This is the man once labelled by Peter Oborne as "a well-known Eurosceptic". Does anyone still take Oborne seriously? Is there any intelligent being anywhere on this planet who really believes that Hague is a eurosceptic - or ever was?
Not to be outdone, though, we have Cameron - another of Oborne's "eurosceptics". Speaking at the start of the Conservative Party in Manchester, he tells is that he does not believe the UK should quit the EU - and he played down the prospect of the Government repatriating powers from Brussels in the near future.
I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!
COMMENT THREAD
That it has been (and continues to be) a journey implies a beginning and an end, with a specific destination. At the outset, that destination seemed obvious – a United Kingdom free from the malign grip of the European Union. But that is no longer the case. It has become merely a way-station in a much longer journey.
The change of destination, I hope, explains what might otherwise appear to be an amount of incoherence on this blog. The change has not come easily or quickly, and we have spent many years realising that the EU is not the problem, or even part of the problem. The EU is merely the symptom of a much larger problem which starts and ends in the minds of this Island People, and those who would wish to rule us.
But if the EU is just a symptom, identifying the problem has not been that easy, and I am still not sure we are there, with the completeness of understanding that we would prefer. There is, though, enough to set out some observations, which seem to make some sense.
Here, I rely on my own potted version of history, which I have sought to articulate in pieces such as this and this, all pointing to how we are seeing a re-alignment of politics. The line which once marked the division between left and right has now rotated ninety degrees. We are no longer left or right, but above the line or below it.
With that, the journey becomes more of a process, a task – ultimately to remove that line, or to re-align it, so that there are more egalitarian divisions in society. Such divisions as there are should be between ideas, rather than determined by status, position and wealth, with the dominance of a permanent ruling class perched over us.
Thus, my political world is divided not by left and right but by "above the line" and below it. And, in many senses – from my position firmly "below the line" – that is how I see the world. That is how I distinguish friends and allies from political foes.
Some of my readers express puzzlement as to why I attack people who would appear to be our allies, the egregious Daniel Hannan, for instance. As a self-professed "eurosceptic" – he would seem to qualify as our ally in a common cause. However, I see him and many like him as "above the liners". For sure, Hannan would replace the autocracy of the EU – but with an autocracy of his own. He is, therefore, no friend of the people.
But what about "The Plan"? Thus do you ask about the famous offering from the Hannan and Carswell stable, which would bring us a new dawn of enlightenment, peace and prosperity? Except that it would do no such thing.
Like many of their ilk, this pair have stopped thinking. These are clever people so it is not that they are incapable of so doing. It is just that they have stopped doing it. Thus, they wrongly believe that "democracy" is a matter of having more and more tiers of elected officials – from tea ladies to mayors and police commissioners.
By this means, these people have lost sight of the essence of democracy – which is power to the people. Electing officials without having power over them is not democracy. It is simply an elective dictatorship. Turning this round, if we have power over our officials, it often becomes irrelevant whether they are elected or not. Elections are not a necessary condition for democracy and, even if they were desirable, they are certainly not sufficient.
As a very small example, you have to ask whether our representatives would be any better or any worse if they were appointed by a randomly selected jury who interviewed prospective candidates and chose them on the basis of merit. Or would our parliament be any the worse if our MPs were picked at random by computer?
On the other hand, it was "democratically elected" MPs who took us into the Common Market, and "democratically elected" MPs keep us in the EU. If we, the people, forced them to pull the UK out, by marching on Westminster, ransacking the parliament and putting to the sword the denizens - that would not conform with most people's idea of an election. But it would be democracy.
So it is that my pursuit of a more egalitarian and democratic society rests on the pursuit of power – for the people. I do not hold with the premise dear to the heart of the "above the liners" that the people cannot be trusted – and that we must elect only the pre-selected few to guide us to the path of righteousness and enlightenment. Nor do I accept that more elected officials is any answer.
In particular, I have far greater trust in the sense of the people than I do in the good faith of the ruling élites. My fundamental premise is that, in a society where people truly have power, they will grow into their responsibilities and use their power wisely. Even if they do not always do so, they can do no worse than our élites, who periodically "guide" us to war, famine and disaster, all in the name of peace and stability.
