Diehard Remoaners will drop to 15%

The polling is becoming consistent. Michael Ashcroft, a businessman from Belize who takes an interest in British politics, has recently carried out his own polls. These reflect the many ongoing polls collated by the ESRC at What Britain Thinks. Both find by a clear margin that we don't want another referendum. And the indications are that a growing number of Brits are now accepting the last one; the Leavers have hardly changed their views, and moderate Remainers are joining us in accepting that Brexit will happen.

There is also a prediction that a rump of diehard Remoaners will continue; currently estimated at twenty something percent, half the referendum total, this rump is predicted to shrink to some 15% or fewer of implacable EUphiles, some of whom will devote every second of their lives and every pound of their fortunes to punishing their fellow citizens for disobeying. 

These are not ordinary people. These are the wealthy, the powerful, the influencers and manipulators who are used to pulling the levers of society. With access to money and media and the support of global finance and government, they remain incandescent and consumed by bile, derision and contempt for we ordinary folk who dared to disobey them. Gina Miller, her face contorted in fury and hate, on live TV becoming a caricature of a bitterly unhinged woman now showing her years. AC Grayling's very public and ongoing meltdown on Twitter. Blair. Campbell. Adonis. All will be part of the 15% that will never let it go.

Gina Miller before and after the Referendum

They will of course destroy their own lives and happiness with this obsession. It will be a ginormous national sulk that will be turned to humour by a British public. That, at least, is something for which to look forward. 

The dangers of the media echo chamber

We have moved into an age in which the traditional news media no longer merely report the news but seek to shape it. Newspapers and broadcast media have become political actors, campaigns and even parties. As a consequence, the trust that the public used to invest in establishment entities such as the BBC, or the 'broadsheet' press, has disappeared. They are all guilty of disseminating 'Fake News', and public trust of journalists and journalism is now in the gutter. Alongside that of politicians. 

The consequence of this is that most of us now communicate only in echo chambers, with those who share our views and beliefs, using sources that confirm such opinions. The more pronounced this becomes, the more polarised our nation and society, the greater the mistrust and the more egregious the Fake News. From both sides.  

I have written before that I respect greatly the journalistic integrity of Der Spiegel, an openly left-liberal publication but one that fights the loss of journalistic professionalism in a way that the Guardian would simply not understand. It takes a certain courage for Spiegel to ask 'Is there truth to refugee rape reports?' and then to answer the question in a conditional affirmative. Something I suspect strongly that the Guardian would never do. 

Germans are particularly sensitive to notions of mass rape. Antony Beevor helped lift the lid on the extent of Soviet rape in Berlin - the Downfall, bringing to a popular audience hidden records that both German and Russian authorities would rather have remained hidden. Rape and conquest, rape and invasion, are linked in German historic memory, so sex crimes attributed to migrants are big news. In the German echo chamber, no mainstream news outlet references the website Rapefugees.net - but Spiegel sought to challenge what it displayed.  

They found that though many of the rape reports were either false or referred to sexual assaults that fall short of rape under German law, many others were based in fact. Now after finding this unwelcome result, a dishonest media outlet would have shelved the result. All credit to Spiegel for publishing. They write;

The classical media find themselves in a quandary here. If we don't write about the issue and about the rumours circulating on the internet, skeptics see that as proof that something is being hidden. Yet if we do write about specific websites like the one covered in this story, we run the risk of enhancing the profile of pages meant to incite hatred online.

So yes, the pandemic of sex assaults carried out by migrants is based on reality. Police statistics back this up. But the real benefit of honest reporting across the echo chambers is to challenge prejudice and preconceptions; migrants commit sex assaults not because they are Muslims or brown, it is suggested, but because they are "more frequently young and male and are more likely to live in a large city, lack education, be unemployed and have no income".

Well, to a point, Lord Copper. I think why they commit such a high level of sex assaults is still open to judgement. But acknowledging that there is a problem is a good start for both polarised sides. And perhaps our UK media, including the BBC, can even learn a lesson that will allow them to raise their own gaze from the gutter. 

EU to ban stun fishing. For the second time

The EU's identity as a corrupt but inept bureaucracy was confirmed yesterday as French, Belgian, Irish and British MEPs dealt a kick to their Dutch colleagues in requiring the Council to add a new ban on stun fishing to a change in fishing rules. The Dutch fishing minister now faces another kicking from Dutch trawler owners who have spent over £300k per boat converting vessels to electric stun fishing. The vote was 402 to 232 - by no means overwhelming, indicating nations other than the Netherlands have a snout in this eco-destructive trough. 

The story to date is this. First, the EU banned stun fishing in 1998. Then produced a scientific / technical report in 2006 recommending continuing the ban. Despite which, Dutch lobbying, blackmail or string pulling managed to get an exemption for Dutch trawlers - with the effects described in a previous post HERE.  However, British, French, Belgian and Irish fishermen have mounted an effective and concerted campaign to expose the deep harm caused by the Dutch - with the result that MEPs, fearful of the political reaction at home rather than out of principle, I suspect, have acted. 

However, the law will be written by the EU Council. This leaves the Dutch some wriggle room to water down the requirement, delay it or fail to implement what the EP have requested. These delaying and blocking tactics are all part of the wonderfully corrupt way in which the EU works. 

For the UK, one major problem remains. As I wrote in November:-

One current problem is that Dutch boats can fly the red duster and take UK quotas; the previous requirement on UK flagged vessels being owned by Brit nationals was overturned. Our 1988 Merchant Shipping Act was challenged by the European Court of Justice in the Factortame case and overturned - requiring us to register foreign-owned fishing boats.  A single Dutch owned and crewed vessel, the Cornelis Vrolijk, but UK flagged, accounts for almost a quarter of the entire English catch and about 6 per cent of the total UK quota. It lands all catches - some £17m annually - in the Netherlands.

Michael Gove must act now to prepare to reverse the effects of Factortame and to restore the 1988 Merchant Shipping Act to the form in which it was agreed by our sovereign parliament. 

