Austrian election - Post 3

Emmanuel Macron's reign as the EU's wunderkind did not last long. He's been usurped by a man not only younger than he is, but one dating a girl his own age, rather than being married to his grandmother. And it may well be this small nation that influences EU policy more effectively than Macron.

British papers have picked up on the possibility that Kurz may take Austria into the Vizegrad group, thus forming an internal EU opposition group that runs from the Baltic almost to the Adriatic. They have also mentioned that the last Turkish seige of Vienna in 1683 left the country with a permanent identity as Europe's final barrier against Islam. To a point, Lord Copper. None I've read have mentioned that it was actually the Polish Jan Sobieski who routed the Turkish forces at the gates of Vienna and it was not Austria alone but a Christian alliance that finally turned Islam from Europe's heart.  

Today, Vienna is as well populated with Turkish kebab shops, per capita, as is London. Only here they're 'Kebap' shops, the pitta bread is round and the chilli sauce is bland and mild to suit Austrian palates. Most of Austria's Muslims are either Turks or from the Balkans; westernised, easy to assimilate, invisible after two or three generations. Not so Muslim migrants from Africa, Pakistan or Iraq. Austria's game plan is to assimilate the old migrants and block any more from settling; Saudi funding of mosques and imams is banned here, Salafist teaching forbidden and any segregated Islamist schools, even nurseries, subject to intense State surveillance and monitoring. And now the Burqa is banned. 

It would seem obvious even to the meanest intelligence that Austria, like Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, will refuse to take part in Juncker's mad plan to distribute tens of thousands of African Muslim migrants across Europe from Italy. Austrian tanks and barbed wire at the Brenner pass are symbolic; the little border road we use to go to Tarvisio for fresh market vegetables and a pizza lunch is manned by just a pair of bored guards. This does not, however mean that Austria will formally join the Vizegrad group; the country is proud of being a bit different, and is the EU's only neutral nation one of four neutral EU nations (and therefore not a NATO member). Austria sees itself as more Switzerland than Hungary, and will want to play a role with a foot in both Vizegrad and the Franco-German EU, holding a powerful but variable casting vote. 

The border

  Austria also desires an EU that suits it. A good example is electricity market deregulation. Only in Vienna and environs does one have a choice of power provider. Here 25% Länder-owned power company Kelag has the monopoly - in the face of EU requirements forcing competition - and the same applies in other Länder. As far as Austria is concerned, competition will only be implemented when it is advantageous to do so, not because Brussels says so.* Austria in particular believes state aid is a good thing, that maintaining jobs and the economy is more important than EU edicts. So firms employing over 15 or so people here rarely go suddenly bankrupt; once they've run up a million or so in debt and the banks won't extend, the local council and the province step in, arrange new contracts, commission orders, pump in money on easy terms, guarantee loans and put together asset deals, all utterly unlawful under EU rules but all utterly widespread here. 

Kurz regards these things as internal, matters that should be determined by individual nations and not dictated from Brussels. He is, in this, closer to Jeremy Corbyn than to Theresa May. The rail operator, OeBB, is wholly state owned and services are superb and fares low. There is a popular consensus that approves the economic role of the State and also accepts that it not need be too efficient, as inefficiency means more jobs. Even estate agents are protected here with statutory house-sale fees of 3%, half-each to be paid by buyer and seller. The consequence of this last is that Austria's estate agents are the laziest and poorest quality in Europe. 

There is an expression that one hears time after time in Austria - 'One hand washes the other'. It applies to everything from petty corruption to nepotism, crooked government deals and bribery. I really can't see that changing. Austria is 17th in Transparency International's corruption index, a way away from Switzerland at 5th place.   

Above all this election means that the EU has lost all pretence at being a homogeneous entity. Brussels must now, rather than uniting ever more closely, become even more expert at playing realpolitik with nations determined upon their own national identity, opposed to any further loss of power, and now with enough clout to make life very difficult in Brussels. Poor Herr Juncker. One can hardly begrudge him the cognac bottle for his breakfast this morning.  

*This has the knock-on that Kelag can dictate consumer hardware; instead of a UK style consumer unit costing £60 - £70 one is obliged here to install a locally-designed 'Kärnten verteiler' made by a local company and costing around €1,000. It is the size of a small fridge, made of steel, and weighs 60kg empty. It is called, without any irony, the 'Eco' by makers Schrack.