Democracy, therefore, is the destination. We seek democracy, in its true sense, not the pastiche that masquerades as such.
That then leaves us with the minor problem of how to achieve this desirable state but, here, we are beginning to formulate some principles of our own. Firstly, we take at as a given that the EU has reached it point of no return. The battle is not yet won, but the collapse of the "project" is now inevitable. In fact, it always was inevitable, as we wrote in The Great Deception in 2003. It is just that it is more obvious now.
Secondly, the collapse will make no great difference to us. Given our current governmental structure, our unaccountable ruling élite is quite capable of making a mess unaided. It does not need the EU. As we said, the EU is a symptom not the cause.
Thus, the real battle lines are over the shape of a post-EU United Kingdom. But we can't really talk about "restoring" democracy. In truth, we've never really had it. We need to take the next step towards the goal of achieving it, there having been no real developments since the Chartists took us towards universal suffrage.
As a result, the third principle we come to is the famous Tip O'Neill aphorism, that all politics is local. For democracy to work it must, in the first instance, be exerted locally. And here, we have a real problem. Not only did Heath destroy central government by taking us into the Common Market, he destroyed local government with the Walker "reforms" and the 1973 local government reorganisation.
Even before then, we had a top-down government, weak councils and excessive power at the centre. Over the years since 1973, this has got worse, with the accountability made even more fragile by the introduction of cabinet government, and the Bains Report dictum of all-powerful chief officers and delegated powers.
Thus, to bring democracy, we must address it first at a local level, altering the balance of power between local and central government. That is not "localism" - it is democracy. Democracy is local, first and foremost. Thus, it is a necessary part and parcel of a democratic state than we have a vibrant democracy at the lowest tiers of government.
It goes without saying, though, that it is not safe to give local councils more power until we have more power over those councils. And that means money. We must control the purse strings … the essence of the Referism concept. As long as we have "masters" who decide year-on-year how much we must pay them, and our choice is only how we pay them, there can be no democracy.
There lies the battleground – in my view. We perhaps need to be more formal, in setting out our lists of demands, as did the Chartists. And then we set out to make ourselves ungovernable until our demands are met.
Free people do not have rulers. Their governments are servants. We, in this benighted country of ours, have rulers – the "above the line" autocrats – in our town halls, in Whitehall and in Brussels. We will not be free until we clear out the lot of them and take control. Getting rid of Brussels is only a start, and by no means enough.
Autonomous Mind says it superbly. We must re-draw the line. Only then can we continue the march our forefathers started - towards real democracy.
COMMENT THREAD
Booker in a reflective mood talks about the five stages of the "fantasy cycle", as it applies to the EU … with the "colleagues" locked into the "nightmare stage", awaiting nemesis. For the Hague, though, Booker is going to have to re-structure his theory. He is still trapped in the fantasy stage, the tragic puer aeternus who will move straight from there to nemesis without transitioning the other stages.
Nevertheless, says Booker, we are witnessing the unfolding of one of the great archetypal patterns that shape human affairs, one we can compare to the story of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
The EU's leaders frenziedly rush about trying to stop their magic broomstick running amok, as it fills their house with ever more buckets full of debt. The hapless victim of the old fable was eventually saved by the return of the sorcerer, who knew the magic spell that could avert final disaster.
In the case of the EU, there is no sorcerer. There seems to be no means by which Europe's leaders can halt the chaos that now threatens to bring down the euro, much of the world's financial system – and, ultimately, even the EU itself. But since this must happen, the sooner the better. We really need to get this over and done with.
COMMENT THREAD
As we struggle to meet the ever-increasing demands of City Hall bureaucrats, the councillors who should be keeping a grip on the spending are themselves living it up to the tune of £1.8 million paid out in wages and allowances - a three percent rise on last year.
More than 35 councillors claimed more than £20,000 each and, of those, ten took home more than £30,000. Two councillors claimed more than £40,000 and the highest earner was Labour Councillor Ian Greenwood (Lab, Little Horton), who as leader of the Council was paid a total of £49,414.
This is the man who presides over the Council Tax Fraud, ripping off the poorest and most vulnerable tax payers in the City by illegally inflating fees for late payment of local taxes.