Carillion - sub contractors and suppliers

For the construction arm far more than the FM concerns, intelligent journos have started to pick up on the impact of the firm's collapse on other than direct employees. The real pain is likely to be felt by sub contractors and suppliers - with an impact on tens of thousands of people working for smaller firms carrying out specialist works for the fallen behemoth.

Subbies are always the last to be paid anyway, and have the longest wait for their money as main contractors will generally not pay until their own monthly claims have been passed, and even then may pay only a percentage, with their own retention in place. Main contractors who have won work by underbidding will also squeeze subbies already contracted. I know from personal experience how very close to the edge many subbies on big jobs walk.

Ideally, if the job is to be finished, the subcontractors will be novated to the new main contractor on the same terms - but even this takes time, and when it is likely that Carillion haven't paid them for three months (and they may end up with nothing) the prospect of waiting another three for a payment from a new principal contractor will force many to the wall. 

Clients will only find main contractors to replace Carillion on cost-plus terms if continuity is to be maintained; there is simply no time to cost and negotiate new contracts. And rescue firms will know they must secure rock solid fee agreements now, up front; clients happy to agree crash costs at times of crisis will always backtrack once the hiatus of the rescue is over; getting it sewn up tight whilst you have the advantage is the only way. 

And make no mistake, it's the clients that will pay. As long as the crash costs now are equal to or less than costs of demobilising the schemes, mothballing, re-tendering and re-mobilising, with all the substantial costs of delayed delivery, they will pay. And that means us - taxpayers - in many cases. There really is no alternative. The least-cost options will still cost us a fortune.

When construction pigeons come home to roost

Balfour Beatty must be breathing a sigh of relief this morning that Carillion's recent takeover bid was not successful. BB was lined up to follow Mowlem, McAlpine and Eaga to boost Carillion's sales and potential profits in a process that only works so long as there are more companies with which to merge or take-over; once the music stops, the whole thing generally collapses. 

Carillion was overburdened with debt and major construction contracts were simply not providing the profits to service them. This was disguised for a while by accounting for 'other receivables' i.e. money expected to be released from construction contracts, but never materialising. And this is a tale that is common throughout the construction industry. 

I once let a large contract to a subsidiary of a well known mega firm. It was a newish subsidiary run by set of very confident managers, but with no great track record. Still, their bids were excellent value and they were underwritten by their parent. Shortly after my contract started, rumours came in of heavy time over-runs on another job. They moved key contract management staff from my job to the problem job, and as a result they fell behind on my job. Their solution was to bid low for yet another job; the ever-growing order book made the risk of losses look unimportant. They failed to perform adequately on the third job, too. All the while they were reporting expected contract out turn as close to budget - even when they were into LADs for late completion. A few weeks after my job finished and the final account on their first job became clear, they submitted requests for additional payments of several millions. All the while they were still reporting to their board high levels of profitability - the cost claim was 'income' and contrived to maintain the fiction for as long as possible. 

Well, we demolished their silly claims without breaking sweat, but that took time. By the time their major losses on all three jobs became clear, the parent company decided to close down the subsidiary. The very confident managers became ex-managers. The fact is that they were able to continue forecasting profitability long after the point when it was blindingly obvious they'd cocked up hugely.

In effect, the head company shareholders subsidised my scheme by their cocky managers underbidding and hoping to make up the profits from changes, additions and variations. The form of contract I used didn't allow very much scope for that. 

Well, I'm sorry for all the good folk at Carillion including those I know and have enjoyed working with. But that's mega construction firms for you.  

Brexit - FAQs

Given that Project Fear is achieving peak risible on social media, now may be an appropriate moment to answer a few Remoaner points;

Brexit will mean Brits are banned from travelling in Europe
Brits will be able to travel in Europe visa-free but with passports, just as we have been since 1947, with stays of up to 3 months. No change.

British people will never be allowed to live abroad
Brits can live wherever they like in the world, and do. Generally one needs a source of income, health care arrangements and the consent of the country in which one wants to live. There has NEVER been an absolute, unconditional right to live in another EU country. Nor is there is a single  EU wide standard, and individual national standards are likely to remain as they are now. No change. 

Our children will be barred from the ERASMUS programme
UK access to ERASMUS will continue unconditionally until 2020. After that, the British Council, which funds and runs the UK programme, is committed to facilitating reciprocal access to Europe and the Commonwealth for young Brits. 

Our children's access to EU universities will be restricted
This is probably a good thing if it happens but is sadly unlikely. EU universities are utterly second rate and rank way below the UK's HE sector. The EU27 don't have a single university in the international Top Ten; the UK has four. However, if young Tarquin is so irredeemably stupid that he can't even get a place on the media studies course at Steeple Bumstead, I'm sure that the University of Ibiza will still give him a place on the English degree course. For a fee. 

Brexit will mean food prices will rise
The EU is deeply protectionist and maintains high food prices to ensure good incomes for EU farmers; imports to the EU are therefore heavily taxed. After Brexit it's entirely up to the UK whether to maintain these trade barriers or not - though there are implications for UK farm incomes if we scrap them. Whatever, the UK government will have its hands on the levers that determine retail food prices - and you can be reasonably certain that they will ensure no overall price rise, though the mix and origin of the nation's shopping basket may change. 

The NHS will collapse after Brexit without EU staff
Simply, Bollocks. See the NHS' own breakdown of staff origin. Many EU staff who have gone home since 2016 - a small part of a small part of total staff - have done so because the £ used to buy €1.40 but now only buys €1.12. That's quite a drop in incentive for a Polish nurse working in the SE and also having to pay rent. EU churn will be compensated for by additional worldwide recruitment.

Right. I'm fed up with this now. The remoaners talk so much bollocks one could continue indefinitely.

Winning back the seas

For a nation with links to the sea as strong as the UK, nothing raises such visceral protectiveness as our territorial waters and fish. Oh sure we can get a little bit excited about the economic benefits of passporting for the City, but it simply doesn't raise the blood to battle as does the prospect of a Dutch trawler stealing our cod. Gaining economic sovereignty (I won't say regaining) of our 200 mile commercial limit in 2019 is therefore a big deal.

