pm, ten hours after our own piece below, the guido fawkes site trashed the whole thing

James O’Shaughnessy and Will Tanner must be feeling like a right pair of dickheads today. The BTL comments on guido are, as you would expect, considerably more vicious than those that the Telegraph has now buried. I was wise yesterday to refrain from commenting on the pair's spin until I had sight of the polling data. It really doesn't support the narrative they want to promote.

A poll of 5,000 respondents, even conducted wholly by smartphone, is expensive. Who paid for it? O'Shaughnessy and Tanner claim it was them -

But Hanbury Polling say it was Politico

Overnight the polling data - what we'd all been waiting for - appeared on the Hanbury website. It's good, a rich source of evidence for many posts ahead. But not posts that will support the hapless pair's agenda.

Are we raising a generation of fascists?

Some years ago I assisted in arranging a garden party for those mainly of the younger generation. We had awnings, food, booze and a string band - all, we imagined, that was needed for these bright young things to become effervescent. As I watched, they had splintered into many small pairs or trios that knew eachother, and worryingly many lone figures not interacting. A septuagenarian Chelsea Arts Club member stood with me and advised firmly "You've forgotten what it's like to be that age. They want to be organised, told what to do. Go on!" So we organised games, encouraged non-sexual physical contact and interaction but most successfully got them dancing English folk dances that were designed for just this purpose. Don't laugh. If you've never Stripped the Willow or circled the Draper's Maggot* you haven't lived. We were blessed with a skilled and enthusiastic string band who for little more than money and beer exceeded their contractual sets and it became a roaring success.

I share that anecdote by way of introduction to a report and poll that, at time of writing, are not available online but clearly will emerge soon from their embargo as the Telegraph's Camilla Tominey has penned a teaser piece. "A third of millennials want martial law and 66 per cent prefer strong leader over parliament, poll finds" reads the strapline. It will I am sure be more nuanced than that, but the spin is the thing for the originators.

'Onward' is a Cameronian soft sort of dilettante centre right remainian think tank based on the premise that what young people want is, erm, a soft Cameronian centre-right remainian politics. However, they have produced one decent report - Generation Why? -  that is worth reading. I will wait for both the Onward report and supporting Hanbury Strategy poll before commenting on the pre-release spin.

I have commented before on other research that suggests strongly that the young are far less keenly committed to democratic forms than my own generation. Of course, they've never lived through the Lord Chamberlain's censorship, the battles that TW3, the Pythons, Oz, Private Eye and the whole counterculture movement fought in the '60s and '70s. Or the Cold War, when the nation's wealth went on guns rather than butter. We didn't drink Mateus Rose because we had no taste but because the economy had little room to support frivolities such as wine.

Forgive me if once again I stress the utterly fundamental importance of free political association, universal suffrage and the secret ballot. If the anti-democrats who are so determined to erode these fundamental guarantors of freedom are making headway with the Millennials, I am worried.

*Both of which, for maximum enjoyment, should be danced slightly drunk by people who get the moves wrong

Police - Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

John Sutherland writing yesterday in the Telegraph is an ex-copper. A few years ago it would certainly have been ex- writing as serving plods were simply not permitted to voice personal opinions in the columns of newspapers - today one has to find the fact hidden in the article. Anyway, cutting the waffle, what John really wants more than anything is for our democratic society to stop telling coppers what to do - so like Judge Dredd they can get on with dispensing justice free of all constraints. I'm not kidding.

..we need to re-establish operational policing independence from political control, starting with the abolition of Police and Crime Commissioners.

I'd guess John was off sick the day they did 'The history of the police force' at copper school. Policing has never, ever, in any remote way been free from democratic control - and rightly so. Before the 1964 Police Act local forces were governed by Watch Committees, made up of both local elected burgesses and local magistrates. The fight between SW1 and local communities for control of the police has been a long one; the 1964 Act was a victory for the Home Office, and centralised control of much of the authority previously exercised by the Watch Committees. The Watch Committees were abolished. Crime Commissioners are nothing but an ineffective sop to Localism by a Home Office under pressure for their power-hoarding.

John of course is not alone in his anti-democratic and extremist opinions. They are held by most senior police officers, who want nothing more than a national police force controlled by no-one but themselves. To this end they have created numerous bodies - funded by our own taxes - to promote this outcome, and lobby for anti-democratic powers at every opportunity. They are part of the anti-democratic nexus that in the words of Betz and Smith has captured the democratic State -

What we appear to be witnessing is the corrupt mutation of the notion of the representation of the people in parliament, into the substitution of the will of the people by the interests of the political class. We are entering the realms, no less, of state capture. What happens when sectional interests capture the political institutions of the state? This is a question we will get to, but first it is worth reiterating that in many senses this has been a long time coming, and to emphasise, in the British case has little or nothing intrinsically to do with Brexit.