If, of course, the councillors did provide a check on the Council (and some are certainly trying), they might be worth their payments in a city with a half-million population – bigger than some countries.
But Greenwood's hands-off approach to official theft has catapulted the City to the top of the league on the "Greed Index" (above), based on what different councils are charging. Sending out nearly five times as many summonses as the lowest council, it also charges on average seven times the rate of the cheapest.
Bradford is thus capitalising on the hardship of the many, exploiting them as a business opportunity to yield in excess of £3.2 million a year, giving the council a comfortable surplus with which to pay their councillors and have six-figure sums left over for their chief officers' salaries and pensions.
And while the Labour leadership is silent on the issue, so too is Councillor Anne Hawkesworth (Con, Ilkley). But then, as leader of the Tory group for a year from May 2010, she is the second-highest beneficiary of the council rip-off, claiming a total of £42,107.
Not a single penny of this, though, was ever democratically mandated. The taxpayers were never asked if they wanted paid councillors, much less chief officers on six-figure salaries. It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that nearly one in six households withhold their taxes until they receive a court order forcing them to pay.
With local democracy having all but broken down, such resistance is all that is left to us … for the moment. As the rip-off continues, though, many are taking the view that this is not enough. The "Greedy City" is on notice.
COMMENT THREAD
A revealing piece is to be found in the Bournemouth Daily Echo, retailing news of a plea by Dorset Fire Service for more money.
There is nothing unusual in that, you might feel, except that, despairing of a free hand at the till, county fire chief Darran Gunter is appealing over the heads of the politicians, making an appeal directly to the public. He is asking people to support "a small rise in Council Tax" to offset an expected reduction in the central government support grant.
What is revealing though is that that, having exhausted all other options for more money, the beleaguered fire chief turns as a last resort to the people themselves. This might thus have the elements of Referism, except that the public is only being given the option of shelling out more money.
However, there was a time when such an option was given to a limited number of people, as an experiment and, in the interest of equity, it is about time it was repeated. If we are deemed by our masters as worth consulting when they want more money, then the other way around should also apply. We must take the power to decide how much we pay them in the first place.
COMMENT THREAD
As Charles Moore reminds us, this coming week – starting on Sunday – sees the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.
Moore then goes through the ritual of advising the man who calls himself our prime minister. Opinion polls, he says, tell a story of quiet acceptance of the way things are, and Moore acknowledges that things must get worse before they can get better. And with that, he tells us that Cameron needs to give us a stronger sense next week of what that better might be.
If he does, I for one will not be listening. The television news will not be watched and, on the occasions when I sit in front of the idiots' lantern for a meal, 40-year-old repeats of MASH are preferable to the hand-wavers and their faux political dramas.
As for Cameron, he has nothing to say to me or mine. There is not the "quiet acceptance" that Moore would aver. Rather, there is complete indifference to anything the Tory leader might say or do. He is a factor in our lives only because, by virtue of his office, he has some residual power and a capacity to do us harm. When he passes, we will not miss him or even care.
The drama, such that it is, rests with Brussels – and other points on the benighted continent of Europe, which is tearing itself apart over the vainglory of the EU experiment. Ambrose forecasts its demise. After many false starts – his analysis this time is spot on. The euro is finished. Germany will see to that. And with it will go the EU, even if it takes some time.
Meanwhile, we are left with the wreckage of a governmental system which has been decaying since the Second World War – and was not up to much before then. But the same Heathite enthusiasm for corporate gigantism brought us not only the Common Market but also local government reorganisation.
The so-called Walker "reforms" in 1973 have destroyed local government every bit as much as our membership of the EU has destroyed central government. Every tier of our government is in terminal decay, beyond the reach of the posturing that will dominate this week in Manchester.
Strangely, though, the smell of decay in the air is encouraging. The giant tree which, for decades seemed a permanent feature of the landscape, solid and immovable, is now rotten to the core. One stiff gale will bring it down. And the gap left presents an opportunity – for new growth, for new experiments and, possibly, a new beginning.
But, whatever optimism and encouragement there might be, we will not find it in Manchester, nor in any of the established political parties, large or small. These are the constructs of the nineteenth and twentieth Century. They are the ghosts of the past, their faces distorted and blurred beyond recognition or memory.
