Category Archives: Government

UK government, political theory and philosophy

Immigration

 

 

 

 

 

 

The recent furore over Gary Lineker’s comments about Conservative government migrant policy on the small boats has exposed clearly the hard left mentality that dominates political discourse in the UK. All the usual suspects have come out of the woodwork against the prospective policies of Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman: the Labour party, celebrities like Lineker, charities, open borders activists and of course the United Nations and so on.

 

At the risk of annoying all those who have already followed this story, Lineker’s contribution to the debate is not really a free speech issue. He is free to say what he likes as an independent person. However, as a very high profile BBC personality he should be aware of impartiality guidelines in view of the effect his words have on BBC viewers and people generally and realise that his take on government migration policy was outrageous considering the comparison with Germany in the Thirties.

 

The government has an enormous fight on its hands now as it finds itself in an epic battle between open borders supporters and those who believe in the nation state and protection of borders. It was once said that liberals tear down fences that already exist whilst conservatives try and conserve fences as they are there for a reason, and this is reflected by the migration issue.

 

Back in the day, when I was growing up in the UK, it was just taken as given that the world was composed of 195 odd countries which all had their own culture and history, and that you needed a passport or visa to cross a border from one country to another. Otherwise you were transgressing a basic, fundamental boundary that was criminal to sever. Most if not all people would have adhered to that outlook.

 

The world is much changed, and now legal and illegal immigration is running at historic and unprecedented levels. There are those that say it’s too late, the demography is irreversible, but you don’t keep digging if you’re in a hole. Demography is literally everything and we must have a discussion about nationhood, patriotism, history, heritage and what sort of future we want. A fundamental difference has to be acknowledged at the basis of any discussion, that there are those that believe in open borders and others, probably the majority, who believe in borders.

 

Those arguing for proper border controls must first of all be utterly confident in their position and have an unassailable arsenal of arguments to support their view, and they must be fearless in their stance, because the nature of the battle is that they are facing a very powerful bullying and intimidating spirit that shamefully resorts to name calling and cries of ‘bigot’ or ‘racist’ to get its way. A calm reasoned approach may not be popular against such opposition but it will chime strongly with the vast majority of thinking people.

 

Culture, history and nationhood are important because they run deep in our consciousness of who we are, and represent a very strong part of our identity. When we say we are British there are deep connections with a long island history, much of which has been positive and has benefited the world, with historic institutions such as the monarchy and Parliament, the judiciary, the army, universities, the country itself which is full of beauty, customs and mores which are seen as uniquely British, and so on. Although some of these institutions have lost some credibility for one reason or another, people are proud of the things these institutions represent, and you cannot just sweep them under the carpet.

 

Religion also historically plays an important role, although it is less understood by the intellectual and governing classes, Christianity has left its mark both on the physical nature of the landscape with its network of cathedrals, churches and chapels but also on the character of the people. Although the majority would not claim to be Christian, the teachings and commands of the Bible have left their mark on generations of inhabitants, and influence the temperament and character of the people today even if they are not specifically followers of Christ. Waves of immigration have brought other religions to these shores, and many of their adherents have assimilated admirably into our culture, such as the Jews, Sikhs and Hindus, but there have been and are strains on the body politic, and we have seen this particularly with Islam. Political Islam is a very strong strain of Islam which does not fit well with UK history and culture, and this must be recognised with immigration policymakers. There have been too many incidents in the last two decades of fundamental clashes. As Norman Tebbitt said, you cannot have two dominant cultures, Christianity and Islam.

 

This leads to another point. Militant Islam thinks strategically, British governments don’t. It is the price of having a democracy that governments don’t think much beyond the five year election cycle. British governments need to think more strategically about demography, culture and nationhood and how exactly it represents the average patriotic voter making up the ‘somewheres’ in the country as opposed to the ‘anywheres.’ We need statesmen who can see at least fifty years ahead.

 

Continuing to allow huge numbers of legal, and illegal immigrants from alien cultures will simply continue the present trajectory of bigger and bigger percentages of the population being foreign born and smaller percentages being indigenous Brits or indeed settled immigrants who have been happy to make Britain their home. Thus any existing historical culture and traditions will come under increasing strain especially with the discrimination and equality strands so strong in western culture.

 

If governments genuinely want to preserve their nation and culture they have to think of policies which encourage marriage, family and having children, as you only perpetuate your culture through producing the next generation. The former Chief Rabbi maybe made a salient point here when he said that Europeans are no longer prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to raise a family. This will involve ‘discrimination,’ but making judgements for the welfare of society is nothing less than eminently sensible. This might involve tax breaks, tax allowances e.g. interchangeable allowances between couples with children, subsidies or vouchers to encourage father and motherhood.

 

The fundamental problem with the open borders apologists is a failure to understand the nuances and discernment needed to have successful border protection. Protecting your own borders is a completely separate issue from racism and is a viewpoint that understands the argument that all human beings are of equal value and are entitled to be treated accordingly with dignity and respect, but nevertheless we all carry the values, lifestyle, religion and culture of the nation in which were born. Because these issues are so diverse and different across the world there will be significant conflict between them as has always been the case, and allowing huge numbers from alien cultures into your nation will inevitably lead to problems.

 

The UK is a tiny state physically. I have just looked at the World Population Review for 2023 and the UK is the one of the most densely populated relatively large advanced economies in the world after South Korea, India and Japan, in other words it is the most densely populated significant advanced western nation period, with 725 people/square mile, over twice the density of France with 306 people per square mile. Germany is the next most densely populated big western country with 617/square mile. If you drill down deeper, the population density of England as opposed to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is even greater. This alone should make policy makers think very carefully about openness to high numbers of immigrants because of the strain on infrastructure that mass immigration inevitably will bring. It’s such an obvious point that it is difficult to take seriously any arguments of mass immigration activists. There is limited road space, railway infrastructure, hospital capacity, housing space, water resources, etc. and unless you accordingly increase such infrastructure continuing mass immigration is simply foolish. I myself have faced this problem as a local Councillor attending a Southern Water workshop where forecasts of water shortages in the future were shared with delegates.

 

If you believe in the validity of the nation state you must always put your own people first, every time. In other words their welfare is more important than looking after any immigrant. Obviously there are genuine refugees and asylum seekers fleeing from catastrophic circumstances and the UK has a responsibility to help such people, but the British government must ensure the safety and security of its own people as priority.

 

Whatever the pros and cons of immigration it is time for the UK to pause and take stock of the implications of its immigration policy over the last forty years. It seems that arguments for mass immigration have centred around the needs of the economy, the need to keep wages low, the need to fill many low skilled jobs that many British people do not want to do, but surely we should be aiming to get our own people back into work before thinking about importing a workforce, and also we should be having a discussion about nationhood, culture and cohesion at this important time in our history.

Letter sent to BBC in middle of Covid

7.2.21

Dear Sir/Madam

I write with regard to the Covid crisis. Please understand that I am not denying that Covid exists nor the tragic circumstances for many families who have lost loved ones. Nor am I denying the sensitive coverage by the BBC of many who have suffered either directly or indirectly in this crisis. However I do believe the presponse of the authorities and media has been grossly disproportionate.