In our fight against extremism - of the Left, Right and Islamist - we must never forget that those who seek to destroy democratic control over the institutions of the State are also extremists. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Someone also needs to tell John that it's not the job of the police to dispense justice - we have courts for that. I can't help feeling that we've been recruiting the wrong sort of people to the police.

It's time we had a fundamental review of the role and structure of the police, similar to the Royal Commission that reported in 1962, but this time not rigged by the Home Office. Remember - 98% of police work is call-outs to disturbances and policing non-indictable offences. I can see no reason why such work cannot be undertaken by local, accountable forces of coppers skilled in the basics. Organised crime, terrorism, specialist investigations and serious indictable offences can be undertaken by regional or national squads or bodies under democratic oversight. Why not?

Harland and Wolff

The final demise of the shipyard that built the Titanic will be largely un-mourned. Only around 100 workers are left, engaged on maintenance activities, including having kept one of the yard's two great cranes, Samson and Goliath, in working order. For many Catholics, denied work at the yard until the 1960s, the erasure of the place from Ulster's landscape will be welcome.

It all started, in a surprisingly modern way, with a smoking ban. Imposed in 1854 by the nascent yard's didactic new manager, the 23 year old Edward Harland. In addition to the ban on smoking, Harland cut wages as he reckoned the work was sub-standard.

It was never a pleasant or progressive place in which to work. The employment system was tyrannical and nepotistic. Bullying and victimisation by the brutal cadre of foremen was the norm rather than the exception. Unskilled labourers, employed casually, were treated like scum, barely better than Catholics.

And the foregoing three paragraphs tell you all we know about the fourth industrial revolution; until now, shipyards, factories, mines have all been seen as formed by the men and women who built them and spent their lives working in them. We discuss them in terms of their workforce. In fact, the yard need not be redundant - though the workforce is history. A shipyard located where slipways fall into deep, sheltered water, where there is an abundance of power, where there are transport links, rail, ports and above all 5G comms, could well become a resurgent industry later this century. CNC steel cutting and shaping, robotic movers and welders, AI build supervisors and driverless cranes could see shipbuilding return to Belfast - but not employment. New jobs will be in a comfortable, climate conditioned computer control and monitoring suite, or servicing the CNC machines and robotic welders.

If the site is so suited, we must make efforts to secure it from being lost to woke hipster housing, leisure centres or MUGA cages paid for with the billions of the supply and confidence arrangements.We must recognise that locations that can be used for AI replacement industry are key assets - and protect them now.

Set the Finance Spivs on German savers

Many years ago I had an endowment mortgage for a few years - five, to be exact. It was a time at which the economy was booming, the FTSE was growing like a Texas steer on hormones, the nation was becoming measurably wealthier. All that is except for me. For some reason, year after year, my regular monthly investments did not grow by even one per cent; if the whole lot had been invested in FTSE100 companies, I would have made 50%. So what went wrong? The answer of course was that I, and millions like me, were being robbed blind by the endowment mortgage spivs.

So what happened to the finance spivs when we all wised up and ditched our endowment mortgages? Or sadly only most of us did. Some poor souls who believed the lies that if they only gave it a full 25 years it would all come right lost their homes, their wealth pissed away in Balls Brothers and the champagne and lap dancing clubs. After the endowment scam I guess they split 50/50 - half of them went into selling double glazing, the other half into running pension funds.

The ones running pension funds quickly dropped back into their old endowment mortgage ways; prudent savers and small-time investors are always easy prey for the finance spivs. Well, they may have to look for alternative rip-offs; Frank Field's Work and Pensions select committee, in a final and welcome parting shot for both Frank, whom I have long held in some regard, and for the current parliament, is seeking to force the finance spivs to be honest with their customers.

Reporting the moves, the Telegraph feels a little proud of itself.

The Telegraph ran a two-year campaign to secure action to lower fees, having exposed how hidden pension charges cut savers’ retirement funds by as much as half over a working career. It led to charges on auto-enrolled pensions being capped at 0.75 per cent a year from 2015. However the MPs’ new report has suggested the charge cap needs to be reviewed by the Department for Work and Pensions in 2020 after failing to have the predicted impact.

Now, with an inevitable Brexit looming, the finance spivs will be looking for another outlet for their talents, another well to drain to meet their insatiable demand for cheap sparkling wine, flash cars and fast women. Well, lads, I'd recommend you learn German. And invent a new offshore, EU-external, tax efficient savings product for the thrifty Germans who are sitting on billions that would do far better invested in the UK - less your skim, of course.

Glück Auf!