This time a hundred years ago, we were three years away from a World War. There is the same feeling of impending change with us now. The post-war settlement is finally breaking down. In a few years time, new things, the shape of which we can only guess, will be emerging.
By the end of this decade a hundred years ago, we were looking at a world that had irrevocably changed. That same wind of change is blowing now. Ambrose sees it. I can see it and many of my readers are only too aware of it. But, next week, it will by-pass Manchester. Yesterday's figures will posture and preach. And we shall ignore them.
COMMENT THREAD
The figures for Bristol Council Tax summonses and liability orders are in, and very interesting reading they make. With 166,380 households, the council produced 22,700 chargeable summonses in the last financial year, giving a summons-to-household ratio of 1:7.
However, with a single fee of £103, the council is way on top of the league in its fee level, grossing £2,338,100 in the last financial year and pulling in over £28 million since the charging scheme started. But what is especially interesting about Bristol though is that it is one of the few councils that has been asked to justify its charges and its answer very much conforms with what we were told yesterday.
We do, though, seem to have a slight variation on a theme. The authority assigns a notional percentage of staff time spent on "recovery and enforcement", then applying that percentage to the overall cost of the revenue collection operation in order to work out its summons cost.
Thus we see in 2007/8, 27.3 percent of the staff time – amounting to 21 full-time equivalents - allocated to "recovery and enforcement", which means that the cost of sending out a claimed 16,000 summonses is that percentage of the £5.7 million total budget – or £1.6 million. Some of the tasks specified, that the costs supposedly cover, are set out here.
One really has to do a double-take here, for looking at the Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992, the allowable charges are set out quite clearly – in summary here:
After a summons has been issued (but before the application for a liability order is heard): a sum equal to the costs reasonably incurred by the authority in connection with the application up to the time of the payment or tender, Section 34 (5)By any reckoning, charging a single fee to cover summonses and liability orders cannot be legal. If the council sends out a summons, and they get a payment by return, it has incurred nothing more than the cost of sending out a mailshot, very similar to sending out a final notice, which is also a statutory document.
After the liability order has been issued: a sum equal to the costs reasonably incurred by the applicant in obtaining the order. Section 34 (7)(b)
And here, from Nuneaton and Bedfordshire on 26 October 2010, we get the cost to the authority of producing a final notice, including stationery, printing, postage and staffing costs is £1.22 per notice. Even adding a certain amount of extra processing to get the court approval for the summonses, you would be very hard put to it to double this cost, which means we are talking of a huge rip-off.
Then one comes to the liability order, where the law states that the costs apply to obtaining the order. There is not the remotest sanction for ladling in all the follow-up costs, which has Bristol allocating the costs of 70 percent of the 23-strong "customer services team" to recovery and enforcement.
What Bristol officials have not actually worked out is that, with 21 staff (FTEs) allocated, that amounts annually to over 35,000 staff hours devoted to its notional 16,000 defaulters. That gives them over two hours each. Council officials could afford to hand-deliver each summons and sit down with defaulters to discuss payments over cups of tea.
As the evidence builds, therefore, it becomes more and more clear that officials are abusing the system. And up there in the premier league reside the Bristol Bandits.
COMMENT "STEALTH TAX" THREAD
To see how far the British justice system has gone down the pan, one just needs to look at this (above). Stephens stole jogging bottoms, T-shirts and shorts of an unknown monetary value from the Adidas store on New Street on August 8. Judge Inman told Stephens he had reduced his sentence because he handed himself in and also because he entered an early guilty plea.
Now compare and contrast that with the fate of filth like Andrew Laycock, at 58 a retired former council head of legal services (who will have sought the imprisonment of many Council Tax defaulters in his him). He walks free with a suspended sentence, having been given "credit for his plea" of guilty to possessing more than 5,700 indecent images and 17 counts of making indecent images of children.
And then, of course, there is this excrement, the former Liberal Democrat councillor Christopher John Basson, who walks free from Westminster Magistrates' Court, despite stealing £12,000 from the State in fraudulently obtained incapacity benefits, while receiving nearly £26,000 in member's allowances from Camden Council.