It is evident to me that the BBC is far too complicit in pushing the narrative that lockdowns are the only way of dealing with the pandemic, followed by the vaccination roll out of course, and in effect you have been operating as the propaganda arm of the government for the last ten months. I have listened to you consistently and there has been no deviation from the official line. I would have thought it more serving of the general public for the main news channel in the country to have a far more circumspect approach, wondering at the very least if there might be a better way of dealing with Covid, and yet there appears to be a frightening level of group think which is unwilling to debate or air sufficiently any other viewpoint.

The government could be forgiven at the beginning of the pandemic for taking a full lockdown approach given the fact that we had not experienced a serious plague for 100 years and what was happening across the world in countries like Italy and the US. However it was evident pretty quickly that the vast majority of deaths were of those over 65 with comorbidities. We had the opportunity then to reevaluate the lockdown policy and debate whether there was a better way. It surely would have been a far more common sense approach to have concentrated on protecting the vulnerable and get the rest of society back to normal as quickly as possible. Instead despite some easing of restrictions in the summer the government imposed mask wearing and doubled down on the lockdown approach with the tier system and further lockdowns in the autumn and into 2021. The BBC just went along with this as if it was the undisputedly correct approach.

It is obvious to anyone with an ounce of discernment that shutting down society to deal with Covid is an incredibly blunt and brutal instrument whose negative effects are incalculable – separating people from one another, splitting families, isolating an enormous number of single households in this country, putting on hold treatment for other health issues, excess deaths from those who had heart, cancer or other issues that were never dealt with, destroyed businesses and consequently broken lives, disrupted education for millions of children (I am a teacher and strongly oppose the union policy of keeping children put of school). The list goes on. Despite any government intentions it could be argued that this was an anti-human and some would say even wicked thing to do in the name of a public health crisis.

This is especially galling in view of the fact that although hospitals have been under pressure the numbers of deaths in historical terms have not been that great, although each death is obviously awful for many families. But be honest, how many deaths have been of fit and healthy people who are not overweight and do not have secondary conditions? Very few. This is where the media have blown the crisis out of all proportion and together with government have projected an unhealthy level of fear over society which in turn has led to an unhealthy level of control which we are now struggling to get out of. This would be considered by many people to be unforgivable.

In the late summer of 2020 an opportunity was given through the Great Barrington Declaration which was supported by over 50000 medical practitioners to change course by concentrating on protecting the vulnerable and releasing the rest of society to get back to normal, a perfectly common sense approach which would have avoided the continuing collateral damage to the economy and society. But it was cast aside by the powers that be who continued with arguably their ruinous lockdown approach. Can you please explain to me why we as a society cannot concentrate on protecting the vulnerable if we can produce reams of directives to regulate every other possible area of society? The proposal could have received at least considerably more debate.

On top of this are the problems with the data. The BBC feeds us with a daily figure of the number of deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test. Yet neither you nor the government nor anyone else, even medical experts can tell us how many of these people actually died of Covid and how many with Covid. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to surmise that the majority of those people died mainly of other causes given that they were old, such as heart problems, cancer, pneumonia, kidney failure, so on and so forth, and Covid was simply another condition whose extra weight and burden especially to those of great age overcame the patient. In addition is the problem of the high rate of testing with false positives with the popular Covid PCR test, which muddies the waters even further.

Given that what we know about the virus most people under 65 are under little threat from the virus, we then have the issue of social distancing. This whole idea of people being asymptomatic is fraught with difficulty. The idea that we have to socially distance because we might or might not have a virus is a rather tenuous basis for a major public policy. Even if someone had the virus what sort of virus load would they carry especially if they were asymptomatic, and honestly how much threat would they really be to most people they come into contact with, bearing in mind that they might be much more careful with older relatives? The human body is an incredible and wonderful creation and has the ability to develop immunity to viruses through natural means. Surely allowing healthy and younger people to mix normally could go some way to building up a natural immunity to this virus.

There are also disturbing conflicts of interest in this whole affair. We are told for instance that Professor Patrick Vallance has a shareholding of £600000 in GSK which was contracted to develop vaccines. The BMJ put out an article in December concerning the interests of doctors, scientists and academics advising the government on how to manage the pandemic. The article made the point that Downing St has shown little concern that advisors to the coronavirus vaccine task force have financial interests in pharmaceutical companies receiving government contracts. We should be mindful that ‘the love of money is the root of all evil’ and that these issues are worth questioning. Chris Whitty is on the Interim Board of CEPI (coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) which evidently unites players in biotechnology, Big Pharma and health charities, government agencies, etc to push global immunisation which fits in nicely with a lockdown strategy. These issues are worth querying by both governments and journalists?

Historically my understanding is that national lockdowns have never been used before as a tool of public policy. I am sure that public health policy up to recently would never have entertained such an extreme method to deal with a virus, especially given that we have had very serious flu outbreaks within our lifetime and also potential scares with new viruses which never caused many deaths and certainly didn’t move the authorities to lock down a whole society, and especially as this virus is little threat to anyone apart from the old. The way the government is micromanaging people’s lives is serious government overreach into areas it should have nothing to do with, especially as they are illegitimately taking over the management of risk from private individuals and families into the realms of the State, again something unprecedented in human history. The only type of governmental system that would take such drastic action would be an extreme communist or socialist regime, as we saw with China leading the way.

We now have an impressive rollout of the vaccination programme and the medical and scientific community must be congratulated for all their superb work in producing a way out of the grip of this situation. For many people this has been the holy grail. However we have again been fed a narrative that this is the only realistic way out with an underplaying of alternatives. What about an emphasis on development of other treatments that could be another pathway for people, as has happened with HIV for which there is no vaccine but nevertheless the development of amazing new treatments?

There is also evidence that this is a man made virus which adds another level of intrigue to the plot. It is not beyond the realms of imagination that there is another agenda at work in all this and that unscrupulous people would like to use this virus to bring down nations for their own very suspect purposes. It is little wonder that there are so many doubters over this whole affair as both the government and media have left themselves with too many own goals. People are discerning, you can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time. It is no surprise that people turn to conspiracy theories or ideas that players behind the scenes are engineering this crisis for their own ends, whether for love of money, desire for global government or whatever. You cannot blame people for asking hard questions.

I would like to see a far more open debate in the mainstream media over these issues and a much more critical approach to the efficacy and suitability of lockdown, given that this crisis could go on somewhat longer than people would hope. This would give you more credibility with many who question what is going on at the moment and undermine any accusations that it is in your interests to push this agenda.

I would suggest respectfully that we are being ‘played’ in this Covid crisis by a very powerful spirit of manipulation and control, and both the government and mainstream media are party to this and to a degree are under that spirit. It would be in the interests of everybody to have a far more open debate about the whole issue which would go some way to allay the fears and questions of many.

CS Lewis, one of our greatest thinkers said something very prescient many years ago: ‘Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.’

I humbly suggest that you have to govern for the welfare of 65m people and that we have lost sight of that in this crisis, allowing coronavirus to rule us rather than keeping it in a more realistic perspective.