Austrian election - Post 2

A couple of weeks ago the Burqa ban came into effect in Austria, banning all clothing that covered the face. The first (and so far only) fine issued by the police under the law was to a performer wearing a shark costume whilst promoting the McShark computer chain. Austria's estimated 150 (yes, 150) Burqa wearers stayed indoors. Of course there's no Burqa problem now, say Austrian friends, but look at France, where the Burqa is used as an outward expression of Islamism to say 'FU' to the Fifth Republic. They don't want that to happen here. 

The election has been a single issue business, all about migration. On everything else there's an easy consensus between the parties; Austria is a protectionist, social-democratic republic with a socialist economy and conservative values. This has enabled the conservative OeVP and the socialist SPOe to govern in coalition for most of the years since the war. But it was Germany's stupidity in opening Europe's borders last year that provoked the backlash; until the young Sebastian Kurz took the initiative in co-ordinating the closure of the Serbian migrant route with steel fences, the tsunami of economic migrants all came through Austria, many staying. 

The Austrian Federal government went over the heads of the Länder in dispersing migrants as thinly as possible across the country. They didn't want to create ghettoes in Vienna. Here in my gemeinde we were allocated 74, though fewer than half that number are actually billeted here. The owner of a closed and tired small hotel, last refurbed in the '70s, volunteered his asset to the Vienna government with alacrity. He houses and feeds the migrants twice a day on boiled pasta and rakes in more money than he's made in the past decade. The Afghans shrug off the -20 winter cold and the snow, the Africans shiver in misery under their bedclothes. CAFOD have donated some bicycles (migrants can't drive in Austria) and volunteers now coach ex-Iraqi tank drivers, Afghan helo pilots and Sudanese taxi operators as they wobble uncertainly around the car park like children. 

Muslim migrants in particular have found an immovable cultural barrier. Not only do the valleys tintabulate to the sound of church bells three times a day, not only can you not travel more than 100m without meeting a crucifix or a Marian roadside shrine, only pork and beef can be bought in the shop, and there are no halal foods, but the locals insist on greeting them in public with a cheery smile and "Grüß Gott!". They know damn well that the God being asked to bless them is the Holy Trinity of the Christian Diety and not the sterile Allah of their own death cult. You can see them wince almost imperceptibly at the greeting. They do not respond. 

In dispersing the migrants so widely the Federal government scored a home goal. In those provinces in which most gemeindes had never seen a black face before the dispersal, the SPOe and Green vote has collapsed and the OeVP and FPOe have benefited. The message is very clear; thus far and no further. The migrants here themselves want to leave the rather bleak and isolated Austrian rural areas for German cities, and the Austrian authorities are complicit in turning a blind eye to their leaving; the whole mess was, after all, Germany's fault. In return, Germany is keeping the Austrian border closed - to intercept both migrants and Balkans cigarettes. 

All this has put Sebastian Kurz in the Ballhausplatz. 

I was in the local pub yesterday evening with a couple of young German friends and the place was fairly packed with folk watching the election results. I'd worked out that the full tables in front of us were SPOe until young Katz nudged me to point out an FPOe 'Strache' scarf draped over a chair on the table behind. This is how rural Austria works. There's only one pub, so Labour and UKIP share, and get on politely enough, greeting eachother in the toilet and enquiring about children. They're likely to be related, after all, in an Austria in which extended families have largely stayed in place on the same land their ancestors inhabited centuries ago. And community and cultural identity are always more important than party politics.    

Austrian election - Post 1

I'm going to spread my reaction to the Austrian election over two or three posts. It really is all far more complex and nuanced that UK commentators are indicating. You'll hear the term 'Nazis' bandied about a lot over the next week, so let's start with that. 

Ulrichsberg, a short drive away, is a small ruined roofless chapel perched on a small peak above the village; on its walls are the regimental plaques of long-gone army units - mostly of the Austrian army as it was absorbed into the German forces after Anschluss. In particular, this was the recruiting ground for the Gebirgsjäger, the mountain warfare troops with the little Edelweiss on their sleeve, the local regiment of which scuppered a much more powerful British force at Narvik and spent the rest of the war in Lapland fighting Russians. Each year the old veterans with their Iron Crosses, their close combat infantry badges and wound badges, all made legal to wear after the war as long as the Swastika was ground off, met for a flag and prayer service of a type familiar all over Europe.

It enjoyed a semi-official approval; each year the Austrian army would lay on vehicles to take the old soldiers up the steep mountain and would maintain the forest track; they would provide a scratch oompah band and a couple of senior officers in uniform, and the local gemeinde would sanction the attendance of the Fire Brigade and use of local resources. All was well until a journalist identified ex-members of the Waffen SS (the ones who fought, but hardly honourably, rather than the ones who operated the extermination camps). Of course there was a stink, the army was ordered to withdraw help, the gemeinde said 'nothing to do with us, guv' and for the past two years the old boys have met in a tent down in the village - unable to get up to their ruined chapel. It was an official move to suffocate the thing - though long known about and tolerated - because of bad publicity. A very Austrian reaction - they are great hiders of unpleasant things.