If there is a logic here, it is difficult to see it ... other than it paying to wear a suit and have council connections. But, if kids on the streets don't take the system seriously, or give it any respect, you can hardly blame them. This is "The Man's justice" and it stinks.
COMMENT THREAD
Wholesale looting by the thieves in suits is not confined to the public sector. In fact, the looting disease was caught from the private or – to be more precise – from the corporate sector. Here, wages – or "compensation" as they quaintly call it – has soared to stratospheric heights, reaching the obscene levels typified by the grotesque payments made to BT chief executive, Ian Livingston.
Last year, this looter saw his bonus more than triple, taking his total pay package, including shares, to more than £3m. It thus can hardly be unrelated to see today the beguilingly simple headline "BT customers face higher bills".
Monthly line rental for customers are to rise from £13.90m to £14.60, having already increased from £12.79 in April. Other rising charges include the cost of daytime calls, the cost of the popular "Anytime" call package, and the call connection fee.
In fact, the rise in charges is directly connected to Livingston's fortunes, as he was drafted in salvage the company from its disastrous ventures, in particular the losses from its Global Services wing. His predecessor in the role, Hanif Lalani, left BT the year before, having presided over £1.6bn of "write downs" on these ventures, taking a £780,000 "golden goodbye" as his reward for failure.
Livingston has since turned the company round , mainly by the expedient of increasing prices while holding down the pay of his field workers. He has, nevertheless, retained his company's enviable reputation for inefficiency, poor consumer service and indifference to customer needs.
Apologists for this type of corporate looting will, of course, point to the effect one man can have on the balance sheet, stressing that getting the right man for the job requires an internationally competitive payment package.
On the other hand, one has to note that corporate decisions are not taken by one man alone – that is what boards of directors are for. And here the looting spreads across the table. Last year, the head of BT's retail business, Gavin Patterson, saw a salary increase of five percent and finance director Tony Chanmugam got a rise worth more than seven percent.
Yet these officials had been in post during the height of the Global Services debacles, each trousering £1.1m in salary and bonuses during the period. Chanmugam salary was then lifted from £475,000 to £510,000, while Patterson's £500,000 was increased by £25,000. In 2009, Chanmugam had also received a £315,000 "retention cash award".
The message sent is obvious – and it is one that has doubtless been absorbed by the youths of Tottenham and elsewhere. And if the men in suits can so freely indulge, they should hardly complain when the scrotes at the bottom of the heap follow their example.
COMMENT THREAD
I had a look at this story yesterday, and wondered what to make of it. The idea of a plod being dobbed in for failing to arrest a scrote in the act of thieving – and then being banged up – sounds so implausible that one feels there has to be more to it.
However, Raedwald thinks he might have an explanation. "When officers start shooting their men to encourage obedience, you know they're in desperate trouble", he writes:
When rank and file police officers see their endemically corrupt seniors get away with gross peculation of public funds, taking lavish bungs from dodgy enterprises, rewarding themselves with bonuses that equal a constable's annual salary, consorting openly with known criminals and stumbling from one silver-braided circle jerk to another, what do you imagine happens to their commitment to risk themselves to protect the public? Senior officers are aware that they've alienated themselves from ordinary plods. So they're seeking to secure by fear the obedience they can't achieve by leadership.I wouldn't entirely disagree with that, and we have observed before that the establishment seems to be running scared. Certainly, the extraordinary effort being devoted to tracking down the street rioters and looters, and the stiffer than normal sentences being handed down, can be interpreted in a similar vein. These are signs of weakness – fear – rather than strength.
One wonders if they are thinking what we're thinking, that we are on the cusp of a low-grade civil war, the nature of which seems to be continuing in Berlin, where the continuing car burning is now being treated as "politically motivated".
Our own establishment have gone out of their way to brand our troubles as "criminality", which is what they originally tried to do in Berlin. But it hasn't washed there, and it doesn't really wash here. They next time, though, the violence will be harder to dismiss, and our establishment too may well have to admit to political motivation.
But, if Raedwald is right and the senior plod and the politicals are losing touch with the rank and files, then we are in for a torrid time. The distance does beget fear and a frightened plod is a violent plod. But if they give vent to violence, they will be sowing the seeds of their own demise. We are the ones with the power.