Thank you for reading this letter, and I look forward to more balance in the lockdown debate,

Yours faithfully

Covid 19 counterfeit religion

If any religion has shaped Britain it is Christianity which has gone deep into the warp and woof of our culture and substantially affected it in profound ways, to the extent that many of us are living off the fat of the land, the rump of Christian culture that is our heritage passed down from generation to generation. However that culture is now seriously compromised and so poses the question does this leave Britain weak when faced with serious challenges such as that which faced our grandfathers in the Second World War.

Covid 19 has proved almost a step too far for our survival as a nation and things were very much in the balance with a fully vaccinated population, vaccine passports and even digital ID in the pipeline at one point. We have and are, like many other countries, in danger of moving swiftly into a surveillance society the end game of which is what we see in communist China with its social credit scores and coercion and control of each individual. The common law, primacy of Parliament, independent judiciary, freedom of worship and association, freedom of speech and all things associated with being British are fast disappearing and will be a thing of the past unless there is a massive backlash.

It is interesting given our Christian heritage to draw some parallels between true Christianity and Covid 19, which became almost like a substitute religion for many people. The foundational difference is that the religion of Covid is based on fear whereas true Christianity is based on faith, hope and love. The fear of course Is fear of death which was ramped up shamelessly by a ruthless government and mass media machine which relentlessly pushed a narrative of the dangers of Covid out of all proportion to the reality. Of course fear of death is a reality, but those with a Christian faith know that death is not the end and that this life is just a precursor for eternal life in heaven forever with their Saviour. Many have no faith apart from the insecure trappings of this life, reliance on personal abilities, intelligence, money, power and material success, so are easy prey to that which threatens their security.

Covid 19 is a Pharisaical religion, based on rules and regulations, crossing every t and dotting every i. This was the only way to achieve freedom from Covid with the eternal mask wearing, track and trace apps, plastic screens, signage and arrows on floors. This was the way of the Pharisees in the New Testament who believed the only way to heaven was a religion of works, adhering to thousands of petty rules which produces a never ending feeling of falling short if one does not adhere to the Covid code, which like the Ten Commandments must be obeyed at all times. Contrast this with real Christianity, a religion of grace, mercy and forgiveness which offers pardon to the most recalcitrant sinner and respects free will. Anyone can choose to follow or reject the message, you still keep your personal liberty.

Any true religion is based on solid rock and its adherents are secure in who they are and what they believe. Covid 19 was an insecure religion and gave itself away by refusing to countenance any other interpretation of how to deal with a virus. We must have lockdowns, everyone has to be vaccinated, we have to limit human interaction to the extent that family members are cut off from one another, weddings and funerals are curtailed and the hard face of the law governs what we can and cannot do. Anyone who thought outside the box was a heretic, even if they were seasoned professionals and experts in their field, and had to be shut down. There is another way of doing things they cried, you are disregarding the huge collateral damage of lockdowns, Covid is of little threat to healthy people, emphasise the importance of a healthy lifestyle, diet and exercise, with lots of sun and vitamin D, let the body build up natural immunity, there are other remedies and medications for Covid apart from vaccinations. But the MSM, the social media giants and government shut down or ignored such voices, shamefully, demonstrating their huge insecurity over what they were doing or supporting. That alone should have been an alarm bell to everyone.

Meanwhile real Christianity emphasises the importance of free will and respect for an individual’s right to make their own decisions on whether they follow the narrow way that leads to salvation or the broad way that means doing your own thing and not submitting to any divine will. It is based on a secure foundation of theology and historical witness, and has weathered the storms of criticism and persecution without having to dominate the narrative and shutting down opposing opinions. Sure, twisted interpretations of Christianity have been use to dominate and control societies in the past, but true Christianity respects the dignity of the individual and its enormous value before God such that you cannot force the Christian worldview on anyone

Covid 19 had its prophets of course, found amongst its so called SAGE experts, spokespersons like Whitty and Vallance and lockdown fanatics like Professor Ferguson. Their platform was the BBC and other mainstream media from which they issued their edicts from on high and mathematical models. They presented their vision, the latest graphs with their doom laden predictions, emphasising how many people could go to hospital or die if we didn’t have another lockdown. They came with their Ten Commandments, to stay at home, not socialise, meet only in a bubble, only visit essential shops, get vaccinated, get a booster, get the flu jab.

Of course counterfeit religions have their rituals and sacraments, and perhaps the most ghastly and soul destroying was the lockdown, a policy which had not had any clear cost benefit analysis on its effects on society but was churned out as the panacea to the Covid problem. But if ever a religion could be accused of taking a leap of faith without any sold evidence that it worked it was in relation to the disastrous policy of lockdown. And the Covid 19 adherents kept coming back to the same policy despite evidence that it didn’t work and the slightly more obvious point that you don’t quarantine healthy people, which is exactly what they did!

The Covid crisis has exposed the leftist stance for what it is. In the UK Boris Johnson”s conservative government has hardly acted in a conservative way in dealing with the pandemic, imposing lockdowns and restrictions on an unprecedented scale. It might be argued that Johnson’s libertarian instincts prevented England from experiencing some of the worst excesses pursued by some governments around the world. Yet behind Johnson were the Labour Party who supported these measures all the way and it is a small mercy that they were not in power as they would have been even more restrictive and coercive in their policies. It was only with the help of the Labour Party that Johnson was able to push through vaccinating NHS workers and vaccine passports for big events in the Commons. The Labour Party have been as useful as a chocolate teapot in critiquing lockdown and all the other big state interventions.

Again you saw leftist policy at play in Europe, in Austria where they mandated vaccinations for everyone, Germany where they considered the same, Italy where you were not able to function in society unless you had a Green pass, and France where Macron set himself against his own people with vaccine mandates. The USA has been one giant experiment in how to deal with Covid. Again it was Democrat leftist states that pushed the vaccine ie mandates, mask restrictions and coercive control measures whilst Republican states left the people to make judgements on whether they want to wear a mask or take a vaccine. Florida is the glorious outlier here, and De Santis the buccaneering governor who did away with all Covid restrictions and encouraged an influx of migrants from other states. It’s always the same, people will move from oppression to freedom, wherever you are in the world, whether it’s east to west Germany or from New York to Florida.

Meanwhile in other parts of the Anglosphere, notably Canada and parts of Australia, the hard left has outdone itself in draconian regulation of peoples lives. Dan Andrews in Victoria has been possibly the most extreme western leader with lockdowns in the city of Melbourne continuing for virtually longer than any other place on earth. The heavy handed behaviour of the police has been one of the most disturbing features of the Australian lockdown.