For UK fishing fleets to take up the catches currently taken from our waters by the EU27 will take time. Boats must be built, crews must be trained, shore facilities must be expanded - and most importantly, vessels to patrol and police our waters from foreign poachers must be built and crewed. If new keels are not laid this month, we simply won't have the last capacity in March 2019.   

I'm not surprised that the EU27 want to hold onto their right to take British fish during the 2-year transition period, nor that the government seem prepared to concede this. If not the CFP then some form of licencing would realistically have been needed to allow continental fleets to wind-down their operations. However, our lost licence fee income from these two years must be deducted from the financial settlement - after 2019 they'll be taking our fish, not a common EU fish stock. 

And one measure we can take, one piece of legislation we can prepare, is to reverse the judgement in Factortame.  Requiring red duster flagged vessels to have a majority of UK national owners would at least halt the despoliation of stun fishing, and ensure that within reasonable time the full economic benefits would return to the United Kingdom.

Impress and Ipso

This is a story in which there are no heroes, only villains. Press 'regulation' does absolutely nothing to eliminate fake news, bias, distortion, omission or misrepresentation in our national press; such things are accepted as part and parcel of newspapers. Some editors, such as Piers Morgan, unashamedly even faked photos and printed fiction when the real thing was scarce. For anyone of any sense, the best approach to newspaper reporters is to shun them utterly; anyone stupid or naive enough to believe that a newspaper will tell their story the way they describe it deserves the monstering they will undoubtedly earn.

So who exactly do the competing regulators Impress and Ipso protect? Well, the establishment for a start - politicians, fixers, political dags, the wealthy, the powerful, and then of course luvvies - actors, musicians and the like, those who seek to use the press for their own publicity. Them. Not us. Press regulators do absolutely nothing for you and I; absolutely nothing. 

So the Press are heroes then, fighting the rich and powerful on our behalf? Uhm, no. The papers are owned or directed by the same rich and powerful. Their aim is to stay rich by printing stuff that people want to read - and what people want to read about are other people, if not the establishment and the rich and famous then at least those endowed with enormous buttocks. Private Eye used to push the boundaries a bit but under Hislop has become flaccid and toothless, a sort of downmarket Punch with dirty print.

One of these pointless regulators was actually founded by Max Mosley who has spent much time and effort ridding the internet of images of himself naked and undergoing a sexually perverted act with a number of prostitutes. As a wealthy man who can afford to indulge his perversions, Mosley asserts his right to do so without fear of exposure. It's not an argument with which I care to engage. 

So there you have it. Impress and Ipso. Utterly pointless and nothing to worry about.

Tax funding for political parties ... again

Yep you guessed. The political establishment is gearing up to have another go at getting tax funding of the established parties onto the statute books - or rather, enhancing the tax funding provisions that already apply. This time around the Conservatives, down to a rumoured 70,000 members, are listening. 

The previous crooked proposals from Christopher Kelly, building on earlier crooked proposals from Hayden Phillips, would have given all parties with at least one sitting MP about £3 a year from taxpayers for each vote the party got in the previous general election. Protests that this entrenched incumbent parties, discouraged tactical voting, discouraged all voting, inhibited political change and gave Labour, LibDems and Conservatives a sort of quasi-constitutional status beloved of establishment mandarins such as Kelly and Phillips fell on deaf ears. In the end it was Labour's refusal to accept a cap of £50k on individual donations - hobbling Union cash - that froze the scheme. 

Back in 2014 I wrote of my dislike for Carswell at the time of his defection - and was admonished by UKIP readers. I called him caddish, I think. However, had the Kelly / Phillips tax funding proposals gone through, he could have earned UKIP some £12m a year in party funding. Without him, 4m votes would get UKIP exactly nothing. Still a turd, perhaps, but possibly a gold plated one. 

Now of course wealthy individual LEAVE funders are being hit for 20% inheritance tax on their donations - donations tax free for global corporates and their UK incorporated dags, for trade unions or if made to (you've guessed it) political parties with at least one sitting MP. HMRC may be applying the law, but it is a dubious law that has the effect of implementing crooked and underhand tax funding of some points of view, wholly against the will of the public on tax funding in general. It's bent, it's corrupt and we didn't vote for it. It's the introduction of tax funding by the back door - and the lever that the establishment will use to move to the next stage. 

The political landscape never remains static. When I started writing this blog, the Conservatives had some 250k paying members, Labour was suffering and down to about 160k and the LibDems scraped some 60k. The 2010 coalition brought chauffeured jags for the LibDem top dogs but a massive hole in party funding from the loss of opposition Short money. Party membership in the UK had reached a nadir with just 1% of an electorate of 45m being party members. 

In 2018 we face a Conservative party with fewer than a third of the members it had ten years ago, a LibDem party on the verge of extinction, with only the disproportionate number of LD peers giving them any parliamentary presence at all, but a reinvigorated Labour party replete with individual memberships and backed with big union money from the TUs that would dearly love a Marxist in the Treasury. 

Party funding is in desperate need of a complete rethink; social media in particular makes a joke of much of the existing framework. But no more Kelly and no more Phillips - no more establishment mandarins, crooked civil servants, bent globalists or Blairite managerialists. 

Who would you nominate to chair a new, fair enquiry into party funding? My own nominees are both from the left; Simon Jenkins, who ran a membership organisation with over 4m paying members, and Helena Kennedy, whose seminal Power inquiry was squashed by the very establishment it sought to reform. 

Raw Water

I never fail to get a chuckle here when I describe my old drinking water supply in London; through a series of sewage treatment works and reservoirs from Oxford to Heathrow, down the Thames Valley to the Great Wen. "They say" I usually conclude "that London tap water is very pure, having been filtered through the kidneys of seven people before one drinks it". Not only pre-owned, London's drinking water also bears the traces of nitrate fertilizers, and of the Oestrogens used as cattle growth promoters as well as the ubiquitous Flouride. Many folk are suspicious of Flouride, including a very sane econometrist of my acquaintance. 

Well, in the US the public revolt against the chemical soup of urban tap water has lead to a craze for 'Raw Water' - and with all the attendant health industry shouting crazed warnings that everyone will die of Cholera. 