COMMENT THREAD
I don't have much time for Pat Condell. He strikes me as the classic "man-in-pub", reinforcing prejudices which make him almost a parody of himself. This clip is typical of the genre, even if the underlying theme is sound. We do need a revolution – more a counter-revolution, as the "colleagues" got there first to steal our rights.
But Condell, like so many, confuses elections with democracy. We need to understand here that electing officials does not a democracy make, and nor is the election of our officials a necessary condition for democracy - as Klein Verzet also notes. Until it was so perverted, there was more democracy in the unelected House of Lords than there was in the Commons.
Democracy, therefore, is not about choosing officials, but of controlling them once they are in office. With election comes the threat that, should they not behave, we will remove them ... but since those officials all work to the same agenda now, that threat has lost its force.
Nor can we really talk about restoring democracy. In this country, we have never really had it, except around the margins. The history of the British people has been the journey towards a destination, at which we have never arrived. We need, actually, to create a democracy, to which effect we need to give the means some considerable thought.
For the moment, though, Condell will have to suffice, with his call for a revolution – not an uprising. His is not a call to violence, and neither will you get one here. But to fight the current order and to seek its overthrow by peaceful means are legitimate aspirations of the British people.
And, as I keep saying, there are more of us than there are of them. We just need to realise our own power.
COMMENT THREAD
Brazen in its contempt for public sentiment, the Local Government Group (formerly the Local Government Association) is seeking to appoint a new chief executive, and is ready to pay £190,000 a year. Funded from subscriptions from local government, which it represents, the LG Group is thus far from setting a good example in moderating its salary offers. Instead, it is joining the ranks of the looters with great gusto.
Officially the group, which changed its name from the Local Government Association this summer, has advertised the job for £150,000, with more available for an "exceptional candidate". However its choice, which is likely to be announced in the next few weeks, is certain to be judged exceptional and its salary will be set to come just beneath the £200,000 mark.
Outgoing chief executive John Ransford was paid at the rate of under £100,000 a year in his final months in the job, which means that the new chief executive will be enjoying what amounts to a doubling in salary for a job that has remained unchanged.
And, to add insult to injury, the LG Group brought in a recruitment consultancy to help with the appointment and has put the cost of this at £16,000 – more than many local authority employees earn in a year.
The contempt of the Group, however, is hardly surprising. Its political leader is Tory Sir Merrick Cockell, former leader of Kensington and Chelsea council. Cockell is one of the local councillors estimated to have made more than £100,000 in a single year in allowances paid by various local government bodies of which he has been a member.
But we must not talk of killing these people ... to do so could be construed as an arrestable offence - and it upsets some of our more sensitive readers. We, the little people, should instead smile and be grateful that we have such towering figures looking after our interests, for such a pittance. You know it makes sense.
COMMENT THREAD
Do you remember when the mantra of "Tory splits" seemed to be the most dominant force in politics, with Labour in full cry at the very hint of them, and the Tory grandees pulling out all the stops to maintain a façade of unity?
And now we have the "coalition", with the Cleggerons totally at odds over a supposedly flagship policy. They are split right down the middle, yet somehow this is not supposed to matter.
Actually, this makes a total nonsense of any idea of coherent government, when the man pretending to be prime minister is being held to ransom by his own deputy who is actively briefing against him.
Meanwhile, while the idiot Boy prattled about clawing back powers from Brussels, he is being undermined by his Business Secretary, Vince Cable, who has "agreed" to a controversial EU directive on agency workers, a measure which is set to cost employers more than £1.8 billion a year.
With that, the very concept of a unified government descends into low farce – a hollow joke. But the tragedy is that the joke is on us, the British people, forced as we are to suffer these posturing buffoons.
COMMENT THREAD
Confronted with evidence of their peculation, you would think that local authority chief executives would be hanging their heads in shame. That, though, would be to misunderstand the beast. Lining your pockets with public funds means never having to say you're sorry. Thus, we get "much anger amongst many in local government" at the inclusion of "all payments to chief executives covering items such as expenses, pension payments and returning officer fees".