Sadly, the deception of the Covid narrative has captured the one institution that could have taken a clear alternative angle on all this, the church. Instead of shutting its doors when Covid struck, the church could have kept its doors open and ministered to the spiritual and moral needs of the nation which had been so very great over the previous two years. Admittedly at first when Covid struck we were all flying blind, having not experienced a serious epidemic for a hundred years. This was an unknown and potentially lethal virus and many would say the government could not be blamed for taking a cautious approach at the beginning. However the truth came out pretty quickly for those with eyes to see and who would not bow down to the powerful spirit of manipulation and control which was working through the media. The church could have held the government to account over its draconian restrictions and policies, and challenged the lawfulness of banning normal human interaction in the name of health and safety. The church could have taught the nation the reality of the healing power of God, that deliverance from viruses is not only found on the NHS or through vaccines, but also from the power of prayer and the ministry of the laying on of hands. There have been notable exceptions to this of course, with church vicars criticising state interventions and standing up for freedom, whilst much good has been done in the form of food banks and helping the poor and oppressed, whilst some in the church have threatened the government with legal action over church closures and saw the government back down. All this was very laudable but the case remains that the church was relatively supine, uncritical and far too accepting of the government line and not open enough to the possibility that unscrupulous men and women were using this crisis to further unhealthy agendas. The church is called to prophetic discernment of the times and the seasons and to give spiritual leadership to the nation. In this it singularly failed. A tragedy that will blight our nation for years. The sad fact is that non church people have had more discernment on the wicked oppressive plans that have been rolled out over the last two years in the guise of a health crisis. I have witnessed this myself having attended about five of the demonstrations in London over the last eight months or so of the Covid era. It is those people who have stood up for out freedom and seen the dangers of state overreach so clearly, whilst the church has meekly stood on the side.

However all is not lost. When all’s said and done there is always hope and grace and an opportunity to do things a different way next time round. Who’s to say this won’t be an opportunity for a reboot of society and for the church to rise up in new boldness and faith in a time when courage and fearlessness are in short supply. God is that God of the second chance, and his grace covers a multitude of sins. Who’s to know that Covid may have been a time of seeding, when the hearts of men and women have been prepared in the quiet places for future leadership and influence. The past two years will have opened the eyes of many to the deception and wickedness in high places, working through big government, the MSM and the social media giants and they will have learnt that the greatest malevolent spirit we face is the spirit of manipulation and control that works through the majority. An article was written recently that heralded the rise of war leaders to deal with the present situation. Not made for times of peace, such warriors arise when courage is needed to stand against extreme wickedness

Christianity has the cross, the supreme symbol of self sacrifice as God invaded the earth, becoming a man to bear the punishment for our sin. The past shows us that Christianity gets right in amongst the poor, marginalised and sick to minister relief and healing to people. In the plagues that hit the Roman Empire it was the Christians that got in amongst the sick and diseased with no care for their own well being, knowing the risks of catching deadly disease but motivated by love and care for their fellow man. The church has risen to the occasion in terms of social care, ministering to the poor, supporting food banks and suchlike. However by and large the church has complied with government regulations rather than challenge lockdown which is arguably the worst public policy disaster in modern history. The draconian restrictions on human contact, limits on attendance at weddings and funerals, bans on meeting with loved ones in care homes and hospitals, especially when sick family members were at the end of their lives were an opportunity for the church to face down the government on the unprecedented bans on human interaction. We have to,pray that with future threats like Covid or otherwise, that the church will respond ina more discerning manner.

Syria

Before Donald Trump got elected to be American president last week and caused generation snowflake to go apoplectic I started to pen a letter to Theresa May on Syria. Well what a surprise but Mr Trump seems to have the same views as me on this subject. Perhaps he should elect me as his advisor!

Looking at the headlines in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph we see that Mr Trump is taking the line that we should be more alongside Russia in their Syria policy rather than helping the Syrian ‘opposition.’ I would have advised the British government to take Trump’s line ages ago, even before this present conflict started. We might have saved ourselves an awful lot of trouble, notably perhaps some of the massive migrant flows into Europe which are now destabilising the continent.

Under Assad Syria was a reasonably stable entity up to the recent conflict. Indeed it was perhaps a bit of a beacon for the Middle East where Christians and Yazidis were free to practice their faith and basically protected by Assad. How many Middle Eastern states can you say that of? Admittedly Syria was no western liberal democracy but is was not a bad imitation of being the least worst option in terms of decent government in that part of the world. Again Assad might not be your favourite uncle who you’d look forward to having a pint with down at the ‘Dog and Duck,’ but he understood a little better the threat that Islamic extremists posed to his country and would have a little more clue than the west about how to deal with them. I daresay his opponents have one language for Europe and another for the Middle East, it was ever so.

So what I am saying is perhaps let’s help Assad deal with these opponents of his rather than doing everything possible to oust him from power, because I venture to suggest that what we will get in his place will be far, far worse. Shades of the Shah of Iran anyone? Thank God David Cameron lost his vote in the Commons in August 2013 to take military action against Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, fuelled I seem to remember by his wife’s Syrian experiences. I think a few angels hanging around in the chamber that day may have whispered in some MPs ears which way to vote. The least worst option in the Middle East is often to help some of these regimes stay in power for a modicum of stability, cue Egypt, Libya and so on, rather than indulge in regime change. Bit of discernment needed here of course as you can’t make it a rule for every situation, but I think we should be very slow to get involved in the Middle East unless it directly affects our interests and there is overwhelming clamour for these countries for our help. We would get more support from the Middle East if countries there knew that their people had begged us to help them dealing with intractable situations.

So I am somewhat aghast at the latest rumblings from the government that Mr Trump should be persuaded not to get too close to Russia on this issue. To think that the whole government machine, the Cabinet, the Foreign Office and all those advisory civil servants will be busy trying to persuade Mr Trump not to support Mr Assad, that’s our taxpayers money folks. It won’t be the best start to a new relationship with our strongest ally.

I can’t help thinking that most of Mr Assad’s opponents in Aleppo and elsewhere are of the ‘bearded extremist’ type who will behead you or worse if you can’t quote a couple of ready verses from the Koran in case they query your Moslem credentials, and are busy constructing the worldwide caliphate beloved of militant Islam. Why we should be supporting such people I have no idea. We should be doing everything we can to wipe them from the face of the earth if it comes to military conflict. There is huge concern about how people are suffering because of the Russian/Assad bombardment of Aleppo, but this is where the US and UK could perhaps bring a little more finesse to the campaign with more precision targeting of the real enemy.

If Mrs Clinton had got in we would be cosying up to her as she pulled full steam ahead with her Syrian policy, perhaps arming the opposition more? No fly zones? A bit of sabre rattling in Putin’s direction? It would only need one or two near misses between Russian Migs and American F35s or Her Majesty’s Tornados in a no fly zone and we could see the start of World War 3, not something the liberal west wants to wake up to as it munches its raisin flavoured porridge in the morning.

Sure, Putin is no angel and may be a leader geared for war, but it sure is wiser to accommodate the Bear rather than poke it with a great big massive stick, especially in the cauldron of the Middle East. This is why I think we have a little less clue than Trump’s pending administration, so I bow to my American cousins on this issue. I by no means condone Putin’s authoritarianism and some of the ruthless actions of the Russian state machine, but in Syria it might be a case of holding your nose to help the Russians destroy ISIS. After all, in the Second World War the Soviet Union and  US were fighting on the same side. Perhaps the Brits can join them to help out.

Meanwhile I must finish my letter to Theresa May. But what do I know compared with those armies of civil servants in Whitehall?

Link

The world is in a bit of a quandary over the American elections. I said earlier this year that Brexit and a Trump victory in the US will be better for the world if they happen, and I stand by this. Just a few thoughts however from an Englishman who has been through Brexit.