The point is that these old boys are people's fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers, loved and esteemed family members, who were conscripted into the Reich's forces and like soldiers everywhere who have fought, remembered this as the most intensely lived part of their lives. If they shared anything, it was a rather old fashioned belief in service, obedience, discipline, comradeship, self-sacrifice, domestic economy and a loyalty to their family, clan and province. Values still prevalent here in homes of all political persuasions.

In a simplistic Twitter world the shorthand for this sort of treffen is a 'Nazi Rally'. When an FPOe politician said recently that Austrians who served in the Reich forces should stop being ashamed of it, he of course raised a 'Nazi Spectre' storm from Der Spiegel to Guardian Towers. The reality is really far more nuanced than that. We'll hear a lot about Austrian Nazis over the next week.  
 
Values often skip a generation or two. So it seems sometimes with the Millennials, who can seem priggish, over-serious, politically unrealistic and far, far too didactic to we boozy, bloated, fortunate Gen-Xers. Ulrichsberg too was attractive to the old and the young, to the veterans and to their grandchildren and great grandchildren. It's about tradition and culture rather than fascist values, as far as I can see. I could be wrong, but I can see little evil in it. This lieder has had over a million views on You Tube - is it a fascist anthem or a folk song?

Eight things to do with a whiteboard ......

The further I get from all the corporate crap, only some of which I pretended to understand in the wind-down year before I took the early bath, the more I wonder why there are people who still take it all so seriously. The risible idiocies coming through my professional body have now surely degenerated into self-parody; surely to God, no-one believes this to be serious?

What next? "Using snazzy sounds and transitions in Powerpoint to give evidence at the Construction Court - how to impress!"

I recall I once shared a complex but very plain spreadsheet with a director who gazed at it unmoved. The following week I resubmitted it to his PA with all the cells coloured in and a 48pt header 'Risk Management Dashboard'. He loved it. After that I found that calling anything a 'dashboard' was an instant way of engaging his attention, until 'agile' came along - when everything had to be 'agile'. Well, I was bloody agile at that point. By about a thousand miles.

Shengen isn't working ... broken by smuggled cigarettes?

Friends of mine here in Austria have recently made a couple of trips back to the UK by road, distributing stuff between their two homes. Both times they've been stopped at the border and inspected by the German Finance Police (like the Inland Revenue but in uniform, with pistols). Not looking for Jihadists, Sudanese migrants, Serbian surplus weapons but for cigarettes and tobacco. 

Germany has announced that she will keep her borders closed. So will Denmark, France and Austria, not to mention Hungary and Slovenia. The pretence is terrorism; the reality, I think, almost certainly includes smuggled tobacco products.

Austria is a nation of heavy smokers, and the legal price of ciggies at about €4.50 a pack keeps it that way; bars are mostly smoking-friendly, with only a ban coming next year for food and fags in the same room. It does my heart good to walk into a thick comforting fug of eye-stinging tobacco smoke down the hill at my local gasthaus - keeping alive the memory of pre-2006 Britain. It's not that the Austrian government, under strong pressure from the EU, doesn't want to increase tax on fags; it can't. The proximity of the eastern EU border, with fags coming in from Ukraine at €1.50 a pack, means any tax increase on legal fags will actually lower revenue. Poland's the same, as is Hungary.  Only the UK and Ireland, far from eastern Europe, can increase tobacco duty indefinitely.

So as the Shengen area border posts are reappearing and traffic queues that were recently just a distant memory are now returning on national borders, the nations of Europe are striving to stem the haemorrhage of tax eastwards and halt the tsunami of Chinese and eastern European fags flooding in. 

The prospect makes me chuckle that it's Europe's smokers who may be the final straw that broke Shengen. Now that would be sweet revenge ...  

The war with the New Left is a fight for Enlightenment values

Following my Atlantic Charter piece below, two slightly unlikely mainstream voices have joined pleas for us to respect these most basic values. Most coherent is Allister Heath in the Telegraph, who recognises the same threat;

Contemporary “liberals” – the dominant group in the civil service, academia, the cultural industries and among young, highly educated urbanites – have all too often become born-again authoritarians.....Forget about democracy, people power and autonomy: the New Left loves authority, elite rule and cultural warfare.