Well, to a point, Lord Copper. Here water and sewerage are managed by the local council. We have our own little sewage treatment plant that deals with the output of some 2,500 souls and our water comes from the 'moss slopes' collected in two small concrete tanks with sand filters half way up the mountain. No further treatment. It comes out of the taps at about 9 bar with no pumping. It is pure Raw Water, absorbed from winter snowfall by the moss layers and slowly released. 

However, things get even better. Our valley is a geological anomaly. On the south side, where the water comes from, are acidic schists, giving the wonderfully soft 'gemeindewasser' excellent for washing and brewing. On the north side, where we live in the Sun, is magnesian limestone, giving me hard water from the two sources or quellen on my land which is better for watering plants and fine for livestock. This can also be drunk raw, as it runs from the earth pipe. So not only do I have running Raw Water, but a choice of hard or soft. Knowing that septics are paying €6 a litre for it makes me feel all the luckier. 

Lamont: Blair's argument "completely fraudulent"

Pilots will correct me, but I think the speed / runway distance during an aircraft's take off at which it is no longer possible to abort is termed 'V1' - once reached, the only possible course of action is to continue the ascent, even if an emergency landing is made immediately afterwards. The question facing us all is whether Brexit has reached 'V1'.  

There is a concerted remainer media offensive this week; AC Grayling continues his painful public meltdown and so is deemed unfit to face the camera or microphones, but Andrew Adonis has already delivered a rather hysterical and disconnected plea on the 'Today' programme to abandon Article 50, and today on R4 the Great Dissembler, Blair himself, did his utmost to advance the several specious arguments that remainers use to justify reversing the referendum result. Not only did Humphrys do a reasonable job of taking these apart, but Norman Lamont, the poor badger in the Treasury when Soros mounted his financial assault on Sterling, demolished as fatuous and risible Blair's arguments, concluding that his reasoning was 'completely fraudulent'. 

When I read what remainers want to reverse and return to it is the EU as it was before 23rd June 2016. This was eighteen months ago; if a week is a long time in politics, a year is an eternity. The past is a different country. Even if Article 50 were reversed, it is simply not possible to go back to 2016. The EU has already moved ahead; the EU army that remainers poopooed is in formation via PESCO, sweeping presidential powers are in preparation, an integrated Finance Ministry is gradually winning German acceptance, Macron of France and Schulz, likely soon to be in coalition government in Germany, agree that a United States of Europe should be the goal within eight years. If we seek to return now, not only will we lose the budget rebate but Brussels will demand that we adopt the Euro. It is simply not possible to go back to the way things were in 2016. 

All of which suggest to me that we have already reached V1. There is no longer a 'remain' option - only an option to join anew a completely different EU.

  

The right to insult

In 2008 when visiting an agricultural show, the then President of the Fifth Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, was refused a handshake by a French farmer. Rather than just shrugging inwardly and passing on, the foul-mouthed little head of State snarled back "Casse toi, pauv’ con". I wish my quadrilingual nephew were here to check my translation - the closest I can suggest is something like "Fuck you, dickhead".

It might have ended there had not M Herve Eon, some six months later, held up a placard bearing these same words on the route of a presidential procession in Laval. Eon was arrested by plain clothes police and charged and convicted of insulting the president, under a French law of 1881 that also criminalises insulting hordes of other establishment members, including foreign heads of state. After refusing to apologise to Sarkozy to reduce his penalty, Eon managed to get this appealed at the ECHR - and though the ECHR would doubtless have dearly loved to have upheld such penalties against lèse-majesté, the court felt obliged to avoid international ridicule by declaring that M.Eon's declaration had been satirical, and was therefore permitted.

In France it takes a whole bench of judges to tell the difference between an insult and satire. And satire itself is seemingly only protected when it not too vicious or biting; cartoon or distorted images of protected fat cats can all too easily be termed insulting.

France of course is seeking only to implement fully the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), effective from 1976. Luckily it already has an earlier 1881 law that does so. The ICCPR is an appalling piece of treaty-making; as is often the way with such things, it authorises suppression of free speech to a greater degree than it protects freedom of expression. In particular article 19 (3);

The exercise of the [right to freedom of expression] carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:
(a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;
(b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.

And there you have it. Governments may freely introduce laws to protect the reputations of others from insult. And you can be sure that the 'others' that many governments will have in mind are not us ordinary folk but those for whom reputation is vital - such as ministers, politicians and members of the establishment.  

The EU has taken the lead in seeking to implement across the EU its own interpretation of the international convention, to which all 27 are signatories. Many EU nations can already lock their citizens up for insulting politicians - but thank God the UK is not amongst them:-

M. Herve Eon was also fortunate in that France only fines those that insult its establishment figures, rather than locks them up. The fines, though, can be up to €45,000 - on a scale greater than anything the UK's summary courts can impose for a whole host of serious criminal acts. In Austria one also has to be careful what one writes and says - 

Now one can begin to understand the sort of legal changes that Yvette Cooper and others of her parliamentary cohort are seeking, and why they are so keen to adopt the EU standards on the criminalisation of insult. We must all fight this with every fibre of fortitude; British politics has always been a robust and forthright process, where political insults are freely traded and politicians expected to have thick skins. 

Provided that my frequent reminders to Mz Cooper of her pledge to house a migrant - a pledge that neither she, Lily Allen nor any of the fatuous virtue signallers have fulfilled - can remain as satire, provided that I never descend into encouraging violence, harassment or intimidation (which I absolutely counsel and extort against - whether directed at politicians, migrants or any persons). So here again is that clip from the Telegraph on the 'flipping' of Mz Cooper's two homes, either of which is doubtless capacious enough to accommodate a migrant or two - 

2017 Roundup part 2

Worthless distinctions
The honours system has been irredeemably befouled and corrupted by undeserved honours given to politicians and civil servants. The public seem to support the recognition of sportspersons, artists of all kinds, the talented, the selfless, the gifted and armed services personnel - but their proper achievements are being beshitten by risibly unwarranted 'honours' to loathed and unworthy political failures and civil service time-servers. Why the hell should the goon in charge of procurement at the MoD, the idiot that's wasted billions of our tax money on the poorly managed buying of stuff that doesn't work, get anything other than a clock from his chums and a curt 'goodbye'? Why should hysterical little fools such as Andrew Adonis, with no real world experience and no achievement whatseover, enjoy the same status as distinguished scholars and academics of international repute?