I in no way condone Trump’s past behaviour or attitude to women, his outrageous statements on various groups Iike Mexicans, or his intemperate remarks on a range of issues. There are all sorts of reasons why people would not want to vote for him, and these are just some of them, just as there are many reasons why people will not vote for Hilary Clinton. The highest level of character and integrity are what you look for in a national leader, yet here we have two candidates with serious flaws, they do not measure up to want you want to see in a national leader. Many people will not vote for them because they refuse to give their vote to people they see as morally or spiritually bankrupt. That is their right, although I believe the stakes are so high that those people should still vote, including the significant bloc of evangelical Christians some of whom particularly disapprove of both candidates. You could say that Trump and Clinton are a symptom of the state of the nation rather than a cause. American society has produced two such candidates and they are merely a reflection of what America now represents. Just as in the U.K. we say we get the government we deserve.

l still say that there is a bigger picture at work, things will be difficult for America with either Trump or Clinton, but Trump I believe is the lesser of two evils. Again I see Trump as a Cyrus figure, a wrecking ball or bulldozer meant to smash the establishment and expose corruption, including the powerful hold of political correctness on the American authorities and especially the Democratic party. At least he stands for some conservative values, control of borders, slashing tax rates to encourage business, protection of the American Constitution and a realistic attitude to militant Islam. On the other hand Hilary Clinton is a hard left candidate who represents open borders, a hemispheric common market, continuance of the entitlement mentality, destruction of the Constitution and a dangerous appeasement towards militant Islam, as well as social transformation with the further pushing of dangerous agendas like partial-birth abortion and the transgender movement. Then we have the email debacle, the evidence of corruption in the Clinton foundation which has taken money from regimes like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In essence Hilary represents a party that is totally on board with the agenda that is speeding the destruction of western civilisation and destroying anything left of our Judeo Christian heritage.

Supreme Court nominations is another issue. Presidents get to nominate new Supreme Court justices and once they are in they are in for life. Hilary Clinton will ensure hard left candidates for those roles. At least Trump is more likely to appoint conservative judges. Presidents only get eight years maximum, Supreme Court justices are there for life unless they choose to retire or resign. This means they have the ability to remake massively the social and political landscape of America over the long term that a president would never achieve. If Clinton wins, expect judicial activism and a liberal totalitarian social agenda on a grand scale.

Trump has already referred to this as a Brexit election and to some extent he is right. The same forces are at work to a degree. People are fed up with the downgrading of any cultural or historical sense of nationhood, they are tired of the mass migration that is fast changing the nature of our societies, and they are very wary of the policy of allowing so many Moslems to migrate to the west. If Trump gets in, just as with Brexit, it is a sign of the revival of the nation state which has been so inaccurately caricatured in recent decades. People want their own country with a sense of pride in its nature and traditions, and there is nothing wrong with that. They don’t want a globalist agenda imposed upon them. It was inevitable that a pushback would take place, a sign that there is still some backbone left in the west.

One characteristic that defines Trump whatever you say about him is that he has courage. Courage is perhaps the most essential and the most rare commodity in western society today, courage to speak the truth without fear or favour. Too many in the west have been intimidated by a spirit of fear, which stops them from saying what they think. We need leaders who will tell it like it is, before it is too late. Unfortunately too many leaders fit the mould of what is an ‘acceptable’ politician these days. Trump has broken that mould.

The other thing that could be in Trump’s favour is that if he gets a good team around him this will mitigate some of the potential disasters that people anticipate. It won’t be a one man band. Cool heads planted around him can provide a healthy siphon for any excess. The outlook is positive on this front as you see men like Mike Pence, his running mate, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, trusted generals, some decent conservative leaders around him. Trump can’t do it on his own, a strong team around him will bring stability. He would be wise to recruit those who can get the job done.

Also don’t believe the polls! We have learnt this in the UK both with last year’s General Election and this year’s Brexit vote. Both results were unexpected and leave some faith in democracy against those who argue that elections are rigged. I was up all night at the Brexit vote witnessing the vote count and it is heartening to see the order and level of professionalism displayed in running the count, although it was an area of the country not likely to see much voter fraud! Whether you hold your nose and vote for him or you are a die hard Trump supporter, I still predict that he will win. The alternative in my opinion is frightening, it could spell the end of America as we know it. Just look at this video to sum up Trump’s role as a wrecking ball:

 

 

Brexit!

Well it’s happened! The good ship HMS United Kingdom has loosed her moorings and is now departing the EU quay. Those thick heavy ropes that tied her to Europe are unraveling. There are some that say this will be reversed, that the EU will clutch the UK back into her bosom through the chicanery and Machiavellian tactics of both its own fanatical globalists and sympathetic remainers in the British government.

There are some worrying ‘delays’ and roadblocks being put in place. May is saying that article 50 will not be actioned this year. There have been reports from Europe that we could keep access to the Single Market but at the price of continued free movement of labour. A campaign in the Lords wants to make the country think again. But I just don’t think this will happen now. I really don’t believe the so called ‘New World Order’ has that much power. There will be 17.5 million people to answer to at the next election if Brexit is ‘fudged.’ The momentum is with the leavers, who have been disgracefully smeared as racists and xenophobes by some of the media and sadly by ordinary Brits who voted the other way. A workmate of mine was verbally abused by a fellow worker over their leave stance, although I am pleased to hear there was an emphatic apology. I must say it was a delight to hear people like Keith Vaz and David Lammy summing up this as a ‘disaster’ when in my view it’s the best thing to have happened to Blighty since the end of the Second World War.

The significance of this result should not be underestimated because those that voted out faced the full force of propaganda, bullying and manipulation the establishment could muster. Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of them. The whole government machine threw the kitchen sink at the voters, notably spending £9m on government leaflets posted to every house in the country extolling the arguments for remaining in the EU. Then we had Obama come over the pond to offer his advice that we would go to the back of the queue for a trade deal if we left the EU. I daresay a lot of Brits gave him a classic Anglo Saxon rebuttal when they heard this pontificating about how they should vote. Then we had the banking establishment led by venerable institutions such as the Bank of England and Goldman Sachs informing us of the dangers to the economy a Brexit would pose, followed by various world leaders such as Angela Merkel, and assorted businessmen like Richard Branson telling us what to do. Then there was the catwalk of celebrities that informed us of the ‘folly’ of exit, Jamie Oliver, Gary Lineker, and people like the comedian Eddie Izzard whose appearance on Question Time before the referendum might have convinced any waverer that staying in the EU might not be such a good idea. Even David Beckham was dragged into it, coming out as an enthusiastic remainer along the lines of its better being together. A lot of these people showed a woeful lack of knowledge or discernment on exactly what the EU represents, or at least that they serve the God of mammon. I have to salute the British public who after all the massive bullying fell back on good old fashioned common sense and voted for self government. I daresay that the vote to leave would have been bigger if that horrendous and wicked murder of Jo Cox, female Labour MP had not happened. Also, I suspect a significant number voted to stay through fear, and may be glad later that they lost the vote when and if Brexit proves to be the right move.