In particular, the officials are very cross about this story, identifying one of their number, Phil Dolan, as a council fat cat, "earning" £570,000. We've got him all wrong, it seems. When he left his lucrative post, his authority, South Somerset, was "obliged" to pay Mr Dolan his £133,878 salary and £6,000 benefits in kind for the year, £23,122 for his notice period, £239,000 to the Local Government Pension Scheme under rules set by DCLG and £10,700 in statutory redundancy compensation. The only part decided by the council was a £156,676 discretionary redundancy payment.
Therefore, ministers – to say nothing of the rest of us – are making "malicious and vindictive" personal attacks on these innocent local government officials. And as people lap these stories up, we are told, "they come to view local government officers as 'fat cat bureaucrats' intent on bleeding the state dry for their own advantage when, really, they'd be far better off if they left the sector".
Well, there is a real easy answer to that. If these poor, misunderstood little darlinks think they would be better off elsewhere ... please leave the sector. We won't mind at all.
COMMENT THREAD
Less than two weeks ago we saw this after judge Farook Ahmed had cut the sentence of Vincent Miller, illegal immigrant and drug dealer, to help him escape deportation (above). He deliberately shortened the sentence Miller would have received from a year to eleven months. Criminals given twelve months face automatic deportation proceedings.
And now, we see this: a looter who took just one lick of an ice cream he stole during rioting before he gave it away has been jailed for sixteen months. Anderson Fernandes, 21, wandered into an upmarket store in central Manchester after the door was left open and helped himself to a cone and two scoops.
But despite giving it to a passer-by because he didn't like the coffee flavour he was still given a lengthy prison term.
And this occurs on the day we see reported that net immigration soared by 20 percent last year. This, says the Daily Mail "is making a mockery of Government pledge to bring it down".
One could venture that what is really behind this is the weak attitiude of government to immigration. When The Man feels threatened, as with the riots and looting, no sentence is too draconian. What a contrast this makes with the laid-back attitude to people who should not even be here.
Sometimes, you know, actions speak louder than words.
COMMENT THREAD
After a flat summer, Dellers has delivered a stonker, effectively calling for The Boy to go for an immediate general election. He (The Boy) won't, of course - he's far too wedded to the fruits of office to put those at risk.
With reference to this blog, some of our readers have taken exception to the belicose tone, only just stopping short of promoting physical violence against our rulers. But here, we have Dellers in a spoof letter from Cameron to Britain, telling us that, "if you realised just how totally stuffed we are you wouldn’t waste time getting to the end of this letter. You’d already be outside Number 10 with pitchforks demanding my head on a spike ... ".
We are where we are, writes "Cameron", through the pen of Dellers – and where we are is about as dire a place as Britain has ever found itself in in its entire existence. That includes ... even the darkest days of the Second World War.
Back then says Delleron, "however bad things might get, we were cushioned by an empire, by America, by a sense of unity and purpose, by a national character defined by resilience, self-reliance, patriotism, decency and an absolute determination – even unto death – never to surrender to tyranny in any form".
I think Dellers overstates that "sense of unity and purpose", but there was at least a common external enemy. Now, the enemy is within, the parasite classes indulging in the systematic looting of the public purse, while handing the legislative and governing powers of Parliament to the EU, unelected quagoes and a corrupt, dysfunctional local government.
And while that is all going on, we have a media besotted with the "bread and circuses" soap opera of Libya, one of those foreign adventures in which we should never have got involved and which now serves to divert attention from the real and pressing crises at home.
Thus, despite the fond wish of the Dellers, the general election – even if it was to happen – is not going to be the solution. Things have gone to far. We are on the edge of the precipice, but there does not seem to be anything capable of dragging us back.
Undesirable though it might be, it looks very much as if those "pitchforks" will have to be used ... it is just a matter of time. And getting po-faced and "precious" about this blog's strident tone isn't going to make it any different. As for me, I'd sooner be down to one reader and right, rather than play to the masses and join the ranks of the deluded and the ostriches.
COMMENT THREAD
As more and more detail comes pouring in, it is quite evident here that we have an epidemic of looting. By any comparison, the amount of money appropriated by the "looters in suits" far exceeds that stolen by the street amateurs. No one yet has pieced it all together, and at this stage it is probably not yet possible. But, when you take local authorities, civil servants, quango executives and the NHS, we are well into ten figures ... the billion-mark.