Of course we should recognise the few worthy political recipients such as Patrick Cormack (he of "Country, constituency, party. In that order") but perhaps there should be a new honour created - say an order with a membership limited to fifty, with no seat in the Lords, and only ex-elected politicians eligible. But we must cull all the politicians and the civil servants from the British Empire orders, the Bath and Michael and George. Or they will be lost to those who really deserve them.

With each year, twice a year, the public clamour against political honours grows. Let's hope the establishment hears those voices. 

Democracy at risk
With Labour still blocking any reform of our deeply corrupt constituency boundaries, the UK remains shamed by an Electoral Quotient (EQ) below third world standards. We're not even close to the +/-5% of the second world, let alone the +/-3% of advanced democracies such as New Zealand. 

We're not well served by the current Electoral Commissioners, fat and complacent placemen unmoved by indignation at Electoral inequality and mired in a stasis that prohibits action. A clear-out of the Commission in 2018 is well overdue.  

The young are also far less defensive of our democratic absolutes - such as universal suffrage and the secret ballot- than those of older age cohorts, and a Remainian elite still smarting from the Brexit result are pushing all sorts of alternatives to the majority vote to seek to re-establish their political dominance. I was joking in June 2016 when I parodied little Owen Jones as complaining "The wrong people are using democracy" - but this is now a joke becoming true. Many of them actually believe it. 

The Electoral Commission also needs to get its collective head around non-member issue-based campaigners such as this blog and Twitter account, with no discernible spend. Online it's not about parties and financial structures but millions of ordinary people manning their keyboards. The utterly trivial impact of Russian postings during the referendum campaign was due to the utterly massive scale of engagement of the rest of us. I'm not sure that many of the existing Commissioners have ever actually used a computer, let alone know what facebook is.  

Roundup of 2017- part 1

Well, it's been another year of surprises and our understanding of the world is just a bit different at the turn of this year from the turn of last. From my point of view, some of the more significant changes include

AI
Video footage new this year showing entire factories with not a single visible human, just scores of robotic articulated entities cutting, grinding, milling, pressing, welding and finishing. And of course the porn market is driving refinements to produce a robot hand that can grip a, er, cucumber safely. Last year I printed this chart as a warning against the directions from which migrant waves will come; this year I print it to show the blocs most vulnerable to stage 1 manufacturing robotic replacement. They're the same. We face a double whammy. 

Regulation of Social Media
The headlines this year have been about the abuse issues on social media; MPs in particular, who want to use social media to self-publicise, are unaccustomed the level of vitriol that they attract from some folk - some clearly illegal, but much of it just robust abusive invective. They are pushing for more regulation. 

In fact the real issue about social media in 2017 is how vital to democracy unencumbered access to it is. With Facebook and Twitter struggling to control unacceptable content, crude and thus unfair shortcuts, including AI, are being used to censor postings. 

I think 2018 may bring the realisation that access to social media equals access to democracy - and attempts to restrict access for legal uses equal attempts to gag voters. As facebook in particular is looking to the lucrative political advertising stream, the Electoral Commission must speed up from its snail's pace to face this challenge. 

Yvette Cooper will never escape the internet's long memory

House of Peers
A year ago I suggested the HoL would prove in 2017 a Brexit thorn that needed desperate remedies. Well, in the event it didn't. The government's stated intention - to 'let them talk until they wet themselves' - proved effective. The prospect of damp red benches with no effective outcome clearly didn't appeal to their Lordships. I'm going to recycle this for 2018 - it's all or bust this year for the anti-democratic refuseniks. They may destroy their privilege in the process, or see TM flood the Lords with People's Peers (I'm still free, Prime Minister) but will they emerge over the parapit?

No puddles on the leather in 2017 - but in 2018?

For Hope, and our Future

It's now eighteen months since that momentous referendum, and we're still leaving. With every single day it becomes more and more difficult for the saboteurs to derail the process. The global corporates, their Federast and globalist dags, the Euro bien pensants, has-been politicians, are daily nearer to meltdown and daily more furious. This also makes them daily more dangerous; the dags are being goaded into petty acts of spite, with Remoaner HMRC officials prodded by the Treasury now demanding tax from private Leave referendum donors whilst the vastly richer global corporates escape scot free for their Remain gifts. We may have sighted land, but it will still take some skillful pilotage before we're tied up alongside. 

ISIS are also just another terrorist organisation rather than a putative Caliphate. The government of Syria, with Russian help, have succeeded against the global corporates and their puppets, against the stupidity and venality of our own government and Foreign Office. We have reached the morning of the eve of Christmas with no successful Islamist attack on the West, just a failed terrorist act in Australia, a nation now more Eddie Izzard than Crocodile Dundee. There is a perceptible hardening of attitude towards Islamism, and the faint start of some pushback. 

More than anything else, social media has enabled the idiocies of neoliberalism, the insanity of distorted morality, the fake news, lies, distortions and deceits of the malign, to be exposed to the disinfectant of sunlight and to laughter. Social media means a FTSE100 firm and a sharp witted nobody are equal. Nothing is more painful to these evils than laughter. May St Isidore, patron saint of the internet, intercede for succour and protection of universal access to social media.  

At home and abroad we still face human challenges - abroad we have human populations outgrowing food, water, wealth and work, and with the richness of the West visible on their 3G screens forming a tsunami of human migration towards Europe. Do not, I beg you, direct hatred or vituperation towards these people, no matter how devious, dishonest, manipulating or self-interested their behaviour. We must work to keep them in their own nations, to emulate themselves the prizes of Western post-enlightenment Christian nations by adopting our norms and ways, however cruel we must be to keep them from our shores. 