And there’s the rub. One report in the Sunday Times made it quite clear that the number one reason for voting out was sovereignty and recovery of democratic accountability to the British voter. Those who oppose the leavers must really extract from the narrative this poisonous idea that such people are racists and xenophobes. This is an insult to millions of decent and principled people who are deeply concerned about what is happening to their country, and it is their country, and they have the right to claim it as their own just as any other people anywhere in the world do. It does not belong to the world and his wife, and any country worth its salt should be able to reserve a high bar to entry, otherwise you devalue the very idea of nationhood. And that vision includes unequivocally those who have come here from overseas and made it their home, happy to accept its values and mores.

This was the main issue for me. Do you or do you not want to be ruled by an external authority? There is only one answer if you want a self governing Britain. And my conviction is not based on consuming endless Daily Express and Daily Mail articles for breakfast but by a long standing study and consideration of our relationship with the EU. I have even read ‘This Blessed Plot’ by Hugo Young, the very bible of the history of UK/EU integration, which traces in long and tortuous detail our developing ties with the continent, and exposes the deceit at the heart of this relationship played on the British people, the idea that there would be no essential loss of sovereignty and that it was no more than an economic deal. He says in the book that there was sufficient covering up of the full truth such that anyone who wanted to ‘make hay’ later would be able to and with full justification. And so it has happened with the rise of Nigel Farage and UKIP who have forced the government’s hand. In a nutshell it can be argued that Edward Heath and his acolytes and successors committed treason by subsuming UK law to EU or European law in the first place and he should not have been able to get away with it.

One might be forgiven for thinking that the hand of Providence intervened in this affair. David Cameron was surprised that he got a majority in the last Parliament. It was totally unexpected by the pollsters. He bought off the threat of UKIP who were holding his feet to the fire by offering a referendum on in or out. How many people voted for him with this in mind? I for one had had enough and went with UKIP. One or two commentators have linked all this to Cameron’s modernising campaign, notably same sex marriage, which drove goodness knows how many exasperated Tories into the bosom of UKIP. So we are where we are, and Nigel Farage is to be saluted by the nation, because his drive and energy and the rise of UKIP has had a lot to do with this incredible victory. They have put the pressure on and won the great prize, and what a prize, regained independence and sovereignty for the people of the U.K. This is a time for great rejoicing.

I argue that you have to see the big picture which extends way beyond our short term interests in the UK. At the beginning of this year the world been out of alignment, spinning on its axis but not in true fashion, wobbly and dangerously lopsided. There is a massive struggle between nationhood and patriotism on the one hand, and globalism on the other. This is the first great event that will help to steer the world back into some sort of alignment again, as perhaps people are seeing that the globalist agenda, like the Emperor, has no clothes. It remains to be seen whether Donald Trump can curry the same favour with voters in the US that Brexit has whipped up in the UK. And let me say now that I do not see Trump as that much better than Hilary. But Hilary will continue to push the globalist agenda whilst Trump is much less likely to do so. Meanwhile, already a number of European countries are demanding their own referendum, countries like the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, France and even Germany. America has seen all this. Will she go for the same result?

This whole episode demonstrates that you cannot thwart the will of the people indefinitely. Sooner or later something will snap. I predict a love of country and revival of patriotism across the globe as peoples react to the relentless push for impersonal globalisation with its worship of money and big business, emasculation of national parliaments, erosion of democracy and unfettered and uncontrolled mass migration that poses a major threat to national cultures and social cohesion. Brexit is a healthy reality check that is proving an encouragement to the world to rediscover the importance of national identity. Well done Britain for leading the way, a fitting source for global change given her historical role as a bulwark against tyranny. She has not quite lost her soul, and may yet surprise us in the future.

Trump and Brexit

There are two events this year that could have an enormous effect on the future of the world. One is the presidential election in the USA and the other is the Brexit vote in the UK. If Donald Trump is elected president of the USA and the U.K. votes to leave the European Union this will be an enormous setback for the elite money men, socialist political leaders, corporatist interests, global companies that know no borders, in fact everything that epitomises the internationalist, globalist agenda, the virtual Tower of Babel that finds its ultimate manifestation in the superstate under construction that is the EU. All those who represent the New World Order and world government will get a kick in the teeth and have to move back in the queue just as the Brits will have to do of course if they leave the EU and try and form a trade deal with the USA! As Lord Obama said of course.

This is why so many people are up in arms about the Donald, as he is stirring up a hornets nest, attacking the forces of political correctness like a bulldozer. Nothing epitomises this direct challenge to the evil power known as ‘political correctness’ than Trump’s proposal to ban all Moslems from entering the USA ‘until we know what’s going on.’ Moslems are at the top of the food chain of the far left’s ‘victim’ groups. Trump has faced Islam down head on.

Trump might be seen as like a ‘Cyrus’ in the Biblical sense, raised up by the Almighty to destroy the spirit of control that is now spreading all over the western world like a lethal virus, causing decent people to hesitate about speaking common sense. In the Old Testament Cyrus was a heathen King who was used by God to decree the return of the exiled Jews to Israel. Trump likewise is poised to give a poke in the eye to all those who think they have the world locked into a one way trajectory. Yes he may not be to every conservatives taste, he may flip flop on a number of issues, he may even be seen as an immoral man, but he is not afraid to confront issues that need to be dealt with, and he is the only politician of a major western country that is prepared to say things about Islam that need to be said.

Meanwhile nothing would give the enemies of the U.K. more joy than to lock her irreversibly into a superstate which would shackle her potential ingenuity and creativity for ever. The land of Magna Carta, the mother of parliaments and the greatest empire the world has ever known finally tamed and neutered. Believe you me the influential ‘remainers’ as they are called in the UK are desperate to keep the UK submitted to the European project. If Britain leaves however, I believe it could be a wonderful release which can enable Britain to enjoy much greater freedom of movement.

Sadly, the U.K. doesn’t have leaders with a clear eye at this time, only the First and Second Lords of the Treasury, who some would say are acting like snake oil salesmen, Cameron and Osborne, who come with an ever more ludicrous narrative to try and bully the British people to stay in the corrupt and totalitarian EU. The referendum campaign in Britain demonstrates the stranglehold the BBC, the media and the establishment have on controlling the agenda. One of the saddest things about the campaign is the emphasis by the remainers on the importance of the economy. They have managed to get a profound debate on an issue close to the hearts of many concerning liberty and democracy down to the level of pounds, shillings and pence, when pecuniary interest should be the last issue in the debate.

However a UK set free from the straightjacket of Europe and able to make more of her own decisions would be a potential force for good in the world. There is enormous scope for developing the relationship with the Commonwealth which would have more natural allegiance to the monarchy and British traditions than could ever be drummed up from our European partners. The U.K. would be able to break free from all the tentacles of the EU octopus that have inveigled themselves into the UK body politic and to set a course which suits herself. Trade would be established with new markets unburdened by EU regulation, and last but not least the UK could help to free other nations also shackled by Brussels. A Brexit could initiate a domino effect that could reverberate through the whole EU.

So these two events give a great chance to the two great old champions of the free world, now much diminished, to make a bid for freedom. If the American people, thoroughly fed up with the political class go for Trump, and the British people show a little courage to break free from the powerful manipulative spirit of the EU, there may be more for the world to rejoice about at the end of the year than there was at the beginning. We can only live in hope.

 

The Dragon needs to be slain!