I've commented before on the declining commitment of the young to democracy - of great concern, because even our most fundamental democratic safeguards of universal suffrage and the secret ballot are under attack from the New Left, who favour authoritarian rule by 'experts' i.e. them, for our own good. Big State centralist authoritarianism is something I've fought against my entire life, and just when I thought we were winning we face a new cohort of slavemasters. If you can, please read Allister's piece - it really is worth it.

The second and most unlikely voice is that of Owen Jones in the Guardian - yes, he whom I characterised as whining "The wrong people are using democracy!" after the Brexit vote. In an entirely unexpected piece he writes

I have little truck with pro-independence movements unless a nation is oppressed, like those subjugated by Europe’s former great powers – and Catalonia is not. Supporting Catalonia’s right to divorce does not mean endorsing it. But when democracy comes under attack anywhere, it is our collective responsibility to show solidarity.

Well, well.  

Incidentally, anyone after Quentin Letts' new book 'Patronising Bastards' will find Blackwell selling direct on eBay for £11.99 - the cheapest I've found, unless you know different ...

No cheap food or goods from Brexit? WTO deal revealed ...

I'll post the memorandum images below as I have them today from the European Commission. I'll leave it to those wiser than I in these things for definitive comments, but from my first reading it seems:-

• We'll keep our separate 1995 membership of the WTO
• On Brexit, we'll apportion EU import goods tariffs and quotas - so the end result for the 27 + 1 is as now for the 28
• Same for agricultural subsidies

Does this mean that all the talk of Brexit freeing us from EU restrictive import barriers and enabling cheaper food and goods is just twaddle? And how long will we keep in lockstep with the Empire?   

Postscript
++++++++
Ah, pretty much as thought - Guardian has the detail
Guardian's take is that we & the EU have played a flanker in preventing the US dumping its unwanted ag surpluses on us both - but that it's not yet a done deal. I guess there's a difference between choosing to raise quotas and being dumped upon.

Moral courage that shames the dictators of Brussels

The Summer of 1941 was a bleak and fearful one in Britain. We stood alone; the public mood in the USA was against any involvement in the war, our cities were nightly being destroyed by Nazi bombers, Hood had been sunk, Rommel was pushing us back to Egypt in North Africa, Nazi U-boats were sinking tens of thousands of tons of shipping. A beam of hope shattered the gloom in June when the mad Hitler invaded the Soviet Union - and Britain, itself short of every piece of war equipment, with nary a .303 round to spare, under threat of invasion, gamely dispatched convoys of war material to Stalin, beggaring our own forces to do so.  

In August, at very considerable risk from U-boats, aircraft and the spiteful might of the Nazi behemoth, Churchill crossed the Atlantic to meet President Roosevelt to agree the foundation of a postwar world. It was a meeting of the most astounding confidence, with Britain at danger of falling to the Nazi jackboot and the US not even in the war. From it came the Atlantic Charter, a document of hope, freedom and justice, a candle to light the breath of aspiration amid the dark blanket of evil that fell across Europe and Asia.

The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.

First, their countries seek no aggrandisement, territorial or other;

Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;

Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;

Fourth, they will endeavour, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;

Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labour standards, economic advancement and social security;

Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;

Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;

Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measure which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments.

It was the document that built the foundation of the United Nations, back in the days of its purity and before its corruption by lesser nations and little crooks in league with global corporatists. The right of self-determination was proclaimed unequivocally by the UK - at a time when a third of the globe was still coloured pink. It committed us to the most ambitious postwar programme of independence that the world has ever seen, as people after people, nation after nation, were given leave to exercise self-determination. The Atlantic Charter is an enduring document of the most profound moral worth, a foundation stone of peace and civilisation for the twenty-first century. 

Let us remember those principles of self-determination this week, at a time when the functionaries of the EU act even now to suppress the identity and freedoms of Europe's peoples under a new legal and economic jackboot. Let us also remember the moral courage, the almost unbelievable confidence in the power of Right and Justice, that was displayed by the leaders of the free world in 1941. 

Spain blocks any meaningful dialogue over Catalonia

The next few days will be critical for hopes of a peaceful resolution to the Catalan crisis. 

El Pais sets out most clearly the Spanish position;

As things stand today, the Spanish Constitution does not contemplate the right to secession. It obliges all powers to preserve the unity of the state and to guarantee that sovereignty will remain in the hands of all Spaniards.

Accepting a dialogue, mediation or negotiation that might lead to a legal, agreed-to referendum with a binding option for Catalan secession from Spain entails opening up a negotiation for constitutional reform between the governments of Spain and Catalonia, and this is something that the central government cannot do unilaterally, much less under pressure or through international mediation.