At home we are still failing our own people; ex-armed forces living rough, enduring hardship and privation without complaint. They stood on the line for you and me. We owe them. For our semi-feral urban children, victims of gross sexual abuse and exploitation, victims also of failed official care, of moral relativism, and of our selfishness. We must help them. And heartfelt thanks to all those who keep the law, demand nothing, discharge their social responsibility and ask only for a little pride, a little identity and a little recognition. We owe them, too.  

As each day grows a little brighter I am inspired with hope. Not a surge, but a fleeting butterfly shadow of hope that flickers over the heart and soul. There is a future, a good future, and we can all help shape it. God really is with us if we allow him to be. 

It is easy here, in the snow and the beauty, to the sound of bells and in a little 14th century church with vivid ancient wall paintings, to understand the miracle of the Nativity and the joy that the birth of the Christ child, Son of God, born to save the world, brought to mankind. With all my gratitude and thanks to you all, may you all have a peaceful Christmas.   

Poland's judges are not independent. But neither are the rest of Europe's.

Poland's judicial independence comes in at 99th in the 2018 World Economic Forum tables, below Swaziland, Mali and Zambia. Nigeria is at 82. Poland's judicial system, like all those in Napoleonic law nations, is deeply politicised - the reason that Poland has over 4,000 cyclists in prison is not for any great breach in natural or moral law. 

However, only very few nations in Europe - the UK and the Netherlands amongst them - can criticise. Italy is not far from Nigeria, neither is Spain. Turkey, at 103rd place, receives hundreds of millions of Euros in bribe money from the EU to keep Syrian migrants within Turkish borders, despite draconian restrictions on press freedom, tens of thousands of political prisoners in detention and a growing number of unexplained deaths in custody of military officers. EU officials are not driven by human rights abuses, clearly, in their actions against Poland. The EU's excuse for action, Poland's changes to judicial appointments, are a smokescreen to disguise the use of the Brussels knout to bludgeon a disobedient vassal state into line. 

If this action was really aimed at improving judicial independence, then Latvia, Slovenia, Greece and Italy would be next in line for EU sanctions. they're not. Their courts can be as corrupt as they can be without fear, because they obey Brussels. And that's the reality about the utterly crooked, despotic regime that we're desperately trying to leave. 

Supporting democracy in Europe

Poland's Independence Day in November - the 99th of the current incarnation of the nation - was dry but cold. Patriotic Poles were out en masse waving a field of red and white national flags in a demonstration of real pride and love of their nation. Poland's elected politicians stood in the front row of the VIP stand, and another Pole, the President of the European Council Donald Tusk, was also there, back in the third row with other unelected officials.   

But there was another mass gathering there on that day - radical nationalist Poles carrying not flags but slogans and placards, chanting not the words of the national hymn but words of anger and protest. I don't read or speak Polish so must rely on newspaper reports for what the slogans said. They called for the protection of Polish 'blood', opposed spreading Islamic immigration to Europe, and support of defence of the Homeland.  

Poland's democratically elected PiS government - fairly described as 'hardline conservative' by the Telegraph - consistently enjoys clear popular support and the sort of opinion poll ratings that western European political parties can only dream about, the latest giving them 50% approval against 17% for their closest rivals. They are irrevocably opposed to every single EU policy in respect of opening Europe's borders to 5m non-European migrants to compensate for low European birth rates. 

They are also in the process of dismantling the mechanisms left by the old communist regime to ensure a continuity of control over many of the levers of State. The communists of course have disappeared, but their successors - some of whom in the EP are members of Verhofstadt's ALDE group - still sit on many judicial posts. In Napoleonic European systems with no real judicial independence and where justice is political, from Paris to Berlin, from Warsaw to Rome, this is a real obstacle. 

Verhofstadt is of course furious about his chums losing power. He is seeking to declare Poland a European Pariah. He will fail, but will have made a lot of noise. 

The point about all this is that I've tried as far as possible to write this post in a way to which neither a native Pole or a professional UK journalist could reasonably object, eschewing terms such 'far right' or 'enemies of the EU'. The Poles are as European as anyone; unelected officials in Brussels are neither more European nor endowed with greater moral purity than elected politicians in Poland. Both have a legitimate viewpoint. But the difference is this; Poland's rulers were elected. The EU's rulers are not. As long as this yawning democratic deficit exists in the EU, the support of freedom loving democrats must always be to those actually voted into power. 

Debt

Reading Polly Toynbee's mind at work is almost heartbreaking. Today, she fairly and accurately describes a queue of debtors being dealt with by the civil courts; the list is pretty evenly divided between B2B debt and failed household credit, the major creditors HMRC, local councils and banks. The witness evidence could have formed the basis for an informed and constructive article, but instead Polly just can't resist the trite and bromidic - it's all the fault of gub'ment austerity. 

Many of you will also have caught on TV one of the rival fly-on-the-wall progs about bailiffs and sheriffs; again, a litany of business debt and evictions by private landlords mostly for failure to pay rent. If HMRC, councils and banks are creditors for these cases they stay clear of any mention, or perhaps they don't permit their bailiff actions to be filmed. Where creditors are revealed, they're frequently in no better financial position than their debtors - single-house landlords, other skint small businesses.

And we ain't seen nothing yet. We're still at the top end of the curve. It's said that in 2008 the banks weren't prepared and took the hit - but today they are, and it's their debtors that will feel the real pain this time. The ECB are already preparing for the next crash - measures are even now being enacted to staunch outflows in the event of bank runs and restrict depositor access to protected deposits (€100k). 

As far as I can see the victims of debt are not victims of government cuts - and every time a council wrings its hands and closes a library I am reminded that CIPFA valued local authority reserves at £21bn in 2016 - but of globalisation. Half the country haven't done well economically and are the first casualties. The other half - the public sector, universities, global corporates, legal and accounting megafirms, media, digital economy - have done comparatively nicely, but are by no means free of debt. Their turn will come when austerity really does hit. A metropolitan elite economy based on Amazon Prime, Netflics and Lloyds Gym memberships, a leased car and three designer coffees a day is built on sand.  