“National sovereignty is the root cause of the most crying evils of our times… The only final remedy for this supreme and catastrophic evil of our time is a federal union of the peoples…”

Words on the wall in the EU Parliament’s Visitors Centre in Brussels, Belgium.

The upcoming Brexit referendum is of historic importance, not only for the UK in its relationship with the EU but of the impact of this referendum result on the whole world. I contend strongly that a free sovereign UK again will be a positive result for the world. Britain’s continuing membership will help to perpetuate and worsen the present sorry state of affairs.

To understand the nature of the beast we are dealing with just look at the quote at the beginning of this article. Unless you understand the DNA of the EU you will keep falling for the deception. For the EU is possibly the biggest deception or delusion this country has ever faced. The only thing that will stop us from being consumed by the EU is a casting aside of apathy and a little willingness to look at the bigger picture, and that includes taking a historical perspective.

The level of lies, deception and delusion surrounding the EU is enormous. There is always a spirit in Europe that rises up to try to take control of the continent. It has had various guises through the ages and can use any form of government or strategy to effect that control. You only have to look at the history of Europe to realise this. The Roman Empire was an early example when the legions of Rome got to Hadrian’s Wall but interestingly no further. Military power was the driving force. Then during the Middle Ages the controlling spirit worked through a political and religious hierarchy notably represented by the Roman Catholic Church. Later on we had Napoleon trying to conquer Europe through military power but taking a step too far by trying to take on Russia.

The most obvious recent manifestation were the Nazis. Again, a controlling spirit trying to take Europe by terror, Jew hatred and military power. The very same spirit just morphed into something different after the war, but this time it’s a little bit more subtle, using ‘peaceful’ methods to get its way, using words like ‘federalism,’ ‘pooling of sovereignty,’ ‘subsidiarity,’ ‘qualified majority voting,’ ‘progressive,’ ‘anti discrimination’ and ‘equality’ to get its way.

The EU is like a totalitarian monster trying to disguise itself in a velvet cloak, but it’s unceasing activity is to destroy the nation state. You can be absolutely sure that it aims to do this to what is left of the U.K. despite our history. Go to Brussels, to the very centre of the project, and read the words from the beginning of this article that quotes a British civil servant, Philip Kerr, later known as Lord Lothian, who loved federalism and internationalism and thought the nation state was the cause of all the world’s problems. This demonstrates the core DNA of the EU and needs to be exposed for all the world to see.

Also unless you can see you are dealing with a bully who will make ridiculous threats you will not get far. European Commission chief Jean Claude Juncke has actually just said there is no plan B, that ‘the UK will stay in the EU as a constructive and active member of the Union.’ Right now the UK needs a statesman of the highest calibre with great farsightedness, someone with the prophetic insight of Churchill, but we haven’t got that type of person in a Prime ministerial role. Every politician that enters Westminster is in danger of coming under the same spirit of control that emanates from Brussels, because this nation has opened a gateway to that spirit when we entered the Common Market. Thank God for UKIP who have provided a safety valve for dissent and indeed the chance of a referendum.

The EU has been trying to operate as one superstate for years. The single market is an example of that. We hear about being excluded from the single market if we leave the EU, but that shouldn’t surprise us. Any sovereign country has a single market with no trade barriers. In the UK there is a single market if you like, although we are compromised by Europe. So goods and services are freely traded across county and regional boundaries, between England, Wales and Scotland every day, without any tariff barriers. That’s what happens when you have one country. If we left the EU we would leave the single market and have to arrange a trade deal with the EU. That’s ok, it’s what any other country outside the EU does if they want to trade with Europe. Sure there may be tariffs or taxes involved at some point working both ways, but that’s what happens between sovereign nations. It certainly wouldn’t be in the interests of either side to set unnecessarily high trade barriers.

Another example is not being allowed to discriminate against workers from across the EU in terms of employment and benefits in favour of your own nationals. Of course that will happen because the EU is trying to build one country where you cannot discriminate in favour of your own people, for we are all EU citizens with EU passports.

Then we have child benefits for migrant families. We send child benefit payments ‘abroad’ for migrant families. The latest deal proposes that payments are indexed to individual countries’ costs off living so that a Polish family is not getting the same number of pounds as a Bulgarian family who are probably getting a ‘kings ransom’ at present rates given the low cost of living in Bulgaria. Again the EU is trying to act like a single state where payments are just sent home to wherever home is in ‘Europa.’

What have they offered us? Not very much at all. When dealing with a bully you have to go in hard and face them down head on, confronting them with a list of demands as long as your arm including taking back control of our fishing industry, industrial policy, energy policy and full control of our borders, and clipping the wings of the European Court of Justice to overrule Britain in any way. David has managed to secure a deal on migrants, to disallow in work benefits for in work migrants for up to four years, an emergency brake, but then this is subject to the agreement of the European Parliament and agreement of other governments to activate the brake. Exactly how many migrants is this going to stop from entering the UK, especially if they come from much poorer countries and are coming essentially to earn a living? A mere cosmetic exercise, especially as the Living Wage is coming on stream soon.

In view of all this David Cameron is a bit like a puppy sitting at the foot of the table of his master eagerly awaiting a few crumbs from the table. Quite insulting to him and the British people. Unfortunately Cameron is another gatekeeper for the European project, utterly under the thumb of the big bully of Brussels. You could also argue he is like a magician trying to perform a trick with smoke and mirrors. It has always been a dream of mine for a UK Prime Minister to stand up in Parliament and tell the EU to get lost. I will have to wait a little longer. But perhaps in the meantime the British people will make that unnecessary by rising up in courage and voting ‘out.’ Let us hope so!

Good government starts directly with you!

It is often said that we get the government we deserve. We castigate government and politicians for all sorts of reasons, lack of integrity, lying, bullying, sexual impropriety, but perhaps the behaviour of government simply reflects the behaviour of society at large.

Here are some interesting quotes:

The Bible, Proverbs 16 v 32: ‘He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that rules his own spirit than he that takes a city.’

‘Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the strong arm of man, either by the Bible, or by the bayonet.’ Robert C Winthrop, Addresses and Speeches on various occasions, 1852.

“When a people shall have become incapable of governing themselves, and fit for a master, it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes.” George Washington.

“If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.” William Penn.

The implication here is that some form of self government is the best for society, springing from great self control or individuals being answerable to some higher power. If people cannot control themselves the government will step in to protect us from one another’s harmful behaviour. The greater the number of potentially uncivilised behaviours, the greater the number of restrictions on our lives. And often, we all suffer.

The papers are full of stories every week that reflect peoples’ inability to control their own behaviour. In many cases everybody suffers to minimise the dangers from a tiny number of potential offenders. More laws are called for, or more restrictions are put on peoples’ freedom to protect society from potential criminals.

Because of the dangers of paedophiles and child molesters all teachers and those working with children have had to be CRB checked regardless of whether or not those people have any criminal record. In the news recently was a report that in Magaluf on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca the authorities have decided to crack down on pub crawls because of the level of disorder from English youngsters. This is after an incident when a teenage girl was seen performing sex acts on more than 20 men in public. No surprises there that a crackdown came. Also recently there were calls for more laws to protect people from abuse and bullying in cyberspace. The list could go on and on of calls for more laws to restrict bad behaviour.