The only body that can reform the Constitution is Congress – where Catalans are also represented, by the way. To this should be added all the citizens of Spain, who would have to be consulted in a national referendum.

And there you have it; Spain is indivisible, self-determination, even for a population that meets international criteria for a separate people, will not be permitted. With all offers of external mediation rejected, and Catalans not given the slightest hope of a legal referendum, Catalan leaders are being forced into an unlawful and unwarranted declaration of independence, or abject surrender to Madrid's rule. 

This is not the way to deal with devolution in the 21st century. Even at this hour I hope calmer heads will prevail to avert what would be a catastrophe for the peoples of Spain and Catalonia.

Felipe of Spain - just the same old don?

Felipe VI of Spain showed his real attitude to self-determination back in July, on a State visit to the UK during which we pretended he was welcome and he pretended that he enjoyed being here. The toy king (founded 1975) who owes his throne to the unelected bureaucrats of Brussels refused to recognise the government of Gibraltar (founded 1713) or the rights of the people of Gibraltar to determine their own future; a true EUphile, he wanted instead to trade the freedom of the people of the Rock without any reference to their own views. 

His uncompromising and brutal speech on self-determination in Catalonia confirms his attitude towards extending democracy within his toy kingdom. No calls for dialogue, no door left open for a future legitimate referendum, no compromise. In the world of kings he is something of a counter-jumper, an arriviste, a nouveau roi. Perhaps his grasping approach to what is left of the Spanish empire is not unexpected; neither Ceuta nor Melilla, holdings far less legitimate and democratic than Gibraltar, will be allowed to slip from Spain's grasp. 

Many in Catalonia now blame Felipe for the paramilitary violence last weekend. They know their king better than we do, and have a shrewd idea of the extent of his power to direct Spain's military. This also raises whether Felipe is personally behind the long series of military provocations against Gibraltar this year. Is Felipe just the same old unreasoning, fanatical don that we have known before? Has loyalty to the Pope just been replaced with loyalty to the EU? 

I sincerely hope that both sides pull back from the brink next week, that Spain concedes a proper referendum, that the Catalan parliament resists declaring independence. Felipe and his EU masters have shown themselves to be both wilful and stupid so far, driving the region to secession. Let's hope more balanced voices are heard - possibly Switzerland, which has already offered to mediate, but has been spurned by both Spain and the EU. 

Felipe may want to take note. Switzerland is what an actual democracy looks like - and every Canton retains the right to leave the Swiss Federation. Perhaps he was sick on the day they taught democracy.

Felipe II and Felipe VI - the same old don?

Council housing doesn't work any more

The Parker-Morris standards for Council houses are almost always described as minimum space standards. They are not. They are actually maximum space standards. When the committee was investigating during the 1950s, at the height of what was then called 'slum clearance' in which gorgeous Georgian terraces and the remains of 16th and 17th century urban villages were destroyed along with any houses that had inconveniently survived the Blitz, the government faced a demand problem. If they built houses that were wind and weathertight, with indoor privies, heating and all modern conveniences, good strong roofs and damp courses, better in fact than most privately rented housing stock, how would they curb demand? The answer was to make them small - with every square inch of space calculated; room for the bin, and the pram, for a small 2-person sofa, a table for the wireless, a dining table for two. Making them as small as possible - smaller than the private alternatives - was intended to restrict demand, and in the 1950s, to an extent, it worked. It also allowed economy in construction, housing 25% more people than new private construction for the same cost. 

In 2017, private housebuilding builds to almost exactly the same space standards as the 1961 Parker Morris quota. But with no room for the landrover baby buggy, the fridge freezer, the dish washer or storage for clothes and shoes twenty times the size of the lean post-war wardrobe. The owner of a modern estate home may also rent a self-store space in lieu of a garage and loftspace, or clutter their parents' homes with their overspill of stuff. 

Off-site fabrication, increased quality control that means thinner, leaner structural sections, eliminating wet-trades, de-skilling construction and global procurement* have all combined to deliver new houses at minimum cost and minimum size with barely acceptable economic life; you can expect the roofs to fail economically in twenty years, services to fail economically in fifteen years. However, for those houses built with a slot-in pre-plumbed bathroom wall that just needs connecting to water and bolting in, owners may well need to remove sections of the external brick cladding to replace the plumbing. Yes, we're now building instant slums, with poor soundproofing, shoddy materials and, still, hammer-induced fitting of precise components. 