It may be only a few of us saying this, but that does not make us wrong. This is a crisis – more so than the street violence of a few weeks ago. Then, at least there were measures that could be taken against the perpetrators. Here, the thieves are in our midst, and walking away with their loot, unchecked.
Of course, there is also the Jacqui Smith farce, but that is small beer compared with this epidemic of official looting. It is the looting which is costing us the money, and our supine MPs seem powerless to stop it. But, reviewing this escalating situation, by what moral authority now do they claim any obligation to pay tax? And if there is no moral authority, we are not talking tax – but extortion and theft.
The really interesting thing, though, is that this seems to be an international phenomenon, with an outbreak in the Netherlands, Australia and South Africa. This institutionalised corruption is becoming the norm. We are all the poorer for it and, if it is not stopped, it has the potential to bring down civilisation as we know it.
COMMENT THREAD
And so we have another one, another "looter in a suit", ripping off the public. And what must never be forgotten here is that, should you as a council tax payer decide that you want no part of this outrageous theft, and refuse to pay, you go to jail. If you resist, force will be used. You will be restrained, you will be handcuffed and you will be forcibly detained.
Slime like Kevin Lavery, therefore, line their pockets on the proceedings on extortion with menaces. But for his fine position, his title and the veneer of "democracy", this would be a criminal offence. Almost laughably, people get worked up about the tyranny in Libya. But we have our own version of tyranny, under our very noses. It is called local government.
COMMENT THREAD
As has been pointed out on our forum, the parasite classes are not confined to the state sector. They can be found in the private sector as well. Actually, though, this is a state-owned bank – even if it is not under direct state control. Arguably, therefore, it is part of the state sector.
Perhaps more to the point, it is a corporate ... a status common to state and private sectors, where there is no morality or sense of right and wrong. Everything is justified if there is a "procedure" for it, and there can be no wrong as long as the rules were obeyed – never mind who made the rules, or whether they are right.
In the case of RBS, this looks to be wholesale looting before the bank (and the economy) goes belly-up. The thieves are taking what they can before the whole edifice comes crashing round our heads.
What is odd is that people seem to be more ill-disposed to the amateurs than they are to the genuine article. Perhaps, though, this is simply a reflection of the way polls are framed, allowing the "looters in suits" to get away with their thieving Scot-free – so far.
COMMENT THREAD
We can do without second-rate politicians grandstanding on issues over which they have little control and of which they have little comprehension, spending money we haven't got, while neglecting domestic issues.
Whether or not the politicals and their gormless claque realise it, we have enough crises over here to be going on with, not least local authority management taking the piss.
The latest example is Hammersmith and Fulham Council's highly paid chief executive. As his council was presiding over the biggest cuts in living memory, Geoff Alltimes saw his pay rise by £11,193 to 281,667 in 2010, making him the second highest paid local authority boss in the country.
We then get Essex County Council boss Joanna Killian cutting £4,000 from her salary - only to receive a £6,900 bonus. Accounts show Killian took home £289,173 in 2010/11 - £147,000 more than the Prime Minister - despite previously agreeing to take a five percent wage cut. The pay was topped up with a £6,900 bonus and an extra £1,100 towards her pension, despite County Hall having to make £98m worth of cuts.
Then we have a ghastly situation over in Northern Ireland, where convicted murderer Mary McArdle gets a job as a SPAD on £90K – an insult to the victim's relatives and their community.
There are so many of these sort of episodes that it would be unwise of ministers to ignore them. Whether it is hospital bosses getting away with murder, obscene compensation payments, officials living high on the hog, or just wasting money, people have had enough.
Despite the determination of the politicals not to take the riots and looting as a warning sign, we are not alone in seeing them as a response to organised looting by the parasite class, which is seriously pushing its luck - witness the political cartoon in the Independent.
The Boy maybe today rejoicing in the ransacking of Gaddafi's compound, but if he lets the sores here fester, his compound will be next. It won't then be an Arab Spring he is looking at but a British fall.
COMMENT THREAD