That's the bloody problem. We all know it's coming, but when? Until the storm hits, we're all just marking time and standing ready. And until it does come, growth just won't return.

So 20 mph zones don't work ...

There's a certain glee in reports today that the accident-reducing 20mph zones in our towns and cities don't work. At least, it seems, not without speed cushions, chicanes, steel posts to reduce lane width and so on. I can't say I'm surprised.

Years ago I pointed out that the Pelican crossings being installed to replace existing Zebra crossings were actually more dangerous. Getting the FOI data from the Transport Department had been like pulling teeth. Yes, 20m of steel cattle pen barrier either side of the crossing on both sides of the road, loud beeping and flashing noises, peremptory commands to stand or walk, a vulgar and intrusive part of the Big State imposed on small communities, actually killed more people than the simple painted  stripes on the road that they replaced. The problem, the DoT hypothesised, was twofold. First, people didn't obey the commands of the State and oh horror decided themselves when to cross the road - the younger ones even leapt over the barriers at times. Secondly (and I suspect the real reason) was that drivers seeing green lights didn't look for hazards in the same way that the glowing orange balls of Hore-Belisha's beacons induced. 

Conservative councillor Daniel Moylan and his colleagues at K&C Council took personal liability for changing Kensington High Street when the council's officers refused to do so. They ripped out every cattle barrier, every obstacle, all the peremptory commands, scores of signs, posts and bollards and made the space one shared between vehicles and pedestrians for which space was negotiated between them - in the same way that a zebra crossing works. The accident rate dropped immediately and stayed low. KH St became an infinitely more pleasant place on which to wander, browse, graze and bar-crawl. It was a genuinely courageous move at a time when the State's agents, the council's professional officers, were advocating that only penning pedestrians behind ten-foot fences could further reduce the accident rates. 

The ideas came from a Dutchie - Hans Monderman. He found that such road sharing not only reduced accidents but allowed traffic to move more efficiently. Yes, if people are allowed to make their own decisions, if the State is put back in its box, things are more efficient. This is proved time after time on the rare occasions that traffic lights fail; motorists allowed to negotiate junctions themselves actually do better than traffic lights, and queues, slow moving traffic and extended travel times are greatly reduced. We used to reckon in our part of London that a TfL traffic light failure meant 10 minutes off the drive home. 

You don't have to be Ayn Rand to work out that generally the least intervention and the lightest touch in respect of traffic management, combined with 'nudge' rather than concrete and steel*, is not only much cheaper but more efficient and far more effective. 

*Except of course from the risk posed by rogue members of the Religion of Peace. At either end of pedestrian roads. 

Are ALL Guardian readers irredeemably stupid?

It started with a typically whiny Guardian piece yesterday titled "No one cares about us - Brits in Europe". It's part of a big whine from many of the 1m Brits living in Europe for special status - a status that can only come at a cost to the British. It is a typically selfish and self-obsessed whinge, as is normal today. My own view is that those of us who have chosen to make homes in Europe must make shift for ourselves; we made informed decisions. I want no-one in the UK to pay for my choice. 

Anyway, I commented to this effect. What 'protection' do you need, I asked, "To be permitted residence in Austria you have to prove you have an adequate income and are a member of an Austrian health insurance scheme - to demonstrate you are not a burden on Austrian taxpayers. Same before Brexit, same after. What's the problem?"

The problem, it emerged, is that several Guardian readers living in Austria are here unlawfully. If EU or EEA citizens intend to be here for more than 3 months, they must apply for a residency certificate, and do so before the end of month 4 or face steep daily fines.  I have my residency certificate. The Guardian readers do not. One declared that he classed himself as a free spirit and didn't agree with documentation in general, others said they had been here for many years and not been deported, others that said they didn't think the requirement was important. Not one seems to have read the widely available guidance from the Austrian government detailing residence requirements. All seem just to have understood that the EU meant free movement and acted on that - and now that they face problems post Brexit, are whining and moaning that the UK government and all the British people back home should get them out of the shit.

My own view is that the UK should not lift a finger to help them. If they are stupid enough, arrogant enough or misguided enough not even to understand the most basic residence requirements of another country then Austria is probably best rid of them - sorry, UK, you will get some irredeemably stupid and bitter Guardian readers back. I had a drink with my young German mates last night and asked them if they understood the Anmeldebescheinigung. Sure, they said - all of them working or studying in Austria have the 'yellow certificate'. They simply couldn't imagine anyone moving to Austria without checking out the requirements in advance. "They're Guardian readers" I explained "fantasists, dreamers, away with the fairies". They nodded, not quite understanding. 

2018 Austrian smoking ban to be scrapped

This is a post about freedom, not an encouragement to smoke tobacco. Myself, I am a committed tobaccophile - I'm just taking a very long break from smoking. If I make it to 70, I intend to start smoking again. I like the smell of smoke and am lucky having local friends who smoke - so my house is still furnished with ashtrays. I've also got some cigars which they will have to smoke for me over Christmas, whilst I bliss out on Colheita Port, Samuel Gawith snuff and the heady scent of best Havana leaf smoke. But because of the health disbenefits, I wouldn't encourage anyone to start.

Austrians however are firm believers in the rights of citizens to injure themselves in any way they wish. There isn't a week goes by without the local paper reporting in a matter-of-fact way another farmer crushed under his tractor, lady kicked to death by a horse, driver heading off a steep ravine or carpenter sawing his arm off. In fact, carpenters here wear their lack of fingers as a badge of honour - good carpenters, they reckon, must have lost at least two fingers. And there is no, I repeat no, whiny wailing in the media that 'Something must be done!' or that 'They must stop this happening!' after each death. Very philosophical they are about such things, here.

It reminds me of a train crash in Ghana in which several passengers had been killed. Our local Accra paper reported that the Transport Minister had visited the scene - not to call for an inquiry, or make vacuous promises, but simply to pour a libation of palm wine to appease the spirits of those killed. A policy at least as sound as, and possibly more so than, UK practice.    