It's no longer possible to build council houses better than private homes for lesser cost; there is also no longer a 'cheaper' option as private builders have already attained the nadir. There's just new housing, all the same. The only variable is land with planning consent. Unless the government cracks this one, new council housing just won't work any more.

*A consignment of cement-woodwool boards from Thailand on one of my jobs was delayed when HMRC found a few kilos of heroin hidden in the load.

Dear Evening Standard - saying "Death to Allah" is not illegal

From the strapline in the ES, you'd think the bloke was facing jail for saying something rude about the Muslim fetish-god, wouldn't you? One needs to read the story to discover that the crime was actually criminal damage, for writing on an expensive business class seat, or rather for 'religiously aggrevated' criminal damage. This is a curious quirk of English law; saying 'Mohammed Sucks' in criticism of the Muslim idol is fine, printing it on a blog is perfectly legal; indeed, one's right to do so is clearly enshrined in s.29j of the 2006 Racial and Religious hatred Act:-

Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system.

However, spraying a wall with the same message in a way that causes criminal damage can be 'upped' to the more serious offence. Clear?

Otherwise, saying 'Death to Allah' only becomes illegal when it escapes from the umbrella of s.29j - when it is proclaimed with the intention of breaching public order, causing hatred or violence, when it is used to harass to intimidate. When, in other words, the aim is other than legitimate 'discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse'

I know this entire concept may just be too hard for many simple minds to understand. It seems to have defeated Tristan Kirk, the author of the piece. Or this may be wilful obtuseness; it suits a certain metropolitan cabal to try to threaten, bluster and shock folk into saying absolutely nothing derogatory about religion. So let's thank goodness for all the Greg Tingeys out there who do such sterling service in the cause of free speech.  

EU regional policy - yet another grievous error

The EU set up the Committee of the Regions in 1994 with a huge lie. Its real purpose was to establish direct governance links between Brussels and European local government whilst bypassing those pesky democratic national governments and states. Sometime over the last ten or fifteen years, the EU decided either that this regional policy was a huge error or that, following the Treaty of Lisbon, that it was no longer needed. Today the Committee of the Regions is a poorly-funded embarrassment in Brussels, with an unknown President (the fourth or fifth EU President?), currently Karl-Heinz Lambert, and the third-smallest budget in the EU, largely spent on itself. The EU will never abolish it, of course, but it will just be gradually pushed further and further to the margins, absent from news releases, ignored, underfunded and unfashionable. Its Presidents and members feature on no ballot papers, and I'll bet there's not more than half a dozen people in the UK who know more than one of our 24 members. Shortly to go.

Yet during its lifetime, it has wasted more money and fomented more conflict than pretty much any other EU cabal. Ambitious regions, in conflict with their national governments, have even established 'embassies' in Brussels, in the most egregious display of snouts-in-the-trough misuse of tax money. Catalunya is one consequence, one that the EU now bitterly regrets.

It is quite possible that Catalonia will gain independence, but not from this referendum, at least not with any legitimacy. It will take a proper referendum, sanctioned by the Spanish government, overseen by observers, absent threat or coercion. 

What a bloody mess. What utter stupidity - Spain's and the EU's. Forgive me, but everything the EU touches turns to shit. This could all have been avoided if skill and experience rather than zealotry and purblind anti-democracy had driven these fools.

EU seeks to destroy self-determination

The UK, post-WWII, has been one of the world's most fervent upholders of the rights of a people to self-determination. From Palestine in '45-47, Indian independence in '47, the wave of African independence in the 1950s right through to officially arranging TWO independence referenda in Scotland, few nations have done more to defend and promote self-determination.

In return, we assert those rights on behalf of the people of Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands. And also, with greater finesse, for the people of Northern Ireland, a falling majority of whom wish to remain part of the UK. 

Indeed, the West was very much in favour of self-determination until the fall of the Wall, when strangely there was a shift towards the idea of 'territorial integrity' trumping self-determination. Oh sure we believe in self-determination, said the EU, except when territorial integrity is more important. So for Western Ukraine, self-determination but for Crimea, territorial integrity. The EU's unelected officials love the new approach; it allows Imperial inconsistency. For an antidemocratic organisation that has fomented war and conflict in the Balkans, Ukraine and Baltic, which has encouraged the Spanish neo-fascists to provoke an armed incident in Gibraltar, it's therefore no surprise that the EU is wholly behind the neo-fascists in suppressing the people of Catalonia. Maybe Germany and France are even prepared to offer new Condor Legions to help the fascists.   