Writing in the Guardian recently (July 12th 2014) Hari Kunzru touches on this and actually relates it back to faith implicated in my earlier quotes when he says: ‘In general ‘faith’ makes people much easier to govern – after all they’re already being governed by God, who has panoptical security cameras and already knows what’s in everyone’s browser history. No wonder politicians line up to praise it. If only everyone possessed this salutary quality!’

Some politicians indeed understand these things, even in their own lives they are aware of guiding principles ruling their behaviour. Gordon Brown, son of the manse, when becoming Prime Minister spoke of his moral compass. John Major used his ‘back to basics’ campaign in an effort to return to ‘certain values.’ Here are his words in a speech he made on the 8th October 1993.

‘The old values – neighbourliness, decency, courtesy – they’re still alive, they’re still the best of Britain. They haven’t changed, and yet somehow people feel embarrassed by them. Madam President, we shouldn’t be. It is time to return to those old core values, time to get back to basics, to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting a responsibility for yourself and your family and not shuffling off on other people and the state.’

This all backfired somewhat after a series of scandals hit the Conservative party, and Mr Major himself was later found to have been having an extra marital affair which must have left much of the population agog with astonishment.

However we have touched on an important principle for good government in any nation at any time in any place. Good government is directly related to the discipline and self control of its people. It guarantees that you have a much more healthy balance between those who are governed and the governors themselves, who should after all be the servants of the governed. Nobody would dispute that any country needs good government. Whether we actually have good government is another matter. But if we want good government in any nation it first starts with you as an individual, yes each one of us in our own lives.

Good government starts with you. If you can control yourself you don’t need an outside authority to control you. The more an internal ‘law’ keeps you in order, the less an outside law needs to keep you in order. You are no threat to those around you because you know how to control yourself in day to day discourse.

The less self discipline and self control a population has, the more a government has to step in with coercive measures. New Labour were known for making a huge number of laws. To what extent they were trying to control peoples’ bad behaviour and to what extent they were just passing too many laws to impose an ideology upon the nation is an interesting question.

Here is a quote by Philip Johnson in the Telegraph in March 2010. He writes that in his ten years as Prime Minister Tony Blair presided over more than 3000 new laws, more than 1000 of which carried jail terms. Their incessant law making was disturbing to say the least. I’d say that was sign of a corrupt government. Or maybe they thought the people of this nation couldn’t control themselves as well as they used to. Maybe it’s in their DNA and that’s why a socialist government should never ideally be allowed to govern this nation. It’s been said in general that socialists use the law to make people ‘good,’ conservatives use the law to punish bad people. The socialist interpretation is a misunderstanding of the nature and limits of government. The inner compass cannot be imposed by law. That has to come from other sources, the settled mores of an established culture, family and the teaching of right from wrong which comes from institutions such as school and church, but primarily should come from family. When a government takes these responsibilities, you know a culture is on its death bed.

Mr Robert C Winthrop’s quote above says you either rule people through the Bible or the Sword. My, that would get all the cappuccino sucking liberals choking on their coffee. Highly controversial nowadays as so many people have jettisoned Christianity. But what do you put in the place of Christianity as a restraining influence on peoples’ bad behaviour? Take your pick! You either have a people who know how to behave through the internal restraints of conscience or you have men and women who cannot control their natural appetites who need an increasingly ruthless external authority to keep them in order.

Self control springs from character and integrity, two qualities that are in short supply today. The measure of any man or woman is their character and integrity. That is the way you measure success in life or otherwise. Not by what they do or how much they earn, but by their character and how they deal with those around them. The west is performance orientated, people are valued or measured according to the power of their personality, their looks, their earning power of status in society. Yet these things should play second fiddle to character. But we tend to look on the outward appearance or talents rather than what’s inside. How many of us are excited by a person with self control rather than a person with charisma, good looks and high intelligence? Who would you rather spend a night in a pub with, a man about town with a hint of danger in their eye or a man who has been faithful to his wife for 30 years but seriously lacks charisma. People are overawed or overwhelmed by attractive natural ability and underwhelmed by steady faithful unexciting character.

What do we mean by a person of character and integrity? We could produce a long list of attributes, but one of those attributes is definitely self control, and that means dominion over your temper, your tongue and your appetites. A man or woman who can control their own temper is to be esteemed. That means you rule the spirit that is within you, it does not rule you. You are not easily roused to intemperate behaviour.

They know how to control their tongue, a rare thing again for most of us! Life and death is in the power of the tongue, we speak life with encouragement, praise and a ‘looking on the bright side’ attitude or we can speak death by continually running people down, moaning, complaining and gossiping. That’s a difficult one!

They can control their appetites. Whether it is longing for food, alcohol, sexual impropriety, money or a whole host of other things, allowing a particular appetite to control you can bring untold misery to others.

Self government is manifestly not everyone doing what is right in their own eyes. In such a society what is right to you may not be right to me, and I will still do what I want. There has to be a common set of mores, a standard of right and wrong that people more or less agree with. If you do not have that the nation begins to fall apart for what is the glue that holds it together anymore? So it’s not enough to control yourself. You also have to have general agreement in society as to the proper way to behave.

But we now live in a society where increasingly people do what is right in their own eyes regardless of traditional morality. The church has a diminished role in being the nation’s moral compass. In addition the drive towards a multicultural society magnifies the importance of all cultures and worldviews. We now have communities in the UK whose mind-set and ways of thinking are totally incompatible with the mind-set of the traditional Brit. This makes governing the nation much more difficult, especially when the authorities have encouraged immigrants to import their own culture without buying into what it means to be British.

So there you have it. The more internal constraints individuals have on their behaviour the less external constraints they will need. The more internal motivation to practice good behaviour, the less need there is for governmental authority to force people to conform to ‘expectations.’ A nation is the sum of its parts, and what is more valuable than a nation’s human resources? The strength of a nation is in the character of its people. That makes a nation great. Self control and self discipline are essential prerequisites of such a culture.

There are immeasurable benefits to a society whose people know how to govern themselves properly. For starters there is the effect on the nation’s finances. The UK has a vast fiscal deficit. I wonder how much it would be reduced if the courts, policing, security and prison services had less to do because the system was not under such strain from people who don’t know how to behave? More could be said on this but that would be the scope of another article.

George Washington said that the American constitution was only ever made for a spiritual and moral people. If that begins to break down, we move towards totalitarianism. Frighteningly the signs are that under Obama Barak particularly, the US is losing its freedom. I remember speaking to a Headmaster who said he thought the French were more ungovernable than the English, what with their farm protests and so on. Secularists and atheists may not like it, but a significant proportion of the older generation in this country went to Sunday School where they received a Bible education which taught them clearly what was right and wrong. Did that give them the internal compass which helped make the English a relatively law abiding nation certainly in the past? Even now, are we living on the moral and spiritual capital that has been built up in previous generations?

Whatever you say, I believe unless politicians have a fundamental understanding of the importance of self government for a nation’s health and welfare, and are prepared to debate how we can rediscover such a quality, we will continue to slide down the darkening trajectory we have set ourselves.

Just a thought!