One of the things here I particularly enjoy is my clothes reeking of smoke after a session down at the gasthaus. Sometimes, if I sniff deeply enough, I can still get a hit three days later. The current law does require bars over a certain size to offer a non-smoking room, usually a cold, empty room at the back somewhere, for anti-smokers. From next year all bars and restaurants where food is consumed would have been obliged to ban smoking - but Austria's new political coalition is putting an end to that. The FPOe - the Freedom Party -  is insisting the ban is scrapped. So those of us who really don't mind eating and smoking in the same room can carry on being as sociable as before.

It's a small win, but proof that there's still a libertarian tolerance in places. 

Population growth is not the only option

We go into 2018 with an EU that is already very different. Committed to becoming the USE within eight years, with an army, foreign office, finance ministry and powerful president, much hinges on the federation's forecasts for future growth. These have been gloomy because Euros have been breeding at below the replacement ratio of 1.2 2.1 children per couple. The EU's solution is to import 5m healthy breeders from Africa, the Middle East and Indian subcontinent. It made the decision much as a steel plant decides a new limestone contract, or a pie-maker signs up a new abattoir. Yes, all those sexually urgent young men in Germany are there not because Mrs Merkel felt sorry for them - it's their priapism that is valued, like little breeding rams, to impregnate German maidens and breed a new generation of factory workers for the global corporates. 

The EU also took the decision in secret, without consultation or any democratic endorsement. You see, we ordinary folk don't know what's best for us, and need benign and sober heads such as Herr Juncker's to decide these things for us. It's jolly bad form to question the EU's wisdom and anyone who does so must be a Hitlerite bigot. 

Now I don't doubt the EU's well-meaning. What I condemn is their stupidity. The utter, crass, doltish stupidity of fools like the EU commissioners is the very reason we have democracy - crowds make better decisions than 'experts'.

That they're still pursuing their insane aims at a time when factories are becoming fully robotic, when AI is replacing vast swathes of human labour, when machine pickers intelligent enough to tell a potato half buried in the earth from a stone are in common use, the whole basis of their fatuous rationale collapses. My carer in old age will be a small robot with powerful hydraulics and sensors delicate enough to wipe a geriatric arse gently. 

You see, I really don't believe the replacement ratio or continuous GDP growth are that important any more - we're moving into a new age. The idiots, fools and charlatans at the EU just haven't realised it yet. We can only hope the cooler heads of the Visegrad group apply some sort of brake to their mad ambition.

German car bosses face jail if they step outside the EU

I'm sure, in the worldwide diesel fraud issue, that carmakers around the globe were complicit in at least a massaging of the test results. But none were as industrially efficient at defrauding the public as German carmakers VW, BMW, Audi et al. With Teutonic efficiency, they defrauded the world on a massive scale.

Now the first German VW executive has been jailed - in the US. He was unlucky enough not to escape back to Germany quickly enough, and the Americans scooped him up. Oliver Schmidt is now doing seven years in a federal penitentiary. The US indicted five other VW executives last January - Heinz-Jakob Neusser, 56, Jens Hadler, 50, Richard Dorenkamp, 68, Bernd Gottweis, 69, and Jürgen Peter, 59. They face summary arrest and detention without bail in the US if they are caught. 

No one has yet been prosecuted in Germany. No EU countries that have been defrauded have issued EU arrest warrants for any of the five VW bosses. The US isn't trying to extradite them from Europe. And this is all because the world knows full well that European justice and its organs the ECHR and the ECJ are corrupt political courts. Courts in China and Russia are rated by the WEF as having greater judicial independence than those in most EU countries. 

However, should those five VW bosses, and others from the other big-name German carmakers, step outside Europe to any country that has an extradition arrangement with the US, they face arrest and detention. After Brexit, if the UK breaks free of the corrupt claws of Euro justice, this includes Britain. And this forms a large part of the reason that the EU is fighting so hard to keep EU citizens in the UK under the protection of the bent ECJ - to allow VW bosses, fugitives from justice and other Euro criminals to visit Britain (and Ireland) without being banged up and extradited to the US. It stinks. EU 'justice' stinks. The collusion between the EU and the global corporates stinks. We will be far better off after Brexit away from that noxious putrescent foulness.  

Remoaner sabotage reaches a new high

I wonder if we should have an assessed code, somewhat after the manner of terrorist warnings, in respect of attempts by Remoaners to sabotage Brexit? If so, We are forever in the highest categories of SUBSTANTIAL, SEVERE or CRITICAL. Ireland's government is I am sad to say little more than the EU's sock puppet. If left to the British and Irish we could sort the border in a day's talks. And now that loathsome putrefying old zombie Blair has risen from his grave to bother us all again - no doubt fomenting difficulties for the country of his birth.

Juncker and the Federasts are laughing in their muesli. Half the work of undermining the United Kingdom is being done by those with British passports. The Remoaners are now promoting a counter proposal that would see the UK as a 'Protectorate' of the EU much as Bohemia and Moravia was declared a Protectorate of the Reich. It means they govern us, and take whatever economic surplus we have, but we are not represented and have no say in our subservience.

You can be sure that the Federasts never want us again at the same table. They are charging ahead with proposals for their own army - yesterday announcing that they are formulating ways in which EU and NATO forces can exercise together, and take part in joint operations. A UK that could frustrate such jejune ambitions is simply not wanted - they want to live in La-La land away with the fairies without a nagging voice behind them. 

I've given May the benefit of the doubt so far in my mind; we can cope with the money, but my own red lines are complete freedom from the corrupt political court the ECJ and unencumbered repossession of our economic waters. If Theresa May is prepared to compromise on either of those then I join the 'no deal' camp, whatever the ensuing chaos. 

Brendan O'Neill nails it again in Spiked;

They want to Balkanise Britain. Carve it up into Remainer and Brexit enclaves. Divide a nation so that different zones are subject to different constitutions and principles and laws. This is the end point of the EU class’s elitist pseudo-cosmopolitan hatred for the nation: a situation where popular sovereignty comes to be superseded by a dynamic of fragmentation that’s entirely motored by the arrogant desire of the political class to escape the judgement and opinion of the people.

And so this is Christmas ..

No words today. Just a few images.