Now the EU, an unelected empire renowned worldwide for foreign policy incompetence, for creating division and for fomenting conflict, is blundering clumsily, foolishly and maliciously into Northern Ireland. The province is a matter for the British and Irish governments alone, and for the people of the province alone to determine. We can simply not allow the EU to destroy the carefully wrought peace. If they try to re-ignite armed conflict there, we must drop all defence and intelligence co-operation immediately, and walk away from Brexit talks. 

The anti-democratic nomenklatura in Brussels must learn one lesson - the power of the ballot box, whether in Catalonia or anywhere else.

Catalan independence supporter wounded by EU police today

British independence websites blocked by EU government in bid to stop referendum

Brussels, 28th September
 
British authorities have accused the EU government of blocking websites aimed at spreading information about the country’s independence referendum. The move is part of a crackdown on the British independence movement to prevent the vote, which includes the confiscation of ballot papers and the deployment of extra police officers to Britain. Separatists hope the referendum will go ahead on 1 October to decide whether Britain, an autonomous former nation in the European Union, should declare itself an independent country.

The EU government has insisted the referendum is illegal and is taking action to stop it, including the spreading of information seen to promote the vote. Earlier this week, police summoned 17 people for questioning over the development of web platforms related to the referendum. A police spokesperson told AFP the people were suspected of “disseminating a website for people to participate in a referendum declared illegal by the European Court of Justice”.
 
An organisation which manages how users find websites with the extension .uk was raided by the EU security police force, Politico reported. The .uk Foundation, which manages the register of domains ending in .uk, was forced by authorities to block websites with information about the referendum.  The raid came shortly after the ECJ ordered the foundation block websites related to the vote. The homepage of the site Referendum.uk now displays a message stating: “This domain name has been seized pursuant to a seizure warrant under the Judicial Authority and is under its administration.”

A spokesperson for the British government told the Guardian the move was denying people the right to freedom of information online.

Remember, they can't rewrite the result of 23rd June 2016. We may be the last nation allowed independence in Europe. 

Con Coughlin: Saudi-funded Islamism better than Qatari-funded Islamism. For some.

It's always good to know there are some certainties in life, and Con's willingness to parrot the message of his contacts at the MoD are amongst them. Sometime, though, during his most recent lunch, he must have confused the reality, for today's column is contorted even for Con.

Although he half admits that Brit Islamist killers have well established links to Salafist / Wahhabi  extremism from KSA, he points out that Qatar, too, sponsors terrorists who want to kill us, and selling 24 Eurofighters to Qatar is a mistake. The Saudis are our real friends, Con says, despite them funding a network of terrorist madrassas, mosques and Islamist infiltration, despite them exporting Islamist imams intent on the destruction of the west. He doesn't have to point out that KSA directly pays the salaries of 2,000 MoD staff and offers lucrative if ostensibly corrupt employment opportunities to retired officers and civil servants who can influence procurement decision making, as well as being a source of assured profits to the global arms manufacturers headquartered in the UK. 

Clearly, for Con and his MoD chums, a few score Brits annihilated each year by Islamist killers is a reasonable price to pay for such lucrative wonga.

Deep anger at Brexit 'betrayal'

Although I have avoided writing a post that condemns Mrs May's handling of Brexit, the comments to the post below are unanimous in their anger, frustration and exasperation at the government's implementation of the Brexit vote. I share the frustration, but not perhaps the anger.

We are where we are. The only government that will implement Brexit has a knife-edge majority. We face a powerful, effective and international Remain lobby that seeks to reverse the vote. May's own ministers risk triggering an election that would put Labour into power and leave us in the EU. 

The nation is deeply divided. That we won doesn't mean it's wise to trample on the sensibilities of the losers. Remember Churchill's 'Magnanimity' - we have to find a way back to a unified nation, to heal the bitterness, while still honouring the vote and implementing Brexit.

So no, you won't find puce spluttering fury here, nor pointless condemnation of the government. It's all far too serious for that. We are tiptoeing through a minefield. Yes, Hammond should go - or rather be re-shuffled to Agriculture or DFID. For now May's speech has made a number of conciliatory, utterly reasonable concessions which if rejected by the EU demonstrate a level of unreason that forces us to leave without a deal. Not our doing, guv; no nation could swallow their punishment.

I'm keeping my powder dry for now.    

Florence speech verdict; steady as she goes

Reactions to Theresa May's Florence speech are predictable. Nigel Farage and Guy Verhofstadt have both slated it, politicians have created varieties of weasel words of semi-approval but the majority in the middle asked of the much-hyped landmark "was that it?"

The avoidance of a cliff-edge and extending our leave date until the end of the current EU budget cycle both make some sense. However, what I was looking for were Mrs May's words on what is to me a critically important part of leaving; re-establishing the supremacy of UK courts. What she said is this:

I am clear that the guarantee I am giving on your rights is real. And I doubt anyone with real experience of the UK would doubt the independence of our courts or of the rigour with which they will uphold people’s legal rights

But I know there are concerns that over time the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens overseas will diverge. I want to incorporate our agreement fully into UK law and make sure the UK courts can refer directly to it.

Where there is uncertainty around underlying EU law, I want the UK courts to be able to take into account the judgments of the European Court of Justice with a view to ensuring consistent interpretation. On this basis, I hope our teams can reach firm agreement quickly.

In other words, after Brexit the UK supreme court will revert to being fully independent and the judgements of the ECJ will have just the same comparative weight as those from the common law jurisdictions of the Commonwealth and the US, which have long been considered by our supreme court. In fact, the UK has always been more open to the use of comparative law than any of the Code Napoleon nations of the EU. It is therefore the EU that risks isolation from evolving international standards, through a rigid belief in its own politicised court, and not the UK. 

In the field of human rights in particular there has been an international convergence between first-world jurisdictions, and human rights cases in the UK have frequently been argued using foreign case-law; a report for the US congress in 2010 quoted the decline of the US supreme court in leading international law and praised the UK, and the then leadership in the Lords of the UK's supreme tribunal;

The House of Lords has, where relevant, used decisions from foreign courts in these cases to compare how the rights have been interpreted. This applies for not only the European Convention on Human Rights, but also for a number of other international treaties. For example, in A v. Secretary of State, foreign cases were used throughout the opinions of the Law Lords, which was considering the use of evidence that may have been obtained by torture. It noted how the Torture Convention had been implemented into the law of France, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States. During this case, numerous foreign decisions were referred to—three from the Supreme Court of the United States, twelve from the Supreme Courts of six other countries, and others from international courts and tribunals. Some commentators have noted that the use of so many foreign cases was a “conscious attempt to put the practice of the UK within a global context and to upgrade the common law to modern international standards.” In fact, the approach of Lord Bingham was highly commended by an article in the Law Society Gazette, which provided:

Lord Bingham has performed brilliantly in the job for which he was specifically selected in defiance of the principle of “buggin’s turn”, which would have given it to another. He has stitched the Human Rights Act into the fabric of our domestic law and, in doing so, aligned our jurisprudence with that of an emerging global approach. The breadth of the approach of the House of Lords under his leadership throws into stark relief the decline of its US equivalent … this was a conscious attempt to put the practice of the UK within a global context and to upgrade the common law to modern international standards.

That puts the politicised 'court' of the ECJ in its place, I think. Brexit means our courts will again be free to develop law in line with humankind's continuing social evolution, using the wisdom of the US supreme court and of our Commonwealth cousins, unconstrained by the narrow and primitive world-view of the parochial and somewhat corrupt ECJ.  

Yvette Cooper and Lily Allen

In the wake of the tube bomber suspect and his chum both having been child migrants lodged in UK homes, I'm wondering how those saintly, selfless givers Yvette Cooper and Lily Allen. who both undertook to house migrant children in their own capacious homes (in Yvette's case more than one) are getting on?

Oh. They didn't actually house any migrants, did they? That was left to ordinary folk, many elderly, whilst our gobby heroines just reaped the kudos.  

 

Why Boris' £350m a week is about right

It's extraordinary that folk who can't read a P&L a/c or balance sheet are suddenly experts in accounting, but the media is full of remoaners who are striving to shoot down the figure, referenced by Boris Johnson in his post-Brexit vision paper.

Amongst the remoaners is some bloke who says he is head of statistics. I've read his silly letter - which has been shot down by Boris. His basic error was in answering the claims made during the referendum rather than what Boris had written, and not actually reading what Boris had written before writing his own fatuous missive. The rebuttal from the Orwellian BBC Department of Truth shows that in fact the EU is paying the UK £50m a week, and that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden. 

Folks, for the truth go to the EU budget pages. Not what the BBC or the remoaner statistics manager thinks the figure should be, but the actual EU official figures. 

For anyone who works for the BBC, let me explain. Our gross contribution, before the rebate, is £24,337.2m€. We get a 6m€ rebate which brings the contribution down to a net 18,209.4m€ a year, or €350m a week. 

We also collect €4.27bn a year in VAT and duty for goods landing in the UK but passing through to elsewhere in the EU. You could argue that some of this would remain after Brexit and that this should be added to the €18bn. 

Either way, what Boris actually claimed about the £350m a week was broadly true - the figure was close, and yes, we will regain control of how it's spent.